Chapter Three.
Breakers Ahead.
“Our treasures moth and rust corrupt:
Or thieves break through and steal; or they
Make themselves wings and fly away.
One man made merry as he supped,
Nor guessed how, when that night grew dim,
His soul should be required of him.”
Ellen Alleyn.
Eleven years had passed away since the events of the previous chapters, and in the room where we first saw her, Rachel Enville sat with the four girls around her. Little girls no longer,—young ladies now; for the youngest, Blanche, was not far from her fifteenth birthday. Margaret—now a young woman of four-and-twenty, and only not married because her betrothed was serving with the army of occupation in the Netherlands—was very busily spinning; Lucrece—a graceful maiden of twenty-two, not strictly handsome, but possessed of an indescribable fascination which charmed all who saw her—sat with her eyes bent down on her embroidery; Clare—seventeen, gentle, and unobtrusive—was engaged in plain sewing; and Blanche,—well, what was Blanche doing? She sat in the deep window-seat, her lap full of spring flowers, idly taking up now one, and now another,—weaving a few together as if she meant to make a wreath,—then suddenly abandoning the idea and gathering them into a nosegay,—then throwing that aside and dreamily plunging both hands into the fragrant mass. Blanche had developed into a very pretty picture,—lovelier than Lady Enville, whom she resembled in feature.
“Blanche!” said her aunt suddenly.
Blanche looked up as if startled. Rachel had changed little. Time had stiffened, not softened, both her grogram and her prejudices.
“What dost thou?” she demanded.
“Oh! I—well—I know not what I did, Aunt Rachel. I was thinking, I reckon.”
“And where were thy thoughts?” was the next searching query.
Blanche smelt at her flowers, coloured, laughed, and ended by saying lightly, “I scantly know, Aunt.”
“Then the sooner thou callest them to order, the better. She must needs be an idle jade that wits not whereof she thinketh.”
“Well, if you must needs know, Aunt Rachel,” said Blanche, laughing again, and just a trifle saucily, “I thought about—being wed.”
“Fie for shame!” was the prompt comment on this confession. “What hast thou to do withal, till thy father and mother bid thee?”
“Why, that is even what I thought, Aunt Rachel,” said Blanche coolly, “and I would I had more to do withal. I would fain choose mine own servant.” (Suitor.)
“Thou!—Poor babe!” was the contemptuous rejoinder.
“Well, Aunt Rachel, you wot a woman must be wed.”
“That’s a man’s notion!” said Rachel in her severest manner. “Blanche, I do marvel greatly that thou hast not more womanfulness than so. A woman must be wed, quotha! Who saith it? Some selfish man, I warrant, that thought women were create into the world for none other cause but to be his serving-maids!”
“I am sure I know not wherefore we were create,” muttered Blanche, loud enough for her sisters to hear but not her Aunt.
Rachel stopped her carding. She saw a first-rate opening for a lecture, and on her own special pet topic.
“Maidens, I would fain have you all list me heedfully. Prithee, take not up, none of you, with men’s notions. To wit, that a woman must needs be wed, and that otherwise she is but half a woman, and the like foolery. Nay, verily; for when she is wed she is no more at all a woman, but only the half of a man, and is shorn of all her glory. Wit ye all what marriage truly meaneth? It is to be a slave, and serve a man at his beck, all the days of thy life. A maid is her own queen, and may do as it like her—”
“Would I might!” said Blanche under her breath.
“But a wife must needs search out her lord’s pleasure.”
“Or make him search out hers,” boldly interposed Blanche.
“Child, lay thou down forthwith that foolish fantasy,” returned Rachel with great solemnity. “So long time as that thing man is not sure of thee, he is the meekest mannered beast under the sun. He will promise thee all thy desire whatsoever. But once give leave unto thy finger to be rounded by that golden ring the which he holdeth out to thee, and where be all his promises? Marry, thou mayest whistle for them,—ay, and weep.”
Rachel surely had no intention of bringing her lecture to a close so early; but at this point it was unfortunately—or, as Blanche thought, fortunately—interrupted. A girl of nineteen came noiselessly into the room, carrying a small basket of early cherries. She made no attempt to announce herself; she was too much at home at Enville Court to stand on ceremony. Coming up to Rachel, she stooped down and kissed her, setting the basket on a small table by her side.
“Ah, Lysken Barnevelt! Thou art welcome. What hast brought yonder, child?”
