by Talbot Mundy
“Hide her?” he said. “She is hidden! But can you hide a flame in darkness? Mistress” (he turned again to Mildred), “those bright eyes burn away my sorrow.”
If he knew what sorrow was he gave no sign of it just then. I shook him until he must have seen at least a dozen of us, and then asked him how far to where he lodged? And who kept the place? And whether it was fit shelter for a maiden jealous of her good name?
There was nothing to be won by pressing Will; he tried to hide under a mask of phrases that his house was nothing estimable; and when I told him I needed a place where Mildred might take suitabler adornment from the packs and come forth presently in woman’s clothes — and why she should — and why the haste, he mocked me:
“To the Queen?” he said. “At this hour? And does the Queen so love a dairymaid that you would change your fairy princess into a wench from Brownsover in country woollens to delight her? Is the Queen so weary of romance? I have heard it said of her, she loves the players better than a bishop’s sermon. All the world’s a stage, Will, if the groundlings only knew it! Play an actor’s part, and you shall smile your way through every ambuscade that envy sets, so be you act romantic and not add your increase to the drabness of a life already wearisome enough.”
If I had known the court — if I had lived a year in London — I would have laughed at his conceit; but I knew nothing save that I was desperate and had scant time in which to steal a march on the Earl of Leicester. And it seemed to me Will had the right of it.
“They tell me,” he said, “there are great doings at the Palace of St. James’s to-night, where the Queen shall dance a minuet and give the lie to rumour of her having the gout like Secretary Burghley.”
I can be quick enough when another’s genius has given me my cue. I turned on Berden, who was waiting sulkily to see what error I would make next.
“Berden,” I said, “you are known to the guards? Will they admit you at St. James?”
He nodded. If he said he had a message for the Lords in Council none would dare to turn him away, not at any hour. “But at my risk,” he added. “An I enter on a false excuse I am like to pay for it.”
“Nay, it is I who will pay,” I told him. “If you obey me and the plan miscarries, I will forfeit a hundred pounds to you in minted money. And if not, then we are all winners, for you will share my credit.”
I bade him take a fresh horse from Burbage’s stable and ride post-haste to the palace, where he should cry great urgency and secrecy. He should find Lord Burghley. And if Lord Burghley were not there he should demand admittance to the Queen herself (for I knew not yet how difficult it was to come into the Queen’s own chamber). And to Lord Burghley, or to the Queen herself, he was to report my coming with a secret of such import as brooked no delay.
“And say that to the Queen herself,” said I, “if you can manage it. But the essence of the plan is this: that when we arrive, soon after you, Mildred and I and Tony are to be taken straight in, either to the Lords of the Council in the Council Chamber, or into the Queen’s own presence — and the latter best.”
He thought me mad, as in truth I may have been; but I have seen many a stroke of madness win where shrewdness was a loser.
“And God pity us all,” he exclaimed, “when your secret turns out to be of lesser import than its promise! The Lords of England are not lightly to be summoned to hear trifles at this hour o’ night.”
It was a long time before I could browbeat Berden to obedience. He wanted me to rehearse to him my message that should justify his importunity and save him a rebuke. But I bade him have confidence that I would not risk Mildred’s safety on a hopeless chance; and again I promised him a hundred pounds if failure should come of his doing exactly as I bade him. So he rode away at last, in pouring rain that washed the fog away but inspired no man’s zeal, so that I began again to dread the outcome, hardly daring to believe that Berden would play his part manfully. I thought him likelier to turn against me.
Will Shakespeare offered comfort, in the moment he could spare from praising Mildred, whose mannish suit of velvet stirred his imagination much more than my peril did:
“One touch,” he said, “of the romantic, the unusual, and Nature — aye, the very stars and planets, heaven’s elements, and forces of the unseen mystery, are leagued in cordial alliance to preserve it! Life knows no more grateful joy than novelty. Old orders, barricaded custom, jealousy and envy trenched within the fortalice of habit, yield, Will, to that touch of newness that is Nature’s jewellery emblazoned on the brow of time! So rest you merry. There is not a venom brewed in hell’s worst cauldron, spat forth from the mouths of politicians, that shall harm you an you bring new humour to an ageing Queen by cares of state perplexed!”
