Queen Mary's Boon
'Oh, help me!' I implored. 'Help me to get into the Tower!'
The Court physician to whom I appealed shook his head gravely.
'It is a difficult matter for an outsider to get in there,' he said,
'and, if I mistake not, you are one who would be liable to be
suspected, by reason of your having been there before with the
unfortunate Lady Jane Grey.'
'Then you remember me? I thought you would. I am Margaret Brown,' I
faltered.
'Mistress Margaret Brown,' said he, very gently, 'I will give you one
word of advice, and that is, go home to your friends.'
'Alas!' I said, wringing my hands, 'I have no friend--save one--so
dear as she who is imprisoned in the Tower. Help me to get to her,
Dr. Massingbird, I implore you. She said that it would be a comfort
to her to have me there, and she is in sore need of comfort!'
'Poor lady! Poor young lady! So sinned against, and yet so
innocent; and made a tool of by that wicked man who has met with his
just fate. I mean Northumberland.'
'Yes,' said I. 'It was he and his ambition that ruined my dear lady.'
We were standing talking together in Thames Street, not far from the
Bulwark Gate of the great Tower of London. For a week I had been
making many endeavours to get into the Tower, but, owing to the great
precautions which were being taken against treachery--especially
during Queen Mary's residence there--every attempt of mine to effect
an entrance was in vain. I had found Betsy all right on London
Bridge, where she stayed twelve hours waiting for me, in spite of
every effort made to dislodge her from her position, and she and I
were lodging, with the Woods, in apartments in the Strand.
Sir William Wood and Lady Caroline had no power to assist me to get
into the Tower; they were obliged to keep as quiet as possible, only
going out at night, owing to Sir William's partisanship of Lady Jane,
whilst, for the same reason, Sir Hubert Blair, too, was compelled to
remain hidden until certain plans were matured. He could not help
me, and indeed I had not seen him since we parted on Kingston Bridge.
As for the Duke of Suffolk, he was quite unable to assist me to go to
his daughter, for, having been liberated after two or three days'
imprisonment, owing to the intercession of his wife who prostrated
herself before Mary, pleading that he was delicate and that his
health would suffer if he were not set free, upon which Her Majesty
graciously forgave him, he was most ungratefully busying himself with
secret schemes for ousting her from the throne and reinstating Queen
Jane. Always careless of the latter's feelings, whether she had her
favourite gentlewoman with her in her imprisonment, or not, was a
matter of indifference to him. Others who had made my acquaintance
during the queen's short reign cut me dead, or treated me with scanty
civility upon my reappearing on the scene. There was not one of
those fine Court ladies who had formerly professed to admire and love
Queen Jane who would lift a hand to help her now that she was in
affliction and imprisonment. I was thinking sadly about this, as I
returned from my last fruitless effort to gain ingress into the
Tower, when I met one of the physicians who had attended Queen Jane
during her illness in the royal palace. He was a truly benevolent
man, and although he was evidently going somewhere in a hurry, he got
out of his coach when I called to him, to inquire what I wanted.
'I am very hurried just now,' he said, temporizing, 'The fact is
Queen Mary cannot sleep; evil, unpleasant thoughts trouble her, from
the moment in which she lies down in bed until it is well nigh time
to rise again, and potions and drugs do not cure the malady. But I
bethought me of King Saul, to whom David played when he was
distracted in that manner, until the evil spirits no longer troubled
him, so I told Her Majesty that I would slip out of the Tower and go
and fetch a young female singer, who would sing to her so beautifully
that she would fall into a natural sleep. I heard a girl singing
very sweetly in a friend's house in the Strand once, but whether I
shall be able to find her or not I know not. It is growing late.
The curfew bell has rung; the streets will not be very safe to be out
in soon, and yet I must try to find the girl, if Queen Mary is to
sleep.'
A bold thought came to me as he was speaking. The good physician was
in search of a girl who could sing well, who in fact could sing Queen
Mary to sleep, and I, who could sing well, wanted above all things to
get into the Tower; it therefore seemed conclusive that I must be the
girl to sing for the queen. But Queen Mary? I would rather that it
had been Queen Jane.
'Doctor,' I said entreatingly, 'I am your girl. Your sweet singer,
you know,' I hurriedly explained, seeing that he did not understand.
'I can sing very sweetly, though I say it myself. Take me to Queen
Mary.'
'You!' The good man looked amazed. 'I am afraid it would not do,'
he said. 'Supposing now that Her Majesty found out that you had been
in the Tower with Queen Jane?'
'I don't think that that would make so much difference,' I said. 'A
singer may sing to any one.'
After a little more demur, to my intense satisfaction, Dr.
