The Caged Lion

‘You are sure it was Ghisbert?’ repeated Bedford, anxiously.

‘As certain as a man’s voice can make me,’ said Malcolm.  ‘Methinks, had I not named him, he would perhaps have bound me to a tree, and left it to be thought that they were but common thieves.’

‘Belike,’ said Bedford, thoughtfully.  ‘We are beholden to you, my Lord Glenuskie; the whole state of England is beholden to you for the saving of the confusion and evils the loss of that ring would have caused.  You can keep counsel, I wot well.  Then let all this matter of the Queen and Countess rest a secret.’

Malcolm looked amazed; and Bedford added: ‘I cannot quarrel with the woman, nor banish her from Court.  Did we accuse her, Holland would become Armagnac; nor is she subject of ours, to have justice done on her.  It is for her interest to hush the matter up, and it must be ours too.  If that knave Ghisbert ever gives me the chance, he shall hang like a dog; but for the rest—’ he shrugged his shoulders.

‘And,’ said Malcolm, ‘Ghisbert only meant to serve his lady.  Any vassal of mine would do the like for me or my sister.’

Bedford half smiled; then sighed and said: ‘Once we were like to get laws more obeyed than lords; but that is all over now!  Yet you, young Sir, have seen a great pattern; you will have great powers!’

‘Sir,’ interrupted Malcolm, ‘I pray you believe me, great powers I shall not have.  As I told you last night, I do but hold this precious troth in trust!  It must be a secret, or it would not save her; but you—oh, Sir! you will believe that!’

‘If it be so,’ said Bedford, gravely, ‘it is too sacred a trust to be spoken of.  You will deserve greater honour if you keep your word, than ever you will receive from the world.  Farewell—and recover fast.’

Malcolm did not meet with much encouragement from the few to whom he thought fit to confide the conditions of his espousal.  The King allowed that he could not have acted otherwise, but was concerned at it, because of the hindrance that might for years be interposed in the way of his welfare; and secretly hoped that Malcolm, in his new capacity, would so gain on Esclairmonde’s esteem and gratitude, as to win her affection, and that by mutual consent they would lay aside their loftier promises, and take up their espousal where they had left it.

And what James secretly desired, Sir Patrick Drummond openly recommended.  In his eyes, Malcolm would be no better than a fool if he let his ladye-love, with all her lands, slip through his fingers, when she was lawfully his own.  Patrick held that a monastery was a good place to be nursed in if wounded, and a convenience for disposing of dull or weakly younger sons; and he preferred that there should be some holy men to pray for those who did the hard and bloody work of the world; but he had no desire that any one belonging to himself should plunge into extra sanctity; and the more he saw Malcolm developing into a man among men, the more he opposed the notion of his dedicating himself.

A man!  Yes; Malcolm was rising from his bed notably advanced in manliness.  As the King’s keen eye had seen from the first, and as Esclairmonde had felt, there was an elevation, tenderness, and refinement in his cast of character, which if left to his natural destiny would have either worn out his life early in the world, or carried him to the obscure shelter of a convent.  In the novelty of the secular life, and temptations of all kinds, dread of ridicule, and the flood of excitements which came with reviving health, that very sensitiveness led him astray; and the elevated aims fell with a heavier fall when diverted from heavenly palaces to earthly ones.  Self-reproach and dejection drove him further from the right course, and in proportion to the greater amount of conscience he had by nature, his character was the more deteriorating.  His deeds were far less evil in themselves than those of many of his companions, but inasmuch as they were not thoughtless in him, they were injuring him more.  But the sudden shock of Patrick’s danger roused him to a new sense of shame.  King Henry’s death had lifted his mind out of the earthly atmosphere, and then the treasure of Esclairmonde’s pure and perfect trust seemed to be the one thing to be guarded worthily and truly.  It gave him weight, drew him out of himself, lifted him above the boyish atmosphere of random self-indulgence and amusement.  To be the protector who should guard her vows for the heavenly Bridegroom to whom her soul was devoted, was indeed a championship that in his eyes could only have befitted Sir Galahad; and a Galahad would he strive to be, so long as that championship held him to the secular life.  James and Bedford both told him he had won his spurs, and should have them on the next fit occasion; but he had ceased to care for knighthood, save in that half-consecrated aspect which he thought would render his guardianship less unmeet for Esclairmonde.

