Thomas the Nestorian had been in many lands and in the midst of many dangers, but he had never before found himself in quite so unpleasant a position as now. Six ugly Tartar horsemen with very uncomfortable-looking spears and appalling shouts, and mounted on their swift Kirghiz ponies, were charging down upon him, while neither the rushing Yellow River on the right hand, nor the steep dirt-cliffs on the left, could offer him shelter or means of escape. These dirt-cliffs, or “loess,” to give them their scientific name, are remarkable banks of brownish-yellow loam, found largely in Northern and Western China, and rising sometimes to a height of a thousand feet. Their peculiar yellow tinge makes every thing look “hwang” or yellow,—and hence yellow is a favorite color among the Chinese. So, for instance, the emperor is “Hwang-ti”—the “Lord of the Yellow Land”; the imperial throne is the “Hwang-wei” or “yellow throne” of China; the great river, formerly spelled in your school geographies Hoang-ho, is “Hwang-ho,” the “yellow river,” etc.
These “hwang” cliffs, or dirt-cliffs, are full of caves and crevices, but the good priest could see no convenient cave, and he had therefore no alternative but to boldly face his fate, and like a brave man calmly meet what he could not avoid.
But, just as he had singled out, as his probable captor, one peculiarly unattractive-looking horseman, whose crimson sheepskin coat and long horsetail plume were streaming in the wind, and just as he had braced himself to meet the onset against the great “loess,” or dirt-cliff, he felt a twitch at his black upper robe, and a low voice—a girl’s, he was confident—said quickly:
“Look not before nor behind thee, good O-lopun, but trust to my word and give a backward leap.”
Thomas the Nestorian had learned two valuable lessons in his much wandering about the earth,—never to appear surprised, and always to be ready to act quickly. So, knowing nothing of the possible results of his action, but feeling that it could scarcely be worse than death from Tartar spears, he leaped back, as bidden.
The next instant, he found himself flat upon his back in one of the low-ceiled cliff caves that abound in Western China, while the screen of vines that had concealed its entrance still quivered from his fall. Picking himself up and breathing a prayer of thanks for his deliverance, he peered through the leafy doorway and beheld in surprise six much astonished Tartar robbers regarding with looks of puzzled wonder a defiant little Chinese girl, who had evidently darted out of the cave as he had tumbled in. She was facing the enemy as boldly as had he, and her little almond eyes fairly danced with mischievous delight at their perplexity.
At once he recognized the child. She was Woo (the “high-spirited” or “dauntless one”), the bright young girl whom he had often noticed in the throng at his mission-house in Tung-Chow,—the little city by the Yellow River, where her father, the bannerman, held guard at the Dragon Gate.
He was about to call out to the girl to save herself, when, with a sudden swoop, the Tartar whom he had braced himself to resist, bent in his saddle and made a dash for the child. But agile little, Woo was quicker than the Tartar horseman. With a nimble turn and a sudden spring, she dodged the Tartar’s hand, darted under his pony’s legs, and with a shrill laugh of derision, sprang up the sharp incline, and disappeared in one of the many cliff caves before the now doubly baffled horsemen could see what had become of her.
With a grunt of discomfiture and disgust, the Tartar riders turned their ponies’ heads and galloped off along the road that skirted the yellow waters of the swift-flowing Hwang-ho. Then a little yellow face peeped out of a cave farther up the cliff, a black-haired, tightly braided head bobbed and twitched with delight, and the next moment the good priest was heartily thanking his small ally for so skilfully saving him from threatened capture.
It was a cool September morning in the days of the great Emperor Tai, twelve hundred and fifty years ago. And a great emperor was Tai-tsung, though few, if any, of my young readers ever heard his name. His splendid palace stood in the midst of lovely gardens in the great city of Chang-an,—that old, old city that for over two thousand years was the capital of China, and which you can now find in your geographies under its modern name of Singan-foo. And in the year 635, when our story opens, the name of Tai-tsung was great and powerful throughout the length and breadth of Chung Kwoh—the “Middle Kingdom,” as the Chinese for nearly thirty centuries have called their vast country—while the stories of his fame and power had reached to the western courts of India and of Persia, of Constantinople, and even of distant Rome.
It was a time of darkness and strife in Europe. Already what historians have called the Dark Ages had settled upon the Christian world. And among all the races of men the only nation that was civilized, and learned, and cultivated, and refined in this seventh century of the Christian era, was this far eastern Empire of China, where schools and learning flourished, and arts and manufactures abounded, when America was as yet undiscovered and Europe was sunk in degradation.
And here, since the year 505, the Nestorians, a branch of the Christian Church, originating in Asia Minor in the fifth century, and often called “the Protestants of the East,” had been spreading the story of the life and love of Christ. And here, in this year of grace 635, in the city of Chang-an, and in all the region about the Yellow River, the good priest Thomas the Nestorian, whom the Chinese called O-lo-pun—the nearest approach they could give to his strange Syriac name—had his Christian mission-house, and was zealously bringing to the knowledge of a great and enlightened people the still greater and more helpful light of Christianity.
“My daughter,” said the Nestorian after his words of thanks were uttered; “this is a gracious deed done to me, and one that I may not easily repay. Yet would I gladly do so, if I might. Tell me what wouldst thou like above all other things?”
The answer of the girl was as ready as it was unexpected.
“To be a boy, O master!” she replied. “Let the great Shang-ti,(1) whose might thou teachest, make me a man that I may have revenge.”
(1) Almighty Being.
The good priest had found strange things in his mission work in this far Eastern land, but this wrathful demand of an excited little maid was full as strange as any. For China is and ever has been a land in which the chief things taught the children are, “subordination, passive submission to the law, to parents, and to all superiors, and a peaceful demeanor.”
“Revenge is not for men to trifle with, nor maids to talk of,” he said. “Harbor no such desires, but rather come with me and I will show thee more attractive things. This very day doth the great emperor go forth from the City of Peace,(1) to the banks of the Yellow River. Come thou with me to witness the splendor of his train, and perchance even to see the great emperor himself and the young Prince Kaou, his son.”
(1) The meaning of Chang-an, the ancient capital of China, is “the City of Continuous Peace.”
“That I will not then,” cried the girl, more hotly than before. “I hate this great emperor, as men do wrongfully call him, and I hate the young Prince Kaou. May Lung Wang, the god of the dragons, dash them both beneath the Yellow River ere yet they leave its banks this day.”
