To Serve a Queen

by Josephine Bell

  ‘Nor with the Princess Amelia, so lately married to the new Prince of Orange.’

  The two men laughed, which Francis did not understand and so resented. He realised how little he knew as yet of the ways of the world, at least of the ways of royal Courts. But he had learned enough not to throw his little knowledge from him in disgust. It smelled evilly, but so did all putrid things. He remembered the retreat from Cadiz to the ships, the bodies rotting in the sun. Another world, not less real than the world of intrigue, not less corrupt. A different kind of horror, that was all.

  On the way back to his lodgings, he said to his uncle, ‘Surely there will be a campaign started before long? The season is becoming mild, we have had little rain of late. I should be out learning my trade.’

  ‘All in good time, boy,’ the colonel answered. ‘I do not think my Lord Carleton will forget us, though he did seem so disturbed. He must approach the Prince Henry before he can make any move to get you employed. In the meantime we have permission to attend those occasions and entertainments given at the Embassy. I think you should take advantage of them. You have as yet no uniform for your service in war, but I think your good friend Master Leslie has built you up a wardrobe that will not disgrace our family.’

  He smiled as he spoke and Francis smiled back, openly and affectionately and with deep gratitude. He knew as well as his uncle that his suit was drab and out of fashion, though respectable. The colonel was consciously telling him this did not matter. There was true acceptance in his speech, no condescension whatever. They walked on in silence, to the casual passerby a father and son who had no need of speech to express their communion of thought and purpose.

  It was some weeks before Francis was found a post where he could be usefully and gainfully employed. In the end it was settled he should join the forces of Christian IV of Denmark, uncle to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia. The ageing king was rather reluctantly assembling his army to march once more against the Emperor and his Spanish ally. Help in this venture was supposed to be coming from England in the form of some trained troops, but also a considerable sum of money towards the total expense of the enterprise. As usual delay succeeded delay in bringing this decision into effect.

  Meanwhile Francis took his uncle’s advice and presented himself again at the Embassy, where he was welcomed as much for his attractive appearance as for his admirable manners. Among the ladies, particularly those visiting Holland from London, his youth alone had a great appeal, for the Embassy staff was middle-aged, if not elderly, consisting very largely of those men who had proved themselves very trustworthy, but were not given to fresh ideas or disturbing energy. The keener minds and brighter spirits had served a term and gone back to England or to more exalted missions about the world where they could find an outlet for their talents. Holland, reasonably prosperous in spite of the wars and the proximity of the Spanish Netherlands, was well organised to guard against spies in high places. The English establishment, apart from a few religious fanatics who were soon eliminated, held to a calm, controlled course at this time, with a careful watch upon newcomers.

  Francis was not aware of this, nor had he any need to be. With an enlargement of his circle of friends and acquaintances, he soon learned to distinguish among the visitors those who came to see their friends or relations among the permanent staff, a few who hoped to rise in the social scale because they were connected with trade and commerce, and others out of curiosity, hoping to meet the Queen of Bohemia, whose story excited so much interest in England.

  Francis, while enjoying this varied company, kept his intention of searching for the true facts of his mother’s mysterious end. But he found it extremely difficult to make any progress. One or two of the ladies whom he got to know well enough to approach with a discreet version of her death, told him their parents had been in Holland or had been about to visit Holland at approximately that time. They did not know the exact date, but then no more did Francis, Certainly they, the parents, had been members of the Court of King James and if Lady Leslie, whose name was unfamiliar, had been prominent there, must have known her. But they themselves were children at the time, living in the country, with governors and tutors. They had learned nothing but the rules of reading and writing, embroidery and music, dancing and singing.

  Laughing with them in their laughter, Francis could not deny he had not, at eight years old, been very much concerned at his mother’s death. He avoided giving any details of his own life at the time. He had simply wondered, he said, whether any of them had been connected with those friends his lady mother had been travelling to meet at whose house she had not yet arrived when death overtook her.

  But while seeming to dismiss the whole matter as a sorrow that had lost its bitterness with time, Francis did take note of the names of any who might be descended from those he sought, who might, even now, be a source of information, however tangled, that he could unravel at some future time.

