Books: The Herd Boy and His Hermit
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Herd Boy and His Hermit
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'How should I tell?'
'Which way did the sun lie when you crossed the moor?'
Anne could not remember at first, but by-and-by recollected that it
dazzled her eyes just as she was looking for the runaway pony; and
Hal declared that it proved that the convent must have been to the
south of the spot of her fall; but his astronomy, though eagerly
demonstrated, was not likely to have brought her back to Greystone.
Still Doll was thankful for the safe subject, as he went on to mark
out what he promised that she should see in the winter--the swarm of
glow-worms, as he called the Pleiades; and 'Our Lady's Rock,' namely,
distaff, the northern name for Orion; and then he talked of the stars
that so perplexed him, namely, the planets, that never stayed in
their places.
By-and-by, when Mother Dolly's work was over the kettle was on the
fire, and she was able to take out her own spinning, she essayed to
fill up the time by telling them lengthily the old stories and
ballads handed down from minstrel to minstrel, from nurse to nurse,
and they sat entranced, listening to the stories, more than even Hal
knew she possessed, and holding one another by the hand as they
listened.
Meantime the snow had ceased--it was but a scud of early autumn on
the mountains--the sun came out with bright slanting beams before his
setting, there was a soft south wind; and Hob, when he came in,
growled out that the thaw had set in, and he should be able to take
the maid back in the morning. He sat scowling and silent during
supper, and ordered Hal about with sharp sternness, sending him out
to attend to the litter of the cattle, before all had finished, and
manifestly treated him as the shepherd's boy, the drudge of the
house, and threatening him with a staff if he lingered, soon
following himself. Mother Dolly insisted on putting the little lady
to bed before they should return, and convent-bred Anne had
sufficient respect for proprieties to see that it was becoming. She
heard no more that night.
CHAPTER III. OVER THE MOOR
In humblest, simplest habit clad,
But these were all to me.--GOLDSMITH.
'Hal! What is your name?'
She stood at the door of the hovel, the rising sun lighting up her
bright dark eyes, and smiling in the curly rings of her hair while
Hal stood by, and Watch bounded round them.
'You have heard,' he said, half smiling, and half embarrassed.
'Hal! That's no name.'
'Harry, an it like you better.'
'Harry what?' with a little stamp of her foot.
'Harry Hogward, as you see, or Shepherd, so please you.'
'You are no Hogward, nor shepherd! These folk be no kin to you, I
can see. Come, an you love me, tell me true! I told you true who I
am, Red Rose though I see you be! Why not trust me the same?'
'Lady, I verily ken no name save Harry. I would trust you, verily I
would, but I know not myself.'
'I guess! I guess!' she cried, clapping her hands, but at the moment
Dolly laid a hand on her shoulder.
'Do not guess, maiden,' she said. 'If thou wouldst not bring evil on
the lad that found thee, and the roof that sheltered thee, guess not,
yea, and utter not a word save that thou hast lain in a shepherd's
hut. Forget all, as though thou hadst slept in the castle on the
hill that fades away with the day.'
She ended hastily, for her husband was coming up with a rough pony's
halter in his hand. He was in haste to be off, lest a search for the
lost child might extend to his abode, and his gloomy displeasure and
ill-masked uneasiness reduced every-one to silence in his presence.
'Up and away, lady wench!' he said. 'No time to lose if you are to
be at Greystone ere night! Thou Hal, thou lazy lubber, go with Piers
and the sheep--'
'I shall go with you,' replied Hal, in a grave tone of resolution.
'I will only go within view of the convent, but go with you I will.'
He spoke with a decided tone of authority, and Hob Hogward muttered a
little to himself, but yielded.
Hal assisted the young lady to mount, and they set off along the
track of the moss, driving the cows, sheep, and goats before them--
not a very considerable number--till they came to another hut, much
smaller and more rude than that where they had left Mother Doll.
