Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had builded him a new tennis court in
where his stables had been before poverty had caused him to sell the
major part of his horseflesh. He called to him the Duke of Norfolk, who
was of the Papist cause, and Sir Henry Wriothesley who was always
betwixt and between, according as the cat jumped, to see this new
building of his that was made of a roofed-in quadrangle where the stable
doors were bricked up or barred to make the grille.
But though Norfolk and Wriothesley came very early in the afternoon,
while it was yet light, to his house, they wasted most of the daylight
hours in talking of things indifferent before they went to their
inspection of this court. They stood talking in a long gallery beneath
very high windows, and there were several chaplains and young priests
and young gentlemen with them, and most of the talk was of a
bear-baiting that there should be in Smithfield come Saturday. Sir Henry
Wriothesley matched seven of his dogs against the seven best of the
Duke's, that they should the longer hold to the bear once they were on
him, and most of the young gentlemen wagered for Sir Henry's dogs that
he had bred from a mastiff out of Portugal.
But when this talk had mostly died down, and when already twilight had
long fallen, the Bishop said--
'Come, let us visit this new tennis place of mine. I think I shall show
you somewhat that you have not before seen.'
He bade, however, his gentlemen and priests to stay where they were,
for they had all many times seen the court or building. When he led the
way, prelatical and black, for the Duke and Wriothesley, into the lower
corridors of his house, the priests and young gentlemen bowed behind his
back, one at the other.
In the courtyard there were four hounds of a heavy and stocky breed that
came bounding and baying all round them, so that it was only by
vigilance that Gardiner could save Wriothesley's shins, for he was a man
that all dogs and children hated.
'Sirs,' the Bishop said, 'these dogs that ye see and hear will let no
man but me--not even my grooms or stablemen--pass this yard. I have bred
them to that so I may be secret when I will.'
He set the key in the door that was in the bottom wall of the court.
'There is no other door here save that which goes into the stable where
the grille is. There I have a door to enter and fetch out the balls that
pass there.'
In the court itself it was absolute blackness.
'I trow we may talk very well without lights,' he said. 'Come into this
far corner.'
Yet, though there was no fear of being overheard, each of these three
stole almost on tiptoe and held his breath, and in the dark and shadowy
place they made a more dark and more shadowy patch with their heads all
close together.
Suddenly it was as if the Bishop dropped the veil that covered his
passions.
'I may well build tennis courts,' he said, and his voice had a ring of
wild and malignant passion. 'I may well build courts for tennis play.
Nothing else is left for me to do.'
In the blackness no word came from his listeners.
'You too may do the like,' the Bishop said. 'But I would you do it
quickly, for soon neither the one nor the other of you but will be
stripped so bare that you shall not have enough to buy balls with.'
The Duke made an impatient sound like a drawing in of his breath, but
still he spoke no word.
'I tell you, both of you,' the Bishop's voice came, 'that all of us have
been fooled. Who was it that helped to set on high this one that now
presses us down? I did! I!...
'It was I that called the masque at my house where first the King did
see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what
gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my
see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones
thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I
set this woman where she sits....'
'I too have my griefs,' the Duke of Norfolk's voice came.
'And I, God wot,' came Wriothesley's.
'Why, you have been fooled,' Gardiner's voice; 'and well you know it.
For who was it that sent you both, one after the other, into France
thinking that you might make a match between the Lady Royal and the Duke
of Orleans?--Who but the Queen?--For well she knew that ye loved the
French and their King as they had been your brothers. And well we know
now that never in the mind of her, nor in that of the King whom she
bewitches and enslaves, was there any thought save that the Lady Royal
should be wedded to Spain. So ye are fooled.'