She had her back to the window, and some faint gleam of wintry sunshine, passing through the gules of the shield blazoned behind her, cast a red stain on her dark hair and shapely head. She was silent, probably through pity or consternation; but I could not see her face, and misread her. I thought her hard, and, resenting this, bragged on with a lad’s empty violence.
“He did; but I will not stand it! I give you warning, I won’t stand it, Petronilla!” and I stamped, young bully that I was, until the dust sprang out of the boards, and the hounds by the distant hearth jumped up and whined. “No! not for all the base bishops in England!” I continued, taking a step this way and that. “He had better not do it again! If he does, I tell you it will be the worse for some one!”
“Francis,” she exclaimed abruptly, “you must not speak in that way!”
But I was too angry to be silenced, though instinctively I changed my ground.
“Stephen Gardiner!” I cried furiously. “Who is Stephen Gardiner, I should like to know? He has no right to call himself Gardiner at all! Dr. Stephens he used to call himself, I have heard. A child with no name but his godfather’s; that is what he is, for all his airs and his bishopric! Who is he to look on and see a Cludde beaten? If my uncle does not take care — —”
“Francis!” she cried again, cutting me short ruthlessly. “Be silent, sir!” [and this time I was silent], “You unmanly boy,” she continued, her face glowing with indignation, “to threaten my father before my face! How dare you, sir? How dare you? And who are you, you poor child,” she exclaimed, with a startling change from invective to sarcasm— “who are you to talk of bishops, I should like to know?”
“One,” I said sullenly, “who thinks less of cardinals and bishops than some folk, Mistress Petronilla!”
“Ay, I know,” she retorted scathingly— “I know that you are a kind of half-hearted Protestant — neither fish, flesh, nor fowl!”
“I am what my father made me!” I muttered.
“At any rate,” she replied, “you do not see how small you are, or you would not talk of bishops. Heaven help us! That a boy who has done nothing and seen nothing, should talk of the Queen’s Chancellor! Go! Go on, you foolish boy, and rule a country, or cut off heads, and then you may talk of such men — men who could unmake you and yours with a stroke of the pen! You, to talk so of Stephen Gardiner! Fie, fie, I say! For shame!”
I looked at her, dazed and bewildered, and had long afterward in my mind a picture of her as she stood above me, in the window bay, her back to the light, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her hand extended toward me. I could scarcely understand or believe that this was my gentle cousin. I turned without a word and stole away, not looking behind me. I was cowed.
It happened that the servants came hurrying in at the moment with a clatter of dishes and knives, and the noise covered my retreat. I had a fancy afterward that, as I moved away, Petronilla called to me. But at the time, what with the confusion and my own disorder, I paid no heed to her, but got myself blindly out of the hall, and away to my own attic.
It was a sharp lesson. But my feelings when, being alone, I had time to feel, need not be set down. After events made them of no moment, for I was even then on the verge of a change so great that all the threats and misgivings, the fevers and agues, of that afternoon, real as they seemed at the time, became in a few hours as immaterial as the dew which fell before yesterday’s thunderstorm.
The way the change began to come about was this. I crept in late to supper, facing the din and lights, the rows of guests and the hurrying servants, with a mixture of shame and sullenness. I was sitting down with a scowl next the Bishop’s pages — my place was beside them, half-way down the table, and I was not too careful to keep my feet clear of their clothing — when my uncle’s voice, raised in a harsher tone than was usual with him, even when he was displeased, summoned me.
“Come here, sirrah!” he cried roundly. “Come here, Master Francis! I have a word to speak to you!”
I went slowly, dragging my feet, while all looked up, and there was a partial silence. I was conscious of this, and it nerved me. For a moment indeed, as I stepped on to the dais I had a vision of scores of candles and rushlights floating in mist, and of innumerable bodiless faces all turned up to me. But the vision and the mistiness passed away, and left only my uncle’s long, thin face inflamed with anger, and beside it, in the same ring of light, the watchful eyes and stern, impassive features of Stephen Gardiner. The Bishop’s face and his eyes were all I saw then; the same face, the same eyes, I remembered, which had looked unyielding into those of the relentless Cromwell and had scarce dropped before the frown of a Tudor. His purple cap and cassock, the lace and rich fur, the chain of office, I remembered afterward.
