They took me back to the room in the tower, it being now nearly ten o'clock. Master Lindstrom would fain have stayed with me constantly to the end, but having the matter I have mentioned much in my mind, I begged him to go and get me writing materials. When he returned Van Tree was with him. With a particularity very curious at that moment, I remarked that the latter was carrying something.
"Where did you get that?" I said sharply and at once.
"It is your haversack," he answered, setting it down quietly. "I found the man who had taken possession of your horse, and got it from him. I thought there might be something in it you might like."
"It is my haversack," I assented. "But it was not on my horse. I have not seen it since I left it in Master Lindstrom's house by the river. I left it on the pallet in my room there, and it was forgotten. I searched for it at Emmerich, you remember."
"I only know," he replied, "that I discovered it behind the saddle of the horse you were riding yesterday."
He thought that I had become confused and was a little wrong-headed from excitement. Master Lindstrom also felt troubled, as he told me afterward, at seeing me taken up with a trifle at such a time.
But there was nothing wrong with my wits, as I promptly showed them.
"The horse I was riding yesterday?" I continued. "Ah! then, I understand. I was riding the horse which I took from the Spanish trooper. The Spaniard must have annexed the haversack when he and his companions searched the house after our departure."
"That is it, no doubt," Master Lindstrom said. "And in the hurry of yesterday's ride you failed to notice it."
It was a strange way of recovering one's property--strange that the enemy should have helped one to it. But there are times--and this to me was one--when the strange seems the ordinary and commonplace. I took the sack and slipped my hand through a well-known slit in the lining. Yes, the letter I had left there was there still--the letter to Mistress Clarence. I drew it out. The corners of the little packet were frayed, and the parchment was stained and discolored, no doubt by the damp which had penetrated to it. But the seal was whole. I placed it, as it was, in Master Lindstrom's hands.
"Give it," I said, "to the Duchess afterward. It concerns her. You have heard us talk about it. Bid her make what use she pleases of it."
I turned away then and sat down, feeling a little flurried and excited, as one about to start upon a journey might feel; not afraid nor exceedingly depressed, but braced up to make a brave show and hide what sadness I did feel by the knowledge that many eyes were upon me, and that more would be watching me presently. At the far end of the room a number of people had now gathered, and were conversing together. Among them were not only my jailers of the night, but two or three officers, a priest who had come to offer me his services, and some inquisitive gazers who had obtained admission. Their curiosity, however, did not distress me. On the contrary, I was glad to hear the stir and murmur of life about me to the last.
I will not set down the letter I wrote to the Duchess, though it were easy for me to do so, seeing that her son has it now. It contains some things very proper to be said by a dying man, of which I am not ashamed--God forbid! but which it would not be meet for me to repeat here. Enough that I told her in a few words who I was, and entreated her, in the name of whatever services I had rendered her, to let Petronilla and Sir Anthony know how I had died. And I added something which would, I thought, comfort her and her husband--namely, that I was not afraid, or in any suffering of mind or body.
The writing of this shook my composure a little. But as I laid down the pen and looked up and found that the time was come, I took courage in a marvelous manner. The captain of the guard--I think that out of a compassionate desire not to interrupt me they had allowed me some minutes of grace--came to me, leaving the group at the other end, and told me gravely that I was waited for. I rose at once and gave the letter to Master Lindstrom with some messages in which Dymphna and Anne were not forgotten. And then, with a smile--for I felt under all those eyes as if I were going into battle--I said: "Gentlemen, I am ready if you are. It is a fine day to die. You know," I added gayly, "in England we have a proverb, 'The better the day, the better the deed!' So it is well to have a good day to have a good death, Sir Captain."
"A soldier's death, sir, is a good death;" he answered gravely, speaking in Spanish and bowing.
Then he pointed to the door.
As I walked toward it, I paused momentarily by the window, and looked out on the crowd below. It filled the sunlit street--save where a little raised platform strewn with rushes protruded itself--with heads from wall to wall, with faces all turned one way--toward me. It was a silent crowd standing in hushed awe and expectation, the consciousness of which for an instant sent a sudden chill to my heart, blanching my cheek, and making my blood run slow for a moment. The next I moved on to the door, and bowing to the spectators as they stood aside, began to descend the narrow staircase.
There were guards going down before me, and behind me were Master Lindstrom and more guards. The Dutchman reached forward in the gloom, and clasped my hand, holding it, as we went down, in a firm, strong grip.
