Two Penniless Princesses by Charlotte M. Yonge (the two towers ebook TXT) 📖

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ah! Masses shall be said for her by my bedesmen at St. Cross, and at all my churches,’ said the Cardinal, crossing