Two Penniless Princesses

‘Ah!’ she said, ‘that is the king of the minstrel birds.’

He smiled. ‘The royal lady then has her orders and ranks for the birds.’

‘Oh yes. If the royal eagle is the king, and the falcon is the true knight, the nightingale and mavis, merle and lark, are the minstrels. And the lovely seagull, oh, how call you it?—with the long white floating wings rising and falling, is the graceful dancer.’

‘Guifette,’ Rene gave the word, ‘or in Provence, Rondinel della mar—hirondelle de la mer!’

‘Swallow! Ah, the pilgrim birds, who visit the Holy Land.’

‘Lady, you should be of our court of the troubadours,’ said Rene; ‘your words should be a poem.’

He was called away at the moment, and craved her licence so politely that the chivalrous minstrel king seemed to Elleen all she had dreamt of. The whole was perfect, nothing wanting save that for which her heart was all the time beating high, the presence of her beloved sister Margaret. It was as if a scene out of a romance of fairyland had suddenly taken reality, and she more than once closed her eyes and squeezed her hands to try whether she was awake.

A fanfaron of trumpets came on the wind, and all were on the alert, while Eleanor’s heart throbbed so that she could hardly stand, and caught at Margaret’s arm, as she murmured with a gasp, ‘My sister! My sister!’

‘Ah! you are happy to meet once more,’ said Margaret. ‘The saints only know whether Yolande and I shall ever see one another’s faces again when once I am carried away to your dreary England.’

‘England is not mine, lady,’ said Eleanor, rather sharply. ‘We reckon the English as our bitterest foes.’

‘You have come with an Englishman though,’ said Margaret, ‘whom I am to take for my husband,’ and she laughed a gay innocent laugh. A grizzled old knight, whom I am not like to mistake for my true spouse. Have you seen him? What like is he?’

‘The gentlest and sweetest of kings,’ returned Eleanor; ‘as fond of all that is good and fair and holy as is your own royal father.’

Margaret coughed a little. ‘My husband should be a gallant warlike knight,’ she said, ‘such as was this king’s father.’

‘Oh, see! cried Eleanor. ‘I saw the glitter of the spears through the trees. There’s another blast of the trumpets! Oh! oh! it is a gallant sight! If only Jamie, my little brother, could see it! It stirs one’s blood.’

‘Ah yes, Elleen,’ cried Jean. ‘This is something to have come for.’

‘And Margaret, sweet Madge,’ repeated Eleanor to herself, in her native Scotch, while King Rene’s trumpets, harps, and hautbois burst forth with an answering peal, so exciting her that her yellow-brown eyes sparkled and the colour rose in her cheeks, giving her a strange beauty full of eager spirit. Duke Sigismund turned and gazed at her in surprise, and an old herald who was waiting near observed, ‘Is that the daughter of the captive King of Scotland? She has his very countenance and bearing.’

The trumpeters and other attendants, bearing the blue-lilied banner of France, appeared among the trees, and dividing, formed a lane for the advance of the royal personages. King Rene went forward to meet them, foremost, so as to be ready to hold the stirrup for his sister the Queen of France. Duke Sigismund seemed about to give his hand to the Infanta Violante, as the Provencaux called Yolande, but she was beforehand with him, linking her arm into Jean’s, while Margaret took Eleanor’s, and said in her ear, ‘The great awkward German! He is come here to pay his court to Yolande, but she will none of him. She has better hopes.’

Eleanor hardly attended, for her whole soul was bent on the party arriving. King Charles, riding on a handsome bay horse, closely followed by a conveyance such as was called in England a whirlicote, from which the Queen was handed out by her brother, and then, on a sorrel palfrey, in a blue gold-embroidered riding-suit—could that be Margaret of Scotland? The long reddish-yellow hair and the tall figure had a familiar look. King Rene was telling her something as he helped her to alight, and with one spring, regardless of all, and of all ceremony, she sprang forward. ‘My wee Jeanie! My Elleen! My titties! Mine ain wee things,’ she cried in her native tongue, as she embraced them by turns, as if she would have devoured them, with a gush of tears.