  The urgency had certainly grown less, he felt. He had not lied over that. As the present became more real and more demanding than ever before, the weight of the unhappy past began to lighten. He no longer felt embarrassment at giving his full name as Francis Leslie. He had used it all his life. Until a year ago he had believed it valid. At it was, indeed, he had been told, since Sir Francis had accepted him from birth. As it was not, he had sworn, but knew he was helpless to alter it.

  Encouraged by members of the Embassy, Francis managed to secure a place in a special reception at the palace of the Prince of Orange. He hoped to find the Queen of Bohemia present, since she was born an English princess and both she and her husband had received so much kindness from the late Prince Maurice; consideration and practical help that the present Prince had continued.

  But when Francis mentioned his disappointment to the friend he was with the latter laughed, in very much the same sarcastic way the young man had heard before.

  ‘What is it makes you all laugh when the Queen is mentioned?’ he asked. ‘What has she done, poor lady, to make you all deride her?’

  ‘Deride the Queen of Hearts? God forbid!’ he got answer. ‘Never in the world!’ He lowered his voice. ‘Perhaps you did not know that our new Princess of Orange was formerly a lady-in-waiting to the Queen?’

  ‘I know nothing. I have but lately come to Holland.’

  ‘Why, yes. Our Princess of Orange was Lady Amelia of Solms. She feels her elevation keenly, she savours her position. She makes her Court savour it too and I think they find it over-spiced, far too hot at times.’ He laughed again. ‘Her late mistress, the Queen, though most kind and lovable as well as possessed of the most exquisite courage, does in this instance take unnecessary pains to forget her lady-in-waiting is hers no longer. In matters of precedence especially, you understand?’

  Francis was ready to ask about these matters, chiefly from ignorance, but partly because the complications of etiquette, court usage and so on seemed to him to be very amusing, though ridiculous and a sad waste of both time and effort. But he never gave voice to his questions for the company was turning towards the great doors at the end of the room, the gentlemen bending in low bows, the ladies sinking in deep curtseys. Down the straight track miraculously formed on an instant, came the Prince and his consort, magnificently dressed in satin and brocade, jewels sparkling at the lady’s breast and in her loose-curled dark hair. A number of exalted persons followed them closely, among whom Francis saw the Ambassador with beside him a face and form he recognised; Lord Aldborough, whose patronage had led to his involvement in the flasco at Cadiz.

  Not wishing to renew that ill-omened favour, Francis held his bow until be judged Lord Aldborough had passed him by. But he had no sooner stood upright and begun to turn away than a voice hailed him.

  ‘Young Leslie, is it not? I’ faith, lad, do you not know me?’

  ‘My lord!’

  Francis renewed his bow, to be greeted with a high musical laugh that could not have come from the nobleman’s mouth.

  Aga
in Francis stood upright. Behind Lord Aldborough, standing with two others of her own age were three beauties who had advanced up the room directly behind the Princess of Orange and had been dismissed by her as soon as she and the Prince had occupied the waiting thrones of State and were about to begin receiving their guests.

  ‘My daughter, the Lady Anne Wolmer,’ Lord Aldborough introduced her, ‘who is so very lately come from her schoolroom she forgets her manners.’

  Francis inclined his head. He was not going to bow a third time to a chit who laughed coarsely in the solemn, perhaps over-solemn, presence of the Dutch aristocracy and their German friends.

  The girl reddened, composing her features so quickly that Francis wondered what had so much amused her and longed to know. For the small lapse did not really affect him; the occasion had been more informal than my Lord Aldborough had chosen to consider it; altogether trivial, Francis told him. self, not trying to conceal his admiration for the young beauty who flushed still more hotly under his gaze, half turning away her head, for she would not lower her eyes to this skinny youth for all the splendour of his auburn locks and violet blue eyes.

  Francis found he had nothing whatever to say. He looked about him. Lord Aldborough had moved a few paces off and was talking to an Embassy Counsellor. Lady Anne’s two friends had melted away. In their tongue-tied state the two young people stared this way and that until, their looks coming together again, their strained nerves gave way, their faces collapsed, they bowed and curtsied again, both shaking with suppressed laughter.

