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THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE

BY STANLEY J. WEYMAN

THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF. A Romance. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.

THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE. A Romance. With four Illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.25.

A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE. Being the Memoirs of Gaston de Bonne, Sieur de Marsac. With Frontispiece and Vignette. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.

UNDER THE RED ROBE. With twelve full-page Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.

MY LADY ROTHA. A Romance of the Thirty Years' War. With eight Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A MINISTER OF FRANCE. With thirty-six Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.25.

SHREWSBURY. A Romance. With twenty-four illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

THE RED COCKADE. A Novel. With 48 illustrations by R. Caton Woodville. Crown 8vo, $1.50.

New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

THE STORY

OF

FRANCIS CLUDDE

BY

STANLEY J. WEYMAN

AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"MY LADY ROTHA," ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1898

Copyright, 1891, by
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1897, by
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

All rights reserved

CONTENTS.

THE STORY OF FRANCIS CLUDDE.

CHAPTER I.

["HÉ, SIRE ANE, HÉ!"]

On the boundary line between the two counties of Warwick and Worcester there is a road very famous in those parts, and called the Ridgeway. Father Carey used to say--and no better Latinist could be found for a score of miles round in the times of which I write--that it was made by the Romans. It runs north and south along the narrow spine of the country, which is spread out on either side like a map, or a picture. As you fare southward you see on your right hand the green orchards and pastures of Worcestershire stretching as far as the Malvern Hills. You have in front of you Bredon Hill, which is a wonderful hill, for if a man goes down the Avon by boat it goes with him--now before, and now behind--a whole day's journey--and then stands in the same place. And on the left hand you have the great Forest of Arden, and not much besides, except oak trees, which grow well in Warwickshire.

I describe this road, firstly, because it is a notable one, and forty years ago was the only Queen's highway, to call a highway, in that country. The rest were mere horse-tracks. Secondly, because the chase wall of Coton End runs along the side of it for two good miles; and the Cluddes--I am Francis Cludde--have lived at Coton End by the Ridgeway time out of mind, probably--for the name smacks of the soil--before the Romans made the road. And thirdly, because forty years ago, on a drizzling February day in 1555--second year of Mary, old religion just reestablished--a number of people were collected on this road, forming a group of a score or more, who stood in an ordered kind of disorder about my uncle's gates and looked all one way, as if expecting an arrival, and an arrival of consequence.

First, there was my uncle Sir Anthony, tall and lean. He wore his best black velvet doublet and cloak, and had put them on with an air of huge importance. This increased each time he turned, staff in hand, and surveyed his following, and as regularly gave place to a "Pshaw!" of vexation and a petulant glance when his eye rested on me. Close beside him, looking important too, but anxious and a little frightened as well, stood good Father Carey. The priest wore his silk cassock, and his lips moved from time to time without sound, as though he were trying over a Latin oration--which, indeed, was the fact. At a more respectful distance were ranged Baldwin Moor, the steward, and a dozen servants; while still farther away lounged as many ragamuffins--landless men, who swarmed about every gentleman's door in those times, and took toll of such abbey lands as the king might have given him. Against one of the stone gate-pillars I leaned myself--nineteen years and six months old, and none too wise, though well grown, and as strong as one here and there. And perched on the top of the twin post, with his chin on his knees, and his hands clasped about them, was Martin Luther, the fool.

Martin had chosen this elevated position partly out of curiosity, and partly, perhaps, under a strong sense of duty. He knew that, whether he would or no, he must needs look funny up there. His nose was red, and his eyes were running, and his teeth chattering; and he did look funny. But as he felt the cold most his patience failed first. The steady, silent drizzle, the mist creeping about the stems of the oak trees, the leaden sky proved too much for him in the end. "A watched pot never boils!" he grumbled.

"Silence, sirrah!" commanded my uncle angrily. "This is no time for your fooling. Have a care how you talk in the same breath of pots and my Lord Bishop!"

"Sanctæ ecclesiæ," Father Carey broke out, turning up his eyes in a kind of ecstasy, as though he were knee to knee with the prelate--"te defensorem inclytum atque ardentem----"

"Pottum!" cried I, laughing loudly at my own wit.

It was an ill-mannered word, but I was cold and peevish. I had been forced to this function against my will. I had never seen the guest whom we were expecting, and who was no other than the Queen's Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, but I disliked him as if I had. In truth, he was related to us in a peculiar fashion, which my uncle and I naturally looked at from different standpoints. Sir Anthony viewed with complacence, if not with pride, any connection with the powerful Bishop of Winchester, for the knight knew the world, and could appreciate the value it sets on success, and the blind eyes it has for spots if they do but speckle the risen sun. I could make no such allowance, but, with the pride of youth and family, at once despised the great Bishop for his base blood, and blushed that the shame lay on our side. I hated this parade of doing honor to him, and would fain have hidden at home with Petronilla, my cousin, Sir Anthony's daughter, and awaited our guest there. The knight, however, had not permitted this, and I had been forced out, being in the worst of humors.

So I said "Pottum!" and laughed.

"Silence, boy!" cried Sir Anthony fiercely. He loved an orderly procession, and to arrange things decently. "Silence!" he repeated, darting an angry glance first at me and then at his followers, "or I will warm that jacket of yours, lad! And you, Martin Luther, see to your tongue for the next twenty-four hours, and keep it off my Lord Bishop! And, Father Carey, hold yourself ready----"

"For here Sir Hot-Pot cometh!" cried the undaunted Martin, skipping nimbly down from his post of vantage; "and a dozen of London saucepans with him, or may I never lick the inside of one again!"

A jest on the sauciness of London serving-men was sure to tell with the crowd, and there was a great laugh at this, especially among the landless men, who were on the skirts of the party, and well sheltered from Sir Anthony's eye. He glared about him, provoked to find at this critical moment smiles where there should have been looks of deference, and a ring round a fool where he had marshaled a procession. Unluckily, he chose to visit his displeasure upon me. "You won't behave, won't you, you puppy!" he cried. "You won't, won't you!" and stepping forward he aimed a blow at my shoulders, which would have made me rub myself if it had reached me. But I was too quick. I stepped back, the stick swung idly, and the crowd laughed.

And there the matter would have ended, for the Bishop's party were now close upon us, had not my foot slipped on the wet grass and I fallen backward. Seeing me thus at his mercy, the temptation proved too much for the knight. He forgot his love of seemliness and even that his visitors were at his elbow--and, stooping a moment to plant home a couple of shrewd cuts, cried, "Take that! Take that, my lad!" in a voice that rang as crisply as his thwacks.

