The Caged Lion

At last, before a tall overhanging house, there was an immense press, and a frightful din of shouts and imprecations, filling both the new-comers with infectious eagerness.

‘How now? how now?’ called Percy.  ‘Keep the peace, good fellows.’

‘Sir,’ cried a number of voices, passionately, ‘the French villains have barred their door.  There’s a lot of cowardly Armagnacs hid there with their gold, trying to balk honest men of their ransom.’

Such was the cry resounding on all sides.  ‘Have at them!  There’s the rogue at the windows.  Out on the fellows!  Burn down the door!  ’Tis Vaurus himself and all his gold.  Treason! treason!’

The clamour was convincing to the spirit, if not to the senses.  The two lads believed in the concealed Armagnacs, or perhaps more truly were carried away by the vehemence around them; and with something of the spirit of the chase, threw themselves headlong into the affair.

‘Open! open!’ shouted Ralf.  ‘Open, in the name of King Henry!’

An old man’s face peeped through a little wicket in the door, and at sight of the two youths, evidently of high rank, said in a trembling voice, ‘Alas! alas!  Sir, bid these cruel men go away.  I have nothing here—no one—only my sick daughter.’

‘You hear,’ said Malcolm, turning round; ‘only his sick daughter.’

‘Sick daughter!—old liar!  Here’s an honest tinker makes oath he has hoards of gold laid up for Vaurus, and ten Armagnacs hidden in his house.  Have at him!  Bring fire!’

Blows hailed thick on the door; a flaming torch was handed over the heads of the throng; horrible growls and roars pervaded them.  Malcolm and Ralf, furious at the cheat, stood among the foremost, making so much noise themselves between thundering and reviling, and calling out, ‘Where are the Armagnacs?  Down with the traitors!’ that they were not aware of a sudden hush behind them, till a buffet from a heavy hand fell on Malcolm’s shoulder, and a mighty voice cried ‘Shame! shame!  What, you too!’

‘There are traitors hid here, Sir,’ said Percy, in angry self-justification.

‘And what an if there are?  Back, every one of you! rogues that you be!—Here, Fitzhugh, see those villains back to the camp.  Let their arms be given up to the Provost-marshal.—Kites and crows as you are!  Away, out with you!’

Henry pointed to the broken door, and the cowed and abashed soldiers slunk away from the terrible light of his eyes.  No man could stand before the face of the King.

There was a stillness.  He stood leaning on his sword, his chest heaving with his panting breaths.  He was naturally as fleet as the swift-footed Achilles, but the winter had told upon him, and the haste with which he had rushed to the rescue left him breathless and speechless, while he seemed as it were to nail the two lads to the spot by his steady gaze of mingled distress and displeasure.

Neither could brook his eye: Percy hung his head like a boy in a scrape; Malcolm quailed with terror, but at the same time felt a keen sense of injury in being thus treated as a plunderer, and the blow under which his shoulder ached seemed an indignity to his royal blood.

‘Boys,’ said Henry, still low and breathlesly, but all the more impressively, ‘what is to become of honour and mercy if such as you must needs become ravening wolves at scent of booty?’

‘It was not booty, Sir; they said traitors were hid here,’ said Percy, sulkily.

‘Tush! the old story!  Ever the plea for rapine and bloodthirstiness.  After the warnings of last night you should have known better; but you are all alike in frenzy for a sack.  You have both put off your knighthood till you have learnt not to become a shame thereto.’

‘I take not knighthood at your hands, Sir,’ burst out Malcolm, goaded with hot resentment, but startled the next moment at the sound of his own words.

‘I cry you mercy,’ said King Henry, in a cold, short tone.

Malcolm turned on his heel and walked away, without waiting to see how the poor old man in the house threw himself at the King’s feet with a piteous history of his sick daughter and her starving children, nor how Ralf hurried off headlong to the lower town to send them immediate relief in bread, wine, and doctors.  The gay, good-natured, thoughtless lad no mere harboured malice for the chastisement than if his tutor had caught him idling; but things went deeper with Malcolm.  True, he had undergone many a brutal jest and cruel practical joke from his cousins; but that was all in the family, not like a blow from an alien king, and one not apologized for, but followed up by a rebuke that seemed to him unjust, lowering him in his own eyes and those of Esclairmonde, and making him ready to gnaw himself with moody vexation.