  ‘Now,’ Francis said, recovering himself first, ‘Now, my lady, you will tell me what you are doing here at The Hague in company with your father.’

  ‘I am here to serve the Princess,’ Lady Anne answered. ‘As a maid-of-honour. My mother is too busy at the Court at Whitehall to bring me hither. But my Lord Aldborough is here at His Grace of Buckingham’s behest to prepare the coming visit of the Duke.’

  ‘His Grace will be here?’ Francis asked.

  So the hints were true. His sometime commander would be in Holland. It might not be possible to avoid him. He did not consider he had done wrong himself in not reporting his survival at Plymouth. But he knew enough now about the Duke’s overriding self-importance to think it prudent he should have left The Hague by the time His Grace arrived there.

  ‘That is what my father says,’ Lady Anne answered quietly, for she did not understand the change in the young man. She had been brought up to admire and reverence the great favourite, whose wife, a daughter of the Duke of Rutland, was a family connection, being a cousin of her own mother. The Duchess of Buckingham, herself a gentle, happy creature, adored her magnificent husband and never could, never would, understand his growing unpopularity.

  The admiration persisted in all members of the family, including to some extent Anne Wolmer. For she was a young woman with a cool head and a keen eye. The reverence had worn off a little since the death of the old king. The great duke had sometimes gone too far in the pursuit of fame. His failures, becoming known, were beginning to wash out the roots of his power. Was it possible that Master Francis Leslie had heard rumours? Surely it was not possible he had heard facts? Rumours spread in great tides, back and forth, among the servants and hangers-on of all the families beholden to the Duke for their fortunes and position. But Master Leslie …

  ‘Are you a soldier?’ she asked bluntly, recalling Francis from his clouds of speculation.

  ‘I hope to be, my lady,’ he answered and told her plainly and honestly about his uncle, the colonel, and about his wish to become professional as was Colonel Ogilvy, and the probability he would join the trained forces of the King of Denmark.

  ‘I hope you may succeed,’ Lady Anne said politely.

  Francis saw she was not interested. Why should she be? It was enough that she condescended to stay talking with him. He noticed that others envied him the position and elated by this he exerted himself to amuse her, but to his disappointment without marked success. In the end Lord Aldborough came back to take her away. This too was envied and caused even more surprise in Francis’s immediate neighbourhood. But neither father nor daughter invited him to go with them, nor proposed any future meeting.

  The parting indeed seemed quite final. Ridiculously so, Francis thought, trying angrily but in vain to wipe the image of her from his mind.

  But it persisted. A face of marked loveliness, soft brown curls dotted along her forehead and falling to just below her neck, just off her shoulders on either side. A high-waisted low-cut, swathed bodice of old-rose silk joined ample skirts of the same material and matching full sleeves from shoulder to elbow. A wisp of pale tulle at the upper edge of the bodice covered, while revealing, the swell of her young breasts. A single drop-pearl brooch held the centre of the bodice. It was the only jewel she wore.

  This picture of the Lady Anne Wolmer was delightful. Francis continued to keep it in his mind throughout the remainder of that day, though by the evening an effort was needed to bring it springing before his mind and by the next morning it was distinctly blurred.

  So why pursue it, he thought, lying in bed waiting for Will Stubble to draw his curtains, set down a jug of hot water and take his orders for breakfast. Why try to engage himself in a quest that could lead nowhere? Why engage romantic imagination, far less his heart, in a quarter where feelings were forbidden entry on every single count he could add up?

  He got out of bed wearily, surprising Will, who had looked forward to a lively account of the reception at the Court of the Prince of Orange. His young master dressed silently. He was not morose or unkind, but Will’s prattle soon stopped. He waited for orders, puzzled when none came. More puzzled still when the young master failed to go out of doors at all that day, but spent it looking out of the window or writing letters that never came into his, Will’s, hands to be sent out, but disappeared from sight in the evening and were never mentioned by either of them.

