The Prince and the Page: A Story of the Last Crusade by Charlotte M. Yonge (ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the first moment, as he lifted himself up to look again at the first-born of his parents, the head of the brave troop of brethren, the gay, handsome, imperious young Lord de Montfort, whose proud head and gallant bearing he had looked at with a younger brother’s imitative deference.  What did he see but a wreck of a man, sitting crouched on the wretched bed, the left arm a mere stump, a bandage where the bright sarcastic eyes used to flash forth their dark fire, deep scars on all the small portion of the face that was visible through the over-grown masses of hair and beard, so plentifully sprinkled with white, that it would have seemed incredible that this man was but eight months older than the Prince, whose rival he had always been in personal beauty and activity.  The beautiful child, clasped close to his breast, her face buried on his shoulder under his shaggy locks, was a strange contrast to his appearance, but only added to the look of piteous helplessness and desolation, as she hung upon him in her alarm at the agitation around her.

Richard had long been accustomed to think of his brother as dead; but such a spectacle as this was far more terrible to him, and his cheek blanched at the shock, as he gasped again, “Thou here, and thus! thou whom I thought slain!”

“Deem me so still,” said his brother, “even as I deem the royal minion dead to me.”

“Nay, Henry, thou knowst not.”

“Who is present?” interrupted the blind man, raising his head and tossing back his hair with a gesture that for the first time gave Richard a sense that his eldest brother was indeed before him.  “Methought I heard another voice.”

“I am here, fair son,” replied the old knight, “Father Robert of the Hospital!  I will either leave thee, or keep thy secret as though it were thy shrift; but thou art sore spent, and mayst scarce talk more.”

“Weariness and pain are past, Father, with my little one again in my bosom,” said Henry; “and there are matters that must be spoken between me and this young brother of mine ere he quits this hut;” and his voice resumed its old authoritative tone towards Richard.  “Said you that he had saved my child?”

“He drew me from the river, Father,” said Bessee looking up.  “There was nothing to stand on, and it was so cold!  And he took me in his arms and pulled me out, and put me in a boat; and the lady pulled off my blue coat, and put this one on me.  Feel it, Father; oh, so pretty, so warm!”

“It was the Princess,” said Richard; but Henry, not noticing, continued,

“Thou hast earned my pardon, Richard,” and held out his remaining hand, somewhere towards the height where his brother’s used to be.

Sir Robert smiled, saying, “Thou dost miscalculate thy brother’s stature, son.”  And at the same moment Richard, who was now little short of his Cousin Edward in height, was kneeling by Henry, accepting and returning his embrace with agitation and gratitude, such as showed how their relative positions in the family still maintained their force; but Richard still asserted his independence so as to say, “When you have heard all, brother you will see that there is no need of pardoning me.”

Henry, however, as perhaps Sir Robert had foreseen, instead of answering put his hand to his side, and sank back in a paroxysm of pain, ending in another swoon.  The child stood by, quiet and frightened but too much used to similar occurrences to be as much terrified as was Richard, who thought his brother dying; but calling in the serving-brother, the old Hospitalier did all that was needed, and the blind man presently recovered and explained in a feeble voice that he had been jostled, thrown down, and trodden on, at the moment when he lost his hold of his little daughter; and this was evidently renewing his sufferings from the effect of an injury received in battle.  “And what took thee there, son?” said Sir Robert, somewhat sharply.

“The harvest, Father,” answered Henry, rousing himself to speak with a certain sarcasm in his tone.  “It is the beggars’ harvest wherever King Henry goes.  We brethren of the wallet cannot afford to miss such windfalls.”

“A beggar!” exclaimed Richard in horror.

“And what art thou?” retorted Henry, with a sudden fierceness.

“Listen, young men,” said Sir Robert, “this I know, my patient there will soon be nothing if ye continue in this strain.  A litter shall bring him to the infirmary.”

“Nay,” said Henry hastily, “not so, good Father.  Here I abide, hap what may.”

“And I abide with him,” said Richard.

“Not so, I say,” returned the Hospitalier, “unless thou wouldst slay him outright.  Return to the Spital with me; and at morn, if he have recovered himself, unravel these riddles as thou and he will.”

“It is well, Father,” said Henry.  “Go with him, Richard; but mark me.  Be silent as the grave, and see me again.”

And reluctant as he was, Richard was forced to comply.

CHAPTER VI
THE BEGGAR EARL

“Along with the nobles that fell at that tyde,
His eldest son Henrye, who fought by his syde,
Was felde by a blow he receivde in the fight;
A blow that for ever deprivde him of sight.”

Old Beggar.

The chapel at the Spital was open to all who chose to attend.  The deep choir was filled with the members of the Order, half a dozen knights in the stalls, and the novices and serving-brothers so ranged as to give full effect to the body of voice.  Richard knelt on the stone floor outside the choir, intending after early mass to seek his brother; but to his surprise he found the blind man with his child at his feet in what was evidently his accustomed place, just within the door.  His hair and beard were now arranged, his appearance was no longer squalid; but when he rose to depart, guided in part by the child, but also groping with a stick, he looked even more helpless than on his bed, and Richard sprang forward to proffer an arm for his support.

“Flemish cloth and frieze gown,” said the object of his solicitude in a strange gibing voice; “court page and street beggar—how now, my master?”

“Lord Earl and elder brother,” returned Richard, “thine is my service through life.”

“Mine?  Ho, ho!  That much for thy service!” with a disdainful gesture of his fingers.  “A strapping lad like thee would be the ruin of my trade.  I might as well give up bag and staff at once.”

