CHAPTER I

THE CEDAR ROOM

One fine autumn morning a long time ago, a little boy lay stretched in the broad seat of a latticed window, gazing earnestly with his great dark eyes on the scene before him. The window was the only one in the room, which was situated high up in a sort of tower at the corner of a big old house.

The beautiful garden surrounding the house was laid out in long terrace walks, with wide stone steps and balustrades, and planted with smooth-shaven yew-hedges as thick and almost as sturdy as walls, and the flower-beds carpeting the ground were ablaze with glorious colors in the shadowless sunshine, for the great bell in its wooden cote above the square red-brick gate-house was ringing out midday. Bounding the garden on every side were lofty walls, covered with the spreading branches of plum and pear and apple trees, and the rich fruit gleamed red and tawny and purple, bright as gems among the green leaves. Away beyond the garden, far as eye could reach, stretched wood and dale and fair green meadows, where the sheep cropped at the sweet turf and the cows grazed, whisking away the tiresome flies with their great tails as they moved slowly along. Here and there among the leafy hedgerows and coppices, the little boy, whose Christian name was Charles, could see from his lofty watch-place the gleaming of a stream which wound like a silver ribbon on and on, nearer and nearer, till it reached the little wood covering the wide, sloping banks which shut in the road leading past the house. There for some distance it was almost completely lost in the ferny brushwood, peeping out again at last in a rush-grown pool. Thence hurrying onward, it wound right round the walls of the house, so that to reach the great nail-studded main door you had to cross a little one-arched stone bridge.

Faster and faster, as he gazed upon this fair scene, the tears brimmed up into the little lad’s eyes, until they rolled down his cheeks—cheeks not very rosy or chubby, like those of most boys and girls of eight or nine years old, which was the age of this boy, but of a clear, naturally healthful brown, although just now they looked a little wan. His hair was also dark, and fell in thick curly locks upon the broad collar of Flemish lace covering his shoulders to the top of the sleeves of his dark-green velvet surcoat. His face was rather handsome, and, although there was an expression of self-will about his lips, it was mingled with great good-humor, as if he had a kind, generous nature, and might look merry enough when there was anything to be merry about.

That, however, he at present considered as being very far from the case; and at last his silent weeping broke out into loud sobs, which grew only the louder the more he strove to stifle them. They could be heard such a long way off that they reached the ears of Lady Chauncy, the mistress of the house, who was sitting at her needlework in her private room on the floor below. She rose with a little impatient frown at being thus disturbed, and taking from a side-table a small gilt cage, which contained a fine blackbird or merle, as blackbirds were then called, and carrying it with her, went up the stairs to the room where the boy was.

First removing a stout wooden bar from across the door, she lifted a bunch of big keys, hanging from her girdle, and, selecting one of the keys, put it in the lock of the door, turned it, and entered the room.

“What is the matter?” she said, as she carefully locked the door behind her, and advanced a few steps into the room. She was an oldish lady, with a yellowish wrinkled face framed tightly in with a cap of fine linen in such a fashion that, if she had any hair, none of it was to be seen. Her eyes were light green-gray, and gleamed sternly, but not unkindly, under their thick grizzled brows upon the boy, as at sight of her he slid down from his corner, and went and sat in a large high-backed armchair. He brushed away the tears from his eyes, but he made no answer, and the lady had to repeat her question.

“What are you crying about? Are you ill?” she went on. “Have you a headache, or a toothache—or any ache?”

“No, madam, not the merest finger-ache,” replied the little lad, with almost a smile. “There is nothing—nothing at all amiss with me,” and then, in spite of his grand words, a last lingering sob broke up his speech. “I am only—only——”

“Only hungry—is that it?” she said, with a relieved look. “Well, eating is the best cure for that, and your favorite dinner will be here directly——roast beef; so dry your eyes.”

