That progress was a nightmare, an “Inferno,” a masquerade—what you will: the Queen of England clad in rags, her hair untied, seated in a common country bullock-cart, drawn by a pair of sorry steeds, mocked all the way along as “Une Merrie Mol!” “Une Naufragée!” “Une Sorcière de Vent!” The Comte de Charolois, heir to the duchy, met her Majesty at the digue, saluted her with all reverence, and conducted her to the Castle of St. Pol. On the morrow the Duke of Burgundy arrived, and at once went to the Queen’s lodgings to pay his homage. Right in the middle of the street, where Margaret stood to greet him, with a courtly bow he swept the ground with the drooping plume of his berretta, whilst the Queen curtsied in her abbreviated gown twice majestically. Never was there a finer piece of royal burlesque enacted!
Margaret caught the Duke by the arm as he was about to give the kiss of etiquette. “Thanks, my cousin,” she said; “now I am, perhaps, in no fit mind for compliments. I seek your aid for Henry and our son, and I beseech you, by the love of Our Lady, not to credit the abominable tales which have been circulated touching me.” The Duke did not commit himself, but generously gave his “sweet cousin” 2,000 golden crowns,—wherewith “to fit your Majesty with proper raiment,” he said,—and a fine diamond to wear for him. The next day the Duchess of Bourbon, Philippe’s sister, visited Queen Margaret, and in her she found a sincere and sympathizing confidante. She set before the Duchess all the sad facts of her impoverished condition, and told her all about the hardships she and her spouse and son had met with in England. “We were reduced,” she said, “on one occasion to one herring among three, and not more bread than would suffice for five days’ nourishment.” She went on to say that once at Mass, at Dunfermline, she had no coin for the offertory, and she asked an archer of the King of Scotland, kneeling near her, for a farthing, which he most reluctantly gave her.
“Alas!” replied the weeping Duchess, “no Queen save your Majesty has been so hardly dealt with by Providence; but now we must offer you, sweet cousin, some consolation for your sufferings.” One more affecting speech of the heroic Queen must be recorded. “When on the day of my espousal,” she said, “I gathered the rose of England, I was quite well aware that I should have to wear it whole with all its thorns!”
The Duchess, true to her word, organized splendid fêtes at the Castle of St. Pol in honour of the royal refugees, and Margaret, now attired as became her lofty station, put on one side her cruel anxieties, and yielded herself to the pleasures and humours of the festivities. They put her in mind of the gay tournaments in her happy home—the Court of her good father, King René.
Henry was all the while a prisoner in the Tower, and Margaret’s tender heart bled on his account. She for the moment was without resources, and she had to bide her time. She knew that that time would come, and never for a moment did she lend herself to unprofitable despair. The Duke stood by her, a friend in need, and bestowed both money and an escort upon his royal visitor. In the spring of 1463 she and the Prince were welcomed in Bar-le-Duc by King René and his Court, though it cost Margaret a pang to see her one-time Maid of Honour, Jehanne de Laval, in her dear mother’s place.
Six months passed all too swiftly under the hospitable roofs of her brother Jean, Duke of Calabria, and now actual Duke of Lorraine as well, and of her sister Yolande, Countess of Vaudémont. Then widowed Queen Marie sent an urgent summons for her favourite niece to pay her a visit at Amboise in Touraine, and there most happily Margaret forgot her troubles, and looked more hopefully than ever to the future.
King René’s affairs were in hopeless confusion, and his interests and resources were drained by his son’s campaign in Italy. He could offer nothing but a loving father’s whole-hearted love and protection to his unfortunate daughter and his little grandson, the pride and joy of his life. He breathed out his deep feelings in two elegant canticles eloquent of Margaret’s woes. His example set all the poets singing sweetly of the Lancastrian Queen; her beauty and her accomplishments, her troubles and her fortitude, appealed to them mightily. They sought, too, to cheer the riven soul of their liege lord and poet leader:
“Rouse thee, King René! rouse thee, good René!
Let not sorrow all thy spirits beguile.