household to the fair that was being held at Abingdon that day, using
insistence with the reluctant, and particularly with one of her women,
a Mrs. Oddingsell, who expressed herself strongly against leaving her
ladyship alone in that lonely house. At length, however, the last of
them was got off, and my lady was left impatiently to await her secret
visitor. It was late afternoon when he arrived, accompanied by Nunweek,
whom he left to hold the horses under the chestnuts in the avenue.
Himself he reached the house across the garden, where the blighting
hand of autumn was already at work.
Within the porch he found her waiting, fretted by her impatience.
“It is very good in you to have come, Sir Richard,” was her gracious
greeting.
“I am your ladyship’s devoted servant,” was his sufficient answer, and
he doffed his plumed bonnet, and bowed low before her. “We shall be
private in your bower above stairs,” he added.
“Why, we are private anywhere. I am all alone, as you desired.”
“That is very wise—most wise,” said he. “Will your ladyship lead the
way?”
So they went up that steep, spiral staircase, which had loomed so
prominently in the plans the ingenious scoundrel had evolved. Across
the gallery on the first floor they entered a little room whose windows
overlooked the garden. This was her bower—an intimate cosy room,
reflecting on every hand the gentle, industrious personality of the
owner. On an oak table near the window were spread some papers and
account-books concerned with the estate—with which she had sought to
beguile the time of waiting. She led the way towards this, and, sinking
into the high-backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at him
expectantly. She was pale, there were dark stains under her eyes, and
wistful lines had crept into the sweet face of that neglected wife.
Contemplating his poor victim now, Sir Richard may have compared her
with the woman by whom my lord desired so impatiently to supplant her.
She was tall and beautifully shaped, despite an almost maidenly
slenderness. Her countenance was gentle and adorable, with its soft
grey eyes and light brown hair, and tender, wistful mouth.
It was not difficult to believe that Lord Robert had as ardently
desired her to wife five years ago as he now desired to be rid of her.
Then he obeyed the insistent spur of passion; now he obeyed the
remorseless spur of ambition. In reality, then as now, his beacon-light
was love of self.
Seeing her so frail and trusting, trembling in her anxious impatience
to hear the news of her lord which he had promised her, Sir Richard may
have felt some pang of pity. But, like my lord, he was of those whose
love of self suffers the rivalry of no weak emotion.
“Your news, Sir Richard,” she besought him, her dove-like glance upon
his florid face—less florid now than was its wont.
He leaned against the table, his back to the window. “Why, it is
briefly this,” said he. “My lord...” And then he checked, and fell into
a listening attitude.
“What was that? Did you hear anything, my lady?”
“No. What is it?” Her face betrayed alarm, her anxiety mounting under
so much mystery.
“Sh! Stay you here,” he enjoined. “If we are spied upon...” He left the
sentence there. Already he was moving quickly, stealthily, towards the
door. He paused before opening it. “Stay where you are, my lady,” he
enjoined again, so gravely that she could have no thought of disobeying
him. “I will return at once.”
He stepped out, closed the door, and crossed to the stairs. There he
stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of whipcord,
attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle sharpness. That bodkin
he drove into the edge of one of the panels of the wainscot, in line
with the topmost step; drawing the cord taut at a height of a foot or
so above this step, he made fast its other end to the newel-post at the
stair-head. He had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the
performance of it occupied but a few seconds. Such dim light of that
autumn afternoon as reached the spot would leave that fine cord
invisible.
Sir Richard went back to her ladyship. She had not moved in his
absence, so brief as scarcely to have left her time in which to resolve
upon disobeying his injunction.
“We move in secret like conspirators,” said he, “and so we are easily
affrighted.. I should have known it could be none but my lord
himself... here?”
“My lord!” she interrupted, coming excitedly to her feet. “Lord
Robert?”
“To be sure, my lady. It was he had need to visit you in secret—for did
the Queen have knowledge of his coming here, it would mean the Tower
for him. You cannot think what, out of love for you, his lordship
suffers. The Queen...
“But do you say that he is here, man,” her voice shrilled up in
excitement.
“He is below, my lady. Such is his peril that he dared not set foot in
Cumnor until he was certain beyond doubt that you are here alone.”
