“No more,” she said, “no more! lest you bring down your fate upon you! So does the bull roar and tear up the ground, but when his hour comes, his strength is nothing. Give me your hand, Estercel, and I will put the ring back in its old place where it wishes to be. Night and morning, I will pray to Mary with the seven wounds in her heart, who understands my sorrow, that her hand may be between you and harm.”
Estercel was not very pleased to have his war-song interrupted, but so gentle was the touch of the girl's small hand, so piercing the sweetness of her countenance, that his vanity was soon forgot. Meekly and quietly, he held out his hand, and the girl placed the ring once more upon his finger. If you had seen him as he sat there, you would have thought that a charm was indeed in the ring. He appeared to come out of himself. As he gazed upon Sabia, the light of reflection passed over his brow, and a man's soul looked for the first time out of his eyes. At the same moment, sights and sounds played more vividly, more strangely upon his eye and ear. The wheeling moon and her spreading light, the baying of a dog that howled to it in the distance, the singing of the waters, and the mysterious passion of the girl who so clave to him together worked upon his spirit. Tomorrow he would be flung out on the broad world of which he knew such a little, these skies and hills would be moved backward into the past to stand there like a dream. As his bold and intrepid spirit fled on before to meet the unknown, his heart, grown tender, turned back to familiar things and found a new meaning in them. With wide open eye and nostril dilated, like a snuffing stag, he gazed around him, then turned, looked upon the girl and with sudden passion caught her to his breast and kissed her face.
But Sabia, in fear and angry astonishment, reached up her hand and smartly slapped his cheek. She struggled free of him, slipping like an eel beneath his arm, sat down upon the wall again and looked at him like a vexed thundercloud.
“Look now,” said Estercel, astonished. “There is nothing amiss that ever I heard in a mere kiss! I meant it all in sweet affection as a most acceptable farewell! And behold you now! First you slap my face, and now you look at me as the hen looks at the shadow of the kite upon the ground!”
“You are talking!” said Sabia, panting with indignation. “It is very well to talk, but you had better be sorry immediately, or I will never converse with you again.”
Estercel grinned, a broad and cheerful grin. “I am sorry, indeed,” said he.
“You had better be sorry in your heart, Estercel. It is not fit that a young gentleman and gentlewoman of good birth should behave in so foolish a manner. Let there, by all means, be sweet affection and amity between us, but no such clownishness as that.”
“Call you it clownishness? Indeed! And as for the behaviour of gentlemen, I have heard tell …”
“Be silent,” said the girl. “It grows towards morning. See, the moon is dipping down, and the breeze is more fresh. Say farewell now, Estercel. I know not how it is with me; is it possible to feel joy and sorrow at one time?”
“A little of that is in my heart also, Sabia. I rejoice that I go on a great adventure. Yet I feel sorrow to think of you, my girl. Merrily enough, the world wags for such as I. My good fortune is secure. The more reason that I should think of you, so slight and so small and left to battle on by yourself.”
“Bless me now, Estercel. And when you are far away, name me always by name in your prayers. Believe me, I shall know.”
Estercel put a great hand on the girl's head.
“God and the saints keep you,” he said. “In truth, you are dear to me, and glad I shall be to see your face again.”
“I am content then, Estercel. Farewell, and God keep you!”
The hand was removed from her head. As it descended, Sabia caught and held it in both her own: it was indeed a great hand and a great arm, well-shaped and well-muscled, firm as if sculptured in stone. On the smallest of the fingers shone the twisted ring of gold. Sabia bent her head and left a kiss as light as the floating downs of September upon the ring. Then slipping from her seat without sigh or sound, she went away, flitting like a brown moth on the side of the hill.
In the morning, great was the commotion, as Estercel, heir of his uncle's house, rode southward with his little troop, Owen Joy, long-faced and long-headed, behind his back to moderate his youth. In the embrasure of the narrow window of the tower, Sabia stood with her nurse and watched him without sign or sound. When the last sight of them riding between wood and hill was gone, Sabia turned about.
