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Two Penniless Princesses

by Charlotte M. Yonge · English · Gutenberg #2942 · 406,013 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Two Penniless Princesses

Author: Charlotte M. Yonge


        
Release date: December 1, 2001 [eBook #2942]
                Most recently updated: October 12, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2942

Credits: Produced by Sandra Laythorpe, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO PENNILESS PRINCESSES ***




Produced by Sandra Laythorpe





TWO PENNILESS PRINCESSES

By Charlotte M. Yonge




CHAPTER 1. DUNBAR


     ‘’Twas on a night, an evening bright
        When the dew began to fa’,
      Lady Margaret was walking up and down,
        Looking over her castle wa’.’


The battlements of a castle were, in disturbed times, the only
recreation-ground of the ladies and play-place of the young people.
Dunbar Castle, standing on steep rocks above the North Sea, was not
only inaccessible on that side, but from its donjon tower commanded a
magnificent view, both of the expanse of waves, taking purple tints from
the shadows of the clouds, with here and there a sail fleeting before
the wind, and of the rugged headlands of the coast, point beyond point,
the nearer distinct, and showing the green summits, and below, the
tossing waves breaking white against the dark rocks, and the distance
becoming more and more hazy, in spite of the bright sun which made a
broken path of glory along the tossing, white-crested waters.

The wind was a keen north-east breeze, and might have been thought too
severe by any but the ‘hardy, bold, and wild’ children who were merrily
playing on the top of the donjon tower, round the staff whence fluttered
the double treasured banner with ‘the ruddy lion ramped in gold’
denoting the presence of the King.

Three little boys, almost babies, and a little girl not much older, were
presided over by a small elder sister, who held the youngest in her lap,
and tried to amuse him with caresses and rhymes, so as to prevent his
interference with the castle-building of the others, with their small
hoard of pebbles and mussel and cockle shells.

Another maiden, the wind tossing her long chestnut-locks, uncovered, but
tied with the Scottish snood, sat on the battlement, gazing far out over
the waters, with eyes of the same tint as the hair. Even the sea-breeze
failed to give more than a slight touch of colour to her somewhat
freckled complexion; and the limbs that rested in a careless attitude on
the stone bench were long and languid, though with years and favourable
circumstances there might be a development of beauty and dignity. Her
lips were crooning at intervals a mournful old Scottish tune, sometimes
only humming, sometimes uttering its melancholy burthen, and she now and
then touched a small harp that stood by her side on the seat.

She did not turn round when a step approached, till a hand was laid on
her shoulder, when she started, and looked up into the face of another
girl, on a smaller scale, with a complexion of the lily-and-rose kind,
fair hair under her hood, with a hawk upon her wrist, and blue eyes
dancing at the surprise of her sister.

‘Eleanor in a creel, as usual!’ she cried.

‘I thought it was only one of the bairns,’ was the answer.

‘They might coup over the walls for aught thou seest,’ returned the
new-comer. ‘If it were not for little Mary what would become of the poor
weans?’

‘What will become of any of us?’ said Eleanor. ‘I was gazing out over
the sea and wishing we could drift away upon it to some land of rest.’

‘The Glenuskie folk are going to try another land,’ said Jean. ‘I was
in the bailey-court even now playing at ball with Jamie when in comes a
lay-brother, with a letter from Sir Patrick to say that he is coming
the night to crave permission from Jamie to go with his wife to France.
Annis, as you know, is betrothed to the son of his French friends,
Malcolm is to study at the Paris University, and Davie to be in the
Scottish Guards to learn chivalry like his father. And the Leddy of
Glenuskie--our Cousin Lilian--is going with them.’

‘And she will see Margaret,’ said Eleanor. ‘Meg the dearie! Dost
remember Meg, Jeanie?’

‘Well, well do I remember her, and how she used to let us nestle in her
lap and sing to us. She sang like thee, Elleen, and was as mother-like
as Mary is to the weans, but she was much blithesomer--at least before
our father was slain.’

‘Sweetest Meg! My whole heart leaps after her,’ cried Eleanor, with a
fervent gesture.

‘I loved her better than Isabel, though she was not so bonnie,’ said
Jean.

‘Jeanie, Jeanie,’ cried Eleanor, turning round with a vehemence
strangely contrasting with her previous language, ‘wherefore should we
not go with Glenuskie to be with Meg at Bourges?’

Jeanie opened her blue eyes wide.

‘Go to the French King’s Court?’ she said.

‘To the land of chivalry and song,’ exclaimed Eleanor, ‘where they have
courts of love and poetry, and tilts and tourneys and minstrelsy, and
the sun shines as it never does in this cold bleak north; and above all
there is Margaret, dear tender Margaret, almost a queen, as a queen she
will be one day. Oh! I almost feel her embrace.’

‘It might be well,’ said Jean, in the matter-of-fact tone of a practical
young lady; ‘mewed up in these dismal castles, we shall never get
princely husbands like our sisters. I might be Queen of Beauty, I doubt
me whether you are fair enough, Eleanor.’

‘Oh, that is not what I think of,’ said Eleanor. ‘It is to see our own
Margaret, and to see and hear the minstrel knights, instead of the rude
savages here, scarce one of whom knows what knighthood means!’

‘Ay, and they will lay hands on us and wed us one of these days,’
returned Jean, ‘unless we vow ourselves as nuns, and I have no mind for
that.’

‘Nor would a convent always guard us,’ said Eleanor; ‘these reivers
do not stick at sanctuary. Now in that happy land ladies meet with
courtesy, and there is a minstrel king like our father, Rene is his
name, uncle to Margaret’s husband. Oh! it would be a very paradise.’

‘Let us go, let us go!’ exclaimed Jean.

‘Go!’ said Mary, who had drawn nearer to them while they spoke. ‘Whither
did ye say?’

‘To France--to sister Margaret and peace and sunshine,’ said Eleanor.

‘Eh!’ said the girl, a pale fair child of twelve; ‘and what would poor
Jamie and the weans do, wanting their titties?’

‘Ye are but a bairn, Mary,’ was Jean’s answer. ‘We shall do better for
Jamie by wedding some great lords in the far country than by waiting
here at home.’

‘And James will soon have a queen of his own to guide him,’ added
Eleanor.

‘I’ll no quit Jamie or the weans,’ said little Mary resolutely,
turning back as the three-year-old boy elicited a squall from the
eighteen-months one.

‘Johnnie! Johnnie! what gars ye tak’ away wee Andie’s claw? Here, my
mannie.’

And she was kneeling on the leads, making peace over the precious crab’s
claw, which, with a few cockles and mussels, was the choicest toy of
these forlorn young Stewarts; for Stewarts they all were, though the
three youngest, the weans, as they were called, were only half-brothers
to the rest.

Nothing, in point of fact, could have been much more forlorn than the
condition of all. The father of the elder ones, James I., the flower
of the whole Stewart race, had nine years before fallen a victim to
the savage revenge and ferocity of the lawless men whom he had vainly
endeavoured to restrain, leaving an only son of six years old and six
young daughters. His wife, Joanna, once the Nightingale of Windsor, had
wreaked vengeance in so barbarous a manner as to increase the dislike
to her as an Englishwoman. Forlorn and in danger, she tried to secure a
protector by a marriage with Sir James Stewart, called the Black Knight
of Lorn; but he was unable to do much for her, and only added the
feuds of his own family to increase the general danger. The two eldest
daughters, Margaret and Isabel, were already contracted to the Dauphin
and the Duke of Brittany, and were soon sent to their new homes. The
little King, the one darling of his mother, was snatched from her,
and violently transferred from one fierce guardian to another; each
regarding the possession of his person as a sanction to tyranny. He had
been introduced to the two winsome young Douglases only as a prelude to
their murder, and every day brought tidings of some fresh violence;
nay, for the second time, a murder was perpetrated in the Queen’s own
chamber.

The poor woman had never been very tender or affectionate, and had the
haughty demeanour with which the house of Somerset had thought fit
to assert their claims to royalty. The cruel slaughter of her first
husband, perhaps the only person for whom she had ever felt a softening
love, had hardened and soured her. She despised and domineered over her
second husband, and made no secret that the number of her daughters
was oppressive, and that it was hard that while the royal branch had
produced, with one exception, only useless pining maidens, her second
marriage in too quick succession should bring her sons, who could only
be a burthen. No one greatly marvelled when, a few weeks after the birth
of little Andrew, his father disappeared, though whether he had perished
in some brawl, been lost at sea, or sought foreign service as far as
possible from his queenly wife and inconvenient family, no one knew.

Not long after, the Queen, with her four daughters and the infants, had
been seized upon by a noted freebooter, Patrick Hepburn of Hailes, and
carried to Dunbar Castle, probably to serve as hostages, for they were
fairly well treated, though never allowed to go beyond the walls. The
Queen’s health had, however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the
north wind withered her up, and she died in the beginning of the year
1445.

The desolateness of the poor girls had perhaps been greater than their
grief. Poor Joanna had been exacting and tyrannical, and with no female
attendants but the old, worn-out English nurse, had made them do her
all sorts of services, which were requited with scoldings and grumblings
instead of the loving thanks which ought to have made them offices of
affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have
fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had
not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with tender,
motherly instincts.

Beyond providing that there was a supply of some sort of food, and
that they were confined within the walls of the Castle, Hepburn did not
trouble his head about his prisoners, and for many weeks they had
no intercourse with any one save Archie Scott, an old groom of their
mother’s; Ankaret, nurse to baby Andrew; and the seneschal and his wife,
both Hepburns.

Eleanor and Jean, who had been eight and seven years old at the time
of the terrible catastrophe which had changed all their lives, had been
well taught under their father’s influence; and the former, who had
inherited much of his talent and poetical nature, had availed herself of
every scanty opportunity of feeding her imagination by book or ballad,
story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies
that she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that
of her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to pass,
unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of young creatures
together. When their mother was dying, Hepburn could not help for very
shame admitting a priest to her bedside, and allowing the clergy to
perform her obsequies in full form. This had led to a more complete
perception of the condition of the poor Princesses, just at the
time when the two worst tyrants over the young King, Crichton and
Livingstone, had fallen out, and he had been able to put himself under
the guidance of his first cousin, James Kennedy, Bishop of St.
Andrews and now Chancellor of Scotland, one of the wisest, best, and
truest-hearted men in Scotland, and imbued with the spirit of the late
King.

By his management Hepburn was induced to make submission and deliver up
Dunbar Castle to the King with all its captives, and the meeting between
the brother and sisters was full of extreme delight on both sides. They
had been together very little since their father’s death, only meeting
enough to make them long for more opportunities; and the boy at fifteen
years old was beginning to weary after the home feeling of rest among
kindred, and was so happy amidst his sisters that no attempt at breaking
up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made it a
convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had such advantages
of education as, strangely enough, captivity had afforded to his father,
he had not been untaught, and his rapid, eager, intelligent mind had
caught at all opportunities afforded by those palace monasteries of
Scotland in which he had stayed for various periods of his vexed and
stormy minority. Good Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many
months, had studied at Paris and had passed four years at Rome, so as
to be well able both to enlarge and stimulate his notions. In Eleanor he
had found a companion delighted to share his studies, and full likewise
of original fancy and of that vein of poetry almost peculiar to Scottish
women; and Jean was equally charming for all the sports in which she
could take part, while the little ones, whom, to his credit be it
spoken, he always treated as brothers, were pleasant playthings.

His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy change
in the maidens’ lives; and yet there was still great dreariness, much
restraint in the presence of constant precaution against violence, much
rudeness and barbarism in the surroundings, absolute poverty in the
plenishing, a lack of all beauty save in the wild and rugged face of
northern nature, and it was hardly to be wondered at that young
people, inheritors of the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the
Plantagenets, should yearn for something beyond, especially for that
sunny southern land which report and youthful imagination made them
believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry, and the
loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that golden age when
their noble and tender-hearted father was among them.

The boy’s foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the
battlements--a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as Eleanor,
and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red mark upon one
cheek.

‘How now, wee Andie?’ he exclaimed, tossing the baby boy up in his arms,
and then on the cry of ‘Johnnie too!’ ‘Me too!’ performing the same feat
with the other two, the last so boisterously that Mary screamed that
‘the bairnie would be coupit over the crag.’

‘What, looking out over the sea?’ he cried to his elder sisters. ‘That’s
the wrang side! Ye should look out on the other, to see Glenuskie coming
with Davie and Malcolm, so we’ll have no lack of minstrelsy and tales
to-night, that is if the doited old council will let me alone. Here,
come to the southern tower to watch for them.’

The sisters had worked themselves to the point of eagerness where
propitious moments are disregarded, and both broke out--

‘Glenuskie is going to Margaret. We want to go with him!’

‘Go! Go to Margaret and leave me!’ cried James, the red spot on his face
spreading.

‘Oh, Jamie, it is so dull and dreary, and folks are so fierce and rude.’

‘That might be when that loon Hepburn had you, but now you have me, who
can take order with them.’

‘You cannot do all, Jamie,’ persisted Eleanor; ‘and we long after that
fair smooth land of peace. Lady Glenuskie would take good care of us
till we came to Margaret.’

‘Ay! And ‘tis little you heed how it is with me,’ exclaimed James, ‘when
you are gone to your daffing and singing and dancing--with me that have
saved you from that reiver Hepburn.’

‘Jamie, dear, I’ll never quit ye,’ said little Mary’s gentle voice.

He laughed.

‘You are a leal faithful little lady, Mary; but you are no good as yet,
when Angus is speiring for my sister for his heir.’

‘And do you trow,’ said Jean hotly, ‘that when one sister is to be a
queen, and the other is next thing to it, we are going to put up with a
raw-boned, red-haired, unmannerly Scots earl?’

‘And do you forget who is King of Scotland, ye proud peat?’ her brother
cried in return.

‘A braw sort of king,’ returned Jean, ‘who could not hinder his mother
and sisters from being stolen by an outlaw.’

The pride and hot temper of the Beauforts had descended to both brother
and sister, and James lifted his hand with ‘Dare to say that again’;
and Jean was beginning ‘I dare,’ when little Annaple opportunely called,
‘There’s a plump of spears coming over the hill.’

There was an instant rush to watch them, James saying--

‘The Drummond banner! Ye shall see how Glenuskie mocks at this same fine
fancy of yours’; and he ran downstairs at no kingly pace, letting the
heavy nail-studded door bang after him.

‘He will never let us go,’ sighed Jean.

‘You worked him into one of his tempers,’ returned Eleanor. ‘You should
have broached it to him more by degrees.’

‘And lost the chance of going with Sir Patie and his wife, and got
plighted to the red-haired Master of Angus--never see sweet Meg and
her braw court, and the tilts and tourneys, but live among murderous
caitiffs and reivers all my days,’ sobbed Jean.

‘I would not be such a fule body as to give in for a hasty word or two,
specially of Jamie’s,’ said Eleanor composedly.

‘And gin ye bide here,’ added gentle Mary, ‘we shall be all together,
and you will have Jamie and the bairnies.’

‘Fine consolation,’ muttered Jean.

‘Eh well,’ said Eleanor, we must go down and meet them.’

‘This fashion!’ exclaimed Jean. ‘Look at your hair, Ellie--blown wild
about your ears like a daft woman’s, and your kirtle all over mortar
and smut. My certie, you would be a bonnie lady to be Queen of Love and
Beauty at a jousting-match.’

‘You are no better, Jeanie,’ responded Eleanor.

‘That I ken full well, but I’d be shamed to show myself to knights and
lairds that gate. And see Mary and all the lave have their hands as
black as a caird’s.’

‘Come and let Andie’s Mary wash them,’ said that little personage,
picking up fat Andrew in her arms, while he retained his beloved crab’s
claw. ‘Jeanie, would you carry Johnnie, he’s not sure-footed, over the
stair? Annaple, take Lorn’s hand over the kittle turning.’

One chamber was allotted to the entire party and their single nurse.
Being far up in the tower, it ventured to have two windows in the
massive walls, so thick that five-and-twenty steps from the floor were
needed to reach the narrow slips of glass in a frame that could be
removed at will, either to admit the air or to be exchanged for solid
wooden shutters to exclude storms by sea or arrows and bolts by land.
The lower part of the walls was hung with very grim old tapestry, on
which Holofernes’ head, going into its bag, could just be detected;
there were two great solid box-beds, two more pallets rolled up for the
day, a chest or two, a rude table, a cross-legged chair, a few stools,
and some deer and seal skins spread on the floor completed the furniture
of this ladies’ bower. There was, unusual luxury, a chimney with a
hearth and peat fire, and a cauldron on it, with a silver and a copper
basin beside it for washing purposes, never discarded by poor Queen
Joanna and her old English nurse Ankaret, who had remained beside her
through all the troubles of the stormy and barbarous country, and,
though crippled by a fall and racked with rheumatism, was the chief
comfort of the young children. She crouched at the hearth with her
spinning and her beads, and exclaimed at the tossed hair and soiled
hands and faces of her charges.

Mary brought the little ones to her to be set to rights, and the elder
girls did their best with their toilette. Princesses as they were, the
ruddy golden tresses of Eleanor and the flaxen locks of Jean and Mary
were the only ornaments that they could boast of as their own; and
though there were silken and embroidered garments of their mother’s in
one of the chests, their mourning forbade the use of them. The girls
only wore the plain black kirtles that had been brought from Haddington
at the time of the funeral, and the little boys had such homespun
garments as the shepherd lads wore.

Partly scolding, partly caressing, partly bemoaning the condition of her
young ladies, so different from the splendours of the house of Somerset,
Ankaret saw that Eleanor was as fit to be seen as circumstances would
permit; as to Jean and Mary, there was no trouble on that score.

The whole was not accomplished till a horn was sounded as an intimation
that supper was ready, at five o’clock, for the entire household, and
all made their way down--Jean first, in all the glory of her fair face
and beautiful hair; then Eleanor with little Lorn, as he was called, his
Christian name being James; then Annaple and Johnnie hand-in-hand, Mary
carrying Andrew, and lastly old Ankaret, hobbling along with her stick,
and, when out of sight, a hand on Annaple’s shoulder. In public, nothing
would have made her presume so far. The hall was a huge, vaulted,
stone-walled room, with a great fire on the wide hearth, and three long
tables--one was cross-wise, on the dais near the fire, the other two ran
the length of the hall. The upper one was furnished with tolerably clean
napery and a few silver vessels; as to the lower ones, they were in two
degrees of comparison, and the less said of the third the better. It was
for the men-at-arms and the lowest servants, whereas the second belonged
to those of the suite of the King and Chancellor, who were not of rank
to be at his table. The Lord Lion King-at-Arms was high-table company,
but he was absent, and the inferior royal pursuivant was entertaining
two of his fellows, one with the Douglas Bloody Heart, the other
with the Lindsay Lion on a black field, besides two messengers of the
different clans, who looked askance at one another.

Leaning against the wall near the window stood the young King with
two or three youths beside him, laughing and talking over three great
deer-hounds, and by the hearth were two elder men--one, a tall dignified
figure in the square cap and purple robe of a Bishop, with a face of
great wisdom and sweetness; the other, still taller, with slightly
grizzled hair and the weather-beaten countenance of a valiant and
sagacious warrior, dressed in the leathern garments usually worn under
armour.

As Jean emerged from the turret she was met and courteously greeted
by Sir Patrick Drummond and his sons, as were also her sisters, with a
grace and deference to their rank such as they hardly ever received from
the nobles, and whose very rarity made Eleanor shy and uncomfortable,
even while she was gratified and accepted it as her due.

The Bishop inclined his head and gave them a kind smile; but they had
already seen him in the morning, as he was residing in the castle. He
was the most fatherly friend and kinsman the young things knew, and
though really their first cousin, they looked to him like an uncle. He
insisted on due ceremony with them, though he had much difficulty in
enforcing it, except with those Scottish knights and nobles who, like
Sir Patrick Drummond, had served in France, and retained their French
breeding.

So Jean, hawk and all, had to be handed to her seat by Sir Patrick as
the guest, Eleanor by her brother, not without a little fraternal pinch,
and Mary by the Bishop, who answered with a paternal caress to her
murmured entreaty that she might keep wee Andie on her lap and give him
his brose.

It was not a sumptuous repast, the staple being a haggis, also broth
with chunks of meat and barleycorns floating in it, the meat in strings
by force of boiling. At the high table each person had a bowl, either
silver or wood, and each had a private spoon, and a dagger to serve as
knife, also a drinking-cup of various materials, from the King’s gold
goblet downwards to horns, and a bannock to eat with the brose. At the
middle table trenchers and bannocks served the purpose of plates; and at
the third there was nothing interposed between the boards of the table
and the lumps of meat from which the soup had been made.

Jean’s quick eyes soon detected more men-at-arms and with different
badges from the thyme spray of Drummond, and her brother was evidently
bursting with some communication, held back almost forcibly by the
Bishop, who had established a considerable influence over the impetuous
boy, while Sir Patrick maintained a wise and tedious political
conversation about the peace between France and England, which was to be
cemented by the marriage of the young King of England to the daughter of
King Rene and the cession of Anjou and Maine to her father.

‘Solid dukedoms for a lassie!’ cried young James. ‘What a craven to make
such a bargain!’

‘Scarce like his father’s son,’ returned Sir Patrick, ‘who gat the bride
with a kingdom for her tocher that these folks have well-nigh lost among
them.’

‘The saints be praised if they have.’

‘I cannot forget, my liege, how your own sainted father loved and fought
for King Harry of Monmouth. Foe as he was, I own that I shall never look
on his like again.’

‘I hold with you in that, Patie,’ said Bishop Kennedy; ‘and frown as
you may, my young liege, a few years with such as he would do more for
you--as it did with your blessed father--than ever we can.’

