The Fifth Queen Crowned Part 29

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had builded him a new tennis court in where his stables had been before poverty had caused him to sell the major part of his horseflesh. He called to him the Duke of Norfolk, who was of the Papist cause, and Sir Henry Wriothesley who was always betwixt and between, according as the cat jumped, to see this new building of his that was made of a roofed-in quadrangle where the stable doors were bricked up or barred to make the grille.

But though Norfolk and Wriothesley came very early in the afternoon, while it was yet light, to his house, they wasted most of the daylight hours in talking of things indifferent before they went to their inspection of this court. They stood talking in a long gallery beneath very high windows, and there were several chaplains and young priests and young gentlemen with them, and most of the talk was of a bear-baiting that there should be in Smithfield come Sat.u.r.day. Sir Henry Wriothesley matched seven of his dogs against the seven best of the Duke's, that they should the longer hold to the bear once they were on him, and most of the young gentlemen wagered for Sir Henry's dogs that he had bred from a mastiff out of Portugal.

But when this talk had mostly died down, and when already twilight had long fallen, the Bishop said--

'Come, let us visit this new tennis place of mine. I think I shall show you somewhat that you have not before seen.'

He bade, however, his gentlemen and priests to stay where they were, for they had all many times seen the court or building. When he led the way, prelatical and black, for the Duke and Wriothesley, into the lower corridors of his house, the priests and young gentlemen bowed behind his back, one at the other.

In the courtyard there were four hounds of a heavy and stocky breed that came bounding and baying all round them, so that it was only by vigilance that Gardiner could save Wriothesley's shins, for he was a man that all dogs and children hated.

'Sirs,' the Bishop said, 'these dogs that ye see and hear will let no man but me--not even my grooms or stablemen--pa.s.s this yard. I have bred them to that so I may be secret when I will.'

He set the key in the door that was in the bottom wall of the court.

'There is no other door here save that which goes into the stable where the grille is. There I have a door to enter and fetch out the b.a.l.l.s that pa.s.s there.'

In the court itself it was absolute blackness.

'I trow we may talk very well without lights,' he said. 'Come into this far corner.'

Yet, though there was no fear of being overheard, each of these three stole almost on tiptoe and held his breath, and in the dark and shadowy place they made a more dark and more shadowy patch with their heads all close together.

Suddenly it was as if the Bishop dropped the veil that covered his pa.s.sions.

'I may well build tennis courts,' he said, and his voice had a ring of wild and malignant pa.s.sion. 'I may well build courts for tennis play.

Nothing else is left for me to do.'

In the blackness no word came from his listeners.

'You too may do the like,' the Bishop said. 'But I would you do it quickly, for soon neither the one nor the other of you but will be stripped so bare that you shall not have enough to buy b.a.l.l.s with.'

The Duke made an impatient sound like a drawing in of his breath, but still he spoke no word.

'I tell you, both of you,' the Bishop's voice came, 'that all of us have been fooled. Who was it that helped to set on high this one that now presses us down? I did! I!...

'It was I that called the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what grat.i.tude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set this woman where she sits....'

'I too have my griefs,' the Duke of Norfolk's voice came.

'And I, G.o.d wot,' came Wriothesley's.

'Why, you have been fooled,' Gardiner's voice; 'and well you know it.

For who was it that sent you both, one after the other, into France thinking that you might make a match between the Lady Royal and the Duke of Orleans?--Who but the Queen?--For well she knew that ye loved the French and their King as they had been your brothers. And well we know now that never in the mind of her, nor in that of the King whom she bewitches and enslaves, was there any thought save that the Lady Royal should be wedded to Spain. So ye are fooled.'

He let his voice sink low; then he raised it again--

'Fooled! Fooled! Fooled! You two and I. For who of your friends the French shall ever believe again word that you utter. And all your goods and lands this Queen will have for the Church, so that she may have utter power with a parcel of new shavelings, that will not withstand her. So all the land will come in to her leash.... We are fooled and ruined, ye and I alike.'

'Well, we know this,' the Duke's voice said distastefully. 'You have no need to rehea.r.s.e griefs that too well we feel. There is no lord, either of our part or of the other, that would not have her down.'

'But what will ye do?' Gardiner said.

'Nothing may we do!' the voice of Wriothesley with its dismal terror came to their ears. 'The King is too firmly her Highness's man.'

'Her "Highness,"' the Bishop mocked him with a bitter scorn. 'I believe you would yet curry favour with this Queen of straw.'

'It is a man's province to be favourable in the eyes of his Prince,' the buried voice came again. 'If I could win her favour I would. But well ye know there is no way.'

'Ye ha' mingled too much with Lutheran swine,' the Bishop said. 'Now it is too late for you.'

'So it is,' Wriothesley said. 'I think you, Bishop, would have done it too had you been able to make your account of it.'

The Bishop snarled invisibly.

But the voice of Norfolk came malignantly upon them.

'This is all of a piece with your silly schemings. Did I come here to hear ye wrangle? It is peril enow to come here. What will ye do?'

'I will make a pact with him of the other side?' the Bishop said.

'Misery!' the Duke said; 'did I come here to hear this madness? You and Cranmer have sought each other's heads this ten years. Will you seek his aid now? What may he do? He is as rotten a reed as thou or Wriothesley.'

The Bishop cried suddenly with a loud voice--

'Ho, there! Come you out!'

Norfolk set his hand to his sword and so did Wriothesley. It was in both their minds, as it were one thought, that if this was a treason of the Bishop's he should there die.

From the blackness of the wall sides where the grille was there came the sound of a terroring lock and a creaking door.

'G.o.d!' Norfolk said; 'who is this?'

There came the sound of breathing of one man who walked with noiseless shoes.

'Have you heard enow to make you believe that these lords' hearts are true to the endeavour of casting the Queen down?'

'I have heard enow,' a smooth voice said. 'I never thought it had been otherwise.'

'Who is this?' Wriothesley said. 'I will know who this is that has heard us.'

'You fool,' Gardiner said; 'this man is of the other side.'

'They have come to you!' Norfolk said.

'To whom else should we come,' the voice answered.

A subtler silence of agitation and thought was between these two men. At last Gardiner said--