PRISONER AND PRINCE
The sun sank lower and had begun to throw long shadows before the door
opened again and the Prior beckoned. As Chris had stood there staring
out of the window at the green water of the moat and the shadowed wall
beyond, with the warder standing a few steps below, now sighing at the
delay, now humming a line or two, he had heard voices now and again from
the room above, but it had been no more than a murmur that died once
more into silence.
* * * * *
Chris was aware of a dusty room as he stepped over the threshold, bare
walls, one or two solid pieces of furniture, and of the Prior’s figure
very upright in the light from the tiny window at one side; and then he
forgot everything as he looked at the man that was standing smiling by
the table.
It was a very tall slender figure, dressed in a ragged black gown
turning green with age; a little bent now, but still dignified; the face
was incredibly lean, with great brown eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and a
little white hair, ragged, too, and long, hung down under the old
flapped cap. The hand that Chris kissed seemed a bundle of reeds bound
with parchment, and above the wrist bones the arm grew thinner still
under the loose, torn sleeve.
Then the monk stood up and saw those kindly proud eyes looking into his
own.
The Prior made a deferential movement and said a word or two, and the
bishop answered him.
“Yes, yes, my Lord Prior; I understand--God bless you, my son.”
The bishop moved across to the chair, and sat down, panting a little,
for he was torn by sickness and deprivation, and laid his long hands
together.
“Sit down, brother,” he said, “and you too, my Lord Prior.”
Chris saw the Prior move across to an old broken stool, but he himself
remained standing, awed and almost terrified at that worn face in which
the eyes alone seemed living; so thin that the cheekbones stood out
hideously, and the line of the square jaw. But the voice was wonderfully
sweet and penetrating.
“My Lord Prior and I have been talking of the times, and what is best to
be done, and how we must all be faithful. You will be faithful,
brother?”
Chris made an effort against the absorbing fascination of that face and
voice.
“I will, my lord.”
“That is good; you must follow your prior and be obedient to him. You
will find him wise and courageous.”
The bishop nodded gently towards the Prior, and Chris heard a sobbing
indrawn breath from the corner where the broken stool stood.
“It is a time of great moment,” went on the bishop; “much hangs on how
we carry ourselves. His Grace has evil counsellors about him.”
There was silence for a moment or two; Chris could not take his eyes
from the bishop’s face. The frightful framework of skin and bones seemed
luminous from within, and there was an extraordinary sweetness on those
tightly drawn lips, and in the large bright eyes.
“His Grace has been to the Tower lately, I hear, and once to the
Marshalsea, to see Dom Sebastian Newdegate, who, as you know, was at
Court for many years till he entered the Charterhouse; but I have had no
visit from him, nor yet, I should think, Master More--you must not judge
his Grace too hardly, my son; he was a good lad, as I knew very well--a
very gallant and brave lad. A Frenchman said that he seemed to have come
down from heaven. And he has always had a great faith and devotion, and
a very strange and delicate conscience that has cost him much pain. But
he has been counselled evilly.”
Chris remembered as in a dream that the bishop had been the King’s tutor
years before.
“He is a good theologian too,” went on the bishop, “and that is his
misfortune now, though I never thought to say such a thing. Perhaps he
will become a better one still, if God has mercy on him, and he will
come back to his first faith. But we must be good Catholics ourselves,
and be ready to die for our Religion, before we can teach him.”
Again, after another silence, he went on.
“You are to be a priest, I hear, my son, and to take Christ’s yoke more
closely upon you. It is no easy one in these days, though love will make
it so, as Himself said. I suppose it will be soon now?”
“We are to get a dispensation, my lord, for the interstices,” said the
Prior.
Chris had heard that this would be done, before he left Lewes, and he
was astonished now, not at the news, but at the strange softness of the
Prior’s voice.
“That is very well,” went on the bishop. “We want all the faithful
priests possible. There is a great darkness in the land, and we need
lights to lighten it. You have a brother in Master Cromwell’s service,
sir, I hear?”
Chris was silent.
“You must not grieve too much. God Almighty can set all right. It may be
he thinks he is serving Him. We are not here to judge, but to give our
own account.”
The bishop went on presently to ask a few questions and to talk of
Master More, saying that he had managed to correspond with him for a
while, but that now all the means for doing so had been taken away from
them both, as well as his own books.
“It is a great grief to me that I cannot say my office, nor say nor hear
mass: I must trust now to the Holy Sacrifice offered by others.”
He spoke so tenderly and tranquilly that Chris was hardly able to keep
back his tears. It seemed that the soul still kept its serene poise in
that wasted body, and was independent of it. There was no weakness nor
peevishness anywhere. The very room with its rough walls, its cobwebbed
roof, its uneven flooring, its dreadful chill and gloom, seemed alive
with a warm, redolent, spiritual atmosphere generated by this keen, pure
soul. Chris had never been near so real a sanctity before.
“You have seen nothing of my Rochester folk, I suppose?” went on the
bishop to the Prior.
The Prior shook his head.