She had not shunned to send him a kind greeting on hearing of his wound, and by way of token a fresh leaf of vellum with a few more of those meditations from Zwoll—meditations that he spelled over from Latin into English, and dwelt upon in great tranquillity and soothing of spirit during the days that he was confined to his bed.

These were not many.  He was on his feet by the time the funeral cavalcade was in readiness to move from Vincennes to convey Henry of Monmouth to his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey.  Bedford could not be spared to return to England, and was only to go as far as Calais; and James of Scotland was therefore to act as chief mourner, attended by his own small personal suite.

Sir Patrick Drummond—though, shrugging his shoulders, he muttered that he should as soon have thought of becoming mourner at the foul fiend’s funeral as at the King of England’s—could not object to swell the retinue of his sovereign by his knighthood; and though neither he nor Malcolm were in condition for a campaign, both could ride at the slow pace of the mournful procession.

The coffin was laid on a great car, drawn by four black horses, and surmounted by Henry’s effigy, made in boiled leather and coloured to the life, robed in purple and ermine, crown on head, sceptre and orb in either hand.  The great knights and nobles rode on each side, carrying the banners of the Saints; and close behind came James and Bedford, each with his immediate attendants; then the household officers of the King, Fitzhugh his chamberlain, Montagu his cup-bearer, Ralf Percy and his other squires, and all the rest.  Four hundred men-at-arms in black armour, with lances pointed downwards, formed the guard behind; and the vanguard was of clergy, robed in white, bearing banners and wax lights, and chanting psalms.  At the border of every parish, all the ecclesiastics thereto appertaining, parochial, chantry, and monastic, turned out to meet the procession with their tapers; escorted it to the principal church; performed Mass there, if it were in the forenoon; and then accompanied the coffin to the other limit of their ground, and consigned it to the clerks of the next parish.  At night, the royal remains always rested in a church, guarded by alternate watches of the English men-at-arms, and sung over by the local clergy, while the escort were quartered in the town, village, or abbey where the halt chanced to be made.  Very slow was this progress; almost like a continual dream was that long column, moving, moving on—white in front, black behind—when seen winding over a hill, or, sometimes, the banners peering over the autumn foliage of some thicket, all composed to profound silence and tardy measured tread; while the chants rose and fell with the breeze, like unearthly music.  Many moved on more than half asleep; and others of the younger men felt like Ralf Percy, who, for all his real sorrow for the King, declared that, were it not for rushing out, morning and evening, for a bathe and a gallop, to fly a hawk or chase a hare, he should some day run crazed, blow out all the wax lights, or play some mad prank to break the intolerable oppression.  Malcolm smiled at this; but to him, still in the dreamy inertness of recovery, this tranquil onward movement in the still autumn weather had some thing in it of healing influence; and the sweet chants, the continual offices of devotion, were accordant with his present tone of mind, and deepened the purpose he had formed.

Queen Catherine and her ladies joined the funeral march at Rouen, or rather followed it at a mile’s interval; but the two trains kept apart, and only occasional messages were sent from one to the other.  Some of the gentlemen, who had a wife or sister in the Queen’s suite, would ride at nightfall to pay her a hasty visit; but Malcolm—though he longed to be sent—durst not intrude upon Esclairmonde; and the Duke of Bedford was not only forced to spend all the evening and half the night in business, but was not loth to put off the day of the meeting with his dear sister Catherine—to say nothing of the ‘Woman of Hainault.’

Therefore it was not until all had arrived at Calais, where a fleet was waiting to meet them, that any visits were openly made by the one party to the other.

Bedford and James went together to the apartments of the Queen, and while they saw her in private, Malcolm came blushing towards Esclairmonde, and was welcomed by her with a frank smile, outstretched hand, and kind inquiry after his recovery.

She treated him indeed as a brother, as one on whom she depended, and had really wished to see and arrange with.  She told him that Alice Montagu and her husband were returning to England, and that her little friend had so earnestly prayed her to abide with her at Middleham for the present, that she had consented—‘until such time as the way be open,’ said Esclairmonde, with her steady patient smile.

Malcolm bowed his head.  ‘I am glad you will not be forced to be with your Countess,’ he said.

‘My poor lady!  Maybe I have spoken too plainly.  But I owe her much.  I must ever pray for her.  And you, my lord?’

