attending on his sovereign as an adventurer in the camp. It was not even worth while to name such scruples to the English friar who shrived him on the last day before the departure, and who knew nothing of his past history. He knew all priests would say the same things, and as he had never made a binding vow, he saw no need of consulting any one on the subject; it would only vex him again, and fill him with doubts. The suspicion that Dr. Bennet was aware of his previous intention made him shrink from him. So the last day had come, and all was farewell. King Henry had persuaded the Queen to seclude herself for one evening from Madame of Hainault, for his sake. King James was pacing the gardens on the Thames banks, with Joan Beaufort’s hand for once allowed to repose in his; many a noble gentleman was exchanging last words with his wife–many a young squire whispering what he had never ventured to say before–many a silver mark was cloven–many a bright tress was exchanged. Even Ralf Percy was in the midst of something very like a romp with the handsome Bessie Nevil for a knot of ribbon to carry to the wars.
Malcolm felt a certain exaltation in being enough like other people to have a lady-love, but there was not much comfort otherwise; indeed, he could so little have addressed Esclairmonde that it was almost a satisfaction that she was the centre of a group of maidens whose lovers or brothers either had been sent off beforehand, or who saw their attentions paid elsewhere, and who all alike gravitated towards the Demoiselle de Luxemburg for sympathy. He could but hover on the outskirts, conscious that he must cut a ridiculous figure, but unable to detach himself from the neighbourhood of the magnet. As he looked back on the happy weeks of unconstrained intercourse, when he came to her as freely as did these young girls with all his troubles, he felt as if the King had destroyed all his joy and peace, and yet that these flutterings of heart and agonies of shame and fits of despair were worth all that childish calm.
He durst say nothing, only now and then to gaze on her with his great brown wistful eyes, which he dropped whenever she looked towards him; until at last, when the summer evening was closing in, and the last signal was given for the break-up of the party, Malcolm ventured on one faltering murmur, ‘Lady, lady, you are not offended with me?’
‘Nay,’ said Esclairmonde, kindly; ‘nothing has passed between us that should offend me.’
His eye lighted. ‘May I still be remembered in your prayers, lady?’
‘As I shall remember all who have been my friends here,’ she said.
‘And oh, lady, if I should–should win honour, may I lay it at your feet?’
‘Whatever you achieve as a good man and true will gladden me,’ said Esclairmonde, ‘as it will all others that wish you well. Both you and your sister in her loneliness shall have my best prayers. Farewell, Lord Malcolm; may the Saints bless and guard you, whether in the world or the Church.’
Malcolm knew why she spoke of his sister, and felt as if there were no hope for him. Esclairmonde’s grave kindness was a far worse sign than would have been any attempt to evade him; but at any rate she had spoken with him, and his heart could not but be cheered. What might he not do in the glorious future? As the foremost champion of a crusading king, bearing St. Andrew’s cross through the very gates of Jerusalem, what maiden, however saintly, could refuse him his guerdon?
And he knew that, for the present, Esclairmonde was safe from retiring into any convent, since her high birth and great possessions would make any such establishment expect a large dower with her as a right, and few abbesses would have ventured to receive a runaway foreigner, especially as one of her guardians was the Bishop of Therouenne.
CHAPTER VII: THE SIEGE OF MEAUX
Wintry winds and rains were sweeping over the English tents on the banks of the Marne, where Henry V. was besieging Meaux, then the stronghold of one of those terrible freebooters who were always the offspring of a lengthened war. Jean de Gast, usually known as the Bastard de Vaurus, nominally was of the Armagnac or patriotic party, but, in fact, pillaged indiscriminately, especially capturing travellers on their way to Paris, and setting on their heads a heavy price, failing which he hung them upon the great elm-tree in the market-place. The very suburbs of Paris were infested by the forays of this desperate routier, as such highway robbers were called; the supplies of previsions were cut off, and the citizens had petitioned King Henry that he would relieve them from so intolerable an enemy.
The King intended to spend the winter months with his queen in England, and at once attacked the place in October, hoping to carry it by a coup de main. He took the lower city, containing the market- place and several large convents, with no great difficulty; but the upper city, on a rising ground above the river, was strongly fortified, well victualled, and bravely defended, and he found himself forced to invest it, and make a regular siege, though at the expense of severe toil and much sickness and suffering. Both his own prestige in France and the welfare of the capital depended on his success, and he had therefore fixed himself before Meaux to take it at whatever cost.
The greater part of the army were here encamped, together with the chief nobles, March, Somerset, Salisbury, Warwick, and likewise the King of Scots. James had for a time had the command of the army which besieged and took Dreux while Henry was elsewhere engaged, but in general he acted as a sort of volunteer aide-de-camp to his brother king, and Malcolm Stewart of Glenuskie was always with him as his squire. A great change had come over Malcolm in these last few months. His feeble, sickly boyhood seemed to have been entirely cast off, and the warm genial summer sun of France to have strengthened his frame and developed his powers. He had shot up suddenly to a fair height, had almost lost his lameness, and gained much more appearance of health and power of enduring fatigue. His nerves had become less painfully sensitive, and when after his first skirmish, during which he had kept close to King James, far too much terrified to stir an inch from him, he had not only found himself perfectly safe, but had been much praised for his valour, he had been so much pleased with himself that he quite wished for another occasion of displaying his bravery; and, what with use, and what with the increasing spirit of pugnacity, he was as sincere as Ralf Percy in abusing the French for never coming to a pitched battle. Perhaps, indeed, Malcolm spoke even more eagerly than Ralf, in his own surprise and gratification at finding himself no coward, and his fear lest Percy should detect that he ever had been supposed to be such.
So far the King of Scots had succeeded in awakening martial fire in the boy, but he found him less the companion in other matters than he had intended. When at Paris, James would have taken him to explore the learned hoards of the already venerable University of Paris, where young James Kennedy–son to Sir James Kennedy of Dunure, and to Mary, an elder sister of the King–was studying with exceeding zeal. Both James and Dr. Bennet were greatly interested in this famous abode of hearing–the King, indeed, was already sketching out designs in his own mind for a similar institution in Scotland, designs that were destined to be carried out after his death by Kennedy; and Malcolm perforce heard many inquiries and replies, but he held aloof from friendship with his clerkly cousin Kennedy, and closed his ears as much as might be, hanging back as if afraid of returning to his books. There was in this some real dread of Ralf Percy’s mockery of his clerkliness, but there was more real distaste for all that appertained to the past days that he now despised.
The tide of vitality and physical vigour, so long deficient, had, whom it had fairly set in, carried him away with it: and in the activity of body newly acquired, mental activity had well-nigh ceased. And therewith went much of the tenderness of conscience and devout habits of old. They dropped from him, sometimes for lack of time, sometimes from false shame, and by and by from very weariness and distaste. He was soldier now, and not monk–ay, and even the observances that such soldiers as Henry and James never failed in, and always enforced, were becoming a burthen to him. They wakened misgivings that he did not like, and that must wait till his next general shrift.
And Esclairmonde? Out of her sight, Malcolm dreamt a good deal about her, but more as the woman, less as the saint; and the hopes, so low in her presence, burnt brighter in her absence as Malcolm grew in self-confidence and in knowledge of the world. He knew that when he parted with her he had been a miserable little wretch whom any woman would despise, yet she had shown him a sort of preference; how would it be when he returned to her, perhaps a knight, certainly a brave man like other men!
Of Patrick Drummond he had as yet heard nothing, and only believed him to be among the Scots who fought on the French side under the Earls of Buchan and Douglas. Indeed, James especially avoided places where he knew these Scots to be engaged, as Henry persisted in regarding them as rebels against him, and in hanging all who were made prisoners; nor had Malcolm, during the courtesies that always pass between the outposts of civilized armies, made much attempt to have any communication with his cousin, for though his own abnegation of his rights had never been permitted by his guardian, or reckoned on by his sister or her lover, still he had been so much in earnest about it himself, as, while regarding it as a childish folly, to feel ill at ease in the remembrance, and, though defiant, willing to avoid all that could recall it.
Meantime he, with his king, was lodged in a large old convent, as part of the immediate following of King Henry. Others of the princes and nobles were quartered in the market hall and lower town, but great part of thine troops were in tents, and in a state of much discomfort, owing to the overflowings of the Marne. Fighting was the least of their dangers, though their skirmishes were often fought ankle-deep in mud and mire; fever and ague were among them, and many a sick man was sent away to recover or die at Paris. The long dark evenings were a new trial to men used to summer campaigning, and nothing but Henry’s wonderful personal influence and perpetual vigilance kept up discipline. At any hour of the day or night, at any place in the camp, the King might be at hand, with a cheery word of sympathy or encouragement, or with the most unflinching sternness towards any disobedience or debauchery–ever a presence to be either loved or dreaded. An engineer in advance of his time, he was persuaded that much of the discomfort might be remedied by trenching the ground around the camp; but this measure proved wonderfully distasteful to the soldiery. How hard they laboured in the direct siege operations they cared not, but to be set to drain French fields seemed to them absurd and unreasonable, and the work would not have proceeded at all without constant superintendence from one of the chiefs of the army, since the ordinary knights and squires were as obstinately prejudiced as were the men.
Thus it was that, on a cold sleety December day, James of Scotland rode along the meadows, splashing through thin ice into muddy water, and attended by his small personal suite, excepting Sir Nigel Baird, who was gone on a special commission to Paris. Both he and Malcolm were plainly and lightly armed, and wore long blue cloaks with the St. Andrew’s cross on the shoulder, steel caps without visors, and the King’s merely distinguished by a thread-hike circlet of gold. They had breastplates, swords, and daggers, but they were not going to a quarter where fighting was to be expected, and bright armour was not to be exposed to rust without need. A visit of inspection to the delvers was not a congenial occupation, for though the men-at-arms had obeyed James fairly well when he was in sole command at Dreux, yet whenever he was obliged to enforce anything unpopular, the national dislike to the Scot was apt to show itself, and the whole army was at present in a depressed condition which made such manifestations the more probable.
But King Henry was not half recovered from a heavy feverish cold, which he had not confessed or attended to, and he had also of late been troubled with a swelling of the neck. This morning, too, much to his inconvenience and dismay, he had missed his signet-ring. The private seal on such a ring was of more importance than the autograph at that time, and it would never have left the King’s hand; but no doubt, in consequence of his indisposition, his finger, always small- boned, had become thin enough to allow the signet to escape unawares, he was unwilling to publish the loss, as it might cast doubt on the papers he despatched, and he, with his chamberlain Fitzhugh, King James, Malcolm, Percy, and a few more, had spent half the morning in the vain search, ending by the King sending his chamberlain, Lord Fitzhugh, to carry to Paris a seal already bearing his shield, but lacking the small private mark that authenticated it as his signet. Fitzhugh would stand over the lapidary and see this added, and bring it back. Ralf Percy had meantime been sent to bring a report of the diggers, but he was long in returning; and when Henry became uneasy, James had volunteered to go himself, and Henry had consented, not because the air was full of sleety rain or snow, but because his hands were full of letters needing to be despatched to all quarters.
