To Serve a Queen

by Josephine Bell

  Francis was torn again by her obvious perplexity. He sat uneasily, longing for this distressing interview to end. To help this on he said, ‘I have been told I may take leave. My uncle goes to England and I with him. But I – I –’ the words came with a rush, ‘I could not bear it if my service was ended – my service to Your Majesty – I have no other wish in life …’

  He was down on his knees again, his hands clasped, a suppliant of such clear young honesty, such urgency, that even the cynics among the Queen’s small band of courtiers found no food for their wit.

  She was profoundly touched. Tears fell from her eyes as she cried, ‘Indeed we are blessed in our sad life above our merit by such loyalty and such fervour! Go you to England, boy, and we will recommend you again to our brother, so you may be engaged once more in our cause, which please God may at last have the success it deserves.’

  He left the villa in a daze of lofty dreams in which he breached a besieged wall single-handed and led a victorious band of well-trained soldiers through it to secure or kill the Spanish invaders and free the citizens to their rightful Elector Palatine.

  So taken up was he with his thoughts that he did not see Lady Anne Wolmer. She thought he avoided her on purpose. She told herself she did not care. His reputation, according to her associate Louise Mayerne, was grown more than ever unsavoury. But he looked no less handsome than before. And what were her prospects now that her father, since the death of his patron, had begun to sink towards obscurity?

  In five weeks Colonel Ogilvy and his nephew landed at Harwich in Essex. The colonel’s luggage, a number of bulky packages, crated furniture, wrapped pictures, boxes of papers and books, household utensils, weapons, were piled on to a couple of waggons. The colonel’s favourite horse had travelled on the ship with him. His carriage and carriage horses had been sold in Holland. A second horse was bought in Harwich for Francis and so the party travelled to London where Young Giles, warned of their arrival, was ready to receive his master.

  There was much rejoicing in the small house near the church of St Paul’s, whose square tower split the morning summer sun into two shining arcs above the opposite rooftops. At the present season, early February, its rays were hidden until midday, if indeed London saw them at all for the smoke of the sea-coal now used in most of the grates of the capital, since wood had become scarce and far to seek beyond the spreading of the city outside its walls.

  For the first few days the colonel and Francis were kept busy arranging the former’s possessions in the old home. At last the study shelves were again set with books, histories of campaigns, both of the ancient world in Latin and translations of the Greek, of later times in Europe and in the Wars of the Roses in England. Such works of literature as Chaucer’s Tales, Le Morte d’Arthur of Malory, the Mabinogion from the Welsh, Bocaccio’s famous stories and the histories of Froissart also took their place. No poets, no playwrights. Even Shakespeare, now somewhat out of fashion, found no place on the soldier’s shelves. The colonel had attended masques, and sometimes plays, in the way of duty, but took little interest in such mountebank folly, as he called it. In fact it embarrassed him not a little, this aping of heroic deeds or the transports of love. It was unworthy of grown men to display these childish antics. The verse meant nothing to him.

  When the rooms were set in order, Colonel Ogilvy ordered his horse one morning. He left Francis to go down to the river to see the ice it was rumoured had formed there for several yards out from the shore. He rode off to Gracious Street without telling his nephew his destination or his purpose.

  But when he got back he took the young man into his study, made him sit down and standing before the fire to warm his backside made numb with cold on the ride home, he said, ‘Francis, I have certain news for you which may disturb, but which you must not allow to anger you. I think you are old enough now to bear it as a man, consider it as a man and submit to the wishes of that good old alderman, Master Angus Leslie.’

  Francis grew a little pale, but waited to hear more. For several days Young Giles had been hinting at certain news he said he dare not give, but which concerned the young master closely. Francis had been led to believe it was connected with his parents and since his mother’s sad story could not now, in any particular, be news to him, he guessed it had something to do with his father. Pride stopped him asking if this was so. He continued to keep silent while his uncle searched for words.

  ‘Master Leslie hath with him a visitor from the New World,’ he said bluntly at last. ‘I think you can guess who that is.’

