The Blossoming of an Aloe, and the Queen's Token

Front matter

VOL. AND THE QUEEN'S TOKEN. BY MRS. CASHEL HOEY, AUTHOK OF "OUT OF COURT." "A GOLDEN SORROW," &c. &c. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. in. LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1875. All rights reserved LONDON: PRINTED BY MAODONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE, BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.

CHAPTER XIII.

mary's resolution. A MONG the letters which awaited Miss -*--*- Cairnes on the following morning, was one from Mrs. Westland. She opened it without interest or misgiving, her mind was absorbed in the occurrences of the previous night ; and she read, hardly understanding them at first, the following lines : — "It is impossible for me to address you with any of the customary forms of polite ness or affection. You have taken an unfair advantage of the position in which vol. in. b my unfortunate circumstances have placed me, to enable my son to violate, with your connivance, all the principles I have ever striven to inculcate in him. Your careful concealment from me of the extraordinary step you have taken in bringing into your house the daughter of a common station master and of a former dependent of your own, and treating her as an equal, proves that you knew it was one which society •would condemn.

Chapter I. The Abbey

TZILFERRAN ABBEY is situated in a -■---»- wild and romantic part of the south west of Ireland. The coast thereabouts is grand and craggy, broken into strange shapes, majestic sweeps, and great precipices ; but with lovely inland glimpses of greenery and trees ; beyond it thunder the great ocean waves, the long, sweeping "rollers" of the Atlantic. They who would see Kilferran Abbey must not shun rough roads and lonely paths, must not shrink from the sense of solitude, or expect to find anything like the "show place" of a great English proprietor. No smooth shrub-bordered carriage road at Kilferran ; no deftly-adjusted plantation, bringing out the " points " of the ruin ; no wide grassy esplanade, and well-kept grassy court ; no flaunting flag ; no trained ivy, or luxuriant Virginian creeper, hiding the ghastliness of decay.

The inland approach to Kilferran, from the county town, Ballycashel, is monotonous and uninteresting, as almost all the inland scenery of Ireland is, even in the south, bearing few evidences of prosperity, and having little diversity or sylvan charm. The Abbey turns its back upon the visitor who approaches by the land, and its back is not imposing. Reached from the west by the wild, irregular, precipitous road winding through great gaps, from whose rocky sides the ferns spring, and down whose rugged surface pure sparkling water trickles, form ing tiny threads of rivulet below, and making THL' ABBEY. a tinkle as of fairy music in the stillness of the Summer noon, and under the solemn moonlight in the night, the old building looks grand. It stands on the face of a hill with steep scarped sides; a deep roadway cut in the rock, on which the iron-shod hoofs of horses ring as on an old Roman causeway.

Groups of cattle on the plains, goats clambering about the hills, the scream of the curlew, flying far in from the frequent storm, the grey-blue sky, piled with the low lying, fantastic clouds which veil the face of heaven from the lands near the sea ; these are the surroundings of the ancient abbey, once a place of great fame and much resort in bygone times, when it was a monastery of the Dominican Order. From Kil ferran, preachers, full of fire and eloquence, of zeal and severity, had gone abroad to preach in Ireland, and in distant lands over the sea, with the sound of whose distant waters mingled the tolling of the bells of Kilferran. These bells were masterpieces of the Flemish founder's art, brought to the abbey in its high and palmy days by Francois de Valmont, who lived, and worked, and died a much respected member of the Dominican community, as Brother Cyprian.

France in those days was a terribly long way off from Ireland, a distance which, ex cept to the great nobles, to statesmen, to soldiers, and to the Friars Preachers, implied an absolute strangeness and division, such as do not now exist between our island kingdoms and any portion of the known earth. Kilferran sent many an earnest, eager-faced monk in the Dominican robe, and cloak, and cowl, to mingle with the motley world awhile, preaching to unwill ing ears the vanity of earth, the worth of heaven, and then to return and keep the severe but peaceful rule of St. Dominic. But Brother Cyprian lived always within the abbey, though the tradition which lingered long among the peasantry of the place, who had little lore besides, or nutriment for the ever active Irish imagination, had it that no more learned man, or " golden-mouthed," dwelt among the Friars Preachers.

