Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland

"One day my child will grow out of her little heretic prejudices, and learn to love her mother's staunch friends, the champions of Holy Church, and the representatives of true knighthood in these degenerate days. Ah, child! couldst thou but see a true Spanish caballero, or again, could I but show thee my noble cousin of Guise, then wouldst thou know how to rate these gross clownish English mastiffs who now turn thy silly little brain. Ah, that thou couldst once meet a true prince!"

"The well," murmured Cicely.

"Tush, child," said the Queen, amused. "What of that? Thy name is not Cis, is it? 'Tis only the slough that serves thee for the nonce. The good youth will find himself linked to some homely, housewifely Cis in due time, when the Princess Bride is queening it in France or Austria, and will own that the well was wiser than he."

Poor Cis! If her inmost heart declared Humfrey Talbot to be prince enough for her, she durst not entertain the sentiment, not knowing whether it were unworthy, and while Marie de Courcelles read aloud a French legend of a saint to soothe the Queen to sleep, she lay longing after the more sympathetic mother, and wondering what was passing in the hall.

Richard Talbot had communed with his wife's eyes, and made up his mind that Humfrey should know the full truth before the Queen should enjoin his being put off with the story of the parentage she had invented for Bride Hepburn; and while some of the gentlemen followed their habit of sitting late over the wine cup, he craved their leave to have his son to himself a little while, and took him out in the summer twilight on the greensward, going through the guards, for whom he, as the gentleman warder, had the password of the night. In compliment to the expedition of the day it had been made "True love and the Flowing Well." It sounded agreeable in Humfrey's ears; he repeated it again, and then added "Little Cis! she hath come to woman's estate, and she hath caught some of the captive lady's pretty tricks of the head and hands. How long hath she been so thick with her?"

"Since this journey. I have to speak with thee, my son."

"I wait your pleasure, sir," said Humfrey, and as his father paused a moment ere communicating his strange tidings, he rendered the matter less easy by saying, "I guess your purpose. If I may at once wed my little Cis I will send word to Sir John Norreys that I am not for this expedition to the Low Countries, though there is good and manly work to be done there, and I have the offer of a command, but I gave not my word till I knew your will, and whether we might wed at once."

"Thou hast much to hear, my son."

"Nay, surely no one has come between!" exclaimed Humfrey. "Methought she was less frank and more coy than of old. If that sneaking traitor Babington hath been making up to her I will slit his false gullet for him."

"Hush, hush, Humfrey! thy seafaring boasts skill not here. No man hath come between thee and yonder poor maid."

"Poor! You mean not that she is sickly. Were she so, I would so tend her that she should be well for mere tenderness. But no, she was the very image of health. No man, said you, father? Then it is a woman. Ah! my Lady Countess is it, bent on making her match her own way? Sir, you are too good and upright to let a tyrannous dame like that sever between us, though she be near of kin to us. My mother might scruple to cross her, but you have seen the world, sir."

"My lad, you are right in that it is a woman who stands between you and Cis, but it is not the Countess. None would have the right to do so, save the maiden's own mother."

"Her mother! You have discovered her lineage! Can she have ought against me?—I, your son, sir, of the Talbot blood, and not ill endowed?"

"Alack, son, the Talbot may be a good dog but the lioness will scarce esteem him her mate. Riddles apart, it is proved beyond question that our little maid is of birth as high as it is unhappy. Thou canst be secret, I know, Humfrey, and thou must be silent as the grave, for it touches my honour and the poor child's liberty."

"Who is she, then?" demanded Humfrey sharply.

His father pointed to the Queen's window. Humfrey stared at him, and muttered an ejaculation, then exclaimed, "How and when was this known?"

Richard went over the facts, giving as few names as possible, while his son stood looking down and drawing lines with the point of his sword.

"I hoped," ended the father, "that these five years' absence might have made thee forget thy childish inclination;" and as Humfrey, without raising his face, emphatically shook his head, he went on to add— "So, my dear son, meseemeth that there is no remedy, but that, for her peace and thine own, thou shouldest accept this offer of brave Norreys, and by the time the campaign is ended, they may be both safe in Scotland, out of reach of vexing thy heart, my poor boy."

