Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)
Page 247
To live of him mistrusted.
BABINGTON.
Why, well said:
Strike hands upon it; I think you shall not find
A trustless pilot of me. Keep we fast,
And hold you fast my counsel, we shall see
The state high-builded here of heretic hope
Shaken to dust and death. Here comes more proof
To warrant me no liar. You are welcome, sirs;
Enter Ballard, disguised, and Savage.
Good father captain, come you plumed or cowled,
Or stoled or sworded, here at any hand
The true heart bids you welcome.
BALLARD.
Sir, at none
Is folly welcome to mine ears or eyes.
Nay, stare not on me stormily; I say,
I bid at no hand welcome, by no name,
Be it ne’er so wise or valiant on men’s lips,
Pledge health to folly, nor forecast good hope
For them that serve her, I, but take of men
Things ill done ill at any hand alike.
Ye shall not say I cheered you to your death,
Nor would, though nought more dangerous than your death
Or deadlier for our cause and God’s in ours
Were here to stand the chance of, and your blood
Shed vainly with no seed for faith to sow
Should be not poison for men’s hopes to drink.
What is this picture? Have ye sense or souls,
Eyes, ears, or wits to take assurance in
Of how ye stand in strange men’s eyes and ears,
How fare upon their talking tongues, how dwell
In shot of their suspicion, and sustain
How great a work how lightly? Think ye not
These men have ears and eyes about your ways,
Walk with your feet, work with your hands, and watch
When ye sleep sound and babble in your sleep?
What knave was he, or whose man sworn and spy,
That drank with you last night? whose hireling lip
Was this that pledged you, Master Babington,
To a foul quean’s downfall and a fair queen’s rise?
Can ye not seal your tongues from tavern speech,
Nor sup abroad but air may catch it back,
Nor think who set that watch upon your lips
Yourselves can keep not on them?
BABINGTON.
What, my friends!
Here is one come to counsel, God be thanked,
That bears commission to rebuke us all.
Why, hark you, sir, you that speak judgment, you
That take our doom upon your double tongue
To sentence and accuse us with one breath,
Our doomsman and our justicer for sin,
Good Captain Ballard, Father Fortescue,
Who made you guardian of us poor men, gave
Your wisdom wardship of our follies, chose
Your faith for keeper of our faiths, that yet
Were never taxed of change or doubted? You,
’Tis you that have an eye to us, and take note
What time we keep, what place, what company,
How far may wisdom trust us to be wise
Or faith esteem us faithful, and yourself
Were once the hireling hand and tongue and eye
That waited on this very Walsingham
To spy men’s counsels and betray their blood
Whose trust had sealed you trusty? By God’s light,
A goodly guard I have of you, to crave
What man was he I drank with yesternight,
What name, what shape, what habit, as, forsooth,
Were I some statesman’s knave and spotted spy,
The man I served, and cared not how, being dead,
His molten gold should glut my throat in hell,
Might question of me whom I snared last night,
Make inquisition of his face, his gait,
His speech, his likeness. Well, be answered then
By God, I know not; but God knows I think
The spy most dangerous on my secret walks
And witness of my ways most worth my fear
And deadliest listener to devour my speech
Now questions me of danger, and the tongue
Most like to sting my trust and life to death
Now taxes mine of rashness.
BALLARD.
Is he mad?
Or are ye brainsick all with heat of wine
That stand and hear him rage like men in storms
Made drunk with danger? have ye sworn with him
To die the fool’s death too of furious fear
And passion scared to slaughter of itself?
Is there none here that knows his cause or me,
Nor what should save or spoil us?
TICHBORNE.
Friend, give ear;
For God’s sake, yet be counselled.
BABINGTON.
Ay, for God’s!
What part hath God in this man’s counsels? nay,
Take you part with him; nay, in God’s name go;
What should you do to bide with me? turn back;
There stands your captain.
SAVAGE.
Hath not one man here
One spark in spirit or sprinkling left of shame?
I that looked once for no such fellowship,
But soldier’s hearts in shapes of gentlemen,
I am sick with shame to hear men’s jangling tongues
Outnoise their swords unbloodied. Hear me, sirs;
My hand keeps time before my tongue, and hath
But wit to speak in iron; yet as now
Such wit were sharp enough to serve our turn
That keenest tongues may serve not. One thing sworn
Calls on our hearts; the queen must singly die,
Or we, half dead men now with dallying, must
Die several deaths for her brief one, and stretched
Beyond the scope of sufferance; wherefore here
Choose out the man to put this peril on
And gird him with this glory; let him pass
Straight hence to court, and through all stays of state
Strike death into her heart.