"Never fear," I said to him cheerily, looking back. "It is all right."
He answered in words which I will not write here; not wishing, as I have said, to make certain things common.
I suppose the doorway at the bottom was accidentally blocked, for a few steps short of it we came to a standstill; and almost at the same moment I started, despite myself, on hearing a sudden clamor and a roar of many voices outside.
"What is it?" I asked the Dutchman.
"It is the Duke of Cleves arriving, I expect," he whispered. "He comes in by the other gate."
A moment later we moved on and passed out into the light, the soldiers before me stepping on either side to give me place. The sunshine for an instant dazzled me, and I lowered my eyes. As I gradually raised them again I saw before me a short lane formed by two rows of spectators kept back by guards; and at the end of this, two or three rough wooden steps leading to a platform on which were standing a number of people. And above and beyond all only the bright blue sky, the roofs and gables of the nearer houses showing dark against it.
I advanced steadily along the path left for me, and would have ascended the steps. But at the foot of them I came to a standstill, and looked round for guidance. The persons on the scaffold all had their backs turned to me, and did not make way, while the shouting and uproar hindered them from hearing that we had come out. Then it struck me, seeing that the people at the windows were also gazing away, and taking no heed of me, that the Duke was passing the farther end of the street, and a sharp pang of angry pain shot through me. I had come out to die, but that which was all to me was so little to these people that they turned away to see a fellow-mortal ride by!
Presently, as we stood there, in a pit, as it were, getting no view, I felt Master Lindstrom's hand, which still clasped mine, begin to shake; and turning to him, I found that his face had changed to a deep red, and that his eyes were protruding with a kind of convulsive eagerness which instantly infected me.
"What is it?" I stammered. I began to tremble also. The air rang, it seemed to me, with one word, which a thousand tongues took up and reiterated. But it was a German word, and I did not understand it.
"Wait! wait!" Master Lindstrom exclaimed. "Pray God it be true!"
He seized my other hand and held it as though he would protect me from something. At the same moment Van Tree pushed past me, and, bounding up the steps, thrust his way through the officials on the scaffold, causing more than one fur-robed citizen near the edge to lose his balance and come down as best he could on the shoulders of the guards.
"What is it?" I cried. "What is it?" I cried in impatient wonder.
"Oh! my lad, my lad!" Master Lindstrom answered, his face close to mine, and the tears running down his cheeks. "It is cruel if it be not true! Cruel! They cry a pardon!"
"A pardon?" I echoed.
"Ay, lad, a pardon. But it may not be true," he said, putting his arm about my shoulder. "Do not make too sure of it. It is only the mob cry it out."
My heart made a great bound, and seemed to stand still. There was a loud surging in my brain, and a mist rose before my eyes and hid everything. The clamor and shouting of the street passed away, and sounded vague and distant. The next instant, it is true, I was myself again, but my knees were trembling under me, and I stood flaccid and unnerved, leaning on my friend.
"Well?" I said faintly.
"Patience! patience a while, lad!" he answered.
But, thank Heaven! I had not long to wait. The words were scarcely off his tongue, when another hand sought mine and shook it wildly; and I saw Van Tree before me, his face radiant with joy, while a man whom he had knocked down in his hasty leap from the scaffold was rising beside me with a good-natured smile. As if at a signal, every face now turned toward me. A dozen friendly hands passed me up the steps amid a fresh outburst of cheering. The throng on the scaffold opened somehow, and I found myself in a second, as it seemed, face to face with the president of the court. He smiled on me gravely and kindly--what smiles there seemed to be on all those faces--and held out a paper.
"In the name of the Duke!" he said, speaking in Spanish, in a clear, loud voice. "A pardon!"
I muttered something, I know not what; nor did it matter, for it was lost in a burst of cheering. When this was over and silence obtained, the magistrate continued, "You are required, however, to attend the Duke at the courthouse. Whither we had better proceed at once."
"I am ready, sir," I muttered.
A road was made for us to descend, and, walking in a kind of beautiful dream, I passed slowly up the street by the side of the magistrate, the crowd everywhere willingly standing aside for us. I do not know whether all those thousands of faces really looked joyfully and kindly on me as I passed, or whether the deep thankfulness which choked me, and brought the tears continually to my eyes, transfigured them and gave them a generous charm not their own. But this I do know: that the sunshine seemed brighter and the air softer than ever before; that the clouds trailing across the blue expanse were things of beauty such as I had never met before; that to draw breath was a joy, and to move, delight; and that only when the dark valley was left behind did I comprehend its full gloom--by Heaven's mercy. So may it be with all!
