“That’s enow for to-night. We’ve done. We’ve beat the weather this year. Come rain, come snow, we’ve beat it,” said Uncle Barnabas.
“Glory be to God,” returned Patrick.
“Who’s that ghostess a-sitting on the seat?” asked Uncle Barny, looking over the gate. “Why it’s Penelope! Come along in, my girl. You’ll get your cough back again, and be abed, and we’ll have to send for the doctor and I don’t think he’ll know the way for he’s not been at Thackers for half a century.” So I finished my supper and went in, for there was no way to that hidden world.
We had great rejoicings the next day, for Uncle Barnabas kept up the old traditions of his forefathers, and there was ale and boiled beef and suet dumplings for the Irish. I helped to set the table on the grassplat, and Aunt boiled the beef in the round, black kettle which she fetched down from a granary loft. I had seen it before, I told her, but she said that was impossible unless I had been up in the dark chamber, poking about among the rats.
“I’ve seen it hung over the fire,” I protested.
“Nay, we only use it twice a year, for hay-harvest and corn-harvest, and sometimes for the Christmas hams,” said she.
Then I remembered it was the one I had seen in the Babington household hanging over the great open hearth with venison simmering in it.
“It’s mortal old,” laughed Aunt Tissie, looking at the enormous iron vessel with its four little legs. “Maybe over a hunnerd years. What do you think, Brother Barnabas?”
“Nigher two hunnerd,” said Uncle Barny.
“Nearer three hundred,” I added triumphantly.
I changed to my new green tussore and brushed my hair and fastened the picture of the Queen of Scots round my neck. Then I went to the harvest supper. The Irishmen were eating their meal at the long trestle table, such as those others had used in the Thackers kitchen, and Uncle Barnabas sat with them, his Sunday necktie looking very smart, his round, red face beaming on his friends, as he drank his ale and listened to the chatter and jokes which the men tossed from one to another. Ian sat there, too, practising the role of farmer, imitating Uncle Barnabas.
Aunt Tissie dished up the Spotted Dick as big as a cannon-ball and carried it out all steaming hot. I cut the slices and gave each man his portion dredged with sugar and curled with butter on the top. In the pudding a bright shilling was hidden, and each man hunted in his suety portion. I was glad when it settled on Patrick’s plate, and he nodded and smiled over it. When all was eaten the Irishmen gave a concert, singing ballads, and dancing Irish jigs.
“What is that pretty picture Miss Penelope has round her neck?” asked Patrick.
“It’s a locket we found a while back,” said Uncle Barny. “It’s not pure gowd; I wish it was, we could do with some of that.”
“She’s a nice-looking colleen,” said another. “Somebody must have loved her.”
“It’s Mary, Queen of Scots,” I said proudly, and as I spoke I saw Francis standing by the door, in his fur-edged doublet and long, leather boots. On his wrist he carried a falcon, whose fierce eyes gazed beyond me as if seeing something afar. Nobody took any notice of the gallant and splendid figure, who strode across the yard and went out through the gate. He was unseen by all, but one of the Irishmen shivered as if he felt a cold wind, and he made the sign of the cross.
“Holy Mother! I thought there was somebody—somebody,” he muttered, but the others were unaware of his start and he drank a mug of ale. “Somebody walking on my grave,” said he.
I left the harvest feast and crossed the lawn, following the dim figure, and as I went the sounds of the singing died away and the scene was blotted out.
Anthony sat under the tree, reading a book called A Booke of Divers Prayers for Sundrey Sayntes. I stood waiting for him to look up. Perhaps I was invisible to him as Francis had been to those at the farm. He put down the book and murmured a prayer aloud, an invocation to the queen. “Most gracious majesty,” he whispered, and I felt that he saw the queen before him as he spoke. “Beloved majesty, most gallant and fearless of women, defiant of fortune, uncowed by years of captivity, but never captured in soul, you will ride free of them all. Your beauty will reign over us, you who already reign in our hearts.”
Then Francis came up, and both of them saw me.
“I was thinking of the queen,” said Anthony, smiling gently, with no surprise at my appearance, as if I were part of his dream.
