Two Penniless Princesses Part 8

Rene was not the father to withstand such an appeal. He leapt from his chair of state, he hurried to Yolande in her gallery, took her by the hand, and in another moment Ferry had sprung from his horse, and on the steps knight and lady, in their youthful glory and grace, stood hand in hand, all blushes and bliss, amid the ecstatic applause of the mult.i.tude, while the Dauphiness shed tears of joy. Thus brilliantly ended the first tournament witnessed by the Scottish princesses. Eleanor had been most interested on the whole in Duke Sigismund, and had exulted in his successes, and been sorry to see him defeated, but then she knew that Yolande dreaded his victory, and she suspected that he did not greatly care for Yolande, so that, since he was not hurt, and was certainly the second in the field, she could look on with complacency.

Moreover, at the evening's dance, when Margaret and Suffolk, Ferry and Yolande stood up for a stately pavise together, Sigismund came to Eleanor, and while she was thinking whether or not to condole with him, he shyly mumbled something about not regretting-being free-the Dauphin, her brother, enduring a beaten knight. It was all in a mixture of French and German, mostly of the latter, and far less comprehensible than usual, unless, indeed, maidenly shyness made her afraid to understand or to seem to do so. He kept on standing by her, both of them, mute and embarra.s.sed, not quite unconscious that they were observed, perhaps secretly derided by some of the lookers-on. The first relief was when the Dauphiness came and sat down by her sister, and began to talk fast in French, scarce heeding whether the Duke understood or answered her.

One question he asked was, who was the red-faced young man with stubbly sunburnt hair, and a scar on his cheek, who had appeared in the lists in very gaudy but ill-fitting armour, and with a great raw-boned, snorting horse, and now stood in a corner of the hall with his eyes steadily fixed on the Lady Joanna.

'So!' said Sigismund. 'That fellow is the Baron Rudiger von Batchburg Der Schelm! How has he the face to show himself here?'

'Is he one of your Borderers-your robber Castellanes?' asked Margaret.

'Even so! His father's castle of Balchenburg is so cunningly placed on the march between Elsa.s.s and Lothringen that neither our good host nor I can fully claim it, and these rogues shelter themselves behind one or other of us till it is, what they call in Germany a Rat Castle, the refuge of all the ecorcheurs and routiers of this part of the country. They will bring us both down on them one of these days, but the place is well-nigh past scaling by any save a gemsbock or an ecorcheur!'

Jean herself had remarked the gaze of the Alsatian mountaineer. It was the chief homage that her beauty had received, and she was somewhat mortified at being only viewed as part of the constellation of royalty and beauty doing honour to the Infantas. She believed, too, that if G he could have brought her out in as effective and romantic a light as that in which Yolande had appeared, and she was in some of her moods hurt and angered with him for refraining, while in others she supposed sometimes that he was too awkward thus to venture himself, and at others she did him the justice of believing that he disdained to appear in borrowed plumes.

The wedding was by no means so splendid an affair as the tournament, as, indeed, it was merely a marriage by proxy, and Yolande and her Count of Vaudemont were too near of kin to be married before a dispensation could be procured.

The King and Queen of France would leave Nanci to see the bride partly on her way. The Dauphin and his wife were to tarry a day or two behind, and the princesses belonged to their Court. Sir Patrick had fulfilled his charge of conducting them to their sister, and he had now to avail himself of the protection of the King's party as far as possible on the way to Paris, where he would place Malcolm at the University, and likewise meet his daughter's bridegroom and his father.

Dame Lilias did not by any means like leaving her young cousins, so long her charge, without attendants of their own; but the Dauphiness gave them a tirewoman of her own, and undertook that Madame de Ste. Petronelle should attend them in case of need, as well as that she would endeavour to have Annis, when Madame de Terreforte, at her Court as long as they were there. They also had a squire as equerry, and George Douglas was bent on continuing in that capacity till his outfit from his father arrived, as it was sure to do sooner or later.

