indignation aroused in him at the signs of satisfaction, complacency,
and even mirth that he discovered in that house of death. The Queen
herself, however, overwrought by the events, and perhaps
conscience-stricken by the tragedy which in the eleventh hour she had
sought to avert, burst into tears at sight of Sully, and brought in the
Dauphin, who flung himself upon the Duke’s neck.
“My son,” the Queen addressed him, “this is Monsieur de Sully. You must
love him well, for he was one of the best and most faithful servants of
the King your father, and I entreat him to continue to serve you in the
same manner.”
Words so fair might have convinced a man less astute that all his
suspicions were unworthy. But, even then, the sequel would very quickly
have undeceived him. For very soon thereafter his fall was brought
about by the Concinis and their creatures, so that no obstacle should
remain between themselves and the full gratification of their fell
ambitions.
At once he saw the whole policy of the dead King subversed; he saw the
renouncing of all ancient alliances, and the union of the crowns of
France and Spain; the repealing of all acts of pacification; the
destruction of the Protestants; the dissipation of the treasures
amassed by Henry; the disgrace of those who would not receive the yoke
of the new favourites. All this Sully witnessed in his declining years,
and he witnessed, too, the rapid rise to the greatest power and dignity
in the State of that Florentine adventurer, Concino Concini—now bearing
the title of Marshal d’Ancre—who had so cunningly known how to profit
by a Queen’s jealousy and a King’s indiscretions.
As for the miserable Ravaillac, it is pretended that he maintained
under torture and to the very hour of his death that he had no
accomplices, that what he had done he had done to prevent an
unrighteous war against Catholicism and the Pope—which was, no doubt,
the falsehood with which those who used him played upon his fanaticism
and whetted him to their service. I say “pretended” because, after all,
complete records of his examinations are not discoverable, and there is
a story that when at the point of death, seeing himself abandoned by
those in whom perhaps he had trusted, he signified a desire to confess,
and did so confess; but the notary Voisin, who took his depositions in
articulo mortis, set them down in a hand so slovenly as to be
afterwards undecipherable.
That may or may not be true. But the statement that when the President
du Harlay sought to pursue inquiries into certain allegations by a
woman named d’Escoman, which incriminated the Duc d’Epernon, he
received a royal order to desist, rests upon sound authority.
That is the story of the assassination of Henry IV. re-told in the
light of certain records which appear to me to have been insufficiently
studied. They should suggest a train of speculation leading to
inferences which, whilst obvious, I hesitate to define absolutely.
“If it be asked,” says Perefixe, “who were the friends that suggested
to Ravaillac so damnable a design, history replies that it is ignorant
and that upon an action of such consequences it is not permissible to
give suspicions and conjectures for certain truths. The judges
themselves who interrogated him dared not open their mouths, and never
mentioned the matter but with gestures of horror and amazement.”
VI. THE BARREN WOOING
The Murder of Amy Robsart
There had been a banquet, followed by a masque, and this again by a
dance in which the young queen had paired off with Lord Robert Dudley,
who in repute was the handsomest man in Europe, just as in fact he was
the vainest, shallowest, and most unscrupulous. There had been homage
and flattery lavishly expressed, and there was a hint of masked
hostility from certain quarters to spice the adventure, and to thrill
her bold young spirit. Never yet in all the months of her reign since
her coronation in January of last year had she felt so much a queen,
and so conscious of the power of her high estate; never so much a
woman, and so conscious of the weakness of her sex. The interaction of
those conflicting senses wrought upon her like a heady wine. She leaned
more heavily upon the silken arm of her handsome Master of the Horse,
and careless in her intoxication of what might be thought or said,
she—who by the intimate favour shown him had already loosed the tongue
of Scandal and set it chattering in every court in Europe—drew him
forth from that thronged and glittering chamber of the Palace of
Whitehall into the outer solitude and friendly gloom.
And he, nothing loth to obey the suasion of that white hand upon his
arm, exultant, indeed, to parade before them all the power he had with
her, went willingly enough. Let Norfolk and Sussex scowl, let Arundel
bite his lip until it bled, and sober Cecil stare cold disapproval.
