Fulke was in an evil temper, since it was common talk that Campion had had the best of the argument on the eighteenth.
“The other day,” he said, “when we had some hope of your conversion, we forbare you much, and suffered you to discourse; but now that we see you are an obstinate heretic, and seek to cover the light of the truth with multitude of words, we mean not to allow you such large discourses as we did.”
“You are very imperious to-day,” answered Campion serenely, “whatsoever the matter is. I am the Queen’s prisoner, and none of yours.”
“Not a whit imperious,” said Fulke angrily,—“though I will exact of you to keep the right order of disputation.”
Then the argument began. It soon became plain to Anthony that it was possible to take the Scripture in two senses, literally and metaphorically. The sacrament either was literally Christ’s body, or it was not. Who then was to decide? Father Campion said it meant the one; Dr. Fulke the other. Could it be possible that Christ should leave His people in doubt as to such a thing? Surely not, thought Anthony. Well, then, where is the arbiter? Father Campion says, The Church; Dr. Fulke says, The Scripture. But that is a circular argument, for the question to be decided is: What does the Scripture mean? for it may mean at least two things, at least so it would seem. Here then he found himself face to face with the claims of the Church of Rome to be that arbiter; and his heart began to grow sick with apprehension as he saw how that Church supplied exactly what was demanded by the circumstances of the case—that is, an infallible living guide as to the meaning of God’s Revelation. The simplicity of her claim appalled him.
He did not follow the argument closely, since it seemed to him but a secondary question now; though he heard one or two sentences. At one point Campion was explaining what the Church meant by substance. It was that which transcended the senses.
“Are you not Dr. Fulke?” he said. “And yet I see nothing but your colour and exterior form. The substance of Dr. Fulke cannot be seen.”
“I will not vouchsafe to reply upon this answer,” snarled Fulke, whose temper had not been improved by the debate—“too childish for a sophister!”
Then followed interminable syllogisms, of which Campion would not accept the premises; and no real progress was made. The Jesuit tried to explain the doctrine that the wicked may be said not to eat the Body in the Sacrament, because they receive not the virtue of It, though they receive the Thing; but Fulke would not hear him. The distinction was new to Anthony, with his puritan training, and he sat pondering it while the debate passed on.
The afternoon discussion, too, was to little purpose. More and more Anthony, and others with him, began to see that the heart of the matter was the authority of the Church; and that unless that was settled, all other debate was beside the point; and the importance of this was brought out for him more clearly than ever on the 27th of the month, when the fourth and last debate took place, and on the subject of the sufficiency of the Scriptures unto salvation.
Mr. Charke, who had now succeeded as disputant, began with extempore prayer, in which as usual the priest refused to join, praying and crossing himself apart.
Mr. Walker then opened the disputation with a pompous and insolent speech about “one Campion,” an “unnatural man to his country, degenerated from an Englishman, an apostate in religion, a fugitive from this realm, unloyal to his prince.” Campion sat with his eyes cast down, until the minister had done.
Then the discussion began. The priest pointed out that Protestants were not even decided as to what were Scriptures and what were not, since Luther rejected three epistles in the New Testament; therefore, he argued, the Church is necessary as a guide, first of all, to tell men what is Scripture. Walker evaded by saying he was not a Lutheran but a Christian; and then the talk turned on to apocryphal books. But it was not possible to evade long, and the Jesuit soon touched his opponent.
“To leave a door to traditions,” he said, “which the Holy Ghost may deliver to the true Church, is both manifest and seen: as in the Baptism of infants, the Holy Ghost proceeding from Father to Son, and such other things mentioned, which are delivered by tradition. Prove these directly by the Scripture if you can!”
Charke answered by the analogy of circumcision which infants received, and by quoting Christ’s words as to “sending” of the Comforter; and they were soon deep in detailed argument; but once more Anthony saw that it was all a question of the interpretation of Scripture; and, therefore, that it would seem that an authoritative interpreter was necessary—and where could such be found save in an infallible living Voice? And once more a question of Campion’s drove the point home.
“Was all Scripture written when the Apostles first taught?” And Charke dared not answer yes.
The afternoon’s debate concerned justification by faith, and this, more than ever, seemed to Anthony a secondary matter, now that he was realising what the claim of a living authority meant; and he sat back, only interested in watching the priest’s face, so controlled yet so transparent in its simplicity and steadfastness, as he listened to the ministers’ brutal taunts and insolence, and dealt his quiet skilful parries and ripostes to their incessant assaults. At last the Lieutenant struck the table with his hand, and intimated that the time was past, and after a long prayer by Mr. Walker, the prisoners were led back to their cells.
As Anthony rode back alone in the evening sunlight, he was as one who was seeing a vision. There was indeed a vision before him, that had been taking shape gradually, detail by detail, during these last months, and ousting the old one; and which now, terribly emphasised by Campion’s arguments and illuminated by the fire of his personality, towered up imperious, consistent, dominating—and across her brow her title, The Catholic Church. Far above all the melting cloudland of theory she moved, a stupendous fact; living, in contrast with the dead past to which her enemies cried in vain; eloquent when other systems were dumb; authoritative when they hesitated; steady when they reeled and fell. About her throne dwelt her children, from every race and age, secure in her protection, and wise with her knowledge, when other men faltered and questioned and doubted: and as Anthony looked up and saw her for the first time, he recognised her as the Mistress and Mother of his soul; and although the blinding clouds of argument and theory and self-distrust rushed down on him again and filled his eyes with dust, yet he knew he had seen her face in very truth, and that the memory of that vision could never again wholly leave him.
CHAPTER VI
SOME CONTRASTS
In the Lambeth household the autumn passed by uneventfully. The rigour of the Archbishop’s confinement had been mitigated, and he had been allowed now and again to visit his palace at Croydon; but his inactivity still continued as the sequestration was not removed; Elizabeth had refused to listen to the petition of Convocation in ’80 for his reinstatement. Anthony went down to the old palace once or twice with him; and was brought closer to him in many ways; and his affection and tenderness towards his master continually increased. Grindal was a pathetic figure at this time, with few friends, in poor health, out of favour with the Queen, who had disregarded his existence; and now his afflictions were rendered more heavy than ever by the blindness that was creeping over him. The Archbishop, too, in his loneliness and sorrow, was drawn closer to his young officer than ever before; and gradually got to rely upon him in many little ways. He would often walk with Anthony in the gardens at Lambeth, leaning upon his arm, talking to him of his beloved flowers and herbs which he was now almost too blind to see; telling him queer facts about the properties of plants; and even attempting to teach him a little irrelevant botany now and then.
They were walking up and down together, soon after Campion’s arrest, one August morning before prayers in a little walled garden on the river that Grindal had laid out with great care in earlier years.
“Ah,” said the old man, “I am too blind to see my flowers now, Mr. Norris; but I love them none the less; and I know their places. Now there,” he went on, pointing with his stick, “there I think grows my mastick or marum; perhaps I smell it, however. What is that flower like, Mr. Norris?”
