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Unknown to History

C >> Charlotte M Yonge >> Unknown to History




"Nay, madam, if my Lord of Shrewsbury be satisfied with him, so
surely ought I to be," said Sir Ralf.

Nothing more of importance passed that night. The packet of accounts
was handed over to Sir Andrew Melville, and the two gentlemen
dismissed with gracious good-nights.

Richard Talbot was entirely trusted, and when the next morning after
prayers, breakfast, and a turn among the stables, it was intimated
that the Queen was ready to see him anent my Lord's business, Sir
Ralf Sadler, who had his week's report to write to the Council,
requested that his presence might be dispensed with, and thus Mr.
Talbot was ushered into the Queen's closet without any witnesses to
their interview save Sir Andrew Melville and Marie de Courcelles.
The Queen was seated in a large chair, leaning against cushions, and
evidently in a good deal of pain, but, as Richard made his obeisance,
her eyes shone as she quoted two lines from an old Scotch ballad--


"'Madame, how does my gay goss hawk?
Madame, how does my doo?'


Now can I hear what I hunger for!"

"My gay gosshawk, madam, is flown to join Sir Francis Drake at
Plymouth, and taken his little brother with him. I come now from
speeding them as far as Derby."

"Ah! you must not ask me to pray for success to them, my good sir,--
only that there may be a time when nations may be no more divided,
and I fear me we shall not live to see it. And my doo--my little
Cis, did she weep as became a sister for the bold laddies?"

"She wept many tears, madam, but we are sore perplexed by a matter
that I must lay before your Grace. My Lady Countess is hotly bent on
a match between the maiden and young Babington."

"Babington!" exclaimed the Queen, with the lioness sparkle in her
eye. "You refused the fellow of course?"

"Flatly, madam, but your Grace knows that it is ill making the
Countess accept a denial of her will."

Mary laughed "Ah ha! methought, sir, you looked somewhat as if you
had had a recent taste of my Lord of Shrewsbury's dove. But you are
a man to hold your own sturdy will, Master Richard, let Lord or Lady
say what they choose."

"I trust so, madam, I am master of mine own house, and, as I should
certainly not give mine own daughter to Babington, so shall I guard
your Grace's."

"You would not give the child to him if she were your own?"

"No, madam."

"And wherefore not? Because he is too much inclined to the poor
prisoner and her faith? Is it so, sir?"

"Your Grace speaks the truth in part," said Richard, and then with
effort added, "and likewise, madam, with your pardon, I would say
that though I verily believe it is nobleness of heart and spirit that
inclines poor Antony to espouse your Grace's cause, there is to my
mind a shallowness and indiscretion about his nature, even when most
in earnest, such as would make me loath to commit any woman, or any
secret, to his charge."

"You are an honest man, Mr. Talbot," said Mary; "I am glad my poor
maid is in your charge. Tell me, is this suit on his part made to
your daughter or to the Scottish orphan?"

"To the Scottish orphan, madam. Thus much he knows, though by what
means I cannot tell, unless it be through that kinsman of mine, who,
as I told your Grace, saw the babe the night I brought her in."

"Doubtless," responded Mary. "Take care he neither knows more, nor
hints what he doth know to the Countess."

"So far as I can, I will, madam," said Richard, "but his tongue is
not easy to silence; I marvel that he hath not let the secret ooze
out already."

"Proving him to have more discretion than you gave him credit for, my
good sir," said the Queen, smiling. "Refuse him, however, staunchly,
grounding your refusal, if it so please you, on the very causes for
which I should accept him, were the lassie verily what he deems her,
my ward and kinswoman. Nor do you accede to him, whatever word or
token he may declare that he brings from me, unless it bear this
mark," and she hastily traced a peculiar-twisted form of M. "You
know it?" she asked.

"I have seen it, madam," said Richard, gravely, for he knew it as the
letter which had been traced on the child's shoulders.

"Ah, good Master Richard," she said, with a sweet and wistful
expression, looking up to his face in pleading, and changing to the
familiar pronoun, "thou likest not my charge, and I know that it is
hard on an upright man like thee to have all this dissembling thrust
on thee, but what can a poor captive mother do but strive to save her
child from an unworthy lot, or from captivity like her own? I ask
thee to say nought, that is all, and to shelter the maid, who hath
been as thine own daughter, yet a little longer. Thou wilt not deny
me, for her sake."

