Suddenly the door opened and a groom came in. He hesitated. “Ah … I did not know there was anyone here. I have brought more straw.”
“I thank you.”
“There are four of you and the little girl?”
“Little boy,” she corrected him.
As she spoke she had laid her hand on the child; it was as though when anyone spoke of it she had to touch it, fearing that someone might try to snatch it from her. The man came over and looked down at the sleeping child. He stared, and she remembered how the woman on the bank had noticed her finely shaped hands.
“A little boy,” said the groom, “with the looks of a girl.”
“He is young yet, and I am told that he resembles his mother rather than his father.”
“He has an air,” said the groom. “He might be the child of someone of high degree.”
He was watching the hunchback in a manner which brought the flush to her cheeks, and in that instant, as the rich blood showed beneath the dirt, she was young and comely.
He lowered his voice. “Lady,” he said, “there are some hereabouts who would be loyal to His Majesty.”
She did not answer; her grip tightened on the child.
“Your hands are too fine, madam,” he said. “They betray you. You should keep them hidden.”
“My hands? I am a lady’s maid.”
“That would account for it, mayhap.”
“Mayhap! It does account for it!”
“Your hump has slipped a little, lady. If you’ll forgive my saying so, it is a bit too high. And you should bend over more.”
The hunchback tried to speak, but she could not; her mouth was dry and she was trembling.
“I was with the King’s army at Edgehill,” went on the groom. “I was with the little Prince Charles and his brother James. There was that about him—Charles, I mean—which made me want to serve him. Boy as he was, I’ll never forget him. Tall for his age and dark for an Englishman, and so ready to give a smile to a man that he didn’t seem like a king’s son. Just one of ourselves … and yet with a difference … He came near to capture at Edgehill … God bless him! God bless the Prince of Wales!”
“You’re a bold man to speak thus before a stranger.”
“These are days for bold deeds, madam. But you may trust me. I wish you Godspeed and a safe trip across the water.”
“Across the water?”
“You go to Dover, madam. You will cross the water with the child and join the Queen.”
“I have said nothing that should make you think this.”
“They say the Queen is the cause of the King’s troubles, madam. That may be so, but the Queen is devoted to the King’s cause. Poor lady! It must be two years since she fled from England. It was a few weeks after the birth of her youngest, the little Princess Henrietta.”
“This makes uneasy talk,” said the hunchback.
“You may trust me, madam. And if there is anything I can do to serve you …”
“Thank you, but I am only a poor woman who, with her husband and fellow-servants, goes to join her master’s household.”
He bowed and went from the room; and when he had gone she was still unable to move, for a numbness had seized her limbs. On the road, passing the soldiers of the King’s enemies, she had been less frightened than now. The walls of the attic became to her like prison walls.
When the others joined her, they found her sitting on the straw holding the child in her arms.
She said: “I am afraid. One of the grooms came to bring straw, and I am sure he knows who we are. And I … I cannot be sure whether or not we can trust him.”
The night was full of terrors. She shifted from side to side on her straw. The hump of linen hurt her back, but she dared not unstrap it. What if the hunchback were surprised without her hump! Had she been foolish in attempting this great adventure? What if she failed now? That virago, Queen Henrietta Maria, would never forgive her for exposing her youngest child to such dangers of the road. And yet there were times when it was necessary to take a bold action. The Queen herself had acted boldly, and because of that was at this moment in her native country where she might work for the King, her husband, instead of being—as she most certainly would have been, had she been less bold—the prisoner of the King’s enemies.
Anne Douglas, Lady Dalkeith, had had to find some way of disguising her tall and graceful figure, and the hump had seemed as good a way as any; and to assume French nationality had seemed imperative since the little Princess could prattle and her lisping “Princess” sounded more like Pierre than any other name. If it had only been possible to make the child understand the danger she was in, how much easier would this task have been! But she was too young to realize why she must be hurried from her comfortable palace, why she must be dressed as a beggar’s child, and that she must be called Pierre. If she had been younger—or older—the journey might have been less dangerous.
Anne Douglas had scarcely slept since she had left the Palace of Oat-lands; she was exhausted now, but even with the others at hand, she dared not sleep. The groom had made her very uneasy. He had said she could trust him, but whom could one trust in a country engaged in a great civil war?
It would have seemed incredible a few years ago that she, Anne Villiers, wife of Robert Douglas who was the heir of the Earl of Morton, should be lying in such a place as this. But times had changed; and it occurred to her to wonder where the King slept this night or where the Prince of Wales had his lodging.
She had made the decision suddenly.
It was two years since the little Princess had been born. The Queen had been very weak at the time, and before she had risen from her bed news had come that Lord Essex—who was on the side of the Parliament—was marching to Exeter with the intention of besieging the city. Henrietta Maria had written to him asking for permission to leave for Bath with her child; Essex’s reply had been that if the Queen went anywhere with his consent it would be to London, where she would be called before the Parliament to answer a charge of making civil war in England.
There had been only one course open to her—flight to France. How she had wept, that emotional woman! She had cried to Anne: “I must leave this country. If the Parliament make me their prisoner, my husband will come to my aid; he will risk all for my sake. It is better that my miserable life should be risked than that he should be in peril through me. I have written to him telling him this; and by the time he receives my letter I hope to be in France. The Queen of France is my own sister-in-law, and she will not turn me away.”
She was all emotion; her heart was ever ready to govern her head, and this, Anne knew, was in a large measure to be blamed for the King’s disasters; for, oddly enough, although the marriage of Charles and Henrietta Maria had begun stormily, they had quickly understood each other, and with understanding had come passionate affection. The Queen was passionate by nature; frivolous she seemed at times, yet how singlemindedly she could cling to a cause; and the cause to which she now gave her passionate energy was that of her husband.
“Take care of my little one, Anne,” she had said. “Guard her with your life. If ill befall her, Anne Douglas, you shall suffer a thousand times more than she does.” Those black eyes had snapped with fury as she had railed against a fate which demanded she leave her child; they softened with love for the baby and gratitude to Anne Douglas, even while she threatened her. Then, having made these threats, she had taken Anne in her arms and kissed her. “I know you will take care of my child … Protestant though you are. And if you should ever see the light, foolish woman, and come to the true religion, you must instruct my daughter as I would have her instructed. Oh, but you are a Protestant, you say! And the King will have his children brought up in the religion of their own country! And I am a poor desolate mother who must give up her newborn babe to a Protestant! A Protestant!” She had become incoherent, for she had never bothered to learn the English language properly. Anne knelt to her and swore that, apart from her religion, she would serve the Queen and obey her in all things.