'T is neither safe nor seemly
for a maid to show herself in baron's hall or in king's
banquet-room."
"Safe and seemly it may not be, but come you must," said the
page, rudely. "The king demands it, and your nay is naught."
And so, hurried along whether she would or no, while her friend,
Robert Fitz Godwine, accompanied her as far as he dared, the
young Princess Edith was speedily brought into the presence of
the king of England, William H., called, from the color of his
hair and from his fiery temper, Rufus, or "the Red."
For Edith and Mary were both princesses of Scotland, with a
history, even before they had reached their teens, as romantic as
it was exciting. Their mother, an exiled Saxon princess, had,
after the conquest of Saxon England by the stern Duke William the
Norman, found refuge in Scotland, and had there married King
Malcolm Canmore, the son of that King Duncan whom Macbeth had
slain. But when King Malcolm had fallen beneath the walls of
Alnwick Castle, a victim to English treachery, and when his
fierce brother Donald Bane, or Donald the Red, had usurped the
throne of Scotland, then the good Queen Margaret died in the gray
castle on the rock of Edinburgh, and the five orphaned children
were only saved from the vengeance of their bad uncle Donald by
the shrewd and daring device of the young Princess Edith, who
bade their good uncle Edgar, the Atheling, guide them, under
cover of the mist, straight through the Red Donald's knights and
spearmen to England and safety.
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