TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
By Mary Johnston
HAGAR.
THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books dealing with the war between the
States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.
CEASE FIRING. The second of two books dealing with the war between the
States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.
LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.
AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.
PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece.
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by HOWARD PYLE, E. B.
THOMPSON, A. W. BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL.
THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
[Illustration:
(p. 154)
“GOOD-BYE, MISTRESS FRIENDLY-SOUL!”]
THE WITCH
BY
MARY JOHNSTON
[Illustration: LOGO]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY JOHNSTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1914_
CONTENTS
I. THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER 1
II. THE CAP AND BELLS 10
III. THE TWO PHYSICIANS 24
IV. THE ROSE TAVERN 37
V. THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN 54
VI. THE MAN WITH THE HAWK 69
VII. JOAN 82
VIII. THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER 97
IX. THE OAK GRANGE 109
X. IN HAWTHORN FOREST 124
XI. THE PLAGUE 136
XII. HERON’S COTTAGE 151
XIII. HAWTHORN CHURCH 165
XIV. NIGHT 176
XV. NEXT DAY 188
XVI. MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT 204
XVII. MOTHER SPURAWAY 218
XVIII. THE GAOL 235
XIX. ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW 246
XX. THE WITCH JUDGE 260
XXI. THE WITCH 272
XXII. ESCAPE 281
XXIII. THE ROAD TO THE PORT 298
XXIV. THE FARTHER ROAD 312
XXV. THE SILVER QUEEN 327
XXVI. THE OPEN BOAT 342
XXVII. THE ISLAND 351
XXVIII. FOUR YEARS 362
XXIX. THE SPANIARDS 376
XXX. THE ISLET 387
XXXI. THE HOUR-GLASS 404
XXXII. A JOURNEY 420
THE WITCH
THE WITCH
CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER
IT was said that the Queen was dying. She lay at Richmond, in the
palace looking out upon the wintry, wooded, March-shaken park, but
London, a few miles away, had daily news of how she did. There was
much talk about her--the old Queen—much telling of stories and
harking back. She had had a long reign—“Not far from fifty years, my
masters!”—and in it many important things had happened. The crowd in
the streets, the barge and wherry folk upon the wind-ruffled river,
the roisterers in the taverns drinking ale or sack, merchants and
citizens in general talking of the times in the intervals of business,
old soldiers and seamen ashore, all manner of folk, indeed, agreed
upon the one most important thing. The most important thing had been
the scattering of the Armada fifteen years before. That disposed of,
opinions differed as to the next most important. The old soldiers were
for all fighting wherever it had occurred. The seamen and returned
adventurers threw for the voyages of Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert
and Raleigh. With these were inclined to agree the great merchants
and guild-masters who were venturing in the East India and other
joint-stock companies. The little merchant and guild fellows agreed
with the great. A very large number of all classes claimed for the
overthrow of Popery the first place. On the other hand, a considerable
number either a little hurriedly slurred this, or else somewhat too
anxiously and earnestly supported the assertion. One circle, all
churchmen, lauded the Act of Uniformity, and the pains and penalties
provided alike for Popish recusant and non-conforming Protestant.
Another circle, men of a serious cast of countenance and of a growing
simplicity in dress, left the Act of Uniformity in obscurity, and
after the deliverance from the Pope, made the important happening the
support given the Protestant principle in France and the Netherlands.
A few extreme loyalists put in a claim for the number of conspiracies
unearthed and trampled into nothingness—Scottish conspiracies, Irish
conspiracies, Spanish conspiracies, Westmoreland and Northumberland
conspiracies, Throgmorton conspiracies—the death of the Queen of
Scots, the death, two years ago, of Essex.
All agreed that the Queen had had a stirring reign—all but the latter
end of it. The last few years—despite Irish affairs—had been dull and
settled, a kind of ditch-water stagnation, a kind of going downhill.
Fifty years, almost, was a long time for one person to reign....
On a time the Queen had been an idol and a cynosure—for years
the love of a people had been warm about her. It had been a people
struggling to become a nation, beset with foreign foes and inner
dissensions, battling for a part in new worlds and realms. She had led
the people well, ruled well, come out with them into the Promised Land.
And now there was a very human dissatisfaction with the Promised Land,
for the streams did not run milk and honey nor were the sands golden.
As humanly, the dissatisfaction involved the old Queen. She could not
have been, after all, the Queen that they had thought her.... After
crying for so many years “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” there would come
creeping into mind a desire for novelty. _King James,—King James!_ The
words sounded well, and promised, perhaps, the true Golden Age. But
they were said, of course, under breath. The Queen was not dead yet.
They told strange stories of her—the old Queen; usually in small,
select companies where there were none but safe men. As March roared
on, there was more and more of this story-telling, straws that showed
the way the tide was setting. They were rarely now stories of her
youth, of her courage and fire, of her learning, of the danger in which
she lived when she was only “Madam Elizabeth,” of her imprisonment
in the Tower—nor were they stories of her coronation, and of the
way, through so many long years, she had queened it, of her “mere
Englishness,” her steady courage, her power of work, her councillors,
her wars, and her statecraft. Leaving that plane, they were not so
often either stories of tragic errors, of wrath and jealousy, finesse
and deception, of arbitrary power, of the fret and weakness of the
strong.—But to-day they told stories of her amours, real or pretended.
They repeated what she had said to Leicester and Leicester had said to
her, what she had said to Alençon and Alençon had answered. They dug
up again with a greasy mind her girlhood relations with Seymour, they
created lovers for her and puffed every coquetry into a full-blown
_liaison_; here they made her this man’s mistress and that man’s
mistress, and there they said that she could be no man’s mistress. They
had stories to tell of her even now, old and sick as she was. They told
how, this winter, for all she was so ill at ease, she would be dressed
each day in stiff and gorgeous raiment, would lie upon her pillows so,
with rings upon her fingers and her face painted, and when a young man
entered the room, how she gathered strength....
