The Caged Lion by Charlotte M. Yonge (books to read to increase intelligence TXT) 📕

like ram’s horns, as a special passport to the favour of Dame Jac—a lady who seemed to be the object of Duke John’s great distaste.

Suddenly a voice was heard in the gallery of the great old mansion where they were lodged.  ‘John!  John!  Here!—Where is the Duke, I say?’  It was thick and husky, as with some terrible emotion; and the King and Duke had already started in dismay before the door was thrown open, and King Henry stood among them, his face of a burning red.

‘See here, John!’ he said, holding out a letter; and then, with an accent of wrathful anguish, and a terrible frown, he turned on James, exclaiming, ‘I would send you to the Tower, Sir, did I think you had a hand in this!’

Malcolm trembled, and sidled nearer his prince; while James, with an equally fierce look, replied, ‘Hold, Sir!  Send me where you will, but dare not dishonour my name!’  Then changing, as he saw the exceeding grief on Henry’s brow, and heard John’s smothered cry of dismay, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Harry, what is it?’

‘This!’ said Henry, less loudly, less hotly, but still with an agony of indignation: ‘Thomas is dead—and by the hand of two of your traitor Scots!’

‘Murdered!’ cried James, aghast.

‘Murdered by all honest laws of war, but on the battlefield,’ said Henry.  ‘Your cousin of Buchan and old Douglas fell on my brave fellows at Beaugé, when they were spent with travel to stop the robberies in Anjou.  They closed in with their pikes on my brave fellows, took Somerset prisoner, and for Thomas, while he was dealing with a knight named Swinton in front, the villain Buchan comes behind and cleaves his head in twain; and that is what you Scots call fighting!’

‘It was worthy of a son of Albany!’ said James.  ‘Would that vengeance were in my power!’

‘Ay, you loved him!’ said Henry, grasping James’s hand, his passion softened into a burst of tears, as he wrung his prisoner’s hand.  ‘Nay, who did not love him, my brave, free-hearted brother?  And that I—I should have dallied here and left him to bear the brunt, and be cut off by you felon Scots!’  And he hid his face, struggling within an agony of heart-rending grief, which seemed to sway his whole tall, powerful frame as he leant against the high back of a chair; while John, together with James, was imploring him not to accuse himself, for his presence had been needful at home; and, to turn the tenor of his thought, James inquired whether there were any further disaster.

‘Not as yet,’ said Henry; ‘there is not a man left in that heaven-abandoned crew who knows how to profit by what they have got! but I must back again ere the devil stir them up a man of wit!—And you, Sir, can you take order with these heady Scots?’

‘From Windsor? no,’ said James; ‘but set me in the saddle, let me learn war under such a captain as yourself, and maybe they will not take the field against me; or if they do, the slayer of Clarence shall rue it.’

‘Be it so,’ said Henry, wringing his hand.  ‘You shall with me to France, Jamie, and see war.  The Scots should flock to the Lion rampant, and without them the French are mo better than deer, under the fool and murderer they call Dauphin.  Yet, alas! will any success give me back my brother—my brother, the brave and true?’ he added, weeping again within time abandon of an open nature and simple age.  ‘It was for my sins, my forgetfulness of my great work, that this has come on me.—Ho, Marmion! carry these tidings from me to the Dean; pray him that the knell be tolled at the Minster, and a requiem sung for my brother and all who fell with him.  We will be there ourselves, and the mayor must hold us excused from his banquet; these men are too loyal not to grieve for their King.’

And, with his arm round the neck of his brother John, Henry left the room; and before another word could be said, Sir Nigel was there, having only retired on the King’s entrance.  The news was of course all over the house, and with an old attendant’s freedom he exclaimed, ‘So, Sir, the English have found tough cummers at last!’

‘Not too honourably,’ said James, sadly.

‘Hout, would not the puir loons be glad enow of any gate of coming by a clout at the man’s brother that keeps you captive!’

‘They have taken away one of those I loved best!’ said James.

‘I’m no speaking ill of the lad Clarence himself,’ said Nigel; ‘he was a braw youth, leal and bold, and he has died in his helm and spurs, as a good knight should.  I’d wish none of these princes a waur ending.  Moreover, could Swinton have had the wit to keep him living, he’d have been a bonnie barter for you, my Lord; but ony way the fight was a gallant one, and the very squire that brought the tidings cannot deny that our Scots fought like lions.’

‘Would Douglas but so fight in any good quarrel!’ sighed the King.  ‘But what are you longing to ask, Malcolm?  Is it for your kinsman Patrick?  I fear me that there is little chance of your hearing by name of him.’

‘I wot not,’ said Sir Nigel; ‘I did but ask for that hare-brained young cousin of mine, Davie Baird, that must needs be off on this journey to France; and the squire tells me he was no herald, to be answerable for the rogues that fought on the other side.’

‘We shall soon see for ourselves,’ said James; ‘I am to make this campaign.’

‘You! you, my liege!  Against your own ally, and under the standard of England!  Woe’s me, how could ye be so lost!’

