“In truth all seemeth fair, my daughter. Our good burghers always respond to our need, though our nobles sometimes think too highly of their power.”
“Our loyal burghers! In truth they are our best friends. Yet remember how many nobles ride with us this day, and have sworn to urge our cause as though it were their own.”
They rode slowly forward, the little Princess pleased and happy at the homage of her subjects, bowing and smiling. At last the church of St. Waltrude was reached. Here Jacqueline dismounted, and entering the dim old building, walked slowly up the central aisle till she reached the high altar. Here she knelt, kissed the holy relics, and swore to preserve “all usages and privileges of the city, to protect the church, to uphold the right, to dispel the wrong.”
Then, seated on a lofty throne that had been set up beside the altar, she received the homage of her subjects, and their vows of loyalty to her and to her cause.
After the solemn ceremonies at the church were over, the royal party had a banquet given in their honour by the burghers of the city, who had arranged many festivities to give them pleasure.
Can you not see our Princess with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes standing at the table’s head? Her soft brown hair is tightly bound to her head and covered with a cap wrought of threads of gold strung with pearls. Embroidery of threads of gold and coloured silks in which the Dutch excelled, enrich her gown, which is of the heaviest silk that even Flanders can produce. Long chains of pearls, which were sold by weight, hang about her neck, and fur of minever binds and edges the cuts and slashes in her great sleeves and on the body of her gown.
Besides the banquet, there was planned a tournament, a favourite occasion for showing knightly deeds, and it was to be held on a grassy mead just without the walls of the city, on the day following the paying of homage, and entry into the city.
Thither early in the morning trooped the inhabitants of the town. Among the first to go were groups of apprentices, dressed in the uniforms of their guilds or trade societies. These trudged on foot, glad enough of a holiday. Mingling among them were serfs or bondsmen, easily to be told by their metal collars. Some carried burdens for their masters who should arrive later in the day, while some merely swung a cudgel, and hurried on as if conscious of their lowly position.
As the day wore on, the road was dusty with the men-at-arms, knights, nobles, and their attendants, with substantial burghers with their apprentices, and with groups of maidens from the town, eager to see the gay company, and looking pretty enough themselves in their close-fitting white caps and scarlet kirtles.
Only occasionally, walking sedately by her father’s side, shrouded in a long cloak to keep her clothes fresh from the dust, came some tradesman’s daughter, her neck encircled with strings of coral beads, and her gold earrings, handed down through many generations, a trifle longer than those of the serving maidens, and the inevitable cap edged with lace, or of finest plaited muslin, while theirs, though snowy white, were of coarse material.