Ludd knows he had long profited by following his own advice. His words encouraged me, although I thought them nonsense; and as for Mildred, she was so delighted with him as to pay me no thought at all to danger when I left my men at Burbage’s and, choosing the three best horses I could find, rode off into the dark with her and Tony, leaving Will waving his hat to us beneath the lantern in the rain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
How Will met Gloriana.
THROUGH drenching rain and splashing mud we rode, until by the time we reached the palace of St. James we resembled water-rats, and we were none too cordially-welcomed by the guard, whose captain was half-beside himself because the rain fell splashing from the arch and spoiled his starched ruff.
There were evidently doings at the palace. There were carriages — new-fangled, gaudy things from France — and litters, and a swarm of servants taking shelter where they might. I marked about two hundred armed retainers in the liveries of perhaps a score of noblemen. The Earl of Leicester’s men were better clad than most and being in greatest force they took the wall of the others for the shelter it afforded. In among them limped the cripples from the war in Flanders, pitiable fellows, Pegging alms.
“What are you? Chimney sweeps?” the captain shouted at me. “Away with you to the back entrance!”
However, I leaned forward to whisper my name to him and it was evident at once that thus far Berden had done his business. He waved us forward, after a man had held a lantern on a pike-end that he might examine our faces, and we rode under the arch into a yard where two or three score horses stood under a cloister. We found space for our own nags, but there was no sign anywhere of Berden; nor did I know which was the proper entrance until I spied, by the light of a spluttering link, a strip of crimson carpet underneath a sail-cloth awning. Thither I led the way.
There were liveried footmen in the entrance and they let us pass. But within the door there was a group of pages, impudent as magpies, who laughed at us; and doubtless we did look countrified and shabby as compared to their crimson daintiness. However, I boxed the ears of one of the pages, ordering him to do his duty and to hang our wet cloaks where they should be found when we needed them; and that stir brought a gentleman in crimson velvet, marvellously ruffed, and two others behind him whom I could clearly see because of the shadows in the long hall.
“How now? What scandal now? I’ll have no brawling!” said he in crimson. “Who are you, sirrah?”
I gave him my name in a loud voice, hoping that Berden might be somewhere within hail. But instead of Berden the two other gentlemen stepped forward, and I recognized in one of them Sir Francis Drake, all in white velvet. Sir John Hawkins was beside him, clad in crimson. My heart leaped. I forgot my indignation at the pages.
“Did I hear the name of Halifax?” Sir Francis Drake asked. “Are you the son of that Sir Harry Halifax of Brownsover, who lent me money for my first ship? By the road, you favour him! Then you are grandson of Sir William Halifax, who rallied the King’s cavalry at Flodden?”
I showed him the hilt of the sword I wore, that has been borne on Flodden Field. (Sir John Hawkins all the while was staring at Mildred, trying to scan the face beneath the mask, but Sir Francis Drake took hardly any notice of her.)
“And they named you Will for your grandsire? Carry the name gallantly then! That was lamentable when Sir Harry wrecked himself on such a rotten reef as men say. Howso, he was my friend. John” (he turned to Sir John Hawkins) “this is a chip off the old West Country block, who should help us to make a hot fire for the King of Spain. This lad’s father sheltered me when I first came out of Devonshire.”
I made the best bow I could muster. But I could not see. Mine eyes were wet.
“How is it that you did not come and tell me you were in London?” asked Sir Francis.
I could have shouted for the joy of being spoken to by the stoutest heart in England, but when it came to speaking the words choked me, so that I stammered:
“Why, sir,” I said, “an my father lived, and knew I claimed repayment on account of friendship, he would disinherit me.”