I was up in an instant; not that the pain was anything, and before our own people I should have thought as little of shame, for if the old may not lay hand to the young, being related, where is to be any obedience? Now, however, my first glance met the grinning faces of strange lackeys, and while my shoulders still smarted, the laughter of a couple of soberly-clad pages stung a hundred times more sharply. I glared furiously round, and my eyes fell on one face--a face long remembered. It was that of a man who neither smiled nor laughed; a man whom I recognized immediately, not by his sleek hackney or his purple cassock, which a riding-coat partially concealed, or even by his jeweled hand, but by the keen glance of power which passed over me, took me in, and did not acknowledge me; which saw my humiliation without interest or amusement. The look hurt me beyond smarting of shoulders, for it conveyed to me in the twentieth part of a second how very small a person Francis Cludde was, and how very great a personage was Stephen Gardiner, whom in my thoughts I had presumed to belittle.

I stood irresolute a moment, shifting my feet and glowering at him, my face on fire. But when he raised his hand to give the Benediction, and the more devout, or those with mended hose, fell on their knees in the mud, I turned my back abruptly, and, climbing the wall, flung away across the chase.

"What, Sir Anthony!" I heard him say as I stalked off, his voice ringing clear and incisive amid the reverential silence which followed the Latin words; "have we a heretic here, cousin? How is this? So near home too!"

"It is my nephew, my Lord Bishop," I could hear Sir Anthony answer, apology in his tone; "and a willful boy at times. You know of him; he has queer notions of his own, put into his head long ago."

I caught no more, my angry strides carrying me out of earshot. Fuming, I hurried across the long damp grass, avoiding here and there the fallen limb of an elm or a huge round of holly. I wanted to get out of the way, and be out of the way; and made such haste that before the slowly moving cavalcade had traversed one-half of the interval between the road and the house I had reached the bridge which crossed the moat, and, pushing my way impatiently through the maids and scullions who had flocked to it to see the show, had passed into the courtyard.

The light was failing, and the place looked dark and gloomy in spite of the warm glow of burning logs which poured from the lower windows, and some show of green boughs which had been placed over the doorways in honor of the occasion. I glanced up at a lattice in one of the gables--the window of Petronilla's little parlor. There was no face at it, and I turned fretfully into the hall--and yes, there she was, perched up in one of the high window-seats. She was looking out on the chase, as the maids were doing.

Yes, as the maids were doing. She too was watching for his High Mightiness, I muttered, and that angered me afresh. I crossed the rushes in silence, and climbed up beside her.

"Well," I said ungraciously, as she started, hearing me at her shoulder, "well, have you seen enough of him yet, cousin? You will, I warrant you, before he leaves. A little of him goes far."

"A little of whom, Francis?" she asked simply.

Though her voice betrayed some wonder at my rough tone, she was so much engaged with the show that she did not look at me immediately. This of course kept my anger warm, and I began to feel that she was in the conspiracy against me.

"Of my Lord of Winchester, of course," I answered, laughing rudely; "of Sir Hot-Pot!"

"Why do you call him that?" she remonstrated in gentle wonder. And then she did turn her soft dark eyes upon me. She was a slender, willowy girl in those days, with a complexion clear yet pale--a maiden all bending and gracefulness, yet with a great store of secret firmness, as I was to learn. "He seems as handsome an old man," she continued, "as I have ever met, and stately and benevolent, too, as I see him at this distance. What is the matter with you, Francis? What has put you out?"

"Put me out!" I retorted angrily. "Who said anything had put me out?"

But I reddened under her eyes; I was longing to tell her all, and be comforted, while at the same time I shrank with a man's shame from saying to her that I had been beaten.

"I can see that something is the matter," she said sagely, with her head on one side, and that air of being the elder which she often assumed with me, though she was really the younger by two years. "Why did you not wait for the others? Why have you come home alone? Francis," [with sudden conviction] "you have vexed my father! That is it!"

"He has beaten me like a dog!" I blurted out passionately; "and before them all! Before those strangers he flogged me!"

She had her back to the window, and some faint gleam of wintry sunshine, passing through the gules of the shield blazoned behind her, cast a red stain on her dark hair and shapely head. She was silent, probably through pity or consternation; but I could not see her face, and misread her. I thought her hard, and, resenting this, bragged on with a lad's empty violence.

"He did; but I will not stand it! I give you warning, I won't stand it, Petronilla!" and I stamped, young bully that I was, until the dust sprang out of the boards, and the hounds by the distant hearth jumped up and whined. "No! not for all the base bishops in England!" I continued, taking a step this way and that. "He had better not do it again! If he does, I tell you it will be the worse for some one!"

"Francis," she exclaimed abruptly, "you must not speak in that way!"

But I was too angry to be silenced, though instinctively I changed my ground.

"Stephen Gardiner!" I cried furiously. "Who is Stephen Gardiner, I should like to know? He has no right to call himself Gardiner at all! Dr. Stephens he used to call himself, I have heard. A child with no name but his godfather's; that is what he is, for all his airs and his bishopric! Who is he to look on and see a Cludde beaten? If my uncle does not take care----"

"Francis!" she cried again, cutting me short ruthlessly. "Be silent, sir!" [and this time I was silent], "You unmanly boy," she continued, her face glowing with indignation, "to threaten my father before my face! How dare you, sir? How dare you? And who are you, you poor child," she exclaimed, with a startling change from invective to sarcasm--"who are you to talk of bishops, I should like to know?"

"One," I said sullenly, "who thinks less of cardinals and bishops than some folk, Mistress Petronilla!"

"Ay, I know," she retorted scathingly--"I know that you are a kind of half-hearted Protestant--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl!"

"I am what my father made me!" I muttered.

"At any rate," she replied, "you do not see how small you are, or you would not talk of bishops. Heaven help us! That a boy who has done nothing and seen nothing, should talk of the Queen's Chancellor! Go! Go on, you foolish boy, and rule a country, or cut off heads, and then you may talk of such men--men who could unmake you and yours with a stroke of the pen! You, to talk so of Stephen Gardiner! Fie, fie, I say! For shame!"

I looked at her, dazed and bewildered, and had long afterward in my mind a picture of her as she stood above me, in the window bay, her back to the light, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her hand extended toward me. I could scarcely understand or believe that this was my gentle cousin. I turned without a word and stole away, not looking behind me. I was cowed.

It happened that the servants came hurrying in at the moment with a clatter of dishes and knives, and the noise covered my retreat. I had a fancy afterward that, as I moved away, Petronilla called to me. But at the time, what with the confusion and my own disorder, I paid no heed to her, but got myself blindly out of the hall, and away to my own attic.

It was a sharp lesson. But my feelings when, being alone, I had time to feel, need not be set down. After events made them of no moment, for I was even then on the verge of a change so great that all the threats and misgivings, the fevers and agues, of that afternoon, real as they seemed at the time, became in a few hours as immaterial as the dew which fell before yesterday's thunderstorm.

The way the change began to come about was this. I crept in late to supper, facing the din and lights, the rows of guests and the hurrying servants, with a mixture of shame and sullenness. I was sitting down with a scowl next the Bishop's pages--my place was beside them, half-way down the table, and I was not too careful to keep my feet clear of their clothing--when my uncle's voice, raised in a harsher tone than was usual with him, even when he was displeased, summoned me.

