I was now soon to find that it may be easier to assume a part than to
throw it off. At His Highness's invitation I was no little dismayed,
having at the moment but one desire--to get me home, I mean, without
delay. At thought of the feminine armor of a petticoat I was filled
with a courage greater than any I had yet appeared to show. So
armed, I felt I could even, without overmuch blushing, confess the
sex of Sir Michael Drayton's messenger. But this greatness of heart
did at once forsake me, falling away into my great boots, as it
seemed, at first thought of standing up in them and their kindred
garments to say, before all these soldiers, or any one of them, "I am
a woman!"
Seeking, then, for some means of evasion, I laid my hand, on our
being come near to the house, upon the arm of M. de Rondiniacque,
thinking his frank and laughing countenance to offer sure promise of
a kindly nature. On his then pausing to observe me, I did draw him a
little to one side, asking if it were possible and convenient to him
to make my excuse to His Highness, seeing I was much set on returning
immediately home.
He clapped a hand upon my shoulder, and looking down upon me very
kindly, with yet a comical glitter of mirth in his eye,--"Why, my
brave boy," said he, "I would very willingly do you a service,
whether for your brave deed or your pretty manners. But, if you will
take an old soldier's counsel," and at this word he twirled his small
and very black mustachios mighty fiercely, "you will not risk
offending so great a man as William, Prince of Orange-Nassau, in so
strongly rising a tide of your fortune. _Mon Dieu!_" he cried,
laughing and looking in my face too close and keenly for my comfort,
"if the lad is not shy and timorous as any girl!" And with that he
thrust his arm through mine, and, "If you will ever bear that
commission His Highness named," he said, "you must learn to sit at
meat with soldiers without blushing. Come, let us go in and contrive
that we sit together. I doubt not that and a bumper or two will give
you courage!"
After which I dared say no more, but, as he would have haled me by
force into the dining-hall, I begged him stay a moment while I spoke
with Christopher Kidd, to whom calling as he hung forlorn and
hesitating on our rear, I begged him to ride out and pick up as many
as might be of our straggling troop, and to send them one and all
back to Drayton with news that all was well. Some signs of mirth
appearing upon Christopher's face, which in that predicament of mine
I found very foolish and inconvenient, I continued in harder tones
and with words of command in place of forms of request: "Though you
are but a soldier of a day, Kidd, I believe you know very well under
whose command Sir Michael Drayton's small body of horse left home.
Find of them such as you may within the space of two hours, and see
that they carry out my orders. At the end of that time you will
report here to the officer of the guard, and await my further
pleasure to escort me on my return. I dine with His Highness."
Though little used to command, I was not unaccustomed to be obeyed,
and Christopher, closing his mouth on his foolish grin with a jerk,
saluted and marched off to the orchard and his horse with promptitude
worthy of a veteran.
"Well spoken, little soldier!" cried M. de Rondiniacque. "These raw
levies are the devil, and thrive on a diet of brimstone. 'T is true
they need curses for the most part, but, _mort de ma vie!_ we have
not all such eyes as you to flash lightning on our recruits."
"He did begin his drill no earlier than this morning," said I, with
assumption of much carelessness; for the anger that had, I believe,
stayed Kidd from calling me madam, had left me so trembling that I
feared M. de Rondiniacque holding me by the arm should perceive it.
He but said, however, I should make an officer one day, whatever
became of Kidd, and hurried me into the dining-hall. As we entered,
the Prince was about taking his seat, and in the slight bustle of the
rest following his example, M. de Rondiniacque and I slipped into two
vacant seats at the lower end of the table.
On His Highness's right was seated "Captain Jennings," on his left
Count Schomberg. Captain Royston also and Mr. Bentinck were at that
end of the table, while I found myself, to my great discomfort,
surrounded by junior officers of various nations, and, for the most
part, younger even than my friend, M. de Rondiniacque. With at first
great intent of courtesy, they hurried me from one embarrassment to
another. Now they would have me drink deep; then, by way, I do
suppose, of enlivening my spirits, they plied me with polyglottic
histories of amorous adventure, growing by steady degrees ever less
pleasing; till at length, finding me grow shorter in reply and
shrinking closer, as it were, into my shell, they abandoned the
attempt to include me in their talk, and chattered among themselves
as I wish, rather than believe, was not their custom. Much, I thank
Heaven, from the babel of the many tongues, I missed; yet did I
perforce hear more than enough.
