Chivalry (13 page)

"The dappled one?" said the Regent; "and all for making a little
mark?" The boy jumped for the pen.

"Lionel," said the Queen, "you are Regent of England, but you are also
my son. If you sign that paper you will beyond doubt get the pony, but
you will not, I think, care to ride him. You will not care to sit down
at all, Lionel."

The Regent considered. "Thank you very much, my lord," he said in the
ultimate, "but I do not like ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?"

Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the English
forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English ports. "My
lords," the Queen said, "this boy is the King's vicar. In defying him,
you defy the King. Yes, Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam
for supper."

Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled at his
lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the Marquess
of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and Sir Thomas
Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered with pens and
parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind him, sat the
Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of Bordeaux.

Presently Hastings said: "My friends, in creating our womankind the
Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable and cogent
reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to fathom these
reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I did otherwise
Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his return. In
consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose his vicar.
To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which remain to us,
and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. To-night I am
sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an obliging person, and
would convey—to cite an instance—eight letters quite as blithely as
one."

Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and
knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful
Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings,
too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a
sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates
in the north.

The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended,
Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the
superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey.
"For the courier," he said.

The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter
of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man,
gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked.

"We have saved our precious skins," said he. "Hey, you fidgeters, you
ferments of sour offal! I commend your common-sense, messieurs, and I
request you to withdraw. Even a damned rogue such as I has need of a
cleaner atmosphere in order to breathe comfortably." The seven went
away without further speech.

They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where the
Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned his way
to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the city. He sent
word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come forth from the
town he would abide and give them battle.

She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would
gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The
Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters
from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort.

Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked savages, a
shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be auspicious; on
the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force lieutenanted by
perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what dreams she had of
miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked in secret with the
Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday before Michaelmas, when
the opposing armies marshalled in the Bishop's Park, at Auckland, not
a captain on either side believed the day to be pregnant with battle.
There would be a decent counterfeit of resistance; afterward the
little English army would vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be
master of the island. The farce was prearranged, the actors therein
were letter-perfect.

That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen's tent, and
informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had been drinking
overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and after the third
bottle had found them candid. "Madame and Queen, we are betrayed. The
Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is inexplicably smitten with a
fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one of your lords will fight
to-day." Master Copeland laid bare such part of the scheme as
yesterday's conviviality had made familiar. "Therefore I counsel
retreat. Let the King be summoned out of France."

Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast and
dipped them in milk for the Regent's breakfast. "Sire Edward would be
vexed. He has always wanted to conquer France. I shall visit the
Marquess as soon as Lionel is fed,—do you know, John Copeland, I am
anxious about Lionel; he is irritable and coughed five times during
the night,—and then I will attend to this affair."

She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up to his
chin. "Pardon, Highness," said Lord Hastings, "but I am an ill man. I
cannot rise from this couch."

"I do not question the gravity of your disorder," the Queen retorted,
"since it is well known that the same illness brought about the death
of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you get up and lead our troops
against the Scot."

Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. "I am an ill
man," he muttered, doggedly. "I cannot rise from this couch."

There was a silence.

"My lord," the Queen presently began, "without is an army
prepared—yes, and quite able—to defend our England. The one
requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them that, my lord—ah, I
know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, yet our yeomen at least are
honest. Give them, then, a leader, and they cannot but conquer, since
God also is honest and incorruptible. Pardieu! a woman might lead
these men, and lead them to victory!"

Hastings answered: "I am ill. I cannot rise from this couch."

"There is no man left in England," said the Queen, "since Sire Edward
went into France. Praise God, I am his wife!" She went away without
flurry.

Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. The
English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded by a
bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by the
delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were going
about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a white
palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants were now
gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard them out.
Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as one might
order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, as though
these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of interest. She
reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the standard in her
hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the army was in an
uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in stealthy groups of
two or three whisperers each; all were in the greatest amazement and
knew not what to do; but the army was shouting the Queen's name.