‘I can hold mine own, I hope, without lessons from the enemy,’ said
James, holding his head high, while his ruddy locks flew back, his eyes
glanced, and the red scar on his cheek widened. ‘And is it true that you
are for going through false England, Patie?’

‘I made friends there when I spent two years there with your Grace’s
blessed father,’ returned Sir Patrick, ‘and so did my good wife. She
longs to see the lady who is now Sister Clare at St. Katharine’s in
London, and it is well not to let her and Annis brook the long sea
voyage.’

‘There, Jean! I’d brook ten sea voyages rather than hold myself beholden
to an Englishman!’ quoth James.

‘Nevertheless, there are letters and messages that it is well to confide
to so trusty and wise-headed a knight as Glenuskie,’ returned the
Bishop.

The meal over, the silver bowls were carried round with water to wash
the hands by the two young Drummonds, sons of Glenuskie, and by the
King’s pages, youths of about the same age, after which the Bishop and
Sir Patrick asked licence of the King to retire for consultation to
the Bishop’s apartment, a permission which, as may well be believed, he
granted readily, only rejoicing that he was not wanted.

The little ones were carried off by Mary and Nurse Ankaret; and the
King, his elder sisters, and the other youths of condition betook
themselves, followed by half-a-dozen great dogs, to the court, where
the Drummonds wanted to exhibit the horses procured for the journey, and
James and Jean to show the hawks that were the pride of their heart.

By and by came an Italian priest, who acted as secretary to the
Bishop--a poor little man who grew yellower and yellower, was always
shivering, and seemed to be shrivelled into growing smaller and smaller
by the Scottish winds, but who had a most keen and intelligent face.

‘How now, Father Romuald,’ called out James. ‘Are ye come to fetch me?’

‘Di grazia, Signor Re’, began the Italian in some fear, as the dogs
smelted his lambskin cape. ‘The Lord Bishop entreats your Majesty’s
presence.’

His Majesty, who, by the way, never was so called by any one else,
uttered some bitter growls and grumbles, but felt forced to obey the
call, taking with him, however, his beautiful falcon on his wrist, and
the two huge deer-hounds, who he declared should be of the council if he
was.

Jean and Eleanor then closed upon David and Malcolm, eagerly demanding
of them what they expected in that wonderful land to which they were
going, much against the will of young David, who was sure there would be
no hunting of deer, nor hawking for grouse, nor riding after an English
borderer or Hieland cateran--nothing, in fact, worth living for! It
would be all a-wearying with their manners and their courtesies and such
like daft woman’s gear! Why could not his father be content to let him
grow up like his fellows, rough and free and ready?

‘And knowing nothing better--nothing beyond,’ said Eleanor.

‘What would you have better than the hill and the brae? To tame a horse
and fly a hawk, and couch a lance and bend a bow! That’s what a man is
made for, without fashing himself with letters and Latin and manners, no
better than a monk; but my father would always have it so!’

‘Ye’ll be thankful to him yet, Davie,’ put in his graver brother.

‘Thankful! I shall forget all about it as soon as I am knighted, and
make you write all my letters--and few enough there will be.’

‘And you, Malcolm!’ said Eleanor, ‘would you be content to hide within
four walls, and know nothing by your own eyes?’

‘No indeed, cousin,’ replied the lad; ‘I long for the fair churches
and cloisters and the learned men and books that my father tells of. My
mother says that her brother, that I am named for, yearned to make this
a land of peace and godliness, and to turn these high spirits to God’s
glory instead of man’s strife and feud, and how it might have been done
save for the slaying of your noble father--Saints rest him!--which broke
mine uncle’s heart, so that he died on his way home from pilgrimage.
She hopes to pray at his tomb that I may tread in his steps, and be a
blessing and not a curse to the land we love.’

Eleanor was silent, seeing for the first time that there might be higher
aims than escaping from dulness, strife, and peril; whilst Jean cried--

‘’Tis the titles and jousts, the knights and ladies that I care for--men
that know what fair chivalry means, and make knightly vows to dare all
sorts of foes for a lady’s sake.’

‘As if any lass was worth it,’ said David contemptuously.

‘Ay, that’s what you are! That’s what it is to live in this savage
realm,’ returned Jean.

At this moment, however, Brother Romuald was again seen advancing,
and this time with a request for the presence of the ladies Jean and
Eleanor.

‘Could James be relenting on better advice?’ they asked one another as
they went.

‘More likely,’ said Jean, with a sigh, amounting to a groan, ‘it is only
to hear that we are made over, like a couple of kine, to some ruffianly
reivers, who will beat a princess as soon as a scullion.’

They reached the chamber in time. Though the Bishop slept there it also
served for a council chamber; and as he carried his chapel and household
furniture about with him, it was a good deal more civilised-looking than
even the princesses’ room. Large folding screens, worked with tapestry,
representing the lives of the saints, shut off the part used as an
oratory and that which served as a bedchamber, where indeed the good man
slept on a rush mat on the floor. There were a table and several chairs
and stools, all capable of being folded up for transport. The young King
occupied a large chair of state, in which he twisted himself in a very
undignified manner; the Bishop-Chancellor sat beside him, with the Great
Seal of Scotland and some writing materials, parchments, and letters
before him, and Sir Patrick came forward to receive and seat the young
ladies, and then remained standing--as few of his rank in Scotland would
have done on their account.

‘Well, lassies,’ began the King, ‘here’s lads enow for you. There’s the
Master of Angus, as ye ken--‘(Jean tossed her head)--‘moreover, auld
Crawford wants one of you for his son.’

‘The Tyger Earl,’ gasped Eleanor.

‘And with Stirling for your portion, the modest fellow,’ added James.
‘Ay, and that’s not all. There’s the MacAlpin threats me with all his
clan if I dinna give you to him; and Mackay is not behindhand, but will
come down with pibroch and braidsword and five hundred caterans to pay
his court to you, and make short work of all others. My certie, sisters
seem but a cause for threats from reivers, though maybe they would not
be so uncivil if once they had you.’

‘Oh, Jamie! oh! dear holy Father,’ cried Eleanor, turning from the King
to the Bishop, ‘do not, for mercy’s sake, give me over to one of those
ruffians.’

‘They are coming, Eleanor,’ said James, with a boy’s love of terrifying;
‘the MacAlpin and Mackay are both coming down after you, and we shall
have a fight like the Clan Chattan and Clan Kay. There’s for the
demoiselle who craved for knights to break lances for her!’

‘Knights indeed! Highland thieves,’ said Jean; ‘and ‘tis for what tocher
they may force from you, James, not for her face.’

‘You are right there, my puir bairn,’ said the Bishop. ‘These men--save
perhaps the young Master of Angus--only seek your hands as a pretext
for demands from your brother, and for spuilzie and robbery among
themselves. And I for my part would never counsel his Grace to yield the
lambs to the wolves, even to save himself.’

‘No, indeed,’ broke in the King; we may not have them fighting down
here, though it would be rare sport to look on, if you were not to be
the prize. So my Lord Bishop here trows, and I am of the same mind, that
the only safety is that the birds should be flown, and that you should
have your wish and be away the morn, with Patie of Glenuskie here, since
he will take the charge of two such silly lasses.’

The sudden granting of their wish took the maidens’ breath away. They
looked from one to the other without a word; and the Bishop, in more
courtly language, explained that amid all these contending parties he
could not but judge it wiser to put the King’s two marriageable sisters
out of reach, either of a violent abduction, or of being the cause of
a savage contest, in either case ending in demands that would be either
impossible or mischievous for the Crown to grant, and moreover in misery
for themselves.

Sir Patrick added something courteous about the honour of the charge.

‘So soon!’ gasped Jean; ‘are we really to go the morn?’

‘With morning light, if it be possible, fair ladies,’ said Sir Patrick.

‘Ay,’ said James, ‘then will we take Mary and the weans to the nunnery
in St. Mary’s Wynd, where none will dare to molest them, and I shall go
on to St. Andrews or Stirling, as may seem fittest; while we leave old
Seneschal Peter to keep the castle gates shut. If the Hielanders come,
they’ll find the nut too hard for them to crack, and the kernel gone, so
you’d best burn no more daylight, maidens, but busk ye, as women will.’

‘Oh, Jamie, to speak so lightly of parting!’ sighed Eleanor.

‘Come--no fule greeting, now you have your will,’ hastily said James,
who could hardly bear it himself.

‘Our gear!’ faltered Jeanie, with consternation at their ill-furnished
wardrobes.

‘For that,’ said the Bishop, ‘you must leave the supply till you are
over the Border, when the Lady Glenuskie will see to your appearing as
nigh as may be as befits the daughters of Scotland among your English
kin.’

‘But we have not a mark between us,’ said Jean, ‘and all my mother’s
jewels are pledged to the Lombards.’

‘There are moneys falling due to the Crown,’ said the Bishop, ‘and I can
advance enow to Sir Patrick to provide the gear and horses.’

‘And my gude wife’s royal kin are my guests till they win to their
sister,’ added Sir Patrick.

And so it was settled. It was an evening of bustle and a night of
wakefulness. There were floods of tears poured out by and over sweet
little Mary and good old Ankaret, not to speak of those which James
scorned to shed. Had a sudden stop been put to the journey, perhaps,
Eleanor would have been relieved but Jean sorely disappointed.

It was further decided that Father Romuald should accompany the party,
both to assist in negotiations with Henry VI. and Cardinal Beaufort, and
to avail himself of the opportunity of returning to his native land, fa
 north, and to show cause to the Pope for erecting St. Andrews into an
archiepiscopal see, instead of leaving Scotland under the primacy of
York.

Hawk and harp were all the properties the princesses-errant took with
them; but Jean, as her old nurse sometimes declared, loved Skywing
better than all the weans, and Elleen’s small travelling-harp was all
that she owned of her father’s--except the spirit that loved it.




CHAPTER 2. DEPARTURE


                 ‘I bowed my pride,
     A horse-boy in his train to ride.’--SCOTT.


The Lady of Glenuskie, as she was commonly called, was a near kinswoman
of the Royal House, Lilias Stewart, a grand-daughter of King Robert II.,
and thus first cousin to the late King. Her brother, Malcolm Stewart,
had resigned to her the little barony of Glenuskie upon his embracing
the life of a priest, and her becoming the wife of Sir Patrick Drummond,
the son of his former guardian.

Sir Patrick had served in France in the Scotch troop who came to the
assistance of the Dauphin, until he was taken prisoner by his native
monarch, James I., then present with the army of Henry V. He had then
spent two years at Windsor, in attendance upon that prince, until both
were set at liberty by the treaty made by Cardinal Beaufort. In the
meantime, his betrothed, Lilias, being in danger at home, had been
bestowed in the household of the Countess of Warwick, where she had
been much with an admirable and saintly foreign lady, Esclairmonde de
Luxembourg, who had taken refuge from the dissensions of her own vexed
country among the charitable sisterhood of St. Katharine in the Docks in
London.

Sir Patrick and his lady had thus enjoyed far more training in the
general European civilisation than usually fell to the lot of their
countrymen; and they had moreover imbibed much of the spirit of that
admirable King, whose aims at improvement, religious, moral, and
political, were so piteously cut short by his assassination. During the
nine miserable years that had ensued it had not been possible, even
in conjunction with Bishop Kennedy, to afford any efficient support or
protection to the young King and his mother, and it had been as much as
Sir Patrick could do to protect his own lands and vassals, and do his
best to bring up his children to godly, honourable, and chivalrous
ways; but amid all the evil around he had decided that it was well-nigh
impossible to train them to courage without ruffianism, or to prevent
them from being tainted by the prevailing standard. Even among the
clergy and monastic orders the type was very low, in spite of the
endeavours of Bishop Kennedy, who had not yet been able to found his
university at St. Andrews; and it had been agreed between him and Sir
Patrick that young Malcolm Drummond, a devout and scholarly lad of
earnest aspiration, should be trained at the Paris University, and
perhaps visit Padua and Bologna in preparation for that foundation,
which, save for that cruel Eastern’s E’en, would have been commenced by
the uncle whose name he bore.

The daughter had likewise been promised in her babyhood to the Sire
de Terreforte, a knight of Auvergne, who had come on a mission to the
Scotch Court in the golden days of the reign of James I., and being an
old companion-in-arms of Sir Patrick, had desired to unite the families
in the person of his infant son Olivier and of Annis Drummond.

Lady Drummond had ever since been preparing her little daughter and her
wardrobe. The whole was in a good state of forwardness; but it must be
confessed that she was somewhat taken aback when she beheld two young
ladies riding up the glen with her husband, sons, and their escort; and
found, on descending to welcome them, that they were neither more nor
less than the two eldest unmarried princesses of Scotland.

‘And Dame Lilias,’ proceeded her knight, ‘you must busk and boune you
to be in the saddle betimes the morn, and put Tweed between these puir
lasses and their foes--or shall I say their ower well wishers?’

The ladies of Scotland lived to receive startling intelligence, and
Lady Drummond’s kind heart was moved by the two forlorn, weary-looking
figures, with traces of tears on their cheeks. She kissed them
respectfully, conducted them to the guest-chamber, which was many
advances beyond their room at Dunbar in comfort, and presently left her
own two daughters, Annis and Lilias, and their nurse, to take care of
them, since they seemed to have neither mails nor attendants of their
own, while she sought out her husband, as he was being disarmed by his
sons, to understand what was to be done.

He told her briefly of the danger and perplexity in which the presence
of the two poor young princesses might involve themselves, their
brother, and the kingdom itself, by exciting the greed, jealousy, and
emulation of the untamed nobles and Highland chiefs, who would try to
gain them, both as an excuse for exactions from the King and out of
jealousy of one another. To take them out of reach was the only ready
means of preventing mischief, and the Bishop of St. Andrews had besought
Sir Patrick to undertake the charge.

‘We are bound to do all we can for their father’s daughters,’ Dame
Lilias owned, ‘alike as our King and the best friend that ever we had,
or my dear brother Malcolm, Heaven rest them both! But have they no
servants, no plenishing?’

‘That must we provide,’ said Sir Patrick. ‘We must be their servants,
Dame. Our lasses must lend them what is fitting, till we come where I
can make use of this, which my good Lord of St. Andrews gave me.’

‘What is it, Patie? Not the red gold?’

‘Oh no! I have heard of the like. Ye ken Morini, as they call him, the
Lombard goldsmith in the Canongate? Weel, for sums that the Bishop will
pay to Morini, sums owing, he says, by himself to the Crown--though
I shrewdly suspect ‘tis the other way, gude man!--then the Lombard’s
fellows in York, London, or Paris, or Bourges will, on seeing this bit
bond, supply us up to the tune of a hundred crowns. Thou look’st mazed,
Lily, but I have known the like before. ‘Tis no great sum, but mayhap
the maidens’ English kin will do somewhat for them before they win to
their sister.’

‘I would not have them beholden to the English,’ said Dame Lilias, not
forgetting that she was a Stewart.

Her husband perhaps scarcely understood the change made in the whole
aspect of the journey to her. Not only had she to hurry her preparations
for the early start, but instead of travelling as the mistress of the
party, she and her daughter would, in appearance at least, be the mere
appendages of the two princesses, wait upon them, give them the foremost
place, supply their present needs from what was provided for themselves,
and it was quite possible have likewise to control girlish petulance and
inexperience in the strange lands where her charges must appear at their
very best, to do honour to their birth and their country.

But the loyal woman made up her mind without a word of complaint after
the first shock, and though a busy night was not the best preparation
for a day’s journey, she never lay down; nor indeed did her namesake
daughter, who was to be left at a Priory on their way, there to decide
whether she had a vocation to be a nun.

So effectually did she bestir herself that by six o’clock the next
morning the various packages were rolled up for bestowal on the sumpter
horses, and the goods to be left at home locked up in chests, and
committed to the charge of the trusty seneschal and his wife; a meal, to
be taken in haste, was spread on the table in the hall, to be swallowed
while the little rough ponies were being laden.

Mass was to be heard at the first halting-place, the Benedictine nunnery
of Trefontana on Lammermuir, where Lilias Drummond was to be left, to be
passed on, when occasion served, to the Sisterhood at Edinburgh.

The fresh morning breezes over the world of heather brightened the
cheeks and the spirits of the two sisters; the first wrench of parting
was over with them, and they found themselves treated with much more
observance than usual, though they did not know that the horses
they were riding had been trained for the special use of the Lady of
Glenuskie and her daughter Annis upon the journey.

They rode on gaily, Jean with her inseparable falcon Skywing, Eleanor
with her father’s harp bestowed behind her--she would trust it to no one
else. They were squired by their two cousins, David and Malcolm, who, in
spite of David’s murmurs, felt the exhilaration of the future as much
as they did, as they coursed over the heather, David with two great
greyhounds with majestic heads at his side, Finn and Finvola, as they
were called.

The graver and sadder ones of the party, father, mother, and the two
young sisters, rode farther back, the father issuing directions to the
seneschal, who accompanied them thus far, and the mother watching over
the two fair young girls, whose hearts were heavy in the probability
that they would never meet again, for how should a Scottish Benedictine
nun and the wife of a French seigneur ever come together? nor would
there be any possibility of correspondence to bridge over the gulf.

The nunnery was strong, but not with the strength of secular buildings,
for, except when a tempting heiress had taken refuge there, convents
were respected even by the rudest men.

Numerous unkempt and barely-clothed figures were coming away from the
gates, a pilgrim or two with brown gown, broad hat, and scallop shell,
the morning’s dole being just over; but a few, some on crutches,
some with heads or limbs bound up, were waiting for their turn of the
sister-infirmarer’s care. The pennon of the Drummond had already been
recognised, and the gate-ward readily admitted the party, since the
house of Glenuskie were well known as pious benefactors to the Church.

They were just in time for a mass which a pilgrim priest was about to
say, and they were all admitted to the small nave of the little chapel,
beyond which a screen shut off the choir of nuns. After this the ladies
were received into the refectory to break their fast, the men folk being
served in an outside building for the purpose. It was not sumptuous
fare, chiefly consisting of barley bannocks and very salt and dry fish,
with some thin and sour ale; and David’s attention was a good deal taken
up by a man-at-arms who seemed to have attached himself to the
party, but whom he did not know, and who held a little aloof from the
rest--keeping his visor down while eating and drinking, in a somewhat
suspicious manner, as though to avoid observation.

Just as David had resolved to point this person out to his father, Sir
Patrick was summoned to speak to the Lady Prioress. Therefore the youth
thought it incumbent upon him to deal with the matter, and advancing
towards the stranger, said, ‘Good fellow, thou art none of our
following. How, now!’ for a pair of gray eyes looked up with recognition
in them, and a low voice whispered, ‘Davie Drummond, keep my secret till
we be across the Border.’

‘Geordie, what means this?’

‘I canna let her gang! I ken that she scorns me.’

‘That proud peat Jean?’

‘Whist! whist! She scorns me, and the King scarce lent a lug to my
father’s gude offer, so that he can scarce keep the peace with their
pride and upsettingness. But I love her, Davie, the mere sight of her is
sunshine, and wha kens but in the stour of this journey I may have the
chance of standing by her and defending her, and showing what a leal
Scot’s heart can do? Or if not, if I may not win her, I shall still be
in sight of her blessed blue een!’

David whistled his perplexity. ‘The Yerl,’ said he, ‘doth he ken?’

‘I trow not! He thinks me at Tantallon, watching for the raid the
Mackays are threatening--little guessing the bird would be flown.’

‘How cam’ ye to guess that same, which was, so far as I know, only
decided two days syne?’

‘Our pursuivant was to bear a letter to the King, and I garred him let
me bear him company as one of his grooms, so that I might delight mine
eyes with the sight of her.’

David laughed. His time was not come, and this love and admiration for
his young cousin was absurd in his eyes. ‘For a young bit lassie,’ he
said; ‘gin it had been a knight! But what will your father say to mine?’

‘I will write to him when I am well over the Border,’ said Geordie, ‘and
gin he kens that your father had no hand in it he will deem no ill-will.
Nor could he harm you if he did.’

David did not feel entirely satisfied, on one side of his mind as to his
own loyalty to his father, or Geordie’s to ‘the Yerl,’ and yet there was
something diverting to the enterprising mind in the stolen expedition;
and the fellow-feeling which results in honour to contemporaries made
him promise not to betray the young man and to shield him from notice as
best he might. With Geordie’s motive he had no sympathy, having had
too many childish squabbles with his cousin for her to be in his eyes a
sublime Princess Joanna, but only a masterful Jeanie.

Sir Patrick, absorbed in orders to his seneschal, did not observe the
addition to his party; and as David acted as his squire, and had been
seen talking to the young man, no further demur was made until the time
when the home party turned to ride back to Glenuskie, and Sir Patrick
made a roll-call of his followers, picked men who could fairly be
trusted not to embroil the company by excesses or imprudences in England
or France.

Besides himself, his wife, sons and daughters, and the two princesses,
the party consisted of Christian, female attendant for the ladies, the
wife of Andrew of the Cleugh, an elderly, well-seasoned man-at-arms, to
whom the banner was entrusted; Dandie their son, a stalwart youth of two
or three-and-twenty, who, under his father, was in charge of the horses;
and six lances besides. Sir Patrick following the French fashion, which
gave to each lance two grooms, armed likewise, and a horse-boy. For
each of the family there was likewise a spare palfrey, with a servant
in charge, and one beast of burthen, but these last were to be freshly
hired with their attendants at each stage.

Geordie, used to more tumultuous and irregular gatherings, where any man
with a good horse and serviceable weapons was welcome to join the raid,
had not reckoned on such a review of the party as was made by the old
warrior accustomed to more regular warfare, and who made each of his
eight lances--namely, the two Andrew Drummonds, Jock of the Glen, Jockie
of Braeside, Willie and Norman Armstrong, Wattie Wudspurs, and Tam
Telfer--answer to their names, and show up their three followers.

