The Constant Prince
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So spoke the great Enrique of Avis, in the young days of the modern world, he who was at once a great soldier and a devoted son of the Church, the priestly knight of the Middle Ages, who helped the new learning many miles on her way, to whom astronomy and physical science began to open their treasures; while in his breast burnt the same fire of adventure, the same longing for discovery, that in our day has penetrated Arctic seas and African deserts, fulfilling the command to replenish the earth and subdue it. But, prince though he was, Enrique met with scant sympathy beyond the limits of his family, in designs which the world had not yet learnt to understand. And little did he dream of how much misery Christian men would bring to those unknown lands, after which his heart hungered; or that his earnest desire to bring his islanders to a sight of the blessings of Christianity should be quoted as a precedent and justification for all the horrors of the slave trade.
Pedro had enough of the same power to understand his efforts, and he was beginning a sympathetic reply, when one of Fernando’s attendants came towards them telling him that Sir Walter Northberry desired to speak with him.
“Ask him to come hither,” said Fernando; and even as he spoke, Northberry, with a pale and disturbed countenance, came hurriedly towards the brothers.
“Alas! my lord!” he said, with a hasty reverence, “I have the worst of ill news. I am a miserable man. The ship in which my little daughters sailed him been attacked by Moorish pirates. There was a vessel bound from France to Lisbon came to the rescue, and beat them off; but oh, the saints pity us! the cursed villains carried with them my little Kate. Woe’s me that ever I let them go.”
Northberry covered his face with his hands, unable to repress his despairing grief; while the princes pressed round him, full of sympathy and indignation.
Fernando took his hand, and drew him to a seat, saying eagerly —
“Everything is at your command. What can be done? Have you any due?”
“Surely,” said Duarte, “a sufficient ransom will open the prison gates.”
“Horrible degradation!” cried Enrique and Fernando in a breath.
“As to that, my good lords,” said Northberry, “I care not for degradation, if I can but get my poor little maid back. Better tempest and shipwreck. But this French vessel that brought me the news said that the attack was made at night by a superior force, and that they were gone in the morning beyond pursuit. So Dom Manuel sent the wretched news back, and sailed as fast as might be for England, lest Nella should share her sister’s fate. Alas! alas!”
“And this!” cried Fernando, with flashing eyes, “this is what we suffer on our shores – we! princes, knights, Christians – shame – shame upon us! Better spend the last coin in our treasury – shed the last drop of our blood – better die among nations, lose all – everything – than have it so! What! we hold our kingdom undisturbed by a false peace with friends such as these! Let it go, but let us drive them from Portuguese waters – from Christian soil. I will endure it no longer; I will do it single-handed.”
Fernando stood with lifted hand and face on fire, long suppressed passion giving startling effect to his words; but suddenly his face paled and he dropped back on his seat.
“I – I can do nothing,” he said, in a voice of inexpressible melancholy.
Enrique leaned over him, and put his arm round him, as if he had been still the little brother, whose excitement he had soothed so often in early years.
“Everything in our power shall be done, good Sir Walter,” said Duarte, earnestly.
“Indeed, my lord, I doubt it not,” said Northberry. “I am sorry so to grieve Dom Fernando.”
Fernando looked up.
“Duarte, I meant to reproach no one,” he said, humbly. “My friend, I can do little for you, or any one, but pray; I will go and do that.”
“My lord,” said Sir Walter, kissing his hand, “such prayers as yours must be answered.”
Fernando shook his head sadly. He blamed himself for the outburst of feeling which had seemed to reproach his brothers for failing in a duty which he could not even attempt, and for long hours that night he knelt in his private chapel, and prayed that at whatever cost to himself the power of the Moor might be lessened and the little captive restored unharmed to her friends.
Fernando often pursued his devotions at risk to his own health, the care of which did not present itself to him as a duty in the way it would now to an equally conscientious person; and perhaps, had his austerities been fewer, he would have been better able to follow the wish of his heart. But he followed the light given him, and his prayers in due time bore fruit. But not immediately; no tidings of Katharine Northberry came to Lisbon; the sorrow narrowed itself to one sore spot in her father’s heart, while a long and dangerous attack of illness for Fernando followed close on Dom Pedro’s wedding.
