“Poor maiden!” said her foster-father,
“she is in a manner ours, and we cannot but
watch over her; but after all, I doubt me whether it
had not been better for her and for us, if the waves
had beaten the little life out of her ere I carried
her home.”
“She hath been the joy of my life,” said
Humfrey, low and hoarsely.
“And I fear me she will be the sorrow of it.
Not by her fault, poor wench, but what hope canst
thou have, my son?”
“None, sir,” said Humfrey, “except
of giving up all if I can so defend her from aught.”
He spoke in a quiet matter-of-fact way that made
his father look with some inquiry at his grave settled
face, quite calm, as if saying nothing new, but expressing
a long-formed quiet purpose.
Nor, though Humfrey was his eldest son and heir, did
Richard Talbot try to cross it.
He asked whether he might see Cicely before going
on to London, but Sir Amias said that in that case
she would not be allowed to return to the Queen, and
that to have had any intercourse with the prisoners
might overthrow all his designs in London, and he therefore
only left with Humfrey his commendations to her, with
a pot of fresh honey and a lavender-scented set of
kerchiefs from Mistress Susan.
During that close imprisonment at Tixall Cicely learnt
to know her mother both in her strength and weakness.
They were quite alone; except that Sir Walter Ashton
daily came to perform the office of taster and carver
at their meals, and on the first evening his wife
dragged herself upstairs to superintend the arrangement
of their bedroom, and to supply them with toilette
requisites according to her own very limited notions
and possessions. The Dame was a very homely,
hard-featured lady, deaf, and extremely fat and heavy,
one of the old uncultivated rustic gentry who had
lagged far behind the general civilisation of the
country, and regarded all refinements as effeminate
French vanities. She believed, likewise, all
that was said against Queen Mary, whom she looked
on as barely restrained from plunging a dagger into
Elizabeth’s heart, and letting Parma’s
hell-hounds loose upon Tixall. To have such
a guest imposed on her was no small grievance, and
nothing but her husband’s absolute mandate could
have induced her to come up with the maids who brought
sheets for the bed, pillows, and the like needments.
Mary tried to make her requests as moderate as necessity
would permit; but when they had been shouted into
her ears by one of the maids, she shook her head at
most of them, as articles unknown to her. Nor
did she ever appear again. The arrangement of
the bed-chamber was performed by two maidservants,
the Knight himself meanwhile standing a grim sentinel
over the two ladies in the outer apartment to hinder
their holding any communication through the servants.
All requests had to be made to him, and on the first
morning Mary made a most urgent one for writing materials,
books, and either needlework or spinning.