‘And who is yon lad in bright steel?’ Sir Patrick asked.

‘Master Davie kens, sir,’ responded old Andrew. David, being called,
explained that he was a leal lad called Geordie, whom he had seen in
Edinburgh, and who wished to join them, go to France, and see the world
under Sir Patrick’s guidance, and that he would be at his own charges.
‘And I’ll be answerable for him, sir,’ concluded the lad.

‘Answer! Ha! ha! What for, eh? That he is a long-legged lad like your
ain self. What more? Come, call him up!’

The stranger had no choice save to obey, and came up on a strong white
mare, which old Andrew scanned, and muttered to his son, ‘The Mearns
breed--did he come honestly by it?’

‘Up with your beaver, young man,’ said Sir Patrick peremptorily; ‘no man
rides with me whose face I have not seen.’

A face not handsome and thoroughly Scottish was disclosed, with keen
intelligence in the gray eyes, and a certain air of offended dignity,
yet self-control, in the close-shut mouth. The cheeks were sunburnt and
freckled, a tawny down of young manhood was on the long upper lip, and
the short-cut hair was red; but there was an intelligent and trustworthy
expression in the countenance, and the tall figure sat on horseback with
the upright ease of one well trained.

‘Soh!’ said Sir Patrick, looking him over, ‘how ca’ they you, lad?’

‘Geordie o’ the Red Peel,’ he answered.

‘That’s a by-name,’ said the knight sternly; ‘I must have the full name
of any man who rides with me.’

‘George Douglas, then, if nothing short of that will content you!’

‘Are ye sib to the Earl?’

‘Ay, sir, and have rid in his company.’

‘Whose word am I to take for that?’

‘Mine, sir, a word that none has ever doubted,’ said the youth boldly.
‘By that your son kens me.’

David here vouched for having seen the young man in the Angus following,
when he had accompanied his father in the last riding of the Scots
Parliament at Edinburgh; and this so far satisfied Sir Patrick that
he consented to receive the stranger into his company, but only on
condition of an oath of absolute obedience so long as he remained in the
troop.

David could see that this had not been reckoned on by the high-spirited
Master of Angus; and indeed obedience, save to the head of the name, was
so little a Scottish virtue that Sir Patrick was by no means unprepared
for reluctance.

‘I give thee thy choice, laddie,’ he said, not unkindly; ‘best make up
your mind while thou art still in thine own country, and can win back
home. In England and France I can have no stragglers nor loons like to
help themselves, nor give cause for a fray to bring shame on the haill
troop in lands that are none too friendly. A raw carle like thyself, or
even these lads of mine, might give offence unwittingly, and then I’d
have to give thee up to the laws, or to stand by thee to the peril of
all, and of the ladies themselves. So there’s nothing for it but strict
keeping to orders of myself and Andrew Drummond of the Cleugh, who kens
as well as I do what sorts to be done in these strange lands. Wilt thou
so bind thyself, or shall we part while yet there is time?’

‘Sir, I will,’ said the young man, ‘I will plight my word to obey
you, and faithfully, so long as I ride under your banner in foreign
parts--provided such oath be not binding within this realm of Scotland,
nor against my lealty to the head of my name.’

‘Nor do I ask it of thee,’ returned Sir Patrick heartily, but regarding
him more attentively; ‘these are the scruples of a true man. Hast thou
any following?’

‘Only a boy to lead my horse to grass,’ replied George, giving a
peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted
lad, in a shepherd’s tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as
a wild deer, and an eye twinkling and alert.

‘He shall be put in better trim ere the English pock-puddings see him,’
said Douglas, looking at him, perhaps for the first time, as something
unsuited to that orderly company.

‘That is thine own affair,’ said Sir Patrick. ‘Mine is that he should
comport himself as becomes one of my troop. What’s his name?’

‘Ringan Raefoot,’ replied Geordie Sir Patrick began to put the oath of
obedience to him, but the boy cried out--

‘I’ll ne’er swear to any save my lawful lord, the Yerl of Angus, and my
lord the Master.’

‘Hist, Ringan,’ interposed Geordie. ‘Sir, I will answer for his faith to
me, and so long as he is leal to me he will be the same to thee; but I
doubt whether it be expedient to compel him.’

So did Sir Patrick, and he said--

‘Then be it so, I trust to his faith to thee. Only remembering that if
he plunder or brawl, I may have to leave him hanging on the next bush.’

‘And if he doth, the Red Douglas will ken the reason why,’ quoth Ringan,
with head aloft.

It was thought well to turn a deaf ear to this observation. Indeed,
Geordie’s effort was to elude observation, and to keep his uncouth
follower from attracting it. Ringan was not singular in running along
with bare feet. Other ‘bonnie boys,’ as the ballad has it, trotted
along by the side of the horses to which they were attached in the like
fashion, though they had hose and shoon slung over their shoulders, to
be donned on entering the good town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Not without sounding of bugle and sending out a pursuivant to examine
into the intentions and authorisation of the party, were they admitted,
Jean and Eleanor riding first, with the pursuivant proclaiming--‘Place,
place for the high and mighty princesses of Scotland.’

It was an inconvenient ceremony for poor Sir Patrick, who had to hand
over to the pursuivant, in the name of the princesses, a ring from
his own finger. Largesse he could not attempt, but the proud spirit of
himself and his train could not but be chafed at the expectant faces
of the crowd, and the intuitive certainty that ‘Beggarly Scotch’ was in
every disappointed mind.

And this was but a foretaste of what the two royal maidens’ presence
would probably entail throughout the journey. His wife added to this
care uneasiness as to the deportment of her three maidens. Of Annis she
had not much fear, but she suspected Jean and Eleanor of being as wild
and untamed as hares, and she much doubted whether any counsels might
not offend their dignity, and drive them into some strange behaviour
that the good people of Berwick would never forget.

They rode in, however, very upright and stately, with an air of taking
possession of the place on their brother’s behalf; and Jean bowed with a
certain haughty grace to the deputy-warden who came out to receive them,
Eleanor keeping her eye upon Jean and imitating her in everything. For
Eleanor, though sometimes the most eager, and most apt to commit herself
by hasty words and speeches, seemed now to be daunted by the strangeness
of all around, and to commit herself to the leading of her sister,
though so little her junior.

She was very silent all through the supper spread for them in the hall
of the castle, while Jean exchanged conversation with their host upon
Iceland hawks and wolf and deer hounds, as if she had been a young lady
keeping a splendid court all her life, instead of a poverty-stricken
prisoner in castle after castle.

‘Jeanie,’ whispered Eleanor, as they lay down on their bed together,
‘didst mark the tall laddie that was about to seat himself at the high
table and frowned when the steward motioned him down?’

‘What’s that to me? An ill-nurtured carle,’ said Jean; ‘I marvel Sir
Patie brooks him in his meinie!’

Eleanor was a little in awe of Jeanie in this mood, and said no more,
but Annis, who slept on a pallet at their feet, heard all, and guessed
more as to the strange young squire.

Fain would she and Eleanor have discussed the situation, but Jean’s blue
eyes glanced heedfully and defiantly at them, and, moreover, the young
gentleman in question, after that one error, effaced himself, and was
forgotten for the time in the novelty of the scenes around.

The sub-warden of Berwick, mindful of his charge to obviate all
occasions of strife, insisted on sending a knight and half-a-dozen men
to escort the Scottish travellers as far as Durham. David Drummond and
the young ladies murmured to one another their disgust that the English
pock-pudding should not suppose Scots able to keep their heads with
their own hands; but, as Jean sagely observed, ‘No doubt he would not
wish them to have occasion to hurt any of the English, nor Jamie to have
to call them to account.’

This same old knight consorted with Sir Patrick, Dame Lilias, and
Father Romuald, and kept a sharp eye on the little party, allowing no
straggling on any pretence, and as Sir Patrick enforced the command, all
were obliged to obey, in spite of chafing; and the scowls of the English
Borderers, with the scant courtesy vouchsafed by these sturdy spirits,
proved the wisdom of the precaution.

At Durham they were hospitably entertained in the absence of the Bishop.
The splendour of the cathedral and its adjuncts much impressed Lady
Drummond, as it had done a score of years previously; but, though
Malcolm ventured to share her admiration, Jean was far above allowing
that she could be astonished at anything in England. In fact, she
regarded the stately towers of St. Cuthbert as so much stolen family
property which ‘Jamie’ would one day regain; and all the other young
people followed suit. David even made all the observations his own
sense of honour and the eyes of his hosts would permit, with a view to a
future surprise. The escort of Sir Patrick was asked to York by a Canon
who had to journey thither, and was anxious for protection from the
outlaws--who had begun to renew the doings of Robin Hood under the laxer
rule of the young Henry VI, though things were expected to be better
since the young Duke of York had returned from France.

Perhaps this arrangement was again a precaution for the preservation of
peace, and at York there was a splendid entertainment by Cardinal Kemp;
but all the ‘subtleties’ and wonders--stags’ heads in their horns,
peacocks in their pride, jellies with whole romances depicted in them,
could not reconcile the young Scots to the presumption of the Archbishop
reckoning Scotland into his province. Durham was at once too monastic
and too military to have afforded much opportunity for recruiting
the princesses’ wardrobe; but York was the resort of the merchants of
Flanders, and Christie was sent in quest of them and their wares, for
truly the black serge kirtles and shepherd’s tartan screens that had
made the journey from Dunbar were in no condition to do honour to royal
damsels.

Jean was in raptures with the graceful veils depending from the horned
headgear, worn, she was told, by the Duchess of Burgundy; but Eleanor
wept at the idea of obscuring the snood of a Scottish maiden, and would
not hear of resigning it.

‘I feel as Elleen no more,’ she said, ‘but a mere Flanders popinjay. It
has changed my ain self upon me, as well as the country.’

‘Thou shouldst have been born in a hovel!’ returned Jean, raising her
proud little head. ‘I feel more than ever what I am--a true princess!’

And she looked it, with beauty enhanced by the rich attire which only
made Eleanor embarrassed and uncomfortable.

Malcolm, the more scrupulous of the Drummond brothers, begged of George
Douglas, when at Durham, to write to his father and declare himself to
Sir Patrick, but the youth would do neither. He did not think himself
sufficiently out of reach, and, besides, the very sight of a pen was
abhorrent to him. There was something pleasing to him in the liberty of
a kind of volunteer attached to the expedition, and he would not give it
up. Nor was he without some wild idea of winning Jean’s notice by some
gallant exploit on her behalf before she knew him for the object of her
prejudice, the Master of Angus. As to Sir Patrick, he was far too busy
trying to compose Border quarrels, and gleaning information about the
Gloucester and Beaufort parties at Court, to have any attention to spare
for the young man riding in his suite with the barefooted lad ever at
his stirrup.

Geordie never attempted to secure better accommodation than the other
lances; he groomed his steed himself, with a little assistance from
Ringan, and slept in the straw of its bed, with the lad curled up at his
feet; the only difference observable between him and the rest being that
he always groomed himself every night and morning as carefully as the
horse, a ceremony they thought entirely needless.




CHAPTER 3. FALCON AND FETTERLOCK


                ‘Ours is the sky
     Where at what fowl we please our hawk shall fly.’
     --T. Randolph.


Beyond York that species of convoy, which ranged between protection and
supervision, entirely ceased; the Scottish party moved on their own wa
 oftener through heath, rock, and moor, for England was not yet thickly
inhabited, though there was no lack of hostels or of convents to receive
them on this the great road to the North, and to its many shrines for
pilgrimage.

Perhaps Sir Patrick relaxed a little of his vigilance, since the good
behaviour of his troop had won his confidence, and they were less likely
to be regarded as invaders than by the inhabitants of the district
nearer their own frontier.

Hawking and coursing within bounds had been permitted by both the Knight
of Berwick and the Canon of Durham on the wide northern moors; but Sir
Patrick, on starting in the morning of the day when they were entering
Northamptonshire, had given a caution that sport was not free in the
more frequented parts of England, and that hound must not be loosed nor
hawk flown without special permission from the lord of the manor.

He was, however, riding in the rear of the rest, up a narrow lane
leading uphill, anxiously discussing with Father Romuald the expediency
of seeking hospitality from any of the great lords whose castles might
be within reach before he had full information of the present state of
factions at the Court, when suddenly his son Malcolm came riding back,
pushing up hastily.

‘Sir! father!’ he cried, ‘there’s wud wark ahead, there’s a flight of
unco big birds on before, and Lady Jean’s hawk is awa’ after them, and
Jeanie’s awa’ after the hawk, and Geordie Red Peel is awa’ after Jean,
and Davie’s awa’ after Geordie; and there’s the blast of an English
bugle, and my mither sent me for you to redd the fray!’

‘Time, indeed!’ said Sir Patrick with a sigh, and, setting spurs to his
horse, he soon was beyond the end of the lane, on an open heath, where
some of his troop were drawn up round his banner, almost forcibly
kept back by Dame Lilias and the elder Andrew. He could not stop for
explanation from them, indeed his wife only waved him forward towards
a confused group some hundred yards farther off, where he could see a
number of his own men, and, too plainly, long bows and coats of Lincoln
green, and he only hoped, as he galloped onward, that they belonged
to outlaws and not to rangers. Too soon he saw that his hope was vain;
there were ten or twelve stout archers with the white rosette of York
in their bonnets, the falcon and fetterlock on their sleeves, and
the Plantagenet quarterings on their breasts. In the midst was a dead
bustard, also an Englishman sitting up, with his head bleeding; Jean
was on foot, with her dagger-knife in one hand, and holding fast to her
breast her beloved hawk, whose jesses were, however, grasped by one of
the foresters. Geordie of the Red Peel stood with his sword at his feet,
glaring angrily round, while Sir Patrick, pausing, could hear his son
David’s voice in loud tones--

‘I tell you this lady is a royal princess! Yes, she is’--as there was a
kind of scoff--‘and we are bound on a mission to your King from the King
of Scots, and woe to him that touches a feather of ours.’

‘That may be,’ said the one who seemed chief among the English, ‘but
that gives no licence to fly at the Duke’s game, nor slay his foresters
for doing their duty. If we let the lady go, hawk and man must have
their necks wrung, after forest laws.’

‘And I tell thee,’ cried Davie, ‘that this is a noble gentleman of
Scotland, and that we will fight for him to the death.’

‘Let it alone, Davie,’ said George. ‘No scathe shall come to the lady
through me.’

‘Save him, Davie! save Skywing!’ screamed Jean.

‘To the rescue--a Drummond,’ shouted David; but his father pushed his
horse forward, just as the men in green, were in the act of stringing,
all at the same moment, their bows, as tall as themselves. They were not
so many but that his escort might have overpowered them, but only with
heavy loss, and the fact of such a fight would have been most disastrous.

‘What means this, sirs?’ he exclaimed, in a tone of authority, waving
back his own men; and his dignified air, as well as the banner with
which Andrew followed him, evidently took effect on the foresters, who
perhaps had not believed the young men.

‘Sir Patie, my hawk!’ entreated Jean. ‘She did but pounce on yon unco
ugsome bird, and these bloodthirsty grasping loons would have wrung her
neck.’

‘She took her knife to me,’ growled the wounded man, who had risen to
his feet, and showed bleeding fingers.

‘Ay, for meddling with a royal falcon,’ broke in Jean. ‘’Tis thou, false
loon, whose craig should be raxed.’

Happily this was an unknown tongue to the foresters, and Sir Patrick
gravely silenced her.

‘Whist, lady, brawls consort not with your rank. Gang back doucely to my
leddy.’

‘But Skywing! he has her jesses,’ said the girl, but in a lower tone, as
though rebuked.

‘Sir ranger,’ said Sir Patrick courteously, ‘I trust you will let
the young demoiselle have her hawk. It was loosed in ignorance and
heedlessness, no doubt, but I trow it is the rule in England, as
elsewhere, that ladies of the blood royal are not bound by forest laws.’

‘Sir, if we had known,’ said the ranger, who was evidently of gentle
blood, as he took his foot off the jesses, and Jean now allowed David to
remount her.

‘But my Lord Duke is very heedful of his bustards, and when Roger there
went to seize the bird, my young lady was over-ready with her knife.’

‘Who would not be for thee, my bird?’ murmured Jean.

‘And yonder big fellow came plunging down and up with his sword--so as
he was nigh on being the death of poor Roger again for doing his duty.
If such be the ways of you Scots, sir, they be not English ways under my
Lord Duke, that is to say, and if I let the lady and her hawk go, forest
law must have its due on the young man there--I must have him up to
Fotheringay to abide the Duke’s pleasure.’

‘Heed me not, Sir Patrick!’ exclaimed Geordie. ‘I would not have those
of your meinie brought into jeopardy for my cause.’

David was plucking his father’s mantle to suggest who George was, which
in fact Sir Patrick might suspect enough to be conscious of the full
awkwardness of the position, and to abandon the youth was impossible.
Though it was not likely that the Duke of York would hang him if aware
of his rank, he might be detained as a hostage or put to heavy ransom,
or he might never be brought to the Duke’s presence at all, but be put
to death by some truculent underling, incredulous of a Scotsman’s tale,
if indeed he were not too proud to tell it. Anyway, Sir Patrick felt
bound to stand by him.

‘Good sir,’ said he to the forester, ‘will it content thee if we all go
with thee to thy Duke? The two Scottish princesses are of his kin, and
near of blood to King Henry, whom they are about to visit at Windsor. I
am on a mission thither on affairs of state, but I shall be willing to
make my excuses to him for any misdemeanour committed on his lands by my
followers.’

The forester was consenting, when George cried--

‘I’ll have no hindrance to your journey on my account, Sir Patrick. Let
me answer for myself.’

‘Foolish laddie,’ said the knight. ‘Father Romuald and I were only now
conferring as to paying the Duke a visit on our way. Sir forester, we
shall be beholden to you for guiding us.’

He further inquired into the ranger’s hurts, and salved them with a
piece of gold, while David thought proper to observe to George--

‘So much for thy devoir to thy princess! It was for Skywing’s craig she
cared, never thine.’

George turned a deaf ear to the insinuation. He was allowed free hands
and his own horse, which was perhaps well for the Englishmen, for Ringan
Raefoot, running by his stirrup, showed him a long knife, and said with
a grin--

‘Ready for the first who daurs to lay hands on the Master! Gin I could
have come up in time, the loon had never risen from the ground.’

George endeavoured in vain to represent how much worse this would have
made their condition.

Sir Patrick, joining the ladies, informed them of the necessity of
turning aside to Fotheringay, which he had done not very willingly,
being ignorant of the character of the Duke of York, except as one of
the war party against France and Scotland, whereas the Beauforts were
for peace. As a vigorous governor of Normandy, he had not commended
him self to one whose sympathies were French. Lady Drummond, however,
remembered that his wife, Cicely Nevil, the Rose of Raby, was younger
sister to that Ralf Nevil who had married the friend of her youth, Alice
Montagu, now Countess of Salisbury in her own right.

Sir Patrick did not let Jean escape a rebuke.

‘So, lady, you see what perils to brave men you maids can cause by a
little heedlessness.’

‘I never asked Geordie to put his finger in,’ returned Jean saucily.
‘I could have brought off Skywing for myself without such a clamjamfrie
after me.’

But Eleanor and Annis agreed that it was as good as a ballad, and ought
to be sung in one, only Jean would have to figure as the ‘dour lassie.’
For she continued to aver, by turns, that Geordie need never have
meddled, and that of course it was his bounden duty to stand by his
King’s sister, and that she owed him no thanks. If he were hanged for it
he had run his craig into the noose.

So she tossed her proud head, and toyed with her falcon, as all rode on
their way to Fotheringay, with Geordie in the midst of the rangers.

It was so many years since there had been serious war in England,
that the castles of the interior were far less of fortresses than of
magnificent abodes for the baronage, who had just then attained their
fullest splendour. It may be observed that the Wars of the Roses were
for the most part fought out in battles, not by sieges. Thus Fotheringay
had spread out into a huge pile, which crowned the hill above, with a
strong inner court and lofty donjon tower indeed, and with mighty
walls, but with buildings for retainers all round, reaching down to
the beautiful newly-built octagon-towered church; and with a great park
stretching for miles, for all kinds of sport.

‘All this enclosed! Yet they make sic a wark about their bustards, as
they ca’ them,’ muttered Jean.

The forester had sent a messenger forward to inform the Duke of York
of his capture. The consequence was that the cavalcade had no sooner
crossed the first drawbridge under the great gateway of the castle,
where the banner of Plantagenet was displayed, than before it were seen
a goodly company, in the glittering and gorgeous robes of the fifteenth
century.

There was no doubt of welcome. Foremost was a graceful, slenderly-made
gentleman about thirty years old, in rich azure and gold, who doffed his
cap of maintenance, turned up with fur, and with long ends, and, bowing
low, declared himself delighted that the princesses of Scotland, his
good cousins, should honour his poor dwelling.

He gave his hand to assist Jean to alight, and an equally gorgeous but
much younger gentleman in the same manner waited on Eleanor. A tall,
grizzled, sunburnt figure received Lady Drummond with recognition on
both sides, and the words, ‘My wife is fain to see you, my honoured
lady: is this your daughter?’ with a sign to a tall youth, who took
Annis from her horse. Dame Lilias heard with joy that the Countess of
Salisbury was actually in the castle, and in a few moments more she was
in the great hall, in the arms of the sweet Countess Alice of her youth,
who, middle-aged as she was, with all her youthful impulsiveness had not
waited for the grand and formal greeting bestowed on the princesses by
her stately young sister-in-law, the Duchess of York.

