Chapter III: Part 3

“Yes, madam,” she whispered low.

“He never flattered, I say,” went on the Queen. “He was too honest--the devil damn honesty! What day is it?”

“Your Highness,” was the tremulous answer, “it is the twenty-fifth day of February.”

She had known it well enough. All night within her haunted brain the horror of this coming day had brooded--this ghastly morning when on Tower Hill the young Earl of Essex--he was but thirty-four--was to pay the penalty of his madness. She stood staring before her, like one tranced.

“Never flattered,” she repeated--“a bad policy where a woman reigns. The twenty-fifth, is it? Let us know if my Lord of Essex sends or writes.”

“Yes, madam--O, yes, indeed!”

The girl, leaning to her mother, buried her pale face in her shoulder.

“Hush!” whispered the Queen; “was not that a step?”

“Indeed, madam, I cannot hear a sound.”

“A stubborn, relentless dog!” muttered the Queen hoarsely. “Let the axe convince him. He will see clearer being dead--no longer dub my mind as crooked as my body; learn that the soul’s glory waxeth with the years, striving to slough its vesture, like a snake. A fool, that cannot penetrate that crackling veil, and see, other than a boy, how Truth abhors externals. Raleigh is older; Raleigh can look deeper. Shall I not be Dian still to him?”

She faced her frightened witnesses with the enormous challenge--an old, arid, charmless woman of sixty-eight. Her withered, clay-white face was latticed with countless wrinkles; her nose was high and pinched; her thin, bloodless lips parted to show a ruin of blackened teeth--little spoiled and broken gravestones recording dead memories. Her gullet pursed; her eyes were bloodshot; the red periwig on her poll glowed like a dull flame over expiring ashes. Even her sloven dress betrayed the sickness of her spirit.

“Yes, indeed, madam,” said the mother.

“You lie!” cried Elizabeth fiercely. “He is false like the rest. His eyes betray his lips. Their love-light is the gilding on my crown. When he looks beneath I see mine image in them, an old and loveless woman--barren, and old, and loveless. Do you not hear my heart cry? It turns on a dry axle. O, I would give my queenhood to weep! So utterly alone--no child, no heir, no hope. They say that Charles of Valois wasted and died of poison. What could he expect? Was he not a prince and curst to flattery?”

She strode up and down once or twice in intolerable anguish.

“Truth!” she cried--“truth! And yet when it was mine at last, I turned and struck it down.”

“Not truth, your Grace, but jealousy,” ventured the trembling lady.

“Jealousy!” exclaimed the Queen, stopping suddenly. She stared at the speaker, her breath falling from hard to soft. “Was he jealous, think you?”

“O! madam,” said the other, “is it not thy player, Master Shakespeare, that calleth jealousy ‘green-eyed,’ like as with sour bile that clouds the vision. The distempered speak distempered thoughts, and often turn the most against their most-beloved. I count it green-eyed jealousy with him because he saw your Highness so distorted--not to extenuate the grievous crimes upon which his passions launched him. O, pardon me, madam!”

The Queen stood with her eyes still fixed upon the speaker, but it was evident that their vision took no heed of her, though her ears regarded the import of her speech.

“Jealous!” she said, with a tremulous sigh. “Mayhap like a silly quean I gave him cause, sporting with my troth-ring till it rolled into the well. He was too sure and bold, forgetting who had lifted him, and who could cast him down. But, jealous? Does not his hair curl sweetly on his forehead, child?”

“O, madam! Your Grace!”

“And his eyes so frank and fearless. Fear! He knows it not, the rash and headstrong fool! To think to overbear us!--teach our displeasure a lesson! O, a venture once too often! Because he can boast a strain of royal blood in his veins to dare to lift his head at us! to stamp, and cry: ‘Now, madam, do you hear me?’ or ‘I would have it thus, or thus and thus.’ Such presumption! And yet to see the pretty lord--his lip thrust out in scorn of sycophancy--a man of men, brave, honest, generous, and a fool.”

“Rash and foolish indeed, your Highness.”

“Those are but virtues in reverse. Had he no cause to doubt the love that made him but to ruin?”

“I cry your Grace’s mercy.”

“What for?”

“The ruin followed on the treachery.”

“Was he a traitor?”

“O, Madam! did he not curry favour with the King of Scotland, and plot and league to win him the succession?”

“Yes, he’s a traitor.”

“Your Grace forgive me.”

“And I’m a woman.”

“Madam!”

“At the last I yield him all my pride and self-will. He hath so much of me, ’twere idle to reserve that little. Who is that coming?”

“’Twas but the wind in the corridor, Madam.”

“I swear I heard him.”

“No, Madam.”

“Pride! Will he not meet us so far--but to crave our clemency? He knows the way, and, not taking it, must die. What o’clock is it? O, God, he shall not die! Send for my lord Keeper; have horses ready. Hush! he’s coming! Should I not know his footfall?”

She drew herself erect and away; a flush came to her withered cheek; she was the Queen again, aloof, haughty, self-contained. The two terrified women, shrunk together into the shadows by the hearth, saw her eyes gaze into vacancy, heard her lips address some apparition beyond their ken:

“What imports this visit, my Lord of Essex? Who gave you leave to come? Our Constable of the Tower shall be roundly questioned, trust to us. What! are you so pale at last to meet offended majesty? Will you not speak? Will you not pray the mercy you have abused in us too long? A viper in our bosom--O, my lord, that loved and trusted you! What can we think or say, God help us! But we will hear what is to hear. So pale?--the sickness of the stones hath chilled thy fiery blood. Why, I would have come to you, you know well, if you had sent it. Why did you not send it--prouder than thy Queen? Where is the ring? Give it me. O, I have waited, dear my love--have waited dying for this token. Speak--utter one word of sorrow, and I will forgive thee. Aye, kneel so and bow thy comely head----”

A burning log on the hearth fell with a crash and a spurt of flame; a shrill agonised cry broke from the lips of the Queen; she flung her hands before her eyes:

“O, God in heaven! The falling head! They are killing my love!”

