look on me otherwise when I go hence, for the general charged me, if all
was well with you, to convey the prisoner straightly back to camp. What
am I to tell him of you, Chris?"
"It needs not that you tell him anything," I answered. "I shall come
with you."
"Tush, man, 'twill be a month ere you can sit a horse in any comfort,"
said he. "I know that, though I am no leech. And something whispers me
that your fighting days are over. Never again shall we outface the
murderous cannon together, never again mount side by side into the
deadly breach. Alack, old lad, and wellaway!"
"You talk a deal of nonsensical nothing, Toby," said I. "My organs are
sound enough; shall I cease to bear arms for a paltry poke i' the leg?"
"Ah, lad, I doubt your organs be not so sound as you suppose;" and
saying this he sighed again, and smiled whimsically when I asked him if
I had unawares been wounded in another part. "Time will show," said he.
"Now I must get me to horse, though I dread the lady's anger when I tell
her I must take her father hence."
But after some time he came back in great cheerfulness of spirit.
"She received me sweetly," he said, "avowed 'twas hard for a daughter to
part from her father, but I must do my duty; said she had confidence in
the courtesy of English gentlemen and knew we should treat her father
well; assured me that you should have all good care and tendance, and
thanked Heaven that Master Rudd had so true a friend. Then she smiled
bewitchingly upon me, gave me her hand, and looked as though the
greatest pleasure in life I could do her was to turn my back and hie me
away. What will the Queen say, Chris?"
He laughed heartily at my bewilderment upon this question, then sighed
again, shook my hand mournfully, and so departed.
It needs not to tell of those few weeks I spent in sickness on my couch,
yet weeks of bliss and unimaginable contentment. My lady spent the
greater part of every day with me, bringing me confections made by her
own fair hands, smoothing my pillow, tending me with kind ministrations,
reading to me prettily out of her books, and hanging upon my lips when I
related, as she bade me, somewhat of my adventures. One day, when
reading out of Master Spenser's book, she faltered at those lines--
"Where they do feed on Nectar heavenly-wise,
With Hercules and Hebe and the rest,"
and with a pretty blush she listened as I told her those enchanting
fables of the antique world.
"And I was jealous of Hebe!" she said.
"'That canker-worm, that monster, Jealousy!'" I quoted from the same
poem. "But why jealous of Hebe, mistress?" I asked.
"Because I was a witless, silly child," she said. "Jealous of a
goddess, indeed! But I knew not then she was a goddess."
"You thought she was a maiden like yourself?" I said.
"Not like myself," she said, "but fairer."
"Was there ever fairer?" said I, under my breath.
"Tell me, are there many pretty ladies at your Queen's Court?" she said.
I feigned to consider deeply, and rehearsed the names of some known to
me, praising this one and that, and marking how her breath came and
went.
"But no one durst say a good word of any in the hearing of the Queen,"
said I. "She must ever be the fairest, the wittiest, the best
proportioned, the most nobly endowed both in body and mind. Do you
know, mistress, the Queen hath banished and even cast into prison many a
man that has dared to wed one of her ladies?"
"Is she so unkind?" she said.
"And when Toby Caulfeild was leaving me he said, 'What will the Queen
say, Chris?' and my doltish pate did not understand him."
"Why, that is simple," she said. "He meant that the Queen would be sore
grieved at hearing of your hurt. With her own hand she wrote, 'Thy
loving sovereign.'"
"She will love me no more when she knows that I love thee," said I,
laying my hand upon hers.
She let it rest so for a little, and her cheeks went from red to pale,
and from pale to red again. Then her hand stole from mine, and clasped
the other upon her lap.
"Ay, none but thee," I said, seeking her eyes beneath the covert of
their lids. I breathed her name. I reached out my hand and gently
unclasped her twining fingers, and with a lift of the eyes she gave me
my answer.
"Let the Queen say what she will!" I cried in my joy. "There is a
little place in our south country, Sheila, within sound of the sea, in a
fair forest, near soft-running brooks. I would not exchange it for a
king's palace. Good-bye the Camp, good-bye the pomp and glitter of the
Court. There will we nest ourselves, my sweet, away from the noise and
racket of the world."
Toby Caulfeild was approved a true prophet. My fighting days were done.
We took up our abode, Sheila and I, on my little manor, out of the
current of war and intrigue, untouched by the discords that rent England
asunder when the great Queen had gone to her rest. I never saw the
Queen again after that Christmas when she goaded me to fight; what she
would have said on hearing that I had wed an Irish maiden without her
royal consent could only be guessed. When I returned with my bride from
Ireland, the Queen was deep sunk in a lethargy, and the joys and sorrows
of mortality were beyond her ken.
[Illustration: tailpiece to Fifth Part]
*Postscript*
My grandfather took his bride home in the summer of the year 1603, and
there they lived in great happiness and contentment, rarely stirring
abroad save to make brief and sudden visits to London and to their many
friends. My father, their sole child, was born in October of the year
1604, and when he came to the age of eleven, he was sent to the school
at Winchester, whence in due order he proceeded to the New College at
Oxford.