At the door of the court-house, whither numbers of the people had already run, the press was so great that we came to a standstill, and were much buffeted about, though in all good humor, before, even with the aid of the soldiers, we could be got through the throng. When I at last emerged I found myself again before the table, and saw--but only dimly, for the light now fell through the stained window directly on my head--a commanding figure standing behind it. Then a strange thing happened. A woman passed swiftly round the table, and came to me and flung her arms round my neck and kissed me. It was the Duchess, and for a moment she hung upon me, weeping before them all.
"Madam," I said softly, "then it is you who have done this!"
"Ah!" she exclaimed, holding me off from her and looking at me with eyes which glowed through her tears, "and it was you who did that!"
She drew back from me then, and took me by the hand, and turned impetuously to the Duke of Cleves, who stood behind smiling at her in frank amusement. "This," she said, "is the man who gave his life for my husband, and to whom your highness has given it back."
"Let him tell his tale," the Duke answered gravely. "And do you, my cousin, sit here beside me."
She left me and walked round the table, and he came forward and placed her in his own chair amid a great hush of wonder, for she was still meanly clad, and showed in a hundred places the marks and stains of travel. Then he stood by her with his hand on the back of the seat. He was a tall, burly man, with bold, quick-glancing eyes, a flushed face, and a loud manner; a fierce, blusterous prince, as I have heard. He was plainly dressed in a leather hunting-suit, and wore huge gauntlets and brown boots, with a broad-leaved hat pinned up on one side. Yet he looked a prince.
Somehow I stammered out the tale of the surrender.
"But why? why? why, man?" he asked, when I had finished; "why did you let them think it was you who wounded the burgher, if it was not?"
"Your highness," I answered, "I had received nothing but good from her grace, I had eaten her bread and been received into her service. Besides, it was through my persuasion that we came by the road which led to this misfortune instead of by another way. Therefore it seemed to me right that I should suffer, who stood alone and could be spared--and not her husband."
"It was a great deed!" cried the prince loudly. "I would I had such a servant. Are you noble, lad?"
I colored high, but not in pain or mortification. The old wound might reopen, but amid events such as those of this morning it was a slight matter. "I come of a noble family, may it please your highness," I answered modestly; "but circumstances prevent me claiming kinship with it."
He was about, I think, to question me further, when the Duchess looked up, and said something to him and he something to her. She spoke again and he answered. Then he nodded assent. "You would fain stand on your own feet?" he cried to me. "Is that so?"
"It is, sire," I answered.
"Then so be it!" he replied loudly, looking round on the throng with a frown. "I will ennoble you. You would have died for your lord and friend, and therefore I give you a rood of land in the common graveyard of Santon to hold of me, and I name you Von Santonkirch. And I, William, Duke of Cleves, Julich and Guelders, prince of the Empire, declare you noble, and give you for your arms three swords of justice; and the motto you may buy of a clerk! Further, let this decree be enrolled in my Chancery. Are you satisfied?"
As I dropped on my knees, my eyes sparkling, there was a momentary disturbance behind me. It was caused by the abrupt entrance of the Sub-dean. He took in part of the situation at a glance; that is, he saw me kneeling before the Duke. But he could not see the Duchess of Suffolk, the Duke's figure being interposed. As he came forward, the crowd making way for him, he cast an angry glance at me, and scarcely smoothed his brow even to address the prince. "I am glad that your highness has not done what was reported to me," he said hastily, his obeisance brief and perfunctory. "I heard an uproar in the town, and was told that this man was pardoned."
"It is so!" said the Duke curtly, eying the ecclesiastic with no great favor. "He is pardoned."
"Only in part, I presume," the priest rejoined urgently. "Or, if otherwise, I am sure that your highness has not received certain information with which I can furnish you."
"Furnish away, sir," quoth the Duke, yawning.
"I have had letters from my Lord Bishop of Arras respecting him."
"Respecting him!" exclaimed the prince, starting and bending his brows in surprise.
"Respecting those in whose company he travels," the priest answered hastily. "They are represented to me as dangerous persons, pestilent refugees from England, and obnoxious alike to the Emperor, the Prince of Spain, and the Queen of England."
