THE COMING QUEEN.
I stood glaring at her.
"You were a blind bat or you would have found it out for yourself,"
she continued scornfully. "A babe would have guessed it, knowing as
much of your father as you did."
"Does he know himself?" I muttered hoarsely, looking anywhere but at
her now. The shock had left me dull and confused. I did not doubt her
word, rather I wondered with her that I had not found this out for
myself. But the possibility of meeting my father in that wide world
into which I had plunged to escape from the knowledge of his
existence, had never occurred to me. Had I thought of it, it would
have seemed too unlikely; and though I might have seen in Gardiner a
link between us, and so have identified him, the greatness of the
Chancellor's transactions, and certain things about Clarence which had
seemed, or would have seemed, had I ever taken the point into
consideration, at variance with my ideas of my father, had prevented
me getting upon the track.
"Does he know that you are his son, do you mean?" she said. "No, he
does not."
"You have not told him?"
"No," she answered with a slight shiver.
I understood. I comprehended that even to her the eagerness with
which, being father and son, we had sought one another's lives during
those days on the Rhine, had seemed so dreadful that she had concealed
the truth from him.
"When did you learn it?" I asked, trembling too.
"I knew his right name before I ever saw you," she answered. "Yours I
learned on the day I left you at Santon." Looking back I remembered
the strange horror, then inexplicable, which she had betrayed; and I
understood it. So it was that knowledge which had driven her from us!
"What will you do now?" she said. "You will save him? You must save
him! He is your father."
Save him? I shuddered at the thought that I had destroyed him! that I,
his son, had denounced him! Save him! The perspiration sprang out in
beads on my forehead. If I could not save him I should live pitied by
my friends and loathed by my enemies!
"If it be possible," I muttered, "I will save him."
"You swear it?" she cried. Before I could answer she seized my arm and
dragged me up the dim aisle until we stood together before the Figure
and the Cross. The chimes above us rang eleven. A shaft of cold
sunshine pierced a dusty window, and, full of dancing motes, shot
athwart the pillars.
"Swear!" she repeated with trembling eagerness, turning her eyes on
mine, and raising her hand solemnly toward the Figure. "Swear by the
Cross!"
"I swear," I said.
She dropped her hand. Her form seemed to shrink and grow less. Making
a sign to me to go, she fell on her knees on the step, and drew her
hood over her face. I walked away on tiptoe down the aisle, but
glancing back from the door of the church I saw the small, solitary
figure still kneeling in prayer. The sunshine had died away. The dusty
window was colorless. Only the red lamp glowed dully above her head. I
seemed to see what the end would be. Then I pushed aside the curtain,
and slipped out into the keen air. It was hers to pray. It was mine to
act.
I lost no time, but on my return I could not find Master Bertie either
in the public room or in the inn yard, so I sought him in his bedroom,
where I found him placidly reading a book; his patient waiting in
striking contrast with the feverish anxiety which had taken hold of
me. "What is it, lad?" he said, closing the volume, and laying it down
on my entrance. "You look disturbed?"
"I have seen Mistress Anne," I answered. He whistled softly, staring
at me without a word. "She knows all," I continued.
"How much is all?" he asked after a pause.
"Our names--all our names, Penruddocke's, Kingston's, the others; our
meeting-place, and that we hold Clarence a prisoner. She was that old
woman whom we saw at the Gatehouse tavern last night."
He nodded, appearing neither greatly surprised nor greatly alarmed.
"Does she intend to use her knowledge?" he said. "I suppose she does."
"Unless we let him go safe and unhurt before sunset."
"They will never consent to it," he answered, shaking his head.
"Then they will hang!" I cried.
He looked hard at me a moment, discerning something strange in the
bitterness of my last words. "Come, lad," he said, "you have not told
me all. What else have you learned?"
"How can I tell you?" I cried wildly, waving him off, and going to the
lattice that my face might be hidden from him. "Heaven has cursed me!"
I added, my voice breaking.
He came and laid his hand on my shoulder. "Heaven curses no one," he
said. "Most of our curses we make for ourselves. What is it, lad?"
