To Serve a Queen

by Josephine Bell

  ‘You will wait for your brother there?’

  ‘If he delay not too long. I hope for further news. I should be in Oxford. Francis returns there tomorrow. Do you not?’ he asked, turning to Sir Francis, who had listened to this exchange without speaking.

  The latter hesitated, but Master Leslie said quietly, ‘Young Francis hath taken himself into the garden. You may speak freely.’

  Sir Francis sighed.

  ‘I would I knew what was in his mind. Oh yes, I know the main grudge he bears against me. I am not his father. He cannot hold that as my fault, but he resents my generosity in giving him my name and accepting him as my son, while at the same time sending him away while yet an infant to so-called grandparents for his rearing, not once visiting him in Scotland, depriving him forever of any sight of his mother, exposing him to the sudden shock of the truth when Kilessie succeeded my father as laird, since I gave up my patrimony when I found my life’s work lay in Oxford.’

  ‘You have told him but the lesser part of the truth,’ Mistress Leslie broke in. ‘The reason for his long banishment did not lie with you but with his mother.’

  Sir Francis turned away in sudden anger. Master Leslie laid a hand on his wife’s arm.

  ‘My love,’ he said gently, ‘we will not drag up that sorry tale into the light. The boy suffers but it is in part his own doing. These two years he has been a burden on Kilessie. He would not take the least interest in the land or the farm. He persuaded St Andrews to take him as a scholar, but spent his time in play, ball play and sword play –’

  ‘In which it seems he showed much proficiency,’ put in Doctor Ogilvy, who would not hear his sister’s by-blow too hardly criticised. ‘Do not forget Kate’s child may well have inherited those qualities my elder brother showed early and has cultivated with distinction.’

  ‘Also he is indeed Alec’s son,’ Sir Francis added bitterly. ‘My brother would not have sent him south to me for playing games of ball. There were other games that engaged his abundant energy, less innocent and far more dangerous.’

  ‘And all you say makes him seem a proper soldier,’ Mistress Leslie said with a short laugh. ‘Nay, Francis, you may frown, but the boy has some right on his side. He was but eight years old when his mother died, but old enough to understand the meaning of that event. You did not allow him to be informed, for you still shrank from awkward revelations. Do not stop me, sir. Nor you, Angus.’

  The alderman raised his hands in mock helplessness. He had married late, knowing the full worth of his excellent housekeeper whose sole daughter Lucy was the second Lady Francis Leslie. Master Leslie watched her now, admiring her round pink face, pitted with the scars of that dread smallpox she had suffered in early widowhood, before she came into his household with her surviving child. Her figure was plumper, the face too, but both still firm. Her spirit’s vigour was undiminished. He enjoyed her encounters with dissidents of every sort, domestic, religious or otherwise. He smiled as she continued her reasoned scolding.

  ‘No, sir. You were so besotted with my daughter you gave no thought to that poor boy in the cold north. You had never felt any shame for his bastardy, except in so far as it affected your own honour and that of your wife. Why should you? In these lewd times among the great ones, especially at the Court, it is considered of no importance one way or another. But you would conceal it forever it seems. Francis grew year by year and still you stayed a stranger to him. By custom it was natural his childhood be spent away from home. But not his early manhood, not permanently. He has his own feelings, he is not dull, he questions himself, he would question you, his uncle here –’

  ‘Enough,’ Master Angus said, in the tone of voice his wife understood and obeyed.

  With a common understanding they all moved to the windows of the wide room that gave a view of the well-kept formal garden, bright with spring flowers in little box-edged plots bordered by clipped grass paths.

  Young Francis was standing with his back to them, staring out beyond the wall. He had turned his head to look northwards towards the hills of Islington. His face was closed, expressing neither joy nor sorrow, nor even any interest in his surroundings. But his shoulders were set firm and his whole stance was alert. It was not a picture of youthful despair. It struck Sir Francis suddenly, with a sharp pang of recollection, that thus had his great friend, his betrayer, Alec Nimmo looked, when, as students at that same St Andrews University that had lately rejected Alec’s son, a problem had checked his wild friend but had never defeated him entirely. So might it be with this youth, he prayed. God forgive himself for any ill he had done the boy by neglect. Mistress Leslie’s words had bitten deep into his complacency.

