"If the bridge had been stronger, My tale had been longer.""Amyas! Amyas!" quoth Frank, solemnly, "you know not what power over the soul has the native and God-given majesty of royalty (awful enough in itself) when to it is superadded the wisdom of the sage, and therewithal the tenderness of the woman.Had I my will, there should be in every realm not a salique, but an anti-salique law: whereby no kings, but only queens should rule mankind.Then would weakness and not power be to man the symbol of divinity;love, and not cunning, would be the arbiter of every cause; and chivalry, not fear, the spring of all obedience.""Humph! There's some sense in that," quoth Amyas."I'd run a mile for a woman when I would not walk a yard for a man; and-- Who is this our mother is bringing in? The handsomest fellow I ever saw in my life!"Amyas was not far wrong; for Mrs.Leigh's companion was none other than Mr.Secretary, Amyas's Smerwick Fort acquaintance; alias Colin Clout, alias Immerito, alias Edmund Spenser.Some half-jesting conversation had seemingly been passing between the poet and the saint; for as they came in she said with a smile (which was somewhat of a forced one)--"Well, my dear sons, you are sure of immortality, at least on earth; for Mr.Spenser has been vowing to me to give your adventure a whole canto to itself in his 'Faerie Queene'""And you no less, madam," said Spenser."What were the story of the Gracchi worth without the figure of Cornelia? If I honor the fruit, I must not forget the stem which bears it.Frank, Icongratulate you."
"Then you know the result of my interview, mother?""I know everything, and am content," said Mrs.Leigh.
"Mrs.Leigh has reason to be content," said Spenser," with that which is but her own likeness."Spare your flattery to an old woman, Mr.Spenser.When, pray, did I" (with a most loving look at Frank) "refuse knighthood for duty's sake?""Knighthood?" cried Amyas."You never told me that, Frank!""That may well be, Captain Leigh," said Spenser; "but believe me, her majesty (so Hatton assures me) told him this day, no less than that by going on this quest he deprived himself of that highest earthly honor, which crowned heads are fain to seek from their own subjects."Spenser did not exaggerate.Knighthood was then the prize of merit only; and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted him, she had nothing better to bestow.It remained for young Essex to begin the degradation of the order in his hapless Irish campaign, and for James to complete that degradation by his novel method of raising money by the sale of baronetcies; a new order of hereditary knighthood which was the laughing-stock of the day, and which (however venerable it may have since become) reflects anything but honor upon its first possessors.
"I owe you no thanks, Colin," said Frank, "for having broached my secret: but I have lost nothing after all.There is still an order of knighthood in which I may win my spurs, even though her majesty refuse me the accolade.""What, then? you will not take it from a foreign prince?"Frank smiled.
"Have you never read of that knighthood which is eternal in the heavens, and of those true cavaliers whom John saw in Patmos, riding on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, knights-errant in the everlasting war against the False Prophet and the Beast? Let me but become worthy of their ranks hereafter, what matter whether I be called Sir Frank on earth?""My son," said Mrs.Leigh, "remember that they follow One whose vesture is dipped, not in the blood of His enemies, but in His own.""I have remembered it for many a day; and remembered, too, that the garments of the knights may need the same tokens as their captain's.""Oh, Frank! Frank! is not His precious blood enough to cleanse all sin, without the sacrifice of our own?""We may need no more than His blood, mother, and yet He may need ours," said Frank.
.......
How that conversation ended I know not, nor whether Spenser fulfilled his purpose of introducing the two brothers and their mother into his "Faerie Queene." If so, the manuscripts must have been lost among those which perished (along with Spenser's baby) in the sack of Kilcolman by the Irish in 1598.But we need hardly regret the loss of them; for the temper of the Leighs and their mother is the same which inspires every canto of that noblest of poems; and which inspired, too, hundreds in those noble days, when the chivalry of the Middle Ages was wedded to the free thought and enterprise of the new.
.......
So mother and sons returned to Bideford, and set to work.Frank mortgaged a farm; Will Cary did the same (having some land of his own from his mother).Old Salterne grumbled at any man save himself spending a penny on the voyage, and forced on the adventurers a good ship of two hundred tons burden, and five hundred pounds toward fitting her out; Mrs.Leigh worked day and night at clothes and comforts of every kind; Amyas had nothing to give but his time and his brains: but, as Salterne said, the rest would have been of little use without them; and day after day he and the old merchant were on board the ship, superintending with their own eyes the fitting of every rope and nail.Cary went about beating up recruits; and made, with his jests and his frankness, the best of crimps: while John Brimblecombe, beside himself with joy, toddled about after him from tavern to tavern, and quay to quay, exalted for the time being (as Cary told him) into a second Peter the Hermit; and so fiercely did he preach a crusade against the Spaniards, through Bideford and Appledore, Clovelly and Ilfracombe, that Amyas might have had a hundred and fifty loose fellows in the first fortnight.But he knew better: still smarting from the effects of a similar haste in the Newfoundland adventure, he had determined to take none but picked men; and by dint of labor he obtained them.