Lord Montagu's Page: An Historical Romance

by G. P. R. James

His reasoning was conclusive; and Edward Langdale was accordingly carried to the abbey and kindly received.

No need to dwell upon his illness. It was severe, but it was not fatal; and, by the reader's leave, we will advance six days in our story and look into the chamber which had been assigned him in the hospital-part of the building. Lord Montagu sat by his bedside with a cheerful look, and the young man was already able to raise himself upon his arm and listen to or answer questions. His noble friend had passed the intervening time, as he had proposed, at Aix, and his days were full of business and excitement; but still he had found leisure to ride out each day and visit his page.

"Well, Ned," he said, "you are now in a fair way. The surgeon tells me there is no doubt of your recovery now, if you have even tolerable prudence; so I shall leave you for a day or two and go to Turin. I trust you will be able to travel shortly after I come back; for I have wanted you much during your long absence, and shall want you more now. There is Henry Freeland; he is stupid as an ass; and then George Abbot, who has sense enough when you give him three hours to think over what he has to do, is as slow as an elephant."

"I was indeed very long on my journey, my lord," replied Edward; "but I can assure you I could not help it. One unfortunate accident after another detained me, as I have partly told you."

"Ay, Madame de Chevreuse wrote me all that," said Montagu. "You were ill from a knock on the head at Rochelle. You are too quick, my boy, and, I dare say, brought it on yourself; but I would rather have a ready hand and a ready head than a slow heart and a dull understanding. It was unfortunate, it is true; for it gave an excuse for sending away Lord Denbigh's fleet. But that was all a pretext. We understand these Rochellais well; and they will quarrel amongst themselves till they lose their city. Then you were caught by this great cardinal and detained by him. You must tell me all about that by-and-by. It is a marvel he hanged you not; and you must have managed him skilfully. But tell me about these two blacksmith horse-doctors you had with you. They say they met you on the road at Chartres, and that you would have none of their company."

"They say true, my lord," answered Edward. "I liked not their faces, and I wished to ride alone. Besides, I had seen one of them, I am sure, at Nantes, in the court of the castle; and I feared he might be one of the cardinal's people. But, as he is here in Savoy, whither he said from the first he was coming, I was probably mistaken. However, it is always better to be sure of your company."

"Oh, they are honest fellows," said Lord Montagu; "and, as I am continually wanting a smith, I have engaged them both to go with me as far at least as Liege. If they were the cardinal's men they would not go out of the cardinal's reach."

It may be necessary to explain that in those days, in Europe, men were much in the same state as travellers in Hindostan at present. Each servant you had with you had his specialty, and the train of a man of means and retinue consisted of a dozen more persons than any one now requires. It is true that at great towns you could find artificers of all sorts, ready to repair your coach or shoe your horses, or perform any services which the accidents of the road might require; but, if one of those accidents occurred between great town and great town, you might have to travel twenty miles with a lame horse or a broken vehicle, unless you had some one with you capable of rectifying the mischance upon the spot. Poor men were obliged to submit to such inconveniences, but the rich were prepared against them; and, as Lord Montagu's object was haste, and that rapidity of movement which is the best concealment, he very naturally desired to guard against all impediments.

The object of that nobleman in the long journey which he was even then taking was to forward the great schemes of one to whom he was devoted with a warmth and sincerity of attachment very rare even then, rarer still now. The famous Duke of Buckingham, favorite of two kings, and ruler for a time of both king and people, was a man of great and daring enterprise, of bold and courageous action, but of small foresight and of less discretion. Unfortunate in action, from causes which he often could not control, he was great in purpose and even obstinate in resolution. The fault was generally a want of capacity for detail, and a miscalculation of the means in his power as proportioned to the end he had in view. For the first time in life, however, he had now considered his steps well and devised each move on the political chess-board accurately. Whatever were his motives, (none has discovered them, nor, perhaps, ever will,) his present object was to humble France and to raise England at her expense; and, while he himself prepared eagerly for a war in which he was not fitted for command, his most intimate friend and confidant, Lord Montagu, was intrusted with the execution of that great political scheme which is the only bright point in Buckingham's career as a statesman. His task was, in the first place, to unite every discontented person and party in France against the crown, to combine Huguenots with dissatisfied Catholics, a turbulent nobility with a turbulent people, and to disunite the powers, wherever they might be, which supported the throne. But in the next place came the still more important part of the scheme. It was to bring together all the foreign enemies of France, a discordant and heterogeneous body, and to direct their efforts in one concentrated torrent against a kingdom already distracted by internal feuds.