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Title: The King's Minion
U.K. title: The Minion
Author: Sabatini, Rafael (1875-1950)
Date of first publication: 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: McClelland and Stewart
   ["Copyright, Canada, 1930"]
Date first posted: 20 December 2012
Date last updated: 20 December 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1025

This ebook was produced by:
David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






                             THE KING'S MINION

    BEING THE RISE AND FALL OF ROBERT CARR OF FERNIEHURST, EARL OF
    SOMERSET, VISCOUNT ROCHESTER, BARON WINWICK, BARON BRANCEPETH,
    KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER, A MEMBER OF HIS
    MAJESTY'S MOST HONORABLE PRIVY COUNCIL &c., &c., &c.

                             BY RAFAEL SABATINI


    McCLELLAND & STEWART LIMITED
    PUBLISHERS TORONTO

    COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1930
    BY
    MCCLELLAND & STEWART, LIMITED

    PRINTED IN CANADA
    T. H. BEST PRINTING CO., LIMITED
    TORONTO, ONT.




CONTENTS


        I. IN THE TILT-YARD                           3

       II. THE RISING SUN                            13

      III. THOMAS OVERBURY                           28

       IV. THE BOND                                  46

        V. LADY ESSEX                                56

       VI. VENERY AND TENNIS                         77

      VII. PREFERMENT                                92

     VIII. IMPORTUNATE WOOERS                       102

       IX. MRS. TURNER                              114

        X. METHEGLIN                                126

       XI. MAGIC                                    141

      XII. SCANDAL                                  152

     XIII. AT AUDLEY END                            164

      XIV. THE EARL OF ESSEX                        178

       XV. ULTIMATUM                                194

      XVI. NECROMANCY                               206

     XVII. CONSTRAINT                               218

    XVIII. THE COMEDY AT CHARTLEY                   231

      XIX. CAPITULATION                             242

       XX. THE ALARM                                252

      XXI. SIR DAVID WOOD                           262

     XXII. THE QUARREL                              276

    XXIII. THE TRAP                                 288

     XXIV. TEMPTATION                               300

      XXV. THE BISHOP'S MOVE                        312

     XXVI. THE KING'S MOVE                          325

    XXVII. MARRIAGE                                 333

   XXVIII. MR. VILLIERS                             344

     XXIX. GATHERING CLOUDS                         363

      XXX. THE AVALANCHE                            379

     XXXI. VALEDICTION                              391

    XXXII. PRELUDE                                  405

   XXXIII. THE AMBASSADOR                           415

    XXXIV. THE MERCY OF KING JAMES                  429




THE KING'S MINION




CHAPTER I

IN THE TILT-YARD


King James, fully recovered from the terrible fright occasioned him by
the Gunpowder Plot, had returned to his norm of pusillanimity. Guy
Fawkes, unbroken in spirit, however broken in body by torture, had
expiated on the gallows in Paul's Yard the attempt--in his own bold
words--to blow the Scots beggars back to their mountains.

The beggars remained and profited by the distribution amongst them of
the acres and possessions of the conspirators, most of whom were
gentlemen of substance.

For the King, too, the matter had not been without ultimate profit, of a
more spiritual kind. It had enabled him by an exercise of the arts of
kingcraft--a term signifying little more than the shameless use of
falsehood and dissimulation--to parade before the world the divine
inspiration vouchsafed to monarchs. It was, he pretended, the acuteness
with which kings are supernaturally endowed which had enabled him to
enucleate from obscurest utterances the true aim and nature of the plot,
and thus, almost miraculously, to avert a national catastrophe.

Some material profit, too, was to be extracted from it, in the course of
a further display of the spiritual graces and accomplishments of this
astounding prince. He was enabled to argue, cogently enough, that people
themselves so intolerant as the Papists, on whose behalf it had been
sought to blow him and his Parliament into a better world, deserved no
toleration; that the Scarlet Woman on her seven hills propounded,
indeed, the mystery of iniquity. Hence he was justified in proceeding
against Papists and at the same time against Puritans--so as to be
perfectly consistent in his exclusive upholding of the Established
Church--by means of heavy fines and confiscations. Thus he replenished
his sadly depleted treasury and was enabled further to relieve the
necessities of those Scots beggars--and some English ones, too--who
clustered about him.

It did not trouble his elastic royal conscience that the plot of a few
desperate men, for which he now punished an entire community, was
directly sprung from his own bad faith in an earlier exercise of his art
of kingcraft. Readily enough had he promised toleration alike to the
co-religionaries of his mother and to the Puritans, when they had
approached him on the subject in Scotland in the days of his own
anxieties touching his succession to the throne of England. They were
foolish to have trusted him. They should have perceived that a man who
would not raise a finger to save his own mother from the block, lest by
doing so he should jeopardise his inheritance of the English crown,
would never scruple about a false promise or two that would help to
ensure the unanimity of all classes of Englishmen in his favour. By
breaking faith when he discovered that the Episcopalian religion, which
made him head of the Church as well as of the State, was the only
religion fit for kings, he provoked not only the Gunpowder Plot, but
that earlier conspiracy in which Catholics and Puritans were united, the
strangest bedfellows adversity ever made.

All this, however, was now happily overpast. The heel of authority was
firmly planted on the neck of Papist and Puritan, and their recusancy
was being sweated out of them in the gold that was so urgently required
to maintain the prodigal splendours of the court of this new kingdom of
Great Britain. For now, in the year 1607 of the coming of Our Lord and
fourth of the coming of King James, his majesty was in dire straits for
ready money.

Never before in the history of the country had there been, and never
since has there been, such reckless extravagance as that which
distinguished the descent of the Scots from their Northern fastnesses in
the train of a king who was a veritable beggar on horseback.

Out of the stern and arid North he had come into the promised land of
plenty, a land that flowed, and flowed richly, with milk and honey at
his command. His commands, however, had been so free and frequent that
at last the springs were showing signs of exhaustion. Fortunes lavished
upon favourites by a prince who had never learnt and never did learn the
value of money were draining the resources of the nation. Finding his
hands, which hitherto had been ever empty, to be suddenly filled with
gold, he had scattered it in almost childish recklessness, spending for
the mere love of spending, who in thirty-seven years of life had never
had anything to spend. Similarly, finding himself a free and
uncontrolled fount of honour, who hitherto had been overborne and
brow-beaten by rude nobles and ruder clerics, he spouted honours so
freely that in the first three months of his reign, apart from the new
earls and barons he created, he distributed no less than seven hundred
knighthoods, so that to be a knight became so common as to be almost
disreputable. There was no lack of point in the announcement nailed by a
satirist on the door of Saint Paul's, offering to train weak memories in
the titles of nobility.

When at last he began to feel himself hard-pressed for money, he had
summoned Parliament so that it might provide, only to make the
discovery, next in horror to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, that
the Commons, far from acknowledging his divinity, would scarcely
acknowledge his majesty. His own views and Parliament's on the function
of the Commons were found to be widely divergent. The session resolved
itself into a battle between absolutism and constitutionalism; and it
was in vain that, with the polemical skill in which he took such pride,
he argued that kings are in the Word of God called gods, as being His
lieutenants and vicegerents on earth and therefore adorned and furnished
with some sparks of Divinity. The Commons, perceiving no spark of
divinity in his majesty's very human if excessive need of money, were so
impudent as to treat him as a man, and to vote him certain subsidies
which would not even pay the monstrous debts he had piled up.

If this annoyed him, it nowise served to curtail his extravagance or the
munificence in which he delighted, largely no doubt because in its
indulgence he gratified his desire to feel a god. So he went his ways,
junketing and banqueting in this land of milk and honey, with revels and
maskings, tournaments and mummeries. He discovered that the exercise of
hunting was not merely pleasant in itself, but an absolute necessity to
the preservation of his health, whilst cock-fighting was so important a
relaxation to his mind, so that its vigour might subsequently be
renewed, that he paid the master of the cocks as much as any two
Secretaries of State. And for the rest, as Sir John Harrington wrote
from court, 'Now that the gunpowder fight is got out of our heads, we
are going on hereabouts as if the Devil was contriving that every man
should blow himself up by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time and
temperance.'

Being at heart a woman, his majesty loved to look upon fine men, and he
saw to it that those immediately about him were fine, not only in
person, but also in apparel and equipment, and he showered upon them
honours and riches at the expense of his new kingdom. There was Philip
Herbert, whom he had made Earl of Montgomery, the handsome, oafish,
rowdy, and unworthy brother of the splendid Pembroke; there was Sir John
Ramsay, whom he had created Viscount Haddington, between whom and
himself lay perhaps the truth of the dark Gowrie business; there was the
magnificent Sir James Hay, who eventually became Earl of Carlisle, a
courtier trained in France, where he had served in the Scots Guards; and
there was a host of lesser handsome satellites, mostly Scots, who sunned
themselves in the royal favour, had their will of the weak prodigal
king, and preyed upon him much as light wanton women will prey upon a
man who delights in feminine companionship. His want of dignity in his
relations with his minions was as ludicrous as his excess of it in his
relations with the Commons.

Surrounded by a cloud of these lively, gorgeous fritillaries, you behold
him on a fair September morning in his pavilion in the tilt-yard at
Whitehall. There was to be riding at the ring and there were to be other
joustings of a mild order, in the nature of pageants rather than of
tourneys, so as to display fine horsemanship and athletic beauty without
danger to life or limb, for his majesty did not relish shows that were
too warlike.

Dazzling as Phoebus himself rode forth the magnificent James Hay in a
doublet of cloth of gold, a short cloak of white beaver trailing from
his shoulders, a white-plumed white beaver hat above his golden curls.
He was attended, as became so magnificent a paladin, by close upon a
score of esquires, who again were followed by as many pages in his
cerulean livery, with his arms embroidered on each breast. To be his
shield-bearer Sir James had chosen the handsomest of his esquires, a
youth of twenty, who for beauty of face and straight shapeliness of limb
must draw the eye in any assembly. He drew now the eyes of all in the
ladies' gallery as he rode forward alone in advance of the others,
mounted on a mettlesome white horse, to do his appointed office and
present his lord's escutcheon to the King.

The King rolled his big liquid eyes, and under the veil of his thin
sandy beard, the heavy lips of his loose mouth smiled approval. His
majesty loved good horses and admired good horsemanship, an art he was
never to master for himself, although more than half his days were spent
in the saddle. He was lost now in admiring wonder of the superb mastery
of the advancing rider.

'Like a centaur. Ay, and a bonnie,' he muttered thickly in his singsong
Scots voice.

A final curvet at the very steps of the royal gallery, and the horse was
pulled up, so sharply that it almost sat down on its haunches like a
cat. Yet all would have been well with the horseman if he had not
already disengaged one foot from the stirrup intending to complete his
display by a leap to the ground which should bring horse and man to a
simultaneous standstill. The result was that he lost his balance at the
very moment of gathering himself for his leap, and, cumbered as he was
by the shield, he came heavily to the ground.

Philip Herbert at the King's elbow advertised his inherent boorishness
by a loud guffaw.

'Your centaur's come in pieces, Sire.'

But the King never heard him, which was perhaps as well for him. The
royal eyes were upon the young man, who sprawled in a curiously helpless
attitude upon the dusty ground after an instant's aborted effort to
rise.

'God's sake!' the King muttered. 'The lad's hurt.' And he heaved himself
out of his crimson chair and stood forth, a man a little above the
middle height, whose thick ungainly body was carried upon thin rachitic
shanks. He had been suckled by a drunkard, and to this it was attributed
that he had not been able to stand until his seventh year; nor did his
legs thereafter ever grow to normal strength.

Already esquires and pages were on foot and hastening to the fallen
young man's assistance, Sir James Hay, on horseback close at hand,
directing them. There was silence in the assembly of spectators, all of
whom had risen. In the ladies' gallery, the Countess of Essex, a
fair-headed child of fifteen of an extraordinary loveliness, leaning
forward, clutching the wooden rail before her with a slim gloved hand,
drew attention to herself by the anxious note of her outcry and the
insistence with which she demanded to know the extent of the young man's
hurt, which none yet could tell her. Her mother, the Countess of
Suffolk, that ample-bosomed, sneering-mouthed, pock-marked woman,
restrained her, whilst smiling upon the tenderness of her solicitude for
an unknown youth.

Then the King became the centre of interest. Leaning heavily upon
Herbert's shoulder, he shambled down the steps. He bent over the young
man, who lay supine and helpless, his right leg at an odd angle. This
leg, they informed his majesty, was broken. A page had already gone to
summon bearers and a hand-litter.

'Poor lad! Poor lad!' mumbled the King on an almost maudlin note. Small
ills observed could singularly move this man to tenderness, who could
yet perpetrate great and bloody cruelties which he was not called upon
to witness.

The youth shifted his head upon the pillow it had found on the knee of
another esquire, and his fine eyes looked up in awe at compassionate
majesty. Though livid and drawn by pain, the beauty of his face remained
singularly arresting. Not more than twenty years of age, he was still
beardless, and only a little auburn moustache shaded the shapely mouth,
at once firm and sensuous. He pushed back the tumbled red-gold hair from
his moist brow and made as if to speak, then checked, not knowing what
might be required of him by etiquette in such a case.

But the King had little thought for etiquette. Goggle-eyed he considered
this long slim lad, and he was so overcome at the thought of so much
physical perfection being perhaps permanently marred that a tear rolled
down his prematurely furrowed yet florid cheek.

'Who is he? How's he called?' he gruffly questioned.

Sir James, who had dismounted, pushed forward, hat in hand, to answer
him.

'His name is Carr, may it please your majesty; Robert Carr of
Ferniehurst.'

'Carr o' Ferniehurst!' The King seemed taken aback. 'The son of Tom
Carr! God's sake!'

He bent lower to scan more closely the handsome man grown out of one who
some years ago had served him as a page in Edinburgh, but who had been
dismissed for his persistent bad Latin at grace, which to the King had
smacked of irreverence.

Young Carr's white mask of pain was irradiated by a smile to behold
himself remembered.

'God save your majesty,' he said in an accent even more broadly Scots
than the King's own.

'It's thyself needs saving now, lad,' the King mumbled. He stood upright
again and became brisk in the issuing of orders, and more indistinct in
speech than usual in this briskness.

Mr. Carr was to be conveyed no farther than Mr. Rider's house in King
Street, near at hand. Let word be sent ahead at once that a room be
prepared for him. At the royal nod one of his gentlemen sped upon the
errand, whilst another departed in quest of his majesty's own physician.
The repairs to the lad's leg were to be carried out by the most skilful
hands available, so as to ensure that so lovely a body should suffer no
permanent impairment.

Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, holding premier place among the
favourites, looked down his handsome nose in disdain. Why did his old
dad and gossip, as he familiarly called his sovereign, make all this
bother about a raw Scots esquire of no account?

Dull fellow that Herbert was, he lacked the wit to perceive that another
of Guy Fawkes's beggars was come to court.




CHAPTER II

THE RISING SUN


Very soon it became apparent that the fall in which Mr. Robert Carr had
broken his leg had flung him headlong into the lap of fortune.

The King had outstayed the show in the tilt-yard. So much he owed to the
gentlemen who were providing this entertainment. At its conclusion,
however, he had postponed his return to the palace, to turn aside and
visit Mr. Rider's house in King Street, so that he might personally
ascertain the exact extent of Mr. Carr's injuries. He went attended by a
group of gentlemen, among whom was Herbert, very sulky now at what he
accounted a fresh and excessive manifestation of royal caprice.

At Mr. Rider's they found his majesty's physician, who relieved
anxieties which could hardly have been greater had the patient been an
old and valued friend.

Mr. Carr, his leg set, and now out of pain and moderately comfortable,
lay in a pleasant room whose latticed windows stood open to the
September sunshine and Mr. Rider's pleasant garden behind the house. As
the door opened, he turned his head with its tumbled mane of red-gold
hair, and from his pillow looked to see who came.

It startled him to behold under the lintel the figure of the King,
loutish and ungainly despite rich saffron-coloured velvet and gleam of
jewels. The corpulence to which his majesty's body already tended was
aggravated in appearance by thickly bombasted breeches and a doublet
stuffed and quilted so as to render it dagger-proof and thus quiet his
congenital timorousness and abiding dread of cold steel. This affliction
of physical fear under which he was to labour all his days was perhaps
to be traced back to that night in Holyrood, two months before his
birth, when Rizzio was brutally stabbed to death at his mother's feet.

He stood now upon that threshold, rolling his big wistful eyes in a face
whose lines bore the imprint of an age considerably beyond his forty
years. In repose his countenance ever wore that vacant quality of
melancholy that is to be seen in the brute creation. And it reflected,
no doubt accurately, a soul which was not to be beguiled from its
fundamental sadness and loneliness either by the free indulgence of the
man's egregious vanity or the liberal pursuit of sensuous satisfactions.

Closely followed by the physician, who had met him in the outer room, he
shambled forward to the trundle-bed, leaving his gentlemen on the
threshold. He came, he announced, no more than to inquire of Mr. Carr,
himself, how he did.

Mr. Carr, flushing deeply, between awe and gratification of an honour so
far in excess of his poor deserts, answered in his broad Northern accent
that he did very well, which immediately opened the door to the King's
ever-ready and usually trivial facetiousness.

'Ud's death!' He spoke thickly and indistinctly, his tongue being too
thick for his mouth. In theory he condemned all blasphemy, and, indeed,
had written a treatise upon the evils of it; in practice he seldom
sought vehemence of expression without having recourse to its emphatic
aid. 'If you account yourself very well with a broken leg what'll ye
deem yourself when it's whole again?'

The courtiers in the background offered the murmur of laughter that was
expected. But Mr. Carr did not even smile.

'Your majesty's gracious concern had been cheaply bought at the price of
both legs broken.'

If his accent was uncouth to English ears, his matter at least left
little to be desired in courtliness. The King pulled at his thin tuft of
sandy beard and smiled, nodding his head in approval.

'Say you so? Faith, it's a graceful enough answer. Ye'll have been in
France, I doubt, with Sir James.'

Mr. Carr confessed it. He had spent two years at court there.

'And ye'll have learnt among those leeching loons to cast French
capriolles of speech. Nay, never look downcast. I bear no rancour for
civilities even when they're but clavering.'

The handsome young face flushed again, and the bright eyes slid away
abashed under the benevolent gaze of royalty.

Not until the King had left him, which followed presently, did the
possible significance of that visit begin to break upon the dazzled wits
of Mr. Carr. Not until the visit was repeated on the following morning,
and again on the morning after that, did Mr. Carr permit himself to
believe that which until then appeared almost too daring a suspicion.
When three mornings later he was waited upon by a Gentleman of the
Household accompanied by a page bearing a basket of such rare exotic
fruits as peaches and musk melons, sent by the King from the royal
table, certainty was piled on certainty. Moreover, the bearer of these
gifts, a very splendid Scots gentleman who named himself to Mr. Carr as
Sir Alan Ochiltree, was very civil, very solicitous on the score of Mr.
Carr's hurt and health, and very ready to profess himself at Mr. Carr's
orders and eager to serve him.

The sudden change of fortune which all this seemed to presage for the
penniless young Scot bewildered him. It had happened so abruptly, had
been so utterly the fruit of chance, and was so far beyond any
calculation he would have dared embark upon, that, despite the abundance
of the confirmation and whilst already believing, he yet hesitated to
believe. It lent truth to the courtly speech he had used to the King,
for it was true enough that to penetrate so far into the royal esteem he
would willingly have suffered both his legs to have been broken.

The King's visits continued daily, and daily became more protracted.
Soon there was scarcely an hour of the day but some great gentleman or
other, eager to follow his majesty's example, came to wait upon Mr. Carr
to inquire into his state of health. By the end of the week, the outer
room of the house in King Street might have been mistaken from the
quality of its tenants for one of the antechambers of the Palace of
Whitehall.

Sir James Hay, who whilst Mr. Carr was in his service had paid but
indifferent attention to him, was now a daily visitor, and of such
assiduity that the erstwhile patron seemed almost to have become the
suitor. Even my Lord of Montgomery did not disdain to court the favour
of the young Scot, and then one day, as if to set a climax upon all, the
Lord Chamberlain, the great Earl of Suffolk, came in person to wait
upon Mr. Carr and to overwhelm him with civilities.

He had heard of Mr. Carr, he announced, and of Mr. Carr's unfortunate
accident from his daughter, Lady Essex, who had been a distressed
witness of the event and had spoken of it daily since. Mr. Carr,
although he had never heard of the lady, was deeply flattered to have
drawn upon himself the eyes and thoughts of such exalted nobility. Her
ladyship, my lord continued, had, in common with his own countess, been
moved to deep concern on Mr. Carr's behalf, and it was in the hope of
being able to allay their anxieties that his lordship now sought news of
the invalid in person.

Mr. Carr thanked him becomingly. After all, the young Scot was well
bred, he had profited by his courtly experience in France, and gathering
now confidence and self-assurance rapidly from the consequence with
which he found himself treated, he put forth an easy charm of manner of
the kind that rarely fails to win friends for a man.

My Lord of Suffolk was relieved. At least this youth, of whom men spoke
already as the new favourite, was no rowdy overbearing oaf like so many
of the royal pets, like, for instance, Montgomery, with whom his
lordship almost collided as he issued from Mr. Carr's chamber.

Montgomery came in boisterously. 'What brings the old sea-fox to your
bedside?' For all that his lordship was not yet out of the house, young
Herbert made no attempt to subdue his vibrant voice. That was the rude
way of him: reckless ever of what offence he gave.

The demureness of Mr. Carr's reply seemed almost a reproof. 'No more
than the desire to be civil.'

'Which is when most he is to be mistrusted, like all the Howards: a
greedy, self-seeking pack made up of wolves and foxes; and he the worst
of them. Beware of Howards! Avoid their embraces as ye would the
Devil's. There's as much profit to a man in the one as in the other.'

Mr. Carr made no answer beyond a pensive smile. A book was closed upon
his forefinger to mark the place where he had been reading before the
coming of the Lord Chamberlain had interrupted him. He smiled to think
how fully he was already accounted of the court that his choice of a
party was being guided for him, if, indeed, his suffrages were not being
sought.

Anon came the King in a blue velvet doublet which he had buttoned awry,
thereby increasing the ungainliness of his appearance. It was stained,
too, with gravy like all his suits, for clumsy and untidy in all things,
he was in nothing more so than in his eating, unless it was in his
drinking. To behold him at table was to understand why the impudent
Buckingham at a much later date entitled him 'his sowship.'

The King drove out Montgomery and took the chair at the head of the bed,
as was now his daily custom. He mumbled inquiries as to how his dear lad
fared and what the physician had to report upon his progress, then asked
him what he read. Mr. Carr held up the book, and smiled. The King smiled
too; he put back his head a little with a certain jauntiness and his
eyes gleamed pride. For the volume was a copy of the 'Basilicon Doron,'
that monument of pedantry which his majesty, like a new Machiavel, had
produced some years ago for the instruction of the Prince his son. Mr.
Rider, an experienced courtier, had, in Mr. Carr's own interest,
procured him the copy.

The King grunted approvingly. 'So, so! Ye take the trouble to become
acquainted with the best parts of me.'

He desired to have Mr. Carr's opinion of the book. Mr. Carr considered
that it would be a presumption for one so rudely tutored as himself to
utter an opinion of a work so scholarly and profound.

'Ye're none so rudely tutored after all, since ye perceive the
scholarliness and profundity.' Squirming with satisfaction he pressed
Mr. Carr to tell him what part he had liked best.

Mr. Carr, who had found the work of an intolerable, soporific tedium,
and could remember of it only that which he had last read, spoke of
necessity to this. In all this monument of erudition, said he, written
it was clear by one who was at once a philosopher and a theologian, he
would venture to select for his preference the part that dealt with
marriage.

The King's satisfaction seemed diminished. He knew how far in this
matter his own performance had fallen short of his precepts. In public
he could be almost uxorious. But in private there was little in common
nowadays between himself and Danish Anne, for all that she had borne him
seven children. At Denmark House in the Strand she kept not only her own
establishment apart from him, but was assembling a court of her own; and
it began to look as if she would make of that court the foundations of a
party in the State that might yet come into conflict with the King's
desires and policies. Yet, since this troubled him less than the
Queen's constant company might have done, he was well content.

His majesty changed the subject. He talked of horses and horsemanship,
of dogs and hunting and falconry, matters these of a gentleman's
education in which Mr. Carr showed intelligent knowledge. Then the talk
shifted to Scotland and to the days when young Robert Carr, by favour of
Esmé, Duke of Lennox, who had been his father's close friend, had
entered the royal household as a page. Laughing now, the King alluded to
his annoyance at the lad's incurable blundering over the Latin grace
when it was his duty to say it before meat, which had ultimately led to
his dismissal.

'No doubt ye'll have mended that lack of learning since?'

Mr. Carr in confusion confessed that he had neglected to do so. His
majesty was shocked into sudden incredulous gravity.

'A gentleman without Latin! Ud's death! It's worse than a woman without
chastity. For whereas to the latter Nature herself may at times oppose
obstacles, as it becomes us to remember lest we judge too harshly of
their frailty, to the former there is no natural obstacle at all.'

Taking that for his text, he descanted at great length with a wealth of
recondite verbiage and classical allusion in one of those vain displays
of erudition in which this royal pedant delighted. The end of it all was
a declaration that he could not have Mr. Carr about his person as he
intended unless the shortcomings of the young man's education were
repaired. He loved to have about him, he vowed, gentlemen of taste and
learning, which did not explain the favour he showed to Philip Herbert
and some others whose taste and learning did not go beyond the matter of
dogs and horses.

Mr. Carr abased himself in regrets for the neglect he had practised. It
should be repaired without delay.

'I mean it so to be,' the King assured him. Himself he would be the
lad's preceptor. 'I care not,' he vowed, 'if I fling away as much time
as shall teach you. It might be less profitably wasted, Robin.' He
stroked the young man's cheek with a finger, which, if thick, soft, and
jewelled, was none too scrupulously clean.

Thereafter, daily, during the mending of his limb, Mr. Carr struggled
bravely with a Latin grammar, whose intricacies were expounded to him by
the royal pedagogue. It was a form of torture to which he submitted with
great fortitude, for the sake of all that he now supposed to hang upon
it. If he was conscious of his own dullness, at least he was relieved
from anxiety by the patience of this King, who was born to play the
schoolmaster, a patience founded upon the satisfaction which his vanity
derived from the free display of his own learning.

Mr. Carr was still at declensions and conjugations when towards the end
of October the doctors at last permitted him to set foot to the ground
again, his leg now mended, and so soundly that its shapely symmetry was
nowise impaired.

King James was there to witness those first steps in convalescence as
gleefully as a fond father observing the first steps of his own
offspring, and he sharply commanded Philip Herbert to lend the lad an
arm for his support. My Lord of Montgomery complied, however deeply it
may have galled him to play the valet to this young upstart. If he was
rancorous, he did not suffer it to be perceived, and this not even when,
from being courted by those who sought the royal favour, he found it
prudent to do some courting in his turn and join the ever-growing stream
of those who wooed Mr. Robert Carr.

The throng of gentlemen of birth and quality to be met in the outer room
of Mr. Rider's house in King Street, during the last two or three weeks
of Mr. Carr's confinement there, was but an earnest of the crowds that
were to assemble in Mr. Carr's own antechamber at Whitehall when
presently he was translated thither by the infatuated monarch. Had the
young Scot been acquainted with the Arabian Nights he must have
conceived that he lived in one of them, befriended by some benevolent
djin whose fiat had transmogrified his world. Sumptuous quarters were
allotted to him, indeed the best that Whitehall, now fallen into a
ramshackle state, could provide. His lodging overlooked the privy
gardens. It was a lodging that for some years had been tenanted by Sir
James Elphinstone, a gentleman of great lineage and greater pride who
had enjoyed the esteem of the late Queen. Sir James, when ordered to
vacate the premises, went vehemently protesting to the Lord Chamberlain,
who conveyed the protest in more temperate terms to his majesty. His
majesty would listen to no pleas, enter into no discussions.

'I maun ha' it for Carr,' was all he said, and this with such grim
finality that my Lord of Suffolk went out backwards at once, to inform
Sir James that he must pack and quit.

By the King's orders these new quarters were extravagantly refurnished
to receive their new tenant. Rich hangings and rare carpets were
procured to adorn them, and when installed there Mr. Carr found a
regiment of grooms and pages to minister to him, who hitherto had been
his own body-servant and whose highest consequence had been reached as
another man's esquire. There were tailors to provide a sumptuous
wardrobe to replace the few threadbare garments that he owned,
pronounced by the King as fit only for a peasebogle; and there were
tiremen to array him in these glories under the supervision of the King
himself, who did not disdain to display himself as much an arbiter of
elegancies as he was proud to boast himself a theologian and a poet.
Jewellers from Goldsmith's Row spread gaudy, glittering toys before
young Robin, of which the paternal monarch commanded him to make choice.
Barbers and hair-dressers combed and curled and scented his red-gold
locks and trimmed to a dagger-point the little auburn beard which he had
allowed to grow since his accident.

If the lad was allotted no preceptors, this was because the King himself
desired to continue in that office. He could trust no tutor in England
to give the boy's Latin that genuine Roman pronunciation practised in
Scotland, upon which his majesty prided himself not a little. The wits
accounted it a pity that his majesty was not attracted by the same
purity of diction where English was concerned, both in his own case and
that of his pupil.

In those wintry days, if Mr. Carr was not closeted with the King at his
studies, he was at table with him, or riding with him, or lending him
his arm when he went to give audience; for such a hold had the young
Scot's beauty of person and charm of manner taken upon King James that
he could no longer bear him out of his sight.

By Christmas the name of the new favourite, who had outstripped all
rivals and perched himself on a pinnacle of eminence such as none had
ever yet scaled, was on the lips of every man and woman in London. At
Denmark House, where the Queen held her court under the virtual
leadership of the elegant accomplished Pembroke, much frequented by the
austere young Prince Henry, and where it was the fashion to contemn the
minions by whom King James surrounded himself, lampoons were being
freely written with Mr. Robert Carr for their butt. Whilst naturally
enough there were many to sneer at the sudden exaltation of this
penniless Scots nobody, and many envious ones at court who hopefully
predicted that the upstart's fall would follow soon and prove sharper
even than his rise, yet all who came in contact with him succumbed to
the charm of his engaging personality. Even amongst those who came
jaundiced by jealousy, there were some whom he converted at the first
meeting by his frank boyishness and the modesty with which he bore
himself in circumstances which must soon have begotten arrogance in a
nature less finely tempered. His breeding saved him there. For let men
sneer at him as they would for an upstart, the fact remained that, if
poor, he was gently born and of courtly rearing, to which his graceful
easy carriage bore constant witness, despite the uncouthness of his
Northern speech. His good looks, youthful eagerness, and the bright
joyousness that flowed from him, making him a creature of warmth and
sunshine, brought men easily to understand and even to approve the
royal infatuation.

His success remained still in his own eyes an unreal dream-business from
which he might at any moment awaken to his former precarious estate. It
continued so even when one day he found Sir James Hay, his former
patron, actually inviting his suffrages.

Sir James, whose ambitions were preëminently ambassadorial, desired to
be appointed envoy to the court of France. He had taken advantage of the
fact that the King used him intimately to solicit the office, and he now
begged of Carr that he would endorse the request for him. Mr. Carr
almost gasped. If anything could make him realise to the full the change
in his fortunes which a few months had wrought, this should do it.

He bowed very gravely, almost pale as he answered: 'Sir James, it is not
for you to beg anything of me; but to command me. You may count upon me
in this. I will speak to his majesty to-day, since you require it;
though if you are granted the office, you will owe it rather to your own
deserts and influence than to any poor word of mine.'

Sir James had stared a moment; indeed, he had looked hard to see if he
was not perhaps being mocked, so unusual was such a tone as this in a
favourite. But perceiving the lad's earnest sincerity, he had bowed in
his turn.

'Sir,' he said, smiling, 'you make me proud to have been your friend.'

As in this, so in all. Mr. Carr's purse, which the doting monarch kept
well supplied, was ever in those days at the disposal of the needy whom
he could not succour otherwise, and that he was free from the venality
which others in his place have seldom failed to manifest, he gave early
proof. Wooed by a place-seeker for a post in the customs, who came to
him recommended by no less a person than the Attorney-General, he lent
the usual ready ear to the man's representations of his worth and
fitness for the office. He promised readily to lay the petition before
his majesty. Thereupon the man, instructed perhaps by Mr. Attorney
himself in the place-seeker's sure way to a favourable patronage, made
it plain that he did not ask to be served for worth alone and that upon
his receiving the appointment there would be three hundred pounds for
Mr. Carr.

The young man stiffened and changed colour. A moment he paused, his
clear eyes hard as they measured this presumptuous trafficker.

'Wait upon me again to-morrow, and you shall ken his majesty's pleasure
in the matter.' Coldly he inclined his head, and passed on to the next
suitor.

But there was no coldness in his manner when anon he came to tell the
King of this insult. The King's cackling laugh cropped his indignation
in full flow.

'God's sake! If my faithful Commons would but insult me in such like
manner I'd greet for joy.'

Mr. Carr looked askance at him, which increased his mirth.

'Did ye discern,' quoth the King, 'if the carle had qualities to fit him
for the office?'

'He boasted of them; and there was a letter from Mr. Attorney to assert
it. But ...'

'Why, then he'll serve as well as another, and it's not every suitor for
the place will be as ready to part with so much silver. A God's name,
take his three hundred, give him the office, and bid him go to the
devil. Customs, is it? Tell him his own customs commend him finely.'

His majesty laughed over the matter at the moment. But anon, when once
more alone, he became serious on a belated thought that suddenly
assailed him. Robert Carr was honest! It was a startling quality to
discover in a courtier. The fellow was a prodigy. To have singled him
out for trust and favour was an instance of the acuteness of his royal
wits in selecting servants. It confirmed him in the belief that he could
read a man's worth at a glance. King James was pleased with himself, and
therefore the more pleased with Carr who had made him so. At last
amongst all these self-seeking flatterers, these leeching carles, who
fawned upon him for their own profit and who were ready to sell him
whenever occasion offered, he had found an honest man; one who had
desired nothing of him and was so little disposed to take advantage of
his favour that he denounced the first suitor who had sought to bribe
him.

This was a man to grapple to him with hoops of steel, to lean upon and
to trust.

Decidedly Robin must make better progress in Latinity.

The highest destinies awaited him.




CHAPTER III

THOMAS OVERBURY


Mr. Thomas Overbury, gentleman, scholar, and poet, sometime
gentleman-commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, where he had taken a
degree in arts, and law student of the Middle Temple, was homing from
foreign wanderings. Enriched in worldly experience, but in no other
gear, he was lured back to England by the hope of finding employment
worthy of his undoubted talents and exceptional accomplishments.

Whilst not himself a Scot--he was the son of a Gloucestershire squire
and bencher of the Middle Temple, who in the old days had enjoyed the
patronage of Sir Robert Cecil--he had several high-placed Scottish
friends, made during a visit to Edinburgh three years before the old
Queen's death. On his return from that visit, Mr. Overbury had been
charged with a delicate mission from the King of Scots to Elizabeth's
Secretary of State, which he had fulfilled zealously, discreetly, and
intelligently. Sir Robert Cecil thereafter had employed him for a while,
hoping much from a man of his attainments. But Overbury's restlessness
and desire to widen his knowledge of the world had sent him upon those
foreign wanderings.

Mr. Overbury's ambitions were not immodest, and he hoped by the aid of
some of his possible patrons to gratify them in securing some
appointment about the court, in which he might stay his own necessities
with anything that the Scottish locusts might have spared.

He put up at the Angel in Cheapside, a house of indifferent comfort but
modest charges, attuned to the modest means at his command, and thence
reconnoitred the position he intended to attack. In this his patience
was not greatly taxed. The landlord of the Angel was garrulous as all
his kind, and perceiving in certain details of gear and manner that this
guest was newly landed from foreign parts, accounted him a suitable
victim. Again after the fashion of his kind, his talk was chiefly of the
doings of the great world, the events at court and the minutiæ of
courtly life. True, he began his discourse with a lament on the subject
of the plague, the ravages it had wrought in the city in the year of his
gracious majesty's accession, and the wise measures by which the city
fathers had at last stamped it out. Thence at a stride he reached
Whitehall and its gay doings, and drew a parallel, which he intended
should be flattering to King James, between the present court and that
of the old Queen, which in the later years of her reign had been what
the Scots would have called dour. But there was no dourness he vowed
about King James. That was a man after the heart of any honest vintner,
a great trencherman and a prodigious drinker of strong wine.

Mr. Overbury rose from his breakfast of salt herrings and Scottish ale,
a tall wiry gentleman of a deceptive slenderness that lent him an
appearance almost of delicacy. His pale saturnine face was long and
narrow, with a good nose and chin, a lofty brow about which the brown
hair clustered crisply, and full eyes, wide-set and observant, whose
keenness he had a trick of dissembling by a sleepy droop of the lids.
The comely whole was saved from asceticism by the red fullness of his
lips. By the discerning he was to be read at a glance as a man strong in
all things: strong in his passions and desires, and as strong in his
power to curb them. In his carriage there was an indefinable aloofness,
a stateliness that offered barriers to presumption; in his movements and
gestures, in the way he turned his head and used his hands, there was a
grace that was inherent. He was in his twenty-eighth year, but he looked
older, having lived hard, and worked hard in lucubrations from his
Oxford days. He had immolated his youth on the altar of ambition, and,
ignoring the lures which life offers to the young, he had laboured at
equipping mind and spirit with the scholarly knowledge which he regarded
as the necessary weapons of one who looks to prevail by his wits alone.

He rose, then, from his salt herrings and Scottish ale, and looked down
his aquiline nose at the vintner.

'You tell me, sirrah, that King James is a drunkard and a glutton.'

The landlord's fat body quivered like a jelly, being shaken by a sudden
gust of terrified indignation.

'Sir, sir! Here's wanton twisting of my words!'

'Your words? I heard no words from you touching the King save in
commendation of his vast appetite and unquenchable thirst. These may be
goodly virtues in a vintner's eyes, but in plain terms they are no
better than I've named them. Nay, never sweat, man. I am no spy of
Cecil's as you may be supposing now; neither am I in the pay of Spain as
you may have supposed before.'

The man quailed before that lofty, almost contemptuous manner.

'Your worship,' he faltered, 'the very words I used were scarcely my
own. They were the talk of almost every man in the city since the
banquet at the Guildhall, offered by the Lord Mayor to his gracious
majesty.'

Mr. Overbury sneered. 'Faith! It may be worthy of you city hucksters to
ask a gentleman to dinner, and then weigh the food he eats, measure the
wine he drinks.' Abruptly he dropped the subject. 'When was this
banquet?'

'A week ago, worshipful sir. You might have seen the procession from
these windows: as brave a show as the city's seen for many a day; the
velvets and satins and the jewels and the housings of the horses. There
was the King's grace on a white palfrey, and there was Sir James Hay in
cloth of gold, and my Lord of Montgomery, and my Lord Chamberlain,
and--bravest of them all--there was Sir Robert Carr riding at the King's
right hand, with a smile for everybody, and ...'

'Whom did you name?' So sharp was the tone of Mr. Overbury's
interjection, so taut on a sudden was his tall, slim figure, that the
vintner checked at the very beginning of the catalogue he was proposing
to rehearse.

'Sir Robert Carr I said, worshipful sir: the new favourite on whom they
say his majesty dotes as on a son. And, faith, no man who sees the
gentleman could grudge him his good fortune. A frank-faced, winsome,
golden-headed lad, with as honest a blue eye and as merry a laugh as
ever you saw.'

The vintner rambled on in eulogies. But Mr. Overbury was not listening.
His breath had quickened a little; there was even a stir of colour in
his pale cheeks. Presently he interrupted again, to ejaculate the
single word: 'Impossible!'

The vintner checked to stare at him.

'Impossible does your worship say? But I assure you, sir, that I tell
you no more than ...'

Mr. Overbury waved him contemptuously into silence. 'I answered my own
thoughts, master landlord, not any words of yours. This Robert Carr,
whence is he, do you know?'

'Why, from Scotland, to be sure.'

'From Scotland, ay: whence else with such a name? But from where in
Scotland? Do you happen to have heard?'

'Why, yes. I've heard tell.' He scratched his bald pate to stimulate
recollection. 'They do name him Sir Robert Carr of Fernieside, or
Furniebank, or Fernie-something.'

'Would it be Ferniehurst?' There was a faint excitement now in the calm
gentleman's tone.

The vintner smacked fist into palm. 'Ferniehurst it is. That's it. You
have it, sir. Ferniehurst it is.'

Mr. Overbury startled him by such a burst of laughter as you would never
have expected from a man of his countenance.

'Robin Carr o' Ferniehurst! And the King's favourite? Come, landlord,
tell me more of this.' He sat down again. 'Tell me all you know.'

Readily enough the vintner rehearsed for him the town talk on the
subject. The sum of it was that whoever had a suit to prefer at court
should prefer it nowadays, not to my Lord Chamberlain as heretofore, nor
to my Lord Treasurer or my Lord Montgomery, powerful though they both
were, but to Sir Robert Carr, whose influence with the King was the
weightiest of all.

To Mr. Overbury this news was fantastic. Robert Carr, the stripling with
whom he had been acquainted, in Edinburgh, had in those days sat at his
feet and offered a brotherly love to the older man, who, although then
but two and twenty, had seemed of a full maturity to the boy of fifteen.
And mature Overbury had been even then; a scholar, a lawyer, and with
the airs already of an accomplished man of the world, or at least so
they appeared to the raw Scots lad. That he should have taken notice of
this boy, and treated him in every sense as an equal had transmuted into
worship the awe and wonder with which Robin had at first regarded him.
This Robin had been a sweet lovable lad, as Mr. Overbury remembered him.
What changes, he wondered, had been wrought by the six years that were
sped? How would Robin regard now the man whom once he had esteemed so
highly? In those days he had been constrained to look up at Mr.
Overbury; now, from the eminence to which a turn of Fortune's wheel had
hoisted him, he would of course look down, and his perspective would of
necessity be different.

Speculation Mr. Overbury realised was idle. His course lay in
ascertaining.

He spread out the meagre contents of his saddlebags, and selected,
without difficulty where the choice was so restricted, a suit of dark
purple velvet which had already seen much service. He brushed it
carefully, and arrayed himself. Jewels he had none wherewith to set it
off; not so much as a gold chain. But the collar of fine Mechlin, which
in France was already superseding the starched ruff, lent him a certain
modishness, and his fine figure, graceful carriage, and air of assurance
must do the rest.

He sallied forth into the noisy street and the gusty airs of that March
morning, and made his way to Paul's. Here he found a place in one of the
new hackney-coaches that drove to Westminster, carrying four for a
shilling. His companions were a merchant bound for the court and two
gentlemen from the country on a sight-seeing visit to the capital, all
of whom he chilled by his aloofness.

Set down at Charing Cross, he proceeded on foot along Whitehall, past
the bourne posts and into the broader space set off by gilt railings and
dominated by the imposing tessellated gateway which Holbein had built
for Henry VIII.

After that he was for some time tossed like a tennis-ball, as it seemed
to him, from yeomen of the guard to lackeys, and from lackeys to ushers,
and had he not in one of the galleries by great good fortune come upon
the new Earl of Salisbury, it is odds that he would have had all his
pains for nothing.

A gentleman usher armed with a wand had ordered him none too courteously
to make way, and as he stepped obediently aside and half-turned to face
the little limping gentleman who with two attendants following him was
bustling to audience, he found himself confronting the first Secretary
of State.

The little gentleman's keen eyes returned his glance. The little
gentleman checked in his stride, and named him in accents of surprise.

Mr. Overbury was justified of his faith in Sir Robert Cecil's memory.

In answer to my lord's swift probing questions, Mr. Overbury rendered a
brief account of himself. He had arrived but yesterday, and was
intending to wait upon his lordship to-morrow.

'And why not to-day?'

Mr. Overbury offered a truthful explanation. The handsome, sensitive
face of the deformed, splay-footed little earl was lighted by a smile of
bitter-sweet understanding. Mr. Overbury, answering this, explained
further that he was urged rather by his memory of his old friendship for
Robert Carr than by any news of the position the young Scot now held in
the King's favour. Yet his lordship's smile persisted.

'The latter would quicken the former, not a doubt,' said he. Then,
abruptly, he added: 'Come you now with me. I am on my way to the King;
and where the King is, there shall you find Carr.'

It was as he promised. His majesty was moving down the privy gallery
when they entered it, and Robin Carr--a full-grown resplendent Robin
Carr in whom Mr. Overbury barely perceived traces of the Scots lad who
had been his friend--stepped beside him. As he moved or stood, the King
leaned heavily upon him, his left arm flung about the favourite's
shoulders. This was not merely, and as it may have seemed to many, in
token of his maudlin affection, but actually as a measure of support
rendered necessary by the weakness of his royal legs. Yet maudlin only
was his habit of permitting his gross fingers to toy with the lad's
red-gold ringlets, or pinch his cheeks, what time he stood to hear one
suitor or another.

They were pausing thus before the vulture-headed old Earl of
Northampton, when Sir Robert's wandering and rather vacant gaze alighted
on Mr. Overbury, straight and tall beside the little Secretary.

Instantly that gaze quickened into life, and in a flash the handsome
young face was aflush and irradiated by delighted surprise. If the old
affection had lain dormant for years, so strong was its call in the
moment of undergoing this abrupt awakening, that Sir Robert
unceremoniously disengaged the royal arm from about his neck, and flung
forward with both hands outheld to greet his friend.

The King broke off his speech in amazement to look after him, and a
frown rumpled his brow. Instantly Haddington, one of those who followed
in attendance, stepped into the place at his majesty's side which Sir
Robert had so abruptly vacated. The King took his arm in silence, what
time his big eyes continued to stare after Sir Robert and to con the man
who had drawn him as a magnet draws a sliver of steel.

Northampton's crafty face was slewed round on his scraggy neck, and he
too followed the course of the young Scot with dark old eyes that seemed
to smoulder in his parchment face.

Meanwhile Sir Robert, ever in boyish oblivion of all but this old
friend, this paragon about whom his earliest illusions had been woven,
was wringing his hands and asking him a dozen questions in a breath.

Mr. Overbury laughed at so much and such generous impetuosity. Then,
observing the King's aggrievedly indignant stare, he realised the breach
of manners into which Sir Robert's eagerness had betrayed him. He
observed also, for his eyes missed nothing, the evil leer of Northampton
and the tight-lipped, satisfied smile of my Lord Haddington. It imported
at once to repair this situation. Therefore he laughed as he replied:

'My answers shall be full in season, Robin. Presently his majesty claims
your attendance.'

Sir Robert looked over his shoulder, met the royal glance, and grew
conscious of his fault. Lord Salisbury saved the situation by advancing
with him and drawing Mr. Overbury after him to be presented.

The King's curiosity, being awakened, required no less. His reception of
this stranger, however, was cold, and upon hearing him named, he punned
upon the name as execrably and cruelly as once he had punned upon
Raleigh's.

'Overbury? Ah! And a thought overburying in his port, I think.'

That said he turned his shoulder upon the bowing gentleman. But
Salisbury would not leave it there.

'May it please your majesty, Mr. Overbury is no newcomer to your service
or to mine.'

The King's brows went up in chill inquiry.

'Once he was your majesty's trusted messenger to me, and diligently he
discharged his trust.' And his lordship added a mention of the occasion.

Now it was an amiable trait in the character of King James that he never
forgot--unless there were strong reasons why he should--the debt to any
who had served him in those hungry anxious days of waiting for the
English crown, or to any who had contributed in however slight a measure
to his ultimate translation from the wilderness into this Land of
Plenty. Fortunate was it for Mr. Overbury that my lord could name him
for one of those, else it is certain that his first appearance at court
would have been his last.

The King turned and scanned again the pale saturnine face more closely
and less coldly.

'I don't recall him, which is odd, for my remembrance is the kingliest
part of me. But since it's as you say, little beagle, we shall look to
see him here again.' He took his arm from Haddington's. 'Come, Robin,'
he commanded, and with Robin once more to lean upon, he passed on.

But Sir Robert had whispered a word to Lord Salisbury, and this word was
a message which his lordship now delivered.

As a consequence, some hours later, when the audience was over and when
his majesty, having dined, had retired to sleep as was his wont in the
afternoon, the friends met again in Sir Robert's lodging, whither Mr.
Overbury had gone to await him.

No mean suspicion--such as might have beset another in his
place--touched young Carr's frank generous nature that he was being
sought from motives of worldly advancement. Warmly he embraced his
friend and demanded to know why his Tom had not sought him earlier. Mr.
Overbury, more self-contained, as his nature was, quietly explained that
he had only just arrived in England. His saturnine eye conned the young
man closely and commented at once upon his fine vigorous growth and
dazzling appearance. The full-skirted doublet of dull red velvet with
its waspish waist was in the height of fashion; his silk stockings, each
gartered with a bunch of ribbons, were drawn over the knees of his
cannioned breeches; a starched ruff made his golden head, in the word of
Mr. Overbury, look like that of John the Baptist on a charger. There
were jewels in his ears and a rich gold chain upon his breast.

He called for cake and wine to regale his visitor, who had fasted whilst
awaiting him, and Mr. Overbury was again enabled to admire the rich
blue-and-silver liveries of Sir Robert's lackeys, the costly service of
gold plate which was set before him, the wrought gold cup and the golden
jug containing the choicest of sweet Frontignac. Here, indeed, was a
change from the Northern fare of small beer served in pewter and
oatcakes presented on a wooden platter.

They sat and talked far into the afternoon, until the March daylight was
fading, and the spacious, richly hung chamber was aglow in the light of
the great sea-coal fire that blazed under the wide chimney-cowl. At
first there had been reminiscences of Scotland in the days of their
first meeting. Then Mr. Overbury talked of his travels and of foreign
ways with a dry-witted liveliness that made sharp pictures leap to the
eye. At last they came to consider the fortunes of Robin Carr; and Mr.
Overbury learnt the stages by which his friend had climbed to the
vertiginous heights on which he found him perched.

But oddly enough this narrative of achievement, which should have glowed
in the telling, grew more and more sombre as it approached its end.
There was, Mr. Overbury discerned, a shadow over the sun of this
romantic emprise. Bluntly he said as much, and desired to know its
nature.

Sir Robert fetched a sigh. He passed a hand over his brow in a gesture
of weariness. He stared into the fire as he answered haltingly.

'I am enviable only in appearance and to the vulgar. To be as I am is to
be a toy, a minion; and that's unworthy, unmanly. I am well enough to
walk with the King, to hunt with him, to carouse with him. He'll lean
upon my shoulder, pull my hair as if I were a lap-dog, or pinch my cheek
as if I were a woman. He loads me with gifts. I am finely lodged, as you
see. I may command what moneys I require. Were I a king's son I could
not lie more soft. For all this the unthinking maybe envy me; the
charitable pity me, perhaps; but certain it is that the worthy despise
me. I never meet Pembroke's eye, or Salisbury's, but I meet frank and
undisguised contempt. In Suffolk's and Northampton's I meet the same,
but thinly veiled, because they are men whose stomachs are above their
hearts. Mean tool though they account me, they know that I may serve
them, and the knowledge keeps them striving to be civil. The Queen never
looks on me but she sneers openly, and Prince Henry, who is
accounted--ay and rightly--the noblest lad in England, follows the
example of his mother. So that no friend of the Prince's--and his
friends are many and of worth--can be anything but enemy of mine.

'At times I am tempted to strip myself of all and go my ways. I am weary
of it, too, on other grounds. The King is exacting. My presence is too
constantly required, my attention must all be at his command. I can have
no friends, no associates of my own choosing. He's sulky as a jealous
woman now, because I was overfree with my joy at seeing you. God help
me, Tom, the burden of it grows at times intolerable.'

Moved by passion he had risen, and now he leaned his arm upon the
chimney-cowl, his brow upon his arm.

Mr. Overbury sat silently aghast at these revelations.

'What I've said to you, Tom, I've never yet said to any but myself;
indeed, scarcely to myself. It's as frank a confession as ever Papist
made to priest. And it was a necessary confession; necessary to my
sanity, letting out some of the humours that fester in me. I think God
must have sent you, so opportunely you are come.'

'Opportune to what?' wondered Mr. Overbury.

'To advise me, Tom.'

Mr. Overbury sighed. 'From what you've said I opine your heart advises
you already.'

Sir Robert groaned. 'Ay!' He swung round to face his companion, who sat
grimly thoughtful, elbow on knee, chin on clenched hand. The interview
was taking a turn very different from all that Mr. Overbury could have
supposed, and, for his own sake, hoped. 'If the King needed me for aught
that matters, all would be so different.'

'Aught that matters?' quoth Mr. Overbury. To a sensitive ear his tone
might have implied a doubt of the real consequence of anything in this
curious business of living.

Sir Robert explained himself. 'If I could be of use in affairs; do
honest work; fulfil some position of service, real service; discharge
some office.'

'What hinders? You are a recognised fountain of patronage, they tell me.
You can obtain such things as these for others. Why not for yourself?'

'Because I lack the ability, so the King supposes. I am not scholarly. I
haven't much Latin.' He spoke bitterly.

'Latin?' Mr. Overbury laughed. 'What Latin has Tom Howard, whom I find
Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, in addition to being Lord
Chamberlain and Earl of Suffolk? You may become a man of affairs
without Latin.'

'It is objected that I have no knowledge of affairs.'

'Yet of all knowledge that is the most easily acquired. Why, Robin, I
vow you're needlessly dejected. If you've the will, a way were easily
found.'

'Not as easily as it is for you to assert it. You have advantages. You
were at Oxford and ye're learned in law.'

'What I know, I learnt from books; and those are free to all.'

'Books, ay! I ken. I've been at books. The King himself has been my
Latin tutor. But progress is slow. And meanwhile, I am what I am.
Admitted to the King's Council, I have to recognise that every man who
fawns upon me for my patronage and favour with his majesty is my better.
I sit silent, like a silly bairn or feckless woman, when affairs are
being discussed. But yesterday it was this Dutch business to which I had
to listen shamed by my own ignorance.'

Mr. Overbury smiled tolerantly. 'Whilst others talked who knew perhaps
as little. The first art ye've to learn, Robin, which it needs no books
to teach you, is the art of dissembling this same ignorance that
afflicts you. Ignorance is more common than you think.'

'Pretence would not have served me then.'

'Why not? What was the business?'

Sir Robert shrugged almost impatiently. The nature of the business
seemed an irrelevancy to his grievance. Briefly, nevertheless, he stated
it.

'The King's in sore distress for money. His debts are something over a
million pounds, and the new taxes devised by Salisbury since he became
Lord Treasurer are but a drop in the ocean.'

'Come now! This alone shows some knowledge of affairs.'

'I but rehearse what yesterday I heard. The King, it seems, has a claim
on the Netherlands for some eight hundred thousand pounds, for services
rendered by the old Queen in the war with Spain. He holds as security
the towns of Flushing, Brell, and ... another.'

'Rammekens,' said Mr. Overbury.

'Rammekens; that's it. I see ye ken.'

Mr. Overbury smiled to himself. Sir Robert continued: 'Since the Dutch
cannot pay and the King must have the money, it is his notion that he
should sell the towns to Philip of Spain.'

Mr. Overbury laughed outright. 'And how did that crack-brained notion
fare at the hands of his majesty's advisers?'

Sir Robert was startled by the promptitude with which Mr. Overbury had
qualified the business. But he answered his question.

'They talked from dinner until supper, some for and others against it;
but they reached no conclusion.'

Mr. Overbury's face wore a curious look as seen in the firelight. 'What
reasons did those urge who opposed it?'

'That the sale would be regarded as a betrayal of the Protestant cause,
and would give rise to bitter discontent in England.' Then, dismissing
the matter, he reverted to his own personal grievance. 'I could but sit
there mute, a useless fribble without opinion to offer.'

'Why should you not have had an opinion?'

'Because I have had no means of forming one.'

'Neither had they. But it skilled not with them. Ha! You rail at others
for faults that are your own. It's human enough; but it leads a man
nowhere. The matter, you say, is to be discussed again. Now mark me
closely. I am newly out of Holland, and I lack no warrant for what I am
to tell you. Make your own use of it. Convert it into your own. By which
I mean, do not recite it merely as a lesson learnt.'

Thereafter at length, in detail and deliberately, Mr. Overbury expounded
the state of things Spanish in the Netherlands, whilst the young man
listened avidly. 'With that knowledge,' he concluded, 'advise boldly. As
a last resource, you may cite me as your authority. But if you do,
remember to make it plain that you drew the information from me because
you accounted that thus you might serve the King's interests. All
information of affairs must be derived from some source or other. He is
fittest for the control of affairs who knows how to discern the sources
and how to reach them.'

He rose and held out his hand. Night was closing in by now, and still
there was no light in the room save the glow of the fire.

Sir Robert clasped that hand eagerly and firmly. His voice was anxious.

'You'll come again?'

'Whenever you require me. I am your servant, Robin. I am lodged at the
Angel in Cheapside where at need you'll find me.'

Sir Robin passed an arm through Mr. Overbury's, and went with him from
the room along the gallery leading to the stair-head. Here at last he
surrendered him to an usher who was to reconduct him.

Thus Mr. Overbury might appear to take his leave without having
discharged any part of the business which had brought him. He had made
no mention of employment for himself. That was because his methods were
more subtle. The man who can discover himself to be required is in no
need to offer himself. He can better serve his ends by waiting to be
sued.




CHAPTER IV

THE BOND


His Majesty sat in council with his Lord Treasurer, his Lord
Chamberlain, his Lord Privy Seal, the slender, supple Sir Thomas Lake,
who had been so valued a servant to the old Queen, the ponderous,
swarthy Sir Ralph Winwood, and some others who matter less.

On a stool beside the great gilded chair in which the King lolled and
fidgeted at the head of the Council board, sat Sir Robert Carr, not yet
a Privy Councillor and therefore feeling that his presence here was just
such a tolerated intrusion as might have been that of Archie Armstrong,
the King's fool.

The greybeards were talking. The Dutch towns were again the subject, and
divergent views were being freely expressed. The two Howards, being
Catholics in sympathy even if they did not in secret attend Mass as was
commonly supposed, were stout advocates of the proposed sale to Spain,
which might have the effect of tightening the friendly relations between
James I and Philip III. Salisbury, who carried no interests but those of
England in the stout heart contained in his frail body, as vigorously
opposed the sale, on the ground of the well-founded discontent it would
engender throughout the land.

The King listened to both sides, interjecting now to answer one and now
the other, and enjoying himself vastly in the part of Solomon, a rôle so
dear to his vanity that it was with difficulty he was restrained from
sitting as a judge in the Court of King's Bench.

He answered Cecil now.

'You urge a matter of sentiment against a matter of necessity; and I
cannot call to mind that the history of the world, of which my knowledge
is considerable, affords a single instance in which sentiment is able to
triumph over necessity in the end. Necessity must be served. If, so that
the sentiments of the nation may be honoured, Parliament can be induced
to remove the necessity by granting adequate subsidies, Parliament may
be convened for the purpose. But I am none so very hopeful there.
Because if Parliament had shown a proper sense of its duty and
obligations to the anointed sovereign, and a seemly obedience to his
wishes, we should not now be considering these other measures for
furnishing supplies.'

The Howards applauded him. Northampton, the greatest sycophant of his
time, pronounced the discourse an unanswerable marvel of lucidity and
logic. Suffolk bluntly declared that it was idle to respect the
sentiments of a nation which did not respect the necessities of its
king, and that, if the towns were sold to King Philip and the nation
were presented with an accomplished fact, it must be made to see that
the blame for anything distasteful in the bargain must fall on
Parliament which had left the King no other course.

Northampton, returning to the assault, and carrying matters further, his
vulturine head and smouldering glance challenging Salisbury at every
word, asserted that too much was being assumed on the subject of so
definite a measure of alliance with Spain. Such an alliance made for
peace; the peace of the world; and thus for general prosperity. This
required only to be understood by the nation to be applauded, and the
old rancour fostered by men such as Raleigh and other sea-robbers would
soon die down.

This carried the debate into by-ways in which it was in danger of being
lost, when Sir Robert Carr, taking his courage in both hands, made bold
at last to intervene.

'Have I your majesty's leave to say a word on this?'

It startled them. Scornfully it amused them. So much their countenances
showed. The King, who had been toying with the lad's shoulder-knot,
paused in the act, and turned to regard him, rolling his eyes fearfully
in his alarm.

'Ye'd intervene in the Council!' he muttered, scandalised. Then he
recovered, and laughed his thick laugh. 'Ecod! Is it not writ: "Out of
the mouths of sucklings ..."? To it, lad. Let's hear this word of yours.'

Sir Robert cleared his throat. 'Since this matter was last discussed two
days ago, I've had an opportunity to look into Dutch affairs. Let that,
Sire, excuse my presumption now.'

'Ye've been looking into Dutch affairs!' The King laughed, and the
Council laughed with him, all but Cecil, who suddenly remembered
Overbury, and already blamed himself for having neglected to ascertain
what that man, whom he knew for a shrewd observer, might have discovered
on his foreign travels. Young Carr, he instantly perceived, either by
accident or design, had forestalled him there. Therefore he alone was
not surprised by what ensued.

Sir Robert's opening was blunt.

'Your discussion here is so much waste of time and labour. For it rests
upon the assumption of a state of things which does not, in fact,
exist.' He paid no heed to the snortings of contemptuous
impatience, but ploughed steadily ahead. 'You assume upon inadequate
information--information which if it was once correct is so no
longer--that King Philip will buy these towns, which it certainly would
be within your majesty's rights to sell.'

Men shrugged and turned their shoulders to him. The upstart presumed too
far upon his favour. Only the King troubled to question him.

'And for why would he not buy?'

'Because he cares, I take it, as little as another to waste money. As
long as Spain's intention was to continue the war, so long was it
possible to do what you now deliberate. But the chance is gone! The
Archduke Albert is still in the Netherlands, it is true. But he is
already taking measures for their evacuation. Spain recognises herself,
at last, at the end of her resources. Within three months, maybe less,
she will be negotiating peace with the United Provinces. Therefore Spain
no longer wants these towns. It follows, then, that to offer them for
sale to her would merely be to provoke discontent at home to no purpose
and to rouse in the Dutch a resentment which must render the ultimate
recovery of the debt more difficult than it now is.'

It was a bombshell to scatter dismay among those supercilious gentlemen.

Cecil and those who thought with him were not displeased by news which
rendered impossible an act whose effect on public opinion must be
disastrous. The others mingled with annoyance at the news annoyance at
the source from whence it came. Each one of them would have challenged
it had not the King forestalled them.

'Ud's death!' he ejaculated. 'How come you by all this knowledge of
Spain's intentions?'

If to magnify himself Sir Robert was disingenuous, he but practised the
disingenuousness which Mr. Overbury had counselled. He represented that,
having been sought yesterday by a gentleman of his acquaintance who had
but lately landed from the Netherlands, he had seized the opportunity to
gather information which should perhaps be of assistance to their
lordships in deciding this matter which he knew to be vexing them.

'This gentleman of your acquaintance,' quoth the King, 'would be that
long-legged carle my Lord Treasurer presented to us.'

'The same, Sire. Mr. Overbury.'

'Overbury. Ay! I mind me. But what do we ken about him that we should
heed his words?'

'My Lord Treasurer can speak to the worth of his opinion.'

My Lord Treasurer did so. He was impressive. 'In the past I have found
him shrewd and cautious. If he says that Spain is on the eve of making
peace, he will have good grounds for it in what he has observed. That
being so, Sir Robert's reasoning from the facts is not to be assailed.'

'Ay, ay! But if this man were mistaken in his speerings? _Humanum est
errare_, you know, my lord; and human inferences are to be taken
cannily.'

Young Carr, eager to follow up his advantage and, whilst the occasion
served, to impress himself upon them as something more than the fribble
they had hitherto regarded him, was swift to supply the answer.

'A very little time will show whether Overbury's report agrees with the
fact. Meanwhile, prudence suggests no action whatsoever. If in two or
three months' time it be found that, instead of withdrawing from the
Netherlands, the Archduke is renewing or increasing measures against
them, then will be the time to consider this sale, and then the time to
make the sale to best advantage. If the war drags on there can be
nothing lost by waiting.'

'It's a Daniel come to judgment!' crowed the King, and his delight to
discover such qualities of mind hitherto unsuspected in this handsome
lad of his affection was freely displayed then and thereafter.

Later, when alone with Sir Robert, the King, having further considered,
expressed a desire to test for himself the extent of Mr. Overbury's
knowledge of Netherland affairs. As a consequence a messenger from Sir
Robert waited next morning upon Mr. Overbury to bid him to Whitehall.
Sir Robert's own barge, which had come down on the last of the ebb,
awaited him amid the press of boats at Queenhithe.

The King, having need of him, received him kindly, and played the
well-rehearsed part of a genial good-humoured fellow. In reply to the
royal questions Mr. Overbury expressed himself crisply, lucidly, and
wittily upon the state of affairs which he had lately found in the
Netherlands.

His majesty quoted Lucian, and Mr. Overbury capped the quotation with
such scholarly fullness that the King congratulated him upon his
Latinity whilst censuring his Oxford pronunciation.

Mr. Overbury accepted both criticisms with a bow, making no attempt to
defend his accent.

'Ye don't take my corrections amiss,' said his majesty.

Mr. Overbury bowed again with the utmost gravity. 'He that hates to be
reproved by the master sits in his own light.'

The King's eyes quickened at the phrase. Its modesty, subtle flattery,
and neatness all pleased him. 'Ye're a wit, I perceive.'

A pale smile illumined that narrow melancholy face. 'My wit, sir, is but
as the marigold. It opens to the sun.'

Thereafter, the King's dinner-time being at hand, Mr. Overbury was given
leave to depart, having done something to remove the bad impression his
first appearance at court had created upon the royal mind.

He stayed to dine with Sir Robert, and, a lover of good food and good
wine, he had occasion to admire the sumptuousness in which he found his
friend in these respects. When the cloth was raised, and they were come
to the comfits, Mr. Overbury opened the matter that was in his mind.

'Yours, Robin, was not the only messenger that sought me this morning at
the Angel. There was a note from my Lord Treasurer, bidding me to wait
upon him at the earliest.'

Sir Robert nodded, but said nothing. Mr. Overbury resumed.

'His lordship and I have already some acquaintance. I served him once in
the old Queen's time, and his message means that I may serve him again
if I wish, or so I conjecture. Why, else, should he send for me?'

'Why else, indeed?' Sir Robert smiled. 'I am glad, so glad, a door is to
be opened for you.'

Mr. Overbury displayed surprise. 'You're glad?' A little smile that was
tinged with regret flickered upon his lips. 'In that case there is no
more to say.'

'No more to say of what? And what for would I not be glad? Do I not wish
you well, Tom?'

'Of course you wish me well; as I wish you well.' And he repeated:
'There's no more to say. I shall wait upon my Lord Treasurer to-morrow.'

'Have you been hesitating?'

'Not hesitating. Waiting. Waiting to know your will with me.'

'My will with you?' Sir Robert understood less and less. Inwardly Mr.
Overbury damned the sluggishness of his wits.

'Cecil sends for me because what happened yesterday shows that I may be
of use to him. But before going, I bethought me that perhaps the same
notion might have occurred to you. And I should be loath to serve
another, Robin, if you had need of me.'

'Need of you!' Sir Robert rose in the excitement that accompanied
understanding. 'Why, so I have: great and urgent need, as you have seen.
And ye could serve me as could no other man; for in learning and
knowledge of affairs you supply all that I lack.'

'Why, then ...' Mr. Overbury was beginning; but the other swept warmly
on.

'But what have I to offer you compared with the employment you could
find with Cecil?'

'No matter for that.'

'Ay, but there is matter to it. It were to abuse your friendship; to
trade upon your love.'

'The trading would be mutual.' Mr. Overbury adopted complete frankness.
'You have the graces of person and of manner that have already
conquered the King's affection. I have the knowledge and resource which
would enable you to win a real position at court, to rise from being a
mere minion--the word is yours, Robin--to become a powerful influence in
the State. Thus you and I united compose a whole that should be
irresistible. Each of us in this is the complement of the other. Apart
each of us counts for little. United we could rule, if not the world, at
least this England.

'Yesterday, in this matter of the Netherlands, you increased your credit
with the King and no doubt with every member of the Council. Already
they discover in you an unsuspected force. Let that be maintained
awhile--and I could teach you to maintain it--and you will be the power
behind the throne; you will be consulted and your views respected on
every matter of weight that's to be decided. Cecil grows old and sickly,
riddled with ills; and he, poor cripple, is the only man amongst them.
When he relinquishes the helm of this ship of State, it should be yours
to grasp it.'

Standing, Sir Robert had heard him out. As he ceased, the younger man
sank back into his chair, his face flushed, his eyes aglow. He was
trembling in his excitement at the dream-prospect spread before him. Had
Overbury the power to convert it into reality? It was possible. If his
own favour with the King were backed by such knowledge as Overbury could
supply, it was probable. Already he beheld the fruits of it: saw his
position at court justified by something more than a comely face and a
shapely figure and a King's capricious fancy for such externals. He saw
the sneers converted into looks of deference; saw his self-respect
restored by the respect he inspired in others.

'Well, Robin?' quoth the watchful Mr. Overbury at length, to rouse him
from his daydream. 'What is your will in the matter? It lies with you.'

Sir Robert raised his glowing eyes to look at his companion. 'You offer
much, Tom,' he said.

'No more than I'll perform.'

'I doubt not that.' He held out a hand across the board, a hand that
trembled. 'Do as you propose. Stand by me, Tom, to make common fortune
with me, as I with you.'

Mr. Overbury took the hand in his own grip, which was as steady and cool
as the resolute brain controlling it. 'It is a bond,' he said.

'A bond in which I'll never fail of my part,' said Sir Robert
fervently.




CHAPTER V

LADY ESSEX


As in the person, so in all the actions and transactions of Mr. Overbury
there was the neat tidiness which proceeds from methodical habits. With
him thought and plan were ever the precursors of speech and act. Thought
revealed to him that the success of his alliance with Sir Robert Carr
must depend upon the world's assumption that Sir Robert moved upon his
own unsupported inspiration. Therefore Mr. Overbury took good care
completely to efface himself for the present.