Weeping and trembling, the two women crept from their corner. At that instant a dull boom, coming from down the river, shook the glass of the casement. The Queen dropped her hands.

“What was that?” she crowed. Her face was all distorted.

“Your Majesty!”

“What was that, I say? My Lord of Essex! He was here but now! Where is he?”

“In heaven, by God’s mercy, madam. It was the Tower gun.”

The Queen sank down moaning where she stood.

JANE SHORE

It was a bitter Sunday in January, 1484. A little dry snow fell from time to time, and, so surely as its chill dust whitened the stones about St. Paul’s Church, a wind, like an officious tipstaff, would come and drive it away right and left, sweeping the pavement for bare footsteps that were to follow.

It was all sad and grey and wintry. The over-gabled houses seemed to totter with cold; the signboards cried with it; only the church itself, half-shrouded in mist, loomed like some mighty mountain-crag, soaring into one solitary pinnacle, spectral, stupendous, in its midst. The Sabbath folk in the streets below, released from Mass, wrung their frosty fingers as they lingered in dull excitement, waiting for the show that was to follow. They gathered in a swarm about the great west door; but mostly they flocked towards the north side, where in an open place stood the cross of St. Paul’s, surmounting the leaden roof of a little timber pavilion. This bothy, or pulpit, was like a dovecot in shape, hexagonal, and with a window in each of its six sides. That facing west was furnished with a lectern for the preacher; and the whole building was reared on a triple platform of stone, hexagonal like the other, and forming steps to it.

Whether from the weather, or the day, or the occasion, the crowd was a curiously quiet one. The weight of the new King’s authority, no doubt, rested upon it heavily. A general air of numbness and stupefaction appeared to prevail. Events of late had come, matured, and yielded to others so rapidly. Edward’s death in April; the disappearance of the young princes, his sons, in June; the new coronation in July; Buckingham’s short abortive conspiracy and execution in October; finally, in this very first month of the new year, the passing of the _Titulus Regius_, or Act which bastardised the late King’s issue and confirmed the crown to his usurper--such was the astonishing tale. Nothing was evident for the moment but that this crooked fellow could see clearly and strike quickly; that he was bold, unscrupulous, and strong. He was not unpopular for that, or for certain manly attributes which the crowd admire. The difficulty was, as in all sudden _coups d’état_, to adapt oneself politicly to the fresh conditions, while awaiting security from retaliation by the old. The twisted King was not so firm in his seat as a Pope of Rome. There was a certain risk in subscribing even to his pleasantries, among which the present show might be counted.

No one had properly believed in the worser guilt of poor Mistress Shore, the late Prince’s naughty, good-hearted mistress. The indictment which charged her with complicity in the asserted attempt of Lord Hastings, her second protector, to destroy the present King’s life by witchcraft, had succeeded in proving nothing but her lovable qualities of mind and heart; whereby the Court was obliged to fall back upon her frailty, which was notorious and undeniable. It made no point, indeed, of the real tragedy of her sinning, which lay in her desertion of a young husband--a good, honest, uncorrupt fellow, a prosperous goldsmith of Lombard Street--whose happiness she had done her best to wreck, and whose name she had not had the grace to exchange for another. It was really only concerned, at bottom, with proving what an obnoxious libertine had been the fourth Edward, and how sweetly the crooked one shone by contrast. And so, to make all this clear, it washed, Pilate-like, its hands of the beautiful frailty, and handed her over to the Churchmen for chastisement. They were prompt to deliver it, and not altogether inhumanly. The concubine was sentenced to make public confession of her fault, in the prescriptive deshabille of sheet and candle, and thereafter depart in peace and mend her ways. The penalty, in fact, was in process at the moment.

There was not much gossip. The crowd, penned within the multitude of low buildings which surrounded the old Cathedral, showed more curiosity, even sympathy, than hostility towards the delinquent. Its constituents were much the same as when it had listened six months before to Dr. Shaw’s famous sermon at the Cross, and that truckling divine had first broached the question of the last two Edwards’ illegitimacy. It had acquiesced then, in the insensibility following exhaustion; it had not yet recovered from that condition. This present matter, or the sin which had procured it, was not of a nature wont to excite much comment or reproof; but the undoubted popularity of the usurper was confusing all issues. It supposed he had a reason for humiliating pretty Mrs. Shore, who had been as notable for her kindness as her beauty; and so it accepted his ruling as part of the perplexity of things, which some day must be going to lighten.

She came out in a minute, a half-dozen of acolytes preceding, a group of priests following her. As she appeared on the steps, a waft of wind took the hem of the white sheet, which was her sole drapery, and blew it aside from her knees. Her face, which had been deadly pale, flushed to an instant pink, which never thereafter deserted it. She clapped down her hand in a haste which extinguished the taper she held; whereat a cold voice halted the procession, and she must stand in her shame while the light was being rekindled. And as they came on again she hung her head and her lip trembled.

