The pen was lifted to sign the fatal document, when the proceedings were stopped by an unexpected little wail from something in Maude’s arms. Custance dashed down the quill, and springing up, took her little Alianora to her bosom.
“Sign away thy birthright, my star, my dove! Wretched mother that I am, to dream thereof! How could I ever meet thine innocent eyes again? I will not sign it!”
“As it like you, fair Cousin,” was the quiet response of that voice gifted with such inexplicable power. “For us, we have striven but to avance you unto your better estate. ’Tis nought to us whether ye sign or no.”
She hesitated; she wavered; she held out the child to Maude.
“I would but add,” observed the King, “that yonder babe is no wise touched by your signing of that paper. Her birthright is gone already; or more verily, she had never none to go. Your name unto yon paper maketh no diversity thereabout.”
Still the final struggle was terrible. Twice she resumed the pen; twice she flung it down in passionate though transient determination not by her own act to alienate her child’s inheritance and blot her own fair name. But every time the memory of her favourite, her loving little Richard, rose up before her, and she could not utter the refusal which would deprive her of him for ever. Perhaps she might even yet have held out, had the alternative been that of resigning him to any person but Joan. But the certain knowledge that he would be taught to despise and hate her was beyond the mother’s power to endure. At last she snatched up the pen, and dashed her name on the paper. It was signed in regal form, without a surname.
“There!” she cried passionately: “behold all ye get of me! If I may not sign ‘Custance Kent,’ content you with ‘Custance.’ Never ‘Custance Le Despenser!’ My Lord was true to his heart’s core; and never sign I his name to a dishonour and a lie!—O my Dickon, my pretty, pretty Dickon! thou little knowest the price thine hapless mother hath paid for thee this day!”
Henry the Fourth was not a man who loved cruelty for its own sake: he was simply a calculating, politic one. He never wasted power on unnecessary torture. When his purpose was served, he let his victim go.
“Fully enough, fair Cousin!” he said with apparent kindness. “You sign as a Prince’s daughter—and such are you. We thank you right heartily for this your wise submission, and as you shall shortly see, you shall not lose thereby.”
Not another word was said about her presence at the wedding. That would, come later. His present object was to get her to London. The evening of the 17th of November saw them at Westminster Palace.