"Come here, sirrah!" he cried roundly. "Come here, Master Francis! I have a word to speak to you!"

I went slowly, dragging my feet, while all looked up, and there was a partial silence. I was conscious of this, and it nerved me. For a moment indeed, as I stepped on to the dais I had a vision of scores of candles and rushlights floating in mist, and of innumerable bodiless faces all turned up to me. But the vision and the mistiness passed away, and left only my uncle's long, thin face inflamed with anger, and beside it, in the same ring of light, the watchful eyes and stern, impassive features of Stephen Gardiner. The Bishop's face and his eyes were all I saw then; the same face, the same eyes, I remembered, which had looked unyielding into those of the relentless Cromwell and had scarce dropped before the frown of a Tudor. His purple cap and cassock, the lace and rich fur, the chain of office, I remembered afterward.

"Now, boy," thundered Sir Anthony, pointing out the place where I should stand, "what have you to say for yourself? why have you so misbehaved this afternoon? Let your tongue speak quickly, do you hear, or you will smart for it. And let it be to the purpose, boy!"

I was about to answer something--whether it was likely to make things worse or better, I cannot remember--when Gardiner stayed me. He laid his hand gently on Sir Anthony's sleeve, and interposed. "One moment," he said mildly, "your nephew did not stay for the Church's blessing, I remember. Perhaps he has scruples. There are people nowadays who have. Let us hear if it be so."

This time it was Sir Anthony who did not let me answer.

"No, no," he cried hastily; "no, no; it is not so. He conforms, my lord, he conforms. You conform, sir," he continued, turning fiercely upon me, "do you not? Answer, sir."

"Ah!" the Bishop put in with a sneer, "you conform, do you?"

"I attend mass--to please my uncle," I replied boldly.

"He was ill brought up as a child," Sir Anthony said hastily, speaking in a tone which those below could not hear. "But you know all that, my lord--you know all that. It is an old story to you. So I make, and I pray you to make for the sake of the house, some allowance. He conforms; he undoubtedly conforms."

"Enough!" Gardiner assented. "The rest is for the good priest here, whose ministrations will no doubt in time avail. But a word with this young gentleman, Sir Anthony, on another subject. If it was not to the holy office he objected, perhaps it was to the Queen's Chancellor, or to the Queen?" He raised his voice with the last words and bent his brows, so that I could scarcely believe it was the same man speaking. "Eh, sir, was that so?" he continued severely, putting aside Sir Anthony's remonstrance and glowering at me. "It may be that we have a rebel here instead of a heretic."

"God forbid!" cried the knight, unable to contain himself. It was clear that he repented already of his ill-timed discipline. "I will answer for it that we have no Wyatts here, my lord."

"That is well!" the Chancellor replied. "That is well!" he repeated, his eyes leaving me and roving the hall with so proud a menace in their glance that all quailed, even the fool. "That is very well," he said, drumming on the table with his fingers; "but let Master Francis speak for himself."

"I never heard," said I boldly--I had had a moment for thought--"that Sir Thomas Wyatt had any following in this country. None to my knowledge. As for the Queen's marriage with the Prince of Spain, which was the ground, as we gathered here, of Wyatt's rising with the Kentish folk, it seems a matter rather for the Queen's grace than her subjects. But if that be not so, I, for my part, would rather have seen her married to a stout Englishman--ay, or to a Frenchman."

"And why, young gentleman?"

"Because I would we kept at peace with France. We have more to gain by fighting Spain than fighting France," I answered bluntly.

My uncle held up his hands. "The boy is clean mad!" he groaned. "Who ever heard of such a thing? With all France, the rightful estate of her Majesty, waiting to be won back, he talks of fighting Spain! And his own grandmother was a Spaniard!"

"I am none the less an Englishman for that!" I said; whereon there was a slight murmur of applause in the hall below. "And for France," I continued, carried away by this, "we have been fighting it, off and on, as long as men remember; and what are we the better? We have only lost what we had to begin. Besides, I am told that France is five times stronger than it was in Henry the Fifth's time, and we should only spend our strength in winning what we could not hold. While as to Spain----"

"Ay, as to Spain?" grumbled Sir Anthony, forgetting his formidable neighbor, and staring at me with eyes of wonder. "Why, my father fought the French at Guinegate, and my grandfather at Cherbourg, and his father at Agincourt! But there! As to Spain, you popinjay?"

"Why, she is conquering here," I answered warmly, "and colonizing there among the newly-discovered countries of the world, and getting all the trade and all the seaports and all the gold and silver; and Spain after all is a nation with no greater strength of men than England. Ay, and I hear," I cried, growing more excited and raising my voice, "that now is our time or never! The Spaniards and the Portuguese have discovered a new world over seas.

"A Castilla y á Leon
Nuevo mundo dió Coton!

say they; but depend upon it, every country that is to be rich and strong in the time that is coming must have part in it. We cannot conquer either Spain or France; we have not men enough. But we have docks and sailors, and ships in London and Fowey, and Bristol and the Cinque Ports, enough to fight Spain over the great seas, and I say, 'Have at her!'"

"What next?" groaned Sir Anthony piteously. "Did man ever hear such crackbrained nonsense?"

But I think it was not nonsense, for his words were almost lost in the cry which ran through the hall as I ceased speaking--a cry of English voices. One moment my heart beat high and proudly with a new sense of power; the next, as a shadow of a cloud falls on a sunny hillside, the cold sneer on the statesman's face fell on me and chilled me. His set look had neither thawed nor altered, his color had neither come nor gone. "You speak your lesson well, lad," he said. "Who taught you statecraft?"

I grew smaller, shrinking with each word he uttered; and faltered, and was dumb.

"Come," he said, "you see but a little way; yet country lads do not talk of Fowey and Bristol! Who primed you?"

"I met a Master Sebastian Cabot," I said reluctantly at last, when he had pressed me more than once, "who stayed a while at a house not far from here, and had been Inspector of the Navy to King Edward. He had been a seaman seventy years, and he talked----"

"Too fast!" said Gardiner, with a curt nod. "But enough, I understand. I know the man. He is dead."

He was silent then, and seemed to have fallen suddenly into thought, as a man well might who had the governing of a kingdom on his shoulders.

Seemingly he had done with me. I looked at Sir Anthony. "Ay, go!" he said irritably, waving me off. "Go!"

And I went. The ordeal was over, and over so successfully that I felt the humiliation of the afternoon cheap at the price of this triumph; for, as I stepped down, there was a buzz around me, a murmur of congratulation and pride and excitement. On every Coton face I marked a flush, in every Coton eye I read a sparkle, and every flush and every sparkle was for me. Even the Chancellor's secretaries, grave, down-looking men, all secrecy and caution, cast curious glances at me, as though I were something out of the common; and the Chancellor's pages made way for me with new-born deference. "There is for country wits!" I heard Baldwin Moor cry gleefully, while the man who put food before me murmured of "the Cludde bull-pup!" If I read in Father Carey's face, as indeed I did, solicitude as well as relief and gladness, I marked the latter only, and hugged a natural pride to my breast. When Martin Luther said boldly that it was not only Bishop could fill a bowl, it was by an effort I refrained from joining in the laugh which followed.