The air was so thick that it was not easy to see where were the sullen group of diggers presided over by the quondam duellists of Thirsk, Kitson and Trenton, now the most inseparable and impracticable of men; but James and his companions had ridden about two miles from the market-place, when Ralf Percy came out of the mist, exclaiming, ‘Is it you, Sir King? Maybe you can do something with those rascals! I’ve talked myself blue with cold to make them slope the sides of their dyke, but the owl Kitson says no Yorkshireman ditcher ever went but by one fashion, and none ever shall; and when I lifted my riding-rod at the most insolent of the rogues, what must Trenton do but tell me the lot were free yeomen, and I’d best look out, or they’d roll me in the mire if I meddled with a soul of them.’
‘You didn’t threaten to strike Trenton?’
‘No, no; the sullen cur is a gentleman. ‘Twas one of those lubberly men-at-arms! I told them they should hear what King Harry would say to their mood. I would it were he!’
‘So would I,’ said James. ‘Little chance that they will hearken to a Scot when you have put them in such a mood. Hold, Ralf, do not go for the King; he has letters for the Emperor mattering more than this dyke.’
He rode on, and did his best by leaping into the ditch, taking the spade, and showing the superior security of the angle of inclination traced by the King, but all in vain; both Trenton and Kitson silently but obstinately scouted the notion that any king should know more about ditches than themselves.
‘See,’ cried Percy, starting up, ‘here’s other work! The fellows, whence came they?’
Favoured by the fog and the soft soil of the meadows, a considerable body of the enemy were stealing on the delvers with the manifest purpose of cutting them off from the camp. They were all mounted, but the only horses in the English party were those of James, Percy, Malcolm, and the half-dozen men of his escort. James, assuming the command at once, bade these to be all released; they would be sure to find their way to the camp, and that would bring succour. Meantime he drew the whole of the men, about thirty in number, into a compact body. They were, properly, archers, but their bows had been left behind, and they had only their pikes and bills, which were, however, very formidable weapons against cavalry as long as they continued in an unbroken rank; and though the bogs, pools, sunken hedges, and submerged stumps made it difficult to keep close together as they made their way slowly with one flank to the river, these obstacles were no small protection against a charge of horsemen.
For a quarter of a mile these tactics kept them unharmed, but at length they reached a wide smooth meadow, and the enemy seemed preparing to charge. James gave orders to close up and stand firm, pikes outwards. Malcolm’s heart beat fast; it was the most real peril he had yet seen; and yet he was cheered by the King’s ringing voice, ‘Stand firm, ye merry men. They must soon be with us from the camp.’
Suddenly a voice shouted, ‘The Scots! the Scots! ‘Tis the Scots! Treachery! we are betrayed. Come, Sir’ (to Percy), ‘they’ll be on you. Treason!’
‘An’ it were, you fool, would a Percy turn his back?’ cried Ralf, striking at the man; but the panic had seized the whole body; all were shouting that the false Scots king had brought his countrymen down on them; they scattered hither and thither, and would have fallen an easy prey if they had been pursued. But this did not seem to be the purpose of the enemy, who merely extended themselves so as to form a hedge around the few who stood, sword in hand, disdaining to fly. These were, James, somewhat in advance, with his head high, and a lion look on his brow; Malcolm, white with dismay; Ralf, restless with fury; Kitson and Trenton, apparently as unmoved as ever; Brewster, equally steady: and Malcolm’s follower, Halbert, in a glow of hopeful excitement.
‘Never fear, friends,’ said James, kindly; ‘to you this can only be matter of ransom.’
‘I fear nothing,’ sharply answered Ralf.
‘We’ll stand by you, Sir,’ said Kitson to Ralf; ‘but if ever there were foul treason–‘
‘Pshaw! you ass,’ were all Percy’s thanks; for at that moment a horseman came forward from among the enemy, a gigantic form on a tall white horse, altogether a ‘dark gray man,’ the open visor revealing an elderly face, hard-featured and grim, and the shield on his arm so dinted, faded, and battered, as scarce to show the blue chief and the bleeding crowned heart; but it was no unfamiliar sight to Malcolm’s eyes, and with a slight shudder he bent his head in answer to the fierce whisper, ‘Old Douglas himself!’ with which Hotspur’s son certified himself that he had the foe of his house before him. King James, resting the point of his sword on his mailed foot, stood erect and gravely expectant; and the Scot, springing to the ground, advanced with the words, ‘We greet you well, my liege, and hereby–‘ he was bending his knee as he spoke, and removing his gauntlet in preparation for the act of homage.
‘Hold, Earl Douglas,’ said James, ‘homage is vain to a captive.’
‘You are captive no longer, Sir King,’ said Earl Archibald. ‘We have long awaited this occasion, and will at once return to Scotland with you, with the arms and treasure we have gained here, and will bear down the craven Albany.’
Kitson and Trenton looked at one another and grasped their swords, as though doubting whether they ought not to cut down their king’s prisoner rather than let him be rescued; and meanwhile the cry, ‘Save King James!’ broke out on all sides, knights leapt down to tender their homage, and among the foremost Malcolm knew Sir Patrick Drummond, crying aloud, ‘My lord, my lord, we have waited long for you. Be a free king in free Scotland! Trust us, my liege.’
‘Trust you, my friends!’ said James, deeply touched; ‘I trust you with all my heart; but how could you trust me if I began with a breach of faith to the King of England?’
Ralf Percy held up his finger and nodded his head to the Yorkshire squires, who stood open-mouthed, still believing that a Scot must be false. There was an angry murmur among the Scots, but James gazed at them undauntedly, as though to look it down.
‘Yes, to King Harry!’ he said, in his trumpet voice. ‘I belong to him, and he has trusted me as never prisoner was trusted before, nor will I betray that trust.’
‘The foul fiend take such niceties,’ muttered old Douglas; but, checking himself, he said, ‘Then, Sir, give me your sword, and we’ll have you home as my prisoner, to save this your honour!’
‘Yea,’ said James, ‘that is mine own, though my body be yours, and till England put me to ransom you would have but a useless captive.’
‘Sir,’ said Sir John Swinton, pressing forward, ‘if my Lord of Douglas be plain-spoken, bethink you that it is no cause for casting aside this one hope of freedom that we have sought so long. If you have the heart to strike for Scotland, this is the time.’
‘It is not the time,’ said James, ‘nor will I do Scotland the wrong of striking for her with a dishonoured hand.’
‘That will we see when we have him at Hermitage Castle,’ quoth Douglas to his followers. ‘Now, Sir King, best give your sword without more grimace. Living or dead you are ours.’
‘I yield not,’ said James. ‘Dead you may take me–alive, never.’ Then turning his eyes to the faces that gazed on him so earnestly in disappointment, in affection, or in scorn, he spoke: ‘Brave friends, who may perchance love me the better that I have been a captive half my life and all my reign, you can believe how sair my heart burns for my bonnie land’s sake, and how little I’d reck of my life for her weal. But broken oaths are ill beginnings. For me, so notably trusted by King Henry, to break my bonds, would shame both Scots and kings; and it were yet more paltry to feign to yield to my Lord of Douglas. Rescue or no rescue, I am England’s captive. Gentles, kindly brother Scots, in one way alone can you free me. Give up this wretched land of France, whose troubles are but lengthened by your valour. Let me gang to King Harry and tell him your swords are at his service, so soon as I am free. Then am I your King indeed; we return together, staunch hearts and strong hands, and the key shall keep the castle, and the bracken bush keep the cow, though I lead the life of a dog to bring it about.’
His tawny eye flashed with falcon light; and as he stood towering above all the tall men around, there were few who did not in heart own him indeed their king. But his picture of royal power accorded ill with the notions of a Black Douglas, in the most masterful days of that family; and Earl Archibald, who had come to regard kings as beings meant to be hectored by Douglases, resentfully exclaimed, ‘Hear him, comrades; he has avouched himself a Southron at heart. Has he reckoned how little it would cost to give a thrust to the caitiff who has lost heart in his prison, and clear the way for Albany, who is at least a true Scot?’
‘Do so, Lord Earl,’ said James, ‘and end a long captivity. But let these go scatheless.’
With one voice, Percy, Kitson, Trenton, and Brewster, shouted their resolve to defend him to the last; and Malcolm, flinging himself on Patrick Drummond, adjured him to save the King.
‘Thou here, laddie!’ said Patrick, amazed; and while several more knights exclaimed, ‘Sir, Sir, we’ll see no hand laid on you!’ he thrust forward, ‘Take my horse, Sir, ride on, and I’ll see no scathe befall you.’
‘Thanks,’ said James; ‘but my feet will serve me best; we will keep together.’
The Scottish force seemed dividing into two: Douglas and his friends and retainers, mounted and holding together, as though still undecided whether to grapple with the King and his half-dozen companions; while Drummond and about ten more lances were disposed to guard him at all risks.
‘Now,’ said James to his English friends; and therewith, sword in hand, he moved with a steady but swift stride towards the camp, nor did Douglas attempt pursuit; some of the other horsemen hovered between, and Patrick Drummond, with a puzzled face, kept near on foot. So they proceeded till they reached a bank and willow hedge, through which horses could hardly have pursued them.
On the other side of this, James turned round and said, ‘Thanks, Sir Knight; I suppose I may not hope that you will become a follower of the knight adventurer.’
‘I cannot fight under the English banner, my liege. Elsewhere I would fellow you to the death.’
‘This is no time to show your error,’ said James; ‘and I therefore counsel you to come no farther. The English will be pricking forth in search of us: so I will but thank you for your loyal aid.’
‘I entreat you, Sir,’ cried Patrick, ‘not to believe that we meant this matter to go as it has done! It had long been our desire–of all of us, that is, save my Lord Buchan’s retainers–to find you and release you; but never did we deem that Lord Douglas would have dared to conduct matters thus.’
‘You would be little the better for me did Lord Douglas bring me back on his own terms,’ said James, smiling. ‘No, no; when I go home, it shall be as a free king, able to do justice to all alike; and for that I am content to bide my time, and trust to such as you to back me when it comes.’
‘And with all my heart, Sir,’ said Patrick. ‘Would that you were where I could do so now. Ah! laddie,’ to Malcolm; ‘ye’re in good hands. My certie, I kenned ye but by your voice! Ye’re verily grown into a goodly ship after all, and ye stood as brave as the rest. My poor father would have been fain to see this day!’
