Two Penniless Princesses

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Two Penniless Princesses

by Charlotte M. Yonge

CHAPTER 1

DUNBAR

''Twas on a night, an evening bright
When the dew began to fa',
Lady Margaret was walking up and down,
Looking over her castle wa'.'

The battlements of a castle were, in disturbed times, the only
recreation-ground of the ladies and play-place of the young
people. Dunbar Castle, standing on steep rocks above the North
Sea, was not only inaccessible on that side, but from its donjon
tower commanded a magnificent view, both of the expanse of
waves, taking purple tints from the shadows of the clouds, with
here and there a sail fleeting before the wind, and of the
rugged headlands of the coast, point beyond point, the nearer
distinct, and showing the green summits, and below, the tossing
waves breaking white against the dark rocks, and the distance
becoming more and more hazy, in spite of the bright sun which
made a broken path of glory along the tossing, white-crested
waters.

The wind was a keen north-east breeze, and might have been
thought too severe by any but the 'hardy, bold, and wild'
children who were merrily playing on the top of the donjon
tower, round the staff whence fluttered the double treasured
banner with 'the ruddy lion ramped in gold' denoting the
presence of the King.

Three little boys, almost babies, and a little girl not much
older, were presided over by a small elder sister, who held the
youngest in her lap, and tried to amuse him with caresses and
rhymes, so as to prevent his interference with the castle-
building of the others, with their small hoard of pebbles and
mussel and cockle shells.

Another maiden, the wind tossing her long chestnut-locks,
uncovered, but tied with the Scottish snood, sat on the
battlement, gazing far out over the waters, with eyes of the
same tint as the hair. Even the sea-breeze failed to give more
than a slight touch of colour to her somewhat freckled
complexion; and the limbs that rested in a careless attitude on
the stone bench were long and languid, though with years and
favourable circumstances there might be a development of beauty
and dignity. Her lips were crooning at intervals a mournful old
Scottish tune, sometimes only humming, sometimes uttering its
melancholy burthen, and she now and then touched a small harp
that stood by her side on the seat.

She did not turn round when a step approached, till a hand was
laid on her shoulder, when she started, and looked up into the
face of another girl, on a smaller scale, with a complexion of
the lily-and-rose kind, fair hair under her hood, with a hawk
upon her wrist, and blue eyes dancing at the surprise of her
sister.

'Eleanor in a creel, as usual!' she cried.

'I thought it was only one of the bairns,' was the answer.

'They might coup over the walls for aught thou seest,' returned
the new-comer. 'If it were not for little Mary what would
become of the poor weans?'

'What will become of any of us?' said Eleanor. 'I was gazing
out over the sea and wishing we could drift away upon it to some
land of rest.'

'The Glenuskie folk are going to try another land,' said Jean.
'I was in the bailey-court even now playing at ball with Jamie
when in comes a lay-brother, with a letter from Sir Patrick to
say that he is coming the night to crave permission from Jamie
to go with his wife to France. Annis, as you know, is betrothed
to the son of his French friends, Malcolm is to study at the
Paris University, and Davie to be in the Scottish Guards to
learn chivalry like his father. And the Leddy of Glenuskie--our
Cousin Lilian--is going with them.'

'And she will see Margaret,' said Eleanor. 'Meg the dearie!
Dost remember Meg, Jeanie?'

'Well, well do I remember her, and how she used to let us nestle
in her lap and sing to us. She sang like thee, Elleen, and was
as mother-like as Mary is to the weans, but she was much
blithesomer--at least before our father was slain.'

'Sweetest Meg! My whole heart leaps after her,' cried Eleanor,
with a fervent gesture.

'I loved her better than Isabel, though she was not so bonnie,'
said Jean.

'Jeanie, Jeanie,' cried Eleanor, turning round with a vehemence
strangely contrasting with her previous language, 'wherefore
should we not go with Glenuskie to be with Meg at Bourges?'

Jeanie opened her blue eyes wide.

'Go to the French King's Court?' she said.

'To the land of chivalry and song,' exclaimed Eleanor, 'where
they have courts of love and poetry, and tilts and tourneys and
minstrelsy, and the sun shines as it never does in this cold
bleak north; and above all there is Margaret, dear tender
Margaret, almost a queen, as a queen she will be one day.
Oh! I almost feel her embrace.'