For an hour I enjoyed this triumph, and did all but brag of it. Especially I wished Petronilla had witnessed it. At the end of that time--Finis, as the book says. I was crossing the courtyard, one-half of which was bathed in a cold splendor of moonlight, and was feeling the first sobering touch of the night air on my brow, when I heard some one call out my name. I turned, to find one of the Chancellor's servants, a sleek, substantial fellow, with a smug mouth, at my elbow.

"What is it?" I said.

"I am bidden to fetch you at once, Master Cludde," he answered, a gleam of sly malice peeping through the gravity of his demeanor. "The Chancellor would see you in his room, young sir."

CHAPTER II.

[IN THE BISHOP'S ROOM.]

Chancellor was lodged in the great chamber on the southern side of the courtyard, a room which we called the Tapestried Chamber, and in which tradition said that King Henry the Sixth had once slept. It was on the upper floor, and for this reason free from the damp air which in autumn and winter rose from the moat and hung about the lower range of rooms. It was besides, of easy access from the hall, a door in the gallery of the latter leading into an anteroom, which again opened into the Tapestried Chamber; while a winding staircase, starting from a dark nook in the main passage of the house, also led to this state apartment, but by another and more private door.

I reached the antechamber with a stout heart in my breast, though a little sobered by my summons, and feeling such a reaction from the heat of a few minutes before as follows a plunge into cold water. In the anteroom I was bidden to wait while the great man's will was taken, which seemed strange to me, then unused to the mummery of Court folk. But before I had time to feel much surprise, the inner door was opened, and I was told to enter.

The great room, which I had seldom seen in use, had now an appearance quite new to me. A dull red fire was glowing comfortably on the hearthstone, before which a posset stool was standing. Near this, seated at a table strewn with a profusion of papers and documents, was a secretary writing busily. The great oaken bedstead, with its nodding tester, lay in a background of shadows, which played about the figures broidered on the hangings, or were lost in the darkness of the corners; while near the fire, in the light cast by the sconces fixed above the hearth, lay part of the Chancellor's equipment. The fur rugs and cloak of sable, the saddle-bags, the dispatch-boxes, and the silver chafing-dish, gave an air of comfort to this part of the room. Walking up and down in the midst of these, dictating a sentence at every other turn, was Stephen Gardiner.

As I entered the clerk looked up, holding his pen suspended. His master, by a quick nod, ordered him to proceed. Then, signaling to me in a like silent fashion his command that I should stand by the hearth, the Bishop resumed his task of composition.

For some minutes my interest in the man, whom I had now an opportunity of scrutinizing unmarked and at my leisure, took up all my attention. He was at this time close on seventy, but looked, being still tall and stout, full ten years younger. His face, square and sallow, was indeed wrinkled and lined; his eyes lay deep in his head, his shoulders were beginning to bend, the nape of his neck to become prominent. He had lost an inch of his full height. But his eyes still shone brightly, nor did any trace of weakness mar the stern character of his mouth, or the crafty wisdom of his brow. The face was the face of a man austere, determined, perhaps cruel; of a man who could both think and act.

My curiosity somewhat satisfied, I had leisure, first to wonder why I had been sent for, and then to admire the prodigious number of books and papers which lay about, more, indeed, than I had ever seen together in my life. From this I passed to listening, idly at first, and with interest afterward, to the letter which the Chancellor was dictating. It seemed from its tenor to be a letter to some person in authority, and presently one passage attracted my attention, so that I could afterward recall it word for word.

"I do not think"--the Chancellor pronounced, speaking in a sonorous voice, and the measured tone of one whose thoughts lie perfectly arranged in his head--"that the Duchess Katherine will venture to take the step suggested as possible. Yet Clarence's report may be of moment. Let the house, therefore, be watched if anything savoring of flight be marked, and take notice whether there be a vessel in the Pool adapted to her purpose. A vessel trading to Dunquerque would be most likely. Leave her husband till I return, when I will deal with him roundly."

I missed what followed. It was upon another subject, and my thoughts lagged behind, being wholly taken up with the Duchess Katherine and her fortunes. I wondered who she was, young or old, and what this step could be she was said to meditate, and what the jargon about the Pool and Dunquerque meant. I was still thinking of this when I was aroused by an abrupt silence, and looking up found that the Chancellor was bending over the papers on the table. The secretary was leaving the room.

As the door closed behind him, Gardiner rose from his stooping posture and came slowly toward me, a roll of papers in his hand. "Now," he said tranquilly, seating himself in an elbow-chair which stood in front of the hearth, "I will dispose of your business, Master Cludde."

He paused, looking at me in a shrewd, masterful way, much as if--I thought at the time, little knowing how near the truth my fancy went--I were a beast he was about to buy; and then he went on. "I have sent for you, Master Francis," he said dryly, fixing his piercing eyes on mine, "because I think that this country does not suit your health. You conform, but you conform with a bad grace, and England is no longer the place for such. You incite the commonalty against the Queen's allies, and England is not the place for such. Do not contradict me; I have heard you myself. Then," he continued, grimly thrusting out his jaw in a sour smile, "you misname those whom the Queen honors; and were Dr. Stephens--you take me, Master Malapert? such a man as his predecessors, you would rue the word. For a trifle scarce weightier Wolsey threw a man to rot six years in a dungeon, boy!"

I changed color, yet not so much in fear--though it were vain to say I did not tremble--as in confusion. I had called him Dr. Stephens indeed, but it had been to Petronilla only. I stood, not knowing what to say, until he, after lingering on his last words to enjoy my misery, resumed his subject. "That is one good and sufficient reason--mind you, sufficient, boy--why England is no place for you. For another, the Cluddes have always been soldiers; and you--though readier-witted than some, which comes of your Spanish grandmother--are quicker with a word than a thought, and a blow than either. Of which afterward. Well, England is going to be no place for soldiers. Please God, we have finished with wars at home. A woman's reign should be a reign of peace."

I hardened my heart at that. A reign of peace, forsooth, when the week before we had heard of a bishop burned at Gloucester! I hardened my heart. I would not be frightened, though I knew his power, and knew how men in those days misused power. I would put a bold face on the matter.

He had not done with me yet, however. "One more reason I have," he continued, stopping me as I was about to speak, "for saying that England will not suit your health, Master Cludde. It is that I do not want you here. Abroad, you may be of use to me, and at the same time carve out your own fortune. You have courage and can use a sword, I hear. You understand--and it is a rare gift with Englishmen--some Spanish, which I suppose your father or your uncle taught you. You can--so Father Carey says--construe a Latin sentence if it be not too difficult. You are scarcely twenty, and you will have me for your patron. Why, were I you, boy, with your age and your chances, I would die Prince or Pope! Ay, I would!" He stopped speaking, his eyes on fire. Nay, a ring of such real feeling flashed out in his last words that, though I distrusted him, though old prejudices warned me against him, and, at heart a Protestant, I shuddered at things I had heard of him, the longing to see the world and have adventures seized upon me. Yet I did not speak at once. He had told me that my tongue outran my thoughts, and I stood silent until he asked me curtly, "Well, sirrah, what do you say?"

