Under One Sceptre, or Mortimer's Mission: The Story of the Lord of the MarchesHolt, Emily Sarah
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Under One Sceptre, or Mortimer's Mission: The Story of the Lord of the Marches
Holt, Emily Sarah
Historical fiction; Mortimer, Roger de, Earl of March, 1328-1360 -- Fiction
[#] The Irish Government was charged to search for him in September,
1397, as he was supposed to be in that country; and he was executed in
England, before May 27th, 1399. (Close Roll, 21 Ric. II., Part 1; Patent
Roll, 23 ib.)
The Lady Agnes Mortimer, who came to conduct the little Lady Anne back
to her English friends, while her son attended to the more public
necessities of the case, was an elderly woman of girlish character. She
was by birth a Poynings, and sister-in-law of that Lollard Lady Poynings
who was the daughter of a Princess of Lancaster, and who had been
ejected from King Richard’s household by the Lords Appellants. But Lady
Agnes was no Lollard, as she showed a few years later by making painful
pilgrimage to Cologne and Rome for the good of her soul. She came
forward now to meet Guenllian, answering her deliberate and modest
reverence with a shower of rapid words.
"Mistress Wenteline Bevan, is it not so? Not Bevan? ’Ap Evan’!
Gramercy, what matter? Ap Evan is Bevan, and Bevan is Ap Evan—’tis all
one. I pray you, Mistress Wenteline, carry me whither I may dry me, for
my skirts be all sore bemired this rainy day. Good lack, but it witteth
how to rain in this country, by my troth! And how doth your little
Lady, trow? Verily, poor child, she must have been moped well-nigh to
death, with all this doole about her. Young things love gleesomeness,
and should have it. Is she yet abed?"
Lady Agnes paused a second for the answer, and Guenllian managed to
glide in—"No, Madam. Truly I think the child hath too much sorrowed for
her father to take any grief at the doole."
"Ah, well, we will soon have that amended," said Lady Agnes cheerfully.
"I will have the maid away at once, and not await for aught but the bare
needful: we can amend all when we come to Usk, where my Lady her mother
now abideth."
The Countess had always expressed so much dislike to Usk that it rather
surprised Guenllian to hear that she was there. Lady Agnes answered her
look.
"Ah, my Lady loveth not doole, no more than other folk. She hath held
fair court at Usk, trust me, with a merry lot of knights and dames: and
in especial—mark you, Mistress Wenteline—_in especial_—my good Lord
Charlton of Powys. Marry, but when the news came, she _was_ aggrieved!"
Guenllian was glad to hear it. The thought had lain heavy at her heart,
that Alianora would not sorrow. Yet to think of her "holding fair
court" with gay company, while that terrible scene was enacting at
Kenles, went sorely against her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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