The abbey within whose ancient walls the Comte de Valmont found peace, and buried the story of his former life, was ancient when he claimed its shelter. The famous bells, his magnificent gift, were landed from a foreign-looking craft, the fashion of whose sails was declared to be " outlandish." A rumour gained ground that the novice had brought much wealth to the community, in addition to his gift of the bells, which the people regarded with superstitious venera tion. Apparently, Brother Cyprian did no more than this for the abbey of Kilferran. If, in deed, he had brought wealth with him into the cloister, there was no external evidence of its expenditure ; his life was as obscure as that of any humble lay-brother there, and his name was rarely heard while he lived. But for "the musical, magical bells," he might have been forgotten as utterly as any of the countless brethren of the order who mouldered away in nameless sepulture in the abbey burial-ground, under the shade of the thick eastern wall, of which one sturdy frag ment is still standing, and where the irregu larities of the earth indicate ancient and for gotten graves.

But the bells kept the memory of Cyprian fresh for scores of years, long after they had been carried off from the ruined and dismantled abbey, and hung in the belfry of a church of the reformed faith in the county town. Deep and deadly, though suppressed un der the iron rule of the time, was the rage of the people when Brother Cyprian's bells, with their beautiful dedicatory legends and their orthodox baptism, were thus trans ferred to the enemy of their country and their faith. Deep, deadly, and vain ; for the people were helpless. There was, however, something on their side — something they could not define, did not care to investigate, did not dare openly to claim and exult in, but, nevertheless, believed in and cherished, as the Irish people always believe in and cherish anything which combines the ele ments of religion and revenge.

The men employed to hang the bells in their new place fell from the scaffolding, aud were mortally hurt; the belfry was struck by lightning and hurled to the ground ; the bells split in the fall, and when restored, they cracked of their own accord. At last, in all the parish, no man could be found to offici ate as bell-ringer, for it became known that he who made Brother Cyprian's bells chime in obedience to the stranger and the heretic, should have no place by any fireside, no partner in a dance, no wife from out any household, no nurse in sickness — should, in VOL. III. H fact, be outcast from his fellows. The power of the strong hand availed nothing against this. There were cruel laws enough in Ire land then ; but, short of the subjection of slavery, none which could be applied to the forcing of a man to ring Cyprian's bells, and so they remained silent.

The tradition lasted ; dormant indeed, for none cared to rouse it. At length, in the lapse of time, the bells disappeared, none knew exactly when or how. The expla nation might have been simple, but mystery was preferable, and the mystery was established. In the course of years, when the infants of the days in which the avoided place of Cyprian's bells had been unaccount ably left tenantless were grown men and women, it began to be rumoured that the bells were heard again ; on the heights of Kilferran, from the sea, in the calm-slum bering, sparkling time of Summer, and of nights, when the watch listened from shipboard for their solemn, elevating, admonitory music. Young mothers watching by their sick infants' cradles heard the bells ; mourn ers by death-beds, sorrow-stricken people, heavily laden with sin and grief; above all, the dying.

And it was held of all " a good sign " to hear the ancient music. They were not afraid ; though no one knew where the bells hung, or if they were in existence under any form ; though centuries had passed since any sound but the swish of the bats' wings, the hooting of the owl, or the twittering of nesting birds among the ivy, had come from the deserted ruins of Kilferran ; they were not afraid, nor had they any doubt that the sound was that of Cyprian's bells. So that, though it was always sad, yet it was accounted a blessed thing to have heard these bells ; and many a sick heart had listened for the sound until benignant fancy produced it, and the longing was satisfied ; h2 the link of sense with the supernatural granted. But this was of comparatively late date, when ruin had so taken possession of Kil ferran Abbey that it would have needed a thorough knowledge of the architecture of the period at which the abbey was built, to restore it to the mind's eye as it had been when Brother Cyprian trod its cloisters with his sandalled feet, and mused among the graves, so numerous even then, with his refined, thin, dark French face, very eager, and yet weary, and differing much from the faces of his brethren.

The front of the abbey was of great extent, and can now be traced in all its length, though of the remainder a mere shell exists. The lofty and wide entrance is in the centre, and a portion of the stonework above the arch of the massive gateway is in good preservation. This portion consists of a long line of short, bulky columns, which once formed the external side of the principal cloister, and was probably continued on three sides of the building. Of decoration, of the artistic skill and taste with which the monks of old were wont to adorn their dwellings, the visitor will be persuaded at first that no trace remains. The fragments of the walls are rough fragments. The time-worn rugged surface of the columns which are still stand ing in their firm and massive sockets — of the grey stone which is so dreary-looking and so enduring — bears no impress of the sculptor's hand.

