第13章 The Two Cousins(5)

'You are as cruel as a woman,' the lady answered. 'I was not to blame. I told you I gave 'em time to change their minds. On my honour (ay de mi!), she asked no more of 'em at first than to wait a while off that coast - the Gascons' Graveyard - to hover a little if their ships chanced to pass that way - they had only one tall ship and a pinnace - only to watch and bring me word of Philip's doings. One must watch Philip always. What a murrain right had he to make any plantation there, a hundred leagues north of his Spanish Main, and only six weeks from England? By my dread father's soul, I tell you he had none - none!' She stamped her red foot again, and the two children shrunk back for a second.

'Nay, nay. You must not turn from me too! She laid it all fairly before the lads in Brickwall garden between the yews. I told 'em that if Philip sent a fleet (and to make a plantation he could not well send less), their poor little cock-boats could not sink it. They answered that, with submission, the fight would be their own concern. She showed 'em again that there could be only one end to it - quick death on the sea, or slow death in Philip's prisons.

They asked no more than to embrace death for my sake. Many men have prayed to me for life. I've refused 'em, and slept none the worse after; but when my men, my tall, fantastical young men, beseech me on their knees for leave to die for me, it shakes me - ah, it shakes me to the marrow of my old bones.'

Her chest sounded like a board as she hit it.

'She showed 'em all. I told 'em that this was no time for open war with Spain. If by miracle inconceivable they prevailed against Philip's fleet, Philip would hold me accountable. For England's sake, to save war, I should e'en be forced (I told 'em so) to give him up their young lives. If they failed, and again by some miracle escaped Philip's hand, and crept back to England with their bare lives, they must lie - oh, I told 'em all - under my sovereign displeasure. She could not know them, see them, nor hear their names, nor stretch out a finger to save them from the gallows, if Philip chose to ask it.

'"Be it the gallows, then," says the elder. (I could have wept, but that my face was made for the day.)

'"Either way - any way - this venture is death, which I know you fear not. But it is death with assured dishonour," I cried.

'"Yet our Queen will know in her heart what we have done," says the younger.

'"Sweetheart," I said. "A queen has no heart."

'"But she is a woman, and a woman would not forget," says the elder. "We will go!" They knelt at my feet.

'"Nay, dear lads - but here!" I said, and I opened my arms to them and I kissed them.

'"Be ruled by me," I said. "We'll hire some ill-featured old tarry-breeks of an admiral to watch the Graveyard, and you shall come to Court."

'"Hire whom you please," says the elder; "we are ruled by you, body and soul"; and the younger, who shook most when I kissed 'em, says between his white lips, "I think you have power to make a god of a man."

'"Come to Court and be sure of't," I said.

'They shook their heads and I knew - I knew, that go they would. If I had not kissed them - perhaps I might have prevailed.'

'Then why did you do it?' said Una. 'I don't think you knew really what you wanted done.'

'May it please your Majesty' - the lady bowed her head low -

'this Gloriana whom I have represented for your pleasure was a woman and a Queen. Remember her when you come to your Kingdom.'

'But- did the cousins go to the Gascons' Graveyard?' said Dan, as Una frowned.

'They went,' said the lady.

'Did they ever come back?' Una began; but - 'Did they stop King Philip's fleet?' Dan interrupted.

The lady turned to him eagerly.

'D'you think they did right to go?' she asked.

'I don't see what else they could have done,' Dan replied, after thinking it over.

'D'you think she did right to send 'em?' The lady's voice rose a little.

'Well,' said Dan, 'I don't see what else she could have done, either - do you? How did they stop King Philip from getting Virginia?'

'There's the sad part of it. They sailed out that autumn from Rye Royal, and there never came back so much as a single rope-yarn to show what had befallen them. The winds blew, and they were not. Does that make you alter your mind, young Burleigh?'

'I expect they were drowned, then. Anyhow, Philip didn't score, did he?'

'Gloriana wiped out her score with Philip later. But if Philip had won, would you have blamed Gloriana for wasting those lads' lives?'

'Of course not. She was bound to try to stop him.'

The lady coughed. 'You have the root of the matter in you.

Were I Queen, I'd make you Minister.'

'We don't play that game,' said Una, who felt that she disliked the lady as much as she disliked the noise the high wind made tearing through Willow Shaw.

'Play!' said the lady with a laugh, and threw up her hands affectedly. The sunshine caught the jewels on her many rings and made them flash till Una's eyes dazzled, and she had to rub them.

Then she saw Dan on his knees picking up the potatoes they had spilled at the gate.

'There wasn't anybody in the Shaw, after all,' he said. 'Didn't you think you saw someone?'

'I'm most awfully glad there isn't,' said Una. Then they went on with the potato-roast.