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

‘Why does she not come? I want some more drink,’ moaned Jean. Barbe did come, and, moreover, brought not only water but some tisane of herbs that was good for fever and had been brewing all night, and she was wonderfully good-humoured at the patient’s fretful refusal, though between coaxing and authority ‘Leddy Lindsay’ managed to get it taken at last. After Margaret’s experience of her as a stern duenna, her tenderness in illness and trouble was a real surprise.

No keys were turned on them, but there was little disposition to go beyond the door which opened on the stone stair in the gray wall. The view from the windows revealed that they were very high up. There was a bit of castle wall to be seen below, and beyond a sea of forest, the dark masses of pine throwing out the lighter, more delicate sweeps of beech, and pale purple distance beyond—not another building within view, giving a sense of vast solitude to Eleanor’s eyes, more dreary than the sea at Dunbar, and far more changeless. An occasional bird was all the variety to be hoped for.

By and by Barbe brought a message that her masters requested the ladies’ presence at the meal, a dinner, in fact, served about an hour before noon. Eleanor greatly demurred, but Barbe strongly advised consent, ‘Or my young lord will be coming up here,’ she said; ‘they both wish to have speech of you, and would have been here before now, if my old lord were not so lame, and the young one so shy, the poor child!’

‘Shy,’ exclaimed Eleanor, ‘after what he has dared to do to us!’

‘All the more for that very reason,’ said Barbe.

‘True,’ returned Madame; ‘the savage who is most ferocious in his acts is most bashful in his breeding.’

‘How should my poor boy have had any breeding up here in the forests?’ demanded Barbe. ‘Oh, if he had only fixed his mind on a maiden of his own degree, she might have brought the good days back; but alas, now he will be only bringing about his own destruction, which the saints avert.’

It was agreed that Eleanor had better make as royal and imposing an appearance as possible, so instead of the plain camlet riding kirtles that she and Lady Lindsay had worn, she donned a heraldic sort of garment, a tissue of white and gold thread, with the red lion ramping on back and breast, and the double tressure edging all the hems, part of the outfit furnished at her great-uncle’s expense in London, but too gaudy for her taste, and she added to her already considerable height by the tall, veiled headgear that had been despised as unfashionable.

Jean from her bed cried out that she looked like Pharaoh’s daughter in the tapestry, and consented to be left to the care of little Trudchen, since Madame de Ste. Petronelle must act attendant, and Barbe evidently thought her young master’s good behaviour might be the better secured by her presence.

So, at the bottom of the narrow stone stair, Eleanor shook out her plumes, the attendant lady arranged her veil over her yellow hair, and drew out her short train and long hanging sleeves, a little behind the fashion, but the more dignified, as she swept into the ball, and though her heart beat desperately, holding her head stiff and high, and looking every inch a princess, the shrewd Scotch lady behind her flattered herself that the two Barons did look a little daunted by the bearing of the creature they had caught.

The father, who had somewhat the look of an old fox, limped forward with a less ungraceful bow than the son, who had more of the wolf. Some greeting was mumbled, and the old man would have taken her hand to lead her to the highest place at table, but she would not give it.

‘I am no willing guest of yours, sir,’ she said, perhaps alarmed at her own boldness, but drawing herself up with great dignity. ‘I desire to know by what right my sister and I, king’s daughters, on our way to King Charles’s Court, have thus been seized and detained?’

‘We do not stickle as to rights here on the borders, Lady,’ said the elder Baron in bad French; ‘it would be wiser to abate a little of that outre-cuidance of yours, and listen to our terms.’

‘A captive has no choice save to listen,’ returned Eleanor; ‘but as to speaking of terms, my brothers-in-law, the Dauphin and the Duke of Brittany, may have something to say to them.’

‘Exactly so,’ replied the old Baron, in a tone of some irony, which she did not like. ‘Now, Lady, our terms are these, but understand first that all this affair is none of my seeking, but my son here has been backed up in it by some whom’—on a grunt from Sir Rudiger—‘there is no need to name. He—the more fool he—has taken a fancy to your sister, though, if all reports be true, she has nought but her royal blood, not so much as a denier for a dowry nor as ransom for either of you. However, this I will overlook, dead loss as it is to me and mine, and so your sister, so soon as she recovers from her hurt, will become my son’s wife, and I will have you and your lady safely conducted without ransom to the borders of Normandy or Brittany, as you may list.’

‘And think you, sir,’ returned Eleanor, quivering with indignation, ‘that the daughter of a hundred kings is like to lower herself by listening to the suit of a petty robber baron of the Marches?’

‘I do not think! but I know that though I am a fool for giving in to my son’s madness, these are the only terms I propose; and if you, Lady, so deal with her as to make her accept them, you are free without ransom to go where you will.’

‘You expect me to sell my sister,’ said Eleanor disdainfully.

‘Look you here,’ broke in Rudiger, bursting out of his shyness. ‘She is the fairest maiden, gentle or simple, I ever saw; I love her with all my heart. If she be mine, I swear to make her a thousand times more cared for than your sister the Dauphiness; and if all be true your Scottish archers tell me, you Scottish folk have no great cause to disdain an Elsass forest castle.’

An awkward recollection, of the Black Knight of Lorn came across Eleanor, but she did not lose her stately dignity.

‘It is not the wealth or poverty that we heed,’ she said, ‘but the nobility and princeliness.’

‘There is nothing to be done then, son,’ said the old Baron, ‘but to wait a day or two and see whether the maiden herself will be less proud and more reasonable. Otherwise, these ladies understand that there will be close imprisonment and diet according to the custom of the border till a thousand gold crowns be paid down for each of these sisters of a Scotch king, and five hundred for Madame here; and when that is like to be found, the damoiselle herself may know,’ and he laughed.

‘We have those who will take care of our ransom,’ said Eleanor, though her heart misgave her. ‘Moreover, Duke Sigismund will visit such an offence dearly!’ and there was a glow on her cheeks.

‘He knows better than to meddle with a vassal of Lorraine,’ said the old man.