Page:Of Six Mediaeval Women (1913).djvu/27

 fly away, so he can come, as if at unconscious bidding, and make for himself a dwelling-place.

To get any true insight into the life of the woman of the Middle Ages, we must study the small everyday affairs, and to this end go, in imagination, to some castle, and see how the day is passed there by its lady. Perhaps it is a day in late spring. The watchman on the tower, heralding the day, has sounded his horn, and soon all the castle is astir. Leaving her curtained bed, she first offers a short prayer at the small shrine hanging close by with its flickering light. Then the bath, the water scented with aromatic roots and covered with rose-petals, is taken. Mass and the morning broth follow, and the day is considered fitly begun. The poor, or any sick and sorry folk, are the first to be considered, or perhaps there is some wounded knight, who has sought shelter within the protecting walls of the castle, for whom soothing potions or healing salves have to be compounded. This latter service was generally the work of the lady of the castle, who as a rule possessed sufficient surgical knowledge to bind a broken limb. To beguile the weary hours of convalescence, she sings to the lute, tells stories, recounts legends, or reads aloud a romance lately bought from some wayfaring packman. Little is it to be wondered at that the convalescence is