homewards from their occupations; and the women were busy within. A
chorus of birds sounded somewhere overhead; but there was not a living
creature to be seen except a dog asleep in the sunshine at the corner of
the gravel.
It was delicious to lean out here, away from the fire that burned hot
and red in the grate under its black mass of papers that had been
destroyed,--out in the light and air. Ralph determined that he would let
the fire die now; it would not be needed again.
He must go out, he told himself, and not linger here. He could lock up
the papers for the present in readiness for their transport next day;
and he wondered vaguely whether his hat and cane were in the
entrance-hall below.
He straightened himself, and turned away from the window, noticing as he
did so the dog at the corner of the street sit up with cocked ears. He
hesitated and turned back.
There was a sound of furious running coming up the street. He would just
see who the madman was who ran like this on a hot evening, and then go
out himself.
As he leaned again the pulsating steps came nearer; they were coming
from the left, the direction of the Palace.
A moment later a figure burst into sight, crimson-faced and hatless,
with arms gathered to the sides and head thrown back; it appeared to be
a gentleman by the dress--but why should he run like that? He dashed
across the opening and disappeared.
Ralph was interested. He waited a minute longer; but the footsteps had
ceased; and he was just turning once more from the window, when another
sound made him stand and listen again.
It came from the same direction as before; and at first he could not
make out what it was. There was a murmur and a pattering.
It came nearer and louder; and he could distinguish once more running
footsteps. Were they after a thief? he wondered. The murmur and clatter
grew louder yet; and a second or two later two men burst into sight;
one, an apprentice with his leather apron flapping as he ran, the other
a stoutish man like a merchant. They talked and gesticulated as they
went.
The murmur behind swelled up. There were the voices of many people, men
and women, talking, screaming, questioning. The dog was on his feet by
now, looking intently down the street.
Then the first group appeared; half a dozen men walking fast or
trotting, talking eagerly. Ralph could not hear what they said.
Then a number surged into sight all at once, jostling round a centre,
and a clamour went up to heaven. The dog trotted up suspiciously as if
to enquire.
Ralph grew excited; he scarcely knew why. He had seen hundreds of such
crowds; it might mean anything, from a rise in butter to a declaration
of war. But there was something fiercely earnest about this mob. Was the
King ill?
He leaned further from the window and shouted; but no one paid him the
slightest attention. The crowd shifted up the street, the din growing
as they went; there was a sound of slammed doors; windows opened
opposite and heads craned out. Something was shouted up and the heads
disappeared.
Ralph sprang back from the window, as more and more surged into sight;
he went to his door, glancing at his papers as he ran across; unlocked
the door; listened a moment; went on to the landing and shouted for a
servant.
There was a sound of footsteps and voices below; the men were already
alert, but no answer came to his call. He shouted again.
“Who is there? Find out what the disturbance means.”
There was an answer from one of his men; and the street door opened and
closed. Again he ran to the window, and saw his man run out without his
doublet across the court, and seize a woman by the arm.
He waited in passionate expectancy; saw him drop the woman’s arm and
turn to another; and then run swiftly back to the house.
There was something sinister in the man’s very movements across that
little space; he ran desperately, with his head craning forward; once he
stumbled; once he glanced up at his master; and Ralph caught a sight of
his face.
Ralph was on the landing as the steps thundered upstairs, and met him at
the head of the flight.
“Speak man; what is it?”
The servant lifted a face stamped with terror, a couple of feet below
Ralph’s.
“They--they say--”
“What is it?”
“They say that the King’s archers are about my Lord Essex’s house.”
Ralph drew a swift breath.
“Well?”
“And that my Lord was arrested at the Council to-day.”
Ralph turned, and in three steps was in his room again. The key clacked
in the lock.
CHAPTER VII
A QUESTION OF LOYALTY
He did not know how long he stood there, with the bundle of papers
gripped in his two hands; and the thoughts racing through his brain.
The noises in the street outside waned and waxed again, as the news
swept down the lanes, and recoiled with a wave of excited crowds
following it. Then again they died to a steady far-off murmur as the mob
surged and clamoured round the Palace and Abbey a couple of hundred
yards away.
At last Ralph sat down; still holding the papers. He must clear his
brain; and how was that possible with the images flashing through it in
endless and vivid succession? For a while he could not steady himself;
the shock was bewildering; he could think of nothing but the appalling
drama. Essex was fallen!
Then little by little the muddy current of thought began to run clear.
He began to understand what lay before him; and the question that still
awaited decision.
His first instinct had been to dash the papers on to the fire and grind
them into the red heart of the wood; but something had checked him. Very
slowly he began to analyse that instinct.
First, was it not useless? He knew he did not possess one hundredth part
of the incriminating evidence that was in existence. Of what service
would it be to his master to destroy that one small bundle?
Next, what would be the result to himself if he did? It was known that
he was a trusted agent of the minister’s; his house would be searched;
papers would be found; it would be certainly known that he had made away
with evidence. There would be records of what he had, in the other
houses. And what then?
On the other hand if he willingly gave up all that was in his
possession, it would go far to free him from complicity.
Lastly, like a venomous snake lifting its head, his own private
resentment looked him in the eyes, and there was a new sting added to it
now. He had lost all, he knew well enough; wealth, honour and position
had in a moment shrunk to cinders with Cromwell’s fall, and for these
cinders he had lost Beatrice too. He had sacrificed her to his master;
and his master had failed him. A kind of fury succeeded to his dismay.
Oh, would it not be sweet to add even one more stone to the mass that
was tottering over the head of that mighty bully, that had promised and
not performed?
He blinked his eyes, shocked by the horror of the thought, and gripped
the bundle yet more firmly. The memories of a thousand kindnesses
received from his master cried at the door of his heart. The sweat
dropped from his forehead; he lifted a stiff hand to wipe it away, and
dropped it again into its grip on the papers.
Then he slowly recapitulated to himself the reasons for not destroying
them. They were overwhelming, convincing! What was there to set against
them? One slender instinct only, that cried shrill and thin that in
honour he must burn that damning evidence--burn it--burn it--whether or
no it would help or hinder, it must be burnt!
Then again he recurred to the other side; told himself that his
instinct was no more than a ludicrous sentimentality; he must be guided
by reason, not impulse. Then he glanced at the impulse again. Then the
two sides rushed together, locked in conflict. He moaned a little, and
lay back in his chair.
* * * * *
The bright sunlight outside had faded to a mellow evening atmosphere
before he moved again; and the fire had died to one dull core of
incandescence.
As he stirred, he became aware that bells were pealing outside; a
melodious roar filled the air. Somewhere behind the house five brazen
voices, shouting all together, bellowed the exultation of the city over
the great minister’s fall.
He was weary and stiff as he stood up; but the fever had left his brain;
and the decision had been made. He relaxed his fingers and laid the
bundle softly down on the table from which he had snatched it a couple
of hours before.
They would be here soon, he knew; he wondered they had not come already.
Leaving his papers there, he went out, taking the key with him, and
locking the door after him. He called up one of his men, telling him he
would be ready for supper immediately in the parlour downstairs, and
that any visitors who came for him were to be admitted at once.
Then he passed into his bedroom to wash and change his clothes.
* * * * *
Half an hour later he came upstairs again.
He had supped alone, listening and watching the window as he ate; but no
sign had come of any arrival. He had dressed with particular care,
intending to be found at his ease when the searchers did arrive; there
must be no sign of panic or anxiety. He had told his man as he rose
from table, to say to any that came for him that they were expected, and
to bring them immediately upstairs.
He unlocked the door of his private room, and went in. All was as he had
left it; the floor between the window and table was white with ordered
heaps of papers; the bundle on the table itself glimmered where he had
laid it.
The fire had sunk to a spark. He tenderly lifted off the masses of black
sheets that crackled as he touched them; it had not occurred to him
before that these evidences of even a harmless destruction had better be
removed; and he slid them carefully on to a broad sheet of paper, folded
it, shaking the ashes together as he did so, and stood a moment,
wondering where he should hide it.
The room was growing dark now; he put the package down; went to the fire
and blew it up a little, added some wood, and presently the flames were
dancing on the broad hearth.
As he stood up again he heard the knocker rap on his street-door. For a
moment he had an instinct to run to the window and see who was there;
but he put it aside; there was scarcely time to hide the ashes; and it
was best too to give no hint of anxiety. He lifted the package of burnt
papers once more, and stood hesitating; a press would be worse than
useless as a hiding-place; all such would of course be searched. Then a
thought struck him; he stood up noiselessly on his chair. The Holbein
portrait of Cromwell in his furred gown and chain leaned forward from
the tapestry over the mantelpiece. Ralph set one hand against the wall
at the side; and then tenderly let the package fall behind the portrait.
As he did so the painted and living eyes were on a level; it seemed
strange to him that the faces were so near together at that moment; and
it struck him with a grim irony that the master should be so protecting
the servant under these circumstances.
Then he dropped lightly to the ground, and sat quickly in the chair,
snatching up the bundle of papers from the table as he did so.
The steps were on the landing now; he heard the crack of the balustrade;
but it seemed they were coming very quietly.
There was a moment’s silence; the muscles of his throat contracted
sharply, then there came the servant’s tap; the handle was turned.
Ralph stood up quickly, still holding the papers, as the door opened,
and Beatrice stepped forward into the room. The door shut noiselessly
behind her.
* * * * *
She stood there, with the firelight playing on her dark loose-sleeved
mantle, the hood that surrounded her head, her pale face a little
flushed, and her black steady eyes. Her breath came quickly between her
parted lips.
Ralph stared at her, dazed by the shock, still gripping the bundle of
papers. She moved forward a step; and the spell snapped.
“Mistress Beatrice,” he said.
“I have come,” she said; “what is it? You want me?”
She came round the table, with an air of eager expectancy.
“I--I did not know,” said Ralph.
“But you wanted me. What is the matter? I heard you call.”
Ralph stared again, bewildered.
“Call?” he said.
“Yes, I heard you. I was in my room at my aunt’s house--ah! a couple of
hours ago. You called me twice. ‘Beatrice! Beatrice!’ Then--then they
told me what had happened about my Lord Essex.”
“I called you?” repeated Ralph.
“Yes--you called me. Your voice was quite close to me, at my ear; I
thought you were in the room. Tell me what it is.”
She loosened her hold of her mantle as she stood there by the table; and
it dropped open, showing a sparkle of jewels at her throat. She threw
back her hood, and it dropped on to her shoulders, leaving visible the
coiled masses of her black hair set with knots of ribbon.
“I did not call,” said Ralph dully. “I do not know what you mean,
Mistress Atherton.”
She made a little impatient gesture.
“Ah! yes,” she said, “it is something. Tell me quickly. I suppose it has
to do with my Lord. What is it?”
“It is nothing,” said Ralph again.
They stood looking at one another in silence. Beatrice’s eyes ran a
moment up and down his rich dress, the papers in his hands, then
wandered to the heaped floor, the table, and returned to the papers in
his hands.
“You must tell me,” she said. “What is that you are holding?”
An angry terror seized Ralph.
“That is my affair, Mistress Atherton. What is your business with me?”
She came a step nearer, and leant her left hand on his table. He could
see those steady eyes on his face; she looked terribly strong and
controlled.
“Indeed you must tell me, Mr. Torridon. I am come here to do something.
I do not know what. What are those papers?”
He turned and dropped them on to the chair behind him.
“I tell you again, I do not know what you mean.”
“It is useless,” she said. “Have they been to you yet? What do you mean
to do about my Lord? You know he is in the Tower?”
“I suppose so,” said Ralph, “but my counsel is my own.”
“Mr. Torridon, let us have an end of this. I know well that you must
have many secrets against my lord--”
“I tell you that what I know is nothing. I have not a hundredth part of
his papers.”
He felt himself desperate and bewildered, like a man being pushed to the
edge of a precipice, step by step. But those black eyes held and
compelled him on. He scarcely knew what he was saying.
“And are these papers all his? What have you been doing with them?”
“My Lord told me to sort them.”
The words were drawn out against his own will.
“And those in your hand--on the chair. What are they?”
Ralph made one more violent effort to regain the mastery.
“If you were not a woman, Mistress Atherton, I should tell you you were
insolent.”
Not a ripple troubled those strong eyes.
“Tell me, Mr. Torridon, what are they?”
He stood silent and furious.