“Nurse Phaire,” said she, “many and many is the bottle of physic you have made me swallow. Yours was the charm of the ring. I know that your knowledge of herbs is great. You must now make me your disciple. It is Tyrone's advice to me that I should learn the proper manner of healing the sick. What way shall I set about it?”
The old woman looked keenly out of her bright blue eyes upon her young charge.
“God bless the charm!” said she. “And a thousand blessings on the head of the O'Neill. My brown girl is in better heart this day. The matter is easily arranged. Well does the country know the skill of old Nurse Phaire. I will give orders that all the sick and wounded be brought to the castle-yard, and there with the blessing of God, you and I will operate on them each morning.”
“Better could not be,” answered Sabia. “Your draughts, nurse, are bitter, but bitterer is sickness to the sick. And specially, Nurse Phaire, I would learn the care of wounds. It is not likely that Estercel will be overtaken by sickness, but wounded he may be. What is one man against all the armies of Elizabeth? In my dreams, I see the ocean covered with the white-sailed ships that are coming up against us. And my heart is so faint when I wake, that I wish I might never have waked again. Is it any wonder that I am fearing for Estercel?”
Chapter VIII. - The Mirror-Chamber
For twenty years, the windows of Hone House had looked down expressionless upon the thoroughfare of Warden Street in Dublin. An April morning, two days after Estercel had ridden away southward, saw their sleeping rows wake up to life again. Behind them was a stirring and movement of passing forms, then a corner casement opened, and a face like the morning looked out. The house was old, built of a cage-work of oak beams, the panes in the latticed windows were of thick greenish glass. A girl leaned on the window-sill with forearms interlaced, wrist and elbow, and her forehead all but touched the window frame above.
Confident in her rank, she was clothed in a vest of the forbidden crocus-dyed linen; forbidden because the great Elizabeth held that the saffron was a disloyal colour. Her white neck was tall and well reared up. Her countenance was very fresh and full of life and bloom. Bound about her head was a mass of hair of a copper-golden colour. The early morning sunbeams seemed of their own accord to seek her out, they darted upon her, glad to find a brightness as living as their own. Then gliding by and around her, they entered the room in shining ranks, swift to seek admittance where barred shutters had so long denied them a path.
The chamber from which this beauty leaned was plain even to sternness: it was panelled in wood, long and narrow, and on the boarded floor lay the shadow of the girl's head cast large behind her by the level morning beams. In one corner stood a bed with a woollen coverlet and heavily tasselled bed-cushions. A large chest, an elbow-chair, and little else besides completed the furniture of the room. On the wall, at right angles to the door, hung a mirror; it was round and thick, with an embossed rim of brass.
The beauty presently left her post at the window and, approaching the mirror, looked earnestly at her own reflection that moved in its depths. There she herself, the room, and everything which it contained were given back in a different hue from that which in reality they wore. The yellow light of the sun shone in the room and the hue of the chamber was brown: the light that shone in the mirror was blue and glittering grey. The face that inhabited the mirror gazed back at the true face in the room with a different expression. The face in the mirror was beautiful but cold: the eyes had a glitter, the lines of the cheek and chin were ha
rder, the brow chill and empty.
But even as it appeared, the sight of the face in the mirror seemed to delight the girl as she gazed: it was the first mirror she had ever been able to call her own. She leaned close and smiled at the face in the glass, opened her hazel eyes widely, then cast them down. Unfastening a coil of her hair, she carried it across her brows, winding it in the form of a coronet; then she turned her tall neck this way and that, striving to catch the reflection of her side face in the glass. At last, in a sort of ecstasy, she laughed aloud, flung her arms above her head, dropped them again and, leaning forward, kissed the cold lips that met hers in the mirror. But she seemed to feel a sudden chill, for she shivered as she turned away and, walking back into the sunbeams, took her place at the window again.