"I wonder you do not add also to the King of France and the Soldan of Turkey!" growled the Duke. "Pish! I am not going to be dictated to by Master Granvelle--no, nor by his master, be he ten times Emperor! Go to! Go to! Master Sub-dean! You forget yourself, and so does your master the Bishop. I will have you know that these people are not what you think them. Call you my cousin, the widow of the consort of the late Queen of France, an obnoxious person? Fie! Fie! You forget yourself!"
He moved as he stopped speaking, so that the astonished churchman found himself confronted on a sudden by the smiling, defiant Duchess. The Sub-dean started and his face fell, for, seeing her seated in the Duke's presence, he discerned at once that the game was played out. Yet he rallied himself, bethinking him, I fancy, that there were many spectators. He made a last effort. "The Bishop of Arras----" he began.
"Pish!" scoffed the Duke, interrupting him.
"The Bishop of Arras----" the priest repeated firmly.
"I would he were hung with his own tapestry!" retorted the Duke, with a brutal laugh.
"Heaven forbid!" replied the ecclesiastic, his pale face reddening and his eyes darting baleful glances at me. But he took the hint, and henceforth said no more of the Bishop. Instead, he continued smoothly, "Your highness has, of course, considered the danger--the danger, I mean, of provoking neighbors so powerful by shielding this lady and making her cause your own. You will remember, sir----"
"I will remember Innspruck!" roared the Duke, in a rage, "where the Emperor, ay, and your everlasting Bishop too, fled before a handful of Protestants, like sheep before wolves. A fig for your Emperor! I never feared him young, and I fear him less now that he is old and decrepit and, as men say, mad. Let him get to his watches, and you to your prayers. If there were not this table between us, I would pull your ears, Master Churchman!"
* * * * *
"But tell me," I asked Master Bertie as I stood beside his couch an hour later, "how did the Duchess manage it? I gathered from something you or she said, a short time back, that you had no influence with the Duke of Cleves."
"Not quite that," he answered. "My wife and the late Duke of Suffolk had much to do with wedding the Prince's sister to King Henry, thirteen--fourteen years back, is it? And so far we might have felt confident of his protection. But the marriage turned out ill, or turned out short, and Queen Anne of Cleves was divorced. And--well, we felt a little less confident on that account, particularly as he has the name of a headstrong, passionate man."
"Heaven keep him in it!" I said, smiling. "But you have not told me yet what happened."
"The Duchess was still asleep this morning, fairly worn out, as you may suppose, when a great noise awoke her. She got up and went to Dymphna, and learned it was the Duke's trumpets. Then she went to the window, and, seeing few people in the streets to welcome him, inquired why this was. Dymphna broke down at that, and told her what was happening to you, and that you were to die at that very hour. She went out straightway, without covering her head,--you know how impetuous she is,--and flung herself on her knees in the mud before the Duke's horse as he entered. He knew her, and the rest you can guess."
Can guess? Ah, what happiness it was! Outside, the sun fell hotly on the steep red roofs, with their rows of casements, and on the sleepy square, in which knots of people still lingered, talking of the morning's events. I could see below me the guard which Duke William, shrewdly mistrusting the Sub-dean, had posted in front of the house, nominally to do the Duchess honor. I could hear in the next room the cheerful voices of my friends. What happiness it was to live! What happiness to be loved! How very, very good and beautiful and glorious a world, seemed the world to me on that old May morning in that quaint German town which we had entered so oddly!
As I turned from the window full of thankfulness, my eyes met those of Mistress Anne, who was sitting on the far side of the sick man's couch, the baby in a cradle beside her. The risk and exposure of the last week had made a deeper mark upon her than upon any of us. She was paler, graver, older, more of a woman and less, much less, of a girl. And she looked very ill. Her eyes, in particular, seemed to have grown larger, and as they dwelt on me now there was a strange and solemn light in them, under which I grew uneasy.
"You have been wonderfully preserved," she said presently, speaking dreamily, and as much to herself as to me.
"I have, indeed," I answered, thinking she referred only to my escape of the morning.
But she did not.
"There was, firstly, the time on the river when you were hurt with the oar," she continued, gazing absently at me, her hands in her lap; "and then the night when you saw Clarence with Dymphna."
"Or, rather, saw him without her," I interposed, smiling. It was strange that she should mention it as a fact, when at the time she had so scolded me for making the statement.
"And then," she continued, disregarding my interruption, "there was the time when you were stabbed in the passage; and again when you had the skirmish by the river; and then to-day you were within a minute of death. You have been wonderfully preserved!"