“Now, boy,” thundered Sir Anthony, pointing out the place where I should stand, “what have you to say for yourself? why have you so misbehaved this afternoon? Let your tongue speak quickly, do you hear, or you will smart for it. And let it be to the purpose, boy!”
I was about to answer something — whether it was likely to make things worse or better, I cannot remember — when Gardiner stayed me. He laid his hand gently on Sir Anthony’s sleeve, and interposed. “One moment,” he said mildly, “your nephew did not stay for the Church’s blessing, I remember. Perhaps he has scruples. There are people nowadays who have. Let us hear if it be so.”
This time it was Sir Anthony who did not let me answer.
“No, no,” he cried hastily; “no, no; it is not so. He conforms, my lord, he conforms. You conform, sir,” he continued, turning fiercely upon me, “do you not? Answer, sir.”
“Ah!” the Bishop put in with a sneer, “you conform, do you?”
“I attend mass — to please my uncle,” I replied boldly.
“He was ill brought up as a child,” Sir Anthony said hastily, speaking in a tone which those below could not hear. “But you know all that, my lord — you know all that. It is an old story to you. So I make, and I pray you to make for the sake of the house, some allowance. He conforms; he undoubtedly conforms.”
“Enough!” Gardiner assented. “The rest is for the good priest here, whose ministrations will no doubt in time avail. But a word with this young gentleman, Sir Anthony, on another subject. If it was not to the holy office he objected, perhaps it was to the Queen’s Chancellor, or to the Queen?” He raised his voice with the last words and bent his brows, so that I could scarcely believe it was the same man speaking. “Eh, sir, was that so?” he continued severely, putting aside Sir Anthony’s remonstrance and glowering at me. “It may be that we have a rebel here instead of a heretic.”
“God forbid!” cried the knight, unable to contain himself. It was clear that he repented already of his ill-timed discipline. “I will answer for it that we have no Wyatts here, my lord.”
“That is well!” the Chancellor replied. “That is well!” he repeated, his eyes leaving me and roving the hall with so proud a menace in their glance that all quailed, even the fool. “That is very well,” he said, drumming on the table with his fingers; “but let Master Francis speak for himself.”
“I never heard,” said I boldly — I had had a moment for thought— “that Sir Thomas Wyatt had any following in this country. None to my knowledge. As for the Queen’s marriage with the Prince of Spain, which was the ground, as we gathered here, of Wyatt’s rising with the Kentish folk, it seems a matter rather for the Queen’s grace than her subjects. But if that be not so, I, for my part, would rather have seen her married to a stout Englishman — ay, or to a Frenchman.”
“And why, young gentleman?”
“Because I would we kept at peace with France. We have more to gain by fighting Spain than fighting France,” I answered bluntly.
My uncle held up his hands. “The boy is clean mad!” he groaned. “Who ever heard of such a thing? With all France, the rightful estate of her Majesty, waiting to be won back, he talks of fighting Spain! And his own grandmother was a Spani
ard!”
“I am none the less an Englishman for that!” I said; whereon there was a slight murmur of applause in the hall below. “And for France,” I continued, carried away by this, “we have been fighting it, off and on, as long as men remember; and what are we the better? We have only lost what we had to begin. Besides, I am told that France is five times stronger than it was in Henry the Fifth’s time, and we should only spend our strength in winning what we could not hold. While as to Spain — —”
“Ay, as to Spain?” grumbled Sir Anthony, forgetting his formidable neighbor, and staring at me with eyes of wonder. “Why, my father fought the French at Guinegate, and my grandfather at Cherbourg, and his father at Agincourt! But there! As to Spain, you popinjay?”
“Why, she is conquering here,” I answered warmly, “and colonizing there among the newly-discovered countries of the world, and getting all the trade and all the seaports and all the gold and silver; and Spain after all is a nation with no greater strength of men than England. Ay, and I hear,” I cried, growing more excited and raising my voice, “that now is our time or never! The Spaniards and the Portuguese have discovered a new world over seas.
