'Thou wert before me! Ah! forgive thy tardy knight,' he continued, gazing at her really enhanced beauty as if he had eyes for no one else, even while with lip and hand, kiss, grasp, and word, he greeted her companions, of whom Jaqueline of Hainault and John of Bedford were the most prominent.
'And the babe! where is he?' then cried he. 'Let me have him to hold up to my brave fellows in the court!'
'The Prince of Wales?' said Catherine. 'You never spake of my bringing him.'
'If I spake not, it was because I doubted not for a moment that you would keep him with you. Nay, verily it is not in sooth that you left him. You are merely sporting with use.'
'Truly, Sir,' said Catherine, 'I never guessed that you would clog yourself with a babe in the cradle, and I deemed him more safely nursed at Windsor.'
'If it be for his safety! Yet a soldier's boy should thrive among soldiers,' said the King, evidently much disappointed, and proceeding to eager inquiries as to the appearance and progress of his child; to which the Queen replied with a certain languor, as though she had no very intimate personal knowledge of her little son.
Other eyes were meanwhile eagerly scanning the bright confusion of veils and wimples; and Malcolm had just made out the tall head and dark locks under a long almost shrouding white veil far away in the background behind the Countess of Hainault, when the Duke of Bedford came up with a frown of consternation on his always anxious face, and drawing King James into a window, said, 'What have you been doing to him?'--to which James, without hearing the question, replied, 'Where is SHE?'
'Joan? At home. It was the Queen's will. Of that another time. But what means this?' and he signed towards his brother. 'Never saw I man so changed.'
'Had you seen him at Christmas you might have said so,' replied James; 'but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him so fair and comely.'
'I tell you, James,' said Bedford, contracting his brows till they almost met ever his arched nose, 'I tell you, his look brings back to me my mother's, the last time she greeted my father!'
'To your fantasy, not your memory, John! You were a mere babe at her death.'
'Of five years,' said Bedford. 'That face--that cough--have brought all back--ay, the yearning look when my father was absent, and the pure rosy fairness that Harry and Tom cited so fiercely against one who would have told them how sick to death she was. I mind me too, that when our grandame of Hereford made us motherless children over to our grandsire of Lancaster, it was with a warning that Harry had the tender lungs of the Bohuns, and needed care. One deadly sickness he had at Kenilworth, when my father was ridden for post-haste. My mind misgave me throughout this weary siege; but his service held me fast at home, and I trusted that you would watch over him.'
'A man like him is ill to guide,' said James; 'but he is more himself now than he has been for months, and a few weeks' quiet with his wife will restore him. But what is this?' he proceeded in his turn; 'why is the Lady Joan not here?'
'How can I tell? It was no fault of mine. I even got a prim warning that it became me not to meddle about her ladies, and I doubted what slanders you might hear if I were seen asking your Nightingale for a token.'
'Have you none! Good John, I know you have.'
John smiled his ironical smile, produced from the pouch at his girdle a small packet bound with rose-coloured silk, and said: 'The Nightingale hath a plume, you see, and saith, moreover, that her knight hath done his devoir passably, but that she yet looks to see him send some captive giant to her feet. So, Sir Knight, I hope your poor dwarf hath acquitted him well in your chivalrous jargon.'
James smiled and coloured with pleasure; the fantastic message was not devoid of reality in the days when young imaginative spirits tried to hide the prose of war and policy in a bright mist of romantic fancy; nor was he ashamed to bend his manly head in reverence to, and even press to his lips, his lady's first love- letter, in the very sight of the satirical though sympathizing Bedford, of whom he eagerly asked of the fair Joan's health and welfare, and whether she were flouted by Queen Catherine.
'No more than is the meed of her beauty,' said Bedford. 'Sister Kate likes not worship at any shrine save one. Look at our suite: our knights--yea, our very grooms are picked for their comeliness; to wit that great feather-pated oaf of a Welshman, Owen Tudor there; while dames and demoiselles, tire-women and all, are as near akin as may be to Sir Gawain's loathly lady.'
'Not at least the fair Luxemburg. Did not I see her stately mien?'
'She is none of the Queen's, and moreover she stands aloof, so that the women forgive her gifts! There is that cough of Harry's again! He is the shadow of the man he was; I would I knew if this were the step-dame's doing.'
'Nay, John, when you talk to me of Harry's cough, and of night- watches and flooded camps, I hearken; but when your wits run wool- gathering after that poor woman, making waxen images stuck full--'
'You are in the right on't, James,' said Henry, who had come up to them while he was speaking. 'John will never get sorceries out of his head. I have thought it over, and will not be led into oppressing my father's widow any more. I cannot spend this Pentecost cheerily till I know she is set free and restored to her manors; and I shall write to Humfrey and the Council to that effect.'
And as John shrugged his shoulders, Henry gaily added: 'Thou seest what comes of a winter spent with this unbeliever Jamie; and truly, I found the thought of unright to my father's widow was a worse pin in my heart than ever she is like to thrust there.'
Thus then it was, that in the overflowing joy and good-will of his heart, and mayhap with the presentiment which rendered him willing to be at peace with all his kindred, Henry forgave and released his step-mother, Joan of Navarre, whom common rumour termed the Witch Queen, and whom he had certainly little reason to love, whether it were true or not that she had attempted to weave spells against him. In fact, there were few of the new-comers from England who did not, like Bedford, impute the transparency of Henry's hands, and the hollowness of his brightly-tinted cheek, to some form of sorcery.
Meantime, Esclairmonde de Luxemburg, more beautiful than ever under a still simpler dress, had greeted Malcolm with her wonted kindness; adding, with a smile, that he was so much grown and embrowned that she should not have known him but for the sweet Scottish voice which he, like his king, possessed.
'You do me too much grace in commending aught that is mine, madame,' said Malcolm, with an attempt at the assurance he believed himself to have acquired; but he could only finish by faltering and blushing. There was a power of repression about Esclairmonde that annihilated all his designs, and drove him back into his bashful self whenever he came into contact with her, and felt how unlike the grave serene loftiness of her presence was to the mere queen of romance, that in her absence her shadow had become.
Alice Montagu, returning to her side, relieved while disconcerting him. Sweet little Alice had been in a continual flutter ever since commands had come from Meaux that she was to come out to meet the father whom she had not seen since what seemed like half her childish lifetime, and the betrothed whom she had never seen at all; and Lady Westmoreland had added to her awe by the lengthened admonition with which she took leave of her. And on this day, when Esclairmonde herself had arrayed the fair child in the daintiest of rose-pink boddices edged with swan's-down, the whitest of kirtles, and softest of rosy veils, the flush of anxiety on the pale little face made it so fair to look upon, that as the maiden wistfully asked, 'Think you he will flout me?' it was impossible not to laugh at the very notion. 'Ah! but I would be glad if he did, for then I might bide with you.'