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

and a hay-cart having been left in the flight of the marauders, he was laid in it, and covered with the King’s cloak, to be conveyed to Corbeil, where James trusted to secure his life by personal intercession with Henry.  He groaned heavily several times, but never opened his eyes or spoke articulately the whole way; and James and Sir Nigel kept on either side of the cart, ready to address him in French the first moment, having told the English that he was a prisoner of quality, who must be carefully conveyed to King James’s tent at Corbeil.  Malcolm was not allowed to approach, lest he should be recognized; and he rode along in an agony of shame and suspense, with very different feelings towards Patrick than those with which he had of late thought of him, or of his own promises.  If Patrick died through this plundering raid, how should he ever face Lily?

It was nearly night ere they reached Corbeil, where the tents were pitched outside the little town.  James committed his captive to the prudent care of old Baird, bidding him send for a French or Burgundian surgeon, unable to detect the Scottish tongue; and then, taking Malcolm with him, he crossed the square in the centre of the camp to the royal pavilion, opposite to which his own was pitched.

It was a sultry night, and Henry had insisted on sleeping in his tent, declaring himself sick of stone walls; and as they approached his voice could be heard in brief excited sentences, giving orders, and asking for the King of Scots.

‘Here, Sir,’ said James, stopping in where the curtain was looped up, and showed King Henry half sitting, half lying, on a couch of cushions and deer-skins, his eyes full of fire, his thin face flushed with deep colour; Bedford, March, Warwick, and Salisbury in attendance.

‘Ho! you are late!’ said Henry.  ‘Did you come up with the caitiff robbers?’

‘They made off as we rode up.  The village was already burnt.’

‘Who were they?  I hope you hung them on the spot, as I bade,’ continued Henry, coughing between his sentences, and almost in spite of himself, putting his hand to his side.

‘I was delayed.  There was a life to save: a gentleman who lay sick and stifled in a burning house.’

‘And what was it to you,’ cried Henry, angrily, ‘if a dozen rebel Armagnacs were fried alive, when I sent you to hinder my men from growing mere thieves?  Gentleman, forsooth!  One would think it the Dauphin himself; or mayhap Buchan.  Ha! it is a Scot, then!’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said James; ‘Sir Patrick Drummond, a good knight, hurt and helpless, for whom I entreat your grace.’

‘You disobeyed me to spare a Scot!’ burst forth Henry.  ‘You, who call yourself a captain of mine, and who know my will!  He hangs instantly!’

‘Harry, bethink yourself.  This is no captive taken in battle.  He is a sick man, left behind, sorely hurt.’

‘Then wherefore must you be meddling, instead of letting him burn as he deserved, and heeding what you undertook for me?  I will have none of your traitor ruffians here.  Since you have brought him in, the halter for him!—Here, Ralf Percy, tell the Provost-marshal—’

He was interrupted, for James unbuckled his sword, and tendered it to him.

‘King Harry,’ he said gravely, ‘this morning I was your friend and brother-in-arms; now I am your captive.  Hang Patrick Drummond, who aided me at Meaux in saving my honour and such freedom as I have, and I return to any prison you please, and never strike blow for you again.’

‘Take back your sword,’ said Henry.  ‘What folly is this?  You knew that I count not your rebel subjects as prisoners of war.’

‘I did not know that I was saving a defenceless man from the flames to be used like a dog.  I never offered my arm to serve a savage tyrant.’

‘Take your sword!’ reiterated Henry, his passion giving way before James’s steady calmness.  ‘We will look into it to-morrow: but it was no soldierly act to take advantage of my weariness, to let my commands be broken the first day of taking the field, and bring the caitiff here.  We will leave him for the night, I say.  Take up your sword.’

‘Not till I am sure of my liegeman’s life,’ said James.

‘No threats, Sir.  I will make no promise,’ said Henry, haughtily; but the words died away in a racking cough.

And Bedford, laying his hand on James’s arm, said, ‘He is fevered and weary.  Fret him no longer, but take your sword, and get your fellow out of the camp.’

James was too much hurt to make a compromise.  ‘No,’ he said; ‘unless your brother freely spares the life of a man thus taken, I must be his prisoner—but his soldier never!’

He left the tent, followed by Malcolm in an agony of despair and self-reproach.

Henry’s morning decisions were not apt to vary from his evening ones.  There was a terrible implacability about him at times, and he had never ceased to visit his brother of Clarence’s death upon the Scots, on the plea that they were in arms against their king.  Even Bedford obviously thought that the prisoner would be safest out of his reach; and this could hardly be accomplished, since Patrick had been placed in James’s tent, in the very centre of the camp, near the King’s own.  And though Bedford and March might have connived at his being taken away, yet the mass of the soldiery would, if they detected a Scot being smuggled away into the town, have been persuaded that King James was acting treacherously.

Besides, the captive himself proved to be so exhausted, that to transport him any further in his present state would have been almost certainly fatal.  A barber surgeon from Corbeil had been fetched, and was dealing with the injuries, which had apparently been the effect of a fall some days previously, probably when on his way to join the French army at Cosne; and the first fever of these hurts had no doubt been aggravated by the adventures of the day.  At any rate Patrick lay unconscious, or only from time to time groaning or murmuring a few words, sometimes French, sometimes Scotch.

Malcolm would have fallen on his knees by his side, and striven to win a word or a look, but James forcibly withheld him.  ‘If you roused him into loud ravings in our own tongue, all hope of saving him would be gone,’ he said.

