Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

“The simpletons,” said Sir Robert with a smile.

  They began the work of selection the next day, pricking off slowly after much discussion their co-religionists in Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Shropshire. These again were subjected to a searching revision. There were loyal Catholics who had always been loyal. There were others who, seeing how dissension had been appeased, and religion made seemly by tolerance, and a bankrupt nation allowed to grow to prosperity on its own feet, so that it was courted and coveted and at its word all other nations paused, had become loyal. And there were families on the side of Philip and the Pope who had even suffered in their members and their fortunes for their faith yet would put their race above all and, called to the standard of England, would spend their blood in a glowing scorn to repel, not the Papist, but the foreigner.

  They came to the Protestants.

  “The Norris family,” Mr Stafford suggested with his pen poised in the air.

  Humphrey’s face darkened. Sir Robert sat pinching his lips between his forefinger and his thumb with a sly glance at his son.

  “We can certainly class the parents as honest simpletons,” he said. “Colonel Norris was wounded in the Low Countries, and that, I think, was his sole distinction. Since then, a country squire who does not look beyond the edge of his estate and takes his politics from the parish pulpit. His wife — as long as she can chide and doctor and help the village of Winterborne Hyde and keep her house spotless, she asks no more. Upon my soul, I believe we could fly the banner of Spain from our flagstaff and they’d never notice it.”

  “Cynthia would,” Humphrey returned sullenly, “aye, and be off with the news to the sheriffs within the hour.”

  “It is true,” said Sir Robert sleekly, “that Cynthia has a certain fire and a quicker humour than her parents. Indeed they are aware of it themselves. For I have seen them gaze at her with some bewilderment as though they asked themselves — How did this chick come out of our nest? But we can hardly ask the good colonel and his housewife and leave the maid at home.”

  Humphrey’s face grew still more sullen.

  “She said No to me twice,” he blurted out angrily. “I should get nothing but discomfort from her presence.”

  “Some drowning men have three chances, Humphrey,” his father replied, “and if you take your third, the circumstances will be more propitious.”

  Humphrey looked up eagerly with a light in his eyes, but it faded out in an instant, and he shook his head.

  “I took no pleasure in being twice refused in a quarter where it seemed to me I was conferring a benefit,” he answered haughtily, and broke out into a sudden violence. “And it would happen again. For I know why I was gainsaid.”

  “We all perhaps have some suspicion,” said Sir Robert. “But it would be a good match. Colonel Norris is a warm man, Humphrey. His pockets are full.”

  “I think of the girl,” Humphrey interrupted.

  “And the girl, I was going to add, is admirable,” said Sir Robert, smooth as ever. “Therefore, since the cause of her refusal is near to its extinction, the third attempt would be worth while, even at the risk of a little shame.”

  “I don’t understand you, sir,” said Humphrey obstinately.

  “Then let us use a name and make all clear. Robin Aubrey is away with his ships. Our good Mr Gregory of Lyme for once let a secret escape him.”

  “Yes!” said Humphrey.

  Mr Gregory had, indeed, let that secret slip, and very deliberately. If Robin was thought to be roaming the Atlantic in search of Philip’s gold fleet, there would be the less risk of his detection in the household of Santa Cruz.

  “Well, then, if the Enterprise of England goes as we wish his life is forfeit, and, after all, few maidens die of love. Take heart, Humphrey! Besides” — and now Sir Robert’s smile had a less pleasant look— “Mistress Cynthia would be in our safekeeping. We would keep her very securely, and when Philip is king her good parents might stand in some peril. She would, being dutiful, wish to purchase their freedom; and we, being then of more importance than we are today, might fix the price of it!”

  “No, but — —” Mr Stafford began enthusiastically and, seeing Sir Robert’s eyes turn coldly upon him, he broke off hurriedly. “I mean, of course, that this is the most subtle wisdom.”

  Humphrey himself was lifted to a more hopeful view.

  “After a little while she might turn to me. I am not so ill-favoured. . . . I can hold my own, I think, when the odds are even . . . and on my soul I want her. . . .”

  Sir Robert was for striking whilst the iron was hot.

