The White Rose of Langley Part 42

The point was st.u.r.dily fought over on both sides. Isabel dared promise nothing more than that Custance should be allowed to see her children, and that she herself would do her utmost to obtain further concessions.

At last it was settled that the King should be appealed to, and the request urged upon him by his emissary, by letter. Isabel, however, was evidently gifted with no slight amba.s.sadorial powers; for when she selected Bertram Lyngern as her messenger, the Governor did not hesitate to let him go.

But Bertram's projected journey never took place, for a most unexpected event intervened to stop it.

It was the seventh of November, and a warm, close, damp day, inducing languor and depression in any person sensitive to the influence of weather. Custance and Maude had received no visit that day from any one but Bertram, who was busy preparing for his journey. There were frequent comers and goers to Kenilworth Castle, so that the sound of a bugle-horn without was likely to cause no great curiosity; nor, as Custance's drawing-room window opened on a little quiet corner of the inner court-yard, did she often witness the arrival of guests. So that three horns rang out on that afternoon without awakening more than a pa.s.sing wonder "who it might be;" and when an unusual commotion was heard in the guard-room, the cause remained unsurmised. But when the door of the drawing-room was opened, a most unexpected sight dawned on the eyes of the prisoners. Unannounced and completely unlooked-for, in the doorway stood Henry of Bolingbroke, the King.

It was no wonder that Maude's work dropped from her hands as she rose hastily; nor that Custance's eyes pa.s.sed hurriedly on to see who composed the suite. But the suite consisted of a solitary individual, and this was her ubiquitous brother, Edward of York.

"G.o.d give you good even, fair Cousin!" said Henry, with a bend of his stately head. His manners in public, though less really considerate, were stiffer and more ceremonious than those of his predecessor. "You scantly looked, as methinks, for a visit of ours this even?"; "Your Highness' servant!" was all chat Custance said, in a voice the constrained tone of which had its source rather in coldness than in reverence.

"Christ save thee, Custance!" said Edward, sauntering in behind his royal master. "Thou hast here a fine look-out, in very deed."

"Truth, Ned; and time to mark it!" rejoined his sister.

The door opened again, and with a lout [the old English courtesy, now considered rustic] of the deepest veneration, Isabel made her appearance.

"I pray you sit, ladies," commanded the King.

The Princesses obeyed, but Maude did not consider herself included. The King took the isolated chair with which the room was provided.

"An' you be served, our fair Cousins," he remarked, "we will to business, seeing our tarrying hither shall be but unto Monday; and if your leisure serve, Lady Le Despenser, we would fain bear you with us unto London. Our fair cousin Isabel, as methinks, did you to wit of our pleasure?"

What was the occult power within this man--whom no one liked, yet who seemed mysteriously to fascinate all who came inside the charmed circle of his personal influence? Instead of answering defiantly, as she had done to Isabel, Custance contented herself with the meek response--

"She so did, Sire."

"You told her all?" pursued the King, turning his keen eyes upon Isabel.

"To speak very truth, Sire," hesitated Isabel, "I did leave one little matter."

She seemed reluctant to confess the omission; and Custance's face paled visibly at this prospect of further sorrow in store.

"Which was that, fair Cousin?"

Henry was a perfect master of the art of expressing displeasure without any use of words to convey it. Isabel knew in an instant that he considered her to have failed in her mission.

"Under your gracious leave, my Liege," she said deprecatingly, "had your Grace seen how my fair cousin took that which I did say, it had caused you no marvel that I stayed ere more were spoken."

"We blamed you not, fair Cousin," responded Henry coldly. "What matter left you unspoken?"

"An' it like your Grace to pardon me, touching her presence desired--"

"Enough said. All else spake you?"

"All else, your Highness' pleasure served," answered Isabel meekly.

"My 'presence desired'!" broke in Custance. "What meaneth your Grace, an' it like you? Our fair cousin did verily arede [tell] me that your Grace commandeth mine appearing in London; and thither I had gone, had it not pleased your Grace to win hither."

"So quoth she; but this was other matter," calmly rejoined the King.

