Marguerite would have been energetically working in England, had she
found it possible. But winds and waves were against her. She came down
to the French coast in November, as had been agreed with Warwick: but
she could go no further. In an agony of impatience and longing, she was
compelled to waste at Harfleur time more precious than jewels. Her
husband wanted her, in every sense of the word. The Lancastrian party,
deprived of her, was a body without a soul. Even Warwick, clever man as
he was, and little love as was lost between him and her, condescended to
express a wish for the Queen's presence.
On the fourth of November, 1470, while things were in this condition, a
little life began in the sanctuary at Westminster, which was to end,
fifteen years later, as sorrowfully as it had opened, in the Tower of
London. The long wished for son of Edward IV. came at last. But the
news does not seem to have lightened the discouraged hearts of the
Yorkists. Before the month was over, Sir Richard Widville, Queen
Elizabeth's own brother, had made his submission to King Henry.
The King was residing, quietly enough, at Westminster Palace, which he
never quitted during his short tenure of power. Large grants were made
to the three Warwick brothers; and Henry, who could not conceive the
idea of any body playing him false, seems to have placed himself
entirely in their hands. His sagacious wife would have taken a truer
view of the situation. But she was a virtual prisoner on the French
coast, bound there by the winds and waves of God.
Warwick was created afresh Lord High Admiral of England, Ireland, and
Aquitaine, with enormous powers: Clarence was made Viceroy of Ireland,
and letters patent granted enabling him to do any thing he chose. The
whole tone of the grants shows them to have really proceeded from the
persons to whom they were ostensibly made, and in whose hands the King
was an innocent toy, skilfully moved at pleasure. O for the wise head
and the true heart of his one real friend!--of her who loved _him_
first, and the crown and sceptre second. There were other friends, true
in a sense: but to them the crown was the point of importance, and Henry
was interesting merely as the man who ought to be wearing it.
One of these last was with him--his brother Jaspar,--and early in
February, another fought his way to his side. The winds and waves, soon
to have so dire a message for him, yielded now to the eager importunity
of Exeter. The sight of Edward at the Court of Burgundy was more than
his Lancastrian heart could bear. The bitter cruelty which he had
received at the hands of Edward's sister, his own wife, came back upon
him too vividly to be endured. Half driven by the one reason, half
drawn by the other, he hastily left St. Pol, and journeyed across France
to the port where Queen Marguerite waited for a fair wind from the east.
And then it was that Frideswide Marston first saw the face which she
should never forget again.
Henry Duke of Exeter was a Holand, but not one of the handsome Holands
of Kent, who were characterised by their lofty height, their stately
carriage, and their magnificent beauty. His grandfather, John de
Holand, the first Duke of Exeter, had stepped out of the family ranks in
respect of personal appearance, being a short, dark-haired man, with
pendulous cheeks and no good looks of any kind. Duke Henry had improved
upon this pattern, having inherited some of the attractiveness of his
beautiful grandmother, the Princess Elizabeth of Lancaster. Two Holand
qualities were his, derived from his grandfather--the fiery fervour and
the silver tongue. From both sides of his ancestry came his impulsive
bravery; from the Plantagenet side his chivalrous generosity, his
delicate courtesy: from all, the unswerving loyalty and faithfulness
which formed the most prominent feature of his character. Yet they were
joined by that shrinking from pain, and that despondent hopelessness,
which an eminent psychologist tells us are manly, not womanly
characteristics, inconsistently mingled with weakness of a type much
more feminine than masculine. A strangely complex and inconsistent
character was this: a brave man who never feared disgrace nor death; a
true man, who would have died with his hand upon his banner and his face
to the foe; a man with distinct convictions, and courage to avow
them--yet a weak man. A voice that he loved would lead him in the teeth
of his own convictions, though a voice that he did not love could not
make him swerve for an instant. In this respect he was unlike all his
family,--most of all unlike his bluff and cruel father, the last act of
whose life had been the invention of the rack, long popularly known in
England as "The Duke of Exeter's daughter."
In a popular ballad of the day, wherein the state is described under the
figure of a ship, Exeter is selected as the lantern at the mast-head.
The idea was doubtless originally taken from his badge--the fiery
cresset set aloft upon the pole--yet it was equally true to the fervent,
devoted, transparent character of the man.
"The ship hath closed hym a lyght
To kepe her course in way of ryght,
A fyre cressant that bernethe bryght,
With fawte was never spyed.