There seemed to be a perfect crowd of richly-dressed nobles, ladies,
children; and though the Lady Joanna held her head up in full state, and
kept her eye on her sister to make her do the same, their bewilderment
was great; and when they had been conducted to a splendid chamber,
within that allotted to the Drummond ladies, tapestry-hung, and with
silver toilette apparatus, to prepare for supper, Jean dropped upon a
high-backed chair, and insisted that Dame Lilias should explain to her
exactly who each one was.

‘That slight, dark-eyed carle who took me off my horse was the Duke of
York, of course,’ said she. ‘My certie, a bonnie Scot would make short
work of him, bones and all! And it would scarce be worth while to give a
clout to the sickly lad that took Elleen down.’

‘Hush, Jean,’ said Eleanor; ‘some one called him King! Was he King Harry
himself?’

‘Oh no,’ said Dame Lilias, smiling; ‘only King Harry of the Isle of
Wight--a bit place about the bigness of Arran; but it pleased the
English King to crown him and give him a ring, and bestow on him the
realm in a kind of sport. He is, in sooth, Harry Beauchamp, Earl of
Warwick, and was bred up as the King’s chief comrade and playfellow.’

‘And what brings him here?’

‘So far as I can yet understand, the family and kin have gathered for
the marriage of his sister, the Lady Anne--the red-cheeked maiden in the
rose-coloured kirtle--to the young Sir Richard Nevil, the same who gave
his hand to thee, Annis--the son of my Lord of Salisbury.’

‘That was the old knight who led thee in, mother,’ said Annis. ‘Did you
say he was brother to the Duchess?’

‘Even so. There were fifteen or twenty Nevils of Raby--he was one of the
eldest, she one of the youngest. Their mother was a Beaufort, aunt to
yours.’

‘Oh, I shall never unravel them!’ exclaimed Eleanor, spreading out her
hands in bewilderment.

Lady Drummond laughed, having come to the time of life when ladies enjoy
genealogies.

‘It will be enough,’ she said, ‘to remember that almost all are, like
yourselves, grandchildren or great-grandchildren to King Edward of
Windsor.’

Jean, however, wanted to know which were nearest to herself, and which
were noblest. The first question Lady Drummond said she could hardly
answer; perhaps the Earl of Salisbury and the Duchess, but the Duke was
certainly noblest by birth, having a double descent from King Edward,
and in the male line.

‘Was not his father put to death by this King’s father?’ asked Eleanor.

‘Ay, the Earl of Cambridge, for a foul plot. I have heard my Lord of
Salisbury speak of it; but this young man was of tender years, and
King Harry of Monmouth did not bear malice, but let him succeed to the
dukedom when his uncle was killed in the Battle of Agincourt.’

‘They have not spirit here to keep up a feud,’ said Jean.

‘My good brother--ay, and your father, Jeanie--were wont to say they
were too Christian to hand on a feud,’ observed Dame Lilias, at which
Jean tossed her head, and said--

‘That may suit such a carpet-knight as yonder Duke. He is not so tall as
Elleen there, nor as his own Duchess.’

‘I do not like the Duchess,’ said Annis; ‘she looks as if she scorned
the very ground she walks on.’

‘She is wondrous bonnie, though,’ said Eleanor; ‘and so was the bairnie
by her side.’

In some degree Jean changed her opinion of the Duke, in consequence,
perhaps, of the very marked attention that he showed her when the supper
was spread. She had never been so made to feel what it was to be at once
a king’s daughter and a beauty; and at the most magnificent banquet she
had ever known.

Durham had afforded a great advance on Scottish festivities; but in the
absence of its Prince Bishop, another Nevil, it had lacked much of what
was to be found at Fotheringay in the full blossoming of the splendours
of the princely nobility of England, just ere the decimation that they
were to perpetrate on one another.

The hall itself was vast, and newly finished in the rich culmination of
Gothic work, with a fan tracery-vaulted roof, a triumph of architecture,
each stalactite glowing with a shield or a badge of England, France,
Mortimer, and Nevil--lion or lily, falcon and fetterlock, white rose and
dun cow, all and many others--likewise shining in the stained glass of
the great windows.

The high table was loaded with gold and silver plate, and Venice glasses
even more precious; there were carpets under the feet of the nobler
guests, and even the second and third tables were spread with more
richness and refinement than ever the sisters of James II had known
in their native land. In a gallery above, the Duke’s musicians and the
choristers of his chapel were ready to enliven the meal; and as the
chief guest, the Lady Joanna of Scotland was handed to her place by the
Duke of York, who, as she now perceived, though small in stature, was
eminently handsome and graceful, and conversed with her, not as a mere
child, but as a fair lady of full years.

Eleanor, who sat on his other hand beside the Earl of Salisbury, was
rather provoked with her sister for never asking after the fate of her
champion; but was reassured by seeing his red head towering among the
numerous squires and other retainers of the second rank. It certainly
was not his proper place, but it was plain that he was not in disgrace;
and in fact the whole affair had been treated as a mere pardonable
blunder of the rangers. The superior one was sitting next to the young
Scot, making good cheer with him. Grand as the whole seemed to the
travellers, it was not an exceptional banquet; indeed, the Duchess
apologised for its simplicity, since she had been taken at unawares,
evidently considering it as the ordinary family meal. There was ample
provision, served up in by no means an unrefined manner, even to the
multitudinous servants and retainers of the various trains; and beyond,
on the steps and in the court, were a swarm of pilgrims, friars, poor,
and beggars of all kinds, waiting for the fragments.

It was a wet evening, and when the tables were drawn the guests devoted
themselves to various amusements. Lord Salisbury challenged Sir Patrick
to a game at chess, Lady Salisbury and Dame Lilias wished for nothing
better than to converse over old times at Middleham Castle; but the
younger people began with dancing, the Duke, who was only thirty years
old, leading out the elder Scottish princess, and the young King of the
Isle of Wight the stately and beautiful Duchess Cicely. Eleanor,
who knew she did not excel in anything that required grace, and was,
besides, a good deal fatigued, would fain have excused herself when
paired with the young Richard Nevil; but there was a masterful look
about him that somewhat daunted her, and she obeyed his summons, though
without acquitting herself with anything approaching to the dexterity
of her sister, who, with quite as little practice as herself, danced
well--by quickness of eye and foot, and that natural elegance of
movement which belongs to symmetry.

The dance was a wreathing in and out of the couples, including all
of rank to dance together, and growing more and more animated, till
excitement took the place of weariness; and Eleanor’s pale cheeks were
flushed, her eyes glowing, when the Duchess’s signal closed the dance.

Music was then called for, and several of the princely company sang to
the lute; Jean, pleased to show there was something in which her sister
excelled, and gratified at some recollections that floated up of her
father’s skill in minstrelsy, insisted on sending for Eleanor’s harp.

‘Oh, Jean, not now; I canna,’ murmured Eleanor, who had been sitting
with fixed eyes, as though in a dream.

But the Duke and other nobles came and pressed her, and Jean whispered
to her not to show herself a fule body, and disgrace herself before
the English, setting the harp before her and attending to the strings.
Eleanor’s fingers then played over them in a dreamy, fitful way, that
made the old Earl raise his head and say--

‘That twang carries me back to King Harry’s tent, and the good old time
when an Englishman’s sword was respected.’

‘’Tis the very harp,’ said Sir Patrick; ‘ay, and the very tune--’

‘Come, Elleen, begin. What gars thee loiter in that doited way?’
insisted Jean. ‘Come, “Up atween.”’

And, led by her sister in spite of herself, almost, as it were, without
volition, Eleanor’s sweet pathetic voice sang--


     ‘Up atween yon twa hill-sides, lass,
       Where I and my true love wont to be,
     A’ the warld shall never ken, lass,
       What my true love said to me.

     ‘Owre muckle blinking blindeth the ee, lass,
       Owre muckle thinking changeth the mind,
     Sair is the life I’ve led for thee, lass,
       Farewell warld, for it’s a’ at an end.’


Her voice had been giving way through the last verse, and in the final
line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back
with a strange choked agony.

‘Why, Elleen! Elleen, how now?’ cried Jean. ‘Cousin Lilias, come!’

Lady Drummond was already at her side, and the Duchess and Lady
Salisbury proffering essences and cordials, the gentlemen offering
support; but in a moment or two Eleanor recovered enough to cling to
Lady Drummond, muttering--

‘Oh, take me awa’, take me awa’!’

And hushing the scolding which Jean was commencing by way of bracing,
and rejecting all the kind offers of service, Dame Lilias led the girl
away, leaving Jean to make excuses and explanations about her sister
being but ‘silly’ since they had lost their mother, and the tune minding
her of home and of her father.

When, with only Annis following, the chambers had been reached, Eleanor
let herself sink on a cushion, hiding her face against her friend, and
sobbing hysterically--

‘Oh, take me awa’, take me awa’! It’s all blood and horror!’

‘My bairnie, my dearie! You are over-weary--‘tis but a dreamy fancy.
Look up! All is safe; none can harm you here.’

With soothings, and with some of the wine on the table, Lady Drummond
succeeded in calming the girl, and, with Annis’s assistance, she
undressed her and placed her in the bed.

‘Oh, do not gang! Leave me not,’ she entreated. And as the lady sat by
her, holding her hand, she spoke, ‘It was all dim before me as the music
played, and--’

‘Thou wast sair forefaughten, dearie.’

Eleanor went on--

‘And then as I touched mine harp, all, all seemed to swim in a mist of
blood and horror. There was the old Earl and the young bridegroom, and
many and many more of them, with gaping wounds and deathly faces--all
but the young King of the Isle of Wight and his shroud, his shroud,
Cousin Lily, it was up to his breast; and the ladies’ faces that were
so blithe, they were all weeping, ghastly, and writhen; and they were
whirling round a great sea of blood right in the middle of the hall, and
I could--I could bear it no longer.’

Lady Drummond controlled herself, and for the sake both of the sobbing
princess and of her own shuddering daughter said that this terrible
vision came of the fatigue of the day, and the exhaustion and excitement
that had followed. She also knew that on poor Eleanor that fearful
Eastern’s Eve had left an indelible impression, recurring in any
state of weakness or fever. She scarcely marvelled at the strange and
frightful fancies, except that she believed enough in second-sight to
be concerned at the mention of the shroud enfolding the young Beauchamp,
who bore the fanciful title of the King of the Isle of Wight.

For the present, however, she applied herself to the comforting of
Eleanor with tender words and murmured prayers, and never left her till
she had slept and wakened again, her full self, upon Jean coming up to
bed at nine o’clock--a very late hour--escorted by sundry of the ladies
to inquire for the patient.

Jean was still excited, but she was, with all her faults, very fond of
her sister, and obeyed Lady Drummond in being as quiet as possible.
She seemed to take it as a matter of course that Elleen should have her
strange whims.

‘Mother used to beat her for them,’ she said, ‘but Nurse Ankaret said
that made her worse, and we kept them secret as much as we could. To
think of her having them before all that English folk! But she will be
all right the morn.’

This proved true; after the night’s rest Eleanor rose in the morning
as if nothing had disturbed her, and met her hosts as if no visions
had hung around them. It was well, for Sir Patrick had accepted the
invitation courteously given by the Duke of York to join the great
cavalcade with which he, with his brothers-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury
and Bishop of Durham, and the Earl of Warwick, alias the King of the
Isle of Wight, were on their way to the Parliament that was summoned
anent the King’s marriage. The unwilling knights of the shire and
burgesses of Northampton who would have to assist in the money grant
had asked his protection; and all were to start early on the Monday--for
Sunday was carefully observed as a holiday, and the whole party in all
their splendours attended high mass in the beautiful church.

After time had been given for the ensuing meal, all the yeomen and young
men of the neighbourhood came up to the great outer court of the castle,
where there was ample space for sports and military exercises, shooting
with the long and cross bow, riding at the quintain and the like, in
competitions with the grooms and men-at-arms attached to the retinue of
the various great men; and the wives, daughters, and sweethearts came
up to watch them. For the most successful there were prizes of leathern
coats, bows, knives, and the like, and refreshments of barley-bread,
beef, and very small beer, served round with a liberal hand by the
troops of servants bearing the falcon and fetterlock badge, and all was
done not merely in sport but very much in earnest, in the hope on the
part of the Duke, and all who were esteemed patriotic, that these youths
might serve in retaining at least, if not in recovering, the English
conquests.

Those of gentle blood abstained from their warlike exercises on this day
of the week, but they looked on from the broad walk in the thickness of
the massive walls; the Duke with his two beautiful little boys by his
side, the young Earls of March and Rutland, handsome fair children, in
whom the hereditary blue eyes and fair complexion of the Plantagenets
recurred, and who bade fair to surpass their father in stature. Their
mother was by right and custom to distribute the prizes, but she always
disliked doing so, and either excused herself, or reached them out
with the ungracious demeanour that had won for her the muttered name
of ‘Proud Cis’. On this day she had avoided the task on the plea of the
occupations caused by her approaching journey, and the Duke put in her
place his elder boy and his little cousin, Lady Anne Beauchamp, the
child of the young King of the Isle of Wight--a short-lived little
delicate being, but very fair and pretty, so that the two children
together upon a stone chair, cushioned with red velvet, were like a
fairy king and queen, and there was many a murmur of admiration, and
‘Bless their little hearts’ or ‘their sweet faces,’ as Anne’s dainty
fingers handled the prizes, big bows or knives, arrows or belts, and
Edward had a smile and appropriate speech for each, such as ‘Shoot at a
Frenchman’s breast next time, Bob’; ‘There’s a knife to cut up the deer
with, Will,’ and the like amenities, at which his father nodded, well
pleased to see the arts of popularity coming to him by nature.
Sir Patrick watched with grave eyes, as he thought of his beloved
sovereign’s desire to see his people thus practised in arms without
peril of feud and violence to one another.

Jean looked on, eager to see some of the Scots of their own escort
excel the English pock-puddings, but though Dandie and two or three
more contended, the habits were too unfamiliar for them to win any great
distinction, and George Douglas did not come forward; the competition
was not for men of gentle blood, and success would have brought him
forward in a manner it was desirable to avoid. There was a good deal of
merry talk between Jean and the hosts, enemies though she regarded
them. The Duke of York was evidently much struck with her beauty and
liveliness, and he asked Sir Patrick in private whether there were
any betrothal or contract in consequence of which he was taking her to
France.

‘None,’ said Sir Patrick, ‘it is merely to be with her sister, the
Dauphiness.’

‘Then,’ said young Richard Nevil, who was standing by him, and seemed to
have instigated the question, ‘there would be no hindrance supposing she
struck the King’s fancy.’

‘The King is contracted,’ said Sir Patrick.

‘Half contracted! but to the beggarly daughter of a Frenchman who calls
himself king of half-a-dozen realms without an acre in any of them. It
is not gone so far but that it might be thrown over if he had sense and
spirit not to be led by the nose by the Cardinal and Suffolk.’

‘Hush-hush, Dick! this is dangerous matter,’ said the Duke, and Sir
Patrick added--

‘These ladies are nieces to the Cardinal.’

‘That is well, and it would win the more readily consent--even though
Suffolk and his shameful peace were thrown over,’ eagerly said the
future king-maker.

‘Gloucester would be willing,’ added the Duke. ‘He loved the damsel’s
father, and hateth the French alliance.’

‘I spoke with her,’ added Nevil, ‘and, red-hot little Scot as she is,
she only lacks an English wedlock to make her as truly English, which
this wench of Anjou can never be.’

‘She would give our meek King just the spring and force he needs,’ said
the Duke; ‘but thou wilt hold thy peace, Sir Knight, and let no whisper
reach the women-folk.’

This Sir Patrick readily promised. He was considerably tickled by the
idea of negotiating such an important affair for his young King and his
protegee, feeling that the benefit to Scotland might outweigh any qualms
as to the disappointment to the French allies. Besides, if King Henry of
Windsor should think proper to fall in love with her, he could not help
it; he had not brought her away from home or to England with any such
purpose; he had only to stand by and let things take their course, so
long as the safety and honour of her, her brother, and the kingdom
were secure. So reasoned the canny Scot, but he held his tongue to his
Lilias.




CHAPTER 4. ST. HELEN S


     ‘I thought King Henry had resembled thee,
      In courage, courtship, and proportion:
      But all his mind is bent to holiness,
      To number Ave-Maries on his beads:
      His champions are the prophets and apostles;
      His weapons, holy saws of sacred writ.’
                                        King Henry VI.


George Douglas’s chivalrous venture in defence of the falcon of his
lady-love had certainly not done much for him hitherto, as Davie
observed. The Lady Joanna, as every one now called her, took it as only
the bounden duty and natural service of one of her suite, and would have
cared little for his suffering for it personally, except so far as it
concerned her own dignity, which she understood much better than she
had done in Scotland, where she was only one of ‘the lassies,’ an
encumbrance to every one.

The York retainers had dropped all idea of visiting his offence upon
Douglas when they found that he had acted in the service of an honoured
guest of their lord, but they did not look with much favour on him or
on any other of the Scottish troop, whom their master enjoined them to
treat as guests and comrades.

The uniting of so many suites of the mighty nobles of the fifteenth
century formed quite a little army, amounting to some two or three
hundred horsemen, mostly armed, and well appointed, with their masters’
badges on their sleeves,--falcon and fetterlock, dun cow, bear and
ragged staff and the cross of Durham, while all likewise wore in their
caps the white rose. Waggons with household furniture and kitchen
needments had been sent in advance with the numerous ‘black guard,’ and
a provision of cattle for slaughter accompanied these, since it was one
of the considerate acts that already had won affection to Richard of
York that, unlike many of the great nobles, he always avoided as much as
possible letting his train be oppressive to the country-people.

David Drummond had been seeing that all his father’s troop were duly
provided with the Drummond badge, the thyme, which was requisite as
showing them accepted of the Duke of York’s company, but as George and
his follower had never submitted to wear it, he was somewhat surprised
to find the gray blossom prominent in George’s steel-guarded cap, and to
hear him saying--

‘Don it, Ringan, as thou wouldst obey me.’

‘His father’s son is not his own father,’ said Ringan sulkily.

‘Then tak’ thy choice of wearing it, or winning hame as thou canst--most
like hanging on the nearest oak.’

‘And I’d gey liefer than demean myself in the Drummond thyme!’ replied
Ringan, half turning away. ‘But then what would come of Gray Meg wi’
only the Master to see till her,’ muttered he, caressing the mare’s
neck. ‘Weel, aweel, sir’--and he held out his hand for the despised
spray.

‘Is yon thy wild callant, Geordie?’ said David in some surprise, for
Ringan was not only provided with a pony, but his thatch of tow-like
hair had been trimmed and covered with a barret cap, and his leathern
coat and leggings were like those of the other horse-boys.

‘Ay,’ said George, ‘this is no place to be ower kenspeckle.’

‘I was coming to ask,’ said David, ‘if thou wouldst not own thyself to
my father, and take thy proper place ere ganging farther south. It irks
me to see some of the best blood in Scotland among the grooms.’

‘It must irk thee still, Davie,’ returned George. ‘These English folk
might not thole to see my father’s son in their hands without winning
something out of him, and I saw by what passed the other day that thou
and thy father would stand by me, hap what hap, and I’ll never embroil
him and peril the lady by my freak.’

‘My father kens pretty well wha is riding in his companie,’ said David.

‘Ay, but he is not bound to ken.’

‘And thou winna write to the Yerl, as ye said ye would when ye were ower
the Border? There’s a clerk o’ the Bishop of Durham ganging back, and
my father is writing letters that he will send forward to the King, and
thou couldst get a scart o’ the pen to thy father.’

‘And what wad be thought of a puir man-at-arms sending letters to
the Yerl?’ said George. ‘Na, na; I may write when we win to France,
a friendly land, but while we are in England, the loons shall make
naething out of my father’s son.’

‘Weel, gang thine ain gait, and an unco strange one it is,’ said David.
‘I marvel what thou count’st on gaining by it!’

‘The sicht of her at least,’ said George. ‘Nay, she needed a stout hand
once, she may need it again.’

Whereat David waved his hands in a sort of contemptuous wonder.

‘If it were the Duchess of York now!’ he said. ‘She is far bonnier and
even prouder, gin that be what tak’s your fancy! And as to our Jeanie,
they are all cockering her up till she’ll no be content with a king. I
doot me if the Paip himself wad be good enough for her!’

It was true that the brilliant and lively Lady Joanna was in high favour
with the princely gallants of the cavalcade. The only member of the
party at all equal to her in beauty was the Duchess of York, who
travelled in a whirlicote with her younger children and her ladies, and
at the halting-places never relaxed the stiff dignity with which she
treated every one. Eleanor did indeed accompany her sister, but she had
not Jean’s quick power of repartee, and she often answered at haphazard,
and was not understood when she did reply; nor had she Jean’s beauty,
so that in the opinion of most of the young nobles she was but a raw,
almost dumb, Scotswoman, and was left to herself as much as courtesy
permitted, except by the young King of the Isle of Wight, a gentle,
poetical personage, in somewhat delicate health, with tastes that made
him the chosen companion of the scholarly King Henry. He could repeat a
great deal of Chaucer’s poetry by heart, the chief way in which people
could as yet enjoy books, and there was an interchange between them of
“Blind Harry” and of the “Canterbury Tales”, as they rode side by side,
sometimes making their companions laugh, and wonder that the youthful
queen was not jealous. Dame Lilias found her congenial companion in the
Countess Alice of Salisbury, who could talk with her of that golden
age of the two kings, Henry and James, of her brother Malcolm, and of
Esclairmonde de Luxembourg, now Sister Clare, whom they hoped soon to
see in the sisterhood of St. Katharine’s.

‘Hers hath been the happy course, the blessed dedication,’ said Countess
Alice.

‘We have both been blessed too, thanks to the saints,’ returned Lilias.

