It was a couple of months after his leaving Chartley before he came at last to Booth’s Edge. First he had had to bestow Mr. Arnold in Lancashire. He had slowly travelled north; then, coming round about from the north, after leaving his friend, saying Mass here and there where he could, crossing into Yorkshire even as far west as Wakefield, he had come at last, through this wet November day, along the Derwent valley and up to Booth’s Edge, where he arrived after sunset, to find the hall filled with folks to greet him.
He was smiling himself, though his eyes were full of tears, by the time that he had done giving his blessings. Mr. John FitzHerbert was come up from Padley, where he lived now for short times together, greyer than ever, but with the same resolute face. Mistress Alice Babington was there, still serene looking, but with a new sorrow in her eyes; and, clinging to her, a thin, pale girl all in black, who only two months before had lost both daughter and husband; for the child had died scarcely a week or two before her father, Anthony Babington, had died miserably on the gallows near St. Giles’ Fields, where he had so often met his friends after dark. It was a ghastly tale, told in fragments to Robin here and there during his journeyings by men in taverns, before whom he must keep a brave face. And a few farmers were there, old Mr. Merton among them, come in to welcome the son of the Squire of Matstead, returned under a feigned name, unknown even to his father, and there, too, was honest Dick Sampson, come up from Dethick to see his old master. So here, in the hall he knew so well, himself splashed with red marl from ankle to shoulder, still cloaked and spurred, one by one these knelt before him, beginning with Marjorie herself, and ending with the youngest farm-boy, who breathed heavily as he knelt down and got up round-eyed and staring.
“And his Reverence will hear confessions,” proclaimed Marjorie to the multitude, “at eight o’clock to-night; and he will say Mass and give Holy Communion at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
VIII
He had to hear that night, after supper, and before he went to keep his engagement in the chapel-room, the entire news of the county; and, in his turn, to tell his own adventures.
Robin was no story-teller; but for half an hour he was forced to become one, until his hearers were satisfied. Even here, in the distant hills, Mary’s name was a key to a treasure-house of mysteries. It was through this country, too, that she had passed again and again. It was at old Chatsworth that she had passed part of her captivity; it was in Derby that she had halted for a night last year; it was near Burton that she had slept two months ago on her road to Fotheringay, whither she had been moved last September, and to hear now of her, from one who had spoken to her that very autumn, was as a revelation. So Robin told it as well as he could.
“And it may be,” he said, “that I shall have to go again. Mr. Bourgoign said that he would send to me if he could. But I have heard no word from him.” (He glanced round the watching faces.) “And I need not say that I shall hear no word at all, if the tale I have told you leak out.”
“Perhaps she hath a chaplain again,” said Mr. John, after a pause.
“I do not think so,” said the priest. “If she had none at Chartley, she would all the less have one at Fotheringay.”
“And it may be you will be sent for again?” asked Marjorie’s voice gently from the darkness.
“It may be so,” said the priest.
“The letter is to be sent here?” she asked.
“I told Mr. Bourgoign so.”
“Does any other know you are here?”
“No, Mistress Marjorie.”
There was a pause.
“It is growing late,” said Mr. John. “Will your Reverence go upstairs with me; and these ladies will come after, I think.”
If it had been a great day for Robin that he should come back to his own country after six years, and be received in this house of strange memories; that he should sit upstairs as a priest, and hear confessions in that very parlour where nearly seven years ago he had sat with Marjorie as her accepted lover—if all this had been charged, to him, with emotions and memories which, however he had outgrown them, yet echoed somewhere wonderfully in his mind; it was no less a kind of climax and consummation to the girl whose house this was, and who had waited so long to receive back a lover who came now in so different a guise.
Yet her memories of him that remained in her had, of course, a place in her heart; and, though she knelt before him presently in the little parlour where once he had kneeled before her, as simply as a child before her father, and told her sins, and received Christ’s pardon, and went away to make room for the next—though all this was without a reproach in her eyes; yet, as she went she knew that she must face a fresh struggle, and a temptation that would not have been one-tenth so fierce if it had been some other priest that was in peril. That peril was Fotheringay, and that temptation lay in the knowledge that when that letter should come (as she knew in her heart it would come), it would be through her hands that it would pass—if it passed indeed.
While the others went to the priest one by one, Marjorie kneeled in her room, fighting with a devil that was not yet come to her, as is the way with sensitive consciences.
CHAPTER V
I
THE SUSPENSE at Fotheringay grew deeper with every day that passed.
Christmas was come and gone, and no sign was made from London, so far, at least, as the little town was concerned. There came almost daily from the castle new tales of slights put upon the Queen, and now and again of new favours granted to her. Her chaplain, withdrawn for a while, had been admitted to her again a week before Christmas; a crowd had collected to see the Popish priest ride in, and had remarked on his timorous air; and about the same time a courier had been watched as he rode off to London, bearing, it was rumoured, one last appeal from one Queen to the other.
