Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
"And, seeing her in that good mind," Stone went on with his tale, "I
remembered that she was a very old woman—the oldest of all these parts.
So I told her that if she could remember matters of Barnside years
agone, since she was in a holier mind, without doubt the young lording
would be gracious to her and would grant her a halfpenny a day to live
by; so she might live godly, after repenting in a sheet.... So she
remembered very clearly that one Hindhorn of Barnsides, Henrice Quinto
Rege, had been used, once a year, at Shrovetide, to drag with three
bullocks, an oaken log bound with yellow ribbons to the Castle. This was
direct and blinding evidence that the right of fire-feu ..."
"Well, you went with the old hag to the chapel," the Lady Margaret said.
"I can follow the cant of your mind and spring before it."
"But you may miss many and valuable things," he retorted. "As thus....
Whilst we went up the hill, this old goody, being repentant and weeping,
cried out when she heard whither we were bound: ’Alas! Horror! Woe is
me!" and other cries. And, when I pressed for a reason, she said that
the young lording was a damned soul and that was one of her sins. For
she had taught him magic and the meeting-places of warlocks; one of
which was that chapel that was an ill-haunted spot, and that was why the
lording was there at night. And she was afraid to go near the chapel;
for the warlocks would tear her limb from limb. And the familiar and
succubus of the Young Lovell was the toad that was, in afore time, the
step-mother of the Laidly Worm of Spindleston, that to this day spits
upon maidens, so much she hateth the estate of virginity, as often you
will have heard."
The lawyer paused and looked long at that lady.
"So that old witch repented?" she said at last, but she gave no sign of
her feelings.
"There was never a more beautiful repentance seen," the lawyer said.
"So she sighed and groaned and the tears poured off her face to think
that she had corrupted that poor lording...." And it had been her
repentance, he went on, that had let them see what they had seen, and so
made it possible for them to save him.
Now when they came to the chapel, said the lawyer, the young lording, as
if he were demented, came rushing out from the door, and the Decies who
had watched all night in the porch came out after him, and asked him
what he would. But he answered nothing to the Decies and nothing to
them, but, with a marvellous fury, like a man rushing in a dream, he ran
into the shed where his horse was tethered, and bringing it out, so he
galloped away that his long curls of gold flapped in the wind. It was
not yet cockcrow, but pretty clear.
Thus those three, standing there and lamenting, saw how, at no great
distance, but just under Budle Crags, there was a fire lit, and round it
danced wonderful fair women and some old hags and witch-masters, but
most fair women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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