Walsingham shook his head.
“I had then, as I have now, no good news out of Spain. I never saw your father after that night when he came to Sydling House. I heard that he had travelled to Italy and thence into Spain.”
“Where he was arrested.”
“Yes. People might come and go. I speak of seven years ago. They came and went at their own risks.”
“My father was arrested because he had with him in his luggage a book, a little book, a copy of the Precepts of Cato.”
“But translated by Erasmus,” said Sir Francis Walsingham, and bit his lip. He was showing too much knowledge for a man who had no news out of Spain. “I heard that too. A translation by Erasmus, the arch-heretic. That was cause enough.”
“Cause enough for the rack and the stake,” said Robin; and still his face was a mask, and still his voice was steady, more shrill perhaps than even a moment ago, but steady and quiet as that of one speaking of exciting things which had no personal touch.
“At the stake? You are sure of that?” cried the secretary, leaning forward.
“There was a famine in Spain. Ships which carried wheat from England were given a safe conduct. The Catherine out of Lyme was one.”
“It brought back the gossip of the ports?”
“No!” cried Robin. “It brought back its master, Richard Brymer, a man of Lyme. On a summer night he sailed in his ship’s pinnace with the tide round Portland Bill. He drew in by the Mupe Rocks and beached his pinnace in Warbarrow Bay in the morning. He found me there. I had been swimming; I was drying in the sun on the sand — —”
Suddenly that even voice stopped altogether, and so abruptly that Walsingham doubted for a moment his estimate of Robin. There was, however, no other sign of distress visible in his manner. He stood up erect against the wall, speaking steadily in a shrill singsong, and then came silence sharp upon speech, as a shutter upon sunlight. It was a schoolboy reciting his piece on a prize day and suddenly forgetting the word which came next and his mind going blank. And yet if it was only that, why did the secretary, not an imaginative man, see shaping itself in front of him with extraordinary precision the picture of a brown curving beach, a summer morning, a circle of high cliffs, a boy of ten stretched out, brown as the beach on which he lay, digging in his feet and letting the sand run between his toes, and over the shining water a ship’s pinnace sailing in a light wind with a man at the helm, bringing such news as might well make in an instant a man out of a boy — and a secret iron man, however much the slim elegance of his looks belied him.
“What did this Richard Brymer tell you?” the secretary asked intently.
“That whilst his ship was unloading at Vigo he had gone to Madrid — that on a Sunday he had been caught up by a great crowd all in holiday dress — that he had gone with it to the Square of San Bernardo. Richard Brymer had a smattering of Spanish. The place they were bound for was called the Quemadero. There was to be an auto-da-fé, and amongst the heretics to suffer was an English traveller.”
“And he saw your father?”
“Yes. Brymer was on the outskirts of the crowd. But the procession passed at his elbow. My father walked in it wearing the yellow sack and the high conical hat. . . . He dragged his legs, his face was wasted with pain. . . . Richard Brymer saw the smoke of the faggots curling up into the air. . . . He was crying like a child as he told me.”
The picture of the beach was still before Sir Francis Walsingham’s eyes. He saw the sun cross the sky and drop behind the cliffs to the west — and the boy still lying on the sand, but the pinnace gone and the place empty. He watched the boy rise with a shiver and dress himself in his clothes and go up alone through the gap to an empty house.
But a movement of the real boy in front of him tore this picture into wisps as a wind shreds a mist. Robin again raised his hand to his breast and fingered it, feeling for something which lay hidden beneath his doublet. The queen’s knot of ribbons! So that was the talisman which kept the voice equable, the face unravaged. A knot of ribbons, a hope of the queen’s favour, the promise of life at a brilliant court. Walsingham beat upon the arms of his chair. Then he stretched out an accusing finger which pointed at the boy’s hand.
“And it means no more to you than a cloud across the moon! The Quemadero, the yellow sack, the dragging limbs! Even Richard Brymer was more moved. For you have the queen’s ribbons against your heart!”
