Come Rack, Come Rope

by Robert Hugh Benson

  “I am more at peace, gentlemen,” said Mr. John, “than I have been for the past five years. My son is in gaol yet; and I am proud that he should be there, since my eldest son——” (he broke off a moment). “And I think the worst of the storm is over. Her Grace is busying herself with other matters.”

  “You mean the Spanish fleet, sir?” said Mr. Garlick.

  He nodded.

  “It is not that I look for final deliverance from Spain,” he said. “I have no wish to be aught but an Englishman, as I said to Mr. Bassett a while ago. But I think the fleet will distract her Grace for a while; and it may very well mean that we have better treatment hereafter.”

  “What news is there, sir?”

  “I hear that the Londoners buzz continually with false alarms. It was thought that the fleet might arrive on any day; but I understand that the fishing-boats say that nothing has yet been seen. By the end of the month, I daresay, we shall have news.”

  So they talked pleasantly in the shade till the shadows began to lengthen. They were far enough here from the sea-coast to feel somewhat detached from the excitement that was beginning to seethe in the south. A beacon or two had been piled on the hills, by order of the authorities, to pass on the news when it should come; a few lads had disappeared from the countryside to drill in Derby market-place; but except for these things, all was very much as it had been from the beginning. The expected catastrophe meant little more to such folk than the coming of the Judgment Day—certain, but infinitely remote from the grasp of the imagination.

  The three were talking of Robin as they came down towards the house for supper, and, as they turned the corner, he himself was at that moment dismounting.

  He looked surprisingly cool and well-trimmed, considering his ride up the hot valley. He had taken his journey easily, he said, as he had had a long day yesterday.

  “And I made a round to pay a visit to Mistress Manners,” he said. “I found her a-bed when I got there; and Mrs. Alice says she will not be at Mass to-morrow. She stood too long in the sun yesterday, at the carrying of the hay; it is no more than that.”

  “Mistress Manners is a marvel to me,” said Garlick, as they went towards the house. “Neither wife nor nun. And she rules her house like a man; and she knows if a priest lift his little finger in Derby. She sent me my whole itinerary for this last circuit of mine; and every point fell out as she said.”

  Robin thought that he had seldom had so pleasant a supper as on that night. The windows of the low hall where he had dined so often as a boy were flung wide to catch the scented evening air. The evening was as still as night, except for the faint peaceful country sounds that came up from the valley below—the song of a lad riding home; the barking of a dog; the bleat of sheep—all minute and delicate, as unperceived, yet as effective, as a rich fabric on which a design is woven. It seemed to him as he listened to the talk and he ate the plain, good food and drank the country drink, that, in spite of all, his lot was cast in very sweet places. He found himself in one of those moods that visit all men sometimes, when the world appears, after all, a homely and a genial place; when the simplest things are the best; when no excitement can compare with the gentle happiness of a tired body that is in the act of refreshment, or of a driven mind that is finding its relaxation. At least, he said to himself, he would enjoy this night and the next day and the night after, with all his heart.

  The four found themselves so much at ease here, that the dessert was brought in to them where they sat; and it was then that the first unhappy word was spoken.

  “Mr. Simpson!” said Garlick suddenly. “Is there any more news of him?”

  Mr. John shook his head.

  “He hath not yet been to church, thank God!” he said. “So much I know for certain. But he hath promised to go.”

  “Why is he not yet gone? He promised a great while ago.”

  “I hear he hath been sick. Derby gaol is a pestiferous place. They are waiting, I suppose, till he is well enough to go publicly, that all the world may be advertised of it!”

  Mr. Garlick gave a bursting sigh.

  “I cannot understand it at all,” he said. “There has never been so zealous a priest. I have ridden with him again and again before I was a priest. He was always quiet; but I took him to be one of those stout-hearted souls that need never brag. Why, it was here that we heard him tell of Mr. Nelson’s death!”

  Mr. John threw out his hands.

  “These prisons are devilish,” he said; “they wear a man out as the rack can never do. Why, see my son!” he cried. “Oh! I can speak of him if I am but moved enough! It was that same Derby gaol that wore him out too! It is the darkness, and the ill food, and the stenches and the misery. A man’s heart fails him there, who could face a thousand deaths in the sunlight. Man after man hath fallen there—both in Derby, and in London and in all the prisons. If it were the rack and the rope only, England would be Catholic yet, I think.”

  The old man’s face blazed with indignation; it was not often that he so spoke out his mind. It was very easy to see that he had thought continually of his son’s fall.

  “Mistress Manners hath told me the very same thing,” said Robin. “She visited Mr. Thomas in gaol once at least. She said that her heart failed her altogether there.”

  Mr. Ludlam smiled.

  “I suppose it is so,” he said gently, “since you say so. But I think it would not be so with me. The rack and the rope, rather, are what would shake me to the roots, unless God His Grace prevailed more than it ever yet hath with me.”

  He smiled again.

  Robin shook his head sharply.

  “As for me——” he said grimly, with tight lips.

  II

  It was within an hour of dawn that the first Mass was said next morning by Mr. Robert Alban.