At this terrible wish on the lips of a girl, the good master very nearly forgot even his most valuable precept—never to be surprised. He regarded his defiant young companion in sheer amazement.
“Have a care, have a care, my daughter!” he said at length. “The blessed Saint James telleth us that the tongue is a little member, but it can kindle a great fire. How mayst thou hope to say such direful words against the Son of Heaven(1) and live?”
(1) “The Son of Heaven” is one of the chief titles of the Chinese emperor.
“The Son of Heaven killed the emperor, my father,” said the child.
“The emperor thy father!” Thomas the Nestorian almost gasped in this latest surprise. “Is the girl crazed or doth she sport with one who seeketh her good?” And amazement and perplexity settled upon his face.
“The Princess Woo is neither crazed nor doth she sport with the master,” said the girl. “I do but speak the truth. Great is Tai-tsung. Whom he will he slayeth, and whom he will he keepeth alive.” And then she told the astonished priest that the bannerman of the Dragon Gate was not her father at all. For, she said, as she had lain awake only the night before, she had heard enough in talk between the bannerman and his wife to learn her secret—how that she was the only daughter of the rightful emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne; and how she, the Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid waters of which she had been rescued by the bannerman of the Dragon Gate.
“This may or may not be so,” Thomas the Nestorian said, uncertain whether or not to credit the girl’s surprising story; “but even were it true, my daughter, how couldst thou right thyself? What can a girl hope to do?”
The young princess drew up her small form proudly. “Do?” she cried in brave tones; “I can do much, wise O-lo-pun, girl though I am! Did not a girl save the divine books of Confucius, when the great Emperor Chi-Hwang-ti did command the burning of all the books in the empire? Did not a girl—though but a soothsayer’s daughter—raise the outlaw Liu Pang straight to the Yellow Throne? And shall I, who am the daughter of emperors, fail to be as able or as brave as they?”
The wise Nestorian was shrewd enough to see that here was a prize that might be worth the fostering. By the assumption of mystic knowledge, he learned from the bannerman of the Dragon Gate, the truth of the girl’s story, and so worked upon the good bannerman’s native superstition and awe of superior power as to secure the custody of the young princess, and to place her in his mission-house at Tung-Chow for teaching and guidance. Among the early Christians, the Nestorians held peculiarly helpful and elevating ideas of the worth and proper condition of woman. Their precepts were full of mutual help, courtesy, and fraternal love. All these the Princess Woo learned under her preceptor’s guidance. She grew to be even more assertive and self-reliant, and became, also, expert in many sports in which, in that woman-despising country, only boys could hope to excel. One day, when she was about fourteen years old, the Princess Woo was missing from the Nestorian mission-house, by the Yellow River. Her troubled guardian, in much anxiety, set out to find the truant; and, finally, in the course of his search, climbed the high bluff from which he saw the massive walls, the many gateways, the gleaming roofs, and porcelain towers of the Imperial city of Chang-an-the City of Continuous Peace.
But even before he had entered its northern gate, a little maid in loose silken robe, peaked cap, and embroidered shoes had passed through that very gateway, and slipping through the thronging streets of the great city, approached at last the group of picturesque and glittering buildings that composed the palace of the great Emperor Tai.
Just within the main gateway of the palace rose the walls of the Imperial Academy, where eight thousand Chinese boys received instruction under the patronage of the emperor, while, just beyond extended the long, low range of the archery school, in which even the emperor himself sometimes came to witness, or take part in, the exciting contests.
Drawing about her shoulders the yellow sash that denoted alliance with royalty, the Princess Woo, without a moment’s hesitation, walked straight through the palace gateway, past the wondering guards, and into the boundaries of the archery court.
Here the young Prince Kaou, an indolent and lazy lad of about her own age, was cruelly goading on his trained crickets to a ferocious fight within their gilded bamboo cage, while, just at hand, the slaves were preparing his bow and arrows for his daily archery practice.
Now, among the rulers of China there are three classes of privileged targets—the skin of the bear for the emperor himself, the skin of the deer for the princes of the blood, and the skin of the tiger for the nobles of the court; and thus, side by side, in the Imperial Archery School at Chang-an, hung the three targets.
The girl with the royal sash and the determined face walked straight up to the Prince Kaou. The boy left off goading his fighting crickets, and looked in astonishment at this strange and highly audacious girl, who dared to enter a place from which all women were excluded. Before the guards could interfere, she spoke.
“Are the arrows of the great Prince Kaou so well fitted to the cord,” she said, “that he dares to try his skill with one who, although a girl, hath yet the wit and right to test his skill?”
The guards laid hands upon the intruder to drag her away, but the prince, nettled at her tone, yet glad to welcome any thing that promised novelty or amusement, bade them hold off their hands.
“No girl speaketh thus to the Prince Kaou and liveth,” he said insolently. “Give me instant test of thy boast, or the wooden collar(1) in the palace torture-house, shall be thy fate.”
(1) The “wooden collar” was the “kia” or “cangue,”—a terrible instrument of torture used in China for the punishment of criminals.
“Give me the arrows, Prince,” the girl said, bravely, “and I will make good my words.”
At a sign, the slaves handed her a bow and arrows. But, as she tried the cord and glanced along the polished shaft, the prince said:
“Yet, stay, girl; here is no target set for thee. Let the slaves set up the people’s target. These are not for such as thou.”
“Nay, Prince, fret not thyself,” the girl coolly replied. “My target is here!” and while all looked on in wonder, the undaunted girl deliberately toed the practice line, twanged her bow, and with a sudden whiz, sent her well-aimed shaft quivering straight into the small white centre of the great bearskin—the imperial target itself!
With a cry of horror and of rage at such sacrilege, the guards pounced upon the girl archer, and would have dragged her away. But with the same quick motion that had saved her from the Tartar robbers, she sprang from their grasp and, standing full before the royal target, she said commandingly:
“Hands off, slaves; nor dare to question my right to the bearskin target. I am the Empress!”
It needed but this to cap the climax. Prince, guards, and slaves looked at this extraordinary girl in open-mouthed wonder. But ere their speechless amazement could change to instant seizure, a loud laugh rang from the imperial doorway and a hearty voice exclaimed: “Braved, and by a girl! Who is thy Empress, Prince? Let me, too, salute the Tsih-tien!”(1) Then a portly figure, clad in yellow robes, strode down to the targets, while all within the archery lists prostrated themselves in homage before one of China’s greatest monarchs—the Emperor Tai-tsung, Wun-woo-ti.(2)
(1) “The Sovereign Divine”—an imperial title.