"I have," I assented thoughtfully. "The more as I suspect that I have to thank Master Clarence for all these little adventures."
"Strange--very strange!" she muttered, removing her eyes from me that she might fix them on the floor.
"What is strange?"
The abrupt questioner was the Duchess, who came bustling in at the moment. "What is strange?" she repeated, with a heightened color and dancing eyes. "Shall I tell you?" She paused and looked brightly at me, holding something concealed behind her. I guessed in a moment, from the aspect of her face, what it was: the letter which I had given to Master Lindstrom in the morning, and which, with a pardonable forgetfulness, I had failed to reclaim.
I turned very red. "It was not intended for you now," I said shyly. For in the letter I had told her my story.
"Pooh! pooh!" she cried. "It is just as I thought. A pretty piece of folly! No," she continued, as I opened my mouth, "I am not going to keep your secret, sir. You may go down on your knees. It will be of no use. Richard, you remember Sir Anthony Cludde of Coton End in Warwickshire?"
"Oh, yes," her husband said, rising on his elbow, while his face lit up, and I stood bashfully, shifting my feet.
"I have danced with him a dozen times, years ago!" she continued, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Well, sir, this gentleman, Master Francis Carey, otherwise Von Santonkirch, is Francis Cludde, his nephew!"
"Sir Anthony's nephew?"
"Yes, and the son of Ferdinand Cludde, whom you also have heard of, of whom the less----"
She stopped, and turned quickly, interrupted by a half-stifled scream. It was a scream full of sudden horror and amazement and fear; and it came from Mistress Anne. The girl had risen, and was gazing at me with distended eyes and blanched cheeks, and hands stretched out to keep me off--gazing, indeed, as if she saw in me some awful portent or some dreadful threat. She did not speak, but she began, without taking her eyes from me, to retreat toward the door.
"Hoity toity!" cried my lady, stamping her foot in anger. "What has happened to the girl? What----"
What, indeed? The Duchess stopped, still more astonished. For, without uttering a word of explanation or apology, Mistress Anne had reached the door, groped blindly for the latch, found it, and gone out, her eyes, with the same haunted look of horror in them, fixed on me to the last.
"Hoity, toity!" the Duchess cried again, looking from one to another of us when Anne had disappeared. "What has come to the little fool? Has she gone crazy?"
I shook my head, too completely at sea even to hazard a conjecture. Master Bertie shook his head also, keeping his eyes glued to the door, as if he could not believe Anne had really gone.
"I said nothing to frighten her!" my lady protested.
"Nothing at all," I answered. For how should the announcement that my real name was Cludde terrify Mistress Anne Brandon nearly out of her senses?
"Well, no," Master Bertie agreed, his thoughtful face more thoughtful than usual; "so far as I heard, you said nothing. But I think, my dear, that you had better follow her and learn what it is. She must be ill."
The Duchess sat down. "I will go by-and-by," she said coolly, at which I was not much surprised, for I have always remarked that women have less sympathy with other women's ailments, especially of the nerves, than have men.
"For the moment I want to scold this brave, silly boy here!" she continued, looking so kindly at me that I blushed again, and forgot all about Mistress Anne. "To think of him leaving his home to become a wandering squire of dames merely because his father was a--well, not quite what he would have liked him to be! I remember something about him," she continued, pursing up her lips, and nodding her head at us. "I fancied him dead, however, years ago. But there! if every one whose father were not quite to his liking left home and went astraying, Master Francis, all sensible folk would turn innkeepers, and make their fortunes."
"It was not only that which drove me from home," I explained. "The Bishop of Winchester gave me clearly to understand----"
"That Coton was not the place for you!" exclaimed my lady scornfully. "He is a sort of connection of yours, is he not? Oh, I know. And he thinks he has a kind of reversionary interest in the property! With you and your father out of the way, and only your girl cousin left, his interest is much more likely to come to hand. Do you see?"
I recalled what Martin Luther had said about the cuckoo. But I have since thought that probably they both wronged Stephen Gardiner in this. He was not a man of petty mind, and his estate was equal to his high place. I think it more likely that his motive in removing me from Coton was chiefly the desire to use my services abroad, in conjunction perhaps with some remoter and darker plan for eventually devoting the Cludde property to the Church. Such an act of piety would have been possible had Sir Anthony died leaving his daughter unmarried, and would certainly have earned for the Chancellor Queen Mary's lasting favor. I think it the more likely to have been in his mind because his inability to persuade the gentry to such acts of restitution--King Harry had much enriched us--was always a sore point with the Queen, and more than once exposed him to her resentment.