‘That is indeed sooth,’ replied the other lady. ‘My lord hath ever been
most good to me, and I have had joy of my sons. Yet there is much that
my mind forbodes and shrinks back from in dread, as I watch my son
Richard’s overmastering spirit.’

‘The Cardinal and the Duke of Gloucester have long been at strife, as we
heard,’ said Lady Drummond, ‘but sure that will be appeased now that the
Cardinal is an old man and your King come to years of discretion.’

‘The King is a sweet youth, a very saint already,’ replied the Countess,
‘but I misdoubt whether he have the stout heart and strong hand of his
father, and he is set on peace.’

‘Peace is to be followed,’ said Lilias, amazed at the tone in which her
friend mentioned it.

‘Peace at home! Ay, but peace at home is only to be had by war abroad.
Peace abroad without honour only leaves these fiery spirits to fume,
and fly at one another’s throats, or at those who wrought it. My mind
misgives me, mine old friend, lest wrangling lead to blows. I had rather
see my Richard spurring against the French than against his cousins of
Somerset, and while they advance themselves and claim to be nearer in
blood to the King than our good host of York, so long will there be
cause of bitterness.’

‘Our kindly host seems to wish evil to no man.’

‘Nay, he is content enough, but my sister his wife, and alas! my son,
cannot let him forget that after the Duke of Gloucester he is highest in
the direct male line to King Edward of Windsor, and in the female line
stands nearer than this present King.’

‘In Scotland he would not forget that his father suffered for that very
cause.’

‘Ah, Lilias, thou hast seen enow of what such blood-feuds work in
Scotland to know how much I dread and how I pray they may never awaken
here. The blessed King Harry of Monmouth kept them down by the strong
hand, while he won all hearts to himself. It is my prayer that his young
son may do the like, and that my Lord of York be not fretted out of his
peaceful loyalty by the Somerset “outrecuidance”, and above all that
my own son be not the make-bate; but Richard is proud and fiery, and I
fear--I greatly fear, what may be in store for us.’

Lilias thought of Eleanor’s vision, but kept silence respecting it.

Forerunners had been sent on by the Duke of York to announce his coming,
and who were in his company; and on the last stage these returned,
bringing with them a couple of knights and of clerks on the part of the
Cardinal of Winchester to welcome his great-nieces, whom he claimed as
his guests.

‘I had hoped that the ladies of Scotland would honour my poor house,’
said the Duke.

‘The Lord Cardinal deems it thus more fitting,’ said the portly priest
who acted as Beaufort’s secretary, and who spoke with an authority that
chafed the Duke.

Richard Nevil rode up to him and muttered--‘He hath divined our purpose,
and means to cross it.’

The clerk, however, spoke with Sir Patrick, and in a manner took
possession of the young ladies. They were riding between walled courts,
substantially built, with intervals of fields and woods, or sometimes
indeed of morass; for London was still an island in the middle of
swamps, with the great causeways of the old Roman times leading to
it. The spire of St. Paul’s and the square keep of the Tower had been
pointed out to them, and Jean exclaimed--

‘My certie, it is a braw toon!’

But Eleanor, on her side, exclaimed--

‘’Tis but a flat! Mine eye wearies for the sea; ay, and for Arthur’s
Seat and the Castle! Oh, I wadna gie Embro’ for forty of sic toons!’

Perhaps Jean had guessed enough to make her look on London with an eye
of possession, for her answer was--

‘Hear till her; and she was the first to cry out upon Embro’ for a place
of reivers and land-loupers, and to want to leave it.’

There was so much that was new and wonderful that the sisters pursued
the question no further. They saw the masts of the shipping in the
Thames, and what seemed to them a throng of church towers and spires;
while, nearer, the road began to be full of market-folk, the women in
hoods and mantles and short petticoats, the men in long frocks, such as
their Saxon forefathers had worn, driving the rough ponies or donkeys
that had brought in their produce. There were begging friars in cowl and
frock, and beggars, not friars, with crutch and bowl; there were gleemen
and tumbling women, solid tradesfolk going out to the country farms they
loved, troops of ‘prentices on their way to practice with the bow or
cudgel, and parties of gaily-coloured nobles, knights, squires, and
burgesses, coming, like their own party, to the meeting of Parliament.

There were continual greetings, the Duke of York showing himself most
markedly courteous to all, his dark head being almost continuously
uncovered, and bending to his saddle-bow in response to the salutations
that met him; and friendly inquiries and answers being often exchanged.
The Earl of Salisbury and his son were almost equally courteous; but in
the midst of all the interest of these greetings, soon after entering
the city at Bishopsgate, the clerk caused the two Scottish sisters to
draw up at an arched gateway in a solid-looking wall, saying that it was
here that my Lord Cardinal wished his royal kinswomen to be received, at
the Priory of St. Helen’s. A hooded lay-sister looked out at a wicket,
and on his speaking to her, proceeded to unbar the great gates, while
the Duke of York took leave in a more than kindly manner, declaring that
they would meet again, and that he knew ‘My Lady of St. Helen’s would
make them good cheer.’

Indeed, he himself and the King of Wight rode into the outer court, and
lifted the two ladies down from horseback, at the inner gate, beyond
which they might not go. Jean, crossed now for the first time since she
had left home, was in tears of vexation, and could hardly control her
voice to respond to his words, muttering--

‘As if I looked for this. Beshrew the old priest!’

None but female attendants could be admitted. Sir Patrick, with his sons
and the rest of the train, was to be lodged at the great palace of the
Bishop of Winchester at Southwark, and as he came up to take leave of
Jean, she said, with a stamp of her foot and a clench of her hand--

‘Let my uncle know that I am no cloister-bird to be mewed up here. I
demand to be with the friends I have made, and who have bidden me.’

Shrewd Sir Patrick smiled a little as he said--

‘I will tell the Lord Cardinal what you say, lady; but methinks you will
find that submission to him with a good grace carries you farther here
than does ill-humour.’

He said something of the same kind to his wife as he took leave of
her, well knowing who were predominant with the King, and who were in
opposition, the only link being the King of Wight, or rather Earl of
Warwick, who, as the son of Henry’s guardian, had been bred up in the
closest intimacy with the monarch, and, indeed, had been invested with
his fantastic sovereignty that he might be treated as a brother and on
an equality.

Jean, however, remained very angry and discontented. After her neglected
and oppressed younger days, the courtesy and admiration she had received
for the last ten days had the effect of making her like a spoilt child;
and when they entered the inner cloistered court within, and were met by
the Lady Prioress, at the head of all her sisters in black dresses, she
hardly vouchsafed an inclination of the head in reply to the graceful
and courtly welcome with which the princesses, nieces to the great
Cardinal, were received. Eleanor, usually in the background, was left in
surprise and confusion to stammer out thanks in broad Scotch, seconded
by Lady Drummond, who could make herself far more intelligible to these
south-country ears.

There was a beautiful cloister, a double walk with clustered columns
running down the centre and a vaulted roof, and with a fountain in the
midst of the quadrangle. There was a chapel on one side, the buildings
of the Priory on the others. It was only a Priory, for the parent Abbey
was in the country; but the Prioress was a noble lady of the house of
Stafford, a small personage as to stature, but thoroughly alert and
business-like, and, in fact, the moving spring, not only of the actual
house, but of the parent Abbey, manager of the property it possessed in
the city, and of all its monastic politics.

Without apparent offence, she observed that no doubt the ladies were
weary, and that Sister Mabel should conduct them to the guest-chamber.
Accordingly one of the black figures led the way, and as soon as
they were beyond ear-shot there were observations that would not have
gratified Jean.

‘The ill-nurtured Scots!’ cried one young nun. ‘’Tis ever the way with
them,’ returned a much older one. ‘I mind when one was captive in my
father’s castle who was a mere clown, and drank up the water that was
meant to wash his fingers after meat. The guest-chamber will need a
cleaning after they are gone!’

‘Methinks it was less lack of manners than lack of temper,’ said the
Prioress. ‘She hath the Beaufort face and the Beaufort spirit.’

The chapel bell began to ring, and the black veils and white filed in
long procession to the pointed doorway, while the two Scottish damsels,
with Lady Drummond, her daughter, and Christie, were conducted to three
chambers looking out on the one side on the cloistered court, on the
other over a choicely-kept garden, walled in, but planted with trees
shading the turf walks. The rooms were, as Sister Mabel explained with
some complacency, reserved for the lodging of the noble ladies who came
to London as guests of my Lord Cardinal, or with petitions to the King;
and certainly there was nothing of asceticism about them; but they were
an advance even on those at Fotheringay. St. Helena discovering the
Cross was carved over the ample chimney, and the hangings were of
Spanish leather, with all the wondrous history of Santiago’s relics,
including the miracle of the cock and hen, embossed and gilt upon them.
There was a Venetian mirror, in which the ladies saw more of themselves
than they had ever done before, and with exquisite work around; there
were carved chests inlaid with ivory, and cushions, perfect marvels of
needlework, as were the curtains and coverlets of the mighty bed, and
the screens to be arranged for privacy. There were toilette vessels of
beautifully shaped and brightly polished brass, and on a silver salver
was a refection of manchet bread, comfits, dried cherries, and wine.

Sister Mabel explained that a lay-sister would be at hand, in case
anything was needed by the noble ladies, and then hurried away to
vespers.

Jean threw herself upon the cross-legged chair that stood nearest.

‘A nunnery forsooth! Does our uncle trow that is what I came here for?
We have had enow of nunneries at home.’

‘Oh, fie for shame, Jeanie!’ cried Eleanor.

‘’Twas thou that saidst it,’ returned Jean. ‘Thou saidst thou hadst no
call to the veil, and gin my Lord trows that we shall thole to be shut
up here, he will find himself in the wrong.’

‘Lassie, lassie,’ exclaimed Lady Drummond, ‘what ails ye? This is but a
lodging, and sic a braw chamber as ye hae scarce seen before. Would you
have your uncle lodge ye among all his priests and clerks? Scarce the
place for douce maidens, I trow.’

‘Leddy of Glenuskie, ye’re not sae sib to the bluid royal of Scotland as
to speak thus! Lassie indeed!’

Again Eleanor remonstrated. ‘Jeanie, to speak thus to our gude
kinswoman!’

‘I would have all about me ken their place, and what fits them,’ said
the haughty young lady, partly out of ill-temper and disappointment,
partly in imitation of the demeanour of Duchess Cicely. ‘As to the
Cardinal, I would have him bear in mind that we are a king’s own
daughters, and he is at best but the grandson of a king! And if he deems
that he has a right to shut us up here out of sight of the King and
his court, lest we should cross his rule over his King and disturb his
French policy and craft, there are those that will gar him ken better!’

‘Some one else will ken better,’ quietly observed Dame Lilias. ‘Gin ye
be no clean daft, Leddy Joanna, since naething else will serve ye, canna
ye see that to strive with the Cardinal is the worst gait to win his
favour with the King, gin that be what ye be set upon?’

‘There be others that can deal with the King, forbye the Cardinal,’ said
Jean, tossing her head.

Just then arrived a sister, sent by the Mother Prioress, to invite the
ladies to supper in her own apartments.

Her respectful manner so far pacified Jean’s ill-humour that a civil
reply was returned; the young ladies bestirred themselves to make
preparations, though Jean grumbled at the trouble for ‘a pack of
womenfolk’--and supposed they were to make a meal of dried peas and red
herrings, like their last on Lammermuir.

It was a surprise to be conducted, not to the refectory, where all the
nuns took their meal together, but to a small room opening into the
cloister on one side, and with a window embowered in vines on the other,
looking into the garden. It was by no means bare, like the typical cells
of strict convents. The Mother, Margaret Stafford, was a great lady, and
the Benedictines of the old foundation of St. Helen’s in the midst of
the capital were indeed respectable and respected, but very far from
strict observers of their rule--and St. Helen’s was so much influenced
by the wealth and display of the city that the nuns, many of whom were
these great merchants’ daughters, would have been surprised to be told
that they had departed from Benedictine simplicity. So the Prioress’s
chamber was tapestried above with St. Helena’s life, and below was
enclosed with drapery panels. It was strewed with sweet fresh rushes,
and had three cross-legged chairs, besides several stools; the table, as
usual upon trestles, was provided with delicate napery, and there was a
dainty perfume about the whole; a beautiful crucifix of ivory and ebony,
with images of Our Lady and St. John on either side, and another figure
of St. Helena, cross in hand, presiding over the holy water stoup, were
the most ecclesiastical things in the garniture, except the exquisitely
illuminated breviary that lay open upon a desk.

Mother Margaret rose to receive her guests with as much dignity as
Jean herself could have shown, and made them welcome to her poor house,
hoping that they would there find things to their mind.

Something restrained Jean from bursting out with her petulant complaint,
and it was Eleanor who replied with warm thanks. ‘My Lord Cardinal
would come to visit them on the morn,’ the Prioress said; ‘and in the
meantime, she hoped,’ looking at Jean, ‘they would condescend to the
hospitality of the poor daughters of St. Helen.’

The hospitality, as brought in by two plump, well-fed lay-sisters,
consisted of ‘chickens in cretyne,’ stewed in milk, seasoned with sugar,
coloured with saffron, of potage of oysters, butter of almond-milk,
and other delicate meats, such as had certainly never been tasted at
Stirling or Dunbar. Lady Drummond’s birth entitled her and Annis to
sit at table with the Princesses and the Prioress, and she ventured to
inquire after Esclairmonde de Luxembourg, or, as she was now called,
Sister Clare of St. Katharine’s.

‘I see her at times. She is the head of the sisters,’ said the Prioress;
‘but we have few dealings with uncloistered sisters.’

‘They do a holy work,’ observed Lady Lilias.

‘None ever blamed the Benedictines for lack of alms-deeds,’ returned the
Prioress haughtily, scarcely attending to the guest’s disclaimer. ‘Nor
do I deem it befitting that instead of the poor coming to us our sisters
should run about to all the foulest hovels of the Docks, encountering
men continually, and those of the rudest sort.’

‘Yet there are calls and vocations for all,’ ventured Lady Drummond.
‘And the sick are brethren in need.’

‘Let them send to us for succour then,’ answered Mother Margaret. ‘I
grant that it is well that some one should tend them in their huts, but
such tasks are for sisters of low birth and breeding. Mine are ladies of
noble rank, though I do admit daughters of Lord Mayors and Aldermen.’

‘Our Saint Margaret was a queen, Reverend Mother,’ put in Eleanor.

‘She was no nun, saving your Grace,’ said the Prioress. ‘What I speak of
is that which beseems a daughter of St. Bennet, of an ancient and royal
foundation! The saving of the soul is so much harder to the worldly
life, specially to a queen, that it is no marvel if she has to abase
herself more--even to the washing of lepers--than is needful to a vowed
and cloistered sister.’

It was an odd theory, that this Benedictine seclusion saved trouble,
as being actually the strait course; but the young maidens were not
scholars enough to question it, and Dame Lilias, though she had learnt
more from her brother and her friend, would have deemed it presumptuous
to dispute with a Reverend Mother. So only Eleanor murmured, ‘The holy
Margaret no saint’--and Jean, ‘Weel, I had liefer take my chance.’

‘All have not a vocation,’ piously said the Mother. ‘Taste this Rose
Dalmoyne, Madame; our lay-sister Mold is famed for making it. An
alderman of the Fishmongers’ Company sent to beg that his cook might
know the secret, but that was not to be lightly parted with, so we only
send them a dish for their banquets.’

Rose Dalmoyne was chiefly of peas, flavoured with almonds and milk, but
the guests grew weary of the varieties of delicacies, and were very glad
when the tables were removed, and Eleanor asked permission to look at
the illuminations in the breviary on the desk.

And exquisite they were. The book had been brought from Italy and
presented to the Prioress by a merchant who wished to place his daughter
in St. Helen’s, and the beauty was unspeakable. There were natural
flowers painted so perfectly that the scattered violets seemed to invite
the hand to lift them up from their gold-besprinkled bed, and flies and
beetles that Eleanor actually attempted to drive away; and at all the
greater holy days, the type and the antitype covering the two whole
opposite pages were represented in the admirable art and pure colouring
of the early Cinquecento.

Eleanor and Annis were entranced, and the Prioress, seeing that books
had an attraction for her younger guest, promised her on the morrow a
sight of some of the metrical lives of the saints, especially of St.
Katharine and of St. Cecilia. It must be owned that Jean was not fretted
as she expected by chapel bells in the middle of the night, nor was
even Lady Drummond summoned by them as she intended, but there was a
conglomeration of the night services in the morning, with beautiful
singing, that delighted Eleanor, and the festival mass ensuing was also
more ornate than anything to be seen in Scotland. And that the extensive
almsgiving had not been a vain boast was evident from the swarms of poor
of all kinds who congregated in the outer court for the attention of
the Sisters Almoner and Infirmarer, attended by two or three novices and
some lay-sisters.

There were genuine poor, ragged forlorn women, and barefooted, almost
naked children, and also sturdy beggars, pilgrims and palmers on their
way to various shrines, north or south, and many more for whom a dole of
broth or bread sufficed; but there were also others with heads or limbs
tied up, sometimes injured in the many street fights, but oftener with
the terrible sores only too common from the squalid habits and want of
vegetable diet of the poor. These were all attended to with a tenderness
and patience that spoke well for the charity of Sister Anne and her
assistants, and indeed before long Dame Lilias perceived that, however
slack and easy-going the general habits might be, there were truly meek
and saintly women among the sisterhood.

The morning was not far advanced before a lay-sister came hurrying in
from the portress’s wicket to announce that my Lord Cardinal was on his
way to visit the ladies of Scotland. There was great commotion. Mother
Margaret summoned all her nuns and drew them up in state, and Sister
Mabel, who carried the tidings to the guests, asked whether they would
not join in receiving him.

‘We are king’s daughters,’ said Jean haughtily.

‘But he is a Prince of the Church and an aged man,’ said Lady Drummond,
who had already risen, and was adjusting that headgear of Eleanor’s that
never would stay in its place. And her matronly voice acted upon Jean,
so as to conquer the petulant pride, enough to make her remember that
the Lady of Glenuskie was herself a Stewart and king’s grandchild, and
moreover knew more of courts and their habits than herself.

So down they went together, in time to join the Prioress on the steps,
as the attendants of the great stately, princely Cardinal Bishop began
to appear. He did not come in state, so that he had only half a dozen
clerks and as many gentlemen in attendance, together with Sir Patrick
and his two sons.

Few of the Plantagenet family had been long-lived, and Cardinal Beaufort
was almost a marvel in the family at seventy. Much evil has been said
and written of him, and there is no doubt that he was one of those
mediaeval prelates who ought to have been warriors or statesmen, and
that he had been no model for the Episcopacy in his youth. But though
far from having been a saint, it would seem that his unpopularity in his
old age was chiefly incurred by his desire to put an end to the long and
miserable war with France, and by his opposition to a much worse man,
the Duke of Gloucester, whose plausible murmurs and amiable manners
made him a general favourite. At this period of his life the old man had
lived past his political ambitions, and his chief desire was to leave
the gentle young king freed from the wasting war by a permanent peace,
to be secured by a marriage with a near connection of the French
monarch, and daughter to the most honourable and accomplished Prince in
Europe. That his measures turned out wretchedly has been charged upon
his memory, and he has been supposed guilty of a murder, of which he was
certainly innocent, and which probably was no murder at all.

He had become a very grand and venerable old man, when old men were
scarce, and his white hair and beard (a survival of the customs of the
days of Edward III) contrasted well with his scarlet hat and cape, as he
came slowly into the cloistered court on his large sober-paced Spanish
mule; a knight and the chaplain of the convent assisted him from it, and
the whole troop of the convent knelt as he lifted his fingers to bestow
his blessing, Jean casting a quick glance around to satisfy her proud
spirit. The Prioress then kissed his hand, but he raised and kissed
the cheeks of his two grand-nieces, after which he moved on to the
Prioress’s chamber, and there, after being installed in her large chair,
and waving to the four favoured inmates to be also seated, he looked
critically at the two sisters, and observed, ‘So, maidens! one favours
the mother, the other the father! Poor Joan, it is two-and-twenty years
since we bade her good-speed, she and her young king--who behoved to
be a minstrel--on her way to her kingdom, as if it were the land of
Cockayne, for picking up gold and silver. Little of that she found, I
trow, poor wench. Alack! it was a sore life we sent her to. And you are
mourning her freshly, my maidens! I trust she died at peace with God and
man.’

‘That reiver, Patrick Hepburn, let the priest from Haddington come to
assoilzie and housel her,’ responded Jean.

‘Ah! Masses shall be said for her by my bedesmen at St. Cross, and at
all my churches,’ said the Cardinal, crossing himself. ‘And you are on
your way to your sister, the Dolfine, as your knight tells me. It is
well. You may be worthily wedded in France, and I will take order for
your safe going. Meantime, this is a house where you may well serve
your poor mother’s soul by prayers and masses, and likewise perfect
yourselves in French.’

This was not at all what Jean had intended, and she pouted a little,
while the Cardinal asked, changing his language, ‘Ces donzelles, ont
elles appris le Francais?’

Jean, who had tried to let Father Romuald teach her a little in
conversation during the first part of the journey, but who had dropped
the notion since other ideas had been inspired at Fotheringay, could not
understand, and pouted the more; but Eleanor, who had been interested,
and tried more in earnest, for Margaret’s sake, answered diffidently and
blushing deeply, ‘Un petit peu, beau Sire Oncle.’

He smiled, and said, ‘You can be well instructed here. The Reverend
Mother hath sisters here who can both speak and write French of Paris.’

‘That have I truly, my good Lord,’ replied the Prioress. ‘Sisters Isabel
and Beata spent their younger days, the one at Rouen, the other at
Bordeaux, and have learned many young ladies in the true speaking of the
French tongue.’