Enrique put aside his pressing schemes to stay with him and to nurse him, and as he grew better to understand the deep desire of Fernando’s heart, he resolved that before every other object he would devote himself to carry it out.
Chapter Eight
Two Lives
“And like a double cherry – seeming parted.”
The clear light of an English spring evening was shining down on the grey walls of the convent of Saint Mary, streaming through the golden green of the neighbouring wood, showing the towers of Northberry Manor House through the trees, and sparkling on the blue strip of sea behind them. Far on either side stretched wood and forest, hitherto untouched by the hand of man, while from the pleasant fields cultivated round the convent and Manor House green glades and glens wound away into the forest, where the hunter might sound his horn, the outlaw take refuge, where wild game of all kinds still dwelt without chance of extinction, and where fairy rings were found on the grass, strange sights seen, and strange sounds heard beyond the chime of the church bells of Northberry. The lords of the manor rode through the rough roads now and again on visits to their neighbours, or for assize meetings at the nearest town; the convent priests, who also served the little village church, went through the wood now and then at the summons of the Bishop; but the villagers who clustered round the convent and manor walls were afraid of the forest, and Eleanor Northberry had never passed through it since she had been brought there, six years before, a solitary and frightened child, pining for the little twin sister who had been torn from her side. She had been tenderly received and cherished by her cousins, and with their daughter Adela was placed at the convent, where she learnt to read and to sing, to sew and to embroider, going home occasionally to Northberry Manor, and growing so much into a part of the family, that Sir Edward Northberry contemplated finding a husband for her in due time among the gallant squires of Devon, and never sending her back again to the “foreign parts,” which, spite of his connection with Lisbon, he regarded as peopled by a mixture of Frenchmen and Moors.
Within the convent precincts was a garden surrounded by high old walls, through one of which a gate led into the little burial-ground where the convent chapel stood. There was a sun-dial in the midst of the garden, on the step of which Eleanor – or as she loved better to be called, Nella – Northberry sat making wreaths from a great heap of white hawthorn on the grass beside her. The garden was neatly kept, with a plentiful supply of herbs useful for cooking or for medicine, and a few spring flowers, such as bluebells or lilies of the valley, and in the centre of the turf an apple-tree in full blossom; there were cherries and plums in plenty, with the fruit just setting among their green leaves. A large oblong pond full of fish lay across the bottom of the garden. The birds sang sweetly; a family of robin-redbreasts were making their first attempts at flying from the low branches of the apple-trees. There was a low sound of chanting from the chapel, where the nuns were practising the services for the approaching festival of Whitsuntide. All was full of peace and calm, brightened by the fresh and hopeful spring-time.
Nella finished her long white garland, and laid it at her feet. She clasped her hands on her knees, and watched the little snowy clouds as they came floating from behind the cherry-trees across the sky. She was very simply dressed in a grey frock cut square at her neck, and finished with a white frill; but she was a tall and beautiful girl, almost a woman in height, with her long brown hair drawn back from a broad fair brow, a frank and simple countenance, and eyes at once innocent and fearless. She was almost too much for the nuns sometimes, with her wild spirits and dauntless gaiety, delighting in woodland scrambles and hairbreadth escapes. But she was loving and loyal-hearted, and no rebel, though a little difficult of control.
Just now, however, the evening calm had stolen over her spirit, and she sat lost in thought, her memory, seldom active, going back to the days of her early childhood, as she glanced at the gold cross which she wore constantly round her neck.
Nella could not be said to have forgotten Catalina. She prayed for her morning and evening, and she knew that masses were constantly sung in the convent chapel for her deliverance; but the sorrow of her loss was regarded as too terrible for common speech. A cloud of horror hung over her memory, and Nella, whose simple, healthy nature easily adapted itself to new surroundings, rather shrank from the thought of her. Her father had never fulfilled his promise of coming to England; her nurse had been taken captive with Kate. She could vividly remember the night attack, when she had run out to see what was the matter, and found the others gone on her return, and carrying her thoughts back she could remember different trees and flowers, a house that seemed to her of wonderful splendour, a mother’s kiss, her bluff father’s voice, and, more clearly than anything else, the tall, pale young prince who had given her the jewel round her neck and bid her trust in God.