“Only cherries, Mistress Rachel:—our early white-hearts, which my Lady loveth, and Aunt Thekla sent me hither with the first ripe.”
“Wherefore many thanks and hearty, to her and thee. Sit thee down, Lysken: thou art in good time for four-hours. Hast brought thy work?”
Lysken pulled out of her pocket a little roll of brown holland, which, when unrolled, proved to be a child’s pinafore, destined for the help of some poverty-stricken mother; and in another minute she was seated at work like the rest. And while Lysken works, let us look at her.
A calm, still-faced girl is this, with smooth brown hair, dark eyes, a complexion nearly colourless, a voice low, clear, but seldom heard, and small delicate hands, at once quick and quiet. A girl that has nothing to say for herself,—is the verdict of most surface observers who see her: a girl who has nothing in her,—say a few who consider themselves penetrating judges of character. Nearly all think that the Reverend Robert Tremayne’s partiality has outrun his judgment, for he says that his adopted daughter thinks more than is physically good for her. A girl who can never forget the siege of Leyden: never forget the dead mother, whose latest act was to push the last fragment of malt-cake towards her starving child; never forget the martyr-father burnt at Ghent by the Regent Alva, who boasted to his master, Philip of Spain, that during his short regency he had executed eighteen thousand persons,—of course, heretics. Quiet, thoughtful, silent,—how could Lysken Barnevelt be anything else?
A rap came at the door.
“Mistress Rachel, here’s old Lot’s wife. You’ll happen come and see her?” inquired Jennet, putting only her head in at the door.
“I will come to the hall, Jennet.”
Jennet’s head nodded and retreated. Rachel followed her.
“How doth Aunt Rachel snub us maids!” said Blanche lazily, clasping her hands behind her head. “She never had no man to make suit unto her, so she accounteth we may pass us (do without) belike.”
“Who told thee so much?” asked Margaret bluntly.
“I lacked no telling,” rejoined Blanche. “But I say, maids!—whom were ye all fainest to wed?—What manner of man, I mean.”
“I am bounden already,” said Margaret calmly. “An’ mine husband leave me but plenty of work to do, he may order him otherwise according to his liking.”
“Work! thou art alway for work!” remonstrated ease-loving Blanche.
“For sure. What were men and women made for, if not work?”
“Nay, that Aunt Rachel asked of me, and I have not yet solute (solved) the same.—Clare, what for thee?”
“I have no thought thereanent, Blanche. God will dispose of me.”
“Why, so might a nun say.—Lysken, and thou?”
Lysken showed rather surprised eyes when she lifted her head. “What questions dost thou ask, Blanche! How wit I if I shall ever marry? I rather account nay.”
“Ye be a pair of nuns, both of you!” said Blanche, laughing, yet in a slightly annoyed tone. “Now, Lucrece, thou art of the world, I am well assured. Answer me roundly,—not after the manner of these holy sisters,—whom wert thou fainest to wed?”
“A gentleman of high degree,” returned Lucrece, readily.
“Say a king, while thou goest about it,” suggested her eldest sister.
“Well, so much the better,” was Lucrece’s cool admission.
“So much the worse, to my thinking,” said Margaret. “Would I by my good-will be a queen, and sit all day with my hands in my lap, a-toying with the virginals, and fluttering of my fan,—and my heaviest concernment whether I will wear on the morrow my white velvet gown guarded with sables, or my black satin furred with minever? By my troth, nay!”
“Is that thy fantasy of a queen, Meg?” asked Clare, laughing. “Truly, I had thought the poor lady should have heavier concernments than so.”
“Well!” said Blanche, in a confidential whisper, “I am never like to be a queen; but I will show you one thing,—I would right dearly love to be presented in the Queen’s Majesty’s Court.”
“Dear heart!—Presented, quotha!” exclaimed Margaret. “Prithee, take not me withal.”
“Nay, I will take these holy sisters,” said Blanche, merrily. “What say ye, Clare and Lysken?”
“I have no care to be in the Court, I thank thee,” quietly replied Clare.
“I shall be, some day,” observed Lysken, calmly, without lifting her head.
“Thou!—presented in the Court!” cried Blanche.
For of all the five, girls, Lysken was much the most unlikely ever to attain that eminence.
“Even so,” she said, unmoved.
“Hast thou had promise thereof?”
“I have had promise thereof,” repeated Lysken, in a tone which was lost upon Blanche, but Clare thought she began to understand her.
“Who hath promised thee?” asked Blanche, intensely interested.