Piers was a wild, shaggy-haired lad, with a sheepskin over his
shoulders, and legs bare below the knee, and to him the charge of the
flock was committed, with signs which he evidently understood and
replied to with a gruff 'Ay, ay!' The three went on the way, over
the slope of a hill, partly clothed with heather, holly and birch
trees, as it rose above the moss. Hob led the pony, and there was
something in his grim air and manner that hindered any conversation
between the two young people. Only Hal from time to time gathered a
flower for the young lady, scabious and globe flowers, and once a
very pink wild rose, mingled with white ones. Lady Anne took them
with a meaning smile, and a merry gesture, as though she were going
to brush Hal's face with the petals. Hal laughed, and said, 'You
will make them shed.'
'Well and good, so the disputes be shed,' said Anne, with more
meaning than perhaps Hal understood. 'And the white overcomes the
red.'
'May be the red will have its way with spring--'
But there Hob looked round on them, and growled out, 'Have done with
that folly! What has a herd boy like thee to do with roses and
frippery? Come away from the lady's rein. Thou art over-held to
thrust thyself upon her.'
Nevertheless, as Hal fell back, the dark eyes shot a meaning glance
at him, and the party went on in silence, except that now and then
Hob launched at Hal an order that he endeavoured to render savagely
contemptuous and harsh, so that Lady Anne interfered to say, 'Nay,
the poor lad is doing no harm.'
'Scathe enough,' answered Hob. 'He always will be doing ill if he
can. Heed him not, lady, it only makes him the more malapert.'
'Malapert,' repeated Anne, not able to resist a little teasing of the
grim escort; 'that's scarce a word of the dales. 'Tis more like a
man-at-arms.'
This Hob would not hear, and if he did, it produced a rough
imprecation on the pony, and a sharp cut with his switch.
They had crossed another burn, travelled through the moss, and
mounted to the brow of another hill, when, far away against the sky,
on the top of yet another height, were to be seen moving figures, not
cattle, but Anne recognised them at once. 'Men-at-arms! archers!
lances! A search party for me! The Prioress must have sent to the
Warden's tower.'
'Off with thee, lad!' said Hob, at once turning round upon Hal.
'I'll not have thee lingering to gape at the men-at-arms! Off I say,
or--'
He raised his stout staff as though to beat the boy, who looked up in
his face with a laugh, as if in very little alarm at his threat,
smiled up in the young lady's face, and as she held out her hand with
'Farewell, Hal; I'll keep your rose-leaves in my breviary,' he bent
over and kissed the fingers.
'How now! This impudence passes! As if thou wert of the same blood
as the damsel!' exclaimed Hob in considerable anger, bringing down
his stick. 'Away with thee, ill-bred lubber! Back to thy sheep,
thou lazy loiterer! Get thee gone and thy whelp with thee!'
Hal obeyed, though not without a parting grin at Anne, and had sped
away down the side of the hill, among the hollies and birches, which
entirely concealed him and the bounding puppy.
Hob went on in a gruff tone: 'The insolence of these loutish lads!
See you, lady, he is a stripling that I took up off the roadside out
of mere charity, and for the love of Heaven--a mere foundling as you
may say, and this is the way he presumes!'
'A foundling, sayest thou?' said Anne, unable to resist teasing him a
little, and trying to gratify her own curiosity.
'Ay, you may say so! There's a whole sort of these orphans, after
all the bad luck to the land, to be picked up on every wayside.'
'On Towton Moor, mayhap,' said Anne demurely, as she saw her surly
guide start. But he was equal to the occasion, and answered:
'Ay, ay, Towton Moor; 'twas shame to see such bloody work; and there
were motherless and fatherless children, stray lambs, to be met with,
weeping their little hearts out, and starving all around unless some
good Christian took pity on them.'
'Was Hal one of these?' asked Lady Anne.
'I tell you, lady, I looked into a church that was full of weeping
and wailing folk, women and children in deadly fear of the cruel,
bloody-minded York folk, and the Lord of March that is himself King
Edward now, a murrain on him!'
