God and the King

by Marjorie Bowen

  CHAPTER I

  VITA SINE AMOR MORS EST

  Henry Sidney, Lord Romney, and the Earl of Portland were walking up anddown the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. It was the end of April--abitter spring following a severe winter; constant clouds blotted out thesun, and sudden falls of snow had left the square of grass in the centreof the cloisters wet and white.

  The Earl, muffled to the chin in a red mantle, and carrying a great muffof brown fur, was talking earnestly to Lord Romney, who, though afeather-head and useless in politics, was more loved by the King thanany Englishman, and of unimpeachable loyalty to the throne.

  "This," said Portland, with energy, "is death or madness--nay, worsethan either, for he is but a figure of himself that deceiveth us intothinking we have a King."

  "God knoweth," returned Romney, who looked old and worn, sad anddejected, "never have we so needed his wisdom and his courage. Whom canwe trust since the death of Her Majesty? Not even my Lord Nottingham."

  "Sunderland," said the Earl, "is creeping back to favour--the knave oftwo reigns, who would get a third King in his clutches--and the LordKeeper is very active in the House. Now I have done what I can totransact necessary business since the Queen's death--but I cannot domuch, for the malice against foreigners is incredible----"

  "No one but the King can do anything!" broke out Romney.

  "I at least can do no more," admitted Portland. "And certainly my heartmisgiveth me that this is going to be the end--in miserable failure."

  "Why--not failure," protested the Englishman.

  Portland paused by the clustered pillars which divided the open windows;a few ghastly flakes of snow were falling from a disturbed sky againstthe worn, crumbling, and grey masonry.

  "Miserable failure," repeated the Earl; his fine fair face was pale andstern in the colourless shadows of the heavy arches. "Parliament needetha leader, the Republic needeth her magistrate, the allies theircommander--there is very much to do--with every day, more--and the manwho should do it is as useless as a sick girl."

  "I think," said Romney, with some gentleness, "that his heart isbroken."

  "A man," flashed Portland, "hath no right to a broken heart. Good God,could we not all discover broken hearts if we took time to probe them?I know the Queen's worth, what she was to him, and all of us--but is sheserved by this weakness of grief? He would best commemorate her bymaking no pause in his task."

  "That is a hard doctrine," answered the Englishman half sadly.

  "It is a hard fate to be a great man, my lord--the destinies of nationsare not made easily nor cheaply. When the King began his task he wasprepared for the price--he should not now shirk the paying of it----"

  "It is higher than he thought would be exacted, my lord."

  Portland answered sternly--

  "You surely do not understand. What was she, after all, but anincident? He had been ten years at his work before she came."

  The snow fell suddenly, and, caught and whirled by a powerful wind,filled the air with a thick whiteness like spreading smoke; it blewagainst the two gentlemen, and in a second covered their mantles withglittering crystals.

  Romney stepped back and shook it from him.

  "Shall we not go into the church," he said, with a shiver, "and persuadethe King return?"

  "It doth not matter if he be at her grave or in his cabinet," answeredPortland gloomily, "since his temper is the same wherever he be."

  Romney turned towards the low door that led into the Abbey.

  "Did you mark," he said irrelevantly, "that the robin was still on hergravestone?"

  "Yes," replied Portland; "it hath been singing there since she wasburied."

  They entered the large, mysterious church. The snowstorm had soobscured the light from the tall, high windows that the columns, roof,and tombs were alike enveloped in a deep shade; it was very cold and theair hung misty and heavy.

  Above the altar, to their right, swung a red burning lamp that gave nolight, but showed as a sudden gleam of crimson.

  On the altar itself burnt four tall candles that gleamed on the polishedgold sacred vessels and faintly showed the sweep of marble and theviolet-hued carpet beyond the brass rails which divided the altar fromthe steps.

  There was only one person visible in this large, cold, dark church, andthat was a man in the front pew, entirely in black, who neither sat norknelt, but drooped languidly against the wooden rest in front of him,with his face hidden in his right hand.

  Portland and Romney took off their hats and approached the altar; theyhad nearly reached it before they noticed the King, whom they had leftat his wife's grave.

  Their footsteps were very noticeable in the sombre stillness. The Kinglooked up and rose, holding heavily to the arm of the pew.

  Romney hesitated, but Portland stepped up to William.

  "We had best return, sire."

  The King was silent, his eyes fixed on the altar and the fluttering goldlight that dwelt there--a radiance in the gloom.