"The strangest thing of all," the Duchess continued with alacrity, "seems to me to be this: that if he had not meddled with you, he would not have had his plans in regard to us thwarted. If he had not driven you from home, you would never have helped me to escape from London, nor been with us to foil his agents."
"A higher power than the Chancellor arranged that!" said Master Bertie emphatically.
"Well, at any rate, I am glad that you are you!" the Duchess answered, rising gayly. "A Cludde? Why, one feels at home again. And yet," she continued, her lips trembling suddenly, and her eyes filling with tears as she looked at me, "there was never house raised yet on nobler deed than yours."
"Go! go! go!" cried her husband, seeing my embarrassment. "Go and look to that foolish girl!"
"I will! Yet stop!" cried my lady, pausing when she was half way across the floor, and returning, "I was forgetting that I have another letter to open. It is very odd that this letter was never opened before," she continued, producing that which had lain in my haversack. "It has had several narrow escapes. But this time I vow I will see inside it. You give me leave?"
"Oh, yes," I said, smiling. "I wash my hands of it. Whoever the Mistress Clarence to whom it is addressed may be, it is enough that her name is Clarence! We have suffered too much at his hands."
"I open it, then!" my lady cried dramatically. I nodded. She took her husband's dagger and cut the green silk which bound the packet, and opened and read.
Only a few words. Then she stopped, and looking off the paper, shivered. "I do not understand this," she murmured. "What does it mean?"
"No good! I'll be sworn!" Master Bertie replied, gazing at her eagerly. "Read it aloud, Katherine."
"'To Mistress A---- B----. I am advertised by my trusty agent, Master Clarence, that he hath benefited much by your aid in the matter in which I have employed him. Such service goeth always for much, and never for naught, with me. In which belief confirm yourself. For the present, working with him as heretofore, be secret, and on no account let your true sentiments come to light. So you will be the more valuable to me, even as it is more easy to unfasten a barred door from within than from without.'"
Here the Duchess broke off abruptly, and turned on us a face full of wonder. "What does it mean?" she asked.
"Is that all?" her husband said.
"Not quite," she answered, returning to it, and reading:
"'Those whom you have hitherto served have too long made a mockery of sacred things, but their cup is full and the business of seeing that they drink it lieth with me, who am not wont to be slothful in these matters. Be faithful and secret. Good speed and fare you well.--Ste. Winton."
"One thing is quite clear!" said Master Bertie slowly. "That you and I are the persons whose cup is full. You remember how you once dressed up a dog in a rochet, and dandled it before Gardiner? And it is our matter in which Clarence is employed. Then who is it who has been cooperating with him, and whose aid is of so much value to him?"
"'Even as it is easier,'" I muttered thoughtfully, "'to unfasten a barred door from within than from without." What was it of which that strange sentence reminded me? Ha! I had it. Of the night on which we had fled from Master Lindstrom's house, when Mistress Anne had been seized with that odd fit of perverseness, and had almost opened the door looking upon the river in spite of all I could say or do. It was of that the sentence reminded me. "To whom is it addressed?" I asked abruptly.
"To Mistress Clarence," my lady answered.
"No; inside, I mean."
"Oh! to Mistress A---- B----. But that gives us no clew," she added. "It is a disguise. You see they are the two first letters of the alphabet."
So they were. And the initial letters of Anne Brandon! I wondered that the Duchess did not see it, that she did not at once turn her suspicions toward the right quarter. But she was, for a woman, singularly truthful and confiding. And she saw nothing.
I looked at Master Bertie. He seemed puzzled, discerning, I fancy, how strangely the allusions pointed to Mistress Anne, but not daring at once to draw the inference. She was his wife's kinswoman by marriage--albeit a distant one--and much indebted to her. She had been almost as his own sister. She was young and fair, and to associate treachery and ingratitude such as this with her seemed almost too horrible.
