The long hours of that day wore on, and nobody came again to Elizabeth
in the porch-chamber. The dusk fell, and she heard the sounds of
locking up the house and going to bed, and began to understand that
neither supper nor bed awaited her that night. Elizabeth quietly
cleared a space on the floor in the moonlight, heaping boxes and baskets
on one another, till she had room to lie down, and then, after kneeling
to pray, she slept more peacefully than Queen Mary did in her Palace.
She was awoke suddenly at last. It was broad daylight, and somebody was
rapping at the street door.
"Amy!" she heard Mistress Clere call from her bedchamber, "look out and
see who is there."
Amy slept at the front of the house, in the room next to the
porch-chamber. Elizabeth rose to her feet, giving her garments a shake
down as the only form of dressing just then in her power, and looked out
of the window.
The moment she did so she knew that one of the supreme moments of her
life had come. Before the door stood Mr Maynard, the Bailiff of
Colchester--the man who had marched off the twenty-three prisoners to
London in the previous August. Everybody who knew him knew that he was
a "stout Papist," to whom it was dear delight to bring a Protestant to
punishment. Elizabeth did not doubt for an instant that she was the one
chosen for his next victim.
Just as Amy Clere put her head out of the window. Mr Maynard, who did
not reckon patience among his chief virtues, and who was tired of
waiting, signed to one of his men to give another sharp rap, accompanied
by a shout of--"Open, in the Queen's name!"
"Saints, love us and help us!" ejaculated Amy, taking her head in again.
"Mother, it's the Queen's men!"
"Go down and open to 'em," was Mrs Clere's next order.
"Eh, I durstn't if it was ever so!" screamed Amy in reply. "May I
unlock the door and send Bessy?"
"Thee do as thou art bid!" came in the gruff tones of her father.
"Come, I'll go with thee," said her mother. "Tell Master Bailiff we're
at hand, or they'll mayhap break the door in."
A third violent rap enforced Mrs Clere's command.
"Have a bit of patience, Master Bailiff!" cried Amy from her window.
"We're a-coming as quick as may be. Let a body get some clothes on,
do!"
Somebody under the window was heard to laugh.
Then Mrs Clere went downstairs, her heavy tread followed by the light
run of her daughter's steps; and then Elizabeth heard the bolts drawn
back, and the Bailiff and his men march into the kitchen of the Magpie.
"Good-morrow, Mistress Clere. I am verily sorry to come to the house of
a good Catholic on so ill an errand. But I am in search of a maid of
yours, by name Elizabeth Foulkes, whose name hath been presented a afore
the Queen's Grace's Commission for heresy. Is this the maid?"
Mr Maynard, as he spoke, laid his hand not very gently on Amy's
shoulder.
"Eh, bless me, no!" cried Amy, in terror. "I'm as good a Catholic as
you or any. I'll say aught you want me, and I don't care what it is--
that the moon's made o' green cheese, if you will, and I'd a shive last
night for supper. Don't take _me_, for mercy's sake!"
"I'm not like," said Mr Maynard, laughing, and giving Amy a rough pat
on the back. "You aren't the sort I want."
"You're after Bess Foulkes, aren't you?" said Mrs Clere. "Amy, there's
the key. Go fetch her down. I locked her up, you see, that she should
be safe when wanted, I'm a true woman to Queen and Church, I am, Master
Bailiff. You'll find no heresy here, outside yon jade of a Bessy."
Mrs Clere knew well that suspicion had attached to her husband's name
in time past, which made her more desirous to free herself from all
complicity with what the authorities were pleased to call heresy.
Amy ran upstairs and unlocked the door of the porch-chamber.
"Bessy, the Bailiff's come for thee!"
A faint flush rose to Elizabeth's face as she stood up.
"Now do be discreet, Bessy, and say as he says. Bless you, it's only
words! I told him I'd say the moon was made o' green cheese if he
wanted. Why shouldn't you?"
"Mistress Amy, it would be dishonour to my Lord, and I am ready for
anything but that."
"Good lack! couldst not do a bit o' penance at after? Bess, it's thy
life that's in danger. Do be wise in time, lass."
"It is only this life," said Elizabeth quietly, "and `he that saveth his
life shall lose it.' They that be faithful to the end shall have the
crown of life.--Master Bailiff, I am ready."
The Bailiff looked up at the fair, tall, queenly maiden who stood before
him.
"I trust thou art ready to submit to the Church," he said. "It were
sore pity thou shouldst lose life and all things."
"Nay, I desire to win them," answered Elizabeth. "I am right ready to
submit to all which it were good for me to submit to."
"Come, well said!" replied the Bailiff; and he tied the cord round her
hands, and led her away to the Moot Hall.
Just stop and think a moment, what it would be to be led in this way
through the streets of a town where nearly everybody knew you, as if you
had been a thief or a murderer!--led by a cord like an animal about to
be sold--nay, as our Master, Christ, was led, like a sheep to the
slaughter! Fancy what it would be, to a girl who had always been
respectable and well-behaved to be used in this way: to hear the rough,
coarse jokes of the bystanders and of the men who were leading her, and
not to have one friend with her--not one living creature that cared what
became of her, except that Lord who had once died for her, and for whom
she was now, for aught she knew, upon her way to die! And even He
_seemed_ as if He did not care. Men did these things, and He kept
silence. Don't you think it was hard to bear?
When Elizabeth reached the Moot Hall and was taken to the prison, for an
instant she felt as if she had reached home and friends. Mrs
Silverside bade her welcome with a kindly smile, and Robert Purcas came
up and kissed her--people kissed each other then instead of shaking
hands as we do now,--and Elizabeth felt their sympathy a true comfort.
But she was calm under her suffering until she caught sight of Cissy.
Then an exclamation of pain broke from her.
"O Cissy, Cissy; I am so sorry for thee!"
"O Bessy, but I'm so glad! Don't say you're sorry."
"Why, Cissy, how canst thou be glad? Dost know what it all signifieth?"
"I know they've taken Father, and I'm sorry enough for that; but then
Father always said they would some day. But don't you see why I'm glad?
They've got me too. I was always proper 'feared they'd take Father and
leave me all alone with the children; and he'd have missed us dreadful!
Now, you see, I can tend on him, and do everything for him; and that's
why I'm glad. If it had to be, you know."