But when the visitor stands close by the doorway, and carefully scans the line of stonework just above the columns, he observes a few feet of masonry jutting in towards the hollow, empty centre, and makes out that there was the massive flooring of a great gallery, probably of cells or dormitories. On narrow inspection, he sees that there was once a fireplace, and in the wall — a few feet of which remain — just above the tenth column, counting from the right side of the great entrance, the mutilated remains of a sculptured tablet may be discerned. The relief is almost obliterated by age and exposure; the corners are chipped, green stains mar the surface, and a deep crack traverses the tablet, so that it is strange that it has not long ago fallen from its position, and added its tiny item to the heap of ruin around.

There is no means of climbing up to the level of this sad little relic of the sculptor's presence here, and it is difficult to make out the design of the bas-relief. The visitor is told that it represents the Winged Lion of St. Mark, and people suppose that, in old times, the distinctive signs of the Four Evangelists were sculptured upon the walls of Kilferran. Whose was the artist's hand ? No one knows. Perhaps some wanderer coming from the distant sunny home of the arts to this remote place, where they were little known, and met scant welcome, who set the mark of the Christian revelation upon the yet unconsecrated walls, and went his way ; perhaps some monk, learned in other ways than with the learning of his brethren, whose peaceful dust has mingled with theirs for ages. There is no other trace of any but the mason's skill at Kilferran.

Not far down the coast, and formed by the craggy boundaries of the hills about Kilferran, is a fine harbour, where many ships are now no uncommon sight, and where even in those days there was much recourse of shipping, for commercial purposes, and especially for those generally known as the " Portingal trade." Many a voyager landed in that harbour, took horse and guide, and set forth for Kilferran, where he would be well received and hospita bly entertained ; and having conferred with the monks, and, mayhap, brought them news of their foreign brethren, or more general intelligence of the world outside, would go on his way to encounter the vicissitudes of a troublous time, with many a wistful backward look at the peace ful place he left behind. The dwellers by the shore were rude peasants, mostly fishermen near the abbey ; the towns, with their more cultivated and crafty inhabitants, lay beyond the harbour, far to the southward of Kilferran.

All visitors to the abbev had to come thither on special purpose ; it did not lie in any track, and the brother porter had ample notice of an arrival before he needed to let fall the ponderous chain which held the heavy black door, and ask the pleasure of the stranger. Seven years had elapsed since the world had lost sight of Francois de Valmont, and Kilferran Abbey and the country around had come to know the learning, the piety, the austerity, of Brother Cyprian ; but no stranger had ever asked to speak with him, no news had reached him in particular from the external world. Great events had happened since he had looked his last on his native land ; some terrible scenes in the history of the world had been witnessed, and it had gone very hard, not only with the society from which he had cut himself adrift, but with a great part of that in which he had taken refuge.

Kilferran Abbey owed its safety to its remoteness — to its apparent insignificance. It is probable that many of the men in power, engaged in destroying the ancient monastic institutions of Ireland, did not know anything about the obscure Dominican house, or did not think it worth the trouble of exploration. Be that as it may, the turn of Kilferran had not yet come ; the com munity pursued their way of life, and held their goods in peace, — though even there disquieting rumours of the dealings of Eliza beth's English deputies with the Irish people and their faith had penetrated, — when the first sign was given that any tie still existed between Brother Cyprian and the external world. It was on a day late in the Summer, when the fields were fast ripening for the harvest, when the sea was slumbering in the sunny haze, when all sounds had a reluctant, drowsy tone in them, when the cat tle lay down in content, and the trees, motionless at intervals, suddenly rustled as though with stealthy pleasure.

In a small room, with a grated window and bare white walls, sat Brother Cyprian, poring over several folios of quaint writing on thick parchment. His dark face wore its usual eager look, as with one lean brown forefinger he followed the lines of the writing, and his thin lips moved in unison with his decipherment. Brother Cyprian looked every inch a monk, but yet, an observer, studying him closely, without his knowledge, would have been inclined to think that, with other sur roundings, he might have looked every inch a soldier. The sound of a horse's hoofs was ringing on the stony road, but it did not reach his ears, nor did the clanging of the chain, the opening of the great door. Presently a lay brother entered, and told him there was one below who demanded to see him, and was now in audience with the Prior.

Brother Cyprian looked up, his finger keeping its place upon the line he had reached, a faint surprise and incredulity in his face, and asked the lay -brother to repeat his words ; then he rose, and, paler by some shades of his olive skin, went to the vaulted " parloir," where stood the Prior, in cloak and cowl, and, with him, a man in the prime of life, of soldierly aspect, and, despite his clumsy and stained travelling dress, of a handsome and gallant presence, who held a plumed hat in his hand. As Brother Cyprian entered with his noiseless step, the stranger dropped his hat, and advanced to him with outstretched arms. " Francois !" he exclaimed. "Louis! My brother!"