He waited on the morrow upon the Lord Treasurer. But the offer of an
under-secretaryship which Cecil made him he declined with a polite show
of gratitude and reluctance. The reason he advanced was, truthfully,
that he had made other plans: less truthfully, that these plans might
entail his going abroad again shortly, in obedience also to a restless,
roving disposition.

They parted with mutual expressions of good will, sincere on both sides,
and of regret which can have been sincere only on the part of my Lord
Treasurer.

Mr. Overbury removed himself in the course of the next few days from the
Angel in Cheapside to a more commodious lodging of his own near Paul's
Wharf. Here for the next few months he remained comfortably established,
with a single servant to wait upon him, a sleek, discreet, intelligent
Welsh lad named Lawrence Davies, who quickly became devoted to him.
Here he was visited at least twice a week by Sir Robert, who came by
water and with hired sculls, his identity unsuspected. He would commonly
dine or sup with Overbury and remain for some hours, to be primed with
such information as he sought, and tutored in the uses of it.

From this lodging Mr. Overbury would sally forth, sometimes to the inns
of court to renew old acquaintances and to seek fresh ones among the men
of law; sometimes to Paul's, in the Middle Aisle of which between the
hours of three and six all manner of folk were to be met and all manner
of news was to be canvassed. Often he was to be seen dining in
ordinaries, and occasionally he would visit the Royal Exchange and the
taverns thereabouts, the Three Morrice Dancers or the White Horse in
Friday Street, where the fishmongers drove their trade. Wherever he
could set his finger upon the pulse of the town, which again was to be
accounted the pulse of England, he was assiduous. As much with this
intent as to indulge a poet's natural taste for the drama, he was often
at the Globe Theatre on Bankside, where Mr. Shakespeare was still at
work; and because he was in a sense kin with such men, he frequented the
suppers at the Mermaid, introduced there by Mr. Ben Jonson who we know
esteemed him highly. Easy and affable in manner, he ingratiated himself
into all companies, engaged all and sundry in conversation, assuming in
some assemblies the character of a lawyer, in others that of a poet and
man of letters.

Often he would, himself, be the bearer of tidings in his various haunts,
announcing new measures which as yet were in the egg--matters which Sir
Robert informed him were under contemplation--so as to put them to the
touchstone of public opinion and study the various comments they
provoked. In this manner he was able to advise with confidence that the
enactments touching the fines upon recusants, which of late had been
relaxed, should be fully enforced so as to replenish the ever-empty
purse of royal prodigality. Similarly he dictated leniency in dealing
with certain lingering activities of the levellers, perceiving that
public opinion was strongly on their side and that indignation was all
against the usurpations which had provoked those outbreaks.

In short, had he been a spy in Cecil's pay he could not have acted other
than he did throughout that year (when he was generally supposed to be
abroad), save that no spy of any Secretary of State was ever half so
diligent, alert, accomplished, and insinuating as was he.

Invisible and unsuspected, he dictated policy to the Privy Council
through the lips of Sir Robert Carr, who garnered all the glory and
increased in credit at a rate that to some appeared alarming.

Towards the consolidation of Carr's position nothing contributed more
than the fulfilment of his timely prognostication touching Spain and the
Netherlands. Early in the new year came an invitation to England to
coöperate in the peace settlement, as France was already disposed to do.

The King slobbered and dribbled in sheer rapture to discover in his
beloved Robin the gifts of statecraft, not only in this, but in almost
every subject. The lad's penetration and insight into the heart of the
nation seemed almost uncanny. With so little experience of the world and
so few opportunities of observing national life at first hand, his
shrewd comments, trenchant criticisms, lucid inferences, and daring
forecasts argued a power of deductive reasoning amounting to genius.

The Howards--and old Northampton in particular--began to perceive in him
a person to be respected, one who, if provoked to enmity, might
presently be able to crush them without effort. Therefore, with gifts
and flatteries they studied all ways of making him their friend.

Forewarned against them by Overbury, and obeying implicitly the dictates
of this shrewd famulus, Sir Robert held aloof, received their advances
with a distant frigid condescension oddly at variance with his
ordinarily friendly nature, and thereby drove them to almost frantic
lengths of sycophancy.

Because the King favoured him, and because he now revealed himself in
all senses worthy of that favour, these men courted him assiduously. And
the more assiduously did they court him, the more did the King favour
him, taking ever-increasing pride in a creature whose merit flattered
the discernment of his creator. Thus his popularity and influence spread
in ever-widening circles as that year advanced.

As a result of all this, he found himself ultimately with so much
business on his hands on the King's behalf that it became necessary--as
he represented to his majesty--to seek a secretary who should assist him
more closely and to whom he could give his confidence more freely than
to any of the three or four amanuenses whom already he employed.

When his need became known there was no lack of candidates for the
office. Scarcely a gentleman about the court but had some nephew or
cousin or even son who would be proud to serve under Sir Robert Carr.
Sir Robert looked into the qualifications of those submitted, but could
not be satisfied. And then one day he announced to the King a piece of
great good fortune. Mr. Thomas Overbury was returned to town and had
been to wait upon him. Mr. Overbury was in need of employment, and his
reappearance at such a moment seemed to Sir Robert singularly opportune.
For he fulfilled the requirements of Sir Robert more than any man alive,
and subject to his majesty's approval Sir Robert proposed to take him
into his service.

Thus had it been concerted between them. Sir Robert's reputation for
ability in affairs was so completely established that none could
attribute the continued display of it to any wits but his own. Mr.
Overbury, therefore, might now without damage to Sir Robert step into
the open from behind the arras which had hitherto concealed him.

The King demurred. He thrust out a sulky nether lip. 'I mind me of him,
ay. The horse-faced carle that was here nigh upon a year since.' He
remembered with a pang the flash of intimacy which he had seen pass
between the two. 'Is he not maybe an over-important gentleman for your
needs, Robin? A dour fellow I deemed him. Overburying I named him, and
rightly I think.'

But Sir Robert insisted, employing craft, and reluctantly the King
yielded his consent.

However unobtrusive Mr. Overbury might be in his character of secretary,
the moment was one in which it was impossible for him to be unobtrusive
in his own. His famous 'Characters,' those inimitable sketches of
contemporary life, penned to beguile the loneliness of idle hours in his
lodging at Paul's Wharf, had lately been published by Lisle, the
bookseller at the Tiger's Head in Paul's Yard. The little work had
attracted the attention of the wits. They were loudly acclaiming it, and
purchasing it widely to use it as a whetstone for their own small talk.
A copy of it reached the hands of the King, who read it with reluctant
admiration mingled with envy. His jealousy of any man who might rival
him in scholarship was irrepressible, which may have contributed to his
scandalous treatment of Sir Walter Raleigh, and to his affection for
Philip Herbert, who made butts of all scholars below the royal rank, and
indulged at their expense his ignorant buffooneries. His majesty,
however, dissembled his envy, swallowed the spite which is the
inevitable fruit of it, and condescendingly from his own Olympian
heights of learning bestowed a benediction upon an author so generally
acclaimed. As a result Mr. Overbury began to be seen about the court
much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

If on the score of his own merits he was the recipient of courtesies
from those who could appreciate them, as the favourite's favourite he
shared the open contempt in which Sir Robert was still held by the
few--those of the Queen's party and of Prince Henry's--and the secret
animosity of which Sir Robert was the object at the hands of those who
had learned to fear his influence and to perceive in it an obstacle to
their own advancement.

The perspicient Mr. Overbury missed none of this. But he was not
perturbed. He met the contempt that was rooted in envy with the deeper
and deadlier contempt that springs from the consciousness of
intellectual superiority, and he knew how to wound whilst preserving an
inscrutable sardonic urbanity of surface towards the victim of his
pitiless wit.

The improved relations between Spain and England resulting from their
coöperation in the peace settlement of the Netherlands led the King in
the course of that year 1610 to turn his thoughts to the promotion of a
Spanish marriage for his son. Despite his stout Protestantism, King
James was anxious to prove himself a king who ruled by love and who by
the loving arts of peace could achieve more than had ever been achieved
by force of arms.

As a preliminary to any definite proposals, his majesty offered a great
banquet at Whitehall to the Spanish Ambassador, the Count of
Villamediana, and the Constable of Castile, Don Pedro of Aragon. It was
the most lavish of the many lavish junketings that had piled up King
James's enormous load of debt.

About himself, his Queen, and their son Prince Henry, his majesty
assembled the nobility and beauty of the court, to welcome the two
illustrious representatives of King Philip and their train of Spanish
grandees.

They dined in public state in the great audience chamber, and after many
toasts, in the course of which his majesty became mildly intoxicated and
very maudlin, the tables were removed and the floor was cleared for
dancing.

First came a coranto, in which the stout, flaxen-haired, freckled Queen,
deep-bosomed, broad-shouldered, and almost masculine of countenance, was
led forth by Don Pedro of Aragon.

After this the King, sleepily benign and slightly lachrymose, lolling in
his great brocaded chair under a canopy of cloth of gold with the
blazonry of united England and Scotland behind his head, desired to
show off his son's paces to the Spaniards. He commanded him to dance a
galliard, and gave him leave to choose a partner, subject to his
majesty's confirmation of the choice.

The handsome boy, who was the hope of England and the ornament of his
not very decorative house, assented willingly enough. He delighted
almost as much in dancing as in the sterner exercises for which he was
already renowned. Although still in his seventeenth year, he was of a
good height and excellently shaped, as graceful in body as in mind, and
in all things the very antithesis of his sire. High-spirited, valiant,
gracious, and even at this young age a patron of all deserving arts, he
was fast becoming the idol of the people, whilst the very flower of the
nobility was to be found surrounding him at Saint James's Palace, where
he held his court. Athletic in his pursuits and austere in manners,
God-fearing and studious by inclination, he contrived to be dignified
and princely beyond his years. Inevitably a gulf was widening daily
between himself and his father, opened by jealousy on the one hand and
disdain on the other. Each, however, masked his feelings. Prince Henry
studiously preserved the appearances of filial piety, and King James
displayed a fatherliness which was as much a pretence as his
uxoriousness.

The young Prince, standing now beside his father's chair, swept the
brilliant assembly with his glance upon no random quest. It travelled
purposefully until it reached the young Countess of Essex, and was there
arrested. Then he leaned towards the King, and announced his choice in a
murmur audible to his majesty alone. The King smiled and nodded his
great head covered by the heavily plumed and diamond-buckled hat. The
Prince, thus authorised, stepped forward to claim the Countess.

Blushing a little, but displaying no more agitation than was proper in a
child as yet unfamiliar with the court, she suffered herself to be led
forth, full conscious of the great honour done her, and unconscious of
the envy it provoked in other feminine breasts. But a few months older
than the Prince, this daughter of the Earl of Suffolk was already
acknowledged to be the loveliest ornament of King James's court, where
as yet she had been all too rarely seen. Delicately featured and very
fair, the fire of life glowed brightly in eyes whose colour shifted with
the light from blue to violet. As in the case of Prince Henry, it was
universally agreed that her outward graces were but a reflection of
inward spiritual worth. We have it on the word of one who knew her well
and had no cause to judge her generously that her goodness of heart, her
gentleness and her sweetness of disposition outshone the ravishing
beauty of her person. And with all this she was sprightly, lively, and
gay, and utterly adorable. She stood a little above the middle height,
and at this stage was almost sylph-like in her virginal slimness. For
although she had been four years now a wedded wife, she still remained a
maid. Her husband, the Earl of Essex, a year or so younger than herself,
had been parted from her at the altar and sent upon his travels to
complete his education and to grow to manhood before claiming the
custody of his wife. The marriage had been one of policy, in which the
wishes of neither child had been consulted.

One of the early acts of King James's reign had been the reinstatement
of the son of that Earl of Essex whom Elizabeth had loved and beheaded,
in the titles and confiscated estates of his unfortunate father. The
Howards, too, had found favour in his royal eyes for the sake of that
Duke of Norfolk who had suffered similarly under Elizabeth for his
devotion to King James's mother. And the marriage of Robert Devereux and
Frances Howard, because desired by her family, had been promoted by the
King as being to the advantage of both houses.

Until lately the young Countess had been kept more or less in retirement
at Audley End. Accounted until now too young to take her proper place at
court, she had pursued in the quiet of the country, and saving for
occasional visits to Whitehall, the studies that should enable her to
adorn the station which was hers by birth and marriage.

That she had profited by them she now evinced as she moved through the
sprightly measure of the galliard with the Prince for partner,
displaying a grace and liveliness as well as an assurance in her steps
which captivated the entire court, and made the stately Spanish
gentlemen about his majesty almost as eloquent in their praise of her
beauty and art as they were in the praise which etiquette prescribed of
the person and deportment of the Prince.

Having reconducted her to the care of her mother, and constrained her to
resume her chair, the Prince, instead of returning to his father and the
Spanish guests as would have been more fitting, lingered in talk with
her, bending over her where she sat. The court looked on, and with
covert amusement was blended open surprise at conduct so very unusual in
this austere young man. If embarrassed at being made the object of these
open attentions, Lady Essex was nevertheless flattered by them,
considering from whom they proceeded, particularly when remembering his
reputation for reserve where women were concerned.

But whilst she listened to the Prince and spoke to him in her turn, Lady
Essex scarcely looked at him, and this not from any shyness, but because
her eyes were busy elsewhere. Covertly their glances were directed
towards the royal dais, drawn thither by one who stood near the King,
one whom the King used familiarly, patting his shoulder or pinching his
arm as he addressed him. A tall, straight-limbed young man this, in blue
velvet that glittered with jewels, broad of shoulder, but tapering
thence to a graceful slimness. His handsome head, framed in a cloud of
red-gold hair, proudly carried and radiant with youth and health and
ready laughter.

Once before she had seen him, on a day nearly three years ago, in the
tilt-yard at Whitehall, when he had been flung from his horse, and she
had cried out in fear and pain for him, and had long thereafter been
haunted by the memory of his white face, as he lay helpless and swooning
in the dust. If he had looked radiant and splendid as he rode that day
on his big white horse, infinitely more radiant and splendid did he look
now, standing so self-assured beside the royal chair.

Meanwhile, the Prince, bending his auburn head, continued to utter
amiabilities, and she knew without looking at him that his eyes were
devouring her the while. Thus until the King, grown impatient, put an
end to the matter. Court usage required that either he or his deputy
should tread a measure with the Countess of Villamediana. Since James's
own rachitic legs did not permit him to dance, it was necessary that
his son should represent him. He despatched Sir Robert Carr to summon
the Prince to his duty.

My Lady Essex, covertly watching them, caught the flash of jewels on the
royal hand as it was raised to point in her direction, and then saw Sir
Robert detach himself from the group about the dais and come straight
towards her and the Prince.

If she had flushed when his highness had approached her, she paled now
at the approach of Sir Robert, which she could not even suppose to be in
any way concerned with her. By the time he came to halt before her at
the Prince's side, she was conscious of quickened heartbeats, of a sense
of embarrassment amounting almost to panic. She dissembled it by making
play with her fan of peacock's feathers, and masking with the edges of
it the lower part of her face.

Sir Robert bowed to her formally, as if to crave her indulgence, and she
admired again at close quarters his grace and his air of noble
self-command. Then he addressed himself to the Prince, and his broad
Scots accent startled her. Yet she reflected instantly that it was no
worse than the King's, and scarcely out of place in a court presided
over by a Scottish monarch. It was, indeed, almost a maxim that a king,
even in his shortcomings and infirmities, would be the model of his
courtiers.

'His majesty is asking for your highness.'

The Prince nodded almost imperceptibly, as he might have nodded to a
lackey.

Sir Robert stood his ground a moment, with the feeling that his face had
been slapped in public. But his lips retained their deferential smile.
Retaliation was out of the question. Humiliation might be avoided only
by ignoring that contemptuous dismissal; but to remain, some pretext was
necessary. He found it instantly in the person of Lady Suffolk, and he
turned to address her where she sat beside her daughter, a stout woman
in whose crafty, pock-marked face it was difficult to discover the
source of any of the grace and beauty that earlier had distinguished
her. Ordinarily he might have feared from her an imitation of the
Prince's manner such as sycophancy prescribed. But Lady Suffolk was a
Howard, and the Howards were too actively wooing his friendship in those
days to leave him under any apprehension here. If her ladyship was
uncomfortable in this situation, she dissembled it. After all, the
Prince's discourtesy to Sir Robert had been no more than a lightning
flash which she might easily have failed to perceive. She spoke to him
civilly, even pleasantly.

His highness stared haughtily at Sir Robert's shoulder, which was quite
deliberately turned to him. Then with a low bow to Lady Essex, he swung
round and walked stiffly away to obey his father's summons.

Malice whispered in Sir Robert's ear, showed him how he might gall the
Prince, who had so deliberately slighted him. Acting upon it, he
reminded Lady Suffolk that he had not yet been honoured by presentation
to her lovely daughter, thereby increasing the unsuspected tumult in
that lovely daughter's virginal breast.

The fiddlers in the gallery were tuning up for the last coranto, as Sir
Robert, bowing low before the youthful lady who was to shape his
destiny, murmured conventional amiabilities. No embarrassment had tied
her inexperienced tongue when a prince had similarly addressed her under
the watchful eyes of a whole court. Yet now she was dumb. She could do
no more than smile, and look up at him, to look away again as quickly,
as if dazzled by the radiance of his countenance, the effulgence of his
steady glance, which yet had none of that devouring, wooing quality
which had marked Prince Henry's.

The Prince, as his father's deputy, was leading forth the handsome
Spanish Countess; the Queen had partnered with the stately Earl of
Pembroke; the Princess Elizabeth had given her hand to the Count of
Villamediana; and other noble couples were making haste to take the
floor. Sir Robert surrendered completely to the impulse of his playful
malice. Humbly he craved the honour of Lady Essex's hand for the
coranto. It was so instantly surrendered that he was almost startled.
Indeed, a pretext for refusing him the honour would have surprised him
less.

The musicians struck up, and the dance began. Sir Robert displayed
himself fully as graceful in the more sedate coranto as the Prince had
done in the sprightlier galliard. He carried his head high, and there
was a gleam of mockery in his eyes with which to meet the occasional
frosty glances of his highness. Lady Essex moved with less certainty and
self-possession through this measure than she had shown in the more
intricate paces of the galliard. She was vexed with herself for this;
yet so far as her partner was concerned she need not have troubled. His
mind was so intent upon levelling the score with Prince Henry that he
scarce gave a thought to the ravishing lady who was affording him the
means to do so.

As he was leading her back to her mother's charge, he thanked her
becomingly.

'Your ladyship has honoured me beyond my poor deserts.'

She had herself in hand by now and flashed him a quick answer: 'Your
deserts are small, then, Sir Robert.'

'Compared with the honour, madam, they are naught. All things are
relative.'

She looked up at him, and quickly away again. 'You rally me, I think,'
she said, and he caught a note of odd complaint in her voice. Was this
bewitching child, he asked himself, already a graduate in the arts of
dalliance, and did she affect this tone to challenge him? Or was she
honest? He would meet sincerity, real or simulated, with sincerity which
was both at once.

'Judge for yourself, my lady, upon the truth; which is that, when I
begged the honour, I feared it would be denied me.'

'It would tax you, sir, to show reason for the fear.'

'I accept the challenge. The reason lay in that you had last
condescended to a prince.'

'Now that is almost treason. Condescension is for princes.'

'Saving only where Lady Essex is concerned.'

She grew so daring as frankly to laugh at him. They had reached her
mother now. 'You take advantage of my youth, Sir Robert.'

He bowed as she resumed her seat. 'No advantage, madam, but to serve
you, and that were an advantage I must always covet.'

He commended himself to Lady Suffolk, and took his leave.

As he was retracing his steps to the royal dais, the Prince swept past
him, moving with a stride better suited to Blackheath when playing
there the game of golf which the Scots had newly brought with them to
England. Straight for Lady Essex he steered his course, as if determined
to complete the work of giving her name to the gossips which his choice
of her for the galliard had already started.

And there was more to follow. The courtiers were crowding now to the
windows, to witness the baitings in the yard which the King had ordered
for the entertainment of his Spanish guests. The Prince offered his hand
to Lady Essex, and conducted her to a little balcony in which there was
room for not more than three and into which no third intruded, since her
mother did not see fit to do so. The Countess of Suffolk, greedy of
royal favour and the perquisites accompanying it, saw no disadvantage in
leaving her daughter alone thus with the Prince. After all, my Lady
Essex had a husband of her own (if one who was absent and not yet of
age) and on that score was entitled to be her own guardian.

Lady Essex, still a little bemused, as Sir Robert had left her, suffered
his highness almost listlessly to have his way.

She leaned beside him on the parapet of the little balcony and looked
down into the wide quadrangle, where a crowd of townsfolk surged behind
the barriers about the ring. In this a great shaggy bear, chained to a
post, now shambled to and fro as far as the length of his chain
permitted, now stood still with rocking body and plaintive grunts
expressive of his apprehension.

His highness was speaking, but no longer with any of the sprightliness
with which he had erstwhile addressed her. There was a touch of
sulkiness in his manner, of resentment even, as if his having danced a
galliard with her gave him certain rights.

'That fellow, Carr,' said he. 'You danced with him. Why?'

The audacity of it took her breath away. Only on the recollection that
he was Prince of Wales and her future king did she restrain her
indignant mirth.

'For the same reason that I danced with your highness. Because he did me
the honour to invite me.'

'Honour! Faugh! The word is hollow. Your ladyship is not so easily
honoured.'

'Your highness mistakes me. I am but a simple child.'

'Which is why I would not have your simplicity deluded.'

'Would he delude it, sir, do you suppose?' There was mischief in her
eyes, which but increased their witchery upon him.

'Ay, by making you suppose him something who is nothing, an upstart
nobody from Teviotdale.'

'Your highness does not like him. Is being Scottish the worst with which
you can reproach him?'

He bit his lip and glared at her, to be distracted by the archness of
her smile.

'The fellow is not fit to approach you; an upstart, scarcely gentle.'

'Nay, now there you wrong him. For I found him all gentleness.'

'I mean in birth, not in manners.'

'Surely manners are of more account than birth. And his manners were
faultless. He spoke no ill of any.'

His highness was out of patience at the implied rebuke. 'You defend
him?'

'I have not yet perceived the need. And why does your highness speak of
him?'

'Why?' He checked and laughed. 'Why, indeed, when there is so much that
is better worth our while?'

Came a babble of voices and a baying of dogs to draw their attention to
the scene below.

The bearward and his men were entering the enclosure.

The grooms retained by their leashes four pairs of straining, eager
mastiffs, furiously barking now at sight of their uncouth prey. The
great bear reared himself upon his haunches to receive the charge of
which his instincts warned him. Two dogs were loosed and bounded forward
with a last short yelp to leap gallantly at the beast's throat. One he
cuffed aside with a blow of his great paw which rent its flank. The
other he received in a hug which crushed its ribs, then hurled it from
him dead.

The crowd, in which city prentices ever eager for such a show as this
were conspicuous, howled its delight in Bruin's prowess. The King and
his nobles from the windows and balconies above looked down almost as
eagerly.

Lady Essex, seated upon a stool which a gentleman usher had placed for
her, used her fan of peacock's feathers to screen off the view from her
piteous eyes. She was white and nauseated by that first glimpse of
bear-baiting.

'Oh, cruelty!' she murmured.

The Prince faced her, leaning his elbow on the parapet, his shoulder to
the show, as if to proclaim that his interest in it was far less than in
his companion. With the arguments of a boy and a sportsman he set about
combating her aversion. The cruelty was more apparent than real. Dogs
and bear obeyed their respective natures, which were combative. Each
yielded to the lust of battle which the sight of the other aroused, and
therefore relished it.

If his discourse carried no conviction to that gentle lady, at least she
preferred it to the brutality of the spectacle itself, and so was
content to listen to expositions until the show was ended and she could
lower her fan without being sickened by what confronted her.

The bear-baiting was followed by a performance of tumblers and
rope-dancers in which the displays of skill and agility delighted her as
highly as the previous displays had disgusted her.

The Prince, watching her eager face and parted lips, delighted in her
delight and was growing oblivious of his surroundings, when suddenly a
step sounded behind them. His highness swung round irritably, to be
confronted by a splendid figure in blue velvet. It was Sir Robert Carr
again, who now came to make a third upon that balcony.

'Sir,' the Prince informed him curtly, 'we are private here.'

The lady's breath seemed suspended at that rudeness. There was distress
in her eyes.

Sir Robert, very calm, a man well schooled by now in courtly deportment
and secure in his sense of consequence, smiled easily into the boy's
angry face.

'Your highness should not suppose that I intrude here without orders.'

The lady's distress increased. Perhaps she feared he might suppose that
she, too, regarded his advent as an intrusion.

The Prince's glance lost nothing of its hardness, Sir Robert's nothing
of its suavity.

'His excellency the Count of Villamediana is taking his leave, and his
majesty desires the attendance of your highness.' He paused to add with
a touch of peremptoriness. 'They wait, your highness.' He stood aside to
give passage to the Prince, as if inviting him to depart. Prince Henry
hesitated, looking at the lady. Sir Robert, as if answering that look,
added further: 'I will be her ladyship's escort if she will suffer it.'

The Prince looked beyond him, into the room. Espying Sir Arthur
Mainwaring, he suddenly beckoned him. 'Her ladyship shall have a
gentleman of my own for escort,' said he, to put the favourite down. And
added rashly: 'I am master here.'

Sir Robert commanded himself with a difficulty none would have suspected
from his maintained urbanity. He bowed formally as Sir Arthur
approached. To his amazement, however, the lady was suddenly on her
feet, a bright red spot in either cheek.

'No master of mine, your highness,' she hardily informed the young
Prince, and hardily met the instant discomfiture of his glance. The
child had suddenly become a woman. 'I own no master other than my
husband, and in his absence I am mistress of myself.' Her glance shifted
to the favourite. 'I thank you, Sir Robert, for the escort you have
offered.'

Prince Henry had the sense to perceive that his boyish arrogance had
carried him too far and that her ladyship was justified of her
self-assertion. The perception, however, did not soothe his ruffled
spirit.

He bowed abruptly. He was determined to have the last word in the matter
and to cast a final insult at Sir Robert. 'I do not felicitate your
ladyship.'

On that he stalked angrily from the balcony into the room, and went to
attend his sire.

Lady Essex quitted the balcony a moment later with Sir Robert in
attendance. The favourite shouldered Sir Arthur aside as if he had been
so much rubbish and all but trod on that gentleman's toes in his concern
to clear a way for her ladyship. Once past him, Lady Essex spoke.

'I am no party, sir, to the ill manners of his highness.'

'You are gracious, madam, to give me in words an assurance with which
your acts had already provided me. But the ill manners are naught. I
shall forget them.'

'You are charitable, Sir Robert.'

'Just understanding. Ill manner springs from ill temper, and perhaps in
his highness's place an interruption might similarly have distempered
me.'

Her mother advanced to meet them. He resigned his charge and took his
leave, unconscious that the eyes that followed him as he went to rejoin
the King were questioning and a little wistful.




CHAPTER VI

VENERY AND TENNIS


King James observed signs which led him to suspect that he was not as
deeply loved as he deserved to be for his great gifts of character and
intellect. This from infancy had ever been his secret grievance.
Loneliness had ever overwhelmed him, and in his desperate efforts to
escape from it he had gone to odd lengths and strange shifts, himself
lavishing affection and gifts with an utter lack of discrimination, in
almost hysterical endeavours to purchase that which he could not
inspire. He might at times delude himself that from this person or from
that he was the recipient of the great blessing he sought so ardently.
But he could not now blind himself to the fact that with the nation as a
whole--noble and simple alike--he was being regarded without reverence.

There were various sound reasons for this which his majesty overlooked,
persuaded as he was that all that he did must be right, since in
absolutism it is an article of faith that a king can do no wrong.

His cousin, the Lady Arabella Stuart, was languishing in the
Tower--where soon, as a result of this unjust confinement and her broken
heart, she was to go mad and die--consigned thither by this
superficially genial and good-humoured king, whose royal bowels were not
to be touched by compassion in the case of any man or woman whom his
pusillanimity could construe into a possible agent of danger to
himself. All her offence lay in that with royal blood in her veins she
had made a runagate marriage with William Seymour, whose blood,
remotely, was also royal. King James, yielding to fantastic fears that
his throne might be menaced by this unfortunate couple or by their
offspring, practised upon them the dreadful pitilessness of the coward.
The world of gentle and simple alike, being ever tender of lovers,
looked on and muttered against the inhumanity of the King.

The project of a Spanish marriage for Prince Henry, upon which his
majesty was said to have set his heart, was being censured openly or
tacitly by the worthier part of the nobility, headed by the Prince of
Wales himself, and by sound Protestants of all classes, who agreed with
the Prince's assertion that two religions could not lie in one bed.

The King's desperate straits for money--the very servants of the
household and officers of the Crown were clamouring now for wages which
must somehow be paid--had constrained him to such measures as the sale
of monopolies, which rendered him unpopular in the City; the levying of
forced loans--so-called benevolences--which had offended the gentry who
were concerned to provide them; whilst Puritans and Catholics were being
ground down under the fines for recusancy now remorselessly enforced.

And now as a last and most desperate expedient came the sale of honours.
King James had invented and instituted the order of baronets, membership
of which was to be purchased for a little over a thousand pounds. This
did little harm. The purchasers of the title were stamped by the very
title itself. But when presently other patents of nobility were offered
at prices on a rising scale, culminating in ten thousand pounds for an
earldom, it was perceived that the hallmark of worth was to be acquired
by the worthless and the stamp of nobility to be set upon the
ignoble--the huckster, the haggler, the truckler--with ten thousand
pounds to spend on spurious honours. This fired the indignation of that
small section of the nobility which was not already out of conceit with
his majesty upon other grounds.

Few, indeed, now were those who remained loyal, and these few were loyal
to the office rather than to the man.

The contemplation of such a state of things reduced his majesty to
tears. He wept easily, especially when swept by gusts of self-pity, and
never so easily as over lack of response to the affection which flowed
so generously from his loving nature.

Tearfully he unburdened himself to Sir Robert Carr. He inveighed, in
terms which characteristically mingled piety with lewdness, against
human ingratitude and the hardness of the heart of man, pointing out how
fatherly had been his conduct towards the nation, how unfilial the
nation's conduct towards himself. Working up from tears to anger, he
finally announced in a passion that all of them 'maun gang to the Deil!'
and gave his attention entirely to the pursuit of venery.

But even here new sorrows awaited him.

He hunted at Richmond. The weather was fine and warm, the country air
invigorating, and he was at the pastime dearest to his heart. Finding
himself attended by a vast concourse of members of his lately
disgruntled court, his spirits rose. Things could not be so bad as in
his depressions he had imagined. He did not perceive that it was not
himself who had attracted so noble an assembly, but Prince Henry, whose
attendance he had commanded.

Booted and spurred, in the suit of Lincoln green which he affected on
these occasions, a little feather in his hat and a hunting-horn slung at
his side in place of the detested sword, his majesty followed the hounds
on a horse of which it might be said that it carried him rather than
that he rode it. Sir Robert Carr, Montgomery, and Haddington kept close
to him as a body-guard; the huntsmen hung on the flanks; the Court
trailed after them.

At the end of a hard chase, on the edge of the forest near the river, a
stag was pulled down by hounds as it was making for the water, and the
jubilant monarch, who felt the achievement to be entirely his own, blew
a mort over the carcase.

Followed, under the shade of the oaks, a generous collation, with
abundance of wine and much gaiety, in which the easy-going King, having
completely recovered his usual spirits, set the example. He was almost
gallant towards the few ladies who had shared the chase, and gave
particular attention to the Countess of Essex, all in green like
himself, who had accompanied her cousin, the Earl of Arundel. The King
made merry upon the absence abroad of her ladyship's husband and on the
subject of the reception awaiting him on his return. His majesty's
pleasantries, which were a little questionable, brought a frown to the
brows of Prince Henry. With difficulty his highness curbed the annoyance
aroused in him, and no sooner was the collation ended than he rose and
begged his father's leave to depart with those who had accompanied him.
He explained that as he was returning to Saint James's, he was at the
mercy of the tide. He would ride to Kew where the wherries waited, and
there leave the horses in the charge of the grooms.

His majesty, who by now was coming to regard the heir to the throne as
the most troublesome of his subjects, gave leave readily enough to him
and his company. Not until they were actually departing did he realise
what this meant to him and why the concourse that day had been so
numerous and brilliant. Only a small group of courtiers, apart from the
huntsmen and servants, remained with the King. The main body trailed off
in the wake of the Prince.

King James observed this departure in goggle-eyed dismay, all the
joviality gone out of him. Seated on a cushion, his back propped against
an oak, he seemed to sag together like an empty bag. A tear ran down his
cheek.

'God's sake!' he muttered. 'Will he bury me alive?' He fetched a
ponderous sigh. 'The Lord's will be done!'

Sir Robert offered him wine. He thrust the offer aside. 'No, no. I've
drunk deep enough this day; and of a bitter cup, God knows. Help me up,
Robin; and let's be going.'

As they came by an avenue in the forest, in the neighbourhood of Sheen,
Sir Robert thrust forward to the side of Lady Essex, who with her cousin
Arundel was of those who rode back with the King to the Palace at
Richmond where Elizabeth had breathed her last. He chose a moment when
she was alone, riding two or three lengths in advance of her cousin, who
was deep in talk with the sprightly Lady Hay.

She looked round to see who came, and went first white, then red, upon
perceiving the identity of the green-clad gallant drawing level with
her. She contrived to smile a greeting to him, and even to utter one,
with a boldness that almost surprised herself.

'You compassionate my solitude, sir.'

'No need for that since it is of your own seeking; besides which I find
you in the best of company: your own. My fear was to intrude.'

'Then we are both at fault in our surmises, Sir Robert.'

'I am honoured, madam, that you should have borne my name in your
remembrance.'

'You were supposing my memory infirm?'

'Rather myself scarce worth remembering by one for a place in whose
recollection there are many suitors.'

'Here's gallantry in the garb of modesty, I think.' There was a hint of
wistfulness in her playful tone, as if she could have desired the
gallantry to be sincere.

'Am I different in that from others?'

'Alas! no.'

'Is it matter for a sigh?'

'That you should be cast in the common mould of courtiers? Is it not?'

'Madam, I'll cast myself in any mould you favour if you will designate
it.'

'You might find that of sincerity becoming.'

'So I might if I knew the precise fashion of it. I was bred up in
courts, my lady.'

'Were you so?' She turned her head to look at him. The surprise in tone
and glance provoked a smile in him, a radiant smile displaying strong
white teeth behind the auburn beard.

'What else had you supposed?' he wondered. 'Am I so loutish a gouk as to
make the thing incredible?'

'It is that Prince Henry said ...' She checked, realising her
indiscretion.

'Ah! Prince Henry!' He sighed in his turn, but with mock solemnity.
'He'll have represented me as a swineherd, so as to commend me to your
regard. You may have observed that he does not love me. But is it matter
for wonder? Here you behold a house divided against itself; and to serve
the King is to offend his highness. I am conscious of no other offence.'

She made him no answer. Child though she might be in years, yet she was
woman enough to know that another cause of offence existed, provided,
however unwillingly, by herself.

They rode some little way in silence. The head of the cavalcade had
spurred ahead. Keeping pace with it at first, they presently slackened
rein when they perceived that the remainder of the company advanced more
leisurely. Thus they came to find themselves almost alone among the
sunshine-dappled shadows of the forest. It lent a sense of intimacy to
their companionship, of which the Countess was intensely conscious. At
last Sir Robert spoke.

'Your ladyship came, I think, in the Prince's train?'

Her answer supplied a slight amendment. 'At the bidding of my cousin
Tom, to behold a stag-hunt for the first time.'

'Yet you did not choose to return with his highness.'

'Why, no; since Tom remains.'

'That need not have hindered your ladyship from following your
inclinations.'

'You assume too much, Sir Robert.' She was a little on her dignity all
at once. 'I am following them. I am a Howard, and loyalty is our
tradition.'

Sir Robert smiled as he thought of one or two Howards who had lost their
heads through departing from that same tradition. That, however, was
irrelevant.

'Loyalty, madam, is a duty. I spoke of inclinations.'

'Inclinations?' The spirit of mischief smiled in bright eyes. 'A woman's
duty when performed must be taken to display her inclinations.'

Thus she evaded him, and left unanswered the question that was in his
mind.

Soon it was to arise again; for the Prince's hostility to him, which had
been covert hitherto, seemed now to seek occasions for open expression.
Its next came a week later in the tennis-court at Whitehall. Sir Robert
and Mr. Overbury had matched themselves against my Lord Montgomery and
Sir Henry Trenchard, a gentleman of the Prince's household.

The Lord Chamberlain's quarters overlooked the court, and at one of its
open windows appeared now, attracted by the game, a group of ladies
which included the Lord Chamberlain's wife and her daughter.

Victory fell easily to Sir Robert's side. As it was being achieved,
Prince Henry sauntered into the little gallery above the court, attended
by some gentlemen of his following. Perceiving Lady Essex at the window,
his highness was prompted to seize the opportunity which the
tennis-court afforded him of serving two purposes at once: to display
his prowess to her ladyship, and to put down this upstart who seemed to
have found some favour in her eyes.

It is distressing to present a youth of such fine parts, normally so
amiable, gifted, and accomplished, in these scenes of pettiness into
which an unrequited passion thrust him. His very inexperience in
dalliance but served further to betray him.

He came forward now with all the assurance of his athletic skill, for in
all bodily exercises he was of an unusual address. He had trained his
muscles against fatigue by long and arduous walking. He was an expert
with the long bow, the art of which he strove to keep alive; and he was
always ready to match himself against any man at tennis, at tossing the
caber, at riding at the ring or any other feat of horsemanship.

'Sir Robert, they tell me you are accounted a doughty opponent at
tennis. Will you make a match with me?'

If the invitation surprised Sir Robert, the haughty, unfriendly tone of
it left him no doubt that it was not from love of the game that he was
challenged. Since it was not to be shirked, he bowed submissively.

'Your highness's servant.'

The Prince threw off jerkin and doublet, bound his auburn hair in a
white kerchief, and, being lightly shod, was ready.

He derived an advantage from his freshness in opposing one who was
scarcely rested from the game. But the advantage was not sufficient for
his needs. Sir Robert, sound in wind and limb, more mature of body, and
of a natural strength which was more than a match for the Prince's
cultivated vigour, combined with the endowments of nature an expertness
at the game which was probably unrivalled. Tardily the Prince learned
the lesson that it is prudent first to ascertain the strength of him you
propose to challenge. Not that he was yet suffering defeat. But--and
this was even more galling--he was being made gradually to perceive that
whether he suffered it or not would be entirely as his adversary
elected. Point by point Sir Robert kept level with him, playing easily,
without exertion, and making it clear to the onlookers that he found
here no need to call out his reserves.

As the Prince's suspicion grew that Sir Robert toyed with him, he put it
to the test by deliberate slackness, and found Sir Robert still avoiding
the advantage. Finally the Prince took the point which gave him the
lead, and in a moment, without effort, Sir Robert was level with him
again. His highness, deeply mortified, lost control of himself. He
walked furiously forward, without attempting to take the last ball his
opponent had driven. His face was white.

'I'll play no more, sir.'

Sir Robert looked at him a moment with raised brows. Then he bowed. 'As
your highness pleases.'

The Prince confronted him, his glance so menacing that instinctively the
gentlemen who were present drew nearer.

'You do not ask, sir, why I break off.'

'I am not so presumptuous as to probe the reasons of a prince.'

'Then you may have them without probing. You are too much the courtier
even when you play at tennis.'

Sir Robert smiled a little as he bowed again. 'No less at least, I
trust, than I am now.'

The Prince blinked and frowned a moment over his meaning; then,
perceiving it, he loosed the full tide of his anger.

'You insolent dog!' He swung aloft his racket, to strike.

With a cry of 'Sir! Sir!' Mr. Overbury slipped in and caught his wrist.
He gripped it as firmly as he dared, but not so firmly as to prevent his
highness from instantly wrenching it free. The intervention, however,
gave him time to recover from his momentary fury.

'Why do you hinder, sir? I desired to test the extent of Sir Robert's
courtiership.'

'A blow, your highness, is no test from one whose rank makes him secure
from its return.'

The Prince stared wide-eyed amazement at the long, pale, masterful
countenance. Slowly the colour came to suffuse his young face from chin
to brow.

'What do you mean, sirrah?'

'To serve your highness.' And he explained: 'The racket would have hurt
Sir Robert's head less than your own honour.'

The Prince looked round at his gentlemen, all of whom were grave as
mutes. He laughed on a hard short note. 'I am at school again, it seems.
I am being tutored in tennis and in honour.' Abruptly he flung down his
racket. 'Come, sirs,' he commanded shortly, and stalked off to the
little gallery, to resume his garments. Thence he presently departed,
all following him save only Sir Robert and Mr. Overbury.

'We remain upon the field, it seems,' said Sir Robert, smiling grimly.

'With all the honours, saving perhaps the honours of war,' said Mr.
Overbury. 'If we survive I'll add a chapter to my "Characters" and
entitle it "The Prince."'

'If we survive?'

Mr. Overbury shrugged. 'This was the skirmish. The battle is to follow.
And unless I've little skill at guessing, it will be fought in his
majesty's closet.'

'Bah!' Sir Robert was contemptuous. 'Let the boy bear his tales. The
King's none so fond at present.'

'It depends upon how he presents his story. Between us we've singed the
divine quality of royalty.'

Sir Robert shrugged, and turned away to get his doublet. As he went he
raised his eyes to the window occupied by the ladies. A kerchief
fluttered a greeting to him; bright eyes smiled mischievous commendation
upon him. He bowed, his hand upon his heart.

'Poetic!' said Mr. Overbury. 'Most poetic! You receive the tribute which
was all the prize his highness sought. Have you observed, Robin, that in
this world things never happen as the foolish and presumptuous plan
them?'

The ladies were withdrawing from the window. Perhaps my Lady Suffolk
accounted her daughter excessively imprudent.

Mr. Overbury sighed pensively. 'A sweet child, that daughter of the
House of Howard. I could write sonnets to her if I thought his highness
would buy them against his need: something in the manner of Mr.
Shakespeare, who is a master of the Italian measure.'

'Why, thou venal rogue, is not the lady a sufficient inspiration?'

Mr. Overbury was helping him into his doublet. 'Inspiration, yes: but
there's the translation of it in labour. With a golden rod I could
strike Castalian springs from any rock. But soft! Here comes an
ambassador of wrath, or I'm mistaken.'

It was Sir James Elphinstone, one of the Prince's gentlemen, and the
knight who once had been dispossessed of his lodging in the palace to
make room for the favourite, a matter which he had never forgotten or
forgiven. He bore down upon them truculently, his right hand twirling
his mostachios, his left on the pommel of his sword, thrusting it
horizontally behind him.

He came to a halt before the Scot. 'Sir Robert,' quoth he, 'certain
words fell here a moment since.'

Mr. Overbury slipped neatly between them. 'You're right, Sir James. And
the best of them fell from me, as commonly happens when I'm of the
company. I've an uncommon gift of words in prose or verse, and it's a
gift entirely at your service. Peace, Robin! The gentleman's concern is
with words and me; and I'm here to give him both--or as much of them as
he can stomach.'

Tall Sir James, his eyes level with Mr. Overbury's, scowled darkly.
'Sir, I have no affair with you.'

'If I thought that were true, I could soon mend it.' Thus Mr. Overbury
on a light note of badinage. 'But I'll demonstrate your error. You are
come, I take it, as the deputy of his highness.'

'You are correct so far.'

'I am correct however far. I make a habit of it.'

Here Sir Robert sought again to elbow him aside. But he would not budge.
'Let be, Robin. D'ye not perceive this is an affair between deputies? I
as your deputy will meet his highness's deputy, or jackal, or bully
swordsman, or roaring boy, or gutter-blood, or whatever else he accounts
himself.'

'Sir,' roared Sir James, 'you are insufferably offensive.'

'I told you I have an uncommon gift of words.'

Sir James was out of countenance before this frigid mockery. He could
but storm.

'By God, sir, d'ye rally me?'

'What then, Sir James? What then? Will you skewer my vitals and devour
me whole? I exist to do your pleasure whatever it may be.'

Sir James's furious eye measured him from head to foot. Sir James
recovered some of his wits and employed them.

'I have said that my affair is not with you, but with the fellow who
skulks behind you.'

After that Sir Robert was not to be restrained. 'Skulks!' he roared, and
'Fellow!' He put forth his strength, and thrust Mr. Overbury aside. The
next moment Sir James was rolling in the dust, knocked over by a blow
from the infuriated Scot.

He gathered himself up, dissembling his hurt, grinning his rage and
satisfaction. Though at some cost to his person, dignity, and apparel,
he had, he considered, accomplished the mission on which he came. 'By
God, you shall meet me for this.'

'Meet you? Meet you!' Sir Robert, tense and athletic, snorted
scornfully. 'I'll beat your bones to a jelly when you please; and that's
the only way I'll meet you. I do not fight with jackals.'

Mr. Overbury laughed. 'Did I not tell you so? Lord! Sir James, had you
listened to me you might have saved your pains; ay, and your breeches.'

Sir James, white-faced and glowering upon Sir Robert, had no ears for
the taunt.

'This ends not here,' he said. 'Nor thus. Be sure of that.' He paused.
Then, very minatory, he repeated: 'Be sure of that.' Since he could
think of nothing else to add, he departed abruptly.

Sir Robert watched him go. Then he took up his hat. He looked at Mr.
Overbury, who was solemn.

'Again we remain upon the field, Tom,' he laughed.

Mr. Overbury shook his head bodefully. 'It's but another skirmish. The
battle is still to come. Let your Te Deum wait until it's over.'




CHAPTER VII

PREFERMENT


King James in bedgown and slippers, his head swathed in a multi-coloured
kerchief, sat on the edge of his great canopied bed, looking like
Pantaloon in the comedy. His fingers tugged fretfully at his thin sandy
beard. There was humidity about the corners of his bovine eyes, and a
melancholy beyond the usual in their depths.

The Prince of Wales, tense with choler, strode restlessly to and fro in
the royal bedchamber, talking briskly and vehemently. He was inveighing
against Sir Robert Carr and Sir Robert's henchman, Mr. Thomas Overbury.
Sir Robert, he complained, had ever been wanting in respect to him; but
to-day his insolence had transcended all pardonable bounds. Mr. Overbury
had been his accomplice in this, and thereafter Sir Robert had gone to
unutterable length of audacity. He had grossly manhandled a gentleman of
the Prince's following, and this within the very precincts of the
palace. His highness seemed to imply by his tone that the locality
magnified the offence into a sacrilege.

So long as the complaint had been concerned with Sir Robert's conduct,
the King had sought to stem the vigour of his son's invective and to
belittle the whole matter.

'Tush! Tush! Here's a garboil all about naught. The truth is ye can't
abide Robin, which is but a sign of the lack of discernment I've
remarked in you. That not liking him ye should have put yourself in his
way as ye seem to have done, is a sign of your lack of prudence which
I've similarly remarked. Being my son, I cannot refrain from marvelling
at the general want of judgment in you, for which you have my profound
commiseration.'

Whereafter he added with a touch of peremptoriness: 'Be off home to bed
with you, a' God's name, and sleep yourself into better sense.'

Anger, however, had rendered the young man insubordinate. 'My tale is
but half-told,' he had answered, and thereupon resumed his pacing and
his stormy narrative.

The King groaned, and aloud inquired from his soul of his God what he
had ever done to be plagued with such a son as this, who came demanding
of him the impossible. For to punish Robin for a matter in which his
majesty's heart told him Robin was not to blame was as unthinkable as it
would be unkingly.

Then came the mention of Mr. Overbury and the gross insults to Sir James
Elphinstone by which he had fanned the flames of discord. The King grew
less disconsolate. A scapegoat might be found for Robin, and thus would
his obstreperous son be satisfied. And than Mr. Overbury no scapegoat
could have been preferable to his majesty, who had no love for the
horse-faced carle.

King James assumed the mantle of Solomon, and the canopied bed became
the judgment throne.

'On my soul, ye clutter my wits wi' your clatter and clavering. If you
want justice of me, let me have a plain tale, so that I may pronounce
upon it. How came Robin to lay hands upon Sir James?'

The Prince's tale--which we may suppose to represent his gentleman's
report to him of what had passed--was that Sir James had been grossly
insulted by Mr. Overbury with the object of provoking him to a duel.

'A duel!' The King was genuinely horror-striken. 'A duel, did ye say?
I'll deal with Mr. Overbury. As God's my life, he shall learn to respect
the laws I make. Get you gone and leave this in my hands. I'll deal with
it before I sleep.'

The Prince, however, was far from satisfied. Mr. Overbury, he protested,
was by no means the chief offender.

'Ye'll leave me to be the judge of that when I've sifted the matter, as
sift it I will. God save us all! Are we to have duelling again? And here
in my very court? Away! Away!'

He summoned his gentlemen-in-waiting and constrained his highness, still
unsatisfied, to take his leave. Then he despatched Lord Haddington in
quest of Sir Robert Carr.

The messenger found Sir Robert with Mr. Overbury in the severely
furnished chamber which served them as a workroom. Here despite the
lateness of the hour Mr. Overbury was still at those labours which were
increasing almost daily in arduousness.

In a high-backed padded chair, at a vast oak table which served him for
a writing pulpit, sat the favourite's secretary. He was entrenched on
three sides, as it seemed, by a parapet of piled-up documents, and
lighted in his labours by two clusters of candles in great silver
branches.

Here were papers concerned with petitions of all kinds, with monopolies,
benevolences, matters of poundage and tunnage, and foreign dispatches,
all awaiting the immediate attention of one who virtually discharged
the duties of a Secretary of State.

Mr. Overbury, in a wine-coloured bedgown, worn over shirt and breeches,
sat quill in hand, making marginal notes upon an imposing document.

To receive his visitor, Sir Robert rose from the window-seat where he
had been lounging at the open casement, for the night was hot as with
the threat of thunder. A faint odour hung upon the air, vague to the
nostrils of Lord Haddington, who was only slightly acquainted with
tobacco.

Sir Robert, who had been on the point of going to bed, dissembled his
reluctance at the summons. This reluctance was increased when his
lordship told him significantly that the Prince had been with his
father. By now the afternoon's scene in the tennis-court was the talk of
all the court. Here, then, it seemed, was the battle which Mr. Overbury
had predicted. Metaphorically, as he went, Sir Robert girded up his
loins.

He found the King alone, awaiting him. His majesty no more desired
witnesses for the scene with Carr than for that which had taken place
with the Prince.

Enthroned once more upon the canopied bed, the skirts of his gown
swathing his lean shanks, the King received the favourite with a
countenance of unusual gravity. He laid before him the complaints of the
Prince, alluded severely to the manhandling of Sir James Elphinstone,
and was very hot upon the subject of Mr. Overbury and his endeavours to
put a duel upon Sir James.

He would have, he announced, no brawlers about his court and no
duellists within his kingdom, and not a day longer would he tolerate
the presence of a man who set his known wishes at defiance. He was King,
and he would be obeyed. He would so, by God's death! Breathing noisily,
from rage and adenoids, he paused and gave Sir Robert at last a chance
to answer him.

'Your majesty is not correctly informed of what took place.'

'How?' The King scowled upon him. 'Have you not heard that I had Prince
Henry's word for all?'

'Prince Henry was not himself a witness of all. This matter of Tom
Overbury, now, is at once true and false; but more false than true. Sir
James was the brawler. He came to brawl with me. He was the duellist in
this. He came to force a duel upon me--came back to do so after his
highness had left us.'

'On you! He came to force a duel upon you, Robin?' Majesty was appalled.
The current of the royal wrath was instantly diverted. 'Body o' me! What
are ye saying?'

'It was so as to forestall him, so as to shield me from this fire-eater,
that Tom got between us and offered himself as my deputy.'

The King's goggle-eyes were glaring at him. This mention of Overbury,
this warm defence of him, once again changed the direction of the King's
anger. His mounting tenderness was suddenly converted into suspicion.

'How came ye, then, to lay hands upon Sir James?'

Sir Robert told him. The King rolled his eyes as he listened. His
answer, when it came, was indirect.

'Among ye, ye make a bear-pit of my palace. Ye provoke his highness into
derogation from his royal dignity, and ye so anger him that he comes
storming here to me, forgetting that, if I am his father, I am also his
king. Say what ye will in defence of that rogue Overbury, if he had not
used the words he used to Sir James Elphinstone, the affair might have
been kept within the bounds of decency.'

'I have already informed your majesty ...'

'I ken well what ye've informed me. But my eyes are keen enough to see
through words into the very heart of the matter, and to form opinions
for myself. There's no way but one to end this, to restore peace and
provide against repetitions of anything so unseemly. This fellow
Overbury must go.'

Sir Robert stiffened, and the colour deepened in his face. He would have
spoken, but the King stayed him, raising his hand and assuming a
masterfulness of air and tone, such as he had never yet employed to his
favourite.

'Not a word of protest, Robin. It's not a request ye've heard, but a
command. A royal command. See it executed.'

Sir Robert used his wits briskly. He bowed, utter submission in every
line of his stalwart, graceful figure, utter submission in his voice.

'I am your majesty's most loyal subject and most obedient servant. Mr.
Overbury will have left Whitehall and your majesty's service by this
time to-morrow.'

The King's face lighted with triumph, and remained so until Sir Robert
added:

'Have I your majesty's leave to accompany him?'

'Accompany him? Accompany him! For God's sake tell me what you mean?'

'What I have said, Sire. My wish is to go with Mr. Overbury.'

'By God, you don't.'

'Your majesty may send me to the Tower for disobedience. But short of
that I go with Mr. Overbury.'

The King stared his gloomy dismay and vexation into that resolute
countenance. The royal lip began to tremble. The royal eyes grew
lachrymose. Then rage exploded from him.

'Ye maun baith gang to the Deil!' he roared in broadest Scots, and
slipped off the bed to stand shaking with passion.

Sir Robert bowed, and moved backwards towards the door.

The King's bellow arrested him. 'Where are ye going?'

'I understood your majesty to dismiss me.'

'You understood nothing of the kind. I vow ye desire to exasperate me. I
warn you, Robin: I'll not be trifled with.' He shambled forward a
little, and grew maudlin. 'I've been good to you, Robin; and this is an
ill requital. Are you as ungrateful as the rest?'

'Sire, naught that you can do--not if you send me to the Tower, or even
to the block--will quench my gratitude and love ...'

The King interrupted him, taking up the word. 'Love? You have no love
for me. You're like the rest. All is make-believe, play-acting to gain
your ends. Love joys in giving. You, like the others, seek only to
take.'

'Sire, I have not deserved this. You are unjust.'

'Unjust, am I? In what am I unjust? Have you not proved yourself when
you announced that you'll desert me for this rogue Overbury?'

'If I did less I should be a party to the cruel wrong that is being
done this man, for having shown himself ready to risk his life for mine.
That is all his offence, Sire. What a contemptible rogue should not I be
if I did not insist upon sharing a punishment which I have brought upon
him?'

'It remains that I count for naught.'

Sir Robert looked him straightly between the eyes. 'Could your majesty
ever again trust or esteem me if I were so dead to honour and to
obligations as to abandon that loyal man at such a moment?'

Again the King evaded the question. 'Obligations? And what of your
obligations to me?'

'I have never been unmindful of them. To the best of my poor ability and
strength I have served your majesty loyally and faithfully, ay, and
unsparingly. My life, Sire, is yours. I would yield it up willingly in
your service, as God's my witness.'

The appeal to tenderness, fervently uttered, played havoc with the royal
emotions, ever vulnerable to such assaults.

'Robin! Robin!' He advanced upon the young man, holding out his hands,
and brought them finally to rest on Sir Robert's shoulders. 'You mean
that? For God's sake say that you mean it. For God's sake say that ye'll
not forsake me; that ye'll not break my lonely old heart!'

Sir Robert smiled with the irradiating, irresistible tenderness of which
he had the gift.

'In forsaking you, Sire, I should be breaking my own heart together with
my fortunes. Yet ...'

'Say no more, Robin. Say no more, man.' The King's grip tightened on his
shoulders. 'I believe you. You're true steel in a world of painted
laths.'

He loosed his hold and went shambling away again, wiping his eyes.
'Henry'll be angry if I do naught. He'll no doubt come raging to me
again with his hectorings and his insolences. But I'll bear it. For your
sake, Robin lad, I'll bear it all.'

It was a capitulation which might have satisfied Sir Robert. But he did
not yet choose to be satisfied. He knew the vacillations of the royal
mind; knew that this might change again.

He did not desire, he announced, that the King should suffer griefs on
his account. He did not deserve it, and, all things considered, he
thought it would be better if the King dismissed him together with Mr.
Overbury. As it was, he had too many enemies at court; there were so
many great lords who treated him cavalierly, whose eminence placed them
beyond the reach of his resentment.

He drove the King to frenzy by his determination. He was bidden to hold
his clavering tongue. He was assured by a fond monarch, now utterly
terrified of losing him, that he should be made as great a lord as any
in the land, so that he should take precedence of any insolent gentleman
who in the past might have presumed upon superior rank.

Then, finding that Sir Robert still wavered, the King had recourse to
cajoleries and pettings, and finally made an abject surrender. Not only
should Mr. Overbury remain, but he should receive the honour of
knighthood and be raised to the dignity of a gentleman of the household.
As for Sir Robert himself, he should have the castle of Rochester with
the title of Viscount, besides the vacant Barony of Winwick in
Northamptonshire; he should be invested with the Order of the Garter,
become a member of the Privy Council and Keeper of Westminster Palace
for life. Thus should men know the love and esteem in which he was held
by his king, and they should honour him or it would be the worse for
them.

On that, long after midnight, the King embraced and dismissed him, and
went at last to bed exhausted by the emotions of the evening. Robin's
determined championship of Mr. Overbury, reviewed in retrospect, fanned
the King's singular and abnormal jealousy. The circumstance that he had
been compelled to yield at all where Overbury was concerned, rendered
that detestable fellow more detestable than ever in the royal eyes.

It is characteristic of weak, unstable natures to give generously under
pressure, and, thereafter, hating their own weakness, to hate the
recipient of the gifts.




CHAPTER VIII

IMPORTUNATE WOOERS


Prince Henry's pursuit of my Lady Essex showed little sign of
prospering. There were few opportunities of meeting the lady, and none
of being private with her. To create or increase them, his highness was
driven to odd shifts, the oddest of which was his tightening relations
with the Earl of Northampton.

He knew his lordship to be, like all the Howards, a crypto-Catholic,
which in itself was a thing detestable to the fervently Protestant
Prince. He knew him for a friend of Spain and suspected him of being
secretly in the pay of King Philip, which was still more detestable. He
knew him also for one of the most ardent advocates of the Spanish
marriage, which was most detestable of all. But just as the pangs of
hunger will make a thief out of an honest man, so will the pangs of love
compel the most scrupulous to discard his scruples.

The Lady Essex, beloved of her great-uncle, was often to be found at
Northampton House, the magnificent palace which he had built himself in
the Strand. Prince Henry, informed of this, came to be found there
scarcely less often.

Surprised at first by this sudden friendliness of a Prince who hitherto
had hardly acknowledged his existence, the crafty old nobleman looked
about him for the reason. His keen vulturine eyes were not long in
discovering that his little golden-headed niece was the lure that drew
this royal tiercel. Now, despite his affection for her, which was
probably as deep as any affection his lordship was capable of feeling,
he saw here only matter for self-congratulation. It signified little
that his niece's honour should run the risk of being tarnished, so that
his own insatiable ambitions should be served. And with the Prince on
his side, the head of a party hitherto hostile to himself, there
appeared to be no bounds to the achievements that might yet be his.
Robert Cecil was growing old and infirm--his lordship took no account of
the fact that he was himself over seventy, and the older man--and soon
now would have to make room for a new Lord Treasurer and chief Secretary
of State. It would not be the fault of my Lord Northampton's planning if
he did not succeed to that coveted office. But not in his most sanguine
moments had he ventured to hope that the friendship of the Prince of
Wales would come to strengthen the ladder by which he meant to climb.
Therefore, he blessed the little niece who made this possible, and was
careful, by the courtier arts of which he was a master, to remove all
obstacles from Prince Henry's path.

The Earl became all at once of an extreme sociability, and for a season
Northampton House was rendered the scene of extravagant gaieties. There
were banquetings and dancings and masques, to which all the Court was
bidden, and there were more discreet and private affairs, little water
parties and little intimate dinners for not more than a half-dozen,
whereafter his highness would be free to wander with the lady in the
cool garden by the river.

But be it that the young Countess was the victim of an excessive
prudery, be it that she feared the tongue of gossip, be it that other
causes were at work, whilst the Prince's opportunities of being in her
company were abundant, his opportunities of being private with her were
scarce and fugitive.

Nor was this all that went to stir vexation in his highness. A certain
Sir David Wood was much about Northampton House in those days, and he
contrived, consciously or unconsciously, to put himself damnably in the
Prince's way. This Sir David was a gentleman newly out of Spain and deep
in the Earl's confidence. A boldly handsome man, something under thirty,
gay of temperament and engaging of manners, he fell an instant victim to
the beauty and witchery of the Lady Essex. Being a masterful fellow,
accustomed to take what he lacked, and to practise an utter directness
of aim, he made no secret of the matter. He laid siege to her ladyship,
was ever at her elbow, and either did not, or else refused to, perceive
that in doing so he put himself in the Prince's way.

Northampton looked on aggrieved. Sir David knew too much about his
lordship and his Spanish dealings to be incontinently dismissed.
Therefore the Earl took at last the course of speaking to his niece in
mild reproof of the apparent lightness of her conduct.

The suggestion offended her.

'In what am I light? I do not beckon Sir David, or detain him at my
side. Indeed, I find him almost as importunate as his highness. I desire
the attentions of neither. Yet I am glad to have both, since each serves
to protect me against the other.'

This was more than his lordship cared to hear.

'His highness is one, and Sir David quite another. The attentions of a
prince are not lightly to be repulsed. Loyalty forbids it, unless those
attentions should become unwelcomely insistent. But a plain gentleman
such as Sir David is easily whipped to heel by a lady who values her
good name. She needs but to show him plainly that she values it.'

Her ladyship acted that very day upon this advice; although her uncle's
words were not by any means the spur that drove her.

Sir David dined alone with the Earl, and, as dinner was ending, espying
her ladyship in the garden, announced his intention to take the air.

Scarcely was Sir David gone forth than the new Lord Rochester was
announced.

Robert Carr came, accompanied by the lately knighted Thomas Overbury, to
discuss with the Lord Privy Seal certain matters arising out of letters
newly received from Spain.

The Earl gave him the cordial welcome he reserved for all men who might
be useful to him, and conducted the twain to his handsome, well-stocked
library above-stairs.

Their business was soon done, and then, the day being warm and his
lordship's terrace pleasantly cool, Lord Rochester proposed that they
should remove themselves thither to discuss what yet remained.

In the gardens below, my Lady Essex wandered with the assiduous and
enterprising Sir David. The gallant knight was making the most of his
opportunity, and her ladyship was listening without any positive
annoyance, for Sir David, after all, was no clumsy-footed wooer.
Chancing, however, to raise her eyes to the terrace, and finding herself
suddenly surveyed by one of the two gentlemen who sauntered there with
her uncle, she abruptly checked and the half-smile with which she had
been listening perished on her lips.

My Lord Rochester paused to doff his plumed hat and to bow low in
salutation. Then he passed on with his companions.

Sir David looked hard at her ladyship. 'And who may be that fine
fellow?' said he, in his easy way, for he was no respecter of persons.

'That is my Lord Rochester,' she answered him.

'Robin Carr!' he ejaculated, and he looked again, interest quickening in
his eyes as they took stock of one so famous. Then he transferred his
gaze once more to his companion.

'Your ladyship feels the heat!' he exclaimed in sudden solicitude. 'You
are pale.'

She looked up at him with her deep-blue, candid eyes, and smiled a
little wistfully.

'You look at me too closely, Sir David.'

He took the mild reproof for challenge. 'Who would not that were blessed
with the occasion? I gaze on you as I've seen them gaze in Spain on
images of worship, save that I never saw one gaze with the half of the
devotion that I feel.'

She lowered her eyes before his ardent glance. 'Their piety, then, is
small,' said she.

'On the contrary, it is great. But my adoration is still greater.'

Her brows were puckered in a frown. Her tone became severe. 'Sir David,
I am no object for your adoration.'

'If I find you so, can I help myself? It is something none can deny me.'

'My husband might. I have a husband somewhere. You are forgetting it,
Sir David.'

'Not fifty husbands could deny me the freedom of worshipping you.'

'Yet, if you respect me, the existence of one will make you deny
yourself the freedom of uttering it.'

'Unless you give me leave.'

'How could I?' Her tone became impatient. 'You are mad, Sir David.'

He fetched a sigh. His face was oddly white. He spoke in tones of utmost
humility.

'What do I ask, when all is said, that you should so harshly refuse me?
I offer. I do not beg. I am ready to give without guerdon. I demand
nothing in return.'

'Sir David, I do not understand you. It is as well, perhaps.'

'Yet what I say is plain and simple. I simply announce myself your
servant now and always. Since you can give me nothing, that is little
matter. I give myself to you against your need of me. That's all, my
lady--my dear lady. Rest in the knowledge that there lives one man at
least who will adventure all to serve you. To you it may seem a little
thing ...'

'Surely no little thing, Sir David.' She sighed. 'Yet something that I
wish you had not said; for I can say nothing in return.'

He grew vehement. 'Have I asked you to say aught? All I hope is that you
will bear my words in your memory. The knowledge of that will bring me
happiness.'

It is difficult to credit Sir David with such abstract chivalry as he
professed. It was skilful in that on the one hand it opened a line by
which he could retreat in good order from a position upon which his
assault had been too precipitate, and on the other he left the way
prepared for a renewal of the assault should the occasion ever offer.
For that his words must touch her and linger pleasantly in her memory
he knew as surely as that she was a woman.

Whilst he stood waiting, hoping for some answer, the Earl's voice
summoned him to the terrace. His opinion was required on some question
of fact or policy connected with King Philip. He gave it, and a
discussion followed provoked by Sir Thomas Overbury. The discussion
dragged on, and Lord Rochester grew evidently impatient, for presently,
leaving the group of three to talk the matter out, he sauntered down the
steps to pay his respects to Lady Essex.

His willingness to leave the business to Sir Thomas was no more than his
normal habit, just as nowadays it was increasingly becoming his
majesty's habit to leave affairs to the hands of his lordship. The King
adopted this course because at heart he was indolent, hating all
labours--apart from politico-literary ones, such as his present
'Counterblast to Tobacco,' which flattered his vanity--and detesting all
business that was not directly concerned with the raising of money. Lord
Rochester, following the King's example, entrusted affairs to a deputy,
because--unlike the King--he knew the deputy to be more competent than
himself.

Had Sir David been aware of this, he would have watched Lord Rochester
less closely as he joined her ladyship where she wandered in the green
alleys of the garden.

She wore a rose-pink gown with a short Dutch waist above the
Catherine-wheel of her farthingale, and hanging sleeves that showed a
lining of paler pink. Her golden head was covered by a cap with
side-wings coming to a little peak in the middle of her brow, which,
like her tall pickadell, was of snowy linen and flimsiest lace. Her
dark blue eyes smiled a greeting into the paler eyes of the approaching
gentleman. It was a smile which might have increased Sir David's
anxieties could he have beheld it at close quarters.

The new Viscount received with becoming modesty her felicitations upon
his recent preferment. Then he spoke of Sir David Wood, his Spanish
travels, his accomplishments, his knowledge of affairs. Thus until her
ladyship interrupted him, laughing.

'Is it ever to be your lordship's habit to entertain me with talk of
other men?'

He remembered their last words, a month ago in Richmond Park, and again
their words on the occasion of the banquet to the Spanish Ambassador,
and he joined in her laughter.

'Not my habit, I trust. But, indeed, it seems hitherto to have been my
misfortune.'

'And mine, I think,' said she.

'Why yours?'

She paused a moment, hesitating; then took courage. 'I might prefer that
you should tell me of yourself.'

'Of myself?' He looked at her, a faint surprise upon his face. But her
eyes were averted, and the lovely, tranquil mask of her countenance told
him nothing.

'It is a topic on which you should be able to speak with much
authority,' said she, by way of explanation.

'Perhaps,' he said. 'But would I?' He laughed. 'Is his own self a topic
upon which any man dare be truthful?'

'Yet, if he dare not, who can be? Not his enemies, for they traduce him
out of hate; nor his friends, for they magnify him out of love. How,
then, does one learn the truth of any man?'

'None ever does,' said he. 'Truth is an over-elusive thing. Sir Francis
Bacon is asking through the lips of Pilate what it is. And Sir Francis
is the last man in England to supply the answer to his own question.'

'You are bitter, sir,' she told him. 'I wonder why?'

'Neither sweet nor bitter, madam. I but study to be honest.'

'Honesty is another word for truth. Why trouble after that which you say
is over-elusive?'

He laughed again. 'You are too shrewd for me. You batter me with my own
weapons. I cry you mercy.'

'You shall have that from me and more,' said she on a betraying note of
gentleness.

His lordship looked at her, faintly wondering; and because perhaps for
the first time conscious of the bewitching appeal of her fresh young
loveliness. 'More?' he echoed. 'What more could I presume to ask of
you?'

'Can I tell until you ask? I have no gift of divination.'

'Have you not?' He was still looking at her, and a new light was
quickening in his eyes. Very softly and slowly he added: 'I wonder is
there any gift you lack.'

'Oh, a many, I can assure you.'

'But not such, I'll swear, as any man would miss or desire to find.'

Her manner remained light, but her pulse beat faster. 'Now speaks the
courtier to whom truth is elusive because he so renders it.'

