“I do, my sovereign mistress,” answered Lord Shrope humbly. “I hear and will heed thy commands. Only take not from me thy divine favor.”
“Hadst thou ever been connected with any enterprise against her,” he said to Francis as he reported the result of the interview, “I could understand it. As it is, her mood toward thee gives me great concern.”
“Trouble not thyself, my good friend,” answered Francis, though she herself was more disturbed than she cared to admit. Perhaps the journey to Chartley had come to the queen’s ears, and that enterprise wore a different 167 complexion now to the girl than it had done ere her coming to the court. “Trouble not about me. Thou canst do no more than thou hast done.”
And so she went back to her place among the pages. The greeting between her and Edward Devereaux was formal. As the time passed she became aware that the lad’s manner toward her was quite different from what it had been before their encounter. Now he seemed to regard her with something akin to admiration, and assumed a protecting air toward her, assuming many of her duties, that irked the girl exceedingly.
“Prithee, sirrah,” she said one day pettishly when his guardianship was more than usually apparent, “who gave thee leave to watch over me? It irks me to have thee play the protector. Beshrew me, but Francis Stafford can care for herself.”
“I crave pardon, Master Stafford,” replied Devereaux who never by word or deed dropped a hint that he knew aught of her sex. “I crave pardon if I have offended. I will vex thee no more.”
From that time his care was more unobtrusive, 168 but Francis was still conscious of it, and it was gall and wormwood to her. She could not forget the acknowledgment of his skill had been wrung from her when she thought herself dying. Although she could not but admit that Devereaux was innocent in the matter, she felt as though a fraud had been perpetrated upon her, and, girl-like, held him responsible for it.
And so life at the court went on. A great family under the same walls, loving and hating. The courtiers divided into factions; their followers being kept from brawling only by the presence of the queen. The serving men followed the example of their betters and squabbled in the kitchen; the butlers drank on the sly in the cellars; the maids chattered in the halls; the pages pilfered from the buttery; the matrons busied in the still rooms compounding fragrant decoctions for perfumes, or bitter doses for medicine; the stewards weighing money in the treasury; gallants dueling in the orchard or meeting their ladies on the stairs. But Francis liked it all.
The gallant courtiers with their song and 169 fence, and quibble and prattle and pun; the gaily dressed ladies; the masques in the great hall of the castle; the pomp and ceremony that attended the queen when she went abroad: all appealed to her æsthetic nature.
She soon learned to distinguish the courtiers. The Gipsy Earl of Leicester, with his swarthy handsome face; the tall and comely vice chamberlain, Sir Christopher Hatton; the venerable Burleigh; the trusty and wily Walsingham; the gay, witty and sarcastic Harrington, godson of the queen, and the fiery and impetuous Earl of Essex, stepson to Leicester.