After sitting no great while at meat, His Highness, to my great
satisfaction, retired, requesting the attendance of "Captain
Jennings" alone, and making Captain Royston, as their host, occupy at
the head of the table the seat he was leaving.
More than once before the Prince's withdrawing, I had found Ned's
eyes fixed upon me, with the gaze of one that in vain pursues a
memory intangible. Now, although it had mightily pleased me to
bewilder the man in baffling his pursuit had we been alone together,
I yet, in that company I was in, found his enquiring regard not a
little disconcerting; and, soon perceiving that his changed position
at the table increased the frequency of the attack, I made shift to
summon sufficient courage to ask his permission, on some plea of
fatigue and indisposition, to retire. Which request he very
courteously granted, begging, however, that I would not leave Royston
before he should find time and opportunity to speak with me.
And so I found my way to the one chamber in the house that I knew;
madam's withdrawing-room, to wit, which I had twice entered when Ned
had taken me, a little maid, to see his mother; a large room, whose
casement, broad, low, and heavily mullioned, looked out with a very
noble aspect across copse and meadow, where the land fell away to the
southward beyond the stream whose rocky channel had been one of the
defences of the house in former days. And, as I stood idly gazing
from the window, and drumming upon the panes with idle fingers, and
wondering when Farmer Kidd would return, I remembered how in the old
days Ned had told me of some wondrous means of escape that there was
from that old house, which he would one day, if I should grow wise
enough, reveal to me. And I wished that I had learned it then, that
I might use it now, and so be quit at once of Prince, breeches, and a
false position.
The landscape fading into the early darkness of late autumn, I
stretched myself, half sitting and half lying, on the settle near the
fire that burned fitfully on the great hearth of the chamber; and
here soon forgot the passing of time in a doze induced, as I suppose,
by the warmth of the fire, and the fatigue of my ride and the
subsequent excitements. From this slumber I was aroused, how long
after my falling into it I know not, by the entrance of a trooper,
doing duty as servant, and bearing two heavy and branched silver
candlesticks, filled with lighted candles. I was yet rubbing my eyes
to clear my head of sleep and dreams, and striving to sit upright,
when I caught my right spur on my left boot, and straightway
remembered who I was, and how little like it I appeared. And then,
close on the heels of the soldier with the candles, comes to me M. de
Rondiniacque.
"Aha, my toy soldier!" he cried, as his eye lighted on me, "so 't is
here you have been hiding. And sleeping, I see. Well, you may sleep
on, if you will, for His Highness bids me bring you his most urgent
request that you will here stay the night, in order to accompany him
in the morning on his intended visit to your kinsman, Sir
Michael--something----"
"Sir Michael Drayton," I replied. "I do suppose, sir," I went on,
"that the Prince's urgent request differs little from a command?"
"Faith, you suppose well, young gentleman," said M. de Rondiniacque.
"And therefore I made bold to send your man, when he returned from
fulfilling your order, back to the place you named. Captain Royston
has already much ado to feed and bed us all."
"And did Kidd obey your orders against mine?" I asked, rather that,
saying something, I might cover my dismay than in any anxiety of
discipline.
"Having seen us together, I think he made little distinction, my
little bashaw," said M. de Rondiniacque, laughing. "I threatened
him, moreover, with your displeasure, if he delayed. And now I must
to His Highness."
And with that he left me, thinking very sadly I had enough of being a
man. Had there been a woman in the house, I had gone to her, and
told her my story. But to none of all these men did I dare to
breathe my true name and state; unless, indeed, it had been to
Captain Royston. And I murmured over to myself that title, which did
ring so strange, and yet so proudly, in my ear. It went stiffly,
too, upon the tongue that was once used to say: "Hither, Ned; not so,
Ned; nay, Ned; but I _will_ have it so." Well, Ned, I thought, was
ever tender with me, and I might, indeed, at a pinch, make shift to
tell him my name and troubles; but--and then in my mind there lifted
up his head a little devil of mischief, and I vowed I would not so
tell him till I should be enforced; but, having taken a vagary to be
a man, I would hold fast to my purpose, that I might from behind this
mask see more of the man and to what he was grown from the boy that
had been my playmate and childhood's lover. I was fain not a little,
moreover, certainly, to discover with what complexion of memory he
retained the thought of little Philippa Drayton. And I thought it
was mightily in favor of my plan that, although on that great night
of his escape from Kirke's men, we had spoken together and our hands
had met, yet since I was a little maid he had never looked upon my
countenance.