“Tell Penelope about her,” said Francis, taking my arm. “She is one with us, a part of Thackers. Thackers is like a rock, sheltering us. Tell her, Anthony, for she has never seen Her Grace.” Then Anthony spoke of the valiance of the Scottish queen, of the escapes she had attempted in past days. “She gloried in brave deeds,” he cried, his eyes flashing with adoration. She escaped from Dunbar alone, disguised as a page boy, in 1567, when Anthony himself was a child. The tale of her bravery was told to him by his father and his childish heart was fired with her deeds. His games were of escapes, and he climbed from the Thackers windows at night, to be caught and sent back to bed. He hid himself in haystacks with a parcel of bread and wine pretending to be the fugitive queen, while his parents sought for him.
“She nearly escaped a year later disguised as a laundress,” he continued. “Then Willie Douglas, not much older than Francis here, helped her to escape from Loch Leven in a rowing-boat. Only the perfidy of the rowers who saw her lovely face when her hood was blown back by the raging wind betrayed her. Then again she escaped, and slept in the open fields with sour milk to drink and a hantle of oatmeal for food. Hunger and cold were her bedfellows, darkness her cloak, yet she never felt fear, not even when all men’s hands seemed against her. Not even during that terrible ride through Edinburgh streets with the crowd crying out on her did she show fear.”
He stopped, his mind on the wonder of his queen, and I waited, enthralled by his tales of her valour.
“Now she will escape again, disguised as Anthony Babington,” said he quietly, “and this time she will be free. My plans are carefully laid. She demands courage and self-denial from her followers and we gladly risk our lives for her. A spirit lives in that frail and beautiful body such as was never on earth before.”
“Tell her all. Let her know our plans,” implored Francis. “She may help us by her foreknowledge.”
So Anthony told me his plans to save Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, she was who prisoner to Queen Elizabeth, she who was liberty itself, whose other name was Freedom. He spoke with quick, staccato words, and little gestures such as a foreigner makes. His eyes blazed like stars, and Francis stood with lowered head, listening as if he heard for the first time.
Anthony went back in memory to the old days when he was a page at the court at Sheffield, the little intimate court of the captive queen.
“But it was earlier still that I loved her,” he mused. “I think I loved her from the very beginning of my life, and I never remember the time when I did not know her name. When my mother told me fairytales, or deeds of daring, Mary Stuart was the heroine. When I heard tales of adventure, they were stories about the Queen of Scotland. She rode through my dreams at night, starry-eyed and beautiful, she lived in my daydreams. When at last I was a young page at her court, I wrote sonnets to her, and burned them, and wrote others, protesting my admiration and devotion, then tearing them up as unworthy of my queen.”
A light came to his eyes as he spoke of those days, when he served Mary Stuart, and sang in madrigals to delight her, and she joined the fair-haired boy in his songs. She played chess with him, and made him read to her from her book of Ronsard’s poems, the poet of her glorious youth. He had stumbled with the language till she laughingly bade him stop. She couldn’t bear his Darbyshire French any longer, she had protested.
He spoke of Wingfield Manor, a noble house, though small, only a few miles away over the wooded hills which swept up to the sky behind Thackers. The queen was shortly to be moved there, and already preparations were being made to accommodate
her and her retinue of fifty.
“Fifty! Once she had four hundred of her own household and now they only allow her fifty,” sighed Anthony. “Sir Ralph Sadleir, who is to have charge of Her Grace, begged the Earl of Shrewsbury to keep her at Sheffield, for he would rather guard her with fifty men in that strong castle than with three hundred at Wingfield! But the Earl refused to keep her any longer.”
“His sympathies are with Mary Stuart,” interrupted Francis. “His heart has been touched by her beauty and tragedy, and the Countess Bess is suspicious and jealous of the queen, and has stirred up strife and misunderstanding. I believe the Earl would be glad if Mary Stuart escaped.”
“So long as she isn’t in his custody,” agreed Anthony. “He might lose his head otherwise. So it is much better for the queen that she is going to a country house, unfortified, with scarce room for the men who will guard her.”
