The Caged Lion by Charlotte M. Yonge (readict .txt) 📖

Esclairmonde, and was welcomed by her with a frank smile, outstretched hand, and kind inquiry after his recovery.

She treated him indeed as a brother, as one on whom she depended, and had really wished to see and arrange with.  She told him that Alice Montagu and her husband were returning to England, and that her little friend had so earnestly prayed her to abide with her at Middleham for the present, that she had consented—‘until such time as the way be open,’ said Esclairmonde, with her steady patient smile.

Malcolm bowed his head.  ‘I am glad you will not be forced to be with your Countess,’ he said.

‘My poor lady!  Maybe I have spoken too plainly.  But I owe her much.  I must ever pray for her.  And you, my lord?’

‘I,’ said Malcolm, ‘shall go to study at Oxford.  Dr. Bennet intends returning thither to continue his course of teaching, and my king has consented to my studying with him.  It will not cut me off, lady, from that which you permit me to be.  King Henry and his brothers have all been scholars there.’

‘I understand,’ said Esclairmonde, slightly colouring.  ‘It is well.  And truly I trust that matters may be so guided, that care for me may not long detain you from more lasting vows—be they of heaven or earth.’

‘Lady,’ said Malcolm, earnestly, ‘none who had been plighted to you could pledge himself to aught else save One above!’

Then, feeling in himself, or seeing in Esclairmonde’s face, that he was treading on dangerous ground, he asked leave to present to her his cousin, Patrick Drummond: and this was accordingly done; the lady comporting herself with so much sweet graciousness, that the good knight, as they left the hall, exclaimed: ‘By St. Andrew, Malcolm, if you let that maiden escape you now she is more than half-wedded to you, you’ll be the greatest fool in broad Scotland.  Why, she is a very queen for beauty, and would rule Glenuskie like a princess—ay, and defend the Castle like Black Agnes of Dunbar herself!  If you give her up, ye’ll be no better than a clod.’

Malcolm and Patrick had been borne off by James’s quitting the Castle; Bedford remained longer, having affairs to arrange with the Queen.  As he left her, he too turned aside to the window where Esclairmonde sat as usual spinning, and Lady Montagu not far off, but at present absorbed by her father, who was to remain in France.

One moment’s hesitation, and then Bedford stepped towards the Demoiselle de Luxemburg, and greeted her.  She looked up in his face, and saw its settled look of sad patient energy, which made it full ten years older in appearance than when they had sat together at Pentecost, and she marked the badge that he had assumed, a torn-up root with the motto, ‘The root is dead.’

‘Ah! my lord, things are changed,’ she could not help saying, as she felt that he yearned for comfort.

‘Changed indeed!’ he said; ‘God’s will be done!  Lady,’ he added, ‘you wot of that which once passed between us.  I was grieved at first that you chose a different protector in your need.’

‘You could not, my lord,’ faltered Esclairmonde, crimson as she never had been when speaking to Malcolm.

‘No, I could not,’ said Bedford; ‘and, lady, my purpose was to thank you for the generous soul that perceived that so it is.  You spared me from a cruel case.  I have no self any longer, Esclairmonde; all I am, all I have, all I can, must be spent in guarding Harry’s work for his boy.  To all else I am henceforth dead; and all I can do is to be thankful, lady, that you have spared me the sorest trial of all, both to heart and honour.’

Esclairmonde’s eyes were downcast, as she said, ‘Heaven is the protector of those of true and kind purpose;’ and then gathering courage, as being perfectly aware to whom Bedford must give his hand if he would conciliate Burgundy, she added, ‘And, verily, Sir, the way of policy is this time a happy one.  Let me but tell you how I have known and loved gentle Lady Anne.’

Bedford shook his head with a half smile and a heavy sigh.  ‘Time fails me, dear lady,’ he said; ‘and I cannot brook any maiden’s praise, even from you.  I only wait to ask whether there be any way yet left wherein I can serve you.  I will strive to deal with your kinsmen to restore your lands.’

‘Hold!’ said Esclairmonde.  ‘Never for lands of mine will I have your difficulties added to.  No—let them go!  It was a vain, proud dream when I thought myself most humble, to become a foundress; and if I know my kinsmen, they will be too much angered to bestow on me the dower required by a convent.  No, Sir; all I would dare to inquire would be, whether you have any voice in choosing the bedeswomen of St. Katharine’s Hospital?’

‘The bedeswomen!  They come chiefly from the citizens, not from princely houses like yours!’ said John, in consternation.

‘I have done with princely houses,’ said Esclairmonde.  ‘A Flemish maiden would be of no small service among the many whom trade brings to your port from the Netherlands, and my longing has ever been to serve my Lord through His poor and afflicted.’

‘It is my father’s widow who holds the appointments,’ said John.  ‘Between her and me there hath been little good-will, but my dear brother’s last act towards her was of forgiveness.  She may wish to keep well with us of the Regency—and more like still, she will be pleased that one of so great a house as yours should sue to her.  I will give you a letter to her, praying her to remember you at the next vacancy; and mayhap, if the Lady Montagu could take you to visit her, you could prevail with her!  But, surely, some nunnery more worthy of your rank—’

‘There is none that I should love so well,’ said Esclairmonde, smiling.  ‘Mayhap I have learnt to be a vagabond, but I cannot but desire to toil as well as pray.’

‘And you are willing to wait for a vacancy?’

‘When once safe from my kinsmen, in England, I will wait under my kind Alice’s wing till—till it becomes expedient that yonder gentleman be set free.’