Thus she spurred him on with natural feminine guile, which requires no
tutoring. But his lordship's eyes, wandering in that moment from her
gentle face, were caught by a metallic sheen, and, looking through a gap
in the laurel bush by which he stood, he discovered a great gilded barge
of twelve oars with the royal standard trailing in the water astern,
coming alongside the steps of Lord Northampton's garden. Out of the
canopied stern stepped a glittering group, aptly described by Lord
Rochester's next words.

'What dragon-flies are these that come rising from the water?'

Ahead of some four attendant gentlemen the lithe, stripling figure of
the Prince of Wales stepped briskly towards her ladyship, until
presently, beside the laurel bush which had screened him hitherto, his
highness beheld her tall companion.

He continued to advance, but the eagerness had departed from his young
face, the elasticity from his stride.

He stood bowing before her. She, wishing him at the bottom of the river,
dropped him a curtsey. My lord, bareheaded, and inwardly almost as vexed
by the interruption, offered an obeisance. Peace, superficially, had
been restored between Prince and favourite, as a preliminary to their
receiving the Order of the Garter at the same investiture.

Possibly the Prince perceived that, if his complaints were in their
sequel to accomplish no more than the favourite's preferment, he had
better in future hold his peace.

Compliments being exchanged, his highness stared coldly into his
lordship's face.

'You have leave to go, my lord,' he said in curt dismissal.

Tone and glance combined to sting his lordship. But disobedience was out
of all question. He bowed.

'Your highness is gracious,' he murmured, not without sarcasm, and would
have turned to depart but that he found his loose sleeve caught in her
ladyship's grip. She had been stung with him and for him, and far more
deeply than he. So far as in her power it lay, she would salve the
wound.

'We will seek his lordship together,' she said demurely, in allusion to
her uncle. 'He is on the terrace there and he will be honoured by your
highness's visit.'

'Nay, nay,' said the Prince. 'We'll not disturb his lordship yet
awhile.'

She smiled brightly in answer. 'He would never forgive me if I did not.'
And, turning on her heel, she led the way.

Her assumption that the Prince came to visit her uncle was usual and
fully justified. Since she, herself, was no more than a casual visitor
there, it was not to be supposed that he came on her account.

His highness, blaming his own hesitancy in making the point clear to
her, promised himself that he would amend it at the earliest moment.
Meanwhile, sulkily, he followed but a half-step behind her, Lord
Rochester keeping pace with him, and the Prince's gentlemen bringing up
the rear.

Having delivered him up to her uncle, my lady took her leave upon a
pretext that she was awaited by her mother, and so departed in some
vexation at the course of things.

Her departure rendered Prince Henry conscious that his visit to the Earl
was really without purpose, and very soon thereafter he reëmbarked with
his gentlemen in his stately barge. He made little attempt to dissemble
his ill-humour or the source of it.

'Carr! Carr! Always Carr! Is there no place in the world where I can be
safe from that fellow's intrusion?'

He uttered the question aloud; addressing it to no one in particular,
but rather to the Universe in general. Nevertheless, among his immediate
following there was one who understood that this was less a question
than a prayer, and addressed himself to contriving that it should be
answered.




CHAPTER IX

MRS. TURNER


The understanding gentleman who undertook to play Providence to his
highness was Sir Arthur Mainwaring, a slight, elegant fellow of an
almost Spanish complexion and with all a Spaniard's traditional heat of
blood. He was alert, swift, ingenious, alive in every fibre of him,
expert to his finger-tips in every kind of intrigue, and without
scruples of any kind to hamper him.

Sir Arthur plied his nimble wits to serve his prince with a courtier's
usual hope of being served himself on the rebound. And he went to work
with all an artist's reticence, disclosing nothing of his aims, so as
not to blunt the dazzling surprise of the accomplishment when he should
present it.

Sir Arthur had a mistress, chosen with great discrimination: the
beautiful, clever, and equally unscrupulous Anne Turner, who affluently
maintained herself in the early widowhood to which Fate had doomed her
by the exercise of her abundant talents, enterprise, and industry. She
conducted in Paternoster Row, at the sign of the Golden Distaff, a
considerable establishment for the purveyance of modish luxuries to the
wealthy and the noble. Already she was well known at court, and almost
it might be said that she held a court of her own wherein she was sought
by great ladies who desired the secrets of beauty and elegance which
she--in her own young person a mirror of elegance and of beauty--was
induced to dispense. She drove a brisk trade in perfumes, cosmetics,
unguents and mysterious powders, liniments and lotions asserted to
preserve beauty where it existed and even to summon it where it was
lacking. The widow of a physician of some skill, she had turned to good
account certain notebooks which he had left, containing a serviceable
collection of prescriptions of an infinitely varied character. Among
them was the recipe for yellow starch, which she dispensed. This had
become so widely fashionable for ruffs and pickadells that of itself it
had rendered her famous.

No less brisk was the trade she drove in fashionable appliances, many of
her own invention, and in articles of apparel, chiefly of her own
devising; whilst her services had been more than once engaged by Ben
Jonson and others to design and provide the costumes for the masques so
frequently held at Whitehall.

It was also rumoured that she amassed gold in another and less licit
manner: that she dabbled in fortune-telling and the arts of divination.
But such matters were only whispered, for none wished any harm to Mrs.
Turner, and it would have been dangerous to utter these things aloud
during the reign of a king who was the author of a monument of pedantic
nonsense on the subject of demonology and who employed witch-finders to
harry unfortunate old women throughout the land.

A pretty, fluffy, fair little woman, sleek and luxury-loving as a cat,
Mrs. Turner provided abundantly not only for her own expensive tastes,
but also for those of her lover, Sir Arthur, whose own unaided resources
would scarcely have sufficed to maintain him at court.

She owned a very pleasant country house at Hammersmith, with a fair
garden on the river, and it was the thought of this garden which set the
ingenuities of Sir Arthur's mind in movement. To convey the Prince
thither, and so earn his gratitude--and all that this implied--should be
easy when the time came. The difficulty lay in procuring the presence
there of Lady Essex. This was a problem worthy of our gentleman's
ingenuity. To its solution he applied himself at once with diligence and
confidence.

Circumstances opened a way for him at the outset. The Queen's brother,
King Christian of Denmark, was about to visit the English Court.
Preparations of lavish entertainment were afoot, to include a
masque--the Masque of Solomon--which Ben Jonson was writing and for
which Inigo Jones was designing and constructing the mechanical and
architectural parts. Mrs. Turner was entrusted with the confection of
the dresses for the Queen of Sheba and some other characters in the
masque.

Sir Arthur took an early opportunity of enlarging to Lady Essex upon the
tiring talents of Mrs. Turner, so eloquently, that he moved her ladyship
to desire to be dressed by her for the ball that was to follow the
performance. Thus was the elegant little widow--duly informed of the
ultimate purpose to be served--introduced to the lodging of the Lord
Chamberlain's lady.

She was well received, and she exerted all her talents on behalf of Lady
Essex, delighting her ladyship by the gown of cloth of silver which she
fashioned for her. She showed herself of an extraordinary assiduity,
sparing no pains to achieve perfection, and in the course of these the
acquaintance ripened and widened, enabling Mrs. Turner to display other
than tiring talents which were equally at the service of the Countess.
She praised, and very justly, the pearly beauty of my lady's skin. It
was, she admitted, beyond human power to improve it, but she had a
creamy perfumed pomade that would preserve its glorious perfection. She
possessed also the secret of a special glove to be worn of nights, which
would enhance the white beauty of my lady's hands. And she had other
beauty secrets, whose mention excited my lady's desire to possess them,
and moved my lady to use her with more than ordinary friendliness,
considering their different estates. Out of all this it followed that on
a day of the week following the Masque of Solomon, a coach drew up at
the sign of the Golden Distaff in Paternoster Row. Out of it stepped a
dainty female figure, wimpled in grey and hooded to screen her features
from the gaze of inquisitive city folk.

She was admitted by a lean, knock-kneed man of perhaps fifty, whose
dress of rusty black was relieved only by a broad, unstarched collar of
lawn. His face was long and bony and sallow; all the blood in it seemed
to have fled to the thin, pointed nose. There was a slight cast in one
of his beady black eyes, and his expression was one of sinister
melancholy.

The young Countess shivered at sight of this unlovely usher to a
beauty-parlour.

Within, however, her ladyship found an air of comfort and refinement. A
portrait in oil of the late Dr. Turner, imposing as a Privy Councillor,
looked down austerely from the tall overmantel upon his widow's
pleasant, dimly lighted parlour. The floor was strewn with aromatic
herbs, which combined with the freshly cut roses in a bowl of Italian
ware to render the room agreeably fragrant. An Eastern carpet,
bright-hued, covered the long table; chairs upholstered in red velvet
stood beside it, and some delicate pieces of Venetian glass sparkled on
a tall buffet that was richly carved with little images of nymphs and
satyrs.

Here to her waiting ladyship came the bright little widow, all eagerness
to give welcome and service. My lady suffered herself to be conducted
above-stairs to a more spacious room, lined with coffers and presses,
whose varied contents were displayed to her admiring and interested
eyes. Thus, the Countess, who in reality sought no more than the widow's
beautifying gloves, spent a full two hours surveying brocades for gowns,
embroideries from the Levant, laces from Flanders, comfit-boxes and
scent-phials from Italy, knitted stockings of spun silk from Spain,
besides ribbons, garters, shoulder-knots, and a dozen other fripperies
of home manufacture. And in the end she departed without the gloves,
because the widow assured her that she kept no stock of them, since to
be effective they must be freshly prepared. A pair of them should be
ready for her ladyship in two days' time.

Thus it came to pass that, two days later, my lady was again in
Paternoster Row.

Mrs. Turner received her with the announcement that she had stayed in
town especially in order to serve her. Now that the hot weather was upon
them, it was her custom to spend most of her time at her country house
on the river, leaving the conduct of affairs in Paternoster Row to her
woman Foster and the girls under her charge, as well as to her man
Weston. This Weston, the unprepossessing fellow who admitted Mrs.
Turner's patrons, was, she said, a trained and able apothecary, who had
been in her late husband's service. He was skilled in making up the
various pomades and unguents to her recipes.

She summoned him now to bring the gloves, which had been specially
prepared. Together with these she supplied a little pot of pomatum that
was fragrant with some hyacinthine distillations, of which Mrs. Turner
asserted that the secret was hers alone. To demonstrate exactly how it
should be used, she took the Countess's right hand in her own left, and
proceeded to stroke it from finger-tips to wrist as if applying the
unguent.

And now there came a sudden oddness into the widow's conduct. Midway
through this operation, she abruptly checked, and the Countess felt her
hand gripped with almost hurtful firmness. Mildly surprised, she looked
up to find Mrs. Turner's face enigmatically set. The dark eyes dilated
under the arched brows, now slightly raised; the red lips were tightly
compressed.

'What is it?' quoth her puzzled ladyship.

'Sh! Wait! Don't speak! Don't move, or it will escape me. Wait, wait!'

The tone, so mysteriously impressive, wrought upon the younger woman's
imagination. This and the tightened grip upon her hand, the altered
countenance and the quick excited breathing of the widow gave her the
impression of being in the presence of something abnormal and uncanny.

'Yes,' said Mrs. Turner, her voice hushed almost to a whisper. 'Yes! I
feel it plainly. It is all about you, like ... like a mist. It saturates
you, yet you yourself are scarcely aware of it.'

'What?' begged the Countess. An odd, indefinable fear began to stir in
her. 'What?'

'The longing, the yearning, the love that is being poured out for you,
offered up to you like an incense. It is all about you in billowing
clouds. I feel it so plainly. Oh, so plainly.'

'You feel it?' The Countess began to be afraid. She sought to release
her hand; but the effort was too feeble to defeat the other woman's
firmness. 'What do you mean? What do you feel? How do you feel it?'

'Do not ask me how.' Mrs. Turner's tone was vehement, for all that it
remained low and awed. 'There are mysteries none can explain; forces
known to some only because they have experienced them. I gather it all
from the touch of your hand. Almost I see the man whose longing wraps
you about. He is noble and great, comely, gallant, young; he is
high-placed. High-placed. He stands near the King, himself. And you ...
And you ...'

She broke off abruptly, and let fall the hand. Abruptly her voice
returned to its normal pitch. 'I can tell you no more. At least, not
now.'

The girl was staring, wide-eyed, amazed, even troubled. Her face had
lost some of its colour; there was an agitation in her breathing. She
was in the presence of something she did not understand, something that
perplexed, disturbed, and awed her.

She said so frankly, and begged for explanations, a request that seemed
to shake the widow with sudden fear.

'Oh! I should not have told you. I should not. I could never make you
understand these forces which I do not understand myself. They govern
me; they compelled me to speak. I had no more will than the leaf that is
swept up by the breeze. Of your pity, sweet lady, forget what I've said.
Forget it.'

The Countess was moved by her distress. Compassionately she set a hand
upon the widow's shoulder. 'Why, so I will, since you ask me. Say no
more.'

'And you'll tell no one? You promise me that? It was my affection for
you betrayed me. Promise! Promise!'

'I promise it.' The Countess was emphatic in her desire to allay the
little woman's alarm. 'I've forgotten it already.'

Mrs. Turner knew too much of womankind to suppose that the affirmation
was exact, and my lady discovered it on her way home. Far from having
forgotten the little incident, she could turn her thoughts to nothing
else.

Those words, so oddly spoken in that hushed voice, subtly conveying
almost a suggestion that the speaker uttered them despite herself,
continued to ring in her ears.

'... the man whose longing wraps you about. He is noble, great, comely,
gallant, young. He is high-placed. He stands near the King himself.'

To whom could these words allude but to Robin Carr: that noble, comely,
gallant young man whom her thoughts never quitted, and than whom no man
stood nearer to the King?

There was something as supernormal and uncanny about the matter of the
disclosure as about its manner. Lady Essex had heard, of course, of
seers and diviners, who had power to perceive distant, past, and future
things, and she believed in the reality of their powers as implicitly
as did most people in her day. It must be that gifts of this nature were
in the endowment of Anne Turner. They were accounted unholy of origin by
the general, from the King himself who condemned them in his essay on
Demonology. But did it follow that they were really so? And, unholy or
not, they touched upon the one matter on which her ladyship passionately
desired more knowledge.

It is not surprising, therefore, that early on the following morning she
was to be found again at the sign of the Golden Distaff, driving the
widow hard with questions which appeared to terrify her and which she
struggled fearfully to elude. Driven mercilessly to the last ditch by
the Countess's importunities, she made a distracted appeal _ad
miseri-cordiam_.

'Oh! I was mad, mad, to have told you what I felt. I should have been on
my guard against it. If I had esteemed you less, it would have been easy
to have found strength.'

'But why? Why? Where is the harm?'

'The harm?' Mrs. Turner's fair, winsome face was distorted by fear; the
plump body, so warm and shapely, was shivering. 'There is no harm. There
is no wrong in what I did. But there is the danger of how others might
regard it.'

'If that is all you fear, Anne, be at peace. No living soul shall know
of it from me.'

'Dare I trust you?' The widow clung to her. 'Will you promise that?'

'I will swear it,' said the Countess solemnly.

Profusely Mrs. Turner thanked and blessed her, pronouncing her an angel
of goodness as of beauty.

Her ladyship, standing slim and straight, smiled gently down upon her,
chiding her for her foolishness in so unnecessarily alarming herself.

'Perhaps I have been foolish,' Mrs. Turner agreed, now entirely soothed.
'After all, it is not as if I had read the future for you.'

'The future?' Her ladyship was quick to fasten upon this. She set a
hand, a fine jewelled hand, upon Mrs. Turner's shoulder. 'Would that be
possible? Would it?' Eagerness and apprehension were blended in her
young face and parted her red lips.

Mrs. Turner recoiled, and back came the panic to her countenance.

'Why do you ask? Why do you seek to probe?'

'Why don't you answer?'

'Do you seek the ruin of a poor woman who desires only your good, my
lady?'

Lady Essex accounted that her question, after a fashion, had been
answered.

'Why will you suppose that of me? How could I have any such intentions?
I need your help, dear Turner. I need knowledge of what is to come;
knowledge of ... of ...' She broke off in maidenly hesitation, and her
cheeks grew red. 'Oh, Anne! If you have this power and you will use it
for me, I will pay you well.'

'My God! My God!' The widow was in obvious distress. She wrung her
hands. She sped on tiptoe to the door, opened it and looked out into the
passage. They were in the little ground-floor parlour with its Venetian
glasses and cut flowers and the stern portrait of the late Dr. Turner.

Having reconnoitred, the widow seemed to breathe more easily. 'My God!
If Foster or one of the women should have overheard you! It is not safe
even to mention such things here. They are too dangerous. So dangerous
that I would not venture on them for all the gold in the world.'

Lady Essex sighed. She was pale now, and full of hesitation. 'You give
me no hope, then?'

'Hope?' The widow stared at her out of a face that was now
expressionless. 'What do you want of me? That I take the risk of being
burnt for a witch?'

'Where is the risk in serving me? I can be silent. For my own sake I
should have to be. You are forgetting that. And I would pay you well,
Anne,' she repeated.

At this the widow flared up. 'Have I not said that not all the gold in
the world would tempt me? I do not do such things for gold. I drive no
such trade. God be thanked, I am in no need to do so. But ... If your
need is urgent, I would do it for love of you!'

'Why, then ... When, Anne? When?' cried the eager child.

The widow smiled wryly. 'You are quick to take me up. Well, well, you
shall have your way; and I pray God I may not suffer for it. I know no
other living soul for whom I'd do so much. Nor can I promise a deal, for
my skill is not so great as that of some. Still, what I can I'll do,
since I've promised.'

'God bless you! Oh, God bless you, Turner.'

'But not here. It is too dangerous here. And I need things which are not
here at hand. Also in the peace and quiet of the country results are
better. I go to Hammersmith this afternoon. Come to me there. Not
to-morrow. Not on the Lord's Day. Come Monday. I'll give you full
directions. There we shall be quiet, and you shall have your wish, or as
much of it as I can afford you. But on your life, my lady, no word of
this to anyone, whoever it may be.'

The Countess, eager and grateful, pledged herself solemnly to secrecy,
and so at last departed, content.

Content, the widow watched her go. She should deserve, she thought, the
warm commendations of Sir Arthur.




CHAPTER X

METHEGLIN


If Mrs. Turner's black-and-white timbered house at Hammersmith was not
imposing, at least its creeper-clad exterior was attractive, and its
interior snug almost to the point of luxury, whilst the garden, which
ended in a flagged terrace above the water, extended to some two acres,
well planted with trees and shrubs and parterres of flowers. Privet
hedges enclosed a kitchen-garden, a section of which was devoted to the
growth of special herbs, spurges, euphorbiæ, and plants of a saponaceous
nature, employed by the widow in some of her wonder-working
preparations. All was well tended, trim, and neat, like Mrs. Turner's
own person. As a parapet to the terrace on the river's brink there was a
low brick wall, in which, at intervals, little bays had been practised,
equipped with seats.

On this terrace on a languid afternoon in July sauntered Mrs. Turner
with my Lady Essex.

This was the third visit paid the widow by her ladyship in the course of
a week, and so far the results had been meagre. The Fates had given but
a poor response to the sibyl's endeavours to propitiate them.

On each occasion she had retired alone with the Countess to a cool,
partially darkened room, opening directly upon the garden, and there,
having locked the door, she had taken from a sandalwood box a sphere of
solid crystal of the size of an apricot, swathed in black velvet. Her
elbows resting on the small table before her, her neat golden head in
her white hands, she had sat gazing intently into this lucent sphere,
wherein she hoped to see mirrored some of that immediate future into
which the young Countess desired so ardently to pry. In the aggregate,
however, the results had been vexatiously scanty, and they added little
to what Mrs. Turner, without any crystal to assist her, had already been
able to descry.

Greater success might have attended her endeavours had they not received
a check from the Countess on the occasion of the first visit.

In the heart of the crystal, Mrs. Turner announced, the comely, gallant,
noble youth of whom she had formerly spoken resolved himself out of a
mist.

'His blue eyes gaze out at me with a longing that is akin to pain. His
lips part. He speaks a name. It is Frances. He bows his auburn head in
thought.'

But here the Countess had interrupted. 'Auburn? Nay! His hair is bright
gold.'

Instantly, in confusion, she sucked in her breath, as if she would have
sucked back the betraying words. The widow, however, sitting as one
entranced, gave no sign beyond a momentary dilatation of her narrow eyes
that she had so much as heard the interruption. But it clearly conveyed
to her two facts: that however much Prince Henry might be enamoured of
the Countess, it was not upon him that her ladyship's thoughts were
dwelling, and that the eagerness with which the Countess desired more
knowledge concerned some other than himself. Like the Prince, this other
person must also be young, gallant, comely, and noble, and so
high-placed that he, too, stood very near the King, since so far, it was
clear, these details had described him. The matter required reflection
and information. Mrs. Turner, therefore, was carefully vague in her
disclosures, postponing any definite revelation until she should have
had an opportunity of conferring with Sir Arthur.

The ingenious knight had little difficulty in naming the gentleman so
inadvertently described by her ladyship.

'Hair of bright gold and stands very near the King?' He frowned a moment
in thought. 'Who should it be but Carr? Plague take him! Do you say he
occupies her thoughts?'

'Should not you conclude as much from what I've told you?'

Sir Arthur considered. 'Perdition swallow both him and his trick of
commanding fortune. He finds all that he seeks; and all that he doesn't
seek, seeks him. Look, Anne, she must be turned aside. Wound her pride.
Persuade her that he is indifferent. Tell her ...'

'Teach hawks to stoop,' said the widow. 'You may show me what to do, but
never how to do it.'

So when next closeted with her ladyship in the seclusion of her cosy
bower, she peered into the gleaming orb, she beheld there a figure which
she described in greatest detail: tall, handsome, broad-shouldered,
magnificent of mien and apparel; the George upon his breast; a jewel in
his ear, gleaming through a cloud of hair of the colour of spun gold; a
little peaked beard and upturned mostachios about a comely mouth; eyes
of clearest blue that were full of laughter; a careless attitude towards
all the world.

The Countess listened intently, greedily, unblinking, her bosom stirring
under her bodice of green taffeta, which rose to the throat and was
there closed by a ruff, encircling her upright collar.

The dreamy, monotonous voice continued.

'He stands so high, deems himself so secure in the King's regard that he
can be careless of the regard of others. He has lately been preferred.
The George upon his breast is newly come there. I see great nobles
bowing before him. They address him ... by name ... "Lord Rochester."'

The Countess clasped her hands, leaning farther forward.

'But he recks little of them, or of any. Carelessness is the greatest
attribute of his nature. Love has never touched him, cannot touch him,
unless it be love of himself; for beautiful as Narcissus, like Narcissus
he is in love with his own image. Yet there is one who, misguided,
bestows her thoughts on him. Let her poor soul beware the fate of Echo,
and put this Narcissus from her mind. He fades. A mist is forming.'

The widow paused. Lady Essex had sunk back in her tall chair. Her eyes,
a moment since so bright and eager, were veiled now behind lowered lids;
her hands, still clasped, had fallen listless to her lap; the colour had
perished from her cheeks.

Soon Mrs. Turner, still peering intently into the crystal, announced a
fresh vision.

'Another comes. This is he who was here before; one who, younger than
the other, yet stands even higher, and stands there by right of birth
and noble blood. His nobility is stamped upon his face. It comes from
the very soul of him. He is the Prince of Wales. He is very earnest. Sh!
He speaks. "I love you, Frances; I love you so that I shall find you
wherever you may hide yourself. Soon, very soon we shall meet. I am
coming to you now."' She paused, to add a moment later: 'He's gone; the
crystal clears. I can see no more.'

She lowered her hands from her face, and sank back in her chair with a
sigh. Then with one of her brisk movements she turned her head to
glance, smiling, at her companion. At sight of her ladyship's white
face, drooping glance, and the lines of pain about her lips, the little
widow cried out in sudden concern.

'Why, what has happened, child, to distress you? Is't what I've told
you?'

A wan smile lighted momentarily the sweet, pale face. 'It is nothing.'
Her voice faltered a little, as if tears were not far off. 'You did not
tell me quite what I had hoped to hear. Perhaps we are not meant to pry
beyond the reach of our natural senses.'

'Oh, dear, my lady!' Mrs. Turner was on her feet. 'Let us out into the
air. It is cool in the garden.'

And so they came to seek the terrace. Awhile they paced there, then
rested, and then paced again, and my lady spoke of going. But Mrs.
Turner, whose eyes ever and anon raked the bend of the river towards
Chelsea, beguiled her to linger, with talk in the course of which she
skilfully drew from the Countess a deal more of her mind than her
ladyship intended to reveal.

An hour or so was spent in confidences, when at last a gilded red barge
of six oars came into view rounding the bend. It kept close to the
Middlesex shore, and as it approached, two gentlemen in plumed hats were
to be seen in the stern-sheets, one sitting and the other standing. He
who stood suddenly doffed his hat and bowed.

'Why, it is Sir Arthur, as I live!' cried the widow in delighted
surprise.

She waved a hand in almost rapturous acknowledgement of the greeting.

Sir Arthur stooped to speak to his sitting companion, who nodded. Then
he issued a command to the watermen in their beef-eater liveries, and
the barge came gliding towards the little jetty at the wall's foot.

Sir Arthur stepped from the vessel, and turned to proffer his arm to the
other gentleman, who, disregarding it, leapt nimbly ashore with the easy
grace of the athlete. Sir Arthur preceded him up the steps to announce
him.

'My dear Anne, I have so praised your metheglin to his highness, that he
must stay to taste it.'

Mrs. Turner gave evidence of being flustered, of being taken by
surprise. 'His highness!' she gasped, and dropped a low curtsey as the
Prince stepped up beside his gentleman.

Into the surprise and even vexation of Lady Essex was woven a suspicion
that here was being played a concerted scene, until she saw the blank
amazement that overspread the boy's handsome, high-bred face with its
finely arched nose and full, glowing eyes. That he was not acting she
was instantly assured. He frowned as he turned impulsively to question
Sir Arthur.

'You knew of this?'

'Of what, your highness?' The slim, dark gentleman seemed taken aback.
'On my life,' he protested, 'I had no thought for anything but the
metheglin.'

The Prince uncovered, and bowed low to Lady Essex. 'This, madam, is a
happiness I had no thought to find here.'

Her ladyship curtsied in silence, a little trouble showing in her eyes.

Almost before she realised it, she was alone with him. He had declined
the widow's invitation to go within. He would taste her preparation of
metheglin, of which Sir Arthur boasted, out here in the cool; and she
had gone off to fetch it, accompanied by Sir Arthur.

Lady Essex remained despite herself in some embarrassment, born of a
desire to withdraw, which she knew not how to fulfil. The Prince
observed her as she stood leaning on the parapet, straight and slim in
her gown of pale green taffeta, her face half-averted, her eyes upon the
water and the wooded shore beyond. He addressed her without assurance.

'Madam, I have said this is a happiness I had no thought of finding
here. Yet I must bless the chance.' He drew nearer, and, standing close
beside her, uncovered, leaving the breeze from the water to ruffle the
thick auburn locks about his smooth white brow. 'I hope, madam, that you
do not altogether condemn it.'

'That were discourteous and undutiful, and I trust that I am neither.'

'I am not concerned, madam, with either courtesy or duty in you.'

She gave him a fleeting glance that was cool and discouraging, as was
the half-smile that flickered across her lips. 'That is a pity,
highness. For I offer both.'

'And nothing besides?' He was very eager.

'Nothing besides, I think. Your highness has no claim to more; nor has
any man unless it be my husband.' Her lips came together firmly.

The Prince's face displayed his boyish annoyance. 'Your husband? Pshaw!
That's what my father would call a peasebogle. What do you know of a
husband, or he of you? Were you ever lovers ere you entered your
child-marriage? You use his name deliberately to deter me.'

'If your highness perceives so much, why is it your pleasure to ignore
it?'

'That is a clear question, Frances.' He used her name for the first
time.

'But one that your highness need not be at the pains of answering.'

He smiled with the least shade of bitterness. 'It were a discourtesy not
to do so. I ignore your coldness because I account it to spring from a
mistaken sense of duty.'

'Your highness is modest.' She turned to face the house, and leaning
against the parapet wondered would the others never return.

Prince Henry bit his lip, and, as he looked at her, pain was blent with
ardour in his eyes.

'Why so cruel, Frances?' Abandoning all subtleties he cried out frankly:
'I love you so deeply; so sincerely!'

She allowed her agitation to display itself. She spoke sharply. 'Your
highness must not say these things to me.'

'Why not, since they are true? Why not? Is your absurd marriage--a
marriage that is yet no marriage--to make the obstacle?'

She looked at him steadily. 'I have understood that my Lord Essex was
your friend from boyhood, your playmate before he became my husband.'

He flushed. 'What's that to the matter? Does it make his marriage with
you less than a crime of your elders? You'll not pretend that you love
him, who was scarcely thirteen, a gloomy, awkward boy, when you saw him
last?'

'I need no pretences of any kind. I am a wife. That should make me safe
from other men's wooings.'

'A wife in name only,' he insisted. 'That is not to be a wife. Such
marriages as yours are easily annulled.'

'Annulled?' Almost she laughed, but without suspicion of mirth. 'And to
what purpose the annulment? Or does your highness offer marriage to
follow thereafter?'

She looked him straightly between the eyes as she asked the question,
and she saw his glance momentarily falter, saw the flush deepen in his
face and spread to his brow. An instant he hesitated, brought thus face
to face with his own hitherto scarce considered intentions. Then his
boyish ardour and impetuosity supplied the answer.

'By my faith, I will do even that, Frances.'

'Even that!' said she, and smiled now with very definite scorn. 'I thank
your highness for the "even." There's a whole world of revelation in
that "even." It tells of sacrifice, as a last resource.'

Her irony stirred his anger. 'Am I to be denied the dearest thing in
life because I am what I am?' He was passionately sincere. 'Am I to go
loveless because I was born heir to the throne of England? If so ...'

She interrupted him without ceremony. 'I have for you, Prince Henry, no
such love as you desire of me. Of your pity, then, do not torment me
further.'

From red that he had been, he now went pale. Long he looked at her with
hurt, brooding eyes, eyes in which there was something of that bodeful
look that haunted the eyes of all the Stuarts. Then he bowed in token of
absolute submission to her will, and, like Sir David Wood, before a
similar dismissal at her hands, he offered service where love was
unacceptable.

'I thank you for your plainness; and I honour you for it. I but beg you
to remember that my love for you remains; that I am your servant,
Frances, a friend and servant to count on in your need.'

'Ah! Now you are good and generous and princely, indeed.' Impulsively
she held out her hand. He took it and bore it to his lips. 'For this I
honour you so that you almost make me regret that I have not more to
give.'

'I am content,' he said. 'Content to be your friend.'

But that was not quite all his thought. To have been entirely frank, he
must have said that he was content to be her friend until he could be
more. Lacking though he might be in worldly experience, yet his
mother-wit revealed to him that between man and woman friendship is to
be regarded as the antechamber of love, and in that antechamber he
was--since perforce he must be--content for the present to wait with
such patience as he could command.

At the stage to which things had come, the return of the others was
almost as welcome to his highness as it was to her ladyship.

Mrs. Turner led the way, followed closely by Sir Arthur, bearing a tall
jug. After them came Weston in a white jerkin, carrying a silver tray on
which were four Venetian glasses, fashioned to look like agate cups.

The widow's metheglin, cunningly flavoured with ginger, rosemary,
betony, borage, and thyme, proved to the Prince's palate as rare and
pleasant, he protested, as Sir Arthur had promised. Whilst they quaffed
it, Weston was despatched for ale, which he dispensed to the watermen.

Then, to the infinite surprise of Sir Arthur, who had supposed that some
hours would be spent here in pleasant dalliance, even at the cost of
abandoning the journey to Richmond, the Prince announced that he must
push on while the tide served. They reëmbarked and departed, leaving
Mrs. Turner intrigued and Lady Essex very thoughtful.

'You had no knowledge, Anne, that his highness would be coming?'

'I had,' said Mrs. Turner shortly.

'You had!'

'The crystal forewarned me. Have you forgot?'

'And you had no other knowledge save that? Answer me truthfully.'

Whether truthfully or not, Mrs. Turner certainly answered volubly and
convincingly. How should she know the intentions and movements of the
Prince of Wales? My lady did not suppose that he corresponded with Anne
Turner?

My lady acknowledged that she did not. She recalled also his obviously
genuine surprise at beholding her. She must, then, accept this as a
proof of the power of the crystal and of the accuracy of the visions it
presented. If that applied to the Prince, it must also apply to Robin
Carr, and what the crystal had shown concerning him was not calculated
to cast down a lady as intent as my Lady Essex to remember that she was
a wedded wife. Yet so downcast and dispirited did she now show herself
that the little widow grew motherly towards her, and in this spirit of
motherliness sought her confidence.

The girl gave it as freely as those must whose hearts are surcharged.
The sum of it was expressed in the question with which she closed the
chapter of self-revelation.

'Is it always so in life, Anne? Do we ever seek to elude that which
pursues us, whilst as ardently pursuing that which eludes?'

The widow's narrow eyes grew narrower in sly thought. Pensively she
stroked her long upper lip. Towards Sir Arthur she had done her part,
and the attitude which Lady Essex disclosed towards the Prince appeared
to put an end to that adventure, and so to all chance of profit either
for the widow or her lover. The other was a vastly different affair.
Mrs. Turner looked down a long avenue of possibilities.

After a pause she sighed, and answered very softly and slowly: 'There
are ways of arresting and overtaking the elusive. There are even ways to
compel it to go about and become a pursuer in its turn.'

'Ways there may be. But I seem to lack the art of them.'

'It is an art that is known to very few. Yet it can be practised, and it
rarely fails.'

My lady stared at her, struck by the hint of mystery in her tone.

'To what art do your refer? What do you mean, Turner?'

The widow took her arm familiarly. There was a new intimacy in her
manner, which seemed suddenly to sweep away what was left of the
barriers rank had placed between them. Yet, oddly enough, the Countess
of Essex, reared in such proud consciousness of her lofty station, did
not now resent it, so urgent was her need. She suffered herself to be
conducted to one of the seats embayed in that parapet, and sat there,
the widow's hand still within the crook of her arm.

'You shall hear something, child, that I have never told anyone, that I
would not tell anyone but you. When you spoke just now it seemed to me
that I was hearing my own tale of some years since, when I loved even as
you tell me that you love, one who was as unconscious and indifferent as
this gallant who has caught your maiden fancy. I speak, my dear, of Sir
Arthur Mainwaring. You see I make no secret with you. I was in despair.
I was come so low that I began to think wicked thoughts of taking my own
life, since he who was so necessary to me was so completely beyond my
reach. That was in the year after Dr. Turner died, and when I had set up
my shop in Paternoster Row. Sir Arthur used to come there with his
sister--she who afterwards married Lord Garston--and I loved him from
the moment that I first beheld him.'

Lady Essex reflected that love at first sight had been her own case,
too, and her thoughts went back to that day in the tilt-yard at
Whitehall, three years ago. Her ready sympathy flowed out to this
sister-sufferer from the same cruel pangs.

'In my despair I had recourse to the crystal,' Mrs. Turner resumed. 'The
blessed gift of scrying has been mine almost from childhood. I first
discovered it ... But that's nothing to the matter. In the crystal I
was shown a man advanced in years, a master of medicine, astrology, and
alchemy.'

She broke off to demand assurances before disclosing more. 'What I tell
you, child, is secret and sacred between us, not to be shared with any,
whoever it may be.'

Instantly and fervently the Countess, now a prey to curiosity, interest,
and hope, gave the solemn undertakings required, whereupon the widow
resumed.

'His name and abode were revealed to me together with the assurance that
he would supply my needs. I sought him out that night, and told him all.
He could give me my heart's desire. Although the price was heavy, had it
taken my last angel, I must have paid it.

'I came away with a little phial; no more than that, and instructions
how to use it. When next Sir Arthur and his sister came to Paternoster
Row, I offered them a metheglin which I distilled according to a
wonderful receipt. It is the metheglin I gave you this afternoon. They
tasted it that day, and in it Sir Arthur drank the contents of the
phial, which I had poured into his cup.'

She ceased, and sat a moment in silence, bemused, pensively smiling. The
Countess shook her by the arm. 'Yes, yes? Well? And then?'

The widow continued, the passive smile still hovering about her lips.

'It was in the depth of winter, a foul night of wind and sleet. At dead
midnight I was roused by a furious beating on my door. From my window I
asked who knocked, and my heart stood still to hear the voice of Sir
Arthur imploring me to open. He was drenched to the skin and splashed
from head to foot with mud. He had ridden twenty miles through the storm
in obedience, he swore, to an irresistible impulse to come and fling
himself at my feet and declare his passion. And until that day he had
scarcely been conscious of my existence.'

My Lady Essex audibly drew breath. Softly the widow closed her tale.

'There is not in all England I'll swear a devouter lover than Sir Arthur
has been to me since that night three years ago. Each time I pour for
him a cup of metheglin, I think of the potion which I mixed in that
first cup he had from me, and I bless the name of Simon Forman.'

'Who is he?'

'The alchemist who wrought the miracle. There! I've let slip his name.
Forget it, my lady.'

Her ladyship shook her golden head. Her eyes were preternaturally
bright.

'On the contrary,' said she, 'I must remember it.'




CHAPTER XI

MAGIC


July was almost out. The weather was insufferably hot, and Whitehall
grown stuffy beyond enduring. The King, having dissolved some months ago
in a spirit of finality a Parliament too stubborn and recalcitrant to
serve his purposes, was determined henceforth to govern Britain without
the cavillings and interferences of that vexatious body. Meanwhile, he
had gone off to indulge his increasing indolence in the comparative cool
of Royston, where he hunted and hawked for the benefit of his health.
Thence almost daily he wrote fond letters imploring his dear lad Robin
to join him.

My Lord of Rochester, pleading urgency of State affairs and yet
discharging none of them, lingered on at Whitehall, thereby puzzling Sir
Thomas Overbury, who so competently relieved him of the burden of those
same affairs which were the pretext of his lingering.

In that workroom of theirs Sir Thomas was at his labours, whilst his
lordship, a dazzling figure in claret and silver, with violet hose and
violet, silver-edged rosettes to his high-heeled shoes, lounged in his
favourite place on the window-seat by the open casement. His listless
fingers held a couple of unfolded letters; his pensive eyes stared into
vacancy.

Sir Thomas glanced at him so frequently that it is to be doubted if the
secretary's interest was really in the documents upon which he laboured.
Presently he threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair.

'The King has written to you again, I see,' he said, his glance upon the
sheets in his lordship's hand.

My lord looked at him coldly. His mood was peevish. 'You see too much,
Tom.'

'I need as many eyes as Argus in your service. Be thankful that I have
them.' He paused as if waiting. Then finding the pause in vain, he
resumed: 'Does the King's letter to you touch upon this business of the
Paris embassy?'

'No.' His lordship showed scant interest. Nevertheless, he condescended
to ask: 'What business is that?'

'His majesty is considering the recall of Digby. I can perceive no
reason for the step. Digby is able and punctual, and he has served us
well. Also he is well liked at the French Court. His removal would be a
blunder, and as a blunder should be avoided.'

His lordship nodded almost vacantly. But this was not enough for Sir
Thomas.

'Do you agree, Robin?' he asked him, and roused him by the sharpness of
his tone.

'Agree? Oh! Ah! You'll have good reasons for what you say. You're better
informed in the matter than I am. Of course I agree.'

'Then I'll draft a letter to his majesty in that sense.'

Again his lordship languidly nodded. 'Ay. Do so. But ...' He checked
on a thought. 'Does his majesty give no reason for considering the
change?'

Overbury's lips tightened in the least suggestion of a smile. 'No direct
reason. But possibly an indirect one in that he names the man whom he
desires should replace Digby.'

'Well? Whom does he name?'

'Myself,' said Sir Thomas.

'Yourself?' It took his lordship a moment to understand. 'D'ye mean you
are offered the French embassy by the King?'

'No less. It's a dazzling offer that would carry my ambitions as far as
ever they've soared in dreams.'

His lordship's face was blank with astonishment. 'By God! The King has
grown to love you singularly on a sudden!'

'Is that how you read it? Oh, Robin, Robin! The King but shows how he
detests me and desires to be rid of me. And there you have the reason
for the recall of Digby clear enough, although not expressed. He desires
you at Royston with him, and to all that he already holds against me he
now adds the blame of keeping you here at Whitehall. I am a thorn in the
flesh of majesty to be plucked out one way or another.'

'If that is so, why should you not profit by it, Tom?'

'And leave you where you now stand? That were a poor fulfilment of the
word I pledged you when I took service with you. No, no, Robin. You and
I stand together. Because you resist the King when he would kick me out
of Whitehall, he now tries to lure me away with bribes which he hopes
may outweigh my love for you. Let be. All that's to consider is that,
after all, the King's letter to me amounts to a royal command; and that
to disobey it is akin to treason. It is not, therefore, for me to refuse
the office, but for you to put forward the sound reasons, first why it
would be impolitic to remove Digby, and secondly why you cannot possibly
dispense with a secretary so skilled as I am in foreign matters. Shall
I draft the letter for you?'

'In God's name,' said his lordship fervently.

'I'll do it to-day. Meanwhile it will help if you do as the King bids
you, and join him at Royston.'

'At Royston?' His lordship's look showed how distasteful was the
suggestion.

'In Heaven's name, why do you linger here? What do you find to hold
you?'

'Ah!' ejaculated his lordship, and to Overbury's annoyance fell again to
musing.

After a moment Sir Thomas returned to the attack: 'You neglect your
interests and your health in lingering. It is well perhaps to make
yourself desired. But within limits. For desire of any kind can languish
and perish if starved long enough. And your health would fare better at
Royston, than in the hot reek of Whitehall.'

'My health is well enough.'

Sir Thomas looked him in the face. 'I find you, like Hamlet, "sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought." You look distempered for all your
finery. Odd's my life, man, why so gorgeous? Your clothes would keep a
bishop for a twelvemonth.'

'Peace!' It was an irritable growl. His lordship rose. 'I am to dine
with my Lord Privy Seal.'

'Is that the explanation? By the achievements of your tailor, I should
judge you to be the guest of the Pope at least.' Then on another note he
added: 'You grow friendlier than may be wise with my Lord Northampton.
Nay, now, patience, Robin! For, as your Mentor, this concerns me. This
suggestion of a Spanish marriage for the Prince of Wales has made two
parties in the State where there were three before. The Queen and
Pembroke and the Prince himself are on one side to oppose it, whilst the
Howards, as Catholics and in the pay of Spain, uphold it. The King in
the rôle of Solomon holds the scales. Either party may prevail with him
in the end. Each party knows that it would take a long stride towards
prevailing if it could win you to its side. That keeps both civil. Keep
them so until the events shall show where the best interest lies. I
cannot think that it will lie with Spain; therefore I counsel that you
do not grow too close with that fox Northampton.'

Lord Rochester considered, fingering his little beard. 'He's very
amiable and friendly,' said he slowly.

'From the teeth outwards. That's Henry Howard's way. The most delusive
flatterer in the world, and as false as he's sweet. No man knows what he
carries in his heart.'

His lordship nodded. 'Rest you. I'll practise the like by him.' He stood
in thought a moment by the table. Then, taking one of the two sheets he
held, he placed it before Sir Thomas. 'Can you resolve this riddle for
me, Tom?'

Overbury's attention was at once caught by the fantastic writing. The
characters were Gothic, and their elegant form suggested a practised and
scholarly penman, who chose this means of dissembling his hand. It was
intriguing. More intriguing still was the matter it contained.

     Chance has revealed to me the secret of a lady's heart, which my
     regard and love for your lordship drives me to make known to you.
     Of this lady I dare no more than indicate that your lordship is
     already well acquainted with her, that she is sprung from one of
     the first families in the land, that a prince pays court to her,
     and that she might not remain insensible to his insistence if she
     had not already bestowed her virgin heart upon your lordship, of
     which your lordship is not yet aware.

It bore by way of signature the legend, 'One who wishes well to your
lordship.' Sir Thomas looked up at the magnificent figure beside him.
Humour struggled with gravity on his long, pale face.

'It is concise and elegantly couched. Writ by a scholar, that is plain.
So much it tells me. The rest you should be in better case to infer than
I. That is, as to who should be concerned to inform you that the Lady
Essex sighs for you.'

'Ah! So you, too, think that the Lady Essex is meant?'

'Think? It's plain. What is less plain is why anyone should be concerned
anonymously to disclose it to you. Is it a trap, by chance?'

'A trap?' His lordship was startled. Then he brushed the suggestion
aside. 'Pshaw!'

'I am,' said Overbury, 'by nature suspicious of all things I do not
understand. It is a prudent instinct, common to all animals, including
man.'

'But to what end a trap?'

'Many things are possible. It might be to increase the discord between
yourself and the Prince, who courts her openly; to embroil you with him.
Or it might be to make an enemy for you of her husband.'

'Her husband is no husband.' There was a sudden heat in his lordship's
tone. 'Besides, he is absent abroad.'

'He'll return one day, perhaps before long.'

'What, then?' The pride and arrogance which his great position at court
were engendering in Rochester flashed out in his reply. 'To oppose me
were but to shatter himself against me.'

Sir Thomas raised his brows. 'So you've considered it already? You're
gulping the bait of this letter?'

His lordship turned away in silence, and sauntered to the window. He
spoke presently with his back to Sir Thomas, his eyes upon the privy
garden below.

'It needed not this letter,' he confessed, 'to turn my thoughts to her.'

Sir Thomas frowned at his lordship's back, and for a moment was very
thoughtful.

'You are telling me that this revelation is welcome to you.'

'So that if it be a gin, it is one into which I must have walked before
long without any beckoning.'

'But being beckoned, you'll run instead.'

'That is the only difference. And now you know why I am glad to dine at
Northampton House. Politics have no part in this. My Lord Privy Seal is
not the attraction. I'll keep my head where he is concerned.'

'By losing it to his niece. Yet the one may lead to the other.'

Lord Rochester wheeled sharply. 'It is not in your mind that Northampton
may have writ that letter?'

Sir Thomas laughed outright. 'I was fool enough to think it for a
moment. But on reflection I perceive the thought to be an idiocy. The
Essex alliance is too valuable to the worldly Howards that they should
jeopardise it to make the daughter of their house your mistress.
Besides, they have their pride. No, no. It was no Howard who composed
this lure.' He sighed and frowned. 'If I bid you ignore it, you'll
ignore the advice. But in God's name walk warily. You've much to lose,
Robin.'

'I am not by nature rash.'

'By nature, no. But by love the most prudent lose their caution. I trust
you'll dine with a good appetite.'

His lordship departed to his barge, which waited at the privy steps. He
was rowed to Northampton House in a state of eagerness such as no
previous visit to my Lord Privy Seal's had aroused in him. The letter,
as he had confessed, came but to add a spur to inclinations and longings
which had been faintly astir in him since last he had walked and talked
in the same garden with her ladyship.

Lady Essex was with her uncle when he arrived. Her reception of him was
graciously friendly and no more. Sir David Wood was also of the party,
and they were moderately gay at dinner, saving that her ladyship fell so
far short of her usual norm of vivacity that presently her old uncle
rallied her upon the fact.

He found her pale, he declared, asked her on whom she had bestowed the
delicate roses that usually blossomed in her cheeks, and marvelled that
she did not join the Court at Royston and seek the enjoyment of the
country air. She replied that she was going to-morrow with her mother.
Hitherto affairs had kept her father fast at Whitehall, but it was now
decided they should leave him there. And all the while she was nervously
fingering a slender phial in her waist-band, containing some drops of a
precious and very costly elixir which she had purchased from Simon
Forman, the alchemist, and asking herself how she could convey it into
Lord Rochester's cup of wine. As he sat facing her across the board,
circumstances offered her no opportunity. Consequently her spirits
sank, and the vivacity upon whose diminishing her uncle had commented
became utterly extinct.

Disappointment was not hers alone. As the time for departure approached,
Lord Rochester--to whom the letter he had received was as a spark to
tinder--began to think that he had had his pains for nothing in dining
thus privately with my Lord Privy Seal. But a sudden uplifting awaited
him at the very last moment. As he was taking his leave, her ladyship
announced her own return to Whitehall, and begged a place in his barge
for the journey.

He dissembled his joy as he handed her into the carved and gilded cabin
in the stern, whose curtains he loosed, to shelter her from the ardour
of the sun and also from the eyes of the watermen in their
blue-and-silver liveries and other wayfarers upon the river.

As the barge was pushed off, he took his seat beside her on the red
velvet cushions, bareheaded and tongue-tied. Fortunately she came
provided with matter for discourse.

'My lord, I have a favour to beg of you,' she announced.

'My lady, you make me happy,' said he, with such sudden sincerity and
fervour that her gentle eyes fled startled from his glance and a tumult
started in her breast.

She repressed her agitation, however, to make her request, and in making
it produced a folded paper. It was a petition from Sir David Wood for
certain dues, for services rendered.

Sir David, trading upon such interest as his avowal of affection might
have awakened, had not scrupled to use her for the purpose of conveying
this petition directly to the very fount of patronage, rather than
entrust it to the ordinary channels. And she, out of the gentle meekness
of her nature, had very readily consented, whilst warning him that her
influence with my Lord Rochester was slight indeed.

She went on now to speak of Sir David's worth, his ability, and the
esteem in which her uncle held him, and was still dwelling upon these
matters when his lordship interrupted her.

'What signifies, madam, is that you ask it. You may count the petition
granted.' He thrust the paper into the bosom of his claret-and-silver
doublet. 'Have you no other commands for me? My happiness lies in
serving you.'

She could look the Prince of Wales steadily between the eyes and chop
wit with him when he spoke so. But Robert Carr's comparatively
restrained profession of service left her confused and tongue-tied.

'You are very gracious to me, sir,' she answered him mechanically.

His right arm was flung along the cushions and the shallow rail behind
her. He bowed his head to peer under the brim of her dark beaver hat
with its sweeping ostrich plume of green, and his glance was at once
ardent and suppliant.

'Could any man whom you honoured with your commands be less?'

She looked up into his face. For an instant their eyes met and held each
other, and in that instant all seemed said and all changed between them.
Then her glance fled in a panic of shyness, and the next moment he was
speaking.

'Frances!'

That was the only word he uttered. But the tone of his voice said all
that was ever packed into the most eloquent declaration. It caressed, it
avowed, it claimed.

A pause followed. Then he leaned nearer. His right arm was resting,
though very lightly and timidly, against her shoulders; his left hand
reached across and closed upon both hers where they lay in her lap. She
made no attempt to release them. She sat very still, scarcely seeming to
breathe.

'Frances!' he said again, and now, in addition to the rest, there was an
insistence of entreaty in his voice.

Responding to it, she half-turned to him. His right arm closed about
her, and his left went round to meet it. She was in his arms, against
his breast, her eyes veiled behind lowered lids, the half-gloom of the
curtained cabin befriending them.

He bent his head, and kissed her lips. Thus for a long moment they
clung, and almost swooned in the ecstasy of that first communion. Then
they fell apart, to stare, half-scared, half-laughing, each at the
other, whereafter she buried her face in sudden burning shyness upon his
breast, and in her turn uttered his name, almost upon a sob.

'Robin! Robin!'

The oars slackened, to warn these two, to whom the world about them was
just then forgotten, that they were at the privy steps.

As he handed her from the barge, something slipped from her left hand
and dropped with a tiny splash into the water. It was the phial procured
from Simon Forman. The magic of its contents was no longer needed.




CHAPTER XII

SCANDAL


The affairs of England represented by those heaped documents which made
ramparts about Sir Thomas Overbury's writing-table were suffering
neglect. Sir Thomas in shirt and breeches sat writing verses. You will
not find them in any edition of his Collected Works, for these were
verses written, not in his own name, but in that of another. They were
being conceived to serve the purpose of an amatory epistle.

As he paused in his labours, he smiled. It was not merely that he took a
poet's complacent satisfaction in his conceits, his rhythms and jingles.
It amused him that, having lent his wits to Carr to build him up into
the simulacrum of a statesman and help him win a king, he should now be
lending them to provide him with the garment of the complete and perfect
lover and so help him win a mistress.

And the thought of this mistress, also, afforded matter for grim
amusement and satisfaction to that saturnine gentleman. There should be
a pretty scandal presently, to the profound vexation of the
stiff-necked, worldly Howards, and it should effectively put an end to
any danger of alliance between them and Rochester, such as Overbury
dreaded on every ground. Therefore he addressed himself with zest to his
task on that summer morning, the morrow of the day on which Lord
Rochester had dined with my Lord Privy Seal and brought the Lady Essex
back to Whitehall in his barge.

His lordship had escorted the lady to her lodging in the palace, and
thence had come to Overbury hot-foot and aglow with his success.

'I mind me you said once--on that day in the tennis-court--speaking of
my Lady Essex, that you could write sonnets to her if any would buy them
against his needs. Do you remember?'

'I remember well; though I did not say if any would buy them, but if the
Prince of Wales would buy them.'

'The Prince of Wales, or another, what odds, man?' There was a touch of
impatience in his lordship's tone. 'What skills is the capacity. I want
you to exercise it now for me. And this at once. For to-morrow I go to
Royston, following your advice.'

'What else do you follow in going there? I hear that the Lord
Chamberlain's lady is bound thither, and no doubt her daughter will go
with her. But that's no matter. You shall have the sonnet. Tell me where
you stand that I may know how to fashion it as if it were your own.'

My lord told him, and Sir Thomas was relieved to infer that the letter
in Gothic characters, if still mysterious, was, at least, no trap.

The sonnet was now written, and he was adding final touches to it,
lovingly polishing it, as a lapidary polishes a gem, when Rochester
swept in, a very different Rochester from the one who had lounged there
on the window-seat twenty-four hours ago. The gloomy, pensive man of
yesterday was transfigured into a being brisk and radiant. He came to
fling an arm about the shoulders of his Mentor and secretary, his guide,
philosopher, and friend in the fullest sense of the terms.

'Well, Tom? Well? And is it done? Is it done?'

'It is that,' said Overbury, catching as by infection something of the
other's Scottish diction. 'Look, and content you. I have laboured on it
these four hours and more. The Italian manner is plaguily cramping. But
not Ben Jonson himself could have served you better.'

My lord took up the proffered sheet, and read the first line aloud:

'"O Lady, all of Fire and Snow compounded ..."'

There he broke off in sheer enthusiasm. 'Man! That's a grand conceit! "O
Lady, all of Fire and Snow compounded!" A grand invocation, Tom! And it
expresses her finely. A soul of fire, and a chaste purity, cold and
spotless as driven snow.'

Sir Thomas coughed. 'The image was intended to be purely physical. The
fire is in her hair, her glowing eyes, her scarlet lips, which no doubt
could be fiery upon occasion. The snow is in her white breast and all
the rest of her which we may presume to be as white.'

'I see. But why not spiritual, too? Why not?'

'Because I would not have her suppose that you wrote either as a fool or
a mocker. A woman has no love for either.'

'A fool or a mocker?' My lord was frowning. He took his arm from the
other's shoulders and stood stiffly upright. 'Why must I be either?'

'The talk of the Court is that his highness has singed the wings of his
puritanical austerity at her shrine. Were you not to substitute yourself
as the holocaust, it is possible that in time he might be quite burnt
up.'

His lordship was annoyed, and showed it.

'It is not possible at all. And you know it. As for the Court's lewd
talk ... Pshaw! There never was a pure and lovely flower in any garden
but slugs must be defiling it.'

'It's a poetical conceit,' Sir Thomas approved.

My lord shrugged ill-humouredly, and moved away to resume the perusal of
the sonnet. As he read, his ill-humour was dissipated; his eyes kindled
and his cheeks flushed with pleasure.

'Man, ye've a gift!' he cried at last.

'Several gifts, Robin; several; as is known to all the world, and to
none better than myself. Will the verses serve?'

'Serve! Good lack! It is the very key of Heaven. There's magic in it.'

'A magic key! Well, well, let it unlock for you the door to the Garden
of Delight.'

'I'll copy it at once. Lend me a pen.'

'Here is the very quill that wrote it: from the pinion of neither
Pegasus nor turtle-dove as it should have been, but of a common goose.
In time you may come to find that appropriate. Men often do.'

But my lord never heeded him. He went about the task of copying the
verses in his fairest hand; then folded, sealed, and superscribed the
missive and took his leave. He was departing for Royston, whence he
would write. His train of coaches was already waiting; for he travelled,
as he did all things nowadays, like a great prince, with a state
inferior only to that of the King himself.

At the last moment he remembered a paper in the breast of his doublet,
and plucking it forth tossed it down upon the table.

'There's a petition I desire to grant. My Lord Chamberlain will sign and
seal what's needed.'

He departed in haste, leaving Sir Thomas to unfold and scan the document
at his leisure. Sir Thomas frowned over it. He knew little of the career
of Sir David Wood, and of that little nothing that should entitle him to
a matter of two thousand pounds from the royal treasury. But he did know
of him that he was a creature of Northampton's, and this supplied Sir
Thomas with an excellent reason why he should cut down the claim.

Upon his own responsibility, then, Sir Thomas made a grant of half the
sum petitioned, leaving Sir David, should that not content him, the
alternative of suing through the ordinary channels.

Because he could not to a like extent be the arbiter of all other
matters in the stream of affairs that flowed daily through his hands,
the ensuing fortnight was one of heavy stress for Sir Thomas, who in
addition to ordinary work found himself under the necessity of sending
copious expositions, elucidations, and reports to the absent Rochester.

Now the King had given Rochester upon his arrival a cool and sulky
reception, had upbraided him with neglect, and had allowed his
unreasonable and womanish jealousy of Overbury to transpire in the
course of these upbraidings. Robin, his majesty opined, had made of
business a pretext. The truth was that he had remained at Whitehall
because he liked better the company he found there than that which his
majesty was able to provide at Royston. Majesty was almost in tears that
night when he took Robin to task for his indifference. And he refused
obstinately to accept any explanation other than that which his
petulance placed upon the favourite's absence. But two or three mornings
later, when my lord excused himself from hawking with the King on the
ground of pressure of affairs, his majesty had cursed like a stable-boy,
climbed down from the horse which he had already mounted, and went off
raging to have the matter out with Robin.

Angrily he burst into his lordship's room, and there suddenly checked
his imprecations and stared with rolling eyes.

At a table strewn with papers two secretaries were at work, and Lord
Rochester, in bedgown and slippers, a long document in his hand, was
pacing to and fro in the act of dictating to one of them. He broke off
as the King, all in green, booted to the thighs, a little feather in his
conical hat, a heavy hawking glove on his right hand, rolled into the
chamber.

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Rochester bowed,
astonishment on his countenance.

Where the King had come to storm, he contented himself now with a sulky
grumble.

'Can ye not leave all this until later? It's a fair morning, Robbie, and
the work can keep until after dinner.'

'If your majesty so commands. But after dinner I desired your majesty's
own word on several pressing matters. A courier from Whitehall came in
with these last night.' He pointed to the littered table. 'Only the more
urgent business has been sent on, and it requires early attention.'

'To the deil with it. Let it wait!' The King was peremptory. 'Ye're
pale. Ye need the air and a gallop to whip the colour to your cheeks.'
He shambled forward, and pinched them. 'Get you dressed. I'll stay for
you.'

'Your majesty perceives that it is no more than a postponement.'

'Ay, I perceive,' and he waved the favourite away.

If the royal manner remained surly, the royal heart was uplifted. Here
was proof that what his Robin had told him was true. It was affairs that
had kept him from the King's side, and not any indifference such as
James had feared and too rashly assumed.

As they rode forth together now, the best of friends once more, the King
chid him for his zeal. To the Devil with affairs. Let him procure more
secretaries, let him so dispose that he should not be thus overburdened.
The King would not have him kill himself in the service of the State.
The State might go hang before any man he loved should kill himself with
the labour of looking after it. Where were Cecil and Suffolk and
Northampton and the rest? Indulging themselves in idleness while his
Robin's excessive conscientiousness made a slave of him. This must not
be.

Rochester took order to comply with the royal wishes. He increased the
powers and responsibilities of Overbury and gave him the overt decision
of practically all home affairs that were put forward directly or
indirectly for his majesty's consideration.

But if this left Rochester more time to devote to the King, some of it
again was consumed by his attentions to my Lady Essex, which were now so
open and constant as to be matter for comment and gossip.

Their relations, so tenderly begun upon mutual physical attraction,
became spiritually enriched during those weeks at Royston by the gifts
of soul which each discovered in the other. For Rochester, having once
committed the imposture of employing the choice elegancies of Overbury's
writings, was forced to continue Overbury in the business of supplying
them. Otherwise he must have been driven to explain the cessation of
what the lady herself described in one of her letters to him as 'the
silver-dropping stream of your lordship's pen.'

Sir Thomas, being endowed with a very fertile literary gift and a full
sense of subtlety of thought and melody of words, found in the task some
measure of that self-expression which is the craving of every man of
letters. Where Rochester in his writings would merely have made love,
Overbury made literature as well. He wrote, in fact, precisely as he
would have written had he been himself the suitor, which at times he
almost imagined that he was.

Into the growing amorousness of letters and verses he wove exquisite
patterns of tender philosophy and graceful poesy, revealing coruscating
beauties of mind that could not fail to dazzle and enchant a sensitive
nature.

Rochester in high delight observed the daily growing effect of this
wizardry of words upon the lady. In their frequent meetings, for which
the freedom of Royston gave opportunity, the theme of her discourse
would often be derived from those treasured writings. Thus to the
erstwhile mere carnal attraction provoked by the splendid beauty of the
man, came to be added this intellectual, spiritual delight in him,
transmuting her passion into an ardent worship based on the belief that
such graces of body and of soul had never yet been combined in any
single person.

So far the love of these two creatures, who had become transcendentally
beautiful in each other's eyes, ran a smooth if restricted course,
unruffled by the light gossip to which it was giving occasion, but of
which it remained unconscious.

Not until the Court's return to Whitehall in September did this gossip
suddenly assume the proportions of a scandal. It was the fierce jealousy
of the Prince of Wales that fired the train. The talk that linked the
names of Lady Essex and Rochester had reached the ears of his highness
to wound him both in his heart and in his pride. It affronted and
mortified him deeply to find himself outbidden in the affections of this
lady to whom it began to appear to him that he had stooped. Where now
was the austere wifely duty which she had pretexted when he had wooed
her? And for what, for whom, had she passed him by? For an upstart whom
he detested and despised. Accounting this a sign of her unworthiness,
his love was transmuted into emotions akin to hatred. These flamed up in
him during a ball at Whitehall, as the radiant pair flashed past him and
were lost in the courtly throng. By an evil chance her ladyship dropped
a glove, and was unconscious of the loss.

Sir Arthur Mainwaring, standing by, pounced upon that slender, perfumed
simulacrum of her lovely hand, and in all innocence, hoping to deserve
well for it, proffered the token to the Prince.

'May it please your highness, the glove of my Lady of Essex!'

The Prince stiffened and recoiled, as if shrinking from the touch of
something unclean and vile.

'And what have I to do with it?' he asked, in a tone that withered the
smirking courtier before him. Then his lip curled terribly, and in a
voice that carried far and rang in a score of listening ears, 'It has
been stretched by another,' he added, and swept on.

Those words lighted such a blaze of scandal that my lady's mother, the
easy-going and none too scrupulous Countess of Suffolk, awoke to the
necessity of taking steps to stifle it at the source. On the one hand
there was the responsibility towards the absent Earl of Essex which
urged her to put an end to this growing and perilous intimacy between
her daughter and the favourite; on the other there was the position and
power of Lord Rochester which made it dangerous to apply to the matter
the measures she would have taken in the case of any other man.

In her distraction she took counsel with her husband, who, reduced to a
like perplexity by the alternatives before them, went off to take
counsel in his turn with his uncle Northampton.

Northampton remained unperturbed. 'Why so fearful? It might be turned to
account. It might serve to bring Rochester over to our side. And if we
have Rochester, we have the King.'

My Lord of Suffolk exploded. 'And I am to pay for that with my
daughter's harlotry? God's wounds! Here's pretty counsel for a father!'
And the swarthy little man stamped about the room in a passion, tugging
at his black beard and using stout sailor oaths from his seafaring days.

The old Earl, lounging back in the chair at his library table, derided
him and his milksop scruples. They belonged to some long-dead age, he
asserted. His nephew had not kept pace with the times. After all it was
worth some little sacrifice to win the King over to their side. And when
all was said, such an affair as this with Rochester would not make
Fanny any less virtuous than any other lady at the court of King James.

His nephew declined to hear more. In unequivocal terms he pronounced his
uncle a ribald old man of sin.

'You're not even shrewd in your lewdness,' he concluded. 'For the thing
would never bring you the fruits you hope. You'll never have Rochester
as long as Rochester has Overbury, no matter what you do or what any of
us does.'

'So that's the source of your sour puritanism,' the old Earl mocked him.

'Think so if you choose. I am going. I am going to write to Essex and
tell him that it's high time he came home and claimed his wife.'

The vulture head of Northampton slewed round on its scraggy neck so that
his eyes might follow his departing nephew. 'You're a fool, Tom, as I've
always known.'

My Lord Suffolk slammed the door for only answer. Northampton shrugged
and sneered. Then he grew thoughtful. Perhaps Tom Howard was not such a
fool, after all. Perhaps he was right when he said that as long as
Rochester had Overbury no man should have Rochester, no matter what
price he chose to pay. The recollection of those words reduced my Lord
Privy Seal to gloomy thought. They brought him to suspect that, but for
Overbury, he would long since have made Rochester his puppet, and,
through Rochester, the King. Never had there been such a chance of
accomplishing this as now, when Rochester might so easily be lured into
the Howard influence by Frances. But in despite even of that, Suffolk
was right. Overbury was an insurmountable obstacle. His hold upon
Rochester was something as unbreakable as it was incomprehensible to
Northampton.

Long he sat there, his chin upon his bony hand, his old head full of
evil thoughts from which he could hatch no practical measures, beyond a
conviction that, if Suffolk were not quite a fool in other matters, he
was certainly a fool to bring Essex home at such a moment.




CHAPTER XIII

AT AUDLEY END


Alarums and excursions followed now upon the spread of the scandal.

My Lord Suffolk, to remove his daughter from its orbit and from the
propinquity of Rochester, decreed that she retire with her mother to the
family seat at Audley End.

Frances, in rebellion against a decree which must separate her from her
lover, displayed for the first time some of the strength of character
and determination which underlay the sweetness of her nature, and
offered a firm opposition to parental wishes; and this, notwithstanding
that my Lord Suffolk's language became more and more that of the rough
sea-dog he had been, and less and less that of the urbane Lord
Chamberlain he was become.

Viscount Rochester went off in dudgeon to take counsel with Overbury
upon measures to avenge the deadly insult of Prince Henry's words.
Overbury made philosophy.

'You begin to perceive what a disintegrating, explosive, and
metamorphosing force is contained in love. It can exalt the timid into
heroes and spur them on to high endeavour and to glory. It can abase the
worthy into clowns and betray them into meannesses and vileness. Prince
Henry is suffering from the same distemper as yourself. Its
manifestations are different because the course it runs is different.
You prosper in it; he does not. Compassionate him. It is humane. It is
also prudent. Because, being the King's son, he is beyond the reach of
your resentment.'

Naturally this did not help his lordship's justifiable anger. He
desired, he made it clear, to tear down the sky in his wrath. Sir Thomas
sought to pacify him along other lines.

'You may safely leave his highness to the punishment of his own
conscience. He is a young man of noble and generous nature who has been
false to himself in a moment of jealous fury. So false that he has
sought to defile the very thing he worships. It is a common expression
of jealousy, and one which he will bitterly regret when the balance of
his reason is restored. I doubt if he will ever again be able to look
upon Lady Essex without shame. Leave him to the punishment of that. You
cannot send the length of your sword to the Prince of Wales. Besides,
anything that you may do will only feed the flames of scandal. After
all, it is not as if an honest love were in question.'

At this Rochester flamed up again. In what was his love not honest?

'In that the lady is the wife of another man.'

This merely brought down upon Sir Thomas a fruitless exposition of the
grotesque nature of a marriage under which the lady had remained a maid.
Sir Thomas gently opined that this was a shortcoming which it might be
left to the Earl of Essex to repair on his return home, which should be
taking place before long.

The scene between them was brought to an end by the arrival of a
messenger with a note from Lady Essex. It announced in broken-hearted
terms that, succumbing to parental tyranny, she would be leaving the
court for Audley End to-morrow. To equip herself with certain
necessaries she would be that afternoon at the Golden Distaff in
Paternoster Row. Would his lordship come there secretly, to meet her
perhaps for the last time?

His lordship went. The lady was already waiting in the parlour with the
Eastern carpets, the cut flowers, and the gloomy portrait of the late
Dr. Turner.

Each came to the assignation with a deal to say to the other, all of it
plentifully rehearsed in their minds on their way thither. In each
other's presence they forgot it all, or most of it, and in each other's
arms did little more than sigh and kiss and weep.

What little they did say amounted to vows of eternal fidelity, which no
power, normal or supernormal, should ever shatter.

'I am yours, Robin, for all the days of my life,' she tearfully assured
him. 'I shall never belong to any other whatever they may say or do to
me. Essex may spare himself the pains of seeking me, for I shall never
see him. I swear I never shall. I hate him, Robin. Oh, my dear, I wish I
were dead!'

He stroked her head. He laid it against his shoulder, and spoke with his
lips against her cheek.

'If you were dead, sweet, what would be left in life for me?'

'What is there left in life for us as it is? Shall we live at all if we
are doomed to live apart? Will that be life for either of us?'

Thus they talked on, uttering no more than the unpractical rhetoric of
love without any attempt to be constructive, since, poor things, they
were denied the materials for all that they desired so ardently to
build. They perceived that they were made for each other; but perceived
also the insurmountable obstacles that thrust them apart. They perceived
further, and herein lay their only little comfort, that whilst they were
thrust apart physically there was no power on earth could sever them
spiritually. In soul they were mated irrevocably, whatever might have
happened or might happen to their bodies. Passionately they would cling
to the thought of this and find in it what strength they could against
the dark days ahead.

And so, with repeated final embraces and tear-be-dewed kisses, they
separated at last, and on the morrow Lady Suffolk and her daughter
departed for Audley End.

