“To Francis Cludde,” it ran. “If you would not do a thing of which you will miserably repent all your life, and which will stain you in the eyes of all Christian men, meet me two hours before noon at the cross street by St. Botolph’s, where you first saw Mistress Bertram. And tell no one. Fail not to come. In Heaven’s name, fail not!”
The note had nothing to do with the conspiracy, then, on the face of it; mysterious as it was, and mysteriously as it came. “Look here!” I said to the man. “Tell me who sent it, and I will give you a crown.”
“I would not tell you,” he answered stubbornly, “if you could make me King of England! No, nor King of Spain too! You might rack me and you would not get it from me!”
His one eye glowed with so obstinate a resolve that I gave up the attempt to persuade him, and turned to examine the message itself. But here I fared no better. I did not know the handwriting, and there was no peculiarity in the paper. I was no wiser than before. “Are you to take back any answer?” I said.
“No,” he replied, “the saints be thanked for the same! But you will bear me witness,” he went on anxiously, “that I gave you the letter. You will not forget that, or say that you have not had it? But there!” he added to himself as he turned away, speaking in a low voice, so that I barely caught the sense of the words, “what is the use? she will know!”
She will know! It had something to do with a woman then, even if a woman were not the writer. I went in to breakfast in two minds about going. I longed to tell Master Bertie and take his advice, though the unknown had enjoined me not to do so. But for the time I refrained, and explaining my absence of mind as well as I could, I presently stole away on some excuse or other, and started in good time, and on foot, into the city. I reached the rendezvous a quarter of an hour before the time named, and strolling between the church and the baker’s shop, tried to look as much like a chance passer-by as I could, keeping the while a wary lookout for any one who might turn out to be my correspondent.
The morning was cold and gray. A drizzling rain was falling. The passers were few, and the appearance of the streets dirty and, with littered kennels, was dreary indeed. I found it hard at once to keep myself warm and to avoid observation as I hung about. Ten o’clock had rung from more than one steeple, and I was beginning to think myself a fool for my pains, when a woman of middle height, slender and young in figure, but wearing a shabby brown cloak, and with her head muffled in a hood, as though she had the toothache or dreaded the weather more than ordinary, turned the corner of the belfry and made straight toward me. She drew near, and seemed about to pass me without notice. But when abreast of me she glanced up suddenly, her eyes the only features I could see.
“Follow me to the church!” she murmured gently. And she swept on to the porch.
I obeyed reluctantly; very reluctantly, my feet seeming like lead. For I knew who she was. Though I had only seen her eyes, I had recognized them, and guessed already what her business with me was. She led the way resolutely to a quiet corner. The church was empty and still, with only the scent of incense in the air to tell of a recent service. It was no surprise to me when she turned abruptly, and, removing her hood, looked me in the face.
“What have you done with him?” she panted, laying her hand on my arm. “Speak! Tell me what you have done with him?”
The question, the very question, I had foreseen! Yet I tried to fence with her. I said, “With whom?”
“With whom?” she repeated bitterly. “You know me! I am not so changed in three years that you do not recognize me?”
“No; I know you,” I said.
There was a hectic flush on her cheeks, and it seemed to me that the dark hair was thinner on her thin temples than when I had seen her last. But the eyes were the same.
“Then why ask with whom?” she cried passionately. “What have you done with the man you called Clarence?”
“Done with him?” I said feebly.
“Ay, done with him? Come, speak and tell me!” she repeated in fierce accents, her hand clutching my wrist, her eyes probing my face with merciless glances. “Have you killed him? Tell me!”
“Killed him, Mistress Anne?” I said sullenly. “No, I have not killed him.”
“He is alive?” she cried.
“For all I know, he is alive.”
She glared at me for some seconds to assure herself that I was telling the truth. Then she heaved a great sigh; her hands fell from my wrists, the color faded out of her face, and she lowered her eyes. I glanced round with a momentary idea of escape — I so shrank from that which was to come. But before I had well entertained the notion she looked up, her face grown calm.
“Then what have you done with him?” she asked.
“I have done nothing with him,” I answered.
She laughed; a mirthless laugh. “Bah!” she said, “do not tell me lies! That is your honor, I suppose — your honor to your friends down in the cellar there! Do you think that I do not know all about them? Shall I give you the list? He is a very dangerous conspirator, is Sir Thomas Penruddocke, is he not? And that scented dandy Master Kingston! Or Master Crewdson — tell me of him! Tell me of him, I say!” she exclaimed, with a sudden return from irony to a fierce eagerness, a breathless impatience. “Why did he not come up last night? What have you done with him?”
I shook my head, sick and trembling. How could I tell her?
“I see,” she said. “You will not tell me. But you swear he is yet alive, Master Cludde? Good. Then you are holding him for a hostage? Is that it?” with a piercing glance at my face. “Or, you have condemned him, but for some reason the sentence has not been executed!” She drew a long, deep breath, for I fear my face betrayed me. “That is it, is it? Then there is still time.”
