Cis and Susan cried out with horror, and Babington with stammering wrath demanded whether she was to be assassinated in the Spanish fashion, or on what pretext a charge could be brought against her. "Well," Cavendish answered, "as the saying is, give her rope enough, and she will hang herself. Indeed, there's no doubt but that she tampered enough with Throckmorton's plot to have been convicted of misprision of treason, and so she would have been, but that her most sacred Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, would have no charge made against her.
"Treason from one sovereign to another, that is new law!" said Babington.
"So to speak," said Richard; "but if she claim to be heiress to the crown, she must also be a subject. Heaven forefend that she should come to the throne!"
To which all except Cis and Babington uttered a hearty amen, while a picture arose before the girl of herself standing beside her royal mother robed in velvet and ermine on the throne, and of the faces of Lady Shrewsbury and her daughter as they recognised her, and were pardoned.
Cavendish presently took his leave, and carried the unwilling Babington off with him, rightly divining that the family would wish to make their arrangements alone. To Richard's relief, Babington had brought him no private message, and to Cicely's disappointment, there was no addition in sympathetic ink to her letter, though she scorched the paper brown in trying to bring one out. The Scottish Queen was much too wary to waste and risk her secret expedients without necessity.
To Richard and Susan this was the real resignation of their foster- child into the hands of her own parent. It was true that she would still bear their name, and pass for their daughter, but that would be only so long as it might suit her mother's convenience; and instead of seeing her every day, and enjoying her full confidence (so far as they knew), she would be out of reach, and given up to influences, both moral and religious, which they deeply distrusted; also to a fate looming in the future with all the dark uncertainty that brooded over all connected with Tudor or Stewart royalty.
How much good Susan wept and prayed that night, only her pillow knew, not even her husband; and there was no particular comfort when my Lady Countess descended on her in the first interval of fine weather, full of wrath at not having been consulted, and discharging it in all sorts of predictions as to Cis's future. No honest and loyal husband would have her, after being turned loose in such company; she would be corrupted in morals and manners, and a disgrace to the Talbots; she would be perverted in faith, become a Papist, and die in a nunnery beyond sea; or she would be led into plots and have her head cut off; or pressed to death by the peine forte et dure.
Susan had nothing to say to all this, but that her husband thought it right, and then had a little vigorous advice on her own score against tamely submitting to any man, a weakness which certainly could not be laid to the charge of the termagant of Hardwicke.
Cicely herself was glad to go. She loved her mother with a romantic enthusiastic affection, missed her engaging caresses, and felt her Bridgefield home eminently dull, flat, and even severe, especially since she had lost the excitement of Humfrey's presence, and likewise her companion Diccon. So she made her preparations with a joyful alacrity, which secretly pained her good foster-parents, and made Susan almost ready to reproach her with ingratitude.
They lectured her, after the fashion of the time, on the need of never forgetting her duty to her God in her affection to her mother, Susan trusting that she would never let herself be led away to the Romish faith, and Richard warning her strongly against untruth and falsehood, though she must be exposed to cruel perplexities as to the right- "But if thou be true to man, thou wilt be true to God," he said. "If thou be false to man, thou wilt soon be false to thy God likewise."
"We will pray for thee, child," said Susan. "Do thou pray earnestly for thyself that thou mayest ever see the right."
"My queen mother is a right pious woman. She is ever praying and reading holy books," said Cis. "Mother Susan, I marvel you, who know her, can speak thus."
"Nay, child, I would not lessen thy love and duty to her, poor soul, but it is not even piety in a mother that can keep a maiden from temptation. I blame not her in warning thee."
Richard himself escorted the damsel to her new home. There was no preventing their being joined by Babington, who, being well acquainted with the road, and being also known as a gentleman of good estate, was able to do much to make their journey easy to them, and secure good accommodation for them at the inns, though Mr. Talbot entirely baffled his attempts to make them his guests, and insisted on bearing a full share of the reckoning. Neither did Cicely fulfil her mother's commission to show herself inclined to accept his attentions. If she had been under contrary orders, there would have been some excitement in going as far as she durst, but the only effect on her was embarrassment, and she treated Antony with the same shy stiffness she had shown to Humfrey, during the earlier part of his residence at home. Besides, she clung more and more to her adopted father, who, now that they were away from home and he was about to part with her, treated her with a tender, chivalrous deference, most winning in itself, and making her feel herself no longer a child.
Arriving at last at Wingfield, Sir Ralf Sadler had hardly greeted them before a messenger was sent to summon the young lady to the presence of the Queen of Scots. Her welcome amounted to ecstasy. The Queen rose from her cushioned invalid chair as the bright young face appeared at the door, held out her arms, gathered her into them, and, covering her with kisses, called her by all sorts of tender names in French and Scottish.
"O ma mie, my lassie, ma fille, mine ain wee thing, how sweet to have one bairn who is mine, mine ain, whom they have not robbed me of, for thy brother, ah, thy brother, he hath forsaken me! He is made of the false Darnley stuff, and compacted by Knox and Buchanan and the rest, and he will not stand a blast of Queen Elizabeth's wrath for the poor mother that bore him. Ay, he hath betrayed me, and deluded me, my child; he hath sold me once more to the English loons! I am set faster in prison than ever, the iron entereth into my soul. Thou art but daughter to a captive queen, who looks to thee to be her one bairn, one comfort and solace."
Cicely responded by caresses, and indeed felt herself more than ever before the actual daughter, as she heard with indignation of James's desertion of his mother's cause; but Mary, whatever she said herself, would not brook to hear her speak severely of him. "The poor laddie," she said, "he was no better than a prisoner among those dour Scots lords," and she described in graphic terms some of her own experiences of royalty in Scotland.
The other ladies all welcomed the newcomer as the best medicine both to the spirit and body of their Queen. She was regularly enrolled among the Queen's maidens, and shared their meals. Mary dined and supped alone, sixteen dishes being served to her, both on "fish and flesh days," and the reversion of these as well as a provision of their own came to the higher table of her attendants, where Cicely ranked with the two Maries, Jean Kennedy, and Sir Andrew Melville. There was a second table, at which ate the two secretaries, Mrs. Curll, and Elizabeth Curll, Gilbert's sister, a most faithful attendant on the Queen. As before, she shared the Queen's chamber, and there it was that Mary asked her, "Well, mignonne, and how fares it with thine ardent suitor? Didst say that he rode with thee?"
"As far as the Manor gates, madam."
"And what said he? Was he very pressing?"
'Nay, madam, I was ever with my father-Mr. Talbot."
"And he keeps the poor youth at arm's length. Thine other swain, the sailor, his son, is gone off once more to rob the Spaniards, is he not?-so there is the more open field."