‘You here, Malcolm!’ said King James, entering his quarters; ‘did you miss me in the throng?  I have not seen you all day.’

‘I have been insulted, Sir,’ said Malcolm.  ‘I pray your license to depart and carry my sword to my kinsmen in the French camp.’

‘How now!  Is it the way to treat an insult to run away from it?’

‘Not when the world judges men to be on equal terms, my lord.’

‘What!  Who has done you wrong, you silly loon?’

‘King Henry, Sir; he struck me with his fist, and rated me like his hound; and I will not eat another morsel of his bread unless he would answer it to me in single combat.’

‘Little enough bread you’d eat after that same answer!’ ejaculated James.  ‘Oh!  I understand now.  You were with young Hotspur and the rest that set on the poor townsmen, and Harry made small distinction of persons!  Nay, Malcolm, it was ill in you, that talked of so loathing spulzie!’

‘I wanted no spulzie.  There were Armagnacs hid in the house, and the King would not hear us.’

‘He knew that story too well.  Were you asleep or idling last night, when he warned all, on no plea whatever, to break into a house, but, if the old tale of treachery came up, to set a guard, and call one of the captains?  Did you hear him—eh?’

‘I can take chiding from you, Sir, but neither words nor blows from any other king in Christendom, still less when he threatens me that I have deferred my knighthood!  As if I would have it from him!’

‘From me you will not have it until he have pardoned Ralf Percy,’ said James, dryly.  ‘Malcolm, I had not thought you such a fule body!  Under a captain’s banner, what can be done but submit to his rule?  I should do so myself, were Salisbury or March in command.’

‘Then, Sir,’ said Malcolm, much hurt that the King did not take his part, ‘I shall carry my service elsewhere.’

‘So,’ said James, much vexed, ‘this is the meek lad that wanted to hide in a convent from an ill world, flying off from his king and kinsman that he may break down honest men’s doors at his will.’

‘That I may be free from insult, Sir.’

‘You think John of Buchan like to cosset you!  You found the Black Douglas so courtly to me the other day as to expect him to be tender to this nicety of yours!  Malcolm, as your prince and guardian, I forbid this folly, and command you to lay aside this fit of malice and do your devoir.  What! sobbing, silly lad—where’s your manhood?’

‘Sir, Sir, what will they think of me—the Lady Esclairmonde and all—if they hear I have sat down tamely with a blow?’

‘She will never think about you at all but as a sullen malapert ne’er-do-weel, if you go off to that camp of routiers, trying to prop a bad cause because you cannot take correction, nor observe discipline.’

A sudden suspicion came over Malcolm that the King would not thus make light of the offence, if it had really been the inexpiable insult he had supposed it, and the thought was an absolute relief; for in effect the parting from James, and joining the party opposed to Esclairmonde’s friends, would have been so tremendous a step, that he could hardly have contemplated it in his sober senses, and he murmured, ‘My honour, Sir,’ in a tone that James understood.

‘Oh, for your honour—you need not fear for that!  Any knight in the army could have done as much without prejudice to your honour.  Why, you silly loon, d’ye think I would not have been as angered as yourself, if your honour had been injured?’

Malcolm’s heart felt easier, but he still growled.  ‘Then, Sir, if you assure me that I can do so without detriment to my honour, I will not quit you.’

James laughed.  ‘It might have been more graciously spoken, my good cousin, but I am beholden to you.’

Malcolm, ashamed and vexed at the sarcastic tone, held his tongue for a little while, but presently exclaimed, ‘Will the Bishop of Thérouenne hear of it?’

James laughed.  ‘Belike not; or, if he should, it would only seem to him the reasonable training of a young squire.’

The King did not say what crossed his own mind, that the Bishop of Thérouenne was more likely to think Henry over-strict in discipline, and absurdly rigorous.

The prelate, Charles de Luxemburg, brother to the Count de St. Pol, had made several visits to the English camp.  He was one of these princely younger sons, who, like Beaufort at home, took ecclesiastical preferments as their natural provision, and as a footing whence they might become statesmen.  He was a great admirer of Henry’s genius, and, as the chief French prelate who was heartily on the English side, enjoyed a much greater prominence than he could have done at either the French or Burgundian Court.  He and his brother of St. Pol were Esclairmonde’s nearest kinsmen—‘oncles à la mode de Bretagne,’ as they call the relationship which is here sometimes termed Welsh uncle, or first cousins once removed—and from him James had obtained much more complete information about Esclairmonde than he could ever get from the flighty Duchess.

