The Caged Lion | Page 8

to the King, it were well that he
should know that our hot Scottish bloods, here, could scarce brook an
English alliance, and certainly not one beneath his birth.'
'The King would answer, Sir,' returned Sir James, haughtily, but with
recovered command over himself, 'that it is for him to judge whom his
subjects shall brook as their queen. Moreover,' he added, in a different
and more conciliatory voice, 'Scotsmen must be proud indeed who
disdain the late King's niece, the great-granddaughter of King Edward
III., and as noble and queenly a demoiselle as ever was born in a
palace.'
'She is so very fair, then?' said Lilies, who was of course on the side of
true love. 'You have seen her, gentle Sir? Oh, tell us what are her
beauties?'
'Fair damsel,' said Sir James, in a much more gentle tone, 'you forget
that I am only a poor prisoner, who have only now and then viewed the

lady Joan Beaufort with distant reverence, as destined to be my queen.
All I can tell is, that her walk and bearing mark her out for a throne.'
'And oh!' cried Malcolm, 'is it not true that the King hath composed
songs and poems in her honour?'
'Pah!' muttered Patrick; 'as though the King would be no better than a
wandering minstrel rhymester!'
'Or than King David!' dryly said Sir James.
'It is true, then, Sir,' exclaimed Lilias. 'He doth verily add minstrelsy to
his other graces? Know you the lines, Sir? Can you sing them to us? Oh,
I pray you.'
'Nay, fair maid,' returned Sir James, 'methinks I might but add to the
scorn wherewith Sir Patrick is but too much inclined to regard the
captive King.'
'A captive, a captive--ay, minstrelsy is the right solace for a captive,'
said Patrick; 'at least, so they say and sing. Our king will have better
work when he gains his freedom. Only there will come before me a
subtilty I once saw in jelly and blanc-mange, at a banquet in France,
where a lion fell in love with a hunter's daughter, and let her, for love's
sake, draw his teeth and clip his claws, whereupon he found himself
made a sport for her father's hounds.'
'I promise you, Sir Patrick,' replied the guest, 'that the Lady Joan is
more hike to send her Lion forth from the hunter's toils, with claws and
teeth fresh-whetted by the desire of honour.
'But the lay--the hay, Sir,' entreated Lilias; 'who knows that it may not
win Patrick to be the Lady Joan's devoted servant? Malcolm, your
harp!'
Malcolm had already gone in quest of the harp he loved all the better
for the discouragement thrown on his gentle tastes.
The knight leant back, with a pensive look softening his features as he
said, after a little consideration, 'Then, fair lady, I will sing you the
song made by King James, when he had first seen the fair mistress of
his heart, on the slopes of Windsor, looking from his chamber window.
He feigns her to be a nightingale.'
'And what is that, Sir?' demanded Lilias. 'I have heard the word in
romances, and deemed it a kind of angel that sings by night.'
'It is a bird, sister,' replied Malcolm; 'Philomel, that pierces her breast
with a thorn, and sings sweetly even to her death.'

'That's mere minstrel leasing, Malcolm,' said Patrick. 'I have both seen
and heard the bird in France--_Rossignol_, as we call it there; and were
I a lady, I should deem it small compliment to be likened to a little
russet-backed, homely fowl such as that.'
'While I,' replied the prisoner, 'feel so much with your fair sister, that
nightingales are a sort of angels that sing by night, that it pains me,
when I think of winning my freedom, to remember that I shall never
again hear their songs answering one another through the forest of
Windsor.'
Patrick shrugged his shoulders, but Lilias was so anxious to hear the
lay, that she entreated him to be silent; and Sir James, with a manly
mellow voice, with an exceedingly sweet strain in it, and a skill, both of
modulation and finger, such as showed admirable taste and instruction,
poured forth that beautiful song of the nightingale at Windsor, which
commences King James's story of his love, in his poem of the King's
Quhair.
There was an eager pressing round to hear, and not only were Lilias
and Malcolm, but old Sir David himself, much affected by the strain,
which the latter said put him in mind of the days of King Robert III.,
which, sad as they were, now seemed like good old times, so much
worse was the present state of affairs. Sir James, however, seemed
anxious to prevent discussion of