BABINGTON.
Why, this rings right;
Well said, and soldierlike; do thus, and take
The vanguard of us all for honour.
SAVAGE.
Ay,
Well would I go, but seeing no courtly suit
Like yours, her servants and her pensioners,
The doorkeepers will bid my baseness back
From passage to her presence.
BABINGTON.
O, for that,
Take this and buy; nay, start not from your word;
You shall not.
SAVAGE.
Sir, I shall not.
BABINGTON.
Here’s more gold;
Make haste, and God go with you; if the plot
Be blown on once of men’s suspicious breath,
We are dead, and all die bootless deaths – be swift –
And her we have served we shall but surely slay.
I will make trial again of Walsingham
If he misdoubt us. O, my cloak and sword –
Knocking within.
I will go forth myself. What noise is that?
Get you to Gage’s lodging; stay not here;
Make speed without for Westminster; perchance
There may we safely shift our shapes and fly,
If the end be come upon us.
BALLARD.
It is here.
Death knocks at door already. Fly; farewell.
BABINGTON.
I would not leave you – but they know you not –
You need not fear, being found here singly.
BALLARD.
No.
BABINGTON.
Nay, halt
not, sirs; no word but haste; this way,
Ere they break down the doors. God speed us well!
Exeunt all but Ballard. As they go out enter an Officer with Soldiers.
OFFICER.
Here’s one fox yet by the foot; lay hold on him.
BALLARD.
What would you, sirs?
OFFICER.
Why, make one foul bird fast,
Though the full flight be scattered: for their kind
Must prey not here again, nor here put on
The jay’s loose feathers for the raven priest’s
To mock the blear-eyed marksman: these plucked off
Shall show the nest that sent this fledgeling forth,
Hatched in the hottest holy nook of hell.
BALLARD.
I am a soldier.
OFFICER.
Ay, the badge we know
Whose broidery signs the shoulders of the file
That Satan marks for Jesus. Bind him fast:
Blue satin and slashed velvet and gold lace,
Methinks we have you, and the hat’s band here
So seemly set with silver buttons, all
As here was down in order; by my faith,
A goodly ghostly friend to shrive a maid
As ever kissed for penance: pity ’tis
The hangman’s hands must hallow him again
When this lay slough slips off, and twist one rope
For priest to swing with soldier. Bring him hence.
Exeunt.
Scene II. Chartley
Mary Stuart and Mary Beaton.
MARY STUART.
We shall not need keep house for fear to-day;
The skies are fair and hot; the wind sits well
For hound and horn to chime with. I will go.
MARY BEATON.
How far from this to Tixall?
MARY STUART.
Nine or ten
Or what miles more I care not; we shall find
Fair field and goodly quarry, or he lies,
The gospeller that bade us to the sport,
Protesting yesternight the shire had none
To shame Sir Walter Aston’s. God be praised,
I take such pleasure yet to back my steed
And bear my crossbow for a deer’s death well,
I am almost half content – and yet I lie –
To ride no harder nor more dangerous heat
And hunt no beast of game less gallant.
MARY BEATON.
Nay,
You grew long since more patient.
MARY STUART.
Ah, God help!
What should I do but learn the word of him
These years and years, the last word learnt but one,
That ever I loved least of all sad words?
The last is death for any soul to learn,
The last save death is patience.
MARY BEATON.
Time enough
We have had ere death of life to learn it in
Since you rode last on wilder ways than theirs
That drive the dun deer to his death.
MARY STUART.
Eighteen –
How many more years yet shall God mete out
For thee and me to wait upon their will
And hope or hope not, watch or sleep, and dream
Awake or sleeping? surely fewer, I think,
Than half these years that all have less of life
Than one of those more fleet that flew before.
I am yet some ten years younger than this queen,
Some nine or ten; but if I die this year
And she some score years longer than I think
Be royal-titled, in one year of mine
I shall have lived the longer life, and die
The fuller-fortuned woman. Dost thou mind
The letter that I writ nigh two years gone
To let her wit what privacies of hers
Our trusty dame of Shrewsbury’s tongue made mine
Ere it took fire to sting her lord and me?