Then why was I so clear sighted as to read the riddle? Why was I the first to see the truth? Because I had felt for days a vague and ill-defined distrust of the girl. I had seen more of her odd fits and caprices than had the others. Looking back now I could find a confirmation of my idea in a dozen things which had befallen us. I remembered how ill and stricken she had looked on the day when I had first brought out the letter, and how strangely she had talked to me about it. I remembered Clarence's interview with, not Dymphna,--as I had then thought,--but, as I now guessed, Anne, wearing her cloak. I recalled the manner in which she had used me to persuade Master Bertie to take the Wesel instead of the Santon road; no doubt she had told Clarence to follow in that direction, if by any chance we escaped him on the island. And her despair when she heard in the church porch that I had killed Clarence at the ford! And her utter abandonment to fear--poor guilty thing!--when she thought that all her devices had only led her with us to a dreadful death! These things, in the light in which I now viewed them, were cogent evidences against her.
"It must have been written to some one about us!" said the Duchess at length. "To some one in our confidence. 'On our side of the door,' as he calls it."
"Yes, that is certain," I said.
"And on the wrapper he styles her Mistress Clarence. Now who----"
"Who could it have been? That is the question we have to answer," Master Bertie replied dryly. Hearing his voice, I knew he had come at last to the same conclusion to which I had jumped. "I think you may dismiss the servants from the inquiry," he continued. "The Bishop of Winchester would scarcely write to them in that style."
"Dismiss the servants? Then who is left?" she protested.
"I think----" He lost courage, hesitated, and broke off. She looked at him wonderingly. He turned to me, and, gaining confirmation from my nod, began again. "I think I should ask A---- B----," he said.
"A---- B----?" she cried, still not seeing one whit.
"Yes. Anne Brandon," he answered sternly.
She repeated his words softly and stood a moment gazing at him. In that moment she saw it all. She sat down suddenly on the chair beside her and shuddered violently, as if she had laid her hand unwittingly upon a snake. "Oh, Richard," she whispered, "it is too horrible!"
"I fear it is too true," he answered gloomily.
I shrank from looking at them, from meeting her eyes or his. I felt as if this shame had come upon us all. The thought that the culprit might walk into the room at any moment filled me with terror. I turned away and looked through the window, leaving the husband and wife together.
"Is it only the name you are thinking of?" she muttered.
"No," he answered. "Before I left England to go to Calais I saw something pass between them--between her and Clarence--which, surprised me. Only in the confusion of those last days it slipped from my memory for the time."
"I see," she said quietly. "The villain!"
Looking back on the events of the last week, I found many things made plain by the lurid light now cast upon them. I understood how Master Lindstrom's vase had come to be broken when we were discussing the letter, which in my hands must have been a perpetual terror to the girl. I discerned that she had purposely sown dissension between myself and Van Tree, and recalled how she had striven to persuade us not to leave the island; then, how she had induced us to take that unlucky road; finally, how on the road her horse had lagged and lagged behind, detaining us all when every minute was precious. The things all dovetailed into one another; each by itself was weak, but together they formed a strong scaffold--a scaffold strong enough for the hanging of a man, if she had been a man! The others appealed to me, the Duchess feverishly anxious to be assured one way or the other. The very suspicion of the existence of such treachery at her side seemed to stifle her. Still looking out of the window I detailed the proofs I have mentioned, not gladly, Heaven knows, or in any spirit of revenge. But my duty was rather to my companions who had been true to me, than to her. I told them the truth as far as I knew it. The whole wretched, miserable truth was only to become known to me later.
"I will go to her," the Duchess said presently, rising from her seat.
"My dear!" her husband cried. He stretched out his hand, and grasping her skirt detained her. "You will not----"
"Do not be afraid!" she replied sadly, as she stooped over him and kissed his forehead. "It is a thing past scolding, Richard; past love and even hope, and all but past pity. I will be merciful as we hope for mercy, but she can never be friend of ours again, and some one must tell her. I will do so and return. As for that man!" she continued, obscuring suddenly the fair and noble side of her character which she had just exhibited, and which I confess had surprised me, for I had not thought her capable of a generosity so uncommon; "as for that man," she repeated, drawing herself up to her full height, while her eyes sparkled and her cheek grew red, "who has turned her into a vile schemer and a shameless hypocrite, as he would fain have turned better women, I will show him no mercy nor grace if I ever have him under my feet. I will crush him as I would an adder, though I be crushed next moment myself!"
She was sweeping with that word from the room, and had nearly reached the door before I found my voice. Then I called out "Stay!" just in time. "You will do no good, madam, by going!" I said, rising. "You will not find her. She is gone."
"Gone?"
"Yes," I said quietly. "She left the house twenty minutes ago. I saw her cross the market-place, wearing her cloak and carrying a bag. I do not think she will return."