'It might be well,' said Jean, in the matter-of-fact tone of a
practical young lady; 'mewed up in these dismal castles, we
shall never get princely husbands like our sisters. I might be
Queen of Beauty, I doubt me whether you are fair enough,
Eleanor.'

'Oh, that is not what I think of,' said Eleanor. 'It is to see
our own Margaret, and to see and hear the minstrel knights,
instead of the rude savages here, scarce one of whom knows what
knighthood means!'

'Ay, and they will lay hands on us and wed us one of these
days,' returned Jean, 'unless we vow ourselves as nuns, and I
have no mind for that.'

'Nor would a convent always guard us,' said Eleanor; 'these
reivers do not stick at sanctuary. Now in that happy land
ladies meet with courtesy, and there is a minstrel king like our
father, Rene is his name, uncle to Margaret's husband. Oh! it
would be a very paradise.'

'Let us go, let us go!' exclaimed Jean.

'Go!' said Mary, who had drawn nearer to them while they spoke.
'Whither did ye say?'

'To France--to sister Margaret and peace and sunshine,' said
Eleanor.

'Eh!' said the girl, a pale fair child of twelve; 'and what
would poor Jamie and the weans do, wanting their titties?'

'Ye are but a bairn, Mary,' was Jean's answer. 'We shall do
better for Jamie by wedding some great lords in the far country
than by waiting here at home.'

'And James will soon have a queen of his own to guide him,'
added Eleanor.

'I'll no quit Jamie or the weans,' said little Mary resolutely,
turning back as the three-year-old boy elicited a squall from
the eighteen-months one.

'Johnnie! Johnnie! what gars ye tak' away wee Andie's claw?
Here, my mannie.'

And she was kneeling on the leads, making peace over the
precious crab's claw, which, with a few cockles and mussels, was
the choicest toy of these forlorn young Stewarts; for Stewarts
they all were, though the three youngest, the weans, as they
were called, were only half-brothers to the rest.

Nothing, in point of fact, could have been much more forlorn
than the condition of all. The father of the elder ones,
James I., the flower of the whole Stewart race, had nine years
before fallen a victim to the savage revenge and ferocity of the
lawless men whom he had vainly endeavoured to restrain, leaving
an only son of six years old and six young daughters. His wife,
Joanna, once the Nightingale of Windsor, had wreaked vengeance
in so barbarous a manner as to increase the dislike to her as an
Englishwoman. Forlorn and in danger, she tried to secure a
protector by a marriage with Sir James Stewart, called the Black
Knight of Lorn; but he was unable to do much for her, and only
added the feuds of his own family to increase the general
danger. The two eldest daughters, Margaret and Isabel, were
already contracted to the Dauphin and the Duke of Brittany, and
were soon sent to their new homes. The little King, the one
darling of his mother, was snatched from her, and violently
transferred from one fierce guardian to another; each regarding
the possession of his person as a sanction to tyranny. He had
been introduced to the two winsome young Douglases only as a
prelude to their murder, and every day brought tidings of some
fresh violence; nay, for the second time, a murder was
perpetrated in the Queen's own chamber.

The poor woman had never been very tender or affectionate, and
had the haughty demeanour with which the house of Somerset had
thought fit to assert their claims to royalty. The cruel
slaughter of her first husband, perhaps the only person for whom
she had ever felt a softening love, had hardened and soured her.
She despised and domineered over her second husband, and made no
secret that the number of her daughters was oppressive, and that
it was hard that while the royal branch had produced, with one
exception, only useless pining maidens, her second marriage in
too quick succession should bring her sons, who could only be a
burthen. No one greatly marvelled when, a few weeks after the
birth of little Andrew, his father disappeared, though whether
he had perished in some brawl, been lost at sea, or sought
foreign service as far as possible from his queenly wife and
inconvenient family, no one knew.

Not long after, the Queen, with her four daughters and the
infants, had been seized upon by a noted freebooter, Patrick
Hepburn of Hailes, and carried to Dunbar Castle, probably to
serve as hostages, for they were fairly well treated, though
never allowed to go beyond the walls. The Queen's health had,
however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the north wind
withered her up, and she died in the beginning of the year 1445.

