‘Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies:
Death, avenger of wrongs,
Gives her fame which never dies.’
Much Ado About Nothing.
A day’s rest revived Jean enough to make her eager to push on to
Chalons, and enough likewise to revive her coquettish and petulant
temper.
Sigismund and Eleanor might ride on together in a species of paradise,
as having not only won each other’s love, but acted out a bit of the
romance that did not come to full realisation much more often in those
days than in modern ones. They were quite content to let King Rene glory
in them almost as much as he had arrived at doing in his own daughter
and her Ferry, and they could be fully secure; Sigismund had no one’s
consent to ask, save a formal licence from his cousin, the Emperor
Frederick III., who would pronounce him a fool for wedding a penniless
princess, but had no real power over him; while Eleanor was certain that
all her kindred would feel that she was fulfilling her destiny, and high
sweet thoughts of thankfulness and longing to be a blessing to him who
loved her, and to those whom he ruled, filled her spirit as she rode
through the shady woods and breezy glades, bright with early summer.
Jean, however, was galled by the thought that every one at home would
smile and say that she might have spared her journey, and that, in spite
of all her beauty, she had just ended by wedding the Scottish laddie
whom she had scorned. True, her heart knew that she loved him and none
other, and that he truly merited her; but her pride was not willing that
he should feel that he had earned her as a matter of course, and she was
quite as ungracious to Sir George Douglas, the Master of Angus, as
ever she had been to Geordie of the Red Peel, and she showed all the
petulance of a semi-convalescent. She would not let him ride beside her,
his horse made her palfrey restless, she said; and when King Rene talked
about her true knight, she pretended not to understand.
‘Ah!’ he said, ‘be consoled, brave sire; we all know it is the part of
the fair lady to be cruel and merciless. Let me sing you a roman both
sad and true!’
Which good-natured speech simply irritated George beyond bearing. ‘The
daft old carle,’ muttered he to Sir Patrick, ‘why cannot he let me gang
my ain gate, instead of bringing all their prying eyes on me? If Jean
casts me off the noo, it will be all his fault.’
These small vexations, however, soon faded out of sight when the
drooping, half-hoisted banner was seen on the turrets of Chateau le
Surry, and the clang of a knell came slow and solemn on the wind.
No one was at first visible, but probably a warder had announced their
approach, for various figures issued from the gateway, some coming up
to Rene, and David Drummond seeking his father. The tidings were in one
moment made known to the two poor girls--a most sudden shock, for they
had parted with their sister in full health, as they thought, and Sir
Patrick had only supposed her to have been chilled by the thunderstorm.
Yet Eleanor’s first thought was, ‘Ah! I knew it! Would that I had
clung closer to her and never been parted.’ But the next moment she was
startled by a cry--Jean had slid from her horse, fainting away in George
Douglas’s arms.
Madame de Ste. Petronelle was at hand, and the Lady of Glenuskie quickly
on the spot; and they carried her into the hall, where she revived,
and soon was in floods of tears. These were the days when violent
demonstration was unchecked and admired as the due of the deceased, and
all stood round, weeping with her. King Charles himself leaning forward
to wring her hands, and cry, ‘My daughter, my good daughter!’ As soon
as the first tempest had subsided, the King supported Eleanor to the
chapel, where, in the midst of rows of huge wax candles, Margaret lay
with placid face, and hands clasped over a crucifix, as if on a tomb,
the pall that covered all except her face embellished at the sides with
the blazonry of France and Scotland. Her husband, with his thin hands
clasped, knelt by her head, and requiems were being sung around by
relays of priests. There was fresh weeping and wailing as the sisters
cast sprinklings of holy water on her, and then Jean, sinking down quite
exhausted, was supported away to a chamber where the sisters could hear
the story of these last sad days from Lady Drummond.
The solemnities of Margaret’s funeral took their due course--a lengthy
one, and then, or rather throughout, there was the consideration what
was to come next. Too late, all the Court seemed to have wakened to
regret for Margaret. She had been open-handed and kindly, and the
attendants had loved her, while the ladies who had gossiped about her
habits now found occupation for their tongues in indignation against
whosoever had aspersed her discretion. The King himself, who had always
been lazily fond of the belle fille who could amuse him, was stirred,
perhaps by Rene, into an inquiry into the scandalous reports, the result
of which was that Jamet de Tillay was ignominiously banished from the
Court, and Margaret’s fair fame vindicated, all too late to save her
heart from breaking. The displeasure that Charles expressed to his son
in private on the score of poor Margaret’s wrongs, is, in fact, believed
to have been the beginning of the breach which widened continually, till
finally the unhappy father starved himself to death in a morbid dread of
being poisoned by his son.
