The Sword of the King

INTRODUCTION

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.