Part 21

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.

*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.