Walter looked grave and said, “I remember! My father lifted me on the table to drink King Charles’s health, and Prince Rupert—I remember his scarlet mantle and white plume—patted my head, and called me his little cavalier.”
“We sat apart with mother,” said Rose, “and heard the loud cheers and songs till we were half frightened at the noise.”
“I can’t recollect all that,” said Lucy.
“At least you ought not to forget how our dear father came in with Edmund, and kissed us, and bade mother keep up a good heart. Don’t you remember that, Lucy?”
“I do,” said Walter; “it was the last time we ever saw him.”
And Walter sat on the table, resting one foot on the bench, while the other dangled down, and leaning his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand; Rose sat on the bench close by him, with Charlie on her lap, and the two little girls pressing close against her, all earnest to hear from her the story of the great fight of Naseby, where they had all been in a farmhouse about a mile from the field of battle.
“I don’t forget how the cannon roared all day,” said Lucy.
“Ah! that dismal day!” said Rose. “Then by came our troopers, blood-stained and disorderly, riding so fast that scarcely one waited to tell my mother that the day was lost and she had better fly. But not a step did she stir from the gate, where she stood with you, Charlie, in her arms; she only asked of each as he passed if he had seen my father or Edmund, and ever her cheek grew whiter and whiter. At last came a Parliament officer on horseback—it was Mr. Enderby, who had been a college mate of my father’s, and he told us that my dear father was wounded, and had sent him to fetch her.”
“But I never knew where Edmund was then,” said Eleanor. “No one ever told me.”
“Edmund lifted up my father when he fell,” said Walter, “and was trying to bind his wound; but when Colonel Enderby’s troop was close upon them, my father charged him upon his duty to fly, saying that he should fall into the hands of an old friend, and it was Edmund’s duty to save himself to fight for the King another time.”
“So Edmund followed Prince Rupert?” said Eleanor.
“Yes,” said Lucy; “you know my father once saved Prince Rupert’s life in the skirmish where his horse was killed, so for his sake the Prince made Edmund his page, and has had him with him in all his voyages and wanderings. But go on about our father, Rose. Did we go to see him?”
“No; Mr. Enderby said he was too far off, so he left a trooper to guard us, and my mother only took her little babe with her. Don’t you remember, Walter, how Eleanor screamed after her, as she rode away on the colonel’s horse; and how we could not comfort the little ones, till they had cried themselves to sleep, poor little things? And in the morning she came back, and told us our dear father was dead! O Walter, how can we look back to that day, and rejoice in a new war? How can you wonder her heart should sink at sounds of joy which have so often ended in tears?”
Walter twisted about and muttered, but he could not resist his sister’s earnest face and tearful eyes, and said something about not making so much noise in the house.
“There’s my own dear brother,” said Rose. “And you won’t tease Deborah?”
“That is too much, Rose. It is all the sport I have, to see the faces she makes when I plague her about Diggory. Besides, it serves her right for having such a temper.”
“She has not a good temper, poor thing!” said Rose; “but if you would only think how true and honest she is, how hard she toils, and how ill she fares, and yet how steadily she holds to us, you would surely not plague and torment her.”
Rose was interrupted by a great outcry, and in rushed Deborah, screaming out, “Lack-a-day! Mistress Rose! O Master Walter! what will become of us? The fight is lost, the King fled, and a whole regiment of red-coats burning and plundering the whole country. Our throats will be cut, every one of them!”
“You’ll have a chance of being a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army,” said Walter, who even then could not miss a piece of mischief.
“Joking now, Master Walter!” cried Deborah, very much shocked. “That is what I call downright sinful. I hope you’ll be made a mark of yourself, that I do.”
The children were running off to tell their mother, when Rose stopped them, and desired to know how Deborah had heard the tidings. It was from two little children from the village who had come to bring a present of some pigeons to my lady. Rose went herself to examine the children, but she could only learn that a packman had come into the village and brought the report that the King had been defeated, and had fled from the field. They knew no more, and Walter pronouncing it to be all a cock-and-bull story of some rascally prick-eared pedlar, declared he would go down to the village and enquire into the rights of it.
These were the saddest times of English history, when the wrong cause had been permitted for a time to triumph, and the true and rightful side was persecuted; and among those who endured affliction for the sake of their Church and their King, none suffered more, or more patiently, than Lady Woodley, or, as she was called in the old English fashion, Dame Mary Woodley, of Forest Lea.
When first the war broke out she was living happily in her pleasant home with her husband and children; but when King Charles raised his standard at Nottingham, all this comfort and happiness had to be given up. Sir Walter Woodley joined the royal army, and it soon became unsafe for his wife and children to remain at home, so that they were forced to go about with him, and suffer all the hardships of the sieges and battles. Lady Woodley was never strong, and her health was very much hurt by all she went through; she was almost always unwell, and if Rose, though then quite a child, had not shown care and sense beyond her years for the little ones, it would be hard to say what would have become of them.
Yet all she endured while dragging about her little babies through the country, with bad or insufficient food, uncomfortable lodgings, pain, weariness and anxiety, would have been as nothing but for the heavy sorrows that came upon her also. First she lost her only brother, Edmund Mowbray, and in the battle of Naseby her husband was killed; besides which there were the sorrows of the whole nation in seeing the King sold, insulted, misused, and finally slain, by his own subjects. After Sir Walter’s death, Lady Woodley went home with her five younger children to her father’s house at Forest Lea; for her husband’s estate, Edmund’s own inheritance, had been seized and sequestrated by the rebels. She was the heiress of Forest Lea since the loss of her brother, but the old Mr. Mowbray, her father, had given almost all his wealth for the royal cause, and had been oppressed by the exactions of the rebels, so that he had nothing to leave his daughter but the desolate old house and a few bare acres of land. For the shelter, however, Lady Woodley was very thankful; and there she lived with her children and a faithful servant, Deborah, whose family had always served the Mowbrays, and who would not desert their daughter now.
The neighbours in the village loved, and were sorry for, their lady, and used to send her little presents; there was a large garden in which Diggory Stokes, who had also served her father, raised vegetables for her use; the cow wandered in the deserted park, and so they contrived to find food; while all the work of the house was done by Rose and Deborah. Rose was her mother’s great comfort, nursing her, cheering her, taking care of the little ones, teaching them, working for them, and making light of all her exertions. Everyone in the village loved Rose Woodley, for everyone had in some way been helped or cheered by her. Her mother was only sometimes afraid she worked too hard, and would try her strength too much; but she was always bright and cheerful, and when the day’s work was done no one was more gay and lively and ready for play with the little ones.