‘Why not? Why not?’ His right arm was flung out as if to encircle her. ‘What power is there to hinder?’
‘It is the power to compel that is wanting.’ She rose, and her eyes, candid, pure, and true, almost on a level with his own, looked him squarely in the face, whilst she dealt his hopes the blow that should completely shatter them. ‘I do not love you, Don Pedro.’
She saw him wince as if she had struck him. He fell back before her a little, and half turned away; then, with a swift recovery, he came back to the assault.
‘Love will come, my Margaret. How should it not? I shall know how to awaken it. I could not fail in that, for love begets love; and to such love as I pour upon you, your own love must respond.’ He was white to the lips, so that his beard seemed to take on a deeper shade of black. His vivid eyes glowed with passion and entreaty. ‘Ah, trust me, child! Trust me! I know, I know. I am wise…’
She interrupted him very gently. ‘Not wise enough to see that this importunity must give me pain.’ Then she smiled, that frank clear smile of hers, and held out her hand to him, as a man might have done. ‘Let us be good friends, Don Pedro, as we have been since the day I took you prisoner.’
Slowly, compelled to it, he took her hand. Meanwhile the fingers of her left were touching the pearls upon her bosom. ‘These I shall treasure less for their worth than for the memory of a pleasant friendship. Do nothing now to spoil it.’
He sighed as he bowed low over the fingers he grasped. Reverently he bore them to his lips.
Before the irrevocable note of her voice, before that friendly frankness, which in itself made a stouter barrier between them than mere coldness could have done, he confessed himself defeated. He made no boast when he said that he was wise. He was skilled beyond the common in deciphering human documents, and his skill did not permit him here to persist in error.
If Don Pedro’s skill in the deciphering of human documents was great, as I have said, great, too, were his longings. And longings blunt the senses to all things outside of their own aim. So that by the following morning, Don Pedro had come to doubt the accuracy of his reading of Margaret and the irrevocable quality of the decision she had made. This hope renewed and fortified the longings from which it sprang.
Desire was something which this spoilt child of Fortune had never been schooled to repress. With him it had ever been but the sweet preface to possession. He had never known the meaning of Denial. He knew it now, and knew the torment of it. All night that knowledge and that torment abode in him, until he swore at dawn that he would not submit, could not endure it to continue.
Outwardly, however, on that last day of his at Trevanion Chase, he showed nothing of his inward suffering. Sharp, searching eyes might have detected the imprint of it on his countenance, but in his manner nothing was betrayed. He had been well schooled in the art of self-possession; it had been one of his maxims that who would prevail must never allow his purpose to be read.
And so, whilst pain seared his soul, whilst the hunger for Margaret, sharpened by her denial of him, gnawed at his heart, he smiled as affably as ever and preserved unchanged his cool, urbane, impassive air.
So completely did this deceive her that she came to conclude that his heart was not so seriously involved as his words had seemed to imply. He had been swept away, she thought, by a momentary yielding to emotional impulses. She was glad and relieved to discover it. She liked him more than any man she had ever met save one; and she must have suffered had she remained under the conviction that she had sent him forth in pain.
She had shown the pearls to her father, who had curtly pronounced them fripperies, whereupon in protest and so as to compel his attention she had ventured a hint of their value. It had not impressed him.
‘I can well believe it,’ he had said. ‘There’s naught in the world so costly as vanity, as you may come to learn in time.’
Then she told him what the gift implied; that Don Pedro’s ransom being paid he now claimed the liberty to depart, and would be leaving them that evening.
‘Very well,’ said the Earl indifferently.
It chilled her. So that he was left alone in this musty library to pursue, over quagmires of human speculation, the will-o’-the-wisp of knowledge, whoever chose might come and go at Trevanion Chase. She might depart, herself, and not be missed. Indeed, he might regard her presence as no more than a source of interruptions, and would perhaps welcome, as putting a definite end to these, her departure overseas to Spain. But another there was, who would not be so indifferent. The thought of him warmed her again, and she found in his protracted absence a deserved reproach to herself for her harshness with him. She would send him a note to tell him that Don Pedro was leaving that evening, and to bid him come and receive his forgiveness at her hands. It was jealousy of Don Pedro that had driven him, and she now perceived how right had been the instincts in him which had prompted it. There had been more occasion for it than ever she had suspected.
With Don Pedro that day she was kind and courteous, and he made this possible by the masterly circumspection I have mentioned. He had no packages to make. What odds and ends he had caused to be procured for him whilst there, to eke out his temporary wardrobe, he now bestowed upon the servant who had ministered to him, together with a rich gift of money.
Old Martin, too, was handsomely rewarded for his attentions to the Spanish prisoner who had known how to command his regard.
After an early supper, going as he came, with no more than the clothes in which he stood, Don Pedro was ready to depart. To his lordship, still at table, he addressed a very formal, graceful speech of thanks for the generous entertainment he had received at Trevanion Chase, of which his heart would ever hold and cherish the most pleasant memories. To Heaven also he expressed his deep gratitude for having vouchsafed him the good fortune of falling into such noble, kindly, generous hands as those of the Earl of Garth and his daughter.
The Earl, having heard him out, gave him answer in phrases springing from his innate courtliness, the courtliness which had been his before the events had driven him to become a hermit. He concluded all by wishing Don Pedro a felicitous voyage to his own land and all happiness in his abiding there. Thereupon he effaced himself, leaving his daughter to speed the departing voyager.
Martin fetched Don Pedro his weapons, a hat and a cloak. When he had assumed them, Margaret went with him to the hall, and then down the steps, and on through the garden with scarcely a word passing between them. Their farewells might quite properly have been spoken at the door. But it was as if he drew her on with him by the very force of his will.
On the edge of the spinney she halted, determined to go no farther, and put forth her hand. ‘We part here, Don Pedro.’
Having halted with her, he now faced her, and she saw the pain that flickered in his melancholy eyes. ‘Oh, not yet!’ It was a prayer. He became almost lyrical. ‘Do not deprive my soul of those few moments I had hoped to savour before darkness closes over it. See, I have been a miracle of reticence, a model of circumspection. Since you said what you said to me yesterday, by no single word or glance have I importuned you. Nor would I now. Yet I ask of you one little thing; little to you, but meaning so much—dear God, how much!—to me. Walk with me but a little way farther: to that blessed spot in the dell, where first my eyes were gladdened by the lovely sight of you. There, where I looked my first upon you, let me look my last, and thus departing count all a dream that happened in between. Of your sweet charity, accord me this. Margaret!’
She was not stone to resist this perfervidly, poetical, heartbroken supplication. After all, as he said, it was such a little thing to ask. She consented. Yet on the way through the gloom that was gathering in the dingle, no word was spoken.
Thus in silence they came to their first meeting-place.
‘It was here,’ she said. ‘Yonder you stood on that white rock, when Brutus leapt at you.’
He paused, considered her, and fetched a heavy sigh. ‘Your greatest cruelty was when you stayed him.’ He paused again, still considering her, as if he would print each feature for ever on his brain. And then: ‘How grudgingly,’ pursued that very subtle gentleman, ‘you accord me the exact alms I begged of your charity. “ ’Twas here!” you say, and on the very spot, careful to an inch of ground, you halt. Well! Well!’
‘Ah, no,’ she answered him, her generous heart responding to the touch of that skilful player. ‘I’ll bear you company yet a little farther.’