The desolateness of the poor girls had perhaps been greater
than their grief. Poor Joanna had been exacting and tyrannical,
and with no female attendants but the old, worn-out English
nurse, had made them do her all sorts of services, which were
requited with scoldings and grumblings instead of the loving
thanks which ought to have made them offices of affection as
well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have fared
ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had
not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with
tender, motherly instincts.

Beyond providing that there was a supply of some sort of food,
and that they were confined within the walls of the Castle,
Hepburn did not trouble his head about his prisoners, and for
many weeks they had no intercourse with any one save Archie
Scott, an old groom of their mother's; Ankaret, nurse to baby
Andrew; and the seneschal and his wife, both Hepburns.

Eleanor and Jean, who had been eight and seven years old at the
time of the terrible catastrophe which had changed all their
lives, had been well taught under their father's influence; and
the former, who had inherited much of his talent and poetical
nature, had availed herself of every scanty opportunity of
feeding her imagination by book or ballad, story-teller or
minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies that she
had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that of
her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to
pass, unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of
young creatures together. When their mother was dying, Hepburn
could not help for very shame admitting a priest to her bedside,
and allowing the clergy to perform her obsequies in full form.
This had led to a more complete perception of the condition of
the poor Princesses, just at the time when the two worst tyrants
over the young King, Crichton and Livingstone, had fallen out,
and he had been able to put himself under the guidance of his
first cousin, James Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews and now
Chancellor of Scotland, one of the wisest, best, and truest-
hearted men in Scotland, and imbued with the spirit of the late
King.

By his management Hepburn was induced to make submission and
deliver up Dunbar Castle to the King with all its captives, and
the meeting between the brother and sisters was full of extreme
delight on both sides. They had been together very little since
their father's death, only meeting enough to make them long for
more opportunities; and the boy at fifteen years old was
beginning to weary after the home feeling of rest among kindred,
and was so happy amidst his sisters that no attempt at breaking
up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made
it a convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had
such advantages of education as, strangely enough, captivity had
afforded to his father, he had not been untaught, and his rapid,
eager, intelligent mind had caught at all opportunities afforded
by those palace monasteries of Scotland in which he had stayed
for various periods of his vexed and stormy minority. Good
Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many months, had
studied at Paris and had passed four years at Rome, so as to be
well able both to enlarge and stimulate his notions. In Eleanor
he had found a companion delighted to share his studies, and
full likewise of original fancy and of that vein of poetry
almost peculiar to Scottish women; and Jean was equally charming
for all the sports in which she could take part, while the
little ones, whom, to his credit be it spoken, he always treated
as brothers, were pleasant playthings.

His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy
change in the maidens' lives; and yet there was still great
dreariness, much restraint in the presence of constant
precaution against violence, much rudeness and barbarism in the
surroundings, absolute poverty in the plenishing, a lack of all
beauty save in the wild and rugged face of northern nature, and
it was hardly to be wondered at that young people, inheritors of
the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the Plantagenets,
should yearn for something beyond, especially for that sunny
southern land which report and youthful imagination made them
believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry,
and the loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that
golden age when their noble and tender-hearted father was among
them.

The boy's foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the
battlements--a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as
Eleanor, and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red
mark upon one cheek.

'How now, wee Andie?' he exclaimed, tossing the baby boy up in
his arms, and then on the cry of 'Johnnie too!' 'Me too!'
performing the same feat with the other two, the last so
boisterously that Mary screamed that 'the bairnie would be
coupit over the crag.'

'What, looking out over the sea?' he cried to his elder sisters.
'That's the wrang side! Ye should look out on the other, to
see Glenuskie coming with Davie and Malcolm, so we'll have no
lack of minstrelsy and tales to-night, that is if the doited old
council will let me alone. Here, come to the southern tower to
watch for them.'

The sisters had worked themselves to the point of eagerness
where propitious moments are disregarded, and both broke out--

'Glenuskie is going to Margaret. We want to go with him!'

'Go! Go to Margaret and leave me!' cried James, the red spot
on his face spreading.

'Oh, Jamie, it is so dull and dreary, and folks are so fierce
and rude.'

'That might be when that loon Hepburn had you, but now you have
me, who can take order with them.'

