The house of the wizard

Lord Raby and Mistress Carew walked up and down the terrace before Wildrick Hall, while at the water-stairs a barge waited to take him to Whitehall. Her white gown fluttered in the soft breeze as she walked, and in her eyes shone the light of the spring sunshine.

“I go to arrange my affairs,” he said, “so that I may ride with you and your uncle to Mohun’s Ottery to-morrow. Happily, there is naught to detain me else, dear heart. I fear I should forget my duty for your sake.”

Betty smiled. “You will need to be prompt,” she said lightly; “my uncle waits for no man and is ever beforehand with time.”

“’Twould be a shame on me to be a laggard at such a time,” he answered. “Ah, Betty, how different the world looks when love touches it with golden fingers! I do think that I bear no man malice or ill-will, but rather would be friends even with mine enemies, but never with thine.”

A cloud passed over her face. “I pray you,” she said slowly “remember to avoid Barton Henge. My Lady Crabtree predicts that he will yet endeavor to do us some great mischief, and it makes me uneasy for you.”

“Fear not for me, my love,” he replied tenderly; “and as for you, surely the love that enfolds you shall ward off this snake. But I will be mindful of your fears, albeit I think he will avoid me as he would a pestilence.”

“I know not,” she said, shaking her head; “my heart is full of misgivings when I think of how he set upon you like a cut-throat.”

“And I cannot but rejoice that you are anxious,” he said softly, “since it shows that my safety concerns you.”

She looked at him with a tender light in her eyes.

“’Tis more to me than my own,” she said very low.

He kissed her hand passionately, although Sir William Carew was coming down the walk toward them.

“Your love,” he said, “has made a new life for me. I swore when I left Raby Castle that I would not return until I brought it the fairest mistress in all England.”

“Alas, sir,” she answered, smiling, “’twas a foolish oath, and not likely to be fulfilled.”

Without regarding their feelings, Sir William Carew cut short their talk, which might have continued long; for they were lovers, and knew how to make much of a little matter. He held a package of papers in his hand, sealed with red seals, and gave it to Raby.

“I would have that sent by a sure hand to Cromwell,” he said; “it pertains to some matters of the county of Devon and claims his eye, yet is not so important that I need take it in person.”

“It shall be delivered directly,” Raby replied, putting it in his breast; “’tis time I went, doubtless you came to remind me.”

“Ay,” Carew answered, smiling; “I remember the days when I lingered so. It is nearly noon, however, and you were to have gone an hour since.”

“My excuse is so admirable that I deserve forgiveness,” Simon said, laughing; but he hastened his farewells, and in a few moments he and Sir William were walking to the water-stairs together, while Betty waved her handkerchief from the terrace.

“You have your rogue yet with you, I see,” Carew remarked, his eye lighting on Raby’s groom.

“Shaxter?” Simon replied, smiling; “ay, I had forgotten your prejudice. He is a useful fellow.”

“He looks it!” said Carew, with a shrug; “farewell, and forget not the packet.”

Looking back as the barge swept away, Raby saw the tall white figure on the terrace and the fluttering of her handkerchief. The picture of the great stone house, the green slope of the terrace, and the beautiful girl waving him farewell, framed itself in his mind and was a solace to him in the months which followed.

He was so light-hearted that he whistled to himself as the boat went on to London. The river was full of water-craft, and the scene was gay. The same river that had borne the unhappy Anne Boleyn to the Tower smiled in the sunshine and rippled gleefully from the strong strokes of the oars. Life was full of sweetness to Simon Raby, and he sat in the boat with a smiling face and a ready greeting for any chance acquaintance. In the afternoon he would go to my lord privy seal in person, now he had matters of his own to attend to. He must go to his haberdasher’s and his barber’s; he had a dozen errands, and presently found dust upon his clothes and went to his old lodgings to change them. Shaxter was with him as usual and helped him to make the change; he put on a rich suit of satin with a short cape of velvet, and bidding his attendant remain in his apartments until his return, made his way down the stairs alone and opened the street door. Looking out into the road, he saw no one, and came out humming a new song, popular at court. He had taken but two or three steps when three men stepped out from under an adjacent arched doorway. They barred his progress, and he looked in surprise to recognize the captain of the watch.

“What now, Ludlow?” he said; “I need a little leeway to pass your company.”

“My Lord Raby, you are arrested!” was the reply, as the officer laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder.