That good lyght that is so clere
Call Y the Duke of Exceter,
Whos name in trouthe shyned clere,
His worship spryngethe wyde."
The memory of the wife at whose hands he had endured what few husbands
would have borne, much less have pardoned, was to Exeter one of unmixed
pain and bitterness. It could scarcely be said that he had loved her.
He had liked her, and he would have loved her with very little
encouragement. But so far from encouraging the affection, she had
smothered it in its cradle. She gave him no chance to love her.
Repulsed and mortified, his heart--to which love of something was an
absolute necessity--had turned to their one child, the fair-haired
little daughter who resembled her mother in face, but her father in
character. For her sake he had borne all this suffering inflicted by
her mother; for her sake he had continued to live in the same house with
his wife, long after her company had become intolerable. Nay, not to be
parted from Anne, he had done, and would have done, almost any thing
required from him. They were parted now. The Duchess knew her
daughter's power over her husband, and she therefore insisted on keeping
the daughter by her side. She might become a useful tool some day, if
she received proper training, which her mother meant to give her.
All that Exeter knew was that the only creature whom he loved, and who
loved him, was in the hands of enemies who would try hard to make her
hate him. She was his one comfort in all the world, and she was kept
away from him. This was the bitterest drop in his bitter cup--and his
wife meant it to be so. Few men had suffered in the Wars of the Roses
as he had. To-day in prison, and to-morrow in sanctuary; forsaken by
his own soldiers, reduced to beg his bread barefooted until the Duke of
Burgundy took compassion upon him, robbed of every penny of his
inheritance by the woman who had sworn in God's presence to love and
cherish him--all these painful memories were less to Exeter than the
cruel separation from his only child. Deep down in his heart, scarcely
confessed even to himself, was the hope that would break out of that
passionate longing for her. If he could cross the Channel, if he could
get to London, perhaps, some day, at a window or through the curtains of
a litter, he might catch a glimpse of Anne. Even a wilder hope than
this he cherished; for it might be possible to bribe one of his own
servants to obtain for him a secret and stolen interview with his own
child. But would he ever find his child again? He might see the Lady
Anne de Holand: but would she be the little Nan that he had left years
ago--the little Nan that used to climb upon his knee and kiss him and
tell him that she "loved him so"? Better to keep that sweet remembrance
undimmed, though it called up such hopeless yearning, than to meet a
cold, haughty maiden who would courtesy to him and call him "my gracious
Lord," and take the first opportunity of getting away from him. That
would be to lose his darling indeed, in a far worse sense than he had
lost her now.
It was not for Frideswide Marston to read all this. But she saw the
weary, wistful look in the dark eyes, and she wondered whence it came.
How Exeter contrived to do what the Queen could not do, and make his way
to England, has not been explained. We only know that he did it, and
that on the fourteenth of February, 1471, he rode into London--where
King Henry VI. reigned in the Palace of Westminster, where Queen
Elizabeth Widville pined in the Sanctuary, and where the Duchess Anne of
Exeter held royal state at Coldharbour--safe from both rival Roses, for
what Lancastrian would harm the wife of his King's most faithful
councillor, and what Yorkist would dare to touch the favourite sister of
his sovereign?
In anticipation of the Duke's journey, Queen Marguerite had kindly
suggested that any of the suite who wished to do so might send letters
by him. Frideswide, who was longing for communication with home,
undertook the tremendous task of writing both to her father and sister.
The Duke turned over the letters which were put into his hands, and
paused suddenly when he came to the one addressed to his own home.
"Who writ this?" he asked of John Combe, who had brought the letters to
him.
Combe glanced at the address--"_To the hands of Mistress Agnes Marston,
at Coldharbour, in the City of London, le these delivered._"
"I reckon, my gracious Lord, it shall be Mistress Frideswide Marston,
that is of my Lady of Warwick's following."
"Pray you, desire Mistress Frideswide to come hither, for I would fain
have speech of her."
She came, and stood courtesying within the doorway.
"Come nigh, I pray you, Mistress," said the Duke, "and tell me, is this
fair dame of your kin?"
He held up her letter to Agnes, as he spoke.
"An' it like you, aye, my gracious Lord: it is my sister, that is
chamberer unto your Lady."
The Duke looked thoughtfully at the letter.
"Think not my words strange," said he, "but answer me, if this your good
sister be of gent and pitying kind?"
"That is she, right surely."
"One that should do a kind deed for a man in need, an' it fell in her
way?"
"I am assured of that, my gracious Lord."