Anthony looked at it, and described its little white flower and its leaves.
“That is it,” said the Archbishop, “I thought my memory served me. It is a kind of marjoram, and it has many virtues, against cramps, convulsions and venomous bites—so Galen tells us.” Then he went on to talk of the simple old plants that he loved best; of the two kinds of basil that he always had in his garden; and how good it was mixed in sack against the headache; and the male penny-royal, and how well it had served him once when he had great internal trouble.
“Mr. Gerrard was here a week or two ago, Mr. Norris, when you were down at Croydon for me. He is my Lord Burghley’s man; he oversees his gardens at Wimbledon House, and in the country. He was telling me of a rascal he had seen at a fair, who burned henbane and made folks with the toothache breathe in the fumes; and then feigned to draw a worm forth from the aching tooth; but it was no worm at all, but a lute string that he held ready in his hand. There are sad rascals abroad, Mr. Norris.”
The old man waxed eloquent when they came to the iris bed.
“Ah! Mr. Norris, the flowers-de-luce are over by now, I fear; but what wonderful creatures of God they are, with their great handsome heads and their cool flags. I love to hear a bed of them rustle all together and shake their spears and nod their banners like an army in array. And then they are not only for show. Apuleius says that they are good against the gout. I asked Mr. Gerrard whether my lord had tried them; but he said no, he would not.”
At the violet bed he was yet more emphatic.
“I think, Mr. Norris, I love these the best of all. They are lowly creatures; but how sweet! and like other lowly creatures exalted by their Maker to do great things as his handmaidens. The leaves are good against inflammations, and the flowers against ague and hoarseness as well. And then there is oil-of-violets, as you know; and violet-syrup and sugar-violet; then they are good for blisters; garlands of them were an ancient cure for the headache, as I think Dioscorides tells us. And they are the best of all cures for some children’s ailments.”
And so they walked up and down together; the Archbishop talking quietly on and on; and helping quite unknown to himself by his tender irrelevant old man’s talk to soothe the fever of unrest and anxiety that was beginning to torment Anthony so much now. His conversation, like the very flowers he loved to speak of, was “good against inflammations.”
Anthony came to him one morning, thinking to please him, and brought him a root that he had bought from a travelling pedlar just outside the gateway.
“This is a mandrake root, your Grace; I heard you speak of it the other day.”
The Archbishop took it, smiling, felt it carefully, peered at it a minute or two. “No, my son,” he said, “I fear you have met a knave. This is briony-root carved like a mandrake into the shape of a man’s legs. It is worthless, I fear; but I thank you for the kind thought, Mr. Norris,” and he gave the root back to him. “And the stories we hear of the mandrake, I fear, are fables, too. Some say that they only grow beneath gallows from that which falls there; that the male grows from the corruption of a man’s body; and the female from that of a woman’s; but that is surely a lie, and a foul one, too. And then folks say that to draw it up means death; and that the mandrake screams terribly as it comes up; and so they bid us tie a dog to it, and then drive the dog from it so as to draw it up so. I asked Mr. Baker, the chirurgeon in the household of my Lord Oxford, the other day, about that; and he said that such tales be but doltish dreams and old wives’ fables. But the true mandrake is a clean and wholesome plant. The true ointment Populeon should have the juice of the leaves in it; and the root boiled and strained causes drowsiness. It hath a predominate cold faculty, Galen saith; but its true home is not in England at all. It comes from Mount Garganus in Apulia.”
It was pathetic, Anthony thought sometimes, that this old prelate should be living so far from the movements of the time, owing to no fault of his own. During these months the great tragedy of Campion’s passion was proceeding a couple of miles away; but the Archbishop thought less of it than of the death of an old tree. The only thing from the outside world that seemed to ruffle him was the behaviour of the Puritans. Anthony was passing through “le velvet-room” one afternoon when he heard voices in the Presence Chamber beyond; and almost immediately heard the Archbishop, who had recognised his step, call his name. He went in and found him with a stranger in a dark sober dress.
“Take this gentleman to Mr. Scot,” he said, “and ask him to give him some refreshment; for that he must be gone directly.”
When Anthony had taken the gentleman to the steward, he returned to the Archbishop for any further instructions about him.
“No, Mr. Norris, my business is done with him. He comes from my lord of Norwich, and must be returning this evening. If you are not occupied, Mr. Norris, will you give me your arm into the garden?”
They went out by the vestry-door into the little cloisters, and skirting the end of the creek that ran up by Chichele’s water-tower began to pace up and down the part of the garden that looked over the river.
“My lord has sent to know if I know aught of one Robert Browne, with whom he is having trouble. This Mr. Browne has lately come from Cambridge, and so my lord thought I might know something of him; but I do not. This gentleman has been saying some wild and foolish things, I fear; and desires that every church should be free of all others; and should appoint its own minister, and rule its own affairs without interference, and that prophesyings should be without restraint. Now, you know, Mr. Norris, I have always tried to serve that party, and support them in their gospel religion; but this goes too far. Where were any governance at all, if all this were to come about? where were the Rule of Faith? the power of discipline? Nay, where were the unity for which our Saviour prayed? It liketh me not. Good Dr. Freake, as his messenger tells me, feels as I do about this; and desires to restrain Mr. Browne, but he is so hot he will not be restrained; and besides, he is some kin to my Lord Burghley, so I fear his mouth will be hard to stop.”
Anthony could not help thinking of Mr. Buxton’s prediction that the Church of England had so repudiated authority, that in turn her own would one day be repudiated.
“A Papist prisoner, your Grace,” he said, “said to me the other day that this would be sure to come: that the whole principle of Church authority had been destroyed in England; and that the Church of England would more and more be deserted by her children; for that there was no necessary centre of unity left, now that Peter was denied.”
“It is what a Papist is bound to say,” replied the Archbishop; “but it is easy to prophesy, when fulfilment may be far away. Indeed, I think we shall have trouble with some of these zealous men; and the Queen’s Grace was surely right in desiring some restraint to be put upon the Exercises. But it is mere angry raving to say that the Church of England will lose the allegiance of her children.”
Anthony could not feel convinced that events bore out the Archbishop’s assertion. Everywhere the Puritans were becoming more outrageously disloyal. There were everywhere signs of disaffection and revolt against the authorities of the Establishment, even on the part of the most sincere and earnest men, many of whom were looking forward to the day when the last rags of popery should be cast away, and formal Presbyterianism inaugurated in the Church of England. Episcopal Ordination was more and more being regarded as a merely civil requirement, but conveying no ministerial commission; recognition by the congregation with the laying on of the hands of the presbyterate was the only ordination they allowed as apostolic.
Anthony said a word to the Archbishop about this.
“You must not be too strict,” said the old man. “Both views can be supported by the Scriptures; and although the Church of England at present recognises only Episcopal Ordination within her own borders, she does not dare to deny, as the Papists fondly do, that other rites may not be as efficacious as her own. That, surely, Master Norris, is in accordance with the mind of Christ that hath the spirit of liberty.”
