When Knighthood Was in Flower Part 20

"How are we to avoid it? Have no fear of that, my lord; I will show you."

"Oh! but my dear princess; permit me; you do not seem to know your brother; you cannot in any way avoid this marriage. I believe he will imprison you and put you on bread and water to force your consent. I am sure you had better do willingly that which you will eventually be compelled to do anyway; and besides, there is another thought that has come to me; shall I speak plainly before Lady Jane Bolingbroke?"

"I have no secrets from her."

"Very well; it is this: Louis is old and very feeble; he cannot live long, and it may be that you can, by a ready consent now, exact a promise from your brother to allow you your own choice in the event of a second marriage. You might in that way purchase what you could not bring about in any other way."

"How do you know that I want to purchase aught in any way, Master Wolsey? I most certainly do not intend to do so by marrying France."

"I do not know that you wish to purchase anything, but a woman's heart is not always under her full control, and it sometimes goes out to one very far beneath her in station, but the equal of any man on earth in grandeur of soul and n.o.bleness of nature. It might be that there is such a man whom any woman would be amply justified in purchasing at any sacrifice--doubly so if it were buying happiness for two."

His meaning was too plain even to pretend to misunderstand, and Mary's eyes flashed at him, as her face broke into a dimpling smile in spite of her.

Wolsey thought he had won, and to clinch the victory said, in his forceful manner: "Louis XII will not live a year; let me carry to the king your consent, and I guarantee you his promise as to a second marriage."

In an instant Mary's eyes shot fire, and her face was like the blackest storm cloud.

"Carry this to the king: that I will see him and the whole kingdom sunk in h.e.l.l before I will marry Louis of France. That is my answer once and for all. Good even', Master Wolsey." And she swept out of the room with head up and dilating nostrils, the very picture of defiance.

St. George! She must have looked superb. She was one of the few persons whom anger and disdain and the other pa.s.sions which we call ungentle seemed to illumine--they were so strong in her, and yet not violent. It seemed that every deep emotion but added to her beauty and brought it out, as the light within a church brings out the exquisite figuring on the windows.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

After Wolsey had gone, Jane said to Mary: "Don't you think it would have been better had you sent a softer answer to your brother? I believe you could reach his heart even now if you were to make the effort. You have not tried in this matter as you did in the others."

"Perhaps you are right, Jane. I will go to Henry."

Mary waited until she knew the king was alone, and then went to him.

On entering the room, she said: "Brother, I sent a hasty message to you by the Bishop of Lincoln this morning, and have come to ask your forgiveness."

"Ah! little sister; I thought you would change your mind. Now you are a good girl."

"Oh! do not misunderstand me; I asked your forgiveness for the message; as to the marriage, I came to tell you that it would kill me and that I could not bear it. Oh! brother, you are not a woman--you cannot know." Henry flew into a pa.s.sion, and with oaths and curses ordered her to leave him unless she was ready to give her consent. She had but two courses to take, so she left with her heart full of hatred for the most brutal wretch who ever sat upon a throne--and that is making an extreme case. As she was going, she turned upon him like a fury, and exclaimed:

"Never, never! Do you hear? Never!"

Preparations went on for the marriage just as if Mary had given her solemn consent. The important work of providing the trousseau began at once, and the more important matter of securing the loan from the London merchants was pushed along rapidly. The good citizens might cling affectionately to their angels, double angels, crowns and pounds sterling, but the fear in which they held the king, and a little patting of the royal hand upon the plebeian head, worked the charm, and out came the yellow gold, never to be seen again, G.o.d wot. Under the stimulus of the royal smile they were ready to shout themselves hoa.r.s.e, and to eat and drink themselves red in the face in celebration of the wedding day. In short, they were ready to be tickled nearly to death for the honor of paying to a wretched old lecher a wagon-load of gold to accept, as a gracious gift, the most beautiful heart-broken girl in the world. That is, she would have been heart-broken had she not been inspired with courage. As it was, she wasted none of her energy in lamentations, but saved it all to fight with. Heavens! how she did fight! If a valiant defense ever deserved victory, it was in her case. When the queen went to her with silks and taffetas and fine cloths, to consult about the trousseau, although the theme was one which would interest almost any woman, she would have none of it, and when Catherine insisted upon her trying on a certain gown, she called her a blackamoor, tore the garment to pieces, and ordered her to leave the room.

Henry sent Wolsey to tell her that the 13th day of August had been fixed upon as the day of the marriage, de Longueville to act as the French king's proxy, and Wolsey was glad to come off with his life.