And in the midst of his anger the secretary was flung back amongst perplexities. For Robin’s arms shot out from his sides straight to their full reach at the level of the shoulders. He stood erect with his feet together, the gold of his dress gleaming against the dark panels, his eyes closed, his face at last quivering and tormented. He stood as if crucified. Then slowly his head dropped onto his breast.
“Sir, you press me too hard,” he said in a whisper.
Shame? Or the breaking of a great control under the torture of his questioning? Walsingham could not answer. One thing alone was clear to him. The boy had reached the limits of his strength. Walsingham rose from his chair.
“Very like!” he said in an easier voice. “I must go. Your bedtime is past, Robin, and my hour of leisure.”
He set his cloak about his shoulders and drew it up to muffle his face.
“Of my visit to you, of what I told you about the Pope’s bull, of Richard Brymer’s story, it will better to breathe no word. Your friend, young Bannet, is of a Catholic family; the tutor, Mr Ferret” — and a smile of enjoyment lit up for a moment the secretary’s pale face— “of the same faith, no doubt. Be wary of them, Robin, even in your sleep.”
Robin walked towards the door, but Walsingham stopped him.
“Nay. I’ll take my leave of you here. I want no ceremonies.”
He gave his hand to Robin and then let it fall to his side.
“Well, we shall see what we shall see. Fare you well!”
Outside the door of the room Dakcombe was standing sentinel. Across the passage a thread of light showed that the door of the common room was ajar. Walsingham took a step and closed it softly, and holding the handle gave his other hand to Dakcombe. Dakcombe would have raised it to his lips, but the secretary stopped him.
“You owe me no such reverence.” He clapped George Aubrey’s old servant gently on the shoulder. “We grow old, my old friend, each keeping his ward in his own way. Look well to yours, and God prosper you.”
He drew his hat down over his brows. Like all men of mysteries, he had grown to practise mystery when there was not a shadow of need for it. If he paid a call upon the young son of his greatest friend no one must know it. If he had wanted a feather for his hat — though it is difficult to imagine Sir Francis aware of such a want — he would have bought three bits of a feather at three different shops and sewn them together in the dark. At the door of Mrs Parker’s house his litter awaited him. He was forty-seven years old then, but grievously aged with the stone. Warbarrow Bay and a boy changed into a man in the course of a summer’s day by the story of a sea captain with the tears running down his face. The dark panels of a room and a pretty young water fly of a lad clutching a knot of ribbons to his breast and dreaming of soft, luxurious days in the pageantry of a court. Which was the true picture? Her Majesty’s principal secretary went back to his papers in Windsor Castle, and that problem was still unresolved.
CHAPTER IV. The Signet Ring
THE ANSWER WAS in the long dark room from which he had just departed. Robin stood for a moment or two on the spot where Walsingham had left him. He then walked with the dragging steps of his father at the Quemadero to the fireplace and one by one extinguished the candles which he had lit in honour of the secretary’s visit. He did it very slowly, his thoughts far away and his body very tired. He left alight only that candle which had been burning when he entered the room an hour before, and the candles on each side of the crucifix. He looked uneasily about that shadowed room, not quite sure that he was alone. But being now sure, he unbuttoned his doublet and
drew out from against the white lawn of his shirt, not a crumpled bow of ribbon, but a signet ring hung upon a fine gold chain. The stone set in the ring was an emerald in the shape of a shield, and deep into it were cut two initials, G. A. He smiled rather wistfully as he looked upon the emerald shield. Then he moved as though drawn by a magnet to the prie-dieu. And when he stood in front of the prie-dieu with the ring in his fingers and the ivory crucifix before his eyes, his loneliness had its way with him.