However, for the present, the two Scottish princesses reaped the full
benefit of all the feeling for their sister. The King and Queen called
them their dearest daughters, and made all sorts of promises of marrying
and endowing them, and Louis himself went outwardly through all the
forms of mourning and devotion, and treated his two fair sisters with
extreme civility, such as they privately declared they could hardly
bear, when they recollected how he had behaved before Margaret.
Jean in especial flouted him with all the sharpness and pertness of
which she was capable; but do what she would, he received it all with a
smiling indifference and civility which exasperated her all the more.
The Laird and Lady of Glenuskie were in some difficulty. They could not
well be much longer absent from Scotland, and yet Lilias had promised
the poor Dauphiness not to leave her sisters except in some security.
Eleanor’s fate was plain enough, Sigismund followed her about as her
betrothed, and the only question was whether, during the period of
mourning, he should go back to his dominions to collect a train
worthy of his marriage with a king’s daughter; but this he was plainly
reluctant to do. Besides the unwillingness of a lover to lose sight of
his lady, the catastrophe that had befallen the sisters might well
leave a sense that they needed protection. Perhaps, too, he might expect
murmurs at his choice of a dowerless princess from his vassals of the
Tirol.
At any rate, he lingered and accompanied the Court to Tours, where in
the noble old castle the winter was to be spent.
There Sir Patrick and his wife were holding a consultation. Their means
were well-nigh exhausted. What they had collected for their journey
was nearly spent, and so was the sum with which Cardinal Beaufort had
furnished his nieces. It was true that Eleanor and Jean were reckoned
as guests of the French King, and the knight and lady and attendants as
part of their suite; but the high proud Scottish spirits could not
be easy in this condition, and they longed to depart, while still by
selling the merely ornamental horses and some jewels they could pay
their journey. But then Jean remained a difficulty. To take her back to
Scotland was the most obvious measure, where she could marry George of
Angus as soon as the mourning was ended.
‘Even if she will have him,’ said Dame Lilias, ‘I doubt me whether her
proud spirit will brook to go home unwedded.’
‘Dost deem the lassie is busking herself for higher game? That were an
evil requital for his faithful service and gallant daring.’
‘I cannot tell,’ said Lilias. ‘The maid has always been kittle to deal
with. I trow she loves Geordie in her inmost heart, but she canna thole
to feel herself bound to him, and it irks her that when her sisters are
wedded to sovereign princes, she should gang hame to be gudewife to a
mere Scots Earl’s son.’
‘The proud unthankful peat! Leave her to gang her ain gate, Lily. And
yet she is a bonny winsome maid, that I canna cast off.’
‘Nor I, Patie, and I have gi’en my word to her sister. Yet gin some
prince cam’ in her way, I’d scarce give much for Geordie’s chance.’
‘The auld king spake once to me of his younger son, the Duke of Berry,
as they call him,’ said Sir Patrick; ‘but the Constable told me that was
all froth, the young duke must wed a princess with a tocher.’
‘I trust none will put it in our Jeanie’s light brain,’ sighed Lily, ‘or
she will be neither to have nor to hold.’
The consultation was interrupted by the sudden bursting in of Jean
herself. She flew up to her friends with outstretched hands, and hid her
face in Lilias’s lap.
‘Oh, cousins, cousins! tak’ me away out of his reach. He has been the
death of poor Meg, now he wants to be mine.’
They could not understand her at first, and indeed shame as well as
dismay made her incoherent--for what had been proposed to her was at
that time unprecedented. It is hard to believe it, yet French historians
aver that the Dauphin Louis actually thought of obtaining a dispensation
for marrying her. In the unsettled condition of the Church, when it
was divided by the last splinterings, as it were, of the great schism,
perhaps the astute Louis deemed that any prince might obtain anything
from whichever rival Pope he chose to acknowledge, though it was
reserved for Alexander Borgia to grant the first licence of this kind.
To Jean the idea was simply abhorrent, alike as regarded her instincts
and for the sake of the man himself. His sneering manner towards her
sister had filled her with disgust and indignation, and he had, in those
days, been equally contemptuous towards herself--besides which she was
aware of his share in her capture by Balchenburg, and whispers had not
respected the manner in which his silence had fostered the slanders that
had broken Margaret’s heart.
‘I would sooner wed a viper!’ she said.
What was Louis’s motive it is very hard to guess. Perhaps there was some
real admiration of Jean’s beauty, and it seems to have been his desire
that his wife should be a nonentity, as was shown in his subsequent
choice of Charlotte of Savoy. Now Jean was in feature very like her
sister Isabel, Duchess of Brittany, who was a very beautiful woman, but
not far from being imbecile, and Louis had never seen Jean display any
superiority of intellect or taste like Margaret or Eleanor, but rather
impatience of their pursuits, and he therefore might expect her to be
equally simple with the other sister. However that might be, Sir
Patrick was utterly incredulous; but when his wife asked Madame Ste.
