The Caged Lion Part 23

CHAPTER XII: THE LAST PILGRIMAGE

The summer morning came; the reveille sounded, Ma.s.s was sung in the chapel tent, without which Henry never moved; and Malcolm tried to rea.s.sure his sinking heart by there pledging his vow to St. Andrew.

The English king was not present; but the troops were drawing up in complete array, that he might inspect them before the march. And a glorious array they were, of steel-clad men-at-arms on horseback, in bands around their leader's banner, and of ranks of st.u.r.dy archers, with their long-bows in leathern cases; the orderly mult.i.tude, stretching as far as the eye could reach, glittering in the early sun, and waiting with bold and glad hearts to greet the much-loved king, who had always led them to victory.

The only unarmed knight was James of Scotland. He stood in the s.p.a.ce beside the standard of England, in his plain suit of chamois leather, his crimson cloak over his shoulder, but with no weapon about him, waiting with crossed arms for the morning's decision.

Close outside the royal tent waited Henry's horse, and those of his brother and other immediate attendants; and after a short interval the King came forth in his brightest armour, with the coronal on his helmet, and the beaver up; and as he mounted, not without considerable aid, enthusiastic shouts of 'Long live King Harry!' broke forth, and came echoing back and back from troop to troop, gathering fervour as they rose.

The King rode forward towards the standard; but while yet the shouts were pealing from the army, be suddenly caught at his saddle-bow, reeled visibly, and would have fallen before Bedford could bring his horse to his side, had not James sprung forward, and laid one arm round him, and a hand on his rein.

'It is nothing,' said Henry. 'Let me alone.'

Ere the words were finished, he put his hand to his side, dropped his bridle, and gasped, while a look of intense suffering pa.s.sed over his features; and he was pa.s.sive while his horse was led back to the tent, and he was lifted down and placed on the couch he had just quitted.

'Loose my belt,' he gasped; then trying to smile, 'Percy has strained it three holes tighter.'

Alas! though it was indeed thus drawn in, his armour was hanging on him like the sh.e.l.l of a last year's nut. They released him from it, and he lay against the cus.h.i.+ons with short painful respiration, and frequent cough.

'You must go on with the men at once, John,' he said. 'I will but be blooded, and follow in the litter.'

'Warwick and Salisbury-' began Bedford.

'No, no!' peremptorily gasped Henry. 'It must be you or I, I would, but this st.i.tch in the side catches me, so that I can neither ride nor speak. Go, instantly. You know what I have ordered. I'll be up with you ere the battle.'

He brooked no resistance. His impatience, and with it the oppression and pain, only grew by remonstrance; and Bedford was forced to obey the command to go himself, and leave no one he could help behind him.

'You will stay, at least,' said John, in his distress, turning to the Scottish king.

'I must,' said James.

'You hold not your wrath?' said Bedford. 'It will madden me to leave him to any save you in this stress. Some are dull; some he will not heed.'

'I will tend him like yourself, John,' said the Scot, taking his hand. 'Do what he may, Harry is Harry still. Hasten to your command, John; he will be calmer when you are gone.'

Bedford groaned. It was hard to leave his brother at a moment when he must be more than himself-become general of an army, with a battle imminent; but he was under dire necessity, and forced himself to listen to and gather the import of the few terse orders and directions that Henry, breathless as he was, rendered clear and trenchant as ever.

The King almost drove his brother away at last, while a barber was taking a copious stream of blood from him; and as the army had already been set in motion, a great stillness soon prevailed, no one being left save a small escort, and part of the King's own immediate household, for Henry had himself ordered away Montagu, his chamberlain, Percy, and almost all on whom his eyes fell. The bleeding relieved him; he breathed less tightly, but became deadly pale, and sank into a doze of extreme exhaustion.

'Who is here?' he said, awakening. 'Some drink! What you, Jamie! You that were on fire to see a stricken field!'

'Not so much as to see you better at ease,' said James.

'I am better,' said Henry. 'I could move now; and I must. This tent will stifle me by noon.'

'You will not go forward?'

'No; I'll go back. A sick man is best with his wife. And I can battle it no further, nor grudge the glory of the day to John. He deserves it.'

The irascible sharpness had pa.s.sed from his voice and manner, and given place to a certain languid cheerfulness, as arrangements were made for his return to Vincennes.

There proved to be a large and commodious barge, in which the transit could be effected on the river, with less of discomfort than in the springless horse litter by which he had travelled the day before; and this was at once prepared.

Malcolm had meanwhile remained, as in duty bound, in attendance on his king. James had found time to enjoin him to stay, being, to say the truth, unwilling to trust one so inexperienced and fragile in the melee without himself; nor indeed would this have been a becoming moment for him to put himself forward to win his spurs in the English cause.

Nothing had pa.s.sed about Patrick Drummond, nor the high words of last night. Henry seemed to have forgotten them, between his bodily suffering and the anxiety of being forced to relinquish the command just before a battle; and James would have felt it ungenerous to hara.s.s him at such a moment, when absolutely committed to his charge. For the present, there was no fear of the prisoner being summarily executed by any lawful authority, since the King had promised to take cognizance of the case; and the chief danger was from his chance discovery by some lawless man-at-arms, who would think himself doing good service by killing a concealed Scot under any circ.u.mstances.