"Not return? But whither has she gone?" they both cried at once.
I shook my head.
"I can only guess," I said in a low voice. "I saw no more than I have told you."
"But why did you not tell me'" the Duchess cried reproachfully. "She shall be brought back."
"It would be useless," Master Bertie answered. "Yet I doubt if it be as Carey thinks. Why should she go just at this time? She does not know that she is found out. She does not know that this letter has been recovered. Not a word, mind, was said of it before she left the room."
"No," I allowed; "that is true."
I was puzzled on this point myself, now I came to consider it. I could not see why she had taken the alarm so opportunely; but I maintained my opinion nevertheless.
"Something frightened her," I said; "though it may not have been the letter."
"Yes," said the Duchess, after a moment's silence. "I suppose you are right. I suppose something frightened her, as you say. I wonder what it was, poor wretch!"
It turned out that I was right. Mistress Anne had gone indeed, having stayed, so far as we could learn from an examination of the room which she had shared with Dymphna, merely to put together the few things which our adventures had left her. She had gone out from among us in this foreign land without a word of farewell, without a good wish given or received, without a soul to say God speed! The thought made me tremble. If she had died it would have been different. Now, to feel sorrow for her as for one who had been with us in heart as well as in body, seemed a mockery. How could we grieve for one who had moved day by day and hour by hour among us, only that with each hour and day she might plot and scheme and plan our destruction? It was impossible!
We made inquiries indeed, but without result; and so, abruptly and terribly she passed--for the time--out of our knowledge, though often afterward I recalled sadly the weary, hunted look which I had sometimes seen in her eyes when she sat listless and dreamy. Poor girl! Her own acts had placed her, as the Duchess said, beyond love or hope, but not beyond pity.
So it is in life. The day which sees one's trial end sees another's begin. We--the Duchess and her child, Master Bertie and I--stayed with our good and faithful friends the Lindstroms a while, resting and recruiting our strength; and during this interval, at the pressing instance of the Duchess, I wrote letters to Sir Anthony and Petronilla, stating that I was abroad, and was well, and looked presently to return; but not disclosing my refuge or the names of my companions. At the end of five days, Master Bertie being fairly strong again and Santon being considered unsafe for us as a permanent residence, we went under guard to Wesel, where we were received as people of quality, and lodged, there being no fitting place, in the disused church of St. Willibrod. Here the child was christened Peregrine--a wanderer; the governor of the city and I being godfathers. And here we lived in peace--albeit with hearts that yearned for home--for some months.
During this time two pieces of news came to us from England: one, that the Parliament, though much pressed to it, had refused to acquiesce in the confiscation of the Duchess's estates; the other, that our joint persecutor, the great Bishop of Winchester, was dead. This last we at first disbelieved. It was true, nevertheless. Stephen Gardiner, whose vast schemes had enmeshed people so far apart in station, and indeed in all else, as the Duchess and myself, was dead at last; had died toward the end of 1555, at the height of his power, with England at his feet, and gone to his Maker. I have known many worse men.
We trusted that this might open the way for our return, but we found on the contrary that fresh clouds were rising. The persecution of the Reformers, which Queen Mary had begun in England, was carried on with increasing rigor, and her husband, who was now King of Spain and master of the Netherlands, freed from the prudent checks of his father, was inclined to pleasure her in this by giving what aid he could abroad. His Minister in the Netherlands, the Bishop of Arras, brought so much pressure to bear upon our protector to induce him to give us up, that it was plain the Duke of Cleves must sooner or later comply. We thought it better, therefore, to remove ourselves, and presently did so, going to the town of Winnheim in the Rhine Palatinate.
We found ourselves not much more secure here, however, and all our efforts to discover a safe road into France failing, and the stock of money which the Duchess had provided beginning to give out, we were in great straits whither to go or what to do.
At this time of our need, however, Providence opened a door in a quarter where we least looked for it. Letters came from Sigismund, the King of Poland, and from the Palatine of Wilna in that country, inviting the Duchess and Master Bertie to take up their residence there, and offering the latter an establishment and honorable employment. The overture was unlooked for, and was not accepted without misgivings, Wilna being so far distant, and there being none of our race in that country. However, assurance of the Polish King's good faith reached us--I say us, for in all their plans I was included--through John Alasco, a nobleman who had visited England. And in due time we started on this prodigious journey, and came safely to Wilna, where our reception was such as the letters had led us to expect.