For days thereafter Lord Rochester gloomed about the Palace of Whitehall
without a smile for anyone, until the King supposed him ill and sent his
new French physician, Dr. Mayerne, to minister to him.

But not all the science which Mayerne was credited with having brought
from France could heal the desolation in his lordship's heart. Overbury
was in better case to serve his needs; Overbury, with his nimble, facile
pen and gifts of prosody, to express in terms of fitting beauty my
lord's anguish in this separation.

And so Sir Thomas, already overburdened with affairs in which his
lordship's part grew daily less, spent what little leisure remained him
in pouring out another's heart in song, and thus, vicariously, bringing
relief to that other heart's surcharge.

From Overbury's point of view this was no better than a waste of time.

His own object had been fully served by the verses he had already
written. The scandal had followed and had achieved the desired purpose
in putting an end to any possibility of a closer intimacy between
Rochester and the Howards.

Therein Sir Thomas was well content. Like the Earl of Northampton, he,
too, had come to watch with personal interest the failing health of my
Lord Salisbury. But he was less impatient than the old Earl, because,
for one thing, he was still young and could afford to wait; and, for
another, time was his friend in that it enabled him to consolidate his
own position and Rochester's, so that when a successor came to be
required to the office of First Secretary of State, his own established
experience and ability backed by Rochester's influence should abundantly
suffice to secure him the coveted and exalted secretaryship. He
suspected--indeed, he had evidence of--a similar ambition in my Lord
Northampton, whose qualifications for the office combined with his rank
to make him the only formidable rival. Could Northampton by hook or by
crook win Rochester's friendship, he might prove a real danger to Sir
Thomas Overbury, frustrating his aims and leaving him to continue as
Rochester's ghost with more labour than had ever been shouldered by a
Secretary of State and none of the honours and emoluments that should
accompany the office.

This danger Sir Thomas now accounted set aside. However cynical he might
suppose Northampton, he could not suppose him so lost to dignity and
self-respect as to fawn for personal gain upon the hand that had cast
this mud upon the Howard escutcheon.

So much being achieved, he accounted all further amorous versifying on
Rochester's behalf as a tedious piece of supererogation. He was
relieved, therefore, by a letter from the embassy in Paris, which
arrived one dull November morning, and he almost betrayed his relief it
the cheerful tone in which he conveyed its contents to Lord Rochester
when his lordship paid him his customary forenoon visit to inform
himself of the day's news.

Overbury spoke first of some discontent aroused in connection with a
certain monopoly recently granted. He expounded the situation at length
until his lordship, wearied and bewildered by details which he followed
with difficulty, interrupted.

'Yes, yes. Settle it as you deem fitting. You know more of the affair
than I do. Prepare what documents are necessary for signature. Is there
anything else of importance?'

Sir Thomas fingered the papers before him, considering. 'Nothing
connected with affairs. But there's something in a letter from Digby
that may interest you. When he wrote the Earl of Essex had been some
days in Paris and was on the point of leaving for England.'

His lordship threw up his head; his figure stiffened, and slowly his
colour changed. For a long moment he stood staring vacantly before him;
then, with an oath, he swung on his heel, and stalked away to the
window.

Sir Thomas pensively studied the back of that tall, athletic young
figure so bravely arrayed in grey and gold, and he smiled a little
wistfully under cover of his beard. Then he went to fling an arm about
his shoulders, and stood there with him looking through the closed
window upon the privy garden, so melancholy now in its winter habit,
wreathed in a vague mist and sodden by the recent rains.

'Take heart, Robin, and accept the inevitable. To struggle against it is
to beat your head against a wall. Courage, child. I'll distil your
anguish into one last sonnet with which you shall write _Finis_ to this
bitter-sweet chapter of your young life.'

'O God!' groaned Rochester.

'Ay, ay, it hurts. But it is inevitable as death. And who faces death
bravely kills half its terror. Accept what you are impotent to refuse.
Stab yourself once for all with that acceptance, and then leave time to
heal the wound you'll make.'

'Time!' Rochester was scornful. 'How could time ever heal such a wound
as that?'

'There is no wound of which human soul is capable which time cannot
heal, given courage at the outset. If that were not so, life could not
be lived. Time buries all that time has brought. Some things it may not
bury as deeply as others. But at least it puts them out of constant
sight, and so brings surcease of painful recollection. It will be so
with you.'

'Ah, never! Never!'

'Others have exclaimed as much and as passionately whilst looking upon
the corpse of love before Time had had a chance to use his shovel. Yet
have they survived to love again. It is one of the laws of life. Take
comfort in the assurances it brings.'

'It brings me none. I do not accept it. Why must I bow? Why submit to
the consequences of an infamy perpetrated by self-seeking ambitious
fools when they made this marriage between those children? Frances knew
not what she did. She was twelve years old when they bound her, when
they defiled the sacrament of marriage out of greed. Is that defilement
to stand? Is she to suffer the horror of this stranger's embraces
because of a bond in the making of which she had no part?'

'Ay, ay. For indignation there is every ground. But it is the idle
indignation over a wrong that is done and cannot be repaired. The bond
was made, and cannot be unmade.'

'Can it not? She can be widowed.' Rochester's eyes were wild.

'Lord save us! These are the days of King James I, not of Saxon Harold.
We are a law-abiding people; not savages. If you kill Essex, in what
case shall you find yourself? What grievance even have you against the
man? He is as much a victim of this bond, as you or Frances, as impotent
to untie it if he would.'

'Is that so certain? If he were as reluctant as Frances to fulfil its
obligations, something might yet be done.'

'Something that not the whole bench of bishops could accomplish.' Sir
Thomas shook his head. 'You must bow, Robin, before the inevitable, or
you'll head for madness and destruction.'

To Robin this must have seemed preferable to the imminent finality of
the severance, for, yielding to the madness against which Sir Thomas
warned him, he went off that day to Audley End, where his abrupt and
wild appearance terrified Lady Suffolk.

For the indiscretion of this visit she upbraided him as roundly as she
dared upbraid so great a nobleman, whose power with the King was such
that if exerted to the full it might suffice to break her husband and
her entire family. She protested that what he did was ill done. Harm
enough had his indiscreet wooing already brought upon her misguided
daughter. He would add to it immeasurably if he pursued it now when
Lord Essex was on the point of arriving home to claim his bride. Almost
with tears she besought him to be generous, to take pity upon them, and
to depart at once.

His lordship, splashed from riding, a little dishevelled and wild-eyed,
looked into that broad, crafty, pock-marked countenance that once had
been comely, and felt himself shamed and baffled by her reproaches and
her prayers.

She was a large woman of a loose, untidy shape which no dressmaker and
not even the Catherine-wheel farthingale--of antiquated
proportions--could dissemble, and in her present distress she waddled in
unlovely manner up and down the hall, where she had received him. A
bright sea-coal fire burned on the wide hearth and dispelled some of the
shadows in that gloomy place, from whose walls dead Howards and others
stared down out of their portraits.

Weary in body from his long ride, and weary in soul from the sustained
agony of longings unfulfilled, his lordship's courage left him. He felt
himself defeated and constrained to accept defeat. But to depart without
sight of his beloved Frances from under a roof that sheltered her was
more, he felt, than anyone had any right to ask of him.

'It grieves me to distress your ladyship,' he acknowledged almost
humbly. 'It grieves me to have been the cause of so much past distress.
Let your ladyship bear with me out of some thought for my own
suffering.'

It was a welcome speech to her. It showed her how she might dismiss this
importunate gentleman and yet retain his precious favour.

She approached him with an air of motherliness, and set a motherly hand
upon his shoulder.

'Dear my lord, I do bear with you for that. My heart is raw for you; for
you and that poor child of mine. But, my lord, you know that no
sacrifice of mine could avail against what is done. I can only beg you,
as I beg her, to be brave, and to accept what Fate has decreed.'

He looked into the broad face, whose crafty eyes were now veiled in
tears, and considered that not Fate, but she and her husband in their
greed, had decreed the immolation of their child on the cruel altar of
loveless ambition.

'Madam,' he begged her, 'I cast myself upon your mercy, and implore you
to let me see Frances before I go.'

The woman's hard mouth tightened visibly.

'To let me see her,' he added, in accents of utter intercession, 'for
the last time.'

'For the last time?' she echoed. She scanned his countenance. Its beauty
and dejection moved her to belief. If that was all he sought, or was now
content to seek, there could be little harm in granting his request.
Indeed, much good might follow. Once a definite farewell was spoken
between the lovers, the road of resignation might be less difficult to
tread.

'You are sincere?' she asked him sharply.

'Madam!' He placed his hand on his heart to stress the assurance which
in his tone was blent with reproach for the implied doubt.

Satisfied, she herself conducted him to her daughter's bower, and, with
a promise to seek him again presently, she left him there alone with
Frances for that last farewell.

But in her satisfaction my Lady Suffolk reckoned entirely without her
daughter.

My lord found Frances seated in the bay of a window, where she sought to
profit by the last of the daylight for the piece of embroidery upon
which she was mechanically engaged, an art this in which her skill was
very great.

She rose at sight of him, and stood for a dozen heartbeats staring at
him as if he had been a ghost. And in that little spell he had leisure
to consider her, and was stricken to the heart by her appearance. The
roses had all faded from her cheeks; there were dark shadows, stains of
suffering and sleeplessness and weeping under her brows and all about
those gentle, wistful eyes, which he had always known so lively and
sparkling. Very slight and frail she looked as she stood there sharply
outlined against the leaded casement and the fading daylight.

Then he swept across the room to her.

'Robin!' she whispered, and she was in his arms, laughing and crying at
once. 'Robin! My Robin!'

Awhile he held her mute against him, kissing her eyes, her hair, her
lips. Then, at last, she stayed him with a question: 'How have you
wrought this miracle?'

It brought him to himself. Brought him from the ecstasy of contact with
her to the apprehension of things and factors external to themselves.

'By the charity of your mother,' he announced miserably, 'I am suffered
this occasion of bidding you farewell; of seeing you for the last time
alone.'

'The last time!' Gone was her suddenly risen exaltation. Dismay had
thrust it out. 'No, no! Not that! Never that!'

He led her gently towards the hearth, his arm about her. He set her in a
tall-backed chair, and went down on his knees beside her, his hands
clasping hers, which lay limp and cold in her lap. There he, who
hitherto had listened to no reason, talked reason to her, the reason
which others had talked to him. This out of a sense of duty to the word
he had pledged her mother. But, as Overbury would have said, he talked
reason from the teeth outwards. In his heart there was no such reason as
he uttered. He was the miserable captive of a pledge to utterances
against which all his nature and his passion were in rebellion.
Nevertheless, he was faithful to the bond, and dwelt upon nothing but
the hopelessness of their position, the cruel necessity for final
severance.

'Your wedded husband comes to claim you, Frances. He is on his way.'

On that he closed. But where he closed, she opened.

'My wedded husband? I have no husband. I deny him. I repudiate the act
that made me his wife at an age when I knew not what I did. I repudiate
it. I belong to you, Robin. You may have me when you will, all that is
me. All. For I vow to you, to you and to God here in your presence, that
I shall never belong to any other man.'

He sought to stop her mouth with his hand. 'Dear heart! Sh! That oath!'

'It is sworn, Robin, and I'll never be forsworn. Whether you come to
claim me for your own or not, yours I am; for you I'll keep myself while
I have life. And unless you come to claim me in the end, I pray God that
I may not have life long.'

Her wild firmness--for there was a wildness in the look and gesture that
accompanied her assertion--served only to increase his own despair. He
had hoped, perhaps, that by resignation she would help him to the
strength which he was told, and which his own senses told him, he must
in honour command. Her more direct and simple view was devastating. She
loved, and she would possess where she loved or she would die
unpossessed and unpossessing.

Resentment against the fate imposed upon her swept her with passion,
brought her to her feet and away from him where he still knelt, now
empty-handed.

'I am waiting for my Lord Essex, to tell him what I have just told you.
I owe him nothing, for in my own self I pledged him nothing. The pledge
wrung from a little child, was not the pledge of the grown woman. It was
a child he married. Let him find the child and take her for his own. I
am not she. If, when I have explained this to him, he should see reason,
if he is a man at all--and God knows I do not even know what he is like
to look at, into what he may have grown--if he is a man at all, he will
consent to petition the King with me to have our marriage annulled.'

His lordship got to his feet with alacrity. Hope new-born lent an
elasticity to his weary limbs. Here was something all had overlooked,
something which this shrewd, lovely girl had been the first to see. Of
course, it must be so. What man of honour or of feeling would deny a
woman who met him with such a plaint and such a demand as those which
Lady Essex had announced?

Jettisoned then was his pledge to Lady Suffolk. The circumstances were
all changed. If Essex consented--as consent he must--to petition the
King jointly with her ladyship for the annulment of a marriage which
never having been consummated remained no marriage in fact, whatever it
might be at law, then Rochester himself would be at hand to add his own
intercessions to a king who could refuse him nothing. The horizon so
dark before was on a sudden dazzlingly alight with a hope that was
almost clear certainty.

In his sudden exaltation, as he turned upon her a countenance now
radiant, and held her from him at arm's length by the shoulders, he grew
almost lyrical; and soaring in his new-born confidence over every
obstacle ended by employing the ill-omened phrase he had used to
Overbury. 'Let him know at need that, if he insists upon your being his
wife, it can only lead to your becoming his widow.'




CHAPTER XIV

THE EARL OF ESSEX


Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, arrived in England a couple of days
after Lord Rochester's excursion to Audley End, and dutifully presented
himself at Whitehall.

His first visit was to his father-in-law, whose letters had accelerated
his return.

Any hopes which Lord Suffolk might have founded upon the personality of
Essex to accomplish the conquest of Frances, and efface from her mind
all thought of the brilliant fellow with whose name her own had been so
scandalously coupled, were extinguished by the first sight of his now
adolescent son-in-law. The awkward boy of thirteen to whom the Lord
Chamberlain had married his daughter was grown into an awkward, dull
young man of twenty, incapable of exerting charm or inspiring interest.
He was short in stature, stockily built, and clumsy in his movements. He
was of a sallow complexion, with lank black hair and heavy black
eyebrows over long-shaped eyes set in very shallow sockets. Poor of
brow, he was heavy of nose and jowl, yet the heaviness was of flesh, for
the chin was softly rounded and of small bone-structure. His mouth was
thick, obstinate, and stupid. His dress was sombre, of an almost
puritanical rigour.

Lord Suffolk's keen dark eyes looked him over sharply, and it was with
difficulty that his lordship dissembled his disappointment at time's
work upon this object of all his present hopes. They exchanged
compliments, and in the hope of discovering graces of mind where graces
of body were so singularly lacking, his lordship led his son-in-law to
speak of his travels. After half an hour of it, he came to the
conclusion that for all that the fellow had learnt in his foreign
wanderings, undertaken for purposes of education, he might as well have
stayed at home.

Then Essex spoke of Frances. He hoped that she was well, deplored her
absence from Whitehall, since he had counted upon seeing her that very
day, touched awkwardly upon the eagerness with which he looked forward
to joining her, and announced his intention of carrying her off with the
least possible delay to his place at Chartley.

'I hope your lordship agrees with me that the country is the best place
for a young wife. Court life, with its idleness, luxury, and frivolity,
is unsettling. Myself I have little inclination for it.'

Lord Suffolk added to his other unflattering conclusions about his
son-in-law the conclusion that he was pompous and a prig, and he began
to be really sorry for his daughter. In his reply, however, he affected
lightness.

'Faith, that is a matter that you and Frances must decide between you.'

Lord Essex did not answer him in words, but the sudden dull set of his
face and the contraction of his brows informed his father-in-law of the
young man's deprecation of the idea that Frances should have any part in
a decision of that character.

The Lord Chamberlain carried him off to pay his duty to his King.

In the crowded audience-chamber Lord Essex found himself an object of
interest. The true reason for this not being apparent, his lordship was
not slow to assume it due to his own prepossessions, rank, and
consequence, and possibly to the fact that he was the son of so very
well-remembered a man as his brilliant father, who had been so great an
ornament of the court of Queen Elizabeth. In this last surmise he was
accurate enough. Men stared at him, marvelling at the disparity between
himself and his sire, almost as much as they stared at him for his
wife's sake and because of the scandal about her that was so fresh at
court.

The Prince of Wales made his way across the wide room to greet this old
playmate of his boyhood.

'A welcome to you, Robert! You are well advised to return. A man should
stand beside his wife. Lady Essex is too lovely a blossom to be left to
languish unguarded in the air of courts.'

Thus his highness expressed his content that a husband should place Lady
Essex beyond Rochester's reach, just as Rochester had placed her beyond
his own. It was very human.

His lordship agreed heartily, thereby provoking among those about them
some amusement which he could not understand; and he spoke again of his
early removal with her ladyship to Chartley, where he looked forward to
living simply with her and farming his estate.

'Estates, like wives,' said he sententiously, 'need close husbanding.'

Since men laughed outright at this, his lordship supposed that he had
been witty.

The King, moving leisurely down the room, was approaching them. His
majesty leaned heavily upon the shoulder of the handsomest man that Lord
Essex had ever seen, a man tall and beautifully made and magnificently
tailored in sulphur-coloured velvet. His doublet was peaked to a
tapering waist; his mantle was carelessly worn over one shoulder; his
dazzlingly white ruff was edged with little points of gold, and above
this ruff a noble golden head was nobly carried.

By contrast with so much splendour of person and apparel, the ageing
monarch looked mean, boorish, and almost shabby.

The Lord Chamberlain presented his son-in-law, and visibly startled the
King by the presentation.

His majesty grunted, 'Huh! Huh!' and his eyes rolled significantly as he
slewed round his head to bestow a glance on the magnificent favourite
beside him. Fragments had reached him of the gossip attributing to
Rochester a suitor's ardent pursuit of Lady Essex.

Then he gave his attention to the stocky young earl and welcomed him in
those terms of fatherly kindliness of which he could be prodigal. Lord
Rochester, meanwhile, looked down from his fine height with hard,
unfriendly, astonished eyes upon the husband of the woman he loved. Was
this dull-faced, lumpish lout the mate they had bestowed in marriage
upon his peerless Frances? It was fantastic and horrible. Would such an
oaf as this have the courage and presumption to claim to wear the
loveliest jewel of the English Court?

Lord Essex spoke, answering some questions of the King's on the subject
of the French Court and the conditions of it under the regency of the
Queen-Mother, and his delivery prepossessed men as little as his
appearance. There was about him a certain ludicrous self-sufficiency;
ludicrous because assumed to cover his dullness, the meagreness of his
observations, the colourless paucity of his expressions. By
self-assertiveness of manner he sought to dissemble the unimpressiveness
of his matter; desire to convey the notion that he was a travelled,
cultured man of the world, capable of ruffling it with the best,
succeeded only in exposing his rawness.

The King lost interest in him and passed on, whispering of him presently
in Rochester's ear: 'A feckless, empty dullard.'

Overbury, who had looked on from the background, felt his anxieties
allayed. If he was any judge of men, such an obstinate, aggressive
fellow as this would never forgo his rights, never be persuaded to a
joint petition with his countess for the annulment of the marriage. It
followed, therefore, that there must be a speedy end to Rochester's
entanglement.

Suddenly Sir Thomas found himself face to face with the splendid
Pembroke, the scholarly, accomplished brother of Philip Herbert, and
virtual head of the strong party which opposed the Spanish marriage.
Pembroke was observing Sir Thomas as keenly as Sir Thomas had been
observing my Lord Essex. He addressed him, a rare event, for my Lord
Pembroke made no secret of his hostility to Rochester and those who
stood by him.

'Your master, sir, will need now to walk circumspectly.' There was the
suspicion of a sneer upon the handsome, lofty countenance.

Sir Thomas smiled pensively. 'Your lordship appears to suffer from the
same necessity.'

'I?' The Earl looked him over from top to toe.

'An innuendo based upon court gossip is hardly of the first
circumspection,' Sir Thomas explained himself.

'You permit yourself odd liberties.' His lordship flushed, for he had
been stabbed in a vital place. A mirror of the elegancies, an arbiter of
manners, it was his claim to contemn the vulgarities of scandal. Yet Sir
Thomas had proved him guilty of the offence.

Sir Thomas's smile became one of utmost amiability. He could excel in
the art of subtly wounding.

'_Si libuerit rispondere, dicam quod mihi in buccam venerit_; meaning
that if I choose to reply I must be suffered to say whatever occurs to
me. Nothing else were reasonable, or worthy of your wit, my lord.'

Thus he stabbed Pembroke again, and this time it was a twofold stab. His
parade of glib scholarliness towards one who accounted himself something
of a scholar, and who based his disdain of Rochester partly upon the
latter's ignorance, was in itself a bitterness to the Earl. It deprived
him of the luxury of disdaining Overbury for the same reason; reminded
him of the fact that as a scholar Overbury's reputation stood well above
his own, and was founded upon solid achievement. He was, therefore, the
more acrid in his answer.

'I hope, sir, you will adhere always to the admirable principle of
frankness you expound so readily. I had not perceived it to be a part of
your equipment. In the exercise of it, will you, I wonder, indulge my
curiosity? My Lord Northampton, yonder, does he join forces with your
master?'

'Ah! Now you probe too deep in emptiness, my lord. What should I know of
my Lord Northampton's designs? I occupy so small a place, a very _rutae
folium_, the wrinkle of a leaf, as Martial picturesquely has it.'

The great gentleman smiled disdainfully. 'In that case I must content
myself with guessing.'

'And you would guess, my lord?...'

The venom bubbled out of his lordship. 'That though at times my Lord
Northampton may have lapsed from wisdom, he will hardly lapse so far as
to lean upon a rotten staff.'

'It's picturesque,' said glib Sir Thomas. 'Almost as picturesque as
Martial. But it lacks his accuracy of observation. For the staff is very
far from rotten. And as for leaning on it ...' He paused to nod in the
direction of the King, who with his arm about Rochester's shoulders was
passing from the audience-chamber. 'Where the King leans so heavily,
there any lesser man may also lean with confidence.'

It was true enough, as Pembroke well knew. Robert Carr had never stood
so high or so firmly planted, and it was for Overbury, who had set him
where he stood, to maintain him there by every possible means, nor
suffer him to weaken his position by any act of folly. Pembroke, he
reflected, was but one of many powerful ones who would be ready enough
to take advantage of the least gap they could perceive in his armour.
Perhaps, Sir Thomas ruminated, Pembroke fancied that he detected one now
as a result of this Essex business, and was already sharpening his
weapons in anticipation. But Pembroke was deluded by his hopes. The
personality of Lord Essex gave security for that.

Rochester that night had much to say to his friend and guide on the
score of Essex, expressive of his disgust at the creature. 'To think of
Frances as the wife of such a man!' That was the burden of his
lamentation. But he made it clear that he had not drawn the same
inferences as Sir Thomas of the young earl's character; for his
confidence in the divorce not only remained unshaken, but had been
strengthened by acquaintance with the husband.

Sir Thomas said little. The time for words of comfort would follow. In
that confidence Sir Thomas rested. That it was well justified the sequel
was not long in proving.

The Lord Chamberlain took his son-in-law down to Audley End upon the
morrow. A courier had gone ahead to announce their approach, and thus
had given the young countess time to school herself into a certain calm
in receiving this husband whom she had last seen as an awkward lad of
thirteen.

The lad had meant little to her. The man was a horror to her from the
moment that she beheld him. Whether his short thick frame, his heavy
jowl, and foolish eyes would have revolted her if she had not beheld at
his side the graceful ghost of her lover, is matter for speculation.

Her effect upon him was, from her point of view, the most disastrous
that could have been feared. He had come with a certain curious
eagerness to see how time had fashioned the woman out of the child he
had married, and he had found this woman desirable beyond any dream he
might have entertained during his years of absence. He was in love with
her, furiously and passionately, from the moment that his dark,
slow-moving eyes came to rest upon her white, slim beauty.

The calm, cold dignity with which she received him served to add fuel to
the fire. How finely this cold pride became her. How much it made her
appear the great lady, most worthy to be Countess of Essex and reign at
Chartley. She suffered him to kiss her hand, and even her cheek; and if
he found both cold to the touch of his lips, he blamed for that only the
raw November weather.

During supper, at which he was placed beside her, little passed between
them. The Earl and Countess of Suffolk watched them meanwhile, and
particularly their daughter, with anxious eyes. Thereafter, hoping for
the best, her parents withdrew early, leaving husband and wife alone
together in the library.

Awhile they sat there in silence on either side of the wide hearth,
eyeing each other furtively ever and anon, in obvious embarrassment,
though the source of it was very different in each.

Presently her ladyship observed in her husband's eyes the kindling of a
light of intelligence more hateful to her than their former dullness. He
rose, and crossed the hearth to come and stand beside her chair. Then he
stooped to put an arm about her, murmuring something which if articulate
escaped her comprehension. To elude that embrace she started up and
forward, and then wheeled to confront him, standing with one shoulder to
the overmantel.

The glow from the fire was reflected on the shimmering white satin of
her gown--for by her mother's contriving she was appropriately dressed
in bridal white. There was a glow, too, upon her cheek-bones as if to
mark the deathly pallor of the lower part of her face. Pearls had been
entwined in her bright hair. Pearls hung upon the pearly skin of her
ripening breast, of which her modish corsage gave an ample revelation.
Slim and straight, her chin high, her eyes well above the level of her
lord's, she looked to him the most ravishingly desirable woman that he
had ever seen. And she was his to possess and to enjoy, rendered so by
sacred bonds which no human power could shatter. He exulted in the
thought as he watched her now, discovering a fresh witchery in the
swift, shy movement by which she had eluded his embrace. He must be
patient, he told himself. He must not startle this gentle, timid
creature. She was delicate and fragile as a flower, and to be handled as
tenderly. He must play the lover, and as a lover woo her to surrender to
the husband.

He began to speak, a note of subdued pleading in his voice, the note
proper to the humble suppliant: 'Sweet Frances ...'

He was checked by her suddenly uplifted hand. A jewel gleamed on it, a
blood-red ruby of great price, the gift of Carr. Her voice, that voice
of which even this dullard had caught the liquid quality, the musical
cadence, came hard as flint, forbidding.

'My lord, we must talk, you and I.'

'Why, so we must, sweetheart. But, thank God, we have all our lives
before us ...'

Again he was interrupted. 'Will you sit, my lord?' She waved him to the
chair from which she had just risen. Her gesture, like her tone, was
imperious. It cowed him. He obeyed. If he was dismayed, it was not yet
seriously. Women, as his little experience had shown him, were curious
creatures, to be humoured at first by him who desires empire over them.
He would be patient.

'This marriage of ours, my lord, into which we both entered without any
natural desire of it, at an age when neither of us understood its
meaning, without knowledge of what we did, without any of the love that
alone can sanctify a union, how do you view it now that we have met
again?'

That question was easily answered, especially as he perceived how
eagerly she seemed to hang upon his answer. 'How should I view it, dear
child, but as the most fortunate event of all my life?'

'That is merely a gallantry of speech, my lord. I do not ask for
gallantries. I am serious. I want the truth from you. Take time to
consider if you will, my lord.'

'Not an instant!' he cried. 'It needs not. And what I said is no
gallantry. I have no skill in gallantry. It is the sober, honest truth.
I am in rapture ...'

'Leave rapture yet awhile, my lord. We are not come to it, nor ever
shall.'

'What's that?'

'That you saw me at the altar some seven years ago, we may leave out of
account at present. As man and woman we have met to-day for the first
time. You have known me now for some few hours, too few to permit you to
learn anything of me. How, sir, can you welcome to wife a woman whom you
do not know?'

'Dear child, I have seen you.' His tone was one of expostulation. 'To
see you is to love you. Has no one told you how beautiful you are? Are
you of such a modesty that you will not accept the message of your
mirror?'

He saw her lovely mouth fall into lines of scorn, saw the soft eyes grow
hard as they looked straightly, disconcertingly into his own.

'You are telling me, my lord, that you desire me as a woman ...'

'But why not, since you are ...'

'A man may desire a woman as a woman whom he would not desire as a wife.
There is a difference, I think. You need not shame me by ignoring it.'

Like most dullards, my Lord of Essex was not patient. Again like most
dullards, when he did not readily understand a thing he did not perceive
that the fault lay in his understanding, but assumed that the thing was
incomprehensible and, therefore, to be brushed aside. He sprang up.

'Faith, if there's a difference, I do not know it, and I do not care.'

'But it is necessary that you should do both.'

'Wherein lies the necessity? You are my wife. What more is there to
say?'

'My lord, you go too fast. I am not yet your wife.'

'Not?...' His jaw fell, his eyes stared at her from their shallow
sockets under that shallow brow.

'Will you please to sit, my lord?'

He shrugged impatiently; but he obeyed her and resumed his seat. A man,
after all, must practise patience on his wedding-night. Later on it
would be different. He meant to be her lord in something more than name,
and she should be brought to an early perception of that corner-stone of
domesticity. But for to-night she might have her head a little longer.

She smiled faintly at his slight gesture of annoyance.

'You begin to know me, my lord. You begin to perceive that I am less
smooth than you supposed, that I can be irritating, and move you to
impatiences.'

He laughed in his confidence that presently he would amend all that. She
continued.

'Perhaps if you were to wait until you knew me better, you might come to
the conclusion which I have already reached; that a marriage made as
ours was made cannot be accounted a marriage until at a riper age it is
confirmed by mutual consent.'

Blank disappointment showed upon his heavy face.

'Do you mean that I must wait?'

'Not even so much as that, my lord; for this question must be settled
here to-night between us.'

'Question? What question?'

She was under the necessity of seeking words a moment. 'You agree--do
you not?--that a marriage such as ours needs the confirmation I have
said?'

Again he shrugged. He held out a short, stumpy hand in a meaningless
gesture. She looked at the hand, and shivered. It was, as most hands
are, an epitome of its owner. She would kill herself, she vowed, before
ever she would be pawed by such a hand as that.

'If you will,' he agreed tolerantly. 'But are we not here, together at
last, to confirm it?'

'But the confirmation must be mutual. I have asked you, my lord, if, now
that you see me grown, it is your wish to confirm the thing that was
done before either of us was of an age to give intelligent consent.'

'And on my soul I've answered you, I think. But if you will have it
again, I say again I do.'

'And is that all you say? Have you no thought for me? No thought to show
me a like consideration? To ask me the same question in your turn?'

His impatience increased. A dull flush overspread his countenance.
'Plague take me if I understand you!'

'Why, then, my lord, I must supply both question and answer.' She made a
momentary pause. Then, very white, and even trembling a little, but
keeping her eyes steadily upon him, she delivered herself of that which
was to make all clear. 'Whatever your own wishes in the matter, I find
myself unable to confirm that act of marriage, to give my consent to it
now that I have come to the age of consent.'

He stared at her a long while, yet found it necessary to shift his eyes
from her clear gaze before he answered her grumblingly: 'By Heaven,
madam, here's fine talk! Here's a fine welcome for me!' He got to his
feet again. 'Whether you confirm the bond or not, you'll fulfil its
obligations. You will remember that you are my wife ...'

'I have told you, sir, that I am not your wife. That thing done seven
years ago, that atrocious wrong upon a couple of innocent, ignorant
children, cannot bind us in the sight of God.'

'Let be! Let be! It binds us fast enough in the sight of man. As for the
rest, we can wait until we get to heaven.'

He laughed at his profane jest with the laughter that invites laughter.
But her face remained set and stony. A shadow of fear had entered her
eyes. She had depended so confidently upon the chivalry, the generosity
of the man. She had thought it would all be so easy; that once she
explained the situation, this husband of hers would bow to her wishes.
She had not reckoned that the Earl of Essex would have the soul of a
boor.

'Come, child, come,' he was coaxing her, softening his voice again.
'What's done cannot be undone, and ...'

'It can! It can!'

A ray of hope suddenly illumined her despair. That was the maggot in his
mind. This thing, he thought, was irrevocable. Once she showed him how
the deed could be cancelled, he must consent to do her will; no man
short of a lunatic would compel an unwilling woman into wifehood. 'A
marriage, the ... the ... obligations of which are unfulfilled,
could be annulled by mutual petition. If we were to go together before
the King, protesting against what was done to us as children, telling
him that we have no intention of living together as man and wife, his
majesty would not be hard upon us. He has a kindly nature. He would not
doom us to be each other's unwilling gaolers all our lives.' She
approached him by a step, holding out her hands. 'Do you see now?'

His countenance slew her hopes. It was set, and almost grim, the dark
brows drawn together by a frown. Long he stared at her with eyes whose
glance grew almost malevolent.

This inestimable pearl of womanhood was his. So ran his thoughts. In the
hours that were sped since he had come to Audley End that day, he had
been accounting himself the happiest, the most fortunate of men in the
possession of a wife for which all men must envy him. And now this! He
was asked to relinquish her, no less. To repress the growing hunger
which the sight of her had brought him. To the reasonableness of her
plea, he gave no thought. To the feelings which he might have aroused in
her, no more. She had no right to feelings that ran counter to the
sacrament which had made them one. She was his wife, and if at first she
did not like it, she must come to like it or it would be the worse for
her. For he most certainly did not mean to forgo a husband's rights.

He was angry, wounded, almost vindictive. His pride was lacerated, his
vanity torn to shreds. Yet such little prudence as he commanded urged
him for his own sake yet to be patient.

The embraces of such a woman to be savoured must not be compelled.
Dull-witted he might be; but not so dull-witted that he could not
perceive so elementary an article in the craft of love. She must be won,
for she was worth the winning. So he stamped his anger and his
impatience underfoot. He turned, and walked away, out of the island of
golden light from the great candlebranch upon the table into the shadows
at the room's far end, where rows of books were dimly visible upon their
shelves. He came back, and stood once more in silence beside her,
leaning his arm upon the overmantel, his brow upon his arm, mastering
himself, considering.

Thus in silence they stood there for some time. A log fell with a sizzle
to the hearth and a spurt of flame momentarily increased the
illumination and the heat. It seemed to rouse him. He turned to her, and
spoke gently.

'We will make no decision now. It were unfair, perhaps, to both of us.
You do not know me yet. If you will wait ...'

'I warn you that it can serve no purpose. A woman knows her heart, my
lord. I know mine. It will not change.'

He caught her hand in his. 'Say no more to-night!' he implored her. 'I
can be very patient, Frances. Say no more.'

Wearily she passed her left hand across her brow. The ordeal had been
more severe for her than he could guess. So severe that even a
postponement was now welcome. So she suffered him to kiss her fingers,
then summoned a lackey to light him to his chamber.

He went, poor dullard, to stifle as best he could his disappointment on
a lonely couch.




CHAPTER XV

ULTIMATUM


On the morrow Lady Essex wrote at length to Viscount Rochester, giving
him the substance of that first and unloverlike interview with her
bridegroom.

'No man of honour or of feeling,' she wrote, 'could deny a woman in such
a matter'; and upon this she based her abiding confidence that Lord
Essex would not deny her in the end. She closed with an appeal to her
sweet Robin to love her as steadfastly as she loved him, who was
constantly in her thoughts, and with a vow of fidelity, to be kept even
at the cost of life in the unlikely event that Lord Essex should prove
deaf to the dictates of decency and reason.

That letter lifted some of the gloom which in these last days had been
settling heavily upon his lordship, and there was about him something of
the old buoyancy when he went to lay it before his counsellor and guide.

Sir Thomas perused it carefully. He had seen Essex, and he had read him.
He accounted her ladyship oversanguine.

'Lady Essex is young,' he said. 'In youth we believe what we hope; in
maturity, what we fear.'

His lordship, checked in his satisfaction, would have argued. Sir Thomas
spared him the trouble.

'It was a comment intended only to warn you to wait upon events.'

'I'll wait. I'll wait.' His lordship's tone was confident. 'Meanwhile,
do you write.'

Then Overbury understood fully why he was shown the letter. The
situation was such as to require a further flow of 'the stream of his
lordship's silver-dropping pen,' and of that Sir Thomas was the source.
These impassioned, high-flown vows demanded vows as impassioned and
high-flown in answer.

Sir Thomas shrugged, and wrote, counting upon his reading of Lord Essex
to render his poetical labours sterile.

His trust was not misplaced. For a week young Essex remained at Audley
End, making daily onslaughts upon the ramparts of what he accounted her
ladyship's unreason, and daily manifesting how incapable he was of the
patience he had promised. He carried the war of aggression against her
father and her mother, constraining them into alliance with him to
defeat his wife's obstinacy.

But in vain did her mother plead, her father storm in quarter-deck
terms, and her husband sullenly interject in support of the arguments
employed by one and the other. Lady Essex stood firm as a rock before
combined as before separate assaults, letting them perceive, to their
despair, that the stoutest spirit may reside in the frailest body.

'If you talk until the crack of doom,' she informed them, 'you shall not
turn me from my present resolve that I will never be Lord Essex's wife.'

'You are that already,' growled her husband, thus apparently closing
this line of argument.

'I am not. I was married without my consent being asked. And only a
monster would desire to constrain a woman into fulfilment of such a
bond. Your very insistence, my lord, but serves to make you hateful.'

He stamped away to one of the tall windows of the hall in which they
were met, and stared out at the elms of the park about which the rooks
were circling noisily in the fading November daylight.

Lady Suffolk, meanwhile, was answering her daughter, between
plaintiveness and irritation.

'This is perverse and stupid. The bond is made. Whatever the wrong of
that, it is idle now to speak of it. It is done and cannot be undone,
and it is folly and wickedness to beat your head in rebellion against
that which is accomplished.'

'What's done can be undone,' was the steady answer. 'It needs but his
lordship's consent.'

His lordship did not choose to hear because he could not trust himself
to answer without violence. He was weary of these reiterations, and but
for the restraining presence of her parents, he might have taken a short
way with her.

And then Lord Suffolk, heaving himself out of his chair by the fire,
broke in to swear by God's wounds that what was done could not be undone
and should not so be if he was of any account. Thus the war of words
dragged inconclusively on.

At the end of a weary week which had reduced them all to despair, the
Earl of Suffolk suggested to his son-in-law that he should leave them
for a while.

'In the pass to which things are come your case can better be argued in
your absence. Come soon again. By then I trust we shall have brought the
little idiot to some sanity.'

Reluctantly Essex followed the advice, and went off to occupy his house
in London, the gloomy mansion in the Strand, towards Temple Bar, where
his father had hatched the treason which had cost him his head, the
house which later, in derision of him, when he took service with the
Parliamentary forces, came to be known to Cavaliers as Cuckold's Hall.
There, pretending to busy himself with putting the house in order, he
moped and sulked for a fortnight; finally going back to Audley End, to
find things exactly as he had left them. The only difference lay in that
Suffolk, in his exasperation with his daughter, no longer offered
counsels of patience or of prudence.

'She's your wife, Robert,' he said, to sum up all, 'and it's for you to
make her aware of it. I've told her that you come this time to carry her
off to Chartley. Once there, if you can't make her docile, faith, you
don't deserve her.' He set a hand on the young man's broad shoulder.
'Take a short way with her. She's yours. Let her know it.'

Thus paternally encouraged, his lordship went about taking the short
way.

He invaded her bower, booted and splashed as he was from his fifty-mile
ride over weather-fouled roads, and ordered out her woman Catharine who
was with her. The maid had been sewing, whilst her ladyship was writing
one of her almost daily letters to her lover at Whitehall. Looking over
her shoulder to see who entered, she thrust the sheets into a drawer and
rose to meet him, her face suddenly white, more from anger than from
fear.

'You are come again so soon, my lord!' she exclaimed.

He waited until they were alone. 'I am come, madam, to announce to you
that the time of delays is overpast.' He was very stern, but he nowise
dismayed her by it.

'How very like a lover! With what delicate arts you go to work to win a
woman's heart!'

'You had not found me lacking in delicacy if you had shown me any
kindness,' he defended himself sullenly.

'Like enough! But since of myself I do not choose to be kind, you are to
make me so by being brutal. You march in here, booted and spurred, as if
into a citadel which you summon to surrender. This citadel, my lord,
does not surrender to manners of that kind.'

He curbed his rising temper. 'To what kind of manners do you surrender,
madam? Inform me, so that I may provide them.'

'To none of your providing, sir. I thought you understood.'

'You think too much, madam. It is a labour which in the future you shall
be spared. Henceforth it will be for me to think and for you to act upon
my thoughts.'

She looked at him for a long moment, and her lip curled a little in her
scorn of him.

'You improve with every hour of our acquaintance. You have your whip, I
see. From your tone I almost suppose it a part of your equipment to woo
me?'

He flung the whip from him with an oath, and sent his hat after it. 'You
have resolved to exasperate me,' he declared.

'That is my thought of you, my lord.'

He considered her dully, a flush upon his sallow face, and considering
her stroked his heavy jowl with that ineffable hand of his. She
possessed certain advantages of mind over him of which she made him
aware. Resentment of these advantages but served to harden the obstinacy
natural to him.

'You are wilfully perverse, my lady,' he told her. 'But it shall not
serve you. To-morrow you set out with me for Chartley. I have been
patient long enough. You are a wife, madam, and you shall behave as
one.'

He saw the pallor deepen in her face, and in her limpid eyes he caught
for the first time the glint of fear where hitherto he had encountered
only defiance.

'Even if I were a wife, sir, which I do not acknowledge, I am not to be
ordered as a slave.'

'You shall be ordered as you deserve,' he told her. 'If you will be
wifely, you shall find me kind and loving. If you are rebellious, you
shall find me otherwise. But in either case you shall find me your
husband and your master. Since you are given to thinking, madam, you had
best think of that.'

'O God!' she cried out, and then lashed him with her tongue. 'You oaf!
You boor! You beast!'

Because he had a suspicion that his behaviour justified these titles, he
was the more infuriated. Because he knew that his behaviour had been
provoked by hers, his fury gathered strength. He advanced upon her and
took her forcibly by the shoulders, terrorising her by his powerful
grip.

'Madam, if I am these things, it is because you make me so.'

He had laid hands upon her with intent to shake her, to render her aware
of his physical strength. The mute fear in which she suffered his touch
stirred compassion to restrain him. Then that physical contact,
undertaken in anger, wrought upon him as he paused. She was so lovely,
so desirable, standing so tall and straight in his grasp, that her eyes
were above the level of his own. Obeying his instincts he drew her
gently towards him, and softened his voice to a pleading murmur.

'Be kind, Frances, and as God's my life you shall find me true and
tender in my love.'

The word aroused her from the momentary lethargy in which she had been
suffering his embrace. She thrust against him violently and suddenly
with both hands, and so, taking him unawares, broke loose from him.

'My lord,' she said, 'I want one thing only from you.'

He scowled his anger, embittered now by that frustration. He snarled,
then turned on his heel abruptly, and went to pick up his hat and his
whip. He stalked to the door, and there turned.

'No more now.' His voice was harsh. 'To-morrow we go to Chartley. It is
settled. And you go if I have to carry you there bound hand and foot. So
best resign yourself with a good grace. You'll find it easier and
pleasanter.' He went out, slamming the door after him.

Her ladyship, trembling from head to foot, sat down to think. She was at
law the chattel of this oafish nobleman, who had now clearly shown her
that no consideration of kindness or generosity would make him a party
to the evasion of that law. Almost she cursed the beauty that rendered
her desirable in his eyes. But there were other things to do. Practical
things. The facts must be faced, and met somehow.

That night she kept her chamber. They suffered it, humouring her for the
last time, since to-morrow her lord and master would bear her off to
Chartley.

But on the morrow, when they came to rouse her, they found an empty
nest, and her disappearance gave them some moments of panic until they
discovered that two horses and a groom had also vanished. Even then
their terrors were very far from allayed, and husband, father, and
mother met in council to concert a plan of action for the recovery of
that wayward girl.

The girl meanwhile had startled the old Earl of Northampton by
presenting herself at his house in the Strand in the early hours of that
chill December morning, and claiming sanctuary there.

His lordship, newly risen and wrapped in a bedgown, received her in his
bedchamber. Seated on the edge of his bed, he listened not without
sympathy to her indignant tale of this horror which they thrust upon
her. To him as to her it seemed a monstrous thing that any woman should
be flung into the embrace of a man as abhorrent to her as was Essex to
her ladyship. But going beyond that he sought the source of this
abhorrence, and, as it were, led her with him whilst he tracked it down.

He pointed out to her that her attitude rested upon certain unfortunate
preconceptions, which themselves resulted from a tenderness which had
sprung up between herself and Robert Carr.

'And what if that be so?' she asked him. 'Is not a maid to give her love
as her instincts bid her?'

'A maid, ay!' he agreed, nodding his old bald head. 'But a wife ...'

'If I am a wife, I am also a maid; and a maid I'll be as long as I am
wife to Essex.'

The old man was distressed. He had never known any good to come from
struggling against the inevitable. Heartbreak was commonly the only
consequence. If Essex had been willing to petition jointly with her, the
marriage might have been annulled. But it could not be annulled upon
the petition of one party only. No law would sanction it, since to do
her right must mean to do Essex wrong. Let her well consider that. Also
let her consider the point of view of Essex. Like her he had been bound
by a contract before he was of an age to give intelligent consent. But
he had no thought to repudiate it; he had found her all that he could
have hoped and more. Who could in reason blame him? Then there were
worldly advantages to consider. As Countess of Essex she would enjoy a
great position, that of one of the first ladies in the land. Was she to
allow a love-affair which could never come to any honourable fruition to
wreck her life and prospects at the very outset?

Northampton talked at length upon love, from the impersonal point of
view of a bachelor who had never taken the passion seriously. It was a
singular devastating force which swept men and women off their feet and
committed them to unutterable extravagances and follies. But it was a
force that spent itself either by abstinence or indulgence, and often
more speedily by indulgence than by abstinence. If she would take for
that the word of one who was three times her age and who had observed a
hundred fine flaming passions fall to ashes, all might yet be well.

Her ladyship would not take his word for it. To her ladyship his views
seemed sordidly blasphemous. She perceived with distress that, whilst he
was reasonable and well disposed, and willing to assist her in the minor
details of her present trouble, she could not look to this worldly,
cynical old man for the heroic support that his affection for her had
seemed to promise.

Meanwhile she was afforded the shelter of his house, and the assurance
that, when her father and her husband came to seek her, he would do
what he could to postpone the evil moment of her going to Chartley, and
even make the attempt to bend the Earl of Essex to her ways by argument.
He clearly saw, although he did not mention it, that if the Earl would
consent to the annulment, leaving Frances free to marry Rochester--and
always provided it could be first ascertained that Rochester were as
willing to become her husband as he had been ready to become her
lover--nothing would be lost in worldly advantages, and much would have
been gained, especially for Northampton himself.

It was clear, however, to her ladyship that for real and immediate help
she must turn elsewhere, and that same morning saw her at the Golden
Distaff in Paternoster Row, startling Anne Turner by her sudden
appearance there and her feverish manner.

Weston was instantly despatched to Whitehall to fetch Lord Rochester
with all possible speed. Whilst she awaited him, her ladyship made known
her plight in fullest detail to the sympathetic little widow. The widow,
perceiving how desperate was the case, counselled enlisting the services
of Simon Forman.

'How could Forman help?'

The widow spread her hands and raised her shoulders. 'I do not know how.
But I am certain that if he would he could. He has great power.'

There was no decision taken on that matter when his lordship arrived. He
came breathless from haste and eagerness.

'Fanny!' he cried, opening wide his splendid arms.

In a moment she was enfolded in them, sobbing against his breast, and
the discreet Turner had effaced herself and closed the door upon them.

But after transports of mingled joy and grief, came the consideration of
action to be taken, and this proved far less easy than kissing.

She laid the whole situation trustingly before him. Confidently she
waited for the advice that should redeem them both.

It did not come. He disappointed her. Whilst vowing with all fervency
eternal love and eternal fidelity, he could be and continued to be glib
enough; but when it came to the consideration of practical steps, he was
halting and nonplussed.

Almost he began to talk as old Northampton had talked. They were face to
face with the inevitable. All his hopes had been centred so surely upon
Essex doing that which honour and manhood imposed upon him. But since
Essex refused to behave so accommodatingly, Rochester knew not where he
stood or what to propose.

Only the death of Essex would bring a proper solution to the difficulty.
And then from this leapt another thought. He could force a quarrel upon
Essex, and attempt his life in a duel. But at this panic seized her.
Rochester might, himself, be killed, and then what should she do? Essex
was reputed skilled in arms. She had gleaned so much. It was his only
accomplishment. Never would she consent to any such course as that.

But it needed no great insistence on her part to turn Rochester from
such a project. A moment's reflection showed him the folly of it. The
duel was to King James the unpardonable offence, and, even if Rochester
were to prevail both in the combat and the King's subsequent
indignation, he would face a situation in which his marriage with
Frances would have been rendered impossible by the very act that set
her free.

The long-drawn-out, inconclusive interview came to an end, leaving her a
despair almost more utter than that in which she had come to it. Her
disappointment distorted her judgment a little, magnified her fears
where her Robin was concerned. The difficulties appalled him so much
that he seemed ready to relinquish her. Could it be that his love
fainted at the sight of the obstacles ahead of it? Could it be that it
was diminishing already under the fret of all these influences? She
recalled the cynical words of old Northampton on the evanescence of
human passions, and to her already overwhelming fears a fresh and
terrible one was added now.

Turner was her last hope. If Turner failed her, death alone remained.

In that spirit she summoned the little widow.




CHAPTER XVI

NECROMANCY


Mrs. Turner did not fail.

The daughter of the opulent house of Howard could pay for such services
as were now required--prodigious, inestimable services, fraught with
great peril for those who rendered them, and, consequently, to be
rewarded commensurately.

And so on a dark winter's night two cloaked and hooded women,
accompanied by a man bearing a lantern and a staff, made their way down
the narrow, tortuous streets to Paul's Wharf, and there were handed by
the lantern-bearer into a waiting boat. The watermen bent to their oars,
and the tide serving they made up and across towards Lambeth. By a
footpath across fields, Weston diligently lighted them to a tall, lonely
house standing in a tangled and neglected garden.

Cautiously admitted by an elderly woman after certain words exchanged
with Mrs. Turner, they were conducted to a large bare room, dimly
lighted by two candles in candlesticks of brass some five feet tall that
stood upon the bare floor. Between these on a tripod there was a copper
chafing-dish over a small blue flame, from which a thin wisp of smoke
ascended to lose itself in the darkness overhead. The faint perfume of
the sweet herbs that were being consumed in it suffused the chamber.

Her ladyship, whose nervousness in this unusual adventure had been
increasing ever since she had left the house in Paternoster Row, stood
hesitating until her companion, silently tugging at her cloak, led her
across to a carved oak settle that was placed against the farther wall.
The sound of their footsteps rang loud and hollow in that silent place,
and filled her with a fear akin to that experienced by him who treads
unlawfully in another's house and dreads that the sound may betray his
presence.

In an eerie silence they sat waiting for some moments. Then suddenly,
with a stifled cry, the Countess shrank against her companion. Blue
lights, like stars, flickered momentarily here and there in the gloom
above them. Mrs. Turner gripped her gloved hand, to steady her, and the
Countess was grateful for that warm human grip in this place of
supernatural mystery.

Suddenly at the room's far end a pair of luminous hands appeared at a
height of some six feet from the ground. They seemed raised to command.
They moved vaguely to and fro for a moment, so that they, too, appeared
to flicker, with alternate glowings and vanishings. Then they became
fixed and steady, and a great voice boomed upon the silence.

'On your knees! Be humble and attentive! The Master approaches.'

Obedient to the command and to the tug she received from Mrs. Turner,
the trembling Countess knelt beside the widow.

There was a long moment's pause, and then her ladyship caught her nether
lip in her teeth to repress a scream. Where the hands had been appeared
now a human head and face, dimly revealed at the far end of the room,
where the faint candlelight was insufficient to dispel the shadows. Its
appearance was so abrupt as to leave no conclusion possible other than
it had materialised there under their watching eyes. It was a majestic,
venerable countenance, with a high-bridged nose and a long white beard.
The eyes were undiscernible under the overhanging brow. A deep melodious
voice addressed them.

'Have no fear, my daughters. As you come in peace, so do I give you
welcome.'

The head advanced, revealing that there was a body attached to it, a
tall body in a straight gown of black velvet with a girdle of green
stones and with cabalistic emblems embroidered upon its hem. The head
was covered by a tall conical hat similarly adorned.

The man, moving with such slow stateliness that he seemed to glide over
the ground, the progress of his feet dissembled by his robe, came to
stand before them. He held out his hand and with it raised first Mrs.
Turner, and then her ladyship, who by now found herself able to stand
only with difficulty, so treacherously did her limbs tremble under her.
His next question, by the knowledge it revealed, added to her terrors.

'What do you seek of me, Frances?' He paused, but as no answer came from
her parted lips he added: 'Dismiss your fears, and give me your hand.
Since your tongue refuses its office, your touch shall tell me all it
imports that I know.'

Timidly she put forth her hand. He took it and held it long in a clasp
so cold and clammy that the chill of it travelled through all her body.

And then at last he began to speak; in a level, monotonous, and
colourless voice that seemed scarcely human, she heard her own story:
her marriage to Robert Devereux, her horror of this bond, her love for
Robert Carr, and her ardent desire for happiness in this bond.

At last he loosed her hand.

'So much your touch has told me. What you desire of me, you must tell me
with your own lips, my daughter.'

She found her voice at last to whisper: 'Your help to resolve these
troubles.'

And now Mrs. Turner came to her assistance. Standing with folded hands
and lowered head, almost in an attitude of prayer, and addressing this
awe-inspiring man as Father, she told him that she had brought her
ladyship in the hope that just as his dread skill had power to kindle
love so it might have power to stifle it, and that he would of his
infinite compassion and benevolence exercise that skill on her
unfortunate sister's behalf.

Dr. Simon Forman heard her out in silence, and in silence turned away
when she had done. Whatever else may have been spurious about him, his
doctor's title at least was genuine. He was a graduate of Jesus College,
Cambridge--having taken his degree late in life and after many harsh
vicissitudes, including a prosecution by the College of Physicians. He
possessed great skill as a bone-setter and was endowed with that other
curious gift of healing the King's sickness by touch alone. This gift
and a certain epileptic exaltation of fancy which included the faculty
of self-deception, besides the great profits to be derived from occult
practices, may have been responsible for leading him to become a
warlock.

Turning from the women now, he proceeded to draw with chalk on the floor
a wide circle which had for centre the tripod with its flanking
candlesticks. Within this circle he drew a second one, and in the belt
between the two he sketched with incredible rapidity a number of symbols
which were meaningless then to the awed eyes of the Countess, but which
Mrs. Turner was later to inform her represented the twelve zodiacal
signs.

When this was accomplished, he passed with that solemn, leisurely step
of his to a low writing-pulpit of carved oak, which, with the stool set
before it, completed the furnishing of that place of mystery. On this
desk stood an immense volume bound in black velvet and closed by
ponderous brass clasps, an antique brass lamp of Roman pattern, an
hour-glass, a human skull, and a metal bowl. This bowl Dr. Forman now
took up, and he came back with it to stand immediately before the
tripod, across which he faced the women. Solemnly he beckoned them.

'Come ye within the circle, my daughters, before my invocation begins.
Within its sheltering span you will be safe from all foes among the
spirits I am about to summon.'

Obediently, the Countess suffered herself to be drawn within that belt
of chalk.

'Beware lest you step outside that circle,' he admonished them. 'Beyond
it I have no power to curb the forces that will presently be here, and I
cannot answer for your lives.'

With a shiver of fear her ladyship drew closer to her companion. Had
that which she sought been obtainable by any other than these terrible
means, she must by now be regretting that she had come.

Taking a handful of some substance from the bowl, the necromancer flung
it into the chafing-dish. Explosively a great blue flame leapt up and
vanished, to be followed by a pillar of black smoke which spread so that
in a moment all was utter darkness. The candle-flames gradually shrank
and were finally extinguished.

Cold with increasing fear, her ladyship sought warmth by still closer
contact with her companion.

Then from out of the darkness came the doctor's voice, muttering rapidly
and presumably in some foreign tongue, for no word of what he said was
intelligible to his listeners.

Again a blue flame leapt from the chafing-dish to reveal the room as in
a lightning flash and the doctor standing erect with one arm raised in a
gesture of command. As darkness fell again, his voice rang loud and
imperious in a call which he thrice repeated. Yet a third time was the
darkness split by that same flame, and as it vanished the doctor's cry
resounded again upon that same commanding note.

Followed a moment's utter silence, and then a faint noise, which grew
rapidly in volume until it resembled the rush of a mighty wind or the
beating upon the air of a multitude of wings. After that, silence again,
a silence such as it seemed to the Countess that she had never yet
experienced, the utter stillness of the void.

Gradually then in the darkness before her she beheld a vague human face,
aglow and flickering as if it were a face of fire. It seemed, as she
watched it, to resolve itself into definite form, and she
recognised--and was relieved to recognise--the features of the doctor.
An instant later, she perceived that the weird apparitional effect was
produced by a faint reddish glow arising from the chafing-dish. He
appeared to be gazing down into the heart of this dish, wherein some
substances smouldered, and his lips moved the while with a soft sibilant
whispering in that same strange tongue that he had used before. Thus
awhile, then the lips were still, the eyes intent. Slowly the face thus
seen grew dim and at long last vanished with the extinction of those
smouldering substances. The darkness was now complete again. Out of it
the doctor's voice rang loud and firm.

'Enough! Begone! Avaunt! In your dread Master's name I charge you to
depart.'

Again the air vibrated with that rushing sound, like the gust of some
terrific hurricane which sent the Countess cowering once more against
her companion. Gradually the sound receded and died down, until the
silence was restored, and then, to set a climax to these marvels, the
candles were alight again of their own accord. Once more their
surroundings were dimly visible and the doctor was to be seen standing
beyond the tripod.

'All is now well,' he said. 'You may move in safety and without fear.
Also, my daughter, I may give you hope. The spirits have pointed the
way. Study will resolve the rest. By to-morrow I shall have sure news
for you.'

He came round to the women, moving ever with his stately, deliberate
step.

'Depart in peace, my daughters,' he bade them, and held out his long
bony hand with a regal gesture. A green stone glowed from its third
finger. Mrs. Turner to set the example took the extended hand, and,
going down on one knee, humbly pressed her lips to the magic ring. As he
continued, thereafter, to proffer the hand, the high-born daughter of
the Howards, nudged by her guide, abased herself in like manner before
the warlock.

He folded his hands within the capacious sleeves of his black gown,
inclined his head to them, and walked majestically away into the
shadows, among which finally he vanished as he had appeared, vanished as
if he had walked unfalteringly into the wall.

The door behind them opened abruptly with a clang and apparently without
human agency. The Countess jumped in terror at the sound. Mrs. Turner
took her firmly by the arm.

'Come,' she whispered in an awed voice. 'There is no more to do
to-night.'

When presently her ladyship found herself once more following the
swinging lantern borne by Weston along the field-path towards the
faintly gleaming water, breathing once more the pure cold air of the
winter's night, all that she had gone through seemed to her a fantastic
dream. By comparison with the terrors aroused by that eerie experience,
she felt fearless now in the midnight loneliness of the fields. But as
physical fear receded, so the misgivings of her spirit returned, and
they abode with her until the following noon, when the result of the
doctor's studies guided by the indications of the spirits was made
known.

She had returned to Paternoster Row with Anne Turner, who from being her
dressmaker had gradually become her friend and was now her confidante
and accomplice. She had spent there what remained of the night and she
was but newly risen when the doctor's messenger arrived with a letter,
which filled the widow with joy on behalf of Lady Essex.

Guided by the conjured spirits, Dr. Forman had discovered the formula
for a powder which could effectively still the yearnings of love, and
counteract attraction in such a degree as to transmute it into
repulsion. The preparation of the powder was simple and could be
speedily effected if the ingredients were supplied. The chief of these
was a sublimation of pearls, which were first to be melted down and
distilled. To this were to be added some simpler elements including some
drops of her ladyship's blood.

It was left for Mrs. Turner, who was constantly revealing her great lore
in these matters, to explain the efficacy of this preparation. The
oyster being the least amorous of all animated species, that
quintessence of oysterness which is the pearl must infallibly, when
prepared in accordance with the doctor's magic recipe, produce an
oyster-like coldness in any person to whom it should be administered.

Her ladyship, who in ordinary matters was anything but foolish, was
through the very logical quality of her mind completely convinced by an
argument so logical. A large quantity of pearls was required, since it
was only the skin or outer film that survived solution and supplied the
necessary sublimate. Being without actual pearls on her person, it
became necessary to procure them at once, for she was naturally in haste
to set to work. The doctor promised definitely that if the materials
were in his hands by sunset, he would have the powder ready by midnight.

Lady Essex came well equipped with money for whatever might betide; but
it was far from sufficient for the present need. She was wearing,
however, by a fortunate chance, a carcanet of jewels equal in value to
many a gentleman's estate. Without a moment's hesitation she unclasped
it and gave it into the hands of the widow, so that she might convert
it into gold, purchase the pearls, and send them by a safe hand to the
doctor with the least possible delay.

All this was faithfully and expeditiously accomplished and late that
night the Countess repaired once more to Dr. Forman's lonely house at
Lambeth, there to witness further and more elaborate marvels.

First there was the powder, the preparation of which the doctor had
completed with scrupulous exactitude. He delivered it to her in a little
box with a green seal, instructing her to scatter it over her lord's
meat, or mix it in his drink, and, desirably, to administer it in three
approximately equal doses. He explained to her that, in addition to the
virtue inherent in the powder itself from the nature of its component
parts, it possessed a quite special force due to the cabalistic manner
in which it had been prepared, and to the spirits invoked to preside
over the sublimation of which it was the result.

Then he passed to the other matter in which she required his help: the
assurance to her of the love of Robert Carr in despite of all
difficulties and obstacles. For this, he assured her, no medicine was
now necessary. The Viscount's constancy could be maintained and even
fortified by spells upon the preparation of which the wonder-working
doctor had already been at work.

He produced from a small leaden coffer two little human images modelled
in wax, some six or seven inches high. They were joined by a fine silver
needle, upon which they were impaled transversely, in such a manner that
both were pierced by it in the region of the heart. He explained to her
that these images represented, one herself and the other Carr; that the
needle transfixing them was enchanted, and that the transfixion had
taken place under certain all-powerful astrological influences
fortunately present just then, with Venus in the ascendant. Other
propitious starry combinations were to be sought, and he would prepare
other similar images for further similar magical operations under their
auspices.

'You may rest content, my daughter. Your lord's love for you shall not
be suffered to diminish, but shall daily increase and grow under the
influence of these spells.'

Lady Essex, standing with bent head before him, was thankful that the
light in that weird room was so feeble that he might not see too much of
her shrinking glance and shamed flush reflecting her tortured pudicity.
It seemed to her that she had stripped herself naked to the soul under
the eyes of this warlock, and in her desperate need she had admitted him
to such knowledge as a woman never gives to any and rarely recognises in
herself. In making free with that knowledge for her service, as was
shown by the images and the rest, this stranger and master of repulsive
practices overwhelmed her with such shame and confusion that she doubted
whether she would have faced the ordeal had she known all that it must
entail.

This tall, white-bearded man, with the large knuckly hands and the
assumed majesty of bearing, became suddenly repugnant and obscene, and
the very air of the place foul and mephitic. She was pervaded by a
burning horror infinitely more intolerable than the superstitious dread
which had previously shaken her in those surroundings.

Tears of shame coursed down her cheeks as with Mrs. Turner she hurried
through the night in Weston's wake towards the waiting boat. The little
widow comforted her. Nothing worth achieving was to be had in this world
without sacrifice, and when all was said all confidences were as sacred
to the Master as to a father confessor. She was not to regard him merely
as a man. He was one to whom all secrets of the human heart and of
Nature had been revealed, and she need have no fear that any human soul
would ever know what had passed between her and him.




CHAPTER XVII

CONSTRAINT


Lady Essex, taking what comfort she could from Mrs. Turner's assurances
that her shame and humiliation would remain buried from the eyes of the
world, returned on the morrow to Northampton House.

By her reappearance there she allayed in part the consternation of her
parents, who with her husband had come to the Lord Privy Seal in search
of her.

The King had yesterday removed himself to Theobald's, and since
Rochester had been among those who accompanied him, it was secretly
feared by Lord and Lady Suffolk that their daughter, too, might have
gone thither, a step which must have been attended, now that Lord Essex
was returned, by the most scandalous consequences. Without betraying
this apprehension to her husband, they had despatched her eldest brother
to Theobald's in quest of her, with orders to prevail upon her, if
there, to return immediately to London.

It was some relief to them to perceive that this fear, at least, had
been unfounded; and however much they might reprove an intimacy so
little befitting her station as that which had led her to spend two days
and nights at the house of Mrs. Turner, they recognised this for a
comparatively unimportant evil, and were disposed to make light of it
now that she was returned.

In their relief they even found it in their hearts to be lenient in
other ways, and to submit to her insistence that she should return for
the present to Audley End with them, postponing yet a little while
longer her submission to her husband. Since she spoke now of
postponement, where before she had announced an irrevocable
determination, it was considered wise to indulge her, and Lord Essex was
persuaded, with the assurance that Frances at last showed signs of
melting, to exercise yet a little patience.

When at the end of a week at Audley End it was announced to her that
Lord Essex was about to visit her once more, she further reassured them
by refraining from offering any opposition whatsoever. They were not to
guess that she had a very definite reason for desiring his presence.

Meanwhile, she wrote with great frankness to her lover, at Theobald's,
informing him of the magical aid which she had procured and upon which
now she counted. It was imprudent, but it was natural that she should
desire her beloved Rochester to have these glad tidings, to revive his
hopes and buttress any weakening of intention.

The letter produced in Rochester just the effect she hoped, and in
buoyant mood he showed it to Overbury, who, less credulous than his
lordship, viewed it with secret contempt, offered little comment upon
it, and was quite ready to draft the answer to it in the burning
poetical terms his lordship required.

By the time that answer reached Audley End, Lord Essex had departed
again, and had taken some comfort with him. If her ladyship had
continued to hold aloof, this had been less markedly so than formerly.
Indeed, having administered Dr. Forman's powder to him in accordance
with directions, she placed such trust in its efficacy that she thought
it best to await now the manifestations of aversion which it must
produce.

Be it as a result of that sublimate which he had unconsciously swallowed
with his food, be it from other causes, his lordship was taken violently
ill on his return to town. He was put to bed in his mansion in the
Strand, and, the sickness continuing, there came a time when his
physician expressed a doubt of whether he could save his life. In this
doubt the young earl lay for some weeks, whilst at Audley End his wife,
in despite of herself, recognising the wickedness of the hope, yet
entertaining it as the one sure way of determining all her difficulties
and loosening the dreadful bonds in which she was a captive, looked
daily for news of his death, perhaps even prayed for it.

Death, after all, was a surer agent than Dr. Forman. Death would resolve
all her troubles with a clean finality. If she was wicked in this
thought, it was a wickedness born of the wickedness of others in so
fettering her that she could look to little else for her relief. Thus
she wrote to her lover and even to Mrs. Turner, and this without any
such suspicion as that which instantly crossed the mind of Sir Thomas
Overbury that the magician she had employed, in promising to render Lord
Essex cold, may well have had the coldness of death in view and had
probably supplied her with one of those slow-working poisons of whose
existence rumour never ceased to mutter.

News of Lord Essex's desperate condition reaching the Court, which had
now returned from Theobald's, the King sent his own physician, Sir
Theodore Mayerne, to visit him.

This Mayerne was looked upon askance by the College of Physicians, who
might have taken pains to curtail his growing favour if he had not been
secure in the protection of King James. He was a Swiss of good
Protestant family who had been physician to Henri IV of France, and who
perhaps because of his Protestantism felt none too comfortable at the
French Court under the regency of Marie de' Medici, which followed upon
his master's assassination. The English Ambassador in Paris, aware of
his ability and the confidence he had enjoyed at the hands of Henri IV,
had recommended him to King James, with whom he completely established
himself by his skill in dealing with those intestinal troubles which
resulted from his majesty's imprudent gluttonies. Moreover, the doctor
had other qualities that commended themselves to his majesty. He was
plump and jolly of countenance and of a healthy rotundity of figure. He
was mirthful of disposition, and quite early in his new office of King's
Physician, he gave evidence of a discreetness and closeness above
praise. Moreover, he pronounced Latin in the Roman manner. This was a
man implicitly to be trusted, and if English doctors--resenting that a
foreigner should have usurped such a position--spoke of him as a
charlatan, they did so in secret and among themselves.

Sir Theodore, rosy and mercurial, appeared at the bedside of Lord Essex,
investigated his condition, discovered a state of gastric inflammation
which his colleagues appeared entirely to have overlooked, prescribed
for him, and reported to his majesty later that he would have his
lordship out of bed in a week.

When his bold prognosis was accurately realised, the shrewd doctor
merely justified once again the complete trust which King James reposed
in his ability.

But in dragging the Earl of Essex from the jaws of death, Dr. Mayerne
doomed the Countess, as she herself wrote, both to Lord Rochester and to
Anne Turner, to something infinitely worse than death. For, according to
Forman, the intervention of pharmaceutical agencies at so critical a
stage had undoubtedly resulted in destroying the action of the powders
which he had been at such pains to provide and supply.

And now, Lady Essex was urged by her parents to return to London, so
that she might be near her lord, as was natural for a wife. If they had
not consented that she should be the guest of her uncle Northampton and
if she had been less anxious to see her lover, constraint would have
been necessary to move her from Audley End.

Often, however, during the three weeks of his lordship's convalescence,
she would disappear from Northampton House upon affairs of her own,
connected with Mrs. Turner. Lady Suffolk might rail as she pleased
against her daughter's intimacy with a woman of Mrs. Turner's station.
Lady Essex persisted in the intimacy, which was now a cloak for stolen
meetings with Lord Rochester. Almost daily, either at Paternoster Row or
at Hammersmith, the lovers met, to renew their vows, express their
misery, and find what consolation they could in these stolen communions.