She turned from me and looked toward the end of the aisle, where a dull red lamp hanging before the altar glowed feebly in the warm scented air. She seemed so to turn and so to look in thankfulness, as if the news she had learned were good instead of what it was. “What is the hour fixed?” she asked suddenly.
I shook my head.
“You will not tell me? Well, it matters not,” she answered briskly. “He must be saved. Do you hear? He must be saved, Master Cludde. That is your business.”
I shook my head.
“You think it is not?” she said. “Well, I can show you it is! Listen!”
She raised herself on a step of the font, and looked me harshly in the face. “If he be not given up to me safe and sound by sunset this evening, I will betray you all! All! I have the list here,” she muttered sternly, touching her bosom. “You, Master Bertie, Penruddocke, Fleming, Barnes — all. All, do you hear? Give him up or you shall hang!”
“You would not do it!” I cried aghast, peering into her burning eyes.
“Would not do it? Fool!” she hissed. “If all the world but he had one head, I would cut it off to save his! He is my husband! Do you hear? He is my husband — my all! Do you think I have given up everything, friends and honor and safety, for him, to lose him now? No! You say I would not do it? Do you know what I have done? You have a scar there.”
She touched me lightly on the breast. “I did it,” she said.
“You?” I muttered.
“Yes, I, you blind fool! I did it,” she answered. “You escaped then, and I was glad of it, since the wound answered my purpose. But you will not escape again. The cord is surer.”
Something in her last words crossed my memory and enlightened me.
“You were the woman I saw last night,” I said. “You followed us from High gate.”
“What matter! What matter!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Better be footsore than heartsore. Will you do now what I want? Will you answer for his life?”
“I can do nothing without the others,” I said.
“But the others know nothing,” she answered. “They do not know their own danger. Where will you find them?”
“I shall find them,” I replied resolutely. “And in any ca
se I must consult Master Bertie. Will you come and see him?”
“And be locked up too?” she said sternly, and in a different tone. “No. It is you must do this, and you must answer for it, Francis Cludde. You, and no one else.”
“I can do nothing by myself,” I repeated.
“Ay, but you can — you must!” she retorted, “or Heaven’s curse will be upon you! You think me mad to say that. Listen! Listen, fool! The man whom you have condemned, whom you have left to die, is not only my husband, wedded to me these three years, but your father — your father, Ferdinand Cludde!”
CHAPTER XX.
THE COMING QUEEN.
I stood glaring at her.
“You were a blind bat or you would have found it out for yourself,” she continued scornfully. “A babe would have guessed it, knowing as much of your father as you did.”
“Does he know himself?” I muttered hoarsely, looking anywhere but at her now. The shock had left me dull and confused. I did not doubt her word, rather I wondered with her that I had not found this out for myself. But the possibility of meeting my father in that wide world into which I had plunged to escape from the knowledge of his existence, had never occurred to me. Had I thought of it, it would have seemed too unlikely; and though I might have seen in Gardiner a link between us, and so have identified him, the greatness of the Chancellor’s transactions, and certain things about Clarence which had seemed, or would have seemed, had I ever taken the point into consideration, at variance with my ideas of my father, had prevented me getting upon the track.
“Does he know that you are his son, do you mean?” she said. “No, he does not.”
“You have not told him?”
“No,” she answered with a slight shiver.
I understood. I comprehended that even to her the eagerness with which, being father and son, we had sought one another’s lives during those days on the Rhine, had seemed so dreadful that she had concealed the truth from him.
“When did you learn it?” I asked, trembling too.
“I knew his right name before I ever saw you,” she answered. “Yours I learned on the day I left you at Santon.” Looking back I remembered the strange horror, then inexplicable, which she had betrayed; and I understood it. So it was that knowledge which had driven her from us! “What will you do now?” she said. “You will save him? You must save him! He is your father.”
Save him? I shuddered at the thought that I had destroyed him! that I, his son, had denounced him! Save him! The perspiration sprang out in beads on my forehead. If I could not save him I should live pitied by my friends and loathed by my enemies!
“If it be possible,” I muttered, “I will save him.”
“You swear it?” she cried. Before I could answer she seized my arm and dragged me up the dim aisle until we stood together before the Figure and the Cross. The chimes above us rang eleven. A shaft of cold sunshine pierced a dusty window, and, full of dancing motes, shot athwart the pillars.
“Swear!” she repeated with trembling eagerness, turning her eyes on mine, and raising her hand solemnly toward the Figure. “Swear by the Cross!”
“I swear,” I said.
She dropped her hand. Her form seemed to shrink and grow less. Making a sign to me to go, she fell on her knees on the step, and drew her hood over her face. I walked away on tiptoe down the aisle, but glancing back from the door of the church I saw the small, solitary figure still kneeling in prayer. The sunshine had died away. The dusty window was colorless. Only the red lamp glowed dully above her head. I seemed to see what the end would be. Then I pushed aside the curtain, and slipped out into the keen air. It was hers to pray. It was mine to act.
