To Serve a Queen

by Josephine Bell

  Prince Frederic Henry was wild with excitement, hoarse with shouting applause as the great ships won out to sea. He and his father, together with Francis and the corporal were on board a cutter whose master had been detailed by the Prince of Orange to give the boy a good view of the main proceedings. So the rapid twists and turns they made to use the wind to the best advantage had a particularly disturbing effect upon all the landlubbers on board, including the Palgrave and his son, Francis to some small extent, but Will Stubble not at all. The latter had foreseen what was in store for him. Unlike his betters he had stalwartly refused strong liquor during the early stages of the proceedings and by the time the other three were less able to enjoy the sights than groan over their impending sickness, Will was in full command of himself.

  He was still sufficiently in command when the collision took them unawares. He saved the lives of all four at that moment, as Francis remembered afterwards, by dragging them back from the bows of the vessel just before the impact.

  For, as the cutter went about to clear the last of the slower, heavier vessels barring the way to more open waters and a better view of the whole magnificent scene, that craft also began to turn. The movement of those ponderous sails took the wind from the cutter’s canvas. She went into stays, lost way, could take no avoiding action. The two ships met in a resounding crash that broke in the cutter’s bows, at the same time holing her below the water-line. Some of her crew were struck in the impact, others knocked overboard to be ground between the two hulls. As the heavier vessel dragged on, freeing herself, she left the cutter sinking by the bows, her gear in confusion, her helpless passengers in a state of panic, increased quite fatally in many cases by their already enfeebled state.

  Francis found himself in the water without ever knowing exactly how he got there. But the exiled king was beside him, gasping, clutching, swallowing sea water, as he tried to open his mouth to shout.

  ‘My son!’ he managed to scream as Francis, seeing the man could not swim a stroke, caught hold of him to hold him up.

  Francis looked about him. To his surprise and relief Will was not far off, supporting in his turn the young prince, whose pale face lay along the corporal’s arm, eyes closed, making no obvious attempt to help himself, though Francis knew the lad could swim, though not very strongly.

  ‘Is he hurt?’ he yelled.

  He could not move nearer to Will because he dared not attempt to swim with the whole weight and hindrance of the Elector in his arms. If he could have rid his burden of some of his heavy ceremonial dress and himself of his uniform, movement might have been possible. But since the man seemed incapable of helping himself in any way whatever, only calling out at intervals for his son, Francis gave up any thought of helping Will with the boy and gave his whole attention to supporting his burden while he looked about for rescue.

  The prospect of this seemed at first to be fair, but was slow in coming. The very number of ships about, though less than those inshore of them, worked against rapid moves of an organised kind. The collision had been totally unexpected, so had the dire results of it. Vessels had been touching and parting for hours, with nothing lost but their paint, some unimportant gear and the temper of the seamen, with perhaps a little torn canvas. It was not seen at once that the cutter had foundered, was indeed now sunk to her water-line. Many of the crew had saved themselves by clinging to the sheets, the rigging and rails of the ship that had destroyed their own. Some passengers had followed their example. Others, flung into the water like Francis and his party, had been picked up by the more quick-witted of those sailing in the general line of the disaster. But nearly an hour passed before a systematic search for survivors was ordered, manned, and set in motion.

  All the time Francis held up the Palgrave, whose frantic cries subsided into occasional mutterings and then into silence. When at last a boat came up to them, neither he nor Francis was capable of speech, being nearly frozen and in an extremity of exhaustion. But the rescuers chose the older victim to secure first and tumbled him into safety. They caught at Francis as he was drifting away on the tide and hauled him in, too. Then set out for the shore, quite visible five miles off.

  The young man found his voice almost at once. He explained who they were, he implored them to search further for the Prince Frederic Henry, who was being helped by his own man, he explained.

  The rescuers kept their course. They considered that both the poor wretches in their boat needed warmth and care just as soon as they could give it them. Besides, Francis had not made himself very coherent in their tongue, though he spoke it with some fluency. Also the area of the collision was not yet empty of searchers, though now looking more for flotsam than for drowning persons. The time for survivors was really past, though they did not say so. If his friends had lived, they told Francis, he would find them already ashore or they would be brought in very soon.

  They were not on shore. Word went round at once when they landed, that the Elector Palatine was safe in the care of Lieutenant Leslie. Those of the Elector’s entourage who had not embarked came to him at once, to relieve the lieutenant, but not to praise him. For where was the young Prince who was the lieutenant’s particular charge? Why had he been left to rescue himself? In the care of a mere so-called corporal? A servant of a so-called lieutenant?

  Partly it was their guilty feelings for having cried off from watching the review afloat that started this talk. Partly its reinforcement by those of the entourage who had saved themselves in the collision, abandoning both Elector and Prince in face of their own danger. The fact remained that in spite of his action, in spite of his plight upon landing, Francis found himself abandoned on the quay, the Elector swept away from him, still speechless, shivering, grey-faced, half-demented. For there was no news of Frederic Henry and for Francis no news of Will Stubble.

