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

I ride under your banner in foreign parts—provided such oath be not binding within this realm of Scotland, nor against my lealty to the head of my name.’

‘Nor do I ask it of thee,’ returned Sir Patrick heartily, but regarding him more attentively; ‘these are the scruples of a true man. Hast thou any following?’

‘Only a boy to lead my horse to grass,’ replied George, giving a peculiar whistle, which brought to his side a shock-headed, barefooted lad, in a shepherd’s tartan and little else, but with limbs as active as a wild deer, and an eye twinkling and alert.

‘He shall be put in better trim ere the English pock-puddings see him,’ said Douglas, looking at him, perhaps for the first time, as something unsuited to that orderly company.

‘That is thine own affair,’ said Sir Patrick. ‘Mine is that he should comport himself as becomes one of my troop. What’s his name?’

‘Ringan Raefoot,’ replied Geordie Sir Patrick began to put the oath of obedience to him, but the boy cried out—

‘I’ll ne’er swear to any save my lawful lord, the Yerl of Angus, and my lord the Master.’

‘Hist, Ringan,’ interposed Geordie. ‘Sir, I will answer for his faith to me, and so long as he is leal to me he will be the same to thee; but I doubt whether it be expedient to compel him.’

So did Sir Patrick, and he said—

‘Then be it so, I trust to his faith to thee. Only remembering that if he plunder or brawl, I may have to leave him hanging on the next bush.’

‘And if he doth, the Red Douglas will ken the reason why,’ quoth Ringan, with head aloft.

It was thought well to turn a deaf ear to this observation. Indeed, Geordie’s effort was to elude observation, and to keep his uncouth follower from attracting it. Ringan was not singular in running along with bare feet. Other ‘bonnie boys,’ as the ballad has it, trotted along by the side of the horses to which they were attached in the like fashion, though they had hose and shoon slung over their shoulders, to be donned on entering the good town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Not without sounding of bugle and sending out a pursuivant to examine into the intentions and authorisation of the party, were they admitted, Jean and Eleanor riding first, with the pursuivant proclaiming—‘Place, place for the high and mighty princesses of Scotland.’

It was an inconvenient ceremony for poor Sir Patrick, who had to hand over to the pursuivant, in the name of the princesses, a ring from his own finger. Largesse he could not attempt, but the proud spirit of himself and his train could not but be chafed at the expectant faces of the crowd, and the intuitive certainty that ‘Beggarly Scotch’ was in every disappointed mind.

And this was but a foretaste of what the two royal maidens’ presence would probably entail throughout the journey. His wife added to this care uneasiness as to the deportment of her three maidens. Of Annis she had not much fear, but she suspected Jean and Eleanor of being as wild and untamed as hares, and she much doubted whether any counsels might not offend their dignity, and drive them into some strange behaviour that the good people of Berwick would never forget.

They rode in, however, very upright and stately, with an air of taking possession of the place on their brother’s behalf; and Jean bowed with a certain haughty grace to the deputy-warden who came out to receive them, Eleanor keeping her eye upon Jean and imitating her in everything. For Eleanor, though sometimes the most eager, and most apt to commit herself by hasty words and speeches, seemed now to be daunted by the strangeness of all around, and to commit herself to the leading of her sister, though so little her junior.

She was very silent all through the supper spread for them in the hall of the castle, while Jean exchanged conversation with their host upon Iceland hawks and wolf and deer hounds, as if she had been a young lady keeping a splendid court all her life, instead of a poverty-stricken prisoner in castle after castle.

‘Jeanie,’ whispered Eleanor, as they lay down on their bed together, ‘didst mark the tall laddie that was about to seat himself at the high table and frowned when the steward motioned him down?’

‘What’s that to me? An ill-nurtured carle,’ said Jean; ‘I marvel Sir Patie brooks him in his meinie!’

Eleanor was a little in awe of Jeanie in this mood, and said no more, but Annis, who slept on a pallet at their feet, heard all, and guessed more as to the strange young squire.

Fain would she and Eleanor have discussed the situation, but Jean’s blue eyes glanced heedfully and defiantly at them, and, moreover, the young gentleman in question, after that one error, effaced himself, and was forgotten for the time in the novelty of the scenes around.

The sub-warden of Berwick, mindful of his charge to obviate all occasions of strife, insisted on sending a knight and half-a-dozen men to escort the Scottish travellers as far as Durham. David Drummond and the young ladies murmured to one another their disgust that the English pock-pudding should not suppose Scots able to keep their heads with their own hands; but, as Jean sagely observed, ‘No doubt he would not wish them to have occasion to hurt any of the English, nor Jamie to have to call them to account.’

This same old knight consorted with Sir Patrick, Dame Lilias, and Father Romuald, and kept a sharp eye on the little party, allowing no straggling on any pretence, and as Sir Patrick enforced the command, all were obliged to obey, in spite of chafing; and the scowls of the English Borderers, with the scant courtesy vouchsafed by these sturdy spirits, proved the wisdom of the precaution.

At Durham they were hospitably entertained in the absence of the Bishop. The splendour of the cathedral and its adjuncts much impressed Lady Drummond, as it had done a score of years previously; but, though Malcolm ventured to share her admiration, Jean was far above allowing that she could be astonished at anything in England. In fact, she regarded the stately towers of St. Cuthbert as so much stolen family property which ‘Jamie’ would one day regain; and all the other young people followed suit. David even made all the observations his own sense of honour and the eyes of his hosts would permit, with a view to a future surprise. The escort of Sir Patrick was asked to York by a Canon who had to journey thither, and was anxious for protection from the outlaws—who had begun to renew the doings of Robin Hood under the laxer rule of the young Henry VI, though things were expected to be better since the young Duke of York had returned from France.

Perhaps this arrangement was again a precaution for the preservation of peace, and at York there was a splendid entertainment by Cardinal Kemp; but all the ‘subtleties’ and wonders—stags’ heads in their horns, peacocks in their pride, jellies with whole romances depicted in them, could not reconcile the young Scots to the presumption of the Archbishop reckoning Scotland into his province. Durham was at once too monastic and too military to have afforded much opportunity for recruiting the