‘I,’ said Malcolm, ‘shall go to study at Oxford.  Dr. Bennet intends returning thither to continue his course of teaching, and my king has consented to my studying with him.  It will not cut me off, lady, from that which you permit me to be.  King Henry and his brothers have all been scholars there.’

‘I understand,’ said Esclairmonde, slightly colouring.  ‘It is well.  And truly I trust that matters may be so guided, that care for me may not long detain you from more lasting vows—be they of heaven or earth.’

‘Lady,’ said Malcolm, earnestly, ‘none who had been plighted to you could pledge himself to aught else save One above!’

Then, feeling in himself, or seeing in Esclairmonde’s face, that he was treading on dangerous ground, he asked leave to present to her his cousin, Patrick Drummond: and this was accordingly done; the lady comporting herself with so much sweet graciousness, that the good knight, as they left the hall, exclaimed: ‘By St. Andrew, Malcolm, if you let that maiden escape you now she is more than half-wedded to you, you’ll be the greatest fool in broad Scotland.  Why, she is a very queen for beauty, and would rule Glenuskie like a princess—ay, and defend the Castle like Black Agnes of Dunbar herself!  If you give her up, ye’ll be no better than a clod.’

Malcolm and Patrick had been borne off by James’s quitting the Castle; Bedford remained longer, having affairs to arrange with the Queen.  As he left her, he too turned aside to the window where Esclairmonde sat as usual spinning, and Lady Montagu not far off, but at present absorbed by her father, who was to remain in France.

One moment’s hesitation, and then Bedford stepped towards the Demoiselle de Luxemburg, and greeted her.  She looked up in his face, and saw its settled look of sad patient energy, which made it full ten years older in appearance than when they had sat together at Pentecost, and she marked the badge that he had assumed, a torn-up root with the motto, ‘The root is dead.’

‘Ah! my lord, things are changed,’ she could not help saying, as she felt that he yearned for comfort.

‘Changed indeed!’ he said; ‘God’s will be done!  Lady,’ he added, ‘you wot of that which once passed between us.  I was grieved at first that you chose a different protector in your need.’

‘You could not, my lord,’ faltered Esclairmonde, crimson as she never had been when speaking to Malcolm.

‘No, I could not,’ said Bedford; ‘and, lady, my purpose was to thank you for the generous soul that perceived that so it is.  You spared me from a cruel case.  I have no self any longer, Esclairmonde; all I am, all I have, all I can, must be spent in guarding Harry’s work for his boy.  To all else I am henceforth dead; and all I can do is to be thankful, lady, that you have spared me the sorest trial of all, both to heart and honour.’

Esclairmonde’s eyes were downcast, as she said, ‘Heaven is the protector of those of true and kind purpose;’ and then gathering courage, as being perfectly aware to whom Bedford must give his hand if he would conciliate Burgundy, she added, ‘And, verily, Sir, the way of policy is this time a happy one.  Let me but tell you how I have known and loved gentle Lady Anne.’

Bedford shook his head with a half smile and a heavy sigh.  ‘Time fails me, dear lady,’ he said; ‘and I cannot brook any maiden’s praise, even from you.  I only wait to ask whether there be any way yet left wherein I can serve you.  I will strive to deal with your kinsmen to restore your lands.’

‘Hold!’ said Esclairmonde.  ‘Never for lands of mine will I have your difficulties added to.  No—let them go!  It was a vain, proud dream when I thought myself most humble, to become a foundress; and if I know my kinsmen, they will be too much angered to bestow on me the dower required by a convent.  No, Sir; all I would dare to inquire would be, whether you have any voice in choosing the bedeswomen of St. Katharine’s Hospital?’

‘The bedeswomen!  They come chiefly from the citizens, not from princely houses like yours!’ said John, in consternation.

‘I have done with princely houses,’ said Esclairmonde.  ‘A Flemish maiden would be of no small service among the many whom trade brings to your port from the Netherlands, and my longing has ever been to serve my Lord through His poor and afflicted.’

‘It is my father’s widow who holds the appointments,’ said John.  ‘Between her and me there hath been little good-will, but my dear brother’s last act towards her was of forgiveness.  She may wish to keep well with us of the Regency—and more like still, she will be pleased that one of so great a house as yours should sue to her.  I will give you a letter to her, praying her to remember you at the next vacancy; and mayhap, if the Lady Montagu could take you to visit her, you could prevail with her!  But, surely, some nunnery more worthy of your rank—’

‘There is none that I should love so well,’ said Esclairmonde, smiling.  ‘Mayhap I have learnt to be a vagabond, but I cannot but desire to toil as well as pray.’

