CHAPTER XXII. The Device of the Italian Singers
BUT CHARLES STAFFORD couldn’t put the name out of his head. He saw Sir Robert carefully debating whether or no he should break off his plans, and Humphrey with his face buried in his hands. Carlo Manucci! And then in an unfortunate moment there came stealing into the room the sound of a wistful melody played upon a virginal. Mr Stafford caught his breath like a man on the brink of some momentous discovery. If he only waited, without trying to unravel the intricate hidden process of his mind which connected the name with the music, the truth would become clear to him. So he waited, but the secret still eluded him. He had to ask himself questions. Was it the melody which was vaguely associated with the name? Was it the player? Was it the instrument? His inability to answer was altogether too exasperating.
But Mr Stafford was a man of some ingenuity. He might, perhaps, get his questions answered by someone else. He would be shooting an arrow at a venture, but such arrows pierced a heart at times. The more he thought upon it the more his little scheme appealed to him. It would be amusing to execute it — and no harm would come of it.
Mr Stafford drew a sheet of paper towards him and wrote down upon it some half a dozen names.
Humphrey Bannet looked up.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I am preparing to asperse the reputation of Mr Nicholas Bools, your musician.”
Stafford sanded the paper and shook the sand off.
“I beg you to wait.”
He slipped out of the room and, crossing the great hall, opened the door of the small music room. Colonel Norris was dozing in a chair; his wife had a basket at her side and was working at a sampler whilst she nodded her head to the music. It was a homely scene but rather dull for a girl, and Stafford did not wonder at the wistfulness of the music, which was dropping like sweet tears from the fingers of Cynthia at the virginal.
But the music stopped. Cynthia had raised her eyes from the keys. She was watching Mr Stafford in the mirror above her head as she had once watched Robin. The tears rose suddenly into her eyes as her thoughts went back to the gay smiling youth who had snatched her heart away and given to her his in that memorable second. She turned quickly on the stool.
“Mistress Cynthia, we need your help!” said Mr Stafford, bowing low, and Cynthia shut her eyes suddenly as though she were hurt. Perseus on that selfsame spot had made a bow — a proper bow, a bow with all the graces in it. Alas! where was he now? This was the mere caricature of a bow.
“How can I help?” she asked.
“We must have music and singing worthy of our festival. Sir Robert is set on it. This is the land of sweet singers. Yet it may be that we have still something to learn from Italy.”
Cynthia laughed.
“That is very likely. But though I am flattered by Sir Robert’s estimation of my knowledge, you will get, I must confess, a truer comparison between the English polyphonic and the Italian system from Sir Robert’s musician than from me,” Cynthia answered.
“But that is what Sir Robert doubts,” said Mr Stafford. “Mr Nicholas Bools has perhaps too long made his home in this nook of the country to be abreast with the new fashions.”
“What of me, then?” cried Cynthia with a laugh.
“You, mistress, are not quite so sunk in a good opinion of your own mastery of the art. I have had sent to me from a friend in London the names of some singers and musicians from Italy who have made a stir amongst the critical.”
Cynthia reflected.
“I have heard of one, certainly —— Wait, sir! I have the name — Signor Ercole Tolentino.”
Mr Stafford looked down at his list. He uttered a little cry of pleasure.
“Ah! He is here, to be sure,” and he marked off a name. It was not the name Ercole Tolentino. That was not written on the paper at all. No, nor any name faintly resembling it. But then Mr Stafford did not mean this paper to leave his hands; the more especially since it was written in his own handwriting.
“But I remember no others,” said Cynthia.
“The names I have here might quicken your memory.”
“You might hear them, darling,” said Mrs Norris without looking up from her sampler.
“Very well, Mother.”
Cynthia resigned herself to listen. Mr Stafford fixed his eyes upon his paper. For nothing in the world would he look up. A curious excitement was growing upon him. He could not trust his eyes and his face to conceal it. But he was all ears for a sound, the quick rustle of a dress, a half-checked sigh. All, however, that he heard for the moment was a wheezy cough from Colonel Norris, who had been awakened by the cessation of the music.