She perceived in these meetings, as she believed, the fruits of Dr.
Forman's magical operations. Her Robin was hesitant no longer; no longer
talked of resignation and of bowing to the inevitable; but showed
himself a bold rebel against Fate, determined to oppose it to the last
breath. His hopes fed hers, just as her fortitude and her insistent vows
that she would be torn limb from limb before she should go to the arms
of any other man sustained his own determination. Still confident of the
power of Dr. Forman's powders, whose effect on this occasion had been
fortuitously destroyed by Mayerne's medicines, she but awaited the
occasion to administer to her lord another dose of them with which at
great cost she had already equipped herself. For in her despair she had
so far conquered her feelings as to visit the necromancer again, and
with a martyrdom of her dignity and pride which but gave evidence of the
strength and depth of her feelings for Rochester, she had submitted to
participation in dreadful necromantic rites in that lonely house in
Lambeth.

His lordship's complete recovery came at last to put an end to the
lovers' secret meetings. Together with his illness Lord Essex appeared
to have shed the last vestige of the patience which he had hitherto
commanded. His first visit when he left his house in the Strand was to
my Lord Privy Seal, a visit undertaken with very definite intentions.

It was a bitter day of January. The ground of the garden of Northampton
House was hard as iron in the grip of a black frost, the river a solid
sheet of ice from shore to shore. In the Lord Privy Seal's fine library
at the end of the gallery above-stairs, the Howards were assembled in
force, not to defend but to compel the surrender of the mutinous
daughter of their house.

Lady Suffolk, broad and untidy, sprawled glooming in an armchair by the
hearth. The Earl of Suffolk persistently tramped the length of the room
as if it had been a quarter-deck of his younger days. Old Northampton,
pinched by the cold and more vulturine than ever in consequence, stood
holding his lean bony claws to the blaze of the heaped fire. Lady Essex,
looking very frail, her young face pinched and white, sat a little
apart, with lips compressed and eyes that stared out vacantly upon the
cheerless, icy prospect. Her brother watched her in silence, as sulky as
his parents.

Lord Essex arrived. He was pale of face and a little reduced in bulk by
his late illness. But his glance was hard, and his mouth obstinate. The
Suffolks gave him welcome gravely, Northampton more cheerily, bidding
him to the fire to thaw his limbs, Frances not at all, until he had
stood staring at her in dull anger for a long minute.

'I suppose,' he said at last, bitter resentment in his tone, 'that you
are sorry to see me on my legs again.'

She looked at him coldly. She hated him, and accounted that there was
righteousness in her hatred. In her eyes he was an ogre, a tyrant, a
bully and coward to take advantage of the rights conferred upon him by a
law that had been unlawfully employed. Her hatred spoke frankly in her
reply.

'Has anything in our past conversation given your lordship cause to
suppose otherwise?'

Suffolk exploded into oaths. Northampton chuckled as he continued to
warm his hands. The old sinner had as much affection for Frances as he
was capable of experiencing for any human being, and he accounted the
answer a neat one. Also the notion had grown in his mind that alliance
with Rochester, if it could be brought about, would be of advantage to
his house and particularly to himself. And he found Lord Essex entirely
detestable.

'You are frank, madam.' The young man spoke bitterly.

'It is a virtue, I believe.'

His bitterness became ironical. 'I must study to practise it, so that I
may not lag behind you. And we'll begin now. Frankness for frankness,
then, there has been enough of temporising. I am for Chartley to-morrow,
and I beg your ladyship to be ready to accompany me.'

'You beg?' said she softly.

He raised his voice. 'I command, if you prefer it. Or, to be even more
precise, I merely announce it as my will.'

'You mean that you are not concerned to study mine?'

'It has been studied long enough. Too long. A wife, madam, has no will
that is not her husband's.'

'I am glad, sir, that my parents hear these amiable views.'

Suffolk stormed in. 'Enough pertness, my lady! Your parents not only
hear them, but share them. You go to Chartley to-morrow with your lord.'

She studied her hands, which lay folded in her lap, so that they should
not see her eyes.

'I go under constraint, protesting against this ... barbarity. You'll
remember that.'

'You go in any way you please. But you go,' Suffolk assured her grimly.

Lord Essex bowed to him. Northampton made a noise in his throat. She
caught the note of sympathy in that and swung to him.

'You hear them, my lord!'

He set his back to the fire, and clasped his hands behind him, his old
head with its bony brow and beak of a nose thrust forward. 'I hear them.
They are your husband and your father, to whom the law constrains a
woman to be submissive. You begin to realise, Fanny, that a woman is not
an independent being, but the chattel of some man or other. I give
thanks to God that I am not a woman. It's an indignity.'

'What the Devil do you mean?' Suffolk challenged him.

'The Devil knows,' said Northampton, and turned his back upon them
again.

Lady Suffolk essayed soothing words. 'Surely, my lord, we should stand
united in this. After all, my Lord of Essex is in the right.'

'Who questions it?' barked Northampton.

'I do,' said Frances. 'I more than question it. I denounce it.'

'Denounce and be damned,' said her father. 'And that ends it. You go,
nevertheless.'

'Of course. But my lord should ask himself in his own interests if it is
worth his while. I perceive that he is not concerned for my happiness.
But it is possible that he may be concerned for his own. And I ask him:
What happiness does he look to draw from this?'

'The happiness will follow upon the satisfaction of taming you,' her
father assured them; and Lord Essex quietly smiled his confidence in his
powers. He took his leave upon that, since he could perceive no profit
or pleasure in remaining and announced that he would return betimes on
the morrow to fetch his bride and carry her off to Staffordshire. He
was assured by Lord Suffolk that she would be waiting.

Waiting he found her, when his train of three coaches and a half-dozen
mounted grooms drew up in the courtyard of the great red house in the
Strand. My Lord of Essex travelled in becoming state with his secretary,
chaplain, chamberlain, valet, and cook. He had counted upon making the
journey partly in the leading coach with her ladyship and partly in the
saddle. He may even have flattered himself that during those hours alone
with her in the close seclusion of that great machine of wood and
leather he might make some progress in his wooing. In this, however, he
was frustrated at the outset. Her ladyship came supported by two
tiring-women of her own, who were to accompany her.

He perceived at once--although he had not thought of it before--that
this attendance was the least that was fitting to a woman of her
station, and, vexed though he might be, he knew of no good objection
that he could make. He did, however, go so far as to suggest that the
women should travel with the valet and the cook. But even Lady Suffolk
was outraged by the suggestion. So he swallowed his chagrin, climbed
into the saddle, and set out on horseback to ride beside the coach
containing his lady and her women.

His chamberlain, who saw to such matters and had despatched a courier
ahead, realising that there might be delays in setting out, had decreed
that they should proceed no farther than Watford on that first day. When
they reached it in the early twilight of the winter afternoon, all was
prepared at the best inn for their reception.

My lord, coming chilled from the saddle, found his spirits rise at sight
of the bright fire in the best room above-stairs and the table laid in
promise of supper, with a sack posset steaming in a bowl for his
immediate refreshment. Her ladyship, entering the room ahead of him,
loosened her cloak and went straight for this, whilst he strode to the
fire to thaw his booted legs. With her own hands, her back being fully
turned to him, she brimmed a cup of the steaming mixture of eggs and
milk and Canary, and brought it to him where he stood.

He was almost startled by the graciousness of the act in one hitherto so
aloof. But taking it as the first sign of melting on her part, he smiled
and thanked her. If he was a little exaggerated in the thanks, a little
excessive in his bow of acknowledgement, it was because he could not
stifle the clumsy ironies of the dullard, and lacked the wit to perceive
that playfulness was the least likely means to his ends in the present
circumstances.

'You will be cold, my lord,' she said in level tones, as if to explain
her action.

'Faith, yes! But your kindness warms me more than even the sack itself.'

She threw off her cloak, and took a seat by the hearth without answering
him.

Anon at table, his own chamberlain and valet in attendance, as well as
the cook to carve and to add what seasonings lacked to make the dishes
fit for my lord's consumption, he essayed conversation with her
ladyship, to be answered only in monosyllables. Himself not a talkative
man and with really nothing to say that called for many words in the
saying, the talk between them after a few splutterings as of damp
powder was completely extinguished. Thereafter his lordship ate
copiously, as was his habit, and in silence.

It may have been as a consequence of this that he was troubled in the
night with cramps in his stomach and required the attendance of his
physician to afford him relief.

Her ladyship, behind a bolted door and with her woman Catharine
occupying a truckle-bed at her feet, slept tranquilly through the
disturbance.

In the morning, his lordship was sufficiently recovered to have
forgotten the matter and to be intent only upon setting out early. It
was a bright frosty day, and they made good progress over the hard roads
as far as Buckingham, where they lay the night, and where again his
lordship's slumbers were broken by intestinal trouble. His physician
dosed him and remonstrated with him upon indulging his appetite to
excess, an offence which his lordship protested he had not committed.

On the third night, which they spent at Coventry, his lordship fell a
prey to spasms more acute than those of either of the previous nights,
so that he looked grey and sickly in the morning when he came to face
the last stage of the journey. Her ladyship had given him the residue of
the anti-amorous powder of Dr. Forman, and the dose may thus have
amounted to more than either of the previous ones. Craven, his
physician, had protested against his lordship's rising in the morning.
He was, the doctor swore, in no case to leave his bed, certainly in no
case to expose himself to the fatigue of a ride of some five and twenty
miles. But his lordship paid no heed. Dead or alive, the obstinate man
vowed that he would lie that night at Chartley.

He had to be packed into the coach with the women for the last ten miles
of the journey, by when he was too weak to protest or to care what
happened to him so that he could lie still.

At Chartley, which they reached in the late afternoon, the tenants,
forewarned of the coming of their lord and his lady, were assembled to
welcome them at the gates, which had been lavishly festooned with
evergreens so as to convert the gateway into a triumphal arch. But his
lordship was scarcely conscious of this, or of the cap-wavings and
hurrahs that greeted him as he drove through the gateway to the long
avenue which led to the great gloomy lonely mansion in the very heart of
that vast park.

They lifted him from the carriage, limp and helpless, and her ladyship
following forgot to be thankful for the respite which his condition
afforded her, in the fearful thought that Dr. Forman's sublimation of
pearls might be responsible for a condition akin to that which had
followed an earlier administration of it.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE COMEDY AT CHARTLEY


In the person of the young Earl of Essex there was repeated now at
Chartley the unpleasant experience that lately he had undergone in
London, and this time without the aid of the skilful Dr. Mayerne to help
him through it.

Thus the respite to her ladyship endured for some weeks; wretched,
lonely, anxious weeks of yearnings holy and unholy, and at moments
almost of despair. If the illness of my Lord of Essex once more
sustained her hopes of redemption, at the same time these hopes were now
shot with a certain horror that if he died it would be as a result of
the powders she had given him, although in giving them she had no cause
to suppose that they would slay anything more than his obnoxious love.

Nevertheless, in a measure as he improved under the ministrations of
Craven, her despair increased.

This is reflected in letters which she wrote at the time--letters which
survive--to Anne Turner and also to Dr. Forman.

In these she expounds the situation. She has not seen her lord since his
sickness, but is apprehensive of what may happen when he recovers. Those
apprehensions, we must suppose, would be founded upon the fear that
Craven's physic, like Mayerne's, would interfere with the action of the
warlock's powders. She begs Forman to supply her with galls in case of
need, and implores him to ensure her the continuance of Rochester's
love. 'Keep the lord still to me!' is her cry.

You perceive the double fear by which the unfortunate girl was haunted
in those days at Chartley: of being possessed by a man whom she
detested, and of losing the man whom she so passionately loved.

By March, when the first buds were beginning to appear on the trees in
Chartley Park as a result of winter's final dismissal in a week of
sunshine and premature warmth, my Lord of Essex was well again and
lusty; and then came for her ladyship the great trial of strength which
she had been dreading. She had spent a fortune in powders, spells, and
incantations to avert the evil moment. Nevertheless, it overtook her,
and found her armed only with her own weak strength of body, her
stronger will, her wit, and the iron determination which she gathered
from her love for Rochester.

One sunny morning, as she sat in the room over the porch which she had
made her bower, his lordship entered unannounced, and drove her women
out by the expression of a wish to be alone with her.

He was a little haggard, and again he had lost some weight. But he was
still ponderous enough in body as in manner, and he heightened the
effect of it by the rigidly fashioned sombre garments in which he
arrayed himself like the Puritan he was at heart.

He came in a wooing mood, having resolved upon winning her by
gentleness, bearing in mind the fable of the Sun, the Wind, and the
Traveller, which his tutor, perceiving the fundamental obstinacy of his
nature, had never wearied of reciting to him as if to impress it upon
him as a philosophy of life.

She had risen to receive him, and remained standing, a little
breathless and pale, until he begged her to sit again, and himself drew
up a chair and sat down opposite to her. His full dark eyes admired the
lissom girlish grace of her in a simple robe of the brown of autumn
leaves enlivened by gold lacings. She shrank a little under his glance
as if her modesty were violated by it.

'I trust, madam,' he said, 'that you take satisfaction in my recovery.'

Once before he had said something similar, and her reply to-day did not
greatly vary from her reply on that other occasion. 'That, my lord, must
depend upon what it means for me.'

It was an answer that not only chilled but angered him. Like all
egotists my Lord of Essex desired to impress himself upon the world
around him, and as happens with all egotists who lack the intelligence
to do so effectively, the desire expressed itself in a natural
aggressiveness. There was more than a hint of it in his manner now.

'What it means to you, Frances, will depend upon your own wishes.'

The words might have sounded hopeful but for his tone and the short,
ungainly gesture that accompanied them. How she wished the man would not
gesticulate! His movements betrayed the clumsiness of his nature so
completely and detestably.

'My own wishes, my lord, have undergone no change since last I announced
them to you.'

He frowned. 'Yet the circumstances have changed; and our moods commonly
change with circumstances.'

'When you speak of circumstances, sir, you mean environment. You may
change environment an hundred times without changing circumstances
once.'

His resentment grew more sullen. The impertinent chit was presuming to
correct him, almost to school him. But still he curbed himself.

'We will not quibble over words. Circumstances or environment, it is all
one. You are now in your own house of Chartley, and I look to you to
behave as becomes the mistress of the house.'

'Has your lordship found my behaviour unbecoming?'

'Plague on it, madam! I am serious.'

She smiled a little wistfully. 'Does your lordship find me playful?'

'No, madam. I find you exasperating.'

There was an end to repression. He got up, seized his chair by its back,
lifted it, and banged it down again a pace or two farther back. Thus he
worked off some of his ill-humoured need for action.

She answered him quietly. 'Can I be expected meekly to conform with the
wishes of those who brought me here against my will? If so, something is
expected of me which is not within the compass of human nature.'

To this he had no immediate answer. He set himself to pace the room, a
man ruffled because rendered aware of the impotence of his wit against
what he accounted a wall of obstinacy. At last he adopted a fresh line
of attack.

'Will you tell me, madam, how long you intend to play this comedy?'

But she met the onslaught in the same way, by taking him up upon a word,
and leaving the sense of what he said unanswered.

'Comedy! You think this is a comedy, and that I am playing?'

'What else, madam? What else?'

'To me, it is nearer akin to tragedy, a tragedy which has for aim to
slay my soul.' She spoke quietly with lowered eyes, and she ended on
something suspiciously like a sob. Then she gathered passion, and looked
up at him, raising her voice. 'Why will you seek to constrain an
unwilling woman, who desires of you only her release?'

He paused before her, squarely planted on his short, powerful legs. He
made another of his absurd gestures, with both hands this time. 'It is
too late now for that, madam.' His tone was one of ironical regret. 'It
might have been possible before you came to dwell under my roof. You
have been here some weeks now. Can you suppose after that his majesty
would still listen to a petition?'

'That was your reason for bringing me here!'

He raised his shoulders. His irony deepened.

'Can you blame me for taking what steps were possible to make sure of
the woman I love?'

'Love!' He saw the indignation in the scarlet flame upon her cheeks. 'Is
this love?' She laughed in his face. 'Is a man's love concerned only
with gaining its own ends at any cost? That is what you have been
supposing all your life, no doubt. But love places the happiness of its
object above all else. Your own egregious self-love expresses itself in
that you think of nothing but your own desires.' Then with an infinite
scorn she added: 'Do not degrade the name of love by applying it to
anything between us. You do not even know the meaning of the word, you
oaf!'

Oaf! She had called him oaf! And he was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Galled beyond endurance, he caught her suddenly by the wrist with one
of his powerful paws, and wrenched her to her feet so that she stood
confronting him, her face close to his own which was dark with anger,
her breast touching his breast for the first time. But this only for an
instant. Immediately she recoiled, notwithstanding that his grip so
tightened that she felt as if the bones of her wrist were being crushed.

'Madam, there is a measure of respect due from a wife to a husband.'

'I am not your wife. You are not my husband. This is a mockery, an
infamy from which ...'

His open left hand descending hard upon her face struck her into silence
and brought physical fear to her for perhaps the first time in her young
life.

'There's to brand you,' he mocked her furiously. 'You'll bear the mark
of my hand upon you awhile to remind you to whom you belong.'

'My father shall know of this; my father and my brothers, and my
brothers shall kill you for it.'

'Ah! Bah! 'Od rot your father and your brothers, and 'od rot you!' He
flung her from him in his passion. She hurtled against her chair, and
went over with it to lie bruised and breathless upon the floor.

He stood staring down at her, smiling a little out of his livid,
anger-distorted face.

'Madam, I've had enough of tantrums! You'll be submissive, or it'll be
the worse for you. You shall find me kind or cruel at your pleasure. You
shall receive just that which you desire of me.'

Painfully she gathered herself up, white and breathless, to answer him.
'Since you give me to choose, sir, you leave me something for which to
thank you. I shall prefer you cruel, if you please.'

Something of her dignity and courage daunted him. In that moment the
dull, passionate man could with satisfaction have taken her frail body
in his hands and broken it to pieces.

He curbed himself, however, and, with a last inarticulate growl where he
could think of no words suitable, he strode out of the room, slamming
the door after him.

Bruised and shaken in soul as in body, her ladyship sat down to write a
passionate letter to the Earl of Suffolk, in which she described the
brutality of which she had been a victim. She wrote also to the warlock
in Lambeth, addressing him as her 'Sweet Father,' begging his aid by
every means human and superhuman to rescue her from her terrible
situation. By the help of her woman Catharine, these letters were
smuggled away and despatched.

That done, she withdrew to her own room, locked the door, drew the
curtains, and put herself to bed with her misery. There she remained for
a fortnight, seen by nobody but her women, and refusing to present
herself at table. His lordship, himself sulking over his wrongs, left
her to her own devices. At the end of that time, wearied by a state of
affairs which imposed a gloom upon the mansion, so that even his
servants moved noiselessly and in apprehension, he went to visit her. He
was denied admittance, and departed raging. He came again and yet again,
and finally in a fit of temper he beat down the door and forced himself
into her presence, to announce to her that he would be master in his own
house and to afford practical experience of his mastery.

She was not to imagine, he warned her, that she could prevail against
him by childish methods such as these; nor was she to suppose that his
patience was inexhaustible. If he had consented to humour her so far,
the time had come when she must humour him or take the consequences. She
announced herself quite prepared for the consequences, and commanded him
to leave her. Instead, he laid hands upon her. A pitched battle
followed. She defended herself with all the strength of her lithe,
supple young body, using tooth and claw and tongue and every missile
that came under her eager hands.

It was an indecent battle, the noise of which reverberated through the
great house and set servants listening in terror that murder would be
the outcome. At the end of it, she flung herself bruised and battered
upon the bed, and lay there prone, shaking and sobbing as if her heart
would break, whilst his lordship stalked out with a sense of utter
defeat, his face bleeding where her nails had torn it.

He bore away with him, to increase his fury, the consciousness that he
had been driven to behave like a gutter-blood. But he nursed his
resentment aloof from her, and so she had some days of peace in which to
recover from that evil morning's shocks. Nor was the scene ever
repeated. Her ladyship continued to keep her room; the blinds continued
to be drawn; but realising the futility of a locked door as a barrier
against this violent man--as she accounted him--she gave him admission
when at last he came to seek her. On this and subsequent occasions their
encounters did not go beyond words; words which increased in bitterness
on either side.

Then he adopted fresh tactics. He would wear her down by inaction. She
should grow weary to death of her solitude and be driven to a despairing
surrender by sheer loneliness. So he left her now to her own inert
devices. He filled his house with neighbouring gentlemen, as a bachelor
might have done, so that her presence at table should not be required
nor her absence need excuse. Abandoning his puritanical habits, this
dour young nobleman took to carousing lustily, so that echoes of these
carousals reached her ladyship in her retreat as if to mock her into an
increase of bitterness.

Thus the spring came and went, and summer followed, and the armed truce
between these hostile forces was maintained with a deepening of
exasperation on the one side and a deepening of despair on the other,
since Dr. Forman, too crafty to supply evidence that would run his neck
into a noose, had left her letters unanswered.

At last, one July morning, his lordship strode into my lady's chamber,
and demanded that the curtains should be drawn. As neither of her women
present showed alacrity in obeying him, he drew them himself with an ill
humour evident in the vigour he employed. Then he commanded the women to
withdraw. Perforce, however reluctantly, they went.

Her ladyship, still abed, sat up wrapped in a bedgown, her golden hair
in disorder, ravishingly beautiful despite the apprehension that paled
her cheeks and stared from her dilated eyes. Yet there was little
occasion for it to-day. The beauty which he had found so maddeningly
desirable was suddenly grown odious to him. Here was a fruit which,
however fair to the sight, must be sour to the taste. He had hungered
for it so long and so vainly that at last it had ceased to provoke his
appetite. This is what he was come to announce to her. The situation
into which her obstinacy had forced him was become intolerable. He was
neither married nor single.

He stood at the foot of her bed, the bust of him framed by the rail and
posts, and glowered upon her thence.

'I have come, madam,' he announced in words which had been carefully
rehearsed, 'to summon you for the last time to a surrender to the
circumstances in which we find ourselves.'

The speech sounded ominous in her ears. But she dissembled her
increasing panic, and maintained a steadiness of tone in answering him.
'My answer, my lord, is still the same as on the first occasion.'

'You obstinately refuse to fulfil the obligations of your marriage?'

'I refuse, not obstinately, to fulfil the obligations of a marriage
which I do not recognise.'

'The law and your family recognise it.'

'Must we go over all this again?' Her tone was almost weary, and she
passed a delicate hand over her brow as she spoke, thrusting back the
tumbled hair. 'We move in a circle of argument, my lord, until we are
dizzy. And dizziness does not help us to see things clearly.'

As usual he found himself baffled by her wit, and being baffled grew
incensed. Yet, remembering the resolve in which he came, he practised
patience a little longer.

'If you chose to see things clearly, madam, there would be no need for
argument.'

'Assume, then, that I do not choose. What follows?'

'You admit the obstinacy in you?'

'Oh, I admit anything you please. Let us come to the matter.'

'Very well, madam.' He took a deep breath to steady himself. 'Very well.
The matter is this: I am tired of you, sick of your tantrums, sick of
your presence in this house. You are free to depart this house when you
choose. You may go to your father or to the Devil without fear that I
shall follow to bring you back. I curse the day I first saw you, and I
pray to God that I may never set eyes on you again.' His voice had
soared with his passion as he reached the end of his tirade. He dropped
it again, to add with an affectation of sardonic calm: 'That, madam, I
think is all.' He bowed between the bedposts. 'I have the honour to wish
you a very good day.' And he went out rolling a little in his gait, to
display his dignity.

In silence she had heard him, and in silence she suffered him to depart.
Almost she feared that this unexpected move concealed some trap. It was
so miraculous a solution of all her trouble and her dread. Then she
bethought her of Dr. Forman. Although he had sent her no more powders,
who could doubt but that he had continued his magical operations on her
behalf, and that these had resulted at last in transmuting into hatred
Lord Essex's unwelcome love?

She bounded from the bed, summoned her women, issued her orders briskly
and excitedly, and went instantly about her packing.

On the following Sunday, as the Earl of Northampton was sitting down to
dine in the company only of Sir David Wood, his steward startled him by
announcing Lady Essex.




CHAPTER XIX

CAPITULATION


The moment was one of crisis in other lives than that of Lady Essex.

Robert Cecil was dead. He had breathed his last at Marlborough some
weeks ago, as he was homing from Bath whither Dr. Mayerne had sent him
to take the waters, in a last endeavour to prolong his life.

His death and the chances which it must bring them had been watched by
many, but by none so closely as the Earl of Northampton on the one hand
and Sir Thomas Overbury on the other, both of whom aspired to snatch the
seals as they fell from his dead hand.

Each waited now, alert and ready to seize opportunity the moment it
should appear.

But the King made no decision. Temporarily Rochester--by now to be
regarded as the King's _alter ego_--held the seals, whilst in
conjunction with the King himself he conducted the affairs of the
exalted office of First Minister of State. The duties of that office
whilst thus governed were divided between two shrewd and able gentlemen,
Sir Ralph Winwood and Sir Thomas Lake, an arrangement regarded by both
Northampton and Overbury as temporary merely.

Whilst he watched and waited, the old Earl sighed over what he
considered the daily increasing slenderness of his chances of realising
the great ambition of his life, and cursed the obstacles in his path:
Rochester whom he despised for an upstart and a fribble, and Overbury
whom he feared as a man of parts rendered dangerous by his ability and
the hold which he already had upon power.

Thus his niece found him on that Sunday morning when she walked in upon
him as he was sitting down to dine. Her advent and the news she bore
were oil to the fading lamp of his hopes. If Essex were, indeed, willing
to seek the annulment of the marriage, and, if the marriage being
annulled, she were free to make a match with Rochester, the powerful
favourite must be brought into alliance with the House of Howard. If he
himself were to play the godfather to these lovers, such should be
Rochester's gratitude that in return Northampton might surely count upon
his suffrages with the King.

The old man frowned as he thoughtfully pulled the tuft of grey hair on
his chin. He had been sympathetic with his niece, as became an
affectionate uncle; he had pinched her cheek and held her chin whilst
murmuring soothing words; but at the same time he had spoken only of
difficulties in her path.

'If that numskull Essex had but reached this conclusion before dragging
you down to Chartley, as well he might have done, all would have been
well for both of you. But after keeping you for months under his roof,
it seems idle to plead that neither of you desires the fulfilment of the
contract.'

'Yet it is true. I am no more his wife to-day than I was the day he took
me thither.'

'Maybe not. Maybe not. But what rested on evidence before rests now upon
assumption.'

'The servants at Chartley can bear witness ...'

'Ay, ay, up to a point. But only up to a point. Servants are not always
watchful. They sleep like other folk. Still, take heart, my dear.
Something may be possible. I will write to Essex.'

There was no betrayal in any of this of his own eagerness to serve her
to the fullest extent of his craft and his power. Similarly now, when
she expressed her wish to see Lord Rochester, whilst it was what he
himself desired, he gave no sign of it; but rather of the opposite. His
countenance darkened with thought which might be supposed hostile.

'Were it not better to be off with the old love ...'

She interrupted him hotly. 'There is no old love. There has never been
any love in my life but Robin. I belong to him. I belonged to him long
before my lord came back from his travels.'

He wagged a lean forefinger in her face, and spoke severely. 'You'd be
wise, my girl, not to announce that fact too loudly, or indeed at all.
The gossip that there was of your relations with your Robin might even
now prove an obstacle to delivering you. You cannot want to add to it by
such imprudent reminders of something that were best forgotten. If you
are wise you will not see Lord Rochester at all, nor communicate with
him until our way to the annulment of the marriage is made clear.'

She looked startled at first. Then she smiled wistfully. 'Sometimes it
is so hard to be wise.'

'Generally,' he agreed with her, and shrugged. 'I have said what I
think. For the rest until you take some order for yourself, this house
is yours, and you may use it as your own. I will have rooms prepared for
you. You may receive whom you please. But ...'

She leapt at him and stopped his mouth with a kiss.

No more was said. But on the following morning, coming unexpectedly into
the library, he surprised her in her lover's arms.

He played the astonished and troubled guardian with the histrionic skill
of which he was master. He stood dismayed under the lintel for a long
spell, whilst the handsome gentleman and the lovely lady disengaged
themselves from their embrace.

He put his niece from him when she sought with feminine arts of cajolery
to melt the severity in which he advanced into the room.

'If you please, Fanny, I will have a word alone with my Lord Rochester.'

My Lord Rochester, scenting trouble from that frosty tone, stiffened
visibly before bowing. 'As many as you please, my lord.'

'You'll not be angry with him? The fault is mine. I sent for him,
and ...'

'Quiet you. I am not angry with anybody. I desire the best for you. For
both of you. That is why his lordship and I must talk.'

He thrust her from the room, waved her lover to a chair, and seating
himself opposite displayed no more than a grudging friendliness at
first. He spoke of the state of things between his niece and Essex; of
the difficulties that stood in the way of her divorcement, and pointed
out that such visits with such an object as that of which his eyes had
beheld the evidence could only increase those difficulties.

Then he melted a little. 'I would assure your lordship that in all the
world there is no man more conscious of your worth than I am, and
therefore more entirely your servant and--if you will concede me the
honour of the title--your friend. But my love for my niece must be in
this dark hour of her sweet young life my first consideration.'

'I must honour you for that, my lord.'

'You will therefore bear with me in that I urge prudence upon you, so
that nothing that you now do may increase the difficulties confronting
her.' He paused. 'You would not, I am sure, my lord, wish to jeopardise
the peace of her future life by some ... transient satisfaction.'

Lord Rochester coloured. 'You misapprehend me, my lord.'

The Earl's brows went up interrogatively.

'Or else,' Rochester continued, 'I do not understand your lordship.
Circumstances may not permit me to proclaim it broadcast, which is what
I should desire. But here, to you at least, I may say frankly and freely
that I love Lady Essex, and that I yield to no man in anxiety to see
this divorcement accomplished so that I may make her my wife.'

It was what Northampton desired to hear in explicit terms. His old eyes
owlishly pondered the young man.

'You say it to me. That is safe. But a whisper of it elsewhere may grow
to a tumult. So set a guard upon your tongue as upon your actions where
Frances is concerned.'

For that day it was enough. By displaying his willingness to become Lord
Rochester's ally in the realisation of his hopes of Lady Essex, the old
Earl forged the first stout link of the chain by which he counted upon
attaching the favourite to himself.

Lord Rochester went his ways observing the prudence which the Lord Privy
Seal had enjoined. He spoke neither of the Essex affair nor of his own
hopes therein to any soul but Overbury. Overbury would have been
dismayed had he not accounted the obstacles to the divorce insuperable.
The only result of these futile struggles would be a still greater
scandal, which must widen the breach between the Howards and Rochester
and destroy the bridge which Northampton had so craftily thrown across
it. He expressed himself freely as was his habit.

'Since Northampton is too astute to deceive himself with any such hopes,
it follows that he deliberately aims at deluding you.'

'To what end?' Rochester was impatient of the suggestion.

'You will know that when he seeks your patronage or your favour. Bear it
meanwhile in mind. Take all that his lordship may have to offer, but
commit yourself to nothing in return until the prize is well within your
grasp.'

In his confidence that this would never happen, and that Rochester,
however much he might make a show of resenting the warning, would,
nevertheless, act upon it, Sir Thomas went serenely about his affairs.

He underestimated the pertinacity, resource, and ruthlessness of
Northampton, qualities which were to be very fully displayed before all
was done.

The old Earl began upon Lord Essex so soon as that young gentleman came
to town, which was some weeks later. The dullard showed that he could be
violent, and stormed at the Lord Privy Seal on the subject of his niece
and of his own passionate desire to make an end of the ridiculous
situation in which he found himself.

The old man took a subacid tone with him. 'One tenth of this zeal to do
as her ladyship desired of you before you went to Chartley would have
availed you more than one hundred times the amount of it, vigorous as it
is, that you display at present.'

The young man, who was not usually addicted to profanity, had recourse
to swearing.

'I would to God ...' he was beginning when Northampton crisply
interrupted him.

'Let us leave God out of it. The King is our more immediate concern. And
let me implore your lordship to bring more calm to the consideration of
your difficulties.'

'They are your niece's difficulties no less; and she created them.'

'You created them between you. But that is not now important. What
matters is to discover how this very imperfect creation may be effaced.'

'I am prepared to petition jointly with her ladyship for the annulment.'

'You already know the difficulties resulting from your obstinacy in
dragging an unwilling woman down to Chartley. I do not remind you of
this to annoy you, but so that you may see how it has changed the face
of matters.'

Essex had suspected as much. Nevertheless, to hear it calmly stated by
one who knew the law and spoke with authority was cold water to the heat
of his indignation.

'Are we then to remain bound thus, neither wedded nor single, until one
of us dies?'

'At first I thought so. But I have since considered. There is a way.'
The old serpent spoke very slowly. He moved away now, so that he had his
back to the young nobleman, who sprawled carelessly in a chair. He went
to stare through the window at the boats on the bright river and the
green meadows of the Surrey bank across the water. 'The wedding still
remains no wedding after all these months. Your lordship lays the blame
for that upon my Lady Essex. Her reluctance in the matter would hardly
be accounted a proper ground even if it were believed. To accept such a
state of things would be to establish a dangerous precedent. But if--and
the course would certainly be a more chivalrous one in your
lordship--you were to take the blame upon yourself, the issue would be
rendered infinitely more easy.'

Lord Essex considered, his brow rumpled with perplexity. The old man
continued to present his back to him. At last he confessed himself
baffled.

'I do not perceive the difference,' said he.

'Yet it is plain enough.' His lordship slowly turned, and explained that
which to a mind less dull should have required no explanation.

Essex bounded from his chair. 'Never!' he swore. 'Shall I make myself a
laughing-stock for the whole lewd world?'

'You will be that in any case. You cannot now escape ridicule whichever
way you turn.'

'But I turn not that way.' He was very determined.

Northampton slowly raised his shoulders and spread his hands. 'In that
case, my lord, you must resign yourself to spending the remainder of
your days in the impossible situation in which you now find yourself. I
am sorry for you, and sorry for my niece.'

They got no further that day, nor for many days thereafter. Weeks passed
and grew into months before the heat of indignation engendered in my
Lord Essex had simmered down to the extent of enabling him to renew the
discussion with Northampton.

They were months in which the lovers were driven almost to frenzy as
they observed the apparent wilting of hopes which had seemed on the
point of blossoming. They saw each other constantly, and since
Northampton discouraged these meetings, they met sometimes at Hounslow,
where her ladyship had taken up her residence at a house purchased from
Sir Roger Aston, sometimes at Turner's house at Hammersmith, sometimes
at the Golden Distaff in Paternoster Row, and more rarely at Northampton
House.

His assiduity in these stolen meetings caused Rochester to neglect his
duties at court and about the person of the King, and but for the
remonstrances of Overbury, who looked on with some apprehension, this
neglect might have been carried to unpardonable lengths.

At last, in the early days of September, after some four or five weeks
of fruitless brooding, Lord Essex once more sought the Earl of
Northampton. He came to announce again that he would take any way but
the way which Northampton suggested. But he was less vehement in
announcing it. And by the time they parted, Northampton had at least
succeeded in bringing him to perceive that whether he went that way or
not it was the only way open to him, and that, until he resolved himself
to tread it, further discussions between them were but a waste of time.
At parting, however, Northampton softened the harshness of this by a
little worldly advice.

'After all, my lord, what is this price of a little ridicule that you
need boggle to pay it, considering that with it you purchase liberty
from your present bonds? For liberty men have been glad enough to put
their very lives in pawn. You avoid the ridicule at the cost of wasting
your life. Is that worth a sane man's while?'

Lord Essex departed to think it over, and decided that it was not. He
came yet again, to capitulate; to announce at last that he would do
whatever Northampton desired of him, so that the result should be the
cancellation of his marriage.

Northampton commended the wisdom of the decision, and went to work.
Himself he drew up the petition that was to be laid before the King,
having secretly taken counsel upon it with Rochester, whom he had kept
informed step by step of what was happening. Thus the intimacy between
them grew rapidly in those days in which they might be said to be
accomplices.

Northampton chuckled as he conned the document which Rochester was to
lay before his majesty. If he knew the King at all, this would afford
him such a chance to play Solomon and Pontiff in one, to display the
depths of his erudition in law and in theology, as he could scarcely
ever have hoped to grasp. He imagined how James would slobber and gurgle
in delight over the pedantic periods he would pen on the subject and the
learned discourses he would hold forth to guide bishops and lawyers in
reaching a decision.




CHAPTER XX

THE ALARM


My Lord Northampton did not overrate the King's delight at the prospect
opened out before him by the Essex petition.

His majesty sent for his Robin, and, closeted with him alone, showed him
the document, the preparation of which his lordship had witnessed, and
entertained him at great length with the theological, legal, and
physiological intricacies which its contents aroused. His majesty was
almost tearful on the subject of the poor Howard lassie, and the
harshness of Fate to have sent so dour a visitation to that innocent
little lamb.

If the petition was founded upon the truth--and his majesty could not
conceive that human wickedness could invent a falsehood which if present
must in the sequel be rendered apparent--there could be little doubt of
how the bishops would decide; and if when he came to weigh it carefully
he concluded that it was true--for if false he depended upon the
sagacity which had fathomed at a glance the nature of the Gunpowder
Plot--he would proceed at the earliest moment to appoint a commission to
try the matter.

Then he bethought him that once upon a time the gossips had linked
Rochester's name with the lady's, and questioned Robin thereupon.
Rochester came prepared for this, and was frank enough in his reply.

'It is true, Sire, that I entertained, and still entertain, the deepest
sentiments of affection for her ladyship.'

'The deepest? And how deep may that be? Deep enough for marriage if she
were free?' The great eyes so full of wondering sadness considered the
fair face of the young favourite.

Rochester smiled a little. 'Deep enough for that, may it please your
majesty.'

'Tush! Tush!' His majesty was fretful. 'Why can ye not be frank with me?
D'ye want the lass?'

Rochester was frank. 'As I want salvation, Sire.'

'Huh!' The intensity of his lordship's tone almost startled the monarch.
He fidgeted a moment nervously. Then took a sip of the thick sweet
Malaga wine from the goblet at his elbow, wiped his sandy mostachios
with a handkerchief, and at last delivered himself. 'If ye want the
lass, ye must have her.' He stretched up his hand to pinch his
lordship's cheek. 'Rogue!' he said, and gurgled his satisfaction at
being able to gratify so signally his beloved Rabbie. 'There'll be the
less delay in appointing the commission.' Then the law-giving and
theological sovereign rising above the good-natured, fatherly fellow in
him, he made haste to add: 'Ye must have her, that is, if the commission
favours the petition.'

Rochester reported the King's words to Overbury. And Overbury
experienced his first real pang of apprehension; he began to ask himself
whether he had not held his hand too long, deluded by his confidence
that no acceptable petition could be framed. He learnt now for the first
time its basis, and almost sneered as he asked Rochester how this was to
be established. Rochester shrugged the question aside as unimportant,
and went to bear his good tidings to Northampton, and later to her
ladyship at Hounslow.

Frances wept when she heard them. Her lover, as uplifted as she was,
after having suffered scarcely less, kissed her tears away whilst
swearing to her that he would make it his life's object to see that the
future held no weeping for her.

Things did not move, however, as rapidly as these impatient ones
desired. The King and his Court with him were concerned at the time with
the coming of the Palsgrave, who was to marry the Princess Elizabeth,
and in the bustle of preparation for so momentous an occasion, other
affairs underwent postponement.

But, although the King had as yet taken no steps towards the appointment
of the commission, rumour was soon at work, bringing in its train an
unfortunate revival of the old scandal touching the rivalry of Prince
Henry and my Lord Rochester for the affections of Lady Essex. It
infuriated Rochester, who perceived here matter to daunt the bishops in
their task when they came to it, or at least to render them unpleasantly
inquisitive.

Prince Henry, whose feelings towards Rochester had not been improved by
the ever-increasing intimacy between the King and the favourite, was
moved to fury by the news. The Queen, the Earl of Pembroke, and all
those nobles who made up the great party hostile to Rochester now joined
the Prince in a deeper rancour against this insolent favourite who rode
roughshod over the rights of his betters and who apparently was become
so powerful with the King that he could ride equally roughshod over the
laws of God. They stood united in the intention of using every measure
to thwart the petition when it came to judgment. They would use their
influence with the bishops to be appointed, to the end that these might
refuse the divorcement.

Sir Thomas Overbury, who in those days employed a little army of spies
to keep him informed of what was passing, was presently able to dismay
Lord Rochester by a full exposition of this state of affairs. He
followed up the unwelcome news by advice that was still more unwelcome.

'Do you see, Robin, amid what gins you are walking? Do you see how a
false step may ruin you?'

'Plague take you, Tom, I'm not so easily ruined.' Straight, tall, and
handsome, magnificent as ever in his raiment, he looked indeed a man to
hold his own against the world; for in these last two years he had
ripened richly in the benign and constant sunshine of royal favour.

Sir Thomas fetched a sigh. 'It is such overweening confidence as yours
which has led many a tall fellow to walk with his nose in the air until
a pitfall brought him down.'

Rochester questioned him by a frown.

'These Howards, now,' said Sir Thomas. 'I've warned you against them
since the outset, since long before this woman came to bewitch you.'

'What's that to the matter?'

'In their toils you will be a lost man, and I see you walking into those
toils whilst your eyes behold nothing but this girl's beauty. For God's
sake, Robin, rouse yourself before it is too late.'

'Too late for what?'

'Before that happens which will topple you from your precarious
eminence.'

'I do not perceive its precariousness.'

'All eminences that depend upon royal favour alone are precarious. The
caprice that raised you may cast you down again.'

'Oh, 'sdeath! Do I depend upon caprice alone, do you say?'

'No. You have something more. You have me,' said Sir Thomas steadily.
'But not even I can hold you where you stand unless you heed me.'

Rochester moved about the room ill-humouredly. Sir Thomas used, he
thought, an unnecessary, an indelicate frankness. And he exaggerated. He
was not so valuable a prop to my lord's greatness as he supposed. His
lordship said so with some petulance. Sir Thomas showed no resentment.
He answered with patient calm.

'You and I make one between us. That was the compact from the start. You
supply the brawn, the beauty, and the personal grace which have captured
the fancy of the King. I supply the intelligence, the knowledge of
affairs, and the industry which have made you and preserve you something
more than the minion to display a tailor's tricks and gauds to the
sneers of a Court.'

'By God, you're frank with me!'

'By God, I mean to be.' Sir Thomas banged the writing-table with his
clenched hand. 'Each of us is nothing without the other.'

'I cry you thanks for that, at least. I'm glad you own that without me
you would be nothing.'

'Just as you are nothing without me. United, we have this England under
our hand. In all the world there's not another man to serve you as I
have served you, just as in all the world there is no other to serve me
as you have done. If I claim much, I acknowledge much. Break up this
partnership, Robin, and you break us both. I shall sink back to the
Temple whence I sprang, to pick a living in the practice of the law.
You will sink back to the minionship and fribbledom in which you fretted
when I found you. When it is seen that your hand no longer grasps the
tiller of the ship of State, your influence will depart from you, the
homage will cease, the King himself will begin to regard you
differently, and will cease to regard you at all the moment another
fresher, younger minion attracts an eye in which you, as a mere minion,
will have grown stale.'

'By Heaven, man, d'ye mean to quarrel with me?' Lord Rochester was
furious by now.

'I mean to avoid it,' said Sir Thomas, cold as ice.

His lordship stared angrily into that narrow, finely featured, sensitive
face.

'On my soul, then, you take an odd way to your ends.'

'That is only because you do not yet perceive my ends.'

'I perceive that you have said things which I would brook from no other
living man.'

'There is no other living man entitled to say them. There are not two
other men in all the world who stand to each other as you and I. We are
between us body and soul. Understand it once for all before that happens
which by parting us may ruin us both. Remember the oath we swore to each
other when we entered upon this partnership of ours.'

'I do remember it.' Rochester was at the height of exasperation. 'No
need to remind me of that. But perdition catch my soul if I understand
you. Who is like to part us?'

'You are.'

'I! You're mad, Tom.'

'Oh, not wittingly, nor with your eyes open to the fact. But stupidly
and blindly by persevering in your present courses. This Essex business
is a pitfall for you and a dangerous one. The scandal that there was is
as nothing to the scandal that there'll be if you persist in your
determination to marry her ladyship. Have you considered how the
commission may find if your name continues to be coupled with hers,
whilst your enemies--Pembroke, the Queen, the Prince, and the rest of
them--are at work to pull you down by any means in their power? Do you
not yet perceive what an opportunity you are affording them to ruin you?
Do you not see that even the King himself will scorn to protect you if
certain things should become known?'

'What things?' Rochester demanded out of a sudden intimidation.

'The real depth of your relations with her ladyship before her husband
came home from abroad. Court gossip is naught, we know. A court is a
place of scandalmongers. But if the scandal can be shown to have a
foundation of truth?'

'And who's to show that?'

'Who? Can you be sure that no one knows? What of Anne Turner? What of
her servants? That fellow Weston and others? What of that warlock over
in Lambeth?'

'He died some weeks ago.'

'But his wife survives, and might be brought to show that Lady Essex
practised against her lord's life.'

'That she never did!' thundered Rochester.

'I only say that Forman's widow might be brought to show that she did.
Letters may have survived into which such meanings could be read. Her
ladyship was none too prudent. And such an accusation would gather
confirmation from the fact that my Lord of Essex was twice sick to the
point of death whilst in the company of her ladyship. Where should you
stand if all that were brought to light?'

His lordship's blank countenance showed the dismay that had gathered in
his heart. He sat down heavily, staring at the ever calm Sir Thomas. 'My
God!' he groaned, and again: 'My God!'

'You begin to understand,' said Overbury.

His lordship made some recovery. 'You seek to affright me with
peasebogles,' he complained. 'You state what might happen. But there's
no such likelihood. You present the worst to me.'

'A prudent man keeps ever before him the worst that may befall; and this
however much he may hope for the best.'

'So be it. You indicate the danger. How is't to be averted?'

'In one way only. It may cost you a bitter wrench. But the alternative
may mean the loss of all. Put this marriage definitely from your mind.
Renounce it, and announce the renunciation.'

'Not while I live!' Rochester bounded from his chair. 'I'll take my
chance of ruin before I do that.'

Sir Thomas shrugged. 'To that you would have the right if you stood
alone. But I stand with you. Our partnership is a deal older than this
love-affair. And if you ruin yourself, you ruin me.'

'And I'll ruin us both before ever I contemplate the step you advise.
Have you no heart, Tom? Are you just a cold, calculating brain?'

'I hope I do not lack a heart. But certainly I have brain enough to know
how transient a thing is the love of a woman. This love of yours will
fade the more quickly if you sacrifice your great position to it. Who
knows, indeed, if you hold to your present course and ruin overtakes
you, whether the marriage for which you risk so much will ever come to
pass?'

'If I were beggared, Frances would still cleave to me. I love her with a
love beyond the understanding of such men as you.'

Sir Thomas smiled a crooked smile. 'Yet I should understand it, seeing
that it was I expressed it. Do you forget my letters and my sonnets with
which I won her for you?'

'You won her for me? You?'

'Did I not? Have you forgot?'

Leaning towards him across the writing-table, Rochester was within an
ace of striking him, and might, indeed, have struck him but for Sir
Thomas's next words.

'Robin! Robin! Are we to quarrel, you and I, after all that we have
weathered side by side? Is a woman to come between us, and drive us
asunder?'

His lordship straightened himself. 'It is not the woman that will come
between us, Tom, but your lack of regard for her, which, loving her as I
do, I must resent. No more of this, or we quarrel mortally, and there is
but one human being with whom I should be more loth to quarrel than with
you. Let me hear no more of it. The dangers may exist. But they're none
so imminent as your timidity supposes.' He strode to the door. 'I'll
face them, and you must face them with me. There's no help for it. And
that's my last word.' He put an end to the discussion by going out
abruptly.

Sir Thomas leaned back in his chair, his fingers toying idly with a
quill, his countenance calm. He was checked. But very far yet from being
checkmated. There were several moves he perceived by which to avert a
marriage which would turn Rochester into a puppet for old Northampton.
And for Rochester's sake as well as for his own he accounted it his duty
to make those moves in season.




CHAPTER XXI

SIR DAVID WOOD


Across the serenity of those blissful days for Lady Essex, days in which
she sunned herself in the high hopes of the fulfilment of the love that
was her life, there fell, to chill her, the shadow of Sir Thomas
Overbury.

Rochester in his trouble of mind exposed to her the perils to which Sir
Thomas had drawn his attention. It was weak in him to afflict her with
fears which might never be realised; but he justified himself by the
reflection that these perils threatened her as closely as they
threatened him, and that he had no right to leave her in ignorance of
them.

They stood in the lofty, pillared hall of her somewhat Italianate house
at Hounslow on the October morning after his last interview with
Overbury, and there he urged the matters that oppressed him.

She was not at first perturbed. From the cushioned oak settle, at right
angles to the hearth with its tall, carved overmantel, she looked up at
his clouded countenance, and, smiling, shook her head.

'Turner is true as steel, nor dare be otherwise. Is she to tell the
world the part she played in helping me? It would go hard with her if
she did. As for Weston, he is silenced by the same gag. The rest is
naught. Gossip is never to be stifled, and is not deeply regarded by any
person of worth. The only other who knows is Sir Thomas Overbury. How
comes he to know these matters, Robin?'

Robin shrugged. Her words had put a fresh complexion on the matter,
presented points which he had missed, and thus had instantly restored
his equanimity. He had started at shadows. He answered her question; but
not truthfully, because he dared not tell her of the graces of mind he
had borrowed from Overbury to help him in his wooing.

'It was an indiscretion, perhaps,' he confessed. 'But Tom and I have had
no secrets from each other.'

She frowned a little in thought. 'Yet this was not your secret only. It
was mine as well. More mine than yours.'

'I confess it,' he said contritely. 'But don't blame me. Like you I was
troubled in soul and eager for advice. There was no one else whom I
could trust, and no one of so acute a mind as his.'

'If he is full worthy of your trust, if he is staunch and loyal, you
have done no harm. Can you be sure of that?'

'As sure as of myself.'

'Why, then you may dismiss your every fear.' She rose, and came to put
her arms about his neck with a melting tenderness. 'There are no
obstacles before us, Robin. At least none that are not presently to be
surmounted. The road to happiness lies ahead, my dear. We shall look
back upon our little pangs, our anxieties and momentary despairs, and
count them a little price to have paid for the glory that is ours.'

'My heart!' he cried, and caught her to him, swearing that he would pay
more than that at need, that he would give all he had and was, to find a
haven in her arms.

And so trusting that Turner and Weston would be silent because they
must, and Overbury because he was loyal and true to her Robin, she went
in happy confidence of the finding of the commission which the King was
appointing, with Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at its head. Thus
until the shadow fell.

It happened at Northampton House. Sir Thomas Overbury was not the only
one to employ spies. The Lord Privy Seal found them necessary, both to a
proper discharge of the duties of his office, and to the shaping of his
own personal concerns. And these spies brought him word that the rumours
afloat concerning the real and illicit object of the commission--illicit
since it had for object to break up an existing marriage so as to give
Lady Essex to the favourite who had formerly been her lover--were being
disseminated in Paul's and at the ordinaries by Sir Thomas Overbury
himself. If on the one hand Northampton was aghast at the discovery, on
the other he perceived a certain capital to be extracted from it. Its
disclosure to Rochester should suffice for the breaking of Overbury.

So Northampton sent for Rochester and laid before him the disclosures of
his spies.

Rochester refused to believe the tale. It was unthinkable.

Northampton swore that, unless the damned scab--as he now called
Overbury--were checked, he would ruin all.

Rochester, still trusting to the loyalty of his friend, taxed Overbury
with the matter, and suffered the source of his information to be drawn
from him. Then Sir Thomas laughed.

'Northampton, eh! The pestilent, noisome old fool! A secret recusant
that should long since have been Star-Chambered! Haven't I warned you
against him and all that hell-brood of Howards? Do you not perceive the
fellow's aim? It is to embroil us, to part us, so that he may have you
under his hand to obtain him whatever he covets. I'll hear no more of
this. But I warn you again that if you keep to your course you'll be
forced in the end to choose between the Howards and me, which means that
you'll be forced to choose whether you'll be served by me or live to
serve the Howards.'

His lordship was bewildered, and knew not what to hold by. His
friendship with Overbury in one way and another was being marred. What
would follow if it were ended? In the depths of him he feared that it
might be no less than Sir Thomas foretold. Therefore he persisted in
believing what he hoped, which was that Northampton's spies had been at
fault.

Lady Essex, however, took a different view. Northampton saw to this,
hoping that she might prevail with Rochester where he could not. The old
Earl perceived quite clearly the motives actuating Sir Thomas;
understood perfectly that Sir Thomas was not at all concerned with the
rights or wrongs of the marriage, but merely with his hold upon the
favourite which the marriage threatened. It became a secret duel between
Northampton and Overbury for the possession of Rochester, a duel in
which neither dared too clearly to show his hand.

Meanwhile Lady Essex, driven to distraction, took affairs into her own
hands, with that firm, direct independence of spirit which she had ever
displayed.

Again as of old there hovered about her frequently in those days at
Northampton House the slim, elegant person of Sir David Wood, who once
had paid court to her and announced himself for evermore her servant.
As if in confirmation of this, he still bore himself with a certain
gallantry towards her, although fully informed of what was to follow
upon the dissolution of her marriage. She determined to make proof of
his sincerity. She had heard of him that he had a certain reputation as
a swordsman and that he plied a very nimble rapier. She broached the
matter to him at last, taking him up on one of his ever-recurring
protestations that his life had no purpose but her service.

'These are smooth words, Sir David, and easily uttered.' She shook her
sunny head, and smiled. 'What if I were one day to take you at your
word?'

'I should count myself the happiest of men,' said he promptly.

She laughed outright. 'Why, if it will bring you happiness, I forgo my
last scruple.' She became serious. 'I have a very dangerous enemy
hereabouts. A snake of a man who may do me mortal hurt. It happens that
you have already suffered at his hands, which in a way makes in this a
bond between us.'

Sir David lowered his hand to his sword hilt, and thrust up the blade
behind. 'His name, my lady?' said he, at once converted into your
truculent fire-eater for her admiration.

'His name is Overbury.'

He sucked in his breath. 'That dog! What affront does he dare offer
you?'

'He defiles my name in public with scandalous stories.'

He looked ineffable things, but said nothing until she pressed him. Then
he displayed a certain hesitancy. 'The knave stands high. He is well
protected. Lord Rochester now ...'

She interrupted him. She had no wish to discuss Lord Rochester's part in
this. Instead she offered a further stimulus.

'What was your loss at his hands, Sir David?'

'A matter of a thousand pounds at least.'

'Well, here's to pay the debt and to recover the money at the same time,
Sir David. When you have settled your own score with him as a gentleman
should, you shall have the thousand pounds from me in satisfaction of
the service you will have rendered me at the same time.'

Sir David bowed. She had flicked him sharply with her reminder of what
became a gentleman in his position, and being needy, she had tempted him
beyond his powers of resistance with the glitter of that thousand
pounds.

'His friends may order his winding-sheet,' he said in your fire-eater's
best manner, and went about the business.

That evening found him in King Street just as Sir Thomas was returning
to the handsome house which he now maintained there in the neighbourhood
of the palace. By an odd coincidence he reached the door almost at the
same moment as Sir Thomas so that they were within an ace of colliding.
Each drew aside to give the other passage.

'I go no further,' said Sir Thomas. 'This is my house.'

'Your house? Odso! Then you'll be Overbury?'

His tone drew Overbury's eyes more sharply, and Sir Thomas recognised
him for Northampton's creature and got the scent of mischief breast high
at once.

'I have long desired to meet you, sir,' said Sir David.

'The desire was easy of fulfilment. I am not difficult to find. You are,
I think, Sir David Wood, a friend of the Lord Privy Seal.'

'I am honoured by your memory. But perhaps you have occasion for it.'

'Occasion? I call none to mind.'

'Yet there was one in which your intervention was of a cost to me of a
thousand pounds.'

Sir Thomas looked him over with that glance of his which he could render
so frosty and distant. 'Was it on this that you desired to meet me?'

Sir David nodded. 'On this.'

The door was opened at that moment by Overbury's man Davies, a brisk,
well-set-up lad of a little more than twenty, with a comely brown head,
pleasant-faced and neatly attired, who was entirely in his master's
confidence.

Overbury waved his hand in invitation. 'Let us in, then.'

Sir David hesitated a moment, then, bowing slightly, crossed the
threshold. From the narrow passage he was ushered by Sir Thomas into a
long, low room that was almost bare of furniture. A little oval table of
oak stood in the window, and four tall chairs were ranged against the
wall. On a rack above the overmantel were hung a half-dozen rapiers,
whose padded points announced them for practice swords. As many targets
with daggers attached to them were ranged on either side of this rack.

The long space of floor was bare, and in the middle of it was boldly
drawn a square of chalk whose sides were some seven feet in length.
Within the square, touching its sides at a tangent, there was a circle,
and within the circle a network of lines curious and mysterious to the
staring eyes of Sir David Wood.

Sir Thomas smiled a little under cover of his moustache as for a moment
or two he watched the other's puzzled inquiring glance. Then he uttered
a little laugh, scarcely more than a chuckle.

'You admire my magic circle, Sir David?'

Sir David started; almost he changed colour.

'Magic!' he echoed. 'Do you practise necromancy?'

Sir Thomas laughed, more freely this time. He divined the thoughts that
raced through Sir David's mind, and left the flitting shadows of their
passage on his swarthy countenance where men might read them. Since
Overbury was not only a warlock but had the impudence to proclaim it,
there should be a short way to deal with him. King James's witch-finders
should do his business.

'Necromancy?' Sir Thomas was echoing through his laughter. 'That is
divination by the dead. Oh, hardly that. The sorcery of this is of a
different order. This is the Circle of Thibault. You're a travelled man,
Sir David. You'll have heard of Thibault of Antwerp.'

Sir David shook his head, his face forbidding. 'I do not meddle in such
matters. Thank God!' And he added. 'Ye're singularly rash and bold, Sir
Thomas.'

'Bold, ay. But rash! On the contrary, I am prudent. We are at
cross-purposes, I think. When a man has so many enemies among the
envious, the dishonest, and the greedy, it is well that he should make
use of some magic to protect himself in extreme cases. So I have taken
up the magic of the sword. Telomancy, it might be called. Thibault is
the greatest living master of the sword. Upon the schools of Capoferro
and Paternostier he has built a system of his own. That circle with its
lines is necessary for the perfecting of his methods.' He turned about
to Davies, who stood grinning in the doorway, relishing his master's
jest at the expense of this stranger. 'Come hither, Lawrie. Strip off
your doublet, and we'll show Sir David the mysteries of Thibault. That
is,' he added quickly to his guest, 'if the display will afford you
interest, sir.'

Sir David, crestfallen a little by the explanation which destroyed
almost as soon as they had sprouted those hopes of seeing Sir Thomas
burnt at the stake, was nevertheless still profoundly intrigued.

'It would interest me deeply,' said he.

Sir Thomas offered him a chair, and only after he had taken it did it
begin to occur to him that Overbury, having divined the purpose of his
visit, did this to mock and intimidate him at the same time. No mean
swordsman himself, however, he did not think that he would easily be
scared by any display of foreign tricks. When these displays were over
the laugh should be with him.

Meanwhile Sir Thomas rid himself of his cape-cloak, untrussed his
points, threw off his doublet, and stood forth tall and active as a cat,
the lithe proportions of him now fully displayed as he came on guard in
shirt and breeches, armed with sword alone, whilst the slightly shorter
Davies faced him with sword and dagger.

He explained the reason to Sir David. 'Nature, as you perceive, has
endowed me with a more than ordinary length of reach, which in itself
gives me advantages over most opponents. To render the contest with
this lad more equal, I discard the dagger. I desire you carefully to
observe my feet. It is in their movements that the magic lies, and it is
to guide them that these lines are drawn.'

Davies led the attack. As Sir Thomas side-stepped, parried, and
riposted, he explained the movements, and Sir David was swordsman enough
to perceive before long the magic of it. Presently it was Sir Thomas who
attacked, and as Davies fell back before him, he feinted suddenly, and
overtook him by a lunge under his guard of crossed sword and dagger
which hit him fairly in the stomach.

The lunge as yet was little understood among swordsmen and Sir David
opened his eyes still wider as he looked on. A moment later, Sir Thomas
hit his opponent again by simple imbrocade achieved on a sudden
straightening of his arm after deflecting a thrust. Later still, when
Davies lunged vigorously, Sir Thomas stepped aside to withdraw his body
from the line of that hard-driven blade, and at the same moment
presented his point at the other's face over his guard.

'Enough,' he cried, and stood at ease. 'That will suffice to show Sir
David the peculiar magic of my circle. Away with you, Lawrie. If Sir
David requires a closer acquaintance with Thibault, he may take your
place.'

But Sir David did not. As the door closed upon the departing lad, he
rose to take his leave. He had seen enough to show him that he would
never earn his thousand pounds that way. But Overbury did not intend
that he should go as easily as he had come. There was a strain of
sardonic humour in Sir Thomas, as his writings abundantly show, which he
now proposed to indulge.

'And now, Sir David, to business.' He was fastening his doublet as he
spoke. 'You had something to say to me, I think.' And lest Sir David
should now be reluctant to say it, Sir Thomas's next words barred and
bolted his every exit. 'You had some satisfaction to demand of me, I
think. Some accusation that I had been the means of losing you a
thousand pounds. I well remember the occasion. You sought to make use of
patronage to obtain something to which you had no honest title. You did
not first take the precaution to inform yourself that my Lord Rochester
has never made any awards that should be against the interests of the
Crown, just as unlike most founts of patronage he has never accepted a
bribe from any suitor. This being my Lord Rochester's policy--of which
at this time of day every man is I think aware--and I being my Lord
Rochester's vehicle, it is foolish in you to have expected or to resent
any other issue. That, sir, I think, is all.'

And Sir Thomas smiled pleasantly into the other's angry face.

'All? By God! It is by no means all. You spoke of honesty, I think?'

'Does that word puzzle you? Have you no knowledge of its meaning?'

''Od's wounds! You are insolent!' stormed Sir David.

'Unusually frank, perhaps. The matter is some two years old. Why have
your remonstrances waited until now? Is it that they are being used as a
cloak for some design you come to execute as the lackey of my Lord
Northampton?'

The swarthy face of Sir David Wood was livid. With difficulty he curbed
his fury so that he might answer coherently. 'You make it very plain
that your purpose is to affront me.'

'Am I not amiable in that? Is not that the purpose with which you sought
me? I am meeting you halfway.' He smiled ever with that deadly,
infuriating mockery. 'You cannot in reason require me to go further.'

'Indeed, no,' said Sir David. 'You have gone quite far enough.' Sir
David was committed. Whatever his reluctance to engage this man since
the exhibition he had witnessed, honour did not now permit him to
withdraw. 'When will you cross to France with me?'

Sir Thomas shook his head. 'I have no thought of it. Affairs demand my
presence here in London. If you desire satisfaction of me, you must
obtain it here.'

'Here! With the edicts? The King would break the survivor.'

'Need that trouble you?'

'By God, sir, you're insufferable.'

'You are not required to suffer me. I shall await your friends.'

Either Sir David was reduced to frenzy or he assumed it. It is difficult
to avoid a suspicion that he welcomed the way out which the other's
attitude afforded him.

'You count on your protection by your powerful friends at court. But in
what case am I? Who will protect me? Sir Thomas, you presume upon your
position. Again I invite you as a man of honour to cross to France with
me.'

'And as a man of honour I decline the invitation.'

Sir David gave a long stare, and finally shrugged. 'There is no more to
be said at present then.' And he moved towards the door.

Sir Thomas made haste to open it for him. 'Should you change you mind
and decide to meet me here, I shall be prompt to oblige you.'

Sir David disdained to answer. In the passage the waiting Davies gave
him exit to the street.

He went off to report his failure to her ladyship. His tale was that the
cowardly Sir Thomas refused to meet him anywhere but in London, well
knowing that no man of sense could agree to a step that must bring down
upon him the stern displeasure of the King. In his eagerness to parade
his valiance, he went too far. Sir Thomas Overbury, he asserted
violently, counted upon sheltering himself from the consequences behind
my Lord of Rochester.

'And if,' said her ladyship slowly, 'I were to promise you his
lordship's protection against what may come after?'

Sir David felt like one who has stepped foolishly into a trap. 'If your
ladyship will bring me two lines in that sense above his lordship's
signature ...'

'You ask too much,' she interrupted him. 'How could his lordship afford
you that? It could be used to proclaim him a hirer of bully swordsmen.'

Sir David was downcast. 'Yet short of that, my lady, I hardly dare to
venture.'

'That's it! That's it!' said she. 'You hardly dare to venture.'

'Madam!' Indignation swept through him at the obvious taunt. 'You do me
a deep injustice.'

'How can that be, Sir David! I use no more than the words in which you
have passed judgment on yourself.' She smiled a little, pensively
wistful. 'I mind me of the day on which you protested that your life was
mine in any need of it to serve me. Yet when the moment comes--and to
serve not only me but also your own self--you are soon daunted.'

'Daunted!'

'It is clear that Sir Thomas was not daunted, and Sir Thomas has no
romantic object to allure him. You spoke of his cowardice, I think, Sir
David. Are you so sure that that fault lies in him?'

'You mean that it lies in me?'

'He is ready, at least, to do that which you confess you dare not do.'

Sir David rode back to London with a black rage in his heart. To the
mortification he had suffered at the hands of Sir Thomas Overbury, my
Lady Essex had added immeasurably by telling him what he knew to be the
truth. There is in the human heart no hatred more bitter than that which
is aroused by discovery of mean verities concerning him which a man
seeks to dissemble from his own self. The fact that Sir David had
undoubtedly been stirred to love for Lady Essex but served to deepen the
complexion of his present rancour.

It was a rancour that was later to bear fruit.




CHAPTER XXII

THE QUARREL


The great party hostile to Rochester received in November of that year
1612 a shattering blow in the comparatively sudden death of its most
powerful, influential, and active member, the Prince of Wales.

On the 5th of the month, whilst bonfires blazed and fireworks crackled
and exploded in London streets to commemorate--as commanded by the
King--his majesty's miraculous preservation from the gunpowder barrels
of Guy Fawkes and his associates, Prince Henry lay dying in Saint
James's Palace. Never had the engaging and able young Prince been more
firmly established as the popular idol; never had the gulf between
himself and his father been wider. Out of this grew dreadful rumours at
the time, which received colour from the fact that Mayerne, the King's
foreign physician, had been sent to attend the Prince in his last
illness, and was known to have quarrelled violently with Hammond, the
Prince's doctor, on the subject of the measures to be taken. There was a
deal of talk of the enmity between the Prince and my Lord Rochester and
of the excessive love of the King for his favourite, and from all this
conclusions were drawn very useful for the enemies of Lord Rochester and
some which even dared to go beyond him in pointing the accusing finger.

But not all the rumours afloat or to be invented could diminish my Lord
Rochester, who, never more secure in the royal favour, never exerting a
greater influence over the doting King, was now at the meridian of his
power, a fixed and glowing star of unrivalled magnitude in the firmament
of the English Court, deriving an added lustre from the partial eclipse
of that group which in the past had striven, under the ægis of Prince
Henry, to curb his growth. One who sought him at Royston in the course
of the new year has left it on record that there was no need to ask
direction to his lodgings there, since the great crowds that flocked
about it fully advertised its whereabouts.

The only flaw in his present happiness was that provided by Overbury's
hostility to his relations with my Lady Essex, an hostility which had
been spurred by the sense of personal peril aroused in him by the affair
with Sir David Wood. The matter reached a sort of climax late one night
during the following April.

They were gay in the King's apartments at Whitehall in the course of a
protracted carousal over which his majesty presided. But Rochester was
not of the party. Indeed, of late, in the pursuit of his love-affair and
presuming upon his favour with the King, he had been a little negligent
of his duties at his majesty's side. If the King was aggrieved, he
displayed it as a woman displays her anxieties over a lover's
negligences, by increased attempts to please him.

Rochester came back from Hounslow a full hour after midnight, and going
straight to his quarters was surprised to find Overbury there with his
secretary Harry Payton in attendance.

The consciousness that Overbury knew why he was so belated and that he
disapproved of the matter which was the occasion of it acted as an
irritant upon Rochester. He had almost a boy's sense of having been
discovered in something that must bring him a reproof.

Staring from the threshold upon his friend who sat at the writing-table,
his head resting on his hand, Rochester challenged him sharply. 'How
now? Are you still up?'

Slowly Sir Thomas raised his head. His eyes swept over that brilliant
figure, from the diamond buckle in his plumed hat to the rosettes on his
high-heeled shoes, and a sneer curled his thin lips.

'And what do you returning at this time of night? I have urgent papers
here that wait your signature.'

Lord Rochester came forward slowly, a scowl on his brow. Sir Thomas
waved Payton away; bade him go wait in the gallery outside.

'What are these papers?' quoth Rochester.

Sir Thomas rose, thrusting back his chair, and proffering it by a
gesture to his lordship. The documents were spread upon the table.
'Sit,' he said almost curtly, 'and see for yourself.'

His lordship looked at him, and might have observed that his narrow face
was very pale and that his eyes burned as if he had the fever. He sat
down ill-humouredly, and reached for a pen. He dashed his signature at
the foot of the first document almost without glancing at it, and put it
aside to take the next one. In a few minutes all was done, and he flung
down the pen. 'Could they not have kept until morning?' he asked.

'They could not.' Overbury's tone was cold. He had remained standing by
the table. 'They are of the utmost urgency. A courier waits below to
ride to Dover. These papers are for France, and they should have gone
long since. But to be sure the whole progress of the State must stand
still while you seek the company of your woman.'

'Woman?' cried Rochester coming sharply to his feet: 'Woman, did you
say?'

'Aye! And base! Like all her lewd brood, from her bawd of a mother.'

He stood straight and tense, and by the quality of the anger in him
seemed a man at once of fire and ice, so that at one and the same time
he chilled and scorched his lordship with his person and words.

Some curious magnetic quality of dominance he had to restrain Rochester
from striking him in that moment. 'Will you deny it? Can you? Cast back
your mind upon all that there has been: her relations with you whilst
her husband was abroad; her commerce since with that bawd Turner and
with filthy necromancers, practising the Devil knows what evil rites to
gain her ends with you and Essex.'