'You cannot do all, Jamie,' persisted Eleanor; 'and we long
after that fair smooth land of peace. Lady Glenuskie would take
good care of us till we came to Margaret.'

'Ay! And 'tis little you heed how it is with me,' exclaimed
James, 'when you are gone to your daffing and singing and
dancing--with me that have saved you from that reiver Hepburn.'

'Jamie, dear, I'll never quit ye,' said little Mary's gentle
voice.

He laughed.

'You are a leal faithful little lady, Mary; but you are no good
as yet, when Angus is speiring for my sister for his heir.'

'And do you trow,' said Jean hotly, 'that when one sister is to
be a queen, and the other is next thing to it, we are going to
put up with a raw-boned, red-haired, unmannerly Scots earl?'

'And do you forget who is King of Scotland, ye proud peat?' her
brother cried in return.

'A braw sort of king,' returned Jean, 'who could not hinder his
mother and sisters from being stolen by an outlaw.'

The pride and hot temper of the Beauforts had descended to both
brother and sister, and James lifted his hand with 'Dare to say
that again'; and Jean was beginning 'I dare,' when little
Annaple opportunely called, 'There's a plump of spears coming
over the hill.'

There was an instant rush to watch them, James saying--

'The Drummond banner! Ye shall see how Glenuskie mocks at this
same fine fancy of yours'; and he ran downstairs at no kingly
pace, letting the heavy nail-studded door bang after him.

'He will never let us go,' sighed Jean.

'You worked him into one of his tempers,' returned Eleanor.
'You should have broached it to him more by degrees.'

'And lost the chance of going with Sir Patie and his wife, and
got plighted to the red-haired Master of Angus--never see sweet
Meg and her braw court, and the tilts and tourneys, but live
among murderous caitiffs and reivers all my days,' sobbed Jean.

'I would not be such a fule body as to give in for a hasty word
or two, specially of Jamie's,' said Eleanor composedly.

'And gin ye bide here,' added gentle Mary, 'we shall be all
together, and you will have Jamie and the bairnies.'

'Fine consolation,' muttered Jean.

'Eh well,' said Eleanor, we must go down and meet them.'

'This fashion!' exclaimed Jean. 'Look at your hair, Ellie--
blown wild about your ears like a daft woman's, and your kirtle
all over mortar and smut. My certie, you would be a bonnie lady
to be Queen of Love and Beauty at a jousting-match.'

'You are no better, Jeanie,' responded Eleanor.

'That I ken full well, but I'd be shamed to show myself to
knights and lairds that gate. And see Mary and all the lave
have their hands as black as a caird's.'

'Come and let Andie's Mary wash them,' said that little
personage, picking up fat Andrew in her arms, while he retained
his beloved crab's claw. 'Jeanie, would you carry Johnnie, he's
not sure-footed, over the stair? Annaple, take Lorn's hand over
the kittle turning.'

One chamber was allotted to the entire party and their single
nurse. Being far up in the tower, it ventured to have two
windows in the massive walls, so thick that five-and-twenty
steps from the floor were needed to reach the narrow slips of
glass in a frame that could be removed at will, either to admit
the air or to be exchanged for solid wooden shutters to exclude
storms by sea or arrows and bolts by land. The lower part of
the walls was hung with very grim old tapestry, on which
Holofernes' head, going into its bag, could just be detected;
there were two great solid box-beds, two more pallets rolled up
for the day, a chest or two, a rude table, a cross-legged chair,
a few stools, and some deer and seal skins spread on the floor
completed the furniture of this ladies' bower. There was,
unusual luxury, a chimney with a hearth and peat fire, and a
cauldron on it, with a silver and a copper basin beside it for
washing purposes, never discarded by poor Queen Joanna and her
old English nurse Ankaret, who had remained beside her through
all the troubles of the stormy and barbarous country, and,
though crippled by a fall and racked with rheumatism, was the
chief comfort of the young children. She crouched at the hearth
with her spinning and her beads, and exclaimed at the tossed
hair and soiled hands and faces of her charges.