Matters were getting into a pretty tangle at the palace. Mary would not speak to the king, and poor Catherine was afraid to come within arm's length of her; Wolsey was glad to keep out of her way, and she flew at Buckingham with talons and beak upon first sight. As to the battle with Buckingham, it was short but decisive, and this was the way it came about: There had been a pa.s.sage between the duke and Brandon, in which the latter had tried to coax the former into a duel, the only way, of course, to settle the weighty matters between them.

Buckingham, however, had had a taste of Brandon's nimble sword play, and, bearing in mind Judson's fate, did not care for any more. They had met by accident, and Brandon, full of smiles and as polite as a Frenchman, greeted him.

"Doubtless my lord, having crossed swords twice with me, will do me the great honor to grant that privilege the third time, and will kindly tell me where my friend can wait upon a friend of his grace."

"There is no need for us to meet over that little affair. You had the best of it, and if I am satisfied you should be. I was really in the wrong, but I did not know the princess had invited you to her ball."

"Your lordship is pleased to evade," returned Brandon. "It is not the ball-room matter that I have to complain of; as you have rightly said, if you are satisfied, I certainly should be; but it is that your lordship, in the name of the king, instructed the keeper of Newgate prison to confine me in an underground cell, and prohibited communication with any of my friends. You so arranged it that my trial should be secret, both as to the day thereof and the event, in order that it should not be known to those who might be interested in my release. You promised the Lady Mary that you would procure my liberty, and thereby prevented her going to the king for that purpose, and afterwards told her that it had all been done, as promised, and that I had escaped to New Spain. It is because of this, my Lord Buckingham, that I now denounce you as a liar, a coward and a perjured knight, and demand of you such satisfaction as one man can give to another for mortal injury. If you refuse, I will kill you as I would a cut-throat the next time I meet you."

"I care nothing for your rant, fellow, but out of consideration for the feelings which your fancied injuries have put into your heart, I tell you that I did what I could to liberate you, and received from the keeper a promise that you should be allowed to escape. After that a certain letter addressed to you was discovered and fell into the hands of the king--a matter in which I had no part. As to your confinement and non-communication with your friends, that was at his majesty's command after he had seen the letter, as he will most certainly confirm to you. I say this for my own sake, not that I care what you may say or think."

This offer of confirmation by the king made it all sound like the truth, so much will even a little truth leaven a great lie; and part of Brandon's sails came down against the mast. The whole statement surprised him, and, most of all, the intercepted letter. What letter could it have been? It was puzzling, and yet he dared not ask.

As the duke was about to walk away, Brandon stopped him: "One moment, your grace; I am willing to admit what you have said, for I am not now prepared to contradict it; but there is yet another matter we have to settle. You attacked me on horseback, and tried to murder me in order to abduct two ladies that night over in Billingsgate. That you cannot deny. I watched you follow the ladies from Bridewell to Grouche's, and saw your face when your mask fell off during the melee as plainly as I see it now. If other proof is wanting, there is that sprained knee upon which your horse fell, causing you to limp even yet. I am sure now that my lord will meet me like a man; or would he prefer that I should go to the king and tell him and the world the whole shameful story? I have concealed it heretofore, thinking it my personal right and privilege to settle with you."

Buckingham turned a shade paler as he replied: "I do not meet such as you on the field of honor, and have no fear of your slander injuring me."

He felt secure in the thought that the girls did not know who had attacked them, and could not corroborate Brandon in his accusation, or Mary, surely, never would have appealed to him for help.

I was with Brandon--at a little distance, that is--when this occurred, and after Buckingham had left, we went to find the girls in the forest. We knew they would be looking for us, although they would pretend surprise when they saw us. We soon met them, and the very leaves of the trees gave a soft, contented rustle in response to Mary's low, mellow laugh of joy.

After perhaps half an hour, we encountered Buckingham with his lawyer-knight, Johnson. They had evidently walked out to this quiet path to consult about the situation. As they approached, Mary spoke to the duke with a vicious sparkle in her eyes.

"My Lord Buckingham, this shall cost you your head; remember my words when you are on the scaffold, just when your neck fits into the hollow of the block."

He stopped, with an evident desire to explain, but Mary pointed down the path and said: "Go, or I will have Master Brandon spit you on his sword. Two to one would be easy odds compared with the four to one you put against him in Billingsgate. Go!" And the battle was over, the foe never having struck a blow. It hurt me that Mary should speak of the odds being two to one against Brandon when I was at hand. It is true I was not very large, but I could have taken care of a lawyer.