"I say, my Lord Bishop," I replied respectfully, "that the prospect you hold out to me would tempt me were I a younger son, or without those ties of gratitude which hold me to my uncle. But, my father excepted, I am Sir Anthony's only heir."

"Ah, your father!" he said contemptuously. "You do well to remind me of him, for I see you are forgetting the first part of my speech in thinking of the last! Should I have promised first and threatened later? You would fain, I expect, stay here and woo Mistress Petronilla? Do I touch you there? You think to marry the maid and be master of Coton End in God's good time, do you? Then listen, Francis Cludde. Neither one nor the other, neither maid nor meadow will be yours should you stay here till Doomsday!"

I started, and stood glowering on him, speechless with anger and astonishment.

"You do not know who you are," he continued, leaning forward with a sudden movement, and speaking with one claw-like finger extended, and a malevolent gleam in his eyes. "You called me a nameless child a while ago, and so I was; yet have I risen to be ruler of England, Master Cludde! But you--I will tell you which of us is base-born. I will tell you who and what your father, Ferdinand Cludde, was. He was, nay, he is, my tool, spy, jackal! Do you understand, boy? Your father is one of the band of foul creatures to whom such as I, base-born though I be, fling the scraps from their table! He is the vilest of the vile men who do my dirty work, my lad."

He had raised his voice and hand in passion, real or assumed. He dropped them as I sprang forward. "You lie!" I cried, trembling all over.

"Easy! easy!" he said. He stopped me where I was by a gesture of stern command. "Think!" he continued, calmly and weightily. "Has any one ever spoken to you of your father since the day seven years ago, when you came here, a child, brought by a servant? Has Sir Anthony talked of him? Has any servant named his name to you. Think, boy. If Ferdinand Cludde be a father to be proud of, why does his brother make naught of him?"

"He is a Protestant," I said faintly. Faintly, because I had asked myself this very question not once but often. Sir Anthony so seldom mentioned my father that I had thought it strange myself. I had thought it strange, too, that the servants, who must well remember Ferdinand Cludde, never talked to me about him. Hitherto I had always been satisfied to answer, "He is a Protestant"; but face to face with this terrible old man and his pitiless charge, the words came but faintly from my lips.

"A Protestant," he replied solemnly. "Yes, this comes of schism, that villains cloak themselves in it, and parade for true men. A Protestant you call him, boy? He has been that, ay, and all things to all men; and he has betrayed all things and all men. He was in the great Cardinal's confidence, and forsook him, when he fell, for Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell, although they were of the same persuasion, he betrayed to me. I have here, here"--and he struck the letters in his hand a scornful blow--"the offer he made to me, and his terms. Then eight years back, when the late King Edward came to the throne, I too fell on evil days, and Master Cludde abandoned me for my Lord Hertford, but did me no great harm. But he did something which blasted him--blasted him at last."

He paused. Had the fire died down, or was it only my imagination that the shadows thickened round the bed behind him, and closed in more nearly on us, leaving his pale grim face to confront me--his face, which seemed the paler and grimmer, the more saturnine and all-mastering, for the dark frame which set it off?

"He did this," he continued slowly, "which came to light and blasted him. He asked, as the price of his service in betraying me, his brother's estate."

"Impossible!" I stammered. "Why, Sir Anthony----"

"What of Sir Anthony, you would ask?" the Chancellor replied, interrupting me with savage irony. "Oh, he was a Papist! an obstinate Papist! He might go hang--or to Warwick Jail!"

"Nay, but this at least, my lord, is false!" I cried. "Palpably false! If my father had so betrayed his own flesh and blood, should I be here? Should I be at Coton End? You say this happened eight years ago. Seven years ago I came here. Would Sir Anthony----"

"There are fools everywhere," the old man sneered. "When my Lord Hertford refused your father's suit, Ferdinand began--it is his nature--to plot against him. He was found out, and execrated by all--for he had been false to all--he fled for his life. He left you behind, and a servant brought you to Coton End, where Sir Anthony took you in."

I covered my face. Alas! I believed him; I, who had always been so proud of my lineage, so proud of the brave traditions of the house and its honor, so proud of Coton End and all that belonged to it! Now, if this were true, I could never again take pleasure in one or the other. I was the son of a man branded as a turncoat and an informer, of one who was the worst of traitors! I sank down on the settle behind me and hid my face. Another might have thought less of the blow, or, with greater knowledge of the world, might have made light of it as a thing not touching himself. But on me, young as I was, and proud, and as yet tender, and having done nothing myself, it fell with crushing force.

It was years since I had seen my father, and I could not stand forth loyally and fight his battle, as a son his father's friend and familiar for years might have fought it. On the contrary, there was so much which seemed mysterious in my past life, so much that bore out the Chancellor's accusation, that I felt a dread of its truth even before I had proof. Yet I would have proof. "Show me the letters!" I said harshly; "show me the letters, my lord!"

"You know your father's handwriting?"

"I do."

I knew it, not from any correspondence my father had held with me, but because I had more than once examined with natural curiosity the wrappers of the dispatches which at intervals of many months, sometimes of a year, came from him to Sir Anthony. I had never known anything of the contents of the letters, all that fell to my share being certain formal messages, which Sir Anthony would give me, generally with a clouded brow and a testy manner that grew genial again only with the lapse of time.

Gardiner handed me the letters, and I took them and read one. One was enough. That my father! Alas! alas! No wonder that I turned my face to the wall, shivering as with the ague, and that all about me--except the red glow of the fire, which burned into my brain--seemed darkness! I had lost the thing I valued most. I had lost at a blow everything of which I was proud. The treachery that could flush that worn face opposite to me, lined as it was with statecraft, and betray the wily tongue into passion, seemed to me, young and impulsive, a thing so vile as to brand a man's children through generations.

Therefore I hid my face in the corner of the settle, while the Chancellor gazed at me a while in silence, as one who had made an experiment might watch the result.

"You see now, my friend," he said at last, almost gently, "that you may be base-born in more ways than one. But be of good cheer; you are young, and what I have done you may do. Think of Thomas Cromwell--his father was naught. Think of the old Cardinal--my master. Think of the Duke of Suffolk--Charles Brandon, I mean. He was a plain gentleman, yet he married a queen. More, the door which they had to open for themselves I will open for you--only, when you are inside, play the man, and be faithful."

"What would you have me do?" I whispered hoarsely.

