So I leave it to any who have such memories, to bethink them whether sometimes the heart within—or what part soever a woman is able to call up, to the soul that dwells behind dimmed eyes and wrinkled skin, the very touch of lips velvet-soft and rose-sweet, the thrill of beloved voices long lost to the outward ear, the swift welcoming smile upon faces unseen for thirty years—does not linger upon such days in the greenwood, tuned to the ripple of waters and the hum of bees, when by my side wandered young Laurence who loved me (albeit a clerk) with the purest and most unselfish love which man gives to woman. Yes, I will say it, it is the best and purest, that which seeks not its own. But, in all fairness let this be added—it is seldom the kind of love which pleases a woman best or moves her most.
When he had fitted his last cog and pinion, it was wonderful to note how Larry would leap up and cry, “It is done! Let us go together and see it grind the corn!”
And so, hand in hand, we would depart, and (by the love wherewith I have loved those dearest to me, I swear it!) never once did he even press my hand, though possibly in my excitement I may have pressed his. I do not know. At any rate, there were elements of pleasure about us somewhere, invisible, like the fairies about a spring.
We would run, I say, to the little stream, and, choosing a place where the trickle descended easily but not too forcefully, we would arrange the uprights, and set the mill-wheel a-going. Sometimes, also, Larry would carve most cunningly contrived little buckets out of hard wood, the which he fastened to a wheel, while he showed me how to direct a little stream along a banked-up canal so that it would run freely, and make what he called an “overshot” wheel. This, he said, was the best sort, and saved a great deal of water; but as the water was not ours, at any rate, and there was plenty of it, I did not see the mighty saving.
It was pretty to watch him hastening this way and that, getting his hose wet, his curling hair all of a tangle, his eyes bright, and his cheeks red as those of any young maid waiting at the trysting-tree.
I could not help saying to him, though perhaps I ought not, “Larry, you are certainly a most distracting boy. ’Tis a world’s pity you are a monk!”
“I am no monk,” he cried indignantly. “If I were a monk, would I be playing here with a madcap girl?”
“I do not know,” I answered him; “there are other and worse things that you might do. And as to being a madcap girl, I never was a holy abbot with a cure of souls, with carp and trout, dace and jack, all in mew for Sunday’s dinner! Nor yet did I ever put on another man’s coat and ride a-tourneying with a pope’s Bull in my pocket! Madcap, indeed! Who may be the madcap now?”
Of course, I only shammed anger, as is the best way with boys—that is, if you want to find out what is in their hearts (which, of course, you ought not to do). With elder and more experienced men, the old-fashioned dropping of salt water from the eyes is still without a rival. But with boys, and, they say, with those upon the return to a second childhood, anger is a woman’s best weapon.
At any rate upon this occasion it was more than enough. Never moorland whaup stricken to the heart by the winged shaft of the archer from behind his decoy bush fell more cleanly than did my poor Laurence.
“Do not be angry,” he pleaded piteously. “Indeed I meant no ill. I could not. For I love you—yes, I, who am but a blacksmith’s son and half a clerk besides—dare to love you! So that my heart is like to be broke because I see you about to marry a man without loving him, and”—(here he paused a long time, as if still afraid of my anger)—“loving another man without being able to marry him!”
I sprang to my feet, and then indeed I was angry, as anyone may well believe.
“You mean James Douglas!” I cried, taking a step back from him.
Then he answered very gently, wondrously so indeed for a son of Malise M‘Kim, “God forgive me, I would that I could say that I meant mysel’!”
At that I was wroth, and with reason. For who could have dreamed of such a thing—except, as I said, one blinded by monkish ignorance or childish jealousy? Yes, I was very angry, and I am glad to pass quickly from the cruel words I spoke to my comrade.
But the truth is, that perhaps it was true that I had been as the ostrich, which (says Leo Africanus) hides its head in a heap of sand to escape the hunter. But it was, indeed, small wonder that I was angry. For nothing touches a woman more than to be reproved for that which, till that moment, she thinks no one but herself has perceived.
“I see it all now,” I said, clenching (I am sure, for I always do so) my hands by my side with the arms stiff. “You have learned your lesson well, Sir Priest. William Douglas has set you to spy upon me, has he? Well, go back to him! Carry your tale! There is not much to tell. Faith o’ my body, I wish there had been more. ’Tis not the first time that you have been ambassador for your patron. Who knows but he may have some further advancement to give you!”
It was still with the utmost gentleness that Laurence listened, which was the more surprising, considering what a spitfire he had been in earlier days, the days when Sholto and he had flung themselves each on the other like wild cats till separated by their father’s waist-strap and arm of power, as hath been told elsewhere.