“I will tell you what they are,” she said; “they are my Lord’s secrets.
Is it not so? And you were about to burn them. Oh! Ralph, is it not so?”
Her voice had a tone of entreaty in it. He dropped his eyes, overcome by
the passion that streamed from her.
“Is it not so?” she cried again.
“Do you wish me to do so?” he said amazed. His voice seemed not his own;
it was as if another spoke for him. He had the same sensation of
powerlessness as once before when she had lashed him with her tongue in
the room downstairs.
“Wish you?” she cried. “Why, yes; what else?”
He lifted his eyes to hers; the room seemed to have grown darker yet in
those few minutes. He could only see now a shadowed face looking at him;
but her bright passionate eyes shone out from it and dominated him.
Again he spoke, in spite of himself.
“I shall not burn them,” he said.
“Shall not? shall not?”
“I shall not,” he said again.
There was silence. Ralph’s soul was struggling desperately within him.
He put out his hand mechanically and took up the papers once more, as if
to guard them from this fierce, imperious woman. Beatrice’s eyes
followed the movement; and then rested once more on his face. Then she
spoke again, with a tense deliberateness that drove every word home,
piercing and sharp to the very centre of his spirit.
“Listen,” she said, “for this is what I came to say. I know what you are
thinking--I know every thought as if it were my own. You tell yourself
that it is useless to burn those secrets; that there are ten thousand
more--enough to cast my lord. I make no answer to that.
“You tell yourself that you can only save yourself by giving them up to
his enemies. I make no answer to that.
“You tell yourself that it will be known if you destroy them--that you
will be counted as one of His Highness’s enemies. I make no answer to
that. And I tell you to burn them.”
She came a step nearer. There was not a yard between them now; and the
fire of her words caught and scorched him with their bitterness.
“You have been false to every high and noble thing. You have been false
to your own conscience--to your father--your brother--your sister--your
Church--your King and your God. You have been false to love and honour.
You have been false to yourself. And now Almighty God of His courtesy
gives you one more opportunity--an opportunity to be true to your
master. I say nothing of him. God is his judge. You know what that
verdict will be. And yet I bid you be true to him. He has a thousand
claims on you. You have served him, though it be but Satan’s service;
yet it is the highest that you know--God help you! He is called
friendless now. Shall that be wholly true of him? You will be called a
traitor presently--shall that be wholly true of you? Or shall there be
one tiny point in which you are not false and treacherous as you have
been in all other points?”
She stopped again, looking him fiercely in the eyes.
* * * * *
From the street outside there came the sound of footsteps; the ring of
steel on stone. Ralph heard it, and his eyes rolled round to the window;
but he did not move.
Beatrice was almost touching him now. He felt the fragrance that hung
about her envelop him for a moment. Then he felt a touch on the papers;
and his fingers closed more tightly.
The steps outside grew louder and ceased; and the house suddenly
reverberated with a thunder of knocking.
Beatrice sprang back.
“Nay, you shall give me them,” she said; and stood waiting with
outstretched hand.
Ralph lifted the papers slowly, stared at them, and at her.
Then he held them out.
* * * * *
In a moment she had snatched them; and was on her knees by the hearth.
Ralph watched her, and listened to the steps coming up the stairs. The
papers were alight now. The girl dashed her fingers among them,
grinding, tearing, separating the heavy pages.
They were almost gone by now; the thick smoke poured up the chimney; and
still Beatrice tore and dashed the ashes about.
There was a knocking at the door; and the handle turned. The girl rose
from her knees and smiled at Ralph as the door opened, and the
pursuivants stood there in the opening.
CHAPTER VIII
TO CHARING
Chris had something very like remorse after Ralph had left Overfield,
and no words of explanation or regret had been spoken on either side. He
recognised that he had not been blameless at the beginning of their
estrangement--if, indeed, there ever had been a beginning--for their
inflamed relations had existed to some extent back into boyhood as far
as he could remember; but he had been responsible for at least a share
in the fierce words in Ralph’s house after the death of the Carthusians.
He had been hot-headed, insolent, theatrical; and he had not written to
acknowledge it. He had missed another opportunity at Lewes--at least
one--when pride had held him back from speaking, for fear that he should
be thought to be currying favour. And now this last opportunity, the
best of all--when Ralph had been accessible and courteous, affected,
Chris imagined, by the death of his mother--this too had been missed;
and he had allowed his brother to ride away without a word of regret or
more than formal affection.
He was troubled at mass, an hour after Ralph had gone; the distraction
came between him and the sweet solemnity upon which he was engaged. His
soul was dry and moody. He showed it in his voice. As a younger brother
in past years; as a monk and a priest now, he knew that the duty of the
first step to a reconciliation had lain with him; and that he had not
taken it.
It had been a troubled household altogether when Ralph had gone. There
was first the shock of Lady Torridon’s death, and the hundred regrets
that it had left behind. Then Beatrice too, who had helped them all so
much, had told them that she must go back to town--her aunt was alone in
the little house at Charing, for the friend who had spent Christmas
there was gone back to the country; and Margaret, consequently, had been
almost in despair. Lastly Sir James himself had been troubled; wondering
whether he might not have been warmer with Ralph, more outspoken in his
gratitude for the affair of the mummers, more ready to welcome an
explanation from his son. The shadow of Ralph then rested on the
household, and there was something of pathos in it. He was so much
detached now, so lonely, and it seemed that he was content it should be
so.
* * * * *
There were pressing matters too to be arranged; and, weightiest of all,
those relating to Margaret’s future. She would now be the only woman
besides the servants, in the house; and it was growing less and less
likely that she would be ever able to take up the Religious Life again
in England. There seemed little reason for her remaining in the country,
unless indeed she threw aside the Religious habit altogether, and went
to live at Great Keynes as Mary preferred. Beatrice made an offer to
receive her in London for a while, but in this case again she would have
to wear secular dress.
The evening before Beatrice left, the two sat and talked for a couple of
hours. Margaret was miserable; she cried a little, clung to Beatrice,
and then was ashamed of herself.
“My dear child,” said the other. “It is in your hands. You can do as you
please.”
“But I cannot,” sobbed the nun. “I cannot; I do not know. Let me come
with you, Beatrice.”
Beatrice then settled down and talked to her. She told her of her duty
to her father for the present; she must remember that he was lonely now.
In any case she must not think of leaving home for another six months.
In the meantime she had to consider two points. First, did she consider
herself in conscience bound to Religion? What did the priest tell her?
If she did so consider herself, then there was no question; she must go
to Bruges and join the others. Secondly, if not, did she think herself
justified in leaving her father in the summer? If so, she might either
go to Great Keynes, or come up for at least a long visit to Charing.
“And what do you think?” asked the girl piteously.
“Do you wish me to tell you!” said Beatrice.
Margaret nodded.
“Then I think you should go to Bruges in July or August.”
Margaret stared at her; the tears were very near her eyes again.
“My darling; I should love to have you in London,” went on the other
caressing her. “Of course I should. But I cannot see that King Henry
and his notions make any difference to your vows. They surely stand. Is
it not so, my dear?”
And so after a little more talk Margaret consented. Her mind had told
her that all along; it was her heart only that protested against this
final separation from her friend.
Chris too agreed when she spoke to him a day or two later when Beatrice
had gone back. He said he had been considering his own case too; and
that unless something very marked intervened he proposed to follow Dom
Anthony abroad. They could travel together, he said. Finally, when the
matter was laid before their father he also consented.
“I shall do very well,” he said. “Mary spoke to me of it; and Nicholas
has asked me to make my home at Great Keynes; so if you go, my son, with
Meg in the summer, I shall finish matters here, lease out the estate,
and Mr. Carleton and I shall betake ourselves there. Unless”--he
said--“unless Ralph should come to another mind.”
* * * * *
As the spring and early summer drew on, the news, as has been seen, was
not reassuring.
In spite of the Six Articles of the previous year by which all vows of
chastity were declared binding before God, there was no hint of making
it possible for the thousands of Religious in England still compelled by
them to return to the Life in which such vows were tolerable. The
Religious were indeed dispensed from obedience and poverty by the civil
authority; it was possible for them to buy, inherit, and occupy
property; but a recognition of their corporate life was as far as ever
away. It was becoming plainer every day that those who wished to pursue
their vocation must do so in voluntary exile; and letters were already
being exchanged between the brother and sister at home and the
representatives of their respective communities on the Continent.
Then suddenly on the eleventh of June there arrived the news of
Cromwell’s fall and of all that it involved to Ralph.
They were at dinner when it came.
There was a door suddenly thrust open at the lower end of the hall; and
a courier, white with dust and stiff with riding, limped up the matting
and delivered Beatrice’s letter. It was very short.
“Come,” she had written. “My Lord of Essex is arrested. He is in the
Tower. Mr. Ralph, too, is there for refusing to inform against him. He
has behaved gallantly.”
There followed a line from Mistress Jane Atherton, her aunt, offering
rooms in her own house.
* * * * *
A wild confusion fell upon the household. Men ran to and fro, women
whispered and sobbed in corners under shadow of the King’s displeasure
that lay on the house, the road between the terrace and the stable
buzzed with messengers, ordering and counter-ordering, for it was not
certain at first that Margaret would not go. A mounted groom dashed up
for instructions and was met by Sir James in his riding-cloak on the
terrace who bade him ride to Great Keynes with the news, and entreat Sir
Nicholas Maxwell to come up to London and his wife to Overfield; there
was not time to write. Sir James’s own room was in confusion; his
clothes lay tumbled on the ground and a distraught servant tossed them
this way and that; Chris was changing his habit upstairs, for it would
mean disaster to go to town as a monk. Margaret was on her knees in
chapel, silent and self-controlled, but staring piteously at the
compassionate figure of the great Mother who looked down on her with Her
Son in Her arms. The huge dog under the chapel-cloister lifted his head
and bayed in answer, as frantic figures fled across the court before
him. And over all lay the hot June sky, and round about the deep
peaceful woods.
A start was made at three o’clock.
Sir James was already in his saddle, as Chris ran out; an unfamiliar
figure in his plain priest’s cloak and cap and great riding boots
beneath. A couple of grooms waited behind, and another held the monk’s
horse. Margaret was on the steps, white and steadied by prayer; and the
chaplain stood behind with a strong look in his eyes as they met those
of his patron.
“Take care of her, father; take care of her. Her sister will be here
to-night, please God. Oh! God bless you, my dear! Pray for us all. Jesu
keep us all! Chris, are you mounted?”
Then they were off; and the white dust rose in clouds about them.
* * * * *
It was between eight and nine as they rode up the north bank of the
river from London Bridge to Charing.
It had been a terrible ride, with but few words between the two, and
long silences that were the worst of all; as, blotting out the rich
country and the deep woods and the meadows and heathery hills on either
side of the road through Surrey, visions moved and burned before them,
such as the King’s vengeance had made possible to the imagination. From
far away across the Southwark fields Chris had seen the huddled
buildings of the City, the princely spire that marked them, and had
heard the sweet jangling of the thousand bells that told the Angelus;
but he had thought of little but of that high gateway under which they
must soon pass, where the pikes against the sky made palpable the
horrors of his thought. He had given one swift glance up as he went
beneath; and then his heart sickened as they went on, past the houses
and St. Thomas’s chapel with gleams of the river seen beneath. Then as
he looked his breath came sharp; far down there eastwards, seen for a
moment, rose up the sombre towers where Ralph lay, and the saints had
suffered.
The old Religious Houses, stretching in a splendid line upwards, from
the Augustinian priory near the river-bank, along the stream that flowed
down from Ludgate, caught the last rays of sunlight high against the
rich sky as the riders went along towards Charing between the
sedge-brinked tide and the slope of grass on their right; and the monk’s
sorrowful heart was overlaid again with sorrow as he looked at them,
empty now and desolate where once the praises of God had sounded day and
night.
They stopped beneath the swinging sign of an inn, with Westminster
towers blue and magical before them, to ask for Mistress Atherton’s
house, and were directed a little further along and nearer to the
water’s edge.
It was a little old house when they came to it, built on a tiny private
embankment that jutted out over the flats of the river-bank; of plaster
and timber with overhanging storeys and windows beneath the roof. It
stood by itself, east of the village, and almost before the jangle of
the bell had died away, Beatrice herself was at the door, in her
house-dress, bare-headed; with a face at once radiant and constrained.
