‘She was well when she travelled to London,’ Richard said, choosing his words carefully. ‘She became ill shortly after the ship reached open sea. She suffered from plague. It killed her, as it nearly always does, within twenty-four hours of the onset. We think she never understood what had befallen her. We thank God for that he spared her this knowledge and all fear.’
Seeing a look of sheer incredulity on his nephew’s face Richard went on: ‘Yes, Francis. Plague. There was no great epidemic at that time, ten years ago, but the pestilence is always with us. It rears its head among our poor, the hungry, the weak, the dwellers in the waterside hovels. To reach the ship on which she travelled my lady sister had perforce to embark on a rowing vessel to cross the water to the anchorage. She must have taken the contagion there.’
‘I was not told of this,’ was all Francis could bring himself to say. It certainly relieved Sir Francis of any kind of guilty neglect, but still …
‘As I recollect, you were a child of but eight years at the time,’ Colonel Ogilvy said gruffly. ‘I think they would not consider it seemly to tell you of it then. And afterwards …’
‘And afterwards when my father – when Sir Francis – married again so promptly, so very speedily, even less seemly to spoil the festivities, the rejoicing …’
His blazing temper, the sudden angry grief that swept over him, choked further speech. He turned from his two uncles, rushed from the room, made for the nearest door and found himself in the little garden he had looked at from the library window.
Instantly he wheeled about towards that window to see if his elders were watching him. His rage had vanished, as it usually did if he could free it in instant action of any kind. He turned again from the empty window to the quiet empty garden. Already he regretted his action in throwing back at those two considerate men, his only true relations, the sympathy and care they had shown to him as they revealed the necessary facts of his mother’s life and death. He had no right and no real cause for doing this, except that they had not revealed enough. Why had she wished to go abroad at all, unaccompanied, it seemed? Who were the great ones who had invited her? He thought of the exiled Queen of Bohemia, sister to King Charles, whose sad, romantic history everyone both in Scotland and England had followed ever since her marriage, thirteen years ago. No doubt his mother’s friends belonged to her entourage. Why then not tell him of them?
He moved slowly to the arbour, exhausted by his outbreak of fury and sat down on the old, wooden, moss-covered bench there. Noticing its condition, he wondered if anyone had used it after his mother left her home in marriage to Sir Francis. Had she sat here, a frightened girl, afraid to confess her seduction, looking for help, concealment, rescue; turning in despair, after her proper rescuer, his dastardly father, had fled away into outlawry, to the seducer’s friend, Sir Francis Leslie, who, it seemed, had never really forgiven her for that desperate deception. He had accepted the bastard, himself, in name only, foisting him upon his own parents at Kilessie.
The garden’s calm lovely presence, set apart from the boy’s torn feelings, bitter thought, dire loneliness, slowly soothed him, as gardens will. He became at last aware of the gentle spring awakening all round him, the cherry tree struggling into blossom, the thick buds on the rose branches climbing all about the arbour, the thrusting shoots of marigolds and stocks and gilliflowers, the full-blown petals of the Dutch tulips, those new-fangled early spring flowers brought of recent years from the Low Countries. The birds sang, the sun shone. Francis dropped his face in his hands and wept for his young mother and her lonely death.
A gentle touch on his shoulder brought him immediately to his feet. The caretaker, his equal in height, stood beside him.
‘Young master,’ the man said, ‘I am sent to tell you the colonel will ride back to Gracious Street with you to meet Master Angus Leslie. He has ordered his horse and yours to be ready shortly.’
‘I would ride alone,’ Francis said stubbornly, and sat down again.
‘I think that may not be, sir,’ the man persisted.
‘May not?’
Francis sprang up again. He recognised now that he was addressed by the caretaker, perhaps a servant but no underling. He controlled himself to ask, ‘Upon whose authority do you order me?’
‘No order, sir, but I am Doctor Ogilvy’s man as my father was of his father.’
‘How so?’
