The Tangled Skein Part 47

"To defend mine honour the Duke of Wess.e.x killed Don Miguel."

"This you will swear to be true?"

"Without hope of absolution."

"And you will make this tardy confession, my daughter, to His Grace's judges freely?"

"Whenever it is deemed necessary I will make the confession to His Grace's judges freely."

She swayed as if her senses were leaving her. Instinctively the Cardinal put out his arm to support her, but with a mighty effort she drew herself together, and looked down upon him with all the regal majesty of her own sublime self-sacrifice.

But, flushed with victory, His Eminence cared nothing for the contempt of the vanquished. It had been a hard-fought battle. His Grace was saved from death and Queen Mary Tudor could not help but keep her word. It was a triumph indeed!

He touched a hand-bell, a servant appeared. A few whispered instructions and the end was accomplished at last.

But, G.o.d in Heaven, at what terrible cost!

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

WESTMINSTER HALL

A surging, seething crowd! heads upon heads in a dense, compact ma.s.s--a double row of men, women, boys, and girls, held back with difficulty by the Serjeant-at-Arms and his men, armed with halberds and tipstaves!

A crowd come to gape and grin, some to sympathize--but only a very few of these. All come to see how the proudest gentleman in England would bear himself in a felon's dock.

The dull grey light of an early November day came in ghostly streaks through the huge window of the Hall, throwing into bold relief the scarlet-clad figures of the twenty-four n.o.ble lords who were to be the Duke's triers, the gorgeous robes of the judges, and the dull black gowns of the attorneys and the minor dignitaries.

Quick, excited whispers pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth as now and then a familiar face detached itself from the crowd of all these awesome personages and was recognized by the people.

"That's my lord Huntingdon," said an elderly merchant, pointing to a grey-bearded lord who had just taken his seat. "I mind him well when first he bought a pair of spurs in my father's shop."

"Aye! and there's Lord Northampton," commented another, "and mightily thankful he should be not to be standing at the bar himself for high treason."

"That's Mr. Gilbert Gerard, the Attorney-General," quoth one who knew.

"Sh! sh! sh!" came in excited whispers all around, "here comes the Lord High Steward himself and all the judges."

The procession awed the populace, for every new-comer--gorgeously apparelled though he was--wore a grave face and a saddened mien. The crowd, who had come for a day's pageant, a frolic not unlike the happy doings at East Molesey Fair, felt suddenly silenced and oppressed. Some of the women shivered beneath their thin kerchiefs; the devout ones made a quick sign of the cross, as if prayers were about to begin.

It was all so solemn and so grand, in this dim winter's light, wherein shadows seemed to hover all around, hiding the remote corners of the Hall and dwelling mysteriously on that tall scaffold, whereon one by one these reverend personages took their allotted seats.

The Queen's Serjeant carried the white rod, and escorted my Lord High Steward to the great chair, covered with a gorgeous cloth, which dominated the entire hall. To the right and left of him sat the twenty-four peers with their ermine-decked cloaks over their shoulders.

Below them sat the Lord Chief Justice of England, the Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas, and the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and also the rest of the minor judges. The Clerk of the Crown, in black gown and yellow hose, had been busy some time conversing with his secondary. Next to the judges sat several gentlemen of the Queen's household, their silken doublets of rich though sombre hues adding a crisp note of contrasting colour to the harmonies in scarlet and dull oak, which filled in the background of the picture.

Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, sat close by with six of the Queen's Privy Councillors, also on their left the Master of Requests and other persons of note. Immediately facing the bar was the Queen's Serjeant, the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, and the Attorney-General of the Court of Wards. The Recorder of London had been given a special seat, also Mr. Thomas Norton, the Queen's printer, who wrote out the historical account of the trial, which has been preserved amongst the State papers.

Then my Lord High Steward stood up bareheaded, holding the white rod in his hand, and the Serjeant-at-Arms stepped forward into the immediate centre of the Hall facing the crowd, and read out the proclamation as follows:--

"My Lord's Grace, the Queen's Majesty's Commissioner, High Steward of England, commandeth every man to keep silence on pain of imprisonment and to hear the Queen's Commission read."