Though these were times of great state and ceremony, yet they were also very demonstrative times, when tears and embracings were expected of near kindred; and, indeed, the King and Queen were equally occupied with their brother and nieces; but presently Eleanor heard a low voice observe, with a sort of sarcastic twang, ‘If Madame has sufficiently satiated her tenderness, perhaps she will remember the due of others.’ Margaret started as if stung, and Eleanor, looking up, beheld a face, young but sharp, and with a keen, hard, set look in the narrow eyes, contracted brow, and thin lips, that made her feel as though the serpent had found his way into her paradise. Hastily turning, Margaret presented her sisters to her husband, who bowed, and kissed each with those strange thin lips, that again made Eleanor shudder, perhaps because of his compliment, ‘We are graced by these ladies, in whom we have another Madame la Dauphine, as well as an errant beauty.’

Jean appropriated the last words, but Elleen felt sure that the earlier ones were ironical, both to her and to the Dauphiness, on whose cheeks they brought a flush. The two kings, however, turned to receive the sisters, and nothing could be kinder than the tone of King Charles and Queen Marie towards the sisters of their good daughter, as they termed the Dauphiness, who on her side was welcomed by Rene as the sweet niece, sharer of his tastes, who brought minstrelsy and poetry in her train.

‘Trust her for that, my fair uncle,’ said her husband in a cold, dry tone.

All the royal personages sat down on the cushions spread on the grass to the ‘rural fare,’ as King Rene called it, which he had elaborately prepared for them, while the music sounded from the trees in welcome.

All was, as the kind prince announced, without ceremony, and he placed Lord Suffolk, as the representative of Henry VI., next to the young Infanta Margaret, and contrived that the Dauphiness should sit between her two sisters, whose hands she clasped from time to time within her own in an ecstasy of delight, while inquiries came from time to time, low breathed in her native tongue, for wee Mary and Jamie and baby Annaple. ‘The very sound of your tongues is music to my lugs,’ she said. ‘And how much mair when ye speak mine ain bonnie Scotch, sic as I never hear save by times when one archer calls to another. Jeanie, you favour our mother. ‘Tis gude for ye! I am blithe one of ye is na like puir Marget!’

‘Dinna say that,’ cried Jean, in an access of feeling. ‘’Tis hame, and it’s hame to see sic a sonsie Scots face—and it minds me of my blessed father.’

It was true that Margaret and Eleanor both were thorough Scotswomen, and with the expressive features, the auburn colouring, and tall figures of their father; but there was for the rest a melancholy contrast between them, for while Elleen had the eager, hopeful, lively healthfulness of early youth, giving a glow to her countenance and animation to the lithe but scarcely-formed figure, Margaret, with the same original mould, had the pallor and puffiness of ill-health in her complexion, and a largeness of growth more unsatisfactory than leanness, and though her face was lighted up and her eyes sparkled with the joy of meeting her sisters, there were lines about the brow and round the mouth ill suited to her age, which was little over twenty years.

CHAPTER 7. THE MINSTREL KING’S COURT

     ‘Where throngs of knights and barons bold,      In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold,      With store of ladies, whose bright eyes      Rain influence, and judge the prize      Of wit or arms, while both contend      To win her grace whom all commend.’—L’Allegro.

The whole of the two Courts had to be received in the capital of Lorraine in full state under the beautiful old gateway, but as mediaeval pageants are wearisome matters this may be passed over, though it was exceptionally beautiful and poetic, owing to the influence of King Rene’s taste, and it perfectly dazzled the two Scottish princesses—though, to tell the truth, they were somewhat disappointed in the personal appearance of their entertainers, who did not come up to their notion of royalty. Their father had been a stately and magnificent man; their mother a beautiful woman. Henry VI. was a tall, well-made, handsome man, with Plantagenet fairness and regularity of feature and a sweetness all his own; but both these kings were, like all the house of Valois, small men with insignificant features and sallow complexions. Rene, indeed, had a distinction about him that compensated for want of beauty, and Charles had a good-natured, easy, indolent look and gracious smile that gave him an undefinable air of royalty. Rene’s daughters were both very lovely, but their beauty came from the other side of the house, with the blood of Charles the Great, through their mother, the heiress of Lorraine.

There was a curious contrast between the brothers-in-law, Charles, when dismounting at the castle gate, not disguising his weariness and relief that it was over, and Rene, eager and anxious, desirous of making all his bewildering multitude of guests as happy as possible, while the Dauphin Louis stood by, half interested and amused, half mocking. He was really fond of his uncle, though in a contemptuous superior sort of manner, despising his religious and honourable scruples as mere simplicity of mind.