Chapter II. The Conference

" "TTOU never sought to learn — you have -*- never asked aught of my fate since we parted, Francois," said Louis de Val mont to his brother, when they were alone ; and as he spoke he looked closely into Brother Cyprian's face, and strove with an almost womanly eagerness to discern in it some trace of the feelings, the interests of the past. Not quite in vain. The elder man's face was not impassive, though it did not lose the impress of separation. It said plainly, " Your world has ceased to be mine, but I can throw my mind back into it again for a while, for your sake." There was no lack of interest in the monk's slow smile, though it wanted the tenderness which ex ists only with association. " You are wrong," said Brother Cyprian, in the long unspoken language of his native land. " I have heard of you indirectly, and know that you still hold your place in the favour of the King and at the Court.

More, I knew that you had not changed in anything; and beyond this — there was nought I cared to know. If you lived to want me, I should see you, or hear of you, I knew ; and I was right ; for here you are !" "And have you really no desire — no longing to know more than that ? Do you never look back to the life you have left ? Frangois, have you utterly ceased to be the man you once were ? Have you for gotten ?" " I have forgotten nothing," said the monk ; and the gesture with which he raised his hand in emphasis was slow and delibe rate, but the flush which overspread his sallow cheek was quick and involuntary. "Nothing. But between me and France — between me and Paris — between me and your life — there is nothing in common. I am not Frangois de Valmont, Louis ; I am Cy prian the Dominican."

He spoke with dignity, in a low tone. " I have travelled far," said his brother, " to see you, to confer with you ; and, churchman though I know you to be, I came to you as a brother ; not as a monk." Brother Cyprian's face changed now, and there was a soft pity in his smile, as he looked at the speaker intently, and heard his upbraiding tones. " Think that you have come to me as both, Louis — that will be best. Tell me how you travelled hither, and why and how it comes that you have lest Paris. Surely it has not become hateful and deadly to you too? There are dangers and difficulties, and much weariness, in such a voyage ; and, as I remember you, it is only to the first you would be indifferent." " I came hither in a trading-ship from Bordeaux," replied Louis. " The good people of this savage island have one human taste at least — that for our wines.

I was recommended to the captain of a trader bound to this port, and I sailed with him from Bordeaux. The voyage was tedious, and we had many storms, but I cared little for them, my mind being set on the business I came here to do, and the more distant voyage that is before me." " Still another voyage, my brother ? And whither ?" "You shall know in time. When I reached the harbour yonder, the captain, who knows the place and the people, and, I daresay, has done some illicit business with them in his time — he knows not a little of of their sentiments, and told me his own con cerning Don Philip — put me in the Avay of procuring a stout horse and a guide. It is a bad road up here to your Abbey from the shore, and as wild as any I have travel led ; but I have rougher roads than this to Kilferran before me, and no such assured goal or kind reception.

I set forth early this morning, and performed my journey in silence, for the peasant lad who walked all this weary way beside my horse's head is a wild creature, as it seems to me, and speaks no language ever heard by polite ears." " The people are native Irish, and speak their own tongue." " Like enough : I, perforce, held mine. But, rough though the road may be, the country is beautiful, with all its loneliness and its wildness, so unlike our France. But VOL. III. i I forgot — I must not say our ; a monk has no country, and no ties." " No so, Louis ; say rather all the world in which men live and suffer is the monk's country, and humanity his brother." "Well, we won't dispute," said the younger man, from whose face the passing brightness faded, and was succeeded by an expression of stern anxiety.

"The world has not been so blissful a place to me that I need fight its battles. I often think, Fran gois, the fate which left us fatherless and motherless — you in your childhood, and I in my cradle — has pursued me ever since." " And not me P" asked the elder brother, with a wistful smile. " I cannot tell — nobody can tell. The cloud of your reserve has always been im penetrable ; and the world says that there is only one person in it, besides yourself, who knows what it was that sent the brilliant, the successful, the gallant Frangois de Valmont into the cloister." " And that one person ?" asked the monk, in a tone which was anxious and eager in spite of him. " Madame Marguerite, the Queen of Na varre." The monk smiled. " The world is as wrong as I have always found it," said he, calmly.

" Let it guess, and let us leave it and its guesses alone, and speak of you and the business which has brought you hither. Some rumours have reached us here, of the Court at Paris, of the plans for a marriage between one of the princes and the English Queen. Has Monseigneur d'Anjou or d'Alengon sent you on a mission of in quiry, and have you come all this way round to fulfil it?" Brother Cyprian had seated himself on a stone bench placed against the wall of the '■ parloir," and he now assumed an attitude i2 of intent attention. There was that in his manner, his look, and his voice which made his brother understand that the subject of his own past was for ever closed. It was rather with thoughtful curiosity than with affectionate interest that Cyprian watched his brother while the Chevalier de Valmont paced up and down the narrow parlour, speaking with vehemence seldom exhibited within those walls.