Then he told me that at Wingfield there was a secret passage underground of which only the Earl and the family of Babington knew. It led to Thackers but nobody was certain where was the exit, for it had been unused for many generations and was broken down and silted with earth and crumbled rocks. If they could reopen this ancient tunnel the queen could enter and escape. At the Wingfield end it went only a short distance and was blocked by fallen debris. It was obviously too dangerous to work there and the passage must be cleared from the Thackers end.
At Thackers there were two or three false entrances and they were digging to find the true tunnel. One passage had already been excavated, but it went to the solid rock and now another was being explored. Tom Snowball was working with other men, trusty lead-miners, who were used to breaking the rocks and tunnelling in their search for lead in the hills. They were devout Catholics, who had come over from Tandy, where there were lead-mines, and they would work underground.
“Why was there a tunnel, Master Anthony?” I asked.
“Nobody knows that, Penelope,” he replied. “It must have been dug hundreds of years ago, in more troublous times even than ours, for the escape of fugitives from Wingfield, which is a very old manor. Many great houses had their secret passages, with false openings to screen the real ones, and we are seeking among the mounds of grass and piled rock in the churchyard.”
“The queen will enter at Wingfield, and she will creep along the narrow passage to Thackers, maybe in floods of water, and she will bend, and have to go down on her hands and knees in places, but she won’t care!” cried Francis. “It will be a fine adventure, and when she comes to Thackers, she will be cared for, hidden away for a night to rest, and then off to France when it is safe. She will go disguised as Anthony, for they are the same height, or maybe like a market woman riding pillion, dressed in Dame Cicely’s oldest clothes, and Anthony garbed like a farmer.”
“At our darling Thackers she will hide,” I thought, “and she will sleep in the best bedchamber, under the patchwork quilt. Aunt Cicely will warm the bed with the warming-pan, for the queen will be cold and tired after her journey. I shall carry hot water upstairs and wash her feet, and fetch a clean towel from the press for her lily-white hands.”
“She will go muffled half-face, riding through the hills and woods, and nobody will recognize her when she is dressed in a man’s clothes. I shall ride with her as her brother or servant,” Francis continued.
“And I too,” I implored. “I can ride and endure hardships. Take me too, Francis.”
He laughed and shook his head, but Anthony did not hear. He was deep in thought, his eyes on the distance. He strode across the lawn and entered the house, and in a minute I could see him at his open window, quill in hand, writing rapidly.
“And if she doesn’t escape? Suppose she is caught, or somebody tells?” I asked, with a queer, half-memory of disaster nagging at me like an aching tooth. What it was I could not remember, but Francis knew, for he stopped me from thinking of it, and I never said the words of my fatal pre-knowledge.
“Come with me,” said he, and he ran back across the cobbled stable-yard, where lately I had left the harvest supper. Horses stamped, grooms whistled, a servant-woman laughed and talked and fluttered into the house, her white folded cap bright and clean. At the great door of the kitchen stood my Aunt Cicely, in her white apron over her dark blue bodice and padded, quilted petticoat. Her thick leather shoes were clasped with narrow thongs, and she tapped the stone sill impatiently with her wooden heel. Her hands were on her hips, she was full of laughter, and her head bobbed in its little white ruff, nodding to me as I came through the gate, as if she had lately seen me.
“There you are, my chuck! Master Francis has found you!”
A rich smell of roasted meats came steaming out, and I could hear the sounds of frizzling and hissing fats.
A voice sang a haunting melody, and the thin lovely tones of a harp came from the house. I asked Aunt Cicely who it was, for the music was strangely beautiful.
“A wandering minstrel from Galway. He’s travelling the country, playing his songs, and he’ll sleep here a few nights before he goes on. We are glad to get the news these bards bring, for they sit in kitchen and hall, and they hear many things which would be hidden. This man has been at Sheffield Castle, and although he did not see Her Grace, he brought secret word that she will move in September. He is a devout man, and with his songs he can go where others cannot, for he is simple, without any guile or treachery.”
