The Sword of the King

By Ronald MacDonald

"The Sword of the King" by Ronald MacDonald. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 21, 2019
• ISBN: 4057664647603

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Ronald MacDonald

The Sword of the King

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4057664647603

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

INTRODUCTION

Table of Contents

It is matter of no small difficulty and hesitation for a woman to tell a story—in especial, her own story—from the beginning of it even to the end, and to hold, as it were, a straight course throughout. The perplexities, I say, are many, and among them not the least is found in these same words, beginning and end. For where truly his story has its inception, and what will be its ultimate word, might well puzzle the wisest man of this age, or any other. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of a man is the history of his troubles—but that fashion of considering will bring us, by no devious road, to the latter days of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man. Now either I have somewhere read, or my own heart has privily told me, that the story of a woman is the story of her love. And this I take to be truth, and do therefore resolve that the first chapter of my story shall be the first of my heart.

But, lest my book itself should lack apology, I will first tell how it comes that I, the mere wife and daughter of country gentlemen, and of learning, as will be seen, wholly insufficient to the undertaking, should write a book at all.

I write, it is true, but for my own people—for the family that I pray may be long in the land. But in these days, fortunate indeed, yet full of swift and dubious change—these days when every second man, it would seem, must print a book—these days when all the presses in London are not enough to set before us the tithe of what is committed by ink to paper—in these days, I say, none can be assured that what he now pens shall not by some chance hit of fortune attain the resurrection of print. And if this thing befall my work of love, and if the book then prove, not the cere-cloth of the embalmer, but a second and perpetual life to the thoughts of a most happy daughter, wife, and mother long departed and forgotten, I would stand well with my reader.

If any stranger, then, do read, let him believe that I have no taint in me of that scabies scribendi, mentioned by Horace, and mightily inveighed against last Sunday in the pulpit of Royston Church by our good vicar. This itch must be spreading fast, I thought, if there be danger of it here, where scarce a full score of the good man's hearers can spell in a hornbook. And now, lo! I am in dread lest I be thought infected—I, a woman, with all good things that come to women, and one to whom the holding of the pen is soon a weariness.

There hangs yet (and long may it so hang!) in our great hall at Drayton a sword—not in its sheath, but naked, and broken some two parts of its length from the hilt, but shining bright as on the day it was first drawn by the great prince that once used it. Beneath it, also against the wall above the hearth, is the scabbard.

It was on a fine morning of the fall of last year, as I was tending Ned's new Dutch garden, that I heard loud and childish altercation proceeding through the open windows of the great hall above me. And there in a window arose the fair gilded head of my seven-year Mary, my first and best gift to Ned, and his best to me.

Pray, madam, come up to the hall, she cried, for Will is ever doing things of naught, and he will not be gainsaid by me.

Nay, child, I replied, loath to lose the sweet air of the morning and my labor below. Nay, child, but you must take means and learn cunning to control him.

I cannot do so, madam, says poor Mary, well-nigh in tears; and he is even now about dismounting the broken sword from the wall. But if you will come, madam, I will hold his legs while I may.

And with that I ascended in great haste, yet but just in time to save the relic from desecration and the heir of Royston and Drayton a backward fall of great peril. For the noise of my entrance caused his most unserene Highness to turn quick on his heel and to miss in part the footing, already precarious, that he had attained upon the mantel. In short, he fell into my arms and into tears with one and the same movement; tears shed for no danger run—such is not his habit—but of grief for the plaything that was but now within his grasp; for, though but rising five, Master William Maurice Royston would have the broken sword to fight battles with—against King Lewis, forsooth, and the wicked Frenchmen, in the garden.

It is but a bwoken old sing, madam-muvver, he cried between his sobs, and of a fit length for me, lacking the pointed end, which I did purpose leaving upon the wall. And so I must needs tell him how dearly I do prize that shattered weapon, thinking the while of the shame that was averted, in part by its means, from our houses—and of the honor, too, that came thereby.

Then Mistress Mary would have the tale of the sword, and Will, his grief forgot, and joyously bent on touzing my hair to the image of his own, made instant demand for the fullest narration—"Every word, madam-muvver—from onceuponatime to happyeverafter." Yet the attempt to bring my tale to the measure of childish apprehension did lead me into quagmires of question and answer so vexing to our diverse ignorance, that dinner and Colonel Royston found us scarce advanced beyond Will's onceuponatime. At meat the children demanded and obtained permission to lay the matter before their father—the promised history, and the obscurity of word and idea found necessary by the historian at the very commencement. At last Ned made as if he would speak, when Madam, cries Mary, as one big with a great thought, madam, will you not write it all down, that we may read when we have learned the long words?

