"Messieurs," said Queen Philippa, "who commands here? Am I, then, some woman of the town?"
Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. "Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent."
"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented, deep in meditation.
John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol lustily.
Sang John Copeland:
I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as with extreme cold. She gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was as of stone, fretting at his lute-strings, head downcast. Then in a while the Queen turned to Hastings.
"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented. "Therefore it is my will that to-morrow one and all your men be mustered at Blackheath. We will take the field without delay against the King of Scots."
The riot began anew. "Madness!" they shouted; "lunar madness! We can do nothing until the King return with our army!"
"In his absence," the Queen said, "I command here."
"You are not Regent," the Marquess said. Then he cried, "This is the Regent's affair!"
"Let the Regent be fetched," Dame Philippa said, very quietly. Presently they brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of eight years, and Regent, in name at least, of England.
Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. "Highness," Lord Hastings began, "for reasons of state, which I need not here explain, this document requires your signature. It is an order that a ship be despatched in pursuit of the King. Your Highness may remember the pony you admired yesterday?" The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. "Just here, your Highness—a cross-mark."
"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, 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 him. 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. When they had ended, I must tell you that 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 there was a clatter of hoofs without, 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 Iscariots! 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 when he would breathe." 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 nine-tenths of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort.
There is comedy here. 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 the dreams she had of miraculous victories, what time her barons trafficked in secret with the Bruce. On the Saturday before Michaelmas, when the opposing armies marshalled in the Bishop's Park, at Auckland, it is recorded that 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."
But 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 intended 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."