Much as Anthony loved the old man and his gentle charity, this doctrinal position as stated by the chief pastor of the Church of England scarcely served to establish his troubled allegiance.
During these autumn months, too, both between and after the disputations in the Tower, the image of Campion had been much in his thoughts. Everywhere, except among the irreconcilables, the Jesuit was being well spoken of: his eloquence, his humour, and his apparent sincerity were being greatly commented on in London and elsewhere. Anthony, as has been seen, was being deeply affected on both sides of his nature; the shrewd wit of the other was in conflict with his own intellectual convictions, and this magnetic personality was laying siege to his heart. And now the last scene of the tragedy, more affecting than all, was close at hand.
Anthony was present first at the trial in Westminster Hall, which took place during November, and was more than ever moved by what he saw and heard there. The priest, as even his opponents confessed, had by now “won a marvellously good report, to be such a man as his like was not to be found, either for life, learning, or any other quality which might beautify a man.” And now here he stood at the bar, paler than ever, so numbed with racking that he could not lift his hand to plead—that supple musician’s hand of his, once so skilful on the lute—so that Mr. Sherwin had to lift it for him out of the furred cuff in which he had wrapped it, kissing it tenderly as he did so, in reverence for its sufferings; and he saw, too, the sleek face of Eliot, in his red yeoman’s coat, as he stood chatting at the back, like another Barabbas whom the people preferred to the servant of the Crucified. And, above all, he heard Campion’s stirring defence, spoken in that same resonant sweet voice, though it broke now and then through weakness, in spite of the unconquerable purpose and cheerfulness that showed in his great brown eyes, and round his delicate humorous mouth. It was indeed an astonishing combination of sincerity and eloquence, and even humour, that was brought to bear on the jury, and all in vain, during those days.
“If you want to dispute as though you were in the schools,” cried one of the court, when he found himself out of his depth, “you are only proving yourself a fool.”
“I pray God,” said Campion, while his eyes twinkled, “I pray God make us both sages.” And, in spite of the tragedy of the day, a little hum of laughter ran round the audience.
“If a sheep were stolen,” he argued again, in answer to the presupposition that since some Catholics were traitors, therefore these were—“and a whole family called in question for the same, were it good manner of proceeding for the accusers to say ‘Your great grandfathers and fathers and sisters and kinsfolk all loved mutton;ergo, you have stolen the sheep’?”
Again, in answer to the charge that he and his companions had conspired abroad, he said,
“As for the accusation that we plotted treason at Rheims, reflect, my lords, how just this charge is! For see! First we never met there at all; then, many of us have never been at Rheims at all; finally, we were never in our lives all together, except at this hour and in prison.”
Anthony heard, too, Campion expose the attempt that was made to shift the charge from religion to treason.
“There was offer made to us,” he cried indignantly, “that if we would come to the church to hear sermons and the word preached, we should be set at large and at liberty; so Pascall and Nicholls”—(two apostates) “otherwise as culpable in all offences as we, upon coming to church were received to grace and had their pardon granted; whereas, if they had been so happy as to have persevered to the end, they had been partakers of our calamities. So that our religion was cause of our imprisonment, andex consequenti, of our condemnation.”
The Queen’s Counsel tried to make out that certain secrets that Campion, in an intercepted letter, had sworn not to reveal, must be treasonable or he would not so greatly fear their publication. To this the priest made a stately defence of his office, and declaration of his staunchness. He showed how by his calling as a priest he was bound to secrecy in matters heard in confession, and that these secret matters were of this nature.
“These were the hidden matters,” he said, “these were the secrets, to the revealing whereof I cannot nor will not be brought, come rack, come rope!”
And again, when Sergeant Anderson interpreted a phrase of Campion’s referring to the great day to which he looked forward, as meaning the day of a foreign papal invasion, the prisoner cried in a loud voice:
“O Judas, Judas! No other day was in my mind, I protest, than that wherein it should please God to make a restitution of faith and religion. Whereupon, as in every pulpit every Protestant doth, I pronounced a great day, not wherein any temporal potentate should minister, but wherein the terrible Judge should reveal all men’s consciences, and try every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of change, this is the great day which I threatened; comfortable to the well-behaving, and terrible to all heretics. Any other day but this, God knows I meant not.”
Then, after the other prisoners had pleaded, Campion delivered a final defence to the jury, with a solemnity that seemed to belong to a judge rather than a criminal. The babble of tongues that had continued most of the day was hushed to a profound silence in court as he stood and spoke, for the sincerity and simplicity of the priest were evident to all, and combined with his eloquence and his strange attractive personality, dominated all but those whose minds were already made up before entering the court.
“What charge this day you sustain,” began the priest, in a steady low voice, with his searching eyes bent on the faces before him, “and what account you are to render at the dreadful Day of Judgment, whereof I could wish this also were a mirror, I trust there is not one of you but knoweth. I doubt not but in like manner you forecast how dear the innocent is to God, and at what price He holdeth man’s blood. Here we are accused and impleaded to the death,”—he began to raise his voice a little—“here you do receive our lives into your custody; here must be your device, either to restore them or condemn them. We have no whither to appeal but to your consciences; we have no friends to make there but your heeds and discretions.” Then he touched briefly on the evidence, showing how faulty and circumstantial it was, and urged them to remember that a man’s life by the very constitution of the realm must not be sacrificed to mere probabilities or presumptions; then he showed the untrustworthiness of his accusers, how one had confessed himself a murderer, and how another was an atheist. Then he ended with a word or two of appeal.
“God give you grace,” he cried, “to weigh our causes aright, and have respect to your own consciences; and so I will keep the jury no longer. I commit the rest to God, and our convictions to your good discretions.”
When the jury had retired, and all the judges but one had left the bench until the jury should return, Anthony sat back in his place, his heart beating and his eyes looking restlessly now on the prisoners, now on the door where the jury had gone out, and now on Judge Ayloff, whom he knew a little, and who sat only a few feet away from him on one side. He could hear the lawyers sitting below the judge talking among themselves; and presently one of them leaned over to him.
“Good-day, Mr. Norris,” he said, “you have come to see an acquittal, I doubt not. No man can be in two minds after what we have heard; at least concerning Mr. Campion. We all think so, here, at any rate.”
The lawyer was going on to say a word or two more as to the priest’s eloquence, when there was a sharp exclamation from the judge. Anthony looked up and saw Judge Ayloff staring at his hand, turning it over while he held his glove in the other; and Anthony saw to his surprise that the fingers were all blood-stained. One or two gentlemen near him turned and looked, too, as the judge, still staring and growing a little pale, wiped the blood quickly away with the glove; but the fingers grew crimson again immediately.
“’S’Body!” said Ayloff, half to himself; “’tis strange, there is no wound.” A moment later, looking up, he saw many of his neighbours glancing curiously at his hand and his pale face, and hastily thrust on his glove again; and immediately after the jury returned, and the judges filed in to take their places. Anthony’s attention was drawn off again, and the buzz of talk in the court was followed again by a deep silence.