(2) “Our Exalted Ancestor—the Literary-Martial Emperor.”
But before even the emperor could reach the girl, the bamboo screen was swept hurriedly aside, and into the archery lists came the anxious priest, Thomas the Nestorian. He had traced his missing charge even to the imperial palace, and now found her in the very presence of those he deemed her mortal enemies. Prostrate at the emperor’s feet, he told the young girl’s story, and then pleaded for her life, promising to keep her safe and secluded in his mission-home at Tung-Chow.
The Emperor Tai laughed a mighty laugh, for the bold front of this only daughter of his former master and rival, suited his warlike humor. But he was a wise and clement monarch withal.
“Nay, wise O-lo-pun,” he said. “Such rivals to our throne may not be at large, even though sheltered in the temples of the hung-mao.(1) The royal blood of the house of Sui(2) flows safely only within palace walls. Let the proper decree be registered, and let the gifts be exchanged; for to-morrow thy ward, the Princess Woo, becometh one of our most noble queens.”
(1) The “light-haired ones”—an old Chinese term for the western Christians.
(2) The name of the former dynasty.
And so at fourteen, even as the records show, this strong-willed young girl of the Yellow River became one of the wives of the great Emperor Tai. She proved a very gracious and acceptable stepmother to young Prince Kaou, who, as the records also tell us, grew so fond of the girl queen that, within a year from the death of his great father, and when he himself had succeeded to the Yellow Throne, as Emperor Supreme, he recalled the Queen Woo from her retirement in the mission-house at Tung-Chow and made her one of his royal wives. Five years after, in the year 655, she was declared Empress, and during the reign of her lazy and indolent husband she was “the power behind the throne.” And when, in the year 683, Kaou-tsung died, she boldly assumed the direction of the government, and, ascending the throne, declared herself Woo How Tsih-tien—Woo the Empress Supreme and Sovereign Divine.
History records that this Zenobia of China proved equal to the great task. She “governed the empire with discretion,” extended its borders, and was acknowledged as empress from the shores of the Pacific to the borders of Persia, of India, and of the Caspian Sea.
Her reign was one of the longest and most successful in that period known in history as the Golden Age of China. Because of the relentless native prejudice against a successful woman, in a country where girl babies are ruthlessly drowned, as the quickest way of ridding the world of useless incumbrances, Chinese historians have endeavored to blacken her character and undervalue her services. But later scholars now see that she was a powerful and successful queen, who did great good to her native land, and strove to maintain its power and glory.
She never forgot her good friend and protector, Thomas the Nestorian. During her long reign of almost fifty years, Christianity strengthened in the kingdom, and obtained a footing that only the great Mahometan conquests of five centuries later entirely destroyed; and the Empress Woo, so the chronicles declare, herself “offered sacrifices to the great God of all.” When, hundreds of years after, the Jesuit missionaries penetrated into this most exclusive of all the nations of the earth, they found near the palace at Chang-an the ruins of the Nestorian mission church, with the cross still standing, and, preserved through all the changes of dynasties, an abstract in Syriac characters of the Christian law, and with it the names of seventy-two attendant priests who had served the church established by O-lo-pun.
Thus, in a land in which, from the earliest ages, women have been regarded as little else but slaves, did a self-possessed and wise young girl triumph over all difficulties, and rule over her many millions of subjects “in a manner becoming a great prince.” This, even her enemies admit. “Lessening the miseries of her subjects,” so the historians declare, she governed the wide Empire of China wisely, discreetly, and peacefully; and she displayed upon the throne all the daring, wit, and wisdom that had marked her actions when, years before, she was nothing but a sprightly and determined little Chinese maiden, on the banks of the turbid Yellow River.
On a broad and deep window-seat in the old Abbey guest-house at Gloucester, sat two young girls of thirteen and ten; before them, brave-looking enough in his old-time costume, stood a manly young fellow of sixteen. The three were in earnest conversation, all unmindful of the noise about them—the romp and riot of a throng of young folk, attendants, or followers of the knights and barons of King William’s court.
For William Rufus, son of the Conqueror and second Norman king of England, held his Whitsuntide gemot, or summer council of his lords and lieges, in the curious old Roman-Saxon-Norman town of Gloucester, in the fair vale through which flows the noble Severn. The city is known to the young folk of to-day as the one in which good Robert Raikes started the first Sunday-school more than a hundred years ago. But the gemot of King William the Red, which was a far different gathering from good Mr. Raikes’ Sunday-school, was held in the great chapter-house of the old Benedictine Abbey, while the court was lodged in the Abbey guest-houses, in the grim and fortress-like Gloucester Castle, and in the houses of the quaint old town itself.
The boy was shaking his head rather doubtfully as he stood, looking down upon the two girls on the broad window-seat.
“Nay, nay, beausire(1); shake not your head like that,” exclaimed the younger of the girls. “We did escape that way, trust me we did; Edith here can tell you I do speak the truth—for sure, ‘t was her device.”
(1) “Fair sir”: an ancient style of address, used especially toward those high in rank in Norman times.
Thirteen-year-old Edith laughed merrily enough at her sister’s perplexity, and said gayly as the lad turned questioningly to her:
“Sure, then, beausire, ‘t is plain to see that you are Southron-born and know not the complexion of a Scottish mist. Yet ‘t is even as Mary said. For, as we have told you, the Maiden’s Castle standeth high-placed on the crag in Edwin’s Burgh, and hath many and devious pathways to the lower gate, So when the Red Donald’s men were swarming up the steep, my uncle, the Atheling, did guide us, by ways we knew well, and by twists and turnings that none knew better, straight through Red Donald’s array, and all unseen and unnoted of them, because of the blessed thickness of the gathering mist.”
“And this was YOUR device?” asked the boy, admiringly.
“Ay, but any one might have devised it too,” replied young Edith, modestly. “Sure, ‘t was no great device to use a Scotch mist for our safety, and ‘t were wiser to chance it than stay and be stupidly murdered by Red Donald’s men. And so it was, good Robert, even as Mary did say, that we came forth unharmed, from amidst them and fled here to King William’s court, where we at last are safe.”
