Towers in the Mist

by Elizabeth Goudge

  She and Grace both had new dresses, made and embroidered by themselves. Joyeuce had a green silk farthingale because Nicolas liked her best in “green sleeves,” over a pale-pink kirtle embroidered with rosebuds, and Grace had chosen a very matronly farthingale of lavender color, over a cream-colored kirtle embroidered with purple pansies. They wore coifs of lovely lace on their shining hair and little satin shoes.

  “We do look nice,” said Grace, surveying herself in the glass with satisfaction. “We shall look as nice as any there. . . . Probably nicer.”

  Joyeuce flung her arms round the compact, rounded body of her younger sister. “You have such confidence, Grace,” she cried, hugging her. “You never find things too much for you, do you?”

  “Certainly not,” said Grace, with decision. “I don’t worry about them beforehand. . . . Now you,” she added, with a comically pious expression upon her round rosy face, and plump hands folded at the waist, “cross every bridge before you get there, and in anticipating disasters you entirely fail to remember the powers of endurance that they invariably bring with them.”

  “You are quite right, Grace,” murmured Joyeuce humbly, her eyes cast down that the twinkle in them might be hidden. “But shall I be able to endure it if I don’t look as nice as the Court ladies, and Nicolas is ashamed of me?”

  “He won’t be,” said Grace with decision. “I said to Nicolas the other day that the more I saw of other people the more I liked us, and he quite agreed with me.”

  2.

  Joyeuce never forgot the sight that met her eyes when the doors of the hall were flung open by a servitor and she and the children went in. It was dusk now, and hundreds of candles were burning in great sconces set all round the walls, and their lovely light, kinder than sunshine, softer than moonlight, gave to the scene a radiant loveliness that made her gasp. The feast was not yet quite over and at the long table on the great dais at the far end of the hall the Queen was still sitting with the Chancellor, Dean Godwin, the dons of Christ Church and the senior members of her Court. The candlelight shone upon the rich colors of their dresses, upon their sparkling jewels and laughing faces, upon the silver bowls piled with fruit that stood upon the dark shining table, and upon the red wine in the Venetian glasses, held high to drink a toast. At the tables in the lower part of the hall sat the scholars with the younger maids of honor and the Court pages, dressed in their smartest, all on their best behavior but glowing with happiness, their faces as soft as flowers in the candlelight and their eyes like stars as they too held up their tankards of ale—not Venetian glasses and red wine for the smaller fry—waiting in palpitant excitement for the coming toast. . . . From where she stood Joyeuce could see Nicolas dressed in royal blue, his cheeks flushed and his eyes blazing, Faithful beside him in sober dove-gray slashed with lilac, Philip Sidney beautiful and serious in olive green, Walter Raleigh—what was he doing here?—in blazing scarlet, sitting beside a lovely little girl dressed in white like a snowdrop. . . . And then she saw no more, for the Chancellor was on his feet, the whole crowd of them rising with him, and the toast was given.

  “The Queen. Vivat Regina!”

  Such a roar of cheering and vivats went up that the great rafters of the hall, soaring up into a darkness that the candlelight did not touch, must surely have been shaken by the noise of it. Then silence fell, for the Queen had risen, motioning them all to their seats again with one long pale hand.

  She was dressed in pearl-colored satin tonight, slashed with gold, and great rubies burned on her breast and on her shining hair. Joyeuce noticed with surprise that she was shorter than she had thought; her great dignity and splendid carriage made her seem taller than she was. She stood straight as a ramrod, with something almost masculine about the hard clear lines of her face and her stiffly braced shoulders, a something that was echoed in the depth and strength of her voice that carried effortlessly to the furthest corners of the hall. She is indomitable, was the thought in more than one mind. While she lives we are safe.

