While Oliver Icingla was exerting himself so strenuously against the French who garrisoned the castles of Sussex, and while ballads in his praise were sung in the streets of London, and in the very hearing of the invaders, Dame Isabel was passing her time sadly in the old halls of Oakmede.
The life of a Norman dame of the thirteenth century was, no doubt, somewhat monotonous; but it was not solitary, and generally could not be very dull. In fact, the castle of almost every Norman baron was a school of chivalry, where young men of noble birth, first as pages, and afterwards as squires, served an apprenticeship to arms, and were taught “to serve God and the ladies,” as Oliver had been in the household of the Earl of Salisbury and Hela Devereux, his pious countess. Moreover, the spouse of every powerful noble had a number of damsels in attendance, whom she instructed in the art of needlework and embroidery, as also how to make salve, and bind up wounds, in the event of a siege, and in some very homely domestic duties connected with the larder and the dairy, the dame working in their company, setting them their tasks, and at times reading to them from some holy book or romance of chivalry.
Dame Isabel Icingla’s position, of course, was very different in many respects from that of the wife or widow of a Norman baron, and her household much more limited. Moreover, she could not seclude herself as they could do--in fact, as her husband had been known among the Saxons as Hlaford, which signified the bread-giver, so she as his wife was known as Hleafdian, which signified the server of bread; and she was fain to avoid the charge of being denounced as “niddering” by conforming to the system of lavish hospitality and free intercourse with humble neighbours which the Icinglas, as Saxon thanes, had ever practised--their door having always stood open, from morning to evening, to all comers, and their cheer, such as it was, having been dispensed with open hand.
All this, of course, was very homely and primitive, and perhaps Dame Isabel did not relish it. But while enacting her part as a Hleafdian, she never for a moment forgot that she was a Moreville, and never really descended from what she deemed the dignity of a noble lady. Born a Norman, and heiress to vast possessions, her pride was naturally high; and though she was perhaps unconscious of the fact, her original pride as Moreville and Norman had been much increased by her marriage with an Icingla, and all that she heard of their vague and indefinite pretensions; for, having little of their old grandeur left, save their pride, the Icinglas made the most of it in season, or out of season, and regarded their own strength in battle and wisdom in council as nothing compared with the lustre which they borrowed from ancestors who had held princely rank, and headed great armies in England, before the Danish kings turned England upside down.