“I am very downcast about them sometimes; I saw many of them at the
court the other day. I forget that the Good Shepherd can guard His own
sheep. And they were so faithful to me that I know they will be faithful
to Him.”
* * * * *
There came a sound of a key being knocked upon the door outside, and the
bishop stood up, slowly and painfully.
“That will be Mr. Giles,” he said, “hungry for supper.”
The two monks sank down on their knees, and as Chris closed his eyes he
heard a soft murmur of blessing over his head.
Then each kissed his hand and Chris went to the door, half blind with
tears.
He heard a whisper from the bishop to the Prior, who still lingered a
moment, and a half sob--
“God helping me!”--said the Prior.
There was no more spoken, and the two went down the stairs together into
the golden sunshine with the warder behind them.
Chris dared not look at the other. He had had a glimpse of his face as
he stood aside on the stairs to let him pass, and what he saw there told
him enough.
* * * * *
There were plenty of boats rocking on the tide at the foot of the river
stairs outside the Tower, and they stepped into one, telling the man to
row to Southwark.
It was a glorious summer evening now. The river lay bathed in the level
sunshine that turned it to molten gold, and it was covered with boats
plying in all directions. There were single wherries going to and from
the stairs that led down on all sides into the water, and barges here
and there, of the great merchants or nobles going home to supper, with a
line of oars on each side, and a glow of colour gilding in the stem and
prow, were moving up stream towards the City. London Bridge stood out
before them presently, like a palace in a fairy-tale, blue and romantic
against the western glow, and above it and beyond rose up the tall spire
of the Cathedral. On the other side a fringe of houses began a little to
the east of the bridge, and ran up to the spires of Southwark on the
other side, and on them lay a glory of sunset with deep shadows barring
them where the alleys ran down to the water’s edge. Here and there
behind rose up the heavy masses of the June foliage. A troop of swans,
white patches on the splendour, were breasting up against the
out-flowing tide.
The air was full of sound; the rattle and dash of oars, men’s voices
coming clear and minute across the water; and as they got out near
mid-stream the bell of St. Paul’s boomed indescribably
solemn and melodious; another church took it up, and a chorus of mellow
voices tolled out the Angelus.
Chris was half through saying it to himself, when across the soft murmur
sounded the clash of brass far away beyond the bridge.
The boatman paused at his oars, turned round a moment, grasping them in
one hand, and stared up-stream under the other. Chris could see a
movement among the boats higher up, and there seemed to break out a
commotion at the foot of the houses on London Bridge, and then far away
came the sound of cheering.
“What is it?” asked the Prior sharply, lifting his head, as the boatman
gave an exclamation and laid furiously to his oars again.
The man jerked his head backwards.
“The King’s Grace,” he said.
* * * * *
For a minute or two nothing more was to be seen. A boat or two near them
was seen making off to the side from mid-stream, to leave a clear
passage, and there were cries from the direction of the bridge where
someone seemed to be in difficulties with the strong stream and the
piers. A wherry that was directly between them and the bridge moved
off, and the shining water-way was left for the King’s Grace to come
down.
Then, again, the brass horns sounded nearer.
Chris was conscious of an immense excitement. The dramatic contrast of
the scene he had just left with that which he was witnessing overpowered
him. He had seen one end of the chain of life, the dying bishop in the
Tower, in his rags; now he was to see the other end, the Sovereign at
whose will he was there, in all the magnificence of a pageant. The Prior
was sitting bolt upright on the seat beside him; one hand lay on his
knee, the knuckles white with clenching, the other gripped the side of
the boat.
Then, again, the fierce music sounded, and the first boat appeared under
one of the wider spans of the bridge, a couple of hundred yards away.
The stream was running out strongly by now, and the boatman tugged to
get out of it into the quieter water at the side, and as he pulled an
oar snapped. The Prior half started up as the man burst out into an
exclamation, and began to paddle furiously with the other oar, but the
boat revolved helplessly, and he was forced to change it to the opposite
side.
Meanwhile the boats were beginning to stream under the bridge, and
Chris, seeing that the boat in which he sat was sufficiently out of the
way to allow a clear passage in mid-stream even if not far enough
removed for proper deference, gave himself up to watching the splendid
sight.
The sun had now dropped behind the high houses by the bridge, and a
shadow lay across the water, but nearer at hand the way was clear, and
in a moment more the leading boat had entered the sunlight.
There was no possibility of mistake as to whether this were the royal
barge or no. It was a great craft, seventy feet from prow to stem at
the very least, and magnificent with colour. As it burst out into the
sun, it blazed blindingly with gold; the prow shone with blue and
crimson; the stern, roofed in with a crimson canopy with flying tassels,
trailed brilliant coarse tapestries on either side; and the Royal
Standard streamed out behind.
Chris tried to count the oars, as they swept into the water with a
rhythmical throb and out again, flashing a fringe of drops and showing a
coat painted on each blade. There seemed to be eight or ten a side. A
couple of trumpeters stood in the bows, behind the gilded carved
figurehead, their trumpets held out symmetrically with the square
hangings flapping as they came.