Rene of Anjou has been hardly dealt with, as is often the case with princes upright, religious, and chivalrous beyond the average of their time, yet without the strength or the genius to enforce their rights and opinions, and therefore thrust aside. After his early unsuccessful wars his lands of Provence and Lorraine were islands of peace, prosperity, and progress, and withal he was an extremely able artist, musician, and poet, striving to revive the old troubadour spirit of Provence, and everywhere casting about him an atmosphere of refinement and kindliness.

The hall of his hotel at Nanci was a beautiful place, with all the gorgeous grace of the fifteenth century, and here his guests assembled for supper soon after their arrival, all being placed as much as possible according to rank. Eleanor found herself between a deaf old Church dignitary and Duke Sigismund, on whose other side was Yolande, the Infanta, as the Provencals called the daughter of Rene; while Jean found the Dauphin on one side of her and a great French Duke on the other. Louis amused himself with compliments and questions that sometimes nettled her, sometimes pleased her, giving her a sense that he might admire her beauty, but was playing on her simplicity, and trying to make her betray the destitution of her home and her purpose in coming.

Eleanor, on the other hand, found her cavalier more simple than herself. In fact, he properly belonged to the Infanta, but she paid no attention to him, nor did the Bishop try to speak to the Scottish princess. Sigismund’s French was very lame, and Eleanor’s not perfect, but she had a natural turn for languages, and had, in the convent, picked up some German, which in those days had many likenesses to her own broad Scotch. They made one another out, between the two languages, with signs, smiles, and laughter, and whereas the subtilties along the table represented the entire story of Sir Gawain and his Loathly Lady, she contrived to explain the story to him, greatly to his edification; and they went on to King Arthur, and he did his best to narrate the German reading of Sir Parzival. The difficulties engrossed them till the rose-water was brought in silver bowls to wash their fingers, on which Sigismund, after observing and imitating the two ladies, remarked that they had no such Schwarmerci in Deutschland, and Yolande looked as if she could well believe it, while Elleen, though ignorant of the meaning of his word, laughed and said they had as little in Scotland.

There was still an hour of daylight to come, and moon-rise would not be far off, so that the hosts proposed to adjourn to the garden, where fresh music awaited them.

King Rene was an ardent gardener. His love of flowers was viewed as one of his weaknesses, only worthy of an old Abbot, but he went his own way, and the space within the walls of his castle at Nanci was lovely with bright spring flowers, blossoming trees, and green walks, where, as Lady Suffolk said, her grandfather could have mused all day and all night long, to the sound of the nightingales.

But what the sisters valued it for was that they could ramble away together to a stone bench under the wall, and there sit at perfect ease together and pour out their hearts to one another. Margaret, indeed, touched them as they leant against her as if to convince herself of their reality, and yet she said that they knew not what they did when they put the sea between themselves and Scotland, nor how sick the heart could be for its bonnie hills.

‘O gin I could see a mountain top again, I feel as though I could lay me down and die content. What garred ye come daundering to these weary flats of France?’

‘Ah, sister, Scotland is not what you mind it when our blessed father lived!’

And they told her how their lives had been spent in being hurried from one prison-castle to another.

‘Prison-castles be not wanting here,’ replied Margaret with a sigh. Then, as Elleen held up a hand in delight at the thrill of a neighbouring nightingale, she cried, ‘What is yon sing-song, seesaw, gurgling bird to our own bonnie laverock, soaring away to the sky, without making such a wark of tuning his pipes, and never thinking himself too dainty and tender for a wholesome frost or two! So Jamie sent you off to seek for husbands here, did he? Couldna ye put up with a leal Scot, like Glenuskie there?’

‘There were too many of them,’ said Jean.

‘And not ower leal either,’ said Eleanor.

‘Lealty is a rare plant ony gate,’ sighed Margaret, ‘and where sae little is recked of our Scots royalty, mayhap ye’ll find that tocherless lasses be less sought for than at hame. Didna I see thee, Elleen, clavering with that muckle Archduke that nane can talk with?’

‘Ay,’ said Eleanor.

‘He is come here a-courting Madame Yolande, with his father’s goodwill, for Alsace and Tyrol be his, mountains that might be in our ain Hielands, they tell me.’

‘Methougnt,’ said Eleanor, ‘she scunnered from him, as Jeanie does at—shall I say whom?’

‘And reason gude,’ said Margaret. ‘She has a joe of her ain, Count Ferry de Vaudemont, that is the heir male of the line, and a gallant laddie. At the great joust the morn methinks ye’ll see what may well be sung by minstrels, and can scarce fail to touch the heart of a true troubadour, as is my good uncle Rene.’