“‘Od’s mains’l, how do you like that, John?” Sir Francis asked, and Sir John Hawkins looked steadily at me — a red-faced man, with honest blue eyes — blunt, bold, seamanly — a bit incongruous in velvet.
“If God made Dons, it looks as if he bred a stock to master them,” he answered. “‘Od’s death, Drake, the lad looks manly in the middest o’ this pish-pash. But look to your privileges! They are no sooner weaned, these latter days, than they look to start by being admirals! Ship him, and see how he shapes in a storm with the Dons to windward.”
“I take the weather gauge o’ them as a general thing, John,” said Sir Francis. “Dons up-wind are devils. Down-wind, they’re fish for the frying.”
Sir John Hawkins laughed, with a noise that began like dampened cannon priming spluttering at the match, and ended in a Ho-ho-ho! with his head up.
“Well, he’s good timber, Drake — good timber,” he said. “If he can lay a culverin as smartly as he minds his manners, ship him. They look different when they’re sea-sick. But who’s this?”
He stared again at Mildred. But she and I had agreed between us how she should keep silence until we knew what the Lords in Council had to say.
“By your leave, Sir John, and Sir Francis,” I said, “we are on the Queen’s business, and the less said about it the better until all’s done.”
“Aye,” said Sir Francis Drake, “the less the better. There was a man named Berden awhile since, who sought my favour for you, else I had not known you were in London. Sir John Hawkins and I, as it chanced, had business o’ the Queen’s new ships to talk on, so we talked here where I could watch for you. You are to go in at once to Lord Burghley. I will see to it.”
He took Sir John Hawkins’s arm, nodding to us to follow, and the two went chesting into a great room, bowing right and left to jewelled and bedizened ladies, I remarking that some of the ladies answered with an air of patronage, as if they thought such men not altogether fit for courtly company.
We caused a fine stir, what with our muddy clothes, and Mildred in a man’s suit. I was glad she had her mask on, for I doubt not she was distresed by the staring, though she walked beside me with a good enough show of confidence. Sir Francis beckoned a page in crimson plush and made him walk ahead of us crying: “Matter of urgency! Make way, my lords and ladies!”
There was music in a gallery, and beneath the gallery were seats and chairs on which the flower of England sat. I had never seen such sumptuous surroundings. In the country we were used to rushes on the floor — aye, there were rushes in Kenilworth Castle, and that reckoned one of the noblest homes in England; but here, on the wide stairs at the end of the great room, and for any foot to tread that passed along the corridor to which the stairs ascended, there lay a carpet woven of such coloured patterns as employed the eye far more than did the portraits hanging on the walls, right entertaining though they were and, I suppose, well painted. There was no dirt anywhere. The palace was as spick and span as if a thousand housemaids had that minute finished sweeping it, so that I felt ashamed of my good, muddy Augsburg suit, and even my sword felt shabby amid all those dainty rapier hilts. But Mildred, I knew, was in a sort of seventh heaven because Sir Francis Drake had praised me.
Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins left us at the stair-foot, having done their part so excellently that there was no fear now of anyone refusing us admission. By dint of elbowing our way along the corridor, and very sharply sworn at, we arrived at last before a door where a gentleman-in-waiting wished to examine me as to my business. But the page said that Sir Francis Drake had spoken about us to Lord Hunsdon, and at that we were admitted.
I strode almost into the arms of Phelippes — him whom I had spoken with in Paul’s that day I first met Berden. It appeared he waited for me.
“What news have you?” he asked.
“Secret, for Lord Burghley’s ear alone,” I answered.
He looked sour at that. But he was so well used to secrecy that he could well endure a little more of it. I shut my mouth tight, and he led the way into an ante-room, where several men sat glooming and restless, others appearing to stand guard over them, keeping their backs to the three doors and holding their hilts well forward. In a shadow in a corner I saw Coningsby, but I made him no sign of recognition, nor he me; and while we waited one came from the inner room, who led him away.
