and his kindred knew not whether he were among the unnamed dead who loaded the trees in the rear of the army of Sussex, or whether he had escaped beyond seas. Richard Talbot still remained as one of the trusted kinsmen of Lord Shrewsbury, on whom that nobleman depended for the execution of the charge which yearly became more wearisome and onerous, as hope decayed and plots thickened.
Though resident in the new lodge with her train, it was greatly diminished by the dismissal from time to time of persons who were regarded as suspicious; Mary still continued on intimate terms with Lady Shrewsbury and her daughters, specially distinguishing with her favour Bessie Pierrepoint, the eldest grandchild of the Countess, who slept with her, and was her plaything and her pupil in French and needlework. The fiction of her being guest and not prisoner had not entirely passed away; visitors were admitted, and she went in and out of the lodge, walked or rode at will, only under pretext of courtesy. She never was unaccompanied by the Earl or one of his sons, and they endeavoured to make all private conversation with strangers, or persons unauthorised from Court, impossible to her.
The invitation given to little Cicely on the arrival had not been followed up. The Countess wished to reserve to her own family all the favours of one who might at any moment become the Queen of England, and she kept Susan Talbot and her children in what she called their meet place, in which that good lady thoroughly acquiesced, having her hands much too full of household affairs to run after queens.
There was a good deal of talk about this child's play, a thing which had much better have been left where it was; but in a seclusion like that of Sheffield subjects of conversation were not over numerous, and every topic which occurred was apt to be worried to shreds. So Lady Shrewsbury and her daughters heard the Queen's arch description of the children's mimicry, and instantly conceived a desire to see the scene repeated. The gentlemen did not like it at all: their loyalty was offended at the insult to her gracious Majesty, and besides, what might not happen if such sports ever came to her ears? However, the Countess ruled Sheffield; and Mary Talbot and Bessie Cavendish ruled the Countess, and they were bent on their own way. So the representation was to take place in the great hall of the manor-house, and the actors were to be dressed in character from my lady's stores.
'They will ruin it, these clumsy English, after their own fashion,' said Queen Mary, among her ladies. 'It was the unpremeditated grace and innocent audacity of the little ones that gave the charm. Now it will be a mere broad farce, worthy of Bess of Hardwicke. Mais que voulez vous?'
The performance was, however, laid under a great disadvantage by the absolute refusal of Richard and Susan Talbot to allow their Cicely to assume the part of Queen Elizabeth. They had been dismayed at her doing so in child's play, and since she could read fluently, write pretty well, and cipher a little, the good mother had decided to put a stop to this free association with the boys at the castle, and to keep her at home to study needlework and housewifery. As to her acting with boys before the assembled households, the proposal seemed to them absolutely insulting to any daughter of the Talbot line, and they had by this time forgotten that she was no such thing. Bess Cavendish, the special spoilt child of the house, even rode down, armed with her mother's commands, but her feudal feeling did not here sway Mistress Susan.
Public acting was esteemed an indignity for women, and, though Cis was a mere child, all Susan's womanhood awoke, and she made answer firmly that she could not obey my lady Countess in this.
Bess flounced out of the house, indignantly telling her she should rue the day, and Cis herself cried passionately, longing after the fine robes and jewels, and the presentation of herself as a queen before the whole company of the castle. The harsh system of the time made the good mother think it her duty to requite this rebellion with the rod, and to set the child down to her seam in the corner, and there sat Cis, pouting and brooding over what Antony Babington had told her of what he had picked up when in his page's capacity, attending his lady, of Queen Mary's admiration of the pretty ways and airs of the little mimic Queen Bess, till she felt as if she were defrauded of her due. The captive Queen was her dream, and to hear her commendations, perhaps be kissed by her, would be supreme bliss. Nay, she still hoped that there would be an interference of the higher powers on her behalf, which would give her a triumph.
No! Captain Talbot came home, saying, 'So, Mistress Sue, thou art a steadfast woman, to have resisted my lady's will!'
'I knew, my good husband, that thou wouldst never see our Cis even in sport a player!'