James argued on his own conviction that the true France was with poor Charles VI., and that it was doing the country no service to prolong the resistance of the Armagnacs and the Dauphin, who then appeared mere partisans instead of patriots.  As to fighting under the English banner, no subjection was involved in an adventurer king so doing: had not the King of Bohemia thus fought at Crecy? and was not the King of Sicily with the French army?  Moreover, James himself felt the necessity of gaining some experience in the art of war.  Theoretically he had studied it with all his might, from Cæsar, Quintus Curtius, and that favourite modern authority, the learned ecclesiastic, Jean Pavé, who was the Vauban of the fifteenth century; and he had likewise obtained greedily all the information he could from Henry himself and his warriors; but all this had convinced him that if war was to be more than a mere raid, conducted by mere spirit and instinct, some actual apprenticeship was necessary.  Even for such a dash, Henry himself had told him that he would find his book-knowledge an absolute impediment without some practice, and would probably fail for that very reason when opposed to tough old seasoned warriors.  And, prudence apart, James, at five-and-twenty, absolutely glowed with shame at the thought that every one of his companions had borne arms for at least ten years past, while his arrows had no mark but the target, his lances had all been broken in the tilt-yard.  It was this argument that above all served to pacify old Bairdsbrae; though he confessed himself very uneasy as to the prejudice it would create in Scotland, and so evidently loathed the expedition, that James urged on him to return to Scotland, instead of continuing his attendance.  There was no fear but that his ransom would be accepted, and he had been absent twelve years from his home.

‘No, no, my Lord; I sware to your father that I’d never quit you till I brought you safe home again, and, God willing, I’ll keep my oath.  But what’s this puir callant to do, that you were set upon rearing upon your books at Windsor?’

‘He shall choose,’ said James.  ‘Either he shall study at the learned university at Oxford or at Paris, or he shall ride with me, and see how cities and battles are won.  Speak not yet, cousin; it takes many months to shake out the royal banner, and you shall look about you ere deciding.  Now give me yonder black cloak; they are assembling for the requiem.’

Malcolm, as he followed his king, was not a little amazed to see that Henry, the magnificent victor, was wrapped in a plain black serge garment, his short dark hair uncovered, his feet bare; and that on arriving at the Minster he threw himself on his knees, almost on his face, before the choir steps, there remaining while the De profundis and the like solemn and mournful strains floated through the dark vaultings above him, perhaps soothing while giving expression to the agony of his affliction, and self-accusation, not for the devastation of the turbulent country of an insane sovereign, but for his having relaxed in the mighty work of renovation that he had imposed on himself.

Even when the service was ended, the King would not leave the Minster.  He lifted himself up to bid Bedford and his companions return; but for himself, he intended to remain and confess, in preparation for being ‘houselled’ at the Mass for the dead early the next morning, before hastening on the southern journey.

Was this, thought the bewildered Malcolm as he fell asleep, the godless atmosphere he had been used to think all that was not Glenuskie or Coldingham—England above all?

Indeed, in the frosty twilight of the spring morning, though Henry was now clad in his usual garb, sleeplessness, sorrow, and fasting made him as wan and haggard as any ascetic monk; his eyes were sunken, and his closed lips bore a stern fixed expression, which scarcely softened even when the sacrificial rite struck the notes of praise; and though a light came into his eye, it was rather the devotion of one who had offered himself, than the gleam of hopeful exultation.  The horses stood saddled at the west door, for Henry was feverishly eager to reach Pontefract, where he had left his queen, and wished to avoid the delay of breaking his fast at York, but only to snatch a meal at some country hostel on his way.

Round the horses, however, a crowd of the citizens were collected to gaze; and two or three women with children in their arms made piteous entreaties for the King’s healing touch for their little ones.  The kind Henry waited, ungloved his hand, asked his treasurer for the gold pieces that were a much-esteemed part of the cure, and signed to his attendant chaplain to say the Collect appointed for the rite.

Fervent blessings were meantime murmured through the crowd, which broke out into loud shouts of ‘God save King Harry!’ as he at length leapt into the saddle; but at that moment, a feeble, withered old man, leaning on a staff, and wearing a bedesman’s gown, peered up, and muttered to a comrade—

‘Fair-faced, quotha—fair, maybe, but not long for this world!  One is gone already, and the rest will not be long after; the holy man’s words will have their way—the death mark is on him.’

The words caught James’s ear, and he angrily turned round: ‘Foul-mouthed raven, peace with thy traitor croak!’ but Bedford caught his arm, crying—

‘Hush! ’tis a mere bedesman;’ and bending forward to pour a handful of silver into the beggar’s cap, he said, ‘Pray, Gaffer, pray—pray for the dead and living, both.’

‘So,’ said James, as both mounted, ‘there’s a fee for a boding traitor.’

‘I knew his face,’ said Bedford, with a shudder; ‘he belonged to Archbishop Scrope.’

‘A traitor, too,’ said James.

‘Nay, there was too much cause for his words.  Never shall I forget the day when Scrope was put to death on this very moor on which we are entering.  There sat my father on his horse, with us four boys around him, when the old man passed in front of us, and looked at him with a face pitiful and terrible.  “Harry of Bolingbroke,” he said, “because thou hast done these things, therefore shall thy foes be of thine own household; the sword shall never depart therefrom, but all the increase of thy house shall die in the flower of their age, and in the fourth generation shall their name be clean cut off.”  The commons will have it that at that moment my father was struck with leprosy; and struck to the heart assuredly he was, nor was he ever the same man again.  I always believed that those words made him harder upon every prank of poor Hal’s, till any son save Hal would have become his foe!  And see now, the old bedesman may be in the right; poor pretty Blanche has long been in her grave, Thomas is with her now, and Jamie,’—he lowered his voice,—‘when men say that Harry