  “Greetings to you, my scholars,” she said, “and God’s blessing upon you all. This is my last night with you, and my heart would be heavy were it not that you have given to me a memory that will be my possession for always. All my life I have loved learning, and because of my love my thoughts have turned often to this house of learning that my father founded. Often I have thought of it, pictured it, hoped that I should one day stay within its walls, and now that my hope has come true I find, as so seldom in life, that the fulfillment of my wish is sweeter even than the anticipation of it. I have found this house to be all I had hoped it would be, and more. In the quietness of its gardens, and of the rooms where I have lodged, I have found peace, and in the fellowship of learned men who have attained wisdom, and of young scholars who are striving for it, I have found inspiration. And let me tell you, my friends, that peace and inspiration are the two gifts of God that we most need in this our pilgrimage. If we have peace in our hearts the disorder and cruelty of life will not overwhelm us with despair, and if we have even for a short while seen that flash of light from another country that men call inspiration we shall have the courage to attempt, however unsuccessfully, to do our part in quieting the disorder and quelling the cruelty; until we have battled through them and our rest is won. . . . And it is in such houses as this, my scholars, that we find that peace and inspiration. . . . From the days of the good Saint Frideswide onwards holy men and women have lived here before you. Every moment of solace that came to them as they prayed, every fight for knowledge that won for them the quietude of achievement, was as a drop of water filling up the well of peace that stands in all ancient places. Drink deep of it, and leave behind you for those who come after, as they did, that something of yourselves that is imperishable. And what shall I say of inspiration? You cannot have lived here and not known it. The stuff of those other men’s lives is woven with your own, threads of heavenly silver lightening the earth-brown weft. Every pealing of the bells that called them to prayer in years that are past must seem to you a trumpet call, every sight of the spire that they raised to the glory of God must be to you as the sight of a banner in the sky. So go forth into the world, my scholars, to fight and work for your Queen and your country, with these things as imperishable memories in your hearts.”

  When once she began to speak it was usual for the Queen’s Grace to be so carried away by her own eloquence that she went on a great deal longer than was necessary, but tonight she seemed to have upset herself by her own emotion, or else the dramatic sense of a consummate actress made it appear that she had, for she came to an abrupt end and sat down rather suddenly, to a second outbreak of applause even more thunderous than the first.

  This was the moment chosen for Diccon and Joseph to do their part. They had been rehearsed in it very carefully, yet it was with a beating heart that Joyeuce launched them forth upon their journey up the space that had been kept clear between the tables, leading directly from the hall door to the foot of the dais. They had done it beautifully when they had practiced in an empty, quiet hall, but now that they had to make their way through a crowd, blinded by the lights and deafened by the cheering, she was afraid that Diccon would roar and Joseph turn tail and fly, or that upon reaching the dais they might drop the heart of roses and fall upon the food, or alternatively Diccon might bite the Queen and Joseph, a nervy child, might be sick. . . . There seemed no end to the frightful things that might happen.

  But she had reckoned without the sense of pattern that there is in children. As swans will fly one behind the other in perfect formation, as little birds will lean their breasts against their nests to make of them a perfect round, so Diccon and Joseph knew instinctively that they were playing their part in something that had design. They must walk in a straight line to a given point, they must make certain movements, or the whole thing would be ruined. So their bare feet padded unflinchingly up the aisle through the cheering scholars, their little heads were held
high and the chubby hands that grasped their golden bows were without a tremor. Between them they held the big heart of crimson roses, which they dropped only twice, and retrieved again without a moment’s hesitation. They made straight for the gleaming figure of the Queen, like two little moths fluttering to a candle, and she, when she heard the low ripple of laughter that swept up the ball and saw them trotting towards her as though it were a breeze that carried them, left her seat and came to stand at the head of the flight of steps that led up to the dais. They negotiated these steps with some difficulty, but great determination, and collapsed rather suddenly into two little feathery balls at her feet. At this point they should have held up the heart of red roses in their arms and recited, line and line about, a pretty little verse about it being the heart of the College laid at the feet of a Queen; but they forgot it; Joseph propped the heart carefully against her farthingale, as though he were leaning a picture against a wall, and Diccon, gazing up at her with his green eyes as unblinking as a cat’s, said, “For you,” continuing further, with his fat forefinger pointed at a ruby drop hanging from her necklace, the very image of the one he had seen and howled for in the window of the aurifabray, “Pretty. Diccon wants it.”

