Unknown to History: A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland by Yonge (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

He was a weakly youth, and his wife's health failed immediately after her marriage, so that Lady Shrewsbury remained almost constantly at Chatsworth with her darling.

Gilbert Talbot, who was the chief peacemaker of the family, went to and fro, wrote letters and did his best, which would have been more effective but for Mary, his wife, who, no doubt, detailed all the gossip of Sheffield at Chatsworth, as she certainly amused Sheffield with stories of her sister Bess as a royal countess full of airs and humours, and her mother treating her, if not as a queen, at least on the high road to become one, and how the haughty dame of Shrewsbury ran willingly to pick up her daughter's kerchief, and stood over the fire stirring the posset, rather than let it fail to tempt the appetite which became more dainty by being cossetted.

The difference made between Lady Lennox and her elder sisters was not a little nettling to Dame Mary Talbot, who held that some consideration was her due, as the proud mother of the only grandson of the house of Shrewsbury, little George, who was just able to be put on horseback in the court, and say he was riding to see "Lady Danmode," and to drink the health of "Lady Danmode" at his meals.

Alas! the little hope of the Talbots suddenly faded. One evening after supper a message came down in haste to beg for the aid of Mistress Susan, who, though much left to the seclusion of Bridgefield in prosperous days, was always a resource in trouble or difficulty. Little George, then two and a half years old, had been taken suddenly ill after a supper on marchpane and plum broth, washed down by Christmas ale. Convulsions had come on, and the skill of Queen Mary's apothecary had only gone so far as to bleed him. Susan arrived only just in time to see the child breathe his last sigh, and to have his mother, wild with tumultuous clamorous grief, put into her hands for such soothing and comforting as might be possible, and the good and tender woman did her best to turn the mother's thoughts to something higher and better than the bewailing at one moment "her pretty boy," with a sort of animal sense of bereavement, and the next with lamentations over the honours to which he would have succeeded. It was of little use to speak to her of the eternal glories of which he was now secure, for Mary Talbot's sorrow was chiefly selfish, and was connected with the loss of her pre-eminence as parent to the heir-male.

However, the grief of those times was apt to expend itself quickly, and when little George's coffin, smothered under heraldic devices and funeral escutcheons, had been bestowed in the family vault, Dame Mary soon revived enough to take a warm interest in the lords who were next afterwards sent down to hold conferences with the captive; and her criticism of the fashion of their ruffs and doublets was as animated as ever. Another grief, however, soon fell upon the family. Lady Lennox's ailments proved to be no such trifles as her sisters and sisters-in-law had been pleased to suppose, and before the year was out, she had passed away from all her ambitious hopes, leaving a little daughter. The Earl took a brief leave of absence to visit his lady in her affliction at Chatsworth, and to stand godfather to the motherless infant.

"She will soon be fatherless, too," said Richard Talbot on his return to Bridgefield, after attending his lord on this expedition. "My young Lord Lennox, poor youth, is far gone in the wasting sickness, as well as distraught with grief, and he could scarcely stand to receive my Lord."

"Our poor lady!" said Susan, "it pities me to think what hopes she had fixed upon that young couple whom she had mated together."

"I doubt me whether her hopes be ended now," quoth Richard. "What think you she hath fixed on as the name of the poor puling babe yonder? They have called her Arbel or Arabella."

"Arabella, say you? I never heard such a name. It is scarce Christian. Is it out of a romaunt?"

"Better that it were. It is out of a pedigree. They have got the whole genealogy of the house of Lennox blazoned fair, with crowns and coronets and coats of arms hung up in the hall at Chatsworth, going up on the one hand through Sir AEneas of Troy, and on the other hand through Woden to Adam and Eve! Pass for all before the Stewart line became Kings of Scots! Well, it seems that these Lennox Stewarts sprang from one Walter, who was son to King Robert II., and that the mother of this same Walter was called Anhild, or as the Scots here call it Annaple, but the scholars have made it into Arabella, and so my young lady is to be called. They say it was a special fancy of the young Countess's."

"So I should guess. My lady would fill her head with such thoughts, and of this poor youth being next of kin to the young Scottish king, and to our own Queen."

"He is not next heir to Scotland even, barring a little one we wot of, Dame Sue. The Hamiltons stand between, being descended from a daughter of King James I."

"So methought I had heard. Are they not Papists?"

"Yea! Ah ha, sweetheart, there is another of the house of Hardwicke as fain to dreams of greatness for her child as ever was the Countess, though she may be more discreet in the telling of them."

"Ah me, dear sir, I dreamt not of greatness for splendour's sake—'twere scarce for the dear child's happiness. I only thought of what you once said, that she may be the instrument of preserving the true religion."

"And if so, it can only be at a mighty cost!" said her husband.

"Verily," said Susan, "glad am I that you sent our Humfrey from her. Would that nought had ever passed between the children!"

"They were but children," said Richard; "and there was no contract between them."

"I fear me there was what Humfrey will hold to, or know good reason why," said his mother.