I lost no time, but on my return I could not find Master Bertie either in the public room or in the inn yard, so I sought him in his bedroom, where I found him placidly reading a book; his patient waiting in striking contrast with the feverish anxiety which had taken hold of me. “What is it, lad?” he said, closing the volume, and laying it down on my entrance. “You look disturbed?”
“I have seen Mistress Anne,” I answered. He whistled softly, staring at me without a word. “She knows all,” I continued.
“How much is all?” he asked after a pause.
“Our names — all our names, Penruddocke’s, Kingston’s, the others; our meeting-place, and that we hold Clarence a prisoner. She was that old woman whom we saw at the Gatehouse tavern last night.”
He nodded, appearing neither greatly surprised nor greatly alarmed. “Does she intend to use her knowledge?” he said. “I suppose she does.”
“Unless we let him go safe and unhurt before sunset.”
“They will never consent to it,” he answered, shaking his head.
“Then they will hang!” I cried.
He looked hard at me a moment, discerning something strange in the bitterness of my last words. “Come, lad,” he said, “you have not told me all. What else have you learned?”
“How can I tell you?” I cried wildly, waving him off, and going to the lattice that my face might be hidden from him. “Heaven has cursed me!” I added, my voice breaking.
He came and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Heaven curses no one,” he said. “Most of our curses we make for ourselves. What is it, lad?”
I covered my face with my hands. “He — he is my father,” I muttered. “Do you understand? Do you see what I have done? He is my father!”
“Ha!” Master Bertie uttered that one exclamation in intense astonishment; then he said no more. But the pressure of his hand told me that he understood, that he felt with me, that he would help me. And that silent comprehension, that silent assurance, gave the sweetest comfort. “He must be allowed to go, then, for this time,” he resumed gravely, after a pause in which I had had time to recover myself. “We will see to it. But there will be difficulties. You must be strong and brave. The truth must be told. It is the only way.”
I saw that it was, though I shrank exceedingly from the ordeal before me. Master Bertie advised, when I grew more calm, that we should be the first at the rendezvous, lest by some chance Penruddocke’s orders should be anticipated; and accordingly, soon after two o’clock, we mounted, and set forth. I remarked that my companion looked very carefully to his arms, and, taking the hint, I followed his example.
It was a silent, melancholy, anxious ride. However successful we might be in rescuing my father — alas! that I should have to-day and always to call that man father — I could not escape the future before me. I had felt shame while he was but a name to me; how could I endure to live, with his infamy always before my eyes? Petronilla, of whom I had been thinking so much since I returned to England, whose knot of velvet had never left my breast nor her gentle face my heart — how could I go back to her now? I had thought my father dead, and his name and fame old tales. But the years of foreign life which yesterday had seemed a sufficient barrier between his past and myself — of what use were they now? Or the foreign service I had fondly regarded as a kind of purification?
Master Bertie broke in on my reverie much as if he had followed its course. “Understand one thing, lad!” he said, laying his hand on the withers of my horse. “Yours must not be the hand to punish your father. But after to-day you will owe him no duty. You will part from him to-day and he will be a stranger to you. He deserted you when you were a child; and if you owe reverence to any one, it is to your uncle and not to him. He has himself severed the ties between you.”
“Yes,” I said. “I will go abroad. I will go back to Wilna.”
“If ill comes of our enterprise — as I fear ill will come — we will both go back, if we can,” he answered. “If good by any chance should come of it, then you shall be my brother, our family shall be your family. The Duchess is rich enough,” he added with a smile, “to allow you a younger brother’s portion.”
I could not answer him as I desired, for we passed at that moment under the archway, and became instantly involved in the bustle going forward
in the courtyard. Near the principal door of the inn stood eight or nine horses gayly caparisoned and in the charge of three foreign-looking men, who, lounging in their saddles, were passing a jug from hand to hand. They turned as we rode in and looked at us curiously, but not with any impertinence. Apparently they were waiting for the rest of their party, who were inside the house. Civilly disposed as they seemed, the fact that they were armed, and wore rich liveries of black and gold, caused me, and I think both of us, a momentary alarm.
“Who are they?” Master Bertie asked in a low voice, as he rode to the opposite door and dismounted with his back to them.
“They are Spaniards, I fancy,” I said, scanning them over the shoulders of my horse as I too got off. “Old friends, so to speak.”
“They seem wonderfully subdued for them,” he answered, “and on their best behavior. If half the tales we heard this morning be true, they are not wont to carry themselves like this.”
Yet they certainly were Spanish, for I overheard them speaking to one another in that language; and before we had well dismounted, their leader — whom they received with great respect, one of them jumping down to hold his stirrup — came out with three or four more and got to horse again. Turning his rein to lead the way out through the north gate he passed near us, and as he settled himself in his saddle took a good look at us. The look passed harmlessly over me, but reaching Master Bertie became concentrated. The rider started and smiled faintly. He seemed to pause, then he raised his plumed cap and bowed low — covered himself again and rode on. His train all followed his example and saluted us as they passed. Master Bertie’s face, which had flushed a fiery red under the other’s gaze, grew pale again. He looked at me, when they had gone by, with startled eyes.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 67