“Her stature,” says an eye-witness, “was meane [signifying short]; her haire of a dark yellow; her face round and full; her eye grey, delicate harmony between each part’s proportion, and each proportion’s colour; her body white and smooth ... she went in countenance and pase demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie save her kirtle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the woondering of the people cast a comelier rud in her cheeks (of which she before had most misse), that hir great shame was hir much praise among those that were more amorous of hir bodie than curious of hir soule. And manie good folks that hated hir living (and glad were to see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance than rejoised therein, when they considered that the King procured it more of a corrupt intent, than anie virtuous affection.”

“Proper she was and fair; nothing in her body that you would have changed, but if you would, have wished her somewhat higher”--no romancer can better that description, and so it shall stand.

She came down the steps so shamed that she seemed insensible to the weather. It was snowing again, and the flakes kissed her pink feet as if in pity, and kissed her neck, and cried into her cold bosom. She tried to shake her long, loose hair before her face.

Round by the north side they turned; and so to the pulpit, where she knelt; and all the way the people were silent. And the Bishop mounted into the tribune, and, sheltered in his snuggery, delivered a long harangue on the iniquity of loose living. And at the end he demanded of her if she confessed and repented; whereat she answered, in a voice all little and shrunken: “I do own my fault, and ask pardon for it.” At which he raised his tone and bade her depart where she would, and mend her ways and live cleanly; only first he pronounced the King’s mandate, that no man should relieve or succour her on pain of death, which set many marvelling over the reason which could deliver with one hand and deprive with the other.

Now, Jane Shore rose like one dazed, and the lighted taper fell from her hand, and she looked hither and thither, as if seeking where she could escape in her misery and confusion. And all of a sudden the cold seemed to smite her, and she gathered the sheet about her tender limbs and gave a single cry like a lamb. And in its very utterance she had a desperate inspiration, which was to follow a tall man who all this time had stood close by among the crowd. Something--the shadow of a gesture, the look in his eyes, close under which his hand had gathered his cloak--had seemed to invite her, and when he moved, without appearing to pursue him she followed--on the road to clean living. But was she the first or the only woman helplessly abandoned to the paradoxes of life?

The crowd made way for her, and no man durst follow. Soon she was upon the outskirts of the throng, soon quit of it altogether. Some whispered ribaldries, some rude touches she had to endure, and that was all. She believed that the lure would not have let her lose sight of him; and sure enough there he was going on in front, a noble by token of his jewelled bonnet, with the long pendant gathered from it about his neck, and the rich scarlet hose which showed under his cloak. She thought well, desperate as she was, not to compromise him, and she followed at a distance. He went round by the deserted east end of the church, through the place that was called Old Change, and so, turning sharp down towards the river, made a sudden twist among the confusion of buildings there, and wheeled into a narrow way known as Sermon Lane, where he loitered just sufficiently to enable her to see him disappear into a certain house. Clutching her sheet about her, and watchful of suspicious eyes, she stole on, hesitated a moment, and hurried in his footsteps. She may have been observed or not; in any case she was a contagion whom all avoided. The door closed behind her as she entered and sank against the wall.

“Rise, madam,” he whispered. He was close beside her. His voice was quick and strange.

She burst into tears at once, passionate, heart-rending, exhausting. He let her weep herself out, while she crouched against the wall. Presently, the storm subsiding, she looked half up.

“Will you not give me your cloak?” she said. “I am cold.”

“For no other reason?” he asked.

She slunk down again.

“No,” she said. “That were a poor pretence, and meet for your mockery. I must barter a private place with you against raiment. Even a whore must go covered.”

He stooped and took her, unresisting, in his arms, though she held her face averted. He carried her impassive up the stairs of that dark, unknown house, and all the way there was passion in his hold and grief in his labouring sighs. She knew that they had entered a warm room, that he had shut the door, had placed her gently on a couch by the fire.

“Jane!” he said.

She uttered a quick, wild cry, and started erect, so that the sheet fell from her shoulders.

“Cover them, in mercy to me,” he said.

She stared at him a moment, then went into a sudden hysteric laugh. It stabbed him to the heart to hear her, for her voice had ever been merry and sweet.

“O!” she cried, “that a woman should be so used by her own husband!”

“Nay,” said he--“but that I might know you still not dead to shame.”

The ripple of her laugh stopped as it had begun.

“Why are you so richly dight, Harry?” she said.

“A lure,” he answered, “to lead thee hither. Who would win a King’s mistress must borrow peacock’s plumes.”

She shivered a little, looking down, then whispered hoarse:

“Well, I am well answered. Yet you look like a noble. O, Harry, speak like one!”

“God forbid it, Jane! I will speak like Harry Shore.”

“He loved me once.”

“Aye; he is risking death to prove it.”

She looked up quickly; but before she could speak the door opened, and a little boy peeped into the room. He was caught away in a moment by an unseen hand, and the door closed; but in that instant the woman had snatched her drapery about her nakedness, shamed as she had never been yet.

“A wretch!” she said, her face on fire.

“Saw’st thou his blue eyes and pretty curls?” said the goldsmith. “He is son to my master-setter, whose house this is. I had dreamed once of such a babe, mine own and thine.”

She rose and crept to him, looking in his face. It was a bronzed and honest one, though drawn with pain.

“Harry,” she whispered, “find me clothes and bid me begone--in memory of our once kisses, Harry.”

“They are here,” he said. “Everything is prepared for thee--the means to lead a blameless life henceforth. Summon the woman when I’m gone. I would not have them say I left my wife to starve.”

He put out his arms, passion in his eyes, but withdrew them resolutely.

“Nay,” he said; “in heaven--not yet.”