"Our Council thought good, fair Cousin, that you should be of the guests bidden unto the wedding of our cousin of Kent with the fair Lady Lucy of Milan."

For one instant after the words were spoken, there was dead silence through the room--the silence which marks the midst of a cyclone. The next moment, Custance rose, and faced the man who held her life in his hands. The spell of his mysterious power was suddenly broken; and the old fiery spirit of Plantagenet, which was stronger in her than in him, flamed in her eyes and nerved her voice.

"You meant _that_?" she demanded, dropping etiquette.

"It hath been reckoned expedient," was the calm reply.

"Then you may drag me thither in my coffin, for alive will I never go!"

"This, Custance, to the King's Highness' face!" deprecated her pardoned and (just then) subservient brother.

"To his face? Ay,--better than behind his back!" cried the defiant Princess. "And to thy face, Harry of Bolingbroke, I do thee to wit that thou art no king of mine, nor I owe thee no allegiance! Wreak thy will on me for saying it! After all, I can die but once; and I can die as beseems a King's daughter; and I would as lief die and be rid of thee as 'bide in a world vexed with thy governance."

"Custance! Custance!" cried Edward and Isabel in concert.

"Let be, fair Cousins," answered the cool unmoved tones of the King.

"We can make large allowance for our cousin's words--they be but nature."

This astute man knew how to overlook angry words. And certainly no words he could have used would have vexed Custance half so much as this a.s.sumption of calm superiority.

"Speak your will, Lady," he quietly added. "To all likelihood it shall do you some relievance to uncharge your mind after this fashion; and I were loth to let you of that ease. For us, we are used to hear our intent misconceived. But all said, hear our pleasure."

Which was as much as to say with contemptuous pity,--Poor captive bird!

beat your wings against the iron bars of your cage as much as you fancy it; they are iron, after all.

"Fair Cousin," resumed the King, "you must be at this wedding, clad in your widow's garb; and you must set your hand to the paper which our cousin Isabel holdeth. Know that if you be obedient, the custody and marriage of your son, with all lands of your sometime Lord, shall be yours, and you shall forthwith be set at full liberty, nor word further spoken touching past offences. But you still refusing, then every rood of your land is forfeit, and the marriages and custody of all your childre shall be given unto our fair aunt, the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of York.

We await your answer."

It was not in words that the answer came at first. Only in an exceeding bitter cry--

"As of a wild thing taken in a trap, Which sees the trapper coming through the wood."

Custance saw now the full depth of misery to which she was doomed. The utmost concession hitherto wrung from her was that she would go to London and confront the King. And now it was calmly required of her that she should not only sign away her own fair name, but should confront Kent himself--should sit a quiet spectator of a ceremony which would publicly declare the invalidity of her right to bear his name-- should by her own act consign her child to degradation and penury-- should be a witness and a consenting party to the utter destruction of all her hopes of happiness. She knew that the lark might as well plead with the iron bars as she with Henry of Bolingbroke. And the penalty of her refusal was not merely poverty and homelessness. She could have borne that; indeed, the sentence about the estates pa.s.sed by her, hardly noted. The bitterest sting lay in the a.s.surance thus placidly given her, that her loving little Richard would be consigned to the keeping of a woman whom she knew to hate her fiercely--that he would be taught to hate and despise her himself. He would be brought up as a stranger to her; he would be led to a.s.sociate her name with scorn and disgrace. And how was Joan likely to treat the children, when she had perpetually striven to vex and humiliate the mother?

The words came at last. But they were of very different character from those which had preceded them.

"Grant me one further mercy, Sire," she said in a low voice, looking up to him:--"the one greater grace of death."

"Fair Cousin, we would fain grant you abundant grace, so you put it not from you with your own perversity. We have proffered unto you full restorance to our favour, and to endow you with every of your late Lord's lands, on condition only of your obedience in one small matter.

We take of you neither life nor liberty."

"Life? no!--only all that maketh life worthy the having."

"We wist not, fair Cousin, that our cousin of Kent were so precious,"

replied the King, with the faintest accent of satire in his calm, polished voice.

But Custance, like a spring let loose, had returned to her previous mood.