  ‘A soldier, my Lord Aldborough said, if I heard him rightly,’ Doctor Ogilvy murmured. ‘My brother must advise us. I trust he will not be long delayed.’

  ‘I must go back to Oxford tomorrow,’ Sir Francis said, adding regretfully, ‘At present I can do nought with the lad. He regards me as a villain. He may well be right in his opinion.’

  ‘He can stay here with me until we find some future for him,’ Alderman Leslie offered. ‘Security and comfort are what he needs. And some employment for his abundant energy.’

  ‘With those auburn curls and that figure he will never lack for comfort of a kind,’ Mistress Leslie said to her husband in an undertone. ‘Nor employment neither – of a kind.’

  ‘Licentious trollop!’ the alderman whispered back, restraining his laughter and pinching the wide bottom beside him.

  The scholars move away, too occupied with their serious thoughts to notice this exchange.

  Chapter Two

  Richard Ogilvy went to his late father’s house that same evening, after a few parting words with his friend.

  ‘I expect Arthur at Dover next week if windand tide serve,’ he told Sir Francis. ‘He accompanied Lord Carleton, a great friend and supporter of our unhappy princess, as you know.’

  ‘Pray Heaven her brother, being made king, will further her cause at last, poor exiled queen. Her husband was too obedient to His late Majesty, except in the ill-fated matter of Bohemia.’

  ‘Yet he stood out against taking that throne until overborne by ill advice and his own Calvinist religion.’

  It was a matter for constant argument and discussion in Oxford, and had been so for nearly six years, when that brief reign had ended in ignominy and flight, followed by the total loss of the Palatinate, which many were convinced Frederic had no business ever to have hazarded. A small state, no regular trained army there or in the rebel Bohemia, could hardly expect to hold out against the combined might of the Emperor and his ally, Spain.

  Richard Ogilvy had no wish to embark upon yet another discussion of foreign affairs, so he brought his friend back to their present business.

  ‘Arthur must be acquainted with the truth of Francis’s position,’ he said firmly. ‘He, like myself, is the boy’s true uncle. He must share the responsibility Kilessie has abandoned –’

  ‘Which act I cannot find it in my heart to condemn,’ interrupted Sir Francis in a bitter voice. ‘I feel a great measure of guilt now for not recalling Francis five years or more ago, when I could have made myself his friend, trusted and respected even if no love had grown between us. Then the news we have been forced to give him would have been tempered by an easy relationship, not seeming to him a sudden, even treacherous, blow from a total stranger.’

  Seeing the look of pain on his friend’s face, Richard drew his arm through his and began to walk towards the stable yard to find his horse.

  ‘Do not blame yourself overmuch, my serious friend,’ he said, smiling. ‘The boy is taking it hard because he is a strong, lively lad. Very like his father, the alderman said to me. Quick-tempered, not one to accept an injury without seeking revenge and that instantly. But his anger will pass from you, clearly in no way to blame, to his true father, who is beyond his reach.’

  ‘Alec saw him once at Kilessie. He satisfied himself of the child’s wel
fare, but neither then nor at any time later did he try to possess his son.’

  Richard did not answer this. He remembered that the boy had been sent to the Leslie grandparents and had always supposed it was to spare them and save his own honour and his wife’s that Sir Francis had never gone north nor taken her to Kilessie. Yes, the long delay had complicated matters in the end. But it could not be reversed nor conveniently forgotten. The important thing was to find the youth employment and in that Colonel Arthur Ogilvy, now expected at Dover, must take a hand as he was very well fitted to do.

  ‘He would make a soldier,’ he said, as they went into the yard. ‘He would not refuse that. His eyes lit up when Lord Aldborough spoke of His Grace of Buckingham’s intention of sending a force against Spain.’