He fell back a little, and cried out suddenly:

“Your foot, Jane! Poor foot; it bleeds!”

He motioned her to the couch, knelt, lifted the wounded limb, and with his napkin staunched the trickling blood. He held it to his breast, and at last, with a long, yearning sigh, put his lips to it.

“This hath atoned,” he said--“so far I shame myself,” and he rose. “Little sinful wife,” he whispered, “he loved thee once; he loves thee ever; else could he leave thee thus? Now, let me never hear thy name again--for love’s sake do I ask it.”

She had buried her face in the cushions. And there she lay, long after he had gone, weeping out her soul.

THE CHAPLAIN OF THE TOWER

“My son!”

The kneeling figure started slightly, hearing the whisper in its ear, and half turned its face.

“_Domine salvum fac Regem nostrum Ricardum_, my son.”

The Benedictine had stolen list-footed from among the shadows of the great pillars, and stood, a blacker shadow, bending over the solitary worshipper in the darkening chapel of St. John. It was a breathless August evening of the year 1483, and not a sound penetrated to this remote fastness of the Keep.

“God save the King, Father!” answered the suppliant. It was Brackenbury himself, Lieutenant of the Tower, and a sore matter of conscience had brought him to this place. He rose instantly to his feet.

“I say it with all my heart,” quoth he. “God save the King--from numbering himself among his worst enemies.”

“Sh--sh!” whispered the chaplain. “Sh--sh! good Sir John.” He put a finger to his lips, and, motioning the other forth, held him on the outer threshold.

“To ensure the pure succession,” he said low. “This bastard boy, Sir John--a canker that would eat into the State. No safety but in his excision.”

“For the second time,” replied the knight sternly, “take my answer. Question, if you will, the blood that courses in his veins; question not mine. That stoops to no midnight butchery.”

He waved his hand, as if in appeal or protest, towards the chapel, and turned to go. But the priest detained him.

“A moment, good Sir John. The King wills it.”

“He must find a baser instrument.”

“Well so,” said the Benedictine, “well so, good Sir John. Only keep your back to us, saving your honour, and see nothing for a little space.”

The Lieutenant, without another word, strode away, his harness clanging in the vaults.

The covert priest stood listening, a smile, small and hungry, on his lips. He hungered, indeed, had always hungered, for many things--preferment, power, the good immoral gifts of life and indulgences other than Papal. And suddenly, amazingly, it appeared, they were all come within his grasp. He had only to persuade this master of his to a certain deed, by absolving him for it before committed, and a mitre awaited him. It had been whispered in his ear, as he had whispered in Sir John’s. The abbot of his own Order at Westminster was deeply involved with the Queen-Dowager, to whom he had given sanctuary. The crooked King disliked people who sheltered his enemies. A motion of his hand and the chaplain was in the abbot’s place. The seat awaited him--it was stupendous, actual--and, while reaching for it, to be baulked by a scruple of conscience not his own! The thing was intolerable.

Abbot of St. Peter’s! His lips watered, thinking of it; his eyelids blinked and reddened. He was a lean, famished-looking body, with sharp-set features, and a smile perpetually on his mouth between propitiatory and craving. One might have counted his ribs, and never guessed at the dreams of surfeit that wantoned under them. He turned and crept away.

That night a messenger rode from the Tower, following in the wake of the royal progress northwards. He found the King where he lay at Warwick Castle, and, entering to him at midnight, whispered of Sir John’s obstinate density and of the chaplain’s better understanding. A few minutes later Sir James Tyrrell, Master of the King’s Horse, started on his way back to London. He took with him a brace of confidants, fat trusty fellows, whose names should be pilloried throughout the ages. They were John Dighton and Miles Forrest, sinewy miscreants, as callous to suffering as Smithfield butchers. He took also a royal warrant, entrusting to him, for one night only, the custody of the fortress, its keys and passwords; and finally he took, for his personal comfort in the business, a sure conviction of his own damnation. Reaching the Tower, he displayed his commission, locked away all troublesome witnesses, emptied the outer ward, to which the public had access, of its loiterers, and had the place to himself. Having done which, he hastened with his two ruffians to the gate-house where the princes lay.

It was a close, windless night, with thunder brooding over the river. Every stone that slipped under the assassin’s feet jarred his nerves intolerably. He muttered to himself as he walked, wringing his wet forehead. The shadow of a figure that rose upon him from the shadowy porch brought an oath from his lips.

“Who’s that? Answer, and be damned!”

“Hist, good Sir James!” whispered the crawling priest. “Curse not thine own absolver.”

“A blasphemy,” answered Tyrrell; “or God Himself is a villain. Come,” he said intolerantly: “show us the way to hell.”

The Benedictine crossed himself.

“_Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordium tuam_,” he murmured. “Direct our stumbling feet who seek the light by dubious ways. Give me the key, soldier. It were well that I ascended first to report if the children sleep. The better for them, the better for us.”

Bending under a low doorway in the wall of the passage, he disappeared. Tyrrell let out a quaking groan.

“Trip his heels, trip his heels, O, devil my master!” he sighed between his teeth.

The shadow went up the stairs, paused at a certain door, fitted a key into its lock with stealthy caution, listened, and glided into the room beyond. It was small, and fast locked in stone ten feet in thickness. There were windows front and back. Through the former a cresset burning on St. Thomas’s Tower across the ward cast a red flicker upon a couple of pallets standing near side by side against the wall. A sound of unconscious breathing came from these. The evil shadow crept on and stooped.

