Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/156

148 asked. “Have you a buffet at home worthy to exhibit such a trophy?”

“I have a trifle of grandmother’s plate,” he replied; “a few poor spoons, and an empty place for my prize. I, and all mine, shall have the honour of drinking your Grace’s health,”—and, lowering his voice, he proceeded,—“the health of all your Majesty’s devoted servants, and especially your Majesty’s earliest subjects”

A glance showed that Mary understood that he was giving her news from France.

“Who,” continued the prizeman, “will line our cliffs some night soon.”

There was no time for more. The Countess was approaching amidst laughter and shouts of “Well done, Bess of Hardwick!” She was bearing her great cheese on her head, not altogether without grace, and with extreme good humour; and she lowered it to her Grace’s feet, with a hope that her Grace would permit the Derbyshire people to think of her as tasting the genuine cheese of their county at supper, this evening or some other. Her Grace would not wait for supper-time. If there was bread anywhere on the ground She delighted the people further by declining the delicate manchet, and even the meal loaf, and preferring the oat-cake, which she said she had learned in Scotland to like: but so few were the morsels of cake and cheese that she swallowed, that Felton, and not Felton alone, believed that the whole play was for the sake of pledging the prizeman in a draught from his tankard. She had called for ale; but she found herself served with a choice French wine.

It was but a lady’s portion that she took; but the country people might have been excused for supposing it more, from the flush on her cheek, the gaiety of her voice, and the exhilaration of her whole bearing. She asked questions of the old labourers and their dames, which had to be translated from her slightly foreign English into their dialect before any sort of answer could be got. She made the boys run races; and she noticed the infants,—less gaily, it is true, and once with tearful eyes; but she so far pleased young as well as old, that when the infants grew up to be youths and maidens, they listened eagerly to all conjectures about what would be the end of the long captivity of that beautiful lady. How kindly she had smiled at them! but now, it was said, she never smiled. How lightly she had mounted, and ridden up the valley when the games were over that fair-day! yet now she never appeared outside the walls of Fotheringay Castle. Did she remember that fair-day at Chee Tor, and having patted the cheeks of any baby there? Yes: Mary had reason to remember that day.

She believed that night, and she probably believed to the end of her days, that her hostess knew what to expect on the return of the party: but in this she was mistaken. The country people would not have been allowed to come near her, if it had been suspected that there would be any rousing of the neighbourhood before sunset.

The Countess saw the prizeman take his leave with a rustic bow, and mount a clumsy hack to ride home, as he said: but, as she herself rode behind her guest, she looked back, and saw that he had dismounted just below the ridge, and was watching the group, shading his eyes with his hat. It was true, as she observed to Gadbury, that any yeoman might watch a queen on her way, when he might never see a queen again: but still, his attitude was not that of a man with a good wife at home, to whom he was anxious to show his prize. She should inform Lord Shrewsbury, every time she saw the Duke of Norfolk in attendance; and the Earl would give what information he thought fit to his own sovereign. Her own opinion was that, as her Grace had a train of admirers awaiting her wherever she went, she was insufficiently guarded. Gadbury counted numbers, and observed that there were twenty-two men now present to guard four ladies. The Countess would not be reckoned as a lady requiring guardianship, but rather as one of her Grace’s men-at-arms; and she showed that she carried weapons. She said, too, that where the roads were thronged with the country people, as on that day, all was safe enough: but she fancied that the hunting and hawking, in the woods and on the moors, had gone too far; and that the slippery lady would be missing, some day, when it was time to be going home.

At the same moment, the whole cavalcade seemed to be struck by the appearance of a company of horsemen who crossed the ridge, at some distance to the east of the road. It was a large party,—not less than thirty, the architect judged. The strangeness was in any party coming in that direction after the fair was over. The Countess was instantly persuaded that a rescue was intended. She issued rapid orders to her servants and squires, bidding them push on with all speed on their road home; and she would overtake them presently. Selecting one servant to follow her, she took the left-hand road, as soon as the other ladies had passed its opening, and rode full speed at the approaching company, as if she meant to charge them all at once.

The strangers halted for a moment; and then all but two cut across the moorland, through wet and dry, bog and stones, and succeeded in heading the group below. Of the two who detached themselves one awaited the Countess, hat in hand, and declared himself her Ladyship’s humble servant. He had been deputed by Sir Francis Knollys—.

“Then it is not a rescue! thank Heaven!” exclaimed the Countess.

“Far from it,” the stranger declared. “Indeed it was precisely the contrary. It was an arrest.”

“It must be a mistake,” the Countess replied. Sir Francis Knollys was merely to fulfil Lord Shrewsbury’s office while he was ill. That had been all settled between the Queen’s council and Lord Shrewsbury.

The stranger bowed, evidently unconvinced; and the state of things, when the Lady Bess overtook her party, was certainly surprising enough. The loudest voice she heard was that of Mary of Scotland. She was in vehement anger; and her ladies were in tears. Sir Francis Knollys held her rein, and led her horse forward, while Felton, Stansbury, and their servants offered defiance to all persons who should conduct her Grace anywhere but where she was pleased to go. Mary