“Well he may!” laughed Henry. “Rememberest thou, Richard, the sorry figure our good uncle cut, when we armed him so courteously, and put him on his horse to meet the rebels at Evesham—how he durst not hang back, and loved still less to go onward, and kept calling me his loving nephew all the time?”
“Ah! Henry—but didst thou not hear my father mutter, when he saw the crowned helm under the standard, that it was ill done, and no good could come of seething the kid in the mother’s milk? And verily, had not the Prince been carrying his father from the field, I trow the Mortimers had not refused us quarter, nor had their cruel will of us.”
“Oh ho! thou art come to have opinions of thine own!” laughed Henry, with the scoff of a senior unable to brook that his younger brother should think for himself. Yet this tone was so familiar to Richard’s ears, that it absolutely encouraged him to a nearer step to intimacy. He said, “But how scapedst thou, Henry? I could have sworn that I saw thee fall, skull and helmet cleft, a dead man!”
Instead of answering, Henry put his hand under the chin of his child, who was leaning against him, and holding up her face to his brother, said, “Thou canst see this child’s face? Tell me what like she is.”
“Like little Eleanor, like Amaury. The home-look of her eyes won my heart at once. Even the Princess remarked their resemblance to mine. Think of Eleanor and thy mind’s eye will see her.”
“No other likeness?” said the blind man wistfully; “but no—thou wast at Hereford when she was at Odiham.”
“Who?”
He grasped Richard’s hand, and under his breath uttered the name “Isabel.”
“Isabel Mortimer!” exclaimed Richard, who had been, of course, aware of his brother’s betrothal, when the two families of Montfort and Mortimer had been on friendly terms; “we heard she had taken the veil!”
“And so thou sawst me slain!” said Henry de Montfort dryly.