I covered my face with my hands. "He--he is my father," I muttered.
"Do you understand? Do you see what I have done? He is my father!"
"Ha!" Master Bertie uttered that one exclamation in intense
astonishment; then he said no more. But the pressure of his hand told
me that he understood, that he felt with me, that he would help me.
And that silent comprehension, that silent assurance, gave the
sweetest comfort. "He must be allowed to go, then, for this time," he
resumed gravely, after a pause in which I had had time to recover
myself. "We will see to it. But there will be difficulties. You must
be strong and brave. The truth must be told. It is the only way."
I saw that it was, though I shrank exceedingly from the ordeal before
me. Master Bertie advised, when I grew more calm, that we should be
the first at the rendezvous, lest by some chance Penruddocke's orders
should be anticipated; and accordingly, soon after two o'clock, we
mounted, and set forth. I remarked that my companion looked very
carefully to his arms, and, taking the hint, I followed his example.
It was a silent, melancholy, anxious ride. However successful we might
be in rescuing my father--alas! that I should have to-day and always
to call that man father--I could not escape the future before me. I
had felt shame while he was but a name to me; how could I endure to
live, with his infamy always before my eyes? Petronilla, of whom I had
been thinking so much since I returned to England, whose knot of
velvet had never left my breast nor her gentle face my heart--how
could I go back to her now? I had thought my father dead, and his name
and fame old tales. But the years of foreign life which yesterday had
seemed a sufficient barrier between his past and myself--of what use
were they now? Or the foreign service I had fondly regarded as a kind
of purification?
Master Bertie broke in on my reverie much as if he had followed its
course. "Understand one thing, lad!" he said, laying his hand on the
withers of my horse. "Yours must not be the hand to punish your
father. But after to-day you will owe him no duty. You will part from
him to-day and he will be a stranger to you. He deserted you when you
were a child; and if you owe reverence to any one, it is to your uncle
and not to him. He has himself severed the ties between you."
"Yes," I said. "I will go abroad. I will go back to Wilna."
"If ill comes of our enterprise--as I fear ill will come--we will both
go back, if we can," he answered. "If good by any chance should come
of it, then you shall be my brother, our family shall be your family.
The Duchess is rich enough," he added with a smile, "to allow you a
younger brother's portion."
I could not answer him as I desired, for we passed at that moment
under the archway, and became instantly involved in the bustle going
forward in the courtyard. Near the principal door of the inn stood
eight or nine horses gayly caparisoned and in the charge of three
foreign-looking men, who, lounging in their saddles, were passing a
jug from hand to hand. They turned as we rode in and looked at us
curiously, but not with any impertinence. Apparently they were waiting
for the rest of their party, who were inside the house. Civilly
disposed as they seemed, the fact that they were armed, and wore rich
liveries of black and gold, caused me, and I think both of us, a
momentary alarm.
"Who are they?" Master Bertie asked in a low voice, as he rode to the
opposite door and dismounted with his back to them.
"They are Spaniards, I fancy," I said, scanning them over the
shoulders of my horse as I too got off. "Old friends, so to speak."
"They seem wonderfully subdued for them," he answered, "and on their
best behavior. If half the tales we heard this morning be true, they
are not wont to carry themselves like this."
Yet they certainly were Spanish, for I overheard them speaking to one
another in that language; and before we had well dismounted, their
leader--whom they received with great respect, one of them jumping
down to hold his stirrup--came out with three or four more and got to
horse again. Turning his rein to lead the way out through the north
gate he passed near us, and as he settled himself in his saddle took a
good look at us. The look passed harmlessly over me, but reaching
Master Bertie became concentrated. The rider started and smiled
faintly. He seemed to pause, then he raised his plumed cap and bowed
low--covered himself again and rode on. His train all followed his
example and saluted us as they passed. Master Bertie's face, which had
flushed a fiery red under the other's gaze, grew pale again. He looked
at me, when they had gone by, with startled eyes.
