Earl Hubert's Daughter. Emily Sarah Holt

bound with iron. Meagre indeed we should think the furniture, but it was sumptuous for the date. A tent-bed, hung with green curtains, stood between the two doors. A green velvet settle stretched across the window side of the room. By the fireplace was a leaf-table; round the walls were wooden brackets, with iron sockets for the reception of torches; and at the foot of the bed, which stood with its side to the wall, was a fine chest of carved ebony. There were only three pieces of movable furniture, two footstools, and a curule chair, also of ebony, with a green velvet cushion. As nobody could sit in the last who had not had a king and queen for his or her parents, it may be supposed that more than one was not likely to be often wanted.

      The Countess of Kent, as the elder sister, took the curule chair, while her sister Marjory, when the inspection was finished, sat down on the velvet settle. Margaret drew a footstool to her aunt’s side, and took up her position there, resting her head caressingly on Marjory’s knee.

      “Three whole years, Aunt Marjory, that you have not been near us! What could make you stay away so long?”

      “There were reasons, Magot.”

      The two Princesses exchanged smiles again, but there was some amusement in that of the Countess, while the expression of her sister was rather sad.

      Margaret looked from one to the other, as if she would have liked to understand what they meant.

      “Don’t trouble that little head,” said her mother, with a laugh. “Thy time will come soon enough. Thou art too short to be told state secrets.”

      “I shall be as tall as you some day, Lady,” responded Margaret archly.

      “And then,” said Marjory, stroking the girl’s hair, “thou wilt wish thyself back again, little Magot.”

      “Nay!—under your good leave, fair Aunt, never!”

      “Ah, we know better, don’t we, Madge?” asked the Countess, laughing. “Well, I will leave you two maidens together. There is the month’s wash to be seen to, and if I am not there, that Alditha is as likely to put the linen in the chests without a sprig of rosemary, as she is to look in the mirror every time she passes it. We shall meet at supper. Adieu!”

      And the Countess departed, on housekeeping thoughts intent. For a few minutes the two girls—for the aunt was only about twelve years the senior—sat silent, Margaret having drawn her aunt’s hand down and rested her cheek upon it. They were very fond of one another: and being so near in age, they had been brought up so much like sisters, that except in one or two items they treated each other as such, and did not assume the respective authority and reverence usual between such relations at that time. Beyond the employment of the deferential you by Margaret, and the familiar thou by Marjory, they chatted to each other as any other girls might have done. But just then, for a few minutes, neither spoke.

      “Well, Magot!” said Marjory, breaking the silence at last, “have we nought to say to each other? Thou art forgetting, I think, that I want a full account of all these three years since I came to see thee before. They have not been empty of events, I know.”

      Margaret’s answer was a groan.

      “Empty!” she said. “Fair Aunt, I would they had been, rather than full of such events as they were. Father Nicholas saith that the old Romans—or Greeks, I don’t know which—used to say the man was happy who had no history. I am sure we should have been happier, lately, if we had not had any.”

      “ ‘Don’t know which!’ What a heedless Magot!”

      “Why, fair Aunt, surely you don’t expect people to recollect lessons. Did you ever remember yours?”

      Marjory laughed. “Sufficiently so, I hope, to know the difference between Greeks and Romans. But, however—for the last three years. Tell me all about them.”

      “Am I to begin with the Flood, like a professional chronicler?”

      “Well, no. I think the Conquest would be soon enough.”

      “Delicious Aunt Marjory! How many weary centuries you excuse me!”

      “How many, Magot?”

      “Oh, please don’t! How can I possibly tell? If you really want to know, I will send for Father Nicholas.”

      Marjory laughed, and kissed the lively face turned up to her.

      “Idle Magot! Well, go on.”

      “I don’t think I am idle, fair Aunt. But I do detest learning dates.—Well, now—was it in April you left us? I know it was very soon after my Lady of Cornwall was married, but I do not remember exactly what month.”

      “It was in May,” said Marjory, shortly.

      “May, was it? Oh, I know! It was the eve of Saint Helen’s Day. Well, things went on right enough, till my Lord of Canterbury took it into his head that my Lord and father had no business to detain Tunbridge Castle—it all began with that. It was about July, I think.”

      “I thought Tunbridge Castle belonged to my Lord of Gloucester. What had either to do with it?”

      “O Aunt Marjory! Have you forgotten that my young Lord of Gloucester is in ward to my Lord and father? The Lord King gave him first to my Lord the Bishop of Winchester, when his father died; and then, about a year after, he took him away from the Bishop, and gave him to my fair father. Don’t you remember him?—such a pretty boy! I think you knew all about it at the time.”

      “Very likely I did, Magot. One forgets things, sometimes.”

      And Margaret, looking up into the fair face, saw, and did not understand, the hidden pain behind the smile.

      “So my Lord of Canterbury complained of my fair father to the Lord King. (I wonder he could not attend to his own business.) But the Lord King said that as my Lord of Gloucester held in chief of the Crown, all vacant trusts were his, to give as it pleased him. And then—Aunt Marjory, do you like priests?”

      “Magot, what a question!”

      “But do you?”

      “All priests are not alike, my dear child. They are like other people—some good, and some bad.”

      “But surely all priests ought to be good.”

      “Art thou always what thou oughtest to be, Magot?”

      Margaret’s answer was a sudden spring from the stool and a fervent hug of Marjory.

      “Aunt Marjory,” she said, when she had sat down again, “I just hate that Bishop of Winchester.” (Peter de Rievaulx, always one of the two chief enemies of Margaret’s father.)

      “Shocking, Magot!”

      “Oh yes, of course it is extremely wicked. But I do.”

      “I wish he were here, to set thee a penance for such a naughty speech. However, go on with thy story.”

      “Well, what do you think, fair Aunt, that my Lord’s Grace of Canterbury (Richard Grant, consecrated in 1229) did? He actually excommunicated all intruders on the lands of his jurisdiction, and all who should hold communication with them, the King only excepted; and away he went to Rome, to lay the matter before the holy Father. Of course he would tell his tale from his own point of view.”

      “The Archbishop went to Rome!”

      “Indeed he did, Aunt Marjory. My fair father was very indignant. ‘That the head of the English Church could not stand by himself, but must seek the approbation of a foreign Bishop!’ That was what he said, and I think my fair mother agreed with him.”

      Perhaps in this nineteenth century we scarcely realise the gallant fight made by the Church of England to retain her independence of Rome. It did not begin at the Reformation, as people are apt to suppose. It was as old as the Church herself, and she was as old as the Apostles. Some of her clergy were perpetually trying