He breathed his thanks, and they continued the descent, following the course of the brook, which was the merest trickle now. And as they went, there came from the beach below the grating of a keel upon the shingle.
Forth from the shadows of the trees they stepped onto the edge of the sands now shimmering faintly in the evening light. By the water’s edge there was a boat, and about it, dim and shadowy, a dark group.
At sight of this, Don Pedro raised his voice, and called some words in Spanish. Two men instantly detached themselves and came speeding up the beach.
Margaret put forth her hand for the third time, and her tone was brisk and resolute.
‘And now, farewell! God send you a favourable wind to Spain and bring you safely home.’
‘Home?’ said he sadly. ‘An empty word henceforth. Ah, stay! Stay yet a moment!’ His grip upon her hand detained her. ‘There is something yet I wish to say. Something I must say before I go.’
‘Then say it quickly, sir. Your men are almost here.’
‘It is no matter for them. They are my own. Margaret!’ He seemed to choke.
She noticed that his face shone oddly white in the deepening twilight, that he was actually trembling. A vague fear possessed her. She wrenched her hand free. ‘Farewell!’ she cried, and abruptly turned to go.
But he sprang after her. He was upon her. His arms went round her, holding her close and powerless as in a snare of steel. ‘Ah, no, no,’ he almost sobbed. ‘Forgive, my Margaret! You shall forgive! You must; you will, I know. I cannot bear to let you go. Be God my witness it would kill me.’
‘Don Pedro!’ There was only anger in her voice. She sought to break from him; but he held her firmly. Such an indignity as this had never touched her pure young life, nor had she ever dreamt of such a possibility. ‘Let me go!’ she commanded, her eyes scorching him with their fury. ‘As you are a gentleman, Don Pedro, this is unworthy. It is knavish! Vile!’
‘A gentleman!’ he echoed, and laughed in furious scorn of all such shams as in this moment he accounted them. ‘Here is no gentleman. We are just man and woman, and I love you.’
At last she understood the full villainy of his purpose, sensed the utter remorselessness of his passion, and a scream sped upwards through the dingle. Came a roar from above to answer her. Almost inarticulate though it was, she recognized the voice and thrilled at the sound of it as never yet she had thrilled. Twice she called his name in ringing accents of fearful urgency.
‘Gervase! Gervase!’
Momentarily she was released, and then, almost before she could realize it and attempt to move, a cloak was flung over her head to muffle her. She was lifted from her feet by strong pinioning arms, and hurried swiftly away. After her bearers came Don Pedro at speed.
‘Handle her gently on your lives, dogs,’ he thundered in Spanish to his men. ‘Make haste! Away! Away!’
They gained the boat as Gervase came through the trees onto the open beach. One of the Spaniards levelled a musketoon across the bows to make an end of that single pursuer. Don Pedro kicked the weapon into the sea.
‘Fool! Who bade you take so much upon yourself? Push off! And now give way! Give way!’
They floated clear as Gervase came bounding to the water’s edge. Nor did the water check him. On he came, splashing through it.
‘Don Pedro, you Spanish dog!’ he cried in mingled rage and anguish.
The boat drew off under the stroke of six long oars and swiftly gathered way.
Yet Gervase in his mad agony went after it to his armpits. There he checked, raving, with the wash of the boat about his neck. He raised an impotent fist and shook it in the air.
‘Don Pedro!’ he called across the water. ‘Don Pedro de Mendoza! You may go now. But I come after you. I shall follow you, though it be to hell!’
Don Pedro in the sternsheets, catching the note of agony in those accents, looked through the gloom at the man who had wielded the musketoon.
‘I was wrong,’ he said. ‘It would have been a mercy to have shot him.’
My Lord Garth sat peacefully over his books, lighted by four tapers which Martin had lately placed upon his table. He was labouring over the Phaedrus, and by an odd coincidence relishing the simple explanation afforded by Socrates of the tale of the abduction of Oreithyia by Boreas from the banks of the Ilissus. To his lordship thus engrossed came a wild, dishevelled figure, squelching water from his boots at every stride.
This was Sir Gervase Crosby. But such a Gervase Crosby as his lordship had never yet seen or heard.
‘Afoot, my lord!’ came the thundered exhortation. ‘Afoot, and be doing! Enough of books, by God!’ With a blow of his brawny fist, he swept the tome from under his lordship’s eyes and sent it crashing to the ground.
My lord considered him, blinking in his supreme amazement.
‘Od’s light!’ said he. ‘Hath Brutus got the rabies and bitten thee? Art clean mad?’
The answer came on a sob. ‘Mad! Ay!’ And he flung out his news. ‘Your daughter’s gone; carried off by that Spanish traitor out of hell.’ Scarcely coherent in his headlong passion, he delivered the full tale of it.
His lordship sat benumbed: a crumpled, shrunken figure of dismay and horror and despair. But Sir Gervase knew no mercy, and admonition followed instantly upon narrative.
‘When a man has a daughter, it is his duty to her, to himself, and to his God—if so be he have one—to care for her and keep watch over her. But you sit here with no thought for anything but dust and books and dead men’s tales, and never trouble your mind of what be doing among the living, of what villainies may be wrought under your very nose and against your only child. And now she’s gone. Gone, I say! Borne off by that villain. A dove in the talons of a hawk!’
Sir Gervase, having cast for once, under the overmastering spur of his grief, all that diffidence in which usually he approached the Earl, was terrific and irresistible. Had he but done his wooing in such a spirit, the horror which now afflicted him might never have fallen across his life and Margaret’s.
My lord set his elbows on the table, took his head in his hands, and groaned impotently in his overwhelming misery. He seemed a man suddenly aged. The spectacle of him was pitiful. But it awoke no pity in the tortured soul of Gervase Crosby.
‘Ay, groan!’ he sneered at him. ‘Huddle yourself together there and groan in your helplessness to amend that which you had not the care to hinder.’ Then, abruptly, scornfully: ‘Give you good-night!’ he cried, and swung about to depart, tempestuous as he had come.
‘Gervase!’
The heart-broken cry arrested him. Belatedly it broke upon his distracted reason that, after all, my lord and he were fellow sufferers. The Earl had risen, and stood now commanding himself, a gaunt figure, tall despite the scholar’s stoop which almost humped his shoulders. From their momentary numbness under the shock of the news, his wits were recovering, and his will was compelling their recovery. It is for fools and weaklings to lie prostrate under grief. Lord Garth was neither. This blow was to be met, and if possible to be countered. He would gird up his loins for whatever contest might lie ahead. Under the touch of grim necessity, the man of thought was transmuted into the man of action.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘After her!’ the boy answered wildly. ‘To Spain.’
‘To Spain? Wait, boy! Wait! Let thought precede all action ever. Naught was ever accomplished without plan. Spoil nothing now by haste.’
He moved away from the table, wrapping his russet gown about him. His chin sank to his breast and on his slippered feet he slip-slopped slowly to the window. He stood there, looking out upon the park and the black bulk of the elms over which the moon was rising, whilst Gervase, impressed by the sudden energy of his tone, waited as he was bidden.
‘To Spain, eh?’ His lordship sighed. ‘You are no Perseus, lad, and Margaret’s is hardly the case of Andromeda.’ He swung about on a sudden inspiration. ‘First to the Queen!’ he cried. ‘It may be that Her Grace will still remember me, and that the memory will count for something. Moreover, she’s a woman—a very woman—and she should aid a man to befriend a woman in sore need. I’ll come with you, Gervase. Call Martin. Tell him to bid them prepare horses and order a couple of grooms to ride with us. Bid Francis supply us with what moneys he has at hand. We’ll start so soon as it’s daylight.’