Margaret knew who he was, and promised Sir Patrick to do all in her power for him, as truly his patience and forbearance well deserved.

It was a very sorrowful parting between the two maidens and the Lady of Glenuskie, who for more than half a year had been as a mother to them, nay, more than their own mother had ever been; and bad done much to mitigate the sharp angles of their neglected girlhood by her influence. In a very few months more she would see James, and Mary, and the 'weans'; and the three sisters loaded her with gifts, letters, and messages for all. Eleanor promised never to forget her counsel, and to strive not to let the bright new world drive away all those devout feelings and hopes that Mother Clare and King Henry had inspired, and that Lady Drummond had done her best to keep up.

Duke Sigismund had communicated to Sir Patrick his intention of making a formal request to King James for the hand of the Lady Eleanor. He was to find an envoy to make his proposal in due form, who would join Sir Patrick at Terreforte after the wedding was over, so as to go with the party to Scotland.

Meantime, with many fond embraces and tears, Lady Drummond took leave of her princesses, and they owned themselves to feel as if a protecting wall had been taken away in her and her husband.

'It is folly, though, thus to speak,' said Jean, 'when we have our sister, and her husband, and his father, and all his Court to protect us.'

'We ought to be happy,' said Eleanor gravely. 'Outside here at Nanci, it is all that my fancy ever shaped, and yet-and yet there is a strange sense of fear beyond.'

'Oh, talk not that gate,' cried Jean, 'as thou wilt be having thy gruesome visions!'

'No; it is not of that sort,' returned Eleanor. 'I trow not! It may be rather the feeling of the vanity of all this world's show.'

'Oh, for mercy's sake, dinna let us have clavers of that sort, or we shall have thee in yon nunnery!' exclaimed Jean. 'See this girdle of Maggie's, which she has given me. Must I not make another hole to draw it up enough for my waist?'

'Jean herself was much disappointed when Margaret, with great regret, told her that the Dauphin had to go out of his way to visit some castles on his way to Chalons sur Marne, and that he could not enc.u.mber his hosts with so large a train as the presence of two royal ladies rendered needful. They were, therefore, to travel by another route, leading through towns where there were hostels. Madame de Ste. Petronelle was to go with them, and an escort of trusty Scots archers, and all would meet again in a fortnight's time.

All sounded simple and easy, and Margaret repeated, 'It will be a troop quite large enough to defend you from all ecorcheurs; indeed, they dare not come near our Scottish archers, whom Messire, my husband, has told off for your escort. And you will have your own squire,' she added, looking at Jean.

'That's as he lists,' said Jean scornfully.

'Ah, Jeanie, Jeanie, thou mayst have to rue it if thou turn'st lightly from a leal heart.'

'I'm not damsel-errant of romance, as thou and Elleen would fain be,' said Jean.

'Nay,' said Margaret, 'love is not mere romance. And oh, sister, credit me, a Scots la.s.sie's heart craves better food than crowns and coronets. Hard and unco' cold be they, where there is no warmth to meet the yearning soul beneath, that would give all and ten times more for one glint of a loving eye, one word from a tender lip.' Again she had one of those hysteric bursts of tears, but she laughed herself back, crying, 'But what is the treason wifie saying of her gudeman-her Louis, that never yet said a rough word to his Meg?'

Then came another laugh, but she gathered herself up at a summons to come down and mount.

She was tenderly embraced by all, King Rene kissing her and calling her his dear niece and princess of minstrelsy, who should come to him at Toulouse and bestow the golden violet.

She rode away, looking back smiling and kissing her hand, but Eleanor's eyes grew wide and her cheeks pale.

'Jean,' she murmured, low and hoa.r.s.ely, 'Margaret's shroud is up to her throat.'

'Hoots with thy clavers,' exclaimed Jeanie in return. 'I never let thee sing that fule song, but Meg's fancies have brought the megrims into thine head! Thou and she are pair.'