‘It is well!’ said the Cardinal, ‘my fair nieces will have good leisure.
While sharing the orisons that I will institute for the repose of your
mother, you can also be taught the French.’

Jean could not help speaking now, so far was this from all her hopes.
‘Sir, sir, the Duke and Duchess of York, and the Countess of Salisbury,
and the Queen of the Isle of Wight all bade us to be their guests.’

‘They could haply not have been aware of your dool,’ said the Cardinal
gravely.

‘But, my Lord, our mother hath been dead since before Martinmas,’
exclaimed Jean.

‘I know not what customs of dool be thought befitting in a land like
Scotland,’ said the Cardinal, in such a repressive manner that Jean
was only withheld by awe from bursting into tears of disappointment and
anger at the slight to her country.

Lady Drummond ventured to speak. ‘Alack, my Lord,’ she said, ‘my poor
Queen died in the hands of a freebooter, leaving her daughters in such
stress and peril that they had woe enough for themselves, till their
brother the King came to their rescue.’

‘The more need that they should fulfil all that may be done for the
grace of her soul,’ replied the uncle; but just at this crisis of
Jean’s mortification there was a knocking at the door, and a sister
breathlessly entreated--

‘Pardon! Merci! My Lord, my Lady Mother! Here’s the King, the King
himself--and the King and Queen of the Isle of Wight asking licence to
enter to visit the ladies of Scotland.’

Kings were always held to be free to enter anywhere, even far more
dangerous monarchs than the pious Henry VI. Jean’s heart bounded up
again, with a sense of exultation over the old uncle, as the Prioress
went out to receive her new guest, and the Cardinal emitted a sort of
grunting sigh, without troubling himself to go out to meet the youth,
whom he had governed from babyhood, and in whose own name he had, as
one of the council, given permission for wholesome chastisements of the
royal person.

King Henry entered. He was then twenty-four years old, tall, graceful,
and with beautiful features and complexion, almost feminine in their
delicacy, and with a wonderful purity and sweetness in the expression
of the mouth and blue eyes, so that he struck Eleanor as resembling the
angels in the illuminations that she had been studying, as he removed
his dark green velvet jewelled cap on entering, and gave a cousinly,
respectful kiss lightly to each of the young ladies on her cheek,
somewhat as if he were afraid of them. Then after greeting the Cardinal,
who had risen on his entrance, he said that, hearing that his fair
cousins were arrived, he had come to welcome them, and to entreat them
to let him do them such honour as was possible in a court without a
queen.

‘The which lack will soon be remedied,’ put in his grand-uncle.

‘Truly you are in holy keeping here,’ said the pious young King,
crossing himself, ‘but I trust, my sweet cousins, that you will favour
my poor house at Westminster with your presence at a supper, and share
such entertainment as is in our power to provide.’

‘My nieces are keeping their mourning for their mother, from which they
have hitherto been hindered by the tumults of their kingdom,’ said the
Cardinal.

‘Ah!’ said the King, crossing himself, and instantly moved, ‘far be it
from me to break into their holy retirement for such a purpose.’ (Jean
could have bitten the Cardinal.) ‘But I will take order with my Lord
Abbot of Westminster for a grand requiem mass for the good Queen Joanna,
at which they will, I trust, be present, and they will honour my poor
table afterwards.’

To refuse this was quite impossible, and the day was to be fixed after
reference to the Abbess. Meantime the King’s eye was caught by the
illuminated breviary. He was a connoisseur in such arts, and eagerly
stood up to look at it as it lay on the desk. Eleanor could not but come
and direct him to the pages with which she had been most delighted. She
found him looking at Jacob’s dream on the one side, the Ascension on the
other.

‘How marvellous it is!’ she said. ‘It is like the very light from the
sky!’

‘Light from heaven,’ said the King; ‘Jacob has found it among the
stones. Wandering and homelessness are his first step in the ladder to
heaven!’

‘Ah, sir, did you say that to comfort and hearten us?’ said Eleanor.

There was a strange look in the startled blue eyes that met hers. ‘Nay,
truly, lady, I presumed not so far! I was but wondering whether those
who are born to have all the world are in the way of the stair to
heaven.’

Meantime the King of Wight had made his request for the presence of
the ladies at a supper at Warwick House, and Jean, clasping her hands,
implored her uncle to consent.

‘I am sure our mother cannot be the better for our being thus mewed up,’
she cried, ‘and I’ll rise at prime, and tell my beads for her.’

She looked so pretty and imploring that the old man’s heart was melted,
all the more that the King was paying more attention to the book and the
far less beautiful Eleanor, than to her and the invitation was accepted.

The convent bell rang for nones, and the King joined the devotions of
the nuns, though he was not admitted within the choir; and just as
these were over, the Countess of Salisbury arrived to take the Lady of
Glenuskie to see their old friend, the Mother Clare at St. Katharine’s,
bringing a sober palfrey for her conveyance.

‘A holy woman, full of alms-deeds,’ said the King. ‘The lady is happy in
her friendship.’

Which words were worth much to Lady Drummond, for the Prioress sent a
lay-sister to invite Mother Clare to a refection at the convent.




CHAPTER 5. THE MEEK USURPER


     ‘Henry, thou of holy birth,
      Thou to whom thy Windsor gave
      Nativity and name and grave!
      Heavily upon his head
      Ancestral crimes were visited.’--SOUTHEY.


It suits not with the main thread of our story to tell of the happy and
peaceful meetings between the Lady of Glenuskie and her old friend, who
had given up almost princely rank and honour to become the servant
of the poor and suffering strangers at the wharves of London. To Dame
Lilias, Mother Clare’s quiet cell at St. Katharine’s was a blessed haven
of rest, peace, and charity, such as was neither the guest-chamber nor
the Prioress’s parlour at St. Helen’s, with all the distractions of
the princesses’ visitors and invitations, and with the Lady Joanna
continually pulling against the authority that the Cardinal, her uncle,
was exerting over his nieces.

His object evidently was to keep them back, firstly, from the York
party, and secondly, from the King, under pretext of their mourning for
their mother; and in this he might have succeeded but for the interest
in them that had been aroused in Henry by his companion, namesake, and
almost brother, the King of Wight. The King came or sent each day to St.
Helen’s to arrange about the requiem at Westminster, and when their late
travelling companions invited the young ladies to dinner or to supper
expressly to meet the King and the Cardinal--not in state, but at
what would be now called a family party--Beaufort had no excuse for a
refusal, such as he could not give without dire offence. And, indeed, he
was even then obliged to yield to the general voice, and, recalling his
own nephew from Normandy, send the Duke of York to defend the remnant of
the English conquests.

He could only insist that the requiem should be the first occasion of
the young ladies going out of the convent; but they had so many visitors
there that they had not much cause for murmuring, and the French
instructions of Sister Beata did not amount to much, even with Eleanor,
while Jean loudly protested that she was not going to school.

The great day of the requiem came at last. The Cardinal had, through
Sir Patrick Drummond and the Lady, provided handsome robes of black and
purple for his nieces, and likewise palfreys for their conveyance to
Westminster; and made it understood that unless Lady Joanna submitted to
be completely veiled he should send a closed litter.

‘The doited auld carle!’ she cried, as she unwillingly hooded and veiled
herself. ‘One would think we were basilisks to slay the good folk of
London with our eyes.’

The Drummond following, with fresh thyme sprays, beginning to turn
brown, were drawn up in the outer court, all with black scarves across
the breast--George Douglas among them, of course--and they presently
united with the long train of clerks who belonged to the household of
the Cardinal of Winchester. Jean managed her veil so as to get more than
one peep at the throng in the streets through which they passed, so as
to see and to be seen; and she was disappointed that no acclamations
greeted the fair face thus displayed by fits. She did not understand
English politics enough to know that a Beaufort face and Beaufort train
were the last things the London crowd was likely to applaud. They had
not forgotten the penance of the popular Duke Humfrey’s wife, which,
justly or unjustly, was imputed to the Cardinal and his nephews of
Somerset.

But the King, in robes of purple and black, came to assist her from her
palfrey before the beautiful entry of the Abbey Church, and led her up
the nave to the desks prepared around what was then termed ‘a herce,’
but which would now be called a catafalque, an erection supposed to
contain the body, and adorned with the lozenges of the arms of Scotland
and Beaufort, and of the Stewart, in honour of the Black Knight of Lorn.

The Cardinal was present, but the Abbot of Westminster celebrated. All
was exceedingly solemn and beautiful, in a far different style from the
maimed rites that had been bestowed upon poor Queen Joanna in Scotland.
The young King’s face was more angelic than ever, and as psalm and
supplication, dirge and hymn arose, chanted by the full choir, speaking
of eternal peace, Eleanor bowed her head under her veil, as her bosom
swelled with a strange yearning longing, not exactly grief, and large
tears dropped from her eyes as she thought less of her mother than of
her noble-hearted father; and the words came back to her in which Father
Malcolm Stewart, in his own bitter grief, had told the desolate children
to remember that their father was waiting for them in Paradise. Even
Jean was so touched by the music and carried out of herself that she
forgot the spectators, forgot the effect she was to produce, forgot her
struggle with her uncle, and sobbed and wept with all her heart, perhaps
with the more abandon because she, like all the rest, was fasting.

With much reverence for her emotion, the King, when the service was
over, led her out of the church to the adjoining palace, where the Queen
of Wight and the Countess of Suffolk, a kinswoman through the mother
of the Beauforts, conducted the ladies to unveil themselves before they
were to join the noontide refection with the King.

There was no great state about it, spread, as it was, not in the great
hall, but in the richly-tapestried room called Paradise. The King’s
manner was most gently and sweetly courteous to both sisters. His three
little orphan half-brothers, the Tudors, were at table; and his kind
care to send them dainties, and the look with which he repressed an
unseasonable attempt of Jasper’s to play with the dogs, and Edmund’s
roughness with little Owen, reminded the sisters of Mary with ‘her
weans,’ and they began to speak of them when the meal was over, while
he showed them his chief treasures, his books. There was St. Augustine’s
City of God, exquisitely copied; there was the History of St. Louis, by
the bon Sire de Joinville; there were Sir John Froissart’s Chronicles,
the same that the good Canon had presented to King Richard of Bordeaux.

Jean cast a careless glance at the illuminations, and exclaimed at Queen
Isabel’s high headgear and her becloaked greyhound. Eleanor looked and
longed, and sighed that she could not read the French, and only a very
little of the Latin.

‘This you can read,’ said Henry, producing the Canterbury Tales; ‘the
fair minstrelsy of my Lady of Suffolk’s grandsire.’

Eleanor was enchanted. Here were the lines the King of Wight had
repeated to her, and she was soon eagerly listening as Henry read to her
the story of ‘Patient Grisell.’

‘Ah! but is it well thus tamely to submit?’ she asked.

‘Patience is the armour and conquest of the godly,’ said Henry, quoting
a saying that was to serve ‘the meek usurper’ well in after-times.

‘May not patience go too far?’ said Eleanor.

‘In this world, mayhap,’ said he; ‘scarcely so in that which is to
come.’

‘I would not be the King’s bride to hear him say so,’ laughed the Lady
of Suffolk. ‘Shall I tell her, my lord, that this is your Grace’s ladder
to carry her to heaven?’

Henry blushed like a girl, and said that he trusted never to be so
lacking in courtesy as the knight; and the King of Wight, wishing to
change the subject, mentioned that the Lady Eleanor had sung or said
certain choice ballads, and Henry eagerly entreated for one. It was the
pathetic ‘Wife of Usher’s Well’ that Eleanor chose, with the three sons
whose hats were wreathen with the birk that


                  ‘Neither grew in dyke nor ditch,
                   Nor yet in any shaugh,
                   But at the gates of Paradise
                   That birk grew fair eneugh.’


Henry was greatly delighted with the verse, and entreated her, if it
were not tedious, to repeat it over again.

In return he promised to lend her some of the translations from the
Latin of Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, and sent them, wrapped in a silken
neckerchief, by the hands of one of his servants to the convent.

‘Was that a token?’ anxiously asked young Douglas, riding up to David
Drummond, as they got into order to ride back to Winchester House, after
escorting the ladies to St. Helen’s.

‘Token, no; ‘tis a book for Lady Elleen. Never fash yourself, man; the
King, so far as I might judge, is far more taken with Elleen than ever
he is with Jean. He seems but a bookish sort of bodie of Malcolm’s
sort.’

‘My certie, an’ that be sae, we may look to winning back Roxburgh and
Berwick!’ returned the Douglas, his eye flashing. ‘He’s welcome to Lady
Elleen! But that ane should look at her in presence of her sister! He
maun be mair of a monk than a man!’

Such was, in truth, Jean’s own opinion when she flounced into her
chamber at the Priory and turned upon her sister.

‘Weel, Elleen, and I hope ye’ve had your will, and are a bit shamed,
taking up his Grace so that none by yersell could get in a word wi’
him.’

‘Deed, Jeanie, I could not help it; if he would ask me about our
ballants and buiks, that ye would never lay your mind to--’

‘Ballants and buiks! Bonnie gear for a king that should be thinking of
spears and jacks, lances and honours. Ye’re welcome to him, Elleen, sin
ye choose to busk your cockernnonny at ane that’s as good as wedded!
I’ll never have the man who’s wanting the strick of carle hemp in the
making of him!’

Eleanor burst into tears and pleaded that she was incapable of any such
intentions towards a man who was truly as good as married. She declared
that she had only replied as courtesy required, and that she would
not have her harp taken to Warwick House the next day, as she had been
requested to do.

Dame Lilias here interposed. With a certain conviction that Jean’s
dislike to the King was chiefly because the grapes were sour, she
declared that Lady Elleen had by no means gone beyond the demeanour of
a douce maiden, and that the King had only shown due attention to guests
of his own rank, and who were nearly of his own age. In fact, she said,
it might be his caution and loyalty to his espoused lady that made him
avoid distinguishing the fairest.

It was not complimentary to Eleanor, but Jean’s superior beauty was
as much an established fact as her age, and she was pacified in some
degree, agreeing with the Lady of Glenuskie that Eleanor was bound to
take her harp the next day.

Warwick House was a really magnificent place, its courts, gardens,
and offices covering much of the ground that still bears the name in the
City, and though the establishment was not quite as extensive as it
became a few years later, when Richard Nevil had succeeded his
brother-in-law, it was already on a magnificent scale.

All the party who had travelled together from Fotheringay were present,
besides the King, young Edmund and Jasper Tudor, and the Earl and
Countess of Suffolk; and the banquet, though not a state one, nor
encumbered with pageants and subtilties, was even more refined and
elegant than that at Westminster, showing, as all agreed, the hand of a
mistress of the household. The King’s taste had been consulted, for in
the gallery were the children of St. Paul’s choir and of the chapel of
the household, who sang hymns with sweet trained voices. Afterwards, on
the beautiful October afternoon, there was walking in the garden, where
Edmund and Jasper played with little Lady Anne Beauchamp, and again King
Henry sought out Eleanor, and they had an enjoyable discussion of the
Tale of Troie, which he had lent her, as they walked along the garden
paths. Then she showed him her cousin Malcolm, and told of Bishop
Kennedy and the schemes for St. Andrews, and he in return described
Winchester College, and spoke of his wish to have such another
foundation as Wykeham’s under his own eye near Windsor, to train up the
godly clergy, whom he saw to be the great need and lack of the Church at
that day.

By and by, on going in from the garden, the King and Eleanor found that
a tall, gray-haired gentleman, richly but darkly clad, had entered the
hall. He had been welcomed by the young King and Queen of Wight, who had
introduced Jean to him. ‘My uncle of Gloucester,’ said the King, aside.
‘It is the first time he has come among us since the unhappy affair of
his wife. Let me present you to him.’

Going forward, as the Duke rose to meet him, Henry bent his knee
and asked his fatherly blessing, then introduced the Lady Eleanor of
Scotland--‘who knows all lays and songs, and loves letters, as you told
me her blessed father did, my fair uncle,’ he said, with sparkling eyes.

Duke Humfrey looked well pleased as he greeted her. ‘Ever the scholar,
Nevoy Hal,’ he said, as if marvelling at the preference above the
beauty, ‘but each man knows his own mind. So best.’ Eleanor’s heart
began to beat high! What did this bode? Was this King fully pledged? She
had to fulfil her promise of singing and playing to the King, which she
did very sweetly, some of the pathetic airs of her country, which reach
back much farther than the songs with which they have in later times
been associated. The King thoroughly enjoyed the music, and the Duke of
York came and paid her several compliments, begging for the song she had
once begun at Fotheringay. Eleanor began--not perhaps so willingly as
before. Strangely, as she sang--

             ‘Owre muckle blinking blindeth the ee, lass,
              Owre muckle thinking changeth the mind,’--

her face and voice altered. Something of the same mist of tears and
blood seemed to rise before her eyes as before--enfolding all around.
Such a winding-sheet which had before enwrapt the King of Wight, she
saw it again--nay, on the Duke of Gloucester there was such another,
mounting--mounting to his neck. The face of Henry himself grew dim
and ghastly white, like that of a marble saint. She kept herself from
screaming, but her voice broke down, and she gave a choking sob.

King Henry’s arm was the first to support her, though she shuddered as
he touched her, calling for essences, and lamenting that they had asked
too much of her in begging her to sing what so reminded her of her home
and parents.

‘She hath been thus before. It was that song,’ said Jean, and the Lady
of Glenuskie coming up at the same time confirmed the idea, and declined
all help except to take her back to the Priory. The litter that had
brought the Countess of Salisbury was at the door, and Henry would not
be denied the leading her to it. She was recovering herself, and could
see the extreme sweetness and solicitude of his face, and feel that she
had never before leant on so kind and tender a supporting arm, since
she had sat on her father’s knee. ‘Ah! sir, you mind me of my blessed
father,’ she said.

‘Your father was a holy man, and died well-nigh a martyr’s death,’ said
Henry. ‘’Tis an honour I thank you for to even me to him--such as I am.’

‘Oh, sir! the saints guard you from such a fate,’ she said, trembling.

‘Was it so sad a fate--to die for the good he could not work in his
life?’ said Henry.

 They had reached the arch into the court.  A crowd was round
them, and no more could be said. Henry kissed Eleanor’s hand, as he
assisted her into the litter, and she was shut in between the curtains,
alone, for it only held one person. There was a strange tumult of
feeling. She seemed lifted into a higher region, as if she had been in
contact with an angel of purity, and yet there was that strange sense of
awful fate all round, as if Henry were nearer being the martyr than the
angel. And was she to share that fate? The generous young soul seemed
to spring forward with the thought that, come what might, it would be
hallowed and sweetened with such as he! Yet withal there was a sense of
longing to protect and shield him.

As usual, she had soon quite recovered, but Jean pronounced it ‘one of
Elleen’s megrims--as if she were a Hielander to have second sight.’

‘But,’ said the young lady, ‘it takes no second sight to spae ill to
yonder King. He is not one whose hand will keep his head, and there are
those who say that he had best look to his crown, for he hath no more
right thereto than I have to be Queen of France!’

‘Fie, Jean, that’s treason.’

‘I’m none of his, nor ever will be! I have too much spirit for a gudeman
who cares for nothing but singing his psalter like a friar.’

Jean was even more of that opinion when, the next day, at York House,
only Edmund and Jasper Tudor appeared with their brother’s excuses.
He had been obliged to give audience to a messenger from the Emperor.
‘Moreover,’ added Edmund disconsolately, ‘to-morrow he is going to St.
Albans for a week’s penitence. Harry is always doing penance, I cannot
think what for. He never eats marchpane in church--nor rolls balls
there.’

‘I know,’ said Jasper sagely. ‘I heard the Lord Cardinal rating him for
being false to his betrothed--that’s the Lady Margaret, you know.’

‘Ha!’ said the Duke of York, before whom the two little boys were
standing. ‘How was that, my little man?’

‘Hush, Jasper,’ said Edmund; ‘you do not know.’

‘But I do, Edmund; I was in the window all the time. Harry said he did
not know it, he only meant all courtesy; and then the Lord Cardinal
asked him if he called it loyalty to his betrothed to be playing the
fool with the Scottish wench. And then Harry stared--like thee, Ned,
when thy bolt had hit the Lady of Suffolk: and my Lord went on to say
that it was perilous to play the fool with a king’s sister, and his own
niece. Then, for all that Harry is a king and a man grown, he wept like
Owen, only not loud, and he went down on his knees, and he cried, “Mea
peccata, mea peccata, mea infirmitas,” just as he taught me to do at
confession. And then he said he would do whatever the Lord Cardinal
thought fit, and go and do penance at St. Albans, if he pleased, and not
see the lady that sings any more.’

‘And I say,’ exclaimed Edmund, ‘what’s the good of being a king and a
man, if one is to be rated like a babe?’

‘So say I, my little man,’ returned the Duke, patting him on the head,
then adding to his own two boys, ‘Take your cousins and play ball with
them, or spin tops, or whatever may please them.’

‘There is the king we have,’ quoth Richard Nevil ‘to be at the beck of
any misproud priest, and bewail with tears a moment’s following of his
own will, like other men.’

Most of the company felt such misplaced penitence and submission, as
they deemed it, beneath contempt; but while Eleanor had pride enough to
hold up her head so that no one might suppose her to be disappointed,
she felt a strange awe of the conscientiousness that repented when
others would only have felt resentment--relief, perhaps, at not again
coming into contact with one so unlike other men as almost to alarm her.

Jean tossed up her head, and declared that her brother knew better than
to let any bishop put him into leading-strings. By and by there was a
great outcry among the children, and Edmund Tudor and Edward of York
were fighting like a pair of mastiff-puppies because Edward had laughed
at King Harry for minding what an old shaveling said. Edward, though the
younger, was much the stronger, and was decidedly getting the best of
it, when he was dragged off and sent into seclusion with his tutor for
misbehaviour to his guest.