The verdict ofGuiltywas uttered, as had been pre-arranged, and the Queen’s Counsel demanded sentence.
“Campion and the rest,” said Chief Justice Wray, “What can you say why you should not die?”
Then Campion, still steady and resolute, made his last useless appeal.
“It was not our death that ever we feared. But we knew that we were not lords of our own lives, and therefore for want of answer would not be guilty of our own deaths. The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our religion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned; but otherwise are and have been true subjects as ever the Queen had. In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors,” and as he said this, his voice began to rise, and he glanced steadily and mournfully round at the staring faces about him, “all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings—all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.” Then, as he went on, he flung out his wrenched hands, and his voice rang with indignant defiance. “For what have we taught,” he cried, “however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these old lights—not of England only, but of the world—by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us.” Then, with a superb gesture, he sent his voice pealing through the hall: “God lives, posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now about to sentence us to death.”
There was a burst of murmurous applause as he ended, which stilled immediately, as the Chief Justice began to deliver sentence. But when the horrible details of his execution had been enumerated, and the formula had ended, it was the prisoner’s turn to applaud:—
“Te Deum laudamus!” cried Campion; “Te Dominum confitemur.”
“Haec est dies,” shouted Sherwin, “quam fecit Dominus; exultemus et laetemur in illâ”: and so with the thanksgiving and joy of the condemned criminals, the mock-trial ended.
When Anthony rode down silently and alone in the rain that December morning a few days later, to see the end, he found a vast silent crowd assembled on Tower Hill and round the gateway, where the four horses were waiting, each pair harnessed to a hurdle laid flat on the ground. He would not go in, for he could scarcely trust himself to speak, so great was his horror of the crime that was to be committed; so he backed his horse against the wall, and waited over an hour in silence, scarcely hearing the murmurs of impatience that rolled round the great crowd from time to time, absorbed in his own thoughts. Here was the climax of these days of misery and self-questioning that had passed since the trial in Westminster Hall. It was no use, he argued to himself, to pretend otherwise. These three men of God were to die for their religion—and a religion too which was gradually detaching itself to his view from the mists and clouds that hid it, as the one great reality and truth of God’s Revelation to man. He had come, he knew, to see not an execution but a martyrdom.
There was a trampling from within, the bolts creaked, and the gate rolled back; a company of halberdiers emerged, and in their midst the three priests in laymen’s dress; behind followed a few men on horseback, with a little company of ministers, bible in hand; and then a rabble of officers and pursuivants. Anthony edged his horse in among the others, as the crowd fell back, and took up his place in the second rank of riders between a gentleman of his acquaintance who made room for him on the one side, and Sir Francis Knowles on the other, and behind the Tower officials.
Then, once more he heard that ringing bass voice whose first sound silenced the murmurs of the surging excited crowd.
“God save you all, gentlemen! God bless you and make you all good Catholics.”
Then, as the priest turned to kneel towards the east, he saw his face paler than ever now, after his long fast in preparation for death. The rain was still falling as Campion in his frieze gown knelt in the mud. There was silence as he prayed, and as he ended aloud by commending his soul to God.
“In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.”
The three were secured to the hurdles, Briant and Sherwin on the one, Campion on the other, all lying on their backs, with their feet towards the horse’s heels. The word to start was given by Sir Owen Hopton who rode with Charke, the preacher of Gray’s Inn, in the front rank; the lashed horses plunged forward, with the jolting hurdles spattering mud behind them; and the dismal pageant began to move forward through the crowd on that way of sorrows. There was a ceaseless roar and babble of voices as they went. Charke, in his minister’s dress, able now to declaim without fear of reply, was hardly silent for a moment from mocking and rebuking the prisoners, and making pompous speeches to the people.
“See here,” he cried, “these rogueing popish priests, laid by the heels—aye, by the heels—at last; in spite of their tricks and turns. See this fellow in his frieze gown, dead to the world as he brags; and know how he skulked and hid in his disguises till her Majesty’s servants plucked him forth! We will disguise him, we will disguise him, ere we have done with him, that his own mother should not know him. Ha, now! Campion, do you hear me?”
And so the harsh voice rang out over the crowd that tramped alongside, and up to the faces that filled every window; while the ministers below kept up a ceaseless murmur of adjuration and entreaty and threatening, with a turning of leaves of their bibles, and bursts of prayer, over the three heads that jolted and rocked at their feet over the cobblestones and through the mud. The friends of the prisoners walked as near to them as they dared, and their lips moved continually in prayer.
Every now and then as Anthony craned his head, he could see Campion’s face, with closed eyes and moving lips that smiled again and again, all spattered and dripping with filth; and once he saw a gentleman walking beside him fearlessly stoop down and wipe the priest’s face with a handkerchief. Presently they had passed up Cheapside and reached Newgate; in a niche in the archway itself stood a figure of the Mother of God looking compassionately down; and as Campion’s hurdle passed beneath it, her servant wrenched himself a few inches up in his bonds and bowed to his glorious Queen; and then laid himself down quietly again, as a chorus of lament rose from the ministers over his superstition and obstinate idolatry that seemed as if it would last even to death; and Charke too, who had become somewhat more silent, broke out again into revilings.
The crowd at Tyburn was vast beyond all reckoning. Outside the gate it stretched on every side, under the elms, a few were even in the branches, along the sides of the stream; everywhere was a sea of heads, out of which, on a little eminence like another Calvary, rose up the tall posts of the three-cornered gallows, on which the martyrs were to suffer. As the hurdles came slowly under the gate, the sun broke out for the first time; and as the horses that drew the hurdles came round towards the carts that stood near the gallows and the platform on which the quartering block stood, a murmur began that ran through the crowd from those nearest the martyrs.—“But they are laughing, they are laughing!”
The crowd gave a surge to and fro as the horses drew up, and Anthony reined his own beast back among the people, so that he was just opposite the beam on which the three new ropes were already hanging, and beneath which was standing a cart with the back taken out. In the cart waited a dreadful figure in a tight-fitting dress, sinewy arms bare to the shoulder, and a butcher’s knife at his leather girdle. A little distance away stood the hateful cauldron, bubbling fiercely, with black smoke pouring from under it: the platform with the block and quartering-axe stood beneath the gallows; and round this now stood the officers, with Norton the rack-master, and Sir Owen Hopton and the rest, and the three priests, with the soldiers forming a circle to keep the crowd back.
The hangman stooped as Anthony looked, and a moment later Campion stood beside him on the cart, pale, mud-splashed, but with the same serene smile; his great brown eyes shone as they looked out over the wide heaving sea of heads, from which a deep heart-shaking murmur rose as the famous priest appeared. Anthony could see every detail of what went on; the hangman took the noose that hung from above, and slipped it over the prisoner’s head, and drew it close round his neck; and then himself slipped down from the cart, and stood with the others, still well above the heads of the crowd, but leaving the priest standing higher yet on the cart, silhouetted, rope and all, framed in the posts and cross-beam, from which two more ropes hung dangling against the driving clouds and blue sky over London city.