“Safe, say you, safe?” exclaimed the lad, impulsively. “Ay, as safe as is a mouse’s nest in a cat’s ear—as safe as is a rabbit in a ferret’s hutch. But that I know you to be a brave and dauntless maid, I should say to you——”
But, ere Edith could know what he would say, their conference was rudely broken in upon. For a royal page, dashing up to the three, with scant courtesy seized the arm of the elder girl, and said hurriedly:
“Haste ye, haste ye, my lady! Our lord king is even now calling for you to come before him in the banquet-hall.”
Edith knew too well the rough manners of those dangerous days. She freed herself from the grasp of the page, and said:
“Nay, that may I not, master page. ‘T is neither safe nor seemly for a maid to show herself in baron’s hall or in king’s banquet-room.”
“Safe and seemly it may not be, but come you must,” said the page, rudely. “The king demands it, and your nay is naught.”
And so, hurried along whether she would or no, while her friend, Robert Fitz Godwine, accompanied her as far as he dared, the young Princess Edith was speedily brought into the presence of the king of England, William H., called, from the color of his hair and from his fiery temper, Rufus, or “the Red.”
For Edith and Mary were both princesses of Scotland, with a history, even before they had reached their teens, as romantic as it was exciting. Their mother, an exiled Saxon princess, had, after the conquest of Saxon England by the stern Duke William the Norman, found refuge in Scotland, and had there married King Malcolm Canmore, the son of that King Duncan whom Macbeth had slain. But when King Malcolm had fallen beneath the walls of Alnwick Castle, a victim to English treachery, and when his fierce brother Donald Bane, or Donald the Red, had usurped the throne of Scotland, then the good Queen Margaret died in the gray castle on the rock of Edinburgh, and the five orphaned children were only saved from the vengeance of their bad uncle Donald by the shrewd and daring device of the young Princess Edith, who bade their good uncle Edgar, the Atheling, guide them, under cover of the mist, straight through the Red Donald’s knights and spearmen to England and safety.
You would naturally suppose that the worst possible place for the fugitives to seek safety was in Norman England; for Edgar the Atheling, a Saxon prince, had twice been declared king of England by the Saxon enemies of the Norman conquerors, and the children of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret—half Scotch, half Saxon—were, by blood and birth, of the two races most hateful to the conquerors. But the Red King in his rough sort of way—hot to-day and cold to-morrow—had shown something almost like friendship, for this Saxon Atheling, or royal prince, who might have been king of England had he not wisely submitted to the greater power of Duke William the Conqueror and to the Red William, his son. More than this, it had been rumored that some two years before, when there was truce between the kings of England and of Scotland, this harsh and headstrong English king, who was as rough and repelling as a chestnut burr, had seen, noticed, and expressed a particular interest in the eleven-year-old Scottish girl—this very Princess Edith who now sought his protection.
So, when this wandering uncle boldly threw himself upon Norman courtesy, and came with his homeless nephews and nieces straight to the Norman court for safety, King William Rufus not only received these children of his hereditary foeman with favor and royal welcome, but gave them comfortable lodgment in quaint old Gloucester town, where he held his court.
But even when the royal fugitives deemed themselves safest were they in the greatest danger.
Among the attendant knights and nobles of King William’s court was a Saxon knight known as Sir Ordgar, a “thegn,” (1) or baronet, of Oxfordshire; and because those who change their opinions—political or otherwise—often prove the most unrelenting enemies of their former associates, it came to pass that Sir Ordgar, the Saxon, conceived a strong dislike for these orphaned descendants of the Saxon kings, and convinced himself that the best way to secure himself in the good graces of the Norman King William was to slander and accuse the children of the Saxon Queen Margaret.
(1) Pronounced thane.
And so that very day, in the great hall, when wine was flowing and passions were strong, this false knight, raising his glass, bade them all drink: “Confusion to the enemies of our liege the king, from the base Philip of France to the baser Edgar the Atheling and his Scottish brats!”
This was an insult that even the heavy and peace-loving nature of Edgar the Atheling could not brook. He sprang to his feet and denounced the charge:
“None here is truer or more leal to you, lord king,” he said, “than am I, Edgar the Atheling, and my charges, your guests.”
But King William Rufus was of that changing, temper that goes with jealousy and suspicion. His flushed face grew still more red, and, turning away from the Saxon prince, he demanded:
“Why make you this charge, Sir Ordgar?
“Because of its truth, beausire,” said the faithless knight. “For what other cause hath this false Atheling sought sanctuary here, save to use his own descent from the ancient kings of this realm to make head and force among your lieges? And, his eldest kinsgirl here, the Princess Edith, hath she not been spreading a trumpery story among the younger folk, of how some old wyrd-wif(1) hath said that she who is the daughter of kings shall be the wife and mother of kings? And is it not further true that when her aunt, the Abbess of Romsey, bade her wear the holy veil, she hath again and yet again torn it off, and affirmed that she, who was to be a queen, could never be made a nun? Children and fools, ‘t is said, do speak the truth, beausire; and in all this do I see the malice and device of this false Atheling, the friend of your rebellious brother, Duke Robert, as you do know him to be; and I do brand him here, in this presence, as traitor and recreant to you, his lord.”
(1) Witch-wife or seeress.
The anger of the jealous king grew more unreasoning as Sir Ordgar went on.
“Enough!” he cried. “Seize the traitor,——or, stay; children and fools, as you have said, Sir Ordgar, do indeed speak the truth. Have in the girl and let us hear the truth. ‘Not seemly’? Sir Atheling,” he broke out in reply to some protest of Edith’s uncle. “Aught is seemly that the king doth wish. Holo! Raoul! Damian! sirrah pages! Run, one of you, and seek the Princess Edith, and bring her here forthwith!”
And while Edgar the Atheling, realizing that this was the gravest of all his dangers, strove, though without effect, to reason with the angry king, Damian, the page, as we have seen, hurried after the Princess Edith.
“How now, mistress!” broke out the Red King, as the young girl was ushered into the banquet-hall, where the disordered tables, strewn with fragments of the feast, showed the ungentle manners of those brutal days. “How now, mistress! do you prate of kings and queens and of your own designs—you, who are but a beggar guest? Is it seemly or wise to talk,—nay, keep you quiet, Sir Atheling; we will have naught from you,—to talk of thrones and crowns as if you did even now hope to win the realm from me—from me, your only protector?”
The Princess Edith was a very high-spirited maiden, as all the stories of her girlhood show. And this unexpected accusation, instead of frightening her, only served to embolden her. She looked the angry monarch full in the face.