"Now is England shamed," said Hastings, "since a woman alone dares to
encounter the Scot. She will lead them into battle—and by God! there
is no braver person under heaven than yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David,
I perceive that your venture is lost, for those men would follow her
to storm hell if she desired it."

He meditated, and shrugged. "And so would I," said Hastings.

A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and very
hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen's side. "Madame and
Queen," said Hastings, "I rejoice that my recent illness is departed.
I shall, by God's grace, on this day drive the Bruce from England."

Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her emotions,
but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one plump hand
upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. "I welcome back
the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was about to lead your army, my
friend, since there was no one else to do it, but I was hideously
afraid. At bottom every woman is a coward."

"You were afraid to do it," said the Marquess, "but you were going to
do it, because there was no one else to do it! Ho, madame! had I an
army of such cowards I would drive the Scot not past the Border but
beyond the Orkneys."

The Queen then said, "But you are unarmed."

"Highness," he replied, "it is surely apparent that I, who have played
the traitor to two monarchs within the same day, cannot with either
decency or comfort survive that day." He turned upon the lords and
bishops twittering about his horse's tail. "You merchandise, get back
to your stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your
families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this
day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest woman
our time has known." Immediately the English forces marched toward
Merrington.

Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John Copeland. She
was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company with five of
her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, but made no
comment.

You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in
beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of
the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to
expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence;
it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she
had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention.
Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the Regent of
England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother told him that
ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon encountered the
King of Faery, and subsequently bereaved an atrocious Emir of his
beard and daughter. All this the industrious woman narrated in a low
and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed Regent attended and at the
proper intervals gulped his cough-mixture.

You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the tent.
"We have conquered," he said. "Now, by the Face!"—thus, scoffingly,
he used her husband's favorite oath,—"now, by the Face! there was
never a victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as
utterly dispersed from man's seeing as are the sands which dried the
letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!"

"I rejoice," the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, "that we have
conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else—Oh, horrible!"
She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish. Here in little you have
the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing of
course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth
by John Copeland was a calamity.

He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a
mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded
by the Queen's five retainers. "In the rout I took him," said John
Copeland; "though, as my mouth witnesses, I did not find this David
Bruce a tractable prisoner."

"Is that, then, the King of Scots?" Philippa demanded, as she mixed
salt and water for a mouthwash. "Sire Edward should be pleased, I
think. Will he not love me a little now, John Copeland?"

John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. "He could not
choose," John Copeland said; "madame, he could no more choose but love
you than I could choose."

Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums and
then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was dead,
slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. "That is a pity," the Queen said.
She reflected a while, reached her decision. "There is left alive in
England but one man to whom I dare entrust the keeping of the King of
Scots. My barons are sold to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one
or another lord will engineer his escape within the week, and Sire
Edward will be vexed. Yet listen, John—" She unfolded her plan.

"I have long known," he said, when she had done, "that in all the
world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty years I have loved you,
my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I perceive that in all the world
there is no lady more wise than you."

Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. "Foolish boy! You tell me the
King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a bread poultice
would be best." She told him how to make this poultice, and gave other
instructions. Then John Copeland left the tent and presently rode away
with his company.

Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward mounted her
white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There the Earl of
Neville, as second in command, received her with great courtesy. God
had shown to her Majesty's servants most singular favor: despite the
calculations of reasonable men,—to which, she might remember, he had
that morning taken the liberty to assent,—some fifteen thousand Scots
were slain. True, her gallant general was no longer extant, though
this was scarcely astounding when one considered the fact that he had
voluntarily entered the melee quite unarmed. A touch of age, perhaps;
Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as epilogue, this
Neville congratulated the Queen that—by blind luck, he was forced to
concede,—her worthy secretary had made a prisoner of the Scottish
King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an estimable scribe, and yet—Ah,
yes, Lord Neville quite followed her Majesty—beyond doubt, the
wardage of a king was an honor not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes,
he understood; her Majesty desired that the office should be given
some person of rank. And pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh?
said the Earl of Neville.