But Gervase shook his head as he answered impatiently.
‘My lord, my lord, I cannot wait for daylight. Every hour is precious now. I start for London so soon as I have changed my clothes and taken what gear I need. It was already in my mind to invoke the Queen’s assistance. I was for seeking Drake or Hawkins that they might procure me audience. If you will come, my lord, you must follow. It would but delay me,’ he ended bluntly, ‘to have you with me.’
A flush of indignation overspread the pallid, haggard face of the student. Then he saw reason, and fetched a sigh. ‘Ay, I am old,’ he agreed. ‘Too old and feeble to do more than cumber you. But my name may count for something still; it may count for more with the Queen than that of either Drake or Hawkins. You shall have letters from me. I’ll write to Her Grace. She’ll not deny the bearer; and that will be your opportunity.’
He moved briskly back to his table, cleared a space in that litter of books and papers, and sat down to write.
Sir Gervase waited with such patience as he could command whilst his lordship slowly laboured with the pen. For this was no letter that could be indited swiftly. It required thought, and in his distraction the Earl’s thoughts went haltingly. At last, however, it was done. My lord sealed it with his arms, engraved on a massive ring he wore. He rose to proffer it to Gervase, and almost at once sat down again, weak and shaken. The mental strain had temporarily sapped his physical vigour, and made him realize to the full how unfitted he was to take an active part in the enterprise ahead of the young man.
‘Indeed, indeed, I should but cumber you,’ he confessed. ‘Yet to sit here waiting… O God! Mine is the harder part, Gervase.’
At last Sir Gervase was touched. He had done the Earl a wrong. There was red blood in his veins, after all, and he had a heart for other things than books. He set a hand upon his shoulder.
‘If you trust me, it will help you, my lord. Be assured that what man can do shall be done; that you could not yourself do more if you were in your fullest vigour. You shall hear from me from London.’
He was gone like the whirlwind, and a moment later, the Earl seated again at his table, his head in his hands, heard outside the receding clatter of flying hooves.
At the peril of his neck, Sir Gervase rode through Smithwick; then more slowly, yet with a speed cruel to his horse up to the winding road to Arwenack. Sir John was away from home, a circumstance which Gervase considered almost fortunate, since thus there would be no time lost in explanations. Time was to be lost, however, he discovered; a loss that was to end in a gain: for at Arwenack he found the elder Tressilian awaiting him.
They had become fast friends, these two, who were brothers-in-arms and who had received the accolade on the same day and in reward of similar achievements. There had been some talk between them that so soon as Gervase’s ship was ready, he and Sir Oliver should unite their forces and go forth in a joint venture. It was on this very subject which Sir Oliver had come to discuss with him to-night. Instead he was to listen to Sir Gervase’s furious tale, whilst Sir Gervase was ridding himself of his sodden garments.
The vigorous, black-browed Sir Oliver took fire at the narrative. He swore roundly and fully, for he was ever a rough-tongued man, at Spain and Spaniards.
‘As God’s my life I’ll bear this thing in mind whenever and wherever I meet a Spaniard,’ he promised fiercely. Then he became practical. ‘But why ride to London? Why spend a week upon the road at a time when every day must count? The Rose of the World will bring you there in half the time.’
‘The Rose of the World?’ Sir Gervase checked in the very act of trussing the points of his hose to stare up at his tall friend. ‘My God, Oliver! Is she ready for sea?’
‘She’s been ready this last week. I could put out at dawn.’
‘Could you put out to-night?’ Sir Gervase’s eyes were feverish with excitement.
Sir Oliver looked at him. ‘Give chase, do you mean?’
‘What else?’
But Sir Oliver shook his head, considered a moment, then shook it again. He had a vigorous, practical mind and a mental eye that saw straight and clearly to the core of things. ‘We’ve missed the tide, or must miss it before ever we could get aboard; and then the crew’s ashore and to be assembled. We could drop down the river on the first of the ebb, just after daybreak; but by then it would be too late to hope to overtake your Spaniard. And to follow him into Spain you’ll need some stouter equipment than our swords.’ Again he shook his head. He sighed. ‘It would have been a rare adventure. But fortune puts it beyond our reach. So it’s London first, my lad. And it’ll prove the shorter road in the end. I’ll away, to beat up the crew and get what I need for myself. When you’ve got your gear together, come aboard.’ He set one of his great powerful hands on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Keep up your heart, lad,’ he enjoined, and upon that valediction departed without waiting for any word of thanks for the readiness with which he proffered so very generous a measure of assistance.
The Rose of the World dropped down from her moorings at the mouth of the Penrhyn Creek on the first of the ebb just as day was breaking. She unfurled her sails to the breezes of dawn, and slipped away through the water on the first stage of the adventure. It was Sunday morning. So well did the wind serve them and so ably was the tall ship handled that by Tuesday’s dawn she came to anchor abreast of Greenwich Palace. Landing, they went, at Sir Oliver’s instigation, in quest of Sir John Hawkins, whose influence at Court should open to them its jealously guarded doors, and that same evening, having ridden hard from Greenwich, they were conducted by Sir John into the closet of Sir Francis Walsingham at Whitehall.
In Sir Francis, Gervase beheld the tall, spare man in black with the long narrow white beard who had stood near the Queen on the day Her Majesty had given audience to the seamen. He was seated at a table that was strewn with documents, nor troubled to rise when our two gentlemen were ushered in by Sir John Hawkins, who had gone ahead to obtain the Secretary of State’s consent to receive them. On his narrow grey head he wore a flat black cap with flaps which entirely covered his ears, a cap which had been fashionable in the late King’s time, but was rarely to be seen nowadays unless it were upon some City merchant. But for that matter there was nothing fashionable in all Sir Francis’ attire. The young secretary industriously engaged at a writing-pulpit in one of the window-embrasures was of an infinitely more modish appearance, though similarly clad in black.
Sir John withdrew, leaving the two Cornishmen with Sir Francis.
‘This, sirs,’ he greeted them, ‘is a distressing tale that Sir John tells me.’ But there was no distress in his formal, level voice, nor in the chill glance of those pale, calculating eyes with which he conned them. He invited them to sit, waving a bony hand to indicate the chairs that stood before his table.
Sir Oliver inclined his head in acknowledgement, and sat down, stretching his long, booted legs before him. Sir Gervase, however, remained standing. He was restless and haggard. His tone when he now spoke was almost fretful. He did not find the Secretary of State prepossessing; saw little promise of assistance in the man’s chill exterior. To Sir Gervase, who expected all to share something of his frenzy, it seemed that the man had ink in his veins, not blood.
‘It is my hope, sir, that I may be vouchsafed occasion to place the facts before the Queen’s Grace.’
Sir Francis combed his beard. Behind it Sir Gervase fancied that the lips had parted in a faint smile of weary scorn. ‘Her Majesty shall be apprised, of course.’
But this was far, indeed, from fulfilling the hopes of Sir Gervase. ‘You will procure me an audience, sir?’ he said, between question and intercession.
The cold eyes looked at him inscrutably. ‘To what purpose, sir, when all is said?’