"I would have you do this," he answered. "There are great things brewing in the Netherlands, boy--great changes, unless I am mistaken. I have need of an agent there, a man, stout, trusty, and, in particular, unknown, who will keep me informed of events. If you will be that agent, I can procure for you--and not appear in the matter myself--a post of pay and honor in the Regent's Guards. What say you to that, Master Cludde? A few weeks and you will be making history, and Coton End will seem a mean place to you. Now, what do you say?"

I was longing to be away and alone with my misery, but I forced myself to reply patiently.

"With your leave I will give you my answer to-morrow, my lord," I said, as steadily as I could; and I rose, still keeping my face turned from him.

"Very well," he replied, with apparent confidence. But he watched me keenly, as I fancied. "I know already what your answer will be. Yet before you go I will give you a piece of advice which in the new life you begin to-night will avail you more than silver, more than gold--ay, more than steel, Master Francis. It is this: Be prompt to think, be prompt to strike, be slow to speak! Mark it well! It is a simple recipe, yet it has made me what I am, and may make you greater. Now go!"

He pointed to the little door opening on the staircase, and I bowed and went out, closing it carefully behind me. On the stairs, moving blindly in the dark, I fell over some one who lay sleeping there, and who clutched at my leg. I shook him off, however, with an exclamation of rage, and, stumbling down the rest of the steps, gained the open air. Excited and feverish, I shrank with aversion from the confinement of my room, and, hurrying over the drawbridge, sought at random the long terrace by the fish-pools, on which the moonlight fell, a sheet of silver, broken only by the sundial and the shadows of the rose bushes. The night air, weeping chill from the forest, fanned my cheeks as I paced up and down. One way I had before me the manor-house--the steep gable-ends, the gateway tower, the low outbuildings and cornstacks and stables--and flanking these the squat tower and nave of the church. I turned. Now I saw only the water and the dark line of trees which fringed the further bank. But above these the stars were shining.

Yet in my mind there was no starlight. There all was a blur of wild passions and resolves. Shame and an angry resentment against those who had kept me so long in ignorance--even against Sir Anthony--were my uppermost feelings. I smarted under the thought that I had been living on his charity. I remembered many a time when I had taken much on myself, and he had smiled, and the remembrance stung me. I longed to assert myself and do something to wipe off the stain.

But should I accept the Bishop's offer? It never crossed my mind to do so. He had humiliated me, and I hated him for it. Longing to cut myself off from my old life, I could not support a patron who would know, and might cast in my teeth the old shame. A third reason, too, worked powerfully with me as I became cooler. This was the conviction that, apart from the glitter which the old man's craft had cast about it, the part he would have me play was that of a spy--an informer! A creature like--I dared not say like my father, yet I had him in my mind. And from this, from the barest suspicion of this, I shrank as the burned puppy from the fire--shrank with fierce twitching of nerve and sinew.

Yet if I would not accept his offer it was clear I must fend for myself. His threats meant as much as that, and I smiled sternly as I found necessity at one with inclination. I would leave Coton End at once, and henceforth I would fight for my own hand. I would have no name until I had made for myself a new one.

This resolve formed, I turned and went back to the house, and felt my way to my own chamber. The moonlight poured through the lattice and fell white on my pallet. I crossed the room and stood still. Down the middle of the coverlet--or my eyes deceived me--lay a dark line.

I stooped mechanically to see what this was and found my own sword lying there; the sword which Sir Anthony had given me on my last birthday. But how had it come there? As I took it up something soft and light brushed my hand and drooped from the hilt. Then I remembered. A week before I had begged Petronilla to make me a sword-knot of blue velvet for use on state occasions. No doubt she had done it, and had brought the sword back this evening, and laid it there in token of peace.

I sat down on my bed, and softer and kindlier thoughts came to me; thoughts of love and gratitude, in which the old man who had been a second father to me had part. I would go as I had resolved, but I would return to them when I had done a thing worth doing; something which should efface the brand that lay on me now.

With gentle fingers I disengaged the velvet knot and thrust it into my bosom. Then I tied about the hilt the old leather thong, and began to make my preparations; considering this or that route while I hunted for my dagger and changed my doublet and hose for stouter raiment and long, untanned boots. I was yet in the midst of this, when a knock at the door startled me.

"Who is there?" I asked, standing erect.

For answer Martin Luther slid in, closing the door behind him. The fool did not speak, but turning his eyes first on one thing and then on another nodded sagely.

"Well?" I growled.

"You are off, master," he said, nodding again. "I thought so."

"Why did you think so?" I retorted impatiently.

"It is time for the young birds to fly when the cuckoo begins to stir," he answered.

I understood him dimly and in part. "You have been listening," I said wrathfully, my cheeks burning.

"And been kicked in the face like a fool for my pains," he answered. "Ah, well, it is better to be kicked by the boot you love than kissed by the lips you hate. But Master Francis, Master Francis!" he continued in a whisper.

He said no more, and I looked up. The man was stooping slightly forward, his pale face thrust out. There was a strange gleam in his eyes, and his teeth grinned in the moonlight. Thrice he drew his finger across his lean knotted throat. "Shall I?" he hissed, his hot breath reaching me, "shall I?"

I recoiled from him shuddering. It was a ghastly pantomime, and it seemed to me that I saw madness in his eyes.

"In Heaven's name, no!" I cried--"No! Do you hear, Martin? No!"

He stood back on the instant, as a dog might have done being reproved. But I could hardly finish in comfort after that with him standing there, although when I next turned to him he seemed half asleep and his eyes were dull and fishy as ever.

"One thing you can do," I said brusquely. Then I hesitated, looking round me. I wished to send something to Petronilla, some word, some keepsake. But I had nothing that would serve a maid's purpose, and could think of nothing until my eye lit on a house-martin's nest, lying where I had cast it on the window-sill. I had taken it down that morning because the droppings during the last summer had fallen on the lead work, and I would not have it used when the swallows returned. It was but a bit of clay, and yet it would serve. She would guess its meaning.

I gave it into his hands. "Take this," I said, "and give it privately to Mistress Petronilla. Privately, you understand. And say nothing to any one, or the Bishop will flay your back, Martin."

CHAPTER III.

["DOWN WITH PURVEYORS!"]

The first streak of daylight found me already footing it through the forest by paths known to few save the woodcutters, but with which many a boyish exploration had made me familiar. From Coton End the London road lies plain and fair through Stratford-on-Avon and Oxford. But my plan, the better to evade pursuit, was, instead, to cross the forest in a northeasterly direction, and, passing by Warwick, to strike the great north road between Coventry and Daventry, which, running thence southeastward, would take me as straight as a bird might fly through Dunstable, St. Albans, and Barnet, to London. My baggage consisted only of my cloak, sword, and dagger; and for money I had but a gold angel, and a few silver bits of doubtful value. But I trusted that this store, slender as it was, would meet my charges as far as London. Once there I must depend on my wits either for providence at home or a passage abroad.

