‘We have called you hither, Lieutenant Leslie, to hear from you direct your tale of that terrible deed that hath robbed us and our country of a great man, a great statesman.’
As Francis hesitated, uncertain Where to begin his tale, the King said, less formally, ‘Come closer; be seated. Have no fear. Those that protected you at Portsmouth far outweigh those that in the heat of the moment would have joined you with the villain, the infamous murderer of my Steenie.’
Tears filled the red-rimmed eyes as he pronounced the familiar name of his beloved friend. The attendants placed a chair for the lieutenant, then withdrew beyond hearing. So Francis recited once again his chance encounter at Ports-mouth with the man he had met on Forager in the Cadiz expedition. They had exchanged a few words of no significance.
‘The fellow showed no excitement, no animosity?’
‘He was always inclined to despondency, Your Majesty,’ Francis said carefully. ‘Never hopeful about that venture, nor the coming one. It was his nature as I believe, sire.’
‘Had he others with him? Directing him?’
‘I have no knowledge of such. I think, sir, he was not of the type of a conspirator.’
King Charles allowed himself a watery smile.
‘Your experience of the type being no doubt very wide. In one so young and hitherto unused to plots.’
Francis blushed warmly, hanging his head.
‘Nay, boy, I believe you speak right. I have sought many opinions of this man, but all insist he was aloof, uncompanionable, easily offended, imagining wrongs where they did not exist.’
Francis dared to look up. Felton’s wrongs were real enough. Denied promotion, after all his loyal years of service; denied even his proper payments in his unworthy rank.
‘They tell me he was party to a conspiracy. They seek to rack him for information of the plot. So far I have forbid it. You agree with that, do you?’
‘Your Majesty knows best at all times,’ Francis said, not as flattery, but an honest opinion of the King’s judgement in this matter.
Charles was silent for a minute or two, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. Then he demanded to know how Francis came to be a witness of the foul deed itself.
‘I was with my fellow officers, sire. We had gone to greet the Duke when he left the breakfast room. Neither I nor any near me saw Felton beside the door. He ran out from the wall to confront His Grace. He plunged his knife –’
Francis broke off, fearing the King might faint at this repetition of the story he had already given.
‘Go on, go on!’ Charles whispered. ‘I have heard it all many times and each time I feel the blade enter my breast as it did my Steenie’s. Go on, boy. You were the first at his side, they tell me. As you yourself tell me.’
‘I was the nearest, Your Majesty. I knelt at his side to help if that was possible. He had plucked out the knife as the murderer fled and taken a few steps before he fell, But he was already dead.’
The repetition seemed to relieve Charles. He sat back in his chair. His tears had dried. He began to ask Francis why he was in England. Had he come over to volunteer to join the Duke? Not in the first place? Then why?
The story of the duel came out yet once more, omitting any detail of Carr’s insult. The King’s interest was roused. He remembered the Somersets.
‘A treacherous pair,’ he said, returning to his formal manner. ‘We can only thank you for driving away a potential enemy of our poor sister. And wish you a return to our forces in Holland, or at least to the service of that unfortunate exiled Electress.’
Francis noticed that the King did not call his sister Queen on this occasion. Perhaps he regretted his recent renewal of her marriage allowance. Francis chided himself for this flippancy, while rising at a hint from the attendant-in-waiting. His chair was whisked away. He swept a deep bow, as he waited for the words of dismissal.
‘We will send word to Her Highness,’ King Charles said. ‘We would see your loyalty at Portsmouth suitably rewarded.’
Again he offered his hand and again Francis knelt to kiss it. He left Whitehall in a fervour of hope and worship. He poured a full account of the audience into the willing, amazed ears of Will Stubble, after which in honour of the King’s promise to get him reinstated he proposed taking Will across the river to see the play. Ben Jonson’s Alchemist was being given, a suitably lively and comical piece he had been told, if a trifle out of date, that had not attracted him at a time when he had been nursing his depression.