Petronelle’s opinion, she shook her head, and said the Sire Dauphin was
a strange ower cannie chiel, and advised that Maitre Jaques Coeur should
be consulted.
‘Who may he be?’
‘Ken ye not Jaques Coeur? The great merchant of Bourges--the man to
whom, above all others, France owes it that we be not under the English
yoke. The man, I say, for it was the poor Pucelle that gave the first
move, and ill enough was her reward, poor blessed maiden as she was. A
saint must needs die a martyr’s death, and they will own one of these
days that such she was! But it was Maitre Coeur that stirred the King
and gave him the wherewithal to raise his men--lending, they called it,
but it was out of the free heart of a true Frenchman who never looked to
see it back again, nor even thanks for it!’
‘A merchant?’ asked Sir Patrick.
‘Ay, the mightiest merchant in the realm. You would marvel to see his
house at Bourges. It would fit a prince! He has ships going to Egypt and
Africa, and stores of silk enough to array all the dames and demoiselles
in France! Jewels fit for an emperor, perfumes like a very grove of
camphire. Then he has mines of silver and copper, and the King has given
him the care of the coinage. Everything prospers that he sets his hand
to, and he well deserves it, for he is an honest man where honest men
are few.’
‘Is he here?’
‘Yea; I saw his green hood crossing the court of the castle this very
noon. The King can never go on long without him, though there are those
that so bate him that I fear he may have a fall one of these days.
Methinks I heard that he ay hears his morning mass when here at the
little chapel of St. James, close to the great shrine of St. Martin, at
six of the clock in the morning, so as to be private. You might find him
there, and whatever he saith to you will be sooth, whether it be as you
would have it, or no.’
On consideration Sir Patrick decided to adopt the lady’s advice, and
on her side she reflected that it might be well to take care that the
interview did not fail for want of recognition.
The glorious Cathedral of Tours was standing up dark, but with
glittering windows, from the light within deepening the stained glass,
and throwing out the beauty of the tracery, while the sky, brightening
in the autumn morning, threw the towers into relief, when, little
recking of all this beauty, only caring to find the way, Sir Patrick on
the one hand, the old Scots French lady on the other, went their way to
the noble west front, each wrapped in a long cloak, and not knowing one
another, till their eyes met as they gave each other holy water at the
door, after the habit of strangers entering at the same time.
Then Madame de Ste. Petronelle showed the way to the little side chapel,
close to the noble apse. There, beneath the six altar-candles, a priest
was hurrying through a mass in a rapid ill-pronounced manner, while,
besides his acolyte, worshippers were very few. Only the light fell
on the edges of a dark-green velvet cloak and silvered a grizzled head
bowed in reverence, and Madame de Ste. Petronelle touched Sir Patrick
and made him a significant sign.
Daylight was beginning to reveal itself by the time the brief service
was over. Sir Patrick, stimulated by the lady, ventured a few steps
forward, and accosted Maitre Coeur as he rose, and drawing forward his
hood was about to leave the church.
‘Beau Sire, a word with you. I am the kinsman and attendant of the
Scottish King’s sisters.’
‘Ah! one of them is to be married. My steward is with me. It is to him
you should speak of her wardrobe,’ said Jaques Coeur, an impatient look
stealing over his keen but honest visage.
‘It is not of Duke Sigismund’s betrothed that I would speak,’ returned
the Scottish knight; ‘it is of her sister.’
Jaques Coeur’s dark eyes cast a rapid glance, as of one who knew not who
might lurk in the recesses of a twilight cathedral.
‘Not here,’ he said, and he led Sir Patrick away with him down the
aisle, out into the air, where a number of odd little buildings
clustered round the walls of the cathedral, even leaning against it,
heedless of the beauty they marred.
‘By your leave, Father,’ he said, after exchanging salutations with a
priest, who was just going out to say his morning’s mass, and leaving
his tiny bare cell empty. Here Sir Patrick could incredulously tell
his story, and the merchant could only sigh and own that he feared that
there was every reason to believe that the intention was real. Jaques
Coeur, religiously, was shocked at the idea, and, politically, wished
the Dauphin to make a more profitable alliance. He whispered that the
sooner the lady was out of reach the better, and even offered to advance
a loan to facilitate the journey.
There followed a consultation in the securest place that could be
devised, namely, in the antechamber where Sir Patrick and Lady Drummond
slept to guard their young princesses, in the palace at Tours, Jean,
Eleanor, and Madame de Ste. Petronelle having a bedroom within.
