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

on both sides. They had been together very little since their father’s death, only meeting enough to make them long for more opportunities; and the boy at fifteen years old was beginning to weary after the home feeling of rest among kindred, and was so happy amidst his sisters that no attempt at breaking up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made it a convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had such advantages of education as, strangely enough, captivity had afforded to his father, he had not been untaught, and his rapid, eager, intelligent mind had caught at all opportunities afforded by those palace monasteries of Scotland in which he had stayed for various periods of his vexed and stormy minority. Good Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many months, had studied at Paris and had passed four years at Rome, so as to be well able both to enlarge and stimulate his notions. In Eleanor he had found a companion delighted to share his studies, and full likewise of original fancy and of that vein of poetry almost peculiar to Scottish women; and Jean was equally charming for all the sports in which she could take part, while the little ones, whom, to his credit be it spoken, he always treated as brothers, were pleasant playthings.

His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy change in the maidens’ lives; and yet there was still great dreariness, much restraint in the presence of constant precaution against violence, much rudeness and barbarism in the surroundings, absolute poverty in the plenishing, a lack of all beauty save in the wild and rugged face of northern nature, and it was hardly to be wondered at that young people, inheritors of the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the Plantagenets, should yearn for something beyond, especially for that sunny southern land which report and youthful imagination made them believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry, and the loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that golden age when their noble and tender-hearted father was among them.

The boy’s foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the battlements—a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as Eleanor, and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red mark upon one cheek.

‘How now, wee Andie?’ he exclaimed, tossing the baby boy up in his arms, and then on the cry of ‘Johnnie too!’ ‘Me too!’ performing the same feat with the other two, the last so boisterously that Mary screamed that ‘the bairnie would be coupit over the crag.’

‘What, looking out over the sea?’ he cried to his elder sisters. ‘That’s the wrang side! Ye should look out on the other, to see Glenuskie coming with Davie and Malcolm, so we’ll have no lack of minstrelsy and tales to-night, that is if the doited old council will let me alone. Here, come to the southern tower to watch for them.’

The sisters had worked themselves to the point of eagerness where propitious moments are disregarded, and both broke out—

‘Glenuskie is going to Margaret. We want to go with him!’

‘Go! Go to Margaret and leave me!’ cried James, the red spot on his face spreading.

‘Oh, Jamie, it is so dull and dreary, and folks are so fierce and rude.’

‘That might be when that loon Hepburn had you, but now you have me, who can take order with them.’

‘You cannot do all, Jamie,’ persisted Eleanor; ‘and we long after that fair smooth land of peace. Lady Glenuskie would take good care of us till we came to Margaret.’

‘Ay! And ‘tis little you heed how it is with me,’ exclaimed James, ‘when you are gone to your daffing and singing and dancing—with me that have saved you from that reiver Hepburn.’

‘Jamie, dear, I’ll never quit ye,’ said little Mary’s gentle voice.

He laughed.

‘You are a leal faithful little lady, Mary; but you are no good as yet, when Angus is speiring for my sister for his heir.’

‘And do you trow,’ said Jean hotly, ‘that when one sister is to be a queen, and the other is next thing to it, we are going to put up with a raw-boned, red-haired, unmannerly Scots earl?’

‘And do you forget who is King of Scotland, ye proud peat?’ her brother cried in return.

‘A braw sort of king,’ returned Jean, ‘who could not hinder his mother and sisters from being stolen by an outlaw.’

The pride and hot temper of the Beauforts had descended to both brother and sister, and James lifted his hand with ‘Dare to say that again’; and Jean was beginning ‘I dare,’ when little Annaple opportunely called, ‘There’s a plump of spears coming over the hill.’

There was an instant rush to watch them, James saying—

‘The Drummond banner! Ye shall see how Glenuskie mocks at this same fine fancy of yours’; and he ran downstairs at no kingly pace, letting the heavy nail-studded door bang after him.

‘He will never let us go,’ sighed Jean.

‘You worked him into one of his tempers,’ returned Eleanor. ‘You should have broached it to him more by degrees.’

‘And lost the chance of going with Sir Patie and his wife, and got plighted to the red-haired Master of Angus—never see sweet Meg and her braw court, and the tilts and tourneys, but live among murderous caitiffs and reivers all my days,’ sobbed Jean.

‘I would not be such a fule body as to give in for a hasty word or two, specially of Jamie’s,’ said Eleanor composedly.

‘And gin ye bide here,’ added gentle Mary, ‘we shall be all together, and you will have Jamie and the bairnies.’

‘Fine consolation,’ muttered Jean.

‘Eh well,’ said Eleanor, we must go down and meet them.’

‘This fashion!’ exclaimed Jean. ‘Look at your hair, Ellie—blown wild about your ears like a daft woman’s, and your kirtle all over mortar and smut. My certie, you would be a bonnie lady to be Queen of Love and Beauty at a jousting-match.’

‘You are no better, Jeanie,’ responded Eleanor.

‘That I ken full well, but I’d be shamed to show myself to knights and lairds that gate. And see Mary and all the lave have their hands as black as a caird’s.’

‘Come and let Andie’s Mary wash them,’ said that little personage, picking up fat Andrew in her arms, while he retained his beloved crab’s claw. ‘Jeanie, would you carry Johnnie, he’s not sure-footed, over the stair? Annaple, take Lorn’s hand over the kittle turning.’

One chamber was allotted to the entire party and their single nurse. Being far up in the tower, it ventured to have two windows in the massive walls, so thick that five-and-twenty steps from the floor were needed to reach the narrow slips of glass in a frame that could be removed at will, either to admit the air or to be exchanged for solid wooden shutters to exclude storms by sea or arrows and bolts by land. The