Campion waited perfectly motionless for the murmur of innumerable voices to die down; and Anthony, fascinated and afraid beneath that overpowering serenity, watched him turn his head slowly from side to side with a “majestical countenance,” as his enemies confessed, as if he were on the point of speaking. Silence seemed to radiate out from him, spreading like a ripple, outwards, until the furthest outskirts of that huge crowd was motionless and quiet; and then without apparent effort, his voice began to peal out.
“‘Spectaculum facti sumus Deo, angelis et hominibus.’ These are the words of Saint Paul, Englished thus, ‘We are made a spectacle or sight unto God, unto His angels, and unto men’;—verified this day in me, who am here a spectacle unto my Lord God, a spectacle unto His angels, and unto you men, satisfying myself to die as becometh a true Christian and Catholic man.”
He was interrupted by cries from the gentlemen beneath, and turned a little, looking down to see what they wished.
“You are not here to preach to the people,” said Sir Francis Knowles, angrily, “but to confess yourself a traitor.”
Campion smiled and shook his head.
“No, no,” he said: and then looking up and raising his voice,—“as to the treasons which have been laid to my charge, and for which I am come here to suffer, I desire you all to bear witness with me, that I am thereof altogether innocent.”
There was a chorus of anger from the gentlemen, and one of them called up something that Anthony could not hear. Campion raised his eyebrows.
“Well, my lord,” he cried aloud, and his voice instantly silenced again the noisy buzz of talk, “I am a Catholic man and a priest: in that faith have I lived, and in that faith do I intend to die. If you esteem my religion treason, then am I guilty; as for other treason, I never committed any, God is my judge. But you have now what you desire. I beseech you to have patience, and suffer me to speak a word or two for discharge of my conscience.”
There was a furious burst of refusals from the officers.
“Well,” said Campion, at last, looking straight out over the crowd, “it seems I may not speak; but this only will I say; that I am wholly innocent of all treason and conspiracy, as God is my judge; and I beseech you to credit me, for it is my last answer upon my death and soul. As for the jury I do not blame them, for they were ignorant men and easily deceived. I forgive all who have compassed my death or wronged me in any whit, as I hope to be forgiven; and I ask the forgiveness of all those whose names I spoke upon the rack.”
Then he said a word or two more of explanation, such as he had said during his trial, for the sake of those Catholics whom this a concession of his had scandalised, telling them that he had had the promise of the Council that no harm should come to those whose names he revealed; and then was silent again, closing his eyes; and Anthony, as he watched him, saw his lips moving once more in prayer.
Then a harsh loud voice from behind the cart began to proclaim that the Queen punished no man for religion but only for treason. A fierce murmur of disagreement and protest began to rise from the crowd; and Anthony turning saw the faces of many near him frowning and pursing their lips, and there was a shout or two of denial here and there. The harsh voice ceased, and another began:
“Now, Mr. Campion,” it cried, “tell us, What of the Pope? Do you renounce him?”
Campion opened his eyes and looked round.
“I am a Catholic,” he said simply; and closed his eyes again for prayer, as the voice cried brutally:
“In your Catholicism all treason is contained.”
Again a murmur from the crowd.
Then a new voice from the black group of ministers called out:
“Mr. Campion, Mr. Campion, leave that popish stuff, and say, ‘Christ have mercy on me.’”
Again the priest opened his eyes.
“You and I are not one in religion, sir, wherefore I pray you content yourself. I bar none of prayer, but I only desire them of the household of faith to pray with me; and in mine agony to say one creed.”
Again he closed his eyes.
“Pater noster qui es in cælis.”...
“Pray in English, pray in English!” shouted a voice from the minister’s group.
Once more the priest opened his eyes; and, in spite of the badgering, his eyes shone with humour and his mouth broke into smiles, so that a great sob of pity and love broke from Anthony.
“I will pray to God in a language that both He and I well understand.”
“Ask her Grace’s forgiveness, Mr. Campion, and pray for her, if you be her true subject.”
“Wherein have I offended her? In this I am innocent. This is my last speech; in this give me credit—I have and do pray for her.”
“Aha! but which queen?—for Elizabeth?”
“Ay, for Elizabeth, your queen and my queen, unto whom I wish a long quiet reign with all prosperity.”
There was the crack of a whip, the scuffle of a horse’s feet, a rippling movement over the crowd, and a great murmured roar, like the roar of the waves on a pebbly beach, as the horse’s head began to move forward; and the priest’s figure to sway and stagger on the jolting cart. Anthony shut his eyes, and the murmur and cries of the crowd grew louder and louder. Once more the deep sweet voice rang out, loud and penetrating:
“I die a true Catholic....”
Anthony kept his eyes closed, and his head bent, as great sobs began to break up out of his heart....
Ah! he was in his agony now! that sudden cry and silence from the crowd showed it. What was it he had asked? one creed?—
“I believe in God the Father Almighty.” ...
The soft heavy murmur of the crowd rose and fell. Catholics were praying all round him, reckless with love and pity:
“Jesu, Jesu, save him! Be to him a Jesus!”...
“Mary pray! Mary pray!”...
“Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem.”...
“Passus sub Pontio Pilato.”...
“Crucified dead and buried.”...
“The forgiveness of sins.”...
“And the Life Everlasting.”...
Anthony dropped his face forward on to his horse’s mane.
CHAPTER VII
A MESSAGE FROM THE CITY
Sir Francis Walsingham sat in his private room a month after Father Campion’s death.
He had settled down again now to his work which had been so grievously interrupted by his mission to France in connection with a new treaty between that country and England in the previous year. The secret detective service that he had inaugurated in England chiefly for the protection of the Queen’s person was a vast and complicated business, and the superintendence of this, in addition to the other affairs of his office, made him an exceedingly busy man. England was honeycombed with mines and countermines both in the political and the religious world, and it needed all this man’s brilliant and trained faculties to keep abreast with them. His spies and agents were everywhere; and not only in England: they circled round Mary of Scotland like flies round a wounded creature, seeking to settle and penetrate wherever an opening showed itself. These Scottish troubles would have been enough for any ordinary man; but Walsingham was indefatigable, and his agents were in every prison, lurking round corridors in private houses, found alike in thieves’ kitchens and at gentlemen’s tables.
Just at present Walsingham was anxious to give all the attention he could to Scottish affairs; and on this wet dreary Thursday morning in January as he sat before his bureau, he was meditating how to deal with an affair that had come to him from the heart of London, and how if possible to shift the conduct of it on to other shoulders.
He sat and drummed his fingers on the desk, and stared meditatively at the pigeon-holes before him. His was an interesting face, with large, melancholy, and almost fanatical eyes, and a poet’s mouth and forehead; but it was probably exactly his imaginative faculties that enabled him to picture public affairs from the points of view of the very various persons concerned in them; and thereby to cope with the complications arising out of these conflicting interests.
He stroked his pointed beard once or twice, and then struck a hand-bell at his side; and a servant entered.
