House of Torment Part 3

The air of the closet was heavy and oppressive, and glancing at the windows, he saw that it was no fancy of strained and excited nerves, but that the sky over the river was darkening, and the buildings upon London Bridge stood out with singular sharpness.

"A storm of thunder," said Don Diego indifferently, and then, with a gleam in his eyes, "and such a storm shall presently break over England that the air shall be cleared of heresy by the lightnings of Holy Church--ah! here cometh His Grace of London!"

The Captain of the Guard had suddenly beaten upon the door. It was flung open, and Sir James Clinton, who had come down the pa.s.sage from the Ante-room, preceded the Bishop, and announced him in a loud, sonorous voice.

Johnnie instinctively drew himself up to attention, the chaplain hastened forward, King Philip, in the window, stood upright, and the Queen remained seated. From the wall Johnnie saw all that happened quite distinctly. The scene was one which he never forgot.

There was the sudden stir and movement of his lordship's entrance, the alteration and grouping of the people in the closet, the challenge of the captain at the door, the heralding voice of Sir James--and then, into the room, which was momentarily growing darker as the thunder clouds advanced on London, Bishop Bonner came.

The man _pressed_ into the room, swift, sudden, a.s.sertive. In his scarlet chimere and white rochet, with his bullet head and bristling beard, it was as though a sh.e.l.l had fallen into the room.

A streak of livid light fell upon his face--set, determined, and alive with purpose--and the man's eyes, greenish brown and very bright, caught a baleful fire from the waning gleam.

Then, with almost indecent haste, he brushed past John Commendone and the eager Spanish monk, and knelt before the Queen.

He kissed her hand, and the hand of the King Consort also, with some murmured words which Johnnie could not catch. Then he rose, and the Queen, as she had done upon her arrival from Winchester after her marriage, knelt for his blessing.

Commendone and the chaplain knelt also; the King of Spain bowed his head, as the rapid, breathless pattering Latin filled the place, and one outstretched hand--two white fingers and one white thumb--quivered for a moment and sank in the leaden light.

There was a new grouping of figures, some quick talk, and then the Queen's great voice filled the room.

"Mr. Commendone! See that there are lights!"

Johnnie stumbled out of the closet, now dark as at late evening, strode down the pa.s.sage, burst into the Ante-room, and called out loudly, "Bring candles, bring candles!"

Even as he said it there was a terrible crash of thunder high in the air above the Palace, and a simultaneous flash of lightning, which lit up the sombre Ante-room with a blinding and ghostly radiance for the fraction of a second.

White faces immobile as pictures, tense forms of all waiting there, and then the voice of Sir James and the hurrying of feet as the servants rushed away....

It was soon done. While the thunder pealed and stammered overhead, the amethyst lightning sheets flickered and cracked, the white whips of the fork-lightning cut into the black and purple gloom, a little procession was made, and gentlemen ushers followed Johnnie back to the Royal Closet, carrying candles in their ma.s.sive silver sconces, dozens of twinkling orange points to illumine what was to be done.

The door was closed. The King, Queen, and the Bishop sat down at the central table upon which all the lights were set.

Don Diego Deza stood behind Philip's chair.

The Queen turned to John.

"Stand at the door, Mr. Commendone," she said, "and with your sword drawn. No one is to come in. We are engaged upon affairs of state."

Her voice was a second to the continuous mutter of the thunder, low, fierce, and charged with menace. Save for the candles, the room was now quite dark.

A furious wind had risen and blew great gouts of hot rain upon the window-panes with a rattle as of distant artillery.

Johnnie drew his sword, held it point downwards, and stood erect, guarding the door. He could feel the tapestry which covered it moving behind him, bellying out and pressing gently upon his back.

He could see the faces of the people at the table very distinctly.

The King of Spain and his chaplain were in profile to him. The Queen and the Bishop of London he saw full-face. He had not met the Bishop before, though he had heard much about him, and it was on the prelate's countenance that his glance of curiosity first fell.

Young as he was, Johnnie had already begun to cultivate that cool scrutiny and estimation of character which was to stand him in such stead during the years that were to come. He watched the face of Edmund Bonner, or b.o.n.e.r, as the Bishop was more generally called at that time, with intense interest. b.o.n.e.r was to the Queen what the Dominican Deza was to her husband. The two priests ruled two monarchs.

In the yellow candle-light, an oasis of radiance in the murk and gloom of the storm, the faces of the people round the table hid nothing. The Bishop was bullet-headed, had protruding eyes, a bright colour, and his moustache and beard only partially hid lips that were red and full. The lips were red and full, there was a coa.r.s.eness, and even sensuality, about them, which was, nevertheless, oddly at war with their determination and inflexibility. The young man, pure and fastidious himself, immediately realised that b.o.n.e.r was not vicious in the ordinary meaning of the word. One hears a good deal about "thin, cruel lips"--the Queen had them, indeed--but there are full and blood-charged lips which are cruel too. And these were the lips of the Bishop of London.

There was a huge force about the man. He was plebeian, common, but strong.

Don Diego, Commendone himself, the Queen and her husband, were all aristocrats in their different degree, bred from a line--pedigree people.