  The chapel was decked out as they seldom dared to deck it in those days; but the failure of the last attempt on this place, and the peace that had followed, made them bold.

  An extraordinary sweetness and peace seemed in the place both to the senses and the soul of the young priest as he went up to the altar to vest. Confessions had been heard last night; and, as he turned, in the absolute stillness of the morning, and saw, beneath those carved angels that still to-day lean from the beams of the roof, the whole little space already filled with farm-lads, many of whom were to approach the altar presently, and the grey head of their master kneeling on the floor to answer the Mass, it appeared to him as if the promise of last night were reversed, and that it was, after all, earth rather than heaven that proclaimed the peace and the glory of God.…

  Robin served the second Mass himself, said by Mr. Garlick, and made his thanksgiving as well as he could meanwhile; but he found what appeared to him at the time many distractions, in watching the tanned face and hands of the man who was so utterly a countryman for nine-tenths of his life, and so utterly a priest for the rest. His very sturdiness and breeziness made his reverence the more evident and pathetic: he read the Mass rapidly, in a low voice, harshened by shouting in the open air over his sports, made his gestures abruptly, and yet did the whole with an extraordinary attention. After the communion, when he turned for the wine and water, his face, as so often with rude folk in a great emotion, browned as it was with wind and sun, seemed lighted from within; he seemed etherealized, yet with his virility all alive in him. A phrase, wholly inapplicable in its first sense, came irresistibly to the younger priest’s mind as he waited on him. “When the strong man, armed, keepeth his house, his goods are in peace.”

  Robin heard the third Mass, said by Mr. Ludlam, from a corner near the door; and this one, too, was a fresh experience. The former priest had resembled a strong man subdued by grace; the second, a weak man ennobled by it. Mr. Ludlam was a delicate soul, smiling often, as has been said, and speaking little—“a mild man,” said the countryfolk. Yet, at the altar there was no weakness in him; he was as a keen, sharp blade, fitted as a heavy knife cannot be, for fine and peculiar work. H
is father had been a yeoman, as had the other’s; yet there must have been some unusual strain of blood in him, so deft and gentle he was—more at his ease here at God’s Table than at the table of any man.… So he, too, finished his Mass, and began to unvest.…

  Then, with a noise as brutal as a blasphemy, there came a thunder of footsteps on the stairs; and a man burst into the room, with glaring eyes and rough gestures.

  “There is a company of men coming up from the valley,” he cried; “and another over the moor.… And it is my lord Shrewsbury’s livery.”

  III

  In an instant all was in confusion; and the peace had fled. Mr. John was gone; and his voice could be heard on the open stairs outside speaking rapidly in sharp, low whispers to the men gathered beneath; and, meanwhile, three or four servants, two men and a couple of maids, previously drilled in their duties, were at the altar, on which Mr. Ludlam had but that moment laid down his amice. The three priests stood together waiting, fearing to hinder or to add to the bustle. A low wailing rose from outside the door; and Robin looked from it to see if there were anything he could do. But it was only a little country servant crouching on the tiny landing that united the two sets of stairs from the court, with her apron over her head: she must have been in the partitioned west end of the chapel to hear the Mass. He said a word to her; and the next instant was pushed aside, as a man tore by bearing a great bundle of stuffs—vestments and the altar cloths. When he turned again, the chapel was become a common room once more: the chest stood bare, with a great bowl of flowers on it; the candlesticks were gone; and the maid was sweeping up the herbs.

  “Come, gentlemen,” said a sharp voice at the door, “there is no time to lose.”

  He went out with the two others behind, and followed Mr. John downstairs. Already the party of servants was dispersed to their stations; two or three to keep the doors, no doubt, and the rest back to kitchen work and the like, to give the impression that all was as usual.

  The four went straight down into the hall, to find it empty, except for one man who stood by the fire-place. But a surprising change had taken place here. Instead of the solemn panelling, with the carved shield that covered the wall over the hearth, there was a great doorway opened, through which showed, not the bricks of the chimney-breast, but a black space large enough to admit a man.

  “See here,” said Mr. John, “there is room for two here, but no more. There is room for a third in another little chamber upstairs that is nearly joined on to this: but it is not so good. Now, gentlemen——”

  “This is the safer of the two?” asked Robin abruptly.

  “I think it to be so. Make haste, gentlemen.”

  Robin wheeled on the others. He said that there was no time to argue in.

  “See!” he said. “I have not yet been taken at all. Mr. Garlick hath been taken; and Mr. Ludlam hath had a warning. There is no question that you must be here.”

  “I utterly refuse——” began Garlick.

  Robin went to the door in three strides, and was out of it. He closed the door behind him and ran upstairs. As he reached the head his eye caught a glint of sunlight on some metal far up on the moor beyond the belt of trees. He did not turn his head again; he went straight in and waited.

  Presently he heard steps coming up, and Mr. John appeared smiling and out of breath.

  “I have them in,” he said, “by promising that there was no great difference after all; and that there was no time. Now, sir——” And he went towards the wall at which, long ago, Mr. Owen had worked so hard.

  “And yourself, sir?” asked Robin, as once more an innocent piece of panelling moved outwards under Mr. John’s hand.