Striding steadily up and down hill, for Arden Forest is made up of hills and dells which follow one another as do the wave and trough of the sea, only less regularly, I made my way toward Wootton Wawen. As soon as I espied its battlemented church lying in a wooded bottom below me, I kept a more easterly course, and, leaving Henley-in-Arden far to the left, passed down toward Leek Wootton. The damp, dead bracken underfoot, the leafless oaks and gray sky overhead, nay the very cry of the bittern fishing in the bottoms, seemed to be at one with my thoughts; for these were dreary and sad enough.

But hope and a fixed aim form no bad makeshifts for happiness. Striking the broad London road as I had purposed I slept that night at Ryton Dunsmoor, and the next at Towcester; and the third day, which rose bright and frosty, found me stepping gayly southward, travel-stained indeed, but dry and whole. My spirits rose with the temperature. For a time I put the past behind me, and found amusement in the sights of the road; in the heavy wagons and long trains of pack-horses, and the cheery greetings which met me with each mile. After all, I had youth and strength, and the world before me; and particularly Stony Stratford, where I meant to dine.

There was one trouble common among wayfarers which did not touch me; and that was the fear of robbers, for he would be a sturdy beggar who would rob an armed foot-passenger for the sake of an angel; and the groats were gone. So I felt no terrors on that account, and even when about noon I heard a horseman trot up behind me, and rein in his horse so as to keep pace with me at a walk, step for step--a thing which might have seemed suspicious to some--I took no heed of him. I was engaged with my first view of Stratford, and did not turn my head. We had walked on so for fifty paces or more, before it struck me as odd that the man did not pass me.

Then I turned, and shading my eyes from the sun, which stood just over his shoulder, said, "Good-day, friend."

"Good-day, master," he answered.

He was a stout fellow, looking like a citizen, although he had a sword by his side, and wore it with an air of importance which the sunshine of opportunity might have ripened into a swagger. His dress was plain; and he sat a good hackney as a miller's sack might have sat it. His face was the last thing I looked at. When I raised my eyes to it, I got an unpleasant start. The man was no stranger. I knew him in a moment for the messenger who had summoned me to the Chancellor's presence.

The remembrance did not please me; and reading in the fellow's sly look that he recognized me, and thought he had made a happy discovery on finding me, I halted abruptly. He did the same.

"It is a fine morning," he said, taken aback by my sudden movement, but affecting an indifference which the sparkle in his eye belied. "A rare day for the time of year."

"It is," I answered, gazing steadily at him.

"Going to London? Or may be only to Stratford?" he hazarded. He fidgeted uncomfortably under my eye, but still pretended ignorance of me.

"That is as may be," I answered.

"No offense, I am sure," he said.

I cast a quick glance up and down the road. There happened to be no one in sight. "Look here!" I replied, stepping forward to lay my hand on the horse's shoulder--but the man reined back and prevented me, thereby giving me a clew to his character--"you are in the service of the Bishop of Winchester?"

His face fell, and he could not conceal his disappointment at being recognized. "Well, master," he answered reluctantly, "perhaps I am, and perhaps I am not."

"That is enough," I said shortly. "And you know me. You need not lie about it, man, for I can see you do. Now, look here, Master Steward, or whatever your name may be----"

"It is Master Pritchard," he put in sulkily; "and I am not ashamed of it."

"Very well. Then let us understand one another. Do you mean to interfere with me?"

He grinned. "Well, to be plain, I do," he replied, reining his horse back another step. "I have orders to look out for you, and have you stopped if I find you. And I must do my duty, sir; I am sworn to it, Master Cludde."

"Right," said I calmly; "and I must do mine, which is to take care of my skin." And I drew my sword and advanced upon him with a flourish. "We will soon decide this little matter," I added grimly, one eye on him and one on the empty road, "if you will be good enough to defend yourself."

But there was no fight in the fellow. By good luck, too, he was so startled that he did not do what he might have done with safety; namely, retreat, and keep me in sight until some passers-by came up. He did give back, indeed, but it was against the bank. "Have a care," he cried in a fume, his eye following my sword nervously; he did not try to draw his own. "There is no call for fighting, I say."

"But I say there is," I replied bluntly. "Call and cause! Either you fight me, or I go where I please."

"You may go to Bath for me!" he spluttered, his face the color of a turkey-cock's wattles with rage.

"Do you mean it, my friend?" I said, and I played my point about his leg, half-minded to give him a little prod by way of earnest. "Make up your mind."

"Yes!" he shrieked out, suspecting my purpose, and bouncing about in his saddle like a parched pea. "Yes, I say!" he roared. "Do you hear me? You go your way, and I will go mine."

"That is a bargain," I said quietly; "and mind you keep to it."

I put up my sword with my face turned from him, lest he should see the curl of my lip and the light in my eyes. In truth, I was uncommonly well pleased with myself, and was thinking that if I came through all my adventures as well, I should do merrily. Outwardly, however, I tried to ignore my victory, and to make things as easy as I could for my friend--if one may call a man who will not fight him a friend, a thing I doubt. "Which way are you going?" I asked amicably; "to Stratford?"

He nodded, for he was too sulky to speak.

"All right!" I said cheerfully, feeling that my dignity could take care of itself now. "Then so far we may go together. Only do you remember the terms. After dinner each goes his own way."

He nodded again, and we turned, and went on in silence, eying one another askance, like two ill-matched dogs coupled together. But, luckily, our forced companionship did not last long, a quarter of a mile and a bend in the road bringing us to the first low, gray houses of Stratford; a long, straggling village it seemed, made up of inns strewn along the road, like beads threaded on a rosary. And to be sure, to complete the likeness, we came presently upon an ancient stone cross standing on the green. I pulled up in front of this with a sigh of pleasure, for on either side of it, one facing the other, was an inn of the better class.

"Well," I said, "which shall it be? The Rose and Crown, or the Crown without the Rose?"

"Choose for yourself," he answered churlishly. "I go to the other."

I shrugged my shoulders. After all, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and if a man has not courage he is not likely to have good-fellowship. But the words angered me, nevertheless, for a shabby, hulking fellow lounging at my elbow overheard them and grinned; a hiccoughing, blear-eyed man he was as I had ever met, with a red nose and the rags of a tattered cassock about him. I turned away in annoyance, and chose the "Crown" at hazard; and pushing my way through a knot of horses that stood tethered at the door, went in, leaving the two to their devices.

I found a roaring fire in the great room, and three or four yeomen standing about it, drinking ale. But I was hot from walking, so, after saluting them and ordering my meal, I went and sat for choice on a bench by the window away from the fire. The window was one of a kind common in Warwickshire houses; long and low and beetle-browed, the story above projecting over it. I sat here a minute looking idly out at the inn opposite, a heavy stone building with a walled courtyard attached to it; such an inn as was common enough about the time of the Wars of the Roses when wayfarers looked rather for safety than comfort. Presently I saw a boy come out of it and start up the road at a run. Then, a minute later, the ragged fellow I had seen on the green came out and lurched across the road. He seemed to be making, though uncertainly, for my inn, and, sure enough, just as my bread and bacon--the latter hot and hissing--were put before me, he staggered into the room, bringing a strong smell of ale and onions with him. "Pax vobiscum!" he said, leering at me with tipsy solemnity.