Her mother, a beautiful Walloon, had been heiress to wide domains in Hainault, her father to great estates in Flanders, all which were at present managed by the politic Bishop.  Like most of the statesman-secular-clergy, the Bishop hated nothing so much as the monastic orders, and had made no small haste to remove his fair niece from the convent at Dijon, where she had been educated, lest the Cistercians should become possessed of her lands.  He had one scheme for her marriage; but his brother, the Count, had wished to give her to his own second son, who was almost an infant; and the Duke of Burgundy had designs on her for his half-brother Boëmond; and among these various disputants, Esclairmonde had never failed to find support against whichever proposal was forced upon her, until the coalition between the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant becoming too strong, she had availed herself of Countess Jaqueline’s discontent to evade them both.

The family had, of course, been much angered, and had fully expected that her estates would go to some great English abbey, or to some English lord whose haughty reserve and insularity would be insupportable.  It was therefore a relief to Monseigneur de Thérouenne to hear James’s designs; and when the King further added, that he would be willing to let the claims on the Hainault part of her estates be purchased by the Count de St. Pol, and those in Flanders by the Duke of Burgundy, the Bishop was delighted, and declared that, rather than such a negotiation should fail, he would himself advance the sum to his brother; but that the Duke of Burgundy’s consent was more doubtful, only could they not do without it?

And he honoured Malcolm with a few words of passing notice from time to time, as if he almost regarded him as a relation.  No doubt it would have been absurd to fly from such chances as these to Patrick Drummond and the opposite camp; and yet there were times when Malcolm felt as if he should get rid of a load on his heart if he were to break with all his present life, hurry to Patrick, confess the whole to him, and then—hide his head in some hermitage, leaving his pledge unforfeited!

That, however, could not be.  He was bound to the King, and might not desert him, and it was not unpleasant to brood over the sacrifice of his own displeasure.

‘See,’ said Henry, in the evening, as he came into the refectory and walked up to James, ‘I have found my signet.  It was left in the finger of my Spanish glove, which I had not worn since the beginning of winter.  Thanks to all who took vain pains to look for it.’

But Malcolm did not respond with his pleased look to the thanks.  He was not in charity with Henry, and crept out of hearing of him, while James was saying, ‘You had best destroy one or the other, or they will make mischief.  Here, I’ll crush it with the pommel of my sword.’

‘Ay,’ said Henry, laughing, ‘you’d like to shew off one of your sledge-hammer blows—Sir Bras de Fer!  But, Master Scot, you shall not smash the English shield so easily.  This one hangs too loose to be safe; I shall keep it to serve me when we have fattened up at Paris, after the leanness of our siege.’

‘Hal,’ said James, seeing his gay temper restored, ‘you have grievously hurt that springald of mine.  His northern blood cannot away with the taste he got of your fist.’

‘Pretty well for your godly young monk, to expect to rob unchecked!’ laughed Henry.

‘He will do well at last,’ said James.  ‘Manhood has come on him with a rush, and borne him off his feet; nor would I have him over-tame.’

‘There spake the Scot!’ said Henry.  ‘By my faith, Jamie, we should have had you the worst robber of all had we not caught you young!  Well, what am I do for this sprig of royalty?  Say I struck unawares?  Nay, had I known him, I’d have struck with as much of a will as his slight bones would bear.’

‘An you love me, Hal, do something to cool his ill blood, and remove the sense of shame that sinks a lad in his own eyes.’

‘Methought,’ said Henry, ‘there was more shame in the deed than in the buffet.’

Nevertheless the good-natured King took an occasion of saying: ‘My Lord of Glenuskie, I smote without knowing you.  It was no place for a prince—nay, for any honest man; otherwise no hand should have been laid on my guest or my brother’s near kinsman.  And whereas I hear that both you and my fiery hot Percy verily credited the cry that prisoners were hid in that house, let me warn you that never was place yielded on composition but some villain got up the shout, and hundreds of fools followed it, till they learnt villainy in their turn.  Therefore I ever chastise transgression of my command to touch neither dwelling nor inhabitant.  You have both learnt your lesson, and the lion rampant and he of the straight tail will both be reined up better another time.’