Will did not much favour the theatre but he knew if he refused the proffered treat Lieutenant Leslie would go off alone to seek out a certain young whore he frequented, who lived between Paul’s Churchyard and Blackfriars Steps.
‘He’s taken enough risks of the pox since we was sent out of Holland,’ Will confided to Young Giles. ‘I’d not have him find her from home and go searching elsewhere in desperation.’
‘And why should this doxy be abroad? And why so certain she be not diseased?’ Young Giles asked. ‘And how know you of it?’
‘Because she hath a little sister in the trade that is more to my liking,’ Will answered with a laugh. ‘And she keeps me informed of my young master’s visits.’
Francis never learned how his pardon was secured, for Colonel Ogilvy swore he knew nothing of the manner of it and judged it wise to make no inquiries into the matter. It was enough that the charges against the young man were dropped, he returned to The Hague, he was again invited at times to the Prince of Orange’s Court and to his great delight he was appointed to serve in the small English contingent detailed to guard the Palgrave and his family.
‘You will fight, perhaps, if the Elector makes any new move to rescue the Palatinate,’ the Electress told him.
She had summoned him to her new home at Rhenen to give him his orders, for the Elector preferred to leave all matters concerning his children in his wife’s hands.
At Rhenen in the south of Holland, the exiled couple had now built themselves a most attractive villa, situated in beautiful country, near the Rhine. It had given them very great pleasure to plan the building of it. Also to escape from The Hague and the borrowed house they had occupied there. Of course they could not afford it, but somehow, by using or converting such sums as they could lay hands on, by borrowing, by cutting down here and altering there, the villa emerged, small, elegant, a kind of paradise. In hunting country, too.
Francis rode there with Will to take up his new post, anxious to succeed, curious to see the new establishment that his Uncle Arthur considered an unwarranted extravagance, eager above all to meet again the gracious lady who was still his ideal of queenliness, as of motherhood, beauty and all other virtues of exalted womanhood.
True he was sad to find himself removed from the Court of Orange, where Lady Anne still served the Princess Amelia. He had written to her very warmly in the first days of rejoicing over his reinstatement. But she had not answered his letter, nor had he found a way to see her again before he left The Hague.
But this disappointment faded into insignificance at the prospect of actually being in the service of the Queen. He said as much when she received him shortly after his arrival.
‘I shall welcome active service, Your Majesty, if I have the good fortune to achieve it,’ he ventured.
‘We have no doubt of that,’ she answered, smiling at him.
‘However, just now the opportunity is absent. So we propose to send you to Leyden to our older children’s establishment. Our heir, the Prince Frederic Henry, with his brother Prince Rupert and his sister the Princess Louise, live and study at their own establishment with their tutors and guardians. They are to be joined from Berlin by Prince Maurice and the Princess Elizabeth. Also by Prince Charles Louis. Our daughter Elizabeth is clever and forward for her age. We propose to give her separate training under my Lord and Lady Vere. But you will learn all this when you present yourself at Leyden. Now tell me all you have done since you were sent out of the province for your bar
barous behaviour.’
She spoke with such a comical twist of the words, such a bright spark in her eye that Francis wanted to laugh aloud. Her Majesty was in a merry mood. And shortly afterwards she was laughing aloud herself, so Francis dared to join in and was not chided for it.
He emerged from the audience still laughing, and very nearly collided with Mistress Louise Mayerne, who scolded him in a shrill angry voice until she saw who it was.
‘Your pardon, mistress,’ Francis said, sweeping her a bow but making off directly after.
‘Stay!’ called Louise. ‘I did not recognise you. Master Leslie, is it not? Or are you restored to an army rank?’
‘I was never deprived of it,’ Francis answered, very reluctantly walking back. ‘There was a – a misunderstanding which is now resolved.’
Something in the young man’s polite determination, a hint of menace, a warning not to intrude upon his private concerns, only stirred Mistress Mayerne’s spite, her very mixed feelings towards him. She knew, but would not acknowledge, his deep attraction for her, because she knew and bitterly resented the total lack of attraction she held for him.