“The King!” replied Lysken, with deep feeling. “And I shall be the King’s daughter!”
“Lysken Barnevelt!” cried Blanche, dropping many of her flowers in her excitement, “art thou gone clean wood (mad), or what meanest thou?”
Lysken looked up with a smile full of meaning.
“‘Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,—to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty.’—Do but think,—faultless! and, before His glory!”
Lysken’s eyes were alight in a manner very rare with her. She was less shy with her friends at Enville Court than with most people.
“So that is what thou wert thinking on!” said Blanche, in a most deprecatory manner.
Lysken did not reply; but Clare whispered to her, “I would we might all be presented there, Lysken.”
While the young ladies were thus engaged in debate, and Rachel was listening to the complaints of old Lot’s wife from the village, and gravely considering whether the said Lot’s rheumatism would be the better for a basin of viper broth,—Sir Thomas Enville, who was strolling in the garden, perceived two riders coming up to the house. They were evidently a gentleman and his attendant serving-man, and as soon as they approached near enough for recognition, Sir Thomas hurried quickly to meet them. The Lord Strange, heir of Lathom and Knowsley, must not be kept waiting.
Only about thirty years had passed over the head of Ferdinand Stanley, Lord Strange, yet his handsome features wore an expression of the deepest melancholy. People who were given to signs and auguries said that it presaged an early and violent death. And when, eight years later, after only one year’s tenancy of the earldom of Derby, he died of a rapid, terrible, and mysterious disease, strange to all the physicians who saw him, the augurs, though a little disappointed that he was not beheaded, found their consolation in the conviction that he had been undoubtedly bewitched. His father, Earl Henry, seems to have been a cool, crafty time-server, who had helped to do the Duke of Somerset to death, more than thirty years before, and one of whose few good actions was his intercession with Bishop Bonner in favour of his kinsman, the martyr Roger Holland. His mother was the great heiress Margaret Clifford, who had inherited, before she was fifteen years of age, one-third of the estates of Duke Charles of Suffolk, the wealthiest man in England.
“’Save you, my good Lord!” was Sir Thomas’s greeting. “You be right heartily welcome unto my poor house.”
“I have seen poorer,” replied Lord Strange with a smile.
“Pray your Lordship, go within.”
After a few more amenities, in the rather ponderous style of the sixteenth century, Sir Thomas ceremoniously conducted his guest to Lady Enville’s boudoir. She sat, resplendent in blue satin slashed with yellow, turning over some ribbons which Barbara Polwhele was displaying for her inspection. The ribbons were at once dismissed when the noble visitor appeared, and Barbara was desired to “do the thing she wot of in the little chamber.”
The little chamber was a large, light closet, opening out of the boudoir, with a window looking on the garden; and the doorway between the rooms was filled by a green curtain. Barbara’s work was to make up into shoulder-knots certain lengths of ribbon already put aside for that purpose. While the speakers, therefore, were to her invisible, their conversation was as audible as if she had been in the boudoir.
“And what news abroad, my good Lord?” asked Sir Thomas, when the usual formal civilities were over.
“Very ill news,” said Lord Strange, sadly.
“Pray your Lordship, what so? We hear none here, lying so far from the Queen’s highway.”
“What heard you the last?”
“Well, methinks it were some strange matter touching the Scottish Queen, as though she should be set to trial on charge of some matter of knowledge of Babington’s treason.”
Sir Thomas’s latest news, therefore, was about seven months old. There were no daily papers and Reuter’s telegrams in his day.
“Good Sir Thomas, you have much to hear,” replied his guest. “For the Scottish Queen, she is dead and buried,—beheaden at Fotheringay Castle, in Yorkshire, these three months gone.”
“Gramercy!”
“’Tis very true, I do ensure you. And would God that were the worst news I could tell you!”
“Pray your Lordship, speak quickly.”