'Don't let those folk hear you say so!' laughed Lady Anne. 'They
would think nothing of hauling thee off for a black traitor, or
hanging thee up on the first tree stout enough to bear thee.'
She said it half mischievously, but the only effect was a grunt, and
a stolid shrug of his shoulders, nor did he vouchsafe another word
for the rest of the way before they came through the valley, and
through the low brushwood on the bank, and were in sight of the
search party, who set up a joyful halloo of welcome on perceiving
her.
A young man, the best mounted and armed, evidently an esquire, rode
forward, exclaiming, 'Well met, fair Lady Anne! Great have been the
Mother Prioress's fears for you, and she has called up half the
country side, lest you should be fallen into the hands of Robin of
Redesdale, or some other Lancastrian rogue.'
'Much she heeded me in comparison with hawk and heron!' responded
Anne. 'Thanks for your heed, Master Bertram.'
'I must part from thee and thy sturdy pony. Thanks for the use of
it,' added she, as the squire proceeded to take her from the pony.
He would have lifted her down, but she only touched his hand lightly
and sprang to the ground, then stood patting its neck. 'Thanks
again, good pony. I am much beholden to thee, Gaffer Hob! Stay a
moment.'
'Nay, lady, it would be well to mount you behind Archie. His beast
is best to carry a lady.'
Archie was an elderly man, stout but active, attached to the service
of the convent. He had leapt down, and was putting on a belt, and
arranging a pad for the damsel, observing, 'Ill hap we lost you,
damsel! I saw you not fall.'
'Ay,' returned Anne, 'your merlin charmed you far more. Master
Bertram, the loan of your purse. I would reward the honest man who
housed me.'
Bertram laughed and said, tossing up the little bag that hung to his
girdle, 'Do you think, fair damsel, that a poor Border squire carries
about largesse in gold and silver? Let your clown come with us to
Greystone, and thence have what meed the Prioress may bestow on him,
for a find that your poor servant would have given worlds to make.'
'Hearest thou, Hob?' said Anne. 'Come with us to the convent, and
thou shalt have thy guerdon.'
Hob, however, scratched his head, with a more boorish air than he had
before manifested, and muttered something about a cow that needed his
attention, and that he could not spare the time from his herd for all
that the Prioress was like to give him.
'Take this, then,' said Anne, disengaging a gold clasp from her neck,
and giving it to him. 'Bear it to the goodwife and bid her recollect
me in her prayers.'
'I shall come and redeem it from thee, sulky carle as thou art,' said
Bertram. 'Such jewels are not for greasy porridge-fed housewives.
Hark thee, have it ready for me! I shall be at thy hovel ere long'--
as Anne waved to Hob when she was lifted to her seat.
But Hob had already turned away, and Anne, as she held on by Archie's
leathern belt, in her gay tone was beginning to defend him by
declaring that porridge and grease did not go together, so the
nickname was not rightly bestowed on the kindly goodwife.
'Ay! Greasy from his lord's red deer,' said Bertram, 'or his tainted
mutton. Trust one of these herds, and a sheep is tainted whenever he
wants a good supper. Beshrew me but that stout fellow looks lusty
and hearty enough, as if he lived well.'
'They were good and kind, and treated me well,' said Anne. 'I should
be dead if they had not succoured me.'
'The marvel is you are not dead with the stench of their hovel, and
the foulness of their food.'
'It was very good food--milk, meat, and oaten porridge,' replied
Anne.
'Marvellous, I say!' cried Bertram with a sudden thought. 'Was it
not said that there were some of those traitorous Lancastrian folk
lurking about the mountains and fells? That rogue had the bearing of
a man-at-arms, far more than of a mere herd. Deemedst thou not so,
Archie?' to the elderly man who rode before the young damsel.
