To Serve a Queen

by Josephine Bell

  For a full week Francis lay very near to death, at first in deep coma, later in delirium. He was kept in strict quarantine, since to the first shock of the death of Gustavus Adolphus had come the added appalling news of that of the Elector, just thirteen days after his deliverer. The Palgrave was reported to have died from plague.

  Francis knew none of this. But he showed no symptoms of plague. On the contrary he came fully to his senses in his third week at Rhenen, very weak, very wasted, but with his thigh wound healing cleanly at last and able to recognise those about him.

  Ian Munro was the first friend who was allowed to visit him when the danger of infection was pronounced by his surgeon to be over. At this first visit he was forbidden to give the patient any news that would shock him.

  ‘I am not wholly wanting in good sense,’ the lieutenant protested. ‘You may leave it to my own judgement what I tell him.’

  He had no difficulty in this respect, for he found Francis with no thoughts but for Anne Wolmer. In a weak voice that quite frightened Ian he said, ‘Why has Anne not come to me? Why have they not let her visit me?’

  ‘They feared you might be suffering from the plague. That is why I have not seen you till now, when they say you never had it.’

  ‘Have I been ill for so long, then?’

  ‘A full month, Francis. And out of your senses for the best part of it.’

  He seemed too listless to take this in, or to care if he did so. He asked no questions, but lay back and presently smiled at his friend.

  ‘Was I so very ill?’ he asked.

  ‘We thought you would die.’

  Francis nodded.

  ‘I thought that, too. I dared not dismount, once I’d got up, for fear I could not mount again. How long … I have no means of telling …’

  ‘I found you but five miles from here. You are at Rhenen.’

  ‘They have told me so. Anne … I must see Anne. She will bear my message …’

  His voice trailed off, his eyes closed. It was a dangerous moment, Munro decided. So he crept away.

  Anne Wolmer was the next visitor. Francis was asleep when she was shown into his room, but she would not let him be woken for her. Instead she sat down by his bed and when he stirred and opened his eyes, her beloved face was bending over him and her gentle voice was encouraging him to make his recovery with all speed.

  ‘For there is good news for us from England,’ she told him. ‘My father looks favourably upon your suit. He has seen your father. Colonel Ogilvy waits only for you to find your health and strength. So do not delay, my dearest love, and all will be well for us.’

  She kept his mind upon their own affairs until she left him, promising to come again the next day, when she allowed him to tell her the reason for his illness and the story of the ambush laid by Alan Carr and his two villians and how he had been wounded by the last of these and had slain all three.

  But he gave the details of the fight to his friend.

  ‘I shall never know exactly where it took place,’ he told him, ‘for the time since is still a blur to me. I know I kept to the saddle. I believe there were those, peasants, I think, who gave me water to drink and my horse too, but where –’

  ‘The bodies have been found,’ Lieutenant Munro told him. ‘Some thirty miles from here in a coppice the road passes through. Also the thin rope they stretched across the road between trees.’

  ‘Aye, the rope. It helped me in the end, when it was meant to throw me. I think the Good God preserved me from that evil man.’

  Later in the same week when Francis had made such progress he was allowed out of bed to dress and even walk, if a little unsteadily, across the room, Anne told him of the double tragedy that had befallen the Queen.

  ‘Madam took to her bed for a time to hide her terrible grief from us all,’ she said. ‘But now she is with us again, silent for the most part, but still her considerate, loving self …’

  Her voice stumbled on a sob, she wept.

  Francis wept with her. Too much had fallen upon the Queen too suddenly and it was partly his fault. The quarrel with Carr had been his fault to begin with and it all stemmed from his quest for his mother’s sad history. So in essence he had failed his Queen when he was at his most eager to serve her.

  When he explained all this to Anne she would have none of it. But his renewed depression frightened her, so she consulted his friend about how to overcome it.

  ‘He will not forgive himself until the Queen forgives him, but I dare not approach her with it. Her own health, Doctor Mayerne pronounces, is precarious.’

  ‘I think I can help,’ Munro said. ‘I have recently had despatches from Lord Craven, concerning our future, mine and his. It would be in order for me to acquaint the Queen with them, which could persuade her to send for Francis.’

  This proved successful, but first the lieutenant went to his friend.

  ‘News from Craven,’ he said, using a very brisk cheerful voice as he went into Francis’s room, where the convalescent sat by the window, gazing despondently at snow-covered fields and the broad, dark ribbon of the Rhine in the distance. ‘I am promoted captain and you have a strong commendation and are to remain in our regiment.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ Francis asked. ‘All action here is over, is it not?’

  ‘For the season, apart from garrison duties, yes. You forget it is now December.’

  ‘I do not forget. I see the snow.’

  Munro handed him the despatches.