  “That is well, Humphrey, very well. And since it is well, let us make well better! Let us take our good friends of Winterborne Hyde into our council for the drawing up of our programme. It must be all gaiety and entertainment, sports and singing and music on the outside. Underneath it will be the forming into companies, the appointment of officers, the disposition of our troops. But these matters we shall keep very easily from our good thickheads.”

  Mr Stafford shook his head.

  “And from Mistress Cynthia?” he asked.

  Sir Robert raised his shoulders.

  “We must take some risk, and Humphrey must see to it that the risk is small. On the other hand, there is a great advantage. We are not altogether free from suspicion. We are thought in some quarters to be lukewarm in our loyalty. The object of our gathering might be eyed with distrust. But if we are joined in our plans for this celebration by a family of such known honesty as the family of Norris, we shall be thought people who have been grievously misjudged.”

  Thus, then, it was decided. A list was drawn up, the invitations were sent out, and Sir Robert and Humphrey themselves rode far afield to commend them. In the end they calculated that they would have a muster of five hundred armed men camped about Hilbury Melcombe in the middle of July — apart from the simpletons; and the Norris family was asked upon a visit so that nothing might be lacking to make the entertainment worthy of so illustrious an occasion.

  “That is a noble thought,” said Colonel Norris. “The thirtieth year of her reign! God bless my soul! Let me hear no aspersions on the Bannets!”

  “And we are not so far but what I can come back if I am needed,” said Mrs Norris.

  “Might I stay quietly at home?” Cynthia asked gently.

  But neither of her parents would hear of it. What? Stay moping at home when so much splendour was afoot? Why, it would be rank disloyalty at the best. There would be questions asked.

  “Oh well, if there would be questions asked . . .” said Cynthia with a sigh. The one question which she really dreaded was the question which Humphrey Bannet had already put to her twice.

  CHAPTER XXI. On the Edge of the Grass

  THE FIRST AND indeed the last of these conferences took place at Hilbury Melcombe halfway through March. Sir Robert, his son, Colonel Norris, with his wife and daughter and Charles Stafford, were sitting at the high table in the great chamber, and the supper was at its last course.

  “On the fourth day there should, I think, be some little joustings and tiltings,” said Sir Robert, “and on the fifth — —”

  Sir Robert had got so far when a trifling disturbance amongst the servants behind him interrupted him.

  “What is this?” he cried in amazement. The servants talking at their service? Such indecorum had never before been seen at Hilbury Melcombe. There would be some little joustings and tiltings amongst them next.

  “There is a traveller at the door, sir, in a great fret and hurry,” said the butler.

  “He must come at a more seemly time,” said Sir Robert. “Has he no name?”

  “He would give none. He bade me tell you that he had come on the business you wot of.”

  And Sir Robert rose quickly to his feet.

  “A new steward,” said he with a smile. “I shall teach him better manners later on. Meanwhile I beg you, my guests, to excuse me. He may have some business of importance.”

&nb
sp; Sir Robert hardly waited to hear the reassurance of his guests before he was in the hall. There, just within the door, Christopher Vode stood, muffled to the eyes in his cloak.

  “The mountebank!” Sir Robert thought scornfully. “I’ll wager he rode up on the edge of the grass. Well, come you in!” he added aloud, and he led the way into his library and lit a couple of candles on the table. As Vode dropped his cloak and removed his hat, Bannet recognized that this time the spy was not play-acting at all. Vode was white with excitement, and such terror was at odds with his excitement that his face twitched and his teeth chattered in his head.

  “I am on the most dangerous business in the world,” he said, directing his eyes into corner after corner of the ill-lit room. “I am on my way from Sydling Court to France. A boat waits for me at Poole. If it were known that I had stepped out of my way — —”

  “We should be like to suffer for it no less than you. So to the point!”

  “I have that secret.”

  Sir Robert’s eyes narrowed. The secret Vode was to put his own price upon. Well, perhaps he had! Nay, the very look of the man was warrant that he had.

  “The price, then?”

  “Three hundred pounds.”

  Three hundred pounds was near to three thousand of our day. Sir Robert lifted his eyebrows.