She breathed deep as she leaned on the sill: the smell of the town was delightful to her who had breathed only country airs; the cage-work houses roofed with shingles were a wonder to her; hardly a thatch was to be seen; a narrow passage for foot people was laid down one side of the street; and the sound of passing feet upon the smoothed stone was so unusual to her ears, that she almost held her breath to listen.
From the manner and expression of her countenance, it would have been hard to predict a future for her or to tell her nature, so open and alive did she seem to influences coming by way of every channel through which apprehension is possible. She was smiling now as she said to herself: “A kincob* gown, to think of me in a kincob gown! How shall I look in the mode of the English court? I must hold myself stately and think before I speak, that they may not take me for a country maid.”
(* Fine silk fabric embroidered with threads of gold or silver.)
There came a noise of horses. Meraud leaned further out to see them pass. Down the street rode a little troop. Their leader was a young man of about twenty-two years of age, with a great frame and a rejoicing countenance, and strong golden locks upon his neck. He was mounted on a vast white horse, mud to the shoulder. Well up to him rode a sensible middle-aged looking man, and behind again two strong serving-men or retainers, dressed in the Irish fashion of tunics with short mantles. All their horses were magnificent; in hard condition from far travelling, but evidently, for strength and spirit, the darlings of the men that rode them. The girl in the window gazed eagerly out; it was the man on the white horse who drew her gaze.
“Oh, what a beauty! Who can he be?” she murmured. “His horse is muddied. He must have come by the Dane's Gate and St. Mary's Ford. I wish to my heart he would look up.”
So brightly did the sunlight fall upon her brightness, that the whole troop saw her and raised their eyes together, and not one of them but smiled. But the young beauty only looked at the leader. For one moment, his glance that looked up and hers that looked down met, either half way. In a second, he was gone. A wild impulse seized the girl. Like a white and golden bird, she spread her arms as though she would fly from the window and follow him.
Even as she did so, she felt a smart rap on her shoulder. She started and turned to find her father's sister, the dispossessed Abbess of Mellifont, standing beside her. This lady was a strange figure: tall, deadly pale, with white uncovered hair, and the straight white dress of a nun. She wore a look of sad authority and was a creature who had her being in a different world from that of the young girl whom she now confronted.
“You naughty girl!” she said. “To lean so from the window. Is this your country fashion?”
But the snows of December cannot teach the leaves of June. Meraud cast down her eyes, then raised them again, her cheeks flushed, her glance half mutinous, half perforce submissive. Then, through the open door sailed another lady, large and bustling with a ruddy face.
“What now, sister?” she cried. “What does she amiss?”
“Even now I caught her half her length out of the window that she might look after passing riders,” said the pale lady solemnly.
“You ape, you baggage!” cried the other. “I will teach you to expose yourself and disgrace the house. Fie on you!” and raising her hand she delivered a sound box of the ear on the side of the beauty's head.
Lady FitzPierce was the mother of many children and had had much experience in the ordering and governing of the young.
“Good aunt, good mother!” cried the girl, her hand to her smarting cheek, half in tears, half angry, for she had spirit; “what creature alive so newly come to town but would fain look out of a window?”
“Do you answer me again?” began the ruddy lady, in high tones.
Then being the girl's mother, she melted into a smile at the sight of her fresh young beauty.
“Ah, well, young cocks love no coops, nor pullets neither. You are but a child. Come kiss me then, and lean no more out of window.”
The girl came reluctantly enough to receive the hearty kiss which her mother bestowed upon her. But the elder lady never troubled about the younger one's feelings. She was already bustling about the chamber, examining the old chest, the pillows on the bed, and finally coming to a stand before the mirror on the wall. With interest and enjoyment, she peered into its depths and arranged her head-dress. The abbess came and stood beside her. Her eyes, too, had been travelling round the chamber, but with a far different look. To one sister belonged the care of the body, to the other the care of the soul.
“I marvel at your disposing, sister FitzPierce,” said the nun. “This is no chamber for a young girl. At least let this vain toy be covered with a cloth. Who knows what evil thing may have looked in it and left some of itself behind?”