“Luigi Savona,” Mr Stafford read.
“Ah! A foreigner,” said the colonel, giving information, and he promptly went to sleep again.
“I never heard of him,” said Cynthia.
“He is not a singer, but a lutenist of repute.”
“He may very well be,” said Cynthia, “but for all I know of him, he may be the parish organ blower.”
“Tommaso Visentini.”
“A fine name, Mr Stafford, but I cannot promise you a voice to match.”
Then in the same even voice, with just a lift at the end to make the name a question, Stafford read:
“Carlo Manucci?”
And beyond all his expectations the trick succeeded. Cynthia was taken unawares. She cried out in surprise:
“Carlo Manucci is a servant in a play. Some wit has been practising on Sir Robert. He is not a man at all . . .” And her voice faltered, and on a low despairing note she breathed: “Oh! What have I done!”
Some wit had been practising upon her. She lifted her eyes to the mirror above her head, and could put a name to the wit if she could not put a name to a singer of Italy. Mr Stafford was standing with such savage exultation on his face that she had never seen the like of it. It would haunt her, she thought, until she died. His tongue slid out and licked his lips. Had any face ever betrayed so much vindictiveness gratified, or so horrible an anticipation of cruelty?
“Gino Muratori,” Stafford read on, but he could not keep the excitement out of his voice.
In some mysterious way she had betrayed her lover. Somewhere in the world he was masquerading as Carlo Manucci. His enemies knew where, but they had needed her to tell them who Carlo Manucci was. And she had told them — fool that she was — traitress that she was.
“Gino Muratori?” Stafford repeated.
Cynthia shook her head, and in a vain hope that she would so cover her confusion, she struck a chord and then another.
“Well, we have one name at all events — Ercole Tolentino — whom we must do our best to secure. I thank you,” said Mr Stafford, and with another bow he escaped from the room. He had drawn his bow at the venture, and he had pierced a heart.
He hurried across the hall and burst into the library with so amazed and eager a look upon his face that both the men there turned to him with a cry.
“What is it now?” cried the father.
“Speak,” said Humphrey.
But Mr Stafford sank down into a chair, his eyes straying wildly from one to the other of his companions.
“To think we never guessed. Guessed! You and I, Mr Humphrey, we knew. Carlo Manucci. Mistress Cynthia had the answer pat. Aye, she would give her tongue, I doubt not, to have it back. Carlo Manucci. I read her a list of names, sweet singers from Italy to grace our festival. Did she know aught of them. Ercole Tolentino, Luigi Savona, Carlo Manucci? ‘It is not a singer,’ says she. ‘It’s the name of a servant in a play.’ Carry your mind back, Mr Humphrey, to a day when we rehearsed a play at Eton and Francis Walsingham came to interrupt our rehearsal.”
Humphrey had been staring at the secretary as at a man demented.
“Carlo Manucci?” Stafford repeated, driving the name home. “Who is Carlo Manucci? Who must he be?”
At last Humphrey Bannet understood.
“Robin Aubrey! God’s death!�
�� he cried. He was drawn up onto his feet, his face white with passion. “Must he be ever in our way? May he burn in hell!”
A dreadful smile contorted Stafford’s features. Never had he looked so viperish.
“We have seen to it, at all events, that he shall burn on earth. Like father, like son. They will find him. The Inquisition’s arm is long, and if it looks sideways from beneath a hood the sight is the quicker. Like father, like son!”
The phrase gave the secretary infinite pleasure, so that he rolled it on his tongue and licked it about his lips.
“Mr Ferret has ferreted to some purpose this evening. Mr Ferret thanks Her Grace for the name,” and he sat mowing and grinning, and rubbing the palms of his hands together in a grotesque and horrible glee which was enough to make a man shiver. And as the vision of that distant afternoon at Eton when he was put to so much contumely rose before his eyes, he said:
“Oh, he shall be on his knees again, but with less sprightly an air, I think, and not so pretty a dress, and we shall not present him with a knot of ribbons. No, not today. A foolscap and a lighted candle and the high plaza in Madrid, and the lovely country of fields and forest stretching away before the tortured eyes to the snow on Guadarrama.”