‘My father served the old doctor, him that was a school-master at the Charterhouse. He was a boy in the yard when he first came here but later was married to a serving maid in the house and when she, my mother, died, was taken wholly into the house to be Doctor Ogilvy’s particular man.’
‘As Walter is to Master Leslie?’
‘Just so, sir. Giles, he was always called by the family. When I was given his place they called me Young Giles, though I am no longer young, sir, as you see.’
He was indeed clearly of middle age. Francis smiled at him.
‘Your father grew too old for the work?’ he asked.
‘He lived but six months after the master died,’ the other answered. ‘Broken heart, we said. Together with the shock of my lady’s death, which by God’s mercy the old man was spared the news of, though my father swore it would have been no news to him, for he had been convinced of it from the very day she took ship out of the country.’
‘How was it my grandfather never heard the news?’
‘He died, sir, the very morning Doctor Richard came with it from Gracious Street. Sitting in his chair by the fire in his library, his breakfast untouched on a tray beside him.’
A shadow fell across the grass. A brisk, loud but not unkind voice cried, ‘Young Giles, what do you, gossiping with my nephew? Hast delivered my message?’
‘Indeed I have, Colonel, sir,’ Young Giles answered in a flutter.
‘It was my fault, sir,’ Francis said. ‘I was questioning him about my grandfather. I ask your pardon.’
‘Granted, boy, granted. But haste ye now, the horses are waiting and your Uncle Richard hath work to do.’
At Gracious Street Francis presented the colonel to Master Leslie and then slipped away again to the yard to find Thomas. The old groom or coachman, for he seldom rode a horse these days, was resting in his own small room over the saddlery.
‘I have been to Paternoster Row, Thomas,’ Francis began. ‘To meet my uncle, the Colonel Arthur Ogilvy, brother to my Uncle Richard. But I think you know all these my relations and have known them for twenty years or more.’
‘I have that, young master. So what more can I tell you than they and the master have told or have chosen to tell?’
‘That’s just the trouble, Thomas. They give me knowledge by slow, meagre packets of fact, no full clear account.’
‘Relating to what, young sir?’
Thomas’s face was grave, but sympathetic. Francis raised a hand in a wide hopeless gesture, then let it fall.
‘I will ask for only one small packet more. How came it that my lady mother rode alone from Oxford, stayed but one night, or was it two, with my grandfather and grandmother? And then set sail upon her visit with no maid to attend her and no one even to see her safely on board the vessel?’
Thomas answered at once. He had rehearsed the story he would tell. He had been through it all in his mind and with certain cuts, to various close friends many times since the drama had been played out ten years before. He embarked now upon yet another retelling and with the desirable cuts very firmly in place.
‘My Lady Leslie did not travel alone, sir. She was accompanied by a groom from Sir Francis’s stable. She rode her own horse and the lad took it back to Oxford later. Sir Francis being kept in Oxford, she went to Paternoster Row to her father and mother. She sent word to Master Leslie here of her intended voyage. She was seen off the following day by Mistress Lucy Butters as she then was –’
‘She that is now Lady Leslie?’
‘The same. Both Mistress Lucy and our Walter saw her safely arrived at th
e wharfside near Master Leslie’s warehouse offices. She rode there from her father’s house behind Giles, his man.’
‘I have this day met Young Giles, as they call him. He told me how my grandfather died.’
It did not seem to Francis that Thomas had told him any lie, but nor did he think he had heard the whole truth. However, it would not be seemly or profitable to pry any further into matters Thomas ought not to understand, or if he did ought not to disclose. So he thanked the old man and went back into the house.
Chapter Five
When he left Thomas, Francis met Colonel Ogilvy on his way to the stable to find his horse, the alderman walking with him.
‘Go in, lad, go in,’ Master Leslie said. ‘You’ll see the colonel again. He tells me his mission will last some days yet, but he will be much occupied, so we will have you here till he send for you. Go find Mistress Leslie. I must speak to my factor, who waits in my office.’