Margaret became quite animated, and her sisters pressed her to tell them if she knew of any secret; but she playfully shook her head, and said that if she did know she would not mar the romaunt that was to be played out before them.

‘Nay,’ said Eleanor, ‘we have a romaunt of our own. May I tell, Jeanie?’

‘Who recks?’ replied Jean, with a little toss of her head.

Thus Eleanor proceeded to tell her sister what—since the adventure of the goose—had gone far beyond a guess as to the tall, red-haired young man-at-arms who had ridden close behind David Drummond.

‘Douglas, Douglas, tender and true,’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘He loves you so as to follow for weeks, nay, months, in this guise without word or look. Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie, happy lassie, did ye but ken it! Nay, put not on that scornful mou’. It sorts you not weel, my bairn. He is of degree befitting a Stewart, and even were he not, oh, sisters, sisters, better to wed with a leal loving soul in ane high peel-tower than to bear a broken heart to a throne!’ and she fell into a convulsive fit of choked and bitter weeping, which terrified her sisters.

At the sound of a lute, apparently being brought nearer, accompanied with footsteps, she hastily recovered herself, and rose to her feet, while a smile broke out over her face, as the musician, a slender, graceful figure, appeared on the path in the moonlight.

‘Answering the nightingales, Maitre Alain?’ she said.

‘This is the court of nightingales, Madame,’ he replied. ‘It is presumption to endeavour to rival them even though the heart be torn like that of Philomel.’ Wherewith he touched his lute, and began to sing from his famous idyll—

              ‘Ainsi mon coeur se guermentait               De la grande douleur qu’il portait,                 En ce plaisant lieu solitaire               Ou un doux ventelet venait,               Si seri qu’on le sentait                 Lorsque la violette mieux flaire.’

Again, as Eleanor heard the sweet strains, and saw the long shadows of the trees and the light of the rising moon, it was like the attainment of her dreamland; and Margaret proceeded to make known to her sisters Maitre Alain Chartier, the prince of song, adding, ‘Thou, too, wast a songster, sister Elleen, even while almost a babe. Dost sing as of old?’

‘I have brought my father’s harp,’ said Eleanor.

‘Ah! I must hear it,’ she cried with effusion. ‘The harp. It will be his voice again.’

‘Madame! Madame! Madame la Dauphine. Out here! Ever reckless of dew—ay, and of waur than dew.’

These last words were added in Scotch, as a tall, dark-cloaked figure appeared on the scene from between the trees. Margaret laughed, with a little annoyance in her tone, as she said, ‘Ever my shadow, good Madame, ever wearying yourself with care. Here, sisters, here is my trusty and well-beloved Dame de Ste. Petronelle, who takes such care of me that she dogs my footsteps like a messan.’

‘And reason gude,’ replied the lady. ‘Here is the muckle hall all alight, and this King Rene, as they call him, twanging on his lute, and but that the Seigneur Dauphin is talking to the English Lord on some question of Gascon boundaries, we should have him speiring for you. I saw the eye of him roaming after you, as it was.’

‘His eye seeking me!’ cried Margaret, springing up from her languid attitude with a tone like exultation in her voice, such as evoked a low sigh from the old dame, as all began to move towards the castle. She was the widow of a Scotch adventurer who had won lands and honours in France; and she was now attached to the service of the Dauphiness, not as her chief lady—that post was held by an old French countess—but still close enough to her to act as her guardian and monitor whenever it was possible to deal with her.

The old lady, in great delight at meeting a compatriot, poured out her confidences to Dame Lilias of Glenuskie. Infinitely grieved and annoyed was she when, early as were the ordinary hours of the Court of Nanci, it proved that the Dauphiness had called up her sisters an hour before, and taken them across the chace which surrounded the castle to hear mass at a convent of Benedictine nuns.

It was perfectly safe, though only a tirewoman and a page followed the Dauphiness, and only Annis attended her two sisters, for the grounds were enclosed, and King Rene’s domains were far better ruled and more peaceful than those of the princes who despised him. It was an exquisite spring morning, with grass silvery with dew and enamelled with flowers, birds singing ecstatically on every branch, squirrels here and there racing up a trunk. Margaret was in joyous spirits, and almost danced between her sisters. Eleanor was amazed at the luxuriant beauty of the scene, and could not admire enough. Jean, though at first a little cross at the early summons, could not but be infected with their delight, and the three laughed and frolicked together with almost childish glee in the delight of their content.

