A Ladder of Swords Part 12

Once more they knelt, and then slowly withdrew, with faces downcast and troubled. They had secret knowledge which she did not yet possess, but which at any moment she must know, and her ambiguous speech carried no conviction to their minds. Yet their conference with her was most opportune, for the news she must presently receive, brought by a messenger from Scotland who had outstripped all others, would no doubt move her to action which should set the minds of the people at rest, and go far to stem the tide of conspiracy flowing through the kingdom.

Elizabeth stood watching them, and remained gazing after they had disappeared; then, rousing herself, she turned to leave the room, and beckoned to Angele to follow.

XII

As twilight was giving place to night Angele was roused from the revery into which she had fallen, by the Duke's Daughter, who whispered to her that if she would have a pleasure given to but few, she would come quickly. Taking her hand, the Duke's Daughter--as bright and true and whimsical a spirit as ever lived in troubled days and under the aegis of the sword--led her swiftly to the Queen's chamber. They did not enter, but waited in a quiet gallery.

"The Queen is playing upon the virginals, and she playeth best when alone; so stand you here by this tapestry, and you shall have reward beyond payment," said the Duke's Daughter.

Angele had no thought that the Queen of her vanity had commanded that she be placed there as though secretly, and she listened dutifully at first; but presently her ears were ravished; and even the Duke's Daughter showed some surprise, for never had she heard the Queen play with such grace and feeling. The countenance of the musician was towards them, and, at last, as if by accident, Elizabeth looked up and saw the face of her lady.

"Spy! spy!" she cried; "come hither--come hither, all of you!"

When they had descended and knelt to her, she made as if she would punish the Duke's Daughter by striking her with a scarf that lay at her hand, but to Angele she said:

"How think you, then, hath that other greater skill--Darnley's wife, I mean?"

"Not she or any other hath so delighted me," said Angele, with worship in her eyes--so doth talent to majesty become lifted beyond its measure.

The Queen's eyes lighted. "We shall have dancing, then," she said.

"The dance hath charms for me. We shall not deny our youth. The heart shall keep as young as the body."

An instant later the room was full of dancers, and Elizabeth gave her hand to Leicester, who bent every faculty to pleasing her. His face had darkened as he had seen Angele beside her, but the Queen's graciousness, whether a.s.sumed or real, had returned, and her face carried a look of triumph and spirit and delight. Again and again she glanced towards Angele, and what she saw evidently gave her pleasure, for she laughed and disported herself with grace and an agreeable temper, and Leicester lent himself to her spirit with adroit wit and humility. He had seen his mistake of the morning, and was now intent to restore himself to favor.

He succeeded well, for the emotions roused in Elizabeth during the day, now heightened by vanity and emulation, found in him a centre upon which they could converge; and, in her mind, Angele, for the nonce, was disa.s.sociated from any thought of De la Foret. Leicester's undoubted gifts were well and cautiously directed, and his gift of a.s.sumed pa.s.sion--his heart was facile, and his gallantry knew no bounds--was put to dexterous use, convincing for the moment. The Queen seemed all complaisance again. Presently she had Angele brought to her.

"How doth her dance compare--she who hath wedded Darnley?"

"She danceth not so high nor disposedly, with no such joyous lightness as your high Majesty, but yet she moveth with circ.u.mspection."

"Circ.u.mspection--circ.u.mspection--that is no gift in dancing, which should be wilful yet airily composed, thoughtless yet inducing.

Circ.u.mspection!--in nothing else hath Mary shown it where she should.

'Tis like this Queen perversely to make a psalm of dancing, and then pirouette with sacred duty. But you have spoken the truth, and I am well content. So get you to your rest."

She tapped Angele's cheek. "You shall remain here to-night, 'tis too late for you to be sent abroad."

She was about to dismiss her, when there was a sudden stir. Cecil had entered and was making his way to the Queen, followed by two strangers. Elizabeth waited their approach.

"Your gracious Majesty," said Cecil, in a voice none heard save Elizabeth, for all had fallen back at a wave of her hand, "the Queen of Scots is the mother of a fair son."

Elizabeth's face flushed, then became pale, and she struck her knee with her clinched hand. "Who bringeth the news?" she inquired, in a sharp voice.

"Sir Andrew Melvill here."

"Who is with him yonder?"

"One who hath been attached to the Queen of Scots."

"He hath the ill look of such an one," she answered, and then said below her breath, bitterly: "She hath a son--and I am but a barren stock."

Rising, she added, hurriedly, "We will speak to the people at the May Day sports to-morrow. Let there be great feasting."

She motioned to Sir Andrew Melvill to come forward, and with a gesture of welcome and a promise of speech with him on the morrow she dismissed them.

Since the two strangers had entered, Angele's eyes had been fastened on the gentleman who accompanied Sir Andrew Melvill. Her first glance at him had sent a chill through her, and she remained confused and disturbed. In vain her memory strove to find where the man was set in her past. The time, the place, the event eluded her, but a sense of foreboding possessed her; and her eyes followed him with strained anxiety as he retired from the presence.

XIII

As had been arranged when Lempriere challenged Leicester, they met soon after dawn among the trees beside the Thames. A gentleman of the court, to whom the Duke's Daughter had previously presented Lempriere, gayly agreed to act as second, and gallantly attended the Lord of Rozel in his adventurous enterprise. There were few at court who had not some grudge against Leicester, few who would not willingly have done duty at such a time; for Leicester's friends were of fair-weather sort, ready to defend him, to support him, not for friendship, but for the crumbs that dropped from the table of his power. The favorite himself was attended by the Earl of Ealing, a youngster who had his spurs to win, who thought it policy to serve the great time-server. Two others also came.