Malcolm had no choice but to bend his head, mutter something, and let the King grasp his hand, though to him the apology seemed none at all, but rather to increase the offence, since the blame was by no means taken back again, while the condescension was such as could not be rejected, and thus speciously took away his excuse for brooding over his wrath.  His hand lay so unwillingly in that strong hearty clasp that the King dropped it, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered to himself, ‘Sullen young dog!  No Scot can let bygones be bygones!’ and then he turned away and cast the trifle from his memory.

James was amazed not to see the moody face clear up, and asked of Malcolm whether he were not gratified with this ample satisfaction.

‘I trow I must be, Sir,’ said Malcolm.

‘I tell thee, boy,’ said James, ‘not one king—nay, not one man—in a thousand would have offered thee the frank amends King Harry hath done this day: nay, I doubt whether even he could so have done, were it not that the hope of his wife’s coming hath made him overflow with joy and charity to all the world.’

Malcolm did not make much reply, and James regarded him with some disappointment.  The youth was certainly warmly attached to him, but these tokens of superiority to the faults of his time and country which had caused the King to seek him for a companion seemed to have vanished with his feebleness and timidity.  The manhood that had been awakened was not the chivalrous, generous, and gentle strength of Henry and his brothers, but the punctilious pride and sullenness, and almost something of the license, of the Scot.  The camp had not proved the school of chivalry that James, in his inexperience, had imagined it must be under Henry, and the tedium and wretchedness of the siege had greatly added to its necessary evils by promoting a reckless temper and willingness to snatch at any enjoyment without heed to consequences.  Close attendance on the kings had indeed prevented either Malcolm or Percy from even having the temptation of running into any such lengths as those gentry who had plundered the shrine of St. Fiacre at Breuil, or were continually galloping off for an interval of dissipation at Paris; but they were both on the outlook for any snatch of stolen diversion, for in ceasing from monastic habits Malcolm seemed to have laid aside the scruples of a religious or conscientious youth, and specially avoided Dr. Bennet, the King’s almoner.

James feared he had been mistaken, and looked to the influence of Esclairmonde to repair the evil, if perchance she should follow the Queen to France.  And this it was almost certain she must do, since she was entirely dependent upon the Countess of Hainault, and could not obtain admission to a nunnery without recovering a portion of her estates.

CHAPTER IX: THE DANCE OF DEATH

The Queen was coming!  No sooner had the first note of surrender been sounded from the towers of Meaux, than Henry had sent intelligence to England that the way was open for the safe arrival of his much-loved wife; and at length, on a sunny day in May, tidings were received that she had landed in France, under the escort of the Duke of Bedford.

Vincennes, in the midst of its noble forest, was the place fixed for the meeting of the royal pair; and never did a happier or more brilliant cavalcade traverse those woodlands than that with which Henry rode to the appointed spot.

All the winter, the King had heeded appearances as little as of old when roughing it with Hotspur in Wales; but now his dress was of the most royal.  On his head was a small green velvet cap, encircled by a crown in embroidery; his robe was of scarlet silk, and over it was thrown a mantle of dark green samite, thickly powdered with tiny embroidered white antelopes; the Garter was on his knee, the George on his neck.  It was a kingly garb, and well became the tall slight person and fair noble features.  During these tedious months he had looked wan, haggard, and careworn; but the lines of anxiety were all effaced, his lustrous blue eyes shone and danced like Easter suns, his complexion rivalled the fresh delicate tints of the blossoms in the orchards; and when, with a shyness for which he laughed at himself, he halted to brush away any trace of dust that might offend the eye of his ‘dainty Kate,’ and gaily asked his brother king if he were sufficiently pranked out for a lady’s bower, James, thinking he had never seen him so handsome, replied:

‘Like a young bridegroom—nay, more like a young suitor.’

‘You’re jealous, Jamie—afraid of being outshone.  ’Tis is your own fault, man; none can ever tell whether you be in festal trim or not.’

For King James’s taste was for sober, well-blending hues; and as he never lapsed into Henry’s carelessness, his state apparel was not very apparently dissimilar from his ordinary dress, being generally of dark rich crimson, blue, or russet, with the St. Andrew’s cross in white silk on his breast, or else the ruddy lion, but never conspicuously; and the sombre hues always seemed particularly well to suit his auburn colouring.