No one was amazed when the next day the Cardinal arrived, and told his
grand-nieces and the Lady of Glenuskie that he had arranged that they
should go forward under the escort of the Earl and Countess of Suffolk,
who were to start immediately for Nanci, there to espouse and bring home
the King’s bride, the Lady Margaret. There was reason to think that the
French Royal Family would be present on the occasion, as the Queen of
France was sister to King Rene of Sicily and Jerusalem, and thus the
opportunity of joining their sister was not to be missed by the two
Scottish maidens. The Cardinal added that he had undertaken, and made
Sir Patrick Drummond understand, that he would be at all charges for
his nieces, and further said that merchants with women’s gear would
presently be sent in, when they were to fit themselves out as befitted
their rank for appearance at the wedding. At a sign from him a large
bag, jingling heavily, was laid on the table by a clerk in attendance.
There was nothing to be done but to make a low reverence and return
thanks.

Jean had it in her to break out with ironical hopes that they would see
something beyond the walls of a priory abroad, and not be ordered off
the moment any one cast eyes on them; but my Lord of Winchester was not
the man to be impertinent to, especially when bringing gifts as a kindly
uncle, and when, moreover, King Henry had the bad taste to be more
occupied with her sister than with herself.

It was Eleanor who chiefly felt a sort of repugnance to being thus,
as it were, bought off or compensated for being sent out of reach. She
could have found it in her heart to be offended at being thought likely
to wish to steal the King’s heart, and yet flattered by being, for
the first time, considered as dangerous, even while her awe, alike of
Henry’s holiness and of those strange visions that had haunted her, made
her feel it a relief that her lot was not to be cast with him.

The Cardinal did not seem to wish to prolong the interview with his
grand-nieces, having perhaps a certain consciousness of injury towards
them; and, after assuring brilliant marriages for them, and graciously
blessing them, he bade them farewell, saying that the Lady of Suffolk
would come and arrange with them for the journey. No doubt, though he
might have been glad to place a niece on the throne, it would have been
fatal to the peace he so much desired for Henry to break his pledges to
so near a kinswoman of the King of France. And when the bag was opened,
and the rouleaux of gold and silver crowns displayed, his liberality
contradicted the current stories of his avarice.

And by and by arrived a succession of merchants bringing horned hoods,
transparent veils, like wings, supported on wire projections, long
trained dresses of silk and sendal, costly stomachers, bands of velvet,
buckles set with precious stones, chains of gold and silver--all the
fashions, in fact, enough to turn the head of any young lady, and in
which the staid Lady Prioress seemed to take quite as much interest as
if she had been to wear them herself--indeed, she asked leave to send
Sister Mabel to fetch a selection of the older nuns given to needlework
and embroidery to enjoy the exhibition, though it was to be carefully
kept out of sight of the younger ones, and especially of the novices.

The excitement was enough to put the Cardinal’s offences out of mind,
while the delightful fitting and trying on occupied the maidens, who
looked at themselves in the little hand-mirrors held up to them by the
admiring nuns, and demanded every one’s opinion. Jean insisted that
Annis should have her share, and Eleanor joined in urging it, when Dame
Lilias shook her head, and said that was not the use the Lord Cardinal
intended for his gold.

‘He gave it to us to do as we would with it,’ argued Eleanor.

‘And she is our maiden, and it befits us not that she should look like
ane scrub,’ added Jean, in the words used by her brother’s descendant, a
century later.

‘I thank you, noble cousins,’ replied Annis, with a little haughtiness,
‘but Davie would never thole to see me pranking it out of English gold.’

‘She is right, Jeanie,’ cried Eleanor. ‘We will make her braw with what
we bought at York with gude Scottish gold.’

‘All the more just,’ added Jean, ‘that she helped us in our need with
her ain.’

‘And we are sib--near cousins after a’,’ added Eleanor; ‘so we may well
give and take.’

So it was settled, and all was amicable, except that there was a slight
contest between the sisters whether they should dress alike, as Eleanor
wished, while Jean had eyes and instinct enough to see that the colours
and forms that set her fair complexion and flaxen tresses off to
perfection were damaging to Elleen’s freckles and general auburn
colouring. Hitherto the sisters had worn only what they could get, happy
if they could call it ornamental, and the power of choice was a novelty
to them. At last the decision fell to the one who cared most about it,
namely Jean. Elleen left her to settle for both, being, after the first
dazzling display, only eager to get back again to Saint Marie Maudelin
before the King should reclaim it.

There was something in the legend, wild and apocryphal as it is,
together with what she had seen of the King, that left a deep impression
upon her.


             ‘And by these things ye understand maun
                The three best things which this Mary chose,
              As outward penance and inward contemplation,
                And upward bliss that never shall cease,
              Of which God said withouten bees
                That the best part to her chose Mary,
              Which ever shall endure and never decrease,
                But with her abideth eternally.’


Stiff, quaint, and awkward sounds old Bokenham’s translation of the
‘Golden Legend,’ but to Eleanor it had much power. The whole history was
new to her, after her life in Scotland, where information had been slow
to reach her, and books had been few. The gewgaws spread out before Jean
were to her like the gloves, jewels, and braiding of hair with which
Martha reproached her sister in the days of her vanity, and the cloister
with its calm services might well seem to her like the better part.
These nuns indeed did not strike her as models of devotion, and there
was something in the Prioress’s easy way of declaring that being safe
there might prevent any need of special heed, which rung false on her
ear; and then she thought of King Henry, whose rapt countenance had so
much struck her, turning aside from enjoyment to seclude himself at the
first hint that his pleasure might be a temptation. She recollected too
what Lady Drummond had told her of Father Malcolm and Mother Clare, and
how each had renounced the world, which had so much to offer them, and
chosen the better part! She remembered Father Malcolm’s sweet smile and
kind words, and Mother Clare’s face had impressed her deeply with its
lofty peace and sweetness. How much better than all these agitations
about princely bridegrooms! and broken lances and queens of beauty
seemed to fade into insignificance, or to be only incidents in the
tumult of secular life and worldly struggle, and her spirit quailed at
the anticipation of the journey she had once desired, the gay court with
its follies, empty show, temptations, coarsenesses and cruelties, and
the strange land with its new language. The alternative seemed to her
from Maudelin in her worldly days to Maudelin at the Saviour’s feet, and
had Mother Margaret Stafford been one whit more the ideal nun, perhaps
every one would have been perplexed by a vehement request to seclude
herself at once in the cloister of St. Helen’s.

Looking up, she saw a figure slowly pacing the turf walk. It was the
Mother Clare, who had come to see the Lady of Glenuskie, but finding all
so deeply engaged, had gone out to await her in the garden.

Much indeed had Dame Lilias longed to join her friend, and make the most
of these precious hours, but as purse-bearer and adviser to her Lady
Joanna, it was impossible to leave her till the arrangements with the
merchants were over. And the nuns of St. Helen’s did not, as has already
been seen, think much of an uncloistered sister. In her twenty years’
toils among the poor it had been pretty well forgotten that Mother Clare
was Esclairmonde de Luxembourg, almost of princely rank, so that no
one took the trouble to entertain her, and she had slipped out almost
unperceived to the quiet garden with its grass walks. And there
Eleanor came up to her, and with glistening tears, on a sudden impulse
exclaimed, ‘Oh, holy Mother, keep me with you, tell me to choose the
better part.’

‘You, lady? What is this?’

‘Not lady, daughter--help me! I kenned it not before--but all is vanity,
turmoil, false show, except the sitting at the Lord’s feet.’

‘Most true, my child. Ah! have I not felt the same? But we must wait His
time.’

‘It was I--it was I,’ continued Eleanor, ‘who set Jean upon this
journey, leaving my brother and Mary and the bairns. And the farther we
go, the more there is of vain show and plotting and scheming, and I am
weary and heartsick and homesick of it all, and shall grow worse and
worse. Oh! shelter me here, in your good and holy house, dear Reverend
Mother, and maybe I could learn to do the holy work you do in my own
country.’

How well Esclairmonde knew it all, and what aspirations had been hers!
She took Elleen’s hand kindly and said, ‘Dear maid, I can only aid you
by words! I could not keep you here. Your uncle the Cardinal would not
suffer you to abide here, nor can I take sisters save by consent of the
Queen--and now we have no Queen, of the King, and--’

‘Oh no, I could not ask that,’ said Eleanor, a deep blush mounting, as
she remembered what construction might be put on her desire to remain
in the King’s neighbourhood. ‘Ah! then must I go on--on--on farther from
home to that Court which they say is full of sin and evil and vanity?
What will become of me?’

‘If the religious life be good for you, trust me, the way will open,
however unlikely it may seem. If not, Heaven and the saints will show
what your course should be.’

‘But can there be such safety and holiness, save in that higher path?’
demanded Eleanor.

‘Nay, look at your own kinswoman, Dame Lilias--look at the Lady of
Salisbury. Are not these godly, faithful women serving God through their
duty to man--husband, children, all around? And are the longings and
temptations to worldly thoughts and pleasures of the flesh so wholly put
away in the cloister?’

‘Not here,’ began Eleanor, but Mother Clare hushed her.

‘Verily, my child,’ she added, ‘you must go on with your sister on this
journey, trusting to the care and guidance of so good a woman as my
beloved old friend, Dame Lilias; and if you say your prayers with all
your heart to be guarded from sin and temptation, and led into the path
that is fittest for you, trust that our blessed Master and our Lady will
lead you. Have you the Pater Noster in the vulgar tongue?’ she added.

‘We--we had it once ere my father’s death. And Father Malcolm taught us;
but we have since been so cast about that--that--I have forgotten.’

‘Ah! Father Malcolm taught you,’ and Esclairmonde took the girl’s hand.
‘You know how much I owe to Father Malcolm,’ she softly added, as she
led the maiden to a carved rood at the end of the cloister, and, before
it, repeated the vernacular version of the Lord’s Prayer till Eleanor
knew it perfectly, and promised to follow up her ‘Pater Nosters’ with
it.

And from that time there certainly was a different tone and spirit in
Eleanor.

David, urged by his father, who still publicly ignored the young
Douglas, persuaded him to write to his father now that there could be no
longer any danger of pursuit, and the messenger Sir Patrick was sending
to the King would afford the last opportunity. George growled and
groaned a good deal, but perhaps Father Romuald pressed the duty on
him in confession, for in his great relief at his lady’s going off
unplighted from London, he consented to indite, in the chamber Father
Romuald shared with two of the Cardinal’s chaplains, in a crooked and
crabbed calligraphy and language much more resembling Anglo-Saxon than
modern English, a letter to the most high and mighty, the Yerl of Angus,
‘these presents.’

But when he was entreated to assume his right position in the troop,
he refused. ‘Na, na, Davie,’ he said, ‘gin my father chooses to send
me gear and following, ‘tis all very weel, but ‘tisna for the credit
of Scotland nor of Angus that the Master should be ganging about like a
land-louper, with a single laddie after him--still less that he should
be beholden to the Drummonds.’

‘Ye would win to the speech of the lassie,’ suggested David, ‘gin that
be what ye want!’

‘Na kenning me, she willna look at me. Wait till I do that which may gar
her look at me,’ said the chivalrous youth.

He was not entirely without means, for the links of a gold chain which
he had brought from home went a good way in exchange, and though he had
spoken of being at his own charges, he had found himself compelled to
live as one of the train of the princesses, who were treated as the
guests first of the Duke of York, then of the Cardinal, who had given
Sir Patrick a sum sufficient to defray all possible expenses as far as
Bourges, besides having arranged for those of the journey with Suffolk
whose rank had been raised to that of a Marquis, in honour of his
activity as proxy for the King.




CHAPTER 6. THE PRICE OF A GOOSE


          ‘We would have all such offenders cut off, and we give
           express charge that, in the marches through the country,
           there be nothing compelled from the villages.’
                                                  --King Henry V.


The Marquis of Suffolk’s was a slow progress both in England and abroad,
with many halts both on account of weather and of feasts and festivals.
Cardinal Beaufort had hurried the party away from London partly in order
to make the match with Margaret of Anjou irrevocable, partly for the
sake of removing Eleanor of Scotland, the only maiden who had ever
produced the slightest impression on the monastic-minded Henry of
Windsor.

When once out of London there were, however, numerous halts on the
road,--two or three days of entertainment at every castle, and then a
long delay at Canterbury to give time for Suffolk’s retainers, and all
the heralds, pursuivants, and other adjuncts of pomp and splendour, to
join them. They were the guests of Archbishop Stafford, one of the peace
party, and a friend of Beaufort and Suffolk, so that their entertainment
was costly and magnificent, as befitted the mediaeval notions of a
high-born gentleman, Primate of all England. A great establishment for
the chase was kept by almost all prelates as a necessity; and whenever
the weather was favourable, hunting and hawking could be enjoyed by
the princesses and their suite. Indeed Jean, if not in the saddle, was
pretty certain to be visiting the hawks all the morning, or else playing
at ball or some other sport with her cousins or some of the young
gentlemen of Suffolk’s train, who were all devoted to her.

Lady Drummond found that to try to win her to quieter occupations was in
vain. The girl would not even try to learn French from Father Romuald
by reading, though she would pick up words and phrases by laughing and
chattering with the young knights who chanced to know the language.
But as by this time Dame Lilias had learnt that there were bounds that
princely pride and instinct prevented from overpassing, she contented
herself with seeing that there was fit attendance, either by her
daughter Annis, Sir Patrick himself, or one or other of Lady Suffolk’s
ladies.

To some degree Eleanor shared in her sister’s outdoor amusements, but
she was far more disposed to exercise her mind than her body.
After having pined in weariness for want of intellectual food, her
opportunities were delightful to her. Not only did she read with Father
Romuald with intense interest the copy of the bon Sire Jean Froissart in
the original, which he borrowed from the Archbishop’s library, but
she listened with great zest to the readings which the Lady of Suffolk
extracted from her chaplains and unwilling pages while the ladies sat
at work, for the Marchioness, a grandchild of Geoffrey Chaucer, had a
strong taste for literature. Moreover, from one of the choir Eleanor
obtained lessons on the lute, as well as her beloved harp, and was
taught to train her voice, and sing from ‘pricke-song,’ so that she much
enjoyed this period of her journey.

Nothing could be more courteous and punctilious than the Marquis of
Suffolk to the two princesses, and indeed to every one of his own
degree; but there was something of the parvenu about him, and, unlike
the Duke of York or Archbishop Stafford, who were free, bright, and
good-natured to the meanest persons, he was haughty and harsh to every
one below the line of gentle blood, and in his own train he kept up a
discipline, not too strict in itself, but galling in the manner in which
it was enforced by those who imitated his example. By the time the suite
was collected, Christmas and the festival of St. Thomas a Becket were so
near that it would have been neglect of a popular saint to have left his
shrine without keeping his day. And after the Epiphany, though the
party did reach Dover in a day’s ride, a stormy period set in, putting
crossing out of the question, and detaining the suite within the massive
walls of the castle.

At last, on a brisk, windless day of frost, the crossing to Calais
was effected, and there was another week of festivals spread by the
hospitality of the Captain of Calais, where everything was as English
as at Dover. When they again started on their journey, Suffolk severely
insisted on the closest order, riding as travellers in a hostile
country, where a misadventure might easily break the existing truce,
although the territories of the Duke of Burgundy, through which their
route chiefly lay, were far less unfavourable to the English than actual
French countries; indeed, the Flemings were never willingly at war with
the English, and some of the Burgundian nobles and knights had been on
intimate terms with Suffolk. Still, he caused the heralds always to keep
in advance, and allowed no stragglers behind the rearguard that came
behind the long train of waggons loaded with much kitchen apparatus, and
with splendid gifts for the bride and her family, as well as equipments
for the wedding-party, and tents for such of the troop as could not
find shelter in the hostels or monasteries where the slowly-moving party
halted for the night. It was unsafe to go on after the brief hours of
daylight, especially in the neighbourhood of the Forest of Ardennes, for
wolves might be near on the winter nights. It was thus that the first
trouble arose with Sir Patrick Drummond’s two volunteer followers.
Ringan Raefoot had become in his progress a very different looking being
from the wild creature who had come with ‘Geordie of the Red Peel,’ but
there was the same heart in him. He had endured obedience to the Knight
of Glenuskie as a Scot, and with the Duke of York and through England
the discipline of the troop had not been severe; but Suffolk, though a
courtly, chivalrous gentleman to his equals, had not the qualities of
popularity, and chafed his inferiors.

There were signs of confusion in the cavalcade as they passed between
some of the fertile fields of Namur, and while Suffolk was halting
and about to send a squire to the rear to interfere, a couple of his
retainers hurried up, saying, ‘My Lord, those Scottish thieves will
bring the whole country down on us if order be not taken with them.’

Sir Patrick did not need the end of the speech to gallop off at full
speed to the rear of all the waggons, where a crowd might be seen, and
there was a perfect Babel of tongues, rising in only too intelligible
shouts of rage. Swords and lances were flashing on one side among the
horsemen, on the other stones were flying from an ever-increasing number
of leather-jerkined men and boys, some of them with long knives, axes,
and scythes.

George Douglas’s high head seemed to be the main object of attack,
and he had Ringan Raefoot before him across his horse, apparently
retreating, while David, Malcolm, and a few more made charges on the
crowd to guard him. When he was seen, there was a cry of which he could
distinguish nothing but ‘Ringan! Geordie! goose--Flemish hounds.’

Riding between, regardless of the stones, he shouted in the Burgundian
French he had learnt in his campaigns, to demand the cause of the
attack. The stones ceased, and the head man of the village, a stout
peasant, came forward and complained that the varlet, as he called
Ringan, had been stealing the village geese on their pond, and when
they were about to do justice on him, yonder man-at-arms had burst in,
knocked down and hurt several, and carried him off.

Before there had been time for further explanation, to Sir Patrick’s
great vexation, the Marshal of the troop and his guard came up, and the
complaint was repeated. George, at the same time, having handed Ringan
over to some others of the Scots, rode up with his head very high.

‘Sir Patrick Drummond,’ said the Marshal stiffly, ‘you know my Lord’s
rules for his followers, as to committing outrages on the villeins of
the country.’

‘We are none of my Lord of Suffolk’s following,’ began Douglas; but Sir
Patrick, determined to avoid a breach if possible, said--

‘Sir Marshal, we have as yet heard but one side of the matter. If wrong
have been done to these folk, we are ready to offer compensation, but we
should hear how it has been--’

‘Am I to see my poor laddie torn to bits, stoned, and hanged by these
savage loons,’ cried George, ‘for a goose’s egg and an old gander?’

Of course his defence was incomprehensible to the Flemings, but on their
side a man with a bound-up head and another limping were produced,
and the head man spoke of more serious damage to others who could not
appear, demanding both the aggressors to be dealt with, i.e. to be
hanged on the next tree.

‘These men are of mine, Master Marshal,’ said Sir Patrick.

‘My Lord can permit no violence by those under his banner,’ said the
Marshal stiffly. ‘I must answer it to him.’

‘Do so then,’ said Sir Patrick. ‘This is a matter for him.’

The Marshal, who had much rather have disposed of the Scottish thieves
on his own responsibility, was forced to give way so far as to let the
appeal be carried to the Marquis of Suffolk, telling the Flemings, in
something as near their language as he could accomplish, that his Lord
was sure to see justice done, and that they should follow and make their
complaint.

Suffolk sat on his horse, tall, upright, and angry. ‘What is this I
hear, Sir Patrick Drummond,’ said he, ‘that your miscreants of wild
Scots have been thieving from the peaceful peasant-folk, and then
beating them and murdering them? I deemed you were a better man than to
stand by such deeds and not give up the fellows to justice.’

‘It were shame to hang a man for one goose,’ said Sir Patrick.

‘All plunder is worthy of death,’ returned the Englishman. ‘Your Border
law may be otherwise, but ‘tis not our English rule of honest men.  And
here’s this other great lurdane knave been striking the poor rogues down
right and left! A halter fits both.’

‘My Lord, they are no subjects of England. I deny your rights over
them.’

‘Whoever rides in my train is under me, I would have you to know, sir.’

‘Hark ye, my Lord of Suffolk,’ said Sir Patrick, coming near enough
to speak in an undertone, ‘that lurdane, as you call him, is heir of a
noble house in Scotland, come here on a young man’s freak of chivalry.
You will do no service to the peace of the realms if you give him up to
these churls, for making in to save his servant.’

Before Sir Patrick had done speaking, while Suffolk was frowning grimly
in perplexity, a wild figure, with blood on the face, rushed forth with
a limping run, crying ‘Let the loons hang me and welcome, if they set
such store by their lean old gander, but they shanna lay a finger on the
Master.’

And he had nearly precipitated himself into the hands of the sturdy
rustics, who shouted with exultation, but with two strides Geordie
caught him up. ‘Peace, Ringan! They shall no more hang thee than me,’
and he stood with one hand on Ringan’s shoulder and his sword in the
other, looking defiant.

‘If he be a young gentleman masking, I am not bound to know it,’ said
Suffolk impatiently to Drummond; ‘but if he will give up that rascal,
and make compensation, I will overlook it.’

‘Who touches my fellow does so at his peril,’ shouted George, menacing
with his sword.

‘Peace, young man!’ said Sir Patrick. ‘Look here, my Lord of Suffolk,
we Scots are none of your men. We need no favour of you English with our
allies. There be enough of us to make our way through these peasants
to the French border, so unless you let us settle the matter with a few
crowns to these rascallions, we part company.’

‘The ladies were entrusted to my charge,’ began Lord Suffolk.