“No,” he said, “William Douglas is, indeed, my master and the head of my clan. But you know, Margaret—yes, as well as I—that he has asked nothing, and I have told him nothing. Yet is my heart sore for you, my dear, my dear!”
“You forget to whom you speak!” I said, trying to build the dyke thus. But he would none of it. I had played too long at blindman’s-buff with him to stand of a sudden upon my princesshood.
“I do not forget,” he said, “I remember—everything. I am the Abbot of Dulce Cor, yet I call you ‘my dear.’ You yourself it was gave me the office, yet you are ‘my dear.’ I am the son of your father’s armourer—a blacksmith, if you will. Yet for all that, and even because of all that, you are (I say it again) ‘my dear—my dear—my dear!’ ”
I continued to look at him without speaking, yet no longer angrily, but with a sort of warmth about the heart which, if not love’s self, was yet his cousin-german. At any rate this was better than Sister Eulalie and the Bald Cat.
Laurence went on, still holding the little mill-wheel between his fingers—I think I see him yet. He kept nervously turning it this way and that, adjusting a bucket held in place with its wooden pin, and firming the axle with care and skill; yet with the most sorely pained expression on his face, and something like a film of unshed tears behind his eyes. He was sorry for himself, yet he seemed, somehow, tenfold sorrier for me. And indeed, the thought of this dear young lad, who had never loved but me really, helped me many a time in after hours, that of themselves were naught but the blackness of pitchy darkness. It might have been better if I could have followed my impulse of the morrow—but it is false that a woman can do with herself as she will. Nevertheless, it was in no wise his fault; for all that Larry did and said was so sweet and simple and undemanding.
Not at all like—like that other. Yet, perhaps, if Laurence had asked more he might have saved me much, who can tell?
“Ah,” he continued, “if only you loved as I would have you love—how safe that would keep you. It is (I, who am half a monk, know it—have seen it) a terrible thing for a woman to marry a man she does not love, whom she never can love!”
“And pray, Sir Abbot,” I cried, “who are you to judge of the likes and dislikes, loves and hates, marryings and givings in marriage of Margaret of Douglas and Galloway? Your breviary and the lives of the holy saints Trophimus and Kentigern would suit you better! Or perhaps that of St. Anthony might teach the danger of championing damosels in distress.”
But all this was thrown away upon the fixity of Laurence M‘Kim’s purpose, and changed nothing of the sweet and gentle melancholy with which he spoke. There was no passion in his words or in his speech, as there would have been in James Douglas’s—but all pure and child-tender, at times almost maternal. Where had the lad learned the secret? Within and without he was wholly different from the rough-colted boy who had gone forth with my uncle, the abbot, to learn singing at Sweetheart on the eve of the great tournament on the Lochar braes.
“It is true,” he said, “you have every right to flout me. But, all the same, you will never love William Douglas. And being the girl you are, the last daughter of your race, a Douglas of the Douglases, you must have someone to love. If that one be not a good man—ah, then I see clouds black and terrible rise up before us. And I risk all—your favour, Earl William’s favour, my place and rank, which I owe to you—so that when the storm comes you may know that there is one who will love you truly and surely—even as, if they had lived, your brothers would—and in the same fashion.”
Then I think that Laurence saw I was not scornful any more, for the tone of his voice grew more cheerful—not glad or amorous, or even hopeful, but as of one who feels neither himself nor his motives any longer misunderstood.
“Half a priest—yes,” he said, still with the tone of gentle melancholy which sat so well on him. “But, thank God, not a whole monk. Do not forget that I have been longer alone within that fair abbot’s house at the New Abbey, within sound of the vesper bells, than you in the convent of St. Brigida. Yes, and I have been much lonelier, for I was not meant to be a holy man, according to the acceptation of the Orders. Yet I obey—that is, so far as in me is. But my heart is apart from this thing. To be kindly to all, helpful to as many as possible, to do evil to none, to carry no ill tale and to listen to none. Such things as these I read in four booklets called the ‘Holy Gospels.’ But that is noways religion according to the Church and the Orders. To pray so often, to eat meat on this day and fish on that, to fast till noon on chicken-broth, to click so many beads, to sing so many hymns, to declare all men outcast and condemned, going before into judgment, unless they can prove themselves properly ear-marked sheep of the churchly pasture, lambs of the monkish fold—!”
“Laurence,” I broke in hastily, “in such a case were it not better to cast your abbotship to the winds, to bend bow or lay spear in rest as a knight or yeoman? Nay, to cut wood and draw water like a villein, rather than to abide practising the things in which you do not believe, chanting songs without a meaning, carrying forth sacraments to mock dying lips?”
He appeared to consider a while.