Wise maid! said her father. And indeed, Philippa, it is worth the doing. But, Mistress Wisehead, he continued to the child, when the long words are spelt from thy mother's head upon the paper, they will cry aloud to be spelt back into thine, if you will have the tale.

Now these words did make my poor maid to blush hotly, who had little love to her book. Yet she answered well, saying: I know, sir, that I have been a poor scholar, but, if madam will write the tale, I purpose to be diligent to the end that I may read well and fitly against the time it is written.

'T is plain, Phil, says Ned merrily, that here is your one hope to make a scholar of your daughter. And, indeed, sweetheart, he went on, with more of gravity, 't is a book I should like well to read myself.

And that, sir, said I, is a compliment you pay to few. For, beyond M. Vauban's work on fortification, I vow I have not seen a book in your hand since we were wed.

So, what with a reluctant daughter to be tempted into the path of letters, and a husband to please,—as I knew by his face his heart was much set on this enterprise of little Mary's suggestion,—I found myself committed to the task. Yet, though I have thought much and uneasily of my promise, I know not indeed when I had begun the fulfilling it had not Mary this very afternoon brought ink and paper, while Will followed close with a new pen.

Write now, madam, quoth the maid.

Write now, madam-muvver, says Will in faithful echo.

If I begin now, said I, hard driven for yet a new plea to postpone the first plunge, William Maurice Royston will not be able to read the book when it is done.

William Maurice Royston, said he, does not purpose reading. Sis says reading is irksome. But, when the tale is wrote, madam-muvver is going to read it to him.

And so it is that I begin.

THE SWORD OF THE KING

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

I was a child of five years when I first saw my lover, and a gallant sight I thought he made, the more that he found me in sore trouble, and drew me out of it, as is ever his way. Colonel Royston, indeed, in these latter days, holds that what I call my memory in this matter is but the light of his after instruction thrown backward on the dark screen of childish oblivion. Whether or no (though I take much pride in the memory, and still will so call it), between him and me the reader shall not lose, but shall know that on that day my nurse, weary and petulant with the great heat and our long ramble afield, was leading me, Philippa Drayton, no less petulant and even more weary, by the hand, or, rather, was hoisting me by the elbow, up the great avenue of elms that leads to Drayton Hall. And, fain as I was for home, her rough speed was too great for my little legs, and her grip pained my arm, so that I cried out. And then I heard the thud of hoofs upon the turf by the roadside, and I looked up to see the little horse pulled well-nigh on his haunches by his rider, whom, from his own mouth, I soon knew to be Master Edward Royston, of Royston Chase. As he pulled up, Betty let go my arm, whereupon, for the greater ease of my legs and the freer exercise of my voice in weeping, I incontinently sat me down in the road.

For shame! says Master Ned, looking down from his galloway upon Betty, with a frown that had sat well on thrice his years.

Ay, shame indeed, says Betty, yet blushing to the color of a well-boiled beet; for she well knew it was at herself his words were aimed; ay, 't is shame indeed for a great maid like little mistress here to sit in the road and weep.

Now Betty spoke in the broad fashion of our parts—the Doric, as Mr. Telgrove calls it, that I have heard is well-nigh a foreign language to many. For the not giving this outlandish speech to my readers there are two reasons: the one, that, though I do well understand it myself, as is but natural, and do love the sound of it at times, and can even, at a pinch, shape my own mouth to it as well as my ear, I yet have by no means the skill to set it down, knowing, indeed, no combination of letters able to convey its sounds; and the second reason is, that could I make shift so to write, none could read what I had written—which perhaps, by the well-disposed at least, might be held a blemish in my book.

But Master Ned, brushing aside her endeavor to hand on her shame to me, at once declared himself my champion.

You do not take me, he said, the dark cleft of his frown growing deeper between his brows, so that it was a marvel to see so much austerity on so smooth and young a face. When little maids weep, my lass, 't is most times the blame of the great ones.

I know not indeed if Colonel Royston yet hold in this belief; but from that point did I love Master Ned, if, indeed, I had not begun to do so some seconds before. And I was glad that he sat upon his horse, that raised his head some few inches above Betty's cap, for she was indeed a great lass, and twice his age, and his reproof had in great measure lost its force had he stood dwarfed beside her great body.