  ‘I trust His Grace will forget my poor Kate’s boy,’ Sir Francis said, cast into gloom once more. ‘I dread the least contact with Courts and with the great ones wielding power and corruption. Her ruin came from her obsession with misbegotten wealth and rank.’

  Richard’s horse was waiting saddled and ready in the charge of a very young stable lad. The learned doctor turned aside to speak to Thomas, the head groom, who had been employed as coachman that day because he had asked for the privilege, it being a very special occasion. Thomas had worked in old Doctor Ogilvy’s service from a young boy until the doctor’s death ten years before. When the house was given over to a caretaking couple, and the rest of the household disbanded, Thomas had found his way into Master Angus Leslie’s stable where he was already known and was welcomed, not least by the alderman’s personal servant Walter, now an old man, but still active in the house.

  ‘Thomas,’ Richard said, ‘I think I told you Colonel Ogilvy would be here in London shortly.’

  ‘Aye, sir, that you did. I have asked the master for leave to visit him if that would suit your worships.’

  ‘Of course. It was of young Master Francis I would speak to you. I take it you are not ignorant of the young gentleman’s sad history. You knew his mother for many years.’

  Thomas nodded. He knew, and he knew that Doctor Richard knew, the story of the first Lady Leslie’s goings-on, both as a girl, as a bride, as a mother and later up to the time of her death. He knew now what Doctor Richard was going to ask him. He forestalled it.

  ‘If the young gentleman should come to me for news of his mother, sir, which he hath not attempted so far, I will only say she was the fairest lady I did ever set eyes on and that is the Lord’s truth, sir, as well you know it, being her brother.’

  Richard pressed the old man’s hand in gratitude, with a coin to confirm his feeling. Thomas had aged since he had last seen him. Always inclined to plumpness, he was now unashamedly fat. Clearly he was well looked after in his present employment. He could be trusted not to betray any of those family secrets that servants took a pride in harbouring.

  Sir Francis stood beside Richard’s mount as he got up.

  ‘You start for Oxford tomorrow, I take it,’ Doctor Ogilvy said. ‘You will see me back in a week. Give this letter to my Celia. Since our loss, she is always fearful when I am from home. Give my respects to my Lady Leslie. And so farewell, Francis. God keep thee, my friend.’

  ‘And thyself, Richard.’

  Sir Francis gave his instructions to Thomas for the morning when he and his man would start early on the first stage of their own journey. Then he went slowly back into the house.

  His departure the next day was scarcely felt in the alderman’s household. If Master Leslie had feared some embarrassment at the last he was relieved of his anxiety by young Francis, who displayed the trained good manners of a gentleman in taking leave of Sir Francis. Gravely polite, the youth handed him a letter he had written to Lady Leslie at the same time explaining its contents.

  ‘I would not have her ladyship find me discourteous,’ he said. ‘Nor ungrateful for her kindness at all times. It is not, it never could be, my fault on her part that makes it impossible I consider Luscombe my home.’

  ‘I understand,’ Sir Francis answered. ‘And I thank you heartily for this letter.’

  He put it away in an inside pocket without further comment. Later Lucy gave it to him to read, at which tears started in both their eyes: his for his neglect of the boy, that he now saw as a wrong he could never mend, and hers for her husband’s feeling of guilt, which she had done nothing, in all the years of their long-deferred happiness, to prevent.

  ‘Madam,’ the letter began. ‘I would not have you to imagine that I do not appreciate your goodness and sweet kindness in receiving me so warmly into a household where I now know I have no claim at all to belong. I am most grateful for all this and I shall never forget it. But your ladyship will well understand that I can never consider Luscombe as my home, now or in the future. In any case Oxford holds out no promise to me as I know I am as incapable of scholarship as I trust my young brother George will prove himself, if he continue as at present. And perhaps, too, your own lively trio, to all of whom and to George I send my kindest love and regards. I remain presently with Alderman Angus Leslie, since there appears to be prospect of my employment in the service of the new king and that out of England. I understand that my future lies in my own hands for which I thank my God, who hath seen fit to test me. So farewell, madam, from your most

  Affectionate and obedient servant, Francis.’