'Be silent, man! In God's name!' Rochester was livid. The door to the
gallery stood ajar and Overbury's voice was vibrant and far-reaching.
'Be silent, or I'll strike you dead!'

'And like the bee slay your own self in killing,' sneered Overbury. 'For
without me, I tell you again, you are nought. I have borne you upon my
shoulders, and from these have you climbed to the eminence you hold. Yet
now all my pains and all my patient labours are to be turned to nought
by the ruin of your honour and yourself, which is what will follow for
you upon this marriage. You go not forward in the matter by my consent.
I warn you now that if you do, you had best look to stand on your own
legs.'

But now his lordship met sneer with sneer. 'Why, here's a threat! You
may leave me when you please, and the Devil go with you. My own legs
are straight enough to bear me up, I warrant you.'

'You may find it otherwise; for your tailor and I have made a man of you
between us.'

They glared at each other, these two who had been as Damon and Pythias,
and hatred was in the eyes of each. Each curbed himself by an effort
from giving it the expression of physical violence. It was Rochester who
spoke at last, in a dull, concentrated tone.

'You have said things, sir, which may be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Things for which as God's my life I will be even with you yet.'

'So be it,' said Overbury with ominous quiet, the volcano of his passion
smothered to outward view. 'I desire that to-morrow we part. Let me have
that portion which is due to me, and I will leave you free to yourself.'

'So that you leave me free of you, it is what I most desire,' he was
answered, and upon that Lord Rochester flung out of the room in a
passion.

Overbury stood there for a spell after he had gone, immobile,
thoughtful. Then mechanically he folded the documents into a package,
tied and sealed it, and, summoning Payton, handed it to him for delivery
to the waiting courier. That done he departed the palace, and walking
like a man in a dream, went home to his house in King Street. But not
yet to bed. The April dawn was near when at last Sir Thomas sought his
couch. Nor did he sleep even then. The turmoil of his thoughts kept
sleep afar. Here was the end of all his soaring hopes and proud
ambitions. His years of patient toil were wasted. To-morrow he would be
nought again, he who had wielded an almost kingly power, whose smile
had been courted, whose nod obeyed. The bond into which he had entered
with Robert Carr, when first he had come five years ago to lift him by
the power of his genius to the dizzy eminence on which he stood, was
broken now. The breach, as he had said, meant ruin to them both. And all
this for a woman, a golden-headed, blue-eyed enchantress, whose beauty,
which would stale with custom, blinded the fool to everything else
within his purview.

In these bitter reflections was the night consumed, and it was in
bitterness that he went next day to that workroom of theirs in
Whitehall, there to await Rochester, so that they might come to their
final accounts and close this partnership which had been so portentous
to them both.

By dinner-time he had not yet seen his lordship. The day wore on, and
still his lordship did not come. He sent to seek him more than once. But
each time his messenger brought word that my Lord Rochester was nowhere
in the palace.

Unopened despatches lay upon his table awaiting attention. To clerks and
secretaries who came to him for orders upon this matter or upon that,
Sir Thomas vacantly returned the answer that they had best await the
coming of his lordship. He accounted himself already a dismissed
servant, presently to depart almost as empty-handed as he had come. For
just as Rochester had through all his time of power remained
incorruptible, so had Overbury. Looking back now, he dubbed himself a
fool for his honesty. Another, foreseeing the possibility at least of
such an end as this, would have taken advantage of his position to
enrich himself. He pondered these things now in his bitterness, as he
sat there, waiting, dejected of countenance and blear-eyed from lack of
sleep.

Lord Rochester, meanwhile, was spending most of that critical day
closeted with my Lord Privy Seal. By last night's action Sir Thomas had
finally accomplished the very thing he sought to avoid, and the dread of
which had been at the heart of his rage. He had definitely thrown
Rochester into the ready arms of the Earl of Northampton.

Northampton between elation and alarm had heard him out, his grey
predatory old countenance expressionless as a mask.

'We must seal the mouth of this damned scab without delay and before he
can do more mischief.'

'As to that,' said Rochester, 'there's an end to him. It was agreed last
night between us. We part at once, and he shifts for himself hereafter.'

There was a faint note of contempt in the voice that answered him.

'That's not the end of him by any means. He knows too much; far, far too
much. You have been so free in your commerce with him that he may even
hold evidence of what he knows; and even without evidence he could
deliver and maintain by his infernal wits a tale so formidable that he
would entirely wreck the chances of the nullity when the commission
shortly comes to sit.'

'God help us!' cried Rochester, in such dismay that Northampton laughed
outright, if none too pleasantly.

'It's a timely prayer,' said Northampton in derision. 'The ground of our
petition is about as firm as quicksand. Only Essex's despair made such a
document possible. As it is, the Archbishop has already expressed his
hostility, and it will need the utmost care in the appointments to
ensure a commission which will give a majority in our favour. Leave
Overbury free to talk--perhaps even to come forward as a sworn witness
to the things that are actually within his knowledge--and there's an end
to all our hopes.'

The truth sent a chill through Rochester. 'What then?' he asked
helplessly.

They were in the library. Northampton was sitting at his writing-table,
his profile clear-cut against the window on his left. He leaned his head
on his hand, and his low-lidded eyes were hidden from the younger man.
His voice came soft and sibilant, pregnant with terrible significance.

'His silence must be absolutely ensured.'

Rochester seemed to crumple in his chair. There was no mistaking the
meaning of that terrible old man, and Robin, whose nature was warm,
generous, and kindly, was aghast at the practical ruthlessness of this
veteran in intrigue. He recalled a March twilight in a firelit room at
Whitehall, when he had passionately cried out against the splendours
which were but evidences of his shame in being no better than a fribble
despised by all men of worth. He remembered how Overbury had offered
himself, the glowing promises he had made of what should come of their
association. He could see him again, tall, straight, and slender, his
sombre garments redly illumined by the leaping firelight, putting forth
his hand to the clasp which was as the seal upon the unwritten bond
between them. And he heard his own voice saying, 'Stand by me, Tom, to
make common fortune with me, as I with you,' to which he was to add a
moment later, 'It is a bond in which I'll never fail of my part.'
Swiftly his mind surveyed that long and at times arduous road which in
the last five years they had travelled together. How loyally in all
things Overbury had kept to the bond, how generously and utterly he had
given the service which he promised!

And now on this April day he sat here in this fine room, with all its
evidences of wealth and culture about him, and listened to its owner,
this old man who, whatever else he had learnt in more than seventy years
of life, had never yet learnt pity, proposing coldly and emotionlessly
that Overbury should be blotted out lest his tongue should threaten the
aims of that same old man's ambition. For Rochester was under no
delusion on the subject of this ambition. Overbury had made that clear,
and the conviction of Overbury's accuracy came to his lordship now with
the perception of Northampton's ruthlessness.

Suddenly he broke the silence, to cry out, shuddering: 'Never that!
Never!' And he rose as he spoke, urged forward by his emotion.

The pallid eyelids of the old Earl were suddenly raised. They seemed to
roll back like the membrane from some reptilian eye, and two bright
steely points stabbed sharply at the young man.

'Never what?' quoth he in his passionless voice. 'I have made no
proposals. You answer your own thoughts, sir, rather than my words.'

Rochester moistened his lips as he stared back to meet that burning
gaze.

'What ... What, then, is in your lordship's mind?' he asked, his
tongue stumbling over the question.

Faintly Northampton smiled. 'Why, nothing yet, beyond the fact I have
stated. Overbury's silence must be assured. How to do it is yet to be
considered. Could he be bought, do you suppose?'

Mechanically Rochester shook his head. He could not yet free himself
from the conviction of Northampton's earlier meaning. 'No gold would buy
him.'

'Preferment, then?'

Rochester turned away, and walked the length of the room in thought, his
chin sunk to his breast. Slowly he came back. An idea had dawned in his
mind,

'I might secure him an embassy abroad.'

Northampton considered. 'It might serve, provided he were sent far
enough away.'

'We need at this moment an envoy in Muscovy. The appointment is being
considered now.'

'That should be far enough. Will he accept it, do you think?'

'I cannot answer for that. But in the pass to which things have come, it
is very probable.'

'If he refused it ...' Northampton checked on the thought. There was a
sudden gleam from his steely eyes. ''Ods life! I have it. I see a way to
seal him up until you're safely married and his blabbing can do no
harm.' And Northampton expounded a plan in which he displayed so much
craft and guile that Rochester was awe-stricken by the glimpse it
afforded into the old man's mind.

It was a plan ample for their present needs, and that hardly less would
serve, Rochester was quick to perceive. When at last he departed to
Whitehall, he bore with him the resolve to act upon it.

He found Sir Thomas waiting for him in that room of their close and
intimate association, that room in which their joint fortunes had been
so gradually and laboriously consolidated. Rochester advanced briskly,
and held out his hand. Pale and stern, Sir Thomas rose, looked at the
hand and then into his lordship's handsome face.

'How now?' he asked almost mistrustfully.

'For the sake of all that's gone between us, Tom, if part we must, at
least let us not part enemies. Something I may yet do for you, even
though henceforth we go separate ways.'

A moment yet Overbury hesitated before taking the proffered hand, and
when at last he took it there was no warmth in his grip. Rochester set
his other hand on his friend's shoulder.

'We were distempered with each other last night. We uttered words which
should never have passed between you and me.'

'Whose was the fault?'

'Leave that. We have unfortunately come to a pass in which we can no
longer stand together. You disapprove the course I take. You are
determined to oppose it, and I as determined to pursue it. We cannot
agree. So that's the end of that. But it need not be the end of all
between us.'

'I do not see what's left.'

'What is to come to you, Tom? What shift will you make for yourself?'

And now Overbury laughed, but with an under-current of bitterness. 'Why,
in your own words last night, my own legs are straight enough to bear me
up. I'll tread my ways upon them, never fear.'

'I might help to make those ways pleasant, profitable, of consequence.
How if I brought the King to offer you the Paris Embassy, sending Digby
to Muscovy instead?'

'So that's the aim. To send me packing.'

'But at least not empty-handed, Tom. At least with an honourable office
which may lead you in time to the fulfilment of your every ambition.'

Sir Thomas thought of the Treasurership which he had accounted so nearly
within his grasp, and by comparison with which an embassy was but a
paltry affair. Still it was honourable, as his lordship said. Certainly
better than going back to seek a precarious livelihood in the inns of
court; and with his talents it might conceivably lead him in time to
better things.

So, like the philosopher he was at heart, he thrust down his bitterness,
and made his peace with Rochester upon those terms.

It was agreed that what had passed between them should be forgotten;
that Overbury on his side should cease all active opposition to the
divorcement of Lady Essex, and should not either by word or deed throw
any obstacle in the way of its accomplishment. Until his future was
settled, he would continue here to discharge the functions of his
secretaryship.

His gloom and dejection scarcely mitigated, Sir Thomas sat down again to
open the despatches which had lain all day untouched upon his table.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE TRAP


The Lord Privy Seal was closeted with the King.

His majesty had supped in his bedchamber, as was often his habit, alone
save for the three gentlemen who had waited upon him. He had washed his
fingers, and wiped them on the napkin Haddington had proffered him. Then
my Lord of Northampton had been admitted, the gentlemen in attendance
had been dismissed to the antechamber, and the Earl and the King were
alone together.

His majesty, who was now approaching fifty, had aged considerably since
that day in the tilt-yard, seven years ago, when first he had taken
notice of Robert Carr. Persistent gluttony and excessive drinking of
sweet sugary wines had combined with indolence to dispose him towards
obesity of body above limbs which remained shrunken. His florid face was
growing wrinkled, his eyes more lachrymose than ever.

He lolled in an armchair, untidily, his quilted doublet half-unbuttoned,
and his sandy head was covered by a hat, a black velvet cone with a
jewelled buckle to secure the band. On the table before him stood a
beaker and a goblet. He had filled the latter with dark sirupy
Frontignac, which he loved to sip very gradually as he talked.

The Earl having announced that the matter which brought him was of a
certain gravity was invited by the King to speak with complete
frankness. Yet he hesitated a little, standing there beyond the table,
his chin in his lean claw, his beady eyes fixed and thoughtful.

'There is,' he said at last, 'a certain scab who is uttering rumours,
dark hints, and other false lewdnesses which may come to embarrass the
nullity commission.'

'What's that?' The sudden change of the royal countenance warmed
Northampton with the assurance that he touched his majesty in a tender
place.

For days King James had toiled with pedantic infatuation upon the
matter. He had pored over Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and the
Laws of England.

He had resolved deep problems of civil and canon law on the subject of
divorcement; he had particularly considered the knotty question of
whether a petition for divorcement could, in any case, be made on behalf
of a woman; and he had spent long hours in cogitation and in setting
down the fruits of all this labour before reaching the decision to
appoint a commission. When that decision was reached, it was merely so
that an authoritative body of lawyers and divines should pronounce the
judgment which his majesty had already reached.

Not his 'Counterblast to Tobacco,' not the infinitely more learned and
profound work on Demonology, not even the 'Basilicon Doron,' or any
other of his pedantic outbursts, had ever brought him such rich delight
in his own erudition as this treatise upon the case of Lady Essex, a
treatise which ransacked all history, divinity, and law, and must if
published leave the world aghast at the stupendous compass of his
learning; a treatise which, if he had been the meanest clerk instead of
King of Britain, must still have made his name immortal.

And now he was told that some kennel rat by the use of scandal was at
work to nibble at the foundations of this mighty edifice. He could not
have heard aright. Therefore he demanded that his lordship should repeat
to him this incredible thing. His lordship repeated it, and added to it
a little.

'This scab dares in his effrontery to criticise the policy of your
majesty in appointing the commission.'

''Ud's death!' James almost choked on the oath. 'My policy? My policy!
Who's this ye speak of?'

'His name is Overbury. Sir Thomas Overbury.'

The anger that now arose in King James was a different thing from the
erstwhile indignation of his offended vanity. It turned him pale by its
addition to the score against a man whom already he hated so implacably.
His goggle eyes stared at the Earl. His jewelled fingers shook so that
they were forced to abandon the mechanical attempt to take up the cup
before him.

It was some time before his majesty spoke. When he did so his voice was
strainedly calm.

'And he talks, you say, of this policy of mine?'

'So much, your majesty, that it is high time he were silenced.'

'It is what I'm thinking.'

Northampton had never seen the King so grim. Never had he beheld so
completely in eclipse that quality in James which had led Overbury to
speak of him once in private to a crony as a _faux bonhomme_. He sat
awhile huddled there, his jewelled fingers toying with the buttons of
his doublet. 'If after this, Robin should still stand between that rat
and me ...' The sentence closed in an inaudible mumble.

Presently his lordship ventured a comment on a sigh. 'Lord Rochester has
a great kindness for the rogue.'

'Too great a kindness,' growled the King. 'Had it not been for Robin,
I'd have laid him by the heels long since. And even now Robin will come
storming to me and cluttering my wits with his clavering in defence of
this eye-sorrow. But, by God's death, I'll not be moved to weakness this
time.'

Yet even as he took the oath he seemed shaken by a doubt of his power to
fulfil it if it ran counter to the wishes of his pampered favourite, and
by rage to think that his darling Rochester should waste such love on
that worthless rogue. Misgivings, jealousies, and choler brought him
almost to the point of tears. He slobbered fearfully. 'Some years
since,' he complained, 'I'd ha' sent him Ambassador to France, paying
even that price to be rid of him from about the court, so that my sight
should not be troubled by him. But Robin would not have it. Robin must
keep him here beside him, never heeding my heart-scald. 'Ud's death!'

'If your majesty were to offer him the same again--some foreign
embassy--my Lord Rochester might not now oppose it. He has some
knowledge of Overbury's loose talk, and would I think be as glad as any
of us to have him away, at least for the present time.'

'Ay, ay! But would he go? Would he go, the insolent, swaggering carle?'

Northampton raised his shoulders. 'If he did not ...' And there
abruptly he checked, so abruptly that the King stared up at him with
his pale, bulging, watery eyes.

'What's in your thoughts, man?'

'If he did not go,' said Northampton slowly and very quietly,' there
would be the Tower.' He paused to add in the same quiet tone the
explanation. 'For disobedience to a royal command; for an affront to
majesty.'

They remained looking into each other's eyes, and the craft in
Northampton's was slowly mirrored in the King's.

'We'll be hoping,' said the King slowly, 'that he disobeys. He'd be
safer a deal in the Tower than in Muscovy, and he deserves it better.'

Northampton's eyes narrowed. 'It might be contrived, Sire, by the
exercise of a little adroitness, that he should refuse the embassy.'

'And who's to exercise it? The adroitness?'

'If your majesty will trust me in this.'

'You'll prove yourself trustworthy, indeed, ay, and adroit, indeed, if
you can bring about so desirable a consummation.'

'I shall hope to deserve your majesty's approval.'

When presently he was dismissed, it was in the assurance that by the
interview he was a gainer in two senses: the result should enhance his
credit with the King and rid the court of the plaguily inconvenient Sir
Thomas Overbury.

Interviews followed between Northampton and Rochester in which the
utmost frankness was employed, and between Rochester and the King, which
were less ingenuous. It was Rochester who broached the matter to his
majesty upon the morrow, in the course of their daily discussion of
affairs.

'The embassy at Muscovy awaits the appointment of an envoy.'

'Ay, ay,' said the King. 'Have ye any names to lay before the Privy
Council?'

Rochester paused a moment. 'Sir Thomas Overbury is about to quit my
service.'

'Is he so? Ah, well! I'll not pretend that I'm not glad of it. I never
loved the cullion, nor ever knew why you should love him. But what has
he to do with Muscovy?'

'He is better qualified for that or any other embassy than any man I
know. Your majesty held some such opinion of him once when you offered
him the embassy in Paris.'

'Did I so? Belike it was to be rid of him, Rabbie. Ah, well, lad,
Muscovy'll be better for him than Paris. Russia is a country in which he
may cool his super-abundant heats. And it'll take him farther from me,
though hardly far enough for my pleasure. Ye see, I'm frank about the
carle. If you ask it for him he shall have the office.'

And so it fell out that two days later Sir Thomas Overbury received a
visit from the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who came formally in the
King's name to offer him the embassy to Russia.

Sir Thomas was taken aback. Muscovy was not Paris. In Paris, with his
fluent French and his close intimacy with French affairs, he could
rapidly impress himself as a man of weight. But Muscovy was altogether
different. He had no Russian, knew little of Muscovite ways and less of
its politics. Moreover, it was almost as far as the antipodes. Had
Rochester, he asked himself, but played a game with him?

Of all this, however, he allowed no glimpse to escape him. Soberly he
received the proposal, and soberly answered it that he would take time
to consider, an answer which caused the old Chancellor to raise his
brows. For a man of Overbury's apparent position at court an embassage
was a great honour, the acceptance of which should require no
reflection. Moreover, the offer was in the nature of a royal command.
Lord Ellesmere, however, did not stay to argue with him, but left him to
the consideration for which Sir Thomas demanded time.

All the time he required was to lay the matter before Rochester, who
heard him out with a serene countenance.

'The King,' he was answered by the favourite, 'is loth to displace
Digby, who has served him well in Paris. But your reasons are just
enough, and if you refuse the offer of Muscovy, I nothing doubt that
France or the Low Countries with which you are so well acquainted will
presently be opened out to you.'

Sir Thomas was relieved by this assurance, and, trusting to it, desired
Lord Rochester to inform the King that respectfully he declined an
appointment for which he did not feel himself equipped.

Two days thereafter, late in the afternoon, there came for Sir Thomas a
summons to appear before the Privy Council. He went without hesitation
or any apprehension of what awaited him.

With his brisk step he passed between the two scarlet yeomen of the
guard who kept the portal, and confidently entered the Council Chamber.

It was a room of moderate proportions, hung with Flemish tapestries, and
lighted by a high window at the farther end, between whose mullions the
leaded panes were aglow in the evening sunlight. A long table covered
by a Persian carpet occupied the middle of the room, and the lords of
the Council were ranged in their seats on either side of it. At a lesser
table apart sat the clerk with his scribes.

Sir Thomas, tall and elegant in his rich dark suit and delicately
starched ruff, came to take his stand at the vacant end of the Council
table. Facing him, the King's great gilded chair stood empty, and as his
keen eyes raked the two lines of Councillors, gliding over the Lords
Northampton, Pembroke, Nottingham, Southampton, and the rest, he
observed on his right another empty chair. Lord Rochester, too, was
absent from his place.

All eyes were turned upon him, and he knew that not a single pair could
he count as friendly. Not a lord present who was not secretly his enemy,
however much the greater part of them might in the past have expressed a
spurious friendliness which did not deceive him, whilst some, like
Pembroke and Shrewsbury, had ever been avowedly hostile.

Although he had ruffled it for years on equal terms with them, yet he
was not one of them; and they made him conscious of it now, allowed him
to perceive in their bearing their contempt of him.

His fine sensitiveness was quick to apprehend all this. And yet it
scarcely galled him. What they were, they were by right of birth, a
right by which the most worthless may parade the honours carved him by a
forbear. What he was, he was by right of his own worth, his talents, and
his industry. They were but descendants. He was of the stuff of which
ancestors are made.

In that consciousness he stood calm and firm under the volley of their
glances.

The Lord Chancellor rose in his place to give him formal welcome, and
formally to repeat the offer of the Russian embassy.

Calmly Overbury announced his well-considered reasons for declining an
appointment to which he did not feel himself competent to do credit. To
answer the haughty stare with which his refusal was received, Sir Thomas
added to the reasons already expressed to Rochester in private certain
excuses on the grounds of health. The climate of Russia was of a rigour
which he did not feel himself physically able to confront.

But before he had come to the end of this, Lord Pembroke had interrupted
him.

'Sir Thomas, I'll make so bold as to remind you that the King intends
this gracious offer for your good and preferment, and I'll beg you to
weigh well your answer.'

Overbury looked round the board, and everywhere met hostile eyes and
sneering lips. Did they venture not only to browbeat him, but to do it
with contempt? He felt singularly alone in that moment, like the hart
when it turns to face the hounds that race to pull it down. But like the
hart at bay, he fronted them boldly, and answered them out of the anger
which their enmity was kindling in him, and also out of his trust in
Rochester.

'I have weighed it, may it please your lordships. It is not my desire to
leave my country for any preferment in the world. But since the King
commands, I will submit to go, provided that I am sent to some place
where I can serve with advantage to England and honour to myself.
Russia, my lords, is not of these for the reasons I have given.'

The Lord Chancellor compressed his lips and inclined his head. Less to
Overbury than to their lordships he announced that he must take the
King's pleasure in the matter, and upon that went out, leaving Overbury
where he stood.

Their lordships took no further heed of him, but broke into murmured
talk among themselves. Conscious that he was being deliberately ignored,
he continued to stand there, keeping his head high and his glance steady
for all that every moment that passed added to the calculated indignity
of his position.

They were bitter moments for Sir Thomas, the more bitter since in the
pass to which things were come the future was likely to offer little
opportunity of paying off the score with these gentlemen who now so
calculatedly insulted him by their disregard. But for my Lady Essex how
different would all this have been. But for the schemes of that
scaly-headed Northampton yonder, who peered at him now and again from
under his reptilian eyelids, these gentlemen, whatever the hostility in
their hearts, would be fawning upon him cap in hand, as they had fawned
aforetime, knowing him for the man who ruled the favourite who ruled the
King.

The moments passed leaden-footed, and there were many of them to pass
before at long last the Lord Chancellor, moving gravely in his fur-edged
robes, reëntered. He was followed by an officer and two yeomen of the
guard, whose appearance made some stir among the gentlemen about the
Council table.

Overbury, too proud to yield to curiosity and turn his head, did not yet
see them, and certainly did not suspect their presence, or else he
might have had some indication of what was coming.

Lord Ellesmere advanced to the Council table. 'His majesty, may it
please your lordships, is rightly indignant at that, in his own words,
he cannot obtain so much of a gentleman and one of his own servants as
to accept an honourable employment from him. Rightly he accounts this
insolence of Sir Thomas Overbury's a matter of high contempt, and he
commands us to commit him for it.'

He made a sign to the clerk of the Council, who thereupon grew busy upon
a parchment, whilst Sir Thomas, recovering from his momentary
stupefaction, broke forth into protest.

'My Lord Chancellor, will you give me the law of that?' He was white,
and his dark eyes smouldered wrathfully.

'The law of it?' The Lord Chancellor raised his grey eyebrows. Someone
at the table laughed.

'Ay, the law of it,' insisted Overbury. 'I am myself more than something
of a lawyer, my lord, and before you lend yourself to this I demand to
know by what law of England the King can compel a subject to leave the
country.'

'You shall have law enough to comfort you ere all is done,' he was
assured, and then the clerk approached him with the document he had been
preparing.

Those preparations had been suspiciously brief, as Overbury was
presently to remember. Meanwhile he was still protesting and demanding,
no one heeding him, and he was still at it when the warrant, signed by
the Lord Chancellor and countersigned by Pembroke, was handed to the
waiting officer.

Only then, as they ranged themselves on either side of him, did Overbury
become aware of the two yeomen of the guard. He looked from one to the
other with dilating eyes. Then, commanding himself, and sweeping their
lordships once more with his haughty glance, he took his leave of them.

'Well, well, my lords! It seems we must argue this another day.'

They led him out, and marched him swiftly along the gallery, and so by
way of the privy gardens to Whitehall Stairs. Not until he stood there
and beheld the waiting barge of the Lieutenant of the Tower did he
perceive how complete were the preparations, and understand the trap
that had been laid for him. But as he stepped aboard the barge there was
more scorn in his heart than dismay. They were fools, indeed, if they
thought him a man so easily to be repressed, and whatever followed he
would see to it that Robin should repent his perfidy. Thus, neither his
courage nor his confidence deserted him. Better for him had it been
otherwise.




CHAPTER XXIV

TEMPTATION


The arrest of Sir Thomas Overbury set town and court agog with rumours.
The most prevalent of them was that it was no more than a prelude to the
fall of Lord Rochester himself.

This was also the most foolish of them, since there can be little doubt
that his majesty already had in view the further aggrandisement of his
beloved Robin on the occasion of his marriage, to which the nullity
commission should clear the way. And to ensure that the nullity
commission should not fail in this, his majesty continued to give his
exalted attention to the suit.

He went out of town, carrying Rochester with him; but whether at
Theobald's, Newmarket, Royston, or elsewhere, and whatever else
was at hand for his entertainment--be it hunting, hawking, or
cock-fighting--the enthusiasm of his majesty's labours knew no
abatement. He still pondered and wrote for the enlightenment of the
divines and lawyers who were to deal with the suit, and was so
transported by his own learning and casuistry that he almost lost sight
of the object to be served in his delight over the manner of serving it.
Had the desire to please his darling Robin by setting free for him the
lady of his choice been entirely absent, had the parties concerned in
this divorcement been utter strangers to him, he still must have
delighted in so extraordinary an occasion to parade talents whose
compass, now that he came to employ them, astounded even himself.

In this stage stood matters some three weeks after Overbury's
consignment to the Tower, by when the commission, headed by the honest,
God-fearing Archbishop Abbot, came to sit, and the fruits of its first
sittings were laid before the King at Theobald's.

In the course of his closely reasoned opposition to the suit, the
Archbishop desired to know by what text of Scripture of either the Old
or the New Testament a man might have warrant, on the grounds set forth
by the petition, to make a nullity of a marriage solemnly celebrated; or
what ancient Fathers, Greek or Latin, or ancient Councils, General or
Provincial, so interpret any text. And he proceeded to quote
Melanchthon, Pezelius, Hemingius, and several others.

Abbot's gravely couched exposition threw the King into a slobbering
rage. Was the Archbishop a knave or a fool that he so utterly ignored
the masterly notes the King had sent him for his guidance, and still
dared to ask questions which the King did not hesitate in his reply to
stigmatise as 'preposterous'?

From that moment Viscount Rochester was for nothing in the matter. His
majesty fought now, not to pleasure his favourite, but to vindicate his
own views and his own authority. It became a duel between the King
affronted in his vanity, and the Archbishop entrenched in his honesty.
Fiercely the King went to work again upon a lengthy dissertation to
confound the Archbishop's arguments.

Abbot nevertheless stood firm, and by his firmness so far swayed the
doctors and divines who sat with him that by July it came to be
generally known that the commission was divided in its findings. Let the
King rage as he might, a deadlock had been reached, from which the only
issue appeared to be through the appointment of a fresh commission.

The delay was vexatious to the lovers; but infinitely more vexatious
were certain rumours which showed that not even his confinement in the
Tower could suffice to muzzle Overbury. He had been receiving visitors,
and he had been writing letters, and the tone of his utterances grew
daily more minatory in a measure as the continuation of his imprisonment
increased his indignation at the perfidy of Rochester.

To his first upbraidings, Rochester had replied in mild and friendly
terms, assuring Sir Thomas that if he would exercise a little patience
all should presently be well with him, and that upon his enlargement
would follow some honourable office to compensate him.

In this there is no cause to doubt that his lordship was sincere. All he
desired was that Sir Thomas should be kept close until the nullity were
pronounced and he could do no further mischief.

When Overbury complained in June that he was ill as a result of his
confinement, Rochester in a letter of solicitude for his health sent him
a medicinal powder, and upon the heels of that his own physician Craig
to minister to him.

Northampton, however, was inspired by no such gentleness. His relations
with Rochester had now become of the closest. As a result of this, when
the King and his favourite went out of town, Northampton stepped into
the position of First Secretary of State. He directed the courses of
Winwood and Lake, who nominally held the Treasurership between them, and
he was virtually head of the realm.

He took steps at once to increase the rigours of Overbury's
confinement. He sent orders to the Tower that Sir Thomas was no longer
to be allowed the exercise of walking in the grounds, that he was to be
denied all visitors, and that his man Davies, who had hitherto attended
him, should be dismissed.

The faithful lad wept when he received the order to go, offered in vain
to be shut up with Sir Thomas in his prison if they would allow him to
continue to serve him.

Next, and as a warning to other visitors of Overbury's who might be
disposed to talk, Northampton ordered the arrest of a gentleman named
Sir Robert Killigrew, who was known to have repeated Overbury's
assertion that he was in possession of knowledge which when divulged
would bring the Essex nullity suit to nought.

Nor did his measures end there. Sir William Wadd, the Lieutenant of the
Tower, was already under a cloud over the matter of the escape of
Seymour--the Lady Arabella's lover--from prison. Detested by Northampton
for his remorseless persecution of Catholics, the Earl lent a ready ear
to the accusations against him of dishonesty in the matter of some
jewels belonging to the Lady Arabella, and using this as his pretext
avenged himself of the knight's laxity concerning Overbury, by depriving
him of his office.

In his place and, on the recommendation of Sir William Monson, the
Master of the Armoury, Northampton appointed a staid, dull, and elderly
Lincolnshire gentleman, Sir Gervase Elwes, to the office.

These measures sufficed to reassure the Lord Privy Seal; but they were
inadequate to allay the alarm of his niece.

The dreadful rumours, which were already affording matter for the
ballad-mongers in Paul's Walk, came to renew the dismay in which she
wrote to her lover, absent in the King's train, and to fill her with
shame and indignation to find her name a subject for rhymed ribaldries.
She wearied her father, her mother, her brothers, and even old
Northampton with her bitter plaints. And they accounted her unreasonable
in that she would not be quieted by the Lord Privy Seal's measures to
tighten the bonds of the prisoner in the Tower. Only Anne Turner
listened to her with the sympathy and feeling which it seemed to her
that her case deserved.

They were on the Italianate terrace of the house at Hounslow, occupying
a stone seat on which a carpet and some cushions had been spread. It was
a hot and breathless day of July, and in the garden below the shrubs
hung motionless and listless under the bright sunshine.

Her ladyship leaned forward, one elbow on her knee, her little pointed
chin cupped in the palm of her hand, and she looked straight before her
as she spoke.

'There is not one amongst them all who serves me for myself, or ever has
done. Not my Lord Northampton, nor my father, nor my mother. They
married me to improve their own fortunes. Now they are lending a hand to
my divorcement because they perceive how it may be to the family
advantage. Well might my Lord Northampton say one day that he thanked
God he was not a woman; that to be a woman is an indignity. I have been
made to savour that, God knows! I am savouring it now. What dignity have
they left me? To what indignities have they not driven me? None knows
better than yourself, Turner. In my despair I sought the assistance of
your warlock Forman, and lent myself to abominations at the memory of
which I burn with shame. Then there were the indignities of Chartley;
that long-drawn contest; the insult of being wooed by a man by whom I
was repelled; the physical fear in which I went of him, justified by his
manhandling of me. And with all this, as if it were not torture enough
for any woman, the agony of my yearnings for Robin, the distracting
thought that we two, who love each other as sincerely as man and woman
ever loved, were held apart by the infamous detestable bond of my unholy
marriage.'

The little widow sought to soothe her. She set an arm about her
shoulders.

'Why dwell on all this now? It is to harass you for no good purpose. All
that is over and done with at last, and the future is to make amends for
what you have suffered.'

'Is it, Turner? Is it? Who will assure me of that? What peace of mind is
there for me while that fellow Overbury has it in his power to ruin all
even now? Think of it, Turner! After all that I have endured, to find
this villain threatening to lay everything waste again, and this merely
for ends of his own, merely out of vindictiveness to find his own
ambition thwarted. What have I ever done to the wretch that he should
bring this evil upon me? Is it my fault that he has been sent to the
Tower and that he has lost all that he possessed and his hopes of more?
What need had he to meddle between my lord and me? Why could he not have
had some thought for my wretchedness? Why should he deny me the little
peace I have bought by years of suffering? Why? In God's name, Turner,
why?'

Her stony impassivity was gone. She was in tears now, a panting,
desperate, broken creature.

'Quiet, child! Quiet!' the widow crooned, tightening her grip of the
heaving shoulders. 'All that is now safely overpast. Let him lie and rot
where he is. He can do no further harm.'

'Can he not? How do I know that? Remember that foul ballad you brought
me in which my name is held to the lewd mockery of lewd men. If he is
not himself the author of it, at least it could have had no author but
for the wickednesses he had uttered against me. A little more of this
and it will suffice to make an end of the nullity. Already those words
of his spoken in the Tower are ringing through London, to encourage my
Lord Archbishop in his obstinate courses, as I hear.'

'Peace, child! Peace! It is not so bad as your fears make it appear.'

'Peace?' she laughed fiercely in her grief and bitterness. 'There is no
peace for me while that man lives. Himself he has said it, Turner.'

'Then kill him.' The widow heard herself pronounce the words before she
was even aware that the thought was in her mind.

The Countess echoed them. 'Kill him!' She spoke musingly, ever on that
note of dreary bitterness. Then she sat up and uttered a short, hard
laugh. 'Should I hesitate, can you think, if it lay in my power? He is
as a snake in my path threatening my existence with his poison. Could
any blame me if I put my heel upon his head?'

The fair little widow sucked in her breath. Her long eyes had narrowed
in thought. Instinctively she looked about her in the pause that
followed. They were quite alone, and all was silent on that terrace
save for the hum of the bees that were foraging in the wallflowers along
the foot of the stone balustrade.

'Do you mean it?' she asked softly.

'Mean it?' The delicate golden head was turned, the dark blue-violet
eyes looked solemnly upon Mrs. Turner out of that tear-stained face.
'Mean what?'

'Why, what you've said. That you want him dead.'

'What if I did?'

The widow pursed her lips. Her voice sank lower. 'These things can be
contrived.'

Lady Essex shuddered. 'O God! No, no! What's in your mind? More
necromancy? But Forman is dead, thank God!'

'There are others still alive. I know of more than one who is able to do
all that ever the doctor could do.'

'No, no!' The musical young voice rang sharp and firm. 'Not to save my
soul, Turner! There has been enough of that. I can thank God that
Forman's dead because the memory of my shameful dealings is buried with
him. I'll never soil myself in that way again.'

'There is no need why you should do anything at all.'

Her ladyship's eyes questioned the widow, and the widow answered. 'I
know of one who, if less skilled in magic than was Dr. Forman, by much
excels him in the use of medicines. He boasts a water that can slowly
kill a man and leave no trace.'

Her ladyship disengaged herself sharply from the other's sheltering arm.
'What is it you suggest to me, Turner?'

'Dear child, I seek ways to help you. Did you not say you want him
dead?'

'I did not. I did not say it.' Her ladyship's voice shrilled up a little
in her vehemence, as if behind that vehemence of denial there was
something that appalled her.

'You said that there is no peace for you while this man lives.'

Lady Essex leaned forward again, both elbows on her knees. 'There is a
difference between wishing a man dead and setting out to slay him. And
yet ...' She broke off. 'I am a hypocrite, Turner. Just now you made
me shudder; you made me afraid of you; you awoke my horror. Yet you but
pointed down a road that I have already desired to tread. Yes, even to
that has desperation driven me.' She paused a moment before adding the
full explanation. 'There was a man, a gentleman who vowed he loved me,
announced himself my servant in all things, made big talk of being glad
to die for me. It happened also that he, too, had been wronged by this
fellow Overbury. He is reputed a deadly swordsman. I charged him to pick
a quarrel with this man. He failed me. But that's no matter. I am nice,
you see, in my discriminations. I start in horror when you propose in
one way what already I have sought to accomplish in another.' She rose
abruptly. 'God help me, Turner! They'll drive me mad, I think, before
all's done.' She pressed her hands to her brow. 'My uncle Northampton is
right. It's an indignity to be a woman.'

The widow sat very still, and waited. There would be great profit in
thus serving Lady Essex. The deadly water would be fully as costly as
Forman's sublimate of pearls. But not on that account would she press
the matter, or display any eagerness. She prospered in her various
trades by knowledge of the human heart. She knew what a fruitful soil it
can become under despair. She had planted her seed. Now let it
germinate.

'I but sought to help you, child,' she repeated presently. 'It breaks my
heart to see you so distraught. There is nothing I would not do to serve
you, dear my lady.'

The tenderness of her voice produced its effect. Her ladyship turned,
swift grace in every line of her. 'I know, sweet Turner. I know. Forgive
me if I was harsh. I am curst as a shrew these days. Let us leave that
now.'

No more was said either in the matter of Sir Thomas Overbury or her
ladyship's troubles. But in the week that followed, the widow's words
were too often in her ladyship's mind for its peace.

At the end of that time, fretted by lack of news of how things were
going in London, she took coach and repaired to Northampton House. The
King was at Newmarket, and Rochester was with him. But her uncle was
able to inform her that not on that account was the matter of the
nullity being neglected.

'I have letters from Rochester that his majesty is solving the
difficulty of the deadlock by appointing two further commissioners upon
whom he can depend, the Bishops of Rochester and Winchester. But the
whole matter is now put off until the end of September.'

The delay was in itself a blow to her hopes. She knew how readily
dangers are increased by delay. She sat down wearily, and looked at him
in silence. He observed her face to be pale and peaked, and commented
upon it whilst coming to pinch some colour into her cheeks with his lean
old fingers.

'Fie! Fie! What will Robin say to his lady if he finds the roses all
withered in her countenance?'

'Will he marvel, do you suppose, considering the sleepless nights he
must guess me to have spent? I am stretched by suspense as by a rack,
and now you tell me that this must drag on, and that perhaps I must go
again before the commission to answer all their dreadful questionings.'

'Scarcely that. But what then, provided all come right in the end? And
right it will come unless that scab Overbury works a miracle.'

She caught her breath at the mention of that detested name. 'Unless, do
you say?'

He hunched his shoulders, standing before her with hands folded behind
his back, his long black robe hanging loose about his lean shanks. 'It
is the only thing I fear. Elwes, the new Lieutenant, has his orders. But
it's a world of fools and traitors, and I hear this devil Overbury is
loud and confident in his daily swearing that while he lives no nullity
shall be pronounced.'

He fell to brooding, his chin upon his breast. Then, after a while, he
laughed with a display of yellow fangs, and patted her cheeks, and bid
her down to dine with him.

But his doubts and misgivings had made her heart too sick. She could not
eat. It was a dreadful thing that her fate, her whole future destiny
should hang in the balance thus; an intolerable thing that at any moment
the balance might be brought down against her by the intervention of one
who cared not what havoc he made of her life so that his own ends were
served. Sir Thomas used her, as it seemed to her, to constrain her lover
and her friends. It was as if he held the point of a sword at her breast
and said to them, yield me my requirements or I slay her.

Was she to stand passive under that menace to herself and to them when
by a single gesture, a single word, she could put an end to it?

Her smooth brow was furrowed, her sweet and gentle countenance darkly
overcast by her soul's travail to find the answer to that question.




CHAPTER XXV

THE BISHOP'S MOVE


Sir Thomas Overbury was ill in body and in mind, and it may well be that
his bodily sickness derived from his mental distemper. Denied exercise
or visitors, or communication of any kind with the outside world--saving
only my Lord Rochester--he was treated, as he violently complained to
the new Lieutenant, with as much rigour as if he had conspired against
the State or plotted against the life of the King.

Sir Gervase Elwes, that grave, dull man, gave a stolidly courteous
attention to his plaints, but denied responsibility in the matter, or
power to ameliorate the conditions. Sir Gervase merely acted upon his
instructions. In one particular only did he mitigate the severity of the
prisoner's condition. The servant for whom Sir Thomas clamoured as a
necessity to him since the removal of his man Davies, a removal which he
dubbed with the rest as a deliberate inhumanity, was presently supplied
him in the person of a lean, elderly man with a forbidding countenance
and a slight cast in one of his eyes, who answered to the name of
Weston. Sir Thomas, however, yielding to his bitter humour, renamed him
Cassius, from, as he said, his lean and hungry look. A memory this of
one of Mr. Shakespeare's plays which he had seen performed some time ago
on Bankside. The fellow inspired him with hope.

He looked so utterly a scoundrel that Sir Thomas concluded he would
prove corruptible.

Assured by now that Rochester was playing him false, Sir Thomas had
reached that point where he would pass from threats to action. He recked
nothing of what might follow to himself--accounting that in any case his
ruin was assured--provided that he could punish the perfidy of the man
whom he had served so stoutly. One certain way there was to accomplish
it. From Lidcote and the others who had visited him he had learnt the
honest attitude taken up by Archbishop Abbot in the matter of the
nullity. If Sir Thomas could contrive to be brought before the
commission to give evidence, he knew that he would not only wreck the
nullity but stir up such a scandal that the King to save his own face
would be constrained to sacrifice Rochester to the popular indignation.
From his knowledge of King James's ways, he had no doubt whatever that
in such a difficulty his majesty would never hesitate. There were
elements of comedy in the situation that moved him to laughter as he
considered them.

The resolve to communicate with the Archbishop was now formed. The
vehicle he thought had been found in this new servant who had been sent
to wait upon him in his wretched quarters in the Garden Tower, which for
so many in the past had been but the antechamber of death. He knew the
corrupting chemistry of gold upon most men's loyalties, and, studying
his lean and hungry Cassius, he concluded that here was a rogue who
would pawn his soul for a handful of money.

He went to work with art. He sought to stir the sympathies of the fellow
with the unnecessary rigour of his treatment considering the littleness
of his offence. There were things he needed: linen, books, and the
like. Yet he must forgo them because he was not allowed to write to
those who could supply them. If Weston would smuggle a letter to Sir
John Lidcote, Sir Thomas would add a _postscriptum_ to that letter
instructing Sir John to give the bearer five pounds.

He saw the covetous gleam in those shifty eyes which never seemed to
meet his own, and his hopes were encouraged.

Weston demurred. If it were discovered, it would go ill with him. Said
Sir Thomas, who cared nothing what might happen to the rogue, that he
would so provide that there should be no risk of discovery. Weston
yielded, and left Sir Thomas to write his letter. Now it is not by
precipitancy of action that such men as Sir Thomas Overbury win to
eminence.

Sir Thomas wrote his letter. But it was just such a letter as he had
pretended to Weston that he desired to write. A letter informing Lidcote
of his health, of his hopes of delivery shortly by the favour of my Lord
Rochester, and requesting his brother-in-law to send him some shirts and
some books, which he enumerated. He added the instruction that the
bearer was to have five pounds.

Weston did what Sir Thomas feared he might do. He carried the letter
straight to Sir Gervase Elwes. Sir Gervase examined it, and, although
finding it no more than was pretended, acted strictly upon the
instructions he had received from my Lord Northampton, which were that
no letters, excepting only such as might be written to my Lord
Rochester, should be allowed to pass. Sir Gervase sent the letter to the
Lord Privy Seal.

Days passed and neither shirts nor books came for Sir Thomas. He took
Weston plaintively to task, and at the same time called him a fool for
having lost this opportunity of earning five pounds without any harm
done to anyone. Weston had by now reached the same conclusion
independently. He made a frank confession, adding to it that, if Sir
Thomas would write again, he would this time contrive the delivery of
the letter.

But still Sir Thomas practised caution. He wrote again precisely as
before, merely adding a complaint that Sir John Lidcote should not have
heeded his previous request, and an injunction that this time he should
send the articles, not as if in answer to a request for them, but as the
result of his own assumptions that Sir Thomas would be needing them.

Three days later came a parcel to the Tower, which, after close
inspection by the Lieutenant, was handed to Sir Thomas. It contained the
shirts and other things, and so brought Sir Thomas the assurance that
his letter had been delivered, and that henceforth he would have no
difficulty with Weston.

But before he could take further action he fell violently ill, as a
consequence it seemed to him of something that he had eaten or drunk,
and for days he lay tortured by pain and fever in that sparsely
furnished stone chamber. It gave him a pretext for writing to Lidcote
again. His condition brought about fresh requirements, and again he
tempted Weston to convey a letter for him. Weston showed reluctance,
whereupon Sir Thomas raised the price to ten pounds, and Weston
succumbed on the condition that he should read the letter before it was
sealed.

Sir Thomas allowed him to read it, and thereafter turned to the table to
fold and seal it. For an instant only was his back to Weston, but in
that instant he did all that was required. Into the letter he slipped
another note, already folded and held in readiness within the palm of
his left hand. It was an operation he had previously rehearsed. Weston
was at his side as he tied and sealed the missive, and had no cause to
suspect the juggling.

The man earned his ten pounds, and Sir John Lidcote found himself in
possession of a note for the Archbishop of Canterbury, which he was to
deliver either upon receiving from Sir Thomas a request for peaches, or
at the end of three weeks if in that time he should not have received
any communication at all from the prisoner.

It was then that Sir Thomas wrote his fiercest, frankest denunciation to
Rochester and his renewed threat that, unless he were shortly restored
to liberty, he would take such steps as should effectively make an end
of all his lordship's hopes of a nullity.

After that Sir Thomas, still weak and shaken from his last illness, fell
sick again much as he had been sick before, and did not hesitate to
assert to the Lieutenant who came to see him that he was being poisoned.

'But you may warn my Lord Rochester,' he said between gasps, 'that if I
die, his nature shall never die, for I have taken such steps to publish
it as will make him the most odious man alive. If you have any love for
his lordship, or you desire to serve him, you would do well to warn him
to have a care for my health, since nothing more terrible could happen
to him than that I should die.'

If Sir Gervase conveyed the warning, Rochester made no sign. Overbury
must abide where he was until the nullity should have been pronounced.
But Sir Gervase took measures to have the cell better ventilated and
left instructions that the rushes on the stone floor, which he found
foul and noisome, should daily be renewed.

Thereafter the prisoner's condition improved; but his weakness abode in
him. His vigour was sapped, and at the end of five months' imprisonment
he was the ghost of the man who had come there on that April day in the
Lieutenant's barge.

And meanwhile the three weeks were sped, and Lidcote, true to his
instructions, and taking steps to conceal only the channel through which
the letter was conveyed, forwarded Overbury's communication to
Archbishop Abbot.

The middle of September had been reached and the nullity commission was
about to sit again, strengthened now from the point of view of Rochester
by the two bishops who would vote as they were desired.

The Archbishop was in the depths of wretchedness. He perceived that he
was being made the tool of worldliness, yet lacked the means to
establish this so that he could combat it as his conscience bade him.
When the letter from Sir Thomas Overbury reached his hands he regarded
it as an intervention from on high to enable him to establish that which
in his heart he already knew to be the truth.

Sir Thomas wrote that the nullity suit was based on falsehoods and
concealments which it lay in his power completely to unmask, since no
man apart from those interested in the proceedings was better informed
than he of what actually had occurred. And he demanded, in the interests
of truth and of justice, human and divine, to be summoned before the
commission to give the evidence that was in him.

The King was at Whitehall again, and without loss of more time than was
required to harness horses, the Archbishop got into his coach at Croydon
and rolled up to the palace to voice Sir Thomas Overbury's demand.

My Lord of Canterbury reached Whitehall in the forenoon, and as the King
came through the audience gallery he observed the sturdy figure and
solemn, overcast countenance of Abbot standing prominently on the edge
of the crowd of courtiers. His majesty was attended by Rochester and
Haddington, and his face darkened at sight of the divine who was so
obstinately opposing his royal expositions upon divinity.

Nevertheless, he advanced towards him, and gave him his hand to kiss,
whilst Rochester stood stiff and haughty in his splendour looking down
upon the portly, short-necked prelate whom he must regard as his enemy.
Haddington, on the King's other side, betrayed a faint mischievous
amusement at this meeting.

The King disengaged his arm from Rochester's and laid a hand upon the
shoulder of the Archbishop. He looked into that grave countenance with
its kindly eyes and broad spade beard, asked his lordship bluntly how
the great cause went forward.

'I am here to speak to your majesty upon it,' Abbot answered. 'If your
majesty would graciously hear a word in private ...'

'In private?' mouthed the King. 'Huh!' He paused, hesitating, then,
abruptly consenting, he almost propelled the Archbishop forward by the
pressure of that hand upon his shoulder, and so, leaning upon him,
thrust him across the gallery into the recess of a window, where they
were quite alone. 'What is your private word, my lord?'

The Archbishop did not falter. He looked the King squarely in the face
as he replied.

'Your majesty already knows that I have no liking for this suit.'

'What's that to the matter?' wondered the King discouragingly. 'I do not
perceive the necessity in a judge for liking any matter whereupon he is
called to pronounce.'

'It matters if he should be rebuked for doing no more than his duty
according to his conscience. It is nought to me that the Lady Frances
remain wife to the Earl of Essex or be married to another man. But I may
not give a sentence where I see no proof.'

His majesty frowned at this. But the prelate held to his course.

'I have lived fifty-one years almost, and had my conscience uncorrupted.
I know not how soon I may be called before God, and I am loth against
that time to give a wound to my soul. All my grief is that your
majesty's hand is in this. For now there comes one who promises such
evidence that will make plain the injustice of this suit.'

'How now? And who may this be?' The bulging eyes looked startled.

For answer the Archbishop unfolded and proffered the note he had
received. The King took it in his plump, jewelled fingers and glanced at
the signature. He uttered a grunt. 'Huh! My old friend Overbury! Huh!'
He strove to keep his mobile countenance inscrutable, studied to shut
out of it the dark anger that welled up in him as he read.

A foolish fellow in many things, in others this James Stuart was of an
almost diabolical acuteness, and never so acute as where effects upon
himself were concerned. At a glance he perceived all the mischief
Overbury might make, and all the scandal that might recoil upon his own
head, rendering ridiculous in the eyes of the commissioners those
masterly arguments of civil and canon law by which he sought to coerce
them, and himself contemptible in the eyes of the world for endeavouring
to juggle with justice and corrupt it for the profit and pleasure of
those he favoured.

Underneath that fatherly benignity which he affected there was all the
ruthless cruelty of the weak man, just as under that air of simplicity
amounting at times to foolishness there was a depth of guile and craft
which may not even now be plumbed. Never was a man better epitomized
than he in the _mot_ of Sully which pronounced him the wisest fool in
Christendom.

Under the searching almost stern eyes of the Archbishop now he was all
benign fatherliness and simplicity. In the depths of him passion boiled
unsuspected; his craft was being swiftly exercised. Too long had this
insolent fellow Overbury been a thorn in his flesh and a source of
friction between himself and his darling Rabbie. And not even now that
he had flung him into the Tower did the fellow cease from galling him;
indeed, he threatened things which in their ruthless, reckless sweep
were a menace to majesty itself.

The King tugged at his beard, whilst he read the note a second time and
pondered it. He lifted his plumed hat and scratched the back of his
fulvid head whilst he read it yet a third time, and all the while he
was considering. At last his countenance reflected a decision taken, a
benign decision, the Archbishop was relieved to see.

'Ay, ay! If the man can say aught that signifies, he must be heard. But
what can he say of his own knowledge? He can but retail scandals and
gossip and such like. Still ...' the King paused and sighed. 'Far be
it from me to give grounds for a reproach that I lightly stopped the
mouth of any man. You must have him before their lordships and hear the
evidence he pretends to have. If it prove nought but vindictiveness
without any solid foundation of fact, we'll deal with him afterwards. I
see the fellow says he's sick and infirm. But no doubt he'll be well
enough to come before your lordships. I'll take order about it.'

The Archbishop, who had feared a raging refusal to the reopening of
evidence, was moved to thank his majesty almost with tears in his honest
eyes.

The King patted his shoulder, murmuring some empty words in commendation
of his lordship's honesty, of which he assured the Archbishop that he
had never held a doubt, or else he would not have placed him where he
stood. Then with Abbot beside him he shambled back across the gallery
towards a group of watchful Howards--Northampton, Suffolk, and some
others of the family, with whom now was Rochester.

At the moment his majesty said nothing of the matter to any of them. But
after dinner, when he was withdrawing for his afternoon rest, he
beckoned Rochester away with him, and in the privacy of his bedchamber,
having driven out the valet Gibb, who waited, he not only showed his
lordship the Archbishop's note, but informed him of the Archbishop's
natural insistence that this witness should be heard.

'Obstinacy, I've ay observed,' said the King, 'to be a strong
characteristic of churchmen. They care not a rushlight what havoc may be
wrought so that they keep rigidly to the line of conduct which their
doctrine-ridden sense of duty points to them. So that they may sleep
tranquil in the sense of duty done, they care not if half the world goes
sleepless.'

His lordship was not listening. With dismay on his fair, handsome face
he stood there, lost to everything but the cardinal point in this
business.

'You'll never consent, Sire!' he exclaimed at last.

'Consent? D'ye perceive what it means? The clattering of this man's
venomous tongue has already brought my policy in the matter of the
nullity under criticism. Will I now consent that these criticisms be
made to appear justified, and have my judgment held up to the opprobrium
of the vulgar and the ignorant? Will I consent to that? Well may ye
assume that I will not. But his lordship of Canterbury insists that I
do, and if I oppose that plaguy insistence the consequences to myself
may be even worse. D'ye perceive in what a cleft stick we're held by
this sweet friend of yours whom in an evil hour you brought to be your
secretary? 'Ud's death! He aims at destroying your happiness and my
honour at one and the same blow!'

The royal countenance was flushed. It had lost the last trace of its
usual foolishly benevolent expression, and the bulging eyes were
bodeful.

Yet even in that moment Rochester must pause to defend the friend whom
his conscience told him that he had already used with excessive
harshness, and that it was this harshness and the fear perhaps of worse
to follow that drove Overbury to use in self-defence the only weapon
remaining him. Something of the kind he said, fetching a sigh as he said
it, and thereby increased his majesty's anger by a revival of his
jealousy.

'Can ye defend him even now?' he bawled. 'Can ye defend him when he's
threatening your prospects as well as the findings of my wisdom? In
God's name, Rabbie, what is the love that lies betwixt ye?'

'It's an old friendship,' said his lordship. 'And I hope I shall ever be
loyal to my friends.'

'Your friends! He's your friend, this scum of mankind?' There was froth
on the royal lips. Then he changed to a tone of bitter sarcasm. 'I am
then to allow him to go before the commission lest your loyalty to him
shall be affronted?'

'No, no. In God's name, no!'

'I'm glad we're of a mind at least in one particular concerning him.
Will ye tell me, then, how it's to be prevented? How I am to avoid
keeping my word to the Archbishop, which was that Overbury should be
heard?'

'Your majesty has already promised that?'

'A pox on your dull wits, Rabbie! How could I not without betraying bad
faith? It was imperative that the promise be given. It's just as
imperative that it should not be kept. Will ye tell me how I am to
accomplish this?'

At a time of less mental trouble and confusion it must have been
perceived by his lordship that the King was pressing him to some
definite course, demanding of him a clear expression of something
already in the royal mind. As it was Rochester heard only the words, and
entirely missed their accent.

With rumpled brow, and his glance on the ground, he answered
thoughtfully. 'It's to be considered.'

The King's glance was dulled by disappointment. 'Very true,' said he
dryly. 'Very true. It's to be considered. And if I am to preserve my
dignity and you are to marry Frances Howard, the answer must be found.'
He rose, and shambled towards the day bed, which Gibb had prepared for
him. 'Go, leave me now,' he said in another tone, and yawned almost as
he spoke.

Rochester bowed himself out, a very troubled man.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE KING'S MOVE


My Lord Rochester was still troubled on the morrow when in attendance
upon his majesty he went to Windsor, whither the King chose to retire
until the nullity commission sitting in Lambeth Palace should have done
its work.

It occurred to his lordship presently that before leaving town it would
have been prudent to yield to the impulse to visit Sir Thomas in the
Tower. He might have succeeded in dissuading him by pleading with him,
in the name of their old friendship and by sincere promises of good to
follow, to abandon the vindictive course he was bent upon pursuing. As
it was, even if Overbury's uncorroborated evidence did not suffice to
wreck the nullity, it would raise such a scandal as must make impossible
Rochester's subsequent marriage with Lady Essex.

It is little wonder that his lordship was moody and thoughtful during
the first three days at Windsor. He moved in dread of a further
discussion of the matter with the King. Yet, oddly enough, his majesty
never again alluded to it, nor seemed unduly troubled, hunting daily in
a spirit which almost suggested that he had no care for anything else in
the world.

And then on the third day came news which completely and finally
disposed of the whole matter.

Sir Thomas Overbury was dead.

He had succumbed suddenly in the Tower to the disease which it was now
divulged had been consuming him for months.

Thus wrote my Lord Privy Seal to his majesty.

For Lord Rochester there was a brief note from Northampton to inform him
that all had been done for Sir Thomas which the necessary rigours of his
confinement permitted, and that as lately as Tuesday he had been visited
by the King's physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne. Sir John Lidcote had
viewed the body, the coroner had held his inquest, and burial had
immediately followed.

His majesty sent for Rochester, and made no secret of his elation. The
fellow had died most opportunely, a bare twenty-four hours before he
must have appeared before the commission to give evidence. The nullity
was now assured.

Rochester, however, did not share the elation. No consideration could
lift him above the gloom resulting from Sir Thomas Overbury's death in
the circumstances in which it had taken place. He remained oddly
conscience-stricken, obsessed by the memory of the bond that had been
between them, of the high hopes in which they had mutually entered upon
it, of the generous manner in which Sir Thomas had fulfilled his part
until lately, and of the pitiful manner in which it was now determined.

In some sense he felt as if he were the murderer of Overbury, for it was
by the duplicity he had practised towards him that Overbury had been
placed in circumstances whose rigours had destroyed him. It did not
greatly help him to consider that Sir Thomas had brought this upon
himself by his own intransigence. On a generous mind the ills that are
suffered compare very lightly with the ills that are wrought, and
Robert Carr, whatever his failings and shortcomings, was generous to the
point of weakness.

The King's leer and his half-chuckle, as he announced to Robin that
Nature had intervened most opportunely, filled his lordship with horror
and remorse.

Opportunely was the word that reëchoed through his mind. On the eve of
being brought before the commission, Sir Thomas's death was opportune,
indeed. Singularly opportune. Suspiciously opportune. Rochester,
closeted with his majesty, was appalled by the sudden twist of his
thoughts. They raced down a fresh avenue gathering confirmation at every
step.

The King, looking up at him from the chair in which he lolled with a
bedgown loosely pulled about him, for the despatch from London had
reached him while he was still abed, was startled by his aspect.

'Why, what ails you, Rabbie? Are ye sick, man?'

And Rochester looking down upon him with stern, accusing eyes, answered
slowly:

'Ay! Sick!'

'Man! What's sickened ye?' The royal uneasiness was manifest in his
goggling eyes.

'The opportuneness as your majesty has said of Tom Overbury's death. Was
it truly Nature that intervened so seasonably?'

'Nature surely, since disease is but a weapon of Nature's, and the
fellow has been far gone these weeks they tell me.'

'Yet your majesty hoped he might recover?'

'Nay, now, nay!' James almost smiled at this. 'Ye cannot impute quite so
deep a charity to me as that, and I'll not be a hypocrite to assume
it.'

'The facts impute it. That or something else. So solicitous was your
majesty on the matter of Tom's health that you sent your own physician
to wait upon him.'

James's loose mouth fell open in astonishment and dismay.

'I have it in a letter from my Lord Privy Seal,' Rochester informed him.
'Sir Theodore Mayerne visited Tom on Tuesday. And on Wednesday he died.
On Thursday he would have given evidence before the commission. These
facts make up a singular procession.'

''Ud's death, man! What d'ye imply?' The King displayed an anger that
was not entirely histrionic.

His lordship, livid of countenance, shrugged disrespectfully and sneered
into the face of majesty. 'Why did you send Mayerne to visit him? Was it
that Mayerne might cure a man whose death would be, in your majesty's
own word, so very opportune? A man for whose recovery it were, again in
your majesty's own words, too deep a charity to impute to you that you
should hope.'

'Stop!' The King heaved himself up out of his chair. He was trembling,
and well may it have been with anger at the contemptuous tone in which
he was addressed by this favourite to whom he had given many liberties.
'You forget to whom you are speaking.' He pulled the loose gown about
him, and strove to bring an appearance of majesty into his untidy
person. 'Sometimes, my lord, you appear to forget that I am the King.'

'Sometimes,' he was boldly answered, 'your majesty forgets it.'

They stood eyeing each other like men who are about to draw and engage.
The King's usually florid countenance was ashen. He shook with wrath.

'I'll not forget this, Robin,' he mumbled indistinctly. 'I'll be even
with you for this.'

'My God!' It was a cry of horror from Rochester. He covered his face
with his hands. 'Those were the very words I spoke to Overbury, as he
has since written to remind me. And dying he'd think it was my hand
that struck him down.'

The pain in his voice moved the King oddly. His queer affection for this
bonny lad whelmed forth in pity to drown his wrath. He made a noise as
if clearing his throat, and shambled forward to Rochester's side. With
one hand he held his bedgown about him, with the other he patted
Rochester's shoulder.

'He'll know better now, lad,' were the extraordinary words with which he
sought to soothe him. 'He'll know better now. He'll know ye're not to
blame; that ye had no hand in it; and he'll know that he brought it
entirely upon himself. Why, what's to greet over, when all's said?'

Rochester lowered his hands from a face that was ghastly.

'Come, Rabbie, come! Here's weakness. If the rogue had lived he would
have wrecked your every hope of happiness, and not only yours but hers,
which, if ye're a lover worth the name, should be of more account to you
than your own. Hasn't the poor lass suffered enough for love of you that
she should have been left to suffer more by this fellow's malice? And
what of me, Rabbie? Do I count for naught? Is your love for Overbury far
above your every other feeling that in your sorrow for his death ye can
take no thought for the sorrows his life would have brought those who
love ye? Away with you to London, lad, to see her ladyship, and bid her
be of good cheer; tell her from me that the nullity is as good as
pronounced and that the wedding-bells will soon be ringing now. Away
with ye, until ye can think more kindly of your old dad and gossip James
and realise that ye've no better friend in all the world.'

Rochester bowed and stumbled out with no word answered, leaving his
majesty very thoughtful.

But not until two days later did he return to town, keeping meanwhile to
his own lodgings in the castle. In that time, having recovered from the
shock of the news, he came to take a less uncompromising view. There was
after all much in what the King had said. Overbury had become a menace
not only to himself, but to King James and to Frances. On their behalf,
if not on his own, let him now put all resentment from him. What King
James had done he had a perfect right to do in self-defence and in the
exercise of kingcraft against one who openly avowed his aims to bring
the King into contempt. And since further he must suppose that King
James had also been actuated in part at least by solicitude for himself,
he could not in justice bear him rancour.

Nevertheless, it was with a sad heart that he rode to town with his
little troop of lackeys, and sought the Lord Privy Seal at Northampton
House.

In the library there he found his lordship steeped in all those affairs
which but a few months ago had been in the charge of Overbury acting on
behalf of Rochester himself. He could not repress a pang to observe in
how short a time his lordship had gathered into his own hands all those
threads of policy and power, and how completely by almost imperceptible
degrees he himself had been elbowed aside, until to-day he knew of
affairs no more than others chose to report to him.

His lordship came to meet him with a fond welcome. Like the King he
pronounced most opportune the decease of Overbury. Like the King he
perceived in the event only grounds for thankfulness on my Lord
Rochester's behalf. The thing, he confessed, was making some stir. His
agents reported that Paul's and the ordinaries were full of rumours. The
idle and the malicious must ever be talking to the detraction of their
betters. There was a tale abroad that Overbury had been poisoned, and it
was being said that the hand that had administered the dose was the same
that had struck down Prince Henry.

'But let them talk,' the old Earl added with a contemptuous shrug. 'They
will the sooner weary. What matters is that the fellow's death has put a
term to all our troubles and misgivings.'

'Yet I would that end might have been achieved without his death,' said
Rochester heavily.

The keen, crafty old eyes surveyed him. The Earl sighed. 'So would we
all, to be sure. And there's none to blame. All that could be done for
him was done. The King's own physician ministered to him, as I told you,
yet could do nothing to save him.'

Rochester looked sharply at the Earl, wondering did he know, or did he
suspect. But the old rogue's inscrutable countenance told him nothing.

He muttered empty platitudes, and went in quest of Frances when
Northampton told him that she was in the house.

With his arms presently about her, he found at last the balm his wounded
soul was needing. She was pale and fretful, with dark shadows under her
lovely eyes heightening to feverishness their lustre. He realised
without being told that these were the signs of all the anxieties she
had been made to suffer by the activities of Overbury, which threatened
to thrust her back into the hell from which at last she was to win
respite. Realising this, and realising as he held her how intolerable to
him must have been the irreparable loss of her, he came at last to think
with the King and with Northampton that Overbury's death in all the
circumstances had been most opportune.




CHAPTER XXVII

MARRIAGE


After a jury of matrons had been empanelled, and its evidence heard, the
packed commission delivered its sentence of nullity, transforming the
Countess of Essex back again into the Lady Frances Howard, within a week
of Sir Thomas Overbury's death.

The seven commissioners who voted in favour of it earned thereby the
lasting approval of the King; the five who opposed it deserved his
unuttered rancour. Nor did it soften this to discover that among the
great majority of his subjects noble and simple the opposite view was
taken of the respective merits and demerits of his commissioners.

Six weeks later his majesty gave fresh proof of his love for Rochester,
by creating him Earl of Somerset and bestowing upon him the Barony of
Brancepeth with its broad acres to add to his already vast possessions,
who seven years ago had been a simple esquire owning little more than
the suit of clothes in which he stood.

And now all the talk of court and town was of the forthcoming marriage.
To provide for it on a sumptuous scale at a time when the Treasury was
empty, the prodigal King was driven to a sale of crown lands, and every
penny proceeding from this source was recklessly squandered in gifts and
in junketings that lasted for a week from the 26th December, the day on
which the marriage was celebrated.

The Lady Frances, all in virginal white and with hair unbound, was led
to the altar by the Duke of Saxony, then on a visit to the English
Court, and her great-uncle Northampton, who counted confidently upon
achieving through her the gratification of his every ambition.

Always of a supple slightness, her ladyship was now seen to have grown
slighter still in the last few months, and on her countenance there was
an etherealizing pallor and in her eyes a look almost of fear. This was
compassionately assigned to all that she had borne in the course of her
unhappy marriage to Lord Essex.

After the banquet at Whitehall, the masque especially written by Campion
for the occasion, and the dancing that had followed this, Robin carried
her off to the village of Kensington and the house which he had rented
there from Sir Baptist Hicks.

Weary to exhaustion by the strain of the day and the revelry of the
night, she reclined in an armchair, whilst her bridegroom knelt to her
in all his own bridal finery of shimmering white satin laced with
silver. Thus reverently kneeling, he took her slim, shapely hand in his,
and swore so to use her as to make amends for all that she had suffered
and all that for love of him she had so bravely fronted.

That oath of his appeared to galvanise her into fresh energy.

'It was! It was!' she declared with a vehemence odd in one who a moment
earlier had seemed so lethargic. 'All, all was for love of you, Robin.
To make me yours without let or hindrance. Always remember it, Robin
mine. Always remember it.'

'Should I forget it ever, child? Could I?'

Her fingers made play absently with his golden curls, which were on a
level with her breast. 'Let it forgive all! Let it condone all.'

'Forgive? Condone?' He laughed at her earnestness and slipped an arm
about her waist. 'Child, you're overstrained.'

'I am.' The caress of his voice drew tears from her. 'Oh, Robin, Robin!'
She looked down upon him, smiling wistfully. 'We have bought and paid in
advance--ay, and paid heavily--for happiness. See to it that nothing
cheats us now.'

'Why, what should cheat us, sweetheart?'

'I ... I don't know. I am full of fears.'

He rose and drew her up with him, and held her close against his breast,
tenderly stroking her wet cheek. 'Rest you, dear wife, and put all fear
behind you. We've done with fear and with evil of every kind. Rest you,
sweetheart.' He kissed her fondly, gently. 'I'll call your women.'

But there was no enduring rest just yet, for body or for mind. The
wedding festivities were no more than begun. They were to continue for a
week and on a scale such as no wedding at Whitehall had ever witnessed.

