The Caged Lion

‘Harry, bethink yourself.  This is no captive taken in battle.  He is a sick man, left behind, sorely hurt.’

‘Then wherefore must you be meddling, instead of letting him burn as he deserved, and heeding what you undertook for me?  I will have none of your traitor ruffians here.  Since you have brought him in, the halter for him!—Here, Ralf Percy, tell the Provost-marshal—’

He was interrupted, for James unbuckled his sword, and tendered it to him.

‘King Harry,’ he said gravely, ‘this morning I was your friend and brother-in-arms; now I am your captive.  Hang Patrick Drummond, who aided me at Meaux in saving my honour and such freedom as I have, and I return to any prison you please, and never strike blow for you again.’

‘Take back your sword,’ said Henry.  ‘What folly is this?  You knew that I count not your rebel subjects as prisoners of war.’

‘I did not know that I was saving a defenceless man from the flames to be used like a dog.  I never offered my arm to serve a savage tyrant.’

‘Take your sword!’ reiterated Henry, his passion giving way before James’s steady calmness.  ‘We will look into it to-morrow: but it was no soldierly act to take advantage of my weariness, to let my commands be broken the first day of taking the field, and bring the caitiff here.  We will leave him for the night, I say.  Take up your sword.’

‘Not till I am sure of my liegeman’s life,’ said James.

‘No threats, Sir.  I will make no promise,’ said Henry, haughtily; but the words died away in a racking cough.

And Bedford, laying his hand on James’s arm, said, ‘He is fevered and weary.  Fret him no longer, but take your sword, and get your fellow out of the camp.’

James was too much hurt to make a compromise.  ‘No,’ he said; ‘unless your brother freely spares the life of a man thus taken, I must be his prisoner—but his soldier never!’

He left the tent, followed by Malcolm in an agony of despair and self-reproach.

Henry’s morning decisions were not apt to vary from his evening ones.  There was a terrible implacability about him at times, and he had never ceased to visit his brother of Clarence’s death upon the Scots, on the plea that they were in arms against their king.  Even Bedford obviously thought that the prisoner would be safest out of his reach; and this could hardly be accomplished, since Patrick had been placed in James’s tent, in the very centre of the camp, near the King’s own.  And though Bedford and March might have connived at his being taken away, yet the mass of the soldiery would, if they detected a Scot being smuggled away into the town, have been persuaded that King James was acting treacherously.

Besides, the captive himself proved to be so exhausted, that to transport him any further in his present state would have been almost certainly fatal.  A barber surgeon from Corbeil had been fetched, and was dealing with the injuries, which had apparently been the effect of a fall some days previously, probably when on his way to join the French army at Cosne; and the first fever of these hurts had no doubt been aggravated by the adventures of the day.  At any rate Patrick lay unconscious, or only from time to time groaning or murmuring a few words, sometimes French, sometimes Scotch.

Malcolm would have fallen on his knees by his side, and striven to win a word or a look, but James forcibly withheld him.  ‘If you roused him into loud ravings in our own tongue, all hope of saving him would be gone,’ he said.

‘Shall we?  Oh, can we?’ cried Malcolm, catching at the mere word hope.

‘I only know,’ said the King, ‘that unless we do so by Harry’s good-will, I will never serve under him again.’

‘And if he persists in his cruelty?’

‘Then must some means be found of carrying Drummond into Corbeil.  It will go hard with me but he shall be saved, Malcolm.  But this whole army is against a Scot; and Harry’s eye is everywhere, and his fierceness unrelenting.  Malcolm, this is bondage!  May God and St. Andrew aid us!’

When the King came to saying that, it was plain he deemed the case past all other aid.

Malcolm’s misery was great.  The very sight of Patrick had made a mighty revulsion in his feelings.  The almost forgotten associations of Glenuskie were revived; the forms of his guardian and of Lily came before him, as he heard familiar names and phrases in the dear home accent fall from the fevered lips.  Coldingham rose up before him, and St. Abbs, with Lily watching on the rocks for tidings of her knight—her knight, to whom her brother had once promised to resign all his lands and honours, but who now lay captured by plunderers, among whom that brother made one, and in peril of a shameful death.  Oh, far better die in his stead, than return to Lily with tidings such as these!