“There is somewhat in what you say, though, in fact, I do none of these things,” thus he answered me. “Also, there is an obverse to the coin. In the first place, at least, I can make of Dulce Cor a clean place as compared with other foundations, a harbourage of peace and right living, a centre of help and kindly brotherhood. For not the Grand Bashaw of the Turks has more absolute power than I in the Cistercian abbey of Sweetheart—so long, that is, as I have the Douglases at my back.”
I shook my head in my turn.
“You are keeping something behind that,” I said. “Larry, you cannot deceive me. You, a soldier and a brave lad to drive a spear, handsome and young, you should not be content to rule in a monastery, when you could as easily lead five hundred men, all clad in mail, into the shock and turmoil of battle. No, Larry lad, you ever liked your drink heady. Tell me the true reason why you have come down to curds and whey!”
He thought a while and then said, “It is true—there is more behind.”
“Tell it me, then!” said I.
And I laid my hand upon his arm, looking at him. For one could not help being gracious with Laurence. At least I could not. He never presumed even once—perhaps I should add, “Alas!”
“I have little to live for,” he said, “leave me this. I would rather a thousand times spend my life in a cell, than take away the one hope which I hold in the deep places of my heart.”
“And that hope is—?”
“That one day the White House of the Sisters of Dulce Cor may be a refuge for you—at the storm-breaking, in the day which shall come—yes, surely!”
“But am I not to be the wife of William Douglas, Earl of Galloway and Duke of Touraine? What need shall I have of refuges and convents? I had done with such on the day I left Cour Cheverney yonder!”
“Ah, wait,” he made answer, gently as ever; “the great house stands high, and the winds bear sore upon it. The tides run strong beneath. But mine is but a little dwelling, set in a green howe, with only a streamlet that runs thereby. And—I am content. At least it shall be kept in readiness for you.”
“Then you think that William will not succeed in his great schemes for Scotland—or that he will perish in the doing of them?”
“As to that, there is none who can tell,” Laurence answered; “either William of Douglas will be the first man in the land or—his head will go the way of those other two—his cousins!”
“Then,” said I, “there is one other of the race who will stand by the chief, and the name of her—Margaret Douglas.”
Laurence smiled, yet with something so strange, so far away and sweet in his smile, that I asked him what he meant. For it seemed that I had not yet snatched the whole heart out of the mystery he propounded.
But he would only say, “My Margaret of Margarets, it is the rule of the Master of All that days run to weeks, that weeks, being summed, make the months, and the returning months count the years and the lifetime. That is a long time for a woman of the Douglas race to do without being loved. As for the love with which I love you, it is (I promise you) as the well-water in the abbey precinct, under the great oak, cool, clear, and—savourless. But you Douglases, man and woman of you, drink of love as one who quenches his thirst in strong wine, goblet after goblet. So it was with your brother, and so it will be with you!”
“Bah,” said I, “you preach too much, Laurence M‘Kim! And all your texts are taken from the Song of Solomon—which even clerks ought to read only on high days and holidays. I agree not with your conclusions. I deny your premises. I will none of your reproof. Set up your mill-wheel in the linn; and let us be going!”
It was the Dauphin who conducted us to Amboise—why, I did not at the time know. And such a way as it proved from Cour Cheverney, past telling of—all along the green river banks, the blossoms of the fruit trees blushing in the sunshine, a pink haze of blown petals, like a morning mist, pearling all across the orchards of Touraine—a sweet thing to see, that high day and holiday of the year.
This time we rode quietly and steadily; for Varlet had been exercised of late, and—I had no need to run away from three men who, each according to his possible, loved me, or at least told me that he did. With these about me, I cared little even for the shifty, baleful, yellowish eye of the Dauphin Louis. For (as I thought then) William was his equal in statecraft; James certainly could have cut him in twelve, like the Levite’s concubine, with as many strokes of his sword; and as for Larry, Louis de Valois was afraid that, in his quality of abbot, he would ban him with bell, book, and candle.
So I rode and held myself safe, not knowing of the depth of the creature’s guile, and the cruelties which even then were fermenting like yeast in his brain.
As usual, William Douglas and the Dauphin rode together—hard at it, now in fierce debate, now in hushed conference, the miles padding unheeded between their horses’ hoofs, and the fair landscape lying all unregarded.
A little behind, Laurence rode with one or two of his ambassador’s suite about him, on his white mule; and, save for the wistful eyes he turned upon me whenever I looked his way, one might have thought him happy enough. But, since I knew that by the turn of a finger I could bring him to my side, I stayed with James, who, as usual, was the gayest of all that company.
I think, too, that I was a little revengeful, because of what Laurence had taken it upon him to say in the wood the day we set the water-mills whirling. After all, though I liked Laurence M‘Kim, and he was of the pleasant of the earth, he had no right to dictate to me what I should say or with whom I should speak.