Malcolm flushed to the ears; somehow Patrick’s praise was not as pleasant to him as he would have expected, and he only faltered, ‘You know–‘
‘I ken but what Johnnie Swinton brought me in a letter frae the Abbot of Coldingham, that my father–the saints be with him!–had been set on and slain by yon accursed Master of Albany–would that his thrapple were in my grip!–that he had sent you southwards to the King, and that your sister was in St. Abbs. Is it so?’
Malcolm had barely time to make a sign of affirmation, when the King hurried him on. ‘I grieve to balk you of your family tidings, but delay will be ill for one or other of us; so fare thee well, Sir Patrick, till better times.’
He shook the knight’s hand as he spoke, cut short his protestations, and leapt down the bank, saying in a low voice, as he stretched out his hand and helped Malcolm down after him, ‘He would have known me again for your guest if we had stood many moments longer; he looked hard at me as it was; and neither in England nor Scotland may that journey of mine be blazed abroad.’
Malcolm was on the whole rather relieved; he could not help feeling guilty towards Patrick, and unless he could have full time for explanation, he preferred not falling in with him.
And at the same moment Kitson stepped towards the King. ‘Sir, you are an honest man, and we crave your pardon if we said aught that seemed in doubt thereof.’
James laughed, shaking each honest hand, and saying, ‘At least, good sirs, do not always think Scot and traitor the same word; and thank you for backing me so gallantly.’
‘I’d wish no better than to back such as you, Sir,’ said Kitson heartily; and James then turned to Ralf Percy, and asked him what he thought of the Douglas face to face.
‘A dour old block!’ said Ralf. ‘If those runaways had but stayed within us, the hoary ruffian should have had his lesson from a Percy.’
James smiled, for the grim giant was still a good deal more than a match for the slim, rosy-faced stripling of the house of Percy, who nevertheless simply deemed his nation and family made him invincible by either Scot or Frenchman.
The difficulties of their progress, however, entirely occupied them. Having diverged from the regular track, they had to make their way through the inundated meadows; sometimes among deep pools, sometimes in quagmires, or ever hedges; while the water that drenched them was fast freezing, and darkness came down on them. All stumbled or were bogged at different times; and Malcolm, shorter and weaker than the rest, and his lameness becoming more felt than usual, could not help impeding their progress, and at last was so spent that but for the King’s strong arm he would have spent the night in a bog-hole.
At last the lights were near, the outskirts were gained, the pass- word given to the watch, and the rough but welcome greeting was heard–‘That’s well! More of you come in! How got you off?’
‘The rogues got back, then?’ said Kitson.
‘Some score of them,’ was the answer; ‘but ’tis thought most are drowned or stuck by the French. The King is in a proper rage, as well he may be; but what else could come of a false Scot in the camp?’
‘Have a care, you foul tongue!’ Percy was the first to cry; and as torches were now brought out and cast their light on the well-known faces, the soldiers stood abashed; but James tarried not for their excuses; his heart was hot at the words which implied that Henry suspected him, and he strode hastily on to the convent, where the quadrangle was full of horses and men, and the windows shone with lights. At the door of the refectory stood a figure whose armour flashed with light, and his voice sounded through the closed visor– ‘I tell you, March, I cannot rest till I knew what his hap has been. If he have done this thing– ‘
‘What then?’ answered James out of the darkness, in a voice deep with wrath; but Henry started.
‘You there! you safe! Speak again! Come here that I may see. Where is he?’
‘Here, Sir King,’ said James, gravely.
‘Now the saints be thanked!’ cried Henry, joyously. ‘Where be the caitiffs that brought me their false tale? They shall hang for it at once.’
‘It was the less wonder,’ said James, still coldly, ‘that they should have thought themselves betrayed, since their king believed it of me.’
‘Nay, ’twas but for a hot moment–ay, and the bitterest I ever spent. What could I do when the villains swore that there were signals and I know not what devices passing? I hoped yet ’twas but a plea for their own cowardice, and was mounting to come and see for you. Come, I should have known you better; I’d rather the whole world deceived me than have distrusted you, Jamie.’
There was that in his tone which ended all resentment, and James’s hand was at once clasped in his, while Henry added, ‘Ho, Provost- marshal! to the gallows with these knaves!’
‘Nay, Harry,’ said James, ‘let me plead for them. There was more than ordinary to dismay them.’
‘Dismay! ay, the more cause they should have stood like honest men. If a rogue be not to hang for deserting his captain and then maligning him, soon would knavery be master of all.’
‘Hear me first, Hal.’
‘I’ll hear when I return and you are dried. Why, man, thou art an icicle errant; change thy garments while I go round the posts, or I shall hear nought for the chattering of thy teeth.’
‘Nor I for your cough, if you go, Harry. Surely, ’tis Salisbury’s night!’
‘The more cause that I be on the alert! Could I be everywhere, mayhap a few winter blasts would not have chilled and frozen all the manhood out of the host.’
He spoke very sharply as he threw him on his horse, and wrapped his cloak about him–a poor defence, spite of the ermine lining, against the frost of the December night for a man whose mother, the fair and wise Mary de Bohun, had died in early youth from disease of the lungs.
James and the two young partners of his adventure had long been clad in their gowns of peace, and seated by the fire in the refectory, James with his harp in his hand, from time to time dreamily calling forth a few plaintive notes, such as he said always rang in his ears after hearing a Scottish voice, when they again heard Henry’s voice in hot displeasure with the provost-marshal for having deferred the execution of the runaways till after the hearing of the story of the King of Scots.
‘His commands were not to be transgressed for the king of anything,’ and he only reprieved the wretches till morning that their fate might be more signal. He spoke with the peremptory fierceness that had of late almost obscured his natural good-humour and kindliness; and when he entered the refectory and threw himself into a chair by the fire, he looked wearied out in body and mind, shivered and coughed, and said with unwonted depression that the sullen fellows would make a quagmire of their camp after all, since a French reinforcement had come up, and the vigilance that would be needed would occupy the whole army. At supper he ate little and spoke less; and when James would have related his encounter within the Scots, he cut him short, saying, ‘Let that rest till morning; I am sick of hearing of it! An air upon thy harp would be more to the purpose.’
Nor would James have been unwilling to be silent on old Douglas’s conduct if he had not been anxious to plead for the panic-stricken archers, as well as to extol the conduct of the two youths, and of the Yorkshire squires; but, as he divined that the young Hotspur would regard praise from him as an insult, he deferred the subject for his absence, and launched into a plaintive narrative ballad, to which Henry listened, leaning back in his chair, often dozing, but without relaxation of the anxiety that sat on his pale face, and ever and anon wakening within a heavy sigh, as though his buoyant spirits were giving way under the weight of care he had brought on himself.
James was just singing of one of the many knightly orphans of romance, exposed in woods to the nurture of bears, his father slain, his mother dead of grief–a ditty he had perhaps chosen for its soporific powers–when a gay bugle blast rang through the court of the convent.
‘The French would scarce send to parley thus late,’ exclaimed James; but the next moment a joyful clamour arose without, and Henry, springing to his feet, spoke not, but stood awaiting the tidings with the colour burning on cheek and brow in suppressed excitement.
An esquire, splashed to the ears, hurried into the room, and falling on his knees, cried aloud, ‘God save King Harry! News, news, my lord! The Queen has safely borne you a fair son at Windsor Castle, five days since.’
Henry did not speak, but took the messenger’s hand, wrung it, and left a costly ring there. Then, taking off his cap, he put his hands over his face, uttering a few words of fervent thanksgiving almost within himself, and then turning to the esquire, made further inquiries after his wife’s welfare, took from him the letter that Archbishop Chicheley had sent, poured out a cup of wine for him, bade the lords around make him good cheer, but craved license for himself to retire.
It was so unlike his usual hilarious manner that all looked at one another in anxiety, and spoke of his unusual susceptibility to fatigue and care; while the squire, looking at the rich jewel in his hand, declared within disappointment in his tone, that he would rather have had a mere flint stone so he had heard King Harry’s own cheery voice.
James was not the least anxious of them, but long ere light the next morning Henry stood at his bedside, saying, ‘I must go round the posts before mass, Jamie. Will you face the matin frost?’
‘I am fitter to face it than thou,’ said James, rising. ‘Is there need for this?’
‘Great need,’ said Henry. ‘Here are these fresh forces all aglow within their first zeal, and unless they are worse captains than I suppose them, they will attempt some mischief ere long–nor is any time so slack as cock-crow.’
James was speedily ready, and, within some suppressed sighs, so was Malcolm, who knew himself in duty bound to attend his master, and was kept on the alert by seeing Ralf Percy also on foot. But it was a great relief to him that the young gentleman murmured in no measured terms against the intolerable activity of their kings. No other attendants went within them, since Henry was wont to patrol his camp with as little demonstration as possible.
‘I would scarcely ask a dog to come out with me this wintry morn,’ said he, as he waved back his sleepy chamberlain, Fitzhugh, and took his brother king’s arm; ‘but I could not but crave a turn with thee, Jamie, ere the hue and cry of rejoicing begins.’
‘That is poor welcome for your heir,’ said James.
‘Poor child!’ said Henry; then, after they had walked some space in silence, he added, ‘You’ll mock me, but I would that this had not befallen at Windsor. I had laid my plans that it should be otherwise; but ladies are ill to guide.’
‘And wherefore should it not have been at fair Windsor? If I can love it as a prison, sure your son may well love it as a cradle.’
‘No dishonour to Windsor,’ said Henry; ‘but, sleeping or waking, this whole night hath this adage rung in my ears –
“Harry, born at Monmouth, shall short time live and all get; Harry, born at Windsor, shall long time live and lose all.”‘
‘A most choice piece of royal poesy and prophecy,’ laughed James.
‘Nay, do not charge me with it, thou dainty minstrel. It was sung to me by mime old Herefordshire nurse, when Windsor seemed as little within my reach as Meaux, and I never thought of it again till I looked to have a son.’
‘Then balk the prophecy,’ said James; ‘Edward born at Windsor got enough, and lived long enough to boot!’
‘Too late!’ was the answer. ‘The Archbishop christened the poor child Harry in the very hour of his birth.’
‘Poor child!’ echoed James, rather sarcastically.
‘Nay, ’tis not solely the rhyme,’ said Henry; ‘but this has been a wakeful night, and not without misgivings whether I am one who ought to look for joy in his children.’
‘What is past was not such that you alone should cry mea culpa,’ said James.
‘I never thought so till now,’ said Henry. ‘Yet who knows? My father was a winsome young man ere his exile, full of tenderness to us all, at the rare times he was with us. Who knows what cares may make of me ere my boy learns to knew me?’