But all this had happened before Christmas, and now a month had gone by, and nothing was truly known the one way or the other. It had been proclaimed, by trumpet, in every town in England, that sentence of death was passed; yet this was two or three months ago, and the knowledge that the warrant had not yet been signed seemed an argument to some that now it never would be.
A group was waiting (as a group usually did wait) at the village entrance to the new bridge lately built by her Grace of England, towards sunset on an evening late in January. This situation commanded, so far as was possible, every point of interest. It was the beginning of the London road, up which so many couriers had passed; it was over this bridge that her Grace of Scotland herself had come from her cross-country journey from Chartley. On the left, looking northwards, rose the great old collegiate church, with its graceful lantern tower, above the low thatched stone houses of the village; on the right, adjoining the village beyond the big inn, rose the huge keep of the castle and its walls, within its double moats, ranged in form of a fetterlock of which the river itself was its straight side. Beyond, the low rolling hills and meadows met the chilly January sky.
A little more material had been supplied for conversation by the events of to-day. It had positively been reported, by a fellow who had been to see about a room for himself in the village, that he had been turned out of the castle to make space for her Grace’s chaplain. This was puzzling. Had not the Popish priest already been in the castle five or six weeks? Then why should he now require another chamber?
The argument waxed hot by the bridge. One said that it was another priest that was come in disguise; another, that once a Popish priest got a foothold in a place he was never content till he got the whole for himself; a third, that the fellow had simply lied, and that he was turned out because he had been caught by Sir Amyas making love to one of the maids.
To this barren war of the schools came a fact at last, and its bearer was a gorgeous figure of a man-at-arms (who, later, got into trouble by talking too much), who came swaggering down the road from the New Inn, with his hat on one side, and his breast-piece loose; and declared in that strange clipped London-English of his that he had been
on guard at the door of Sir Amyas’ room, and had heard him tell Melville the steward and De Préau the priest that they must no longer have access to her Grace, but must move their lodgings elsewhere within the castle.
This, then, had to be discussed once more from the beginning. One said that this was an evident sign that the end was to come and that Madam was to die; another that, on the contrary, it was plain that this was not so, but that rather she was to be compelled by greater strictness to acknowledge her guilt; a third that Madam was turning Protestant at last in order to save her life, and had devised this manner of ridding herself of the priest. And the soldier damned them all round as block-fools, who knew nothing and talked all the more for it.
The dark was beginning to fall before the group broke up, and none of them took much notice of a young man on a fresh horse, who rode quietly out of the yard of the New Inn as the saunterers came up. One of them, three minutes later, however, heard suddenly from across the bridge the sound of a horse breaking into a gallop and presently dying away westwards beyond Perry Lane.
II
Within the castle that evening nothing happened that was of any note to its more careless occupants. All was as usual.
The guard at the towers that controlled the drawbridge across the outer moat was changed at four o’clock; six men came out, under an officer, from the inner court; the words were exchanged, and the six that went off duty marched into the armoury to lay by their pikes and presently dispersed, four to their rooms in the east side of the quadrangle, two to their quarters in the village. From the kitchen came the clash of dishes. Sir Amyas came out from the direction of the keep, where he had been conferring with Mr. FitzWilliam, the castellan, and passed across to his lodging on the south. A butcher hurried in, under escort of a couple of men from the gate, with a covered basket and disappeared into the kitchen entry. All these things were observed idly by the dozen guards who stood two at each of the five doors that gave upon the courtyard. Presently, too, hardly ten minutes after the guard was changed, three figures came out at the staircase foot where Sir Amyas had just gone in, and stood there apparently talking in low voices. Then one of them, Mr. Melville, the Queen’s steward, came across the court with Mr. Bourgoign towards the outer entrance, passed under it, and presently Mr. Bourgoign came back and wheeled sharply in to the right by the entry that led up to the Queen’s lodging. Meanwhile the third figure, whom one of the men had thought to be M. de Préau, had gone back again towards Mr. Melville’s rooms.
That was all that was to be seen, until half an hour later, a few minutes before the drawbridge was raised for the night, the steward came back, crossed the court once more and vanished into the entry opposite.
It was about this time that the young man had ridden out from the New Inn.
Then the sun went down; the flambeaux were lighted beneath the two great entrances. The man at Sir Amyas’ staircase looked across the court and idly wondered what was passing in the rooms opposite on the first floor where the Queen was lodged. He had heard that the priest had been forced to change his room, and was to sleep in Mr. Melville’s for the present; so her Grace would have to get on without him as well as she could. There would be no Popish Mass to-morrow, then, in the oratory that he had heard was made upstairs.… He marvelled at the superstition that made this a burden.…
At a quarter before six a trumpet blew, and presently the tall windows of the hall across the court from him began to kindle. That was for her Grace’s supper to be served. At five minutes to six another trumpet sounded. Finally, through the ground-floor window at the foot of the Queen’s stair, the man caught a glimpse of moving figures passing towards the hall. That would be her Grace going in state to her supper with her women; but, for the first time, without either priest to say grace or steward to escort her.
Meanwhile, ten miles away, along the Uppingham and Leicester track, rode a young man through the dark.