She took them upstairs immediately, after directing the men to take the
horses, when they had unloaded the luggage, back to the inn where they
had enquired the way: for there was no stable, she said, attached to the
house.
Chris came behind his father as if in a dream through the dark little
hall and up the two flights on to the first landing. Beatrice stopped at
a door.
“You can say what you will,” she said, “before my aunt. She is of our
mind in these matters.”
Then they were in the room; a couple of candles burned on a table before
the curtained window; and an old lady with a wrinkled kindly face
hobbled over from her chair and greeted the two travellers.
“I welcome you, gentlemen,” she said, “if a sore heart may say so to
sore hearts.”
There was no news of Nicholas, they were told; he had not been heard of.
* * * * *
They heard the story so far as Beatrice knew it; but it was softened for
their ears. She had found Ralph, she said, hesitating what to do. He had
been plainly bewildered by the sudden news; they had talked a while; and
then he had handed her the papers to burn. The magistrate sent by the
Council had arrived to find the ashes still smoking. He had questioned
Ralph sharply, for he had come with authority behind him; and Ralph had
refused to speak beyond telling him that the bundles lying on the floor
were all the papers of my Lord Essex that were in his possession. They
had laid hands on these, and then searched the room. A quantity of
ashes, Beatrice said, had fallen from behind a portrait over the hearth
when they had shifted it. Then the magistrate had questioned her too,
enquired where she lived, and let her go. She had waited at the corner
of the street, and watched the men come out. Ralph walked in the centre
as a prisoner. She had followed them to the river; had mixed with the
crowd that gathered there; and had heard the order given to the
wherryman to pull to the Tower. That was all that she knew.
“Thank God for your son, sir. He bore himself gallantly.”
There was a silence as she ended. The old man looked at her wondering
and dazed. It was so sad, that the news scarcely yet conveyed its
message.
“And my Lord Essex?” he said.
“My Lord is in the Tower too. He was arrested at the Council by the Duke
of Norfolk.”
The old lady intervened then, and insisted on their going down to
supper. It would be ready by now, she said, in the parlour downstairs.
They supped, themselves silent, with Beatrice leaning her arms on the
table, and talking to them in a low voice, telling them all that was
said. She did not attempt to prophesy smoothly. The feeling against
Cromwell, she said, passed all belief. The streets had been filled with
a roaring crowd last night. She had heard them bellowing till long after
dark. The bells were pealed in the City churches hour after hour, in
triumph over the minister’s fall.
“The dogs!” she said fiercely. “I never thought to say it, but my heart
goes out to him.”
Her spirit was infectious. Chris felt a kind of half-joyful recklessness
tingle in his veins, as he listened to her talk, and watched her black
eyes hot with indignation and firm with purpose. What if Ralph were
cast? At least it was for faithfulness--of a kind. Even the father’s
face grew steadier; that piteous trembling of the lower lip ceased, and
the horror left his eyes. It was hard to remain in panic with that girl
beside them.
They had scarcely done supper when the bell of the outer door rang
again, and a moment later Nicholas was with them, flushed with hard
riding. He strode into the room, blinking at the lights, and tossed his
riding whip on to the table.
“I have been to the Lieutenant of the Tower,” he said; “I know him of
old. He promises nothing. He tells me that Ralph is well-lodged. Mary is
gone to Overfield. God damn the King!”
He had no more news to give. He had sent off his wife at once on
receiving the tidings, and had started half an hour later for London. He
had been ahead of them all the way, it seemed; but had spent a couple of
hours first in trying to get admittance to the Tower, and then in
interviewing the Lieutenant; but there was no satisfaction to be gained
there. The utmost he had wrung from him was a promise that he would see
him again, and hear what he had to say.
Then Nicholas had to sup and hear the whole story from the beginning;
and Chris left his father to tell it, and went up with Beatrice to
arrange about rooms.
Matters were soon settled with the old lady; Nicholas and Chris were to
sleep in one room, and Sir James in another. Two servants only could
be accommodated in the house; the rest were to put up at the inn.
Beatrice went off to give the necessary orders.
Mistress Jane Atherton and Chris had a few moments together before the
others came up.
“A sore heart,” said the old lady again, “but a glad one too. Beatrice
has told me everything.”
“I am thankful too,” said Chris softly. “I wonder if my father
understands.”
“He will, father, he will. But even if he does not--well, God knows
all.”
It was evident when Sir James came upstairs presently that he did not
understand anything yet, except that Beatrice thought that Ralph had
behaved well.
“But it is to my Lord Essex--who has been the worker of all the
mischief--that my son is faithful. Is that a good thing then?”
“Why, yes,” said Chris. “You would not have him faithless there too?”
“But would he not be on God’s side at last, if he were against
Cromwell?”
The old man was still too much bewildered to understand explanations,
and his son was silent.
* * * * *
Chris could not sleep that night, and long after Nicholas lay deep in
his pillow, with open mouth and tight eyes, the priest was at the window
looking out over the river where the moon hung like a silver shield
above Southwark. The meadows beyond the stream were dim and colourless;
here and there a roof rose among trees; and straight across the broad
water to his feet ran a path of heaving glory, where the strong ripple
tossed the silver surface that streamed down upon it from the moon.
London lay round him as quiet as Overfield, and Chris remembered with a
stir at his heart his moonlight bathe all those years ago in the lake at
home, when he had come back hot from hunting and had slipped down with
the chaplain after supper. Then the water had seemed like a cool restful
gulf in the world of sensation; the moon had not been risen at first;
only the stars pricked above and below in air and water. Then the moon
had come up, and a path of splendour had smitten the surface into sight.
He had swum up it, he remembered, the silver ripple washing over his
shoulders as he went.
And now those years of monastic peace and storm had come and gone,
sifting and penetrating his soul, washing out from it little by little
the heats and passions with which he had plunged. As he looked back on
himself he was astonished at his old complacent smallness. His figure
appeared down that avenue of years, a tiny passionate thing,
gesticulating, feverish, self-conscious. He remembered his serene
certainty that he was right and Ralph wrong in every touch of friction
between them, his own furious and theatrical outburst at the death of
the Carthusians, his absurd dignity on later occasions. Even in those
first beginnings of peace when the inner life had begun to well up and
envelop him he had been narrow and self-centred; he had despised the
common human life, not understanding that God’s Will was as energetic in
the bewildering rush of the current as in the quiet sheltered
back-waters to which he himself had been called. He had been awakened
from that dream by the fall of the Priory, and that to which he opened
his eyes had been forced into his consciousness by the months at home,
when he had had that astringent mingling of the world and the spirit, of
the interpenetration of the inner by the outer. And now for the first
time he stood as a balanced soul between the two, alight with a tranquil
grace within, and not afraid to look at the darkness without. He was
ready now for either life, to go back to the cloister and labour there
for the world at the springs of energy, or to take his place in the new
England and struggle at the tossing surface.
He stood here now by the hurrying turbulent stream, a wider and more
perilous gulf than that that had lain before him as he looked at the
moonlit lake at Overfield and yet over it brooded the same quiet shield
of heaven, gilding the black swift flowing forces with the promise of a
Presence greater than them all.
He stood there long, staring and thinking.
CHAPTER IX
A RELIEF-PARTY
The days that followed were very anxious and troubled ones for Ralph’s
friends at Charing. They were dreadful too from their very
uneventfulness.
On the morning following their arrival Chris went off to the Temple to
consult a lawyer that the Lieutenant had recommended to Nicholas, and
brought him back with him an hour later. The first need to be supplied
was their lack of knowledge as to procedure; and the four men sat
together until dinner, in the parlour on the first floor looking over
the sunlit river; and discussed the entire situation.
The lawyer, Mr. Herries, a shrewd-faced Northerner, sat with his back to
the window, fingering a quill horizontally in his lean brown fingers and
talking in short sentences, glancing up between them, with patient
silences as the others talked. He seemed the very incarnation of the
slow inaction that was so infinitely trying to these anxious souls.
The three laymen did not even know the crime with which Ralph was
charged, but they soon learnt that the technical phrase for it was
misprision of treason.
“Mr. Torridon was arrested, I understand,” said the lawyer, “by order of
Council. He would have been arrested in any case. He was known to be
privy to my Lord Essex’s schemes. You inform me that he destroyed
evidence. That will go against him if they can prove it.”
He drew the quill softly through his lips, and then fell to fingering it
again, as the others stared at him.
“However,” went on Mr. Herries, “that is not our affair now. There will
be time for that. Our question is, when will he be charged, and how? My
Lord Essex may be tried by a court, or attainted in Parliament. I should
suppose the latter. Mr. Torridon will be treated in the same way. If it
be the former, we can do nothing but wait and prepare our case. If it be
the latter, we must do our utmost to keep his name out of the bill.”
He went on to explain his reasons for thinking that a bill of attainder
would be brought against Cromwell. It was the customary method, he said,
for dealing with eminent culprits, and its range had been greatly
extended by Cromwell himself. At this moment three Catholics lay in the
Tower, attainted through the statesman’s own efforts, for their supposed
share in a conspiracy to deliver up Calais to the invaders who had
threatened England in the previous year. Feeling, too, ran very high
against Cromwell; the public would be impatient of a long trial; and a
bill of attainder would give a readier outlet to the fury against him.
This then was the danger; but they could do nothing, said the lawyer, to
avert it, until they could get information. He would charge himself with
that business, and communicate with them as soon as he knew.
“And then?” asked Chris, looking at him desperately, for the cold
deliberate air of Mr. Herries gave him a terrible sense of the
passionless process of the law.
“I was about to speak of that,” said the lawyer. “If it goes as I think
it will, and Mr. Torridon’s name is suggested for the bill, we must
approach the most powerful friends we can lay hold on, to use their
influence against his inclusion. Have you any such, sir?” he added,
looking at Sir James sharply over the quill.
The old man shook his head.
“I know no one,” he said.
The lawyer pursed his lips.
“Then we must do the best we can. We can set aside at once all of my
Lord Essex’s enemies--and--and he has many now. Two names come to my
mind. Master Ralph Sadler--the comptroller; and my Lord of Canterbury.”
“Ah!” cried Chris, dropping his hand, “my Lord of Canterbury! My brother
has had dealings with him.”
Sir James straightened himself in his chair.
“I will ask no favour of that fellow,” he said sternly.
The lawyer looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.
“Well, sir,” he said, “if you will not you will not. But I cannot
suggest a better. He is in high favour with his Grace; they say he has
already said a word for my Lord Essex--not much--much would be too much,
I think; but still ’twas something. And what of Master Sadler?”
“I know nothing of him,” faltered the old man.
There was silence a moment.
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Herries, “you can think the matter over. I am for
my Lord of Canterbury; for the reasons I have named to you. But we can
wait a few days. We can do nothing until the method of procedure is
known.”
Then he went; promising to let them know as soon as he had information.
* * * * *
Rumours began to run swiftly through the City. It was said, though
untruly at that time, that Cromwell had addressed a letter to the King
at Henry’s own request, explaining his conduct, utterly denying that he
had said certain rash words attributed to him, and that His Majesty was
greatly affected by it. There was immense excitement everywhere; a crowd
assembled daily outside Westminster Hall; groups at every corner of the
streets discussed the fallen minister’s chances; and shouts were raised
for those who were known to be his enemies, the Duke of Norfolk, Rich,
and others--as they rode through to the Palace.
Meanwhile Ralph’s friends could do little. Nicholas rode down once or
twice to see the Lieutenant of The Tower, and managed to extract a
promise that Ralph should hear of their presence in London; but he could
not get to see him, or hear any news except that he was in good health
and spirits, and was lodged in a private cell.
Then suddenly one afternoon a small piece of news arrived from Mr.
Herries to the effect that Cromwell was to be attainted; and anxiety
became intense as to whether Ralph would be included. Sir James could
eat nothing at supper, but sat crumbling his bread, while Beatrice
talked almost feverishly in an attempt to distract him. Finally he rose
and went out, and the others sat on, eyeing one another, anxious and
miserable.
In desperation Nicholas began to talk of his visit to the Tower, of the
Lieutenant’s timidity, and his own insistence; and they noticed nothing,
till the door was flung open, and the old man stood there, his eyes
bright and his lips trembling with hope. He held a scrap of paper in his
hand.
“Listen,” he cried as the others sprang to their feet.