The great, gentle-eyed, long-horned kine were being driven in at the convent-yard to be milked by the lay-sisters; at another entrance, peasants, beggars, and sick were congregating; the bell from the lace-works spire rang out, and the Dauphiness led the way to the gateway, where, at her knock on the iron-studded door, a lay-sister looked through the wicket.

‘Good sister, here are some early pilgrims to the shrine of St. Scolastique,’ she began.

‘To the other gate,’ said the portress hastily. Margaret’s face twinkled with fun. ‘I wad fain take a turn with the beggar crew,’ she said to her sisters in Scotch; ‘but it might cause too great an outcry if I were kenned. Commend me to the Mere St. Antoine,’ she added in French, ‘and tell her that the Dauphiness would fain hear mass with her.’

The portress cast an anxious doubtful glance, but being apparently convinced, cried out for pardon, while hastily unlocking her door, and sending a message to the Abbess.

As they entered the cloistered quadrangle the nuns in black procession were on their way to mass, but turned aside to receive their visitors. Margaret knelt for a moment for the blessing and kiss of the Abbess, then greeted the nun whom she had mentioned, but begged for no further ceremony, and then was led into church.

It was a brief festival mass, and was not really over before she, with a restlessness of which her sisters began to be conscious, began to rise and make her way out. A nun followed and entreated her to stay and break her fast, but she would accept nothing save a draught of milk, swallowed hastily, and with signs of impatience as her sisters took their turn.

She walked quickly, rather as one guilty of an escapade, again surprising her sisters, who fancied the liberty of a married princess illimitable.

Jean even ventured to ask her why she went so fast, ‘Would the King of France be displeased?’

‘He! Poor gude sire Charles! He heeds not what one does, good or bad; no, not the murdering of his minion before his eyes,’ said Margaret, half laughing.

‘Thy husband, would he be angered?’ pressed on Jean.

‘My husband? Oh no, it is not in the depth and greatness of is thoughts to find fault with his poor worm,’ said Margaret, a strange look, half of exultation, half of pain, on her face. ‘Ah! Jeanie, woman, none kens in sooth how great and wise my Dauphin is, nor how far he sees beyond all around him, so that he cannot choose but scorn them and make them his tools. When he has the power, he will do more for this poor realm of France than any king before him.’

‘As our father would have done for Scotland,’ said Eleanor.

‘Then he tells thee of his plans?’

‘Me!’ said Margaret, with the suffering look returning. ‘How should he talk to me, the muckle uncouthie wife that I am, kenning nought but a wheen ballads and romaunts—not even able to give him the heir for whom he longs,’ and she wrung her hands together, ‘how can I be aught but a pain and grief to him!’

‘Nay, but thou lovest him?’ said Jean, over simply.

‘Lassie!’ exclaimed Margaret hotly, ‘what thinkest thou I am made of? How should a wife not love her man, the wisest, canniest prince in Christendom, too! Love him! I worship him, as the trouveres say, with all my heart, and wad lay down my life if I could win one kind blush of his eye; and yet—and yet—such a creature am I that I am ever wittingly or unwittingly transgressing these weary laws, and garring him think me a fool, or others report me such,’ clenching her hands again.

‘Madame de Ste. Petronelle?’ asked Jean.

‘She! Oh no! She is a true loyal Lindsay, heart and soul, dour and wearisome; but she would guard me from every foe, and most of all, as she is ever telling me, from mine ain self, that is my worst enemy. Only she sets about it in such guise that, for very vexation, I am driven farther! No, it is the Countess de Craylierre, who is forever spiting me, and striving to put whatever I do in a cruel light, if I dinna walk after her will—hers, as if she could rule a king’s daughter!’

And Margaret stamped her foot on the ground, while a hot flush arose in her cheeks. Her sisters, young girls as they were, could not understand her moods, either of wild mirth, eager delight in poetry and music, childish wilfulness and petulant temper or deep melancholy, all coming in turn with feverish alternation and vehemence. As the ladies approached the castle they were met by various gentlemen, among whom was Maitre Alain Chartier, and a bandying of compliments and witticisms began in such rapid French that even Eleanor could not follow it; but there was something in the ring of the Dauphiness’s hard laugh that pained her, she knew not why.