  ‘My father,’ Francis said, speaking with difficulty, but firmly.

  ‘The alderman wishes you to meet him. Nay, do not refuse without considering the position. I said you were no longer a child. Prove it to me by your consideration for a man who has helped your father for many years, both to establish him here, to rescue him in need, to support his pardon and for twelve years and more hath traded with him in his most successful venture. To meet your father is, in the alderman’s view, to clear a great pit of its filth that hath lain between you since the day you were born.’

  ‘Since the day he most vilely got me,’ Francis groaned.

  ‘Maybe, maybe,’ Colonel Ogilvy agreed. Privately he had always blamed his sister for the event. Why were women always so fecund when it was the least convenient? Part of their prevailingly animal natures, he supposed.

  After some further persuasion Francis agreed to go. Alone, he insisted, which pleased the colonel. And on the next day; no mulling it over. Get it done with and then forget it.

  But this was not at all as things fell out. Francis was shown into the merchant’s office, where Master Leslie was sitting at his desk, wearing a warm fur-lined gown, though a big fire was blazing on the hearth. Beside him stood a very tall broad man, of middle age, dressed in a drab city suit, with spotless white linen collar and cuffs, white shirt and dark green waistcoat His red hair was streaked with grey, as was his small neat beard. The hair curled naturally; he wore it just below his ears, but much shorter than Francis, who followed the fashion of the young men of his time, though he still shaved his face.

  ‘Come in, Francis,’ Master Leslie said. ‘I want to present you to your father, Master Alec Nimmo.’

  Francis moved forward steadily. Alec held out his hand. The young man took it, the clasp held for a long moment.

  Alderman Leslie said afterwards to his wife, with the usual laugh that came to him in most tense situations, ‘They are much of a height, Francis still slender, smaller features, eyes a darker blue, hair darker, auburn instead of carrot. But the look was the same; wary, hard, giving nothing, ice above, an explosion below, ready to meet any attack. Thank God each liked what he saw. They can become friends.’

  But to Master Leslie’s sorrow no deeper feeling than a reconciliation. They dined, with Mistress Leslie presiding. They exchanged news covering many years. Francis dimly remembered Alec calling at Kilessie when the latter went back into Fife following his pardon. Francis described how he had been sent from St Andrews. They both laughed, recognising a similar want of any academic urge.

  ‘You should come to Virginia if you seek adventure,’ Alec said. ‘Even further north, where I fish the great cod. We have new settlements made all the time, though some are too religious for my liking, spoil-sports, kill-joys, with their sour looks and bible minds …’

  ‘That would not do for me if it casts gloom on them,’ Francis answered. ‘But the people in Holland are Lutheran or Calvinist. The Elector is Calvinist, though my queen is Protestant, being an English princess.’

  Alec exchanged looks with Master Leslie. He had been told of the boy’s allegiance to the cause of the Palgrave. Master Leslie turned the conversation into shallower channels.

  Francis went home that evening, soothed but in essence no happier. He had a father of whom he need be in no way ashamed; an eminently respectable successful merchant, a power in the land he had made his own, a great new country to be. He had described
its wonders, its opportunities, but without once suggesting seriously that Francis might go there to join him in his business. He had been given kind messages from his father’s wife and on behalf of their three sons and two daughters, his half-brothers and sisters. He had been urged to visit them at some vague future date. But it was as clear to him as it was to his father and Master Leslie that there had been no true meeting of minds or hearts and there never would be.

  To Colonel Ogilvy’s enormous relief he received the same impression. He was content to wait until Master Nimmo’s visit was over, his business affairs concluded, contracts renewed, new gear and needed materials bought, presents for his family and for the colony packed and stowed. Alec sailed from Gravesend one morning, with his first-born son waving to him from the shore, each a little relieved that there was now no guilt, no resentment, and that in future the ocean would continue to lie between.