‘To what purpose?’ Sir Gervase was beginning hotly, when the lean hand upheld checked the burst of indignation that was about to follow.
‘If the Queen, sir, were to grant audience to every man who asks it, no single second of her day would be left for any of her other manifold and important occupations. Hence the functions of Her Majesty’s Ministers.’ He was a pedant instructing a schoolboy in the elements of worldly conduct. ‘Such action as may be taken in this regrettable affair the Queen would invite me to take if she were informed of it. Therefore, we may without any loss show ourselves dutiful to Her Grace by sparing her this unnecessary audience.’
Sir Oliver shifted in his chair, and his deep voice rang loud and harsh by contrast with the sleek, level accents of the Secretary.
‘It is not the view of Sir Gervase that Her Majesty should be spared, or that she will thank any man for sparing her in this matter.’
Sir Francis was neither startled by Tressilian’s vehemence nor intimidated by the fierceness of his glance.
‘You misunderstand, I think.’ He spoke quietly ever, with that chill disdain of his. ‘It is Her Majesty’s person alone that I am—that we all must be—concerned to spare. Her powers, her authority, shall be exerted to the full. It is my duty to exert them.’
‘In plain terms, Sir Francis, what does that mean?’ Gervase demanded.
Sir Francis sat back in his tall chair, leaning his capped head against the summit. His elbows resting on its carved arms, he brought his finger-tips together, and over them considered with interest these two furious men of action who imagined that a Secretary of State was a person to be bullied or brow-beaten. ‘It means,’ he said after a deliberate pause, ‘that I shall make the strongest representations to the French Ambassador in the morning.’
‘The French Ambassador? What has the French Ambassador to do with this?’
This time Sir Francis’ smile was no longer covert. ‘Our own relations with Spain being at this present suspended, the intervention of the Ambassador of France becomes necessary. It can be relied upon.’
Sir Gervase’s patience was rapidly running out.
‘God’s light!’ he roared. ‘And what is to happen to the Lady Margaret Trevanion while you represent the matter to the Ambassador of France and he sends messages to King Philip?’
Sir Francis parted his hands and spread them a little in a deprecatory gesture. ‘Let us be practical. According to your tale this lady has already been three days upon the seas in her abductor’s company. The matter can no longer be of such urgency that we should distress ourselves over an unavoidable delay in reaching her.’
‘My God!’ cried Gervase in pain.
‘That,’ rasped Sir Oliver, ‘is where the Queen, being a woman, must take a different view: a less cold-blooded view, Sir Francis.’
‘You do me wrong, sir, as I perceive. No heat of passion will help any of us here.’
‘I am not sure,’ Sir Oliver answered him. He heaved himself to his feet. ‘And, anyway, the matter is one for human beings, not for statesmen. Here we stand, two men who have brought our lives and our gear to the service of the Queen’s Grace, and all we ask now in return is that we be brought to audience with Her Majesty.’
‘Nay, nay. That is not all you ask. You ask that, so that you may ask something else.’
‘It is our right!’ Sir Oliver roared.
‘And we demand it,’ Sir Gervase added. ‘The Queen, sir, would not deny us.’
Sir Francis looked at them both with the same unrufflable composure with which he had first received them. The secretary in the window-embrasure had suspended his labours to lend an ear to this brow-beating of his formidable master. At any moment he expected to hear Sir Francis declare the audience at an end. But to his surprise Sir Francis now rose.
‘If I deny you,’ said he quietly, without the least shade of resentment, ‘as I account it my duty to Her Majesty, you are of those who will be stirring up interest until in the end you have your way. But I warn you that it can serve no good purpose, and is but a waste of time; your own and the Queen’s. Her Majesty can but entrust the business to me, to take what steps are in the circumstances possible. However, if you really insist…’
He paused, and looked at them.
‘I do,’ said Gervase emphatically.
He nodded. ‘In that case I will take you to the Queen at once. Her Majesty is expecting me before she sups, and it is time I went. If the audience proves little to your taste, if it is fruitless, as it must be, of more than could have been achieved without it, I trust you will remember to place the reproach where it is deserved.’
Tall and gaunt in his black gown that was edged with brown fur, he moved to the door, and threw it open. ‘Pray follow me,’ he bade them coldly over his shoulder.
Along a gallery, with windows on their right through the blurred glass of which they caught the green sheen of the foliage in the privy garden, Walsingham led them, to a closed door, kept by two stalwart young yeomen of the guard in scarlet with the Tudor rose embroidered in gold upon their backs. At the approach of Sir Francis, they ordered their tasselled halberts, whose polished blades shone like mirrors. At a nod from him, one of them threw open the door and held it wide. In silence he crossed the threshold, his companions following. The door closed after them, and they proceeded some little way along the farther gallery into which they had now stepped, until Sir Francis brought up at a door on his left, which again was guarded by two yeomen.
Sir Gervase observed that, like the others, these, too, were tall, athletic, young, and handsome. The tongue of rumour certainly appeared justified when it said that the Queen liked to have splendid-looking men about her. It was asserted that the loss of a front tooth by one of these magnificent guards entailed his removal from about the Queen’s person.
They went through the doorway instantly opened to Sir Francis, and found themselves in a lofty antechamber, very richly furnished, the golden rose everywhere conspicuous upon scarlet fabrics. Half a dozen resplendent gentlemen lounged here. A chamberlain with a wand advanced to meet Sir Francis, and at a word from him, bowing profoundly, withdrew through a small door which again was guarded by a pair of yeomen who might have been cast in the same mould as the others. He returned a moment later to announce that Her Majesty would at once receive Sir Francis and his companions.
Through the open doorway came the tinkling sound of a virginal. Her Majesty’s occupations of state, thought Sir Gervase, might be manifold and important, as Sir Francis had stated; but it was clear that they were not engaging her at the moment, which may, indeed, have accounted for the promptitude of their admission to her gracious presence.
They entered. Sir Francis went down on one knee, and with his left hand covertly signalled to the others to imitate his genuflexion.
They found themselves in a small room, three of whose walls from ceiling to floor were hung with rich tapestries, illustrating scenes which Sir Gervase would not have identified even if he had had leisure to examine them. A tall mullioned window overlooked the river and the Palace Steps, where the great gilded royal barge was moored amid a flock of lesser craft.
This in a glance he saw as he entered. Thereafter his eyes were upon the Queen, to whom he knelt now for the second time. She was in rose-pink to-day. That at least was the background of the shimmering brocade she wore, which was all embroidered with eyes, so that you might have conceived that Her Majesty looked at you from every point of her person at once. For the rest she was as richly, as monstrously bejewelled as on the last occasion when Sir Gervase had beheld her, and the great erect collar of lace, spreading like a fan behind her head, reached almost to the summit of her pearl-entwined wig.
For a moment after the gentlemen entered she continued, engrossed in the virginals, bringing her musical phrase to a conclusion. It was one of her many vanities to be accounted a fine performer, and she deemed no audience too trivial.
A tall, fair lady stood immediately behind her. Two others, one fair, the other dark, and the dark one of a singular loveliness, were seated near the window.