“What is this you are talking of?” cried the father incredulously. “Carlo Manucci — the informer who has ruined our hopes and made every dockyard in England an anthill for activity is — —”
“Robin Aubrey. Yes sir.”
“A boy!”
Mr Stafford nodded his head. He had always been at a loss to understand Robin Aubrey. Something in the lad had eluded him. But he was clearer in his estimate now.
“A boy with a dream — a dream that made him a man whilst he was a boy and kept him a boy after he was a man. So that things impossible have been done.”
Bannet turned to his son.
“And you say so, Humphrey?”
Humphrey, who was now staring at the table, nodded his head.
“I should have known without this proof if I had had half the wits of a tadpole. He was always in front of me — just in front of me, so that what I wanted fell to him in small things and great things. If we had hopes of a fuller life, of power, of the triumph of our faith, of another prince — it is he who must spoil them. Why, even Cynthia—” and he nodded violently towards the door— “even Cynthia Norris he takes from me.”
“You believe that?”
“How else should she remember what we had forgot? Carlo Manucci — that was Aubrey’s part in the Eton play — the servant’s part — and we, you and I, Stafford, chuckling fools that we were, thought it so suitable. We had rehearsed it evening after evening — we had forgotten, but she remembers. Pat, you said, the answer comes pat, without thinking. Had she thought she would never have spoken it. A servant in a play! Carlo Manucci. Of course she remembers, as she remembers every word he spoke to her, every glance of his eyes, every paddling touch of his hand! Cunning, too, to keep her secret so well.”
Oh yes, Cynthia must come under his lash too. Humphrey stood, his hands opening and clenching, his face contorted with malevolence.
“He taught her his cunning,” said Mr Ferret. “Oh, he had enough of it. This fine romantical story which has gradually crept out — a little fleet of ships to avenge his father. Oh, bravery! Oh, worthy example of ancient piety! Oh, noble son! And all the while he sneaks about Philip’s quays, an Italian gentleman.”
Humphrey swore aloud.
“A grocer’s clerk, rather, adding barrel to barrel.”
“And culverin to culverin and soldier to soldier till the list’s complete,” Mr Ferret added in a voice which had lost something of its glee. “Aye, until the list’s complete, and Chatham’s bustling with shipwrights and Walsingham’s on his way to Plymouth.”
“God! that we should split on so puny a rock!” cried Humphrey. “Why, he has made fools of us all with his lies. A second Drake he was to be — and, God help us, we believed him.”
“Ah! But there’s one word of truth in his story,” said Stafford, his spirits rising a little, “and one little thought of comfort for us. There was to be an auto-da-fé, I think. Wasn’t that his word? Well, with Christopher Vode’s help there will be an auto-da-fé. But it will not be held in the Atlantic. No, no! In the Quemadero at Madrid.”
Mr Stafford found such great consolation in the picture of Robin burning that he must ever be painting it again.
And then Sir Robert Bannet rapped upon the table.
“You talk like children.”
For some little time he had been giving only the faintest heed to what his counsellors were saying. They were talking — that was all. Words of fury, words of spite, gloating anticipations which might never be fulfilled, and all the while danger was pressing nearer upon this house in which they sat, danger most swift and sudden, which would need the coolest heads to conjure, if conjured it could be.
“A boy’s passion, a man’s hurt vanity will not help us in our straits,” said the old man, and his two companions looked at him with surprise. There was so much consternation in his face, so wild and hunted a glance in his eyes.
“You did a clever thing, Stafford, when you went into the small drawing room with your list of sweet singers and lutenists in your hand, eh? Oh, such a clever, subtle thing! ‘Carlo Manucci,’ says you. ‘And that’s a character in a play,’ says she. She says it pat, without thinking, and there you are. Carlo Manucci is Robin Aubrey. Good! We have him! Yes, but what is she thinking now in the small drawing room?”
