Mistress Mary Cavendish had framed in black, in her chamber, a
silhouette of this hero, and she wore in a locket a lock of his
hair, by which she had come, in some girlish fashion, through a
young gossip of hers, a kinswoman of Bacon's, from whose head I
verily believe she had pilfered it while asleep. And, more than
that, I knew of her and Cicely Hyde strewing fresh blossoms on the
tide of the York River, in which Bacon had been buried, on the
anniversary of his death, and coming home with sweet eyes red with
tears of heroic sentiment, which surely be not the most ignoble shed
by mankind.
"'Twas the only good ever heard of them," repeated Mistress Mary,
"and even that they must need spoil by coming home and paying tithes
to my Lord Culpeper that he wink at their disaffection. I trow had I
been a man and fought with General Bacon, as I would have fought,
had I been a man, I would have paid no price therefore to the king
himself, but would have stayed in hiding forever."
With that she touched Merry Roger with her whip and was off at a
gallop, and I abreast, inwardly laughing, for I well understood that
this persistency on other and stirring topics, and sudden flight
when they failed, was to keep me from the subject of the powder and
ammunition unladen that morning from the "Golden Horn." But she need
not have taken such pains, for I, while in church, had resolved
within myself not to question her further, lest she tell me
something which might do her harm were I forced, for her good, to
reveal it, but to demand the meaning of all this from Sir Humphrey
Hyde, who, I was convinced, knew as much as she.