“A fellow has just come from Mr. Herries with this”--he lifted the paper
and read,--“Mr. Torridon’s name is not in the bill. I will be with you
to-morrow.”
“Thank God!” said Chris.
* * * * *
There was another long discussion the following morning. Mr. Herries
arrived about ten o’clock to certify his news; and the four sat till
dinner once again, talking and planning. There was not the same
desperate hurry now; the first danger was passed.
There was only one thing that the lawyer could do, and that was to
repeat his advice to seek the intercession of the Archbishop. He
observed again that while Cranmer had the friendship of the fallen
minister, he had not in any sense been involved in his fall; he was
still powerful with the King, and of considerable weight with the
Council in consequence. He was likely therefore to be both able and
willing to speak on behalf of Cromwell’s agent.
“But I would advise nothing to be done until the bill of attainder has
come before Parliament. We do not know yet how far Mr. Torridon’s action
has affected the evidence. From what you say, gentlemen, and from what I
have heard elsewhere, I should think that the papers Mr. Torridon
destroyed are not essential to a conviction. My Lord’s papers at his own
house are sufficient.”
But they had some difficulty in persuading Sir James to consent to ask a
favour of the Archbishop. In his eyes, Cranmer was beyond the pale of
decency; he had lived with two women, said the old man, whom he called
his wives, although as a priest he was incapable of marriage; he had
violated his consecration oath; he had blessed and annulled the frequent
marriages of the King with equal readiness; he was a heretic confessed
and open on numberless points of the Catholic Faith.
Mr. Herries pointed out with laborious minuteness that this was beside
the question altogether. He did not propose that Sir James Torridon
should go to the Archbishop as to a spiritual superior, but as to one
who chanced to have great influence;--if he were a murderer it would
make no difference to his advice.
Chris broke in with troubled eyes.
“Indeed, sir,” he said to his father, “you know how I am with you in
all that you say; and yet I am with Mr. Herries too. I do not
understand--”
“God help us,” cried the old man. “I do not know what to do.”
“Will you talk with Mistress Beatrice?” asked Chris.
Sir James nodded.
“I will do that,” he said.
* * * * *
The next day the bill was passed; and the party in the house at Charing
sat sick at heart within doors, hearing the crowds roaring down the
street, singing and shouting in triumph. Every cry tore their hearts;
for was it not against Ralph’s master and friend that they rejoiced? As
they sat at supper a great battering broke out at the door that looked
on to the lane; and they sprang up to hear a drunken voice bellowing at
them to come out and shout for liberty. Nicholas went crimson with
anger; and he made a movement towards the hall, his hand on his hilt.
“Ah! sit down, Nick,” said the monk. “The drunken fool is away again.”
And they heard the steps reel on towards Westminster.
* * * * *
It was not until a fortnight later that they went at last to Lambeth.
Sir James had been hard to persuade; but Beatrice had succeeded at last.
Nicholas had professed himself ready to ask a favour of the devil
himself under the circumstances; and Chris himself continued to support
the lawyer’s opinion. He repeated his arguments again and again.
Then it was necessary to make an appointment with the Archbishop; and a
day was fixed at last. My Lord would see them, wrote a secretary, at
two o’clock on the afternoon of July the third.
Beatrice sat through that long hot afternoon in the window-seat of the
upstairs parlour, looking out over the wide river below, conscious
perhaps for the first time of the vast weight of responsibility that
rested on her.
She had seen them go off in a wherry, the father and son with Nicholas
in the stern, and the lawyer facing them on the cross-bench; they had
been terribly silent as they walked down to the stairs; had stood
waiting there without a word being spoken but by herself, as the wherry
made ready; and she had talked hopelessly, desperately, to relieve the
tension. Then they had gone off. Sir James had looked back at her over
his shoulder as the boat put out; and she had seen his lips move. She
had watched them grow smaller and smaller as they went, and then when a
barge had come between her and them, she had gone home alone to wait for
their return, and the tidings that they would bring.
And she, in a sense was responsible for it all. If it had not been for
her visit to Ralph, he would have handed the papers over to the
authorities; he would be at liberty now, no doubt, as were Cromwell’s
other agents; and, as she thought of it, her tortured heart asked again
and again whether after all she had done right.
She went over the whole question, as she sat there, looking out over the
river towards Lambeth, fingering the shutter, glancing now and again at
the bent old figure of her aunt in her tall chair, and listening to the
rip of the needle through the silk. Could she have done otherwise? Was
her interference and advice after all but a piece of mad chivalry,
unnecessary and unpractical?
And yet she knew that she would do it again, if the same circumstances
arose. It would be impossible to do otherwise. Reason was against it;
Mr. Herries had hinted as much with a quick lifting of his bushy
eyebrows as she had told him the story. It would have made no difference
to Cromwell--ah! but she had not done it for that; it was for the sake
of Ralph himself; that he might not lose the one opportunity that came
to him of making a movement back towards the honour he had forfeited.
But it was no less torture to think of it all, as she sat here. She had
faced the question before; but now the misery she had watched during
these last three weeks had driven it home. Day by day she had seen the
old father’s face grow lined and haggard as the suspense gnawed at his
heart; she had watched him at meals--had seen him sit in bewildered
grief, striving for self-control and hope--had seen him, as the light
faded in the parlour upstairs, sink deeper into himself; his eyes hidden
by his hand, and his grey pointed beard twitching at the trembling of
his mouth. Once or twice she had met his eyes fixed on hers, in a
questioning stare, and had known what was in his heart--a simple,
unreproachful wonder at the strange events that had made her so
intimately responsible for his son’s happiness.
She thought of Margaret too, as she sat there; of the poor girl who had
so rested on her, believed in her, loved her. There she was now at
Overfield, living in a nightmare of suspense, watching so eagerly for
the scanty letters, disappointed every time of the good news for which
she hoped....
* * * * *
The burden was an intolerable one. Beatrice was scarcely conscious of
where she sat or for what she waited. She was living over again every
detail of her relations with Ralph. She remembered how she had seen him
at first at Chelsea; how he had come out with Master More from the door
of the New Building and across the grass. She had been twisting a
grass-ring then as she listened to the talk, and had tossed it on to the
dog’s back. Then, day by day she had met him; he had come at all hours;
and she had watched him, for she thought she had found a man. She
remembered how her interest had deepened; how suddenly her heart had
leapt that evening when she came into the hall and found him sitting in
the dark. Then, step by step, the friendship had grown till it had
revealed its radiant face at the bitterness of Chris’s words in the
house at Westminster. Then her life had become magical; all the world
cried “Ralph” to her; the trumpets she heard sounded to his praise; the
sunsets had shone for him and her. Then came the news of the Visitors’
work; and her heart had begun to question her insistently; the questions
had become affirmation; and in one passionate hour she had gone to him,
scourged him with her tongue, and left him. She had seen him again once
or twice in the years that followed; had watched him from a window hung
with tapestries in Cheapside, as he rode down beside the King; and had
not dared to ask herself what her heart so longed to tell her. Then had
come the mother’s question; and the falling of the veils.
Then he had called her; she never doubted that; as she sat alone in her
room one evening. It had come, thin and piteous;--“Beatrice, Beatrice.”
He needed her, and she had gone, and meddled with his life once more.
And he lay in the Tower....
* * * * *
“Beatrice, my child.”
She turned from the window, her eyes blind with tears; and in a moment
was kneeling at her aunt’s side, her face buried in her lap, and felt
those kindly old hands passing over her hair. She heard a murmur over
her head, but scarcely caught a word. There was but one thing she
needed, and that--
Then she knelt suddenly upright listening, and the caressing hand was
still.
“Beatrice, my dear, Beatrice.”
* * * * *
There were footsteps on the stairs outside, eager and urgent. The girl
rose to her feet, and stood there, swaying a little with a restrained
expectation.
Then the door was open, and Chris was there, flushed and radiant, with
the level evening light full on his face.
“It is all well,” he cried, “my Lord will take us to the King.”
CHAPTER X
PLACENTIA
The river-front of Greenwich House was a magnificent sight as the four
men came up to it one morning nearly three weeks later. The long
two-storied row of brick buildings which Henry had named Placentia, with
their lines of windows broken by the two clusters of slender towers, and
porticos beneath, were fronted by broad platforms and a strip of turf
with steps leading down to the water, and at each of these entrances
there continually moved brilliant figures, sentries with the sunlight
flashing on their steel caps and pike-points, servants in the royal
livery, watermen in their blue and badges.
Here and there at the foot of the steps rocked gaudy barges, a mass of
gilding and colour, with broad low canopies at the stern, and flags
drooping at the prow; wherries moved to and fro, like water-beetles,
shooting across from bank to bank with passengers, above and below the
palace, or pausing with uplifted oars as the stream swept them down, for
the visitors to stare and marvel at the great buildings. Behind rose up
the green masses of trees against the sloping park. And over all lay the
July sky, solemn flakes of cloud drifting across a field of intense
blue.
There had been a delay in the fulfilment of the Archbishop’s promise; at
one time he himself was away in the country on affairs, at another time
the King was too much pressed, Cranmer reported, to have such a matter
brought before him; and then suddenly a messenger had come across from
Lambeth with a letter, bidding them present themselves at Greenwich on
the following morning; for the day following that had been fixed for
Cromwell’s execution, and the Archbishop hoped that the King would be
ready to hear a word on behalf of the agent whose loyalty had failed to
save his master.
* * * * *
The boatman suddenly backed water with his left-hand oar, took a stroke
or two with his right, glancing over his shoulder; and the boat slid up
to the foot of the steps.
A couple of watermen were already waiting there, in the Archbishop’s
livery, and steadied the boat for the four gentlemen to step out; and a
moment later the four were standing on the platform, looking about them.
They were at one of the smaller entrances to the palace, up-stream. A
hundred yards further down was the royal entrance, canopied and
carpeted, with the King’s barge rocking at the foot, a number of
servants coming and going on the platform, and the great state windows
overlooking all; but here they were in comparative quiet. A small
doorway with its buff and steel-clad sentry before it opened on their
right into the interior of the palace.
One of the watermen saluted the party.
“Master Torridon?” he said.
Chris assented.
“My Lord bade me take you through to him, sir, as soon as you arrived.”
He went before them to the door, said a word to the guard, and then the
party passed on through the little entrance-hall into the interior. The
corridor was plainly and severely furnished with matting under-foot,
chairs here and there set along the wainscot, pieces of stuff with
crossed pikes between hanging on the walls; through the bow windows
they caught a glimpse now and again of a little court or two, a
shrubbery and a piece of lawn, and once a vista of the park where Henry
in his younger days used to hold his May-revels, a gallant and princely
figure all in green from cap to shoes, breakfasting beneath the trees.
Continually, as they went, first in the corridor and then through the
waiting rooms at the end, they passed others going to and fro, servants
hurrying on messages, leisurely and magnificent persons with their hats
on, pages standing outside closed doors; and twice they were asked their
business.
“For my Lord of Canterbury,” answered the waterman each time.
It seemed to Chris that they must have gone an immense distance before
the waterman at last stopped, motioning them to go on, and a page in
purple livery stepped forward from a door.
“For my Lord of Canterbury,” said the waterman for the last time.
The page bowed, turned, and threw open the door.
They found themselves in a square parlour, carpeted and hung with
tapestries from floor to ceiling. A second door opened beyond, in the
window side, into another room. A round table stood in the centre, with
brocaded chairs about it, and a long couch by the fireplace. Opposite
rose up the tall windows through which shone the bright river with the
trees and buildings on the north bank beyond.
They had hardly spoken a word to one another since they had left
Charing, for all that was possible had been said during the weeks of
waiting for the Archbishop’s summons.
Cranmer had received them kindly, though he had not committed himself
beyond promising to introduce them to the King, and had expressed no
opinion on the case.
He had listened to them courteously, had nodded quietly as Chris
explained what it was that Ralph had done, and then almost without
comment had given his promise. It seemed as if the Archbishop could not
even form an opinion, and still less express one, until he had heard
what his Highness had to say.
* * * * *
Chris walked to the window and the lawyer followed him.
“Placentia!” said Mr. Herries, “I do not wonder at it. It is even more
pleasing from within.”
He stood, a prim, black figure, looking out at the glorious view, the
shining waterway studded with spots of colour, the long bank of the
river opposite, and the spires of London city lying in a blue heat-haze
far away to the left.