‘You trust him?’ said Bedford.

‘Entirely,’ responded Esclairmonde, heartily.

‘Happy lad!’ half sighed the Duke; but, even as he did so, he stood up to bid the lady adieu—lingering for a moment more, to gaze at the face he had longed for permission to love—and thus take leave of all his youth and joy, addressing himself again to that burthen of care which in thirteen years laid him in his grave at Rouen.

As he left the Castle and came out into the steep fortified street, Ralf Percy came up to him, laughing.  ‘Here, my lord, are those two honest Yorkshire knights running all over Calais to make a petition to you.’

‘What—Trenton and Kitson!  I thought their year of service was up, and they were going home!’

‘Ay, my lord,’ said Kitson, who with his comrade had followed close in Percy’s wake, ‘we were going home to bid Mistress Agnes take her choice of us; but this morn we’ve met a pursuivant that is come with Norroy King-at-arms, and what doth he but tell us that no sooner were our backs turned, than what doth Mistress Agnes but wed—ay, wed outright—one Tom of the Lee, a sneaking rogue that either of us would have beat black and blue, had we ever seen him utter a word to her?  A knight’s lady—not to say two—as she might have been!  So, my lord, we not being willing to go home and be a laughing-stock, crave your license to be of your guard as we were of King Harry’s, and show how far we can go among the French.’

‘And welcome; no good swords can be other than welcome!’ said Bedford, not diverted as his brother would have been, but with a heartiness that never failed to win respectful affection.

Long did James and Bedford walk up and down the Castle court together, while the embarkation was going on.  The question weighed on them both whether they should ever meet more, after eighteen years of youth spent together.

‘Youth is gone,’ said Bedford.  ‘We have been under a mighty master, and now God help us to do his work.’

‘You!’ said James; ‘but for me—it is like to be the library and the Round Tower again.’

‘Scarcely,’ said Bedford, ‘the Beauforts will never rest till Joan is on a throne.’

James smiled.

‘Ay,’ said Bedford, ‘the Bishop of Winchester will be no small power, you will find.  Would that I could throw up this France and come home, for he and Humfrey will clash for ever.  James, an you love me, see Humfrey alone, and remind him that all the welfare of Harry’s child may hang on his forbearance—on union with the Bishop.  Tell him, if he ever loved the noblest brother that ever lived, to rein himself in, and live only for the child’s good, not his own.  Tell him that Bedford and Gloucester must be nothing henceforth—only heads and hands doing Harry’s will for his babe.  Oh, James, what can you tell Humfrey that will make him put himself aside?’

‘You have writ to him Harry’s words as to Dame Jac?’

‘The wanton! ay, I have; and if you can whisper in his ear that matter of Malcolm and the signet, it might lessen his inclination.  But,’ he sighed, ‘I have little hope, James; I see nothing for Lancaster but that which the old man at York invoked upon us!’

‘Yet, when I look at you and Humfrey, and think of the contrast with my own father’s brethren, I see nothing but hope and promise for England,’ said James.

‘We must do our best, however heavy-hearted,’ said John of Bedford, pausing in his walk, and standing steadfast.  ‘The rod becomes a palm to those who do not freshly bring it on themselves.  May this poor child of Harry’s be bred up so that he may be fit to meet evil or good!’

‘Poor child,’ repeated James.  ‘Were he not there, and you—’

‘Peace, James,’ said Bedford; ‘it is well that such a weight is not added!  While I act for my nephew, I know my duty; were it for myself, methinks I should be crazed with doubts and questions.  Well,’ as a messenger came up with tidings that all was ready, ‘fare thee well, Jamie.  In you I lose the only man with whom I can speak my mind, or take counsel.  You’ll not let me gain a foe, as well as lose a friend, when you get home?’

‘Never, in heart, John!’ said the King.  ‘As to hand—Scotland must be to England what she will have her.  Would that I saw my way thither!  Windsor will have lost all that made captivity well-nigh sweet.  And so farewell, dear brother.  I thank you for the granting to me of this sacred charge.’

And so, with hands clasped and wrung together, with tears raining from James’s eyes, and a dry settled melancholy more sad than tears on John’s countenance, the two friends parted, never again to meet; each to run a course true, brave, and short—extinguished the one in bitter grief, the other in blood.

On All Saints’ Day, while James stood with Humfrey of Gloucester at the head of the grave at Westminster, where Henry’s earthly form was laid to rest amid the kings his fathers, amid the wail of a people as sorrowful as if they knew all the woes that were to ensue, Bedford was in like manner standing over a grave at the Royal Abbey of St. Denis.  He, the victor’s brother, represented all the princely kindred of Charles VI. of France, and, with his heart at Westminster, filled the chief mourner’s place over the king who had pined to death for his conqueror.

The same infant was proclaimed king over each grave—heir to France and England, to Valois and Lancaster.  Poor child, his real heirloom was the insanity of the one and the doom of the other!  Well for him that there was within him that holy innocence that made his life a martyrdom!

CHAPTER XVI: THE CAGE OPEN

More than a year had passed, and it was March when Malcolm was descending the stone stair that leads so picturesquely beneath the archway of its tower up to the hall of the college of St. Mary Winton, then really New College.  He had been residing there with Dr. Bennet, associating with the young members of the foundation educated at Winchester, and studying with all the freshness of a recent institution.  It had been a very happy time for him, within the gray stone walls that pleasantly recalled Coldingham, though without Coldingham’s defensive aspect, and with ample food for the mind, which had again returned to its natural state of inquiring reflection and ardour for knowledge.

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