  Portland touched his arm and he moved then, with no sign of animation,towards the Abbey door; his two friends followed shivering in the greatspaces of the church that were more bitterly cold than the outer air.

  The King's eyes turned to the shadowed dark aisles which led to thechapel of the seventh Henry and the spot where the Queen, a few monthsago young, and beautiful, and gay, now lay among her royal kinsmen, dustwith dust.

  The King opened the heavy door and stepped out into the bitter light ofthe snowstorm which hid sky and houses, whitened the coach waiting andthe liveries of the impatient footmen who walked about in the endeavourto keep warm. The King himself was in an instant covered from head tofoot; he gave a lifeless shudder as one so sick with life that sun andsnow were alike to him.

  He entered the coach and the two lords followed him; there was no wordspoken; his friends had lost heart in the fruitless endeavour ofcomfort; he had scarcely spoken since the Queen's death, scarcely raisedhis eyes; for six weeks he had remained in his chamber, and now he cameabroad it was to no purpose, for he took no interest in anything inlife.

  He gave himself much to religious observances, and was often closetedwith the Archbishop; he uttered no word of complaint, never even hadmentioned his wife's name, which was the more remarkable after the firstfrantic passion of his grief; he would attend to no business and see noone; he replied to the addresses of the Houses only by a few incoherentwords; his answers as they appeared in the _Gazette_ were written byPortland.

  He fainted often, and his spirits sunk so low that the doctors feared hewould die of mere apathy, for all their devices were useless to rousehim to any desire to live.

  Portland could do nothing. M. Heinsius, Grand Pensionary of Holland,wrote in vain from The Hague; that long, intimate, and importantcorrespondence was broken by the King for the first time since hisaccession; the allies clamoured in vain for him whose guidance alonekept the coalition together; factions raged in parliament with noauthority to check them; the Jacobites raised their heads again, and,the moment the breath was out of the Queen, began their plots for aFrench invasion and the assassination of the one frail life that stoodfor the forces of Protestantism; this was generally known, though notproved, but the King cared for none of it.

  The home government, since the retirement of Leeds after the East Indiascandal, was in many hands, mostly incompetent; foreign affairs faredworse, for these the King had always kept almost entirely in his owncontrol, and had scarcely even partially trusted any of his Englishministers on these matters, that, as he was well aware, neither theirknowledge nor their characters fitted them to deal with. Portland heldmany of the clues to the King's immense and intricate internationalpolicy, and he had done what he could with matters that could not wait,but he could not do everything, nor do anything for long, and what hecould not do was left undone.

  As the Royal coach swung into Whitehall courtyard the sudden snowstormhad ceased and a pale, c
old ray of sun pierced the disturbed clouds.

  The King had lately taken a kind of horror to his villa at Kensington,and resided at Whitehall, though he had always detested this palace, andthe foul air of London was perilous to his health.

  There was, however, no pretence even of a Court. The ladies, with theirmusic, their sewing, their cards and tea drinking, had vanished; thePrincess Anne, nominally reconciled to the King, lived at St. James's,and no woman came to Court now; the great galleries, chambers, andcorridors were empty save for a few Dutch sentries and ushers and anoccasional great lord or foreign envoy waiting to ask my Lord Portlandwhen His Majesty would be fit to do business.

  Without a word or a look to any the King passed through the antechamberto his private apartments. Portland stopped to speak to LordSunderland, who was talking to the Lord Keeper, Sir John Somers, theWhig lawyer, as industrious, as honest, and as charming as any man inEngland, and an extraordinary contrast to Sunderland in character. Thetwo were, however, for a moment in league, and had together broughtabout that reconciliation of the King and the Princess Anne that set thethrone on a firmer basis, though neither had as yet dared to bringforward my Lord Marlborough.

  Romney, who disliked the everyday virtues of the middle-class LordKeeper, would have preferred to follow the King, but William gave him noinvitation, but entered his apartments and closed the door, so he had tojoin the little group of three.

  Their talk was for a while of general matters--of the heats inparliament and the prospects of the campaign of the allies under Waldeckand Vaudemont; each was silent about the matter uppermost in hismind--the recovery of the King. Portland, the lifelong friend, upright,noble, stern; Romney, gay, impulsive, shallow, but loyal and honest;Somers, worthy, tireless, a Whig, and of the people; Sunderland,aristocrat and twice told a traitor, shameless, secretive, andfascinating, by far the finest statesman of the four--all these had oneobject in common, to rouse the man on whom depended the whole machineryof the English government and the whole fate of the huge coalitionagainst France, which had taken twenty years to form.

