Two Penniless Princesses
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> Two Penniless Princesses
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'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, seemed to bask in their presence, and held
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.
'0 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.
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