  “I have no such sum in the house.”

  “And I dared not take it if you had. I will take an order on your bank in Paris.”

  Sir Robert shot a swift glance at the man’s disordered face and frightened eyes. Then he sat down at a writing table and wrote.

  “You go to Paris — when?”

  “This very night. I have to carry false news — yes, deliberately false — that we live in a fool’s security here, that the old harlot thinks of nothing but raddling her cheeks and languishing on her favourites like a lovesick girl, and that Sir Francis Walsingham is banished to his house of Sydling St Nicholas as a wanton stirrer up of trouble.”

  And Sir Robert interrupted him.

  “And is Sir Francis at Sydling St Nicholas now?”

  “Yes.”

  “At this time? Why?”

  “He is travelling secretly to Plymouth.”

  “Plymouth?”

  “He starts at daybreak tomorrow.”

  Sir Robert Bannet sprang up. Here, certainly, was a circumstance full of menace. For Drake was at Plymouth. If Drake and Walsingham, the two men who wanted to bring these perils of England to the open arbitrament of war, were putting their heads together in Plymouth, the crafty statesman and the devil-spawned marauder, why, Sir Robert Bannet had better think twice of his fine celebration at Hilbury Melcombe of the thirtieth year of Her Gracious Majesty’s reign. Bannet sat down again, sanded the paper and handed it to Vode, who put it away inside his doublet with relief.

  “I tell you frankly, sir, I shall not come back from Paris,” he said. “I saw Babington at Tyburn. I heard Ballard’s screams and prayers under the disembowelling knife. God send me a fair passage to France, and this cursed country shall go its own way to hell!”

  He shivered like a man in an ague. There was nothing of the mountebank about Mr Vode now. He was a wretch in the very extremity of terror. After another glance at him Sir Robert struck his gong.

  “You shall tell your news to the three of us, my son Humphrey, Mr Stafford and myself.”

  “No!” cried Vode. “To you alone.”

  “They are all as deep in it as I,” Bannet returned. “They must in any case hear your story afterwards, but it will be all the more convincing if it comes straight from your lips.”

  He bade the footman who answered the bell to tell his son and his secretary to ask for the forbearance of Mrs Norris and join him at once. Whilst he waited for them he crossed the room to a buffet and poured out a brimming glass of his strong charneco.

  “Drink this!”

  Mr Vode’s teeth clacked against the glass, but he drank the wine as if it was so much water. Humphrey and Stafford hurried into the room.

  “Sit you down,” said Sir Robert. “You too, Mr Vode.”

  They gathered about the table.

  “Now speak!”

  And with the candles lighting their anxious faces in the middle of the shadowy room Vode spoke. His story held his audience so that no one interrupted him. No one even made a movement, and they kept their eyes on him from first to last.

  The opportunity for which he had been waiting had come by chance, and only in that way could it have come at all. Vode was summoned into Walsingham’s presence at Sydling Court.

  “It is desirable, Mr Vode,” Walsingham had said, “that our enemies in Paris should have encouraging news. Let them think we sit guarding Chatham Church! The sooner we shall come to the great trial! Therefore you will carry this false news all properly cyphered in a special cypher and addressed to Her Majesty’s ambassador. You will see my lord Paget at once upon your arrival. You will tell him that you carry a despatch sealed to the ambassador. You will then take it to the ambassador, who will drop it into his paper basket, and we need have no fear but that it will find its way shortly to my lord Paget. Nor need we fear that my lord Paget will have any difficulty in deciphering it. For I have taken care that the key to this fine new secret cipher is already in my lord Paget’s hands.”

  Speaking thus, Sir Francis struck his gong and called for Mr Phelippes, that he might put his name to the ciphered message and add the pointing finger in the margin which called attention to the important particulars.

  “If you will wait in Phelippes’ room,” said Sir Francis, “he shall bring the despatch back to you and seal it.”

  Christopher Vode had accordingly left Walsingham’s office and in the corridor ran against Phelippes.

