“Safe, say you, safe?” exclaimed the lad, impulsively. “Ay, as safe as is a mouse’s nest in a cat’s ear—as safe as is a rabbit in a ferret’s hutch. But that I know you to be a brave and dauntless maid, I should say to you——”
But, ere Edith could know what he would say, their conference was rudely broken in upon. For a royal page, dashing up to the three, with scant courtesy seized the arm of the elder girl, and said hurriedly:
“Haste ye, haste ye, my lady! Our lord king is even now calling for you to come before him in the banquet-hall.”
Edith knew too well the rough manners of those dangerous days. She freed herself from the grasp of the page, and said:
“Nay, that may I not, master page. ‘T is neither safe nor seemly for a maid to show herself in baron’s hall or in king’s banquet-room.”
“Safe and seemly it may not be, but come you must,” said the page, rudely. “The king demands it, and your nay is naught.”
And so, hurried along whether she would or no, while her friend, Robert Fitz Godwine, accompanied her as far as he dared, the young Princess Edith was speedily brought into the presence of the king of England, William H., called, from the color of his hair and from his fiery temper, Rufus, or “the Red.”
For Edith and Mary were both princesses of Scotland, with a history, even before they had reached their teens, as romantic as it was exciting. Their mother, an exiled Saxon princess, had, after the conquest of Saxon England by the stern Duke William the Norman, found refuge in Scotland, and had there married King Malcolm Canmore, the son of that King Duncan whom Macbeth had slain. But when King Malcolm had fallen beneath the walls of Alnwick Castle, a victim to English treachery, and when his fierce brother Donald Bane, or Donald the Red, had usurped the throne of Scotland, then the good Queen Margaret died in the gray castle on the rock of Edinburgh, and the five orphaned children were only saved from the vengeance of their bad uncle Donald by the shrewd and daring device of the young Princess Edith, who bade their good uncle Edgar, the Atheling, guide them, under cover of the mist, straight through the Red Donald’s knights and spearmen to England and safety.
You would naturally suppose that the worst possible place for the fugitives to seek safety was in Norman England; for Edgar the Atheling, a Saxon prince, had twice been declared king of England by the Saxon enemies of the Norman conquerors, and the children of King Malcolm and Queen Margaret—half Scotch, half Saxon—were, by blood and birth, of the two races most hateful to the conquerors. But the Red King in his rough sort of way—hot to-day and cold to-morrow—had shown something almost like friendship, for this Saxon Atheling, or royal prince, who might have been king of England had he not wisely submitted to the greater power of Duke William the Conqueror and to the Red William, his son. More than this, it had been rumored that some two years before, when there was truce between the kings of England and of Scotland, this harsh and headstrong English king, who was as rough and repelling as a chestnut burr, had seen, noticed, and expressed a particular interest in the eleven-year-old Scottish girl—this very Princess Edith who now sought his protection.
So, when this wandering uncle boldly threw himself upon Norman courtesy, and came with his homeless nephews and nieces straight to the Norman court for safety, King William Rufus not only received these children of his hereditary foeman with favor and royal welcome, but gave them comfortable lodgment in quaint old Gloucester town, where he held his court.