  “I’ll see to that; but not until you are in——”

  “But——”

  The old man’s face blazed suddenly up.

  “Obey me, if you please. I am the master here. I tell you I have a very good place.”

  There was no more to be said. Robin advanced to the opening, and sat down to slide himself in. It was a little door about two feet square, with a hole beneath it.

  “Drop gently, Mr. Alban,” whispered the voice in his ear. “The altar vessels are at the bottom, with the crucifix, on some soft stuff.… That is it. Slide in and let yourself slip. There is some food and drink there, too.”

  Robin did so. The floor of the little chamber was about five feet down, and he could feel woodwork on all three sides of him.

  “When the door is closed,” said the voice from the daylight, “push a pair of bolts on right and left till they go home. Tap upon the shutter when it is done.”

  The light vanished, and Robin was aware of a faint smell of smoke. Then he remembered that he had noticed a newly lit fire on the hearth of the hall.… He found the bolts, pushed them, and tapped lightly three times. He heard a hand push on the shutter to see that all was secure, and then footsteps go away over the floor on a level with his chin.

  Then he remembered that he must be in the same chamber with his two fellow-priests, separated from them by the flooring on which he stood. He rapped gently with his foot twice. Two soft taps came back. Silence followed.

  IV

  He was in complete and utter darkness. There was not a crack anywhere in the woodwork (so perfect had been the young carpenter’s handiwork) by which even a glimmer of light could enter. A while ago he had been in the early morning sunlight; now he might be in the grave.

  For a while his emotions and his thoughts raced one another, tumbling in inextricable confusion; and they were all emotions and thoughts of the present: intense little visions of the men closing round the house, cutting off escape from the valley on the one side and from the wild upland country on the other; questions as to where Mr. John would hide himself; minute sensible impressions of the smoky flavour of the air, the unplaned woodwork, the soft stuffs beneath his feet. Then they began to extend themselves wider, all with that rapid unjarring swiftness: he foresaw the bursting in of his stronghold; the footsteps within three inches of his head; the crash as the board was kicked in: then the capture; the ride to Derby, bound on a horse; the gaol; the questioning; the faces of my lord Shrewsbury and the magistrates … and the end.…

  There were moments when the sweat ran down his face, when he bit his lips in agony, and nearly moaned aloud. There were others in which he abandoned himself to Christ crucified; placed himself in Everlasting Hands that were mighty enough to pluck him not only out of this snare, but from the very hands that would hold him so soon; Hands that could lift him from the rack and scaffold and set him a free man among his hills again: yet that had not done so with a score of others whom he knew. He thought of these, and of the girl who had done so much to save them all, who was now saved herself by sickness, a mile or two away, from these hideous straits. Then he dragged out Mr. Maine’s beads and began to recite the “Mysteries.” …

  There broke in suddenly the first exterior sign that the hunters were on them—a muffled hammering far beneath his feet. There were pauses; then voices carried up from the archway nearly beneath through the hollowed walls; then hammering again; but all was heard as through wool. Even while he followed the sounds, he understood why my lord Shrewsbury had made this assault so suddenly, after months of peace.… He perceived the hand of Thomas FitzHerbert, too, in the precision with which the attack had been made, and the certain information he must have given that priests would be in Padley that morning.

  There were noises that he could not interpret—vague tramplings from a direction which he could not tell; voices that shouted; the sound of metal on stone.

  He did interpret rightly, however, the sudden tumult as the gate was unbarred at last, and the shrill screaming of a woman as the company poured through into the house; the clamour of voices from beneath as the hall below was filled with men; the battering that began almost immediately; and, finally, the rush of shod feet up the outside staircases, one of which led straight into the chapel itself. Then, indeed, his heart seemed to spring upwa
rds into his throat, and to beat there, as loud as knocking, so loud that it appeared to him that all the house must hear it.

  Yet it was still some minutes before the climax came to him. He was still standing there, listening to voices talking, it seemed, almost in his ears, yet whose words he could not hear; the vibration of feet that shook the solid joist against which he had leaned his head, with closed eyes; the brush of a cloak once, like a whisper, against the very panel that shut him in.

  The climax came in a sudden thump of a pike foot within a yard of his head, so imminent, that for an instant he thought it was at his own panel. There followed a splintering sound of a pike-head in the same place. He understood. They were sounding on the woodwork and piercing all that rang hollow.… His turn, then, would come immediately.

  Talking voices followed the crash; then silence; then the vibration of feet once more. The strain grew unbearable; his fingers twisted tight in his rosary, lifted themselves once or twice from the floor edge on which they were gripped, to tear back the bolts and declare himself. It seemed to him in those instants a thousand times better to come out of his own will, rather than to be poked and dragged from his hole like a badger. In the very midst of such imaginings there came a thumping blow within three inches of his face, and then silence. He leaned back desperately to avoid the pike-thrust that must follow, with his eyes screwed tight and his lips mumbling. He waited … and then, as he waited, he drew an irrepressible hissing breath of terror, for beneath the soft padding under his feet he could feel movements; blow follow blow, from the same direction, and last a great clamour of voices all shouting together.