There we left Tony at Phelippes’s bidding, and presently, through the farther door we passed into a second ante-room, where secretaries worked by candle-light in solemn quiet. Thence we passed into a corridor that had no window, lit by a row of candles set in sconces on the panelled wall; the candles guttered when a door moved, and I wondered how the Queen should live in so grave peril of her house afire, for the oak was burned black where the candle-smoke had been forced against it by the draught.
Thence, knocking on an oaken door, we were admitted into a chamber whose furnishings are beyond my power to describe, such gilt there was, and such mirrors, and luxuriance of tapestry. At one end, with a door on either hand, was a gilt chair like a throne, set on a dais beneath a crimson and gilt canopy, with the royal arms of England woven on a curtain at the back.
Below the dais, down the middle of the room, there was a richly carven table, at which sat men who, at the moment, subject to the Queen, held England’s destinies in keeping. Instantly I marked the Earl of Leicester, and he me, scowling, but he said nothing.
On the right hand of the throne and nearest to it sat Lord Burghley, and beside him, on his right, Sir Francis Walsingham, who none could have mistaken who had even only heard of him, so like a fox he looked, and yet unlike a fox; for he was venerable looking and in ill-health — lean and learned — dark of complexion, having brown eyes of a sort of smoky hue that seemed indifferent to all enthusiasm. It was, I think, the essence of his nature peering through the mask that made men at the first glance liken him to the fox that in appearance he resembled truly not at all.
Beside him sat Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Him I knew not at the time. And facing them, with their backs toward us, sat three others whom I knew not: Lord Hunsdon, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir James Crofts. The Earl of Leicester sat at the end of the table that faced the throne, and none except he so much as glanced up when he came into the room.
They were examining the documents they took from leather-covered boxes, making notes on them and writing their endorsements. Now and then the squeaking of their quill pens was interrupted by subdued speech, but there was almost silence for an hour — aye, longer, by the hour-glass that Lord Burghley had beside him and that he turned when the sand had run.
But at last there came a lord-in-waiting through a door beside the throne, holding in his right hand a black stick tipped with ivory. Then instantly all they at the table rose and dropped their cushions to the floor.
“Down on your knees!” Phelippes whispered. Everybody knelt, on both knees, except Lord Burghley, whose gout prevented so that he kept one foot forward; and I held my breath, for then came the Great Elizabeth, our Gloriana, of whom we in the shires had heard so much but actually knew so little.
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�Drop your eyes seemly!” Phelippes whispered. But I could not help but stare, although I bent my head a little.
She was so magnificently dressed that for a moment I saw nothing except her wide skirt, and the stomacher, and then her necklace and the wondrous collar of lace and jewels. She came as it were sailing, like a tall ship before a light breeze. Then, when awe gave place to curiosity and I beheld her face, I thought her like the portraits of her father the Lord Harry, only it might be something wiser and less human.
She had red hair — good, if God made all of it; but I believe the skull on which the greater part of it had grown lay long since in a sepulchre. Her face, it seemed to me, was sadly wrinkled underneath the paint, and her lips were drawn tightly as if she suffered bravely but with sharp impatience. I should have guessed her older than I knew her age to be; but she stood straight and royal, appearing capabler of wielding rapier than bodkin.
What I noticed most particularly, when I had done wondering at her wise, bright, serpent’s eyes, were her lily-white hands, long-fingered and as lovely shapen as I think their Maker ever can have turned out from his workshop where the kings and queens are fashioned; not even the great fantastic rings she wore could spoil their shapeliness, but rather drew attention to it, and she held them in a manner that suggested pride as well as strength of purpose.
Six sweet ladies waited on her, and when the Earl of Leicester, rising from his knees unbidden, went hurrying to offer her his hand as she mounted the dais, she preferred her ladies and looked, Robert.” So that he returned to the far end of the table to kneel I thought, scornful at him, saying: “This is no place for a minuet, again, favouring me as he passed with a dark scowl, as if it had been my fault.
When she had sat down on the throne and her ladies had done arranging her skirts and the footstool, she dismissed all except two of them, they curtseying out backwards. The two sat one on either side of her on low chairs.