  Some of the Prince’s household did find Francis that evening. He had been taken in by a middle-aged merchant couple who had seen him left to his own devices and followed him, staggering and dripping wet in vague search for some inn where he could rest and dry his clothes. They had taken him to their house and tended him. When found he was still too shocked to thank the couple properly, but the Prince’s people, who liked him and who knew that his devotion to the Bohemian exiles was genuine and deep, explained the situation. Lieutenant Leslie would come back to thank them when he was fully recovered, they said. The couple assured them that they understood. There were tears in the good wife’s eyes when they left.

  It was not until five days later that word came to The Hague of bodies beginning to be cast up on the sandy beaches where tide and current was sure to deliver them in due course.

  Francis went to the beach to watch. Already a few officials, peasants, fishermen and more dubious characters in wait to steal were moving up and down. As expected, the bodies came in on the tide that rolled them up the sands and retreating left them there, jetsam, useless except to relieve anxiety with the death of hope.

  As now, when Francis joined a denser group gathered about two corpses that had arrived together.

  ‘Holding the boy in his arms,’ was the first thing he heard and knew at once what it meant.

  Will Stubble and the Prince Frederic Henry. He thought of them in that order before he saw them lying there. He had wondered all these agonising days, how it had come about in the end. Had the boy been dead already, when he saw him in the water, lying, his face along Will’s arm, white, eyes closed? Had Will discovered this but held on, sacrificing any hope of his own rescue? But why had they not been rescued as he was? Had Will drowned slowly, or had cramp taken him quickly and the boy with him?

  He knelt beside the bodies, putting aside the onlookers with an authority that was at once recognised. Will Stubble and the young prince lay there on the sand, the man’s arms locked about the slim body as he must have forced them to fasten when he knew life was passing from him. He could not deliver up his charge alive but he would not lose him dead.

  ‘It is the
Prince Frederic Henry Palatine,’ he said brokenly, when an official came to question him. ‘Heir to the Elector Palatine, King of Bohemia. And Corporal William Stubble, Englishman, in the service of …’

  He could go no further. He wept, his hands covering his face, sitting back on his heels, rocking to and fro in bitter grief, while men disputed over his head and sent off messengers and covered the bodies from prying eyes.

  In time they came back with a stretcher for the boy and took him away. They offered to dispose of the other corpse. It was of no account, they said, but if the fellow had been known to him perhaps Francis would undertake to have him buried and see to informing his next-of-kin.

  ‘He gave his life for the Prince!’ Francis cried indignantly. ‘He might have saved himself, leaving the child to me. But he did not.’

  ‘He failed.’

  ‘Must the attempt be considered naught because it did not succeed?’

  ‘Clearly so.’

  Francis cursed their cold hearts and minds, defying them to touch his dead friend. So they left him alone on the beach, even the pickpockets and graveyard thieves not daring to disturb his grief.

  He sat there all that night, mourning the loss of the only true friend he had made since he left Scotland, and the only real friend of his adult life. He had known many companions of his own age and both sexes, he had loved lightly girls whose names he had forgotten or never known. Anne Wolmer, lost now for ever, had excited in him another kind of love, of the heart and imagination as well as of the body. He respected, admired, held in affection his soldier uncle and to a lesser degree his uncle the scholar in Oxford. But Will had fought at his side, escaped the dangers of war with him, played, hunted, taught, advised, cosseted, scolded and unquestioningly loved him as had no one else in his life since he outgrew his old nurse at the laird’s house in Kilessie and a certain groom in the stable there.

  When the dawn came he sent a message to Colonel Ogilvy for help to bring his dead friend to the English church for Anglican Protestant burial.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The confusion over the rescue and return of the Elector Palatine did not last. Nor did the horror at the drowning of Prince Frederic Henry. A brief, very formal message of thanks came to Francis. He had not expected more. In fact he had half expected blame for not securing the young prince’s person at the time of the accident, leaving the Elector to his own people. But the whole affair had been so sudden, so violent, there had been no time at all to take concerted action before they were thrown in the water. And from that moment it had been a matter of holding up a drowning man, which he would have continued to do, he swore to himself, whoever it had been who clung to him, calling for help.

  No, calling for help for his son, Francis remembered. Not for himself. Never at any time for himself. Too late now, surely to lay blame in any direction.

  Francis was right. The feeling at the Prince of Orange’s Court came round to agree with him, particularly as the Prince himself sent a warm, private message of congratulation, together with a word of sympathy for the loss of the brave soldier who had attempted the rescue of the young heir to the Palatinate.

  Colonel Ogilvy heard a full account of the news with relief and admiration. Though he had no doubt Francis had helped the Elector because he was beside him at the time of the accident and for no other reason, he could not have made a more fortunate choice. This was confirmed by an elderly visitor, Sir Thomas Roe, who had known the unfortunate royal pair of Bohemia since ‘Madam’ was a young girl and he had acted as tutor to her elder brother. They had corresponded from that time and since her exile from both her old and her new domains she had found comfort in the exercise.

  ‘I have come from her now as an old friend, Arthur,’ Sir Thomas said, ‘and as well to get news from you, an you have it, of that young nephew of yours. Madam hath a great wish to see the young man to thank him in person for preserving the life of her beloved lord.’

  ‘And he, poor man, is torn with grief for his lost boy.’