"Then pray you, Mistress Frideswide, do me so much grace as to write
outside your letter, that you do beseech her, for the love of you, to
grant that the bearer thereof shall ask of her."
Frideswide looked, as she felt, astonished.
"Mistress Frideswide," said the Duke sadly, "you are here, as I, cut off
from home and friends. But you have hope to return thither when God
will, and I have none. My maid, I have one only child, that is the very
jewel of my heart, and they keep her from me. (He did not say who
"they" were.) If you will do so much for me, I will myself deliver your
letter, an' it may be compassed, and pray your good sister to let me
have a word with my darling."
Frideswide Marston looked up into the sad earnest eyes, and then,
without another word, stooped down and added the request to her letter.
There was more wet on the cover than ink, when she had done.
*CHAPTER V.*
*HIS LITTLE NAN.*
"Some feelings are to mortals given
With less of earth in them than Heaven;
And if there be a human tear
From passion's dross refined and clear,
A tear so limpid and so meek
It would not stain an angel's cheek,
'Tis that which pious fathers shed
Upon a duteous daughter's head."
--SIR WALTER SCOTT.
"Be sure, Jane, to tell Valentine that I will have my gown of motley
velvet ready for my wearing on the morrow; and bid him set silver
buttons thereto--and good plenty."
"Please it your Grace, Master Valentine did desire of me that I should
say unto you that he could not make ready the gown of motley as
to-morrow, nor afore Thursday come."
"Could not?" The Duchess of Exeter's chiselled eyebrows were slightly
raised. "Could not? But he must."
"Please it your Grace, thus said he."
"Tell him it skills not[#] what he can. I say he shall."
[#] Matters not.
"Then belike there shall be more tailors had?"
"I care not how it be done, so it cost no money."
"But, an't like your Grace, the tailors will not work without money: and
unless more be had, Master Valentine can never, his own self--without he
sit up all night, nor scarce then--make an end of your Grace's gown by
to-morrow."
"Let him sit up, then. Good lack! what ado is here over a sely[#]
tailor!"
[#] Simple, mean.
"Your Grace mindeth, maybe, that you were set to have the murrey[#] gown
by next Sunday?--and both two cannot be done."
[#] Plum-coloured.
"Cannot! always at _cannot_! Hold thine idle tongue. Of course it can
be done if I will have it so."
"Doubtless, Madam, if it please your Grace to pay more tailors."
"I will pay nobody. Ye will clean ruin me amongst you. "'Twas but
yesterday I paid four thousand marks to a Lombard for jewelling. Ye
would leave me never a cross[#] in my purse."
[#] Penny, divided by a cross that it might be easily broken into
fourthings=farthings.
"Then, an' it please your Grace, what is to be done?" demanded the
practical Jane, who was one of the four chamberers of the Duchess.
"Gramercy, maid, burden not me withal!" testily exclaimed her royal
mistress. "Go and ask at Dame Elizabeth Darcy, an' thou wist not what
to do. I tell thee, the motley must be made ready for to-morrow, and
the murrey by Sunday next: and how it shall be is no business of mine,
so it cost not money. _It shall be_. See to it."
Poor Jane, who felt herself ordered to do the impossible, made one more
faint struggle with destiny.
"It should not like your Grace to bear that gown to-morrow?"
"This?" returned the Duchess contemptuously, glancing down at her dress,
which was of dark blue satin, heavily trimmed with minever. "'Tis not
fit to be seen. Hast lost thy wit? I tell thee, I must have a decent
gown to put on. That idle Valentine hath left me never a one in my
wardrobe. He is the laziest tyke that ever set needle."
"Please it your Grace, there is the broched[#] cloth of silver"----
[#] Figured.
"'Tis all frayed at the bottom. I warrant he hath not hemmed it anew."
"And the tawny velvet"----
"The which yon rascal Fulk spilt a glass of malmsey o'er. Tell Dame
Elizabeth it must be docked of his wages."
"And the changeable[#] green velvet"----
[#] We retain changeable silk, under the name of shot silk; but
changeable velvet is lost.
"With a rent across the front breadth as wide as mine arm, and none of
you idle hussies hath thought to mend it."
"And the russet figury velvet"----
"All the pile worn off--as shabby as can be."
"And the crimson and blue damask, and the purple tartaryn,[#] and the
mustredevilers,[#] and"----
[#] A kind of satinette, or satin Turk.
[#] A cloth, of which the name was derived either from _moitie de
velours_, or from being manufactured at Villars.