The boy’s face did not, however, grow much brighter, and Lady Chauncy began to knit her stern brow again. “Come, come, your Highness is hard to please to-day,” she went on; “what is amiss with you to be so naughty and discontented? Pray what can you lack? Where are your draughts, and your beautiful new horn-book, and your brave new troop-horse which his Majesty brought all the way from Cheapside in his own coach for you? You ought to be happy as the day is long, with everything dainty and to your taste to eat, and a soft bed, and the blue sky and the fair scene to look at from this casement. What, tears again?” for at these last words of Lady Chauncy’s the boy’s breath quivered very much as if the sobs were going to burst out afresh. “Nay,” she went on, “I’ll warrant they will dry up fast enough when you see what I have here for you,” and, pulling off the cover of the gilt cage, she placed it on the table. “William the gardener caught this pretty bird to-day, and I have put it in this fine cage and bring it you for a present. What do you say?”

The boy did not reply. He only looked hard at the captive bird, and still the tears seemed swelling in his throat. “It is a brave bird,” he said softly at last.

“Well, I am glad you are pleased with it,” said Lady Chauncy, “but I must be going now—and hark,” for at this moment there came a loud tap at the door, “there is Wynkin come with your dinner,” and she turned and unlocked the door for a serving-man who entered with a silver tray laden with plates and dishes, and, entrusting him with the key of the door, she went out, closing it carefully behind her.

Meanwhile the servant spread the snowy damask cloth on the carved oak table and arranged the dishes, and having helped the boy from the joint of roast beef, and poured out a goblet full of clear golden cider from a silver flagon, he took up a place behind Charles’s tall-backed chair, looking in a concerned, half-scared sort of manner at the boy when, after a few mouthfuls, he pushed aside the plate.

“Take it away,” he said.

“But your Highness has hardly eaten anything,” said Wynkin.

“No,” said Charles, “I can’t eat any more in this stifling cupboard of a place. Could you now, Wynkin?”

Wynkin grinned. “I think I could,” he said, “if——”

“If what?”

“Well, if it was roast beef.”

“Don’t you have roast beef for dinner of a day?”

“Only on Sundays, your Highness. Week-days we have mostly porridge for dinner, or, for a treat now and again, a sop in the pan of barley-bread.”

“And what do you have for pudding?” inquired the Prince, as Wynkin removed the thrust-aside plate and placed a dish of quince tarts on the table all heaped up with whisked cream stuck over with sugar-plums; “sweets, you know.”

“Oh, we don’t have them at all, except at Christmas, which comes but once a year, worse luck. A little sour buttermilk sometimes perhaps, but sweet things, bless your heart, no.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” said Charles, with a merry twinkle in his eye; “you have the sweetest thing of all—liberty.”

“Why, yes, that is true,” admitted Wynkin, gazing down sorrowfully at the boy.

“And I wish I were you, Wynkin,” went on Charles, all the clouds darkening his face again. “It’s dreadful to be a King’s son, I can tell you; and treated as if I’d done something wrong, and I haven’t—I haven’t.”

“No, of course not,” said Wynkin, in consoling tones. “It isn’t possible, for the King can do no wrong, I’ve always heard say. Every idiot knows that, and it isn’t likely his son can, particularly his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, like you are.”

“I never thought of that,” said Charles, with a meditative air, as he lifted all the whipped cream with his spoon from his tart and swallowed it at a gulp. “I may do whatever I please and it won’t be wrong. But there, that’s just it—I can’t do what I please. How can I? I want to run and jump and bathe out in that splendid pool there, and climb up those great tall fellows of trees and—and—do all the things other boys do—for I’m not a baby now—I’m turned nine—and it’s a shame, keeping me cooped up in this mousetrap of a room. Oh, you know it is, Wynkin, and you might say so, if you had a kind heart, but you haven’t—you are hard-hearted and cruel, like the lords.”

“But they have to be cruel to be kind,” contended Wynkin. “The King’s Majesty, God preserve him, has so many enemies—so many who hate him.”

“Yes, I know, so ’tis said,” replied the boy, “and ’tis all very well, Wynkin, but I can’t believe it. My father is so gentle and kind. If ’tis true, ’tis because they don’t know him.”

