The Caged Lion Part 16

An old man's face peeped through a little wicket in the door, and at sight of the two youths, evidently of high rank, said in a trembling voice, 'Alas! alas! Sir, bid these cruel men go away. I have nothing here-no one-only my sick daughter.'

'You hear,' said Malcolm, turning round; 'only his sick daughter.'

'Sick daughter!-old liar! Here's an honest tinker makes oath he has h.o.a.rds of gold laid up for Vaurus, and ten Armagnacs hidden in his house. Have at him! Bring fire!'

Blows hailed thick on the door; a flaming torch was handed over the heads of the throng; horrible growls and roars pervaded them. Malcolm and Ralf, furious at the cheat, stood among the foremost, making so much noise themselves between thundering and reviling, and calling out, 'Where are the Armagnacs? Down with the traitors!' that they were not aware of a sudden hush behind them, till a buffet from a heavy hand fell on Malcolm's shoulder, and a mighty voice cried 'Shame! shame! What, you too!'

'There are traitors hid here, Sir,' said Percy, in angry self-justification.

'And what an if there are? Back, every one of you! rogues that you be!-Here, Fitzhugh, see those villains back to the camp. Let their arms be given up to the Provost-marshal.-Kites and crows as you are! Away, out with you!'

Henry pointed to the broken door, and the cowed and abashed soldiers slunk away from the terrible light of his eyes. No man could stand before the face of the King.

There was a stillness. He stood leaning on his sword, his chest heaving with his panting breaths. He was naturally as fleet as the swift-footed Achilles, but the winter had told upon him, and the haste with which he had rushed to the rescue left him breathless and speechless, while he seemed as it were to nail the two lads to the spot by his steady gaze of mingled distress and displeasure.

Neither could brook his eye: Percy hung his head like a boy in a sc.r.a.pe; Malcolm quailed with terror, but at the same time felt a keen sense of injury in being thus treated as a plunderer, and the blow under which his shoulder ached seemed an indignity to his royal blood.

'Boys,' said Henry, still low and breathlesly, but all the more impressively, 'what is to become of honour and mercy if such as you must needs become ravening wolves at scent of booty?'

'It was not booty, Sir; they said traitors were hid here,' said Percy, sulkily.

'Tus.h.!.+ the old story! Ever the plea for rapine and bloodthirstiness. After the warnings of last night you should have known better; but you are all alike in frenzy for a sack. You have both put off your knighthood till you have learnt not to become a shame thereto.'

'I take not knighthood at your hands, Sir,' burst out Malcolm, goaded with hot resentment, but startled the next moment at the sound of his own words.

'I cry you mercy,' said King Henry, in a cold, short tone.

Malcolm turned on his heel and walked away, without waiting to see how the poor old man in the house threw himself at the King's feet with a piteous history of his sick daughter and her starving children, nor how Ralf hurried off headlong to the lower town to send them immediate relief in bread, wine, and doctors. The gay, good-natured, thoughtless lad no mere harboured malice for the chastis.e.m.e.nt than if his tutor had caught him idling; but things went deeper with Malcolm. True, he had undergone many a brutal jest and cruel practical joke from his cousins; but that was all in the family, not like a blow from an alien king, and one not apologized for, but followed up by a rebuke that seemed to him unjust, lowering him in his own eyes and those of Esclairmonde, and making him ready to gnaw himself with moody vexation.

'You here, Malcolm!' said King James, entering his quarters; 'did you miss me in the throng? I have not seen you all day.'

'I have been insulted, Sir,' said Malcolm. 'I pray your license to depart and carry my sword to my kinsmen in the French camp.'

'How now! Is it the way to treat an insult to run away from it?'

'Not when the world judges men to be on equal terms, my lord.'

'What! Who has done you wrong, you silly loon?'

'King Henry, Sir; he struck me with his fist, and rated me like his hound; and I will not eat another morsel of his bread unless he would answer it to me in single combat.'

'Little enough bread you'd eat after that same answer!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed James. 'Oh! I understand now. You were with young Hotspur and the rest that set on the poor townsmen, and Harry made small distinction of persons! Nay, Malcolm, it was ill in you, that talked of so loathing spulzie!'

'I wanted no spulzie. There were Armagnacs hid in the house, and the King would not hear us.'

'He knew that story too well. Were you asleep or idling last night, when he warned all, on no plea whatever, to break into a house, but, if the old tale of treachery came up, to set a guard, and call one of the captains? Did you hear him-eh?'

'I can take chiding from you, Sir, but neither words nor blows from any other king in Christendom, still less when he threatens me that I have deferred my knighthood! As if I would have it from him!'

'From me you will not have it until he have pardoned Ralf Percy,' said James, dryly. 'Malcolm, I had not thought you such a fule body! Under a captain's banner, what can be done but submit to his rule? I should do so myself, were Salisbury or March in command.'

'Then, Sir,' said Malcolm, much hurt that the King did not take his part, 'I shall carry my service elsewhere.'

'So,' said James, much vexed, 'this is the meek lad that wanted to hide in a convent from an ill world, flying off from his king and kinsman that he may break down honest men's doors at his will.'

'That I may be free from insult, Sir.'

'You think John of Buchan like to cosset you! You found the Black Douglas so courtly to me the other day as to expect him to be tender to this nicety of yours! Malcolm, as your prince and guardian, I forbid this folly, and command you to lay aside this fit of malice and do your devoir. What! sobbing, silly lad-where's your manhood?'