“If Mr. Lackington is below,” he said, “show him here immediately,” and the servant went out.
Lackington, sometime servant to Sir Nicholas Maxwell, had entered Sir Francis’ service instead, at the same time that he had exchanged the Catholic for the Protestant religion; and he was now one of his most trusted agents. But he had been in so many matters connected with recusancy, that a large number of the papists in London were beginning to know him by sight; and the affairs were becoming more and more scarce in which he could be employed among Catholics with any hope of success. It was his custom to call morning by morning at Sir Francis’ office and receive his instructions; and just now he had returned from business in the country. Presently he entered, closing the door behind him, and bowed profoundly to his master.
“I have a matter on hand, Lackington,” said Sir Francis, without looking at him, and without any salutation beyond a glance and a nod as he entered,—“a matter which I have not leisure to look into, as it is not, I think, anything more than mere religion; but which might, I think, repay you for your trouble, if you can manage it in any way. But it is a troublesome business. These are the facts.
“No. 3 Newman’s Court, in the City, has been a suspected house for some while. I have had it watched, and there is no doubt that the papists use it. I thought at first that the Scots were mixed up with it; but that is not so. Yesterday, a boy of twelve years old, left the house in the afternoon, and was followed to a number of houses, of which I will give you the list presently; and was finally arrested in Paul’s Churchyard and brought here. I frightened him with talk of the rack; and I think I have the truth out of him now; I have tested him in the usual ways—and all that I can find is that the house is used for mass now and then; and that he was going to the papists’ houses yesterday to bid them come for next Sunday morning. But he was stopped too soon: he had not yet told the priest to come. Now unless the priest is told to-night by one whom he trusts, there will be no mass on Sunday, and the nest of papists will escape us. It is of no use to send the boy; as he will betray all by his behaviour, even if we frighten him into saying what we wish to the priest. I suppose it is of no use your going to the priest and feigning to be a Catholic messenger; and I cannot at this moment see what is to be done. If there were anything beyond mere religion in this, I would spare no pains to hunt them out; but it is not worth my while. Yet there is the reward; and if you think that you can do anything, you can have it for your pains. I can spare you till Monday, and of course you shall have what men you will to surround the house and take them at mass, if you can but get the priest there.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Lackington deferentially. “Have I your honour’s leave to see the boy in your presence?”
Walsingham struck the bell again.
“Bring the lad that is locked in the steward’s parlour,” he said, when the servant appeared.—“Sit down, Lackington, and examine him when he comes.”
And Sir Francis took down some papers from a pigeon-hole, sorted out one or two, and saying, “Here are his statements,” handed them to the agent; who began to glance through them at once. Walsingham then turned to his table again and began to go on with his letters.
In a moment or two the door opened, and a little lad of twelve years old, came in, followed by the servant.
“That will do,” said Walsingham, without looking up; “You can leave him here,” and the servant went out. The boy stood back against the wall by the door, his face was white and his eyes full of horror, and he looked in a dazed way at the two men.
“What is your name, boy?” began Lackington in a sharp, judicial tone.
“John Belton,” said the lad in a tremulous voice.
“And you are a little papist?” asked the agent.
“No sir; a Protestant.”
“Then how is it that you go on errands for papists?”
“I am a servant, sir,” said the boy imploringly.
Lackington turned the papers over for a moment or two.
“Now you know,” he began again in a threatening voice, “that this gentleman has power to put you on the rack; you know what that is?”
The boy nodded in mute white-faced terror.
“Well, now, he will hear all you say; and will know whether you say the truth or not. Now tell me if you still hold to what you said yesterday.”
And then Lackington with the aid of the papers ran quickly over the story that Sir Francis had related. “Now do you mean to tell me, John Belton,” he added, “that you, a Protestant, and a lad of twelve, are employed on this work by papists, to gather them for mass?”
The boy looked at him with the same earnest horror.
“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” he said, and there was a piteous sob in his voice. “Indeed it is all true: but I do not often go on these messages for my master. Mr. Roger generally goes: but he is sick.”
“Oho!” said Lackington, “you did not say that yesterday.”
The boy was terrified.
“No, sir,” he cried out miserably, “the gentleman did not ask me.”
“Well, who is Mr. Roger? What is he like?”
“He is my master’s servant, sir; and he wears a patch over his eye; and stutters a little in his speech.”
These kinds of details were plainly beyond a frightened lad’s power of invention, and Lackington was more satisfied.
“And what was the message that you were to give to the folk and the priest?”
“Please, sir, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’”
This was such a queer answer that Lackington gave an incredulous exclamation.
“It is probably true,” said Sir Francis, without looking up from his letters; “I have come across the same kind of cypher, at least once before.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the agent. “And now, my boy, tell me this. How did you know what it meant?”
“Please, sir,” said the lad, a little encouraged by the kinder tone, “I have noticed that twice before when Mr. Roger could not go, and I was sent with the same message, all the folks and the priest came on the next Sunday; and I think that it means that all is safe, and that they can come.”
“You are a sharp lad,” said the spy approvingly. “I am satisfied with you.”
“Then, sir, may I go home?” asked the boy with hopeful entreaty in his voice.
“Nay, nay,” said the other, “I have not done with you yet. Answer me some more questions. Why did you not go to the priest first?”
“Because I was bidden to go to him last,” said the boy. “If I had been to all the other houses by five o’clock last night, then I was to meet the priest at Papists’ Corner in Paul’s Church. But if I had not done them—as I had not,—then I was to see the priest to-night at the same place.”
Lackington mused a moment.
“What is the priest’s name?” he asked.
“Please, sir, Mr. Arthur Oldham.”
The agent gave a sudden start and a keen glance at the boy, and then smiled to himself; then he meditated, and bit his nails once or twice.
“And when was Mr. Roger taken ill?”
“He slipped down at the door of his lodging and hurt his foot, at dinner-time yesterday; and he could not walk.”
“His lodging? Then he does not sleep in the house?”
“No sir; he sleeps in Stafford Alley, round the corner.”
“And where do you live?”
“Please, sir, I go home to my mother nearly every night; but not always.”
“And where does your mother live?”
“Please, sir, at 4 Bell’s Lane.”
Lackington remained deep in thought, and looked at the boy steadily for a minute or two.
“Now, sir; may I go?” he asked eagerly.
Lackington paid no attention, and he repeated his question. The agent still did not seem to hear him, but turned to Sir Francis, who was still at his letters.
“That is all, sir, for the present,” he said. “May the boy be kept here till Monday?”
The lad broke out into wailing; but Lackington turned on him a face so savage that his whimpers died away into horror-stricken silence.
“As you will,” said Sir Francis, pausing for a moment in his writing, and striking the bell again; and, on the servant’s appearance, gave orders that John Belton should be taken again to the steward’s parlour until further directions were received. The boy went sobbing out and down the passage again under the servant’s charge, and the door closed.
“And the mother?” asked Walsingham abruptly, pausing with pen upraised.
“With your permission, sir, I will tell her that her boy is in trouble, and that if his master sends to inquire for him, she is to say he is sick upstairs.”