‘You serve again then with your uncle, Colonel Ogilvy? You have returned to The Hague or is not the Court now at Amsterdam?’
‘I serve the Queen of Bohemia, mistress,’ Francis said proudly, but without offering any further detail.
Louise dismissed this news with a wave of the hand.
‘Then you remain here? You do not return to the Prince of Orange’s Court?’
Francis shook his head, edging away again. He resented the girl’s impertinence, her persistence, her evident thirst for gossip that she could relay to her companions. Louise saw the movement. She must strike before he could escape her.
‘Then you have none of the latest news, unless you have it from my lady herself in writing.’
‘News?’
‘Of my Lady Anne Wolmer’s betrothal?’
‘To whom?’
Francis regretted his sharp question directly the words were out. He regretted more his failure to answer Anne’s kind letter on his banishment. That fault could never be rubbed out in writing. But he had hoped, when he should meet her again among the Princess Amelia’s entourage, to plead forgiveness in person. Louise’s next words destroyed that hope.
‘I know not to whom. Some English nobleman. Her father returned to England directly following your Duke of Buckingham’s assassination. He took his daughter with him.’
‘I am not surprised,’ Francis forced himself to say. He bowed with a severe formality Mistress Mayerne could not overcome and they parted, Francis to travel to Leyden to take up his new post of companion and bodyguard to the young Princes, Louise to the Queen’s parlour where her duties still lay.
And then she presently sought out the Lady Anne Wolmer who, since her father had gone home and the Princess of Orange, obeying her lord, had dispensed with the girl’s services, had returned to her former duty with the exiled queen. For Orange had no wish to employ in any part of his household man or maid who belonged to the faction of the dead duke. He had not approved of Buckingham’s behaviour when alive, nor of his regrettable influence upon the English king.
‘I think you have missed a meeting you might have enjoyed,’ Louise said to Anne, when she had found her. ‘The young man that enjoyed his uncle’s patronage in spite of his base birth.’
Anne grew pale but she answered calmly, ‘I am not sure of whom you speak.’
‘Leslie. A Lieutenant Leslie, outlawed for fighting a duel with your former suitor. Now pardoned. The young man, not the suitor.’
Anne’s heart leaped, but she still controlled her voice, for she had his letter.
‘I remember him. I am glad to hear of his pardon. He was here today, you say?’
‘He was. At audience with Madam. But now returned, he told me, to the Prince’s Court.’
‘He told you that? You had speech with him?’
‘Aye, indeed. He sought me out.’
This was too much. Louise saw she had overstated her advantage.
‘I think he did not know you were here. He sought me out as an old friend.’
‘But you did not tell him another old friend was serving Madam here at Rhenen?’
This was open resentment, almost an accusation of former lying. Louise struck back.
‘Nay, but he gave me no chance. He was eager to be gone to his new attraction. He hinted at her perfections, though he could not, of course, name the lady.’
‘At the Court?’
‘Or outside it. I do not know. He could scarcely with his misfortune have pretensions to any noble alliance.’
‘No, indeed,’ answered Anne, coldly.
But her heart was wrung by the news, as Louise intended. Mistress Mayerne left the Lady Anne to nurse the wound she had dealt her. She rejoiced for the rest of that day in her double treachery. Surely, she thought, Lord Aldborough would soon recall his daughter, since her presence in Holland now served no purpose whatever. And then, when Francis Leslie came again to Rhenen she would no longer have any rival to circumvent and perhaps her forlorn but dearest hope might be fulfilled.
Chapter Eighteen
The older surviving children of that stupendous family reared by the Elector and Electress Palatine had been placed in a separate establishment at Leyden when they were still of comparatively tender age. The heir, Prince Frederic Henry, had been eleven at the time. A few of the babies had died in infancy or early childhood, causing the parents sharp but passing grief. But there was no danger of the stolen lands being lost to the family because the succession lacked an heir.