“A Castilla y á Leon
Nuevo mundo dió Coton!
say they; but depend upon it, every country that is to be rich and strong in the time that is coming must have part in it. We cannot conquer either Spain or France; we have not men enough. But we have docks and sailors, and ships in London and Fowey, and Bristol and the Cinque Ports, enough to fight Spain over the great seas, and I say, ‘Have at her!’”
“What next?” groaned Sir Anthony piteously. “Did man ever hear such crackbrained nonsense?”
But I think it was not nonsense, for his words were almost lost in the cry which ran through the hall as I ceased speaking — a cry of English voices. One moment my heart beat high and proudly with a new sense of power; the next, as a shadow of a cloud falls on a sunny hillside, the cold sneer on the statesman’s face fell on me and chilled me. His set look had neither thawed nor altered, his color had neither come nor gone. “You speak your lesson well, lad,” he said. “Who taught you statecraft?”
I grew smaller, shrinking with each word he uttered; and faltered, and was dumb.
“Come,” he said, “you see but a little way; yet country lads do not talk of Fowey and Bristol! Who primed you?”
“I met a Master Sebastian Cabot,” I said reluctantly at last, when he had pressed me more than once, “who stayed a while at a house not far from here, and had been Inspector of the Navy to King Edward. He had been a seaman seventy years, and he talked — —”
“Too fast!” said Gardiner, with a curt nod. “But enough, I understand. I know the man. He is dead.”
He was silent then, and seemed to have fallen suddenly into thought, as a man well might who had the governing of a kingdom on his shoulders.
Seemingly he had done with me. I looked at Sir Anthony. “Ay, go!” he said irritably, waving me off. “Go!”
And I went. The ordeal was over, and over so successfully that I felt the humiliation of the afternoon cheap at the price of this triumph; for, as I stepped down, there was a buzz around me, a murmur of congratulation and pride and excitement. On every Coton face I marked a flush, in every Coton eye I read a sparkle, and every flush and every sparkle was for me. Even the Chancellor’s secretaries, grave, down-looking men, all secrecy and caution, cast curious glances at me, as though I were something out of the common; and the Chancellor’s pages made way for me with new-born deference. “There is for country wits!” I heard Baldwin Moor cry gleefully, while the man who put food before me murmured of “the Cludde bull-pup!” If I read in Father Carey’s face, as indeed I did, solicitude as well as relief and gladness, I marked the latter only, and hugged a natural pride to my breast. When Martin Luther said boldly that it was not only Bishop could fill a bowl, it was by an effort I refrained from joining in the laugh which followed.
For an hour I enjoyed this triumph, and did all but brag of it. Especially I wished Petronilla had witnessed it. At the end of that time — Finis, as the book says. I was crossing the courtyard, one-half of which was bathed in a cold splendor of moonlight, and was feeling the first sobering touch of the night air on my brow, when I heard some one call out my name. I turned, to find one of the Chancellor’s servants, a sleek, substantial fellow, with a smug mouth, at my elbow.
“What is it?” I said.
“I am bidden to fetch you at once, Master Cludde,” he answered, a gleam of sly malice peeping through the gravity of his demeanor. “The Chancellor would see you in his room, young sir.”
CHAPTER II.
IN THE BISHOP’S ROOM.
Chancellor was lodged in the great chamber on the southern side of the courtyard, a room which we called the Tapestried Chamber, and in which tradition said that King Henry the Sixth had once slept. It was on the upper floor, and for this reason free from the damp air which in autumn and winter rose from the moat and hung about the lower range of rooms. It was besides, of easy access from the hall, a door in the gallery of the latter leading into an anteroom, which again opened into the Tapestried Chamber; while a winding staircase, starting from a dark nook in the main passage of the house, also led to this state apartment, but by another and more private door.