This was followed by the reading of the Queen's Commission by the Clerk of the Crown, after which--still standing--he read the indictment in a loud voice, so that all might hear.

"Whereas Robert d'Esclade, fifth Duke of Wess.e.x, did on the night of the fourteenth of October of this year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and fifty-three, unlawfully kill Don Miguel, Marquis de Suarez, grandee of Spain . . ."

The voice of the Clerk went droning on, the people amazed, horrified, tried not to lose one single word of this strange doc.u.ment which so loudly proclaimed the fact that a dastardly crime, unparalleled in its cowardice and ferocity, had been committed by one who until now had stood above all Englishmen as a model of honour, loyalty, and truth.

With every fresh charge, skilfully woven together and intertwined with sundry depositions obtained from my lord Cardinal and his retinue, the crowd of spectators realized more and more that they were face to face with a weird and mysterious tragedy, not a pageant, but an appalling drama, the prologue of which was being enacted before them now.

It seemed, as the Clerk pursued his reading, that he was slowly unfolding mesh by mesh a hideous web, in the midst of which the presence of a death-dealing and loathsome spider could as yet only be dimly guessed.

A close, clinging web from which no man, be he the premier peer of England or the humblest commoner, could ever hope to escape.

The web of a rough and misguided justice, of a law of the talion, retributive and blind, distributing with an impartial hand condemnations and punishments to guilty and innocent alike, to the martyr and to the felon, to the coward and the deceived.

This was not a decadent, puny century, peopled with neurotics and feeble-minded weaklings, it was a century of men!--men who were giants alike in their virtues and their pa.s.sions, their vices and their atrocities, narrow in their views, but staunch in their beliefs, savage in their creeds and prejudices--but MEN for all that.

"The more heinous the offence the less chance shall the prisoner have of justifying his conduct." That was the dictate of the law.

"For truly," said Sir Robert Catline, Lord Chief Justice of England, in the course of the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton for high treason, "justice must not be confused by sundry arguments in the prisoner's cause, which might lead to his acquittal and the non-punishment of so grave a fault."

Witnesses were seldom, if ever, examined in the presence of the accused.

Depositions were extorted--often by torture, always by threats--from persons who happened to be friends or a.s.sociates of the prisoner.

An acquittal?--perish the thought! Let the citizen look to himself ere he fell in the clutches of his country's justice; once there he had little or no chance of proving his innocence.

Lest the guilty escape!

Always that awful possibility! Rough justice demanded punishment--always punishment--lest the guilty escape!

And the people as they listened knew that they had come to see a man's last day upon earth.

Proud, rich, fastidious Wess.e.x! this is the end of all things! Pomp and ceremony, gorgeous robes and costly apparels! these to speed thee on thy way; but as inevitably as the dull winter's night must follow this grey November morning, so will pomp and circ.u.mstance fade away into the past and leave thee with but one red-clad figure by thy side--that of the headsman with the axe.

Justice to-day could make short work of her duties.

Robert d'Esclade, fifth Duke of Wess.e.x, had confessed to his crime, why should Justice trouble herself to prove that which was already admitted?

She had merely to think out the form and severity of the punishment for this man of high degree, who had sunk and stooped so low.

For form's sake a few depositions had been taken, for this was an unusual event--a specially atrocious crime! the murder of a foreign envoy at the Court of the Queen of England, and at the hand of the premier peer of the realm!

The Cardinal de Moreno, envoy in chief of His Majesty the King of Spain, had given the matter a political significance. In the name of his royal master he had demanded judgment on that most monstrous felony, and the exercise of the full rigour of the law. The Duke of Wess.e.x had been a rival suitor for the hand of the Queen of England, and he had--presumably--wilfully removed a successful diplomatist who threatened to thwart his projects.

And thus Wess.e.x was arraigned for treason as well as for murder, and the indictment set forth the depositions of my lord Cardinal and those of his servant Pasquale, all of which His Grace had declined to peruse. He knew that these statements were lies, guessed well enough how his enemies would heap proof upon proof to bolster up his own brief confession.