  ‘He is. He would far rather, he repeats it continually, have been left to drown if the lad could have been saved.’

  ‘He means it too.’ Colonel Ogilvy gave an exasperated laugh. ‘He always means nobly, sincerely. A good man, but the most ineffectual I have ever encountered in my whole experience.’

  ‘Everyone knows it and has taken advantage of it. Except Madam herself, who counts him her dearest treasure.’

  ‘And will present him with yet another pledge of her love before the month is out.’

  The eleventh,’ said Sir Thomas, drily. ‘Boy or girl, the supply of heirs to that ravished throne is very secure. Did I not say your nephew chose well in his rescue?’

  The colonel did not put forward Sir Thomas Roe’s conclusion when Francis called upon him soon after his return to his former lodgings. But he told the young man that the exiled queen wished to see him to thank him in person.

  ‘I add my heartfelt congratulations, my boy,’ Colonel Ogilvy said. ‘Your action was admirable and so was poor Stubble’s. You will feel his loss most grievously. In fact, I doubt …’

  He stopped, not quite sure how much Francis had been told of the Elector’s state of mind.

  ‘Oh, I am again my own master,’ Francis said with some bitterness. ‘His Majesty of Bohemia no longer trusts me to attend his children. He almost lays the blame on me for the Prince’s death.’

  ‘That is an unjust decision,’ his uncle said. ‘But not unlike the man. In any case his Calvinist religion should promote his patience and submission to the Divine Will, since he considers our whole lives to be pre-ordained, not capable of any change from that laid down in Heaven.’

  Francis lowered his eyes, for he was not sure if the old soldier spoke earnestly or with a reserve of satire.

  ‘I think you would do well to take a period of leave in England,’ Colonel Ogilvy said.

  This agreed with Francis’s own plans.

  ‘It has been offered me,’ he told his uncle. ‘In a personal message from the Prince of Orange. He speaks well of my action. He accepts me back into the army in some shape, perhaps in a force that is to be raised by the Marquis of Hamilton with the support of King Charles.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the colonel answered, ‘I believe the Marquis may act; I must doubt the King. But we shall see. Now I think I may tell you my own plans.’ He paused, looking away into the distance beyond the window. ‘I am grown too old for battle. My army pay comes precariously, while I must spend freely at the Courts while I attend both in purely formal service. In fact I spend more for Bohemia with the Palatinate, both submerged, than I do in attendance upon the House of Orange. So I plan to retire now to my comfortable house in Paternoster Row, enjoy my small patrimony and the services of Young Giles and his good wife and live happily upon my memories.’

  ‘I have never thought of you as old, sir, until this moment,’ Francis said, smiling broadly, ‘and I do not even now believe it.’

  ‘Spare me flattery,’ his uncle said. ‘But help me to pack up my belongings here and attend me in London until I be settled in my father’s house.’

  In my mother’s house, Francis thought with a stab of pain, wondering how he could bear to go there again. But he was growing fast now in experience and before the day was out he had told himself to give up mawkish regrets, accept the recurring blows of the cruel world and give his personal wounds less angry importance.

  Colonel Ogilvy passed on Sir Thomas Roe’s message before Francis left him and then settled down to answer a letter that had come to him from Alderman Angus Leslie. It brought news that might prove disquieting alike to himself and Francis. But he had decided not to give it to the young man until they were both on English soil. Meanwhile he thanked the alderman for his letter and put forward his own wishes for his nephew.

  Francis found the Queen’s house all in mourning, reminding him in some sort of the occasion of King James’s lying-in-state. But less extreme. The livery of the servants was far
from complete; a black band or ribbon attached to their usual clothes had to suffice.

  But the Queen herself was robed in black, with a black veil about her head, sitting on a black-draped ample chair. The room was hung with dark curtains, drawn together.

  When he was presented to this figure of grief Francis dropped on his knee, bowing his head almost to the ground. Though he had been blamed in some sort for the young Prince’s loss, he had not until this moment felt any guilt in the matter. But now he pictured to himself the mother’s agony in the loss of her child, not her first-born who had died very young, but the eldest surviving, the heir. Particularly at this moment of natural anxlety, when she expected daily to be delivered of her next offspring.

  But he felt the Queen’s hands on his arms, heard her kind voice, calm, gentle, bidding him rise. As he moved to do so, looking up at her, she leaned down to kiss his forehead. She murmured, so low that only he could hear, ‘I can never thank you fully for saving my lord, my love.’

  Then, as he got to his feet, his heart beating violently in wild gratitude, joy, near adoration, she spoke more loudly, plainly, commanding, ‘Set a chair for Lieutenant Leslie. We would hear his account of this dreadful accident that hath robbed us of our beloved son.’

  His recital added nothing to his first account of the collision and what followed. It seemed to Francis that she had brought him there less for any possible solace his story might be to her than to save him from remorse. This only increased his gratitude and his devotion.

  ‘We have been told you are to leave Leyden,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Perhaps that must be. There will be changes. The Prince Charles Louis – the Prince Rupert –’ She gave him a wan smile. The one too staid, the other too wild. Our poor Frederic Henry …’