This, certainly, was a question which had not occurred either to Stafford in his glee or Humphrey in his anger.
“Do you think she doesn’t know now that your list of singers was a trap? Oh, she fell into it, I grant you. But haven’t you trapped us, too, with your subtle cleverness? She’s aware now that you know that Carlo Manucci is Robin Aubrey. But why did you want to know it? Will she put it down to your kindness of heart? And how did you come to hear of that name Carlo Manucci? Where did you learn that there was a Carlo Manucci whose activities were important? Eh, eh, eh, there’s a question for you, Mr Stafford. And if Cynthia Norris loves this boy, Robin Aubrey, what will she do, Mr Stafford? She’ll smell danger for her lover in every nook in the house. What will she do to save him?”
“She can’t save him,” said Mr Stafford stubbornly. “Vode will be in Poole before he can be stopped; he will be in France before he can be stopped. There’ll be no saving of Robin Aubrey, Sir Robert.”
“And what saving will there be for us? Robin Aubrey’s Walsingham’s agent in Spain. Doesn’t she know that? Hasn’t she known that all this last year? A secret between her and Phelippes and Walsingham?”
Mr Stafford was quick to defend himself.
“No sir, she doesn’t know it. It’s notorious that Walsingham keeps his secrets to himself.”
“She knows, at all events, that Walsingham is the boy’s friend, as he was his father’s friend. There’s not one in the county who’s unaware of it. And she knows, thanks to you, that the boy’s in danger. What will she do but seek Walsingham out and tell him of your clever play with your singers and your lutenists?”
Humphrey looked up quickly. That last bitter question did something to revive his confidence.
“But she can’t,” he cried.
“And why not?”
“Because Walsingham rides to Plymouth at daybreak and Cynthia Norris is here at Hilbury Melcombe.”
But as he spoke, old Bannet lifted his hand for silence, and so sharply that all obeyed him. They listened as if bound by a spell. Suddenly Sir Robert with an oath sprang up and flung open a window. The night was very still. There was not a whisper in the boughs of the trees; overhead the stars streamed in a clear sky of ebony; one would have said that but for these three troubled men all the earth was asleep.
“But I heard,” said the old man in a low and frightened voice.
“What, sir?” asked Humphrey in a whisper.
“There
is nothing to hear,” said Stafford.
And there was nothing to hear while Stafford spoke. But a second later, clear and sharp as the sound of a bell, all of them heard the beat of a horse galloping. The strokes of its hooves upon the gravel were loud to them as the strokes of doom. No one moved until they had died away in the distance. Then Robert Bannet flung the window to in a rage.
“She rode on the grass at the edge of the drive, like Vode,” and he began to laugh. Both Humphrey and Stafford were appalled by the look of him. He, the cool, careful head, was distraught.
“Treachery taught the one; love teaches the other.”
He bent over the table and snatched up the papers with the plans for the camps and the entertainments.
“Well, we are saved this much trouble,” he cried, tearing them up like a man demented. “We shall entertain no guests to celebrate the thirtieth year of Gloriana’s reign. And why, Mr Stafford; why, Humphrey my son? Because there’ll be no house standing in which to entertain them.”
CHAPTER XXIII. A Vain Pursuit
IN THIS CRISIS of their fortunes it seemed that Sir Robert and his son changed places. The old man drooped in his chair, his eyes dull and tired, his face haggard and twice his age. Even his anger against his secretary was spent. He sat with his eyes set upon the ruin of his house, the ghost of a man who a few hours back had been blithely trimming his sails so that no swift change of wind should catch him unprepared. Such lead as it was possible to take Humphrey took.
“We must make sure that it was she who rode away,” he said. He opened the door into the great hall. The household had gone to bed. The candles were all extinguished in the sconces on the walls. The only light came over his shoulder from the room behind him. He returned into the library and lit a taper.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 679