It must be remembered that though Nella’s memory enabled her to recall orange-trees and pomegranates, strange dresses and customs, and the “Moors” as familiar objects of dread, she never met with any one who had ever seen an orange-tree, or done more than hear of a Moor as a sort of emissary of evil. She had nothing therefore but her own childish impressions to fall back upon, which were confused and blurred, and she invariably pictured Catalina as her own double, grown to the same height, wearing the same clothes, and thinking the same thoughts. But the image seemed as far removed from her as if she had been taught to regard Catalina as among the saints in Paradise. Nella was not imaginative; she did not realise strange conditions; a sort of reserve had always veiled even from her own thoughts the present condition of her twin sister. But her convent life was almost over, and the change in her own existence made her thoughtful.
“I am thirteen,” she thought; “I have made my first communion, perhaps before many years I shall be married; but Catalina – ”
Suddenly, for the first time, it came clearly before her mind that Catalina, if alive, could not be in the least like herself, could not be a Christian at all. Nella sprang to her feet and almost cried out as the thought stung her, and for the first time in her life she was seized with the intensest desire to know her sister’s fate; she felt as if she must discover what had become of her, as if the uncertainty so long acquiesced in had become suddenly intolerable to her.
The chapel bell began to ring for vespers; one of the nuns came into the garden and called Nella. She took up her wreath and followed into the chapel, and as she knelt and prayed, the twin sister whom she could no longer picture to herself seemed to call to her out of terrible and unknown darkness.
In the convent chapel, among the oak-wood and the cherry-blossoms of an English spring, Eleanor Northberry laid her garlands on a holy shrine and listened to the chanting of the vesper service; while the light faded away over the peaceful garden, and the last reflection of the sunset died out from the long fish-pond, and the nuns were left to the peace and the stillness of night.
The sun also dropped down to rest over another small inclosure, far away in the warm south. Round the royal palace of Muley Hassan, King of Fez, were magnificent gardens, and on the side devoted to the women was one, the very gem of them all. A kind of cloister surrounded it, built with the utmost elaboration of Moorish art, horseshoe arches, fretwork of the most exquisite forms, blazing with gold and silver, and glowing with the gorgeousness of Oriental colour. Flowers of almost tropical variety and beauty were growing in profusion, and in the centre was a fountain in which gold and silver fish were swimming. On the brink stood a young girl with a splendid wreath of crimson passion-flowers in her hand. She was dressed in a tunic of blue silk, wonderfully embroidered with coloured flowers, full white silk trousers were fastened round her ankles above her golden slippers; on her head was a rose-coloured turban, coquettishly set on the top of the long straight plait of hair that fell down her back. She seated herself on the rim of the fountain, and laying her flowers at her feet, listened to the distant sound of girlish voices laughing and chattering beyond the cloister, or to the noise of a number of parrots and other birds inclosed in a golden network at one corner of the garden.
The girl’s face was fair, with fine outlines, large blue eyes of a peculiar wistful softness, and with an expression gentle, dreamy, and somewhat passive. This was Leila, a Christian slave, the pet and plaything of the ladies of Muley Hassan’s harem; this was Katharine, Eleanor Northberry’s lost sister.
Strangely enough there had been a sort of outward similarity between the lives that were essentially so different. Each sister had been brought up in seclusion in a household of women. Catalina, like Nella, learnt to embroider and to sing; she too lived among birds and flowers and pleasant places. She too was taught to be obedient, to submit to rules; and the gentle nature obeyed more perfectly, and carried cushions and sang little songs or gathered flowers for the princesses, more aptly than Nella learnt her tasks or steadied her dancing steps in Northberry convent. But the little slave had been treated as a favourite toy, and nothing had occurred to drive her thoughts beyond herself. She had at once been separated from her nurse and taken to the palace, and though she could have told, if asked, her real name and have understood probably her own language, years of soft living separated her from any reminder of her old life.
“Leila, Leila!” cried a clear voice.
Leila sprang up and ran to the garden-gate to meet a lady, of exquisite dark beauty, who came and sat down on a pile of silken cushions near the fountain. Leila took, at her signal, a golden casket from another little girl, and kneeling before her mistress, began to take out its contents and display them.
Mistress and maiden smiled with delight as rubies, diamonds, and emeralds came to view.
“My jewels are the best in the harem,” said the Princess Zarah, proudly.