Chris stared at it too, but with unseeing eyes. It seemed as if all
power of sensation had left him. The suspense of the last weeks had
corroded the surfaces of his soul, and the intensity to which it was now
rising seemed to have paralysed what was left. He found himself
picturing the little house at Charing where Beatrice was waiting, and,
he knew, praying; and he reminded himself that the next time he saw her
he would know all, whether death or life was to be Ralph’s sentence. The
solemn quiet and the air of rich and comfortable tranquillity which the
palace wore, and which had impressed itself on his mind even in the
hundred yards he had walked in it, gave him an added sense of what it
was that lay over his brother, the huge passionless forces with which he
had become entangled.
Then he turned round. His father was sitting at the table, his head on
his hand; and Nicholas was staring round the grave room with the
solemnity of a child, looking strangely rustic and out of place in these
surroundings.
It was very quiet as Chris leaned against the window-shutter, in his
secular habit, with his hands clasped behind his back, and looked. Once
a footstep passed in the corridor outside, and the floor vibrated
slightly to the tread; once a horn blew somewhere far away; and from the
river now and again came the cry of a waterman, or the throb of oars in
rowlocks.
Sir James looked up once, opened his lips as if to speak; and then
dropped his head on to his hand again.
The waiting seemed interminable.
Chris turned round to the window once more, slipped his breviary out of
his pocket, and opened it. He made the sign of the cross and began--
“_In nomine Patris et Filii...._”
Then the second door opened; he turned back abruptly; there was a rustle
of silk, and the Archbishop came through in his habit and gown.
Chris bowed slightly as the prelate went past him briskly towards the
table where Sir James was now standing up, and searched his features
eagerly for an omen. There was nothing to be read there; his smooth
large-eyed face was smiling quietly as its manner was, and his wide lips
were slightly parted.
“Good-day, Master Torridon; you are in good time. I am just come from
His Highness, and will take you to him directly.”
Chris saw his father’s face blanch a little as he bowed in return.
Nicholas merely stared.
“But we have a few minutes,” went on the Archbishop. “Sir Thomas
Wriothesly is with him. Tell me again sir, what you wish me to say.”
Sir James looked hesitatingly to the lawyer.
“Mr. Herries,” he said.
Cranmer turned round, and again made that little half-deprecating bow to
the priest and the lawyer. Mr. Herries stepped forward as Cranmer sat
down, clasping his hands so that the great amethyst showed on his
slender finger.
“It is this, my Lord,” he said, “it is as we told your Lordship at
Lambeth. This gentleman desires the King’s clemency towards Mr. Ralph
Torridon, now in the Tower. Mr. Torridon has served--er--Mr. Cromwell
very faithfully. We wish to make no secret of that. He destroyed certain
private papers--though that cannot be proved against him, and you will
remember that we were doubtful whether his Highness should be informed
of that--”
Sir James broke in suddenly.
“I have been thinking of that, my Lord. I would sooner that the King’s
Grace knew everything. I have no wish that that should be kept from
him.”
The Archbishop who had been looking with smiling attention from one to
the other, now himself broke in.
“I am glad you think that, sir. I think so myself. Though it cannot be
proved as you say, it is far best that His Grace should know all. Indeed
I think I should have told him in any case.”
“Then, my Lord, if you think well,” went on Mr. Herries, “you might lay
before his Grace that this is a free and open confession. Mr. Torridon
did burn papers, and important ones; but they would not have served
anything. Master Cromwell was cast without them.”
“But Mr. Torridon did not know that?” questioned the Archbishop blandly.
“Yes, my Lord,” cried Sir James, “he must have known--that my Lord
Cromwell--”
The Archbishop lifted his hand delicately.
“Master Cromwell,” he corrected.
“Master Cromwell,” went on the old man, “he must have known that Mr.
Cromwell had others, more important, that would be certainly found and
used against him.”
“Then why did he burn them? You understand, sir, that I only wish to
know what I have to say to his Grace.”
“He burned them, my Lord, because he could not bear that his hand should
be lifted against his master. Surely that is but loyal and good!”
The Archbishop nodded quietly three or four times.
“And you desire that his Grace will take order to have Mr. Torridon
released?”
“That is it, my Lord,” said the lawyer.
“Yes, I understand. And can you give any pledge for Mr. Torridon’s good
behaviour?”
“He has served Mr. Cromwell,” answered the lawyer, “very well for many
years. He has been with him in the matter of the Religious Houses; he
was one of the King’s Visitors, and assisted in the--the destruction of
Lewes priory; and that, my Lord, is a sufficient--”
Sir James gave a sudden sob.
“Mr. Herries, Mr. Herries--”
Cranmer turned to him smiling.
“I know what you feel, sir,” he said. “But if this is true--”
“Why, it is true! God help him,” cried the old man.
“Then that is what we need, sir; as you said just now. Yes, Mr.
Herries?”
The lawyer glanced at the old man again.
“That is sufficient guarantee, my Lord, that Mr. Ralph Torridon is no
enemy of his Grace’s projects.”
“I cannot bear that!” cried Sir James.
Nicholas, who had been looking awed and open-mouthed from one to the
other, took him by the arm.
“You must, father,” he said. “It--it is devilish; but it is true. Chris,
have you nothing?”
The monk came forward a step.
“It is true, my Lord,” he said. “I was a monk of Lewes myself.”
“And you have conformed,” put in the Archbishop swiftly.
“I am living at home peaceably,” said Chris; “it is true that my brother
did all this, but--but my father wishes that it should not be used in
his cause.”
“If it is true,” said the Archbishop, “it is best to say it. We want
nothing but the bare truth.”
“But I cannot bear it,” cried the old man again.
Chris came round behind the Archbishop to his father.
“Will you leave it, father, to my Lord Archbishop? My Lord understands
what we think.”
Sir James looked at him, dazed and bewildered.
“God help us! Do you think so, Chris?”
“I think so, father. My Lord, you understand all?”
The Archbishop bowed again slightly.
“Then, my Lord, we will leave it all in your hands.”
There was a tap at the door.
The Archbishop rose.
“That is our signal,” he said. “Come, gentlemen, his Grace will be ready
immediately.”
Mr. Herries sprang to the door and opened it, bowing as the Archbishop
went through, followed by Sir James and Nicholas. He and Chris followed
after.
* * * * *
There was a kind of dull recklessness in the monk’s heart as he went
through. He knew that he was in more peril than any of the others, and
yet he did not fear it. The faculty of fear had been blunted, not
sharpened, by his experiences; and he passed on towards the King’s
presence, almost without a tremor.
The room was empty, except for a page by the further door, who opened it
as the party advanced; and beyond was a wide lobby, with doors all
round, and a staircase on the right as they came out. The Archbishop
made a little motion to the others as he went up, gathering his skirts
about him, and acknowledging with his disengaged hand the salute of the
sentry that stood in the lobby.
At the top of the stairs was a broad landing; then a corridor through
which they passed, and on. They turned to the left, and as they went it
was apparent that they were near the royal apartments. There were thick
leather rugs lying here and there; along the walls stood magnificent
pieces of furniture, inlaid tables with tall dragon-jars upon them,
suits of Venetian armour elaborately worked in silver, and at the door
of every room that opened on the corridor there was standing a sentry or
a servant, who straightened themselves at the sight of the Archbishop.
He carefully acknowledged each salutation, and nodded kindly once or
twice.
There was a heavy odour in the air, warm and fragrant, as of mingled
stuffs and musk, which even the wide windows set open towards the garden
on the right hand did not wholly obliterate.
For the first time since leaving Charing, Chris’s heart quickened. The
slow stages of approach to the formidable presence had begun to do their
work; if he had seen the King at once he would not have been moved; if
he had had an hour longer, he would have recovered from his emotion; but
this swift ordered approach, the suggestiveness of the thick carpets
and furniture, the sight of the silent figures waiting, the musky smell
in the air, all combined now to work upon him; he began to fancy that he
was drawing nearer the presence of some great carrion-beast that had
made its den here, that was guarded by these discreet servitors, and to
which this smooth prelate, in the rôle of the principal keeper, was
guiding him. Any of these before him might mark the sanctuary of the
labyrinth, where the creature lurked; one might open, and a savage face
look out, dripping blood and slaver.
A page threw back a door at last, and they passed through; but again
there was a check. It was but one more waiting room. The dozen persons,
folks of all sorts, a lawyer, a soldier, and others stood up and bowed
to the prelate.
Then the party sat down near the further door in dead silence, and the
minutes began to pass.
There were cries from the river once or twice as they waited; once a
footstep vibrated through the door, and twice a murmur of voices sounded
and died again.
Then suddenly a hand was laid on the handle from the other side, and the
Archbishop rose, with Sir James beside him.
There was still a pause. Then a voice sounded loud and near, and there
was a general movement in the room as all rose to their feet. The door
swung open and the Garter King-at-Arms came through, bland and smiling,
his puffed silk sleeves brushing against the doorpost as he passed. A
face like a mask, smooth and expressionless, followed him, and nodded to
the Archbishop.
Cranmer turned slightly to his party, again made that little movement,
and went straight through.
Chris followed with Mr. Herries.
CHAPTER XI
THE KING’S HIGHNESS
As Chris knelt with the others, and the door closed behind him, he was
aware of a great room with a tall window looking on to the river on his
left, tapestry-hung walls, a broad table heaped with papers in the
centre, a high beamed ceiling, and the thick carpet under his knees.
For a moment he did not see the King. The page who had beckoned them in
had passed across the room, and Chris’s eyes followed him out through an
inner door in the corner.
Then, still on his knees, he turned his eyes to see the Archbishop going
towards the window, and up the step that led on to the dais that
occupied the floor of the oriel.
Then he saw the King.
* * * * *
A great figure was seated opposite the side door at which they had
entered on the broad seat that ran round the three sides of the window.
The puffed sleeves made the shoulders look enormous; a gold chain lay
across them, with which the gross fingers were playing. Beneath, the
vast stomach swelled out into the slashed trunks, and the scarlet legs
were crossed one over the other. On the head lay a broad plumed velvet
cap, and beneath it was the wide square face, at once jovial and solemn,
with the narrow slits of eyes above, and the little pursed mouth fringed
by reddish hair below, that Chris remembered in the barge years before.
The smell of musk lay heavy in the air.
Here was the monstrous carrion-beast then at last, sunning himself and
waiting.
* * * * *
So the party rested a moment or two, while the Archbishop went across to
the dais; he knelt again and then stood up and said a word or two
rapidly that Chris could not hear.
Henry nodded, and turned his bright narrow eyes on to them; and then
made a motion with his hand. The Archbishop turned round and repeated
the gesture; and Chris rose in his place as did the others.
“Master Torridon, your Grace,” explained the Archbishop, with a
deferential stoop of his shoulders. “Your Grace will remember--”
The King nodded abruptly, and thrust his hand out.
Chris touched his father behind.
“Go forward,” he whispered; “kiss hands.”
The old man went forward a hesitating step or two. The Archbishop
motioned sharply, and Sir James advanced again up to the dais, sank
down, and lifted the hand to his lips, and fell back for the others.
When Chris’s turn came, and he lifted the heavy fingers, he noticed for
a moment a wonderful red stone on the thumb, and recognised it. It was
the Regal of France that he had seen years before at his visit to St.
Thomas’s shrine at Canterbury. In a flash, too, he remembered Cromwell’s
crest as he had seen it on the papers at Lewes--the demi-lion holding up
the red-gemmed ring.
Then he too had fallen back, and the Archbishop was speaking.
“Your Grace will remember that there is a Mr. Ralph Torridon in the
Tower--an agent of Mr. Cromwell’s--”
The King’s face moved slightly, but he said nothing.
--“Who is awaiting trial for destroying evidence. It is that, at least,
your Grace, that is asserted against him. But it has not been proved.
Master Torridon here tells me, your Highness, that it cannot be proved,
but that he wishes to acknowledge it freely on his son’s behalf.”
Henry’s eyes shot back again at the old man, ran over the others, and
settled again on Cranmer’s face, who was standing beside him with his
back to the window.
“He is here to plead for your Grace’s clemency. He wishes to lay before
your Grace that his son erred through over-faithfulness to Mr.
Cromwell’s cause; and above all that the evidence so destroyed has not
affected the course of justice--”
“God’s Body!” jarred in the harsh voice suddenly, “it has not. Nor shall
it.”