‘You will not hold him aloof, and give him no chance of loving you?’
‘I trow not! I’ll have him with me in the camp, and he and my brave men shall be one another’s pride. Which Roman emperor is it that hears the nickname his father’s soldiers gave him as a child? Nay– Caligula was it? Omens are against me this morning.’
‘Then laughs them to scorn, and be yourself,’ said James. ‘Bless God for the goodly child, who is born to two kingdoms, won by his father’s and his grandsire’s swords.’
‘Ah!’ said Henry, depressed by failing health, a sleepless night, and hungry morning, ‘maybe it were better for him, soul and body both, did I stand here Duke of Lancaster, and good Edmund of March yonder were head of realm and army.’
‘Never would he be head of this army,’ said James. ‘He would be snoring at Shene; that is, if he could sleep for the trouble the Duke of Lancaster would be giving him.’
Henry laughed at last. ‘Good King Edmund, he would assuredly never try to set the world right on its hinges. Honest fellow, soon he will be as hearty in his congratulations as though he did not lie under a great wrong. Heigh-ho! such as he may be in the right on’t. I’ve marvelled of late, whether any priest or hermit could bring back my old assurance, that all this is my work on earth, or tell me if it be all one grand error. Men there have been like Caesar, Alexander, or Charlemagne, who thought my thoughts and worked them out; and surely Church and nations cry aloud for purifying. Jerusalem, and a general council–I saw them once clear and bright before me; but now a mist seems to rise up from Richard’s blood, and hide them from me; and there comes from it my father’s voice when he asked on his deathbed what right I had to the crown. What would it be if I had to leave this work half done?’
He was interrupted by the sight of a young knight stealing into the camp, after a furtive expedition to Paris. It was enough to rouse him from his despondent state; and the severity of his wrath was in full proportion to the offence. Nor did he again utter his misgivings, but was full of his usual alacrity and life, as though daylight had restored his buoyancy.
James, on the way back to the thanksgiving mass, interceded for last night’s offenders, as an act of grace suitable to the occasion; but Henry was inexorable.
‘Had they stood to die like Englishmen, they had not lied like dogs! ‘he said; ‘and as dogs they shall hang!’
In fact, in the critical state of his army, he knew that the only safety lay in the promptest and sternest justice; and therefore the three foremost in accusing King James of treachery were hung long before noon.
However, he called for the two Yorkshiremen, and thus addressed them: ‘Well done, my masters! Thanks for showing Scots and Frenchmen what stuff Englishmen are made of! I keep my word, good fellows. Kneel down, and I’ll dub each a knight. How now! what are you blundering and whispering for?’
‘So please you, Sir,’ said Kitson, ‘this is no matter to win one’s spurs for–mere standing still without a blow.’
‘I would all had that same gift of standing still,’ returned Henry. ‘What is it sticks in your gizzard, friend? If ’tis the fees, I take them on myself.’
‘No, Sir,’ hoarsely cried both.
And Kitson explained: ‘Sir, you said you’d knight the one of us that was foremost. Now, the two being dubbed, we shall be but where we were before as to Mistress Agnes of Mineshull, unless of your good- will you would be pleased to let us fight out the wager of the heriard in all peace and amity.’
Henry burst out laughing, with all his old merriment, as he said, ‘For no Mistress Agnes living can I have honest men’s lives wasted, specially of such as have that gift of standing still. If she does not knew her own mind, one of you must get himself killed by the Frenchmen, not by one another. So kneel down, and we’ll make your knighthood’s feast fall in with that of my son.’
Thus Sir Christopher Kitson and Sir William Trenton rose up knights; and bore their honours with a certain bluntness that made them butts, even while they were the heroes of the day; and Henry, who had resumed his gay temper, made much diversion out of their mingled shrewdness and gruffness.
‘So,’ muttered Malcolm to Ralf Percy, ‘we are passed over in the self-same matter for which these fellows are knighted.’
‘Tush!’ answered Percy; ‘I’d scorn to be confounded with a couple of clowns like them! Moreover,’ he added, with better reason, ‘their valour was more exercised than ours, inasmuch as they thought there was treachery, and we did not. No, no; when my spurs are won, it shall be for some prowess, better than standing stock-still.’
Malcolm held his tongue, unwilling that Percy should see that he did feel this an achievement; but he was vexed at the lack of reward, fancying that knighthood would be no small step in the favour of that imaginary Esclairmonde whom he had made for himself.
‘Light of the world’ he loved to call her still, but it was in the commonplace romance of his time, the mere light of beauty and grace illuminating the world of chivalry.
CHAPTER VIII: THE CAPTURE
The seven months’ siege ended at last, but it was not until the brightness of May was on the fields outside, and the deadly blight of famine on all within, that a haggard, wasted-looking deputation came down from the upper city to treat with the King.
Henry was never severe with the inhabitants of French cities, and exacted no harsh terms, save that he insisted that Vaurus, the robber captain, and his two chief lieutenants, should be given up to him to suffer condign punishment. The warriors who had shut themselves up to hold out the place by honourable warfare for the Dauphin must be put to ransom as prisoners of war; but the burghers were to be unmolested, on condition of their swearing allegiance to Henry as regent for, and heir of, Charles VI.
To this the deputies consented, and the next day was fixed for the surrender. The difficulty was, as Henry had found at Harfleur, Rouen, and many other places, to enforce forbearance on his soldiery, who regarded plunder as their lawful prey, the enemy as their natural game, and the trouble a city had given them as a cause for unmercifulness. The more time changed his army from the feudal gathering of English country gentlemen and yeomen to mercenary bands of men-at-arms, the mere greedy, rapacious, and insubordinate became their temper. Well knowing the greatness of the peril, and that the very best of his captains had scarcely the will, if they had the power, to restrain the license that soon became barbarity unimaginable, he spoke sadly overnight of his dread of the day of surrender, when it might prove impossible to prevent deeds that would be not merely a blot on his scutcheon, but a shame to human nature; looking back to the exultation with which he had entered Harfleur as a mere effect of boyish ignorance and thoughtlessness.
Having taken all possible precautions, he stood in his full armour, with the fox’s brush in his helmet, under the great elm in the market-place, received the keys, accepted the sword of the captain commissioned by Charles with royal courtesy, gave his hand to be kissed by the mayor; and then, with grave inexorable air, like a statue of steel, watched as the freebooter Vaurus and his two chief companions were led down with their hands tied, halters round their necks, and priests at their sides, preparing them to be hung on that very tree. They were proud hard men, and uttered no entreaty for grace. They had hung too many travellers upon these same branches not to expect their own turn, and they were no cravens to abase themselves.
That act of justice ended, Henry mounted his warhorse and rode in at the gates. His wont was to go straight to the principal church, and there attend a solemn mass of thanksgiving; but experience had taught him that his devotions were the very opportunity of his men’s rapine: he had therefore arranged that as soon as he should have arrived in the choir of the cathedral, James should take his place, and he slip out by a side door, so as to return to the scene of action.
In full procession he and his suite reached the chief door, and there dismounted in an immense crowd, which thronged in at the doors.
‘Come, Glenuskie,’ said Ralf Percy, as the two youths were pushed chose together in the press; ‘if you have a fancy for being smothered in the minster, I have none. We shall never be missed. ‘Twill be sport to walk round and see how these hardy rogues contrived to hold out.’
Malcolm willingly turned aside with him, and looked down the sloping street, which was swarming with comers and goers. The whole place was in an inflammable state. Soldiers were demanding quarters, which the citizens unwillingly gave. A refusal or expostulation against a rough entry led to violence; and ever as the two youths walked farther from the cathedral, there was more of excitement, more rude oaths of soldiers, more shrieking of women, often crying out even before any harm was done to them or their houses.
At last, before a tall overhanging house, there was an immense press, and a frightful din of shouts and imprecations, filling both the new- comers with infectious eagerness.
‘How now? how now?’ called Percy. ‘Keep the peace, good fellows.’
‘Sir,’ cried a number of voices, passionately, ‘the French villains have barred their door. There’s a lot of cowardly Armagnacs hid there with their gold, trying to balk honest men of their ransom.’
Such was the cry resounding on all sides. ‘Have at them! There’s the rogue at the windows. Out on the fellows! Burn down the door! ‘Tis Vaurus himself and all his gold. Treason! treason!’
The clamour was convincing to the spirit, if not to the senses. The two lads believed in the concealed Armagnacs, or perhaps more truly were carried away by the vehemence around them; and with something of the spirit of the chase, threw themselves headlong into the affair.
‘Open! open!’ shouted Ralf. ‘Open, in the name of King Henry!’
An old man’s face peeped through a little wicket in the door, and at sight of the two youths, evidently of high rank, said in a trembling voice, ‘Alas! alas! Sir, bid these cruel men go away. I have nothing here–no one–only my sick daughter.’
‘You hear,’ said Malcolm, turning round; ‘only his sick daughter.’
‘Sick daughter!–old liar! Here’s an honest tinker makes oath he has hoards of gold laid up for Vaurus, and ten Armagnacs hidden in his house. Have at him! Bring fire!’
Blows hailed thick on the door; a flaming torch was handed over the heads of the throng; horrible growls and roars pervaded them. Malcolm and Ralf, furious at the cheat, stood among the foremost, making so much noise themselves between thundering and reviling, and calling out, ‘Where are the Armagnacs? Down with the traitors!’ that they were not aware of a sudden hush behind them, till a buffet from a heavy hand fell on Malcolm’s shoulder, and a mighty voice cried ‘Shame! shame! What, you too!’
‘There are traitors hid here, Sir,’ said Percy, in angry self- justification.
‘And what an if there are? Back, every one of you! rogues that you be!–Here, Fitzhugh, see those villains back to the camp. Let their arms be given up to the Provost-marshal.–Kites and crows as you are! Away, out with you!’
Henry pointed to the broken door, and the cowed and abashed soldiers slunk away from the terrible light of his eyes. No man could stand before the face of the King.
There was a stillness. He stood leaning on his sword, his chest heaving with his panting breaths. He was naturally as fleet as the swift-footed Achilles, but the winter had told upon him, and the haste with which he had rushed to the rescue left him breathless and speechless, while he seemed as it were to nail the two lads to the spot by his steady gaze of mingled distress and displeasure.
Neither could brook his eye: Percy hung his head like a boy in a scrape; Malcolm quailed with terror, but at the same time felt a keen sense of injury in being thus treated as a plunderer, and the blow under which his shoulder ached seemed an indignity to his royal blood.
‘Boys,’ said Henry, still low and breathlesly, but all the more impressively, ‘what is to become of honour and mercy if such as you must needs become ravening wolves at scent of booty?’
‘It was not booty, Sir; they said traitors were hid here,’ said Percy, sulkily.
