LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

love, had hardened and soured her. She despised and domineered over her second husband, and made no secret that the number of her daughters was oppressive, and that it was hard that while the royal branch had produced, with one exception, only useless pining maidens, her second marriage in too quick succession should bring her sons, who could only be a burthen. No one greatly marvelled when, a few weeks after the birth of little Andrew, his father disappeared, though whether he had perished in some brawl, been lost at sea, or sought foreign service as far as possible from his queenly wife and inconvenient family, no one knew.

      Not long after, the Queen, with her four daughters and the infants, had been seized upon by a noted freebooter, Patrick Hepburn of Hailes, and carried to Dunbar Castle, probably to serve as hostages, for they were fairly well treated, though never allowed to go beyond the walls. The Queen’s health had, however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the north wind withered her up, and she died in the beginning of the year 1445.

      The desolateness of the poor girls had perhaps been greater than their grief. Poor Joanna had been exacting and tyrannical, and with no female attendants but the old, worn-out English nurse, had made them do her all sorts of services, which were requited with scoldings and grumblings instead of the loving thanks which ought to have made them offices of affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys would indeed have fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve years old, had not been one of those girls who are endowed from the first with tender, motherly instincts.

      Beyond providing that there was a supply of some sort of food, and that they were confined within the walls of the Castle, Hepburn did not trouble his head about his prisoners, and for many weeks they had no intercourse with any one save Archie Scott, an old groom of their mother’s; Ankaret, nurse to baby Andrew; and the seneschal and his wife, both Hepburns.

      Eleanor and Jean, who had been eight and seven years old at the time of the terrible catastrophe which had changed all their lives, had been well taught under their father’s influence; and the former, who had inherited much of his talent and poetical nature, had availed herself of every scanty opportunity of feeding her imagination by book or ballad, story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies that she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that of her sisters, in the many long and dreary hours that they had to pass, unbrightened save by the inextinguishable buoyancy of young creatures together. When their mother was dying, Hepburn could not help for very shame admitting a priest to her bedside, and allowing the clergy to perform her obsequies in full form. This had led to a more complete perception of the condition of the poor Princesses, just at the time when the two worst tyrants over the young King, Crichton and Livingstone, had fallen out, and he had been able to put himself under the guidance of his first cousin, James Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews and now Chancellor of Scotland, one of the wisest, best, and truest-hearted men in Scotland, and imbued with the spirit of the late King.

      By his management Hepburn was induced to make submission and deliver up Dunbar Castle to the King with all its captives, and the meeting between the brother and sisters was full of extreme delight on both sides. They had been together very little since their father’s death, only meeting enough to make them long for more opportunities; and the boy at fifteen years old was beginning to weary after the home feeling of rest among kindred, and was so happy amidst his sisters that no attempt at breaking up the party at Dunbar had yet been made, as its situation made it a convenient abode for the Court. Though he had never had such advantages of education as, strangely enough, captivity had afforded to his father, he had not been untaught, and his rapid, eager, intelligent mind had caught at all opportunities afforded by those palace monasteries of Scotland in which he had stayed for various periods of his vexed and stormy minority. Good Bishop Kennedy, with whom he had now spent many months, had studied at Paris and had passed four years at Rome, so as to be well able both to enlarge and stimulate his notions. In Eleanor he had found a companion delighted to share his studies, and full likewise of original fancy and of that vein of poetry almost peculiar to Scottish women; and Jean was equally charming for all the sports in which she could take part, while the little ones, whom, to his credit be it spoken, he always treated as brothers, were pleasant playthings.

      His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy change in the maidens’ lives; and yet there was still great dreariness, much restraint in the presence of constant precaution against violence, much rudeness and barbarism in the surroundings, absolute poverty in the plenishing, a lack of all beauty save in the wild and rugged face of northern nature, and it was hardly to be wondered at that young people, inheritors of the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the Plantagenets, should yearn for something beyond, especially for that sunny southern land which report and youthful imagination made them believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry, and the loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that golden age when their noble and tender-hearted father was among them.

      The boy’s foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the battlements—a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as Eleanor, and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red mark upon one cheek.

      ‘How now, wee Andie?’ he exclaimed, tossing the baby boy up in his arms, and then on the cry of ‘Johnnie too!’ ‘Me too!’ performing the same feat with the other two, the last so boisterously that Mary screamed that ‘the bairnie would be coupit over the crag.’

      ‘What, looking out over the sea?’ he cried to his elder sisters. ‘That’s the wrang side! Ye should look out on the other, to see Glenuskie coming with Davie and Malcolm, so we’ll have no lack of minstrelsy and tales to-night, that is if the doited old council will let me alone. Here, come to the southern tower to watch for them.’

      The sisters had worked themselves to the point of eagerness where propitious moments are disregarded, and both broke out—

      ‘Glenuskie is going to Margaret. We want to go with him!’

      ‘Go! Go to Margaret and leave me!’ cried James, the red spot on his face spreading.

      ‘Oh, Jamie, it is so dull and dreary, and folks are so fierce and rude.’

      ‘That might be when that loon Hepburn had you, but now you have me, who can take order with them.’

      ‘You cannot do all, Jamie,’ persisted Eleanor; ‘and we long after that fair smooth land of peace. Lady Glenuskie would take good care of us till we came to Margaret.’

      ‘Ay! And ‘tis little you heed how it is with me,’ exclaimed James, ‘when you are gone to your daffing and singing and dancing—with me that have saved you from that reiver Hepburn.’

      ‘Jamie, dear, I’ll never quit ye,’ said little Mary’s gentle voice.

      He laughed.

      ‘You are a leal faithful little lady, Mary; but you are no good as yet, when Angus is speiring for my sister for his heir.’

      ‘And do you trow,’ said Jean hotly, ‘that when one sister is to be a queen, and the other is next thing to it, we are going to put up with a raw-boned, red-haired, unmannerly Scots earl?’

      ‘And do you forget who is King of Scotland, ye proud peat?’ her brother cried in return.

      ‘A braw sort of king,’ returned Jean, ‘who could not hinder his mother and sisters from being stolen by an outlaw.’

      The pride and hot temper of the Beauforts had descended to both brother and sister, and James lifted his hand with ‘Dare to say that again’; and Jean was beginning ‘I dare,’ when little Annaple opportunely called, ‘There’s a plump of spears coming over the hill.’

      There was an instant rush to watch them, James saying—

      ‘The Drummond banner! Ye shall see how Glenuskie mocks at this same fine fancy of yours’; and he ran downstairs at no kingly pace, letting the heavy nail-studded door bang after him.

      ‘He will never let us go,’ sighed Jean.

      ‘You worked him into one of his tempers,’ returned Eleanor. ‘You should have broached it to him more by degrees.’

      ‘And lost the chance of going with Sir Patie and his wife, and got plighted to the red-haired Master

Скачать книгу