“‘T is a false and lying charge, lord king,” she said, “from whomsoever it may come. Naught have I said but praise of you and your courtesy to us motherless folk. ‘T is a false and lying charge; and I am ready to stand test of its proving, come what may.”
“Even to the judgment of God, girl?” demanded the king.
And the brave girl made instant reply: “Even to the judgment of God, lord king.” Then, skilled in all the curious customs of those warlike times, she drew off her glove. “Whosoever my accuser be, lord king,” she said, “I do denounce him as foresworn and false, and thus do I throw myself upon God’s good mercy, if it shall please him to raise me up a champion.” And she flung her glove upon the floor of the hall, in face of the king and all his barons.
It was a bold thing for a girl to do, and a murmur of applause ran through even that unfriendly throng. For, to stand the test of a “wager of battle,” or the “judgment of God,” as the savage contest was called, was the last resort of any one accused of treason or of crime. It meant no less than a “duel to the death” between the accuser and the accused or their accepted champions, and, upon the result of the duel hung the lives of those in dispute. And the Princess Edith’s glove lying on the floor of the Abbey hall was her assertion that she had spoken the truth and was willing to risk her life in proof of her innocence.
Edgar the Atheling, peace-lover, though he was, would gladly have accepted the post of champion for his niece, but, as one also involved in the charge of treason, such action was denied him.
For the moment, the Red King’s former admiration for this brave young princess caused him to waver; but those were days when suspicion and jealousy rose above all nobler traits. His face grew stern again.
“Ordgar of Oxford,” he said, “take up the glove!” and Edith knew who was her accuser. Then the King asked: “Who standeth as champion for Edgar the Atheling and this maid, his niece?”
Almost before the words were spoken young Robert Fitz Godwine had sprung to Edith’s side.
“That would I, lord king, if a young squire might appear against a belted knight!”
“Ordgar of Oxford fights not with boys!” said the accuser contemptuously.
The king’s savage humor broke out again.
“Face him with your own page, Sir Ordgar,” he said, with a grim laugh. “Boy against boy would be a fitting wager for a young maid’s life.” But the Saxon knight was in no mood for sport.
“Nay, beausire; this is no child’s play,” he said. “I care naught for this girl. I stand as champion for the king against yon traitor Atheling, and if the maiden’s cause is his, why then against her too. This is a man’s quarrel.”
Young Robert would have spoken yet again as his face flushed hot with anger at the knight’s contemptuous words. But a firm hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a strong voice said:
“Then is it mine, Sir Ordgar. If between man and man, then will I, with the gracious permission of our lord the king, stand as champion for this maiden here and for my good lord, the noble Atheling, whose liegeman and whose man am I, next to you, lord king.” And, taking the mate to the glove which the Princess Edith had flung down in defiance, he thrust it into the guard of his cappe. line, or iron skull-cap, in token that he, Godwine of Winchester, the father of the boy Robert, was the young girl’s champion.
Three days after, in the tilt-yard of Gloucester Castle, the wager of battle was fought. It was no gay tournament show with streaming banners, gorgeous lists, gayly dressed ladies, flower-bedecked balconies, and all the splendid display of a tourney of the knights, of which you read in the stories of romance and chivalry. It was a solemn and sombre gathering in which all the arrangements suggested only death and gloom, while the accused waited in suspense, knowing that halter and fagot were prepared for them should their champion fall. In quaint and crabbed Latin the old chronicler, John of Fordun, tells the story of the fight, for which there is neither need nor space here. The glove of each contestant was flung into the lists by the judge, and the dispute committed for settlement to the power of God and their own good swords. It is a stirring picture of those days of daring and of might, when force took the place of justice, and the deadliest blows were the only convincing arguments. But, though supported by the favor of the king and the display of splendid armor, Ordgar’s treachery had its just reward. Virtue triumphed, and vice was punished. Even while treacherously endeavoring (after being once disarmed) to stab the brave Godwine with a knife which he had concealed in his boot, the false Sir Ordgar was overcome, confessed the falsehood of his charge against Edgar the Atheling and Edith his niece, and, as the quaint old record has it, “The strength of his grief and the multitude of his wounds drove out his impious soul.”
So young Edith was saved; and, as is usually the case with men of his character, the Red King’s humor changed completely. The victorious Godwine received the arms and lands of the dead Ordgar; Edgar the Atheling was raised high in trust and honor; the throne of Scotland, wrested from the Red Donald, was placed once more in the family of King Malcolm, and King William Rufus himself became the guardian and protector of the Princess Edith.
And when, one fatal August day, the Red King was found pierced by an arrow under the trees of the New Forest, his younger brother, Duke Henry, whom men called Beauclerc, “the good scholar,” for his love of learning and of books, ascended the throne of England as King Henry I. And the very year of his accession, on the 11th of November, 1100, he married, in the Abbey of Westminster, the Princess Edith of Scotland, then a fair young lady of scarce twenty-one. At the request of her husband she took, upon her coronation day, the Norman name of Matilda, or Maud, and by this name she is known in history and among the queens of England.
So scarce four and thirty years after the Norman conquest, a Saxon princess sat upon the throne of Norman England, the loving wife of the son of the very man by whom Saxon England was conquered.
“Never, since the battle of Hastings,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian, “had there been such a joyous day as when Queen Maud was crowned.” Victors and vanquished, Normans and Saxons, were united at last, and the name of “Good Queen Maud” was long an honored memory among the people of England.
And she was a good queen. In a time of bitter tyranny, when the common people were but the serfs and slaves of the haughty and cruel barons, this young queen labored to bring in kindlier manners and more gentle ways. Beautiful in face, she was still more lovely in heart and life. Her influence upon her husband, Henry the scholar, was seen in the wise laws he made, and the “Charter of King Henry” is said to have been gained by her intercession. This important paper was the first step toward popular liberty. It led the way to Magna Charta, and finally to our own Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls of America, therefore, in common with those of England, can look back with interest and affection upon the romantic story of “Good Queen Maud,” the brave-hearted girl who showed herself wise and fearless both in the perilous mist at Edinburgh, and, later still, in the yet greater dangers of “the black lists of Gloucester.”
Count William of Hainault, of Zealand and Friesland, Duke of Bavaria and Sovereign Lord of Holland, held his court in the great, straggling castle which he called his “hunting lodge,” near to the German Ocean, and since known by the name of “The Hague.” (1)
(1) “The Hague” is a contraction of the Dutch’s Gravenhage—the haag, or “hunting lodge,” of the Graf, or count.