Blood on the young white face! Fool! it was the painting of the cresset. This deed might seem a pitiful thing were it not for the hunger that seemed a pitifuller. To be abbot--to be bishop--to be cardinal even! Who knew? He glanced down. His own inky cassock was smeared with the scarlet fire. To wade through blood to the Sacred College! Why not? The end expiated all means thereto. There were a score of precedents to justify him. The Abbacy once gained, his power for good would be multiplied a hundredfold. He raised his eyes. The red glare seemed to fill them from within. Something in his interposing shadow appeared to make the younger child behind him uneasy. He stirred and moaned in his sleep. Presently he murmured, with a whimper:

“Take it away, mother!”

He was always her Saxon darling, with the head of gold. She used to call his eyes like cockles in the corn. The shadow stole apart, and, with a sigh, he breathed warm again.

To be abbot! What surer justification of his right than to dispatch these innocent souls to God? They would thank him in the end for much peril spared them. He hesitated no longer, but, leaving the door ajar, descended as he had come.

The human dogs below were straining in their leashes. At a sign Tyrrell motioned them to their work. The two stole up, while their master remained to hold the door. And then came the awful interval.

The blood on the white face! The priest blinked at the cresset flaming high across the yard. Surely it burned with a lurider glow? It was the wind fanning it. Wind? there was no breath of wind in all the dead night. What, then, if not the pipe of wind in passage or keyhole, was that sudden whine which rose upon the silence? With the sweat breaking out on his forehead, he seized a mattock, one of several which had been laid ready, and began frenziedly striking at the ground under the wall. Tyrrell, with a gasping oath, came hurrying to join him.

They dug like madmen, against their own terror and the vision to come. And when at last it announced itself with heave, and shuffle, and the grunting of brute lungs, they would not pause for a moment, but, reinforced, wrought and wrought until the grave was made, and closed in, and their sin covered. And then Tyrrell, summoning his vile grooms, delivered up his trust and rode away for York, with his soul rattling like a dried kernel within him.

The chaplain thought of a prayer for the dead, and bending, with an abject face, to kneel by the grave, saw dark stains on his sandalled feet. He glanced at the burning cresset, stooped and, touching them, looked at his fingers. To wade through blood! With a shudder he thrust his hands out of sight into the wide sleeves of his cassock, and went hurriedly away, drifting across the open ward like the black shadow of a cloud.

But the morning found him restored and unrepentant.

Abbot of St. Peter’s! Day by day, while that preferment was delayed, the hunger ravened in him and the conscience hardened, until his crime, going unrewarded, filled him with an insane and rageful joy. But one evening there came a secret message to him that the King, superstitious after the fashion of the sceptical and world-serving, had taken exception to the place of burial, and desired that the dead should be privately exhumed and reinterred in a place less unconsecrate. Flushed with renewed hope, then, he hugged his confidence, and went with burning eyes about his task.

God knows how he managed to perform it, and alone, and without exciting suspicion. He was lord of his own sacred domain. But, working with demoniac energy, he got out the spoiled young bodies, and conveyed them one by one to the new grave he had himself opened for them under the chapel stairs. There they might repose within sound of the Mass, at peace and at rest for evermore. His imagination, as with monomaniacs, could flow only in one direction. Each day he trod upon the stones that hid his secret, and never faltered or feared. And each day he waited, hungering, for his summons to Westminster.

It came at last--the prize for which he had wrought, and suffered, and bartered his priestly soul. He was in the chapel at the time, and he heard the voice of the Lieutenant calling to him. He hurried out, and saw Sir John standing, citation in hand, at the foot of the stairs.

“Hail, Father Abbot!” quoth the knight, in that derisory tone he had ever assumed towards him since their last interview.

The chaplain, his thin lips chewing out a smile, lingered on the top of the flight. And then, all in a moment, his eyes were seen to fix themselves in a stare of horror, as if some terrific vision opposed them.

“What’s this?” he whispered. “Who put it here?”

The other answered, startled: “I see naught.”

“Ah-ha!”

He threw up his hands with a screech and fell headlong. His neck, as he pitched, doubled under him with a crack, and the body, bowling down, was flung at Sir John’s feet. There, with its head fallen back upon the very stone which locked away its secret, it relaxed and settled.

_He had received the wages and paid the price of blood in one and the same instant._

So died that chaplain of the Tower who alone, out of all the kingdom, could have solved the mystery of the tragic dead. When, on the accession of Henry, it became necessary, for reasons of high policy, to disinter the bodies, the grave under the wall was found to have been violated--only rumour could whisper by whom. One of the actual murderers was dead; the other, together with the late Master of the Horse, being seized and questioned, could throw no light upon the matter. Not until two hundred years had passed was the secret to be unearthed by some masons engaged in repairing the chapel stairs.

And the priest? There was a legend once current of an odd little detail connected with his end. And that was that the body, when picked up, exhibited no marks of injury about the head and neck, only the feet were bloody. It might well have been, seeing whereon they had trodden those many days past.

LADY GODIVA

“Will you not, Leofric?”

“Hence! You weary me.”

“Dear lord?”

“Dear lady. So you plead like a child, the gold circlet in thy hair, the gold hem at thy robe, the gold garters about thy knees. Remission of these dues, quotha! Are gems got with forbearance? Go to! you talk. Wouldst sacrifice one garnet in thy brooch to ease these churls of mine?”

“O, yes! and more.”

“More, more! What more? The garnets of thy lips, perchance, thine eyes’ amethysts, the whole treasury of thy love?”

“Nay, for that is my dear lord’s.”