'Herdsmen here are good with the quarter-staff. They know how to
stand against the Scots, and do not get bowed like our Midland
serfs,' put in Anne, before Archie could answer, which he did with
something of a snarl, as Bertram laughed somewhat jeeringly, and
declared that the Lady Anne had become soft-hearted. She looked down
at her roses, but in the dismounting and mounting again the petals of
the red rose had floated away, and nothing was left of it save a
slender pink bud enclosed within a dark calyx.
Archie, hard pressed, declared, 'There are poor fellows lurking about
here and there, but bad blood is over among us. No need to ferret
about for them.'
'Eh! Not when there may be a lad among them for whose head the king
and his brothers would give the weight of it in gold nobles?'
Anne shivered a little at this, but she cried out, 'Shame on you,
Master Bertram Selby, if you would take a price for the head of a
brave foe! You, to aspire to be a knight!'
'Nay, lady, I was but pointing out to Archie and the other grooms
here, how they might fill their pouches if they would. I verily
believe thou knowst of some lurking-place, thou art so prompt to
argue! Did I not see another with thee, who made off when we came in
view? Say! Was he a blood-stained Clifford? I heard of the mother
having married in these parts.'
'He was Hob Hogward's herd boy,' answered Anne, as composedly as she
could. 'He hied him back to mind his sheep.'
Nor would Anne allow another word to be extracted from her ere the
grey walls of the Priory of Greystone rose before her, and the lay
Sister at the gate shrieked for joy at seeing her riding behind
Archie.
CHAPTER IV. A SPORTING PRIORESS
Yet nothing stern was she in cell,
And the nuns loved their abbess well.--SCOTT.
The days of the Wars of the Roses were evil times for the discipline
of convents, which, together with the entire Western Church, suffered
from the feuds of the Popes with the Italian princes.
Small remote houses, used as daughters or auxiliaries to the large
convents, were especially apt to fall into a lax state, and in truth
the little priory of Greystone, with its half-dozen of Sisters, had
been placed under the care of the Lady Agnes Selby because she was
too highly connected to be dealt with sharply, and too turbulent and
unmanageable for the soberminded house at York. So there she was
sent, with the deeply devout and strict Sister Scholastica, to keep
the establishment in order, and deal with the younger nuns and lay
Sisters. Being not entirely out of reach of a raid from the Scottish
border, it was hardly a place for the timid, although the better sort
of moss troopers generally spared monastic houses. Anne St. John had
been sent thither at the time when Queen Margaret was making her
attempt in the north, where the city of York was Lancastrian, as the
Mother Abbess feared that her presence might bring vengeance upon the
Sisterhood.
There was no great harm in the Mother Agnes, only she was a maiden
whom nothing but family difficulties could have forced into a
monastic life--a lively, high-spirited, out-of-door creature, whom
the close conventionalities of castle life and even whipping could
not tame, and who had been the despair of her mother and of the
discreet dames to whom her first childhood had been committed, to say
nothing of a Lady Abbess or two. Indeed, from the Mother of Sopwell,
Dame Julian Berners, she had imbibed nothing but a vehement taste for
hawk, horse, and hound. The recluses of St. Mary, York, after being
heartily scandalised by her habits, were far from sorry to have a
good excuse for despatching her to their outlying cell, where, as
they observed, she would know how to show a good face in case the
Armstrongs came over the Border.
She came flying down on the first rumour of Lady Anne's return, her
veil turned back, her pace not at all accordant with the solemn gait
of a Prioress, her arms outstretched, her face, not young nor
handsome, but sunburnt, weather-beaten and healthy, and full of
delight. 'My child, my Nan, here thou art! I was just mounting to
seek for thee to the west, while Bertram sought again over the mosses
where we sent yester morn. Where hast thou been in the snow?'
'A shepherd took me to his hut, Lady Mother,' answered Anne rather
coldly.
'Little didst thou think of our woe and grief when thy palfrey was
found standing riderless at the stable door, and Sister Scholastica
told us that there he had been since nones! And she had none to send
in quest but Cuddie, the neatherd.'
'My palfrey fell with me when you were in full chase of hawk and
heron, 'and none ever turned a head towards me nor heard me call.'