  Sunderland, heartily disliked by the other three, yet master of all ofthem, suddenly, with delicate precision, came to the heart of thematter.

  "Unless all Europe is to slip back into the hands of France," he said,"the King _must_ take up his duties."

  "This temper of his is making him most unpopular," remarked Somers, who,honestly grateful to his master, had always endeavoured to turn peopleand parliament to an affection for the King. "Though the Queen wasgreatly beloved they resent this long mourning."

  "She held the King and country together," answered Sunderland. "HerEnglish birth, her tactful, pretty ways did His Majesty more servicehere than a deal of statecraft--the Jacks know that; the country isswarming with them, and unless it is all to end in disaster--the King_must_ act his old part."

  Portland flushed.

  "You say so, my lord, but who is to rouse a man utterly prostrate?Nothing availeth to draw him from his sloth."

  "He is neither dead nor mad," said Sunderland calmly. "And grief is athing that may be mastered. He should go to Flanders in May and takecommand of the allies."

  "It is impossible!" broke out Sidney. "Did you mark him but now? Hehardly lifts his eyes from the floor, and I have not heard him speak oneword these ten days."

  Sunderland answered quietly--

  "A man who hath done what he hath cannot utterly sink into apathy--thereis a spirit in him which must respond, if it be but rightly calledupon."

  "Will _you_ assay to rouse His Majesty?" asked Portland haughtily.

  Sunderland's long eyes narrowed.

  "I am bold to try where your lordship hath failed," he said, with adeference that was like insolence; "but it is a question of greatmatters, and I will make the trial."

  "You will make it in vain, my lord," answered Romney. "The King isbeyond even your arts."

  Sunderland delicately lifted his shoulders.

  "We can but see." He looked rather cynically round the other three men."If the King is out of the reach of reason it is as well we should knowit, my lords."

  Portland did not reply. He bitterly resented that this man, whom hescorned and despised, should gain this intimacy with the King'sweakness; but he led the way to William's apartments. He had practicallycontrol of affairs since the King's collapse, and no one questioned hiscoming or going.

  They found William in his cabinet that overlooked the privy gardens, atthe bottom of which the river rolled black and dismal in contrast to theglitter of the snow on the paths and flowerbeds.

  The King sat by the window, gazing out on this prospect, his head sunkon his breast and his left arm along the sill of the window. Thecrimson cut crystal bracelet round his wrist was the only light orcolour on his person, for he wore no sword, and his heavy black clotheswere unbraided and plain; the considerable change in his appearance waslargely heightened by this complete mourning, for he had seldom beforeworn black, having, indeed, a curious distaste to it. He had been bornin a room hung with funeral trappings and lit only with candles, and forthe first months of his life never left this black chamber, which hadcaused, perhaps, a certain revulsion in him to the sables of mourning,which he had worn only once before, when, a pale child of ten, he hadbeen dressed in black for his young mother, that other Mary Stewartwhose coffin lay in Westminster within a few feet of that of his wife.

  He did not seem to notice that any had entered upon his privacy.Portland glanced back at Romney and the Lord Keeper with a look thatseemed to convey that he felt hopeless of my Lord Sunderland doing whathe had boasted; but that lord went forward with his usual quietcarriage.

  A large fire filled the room with cheerful light that glowed on thepolished Dutch pottery and rich Dutch pictures on the mantelshelf andwalls. On a marquetry bureau, with glittering brass fuchsia-shapedhandles, was a pile of unopened letters, and amid them a blue-glazedearthenware dragon that used to stand in the Queen's withdrawing-room atHampton Court.

  Sunderland paused, looking at the King. The three other men remainedinside the door, watching with painful attention.

  "Sire," said the Earl, "there is news from France. M. de Luxembourg,who was your greatest enemy, is dead."

  The King did not move.

  "It is a great loss to King Louis," added Sunderland. "They say M. deVilleroy is to have the command."

  William slowly turned his head and looked at the speaker, but withoutinterest or animation, almost, it seemed, without recognition.

  Sunderland came nearer. A book was lying on the window-seat, he glancedat it--it was Dr. Tenison's sermon on the text, "I have sworn and amsteadfastly purposed to keep thy righteous judgments," which had beenpreached after the Queen's death, and printed by the King's command.