Mary brought the little ones to her to be set to rights, and the
elder girls did their best with their toilette. Princesses as
they were, the ruddy golden tresses of Eleanor and the flaxen
locks of Jean and Mary were the only ornaments that they could
boast of as their own; and though there were silken and
embroidered garments of their mother's in one of the chests,
their mourning forbade the use of them. The girls only wore the
plain black kirtles that had been brought from Haddington at the
time of the funeral, and the little boys had such homespun
garments as the shepherd lads wore.

Partly scolding, partly caressing, partly bemoaning the
condition of her young ladies, so different from the splendours
of the house of Somerset, Ankaret saw that Eleanor was as fit
to be seen as circumstances would permit; as to Jean and Mary,
there was no trouble on that score.

The whole was not accomplished till a horn was sounded as an
intimation that supper was ready, at five o'clock, for the
entire household, and all made their way down--Jean first, in
all the glory of her fair face and beautiful hair; then Eleanor
with little Lorn, as he was called, his Christian name being
James; then Annaple and Johnnie hand-in-hand, Mary carrying
Andrew, and lastly old Ankaret, hobbling along with her stick,
and, when out of sight, a hand on Annaple's shoulder. In
public, nothing would have made her presume so far. The hall
was a huge, vaulted, stone-walled room, with a great fire on the
wide hearth, and three long tables--one was cross-wise, on the
dais near the fire, the other two ran the length of the hall.
The upper one was furnished with tolerably clean napery and a
few silver vessels; as to the lower ones, they were in two
degrees of comparison, and the less said of the third the
better. It was for the men-at-arms and the lowest servants,
whereas the second belonged to those of the suite of the King
and Chancellor, who were not of rank to be at his table. The
Lord Lion King-at-Arms was high-table company, but he was
absent, and the inferior royal pursuivant was entertaining two
of his fellows, one with the Douglas Bloody Heart, the other
with the Lindsay Lion on a black field, besides two messengers
of the different clans, who looked askance at one another.

Leaning against the wall near the window stood the young King
with two or three youths beside him, laughing and talking over
three great deer-hounds, and by the hearth were two elder men--
one, a tall dignified figure in the square cap and purple robe
of a Bishop, with a face of great wisdom and sweetness; the
other, still taller, with slightly grizzled hair and the
weather-beaten countenance of a valiant and sagacious warrior,
dressed in the leathern garments usually worn under armour.

As Jean emerged from the turret she was met and courteously
greeted by Sir Patrick Drummond and his sons, as were also her
sisters, with a grace and deference to their rank such as they
hardly ever received from the nobles, and whose very rarity made
Eleanor shy and uncomfortable, even while she was gratified and
accepted it as her due.

The Bishop inclined his head and gave them a kind smile; but
they had already seen him in the morning, as he was residing in
the castle. He was the most fatherly friend and kinsman the
young things knew, and though really their first cousin, they
looked to him like an uncle. He insisted on due ceremony with
them, though he had much difficulty in enforcing it, except with
those Scottish knights and nobles who, like Sir Patrick
Drummond, had served in France, and retained their French
breeding.

So Jean, hawk and all, had to be handed to her seat by Sir
Patrick as the guest, Eleanor by her brother, not without a
little fraternal pinch, and Mary by the Bishop, who answered
with a paternal caress to her murmured entreaty that she might
keep wee Andie on her lap and give him his brose.

It was not a sumptuous repast, the staple being a haggis, also
broth with chunks of meat and barleycorns floating in it, the
meat in strings by force of boiling. At the high table each
person had a bowl, either silver or wood, and each had a private
spoon, and a dagger to serve as knife, also a drinking-cup of
various materials, from the King's gold goblet downwards to
horns, and a bannock to eat with the brose. At the middle table
trenchers and bannocks served the purpose of plates; and at the
third there was nothing interposed between the boards of the
table and the lumps of meat from which the soup had been made.

Jean's quick eyes soon detected more men-at-arms and with
different badges from the thyme spray of Drummond, and her
brother was evidently bursting with some communication, held
back almost forcibly by the Bishop, who had established a
considerable influence over the impetuous boy, while Sir Patrick
maintained a wise and tedious political conversation about the
peace between France and England, which was to be cemented by
the marriage of the young King of England to the daughter of
King Rene and the cession of Anjou and Maine to her father.

'Solid dukedoms for a lassie!' cried young James. 'What a
craven to make such a bargain!'

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