Massingbird consented to take me, only stipulating that I should
conceal my real name and position from the queen, and appear before
her as a professional singer only. He also made me promise that I
would do Queen Mary no harm in any way when admitted into her
presence--for these were days in which treachery was common.
Under his care, escorted by him, in scarcely an hour from the time in
which we met in Thames Street, I was entering the royal apartments of
the ancient palace[1] in the mighty Tower of London.
[1] This palace of the old kings of England has long since
disappeared. It was at the south-east of the Tower.--ED.
I must confess candidly that, whilst outwardly appearing dignified
and calm, I was inwardly in a state of great trepidation and
timidity. Always overawed by the vastness and gloom of the mighty
fortress, even when there with Queen Jane, while she was in power and
every effort was made to display its riches and magnificence, it can
easily be understood, that I was many times more so now when, late at
night under an assumed character, yet at heart an adherent of the
imprisoned ex-queen, I ventured alone, except for the presence of the
physician, himself a servant, into the palace of the reigning
monarch. Curious glances were cast at me by guards and sentinels,
squires and dames, lords and ladies, as we ascended the great oaken
staircase and passed through a long gallery into a spacious hall,
with narrow Gothic windows of stained glass, hung with tarnished
cloth of gold curtains. Here the furniture was large and splendid,
the windows were in deep recesses, whilst there was a gallery round
the upper part of the room.
'Wait a little here, until I return,' said my guide, signing to me to
sit down on an old oak chair.
The physician went away, leaving me, as I at first thought, alone,
but, in a little while, my eyes became accustomed to the dim light,
and I saw that in some of the embrasures by the windows, men and
women sat, or stood engaged in earnest conversation. A few of them
appeared to be foreigners; from their dress I imagined they were
Spaniards, and two or three of these were monks, the sight of whom
there recalled to my mind Sir Hubert Blair's prediction in Woodleigh
Castleyard, that if Mary reigned, the country would be plunged into
Roman Catholicism and brought into alliance with Spain, upon which a
door would be thrown open for the Inquisition, with all its horrors.
At that moment I heard a girl, standing in a recess near, saying to a
tall man, who from his dress and bearing seemed to be of noble birth--
'The queen means well. She is cautious about beginning, but in time
she will do all that she is bidden by the Holy Church. At present
she is racked with indecision and gloomy forebodings----'
'But she has the iron will of her father, King Hal--you see him there
in that portrait, painted by Holbein, over the chimneypiece. What a
man that was!' exclaimed the other.
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
'Mary has a very different creed from his, fortunately,' she said,
'and she hankers after Spain--all may yet be well for our Church!'
I heard no more, for at that moment Dr. Massingbird, returning,
accompanied by a lady of the bedchamber, desired me to go with her to
Queen Mary, who had already retired for the night.
'I have done all I could for you,' added the physician, aside, in a
low tone. 'I have brought you here. But you will have to get out
again as you best can, for I cannot dance attendance upon you any
longer.'
I tried to thank him, and to say that I should be all right, but, not
listening to me, he said--
'I have announced you as a poor singer named Meg Brown! having
clipped off a bit of your name. God grant you may come to no harm,
my child!'
Then he hurried away.
I followed the lady to Queen Mary's bedchamber, walking silently
after her into the splendidly furnished bedroom, where I had been
before with Queen Jane. How it reminded me of her! But this was a
very different woman lying upon the great bed, with its silk and gold
counterpane.
Mary was about forty years old--a little woman, slender and delicate
in appearance. She did not in the least resemble her father, King
Henry VIII. Her features were not bad, and her eyes were bright--so
bright indeed that they frightened me when, all at once, I discovered
them fixed upon my face.
'Who are you?' demanded the queen, in a voice which was thick and
loud like a man's.
I was still more alarmed, and felt at that moment as if those bright,
piercing eyes were looking into the very depths of my heart.
I knelt for one moment, but quickly rose from the ground, with a
prayer in my heart that I might be forgiven bowing in the house of
Rimmon and before the wrong queen.
'I am Meg Brown, madam. At your service,' I said, adding, as she
remained quiet, 'a poor young singing-girl.'
'You don't seem to have much boldness in speech, Meg. How, then, can
you have the courage to sing?'
I clasped my hands tightly together, with an inward prayer for help,
and, in a moment, from the extremity of fear passed to a state of
blessed confidence.
'Only hear me,' I said. 'I can sing, madam.'
'Can you?' The piercing eyes sought to read my innermost soul.