He could see now the heads of the watermen who rowed, with the caps of
the royal livery moving together like clockwork at the swing of the
oars.
Behind followed the other boats, some half dozen in all; and as each
pair burst out into the level sunlight with a splendour of gold and
colour, and the roar from London Bridge swelled louder and louder, for a
moment the young monk forgot the bitter underlying tragedy of all that
he had seen and knew--forgot oozy Tower-hill and trampled Tyburn and the
loaded gallows--forgot even the grim heads that stared out with dead
tortured eyes from the sheaves of pikes rising high above him at this
moment against the rosy sky--forgot the monks of the Charterhouse and
their mourning hearts; the insulted queen, repudiated and declared a
concubine--forgot all that made life so hard to live and understand at
this time--as this splendid vision of the lust of the eyes broke out in
pulsating sound and colour before him.
But it was only for a moment.
There was a group of half-a-dozen persons under the canopy of the
seat-of-state of the leading boat; the splendid centre of the splendid
show, brilliant in crimson and gold and jewels.
On the further side sat two men. Chris did not know their faces, but as
his eyes rested on them a moment he noticed that one was burly and
clean-shaven, and wore some insignia across his shoulders. At the near
side were the backs of two ladies, silken clad and slashed with crimson,
their white jewelled necks visible under their coiled hair and tight
square cut caps. And in the centre sat a pair, a man and a woman; and on
these he fixed his eyes as the boat swept up not twenty yards away, for
he knew who they must be.
The man was leaning back, looking gigantic in his puffed sleeves and
wide mantle; one great arm was flung along the back of the tapestried
seat, and his large head, capped with purple and feathers, was bending
towards the woman who sat beyond. Chris could make out a fringe of
reddish hair beneath his ear and at the back of the flat head between
the high collar and the cap. He caught a glimpse, too, of a sedate face
beyond, set on a slender neck, with downcast eyes and red lips. And then
as the boat came opposite, and the trumpeters sent out a brazen crash
from the trumpets at their lips, the man turned his head and stared
straight at the boat.
It was an immensely wide face, fringed with reddish hair, scanty about
the lips and more full below; and it looked the wider from the narrow
drooping eyes set near together and the small pursed mouth. Below, his
chin swelled down fold after fold into his collar, and the cheeks were
wide and heavy on either side.
It was the most powerful face that Chris had ever seen or dreamed
of--the animal brooded in every line and curve of it--it would have
been brutish but for the steady pale stare of the eyes and the tight
little lips. It fascinated and terrified him.
The flourish ended, the roar of the rowlocks sounded out again like the
beating of a furious heart; the King turned his head again and said
something, and the boat swept past.
Chris found that he had started to his feet, and sat down again,
breathing quickly and heavily, with a kind of indignant loathing that
was new to him.
This then was the master of England, the heart of all their
troubles--that gorgeous fat man with the broad pulpy face, in his
crimson and jewels; and that was his concubine who sat demure beside
him, with her white folded ringed hands on her lap, her beautiful eyes
cast down, and her lord’s hot breath in her ear! It was these that were
purifying the Church of God of such men as the Cardinal-bishop in the
Tower, and the witty holy lawyer! It was by the will of such as these
that the heads of the Carthusian Fathers, bound brow and chin with
linen, stared up and down with dead eyes from the pikes overhead.
He sat panting and unseeing as the other boats swept past, full of the
King’s friends all going down to Greenwich.
There broke out a roar from the Tower behind, and he started and turned
round to see the white smoke eddying up from the edge of the wall beside
the Traitor’s gate; a shrill cheer or two, far away and thin, sounded
from the figures on the wharf and the boatmen about the stairs.
The wherryman sat down again and put on his cap.
“Body of God!” he said, “there was but just time.”
And he began to pull again with his single oar towards the shore.
Chris looked at the Prior a moment and down again. He was sitting with
tight lips, and hands clasped in his lap, and his eyes were wild and
piteous.
They borrowed an oar presently from another boat, and went on up towards
Southwark. The wherryman pawed once to spit on his hands as they neared
the rush of the current below the bridge.
“That was Master Cromwell with His Grace,” he said.
Chris looked at him questioningly.
“Him with the gold collar,” he added, “and that was Audley by him.”
The Prior had glanced at Chris as Cromwell’s name was mentioned; but
said nothing for the present. And Chris himself was lost again in
musing. That was Ralph’s master then, the King’s right-hand man, feared
next in England after the King himself--and Chancellor Audley, too, and
Anne, all in one wooden boat. How easy for God to put out His hand and
finish them! And then he was ashamed at his own thought, so faithless
and timid; and he remembered Fisher once more and his gallant spirit in
that broken body.
A minute or two later they had landed at the stairs, and were making
their way up to the hostel.
The Prior put out his hand and checked him as he stepped ahead to knock.
“Wait,” he said. “Do you know who signed the order we used at the
Tower?”
Chris shook his head.
“Master Cromwell,” said the Prior. “And do you know by whose hand it
came?”
Chris stared in astonishment.
“It was by your brother,” he said.