‘Shall we?  Oh, can we?’ cried Malcolm, catching at the mere word hope.

‘I only know,’ said the King, ‘that unless we do so by Harry’s good-will, I will never serve under him again.’

‘And if he persists in his cruelty?’

‘Then must some means be found of carrying Drummond into Corbeil.  It will go hard with me but he shall be saved, Malcolm.  But this whole army is against a Scot; and Harry’s eye is everywhere, and his fierceness unrelenting.  Malcolm, this is bondage!  May God and St. Andrew aid us!’

When the King came to saying that, it was plain he deemed the case past all other aid.

Malcolm’s misery was great.  The very sight of Patrick had made a mighty revulsion in his feelings.  The almost forgotten associations of Glenuskie were revived; the forms of his guardian and of Lily came before him, as he heard familiar names and phrases in the dear home accent fall from the fevered lips.  Coldingham rose up before him, and St. Abbs, with Lily watching on the rocks for tidings of her knight—her knight, to whom her brother had once promised to resign all his lands and honours, but who now lay captured by plunderers, among whom that brother made one, and in peril of a shameful death.  Oh, far better die in his stead, than return to Lily with tidings such as these!

Was this retribution for his broken purpose, and for having fallen away, not merely into secular life, but into sins that stood between him and religious rites?  The King had called St. Andrew to aid!  Must a proof of repentance and change be given, ere that aid would come?  Should he vow himself again to the cloister, yield up the hope of Esclairmonde, and devote himself for Patrick’s sake?  Could he ever be happy with Patrick dead, and Esclairmonde driven and harassed into being his wife?  Were it not better to vow at once, that so his cousin were spared he would return to his old purposes?

Almost had he uttered the vow, when, tugging hard at his heart, came the vision of Esclairmonde’s loveliness, and he felt it beyond his strength to resign her voluntarily; besides, how Madame of Hainault and Monseigneur de Thérouenne would deride his uncertainties; and how intolerable it would be to leave Esclairmonde to fall into the hands of Boëmond of Burgundy.

Such a renunciation could not be made; he did not even know that Patrick’s safety depended on it; and instead of that, he promised, with great fervency of devotion, that if St. Andrew would save Patrick Drummond, and bring about the two marriages, a most splendid monastery for educational purposes, such as the King so much wished to found, should be his reward.  It should be in honour of St. Andrew, and should be endowed with Esclairmonde’s wealth, which would be quite ample enough, both for this and for a noble portion for Lily.  Surely St. Andrew must accept such a vow, and spare Patrick!  So Malcolm tried to pacify an anguish of suspense that would not be pacified.

CHAPTER XII: THE LAST PILGRIMAGE

The summer morning came; the réveille sounded, Mass was sung in the chapel tent, without which Henry never moved; and Malcolm tried to reassure his sinking heart by there pledging his vow to St. Andrew.

The English king was not present; but the troops were drawing up in complete array, that he might inspect them before the march.  And a glorious array they were, of steel-clad men-at-arms on horseback, in bands around their leader’s banner, and of ranks of sturdy archers, with their long-bows in leathern cases; the orderly multitude, stretching as far as the eye could reach, glittering in the early sun, and waiting with bold and glad hearts to greet the much-loved king, who had always led them to victory.

The only unarmed knight was James of Scotland.  He stood in the space beside the standard of England, in his plain suit of chamois leather, his crimson cloak over his shoulder, but with no weapon about him, waiting with crossed arms for the morning’s decision.

Close outside the royal tent waited Henry’s horse, and those of his brother and other immediate attendants; and after a short interval the King came forth in his brightest armour, with the coronal on his helmet, and the beaver up; and as he mounted, not without considerable aid, enthusiastic shouts of ‘Long live King Harry!’ broke forth, and came echoing back and back from troop to troop, gathering fervour as they rose.

The King rode forward towards the standard; but while yet the shouts were pealing from the army, be suddenly caught at his saddle-bow, reeled visibly, and would have fallen before Bedford could bring his horse to his side, had not James sprung forward, and laid one arm round him, and a hand on his rein.

‘It is nothing,’ said Henry.  ‘Let me alone.’

Ere the words were finished, he put his hand to his side, dropped his bridle, and gasped, while a look of intense suffering passed over his features; and he was passive while his horse was led back to the tent, and he was lifted down and placed on the couch he had just quitted.

‘Loose my belt,’ he gasped; then trying to smile, ‘Percy has strained it three holes tighter.’

Alas! though it was indeed thus drawn in, his armour was hanging on him like the shell of a last year’s nut.  They released him from it, and he lay against the cushions with short painful respiration, and frequent cough.

‘You must go on with the men at once, John,’ he said.  ‘I will but be blooded, and follow in the litter.’

‘Warwick and Salisbury—’ began Bedford.

‘No, no!’ peremptorily gasped Henry.  ‘It must be you or I, I would, but this stitch in the side catches me, so that I can neither ride nor speak.  Go, instantly.  You know what I have ordered.  I’ll be up with you ere the battle.’

He brooked no resistance.  His impatience, and with it the oppression and pain, only grew by remonstrance; and Bedford was forced to obey the command to go himself, and leave no one he could help behind him.

‘You will stay, at least,’ said John, in his distress, turning to the Scottish king.

‘I must,’ said James.

‘You hold not your wrath?’ said Bedford.  ‘It will madden me to leave him to any save you in this stress.  Some are dull; some he will not heed.’

‘I will tend him like yourself, John,’ said the Scot, taking his hand.