  After this Colonel Ogilvy waited a few more days for any latent impression to fade: for Francis to recover completely from any wound the unexpected encounter might have inflicted upon him. Then one morning he called his nephew into the study, bade him draw up his chair to the fire and looking away from him into its glowing depths said with slow emphasis, ‘Francis, my dear boy, I want you to know you have made me very proud of you over the months in which I have watched your progress. Both here when you were first presented to me, and afterwards, when you chose to behave with modest courtesy at a time when you were bitterly resentful of your exposed and humiliating position in the family.’

  Francis was surprised and touched by this speech. He murmured that his uncle, both his uncles, had shown him unusual kindness, as had Sir Francis Leslie, whose name he had been allowed to bear though he had no possible right to it.

  ‘That is why I would speak to you on a matter I have been considering now for some months,’ the colonel went on. ‘I will put it briefly, as between soldiers. Francis, I wish to adopt you as my son, fully, legally, bestowing upon you my name in place of that fiction you use, with succession in due course to my poor fortune and this my house.’

  Pure astonishment seized Francis, then joy, then a great up rush of all that ruined love he had spent upon a false mother, returned to him again by a new father, truer than the stranger who even now had not once offered him his name. He covered his face with his hands and when the colonel, rising, laid an arm about his shoulders, he turned into that embrace with a young simplicity that wrung the older man’s heart with sorrow for all he had denied himself of family life and love.

  When they had recovered themselves Colonel Ogilvy ordered wine and had it mulled to suit the season which continued very cold. Young Giles was entrusted with the new position in the house and invited with his wife to share the toast to the colonel’s son.

  The next day they went together to an attorney where the necessary business of adoption was drawn up and from there to Gracious Street, to explain what had been agreed. Mistress Leslie thereupon insisted they should go to St Paul’s to lay their intention for the future before God in a small private service of praise and thanksgiving. Word was sent to Doctor Richard Ogilvy and Sir Francis Leslie in Oxford, but the roads were too icy for any purpose of visiting, though the usual messenger promised to ride there on the next day that was not made impossible by ice, snow or mud.

  The business went forward smoothly and Colonel Ogilvy saw to it that when an order came from Whitehall that King Charles wished to receive the young man in private audience to have news of His Majesty’s sister, the request was addressed to the Lieutenant Francis Ogilvy, late in the service of the King of Bohemia at Rhenen by the Rhine.

  Chapter Twenty

  Once again Francis found himself informing King Charles upon a disaster that affected His Majesty personally. This time, however, through his sister.

  ‘The Queen of Bohemia has suffered grievously,’ he told Francis. ‘As she writes at great length. But with thankfulness too, since the King was saved and that we are told by you, young man.’

  ‘I had the honour, sire, of attending upon His Majesty on board the ship that was destroyed by collision. I was flung into the water beside His Majesty.’

  ‘And held him up, they inform us, thus saving his life at risk of your own.’

  ‘It was my duty, sire, and my pleasure.’

  King Charles smiled. Here was a graceful courtier in the making. A different being, surely, from the callow boy who had knelt and blushed and trembled at their first meeting and later had faltered, unwilling to describe poor Steenie’s terrible end. Graceful and confident, with a legal father and a new name, they said. But he could not resist saying, ‘We thought your duty, sir, was to the young prince to whose establishment you were attached?’

  Francis, surprised and a little shocked, kept his composure as he replied, That is so, sire. But the accident separated us, though my man, Corporal Stubble, secured the boy and was holding him up in the water as I supported his father. We were further separated in that great confusion and they, alas, were drowned.’

  ‘While the father of that immense brood of sons was preserved, to the everlasting joy of my dear sister. A wise choice you made in your rescue, sir. She asks me to recommend you for some reward or prize. What would you?’

  ‘Naught but a chance to prove myself in Her Majesty’s just cause for the return of Bohemia or at least the Palatinate.’

  ‘War – war,’ said King Charles sadly. ‘Will it never end? Why will the Emperor never consent to a treaty of peace?’

  He fell silent and Francis waited respectfully. At last the King said, ‘The Marquis of Hamilton seeks to raise troops for the Low Countries. Six thousand men he promises to take over. Would you join him, sir?’