At last I heard his step in the gallery without, and, for all its
weight and its jingle of sabre and spur, I had known that footfall
among many, even had I not known him in the house.
Captain Royston came into the chamber, followed by him that had but
now fetched candles, but bearing this time an armful of wood and a
blazing pine-knot. To draw my old friend's gaze, I heaved a great
sigh, and gazed sadly in the fire, and knew, though I scarce saw, his
eyes to turn on me. He crossed the room to the further corner, where
I could well mark him without any show of particular regard, and
threw wide a small door disclosing the foot of a narrow and winding
stair.
"Go up," said he to the soldier, "to the room above; kindle a good
fire upon the hearth; light the candles, and when the fire is well
burning, return hither and stand sentry over this door till His
Highness come."
And as the man ascended the stair, Captain Royston closed the door
behind him, and turned to me, who kept my gaze fast on the fire.
"'T was a heavy sigh you heaved as I entered, young friend," he said,
in a most gentle voice.
"Yes, faith," I answered, "it was heavy." And again I sighed.
He then asked me what it was did make me sad, and I replied I did not
use to be from home, and was mighty lonesome.
"Nay, lad," he cried cheerily, laying a hand of comfort on my
shoulder, "'t is but till the morrow. You have to-day borne yourself
like a man; be not now homesick like a very maid. There is company
enough. Why didst leave the table?"
"I was near falling with fatigue, sir," I answered; "and--and--and,
in truth, I liked not the talk at the table where I sat."
"Poor lad!" said he, gently patting the shoulder where his hand did
lie, and thereafter drawing the hand away; "poor lad! Would you grow
to be a man? Harden your ears--your ears, mark me, not your heart."
And I said nothing to him, but to myself that I feared both would
need it ere long.
And then there came to us M. de Rondiniacque in search of Captain
Royston, crying jovially: "Aha! have I found you, truant Master Host?
His Highness did but now ask for you, and wonders somewhat, I think,
at your long absence."
To which Royston replied: "I warrant His Highness knows that a host
without hostess or servants is no little put to it to house, feed,
and bed so many guests. I will go to him, and make my excuse." He
then turned to me, saying: "Prithee, gentle friend, be of better
comfort. It is not to His Highness alone that your great service has
been rendered, and I would not have you cheerless. Godemar, hold the
lad in talk a while. All this is strange to him, and he is overborne
with fatigue." He then took some steps toward the door, but again
turned to my side, and--"Speak your best English, Godemar," said he,
"and your modest jests, if you have them. None of your ribald
tales,--'t is a home-bred youth." Upon which, with a kindly nod to
me, and a slap on the shoulder of a weight more suited to my garments
than my sex, Captain Royston left the room.
M. de Rondiniacque looked upon me with a merry twinkle in his eye.
"_Ma foi!_" he said, "M. le Capitaine lays heavy commands upon me.
Must I even do as he says?"
"It were best," I answered, with some severity, and never turning my
eyes from the fire.
"I see not wherefore," said he; "I would gladly cheer you, lad, and
he would take all the merriment from our jesting."
"Indeed," I replied, "I had rather never laugh again than hear more
such talk as did pass for wit around us at dinner."
He flung himself with a movement of much petulance into a chair on
the other side of the hearth, and--"My faith!" he cried, "'t is even
as they did tell me: a sorry land and a sad! A country, _mort de ma
vie!_ where one must shift with beer for wine, mists for sunshine,
and hags and hoydens for women."
"Alack!" I cried, being vastly amused; "have the women also
displeased your lordship?"