"Do you know who that was?" he said, speaking like one who had
received a blow and did not yet know how much he was hurt.
"No," I said.
"It was the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador," he answered. "And
he recognized me. I met him often, years ago. I knew him again as soon
as he came out, but I did not think he would by any chance recognize
me in this dress."
"Are you sure," I asked in amazement, "that it was he?"
"Quite sure," he answered.
"But why did he not have you arrested, or at least detained? The
warrants are still out against you."
Master Bertie shook his head. "I cannot tell," he said darkly. "He is
a Spaniard. But come, we have the less time to lose. We must join our
friends and take their advice; we seem to be surrounded by pitfalls."
At this moment the lame ostler came up, and grumbling at us as if he
had never seen us in his life before, and never wished to see us
again, took our horses. We went into the kitchen, and taking the first
chance of slipping upstairs to No. 15, we were admitted with the same
precautions as before, and descending the shaft gained the cellar.
Here we were not, as we had looked to be, the first on the scene. I
suppose a sense of the insecurity of our meeting-place had led every
one to come early, so as to be gone early. Penruddocke indeed was not
here yet, but Kingston and half a score of others were sitting about
conversing in low tones. It was plain that the distrust and suspicion
which we had remarked on the previous day had not been allayed by the
discovery of Clarence's treachery.
Indeed, it was clear that the distrust and despondency had to-day
become a panic. Men glared at one another and at the door, and talked
in whispers and started at the slightest sound. I glanced round. The
one I sought for with eager yet shrinking eyes was not to be seen. I
turned to Master Bertie, my face mutely calling on him to ask the
question. "Where is the prisoner?" he said sharply.
A moment I hung in suspense. Then one of the men said, "He is in
there. He is safe enough!" He pointed, as he spoke, to a door which
seemed to lead to an inner cellar.
"Right," said Master Bertie, still standing. "I have two pieces of bad
news for you nevertheless. Firstly I have just been recognized by the
Spanish Ambassador, whom I met in the courtyard above."
Half the men rose to their feet. "What is he doing here?" they cried,
one boldly, the others with the quaver very plain in their voices.
"I do not know; but he recognized me. Why he took no steps to detain
or arrest me I cannot tell. He rode away by the north road."
They gazed at one another and we at them. The wolfish look which fear
brings into some faces grew stronger in theirs.
"What is your other bad news?" said Kingston, with an oath.
"A person outside, a friend of the prisoner, has a list of our names,
and knows our meeting-place and our plans. She threatens to use the
knowledge unless the man Clarence or Crewdson be set free."
There was a loud murmur of wrath and dismay, amid which Kingston alone
preserved his composure. "We might have been prepared for that," he
said quietly. "It is an old precaution of such folk. But how did you
come to hear of it?"
"My friend here saw the messenger and heard the terms. The man must be
set free by sunset."
"And what warranty have we that he will not go straight with his plans
and his list to the Council?"
Master Bertie could not answer that, neither could I; we had no
surety, and if we set him free could take none save his word. _His
word!_ Could even I ask them to accept that? To stake the life of the
meanest of them on it?
I saw the difficulties of the position, and when Master Kingston
pronounced coolly that this was a waste of time, and that the only
wise course was to dispose of the principal witness, both in the
interests of justice and our own safety, and then shift for ourselves
before the storm broke, I acknowledged in my heart the wisdom of the
course, and felt that yesterday it would have received my assent.
"The risk is about the same either way," Master Bertie said.
"Not at all," Kingston objected, a sparkle of malice in his eye. Last
night we had thwarted him. To-night it was his turn; and the dark
lowering looks of those round him showed that numbers were with him.
"This fellow can hang us all. His accomplice who escapes can know
nothing save through him, and could give only vague and uncertain
evidence. No, no. Let us cast lots who shall do it, get it done
quickly, and begone."
"We must wait at least," Bertie urged, "until Sir Thomas comes."