Was this retribution for his broken purpose, and for having fallen away, not merely into secular life, but into sins that stood between him and religious rites?  The King had called St. Andrew to aid!  Must a proof of repentance and change be given, ere that aid would come?  Should he vow himself again to the cloister, yield up the hope of Esclairmonde, and devote himself for Patrick’s sake?  Could he ever be happy with Patrick dead, and Esclairmonde driven and harassed into being his wife?  Were it not better to vow at once, that so his cousin were spared he would return to his old purposes?

Almost had he uttered the vow, when, tugging hard at his heart, came the vision of Esclairmonde’s loveliness, and he felt it beyond his strength to resign her voluntarily; besides, how Madame of Hainault and Monseigneur de Thérouenne would deride his uncertainties; and how intolerable it would be to leave Esclairmonde to fall into the hands of Boëmond of Burgundy.

Such a renunciation could not be made; he did not even know that Patrick’s safety depended on it; and instead of that, he promised, with great fervency of devotion, that if St. Andrew would save Patrick Drummond, and bring about the two marriages, a most splendid monastery for educational purposes, such as the King so much wished to found, should be his reward.  It should be in honour of St. Andrew, and should be endowed with Esclairmonde’s wealth, which would be quite ample enough, both for this and for a noble portion for Lily.  Surely St. Andrew must accept such a vow, and spare Patrick!  So Malcolm tried to pacify an anguish of suspense that would not be pacified.

CHAPTER XII: THE LAST PILGRIMAGE

The summer morning came; the réveille sounded, Mass was sung in the chapel tent, without which Henry never moved; and Malcolm tried to reassure his sinking heart by there pledging his vow to St. Andrew.

The English king was not present; but the troops were drawing up in complete array, that he might inspect them before the march.  And a glorious array they were, of steel-clad men-at-arms on horseback, in bands around their leader’s banner, and of ranks of sturdy archers, with their long-bows in leathern cases; the orderly multitude, stretching as far as the eye could reach, glittering in the early sun, and waiting with bold and glad hearts to greet the much-loved king, who had always led them to victory.

The only unarmed knight was James of Scotland.  He stood in the space beside the standard of England, in his plain suit of chamois leather, his crimson cloak over his shoulder, but with no weapon about him, waiting with crossed arms for the morning’s decision.

Close outside the royal tent waited Henry’s horse, and those of his brother and other immediate attendants; and after a short interval the King came forth in his brightest armour, with the coronal on his helmet, and the beaver up; and as he mounted, not without considerable aid, enthusiastic shouts of ‘Long live King Harry!’ broke forth, and came echoing back and back from troop to troop, gathering fervour as they rose.

The King rode forward towards the standard; but while yet the shouts were pealing from the army, be suddenly caught at his saddle-bow, reeled visibly, and would have fallen before Bedford could bring his horse to his side, had not James sprung forward, and laid one arm round him, and a hand on his rein.

‘It is nothing,’ said Henry.  ‘Let me alone.’

Ere the words were finished, he put his hand to his side, dropped his bridle, and gasped, while a look of intense suffering passed over his features; and he was passive while his horse was led back to the tent, and he was lifted down and placed on the couch he had just quitted.

‘Loose my belt,’ he gasped; then trying to smile, ‘Percy has strained it three holes tighter.’

Alas! though it was indeed thus drawn in, his armour was hanging on him like the shell of a last year’s nut.  They released him from it, and he lay against the cushions with short painful respiration, and frequent cough.

‘You must go on with the men at once, John,’ he said.  ‘I will but be blooded, and follow in the litter.’

‘Warwick and Salisbury—’ began Bedford.

‘No, no!’ peremptorily gasped Henry.  ‘It must be you or I, I would, but this stitch in the side catches me, so that I can neither ride nor speak.  Go, instantly.  You know what I have ordered.  I’ll be up with you ere the battle.’

He brooked no resistance.  His impatience, and with it the oppression and pain, only grew by remonstrance; and Bedford was forced to obey the command to go himself, and leave no one he could help behind him.

‘You will stay, at least,’ said John, in his distress, turning to the Scottish king.

‘I must,’ said James.

‘You hold not your wrath?’ said Bedford.  ‘It will madden me to leave him to any save you in this stress.  Some are dull; some he will not heed.’

‘I will tend him like yourself, John,’ said the Scot, taking his hand.  ‘Do what he may, Harry is Harry still.  Hasten to your command, John; he will be calmer when you are gone.’