“That may be so, your Highness. And ’tis just the business of many of those who call themselves his Majesty’s friends to hinder him from being known as—as you know him. And you see, there are bad men about of all sorts and sizes and parties, who want to get you away from him.”

“I’d be torn in pieces first,” said the child, his dark face flushing.

“Yes,” said Wynkin, “that’s about what it would be. I’m not certain but I think now there’s a price set upon your head.”

“What’s the good of it to anybody?” laughed Charles.

“Oh, well, there mayn’t, of course, be anything in it?”

“Inside my head?” laughed Charles still more merrily.

“In the talk, your Highness.”

“That is as it may be,” said Charles, “but there is more than one idea inside my head, and the biggest is that I’m not afraid of these evil persons; and the next is that if I can only get out of this badger-hole of a room, I’ll let them know I’m not—and I’ll protect my father from—where is my father just now, Wynkin?”

“He was in London a few days since.”

“Is mother with him?”

“Nay, I think she has gone to France, to fetch soldiers to come over and fight for the royal cause.”

“Oh, that is all right, and when they come—now, Wynkin, look here—I intend to go to my father and fight by his side. Oh, I tell you I can—see,” and, seizing his little wooden toy sword, he tipped his left fingers over his head and thrust out the weapon with such a valiant air that Wynkin laughed heartily and said he had never seen a finer copper captain.

“Nay, copper captain forsooth,” said Charles, flinging away the sword, and seizing the long white stick which Wynkin carried as his staff of office when waiting on the Prince. “I’ll show you I’m no copper captain,” and he began to lunge about with it so lustily that at last he gave Wynkin a sharp poke in the eye. “Oh, dear,” cried the boy, throwing down the stick; and, springing into the serving-man’s arms, he clung round his neck and stroked his damaged eye. “I’m so sorry, Wynkin. It doesn’t hurt much, does it—though it is going all red and black?”

“Nothing to talk about,” said Wynkin, “but you can cut and thrust with the best of ’em. Feeling’s believing.”

“Yes,” said Charles proudly.

“A regular don at it you are,” went on Wynkin, as he began to pile the dinner things together for taking away, “but I must be going now.”

“Oh, don’t go,” pleaded the lonely boy.

“Needs must. I’ve got to be going up-stream with some corn sacks, and the last harvest load’s being carried to-day, and all hands are turned on.”

“Except mine,” sighed the Prince, gazing down sadly at his little slender white hands. “It’s hateful. Now, Wynkin,” he went on, turning suddenly with a commanding air upon the serving-man, “listen to me. Give me that key immediately,” and he pointed to the key which Lady Chauncy had entrusted to Wynkin, and which the man had thrust into the breast of his jerkin in such a manner that the handle peeped out. “I want it.”

“Oh, do you?” said Wynkin, most respectfully.

“Yes, and you must give it me immediately.”

“Faith, not I, your Highness. You’ll be trying to unlock the door with it the next thing,” grinned Wynkin.

“Certainly,” replied Charles majestically. “That is the purpose for which I require it.”

Wynkin’s broad smile grew broader than ever. “What next, I should like to know,” said he.

“That is a matter that does not concern you,” replied the Prince; “your manner is very disloyal. If you must know, I want to get out.”

“Which is precisely what his Majesty has forbidden my lord and my lady to allow you to do,” rejoined Wynkin, “and they have given him their word of honor and solemn promise that you shall not get out, and it’s because I have always been trusted by my lord and my lady to abide by my word, and have never broken faith to them, that they allow me to wait upon your Highness,” and Wynkin took a long breath, for he was not used to making such lengthy speeches. “Honor bright, you know,” concluded he.

The young Prince made no reply. For a long time he stood looking Wynkin full in the face with thoughtful-looking eyes, and Wynkin returned the gaze, but whether his damaged eye hurt him, or somehow a tearful choking kind of feeling in his throat troubled him, it is certain that he turned away, and hurriedly gathering the dinner things together on his tray, he went out, carefully locking and barring up the door behind him.