From Betty he turned to me, as I sat in the road, and—Thou art tired, little one, he cried, with a great tenderness in his young countenance, that to me seemed so old. If you will ride before me, sweetheart, he said, patting the pommel of his saddle, which was new and fine, as all about his person, I and Noll will take most gentle care of thee.

At which kind words I rose to my sore feet, stretching out my arms, and crying to him that I would go with him. And, while Betty stood aghast, yet with never a thought her timid and sickly nursling would venture such a deed, I had reached his down-reached hands, had scrambled or was pulled into the saddle before my knight-errant, the little horse had plunged beneath his double burden, and we were away. As I swayed and bounced on the pommel in the first strides of that gallop along the sward that lies between the elm trees and the road, where the air rushed by so cool and green in the shade, he seized me with his right arm, fetching me round against his body so that my chin lay on the arm above the elbow. As my eyes, close shut in the first shock of our flight, came wide in the great comfort of this security, I was gazing back over the way we had sped, and I laughed aloud to see the vain pursuit of Betty. For all but her great self seemed streaming behind her in the wind of her going—cap, hair, and petticoat, while the fatness of her trembled as she ran.

For all this, long as it has been in the telling, happened, as it were, in a single stroke of time, and we were yet little parted from the pursuer. And, as I laughed, Master Royston, between his chidings of his nag for so serving us, would know the reason of my mirth—so Do but see, I cried, how Betty runs, and you will laugh too. But he could not, till he had tamed and admonished little Noll to a better pace for my ease. And when it was time for him to laugh at the quaint figure Betty did cut, I had already begun to pity her. But Master Royston would none of it.

She is very well served, he said, for her rude manners to thee, little one. I have a mind to give her some more of it. She is weary, is she not?

Ay, indeed, poor Bet! I answered, else had she not so handled me.

Upon that he drew rein, saying we should wait till she drew near. After a while, as Noll did crop the grass at his feet, Master Royston asked me if I could sit astride. It is no shame, he said, thou art so small a maid. And when I was so set, grasping a double handful of the pony's mane, he said: When she is close I shall run to the house. Hold thou fast, little love, for Betty must run as never before if she would catch us. And as I would have pleaded she drew near, all spent and blowing, and I felt his knee move, and little Noll did also feel it, and was gone.

Oh, that I had a pen to tell of that ride! This time I was not afraid. This time there was no starting aside, no uneasy casting of my poor small person from side to side in grievous oscillation. And, oh! I say again, for the pen of some poet (yet I cannot tell whose to wish) in order to describe this my first taste of the joy there is in a horse when he is between us and turf good and plenty! Many a mile and many a beast have I ridden since that summer afternoon, and I hope so to ride, by the goodness of God, many a year hence; and yet that long, clean, resilient flight through an air that seemed of liquid green, flecked with the gold of the sun dropping here and there through the elms; the soft, fresh thud of hoof meeting turf but to part anew with the impact—that meeting with the soil that gave so lively assurance that Mother Earth was yet kindly and strong beneath; the strong rushing of the wind cooling my face and lifting the tangled curls back over the close cap; the new-born trust, moreover, in the arm that held me—all these things are with me now, distilled into one golden drop of life's very elixir, being, indeed, one of those gems of memory whereof the sweetness can as little be set fast by words as the stamp of them can be erased from the mind so sweetly and strangely impressed.

So much for my memory rather of a frame of being than of an ordered consecution of events. The curtain of childish oblivion here descends, as it is wont to fall, swift and dark, on these pregnant spoils of recollection. I think my dear and honored father's arms were those that lifted me from the saddle. I have since heard that Betty was saved by my new friend from the rating Sir Michael had ready for her, receiving privily from that youthful master of craft a mint-new crown in earnest of future subsidies, did she prove thenceforth tender to the little maid. And, indeed, I think she did deserve whatever wage of kindness the future may have brought her. For I have of her no further memory of harsh entreatment.