“And you will report to me on Monday?”
“Yes, sir; by then I shall hope to have taken the crew.”
Sir Francis nodded his head sharply, and the pen began to fly over the paper again; as Lackington slipped out.
Anthony Norris was passing through the court of Lambeth House in the afternoon of the same day, when the porter came to him and said there was a child waiting in the Lodge with a note for him; and would Master Norris kindly come to see her. He found a little girl on the bench by the gate, who stood up and curtseyed as the grand gentleman came striding in; and handed him a note which he opened at once and read.
“For the love of God,” the note ran, “come and aid one who can be of service to a friend: follow the little maid Master Norris, and she will bring you to me. If you have any friends atGreat Keynes, for the love you bear to them, come quickly.”
Anthony turned the note over; it was unsigned, and undated. On his inquiry further from the little girl, she said she knew nothing about the writer; but that a gentleman had given her the note and told her to bring it to Master Anthony Norris at Lambeth House; and that she was to take him to a house that she knew in the city; she did not know the name of the house, she said.
It was all very strange, thought Anthony, but evidently here was some one who knew about him; the reference to Great Keynes made him think uneasily of Isabel and wonder whether any harm had happened to her, or whether any danger threatened. He stood musing with the note between his fingers, and then told the child to go straight down to Paul’s Cross and await him there, and he would follow immediately. The child ran off, and Anthony went round to the stables to get his horse. He rode straight down to the city and put up his horse in the Bishop’s stables, and then went round with his riding-whip in his hand to Paul’s Cross.
It was a dull miserable afternoon, beginning to close in with a fine rain falling, and very few people were about; and he found the child crouched up against the pulpit in an attempt to keep dry.
“Come,” he said kindly, “I am ready; show me the way.”
The child led him along by the Cathedral through the churchyard, and then by winding passages, where Anthony kept a good look-out at the corners; for a stab in the back was no uncommon thing for a well-dressed gentleman off his guard. The houses overhead leaned so nearly together that the darkening sky disappeared altogether now and then; at one spot Anthony caught a glimpse high up of Bow Church spire; and after a corner or two the child stopped before a doorway in a little flagged court.
“It is here,” she said; and before Anthony could stop her she had slipped away and disappeared through a passage. He looked at the house. It was a tumble-down place; the door was heavily studded with nails, and gave a most respectable air to the house: the leaded windows were just over his head, and tightly closed. There was an air of mute discretion and silence about the place that roused a vague discomfort in Anthony’s mind; he slipped his right hand into his belt and satisfied himself that the hilt of his knife was within reach. Overhead the hanging windows and eaves bulged out on all sides; but there was no one to be seen; it seemed a place that had slipped into a backwater of the humming stream of the city. The fine rain still falling added to the dismal aspect of the little court. He looked round once more; and then rapped sharply at the door to which the child had pointed.
There was silence for at least a minute; then as he was about to knock again there was a faint sound overhead, and he looked up in time to see a face swiftly withdrawn from one of the windows. Evidently an occupant of the house had been examining the visitor. Then shuffling footsteps came along a passage within, and a light shone under the door. There was a noise of bolts being withdrawn, and the rattle of a chain; and then the handle turned and the door opened slowly inwards, and an old woman stood there holding an oil lamp over her head. This was not very formidable at any rate.
“I have been bidden to come here,” he said, “by a letter delivered to me an hour ago.”
“Ah,” said the old woman, and looked at him peeringly, “then you are for Mr. Roger?”
“I daresay,” said Anthony, a little sharply. He was not accustomed to be treated like this. The old woman still looked at him suspiciously; and then, as Anthony made a movement of impatience, she stepped back.
“Come in, sir,” she said.
He stepped in, and she closed and fastened the door again behind him; and then, holding the oil-lamp high over her head, she advanced in her slippers towards the staircase, and Anthony followed. On the stairs she turned once to see if he was coming, and beckoned him on with a movement of her head. Anthony looked about him as he went up: there was nothing remarkable or suspicious about the house in any way. It was cleaner than he had been led to expect by its outside aspect; wainscoted to the ceiling with oak; and the stairs were strong and well made. It was plainly a very tolerably respectable place; and Anthony began to think from its appearance that he had been admitted at the back door of some well-to-do house off Cheapside. The banisters were carved with some distinction; and there were the rudimentary elements of linen-pattern design on the panels that lined the opposite walls up to the height of the banisters. The woman went up and up, slowly, panting a little; at each landing she turned and glanced back to see that her companion was following: all the doors that they passed were discreetly shut; and the house was perfectly dark except for the flickering light of the woman’s lamp, and silent except for the noise of the footsteps and the rush of a mouse now and then behind the woodwork.
At the third landing she stopped, and came close up to Anthony.
“That is the door,” she whispered hoarsely; and pointed with her thumb towards a doorway that was opposite the staircase. “Ask for Master Roger.”
And then without saying any more, she set the lamp down on the flat head of the top banister and herself began to shuffle downstairs again into the dark house.
Anthony stood still a moment, his heart beating a little. What was this strange errand? and Isabel! what had she to do with this house buried away in the courts of the great city? As he waited he heard a door close somewhere behind him, and the shuffling footsteps had ceased. He touched the hilt of his knife once again to give himself courage; and then walked slowly across and rapped on the door. Instantly a voice full of trembling expectancy, cried to him to come in; he turned the handle and stepped into the fire-lit room.
It was extremely poorly furnished; a rickety table stood in the centre with a book or two and a basin with a plate, a saucepan hissed and bubbled on the fire; in the corner near the window stood a poor bed; and to this Anthony’s attention was immediately directed by a voice that called out hoarsely:
“Thank God, sir, thank God, sir, you have come! I feared you would not.”
Anthony stepped towards it wondering and expectant, but reassured. Lying in the bed, with clothes drawn up to the chin was the figure of a man. There was no light in the room, save that given by the leaping flames on the hearth; and Anthony could only make out the face of a man with a patch over one eye; the man stretched a hand over the bed clothes as he came near, and Anthony took it, a little astonished, and received a strong trembling grip of apparent excitement and relief: “Thank God, sir!” the man said again, “but there is not too much time.”
“How can I serve you?” said Anthony, sitting on a chair near the bedside. “Your letter spoke of friends at Great Keynes. What did you mean by that?”
“Is the d-door closed, sir?” asked the man anxiously; stuttering a little as he spoke.
Anthony stepped up and closed it firmly; and then came back and sat down again.
“Well then, sir; I believe you are a friend of the priest Mr. M-Maxwell’s.”
Anthony shook his head.
“There is no priest of that name that I know.”
“Ah,” cried the man, and his voice shook, “have I said too much? You are Mr. Anthony Norris of the Dower House, and of the Archbishop’s household?”...
“I am,” said Anthony, “but yet——”
“Well, well,” said the man, “I must go forward now. He whom you know as Mr. James Maxwell is a Catholic p-priest, known to many under the name of Mr. Arthur Oldham. He is in sore d-danger.”