“He is below!” she cried, and a flush dyed her pale cheeks, a light of
gladness quickened her sad eyes. Already she had gathered from his
cunning words a new and comforting explanation of the things reported
to her. “He is below!” she repeated. “Oh!” She turned from him, and in
an instant was speeding towards the door.
He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his teeth, his face a
ghastly white, whilst she ran on.
“My lord! Robin! Robin!” he heard her calling, as she crossed the
corridor. Then came a piercing scream that echoed through the silent
house; a pause; a crashing thud below; and—silence.
Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable. Blood was trickling down
his chin. He had sunk his teeth through his lip when that scream rang
out. A long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-stricken. Then he braced
himself, and went forward, reeling at first like a drunken man. But by
the time he had reached the stairs he was master of himself again.
Swiftly, for all his trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord’s end
from the newel-post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin
from the wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a
moderate pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and
bestowing it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while his
eyes were fixed upon the grey bundle that lay so still at the stairs’
foot.
He came to it at last, and, pausing, looked more closely. He was
thankful that there was not the need to touch it. The position of the
brown-haired head was such as to leave no doubt of the complete success
of his design. Her neck was broken. Lord Robert Dudley was free to
marry the Queen.
Deliberately Sir Richard stepped over the huddled body of that poor
victim of a knave’s ambition, crossed the hall, and passed out, closing
the door. An excellent day’s work, thought he, most excellently
accomplished. The servants, returning from Abingdon Fair on that Sunday
evening, would find her there. They would publish the fact that in
their absence her ladyship had fallen downstairs and broken her neck,
and that was the end of the matter.
But that was not the end at all. Fate, the ironic interloper, had taken
a hand in this evil game.
The court had moved a few days earlier to Windsor, and thither on the
Friday—the 6th of September—came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the definite
answer which the Queen had promised him on the subject of the Spanish
marriage. What he had seen that night at Whitehall, coupled with his
mistrust of her promises and experience of her fickleness, had rendered
him uneasy. Either she was trifling with him, or else she was behaving
in a manner utterly unbecoming the future wife of the Archduke. In
either case some explanation was necessary. De Quadra must know where
he stood. Having failed to obtain an audience before the court left
London, he had followed it to Windsor, cursing all women and
contemplating the advantages of the Salic law.
He found at Windsor an atmosphere of constraint, and it was not until
the morrow that he obtained an audience with the Queen. Even then this
was due to chance rather than to design on the part of Elizabeth. For
they met on the terrace as she was returning from hunting. She
dismissed those about her, including the stalwart Robert Dudley, and,
alone with de Quadra, invited him to speak.
“Madame,” he said, “I am writing to my master, and I desire to know
whether your Majesty would wish me to add anything to what you have
announced already as your intention regarding the Archduke.”
She knit her brows. The wily Spaniard fenced so closely that there was
no alternative but to come to grips.
“Why, sir,” she answered dryly, “you may tell his Majesty that I have
come to an absolute decision, which is that I will not marry the
Archduke.”
The colour mounted to the Spaniard’s sallow cheeks. Iron self-control
alone saved him from uttering unpardonable words. Even so he spoke
sternly:
“This, madame, is not what you had led me to believe when last we
talked upon the subject.”
At another time Elizabeth might have turned upon him and rent him for
that speech. But it happened that she was in high good-humour that
afternoon, and disposed to indulgence. She laughed, surveying herself
in the small steel mirror that dangled from her waist.
“You are ungallant to remind me, my lord,” said she. “My sex, you may
have heard, is privileged to change of mind.”
“Then, madame, I pray that you may change it yet again.” His tone was
bitter.
“Your prayer will not be heard. This time I am resolved.”
De Quadra bowed. “The King, my master, will not be pleased, I fear.”
She looked him straightly in the face, her dark eyes kindling.
“God’s death!” said she, “I marry to please myself, and not the King
your master.”
“You are resolved on marriage then?” flashed he.
“And it please you,” she mocked him archly, her mood of joyousness
already conquering her momentary indignation.
“What pleases you must please me also, madame,” he answered, in a tone
so cold that it belied his words. “That it please you, is reason enough
why you should marry... Whom did your Majesty say?”
“Nay. I named no names. Yet one so astute might hazard a shrewd guess.”
Half-challenging, half-coy, she eyed him over her fan.
“A guess? Nay, madame. I might affront your Majesty.”
“How so?”