  For the first time in his cheerful, energetic life, Francis Leslie moped.

  Chapter Twelve

  How long this unfamiliar mood would have lasted Francis did not ask himself, for it was dissipated the next morning by the arrival of his uncle and thereafter he never thought it worth while to consider that awkward, childish disturbance.

  Will Stubble opened the door to Colonel Ogilvy, not hiding the anxiety he felt but hoping to discharge it into sympathetic ears. The colonel, with his trained knowledge of men, did not fail him.

  ‘How now, Corporal,’ he asked. ‘You are in trouble? Yourself or my nephew?’

  ‘It’s the young gentleman, sir,’ Will answered, his twenty-four-hour problem bursting from him. ‘I did think that he’d be real uplifted, as you might say, by the grand assemblage at the palace, with the Prince and Princess and the grand folk and all. But not a bit of it. Goes straight to his bed and spends the whole of next day, that was yesterday, brooding on whatever it was had upset him, scarce a word for me …’

  ‘He did not go out?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nor had a visitor?’

  ‘Ne’er a one, sir.’

  ‘Take me to him.’

  If he had not admitted a visitor, the colonel thought, Francis’s gloom was unlikely to have been caused by some quarrel, some challenge, perhaps, to a duel, when he would have to stay at home to discuss matters with a friend and receive or send a message to an adversary. As the lad had not gone out it was unlikely he had embroiled himself with a woman or he would want to see her again. Unless there had been an undesirable bodily consequence. But then he would have gone out to find a discreet physician.

  Colonel Ogilvy went into Francis’s room with squared shoulders and a very military expression on his keen features.

  ‘Your man tells me you are unwell,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘Will Stubble is mistaken, sir. Will you sit down? May I offer you …’

  ‘I’ll sit, thank’ee. But I want nothing. I am on my way to see Her Majesty, Madam, the Queen
of Bohemia. I hoped to find you, for she has expressed a wish to have you presented to her.

  ‘How does she know of my existence?’ Francis was utterly astonished.

  ‘Very predictably. The Prince of Orange has suggested you should join the King of Denmark’s army. King Christian has, I have been told, accepted you. The various allies of the young King of Bohemia see fit to acquaint His Majesty with the names of all officers fighting in his cause, together with those who promoted them, if such there be. It is a courtesy move, I may say, for the poor gentleman, poor good young man, has no more talent for war than the babe unborn.’

  This was the first confirmation of his appointment that Francis had heard. He was delighted. All his churned-up feelings subsided and he returned in an instant to his usual attitude of eager expectation and general optimism. He laughed at his uncle’s description of the exiled, most unwarlike king.

  ‘Then I take it he will never recover his crown?’ he said.

  ‘He should never have accepted it. But we must recover him the Palatinate. That he should never have lost. He was happy enough in the enjoyment of his small hereditary state, prosperous, careful of his subjects. After six years of exile his heart is near broken and would be quite destroyed if his love for his wife did not sustain him.’

  ‘And hers for him, I am told.’

  ‘You are told rightly.’

  Francis sprang up and went to the window.

  ‘The sun is shining!’ he exclaimed. ‘When do we go to the Queen, sir?’

  ‘The sun was shining yesterday though you did not look at it, nephew,’ Colonel Ogilvy said, smiling. ‘This afternoon I will take you to bespeak your uniform. If they do not delay over it, and the Dutch are very diligent workers in all things, you should have it in two days, no more. I will arrange our visit for the end of the week, if Her Majesty pleases.’

  Young Francis found this next experience in great contrast with his visit to the ruling Prince’s palace. To begin with it took place in a private house lent to the deposed King of Bohemia by the late Prince Maurice. It was large and well appointed and, considering the penniless state of the exiles, somewhat of an imposition upon all those local tradespeople who served them with food, goods or services. Their credit, very good at first, soon grew less as the bills mounted. With the total loss of the Palatinate the poor young Elector had lost the whole of his income and thenceforth the family had to subsist upon very irregular sums sent from England such as the Queen’s marriage allowance from her father, together with her tiny personal fortune.