  Sunderland spoke again.

  "The Whigs have ousted my Lord Leeds and his friend Trevor--and continueto press heavily upon him."

  Again it was doubtful if the King heard; he fixed his large mournfuleyes steadily upon the Earl, and made no sign nor answer.

  Sunderland, finding neither of these matters touched the King, drew fromthe bosom of his grey satin waistcoat a roll of papers.

  "Sir Christopher Wren showed me these this morning," he said, "anddoubted if he dared bring them to Your Majesty. They are those plans forthe turning of Greenwich Palace into a hospital that Her Majesty hadever at heart."

  The three men watching caught their breath at the delicate bluntness ofmy lord. This time there could be no doubt that the King had heard; hemade some incoherent answer and held out his hand for the plans, whichhe unrolled and gazed at.

  "It should be a noble monument," said the Earl softly, "to Her Majestyand those who fell at La Hogue fight. Sir Christopher would have aninscription along the river frontage saying she built it, and a statueof her--looking along the Thames to London."

  The King answered in a low voice--

  "Let it be put in hand at once."

  "Will Your Majesty see
Sir Christopher?"

  William lifted his eyes from the drawings.

  "No--let him get to work," he murmured; then, after a second, "Do younot think it will be a worthy monument?"

  "So fine that I can but think of one more worthy," answered Sunderland.

  A languid colour touched the King's hollow cheek.

  "What is that?"

  "The completion of Your Majesty's life-work."

  There was silence. The King paled again and looked out of the window.

  "I cannot talk of business," he said hoarsely, after a while.

  "I speak of the Queen--her wishes," answered Sunderland. "She greatlydesired the building of Greenwich Hospital, but she still more desiredthe preservation of this realm--and of the Republic."

  At this last word the King gave a little shiver.

  "The Republic," repeated Sunderland, "needeth Your Majesty."

  William looked round again--his face was troubled.

  "You speak to a dead man," he said, in a hurried whisper. "I havefinished."

  "If that be so," replied the Earl, "we and the United Provinces arelost, and King Louis will triumph after all, yea, after all the toil,and loss, and patience, and endeavour, France will triumph over Europe.Your Majesty had better not have flung the gauntlet in '72--better tohave bowed to France then than submit now."

  The King seemed disturbed; he laid the plans of Greenwich down and movedhis hands restlessly.

  "I am not fit for--anything," he muttered. "I am not capable ofmilitary command--there are others--I have been at this work twentyyears--let some other take it up----"

  "There is no other," said Sunderland. "This is Your Majesty's task, andno one else can undertake it."

  The King looked round in a desperate fashion; he saw the three men atthe other end of the room.

  "Why do you come bating me?" he asked. "I tell you there is nothingmore in me"--he laid his hand on his heart--"all is dead--here."

  A sudden violent cough shook him; he gasped with pain.

  "In a few months I shall be with her," he added, and his voice was soweak and shaken that Sunderland could scarcely catch the words.

  "Doth not Your Majesty believe in predestination?"

  William was silent.

  "Doth not Your Majesty believe that God hath some further use for you?"

  The King answered simply and with infinite sadness--

  "I think He hath had from me all the work I am capable of."

  "No," said Sunderland. "Your greatest tasks, your greatest victorieslie before you. William of Nassau will not die while the battle rageth.God, who put you in the vanguard of the world, will not let you fall outwith the deserters."

  The King drew a sharp breath; he seemed considerably moved and agitated;his dark eyes turned to Sunderland.

  "What is it to you whether I fail or no?" he asked wildly.

  The Earl smiled.

  "I stand for England, sire. Besides that, I always believed in you, andyou are the only man in Europe worth serving."

  William flushed.

  "You speak very boldly."

  "I spoke boldly to Your Majesty in '77. I said to you then, you are thePrince for England--your moment will come. The little things, sir,often clog, and hamper, and bewilder, but in the end the big thingswin--as Your Majesty will win, though through wearisome ways. Sir,kingdoms are large stakes. Sir, to be a champion of a creed is a greatresponsibility, and he who taketh it up must forgo the grief of commonmen, for surely his tears are demanded as well as his blood."

  William sat motionless, with his hand to his side.

  "You think I can take it all up again?" he asked, in his hoarse,strained voice. "My God! I think it is too late."

  Sunderland turned and whispered something to Somers, who left the room;to the King he said--

  "I entreat Your Majesty see a young officer new come from Flanders."