and, truth to tell, this fair young Jacqueline, the little “Lady of Holland,” as men called her,--but whom Count William, because of her fearless antics and boyish ways, called “Dame Jacob,” (1)--loved her knightly father with equal fervor.
(1) Jaqueline is the French rendering of the Dutch Jakobine--the feminine of Jakob, or James.
As she sat, that day, in the great Hall of the Knights in the massive castle at The Hague, she could see, among all the knights and nobles who came from far and near to join in the festivities at Count William’s court, not one that approached her father in nobility of bearing or manly strength--not even her husband.
Her husband? Yes. For this little maid of thirteen had been for eight years the wife of the Dauphin of France, the young Prince John of Touraine, to whom she had been married when she was scarce five years old and he barely nine. Surrounded by all the pomp of an age of glitter and display, these royal children lived in their beautiful castle of Quesnoy, in Flanders,(1) when they were not, as at the time of our story, residents at the court of the powerful Count William of Holland.
Other young people were there, too,--nobles and pages and little ladies-in-waiting; and there was much of the stately ceremonial and flowery talk that in those days of knighthood clothed alike the fears of cowards and the desires of heroes. For there have always been heroes and cowards in the world.
And so, between all these young folk, there was much boastful talk and much harmless gossip how the little Lady of Courtrai had used the wrong corner of the towel yesterday; how the fat Duchess of Enkhuysen had violated the laws of all etiquette by placing the wrong number of finger-bowls upon her table on St. Jacob’s Day; and how the stout young Hubert of Malsen had scattered the rascal merchants of Dort at their Shrovetide fair.
“Hold, there!” he cried hotly. “This Hubert of Malsen is but a craven, sirs, if he doth say the merchants of Dort are rascal cowards. Had they been fairly mated, he had no more dared to put his nose within the gates of Dort than dare one of you here to go down yonder amid Count William’s lions!”
“Have a care, friend Otto,” said the little Lady of Holland, with warning finger; “there is one here, at least, who dareth to go amid the lions--my father, sir.”