The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan

Henry VII and a plain world where there were too many false Scots. The Lord Lovell of the Castle agreed with him, but said that the women would so have it. He was an immense, gross man,

d pomegranates. Her sleeves brushed the ground, her hood of black velvet had a diamond-shaped front, like the gable of a house, and was framed in yellow gold set with emeralds that her lord had brought from Venice to get her back to a good te

alled "Faicts of Arms," and the King himself who loved good chivalry had bade it be printed tho' that would be long in doing. There the order of these things had been set forth, and sh

the roof. They displayed the snarling heads of red tigers, portculles, two-hued roses, and a dun cow on a field of green sarcenet in honour of the Bishop Palatine. The table at which they sat, the men divided from the women, had its silken cloth properly tabled out in chequers of green and v

of his father-in-law. Sir Symonde Vesey, of Haltwhistle, who had married the daughter Douce, and sat beyond Sir Walter, said loudly that too mu

mouths over one who had paid all his ransoms, whether to the Scots or on the bloody field of Kenchie's Burn, with sword-blows solely. She had paid one thousand marks to artificers of Brussels for stuffs to deck that hall and the street of the township where it led from the chapel whence her fair, brave son shoul

ies might be made from castle to castle and so to broom all false Scots out of the country from thereaways to Dunbar. And there they sate who should have been on the northward road before sunrise listening

Sir Symonde, who was brave and barbarous enough, but unlucky, smote so heavily the silver inkhorn sta

s old glance asid

, in his day, he having been dubbed knight on the field, it had been done with a broken sword and the

the whimsy-marees of his new-fashioned harness and was stuck up there in the old chapel like a fool amid the evidences of his folly. The Lord Lovell said nay then, that a band of youngs

page to buckle his harness,

d enter into the sacred chapel till her son should be issued out in his panoply least th

pleased the King Richard the Third-then Duke of Gloucester-rather because of a complaisance than a burly strength. He was very newly come to the Palatine Country. For he had been the K

ishopric, this was his first tour of those parts and he did no

c books but in some of the poets, for in his day he had been long in Rome and later dwelt in Westminster, where th

And after that he hoped that he might leave renown as a great clerk who had added glory, c

the Wear, coming from the neighbouring tower of Glororem, and that day he was to bless her betrothal to Young Lovell of the Castle. She was a dark girl, rising twent

red his or her thoughts, and from this he knew that she regarded the Lady Rohtraut with tender veneration, and the lower classes behind the pill

he lady Rohtraut had been speaking of it, she had leaned sideways over the table, her lips parted as if she could hardly contain herself. He saw also that she was of great piety, since every time Our Lady was mentioned in that debate she inclined, and when it was Our Lord, she did the like and crossed herself. And this pleased the Bishop Palatine, for

is speech, that he was thinking upon, jump so well with that lady's desires, and

gh he well knew that he was their father in God and in a sense their temporal protector, yet he did not wish

very fully. It was true that it would not much become him in those days of comparative peace to strike blows with the iron mace. It was rather his part to stand upon a high place observant of battles and sieges. And, if he wore arms, it was rather as a symbol than as of use. He hoped that, as his reverend and sainted pred

inful unless it had guidance, bestial unless it had control, and for want of counsel horrid, lecherous and filthy by turns. Theirs, by the will and blessing of God and by the wise rule of His vice-gerent-for so he would style their good King, though it was not the habit-theirs were days of near peace. The kingdom was no longer rent by dissensions; famine and pestilence came more seldom nigh th

it. God had given them bread, but they might turn it to bitter stone; He had given them peace, but it might turn to a sword more s

f arms. In the books of chivalry they should read not of vain pomps, but of how arms should be laid upon altars; not of luxurious feasts, but of how good knights held vigils and fasts and kept themselves virgin of heart

suddenly la

fray!" he exclaimed, and shook his lean s

slew the less pagans because he was of a clea

mly. "Maybe they would have slain less if it had

d of it in virtuous and true histories it were a sin to doubt of,

more than a matter of fashion. Yet I think it is early days to prate of our peaceful times. It is but three month

s head obediently

learn of you," he said;

ou. In my high day there were n

Bishop having spoken the more, but the Warden had sent in heavier stone sho

one, of Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this side of Alnwick to the sea. This lawyer was a very skilled chicaner and there were suits to come very soon between the see and the Lords Ogle and Mitford, touching the Bishop's mills at Witton and on Wearside. Th

oudly because the Bishop was occupied with his papers. He was a jovial man, not much loved by his wife whom he delighted to tease. If he had any grief it was that his natural son, Decies of the S

known w

to the Bishopric and had then gone on a Romer's journey, by way, it was considered, of penance. At any rate, he had gone to Rome in sackcloth, taking with him his son, the Young Lovell, who travelled very well appointed and, on the homeward way, h

who was then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of fleshing his sword, to fight with the captains of the Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the Princess of Escia. He had slept in pavilions of si

present at a conclave, between the turbaned envoys of the Soldan and the Venetian c

yes open, having made friends of several youths of Italy and learn

is father still more. He had challenged six Italian squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier, the long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with the rapier had he been twice worsted-and this quite well contented his father, who regarded him

hat did not suffer pillage and over-running from them, not Saint Arnold, Gaillardon, Chatillon or even Chartres itself. In that way Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until, the country of France having been submitted to the English, he had set sail, with much of his wealth, for Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come south into the Percies' country. I

Agincourt, losing three horses, two of which he had taken from French lords. So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of the Castle with none to gainsay them, though till latterly they had been held for rough lords and not over-reverend. The Percies looked down th

the French envoy to the Holy Father in Rome, though there was war between the countries of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth having suddenly made a raid into the country of the lilies. And the c

arts, at Northallerton, they met with the Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother, who treated them very courteously and absolved them of ill intentions because at the time they had taken the oath peace had been between England and France, or at least no news of the war had reached Rome. This Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King Edward, was much loved in the North, of which region he was

n the throat of Richard Raket, that was the Young Lovell's horse boy. And this lord having cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously against the Scots that he slew many of them before nightfall and was lost in a great valley between moors and slept on the heather. There he heard many strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs hunting overhead, which was said by those who had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing still through the night the miserable shade of the foolish Act?on. And between two passages of sleep, he perceived a fair ki

oung Lovell found, indeed, that, whilst he had been so held for dead this young monk had much befriended him. For his father, the Lord Lovell, had shewn a disposition to adopt that Decies of the South and to give him the fruits of the young Lovell's deeds, such as the ransoming of the Scots lord and the knighthood that the Duke should have giv

g Lovell, for all his prowess, could be. He loved the one son whilst he dreaded the other,

But he was rising twenty-one, like the Young Lovell, heavy, clumsy, very strong and an immense feeder. He was dark and red-cheeked and cunning and he fitted his father as a hand fits a glove. Nevertheless he had done little at Kenchie's Burn, he had slep

nting together, though it was always the Young Lovell that had his dagger first in the throat of the grey wolf or the red deer, and the Decies who came second when outlaws, or else when the false Scots, must be driven off from peel t

as growing so monstrous heavy that it was considered that his skin could not much longer contain him. He had led a life of violence, sloth, great appetites and negligent shamelessness, so that the Decies considered that he would soon have need of protectors in their place. The old lord might leave his lands, but much

had no means whereby to convey it to a distance and no place in the distance in which to store it, besides it would surely be taken by moss-troopers and little cry made

bbing that King's lieges, and there was little for the livelihood of proper gentry but harrying whether in the King's cause or in rebellion. So that if the Decies' money on its way to s