Gifts of unparalleled munificence even in that prodigal reign were
showered upon the happy pair. The King alone bestowed jewels on the
bride to the value of ten thousand pounds. Masques were performed
nightly for a week, Ben Jonson writing one of them, Campion another, and
Sir Francis Bacon yet another, which he mounted entirely at his own
charges and with that reckless extravagance which was already
distinguishing him and giving grounds for conjecture. The Lord Mayor
entertained the new Earl and his Countess at a great banquet in the
Merchant Taylors' Hall, and in the very tilt-yard in which Mr. Robert
Carr had first tumbled into the lap of fortune, a tourney was held in
which no colours were seen but his own and his lady's. Moreover, the
occasion appeared to be one which had reconciled all parties. Even the
Queen had been induced to put aside her hostility to Carr, and she
appeared so far to forget the opposition she had encouraged to the
nullity as to lend her countenance to these festivities to the signal
extent of presenting the marriage-bed to the bride. And the noble
Pembroke, the chief and most avowed of all Carr's enemies in the past,
actually rode in the tilting-match wearing the Earl of Somerset's
colours of green and gold.

This, however, was to prove no real alliance, but merely a truce in
hostilities which the events were abundantly to nourish.

The marriage, so ardently desired and reached by such arduous labour and
over obstacles apparently insurmountable, had the effect of placing
Somerset entirely in the power of Northampton and the Howards. With at
least a dozen members of the family in prominent offices at court, they
made up a formidable party, immeasurably strengthened now by the
inclusion of the royal favourite.

Very soon this had the effect of creating an opposing faction. The
Herberts, the Seymours, the Russells, and others bitterly resented this
monopoly of court favour by a single family, and a family, moreover, of
secret recusants.

Somerset perceived all this, and was far from easy or happy in his
position. He cast about him for means to secure himself, and in that
hour missed Overbury as he had never missed him yet. He needed
Overbury's sound judgment and shrewd counsel to guide him. He perceived
already that he was on the wrong side. He saw the forces of the
anti-Howard faction daily swelling, until it included almost every man
of any worth and weight, and he had a presentiment that sooner or later
a storm would break in which the Howards would be swept away and he with
them. He remembered now all Overbury's warnings against alliance with
the Howards and with that old scoundrel Northampton in particular.

In his unguided casting about him for security, he took perhaps the most
disastrous step of his career. The appointment of Secretary of State was
still to make, and as the desperate emptiness of the Treasury made the
assembling of Parliament at last a necessity, that appointment could no
longer be delayed. Sir Thomas Lake and Sir Ralph Winwood continued
nominally to discharge the duties of the office, whilst hoping for
ultimate appointment. In addition one of the Nevilles was another
candidate.

His lordship considered, and made choice of Sir Ralph Winwood. A big,
bulky, swarthy man, this, with a plain, fleshy face, black-bearded, and
with calm, shallow-set eyes. He was unprepossessing and sombre of
demeanour and puritanically sombre of dress. But he had diligently sued
Lord Somerset's favour, and he had come to the wedding laden with
munificent gifts in token of his service. He was, too, a man of parts,
shrewd and able, and Somerset fancied from his staid unpretentious
carriage that in him he might find another Overbury, diligently to
discharge the duties of the office whilst leaving its honours to his
patron.

The King, yielding as usual to his favourite's wishes, bestowed the
exalted office as required upon the least likely of the three
candidates. Neville was put off with some minor perquisites and retired
in sulky resignation. Not so Sir Thomas Lake. His claim had been far the
weightiest, based upon years of faithful service and ripe experience in
affairs acquired under Elizabeth. He took his exclusion as a personal
affront from Somerset, accounted himself injured and insulted at one and
the same time, and he went over to the camp of the favourite's enemies,
to become the bitterest and most vindictive of them all, a man
vigilantly waiting for an opportunity to pay off the score.

A full year went round before that opportunity came, and in that year a
great deal happened.

The Earl of Northampton died in June, performing that last act of his
life with a pomp and circumstance which sorted well with his ambitions.
It was an irony that he should have held for no more than a few brief
months some portion of the power for which he had waited, schemed and
striven down the years.

The Privy Seal went to Somerset. Upon Suffolk, at last, was bestowed the
Treasurership which Northampton had coveted, and Suffolk's vacated
office of Lord Chamberlain was also filled by Somerset, to the
exasperation of the stately Pembroke, who had stout claims to the office
and was supported by the Queen in suing for it. It seemed as if the
King's infatuation and Somerset's greed knew no bounds.

All these fresh hostilities sprouting about him, quarrels with Lennox
and Hay over the question of a Spanish alliance, and the tangle which
appeared in foreign affairs under Somerset's unguided control began to
exacerbate him.

In the Low Countries, Spain and Austria had joined forces against the
Protestant States. The Elector Palatine was in danger, and was calling
upon his father-in-law King James to fulfil the treaty obligations by
assisting the allies, and the good faith of Somerset came under
suspicion in consequence of the pro-Spanish leanings into which the
Howards had manoeuvred him.

Bewildered by events which he lacked the skill and judgment to control,
he longed for Overbury more passionately than ever. Overbury's wits
would have made all clear and would have pointed the safe road, and
Overbury's miserable end, thus brought remorsefully to his mind, helped
to increase his moodiness and irritability.

It was said of him in those days that he was hag-ridden. His erstwhile
radiance had definitely left him. His easy affability was dissipated,
his gaiety and good-humour lost. He became gloomy, arrogant, and
inaccessible, a man whose nerves were frayed and ragged.

In disagreements with the King, which were now of common occurrence,
finding himself without the ready arguments which Overbury had formerly
supplied, he adopted a bullying tone, and a manner so outrageously
overbearing and disrespectful that at last, his majesty uttered an
indignant warning, which the headstrong Somerset would have done well to
heed.

'You'd be wise to remember, Rabbie, that all your being, except your
breathing and soul, is from me.'

'For which I have given such loyalty as you never had from any, not even
though he were of your own blood,' was the haughty answer.

The King's watery eyes considered him from under sullen, frowning brows.

'Am I to repent having raised a man so high that he shall pierce my ears
with such speeches?'

His lordship shrugged contemptuously, and turned sulkily aside, which
brought the King to his feet in a passion.

'And now ye're insolent! By God's death, man, never let me apprehend
that you disdain my person or undervalue my qualities, unless you would
have my love for you turn to hate. Get you gone! Go study a proper
carriage and a humble behaviour before you seek me again, so that you
may wash out of my heart your by-past errors. Go!'

Somerset bowed sulkily and went out, and the King, bruised at heart, sat
down to weep, like a woman whose lover grows cold.

The only living person towards whom Somerset still maintained the
erstwhile gentleness, affability, and graciousness which once had
enabled him to override the prejudice begotten by his sudden elevation
was his Countess.

They had moved from Kensington to Chesterford Park, near Theobald's; and
thence, in consequence of her ladyship's delicate health, to Isleworth,
where they were now established. Her condition gave him some concern,
and may have increased the tenderness of the fond, devoted lover he
remained. But if he was never harsh, at least he could not even in her
presence put aside the increasing melancholy growing out of the
difficulties he was daily encountering; the hostility by which he was
surrounded, and his sense of uncertainty in the handling of affairs.

He gave her, as men will when troubled, more of his confidence; told her
more of the past than he had ever told her yet, and dwelt particularly
on the stout services Overbury had rendered him, unburdening himself, to
her infinite and obvious distress, of the remorse that gnawed at his
conscience.

Phrases from Overbury's last dreadful letter were seared as with an acid
upon his brain:

'Your story shall be put down to betray and so quit a friend ... All
this ill-nature shewed by the man whose conscience tells him that
trusting to him brought me hither ... My share to be a prison upon
such terms that no man suffered yet ... And he that is the author of
all and that hath more cause to love me, yea, perish for me rather than
see me perish.'

Thus from memory he quoted gloomily one day, until her ladyship, deathly
white and breathing hard, ran to him where he sat, entwined her arms
about his neck, and drew his golden head down upon her breast as if to
shelter it there and protect it from this foul legion of memories that
harassed and unmanned him.

'Dear love, you see but the fruits and not the seed in this. How could
he call you the author of his ills that was the wanton author of his
own?'

'Yet by my betrayal of him was he cast into an imprisonment whose
rigours resulted in his death.'

'It would not have been so rigorous had he not made it so.'

'Perhaps not. And yet sometimes I feel myself his murderer. And I loved
the man.'

She uttered a little moan, and held him closer. 'That you were not. You
never meant his death. Yet if you had, who that knew all could blame
you? It would have been something done in self-defence, to save the ruin
of all your life--of all your life and mine. And mine. Have you
forgotten that? Have you forgotten the unforgivable things he said of me
on the night you quarrelled? Many a man would have slain him on the spot
without pity.'

'Better that,' he answered. 'It would have been cleaner and more honest.
But there was that between us ... so deep a debt of love and service ...
A bond into which I entered in my need of him ...'

'Yet had he lived, he would have ruined our hopes. He would have doomed
me to a living death as Essex's wife, and you ... Oh, my dear, my
dear! You start at shadows. You remember but the half of what is done.'

'Because I miss him and need him now more than ever I did. Because I
feel myself rudderless without him. There, I've confessed it. I perceive
now how I should have acted. I should have heeded his appeals on the
score of sickness; I should have explained patiently to him how much the
nullity meant to me, how all my happiness was bound up in it. I could
have melted him, I surely could. He loved me. And I ... I left him to
die like a rat in the trap I had sprung for him.'

'Robin!' It was a cry of pain. 'Of your pity do not torture me with more
of this.'

'Ah! Forgive me, sweet.' He stroked the pale, lovely face that looked so
strained and anguished.

'Time,' she assured him, 'will soften all.'

'Time?' He stared before him with haunted eyes. 'Time can but make me
more conscious of my loss. Daily his absence weighs upon me more
heavily.'

'Leave all this,' she whispered to him with a sudden urgency of
entreaty. 'Leave the cares of office, the duties, the labours, the
court. There is no happiness in ambition. Let us go and live quietly at
Rochester or Brancepeth or where you will. We have each other. Is not
that enough, my Robin? Once away from all this you will find ease.'

Well for him, perhaps, had he listened. But to the man who has wielded
it, power is as a drug without which there is no savour in life.




CHAPTER XXVIII

MR. VILLIERS


The opportunity for which the vindictive Sir Thomas Lake waited with
vigilant patience presented itself at Cambridge in the following March.

The King, accompanied by Prince Charles, was paying the town a royal
visit at once to honour the University and its Chancellor, the Earl of
Suffolk. A great concourse of gallants attended the King, but it was to
be observed that there were only seven ladies in the party, and all of
these either by blood or alliance members of the Howard family. This had
resulted from Suffolk's deliberate omission to invite the Queen, an
omission deeply resented and calculated further to widen the gap between
the Howards and the opposing faction.

Among the various functions offered for his majesty's entertainment was
a performance of 'Ignoramus,' a burlesque written in Latin by a fellow
of Clare's and played by fellows of Clare Hall and Queen's College.
Clare Hall, where the performance was held, had been tricked out and
festively hung for the occasion, and a little tribune had been erected
for his majesty, where he sat enthroned with the Earl and Countess of
Somerset and the Earl and Countess of Suffolk in immediate attendance
upon him, to be stared at by the academic groundlings.

The King showed great relish of the tedious, pedantic show, and its
ponderous humour provoked the royal mirth to frequent outbursts. Clare
Hall that evening was, however, to supply his majesty with another
object of interest besides this play.

During the first of the interludes, whilst raking the ranks of the
audience with his rolling, watery eyes, the royal glance came to rest
upon a slim, straight youth of perhaps a little over twenty, very
gracefully made, arrestingly beautiful of countenance. He wore a suit of
black that once may have been modish, but was now rusty and frayed, and
what took the attention was that not even so shabby a setting could
diminish the innate grace of his movements or detract from the innate
nobility of his face in its frame of glossy chestnut hair.

The King favoured the young man with that almost intolerable, persistent
ogling which he bestowed upon all those who attracted his attention. He
even went so far as quite openly to point him out to the Countess of
Suffolk. The young man, grown conscious of this, blushed and shifted a
little uncomfortably on his feet where he stood within short range of
that volley of glances.

Amongst the observers was Sir Thomas Lake, whose dark eyes suddenly
lighted with interest and whose keen face became suddenly keener.

During the next act, Sir Thomas edged his way gradually across the hall,
and at the ensuing interval the young man found a tall, stately, and
richly dressed courtier at his elbow, who smiled upon him
ingratiatingly, sought his acquaintance, and presently displayed his
interest in him by the questions he asked concerning his family and
himself. Whilst talking to him, Sir Thomas watched the royal tribune out
of the corner of his eye, and assured himself that the royal attention
had nowise diminished and that the royal ogling continued in increased
measure to see one of his gentlemen deeply engaged with his lovely lad.

The young man answered Sir Thomas's questions with ingenuous candour.
His name was George Villiers, and he hailed from Leicestershire, where
his family had been established for four centuries. His father had been
dead some ten years, and had left his family none too prosperous. The
young man had been to France to finish his education. He was newly
returned, and having been home to embrace his mother was now on his way
to London to seek his fortune. The presence of the King and Court and
his natural curiosity to behold them had delayed him in Cambridge.

'And so afforded me the happy chance of becoming acquainted with so
excellent and accomplished a young gentleman,' said the fine courtier
further to embarrass him. 'My name is Lake. Sir Thomas Lake. Inquire for
me at Whitehall when you come to town. It may be my privilege to serve
you.'

Now whatever the ambitions of Mr. Villiers, he was very far from
imagining the destiny in store for him, nor to guess, as he stared in
wonder at this magnificent and influential gentleman, that the day was
not far distant when he was to be as far above him as he now accounted
himself below. He summoned his wits to express becoming thanks, and he
did so with a grace of phrase and bearing which Sir Thomas, closely
noting, accounted of excellent augury for the project which as yet was
but an embryo in his fertile mind. It was an embryo destined to a more
rapid growth than even Sir Thomas could have hoped. Nor was it to be
necessary for Mr. Villiers to ask for him at Whitehall. Fate was to
contrive that Mr. Villiers should travel thither with him.

It was in the third interlude that this began to become apparent.

Sir Thomas suddenly found himself beckoned by the King, and assailed by
questions concerning that admirable young man.

Sir Thomas ventured to embroider his information. The lad was not only
of good family which had fallen upon diminished fortunes, but was the
son of a man who had deserved well for his stout loyalty, and yet, as
sometimes happened, had been entirely overlooked. Sir Thomas might have
been hard put to it to have produced evidence of this; but he shrewdly
guessed that, if the royal interest were aroused as deeply as he hoped,
the King would be glad enough to accept the statement without any
confirmation.

The King desired that the lad be presented, and so at the end of the
performance, you behold the valedictory proceedings suspended while his
majesty utters a few benign and fatherly words to handsome, young,
out-at-elbows Mr. Villiers, who stands modestly blushing before him.
Further, he expresses a desire to see Mr. Villiers at Whitehall, there
to signify his appreciation of his father's loyalty and make amends to
the son for having neglected suitably to reward that loyalty in the
father's own lifetime.

It was a bewildered and rather confused Mr. Villiers who stood
gracefully to hear these surprising words spoken with a smile of such
extreme friendliness as to become almost a leer; to receive a friendly,
fatherly tap upon his smooth cheek from two soft fingers; and to be
aware of innumerable eyes focussed upon him, and in particular a pair
of fine blue eyes cold as agates by which a handsome, gorgeous,
golden-headed gentleman at the King's side regarded him.

He found words in which to thank his majesty for this gracious
condescension, and, still bewildered, suffered himself to be carried off
by Sir Thomas Lake, who did not mean to lose sight of him again just
yet. For Sir Thomas was now persuaded that in this out-at-elbow young
Adonis he had found the necessary lever with which to dislodge the Earl
of Somerset from his high place.

Still more bewildered was Mr. Villiers, who deemed the incident closed
for the present, to find Sir Thomas waiting upon him at his mean inn
betimes on the following morning whilst he was still abed. The
fastidious, accomplished man of courts seated himself upon the only
chair--and this a broken one--which the room boasted, and proceeded to
inform Mr. Villiers that the King was greatly pleased with him and that
he was commanded to attend the performance of a Latin pastoral in Clare
Hall that evening. Sir Thomas inquired if Mr. Villiers had much Latin,
and Mr. Villiers told him frankly and bluntly that he had none. The
courtier seemed momentarily disappointed.

'No matter,' said he, upon reflection. 'It was the same in another case.
His majesty will no doubt find interest in your instruction.'

To Mr. Villiers this was a sentence without sense. Nor did Sir Thomas
waste breath in explaining it. He urged the young man to be stirring,
and when presently Mr. Villiers had arrayed himself in his suit of
black, which looked rustier and shabbier than ever by daylight, he was
carried off by his self-constituted Mentor, to spend the time until
dinner in ransacking the shops of Cambridge tailors and haberdashers.

There came a moment when Mr. Villiers, who saw money being laid out on
his behalf with a reckless indifference to its value such as he had
never witnessed in his needy young life, demanded an explanation of
conduct he was so very far from understanding. A little, too, he
resented being swept without a by-your-leave along some course which
this masterful courtier appeared to have predetermined.

Sir Thomas smiled tolerantly and adopted frankness, as men must when
deception will not serve.

'Have I not said that the King is very pleased with you and desires your
better acquaintance? That, sir, is your good fortune. Mine lies in being
at hand to see that his majesty is gratified in his wishes. When you
have been a little longer at court, you will understand that this is the
surest road to advancement.'

The gentleman spoke as if Mr. Villiers were already established at
court. It took his breath away. He could only stare. Answering his look,
Sir Thomas employed a still greater frankness.

'Count this not merely for generosity in me. Experience has shown me how
high a man may climb who has taken the King's eye. If I expedite your
rise, I put my trust in your gratitude. When you are up, you shall repay
the debt by reaching down a hand to me.'

It was not quite the truth, but it sufficed to quiet the remonstrances
of Mr. Villiers's self-respect, and made him regard this matter of
equipment as a transaction between gentlemen to be adjusted later. In
this conviction he now submitted with a better grace.

That evening, as my Lord of Somerset sat in Clare Hall immediately
behind the King, yawning under cover of his hand over the pompous
dullness of the Latin pastoral which was delighting his majesty, he
suddenly became aware of a lithe, graceful figure very elegantly attired
in a suit of mulberry velvet, that was all puffed and slashed, a satin
cape-cloak, thrust up behind by a gold-hilted rapier, rosetted,
high-heeled shoes, and glossy chestnut hair falling heavily about an
oval face of exceptional beauty. At the elbow of this arrestingly
elegant figure stood Sir Thomas Lake, to supply a clue by which his
lordship recognised the youth for the shabby young man from
Leicestershire whom the King had held last night in talk.

He asked himself why Sir Thomas had been at such pains to turn the crow
into a jay, and guessing the answer sneered at what he accounted so much
waste of labour. Nor was he at all discomposed when presently in the
interlude, the King's roving eye discovered the young man, and beckoned
him to the tribune so that he might hold him again in talk.

His majesty spoke of the play, repeated a line which he had accounted
witty and of whose Latinity he approved, and desired Mr. Villiers's
opinion upon it. Mr. Villiers, who was not such a fool as to affect
knowledge which he did not possess, frankly deplored that his ignorance
of Latin allowed him to do no more than admire the motions of the
players, having previously informed himself of the argument of the play.

The King's expression was saddened by the information. Behind him
Somerset softly laughed his scorn, for which presently, when Mr.
Villiers had retired again, he suffered the unusual experience of a
rebuke from his master.

'Ye're ungenerous, Rabbie, to sneer at an ignorance that was your own
until I mended it.'

Somerset flushed, and his mouth momentarily tightened. But his answer,
an instant later, was suave and level.

'Your majesty mistakes me. I laughed at the notion of a man wasting
hours upon a play in a language he does not understand.'

'Yet a man may waste hours in one way and gain much in another. It was
not to hear the play that Sir Thomas brought him.'

'Or busied his tailors with the fellow.'

'Ay, ay! But did ye mark how well he wears his clothes? Sir Thomas
thought to please me.'

'Sir Thomas paid you a poor compliment, Sire, if he accounted you
pleased so easily.'

His majesty winced at the sneer, and said no more. He was learning to
hold his tongue when his darling Rabbie adopted that tone; but not on
that account did he forgo resentment of it, and this resentment from
being stifled grew of an increasing bitterness.

It may or it may not have been due to this that, at the end of the
performance, the King kept the company waiting whilst once more he
engaged in talk with Mr. Villiers. At the end of it he commanded the
young man's company at a banquet to be given at Trinity on the following
evening with a dance to follow.

It was in this dance that Mr. Villiers at last earned a general meed of
admiration, for the grace with which he carried himself and his
proficiency in an art which he had learnt in France. He was the
recipient of so many compliments afterwards that he was almost as
elated as was Sir Thomas Lake. Somerset, whose splendour of dress, ease
of deportment, beauty of person, and haughty assurance of manner filled
Mr. Villiers with awe, looked on languidly with that curl of the lip
which was becoming almost habitual with him. As he watched the King's
ogling of the lad and his foolish slobbering as he talked to him,
contempt for a man whose delight was so easily aroused and whose
displays of it were so wanting in dignity began to stir in him.

Sir Thomas Lake went swiftly to work to build upon those foundations
which he had laid so cunningly at Cambridge. Having brought his protégé
safely to Whitehall, he had sought the Earl of Pembroke, whose rancour
at the loss of the office of Lord Chamberlain was altogether beyond
allaying; he had sought Abbot, the Archbishop, whose righteous
indignation at the nullity he had been forced to pronounce for
Somerset's ends was never likely to diminish; and he had sought the
Queen, whose momentary favouring of a man she had always detested was
extinguished now by the insult of her exclusion from the Cambridge
junketings, for which, although perhaps unreasonably, she chose to blame
Somerset as well as his father-in-law, Suffolk.

To each of them he pointed out the man he had discovered who should
drive out Somerset as one nail drives out another, and each of them was
ready enough to enter into league with him, although the Queen was a
little of opinion that the ultimate gain would be dubious. These minions
were supple enough at the outset; but once firmly established in favour
and in power, they had a way of becoming scorpion whips for the
shoulders by which they had climbed. Mr. Villiers might to-day be modest
and humble and disposed to gratitude. So had Robert Carr once been. And
as Robert Carr now was, so might George Villiers become. Still, this was
something of which they might take the risk.

Thus came the conspiracy to be formed, and the necessary moneys supplied
for the further equipment and maintenance of the new minion and for the
purchase for him of the office of cupbearer to his majesty, whereby he
would be officially established in the Palace.

Somerset went his ways unruffled. Beyond an occasional sneer at the
royal manifestations of infatuation, his lordship ignored the young
gentleman from Leicestershire. This until a flagrant event warned him of
the peril ahead, and revealed to him the organisation that was at work
against him.

The Earl of Pembroke entertained some gentlemen to dinner at Baynard's
Castle. Sir Thomas Lake was of the company, and the chief spokesman when
they had dined. Among the others were Herbert, Hertford, and Bedford,
and not a man of the dozen or so assembled there was not the sworn enemy
of Somerset. They met to concert measures for the further preferment of
George Villiers at the favourite's expense and to his ultimate
discomfiture and downfall. The immediate necessary step, it was decided,
should be to procure Mr. Villiers's advancement to a knighthood and to
the position of one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. The Queen, Sir
Thomas assured them, was in the business, and would be their ally in
this, and a particularly valuable ally considering the pretences of
uxoriousness which King James maintained.

The company, returning to Westminster in a spirit of merry turbulence
and in an elation resulting as much from the decision taken as from the
wine consumed, espied in Fleet Street outside a painter's shop a
portrait of the Earl of Somerset exposed for sale.

They drew rein to consider it, to jeer and flout a portrait whose
original was too high for personal insult. Finally to indulge his
personal hostility of that original, one of the gentlemen commanded his
servant to bespatter the canvas with mud.

With many a gibe for the outraged painter who rushed from his shop
belatedly to protect his wares from damage, the company rode on in
delight and pride of the puerile achievement.

The painter in deep resentment went off to Whitehall to bear his plaint
to my Lord of Somerset.

His lordship heard the story, and if he changed colour a little, he yet
commanded himself sufficiently to assume contemptuously that it was an
act of drunken folly beneath the dignity of his serious consideration.
Nevertheless, he inquired the names of the gentlemen in question. Having
obtained them, he compensated the painter, and pondered his course of
action.

These gentlemen were without exception not merely enemies of his own and
of the Howards, but they were those who had most signally manifested
their friendship for Mr. Villiers. He concluded that the best retort
would be to deal with their pet as they had dealt with his portrait.

And so it fell out that some days later a cousin and namesake of his own
whom he had made a Gentleman of the Household, and who happened on that
day to be one of the servers at the royal table, upset as if by
accident a dish of soup over the brave satin suit of Mr. Villiers.

Mr. Villiers, whilst gay and friendly and easy-going, was not yet old
enough to have learned to curb impetuosity. Annoyed by the ruin of his
finery and enraged by the instant suspicion that it was due to no
accident, he leapt to his feet so abruptly that his chair crashed over
behind him. With a foul word he caught the offending Scot a buffet on
the side of the head that made him reel.

There was a general outcry, a belated attempt by his immediate
neighbours to restrain him, and then silence and utter stillness.

Mr. Villiers, immediately conscious of the enormity of his offence,
though hardly yet of the penalty imposed by statute, stood abashed and
foolish, making no attempt to wipe the dripping mess from his doublet.
Young Carr, recovering his balance, earned admiration by his
self-command. Swinging half-round to face the King, he brought his heels
together, and bowed as if in expression of a respect for majesty too
utter to admit of his attempting reprisals.

The King, open-mouthed, his tongue protruding, presented a picture of
foolish dismay.

Somerset on the King's right looked on with a faintly cruel smile about
his lips and eyes that were bright and hard as steel.

The remainder of the company at the long table, numbering fully a score,
and the half-dozen gentlemen servers in the background against the
tapestries of the banqueting-hall, awaited the sequel in consternation.

Presently Somerset spoke, after a pause calculated to heighten the
suspense. His voice cut cold and incisively into the silence. His words
were those which in the circumstances his office of Lord Chamberlain
required of him.

'The guard,' he said shortly, and his cousin sprang to obey, and went
swiftly to the door.

A shadow crossed the King's face. But he said nothing. Respect for the
forms struggled within him with his own personal inclinations.

Came the officer of the guard, a vivid figure in a coat of dull red
velvet, carrying his plumed hat in his hand, his gauntleted left hand
upon the pommel of his sword, his spurs jingling musically as he
advanced. He halted, and, grave and impassive, awaited orders, which
again, quite naturally, were given him by the Lord Chamberlain.

'Captain, you will escort Mr. Villiers to his quarters and detain him
there under guard until his majesty makes known his pleasure.'

Mr. Villiers in distress made a movement as if to address the King. His
majesty motioned him to silence by a wave of the hand.

'Ay, ay!' he said thickly. 'You'd best go.'

Prudently the young man commanded himself, bowed, and went out with the
officer, the King's staring, almost vacant eyes watching him to the
door.

As he disappeared the stillness was broken at last by a rustling stir.
Lord Somerset sighed audibly, and spoke lightly.

'Mr. Villiers is over-young in temper and in knowledge for a court.'

'That,' said the King's mumbling voice, 'may excuse him.'

His lordship raised his eyebrows. 'There's no such provision in the
statute.'

'The statute!' His majesty was startled. He glanced at Somerset and
away. 'Huh!'

Somerset signed to the servers to resume their duties. But the King
suddenly got to his feet. That mention of the statute had agitated him.
Shortly he commanded Somerset to attend him, and went out.

Not until they were in his own closet and he had flung himself irritably
into a padded chair did the King speak again. 'What's this blather of a
statute?' His eyes avoided Somerset's.

The favourite, standing easily and gracefully by the table on which his
majesty's elbow rested, explained that which required no explaining.

'I allude, as your majesty well knows, to the statute of King Henry
VIII, which provides quite clearly the penalty for Mr. Villiers's
offence. For a blow given in the presence of majesty the offending hand
shall be struck off at the wrist. It's a statute that concerns my office
closely, for it is the Lord Chamberlain's duty to see the forfeit made,
and to be in attendance to sear the stump.'

The King shuddered at the mental picture evoked. His glance grew scared.

'Na! Na! Ye're not supposing that I'll be governed by any such statute
of that old lecher?'

'Lecher or not, he was King of England, and a king of some weight in his
day, and his statutes are good law.'

'To the Devil with good law; ay, and with you, Rabbie! Ye're never
thinking I'll suffer the mutilation of that bonnie lad? It's blasphemy
to think of it.'

'It would have the advantage of making a repetition of the offence
impossible.'

'Why, ye heartless loon! I'll not have it, I tell ye!' He slapped the
table with his open hand.

Somerset bowed composedly. He even smiled. 'I do not urge it, Sire.'

'I thought ye did. And it's well for you ye don't.'

'It should suffice to send him packing. His manners will suit
Leicestershire better than Whitehall.'

'That's for me to settle.'

'Less would scarcely become your kingly dignity.'

'Ye may leave me to guard my kingly dignity.'

'Yet in some sort it is within the duties of your Lord Chamberlain.'

'Hold your clavering tongue! Will you be manifesting your spite of this
braw lad? Ye'll make me believe that ye'd be glad to see his hand
struck off, Rabbie. Hah!'

'I'll be content to see him go.'

'He's not going.'

'Not?' My lord was supercilious. 'I await your majesty's commands
concerning him.'

The King glowered at him, resenting his manner.

'Send him to me here. I'll read him a lesson on courtly behaviour. That
shall suffice.'

'Your majesty is, indeed, clement!'

'You make me aware of it. If I were not I'd never tolerate your sneers.
I'm finding you over-graceless these days. The higher I place you, the
more intolerable you grow. It's an ill requital for the liberties I
grant you to be wanting in respect to me.'

'Is it lack of respect to your majesty to desire some punishment for one
who has been flagrantly lacking in it?'

'Ye ken well that's not the point. Your lack of respect lies in the tone
and manner you adopt with me, and I tell you I'll not brook it from any
man.'

'Yet you brook worse when you suffer a blow to be struck in your
presence.'

'It was an act of impetuosity. The lad was annoyed, and with some
justification, by your kinsman's clumsiness.'

'So that now my kinsman becomes the offender! Faith, your majesty finds
every excuse for Mr. Villiers.' Somerset was bitter. 'Some days since
mud was flung on a portrait of mine in Fleet Street by this young
upstart's friends. Yet your majesty forbade me to take action against
them, although that was no accident.'

'Was this?' The King fired the question abruptly, and his eyes narrowed.

Somerset gaped, and then laughed.

'You'll excuse him now on the grounds that the thing was deliberate.'

'It's what I'm suspecting. The lout who spilled the broth was your
kinsman. Did ye suppose I'd not observed it? There's little I don't
observe, Rabbie, as you should know by now.'

Somerset became really angry. He hectored it roundly, breaking into
unmeasured upbraidings. It was always so, he declared. The King would
listen to any man before himself, prefer any man's word to his own. He
was insulted on every hand, and debarred by the King's will from all
redress, whilst his majesty listened to every tale that was carried to
him. He ranted on, unreasonably and petulantly piling up imaginary
grievances as vehicles for his spleen, until the King checked him in a
passion.

'Will ye rail at me like a carted street-walker?' He rose trembling.
'Now, as God's my judge, I'll have no more of this. Do you persuade me
that you mean not so much to hold me by love as by awe, and that you
have me so far in your reverence that I dare not offend you or resist
your wishes? Which of us is King? Have you forgot? And have you forgot
that you are my creature and hold all by my favour, and that as I set
you up so I can put you down? Have you forgot that? Away with you now,
and remember it in future.'

Somerset departed, but did not remember. A succession of unworthy and
undignified wrangles ensued now between King and favourite on the
subject of Mr. Villiers, soon, indeed, now to become Sir George Villiers
and a Gentleman of the Bedchamber.

His knighthood came to him by the Queen's help and favour in the
following April. It was on Saint George's Day that her majesty begged
her royal husband to bestow the accolade upon young Villiers in honour
of Saint George, whose name he bore.

The Earl of Somerset had made objections, especially to the young man's
advancement to be a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and he had again
hectored the King in the matter. Nevertheless, his majesty conquered his
awe of the favourite, and took refuge in the mock-uxoriousness which he
loved to practise.

'It's the Queen herself who asks it, Rabbie! Would ye have me refuse our
dear wife the Queen?'

To this his lordship could make no answer. He was driven into sullen
retreat.

Buxom Anne of Denmark personally led the comely young Villiers into the
King's presence, and ordered him to kneel, whilst with her own hands
she proffered James the naked sword for the accolade.

Somerset looked on ill-humouredly, whilst the King, shuddering as he
ever did at the sight of naked steel, took the sword, and averting his
eyes from the flash of it almost poked Mr. Villiers in the face in the
act of dubbing him knight.

From that moment Sir George may be considered as fully launched upon the
ocean of court life. His new duties brought him into constant contact
with the King, and those responsible for this watched with satisfaction
the good use which the comely, intelligent young gentleman from
Leicestershire made of his opportunities. They observed with equal
satisfaction the growth of the King's favour, beheld the King himself
taking in hand the lad's tuition and providing him with tutors for some
of the arts necessary in a courtier.

Soon Sir George was appointed Master of the Horse, by which time his
fame had spread and his name was on every tongue, and already he had his
Court within the court and no lack of suitors for his favour and
patronage.

Somerset, looking on with ever-increasing ill-temper, beheld here
repeated the early steps of his own career, grew conscious at last that
a formidable rival had arisen and that there was ample ground for his
jealous apprehension of ultimate supersession. With this added fear to
plague him, he increased daily in sullenness and irritability.

One last attempt the King made to soften him and to allay the jealousy
which he perceived to lie at the root of it, but which he was mistaken
in supposing to be its only source. He desired Sir George Villiers to
seek the Earl's favour. Thus he thought to conciliate Somerset by
permitting him to suppose that no advancement was possible to any man
without his countenance.

Sir George presented himself modestly before the great favourite, and
delivered himself of a speech in which he had been well schooled.

'My lord, I desire to be your servant and creature, and to take my court
preferment under your favour, assuring your lordship that you shall find
me as faithful a servant as ever did serve you.'

Somerset remained seated and covered, his handsome face obscured by the
shadow of his hat. His answer was of an uncompromising harshness.

'I desire none of your service, and I have no favour for you. I will if
I can break your neck. Of that be confident.'

The younger man, bristling with anger, drew himself up to reply, when
Sir Humphrey May, who had conducted him, restrained him by a hand upon
his arm. Thus checked, Sir George bowed distantly and departed.

Somerset's contemptuous laugh followed to inflame him.




CHAPTER XXIX

GATHERING CLOUDS


My Lord Somerset's dismissal of Sir George was duly reported to his
majesty, and lost nothing in the process. His majesty was deeply
incensed at this affront to his darling Steenie, as he now called
Villiers, from his imagined resemblance to a lovely faced picture of
Saint Stephen that hung in the banqueting hall at Whitehall. Yet,
despite his loud assertions that he would not be ruled by awe, the King
dared not take Somerset to task for his gross treatment of the young
knight.

No resentment can be deadlier than that which must be carried secretly.
Driven inwards, it rarely fails to transmute love into hate. And so now,
as the sequel serves to show, the King, whilst still continuing for the
sake of peace to make a show of cherishing his Rabbie, was in his heart
beginning to detest him.

Thus far by his petulance and peevishness had that unfortunate,
hag-ridden man unwittingly conspired with those who sought his
overthrow.

The two most active agents of his downfall were, oddly enough, those two
candidates for the office of Secretary of State: Sir Thomas Lake, to
whom Somerset had denied it, and Sir Ralph Winwood, upon whom he had
bestowed it. The motives of the first are plain enough, and they have
been seen at work. They are humanly straightforward if not to be
admired.

The motives of Sir Ralph, however, are far less obvious. He owed his
appointment to my Lord of Somerset's favour; therefore it would seem
that he should be grateful, and grateful no doubt he would have been if
he had found in the office that which he was entitled to expect.

But Somerset in appointing that grim dour man had thought to provide
himself with another Overbury: one who would be content to remain in the
background, discharging the onerous duties of the Secretaryship, whilst
placing at his lordship's disposal the fruits of his experience and
knowledge of affairs so as to enable his lordship to continue to enjoy
the power and glory of guiding the country's destinies.

Sir Ralph, however, had not proved at all willing so to be used. Since
he was confined to drudgery, to drudgery he would confine himself. He
gave no counsel, offered no advice, did not even trouble to keep his
patron fully supplied with information. Annoyed by the limitations
imposed upon him, he sulked strictly within them, and left my Lord of
Somerset to blunder as he chose. But he resented his position, and
studied to improve it, to render it in fact what it was in name.
Perceiving that as long as Somerset reigned no improvement would be
possible, he was quite ready to exert himself to curtail that reign.
Like Sir Thomas Lake before him, he watchfully awaited opportunity to
complete what Sir Thomas had so admirably begun.

He observed the growing favour of Sir George Villiers, and whilst in his
dour, puritanical heart he despised Sir George for a minion, yet he knew
from experience that minions sometimes grow into great ministers of
State, and since they have the King's ear they must be regarded as
specially supplied by Providence for the advancement of better men. To
George Villiers, properly handled, belonged the future, and that future
would be realised with a speed proportionate to Somerset's relegation to
that past towards which he was already striding.

Sir Ralph did two things. He began sedulously to cultivate the favour of
Sir George Villiers, in which he but followed the fashion of the Court,
and he watched diligently for an opportunity of accelerating the descent
of my Lord of Somerset to the limbo of things that have been, in which
he was also not quite out of fashion.

And then quite unexpectedly something happened whose ultimate issue Sir
Ralph was very far from foreseeing. In his capacity as Secretary of
State, a letter reached him from the King's agent in Brussels, which he
did not choose to disclose to his master the Earl of Somerset, or,
indeed, to anyone. The agent, Mr. Thoumbal, wrote that he had a secret
of importance to communicate touching the death of Sir Thomas Overbury.
He would not write of it further, but would come over in person to
acquaint Sir Ralph with it if a license for his return to England could
be obtained.

The dour Sir Ralph considered. He remembered old rumours of foul play
that had been circulated at the time of Overbury's death. Assuming now
that Overbury had been done to death, Sir Ralph propounded to himself
that sound old initial question in such inquiries: _Cui bono fuerit?_
Much that had happened subsequently might conceivably be assumed to
point to the Earl of Somerset as the person to whom the elimination of
Sir Thomas Overbury had been desirable.

It was a thought that acted as a spur upon the resentful Secretary.

So Mr. Thoumbal was quietly brought over from Brussels, and Sir Ralph
listened to a startling demonstration of the old adage that murder will
out.

An English lad, an apothecary's assistant named William Reeve, lying
sick at Flushing and being taken with the fear of death, had confessed
that Sir Thomas Overbury had been poisoned in the Tower by an injection
of corrosive sublimate, administered by Reeve himself, acting upon the
orders of his master, the apothecary Paul de Loubel, who had attended
Sir Thomas two days before his death. Because of what he knew, the lad
had been given money by his master and sent abroad immediately
afterwards, which is how he came to be in Flushing.

Sir Ralph, his dark, swarthy face inscrutable, made careful notes of
what Thoumbal told him, procured the agent's signature to those notes,
and dismissed him back to his post at Brussels.

After that, Sir Ralph informed himself cautiously of Paul de Loubel's
whereabouts--no difficult matter, since the apothecary was well
known--and he descended upon him on a sultry day of August at his house
set in the reek of Lime Street near the Tower.

Dr. Loubel was a little startled by the sudden appearance in his modest
dwelling of this bulky, black-bearded, black-attired gentleman of
forbidding countenance, who announced himself as the Secretary of State
and requested a word with him in private. He ushered him into his dingy
parlour on the ground floor, and invited him to sit. The Secretary
remained standing, his back to the window, in such a way that, to
confront him, the doctor must present his face to the light.

'I desire,' he said in his deep, booming voice, 'a word with you on the
subject of an apprentice of yours named William Reeve.'

'William Reeve? Ah, yes!' The doctor appeared a little nervous, a little
flustered, which, after all, considering the rank and consequence of his
visitor, was not surprising. It had never before happened to him to have
a Secretary of State stand questioning him in his parlour. 'William
Reeve. Yes. I remember him.'

Sir Ralph said nothing for a long moment, during which his solemn, dark
eyes pondered the slight, neat, nervous figure before him. Loubel was
something over fifty, lean and pale of face, with lively, intelligent
eyes and a tight mouth. His hair was thin and grey. His speech and
gesture proclaimed his French origin.

He waited respectfully now for the Secretary to make known his wishes,
one hand folded over the other at the level of his breast, his eyes
attentive.

'You sent this lad abroad, I understand, some two years since?'

'Send him? Ah, no. Not send. He desire' to go.'

The Secretary's black brows came sternly in a frown. 'You are not to
prevaricate with me, Dr. Loubel. I warn you that my information is very
full.'

The doctor looked distressed, even bewildered. 'I prevaricate? I? But to
what end? Worshipful sir' (and he became emphatic), 'the lad chose to
go, desire' to go. That is no prevarication.'

'You gave him money to go,' said the heavy voice.

'Money? Ah, yes, I give him money. There was somet'ing I owed him,
somet'ing I keep and save for him. He was two years here with me. To
that I added a little present. He was a good lad. He want to see the
world. I admire ambition. I help him a little. But all told the moneys I
give him were no great amount.'

'What was the amount?'

'The amount?' Loubel reflected, forefinger laid against his nose a
moment. Then he shrugged and flung out his hands. 'But how shall I
remember the amount? It is two years since, as your worship has said. I
have forgot the amount.'

There was a moment's silence in which Sir Ralph pondered him with those
solemn, owlish eyes. Then the Secretary changed his line of attack.

'This lad Reeve was with you when you visited Sir Thomas Overbury in the
Tower?'

Something crossed the Frenchman's face and was gone. It was as if a
shadow had flitted over it, too elusive for interpretation by the
watchful eyes of the Secretary. The eyelids, too, had flickered over
those quick, keen eyes at the mention of Overbury's name. But these
signs, gone in a flash, left that countenance as it had been, alertly
nervous, but otherwise composed.

'It is possible,' he said. 'It is probable. My assistant commonly
accompanies me. Oh, undoubtedly, yes.'

In his mind Sir Ralph wrote him down for a baffling fellow, with his
short, jerky sentences which answered questions with the greatest
possible economy of words, and yet contrived at the same time to colour
the answers. Sir Ralph liked voluble men. They invariably betrayed
themselves sooner or later by saying too much. This fellow by his
terseness was forcing Sir Ralph into the open; and however much he
might deplore it, into the open he must go.

'The lad at the point of death has made a confession,' he announced.

Now at last he had succeeded in startling the little apothecary. The
man's eyes dilated. His pale face seemed to grow paler. But a moment
later, his words explained all this away. It was not the fact of the
confession that had scared him. Or at least so his words made it appear.

'At the point of death? Oh! He is dead, then, that poor William? Dead!
Oh!' He let his arms fall limply to his side, the palms turned outwards.

Sir Ralph damned him for a play-actor. 'Whether he's dead or not, I
don't know. He thought he was dying, and confessed. That's all that
matters.'

'To you. Yes. Maybe, worshipful sir. But to me ... Oh, the poor
William!'

Thus the man clung to grief over the lad's death, and ignored the matter
of his confession, as if it were of no account. Willy-nilly, Sir Ralph
must come still farther out.

'Leave that!' he said sharply. 'It is his confession that signifies.'

'His confession?' The keen eyes laden with inquiry looked up into that
great pear-shaped countenance, broader at the base than at the summit.
'But what, then, did he confess?'

'His share in the business of which Sir Thomas Overbury died.'

Loubel stared and stared at him, his countenance expressing only
bewilderment. At last he flung out his hands in that expressive gesture
of his. 'I do not understand,' he said flatly. 'I do not understand.
Your worship has some purpose to come here. You do not come just for the
honour of my house. No? If your worship will ask frankly what you desire
to know, I will answer frankly if I can.'

It was almost a rebuke, and the ponderous Sir Ralph was angered by it.
He was angered, too, by the fact that he was making no headway. He laid
all his cards on the table, abruptly.

'This boy confessed that Sir Thomas Overbury was murdered in the Tower.
He was murdered by a poisoned injection; an injection of corrosive
sublimate. This was prepared by you, Monsieur Loubel, and administered
by him under your directions.'

Blank stupefaction was spread for a long moment upon the lean, white
face of the apothecary. Then he burst into laughter loud and prolonged,
in the course of which he more than once smacked his thigh with his open
palm.

Sir Ralph stood stiff and resentful, waiting until these spasms of
indecent mirth should abate.

'Oh, but that is most comic! Most droll!' Loubel wiped a tear from his
eye. 'Be'old! I wish to poison Sir Thomas Overbury with corrosive
sublimate; therefore I do not fail to tell my assistant what I am doing,
so that I can be sure that he shall betray me! Oh, the clever way to
poison, so that nobody shall ever know about it!' And he went off into
his explosive laughter again, holding his sides.

'Silence, buffoon!' roared the elephantine Sir Ralph.

But Loubel was no respecter of persons. He suppressed no more of his
laughter than was necessary to permit of his replying. 'It is not me who
is the buffoon in this, Sir Ralph! Not me. And it is the best
buffoonery I ever hear in all my life as an apothecary.'

'What do you mean, sirrah?'

Loubel returned to gravity. But it was a gravity behind which he showed
that mirth still lurked. 'Oh, but ask yourself, Sir Ralph. Consider the
tale that is to tell. I am to poison a gentleman in the Tower. He is
nothing to me, this gentleman. I do not know him. But I am to poison
him. Very well. We admit that first preposterous part. I choose to do so
with corrosive sublimate, and by injection. All very clumsy. But we
admit that, too. I do not give the injection myself. Oh, no. That would
be too secret, and when we poison anybody we never desire to be secret.
So I take my assistant, and give him the clyster so that he makes the
injection for me. And at the same time I say to him: "Observe, William,
this clyster contains corrosive sublimate. I tell you this so that you
may know that I am poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, and so that you may go
afterwards and tell Sir Ralph Winwood, the great Secretary of State, and
get me hanged for doing it." This is the tale, is it not, Sir Ralph? And
you do not understand why I laugh? You think I laugh because I am
buffoon?'

Under the lash of the apothecary's sarcasm, Sir Ralph stood foolish and
with empurpling countenance. But there was yet a little more to follow.

'And you forget, Sir Ralph, that I act as apothecary to my
brother-in-law, Sir Theodore Mayerne, his majesty's physician. I give
Sir Thomas only such things as Sir Theodore prescribe. And if I give him
corrosive sublimate, it must have been upon the prescription of Sir
Theodore. I have his prescriptions; all of them. Would your worship wish
to see them?'

His worship would not. In a minatory tone his worship announced that
others might follow who might desire to see them, and he charged Loubel
to keep them secure as he valued his own neck when he came to be
examined by others. He also ventured a sarcastic hope that when this
happened Monsieur Loubel would be as ready to laugh as he was to-day. On
that Sir Ralph took his departure with a sense of discomfiture rendered
the more utter by his conviction that it had been encompassed by the
clever wits of a rogue who had known how to make a truth wear a
preposterous appearance.

Others should deal with Monsieur Loubel. But before taking steps towards
that end he had better lay the matter as it stood before the King. He
had forgotten until Loubel reminded him--if, indeed, he had ever
known--that Overbury had been attended at the end by the King's
physician. Even a King's physician need not be incorruptible, especially
a foreigner. The narrow, puritanical Sir Ralph was one of those
Englishmen with an innate mistrust of all foreigners. Mayerne might
easily have been within reach of my Lord of Somerset's bribes. Thus
regarded, it looked more than ever as if Somerset might be in the
business. But this his majesty should determine.

And so you behold Sir Ralph Winwood posting out of London in quest of
the royal Solomon. His majesty was on a progress at the time, and Sir
Ralph came up with him at Beaulieu in Hampshire at the house of my Lord
Southampton.

Admitted late at night to private audience with the King, who had
guzzled himself into a crapulous condition, Sir Ralph made known what he
had learnt from Thoumbal.

It was remarkable to Sir Ralph how sobering an effect the scent of
business had upon his majesty. At the disclosure of the confession made
by Loubel's assistant, the vinous flush departed from his majesty's
countenance, leaving it pale, the glitter of his eyes changed from one
of intoxication to one of alertness. The whole expression of his face
was altered and sobered. When Sir Ralph spoke of his visit to Loubel, he
was interrupted by reproof.

'God's death, man! Why this, before ye had seen me?'

Sir Ralph's great bulk was doubled in a bow. 'I accounted it my duty,
Sire.'

'Your duty, sir, is to do my bidding; and ye had no bidding from me in
this. Well, well? A God's name!' His majesty was testy. He thumped the
table with a fist that trembled. 'Well? What said this man Loubel?'

'He laughed at me, Sire,' Sir Ralph exploded, and repeated the sarcasms
with which the apothecary had met him.

The King eyed him contemptuously. 'D'ye not find it matter for laughter,
yourself?' he asked. 'D'ye not perceive the absurdity of it which this
fellow Loubel has made so clear that ye must come troubling me with such
a cock-and-bull affair?'

Sir Ralph was disconcerted for a moment. Then, recovering, 'I might,' he
said, 'if it were not for the fact that this apothecary's lad was given
money and sent packing abroad.'

'And what said Loubel to that?'

Sir Ralph told him. The King shrugged. 'In all the circumstances it's a
sufficient answer. There's no proof or shadow of proof of any other
motive.' And on that he dismissed the Secretary with an admonition not
to waste time in future on mares' nests.

Smarting under something akin to a rebuke, Sir Ralph withdrew in
dudgeon, very far from satisfied that the royal acumen had not here been
at fault, and therefore all the more determined to get to the bottom of
this mystery at the first opportunity. Apothecaries' boys are not given
sums of money and sent abroad by their masters out of sheer generosity.
No one would persuade Sir Ralph of that.

The opportunity for which he watched came in the following week. Sir
Ralph was dining with the Earl of Shrewsbury at his town house in Broad
Street. The Countess of Shrewsbury was at the time a prisoner in the
Tower as a result of the part she had played in the attempted escape of
the Lady Arabella. To procure her what comforts he could, the Earl was
paying court to Sir Gervase Elwes, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Sir
Gervase was of the party, and with a view to advancing his fortunes was
by the Earl presented to the Secretary of State. The presentation was
accompanied by a request to Sir Ralph that he should take the Lieutenant
into his favour.

Sir Ralph received him courteously. During dinner he was very thoughtful
like the dour, uncommunicative man he was reputed. He was considering
what advantage he might derive from this meeting with the Lieutenant.

When dinner was done, he drew Sir Gervase away from the company, and
invited him to take a turn in the open. Sir Gervase, willing enough, and
accounting this a sign that Sir Ralph was disposed to give attention to
my Lord of Shrewsbury's recommendation, went with him into the sunlit
garden. As side by side they paced its alleys, the dry, elderly, trim
Lieutenant in red and the dark, bulky Secretary in black, Sir Ralph
startled his companion by his opening remark.

'I should be glad enough to take you into my friendship, Sir Gervase,
and to serve you in any way that it lies within my power; but I must
first desire that you might clear yourself of a heavy imputation the
world generally places upon you touching the death of Sir Thomas
Overbury whilst in your charge.'

The Lieutenant checked in his stride. Sir Ralph, checking with him,
observed that he had lost colour, that his grey eyes were very round and
solemn.

'You know, sir, what was done?' Sir Gervase asked, making it plain that
he had no thought of dissimulation.

Sir Ralph slowly nodded his big dark head. 'Oh, yes. But not how it was
done, nor your own part in it, with which I must now be more immediately
concerned.'

'My part in it? Faith, my part was to do what I could to save the
wretched man in so far as this was possible without hurt to my own self.
For my Lord Privy Seal was in the business.'

'My Lord Privy Seal!' Sir Ralph's heart missed a beat in his excitement.
'D'ye mean my Lord of Somerset?'

'No, no. The Lord Privy Seal that was then. My Lord Northampton. The
Lady Frances Howard, that is now Countess of Somerset, was in it, too,
and I knew not who else might be behind them. So that in moving to
thwart their ends I ran some risk, Sir Ralph; yet for my conscience'
sake I never hesitated. But in the end, as I believe, they prevailed in
spite of all that I could do. And that, Sir Ralph, is all the part I had
in the matter of that unfortunate gentleman. I take God to witness.'

Sir Ralph nodded slowly, and they moved on between the privet hedges.
They went some little way in silence, the Secretary's chin upon his
breast, his eyes thoughtful.

Here was a pretty tale to tell the King. Would his majesty still agree
that Sir Ralph busied himself with a mare's nest when he found it odd
that an apothecary's boy should be given money and sent abroad by his
master? And the Countess of Somerset was in it, and my Lord of
Northampton, who at the time had been Lord Somerset's closest friend.
Was it to be doubted that the Earl of Somerset was in it, too, and that
here was a weapon with which finally to destroy the upstart favourite?

Sir Ralph spoke slowly at last: 'Sir, you must convince me of this a
little more; that your own part was what you say it was. What were the
measures that you took to guard your prisoner when you discovered that
his life was being attempted, and how came you to make the discovery?'

The Lieutenant answered without any hesitation. 'As to the last, it
seemed to me at the time the result of Divine Providence. There came to
the Tower to be servant to Sir Thomas a fellow named Weston, recommended
by the Master of the Armoury. He replaced Sir Thomas's own servant who
could not be trusted not to carry messages. When Weston had been there a
week, I met him one evening as he was carrying up the prisoner's soup.
He held up a small phial, and asked me, "Shall I give it to him now?"'

'"Give him what?" said I.

'"Why, this," and he added in a whisper: "The rosalgar."

'"Rosalgar?" I said. "Are ye mad? What is't ye mean, fellow?"

'He fell into great confusion at that. "Surely, sir, you know what's to
be done," he cried.

'"To be done, sirrah?" I answered him, and I took him by the collar of
his coat, demanding a plain tale with a threat to have him flogged if he
lied to me, with perhaps worse to follow. In his terror the man shielded
himself behind those that had set him on. He was acting, he swore, upon
orders of Mrs. Turner, who was employed by persons in high places, and
since there was no reason in the world why so mean a fellow should have
ends of his own to serve against Sir Thomas, it was not difficult to
believe him.

'I took the phial from him, and flung away the poison. I realised that I
was swimming in dangerous waters; nevertheless, I adjured him by God and
his conscience to be no party to anything so foul as murder, and that,
if the offences of Sir Thomas Overbury were such as to merit death, it
must be death in lawful manner and after trial.

'After that there were some delicacies sent to the prisoner from my Lady
Frances, by a woman named Turner. They came from time to time, tarts and
jellies, and once a partridge, all of which I intercepted, and had
others prepared in their stead, keeping my own counsel in the matter
lest I provoke against me the resentment of those who were at work. But
in the end they had their way in despite of all my vigilance, and it
was, as I believe and as Weston hath since confessed to me, by a
rascally apothecary's servant, who was corrupted. His master was an
approved, honest man, as I thought and still do, acting upon the
directions of Dr. Mayerne, who was sent from court to minister to Sir
Thomas when he was sick.'

Such was the Lieutenant's tale, and to Sir Ralph it was a triumph to
find himself justified of the suspicions which the King had treated with
such contempt. Moreover, it afforded him at last the thing he sought. It
should make an end, not only of Somerset, but of the Howards and all the
Spanish party.

'This man Weston?' he inquired. 'Where is he now?'

'He has remained with me in the Tower.'

Sir Ralph nodded slowly. 'Let him continue there awhile.' He turned
fully to face the Lieutenant. 'You have been frank and honest with me,
Sir Gervase, and I must esteem you for it however much I may wish you
had taken an earlier opportunity of disclosing your full knowledge of
this dark affair. Let us now return.' He took him by the arm in friendly
fashion and led him back to the house. 'You shall hear from me soon
again,' he promised him, and this with a smile which entirely reassured
the unfortunate Sir Gervase.




CHAPTER XXX

THE AVALANCHE


Once again Sir Ralph sought the King, this time at Windsor, and being
private with him once more announced that it was touching the death of
Sir Thomas Overbury that he desired to be heard.

The King startled him by the vehemency of the passion into which he was
flung.

'God's death, man! Am I never to hear the end of that knave?'

'There are matters touching his end,' said the grim Secretary, 'with
which it imports that your majesty should become acquainted.' And he
proceeded calmly to repeat what he had extracted from Sir Gervase Elwes.
The royal irritation gave place to blank stupefaction.

'Tell me this again,' he begged when Sir Ralph's tale was done. 'Let me
have it all from the beginning.'

He was very attentive during that repetition, sitting very still, with
his hat pulled over his eyes, whilst his fingers toyed absently with the
diamond buttons on his green velvet doublet. Long after Sir Ralph had
done, he sat on in silence, blinking solemnly what time he turned the
matter this way and that in his mind.

'Look you, friend Winwood,' he said at last, 'command me this fellow
Elwes to set down in writing what he has told you. Let me have it under
his own hand that I may consider it.'

Winwood departed and was absent on the business for three days.

On his return he brought a letter from Sir Gervase Elwes which set forth
all that the Lieutenant had already orally disclosed. It was the letter
of a man who had nothing to conceal, and who was glad, as in the course
of it he asserted, to ease himself of a heavy burden.

The King read and re-read it, and announced at last the opinion that the
matter was one for the Lord Chief Justice.

'You had best send that letter to Coke, and bid him act upon it.'

Sir Ralph opined that a beginning should be made by the arrest of
Loubel, and by that opinion provoked the King's wrathful contempt.

'Loubel will laugh in the face of Coke as he laughed in yours. Loubel's
answer is plain. If he had prepared an injection of corrosive sublimate,
he'd never have confided the fact to his assistant. That much is clear.
And if we begin by provoking ridicule, how shall justice ever be done?'

Sir Ralph ventured to point out Sir Gervase's assertion that the
apothecary's servant had been corrupted; that Weston had said that the
lad had had twenty pounds for his work.

'Ay, ay,' the King agreed. 'The apothecary's apprentice may well have
been corrupted; but not by the apothecary, who had no need to do it.
Elwes says himself that he's an approved, honest man; and ye'll remember
that he was acting for Mayerne, his brother-in-law, whom I myself sent
to minister to Overbury. There are grounds for arresting the lad. But ye
tell me he's dead or dying abroad. So we'll begin at the other end. Let
Weston be examined first. Bid Coke attend to it.'

Sir Ralph accounted the King unreasonable, and the procedure wantonly
irregular. But the royal command was definite, and Sir Ralph dared not
trifle with it. He returned to London, and conveyed those commands
exactly to Sir Edward Coke.

The Lord Chief Justice got promptly to work, and an avalanche followed.

Weston was arrested, examined, and reëxamined, cluttered out of his
senses by the bullyings of Coke, until he confessed all that was
required of him and probably a great deal more than was true. The phial
with which Sir Gervase had surprised him had been given to him by one
Franklin, an alchemist and necromancer who dwelt behind the Exchange; on
another occasion he had received through his son from Lady Essex another
phial full of yellowish water for the prisoner, which again he had taken
to Sir Gervase, who had broken it and thrown away the contents; and
there had been pots of jellies and tarts and other delicacies supplied
by Mrs. Turner, by whom he had been formerly employed.

Thus the affair began, and out of Weston's examinations followed
promptly the arrests of Mrs. Turner and Franklin, whom he had
incriminated. Next Sir Gervase Elwes was placed under arrest as an
accessory, and when he informed Coke that Weston had been employed by
him as a result of the recommendation of Sir Thomas Monson, Sir Thomas
also was arrested. From him was elicited the fact that he had
recommended Weston at the request of Lady Essex and my Lord Northampton.

Next the Lord Chief Justice summoned before him for examination Paul de
Loubel, Overbury's servant Lawrence Davies, and his secretary Payton.

Loubel stoutly maintained that Sir Thomas had not been poisoned at all,
but had died, in his opinion, of consumption, and that anyway for his
own part he had given Sir Thomas no physic save such as was prescribed
for him by Dr. Mayerne, whose prescriptions he put forward. Since this
was not at all the evidence Coke desired, Loubel was troubled no
further.

Davies and Payton between them cast suspicion upon the Earl of Somerset;
the first by asserting that he had carried letters from the Earl to Sir
Thomas in one of which there was a powder; the second by telling of the
violent quarrel he had overheard between Overbury and the Earl one night
at Whitehall some days before Overbury's arrest, a revelation which
seemed to supply a motive for the crime.

Forman, betrayed also by Weston, was dead, and could no longer be
brought to answer for his dark practices. But unfortunately some letters
to him from Lady Essex survived, which were capable of a terrible
construction, and certain puppets in wax and lead which obviously had
been employed for purposes of incantation and witchcraft.

And now seeing that great names were being named, the Lord Chief Justice
petitioned the King that others of greater rank be joined with him to
form a commission of investigation, and his majesty, acceding, appointed
the old Chancellor Ellesmere, Lennox, and Zouch.

Echoes of the proceedings reverberated through the country, magnified by
rumour in their progress. They came to startle the Court, which in those
days of early October was at Royston, and no member of it more than the
Earl of Somerset, for all that he did not yet begin to guess the extent
to which his own name and that of his lady were being tossed about.

His relations with the King had been going from bad to worse ever since
the brutal rebuff which he had administered to young Villiers. As if to
compensate the latest favourite for what he had suffered at the hands of
my Lord of Somerset, the King had shown him an increasing tenderness,
and this had but served further to nourish his lordship's rancorous
jealousy. It was in vain that the King sought to reason with him and to
assure him that none should ever stand higher in the royal esteem than
himself. Somerset preferred the evidence of his senses to assurances,
and dreaded whither the favour shown to Villiers might ultimately lead.
Possibly with Overbury behind him to steer him in matters of
statesmanship and clearly to point the way, he might have kept his head,
content that the King should fondle and toy with his darling Steenie so
long as power remained in his own hands. But groping his way more or
less blindly now through matters of statecraft, conscious that he was
little more than a tool in the hands of the Howards for their own ends,
which might well be dangerous ones, his confidence deserted him, and he
was in no case to suffer any rivals.

Hence those unseemly outbursts of jealousy which at once infuriated and
distressed the King. Once, indeed, just before coming to Royston, his
majesty had threatened him that if he persevered in his arrogance he
would be deprived of his offices and dismissed the Court, which had
merely served to goad Somerset into an exasperatingly unreasonable
retort.

'Ha! So the murder's out! That is what you desire. To be rid of me.
After all the fond, faithful service I have given, I am to be discarded
for the first pretty fribble that takes your majesty's eye. That is your
aim; and to make it easy you find fault with me, and provoke me into
giving you justification.'

The King, infuriated by the calculated perversity of this interpretation
of the facts, which it seemed idle to attempt to combat by reason,
gibbered and stormed and threatened, and finally wept.

After that Somerset kept out of the King's way, sulking. He accompanied
the Court to Royston, dragging at his heels a veritable Court of his own
made up of his gentlemen and attendants, and at Royston he continued to
sulk in his lodgings until the King sent for him. That was on the
morning on which the commission of inquiry had been appointed to assist
the Lord Chief Justice in the matter of investigating the death of Sir
Thomas Overbury.

As Somerset stepped into the chamber where the King awaited him alone,
James, despite his half-formed resolve to make an end of relations that
were become impossible, could not help rolling his eyes over the man in
sheer admiration of his grace and beauty. He was dressed in blue velvet
slashed in the sleeves and the ballooning trunks to show a satin lining
of paler blue. His stockings, drawn creaselessly tight, and rolled at
the knee, were gartered with broad ribbons fringed with gold. He was
partly swathed in a blue satin cloak, and emerging from its folds a fine
hand, almost as white as the lace cuff of his sleeve, rested on the gold
hilt of his sword. Erect and broad of shoulder, whence he tapered
gracefully, he carried his golden head proudly upon his fine cambric
ruff. His hair and beard were carefully dressed. His splendid eyes,
once gently liquid and appealing, were now proud and compelling in their
level glance.

The King combed his beard, feasting his eyes upon him in silence for
some moments. There was a virility in the man, a beauty that was
entirely male, such as his majesty delighted to behold. At last he
shifted in his chair, and fetched a sigh, perhaps at the thought that so
fine a fellow should by his own wilfulness have doomed himself to be
broken.

'I've sent for you, Robin, to show you a note I had from Coke this
morning. The matter concerns you something closely.'

His lordship advanced, flung hat and gloves upon a chair, loosed his
cloak, and took the paper which his majesty proffered. He moved aside to
the window, to read it, for the October morning was dull, the light
indifferent, and the Lord Chief Justice's hand a crabbed one.

The King watched him furtively the while from under his sandy brows, his
slightly protruded tongue moving slowly upon his nether lip. His majesty
was seated at his work-table, whose surface was a marvel of untidiness.
Books large and small were heaped upon it, documents of every character
littered it, and some that were important were buried there almost
beyond recovery, and mingling with all this dusty array of scholarship
and statesmanship lay varvels, jesses, feathered hawk-lures, a dog-whip,
a hunting-horn, and other odds and ends belonging to the chase or to the
stables. His majesty himself was wrapped in a sad-coloured
dressing-gown, a blue velvet nightcap pulled tightly down upon his
brows. Thus he lolled there watching Somerset as he read, observing the
man's violent start, and the gradual draining of colour from his face.
For what the Lord Chief Justice had written was that there was vehement
suspicion against the Earl of Somerset as accessory to the poisoning of
Sir Thomas Overbury before the fact done.

He faced the King again, and laughed harshly and without mirth, his eyes
aflash with anger in his white face.

'Here's midsummer frenzy from Coke!' he exclaimed. 'God's death, was the
man drunk when he wrote this?'

The King looked scared as he met the fury of that glance and tone. But
he commanded himself, and even achieved an assumption of dignity and of
judicial calm.

'Ye'll observe that he speaks of no more than suspicion.'

'Ay! Suspicion. "Vehement suspicion." A plague on his soul for his
impudence, the fool! As I live, he shall be taught a proper respect for
his betters. He shall learn what it means to meddle with me.'

'Tush! Tush! Coke is Lord Chief Justice. In such like matters he has no
betters in this realm; and he must proceed to them by such courses as
seem proper to him.'

'However improper in themselves?' Somerset challenged.

'On my soul, there's nought improper here. If in such evidence as he
already possesses Coke finds grounds for suspecting what he says is
suspicious, am I to blame him?'

His lordship flung himself without ceremony or invitation into a chair.
He was trembling with anger. To steady himself he leaned forward,
elbows on knees, facing the King.

'Who started this hare?' he demanded. 'This hare of Overbury's being
poisoned?'

'Sir Ralph Winwood was set upon the trail by the Lieutenant of the
Tower.'

'And this trail leads to me, does it?'

The King showed no resentment of the courtier's disrespectful vehemence.
He maintained his quiet, half-cowed manner.

'At present Coke appears to think so.'

'And if he follows it, he must find that it leads to me only in passing;
that it leads beyond me. That it leads upwards to heights along which
Coke may hesitate to pursue it.'

The King raised his eyebrows, opened wide his pale, watery eyes in a
fine display of astonishment. 'Why, Robin! Then ye do know something of
this matter?'

'Know something?' Somerset was leaning farther forward, scowling at him
now. 'Know something?' he repeated on a rising inflection. Then he
laughed in anger and scorn. 'I know what your majesty knows.'

Still the King showed no resentment. Amazement seemed his only emotion.

'What I know? What I know? And what do I know, Robin?'

Somerset got up abruptly. 'What no man in England knows better. How Sir
Thomas Overbury died.'

There was a silence in which they eyed each other, Somerset taut as a
bowstring, his air fierce, the King sagging together in his chair, his
face entirely vacuous. At last his majesty moistened his lips with his
tongue, and spoke, quietly and slowly.

'God knows what ye're implying, Robin. God knows what strange maggot's
burrowing in your brain. Yet in a sense what ye say is true. In a sense
there's no man better informed than myself of what happens in this
realm. Of this business I know all that's known up till this present,
from the notes Coke has sent me. Ye'd best look at them. It'll help you
to understand how the suspicion against yourself has come to be formed.
Here, man!'--and he held out a little sheaf made up of some four pages.

Dumbfounded, marvelling, intimidated by the royal manner in the unusual
calm of which there was something formidable, Somerset took the papers.

They were in Coke's writing, and they presented a summary of the
evidence supplied by the persons so far examined: Weston, Monson, Elwes,
Davies, Franklin, and Payton.

As Somerset read, following the spoor that had been started by Sir
Gervase Elwes, and saw how it led through his own wife to himself, his
senses reeled. The solid earth of reality seemed to be slipping from
under his feet.

He cast his mind back to that interview with the King some few days
before Overbury died, when the King's own interest in the man's
suppression was revealed, and he passed from that to the interview that
had followed Overbury's death when he had all but accused the King of
having sent Mayerne to murder him, an accusation which the King had not
attempted to deny. Yet here was a circumstantial tale, confirmed and
corroborated _ad nauseam_ by a host of independent witnesses, which
established something altogether different, which already deeply
incriminated his countess and might end by incriminating himself as
deeply.

If his reason was bludgeoned by those notes, yet his instincts rose up
violently to reject them.

''Tis all false, impossible!' he cried out. 'Your majesty knows it to be
false!' His arrogance was all gone. He was a man distracted, terrified,
a change which the watchful King was not slow to observe.

'How should I know it to be false?'

'Because your majesty knows what really occurred.'

'Ay! I know it now, from those notes. They leave little room for doubt,
unless all those men are liars and have agreed to tell the same tale.
Yet I never knew men to agree to lies that would put the rope round
their necks, and there are several there who have admitted that which
must bring them to the gallows. Will you still blame Coke for his
suspicions?'

Somerset looked blankly at the King. His wits were broken.

'There is something here I do not understand,' he said weakly, passing a
hand over his brow in a gesture of mental distress. 'But this I know, as
God's my witness, I had no hand in Tom's death, nor, I'll stake my
soul's salvation, had Frances.'

'Yet you perceive what feeds the suspicion of Coke. You stood to profit
by his death. Both of you stood to profit by it. He might have said that
which would have made your marriage impossible.'

'Does your majesty believe this?' Somerset was almost fierce again.

'Na, na! It's no question of what I believe, but of what Coke believes,
of what these several rogues who have confessed justify him in
believing. And you'll have to answer it when he sends for you, as send
for you, no doubt, he must. Ye'll see that I cannot arrest the
processes of law; no, not though you were my own son, Robin.'

The young Earl's thoughts flew instantly to his countess. If he must
answer, then so must she, against whom the suspicion was even more
vehement than against himself.