“What so? You are considerate.”

“Leofric, they come crying at my stirrup: ‘While you lie soft, O lady, we cannot sleep for cold; while you toy with profusion, our children moan for bread. We toil to keep, not pay, a tithe of what we earn. We may not eat the swine we rear, the eels we net. The taxes crush us; pray you our good lord to lift the heavy burden. Our lives are his.’”

“Do they say so? They shall answer for it for thus importuning you.”

“God forbid! Leofric, hear me! For the love of God, Leofric.”

“Away!”

“Of the sweet Virgin----”

“Will you tempt me too much!”

“For thy love of poor Godiva.”

The Earl turned with a roar.

“_My_ love! What of thine, so to scheme to rob me?”

“O, not rob, but give. I would have them love thee as I love.”

“By robbing me. That is a one-sided compact. I see naught but my own loss in it.”

“Alas! I would give my all.”

“A vain boast. What is thine to give?”

She sighed.

“_My_ love, perhaps?” he said, mocking.

She shook her head.

“What is thy dearest possession?” he asked, still bantering. “Most women count their modesty. Wouldst thou give that?”

She said, weeping, “I would trust in Mary.”

He stamped down his foot.

“Trust, then! Strip off thy robe, ride naked through the town--so then I will believe thee.”

She looked up at him amazed. The colour flushed and waned in her round cheek, leaving it a lily white.

“_But will you give me leave to do so?_” she whispered.

“Aye,” he said, breathing scorn.

“And, being done, remit the tolls and set thy people free?”

“On my knightly oath,” he swore, and, in a sudden tickle of humour, chucked her soft chin, and went off between anger and hard laughter.

She was of the stock of Thorold, this young wife, sheriffs of Lincolnshire and a devout and noble family. It had been like garlanding of a bull with flowers, this wedding of her sweet gentleness with the stormy Saxon earl. Yet from the first she had had influence with him. He bore her humorously, one moment reverencing her, the next loving to bring the shameful scarlet to her cheek, and then to crush her about with his arms in mighty protection and ownership. She had a soft white beauty like a rose, and it was good thus to hold her full fragrance against his breast.

Now, trembling a little and her eyes cast down, she sought Father Thomas, the chaplain of the house, and told him all. Was she justified in the venture? she asked him, her voice scarcely audible.

The man was young and erotic, under his habit a sickly craver of emotions. He would often in his inmost soul gloat upon a dream, a thought--wild and scarce conceivable; yet the authority of his cloth was potent. It was a swooning experience to him to be near her day by day, to feel the leaning of her soul towards his, to handle the soft places of her conscience. Accepting what was regard for his office as regard for the priest, he would whisper to himself: “Even greater miracles have come to pass.” Wherefore now, moistening his dry lips and thinking of her loveliness, he answered her with the Greek proverb: “A little evil is a great good. You are justified, my daughter.”

She turned and fled from him with a strangled cry. Perhaps she had hoped against hope to find her venture banned by Mother Church; perhaps, unrecognised by herself, the pure spirit in her had recoiled from contact with a thing unclean. Yet he was God’s servant, and he had spoken.

For days after, awaiting the ordeal, she walked as in a nightmare, a rose of fever in her cheek. She named the hour of her trial, and sent her herald forth to cry it, and to pray all human creatures of their love to spare her shame, since she was consecrating her womanhood to their salvation, and offering herself for their sakes to be exposed on this pillory. And a sound like a wind went throughout the town, and each soul there, from thrall to freedman, kindled like dull fire blown upon, and dropped upon his knees to call the bitter curse of Heaven on him that should prove a traitor to such trust. And Godiva heard and sighed; yet she could not escape that sense of soilure in her, since to a spotless soul it is defilement enough to be outraged in a dreamer’s thought. “O, Mother Mary, ward and hide me!” she prayed perpetually.

Her lord learned the truth amazed. She was resolved, then, after all? She would take him at his word to browbeat and defy him? Yet he would not interfere, nor move one step to control her. But ever in his frowning eyes was a shadow like death, and on his lips a muttered curse: “Will she do it? Will she do it? A wanton--no wife of mine.” And, thinking so, he let her have her way, even to the brief command of all his house and borough.

Now, on that day of sacrifice, by noon all Coventry was like a city of the dead. The last step had echoed from its streets; the voice of lean barter was hushed; behind veiled windows a thousand ears were strained in thrill and ecstasy to hear the tinkle of a palfry’s feet upon the stones without. Only one sacrilegious hound, doomed to eternal infamy, could be found to slur the honest record--a small, livid-faced man, slinking like a fearful thief, his cowl pulled over his eyes, up the steps of the Byward tower by the castle gate. Father Thomas it was, who had left Godiva in the chapel prostrate before the figure of the Virgin, praying for strength to do her part. It was only right, he told himself, licking his pale lips, that the Church should sanction this live-offering by its presence.

The Castle had fallen as silent as the town. Its inmates whispered apart, or wept if they were women. Its great gate was flung open, its battlements were deserted, its windows stopped and eyeless; only in the courtyard a single creamy jennet, fastened to a pillar, champed and fretted for her rider.

The frowning Leofric, his ear bent to a curtain close at hand, fingered his sword-hilt as he waited listening. His fair Saxon face, clean-shaved but for the corn-coloured beard which forked from its chin like a swallow’s tail, was flushed a deep red; the muscles of his bare arms and thighs, white against his purple gold-hemmed tunic, twitched spasmodically; the leggings of twisted gold upon his calves seemed to undulate like snake-skin.