"Madam, I deny nothing that a Christian man and my Queen's faithful
servant may in honour do. Your Grace has the right to choose your
own daughter's lot, and with her I will deal as you direct me. But,
madam, were it not well to bethink yourself whether it be not a
perilous and a cruel policy to hold out a bait to nourish hope in
order to bind to your service a foolish though a generous youth,
whose devotion may, after all, work you and himself more ill than
good?"

Mary looked a good deal struck, and waved back her two attendants,
who were both startled and offended at what Marie de Courcelles
described as the Englishman's brutal boldness.

"Silence, dear friends," said she. "Would that I had always had
counsellors who would deal with me with such honour and
disinterestedness. Then should I not be here."

However, she then turned her attention to the accounts, where Sir
Andrew Melville was ready to question and debate every item set down
by Shrewsbury's steward; while his mistress showed herself liberal
and open-handed. Indeed she had considerable command of money from
her French dowry, the proceeds of which were, in spite of the
troubles of the League, regularly paid to her, and no doubt served
her well in maintaining the correspondence which, throughout her
captivity, eluded the vigilance of her keepers. On taking leave of
her, which Richard Talbot did before joining his host at the mid-day
meal, she reiterated her thanks for his care of her daughter, and her
charges to let no persuasion induce him to consent to Babington's
overtures, adding that she hoped soon to obtain permission to have
the maiden amongst her authorised attendants. She gave him a billet,
loosely tied with black floss silk and unsealed, so that if needful,
Sadler and Shrewsbury might both inspect the tender, playful,
messages she wrote to her "mignonne," and which she took care should
not outrun those which she had often addressed to Bessie Pierrepoint.

Cicely was a little disappointed when she first opened the letter,
but ere long she bethought herself of the directions she had received
to hold such notes to the fire, and accordingly she watched, waiting
even till the next day before she could have free and solitary access
to either of the two fires in the house, those in the hall and in the
kitchen.

At last, while the master was out farming, Ned at school, and the
mistress and all her maids engaged in the unsavoury occupation of
making candles, by repeated dipping of rushes into a caldron of
melted fat, after the winter's salting, she escaped under pretext of
attending to the hall fire, and kneeling beside the glowing embers,
she held the paper over it, and soon saw pale yellow characters
appear and deepen into a sort of brown or green, in which she read,
"My little jewel must share the ring with none less precious. Yet be
not amazed if commendations as from me be brought thee. Jewels are
sometimes useful to dazzle the eyes of those who shall never possess
them. Therefore seem not cold nor over coy, so as to take away all
hope. It may be much for my service. Thou art discreet, and thy
good guardians will hinder all from going too far. It might be well
that he should deem thee and me inclined to what they oppose. Be
secret. Keep thine own counsel, and let them not even guess what
thou hast here read. So fare thee well, with my longing, yearning
blessing."

Cicely hastily hid the letter in the large housewifely pocket
attached to her girdle, feeling excited and important at having a
real secret unguessed by any one, and yet experiencing some of the
reluctance natural to the pupil of Susan Talbot at the notion of
acting a part towards Babington. She really liked him, and her heart
warmed to him as a true friend of her much-injured mother, so that it
seemed the more cruel to delude him with false hopes. Yet here was
she asked to do a real service to her mother!

Poor Cis, she knelt gazing perplexed into the embers, now and then
touching a stick to make them glow, till Nat, the chief of "the old
blue bottles of serving-men," came in to lay the cloth for dinner,
exclaiming, "So, Mistress Cis! Madam doth cocker thee truly, letting
thee dream over the coals, till thy face be as red as my Lady's new
farthingale, while she is toiling away like a very scullion."




CHAPTER XXI. A TANGLE.



It was a rainy November afternoon. Dinner was over, the great wood
fire had been made up, and Mistress Talbot was presiding over the
womenfolk of her household and their tasks with needle and distaff.
She had laid hands on her unwilling son Edward to show his father how
well he could read the piece de resistance of the family, Fabyan's
Chronicle; and the boy, with an elbow firmly planted on either side
of the great folio, was floundering through the miseries of King
Stephen's time; while Mr. Talbot, after smoothing the head of his
largest hound for some minutes, had leant back in his chair and
dropped asleep. Cicely's hand tardily drew out her thread, her
spindle scarcely balanced itself on the floor, and her maiden
meditation was in an inactive sort of way occupied with the sense of
dulness after the summer excitements, and wonder whether her
greatness were all a dream, and anything would happen to recall her
once more to be a princess. The kitten at her feet took the spindle
for a lazily moving creature, and thought herself fascinating it, so
she stared hard, with only an occasional whisk of the end of her
striped tail; and Mistress Susan was only kept awake by her anxiety
to adapt Diccon's last year's jerkin to Ned's use.