“If I were deluded by appearances. If I named a subject who signally
enjoys your royal favour.”
“You mean Lord Robert Dudley.” She paled a little, and her bosom’s
heave was quickened. “Why should the guess affront me?”
“Because a queen—a wise queen, madame—does not mate with a
subject—particularly with one who has a wife already.”
He had stung her. He had wounded at once the pride of the woman and the
dignity of the queen, yet in a way that made it difficult for her to
take direct offense. She bit her lip and mastered her surge of anger.
Then she laughed, a thought sneeringly.
“Why, as to my Lord Robert’s wife, it seems you are less well-informed
than usual, sir. Lady Robert Dudley is dead, or very nearly so.”
And as blank amazement overspread his face, she passed upon her way and
left him.
But anon, considering, she grew vaguely uneasy, and that very night
expressed her afflicting doubt to my lord, reporting to him de Quadra’s
words. His lordship, who was mentally near-sighted, laughed.
“He’ll change his tone before long,” said he.
She set her hands upon his shoulders, and looked up adoringly into his
handsome gipsy face. Never had he known her so fond as in these last
days since her surrender to him that night upon the terrace at
Whitehall, never had she been more the woman and less the queen in her
bearing towards him.
“You are sure, Robin? You are quite sure?” she pleaded.
He drew her close, she yielding herself to his embrace. “With so much
at stake could I be less than sure, sweet?” said he, and so convinced
her—the more easily since he afforded her the conviction she desired.
That was on the night of Saturday, and early on Monday came the news
which justified him of his assurances. It was brought him to Windsor by
one of Amy’s Cumnor servants, a fellow named Bowes, who, with the
others, had been away at Abingdon Fair yesterday afternoon, and had
returned to find his mistress dead at the stairs’ foot—the result of an
accident, as all believed.
It was not quite the news that my lord had been expecting. It staggered
him a little that an accident so very opportune should have come to
resolve his difficulties, obviating the need for recourse to those more
dangerous measures with which he had charged Sir Richard Verney. He
perceived how suspicion might now fall upon himself, how his enemies
would direct it, and on the instant made provision. There and then he
seized a pen, and wrote to his kinsman, Sir Thomas Blount, who even
then was on his way to Cumnor. He stated in the letter what he had
learnt from Bowes, bade Blount engage the coroner to make the strictest
investigation, and send for Amy’s natural brother, Appleyard. “Have no
respect to any living person,” was the final injunction of that letter
which he sent Blount by the hand of Bowes.
And, then, before he could carry to the Queen the news of this accident
which had broken his matrimonial shackles, Sir Richard Verney arrived
with the true account. He had expected praise and thanks from his
master. Instead, he met first dismay, and then anger and fierce
reproaches.
“My lord, this is unjust,” the faithful retainer protested. “Knowing
the urgency, I took the only way—contrived the accident.”
“Pray God,” said Dudley, “that the jury find it to have been an
accident; for if the truth should come to be discovered, I leave you to
the consequences. I warned you of that before you engaged in this. Look
for no help from me.”
“I look for none,” said Sir Richard, stung to hot contempt by the
meanness and cowardice so characteristic of the miserable egotist he
served. “Nor will there be the need, for I have left no footprints.
“I hope that may be so, for I tell you, man, that I have ordered a
strict inquiry, bidding them have no respect to any living person, and
to that I shall adhere.”
“And if, in spite of that, I am not hanged?” quoth Sir Richard, a sneer
upon his white face.
“Come to me again when the affair is closed, and we will talk of it.”
Sir Richard went out, rage and disgust in his heart, leaving my lord
with rage and fear in his.
Grown calmer now, my lord dressed himself with care and sought the
Queen to tell her of the accident that had removed the obstacle to
their marriage. And that same night her Majesty coldly informed de
Quadra that Lady Robert Dudley had fallen down a flight of stairs and
broken her neck.
The Spaniard received the information with a countenance that was
inscrutable.
“Your Majesty’s gift of prophecy is not so widely known as it deserves
to be,” was his cryptic comment.
She stared at him blankly a moment. Then a sudden uneasy memory
awakened by his words, she drew him forward to a window embrasure apart
from those who had stood about her, and for greater security addressed
him, as he tells us, in Italian.
“I do not think I understand you, sir. Will you be plain with me?” She
stood erect and stiff, and frowned upon him after the manner of her
bullying father. But de Quadra held the trumps, and was not easily
intimidated.