Cranmer waited a moment with downcast eyes; but the King was silent
again.
“Master Torridon has persuaded me to come with him to your Grace to
speak for him. He is not accustomed--”
“And who are these fellows?”
Chris felt those keen eyes running over him.
“This is Master Nicholas Maxwell,” explained the Archbishop, indicating
him. “Master Torridon’s son-in-law; and this, Mr. Herries--”
“And the priest?” asked the King.
“The priest is Sir Christopher Torridon, living with his father at
Overfield.”
“Ha! has he always lived there then?”
“No, your Grace,” said Cranmer smoothly, “he was a monk at Lewes until
the dissolution of the house.”
“I have heard somewhat of his name,” mused Henry. “What is it, sir, that
I have heard of you?”
“It was perhaps Mr. Ralph Torridon’s name that your Grace--” began
Cranmer.
“Nay, nay, it was not. What was it, sir?”
Chris’s heart was beating in his ears like a drum now. It had come,
then, that peril that had always been brooding on the horizon, and which
he had begun to despise. He had thought that there could be no danger in
his going to the King; it was so long since Lewes had fallen, and his
own part had been so small. But his Grace’s memory was good, it seemed!
Danger was close to him, incarnate in that overwhelming presence. He
said nothing, but stood awaiting detection.
“It is strange,” said Henry. “I have forgot. Well, my Lord?”
“I have told your Grace all,” explained the Archbishop. “Mr. Ralph
Torridon has not yet been brought to trial, and his father hopes that
your Grace will take into consideration these two things: that it was a
mistake of over-faithfulness that his son committed; and that it has not
hindered the course of justice.”
“Well, well,” said Henry, “and that sounds to be in reason. We have none
too much of either faithfulness or justice in these days. And there is
no other charge against the fellow?”
“There is no other charge, your Grace.”
There fell a complete silence for a moment or two.
Chris glanced up at his father, his own heart uplifted by hope, and saw
the old man’s face trembling with it too. The wrinkled eyes were full of
tears, and his lips quivered; and Chris could feel the short cloak that
hung against him shaking at his hand. Nicholas’s crimson face showed a
mingling of such emotion and solemnity that Chris was seized with an
internal hysterical spasm; but it suddenly died within him as he
brought his eyes round, and saw that the King was staring at him
moodily....
The Archbishop’s voice broke in again.
“Are we to understand, your Grace, that your Grace’s clemency is
extended to Mr. Ralph Torridon?”
“Eh! then,” said the King peevishly, “hold your tongue, my Lord. I am
trying to remember. Where is Michael?”
“Shall I call him, your Grace?”
“Nay, then; let the lawyer ring the bell!”
Mr. Herries sprang to the table at the King’s gesture, and struck the
little hand-bell that stood there. The door where the page had
disappeared five minutes before opened silently, and the servant stood
there.
“Michael,” said the King, and the page vanished.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Cranmer stood back a little with an
air of patient deference, and his quick eyes glanced up now and again at
the party before him. There was a certain uneasiness in his manner, as
Chris could see; but the monk presently dropped his eyes again, as he
saw that the King was once more looking at him keenly, with tight pursed
lips, and a puzzled look on his forehead.
The thoughts began to race through Chris’s brain. He found himself
praying with desperate speed that Michael, whoever he was, might not
know; and that the King might not remember; and meanwhile through
another part of his being ran the thought of the irony of his situation.
Here he was, come to plead for his brother’s life, and on the brink of
having to plead for his own. The quiet room increased his sense of the
irony. It seemed so safe and strong and comfortable, up here in the rich
room, with the tall window looking on to the sunlit river, in a palace
girt about with guards; and yet the very security of it was his danger.
He had penetrated into the stronghold of the great beast that ruled
England: he was within striking distance of those red-stained claws and
teeth.
Then suddenly the creature stirred and snarled.
“I know it now, sir. You were one of the knaves that would not sign the
surrender of Lewes.”
Chris lifted his eyes and dropped them again.
“God’s Body,” said the King, “and you come here!”
Again there was silence.
Chris saw his father half turn towards him with a piteous face, and
perceived that the lawyer had drawn a little away.
The King turned abruptly to Cranmer.
“Did you know this, my Lord?”
“Before God, I did not!”--but his voice shook as he answered.
Chris was gripping his courage, and at last spoke.
“We were told it was a free-will act, your Grace.”
Henry said nothing to this. His eyes were rolling up and down the monk’s
figure, with tight, thoughtful lips. Cranmer looked desperately at Sir
James.
“I did not know that, your Grace,” he said again. “I only knew that this
priest’s brother had been very active in your Grace’s business.”
Henry turned sharply.
“Eh?” he said.
Sir James’s hands rose and clasped themselves instinctively. Cranmer
again looked at him almost fiercely.
“Mr. Ralph Torridon was one of the Visitors,” explained the Archbishop
nervously.
“And this fellow a monk!” cried the King.
“They must have met at Lewes, your Grace.”
“Ah! my Lord,” cried Sir James suddenly. “I entreated you--”
Henry turned on him suddenly.
“Tell us the tale, sir. What is all this?”
Sir James took a faltering step forward, and then suddenly threw out his
hands.
“Ah! your Grace, it is a bitter tale for a father to tell. It is true,
all of it. My son here was a monk at Lewes. He would not sign the
surrender. I--I approved him for it. I--I was there when my son Ralph
cast him out--”
“God’s blood!” cried the King with a beaming face. “The one brother cast
the other out!”
Chris saw the Archbishop’s face suddenly lighten as he watched the King
sideways.
“But I cannot bear that he should be saved for that!” went on the old
man piteously. “He was a good servant to your Grace, but a bad one to
our Lord--”
The Archbishop drew a swift breath of horror, and his hands jerked. But
Henry seemed not to hear; his little mouth had opened in a round hole of
amazed laughter, and he was staring at the old man without hearing him.
“And you were there?” he said. “And your wife? And your aunts and
sisters?”
“My wife is dead,” cried the old man. “Your Grace--”
“And on which side was she?”
“She was--was on your Grace’s side.”
Henry threw himself back in his chair.
* * * * *
For one moment Chris did not know whether it was wrath or laughter that
shook him. His face grew crimson, and his narrow eyes disappeared into
shining slits; his fat hands were on his knees, and his great body
shook. From his round open mouth came silent gusts of quick breath, and
he began to sway a little from side to side.
Across the Archbishop’s face came a deferential and sympathetic smile,
and he looked quickly and nervously from the King to the group and back
again. Sir James had fallen back a pace at the King’s laughter, and
stood rigid and staring. Chris took a step close to him and gripped his
hand firmly.
There was a footstep behind, and the King leaned forward again, wiping
the tears away with his sleeve.
“Oh, Michael, Michael!” he sobbed, “here is a fine tale.”
A dark-dressed man stepped forward from behind, and stood expectant.
“God! What a happy family!” said the King. “And this fellow here?”
He motioned towards Nicholas, with a feeble gesture. He was still weak
with laughter.
The young squire moved forward a step, rigid and indignant.
“I am against your Grace,” he said sharply.
Henry grew suddenly grave.
“Eh! that is no way to speak,” he said.
“It is the only way I can speak,” said Nicholas, “if your Grace desires
the truth.”
The King looked at him a moment; but the humour still shone in his eyes.
“Well, well. It is the truth I want. Michael, I sent for you to know
about the priest here; but I know now. And is it true that his brother
in the Tower--Ralph Torridon--was one of the Visitors?”
The man pursed his lips a moment. He was standing close to Chris, a
little in front of him.
“Yes, your Majesty.”
“Oh! well. We must let him out, I suppose--if there is nothing more
against him. You shall tell me presently, Michael.”
The Archbishop looked swiftly across at the party.
“Then your Grace extends--”
“Well, Michael, what is it?” interrupted the King.
“It is a matter your Majesty might wish to hear in private,” said the
stranger.
“Oh, step aside, my Lord. And you, gentlemen.”
The King motioned down to the further end of the room, as Michael came
forward.
The Archbishop stepped off the low platform, and led the way down the
floor; and the others followed.
* * * * *
Chris was in a whirl of bewilderment. He could see the King’s great face
interested and attentive as the secretary said something in his ear, and
then suddenly light up with amusement again.
“Not a word, not a word,” whispered Henry harshly. “Very good, Michael.”
The secretary then whispered once more. Chris could hear the sharp
sibilants, but no word. The King nodded once more, and the man stepped
down off the dais.
“Prepare the admission, then,” said the King after him.
The secretary bowed as he turned and went out of the room once more.
Henry beckoned.
“Come, gentlemen.”
He watched them with a solemn joviality as they came up, the Archbishop
in front, the father and son together, and the two others behind.
“You are a sad crew,” began the King, eyeing them pleasantly, and
sitting forward with a hand on either knee, “and I am astonished, my
Lord of Canterbury, at your companying with them. But we will have
mercy, and remember your son’s services, Master Torridon, in the past.
That alone will excuse him. Remember that. That alone. He is the
stronger man, if he turned out the priest there. And I remember your son
very well, too; and will forgive him. But I shall not employ him again.
And his forgiveness shall cover yours, Master Priest; but you must be
off--you must be off, sir,” he barked suddenly, “out of these realms in
a week. We will have no more treason from you.”
The fierce overpowering personality flared out as he spoke, and Chris
felt his heart beat sick at the force of it.
“And you two gentlemen,” went on the King, still smouldering, “you two
had best hold your tongues. We will not hear such talk in our presence
or out of it. But we will excuse it now. There, sir, have I said
enough?”
Sir James dropped abruptly on his knees.
“Oh! God bless your Grace!” he began, with the tears running down.
Henry made an abrupt gesture.
“You shall go to your son,” he said, “and see how he fares, and tell him
this. And she shall have the order of release presently, from me or
another.”
Again the little mouth creased and twitched with amusement.
“And I hope he will be happy with his mother. You may tell him that from
me.”
The Archbishop looked up.
“Mistress Torridon is dead, your Grace,” he said softly and
questioningly.
“Oh, well,” said the King; and thrust out his hand to be kissed.
* * * * *
Chris did not know how they got out of the room. They kissed hands
again; the old man muttered out his thanks; but he seemed bewildered by
the rush of events, and the supreme surprise. Chris, as he backed away
from the presence, saw for the last time those narrow royal eyes fixed
on him, still bright with amusement and expectancy, and the great
red-fringed cheeks creased about the tiny mouth with an effort to keep
back laughter. Why was the King laughing, he wondered?
They waited a few minutes in the ante-room for the order that the
Archbishop had whispered to them should be sent out immediately. They
said nothing to one another--but the three sat close, looking into one
another’s eyes now and again in astonishment and joy, while Mr. Herries
stood a little apart solemn and happy at the importance of the rôle he
had played in the whole affair, and disdaining even to look at the rest
of the company who sat on chairs and watched the party.
The secretary came to them in a few minutes, and handed them the order.
“My Lord of Canterbury is detained,” he said; “he bade me tell you
gentlemen that he could not see you again.”
Sir James was standing up and examining the order.
“For four?” he said.
“Why, yes,” said the secretary, and glanced at the four men.
Chris put his hand on his father’s arm.
“It is all well,” he whispered, “say nothing more. It will do for
Beatrice.”
CHAPTER XII
THE TIDINGS AT THE TOWER
They debated as they stood on the steps in the sunlight five minutes
later, as to whether they should go straight to the Tower, or back to
Charing and take Beatrice with them. They spoke softly to one another,
as men that have come out from darkness to light, bewildered by the
sense of freedom and freshness that lay round them. Instead of the
musk-scented rooms, the formidable dominating presence, the suspense and
the terror, the river laughed before them, the fresh summer breeze blew
up it, and above all Ralph was free, and that, not only of his prison,
but of his hateful work. It had all been done in those few sentences;
but as yet they could not realise it; and they regarded it, as they
regarded the ripples at their feet, the lapping wherry, and far-off
London city, as a kind of dazzling picture which would by and by be
found to move and live.
The lawyer congratulated them, and they smiled back and thanked him.
“If you will put me to shore at London Bridge,” said Mr. Herries--“I
have a little business I might do there--that is, if you will be going
so far.”
Chris looked at his father, whose arm he was holding.
“We must take her with us,” he said. “She has earned it.”
Sir James nodded, dreamily, and turned to the boat.
“To the London Bridge Stairs first,” he said.