How thick soe’er o’erscurfed with poisonous lies,
Of her I am sure it lied not; and perchance
I did the wiselier, having writ my fill,
Yet to withhold the letter when she sought
Of me to know what villainies had it poured
In ears of mine against her innocent name:
And yet thou knowest what mirthful heart was mine
To write her word of these, that had she read
Had surely, being but woman, made her mad,
Or haply, being not woman, had not. ‘Faith,
How say’st thou? did I well?
MARY BEATON.
Ay, surely well
To keep that back you did not ill to write.
MARY STUART.
I think so, and again I think not; yet
The best I did was bid thee burn it. She,
That other Bess I mean of Hardwick, hath
Mixed with her gall the fire at heart of hell,
And all the mortal medicines of the world
To drug her speech with poison; and God wot
Her daughter’s child here that I bred and loved,
Bess Pierpoint, my sweet bedfellow that was,
Keeps too much savour of her grandam’s stock
For me to match with Nau; my secretary
Shall with no slip of hers engraft his own,
Begetting shame or peril to us all
From her false blood and fiery tongue; except
I find a mate as meet to match with him
For truth to me as Gilbert Curle hath found,
I will play Tudor once and break the banns,
Put on the feature of Elizabeth
To frown their hands in sunder.
MARY BEATON.
Were it not
Some tyranny to take her likeness on
And bitter-hearted grudge of matrimony
For one and not his brother secretary,
Forbid your Frenchman’s banns for jealousy
And grace your English with such liberal love
As Barbara fails not yet to find of you
Since she writ Curle for Mowbray? and herein
There shows no touch of Tudor in your mood
More than its wont is; which indeed is nought;
The world, they say, for her should waste, ere man
Should get her virginal goodwill to wed.
MARY STUART.
I would not be so tempered of my blood,
So much mismade as she in spirit and flesh,
To be more fair of fortune. She should hate
Not me, albeit she hate me deadly, more
Than thee or any woman. By my faith,
Fain would I know, what knowing not of her now
I muse upon and marvel, if she have
Desire or pulse or passion of true heart
Fed full from natural veins, or be indeed
All bare and barren all as dead men’s bones
Of all sweet nature and sharp seed of love,
And those salt springs of life, through fire and tears
That bring forth pain and pleasure in their kind
To make good days and evil, all in her
Lie sere and sapless as the dust of death.
I have found no great good hap in all my days
Nor much good cause to make me glad of God,
Yet have I had and lacked not of my life
My good things and mine evil: being not yet
Barred from life’s natural ends of evil and good
Foredoomed for man and woman through the world
Till all their works be nothing: and of mine
I know but this – though I should die to-day,
I would not take for mine her fortune.
MARY BEATON.
No?
Myself perchance I would not.
MARY STUART.
Dost thou think
That fire-tongued witch of Shrewsbury spake once truth
Who told me all those quaint foul merry tales
Of our dear sister that at her desire
I writ to give her word of, and at thine
Withheld and put the letter in thine hand
To burn as was thy counsel? for my part,
How loud she lied soever in the charge
That for adultery taxed me with her lord
And being disproved before the council here
Brought on their knees to give themselves the lie
Her and her sons by that first lord of four
That took in turn this hell-mouthed hag to wife
And got her kind upon her, yet in this
I do believe she lied not more than I
Reporting her by record, how she said
What infinite times had Leicester and his queen
Plucked all the fruitless fruit of baffled love
That being contracted privily they might,
With what large gust of fierce and foiled desire
This votaress crowned, whose vow could no man break,
Since God whose hand shuts up the unkindly womb
Had sealed it on her body, man by man
Would course her kindless lovers, and in quest
Pursue them hungering as a hound in heat,
Full on the fiery scent and slot of lust,
That men took shame and laughed and marvelled; one,
Her chamberlain, so hotly would she trace
And turn perforce from cover, that himself
Being tracked at sight thus in the general eye
Was even constrained to play the piteous hare
And wind and double till her amorous chase
Were blind with speed and breathless; but the worst
Was this, that for this country’s sake and shame’s
Our huntress Dian could not be content
With Hatton and another born her man
And subject of this kingdom, but to heap
The heavier scandal on her countrymen
Had cast the wild growth of her lust away
On one base-born, a stranger, whom of nights
Within her woman’s chamber would she seek
To kiss and play for shame with secretly;
And with the duke her bridegroom that should be,
That should and could not, seeing forsooth no man
Might make her wife or woman, had she dealt