The Queen’s beautiful hands came to rest upon the keys, then one of them, aflash with gems, was extended to take a delicate gold-edged kerchief from the polished top of the instrument. Her dark eyes peered at them short-sightedly, deepening the web of wrinkles about her pencilled brows. She may have noticed that Walsingham’s companions were fine fellows both, such as she loved to look upon. Both above the common height, if Sir Oliver were by a little the taller and more athletic, the other had the greater beauty of countenance. It is possible that the coldly calculating Sir Francis may have weighed this circumstance in introducing them thus without preliminaries into her presence. He may have been persuaded that Her Majesty could of herself do nothing to assist them beyond entrusting their grievance to him for redress; but at least their persons would ensure him from any royal resentment at having brought them to her so that they might convince themselves of what he told them.
‘What’s this, Frank?’ she rasped in her mannish voice. ‘What do you bring me, and why?’ And then, without waiting for the answer, she abruptly addressed Gervase.
Sir Oliver slightly behind him, copying Walsingham, had risen already from the genuflexion. Sir Gervase, not observing this, remained humbly upon one knee.
‘Od’s eyes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Get up, man. D’ye take me for a Popish image that ye’ll kneel to me all day?’
He rose tongue-tied and a little embarrassed with no thought of any such fond speech as that for which her exclamation had given him an opening and such as were dear to her overweening vanity. But his looks made amends in her eyes for his lack of adulatory glibness.
‘Why have you brought them, Frank?’
Briefly Walsingham recalled them to her memory as two of the knights she had lately created in token of her favour, for their achievements in the fight with the Armada.
‘As some slight recompense for the service that already they have rendered England and as some earnest for what may yet be to come for future service, they have a boon to crave.’
‘A boon?’ Alarm flickered in her eyes. She looked up at the tall lady beside her, wrinkling her high, pinched nose. ‘I might have guessed it, Dacres. God’s wounds, man! If it be money, or aught that’s costly, I prithee save thy breath. We are beggared by this Spanish war already.’
‘It is not money, Your Grace,’ said Sir Gervase, speaking boldly now.
Her relief was manifest. She reached for a basket of silver filigree that stood upon the virginal, and gave her care to the selection of a Portingal. It was this love of sweetmeats which may have been responsible for the dark ruin of her teeth. ‘What is it, then? Speak out, man. Art not shy, belike?’
That if shy he had by now conquered his shyness, his answer proved: ‘It is no boon, as Sir Francis says, Your Grace. I am come for simple justice.’
She looked at him with sudden sharp suspicion, the selected Portingal suspended delicately between finger and thumb. ‘Ay, I know the phrase well. Cordieu! ’Tis on the lips of every place-seeker. Well, well! Out with this tale of it, a God’s name, and let us ha’ done.’ The sweetmeat disappeared between her thin, raddled lips.
‘First, Madam,’ said Sir Gervase, ‘I am the bearer of a letter.’ He advanced, instinctively went down on his knee again, and proffered it. ‘Will Your Highness be graciously pleased to receive it?’
Walsingham frowned and stirred forward a pace or two. ‘What’s this of a letter?’ said he. ‘You said naught to me of any letter.’
‘No matter for that,’ she told him curtly. She was examining the seal. ‘Whose arms are these?’ She was frowning. ‘Whence is your letter, sir?’
‘From my Lord Garth, so please Your Grace.’
‘Garth? Garth?’ She spoke as one fumbling in her memory. Suddenly her expression quickened. ‘Why, that will be Roger Trevanion. Roger…’ She caught her breath, and looked at him again, searchingly. ‘What is Roger Trevanion to thee, child?’
‘My friend, I hope, Madam. I know myself his. I love his daughter.’
‘Ha! His daughter! So? He has a daughter? If she favours him, you’re fortunate in your choice. He was a comely fellow in his youth. And he married, eh? I never heard of it.’ Her voice grew wistful. ‘But, indeed, I’ve never heard aught of him for years. Roger Trevanion!’ She sighed, and fell thoughtful a moment, the expression of her face incredibly softened. Then, as if recollecting herself, she abruptly broke the seal, and spread the sheet. She read it with difficulty.
‘Why here’s a vile scrawl, by God!’
‘It was writ in deep agitation and sorrow, Madam.’
‘Was it so? Ay, so it was; so it must have been. Yet it does little more than announce the fact, commend you to me, and implore my favour for you and for him, who are one in the aims of which you are to tell me. So Roger is in trouble, eh? And in trouble he remembers me at last! That is the common way. But hardly Roger’s.’ She was musing now. ‘Cordieu! He might have remembered me before, remembered the debt I have owed him these many years. How many years, dear God!’ She sighed, and fell into thought. There was no hardness now in that pinched, lined face. The dark eyes seemed to Sir Gervase to have grown moist and wistful. Her thoughts may well have been with the past, the gallant Lord Admiral who had loved her and who had paid with his head for the temerity of that love, and the man who had loved him and because of that love had risked his own head freely to serve him and to serve her. Then she roused herself, to command the waiting gentleman before her. ‘What is this tale you have to tell me? Out with it, child. I am listening.’
Sir Gervase told it, briefly, eloquently, passionately. Once only was he interrupted, and then by Walsingham when he mentioned the Spaniard’s surrender and its acceptance which made of him nominally a prisoner, actually a guest, at Trevanion Chase.
‘Now that was ill-done!’ Sir Francis had cried. ‘We should take steps to…’
‘Take steps to hold your tongue, man,’ the Queen silenced him.
There were no further interruptions. Sir Gervase proceeded to the end with ever-increasing anger in the tale he was relating, so that he imparted some of his own heat to his audience—to the Queen, her ladies, and even the cold Walsingham. When, at last, he had done, she smote her hands upon the arms of her chair, and heaved herself to her feet.
‘Now, by God’s death!’ she cried in a fury that had turned her livid under her paint. ‘Does the audacity of these Spaniards dare so much? Is there to be no end of their insolences? Shall we suffer these things, Walsingham? One of them comes shipwrecked into this realm of mine and commits this outrage! By Heaven’s light, they shall yet learn the length of a maid’s arm to shield a maid; they shall feel the weight of a woman’s hand to avenge a woman. They shall so, by God! Walsingham, summon me… No, no. Wait!’
She moved across the room, brushing past the two ladies near the window, who had risen, tapping her high-heeled shoe upon the ground. From somewhere she drew a little silver bodkin. Fragments of the Portuguese comfit were inconveniencing her. Having used the instrument, she fell to tapping with it one of the little panes.
The narrative had moved her more deeply than Gervase could have hoped. However much this may have been due to the outrage itself, there can be no doubt that a contributory factor lay in the circumstance that Roger Trevanion’s daughter was the victim. The tale may have gathered poignancy and impressiveness, too, because it fell upon a mood of softness and tenderness invoked by the memory of that dear friend of her girlhood and of her girlhood’s lover, and further, even, because the narrator was a stalwart, handsome fellow and a lover.
At length she swung from the window, her manner almost harsh with impatience, but an impatience of which clearly he whom she addressed was not the object.
‘Come hither, child!’
He was prompt to approach her, and stood respectfully before her, apart from those others who looked on with interest and one of them with uneasiness. This was Walsingham. Knowing her as he did, he perceived that the lioness in her was aroused, and foresaw trouble for himself from such a mood. He felt a little aggrieved with Sir Gervase Crosby for having taken an advantage of him in the matter of that letter. But this at the moment was a light thing compared with the anxieties which the Queen’s humour awakened in him.
‘Tell me, child; tell me,’ she was urging the long-limbed Gervase. ‘What precisely do you seek of me? What is in your mind that I should do? Exactly what justice do you desire?’