“Nay, surely, wilt thou not?” exclaimed Richard in broken words from his extreme surprise.  “The King and Prince only long to pardon and restore, and—”

“And thou wouldst well like to lord it at Kenilworth, earl in all but the name?  Thou mayst do so yet without being cumbered with me or mine!”

“Thou dost me wrong, Henry,” said Richard, much distressed.  “I love the Prince, for none so truly honoured our blessed father as he, and for his sake he hath been most kind lord to me; but thou art the head of my house, my brother, and with all my heart do I long to render thee such service as—as may lighten these piteous sufferings.”

“I believe thee, Richard; thou wert ever an honest simple-hearted lad,” said Henry, in a different tone; “but the only service thou canst render me is to let me alone, and keep my secret.  Here—I feel that we are at the stone bench, where I bask in the sun, and lay out my dish for the visitors of the gracious Order.—Here, Bessee, child, put the dish down,” he added, retaining his hold of his brother, as if to feel whether Richard winced at this persistence in his strange profession.  The little girl obeyed, and betook herself to the quiet sports of a lonely child, amusing herself with Leonillo, and sometimes returning to her father and obtaining his attention for a few moments, sometimes prattling to some passing brother of the Order, who perhaps made all the more of the pretty creature because this might be called an innocent breach of discipline.  “And now, Master Page,” said Henry in his tone of authority, yet with some sarcasm, “let us hear how long-legged Edward finished the work he had began on thee at Hereford—made thee captive in the battle, eh?”

Richard briefly narrated his life with Gourdon, and his capture by the Prince, adding, “My mother was willing I should remain with him; she bade me do anything rather than join Simon and Guy; and verily, brother, save that the Prince is less free of speech, his whole life seems moulded upon our blessed father’s—”

“Speak not of them in the same breath,” cried Henry hastily.  “And wherefore—if such be his honour to him whom he slew and mutilated—art thou to disown thy name, and stand before him like some chance foundling?”

“That was the King’s doing,” said Richard.  “The Prince was averse to it, but King Henry, though he wept over me and called me his dear nephew, made it his special desire that he might not hear the name of Montfort; and the Prince, though overruling him in all that pertains to matters of state, is most dutiful in all lesser matters.  I hoped at least to be called Fitz Simon, but some mumble of the King turned it into Fowen, and so it has continued.  I believe no one at court is really ignorant of my lineage; but among the people, Montfort is still a trumpet-call, and the King fears to hear it.”

“Well he may!” laughed Henry.  “Rememberest thou, Richard, the sorry figure our good uncle cut, when we armed him so courteously, and put him on his horse to meet the rebels at Evesham—how he durst not hang back, and loved still less to go onward, and kept calling me his loving nephew all the time?”

“Ah!  Henry—but didst thou not hear my father mutter, when he saw the crowned helm under the standard, that it was ill done, and no good could come of seething the kid in the mother’s milk?  And verily, had not the Prince been carrying his father from the field, I trow the Mortimers had not refused us quarter, nor had their cruel will of us.”

“Oh ho! thou art come to have opinions of thine own!” laughed Henry, with the scoff of a senior unable to brook that his younger brother should think for himself.  Yet this tone was so familiar to Richard’s ears, that it absolutely encouraged him to a nearer step to intimacy.  He said, “But how scapedst thou, Henry?  I could have sworn that I saw thee fall, skull and helmet cleft, a dead man!”

Instead of answering, Henry put his hand under the chin of his child, who was leaning against him, and holding up her face to his brother, said, “Thou canst see this child’s face?  Tell me what like she is.”

“Like little Eleanor, like Amaury.  The home-look of her eyes won my heart at once.  Even the Princess remarked their resemblance to mine.  Think of Eleanor and thy mind’s eye will see her.”

“No other likeness?” said the blind man wistfully; “but no—thou wast at Hereford when she was at Odiham.”

“Who?”

He grasped Richard’s hand, and under his breath uttered the name “Isabel.”

“Isabel Mortimer!” exclaimed Richard, who had been, of course, aware of his brother’s betrothal, when the two families of Montfort and Mortimer had been on friendly terms; “we heard she had taken the veil!”

“And so thou sawst me slain!” said Henry de Montfort dryly.

“But how—how was it?” asked Richard eagerly.

“Men sometimes tie knots faster than they intend,” said Henry.  “When Roger Mortimer took Simon’s doings in wrath, and vowed that his sister should never wed a Montfort, he knew not what he did.  He and his proud wife could flout and scorn my Isabel—they might not break her faith to me.  Thou knowst, perhaps, Richard, since thou art hand and glove with our foes, that like a raven to the slaughter, the Lady Mortimer came as near the battle-field as her care for her dainty person would allow; and there was one whom she brought with her.  And, gentle dame, what doth she do but carry her sister-in-law a sweet and womanly gift?  What thinkst thou it was, Richard?”

“I fear I know,” said Richard, choked; “my father’s hand.”

“Nay, that was a choicer morsel reserved for my lady countess herself.  It was mine own, with our betrothal-ring thereon.  Now, quoth that loving sister, might Isabel resume her ring.  No plighted troth could be her excuse any longer for refusing to wed my Lord of Gloucester.  Then rose up my love, ‘It beckons me!’ she said, and bade them leave it with her.  They deemed that it was for death that it beckoned.  So mayhap did she.  I wot Countess Maud had little grieved.  But little dreamed they of her true purpose—my perfect jewel of constant love—namely, to restore the lopped hand to the poor corpse, that it might likewise have Christian burial.  Her old nurse, Welsh Winny, was as true to her as she was to