He had held his own against the queen’s secretary. Words had been spoken to him which had cut like knives and he had concealed the wounds they made, had kept his voice steady, his eyes impenetrable. Now the defences were down. He dropped on his knees in front of the crucifix and bowed his young head on his arms. A passion of grief shook him. His father with the great heart and the great laugh and the high spirit rode with him again on the Purbeck Hills, the river winding like a band of silver through the water meadows to Poole Harbour on the one side, the sea and the crescent of Warbarrow Bay on the other. He sailed again out to St Alban’s Head, he holding the tiller, his father the sheet of the sail. They talked of foreign cities in foreign tongues. They would visit them all together. A storm of tears burst from the boy’s eyes. The sound of his sobbing filled the room. He sank down at the foot of the prie-dieu and crouched there, his legs drawn up beneath him. The yellow sack, the face wasted with torment and the black of dungeons, the dragging limbs, the smoke curling up from the Quemadero — the boy, crouched in his gay, bright dress on the floor of the room, cried with a breaking heart, even as Richard Brymer of Lyme had cried by the side of his pinnace, the rugged old sailor with the brown of the sea upon his face and the horror of what he had seen burning in his eyes.
Sir Francis was about this time being carried in his litter through the castle gate, still in something of a fret over a fruitless visit. He would have been at greater ease if he could have looked into the long, shadowy room of Mrs Parker’s house. But another did. The door was opened with great care that not a hinge should creak. It opened into the room and at first hid Robin altogether from the eyes of the watchers. But it was slowly pushed back and back until the prie-dieu was disclosed and the unhappy boy sobbing on the floor at the foot of it, with his hands to his face and the tears running out between his fingers. There were two who looked on, Mr Stafford and Humphrey Bannet. Humphrey made a movement, shrugged his shoulders and was on the point of speaking. But the tutor set a finger to his lips, and as secretly as he had opened it he shut the door again. He drew Humphrey back into the common room across the passage.
“Crybaby!” said Humphrey.
“Aye, you can laugh now. But if you had laughed in his hearing, if you had spoken, if he had seen you even, he would never have forgiven you. He would have felt shame at the sight of you to the end of his days.”
“Would that have been so great a matter?” said Humphrey scornfully.
“Who shall say?”
Humphrey Bannet looked at his tutor in surprise.
“An hour ago you were not so careful how you offended him.”
“An hour may bring great changes, Humphrey, even in times less changeful than these. One may make a friend.”
Humphrey Bannet laughed.
“If Robin Aubrey made a friend tonight, he seems to have got little joy of it.”
They were standing face to face in the common room, and Mr Stafford spoke in an uneasy voice:
“Here’s a good rule, Humphrey. Before you do the thing which won’t be forgiven, make sure that it’s worth while. Weigh it well, however small a thing it seems.”
The tutor was disquieted. Who was this late visitor? Stafford had remarked the little movement of Francis Walsingham in the courtyard that afternoon when the boy had knelt at the queen’s feet. He knew of the friendship between the statesman and Robin’s father. He suspected that Walsingham was the visitor. And they had talked for a long while. What had Walsingham — if Walsingham it was — sought from Robin Aubrey? He was a subtle searcher: he had his spies everywhere; he kept them unaware of each other, so that he could check what one said by the statement of a second; he neglected no opportunity of knowledge; he could be secret and slow till the last necessary fact was collected, and then he could be swift — appallingly swift — as Tyburn certified. Mr Stafford shivered a little. The great house of Hilbury Melcombe had its own concealments and mysteries. It was natural that Mr Stafford’s fears should run to them and should imagine that what he dreaded should be disclosed was already known or in the way of being known to this crafty fox amongst the queen’s servants.
“Wait!” he said.
He might after all be torturing himself without reason. Robin’s visitor might be some harmless gentleman from Dorsetshire who had talked of old days to an impressionable boy. He went out into the passage and listened at Robin’s door. All was quiet now within the room, though a line of light showed still upon the boards. Mr Stafford returned to the common room.
“Call to him!” he said to Humphrey. “But wait till he answers.”
Humphrey Bannet went out into the corridor.
“Robin,” he called. “Are you alone?”
There was no answer, and he called again, more gently:
“Robin! Robin!”
In a little while Robin’s voice answered, muffled and low.
“A moment, Humphrey!”
And there followed a sound of hurried movement inside the study. Robin had been still sitting crouched on the floor when the summons reached his ears. He rose to his feet quickly, dried his cheeks and eyes with his handkerchief and then blew out the candles on the prie-dieu. He had a wish that no signs of his abasement should be visible even to Humphrey his friend. He buttoned the signet ring away within his doublet, and crossing to the door, threw it open.
