Francis said nothing. If this was an invitation to volunteer for Buckingham’s proposed new foreign invasion, he was not a candidate. When the silence grew into discomfort, he muttered a form of thanks and became speechless once more.
‘I see you like not the idea,’ Colonel Ogilvy said, with a short laugh. ‘And yet your fault would be very acceptable to His Grace, remembering how he climbed to the highest favour over the backs of the Somersets, that arrogant, unlucky pair. You have rid the Duke, at least for a time, of a graceless, poverty-stricken but still dangerous mendicant.’
‘I think that is true,’ Francis answered. ‘I know Captain Carr approached Lord Aldborough more than once, thinking this a step towards making himself agreeable to the Duke.’
He sighed. So little good accomplished; none but himself had heard the ruffian’s words, so what harm had been done to his mother’s memory? None, he decided bitterly, except by himself, since he had been forced by repeated questioning to give his motive for the fight to be a family insult and so set tongues wagging that otherwise had been still.
‘Do not be in such a hurry to be gone,’ Colonel Ogilvy finished. ‘I have a note to deliver to you – from Madam herself.’
The exiled Queen was a great writer of letters. Where a simple request was the whole object of a missive, the Queen was likely as well to tell some story, recollect some incident, discuss an item of current news. So she did now. Hearing that Lieutenant Leslie was being made outcast, she imagined some grave mistake had occurred. Her Majesty wished to hear the true facts that she might present them to her brother, asking His Majesty to find some suitable employment for a loyal, if impetuous subject. Her Majesty expected Lieutenant Leslie to attend her that evening.
Though he had arranged to sail that very night or at any rate to board the London merchant ship on which he had secured a passage, Francis risked certain arrest and punishment to obey Her Majesty’s bidding. He need not have been anxious. Madam was quite used to sudden departures of English subjects for one reason or another. Also she already had the rumoured facts of the scandal; she merely wanted to have them clarified. This done to her satisfaction, she repeated her wish to help him with King Charles, wished him luck and dismissed him very kindly. As he bent over her hand she whispered, ‘It is the Duke we have to see now. Impertinent, bold popinjay! If you encounter him as you leave see you be not blinded by the diamonds he wears about his person!’
She laughed suddenly, inviting him to join in. Which he did, but with a heavy heart for all he was losing.
He understood fully her words as he left the house. For there on the pavement without was a cluster of guards in the livery he recognised. And there was the great Duke of Buckingham himself, long black curls falling below his shoulders, pale blue satin doublet and breeches, the ribbon of the Garter, the flashing star of the ‘George’, the twinkling of many other jewels, from buttons, shoes, cloak fastening, fingers, all that excess of diamonds the Queen had mentioned.
Francis stood to attention with the rest as the great man was led into the house. The Duke did not recognise the youth. Indeed His Grace had looked neither to right nor left as he went in, an arrogant performance that brought silent criticism into open disapproval. Strict Calvinists could not stomach such ostentation. Francis heard on every side, ‘Blasphemy! Peacock pride!’ Even ‘Harlotry!’. a reference to the past, no doubt.
On the tide in the early hours of the next morning Francis sailed for home. On his arrival he went at once to the house in Paternoster Row carrying with him a letter from his Uncle Arthur to Young Giles. He stayed there a few days, seeing no one, keeping to the house, watching the garden wither as the night frosts set in. He was waiting for a reply to his own letter to his other uncle in Oxford.
This came on the day Will Stubble, released from his post through the good offices of Colonel Ogilvy, arrived to join his young master, with a fat bundle of letters from many of his friends in Holland. Among them was one in a childish hand he did not recognise. It was from Anne Wolmer, describing the glittering occasion of a ball for the Duke, whose clothes outshone all present, including the ladies.
‘Which gave him no advantage,’ Anne wrote. ‘For he was thought ill-bred to flaunt so many jewels. Also his plans for his daughter’s advancement by marriage to the Prince Frederic Henry, heir to the Palgrave, are considered presumptuous and in any case foolish, since the boy is no longer in close line to the throne of England, seeing there is now a son to King Charles and like to be more children in due course.’
