Master Blytchett told me that Master Richard was still asleep. He had
blooded him last night, and reduced the fever, but God only could save
his life. For himself, he thought that the young man would die before
night, and he did not know whether he would speak again.
I was drawn towards Master Blytchett; he seemed a sour fellow with
sweetness beneath; and I love such souls as that. I loved him more than
I did the King either at that time or afterward. The King appeared to me
at that time a foolish fellow--God forgive me!--for I had not then heard
what Master Richard had to say of him; nor that such opinion was to be
all part of his passion.
I thanked Master Blytchett for what he had done for my lad; but he burst
out upon me.
"I was all against him," he said, "at the beginning. I thought him a
crack-brained fool, and a meddler. But now--" And he would say no more.
It seemed that many were like that at the Court. They were near all
against him at first; but when they knew that he was wounded to death;
and had heard what the King had said of him; and seen my lord cardinal's
rosy face running with tears of pity and anger as he tore the lad out of
their hands; and gossipped a little with the porter of the monastery;
and listened to the holy ankret roaring out in his cell against
Hierusalem that slew the prophets;--and, most of all, remembered, or
told one another of Master Richard's face as he came out from the privy
staircase before he was struck down--like the Melitenses--_convertentes
se dicebant eum esse deum_. ["Changing their minds, they said he was
a god" (Acts xxviii. 6.)]
* * * * *
I talked with many that morning (for I could do nothing for my lad), who
came in to see one who knew him so well, and had been his friend in the
country.
And after dinner my lord cardinal came in to see me, and I was brought
back to the parlour.
His ruddy face was all blotched and lined with sorrow or age, and for a
while he could say nothing. He went up and down with his sanguine robes
flying behind him, and stayed to look out of the window at the boats
that went by until I thought that he had forgotten me. And at the last
he spoke.
"I do not know what to say to you, Sir John, or what to say to God
Almighty on this matter. It appears to me that we have all been blind
and deaf adders, and with the venom of adders, too, beneath our
tongues--except one or two rude fellows, and my lord King who knew him
for a prophet, and the ankret, who tells us we shall all be damned for
what we have done, and yourself. There be so many of these wild asses
that bray and kick, that when he came we did not distinguish him to be
the colt on which our Lord came to town--and now, as it was then,
_Dominus eum necessarium habet_." ["The Lord hath need of him" (Luke
xix. 34.)]
"But I know what I wish to be said to him, though I dare not say it
myself, or set eyes on him--and that is that I pray him to forgive us,
and to speak our names before the Lord God when he comes before His
Majesty."
"I will tell him that, my lord," I said softly, for I did not doubt that
Master Richard would speak before he died.
After a while longer my lord cardinal asked how he did, and I told him
that he had lain very quiet all day without speaking or moving, and
then, for I knew what my lord wanted, I bade him in Jesu's name to come
in and look on him. For a while he would not, and then he came, and
knelt down beside the King.
Master Richard was lying now upon his back, with his hands hidden and
clasped upon his breast, and his lips were moving a little without
sound. I think that he had never had so long and so heavenly a colloquy
as he was enjoying then. I do not know whether it were the cardinal's
presence that disturbed him, or whether in that secret place where his
soul was retired he heard what had been said by us, but he spoke aloud
for the first time that day, and this is what he said:--
"_Et dimitte nobis debita nostra; sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus
nostris._" ["And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that
trespass against us."]
I saw my lord's face go down upon his hands, and the King's face rise
and look at him. And presently my lord went out.
* * * * *
I cannot tell you, my children, how that day passed, for it was like no
day that I have ever spent. It appeared to me that there was no time,
but that all stood still. Without, the palace was as still as death on
the one side--for the King had ordered it so--and on the other there was
the noise from the river, little and clear and distinct, of the water
washing in the sedges and against the stones, and the cries of the
boatmen on the further shore, and the rattle of their oars as they took
men across.
Once, as I stood by the window saying my office, a boat went by with
folk talking in it, and I heard enough of what they said to know that
they were speaking of Master Richard, and I heard one telling the tale
to another, and saw him point to the windows of the palace. But when
they saw me look out they gave over talking.
A little after the evening bell Master Blytchett took the King out to
his supper, and I was left alone with Master Richard, but I knew that
there were servants in the passage whom I might call if I needed them.
So I sat down by the pillow and looked at him a great while.
I will tell you, my children, something of what I thought at this time,
for it is at such times when the eyes are washed clean by tears that the
soul looks out upon truth and sees it as it is. [I have omitted a great
number of Sir John's reflections. Many of them are too trite even for
this work, and others are so much confused that it is useless to
transcribe them. Sir John seems to have been dearly fond of sermonizing.
Even these that I have retained and set within brackets can be omitted
in reading by those who prefer to supply their own comment.]....