“There be afloat strange things of private import:—to wit, of my kinsman the Earl of Arundel, who, as ’tis rumoured, shall this next month be tried by the Star Chamber, and, as is thought, if he ’scape with life, shall be heavily charged in goods (Note 1): or the Black Assize at Exeter this last year, whereby, through certain Portugals that were prisoners on trial, the ill smells did so infect the Court, (Note 2) that many died thereof—of the common people very many, and divers men of worship,—among other Sir John Chichester of Raleigh, that you and I were wont to know, and Sir Arthur Basset of Umberleigh—”
Barbara Polwhele heard no more for a while. The name that had been last mentioned meant, to Lord Strange and Sir Thomas, the head of a county family of Devonshire, a gentleman of first-class blood. But to her it meant not only the great-grandson of Edward the Fourth, and the heir of the ruined House of Lisle,—but the bright-faced boy who, twenty-seven years before, used to flash in and out of John Avery’s house in the Minories,—bringing “Aunt Philippa’s loving commendations,” or news that “Aunt Bridget looketh this next week to be in the town, and will be rare fain to see Mistress Avery:”—the boy who had first seen the light at Calais, on the very threshold of the family woe—and who, to the Averys, and to Barbara, as their retainer, was the breathing representative of all the dead Plantagenets. As to the Tudors,—the Queen’s Grace, of course, was all that was right and proper, a brave lady and true Protestant; and long might God send her to rule over England!—but the Tudors, apart from Elizabeth personally, were— Hush! in 1587 it was perilous to say all one thought. So for some minutes Lord Strange’s further news was unheard in the little chamber. A pathetic vision filled it, of a night in which there would be dole at Umberleigh, when the coffin of Sir Arthur Basset was borne to the sepulchre of his fathers in Atherington Church. (Note 3.) He was not yet forty-six. “God save and comfort Mistress Philippa!”
For, eldest-born and last-surviving of her generation, in a green old age, Philippa Basset was living still. Time had swept away all the gallant brothers and fair sisters who had once been her companions at Umberleigh: the last to die, seven years before, being the eloquent orator, George. Yet Philippa lived on,—an old maiden lady, with heart as warm, and it must be confessed, with tongue as sharp, as in the days of her girlhood. Time had mellowed her slightly, but had changed nothing in her but one—for many years had passed now since Philippa was heard to sneer at Protestantism. She never confessed to any alteration in her views; perhaps she was hardly conscious of it, so gradually had it grown upon her. Only those perceived it who saw her seldom: and the signs were very minute. A passing admission that “may-be folk need not all be Catholics to get safe up yonder”—meaning, of course, to Heaven; an absence of the set lips and knitted brows which had formerly attended the reading of the English Scriptures in church; a courteous reception of the Protestant Rector; a capability of praying morning and evening without crucifix or rosary; a quiet dropping of crossings and holy water, oaths by our Lady’s merits and Saint Peter’s hosen: a general calm acquiescence in the new order of things. But how much did it mean? Only that her eyes were becoming accustomed to the light?—or that age had weakened her prejudices?—or that God had touched her heart?
Some such thoughts were passing through Barbara’s mind, when Lord Strange’s voice reached her understanding again.
“I ensure you ’tis said in the Court that his grief for the beheading of the Scots Queen is but a blind, (Note 4) and that these two years gone and more hath King Philip been making ready his galleons for to invade the Queen’s Majesty’s dominions. And now they say that we may look for his setting forth this next year. Sir Francis Drake is gone by Her Highness’ command to the Spanish main, there to keep watch and bring word; and he saith he will singe the Don’s whiskers ere he turn again. Yet he may come, for all belike.”
The singeing of the Don’s whiskers was effected soon after, by the burning of a hundred ships of war in the harbour of Cadiz.
“Why, not a man in England but would turn out to defend the Queen and country!” exclaimed Sir Thomas.
“Here is one that so will, Sir, by your leave,” said another voice.
We may peep behind the green curtain, though Barbara did not. That elegant young man with such finished manners—surely he can never be our old and irrepressible friend Jack? Ay, Jack and no other; more courtly, but as irrepressible as ever.
“We’ll be ready for him!” said Sir Thomas grimly.
“Amen!” was Jack’s contribution, precisely in the treble tones of the parish clerk. The imitation was so perfect that even the grave Lord Strange could not suppress a smile.
“Shall I get thee a company, Jack Enville?”
“Pray do so, my good Lord. I thank your Lordship heartily.”
“Arthur Tremayne is set on going, if it come to hot water—as seemeth like enough.”
“Arthur Tremayne is a milksop, my Lord! I marvel what he means to do. His brains are but addled eggs—all stuffed with Latin and Greek.”
Jack, of course, like the average country gentleman of his time, was a profound ignoramus. What knowledge had been drilled into him in boyhood, he had since taken pains to forget. He was familiar with the punctilio of duelling, the code of regulations for fencing, the rules of athletic sports, and the intricacies of the gaming-table; but anything which he dubbed contemptuously “book-learning,” he considered as far beneath him as it really was above.
