"How long is it since this pledge, as thou callest it, was given?"
"Five years next Lammas tide, madam."
"Was it by ring or token?"
"No, madam. Our mother said we were too young, but Humfrey meant it with all his heart."
"Humfrey! That was the urchin who must needs traverse the correspondence through the seeming Tibbott, and so got Antony removed from about us. A stout lubberly Yorkshire lad, fed on beef and pudding, a true Talbot, a mere English bull-dog who will have lost all the little breeding he had, while committing spulzie and piracy at sea on his Catholic Majesty's ships. Bah, mon enfant, I am glad of it. Had he been a graceful young courtly page like the poor Antony, it might have been a little difficult, but a great English carle like that, whom thou hast not seen for five years-" She made a gesture with her graceful hands as if casting away a piece of thistledown.
"Humfrey is my very good-my very good brother, madam," cried Cicely, casting about for words to defend him, and not seizing the most appropriate.
"Brother, quotha? Yea, and as good brother he shall be to thee, and welcome, so long as thou art Cis Talbot by day-but no more, child. Princesses mate not with Yorkshire esquires. When the Lady Bride takes her place in the halls of her forefathers, she will be the property of Scotland, and her hand will be sought by princes. Ah, lassie! let it not grieve thee. One thing thy mother can tell thee from her own experience. There is more bliss in mating with our equals, by the choice of others, than in following our own wild will. Thou gazest at me in wonder, but verily my happy days were with my gentle young king-and so will thine be, I pray the saints happier and more enduring than ever were mine. Nothing has ever lasted with me but captivity, O libera me."
And in the murmured repetition the mother fell asleep, and the daughter, who had slumbered little the night before, could not but likewise drop into the world of soothing oblivion, though with a dull feeling of aching and yearning towards the friendly kindly Humfrey, yet with a certain exultation in the fate that seemed to be carrying her on inevitably beyond his reach.
CHAPTER XVI. THE PEAK CAVERN.
It was quite true that at this period Queen Mary had good hope of liberation in the most satisfactory manner possible-short of being hailed as English Queen. Negotiations were actually on foot with James VI. and Elizabeth for her release. James had written to her with his own hand, and she had for the first time consented to give him the title of King of Scotland. The project of her reigning jointly with him had been mooted, and each party was showing how enormous a condescension it would be in his or her eyes! Thus there was no great unlikelihood that there would be a recognition of the Lady Bride, and that she would take her position as the daughter of a queen. Therefore, when Mary contrived to speak to Master Richard Talbot and his wife in private, she was able to thank them with gracious condescension for the care they had bestowed in rearing her daughter, much as if she had voluntarily entrusted the maiden to them, saying she trusted to be in condition to reward them.
Mistress Susan's heart swelled high with pain, as though she had been thanked for her care of Humfrey or Diccon, and her husband answered. "We seek no reward, madam. The damsel herself, while she was ours, was reward enough."
"And I must still entreat, that of your goodness you will let her remain yours for a little longer," said Mary, with a touch of imperious grace, "until this treaty is over, and I am free, it is better that she continues to pass for your daughter. The child herself has sworn to me by her great gods," said Mary, smiling with complimentary grace, "that you will preserve her secret-nay, she becomes a little fury when I express my fears lest you should have scruples."
"No, madam, this is no state secret; such as I might not with honour conceal," returned Richard.
"There is true English sense!" exclaimed Mary. "I may then count on your giving my daughter the protection of your name and your home until I can reclaim her and place her in her true position. Yea, and if your concealment should give offence, and bring you under any displeasure of my good sister, those who have so saved and tended my daughter will have the first claim to whatever I can give when restored to my kingdom."
"We are much beholden for your Grace's favour," said Richard, somewhat stiffly, "but I trust never to serve any land save mine own."
"Ah! there is your fierete," cried Mary. "Happy is my sister to have subjects with such a point of honour. Happy is my child to have been bred up by such parents!"
Richard bowed. It was all a man could do at such a speech, and Mary further added, "She has told me to what bounds went your goodness to her. It is well that you acted so prudently that the children's hearts were not engaged; for, as we all know but too well royal blood should have no heart."
"I am quite aware of it, madam," returned Richard, and there for the time the conversation ended. The Queen had been most charming, full of gratitude, and perfectly reasonable in her requests, and yet there was some flaw in the gratification of both, even while neither thought the disappointment would go very hard with their son. Richard could never divest himself of the instinctive prejudice with which soft words inspire men of his nature, and Susan's maternal heart was all in revolt against the inevitable, not merely grieving over the wrench to her affections, but full of forebodings and misgivings as to the future welfare of her adopted child. Even if the brightest hopes should be fulfilled; the destiny of a Scottish princess did not seem to Southern eyes very brilliant at the best, and whether poor Bride Hepburn might be owned as a princess at all was a doubtful matter, since, if her father lived (and he had certainly been living in 1577 in Norway), both the Queen and the Scottish people would be agreed in repudiating the marriage. Any way, Susan saw every reason to fear for the happiness and the religion alike of the child to whom she had given a mother's love. Under her grave, self-contained placid demeanour, perhaps Dame Susan was the most dejected of those at Buxton. The captive Queen had her hopes of freedom and her newly found daughter, who was as yet only a pleasure, and not an encumbrance to her, the Earl had been assured that his wife's slanders had been forgotten. He was secure of his sovereign's favour, and permitted to see the term of his weary jailorship, and thus there was an unusual liveliness and cheerfulness about the whole sojourn at Buxton, where, indeed, there was always more or less of a holiday time.
To Cis herself, her nights were like a perpetual fairy tale, and so indeed were all times when she was alone with the initiated, who were indeed all those original members of her mother's suite who had known of her birth at Lochleven, people who had kept too many perilous secrets not to be safely entrusted with this one, and whose finished habits of caution, in a moment, on the approach of a stranger, would change their manner from the deferential courtesy due to their princess, to the good-natured civility of court ladies to little Cicely Talbot.
Dame Susan had been gratified at first by the young girl's sincere assurances of unchanging affection and allegiance, and, in truth, Cis had clung the most to her with the confidence of a whole life's danghterhood, but as the days went on, and every caress and token of affection imaginable was lavished upon the maiden, every splendid augury held out to her of the future, and every story of the past detailed the charms of Mary's court life in France, seen through the vista of nearly twenty sadly contrasted years, it was in the very nature of things that Cis should regard the time spent perforce with Mistress Talbot much as a petted child views its return to the strict nurse or governess from the delights of the drawing-room. She liked to dazzle the homely housewife with the wonderful tales of French gaieties, or the splendid castles in the air she had heard in the Queen's rooms, but she resented the doubt and disapproval they sometimes excited; she was petulant and fractious at any exercise of authority from her foster-mother, and once or twice went near to betray herself by lapsing into a tone towards her which would have brought down severe personal chastisement on any real daughter even of seventeen. It was well that the Countess and her sharp-eyed daughter Mary were out of sight, as the sight of such "cockering of a malapert maiden" would have led to interference that might have brought matters to extremity. Yet, with all the forbearance thus exercised, Susan could not but feel that the girl's love was being weaned from her; and, after all, how could she complain, since it was by the true mother? If only she could have hoped it was for the dear child's good, it would not have been so hard! But the trial was a bitter one, and not even her husband guessed how bitter it was.