“About the prophecy?” said he. “Why, did not your Majesty foretell the
poor lady’s death a full day before it came to pass? Did you not say
that she was already dead, or nearly so?”
He saw her blench; saw fear stare from those dark eyes that could be so
very bold. Then her ever-ready anger followed swiftly.
“’Sblood, man! What do you imply?” she cried, and went on without
waiting for his answer. “The poor woman was sick and ill, and must soon
have succumbed; it will no doubt be found that the accident which
anticipated nature was due to her condition.”
Gently he shook his head, relishing her discomfiture, taking
satisfaction in torturing her who had flouted him and his master, in
punishing her whom he had every reason to believe guilty.
“Your Majesty, I fear, has been ill-informed on that score. The poor
lady was in excellent health—and like to have lived for many years—at
least, so I gather from Sir William Cecil, whose information is usually
exact.”
She clutched his arm. “You told him what I had said?”
“It was indiscreet, perhaps. Yet, how was I to know...?” He left his
sentence there. “I but expressed my chagrin at your decision on the
score of the Archduke—hardly a wise decision, if I may be so bold,” he
added slyly.
She caught the suggestion of a bargain, and became instantly
suspicious.
“You transcend the duties of your office, my lord,” she rebuked him,
and turned away.
But soon that night she was closeted with Dudley, and closely
questioning him about the affair. My lord was mightily vehement.
“I take Heaven to be my witness,” quoth he, when she all but taxed him
with having procured his lady’s death, “that I am innocent of any part
in it. My injunctions to Blount, who has gone to Cumnor, are that the
matter be sifted without respect to any person, and if it can be shown
that this is other than the accident I deem it, the murderer shall
hang.”
She flung her arms about his neck, and laid her head on his shoulder.
“Oh, Robin, Robin, I am full of fears,” she wailed, and was nearer to
tears than he had ever seen her.
But, anon, as the days passed their fears diminished, and finally the
jury at Cumnor—delayed in their finding, and spurred by my lord to
exhaustive inquiries—returned a verdict of “found dead,” which in all
the circumstances left his lordship—who was known, moreover, to have
been at Windsor when his lady died—fully acquitted. Both he and the
Queen took courage from that finding, and made no secret of it now that
they would very soon be wed.
But there were many whom that finding did not convince, who read my
lord too well, and would never suffer him to reap the fruits of his
evil deed. Prominent among these were Arundel—who himself had aimed at
the Queen’s hand—Norfolk and Pembroke, and behind them was a great mass
of the people. Indignation against Lord Robert was blazing out, fanned
by such screaming preachers as Lever, who, from the London pulpits,
denounced the projected marriage, hinting darkly at the truth of Amy
Dudley’s death.
What was hinted at home was openly expressed abroad, and in Paris Mary
Stuart ventured a cruel witticism that Elizabeth was to conserve in her
memory: “The Queen of England,” she said, “is about to marry her
horse-keeper, who has killed his wife to make a place for her.”
Yet Elizabeth persisted in her intent to marry Dudley, until the sober
Cecil conveyed to her towards the end of that month of September some
notion of the rebellion that was smouldering.
She flared out at him, of course. But he stood his ground.
“There is,” he reminded her, “this unfortunate matter of a prophecy, as
the Bishop of Aquila persists in calling it.”
“God’s Body! Is the rogue blabbing?”
“What else did your Majesty expect from a man smarting under a sense of
injury? He has published it broadcast that on the day before Lady
Robert broke her neck, you told him that she was dead or nearly so. And
he argues from it a guilty foreknowledge on your Majesty’s part of what
was planned.”
“A guilty foreknowledge!” She almost choked in rage, and then fell to
swearing as furiously in that moment as old King Harry at his worst.
“Madame!” he cried, shaken by her vehemence. “I but report the phrase
he uses. It is not mine.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I do not, madame. If I did I should not be here at present.”
“Does any subject of mine believe it?”
“They suspend their judgment. They wait to learn the truth from the
sequel.”
“You mean?”
“That if your motive prove to be such as de Quadra and others allege,
they will be in danger of believing.”
“Be plain, man, in God’s name. What exactly is alleged?”
He obeyed her very fully.