'My God!' he groaned. 'Is Coke to bully Frances? She's in no state of
health to bear it.'

And then he bethought him that she, after all, might be able to explain
how all this came about, point out the flaw in this dreadful chain that
had been forged against them. 'I'd best go to her,' he said. 'If your
majesty will give me leave, I'll go at once.' His tone was humble. He
was a beaten man.

The King looked at him almost wistfully. 'Ay, ay, Robin. Get you to her.
Then come to me again.'

He took his leave, gathered up his hat and gloves, and went out in quest
of grooms and horses. His majesty sat very still at his littered table
after he had departed; the prominent pale eyes were wistful, but there
was the least vestige of a smile about the loose-lipped mouth.




CHAPTER XXXI

VALEDICTION


By heavy, miry roads, against a chill October wind and through a country
all golden now in its autumn garb, the Earl of Somerset rode recklessly
from Royston with no more than two grooms to attend him. He covered the
distance almost at a stretch, with only two brief pauses at Hitchin and
Saint Albans, where fresh horses were procured, nor slackened from a
gallop until nightfall and darkness made it imperative to go more
cautiously.

He came at last, towards midnight, a spent man on a spent horse, with
two spent attendants labouring after him, to the gates of the great
house at Henley where the Countess was then residing.

Haggard and splashed with mud from head to foot, he reeled like a
drunkard into the chill hall to which her chamberlain admitted him. He
ordered lights to be brought, servants to be roused, and a fire to be
kindled in the small room on the right of the hall. And thither, whilst
his orders were still being executed, almost as soon as they had dragged
the muddy boots from his legs and brought him a hot posset of sack, came
her ladyship, alarmed by this midnight arrival, to inquire into its
reason.

She came wrapped in a quilted gown and with hair unbound, her bare feet
thrust into fur-lined slippers. She was very pale, and the dark shadows
about her lovely eyes seemed to increase their size and heighten their
brilliance. Her face looked thin and pinched. She was now in the
seventh month of her pregnancy; and bethinking him of this as he
regarded her, his tenderness welled up and his distraction increased at
the thought of how he came to trouble her.

Very gently he took her in his arms, stroking her hair and soothing the
alarm his abrupt appearance had begotten. She clung to him protesting
that whatever it was that brought him she was glad to have him with her,
and hoped that he would remain some days.

This, while the half-clad servants still came and went in the room in
their ministrations for his comfort. At last when they were gone and the
logs crackled aflame on the hearth, he told her, as gently as he could,
of the dreadful business that brought him.

They were standing before the fire, his lordship leaning upon the
overmantel, when he began the tale of Coke's suspicions, and no sooner
had he come to the matter of Weston's allegations than with a little
moan she sank against him, and his arms went round her to save her from
falling.

She lay thus against his breast, with closed eyes and breathing heavily,
a pallor as of death upon her face, and for a moment he thought that she
had swooned. But in the next moment she had recovered, and bade him
continue, assured him of her attention.

In increasing trouble of mind, his loyalty battling against the most
dreadful fears, he resumed his tale, and, as he talked on, she gradually
and by an effort recovered herself from the shock the first intimation
of the business had dealt her.

When he had done there was a long silence. His trouble of mind increased
with every moment of it, until at last, unable to endure it longer, he
begged her to say something, to show him the flaw in this chain of
evidence that had been wrought against them.

He knew, he protested, that these were but the assertions of evil-minded
men, who, be it to protect themselves or so as to hurt him, were
deliberately lying. But liars seldom were consistent. At some part of
every falsehood the proof of it was revealed. So must it be now. Let
them consider this thing together; let them see at what point the pieces
did not fit. Her own knowledge of her relations with Mrs. Turner, whose
servant Weston had been, must help her there. He implored her to speak,
and to set his fears at rest.

She squatted down before the fire, sitting on her heels, mechanically
holding a white hand to the blaze. Her unbound hair hung like a golden
mantle about her white-clad shoulders. Standing beside and above her,
leaning again upon the overmantel, he could not see her face, and it was
some moments before he heard her voice, its tone dull and level.

'Be patient with me, Robin. Be merciful.'

'Merciful?' Something seemed to grip his heart and tighten upon it.
'Merciful?'

'Ay, merciful. Was it not Montaigne who said, as Christ might well have
said, that to understand all is to forgive all?'

A silence followed. He leaned on, looking down upon that huddled,
pathetic heap of womanhood all white and gold at his feet. A chill crept
up through his body, so that he felt his skin contracting and
roughening. From the park outside came the call of an owl, harsh upon
the stillness. Within there was no sound save the hissing of the logs,
and as it seemed to him the thudding of his heart.

'Forgive all?' he echoed at last in a hushed voice of horror. 'Forgive
all? Frances! Is it forgiveness that you need? Is it true, then, this
foulness?'

She seemed to crouch lower, as they crouch who fear a blow. 'I loved
you, Robin, as I love you now, and shall always love you come what may.
This man would have denied that love its full fruition. I had suffered
so much through my love for you. I had been brave. Dear God, how brave I
had been! And when at last the reward was within reach, that knave would
have interposed himself between you and me. Remember that, Robin. Think
only of that when you judge me.'

'Oh, God!' he groaned. He folded his arms upon the overmantel, and laid
his head against them. 'You confess to being a murderess! You, Frances!'

She did not answer him. She sat on, huddled there, rocking a little,
feeling as if she would swoon in her agony, yet making no sound.

'God!' he said again in a thick voice of passion. 'By your deed you
justified him of his attitude towards you.'

It was crueller than a blow. Yet it did not numb her wits.

'His attitude towards me justified my deed,' she answered him. 'Do not
reverse the order of these happenings. I had reached the limit of
endurance. This man, for the sake of his own ambition or else out of the
evil of his heart, would have imposed upon me a suffering greater than
any I had yet borne. I had to choose. I had to choose between him and
myself. What mercy did he deserve at my hands who showed me none? Be
just, Robin! In God's name be just!'

'Just!' He echoed, and then he laughed. 'You may reserve these pleas for
Coke.'

'Coke!' She threw back her head and looked up at him. He beheld the
leaden pallor of her face, the sudden terror which abruptly had effaced
its beauty.

'Ah! That frightens you!' he sneered.

She rose to her knees. 'Ay, it frightens me, but not for myself. If this
knowledge should destroy your love, I care not what becomes of me. But
there is the child to think of, Robin.'

He strode away from the hearth, and set himself to pace the room, a man
distracted by the sudden and utter collapse of all his world about him,
a man incapable in that dreadful hour of marshalling his thoughts in a
coherent sequence. One fact stood out. He was faced with ruin. Ruin
complete and irreparable. At a single thrust he was toppled from the
great eminence to which he had climbed. And he remembered then that he
had climbed to it with Overbury's help. Overbury alone could have
hoisted him to it, Overbury alone maintained him permanently there. And
she had murdered Overbury; and now the inevitable consequences of
Overbury's fall were overtaking him. He was to be dragged down after
him, even as Overbury had foretold, and to be dragged down in ignominy,
in infamy.

She rose labouredly, and stood watching him, supporting herself against
the overmantel even as he had supported himself. Her sensitiveness
required no words from him, no spoken upbraidings; she gathered from his
silence, his pacing and his distracted mien, all that was passing in his
tortured mind, and sensed something of the aversion to herself that was
rising in him. Presently she spoke.

'Robin, I need your help, your mercy.'

He paused, and his wild eyes glared at her. 'And do you hope for it?'

She shook her head. 'Not for myself. For myself I would not ask it. I
have said that if knowledge kills your love I care little what may
befall. But there is a child--your child and mine--quickening in my
womb. If I am destroyed, that innocent is destroyed with me.'

'Is it not better so?' he asked her grimly. 'Is it not better that this
child should never live than that it should bear the brand of infamy?
That it should be pointed out as the offspring of assassins, of
poisoners? For in this ruin I shall be involved with you. Your
conviction inevitably must drag my own at its heels.'

Thus he started a fresh terror in her, brought her love for him to
override even her maternal instincts. 'That it never shall!' she cried
fiercely. 'I will tell the whole truth; declare that the whole guilt is
mine; that you had no part in it. And since you had no part in it, what
evidence can there be against you?'

'Evidence?' He laughed shortly. 'My enemies will see to that. You have
delivered me into their hands, doomed me to such a ruin as they could
never have hoped to encompass.'

She wrung her hands, driven almost to frenzy. Yet by a stupendous effort
still commanded herself, so that she might grasp the tiller and steer
the frail barque of their lives through these angry seas. 'Then, for
your own sake and for the child's, you must make a fight, Robin. I ask
it not for myself. I have played and lost, God knows. I matter nothing
now, and you need not weigh me. Think only of yourself, of the child and
yourself. You can sway the King. You have influence with him. Show him
your peril. Be frank with him. Confess my part in this. He will never
abandon you to your enemies, and for the child's sake you must prevail
upon him not to abandon me. Afterwards, if it is your will, I will go my
ways, and never trouble you again. Oh, Robin, Robin, I would so gladly
give my miserable life for you!'

He stood there frowning, white and helpless. Torn this way and that,
between anger and pity.

'What can the King do now? The engines of the law have been set in
motion. Can the King arrest them? Can he command Coke to desist from
bringing these malefactors to justice? Upon what grounds would that be
possible? Weston, Franklin, and Turner have revealed themselves for foul
rats who live by evil, who make a trade of it. Are they to go free? And
if they do not, how shall those escape whom they will betray for having
employed them? The King can do nothing in this pass.' He swung about and
resumed his pacing. 'I came to you in such confidence that between us we
could tear this thing to shreds, and now ...'

He fell silent and paced on, his chin sunk to his breast, his eyes on
the ground, his countenance distorted. At last he paused to look at her.
She was shivering, as she leaned faintly there by the hearth; her teeth
were chattering, her lips were blue.

'You are cold,' he said dully, mechanically, and added: 'Get you to bed.
There is no more to be done or said.'

She realised the truth of it. That night something had been slain and
buried, something which she had laboured so hard and, in desperate need,
so ruthlessly to bring into existence. She bowed her head and moved
stiffly across to the door. There she paused, and turned.

'What shall you do, Robin?' she asked him piteously.

'So soon as it is dawn I shall set out to return to Royston.'

'Shall I see you before you ride?'

He shook his head. 'To what end? All has been said, I think.'

She opened the door. Yet on the threshold she paused again, and stood a
moment hesitating. 'Will you kiss me, Robin ... for the last time,
perhaps? I may never see you again.'

At that the man in him broke, and he fell suddenly to sobbing like a
child. He ran to her, gathered her to him, and still sobbing kissed her
face and neck, whilst she dry-eyed clung to him in thankfulness and
anguish.

'All is not yet lost,' he vowed in a broken voice. 'What man can do I'll
do. I'll see the King. I'll cast myself upon his mercy. I'll go on my
knees to him. He'll be content to banish us, perhaps. Keep up your
heart, my Fanny. All is not yet lost. Trust me. Trust me. Now go. Go
rest you, child, and pray.'

Thus, in that sudden short sharp gust of pity for her, for himself, and
perhaps for the unborn child.

But when two days later he was back at Royston--for the weakness of the
flesh prevented the return journey being accomplished in a day--it was
not in sackcloth and ashes, nor in any mood of humility that he sought
the King.

As he rode, there had recurred to him certain aspects of the case which
at Henley had been temporarily blotted out by the distraction his wife's
revelations had brought him. He remembered again that interview with
James which had followed immediately upon Overbury's death, remembered
it more particularly now, recalled the very words the King had used. If
ever words admitted guilt, the King's had admitted it when he had bidden
Somerset be reconciled. There was a dark mystery here which baffled
Somerset as he rode, until as a result of much brooding he suddenly
perceived the light. It revived his broken courage, mantled him once
more in his wonted arrogance, and sent him with firm step and chin held
high to seek the King, indifferent to the covert sneers and sly, mocking
glances that followed him as he crossed the antechamber.

It was close upon dinner-time when he came seeking his majesty, and he
took it for a good omen that notwithstanding this the King made no
attempt to postpone the meeting, but dismissed the gentlemen who were
with him in his closet, and sat as before at his work-table to hear the
result of my lord's excursion to Henley.

'Ye're well returned, Rabbie,' he was greeted, 'and in good time, for
Coke has sent for you to go to London.'

Somerset raised his eyebrows. But he did not appear dismayed. 'Already?'
he exclaimed.

'It's no matter for delays, man. Coke is a diligent servant. And I hope
you'll prove no less.'

'Coke can wait,' said his lordship composedly, for all that his face was
white and jaded, his eyes red from weariness. And he added, 'I'm not
going.'

'Not going? What's that ye're saying? It's a summons of the law. If Coke
sent for me, I should have to go. There's no avoiding it.'

'Your majesty may yet come to a different opinion. You may come to
consider sending word to Coke that the matter of those notes of his
examinations is just so much rubbish so far as my incrimination or that
of my countess is concerned.'

'Rubbish, man? Rubbish?'

'Consider, Sire, the sum of the tale these rogues tell, when all is
added together. Over a period of five months Weston is in the Tower to
administer poisons to Overbury, which he says are procured for him by
Mrs. Turner and by Franklin. There is rosalgar, arsenic, _aqua fortis_,
and Heaven knows what else besides; and yet in all this time Sir Thomas
does not die.'

'Because the Lieutenant of the Tower was watchful, and had moved Weston
to play a double game: to accept the bribes of those who had placed him
there without carrying out their orders.'

'It nowhere says in these notes that Weston ultimately complied with
those orders, and gave any of the poisons to Sir Thomas.'

'Yet he must have done so, as is clear; or else Sir Thomas would not
have died.'

'Not unless someone else had stepped in at the last moment; someone who
did not hesitate to do that which Weston dared not do since he had been
discovered and intimidated by the Lieutenant.'

The King's glance shifted uneasily. He stroked his beard, spreading his
hand so that the gesture partly concealed his gaping mouth.

'Nay, as to that I know nought. It is a matter for Coke.'

'But the notes say something to the matter. Weston, in fact, declares as
much. And so does Sir Gervase Elwes. There was an apothecary's boy with
Overbury two days before he died.'

'The boy is dead,' the King snapped, 'and cannot now be brought to
testify.'

'No need for it.' His lordship was almost airy. 'He is but a tool of no
account. He did no more than he was bid. The apothecary himself would be
with him; and the apothecary would be of a certainty Dr. Mayerne's man,
to do as Dr. Mayerne prescribed. Now Mayerne was sent by your majesty to
minister to Overbury who at the time was sick, and it would be--would it
not?--preposterous to suppose that Mayerne was guilty of procuring his
murder.'

They looked into each other's eyes a moment. There was a certain
grimness in his lordship's glance, complete vacuity in the King's.

'Preposterous, indeed,' said the thick guttural voice of James.

'Then it becomes clear, I think, that Sir Thomas was never murdered at
all.'

'The depositions are plain. And these rogues assert that they were
acting upon the orders of Lady Somerset, and my Lord Northampton.'

'To shield themselves it is natural they should name persons of great
rank.'

'Yet Payton brings you in to show a motive; and Lawrence Davies speaks
to a powder you sent Sir Thomas, which made him extremely sick.'

'A powder I sent him three months before he died. Can it be pretended
that he died of that?'

Again the King stroked his beard. The short, reddish hairs upon his hand
glinted in a shaft of sunlight that at the same time revealed his
ghastly pallor. The Earl observed that the hand shook a little.

'Well, well,' said his majesty at length. 'These are matters for Coke.
Maybe ye'll persuade him by such arguments. I perceive their logic.'

'Your majesty still considers that I must go before Coke?'

The very suggestion of disobeying the summons of the Lord Chief Justice
seemed to startle the King more deeply than formerly.

'Ud's death, man! What else? Have I not said that if Coke sends for me
even I must go!'

'Very well,' said his lordship quietly, for all that his countenance
grew overcast. 'Then I shall see to it that Coke pursues to its end this
matter of the apothecary's boy.'

The King sucked in his breath. 'Ye would be best advised to leave the
line of inquiry to Coke himself. That line must follow the trail that's
been started by the Lieutenant.'

He spoke with the quiet impressiveness of a man who conveys more than
the literal meaning of his words. 'Any other line must lead to your
destruction, Robin, and, as God's my life, I do not desire that. I love
you over-well to desire your hurt.' Still more impressive grew the tone.
'So be discreet and place your trust in me, and whatever the lawyers
make of it, no harm shall come to you or to your lady.' He set his hands
on the table and heaved himself up, thrusting back his chair.

For a moment the King and the Earl stood facing each other, the latter a
little wild of eye. It had been in his mind to interrupt the King with a
vehement threat of what he would do, of how he would drag the truth into
the light if he were unduly pressed, insisting upon the examination of
Mayerne, and by means of it establishing the fact that side by side
with the aborted plot which his unfortunate countess had set on foot,
had run another instigated by the King, which had succeeded. In his
wrath and resentment at the treachery of James, at his employment of old
methods for providing scapegoats for his royal dignity, Somerset had
been on the point of threatening a complete exposure which should place
the brand of Cain upon the King.

Betimes, however, he had checked. 'Whatever the lawyers make of it, no
harm shall come to you or to your lady.' That was the promise that had
given him pause. Could he trust it? Swiftly his mind balanced the
question. He thought of Frances and of the unborn child she carried. If
he did not accept this compromise, those two would be destroyed together
with himself.

'Come, now, Rabbie.' His majesty spoke gently in the old fatherly tone,
addressing him by the old intimate diminutive of his name. 'Come. You
shall dine with me, and afterwards away to Coke in London.'

When the King entered the dining-room leaning upon Somerset's stalwart
shoulder fondly as of old, there was consternation almost among the
gentlemen who waited there, who for some days now had confidently been
pronouncing that his lordship's star had definitely set.

Throughout the meal the King glozed an abiding nervousness with
jocularity. He pledged his dear Rabbie, and drank deep, so that even Sir
George Villiers grew thoughtful and uneasy.

When dinner was done, and it was announced that my Lord of Somerset's
coach was waiting, it was the King himself who escorted him to it,
hanging an arm round his neck as he went with him, and slobbering kisses
on his cheek.

'For God's sake, when shall I see thee again? On my soul I shall neither
eat nor sleep until I see thee again. When shall it be, Rabbie?'

His bewildered lordship answered that he counted upon returning on
Monday.

'Shall I? Shall I? For God's sake, let it be Monday.'

Still lolling about his neck, the King went down the stairs with him,
and at the stairs' foot detained him again and again, reaching up to
slobber his cheek.

'For God's sake, give thy lady this kiss for me,' he cried, and then,
lowering his voice so that only Somerset should hear his words: 'Set
your trust in me, Rabbie, and whatever may seem, be sure no harm shall
come to your lady or yourself.'

Somerset bent his knee, and kissed the royal hand in leave-taking, then
went briskly out and stepped into his waiting coach.

The King, following him with his watery eyes, waved to him from where he
stood at the stairs' foot. Then, as the coach rolled away, unless the
gentleman standing at the royal elbow who overheard him was a liar, the
whole expression of his face was seen to alter, and with narrowing
glance he muttered thickly:

'Now the Devil go with you, for I shall never see your face again.'




CHAPTER XXXII

PRELUDE


If, as it seemed to him, policy or the needs of kingcraft drove King
James at times into illegal courses, into violations of the law of which
he was the custodian, into, in short, acts which must be accounted
criminal, yet he usually knew how to cover up his tracks by a further
abuse of his kingly powers, and so to dispose that no definite
accusation could be sustained against him. More than once in his career
he was driven the lengths of providing a scapegoat upon whom he could
fasten the imprudence or the crime of which he had himself been guilty,
and in such a course when it became necessary no scruple appears to have
deterred him. For whilst the woman in him shrank from contact with
violence or cruelty, yet he would never boggle at the ruthlessness of a
deed which he was not called upon to witness.

An instance of this is provided by the affair at Gowrie House, in which
young Ruthven and the Earl of Gowrie were coldly butchered, an affair
the truth of which will never be known, but which certainly does not lie
in the mass of falsehood provided by the King's own account of a
conspiracy against his life. Another instance is possibly provided by
the murder of the Earl of Murray, which many believed to have been done
at the King's instigation, although Huntley, whose actual hands shed the
blood, bore the public blame of it and was by James imprisoned for the
deed. Yet a third instance is supplied by the case of Lord Balmerino.
When an imprudent letter of James Stuart's to the Pope was brought to
light, in which the Protestant monarch was found to have been coquetting
with his holiness with a view to obtaining papal support for his claims
to the crown of England, his majesty took refuge in denouncing the
letter for a forgery. He accused his secretary Elphinstone, who was
afterwards Lord Balmerino, of having forged his signature, flung him
into prison for the crime, and actually went the lengths of having him
sentenced to death, although afterwards, in the exercise of the royal
prerogative of clemency, he pardoned him.

My Lord of Somerset, who knew as much of these and other similar matters
as any man alive, had leisure to reflect upon them as he rolled through
Hertfordshire in his clumsy coach, and to perceive quite clearly that,
in this matter of Sir Thomas Overbury, King James was playing the same
game.

It was quite clear from the evidence assembled by Coke that there had
been a plot against the life of Sir Thomas Overbury. This plot had
failed. But notwithstanding its failure it could be turned to such
account as to provide definitely and conclusively against any accusation
ever being levelled at the King. Undoubtedly several persons would be
tried, convicted, and executed for a murder which they had not
committed. But that need not trouble the royal conscience, since those
persons were undoubtedly guilty in intent; they had certainly conspired
to kill Sir Thomas, and if they had not succeeded this had been due to
an accidental intervention which nowise reduced their guilt. They were
scoundrels all, and the world would be well rid of them in any case.

All this was clear to my Lord of Somerset, and because of it and of the
King's parting assurance to him, he rode to London in some confidence
that no more than a formal examination awaited him, that his denials
would be accepted by Coke, and that he would be back at Royston by
Monday as he had promised.

The future, it is true, looked dark. His position hereafter would be
increasingly difficult, and the ghost of Overbury must ever stand
between himself and Frances. Out of his abiding pity, to which her
approaching motherhood may have contributed, he sought to be just; to be
more than just; to practise clemency in his judgment. He compelled
himself to remember that she had sinned for love of him; that it was as
much to ensure his happiness as her own that she had stooped to those
abominable practices and enlisted the services of those vile creatures
who would now betray her. But his conception of her had changed. His
lover's fancy had exalted her into a holy thing to which he had given
worship. Now the veils were rent and his goddess stood revealed as
basely human. Still, he must do what he could to protect her. He must
reveal to her the shield which they possessed in his knowledge of the
King's guilt. When he should have shown her that however Overbury had
died, it had not been as a result of any measures she might have taken
against him, she would find strength to deny and to persist in denial.

After all, against her there was nothing but the word of discredited
rogues who could not but be proved liars in the course of the
examinations. It was true that there were some dreadful letters which
she had written Forman. But these had no bearing upon the case of Sir
Thomas Overbury nor concerned anything that might have been meditated
against him.

His lordship was anxious to reach London and to have done with his
business with Coke, so that being free to return he might seek her at
once and instruct her in the bearing she must assume in any examination
to which she might be subjected.

His confidence reviving thus, he came to London, to have it all
shattered again almost in the hour of his arrival. At his sumptuous
lodging near the cock-pit he found an officer awaiting him, and a letter
signed by the four members of the commission, in which they professed
themselves his lordship's very loving friends, but required him in his
majesty's name to keep his chamber without suffering the access of any
to him other than his own necessary servants until his majesty's
pleasure should be further known.

Somerset, having read the letter of his 'very loving friends,' let it
flutter from his nerveless fingers. He sat down heavily and took his
head in his hands. His thoughts were with the King, who but yesterday
had been slobbering his cheeks with kisses and protesting in maudlin
accents that he would neither eat nor sleep until Robin should return.
And all the while the King knew that Somerset went to arrest, to be
detained in isolation from all until 'his majesty's pleasure be further
known.'

He heard again the King's thick, slurring voice: 'For God's sake, give
thy lady this kiss for me.'

The kiss of Judas, the kiss of betrayal, it had been. James had flung
him naked to his enemies to be destroyed. And then through the
bitterness of his resentment, through the fierce resolve that James
should yet come to repent this unspeakable falsity, the memory of his
own betrayal of Overbury surged before him to turn him ice-cold with
horror and with the sense that he was but being repaid in the coin which
himself he had uttered.

Deceived by those smooth words and Judas kisses, he had walked into the
trap without ever a chance to communicate again with his countess, to
warn her and school her as he had been determining. And now it was
certain that no chance would be afforded them of communicating with each
other until separately or jointly they were brought before Coke and the
others for examination.

Meanwhile, the Countess of Somerset was also virtually under arrest by
order of Coke and his fellow commissioners. She had been brought to town
at about the same time that the Earl had come thither, and she was
placed in the care of Sir William Smythe in Lord Aubigny's house in the
Blackfriars. She had come attended as befitted her rank by six women and
several menservants; but of these only two of the former were suffered
to remain with her and every precaution was taken to prevent her
communicating with the outside world.

She bore this with the stoicism which follows upon the cessation of all
hope. She had played her desperate game, made her desperate throw for
happiness, and she had lost. Of that she was now fully assured. It was
not a matter that depended upon the issue of any trial that might lie in
store for her. It was not for life that she had played; but for Robin's
love without which life was of little account. And whether she lived or
died, Robin's love was irrevocably lost to her. His worship of her had
been for that ideal of womanhood which she had incarnated for him. This
ideal she had befouled and destroyed in her very endeavours to preserve
it for him. Could irony go further?

It was not only that her hands were imbrued with Overbury's blood, but
that all her body, her very spirit, was defiled by the necromantic
practices to which she had lent herself and by the evil associations
which she had made her own. In his eyes she was leprous. She had seen
that plainly enough in his face on that dreadful night at Henley, before
it had been momentarily effaced by the gust of pity which had shaken
him, a pity whose memory, now that it was fully understood, set her
shuddering. Better would it have been, she thought, had he reviled and
beaten her.

It was finished. The game was played. Love, its greatest forfeit, had
been lost. The sooner life followed, the sooner oblivion came, the
better now. And in the time of waiting, it but remained to bear herself
with such fortitude as she could command and such dignity as she could
counterfeit, for of real dignity no rag was left her. She was as one
exposed naked to the public gaze.

Meanwhile the Earl of Somerset wrote passionate letters to the King
protesting against his betrayal and full of covert threats of what he
must disclose if the betrayal were pushed too far. One letter the King
wrote him in answer, a letter obviously composed for publication,
wherein his majesty protested that he would do his duty honestly and not
tamper with justice.

That justice lost no time in getting to work. On the 19th of October at
the Guildhall began the Great Oyer of Poisoning, as Coke described it,
with the trial of Richard Weston.

Thus, at the very outset the dishonesty of the proceedings is apparent.
Weston was an accessory. Both on his own evidence and that of Sir
Gervase Elwes, besides the confession of the apothecary's boy in
Flushing, Sir Thomas Overbury had died following upon an injection
prepared by Loubel. Therefore Loubel was the principal, and only after
Loubel's conviction of the murder could the field have been extended to
include Weston and the others. But Loubel was tried neither then nor
subsequently, a circumstance regarded by many as the most mysterious
part of what is known as the Overbury Mystery, whereas, in fact, it is
the clue to it. Nor was the evidence of the coroner put in, so that
there was no real preliminary formal proof that Overbury had been
poisoned at all.

The indictment against Weston alleged four several attempts to poison
Sir Thomas. One on the 9th of May, 1613, when rosalgar was said to have
been used; another on the 1st of July by means of white arsenic; and a
third on the 19th of July by mercury sublimate contained in some tarts
and jellies sent in to the prisoner. Finally, on the 14th of September
of that same year, Weston, it was charged, in conjunction with another
man had administered an injection of corrosive sublimate to which Sir
Thomas had succumbed.

Coke, acting as judge and prosecuting counsel in one, secured a verdict
of guilty from the jury, and the unfortunate Weston was hanged at Tyburn
two days after sentence.

In the first week of November, Anne Turner was brought to trial. The
charge against her was of comforting, aiding, and abetting Weston, who
was no longer there to answer anything he might in reason have been
asked. Terrified, the frail little widow pleaded not guilty.

Coke from the bench bespattered her with some ordures of speech by way
of shortening the work in hand and helping the jury to an opinion about
her. He dubbed her whore and bawd and witch and Papist and several other
things, thereby reducing the dainty, golden-headed creature to an
outburst of passionate weeping.

The charge was established by the production of letters which had passed
between the Countess of Essex and Simon Forman, and of some of the
puppets in wax and lead which had been prepared for purposes of
enchantments. Mrs. Turner had obtained possession of these on the death
of Forman, but she had neglected to destroy them. The constable had
found them in her house, and they effectively set the rope about her
pretty, delicate neck.

She made her last appearance at Tyburn, dressed with the modish care
which had ever distinguished her, and wearing the ruffs and cuffs
starched in yellow which she had rendered so fashionable, but which
thereafter were never to be seen again.

The next victim, on the charge of being an accessory, was the
unfortunate Sir Gervase Elwes, but for whom no word of all this business
might ever have been divulged. He defended himself vigorously,
skilfully, and manfully, and must by his grave appearance and demeanour
have commanded some respect and compassion. But he was foredoomed by the
ruthless Coke, and was destroyed upon a lying assertion by Franklin
that he was in league with the Countess. Although it must have been
clear that, if any of what was alleged against him had been true,
Overbury's poisoning would never have taken five months to accomplish,
he was sentenced and hanged. Because he had been Lieutenant of the
Tower, he was executed on Tower Hill, as being a place less infamous
than Tyburn.

After Elwes came Franklin, the doctor and warlock, who, in some mad hope
to save himself, had suggested in his examinations that he could
incriminate half the kingdom, and this, not only for the poisoning of
Sir Thomas Overbury, but for many other mysterious deaths beginning with
that of Prince Henry. He lied recklessly and fantastically. He is
comparable only with a squid which throws out an inky cloud in the hope
of being himself lost in it to the view of his pursuers. It was in the
course of his wildest lies that the Earl was for the first time
seriously mentioned as having any direct connection with the fact of
poisoning. The falsehood of his depositions was rendered obvious by
their own glaring inconsistencies. He delayed his fate by asserting even
after sentence that he had still more to reveal, and he would have
continued these revelations to the end of his natural life had not even
Coke grown weary of his fabrications and cut them short by dismissing
him to the gallows.

In the first days of December, Sir Thomas Monson was brought to trial.
His guilt lay in having procured Sir Gervase Elwes to be Lieutenant of
the Tower in place of Sir William Wade. This was assumed to be something
done in order to pave the way for the murder. He bore himself arrogantly
and contemptuously before the Court, and eventually he was put back in
order that he might be a witness against the Countess. Nor was he ever
brought to trial again.

There ended the prelude to the Grand Oyer of Poisoning. The drama itself
was to follow some six months later, sumptuously staged in Westminster
Hall. Meanwhile, out of all that had gone, and out of the unfortunate
wretches who had been hanged, enough material had been squeezed, as
evidence was then understood, to serve for the destruction of the Earl
and Countess of Somerset by men who were determined to destroy them.




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE AMBASSADOR


In the early days of December of that dreadful year, the young Countess
in her duress in the house in Blackfriars was joylessly delivered of a
daughter.

She had vowed that she would not survive the event; she had even taken
steps to destroy herself, together with the child before its birth; but
in this she had been frustrated by those who watched over her. The King,
being informed of her intentions and attempts, had with a kindness that
was almost cruel sent physicians to take charge of her and nurses to
watch over her constantly so that she might be preserved for all the
suffering that awaited her.

She may have spared some of her pity for herself to bestow it upon the
infant at her breast. No joy bells announced its advent; there was no
pompous christening graced by royalty for the offspring of a daughter of
the great House of Howard and the wife of one who had been First
Minister of State and the greatest man in England.

In March she was conveyed to the Tower, and given the lodging which Sir
Walter Raleigh had lately quitted to sail upon the disastrous El Dorado
adventure. Her babe was delivered into the care of the Countess of
Suffolk and taken to Audley End, where the Lord Treasurer's lady was in
residence during those unhappy days.

As for Somerset, he had already preceded his wife to the Tower, where,
however, they were still not suffered to communicate with each other.

The Earl now perceived quite clearly that, in spite of his letters to
the King, it was not only the intention to bring him to trial, to
arraign him like a criminal before men who in the past had gone in awe
of him, but that the issue of that trial was foregone. Already he had
been stripped of his great offices of State. The privy seals had gone to
the Earl of Worcester; the Lord Chamberlain's wand of office was grasped
at last by the Earl of Pembroke. Soon, he supposed, they would be
parcelling out his lands and possessions, and out of them, no doubt, the
upstart Villiers would be richly endowed.

He writhed in justifiable anger, and took oath that he would never
submit to be so tamely broken. Then he curbed himself, and wrote again
to the King. This time, however, he did not rave and threaten wildly. He
sent a precise, cold, and closely reasoned statement which so fastened
the guilt of Overbury's murder upon the King that if it were publicly
made it could not be suffered to remain unanswered. And publicly made it
should be, Somerset warned his Majesty, if he or his countess were
brought to trial for a crime which no one knew better than the King that
neither of them had committed, and which Somerset himself had never
contemplated.

Nor did he leave the matter there. So that the King should see that he
fully intended what he threatened and that means of publication were not
lacking, he uttered to Sir George More threats of what he could and
would do, knowing full well that Sir George would perform his duty and
report these words to the King. Without being explicit to the
Lieutenant, he announced the intention of laying an aspersion on his
Majesty of being an accessory to the murder.

To Sir George the King replied that this was no more than a trick of
Somerset's idle brain, by which he hoped to shift the trial. Under that
airy answer he dissembled the panic into which the letter had flung him.
Somerset had revealed quite clearly how completely he held the King,
what dreadful havoc he could make if in open court he were to repeat the
statement he had set down, and demand the examination of Mayerne, who
had prescribed, and of Loubel, who had administered the poisoned
injection. It was a demand that could not be refused once the accusation
were lodged; for to refuse it would be an admission of fear which could
have but one interpretation. The evidence upon which Weston had been
hanged had already established that it was the injection, which being
poisoned, had ended Sir Thomas Overbury's days. This was a blunder of
Coke's for which the King in his present rage and terror could
cheerfully have strangled the Lord Chief Justice. It was a blunder of
which Somerset's exposition took the fullest account. Loubel, being
examined, must shelter himself behind Mayerne; and Mayerne, when his
turn came, must betray the King to save his own neck.

And what should King James look like in the eyes of the nation if the
truth were told at this stage? He would stand revealed not merely as a
murderer, but as a murderer on so ruthless and infamous a scale that to
screen himself he had already allowed four persons, however venal, to
suffer death unjustly for a crime of his own, and was seeking to add two
victims more.

He was panic-stricken at the perception of the situation into which
Somerset showed that he could thrust him. The chink which he had always
known to exist in his armour gaped wider than he had supposed possible,
and the wound which Somerset threatened to deal him through it was one
which it might be impossible to staunch before his Majesty was bled
white of credit and reputation. On the other hand, so much had already
been alleged against Somerset by those who were eager to implicate him,
Coke had been so liberal in the course of the preliminary trials in
assertions of his lordship's guilt, of which he said that the proofs
were pregnant against him, that if King James now intervened, it would
be said that he had hushed up the scandal to save the arch-offender
after the lesser ones had suffered.

In this horrible quandary, his majesty finally resolved to send Lord Hay
as his plenipotentiary, not only to Somerset, but to the Countess as
well.

The splendid courtier, who had so often and so brilliantly represented
his prince at foreign courts, had possibly never undertaken a more
delicate embassage or one in whose inmost particulars he was less
instructed.

He landed at Tower Wharf on a brilliant morning of May, when the scent
of lilac was strong upon the tepid air, and having presented his
credentials to the Lieutenant was straightway conducted to her ladyship.

In that lodging which had been Sir Walter Raleigh's, with the
furnishings which had served that bright adventurer and even some of his
books and effects about her, she sat, pale and listless, a neglected
volume of poems in her lap. She had wasted a little during her
confinement, and there was something now almost ethereal and unearthly
about her delicate beauty. She was dressed with great care, but in
black, which threw into greater relief the snowy whiteness of her skin
and the bright gold of the heavy clumps of hair protruding on either
side of the braided coif with which her head was covered.

She rose at sight of the great courtier disclosed to her by the opening
of the heavy oaken door, and her faithful woman Catharine, who was at
her needlework by the window, rose with her.

Lord Hay came quickly forward, scattering the rushes on the floor in his
haste to have her resume her seat. Hat in hand, he bowed low over the
hand she extended mechanically in greeting, and brushed it with his
lips.

The action almost surprised her. It brought tears to her eyes, and a
warmth surged in her heart for this gallant gentleman to whom a woman's
hand was still a woman's hand, even though stained as hers must be
accounted stained.

She looked into his bold, handsome face, and as memories arose she
wondered whether he who had been Robin's first friend was destined now
to be his last. She knew that there had been differences between them;
that for a time Lord Hay, entirely devoted to French interests, had been
hostile to Robin when he had seemed to favour Spain. It was possible
even that there might be resentments of the great eminence to which the
royal favour had hoisted one who had first made his appearance before
King James as a simple esquire in the train of Sir James Hay, as he then
had been. How well she remembered that scene ten years ago in the
tilt-yard at Whitehall. And how much had happened in the time that was
sped. Lord Hay had aged considerably since that day when he himself had
been one of the favourites of a King who loved handsome men. Yet because
he had never climbed to such vertiginous heights as Robin, he had been
able to maintain his foothold in security.

His lordship, with head deferentially inclined, announced himself a
messenger from the King and requested to be private with her.

She dismissed her woman to the outer room, and resumed her armchair. To
stand immediately before her, his lordship turned his back to the window
and the light.

'I bring your ladyship a message of hope,' he announced.

'Of hope?' she echoed, and the sadness of her smile cut him more sharply
than any tears.

He had been of those who had voiced the spreading execration of this
woman stained with such guilt as had been brought to light by the
confessions of scoundrels who had already suffered for a crime of which
she must be supposed the instigator. But in her presence now, her
beauty, her pallor, her wistfulness, the physical frailty of her worn
body brought him to weigh the temptation she had suffered against the
sin she had committed, and he cast out every thought but that of pity.

'The hope of royal clemency,' he explained.

'The only clemency I crave,' she answered him, 'is to pass swiftly out
from ... all this, before I come to the terrible ordeal of my trial.'

'That ordeal you may sensibly lessen by your own act, my lady. If you
will confess, the trial, instead of being a minute and close examination
into your errors, will become little more than a formality. You must
submit to sentence; but that sentence will never be carried out. I
bring you his majesty's assurance of this, provided that you will
confess your guilt.'

'Confess?' she echoed.

He thought she questioned the necessity, still clinging to hope that she
might defeat her accusers and make it appear that the evidence against
her was insufficient. To dispel that imagined hope he briefly recited
what had been betrayed by Weston, by Turner, and by Franklin, showing
how their evidence was intercorroborated. She displayed little interest
until he mentioned Sir David Wood, and told her how that gentleman had
come forward to bear witness that once she had sought to hire him to
kill Overbury. She raised her eyes at this, and looked at him, a smile
of scornful pity on her lips.

'Even he!' she exclaimed, and slowly shook her head. 'Those other poor
wretches I can understand. They hoped to save their lives by putting the
blame on me, where, indeed, it belongs.'

This was a generous admission, considering that, after all, Turner had
been the serpent who had tempted her to her destruction.

'But Sir David! He was my uncle's man and owed him much. At one time he
professed to love me, and vowed himself for ever my servant. Behold his
service! It can nothing profit him to help to break me, and yet he comes
to add what he can to my load of shame. But let be. It little
signifies.'

'Except, madam, that it serves to complete the ring that has been drawn
about you. That is why I urge you in his majesty's name to make a full
confession, thereby disarming justice.'

She rose abruptly. Some colour kindled in her cheeks. She appeared to be
swept by a sudden passion.

'It would not occur to his majesty that this thing which I am urged to
do for clemency, I must already have decided to do for love.'

'You mean, madam?'

'Mean, my lord? Is not my meaning plain? Must I give tongue to the
little virtue that is left me? Must I tell you, after all that has
befallen, that my love for Robin has been the lodestar of my life? Evil
has come of it, God knows. But do you think that it could beget naught
but evil? Do you not see that evil came because evil was made a
necessity to its fulfilment? Oh, my lord, in itself my love was neither
good nor evil. It was just love. The overwhelming desire to possess and
be possessed. It made use of good or evil indiscriminately for its
compelling needs. Where evil alone would serve, it used evil perforce,
as freely as now it must use good, since through good alone can it
continue to manifest itself.'

She paused. My Lord Hay was a little bewildered by the passion which
lent her clarity and eloquence. Then more quietly she continued.

'You may be wondering, my lord, what is all this to the matter. You may
tell his majesty that I shall confess fully and freely; that already I
had resolved upon this; but not out of any hope of mercy; not to gain a
single day of a life that must henceforth be empty. I shall confess
because, were I to deny, were I to attempt to combat or disprove any of
this that has been alleged against me, I must endanger Robin, who is
already suspect upon no better grounds than that he is my husband. Those
suspicions my confession shall clear away. It shall be seen that my
Robin had no part or share in this, that no impeachment can be made
against him. That is why I shall confess, taking all the blame for this
upon myself, where it rightly belongs. It is all that I can now do. The
only amend, alas!'

She sat down again, wearily, folding her hands in her lap. His lordship
stood a moment looking at her, as if undecided. Then he bowed from the
waist, and in that attitude spoke his farewell.

'Madam, the resolve is as wise as it is deserving. I will communicate it
to his majesty. And I pray that you may yet be spared for many years.'

'Ah, pray not that! Pray not that! Let it be clear to his majesty that I
have made no bargain. That I neither ask nor desire mercy. That all that
I can seek is rest when this last duty to Robin shall have been
fulfilled.'

His lordship departed in a mood blending compassion with complacency. So
far he had succeeded, and his royal master should be well pleased with
him. If only he could accomplish as much by my Lord Somerset, the royal
satisfaction should be complete.

The Lieutenant, who had waited, conducted him, by gloomy dank passages,
up one flight of stone steps and down another, to the lodging of the
Earl.

Somerset was writing busily when Lord Hay was ushered in upon him, and
the older man was shocked to perceive the change which a few months had
wrought in the prisoner's appearance. His beautiful red-gold hair, which
always had been so scrupulously combed and frizzed, was lank and
ill-kempt, and odd strands of grey had made their appearance in it. His
face was thin and pallid. Its bone structures were thrown into
prominence, filling with shadow the hollows thus produced. His eyes,
once so clear and commanding, were dull, blood-injected, and sunken
into his head. He was negligently dressed, this man who once had been a
mirror of the elegancies. Wrapped in a purple quilted bedgown, his
collar open at the throat, his feet were thrust into slippers; and black
silk stockings, carelessly gartered, hung in creases about his calves.

As the door opened, he looked up, almost savagely. At sight of Lord Hay,
he rose, startled, and for a long moment remained staring at the man who
once had been his master, subsequently had been a humble suitor for his
patronage, more lately one of his enemies and held now in the royal
favour a position rendered the more assured by Somerset's eclipse.

'My lord!' was all that he could ejaculate, a certain bitterness rising
in him.

Lord Hay bowed to him as deferentially as if he were still the favourite
and First Minister of State. He moved forward. But as Somerset did not
stir to meet him or make shift to proffer his hand, the royal messenger
contented himself with bowing again.

Sir George More closed the door and effaced himself to wait beyond it.

'I am from the King,' Lord Hay announced, and plunged straightway into
the business. 'I am to tell you, Robin, that his majesty deeply resents
the threat in your letter to make him in some sort accessory to your
crime.'

'My crime!' Somerset's face was convulsed with anger. 'My crime!' he
repeated. 'He's determined then to father it upon me? Well, well! We
shall see. His majesty's resentment shall go deeper yet when I make it
clear that I am being used by him as a scapegoat for a deed that is his
own. Tell him from me, as I shall tell their lordships if I am brought
to trial, that I am neither Balmerino nor the Earl of Gowrie. That if
he wants my silence he may send Haddington to murder me as he murdered
Gowrie. But that short of that, if he insists upon dragging me to
Westminster Hall, I shall not be silent upon what I know, nor will I
consent to wear the mantle of his infamy.'

'My lord, my lord!' Hay became formal again in his remonstrance. 'These
are wild, mad words!'

'The country shall judge their madness if I am brought to trial.'

'And mad the country will judge them. If you are guilty of so infamous
an attempt to shift the blame, you will seal your own doom irrevocably.'

'To shift the blame, does he dare to say? I shall not seek to shift it;
but to nail it down where it belongs.'

'Where it belongs?' Hay stood stiff and straight and calm as he looked
into the wild eyes of Somerset. He frowned a little. 'Robin, you delude
yourself, indeed, if you dream that such measures can avail you, that
they can produce any effect upon your judges or the country, or that you
can intimidate his majesty by such threats. The burden of evidence is
too heavy against you.'

'Evidence! What evidence can there be since I am innocent?' His
lordship's fury vibrated in his voice. 'I had no hand in the murder of
Tom Overbury, as none knows better than the King. All the world shall
know where the blame lies before I've done, if either I or my countess
be brought to trial.'

Lord Hay nodded grimly. 'That is true enough. The world shall know it
upon the word of her ladyship herself; indeed, upon her confession that
she contrived the deed. Against that, what shall your threats avail,
how shall the scandals you will attempt to raise ever touch the King?'

Somerset stood suddenly calmed. The high colour which indignation had
whipped into his cheeks receded, leaving them paler than they had been
before. He sat down heavily at the deal table which was strewn with his
papers, quills, and inkhorn, the table by which Lord Hay was standing.

'She confesses!' He spoke hoarsely, scarcely above a whisper.

Here was a factor he had left out of his calculations; stupidly, as he
now perceived. In the light of her confession, what, indeed, could it
avail him to speak to the King's guilt? Since there was one who
confessed to the crime, what could it avail to seek to fasten it on
another? She should have entrenched herself in denial; denounced those
wretches, who had been bullied and tormented into self-accusation, for
liars when they sought to implicate her in their guilt. The rest she
could have left to him and the tale he could tell which must have made
the whole thing look like a base conspiracy against them. So long as she
maintained that attitude, the King would never dare bring them to trial,
aware of the mischief Somerset could do.

But since she confessed, she destroyed them both. Against that
confession there was no battling, as Lord Hay now warned him. Yet still
he resisted. 'If she confesses, she confesses to something that is not
true, although she may believe it true.'

'Could any man persuade their lordships of that?' said Hay gently.

Somerset ignored the question. 'Yet even though she confess, that
confession cannot include me.'

'It must, my lord. By implication. Her motive was common to you both.
Their lordships will not be slow to perceive that. The commission, my
lord, had perceived it already, and that perception alone sufficed them
as a reason for placing you under restraint.'

Somerset rose again, grumbling in his throat, and paced away to the
barred window, dragging his loose-shod feet. He stood staring out a
moment; then swung round and came slowly back.

'And so,' he said bitterly, 'the King thinks to have my head under his
girdle?'

'The King,' Lord Hay replied in a tone of reproof, 'desires to assure
you of his continued affection, and desires you to make it possible to
show you mercy.'

'Mercy for what?'

'For the crime with which you are charged.'

'I thank you, my lord, for not saying the crime which I have committed.
And as I have committed no crime, I desire no mercy. I desire only that
my innocence may appear. I shall defend my honour to my last breath, and
in spite of all the traps and snares that may be laid for me. Tell the
King that. Tell him, as I said at the beginning, that I am neither
Gowrie nor Balmerino.'

Lord Hay shook his fine head. 'I should not be your friend if I bore
that message.'

Lord Somerset smote the table with his open palm. 'You will not be my
friend if you do not.' With a touch of his old haughtiness he added:
'There is no more to say, my lord.'

Lord Hay accepted the dismissal. He gathered his satin cape-cloak about
him and resumed his hat. 'At the moment perhaps not, my lord. But you
will reflect upon what I have said. You will remember that you hold the
key to the gates of royal mercy. It is for you, my lord, to determine
whether you will employ it. God light you to a wise decision.'

'God cannot wish me to destroy my honour,' was the Earl's last word.

They bowed to each other, and Lord Hay went out.

Alone, Somerset sat down again, folded his arms upon the table, and laid
his head upon them with a groan. He was tasting, he knew, the bitterness
that had been Overbury's when Overbury was trapped in that same prison
even as he. Like Overbury he was fighting for his life and liberty by
threats of the havoc he could wreak by his disclosures. He was punished,
indeed, poetically, for his betrayal of his friend.




CHAPTER XXXIV

THE MERCY OF KING JAMES


After many delays and postponements, the true cause for which must be
sought in the conscience of the King and the fears that sprang from it,
the Countess of Somerset was brought to trial on a Friday, towards the
end of May.

Betimes she was conducted by the Lieutenant from the gloom of her prison
into the brilliance of that May morning and the dazzling sunshine which
glinted upon the corselets and headpieces of her escort and upon the
terrible axe which the headsman carried before her with averted edge.

She had dressed herself with care and thought for the dread part she was
to play in the thronged theatre of Westminster Hall. She wore a gown of
black tammil, relieved at throat and wrists by cuffs and ruff of cobweb
lawn, and on her head a chaperon of cypress crêpe. The funereal raiment
but served to render her white beauty the more startling.

With Catharine, her faithful woman, following, she embarked in the
Lieutenant's barge, and with the tide at half-flow she arrived in less
than an hour at Westminster Steps, where pikemen kept the curious crowd
in check.

Within the vast hall, which since six o'clock that morning had been
packed to suffocation by the nobles and gentry who could afford to pay
the high prices demanded for so rare a show, a stage had been erected
for the peers who were to sit in judgment. They entered in procession,
twenty-two of them in their robes, in the wake of the feeble Lord
Chancellor Ellesmere, who filled the post of Lord High Steward, and
followed by the Lord Chief Justice and seven judges in scarlet.

The Lord High Steward, moving slowly and preceded by the bearers of his
white staff, his patent, and his seal, and six sergeants-at-arms
shouldering their maces, took his place under the scarlet cloth of
estate, bowed to the assembly and sat down. Their lordships covering
themselves sank with a rustle to their seats on either side of him; more
noisily the great crowd settled down again in the sweltering heat of
that May morning, and on the ensuing stillness beat the droning voice of
the Clerk of Arraigns. Then came a fresh stir as the Countess, followed
ever by her woman, was conducted by the Lieutenant of the Tower to the
bar. Her pallor was deathlike, but her feet did not falter. With lowered
eyes she took her place before their lordships, and spread her fan, so
as to conceal the half of her countenance from those cruelly
inquisitive, probing glances.

The voice of the Clerk of Arraigns ran challengingly, like a
trumpet-call.

'Frances, Countess of Somerset, hold up thy hand!'

She obeyed, being compelled for this to put aside her fan, and stood so
whilst the indictment was read to her, tears flowing down a face which
might have been carved of marble, so white and rigid did it remain.

At the end of it came the question: 'Frances, Countess of Somerset, how
sayest thou? Art thou guilty of this felony and murder, or not guilty?'

She paused a moment in the deathly stillness all about her, swaying a
little before she answered with the single word which surely must
deliver her Robin of all peril. Although she spoke that word low and
fearfully, it was widely heard in the silence.

'Guilty.'

It may have occasioned disappointment, for it curtailed the sport which
those who had paid so extravagantly for their places might have derived
from the contest arising out of a defence.

Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General, sleek and elegant, was
instantly on his feet, to charm the audience with his silken voice and
well-balanced periods, commending the course she had taken. He had his
orders from the King. She was to be dealt with leniently in view of her
confession, and no odious or uncivil speeches were to be given.

It was not the supple Bacon's way to be odious or uncivil. Such gifts as
his do not need to employ bullyings and browbeatings, nor was there any
need for them here.

He stressed the fact that she was a spectacle of awe and commiseration.
He hinted in plain terms that the royal clemency would follow.
Meanwhile, however, he invited their lordships to pass to the discharge
of their duty.

'This lady,' he said, at one point in his graceful oration, 'meets
justice in the way by confession, which is the corner-stone either of
mercy or judgment. It is said that mercy and truth be met together.
Truth you have in her confession, and that may be a degree to mercy,
which we must leave to him in whose power it resides. In the mean time
this day must be reserved for judgment.'

At the end the Clerk of Arraigns demanded of her formally what she could
say why judgment of death should not be pronounced against her.

What she replied was uttered in so low a voice that no more than the
sound of it was audible save to those immediately about her. Of these it
was Sir Francis Bacon who repeated the words after her to Lord
Ellesmere.

'I can much aggravate but nothing extenuate my fault ... I desire
mercy ... and that the lords will intercede for me with the King.'

The frail old Chancellor, taking his white staff, delivered judgment. He
tempered it by an expression of the belief that, in view of the humility
and grief in which she had confessed, the King would be moved to mercy,
closing in the words prescribed.

'... That you shall be carried from hence to the Tower of London, and
from thence to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged by the
neck till you be dead. And the Lord have mercy upon your soul.'

She staggered and swayed as if about to fall. To steady herself, she
clutched at the rail before her, and remained a moment clinging to it,
whilst her woman hastened to her at a sign from Sir George More. Then,
at another signal from the Lieutenant, the halberdiers advanced, Sir
George proffered her his hand, and thus led by him, again preceded by
the headsman, this time with the edge of the gleaming axe towards her,
she passed out of the hall under the gaze of that great concourse, which
included the short, sturdy figure of the young Earl of Essex, who
watched her with grim, sullen eyes.

The crowd surged out into the sunshine to babble of the show and of the
greater show that was to follow on the morrow when the Earl of Somerset
should come there, not meekly to surrender, it was said, as her ladyship
had done, but fiercely to battle for his life.

Meanwhile, however, my Lord of Somerset was protesting passionately that
he would not go at all, and that if they carried him there in his bed by
main force he would stand mute and refuse to plead. Such were the fierce
assurances he gave Sir George More, when the Lieutenant, on his return
from Westminster Hall, went to inform his lordship of how it had fared
with the Countess.

Her confession created no fresh consternation in him. It did not move
him at all. He had been prepared for it, and he was not to guess that
she had been led to make it more for his sake than for her own, induced
by the assurance that it would earn leniency for both of them.

He waved it now aside, as something done and irretrievable, but
something which did not touch him. His concern was entirely with his own
trial upon the morrow, for which he was desired to prepare himself. He
would not prepare himself, he announced to Sir George More, because he
would not be required to go; because the King dared not bring him to
trial.

'These are grave words to use of his majesty, my lord,' Sir George
reproved him.

'They are. And there are grave facts behind them. I have sent him word
already that I am neither Gowrie nor Balmerino. He'll have read my
meaning. He will know what to expect. He will understand that I do not
mean to provide a holiday for my enemies, to be gloated over in
Westminster Hall by those who for years have fawned upon me for my
patronage. If he dreams that he can doom me to that and himself escape
the punishment of this dastardly betrayal, he's more of a fool than I've
ever deemed him. But he dare not do it, Sir Lieutenant. He dare not do
it.'

Sir George withdrew again more troubled than ever; and he was almost
relieved when there came to him a command to wait upon the King at
Greenwich.

Sir George found the King abed, a very scared and shivering monarch, who
fearfully desired to know if my Lord Somerset had decided to confess.
When he had heard the Lieutenant's tale, he mouthed and slobbered
fearfully, and finally gave way to tears, rocking himself like a
distracted fishwife upon his great bed.

'What's to be done with him, Sir George? What's to be done with him?'

Sir George, standing stiff and bewildered before the agitated King,
announced himself ready to do whatever his majesty commanded.

'Have ye made it clear to him that it is not my intention he shall
suffer any harm to life? That if he will confess this thing, of which
Coke says the proof against him is pregnant, he may be sure that my
mercy will defeat the sentence?'

'His answer to that, Sire, is that he is neither Balmerino nor Gowrie,
whatever that may mean. I was to say so, your majesty.'

The royal mouth fell open. The royal cheeks were ashen. The protruding
royal eyes rolled fearfully in their sockets. 'God's sake!' he gurgled.
'God's sake!' His majesty flung back the bedclothes, and slewed himself
round to face the Lieutenant more squarely, his thin naked legs
dangling above the floor. A look of craft came now to harden that loose
countenance. In Somerset's love for his lady the King thought he
perceived the move that would checkmate him.

'It only remains,' he said, 'to let him perceive the opposite, and
perceive it plainly. Tell him from me that if he dares to utter a single
word that may bring me into contempt, he will seal, not only his own
doom, but that of his countess as well. Tell him that I shall withdraw
my mercy from them both, and that whatever betide himself, his Countess
shall hang in accordance with the sentence passed upon her. Tell him
that! Away with you now.'

The King peremptorily waved a dismissal, which he checked before Sir
George could begin to obey it. 'No, no. Stay!' He considered a moment,
combing his beard and audibly sucking in his breath. 'One other thing,
Sir George. At his trial to-morrow let him be attended by two men with
cloaks ready to muffle him at the first word he may utter that does not
directly bear upon the charge against him. If he should mention me, or
if he should attempt to broach any matter connected with Loubel the
apothecary, let a cloak be thrown over his head. Let him be carried back
to the Tower at once, and the trial proceed in his absence.'

Sir George stood aghast. The Court would never permit such a violation
of its rights over the prisoner. But the King, reading his alarm in his
troubled countenance, reassured him.

'The Lord Chancellor shall have a line from me to prepare him in case it
should come to this. He will understand that reasons of State require
it, and none will interfere with you. Away with you now to the Tower,
and warn friend Somerset of what is prepared for him, so that he may
perceive the futility of attempting any such treachery as he may have in
mind.'

The flush of the May dawn was already in the sky when Sir George, back
in the Tower, conveyed his majesty's message to Lord Somerset. His
lordship set his teeth, and answered nothing. The King had checkmated
him. The threat to withhold mercy from himself should he dare to execute
his threat, he would have laughed to scorn. But the threat to withdraw
the promised clemency from the Countess was another matter. The Countess
had already confessed, and upon her confession had been sentenced. She,
therefore, lay utterly at the King's mercy, and not all the influence of
the Howard family could suffice to rescue her.

Somerset could not deliver her to the hangman; therefore, he must,
whatever it might cost him in bitterness, abandon the line of
retaliatory attack upon which he was depending for his defence. In spite
of all that he had boasted, his must be the part of Balmerino; to be
silent as to where he knew the real blame to lie.

Of this, however, he said nothing to the Lieutenant. Not yet would he
give Sir George the satisfaction of knowing him defeated in his
intentions. In other matters he did not yet accept defeat. Since he was
thus constrained to plead, he would make a stout fight for his life and
his honour. At least there should be no weak-kneed confession from him
of a crime which he had not committed.

Anon he rose and arrayed himself with all his old scrupulous care in a
rich suit of black from which the blue ribbon of his George detached
with startling brilliance, for deliberately he donned his George and
Garter as if to flaunt it in the faces of those nobles who on a
presumption of his guilt would already have had his arms removed from
the chapel at Windsor. His servant came to dress his hair and trim his
golden dagger beard, and at last, at a little before nine, having broken
his fast, he descended with the Lieutenant to the waiting barge.

His pride sustaining him, he made his appearance in Westminster Hall
with the same outward assurance and arrogant demeanour which he had worn
in the privy gallery at Whitehall in the old days when those two and
twenty peers, assembled there to judge and if possible convict him of
infamy, had been wont to bend their backs obsequiously before him.

On either side of him and a little behind him stood unobtrusively those
two yeomen of the guard, each with a cloak over his arm, detailed to
muffle him at a sign from the vigilant Lieutenant. He paid no heed to
them.

Summoned to plead, he pleaded 'Not guilty,' in a firm resonant voice.

The Lord High Steward, in charging him to speak boldly in his own
defence, gave him the last hint of what was desired of him by the King.

'Remember,' the old Chancellor admonished him, 'that God is the God of
truth. A fault defended is a double crime ... Take heed lest your
wilfulness cause the gates of mercy to be shut upon you.'

Sir Francis Bacon in his opening speech for the Crown promised to carry
the lantern of justice, which is evidence, before their eyes upright.
Nevertheless, all the evidence he had to offer was--as he well
knew--presumptive, and much of it depended upon the confessions of
rogues who had been hanged and were no longer there to be questioned by
Somerset. The Attorney-General made much of the quarrel between Somerset
and Overbury, arising out of the latter's opposition to the love between
Somerset and that unfortunate lady the Countess of Essex as she was
then. This was urged as the motive for the crime. He revealed the trap
in which Overbury was taken and committed to the Tower, and dwelt upon
the appointment of Sir Gervase Elwes to the Lieutenancy and the
attachment to him of Richard Weston, which it was now implied had been
done for his own nefarious ends by my Lord of Somerset. There was an
allusion to her ladyship's attempt to bribe Sir David Wood to kill
Overbury. Then certain obscure letters which had passed between Somerset
and Northampton were put forward and such meanings read into them as
suited the purposes of the prosecution.

When this formidable array of emptiness so far as his lordship was
concerned had been fully displayed, he was again summoned by Lord
Ellesmere to make a frank and full avowal of his guilt.

Curtly and proudly he dismissed that appeal. 'My lord, I came hither
with a resolution to defend myself.'

Thereafter they came to the powder which Somerset had sent Overbury some
four months before the latter's death.

'Four several juries,' announced Sergeant Montague, 'have found that
this powder was poison, and of this poison Sir Thomas Overbury died.'

It was a preposterous statement and flagrantly at variance with the
indictment, which had it that Sir Thomas had died of an injection of
corrosive sublimate.

From all the frivolous and uncorroborated lies with which that scoundrel
Franklin had sought to delude the Lord Chief Justice, certain imaginary
conversations with Lord Somerset were now cited to convict him.

The whole of the prosecution was taken up with the weaving of those
strands of evidence into a web in which to muffle him. It was a cobweb
which a single strong breath of truth should have blown to fragments.
That breath it was well within his power to supply. But he knew that at
the first attempt those two fellows standing just behind him would
hoodwink him and carry him away, and that all hope of mercy would be
denied his countess. So in his fight for life and honour he must keep
narrowly to the trumpery matters that had been urged, matters which,
taken severally, as they must be taken, were so vague and impalpable
that there was no seizing them.

It was evening before the prosecution closed, and already many of those
who had been mere spectators were in a fainting condition and withdrew
unable to endure more.

Lights were brought, and once again the thin voice of the Lord High
Steward summoned his lordship to set a term to the business by pleading
guilty.

'Your wife,' Ellesmere reminded him, 'yesterday confessed the fact, and
there is great hope of the King's mercy if you now mar not what is
made.'

It was, as he well perceived, at once a bribe and a threat. He was meant
to understand that, unless he also now confessed, mercy might be
withheld, not only from himself, but also from his wife. This was an
attempt to narrow down the bargain he had accepted, and was asking of
him a price altogether higher than that which had been first concerted,
a price which he could not pay.

'I am confident in my cause,' he answered, 'and I am here to defend it.'

To that defence he now addressed himself. He had come to trial without
foreknowledge of what evidence was to be preferred against him, and all
the assistance he had received had been in a supply of pen and ink and
paper so that he might prepare his defence in a measure as the
prosecution unfolded the case. Even a skilled counsel might have found
such a course beyond his powers. Somerset was without training in such
matters; he felt the more helpless because the chief witnesses against
him were already dead and could not be brought to be questioned by him
on their testimony; therefore he must rest his defence entirely upon
argument, and his wits were bewildered and exhausted by that day's long
ordeal.

As he stood there, leaning upon the rail, faltering and pondering where
he should begin, the thought of Overbury surged in his mind. If only
that ready-witted fellow were at hand to speak for him now! How he would
have torn that tissue of false and fabricated evidence into shreds and
flung them into the faces of those who urged it! He perceived the tragic
irony of such a thought at such a time and in such a cause. He put it
from him, and addressed himself to the task in hand.

He began with matters in which common knowledge must bear witness for
him. He vehemently denied that he had been a party to any plot, or,
indeed, that any plot had existed, to remove Sir William Wade from the
Lieutenancy of the Tower, so as to bring in Sir Gervase Elwes in his
stead. Their lordships well knew that Wade was removed from his charge
on the grounds of dishonesty towards the Lady Arabella.

He passed on to the evidence of Franklin, the only evidence that
definitely linked him with his countess in the practices she had
admitted against Overbury. He denied all knowledge of that perjured
knave. He had never seen him in his life, and he challenged them to
prove by independent testimony that any relations had ever existed
between himself and the man.

Lastly he came to the powder which he had sent Overbury and which it was
now alleged had caused Overbury's death. He admitted having sent it, but
he denied--as the facts themselves abundantly denied--that it was
poison. On the contrary, it was good physic, of which their lordships
held evidence. He called for the production of the letter in which
Overbury had thanked him for it and had acknowledged the gentle effect
it had produced in him.

But he called in vain, and being denied in this he perceived suddenly
how hopeless was all his striving. Already weary, he grew now confused
and disheartened by this clear perception that no defence could here
avail him. This court was determined upon his conviction, since that was
the pleasure of the King, to the end that all questions touching the
death of Sir Thomas Overbury should finally be set at rest.

He abandoned the futile struggle with a last plea to his peers that they
should not take circumstances for evidence and an oath before God that
he was neither guilty of nor privy to any wrong that Overbury suffered
in this kind.

Thereupon the Lieutenant withdrew him from the bar, and the peers
retired for a little while. On their return, the Lord High Steward
resumed his place under the scarlet canopy, the sergeant-crier called
each lord by name; each one answered in turn, and each one in turn
pronounced the prisoner guilty.

The Earl of Somerset was once more conducted into court to be asked what
he had to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him.

Calm and pale he stood in the flare of the torches, for by now darkness
had closed down upon the scene. His glance swept the ranks of the peers
who had pronounced him guilty. He looked at the stately Pembroke, who
had ever been his enemy, and who now held the office of Lord Chamberlain
from which Somerset had been deposed; he looked at the Earl of Worcester
who now held the Privy Seal of which Somerset had been deprived; onward
his glance moved over those nobles who in the past willingly or
unwillingly had courted him and hung upon his favour. It was a
bitterness, indeed, to have been left thus at their mercy, to be spurned
and trampled by them.

If in the shadows to which it had passed the spirit of Overbury was
troubled by vindictiveness towards the friend who had betrayed him, that
spirit should now be appeased by the magnitude of the punishment which
had descended upon his betrayer. Deprived of his offices of State, to be
stripped of the greater part of the vast possessions which by the King's
bounty he had held, branded with infamy, he was now asked what he could
say why sentence of death should not be pronounced against him. Why
should he say anything? What attraction could life still offer one
fallen as he had fallen?

Steady and firm rang his voice with the only answer which in the
circumstances he could make.

'I only desire a death according to my degree.'

But not even the axe was to dignify the sentence, which was that he
should be hanged by the neck until he was dead. Having pronounced it,
the Lord High Steward broke his staff and dissolved the court. It was
past ten o'clock. The trial had consumed twelve hours.

The Lieutenant reconducted him to the waiting barge, hemmed about by his
guard of pikemen, on whose corselets and steel caps the red glare of the
torches cast reflections that were like stains of blood.

Through the luminous May night the great barge slipped down the river on
the bosom of the ebbing tide, conveying him back to the Tower.

In that Tower, the sentence of death remitted by a king who did not
desire the blood of a discarded minion, he was to languish together with
his countess for five miserable years, to be ultimately banished with
her into rural remoteness from a court whose chief pride and ornament he
once had been. Reduced in circumstances, they were to live out their
embittered lives in the ruin which Overbury had foretold him would
follow upon his association with the House of Howard.

Perhaps he had some foreknowledge of this as the Lieutenant's barge
brought up under the black shadow of Traitor's Gate, trusting to the
King's word that just so much merciless mercy would be shown him and his
countess in return for a silence which would have been enforced had he
attempted to violate it.

And lower down the river at that same hour, a king, who shivered and
sweated by turn, in panic awaited news in a fever of anxiety that had
endured since morning. To every boat that since noon he had seen landing
at the bridge below the palace he had sent a messenger for tidings of
the trial, and when the messenger returned empty-handed, his majesty had
slobbered curses at him, growing increasingly fearful as the day wore
on, unable to find distraction, to eat, or even to sit still. Despite
all precautions the Earl of Somerset might yet have succeeded in
betraying him. He might have contrived to point out the connection
between Loubel and Mayerne, demanding to know why Loubel should be
permitted to go free in view of all the admitted facts and why Mayerne
had not been called for examination; demanding, indeed, that these
omissions should now be rectified before judgment was pronounced.

Such questions as these could be asked in a few words flung out before
the Lieutenant's men should have time to hoodwink the prisoner. And once
asked, those questions, although not answered by the court, would be
answered by the people thronging Westminster Hall who had heard them.
The hoodwinking and carrying away of the prisoner not only would not
prevent their being answered, but would guide public opinion in
answering them in such fashion that the royal dignity and honour would
be for all time besmirched.

In such fears as these did the King spend the hours of waiting in
Greenwich Palace, fears which mounted steadily as the day advanced,
until at last they were grown into convictions. That which he dreaded
must have come to pass. There could be no other explanation of the
protraction of the business. To the end Somerset had said that he was
neither Gowrie nor Balmerino. It was proof, thought the maudlin King,
that Robin had never truly loved him.

And then at last, late at night, when he was almost prostrate from panic
and exhausted from the lack of food, there came a dusty messenger who
had ridden hard to bring him news that the headstrong, passionate Robin
had suffered conviction without any word that should betray his king.

He licked his lips as he heard the news. The colour crept slowly back
into that normally florid face. He even contrived a smile, as he waved
the messenger away. Then he heaved himself up onto his rachitic legs,
and beckoned from amongst his surrounding gentlemen the handsome,
resplendent young Villiers. He flung an arm about the young minion's
neck.

'So that's ended, Steenie,' he mumbled. He fetched a sigh, and his pale,
bulging eyes grew watery. 'He shall know how clement I can be. For never
could it be said of me that I could put entirely from my heart any
creature I had truly loved.' Then, on an altered, brisker tone, and
pinching the lad's smooth cheek, 'For God's sake, let's to supper,' he
cried.


THE END




[End of The King's Minion, by Rafael Sabatini]