the Almoner whispered in the Bishop's ear and laid a parchment before him. He begged the Bishop to sign this appointment. For the day drew on, they must ride very soon and might not again be in those parts for a year or more. It was to make the worthy Magister Stone, of Barnside, bailiff for the Palatinate in those parts, this side of Alnwick to the sea. This lawyer was a very skilled chicaner and there were suits to come very soon between the see and the Lords Ogle and Mitford, touching the Bishop's mills at Witton and on Wearside. The Bishop was aware that one of the Almoner's clerks must have had money of the lawyer; nevertheless he signed the appointment, for he knew they would never let him have any other man. A Prince Bishop cannot go searching for scriveners of honesty like Diogenes lacking a lanthorn.
The dispute as to the rules of chivalry went on in spite of the Bishop's abstraction from it. Indeed, the Lord Lovell of the Castle, who had not much reason for loving churchmen, spoke the more loudly because the Bishop was occupied with his papers. He was a jovial man, not much loved by his wife whom he delighted to tease. If he had any grief it was that his natural son, Decies of the South, had never shown himself a lad of any great parts. This lad was reputed to be his natural son, though he was called Young Lovell's foster brother. Nevertheless who was his mother no man knew.
What was known was this.
Six years before the Lord Lovell did some grievous sin, but what that too was, no men knew. He had been called before the former Bishop of Durham; the Lady Rohtraut had, then and afterwards, been heard to rate him soundly. He had given five farms to the Bishopric and had then gone on a Romer's journey, by way, it was considered, of penance. At any rate, he had gone to Rome in sackcloth, taking with him his son, the Young Lovell, who travelled very well appointed and, on the homeward way, had acted as his page. They had taken ship from the New Castle to Bordeaux and from Bordeaux to Genoa, where, falling in with a party of English Condottieri in the pay of the Holy Father, they had travelled in safety to the city of the seven hills.
On the homeward road they had travelled more like great lords, having enlisted a train of followers, and staying in the courts of Princes of Italy until they came again to Marseilles. The Young Lovell, who was then sixteen, had been permitted, by way of fleshing his sword, to fight with the captains of the Prince of Fosse Ligato against the men of the Princess of Escia. He had slept in pavilions of silk and saw the sack of two very rich walled cities whilst his easy father, who had seen fighting enough in his day, dallied over the sweet wines, lemons and the women with dyed hair of the Prince's Court.
In Venice, whilst his father had toyed with similar cates, the young Lovell had been present at a conclave, between the turbaned envoys of the Soldan and the Venetian council, over the exchange of prisoners taken in galleys of the one side and the other.
Therefore as travelling went, the young man had voyaged with his eyes open, having made friends of several youths of Italy and learned some pretty tricks of fence as well as sundry ways of dalliance.
The father regarded his son with not disagreeable complacency, like a carthorse who had begotten a slight and swift barb. The boy's soft ways and gentle speeches amused him till he laughed tears at times; his daring and hot, rash passions pleased his father still more. He had challenged six Italian squires on the Lido to combat with the rapier, the long sword, the axe and the dagger, and only with the rapier had he been twice worsted – and this quite well contented his father, who regarded him as a queer, new-fangled growth, but in no wise a disgraceful one. He set the boy, in fact, down to his mother's account. And this he did with some warrant, for the boy was the first blond child that had been born to the Lovells in a hundred years.
Further back than that the Lovells could not go. They were descended from one Ruthven, a Welsh brigand of whom, a hundred and twenty years before, it was written that he and his companions kept the country between the Rivers Seine and Loire so that none dare ride between Paris and Orleans, nor between Paris and Montargis. These robbers had made that Ruthven a knight and their captain. There were no towns in that district that did not suffer pillage and over-running from them, not Saint Arnold, Gaillardon, Chatillon or even Chartres itself. In that way Ruthven had amassed a marvellous great booty until, the country of France having been submitted to the English, he had set sail, with much of his wealth, for Edinburgh, but liking the Scots little, after he had married a Scots woman called Lovell, he had come south into the Percies' country. It had happened that the Percies had at that date five squires of their house in prison to the Douglas and had little money for their ransoming. So this Ruthven had bought of them seventy farms and land on which to build an outer wall round the fortress that, boastfully, he called the Castle, as if there had been no other castle in that land. And indeed, it was a marvellously strong place, over the sea on its crags of basalt.
Thus had arisen, from huge wealth, the great family of the Lovells of the Castle. For Ruthven had not wished to be known by his name, and indeed King Henry V swore that none of that name should have Lordship nor even Knighthood, though the Ruthven of that day fought well at Agincourt, losing three horses, two of which he had taken from French lords. So, since that day they had been the Lords Lovell of the Castle with none to gainsay them, though till latterly they had been held for rough lords and not over-reverend. The Percies looked down their noses when they met them, and so did the captains of Bamburgh and Holy Island. However, in the year 1459 the Lord Lovell had found the Lady Rohtraut of the Dacres to marry him and, having had three daughters, she bore him the Young Lovell though one of the daughters died.
At any rate; they had travelled home from Marseilles, father and son, very peaceably together, going from castle to castle of the French lords and knights, under a safe-conduct that had been granted them by the French envoy to the Holy Father in Rome, though there was war between the countries of France and England, the King Edward the Fourth having suddenly made a raid into the country of the lilies. And the courteous way with which the French lords treated them made them much wonder because they did not think a Scots lord would have so easily travelled through the Border Country or a Border lord through Scotland.
Therefore, when they came to Calais, they went quietly home to England without turning back to war in France. That was according to their oath to Messire Parrolles at Rome, though some of King Edward's lords and courtiers mocked at them and it was said to be in the King's mind to have fined them, not for having observed, but for having taken such an oath. However, when they came into the North parts, at Northallerton, they met with the Duke of Gloucester, the King's brother, who treated them very courteously and absolved them of ill intentions because at the time they had taken the oath peace had been between England and France, or at least no news of the war had reached Rome. This Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King Edward, was much loved in the North, of which region he was then Lord-General. He dealt with all men courteously, giving simple and smiling answers to simple questions and never failing to answer favourably any petition that he could grant, or refusing others with such phrases of regret as made the refusal almost a boon of itself. He inflicted also no harsh taxes and took off many others, so that in those parts he was known as the good Duke of Gloucester.
He treated the Lord Lovell and his son with such smiling courtesy that they very willingly went with him, before ever their home saw them, on a journey that he was making towards Dunbar, and it was in the battle that some Scots lords made against them on the field of Kenchie's Burn that the Young Lovel did such great things. He took prisoner with his own hands a great Scots lord, own cousin to Douglas, in a hot mêlée, where, before he was taken, the Scots lord, being otherwise disarmed by the Young Lovell, knocked with his clenched fist, nine teeth down the throat of Richard Raket, that was the Young Lovell's horse boy. And this lord having cried mercy, the Young Lovell pursued so furiously against the Scots that he slew many of them before nightfall and was lost in a great valley between moors and slept on the heather. There he heard many strange sounds, such as a great cry of dogs hunting overhead, which was said by those who had read in books to be the goddess Diana chasing still through the night the miserable shade of the foolish Actæon. And between two passages of sleep, he perceived a fair kind lady looking down upon him, but before he was fully awake she was no longer there, and this was thought to be the White Lady of Spindleston, though