  ‘Read. Read both. I am recalled and must go back to Frankfurt at once. The crisis here is considered to be over; all future arrangements for the Palatinate must be made by the Dowager Electress and her son, the heir, until he be of age, which will be soon. Lord Craven’s contract was with Sweden. Its future is in doubt, but I think it likely our Scottish force will now go home, to be employed elsewhere.’

  ‘I am not fit for any employment,’ Francis said.

  ‘Rubbish, man! But read. You are under Craven’s direction unless released and he has no intention, it seems, to let you go.’

  Francis read and his sore heart was soothed a little by the stiff, but encouraging military praise. He was directed to return to England for a further period of convalescence and afterwards to proceed to Scotland, where the Scottish regiment that had suffered severely in the campaign would gather, after leave, for recruitment and retraining.

  ‘I have a future, it seems,’ he said, rather more cheerfully, when he had finished. But added: ‘Though it tears me apart to abandon my queen.’

  However, when Ian fetched Anne to join them a few minutes later, her evident enjoyment of the whole of his news revived his spirits still further. So it was with less guilt, but abiding sorrow he received notice the next day that the Dowager Electress demanded his presence that afternoon.

  He found her in the small library wearing the same mourning as on the occasion after the drowning of Prince Frederic Henry. The Court was in mourning, too; there were no pets in evidence. He saw that a chair had been placed for him already, but one glance at the still, expressionless, unpainted face brought him to his knees at her feet, whispering hoarsely, ‘I have failed, Your Majesty. I have betrayed my trust! I am worthless!’

  ‘Oh no!’ she cried, leaning down to take both his hands. ‘You were most faithful, most loyal. You tried to come to me when you might reasonably have sought help for yourself. It is I should kiss your hand, not you mine!’

  For he had lifted her hands to his lips as she was speaking and did not release them until Anne, encouraged by the lady-in-waiting, persuaded him to rise and sit down.

  The Queen of Hearts wept freely, but it seemed to relieve her. She was able presently to ask Francis what plans he had, and approved very much his fresh orders from Lord Craven.

  ‘But I still hope,’ Francis told her, ‘that I may be allowed to serve Your Majesty’s cause in the coming spring.’

  She looked at him steadily.

  ‘I have no Cause,’ she said at
last. ‘I shall never in my remaining years re-enter those lands where my dear lost lord took me upon our marriage. My son, Prince Charles Louis, is now the Rightful Elector Palatine.’ Her voice grew formal; she resumed the regal manner. ‘We have so proclaimed it to the world and he will act firmly in his succession and with God’s help will enter fully hereafter into his inheritance. For our part we must now stand aside, caring for our children, ordering their welfare as best we may. But an exiled queen no longer, for the King is dead. God rest his beloved soul.’

  There could be no answer to this but a murmured acquiescence from all present. Francis found himself dismissed with kindly thanks and praise and sincere but distant good wishes.

  He said to Anne outside the library, ‘Her heart is broken, but her spirit lives. It is indestructible.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Anne answered. She sighed her relief. The interview that had absolved him had also freed her own future.

  So it fell out. After a disagreeable winter journey from Rhenen by river to Rotterdam and by sea to London, Francis and Anne had to wait in that city until the roads were open in the spring; he at his father’s house, she with the alderman under the willing care of Mistress Leslie, who took the girl to her heart at once with no reservations.

  The wedding was arranged for April, to be held at the village and church and manor house of Lord Aldborough near Banbury. This made it convenient for all the Oxford connection to attend. Colonel Ogilvy set about collecting as many as he could muster of his army friends and colleagues to support his son. Master Angus Leslie proposed to travel by coach, weather and health permitting. He had decided, so Mistress Leslie reported, not to die just yet, but in life as in business, she added, he could never turn down a calculated risk.

  ‘It will be just eight years since you came south to us,’ Colonel Ogilvy said one evening to his son, sitting by the fire, sipping a tankard of steaming Jamaica rum toddy. ‘We have much to be thankful for, my son.’

  Francis nodded, smiling happily. But his mind was on the future, not the past. He was impatient for the spring, not only to secure his bride, but beyond that long-sought delight, to see Scotland again and rejoin his regiment.

  ‘I wonder where Craven will take us,’ he said. ‘Scarcely to Holland now, alas.’

  Colonel Ogilvy considered. Better not alarm the boy with current rumours of unrest, defiance, even strife here at home.

  ‘Ireland maybe,’ he said presently. ‘A land of trouble at all times to her nearest neighbours. At all events you will serve England.’

  ‘King Charles?’ Francis said a trifle doubtfully.

  ‘England,’ Colonel Ogilvy retorted and he did not add the two names together.

  Francis laughed.

  ‘As you will. But I think deep down in me it will always be my Queen of Hearts.’

  Copyright

  First published in 1972 by Geoffrey Bles

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2192-0 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2193-7 POD

  Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1972

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