“You must remember,” he began, as Margeret nestled closer against his arm, “since I have told you so often, that all through my boyhood I lived with my uncle at the edge of a great, wonderful garden that belonged, not to any of the people thereabout, but to the English Crown. It was there that Queen Bess, when she was but the Princess Elizabeth Tudor, had lived when she was a girl. There, too, my father, Robert Radpath, who was heir to the neighbouring estates, used to play with her when they were children and up to the time when she became Queen. He never saw her after that day when she set off to London to assume the crown, but he was always loyal in her service and she stood ever his friend. He sailed on many of those long voyages for which Queen Elizabeth’s reign is famous; he and others of her brave sailors risked much that her flag should fly in distant, unknown corners of the world. When my father became a Puritan and the persecuting laws bore so heavily upon all of that faith that even the Queen’s interest seemed powerless to save him, she appointed him upon a mission to China, to bear a message from her to that far country’s mighty ruler. From that voyage he never returned.
“I was a very little boy at the time of his going, but I remember him well and remember, too, the day the royal messenger came with a letter written in the Queen’s own hand ‘To my good friend and old comrade, Robin Radpath.’ He brought also a gorgeously be-ribboned and red-sealed packet that was to be delivered to ‘The Right, High, Mighty and Invincible Emperor of Cathaye,’ with Elizabeth’s signature upon it, written very large for the better reading of a monarch who knew only Chinese. In three days my father had sailed away in one of her great high-prowed ships, sailed to meet disaster in some unknown sea, for he never came home again.”
“And that was how you came to dwell with your uncle?” asked Margeret, for of this portion of her father’s life she never had heard before.
“Yes, my mother being dead, her brother took me to his house where I lived henceforth with him and his sister, my Aunt Matilda. My father’s Puritanism had cost him his estates, but my uncle, a humble man, had escaped the persecution that had, so far, struck only at the great lords. A rigid follower of the rules of his faith was my uncle, but my Aunt Matilda—ah, her strictness and severity left his far behind. He feared no man on earth, yet of his sister he was as afraid as was I.
“After all these years I cannot quite recollect how it befell that my uncle took me with him on a journey to London, it may have been only because I begged so hard to go. Even less can I tell you how he came to do the thing that almost above all else is forbidden to Puritans, to witness a show of play-actors. We were passing down a narrow crowded street when I saw a sign beside a gateway, a great placard setting forth that here within was to be enacted ‘A new play by Master William Shakespeare, The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fifth, and His Glorious Victory of Agincourt.’ I pulled my uncle’s arm to call his attention, he hesitated, passed by the gate, came back again and finally, muttering ‘Say naught of this to your aunt,’ led me within.
“It was a strange sight for the eyes of a little Puritan boy fresh from the country, the rough platform of the stage, the open space before it where stood a motley crowd of the common folk of London, the rows of boxes, and finally the gaily dressed actors who strode forth upon the boards. I believe rain fell upon us as we stood there, and that the sun came out and disappeared again, but to all that I gave little heed, for my heart and soul and eyes were with the gallant King Henry, speeding away to France. It was a play full of clashing arms, of ringing war-cries and hard-fought battles, yet in the midst of it there was one who came forth to describe the higher blessings of a peaceful kingdom, likening it to a beehive, with each member doing his appointed task and having joy in his work. It was thus he spoke of the bees, ‘Singing masons building roofs of gold.’ When the play was over, my uncle led me out, blind and deaf to the sights and sounds of London, only those stirring words ringing in my ears as they do still.”
“And did your Aunt Matilda ever find you out?” inquired Margeret, hot on the trail of the rest of the story.
“My uncle made me promise again never to tell her,” Master Simon continued with a chuckle, “but he might have known that a little boy, so full of one idea as I was of that play, must spill the news abroad somehow. It was the day after our return that I was playing on the grass before our cottage while my aunt sat knitting in the doorway. Suddenly she asked:
“‘Simon, what is it that you are muttering?’
“She spoke so quickly and sharply that I, lost in a maze of dreams that I scarce understood, had no better wit than to tell her the line that was running through my head.