After waiting a moment, to give their valor fair chance of answering, I turned disdainfully from them, and, bending again to fair Queen Philippa, “Madam,” I said, “these noisy boys make me forget the smooth reverence that I owe your Grace, yet surely the noble daughter of Hainault will forgive a hasty word spoken in defense of soldier honor?”
“I know nothing, good fellow,” replied the Queen, eyeing her discomfited nobles with inward glee, “of thy Hainault, but I like thy outspokenness extremely. By Heaven! you make me think it was some time since I last saw a man about me.”
“And have I leave to do my mission, noble lady?”
“Ay, Sir, to it at once! We care not how you come, or who you are, or for the exact condition of your smock, so that you bring news of victory.”
“But, Madam,” put in Fodringham, “it is not safe—he has some desperate purpose——”
“Silence!” shouted the Queen, springing to her feet and stamping a pretty foot, cased in a dainty pearl-encrusted slipper—“silence, I say, Lord Fodringham, and all you other peers who make our presence-chamber like a bear-pit: silence! or by my father’s heart I will cure him of insolence who speaks again for once and all.” And the sallow virago, flushing like an angry yellow sunset, with her fierce gray eyes agleam, and her thin lips stern-set, one white hand clutching the high carved arm of her daïs, and the other set like white ivory on the jeweled handle of her fan, scowled round upon her courtiers.
They knew that proud termagant too well to meet her eye, and having stared them all into meek silence she let the yellow flush die from her cheek, and turning to me she said: “Now, fellow, to thy errand.”
“Then, sovereign lady,” I began, “but two days since, in France, the English troops, fair set upon a sunny hillside, were attacked by a vast array of foemen, and thanks to happy chance, to thy princely General’s captainship, and to the incredible valor of thy lieges, they were victorious!”
“Now may the dear God who rules these things accept my grateful and most humble thanks!” And the proud Queen, with bright moisture in her eye, looked skyward for a moment, and was so moved with true joy and pleasure in her country’s conquest that thereon at once she went up most mightily in my esteem.
“Most welcome of all heralds,” she went on, “how fared the English leader in that desperate fight? If aught has happed to Lord Leicester, it will spoil all else that you can say.”[4]