At any rate, he should learn his lesson, and then, when I had need—why, I could always call him back as one whistles to heel a well-trained dog. So, and because of these things, I rode with James. There were besides several good Scottish knights with us, but, their kindred ignorance of French shutting them in like a cage, they had little to say even to each other—nothing at all to me.
Now, in all that bright land of Touraine there is no castle (and there are many) so beautiful for situation as that of Amboise. I, who am now an old woman and have lived in these latter days to see vast changes, have seen no vaster change anywhere than in the architecture of the houses in which great folk live.
Now (they tell me) Amboise glistens with round tower and embayed window like a piece of jewellery new coft in St. Mark’s Square at Venice. Then, as I mind it, though the residence of the gayest court in the world, with the king and all his folk flaunting in gold and colours, the castle itself had little of splendour, being an ancient keep with courtyard and flanking towers—not near so fine, indeed, as Cour Cheverney, albeit very much larger. Thick walls, great towers, with low doors therein—no entrance gate half so splendid as that of Thrieve—mighty wastes of masonry, doubtless good against gun and archery, but with slotted windows which made the lower storeys like a vault, while to the upper the staircases were so narrow and difficult that scarce two could ascend at one time abreast, all of them after the old fashion, too, twisting and turning in the thickness of the wall.
But as to the setting of this wilderness of stone and lime, never had I seen such a place.
From the great terrace, lo! all fertile Touraine, the Garden of France—which is to say, of the world. Yonder was the green of the river banks, shining emerant through a lawny drift of peach blossom, the clearer hue of almond, the white wax of cherry and apple—on and on till the distance turned into a land of dream, or some Avalon lost among the clouds of sunset. Beneath, the Loire swung past in a great circle, almost bending back upon itself, and blue as only a river of France can be under the sky of May and Gaul.
In the outer courts and gardens were many courtiers, who saluted the Dauphin with deep reverences. But Louis, striding through the press of them in his apparel of dusty black, his buckleless belt tied with whip-cord, his spurs uncleaned, and narrow-brimmed steel cap which many a gay arquebusier would have scorned to wear, never so much as acknowledged one of their greetings. He passed through a gate which led out of a courtyard into a garden, never pausing till, at a certain iron port, a man in armour stood on guard.
“None must pass within!” the sentry grumbled, frowning and grounding his pike with an air of authority.
But it was fine to see how the Dauphin set him aside, as if he had been a wooden puppet.
“I go to my father,” he said; “let me pass this instant!”
And then, with an officiousness mightily impressive, there came one who, by his chain of office, was a sort of major-domo or chief steward, and he stood before Louis of Valois in all the bravery of gold-worked tabard and silver-hilted sword, the latter shaped like a toothpick, and of as much use. He had on his head a broad flat bonnet of purple velvet, which he doffed as he bowed low before his master’s son. James, amused and yet no little amazed, regarded him as if he had been a green frog swelling himself to croak.
“The king takes the air,” the major-domo said; “will it inconvenience His Highness the Dauphin to wait a moment while his servant announces him to the king?”
“It would inconvenience me exceedingly,” said the Dauphin, with a sneer, “only the Dauphin of France has no idea of being preceded into his father’s presence by—let us say with as little offence as possible—Sir Pandarus of Troy!”
And with that he opened the door with his own hand, and I could see within as through a crevice in a wall.
It was a fine enclosure, laid out with green paths and shady with noble trees, having little fountains that babbled all about. The place was full as it could hold of the lilies of the Virgin, orange and straw-colour and white, jetting up from the green and nodding graciously in the breeze.
James Douglas had stood aside for me to enter first, as my right was. But William Douglas came and caught me by the wrist when I had already set my foot on the threshold. He gripped me almost fiercely, and, indeed, even hurt my wrist.
He drew back with some rudeness, saying only, “Let the Dauphin go find his father first. It is ill coming between such a son and such a father!”
Then I sulked a little and pouted, holding out my hand, as a child does with a hurt. Of this William Douglas took no notice at all, but only stood with his back to the garden door. Then came James up, and, taking my wrist between his fingers, pretended to chafe it, murmuring many jesting bairnlinesses—yet with some of the accompaniments of real tenderness as well. Laurence, in deep dudgeon at something, gnawed at his under lip and gloomed at me from afar.
So I could not help laughing at him. I laughed indeed so that, leaving James, I went up to him and said, “If it pleases his reverency, the Abbot of Dulce Cor, to girn at me like to a sheep’s head in the tongs, perhaps he would like to swage the ill himself!”
And I held out the arm and wrist to him, knowing well that in his heart his desire was to kiss it, and that he dared not before so many. It is good to be able to tease a man thus in safety, and yet nobody know of it.
“What was the cause of the misfortune?” he said, suddenly rallying a little as I made to leave him again.