  The Queen was in a good mood tonight and was not offended. She listened laughing as Dean Godwin repeated to her the forgotten rhyme, then took off her necklace and tossed it to the Chancellor. “Detach the ruby,” she commanded, and then bent to take Diccon’s face in her hands. “ ’Tis a bold, bad face,” she commented, “but it will belong one day to a bold, bad buccaneer who will sail the high seas and capture much wealth for his Queen. Is that not so, little cupid?” Diccon made no answer, but freeing his face from her hands—mercifully without biting—stretched out his hand for the ruby.

  But Joseph’s behavior was beyond reproach. When asked if he, too, would not like a pretty trinket, he gave her his lovely grave smile, shook his head and became absorbed in re-propping the heart upside down, because propped right way up it had fallen over. “An intelligent cupid,” commented the Queen. “A poppet of much concentration.” And feeling in her hanging pocket she produced a little Latin copy of the psalms, bound in crimson velvet, and gave it to him. He took it shyly, smiling at her, and immediately opened and became immersed in it, holding it upside down. . . . Then, at a signal from the Dean, one of the scholars stepped forward and picking up the little cupids removed them one under each arm; and immediately, the thing being over and the pattern completed, Diccon broke into roars of anger and fury that could he heard right out in the quadrangle.

  3.

  When the little boys had been taken away to bed by Dorothy Goatley, who had been waiting outside the hall door to perform this necessary but arduous office—Diccon being by now in such a rage at his removal that carrying him was like carrying a young earthquake—Joyeuce felt free to enjoy herself. No more anxieties now, only such pleasure as she had not known since that evening at the Tavern.

  With lightning speed the servitors had cleared the tables and pushed them back against the walls to leave the hall clear for dancing. The musicians grouped in one of the big oriel windows were tuning their instruments, the soft twanging of the strings sending delicious tremors through Joyeuce as though fingers plucked at her heart; and the Queen, who loved dancing as dearly as any there, was being handed down the steps of the dais by the Chancellor. The candles seemed to burn yet more brightly, and there was a soft swishing of silks and caressing murmur of voices as young and lovely lovers moved towards each other over the gleaming floor. . . . And Joyeuce found Nicolas before her, beautiful as she had never seen him, smiling confidently down at her, lifting her hand and putting his ring upon it with a certain arrogance of possession that gave her such happiness that she gave a little stifled cry of joy, like a child who is lifted out of darkness into safety. He had taken her, and with such complete certainty that her always questioning heart found sudden rest.

  “It is an emerald,” she heard him saying, “because of that arbor in the Tavern garden. Those green vine leaves seemed then to be showing me how I should love you. . . . Gently. . . . Perhaps I shall grieve you sometimes, Joyeuce, perhaps you will find it hard to be patient with me. But I shall always love you. I shall always be faithful.”

  “I too,” whispered Joyeuce. “I shall be faithful.”

  Then the lovely music of the pavane floated out into Christ Church hall, and he swung her into the dance.

  Faithful and Grace, sitting together on a wooden table beside the great open fireplace, filled now with branches of greenery and bunches of late summer flowers, watched the gay scene in utter contentment. They looked a comical couple as they sat there hand in hand. Their legs, which did not reach the floor, were swinging childishly, but upon their faces was the wise, owl-like look of contemplative grandparents. Faithful could not dance. Grace had tried to teach him, and he had tried hard to learn, but he fell over his feet in such a distressing way that they had given it up as a bad job. “Never mind,” Grace had said cheerfully. “It is perhaps just as well. If we do not dance we shall have more leisure to devote our minds to higher things.”

