THE QUEEN
/Along/ a gallery, with windows on their right through the blurred
glass of which they caught the green sheen of the foliage in the privy
garden, Walsingham led them, to a closed door, kept by two stalwart
young yeomen of the guard in scarlet with the Tudor rose embroidered
in gold upon their backs. At the approach of Sir Francis, they ordered
their tasselled halberts, whose polished blades shone like mirrors. At
a nod from him, one of them threw open the door and held it wide. In
silence he crossed the threshold, his companions following. The door
closed after them, and they proceeded some little way along the
farther gallery into which they had now stepped, until Sir Francis
brought up at a door on his left, which again was guarded by two
yeomen.
Sir Gervase observed that, like the others, these, too, were tall,
athletic, young, and handsome. The tongue of rumour certainly appeared
justified when it said that the Queen liked to have splendid-looking
men about her. It was asserted that the loss of a front tooth by one
of these magnificent guards entailed his removal from about the
Queen’s person.
They went through the doorway instantly opened to Sir Francis, and
found themselves in a lofty antechamber, very richly furnished, the
golden rose everywhere conspicuous upon scarlet fabrics. Half a dozen
resplendent gentlemen lounged here. A chamberlain with a wand advanced
to meet Sir Francis, and at a word from him, bowing profoundly,
withdrew through a small door which again was guarded by a pair of
yeomen who might have been cast in the same mould as the others. He
returned a moment later to announce that Her Majesty would at once
receive Sir Francis and his companions.
Through the open doorway came the tinkling sound of a virginal. Her
Majesty’s occupations of state, thought Sir Gervase, might be manifold
and important, as Sir Francis had stated; but it was clear that they
were not engaging her at the moment, which may, indeed, have accounted
for the promptitude of their admission to her gracious presence.
They entered. Sir Francis went down on one knee, and with his left
hand covertly signalled to the others to imitate his genuflexion.
They found themselves in a small room, three of whose walls from
ceiling to floor were hung with rich tapestries, illustrating scenes
which Sir Gervase would not have identified even if he had had leisure
to examine them. A tall mullioned window overlooked the river and the
Palace Steps, where the great gilded royal barge was moored amid a
flock of lesser craft.
This in a glance he saw as he entered. Thereafter his eyes were upon
the Queen, to whom he knelt now for the second time. She was in
rose-pink to-day. That at least was the background of the shimmering
brocade she wore, which was all embroidered with eyes, so that you
might have conceived that Her Majesty looked at you from every point
of her person at once. For the rest she was as richly, as monstrously
bejewelled as on the last occasion when Sir Gervase had beheld her,
and the great erect collar of lace, spreading like a fan behind her
head, reached almost to the summit of her pearl-entwined wig.
For a moment after the gentlemen entered she continued, engrossed in
the virginals, bringing her musical phrase to a conclusion. It was one
of her many vanities to be accounted a fine performer, and she deemed
no audience too trivial.
A tall, fair lady stood immediately behind her. Two others, one fair,
the other dark, and the dark one of a singular loveliness, were seated
near the window.
The Queen’s beautiful hands came to rest upon the keys, then one of
them, aflash with gems, was extended to take a delicate gold-edged
kerchief from the polished top of the instrument. Her dark eyes peered
at them short-sightedly, deepening the web of wrinkles about her
pencilled brows. She may have noticed that Walsingham’s companions
were fine fellows both, such as she loved to look upon. Both above the
common height, if Sir Oliver were by a little the taller and more
athletic, the other had the greater beauty of countenance. It is
possible that the coldly calculating Sir Francis may have weighed this
circumstance in introducing them thus without preliminaries into her
presence. He may have been persuaded that Her Majesty could of herself
do nothing to assist them beyond entrusting their grievance to him for
redress; but at least their persons would ensure him from any royal
resentment at having brought them to her so that they might convince
themselves of what he told them.
‘What’s this, Frank?’ she rasped in her mannish voice. ‘What do you
bring me, and why?’ And then, without waiting for the answer, she
abruptly addressed Gervase.
Sir Oliver slightly behind him, copying Walsingham, had risen already
from the genuflexion. Sir Gervase, not observing this, remained humbly
upon one knee.
‘Od’s eyes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Get up, man. D’ye take me for a Popish
image that ye’ll kneel to me all day?’
He rose tongue-tied and a little embarrassed with no thought of any
such fond speech as that for which her exclamation had given him an
opening and such as were dear to her overweening vanity. But his looks
made amends in her eyes for his lack of adulatory glibness.
‘Why have you brought them, Frank?’
Briefly Walsingham recalled them to her memory as two of the knights
she had lately created in token of her favour, for their achievements
in the fight with the Armada.