‘Tush! the old story! Ever the plea for rapine and bloodthirstiness. After the warnings of last night you should have known better; but you are all alike in frenzy for a sack. You have both put off your knighthood till you have learnt not to become a shame thereto.’
‘I take not knighthood at your hands, Sir,’ burst out Malcolm, goaded with hot resentment, but startled the next moment at the sound of his own words.
‘I cry you mercy,’ said King Henry, in a cold, short tone.
Malcolm turned on his heel and walked away, without waiting to see how the poor old man in the house threw himself at the King’s feet with a piteous history of his sick daughter and her starving children, nor how Ralf hurried off headlong to the lower town to send them immediate relief in bread, wine, and doctors. The gay, good- natured, thoughtless lad no mere harboured malice for the chastisement than if his tutor had caught him idling; but things went deeper with Malcolm. True, he had undergone many a brutal jest and cruel practical joke from his cousins; but that was all in the family, not like a blow from an alien king, and one not apologized for, but followed up by a rebuke that seemed to him unjust, lowering him in his own eyes and those of Esclairmonde, and making him ready to gnaw himself with moody vexation.
‘You here, Malcolm!’ said King James, entering his quarters; ‘did you miss me in the throng? I have not seen you all day.’
‘I have been insulted, Sir,’ said Malcolm. ‘I pray your license to depart and carry my sword to my kinsmen in the French camp.’
‘How now! Is it the way to treat an insult to run away from it?’
‘Not when the world judges men to be on equal terms, my lord.’
‘What! Who has done you wrong, you silly loon?’
‘King Henry, Sir; he struck me with his fist, and rated me like his hound; and I will not eat another morsel of his bread unless he would answer it to me in single combat.’
‘Little enough bread you’d eat after that same answer!’ ejaculated James. ‘Oh! I understand now. You were with young Hotspur and the rest that set on the poor townsmen, and Harry made small distinction of persons! Nay, Malcolm, it was ill in you, that talked of so loathing spulzie!’
‘I wanted no spulzie. There were Armagnacs hid in the house, and the King would not hear us.’
‘He knew that story too well. Were you asleep or idling last night, when he warned all, on no plea whatever, to break into a house, but, if the old tale of treachery came up, to set a guard, and call one of the captains? Did you hear him–eh?’
‘I can take chiding from you, Sir, but neither words nor blows from any other king in Christendom, still less when he threatens me that I have deferred my knighthood! As if I would have it from him!’
‘From me you will not have it until he have pardoned Ralf Percy,’ said James, dryly. ‘Malcolm, I had not thought you such a fule body! Under a captain’s banner, what can be done but submit to his rule? I should do so myself, were Salisbury or March in command.’
‘Then, Sir,’ said Malcolm, much hurt that the King did not take his part, ‘I shall carry my service elsewhere.’
‘So,’ said James, much vexed, ‘this is the meek lad that wanted to hide in a convent from an ill world, flying off from his king and kinsman that he may break down honest men’s doors at his will.’
‘That I may be free from insult, Sir.’
‘You think John of Buchan like to cosset you! You found the Black Douglas so courtly to me the other day as to expect him to be tender to this nicety of yours! Malcolm, as your prince and guardian, I forbid this folly, and command you to lay aside this fit of malice and do your devoir. What! sobbing, silly lad–where’s your manhood?’
‘Sir, Sir, what will they think of me–the Lady Esclairmonde and all- -if they hear I have sat down tamely with a blow?’
‘She will never think about you at all but as a sullen malapert ne’er-do-weel, if you go off to that camp of routiers, trying to prop a bad cause because you cannot take correction, nor observe discipline.’
A sudden suspicion came over Malcolm that the King would not thus make light of the offence, if it had really been the inexpiable insult he had supposed it, and the thought was an absolute relief; for in effect the parting from James, and joining the party opposed to Esclairmonde’s friends, would have been so tremendous a step, that he could hardly have contemplated it in his sober senses, and he murmured, ‘My honour, Sir,’ in a tone that James understood.
‘Oh, for your honour–you need not fear for that! Any knight in the army could have done as much without prejudice to your honour. Why, you silly loon, d’ye think I would not have been as angered as yourself, if your honour had been injured?’
Malcolm’s heart felt easier, but he still growled. ‘Then, Sir, if you assure me that I can do so without detriment to my honour, I will not quit you.’
James laughed. ‘It might have been more graciously spoken, my good cousin, but I am beholden to you.’
Malcolm, ashamed and vexed at the sarcastic tone, held his tongue for a little while, but presently exclaimed, ‘Will the Bishop of Therouenne hear of it?’
James laughed. ‘Belike not; or, if he should, it would only seem to him the reasonable training of a young squire.’
The King did not say what crossed his own mind, that the Bishop of Therouenne was more likely to think Henry over-strict in discipline, and absurdly rigorous.
The prelate, Charles de Luxemburg, brother to the Count de St. Pol, had made several visits to the English camp. He was one of these princely younger sons, who, like Beaufort at home, took ecclesiastical preferments as their natural provision, and as a footing whence they might become statesmen. He was a great admirer of Henry’s genius, and, as the chief French prelate who was heartily on the English side, enjoyed a much greater prominence than he could have done at either the French or Burgundian Court. He and his brother of St. Pol were Esclairmonde’s nearest kinsmen–‘oncles a la mode de Bretagne,’ as they call the relationship which is here sometimes termed Welsh uncle, or first cousins once removed–and from him James had obtained much more complete information about Esclairmonde than he could ever get from the flighty Duchess.
Her mother, a beautiful Walloon, had been heiress to wide domains in Hainault, her father to great estates in Flanders, all which were at present managed by the politic Bishop. Like most of the statesman- secular-clergy, the Bishop hated nothing so much as the monastic orders, and had made no small haste to remove his fair niece from the convent at Dijon, where she had been educated, lest the Cistercians should become possessed of her lands. He had one scheme for her marriage; but his brother, the Count, had wished to give her to his own second son, who was almost an infant; and the Duke of Burgundy had designs on her for his half-brother Boemond; and among these various disputants, Esclairmonde had never failed to find support against whichever proposal was forced upon her, until the coalition between the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant becoming too strong, she had availed herself of Countess Jaqueline’s discontent to evade them both.
The family had, of course, been much angered, and had fully expected that her estates would go to some great English abbey, or to some English lord whose haughty reserve and insularity would be insupportable. It was therefore a relief to Monseigneur de Therouenne to hear James’s designs; and when the King further added, that he would be willing to let the claims on the Hainault part of her estates be purchased by the Count de St. Pol, and those in Flanders by the Duke of Burgundy, the Bishop was delighted, and declared that, rather than such a negotiation should fail, he would himself advance the sum to his brother; but that the Duke of Burgundy’s consent was more doubtful, only could they not do without it?
And he honoured Malcolm with a few words of passing notice from time to time, as if he almost regarded him as a relation. No doubt it would have been absurd to fly from such chances as these to Patrick Drummond and the opposite camp; and yet there were times when Malcolm felt as if he should get rid of a load on his heart if he were to break with all his present life, hurry to Patrick, confess the whole to him, and then–hide his head in some hermitage, leaving his pledge unforfeited!
That, however, could not be. He was bound to the King, and might not desert him, and it was not unpleasant to brood over the sacrifice of his own displeasure.
‘See,’ said Henry, in the evening, as he came into the refectory and walked up to James, ‘I have found my signet. It was left in the finger of my Spanish glove, which I had not worn since the beginning of winter. Thanks to all who took vain pains to look for it.’
But Malcolm did not respond with his pleased look to the thanks. He was not in charity with Henry, and crept out of hearing of him, while James was saying, ‘You had best destroy one or the other, or they will make mischief. Here, I’ll crush it with the pommel of my sword.’
‘Ay,’ said Henry, laughing, ‘you’d like to shew off one of your sledge-hammer blows–Sir Bras de Fer! But, Master Scot, you shall not smash the English shield so easily. This one hangs too loose to be safe; I shall keep it to serve me when we have fattened up at Paris, after the leanness of our siege.’
‘Hal,’ said James, seeing his gay temper restored, ‘you have grievously hurt that springald of mine. His northern blood cannot away with the taste he got of your fist.’
‘Pretty well for your godly young monk, to expect to rob unchecked!’ laughed Henry.
‘He will do well at last,’ said James. ‘Manhood has come on him with a rush, and borne him off his feet; nor would I have him over-tame.’
‘There spake the Scot!’ said Henry. ‘By my faith, Jamie, we should have had you the worst robber of all had we not caught you young! Well, what am I do for this sprig of royalty? Say I struck unawares? Nay, had I known him, I’d have struck with as much of a will as his slight bones would bear.’
‘An you love me, Hal, do something to cool his ill blood, and remove the sense of shame that sinks a lad in his own eyes.’
‘Methought,’ said Henry, ‘there was more shame in the deed than in the buffet.’
Nevertheless the good-natured King took an occasion of saying: ‘My Lord of Glenuskie, I smote without knowing you. It was no place for a prince–nay, for any honest man; otherwise no hand should have been laid on my guest or my brother’s near kinsman. And whereas I hear that both you and my fiery hot Percy verily credited the cry that prisoners were hid in that house, let me warn you that never was place yielded on composition but some villain got up the shout, and hundreds of fools followed it, till they learnt villainy in their turn. Therefore I ever chastise transgression of my command to touch neither dwelling nor inhabitant. You have both learnt your lesson, and the lion rampant and he of the straight tail will both be reined up better another time.’
Malcolm had no choice but to bend his head, mutter something, and let the King grasp his hand, though to him the apology seemed none at all, but rather to increase the offence, since the blame was by no means taken back again, while the condescension was such as could not be rejected, and thus speciously took away his excuse for brooding over his wrath. His hand lay so unwillingly in that strong hearty clasp that the King dropped it, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered to himself, ‘Sullen young dog! No Scot can let bygones be bygones!’ and then he turned away and cast the trifle from his memory.
James was amazed not to see the moody face clear up, and asked of Malcolm whether he were not gratified with this ample satisfaction.
‘I trow I must be, Sir,’ said Malcolm.
‘I tell thee, boy,’ said James, ‘not one king–nay, not one man–in a thousand would have offered thee the frank amends King Harry hath done this day: nay, I doubt whether even he could so have done, were it not that the hope of his wife’s coming hath made him overflow with joy and charity to all the world.’