"Gadso!" answered M. de Rondiniacque, "they have, and mightily. _Mon
Dieu!_ in all the days since we set foot ashore I have not seen one I
would stand to observe a second time. I begin to see it is easy to
be a Puritan in such a land."
And when I did not answer him, he peered curiously across the
flickering twilight into my face. Anon he rose and came to me, with
one hand seizing me by the arm, and raising my chin, not over gently,
with the other--"_Ma foi_" he said, laughing, "with laces and
furbelows, and those great eyes, wouldst make a better thyself than
any lass of them all."
So I began to tremble for my secret, and saw no way out but in anger;
knowing, indeed, so little of the ways of men, that I was ignorant of
running a greater danger in that attempt to avoid the less.
I straightway sprang to my feet, flinging off his hands, crying to
him to let me be, or ill would follow, and laying hand upon and half
drawing my sword.
"What, pepper-box!" cried M. de Rondiniacque, "what, will you quarrel
for nothing? Nay," he went on, with a great laugh, "do but see it
ruffle! Come, boy, take your hand from your sword, or I will take
the sword from you."
By this, between his tone of contempt and my own fear that I made but
a sorry figure, I was trembling with anger no longer simulated; when,
on my making wholly to disengage my sword, the Frenchman did pounce
upon me with the swiftness of a hawk, catching my wrists, one in each
of his hands, in a grasp that seemed of iron. I would have wrenched
them free, but found each struggle to that end did bruise and pinch
my poor flesh worse than the last. Being very near the point of
tears, while yet in my heart raging with anger, I called aloud on
Captain Royston, who, to my good fortune, did enter the room even as
I called.
"Heyday!" he cried, "what 's the matter? Do not hurt the boy,
Godemar," he went on, when drawing near he saw how I struggled to
free my hands.
M. de Rondiniacque laughed again as he let me go. "The little fool
hurts himself with striving," he said. "Had I not held him, he had
run me through with the pretty sword the Prince did give him. _Mon
Dieu!_ he is anxious to flesh it."
"How is this, Master----?" says Captain Royston, mighty sternly, till
checked for lack of a name to give me,--"on my life, I know not how
you are called."
Now this was a question I had no wish to answer without some previous
consideration; so, knowing I could scarce keep out of my voice the
sound of tears, the pain of whose coming was now some minutes
clutching at my throat, I resolved to use them as cover to my
disregarding his enquiry.
"He has hurt my hands," I said, with a little sob, rubbing my wrists
the while in the manner of a spoiled and petulant child.
"What, baby!" he cried; "I give you a friend to cheer you with his
good heart and ready wit, and you must needs fall a-wrangling with
him; and then, because he would curb your childish passion, must you
weep like a very boy unbreeched?"
"I do not weep," I said; yet could I not check the next sob and some
few tears that fell for the pain I had had.
"No more, lad, no more, for shame!" he answered. "There was a bold
spirit in you not many hours ago. Be a man now, for the love of
Heaven."
"With all my heart I would," said I, "if I did know the way of it; to
the end that I might make him smart," I added, wagging my head in the
direction of M. de Rondiniacque.
"Learn to take a jest as 't is meant," said Captain Royston, "and you
may some day grow to it."
"I am as God did make me," I replied pettishly.
"It is rank heresy to cast the blame in that quarter," said M. de
Rondiniacque.
At which Captain Royston laughed a little, but gently bade him hold
his peace, saying: "The boy is in my care, and we cannot make a man
of him before the morrow."
And now the entry of the Prince most happily put an end to the
discussion of my shortcoming as a man. His Highness was attended by
"Captain Jennings," Count Schomberg, and Mr. Bentinck, with a few
other gentlemen. And as the doors were flung wide for them the
trooper that had been about preparing the chamber above descended the
little stair, closed the door behind him, and stood on guard
immovable before it, with drawn sword.
The Prince appeared in the best of humors; of which the reason was
very soon made plain.
"Captain Royston," said His Highness, coming over to the fire, "we
are come to a happy end of our conferring, and 'Captain Jennings,'
being pressed for time, must at once take himself again to the road.
His escort is provided, and he would bid you farewell. It should
indeed be to us all a melancholy parting, for 't is little to be
hoped any man here will again encounter _Captain Jennings_."