'That we shall be nae longer,' sighed Eleanor. 'I saw the shroud as clear as I see yon cross on the spire.'

CHAPTER 8. STINGS

'Yet one asylum is my own, Against the dreaded hour; A long, a silent, and a lone, Where kings have little power.'-SCOTT.

At Chalons, the Sieur de Terreforte and his son Olivier, a very quiet, stiff, and well-trained youth, met Sir Patrick and the Lady of Glenuskie. Terreforte was within the province of Champagne, and as long as the Court remained at Chalons the Sieur felt bound to remain in attendance on the King-lodging at his own house, or hotel, as he called it, in the city. Dame Lilias did not regret anything which gave her a little more time with her daughter, and enabled Annis to make a little more acquaintance with her bridegroom and his family before being left alone with them. Moreover, she hoped to see something more of her cousins the princesses.

But they came not. The Dauphin and his wife arrived from their excursion and took up their abode in the Castle of Surry le Chateau, at a short distance from thence and thither went the Lady of Glenuskie with her husband to pay her respects, and present the betrothed of her daughter.

Margaret was sitting in a shady nook of the walls, under the shade of a tall, ma.s.sive tower, with a page reading to her, but in that impulsive manner which the Court of France thought grossiere and sauvage; she ran down the stone stairs and threw herself on the neck of her cousin, exclaiming, however, 'But where are my sisters?'

'Are they not with your Grace? I thought to find them here!'

'Nay! They were to start two days after us, with an escort of archers, while we visited the shrine of St. Menehould. They might have been here before us,' exclaimed Margaret, in much alarm. 'My husband thought our train would be too large if they went with us.'

'If we had known that they were not to be with your Grace, we would have tarried for them,' said Dame Lilias.

'Oh, cousin, would that you bad!'

'Mayhap King Rene and his daughter persuaded them to wait a few days.'

That was the best hope, but there was much uneasiness when another day pa.s.sed and the Scottish princesses did not appear. Strange whispers, coming from no one knew where, began to be current that they had disappeared in company with some of those wild and gay knights who had met at the tournament at Nanci.

In extreme alarm and indignation, Margaret repaired to her husband. He was kneeling before the shrine of the Lady in the Chapel of Surry, telling his beads, and he did not stir, or look round, or relax one murmur of his Aves, while she paced about, wrung her hands, and vainly tried to control her agitation. At last he rose, and coldly said, 'I knew it could be no other who thus interrupted my devotions.'

'My sisters!' she gasped.

'Well, what of them?'

'Do you know what wicked things are said of them-the dear maids? Ah!'-as she saw his strange smile-'you have heard! You will silence the fellows, who deserve to have their tongues torn out for defaming a king's daughters.'

'Verily, ma mie,' said Louis, 'I see no such great improbability in the tale. They have been bred up to the like, no doubt a mountain kite of the Vosges is a more congenial companion than a chevalier bien courtois.'

'You speak thus simply to tease your poor Margot,' she said, pleading yet trembling; 'but I know better than to think you mean it.'

'As my lady pleases,' he said.

'Then will I send Sir Patrick with an escort to seek them at Nanci and bring them hither?'

'Where is this same troop to come from?' demanded Louis.

'Our own Scottish archers, who will see no harm befall my blessed father's daughters.'

'Ha! say you so? I had heard a different story from Buchan, from the Grahams, the Halls. Revenge is sweet-as your mother found it.'

'The murderers had only their deserts.'

Louis shrugged his shoulders, 'That is as their sons may think.'

'No one would be so dastardly as to wreak vengeance on two young helpless maids,' cried Margaret. 'Oh! sir, help me; what think you?'

'Madame knows better than I do the spirit alike of her sisters and of her own countrymen.'

'Nay, nay, Monsieur, husband, do but help me! My poor sisters in this strange land! You, who are wiser than all, tell me what can have become of them?'