Malcolm did not make much reply, and James regarded him with some disappointment. The youth was certainly warmly attached to him, but these tokens of superiority to the faults of his time and country which had caused the King to seek him for a companion seemed to have vanished with his feebleness and timidity. The manhood that had been awakened was not the chivalrous, generous, and gentle strength of Henry and his brothers, but the punctilious pride and sullenness, and almost something of the license, of the Scot. The camp had not proved the school of chivalry that James, in his inexperience, had imagined it must be under Henry, and the tedium and wretchedness of the siege had greatly added to its necessary evils by promoting a reckless temper and willingness to snatch at any enjoyment without heed to consequences. Close attendance on the kings had indeed prevented either Malcolm or Percy from even having the temptation of running into any such lengths as those gentry who had plundered the shrine of St. Fiacre at Breuil, or were continually galloping off for an interval of dissipation at Paris; but they were both on the outlook for any snatch of stolen diversion, for in ceasing from monastic habits Malcolm seemed to have laid aside the scruples of a religious or conscientious youth, and specially avoided Dr. Bennet, the King’s almoner.
James feared he had been mistaken, and looked to the influence of Esclairmonde to repair the evil, if perchance she should follow the Queen to France. And this it was almost certain she must do, since she was entirely dependent upon the Countess of Hainault, and could not obtain admission to a nunnery without recovering a portion of her estates.
CHAPTER IX: THE DANCE OF DEATH
The Queen was coming! No sooner had the first note of surrender been sounded from the towers of Meaux, than Henry had sent intelligence to England that the way was open for the safe arrival of his much-loved wife; and at length, on a sunny day in May, tidings were received that she had landed in France, under the escort of the Duke of Bedford.
Vincennes, in the midst of its noble forest, was the place fixed for the meeting of the royal pair; and never did a happier or more brilliant cavalcade traverse those woodlands than that with which Henry rode to the appointed spot.
All the winter, the King had heeded appearances as little as of old when roughing it with Hotspur in Wales; but now his dress was of the most royal. On his head was a small green velvet cap, encircled by a crown in embroidery; his robe was of scarlet silk, and over it was thrown a mantle of dark green samite, thickly powdered with tiny embroidered white antelopes; the Garter was on his knee, the George on his neck. It was a kingly garb, and well became the tall slight person and fair noble features. During these tedious months he had looked wan, haggard, and careworn; but the lines of anxiety were all effaced, his lustrous blue eyes shone and danced like Easter suns, his complexion rivalled the fresh delicate tints of the blossoms in the orchards; and when, with a shyness for which he laughed at himself, he halted to brush away any trace of dust that might offend the eye of his ‘dainty Kate,’ and gaily asked his brother king if he were sufficiently pranked out for a lady’s bower, James, thinking he had never seen him so handsome, replied:
‘Like a young bridegroom–nay, more like a young suitor.’
‘You’re jealous, Jamie–afraid of being outshone. ‘Tis is your own fault, man; none can ever tell whether you be in festal trim or not.’
For King James’s taste was for sober, well-blending hues; and as he never lapsed into Henry’s carelessness, his state apparel was not very apparently dissimilar from his ordinary dress, being generally of dark rich crimson, blue, or russet, with the St. Andrew’s cross in white silk on his breast, or else the ruddy lion, but never conspicuously; and the sombre hues always seemed particularly well to suit his auburn colouring.
Malcolm, in scarlet and gold, was a far gayer figure, and quite conscious of the change in his own appearance–how much taller, ruddier, and browner he had become; how much better he held himself both in riding and walking; and how much awkwardness and embarrassment he had lost. No wonder Esclairmonde had despised the sickly, timid, monkish school-boy; and if she had then shown him any sort of grace or preference, what would she think of the princely young squire he could new show her, who had seen service, had proved his valour, and was only not a knight because of King Henry’s unkindness and King James’s punctilio?–at any rate, no child to be brow-beaten and silenced with folly about cloistral dedication, but a youth who had taken his place in the world, and could allege that his inspiration had come through her bright eyes.
Would she be there? That was the chief anxiety: for it was not certain that either she or her mistress would risk themselves on the Continent; and Catherine had given no intimation as to who would be in her suite–so that, as Henry had merrily observed, he was the only one in the whole party who was not in suspense, except indeed Salisbury, who had sent his commands to his little daughter to come out with the Queen.
‘She is come!’ cried Henry. ‘Beforehand with us, after all;’ and he spurred his horse on as he saw the banner raised, and the escort around the gate; and in a few seconds more he and his companions had hurried through the court, where the ladies had scarcely dismounted, and hastened into the hall, breaking into the seneschal’s solemn reception of the Queen.
‘My Kate, my fairest! Mine eyes have been hungry for a sight of thee.’
And Catherine, in her horned head-gear and flutter of spangled veil, was almost swallowed up in his hearty embrace; and the fervency of his great love so far warmed her, that she clung to him, and tenderly said, ‘My lord, it is long since I saw you.’
‘Thou wert before me! Ah! forgive thy tardy knight,’ he continued, gazing at her really enhanced beauty as if he had eyes for no one else, even while with lip and hand, kiss, grasp, and word, he greeted her companions, of whom Jaqueline of Hainault and John of Bedford were the most prominent.
‘And the babe! where is he?’ then cried he. ‘Let me have him to hold up to my brave fellows in the court!’
‘The Prince of Wales?’ said Catherine. ‘You never spake of my bringing him.’
‘If I spake not, it was because I doubted not for a moment that you would keep him with you. Nay, verily it is not in sooth that you left him. You are merely sporting with use.’
‘Truly, Sir,’ said Catherine, ‘I never guessed that you would clog yourself with a babe in the cradle, and I deemed him more safely nursed at Windsor.’
‘If it be for his safety! Yet a soldier’s boy should thrive among soldiers,’ said the King, evidently much disappointed, and proceeding to eager inquiries as to the appearance and progress of his child; to which the Queen replied with a certain languor, as though she had no very intimate personal knowledge of her little son.
Other eyes were meanwhile eagerly scanning the bright confusion of veils and wimples; and Malcolm had just made out the tall head and dark locks under a long almost shrouding white veil far away in the background behind the Countess of Hainault, when the Duke of Bedford came up with a frown of consternation on his always anxious face, and drawing King James into a window, said, ‘What have you been doing to him?’–to which James, without hearing the question, replied, ‘Where is SHE?’
‘Joan? At home. It was the Queen’s will. Of that another time. But what means this?’ and he signed towards his brother. ‘Never saw I man so changed.’
‘Had you seen him at Christmas you might have said so,’ replied James; ‘but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him so fair and comely.’
‘I tell you, James,’ said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost met ever his arched nose, ‘I tell you, his look brings back to me my mother’s, the last time she greeted my father!’
‘To your fantasy, not your memory, John! You were a mere babe at her death.’
‘Of five years,’ said Bedford. ‘That face–that cough–have brought all back–ay, the yearning look when my father was absent, and the pure rosy fairness that Harry and Tom cited so fiercely against one who would have told them how sick to death she was. I mind me too, that when our grandame of Hereford made us motherless children over to our grandsire of Lancaster, it was with a warning that Harry had the tender lungs of the Bohuns, and needed care. One deadly sickness he had at Kenilworth, when my father was ridden for post-haste. My mind misgave me throughout this weary siege; but his service held me fast at home, and I trusted that you would watch over him.’
‘A man like him is ill to guide,’ said James; ‘but he is more himself now than he has been for months, and a few weeks’ quiet with his wife will restore him. But what is this?’ he proceeded in his turn; ‘why is the Lady Joan not here?’
‘How can I tell? It was no fault of mine. I even got a prim warning that it became me not to meddle about her ladies, and I doubted what slanders you might hear if I were seen asking your Nightingale for a token.’
‘Have you none! Good John, I know you have.’
John smiled his ironical smile, produced from the pouch at his girdle a small packet bound with rose-coloured silk, and said: ‘The Nightingale hath a plume, you see, and saith, moreover, that her knight hath done his devoir passably, but that she yet looks to see him send some captive giant to her feet. So, Sir Knight, I hope your poor dwarf hath acquitted him well in your chivalrous jargon.’
James smiled and coloured with pleasure; the fantastic message was not devoid of reality in the days when young imaginative spirits tried to hide the prose of war and policy in a bright mist of romantic fancy; nor was he ashamed to bend his manly head in reverence to, and even press to his lips, his lady’s first love- letter, in the very sight of the satirical though sympathizing Bedford, of whom he eagerly asked of the fair Joan’s health and welfare, and whether she were flouted by Queen Catherine.
‘No more than is the meed of her beauty,’ said Bedford. ‘Sister Kate likes not worship at any shrine save one. Look at our suite: our knights–yea, our very grooms are picked for their comeliness; to wit that great feather-pated oaf of a Welshman, Owen Tudor there; while dames and demoiselles, tire-women and all, are as near akin as may be to Sir Gawain’s loathly lady.’
‘Not at least the fair Luxemburg. Did not I see her stately mien?’
‘She is none of the Queen’s, and moreover she stands aloof, so that the women forgive her gifts! There is that cough of Harry’s again! He is the shadow of the man he was; I would I knew if this were the step-dame’s doing.’
‘Nay, John, when you talk to me of Harry’s cough, and of night- watches and flooded camps, I hearken; but when your wits run wool- gathering after that poor woman, making waxen images stuck full–‘
‘You are in the right on’t, James,’ said Henry, who had come up to them while he was speaking. ‘John will never get sorceries out of his head. I have thought it over, and will not be led into oppressing my father’s widow any more. I cannot spend this Pentecost cheerily till I know she is set free and restored to her manors; and I shall write to Humfrey and the Council to that effect.’
And as John shrugged his shoulders, Henry gaily added: ‘Thou seest what comes of a winter spent with this unbeliever Jamie; and truly, I found the thought of unright to my father’s widow was a worse pin in my heart than ever she is like to thrust there.’
Thus then it was, that in the overflowing joy and good-will of his heart, and mayhap with the presentiment which rendered him willing to be at peace with all his kindred, Henry forgave and released his step-mother, Joan of Navarre, whom common rumour termed the Witch Queen, and whom he had certainly little reason to love, whether it were true or not that she had attempted to weave spells against him. In fact, there were few of the new-comers from England who did not, like Bedford, impute the transparency of Henry’s hands, and the hollowness of his brightly-tinted cheek, to some form of sorcery.
Meantime, Esclairmonde de Luxemburg, more beautiful than ever under a still simpler dress, had greeted Malcolm with her wonted kindness; adding, with a smile, that he was so much grown and embrowned that she should not have known him but for the sweet Scottish voice which he, like his king, possessed.
‘You do me too much grace in commending aught that is mine, madame,’ said Malcolm, with an attempt at the assurance he believed himself to have acquired; but he could only finish by faltering and blushing. There was a power of repression about Esclairmonde that annihilated all his designs, and drove him back into his bashful self whenever he came into contact with her, and felt how unlike the grave serene loftiness of her presence was to the mere queen of romance, that in her absence her shadow had become.