They should mend their countenances soon, and weigh their words or be
for ever silenced, when he was master in England. And that he would
soon be master he was assured to-night by every glance of her blue
eyes, by the pressure of that fair hand upon his arm, by the
languishing abandonment with which that warm young body swayed towards
him, as they passed out from the blaze of lights and the strains of
music into the gloom and silence of the gallery leading to the terrace.
“Out—let us go out, Robin. Let me have air,” she almost panted, as she
drew him on.
Assuredly he would be master soon. Indeed, he might have been master
already but for that wife of his, that stumbling-block to his ambition,
who practiced the housewifely virtues at Cumnor Place, and clung so
tenaciously and so inconsiderately to life in spite of all his plans to
relieve her of the burden of it.
For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen’s in a
tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity as a
sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the Spanish
ambassador, had written home: “I have learnt certain things as to the
terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand towards each other which
I could not have believed.”
That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors who
were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself, appeared to
be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the Spanish marriage with
the Archduke Charles. But it was a presence which nowise deceived the
astute Spaniard, who employed a legion of spies to keep him well
informed.
“All the dallying with us,” he wrote, “all the dallying with the Swede,
all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after another, is
merely to keep Lord Robert’s enemies in play until his villainy about
his wife can be executed.”
What that particular villainy was, the ambassador had already stated
earlier in his letter. “I have learnt from a person who usually gives
me true information that Lord Robert has sent to have his wife
poisoned.”
What had actually happened was that Sir Richard Verney—a trusted
retainer of Lord Robert’s—had reported to Dr. Bayley, of New College,
Oxford, that Lady Robert Dudley was “sad and ailing,” and had asked him
for a potion. But the doctor was learned in more matters than physic.
He had caught an echo of the tale of Lord Robert’s ambition; he had
heard a whisper that whatever suitors might come from overseas for
Elizabeth, she would marry none but “my lord”—as Lord Robert was now
commonly styled. More, he had aforetime heard rumours of the
indispositions of Lady Robert, yet had never found those rumours
verified by the fact. Some months ago, it had been reported that her
ladyship was suffering from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die
of it. Yet Dr. Bayley had reason to know that a healthier woman did not
live in Berkshire.
The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner, and the conclusion to
which he came was that if they poisoned her under cover of his
potion—she standing in no need of physic—he might afterwards be hanged
as a cover for their crime. So he refused to prescribe as he was
invited, nor troubled to make a secret of invitation and refusal.
For awhile, then, Lord Robert had prudently held his hand; moreover,
the urgency there had been a year ago, when that host of foreign
suitors laid siege to Elizabeth of England, had passed, and his
lordship could afford to wait. But now of a sudden the urgency was
returned. Under the pressure brought to bear upon her to choose a
husband, Elizabeth had half-committed herself to marry the Archduke
Charles, promising the Spanish ambassador a definite answer within a
few days.
Lord Robert had felt the earth to be quaking under him; he had seen the
ruin of his high ambitions; he had watched with rage the expanding
mockery upon the countenances of Norfolk, Sussex, and those others who
hated and despised him; and he had cursed that wife of his who knew not
when to die. But for that obstinacy with which she clung to life he had
been the Queen’s husband these many months, so making an end to
suspense and to the danger that lies in delay.
To-night the wantonness with which the Queen flaunted before the eyes
of all her court the predilection in which she held him, came not
merely to lull his recent doubts and fears, to feed his egregious
vanity, and to assure him that in her heart he need fear no rival; it
came also to set his soul Quiver impotent rage. He had but to put forth
his hands to possess himself of this splendid prize. Yet those hands of
his were bound while that woman lived at Cumnor. Conceive his feelings
as they stole away together like any pair of lovers.
Arm in arm they came by a stone gallery, where a stalwart scarlet
sentinel, a yeoman of the guard, with a Tudor rose embroidered in gold
upon his back, stood under a lamp set in the wall, with grounded pike
and body stiffly erect.