It was a necessary arrangement, since the exiled couple had no real home and a yearly increase occurred with painful regularity; painful, that is to say, to their well-wishers and also to their creditors, though welcomed by the fond parents.
When Francis went to Leyden to take up his new post the eldest surviving boy was sixteen, an intelligent, well-mannered lad, not particularly clever, but no fool either. He had enjoyed good tutors who kept him interested in his books but allowed him due time for many sports. It was taken for granted he would later suceed where his good-natured but light-minded, easily led father had failed.
At this time the boy himself began to look forward to a soldier’s life in the cause of his real country, the Palatinate. He did remember, as a small child, being presented to the nobility of Bohemia, most of whom were Calvinist like his father. He had stood by the throne where the Elector, chosen king, had received those vows of loyalty soon to be made worthless. And from that moment it seemed to him in memory, life had been one long confusion, turmoil, escape, journeying, endless jour-neying, separation from brothers and sisters, from young friends, pets, nurses, parents, from place to place, house after house, until the diminished entourage had crammed into the building in The Hague. And at last, after constriction, after constraint, to the new freedom of an ordered life in Leyden.
All this Prince Frederic Henry and the others poured into the willing, amused ears of Francis Leslie during his tours of duty in their service, when he was sent to ride with the boys or teach them to shoot with a hunting crossbow or to use a firearm. Instructing these energetic youngsters was a pleasure to him, perhaps the most natural pleasure he had enjoyed since he had been sent from Kilessie with his personal faults and the sin of his parents hung in disgrace about his neck.
At the time of Francis’s arrival Prince Rupert’s energy already amounted to wildness. It was easy to see how his talents would develop. As Corporal Stubble warned his master: That’s a devil-ridden boy if ever there was one. More than one devil rides ’un, I’d say. Pretty as paint, an’ butter won’t melt and all that. But you’d be wise to watch His Young Highness. There’s big trouble in his path to my way of thinking.’
Francis laughed at this. He had never looked at Rupert as a menace, only as a challenge, when the boy drove his mount away at a gallop and young Leslie had to chase after him, head
him off, force him to slacken pace and finally submit.
Corporal Stubble much preferred acting as groom to one of the ‘young ladies’, as he called them behind their backs. To their faces he used ‘Your Highness’ with a flourish of the whip he carried, much to their amusement. His favourite was the Princess Elizabeth who had come from Berlin to join her kin at Leyden. But she did not stay there very long before she joined Lord and Lady Vere to receive the sort of instruction in court manners she had hitherto lacked.
She was a clever girl, who had enjoyed sharing a certain amount of instruction with her brother Maurice. She did not altogether relish her new ladylike training, but for a time, until she was older, she had to accept it meekly, since this was expected of her. During the winter of that year Prince Frederic Henry, too, left the house at Leyden for The Hague, where he joined his father.
Lieutenant Leslie was then attached as a personal attendant to the young prince, and rode with him to join the Elector. Will Stubble as usual rode behind, acting as groom to his master, together with a small posse of attendants and grooms for the prince. The exiled couple could not of themselves afford such extravagance, but certain moneys had been laid aside for the Palgrave’s children, into which he felt justified in dipping for any very special purpose.
The present one was to join in a gathering of ships assembled for a kind of review by the Prince of Orange. It was an opportunity, the Elector decided, to present his young son and heir to the Prince, who received him very graciously. There was a banquet on the evening before the review. In the morning most of the gentlemen, together with merchants, officers of the Prince’s army and navy, civil officials and others went on board various craft to see the review at closer quarters from the water.
The assembled ships received countless small boatloads of spectators, who clambered on board with much shouting and laughter. The waters near the shore were filled with row-boats taking people out to these craft and returning empty for more. Between and around them ships of all sizes, flat-bottomed barges, gaff-rigged sloops, pinnaces, long galleys, all dodged and swung as the sails were run up and the seamen struggled to get clear of the shore and of one another.
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