Count William was a gallant and courtly knight, learned in all the ways of chivalry, the model of the younger cavaliers, handsome in person, noble in bearing, the surest lance in the tilting-yard, and the stoutest arm in the foray.
Like “Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” of whom the mock-mad Hamlet sang to Polonius, Count William had
and, truth to tell, this fair young Jacqueline, the little “Lady of Holland,” as men called her,—but whom Count William, because of her fearless antics and boyish ways, called “Dame Jacob,” (1)—loved her knightly father with equal fervor.
(1) Jaqueline is the French rendering of the Dutch Jakobine—the feminine of Jakob, or James.
As she sat, that day, in the great Hall of the Knights in the massive castle at The Hague, she could see, among all the knights and nobles who came from far and near to join in the festivities at Count William’s court, not one that approached her father in nobility of bearing or manly strength—not even her husband.
Her husband? Yes. For this little maid of thirteen had been for eight years the wife of the Dauphin of France, the young Prince John of Touraine, to whom she had been married when she was scarce five years old and he barely nine. Surrounded by all the pomp of an age of glitter and display, these royal children lived in their beautiful castle of Quesnoy, in Flanders,(1) when they were not, as at the time of our story, residents at the court of the powerful Count William of Holland.
(1) Now Northeastern France.
Other young people were there, too,—nobles and pages and little ladies-in-waiting; and there was much of the stately ceremonial and flowery talk that in those days of knighthood clothed alike the fears of cowards and the desires of heroes. For there have always been heroes and cowards in the world.
And so, between all these young folk, there was much boastful talk and much harmless gossip how the little Lady of Courtrai had used the wrong corner of the towel yesterday; how the fat Duchess of Enkhuysen had violated the laws of all etiquette by placing the wrong number of finger-bowls upon her table on St. Jacob’s Day; and how the stout young Hubert of Malsen had scattered the rascal merchants of Dort at their Shrovetide fair.
Then uprose the young Lord of Arkell.
“Hold, there!” he cried hotly. “This Hubert of Malsen is but a craven, sirs, if he doth say the merchants of Dort are rascal cowards. Had they been fairly mated, he had no more dared to put his nose within the gates of Dort than dare one of you here to go down yonder amid Count William’s lions!”
“Have a care, friend Otto,” said the little Lady of Holland, with warning finger; “there is one here, at least, who dareth to go amid the lions—my father, sir.”
“I said nothing of him, madam,” replied Count Otto. “I did mean these young red hats here, who do no more dare to bait your father’s lions than to face the Cods of Dort in fair and equal fight.”
At this bold speech there was instant commotion. For the nobles and merchants of Holland, four centuries and a half ago, were at open strife with one another. The nobles saw in the increasing prosperity of the merchants the end of their own feudal power and tyranny. The merchants recognized in the arrogant nobles the only bar to the growth of Holland’s commercial enterprise. So each faction had its leaders, its partisans, its badges, and its followers. Many and bloody were the feuds and fights that raged through all those low-lying lands of Holland, as the nobles, or “Hooks,” as they were called—distinguishable by their big red hats,—and the merchants, or “Cods,” with their slouch hats of quiet gray, struggled for the lead in the state. And how they DID hate one another!
Certain of the younger nobles, however, who were opposed to the reigning house of Holland, of which Count William, young Jacqueline’s father, was the head, had espoused the cause of the merchants, seeing in their success greater prosperity and wealth for Holland. Among these had been the young Lord of Arkell, now a sort of half prisoner at Count William’s court because of certain bold attempts to favor the Cods in his own castle of Arkell. His defiant words therefore raised a storm of protests.
“Nay, then, Lord of Arkell,” said the Dauphin John, “you, who prate so loudly, would better prove your words by some sign of your own valor. You may have dared fight your lady mother, who so roundly punished you therefor, but a lion hath not the tender ways of a woman. Face YOU the lions, lord count, and I will warrant me they will not prove as forbearing as did she.”
It was common talk at Count William’s court that the brave Lady of Arkell, mother of the Count Otto, had made her way, disguised, into we castle of her son, had herself lowered the drawbridge, admitted her armed retainers, overpowered and driven out her rebellious son; and that then, relenting, she had appealed to Count William to pardon the lad and to receive him at court as hostage for his own fealty. So this fling of the Dauphin’s cut deep.
But before the young Otto could return an angry answer, Jacqueline had interfered.
“Nay, nay, my lord,” she said to her husband, the Dauphin; “‘t is not a knightly act thus to impeach the honor of a noble guest.”
But now the Lord of Arkell had found his tongue.
“My lord prince,” he said, bowing low with stately courtesy, “if, as my lady mother and good Count William would force me, I am to be loyal vassal to you, my lieges here, I should but follow where you dare to lead. Go YOU into the lions’ den, lord prince, and I will follow you, though it were into old Hercules’ very teeth.”
It was a shrewd reply, and covered as good a “double-dare” as ever one boy made to another. Some of the manlier of the young courtiers indeed even dared to applaud. But the Dauphin John was stronger in tongue than in heart.
“Peste!” he cried contemptuously. “‘T is a fool’s answer and a fool’s will. And well shall we see now how you will sneak out of it all. See, Lord of Arkell, you who can prate so loudly of Cods and lions: here before all, I dare you to face Count William’s lions yourself!”
The young Lord of Arkell was in his rich court suit—a tight-fitting, great-sleeved silk jacket, rich, violet chausses, or tights, and pointed shoes. But without a word, with scarce a look toward his challenger, he turned to his nearest neighbor, a brave Zealand lad, afterward noted in Dutch history—Francis von Borselen.
“Lend me your gabardine, friend Franz, will you not?” he said.
The young von Borselen took from the back of the settle, over which it was flung, his gabardine—the long, loose gray cloak that was a sort of overcoat in those days of queer costume.
“It is here, my Otto,” he said.
The Lord of Arkell drew the loose gray cloak over his rich silk suit, and turned toward the door.
“Otto von Arkell lets no one call him fool or coward, lord prince,” he said. “What I have dared you all to do, I dare do, if you do not. See, now: I will face Count William’s lions!”
The Princess Jacqueline sprang up in protest.
“No, no; you shall not!” she cried. “My lord prince did but jest, as did we all. John,” she said, turning appealingly to her young husband, who sat sullen and unmoved, “tell him you meant no such murderous test. My father!” she cried, turning now toward Count William, whose attention had been drawn to the dispute, “the Lord of Arkell is pledged to face your lions!”