‘As some slight recompense for the service that already they have
rendered England and as some earnest for what may yet be to come for
future service, they have a boon to crave.’
‘A boon?’ Alarm flickered in her eyes. She looked up at the tall lady
beside her, wrinkling her high, pinched nose. ‘I might have guessed
it, Dacres. God’s wounds, man! If it be money, or aught that’s costly,
I prithee save thy breath. We are beggared by this Spanish war
already.’
‘It is not money, Your Grace,’ said Sir Gervase, speaking boldly now.
Her relief was manifest. She reached for a basket of silver filigree
that stood upon the virginal, and gave her care to the selection of a
Portingal. It was this love of sweetmeats which may have been
responsible for the dark ruin of her teeth. ‘What is it, then? Speak
out, man. Art not shy, belike?’
That if shy he had by now conquered his shyness, his answer proved:
‘It is no boon, as Sir Francis says, Your Grace. I am come for simple
justice.’
She looked at him with sudden sharp suspicion, the selected Portingal
suspended delicately between finger and thumb. ‘Ay, I know the phrase
well. Cordieu! ’Tis on the lips of every place-seeker. Well, well! Out
with this tale of it, a God’s name, and let us ha’ done.’ The
sweetmeat disappeared between her thin, raddled lips.
‘First, Madam,’ said Sir Gervase, ‘I am the bearer of a letter.’ He
advanced, instinctively went down on his knee again, and proffered it.
‘Will Your Highness be graciously pleased to receive it?’
Walsingham frowned and stirred forward a pace or two. ‘What’s this of
a letter?’ said he. ‘You said naught to me of any letter.’
‘No matter for that,’ she told him curtly. She was examining the seal.
‘Whose arms are these?’ She was frowning. ‘Whence is your letter,
sir?’
‘From my Lord Garth, so please Your Grace.’
‘Garth? Garth?’ She spoke as one fumbling in her memory. Suddenly her
expression quickened. ‘Why, that will be Roger Trevanion. Roger…’ She
caught her breath, and looked at him again, searchingly. ‘What is
Roger Trevanion to thee, child?’
‘My friend, I hope, Madam. I know myself his. I love his daughter.’
‘Ha! His daughter! So? He has a daughter? If she favours him, you’re
fortunate in your choice. He was a comely fellow in his youth. And he
married, eh? I never heard of it.’ Her voice grew wistful. ‘But,
indeed, I’ve never heard aught of him for years. Roger Trevanion!’ She
sighed, and fell thoughtful a moment, the expression of her face
incredibly softened. Then, as if recollecting herself, she abruptly
broke the seal, and spread the sheet. She read it with difficulty.
‘Why here’s a vile scrawl, by God!’
‘It was writ in deep agitation and sorrow, Madam.’
‘Was it so? Ay, so it was; so it must have been. Yet it does little
more than announce the fact, commend you to me, and implore my favour
for you and for him, who are one in the aims of which you are to tell
me. So Roger is in trouble, eh? And in trouble he remembers me at
last! That is the common way. But hardly Roger’s.’ She was musing now.
‘Cordieu! He might have remembered me before, remembered the debt I
have owed him these many years. How many years, dear God!’ She sighed,
and fell into thought. There was no hardness now in that pinched,
lined face. The dark eyes seemed to Sir Gervase to have grown moist
and wistful. Her thoughts may well have been with the past, the
gallant Lord Admiral who had loved her and who had paid with his head
for the temerity of that love, and the man who had loved him and
because of that love had risked his own head freely to serve him and
to serve her. Then she roused herself, to command the waiting
gentleman before her. ‘What is this tale you have to tell me? Out with
it, child. I am listening.’
Sir Gervase told it, briefly, eloquently, passionately. Once only was
he interrupted, and then by Walsingham when he mentioned the
Spaniard’s surrender and its acceptance which made of him nominally a
prisoner, actually a guest, at Trevanion Chase.
‘Now that was ill-done!’ Sir Francis had cried. ‘We should take steps
to…’
‘Take steps to hold your tongue, man,’ the Queen silenced him.
There were no further interruptions. Sir Gervase proceeded to the end
with ever-increasing anger in the tale he was relating, so that he
imparted some of his own heat to his audience--to the Queen, her
ladies, and even the cold Walsingham. When, at last, he had done, she
smote her hands upon the arms of her chair, and heaved herself to her
feet.
‘Now, by God’s death!’ she cried in a fury that had turned her livid
under her paint. ‘Does the audacity of these Spaniards dare so much?
Is there to be no end of their insolences? Shall we suffer these
things, Walsingham? One of them comes shipwrecked into this realm of
mine and commits this outrage! By Heaven’s light, they shall yet learn
the length of a maid’s arm to shield a maid; they shall feel the
weight of a woman’s hand to avenge a woman. They shall so, by God!