'Poor maid! But it was such a chase as never you did watch. On and
on went the heron, the falcon ever mounting higher and higher, till
she was but a speck in the clouds, and Tam Falconer shouting and
galloping, mad lest she should go down the wind. Methought she would
have been back to Norroway, the foul jade!'
'Did you capture her, Mother?' asked Anne.
'Ay, she pounced at last, and well-nigh staked herself on the heron's
beak! But we had a long ride, and were well-nigh at the Tyne before
we had caught her. Full of pranks, but a noble hawk, as I shall
write to my brother by the next messenger that comes our way. I call
it a hawk worth her meat that leads one such a gallop.'
'What would you have done, reverend Mother, if she had crossed the
Border?' asked Bertram.
'Ridden after her. No Scot would touch a Lady Prioress on the
chase,' responded Mother Agnes, looking not at all like a reverend
Mother. 'Now, poor Anne, thou must be hungered. Thou shalt eat with
Master Bertram and me in the refectory anon. Take her, Sister Joan,
and make her ready to break her fast with us.'
Anne quickly went to her chamber. It was not quite a cell, the bare
stone walls being hung with faded woollen tapestry, the floor covered
with a deerskin, the small window filled with dark green glass, a
chest serving the double purpose of seat and wardrobe, and further, a
bed hung with thick curtains, in which she slept with the lay Sister,
Joan, who further fetched a wooden bowl of water from the fountain in
the court that she might wash her face and hands. She changed her
soiled riding-dress for a tight-fitting serge garment of dark green
with long hanging sleeves, assisted by Joan, who also arranged her
dark hair in two plaits, and put over it a white veil, fastened over
a framework to keep it from hanging too closely.
All the time Joan talked, telling of the fright the Mother had been
in when the loss of the Lady Anne had been discovered, and how it was
feared that she had been seized by Scottish reivers, or lost in the
snow on the hills, or captured by the Lancastrians.
'For there be many of the Red Rose rogues about on the mosses--
comrades, 'tis said, of that noted thief Robin of Redesdale.'
'I was with good folk, in a shepherd's sheiling,' replied Anne.
'Ay, ay. Out on the north hill, methinks.'
'Nay. Beyond Deadman's Pool,' said Anne. 'By Blackreed Moss. That
was where the pony fell.'
'Blackreed Moss! That moor belongs to the De Vescis, the blackest
Lancaster fellow of all! His daughter is the widow of the red-handed
Clifford, who slew young Earl Edmund on Wakefield Bridge. They say
her young son is in hiding in some moss in his lands, for the King
holds him in deadly feud for his brother's death.'
'He was a babe, and had nought to do with it,' said Anne.
'He is of his father's blood,' returned Sister Joan, who in her
convent was still a true north country woman. 'Ay, Lady Anne, you
from your shires know nought of how deep goes the blood feud in us of
the Borderland! Ay, lady, was not mine own grandfather slain by the
Musgrave of Leit Hill, and did not my father have his revenge on his
son by Solway Firth? Yea, and now not a Graeme can meet a Musgrave
but they come to blows.'
'Nay, but that is not what the good Fathers teach,' Anne interposed.
'The Fathers have neither chick nor child to take up their quarrel.
They know nought about blood crying for blood! If King Edward caught
that brat of Clifford he would make him know what 'tis to be born of
a bloody house.'
Anne tried to say something, but the lay Sister pushed her along.
'There, there, go you down--you know nothing about what honour
requires of you! You are but a south country maid, and have no
notion of what is due to them one came from.'
Joan Graeme was only a lay Sister, her father a small farmer when not
a moss trooper; but all the Border, on both sides, had the strongest
ideas of persistent vendetta, such as happily had never been held in
the midland and southern counties, where there was less infusion of
Celtic blood. Anne was a good deal shocked at the doctrine
propounded by the attendant Sister, a mild, good-natured woman in
daily life, but the conversation confirmed her suspicions, and put
her on her guard as she remembered Hob's warning. She had liked the
shepherd lad far too much, and was far too grateful to him, to utter
a word that might give him up to the revengers of blood.