Anthony was silent through sheer astonishment. This then was the secret of the mystery that had hung round Mr. James so long. The few times he had met him in town since his return, it had been on the tip of his tongue to ask what he did there, and why Hubert was to be master of the Hall; but there was something in Mr. James’ manner that made the asking of such a question appear an impossible liberty; and it had remained unasked.
“Well,” said the man in bed, in anxious terror, “there is no mistake, is there?”
“I said nothing,” said Anthony, “for astonishment; I had no idea that he was a priest. And how can I serve him?”
“He is in sore danger,” said the man, and again and again there came the stutter. “Now I am a Catholic: you see how much I t-trust you sir. I am the only one in this house. I was entrusted with a m-message to Mr. Maxwell to put him on his guard against a danger that threatens him. I was to meet him this very evening at five of the clock; and this afternoon as I left my room, I slipped and so hurt my foot that I cannot put it to the ground. I dared not send a l-letter to Mr. Maxwell, for fear the child should be followed; I dared not send to another Catholic; nor indeed did I know where to find one whom Mr. M-Maxwell would know and trust, as he is new to us here; but I had heard him speak of his friend Mr. Anthony Norris, who was at Lambeth House; and I determined, sir, to send the child to you; and ask you to do this service for your friend; for an officer of the Archbishop’s household is beyond suspicion. N-now, sir, will you do this service? If you do it not, I know not where to turn for help.”
Anthony was silent. He felt a little uneasy. Supposing that there was sedition mixed up in this! How could he trust the man’s story? How could he be certain in fact that he was a Catholic at all? He looked at him keenly in the fire-light. The man’s one eye shone in deep anxiety, and his forehead was wrinkled; and he passed his hand nervously over his mouth again and again.
“How can I tell,” said Anthony, “that all this is true?”
The man with an impatient movement unfastened his shirt at the neck and drew up on a string that was round his neck a little leather case.
“Th-there, sir,” he stammered, drawing the string over his head. “T-take that to the fire and see what it is.”
Anthony took it curiously, and holding it close to the fire drew off the little case; there was the wax medal stamped with the lamb, calledAgnus Dei.
“Th-there,” cried the man from the bed, “now I have p-put myself in your hands—and if more is w-wanted——” and as Anthony came back holding the medal, the man fumbled beneath the pillow and drew out a rosary.
“N-now, sir, do you believe me?”
It was felony to possess these things and Anthony had no more doubts.
“Yes,” he said, “and I ask your pardon.” And he gave back theAgnus Dei. “But there is no sedition in this?”
“N-none, sir, I give you my word,” said the man, apparently greatly relieved, and sinking back on his pillow. “I will tell you all, and you can judge for yourself; but you will promise to be secret.” And when Anthony had given his word, he went on.
“M-Mass was to have been said in Newman’s Court on Sunday, at number 3, but that c-cursed spy Walsingham, hath had wind of it. His men have been lurking round there; and it is not safe. However, there is no need to say that to Mr. Maxwell; he will understand enough if you will give him a message of half a dozen words from me,—Mr. Roger. You can tell him that you saw me, if you wish to. But ah! sir, you give me your word to say no more to any one, not even to Mr. Maxwell himself, for it is in a public place. And then I will tell you the p-place and the m-message; but we must be swift, because the time is near; it is at five of the clock that he will look for a messenger.”
“I give you my word,” said Anthony.
“Well, sir, the place is Papists’ Corner in the Cathedral, and the words are these, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ You know sir, that we Catholics go in fear of our lives, and like the poor hares have to double and turn if we would escape. If any overhears that message, he will never know it to be a warning. And it was for that that I asked your word to say no more than your message, with just the word that you had seen me yourself. You may tell him, of course sir, that Mr. Roger had a patch over his eye and st-stuttered a little in his speech; and he will know it is from me then. Now, sir, will you tell me what the message is, and the place, to be sure that you know them; and then, sir, it will be time to go; and God bless you, sir. God bless you for your kindness to us poor papists!”
The man seized Anthony’s gloved hand and kissed it fervently once or twice.
Anthony repeated his instructions carefully. He was more touched than he cared to show by the evident gratitude and relief of this poor terrified Catholic.
“Th-that is right, sir; that is right; and now, sir, if you please, be gone at once; or the Father will have left the Cathedral. The child will be in the court below to show you the way out to the churchyard. God bless you, sir; and reward you for your kindness!”
And as Anthony went out of the room he heard benedictions mingled with sobs following him. The woman was nowhere to be seen; so he took the oil-lamp from the landing, and found his way downstairs again, unfastened the front door, and went out, leaving the lamp on the floor. The child was leaning against the wall opposite; he could just see the glimmer of her face in the heavy dusk.
“Come, my child,” he said, “show me the way to the churchyard.”
She came forward, and he began to follow her out of the little flagged court. He turned round as he left the court and saw high up against the blackness overhead a square of window lighted with a glow from within; and simultaneously there came the sound of bolts being shut in the door that he had just left. Evidently the old woman had been on the watch, and was now barring the door behind him.
It wanted courage to do as Anthony was doing, but he was not lacking in that; it was not a small matter to go to Papists’ Corner and give a warning to a Catholic priest: but firstly, James Maxwell was his friend, and in danger: secondly, Anthony had no sympathy with religious persecution; and thirdly, as has been seen, the last year had made a really deep impression upon him: he was more favourably inclined to the Catholic cause than he had ever imagined to be possible.
As he followed the child through the labyrinth of passages, passing every now and then the lighted front of a house, or a little group of idlers (for the rain had now ceased) who stared to see this gentleman in such company, his head was whirling with questions and conjectures. Was it not after all a dishonourable act to the Archbishop in whose service he was, thus to take the side of the Papists? But that it was too late to consider now.—How strange that James Maxwell was a priest! That of course accounted at once for his long absence, no doubt in the seminary abroad, and his ultimate return, and for Hubert’s inheriting the estates. And then he passed on to reflect as he had done a hundred times before on this wonderful Religion that allured men from home and wealth and friends, and sent them rejoicing to penury, suspicion, hatred, peril, and death itself, for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.
Suddenly he found himself in the open space opposite the Cathedral—the child had again disappeared.
It was less dark here; the leaden sky overhead still glimmered with a pale sunset light; and many house-windows shone out from within. He passed round the south side of the Cathedral, and entered the western door. The building was full of deep gloom only pricked here and there by an oil-lamp or two that would presently be extinguished when the Cathedral was closed. The air was full of a faint sound, made up from echoes of the outside world and the footsteps of a few people who still lingered in groups here and there in the aisles, and talked among themselves. The columns rose up in slender bundles and faded into the pale gloom overhead; as he crossed the nave on the way to Papists’ Corner far away to the east rose the dark carving of the stalls against the glimmering stone beyond. It was like some vast hall of the dead; the noise of the footsteps seemed like an insolent intrusion on this temple of silence; and the religious stillness had an active and sombre character of its own more eloquent and impressive than all the tumult that man could make.