“Methinks,” said I, “it was only a certain bull, that hath taken it upon him to show his horns a little too soon!”
It seemed as if neither William nor Laurence took my meaning, for both remained fixed and with grave countenances. But with his head thrown back, my great outspoken James shouted a laugh to the skies, which the Dauphin must have heard in the garden.
“She is a very vixen-reynard, this one,” he said. “She nips shrewdly. Will, my lad, she means the pope’s Bull that you have gotten to marry her! And she twits you that you are not married yet, and have no authority over her impishness!”
“Ah!” said William calmly, without appearing to have heard the explanation of the sorry jest (all jests are sorry when explicated), “here is the Dauphin. Doubtless he comes to bring us to the king, his father.”
Now, when I thought of the King of France, Charles, seventh of that name, I took him for a sovereign of power and inches, making men obey him as did Will, my cousin, or able to drive a lance with any man, like James. So I was ill prepared for that which indeed I saw—a man of the middle height, fleshy and otiose, with red-rimmed smallish eyes, full of good humour and slow laughters, which, though most silent, shook him like a jelly. He was walking in a certain alley, the widest of all, under the sparse sprinkling shadow of high lilac bushes. He held by the hand the most beautiful lady and the sweetest to look upon that eyes ever beheld. And I, Margaret Douglas, that have been made mickle of all my life, in mine own country and elsewhere, may, in such a matter, be trusted to tell the truth.
And as the men all uncovered except Laurence (who, being a clerk, only bowed deeply), the king broke into a volley of thick guttural speech, very rapidly spoken—which, though my ears had been attuned to nothing but French for years, it was still difficult for me to make out.
Charles extended his right hand to be kissed, and one by one all bent and kissed the plump fingers—white, scented, and spanned with rings, like those of any court dame. But I, having nothing to ask of him and nothing to fear, with great gravity gave him my hand to kiss (an it liked him), whereat he laughed, and the lady by his side, whose hand he had held all the while, smiled, and nodded at me approvingly.
“Do it!” she bade the king. “If I mistake not, it is a privilege which more than one of these gentlemen present will envy you!”
“Indeed, nay!” I cried. “Why, no more than five minutes ago I offered it to two of them, and”—
But the king, with his hat off, was kissing my hand, while the Dauphin, in whose eyes I caught death and murder, stood glaring at the beautiful lady at his father’s side as if he would like to kill her upon the spot.
Then Charles VII. presented us all to her—myself, the Earl of Douglas, my Lord James, his brother, and that holy ecclesiast in partibus, Laurence, Abbot of Dulce Cor.
“The Lady Agnes Sorel!” said the King of France, with manifest pride, “sometime Demoiselle de Fromentau, now Comtesse de Penthièvre, and, above all” (here he smiled), “Dame de Beauté.”
I took my eyes just long enough off that radiant face, full of gentleness and pity, as well as extraordinary beauty, to observe the effect she produced upon my companions. As for me, I had the grace to feel but a schoolgirl beside her. Indeed, I have never been jealous of a woman in my life. It is not my way—nor, indeed, my need. So I said to myself, “I am but a girl, it is true—but I will grow older. This Dame de Beauté is a woman, and will grow old.”
The which, alas! she never did, dying to the roar of the wind through the northern woods she had helped the king to reconquer—the Seine running below brimful, past the ancient abbey of Jumièges, where dwelt the Dauphin of France—this same Louis de Valois, who is sore belied if he knew not in what manner she died.
Well, be that as it may, William stood stock-still, silent, stern, gloomy as a fir wood in November. He made her the reverence which he never refused to any woman, old or young, sinner or saint. And I said to myself, “Here, surely, is the man that will never be touched by the power of woman. Even now he is thinking of his plans and plottings!” The which, doubtless, should have been a great comfort to me!
But, as usual, James made up for all. He knelt on one knee and kissed the hand of the Dame de Beauté with such lingering courtesy and lover-like fervour that he well-nigh made me laugh.
Then the king, taking Will suddenly by the arm, perhaps in dudgeon at James’s forwardness, marched him off, the Dauphin accompanying them—probably more to listen to their conversation than to attend upon his father from any idea of filial obedience.
We were, therefore, left a party of three. For Laurence and his monks had withdrawn themselves to another part of the garden. It was a festal day, indeed, for our gallant James—with two women, both young and one of them beautiful, to squire here and there among the hawthorn and daffodillies.
He found time, however, while the lady turned to give some directions to her maids, to communicate to me the name by which Agnes Sorel will be known to the end of time.
“La Belle des Belles!” he whispered, with his finger on his lip. Yet, knowing James as I did, I think he meant the lady to hear. For James could only be James to the world’s end.
“Who may she be that is so beautiful?” I asked of James.
