Come Rack, Come Rope

by Robert Hugh Benson

  The lawyer came into the darkening room as the square outside began to grow quiet, and Marjorie opened her eyes to see who it was.

  He said nothing at first, but sat down close beside her. He knew she must be told, but he hated the telling. He carried a little paper in his hand. He would begin with that little bit of good news first, he said to himself.

  “Well, mistress,” he said, “I have the order at last. We are to see him to-night. It is ‘for Mr. Biddell and a friend.’ ”

  She sat up, and a little vitality came back to her face; for a moment she almost looked as she had looked in the early summer.

  “To-night?” she said. “And when——”

  “He will not be brought before my lords for three or four days yet. There is a number of cases to come before his. It will give us those two or three days, at least, to prepare our case.”

  He lifted his eyes to hers. There were still enough light from the windows for him to see her eyes, and that there was a spark in them that had not been there just now. And it was for him to extinguish it.… He gripped his courage.

  “I have had worse news than all,” he said.

  Her lips moved, and a vibration went over her face. Her eyes blinked, as at a sudden light.

  “Yes?”

  He put his hand tenderly on her arm.

  “You must be courageous,” he said. “It is the worst news that ever came to me. It concerns one who is come from London to-day, and rode in with my lords.”

  She could not speak, but her great eyes entreated him to finish her misery.

  “Yes,” he said, still pressing his hand on to her arm. “Yes; it is Mr. Topcliffe who is come.”

  He felt the soft muscles harden like steel.… There was no sound except the voices talking in the square and the noise of footsteps across the pavements. He could not look at her.

  Then he heard her draw a long breath and breathe it out again, and her taut muscles relaxed.

  “We … we are all in Christ’s hands,” she said.… “We must tell him.”

  II

  It appeared to the girl as if she were moving on a kind of set stage, with every movement and incident designed beforehand, in a play that was itself a kind of destiny—above all, when she went at last into Robin’s cell and saw him standing there, and found it to be that in which so long ago she had talked with Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert.…

  The great realities were closing round her, as irresistible as wheels and bars.

  First, it was she who had first turned her friend’s mind to the life of a priest. Had she submitted to natural causes, she would have been his wife nine years ago; they would have been harassed no doubt and troubled, but no more. It was she again who had encouraged his return to Derbyshire. If it had not been for that, and for the efforts she had made to do what she thought good work for God, he might have been sent elsewhere. It was in her house that he had been taken, and in the very place she had designed for his safety. If she had but sent him on, as he wished, back to the hills again, he might never have been taken at all. She felt even as if she were responsible for the manner of his taking, and for the horror that it had been his father who had accomplished it; if she had said more, or less, in the hall on that dark morning; if she had not swooned; if she had said bravely: “It is your son, sir, who is here,” all might have been saved. And now it was Topcliffe who was come—(and she knew all that this signified)—the very man at whose mere bodily presence she had sickened in the court of the Tower. And, last, it was she who had to tell Robin of this.

  Even as she waited, with Mr. Biddell behind her, as the gaoler fumbled with the keys, she was aware that the last breath of resentment had been drawn.… It was, indeed, a monstrous Power that had so dealt with her.… It was none other than the Will of God, plain at last.

  She knelt down for the priest’s blessing, without speaking, as the door closed, and Mr. Biddell knelt behind her. Then she rose and went forward to the stool and sat upon it.

  He was hardly changed at all. He looked a little white and drawn in the wavering light of the flambeau; but his clothes were orderly and clean, and his eyes as bright and resolute as ever.

  “It is a great happiness to see you,” he said, smiling, and then no more compliments.

  “And what of my father?” he added instantly.

  She told him. Mr. Audrey was in Derby, still sick from his fit. He was in Mr. Columbell’s house. She had not seen him.

  “Robin,” she said (and she used the old name, utterly unknowing that she did so), “we must speak with Mr. Biddell presently about your case. But there is a word or two I have to say first. We can have two hours here, if you wish it.”

  Robin put his hands behind him on to the table and jumped lightly, so that he sat on it, facing her.

  “If you will not sit on the table, Mr. Biddell, I fear there is only that block of wood.”

  He pointed to a block of a tree set on end. It served him, laid flat, as a pillow. The lawyer went across to it.

  “The judges, I hear, are come to-night,” said the priest.

  She bowed.

  “Yes; but your case will not be up for three or four days yet.”

  “Why, then, I shall have time——”

  She lifted her hand sharply a little to check him.

  “You will not have much time,” she said, and paused again. A sharp contraction came and went in the muscles of her throat. It was as if a hand gripped her there, relaxed, and gripped again. She put up her own hand desperately to tear at her collar.

  “Why, but——” began the priest.

  She could bear it no more. His resolute cheerfulness, his frank astonishment, were like knives to her. She gave one cry.

  “Topcliffe is come … Topcliffe! …” she cried. Then she flung her arm across the table and dropped her face on it.