'Assuredly not, and thou hadst the best of it, for when Mistress Bess came in as full of wrath as a petard of powder, and made your refusal known, my lord himself cried out, 'And she's in the right o't! What a child may do in sport is not fit for a gentlewoman in earnest.''
'Then, hath not my lord put a stop to the whole?'
'Fain would he do so, but the Countess and her daughters are set on carrying out the sport. They have set Master Sniggius to indite the speeches, and the boys of the school are to take the parts for their autumn interlude.'
'Surely that is perilous, should it come to the knowledge of those at Court.'
'Oh, I promise you, Sniggius hath a device for disguising all that could give offence. The Queen will become Semiramis or Zenobia, I know not which, and my Lord of Leicester, Master Hatton, and the others, will be called Ninus or Longinus, or some such heathenish long-tailed terms, and speak speeches of mighty length. Are they to be in Latin, Humfrey?'
'Oh no, sir,' said Humfrey, with a shudder. 'Master Sniggius would have had them so, but the young ladies said they would have nothing to do with the affair if there were one word of Latin uttered. It is bad enough as it is. I am to be Philidaspes, an Assyrian knight, and have some speeches to learn, at least one is twenty-five lines, and not one is less than five!'
'A right requital for thy presumptuous and treasonable game, my son,' said his father, teasing him.
'And who is to be the Queen?' asked the mother.
'Antony Babington,' said Humfrey, 'because he can amble and mince more like a wench than any of us. The worse luck for him. He will have more speeches than any one of us to learn.'
The report of the number of speeches to be learnt took off the sting of Cis's disappointment, though she would not allow that it did so, declaring with truth that she could learn by hearing faster than any of the boys. Indeed, she did learn all Humfrey's speeches, and Antony's to boot, and assisted both of them with all her might in committing them to memory.
As Captain Talbot had foretold, the boys' sport was quite sufficiently punished by being made into earnest. Master Sniggius was far from merciful as to length, and his satire was so extremely remote that Queen Elizabeth herself could hardly have found out that Zenobia's fine moral lecture on the vanities of too aspiring ruffs was founded on the box on the ear which rewarded poor Lady Mary Howard's display of her rich petticoat, nor would her cheeks have tingled when the Queen of the East-by a bold adaptation-played the part of Lion in interrupting the interview of our old friends Pyramus and Thisbe, who, by an awful anachronism, were carried to Palmyra. It was no plagiarism from 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' only drawn from the common stock of playwrights.
So, shorn of all that was perilous, and only understood by the initiated, the play took place in the Castle Hall, the largest available place, with Queen Mary seated upon the dais, with a canopy of State over her head, Lady Shrewsbury on a chair nearly as high, the Earl, the gentlemen and ladies of their suites drawn up in a circle, the servants where they could, the Earl's musicians thundering with drums, tooting with fifes, twanging on fiddles, overhead in a gallery. Cis and Diccon, on either side of Susan Talbot, gazing on the stage, where, much encumbered by hoop and farthingale, and arrayed in a yellow curled wig, strutted forth Antony Babington, declaiming-
'Great Queen Zenobia am I, The Roman Power I defy. At my Palmyra, in the East, I rule o'er every man and beast'
Here was an allusion couched in the Roman power, which Master Antony had missed, or he would hardly have uttered it, since he was of a Roman Catholic family, though, while in the Earl's household, he had to conform outwardly.
A slender, scholarly lad, with a pretty, innocent face, and a voice that could 'speak small, like a woman,' came in and announced himself thus-
'I'm Thisbe, an Assyrian maid, My robe's with jewels overlaid.'
The stiff colloquy between the two boys, encumbered with their dresses, shy and awkward, and rehearsing their lines like a task, was no small contrast to the merry impromptu under the oak, and the gay, free grace of the children.
Poor Philidaspes acquitted himself worst of all, for when done up in a glittering suit of sham armour, with a sword and dagger of lath, his entire speech, though well conned, deserted him, and he stood red-faced, hesitating,