“That my lord contrived the killing of his wife so that he might have
liberty to marry your Majesty, and that your Majesty was privy to the
deed.” He spoke out boldly, and hurried on before she could let loose
her wrath. “It is still in your power, madame, to save your honour,
which is now in peril. But there is only one way in which you can
accomplish it. If you put from you all thought of marrying Lord Robert,
England will believe that de Quadra and those others lied. If you
persist and carry out your intention, you proclaim the truth of his
report; and you see what must inevitably follow.”
She saw indeed, and, seeing, was afraid.
Within a few hours of that interview she delivered her answer to Cecil,
which was that she had no intention of marrying Dudley.
Because of her fear she saved her honour by sacrificing her heart, by
renouncing marriage with the only man she could have taken for her mate
of all who had wooed her. Yet the wound of that renunciation was slow
to heal. She trifled with the notion of other marriages, but ever and
anon, in her despair, perhaps, we see her turning longing eyes towards
the handsome Lord Robert, later made Earl of Leicester. Once, indeed,
some six years after Amy’s death, there was again some talk of her
marrying him, which was quickly quelled by a reopening of the question
of how Amy died. Between these two, between the fulfilment of her
desire and his ambition, stood the irreconcilable ghost of his poor
murdered wife.
Perhaps it was some thought of this that found expression in her
passionate outburst when she learnt of the birth of Mary Stuart’s
child: “The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son; and I am but a
barren stock.”
VII. SIR JUDAS
The Betrayal of Sir Walter Ralegh
Sir Walter was met on landing at Plymouth from his ill-starred voyage
to El Dorado by Sir Lewis Stukeley, which was but natural, seeing that
Sir Lewis was not only Vice-Admiral of Devon, but also Sir Walter’s
very good friend and kinsman.
If Sir Walter doubted whether it was in his quality as kinsman or as
Vice-Admiral that Sir Lewis met him, the cordiality of the latter’s
embrace and the noble entertainment following at the house of Sir
Christopher Hare, near the port, whither Sir Lewis conducted him, set
this doubt at rest and relighted the lamp of hope in the despairing
soul of our adventurer. In Sir Lewis he saw only his kinsman—his very
good friend and kinsman, to insist upon Stukeley’s own description of
himself—at a time when of all others in his crowded life he needed the
support of a kinsman and the guidance of a friend.
You know the story of this Sir Walter, who had been one of the
brightest ornaments of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and might have
added lustre to that of King James, had not his Sowship—to employ the
title bestowed upon that prince by his own queen—been too mean of soul
to appreciate the man’s great worth. Courtier, philosopher, soldier,
man of letters and man of action alike, Ralegh was at once the greatest
prose-writer, and one of the greatest captains of his age, the last
survivor of that glorious company—whose other members were Drake and
Frobisher and Hawkins—that had given England supremacy upon the seas,
that had broken the power and lowered the pride of Spain.
His was a name that had resounded, to the honour and glory of England,
throughout the world, a name that, like Drake’s, was a thing of hate
and terror to King Philip and his Spaniards; yet the King of Scots,
unclean of body and of mind, who had succeeded to the throne of
Elizabeth, must affect ignorance of that great name which shall never
die while England lives.
When the splendid courtier stood before him—for at fifty Sir Walter was
still handsome of person and magnificent of Apparel—James looked him
over and inquired who he might be. When they had told him:
“I’ve rawly heard of thee,” quoth the royal punster, who sought by such
atrocities of speech to be acclaimed a wit.
It was ominous of what must follow, and soon thereafter you see this
great and gallant gentleman arrested on a trumped-up charge of high
treason, bullied, vituperated, and insulted by venal, peddling lawyers,
and, finally, although his wit and sincerity had shattered every
fragment of evidence brought against him, sentenced to death. Thus far
James went; but he hesitated to go further, hesitated to carry out the
sentence. Sir Walter had too many friends in England then; the memory
of his glorious deeds was still too fresh in the public mind, and
execution might have been attended by serious consequences for King
James. Besides, one at least of the main objects was achieved. Sir
Walter’s broad acres were confiscate by virtue of that sentence, and
King James wanted the land—filched thus from one who was England’s
pride—to bestow it upon one of those golden calves of his who were
England’s shame.
“I maun hae the land for Carr. I maun hae it,” was his brazen and
peevish answer to an appeal against the confiscation.