Count William of Holland dearly loved pluck and nerve.
“Well, daughter mine,” he said, “then will he keep his pledge. Friend Otto is a brave young gallant, else had he never dared raised spear and banner, as he did, against his rightful liege.”
“But, my father,” persisted the gentle-hearted girl, “spear and banner are not lions’ jaws. And surely you may not in honor permit the wilful murder of a hostage.”
“Nay, madam, have no fear,” the Lord of Arkell said, bending in courteous recognition of her interest; “that which I do of mine own free will is no murder, even should it fail.”
And he hastened from the hall.
A raised gallery looked down into the spacious inclosure in which Count William kept the living specimens of his own princely badge of the lion. And here the company gathered to see the sport.
With the gray gabardine drawn but loosely over his silken suit, so that he might, if need be, easily slip from it, Otto von Arkell boldly entered the inclosure.
“Soho, Juno! up, Hercules; hollo, up, Ajax!” cried Count William, from the balcony. “Here cometh a right royal playfellow—up, up, my beauties!” and the great brutes, roused by the voice of their master, pulled themselves up, shook themselves awake, and stared at the intruder.
Boldly and without hesitation, while all the watchers had eyes but for him alone, the young Lord of Arkell walked straight up to Hercules, the largest of the three, and laid his hand caressingly upon the shaggy mane. Close to his side pressed Juno, the lioness, and, so says the record of the old Dutch chronicler, von Hildegaersberch, “the lions did him no harm; he played with them as if they had been dogs.”
But Ajax, fiercest of the three, took no notice of the lad. Straight across his comrades he looked to where, scarce a rod behind the daring lad, came another figure, a light and graceful form in clinging robes of blue and undergown of cloth of gold—the Princess Jacqueline herself!
The watchers in the gallery followed the lion’s stare, and saw, with horror, the advancing figure of this fair young girl. A cry of terror broke from every lip. The Dauphin John turned pale with fright, and Count William of Holland, calling out, “Down, Ajax! back, girl, back!” sprang to his feet as if he would have vaulted over the gallery rail.
But before he could act, Ajax himself had acted. With a bound he cleared the intervening space and crouched at the feet of the fair young Princess Jacqueline!
The lions must have been in remarkably good humor on that day, for, as the records tell us, they did no harm to their visitors. Ajax slowly rose and looked up into the girl’s calm face. Then the voice of Jacqueline rang out fresh and clear as, standing with her hand buried in the lion’s tawny mane, she raised her face to the startled galleries.
“You who could dare and yet dared not to do!” she cried, “it shall not be said that in all Count William’s court none save the rebel Lord of Arkell dared to face Count William’s lions!”
The Lord of Arkell sprang to his comrade’s side. With a hurried word of praise he flung the gabardine about her, grasped her arm, and bade her keep her eyes firmly fixed upon the lions; then, step by step, those two foolhardy young persons backed slowly out of the danger into which they had so thoughtlessly and unnecessarily forced themselves.
The lions’ gate closed behind them with a clang; the shouts of approval and of welcome sounded from the thronging gallery, and over all they heard the voice of the Lord of Holland mingling commendation and praise with censure for the rashness of their action.
And it WAS a rash and foolish act. But we must remember that those were days when such feats were esteemed as brave and valorous. For the Princess Jaqueline of Holland was reared in the school of so-called chivalry and romance, which in her time was fast approaching its end. She was, indeed, as one historian declares, the last heroine of knighthood. Her very titles suggest the days of chivalry. She was Daughter of Holland, Countess of Ponthieu, Duchess of Berry, Lady of Crevecoeur, of Montague and Arloeux. Brought up in the midst of tilts and tournaments, of banquets and feasting, and all the lavish display of the rich Bavarian court, she was, as we learn from her chroniclers, the leader of adoring knights and vassals, the idol of her parents, the ruler of her soft-hearted boy husband, an expert falconer, a daring horsewoman, and a fearless descendant of those woman warriors of her race, Margaret the Empress, and Philippa the Queen, and of a house that traced its descent through the warlike Hohenstaufens back to Charlemagne himself.
All girls admire bravery, even though not themselves personally courageous. It is not, therefore, surprising that this intrepid and romance-reared young princess, the wife of a lad for whom she never especially cared, and whose society had for political reasons been forced upon her, should have placed as the hero of her admiration, next to her own fearless father, not the Dauphin John of France, but this brave young rebel lad, Otto, the Lord of Arkell.
But the joyous days of fete and pleasure at Quesnoy, at Paris, and The Hague were fast drawing to a close. On the fourth of April, 1417, the Dauphin John died by poisoning, in his father’s castle at Compiegne—the victim of those terrible and relentless feuds that were then disgracing and endangering the feeble throne of France.
The dream of future power and greatness as Queen of France, in which the girl wife of the Dauphin had often indulged, was thus rudely dispelled, and Jacqueline returned to her father’s court in Holland, no longer crown princess and heiress to a throne, but simply “Lady of Holland.”
But in Holland, too, sorrow was in store for her. Swiftly following the loss of her husband, the Dauphin, came the still heavier blow of her father’s death. On the thirtieth of May, 1417, Count William died in his castle of Bouchain, in Hainault, and his sorrowing daughter Jacqueline, now a beautiful girl of sixteen, succeeded to his titles and lordship as Countess and Lady Supreme of Hainault, of Holland, and of Zealand.
For years, however, there had been throughout the Low Countries a strong objection to the rule of a woman. The death of Count William showed the Cods a way toward greater liberty. Rebellion followed rebellion, and the rule of the Countess Jacqueline was by no means a restful one.
And chief among the rebellious spirits, as leader and counsellor among the Cods, appeared the brave lad who had once been the companion of the princess in danger, the young Lord of Arkell.
It was he who lifted the standard of revolt against her regency. Placing the welfare of Holland above personal friendship, and sinking, in his desire for glory, even the chivalry of that day, which should have prompted him to aid rather than annoy this beautiful girl, he raised a considerable army among the knights of the Cods, or liberal party, and the warlike merchants of the cities, took possession of many strong positions in Holland, and occupied, among other places, the important town of Gorkum on the Maas. The stout citadel of the town, was, however, garrisoned with loyal troops. This the Lord of Arkell beseiged, and, demanding its surrender, sent also a haughty challenge to the young countess, who was hastening to the relief of her beleaguered town.