  ‘Poor lad, poor lad,’ Lucy said, wiping her eyes. ‘His heart is sorely wounded, but by no means broken.’

  ‘I pray you may be right. He hath courage, none can deny. There is even a whiff of old Nimmo, Alec’s father, in that reference to our Maker’s personal intention.’

  He smiled wryly, which gave Lucy a great feeling of relief.

  ‘Is it true what he says of employment?’

  ‘Time will show. Richard is his true uncle, after all. So is his brother Arthur, the colonel, who is daily expected in London. Pray Heaven he arrive before Lord Aldborough sets Buckingham in train to capture the boy.’

  The same thought occupied the mind of Master Leslie in Gracious Street. So much so that soon after Sir Francis had ridden away he called young Francis into his library, that he used as a City office, sent for wine and fruit and set himself, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to disillusion the boy about that upstart and far from noble favourite duke.

  ‘You have had no word. I take it, from my Lord Aldborough?’ he asked, to make sure no harm had been done as yet.

  ‘Nothing,’ Francis answered. ‘But I would not expect it. His Grace of Buckingham has more important matters to consider than my poor aspirations.’

  He spoke bitterly but with vigour.

  ‘Not so poor,’ said the alderman. ‘But I would warn you against placing high hopes in that quarter. For your private ear, though there are very many who share my views, that great lord works solely for his own advantage and always hath done so. His position, his wealth, his power, continue to grow and spread, by patronage, by threat if need be, by climbing upon and over the backs of others who prove obstacles in that ruthless path.’

  Francis frowned angrily. This talk seemed to him to be treasonable as well as false.

  ‘The people love him,’ he answered, indignantly. ‘They applaud his present plans to attack Spain.’

  ‘Oh, he is popular at this time,’ Master Leslie said. ‘They forget he went with the King last year to Spain to promote the Spanish marriage our late sovereign longed for. Now he would fight Spain and that is an object all Englishmen desire. He promotes, too, a marriage for Charles with France, another Catholic marriage and an alliance with France, who would destroy the Protestant, the Huguenot, minority in that country.’

  Francis was out of his depth, but unwilling to give up his present romantic feeling for the great duke.

  ‘I know none of that,’ he said sulkily, with a boy’s sudden suspicion that the old man was using the accumulated experience of his years to confound him. ‘I only know I would fight for king and my faith.’

  ‘Sp
oken like a true Englishman,’ the alderman told him, leaning forward to refill his young guest’s glass.

  After a pause Master Leslie said, ‘Didst never hear of one Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex?’

  ‘He that Parliament impeached for his corruption and punished for it?’

  ‘He that was betrayed to his ruin by His Grace.’

  ‘Betrayed!’

  Francis was more startled than he cared to show. But he did not argue, he listened to the tale Master Angus had to tell. And though at the end of it he could not believe any great villainy had taken place, he was made aware of the complicated hazards and uncertain principles that existed in the worlds of commerce and of government, and had always done so in a world based upon man’s greed rather than his probity; his innate sinfulness rather than his supposedly innate goodness.

  Master Leslie had known Lionel Cranfield from the latter’s apprentice days in the service of Master Richard Shepherd, a merchant adventurer. He had advanced himself by a well-known and often-practised move, that of marrying his employer’s daughter. He had by his own acute powers and energy risen to be himself a most successful merchant adventurer in the Company of Mercers. He secured a variety of responsible posts, he became a member of Parliament. Later he secured the position of chief commissioner of the Navy and while there, being an excellent business man, he effected many much needed savings and other reforms.

  At this point he came into the baleful orbit of the King’s favourite, George Villiers, now raised to the peerage and married to Lady Caroline Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland. Cranfield was by this time a widower. He found it necessary, for his further advancement, or even to preserve his present position, to marry a cousin of the Duchess of Buckingham, though he had planned to espouse a wealthy widow of his acquaintance.

  Thereafter his advancement continued with a seat in the Privy Council. He took an active and not dishonest part in the fall of Sir Francis Bacon. He was given a barony, he became Lord Treasurer and Earl of Middlesex. King James was delighted with his skill in financial matters.