I reached the antechamber with a stout heart in my breast, though a little sobered by my summons, and feeling such a reaction from the heat of a few minutes before as follows a plunge into cold water. In the anteroom I was bidden to wait while the great man’s will was taken, which seemed strange to me, then unused to the mummery of Court folk. But before I had time to feel much surprise, the inner door was opened, and I was told to enter.
The great room, which I had seldom seen in use, had now an appearance quite new to me. A dull red fire was glowing comfortably on the hearthstone, before which a posset stool was standing. Near this, seated at a table strewn with a profusion of papers and documents, was a secretary writing busily. The great oaken bedstead, with its nodding tester, lay in a background of shadows, which played about the figures broidered on the hangings, or were lost in the darkness of the corners; while near the fire, in the light cast by the sconces fixed above the hearth, lay part of the Chancellor’s equipment. The fur rugs and cloak of sable, the saddle-bags, the dispatch-boxes, and the silver chafing-dish, gave an air of comfort to this part of the room. Walking up and down in the midst of these, dictating a sentence at every other turn, was Stephen Gardiner.
As I entered the clerk looked up, holding his pen suspended. His master, by a quick nod, ordered him to proceed. Then, signaling to me in a like silent fashion his command that I should stand by the hearth, the Bishop resumed his task of composition.
For some minutes my interest in the man, whom I had now an opportunity of scrutinizing unmarked and at my leisure, took up all my attention. He was at this time close on seventy, but looked, being still tall and stout, full ten years younger. His face, square and sallow, was indeed wrinkled and lined; his eyes lay deep in his head, his shoulders were beginning to bend, the nape of his neck to become prominent. He had lost an inch of his full height. But his eyes still shone brightly, nor did any trace of weakness mar the stern character of his mouth, or the crafty wisdom of his brow. The face was the face of a man austere, determined, perhaps cruel; of a man who could both think and act.
My curiosity somewhat satisfied, I had leisure, first to wonder why I had been sent for, and then to admire the prodigious number of books and papers which lay about, more, indeed, than I had ever seen together in my life. From this I passed to listening, idly at first, and with interest afterward, to the letter which the Chancellor was dictating. It seemed from its tenor to be a letter to some person in authority, and presently one passage attracted my attention, so that I could afterward recall it word for word.
“I do not think” — the Chancellor pronounced, speaking in a sonorous voice, and the measured tone of one whose thoughts lie perfectly ar
ranged in his head— “that the Duchess Katherine will venture to take the step suggested as possible. Yet Clarence’s report may be of moment. Let the house, therefore, be watched if anything savoring of flight be marked, and take notice whether there be a vessel in the Pool adapted to her purpose. A vessel trading to Dunquerque would be most likely. Leave her husband till I return, when I will deal with him roundly.”
I missed what followed. It was upon another subject, and my thoughts lagged behind, being wholly taken up with the Duchess Katherine and her fortunes. I wondered who she was, young or old, and what this step could be she was said to meditate, and what the jargon about the Pool and Dunquerque meant. I was still thinking of this when I was aroused by an abrupt silence, and looking up found that the Chancellor was bending over the papers on the table. The secretary was leaving the room.
As the door closed behind him, Gardiner rose from his stooping posture and came slowly toward me, a roll of papers in his hand. “Now,” he said tranquilly, seating himself in an elbow-chair which stood in front of the hearth, “I will dispose of your business, Master Cludde.”
He paused, looking at me in a shrewd, masterful way, much as if — I thought at the time, little knowing how near the truth my fancy went — I were a beast he was about to buy; and then he went on. “I have sent for you, Master Francis,” he said dryly, fixing his piercing eyes on mine, “because I think that this country does not suit your health. You conform, but you conform with a bad grace, and England is no longer the place for such. You incite the commonalty against the Queen’s allies, and England is not the place for such. Do not contradict me; I have heard you myself. Then,” he continued, grimly thrusting out his jaw in a sour smile, “you misname those whom the Queen honors; and were Dr. Stephens — you take me, Master Malapert? such a man as his predecessors, you would rue the word. For a trifle scarce weightier Wolsey threw a man to rot six years in a dungeon, boy!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 43