She was a long way from death in spite of the cackle of idiot chirurgeons, and there was much savour still in the world.There was her son, too, the young Philip....Her eye saw clearer, and she noted the sombre magnificence of the great room, the glory of the brocade, the gleam of silver.Was she not the richest woman in all Bruges, aye, and in all Hainault and Guelderland? And the credit was her own.After the fashion of age in such moods her mind flew backward, and she saw very plain a narrow street in a wind-swept town looking out on a bleak sea.She had been cold, then, and hungry, and deathly poor.Well, she had travelled some way from that hovel.
She watched the thick carved stems of the candlesticks and felt a spacious ease and power.
The Cluniac was speaking.He had supped so well that he was in love with the world.
"Your house and board, my lady, are queen-like.I have seen worse in palaces."Her laugh was only half pleased."Too fine, you would add, for a burgher wife.Maybe, but rank is but as man makes it.The Kings of England are sprung of a tanner.Hark you, father! I made a vow to God when I was a maid, and I have fulfilled my side of the bargain.I am come of a nobler race than any Markgrave, aye, than the Emperor himself, and I swore to set the seed of my body, which the Lord might grant me, again among the great ones.Have I not done it? Is not Philip, my son, affianced to that pale girl of Avesnes, and with more acres of pleasant land to his name than any knightlet in Artois?"The Cluniac bowed a courtly head."It is a great alliance--but not above the dignity of your house.""House you call it, and I have had the making of it.What was Willebald but a plain merchant-man, one of many scores at the Friday Market? Willebald was clay that I moulded and gilded till God put him to bed under a noble lid in the New Kirk.A worthy man, but loutish and slow like one of his own hookers.Yet when I saw him on the plainstones by the English harbour Iknew that he was a weapon made for my hand."Her voice had become even and gentle as of one who remembers far-away things.The Cluniac, having dipped his hands in a silver basin, was drying them in the brazier's heat.Presently he set to picking his teeth daintily with a quill, and fell into the listener's pose.From long experience he knew the atmosphere which heralds confidences, and was willing to humour the provider of such royal fare.