  “I went on,” Vode related to his audience of three, “constraining my steps until I reached Phelippes’ room. It was the first time that I had stood there alone. On the table lay a sheet of paper in the minutest handwriting you ever saw. There was a distribution of letters in groups and figures besides. I wondered whether the figures were to be taken at their value and the groups of letters were the ciphered message — and I saw in Phelippes’ handwriting the deciphering of that sheet of paper. The figures represented the soldiers and sailors, the number of priests and the calibre of the guns on some ships of the Invincible fleet. ‘You have all the details now,’ the letter went on, ‘except Medina-Sidonia’s squadron from Cadiz, which, I understand, you have from another’s hand. My work is done.’ ”

  Sir Robert stared at Vode aghast, and for the first time interrupted him.

  “That is true? Up there in London they know even to the equipment?” he cried.

  Vode nodded his head gloomily.

  “It must be so. Sir John Hawkins, Mr Borough, the Paymaster — they have been again and again to the house on London Wall. There is such work at Chatham as has never been seen there. Powder is being bought in Holland, sailors are being requisitioned. All is heave and ho under Chatham Church.”

  “And Sir Francis is on his way to Plymouth,” said Sir Robert. “Humphrey, we shall have to consider this. This may alter our plans. We may have to make our celebration in a less noticeable way.”

  Mr Ferret uttered a groan, but rather at the caution of Sir Robert Bannet than in despair of the great invasion.

  “They may be as busy as you will at Chatham,” he argued, “but still they will be after the day. See how long it has taken to fit out the Armada! Besides, before July the queen will have bethought her of her dwindling purse again. Even if she does not, the queen’s fleet will stand and guard the Narrow seas. Drake will do what he can with his Plymouth privateers, but the Armada will catch the fleets divided and overthrow them one by one.”

  With eager looks he plied Sir Robert and Humphrey, wringing his hands.

  “Let us not lose hope, sir, at this crisis of our fortunes. Walsingham knows what deadly enemy he must meet. Very well! Is he the better for that? The wiser, yes, but the better? He must m
eet it. In that lies all. Oh, there is much still to be said,” and he looked at Christopher Vode for encouragement and support.

  “There is one thing still to be said,” said Vode, “though it does little to help your argument, sir.”

  “Let me hear it!” said Sir Robert.

  “I know the name of the man who sent all these particulars to Sir Francis Walsingham, who set the dockyards at Chatham teeming like a hive, who now sends Walsingham secretly to Plymouth: the man who is arming England. That, sir, is the secret you have paid for.”

  “His name,” cried Humphrey, beating upon the table with his fist.

  “Let us hear it, so that we may remember it in our prayers,” said Sir Robert, “and call down God’s vengeance upon him.”

  “Aye, and man’s too,” said Mr Stafford. “That name must be spread until there’s no corner in all Spain which can hide him.”

  “Speak,” said Sir Robert, and Christopher Vode spoke.

  “The letter was signed D 1, but in the body of the letter was this phrase: ‘D 1 is dead and buried with Santa Cruz. In his place stands one Carlo Manucci, a gentleman who speaks Spanish with the accent of Italy.’ ”

  “Carlo Manucci,” said Humphrey. “You will remember that name when you speak to Lord Paget in Paris.”

  Mr Vode smiled.

  “I shall remember it very well. I shall remember it still more clearly at the Jesuit College at Rheims. I shall remember it to the papal legate in Paris. I shall bear other news than Sir Francis Walsingham entrusts me with, and this news will not be false.”

  Mr Vode made his bow and slipped out of the room. He rode his horse away on the grass edge of the drive. He had better reason so to do that night than he knew. There was no comfortable bed for him in the best inn of Poole. He went aboard his ship and breathed easily only when he had sighted the coast of France.

  But inside the house Mr Stafford sat with his brows gathered in a frown. Carlo Manucci — somewhere he had heard that name, surely. An Italian. Mr Stafford began to count over the Italians he had met. An Italian who was in some close touch with Walsingham. There were many such, no doubt, but how should he, Stafford, have come across one of them? Yet the name had a familiar sound. Mr Stafford must put it out of his thoughts, then one day, and soon, he would remember. The more he belaboured his memory, the less likely it would be to serve him. Carlo Manucci? No! He must put it quite out of his mind.