Raby drew his sword. “You villain!” he said, “this will be a sorry jest for you.”

“I arrest you in the king’s name,” repeated the captain, sharply; but so angry was Simon that for a moment they grappled, and the officer’s assistants were forced to take part in disarming the furious nobleman.

“Of what avail is this resistance, my lord?” cried Ludlow. “I tell you, as your friend, you had best submit. I was ordered to take you and must, sorely against my will.”

“Upon what charge?” demanded Raby, fiercely; “’tis an evil time if an innocent man may not walk safe upon the streets of London.”

The captain shrugged his shoulders. He was a kindly, honest man, but he could only discharge his office.

“I have the warrant for your arrest, my lord,” he answered soberly, “from my lord privy seal; but the reason of it?” he raised his brows, “you must ask the man who set the trap, not him who merely springs it. Verily, Lord Raby, I trust it may be no great matter, for your own sake. Mayhap you know well what folly brought it.”

“Not I,” said Simon, angrily; “’tis an insult. Where are you taking me, Sir Captain?”

“To my lord privy seal,” he answered, glancing with some compassion at the prisoner’s indignant face; “belike he has some questions to ask. But come, here I linger talking like a featherpate, and Cromwell waits. I would have left you your sword, my lord, but that you were so thirsty for blood.”

“I will go quietly,” Raby said, in great perplexity and wrath; “it was foolish to fly at thy throat for nothing, but it makes my blood boil.”

“For that I do not blame thee,” the officer replied, “though it doth usually make a man’s blood run cold.”

“You speak for a guilty man,” said Raby, sharply; “no honest man would shiver at an insult.”

There were but few more words exchanged, the little company closed up about the prisoner, and the walk through the streets was a rapid one. Many stared, and some insulting jests were made. It was no uncommon sight; disloyalty was rife enough to make the arrest of a nobleman a matter of usual occurrence. They passed some of the gay young gentlemen of the court, who looked aside on seeing their acquaintance in such company. He was taken to Cromwell’s house, and waited but a little while at the door before he was brought before him.

Cromwell was in his private room sitting at a table by the window, and a large mass of papers lay before him. It was his custom to apply himself closely to business, and much of it was transacted by his own hand. Here was a man who held the threads of many conspiracies, whose falcon eye was peering into every secret lurking-place from Land’s End to the Tweed, whose relentless grip closed on the traitor like a vise. His back was to the light where he sat, so that his strong face was in the shadow, but his penetrating eyes were bent on Raby at his entrance with a not unkindly look.

“Master Raby, I had it in my mind to send you some advertisement of my regret at your father’s death,” he said gravely, “when this charge was lodged against you, to my infinite surprise.”

“Sir, I am ignorant of the cause of my arrest,” Raby replied, “nor can I imagine what accusation has been made against me.”

“You are charged with high treason,” Cromwell said, turning over some papers before him, “having conspired with certain persons against the safety of the realm, and the life of the king’s grace.”

The expression of amazement deepened on the prisoner’s face.

“My lord,” he said, “I am dumbfounded; I have been absent more than two months in Sussex, busy with the settlement of my father’s estate, which, as I think you know, was much in need of my administration. As for consorting with conspirators—you, who have known me from my boyhood, should know the folly of the charge. I thought my loyalty to the king’s highness was established by faithful service. This accusation is but the baseless falsehood of mine enemies.”

“My Lord Raby, my heart inclines to believe you; I have ever held a good opinion of your family,” Cromwell rejoined, “but the nature of this charge doth not allow it to be overlooked. But ye shall have an ample hearing. Sir, there is a strange house here upon the Thames, I think you know it,—I see you do,—the house of the wizard, Zachary Sanders. You were there one night this winter, and upon what business?”

Raby’s face had changed at the mention of the wizard’s house; the shrieks of Anne Boleyn had a strange trick of haunting him.

“I was there indeed,” he said frankly, knowing no harm could come now of the truth, “with Queen Anne and her ladies. It was an unhappy whim of the queen’s, and the wizard caused her to see so evil a vision that I was near seizing him as a traitor; would, indeed, have delivered him to the guard but for her grace, who would not have the matter known, fearing the king’s displeasure at her folly.”

Cromwell’s face clouded at the mention of Anne. He had seen her die, sent to perform that duty by the king, and the man who had been faithful to Wolsey, in the misery of Esher house, was not without compassion.

“What was the queen’s vision?” he asked moodily.