  The higher things were at this moment criticism of the scene before them, and gossip about the lovely figures of the dancers who bowed and swayed before them like flowers in the wind. . . . For Faithful, like many other learned men, liked a little gossip.

  “Surely Master Walter Raleigh has no business to be here?” asked Grace.

  “He got in through a window,” said Faithful. “No one in authority has noticed him yet.”

  “They soon will,” said Grace, “in that blazing scarlet doublet. Who is the girl he is dancing with? The pale little thing in white?”

  “They say she is Mistress Bess Throgmorton, a little orphan girl whom the Queen has taken under her wing. She will be one of the maids of honor as soon as she is old enough.”

  “Do you think she is pretty?” asked Grace doubtfully.

  Faithful regarded the slender figure of the lovely little girl with the kindling eye of admiration, but he answered stoutly, “She is not my style. Too pale.”

  Grace, happily conscious of her own pink cheeks and plump chest, sighed with satisfaction and turned her attention to two figures, in royal blue and pale green, who were as lovely as any there. “I had no idea,” she said in shocked tones, “that Joyeuce was so worldly.”

  Faithful too turned his attention upon his future sister-in-law, and the sight of her gave him quite a shock. He had not realized that she could look so beautiful. The stiffness that used to mar her slender figure had all gone. She and Nicolas moved together through the stately figures of the dance with such grace that everyone was looking at them. But Joyeuce, usually so shy, seemed not to know that. Her face was flushed, her lips were parted and her eyes shining as though she saw a vision. But Faithful did not think that she looked worldly, he thought she looked the opposite.

  “She looks,” he said, “as though she were looking through a peephole at something.”

  “At what?” asked Grace.

  “Some unchanging landscape,” he murmured dreamily, and fell to wondering about love and joy and the connection between them. It is always love of something, he thought, that brings joy; love of some human being, of beauty or of learning. Love is the unchanging landscape, he thought, at which, among the changes and chances of this mortal life, we sometimes look through the peep-hole of joy; the love of God of which human love is a tiny echo. To be lost in it will be to have eternal life. One can know no more than that.

  “Good heavens!” cried Grace, “I thought the twins had gone home to bed, but there they are—dancing!”

  Will and Thomas, who thought dancing an overrated entertainment, had departed with some like-minded scholars to the kitchen, in the rear of the retreating food, but the twins were still here, dancing in a far corner of the hall with some little noblemen not much older than themselves. And they too, as they g
ravely pointed their small feet, executed their wobbly curtseys and turned their plump persons this way and that in the figures of the dance, looked as Joyeuce had looked; so happy that they seemed to be seeing a vision; and all the hundreds of candles, burning round Christ Church hall, did not shine so brightly as the yellow frocks they wore. “They look like spring,” said Faithful. “They look like love and warmth and sunshine. All the stars must have danced when they were born.”

  “Did they make you of starlight?” asked Walter Raleigh of Bess Throgmorton, fingering a fold of her white dress, looking down boldly into the bright eyes that twinkled so merrily up at him. The dance had ended and they stood in one of the oriel windows, away from the crowd, well back in the secretive shadows whose black background gave to her whiteness a star-like glimmer. She dropped her eyes shyly before his that were so bold, for she was only a little girl yet, one of the youngest there; and suddenly the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, stained the snowy whiteness of her dress and bowed, white-coifed head with all the colors of the stained-glass window behind her, pink and blue and lilac and palest green. It was like a sudden blooming of flowers in midwinter, it was like the flooding of passion over the whiteness of her virginity, and Raleigh flung his arms round her with such headlong vehemence that she cried out a little, struggling like a young bird that has been snared and caught too soon.

  “Why are you frightened?” he asked her. “You love me, don’t you?”

  She was still then, and whispered, “Yes.”

  “I love you too,” he announced, so loudly that she feared the whole hall would hear. “And one day I will have you for my wife.”