"Is it so sure that her royal lineage will be owned?" muttered Humfrey. "Out on me for saying so! But sure this lady hath made light enough of her wedlock with yonder villain."

"Even so, but that was when she deemed its offspring safe beneath the waves. I fear me that, however our poor damsel be regarded, she will be treated as a mere bait and tool. If not bestowed on some foreign prince (and there hath been talk of dukes and archdukes), she may serve to tickle the pride of some Scottish thief, such as was her father."

"Sir! sir! how can you speak patiently of such profanation and cruelty? Papist butchers and Scottish thieves, for the child of your hearth! Were it not better that I stole her safely away and wedded her in secret, so that at least she might have an honest husband?"

"Nay, his honesty would scarce be thus manifest," said Richard, "even if the maid would consent, which I think she would not. Her head is too full of her new greatness to have room for thee, my poor lad. Best that thou shouldest face the truth. And, verily, what is it but her duty to obey her mother, her true and veritable mother, Humfrey? It is but making her ease harder, and adding to her griefs, to strive to awaken any inclination she may have had for thee; and therefore it is that I counsel thee, nay, I might command thee, to absent thyself while it is still needful that she remain with us, passing for our daughter."

Humfrey still traced lines with his sword in the dust. He had always been a strong-willed though an obedient and honourable boy, and his father felt that these five years had made a man of him, whom, in spite of mediaeval obedience, it was not easy to dispose of arbitrarily.

"There's no haste," he muttered. "Norreys will not go till my Lord of Leicester's commission be made out. It is five years since I was at home."

"My son, thou knowest that I would not send thee from me willingly. I had not done so ere now, but that it was well for thee to know the world and men, and Sheffield is a mere nest of intrigue and falsehood, where even if one keeps one's integrity, it is hard to be believed. But for my Lord, thy mother, and my poor folk, I would gladly go with thee to strike honest downright blows at a foe I could see and feel, rather than be nothing better than a warder, and be driven distracted with women's tongues. Why, they have even set division between my Lord and his son Gilbert, who was ever the dearest to him. Young as he is, methinks Diccon would be better away with thee than where the very air smells of plots and lies."

"I trow the Queen of Scots will not be here much longer," said Humfrey. "Men say in London that Sir Ralf Sadler is even now setting forth to take charge of her, and send my Lord to London."

"We have had such hopes too often, my son," said Richard. "Nay, she hath left us more than once, but always to fall back upon Sheffield like a weight to the ground. But she is full of hope in her son, now that he is come of age, and hath put to death her great foe, the Earl of Morton."

"The poor lady might as well put her faith in—in a jelly-fish," said Humfrey, falling on a comparison perfectly appreciated by the old sailor.

"Heh? She will get naught but stings. How knowest thou?"

"Why, do none know here that King James is in the hands of him they call the Master of Gray?"

"Queen Mary puts in him her chief hope."

"Then she hath indeed grasped a jelly-fish. Know you not, father, those proud and gay ones, with rose-coloured bladders and long blue beards—blue as the azure of a herald's coat?"

"Ay, marry I do. I remember when I was a lad, in my first voyage, laying hold on one. I warrant you I danced about till I was nearly overboard, and my arm was as big as two for three days later. Is the fellow of that sort? The false Scot."

"Look you, father, I met in London that same Johnstone who was one of this lady's gentlemen at one time. You remember him. He breakfasted at Bridgefield once or twice ere the watch became more strict."

"Yea, I remember him. He was an honest fellow for a Scot."