She asked for guidance; asked it from this West-Country youngster, converted, no doubt, into a firebrand by his anguish on behalf of his mistress. Here, thought Walsingham, was madness. He groaned inwardly; indeed, almost aloud. His countenance was lugubriously startled.
The answer did nothing to allay his fears. The lad’s words proved him indeed a firebrand, of a rashness almost beyond the Secretary of State’s belief, and the Secretary of State had great experience of human rashness.
‘It is my intent, Your Grace, to cross at once to Spain. To go after Don Pedro de Mendoza.’
She interrupted him. ‘By God! The intent is a bold one! If you are to take matters thus into your own hands, what is there for me to do?’ There was in her tone the suspicion of a sneer, as well there might be at the avowal of such stark madness.
‘It has been my hope, Madam, that Your Grace—I scarce know how—would provide means to shield me on this journey, and to ensure my safe return. It is not that I go in fear for myself…’
‘You were wiser and you did,’ she interrupted him again. ‘But to shield you? I?’ She made a wry face. ‘My arm is long enough for much. But to protect you within the dominions of King Philip at this present time…’ She broke off, and because she could not see the way to do as he desired of her, and felt herself humiliated by her impotence, she fell to cursing like a roaring captain.
When at length she paused, Sir Francis Walsingham sleekly interposed. ‘I have already told Sir Gervase that Your Grace will command me to pursue the proper course, and to send letters to King Philip by the channel offered by the French Ambassador.’
‘Ha! And what doth Sir Gervase answer?’
‘In all humility, Your Grace, the thing is of an urgency…’
‘Why, so it is, child. Sir Francis needs to learn things by experience. If he had a daughter in Spanish hands, he would be less cool and simpering. The devil damn such paltry counsel.’
The Secretary of State was not discomposed. ‘The poor wits with which I serve Your Grace are waiting to discern a more effective way of availing this unfortunate lady.’
‘Are they so?’ She glared at him. His coolness had upon her an effect quite contrary from that which he hoped. She turned her shoulders to him, and fell to tapping the window again with her bodkin. ‘There should surely be some way. Come, child, ply your wits. I care not how rash be your proposal. We may strike sense from it if we but hear it.’
There fell a pause, Sir Gervase having no settled plan of action, or thought of how that which he sought from Her Majesty might be obtained. To break the silence came the big rough voice of Sir Oliver Tressilian.
‘Have I Your Grace’s leave?’ He advanced a step or two as he spoke, and drew all eyes upon his dark, resolute countenance.
‘A God’s name!’ she barked at him. ‘Speak out, if you’ve aught in mind that will help.’
‘Your Highness asks for rashness, else I should scarce dare.’
‘Dare and be damned, man,’ quoth the lioness. ‘What’s in your mind?’
‘Your Highness may not remember that the honour of knighthood which I received at Your Grace’s hands was for my part in the capture of the flagship of the Andalusian squadron, the only Spanish vessel seized. We took prisoner her commander, Don Pedro Valdez, who is the greatest and deservedly the most valued of all Spain’s captains upon the seas. With him we took among others seven gentlemen of the first houses in Spain. These gentlemen at this present all lie under Your Grace’s hand. They are lodged here in the Tower.’
He said no more than that. But his tone was grim and full of suggestion. It expressed, like the thing he hinted, the ruthlessness of his nature and the lawlessness that were to make him what he was destined to become. It performed the miracle of startling Walsingham at last out of his imperturbability.
‘In the name of Heaven, man! What is’t ye’re implying?’
But it was the Queen who answered him, with a short laugh and a grimness akin to Sir Oliver’s own, which sent a shiver down the spine of the Secretary. ‘God’s light! Is’t not plain?’ Her tone said as clearly as any words could have done that the suggestion was eminently to her taste and mood. ‘Dacres, set my chair to the table yonder. The King of Spain shall learn the length of my arm.’
The tall lady-in-waiting pushed forward the padded crimson chair. The Queen swept to it and sat down. ‘Give me a pen. So! Walsingham, recite me the names of the seven gentlemen who are with Valdez in the Tower.’
‘Your Grace intends?’ Walsingham was white; his long beard was observed to quiver.
‘Shalt know my intentions soon enough, you and that other knock-kneed fellow, Philip of Spain. Their names, I say!’
Her peremptoriness was almost savage. Walsingham quailed and surrendered the names. She set them down in that big angular writing of hers in which later ages have discovered beauty. The list completed, she sat back, conning it with narrowed eyes and thoughtfully gnawing the feathered end of her quill.
Her Secretary of State leaned over her, with fearful urgent mutterings. But she blighted him with a glance and an oath so that he fell back again. A patient man and an opportunist, he resolved to wait until her royal rage should have cooled sufficiently to render her amenable to reason. Of the unreasonable thing, the outrageous thing which, upon the suggestion of that outrageous black-browed Oliver Tressilian, she was about to perform, Sir Francis had no slightest doubt.
She bent to her task, which was to indite a letter to the brother-in-law who at one time had so ardently aspired to become her husband, and may since have had many an occasion to thank God that he had not numbered Elizabeth among his several successive wives. She wrote rapidly, scarcely pausing to consider the shaping of a phrase, and there was something of savage determination in the way her pen bit the parchment, so that her sprawling characters were engraved upon it rather than written. It was soon done.
She signed the document with a vicious flourish that was in itself like a piece of sword-play, and called for wax and a taper that she might seal it. Her ladies moved to obey. Sir Francis endeavoured once again to remonstrate.
‘If in that letter, Madam, the comity of nations…’
Harshly she cropped his speech. ‘The comity of nations!’ She laughed fiercely in the grave long face and snowy beard of him. ‘I have said a word about the comity of nations in this letter. It counts for naught in this affair. I’ve warned His Spanish Majesty of that.’
‘ ’Tis what I feared, Madam…’
‘Lord! Walsingham, when will you cease to be a woman?’ She sank her seal into the wax.
Walsingham, now terror-stricken, murmured of the Privy Council. At that she rose in fury, the letter in her hand, to inform him that she was no word of the Privy Council; that the Privy Council existed but to interpret her sovereign will. The outrage committed by a Spanish noble upon the person of an English maid was an insult to England. She herself was England’s incarnation, she informed the Secretary, and it was for her to answer that insult. It was answered in the letter, and Sir Gervase should deliver it.
Walsingham fell back appalled, but daring nothing further. The circumstances were all unfortunate and against him. He was himself to blame for his rashness in having introduced that young hothead and his worse companion to audience with Her Majesty. The harm was done. Let him provide as best he could for the consequences, whatever they might be. Further intervention here might but curtail his power of doing even so much when the time came.
The Queen proffered the letter to Gervase. ‘There is your weapon, sir. Get you to Spain with all speed. This shall be sword and buckler to you. Yet, should it chance to fail you, depend upon me to avenge you right nobly. And so God speed thee on this knightly errand. Away with him, Sir Francis. Let me know anon how he hath fared. I charge you not to fail me, on your life.’
Gervase went down on his knees to receive the package. She held out her hand to him. He kissed it respectfully and in some awe, whereupon her other hand lightly touched his rippling auburn locks.
‘Art a bonnie lad and a loving heart,’ said she in a softened voice, and lightly sighed. ‘God bring thy mistress scatheless home and thee with her.’
He stumbled out of her presence with Sir Oliver and Sir Francis. All three of them had more than guessed what she had written.