Malcolm, in scarlet and gold, was a far gayer figure, and quite conscious of the change in his own appearance—how much taller, ruddier, and browner he had become; how much better he held himself both in riding and walking; and how much awkwardness and embarrassment he had lost.  No wonder Esclairmonde had despised the sickly, timid, monkish school-boy; and if she had then shown him any sort of grace or preference, what would she think of the princely young squire he could new show her, who had seen service, had proved his valour, and was only not a knight because of King Henry’s unkindness and King James’s punctilio?—at any rate, no child to be brow-beaten and silenced with folly about cloistral dedication, but a youth who had taken his place in the world, and could allege that his inspiration had come through her bright eyes.

Would she be there?  That was the chief anxiety: for it was not certain that either she or her mistress would risk themselves on the Continent; and Catherine had given no intimation as to who would be in her suite—so that, as Henry had merrily observed, he was the only one in the whole party who was not in suspense, except indeed Salisbury, who had sent his commands to his little daughter to come out with the Queen.

‘She is come!’ cried Henry.  ‘Beforehand with us, after all;’ and he spurred his horse on as he saw the banner raised, and the escort around the gate; and in a few seconds more he and his companions had hurried through the court, where the ladies had scarcely dismounted, and hastened into the hall, breaking into the seneschal’s solemn reception of the Queen.

‘My Kate, my fairest!  Mine eyes have been hungry for a sight of thee.’

And Catherine, in her horned head-gear and flutter of spangled veil, was almost swallowed up in his hearty embrace; and the fervency of his great love so far warmed her, that she clung to him, and tenderly said, ‘My lord, it is long since I saw you.’

‘Thou wert before me!  Ah! forgive thy tardy knight,’ he continued, gazing at her really enhanced beauty as if he had eyes for no one else, even while with lip and hand, kiss, grasp, and word, he greeted her companions, of whom Jaqueline of Hainault and John of Bedford were the most prominent.

‘And the babe! where is he?’ then cried he.  ‘Let me have him to hold up to my brave fellows in the court!’

‘The Prince of Wales?’ said Catherine.  ‘You never spake of my bringing him.’

‘If I spake not, it was because I doubted not for a moment that you would keep him with you.  Nay, verily it is not in sooth that you left him.  You are merely sporting with use.’

‘Truly, Sir,’ said Catherine, ‘I never guessed that you would clog yourself with a babe in the cradle, and I deemed him more safely nursed at Windsor.’

‘If it be for his safety!  Yet a soldier’s boy should thrive among soldiers,’ said the King, evidently much disappointed, and proceeding to eager inquiries as to the appearance and progress of his child; to which the Queen replied with a certain languor, as though she had no very intimate personal knowledge of her little son.

Other eyes were meanwhile eagerly scanning the bright confusion of veils and wimples; and Malcolm had just made out the tall head and dark locks under a long almost shrouding white veil far away in the background behind the Countess of Hainault, when the Duke of Bedford came up with a frown of consternation on his always anxious face, and drawing King James into a window, said, ‘What have you been doing to him?’—to which James, without hearing the question, replied, ‘Where is she?’

‘Joan?  At home.  It was the Queen’s will.  Of that another time.  But what means this?’ and he signed towards his brother.  ‘Never saw I man so changed.’

‘Had you seen him at Christmas you might have said so,’ replied James; ‘but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him so fair and comely.’

‘I tell you, James,’ said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost met ever his arched nose, ‘I tell you, his look brings back to me my mother’s, the last time she greeted my father!’

‘To your fantasy, not your memory, John!  You were a mere babe at her death.’

‘Of five years,’ said Bedford.  ‘That face—that cough—have brought all back—ay, the yearning look when my father was absent, and the pure rosy fairness that Harry and Tom cited so fiercely against one who would have told them how sick to death she was.  I mind me too, that when our grandame of Hereford made us motherless children over to our grandsire of Lancaster, it was with a warning that Harry had the tender lungs of the Bohuns, and needed care.  One deadly sickness he had at Kenilworth, when my father was ridden for post-haste.  My mind misgave me throughout this weary siege; but his service held me fast at home, and I trusted that you would watch over him.’

‘A man like him is ill to guide,’ said James; ‘but he is more himself now than he has been for months, and a few weeks’ quiet with his wife will restore him.  But what is this?’ he proceeded in his turn; ‘why is the Lady Joan not here?’