Bedford groaned.  It was hard to leave his brother at a moment when he must be more than himself—become general of an army, with a battle imminent; but he was under dire necessity, and forced himself to listen to and gather the import of the few terse orders and directions that Henry, breathless as he was, rendered clear and trenchant as ever.

The King almost drove his brother away at last, while a barber was taking a copious stream of blood from him; and as the army had already been set in motion, a great stillness soon prevailed, no one being left save a small escort, and part of the King’s own immediate household, for Henry had himself ordered away Montagu, his chamberlain, Percy, and almost all on whom his eyes fell.  The bleeding relieved him; he breathed less tightly, but became deadly pale, and sank into a doze of extreme exhaustion.

‘Who is here?’ he said, awakening.  ‘Some drink!  What you, Jamie!  You that were on fire to see a stricken field!’

‘Not so much as to see you better at ease,’ said James.

‘I am better,’ said Henry.  ‘I could move now; and I must.  This tent will stifle me by noon.’

‘You will not go forward?’

‘No; I’ll go back.  A sick man is best with his wife.  And I can battle it no further, nor grudge the glory of the day to John.  He deserves it.’

The irascible sharpness had passed from his voice and manner, and given place to a certain languid cheerfulness, as arrangements were made for his return to Vincennes.

There proved to be a large and commodious barge, in which the transit could be effected on the river, with less of discomfort than in the springless horse litter by which he had travelled the day before; and this was at once prepared.

Malcolm had meanwhile remained, as in duty bound, in attendance on his king.  James had found time to enjoin him to stay, being, to say the truth, unwilling to trust one so inexperienced and fragile in the mêlée without himself; nor indeed would this have been a becoming moment for him to put himself forward to win his spurs in the English cause.

Nothing had passed about Patrick Drummond, nor the high words of last night.  Henry seemed to have forgotten them, between his bodily suffering and the anxiety of being forced to relinquish the command just before a battle; and James would have felt it ungenerous to harass him at such a moment, when absolutely committed to his charge.  For the present, there was no fear of the prisoner being summarily executed by any lawful authority, since the King had promised to take cognizance of the case; and the chief danger was from his chance discovery by some lawless man-at-arms, who would think himself doing good service by killing a concealed Scot under any circumstances.

Drummond himself, after his delirious night, had sunk into a heavy sleep; and the King thought the best hope for him would be to remain under the care of Sir Nigel Baird for the present, until he could obtain favour for him from Henry, and could send back orders from Vincennes.  He would not leave Malcolm to share the care of him, declaring that the canny Sir Nigel would have quite enough to do in averting suspicion without him; and, besides, he needed Malcolm himself, in the scarcity of attendants who had any tenderness or dexterity of hand to wait upon the suffering King.

Henry had rallied enough to walk down to the river, leaning upon James; and he smiled thanks when he was assisted by Trenton and Kitson to lie along on cushions.  ‘So, my Yorkshire knights,’ he said, ‘’tis you that have had to stop from the battle to watch a sick man home!’

‘Ay, Sir,’ said Sir Christopher; ‘I did it with the better will, that Trenton here has not been his own man since the fever; and ‘twere no fair play in the matter your Grace wets of, did I go into battle whole and sound, and he sick and sorry.’

Henry’s look of amusement brightened him into his old self, as he said, ‘Honester guards could I scarce have, good friend.’

At that moment, after a nudge or two from Trenton, Kitson and he came suddenly down on their knees, with an impetus that must have tried the boards of the bottom of the barge.  ‘Sir,’ said Kitson, always the spokesman, ‘we have a grace to ask of you.’

‘Say on,’ said Henry.  ‘Any boon, save the letting you cut one another’s throats.’

‘No, Sir.  Will Trenton’s scarce my match now, more’s the pity; and, moreover, we’ve lost the good will to it we once had.  No, Sir; ’twas license to go a pilgrimage.’

‘On pilgrimage!’

‘Ay, Sir; to yon shrine at Breuil—St. Fiacre’s, as they call him.  Some of our rogues pillaged his shrine, as you know, Sir; and those that know these parts best, say he was a Scottish hermit, and bears malice like a Scot, saint though he be; and that your sickness, my lord, is all along of that.  So we two have vowed to go barefoot there for your healing, my liege, if so be we have your license.’