‘And you are willing to wait for a vacancy?’

‘When once safe from my kinsmen, in England, I will wait under my kind Alice’s wing till—till it becomes expedient that yonder gentleman be set free.’

‘You trust him?’ said Bedford.

‘Entirely,’ responded Esclairmonde, heartily.

‘Happy lad!’ half sighed the Duke; but, even as he did so, he stood up to bid the lady adieu—lingering for a moment more, to gaze at the face he had longed for permission to love—and thus take leave of all his youth and joy, addressing himself again to that burthen of care which in thirteen years laid him in his grave at Rouen.

As he left the Castle and came out into the steep fortified street, Ralf Percy came up to him, laughing.  ‘Here, my lord, are those two honest Yorkshire knights running all over Calais to make a petition to you.’

‘What—Trenton and Kitson!  I thought their year of service was up, and they were going home!’

‘Ay, my lord,’ said Kitson, who with his comrade had followed close in Percy’s wake, ‘we were going home to bid Mistress Agnes take her choice of us; but this morn we’ve met a pursuivant that is come with Norroy King-at-arms, and what doth he but tell us that no sooner were our backs turned, than what doth Mistress Agnes but wed—ay, wed outright—one Tom of the Lee, a sneaking rogue that either of us would have beat black and blue, had we ever seen him utter a word to her?  A knight’s lady—not to say two—as she might have been!  So, my lord, we not being willing to go home and be a laughing-stock, crave your license to be of your guard as we were of King Harry’s, and show how far we can go among the French.’

‘And welcome; no good swords can be other than welcome!’ said Bedford, not diverted as his brother would have been, but with a heartiness that never failed to win respectful affection.

Long did James and Bedford walk up and down the Castle court together, while the embarkation was going on.  The question weighed on them both whether they should ever meet more, after eighteen years of youth spent together.

‘Youth is gone,’ said Bedford.  ‘We have been under a mighty master, and now God help us to do his work.’

‘You!’ said James; ‘but for me—it is like to be the library and the Round Tower again.’

‘Scarcely,’ said Bedford, ‘the Beauforts will never rest till Joan is on a throne.’

James smiled.

‘Ay,’ said Bedford, ‘the Bishop of Winchester will be no small power, you will find.  Would that I could throw up this France and come home, for he and Humfrey will clash for ever.  James, an you love me, see Humfrey alone, and remind him that all the welfare of Harry’s child may hang on his forbearance—on union with the Bishop.  Tell him, if he ever loved the noblest brother that ever lived, to rein himself in, and live only for the child’s good, not his own.  Tell him that Bedford and Gloucester must be nothing henceforth—only heads and hands doing Harry’s will for his babe.  Oh, James, what can you tell Humfrey that will make him put himself aside?’

‘You have writ to him Harry’s words as to Dame Jac?’

‘The wanton! ay, I have; and if you can whisper in his ear that matter of Malcolm and the signet, it might lessen his inclination.  But,’ he sighed, ‘I have little hope, James; I see nothing for Lancaster but that which the old man at York invoked upon us!’

‘Yet, when I look at you and Humfrey, and think of the contrast with my own father’s brethren, I see nothing but hope and promise for England,’ said James.

‘We must do our best, however heavy-hearted,’ said John of Bedford, pausing in his walk, and standing steadfast.  ‘The rod becomes a palm to those who do not freshly bring it on themselves.  May this poor child of Harry’s be bred up so that he may be fit to meet evil or good!’

‘Poor child,’ repeated James.  ‘Were he not there, and you—’

‘Peace, James,’ said Bedford; ‘it is well that such a weight is not added!  While I act for my nephew, I know my duty; were it for myself, methinks I should be crazed with doubts and questions.  Well,’ as a messenger came up with tidings that all was ready, ‘fare thee well, Jamie.  In you I lose the only man with whom I can speak my mind, or take counsel.  You’ll not let me gain a foe, as well as lose a friend, when you get home?’

‘Never, in heart, John!’ said the King.  ‘As to hand—Scotland must be to England what she will have her.  Would that I saw my way thither!  Windsor will have lost all that made captivity well-nigh sweet.  And so farewell, dear brother.  I thank you for the granting to me of this sacred charge.’