'What can I say, Madame? Love-love of the minstrel kind seems to run in the family. You all have supped full thereof at Nanci. If report said true, there was a secret lover in their suite. What so likely as that the May game should have become earnest?'

'But, sir, we are accountable. My sisters were entrusted to us.'

'Not to me,' said Louis. 'If the boy, your brother, expected me to find husbands and dowers for a couple of wild, penniless, feather-pated damsels-errant, he expected far too much. I know far too well what are Scotch manners and ideas of decorum to charge myself with the like.'

'Sir, do you mean to insult me?' demanded Margaret, rising to the full height of her tall stature.

'That is as Madame may choose to fit the cap,' he said, with a bow; 'I accuse her of nothing,' but there was an ironical smile on his thin lips which almost maddened her.

'Speak out; oh, sir, tell me what you dare to mean!' she said, with a stamp of her foot, clasping her hands tightly. He only bowed again.

'I know there are evil tongues abroad,' said Margaret, with a desperate effort to command her voice; 'but I heeded them no more than the midges in the air while I knew my lord and husband heeded them not! But-oh! say you do not.'

'Have I said that I did?'

'Then for a proof-dismiss and silence that foul-slandering wretch, Jamet de Tillay.'

'A true woman's imagination that to dismiss is to silence,' he laughed.

'It would show at least that you will not brook to have your wife defamed! Oh! sir, sir,' she cried, 'I only ask what any other husband would have done long ago of his own accord and rightful anger. Smile not thus-or you will see me frenzied.'

'Smiles best befit woman's tears,' said Louis coolly. 'One moment for your sisters, the next for yourself.'

'Ah! my sisters! my sisters! Wretch that I am, to have thought of my worthless self for one moment. Ah! you are only teasing your poor Margot! You will act for your own honour and theirs in sending out to seek them!'

'My honour and theirs may be best served by their being forgotten.'

Margaret became inarticulate with dismay, indignation, disappointment, as these envenomed stings went to her very soul, further pointed by the curl of Louis's thin lips and the sinister twinkle of his little eyes. Almost choked, she stammered forth the demand what he meant, only to be answered that he did not pretend to understand the Scottish errant nature, and pointing to a priest entering the church, he bade her not make herself conspicuous, and strolled away.

Margaret's despair and agony were inexpressible. She stood for some minutes leaning against a pillar to collect her senses. Then her first thought was of consulting the Drummonds, and she impetuously dashed back to her own apartments and ordered her palfrey and suite to be ready instantly to take her to Chalons.

Madame la Dauphine's palfreys were all gone to Ghalons to be shod. In fact, there were some games going on there, and trusting to the easy-going habits of their mistress, almost all her attendants had lounged off thither, even the maidens, as well as the pages, who felt Madame de Ste. Petronelle's sharp eyes no longer over them.

'Tell me,' said Margaret, to the one lame, frightened old man who alone seemed able to reply to her call, 'do you know who commanded the escort which were with my sisters, the Princesses of Scotland?'

The old man threw up his hands. How should he know? 'The escort was of the savage Scottish archers.'

'I know that; but can you not tell who they were-nor their commander?'

'Ah! Madame knows that their names are such as no Christian ears can understand, nor lips speak!'

'I had thought it was the Sire Andrew Gordon who was to go with them. He with the blue housings on the dapple grey.'

'No, Madame; I heard the Captain Mercour say Monsieur le Dauphin had other orders for him. It was the little dark one-how call they him?-ah! with a more reasonable name-Le Halle, who led the party of Mesdames. Madame! Madame! let me call some of Madame's women!'

'No, no,' gasped Margaret, knowing indeed that none whom she wished to see were within call. 'Thanks, Jean, here-now go,' and she flung him a coin.

She knew now that whatever had befallen her sisters had been by the connivance if not the contrivance of her husband, unwilling to have the charge and the portioning of the two penniless maidens imposed upon him. And what might not that fate be, betrayed into the hands of one who had so deadly a blood-feud with their parents! For Hall was the son of one of the men whose daggers had slain James I., and whose crime had been visited with such vindictive cruelty by Queen Joanna. The man's eyes had often scowled at her, as if he longed for vengeance-and thus had it been granted him.

