In a popular ballad of the day, wherein the state is described under the figure of a ship, Exeter is selected as the lantern at the mast-head. The idea was doubtless originally taken from his badge—the fiery cresset set aloft upon the pole—yet it was equally true to the fervent, devoted, transparent character of the man.
"The ship hath closèd hym a lyght
To kepe her course in way of ryght,
A fyrè cressant that bernethe bryght,
With fawte was never spyed.
That good lyght that is so clere
Call Y the Duke of Exceter,
Whos name in trouthè shyned clere,
His worship spryngethe wyde."
The memory of the wife at whose hands he had endured what few husbands would have borne, much less have pardoned, was to Exeter one of unmixed pain and bitterness. It could scarcely be said that he had loved her. He had liked her, and he would have loved her with very little encouragement. But so far from encouraging the affection, she had smothered it in its cradle. She gave him no chance to love her. Repulsed and mortified, his heart—to which love of something was an absolute necessity—had turned to their one child, the fair-haired little daughter who resembled her mother in face, but her father in character. For her sake he had borne all this suffering inflicted by her mother; for her sake he had continued to live in the same house with his wife, long after her company had become intolerable. Nay, not to be parted from Anne, he had done, and would have done, almost any thing required from him. They were parted now. The Duchess knew her daughter's power over her husband, and she therefore insisted on keeping the daughter by her side. She might become a useful tool some day, if she received proper training, which her mother meant to give her.
All that Exeter knew was that the only creature whom he loved, and who loved him, was in the hands of enemies who would try hard to make her hate him. She was his one comfort in all the world, and she was kept away from him. This was the bitterest drop in his bitter cup—and his wife meant it to be so. Few men had suffered in the Wars of the Roses as he had. To-day in prison, and to-morrow in sanctuary; forsaken by his own soldiers, reduced to beg his bread barefooted until the Duke of Burgundy took compassion upon him, robbed of every penny of his inheritance by the woman who had sworn in God's presence to love and cherish him—all these painful memories were less to Exeter than the cruel separation from his only child. Deep down in his heart, scarcely confessed even to himself, was the hope that would break out of that passionate longing for her. If he could cross the Channel, if he could get to London, perhaps, some day, at a window or through the curtains of a litter, he might catch a glimpse of Anne. Even a wilder hope than this he cherished; for it might be possible to bribe one of his own servants to obtain for him a secret and stolen interview with his own child. But would he ever find his child again? He might see the Lady Anne de Holand: but would she be the little Nan that he had left years ago—the little Nan that used to climb upon his knee and kiss him and tell him that she "loved him so"? Better to keep that sweet remembrance undimmed, though it called up such hopeless yearning, than to meet a cold, haughty maiden who would courtesy to him and call him "my gracious Lord," and take the first opportunity of getting away from him. That would be to lose his darling indeed, in a far worse sense than he had lost her now.
It was not for Frideswide Marston to read all this. But she saw the weary, wistful look in the dark eyes, and she wondered whence it came.
How Exeter contrived to do what the Queen could not do, and make his way to England, has not been explained. We only know that he did it, and that on the fourteenth of February, 1471, he rode into London—where King Henry VI. reigned in the Palace of Westminster, where Queen Elizabeth Widville pined in the Sanctuary, and where the Duchess Anne of Exeter held royal state at Coldharbour—safe from both rival Roses, for what Lancastrian would harm the wife of his King's most faithful councillor, and what Yorkist would dare to touch the favourite sister of his sovereign?
In anticipation of the Duke's journey, Queen Marguerite had kindly suggested that any of the suite who wished to do so might send letters by him. Frideswide, who was longing for communication with home, undertook the tremendous task of writing both to her father and sister. The Duke turned over the letters which were put into his hands, and paused suddenly when he came to the one addressed to his own home.
"Who writ this?" he asked of John Combe, who had brought the letters to him.
Combe glanced at the address—"To the hands of Mistress Agnes Marston, at Coldharbour, in the City of London, le these delivered."
"I reckon, my gracious Lord, it shall be Mistress Frideswide Marston, that is of my Lady of Warwick's following."