  It was quite quiet after she had spoken. The priest did not stir from where he sat a couple of feet away; only the swinging of his feet ceased. She drove down her convulsions; they rose again; she drove them down once more. Then the tears surged up, her whole being relaxed, and she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Marjorie,” said the grave voice, as steady as it had ever been, “Marjorie. This is what we looked for, is it not? … Topcliffe is come, is he? Well, let him come. He or another. It is for this that we have all looked since the beginning. Christ His Grace is strong enough, is it not? It hath been strong enough for many, at least; and He will not surely take it from me who need it so much.…” (He spoke in pauses, but his voice never faltered.) “I have prayed for that grace ever since I have been here.… He hath given me great peace in this place.… I think He will give it me to the end.…You must pray, my … my child; you must not cry like that.”

  She lifted her agonized face for a moment, then she let it fall again. It seemed as if he knew the very thoughts of her.

  “This all seems very perfect to me,” he went on. “It was yourself who first turned me to this life, and you knew surely what you did. I knew, at least, all the while, I think; and I have never ceased to thank God. And it was through your hands that the letter came to me to go to Fotheringay. And it was in your house that I was taken.… And it was Mr. Maine’s beads that they found on me when they searched me here—the pair of beads you gave me.”

  Again she stared at him, blind and bewildered.

  He went on steadily:

  “And now it is you again who bring me the first news of my passion. It is yourself, first and last, under God, that have brought me all these graces and crosses. And I thank you with all my heart.… But you must pray for me to the end, and after it, too.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  I

  “WATER,” SAID a sharp voice, pricking through the enormous thickness of the bloodshot dark that had come down on him. There followed a sound of floods; then a sense of sudden coolness, and he opened his eyes once more, and became aware of unbearable pain in arms and feet. Again the whirling dark, striped with blood colour, fell on hi
m like a blanket; again the sound of waters falling and the sense of coolness, and again he opened his eyes.

  For a minute or two it was all that he could do to hold himself in consciousness. It appeared to him a necessity to do so. He could see a smoke-stained roof of beams and rafters, and on these he fixed his eyes, thinking that he could hold himself so, as by thin, wiry threads of sight, from falling again into the pit where all was black or blood-colour. The pain was appalling, but he thought he had gripped it at last, and could hold it so, like a wrestler.

  As the pain began to resolve itself into throbs and stabs, from the continuous strain in which at first it had shown itself—a strain that was like a shrill horn blowing, or a blaze of bluish light—he began to see more, and to understand a little. There were four or five faces looking down on him: one was the face of a man he had seen somewhere in an inn … it was at Fotheringay; it was my lord Shrewsbury’s man. Another was a lean face; a black hat came and went behind it; the lips were drawn in a sort of smile, so that he could see the teeth.… Then he perceived next that he himself was lying in a kind of shallow trough of wood upon the floor. He could see his bare feet raised a little and tied with cords.

  Then, one by one, these sights fitted themselves into one another and made sense. He remembered that he was in Derby gaol—not in his own cell; that the lean face was of a man called Topcliffe; that a physician was there as well as the others; that they had been questioning him on various points, and that some of these points he had answered, while others he had not, and must not. Some of them concerned her Grace of the Scots.… These he had answered. Then, again, association came back.…

  “As Thy arms, O Christ …” he whispered.

  “Now then,” came the sharp voice in his ear, so close and harsh as to distress him. “These questions again.… Were there any other places besides at Padley and Booth’s Edge, in the parish of Hathersage, where you said Mass?”

  “… O Christ, were extended on the Cross——” began the tortured man dreamily. “Ah-h-h!” …

  It was a scream, whispered rather than shrieked, that was torn from him by the sharpness of the agony. His body had lifted from the floor without will of his own, twisting a little; and what seemed as strings of fiery pain had shot upwards from his feet and downwards from his wrists as the roller was suddenly jerked again. He hung there perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, conscious only of the blinding pain—questions, questioners, roof and faces all gone and drowned again in a whirling tumult of darkness and red streaks. The sweat poured again suddenly from his whole body.… Then again he sank relaxed upon the floor, and the pulses beat in his head, and he thought that Marjorie and her mother and his own father were all looking at him.…

  He heard presently the same voice talking:

  “—and answer the questions that are put to you.… Now then, we will begin the others, if it please you better.… In what month was it that you first became privy to the plot against her Grace?”

  “Wait!” whispered the priest. “Wait, and I will answer that.” He understood that there was a trap here. The question had been framed differently last time. But his mind was all a-whirl; and he feared he might answer wrongly if he could not collect himself. He still wondered why so many friends of his were in the room—even Father Campion …

  He drew a breath again presently, and tried to speak; but his voice broke like a shattered trumpet, and he could not command it.… He must whisper.

  “It was in August, I think.… I think it was August, two years ago.” …

  “August … you mean May or April.”

  “No; it was August.… At least, all that I know of the plot was when … when——” His thoughts became confused again; it was like strings of wool, he thought, twisted violently together; a strand snapped now and again. He made a violent effort and caught an end as it was slipping away. “It was in August, I think; the day that Mr. Babington fled, that he wrote to me; and sent me——” He paused: he became aware that here, too, lurked a trap if he were to say he had seen Mary; he would surely be asked what he had seen her for, and his priesthood might be so proved against him.… He could not remember whether that had been proved; and so … would Father Campion advise him perhaps whether …

  The voice jarred again, and startled him into a flash of coherence. He thought he saw a way out.