Alice Montagu, returning to her side, relieved while disconcerting him. Sweet little Alice had been in a continual flutter ever since commands had come from Meaux that she was to come out to meet the father whom she had not seen since what seemed like half her childish lifetime, and the betrothed whom she had never seen at all; and Lady Westmoreland had added to her awe by the lengthened admonition with which she took leave of her. And on this day, when Esclairmonde herself had arrayed the fair child in the daintiest of rose-pink boddices edged with swan’s-down, the whitest of kirtles, and softest of rosy veils, the flush of anxiety on the pale little face made it so fair to look upon, that as the maiden wistfully asked, ‘Think you he will flout me?’ it was impossible not to laugh at the very notion. ‘Ah! but I would be glad if he did, for then I might bide with you.’
When, in the general greeting, Alice had been sought out by a tall, dark-browed, grizzled warrior, Esclairmonde had, cruelly, as the maiden thought, kept her station behind the Countess, and never stirred for all those wistful backward glances, but left her alone to drop on her knee to seek the blessing of the mighty old soldier.
And now she was holding his great hand, almost as tough as his gauntlets, and leading him up to her friend, while he louted low, and spoke with a grand fatherly courtesy:
‘Fair demoiselle, this silly wench of mine tells me that you have been good friend to her, and I thank you for the same with all mine heart.’
‘Silly’ was a fond term of love then, and had all the affection of a proud father in it, as the Earl of Salisbury patted the small soft fingers in his grasp.
‘Truly, my lord,’ responded Esclairmonde, ‘the Lady Alice hath been my sweetest companion, friend, and sister, for these many months.’
‘Nay, child, art worthy to be called friend by such a lady as this? If so, I shall deem my little Alice grown a woman indeed, as it is time she were–Diccon Nevil is bent on the wedding before we go to the wars again.’
Alice coloured like a damask rose, and hid her face behind her friend.
‘Hast seen him, sweet?’ asked Esclairmonde, when Salisbury had been called away. ‘Is he here?’
‘Yes; out there–he with the white bull on his surcoat,’ said Alice, dreading to look that way.
‘And hast spoken with him?’ asked the lady next, feeling as if the stout, commonplace, hardy-looking soldier she saw was scarce what she would have chosen for her little wild rose of an Alice, comely and brave though he were.
‘He hath kissed mine hand,’ faltered Alice, but it was quite credible that not a word had passed. The marriage was a business contract between the houses of Wark and Raby, and a grand speculation for Sir Richard Nevil, that was all; but gentle Alice had no reluctance beyond mere maidenly shyness, and unwillingness to enter on an unknown future under a new lord. She even whispered to her dear Clairette that she was glad Sir Richard never tormented her by talking to her, and that he was grave, and so old.
‘So old? why, little one, he can scarce be seven-and-twenty!’
‘And is not that old? oh, so old!’ said Alice. ‘Able to take care of me. I would not have a youth like that young Lord of Glenuskie. Oh no–never!’
‘That is well,’ said Esclairmonde, smiling; ‘but wherefore put such disdain in thy voice, Alice? He used to be our playfellow, and he hath grown older and more manly in this year.’
‘His boyhood was better than such manhood,’ said Alice; ‘he was more to my taste when he was meek, than now that he seems to say, “I would be saucy if I durst.” And he hath not the stuff to dare any way.’
‘Fie! fie! Alice, you are growing slanderous.’
‘Nay, now, Clairette, own verily–you feel the like!’
‘Hush, silly one, what skills it? Youths must pass through temptation; and if his king hindered his vocation, maybe the poor lad may rue it sorely, but methinks he will come to the right at last. It were better to say a prayer for his faults than to speak evil of them, Alice.’
Poor Malcolm! He was at that very moment planning with an embroiderer a robe wherein to appear, covered with flashes of lightning transfixing the world, and mottoes around–‘Esclaire mais Embrase’
Every moment that he was absent from Esclairmonde was spent in composing chivalrous discourses in which to lay himself at her feet, but the mere sight of her steady dark eyes scattered them instantly from his memory; and save for very shame he would have entreated King James again to break the ice for him, since the lady evidently supposed that she had last year entirely quashed his suit. And in this mood Malcolm mounted and took his place to ride into Paris, where the King wished to arrive in the evening, and with little preparation, so as to avoid the weary length of a state reception, with all its speeches and pageants.
In the glow of a May evening the cavalcade passed the gates, and entered the city, where the streets were so narrow that it was often impossible to ride otherwise than two and two. The foremost had emerged into an open space before a church and churchyard, when there was a sudden pause, a shock of surprise. All across the space, blocking up the way, was an enormous line of figures, looking shadowy in the evening light, and bearing the insignia of every rank and dignity that earth presented. Popes were there, with triple crown and keys, and fanned by peacock tails; scarlet-matted and caped cardinals, mitred and crosiered bishops, crowned and sceptred kings, ermined dukes, steel-clad knights, gowned lawyers, square-capped priests, cowled monks, and friars of every degree–nay, the mechanic with his tools, the peasant with his spade, even the beggar within his dish; old men, and children of every age; and women too of all grades–the tower-crowned queen, the beplumed dame, the lofty abbess, the veiled nun, the bourgeoise, the peasant, the beggar;–all were there, moving in a strange shadowy wild dance, sometimes slow, sometimes swift and mad with gaiety, to the music of an unseen band of clashing kettle-drums, cymbals, and other instruments, that played fast and furiously; while above all a knell in the church tower rang forth at intervals a slow, deep, lugubrious note; and all the time there glided in and out through the ring a grisly being–skull- headed, skeleton-boned, scythe in hand–Death himself; and ever and anon, when the dance was swiftest, would he dart into the midst, pounce on one or other, holding an hour-glass to the face, unheeding rank, sex, or age, and bear his victim to the charnel-house beside the church. It was a sight as though some terrible sermon had taken life, as though the unseen had become visible, the veil were taken away; and the implicit unresisting obedience of the victims added to the sense of awful reality and fatality.
The advance of the victorious King Henry made no difference to the continuousness of the frightful dance; nay, it was plain that he was but in the presence of a monarch yet more victorious than himself, and the mazes wound on, the performers being evidently no phantoms, but as substantial as those who beheld them; nay, the grisly ring began to absorb the royal suite within itself, and an awe-stricken silence prevailed–at least, where Malcolm Stewart and Ralf Percy were riding together.
Neither lad durst ask the other what it meant. They thought they knew too well. Percy ceased not for one moment to cross himself, and mutter invocations to the saints; Malcolm’s memory and tongue alike seemed inert and paralyzed with horror–his brain was giddy, his eyes stretched open; and when Death suddenly turned and darted in his direction, one horrible gush of thought–‘Fallen, fallen! Lost, lost! No confession!’–came over him; he would have sobbed out an entreaty for mercy and for a priest, but it became a helpless shriek; and while Percy’s sword flashed before his eyes, he felt himself falling, death-stricken, to the earth, and knew no more.
‘There–he moved,’ said a voice above him.
‘How now, Glenuskie?’ cried Ralf Percy. ‘Look up; I verily thought you were sped by Death in bodily shape; but ’twas all an abominable grisly pageant got up by some dismal caitiffs.’
‘It was the Danse Macabre,’ added the sweet tone that did indeed unclose Malcolm’s eyes, to see Esclairmonde bending over him, and holding wine to his lips. Ralf raised him that he might swallow it, and looking round, he saw that he was in a small wainscoted chamber, with an old burgher woman, Ralf Percy, and Esclairmonde; certainly not in the other world. He strove to ask ‘what it meant,’ and Esclairmonde spoke again:
‘It is the Danse Macabre; I have seen it in Holland. It was invented as a warning to those of sinful life, and this good woman tells me it has become the custom to enact it every evening at this churchyard of the Holy Innocents.’
‘A custom I devoutly hope King Harry will break!’ exclaimed Ralf. ‘If not, I’ll some day find the way between those painted ribs of Monseigneur de la Mort, I can tell him! I had nearly given him a taste of my sword as it was, only some Gascon rogue caught my arm, and he was off ere I could get free. So I jumped off, that your poor corpse should not be trodden by French heels; and I hardly know how it was, but the Lady Esclairmonde was by my side as I dragged you out, and caused these good folks to let me bring you in behind their shop.’
‘Lady, lady, I am for ever beholden,’ cried Malcolm, gathering himself up as if to fall at her feet, and his heart bounding high with joy, for this was from death to life indeed.
‘I saw there was some one hurt,’ said Esclairmonde in her repressive manner. ‘Drink some more wine, eat this bread, and you will be able to ride to the Hotel de St. Pol.’
‘Oh, lady, let me speak of my bliss!’ and he snatched at her hand, but was still so dizzy that he sank back, becoming aware that he was stiff and bruised from his fall. Almost at the same moment a new step and voice were heard in the little open booth where the cutler displayed his wares, and King James was at once admitted.
‘How goes it, laddie?’ he asked. ‘They told me grim Death had clutched you and borne you off to his charnel-house; but at least I see an angel has charge of you.’
Esclairmonde slightly coloured as she made answer:
‘I saw some one fall, and came to offer my poor skill, Sir; but as the Sieur de Glenuskie is fast recovering, if you will permit Sir Nigel Baird to attend me, Sir, I will at once return.’
‘I am ready–I am not hurt. Oh, let us go together!’ panted Malcolm, leaping up.
‘Eh, gentlemen!’ exclaimed the hospitable cutler’s wife; ‘you will not away so fast! This gallant knight will permit you to remain. And the fair lady, she will do me the honour to drink a cup of wine to the recovery of her betrothed.’
‘Not so, good woman,’ said Esclairmonde, a little apart, ‘I am the betrothed of Heaven. I only assisted because I feared the youth’s fall was more serious than it proves.’
The bourgeoise begged pardon, and made a curtsey; there was nothing unusual in the avowal the lady had made, when the convent was a thoroughly recognized profession; but Esclairmonde could not carry out her purpose of departing separately with old Sir Nigel Baird; Malcolm was on his feet, quite ready to mount, and there was no avoiding the being assisted to her saddle by any but the King, who was in truth quite as objectionable a companion, as far as appearances went, for a young solitary maiden, as was Malcolm himself. Esclairmonde felt that her benevolence might have led her into a scrape. When she had seen the fall, knowing that to the unprepared the ghastly pageant must seem reality, she had obeyed the impulse to hurry to the rescue, to console and aid in case of injury, and she had not even perceived that her female companions did not attempt to accompany her. However, the mischance could best be counteracted by simplicity and unconsciousness; so, as she found herself obliged to ride by the King, she unconcernedly observed that these fantastic dances might perhaps arouse sinners, but that they were a horrible sight for the unprepared.