Suddenly the dogs outside bayed, the dogs inside pricked their ears,
Ned joyfully halted, his father uttered the unconscious falsehood,
"I'm not asleep, lad, go on," then woke up as horses' feet were
heard; Ned dashed out into the porch, and was in time to hold the
horse of one of the two gentlemen, who, with cloaks over their heads,
had ridden up to the door. He helped them off with their cloaks in
the porch, exchanging greetings with William Cavendish and Antony
Babington.

"Will Mrs. Talbot pardon our riding-boots?" said the former. "We
have only come down from the Manor-house, and we rode mostly on the
grass."

Their excuses were accepted, though Susan had rather Master William
had brought any other companion. However, on such an afternoon,
almost any variety was welcome, especially to the younger folk, and
room was made for them in the circle, and according to the
hospitality of the time, a cup of canary fetched for each to warm him
after the ride, while another was brought to the master of the house
to pledge them in--a relic of the barbarous ages, when such a
security was needed that the beverage was not poisoned.

Will Cavendish then explained that a post had come that morning to
his stepfather from Wingfield, having been joined on the way by
Babington (people always preferred travelling in companies for
security's sake), and that, as there was a packet from Sir Ralf
Sadler for Master Richard, he had brought it down, accompanied by his
friend, who was anxious to pay his devoirs to the ladies, and though
Will spoke to the mother, he smiled and nodded comprehension at the
daughter, who blushed furiously, and set her spindle to twirl and
leap so violently, as to make the kitten believe the creature had
taken fright, and was going to escape. On she dashed with a sudden
spring, involving herself and it in the flax. The old watch-dog
roused himself with a growl to keep order. Cicely flung herself on
the cat, Antony hurried to the rescue to help her disentangle it, and
received a fierce scratch for his pains, which made him start back,
while Mrs. Talbot put in her word. "Ah, Master Babington, it is ill
meddling with a cat in the toils, specially for men folk! Here, Cis,
hold her fast and I will soon have her free. Still, Tib!"

Cicely's cheeks were of a still deeper colour as she held fast the
mischievous favourite, while the good mother untwisted the flax from
its little claws and supple limbs, while it winked, twisted its head
about sentimentally, purred, and altogether wore an air of injured
innocence and forgiveness.

"I am afraid, air, you receive nothing but damage at our house," said
Mrs. Talbot politely. "Hast drawn blood? Oh fie! thou ill-mannered
Tib! Will you have a tuft from a beaver to stop the blood?"

"Thanks, madam, no, it is a small scratch. I would, I would that I
could face truer perils for this lady's sake!"

"That I hope you will not, sir," said Richard, in a serious tone,
which conveyed a meaning to the ears of the initiated, though Will
Cavendish only laughed, and said,

"Our kinsman takes it gravely! It was in the days of our
grandfathers that ladies could throw a glove among the lions, and bid
a knight fetch it out for her love."

"It has not needed a lion to defeat Mr. Babington," observed Ned,
looking up from his book with a sober twinkle in his eye, which set
them all laughing, though his father declared that he ought to have
his ears boxed for a malapert varlet.

Will Cavendish declared that the least the fair damsel could do for
her knight-errant was to bind up his wounds, but Cis was too shy to
show any disposition so to do, and it was Mrs. Talbot who salved the
scratch for him. She had a feeling for the motherless youth, upon
whom she foreboded that a fatal game might be played.

When quiet was restored, Mr. Talbot craved license from his guests,
and opened the packet. There was a letter for Mistress Cicely Talbot
in Queen Mary's well-known beautiful hand, which Antony followed with
eager eyes, and a low gasp of "Ah! favoured maiden," making the good
mother, who overheard it, say to herself, "Methinks his love is
chiefly for the maid as something appertaining to the Queen, though
he wots not how nearly. His heart is most for the Queen herself,
poor lad."