"And were the young King of Scots married and father to a goodly heir, there is no reason he should not hold to it," rejoined Richard.

However Richard was still anxious to keep his son engaged at a distance from Sheffield. There was great rejoicing and thankfulness when one of the many messengers constantly passing between London and Sheffield brought a packet from Humfrey, whose ship had put into the Thames instead of the Humber.

The packet contained one of the black stones which the science of the time expected to transmute into gold, also some Esquimaux trinkets made of bone, and a few shells. These were for the mother and Cis, and there were also the tusks of a sea-elephant which Humfrey would lay up at my Lord's London lodgings till his father sent tidings what should be done with them, and whether he should come home at once by sea to Hull, or if, as he much desired to do, he might join an expedition which was fitting out for the Spanish Main, where he was assured that much more both of gold and honour was to be acquired than in the cold northern seas, where nothing was to be seen for the fog at most times, and when it cleared only pigmies, with their dogs, white bears, and seals, also mountains of ice bigger than any church, blue as my lady's best sapphires, green as her emeralds, sparkling as her diamonds, but ready to be the destruction of the ships.

"One there was," wrote Humfrey, "that I could have thought was no other than the City that the blessed St. John saw descending from Heaven, so fair was it to look on, but they cried out that it was rather a City of Destruction, and when we had got out of the current where it was bearing down on us, our noble captain piped all hands up to prayers, and gave thanks for our happy deliverance therefrom."

Susan breathed a thanksgiving as her husband read, and he forbore to tell her of the sharks, the tornadoes, and the fevers which might make the tropical seas more perilous than the Arctic. No Elizabethan mariner had any scruples respecting piracy, and so long as the captain was a godly man who kept up strict discipline on board, Master Richard held the quarterdeck to be a much more wholesome place than the Manor-house, and much preferred the humours of the ship to those of any other feminine creature; for, as to his Susan, he always declared that she was the only woman who had none.

So she accepted his decision, and saw the wisdom of it, though her tender heart deeply felt the disappointment. Tenderly she packed up the shirts which she and Cis had finished, and bestrewed them with lavender, which, as she said, while a tear dropped with the gray blossoms, would bring the scent of home to the boy.

Cis affected to be indifferent and offended. Master Humfrey might do as he chose. She did not care if he did prefer pitch and tar, and whale blubber and grease, to hawks and hounds, and lords and ladies. She was sure she wanted no more great lubberly lads—with a sly cut at Diccon—to tangle her silk, and torment her to bait their hooks. She was well quit of any one of them.

When Diccon proposed that she should write a letter to Humfrey, she declared that she should do no such thing, since he had never attempted to write to her. In truth Diccon may have made the proposal in order to obtain a companion in misfortune, since Master Sniggius, emulous of the success of other tutors, insisted on his writing to his brother in Latin, and the unfortunate epistle of Ricardus to Onofredus was revised and corrected to the last extremity, and as it was allowed to contain no word unknown to Virgilius Maro, it could not have afforded much delectation to the recipient.

But when Mrs. Susan had bestowed all the shirts as neatly as possible, on returning to settle them for the last time before wrapping them up for the messenger, she felt something hard among them. It was a tiny parcel wrapped in a piece of a fine kerchief, tied round with a tress of dark hair, and within, Susan knew by the feeling, a certain chess rook which had been won by Cis when shooting at the butts a week or two before.

CHAPTER X. THE LADY ARBELL.

After several weary months of languishing, Charles Stewart was saved from the miseries which seemed the natural inheritance of his name by sinking into his grave. His funeral was conducted with the utmost magnificence, though the Earl of Shrewsbury declined to be present at it, and shortly after, the Countess intimated her purpose of returning to Sheffield, bringing with her the little orphan, Lady Arabella Stewart. Orders came that the best presence chamber in the Manor-house should be prepared, the same indeed where Queen Mary had been quartered before the lodge had been built for her use. The Earl was greatly perturbed. "Whom can she intend to bring?" he went about asking. "If it were the Lady Margaret, it were be much as my head were worth to admit her within the same grounds as this Queen."

"There is no love lost between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law," observed his son Gilbert in a consolatory tone.

"Little good would that do to me, if once it came to the ears of her Grace and the Lord Treasurer that both had been my guests! And if I had to close the gates—though in no other way could I save my life and honour—your mother would never forget it. It would be cast up to me for ever. What think you, daughter Talbot?"

"Mayhap," said Dame Mary, "my lady mother has had a hint to make ready for her Majesty herself, who hath so often spoken of seeing the Queen of Scots, and might think well to take her unawares."

This was a formidable suggestion. "Say you so," cried the poor Earl, with an alarm his eye would never have betrayed had Parma himself been within a march of Sheffield, "then were we fairly spent. I am an impoverished man, eaten out of house and lands as it is, and were the Queen herself to come, I might take at once to the beggar's bowl."

"But think of the honour, good my lord," cried Mary.