“He will be as good for the Spaniards to shoot at as any other,” jocularly observed Sir Thomas.
“Then pray you, let Lysken Barnevelt go!” said Jack soberly. “I warrant you she’ll stand fire, and never so much as ruffle her hair.”
“Well, I heard say Dame Mary Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, that an’ the men beat not back the Spaniards, the women should fight them with their bodkins; wherewith Her Highness was so well pleased that she dubbed the dame a knight then and there. My wife saith, an’ it come to that, she will be colonel of a company of archers of Lancashire. We will have Mistress Barnevelt a lieutenant in her company.”
“My sister Margaret would make a good lieutenant, my Lord,” suggested Jack. “We’ll send Aunt Rachel to the front, with a major’s commission, and Clare shall be her adjutant. As for Blanche, she may stand behind the baggage and screech. She is good for nought else, but she’ll do that right well.”
“For shame, lad!” said Sir Thomas, laughing.
“I heard her yesterday, Sir,—the occasion, a spider but half the size of a pin head.”
“What place hast thou for me?” inquired Lady Enville, delicately applying a scented handkerchief to her fastidious hose.
“My dear Madam!” said Jack, bowing low, “you shall be the trumpeter sent to give challenge unto the Spanish commandant. If he strike not his colours in hot haste upon sight of you, then is he no gentleman.”
Lady Enville sat fanning herself in smiling complacency, No flattery could be too transparent to please her.
“I pray your Lordship, is any news come touching Sir Richard Grenville, and the plantation which he strave to make in the Queen’s Highness’ country of Virginia?” asked Sir Thomas.
Barbara listened again with interest. Sir Richard Grenville was a Devonshire knight, and a kinsman of Sir Arthur Basset.
“Ay,—Roanoke, he called it, after the Indian name. Why, it did well but for a time, and then went to wrack. But I do hear that he purposeth for to go forth yet again, trusting this time to speed better.”
“What good in making plantations in Virginia?” demanded Jack, loftily. “A wild waste, undwelt in save by savages, and many weeks’ voyage from this country,—what gentleman would ever go to dwell there?”
“May-be,” said Lord Strange thoughtfully, “when the husbandmen that shall go first have made it somewhat less rough, gentlemen may be found to go and dwell there.”
“Why, Jack, lad! This country is not all the world,” observed his father.
“’Tis all of it worth anything, Sir,” returned insular Jack.
“Thy broom sweepeth clean, Jack,” responded Lord Strange. “What, is nought worth in France, nor in Holland,—let be the Emperor’s dominions, and Spain, and Italy?”
“They be all foreigners, my Lord. And what better are foreigners than savages? They be all Papists, to boot.”
“Not in Almayne, Jack,—nor in Holland.”
“Well, they speak no English,” said prejudiced Jack.
“That is a woeful lack,” gravely replied Lord Strange. “Specially when you do consider that English was the tongue that Noah spake afore the flood, and the confusion of tongues at Babel.”
Jack knew just enough to have a dim perception that Lord Strange was laughing at him. He got out of the difficulty by turning the conversation.
“Well, thus much say I: let the King of Spain come when he will, and where, at every point of the coast there shall be an Englishman awaiting—and we will drive him home thrice faster than he came at the first.”
Note 1. He was fined 10,000 pounds for contempt of court. What his real offences were remains doubtful, beyond the fact that he was a Papist, and had married against the will of the Queen.
Note 2. The state of the gaols at this time, and for long afterwards, until John Howard effected his reformation of them, was simply horrible. The Black Assize at Exeter was by no means the only instance of its land.
Note 3. I stated in Robin Tremayne that I had not been able to discover the burial-place of Honor Viscountess Lisle. Since that time, owing to the kindness of correspondents, personally unknown to me, I have ascertained that she was probably buried at Atherington, with her first husband, Sir John Basset. In that church his brass still remains—a knight between two ladies—the coats of arms plainly showing that the latter are Anne Dennis of Oxleigh and Honor Granville of Stow. But the Register contains no entry of burial previous to 1570.
Note 4. In the custody of the (Popish) Bishop of Southwark is a quarto volume, containing, under date of Rome, April 28, 1588,—“An admonition to the nobility and people of England and Ireland, concerning the present warres made for the execution of His Holiness’ sentence, by the highe and mightie King Catholicke of Spaine: by the Cardinal of England.” (Cardinal Allen.)—(Third Report of Royal Commission of Historical Manuscripts, page 233).