The very hour of their arrival a babe was born to the Queen, and to her
exceeding joy it was a son. Count von Eily, hearing 'that a king
and friend was born to him', had bonfires lighted, and a torchlight
procession on the ice that same night, and early in the morning came the
Archbishop of Gran to christen the child. The Queen wished her faithful
Helen to be godmother, but she refused in favor of some lady whose
family it was probably needful to propitiate. She took off the little
princess Elizabeth's mourning for her father and dressed her in red
and gold, all the maidens appeared in gay apparel, and there was great
rejoicing and thanksgiving when the babe was christened Ladislas, after
a sainted King of Hungary.
The peril was, however, far from ended; for many of the Magyars had no
notion of accepting an infant for their king, and by Easter, the King of
Poland was advancing upon Buda, to claim the realm to which he had
been invited. No one had discovered the abstraction of the crown, and
Elizabeth's object was to take her child to Weissenburg, and there have
him crowned, so as to disconcert the Polish party. She had sent to Buda
for cloth of gold to make him a coronation dress, but it did not come in
time, and Helen therefore shut herself into the chapel at Komorn, and,
with doors fast bolted, cut up a rich and beautiful vestment of his
grandfather's, the emperor Sigismund, of red and gold, with silver
spots, and made it into a tiny coronation robe, with surplice and
humeral (or shoulder-piece), the stole and banner, the gloves and shoes.
The Queen was much alarmed by a report that the Polish party meant to
stop her on her way to Weissenburg; and if the baggage should be seized
and searched, the discovery of the crown might have fatal consequences.
Helen, on this, observed that the King was more important than the
crown, and that the best way would be to keep them together; so she
wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it under the mattress of his
cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his pap upon the top, so, said the
Queen, he might take care of his crown himself.
On Tuesday before Whit Sunday the party set out, escorted by Count
Ulric, and several other knights and nobles. After crossing the
Danube in a large boat, the Queen and her little girl were placed in
a carriage, or more probably a litter, the other ladies rode, and the
cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men; but this
the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy name, resented so
much, that he began to scream so loud that she was forced to dismount
and carry him in her arms, along a road rendered swampy by much rain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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