Constance Sherwood: An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century

by Georgiana Fullerton

I felt so much choler that any one should write to my lady in this fashion, barbing with cruel malice, or leastways careless lack of thought, this wanton arrow, that I exclaimed in a passion it should be a villain had thus written. She smiled in a sad manner and answered:

"Alas, an innocent villain I warrant the writer to be, for the letter is from my Bess, who has heard others speak of that which she doth unwittingly repeat, thinking it should be an honor to my lord, and to me also, that he should be spoken of in this wise. But content thee; 'tis no great matter to hear that said again which I have had hints of before, and am like to hear more of it, maybe."

Then hastily rising, she prepared to go abroad; and we went to a lodge in the park, wherein she harbored a great store of poor children which lacked their parents; and then to a barn she had fitted up for to afford a night's lodging to travellers; and to tend sick people—albeit, saving herself, she had no one in her household at that time one half so skilful in this way as my Lady l'Estrange. I ween this was the sole place wherein her thoughts were so much occupied that she did for a while forget her own troubles in curing those of others. A woman had stopped there the past night, who, when we went in, craved assistance from her for to carry her to her native village, which was some fifteen miles north of Norwich. She was afraid, she said, for to go into the town; for nowadays to be poor was to be a wicked person in men's eyes; and a traveller without money was like to be whipt and put into the stocks for a vagabond, which she should die of if it should happen to her, who had been in the service of a countess, and had not thought to see herself in such straits, which she should never have been reduced to if her good lady had not been foully dealt with. Lady Surrey, wishing, I ween, by some sort of examination, to detect the truth of her words, inquired in whose service she had lived.

"Madam," she answered, "I was kitchen maid in the Countess of Leicester's house, and never left her service till she was murthered some years back by a black villain in her household, moved by a villain yet more black than himself."

"Murthered!" my lady exclaimed. "It was bruited at the time that lady had died of a fall."

"Ay, marry," quoth the beggar, shaking her head, "I warrant you, ladies, that fall was compassed by more hands than two, and more minds than one. But it be not safe for to say so; as Mark Hewitt could witness if he was not dead, who was my sweetheart and a scullion at Cumnor Place, and was poisoned in prison for that he offered to give evidence touching his lady's death which would have hanged some which deserved it better than he did—albeit he had helped to rob a coach in Wales after he had been discharged, as we all were, from the old place. Oh, if folks dared to tell all they do know, some which ride at the queen's side should swing on a gibbet before this day twelvemonth."

Lady Surrey sat down by this woman; and albeit I pulled her by the sleeve and whispered in her ear to come away—for methought her talk was not fitting for her to hear, whose mind ran too much already on melancholy themes—she would not go, and questioned this person very much touching the manner of Lady Leicester's life, and what was reported concerning her death. This recital was given in a homely but withal moving manner, which lent a greater horror to it than more studied language should have done. She said her lady bad been ill some time and never left her room; but that one day, when one of her lord's gentlemen had come from London, and had been examining of the house with the steward for to order some repairing of the old walls and staircases, and the mason had been sent for also late in the evening, a so horrible shriek was heard from the part of the house wherein the countess's chamber was, that it frighted every person in the place, so that they did almost lose their senses; but that she herself had run to the passage on which the lady's bed-chamber did open, and saw some planking removed, and many feet below the body of the countess lying quite still, and by the appearance of her face perceived her to be gone. And when the steward came to look also (this the woman said, lowering her voice, with her hollow eyes fixed on Lady Surrey's countenance, which did express fear and sorrow), "I'll warrant you, my lady, he did wear a murtherer's visage, and I noticed that the corpse bled at his approach. But methinketh if that earl which rides by the queen's side, and treads the world under his feet, had then been nigh, the mangled form should have raised itself and the cold dead lips cried out, 'Thou art the man!' Marry, when poor folks do steal a horse, or a sheep, or shoot the fallow-deer in a nobleman's park, they straightway do suffer and lose their life; but if a lord which is a courtier shall one day choose to put his wife out of his way for the bettering of his fortunes, even though it be by a foul murther, no more ado is made than if he had shot a pigeon in his woods."

Then changing her theme, she asked Lady Surrey to dress a wound in her leg, for that she did hear from some in that place that she often did use such kindness toward poor people. Without such assistance, she said, to walk the next day would be very painful. My lady straightway began to loosen the bandages which covered the sore, and inquired how long a time it should be since it had been dressed.

"Four days ago," the beggar answered, "Lady l'Estrange had done her so much good as to salve the wound with a rare ointment which had greatly assuaged the pain, until much walking had inflamed it anew."

We both did smile; and my lady said she feared to show herself less skilful than her old pupil; but if the beggar should be credited, she did acquit herself indifferently well of her charitable task; and the bounty she bestowed upon her afterward, I doubt not, did increase her patient's esteem of her ability. But I did often wish that evening my lady had not heard this woman's tale, for I perceived her to harp upon it with a very notable persistency; and when I urged no credit should attach itself to her report, and it was most like to be untrue, she affirmed that some similar surmises had been spoken of at the time of Lady Leicester's death; and that Lord Sussex and Lord Arundel had once mentioned, in her hearing, that the gypsy was infamed for his wife's death, albeit never openly accused thereof. She had not taken much heed of their discourse at the time, she said; but now it came back into her mind with a singular distinctness, and it was passing strange she should have heard from an eye-witness the details of this tragedy. She should, she thought, write to her husband what the woman had related; and then she changed her mind, and said she would not.