'Yes, madam. Once, when I was a child, Master Montgomery, our
curate, took me to see a poor woman who had lost her baby and was
almost dead with grief. She could not weep, nor sleep, nor eat; the
trouble was killing her. But I sang to her, and she cried like a
child, and prayed to God and recovered. And another time,' I spoke
more clearly now, 'when some serving-men and women had a great
quarrel, and were fighting in a truly terrible manner, I stood up and
sang, and sang until they fell upon their knees and burst out into
tears and prayers. After that, Master Montgomery always fetched me
to sing to people when he could do nothing with them.'
'Wonderful!' said Queen Mary, in a rather satirical manner. 'But
those were only poor folk; it remains to be seen whether you can sing
to a queen.'
'God,' said I, half to myself and half to her, 'Who helped me to sing
to His poor, can help me to sing to'--I was going to say His queen,
but substituted 'a queen.'
'And is not the poor queen His, too?' asked the woman, who was
reading my heart.
'He knows,' I said, trembling a little, lest she should take umbrage
at my daring. 'He knows them that are His.'
Mary did not say anything to this. She turned her head away from me
with a peevish movement.
I was afraid to speak, and therefore waited in silence until she
spoke again.
'Sing to me,' she said.
'What shall I sing?'
'I am greatly troubled,' she replied at length. 'Sing what you sang
to that poor mother who had lost her child.'
It was one of Martin Luther's cradle songs, translated for me, when a
child, by Master Montgomery, who fitted it to a tender little tune of
his own composing. I loved it well, but it seemed a strange song to
sing to the mightiest woman in the land, the Queen of England.
Perhaps, however, as she said she was greatly troubled, she might be
in need of comforting. I thought of that, and standing there, with
my hands tightly clasped before me, sang as I had never sung before--
Sleep well, my dear, sleep safe and free;
The holy angels are with thee,
Who always see thy Father's face,
And never slumber nights nor days.
There was a quick movement on the bed, and Mary opened wide eyes of
amazement, but she did not interrupt, and I went on singing, until,
gaining confidence, my voice rang out clearly and triumphantly in the
last verse--
Sleep now, my dear, and take thy rest;
And if with riper years thou'rt blest
Increase in wisdom, day and night,
Till thou attain'st th' eternal light!
For a little time there was silence in the room, when I ended, and
then, with a heaving sigh, the deep voice came from the bed--
'I'm only a frail woman, though I am queen, and I need wisdom. But
go on singing, child. Go on singing.'
I began a favourite hymn of Master Montgomery's, and it brought to my
mind so many memories that sobs trembled in my voice, as I sang--
When my dying hour must be,
Be not absent then from me;
In that dreadful hour I pray,
Jesus, come without delay,
See and set me free!
When thou biddest me depart
Whom I cleave to with my heart,
Lover of my soul, be near,
With Thy saving Cross appear,
Show Thyself to me.
Mary lay so still when I ended that I thought she was asleep; but no,
she was awake, and as I looked closely at her, I perceived that tears
were slowly stealing down her face.
I fell on my knees by the bedside, but I was not kneeling to her, as
she seemed to think, when opening her eyes and looking at me, she
said, in a softer tone than before--
'Child, do you want something?'
Did I want something? Yes, I wanted something so much, that now when
the time had come for asking for it, I could not say a word,
'Your singing is marvellously sweet,' continued Queen Mary. 'Yet it
has not sent me to sleep. I should like to hear you every night.
Will you stay here in the palace and sing to me every night? You
shall have a fair wage.'
'I do not want a wage,' I answered, thanking her. 'But I crave a
boon at your hands, madam.'
'And that is----'
'That I may be allowed to go to Lady Jane Grey----'
'Lady Jane! My cousin? Methinks that you are a bold girl to ask
that,' exclaimed the queen, starting up in bed and speaking very
angrily.
I rose slowly, and, with clasped hands, stood before her, pleading my
love for her sweet cousin and beseeching that I might be allowed to
attend Lady Jane in her prison. I described her youth, her
innocence, and the great unwillingness with which she had permitted
herself to be dragged into the dangerous position of queen, and also
mentioned the quickness and satisfaction with which she abandoned the
undesired sovereignty.
'You plead well, Meg,' said the Queen, when I stopped, partly because
my breath failed, 'and you have a wonderful voice for singing, aye,
and for speaking. If I let you go to Lady Jane, and allow you to
attend her in her prison, will you come and sing to me when I require
you?'
'I will. I will,' I exclaimed delightedly. 'I will sing you to
sleep whenever you like, madam.'
'Nay, not to sleep, Meg, not to sleep,' said Queen Mary. 'As a
promoter of sleep you are a failure, for your singing awakens me out
of the sleep of years, making me feel as if I should never want to
sleep again.'
She then rang a hand-bell, and on the entrance of a gentlewoman,
commanded that I should be taken to the Brick Tower, to attend upon
the Lady Jane Grey.