At the foot of the stone stairs that led into the quadrangle she met
the black-robed, heavily hooded Sister Scholastica on her way to the
chapel. The old nun held out her arms. 'Safely returned, my child!
God be thanked! Art thou come to join thy thanksgiving with ours at
this hour of nones?'
'Nay, I am bound to break my fast with the Mother and Master
Bertram.'
'Ah! thou must needs be hungered! It is well! But do but utter thy
thanks to Him Who kept thee safe from the storm and from foul doers.'
Anne did not break away from the good Sister, but went as far as the
chapel porch, was touched with holy water, and bending her knee,
uttered in a low voice her 'Gratias ago,' then hastened across the
court to the refectory, where the Prioress received her with a laugh
and, 'So Sister Scholastica laid hands on thee; I thought I should
have to come and rescue thee ere the grouse grew cold.'
Bertram, as a courteous squire of dames, came forward bowing low, and
the party were soon seated at the board--literally a board, supported
upon trestles, only large enough to receive the Prioress, the squire
and the recovered girl, but daintily veiled in delicate white napery.
It was screened off from the rest of the refectory, where the few
Sisters had already had their morning's meal after Holy Communion;
and from it there was a slight barrier, on the other side of which
Bertram Selby ought to have been, but rules sat very lightly on the
Prioress Selby. Bertram was of kin to her, and she had no demur as
to admitting him to her private table. He was, in fact, a squire of
the household of the Marquess of Montagu, brother of the Kingmaker
and had been despatched with letters to the south. He had made a
halt at his cousin's priory, had been persuaded to join in flying the
new hawks, and then had first been detained by the snow-storm, and
then joined in the quest for the lost Lady Anne St. John.
No doubt had then arisen that the Nevils were firm in their
attachment to Edward IV., and, as a consequence, in enmity to the
House of Clifford, and both these scions of Selby had been excited at
a rumour that the widow of the Baron who had slain young Edmund of
York had married Sir Lancelot Threlkeld of Threlkeld, and that her
eldest son, the heir of the line, might be hidden somewhere on the De
Vesci estates.
Bertram had already told the Prioress that his men had spied a lad
accompanying the shepherd who escorted the lady, and who, he thought,
had a certain twang of south country speech; and no sooner had he
carved for the ladies, according to the courtly duty of an esquire,
than the inquiry began as to who had found the maiden and where she
had been lodged. Prioress Agnes, who had already broken her fast,
sat meantime with the favourite hawk on her wrist and a large dog
beside her, feeding them alternately with the bones of the grouse.
'Come, tell us all, sweet Nan! Where wast thou in that untimely
snow-storm? In a cave, starved with cold, eh?'
'I was safe in a cabin with a kind old gammer.'
'Eh! And how cam'st thou there? Wandering thither?'
'Nay, the shepherd heard me call.'
'The shepherd! What, the churl that came with thee?'
'He carried me to the hut.'
Anne was on her guard, though Bertram probed her well. Was there
only one shepherd? Was there not a boy with her on the hill-side
where Bertram met her? The shepherd lad in sooth! What became of
him? The shepherd sent him back, he had been too long away from his
flock. What was his name? What was the shepherd's name? Who was
his master? Anne did not know--she had heard no names save Hob and
Hal, she had seen no arms, she had heard nothing southland. The lad
was a mere herd-boy, ordered out to milk ewes and tend the sheep.
She answered briefly, and with a certain sullenness, and young Selby
at last turned on her. 'Look thee here, fair lady, there's a saying
abroad that the heir of the red-handed House of Clifford is lurking
here, on the look-out to favour Queen Margaret and her son. Couldst
thou put us on the scent, King Edward would favour thee and make thee
a great dame, and have thee to his Court--nay, maybe give thee what
is left of the barony of Clifford.'
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