Jacqueline’s answer was swift and unmistakable. With three hundred ships and six thousand knights and men-at-arms, she sailed from the old harbor of Rotterdam, and the lion-flag of her house soon floated above the loyal citadel of Gorkum.
Her doughty Dutch general, von Brederode, counselled immediate attack, but the girl countess, though full of enthusiasm and determination, hesitated.
From her station in the citadel she looked over the scene before her. Here, along the low bank of the river Maas, stretched the camp of her own followers, and the little gayly colored boats that had brought her army up the river from the red roofs of Rotterdam. There, stretching out into the flat country beyond the straggling streets of Gorkum, lay the tents of the rebels. And yet they were all her countrymen—rebels and retainers alike. Hollanders all, they were ever ready to combine for the defence of their homeland when threatened by foreign foes or by the destroying ocean floods.
Jacqueline’s eye caught the flutter of the broad banner of the house of Arkell that waved over the rebel camp.
Again she saw the brave lad who alone of all her father’s court, save she, had dared to face Count William’s lions; again the remembrance of how his daring had made him one of her heroes, filled her heart, and a dream of what might be possessed her. Her boy husband, the French Dauphin, was dead, and she was pledged by her dying father’s command to marry her cousin, whom she detested, Duke John of Brabant. But how much better, so she reasoned, that the name and might of her house as rulers of Holland should be upheld by a brave and fearless knight. On the impulse of this thought she summoned a loyal and trusted vassal to her aid.
“Von Leyenburg,” she said, “go you in haste and in secret to the Lord of Arkell, and bear from me this message for his ear alone. Thus says the Lady of Holland: ‘Were it not better, Otto of Arkell, that we join hands in marriage before the altar, than that we spill the blood of faithful followers and vassals in a cruel fight?’”
It was a singular, and perhaps, to our modern ears, a most unladylike proposal; but it shows how, even in the heart of a sovereign countess and a girl general, warlike desires may give place to gentler thoughts.
To the Lord Arkell, however, this unexpected proposition came as an indication of weakness.
“My lady countess fears to face my determined followers,” he thought. “Let me but force this fight and the victory is mine. In that is greater glory and more of power than being husband to the Lady of Holland.”
And so he returned a most ungracious answer:
“Tell the Countess Jacqueline,” he said to the knight of Leyenburg, “that the honor of her hand I cannot accept. I am her foe, and would rather die than marry her.”
All the hot blood of her ancestors flamed in wrath as young Jacqueline heard this reply of the rebel lord.
“Crush we these rebel curs, von Brederode,” she cried, pointing to the banner of Arkell; “for by my father’s memory, they shall have neither mercy nor life from me.”
Fast upon the curt refusal of the Lord of Arkell came his message of defiance.
“Hear ye, Countess of Holland,” rang out the challenge of the herald of Arkell, as his trumpet-blast sounded before the gate of the citadel, “the free Lord of Arkell here giveth you word and warning that he will fight against you on the morrow!”
And from the citadel came back this ringing reply, as the knight of Leyenburg made answer for his sovereign lady:
“Hear ye, sir Herald, and answer thus to the rebel Lord of Arkell: ‘For the purpose of fighting him came we here, and fight him we will, until he and his rebels are beaten and dead.’ Long live our Sovereign Lady of Holland!”
On the morrow, a murky December day, in the year 1417, the battle was joined, as announced. On the low plain beyond the city, knights and men-at-arms, archers and spearmen, closed in the shock of battle, and a stubborn and bloody fight it was.
Seven times did the knights of Jacqueline, glittering in their steel armor, clash into the rebel ranks; seven times were they driven back, until, at last, the Lord of Arkell, with a fiery charge, forced them against the very gates of the citadel. The brave von Brederode fell pierced with wounds, and the day seemed lost, indeed, to the Lady of Holland.
Then Jacqueline the Countess, seeing her cause in danger—like another Joan of Arc, though she was indeed a younger and much more beautiful girl general,—seized the lion-banner of her house, and, at the head of her reserve troops, charged through the open gate straight into the ranks of her victorious foes. There was neither mercy nor gentleness in her heart then. As when she had cowed with a look Ajax, the lion, so now, with defiance and wrath in her face, she dashed straight at the foe.
Her disheartened knights rallied around her, and, following the impetuous girl, they wielded axe and lance for the final struggle. The result came quickly. The ponderous battle-axe of the knight of Leyenburg crashed through the helmet of the Lord of Arkell, and as the brave young leader fell to the ground, his panic-stricken followers turned and fled. The troops of Jacqueline pursued them through the streets of Gorkum and out into the open country, and the vengeance of the countess was sharp and merciless.
But in the flush of victory wrath gave way to pity again, and the young conqueror is reported to have said, sadly and in tears:
“Ah! I have won, and yet how have I lost!”
But the knights and nobles who followed her banner loudly praised her valor and her fearlessness, and their highest and most knightly vow thereafter was to swear “By the courage of our Princess.”
The brilliant victory of this girl of sixteen was not, however, to accomplish her desires. Peace never came to her. Harassed by rebellion at home, and persecuted by her relentless and perfidious uncles, Count John of Bavaria, rightly called “the Pitiless,” and Duke Philip of Burgundy, falsely called “the Good,” she, who had once been Crown Princess of France and Lady of Holland, died at the early age of thirty-six, stripped of all her titles and estates. It is, however, pleasant to think that she was happy in the love of her husband, the baron of the forests of the Duke of Burgundy, a plain Dutch gentleman, Francis von Borselen, the lad who, years before, had furnished the gray gabardine that had shielded Count William’s daughter from her father’s lions.
The story of Jacqueline of Holland is one of the most romantic that has come down to us from those romantic days of the knights. Happy only in her earliest and latest years, she is, nevertheless, a bright and attractive figure against the dark background of feudal tyranny and crime. The story of her womanhood should indeed be told, if we would study her life as a whole; but for us, who can in this paper deal only with her romantic girlhood, her young life is to be taken as a type of the stirring and extravagant days of chivalry.
And we cannot but think with sadness upon the power for good that she might have been in her land of fogs and floods if, instead of being made the tool of party hate and the ambitions of men, her frank and fearless girl nature had been trained to gentle ways and charitable deeds.
To be “the most picturesque figure in the history of Holland,” as she has been called, is distinction indeed; but higher still must surely be that gentleness of character and nobility of soul that, in these days of ours, may be acquired by every girl and boy who reads this romantic story of the Countess Jacqueline, the fair young Lady of Holland.