* * * * *
There was a kind of piquant joy in their hearts as they crept up past
the Tower, and saw its mighty walls and guns across the water. He was
there, but it was not for long. They would see him that day, and
to-morrow--to-morrow at the latest, they would all leave it together.
There were a hundred plans in the old man’s mind, as he leaned gently
forward and back to the motion of the boat and stared at the bright
water. Ralph and he should live at Overfield again; his son would surely
be changed by all that had come to him, and above all by his own
response to the demands of loyalty. They should learn to understand one
another better now--better than ever before. The hateful life lay behind
them of distrust and contempt; Ralph would come back to his old self,
and be again as he had been ten years back before he had been dazzled
and drugged by the man who was to die next day. Then he thought of that
man, and half-pitied him even then; those strong walls held nothing but
terror for him--terror and despair; the scaffold was already going up on
Tower Hill--and as the old man thought of it he leaned forward and tried
to see over the wharf and under the trees where the rising ground lay;
but there was nothing to be seen--the foliage hid it.
Chris, also silent beside him, was full of thoughts. He would go abroad
now, he knew, with Margaret, as they had intended. The King’s order was
the last sign of God’s intention for him. He would place Margaret with
her own sisters at Bruges, and then himself go on to Dom Anthony and
take up the life again. He knew he would meet some of his old brethren
in Religion--Dom Anthony had written to say that three or four had
already joined him at Cluny; the Prior--he knew--had turned his back for
ever on the monastic life, and had been put into a prebendal stall at
Lincoln.
And meanwhile he would have the joy of knowing that Ralph was free of
his hateful business; the King would not employ him again; he would live
at home now, and rule Overfield well: he and his father together. Ah!
and what if Beatrice consented to rule it with him! Surely now--He
turned and looked at his father as he thought of it, and their eyes met.
Chris leaned a little closer.
“Beatrice!” he said. “What if she--?”
The old man nodded tenderly, and his drawn eyes shone in his face.
“Oh! Chris--I was thinking that--”
Then Nicholas came out of his maze.
Ever since his entrance into the palace, except when he had flared out
at the King, he had moved and stood and sat in a solemn bewilderment.
The effect of the changed atmosphere had been to paralyse his simple and
sturdy faculties; and his face had grown unintelligent during the
process. More than once Chris had been seized with internal laughter, in
spite of the tragedy; the rustic squire was so strangely incongruous
with the situation. But he awoke now.
“God bless me!” he said wonderingly. “It is all over and done. God--”
Chris gave a short yelp of laughter.
“Dear Nick,” he said, “yes. God bless you indeed! You spoke up well!”
“Did I do right, sir,” said the other to Sir James, “I could not help
it. I--”
“Oh! Nick,” said the old man, and leaned forward and put his hand on his
knee.
Nicholas preened himself as he sat there; he would tell Mary how he had
bearded his Majesty, and what a diplomatist was her husband.
“You did very well, sir,” put in Mr. Herries ironically. “You terrified
his Grace, I think.”
Chris glanced at the lawyer; but Nicholas took it all with the greatest
complacency; tilted his hilt a little forward, smoothed his doublet, and
sat smiling and well-pleased.
They reached the Stairs presently and put Mr. Herries ashore.
“I will be at your house to-morrow, sir,” he said, “when you go to take
Mr. Ralph out of prison. The order will be there by the morning, I make
no doubt.”
He bowed and smiled and moved off, a stiff figure deliberately picking
its way up the oozy steps to the crowded street overhead.
* * * * *
Beatrice’s face was at the window as they came up the tide half-an-hour
later. Chris stood up in the wherry, when he saw it, and waved his cap
furiously, and the face disappeared.
She was at the landing stage before they reached it, a slender brilliant
figure in her hood and mantle, with her aunt beside her. Chris stood up
again and cried between his hands across the narrowing space that all
was well; and her face was radiant as the boat slipped up to the side,
and balanced there with the boatman’s hand on the stone edging.
“It is all well,” said Chris again as he stood by her a moment later.
“He is to go free, and we are to tell him.”
He dared not look at her; but he was aware that she stood very still and
rigid, and that her eyes were on his father’s.
“Oh! Mistress Beatrice--”
Chris began to understand it all a little better, a few minutes later,
as the boat was once again on its way downstream. He and Nicholas had
moved to the bows of the wherry, and the girl and the old man sat alone
in the stern.
They were all very silent at first; Chris leaned on his elbow and stared
out at the sliding banks, the trees on this side and that, the great
houses with their high roofs and towers behind, and their stone steps in
front, the brilliant glare on the water, the hundreds of boats--great
barges flashing jewels from their dozen blades, spidery wherries making
this way and that; and his mind was busy weaving pictures. He saw it all
now; there had been that in Beatrice’s face during the moment he had
looked at her, that was more than sympathy. In the shock of that great
joy the veils had fallen, and her soul had looked out through her black
tearful eyes.
There was little doubt now as to what would happen. It was not for their
sake alone, or for Ralph’s, that she had looked like that; she had not
said one word, but he knew what was unspoken.
As they passed under London Bridge he turned a little and looked across
the boatman’s shoulder at the two as they sat there in the stern, and
what he saw confirmed him. The old man had flung an arm along the back
of the seat, and was leaning a little forward, talking in a low voice,
his face showing indeed the lines and wrinkles that had deepened more
than ever during these last weeks, but irradiated with an extraordinary
joy. And the girl was beside him, smiling with downcast eyes, turning a
quick look now and again as she sat there. Chris could see her scarlet
lips trembling, and her hands clasped on her knee, shifting a little now
and again as she listened. It was a strange wooing; the father courting
for the son, and the woman answering the son through the father; and
Chris understood what was the answer that she was giving.
Nicholas was watching it too; and presently the two in the stern looked
up suddenly; first Beatrice and then Sir James, and their eyes flashed
joy across and across as the four souls met.
* * * * *
Five minutes later again they were at the Tower Stairs.
Mr. Morris, who had been sent on by Mistress Jane Atherton when she had
heard the news, was there holding his horse by the bridle; and behind
him had collected a little crowd of idlers. He gave the bridle to one of
them, and came down the steps to help them out of the boat.
“You have heard?” said Chris as he stepped out last.
“Yes, father,” said the servant.
Chris looked at him; and his mask-like face too seemed strangely lighted
up. There was still across his cheek the shadow of a mark as of an old
whip-cut.
As they passed up the steps they became aware that the little crowd that
had waited at the top was only the detached fringe of a multitude that
had assembled further up the slope. It stretched under the trees as far
as they could see to right and left, from the outer wall of the Tower on
the one side, to where the rising ground on the left was hidden under
the thick foliage in the foreground. There was a murmur of talking and
laughter, the ringing of hand-bells, the cracking of whips and the cries
of children. The backs of the crowd were turned to the steps: there was
plainly something going on higher up the slope, and it seemed somewhat
away to the left.
For a moment Chris did not understand, and he turned to Morris.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The scaffold,” said the servant tersely.
At the same moment high above the murmur of the crowd came the sound of
heavy resounding blows, as of wood on wood.
Then Chris remembered; and for one moment he sickened as he walked. His
father turned and looked over his shoulder as he went with Beatrice in
front, and his eyes were eloquent.
“I had forgotten,” said Chris softly. “God help him!”
* * * * *
They turned in towards the right almost immediately to the low outer
gate of the fortress; and those for the first time remembered that the
order they carried was for four only.
Nicholas instantly offered to wait outside and let Morris go in. Morris
flatly refused. There was a short consultation, and then Nicholas went
up to the sentry on guard with the order in his hand.
The man looked at it, glanced at the party, and then turned and knocked
with his halberd on the great door behind, and in a minute or two an
officer came out in his buff and feathers. He took the order and ran his
eyes over it.
Nicholas explained.
The officer looked at him a moment without answering.
“And the lady too?” he said.
“Why, yes,” said Nicholas.
“The lady wishes--” then he broke off. “You will have to see the
Lieutenant,” he went on. “I can let you all through to his lodgings.”
They passed in with a yeoman to conduct them under the low heavy
vaulting and through to the open way beyond. On their right was the wall
between them and the river, and on their left the enormous towers and
battlements of the inner court.
Chris walked with Morris behind, remembering the last time he was here
with the Prior all those years before. They had walked silently then,
too, but for another reason.
They passed the low Traitor’s Gate on their right; Chris glanced at the
green lapping water beneath it as he went--Ralph had landed there--and
turned up the steep slope to the left under the gateway of the inner
court; and in a minute or two more were at the door of the Lieutenant’s
lodgings.
There seemed a strange suggestiveness in the silence and order of the
wide ward that lay before them. The great White Tower dominated the
whole place on the further side, huge and menacing, pierced by its
narrow windows set at wide intervals; on the left, the row of towers
used as prisons diminished in perspective down to where the wall turned
at right angles and ran in behind the keep; and the great space enclosed
by the whole was almost empty. There were soldiers on guard here and
there at the doorways; a servant hurried across the wide sunlit ground,
and once, as they waited, a doctor in his short gown came out of one
door and disappeared into another.
And here they waited for an answer to their summons, silent and happy in
their knowledge. The place held no terrors for them.
The soldier knocked again impatiently, and again stood aside.
Chris saw Nicholas sidle up to the man with something of the same awe on
his face that had been there an hour ago.
“My Lord--Master Cromwell?” he heard him whisper, correcting himself.
The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“There,” he said.
There were three soldiers, Chris noticed, standing at the foot of one of
the Towers a little distance off. It was there, then, that Thomas
Cromwell, wool-carder, waited for death, hearing, perhaps, from his
window the murmur of the crowd beyond the moat, and the blows of mallet
on wood as his scaffold went up.
Then the door opened, and after a word or two the soldier motioned them
in.
* * * * *
Again they had to wait.
The Lieutenant, they were told, had been called away. He was expected
back presently.
They sat down, still in silence, in the little ground-floor parlour. It
was a pleasant little room, with a wide hearth, and two windows looking
on to the court.
But the suspense was not like that of the morning. Now they knew how it
must end. There would be a few minutes more, long perhaps to Ralph, as
he sat in his cell somewhere not far from them, knowing nothing of the
pardon that was on its way; and then the door would open, where day by
day for the last six weeks the gaoler had come and gone; and the faces
he knew would be there, and it would be from their lips that he would
hear the message.
The old man and the girl still sat together in the window-seat, silent
now like the others. They had had their explanations in the boat, and
each knew what was in the other’s heart. Chris and Nicholas stood by the
hearth, Mr. Morris by the door; and there was not the tremor of a doubt
in any of them as to what the future held.
Chris looked tranquilly round the room, at the little square table in
the centre, the four chairs drawn close to it, with their brocade
panels stained and well-worn showing at the back, the dark ceiling, the
piece of tapestry that hung over the side-table between the doors--it
was a martial scene, faded and discoloured, with ghostly bare-legged
knights on fat prancing horses all in inextricable conflict, a great
battleaxe stood out against the dusky foliage of an autumn tree; and a
stag with his fore feet in the air, ramped in the foreground, looking
over his shoulder. It was a ludicrously bad piece of work, picked up no
doubt by some former Lieutenant who knew more of military than artistic
matters, and had hung there--how long? Chris wondered.
He found himself criticising it detail by detail, comparing it with his
own designs in the antiphonary; he had that antiphonary still at home;
he had carried it off from Lewes, when Ralph--Ralph!--had turned him
out. He had put it up into a parcel on the afternoon of the spoilers’
arrival. He would show it to Ralph again now--in a day or two at
Overfield; they would laugh over it together; and he would take it with
him abroad, and perhaps finish it there. God’s work is not so easily
hindered after all.
But all the while, the wandering stream of his thought was lighted and
penetrated by the radiant joy of his heart. It was all true, not a
dream!
He glanced again at the two in the window-seat.
His father was looking out of the lattice; but Beatrice raised her eyes
to his, and smiled at him.
Sir James stood up.
“The Lieutenant is coming,” he said.
A moment later there were steps in the flagged passage; and a murmur of
voices. The soldier who had brought them to the lodgings was waiting
there with the order of admission, and was no doubt explaining the
circumstances.
Then the door opened suddenly; and a tall soldierly-looking man,
grey-haired and clean-shaven, in an officer’s dress, stood there, with
the order in his hand, as the two in the window-seat rose to meet him.
