The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan

ode south to Durham to set about the releasing of the Lady Rohtraut in good earnest. She had been unwilling to do this before hope departed of his retu

the Percies. She had with her an old lady called Bellingham and three maids with forty men-at-arms under the direction of the husband of the lady called Bellingham, an old esquire who had never come to be

land. The Lady Maud his wife was by, that was daughter to the Earl of Pembroke, and she sought to moderate at once the anger of that lord and the importunities of that hotheaded damsel. The Lady Margaret would have the Percy raise his many with cann

ments and charters were locked up. For this Earl, according as he was at Alnwick which he did not much love, or at Warkworth where he much delighted to be, so he moved his window-glass, his muniments and his charters from the one Castle to the other, and for their greater

d papers and parchments which he bade this lady read. And she could make little of them because there

cramped and nearly fourscore years of age, or more. And once, whilst he read them, the Earl looked over the edge of a parchment at the Lady Mar

done with Hotspur, the Earl went on to read of the fate of the father of Hotspur, Henry, the Fourth Lord Percy of Alnwick. This lord fell at Bramham Moor fighting against King Henry IV, as Hotspur had done at Hately Field, fighting against the same King four years before. This lord's head and quarters were placed upon London Bridge: one quarter upon the gate of York, another at Newcastle, and yet further pieces at King's Lynn and Berwick-on-Tweed. Lugubriously and in a level voice this Earl read out all the writs that he had collected, whether by the King's hand or Privy Seal, whether of setting up or for burial. He looked gravely upon the Lady Margaret and asked her wha

ld anybody, seeing that he had reigned but a little while. The Percy made sounds of disagreement and a

amily though they were not of the standing and worth, in those parts, of the Eures, the Dacres, or the Nevilles; they had acquired the most part of their lands by a gradual purchase of Bishop Anthony Bek, who betrayed his ward the

part was saying, and it was better for the Earl to hear it than to sit all day surrounded by flatterers of the make of John Harbottle and hi

e over her back and one over her shoulder, and when she pointed at him her white hand, on which were many rings set with green stones and red stones, her ample sleeves of scarlet damask touched the firelit carpet. In the dark hall of that place her angry figure appeared to wave as the f

we set up Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up Henry Bolingbroke instead. And that Bolingbroke, called Henry IV, we did not well like when we had set him up. Yet I do not blame anyone either for setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down again. For somebody must be King. He will make fair promises before we come to it, and if he break them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords, pull devil, pul

d a red smile i

has broad lands and the Lovells have broad lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs, and whilst they are at each other's throats it is well for the King in London Town and for me at Alnwick. And I wish you were all at each other's throats more than you are; for the King shall have his pickings by way of fines and amercements, and so will I, and so will lawyers and bailiffs and others, and so ye are weakened the more. And it was for this reason that I gave judgment against your true love, the Young Lovell, in my Warden's court, though I knew that judgment should not stand... For I think that Yo

idered that she might better sting this lord with

of Percy as his flatterers, servants and pimps-that is not a pretty and gallant thing. For my cousin Lovell, I do not think ye dare set out against him, for if ye did, all the North part-and it is not yet so cast down-should rise upon you, and there should not remain, of Alnwick, nor yet of Warkworth, one stone upon another. And for this thing of my cousin and true love, I think you have a little mistaken it. For whiles my true love is away we, such as the Eures and the Dacres and the Nevilles and the Widdringtons and the S

ess Maud

of it." But the Earl was

l to be dead and his sisters' husbands are the heirs of that Castle. How then shall I march upon a Castle that

everence, leaning back in her scarl

t would have done it." Then she laughed; and after she w

I will get me gone from thi

Percies. And when she was there she called to her the old squire, John Bellingham, t

abroad. She answered that, if the night were dark it would be as hard for the Scots to see them as for them to see the Scots. And she had chosen him, John Bellingham, to be the ancien

f she left them so. This Countess Maud, daughter of Sir Herbert Stanley, Earl of Bedford, was of the South parts, and she was amazed at all these clamours. Indeed she had not well understood all that had been said, for when the Earl and the Lady Margaret had become heated they spoke in the North