Francis looked for his hostess but Mistress Leslie was shut in her own parlour with some visiting women friends, a manservant told him. So he lost no time in seeking out Walter, for Young Giles had filled in for him a clear picture of his mother as a girl in her father’s house and he now looked for further enlightenment.
Walter, however, had not much to add. The first Lady Leslie and Sir Francis had lived in Gracious Street when they were first married.
‘That I have been told,’ Francis said. ‘Master Leslie has shown me the rooms set aside for their use at that time and for later visits to London after they went to live in Oxford. But I would know more. My Lady Leslie was very beautiful, was she not? The second Lady Leslie tells me so.’
Walter smiled.
‘Mistress Lucy, as I still think of her, sir, has a great admiration for beauty, in all its forms. She spoke truly of your lady mother’s appearance, indeed she did. It was remarked upon by all who saw her.’
‘Tell me more.’
Walter made no answer for a few seconds, then he said, ‘Have you no recollection of the lady, young master? You came here with both your parents from Doctor Richard Ogilvy’s house in Oxford, where you were born. You were full two year old when you went back to Oxford to that house.’
‘And from there to Kilessie, my home till a year ago. No, Walter, try as I will I cannot remember my mother. Only my Lady Lucy and a nursemaid who found fault with me, was cruel too, so that I hated her.’
Walter looked at him with pity and also with some amusement.
‘You were a rare pickle, sir,’ he said, ‘if you will pardon me for the expression. A big strong baby resenting any form of correction.’
‘So belike my punishments were just, would you say?’
They both laughed and in the new-found ease between them Walter’s tongue was loosened to the point of describing how Sir Francis and his student friend, Alec Nimmo, had come to London with the new king, James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England.
‘The fellow Nimmo slew a man and fled north, I believe,’ Francis said.
‘There was a brawl at an inn, devised by an evil servant of a great lord and his friend, a kinsman of my master. In the fight, the two of them setting upon Master Nimmo, the pimp was killed and afterwards the other was tried for it and hanged.’
‘Then why did this Nimmo run away if he was guiltless?’
Walter said carefully, ‘We have never known the real facts of the case, sir. But we believe those two were sent to kill Master Nimmo, but they failed as they were like to do with a great and fearless and skilled adversary. We do know the lord sent his men north to slay Master Nimmo, since they could not bring him under the law in England, justice having found and hanged the murderer.’
‘But they never found him?’
‘It was the same Master Alec Nimmo who returned years later to receive the King’s pardon. The late king, God rest his soul.’
Francis would dearly have liked to ask if the fugitive outlaw had, upon gaining his pardon from the King, sought forgive-ness from the woman he had betrayed and the friend he had wronged. But he could not ask Walter these questions. So he wound up the conversation with a few remarks about his uncles and the house in Paternoster Row and went away upstairs to look at the room that had been his first nursery. He tried to recover some memory of it, but did not succeed. Oxford he had been just able to recall, the garden where he had played with his young Ogilvy cousins, even his aunt, Mistress Celia. But here there was nothing, nothing at all.
Later on that day Master Leslie sent for Francis, who found him alone now in his office.
‘You are fortunate to have two such kinsmen, Francis,’ he said. ‘The colonel in particular, for he wishes to do all he can for you, having no family of his own.’
‘He thought he could place me with his unit in the army of the Prince of Orange, if not with the English volunteers under Sir Horace Vere. He did not recommend Count Mansfeld’s group, though he be again at Dover, recruiting further troops.’
‘So you must wait until Colonel Ogilvy has fulfilled his mission, I suppose from the Prince. I think naught will be done until after the funeral of King James, but you are very welcome to stay in my house until you are summoned, which the colonel told me he intended as soon as he was ready to return to Holland.’
‘I am much beholden to my uncle,’ Francis said stiffly. ‘But seeing that my king has commanded me to serve him, I await his commands in preference to all others. I would fight Spain, the country wills it, the Duke is eager for it. I am sure my uncle is right in serving the Protestant cause in Germany, but I know very little of that quarrel, though it has embroiled the King’s sister.’
