House of Torment Part 4

"_Perro labrador nunca buen mordedor_--a barking dog is never a good fighter," he said. "I shall watch this clerk-convict to-morrow. Methinks he will not be so l.u.s.ty at his burning."

The Bishop looked up quickly with surprise in his face.

"My lord," the Queen said to him, "His Majesty, as is both just and right, desireth to see this blasphemer's end, and will report to me on the matter. Mr. Commendone, come here."

Johnnie advanced to the table.

"You will go to Sir John Shelton," the Queen went on, "and learn from him all that hath been arranged for the burning of this heretic. The King will ride with the party and you in close attendance upon His Majesty. Only you and Sir John will know who the King is, and your life depends upon his safety. I am weary of this business. My heart grieves for Holy Church while these wolves are not let from their wickedness. Go now, Mr. Commendone, upon your errand, and report to Father Deza this afternoon."

She held out her hand. John knelt on one knee and kissed it.

As he left the closet the rain was still las.h.i.+ng the window-panes, and the candles burnt yellow in the gloom.

By a sudden flash of lightning he saw the four faces looking down at the death warrant. There was a slight smile on all of them, and the expressions were very intent.

The great white crucifix upon the panelling gleamed like a ghost.

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE OF SHAME; THE LADDER OF GLORY

It was ten o'clock in the evening. The thunderstorm of the morning had long since pa.s.sed away. The night was cool and still. There was no moon, but the sky above London was powdered with stars.

The Palace of the Tower was ablaze with lights. The King and Queen had supped in state at eight, and now a masque was in progress, held in the glorious hall which Henry III painted with the story of Antiochus.

The sweet music s.h.i.+vered out into the night as John Commendone came into the garden among the sleeping flowers.

"And the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe, and wine are in their feasts." Commendone had never read the Bible, but the words of the Prophet would have well expressed his mood had he but known them.

For he was melancholy and ill at ease. The exaltation of the morning had quite gone. Though he was still pleasantly conscious that he was in a fair way to great good fortune, some of the savour was lost. He could not forget the lurid scene in the Closet--the four faces haunted him still. And he knew also that a strange and probably terrible experience waited him during the next few hours.

"G.o.d on the Cross," he said to himself, snapping his fingers in perplexity and misease--it was the fas.h.i.+on at Court to use the great Tudor oaths--"I am come to touch with life--real life at last. And I am not sure that I like it. But 'tis too new as yet. I must be as other men are, I suppose!"

As he walked alone in the night, and the cool air played upon his face, he began to realise how placid, how much upon the surface, his life had always been until now. He had come to Court perfectly equipped by nature, birth, and training for the work of pageantry, a picturesque part in the retinue of kings. He had fallen into his place quite naturally. It all came easy to him. He had no trace of the "young gentleman from the country" about him--he might have started life as a Court page.

But the real emotions of life, the under-currents, the hates, loves, and strivings, had all been a closed book. He recognised their existence, but never thought they would or could affect him. He had imagined that he would always be aloof, an interested spectator, untouched, untroubled.

And he knew to-night that all this had been but a phantom of his brain.

He was to be as other men. Life had got hold on him at last, stern and relentless.

"To-night," he thought, "I really begin to live. I am quickened to action. Some day, anon, I too must make a great decision, one way or the other. The scene is set, they are pulling the traverse from before it, the play begins.

"I am a fair white page," he said to himself, "on which nothing is writ, I have ever been that. To-night comes Master Scrivener. 'I have a mind to write upon thee,' he saith, and needs be that I submit."

He sighed.

The music came to him, sweet and gracious. The long orange-litten windows of the Palace spoke of the splendours within.

But he thought of a man--whose name he had never heard until that morning--lying in some dark room, waiting for those who were to come for him, the man whom he would watch burning before the sun had set again.

It had been an evening of incomparable splendour.

The King and Queen had been served with all the panoply of state. The Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, Lord Paget and Lord Rochester, had been in close attendance.

The Duke had held the ewer of water, Paget and Rochester the bason and napkin. After the ablutions the Bishop of London said grace.

The Queen blazed with jewels. The life of seclusion she had led before her accession had by no means dulled the love of splendour inherent in her family. Even the French amba.s.sador, well used to pomp and display, leaves his own astonishment on record.

She wore raised cloth of gold, and round her thin throat was a partlet or collar of emeralds. Her stomacher was of diamonds, an almost barbaric display of twinkling fire, and over her gold caul was a cap of black velvet sewn with pearls.

During the whole of supper it was remarked that Her Grace was merry. The gay lords and ladies who surrounded her and the King--for all alike, young maids and grey-haired dames of sixty must blaze and sparkle too--nodded and whispered to each other, wondering at this high good-humour.

When the Server advanced with his white wand, heading the procession of yeomen-servers with the gilt dishes of the second course--he was a fat pottle-bellied man--the Queen turned to the Duke of Norfolk.

"_Dame!_" she said in French, "here is a prancing pie! _Ma mye!_ A capon of high grease! Methinks this gentleman hath a very single eye for the larder!"

"Yes, m'am," the Duke answered, "and so would make a better feast for Polypheme than e'er the lean Odysseus."

They went on with their play of words upon the names of the dishes in the menu....

"But say rather a porpoise in armour."

"Halibut engrailed, Madam, hath a face of peculiar whiteness like the under belly of that fis.h.!.+"

"A jowl of sturgeon!"

"A Florentine of puff paste, m'am."

"_Habet!_" the Queen replied, "I can't better that. Could you, Lady Paget? You are a great jester."

Lady Paget, a stately white-haired dame, bowed to the Duke and then to the Queen.

"His Grace is quick in the riposte," she said, "and if Your Majesty gives him the palm--_qui meruit ferat_! But capon of high grease for my liking."

"But you've said nothing, Lady Paget."

"My wit is like my body, m'am, grown old and rheumy. The salad days of it are over. I abdicate in favour of youth."

Again this adroit lady bowed.

The Queen flushed up, obviously pleased with the compliment. She looked at the King to see if he had heard or understood it.

The King had been talking to the Bishop of London, partly in such Latin as he could muster, which was not much, but princ.i.p.ally with the aid of Don Diego Deza, who stood behind His Majesty's chair, and acted as interpreter--the Dominican speaking English fluently.