‘And welcome, with my best thanks, good friends,’ said Henry, exerting himself to lean forward and give his hand to their kiss.  Then, as they fell back into their places, with a few inarticulate blessings and assurances that they only wished they could go to Rome, or to Jerusalem, if it would restore their king, Henry said, smiling, as he looked at James, ‘Scotsmen here, there, and everywhere—in Heaven as well as earth!  What was it last night about a Scot that moved thine ire, Jamie?  Didst not tender me thy sword?  By my faith, thou hast it not!  What was the rub?’

James now told the story in its fulness.  How he had met Sir Patrick Drummond at Glenuskie; how, afterwards, the knight had stood by him in the encounter at Meaux; and how it had been impossible to leave him senseless to the flames; and how he had trusted that a capture made thus, accidentally, of a helpless man, would not fall under Henry’s strict rules against accepting Scottish prisoners.

‘Hm!’ said Henry; ‘it must be as you will; only I trust to you not to let him loose on us, either here or on the Border.  Take back your sword, Jamie.  If I spoke over hotly last night—a man hardly knows what he says when he has a goad in the side—you forgive it, Jamie.’ And as the Scots king, with the dew in his eyes, wrung his hand, he added anxiously, ‘Your sword!  What, not here!  Here’s mine.  Which is it?’  Then, as James handed it to him: ‘Ay, I would fain you wore it!  ’Tis the sword of my knighthood, when poor King Richard dubbed me in Ireland; and many a brave scheme came with it!’

The soft movement of the barge upon the water had a soothing influence; and he was certainly in a less suffering state, though silent and dreamy, as he lay half raised on cushions under an awning, James anxiously watching over him, and Malcolm with a few other attendants near at hand; stout bargemen propelling the craft, and the guard keeping along the bank of the river.

His thoughts were perhaps with the battle, for presently he looked up, and murmured the verse:

‘“I had a dream, a weary dream,Ayont the Isle of Skye;I saw a dead man win a fight,And I think that man was I.”

That stave keeps ringing in my brain; nor can I tell where or when I have heard it.’

‘’Tis from the Scottish ballad that sings of the fight of Otterburn,’ said James; ‘I brought it with me from Scotland.’

‘And got little thanks for your pains,’ said Henry, smiling.  ‘But, methinks, since no Percy is in the way, I would hear it again; there was true knighthood in the Douglas that died there.’

James’s harp was never far off; and again his mellow voice went through that gallant and plaintive strain, though in a far more subdued manner than the first time he had sung it; and Henry, weakened and softened, actually dropped a brave man’s tear at the ‘bracken bush upon the lily lea,’ and the hero who lay there.

‘That I should weep for a Douglas!’ he said, half laughing; ‘but the hearts of all honest men lie near together, on whatever side they draw their swords.  God have mercy on whosoever may fall to-morrow!  I trow, Jamie, thou couldst not sing that rough rhyme of Agincourt.  I was bashful and ungracious enough to loathe the very sound of it when I came home in my pride of youth; but I would lief hear it once more.  Or, stay—Yorkshiremen always have voices;’ and raising his tone, he unspeakably gratified Trenton and Kitson by the request; and their voices, deep and powerful, and not uncultivated, poured forth the Lay of Agincourt to the waves of the French river, and to its mighty victor:

‘Our King went forth to Normandye.’

Long and lengthily chanted was the triumphant song, with the Latin choruses, which were echoed back by the escort on the bank; while Henry lay, listening and musing; and Malcolm had time for many a thought and impulse.

Patrick’s life was granted; although it had been promised too late to send the intelligence back to the tent at Corbeil.  So far, the purpose of his vow to St. Andrew had been accomplished; but with the probability that he should soon again be associated with Patrick, came the sense of the failure in purpose and in promise.  Patrick would not reproach him, he well knew—nay, would rejoice in the change; but even this certainty galled him, and made him dread his cousin’s presence as likely to bring him a sense of shame.  What would Patrick think of his letting a lady be absolutely compelled to marry him?  Might he not say it was the part of Walter Stewart over again?  Indeed, Malcolm remembered how carefully King James was prevented from hearing the means by which the Countess intended to make the lady his own; and a sensation came over him, that it was profanation to call on St. Andrew to bless what was to be brought about by such means.  Why was it that, as his eyes fell on the face of King Henry, the whole world and all his projects acquired so different a colouring? and a sentence he had once heard Esclairmonde quote would come to him constantly: ‘My son, think not to buy off God.  It is thyself that He requires, not thy gifts.’

