The King's Achievement Part 68

"Certainly, my Lord. It is true."

"You hindered this piece being played? And you used my name?"

"I told them who I was--yes."

Cromwell slapped the paper down.

"Well, that is to use my name, is it not, Mr. Torridon?"

"I suppose it is."

"You suppose it is! And tell me, if you please, why you hindered it."

"I hindered it because it was not decent. My mother had been buried that day. My father asked me to do so."

"Not decent! When the mummers have my authority!

"If your Lordship does not understand the indecency, I cannot explain it."

Ralph was growing angry now. It was not often that Cromwell treated him like a naughty boy; and he was beginning to resent it.

The other stared at him under black brows.

"You are insolent, sir."

Ralph bowed.

"See here," said Cromwell, "my men must have no master but me. They must leave houses and brethren and sisters for my sake. You should understand that by now; and that I repay them a hundredfold. You have been long enough in my service to know it. I have said enough. You can sit down, Mr. Torridon."

Ralph went to his seat in a storm of fury. He felt he was supremely in the right--in the right in stopping the play, and still more so for not destroying the complaint when it was in his hands. He had been scolded like a school-child, insulted and shouted down. His hand shook as he took up his pen, and he kept his back resolutely turned to his master.

Once he was obliged to ask him a question, and he did so with an icy aloofness. Cromwell answered him curtly, but not unkindly, and he went to his seat again still angry.

When dinner-time came near, he rose, bowed slightly to Cromwell and went towards the door. As his fingers touched the handle he heard his name called; and turned round to see the other looking at him oddly.

"Mr. Torridon--you will dine with me?"

"I regret I cannot, my Lord," said Ralph; and went out of the room.

There were no explanations or apologies on either side when they met again; but in a few days their behaviour to one another was as usual.

Yet underneath the smooth surface Ralph's heart rankled and p.r.i.c.ked with resentment.

At the meeting of Parliament in April, the business in Cromwell's hands grow more and more heavy and distracting.

Ralph went with him to Westminster, and heard him deliver his eloquent little speech on the discord that prevailed in England, and the King's determination to restore peace and concord.

"On the Word of G.o.d," cried the statesman, speaking with extraordinary fervour, his eyes kindling as he looked round the silent crowded benches, and his left hand playing with his chain, "On the Word of G.o.d His Highness' princely mind is fixed; on this Word he depends for his sole support; and with all his might his Majesty will labour that error shall be taken away, and true doctrines be taught to his people, modelled by the rule of the Gospel."

Three days later when Ralph came into his master's room, Cromwell looked up at him with a strange animation in his dark eyes.

"Good-day, sir," he said; "I have news that I hope will please you. His Grace intends to confer on me one more mark of his favour. I am to be Earl of Ess.e.x."

It was startling news. Ralph had supposed that the minister was not standing so high with the King as formerly, since the unfortunate incident of the Cleves marriage. He congratulated him warmly.

"It is a happy omen," said the other. "Let us pray that it be a constellation and not a single star. There are others of my friends, Mr.

Torridon, who have claim to His Highness' grat.i.tude."

He looked at him smiling; and Ralph felt his heart quicken once more, as it always did, at the hint of an honour for himself.

The business of Parliament went on; and several important bills became law. A land-act was followed by one that withdrew from most of the towns of England the protection of a sanctuary in the case of certain specified crimes; the navy was dealt with; and then in spite of the promises of the previous years a heavy money-bill was pa.s.sed. Finally five more Catholics, four priests and a woman, were attainted for high treason on various charges.

Ralph was not altogether happy as May drew on. There began to be signs that his master's policy with regard to the Cleves alliance was losing ground in the councils of the State; but Cromwell himself seemed to acquiesce, so it appeared as if his own mind was beginning to change.

There was a letter to Pate, the amba.s.sador to the Emperor, that Ralph had to copy one day, and he gathered from it that conciliation was to be used towards Charles in place of the old defiance.