“Yes, lady,” said Leila, “neither Zuleika nor Zoraya have half so many.”
“There is a string of pearls for you,” said Zarah. “Or, no – choose among these for yourself.”
“What is that?” said the little slave suddenly, pointing to a small eight-pointed ornament with a ruby in the centre.
“That!” said the princess. “Why, child, that is yours already. It was tied round your neck when you were brought to me.”
Leila took the cross in her hand, and gazed at it with a fixed, dreamy look.
“Nella had one too,” she said suddenly. “Dom Fernando gave them to us.”
“Who is that?” said Zarah, indolently.
Leila looked perplexed, tears filled her eyes, and, with a half-unconscious movement, she made the sign of the cross.
Zarah struck her hand sharply.
“Hold, child! that is wicked. Do that again and you shall be beaten.”
“Are all Christians wicked?” said Leila, timidly.
“Of course, child – they are unbelievers.”
“And Nella must be a Christian – I was once.”
“There, do not fret. Here is a spray of emeralds, for you to put in your turban. You are happy enough, and spoiled, my little one. Religions do not matter so much for a woman, certainly not for a slave. Some day, when I can spare you, you shall marry a true Mussulman, who shall give you sweetmeats and jewels. You are very pretty – none of the other princesses have such a pretty slave.”
Leila laid the jewels down, and, slipping away from her mistress’ side, she leaned over the carved parapet of the ladies’ garden, peeping through the trellis-work that divided it from the more public grounds of the palace. Down below, she saw four or five men, haggard, weary, and scantily clothed, dragging heavy loads of earth to form a bank on one side of the garden. Presently a Moor came up and struck one of them a sharp blow. He cowered under it for a moment, and then, as the striker turned away, his victim looked up to Heaven and made the sign of the Cross.
These poor sufferers were Leila’s fellow-Christians. Tears filled her eyes; she longed to help them. But she was a slave, petted, soft, and self-indulgent, like a pet animal. She shrank away from the painful thought, and, going back to her mistress, tried to forget it in wreathing the passion-flowers round her hair.
Chapter Nine
In Northberry Forest
“The huge, broad-breasted old oak-tree.”
Northberry Manor house was a heavy, grey stone building, with a small court in the centre, and four little round towers at the corners. A moat surrounded it, crossed by a drawbridge, which, however, was rarely raised. England still felt the benefit of the strong government of Henry the Fifth, and all was at peace. The gates stood open, save at night; the servants and retainers stood idling about the court, and the great hunting-dogs sat in the sun and enjoyed life, one lovely morning in Whitsun week, as Nella Northberry, in all the delight of a holiday, came running out of the hall-door among them, calling them to her, and stroking and petting them with fearless affection.
“Oh, how much nicer this is than embroidery!” she cried, clapping her hands.
“And oh, how shocked Dame Agnes would be to hear you say so?” said a tall, slim lad, with a ruddy brown skin, bright hazel eyes, and an air of alert and cheerful activity.
“Ah, but, Harry, I have improved so much. See, this is my new green holiday kirtle, and I worked the border to it, I did indeed. Sister Katharine showed me the stitch.”
“It is a very fine kirtle, truly,” said the boy. “See, you have let Lion lay his paws all over the front of it.”
“It will brush, it is made of serge,” said Nella, blushing. “But now, Harry, I have something very serious to speak of. Where will you come and talk to me about it?”
“Let us come on to the tower battlements then,” said Harry, struck with the air of serious purpose that suddenly changed the girl’s laughing face.
Harry Hartsed also had relations in Portugal, and his father, a poor squire, lived not many miles from the manor. Sir Walter Northberry, after the fashion of the time, had taken him into his household that he might acquire the education of a gentleman, and he was now about seventeen, a fine, high-spirited boy, earnest and ambitious. He and Nella took their way on to the top of one of the little towers, from which they could see over miles of forest, in every variety of spring colouring.
Nella leaned against the battlement, the wind freshening her rosy cheeks and blowing her long hair about her shoulders. She fixed her eyes on Harry, and said —
“Now I am going to tell you a secret. I want you to help me, but I will never forgive you if you speak to any one else about it.”
“I always keep your secrets, Nella; you need not scold me beforehand,” said Harry.
“Well,” said Nella, too much in earnest to reply to his challenge, “it is about my – my sister.”