The March wind roared down the streets and shook the tavern signs.
In the palace at Richmond, there was a great room, and in the room
there was a great bed. The room had rich hangings, repeated about the
bed. The windows looked upon the wintry park, and under a huge, marble
mantelpiece, carved with tritons and wreaths of flowers, a fire burned.
About the room were standing women—maids of honour, tiring-women.
Near the fire stood a group of men, silent, in attendance.
The Queen did not lie upon the bed—now she said that she could not
endure it, and now she said that it was her will to lie upon the
floor. They placed rich cushions and she lay among them at their feet,
her gaunt frame stretched upon cloth of gold and coloured silk. She
had upon her a long, rich gown, as full and rigid a thing as it was
possible to wear and yet recline. Her head was dressed with a tire of
false hair, a mass of red-gold; there was false colour upon her cheek
and lip. She kept a cup of gold beside her filled with wine and water
which at long intervals she put to her lips. Now she lay for hours very
still, with contracted brows, and now she turned from side to side,
seeking ease and finding none. Now there came a moan, and now a Tudor
oath. For the most part she lay still, only the fingers of one hand
moving upon the rim of the cup or measuring the cloth of gold beneath
her. Her sight was failing. She had not eaten, would not eat. She lay
still, supported upon fringed cushions, and the fire burned with a low
sound, and the March wind shook the windows.
From the group of men by the fire stepped softly, not her customary
physician, but another of some note, called into association during
these last days. He crossed the floor with a velvet step and stood
beside the Queen. His body bent itself into a curve of deference, but
his eyes searched without reverence. She could not see him, he knew,
with any clearness. He was followed from the group by a grave and able
councillor. The two stood without speaking, looking down. The Queen lay
with closed eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the cloth of gold;
from her thin, drawn lips, coloured cherry-red, came a halting murmur:
“_England—Scotland—Ireland—_”
The two men glanced at each other, then the Queen’s councillor,
stepping back to the fire, spoke to a young man standing a little apart
from the main group. This man, too, crossed the floor with a noiseless
step and stood beside the physician. His eyes likewise searched with a
grave, professional interest.
“_Navarre_,” went the low murmur at their feet. “_Navarre
and Orange.... No Pope, but I will have ritual still....
England—Scotland—_”
The Queen moaned and moved her body upon the cushions. She opened her
eyes. “Who’s standing there? God’s death—!”
The physician knelt. “Madam, it is your poor physician. Will not Your
Grace take the draught now?”
“No.—There’s some one else—”
“Your Grace, it is a young physician—English—but who has studied
at Paris under the best scholar of Ambroise Paré. He is learned and
skilful. He came commended by the Duke of —-- to Sir Robert Cecil—”
“God’s wounds!” cried the Queen in a thin, imperious voice. “Have I
not told you and Cecil, too, that there was no medicine and no doctor
who could do me good! Paré died, did he not? and you and your fellow
will die! All die. I have seen a many men and matters die—and I will
die, too, if it be my will!”
She stared past him at the strange physician. “If he were Hippocrates
himself I would not have him! I do not like his looks. He is a dreamer
and born to be hanged.—Begone, both of you, and leave me at peace.”
Her eyes closed. She turned upon the cushions. Her fingers began again
to move upon the rich stuff beneath her. “_England_—”
The rejected aid or attempt to aid stepped, velvet-footed, backward
from the pallet. The physicians knew, and all in the room knew, that
the Queen could not now really envisage a new face. She might with
equal knowledge have said of the man from Paris, “He is a prince in
disguise and born to be crowned.” But though they knew this to be
true, the Queen had said the one thing and had not said the other, and
what she said had still great and authoritative weight of suggestion.
The younger physician, returning to his place a little apart alike
from the women attendants and from the group of courtiers, became the
recipient of glances of predetermined curiosity and misliking. Now, as
it happened, he really did have something the look of a dreamer—thin,
pale, and thoughtful-faced, with musing, questioning eyes. While
according to accepted canons it was not handsome, while, indeed, it
was somewhat strange, mobile, and elf-like, his countenance was in
reality not at all unpleasing. It showed kindliness no less than power
to think. But it was a face that was not usual.... He was fairly
young, tall and well-formed though exceedingly spare, well dressed
after the quiet and sober fashion of his calling. Of their own accord,
passing him hastily in corridor or street, the people in the room might
not have given him a thought. But now they saw that undoubtedly he
_was_ strange, perhaps even sinister of aspect. Each wished to be as
perspicacious as the Queen.
But they did not think much about it, and as the newcomer, after a
reverence directed toward the Queen, presently withdrew with the older
physician,—who came gliding back without him,—and as he was seen
no more in the palace, they soon ceased to think about him at all.
He had been recommended by a great French lord to the favour of Sir
Robert Cecil. The latter, sending for him within a day or two, told
him bluntly that he did not seem fitted for the Court nor for Court
promotion.
The March wind roared through London and over Merry England and around
Richmond park and hill. It shook the palace windows. Within, in the
great room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the floor with
pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn together above her hawk nose.
At intervals her mortal disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan,
or she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling oaths. For
the most part she lay quite silent, uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless
fingers keeping time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women did
not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had loved that Queen. Year in
and year out, day in and day out, they had feared this Queen; now she
was almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her that the carmine
upon her face was not right, or that she had pushed the attire of hair
to one side, and that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. They
reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might strike the one who told.
She lay in her rich garments upon the floor, and the fire burned with a
low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she smoothed the gold cloth
with her fingers. “_England—Scotland—Ireland.... Mere English—...
The Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—_”