Drummond himself, after his delirious night, had sunk into a heavy sleep; and the King thought the best hope for him would be to remain under the care of Sir Nigel Baird for the present, until he could obtain favour for him from Henry, and could send back orders from Vincennes. He would not leave Malcolm to share the care of him, declaring that the canny Sir Nigel would have quite enough to do in averting suspicion without him; and, besides, he needed Malcolm himself, in the scarcity of attendants who had any tenderness or dexterity of hand to wait upon the suffering King.

Henry had rallied enough to walk down to the river, leaning upon James; and he smiled thanks when he was a.s.sisted by Trenton and Kitson to lie along on cus.h.i.+ons. 'So, my Yorks.h.i.+re knights,' he said, "tis you that have had to stop from the battle to watch a sick man home!'

'Ay, Sir,' said Sir Christopher; 'I did it with the better will, that Trenton here has not been his own man since the fever; and 'twere no fair play in the matter your Grace wets of, did I go into battle whole and sound, and he sick and sorry.'

Henry's look of amus.e.m.e.nt brightened him into his old self, as he said, 'Honester guards could I scarce have, good friend.'

At that moment, after a nudge or two from Trenton, Kitson and he came suddenly down on their knees, with an impetus that must have tried the boards of the bottom of the barge. 'Sir,' said Kitson, always the spokesman, 'we have a grace to ask of you.'

'Say on,' said Henry. 'Any boon, save the letting you cut one another's throats.'

'No, Sir. Will Trenton's scarce my match now, more's the pity; and, moreover, we've lost the good will to it we once had. No, Sir; 'twas license to go a pilgrimage.'

'On pilgrimage!'

'Ay, Sir; to yon shrine at Breuil-St. Fiacre's, as they call him. Some of our rogues pillaged his shrine, as you know, Sir; and those that know these parts best, say he was a Scottish hermit, and bears malice like a Scot, saint though he be; and that your sickness, my lord, is all along of that. So we two have vowed to go barefoot there for your healing, my liege, if so be we have your license.'

'And welcome, with my best thanks, good friends,' said Henry, exerting himself to lean forward and give his hand to their kiss. Then, as they fell back into their places, with a few inarticulate blessings and a.s.surances that they only wished they could go to Rome, or to Jerusalem, if it would restore their king, Henry said, smiling, as he looked at James, 'Scotsmen here, there, and everywhere-in Heaven as well as earth! What was it last night about a Scot that moved thine ire, Jamie? Didst not tender me thy sword? By my faith, thou hast it not! What was the rub?'

James now told the story in its fulness. How he had met Sir Patrick Drummond at Glenuskie; how, afterwards, the knight had stood by him in the encounter at Meaux; and how it had been impossible to leave him senseless to the flames; and how he had trusted that a capture made thus, accidentally, of a helpless man, would not fall under Henry's strict rules against accepting Scottish prisoners.

'Hm!' said Henry; 'it must be as you will; only I trust to you not to let him loose on us, either here or on the Border. Take back your sword, Jamie. If I spoke over hotly last night-a man hardly knows what he says when he has a goad in the side-you forgive it, Jamie.' And as the Scots king, with the dew in his eyes, wrung his hand, he added anxiously, 'Your sword! What, not here! Here's mine. Which is it?' Then, as James handed it to him: 'Ay, I would fain you wore it! 'Tis the sword of my knighthood, when poor King Richard dubbed me in Ireland; and many a brave scheme came with it!'

The soft movement of the barge upon the water had a soothing influence; and he was certainly in a less suffering state, though silent and dreamy, as he lay half raised on cus.h.i.+ons under an awning, James anxiously watching over him, and Malcolm with a few other attendants near at hand; stout bargemen propelling the craft, and the guard keeping along the bank of the river.

His thoughts were perhaps with the battle, for presently he looked up, and murmured the verse:

'"I had a dream, a weary dream, Ayont the Isle of Skye; I saw a dead man win a fight, And I think that man was I."

That stave keeps ringing in my brain; nor can I tell where or when I have heard it.'

"Tis from the Scottish ballad that sings of the fight of Otterburn,' said James; 'I brought it with me from Scotland.'

'And got little thanks for your pains,' said Henry, smiling. 'But, methinks, since no Percy is in the way, I would hear it again; there was true knighthood in the Douglas that died there.'

James's harp was never far off; and again his mellow voice went through that gallant and plaintive strain, though in a far more subdued manner than the first time he had sung it; and Henry, weakened and softened, actually dropped a brave man's tear at the 'bracken bush upon the lily lea,' and the hero who lay there.

'That I should weep for a Douglas!' he said, half laughing; 'but the hearts of all honest men lie near together, on whatever side they draw their swords. G.o.d have mercy on whosoever may fall to-morrow! I trow, Jamie, thou couldst not sing that rough rhyme of Agincourt. I was bashful and ungracious enough to loathe the very sound of it when I came home in my pride of youth; but I would lief hear it once more. Or, stay-Yorks.h.i.+remen always have voices;' and raising his tone, he unspeakably gratified Trenton and Kitson by the request; and their voices, deep and powerful, and not uncultivated, poured forth the Lay of Agincourt to the waves of the French river, and to its mighty victor:

'Our King went forth to Normandye.'