Two Penniless Princesses | Page 5

back
as the three-year-old boy elicited a squall from the eighteen-months
one.
'Johnnie! Johnnie! what gars ye tak' away wee Andie's claw? Here, my
mannie.'
And she was kneeling on the leads, making peace over the precious
crab's claw, which, with a few cockles and mussels, was the choicest
toy of these forlorn young Stewarts; for Stewarts they all were, though
the three youngest, the weans, as they were called, were only
half-brothers to the rest.
Nothing, in point of fact, could have been much more forlorn than the
condition of all. The father of the elder ones, James I., the flower of the
whole Stewart race, had nine years before fallen a victim to the savage
revenge and ferocity of the lawless men whom he had vainly
endeavoured to restrain, leaving an only son of six years old and six
young daughters. His wife, Joanna, once the Nightingale of Windsor,
had wreaked vengeance in so barbarous a manner as to increase the
dislike to her as an Englishwoman. Forlorn and in danger, she tried to
secure a protector by a marriage with Sir James Stewart, called the
Black Knight of Lorn; but he was unable to do much for her, and only
added the feuds of his own family to increase the general danger. The
two eldest daughters, Margaret and Isabel, were already contracted to
the Dauphin and the Duke of Brittany, and were soon sent to their new
homes. The little King, the one darling of his mother, was snatched
from her, and violently transferred from one fierce guardian to another;
each regarding the possession of his person as a sanction to tyranny. He
had been introduced to the two winsome young Douglases only as a

prelude to their murder, and every day brought tidings of some fresh
violence; nay, for the second time, a murder was perpetrated in the
Queen's own chamber.
The poor woman had never been very tender or affectionate, and had
the haughty demeanour with which the house of Somerset had thought
fit to assert their claims to royalty. The cruel slaughter of her first
husband, perhaps the only person for whom she had ever felt a
softening love, had hardened and soured her. She despised and
domineered over her second husband, and made no secret that the
number of her daughters was oppressive, and that it was hard that while
the royal branch had produced, with one exception, only useless pining
maidens, her second marriage in too quick succession should bring her
sons, who could only be a burthen. No one greatly marvelled when, a
few weeks after the birth of little Andrew, his father disappeared,
though whether he had perished in some brawl, been lost at sea, or
sought foreign service as far as possible from his queenly wife and
inconvenient family, no one knew.
Not long after, the Queen, with her four daughters and the infants, had
been seized upon by a noted freebooter, Patrick Hepburn of Hailes, and
carried to Dunbar Castle, probably to serve as hostages, for they were
fairly well treated, though never allowed to go beyond the walls. The
Queen's health had, however, been greatly shaken, the cold blasts of the
north wind withered her up, and she died in the beginning of the year
1445.
The desolateness of the poor girls had perhaps been greater than their
grief. Poor Joanna had been exacting and tyrannical, and with no
female attendants but the old, worn-out English nurse, had made them
do her all sorts of services, which were requited with scoldings and
grumblings instead of the loving thanks which ought to have made
them offices of affection as well as duty; while the poor little boys
would indeed have fared ill if their half-sister Mary, though only twelve
years old, had not been one of those girls who are endowed from the
first with tender, motherly instincts.
Beyond providing that there was a supply of some sort of food, and that
they were confined within the walls of the Castle, Hepburn did not
trouble his head about his prisoners, and for many weeks they had no
intercourse with any one save Archie Scott, an old groom of their

mother's; Ankaret, nurse to baby Andrew; and the seneschal and his
wife, both Hepburns.
Eleanor and Jean, who had been eight and seven years old at the time of
the terrible catastrophe which had changed all their lives, had been well
taught under their father's influence; and the former, who had inherited
much of his talent and poetical nature, had availed herself of every
scanty opportunity of feeding her imagination by book or ballad,
story-teller or minstrel; and the store of tales, songs, and fancies that
she had accumulated were not only her own chief resource but that of
her sisters,