"No!" retorted Kingston, with heat. "We are all equal here. Besides
the man was condemned yesterday, with the full assent of all. It only
remains to carry out the sentence. Surely this gentleman," he
continued, turning suddenly upon me, "who was so ready to accuse him
yesterday, does not wish him spared to-day?"
"I do wish it," I said, in a low tone.
"Ho! ho!" he cried, folding his arms and throwing back his head,
astonished at the success of his own question. "Then may we ask for
your reasons, sir? Last night you could not lay your tongue to words
too bad for him. Tonight you wish to spare him, and let him go?"
"I do," I said. I felt that every eye was upon me, and that, Master
Bertie excepted, not one there would feel sympathy with me in my
humiliation. They were driven to the wall. They had no time for fine
feeling, for sympathy, for appreciation of the tragic, unless it
touched themselves. What chance had I with them, though I was a son
pleading for a father? Nay, what argument had I save that I was his
son, and that I had brought him to this? No argument. Only the appeal
to them that they would not make me a parricide! And I felt that at
this they would mock.
And so, in view of those stern, curious faces, a new temptation seized
me--the temptation to be silent. Why should I not stand by and let
things take their course? Why should I not spare myself the shame
which I already saw would be fruitless? When Master Kingston, with a
cynical bow, said, "Your reasons, sir?" I stood mute and trembling. If
I kept silence, if I refused to give my reasons, if I did not
acknowledge the prisoner, but merely begged his life, he would die,
and the connection between us would be known only to one or two. I
should be freed from him and might go my own way. The sins of
Ferdinand Cludde were well-nigh forgotten--why take to myself the sins
of Clarence, which would otherwise never stain my name, would never be
associated with my father or myself?
Why, indeed? It was a great and sore temptation, as I stood there
before all those eyes. He had deserved death. I had given him up in
perfect innocence. Had I any right to call on them to risk their lives
that I might go harmless in conscience, and he in person? Had I----
What, was there after all some taint in my blood? Was I going to
become like him--to take to myself a shame of my own earning, in the
effort to escape from the burden of his ill-fame? I remembered in time
the oath I had sworn, and when Kingston repeated his question, I
answered him quickly. "I did not know yesterday who he was," I said.
"I have discovered since that he is my father. I ask nothing on his
account. Were he only my father I would not plead for him. I plead for
myself," I murmured. "If you show no pity, you make me a parricide."
I had done them wrong. There was something in my voice, I suppose, as
I said the words which cost me so much, which wrought with almost all
of them in a degree. They gazed at me with awed, wondering faces, and
murmured "His father!" in low tones. They were recalling the scene of
last night, the moment when I had denounced him, the curse he had
hurled at me, the half-told story of which that had seemed the climax.
I had wronged them. They did see the tragedy of it.
Yes, they pitied me; but they showed plainly that they would still do
what perhaps I should have done in their place--justice. "He knows too
much!" said one. "Our lives are as good as his," muttered another--the
first to become thoroughly himself again--"why should we all die for
him?" The wolfish glare came back fast to their eyes. They handled
their weapons impatiently. They were longing to be away. At this
moment, when I saw I had indeed made my confession in vain, Master
Bertie struck in. "What," he said, "if Master Carey and I take charge
of him, and escorting him to his agent without, be answerable for both
of them?"
"You would be only putting your necks into the noose!" said Kingston.
"We will risk that!" replied my friend--and what a friend and what a
man he seemed amid that ignoble crew!--"I will myself promise you that
if he refuse to remain with us until midnight, or tries wherever we
are to raise an alarm or communicate with any one, I will run him
through with my own hand? Will not that satisfy you?"
"No," Master Kingston retorted, "it will not! A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush!"
"But the woman outside?" said one timidly.
"We must run that risk!" quoth he. "In an hour or two we shall be in
hiding. Come, the lot must be drawn. For this gentleman, let him stand
aside."
I leaned against the wall, dazed and horror-stricken. Now that I had
identified myself with him I felt a great longing to save him. I
scarcely noticed the group drawing pieces of paper at the table. My
every thought was taken up with the low door over there, and the
wretched man lying bound in the darkness behind it. What must be the
horror, the black despair, the hate and defiance of his mind as he lay
there, trapped at last like any beast of prey? It was horrible!
horrible! horrible!
