“Harcourt, lady, thy bold captain. And Codrington, too, was redoubtable, and came safe from the fight. Chandos dealt out death to all who crossed his path, like an avenging fury, yet took no scratch. Hot Lord Walsingham swept like an avalanche in spring through the close-packed Frenchmen, yet lives to tell of it, and old Sir John Fitzherbert, when I left the field—his white beard all athwart his shredded broken armor—was cheering loudly for our victory, the while they lapped him up in linens, for a French axe had shorn his left arm off at the shoulder. All have taken dints, but near all are safe and well.”
“’Tis strange,” said the Queen, thoughtfully, “’tis strange I know so few of these. I have a Harcourt, but he is not warlike; and cunning, cruel Walsingham lives in the north, and sits better astride of a dinner-stool than a charger. Codrington and Fitzherbert leading my troops to war! Here, let me see thy script: it may explain.” And she held out her jeweled hand.
Thereon a strange uneasiness possessed me, and seemed to cloud my honest courage. What was it? What had I to fear? I did not know. And yet my strong fingers, that never wearied upon a hilt though the day were ne’er so long, trembled as I slung round my pouch, and my heart set off a-beating with craven fear, as it had never beat before in sack or mêlée. It was too foolish; and, a little angry at the blood that ran so slowly in my veins, and the heavy sense of evil that sat on me all of a sudden, I pulled the metal letter-case from my wallet, and burst the seal and pressed the lid. The wallet split from side to side as though the stout leather were frail paper, and the strong metal crumbled in my fingers like red, rotten touchwood.
I stared at it in amazement. What could it mean? Then shook the thin, rusty fragments from my hand, and, putting on a bold face I did not feel, drew out the parchment from the strangely frail casing, brushed off the dust and litter, and handed it to the Sovereign.
“Lady,” I said in a voice I fain would have made true and clear, “there is the full account, and though seas have stained it, and rough travel spoiled the casing, as you saw, yet have I made all diligence I could. It was yesterday morning King Edward gave me that, and ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘as fast as foot can go to sweet Queen Philippa, my wife. Say ’twas penned on battlefield, and comes full charged with my dear and best affections.’ Thus, Madam, have I brought it straight to thee from famous Crecy, and here place it, the warrant of my truth, in Queen Philippa’s own hand.” And then I gave her the scroll.
Jove! how yellow and tarnished it did look! The frail silk that bound it was all afray and colorless; and the King’s great seal, that once had been so cherry-red, was bleached to sickly pallor! The Queen took it, and while I held my breath in nameless terror she turned it over and slowly round about, and stared first at me, and then at that fatal thing. She begged a dagger from a courtier at her side, and split the binding, and unfolded that tawny scroll that crackled in her fingers, it was so old and stiff, and read the address and superscription; and then, all on a sudden, while a deathlike silence held the room, she turned her stern, cold eyes, full of wrath and wonder, to me kneeling there, and burst out:
“Why, fellow! what mummery is all this? Philippa and Crecy? Why, thou incredible fool! Philippa of Hainault has been dust these twenty generations; and Crecy—thy ‘famous Crecy’—was fought near three hundred years ago! I am Elizabeth Tudor!”
Slowly I rose from my feet and stared at her—stared at her in the hush of that wondering room, while a cold chill of fear and consternation crept over my body. Incredible! “Crecy fought three hundred years ago!”—the hall seemed full of that horrible whisper, and a score of echoes repeated, “Queen Philippa has been dust these twenty generations, and Crecy—thy famous Crecy—was fought near three hundred years ago!” Oh, impossible—cruel—ridiculous!—and yet—and yet! There, as I stood, glaring at the Queen with strained, set face, and clenched hands, and heaving breath, gasping, wondering, waiting for something to break that hideous silence or give the lie to that accursed sentence that still floated round on the ambient air, and took new strength from the disdainful light in those clustering courtier eyes, and their mocking, scornful smiles—while I waited I remembered—by all the infernal powers I remembered—my awakening, and all the things I should have noted and had not. I recalled the bitter throes that had wracked my stiff joints in the old British grave as never mortal rheums yet twisted common sinew and muscle. I recalled the long labor of the crypt thieves, and the altered face of rocks and foreshore when my eyes first lit upon them after that long sleep. The very April season that sorted so ill with the August Crecy left behind took new meaning to me now all on an instant; and my ragged, crumbling raiment, in shreds and tatters, so ruinous as never salt spray yet made a good suit in one mortal evening, the strange garb and speech of those I met, and then this tawny, handsome, yellow lioness on the throne where should have been a pale, black Norman girl. Oh! hell and fiends! But she spoke the truth. I had lain three hundred years in Ufner’s stones, and with a wild, fierce cry of shame and anger, one long yell of pain and disappointment, I tore the cursed wallet from my neck and hurled it down there savagely at her feet, and turned and fled! Past the startled courtiers—past the screaming groups of laced and ruffled women—out! out! through the long line of feeble wardens; out between the glistening lowered halberds of the guards, down the white shining steps, an outcast and a scoffing-point, down into the road I ran, under a thousand wondering eyes, as fast as foot could go—not looking where or how, but seeking only the friendly cover of solitude and the fast-coming evening, and then, at length, worn out and spent—so sick in mind and heart I could scarce put one limb before another, I sank down on a grassy bank, a mile out of sight and sound of that fatal camp, and dropped my head into my hands and let the fierce despair and the black, swelling loneliness well up in my choked and aching heart.
CHAPTER XVIII
You—happy—across whose tablets a kind fate draws the sponge of oblivion even while you write, who leave the cup half emptied, and the feast half finished; you, from whose thoughts ambition passes in warm meridian glow, who nourish expectation and hope to the very verge of the unknown; you, who leave warm with the sweet wine of living, your dim way lit with the shine of love, your fingers locked in the clasp of friendship; you, to whom all these things gently minister and smooth the path of the inevitable; you, who die but once and die so easily, surely cannot comprehend the full measure of my sufferings!