The maiden did not show any great haste to open the letter, being
aware that the true gist of it could only be discovered in private,
and her father was studying his own likewise in silence. It was from
Sir Ralf Sadler to request that Mistress Cicely might be permitted to
become a regular member of the household. There was now a vacancy
since, though Mrs. Curll was nearly as much about the Queen as ever,
it was as the secretary's wife, not as one of the maiden attendants;
and Sir Ralf wrote that he wished the more to profit by the
opportunity, as he might soon be displaced by some one not of a
temper greatly to consider the prisoner's wishes. Moreover, he said
the poor lady was ill at ease, and much dejected at the tenor of her
late letters from Scotland, and that she had said repeatedly that
nothing would do her good but the presence of her pretty playfellow.
Sir Ralf added assurances that he would watch over the maiden like
his own daughter, and would take the utmost care of the faith and
good order of all within his household. Curll also wrote by order of
his mistress a formal application for the young lady, to which Mary
had added in her own hand, "I thank the good Master Richard and Mrs.
Susan beforehand, for I know they will not deny me."

Refusal was, of course, impossible to a mother who had every right to
claim her own child; and there was nothing to be done but to fix the
time for setting off: and Cicely, who had by this time read her own
letter, or at least all that was on the surface, looked up tremulous,
with a strange frightened gladness, and said, "Mother, she needs me."

"I shall shortly be returning home," said Antony, "and shall much
rejoice if I may be one of the party who will escort this fair
maiden."

"I shall take my daughter myself on a pillion, sir," said Richard,
shortly.

"Then, sir, I may tell my Lord that you purpose to grant this
request," said Will Cavendish, who had expected at least some time to
be asked for deliberation, and knew his mother would expect her
permission to be requested.

"I may not choose but do so," replied Richard; and then, thinking he
might have said too much, he added, "It were sheer cruelty to deny
any solace to the poor lady."

"Sick and in prison, and balked by her only son," added Susan, "one's
heart cannot but ache for her."

"Let not Mr. Secretary Walsingham hear you say so, good madam," said
Cavendish, smiling. "In London they think of her solely as a kind of
malicious fury shut up in a cage, and there were those who looked
askance at me when I declared that she was a gentlewoman of great
sweetness and kindness of demeanour. I believe myself they will not
rest till they have her blood!"

Cis and Susan cried out with horror, and Babington with stammering
wrath demanded whether she was to be assassinated in the Spanish
fashion, or on what pretext a charge could be brought against her.
"Well," Cavendish answered, "as the saying is, give her rope enough,
and she will hang herself. Indeed, there's no doubt but that she
tampered enough with Throckmorton's plot to have been convicted of
misprision of treason, and so she would have been, but that her most
sacred Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, would have no charge made against
her.

"Treason from one sovereign to another, that is new law!" said
Babington.

"So to speak," said Richard; "but if she claim to be heiress to the
crown, she must also be a subject. Heaven forefend that she should
come to the throne!"

To which all except Cis and Babington uttered a hearty amen, while a
picture arose before the girl of herself standing beside her royal
mother robed in velvet and ermine on the throne, and of the faces of
Lady Shrewsbury and her daughter as they recognised her, and were
pardoned.

Cavendish presently took his leave, and carried the unwilling
Babington off with him, rightly divining that the family would wish
to make their arrangements alone. To Richard's relief, Babington had
brought him no private message, and to Cicely's disappointment, there
was no addition in sympathetic ink to her letter, though she scorched
the paper brown in trying to bring one out. The Scottish Queen was
much too wary to waste and risk her secret expedients without
necessity.

To Richard and Susan this was the real resignation of their foster-
child into the hands of her own parent. It was true that she would
still bear their name, and pass for their daughter, but that would be
only so long as it might suit her mother's convenience; and instead
of seeing her every day, and enjoying her full confidence (so far as
they knew), she would be out of reach, and given up to influences,
both moral and religious, which they deeply distrusted; also to a
fate looming in the future with all the dark uncertainty that brooded
over all connected with Tudor or Stewart royalty.

How much good Susan wept and prayed that night, only her pillow knew,
not even her husband; and there was no particular comfort when my
Lady Countess descended on her in the first interval of fine weather,
full of wrath at not having been consulted, and discharging it in all
sorts of predictions as to Cis's future. No honest and loyal husband
would have her, after being turned loose in such company; she would
be corrupted in morals and manners, and a disgrace to the Talbots;
she would be perverted in faith, become a Papist, and die in a
nunnery beyond sea; or she would be led into plots and have her head
cut off; or pressed to death by the peine forte et dure.

