“I have been remiss,” the Prince said, and one huge hand strained at his chin; “yes, perhaps I have been remiss. Yet it had appeared to me—But as it is, I bid you mount, my lad!”
The boy demanded, “And to what end?”
“Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in common reason, equity demands that I afford you my protection so far as Burgos, messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de Gâtinais and fetch back my wife to England.”
The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but partially tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. Afterward these two rode southerly, in the direction of Castile.
For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest that in this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her evasion. It appeared to her more diverting when in two days’ space she had become fond of him. She found him rather slow of comprehension, and she was humiliated by the discovery that not an eyelash of the man was irritated by his wife’s decampment; he considered, to all appearances, that some property of his had been stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, to repossess himself of it, after, of course, punishing the thief.
This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid husband’s side, the girl’s heart raged at memory of the decade so newly overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or that ungracious patron—on any one who would take charge of her while the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.[2] But now she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still, she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, to-morrow was to be a new day.
So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new page of his—this Miguel de Rueda,—a jolly lad, who whistled and sang inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill.
Sang Miguel de Rueda:
“Man’s Love, that leads me day by day
Through many a screened and scented way,