III
Sunday, too, passed as usual.
At half-past eight the bells of the church pealed out for the morning service, and the village street was thronged with worshippers and a few soldiers. At nine o’clock they ceased, and the street was empty. At eleven o’clock the trumpets sounded to announce change of guard, and to tell the kitchen folk that dishing-time was come. Half an hour later once more the little procession glinted a moment through the ground-floor window of the Queen’s stair as her Grace went to dinner. At twelve o’clock she came out again and went upstairs, and at the same time, in Leicester, a young man, splashed from head to foot, slipped off a draggled and exhausted horse and went into an inn, ordering a fresh horse to be ready for him at three o’clock.
And so once more the sun went down, and the little rituals were performed, and the guards were changed, and Sir Amyas walked in from the orchard, and the drawbridge was raised. And, at the time that the drawbridge was raised, a young man on a horse was wondering when he should see the lights of Burton.…
IV
The first that Mistress Manners knew of his coming in the early hours of Monday morning was when she was awakened by Janet in the pitch darkness shaking her shoulder.
“It is a young man,” she said, “on foot. His horse fell five miles off. He is come with a letter from Derby.”
Sleep fell from Marjorie like a cloak. This kind of thing had happened to her before. Now and then such a letter would come from a priest who lacked money or desired a guide or information. She sprang out of bed and began to put on her outer dress and her hooded cloak, as the night was cold.
“Bring him into the hall,” she said. “Get beer and some food, and blow the fire up.”
Janet vanished.
When the mistress came down five minutes later, all had been done as she had ordered. The turf and wood fire leaped in the chimney; a young man, still with his hat on his head and drawn down a little over his face, was sitting over the hearth.
“I am Mistress Manners,” she said. “You have a letter for me?”
The young man stood up.
“I know you well enough, mistress,” he said. “I am John Merton’s son.”
Marjorie’s heart leaped with relief. In spite of her determination that this must be a letter from a priest, there had still thrust itself before her mind the possibility that it might be that other letter whose coming she had feared. She had told herself fiercely as she came downstairs just now that it could not be. No news was come from Fotheringay all the winter; it was common knowledge that her Grace had a priest of her own. And now that this was John Merton’s son——
She smiled.
“Give me the letter,” she said. “I should have known you, too, if it were not for the dark.”
“Well, mistress,” he said, “the letter was to be delivered to you, Mr. Melville said; but——”
“Who?”
“Mr. Melville, mistress: her Grace’s steward at Fotheringay.”
He talked on a moment or two, beginning to say that Mr. Melville himself had come out to the inn; that he, as Melville’s own servant, had been lodging there, and had been bidden to hold himself in readiness, since he knew Derbyshire.… But she was not listening. She only knew that that had fallen which she feared.
“Give me the letter,” she said again.
He sat down, excusing himself, and fumbled with his boot; and by the time that he held it out to her, she was in the thick of the conflict … And it was to her own house here in Derbyshire that her friend had come for shelter; it was here that he had said Mass yesterday; and it must be from this house that he must ride, on one of her horses; and it must be her hand that gave him the summons. Last of all, it was she, Marjorie Manners, that had sent him to this life, six years ago.
Then, as she took the letter, the shrewd woman in her spoke. It was irresistible, and she seemed to listen to a voice that was not hers.
“Does any here know that you are come?”
“No, mistress.”
“If I bade you, and said that I had reason
s for it, you would ride away again alone, without a word to any?”
“Why, yes, mistress!”
(Oh! the plan was irresistible and complete. She would send this messenger away again on one of her own horses as far as Derby; he could leave the horse there, and she would send a man for it to-morrow. He would go back to Fotheringay and would wait, he and those that had sent him. And the priest they expected would not come. He, too, himself, had ceased to expect any word from Mr. Bourgoign; he had said a month ago that surely none would come now. He had been away from Booth’s Edge, in fact, for nearly a month, and had scarcely even asked on his return last Saturday to Padley whether any message had come. Why, it was complete—complete and irresistible! She would burn the letter here in this hall fire when the man was gone again; and say to Janet that the letter had been from a travelling priest that was in trouble, and that she had sent the answer. And Robin would presently cease to look for news, and the end would come, and there would be no more trouble.)
“Do you know what is in the letter?” she whispered sharply.
“Yes, mistress,” he said. “The priest was taken from her on Saturday. Mr. Bourgoign had arranged all in readiness for that.”
“You said Mr. Melville.”
“Mr. Melville is a Protestant, mistress; but he is very well devoted to her Grace, and has done as Mr. Bourgoign wished.”
“Why must her Grace have a priest at once? Surely for a few days——”
He glanced up at her, and she, conscious of her own falseness, thought he looked astonished.
“I mean that they will surely give her her priest back again presently; and”—(her voice faltered)—“and Mr. Alban is spent with his travelling.”
“They mean to kill her, mistress. There is no doubt of it amongst those of us that are Catholics. And it is that she may have a priest before she dies, that——”
He paused.
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