“She shall die first!” he kept muttering to himself. “She shall die first!”

A soft step whispered on the stones; he heard the mare whinny, her trappings clinked. “Now!” he muttered, and, drawing his blade, parted the curtain noiselessly and looked forth. In the very act he staggered and flung his hand across his face.

His wife--no question of it! But so etherealised, so remote from his carnal conception of her, that his soul shrank abashed before the spirit his ruthless challenge had evoked. Her hair was down, veiling her from crown to pearly thigh. A nimbus, painted by the sunlight in its gossamer, seemed to hang about her head. Through golden mist budded a rose of lips, a thought of blue eyes flowered, like little eyes of heaven seen through a haze of dawn. So glorified in her sacrifice, seen, but unseeing, she went by him and disappeared, silent as a figure in a glass. He stood like one turned suddenly to stone.

Full ten minutes must have passed before, coming again to consciousness, as it were, he bethought himself that she would be returning in a little, her task accomplished.

“_Introibo ad altare Mariæ!_” he sighed, amazed. “I will pray my love’s forgiveness. I am not worthy to kiss her little latchet.”

He clanked his sword into its scabbard, and, going like a blind man, sought the chapel. The lamp before the altar shone like a star; all the dusk air seemed thick with scent of roses; and before the shrine of the Virgin lay his wife prostrate on the stones.

He stood a moment as if death-smitten; the blood about his heart seemed to stagnate and leave him grey as ashes. Then fury was born in him, and flamed to fire.

“A trick!” he stormed within. “She hath bribed another to take her place.”

He strode roughly forward, bent, and seized the body to his arms. She never moved or spoke. Looking in her face, he saw its eyes closed, its cheek stone-white. No breath came from the parted lips.

“Dead!” he whispered. “My God! have I killed her?”

Raising his eyes in anguish, he saw the shrine empty. The painted figure of the Virgin proper to it was gone. At that moment a sound of horse’s hoofs striking upon the stones outside came to his ear. She was returning! She--who? An awe as of immortality smote into his veins. The body in his arms stirred, and a deep sigh issued from its lips.

“Mother so dear, Mother without stain, protect and cover me thy child with the mantle of thy chastity. I am ready, Mother.”

Her fingers trembled to her belt. Leofric, with a gasp of emotion, caught and held them. “Mother?” he choked, and, looking up, saw the figure in its place once more.

* * * * *

There was a distant cry of jubilance, swelling to a roar, and then near at hand another, on a new and startled note. Something had befallen in the castle--something as unexpected as it was very fearful in its revelation. In a chamber of the Byward tower they had come upon the body of the priest. There was an augur in its crooked clutch, and in the boarded shutter of the window a hole to correspond. The body lay decently, and undefiled of blood, but where the eyes should have been were two burnt and blackened sockets.

A judgment, said the people; but only Leofric and Godiva ever knew of what tremendous import. Divine is beauty, and those who would view it unveiled must risk Actæon’s fate.

THE HERO OF WATERLOO

Colonel Manton put up his rod and demanded to be set ashore. It had been his first experience of coarse fishing on the river, and it had not proved to his taste. It was not that the perch had been distant or the chub unapproachable. On the contrary, the place having been ground-baited overnight, the sport had been excellent. It was the worms and one other thing which decided him. He had been present at Talavera, at Ciudad Rodrigo, at Badajos, at Vittoria, at Quatre Bras, at Waterloo; he had seen as much carnage as most men, but this bloodless impaling of lob-worms on hooks, and then casting them, so transfixed, to lie writhing on the river bottom for an indefinite period at the end of a ledger-line, offended his sense of fitness. It was not, it seemed to him, playing the game. The worms had no chance, and they could not bite back. He hated to sit there and think of what was going on under the quiet water, and the reflection gained nothing in relish from the fact that, by refusing to soil his own hands with the viscous contortions of the creatures, he must appear, in delegating that operation to the boatman, to torture by deputy, like the most cowardly of Eastern despots. And so when, as presently happened, this same stolid deputy, in “disgorging” an obstinate hook from a barbel’s throat tore away---- But it is enough to say that the Colonel put down his rod and demanded there and then to be set ashore.

There was no gainsaying him, of course. It was sufficient that he was the guest of a distinguished General living at Datchet; but in addition to this the Colonel’s personal actions invited no criticism. He fished--as he walked, as he rode, as he appeared on all secular occasions--in a dark blue wasp-waisted frock-coat with frogs, in tight nankeen trousers strapped under neat insteps, in a stiff collar and full black stock, in a tall hat with a brim so crescented that its front peak looked like the “nasal” of a Norman helmet. And for the rest he carried himself and his white moustache with the conscious authority of a cock of a hundred fights.

The boatman put him ashore on the river-bank some half-mile below Datchet, towards which village he immediately addressed his steps. The path was lonely and unfrequented, and it gave the Colonel some surprise to observe, as he turned a clump of bushes, a fashionable old beau toddling along it in front of him. In a few moments the latter paused, nonplussed, at a stile, and the Colonel came up with him.

The pedestrian was a man of uncouth bulk but distinguished mien. He wore a black frock-coat of a somewhat military cut, with a rich fur collar. Curly auburn locks, obviously artificial, showed beneath the brim of his glossy hat, and accented somewhat ghastfully the puffy pallor of a face whose texture betrayed its age. His eyes had a glutinous, half-blind appearance; his loose lower lip perpetually trembled. He peered at the newcomer, panting a good deal, as if the sudden apparition had shaken his nerves.

