“Enough said. All else spake you?”
“All else, your Highness’ pleasure served,” answered Isabel meekly.
“My ‘presence desired’!” broke in Custance. “What meaneth your Grace, an’ it like you? Our fair cousin did verily arede (tell) me that your Grace commandeth mine appearing in London; and thither I had gone, had it not pleased your Grace to win hither.”
“So quoth she; but this was other matter,” calmly rejoined the King. “Our Council thought good, fair Cousin, that you should be of the guests bidden unto the wedding of our cousin of Kent with the fair Lady Lucy of Milan.”
For one instant after the words were spoken, there was dead silence through the room—the silence which marks the midst of a cyclone. The next moment, Custance rose, and faced the man who held her life in his hands. The spell of his mysterious power was suddenly broken; and the old fiery spirit of Plantagenet, which was stronger in her than in him, flamed in her eyes and nerved her voice.
“You meant that?” she demanded, dropping etiquette.
“It hath been reckoned expedient,” was the calm reply.
“Then you may drag me thither in my coffin, for alive will I never go!”
“This, Custance, to the King’s Highness’ face!” deprecated her pardoned and (just then) subservient brother.
“To his face? Ay,—better than behind his back!” cried the defiant Princess. “And to thy face, Harry of Bolingbroke, I do thee to wit that thou art no king of mine, nor I owe thee no allegiance! Wreak thy will on me for saying it! After all, I can die but once; and I can die as beseems a King’s daughter; and I would as lief die and be rid of thee as ’bide in a world vexed with thy governance.”