For Philippa Drayton there now began a new life of the happiest. I had found what all, at one time or another of life, will look for, yet find most often, I truly believe, when they seek him not—I mean a true friend. And there is none but his children and mine that can tell what a friendship it was my friend did give me. He was my playmate, yet of age and wit to control. He was at whiles my tutor, for I would learn of him when none else had the art to keep my eyes five minutes fast on the book. He was my master of equitation, and did teach me in such manner not only to sit upon a horse's back, but also to understand what the animal would be at, that I learned in time to back many a beast that some could not mount with impunity. Before the five years of our early comradeship were past I would ride the colts round the paddock, often without bridle or saddle, and seated astride, as in my first ride with Ned, which I have described above. And he would blame me for a madcap, and yet, if none else were by to see, would laugh at the frolic, and praise my sitting of the nag, and my tricks of control. With his coming into my story, which before was none at all, my old dread of animals, along with the ill-health of my earlier days, had vanished, to be replaced by a pure confidence in all that breathed, which in itself, maybe, was to the full as childish, but, without controversy, far safer for the child. Anon, Ned was himself my steed, to be guided by tuggings of the hair and ears often, I doubt me, little merciful. And, if not the swiftest, he was surely of all I have ridden the most willing. It could not fail that, thus together, we should quarrel often. I mean, it could not fail where such a child as I made one of the pair. But Ned would bear my poutings, my bickerings, and every wayward mood with a smile when he might, and without it when he must. But did some act of mine wrong some other than himself, as when I would cuff Betty, or strike dog or horse for the easing of my own passion rather than the fit correction of the animal, then would he show the sterner mettle that was in him. Then he would not forgive till confession of wrong or pardon was asked. And, was I stubborn, he would stay away, even days together, but I must submit. Once it was a week—seven days, most long and dark for erring Mistress Philippa. For he said: You are my friend, little Phil, and some day I shall wed thee, and it is not for my honor that you do thus, or so.

Thus Master Edward Royston, aged some fourteen years. Yet was my Ned no untimely saint, fitted but for the fatal love of the gods. Passion and frolic were in him, laughter, and—no, not tears—only twice have I seen them in his eyes, heard them mar the government of his speech. Boyish escapades were plentiful enough with him to give his mother and my father some knowledge of the unbending nicety in the point of honor which was yet seen in his most boyish prank or his strongest passion of anger. For the power also of anger was in him, growing, indeed, in its outburst less frequent as he grew in stature, but gaining rather than losing force with its rarer manifestation. I touch on this note of his character designedly, inasmuch as it was the cause of the great change that was soon, I mean at the end of twelve years from our first meeting, to come into my life. But of that in its place.

Sir Michael Drayton, of Drayton Manor, in the southward part of the county of Somerset, was already well on in years when I, the second child of his second wife, was born. And that was in the eighth year of the second Charles. For he, my father, first saw the light in the year of grace 1609, and thus, at the time of my meeting with Ned, which was in the summer of the year 1673, and in the sixth year of my little life, he had fulfilled sixty-four years, of which number some five and forty had brought him trouble sufficient, on moderate computation, to furnish out a fair portion of strife and affliction to six ordinary men. For, ardent and devoted Cavalier though he was, 't was not the outburst of the great war of the Rebellion that marked the worst point of his troubles. Often in his old age have I heard my dear father tell how, after the tedious and ever embittering doubts and hesitations of that civil strife that had endured in England since the coming of the first Stuart, to him as to many another the resort to arms came as a clearing of the vexed mind and settlement of conscience perturbed. Of the momentous action of the Long Parliament, in the year 1642, I have heard him say: Then at length our duty was plain. I, for one, slept better o' nights thereafter than I had done since the meeting of the Short Parliament. For Sir Michael had been elected of the shire for that hapless assembly, as subsequently for its successor, the Long Parliament; of his seat in the latter he was illegally deprived when he withdrew from Westminster to join the King at Oxford, which he did in the late spring of that same year (I mean 1642), in the excellent company of my Lord Falkland and the late Lord Chancellor Clarendon, then Sir Edward Hyde. And thenceforth his life was war, and raising of money in order to its prosecution; in both which perilous and comfortless means of assisting his sovereign and of hurting his foes Sir Michael Drayton was ever forward, to the most lamentable detriment of his own person and estate. He raised on his own land, and maintained at his own expense, a troop of horse that were ever with him throughout the first period of that long and evil war, I mean until the fight at Naseby in Yorkshire. There he lost great part of his following upon the field, and was himself grievously hurt. Yet with that scent, as I may say, which led him in all those years ever where the work was hottest, he was found again in the Welsh rising three years later, whence, escaping after the fall of Pembroke Castle, he joined himself with his little remnant of troopers to the Scots, in bare time to share their overthrow at Warrington by the late Protector (although he had not then that title).

Sore in mind, sick in body,—for he was never wholly healed of his great wound in the right thigh which he