  “Well?” snapped the voice. “Sent you? … Sent you whither?”

  “Sent me to Chartley; where I saw her Grace … her Grace of the Scots; and … ‘As Thy arms, O Christ …’ ”

  “Now then; now then! … So you saw her Grace? And what was that for?”

  “I saw her Grace … and … and told her what Mr. Babington had told me.”

  “What was that, then?”

  “That … that he was her servant till death; and … and a thousand if he had them. And so, ‘As Thy arms, O——’ ”

  “Water,” barked the voice.

  Again came the rush as of cataracts; and a sensation of drowning. There followed an instant’s glow of life; and then the intolerable pain came back; and the heavy, red-streaked darkness.…

  II

  He found himself, after some period, lying more easily. He could not move hand or foot. His body only appeared to live. From his shoulders to his thighs he was alive; the rest was nothing. But he opened his eyes and saw that his arms were laid by his sides; and that he was no longer in the wooden trough. He wondered at his hands; he wondered even if they were his … they were of an unusual colour and bigness; and there was something like a tight-fitting bracelet round each wrist. Then he perceived that he was shirtless and hoseless; and that the bracelets were not bracelets, but rings of swollen flesh. But there was no longer any pain or even sensation in them; and he was aware that his mouth glowed as if he had drunk ardent spirits.

  He was considering all this, slowly, like a child contemplating a new toy. Then there came something between him and the light; he saw a couple of faces eyeing him. Then the voice began again, at first confused and buzzing, then articulate; and he remembered.

  “Now, then,” said the voice, “you have had but a taste of it.…” The phrase repeated itself like the catch of a song.… When he regained his attention, the sentence had moved on.

  “… these questions. I will put them to you again from the beginning. You will give your answer to each. And if my lord is not satisfied, we must try again.”

  “My lord!” thought the priest. He rolled his eyes round a little further. And he saw a little table floating somewhere in the dark; a candle burned on it; and a melancholy face with dreamy eyes was brightly illuminated.… That was my lord Shrewsbury, he considered.…

  “… in what month that you first became privy to the plot against her Grace?”

  Sense was coming back to him again now. He remembered what he had said just now.

  “It was in August,” he whispered, “in August, I think; two years ago. Mr. Babington wrote to me of it.”

  “And you went to the Queen of the Scots, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you there?”

  “I gave the message.”

  “What was that?”

  “… That Mr. Babington was her servant always; that he regretted nothing, save that he had failed. He begged her to pray for his soul, and for all that had been with him in the enterprise.”

  It appeared to him that he was astonishingly voluble, all at once. He reflected that he must be careful.

  “And what did she say to that?”

  “She declared herself guiltless of the plot … that she knew nothing of it; and that——”

  “Now then; now then. You expect my lord to believe that?”

  “I do not know.… But it was what was said.”

  “And you profess that you knew nothing of the plot till then?”

  “I knew nothing of it till then,” whispered the priest steadily. “But——”

  (A face suddenly blotted out more of the light.)


  “Yes?”

  “Anthony—I mean Mr. Babington—had spoken to me a great while before—in … in some village inn.… I forget where. It was when I was a lad. He asked whether I would join in some enterprise. He did not say what it was.… But I thought it to be against the Queen of England.… And I would not.” …

  He closed his eyes again. There had begun a slow heat of pain in ankles and wrists, not wholly unbearable, and a warmth began to spread in his body. A great shudder or two shook him. The voice said something he could not hear. Then a metal rim was pressed to his mouth; and a stream of something at once icy and fiery ran into his mouth and out at the corners. He swallowed once or twice; and his senses came back.

  “You do not expect us to believe all that!” came the voice.

  “It is the truth, for all that,” murmured the priest.

  The next question came sudden as a shot fired:

  “You were at Fotheringay?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what house?”

  “I was in the inn—the ‘New Inn,’ I think it is.”

  “And you spoke with her Grace again?”

  “No; I could not get at her. But——”

  “Well?”

  “I was in the court of the castle when her Grace was executed.”

  There was a murmur of voices. He thought that someone had moved over to the table where my lord sat; but he could not move his eyes again, the labour was too great.

  “Who was with you in the inn—as your friend, I mean?”

  “A … a young man was with me. His name was Merton. He is in France, I think.”

  “And he knew you to be a priest?” came the voice without an instant’s hesitation.

  “Why——” Then he stopped short, just in time.

  “Well?”

  “How should he think that?” asked Robin.

  There was a laugh somewhere. Then the voice went on, almost good-humouredly:

  “Mr. Alban, what is the use of this fencing? You were taken in a hiding-hole with the very vestments at your feet. We know you to be a priest. We are not seeking to entrap you in that, for there is no need. But there are other matters altogether which we must have from you. You have been made priest beyond the seas, in Rheims——”