‘Very like a dream becoming flesh and blood,’ said James. ‘We in advance were slow to perceive what it was, and then the King merely thought whether it would alarm the Queen.’
‘I trow it did not.’
‘No; the thing has not been found that will stir her placid face. She merely said it was very lugubrious, and an ill turn in the Parisians thus to greet her, but they were always senseless betes; and he, being relieved of care for her, looked with all his eyes, with a strange mixture of drollery at the antics and the masques, yet of grave musing at the likeness to this present life.’
‘I think,’ said Esclairmonde, ‘that King Henry is one of the few men to whom the spectacle IS a sermon. He laughs even while he lays a thing to heart.’
These few sentences had brought them to the concourse around the gateway of the great Hotel de St. Pol, in whose crowded courtyard Esclairmonde had to dismount; and, after being handed through the hall by King James, to make her way to the ladies’ apartments, and there find out, what she was most anxious about, how Alice, who had been riding at some distance from her with her father, had fared under the alarm.
Alice ran up to her eagerly. ‘Ah, dear Clairette, and was he greatly hurt?’
‘Not much; he had only swooned for fright.’
‘Swooned! to be a prince, and not have the heart of a midge!’
‘And how was it with you, you very wyvern for courage?’
‘With me? Oh, I was somewhat appalled at first, when my father took hold of my rein, and bade me never fear; for I saw his face grow amazed. Sir Richard Nevil rode up on the other side, and said the hobgoblins should eat out his heart ere they hurt me; and I looked into his face as he said that, and liked it more than ever I thought to like any but yours, Clairette. I think my father was going to leave me to him and see whether the King needed some one to back him; but up came a French lord, and said ’twas all a mere show, and my father said he was glad I was a stout-hearted wench that had never cried out for fear; and then I was so pleased, that I never heeded the ugly sight any more. Ay, and when Sir Richard lifted me off my horse, he kissed my hand of his own accord.’
‘This is all he has ever said to you?’ said Esclairmonde, smiling. ‘It is like an Englishman–to the purpose.’
‘Yea, is it not? Oh! is it not better than all the fine speeches and compliments that Joan Beaufort gets from her Scottish king?’
‘They have truths in them too, child.’
‘Ay; but too fine-spun, too minstrel-like, for a plain English maid. The hobgoblins should eat out his heart ere they touched me!’ she repeated to herself, as though the saying were the most poetical concert sung on minstrel lover’s lute.
Death’s Dance had certainly brought this affianced pair to a better understanding than all the gayest festivities of the Court.
Esclairmonde would have been happy if no one had noticed her benevolence to the young Scot save Alice Montagu; but she had to endure countless railleries from every lady, from Countess Jaqueline downwards, on the unmistakable evidence that her heart had spoken; and her grave dignity had less effect in silencing them than usual, so diverting was the alleged triumph over her propriety, well as they knew that she would have done the same for the youngest horse-boy, or the oldest man-at-arms.
CHAPTER X: THE WHITSUNTIDE FESTIVAL
‘Lady, fairest lady! Ah, suffer your slave to fall at your feet with his thanks!’
‘No thanks are due, Sir. I knew not who had fallen.’
‘Cruel coyness! Take not away the joy that has fed a hungry heart.’
‘Lord Glenuskie’s heart was wont to hunger for better joys.’
‘Lady, I have ceased to be a foolish boy.’
‘Such foolishness was better than some men’s wisdom.’
‘Listen, belle demoiselle. I have been forth into the world, and have learnt to see that monasteries have become mere haunts for the sluggard, who will not face the world; and that honour, glory, and all that is worth living for, lie beyond. Ah, lady! those eyes first taught me what life could give.’
‘Hush, Sir!’ said Esclairmonde. ‘I can believe that as a child you mistook your vocation, and the secular life may be blest to you; but with me it can never be so; and if any friendship were shown to you on my part, it was when I deemed that we were brother and sister in our vows. If I unwittingly inspired any false hopes, I must do penance for the evil.’
‘Call it not evil, lady,’ entreated Malcolm. ‘It cannot be evil to have wakened me to life and hope and glory.’
‘What should you call it in him who should endeavour to render Lady Joan Beaufort faithless to your king, Lord Malcolm? What then must it be to tempt another to break troth-plight to the King of Heaven?’
‘Nay, madame,’ faltered Malcolm; ‘but if such troth were forbidden and impossible?’
‘None has the right or power to cancel mine,’ replied the lady.
‘Yet,’ he still entreated, ‘your kindred are mighty.’
‘But my Bridegroom is mightier,’ she said.
‘O lady, yet– Say, at least,’ cried Malcolm, eagerly, ‘that were you free in your own mind to wed, at least you would less turn from me than from the others proposed to you.’
‘That were saying little for you,’ said Esclairmonde, half smiling. ‘But, Sir,’ she added gravely, ‘you have no right to put the question; and I will say nothing on which you can presume.’
‘You were kinder to me in England,’ sighed Malcolm, with tears in his eyes.
‘Then you seemed as one like-minded,’ she answered.
‘And,’ he cried, gathering fresh ardour, ‘I would be like-minded again. You would render me so, sweetest lady. I would kiss your every step, pray with you, bestow alms with you, found churches, endow your Beguines, and render our change from our childish purpose a blessing to the whole world; become your very slave, to do your slightest bidding. O lady, could I but give you my eyes to see what it might be!’
‘It could not be, if we began with a burthened conscience,’ said Esclairmonde. ‘We have had enough of this, Sieur de Glenuskie. You know that with me it is no matter of likes or dislikes, but that I am under a vow, which I will never break! Make way, Sir.’
He could but obey: she was far too majestic and authoritative to be gainsaid. And Malcolm, in an access of misery, stood lost to all the world, kneeling in the window-seat, where she had left him resting his head against the glass, when suddenly a white plump hand was laid on his shoulder, and a gay voice cried:
‘All a la mort, my young damoiseau! What, has our saint been unpropitious? Never mind, you shall have her yet. We will see her like the rest of the world, ere we have done within her!’
And Malcolm found himself face to face with the free-spoken Jaqueline of Hainault.
‘You are very good, madame,’ he stammered.
‘You shall think me very good yet! I have no notion of being opposed by a little vassal of mine; and we’ll succeed, if it were but for the fun of the thing! Monseigneur de Therouenne is on your side, or would be, if he were sure of the Duke of Burgundy. You see, these prelates hate nothing so much as the religious orders; and all the pride of the Luxemburgs is in arms against Clairette’s fancy for those beggarly nursing Sisters; so it drives him mad to hear her say she only succoured you for charity. He thinks it a family disgrace, that can only be wiped off by marrying her to you; and he would do it bon gre, mal gre, but that he waits to hear what Burgundy will say. You have only to hold out, and she shall be yours, if I hold her finger while you put on the ring. Only let us be sure of Burgundy.’
This was not a very flattering way of obtaining a bride; but Malcolm was convinced that when once married to Esclairmonde, his devotion would atone to her for all that was unpleasant in obtaining her. At least, she loved no one else; she had even allowed that she had once thought him like-minded; she had formerly distinguished him; and nothing lay between them but her scruples; and when they were overcome, by whatever means, his idol would be his, to adore, to propitiate, to win by the most intense devotion. All now must, however, turn upon the Duke of Burgundy, without whose sanction Madame of Hainault would be afraid to act openly.
The Duke was expected at Paris for the Whitsuntide festival, which was to be held with great state. The custom was for the Kings of France to feast absolutely with all Paris, with interminable banquet tables, open to the whole world without question. And to this Henry had conformed on his first visit to the city; but he had learnt that the costly and lavish feast had been of very little benefit to the really distressed, who had been thrust aside by loud-voiced miscreants and sturdy beggars, such as had no shame in driving the feeble back with blows, and receiving their own share again and again.
By the advice of Dr. Bennet, his almoner, he was resolved that this should not happen again; that the feast should be limited to the official guests, and that the cost of the promiscuous banquet should be distributed to those who really needed it, and who should be reached through their parish priests and the friars known to be most charitable.
Dr. Bennet, as almoner, with the other chaplains, was to arrange the matter; and horrible was the distress that he discovered in the city, that had for five-and-twenty years been devastated by civil fury, as well as by foreign wars; and famines, pestilences, murders, and tyrannies had held sway, so as to form an absolute succession of reigns of terror. The poor perished like flies in a frost; the homeless orphans of the parents murdered by either faction roamed the streets, and herded in the corners like the vagrant dogs of Eastern cities; and meantime, the nobles and their partisans revelled in wasteful pomp.
Scholar as he was, Dr. Bennet was not familiar enough with Parisian ways not to be very grateful for aid from Esclairmonde in some of his conferences, and for her explanations of the different tastes and needs of French and English poor.
What she saw and heard, on the other hand, gave form and purpose to her aspirations. The Dutch Sisters of St. Bega, the English Bedeswomen of St. Katharine, were sorely needed at Paris. They would gather up the sufferers, collect the outcast children, feed the hungry, follow with balm wherever a wound had been. To found a Beguinage at Paris seemed to her the most befitting mode of devoting her wealth; and her little admirer, Alice, gave up her longing desire that the foundation should be in England, when she learned that, as the wife of Nevil, her abode was likely to be in France as long as that country required English garrisons.
To the young heiress of Salisbury, her own marriage, though close at hand, seemed a mere ordinary matter compared with Esclairmonde’s Beguinage, to her the real romance. Never did she see a beggar crouching at the church door, without a whisper to herself that there was a subject for the Beguines; and, tender-hearted as she was, she looked quite gratified at any lamentable tale which told the need.
If Esclairmonde had a climax to her visions of her brown-robed messengers of mercy, it was that the holy Canon of St. Agnes should be induced to come and act the part of master to her bedeswomen, as did Master Kedbesby at home.
She had even dared to murmur her design to Dr. Bennet; and when he, under strict seal of secrecy, had sounded King Henry, the present real master of Paris, he reported that the tears had stood in the King’s eyes for a moment, as he said, ‘Blessings on the maiden! Should she be able to do this for this city, I shall know that Heaven hath indeed sent a blessing by my arms!’
For one brief week, Esclairmonde and Alice were very happy in this secret hope; but at the end of that time the Bishop of Therouenne appeared. Esclairmonde had ventured to hope that the King’s influence, and likewise the fact that her intention was not to enrich one of the regular monastic orders, might lead him to lend a favourable ear to her scheme; but she was by no means prepared to find him already informed of the affair of the Dance of Death, and putting his own construction on it.
‘So, my fair cousin, this is the end of your waywardness. The tokens were certainly somewhat strong; but the young gentleman’s birth being equal to yours, after the spectacle you have presented, your uncle of St. Pol, and I myself, must do our utmost to obtain the consent of