Sir Francis sourly took his leave of them. He would have interfered had he dared. But he was on the horns of a dilemma and was constrained to the prudence of inaction. So he suffered them to depart, bearing a package that might set the world on fire.
Fear was an emotion which had never touched the Lady Margaret Trevanion, because in her twenty-five years of life she had never been exposed to any source of it. From the first dawn of memory in her there had been those to obey her, some few to guide, but none to command her. At Trevanion Chase and along that Cornish countryside, where she was regarded as the Lady Paramount, her will had prevailed whenever and wherever it had been exerted. None had ever sought to thwart or oppose her. None had ever been lacking in respect. This partly because of the station into which she had been born, but more because she possessed a generous share of that quality of reserve and self-seclusion which is usually the result of breeding. That any should offend her in even the slightest measure was utterly inconceivable. In this assurance, and in the dignity born of it, a dignity not merely superficial, but going to the very core of her being, lay her immunity from all presumptions and even from the impertinences of fatuously audacious gallantry, to which the unusual freedom of her life and ways might otherwise have exposed her.
So deep-rooted was her self-assurance, so firmly established by all past experience, that it did not forsake her even now when she found herself physically constrained, rudely handled, her head muffled in a cloak. Astonishment and resentment were her predominant emotions. Fear did not touch her, because it was incredible to her that she should have anything to fear, unthinkable that this violence should not be kept within very definite limits. She refrained from struggling as much because she realized the futility of a trial of strength with the arms that held her, as because it was utterly beneath her dignity to have recourse to physical measures of self-defence.
Quiescent, then, she lay in the sternsheets where she had been placed, seeking to control the seething indignation which might hamper the free exercise of her wits. She was not more than half conscious of the heave of the boat, of the creak of rowlocks and thwarts as the men strained at the oars, and of an occasional inarticulate sound from one or the other of her rowers. Beside and immediately above her sat one whom she sensed to be Don Pedro. His arm was about her shoulders, either as a measure of repression or protection. It did not trouble her as at another time it must have done. She did not shrink in pudicity from that male contact which in another place must have awakened her resentment. There was a graver violence here to engage her indignation.
At the end of perhaps a half-hour, that arm was withdrawn from her shoulders. Hands were busy with the cord which had been employed to make fast the cloak about her waist. It was unfastened, the muffling garment was pulled away, and suddenly her head was free to the night air, her eyes free to take stock of her surroundings: the water about her, the stars overhead, the dark forms of the sailors heaving rhythmically on the thwarts, and the man who bent over her, his face a grey blue in the encompassing gloom. He spoke in the voice of Don Pedro.
‘You will forgive this rude audacity, Margaret?’ It was a question softly uttered on a note of pleading.
She found her voice and was almost surprised at its steadiness and hardness. ‘We will speak of that when you set me ashore again in the cove below Trevanion Chase.’
She guessed his smile rather than perceived it; that smile of subtle, mocking self-sufficiency which she knew so well, which she had rather admired but now found entirely abominable. ‘If I did not hope for forgiveness before then, I must kill myself with despair. There is no return, Margaret. You are committed with me to this adventure.’
She attempted to struggle up from the floor of the boat upon which she was sitting. His arm returned to encircle her shoulders and so repress her movement.
‘Calm, my dear,’ he urged her. ‘You need fear no indignity, no undue constraint. You go to the high destiny I have reserved for you.’
‘It is for yourself that you are reserving a high destiny,’ she answered boldly. ‘Gallows high,’ she explained.
He said no more. With a half-sigh he sank back and was silent. He judged it better to wait until this mood of indignation should have passed, as pass he thought it must when she realized more fully how utterly now she was in his power. That realization should bend her stubbornness more effectively than any words of his. She was not yet afraid. Hers was a high spirit, and this manifestation of it but rendered her the more desirable in his eyes. She was, indeed, a woman worth the winning, and to win her was worth all the patience he could command. That he would win her in the end, no doubt was possible to him. Like her own, his will, too, had been ever paramount.
The boat ploughed on. She looked up at the stars overhead, and at another yellower star low down on the horizon, a star which seemed to grow as they advanced. Once she looked back; but her glance failed to pierce the gloom which now blotted out completely the coastline and all sign of land. All that it revealed to her was that Don Pedro was not alone in the sternsheets. Another sat there beside him, grasping the tiller. One more protest she made, one more imperious demand, backed by a threat, to this helmsman, to put about and convey her back to shore. The man, however, did not understand. He said something in Spanish to Don Pedro and was answered shortly and sharply in the same tongue.
Thereafter she wrapped herself once more in her angry dignity and was silent. The yellow star ahead increased in size. It was reflected in a quivering spear of light across the water. Ultimately it resolved itself into the poop lantern of a towering ship, and soon they were bumping and scraping along the black sides of a great galleon, towards the entrance ladder at the summit of which another lantern was being held by a human figure silhouetted in black against the light from the vessel’s waist.
They brought up at the ladder, and her ladyship was invited by Don Pedro to ascend. She refused. She experienced in that moment her first wave of panic, and yielded to it. She struggled, resisted, commanded, and threatened. A rope slid down the ship’s side by the ladder. A sailor caught the end and made in it a running noose. This was slipped over her head, and allowed to slide down her body as far as her knees. Then her arms were raised, and the noose came up again about her until it reached her armpits and gently tightened there. Another moment and Don Pedro had caught her up and hoisted her to his shoulder. Thus burdened, supporting her with his left arm, he grasped the ladder with his right, and raised his right foot to the lowest rung. He began the ascent. She realized that if she struggled or attempted to fling herself from him, she would be suspended by the rope. Of the alternative indignities, the less was to be borne thus upon his shoulder.
In the ship’s waist, where a ring of lanterns made a patch of almost brilliant illumination, he set her down. The rope which had been drawn up hand over hand in a measure as she was borne aloft, lay like a snake along the deck at her feet. Don Pedro loosed and widened the noose until it fell away from her.
At the head of the entrance ladder stood Duclerc, the master, lantern in hand. By the hatch coamings two others waited: one of them stockily built and dressed as a gentleman, the other tall and gaunt in the white habit and black scapulary and mantle of a Dominican friar, his face lost in the shadows of the pointed cowl which covered his head.
The first of these advanced briskly now, and, bowing low before Don Pedro, murmured softly. This was Don Diego, the intendant or steward of the Count of Marcos, he who had fitted the ship for the voyage to England so soon as word had been brought him of his master’s waiting there.
The friar remained where he was, immoveable as a statue, his hands folded within the capacious sleeves of his gown. Don Pedro’s glance seeming to question his presence, the alert Don Diego explained it readily. No ship in the service of Catholic Spain could sail without a spiritual guide. He invited the friar forward and presented him as Frey Luis Salcedo. Priest and noble bowed to each other with all outward semblance of mutual deference. As the friar came upright again, his hands still folded in his sleeves, the gleam of a lantern momentarily dispelled the shadows cast about his face by the cowl. Her ladyship had a glimpse of an ascetic countenance, narrow, lean, and pallid, in which glowed two sombre eyes whose glance struck through her stout soul the chill of a fear such as nothing in this adventure had yet occasioned her. In that single glance, so swiftly eclipsed, she caught something of sinister menace, of active malevolence, before which her soul shuddered as it might have shuddered in the presence of a supernatural manifestation.