"Go thy ways for an impudent ne'er-do-well! I tell thee I will have
those two gowns--I _will have_ them! Let me hear no more of thy
foolery."
And away marched the Duchess, and left poor Jane standing in the middle
of the room.
"It shall cost Master Valentine his place an' he do it not," muttered
she to herself. "And he cannot do it--'tis not possible in the time."
"Then, were I Master Valentine, catch me essaying to compass it!" said a
voice beside her.
"Dear heart, Marion! wouldst lose thy place?"
"I would lose this place, and be rare thankful to do it," responded the
girl addressed as Marion, who was another of the chamberers. "I
oft-times wish we were as the meynie,[#] and could be hence if we
would."
[#] Household servants.
The expression of Jane's face indicated that she thought such a
sentiment treasonable.
"What with her Grace, and what with Tamzine, it is not a dog's life we
lead!" continued Marion. "If the thing lay in mine hands, you should
see, but I would wed the first man that asked me, just to be out of it."
"So might you be worser off than now," suggested Jane.
"Could not!" said Marion expressively.
Jane shook her head as if she thought that very questionable.
"Men be queer matter," said she. "Now you can make out a woman."
"Good lack! think you making out is all?" replied Marion. "She is easy
enough to make out, is Her Grace. So is Tamzine. But I love their
company never a whit the more for that. Gramercy, there goeth my Lady's
handbell! I must away."
In an upper room in the same house two other girls were sitting. One,
who sat at work in the window-seat, was so like Frideswide that we can
easily guess her to be Agnes Marston. She was a little quieter than her
sister in manner, and a shade less good-looking.
The other girl sat in a large, handsome, curule chair, with an
illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. Her face was a
remarkable one. Her figure was extremely slender, thin almost to
emaciation: but more striking than this was the wan white face, where
two hectic spots burned in the hollow cheeks, and the large dark blue
eyes seemed of unnatural size and brilliance. A long-drawn sigh made
Agnes look up.
"Your Ladyship is weary, methinks," she said.
"I may well be thus," was the answer, as the head was leaned on the thin
hand. "I was doing that which would weary an angel, for I was trying to
understand God."
"How, dear my Lady?"
The white-faced girl lifted her head, and let her eyes meet those of
Agnes.
"It were to no good to speak in riddles," she said. "Agnes, you have
dwelt in this house a full year, and you know the sorrows thereof as
well as I. Specially, you know my sorrows--you know that I live a life
wherein there is nothing to make the present happy, and the future is
all full of a great dread. There is only one in all the world that
loves me, and I cannot go to him: and one that I love not, and that
loves not me, is about to be forced upon me whether I will or no. Why
should I try to hide these things from you? You know them all. In all
the whole world that is, and in the life that is to be, there is not one
ray of sunlight for me. Do you marvel, Agnes, if life looks black to
mine eyes? Are you one of those surface seers, that reckon a woman
should be comforted for a breaking heart by a necklace of pearl, and
that she is a fool to weep for a lost friend if she have a new gown of
crimson velvet?"
"No, indeed, Lady mine."
"Aye me!" sighed the Lady Anne. "If I had but been a carpenter's child,
or of a gardener----that I could have welcomed him back at eve from his
daily work, and kept his hearth bright, and might have loved and been
loved! I could have done without the pearls and the velvet, Agnes. But
I have them: and they be poor exchange for the other."
"Things will change one of these days, sweet my Lady. ''Tis a long lane
has no turning.'"
"It has been a long one, and there be eight years now since it turned
last. Eight years, Agnes--more than half my life! And folks think it
strange that I care. They looked for me, it should seem, to set mine
heart on gewgaws, and to think more of the bidding to a dance than of
the loss of a father. If I could see an end to it, I might take less
thought. But I can behold no turn coming save one, and that is for the
worser."
Agnes knew that this allusion was to her approaching marriage.
Certainly that was no source of congratulation. In the eyes of the
waiting-woman no less than the mistress, the handsome young Baron of
Groby, Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth, who had been
chosen as the future husband of the Lady Anne de Holand, was not a man
to be regarded with any other sentiment than repugnance. Agnes had seen
him kick his dog out of the way, and never look whether he had hurt it,
when the poor little spaniel, unaware of its master's mood, had presumed
to request his attention when he was not disposed to give it.
"There is only one comfort thereanent. I shall, may-be, never live to
be wedded."
"Dear my Lady, pray you"----
"Does it look likely, Agnes?" said Lady Anne with a quiet
smile,--scarcely a sad one this time.