The tall young Queen was in crimson satin with cunningly-wrought silver
embroideries, trimmed with tufted silver fringe, her stomacher stiff
with silver bullion studded with gold rosettes and Roman pearls, her
bodice cut low to display her splendid neck, decked by a carcanet of
pearls and rubies, and surmounted by a fan-like cuff of guipure, high
behind and sloping towards the bust. Thus she appeared to the sentinel
as the rays of the single lamp behind him struck fire from her red-gold
hair. As if by her very gait to express the wantonness of her mood, she
pointed her toes and walked with head thrown back, smiling up into the
gipsy face of her companion, who was arrayed from head to foot in
shimmering ivory satin, with an elegance no man in England could have
matched.
They came by that stone gallery to a little terrace above the Privy
Steps. A crescent moon hung low over the Lambeth marshes across the
river. From a barge that floated gay with lights in mid-stream came a
tinkle of lutes, and the sweet voice of a singing boy. A moment the
lovers stood at gaze, entranced by the beauty of the soft, tepid
September night, so subtly adapted to their mood. Then she fetched a
sigh, and hung more heavily upon his arm, leaned nearer to his tall,
vigorous, graceful figure.
“Robin, Robin!” was all she said, but in her voice throbbed a world of
passionate longing, an exquisite blend of delight and pain.
Judging the season ripe, his arm flashed round her, and drew her
fiercely close. For a moment she was content to yield, her head against
his stalwart shoulder, a very woman nestling to the mate of her choice,
surrendering to her master. Then the queen in her awoke and strangled
nature. Roughly she disengaged herself from his arm, and stood away,
her breathing quickened.
“God’s Death, Robin!” There was a harsh note in the voice that lately
had cooed so softly. “You are strangely free, I think.”
But he, impudence incarnate, nothing abashed, accustomed to her gusty
moods, to her alternations between the two natures she had
inherited—from overbearing father and wanton mother—was determined at
all costs to take the fullest advantage of the hour, to make an end of
suspense.
“I am not free, but enslaved—by love and worship of you. Would you deny
me; Would you?”
“Not I, but fate,” she answered heavily, and he knew that the woman at
Cumnor was in her mind.
“Fate will soon mend the wrong that fate has done—very soon now.” He
took her hand, and, melted again from her dignity, she let it lie in
his. “When that is done, sweet, then will I claim you for my own.”
“When that is done, Robin?” she questioned almost fearfully, as if a
sudden dread suspicion broke upon her mind. “When what is done?”
He paused a moment to choose his words, what time she stared intently
into the face that gleamed white in the surrounding gloom.
“When that poor ailing spirit is at rest.” And he added: “It will be
soon.”
“Thou hast said the same aforetime, Robin. Yet it has not so fallen
out.”
“She has clung to life beyond what could have been believed of her
condition,” he explained, unconscious of any sinister ambiguity. “But
the end, I know, is very near—a matter but of days.”
“Of days!” she shivered, and moved forward to the edge of the terrace,
he keeping step beside her. Then she stood awhile in silence, looking
down at the dark oily surge of water. “You loved her once, Robin?” she
asked, in a queer, unnatural voice.
“I never loved but once,” answered that perfect courtier.
“Yet you married her—men say it was a love marriage. It was a marriage,
anyway, and you can speak so calmly of her death?” Her tone was
brooding. She sought understanding that should silence her own
lingering doubt of him.
“Where lies the blame? Who made me what I am?” Again his bold arm
encompassed her. Side by side they peered down through the gloom at the
rushing waters, and he seized an image from them. “Our love is like
that seething tide,” he said. “To resist it is to labour in agony
awhile, and then to perish.”
“And to yield is to be swept away.”
“To happiness,” he cried, and reverted to his earlier prayer. “Say that
when... that afterwards, I may claim you for my own. Be true to
yourself, obey the voice of instinct, and so win to happiness.”
She looked up at him, seeking to scan the handsome face in that dim
light that baffled her, and he observed the tumultuous heave of her
white breast.
“Can I trust thee, Robin? Can I trust thee? Answer me true!” she
implored him, adorably weak, entirely woman now.
“What does your own heart answer you?” quoth he, loaning close above
her.
“I think I can, Robin. And, anyway, I must. I cannot help myself. I am
but a woman, after all,” she murmured, and sighed. “Be it as thou wilt.
Come to me again when thou art free.”
He bent lower, murmuring incoherently, and she put up a hand to pat his
swarthy bearded cheek.
“I shall make thee greater than any man in England, so thou make me
happier than any woman.”