But the long lay of victory was over; and King Henry had roused himself to thank the singers, then sighed, and said, ‘How long ago that was!’

‘Six years,’ said James.

‘The whole space from the hope and pride of youth to the care and toil of eld,’ said Henry.  ‘Your Scots made an old man of me the day they slew Thomas.’

‘Yet that has been your sole mishap,’ said James.

‘Yea, truly!  But thenceforth I have learnt that the road to Jerusalem is not so straight and plain as I deemed it when I stood victorious at Agincourt.  The Church one again—the Holy Sepulchre redeemed!  It seemed then before my eyes, and that I was the man called to do it.’

‘So it may be yet,’ said James.  ‘Sickness alters everything, and raises mountains before us.’

‘It may be so,’ said Henry; ‘and yet—Jerusalem!  Jerusalem!  It was my father’s cry; it was King Edward’s cry; it was St. Louis’ cry; and yet they never got there.’

‘St. Louis was far on his way,’ said James.

‘Ay! he never turned aside!’ said Henry, sighing, and moving restlessly and wearily with something of returning fever.

“‘O bona patria, lumina sobria te speculantur—”

Boy, are you there?’ as, in turning, his eye fell on Malcolm.  ‘Take warning: the straight road is the best.  You see, I have never come to Jerusalem.’  Then again he murmured:

“‘Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur.”

And James, seeing that nothing lulled him like song, offered to sing that mysteriously beautiful rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix.

‘Ay, prithee do so,’ said Henry.  ‘There’s a rest there, when the Agincourt lay rings hollow.  Well, there is a Jerusalem where our shortcomings are made up; only the straight way—the straight way.’

Malcolm took his part with James in singing the rhythm, which he had learnt long ago at Coldingham, and which thus in every note brought back the vanished aspirations and self-dedication to ‘the straight way.’

For such, an original purpose of self-devotion must ever be—not of course exclusively to the monastic life; but whoever lowers his aims of serving God under any worldly inducement, is deviating from the straight way: and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity?

Sometimes dozing, but sometimes restless, and with the pain of breathing constantly increasing on him, Henry wore through the greater part of the day, upon the river, until it was necessary to land, and be taken through the forest in his litter.  He was now obliged to be lifted from the barge; and his weariness rendered the conveyance very distressing, save that his patient smile never faded; and still he said, ‘All will be well when I come to my Kate!’

Alas! when the gates were reached, James hardly knew how to tell him that the Queen had gone that morning to Paris with her mother.  Yet still he was cheerful.  ‘If the physicians deal hard with me,’ he said, ‘it will be well that she should not be here till the worst is over.’

The physicians were there.  A messenger had gone direct from Corbeil to summon them; and Henry delivered himself up into their hands, to fight out the battle with disease, as he had set himself to fight out many another battle in his time.

A sharp conflict it was—between a keen and aggravated disease, apparently pleurisy coming upon pulmonary affection of long standing, and a strong and resolute nature, unquenched by suffering, and backed by the violent remedies of a half-instructed period.  Those who watched him, and strove to fulfil the directions of the physicians, hardly marked the lapse of hours; even though more than one day and night had passed ere in the early twilight of a long summer’s morn he sank into a sleep, his face still distressed, but less acutely, and his breath heavy and labouring, though without the severe pain.

The watchers felt that here might be the turning point, and stood or sat around, not daring to change their postures, or utter the slightest word.  Suddenly, James, who stood nearest, leaning against the wall, with his eyes fixed on the face of the sleeper, was aware of a hand on his shoulder, and looking round, saw in the now full light Bedford’s face—so pale, haggard, and replete with anxiety, so dusty and travel-stained, that Henry, awakening at that moment, exclaimed, ‘Ha, John!’  And as his brother was slow to reply—‘Has the day gone against thee?  How was it?  Never fear to speak, brother; thou art safe; and I know thou hast done valiantly.  Valour is never lost, whether in defeat or success.  Speak, John.  Take it not so much to heart.’

‘There has been no battle, Harry,’ said Bedford, gathering voice with difficulty.  ‘The Dauphin would not abide our coming, but broke up his camp.’