The letter finished with discreet hopes for his return and pardon and not a word about any marriage arranged for herself.
Francis wore the letter inside his shirt for a day or two, to its very serious detriment. Since he wished to preserve it, he then hid it away in one of his few books. He had no satisfactory news to give her, so did not at that time write an answer to it.
A discreetly welcoming message came from Oxford in due course. So Francis with Will Stubble beside him set out one cloudy morning, determined to know, at long last, the true story of his mother’s last days.
Richard Ogilvy did not deny him. It was his due. He had fought a man because of his ignorance, had he not?
‘By reason of Carr’s villainy!’ Francis protested.
‘I imagine had you known who he was and what was his relationship with my Lady Leslie, you would have avoided all contact with the man?’
‘Maybe, maybe,’ Francis answered, who wanted to hear plain facts, not indulge in fruitless argument.
So he had to accept that his mother, whom he had loved, admired, exalted, grieved over for the last two years, had in truth been a proscribed person, in flight from the law, because she had undertaken an errand for a murderess, later convicted. She had left her home on a mad impulse to escape abroad; she had hastened on her father’s death, who could not endure the family disgrace.
‘She went to find Alan Carr, who claims he was her lover? Did she? Was she?’
‘Probably. We never knew. She may have sought refuge with the Winter Queen. I know she tried earlier to go with the young Electress after the Princess’s marriage.’
‘You answer half my question. Must I turn to the servants, to Young Giles, or to Walter? Or employ my own man to find the truth?’
Richard was affronted and inclined to be angry. He had tried to bury his sister’s story, but it was now no use. He appealed to his wife. Celia could do no better.
‘Your mother was very beautiful,’ she told Francis, not for the first time. ‘But she despised me for my interest in scholarship, in my children, in my garden. It was her upbringing. A last surviving daughter, spoilt by a doting father and a foolish mother. The poor old lady lived here five years after your grandfather died, confused in her mind, calling often for Kate, her pretty Kate, whom all the Court admired. Her wits quite left her in the end. She called me Kate and would always ask how often King James received me and how fared my Lady Somerset who loved me so well.’
‘The murderess who betrayed her? And Alan Carr, he too betrayed her, did he not?’
Celia made no answer to this. In the end Francis went to Luscombe, his foster-father’s house. There was no other way and he owed it to Sir Francis.
‘I am come to make my apologies, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘To you and to my Lady Leslie for my surly, ill-bred behaviour when I was last here in your home. I must thank you for your goodness and patience in receiving me.’
‘Oh, my dear boy,’ Sir Francis answered, much moved. ‘I owe you a like apology for my long neglect.’
After that Francis found himself able to ask his question, having explained in detail his fatal exchange with Alan Carr and its outcome in open combat.
‘You have defeated an evil man,’ Sir Francis said. ‘One who hath survived far longer than he should. I regret he still survives though that is a most unchristian wish to harbour. But God must have willed it so. At least you have avenged me when I myself challenged him and he won that contest.�
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‘You fought him?’ Francis was astonished.
‘To my shame he disarmed me, spared my life but gave me a wound in my upper arm to remember him by.’
‘The fight was for my mother’s honour?’
Sir Francis bowed his head.
‘I accused him and he did not deny it. At the trial of the Somersets it was shown that they and their brother all used a certain house for their assignations. Alan Carr was abroad by then –’
‘Enough, father!’ Francis cried in a bitter anger so great he did not notice how he had spoken.
He stayed at Luscombe for two days more, reconciled completely now with this family who were not related to him in any respect, except for his half-brother George. At the end of that time he picked up all the rest of his possessions that he had left with his Uncle Richard and returned with Will to London.
He had suffered such disillusion that he no longer cared greatly what happened to him. He even decided not to write to Lady Anne. He gave up all hope of establishing himself with Lord Aldborough. In utter revulsion he could not bear to wait for the outcome of the efforts that were being made to reestablish him in Holland. He decided, in desperation, to join the Duke of Buckingham’s expedition to the Isle de Rhé off the Atlantic coast of France.