He caught the hand in his and kissed it passionately, his soul singing
a triumph song within him. Norfolk and Sussex and those other scowling
ones should soon be whistled to the master’s heel.
As they turned arm in arm into the gallery to retrace their steps, they
came suddenly face to face with a slim, sleek gentleman, who bowed
profoundly, a smile upon his crafty, shaven, priestly face. In a smooth
voice and an accent markedly foreign, he explained that he, too, sought
the cool of the terrace, not thinking to intrude; and upon that, bowing
again, he passed on and effaced himself. It was Alvarez de Quadra,
Bishop of Aquila, the argus-eyed ambassador of Spain.
The young face of the Queen hardened.
“I would I were as well served abroad as the King of Spain is here,”
she said aloud, that the retreating ambassador might hear the dubious
compliment; and for my lord’s ear alone she added under her breath:
“The spy! Philip of Spain will hear of this.”
“So that he hears something more, what shall it signify?” quoth my
lord, and laughed.
They paced the length of the gallery in silence, past the yeoman of the
guard, who kept his watch, and into the first antechamber. Perhaps it
was that meeting with de Quadra and my lord’s answer to her comment
that prompted what now she asked: “What is it ails her, Robin?”
“A wasting sickness,” he answered, never doubting to whom the question
alluded.
“You said, I think, that... that the end is very near.”
He caught her meaning instantly. “Indeed, if she is not dead already,
she is very nearly so.”
He lied, for never had Amy Dudley been in better health. And yet he
spoke the truth, for in so much as her life depended upon his will, it
was as good as spent. This was, he knew, a decisive moment of his
career. The hour was big with fate. If now he were weak or hesitant,
the chance might slip away and be for ever lost to him. Elizabeth’s
moods were as uncertain as were certain the hostile activities of my
lord’s enemies. He must strike quickly whilst she was in her present
frame of mind, and bring her to wedlock, be it in public or in private.
But first he must shake off the paralysing encumbrance of that
house-wife down at Cumnor.
I believe—from evidence that I account abundant—that he considered it
with the cold remorselessness of the monstrous egotist he was. An
upstart, great-grandson to a carpenter, noble only in two descents, and
in both of them stained by the block, he found a queen—the victim of a
physical passion that took no account of the worthlessness underlying
his splendid exterior—reaching out a hand to raise him to a throne.
Being what he was, he weighed his young wife’s life at naught in the
evil scales of his ambition. And yet he had loved her once, more truly
perhaps than he could now pretend to love the Queen.
It was some ten years since, as a lad of eighteen, he had taken Sir
John Robsart’s nineteen-year-old daughter to wife. She had brought him
considerable wealth and still more devotion. Because of this devotion
she was content to spend her days at Cumnor, whilst he ruffled it at
court; content to take such crumbs of attention as he could spare her
upon occasion. And during the past year, whilst he had been plotting
her death, she had been diligently caring for his interests and
fostering the prosperity of the Berkshire estate. If he thought of this
at all, he allowed no weakly sentiment to turn him from his purpose.
There was too much at stake for that—a throne, no less.
And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of Elizabeth’s, we
find my lord closeted with his henchman, Sir Richard Verney. Sir
Richard—like his master—was a greedy, unscrupulous, ambitious
scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake of such worldly
advancement as it lay in my lord’s power to give him. My lord perforce
used perfect frankness with this perfect servant.
“Thou’lt rise or fall with me, Dick,” quoth he. “Help me up, then, and
so mount with me. When I am King, as soon now I shall be, look to me.
Now to the thing that is to do. Thou’lt have guessed it.”
To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering how much already he
had been about this business. He signified as much.
My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his embroidered bedgown of
yellow satin closer about his shapely limbs.
“Hast failed me twice before, Richard,” said he. “God’s death, man,
fail me not again, or the last chance may go the way of the others.
There’s a magic in the number three. See that I profit by it, or I am
undone, and thou with me.”
“I’d not have failed before, but for that suspicious dotard Bayley,”
grumbled Verney. “Your lordship bade me see that all was covered.”
“Aye, aye. And I bid thee so again. On thy life, leave no footprints by
which we may be tracked. Bayley is not the only physician in Oxford.