And so, with hands clasped and wrung together, with tears raining from James’s eyes, and a dry settled melancholy more sad than tears on John’s countenance, the two friends parted, never again to meet; each to run a course true, brave, and short—extinguished the one in bitter grief, the other in blood.

On All Saints’ Day, while James stood with Humfrey of Gloucester at the head of the grave at Westminster, where Henry’s earthly form was laid to rest amid the kings his fathers, amid the wail of a people as sorrowful as if they knew all the woes that were to ensue, Bedford was in like manner standing over a grave at the Royal Abbey of St. Denis.  He, the victor’s brother, represented all the princely kindred of Charles VI. of France, and, with his heart at Westminster, filled the chief mourner’s place over the king who had pined to death for his conqueror.

The same infant was proclaimed king over each grave—heir to France and England, to Valois and Lancaster.  Poor child, his real heirloom was the insanity of the one and the doom of the other!  Well for him that there was within him that holy innocence that made his life a martyrdom!

CHAPTER XVI: THE CAGE OPEN

More than a year had passed, and it was March when Malcolm was descending the stone stair that leads so picturesquely beneath the archway of its tower up to the hall of the college of St. Mary Winton, then really New College.  He had been residing there with Dr. Bennet, associating with the young members of the foundation educated at Winchester, and studying with all the freshness of a recent institution.  It had been a very happy time for him, within the gray stone walls that pleasantly recalled Coldingham, though without Coldingham’s defensive aspect, and with ample food for the mind, which had again returned to its natural state of inquiring reflection and ardour for knowledge.

Daily Malcolm woke early, attended Matins and Mass in the chapel, studied grammar and logic, mastered difficult passages in the Fathers, or copied out portions for himself in the chamber which he as a gentleman commoner, as we should call him, possessed, instead of living in a common dormitory with the other scholars.  Or in the open cloister he listened and took notes of the lectures of the fellows and tutors of the college, and seated on a bench or walking up and down received special instructions.  Then ensued the meal, spread in the hall; the period of recreation, in the meadows, or in the licensed sports, or on the river; fresh studies, chapel, and a social but quiet evening over the supper in the hall.  All this was varied by Latin sermons at St. Mary’s, or disputations and lectures by notable doctors, and public arguments between scholars, by which they absolutely fought out their degrees.  There were few colleges as yet, and those resident in them were the élite; beyond, there was a great mob of scholars living in rooms as they could, generally very poor, and often very disorderly; but they did not mar the quiet semi-monastic stillness within the foundations, and to Malcolm it seemed as if the truly congenial home was opened.

The curriculum of science began to reveal itself to him with all the stages so inviting to a mind conscious of power and longing for cultivation.  The books, the learned atmosphere, the infinite possibilities, were delightful to him, and opened a more delightful future.  His metaphysical Scottish mind delighted in the scholastic arguments that were now first set before him, and his readiness, appreciation, and eager power of acquiring surprised his teachers, and made him the pride of New College.

When he looked back at his year of court and camp, he could only marvel at having ever preferred them.  In war his want of bodily strength would make real distinction impossible; here he felt himself excelling; here was absolute enjoyment, and of a kind without drawback.  Scholarship must be his true element and study: the deep universal study of the sisterhood of science that the University offered was his veritable vocation.  Surely it was not without significance that the ring that shone on his finger betrothed him to Esclairmonde, the Light of the World; for though in person the maiden was never to be his own, she was the emblem to him of the pure virgin light of truth and wisdom that he would be for ever wooing, and winning only to see further lights beyond.  Human nature felt a pang at the knowledge that he was bound to deliver up the ring and resign his connection with that fair and stately maiden; but the pain that had been sore at first had diminished under the sense that he stood in a post of generous trust, and that his sacrifice was the passport to her grateful esteem.  He knew her to be with Lady Montagu, awaiting a vacancy at St. Katharine’s, and this would be the signal for dissolving the contract of marriage, after which his present vision was to bestow Lilias upon Patrick, make over his estates to them, take minor orders, and set forth for Italy, there to pursue those deeper studies in theology and language for which Padua and Bologna were famous.  It was many months since he had heard of Lilias; but this did not give him any great uneasiness, for messengers were few, and letter-writing far from being a common practice.  He had himself written at every turning-point of his life, and sent his letters when the King communicated with Scotland; but from his sister he had heard nothing.