It was a morning little made for deeds of rancor or of blood. As they pa.s.sed, the early morning mists above the green fields of Kent and Ess.e.x were being melted by the summer sun. The smell of ripening fruit came on them with pungent sweetness, their feet crashed odorously through clumps of tigerlilies, and the dew on the ribbon-gra.s.s shook glistening drops upon their velvets. Overhead the carolling of the thrush came swimming recklessly through the trees, and far over in the fields the ploughmen started upon the heavy courses of their labor; while here and there a poacher with bow and arrow slid through the green undergrowth, like spies hovering on an army's flank.

To Lempriere the morning carried no impression save that life was well worth living. No agitation pa.s.sed across his nerves, no apprehension reached his mind. He had no imagination; he loved the things that his eyes saw because they filled him with enjoyment; but why they were, or whence they came, or what they meant or boded, never gave him meditation. A vast epicurean, a consummate egotist, ripe with feeling and rich with energy, he could not believe that when he spoke the heavens would not fall. The stinging sweetness of the morning was a tonic to all his energies, an elation to his mind; he swaggered through the lush gra.s.ses and boskage as though marching to a marriage.

Leicester, on his part, no more caught at the meaning of the morning, at the long whisper of enlivened nature, than did his foe. The day gave to him no more than was his right. If the day was not fine, then Leicester was injured; but if the day was fine, then Leicester had his due. Moral blindness made him blind for the million deep teachings trembling round him. He felt only the garish and the splendid. So it was that at Kenilworth, where his Queen had visited him, the fetes that he had held would far outshine the fete which would take place in Greenwich Park on this May Day. The fete of this May Day would take place, but would he see it? The thought flashed through his mind that he might not; but he trod it underfoot; not through an inborn, primitive egotism like that of Lempriere, but through an innate arrogance, an unalterable belief that fate was ever on his side. He had played so many tricks with fate, had mocked while taking its gifts so often, that, like the son who has flouted his indulgent father through innumerable times, he conceived that he should never be disinherited. It irked him that he should be fighting with a farmer, as he termed the seigneur of the Jersey isle; but there was in the event, too, a sense of relief, for he had a will for murder. Yesterday's events were still fresh in his mind; and he had a feeling that the letting of Lempriere's blood would cool his own and be some cure for the choler which the presence of these strangers at the court had wrought in him.

There were better swordsmen in England than he, but his skill was various, and he knew tricks of the trade which this primitive Norman could never have learned. He had some touch of wit, some biting observation, and, as he neared the place of the encounter, he played upon the coming event with a mordant frivolity. Not by nature a brave man, he was so much a fatalist, such a worshipper of his star, that he had acquired an artificial courage which had served him well. The unschooled gentlemen with him roared with laughter at his sallies, and they came to the place of meeting as though to a summer feast.

"Good-morrow, n.o.bility," said Leicester, with courtesy overdone, and bowing much too low.

"Good-morrow, valentine," answered Lempriere, flushing slightly at the disguised insult and rising to the moment.

"I hear the crop of fools is short this year in Jersey, and through no fault of yours--you've done your best most loyally," jeered Leicester, as he doffed his doublet, his gentlemen laughing in derision.

"'Tis true enough, my lord, and I have come to find new seed in England, where are fools to spare; as I trust in Heaven one shall be spared on this very day for planting yonder."

He was eaten with rage, but he was cool and steady. He was now in his linen and small-clothes, and looked like some untrained Hercules.

"Well said, n.o.bility," laughed Leicester, with an ugly look. "'Tis seed-time--let us measure out the seed. On guard!"

Never were two men such opposites, never two so seemingly ill-matched. Leicester's dark face and its sardonic look, his lithe figure, the nervous strength of his bearing, were in strong contrast to the bulking breadth, the perspiring robustness of Lempriere of Rozel. It was not easy of belief that Lempriere should be set to fight this matadore of a fighting court. But there they stood, Lempriere's face with a great-eyed gravity looming above his rotund figure like a moon above a purple cloud. But huge and loose though the seigneur's motions seemed, he was as intent as though there were but two beings in the universe, Leicester and himself. A strange alertness seemed to be upon him, and, as Leicester found when the swords crossed, he was quicker than his bulk gave warrant. His perfect health made his vision sure; and, though not a fine swordsman, he had done much fighting in his time, had been ever ready for the touch of steel, and had served some warlike days in fighting France, where fate had well befriended him. That which Leicester meant should be by-play of a moment became a full half-hour's desperate game. Leicester found that the thrust--the fatal thrust learned from an Italian master--he meant to give was met by a swift precision, responding to quick vision. Again and again he would have brought the end, but Lempriere heavily foiled him. The wound which the seigneur got at last, meant to be mortal, was saved from that by the facility of a quick apprehension.

Indeed, for a time the issue had seemed doubtful, for the endurance and persistence of the seigneur made for exasperation and recklessness in his antagonist, and once blood was drawn from the wrist of the great man; but at length Lempriere went upon the aggressive. Here he erred, for Leicester found the chance for which he had man[oe]uvred--to use the feint and thrust got out of Italy. He brought his enemy low, but only after a duel the like of which had never been seen at the court of England. The matadore had slain his bull at last, but had done no justice to his reputation. Never did man more gallantly sustain his honor with heaviest odds against him than did the Seigneur of Rozel that day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'HANG FAST TO YOUR HONORS BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH, MY LORD'"]

As he was carried away by the merry gentlemen of the court, he called back to the favorite:

"Leicester is not so great a swordsman, after all. Hang fast to your honors by the skin of your teeth, my lord."