Walsingham, summon me… No, no. Wait!’
She moved across the room, brushing past the two ladies near the
window, who had risen, tapping her high-heeled shoe upon the ground.
From somewhere she drew a little silver bodkin. Fragments of the
Portuguese comfit were inconveniencing her. Having used the
instrument, she fell to tapping with it one of the little panes.
The narrative had moved her more deeply than Gervase could have hoped.
However much this may have been due to the outrage itself, there can
be no doubt that a contributory factor lay in the circumstance that
Roger Trevanion’s daughter was the victim. The tale may have gathered
poignancy and impressiveness, too, because it fell upon a mood of
softness and tenderness invoked by the memory of that dear friend of
her girlhood and of her girlhood’s lover, and further, even, because
the narrator was a stalwart, handsome fellow and a lover.
At length she swung from the window, her manner almost harsh with
impatience, but an impatience of which clearly he whom she addressed
was not the object.
‘Come hither, child!’
He was prompt to approach her, and stood respectfully before her,
apart from those others who looked on with interest and one of them
with uneasiness. This was Walsingham. Knowing her as he did, he
perceived that the lioness in her was aroused, and foresaw trouble for
himself from such a mood. He felt a little aggrieved with Sir Gervase
Crosby for having taken an advantage of him in the matter of that
letter. But this at the moment was a light thing compared with the
anxieties which the Queen’s humour awakened in him.
‘Tell me, child; tell me,’ she was urging the long-limbed Gervase.
‘What precisely do you seek of me? What is in your mind that I should
do? Exactly what justice do you desire?’
She asked for guidance; asked it from this West-Country youngster,
converted, no doubt, into a firebrand by his anguish on behalf of his
mistress. Here, thought Walsingham, was madness. He groaned inwardly;
indeed, almost aloud. His countenance was lugubriously startled.
The answer did nothing to allay his fears. The lad’s words proved him
indeed a firebrand, of a rashness almost beyond the Secretary of
State’s belief, and the Secretary of State had great experience of
human rashness.
‘It is my intent, Your Grace, to cross at once to Spain. To go after
Don Pedro de Mendoza.’
She interrupted him. ‘By God! The intent is a bold one! If you are to
take matters thus into your own hands, what is there for me to do?’
There was in her tone the suspicion of a sneer, as well there might be
at the avowal of such stark madness.
‘It has been my hope, Madam, that Your Grace--I scarce know how--would
provide means to shield me on this journey, and to ensure my safe
return. It is not that I go in fear for myself…’
‘You were wiser and you did,’ she interrupted him again. ‘But to
shield you? I?’ She made a wry face. ‘My arm is long enough for much.
But to protect you within the dominions of King Philip at this present
time…’ She broke off, and because she could not see the way to do as
he desired of her, and felt herself humiliated by her impotence, she
fell to cursing like a roaring captain.
When at length she paused, Sir Francis Walsingham sleekly interposed.
‘I have already told Sir Gervase that Your Grace will command me to
pursue the proper course, and to send letters to King Philip by the
channel offered by the French Ambassador.’
‘Ha! And what doth Sir Gervase answer?’
‘In all humility, Your Grace, the thing is of an urgency…’
‘Why, so it is, child. Sir Francis needs to learn things by
experience. If he had a daughter in Spanish hands, he would be less
cool and simpering. The devil damn such paltry counsel.’
The Secretary of State was not discomposed. ‘The poor wits with which
I serve Your Grace are waiting to discern a more effective way of
availing this unfortunate lady.’
‘Are they so?’ She glared at him. His coolness had upon her an effect
quite contrary from that which he hoped. She turned her shoulders to
him, and fell to tapping the window again with her bodkin. ‘There
should surely be some way. Come, child, ply your wits. I care not how
rash be your proposal. We may strike sense from it if we but hear it.’
There fell a pause, Sir Gervase having no settled plan of action, or
thought of how that which he sought from Her Majesty might be
obtained. To break the silence came the big rough voice of Sir Oliver
Tressilian.
‘Have I Your Grace’s leave?’ He advanced a step or two as he spoke,
and drew all eyes upon his dark, resolute countenance.
‘A God’s name!’ she barked at him. ‘Speak out, if you’ve aught in mind
that will help.’
‘Your Highness asks for rashness, else I should scarce dare.’
‘Dare and be damned, man,’ quoth the lioness. ‘What’s in your mind?’
‘Your Highness may not remember that the honour of knighthood which I
received at Your Grace’s hands was for my part in the capture of the
flagship of the Andalusian squadron, the only Spanish vessel seized.
We took prisoner her commander, Don Pedro Valdez, who is the greatest
and deservedly the most valued of all Spain’s captains upon the seas.