At that instant, however, both Jean and Eleanor came on the scene,
riding fast, having in truth been summoned by Malcolm, who shrewdly
suspected that thus an outbreak might be best averted.

It was Eleanor who spoke first. In spite of all her shyness, when her
blood was up, she was all the princess.

What is this, my Lord of Suffolk?’ she said. ‘If one of our following
have transgressed, it is the part of ourselves and of Sir Patrick
Drummond to see to it, as representing the King my brother.’

‘Lady,’ replied Suffolk, bowing low and doffing his cap, ‘yonder
ill-nurtured knave hath been robbing the country-folk, and the--the
man-at-arms there not only refuses to give him up to justice, but has
hurt, well-nigh slain, some of them in violently taking him from them.
They ride in my train and I am responsible.’

Jean broke in: ‘He only served the cowardly loons right. A whole
crowd of the rogues to hang one poor laddie for one goose! Shame on a
gentleman for hearkening to the foul-mouthed villains one moment. Come
here, Ringan. King Jamie’s sister will never see them harm thee.’

Perhaps Suffolk was not sorry to see a way out of the perplexity.
‘Far be it from a knight to refuse a boon to a fair lady in her
selle, farther still to _two_ royal damsels. The lives are granted, so
satisfaction in coin be made to yon clamorous hinds.’

‘I do not call it a boon but a right, said Eleanor gravely;
‘nevertheless I thank you, my Lord Marquis.’

George would have thrown himself at their feet, but Jean coldly said,
‘Spare thanks, sir. It was for my brother’s right,’ and she turned her
horse away, and rode off at speed, while Eleanor could not help pausing
to say, ‘She is more blithe than she lists to own! Sir Patrick, what the
fellows claim must come from my uncle’s travelling purse.’

George’s face was red. This was very bitter to him, but he could only
say, ‘It shall be repaid so soon as I have the power.’

The peasants meanwhile were trying to make the best bargain they could
by representing that they were tenants of an abbey, so that the death of
the gander was sacrilegious on that account as well as because it was in
Lent. To this, however, Sir Patrick turned a deaf ear: he threw them
a couple of gold pieces, with which, as he told them, they were much
better off than with either the live goose or the dead Ringan.

Suffolk had halted for the mid-day rest and was waiting for him till
this matter was disposed of. ‘Sir Patrick Drummond,’ he said with some
ceremony, ‘this company of yours may be Scottish subjects, but while
they are riding with me I am answerable for them. It may be the wont in
Scotland, but it is not with us English, to let unnamed adventurers ride
under our banner.’

‘The young man is not unnamed,’ said Sir Patrick, on his mettle.

‘You know him?’

‘I’ll no say, but I have an inkling. My son David kenn’d him and
answered for him when he joined himself to my following; nor has he
hitherto done aught to discredit himself.’

‘What is his name, or the name he goes by?’

‘George Douglas.’

‘H’m! Your Scottish names may belong to any one, from your earls down to
your herdboys; and they, forsooth, are as like as not to call themselves
gentlemen.’

‘And wherefore not, if theirs is gentle blood?’ said Sir Patrick.

‘Nay, now, Sir Patrick, stand not on your Scotch pride. Gentlemen all,
if you will, but you gave me to understand that this was none of your
barefoot gentlemen, and I ask if you can tell who he truly is?’

‘I have never been told, my Lord, and I had rather you put the question
to himself than to me.’

‘Call him then, an’ so please you.’

Sir Patrick saw no alternative save compliance; and he found Ringan
undergoing a severe rating, not unaccompanied by blows from the wood of
his master’s lance. The perfect willingness to die for one another was
a mere natural incident, but the having transgressed, and caused such
a serious scrape, made George very indignant and inflict condign
punishment. ‘Better fed than he had ever been in his life, the rogue’
(and he looked it, though he muttered, ‘A bannock and a sup of barley
brose were worth the haill of their greasy beeves!’). ‘Better fed than
ever before. Couldn’t the daft loon keep the hands of him off poor
folks’ bit goose? In Lent, too!’ (by far the gravest part of the
offence).

George did, however, transfer Ringan’s explanation to Sir Patrick, and
make some apology. A nest of goose eggs apparently unowned had been too
much for him, incited further by a couple of English horseboys, who were
willing to share goose eggs for supper, and let the Scotsman bear the
wyte of it. The goose had been nearer than expected, and summoned her
kin; the gander had shown fight; the geese had gabbled, the gooseherd
and his kind came to the rescue, the horseboys had made off; Ringan,
impeded by his struggle with the ferocious gander, was caught; and
Geordie had come up just in time to see him pricked with goads and axes
to a tree, where a halter was making ready for him. Of course, without
asking questions, George hurried to save him, pushing his horse among
the angry crew, and striking right and left, and equally of course the
other Scots came to his assistance.

Sir Patrick agreed that he could not have done otherwise, though better
things might have been hoped of Ringan by this time.

‘But,’ said he, ‘there’s not an end yet of the coil. Here has my Lord
of Suffolk been speiring after your name and quality, till I told him he
must ask at you and not at me.’

‘Tell’d you the dour meddling Englishman my name?’ asked George.

‘I told him only what ye told me yerself. In that there was no lie.
But bethink you, royal maidens dinna come to speak for lads without a
cause.’

George’s colour mounted high in his sunburnt, freckled cheek.

‘Kens--ken they, trow ye, Sir Pate?’

‘Cannie folk, even lassies, can ken mair than they always tell,’ said
the knight of Glenuskie. ‘Yonder is my Lord Marquis, as they ca’ him; so
bethink you weel how you comport yerself with him, and my counsel is to
tell him the full truth. He is a dour man towards underlings, whom he
views as made not of the same flesh and blood with himself, but he is
the very pink of courtesy to men of his own degree.’

‘Set him up,’ quoth the heir of the Douglas, with a snort. ‘His own
degree, indeed! scarce even a knight’s son!’

‘What he deems his own degree, then,’ corrected Sir Patrick; ‘but he
holds himself full of chivalry to them, and loves a spice of the errant
knight; ye may trust his honour. And mind ye,’ he added, laughing, ‘I’ve
never been told your name and quality.’

Which the Master of Angus returned with an equally canny laugh. The
young man, as he approached the Marquis, drew his head up, straightened
his tall form, brushed off the dust that obscured the bloody heart on
his breast, and altogether advanced with a step and bearing far
more like the great Earl’s son than the man-at-arms of the Glenuskie
following; his eyes bespoke equality or more as they met those of
William de la Pole, and yet there was that in the glance which forbade
the idea of insolence, so that Suffolk, instead of remaining seated rose
to meet him and took him aside, standing as they talked.

‘Sir Squire,’ he said, ‘for such I understand your degree in chivalry to
be.’

‘I have not won my spurs,’ said George.

‘It is not our rule to take to foreign courts gentlemen from another
realm unknown to us,’ proceeded Suffolk, with much civility; ‘therefore,
unless any vow of chivalry binds you, I should be glad to know who it is
who does my banner the honour of riding in its company for a time. If a
secret, it is safe with me.’

George gave his name.

‘That is the name of one of the chief nobles in Scotland,’ said Suffolk.
‘Do I see before me his son?’ George bowed.

‘Then, my Lord Douglas, am I permitted to ask wherefore this mean
disguise? Is it for some vow of chivalry, or for that which is the
guerdon of chivalry?’ the Marquis added in a lower, softer tone, which,
however, extremely chafed the proud young Scot, all the more that he
felt himself blushing.

‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘I am not bound to render a reason to any save my
father, from whom I hope for letters shortly.’

To his further provocation Suffolk smiled meaningly, and answered--

‘I understand. But if my Lord Douglas would honour my suite by assuming
the place that befits him, I should be happy that aught of mine should
serve--’

‘I am beholden to you, my Lord, for the offer,’ replied George, somewhat
roughly. ‘Whatever I make use of must be my father’s or my own. All I
crave of you is to keep my secret, and not make me the common talk.
Have I your licence to depart?’

Wherewith, tall, irate, and shamefaced, the Master of Angus stalked away
to meet David Drummond, to whom he confided his disgusts.

‘The parlous fulebody! As though I were like to make myself a mere sport
for ballad-mongers, such as Lady Elleen is always mooning after; or as
if I would stoop to borrow a following of the English blackguard, to
bolster up my state like King Herod in a mystery play. If my father
lists, he may send me out a band, but the Douglas shall have Douglas’s
men, or none at all.’

David approved the sentiment, but added--

‘Ye could win to Jeanie if ye took your right place.’

‘What good would that do me while she is full of her fine daffing,
singing, clacking, English knights, that would only gibe at the
red-haired Scot? Let her wait to see what the Red Douglas’s hand can do
in time of need! But, Davie, you that can speak to her, let her know how
deeply I thank her for what she did even now on my behalf, or rather on
puir Ringan’s, and that I am trebly bound to her service though I make
no minstrel fule’s work.’

David delivered his message, but did not obtain much by it for his
friend’s satisfaction, for Jeanie only tossed her head and answered--

‘Does the gallant cock up his bonnet because he thinks it was for his
sake. It was Elleen’s doing there, firstly; and next, wadna we have done
the like for the meanest of Jamie’s subjects?’

‘Dinna credit her, Davie,’ said Eleanor. ‘Ye should have seen her start
in her saddle, and wheel round her palfrey at Malcolm’s first word.’

‘It wasna for him,’ replied Jean hotly. ‘They dinna hang the like of him
for twisting a goose’s neck; it was for the puir leal laddie; and ye may
tak’ that to him.’

‘Shall I, Elleen?’ asked David, with a twinkle in his eye of cousinly
teasing.

‘An’ ye do not, I shall proclaim ye in the lists at Nanci as a corbie
messenger and mansworn squire, unworthy of your spurs,’ threatened
Jeanie, in all good humour however.

Suffolk, baffled in his desire to patronise the young Master of Angus,
examined both Sir Patrick and Lady Drummond as far as their caution
would allow, telling that the youth had confessed his rank and admitted
the cause--making inquiry whether the match would be held suitable in
Scotland, and why it had not taken place there--a matter difficult
to explain, since it did not merely turn upon the young lady’s
ambition--which would have gone for nothing--but on the danger to the
Crown of offending rival houses. Suffolk had a good deal about him of
the flashy side of chivalry, and loved its brilliance and romance; he
was an honourable man, and the weak point about him was that he never
understood that knighthood should respect men of meaner birth. He was
greatly flattered by the idea of having the eldest son of the great Earl
of Angus riding as an unknown man-at-arms in his troop, and on the way
likewise to the most chivalrous of kings. His scheme would have been to
equip the youth fully with horse and arms, and at some brilliant tourney
see him carry all before him, like Du Gueselin in his boyhood, and that
the eclat of the affair should reflect itself upon his sponsor. But
there were two difficulties in the way--the first that the proud young
Scot showed no intention of being beholden to any Englishman, and
secondly, that the tall, ungainly youth did not look as if he had
attained to the full strength or management of his own limbs; and though
in five or ten years’ time he might be a giant in actual warfare, he did
not appear at all likely to be a match for the highly-trained champions
of the tilt-yard. Moreover, he was not a knight as yet, and on sounding
Sir Patrick it was elicited that he was likely to deem it high treason
to be dubbed by any hand save that of his King or his father.

So the Marquis could only feel sagacious, and utter a hint or two
before the ladies which fell the more short, since he was persuaded,
by Eleanor’s having been the foremost in the defence, that she was the
object of the quest; and he now and then treated her to hints which
she was slow to understand, but which exasperated while they amused her
sister.

The journey was so slow that it was not until the fourth week in Lent
that they were fairly in Lorraine. It had of course been announced by
couriers, and at Thionville a very splendid herald reached them, covered
all over with the blazonry of Jerusalem and the Two Sicilies, to say
nothing of Provence and Anjou. He brought letters from King Rene,
explaining that he and his daughters were en route from Provence, and
he therefore designated a nunnery where he requested that the Scottish
princesses and their ladies would deign to be entertained, and a
monastery where my Lord Marquis of Suffolk and his suite would be
welcomed, and where they were requested to remain till Easter week, by
which time the King of France, the Dauphin, and Dauphiness would be near
at hand, and there could be a grand entrance into Nanci. Of course there
was nothing to be done but to obey though the Englishmen muttered that
the delay was in order to cast the expense upon the rich abbeys, and to
muster all the resources of Lorraine and Provence to cover the poverty
of the many-titled King.

The Abbey where the gentlemen were lodged was so near Nanci that it was
easy to ride into the city and make inquiries whether any tidings had
arrived from Scotland; but nothing had come from thence for either the
princesses, Sir Patrick, or Geordie of the Red Peel, so that the strange
situation of the latter must needs continue as long as he insisted on
being beholden for nothing to the English upstart, as he scrupled not
to call Lord Suffolk, whose new-fashioned French title was an offence in
Scottish ears.

The ladies on their side had not the relaxation of these expeditions.
The Abbey was a large and wealthy one, but decidedly provincial. Only
the Lady Abbess and one sister could speak ‘French of Paris,’ the
others used a dialect so nearly German that Lady Suffolk could barely
understand them, and the other ladies, whose French was not strong,
could hold no conversation with them.

To insular minds, whether Scottish or English, every deviation of the
Gallican ritual from their own was a sore vexation. If Lady Drummond had
devotion enough not to be distracted by the variations, the young ladies
certainly had not, and Jean very decidedly giggled during some of the
most solemn ceremonies, such as the creeping to the cross--the large
carved cross in the middle of the graveyard, to which all in turn went
upon their knees on Good Friday and kissed it.

Last year, at this season, they had been shut up in their prison-castle,
and had not shared in any of these ceremonies; and Eleanor tried to
think of King Henry and Sister Esclairmonde, and how they were throwing
their hearts into the great thoughts of the day, and she felt distressed
at being infected by Jean’s suppressed laughter at the movements of the
fat Abbess, and at the extraordinary noises made by the younger nuns
with clappers, as demonstrations against Judas on the way to the Easter
Sepulchre.

She was so much shocked at herself that she wanted to confess; but
Father Romuald had gone with the male members of the party, and
the chaplain did not half understand her French, though he gave her
absolution.

Meantime all the nuns were preparing Easter eggs, whereof there was
a great exchange the next day, when the mass was as splendid as the
resources of the Abbey could furnish, and all were full of joy and
congratulation, the sense of oneness for once inspiring all.

Moreover, after mass, Sir Patrick and an Englishman rode over with
tidings that King Rene had sent a messenger, who was on the Tuesday to
guide them all to a glade where the King hoped to welcome the ladies
as befitted their rank and beauty, and likewise to meet the royal
travellers from Bourges, so that all might make their entry into Nanci
together.

The King himself, it was reported, did nothing but ride backwards and
forwards between Nanci and the convent where he had halted, arranging
the details of the procession, and of the open-air feast at the
rendezvous upon the way.

‘I hope,’ said Lady Suffolk, ‘that King Rene’s confections will not be
as full of rancid oil as those of the good sisters. I know not which
was more distasteful--their Lenten Fast or their Easter Feast. We have,
certes, done our penance this Lent!’

To which the rest of the ladies could not but agree, though Lady
Drummond felt it somewhat treasonable to the good nuns, their
entertainers; and both she and Eleanor recollected how differently
Esclairmonde would have felt the matter, and how little these matters of
daily fare would have concerned her.

‘To-day we shall see her!’ exclaimed Eleanor, springing to the floor,
as, early on a fine spring morning, the ladies in the guest-chamber of
the nunnery began to bestir themselves at the sound of one of the many
convent bells. ‘They are at Toul, and we shall meet this afternoon. I
have not slept all night for thinking of it.’

‘No, and hardly let me sleep,’ said Jean, slowly sitting up in bed.
‘Thou hast waked me so often that I shall be pale and heavy-eyed for the
pageant.’

‘Little fear of that, my bonnie bell,’ said old Christie, laughing.

‘Besides,’ said Eleanor, ‘nobody will fash themselves to look at us in
the midst of the pageant. There will be the King to see, and the bride.
Oh, I wish we were not to ride in it, and could see it instead at our
ease.’

‘Thou wast never meant for a princess,’ said Jean; ‘Christie, Annis, for
pity’s sake, see till her. She is busking up her hair just as was gude
enough for the old nuns, but no for kings and queens.’

‘I hate the horned cap, in which I feel like a cow, and methought Meg
wad feel the snood a sight for sair een,’ said Eleanor.

‘Meg indeed! Thou must frame thy tongue to Madame la Dauphine.’

‘Before the lave of them, but not with sweet Meg herself.’

‘Our sister behoves to have learnt what suits her station, and winna
bide sic ways from an ower forward sister. Dinna put us all to shame,
and make the folk trow we came from some selvage land,’ said Jean,
tossing her head.

‘Hast ever seen me carry myself unworthy of King James’s daughter?’
proudly demanded Eleanor.

‘Nay, now, bairnies, fash not yoursells that gate,’ interfered old
Christie; ‘nae fear but Lady Elleen will be douce and canny enow when
folks are there to see. She kens what fits a king’s daughter.’

Jean made a little hesitation over kirtles and hoods, but fortunately
ladies, however royal, had no objection to wearing the same robes twice,
and both she and her sister were objects to delight the eyes of the
crowding and admiring nuns when they mounted their palfreys in the
quadrangle, and, attended by the Lady of Glenuskie and her daughter,
rode forth with the Marchioness of Suffolk at the great gateway to join
the cavalcade, headed by Suffolk and Sir Patrick.

After about two miles’ riding on a woodland road they became aware of
fitful strains of music and a continuous hum of voices, heard through
the trees and presently a really beautiful scene opened before them, as
the trees seemed to retreat, so as to unfold a wide level space, further
enclosed by brilliant tapestry hangings, their scarlet, blue, gold and
silver hues glittering in an April sun, and the fastenings concealed by
garlands of spring flowers. An awning of rich gold embroidery on a green
ground was spread so as to shelter a cloth glittering with plate and
bestrewn with flowers; horses, in all varieties of ornamental housings,
were being led about; there was a semicircle of musicians in the rear;
and, as soon as the guests came in sight, there came forward, doffing
his embroidered and jewelled cap, a gentleman of middle stature and
of exceeding grace and courtesy, whose demeanour, no less than the
attendance around him, left no doubt that this was no other than Rene,
Duke of Anjou and of Lorraine, Count of Provence, and King of the Two
Sicilies and of Jerusalem.

‘Welcome,’ he exclaimed in French, ‘welcome, fair and royal maidens;
welcome, noble lord, the representative of our dear brother and son of
England. Deign on your journey to partake of the humble and rural fare
of the poor minstrel shepherd.’

Wherewith the music broke out in strains of welcome from the grove, with
voices betweenwhiles Rene himself assisted each princess to dismount,
and respectfully kissed her on the cheek as she stood on the ground.
Then, taking a hand of each, he led them to a great chestnut tree, the
shade of whose branches was assisted by hangings of blue embroidered
with white, beneath which cushions, mantles, and seats were spread, and
a bevy of ladies in bright garments stood. From these came forward two
beautiful young girls, with fair complexions and flowing golden hair,
scarcely confined by the bands whence transparent veils descended. King
Rene presented them as his two daughters, Yolande and Margaret, to the
two Scottish maidens, and there were kindly as well as courtly embraces
on either side. The Lady of Glenuskie, as a king’s grand-daughter, with
Annis and Lady Suffolk, had likewise been led up to take their places;
the four royal maidens were seated together. Yolande, the most regularly
beautiful, but with an anxious look on her face, talked to Eleanor
of her journey; Margaret, who had one of those very simple,
innocent-looking child-faces that sometimes form the mask of immense
energy of character, was more absent and inattentive to her duties
as hostess; moreover, she and Jean did not understand one another’s
language so well as did the other two. Delicate little cakes, and tall
Venice glasses, spirally ornamented, and containing light wines, were
served to them on the knee by a tall, large, fair-haired youth, who was
named to them as the Duke Sigismund, of Alsace and the Tyrol.

Jean had time to look about, and heartily wish that her beautiful flaxen
hair was loose, and not encumbered with the rolled headgear with two
projecting horns, against which Elleen had rebelled; since York and even
London were evidently behind the fashion. Margaret’s hair was bound with
a broad band of daisies, and Yolande’s with violets, both in allusion
to their names, Yolande being the French corruption of Violante, her
Provencal name, in allusion to the golden violet. Jean thought of the
Scottish thistle, and studied the dresses, tight-fitting ‘cotte hardis’
of bright, deep, soft, rose colour, edged with white fur, and white
skirts embroidered with their appropriate flowers. She wondered how soon
this could be imitated, casting a few glances at Duke Sigismund,
who stood waiting, as if desirous of attracting Yolande’s attention.
Eleanor, on the other hand, even while answering Yolande, had a feeling
as if she had arrived at the completion of the very vision which she had
imagined on the dreary tower of Dunbar. Here was the warm spring sun,
shining on a scene of unequalled beauty and brilliancy, set in the
spring foliage and blossom, whence, as if to rival the human performers,
gushes of nightingales’ song came in every interval. Hearing Eleanor’s
eager question whether that were the nightingale whose liquid trillings
she heard, King Rene realised that the Scottish maidens knew not the
note, and signed to the minstrels to cease for a time, then came and sat
on a cushion beside the young lady, and enjoyed her admiration.

‘Ah!’ she said, ‘that is the king of the minstrel birds.’

He smiled. ‘The royal lady then has her orders and ranks for the birds.’

‘Oh yes. If the royal eagle is the king, and the falcon is the true
knight, the nightingale and mavis, merle and lark, are the minstrels.
And the lovely seagull, oh, how call you it?--with the long white
floating wings rising and falling, is the graceful dancer.’

‘Guifette,’ Rene gave the word, ‘or in Provence, Rondinel della
mar--hiron

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