The tears came to Agnes's eyes. She could not say that it did.
"No," resumed Lady Anne, after a short pause, and in a low voice, "I
never loved any thing yet that did not either die or go away from me."
"Except Jesus Christ," said Agnes softly. She knew that she was safe in
saying it--that however the black clouds might hide the Sun of
Righteousness, He had risen, with healing in His wings, upon the young
lonely heart beside her.
"Except Jesus Christ," echoed the girl reverently. "And yet--O Agnes,
does He not know how hard it is to see nothing? to have nothing at all
that one can feel and touch, and clasp close to the heart? He had
friends in this life--even He, the Man of Sorrows, was not quite without
them."
"Yet they all forsook Him, and fled."
"Aye. That was worse. But they came back again."
There were tears behind the voice.
"Dear my Lady, what causeth you be thus sorrowful this even?"
She broke down when that was asked. Pushing away the book, she bent her
head down on her clasped hands on the table, and sobbed as though her
heart would break.
"Oh, it is all so dark!" she sobbed. "If we might have gone to Heaven
together, and have had each other there! Why are we kept parted? Agnes,
I hate these signs of mine high estate, which seem as if they came
betwixt me and him--betwixt me and peace. If I had not been King
Edward's niece--Oh, if this awful war had never begun!"
Agnes had dropped her work, and sat looking out of the window. She did
not know what to say. Well enough she knew that religious platitudes
would do no good here. The Lady Anne was nearer God than she was, but
just now she was in the dark. She had dropped the conscious holding of
the Father's hand, and she felt like a lost child left out in the cold.
Agnes did not realise that much of her depression was physical; but she
did feel the necessity for offering some cheerful diversion to her
thoughts.
"Dear my Lady, pray you, think on pleasanter gear."
"Wilt find it for me, Agnes?"
That was not an easy task. Agnes hesitated. But in a few moments more
the sorrowing girl had found it for herself.
"I suppose," she said more quietly, "I must lift up mine eyes unto the
hills, above all the turns in the long road. We shall be together one
day, and with God. I shall not be long first. And set down at Christ's
feet in the light of the Golden City, I count it shall not seem long to
wait for him."
The child was coming back into the light. Physically, the burst of tears
had relieved her.
"And yet, after all," she said, "I shall miss him, till he comes. One
cannot love one instead of another, even if God be that One. And to
love once is to love for ever."
"You can tell the Lord so, dear my Lady."
Lady Anne looked up with an expression of child-like trust and
simplicity in her eyes.
"Agnes, I am always telling Him."
"And is He not, then, always hearing you?"
Light came into the sad blue eyes.
"Aye, He must be always hearing. I thank thee."
The door opened, and Marion came in.
"Agnes, here is--O my Lady, I cry you mercy. I wist not you were
hither."
"Make an end, Marion," said Lady Anne, with a smile.
"Under your Ladyship's pleasure.--Agnes, here is one that would have
speech of you. He hath brought a letter, if I err not, and for some
cause is desirous to deliver the same into your own hand."
"Go and see to it, Agnes," said Lady Anne kindly: and Agnes left the
room, and descended a long flight of stairs to the base court, where the
stranger awaited her.
The stranger! Ah, what a stranger he felt, standing there in the
meanest part of his own house, among strange menials to whom his face
was unknown, for whom his voice had no authority. Did he think of
Another who was Lord and Master of all, and who came unto His own, and
His own received Him not?
"You would speak with Agnes Marston, my master?" said a gentle voice
close to him. "I am she."
The Duke turned quickly. He wore a long cloak, and a hat which could be
pulled down so as to hide his face. For any eyes to recognise him would
probably be fatal to his errand. Yet the sensation of utter isolation
was oppressive, notwithstanding that.
"Gentle Mistress," said he, in a tone and manner which instantly
revealed to Agnes that her visitor was of her own rank or above it, "I
bring you a letter from Mistress Frideswide Marston, in France, and I
pray you of your courtesy to give heed to that which is writ on the
outside thereof."
Agnes held the letter up to the lamp, and read--
"Good Sister, I do beseech you to do that which this bearer shall
request of you; and herein fail you not, for the love of me."
"My sister desires me that I will do what you shall ask," she said.
"What ask you?"
"May I ask it with fewer ears by?" returned the Duke in a low tone.
Agnes nodded. That was a request only too intelligible in the fifteenth
century. She took him aside to a small chamber where no other person
was at that moment.
"Now, Master, your will with me?"