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

‘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 passed 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