"Not I, for one, Madam," answered Mistress Bullen. "What has her life been but one long slavery? What pleasure is there in such a life—just mending, and saving, and cooking, and washing—nursing stupid children, and waiting on her clod of a husband. Methinks one hour of real life, such as we had at the French court, would be worth it all!"
"And you, maiden, what do you think?" asked her Grace, turning to me.
"It was a saying of my honored mother's that love makes easy service, Madam," I answered. "I think such a life as that of the good dame's may be as noble and honorable in the sight of God, as that of any woman in the world."
"That is a strange speech for a nun," said Mrs. Anne, with her usual levity. "What, as honorable as that of a religious?"
"Yes, if she were called to it," I answered.
"And to last so long—sixty years of drudging and poverty," said Mrs. Anne, with a shudder: "No, no! A short life and a merry one for me."
[I thought of these words many a time after that short and merry life had come to its miserable close, and that fair head, with the crown it coveted and wrought for, lay together on the scaffold. I did never believe the shameful charges brought against her, by which her death was compassed, but 'tis impossible to acquit her of great lightness of conduct, and want of womanly delicacy, or of the worse faults of lawless ambition and treachery against her kind mistress, than whom no one need wish a better. Though I am and have long been of the reformed religion, my feelings have ever been on the side of Queen Catherine.]
The next day we went across the moor, to see the woman, Magdalen Jewell, of whom Dame Lee had told us. Mistress Anne was not with us, pleading a headache as an excuse, and I was not sorry to miss her company, but we had Master Griffith instead, and a serving man, who led the Queen's donkey. The rest of us walked; and oh, what joy it was to me to feel the springy turf under foot, and smell the fresh odors of the moorland once more! How beautiful the world is! I can't think why God hath made it so fair, and then set it before us as our highest duty to shut ourselves from it between stone walls. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," we sing in the Venite, and all the Psalms are full of such thoughts. But this is beside the matter.
We had a charming walk over the high, breezy moor, and Master Griffith entertained us with remembrances of his own country of Wales, where he says the people speak a language of their own, as they do in some parts of Cornwall. The Queen riding before us, would now and then put in a word to keep him going.
Presently the path dipped into a little hollow, and there we saw the cottage at the foot of the Tor which had been our landmark all the way. 'Twas to my mind more like a nest than a cottage, so small was it, and so covered (where the vine gave the stones leave to show themselves) with gray and yellow lichens. A humble porch well shaded with a great standard pear, and fragrant with honeysuckle and sweetbriar, held the good woman's chair, wherein lay a spindle and distaff.