Читать книгу Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses онлайн | страница 23

"Look you," she said, after that momentary pause, "it is my step-dame, not my father, that is verily a Marnell. The lady whom you wot of was her grandame—to wit, her father's mother."

"Of no kin to you, then?" asked Avice, in a tone in which Frideswide fancied she heard a shade of disappointment.

"Nay, that can I not rightly say," was the reply: "for Dame Agnes Lovell, the Lady's mother, which was by birth a Greenhalgh, was sister unto Mistress Ladreyne Clitheroe, whose daughter Maud was my grandmother. So you shall see we are near of kin."

A cousin thrice removed would not now be thought a very near relation; but in past times much more was made of "kindly blood" than at present.

Avice did not answer, and Frideswide, having recovered her courage, spoke up boldly. For a hundred years her ancestors had been of the Lollard faith, and she was far more disposed to glory in the fact than to be ashamed of it.

"Wherefore? Are you of that learning?"

"Hush, gramercy!" cried Avice under her breath.

"Wherefore?" asked Frideswide again.

"Dear heart, if any should o'erhear us!" explained Avice. "Know you not that 'tis a dangerous matter to speak thereof?"

"It may be worse to let be," answered Frideswide thoughtfully. She was thinking of a story of twenty years ago, which she had heard most sorrowfully told by the lips of the Lady Idonia, how she had at one time fallen away for fear, and had never forgotten her defection nor forgiven herself.

"Ah, Frideswide," said Avice earnestly, "you speak like to her that had dwelt in a sure place, and knew nought of the world on the outside. Look you, matters be no more as they were these twenty-five years back. So long as the King were in power and of good wit, never man were ill-used for speaking Lollardy, for he never would have creature harmed in his realm an' he wist it, by his good-will. Have you ne'er heard how he bade remove down from the Micklegate at York the one quarter of a traitor there set, saying he would ne'er see Christian thus cruelly used for his sake? But the rebel is made of other metal. Heard you not of one Will Balowe, that was burned on Tower Hill scarce three years gone, for that he would not make confession to no priest, but only unto God, and had (said they) no conscience in eating of flesh during Lent? Both he and his wife had been afore abjured, so that he was a lapsed man. There were no burnings whenso as King Henry were in power. Nor know you not, about the same time, some pixes were stole for the silver, and one of them that stale them was heard for to say that he had a dainty morsel to his supper, for he had eaten nine gods—to wit, the hosts that were in the boxes? There is more Lollardy about the realm than ever afore, trust me: but 'tis not so safe to speak thereof as when you and I were childre."