Now it was that the lawyer-knight earned his bread by his wits, for it was he, I know, who instigated the next move--a master stroke in its way, and one which proved a checkmate to us. It was this: the duke went at once to the king, and, in a tone of injured innocence, told him of the charge made by Brandon with Mary's evident approval, and demanded redress for the slander. Thus it seemed that the strength of our position was about to be turned against us. Brandon was at once summoned and promptly appeared before the king, only too anxious to confront the duke. As to the confinement of Brandon and his secret trial, the king did not care to hear; that was a matter of no consequence to him; the important question was, did Buckingham attack the princess?

Brandon told the whole straight story, exactly as it was, which Buckingham as promptly denied, and offered to prove by his almoner that he was at his devotions on the night and at the hour of the attack. So here was a conflict of evidence which called for new witnesses, and Henry asked Brandon if the girls had seen and recognized the duke. To this question, of course, he was compelled to answer no, and the whole accusation, after all, rested upon Brandon's word, against which, on the other hand, was the evidence of the Duke of Buckingham and his convenient almoner.

All this disclosed to the full poor Mary's anxiety to help Brandon, and the duke having adroitly let out the fact that he had just met the princess with Brandon at a certain secluded spot in the forest, Henry's suspicion of her partiality received new force, and he began to look upon the unfortunate Brandon as a partial cause, at least, of Mary's aversion to the French marriage.

Henry grew angry and ordered Brandon to leave the court, with the sullen remark that it was only his services to the Princess Mary that saved him from a day with papers on the pillory.

This was not by any means what Brandon had expected. There seemed to be a fatality for him about everything connected with that unfortunate trip to Grouche's. He had done his duty, and this was his recompense.

Virtue is sometimes a pitiful reward for itself, notwithstanding much wisdom to the contrary.

Henry was by no means sure that his suspicions concerning Mary's heart were correct, and in all he had heard he had not one substantial fact upon which to base conviction. He had not seen her with Brandon since their avowal, or he would have had a fact in every look, the truth in every motion, a demonstration in every glance. She seemed powerless even to attempt concealment. In Brandon's handsome manliness and evident superiority, the king thought he saw a very clear possibility for Mary to love, and where there is such a possibility for a girl, she usually fails to fulfill expectations. I suppose there are more wrong guesses as to the sort of man a given woman will fall in love with than on any other subject of equal importance in the whole range of human surmising. It did not, however, strike the king that way, and he, in common with most other sons of Adam, supposing that he knew all about it, marked Brandon as a very possible and troublesome personage.

For once in the history of the world a man had hit upon the truth in this obscure matter, although he had no idea how correct he was.

Now, all this brought Brandon into the deep shadow of the royal frown, and, like many another man, he sank his fortune in the fathomless depths of a woman's heart, and thought himself rich in doing it.

_CHAPTER XIV_

_In the Siren Country_

With the king, admiration stood for affection, a mistake frequently made by people not given to self-a.n.a.lysis, and in a day or two a reaction set in toward Brandon which inspired a desire to make some amends for his harsh treatment. This he could not do to any great extent, on Buckingham's account; at least, not until the London loan was in his coffers, but the fact that Brandon was going to New Spain so soon and would be out of the way, both of Mary's eyes and Mary's marriage, stimulated that rare flower in Henry's heart, a good resolve, and Brandon was offered his old quarters with me until such time as he should sail for New Spain.

He had never abandoned this plan, and now that matters had taken this turn with Mary and the king, his resolution was stronger than ever, in that the scheme held two recommendations and a possibility.

The recommendations were, first, it would take him away from Mary, with whom--when out of the inspiring influence of her buoyant hopefulness--he knew marriage to be utterly impossible; and second, admitting and facing that impossibility, he might find at least partial relief from his heartache in the stirring events and adventures of that faraway land of monsters, dragons, savages and gold. The possibility lay in the gold, and a very faintly burning flame of hope held out the still more faintly glimmering chance that fortune, finding him there almost alone, might, for lack of another lover, smile upon him by way of squaring accounts. She might lead him to a cavern of gold, and gold would do anything; even, perhaps, purchase so priceless a treasure as a certain princess of the blood royal. He did not, however, dwell much on this possibility, but kept the delightful hope well neutralized with a constantly present sense of its improbability, in order to save the pain of a long fall when disappointment should come.

Brandon at once accepted the king's offer of lodging in the palace, for now that he felt sure of himself in the matter of New Spain, and his separation from Mary, he longed to see as much as possible of her before the light went out forever, even though it were playing with death itself to do so.