I saw the old man with tangled hair and beard, sitting in the corner of the kitchen, with the maids listening to his music. He moved thin crooked fingers over the harp strings and sang as if unconscious of his country audience. Jude stood near, watching his expression, staring at his lips as if to catch his words. Tabitha poured soup into a bowl and took it to the musician, and each one tried to honour and please him.
As the music drifted soft and clear through the room, I remembered another music there, and for a moment I saw Uncle Barnabas playing his accordion, with his work-hardened hands. I wished to enter and listen but Francis beckoned me to follow him. He took me across the grass to the church, and into the vestry where a pile of spades and mattocks rested. The church was sweet and clean, for Dame Cicely had it scrubbed each week, and fresh herbs were strewn in the pews. There was a smell of rosemary and balm, and the cool odour of green rushes from the brook-side, which were soft as velvet under my feet as I stood in a familiar pew. There was a heavy tapestry curtain across one end of Mistress Babington’s pew, to screen her from the congregation, and cushions and footstools were placed ready for her. In the windows shone the lovely painted glass, and by the font was the ancient clock complaining with the wheezy voice of an old man.
Then we went to the churchyard, where Francis showed me a heap of brown earth and broken rock.
“That is where we have sunk a shaft, one gang digging, another removing the rock and soil, and timbering the roof where necessary. All in the house are sworn to secrecy. The wenches in the kitchen go home at dark to the village. Only Dame Cicely and Tabitha and Phoebe stay here to look after the house-hold, and Margery, Mistress Babington’s personal maid.”
I went back to the house to help in the kitchen. Aunt Cicely was busy with her broths and roasted meats, for there was heavy work to be done, preparing for the miners, storing food for the night-work. I made the sweets for the gentlefolk, under Aunt Cicely’s guidance. I ground the almonds and mixed them with honey to a paste, and then I moulded them into shapes, with colourings from a row of jars, green and brown and rosy pink. I fashioned little fruits and nuts and acorns, and laid them on a dish to dry.
Through the window I could see the miners come from the tunnel and enter the great barn. They played skittles, and slept, awaiting their turn to go back. Tabitha took them food, for they were not asked to the house.
“It’s a lead vein we are seeking,” they spread the report. “A fine vein of lead which will bring money to Thackers.” The villagers rejoiced, for they knew lead had been found on the other side of the hill at Tandy for centuries. Le
ad-mines were worked there in Roman times and every day a train of pack mules went down the lane to the west of Thackers with panniers containing loads of lead-ore to be smelted at the little “cupellow” in the valley.
It was no lead vein they had found in the earth, as we knew quite well, but it served as a blind for the curious who might ask about the digging.
Aunt Cicely gave me the dish of sweetmeats and a silver jug of canary wine to take to Mistress Babington’s parlour. I went across the hall, staying for a minute to gaze up at the great sword and longbow which Master Thomas Babington had used at Agin-court, for to me they were the most romantic things in the house. Then I tapped at the parlour door and entered timidly, for I was unused to this service. But before me I saw the old parlour of Thackers, changed and made beautiful. In the window-seat was young Mistress Babington in her rich blue silk dress over a kirtle of night-blue. Her ruff was stiffly starched and pleated, and round her neck hung a gold chain with a pomander which scented the room. On her fair hair was a lace coif which gave her a matronly look, although she must have been scarcely twenty-three.
She sat with a piece of embroidery before her, and I watched her needle go in and out as she deftly painted in silks a picture of Joseph’s Dream. There were the golden sheaves bowing down to a sheaf in the centre, and in the background were the trees of the wood’s edge. Over all the sun shone with a smile on his yellow face, and long beams pointing like fingers at the sheaf. I recognized the scene as Uncle Barnabas’s great cornfield on the borders of the wood, and I knew that Mistress Babington had chosen the rich old ploughland as the subject of her embroidery.
She saw me glance curiously at the work as I walked across and curtsied to her, and she smiled and showed me her stitches of yellow and gold silk. Then I held out the fluted dish with the little almond and honey sweetmeats shaped like acorns and leaves which I had helped Aunt Cicely to make, and she put one in her mouth, thanking me.
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