“Master Torridon,” he said abruptly.
Sir James stepped forward.
“Yes, sir.”
“You have come to see Mr. Ralph Torridon whom we have here?”
“Yes, sir--my son.”
Nicholas stepped forward, and the Lieutenant nodded at him.
“Yes, sir,” said the officer to him, “I could not admit you before--” he
stopped, as if embarrassed, and turned to Beatrice.
“And this lady too?”
“Yes, Master Lieutenant,” said the old man.
“But--but--I do not understand--”
He looked at the radiant faces before him, and then dropped his eyes.
“I suppose--you have not heard then?”
Chris felt his heart leap, and then begin to throb furiously and
insistently. What had happened? Why did the man look like that? Why did
he not speak?
The Lieutenant came a step forward and put his hand on the table. He was
looking strangely from face to face.
Outside the court was very still. The footstep that had passed on the
flagstones a minute before had ceased; and there was no sound but the
chirp of a bird under the eaves.
“You have not heard then?” said the Lieutenant again.
“Oh! for God’s sake--” cried the old man suddenly.
“I have just come from your son,” said the other steadily. “You are only
just in time. He is at the point of death.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE RELEASE
It was morning, and they still sat in Ralph’s cell.
* * * * *
The attendant had brought in stools and a tall chair with a broken back,
and these were grouped round the low wooden bed; the old man in the
chair on one side, from where he could look down on his son’s face, with
Beatrice beside him, Chris and Nicholas on the other side. Mr. Morris
was everywhere, sitting on a form by the door, in and out with food and
medicine, at his old master’s bedside, lifting his pillow, turning him
in bed, holding his convulsive hands.
He had been ill six days, the Lieutenant told them. The doctor who had
been called in from outside named the disease _phrenitis_. It was
certain that he would not recover; and a message to that effect had been
sent across on the morning before, with the usual reports to Greenwich.
They had supped as they sat--silently--on what the gaoler brought; and
had slept by turns in the tall chair, wakening at a sound from the bed;
at the movement of the light across the floor as Morris slipped to and
fro noiselessly; at the chirp of the birds and the noises of the
stirring City as the daylight broadened on the wall, and the narrow
window grew bright and luminous.
And now the morning was high, and they were waiting for the end.
* * * * *
A little table stood by the door, white-covered, with two candles,
guttering now in their sockets, and a tall crucifix, ivory and black,
lifting its arms in the midst. Before it stood two veiled vessels.
“He will speak before he passes,” the doctor had told them the evening
before; “I do not know whether he will be able to receive Viaticum.”
* * * * *
Chris raised himself a little in his chair--he was stiff with leaning
elbows on knees; and he stretched out his feet softly; looking down
still at the bed.
His brother lay with his back to him; the priest could see the black
hair, longer than Court fashion allowed now, the brown sinewy neck
beneath; and one arm outlined over his hip beneath the piled clothes.
The fingers were moving a little, contracting and loosening, contracting
and loosening; and he could hear the long slow breaths.
Beyond sat Beatrice, upright and quiet, one hand in her lap, and the
other holding the father’s. The old man was bowed with his head on his
other hand, as he had been for the last hour, his back bent forward with
the burden, and his feet crossed before him.
From outside the noises grew louder as the morning advanced. There had
been the sound of continual coming and going since it was light. Wheels
had groaned and rattled up out of the distance and ceased abruptly; and
the noise of hoofs had been like an endless patter over the
stone-paving. And now, as the hours passed a murmur had been increasing,
a strange sound like the wind in dry trees, as the huge crowd gathered.
Beatrice raised her eyes suddenly.
The fortress itself which had been quiet till now seemed to awaken
abruptly.
The sound seemed to come to them up the stairs, but they had learnt
during those hours that all sounds from within came that way. There was
a trumpet-note or two, short and brazen; a tramp of feet for a moment,
the throb of drums; then silence again; then the noise of moving
footsteps that came and went in an instant. And as the sound came, Ralph
stirred.
He swayed slowly over on to his back; his breath came in little groans
that died to silence again as he subsided, and his arm drew out and lay
on the bedclothes. Chris could see his face now in sharp profile against
Beatrice’s dark skirt, white and sharp; the skin was tightly stretched
over the nose and cheekbones, his long thin lips were slightly open,
there was a painful frown on his forehead, and his eyes squinted
terribly at the ceiling.
A contraction seized the priest’s throat as he watched; the face was at
once so august and so pitiable.
The lips began to move again, as they had moved during the night; it
seemed as if the dying man were talking and listening. The eyelids
twitched a little; and once he made a movement as if to rise up. Chris
was down on his knees in a moment, holding him tenderly down; he felt
the thin hands come up and fumble with his own, and noticed lines deepen
between the flickering eyelids. Then the hands lay quiet.
Chris lifted his eyes and saw his father’s face and Beatrice’s watching.
Something of the augustness of the dying man seemed to rest on the grey
bearded lips and solemn eyes that looked down. Beatrice’s face was
steady and tender, and as the priest’s eyes met hers, she nodded.
“Yes, speak to him,” she said.
Chris threw a hand across the bed and rested it on the wooden frame, and
then lowered himself softly till his mouth was at the other’s ear.
“Ralph,” he said, “Ralph, do you hear me?”
Then he raised his face a little and watched.
The eyelids were rising slowly; but they dropped again; and there came a
little faint babbling from the writhing lips; but no words were
intelligible. Then they were silent.
“He hears,” said Beatrice softly.
The priest bent low again; and as he did so, from outside came a strange
sound, as of a long monstrous groan from a thousand throats. Again the
dying man stirred; his hand sought his brother’s arm and gripped it with
a kind of feeble strength; then dropped again on to the coverlet.
Chris hesitated a moment, and again glanced up; and as he did so, there
was a sound on the stairs. He threw himself back on his heels and looked
round, as the doctor came in with Morris behind him.
He was a stout ruddy man, and moved heavily across the floor; but Ralph
seemed not to hear it.
The doctor came to the end of the bed, and stood staring down at the
dying man’s face, frowning and pursing his lips; Chris watched him
intently for some sign. Then he came round by Beatrice, leaned over the
bed, and took Ralph’s wrist softly into his fingers. He suddenly seemed
to remember himself, and turned his face abruptly over his shoulder to
Sir James.
“There is a man come from the palace,” he whispered harshly. “I suppose
it is the pardon.” And Chris saw him arch his eyebrows and purse his
lips again. Then he bent over Ralph once more.
Then again the doctor jerked his head towards the window behind and
spoke across to Chris.
“They have him out there,” he said; “Master Cromwell, I mean.”
Then he rose abruptly.
“He cannot receive Viaticum; and he will not be able to make his
confession. I should shrive him at once, sir, and anoint him.”
“At once?” whispered Chris.
“The sooner the better,” said the doctor; “there is no telling.”
Chris rose swiftly from his knees, and made a sharp sign to Morris. Then
he sank down once more, looking round, and lifted the purple stole from
the floor where he had laid it the evening before; and even as he did so
his soul revolted.
He looked up at Beatrice. Would not she understand the unchivalry of the
act? But the will in her eyes compelled him.--Yes, yes! Who could set a
limit to mercy?
He slipped the strip over his shoulders, and again bent down over his
brother, with one arm across the motionless body. Beatrice and Sir James
were on their knees by now. Nicholas was busy with Morris at the further
end of the room. The doctor was gone.
There was a profound silence now outside as the priest bent lower and
lower till his lips almost touched the ear of the dying man; and every
word of the broken abrupt sentences was audible to all in the room.
“Ralph--Ralph--dear brother. You are at the point of death. I must
shrive you. You have sinned very deeply against God and man. I shall
anoint you afterwards. Make an act of sorrow in your heart for all your
sins; it will stand for confession. Think of Jesu’s love, and of His
death on the bitter cross--the wounds that He bore for us in love. Give
me a sign if you can that you repent.”
Chris spoke rapidly, and leaned back a moment. Now he was terrified of
waiting--he did not know how long it would be; but for an intent instant
he stared down on the shadowed face.
Again the eyelids flickered; the lips formed words, and ceased again.
The priest glanced up, scarcely knowing why; and then again lowered
himself that if it were possible Ralph might hear.
Then he spoke, with a tense internal effort as if to drive the grace
home....
“_Ego te absolvo ab omnibus censuris et peccatis, in nomine Patris_--”
He raised himself a little and lifted his hand, moving it sideways
across and down as he ended--“_et Filii et Spiritus Sancti_.”
* * * * *
The priest rose up once more, his duty driving his emotion down; he did
not dare to look across at the two figures beyond the bed, or even to
question himself again as to what he was doing.
The two men at the further end of the room were waiting now; they had
lifted the candles and crucifix off the table, and set them on the bench
by the side.
Chris went swiftly across the room, dropped on one knee, rose again,
lifted the veiled vessel that stood in the centre, with the little linen
cloth beneath, and set it all down on the bench. He knelt again, went a
step aside back to the table, lifted the other vessel, and signed with
his head.
The two men grasped the ends of the table, and carried it across the
floor to the end of the bed. Chris followed and set down the sacred oils
upon it.
“The cross and one candle,” he whispered sharply.
A minute later he was standing by the bed once more.
“_Oremus_--” he began, reading rapidly off the book that Beatrice held
steadily beneath his eyes.
“_Almighty Everlasting God, Who through blessed James Thy Apostle, hast
spoken, saying, Is any sick among you, let him call the priests of the
Church_--” (The lips of the dying man were moving again at the sound of
the words; was it in protest or in faith?)--“... _that what is done
without through our ministry, may be wrought within spiritually by Thy
divine power, and invisibly by Thy healing; through our Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen._”
The lips were moving faster than ever on the pillow; the head was
beginning to turn from side to side, and the mouth lay open.
“_Usquequo, Domine_” ... began Beatrice.
Chris dipped his thumb in the vessel, and sank swiftly on to his knees.
“_Per istam sanctam Unctionem_”--“_through this holy unction_....”
(The old man leaned suddenly forward on to his knees, and steadied that
rolling head in his two hands; and Chris signed firmly on the eyelids,
pressing them down and feeling the fluttering beneath his thumb as he
did so.)
“... _And His most loving mercy, may the Lord forgive thee whatsoever
thou hast sinned through sight._”
Ah! that was done--dear God! those eyes that had drooped and sneered,
that had looked so greedily on treasure--their lids shone now with the
loving-kindness of God.
Chris snatched a morsel of wool that Morris put forward from behind,
wiped the eyelids, and dropped the fragment into the earthen basin at
his side.
“_Per istam sanctam Unctionem_....”
And the ears were anointed--the ears that had listened to Layton’s
filth, to Cromwell’s plotting; and to the cries of the oppressed.
The nostrils; the lips that had lied and stormed and accused against
God’s people, compressed now in his father’s fingers--they seemed to
sneer even now, and to writhe under the soft oil; the hands that had
been laid on God’s portion, that had torn the vessels from the altar and
the cloth of gold from the treasury--those too were signed now, and lay
twitching on the coverlet.
The bed clothes at the foot of the wooden framework were lifted and laid
back as Chris passed round to the end, and the long feet, icy cold, were
lying exposed side by side.
_Per Istam sanctam Unctionem, et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat
tibi Domimus quidquid peccasti per incessum pedum. Amen._
Then they too were sealed with pardon, the feet that had been so swift
and unwearied in the war with God, that had trodden the sanctuary in His
despite, and trampled down the hearts of His saints--they too were
signed now with the mark of Redemption and lay again under the folded
coverlet at the end of their last journey.
A convulsion tore at the priest’s heart.
* * * * *
Then suddenly in the profound silence outside there broke out an
indescribable clamour, drowning in an instant the murmur of prayers
within. It seemed as if the whole world of men were there, and roaring.
The sound poured up through the window, across the moat; the boards of
the flooring vibrated with the sound. There was the throb of drums
pulsating through the long-drawn yell, the screams of women, the barking
of dogs; and a moment later, like some devilish benediction, the bells
of Barking Church pealed out, mellow and jangling, in an exultation of
blood.
Ralph struggled in his bed; his hands rose clutching at his throat,
tearing open his shirt before Beatrice’s fingers could reach them. The
breath came swift and hoarse through his open teeth, and his eyelids
flickered furiously. Then they opened, and his face grew quiet, as he
looked out across the room.
“My--my Lord!” he said.
THE END.