Two Penniless Princesses [62]
'Hoots with thy clavers,' exclaimed Jeanie in return. 'I never let thee sing that fule song, but Meg's fancies have brought the megrims into thine head! Thou and she are pair.'
'That we shall be nae longer,' sighed Eleanor. 'I saw the shroud as clear as I see yon cross on the spire.'
CHAPTER 8
STINGS
'Yet one asylum is my own, Against the dreaded hour; A long, a silent, and a lone, Where kings have little power.'--SCOTT.
At Chalons, the Sieur de Terreforte and his son Olivier, a very quiet, stiff, and well-trained youth, met Sir Patrick and the Lady of Glenuskie. Terreforte was within the province of Champagne, and as long as the Court remained at Chalons the Sieur felt bound to remain in attendance on the King--lodging at his own house, or hotel, as he called it, in the city. Dame Lilias did not regret anything which gave her a little more time with her daughter, and enabled Annis to make a little more acquaintance with her bridegroom and his family before being left alone with them. Moreover, she hoped to see something more of her cousins the princesses.
But they came not. The Dauphin and his wife arrived from their excursion and took up their abode in the Castle of Surry le Chateau, at a short distance from thence and thither went the Lady of Glenuskie with her husband to pay her respects, and present the betrothed of her daughter.
Margaret was sitting in a shady nook of the walls, under the shade of a tall, massive tower, with a page reading to her, but in that impulsive manner which the Court of France thought grossiere and sauvage; she ran down the stone stairs and threw herself on the neck of her cousin, exclaiming, however, 'But where are my sisters?'
'Are they not with your Grace? I thought to find them here!'
'Nay! They were to start two days after us, with an escort of archers, while we visited the shrine of St. Menehould. They might have been here before us,' exclaimed Margaret, in much alarm. 'My husband thought our train would be too large if they went with us.'
'If we had known that they were not to be with your Grace, we would have tarried for them,' said Dame Lilias.
'Oh, cousin, would that you bad!'
'Mayhap King Rene and his daughter persuaded them to wait a few days.'
That was the best hope, but there was much uneasiness when another day passed and the Scottish princesses did not appear. Strange whispers, coming from no one knew where, began to be current that they had disappeared in company with some of those wild and gay knights who had met at the tournament at Nanci.
In extreme alarm and indignation, Margaret repaired to her husband. He was kneeling before the shrine of the Lady in the Chapel of Surry, telling his beads, and he did not stir, or look round, or relax one murmur of his Aves, while she paced about, wrung her hands, and vainly tried to control her agitation. At last he rose, and coldly said, 'I knew it could be no other who thus interrupted my devotions.'
'My sisters!' she gasped.
'Well, what of them?'
'Do you know what wicked things are said of them--the dear maids? Ah!'--as she saw his strange smile--'you have heard! You will silence the fellows, who deserve to have their tongues torn out for defaming a king's daughters.'
'Verily, ma mie,' said Louis, 'I see no such great improbability in the tale. They have been bred up to the like, no doubt a mountain kite of the Vosges is a more congenial companion than a chevalier bien courtois.'
'You speak thus simply to tease your poor Margot,' she said, pleading yet trembling; 'but I know better than to think you mean it.'
'As my lady pleases,' he said.
'Then will I send Sir Patrick with an escort to seek them at Nanci and bring them hither?'
'Where is this same troop to come from?' demanded Louis.
'Our own Scottish archers, who will see no harm befall my blessed father's daughters.'
'Ha! say you so? I had heard a different story from Buchan, from the Grahams, the Halls. Revenge