Her eyes fell, and she coloured deeply, with the awe of one approaching a mystery.
“Your sister! But you know nothing about her, Nella,” said Harry, tenderly and rather shyly.
“No; but I mean to find out. I began to think of her on Whitsun Eve, when I was making a garland for Our Lady. I want to know what has become of Catalina. I am sure she is alive.”
“But it is quite impossible that you can find out about her, Nell,” said Harry. “Either she is dead – God rest her soul! – or lost to you for ever.”
“I am going to ask the witch in the forest,” said Nella, coolly.
Harry started, and said in a tone of strong disapproval —
“I shall not help you to do that.”
“Then I shall go by myself.”
Harry was a straightforward youth, who disliked what he could not understand. There was something disgraceful as well as dreadful in a Moorish captivity. If the lost girl was a Mahometan slave, the less they knew of her the better; and as for the witch in the forest, in plain English he was very much afraid of her.
“I will not hear of such a thing, Nella,” he said. “It is very wicked to consult a witch who has sold her soul to the Evil One. Besides, how do you know what she might do to you! Now, do you think Father Anselm, or the Lady Abbess, or your aunt, or Sir Walter would consent to it?”
“No,” said Nella, “of course not. But I am sure that it is right to go. And I shall tell my beads all the way and wear my cross round my neck. She cannot harm my soul or my body while I have that. I will let her cut my hair off and give her my string of pearls if she wants them. And if you are afraid, I will go by myself.”
“Afraid! I am not afraid of the forest! But you ought not to deceive Dame Agnes and go in secret.”
“Very well,” said Nella. “And ought you to have got out at the little postern, and gone to Dunford Fair, when Sir Walter forbade you? Or away down on the rocks to get the sea-gull’s eggs, when he sent you to the Master Armourer at Newton? If you may play truant for pleasure, surely I may for a good purpose.”
Master Harry Hartsed, like many another, found his principles impeded by his practice, and, dropping the question of obedience, observed —
“You are a girl, which alters the question.”
“Ask Father Anselm if a boy has any more right to be disobedient than a girl,” retorted Nella.
“I shall not let you run into danger,” said Harry, firmly.
“Then,” said the girl, bursting into tears, “I shall be very unhappy, and I thought you loved me better. I’ll never forgive you – never. And, oh dear, dear Harry, do help me —do! I don’t want Walter Coplestone and Adela to know about it; but if you are so cruel, I – I think I must ask Walter. He would – ”
Perhaps the fact that Nella was a girl did alter the question. Harry yielded, as he usually did, to her strong will and ready tongue, and said —
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“To wait outside the postern to-morrow at the full of the moon. I can get out, but I can’t get across the moat; so I want you to have your little boat ready, dear Harry. Then, I am not afraid of the forest; but I don’t know the way to the blasted oak, and you do. So you must come, and wait there while I go and see the witch. You will, dear Harry!”
Harry was perfectly aware that Nella was going to do a thing that was both wrong and dangerous; but, alas for his good nature! he hated saying no, and more than one scrape that lay heavy on a tender conscience and truthful spirit had been caused by this weakness. Young as Nella was, she was so much of a woman for her years that he, whose thoughts had hardly yet strayed beyond his boyish round of duties and amusements, could not withstand either her coaxing or her contempt. He admired her more, though he hardly knew if he liked her so well as kind little Adela; but Nella was queen of Northberry Manor, and turned all the young people there round her finger.
Besides, he could not make her give up her plan save by betraying her secret, and he could not let her carry it out alone. In the depths of that untrodden forest, strange things were sometimes seen, and much stranger were imagined. Many a frightened woodman or swineherd had seen a werewolf dash aside into the impenetrable undergrowth, or in a sudden clearance had beheld a gnome or a demon grinning at him from between the trees, had heard the rush of the wild huntsman over his head in the autumn storms, and fled in terror from the haunted spot. No doubt it needed little to suggest these and the like phantoms; but it takes a long time for any race of animals to become extinct, and chance specimens of the wolf and the wild boar may have lingered in forest glades long after they were supposed to be exterminated. And wild men of the woods may have had a real existence in a state of society when maniacs were regarded with superstitious horror, and when these vast forests afforded a refuge for criminals and outlaws of every description.