The Tangled Skein Part 56

the dark foreigner barred the way . . . and I know not how it happened . . ." she added, as a trembling suddenly seized her whole body, "he jeered at me . . . and . . . and I killed him!"

"'Twas thou, wench, who killed Don Miguel?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Queen, horrified. "Oh! . . ."

But Wess.e.x only bent his head and murmured in the intensity of his misery--

"Heaven above me! . . . that I should have been so blind!"

"I killed him . . ." repeated Mirrab with strange persistence, "I killed him . . . he would not let me go to thee."

"A madwoman and a wanton," here protested the Cardinal with all the vigour at his command. "Surely Your Majesty will not believe this miserable creature's calumnies."

"No, my lord," replied Mary with quiet dignity, "we'll believe nothing until we have heard what Lady Ursula Glynde has to say. Lady Alicia,"

she added, turning to one of her maids-of-honour, "I pray you find the Lady Ursula. Tell her what has happened and bid her come to us."

In the meanwhile, however, Mirrab seemed to have become aware of the consequences of her vehement confession. Her wandering wits came slowly back to her. Terrified, she looked from one to the other of the grave faces which were fixed upon her.

"What will they do to me?" she murmured, turning appealing eyes on the one man whom she dared to trust.

"Nay, Mirrab, have no fear," said Wess.e.x kindly, as he took her rough hands in his and tried to soothe her scared spirits with a gentle touch.

"Once by chance I saved thy life . . . but thou in return hast now restored to me that which is far dearer than life itself. I am eternally thy debtor, Mirrab, and I pledge thee the honour of Wess.e.x that no harm shall come to thee . . . for I myself will beg for thy pardon of Her Majesty on my knees."

"Nay, my lord," rejoined Mary Tudor earnestly, for he had turned to the Queen, prepared to proffer his request on his knees, "meseems a grievous wrong has been done to you--if unwittingly--by your Queen and country.

Let the wench be free to pray to the Holy Virgin for her great sin. I myself will care for her, and she shall enter any convent she may choose, and be honoured there as if she had brought with her the richest dowry in the land. But," she added, turning to Lord Chandois, "I desire her to make full confession once more before you, my lord, in writing, and to swear to it and sign it with her name. You may go, wench," she said finally, turning to Mirrab, "your Queen has pardoned you. May you be happy in the peace of the convent. We will never forget you, and ever see that joy shall always be in your life."

Slowly, as the Queen spoke, Mirrab sank upon her knees. It seemed to the poor girl as if G.o.d's angels were whispering words of comfort in her ear. Two servitors now came close to her, ready to lead her back to the Palace, there to place her under the charge of waiting-women until her confession had been duly written and sworn to.

But before she finally allowed herself to be led away she once more turned to Wess.e.x.

"May I kiss thy hand?" she murmured gently.

He gave her his hand, and she covered it with kisses, and then she pa.s.sed out of his life, ever remembered by him, ever comforted, happy in the peaceful and silent home which the Queen had so royally provided for her.

But this little interlude had roused the Cardinal's feverish impatience to boiling point. Already he had tortured his astute brain for some sort of issue out of this tangled web. He would not own a defeat so readily, certainly not before he made a final struggle to rea.s.sert the dignity of his position. He forced his face to express nothing but delicate irony, his eyes not to betray the slightest hint of fear.

"Truly, this is somewhat curious justice," he said, as Mirrab's strange figure disappeared behind a turn of the tall yew hedge, "surely Your Majesty will not condemn unheard? . . ."

"No, my lord Cardinal, not unheard," retorted Mary Tudor haughtily. "We have seen strange things to-day, and can only guess at the terrible tangle which caused the first gentleman in England to take upon himself the burden of a heinous crime."

"And no doubt," added Wess.e.x, "that His Eminence can solve the riddle of how a pure and n.o.ble girl was led into sacrificing her honour."