“She saw her life, and her death upon the block,” Simon replied; “and the poor lady was thrown into such terror that she would by no means be quieted, and for hours her shrieks were heard at Greenwich. By Saint Thomas! they ring yet in my ears.”

Cromwell was silent for a while; evidently the frankness and sincerity of Raby, together with his previous knowledge of him, made it difficult to reconcile the man with the accusation.

“I will be frank with you, sir,” my lord privy seal said, at last; “I make no effort to conceal the perils of this realm, you know them. My Lady Mary Tudor, by her stiff-necked attitude toward the king’s grace and the Act of Succession, hath made herself a stumbling-block, and a point round which the malcontents may gather. Then there are the papists, ever stirring in the cause of the Bishop of Rome, and with these the country gentlemen, who detest the breaking up of the monasteries and the abbeys, with no profit to themselves, and the travelling friars, and, God wot, I know not who, to stir up mischief which would bring us swift to civil war. At such times, my Lord Raby, I may not be lenient. The charge against you is so grave that I would have you make a clean breast of the matter. You came to town this morning from Deptford; what was your errand?”

Raby thought at the instant of Sir William’s packet and put his hand in his doublet and drew it out.

“My lord, I came to attend to some matters of my own, of a petty nature, but mainly to attend the king’s grace and also to give you these papers.”

Cromwell stretched out his hand for the packet and broke the seals without waiting for further explanation from Lord Raby. He unfolded the wrappers and began to go through the papers without making any comment. Simon, watching his grave face, read nothing after the first quick flash of surprise. Of the nature of Carew’s communication, Raby was ignorant, but believing it to refer wholly to affairs in Devon, he did not greatly concern himself about it. His mind was but too actively engaged with the state of his own fortune. His arrest had been so sudden, so entirely without reason, that he found no immediate solution of his difficulty. He noticed that Cromwell, with all his apparent frankness, held back the full substance of the charge against him, and the names and condition of his accusers. Secure in his own innocence, Raby did not doubt his ultimate exculpation, but he knew not what course to pursue, whose name to mention, fearing to drag others into his misfortune. While these thoughts passed rapidly through his mind, Cromwell was deeply engaged in the perusal of Sir William’s packet; every paper was carefully examined and some were read twice over. Simon began to think that Carew’s business would indefinitely prolong his own suspense, when the king’s minister looked up. However, he did not address Raby; his face was inscrutable; he touched a bell upon the table and immediately an attendant replied to the summons.

“Call Captain Ludlow,” he said calmly; then turning to Raby, he looked at him with cold eyes. “Sir,” he said, “you gave me the wrong packet.”

Simon returned the look with surprise.

“I had but the one, my lord,” he said.

The officers had entered at Cromwell’s orders.

“If you had but one, you did a strange thing to give it to me,” said my lord privy seal; then to the captain of the watch, “Ludlow, remove Lord Raby under strong guard to the Tower to await his examination.”

Taken by surprise at the entire change in Cromwell’s manner, Simon was about to say that the papers were from Carew, when a second thought made him hesitate. If Sir William’s name was not upon them it would be strange indeed, and he did not wish to bring him under greater displeasure.

“My lord,” he cried, “I pray you to remember that I was but the bearer of those papers; I am ignorant of their purport.”

Cromwell’s face was both incredulous and unrelenting.

“You are not the man to bear such papers ignorantly, Raby,” he said harshly; “who gave them to you?”

Simon started; then Sir William’s name did not appear. A horrible doubt assailed him, but he was a man of stubborn loyalty to his friends. He closed his lips; if his silence could shelter Carew it was well, especially since he was groping in the dark.

Cromwell, who had waited one impatient moment for his answer, smiled grimly. He had seen too many men turn traitors to feel amazement at the aspect of one.

“You are tongue-tied,” he said sternly, “It may be we must enforce the matter from you,” he added, touching the papers; “never saw I a greater batch of treason in so little space.”

“My lord, I am innocent!” exclaimed Raby; “I—”

“Remove the prisoner,” Cromwell interrupted coldly, making a sign to his officers, and returning to his work without another word or glance at the nobleman.

A short while afterwards, Simon Raby entered at the water-gate of the Tower, and its gloomy doors closed upon him, shutting out the beauty and the fragrance of the summer world and separating him from the woman he loved. The king’s prisoner, charged with high treason, had little cause to rejoice in his lot.