'Sir, Sir, what will they think of me-the Lady Esclairmonde and all-if they hear I have sat down tamely with a blow?'

'She will never think about you at all but as a sullen malapert ne'er-do-weel, if you go off to that camp of routiers, trying to prop a bad cause because you cannot take correction, nor observe discipline.'

A sudden suspicion came over Malcolm that the King would not thus make light of the offence, if it had really been the inexpiable insult he had supposed it, and the thought was an absolute relief; for in effect the parting from James, and joining the party opposed to Esclairmonde's friends, would have been so tremendous a step, that he could hardly have contemplated it in his sober senses, and he murmured, 'My honour, Sir,' in a tone that James understood.

'Oh, for your honour-you need not fear for that! Any knight in the army could have done as much without prejudice to your honour. Why, you silly loon, d'ye think I would not have been as angered as yourself, if your honour had been injured?'

Malcolm's heart felt easier, but he still growled. 'Then, Sir, if you a.s.sure me that I can do so without detriment to my honour, I will not quit you.'

James laughed. 'It might have been more graciously spoken, my good cousin, but I am beholden to you.'

Malcolm, ashamed and vexed at the sarcastic tone, held his tongue for a little while, but presently exclaimed, 'Will the Bishop of Therouenne hear of it?'

James laughed. 'Belike not; or, if he should, it would only seem to him the reasonable training of a young squire.'

The King did not say what crossed his own mind, that the Bishop of Therouenne was more likely to think Henry over-strict in discipline, and absurdly rigorous.

The prelate, Charles de Luxemburg, brother to the Count de St. Pol, had made several visits to the English camp. He was one of these princely younger sons, who, like Beaufort at home, took ecclesiastical preferments as their natural provision, and as a footing whence they might become statesmen. He was a great admirer of Henry's genius, and, as the chief French prelate who was heartily on the English side, enjoyed a much greater prominence than he could have done at either the French or Burgundian Court. He and his brother of St. Pol were Esclairmonde's nearest kinsmen-'oncles a la mode de Bretagne,' as they call the relations.h.i.+p which is here sometimes termed Welsh uncle, or first cousins once removed-and from him James had obtained much more complete information about Esclairmonde than he could ever get from the flighty d.u.c.h.ess.

Her mother, a beautiful Walloon, had been heiress to wide domains in Hainault, her father to great estates in Flanders, all which were at present managed by the politic Bishop. Like most of the statesman-secular-clergy, the Bishop hated nothing so much as the monastic orders, and had made no small haste to remove his fair niece from the convent at Dijon, where she had been educated, lest the Cistercians should become possessed of her lands. He had one scheme for her marriage; but his brother, the Count, had wished to give her to his own second son, who was almost an infant; and the Duke of Burgundy had designs on her for his half-brother Boemond; and among these various disputants, Esclairmonde had never failed to find support against whichever proposal was forced upon her, until the coalition between the Dukes of Burgundy and Brabant becoming too strong, she had availed herself of Countess Jaqueline's discontent to evade them both.

The family had, of course, been much angered, and had fully expected that her estates would go to some great English abbey, or to some English lord whose haughty reserve and insularity would be insupportable. It was therefore a relief to Monseigneur de Therouenne to hear James's designs; and when the King further added, that he would be willing to let the claims on the Hainault part of her estates be purchased by the Count de St. Pol, and those in Flanders by the Duke of Burgundy, the Bishop was delighted, and declared that, rather than such a negotiation should fail, he would himself advance the sum to his brother; but that the Duke of Burgundy's consent was more doubtful, only could they not do without it?

And he honoured Malcolm with a few words of pa.s.sing notice from time to time, as if he almost regarded him as a relation. No doubt it would have been absurd to fly from such chances as these to Patrick Drummond and the opposite camp; and yet there were times when Malcolm felt as if he should get rid of a load on his heart if he were to break with all his present life, hurry to Patrick, confess the whole to him, and then-hide his head in some hermitage, leaving his pledge unforfeited!

That, however, could not be. He was bound to the King, and might not desert him, and it was not unpleasant to brood over the sacrifice of his own displeasure.

'See,' said Henry, in the evening, as he came into the refectory and walked up to James, 'I have found my signet. It was left in the finger of my Spanish glove, which I had not worn since the beginning of winter. Thanks to all who took vain pains to look for it.'

But Malcolm did not respond with his pleased look to the thanks. He was not in charity with Henry, and crept out of hearing of him, while James was saying, 'You had best destroy one or the other, or they will make mischief. Here, I'll crush it with the pommel of my sword.'

'Ay,' said Henry, laughing, 'you'd like to shew off one of your sledge-hammer blows-Sir Bras de Fer! But, Master Scot, you shall not smash the English s.h.i.+eld so easily. This one hangs too loose to be safe; I shall keep it to serve me when we have fattened up at Paris, after the leanness of our siege.'

'Hal,' said James, seeing his gay temper restored, 'you have grievously hurt that springald of mine. His northern blood cannot away with the taste he got of your fist.'

'Pretty well for your G.o.dly young monk, to expect to rob unchecked!' laughed Henry.

'He will do well at last,' said James. 'Manhood has come on him with a rush, and borne him off his feet; nor would I have him over-tame.'