Lady FitzPierce dropped her arms and stared in the mirror with a face full of fear.
“The saints be about us,” she cried as she crossed herself hastily; “isn't this the terrible world we live in?”
“You may say so indeed, sister,” said the other, clasping and unclasping her hands while she spoke and looking now to the young girl, now to her mother, “a terrible world and a terrible country and a terrible town. Was it not in this very house that lived that son of Belial, the Lord of Bodergan, that ate up the convent of Slough? Was it not to this house he brought that wanton wife of his out of London to make jewels for whose neck the holy vessels were melted down? Who knows but in this very room she attired herself in the fruit of sacrilege for the delight of her lovers? Sister, I charge you, let Father Clement and Father Francis be sent for that they may sprinkle this house with holy water and burn incense and by their prayers drive out them that are in this place?”
Lady FitzPierce fidgeted about the room. “Well, well, sister, I will see. These holy men will do nothing without a fee. No penny, no paternoster. And Sir John keeps me very short. But what is this? As I'm a living woman, here is a cupboard in the wall. Oh sister, maybe there is treasure in it!” And she pulled and twisted the wooden knob that projected from a square panel. Then using all the strength of a strong arm, with a wrench she forced the door open.
The three ladies came eagerly forward to look. The cupboard was small and dark, and strangely smelling. There were but two shelves, and at first they appeared empty. Then Lady FitzPierce snatched up from the far dark corner, first one, then another small object, which she eagerly examined.
“Ah — ha!” said the pale abbess in tones of horror. “It is even as I thought. Playing-cards in a girl's chamber! Praise be to the saints that these weapons of Satan are rapt from their hiding-place and not left to breed mischief behind the wall. Give them to me, sister, that I may burn them.”
“Nay, then, indeed,” said Lady FitzPierce, “these are no fitting toys for Meraud, but for Sir John they will do right well. They are something used, something dirty, but of a very pretty fancy. La, here are mottoes round the edge of each one, and godly ones, too. As you know, sister, I dote upon mottoes,” and she slipped the pack into a capacious pocket that hung by her side. Next she took from the shelf a small earthenware jar. The top came off easily, and in it was a black paste.
“Now what is this, in the name of goodness?” said Lady Fitz
Pierce.
“God knows,” said the abbess, while she hunted in the cupboard on her own account. “Poison most like or the woman's lip-salve, or her raddle. But see now, sister, said I not well that the chamber was accursed? The violated vessel cried to me from the wall.”
In her hand, that was soiled with dust, she showed a blackened, broken ornament of gold, which might have been the handle of a chalice, for at one end was a wrenched piece of worked gold that still adhered to it.
“Look how it is broken,” cried the girl; “good aunt, good mother, shall I have it?”
“No, child,” said Lady FitzPierce, holding out her hand. “Give it to me, sister, that I may show it to Sir John.”
“Nay,” said the abbess, “from a holy church this gold was taken; to the church it must be returned,” and raising her gown she quickly tucked the ornament into a pocket she carried beneath it.
For a moment, the two elder ladies looked wickedly upon each other. Then the stronger eye of the abbess conquered, and Lady FitzPierce, feigning to remember the needs of her eight other children, sharply bade Meraud dress herself suitably and hurried from the room. Pleased at her victory, the abbess remained a moment behind. As she looked meditatively round the chamber, her eye fell once more upon the mirror.
“Daughter,” she said, “I will cover over this glass. They that look in mirrors leave somewhat of themselves therein. I would not that your innocent image should companion there with sin. They that dip in strange waters may chance to leave a plume behind.” She took a white napkin that lay beside a ewer and neatly and dexterously wrapped the round mirror up. “Child,” she said, looking at the white cloth, then down at her own white robe, “would I could even so wrap your innocence about. I greatly fear the dangers of this bad town. The very stones of the street breathe out folly and sin, and youth often runs mad upon novelty and pleasure. Take warning, child, lean no more out of the window, don't look in the street at all. And, above all, see that you go not near the mirror.”
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