‘That you cannot, sir, begging your pardon,’ said Will, when Francis declared his intention.
‘Cannot? What do you mean?’
‘It hath sailed, sir, so I am told,’ Will answered. ‘And the Duke is leading it.’
‘Oh, you rogue!’ Francis shouted, aiming a blow at the former corporal, that the latter ducked to miss. ‘Why did you not tell me of it?’
‘We was at Oxford, sir, so Mr Giles tells me, when news come of the start It is the Lord’s will, to my way of thinking, that we be well out of it.’
‘So they said at Cadiz. But it may be more as Lieutenant Felton said at that time.’
‘And what was that, sir?’
‘Nothing for your ears. And no help to me for my future.’
Chapter Sixteen
It was as well that Francis by design and good fortune took no part in the war against France that year of 1627. King Charles did not consider that he was at war with his cousin,. Louis XIII, but rather fighting to protect and preserve the Protestant faith. His adversary was not France nor its monarch, but simply Cardinal Richelieu, a wicked, bigoted old man who broke all the promises that had been made to the Huguenots, driving them to take refuge in the fortified town of La Rochelle. Therefore it was right to attempt to eliminate the cardinal’s harassment of the French Protestants.
The Duke of Buckingham, though of proved personal courage, lacked both experience and skill in command, Also his material, in the way of supply of arms, food and clothing, was as bad as in his former mismanaged attempt against Spain. Moreover the soldiers and sailors, pressed men as before, were even more useless at their assumed trades, for they lacked any will to fight; they had this time none of the enthusiasm for beating the French that had fired them at first when they attacked the Spaniards. This time they ran away if they could, even from on board the ships assembled to take them.
The former dreadful conditions were repeated on this fresh voyage though it was not so long. When they reached the small island of Rhé off the Atlantic coast opposite La Rochelle, it was days before an army was assembled in any sort of order. The garrison must be captured or eliminated before they could use the island to break the existing siege of the Huguenot town across the dividing water.
Slow to get moving, slow to leave England, slow to establish any sort of organised, trained action, the Duke’s force wasted the poor supplies of every kind in ill-devised movements lamentably carried out.
Though the detail of all this became known in England by degrees, as calls came in for help, it was never fully understood. King Charles became once more desperate for money to supply the Duke’s needs. He was urged to recall Parliament to make an appeal to the Commons. He refused to do so unless he was assured that they would obey his wishes. No one could do that, so he fell back upon the old, much-resented forced loans. Privy seals, as they were called.
His success was minimal. Supplies were held up or pirated before the ships got free of the Channel. The Rochellese lost faith in the English attempt. The Cardinal’s forces managed to smuggle help to the French garrison on the Isle de Rhé. All the time French forces closed in upon the town of La Rochelle itself.
Meanwhile in Holland and Germany no progress whatever was made in any move by the United Provinces to recapture the Palatinate. In the early autumn there was in fact an attempt to work out a treaty with the Emperor. But bigotry ruled. Besides, the troops of Austria and Spain were in good heart and had fine generals. Tilly and Wallenstein continued to win all their battles and outmanoeuvre the sporadic, ill-contrived ventures of the outraged Protestant States.
In the Spanish Netherlands the Infanta ruled, distributing supplies brought. by sea to the Emperor’s forces. In the North Sea the Dunkirk pirates attacked supplies of all kinds carried between England, Holland, Denmark and Hamburg.
At The Hague the Queen of Hearts bore her seventh son, the strongest child, her doctors said, of all her frequent pregnancies. Her lying-in was uneventful and she was soon back among her small devoted band of courtiers, ladies and maids-of-honour, together with the English friends visiting the province, who had prolonged their stay to greet her upon her recovery.
Her letter-writing began again; she was eager now to pick up all the news, domestic and general, that in any way concerned her.