“She is the queen’s ward, her favourite, and has given much good counsel to the king in matters concerning which the queen is incapable,” said James calmly, “specially, that is, as to fighting the English, and expelling them from the country. Have you not heard what she said to the king when it was foretold by his own soothsayer that she should live to do service to a great and victorious sovereign? ‘Then let me go to the court of the King of England,’ said she, rising to take her leave, ‘that I may serve him! For as for His Majesty of France, he cares for naught save hunting and pleasure. I but lose my time and hinder the fulfilling of my destiny by remaining longer here!’ Which when the king heard that, he was stung to the heart, and forthwith girded on his armour and did valiantly in many battles. Then Agnes Sorel retired for five years to her country seat, where she had been brought up as a young girl. But of late the queen, seeing that the king again drew slack to oppose the English, went in person to fetch her back to the court, which many thought she was foolish for doing. But here comes Her Majesty the Queen in person.”
And across the green alleys, as it were from the side curtains of the garden, about which cropped hedges of yew were drawn in a sort of narrow labyrinth, there came a gracious lady, sedate and grave of aspect, yet without obvious melancholy.
Marie of Anjou, Queen of France, was still in the flower of her age, well able to attend to the affairs domestic of a court which had no fixed seat. But, for the rest, she had no influence with the king, who, when she reproached him that the English were not expelled from Guyenne, replied that he knew very well that she only wanted to get the fish for Fridays better and cheaper from Bordeaux! So after one or two attempts she left the whole governance of the king, in such matters, to her young ward, the Lady Agnes, whose title of Dame de Beauté constitutes by no means the greatest of her claims to be remembered.
James Douglas bent the knee to the Queen of France, but, as I judged, with something less of fervour than he had showed when he kissed the hand of Mistress Sorel.
“And who may this be?” she said, with her motherly serenity, looking long at me, and then turning to Mademoiselle Sorel for information.
The Dame de Beauté lowered her eyes and smiled, but, for reasons which I appreciate better now than then, she left James to make the introduction.
“A princess in your own right, my dear?” said the queen, “and to marry your cousin by the special permission of His Holiness the Pope—you are a happy woman, or ought to be. Indeed, if this be the cousin”—(she turned towards the Lord James as she spoke, but Agnes Sorel quickly interrupted)—“Permit me to set your Majesty right,” she murmured. “That tall, dark man over there is the Earl of Douglas, he who talks to the king and the Dauphin concerning State affairs in the alcove yonder.”
The queen looked at the three men, of whom one was her husband and the other her son. These two were bending towards William Douglas and listening eagerly, as Will, with his usual self-absorption, laid down the law on some subject of importance to himself.
“Ah,” she said, “I would it had not been so—for your sake, that is, my little lady. No woman can halter these men of many and great ideas. When you wed, my princess, see that you keep the smile ready on your lips even when the tears lag not far behind. Lock the sadness up, but let the hearth-fire be lit, and (if God be good to you) the children playing about the door when your husband rides back through the outer gate. For the ideas of such a man drive him fast and far—yea, against his will. His very greatness compels him to go on and yet on. Stop he cannot. His task will never be done. Kingdoms unknown, foes unproved, there are to conquer. New horizons open continually before him, and—I discern clearly the gloom of fate unfulfilled on his face! If he die in his bed, this husband whom you have chosen, I am cheated of my foresight—I, a woman who have suffered much, tell you so! A gloomy prophecy—yet it is better that the heart should be forewarned.”
Then she turned to James, who had been listening with an amazed expression to the queen’s words, for indeed he loved not sad talk at any time. “And the great blond cousin here,” she added, “is he yet wedded?”
James laughed softly and a little scornfully.
“Nay,” he said, “those I would have will none of me. And as for the others”—
At this point, even as he shrugged his shoulders, Mademoiselle Sorel turned her eyes upon him. There was a smile in them—a smile which, for some reason, discomfited our good James no little.
“May I walk with you, little one?” she said, gently touching me on the shoulder with her hand. “I think the queen has something to say to my Lord James of Douglas!”
They walked away together, while we followed them, silent till we had entered upon the alleys of green shade, in which the queen’s head-dress (of the fashion of twenty years ago, winged above like a sea swallow and with a falling frill of white muslin to cover the neck below) reminded me of my mother in the old days at Thrieve—as she was wont to stand in the embrasure of the tower, looking eastward for the home-coming of the “boys,” who would never grow to be men.
The queen and James soon passed out of sight. I was left alone with Agnes Sorel. For a time she did not speak, pacing gently along with her eyes abased upon the tall Easter lilies, which, in the light wind, swayed like her own slender body.
