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

touched her, calling for essences, and lamenting that they had asked too much of her in begging her to sing what so reminded her of her home and parents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Fie, Jean, that’s treason.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was Eleanor who chiefly felt a sort of repugnance to being thus, as it were, bought off or compensated for being sent out of reach. She