“If I may venture, sir,” said Colonel Manton, and proffered his arm. The other accepted it to mount the stile. It was an ungraceful business, and, once over, he stood, with his hands to his sides, vibrating heavily, like a worn-out engine, to his own respirations. Presently he was sufficiently recovered to speak.

“A damned obstruction--a damned obstruction! Cannot I leave my carriage a moment to walk round by the water but this annoyance must appear in my path!”

“A villainous stile,” said the Colonel. “We will indict it for a trespass.”

He was a reasonable man, and he felt the absurdity of the complaint. But, to his surprise, his sarcasm missed fire.

“Do so, do so,” said the old gentleman, and took his arm again, as it might have been his own walking-stick. They went on together, and in a little the stranger had opened a conversation with all the effrontery in the world.

“My boy, what’s your rank?” said he. “I perceive you are a soldier.”

The officer stared, and drew himself up.

“Colonel Manton, sir, at your service,” he answered distantly.

He was surprised; but the man was old, near seventy by his appearance, and very possibly from his cut a retired veteran like himself. Familiarity from a general, say, would be pardonable, and even kindly. Besides, he did not dislike the implied suggestion of juniority.

“Hey!” said the stranger--“retired?”

“Yes, sir, retired.”

“Brevet rank?”

“Brevet be damned!” said Colonel Manton hotly. “I owe my promotion, sir, if you wish to know, to Waterloo.”

The stranger glanced at him with a curiously sly look, and pinched the arm on which his own fingers rested.

“What!” he said, “were you there?”

“I had the honour, sir,” said the Colonel grandiloquently, “of playing my little part in that Homeric contest.”

“Whose division, hey?”

“Picton’s--Pack’s brigade. You are a little--you will excuse my saying it--particular.”

“Certainly I will, my boy. Wounded--hey?”

A distinct flush suffused the Colonel’s cheek.

“Wounded--yes,” he replied shortly.

The old fellow nudged him confidentially.

“Tell me,” he said--“how?”

“Look here--you must forgive me, you know,” exploded the Colonel; “but I must point out that we are strangers. Still--as a fellow-campaigner--if that is the case--may I ask, sir, if _you_ were at Waterloo?”

The other laughed enjoyingly.

“_Was_ I?” he said. “To be sure I was. You had all good reason for knowing it.”

Colonel Manton’s eyes opened. Here was a momentous implication. Evidently he had to do with some great general of division, though the boast sounded a little extravagant and unmilitary. He ran over in his mind a dozen possible names, but without success. And then the thought occurred to him: “Good reason for knowing it? What the devil! Is it possible he was on the other side?”

The idea seemed too preposterous for belief; the stranger was so obviously British. Who, in wonder’s name, could he be, then? Hill, Macdonnell, Saltoun, Uxbridge, Vandeleur, Somersett, Hackett--all divisional or brigadier-generals? He could not identify him, of his knowledge, with any one of these. The Iron Duke himself? He had never been brought into very close personal contact with the great man, but naturally he was familiar with his features. Could it be possible that time had so fused and blunted those that their characteristic contour had degenerated into this scarce distinguishable pulp? Prosperity, he knew, could play strange tricks with countenances, yet a _volte-face_ so revolutionary seemed incredible. And yet who else but the Duke had been on that day as indispensable as implied? But it was conceivable that some might have so regarded themselves--that certain heads might have been turned by their share in the success of so stupendous a victory.

Colonel Manton had been living abroad on his half-pay for some years, and, until the occasion of this visit during the summer of 1830, had dwelt for long a stranger to his native land. He could but suppose that he had in a measure lost the clue, through subsequent developments, to old events. It remained clear only that he was in the presence of one who had, or believed himself to have, contributed signally to the success of the epoch-making battle. And that must be enough for him. He spoke thenceforth as a subordinate to his commanding officer.

“I beg your indulgence, sir,” he said. “I have been absent from my country for a considerable time, and features once familiar elude me. You asked about my wound. It is a ridiculous matter, and I recall it without enthusiasm. The fact is that, when d’Erlon’s guns were pounding us before the advance, a ball smashed the head of a sergeant standing near me, and one of the fellow’s cursed double-teeth was driven into my neck. It was not enough to cripple my fighting-power, but I would have given a dozen of my own to boast a more honourable scar.”

The stranger chuckled.

“Scars are not the only guarantee of valour,” he said.

The Colonel ventured: “You brought away some of your own, sir?”

“No,” said the old fellow. “No; Wellington and I got off scot-free.”

The Colonel dared again: “Were you, may I ask, on his personal staff?”

“Well, yes,” said the stranger, chuckling still more, “I suppose you might call it that.”

Suppose? Colonel Manton gaped. It was positively a matter of history that not one of that staff had escaped death or mutilation. The other may have noticed his perplexity, for he turned on him with an air of sudden annoyance.

“You haven’t the assurance to question my word, I hope, sir?” he demanded.

“Certainly not,” answered the Colonel.

“I could give you convincing proof,” said the stranger. “Did the Commander-in-Chief--now did he or did he not--visit General Blücher at Wavre the night before the battle to make sure of his co-operation?”

“It is a disputed point, sir,” said the Colonel. “I believe that even his Grace has been known to contradict himself in the matter, saying at one time that he would never have fought without Blücher’s explicit promise to back him up, at another flatly contradicting the report that he saw the Prussian general on the night before the battle.”

“And he did not, my boy,” sniggered the old fellow triumphantly, “for his interview with him was after midnight, and therefore on the day _of_ the battle. I ought to know, _for I sent him off there myself_.”