about her. Then the Lady Margaret bade them dress themselves and lie down upon their beds; but to be ready. After that she answered the Countess Maud that her entertainment had been such as she had seldom had before, lacking nothing, but with certain dishes added, that in their rough North parts they had seldom seen before though they had hea

ther as cousins did in the South?" The Lady Margaret laughed and answered that if the people of the South were better t

n a wall by the postern gate and at the foot of a stairway just beside that lady's chamber-room. Then the Lady Margaret bade him let her men lie down

a knocking at the door and the dame Bellingham said that there stood the Earl Percy in his night-gown. So the Lady Margaret said that was what she feared-that the Earl should come

deaths of them all if she would not let him come in to speak to the Lady Margaret. This the Countess did not wish to allow, for the Countess Maud had no comprehen

o herself. For she knew that now, if she could come out of the Castle and get safe away, sh

the North, so that King Henry VII should be almighty and himself the King's viceregent. When the day came there would be indeed no end to his power in those parts, for the King would be very d

with him. Thus he wished he had bitten his tongue out before ever, in his anger, he had revealed what was his secret design to his cousin. For the Lady Margaret was a great gadabout and, if

willing to have laid her by the heels and to keep her a prisoner in that tower. But he was afraid that that might bring about his ears a hornet's nest of his cousins, and even it might bring him reproof from the King. The King was not at all wil

crying at the door, he could not bid his men to arm against her, and whilst her men were armed and his not, he could do little or nothing at all. They could all go out at the postern gate and so into

attention he paid her as his wife, as to the fact that she had no more than four damask dresses and, very particularly, as to the sto

tell her that people were astir in the Castle with some lights, though whether they were about arming themselves or getting ready for the day and the hay harvest, he could not we

nd found her men by the postern gate. The keeper of the gate did not dare to withhold

down twisting steps. She did not think that the Earl would dare to come and take her there. It would have been too great an outrage, to set upon a lady of her quality in the open; besides, being thirty and more, they would be able to give account of themselves and no doubt get away by tracks that John Bellingham knew very well. So the ladies sat down upon shields of the men-at-arms,

rds, he had seemed to change his mind and had given orders that all the horses should be sent out to her. Moreover, he sent her word that, if she would come back into the Castle he would give her news of the Youn

d, and John Bellingham had another tall horse. But the old lady and the three maids had mules, and there were seven pack mules that carried the Lady Margaret's hangings, furnishings for her room if she slept in an inn, her dresses and much things of value as she would not willingly leave in the Tower of Glororem. The men-at-arms rode little, n

latter place to Morpeth was very good travelling, and it ran straight. The Lady Margaret was minded to sleep that night at Newcastle, which would be twenty-four miles more or less, for she had no haste to be in one place more than another. She had little pleasure in life; although she wish

eather, so that those ladies must at first lay off their gray cloaks and then open their shifts at the neck and fan themselves

upon their mules. So, when they came to a little green hill where ash trees climbed to the top, the Lady Margaret said, out of compassion to them, that when they were at the

t their heads fall forward between their knees. One or two were set to walk as sentries outside that wood, to watch the flat country below, so that no sound was heard in that little wood sa

and smiling a lady she had never seen. She stood between the stems of two white birch trees and leaned upon one, with her arm over her head in an attitude of great leisure.

ger and a great company of ladies-in-waiting, all very beautiful, in gowns of sea-blue silk with girdles of silver and gold. The Lady Margaret had never seen so fair a company, though she had seen the Queen of Richard Crookback with all her court. Then it seemed to her that that lady pointed down into the plain as if she wanted to show her lover and her lord. On the road that came from the North, the Lady Margaret

ourhood that could keep up so fair a state, except it were the King of Scots, and not even he, and that could not be the Queen of Scots, for she was a stout, black lady, whereas this one had been a tall woman with red-gold hair, such a one as she could have loved if she had been a man.