All these years did my grandfather hold himself aloof from the Court,
being much troubled in his mind about the foolish and heady courses of
King James. My lady grandmother told me, I remember, how that on the
day when he had news of the beheading of his old captain Sir Walter
Raleigh, he shut himself up in his chamber, and for very sorrow would
neither see nor speak with any of his household. And methinks I hear
still his full round voice rehearsing to me the famous verses which Sir
Walter wrote, the night before his death, in the Bible of the Dean of
Westminster. "He lived and died a gentleman, boy," said he to me; "and
if you would know the true signification of that word 'gentleman,' read
Castillo's _Book of the Courtier_, in Mr. Hoby's translation, though in
truth you will find all and more in the 15th Psalm."
In the summer of the year 1623 there came to him a gentleman post-haste
from London, bearing a letter from a very great person bidding him
journey without delay to Westminster. Being beholden to the writer, he
must needs comply, though apprehensive of trouble in his quiet life.
And after two days a messenger brought from him a letter wherein he
wrote that he had been commanded to cross over to France, and ride with
all imaginable speed into Spain, on an errand of great moment. My
grandmother was sorely disquieted at this news, more especially because
he told her no more, nor indeed did she learn the cause of his going
until he returned in time to keep my father's birthday.
It was on this wise. There had been talk for many years of a marriage
between the Infanta Maria, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, and our
Prince Charles (now King, though a prisoner), a match very little to the
liking of our English people. But King James hoped by this alliance to
aid the cause of his son-in-law the Elector Palatine, and he carried the
business so far as that nothing was wanting except the Pope's
dispensation, whereby alone could a Catholic princess wed with a
heretic.
Now the Prince of Wales, at that time three and twenty years of age, was
a thoughtless unsteady youth, deserving well the fond name of Baby
Charles bestowed upon him by his doting father. In consort with his
boon friend the Marquis (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham, he conceived
the lunatic fancy of going himself to Madrid, with the intent to hasten
the match, and woo the Princess in person. Wherefore in February of
that year the two headstrong young men, disguised with false beards, and
calling themselves Tom and John Smith, set forth from Newhall, crossed
the sea from Dover, and rode through France into Spain, where they were
received, having thrown off their disguise, with due honour. But, being
light-minded, they ran foul of the stiff ceremoniousness of the Spanish
Court and gave deep offence, the Prince by his levity, the Marquis by
his insolency. It was deemed fit that the Infanta should be approached
only with the forms of State; yet the Prince, seeing her walk alone in a
garden, leapt over the wall and made love to her, whereat she screamed
and fled from this too ardent wooing. The Spaniards, moreover, held it
unseemly that the Marquis, a subject, sat in his dressing-gown at the
Prince's table, turned his back upon him in public places, and bent
himself forward to stare unmannerly at the Infanta. And the Marquis was
continually at odds with Olivarez, the Spanish minister, used him
haughtily, and browbeat him without measure whether in word or deed. To
be brief, they played the fool.
In the summer, when a month had gone by without any word arriving from
the Prince, who had been wont before to write often to his father, King
James, then afflicted with the gout, and sick also in mind, conceived
that his dear Baby Charles stood in peril of captivity, and went about
wringing his hands, and crying with tears that his only sweet son would
never see his old dear dad again. Whereupon the great person aforesaid
resolved to send some staid and discreet person privily to Madrid to
have an eye upon the Prince, and to bring him away, even by kidnapping,
if he were in truth menaced by any danger. And bethinking him of my
grandfather, and how he had acquit himself well in many divers
adventures, and moreover had had dealings with the Spaniards, he sent
for him and dispatched him forth on that errand.
As it fell out, my grandfather had his pains for nought. The Prince,
with that deceitfulness which has brought his present woes upon him,
having made promises which he knew he could never perform, departed from
Madrid, leaving, as the custom with royal persons is, a proxy to wed the
Infanta, ten days after the Pope's dispensation should come to hand,
although he was in truth already minded to break off the match. Upon
his return, the great person acquainted King James with what he had
done, and the King sent for my grandfather, and blessed him with many
tears, and dubbed him knight.
Thereafter Sir Christopher dwelt only in the country, beholding with
troubled eyes the headlong gait of Baby Charles after that he became
King.
In the year 1624 my father, having proceeded Master of Arts at Oxford,
became parson of a parish in Wiltshire, and wedded the daughter of a
neighbour gentleman, and in the next year I was born. When I was
sixteen, and a scholar of Winchester, my grandfather related to me the
passages of his life which I have set forth in these writings. Five
years afterward, when the Rebellion was at its height, and my father
held obstinately for the King, he was haled before the Committee of
Sequestration, and charged in that he had incited his parishioners to
attend the King's rendezvous at Austin's Cross and also helped the royal
garrison at Longford Castle. By this Committee being ejected from his
living, he returned to his father's house, and there abode. And in the
next year, on November 15, the very day when King Charles crept into
Carisbrooke Castle, my grandfather died, to the sorrow of us who had the
chiefest cause to love him, and of the friends and neighbours among whom
he had lived in all honour and righteousness.
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.