Bertram shrugged his shoulders, as if the question took him out of his depth. "Marry, she is a woman!" said he; "and all women be alike. There is not one but will screech an' she see a spider." "Mistress Drew and Mother be not alike," answered Maude, falling back on her own small experience. "Neither were Hawise and I alike. She would alway stay at holy Mary her image, to see if the lamp were alight; but I--the saints forgive me!--I never cared thereabout. So good was Cousin Hawise." "Maude," suggested Bertram in a low voice, as if he felt half afraid of his own idea, "Countest that blessed Mary looketh ever her own self to wit if the lamp be alight?" Maude was properly shocked. "Save you All Hallows, Master Bertram! How come you by such fantasies?" Bertram laughed and went away, chanting a stave of the "Ploughman's Complaint"--[See Note 4.] "Christ hath twelve apostles here; Now, say they, there may be but one, That may not erre in no manere-- Who 'leveth [believeth] not this ben lost echone. [each one] Peter erred--so did not Jhon; Why is he cleped the principal? [See note 5.] Christ cleped him Peter, but Himself the Stone-- All false faitours [doers] foule hem fall!" [Evil befall them.] Late that evening a mounted messenger crossed the drawbridge, and stayed his weary horse in the snows-prinkled base court. He was quickly recognised by the household as a royal letter-bearer from London. "And what news abroad, Master Matthew?" "Why, the King's Highness keepeth his Christmas at Eltham; and certain of the Council would fain have the Queen's Bohemians sent forth, but I misdoubt if it shall be done. And Sir Nicholas Brembre is the new mayor. There is no news else. Oh, ay! The parson of Lutterworth, Sir John de Wycliffe--" "The lither heretic!" muttered Warine, for he was the questioner. "What misturnment [perversion] would he now?" "He will never turn ne misturn more," said the messenger. "The morrow after Holy Innocents a second fit of the palsy took him as he stood at the altar at mass, and they bare him home to die. And the eve of the Circumcision [December 31st, 1384], two days thereafter, the good man was commanded to God." "Good man, forsooth!" growled Warine. "Master Warine," said Hugh Calverley's voice behind him, "the day may come when thou and I would be full fain to creep into Heaven at the heels of the Lutterworth parson." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note 1. The anointing at baptism, when a white cloth was always placed on the head. Note 2. Bertram, Ursula, Parnel, Warine, and Maude and her family, are all fictitious persons. Note 3. The herbs were to be boiled and the liquid drunk, for a sprain, bruise, or broken bone. Note 4. Wright's _Political Poems_, one 304, _et seq_. The date of the poem given by Wright is anticipated by about nine years. Note 5. Why is Peter called the "Prince of the Apostles?" CHAPTER TWO.