"Nay!" retorted the Cardinal bitingly, "His Grace of Wess.e.x is more competent than I to solve the riddle of a woman's heart. The Lady Ursula has confessed; this trick of trying to disprove her tale," he added with cutting sarcasm, "was well thought on by the most chivalrous gentleman in England. . . . An it satisfies His Grace," he continued with a careless shrug of the shoulders, "surely I could never wish to dispel so pleasant an illusion."

Perhaps the Duke would have retorted in angry words, despite the unutterable contempt which he felt for this final poisoned shaft aimed at him by the Cardinal; but just then the groups which surrounded him, the Queen and His Eminence, parted, and Ursula Glynde stood before them all.

She still wore the white robes which became her so well, but now they only helped to enhance the brilliancy of her hair, the clear blue of her eyes, and a certain rosy flush, which lent to her delicate face a delicious air of childishness and innocence. She looked at no one, though her eyes were actually fixed respectfully on the Queen, but her spirit seemed to have wandered off into a land of dreams.

"Your Majesty sent for me?" she said.

"Lady Alicia has told you?" rejoined the Queen.

Ursula closed her glorious eyes. A ray of intense joy seemed to illumine her whole face, lighting it with a radiance which surely had its origin in heaven. Then she slowly turned her head towards Wess.e.x, and in one little word told him all that her soul contained.

"Everything!" she said.

Everything! that is to say, his sin, his mistrust of her, his great pa.s.sionate love, and self-sacrifice for her. Everything! which meant her own love, her own devotion, her joy to find him true and chivalrous, her happiness and her hope.

Mary Tudor saw the look and its response from Wess.e.x' eyes. She saw the end of the one dream which had filled her dull, rigid life and rendered it hopeful and bright. But she was above all a Tudor. She accepted the dictate of Fate, she bent the neck to a greater will than her own, and closed the book of her illusions, never to peruse its pages again. One last look at the man who had had the one pa.s.sion of which her strange hard heart was capable, one short farewell to the vague hope, which until now would not be gainsaid.

From now and to the end of her days she would be Queen alone--the woman lay buried amongst the autumn leaves which strewed the walks of old Hampton Court Palace.

As Queen now she once more turned to Ursula. Justice in her demanded that every wrong should be righted, every misdoer punished.

"Child," she said quietly, "it was not you then who was with Don Miguel?"

"No, Your Majesty," replied Ursula, returning to earth at sound of the Queen's kindly voice, "Lady Alicia tells me that a girl . . . a poor, sad girl, was in face so like to me . . . that His Grace must have been mistaken . . . and . . ."

"But, child . . . then why have told a lie? . . ."

"His Eminence told me what to say before the Court, and promised His Grace would be saved by it."

Her voice dropped to so low a murmur that no one heard it but the Queen . . . and Wess.e.x.

"I did it to save him!"

"A lie, Your Majesty," protested the Cardinal.

"The truth!" protested Ursula loudly. "I pray Your Majesty to look on me and him and see on whose face is writ the word--fear."

Almost as if in obedience to Ursula's words Mary Tudor turned and faced the Spanish Cardinal. He tried to meet her look boldly. Even in defeat there was a certain grandeur in this man.

He had staked and lost his own position, his future career, his hopes of a greater destiny, but he had succeeded in his schemes. He knew Mary Tudor well enough to rejoice in this--that she would never now break her word to Philip, even though she let the flood of her royal wrath fall full heavily upon him.

"Go back, my lord, to your royal master," said Queen Mary with lofty contempt. "My word is my bond, and my pledge to him is sacred; but tell him, an he wishes to win the heart of the Queen of England, he must send an honest man to woo her."

Then without another glance at him, without looking to see if he followed her or not, she beckoned to her ladies and gentlemen, her attendants and her courtiers, and, without once turning her royal head towards the spot where had died her happiness, she walked firmly in the direction of her Palace.

CHAPTER XLI

THE END

And now every one had gone.

The wintry sun was already sinking towards the west, faint purple shadows wrapped the alleys and bosquets of the park in dim and ghostly arms.

The last call of a belated robin broke the silence of the gathering dusk, then it too was silenced, and only the "hush--sh--sh--sh" of fallen leaves on the gravelled path murmured a soft accompaniment to the music of the night.