When the laugh due to the jest of a prince had risen and died away,
"Captain Jennings" held out his hand to his host, and said:
"'Jennings' owes you much, Captain Royston, though you are like, as
His Highness well says, never to meet him again, yet in your ear will
I tell you that he has a kinsman that is his very double and his best
friend. I have reason for saying that this gentleman will in the
happier days to come pass by no occasion of furthering the interest
of so stanch a companion, and so generous a host, as Captain Edward
Royston."
To which courteous speech honest Ned replied with some words of his
duty to His Highness of Orange; and I knew well by a certain
stiffness of his manner, which was still clearly marked as he wished
him a safe and pleasant journey, that the favor of "Captain Jennings"
was not such as he wished to earn.
That gentleman, after some other farewells of much grace and
kindness, passed on to me where I stood apart, and with a very
gracious smile on his noble countenance thanked me for the service I
had done him. On my asking what that might be, he was at some pains
to explain, in a voice meant for me alone, that but for my timely
warning and protection to His Highness, that plot might well have had
a very different and terrible ending; in the blame of which fatal
conclusion he himself, from the peculiarity of his position, would
almost certainly have become implicated. "I hope, therefore," he
said, "that we shall meet again when I have thrown aside this _nom de
guerre_ to which I have only a sort of left-handed right by marriage
and necessity." And then first I guessed who he was. "But," he went
on, "if I do seem to need a fresh introduction, young gentleman, when
that day comes, I beg you will attribute my lack of memory to politic
reasons."
By which, thinking him little likely to encounter and less to
recognize me, I was vastly amused.
"I am ready to wager, my lord," I said, laughing a little, "that the
fault will be neither yours nor the nation's, should you pass me by."
He looked at me for a moment with a glance so keen that I found it
hard to support; then, bidding me farewell, very shortly took leave
of the Prince and departed on his journey to Salisbury.
As the door closed upon him, His Highness crossed the chamber and
tapped Captain Royston on the shoulder.
"You act with little wisdom, Captain," he said, with a merry laugh,
"in the moment when the Protestant religion has triumphed over all
else, to receive with coldness an offer of favor from him that is one
day to be the first soldier in Europe."
"I trust, Your Highness," said Royston, with something of pride in
his tone, "that I have not yet lost the favor of him that is."
"I see we shall have a courtier in you yet, Captain," said His
Highness. "The day has been long, and I must needs ask my good host
the way to my chamber. Sleep is a fickle mistress to me, and she
must be wooed in season, or she will have none of me."
"Since the terrible danger Your Highness has this day escaped in my
house but by the goodness of God and this young gentleman's courage,"
said Captain Royston, "I am resolved to beg Your Highness's
acceptance rather of its most secure than its most luxurious chamber.
At the head of this stair," he went on, making the sentry stand aside
as he threw open the door, "is a room neither very large nor finely
furnished. If Your Highness will, however, deign to make use of it,
he will find the bed good and the chamber warm. It has no other
approach, and with Your Highness's consent I will myself watch here
during the night, while Lieutenant de Rondiniacque takes my place as
officer of the watch, which has been doubled, and commands every
approach."
"I thank you for your care of my safety, Captain Royston," said the
Prince. "If the bed be as good as the supper, we will ask none
better between this and London. But I believe you are over-cautious."
On Captain Royston's explaining that the honor of his house was
involved in His Highness's safety within it, all his dispositions
were very kindly and freely accepted. Not long after which His
Highness, with some kind words to me on the service I had done him,
and of his purposed visit on the morrow to Drayton, retired to the
chamber already mentioned, being lighted by Captain Royston, and
attended by Mr. Bentinck for some discussion of matters of state.
Whereafter I very soon found myself again alone, the rest departing
in charge of M. de Rondiniacque, commissioned by our host to show
each gentleman where he should lie. I say I was alone; for the
sentry at the door of the stair to the Prince's chamber counted
little as company, which I was fain to seek in the dancing of the
flames upon the hearth and in my own thoughts. These were not
uneasy, for I knew that Ned must return as he had gone, and that a
word to him would be my protection if aught inconvenient should
arise; nor were they long, for he soon returned.