Very soon after her reappearance at her own Court she was once more invited to attend the Prince of Orange’s receptions and other entertainments. Sometimes she was seen with her personal entourage, more often in company with her husband; the Elector was less often away on his accustomed begging expeditions to his country’s neighbours and former supporters, for he found his reception growing increasingly cold and was hurt by it.
He would never understand that they all fought shy now of one who was known to exist upon credit, the Prince of Orange’s patronage, and those empty promises from his brother-in-law of England.
Besides, though amiable and upright, a sincere Calvinist, a clean liver, no coward in battle or other manly sport, he had no head for strategy of any kind, no skill in diplomacy. So he spent more time at home now, to the mutual happiness of both himself and his wife. For their love remained as ardent and single-minded as ever.
This was remarked upon at both Courts. By the older members with a cynical sort of wonder at such fidelity in such extreme misfortune. By the young with equal wonder but admiration and envy too.
‘Her Majesty looks to be in the best of health again,’ Lady Anne Wolmer remarked to Mistress Mayerne, who was standing beside her at the first reception.
‘And so she is,’ Louise answered. ‘My father who again attended her, says she drops her young as easily as one shells peas from a pod.’
‘She is fortunate,’ Anne answered coldly, for this coarse speech offended her, coming from a girl as young as herself. She added, ‘And more than ever fortunate in her marriage, It is not often that a father’s choice, especially if he be a king, is so happy. But this success persists and even seems to increase.’
‘Increase is the word for it,’ Louise said, laughing heartily.
Lady Anne turned away, showing her disapproval more thoroughly still Louise was annoyed by it, so she followed, waiting for an opportunity to strike again, this time in revenge.
She found her chance when Anne joined a group of her friends among whom were one or two of the Prince’s pages. These latter were talking about one of their number who had joined the Dutch navy and was now at sea.
‘We miss him, yes,’ Mistress Louise said. ‘As also that young Englishman who disgraced himself. Leslie was the name, I think.’
‘You knew him well, did you not?’ Anne said, unable to control the sudden jealousy that stabbed her.
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�Well enough,’ Louise paused, gathering her wits to strike. ‘Well enough to hear his confession of the reason he had for challenging Captain Carr.’
‘We know it,’ one of the pages put in, to spare Anne a sordid tale she might not have heard.
‘Indeed? How Alan Carr had taken away some doxy young Francis Leslie was partial to and they fell out over the ownership with disaster to the older man?’
‘I think you are mistaken, mistress,’ the page said, for he had seen Anne’s face whiten.
‘Have you a better reason?’ Louise asked, smiling cruelly at Anne.
‘I have, but I will not discuss a man who is absent under the Prince’s displeasure.’
He walked away, having offered his arm to the Lady Anne, who took it thankfully. The rest of the group dispersed as well, leaving Louise alone, her spite turned against herself as she was stopped short in her mischief-making.
Anne thought she had learned the reason for her not having received any answer to the letter she had written to Francis. Had he really deceived her? But had he really made those delicate advances, that were undetectable to anyone but herself, as she had fondly thought?
Clearly not. Clearly his thoughts and feelings had been engaged elsewhere. The happiness she had praised aloud to that rough-tongued girl, that physician’s daughter, a happiness she had dreamed of for herself, had no roots but in her silly romantic imagination. Francis had put her out of danger with regard to Captain Alan Carr, for her father, she knew, had toyed with the man’s expressed wish for her hand. Well, let her father consider a fresh choice. If happiness was to be denied her, let her at least be placed where the thought of Francis, far less his actual presence, would for ever be made impossible.
Still no letter came to Anne from London to disturb her half-hearted resolution. And Francis stayed on at his uncle’s house in Paternoster Row, taking no steps to find profitable employment of any kind, but looked after by Young Giles and his wife, who had received fresh instructions from Colonel Ogilvy, together with a sufficient sum to carry them out. His nephew had sustained an injury for which he needed a period of rest, the colonel’s letter stated. When fully recovered the lieutenant would return to Holland.
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