But he did not see much of Parliament affairs this month.

Cromwell had told him to sort a large quant.i.ty of private papers that had gradually acc.u.mulated in Ralph's own house at Westminster; for that he desired the removal of most of them to his own keeping.

They were an enormous ma.s.s of doc.u.ments, dealing with every sort and kind of the huge affairs that had pa.s.sed through Cromwell's hands for the last five years. They concerned hundreds of persons, living and dead--statesmen, n.o.bles, the foreign Courts, priests, Religious, farmers, tradesmen--there was scarcely a cla.s.s that was not represented there.

Ralph sat hour after hour in his chair with locked doors, sorting, docketting, and destroying; and amazed by this startling object-lesson of the vast work in which he had had a hand. There were secrets there that would burst like a bomb if they were made public--intrigues, bribes, threats, revelations; and little by little a bundle of the most important doc.u.ments acc.u.mulated on the table before him. The rest lay in heaps on the floor.

Those that he had set aside beneath his own eye were a miscellaneous set as regarded their contents; the only unity between them lay in the fact that they were especially perilous to Cromwell. Ralph felt as if he were handling gunpowder as he took them up one by one or added to the heap.

The new coronet that my Lord of Ess.e.x had lately put upon his head would not be there another day, if these were made public. There would not be left even a head to put it upon. Ralph knew that a great minister like his master was bound to have a finger in very curious affairs; but he had not recognised how exceptional these were, nor how many, until he had the bundle of papers before him. There were cases in which persons accused and even convicted of high treason had been set at liberty on Cromwell's sole authority without reference to the King; there were commissions issued in his name under similar conditions; there were papers containing drafts, in Cromwell's own hand of statements of doctrine declared heretical by the Six Articles, and of which copies had been distributed through the country at his express order; there were copies of letters to country-sheriffs ordering the release of convicted heretics and the imprisonment of their accusers; there were evidences of enormous bribes received by him for the perversion of justice.

Ralph finished his task one June evening, and sat dazed with work and excitement, his fingers soiled with ink, his tired eyes staring at the neat bundle before him.

The Privy Council, he knew, was sitting that afternoon. Even at this moment, probably, my Lord of Ess.e.x was laying down the law, speaking in the King's name, silencing his opponents by sheer force of will, but with the Royal power behind him. And here lay the papers.

He imagined to himself with a fanciful recklessness what would happen if he made his way into the Council-room, and laid them on the table. It would be just the end of all things for his master. There would be no more bullying and denouncing then on that side; it would be a matter of a fight for life.

The memory of his own grudge, only five months old, rose before his mind; and his tired brain grew hot and cloudy with resentment. He took up the bundle in his hand and wielded it a moment, as a man might test a sword. Here was a headsman's axe, ground and sharp.

Then he was ashamed; set the bundle down again, leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms, yawning.

What a glorious evening it was! He must go out and take the air for a little by the river; he would walk down towards Chelsea.

He rose up from his chair and went to the window, threw it open and leaned out. His house stood back a little from the street; and there was a s.p.a.ce of cobbled ground between his front-door and the uneven stones of the thorough fare. Opposite rose up one of the tall Westminster houses, pushing forward in its upper stories, with a hundred diamond panes bright in the slanting sunshine that poured down the street from the west. Overhead rose up the fantastic stately chimneys, against the brilliant evening sky, and to right and left the street pa.s.sed out of sight in a haze of sunlight.

It was a very quiet evening; the men had not yet begun to stream homewards from their occupations; and the women were busy within. A chorus of birds sounded somewhere overhead; but there was not a living creature to be seen except a dog asleep in the sunshine at the corner of the gravel.

It was delicious to lean out here, away from the fire that burned hot and red in the grate under its black ma.s.s of papers that had been destroyed,--out in the light and air. Ralph determined that he would let the fire die now; it would not be needed again.