“I am alone,” he said, and seeing that Mr Stafford was at Humphrey’s elbow he stepped backwards to the mantelshelf so that he should have the light of the one candle behind him and his face still remain in shadow.
“So your visitor has gone!” said Mr Stafford.
“He has gone,” Robin answered, and thereupon he astonished Mr Stafford. In those days boys stood until they were bidden to be seated, and when they sat, they sat tidily. George Aubrey had schooled his son in good behaviour as well as in the living languages. Never, to the knowledge of the tutor, had Robin behaved as he behaved now. He tumbled into the great chair in which Sir Francis Walsingham had been sitting, without so much as a “By your leave,” and sprawled there, his legs stretched out, his ankles crossed, his arms hanging down, just like a captain at an inn.
“And taken your manners with him,” said Mr Stafford sourly.
Robin did not rise at the rebuke, he did not change his attitude by an inch. His knees had given under him. He had come so utterly to the end of his strength that he dared not trust himself to stand upon his feet.
“I do think so, sir, in very truth,” he answered in a voice which was faint with fatigue. “There are old stories of ancient people who sap the vigour of younger ones to replenish their own. I think such an one visited me tonight.”
“An old man, then?” cried Mr Stafford, and a little eagerly. An old man? Why, then, it would not be Walsingham. But Robin dashed his hopes.
“Not so old if you count by years.”
“Youngish old, then?” said Mr Stafford despondently.
“Or oldish young,” answered Robin. “Have it, sir, as you will.”
“Should I be right in saying a strong Puritan?” Mr Stafford asked slily.
“We didn’t talk religion,” said Robin.
Humphrey laughed impatiently.
“It must have been a Jesuit, who, though he took your manners, Robin, left his quibbles.”
“Or a Puritan Jesuit,” said Robin, and at once Mr Stafford took him up.
“In that case, Sir Francis Walsingham. The phrase fits him like a glove. We need look no further.”
And indeed the description was not inapt — a P
uritan in the austerity of his belief, a Jesuit in his devices. But Robin was on his feet the next moment and looking up into the face of Mr Stafford, his bearing very respectful, his eyes quiet but very intent.
“Was it he, sir?” Robin asked slowly.
The tutor could not interpret the boy’s look. There was no threat in it. It was calm as a pool. Yet for a moment Mr Stafford was seized with a panic and startled enough to betray it.
“And if it was he who came muffled up in a cloak to avoid recognition, why should you, sir, be at so much pains to publish his name?”
Mr Stafford stammered some foolish excuses about his care for his pupils and the heavy charge it laid upon him, whilst a black rage filled his heart. Why, he might be the pupil and this grave-eyed lad looking up into his face — yes, actually looking up — the tutor calling him to account.
Robin heard him out until he stopped; and then with a bow he went to the mantelshelf and took up the one lit candle.
“With your leave, sir, I shall to my bed,” he said.
At the door leading into his bedroom he turned, with a smile upon his face.
“At this moment, sir, I could play Carlo Manucci to your complete satisfaction,” he said. “For I can hardly stand upright.”
With a nod to Humphrey he went into his bedroom and closed the door.
CHAPTER V. Not Foreseen in the Plan
FOUR YEARS AFTERWARDS and in the same month Robin rode to Hilbury Melcombe. He had been for the last two years his own master, but there was little change at Abbot’s Gap to show for it. The house still slept behind its shutters, a desolate and inhospitable place. Robin was for most of the time at Oxford and for the rest of it where nobody knew. When he came to Abbot’s Gap it was suddenly and after nightfall, so that few knew of his coming. He would pass a few days there, ordering his estate and his revenues strictly with his steward, sailing his boat in Warbarrow Bay and sitting late into the night over his books in the library where he had been wont to study the living languages with his father. Then as silently as he had come he would be off again. He refused the companionship of his neighbours and so fell into disuse with the house.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 664