Sir Patrick’s view was that Jean might take her leave in full state
and honour, leaving Eleanor to marry her Duke in due time; but the girl
shuddered at this. ‘Oh no, no; he would call himself my brother for the
nonce and throw me into some convent! There is nothing for it but to
make it impossible. Sir Patie, fetch Geordie, and tell him, an’ he loves
me, to wed me on the spot, and bear me awa’ to bonnie Scotland. Would
that I had never been beguiled into quitting it.’
‘Geordie Douglas! You were all for flouting him a while ago,’ said
Eleanor, puzzled.
‘Dinna be sae daft like, Elleen, that was but sport, and--and a maid may
not hold herself too cheap! Geordie that followed me all the way from
home, and was sair hurt for me, and freed me from yon awsome castle. Oh,
could ye trow that I could love ony but he?’
It was not too easy to refrain from saying, ‘So that’s the end of all
your airs,’ but the fear of making her fly off again withheld Lady
Drummond, and even Eleanor.
George did not lodge in the castle, and Sir Patrick could not sound him
till the morning; but for a long space after the two sisters had laid
their heads on the pillow Jean was tossing, sometimes sobbing; and to
her sister’s consolations she replied, ‘Oh, Elleen, he can never forgive
me! Why did my hard, dour, ungrateful nature so sport with his leal
loving heart? Will he spurn me the now? Geordie, Geordie, I shall never
see your like! It would but be my desert if I were left behind to that
treacherous spiteful prince,--I wad as soon be a mouse in a cat’s claw!’
But George of Angus made no doubt. He had won his ladylove at last, and
the only further doubt remained as to how the matter was to be carried
out. Jaques Coeur was consulted again. No priest at Tours would, he
thought, dare to perform the ceremony, for fear of after-vengeance of
the Dauphin; and Sir Patrick then suggested Father Romuald, who had been
lingering in his train waiting to cross the Alps till his Scotch friends
should have departed and winter be over; but the deed would hardly be
safely done within the city.
The merchant’s advice was this: Sir Patrick, his Lady, and the Master of
Angus had better openly take leave of the Court and start on the way to
Brittany. No opposition would be made, though if Louis suspected Lady
Jean’s presence in their party, he might close the gates and detain
her; Jaques Coeur therefore thought she had better travel separately at
first. For Eleanor, as the betrothed bride of Sigismund, there was no
might therefore remain at Court with the Queen. Jaques Coeur, the
greatest merchant of his day, had just received a large train of waggons
loaded with stuffs and other wares from Bourges, on the way to Nantes,
and he proposed that the Lady Jean should travel with one attendant
female in one of these, passing as the wife and daughter of the foreman.
These two personages had actually travelled to Tours, and were content
to remain there, while their places were taken by Madame de Ste.
Petronelle and Jean.
We must not describe the parting of the sisters, nor the many messages
sent by Elleen to bonny Scotland, and the brothers and sisters she was
willing to see no more for the sake of her Austrian Duke. Of her all
that needs to be said is that she lived and died happy and honoured,
delighting him by her flow of wit and poetry, and only regretting that
she was a childless wife.
Barbe and Trudchen were to remain in her suite, Barbe still grieving for
‘her boy,’ and hoping to devote all she could obtain as wage or largesse
to masses for his soul, and Trudchen, very happy in the new world,
though being broken in with some difficulty to civilised life.
Having been conveyed by by-streets to the great factory or shop of
Maltre Coeur at Tours, a wonder in itself, though far inferior to his
main establishment at Bourges, Madame de Ste. Petronelle and Jean, with
her faithful Skywing nestled under her cloak, were handed by Jaques
himself to seats in a covered wain, containing provisions for them and
also some more delicate wares, destined for the Duchess of Brittany. He
was himself in riding gear, and a troop of armed servants awaited him on
horseback.
‘Was he going with them?’ Jean asked.
‘Not all the way,’ he said; but he would not part with the lady till he
had resigned her to the charge of the Sire de Glenuskie. The state of
should accompany any valuable convoy, that his going with the party
would excite no suspicion.
So they journeyed on in the wain at the head of a quarter of a mile of
waggons and pack-horses, slowly indeed, but so steadily that they were
sure of a good start before the princess’s departure was known to the
Court.
It was at the evening halt at a conventual grange that they came up with
the rest of the party, and George Douglas spurred forward to meet them,
and hold out his eager arms as Jean sprang from the waggon. Wisdom
as well as love held that it would be better that Jean should enter
Brittany as a wife, so that the Duke might not be bribed or intimidated
into yielding her to Louis. It was in the little village church, very
early the next morning, that George Douglas received the reward of his
long patience in the hand of Joanna Stewart, a wiser, less petulant,
and more womanly being than the vain and capricious lassie whom he had
followed from Scotland two years previously.
End of Project Gutenberg’s Two Penniless Princesses, by Charlotte M. Yonge