* * * * *
{I thought of the _ironia_ that marks our Lord's dealings. Master
Richard had come to bring tidings of another's passion, and he found his
own in the bringing of it. It was as when children play at the hanging
of a murderer or a thief, and one is set to play the part of prisoner
and another to hang him, and then at the end when all is prepared they
turn upon the hangman and bid him prepare himself for whipping and death
instead of the other, or maybe both are to be hanged. But our Lord is
not cruel, like such children, but kind, and I think that He acts so to
shew us that life is nothing but a play and a pretence, and that His
will must be done, however much we rebel at it. He teaches us, too, that
the blows we receive and even death itself are only seeming, though they
hurt us at the time, but that we must play in a gallant and merry
spirit, and be tender, too, and forgive one another easily, and that He
will set all right and allot to each his reward at the end of the
playing. And, since it is but a play, we are none of us kings or
cardinals or poor men in reality; we are all of us mere children of our
Father, and upon one is set a crown for a jest, and another is robed in
sanguine, and another in a brown kirtle or a white; and at the end the
trinkets are all put back again in the press, ready for another day and
other children, and we all go to bed as God made us.
But you must not think, my children, that our life is a little thing
because of this; I only mean that one thing is as little and as great as
another, and that maids maying in the country are as much about God's
business as kings and cardinals who strive in palaces, and who give to
this man a collar of Saint Spirit, and to that man a collar of hemp. It
was for this reason, maybe, that our Lord did all things when He was
upon earth. He rode upon His colt as a King; He reigned upon the rood;
He sat at meat with sinners; He wrought tables and chairs at the
carpenter's; He fashioned sparrows, as some relate, out of clay, and
made them fly; and He said that not a sparrow falls without His love and
intention; and He did all and said all in the same spirit and mind, and
at the end He smiled and put on His crown again, and sat down for ever
_ad dexteram Dei_, that He might let us do the same, and help us by His
grace, especially in the sacraments, to be merry and confident. [This is
a very puzzling philosophy. It is surely either very profound or very
shallow. But it certainly is not cynical. Sir John is incapable of such
a feeble emotion as that.]....
* * * * *
This then, too, I thought at that time.
It is marvellous how our Lord sets His seal upon all that we do, if we
will but attend to His working, and not think too highly upon what we do
ourselves. He had caused Master Richard to wear His five wounds until he
loved them, and to set his meat, too, in their order, and then He had
bidden His servant tell him that he did not need the piece of linen, for
that he should bear the wounds upon his body. And this He fulfilled;
for, as Master Blytchett told me, there were neither more nor less than
five wounds upon the young man's body, which he had received from the
crowd that set on him, besides the bruises and the stripes. He had
caused Master Richard, too, to be haled from judge to judge, as Himself
was haled; to be deemed Master by some, and named fool by others; to be
borne in a boat by one who loved him; to be arrayed in a white robe to
be judged without justice; to be dumb _sicut ovis ad occisionem ... et
quasi agnus coram tondente se_ ["as a sheep to the slaughter ... as a
lamb before his shearer" (Is. liii. 7.)], with many other points and
marks, besides that which fell afterwards, when a rich man, like him of
Arimathy, cared for his burying, and strewed herbs and bay leaves and
myrtle upon his body.
There was the matter, too, of the bees that I had seen. [Sir John lays
great stress upon the bees; I cannot understand why. He says that they
betokened great wealth and happiness.]....
* * * * *
And again there was the matter of the seven days that Master Richard
fulfilled from the time of his setting out from his house, to the time
that he entered into his heavenly mansion. Seven days are the time of
perfection; it was in seven days that God Almighty made the world and
all that is in it; there were seven years of famine in Egypt in which
Joseph gathered store, and seven years of plenty. [I cannot bring myself
to follow Sir John through the whole of the Old and New Testaments.]....
And it was in seven days that Master Richard Raynal completed his course,
from the sowing of the wheat and wine on Corpus Xti, to his joyful
harvest in heaven....}
* * * * *
I thought, too, at this time of many other things, such as you may
suppose--of Master Richard's little cell in the country which would
never see him again (for I did not know at this time what the King
intended of his grace), and of the beasts that awaited him so
lamentably, and then of this great room hung all over with royalty
whither it had pleased God that his darling should come to die. I
looked, too, very often upon Master Richard as he lay before me, upon
his clean pallour, paler than I had ever seen it, and his slender
fingers roughened by the spade, and his strong arm, and his smiling
lips, and his closed eyes that looked within upon what I was not worthy
to see, and I wondered often what it was that he was saying to our Lord
and the blessed, and what they were saying to him, and I prayed that my
name might be mentioned amongst them, lest I should be a castaway after
all that I had heard and seen.
When it was dark (for I dared not kindle the candles) the King came in
again, and as he came in Master Richard spoke my name, and moved his
hand towards me on the coverlet.