That was the bond between them.

The Bishop was outside all this, impatient of it, indeed; but even while the groom of the body twirled his moustache with an almost mechanical gesture of disgust and misliking, he felt the power of the man.

And no historian has ever ventured to deny that. The natural son of the hedge-priest, George Savage--himself a b.a.s.t.a.r.d--walked life with a shield of brutal power as his armour. The blood-stained man from whom--a few years after--Queen Elizabeth turned away with a shudder of irrepressible horror, was the man who had dared to browbeat and bully Pope Clement VII himself. He took a personal and undignified delight in the details of physical and mental torture of his victims. In 1546 he had watched with his own eyes the convulsions of Dame Anne Askew upon the rack. He was sincere, inflexible, and remarkable for obstinacy in everything except principle. As Amba.s.sador to Paris in Henry's reign he had smuggled over printed sheets of Coverdale's and Grafton's translation of the Bible in his baggage--the personal effects of an amba.s.sador being then, as now, immune from prying eyes. During the Protectorate he had lain in prison, and now the strenuous opposer of papal claims in olden days was a bishop in full communion with Rome.

... He was speaking now, in a loud and vulgar voice, which even the presence of their Majesties failed to soften or subdue.

--"And this, so please Your Grace, is but a sign and indication of the spirit abroad. There is no surcease from it. We shall do well to gird us up and scourge this heresy from England. This letter was delivered by an unknown woman to my chaplain, Father Holmes. 'Tis a sign of the times."

He unfolded a paper and began to read.

"I see that you are set all in a rage like a ravening wolf against the poor lambs of Christ appointed to the slaughter for the testimony of the truth. Indeed, you are called the common cut-throat and general slaughter-slave to all the bishops of England; and therefore 'tis wisdom for me and all other simple sheep of the Lord to keep us out of your butcher's stall as long as we can. The very papists themselves begin now to abhor your blood-thirstiness, and speak shame of your tyranny. Like tyranny, believe me, my lord, any child that can any whit speak, can call you by your name and say, 'b.l.o.o.d.y b.o.n.e.r is Bishop of London'; and every man hath it as perfectly upon his fingers'-ends as his Paternoster, how many you, for your part, have burned with fire and famished in prison; they say the whole sum surmounteth to forty persons within this three-quarters of this year. Therefore, my lord, though your lordship believeth that there is neither heaven nor h.e.l.l nor G.o.d nor devil, yet if your lordship love your own honesty, which was lost long agone, you were best to surcease from this cruel burning of Christian men, and also from murdering of some in prison, for that, indeed, offendeth men's minds most. Therefore, say not but a woman gave you warning, if you list to take it. And as for the obtaining of your popish purpose in suppressing the Truth, I put you out of doubt, you shall not obtain it as long as you go to work this way as ye do; for verily I believe that you have lost the hearts of twenty thousand that were rank papists within this twelve months."

The Bishop put the letter down upon the table and beat upon it with his clenched fist. His face was alight with inquiry and anger.

Every one took it in a different fashion.

Philip crossed himself and said nothing, formal, cold, and almost uninterested. Don Diego crossed himself also. His face was stern, but his eyes flitted hither and thither, sparkling in the light.

Then the Queen's great voice boomed out into the place, drowning the thunder and the beating rain upon the window-panes, pressing in gouts of sound on the hot air of the closet.

Her face was bagged and pouched like a quilt. All womanhood was wiped out of it--lips white, eyes like ice....

"I'll stamp it out of this realm! I'll burn it out. Jesus! but we will burn it out!"

The Bishop's face was trembling with excitement. He thrust a paper in front of the Queen.

"Madam," he said, "this is the warrant for Doctor Rowland Taylor."

Mary caught up a pen and wrote her name at the foot of the doc.u.ment in the neat separated letters of one accustomed to write in Greek, below the signature of the Chancellor Gardiner and the Lords Montague and Wharton, judges of the Legantine Court for the trial of heretics.

"I will make short with him," the Queen said, "and of all blasphemers and heretics. There is the paper, my lord, with my hand to it. A black knave this, they tell me, and withal very stubborn and l.u.s.ty in blasphemy."

"A very black knave, Madam. I performed the ceremony of degradation upon him yestereen, and, by my troth, never did the walls of Newgate chapel shelter such a rogue before. He would not put on the vestments which I was to strip from him, and was then, at my order, robed by another. And when he was thoroughly furnished therewith, he set his hands to his sides and cried, 'How say you, my lord, am I not a goodly fool? How say you, my masters, if I were in Chepe, should I not have boys enough to laugh at these apish toys?'"

The Queen crossed herself. Her face blazed with fury. "Dog!" she cried.

"Perchance he will sing another tune to-morrow morn. But what more?"

"I took my crosier-staff to smite him on the breast," the Bishop continued. "And upon that Mr. Holmes, that is my chaplain, said, 'Strike him not, my lord, for he will sure strike again.' 'Yes, and by St. Peter will I,' quoth Doctor Taylor. 'The cause is Christ's, and I were no good Christian if I would not fight in my Master's quarrel.' So I laid my curse on him, and struck him not."

The King's large, sombre face twisted into a cold sneer.