“Little maid,” she said, “I am well-nigh twice as old as you—and no longer a girl. I have seen much, and, they say, have profited thereby. They call me still ‘La Belle des Belles!’ These nicknames stick long. They ought rather to call me the wisest of those who once were fair. The profit may have been great, but it has also been bitter. Bear with me!”
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen!” The words came from me I hardly know how. But I meant them—yes, as if I too had been her lover.
She sighed, and looked about her a little wistfully.
“I have never thought much of that,” she said gently.
“Nay,” I answered, feeling somehow more at ease with her, “others were, I doubt not, ready enough to do that for you!”
She poised a finger at me with an expression half arch, half melancholy.
“Little flatterer,” she said, “do they teach even the maids to utter love glosings in their cradles in Scotland? Or have the Sisters taught you the trick at St. Brigida’s along with the abacus and broidering frame?”
“Neither,” I said. “I speak the truth as I think it!”
“Ah, wait, little lady,” she said. “In two years you will be as a bird of paradise to my barn-door fowl. You gain every day in beauty. Wit you have already, as is abundantly manifest. What you want is wisdom. That is all I now possess. In everything else I am far upon the return!”
“Not so, my Lady of Beauty,” I answered her. “You will never cease to be as young and beautiful as I see you now!”
(And when I spoke I knew not how true the words were to prove.)
But she only smiled sadly and answered me in a proverb of her country, as, indeed, she had a habit of doing.
“Adieu, baskets,” she said, “Vintage is done!”
Then gently and sweetly, as she did everything, she looked at me.
“But, my dear,” she continued, “it is not so with you. Your baskets are of the finest silver, and they are worthy to be filled with apples of gold. But will they be? Ah!” (here she sighed), “it is not good for a woman to be too beautiful—or what is the same thing, to have the name for it.”
“But I am not,” I said, awkwardly enough—blushing too, I doubt. For had not James told me that very thing two hours agone as we rode to Amboise? Not that I heeded James much, for he was always cataloguing my charms like a bill of accompt! But Larry—well, Larry spoke the truth even when it hurt. Only Will, my cousin, cared nothing for the matter one way or other. Indeed, I doubt if ever he remarked my face more than the spangles on the wings of the summer butterflies that fluttered by, balancing themselves like thistledown in the light wind. So it is small wonder that I blushed because La Belle des Belles said this thing.
Whereupon immediately she took my arm and bent over me, most loverlike.
“Princess,” she said, “there is a proverb—‘Buy peace and a house ready built!’ That is my advice. Love your husband and none other man. He is, they say, both a good man and a wise—a little hard, maybe, but yet to the wife who keeps the home-fires bright, a husband has a nose of wax. Nine times out of ten, she can make of him what she will. So at least we say in Touraine, and I judge it is a true word. There is, of course, the tenth!”
“But I can never love my Cousin Will,” I cried, “no, not if he were to be twenty years my husband!”
Agnes Sorel rested her hand a little more heavily on my shoulder as she replied, “Yes, you will love him—only pray God it may not be too late!”
I looked about me. Will was, as I expected, deep in talk with the king, and the Dauphin was sitting by, watching them out of those twinkling pupils of his eyes, which closed and opened again ever so little, like a cat’s in the sun.
But James, walking with the queen, was at the moment looking over his shoulder at me, and actually had the audacity to make that pouting movement of the lips which the French call petite moue. He would rather have been with us, he meant to say; and he did it so openly that I was frightened lest the king or other might see him.
“The Lord James is your husband’s brother?” said Agnes Sorel, with (I thought) more of meaning in her tone than was necessary.
“One of five!” I answered, “the eldest after the earl!”
“He follows you?” she continued, as if it were a matter of public knowledge.
“Nay,” answered I, with some little heat, “he saved me from the dungeons of the Maréchal de Retz at Machecoul, and on that account I have seen more of him than of my other cousins, who, besides, are much younger. Will, whom, for the sake of the house, I must marry, I have scarce seen at all.”
“Ah,” she said, after a pause, “then you love this James. I am sorry. Such round-the-corner affection as this is poor capital to begin housekeeping on!”
“Indeed, I love him not—no, nor any man in the world,” I cried, with much hotness of speech. “I would give all I possess to rid me of the whole wearyful, teasing crew. And of all things that tease, my cousins are the worst—excepting Will, that is, who takes no notice of anything.”
“And that,” here the Dame de Beauté smiled, “you, being a woman, like worst of all!”
“Nay,” said I, returning to the main question, “you do James a great wrong. He loves me, indeed, but he would as lief say so before his brother as to myself; and as for William—if he did, why, he would only continue to expound Rights Royal and Rights Seigneurial, Privilege and Prerogative, Domaines and Feodalities, while James made verses upon my eyelashes or told over for the fiftieth time the rings upon my fingers!”
The brows of the Dame de Beauté were drawn into a frown. The line of firmness showed plain between them.