I covered my face and could not restrain the cry of unutterable
distress which rose to my lips. They looked round, two or three of
them, from the table. But the impression my appeal had made upon them
had faded away already, and they only shrugged their shoulders and
turned again to their task. Master Bertie alone stood apart, his arms
folded, his face grave and dark. He too had abandoned hope. There
seemed no hope, when suddenly there came a knocking at the door. The
papers were dropped, and while some stood as if stiffened into stone,
others turned and gazed at their neighbors. It was a knocking more
hasty and imperative than the usual summons, though given in the same
fashion. At last a man found tongue. "It is Sir Thomas," he suggested,
with a sigh of relief. "He is in a hurry and brings news. I know his
knock."
"Then open the door, fool," cried Kingston. "If you can see through a
two-inch plank, why do you stand there like a gaby?"
Master Bertie anticipated the man, and himself opened the door and
admitted the knocker. Penruddocke it was; he came in, still drumming
on the door with his fist, his eyes sparkling, his ruddy cheeks aglow.
He crossed the threshold with a swagger, and looking at us all burst
into a strange peal of laughter. "Yoicks! Gone to earth!" he shouted,
waving his hand as if he had a whip in it. "Gone to earth--gone
forever! Did you think it was the Lords of the Council, my lads?"
He had left the door wide open behind him, and we now saw in the
doorway the seafaring man who usually guarded the room above. "What
does this mean, Sir Thomas?" Kingston said sternly. He thought, I
fancy, as many of us did, that the knight was drunk. "Have you given
that man permission to leave his post?"
"Post? There are no more posts," cried Sir Thomas, with a strange
jollity. He certainly was drunk, but perhaps not with liquor. "Except
good fat posts," he continued, smacking Master Bertie on the shoulder,
"for loyal men who have done the state service, and risked their lives
in evil times! Posts? I shall get so drunk to-night that the stoutest
post on Ludgate will not hold me up!"
"You seem to have gone far that way already," my friend said coldly.
"So will you, when you hear the news!" Penruddocke replied more
soberly. "Lads, the Queen is dying!"
In the vaulted room his statement was received in silence; a silence
dictated by no feeling for the woman going before her Maker--how
should we who were plotting against her feel for her, we who were for
the most part homeless and proscribed through her?--but the silence of
men in doubt, in doubt whether this might mean all that from Sir
Thomas's aspect it seemed to mean.
"She cannot live a week!" Penruddocke continued. "The doctors have
given up hope, and at the palace all is in confusion. She has named
the Princess Elizabeth her successor, and even now Cecil is drawing up
the proclamations. To show that the game is really up, the Count de
Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, has gone this very day to Hatfield to
pay his respects to the coming queen."
Then indeed the vaulted roof did ring--ring and ring again with shouts
of "The Coming Queen!" Men over whom the wings of death had seemed a
minute ago to be hovering, darkening all things to them, looked up and
saw the sun. "The Coming Queen!" they cried.
"You need fear nothing!" continued Penruddocke wildly. "No one will
dare to execute the warrants. The Bishops are shaking in their miters.
Pole is said to be dying. Bonner is more likely to hang himself than
burn others. Up and out and play the man! Away to your counties and
get ready your tar-barrels! Now we will give them a taste of the Cujus
Regio! Ho! drawer, there! A cup of ale!"
He turned, and shouting a scrap of a song, swaggered back into the
shaft and began to ascend. They all trooped after him, talking and
laughing, a reckless, good-natured crew, looking to a man as if they
had never known fear or selfishness--as if distrust were a thing
impossible to them. Master Kingston alone, whom his losses had soured
and who still brooded over his revenge, went off moodily.
I was for stopping one of them; but Master Bertie directed my eyes by
a gesture of his hand to the door at the far end of the cellar, and I
saw that the key was in the lock. He wrung my hand hard. "Tell him
all," he muttered. "I will wait above."