With him we took among others seven gentlemen of the first houses in
Spain. These gentlemen at this present all lie under Your Grace’s
hand. They are lodged here in the Tower.’
He said no more than that. But his tone was grim and full of
suggestion. It expressed, like the thing he hinted, the ruthlessness
of his nature and the lawlessness that were to make him what he was
destined to become. It performed the miracle of startling Walsingham
at last out of his imperturbability.
‘In the name of Heaven, man! What is’t ye’re implying?’
But it was the Queen who answered him, with a short laugh and a
grimness akin to Sir Oliver’s own, which sent a shiver down the spine
of the Secretary. ‘God’s light! Is’t not plain?’ Her tone said as
clearly as any words could have done that the suggestion was eminently
to her taste and mood. ‘Dacres, set my chair to the table yonder. The
King of Spain shall learn the length of my arm.’
The tall lady-in-waiting pushed forward the padded crimson chair. The
Queen swept to it and sat down. ‘Give me a pen. So! Walsingham, recite
me the names of the seven gentlemen who are with Valdez in the Tower.’
‘Your Grace intends?’ Walsingham was white; his long beard was
observed to quiver.
‘Shalt know my intentions soon enough, you and that other knock-kneed
fellow, Philip of Spain. Their names, I say!’
Her peremptoriness was almost savage. Walsingham quailed and
surrendered the names. She set them down in that big angular writing
of hers in which later ages have discovered beauty. The list
completed, she sat back, conning it with narrowed eyes and
thoughtfully gnawing the feathered end of her quill.
Her Secretary of State leaned over her, with fearful urgent
mutterings. But she blighted him with a glance and an oath so that he
fell back again. A patient man and an opportunist, he resolved to wait
until her royal rage should have cooled sufficiently to render her
amenable to reason. Of the unreasonable thing, the outrageous thing
which, upon the suggestion of that outrageous black-browed Oliver
Tressilian, she was about to perform, Sir Francis had no slightest
doubt.
She bent to her task, which was to indite a letter to the
brother-in-law who at one time had so ardently aspired to become her
husband, and may since have had many an occasion to thank God that he
had not numbered Elizabeth among his several successive wives. She
wrote rapidly, scarcely pausing to consider the shaping of a phrase,
and there was something of savage determination in the way her pen bit
the parchment, so that her sprawling characters were engraved upon it
rather than written. It was soon done.
She signed the document with a vicious flourish that was in itself
like a piece of sword-play, and called for wax and a taper that she
might seal it. Her ladies moved to obey. Sir Francis endeavoured once
again to remonstrate.
‘If in that letter, Madam, the comity of nations…’
Harshly she cropped his speech. ‘The comity of nations!’ She laughed
fiercely in the grave long face and snowy beard of him. ‘I have said a
word about the comity of nations in this letter. It counts for naught
in this affair. I’ve warned His Spanish Majesty of that.’
‘’Tis what I feared, Madam…’
‘Lord! Walsingham, when will you cease to be a woman?’ She sank her
seal into the wax.
Walsingham, now terror-stricken, murmured of the Privy Council. At
that she rose in fury, the letter in her hand, to inform him that she
was no word of the Privy Council; that the Privy Council existed but
to interpret her sovereign will. The outrage committed by a Spanish
noble upon the person of an English maid was an insult to England. She
herself was England’s incarnation, she informed the Secretary, and it
was for her to answer that insult. It was answered in the letter, and
Sir Gervase should deliver it.
Walsingham fell back appalled, but daring nothing further. The
circumstances were all unfortunate and against him. He was himself to
blame for his rashness in having introduced that young hothead and his
worse companion to audience with Her Majesty. The harm was done. Let
him provide as best he could for the consequences, whatever they might
be. Further intervention here might but curtail his power of doing
even so much when the time came.
The Queen proffered the letter to Gervase. ‘There is your weapon, sir.
Get you to Spain with all speed. This shall be sword and buckler to
you. Yet, should it chance to fail you, depend upon me to avenge you
right nobly. And so God speed thee on this knightly errand. Away with
him, Sir Francis. Let me know anon how he hath fared. I charge you not
to fail me, on your life.’
Gervase went down on his knees to receive the package. She held out
her hand to him. He kissed it respectfully and in some awe, whereupon
her other hand lightly touched his rippling auburn locks.
‘Art a bonnie lad and a loving heart,’ said she in a softened voice,
and lightly sighed. ‘God bring thy mistress scatheless home and thee
with her.’
He stumbled out of her presence with Sir Oliver and Sir Francis. All
three of them had more than guessed what she had written.
Sir Francis sourly took his leave of them. He would have interfered
had he dared. But he was on the horns of a dilemma and was constrained
to the prudence of inaction. So he suffered them to depart, bearing a
package that might set the world on fire.