"You said you knew I had not changed in anything. Whoever brought you that story from the outer world told you the truth. Do not look at me with such condemnation in your face." " It is not condemnation — it is compassion. " Ah, yes ! you may well compassionate me. I don't come here, brother, to tell you a love-story, offending your pious ears with hopes and sorrows which you cannot under stand. I have come to tell you what I am going to do, so that if you never hear of me more, if I perish in the effort I am about to make, you may know that I have perish ed in doing my knightly duty." " An enterprise on behalf of the Queen of Scots !" said Brother Cyprian, quickly. " Yes, an enterprise for her — for her whom fate and fortune have deserted ; for her who languishes in an English prison — a palace, they say, but a prison to her most hateful and intolerable."

" But she forsook friends when she had them, and her fatal face sent many a man to his ruin. Louis, I have done with all these gauds of women's follies and coquetries ; but how did she treat you in the old times, when you came up to the court, a mere boy, and wore her colours and her chains? I heard something of this even then, and " "How did she treat me?" said Louis de Valmont, excitedly ; " how but as a queen treats her servants, as a woman made more royal by her beauty and her grace than by the two crowns she wore, and the third she has the right to wear ! What was I to her more than all the others who lived in the light of her smile ? Was it her fault that she was fatal ? Who has suffered as she has, because to see her was to find it easy to die for her, and to be near her better than any other lot on earth ?

You remember her, Frangois ? You remember the little queen, and how she would not suffer her page to be slighted by anyone, not even her haughty uncle himself? We were all very young then, not much more than children — she a girl bride, a girl queen. What are we all now? You only know how it has been with you since that bright and glorious time ; but I — I have sickened of life, of the dragging, lingering days which, when they brought any news of her, the sad " white queen," who went away to the north land, to the savage people who tortured, and betrayed, and slandered her, brought bad, wretched news. It was hard enough to know of her Scottish marriage, and the misery that came of it." " And the crime, they say," interposed Brother Cyprian, emphatically. " But they lie ! They lie, like the traitors and the cowards they are.

Crime ! You cannot have forgotten her ; and yet you must, or you could not mention her name in the same breath with crime. Do not make me sorry that I have come to you, my brother — that I am resolved to trust you. But no ; it is only your device to turn me from a danger." " I have not forgotten the Queen of Scots," said Brother Cyprian, aud now his long thin hand hid the lower part of his face ; " but I have heard the history of her disastrous reign from unprejudiced persons. You cannot prove that rumour errs in de claring her a guilty woman — guilty beyond even the wickedness which we have known in high places ; and even if you could, what would it avail you now ? You are no nearer to this woman — a wife still, remember — than in her early days, when she bound you a captive by a smile and a word ; and she is a prisoner in an enemy's country, where the knowledge of your sworn service and devotion would be your ruin, and may be a deadly and hopeless -wrong to her.

What would you do, Louis ? Avail your self of your favour at the French Court, and carry diplomatic messages to those bears and tigers of the north ? Do you not know that France is abhorrent to them, the country of Mary of Guise, who forfeited their independence, and made the policy of the Scottish kingdom subservient to the personal, intriguing ambition of Duke Henri and Cardinal Frangois ? What weight do you carry, my brother, to counterpoise all this ? What is it you would do ?" " Nothing of the sort you think," said Louis de Valmont, impatiently. " I have no acknowledged mission. I am not going to parley with the accursed traitors who have betrayed the queen — who was in trusted to them by those who must have known — or what do the resources of power mean? — how utterly unworthy they were of such a charge, of so gentle and gracious a ruler.

A dove in the eagle's nest, indeed ! You remind me that Mary" (his voice fell and his colour rose as he pronounced the Avord) " is as far from me as ever. Need less zeal, my brother. She never could be other to me than my sovereign mistress and queen, the ruler of my destiny, to dispose of it at a word. She is a wife, not knowing her husband's fate, as ignorant of her own. Men who cannot understand her frank, fearless nature, say she is heartless, and faithless, and wicked. Even if all they say were true, I do not care. My life is hers — let her do with it as she will." A glance of keen intelligence shot from Brother Cyprian's dark-brown eyes, and he took the concealing hand from before his mouth. "Then she has summoned you ! She has sent for you to do some dangerous, perhaps some deadly deed, in her service.