  ‘Most willingly, Your Majesty.’

  The King held out his hand. Francis knelt to kiss it.

  ‘You may look to hear from Hamilton, Lieutenant Ogilvy,’ Charles said.

  And so it fell out. Francis enlisted with the Marquis and set about preparing to go back to Holland. He missed Will sorely and for as long as he stayed in England refused to take anyone in his place. The colonel helped him to supply himself, however, and was of particular use to the young man in other ways.

  For in their new-found intimacy Francis confided to his father his former hopeless desires in respect of the Lady Anne Wolmer. Also the news he had had of her from Louise Mayerne. This, at least, the Colonel could tell him was definitely false.

  ‘Lord Aldborough is quite out of favour at our English Court,’ he told Francis. ‘Also I hear it said at The Hague the Lady Anne has been taken from the entourage of the Princess Amelia. But not because she was betrothed to any gentleman of title in England.’

  ‘Mistress Louise invented that explanation? It is very like, for she has a spiteful temper, though a certain wit when in good humour.’

  ‘I believe Lord Aldborough would have brought his daughter home but that Madam asked to have her back as a maid-of-honour.’

  ‘Back!’ Francis was astonished. ‘I did not see her when Her Majesty received me.’

  The colonel was not surprised. He knew the facts of the young lady’s escapade at the hunt, her rescue by Francis and their subsequent friendly encounters. He had guessed the probable state of his son’s feelings. Now that Aldborough’s fortunes were at a low ebb, his patron having gone and in very ill odour at that, except for the misguided king himself, there could be a return, perhaps a development, of that tentative connection. But at this stage, lacking any element of fortune on either side, there could not be even speculation of a marriage. So he said nothing. Francis must manage his own affairs without interference from a father, however loving.

  Francis had every intention of so doing. His first need was for military employment and this, with the gracious recommendation of King Charles, was now his. The Marquis of Hamilton’s officers had accepted him on his record, which was fair enough, though he had clearly lacked opportunity to distinguish himself in much actual fighting.

  Ma
tters should now go better with the Allies, he was told, for the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, was ready to put himself at the head of the season’s campaign. He had a reputation for swift fierce action, clever strategy; an inspiring leadership, in fact. The Marquis was bent upon joining the Swedish army with his six thousand men.

  But yet once more misunderstanding, incompetence, improvidence, brought ruin to the noble lord’s hopes. Gustavus Adolphus would accept a self-supporting auxiliary, but no other sort of help. King Charles had promised provision, but when the time came his contribution did not appear. The Marquis took his forces abroad notwithstanding, for fear they would melt away if he kept them at home. But he had no means of his own to preserve them there. Once landed in the seat of war he was quite unable to maintain them.

  For Francis this was a sickeningly familiar and most bitter disappointment. The Marquis rode off to persuade the King of Sweden to take his soldiers. The King naturally refused. It had happened too often. The soldiers melted away as predicted. Moreover the native population was grown very cunning in hiding its stores of every kind. Before long, since the Swedish king was implacable, the English troops were reduced to one thousand men, still waiting and looking for action.

  All this took place in and near Frankfurt, where Gustavus Adolphus was assembling his army. He was astonished at the Marquis of Hamilton’s offer of aid; this impoverished rabble was no army. He had expected Charles of England, a prosperous land, to provide for his own native troops. The Elector Palatine too, another apparent pauper, frantic to be in action again to recover his ancestral lands, had also volunteered to join Gustavus Adolphus. The king offered him alliance as he had done with the other Princes of the Union. But poor Frederic had neither army nor money. King Charles was as unable to help his brother-in-law as he was to provision the troops he had sanctioned to the Marquis of Hamilton.

  Frustrated, baffled, growing more and more disillusioned, Francis stayed with Hamilton’s dwindling force near Frankfurt, obeying orders in a desultory sort of training that taught him more of how an army should not be conducted than any useful means of serving a cause. Later in the year he was moved to other towns of the Alliance, but still saw no actual fighting.