Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  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 stai
rs 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.