"When he made out that I was the little lad he remembered, he was very courteous, and desired his commendations to you and to my mother. He had been in Scotland, and had come south in the train of this rogue, Gray. I took him to see the old Pelican, and we had a breakfast aboard there. He asked much after his poor Queen, whom he loves as much as ever, and when he saw I was a man he could trust, your true son, he said that he saw less hope for her than ever in Scotland—her friends have been slain or exiled, and the young generation that has grown up have learned to dread her like an incarnation of the scarlet one of Babylon. Their preachers would hail her as Satan loosed on them, and the nobles dread nothing so much as being made to disgorge the lands of the Crown and the Church, on which they are battening. As to her son, he was fain enough to break forth from one set of tutors, and the messages of France and Spain tickled his fancy—but he is nought. He is crammed with scholarship, and not without a shrewd apprehension; but, with respect be it spoken, more the stuff that court fools are made of than kings. It may be, as a learned man told Johnstone, that the shock the Queen suffered when the brutes put Davy to death before her eyes, three months ere his birth, hath damaged his constitution, for he is at the mercy of whosoever chooses to lead him, and hath no will of his own. This Master of Gray was at first inclined to the Queen's party, thinking more might be got by a reversal of all things, but now he finds the king's men so strong in the saddle, and the Queen's French kindred like to be too busy at home to aid her, what doth he do, but list to our Queen's offers, and this ambassage of his, which hath a colour of being for Queen Mary's release, is verily to make terms with my Lord Treasurer and Sir Francis Walsingham for the pension he is to have for keeping his king in the same mind."

"Turning a son against a mother! I marvel that honourable counsellors can bring themselves to the like."

"Policy, sir, policy," said Humfrey. "And this Gray maketh a fine show of chivalry and honour, insomuch that Sir Philip Sidney himself hath desired his friendship; but, you see, the poor lady is as far from freedom as she was when first she came to Sheffield."

"She is very far from believing it, poor dame. I am sorry for her, Humfrey, more sorry than I ever thought I could be, now I have seen more of her. My Lord himself says he never knew her break a promise. How gracious she is there is no telling."

"That we always knew," said Humfrey, looking somewhat amazed, that his honoured father should have fallen under the spell of the "siren between the cold earth and moon."

"Yes, gracious, and of a wondrous constancy of mind, and evenness of temper," said Richard. "Now that thy mother and I have watched her more closely, we can testify that, weary, worn, and sick of body and of heart as she is, she never letteth a bitter or a chiding word pass her lips towards her servants. She hath nothing to lose by it. Their fidelity is proven. They would stand by her to the last, use them as she would, but assuredly their love must be doubly bound up in her when they see how she regardeth them before herself. Let what will be said of her, son Humfrey, I shall always maintain that I never saw woman, save thine own good mother, of such evenness of condition, and sweetness of consideration for all about her, ay, and patience in adversity, such as, Heaven forbid, thy mother should ever know."

"Amen, and verily amen," said Humfrey. "Deem you then that she hath not worked her own woe?"

"Nay, lad, what saith the Scripture, 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged'? How should I know what hath passed seventeen years back in Scotland?"

"Ay, but for present plots and intrigues, judge you her a true woman?"

"Humfrey, thou hadst once a fox in a cage. When it found it vain to dash against the bars, rememberest thou how it scratched away the earth in the rear, and then sat over the hole it had made, lest we should see it?"

"The fox, say you, sir? Then you cannot call her ought but false."

"They tell me," said Sir Richard, "that ever since an Italian named Machiavel wrote his Book of the Prince, statecraft hath been craft indeed, and princes suck in deceit with the very air they breathe. Ay, boy, it is what chiefly vexes me in the whole. I cannot doubt that she is never so happy as when there is a plot or scheme toward, not merely for her own freedom, but the utter overthrow of our own gracious Sovereign, who, if she hath kept this lady in durance, hath shielded her from her own bloodthirsty subjects. And for dissembling, I never saw her equal. Yet she, as thy mother tells me, is a pious and devout woman, who bears her troubles thus cheerfully and patiently, because she deems them a martyrdom for her religion. Ay, all women are riddles, they say, but this one the most of all!"

"Thinkest thou that she hath tampered with—with that poor maiden's faith?" asked Humfrey huskily.

"I trow not yet, my son," replied Richard; "Cis is as open as ever to thy mother, for I cannot believe she hath yet learnt to dissemble, and I greatly suspect that the Queen, hoping to return to Scotland, may be willing to keep her a Protestant, the better to win favour with her brother and the lords of his council; but if he be such a cur as thou sayest, all hope of honourable release is at an end. So thou seest, Humfrey, how it lies, and how, in my judgment, to remain here is but to wring thine own heart, and bring the wench and thyself to sore straits. I lay not my commands on thee, a man grown, but such is my opinion on the matter."

"I will not disobey you, father," said Humfrey, "but suffer me to consider the matter."