‘Through the total loss of her husband’s possessions, both his hereditary Palatinate and his ill-chosen acceptance of the crown in Bohemia. Spain’s work in all this, Francis. Their general, Spinola, took the Palatinate, with Bavaria hot at his heels to occupy it.’
Francis received this parcel of history politely, but it did not alter his youthful, romantic wish to fight the Spaniards at sea or by raids on their lands, as in the fierce golden days of the Tudor queen. So he fell silent for a few minutes and then told Master Angus about his talk with Young Giles on the subject of his mother’s tragic death at sea.
‘He told me about the manner of it. But he could not tell me why the news was so long delayed, why the friends who expected her did not write to declare she had not arrived, why none here in London came to know it for many weeks, so that my grandfather died without hearing it, of anxiety and dread of some such dire misfortune. How came this about, sir?’
Since the alderman did not know how far the caretaker in Paternoster’s Row had gone in his account of Lady Leslie’s supposed visit abroad, he paused before replying and then passed over the true facts with discreet omissions rather than blatant lies.
‘None of my lady’s friends or relations came to know it sooner because the captain of the ship, good, kind man, dared not declare he had a case of plague on board. Only his bo’sun shared the secret. They buried your poor mother secretly at sea. She had gone abroad very quietly; the crew were not aware of her presence or took it for granted she was a chance passenger, as they were accustomed to take from time to time. Both the captain and the bo’sun observed an undeclared quarantine for themselves and the ship on pretext of making repairs to the vessel. When they found they had escaped the pestilence, the captain, on his next voyage to London, sought me out to tell me the full story.’
‘Why you, sir, and not her father or mother?’
‘Because he knew me through business channels and it had been through me the passage was arranged for Lady Leslie.’
Francis was so moved by the story he failed to notice the strange gaps in it. Instead he thanked Master Leslie and was returning to nurse his unhappiness in his own room when Doctor Richard Ogilvy rode in with his head groom and a lad from the Oxford stable. They had their luggage disposed about them, clearly ready to start their journey home.
Francis, who had seen them move into the
yard from a landing window, went down again to welcome them and to take his uncle to Master Leslie. Mistress Leslie, who had also seen the arrival from an upstairs window had now joined her husband.
‘We aim to spend the night at Isleworth,’ Doctor Ogilvy said.
‘There is a notable inn there I have used upon other occasions. I came but to thank you and to wish Francis well in all his endeavours.’
Further good wishes and compliments were exchanged in the elaborate manner of the times, being brought to an end only by the doctor’s refusal of any refreshments and the merchant’s remark that he had always preserved from their first encounter a warm affection for the young man’s father. He laid no emphasis upon the term, he left it quite open as to interpretation. But he observed that Doctor Ogilvy immediately took his leave and that Francis, told to see his uncle mount, obeyed the order with like alacrity.
‘They skip away from Alec’s memory as from an unburied, decaying corpse,’ the alderman said, resuming his seat.
‘Which to many it is,’ Mistress Leslie agreed, nodding. ‘To move all the time with this great flowering of rank puritanism in our midst. Bastardy is no longer a doubtful misfortune, a loss of inheritance and so on. It is now the fruit of evil, the work of the Devil himself, not the foolish misplaced ardour of men.’
‘Though still the wicked and deliberate invitation of women,’ teased the alderman. ‘I am not puritan and I admit to no positive evil in my life. But I have never denied the power of woman as temptress.’
‘Oh, thou hypocrite!’ cried Mistress Leslie. ‘An unavailing power, indeed, for thou never denied thyself the pleasures of marriage, while avoiding its obligations.’
‘All the greater then, thine own woman’s power, to bring me at last to the altar,’ said her husband, putting an arm about her waist. ‘But seriously, my love, while we do not want young Francis corrupted, we must, if we can, prevent that souring of his spirit so fatal in Malcolm Munro, that ruined man.’
To Serve a Queen Page 5