Then Don Pedro was informing her that the ship’s main cabin was at her service, and inviting her to follow Don Diego, who would lead the way. She stood an instant hesitating, her head high, her chin thrust forward, her glance proud to the point of defiance. At last she turned and followed the stocky figure of the intendant, being followed in her turn by Don Pedro. Until resistance could be of some avail, she must suffer them to have their way with her. This she perceived, and, perceiving it, submitted, upheld ever by her dignity and assisted by the persisting incredulity that any real harm could possibly touch her.
At the entrance to the gangway under the break of the poop, Don Pedro was arrested by a hand upon his arm.
He turned to find the friar at his elbow. The man had followed him. If his sandalled feet had made any sound upon the deck, this had been lost in the noise of general activity aboard as the ship broached to. There had been a creaking of blocks and halliards, a pattering of steps, and now, as the helm was put up, the slatting sails filled and bellied with a succession of thuds like muffled cannon shots. Listing slightly to larboard under the burden of the breeze, the Demoiselle out of Nantes with her crew of Spanish sailors slipped away through the night.
Don Pedro frowned interrogatively into the ascetic face upon which the light of a lantern swinging just within the gangway was beating fully.
The friar’s thin lips moved. ‘This woman whom your lordship brings aboard?’ he questioned.
Don Pedro was conscious of a spasm of anger. The impertinence of the question was aggravated by its contemptuous terseness. But he tempered the reply which another would have had from him to the quality of his questioner.
‘This lady,’ he said, with a slow emphasis, ‘is the future Countess of Marcos. I am glad to have this opportunity of announcing it to you, so that you may speak of her henceforth with a proper deference.’
He turned on his heel whilst the friar was impassively bowing, and went on towards the great cabin, damning in his heart Don Diego for having taken aboard for spiritual guide a brother of the Order of Saint Dominic. These Dominicans were all alike in their insolence, swollen with pride of power in the authority they derived from their inquisitorial functions. From the Inquisitor-General to the meanest brother, they knew no respect of rank however lofty.
A comprehensive glance at the interior of the cabin dispelled some of Don Pedro’s irritation. It had been furnished in a manner worthy of its intended tenants. On the snowy napery of the table crystal and silver sparkled under the light of the swinging lanterns; cushions of crimson velvet laced with gold embellished the chairs and dissembled the rudeness of the long sea-chest ranged under the stern windows of the coach. A long mirror stood between the doors of the two cabins opening on this main one on the starboard side and another beside the door of the single cabin to larboard. A soft Eastern rug of brilliant reds and blues was spread underfoot and there were tapestries to mask the bulkheads.
Beside the table, slight and sleek, stood Pablillos, one of Don Pedro’s own household fetched from his Asturian home to be now his bodyservant.
Don Diego, in the circumstances and considering the haste, had done more than well, and deserved the two words of commendation which his master uttered. Then, dismissing him, Don Pedro waved the lady to a place at table from which Pablillos now withdrew and held the chair.
She looked at him steadily. Her face was white under a cloud of red-gold, now slightly dishevelled hair. There was also some disarray in her dull red bodice, and there was a rent in the lace collar under which her bosom rose and fell to betray the emotion she desired above all to dissemble.
‘I have no choice,’ she said, coldly, contemptuously, in protest. ‘Since you will waste your time to my hurt in constraining me, I must submit. But it is the act of a coward, Don Pedro, and of an ingrate. You return me evil for good. I should have left you to the fate which you prove to me that every Spaniard deserves at the hands of honest men.’
With that she moved slowly forward in frosty dignity and took her place at table.
Don Pedro stood deathly pale, pain in his eyes and dark shadows under them. Against the whiteness of his face, his little pointed beard and upward-flung moustaches looked startlingly black. He betrayed no anger under the lash of her words: only melancholy. He inclined his head a little.
‘The rebuke is merited, I know. But even if you deem my action base, do not blame all Spaniards for the faults of one. And even for these faults, in judging them, consider the source from which they spring.’ He sat down opposite to her. ‘It is not by his actual deeds that a man is to be judged, but by the motive which inspires them. A thousand men of honour might have crossed your path in life and retained your esteem as men of honour because moved to no action that could diminish them. I am, I trust, a man of honour…’
She uttered a short, interrupting laugh. He caught his breath, and flushed a little; but repeated himself and continued. ‘I am, I trust, a man of honour, as in the past you rightly judged me. I might have departed leaving you in that persuasion, had not an overmastering, an overwhelming temptation shattered all preconceptions for me. Knowing you, Margaret, I came to love you, passionately, desperately, blindly.’
‘Must you continue?’
‘I must. For I desire you to understand before you judge. This love of mine, growing to worship, filling me with a sense of adoration, rendered you so necessary to me that I could not face life without you.’ He passed a hand wearily across his pallid brow. ‘These things are not of our own devising. We are the slaves of nature, pawns of Destiny, who uses us to her purpose, lashing us into obedience of her peremptory will. I did not ask to love you. I did not even desire it of my own volition. The desire was planted in me. It came I know not whence, a behest which there was no disobeying, compelling, utterly overmastering. In what opinion you held me before to-night I scarcely know. But I think that you esteemed me. And a woman such as I unerringly judge you to be could not esteem a man whom she supposed addicted to banal gallantries, to the pursuit of trivial amours, making sacrilegiously of love a pastime and a vileness. I am no such man. This I swear to you by my faith and my honour in the sight of God and His Holy Mother.’
‘Why trouble to swear or to forswear? All this is naught to me.’
‘Ah, wait! It must be something surely. It must have weight with you that what I have done has been done in no levity possible to some such man as I say that I am not. I have abducted you. It is an ugly word.’
‘A proper word to describe an ugly fact, a crime for which you shall most certainly be brought to answer.’
‘A crime as you say. But it is opportunity that makes the criminal. There has never been in human man—save One, and He was more than human—so much inherent virtue that there is no point at which temptation cannot break it.’ He sighed. ‘Believe me at least that I should never have done what I have done if in addition to the temptation provided by my need, my irresistible need of you, the circumstances themselves had not conspired to force me. Time would not stand still for me. This ship could not be kept indefinitely in English waters. Every hour exposed her to the risk of seizure. So I must make haste. I spoke to you last night of love, timidly, tentatively. I was rebuffed. It was to have been feared. The disclosure came too abruptly. It startled you, disturbed you, ruffled you. In other circumstances I should have paused. I should have brought an infinite patience to my wooing, sustaining that patience by the conviction that just as in our first meeting something of you had gone out to me to mark me for your own as long as I have life, so something from me must have gone out to you with the same message, although you might not yet be aware of it. It is impossible that the emotions which stirred in me should be other than reciprocal. They were as the spark that is born of the meeting of flint and steel, to the creation of which both elements are necessary. You were not yet aware of it; that was all. But in time, in a little time, I must have awakened you to this awareness. Time, however, was not at my command. It was impossible that I could protract my stay in England.’ He flung out an arm in a gesture of passion, and leaned forward a little across the table. ‘What choice then had I but to resort to this villainy as you deem it, as the only alternative to the impossibility of renouncing you?’ He waited for no answer, but swept on. ‘I have brought you away by force that I may woo you, Margaret, that I may place at your feet all that I have and all that I am, and crown you with all the honours won already and all those yet to be won under your dear inspiration. It is known by now on this ship that I am taking you to Spain to make you Countess of Marcos, and from this moment you will be entreated by all with the deference and homage due to that rank.’