Margaret, with understanding to appreciate Louis's extraordinary ability, had idolised him throughout in spite of his constant coldness and the satire with which he treated all her higher tastes and aspirations, continually throwing her in and back upon herself, and blighting her instincts wherever they turned. She had accepted all this as his superiority to her folly, and though the thwarted and unfostered inclinations in her strong unstained nature had occasioned those aberrations and distorted impulses which brought blame on her, she had accepted everything hitherto as her own fault, and believed in, and adored the image she had made of him throughout. Now it was as if her idol had turned suddenly into a viper in her bosom, not only stinging her by implied acquiescence in the slanders upon her discretion, if not upon her fair fame, but actually having betrayed her innocent sisters by means of the deadly enemy of their family-to what fate she knew not.

To act became an immediate need to the unhappy Dauphiness at once, as the only vent to her own misery, and because she must without loss of time do something for the succour of her young sisters, or ascertain their fate.

She did not spend a moment's thought on the censure any imprudent measure of her own might bring on her, but hastily summoning the only tirewoman within reach, she exchanged her blue and gold embroidered robe for a dark serge which she wore on days of penance, with a mantle and hood of the same, and, to Linette's horror and dismay, bade her attend her on foot to the Hotel de Terreforte, in Chalons.

Linette was in no position to remonstrate, but could only follow, as the lady, wrapped in her cloak, descended the steps, and crossed the empty hall. The porter let her pa.s.s unquestioned, but there were a few guards at the great gateway, and one shouted, 'Whither away, pretty Linette?'

Margaret raised her hood and looked full at him, and he fell back. He knew her, and knew that Madame la Dauphine did strange things. The road was stony and bare and treeless, unfrequented at first, and it was very sultry, the sun shining with a heavy melting heat on Margaret's weighty garments; but she hurried on, never feeling the heat, or hearing Linette's endeavours to draw her attention to the heavy bank of gray clouds tinged with lurid red gradually rising, and whence threatening growls of thunder were heard from time to time. She really seemed to rush forward, and poor, panting Linette toiled after her, feeling ready to drop, while the way was as yet un.o.bstructed, as the two beautiful steeples of the Cathedral and Notre Dame de l'Epine rose before them; but after a time, as they drew nearer, the road became obstructed by carts, waggons, donkeys, crowded with country-folks and their wares, with friars and ragged beggars, all pressing into the town, and jostling one another and the two foot-pa.s.sengers all the more as rain-drops began to fall, and the thunder sounded nearer.

Margaret had been used to walking, but it was all within parks and pleasances, and she was not at all used to being pushed about and jostled. Linette knew how to make her way far better, and it was well for them that their dark dresses and hoods and Linette's elderly face gave the idea of their being votaresses of some sacred order, and so secured them from actual personal insult; but as they clung together they were thrust aside and pushed about, while the throng grew thicker, the streets narrower, the storm heavier, the air more stifling and unsavoury.

A sudden rush nearly knocked them down, driving them under a gargoyle, whose spout was streaming with wet, and completed the drenching; but there was a porch and an open door of a church close behind, and into this Linette dragged her mistress. Dripping, breathless, bruised, she leant against a pillar, not going forward, for others, much more gaily dressed, had taken refuge there, and were chattering away, for little reverence was paid at that date to the sanct.i.ty of buildings.

'Will the King be there, think you?' eagerly asked a young girl, who had been anxiously wiping the wet from her pink kirtle.

'Certes-he is to give the prizes,' replied a portly dame in crimson.

'And the Lady of Beauty? I long to see her.'

'Her beauty is pa.s.sing-except that which was better worth the solid castle the King gave her,' laughed the stout citizen, who seemed to be in charge of them.

'The Dauphiness, too-will she be there?'