“I must speak with William, Earl of Douglas,” she murmured; “this marches worse than I thought.”
“You shall not,” I cried, snatching away from her. “What right have you to take so much upon you? What am I to you—ay, or what is William Douglas either? Pray grind your own corn with the water out of your own mill-dam, Mistress Agnes Sorel!”
The Dame de Beauté was no ways put down by my rudeness; indeed, since I had spoken as a baby, she treated me as one.
“To-day explains Yesterday, and To-morrow the Day After,” she said; “but we must wait the Last Day of All to know everything! Then you also will know that I was right. Though now my words anger you, and are out of tune to your ear, believe that I know that which is best for you. Have I not bought that knowledge with a great price? Let your heart follow your hand, and, as you love God, draw yourself apart from the Lord James, your cousin! He is a light man. He hath the wandering eye. He will make no woman happy!”
“You shall not speak against James,” I cried, yet more angrily than before. “I have known him from a child. He saved me from death—ay, worse, from the Altar of Evil itself at Machecoul. He can drive a lance with any man in France. It is not given you to say to a woman’s heart, ‘Stay here, or go there.’ When you were young as I, could you do as much with your own?”
The Dame de Beauté bowed her head, and I think a tear fell upon her hand.
“God help me, that could I not!” she murmured; “but my failure only makes me the wiser physician for others. May the Mother Mary, in her mercy, keep your feet from the way mine have walked in!”
I took her hand, and would have answered more gently, for there were tears also in my eyes. But at that moment William, my cousin, came up, and, putting his hand on my arm, almost dragged me away, making no apology, saying neither By-y’r-leave nor yet Fare-ye-well!
“The king desires to see you!” He said the words roughly. “Come!”
Then, as was natural, I flew into a yet greater anger, and said to him, “Do you think, sirrah, that this is the way to make a young maid love you?”
“I did not ask you to love me,” he retorted upon me; “only to obey me!”
“Do as he bids; he is right!” murmured Agnes Sorel softly, as she turned away, her eyes upon the green untrodden grass and the nodding lilies of Our Lady.
I confess it was with a marvellous gladness that I saw our ancient castle of Thrieve stand up out of the morning mists, as we rode up Deeside from the little port of Kirkcudbright, where we had landed. I was once more in the land and among the people who were mine own. I could scarce repress my joy. When I leaped on the quay, I declare I could have kissed the many decent townsfolk, who, with sundry of the neighbouring gentrice, had come down to welcome me. It was sweet to hear their honest Scots tongues again, though oftentimes I could hardly keep from answering back in French.
But Thrieve! To see it once more and know it mine—yes, mine, even though I must fulfil my word and give it (with myself) to another, and he a man whom I could not love.
But I did not think of that then—Thrieve and Maud Lindsay and Sholto! These were before me, and my heart beat fast to see the valley opening out, and the white haze lifting from the water-meadows. For though we had left it full summer in Touraine, we came to Galloway to find it little more than the breaking out of the spring-time on the white-thorns on the braes.
And (so I kept saying to myself) Maud could tell me what I must do—Maud would understand all. She would not preach like the others. She would know that the best way to make a young maid think of any man is constantly to abuse him to her behind his back. So they had done with James Douglas—all but William, that is—who, I believe, had as much idea of being jealous of his stable-knave.
But there was Laurence—whose angers, however, because of what I knew was in his heart towards me, I could understand and forgive. But every day there was this one and that—each with a tale to bear of my Lord James and his wild doings—concerning maids of honour and suchlike. Last of all, and worst of all, there was Agnes Sorel, who had had so many bitter things to say of one concerning whom she knew nothing. Even the Sieur Paul (no white angel himself) could not let the poor lad go from Cour Cheverney without a blow in the by-going, perhaps thinking to curry favour with me.
“You are marrying the right brother,” he said; “you will sleep the easier for it! My Lord Quicksilver here would be always out at the haymaking!”
But I answered him back that it was all upon the turn of a coin which of my cousins I wedded—that they were all five of them brave men, right Douglases, and true Scots. The which words, being sorry for afterwards, caused me, upon taking of my leave, to hold up my cheek for the Sieur Paul to kiss—saying that it was an ancient Scots custom, the first time that one had tasted of a good man’s hospitality. And Messire Paul had the grace to reply, “I thank you, my lady princess, for your great condescendence. By St. Denis, if I had been a younger man, and somewhat slimmer of my body, I should have broke a lance with these lads myself for the honour of your hand—though, indeed, as to the matter of your vow, I am no Scot, but only a true Douglas in name and in heart!”
“Well,” I said, “for that good and brave saying I will give you back your kiss—which is more than I have ever given to any of these very poor young men, riding upon horses!”
For I knew how envious James was for the like,