About it, then, and swiftly. Time is the very soul of fortune in this
business, with the Spaniard straining at the leash, and Cecil and the
rest pleading his case with her. Succeed, and thy fortune’s made; fail,
and trouble not to seek me again.”
Sir Richard bowed, and took his leave. As he reached the door, his
lordship stayed him. “If thou bungle, do not look to me. The court goes
to Windsor to-morrow. Bring me word there within the week.” He rose,
magnificently tall and stately, in his bedgown of embroidered yellow
satin, his handsome head thrown back, and went after his retainer.
“Thou’lt not fail me, Dick,” said he, a hand upon the lesser
scoundrel’s shoulder. “There is much at issue for me, and for thee with
me.”
“I will not fail you, my lord,” Sir Richard rashly promised, and on
that they parted.
Sir Richard did not mean to fail. He knew the importance of succeeding,
and he appreciated the urgency of the business as much as did my lord
himself. But between his cold, remorseless will to succeed and success
itself there lay a gulf which it needed all his resource to bridge. He
paid a short visit to Lady Robert at Cumnor, and professed deepest
concern to find in her a pallor and an ailing air which no one else had
yet observed. He expressed himself on the subject to Mrs. Buttelar and
the other members of her ladyship’s household, reproaching them with
their lack of care of their mistress. Mrs. Buttelar became indignant
under his reproaches.
“Nay, now, Sir Richard, do you wonder that my lady is sad and downcast
with such tales as are going of my lord’s doings at court, and of what
there is ’twixt the Queen and him? Her ladyship may be too proud to
complain, but she suffers the more for that, poor lamb. There was talk
of a divorce awhile ago that got to her ears.”
“Old wives’ tales,” snorted Sir Richard.
“Likely,” agreed Mrs. Buttelar. “Yet when my lord neither comes to
Cumnor, nor requires her ladyship to go to him, what is she to think,
poor soul?”
Sir Richard made light of all, and went off to Oxford to find a
physician more accommodating than Dr. Bayley. But Dr. Bayley had talked
too much, and it was in vain that Sir Richard pleaded with each of the
two physicians he sought that her ladyship was ailing—“sad and
heavy”—and that he must have a potion for her.
Each in turn shook his head. They had no medicine for sorrow, was their
discreet answer. From his description of her condition, said each, it
was plain that her ladyship’s sickness was of the mind, and,
considering the tales that were afloat, neither was surprised.
Sir Richard went back to his Oxford lodging with the feeling of a man
checkmated. For two whole days of that precious time he lay there
considering what to do. He thought of going to seek a physician in
Abingdon. But fearing no better success in that quarter, fearing,
indeed, that in view of the rumours abroad he would merely be
multiplying what my lord called “footprints,” he decided to take some
other way to his master’s ends. He was a resourceful, inventive
scoundrel, and soon he had devised a plan.
On Friday he wrote from Oxford to Lady Robert, stating that he had a
communication for her on the subject of his lordship as secret as it
was urgent. That he desired to come to her at Cumnor again, but dared
not do so openly. He would come if she would contrive that her servants
should be absent, and he exhorted her to let no one of them know that
he was coming, else he might be ruined, out of his desire to serve her.
That letter he dispatched by the hand of his servant Nunweek, desiring
him to bring an answer. It was a communication that had upon her
ladyship’s troubled mind precisely the effect that the rascal
conceived. There was about Sir Richard’s personality nothing that could
suggest the villain. He was a smiling, blue-eyed, florid gentleman, of
a kindly manner that led folk to trust him. And on the occasion of his
late visit to Cumnor he had displayed such tender solicitude that her
ladyship—starved of affection as she was—had been deeply touched.
His letter so cunningly couched filled her with vague alarm and with
anxiety. She had heard so many and such afflicting rumours, and had
received in my lord’s cruel neglect of her such circumstantial
confirmation of them, that she fastened avidly upon what she deemed the
chance of learning at last the truth. Sir Richard Verney had my lord’s
confidence, and was much about the court in his attendance upon my
lord. He would know the truth, and what could this letter mean but that
he was disposed to tell it.
So she sent him back a line in answer, bidding him come on Sunday
afternoon. She would contrive to be alone in the house, so that he need
not fear being seen by any.