Susan had nothing to say to all this, but that her husband thought it
right, and then had a little vigorous advice on her own score against
tamely submitting to any man, a weakness which certainly could not be
laid to the charge of the termagant of Hardwicke.

Cicely herself was glad to go. She loved her mother with a romantic
enthusiastic affection, missed her engaging caresses, and felt her
Bridgefield home eminently dull, flat, and even severe, especially
since she had lost the excitement of Humfrey's presence, and likewise
her companion Diccon. So she made her preparations with a joyful
alacrity, which secretly pained her good foster-parents, and made
Susan almost ready to reproach her with ingratitude.

They lectured her, after the fashion of the time, on the need of
never forgetting her duty to her God in her affection to her mother,
Susan trusting that she would never let herself be led away to the
Romish faith, and Richard warning her strongly against untruth and
falsehood, though she must be exposed to cruel perplexities as to the
right-- "But if thou be true to man, thou wilt be true to God," he
said. "If thou be false to man, thou wilt soon be false to thy God
likewise."

"We will pray for thee, child," said Susan. "Do thou pray earnestly
for thyself that thou mayest ever see the right."

"My queen mother is a right pious woman. She is ever praying and
reading holy books," said Cis. "Mother Susan, I marvel you, who know
her, can speak thus."

"Nay, child, I would not lessen thy love and duty to her, poor soul,
but it is not even piety in a mother that can keep a maiden from
temptation. I blame not her in warning thee."

Richard himself escorted the damsel to her new home. There was no
preventing their being joined by Babington, who, being well
acquainted with the road, and being also known as a gentleman of good
estate, was able to do much to make their journey easy to them, and
secure good accommodation for them at the inns, though Mr. Talbot
entirely baffled his attempts to make them his guests, and insisted
on bearing a full share of the reckoning. Neither did Cicely fulfil
her mother's commission to show herself inclined to accept his
attentions. If she had been under contrary orders, there would have
been some excitement in going as far as she durst, but the only
effect on her was embarrassment, and she treated Antony with the same
shy stiffness she had shown to Humfrey, during the earlier part of
his residence at home. Besides, she clung more and more to her
adopted father, who, now that they were away from home and he was
about to part with her, treated her with a tender, chivalrous
deference, most winning in itself, and making her feel herself no
longer a child.

Arriving at last at Wingfield, Sir Ralf Sadler had hardly greeted
them before a messenger was sent to summon the young lady to the
presence of the Queen of Scots. Her welcome amounted to ecstasy.
The Queen rose from her cushioned invalid chair as the bright young
face appeared at the door, held out her arms, gathered her into them,
and, covering her with kisses, called her by all sorts of tender
names in French and Scottish.

"O ma mie, my lassie, ma fille, mine ain wee thing, how sweet to have
one bairn who is mine, mine ain, whom they have not robbed me of, for
thy brother, ah, thy brother, he hath forsaken me! He is made of the
false Darnley stuff, and compacted by Knox and Buchanan and the rest,
and he will not stand a blast of Queen Elizabeth's wrath for the poor
mother that bore him. Ay, he hath betrayed me, and deluded me, my
child; he hath sold me once more to the English loons! I am set
faster in prison than ever, the iron entereth into my soul. Thou art
but daughter to a captive queen, who looks to thee to be her one
bairn, one comfort and solace."

Cicely responded by caresses, and indeed felt herself more than ever
before the actual daughter, as she heard with indignation of James's
desertion of his mother's cause; but Mary, whatever she said herself,
would not brook to hear her speak severely of him. "The poor
laddie," she said, "he was no better than a prisoner among those dour
Scots lords," and she described in graphic terms some of her own
experiences of royalty in Scotland.

The other ladies all welcomed the newcomer as the best medicine both
to the spirit and body of their Queen. She was regularly enrolled
among the Queen's maidens, and shared their meals. Mary dined and
supped alone, sixteen dishes being served to her, both on "fish and
flesh days," and the reversion of these as well as a provision of
their own came to the higher table of her attendants, where Cicely
ranked with the two Maries, Jean Kennedy, and Sir Andrew Melville.
There was a second table, at which ate the two secretaries, Mrs.
Curll, and Elizabeth Curll, Gilbert's sister, a most faithful
attendant on the Queen. As before, she shared the Queen's chamber,
and there it was that Mary asked her, "Well, mignonne, and how fares
it with thine ardent suitor? Didst say that he rode with thee?"

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