I guessed what he was--a monk, one of those unfortunates still to be found here and there up and down the country, whom King Henry, when he put down the monasteries, had made homeless. I did not look on the class with much favor, thinking that for most of them the cloister, even if the Queen should succeed in setting the abbeys on their legs again, would have few attractions. But I saw that the simple farmers received his scrap of Latin with respect, and I nodded civilly as I went on with my meal.

I was not to get off so easily, however. He came and planted himself opposite to me.

"Pax vobiscum, my son," he repeated. "The ale is cheap here, and good."

"So is the ham, good father," I replied cheerfully, not pausing in my attack on the victuals. "I will answer for so much."

"Well, well," the knave replied with ready wit, "I breakfasted early. I am content. Landlord, another plate and a full tankard. The young gentleman would have me dine with him."

I could not tell whether to be angry or to laugh at his impudence.

"The gentleman says he will answer for it!" repeated the rascal, with a twinkle in his eye, as the landlord hesitated. He was by no means so drunk as he looked.

"No, no, father," I cried, joining in the general laugh into which the farmers by the fire broke. "A cup of ale is in reason, and for that I will pay, but for no more. Drink it, and wish me Godspeed."

"I will do more than that, lad," he answered. Swaying to and fro my cup, which he had seized in his grasp, he laid his hand on the window-ledge beside me, as though to steady himself, and stooped until his coarse, puffy face was but a few inches from mine. "More than that," he whispered hoarsely; and his eyes, peering into mine, were now sober and full of meaning. "If you do not want to be put in the stocks or worse, make tracks! Make tracks, lad!" he continued. "Your friend over there--he is a niggardly oaf--has sent for the hundredman and the constable, and you are the quarry. So the word is, Go! That," he added aloud, standing erect again, with a drunken smile, "is for your cup of ale; and good coin too!"

For half a minute I sat quite still; taken aback, and wondering, while the bacon cooled on the plate before me, what I was to do. I did not doubt the monk was telling the truth. Why should he lie to me? And I cursed my folly in trusting to a coward's honor or a serving-man's good faith. But lamentations were useless. What was I to do? I had no horse, and no means of getting one. I was in a strange country, and to try to escape on foot from pursuers who knew the roads, and had the law on their side, would be a hopeless undertaking. Yet to be haled back to Coton End a prisoner--I could not face that. Mechanically I raised a morsel of bacon to my lips, and as I did so, a thought occurred to me--an idea suggested by some talk I had heard the evening before at Towcester.

Fanciful as the plan was, I snatched at it; and knowing each instant to be precious, took my courage in my hand--and my tankard. "Here," I cried, speaking suddenly and loudly, "here is bad luck to purveyors, Master Host!"

There were a couple of stablemen within hearing, lounging in the doorway, besides the landlord and his wife and the farmers. A villager or two also had dropped in, and there were two peddlers lying half asleep in the corner. All these pricked up their ears more or less at my words. But, like most country folk, they were slow to take in anything new or unexpected; and I had to drink afresh and say again, "Here is bad luck to purveyors!" before any one took it up.

Then the landlord showed he understood.

"Ay, so say I!" he cried, with an oath. "Purveyors, indeed! It is such as they give the Queen a bad name."

"God bless her!" quoth the monk loyally.

"And drown the purveyors!" a farmer exclaimed.

"They were here a year ago, and left us as bare as a shorn sheep," struck in a strapping villager, speaking at a white heat, but telling me no news; for this was what I had heard at Towcester the night before. "The Queen should lie warm if she uses all the wool they took! And the pack-horses they purveyed to carry off the plunder--why, the packmen avoid Stratford ever since as though we had the Black Death! Oh, down with the purveyors, say I! The first that comes this way I will show the bottom of the Ouse. Ay, that I will, though I hang for it!"

"Easy! easy, Tom Miller!" the host interposed, affecting an air of assurance, even while he cast an eye of trouble at his flitches. "It will be another ten years before they harry us again. There is Potter's Pury! They never took a tester's worth from Potter's Pury! No, nor from Preston Gobion! But they will go to them next, depend upon it!"

"I hope they will," I said, with a world of gloomy insinuation in my words. "But I doubt it!"

And this time my hint was not wasted. The landlord changed color. "What are you driving at, master?" he asked mildly, while the others looked at me in silence and waited for more.

"What if there be one across the road now!" I said, giving way to the temptation, and speaking falsely--for which I paid dearly afterward. "A purveyor, I mean, unless I am mistaken in him, or he tells lies. He has come straight from the Chancellor, white wand, warrant, and all. He is taking his dinner now, but he has sent for the hundredman, so I guess he means business."

"For the hundredman?" repeated the landlord, his brows meeting.

"Yes; unless I am mistaken."

There was silence for a moment. Then the man they called Tom Miller dashed his cap on the floor and, folding his arms defiantly, looked round on his neighbors. "He has come, has he!" he roared, his face swollen, his eyes bloodshot. "Then I will be as good as my word! Who will help? Shall we sit down and be shorn like sheep, as we were before, so that our children lay on the bare stones, and we pulled the plow ourselves? Or shall we show that we are free Englishmen, and not slaves of Frenchmen? Shall we teach Master Purveyor not to trouble us again? Now, what say you, neighbors?"

So fierce a growl of impatience and anger rose round me as at once answered the question. A dozen red faces glared at me and at one another, and from the very motion and passion of the men as they snarled and threatened, the room seemed twice as full as it was. Their oaths and cries of encouragement, not loud, but the more dangerous for that, the fresh burst of fury which rose as the village smith and another came in and learned the news, the menacing gestures of a score of brandished fists--these sights, though they told of the very effect at which I had aimed, scared as well as pleased me. I turned red and white, and hesitated, fearing that I had gone too far.

The thing was done, however; and, what was more, I had soon to take care of myself. At the very moment when the hubbub was at its loudest I felt a chill run down my back as I met the monk's eye, and, reading in it whimsical admiration, read in it something besides, and that was an unmistakable menace. "Clever lad!" the eye said. "I will expose you," it threatened.

I had forgotten him--or, at any rate, that my acting would be transparent enough to him holding the clew in his hand--and his look was like the shock of cold water to me. But it is wonderful how keen the wits grow on the grindstone of necessity. With scarcely a second's hesitation I drew out my only piece of gold, and unnoticed by the other men, who were busy swearing at and encouraging one another, I disclosed a morsel of it. The monk's crafty eye glistened. I laid my finger on my lips.

He held up two fingers.

I shook my head and showed an empty palm. I had no more. He nodded; and the relief that nod gave me was great. Before I had time, however, to consider the narrowness of my escape, a movement of the crowd--for the news had spread with strange swiftness, and there was now a crowd assembled which more than filled the room--proclaimed that the purveyor had come out, and was in the street.

The room was nearly emptied at a rush. Though I prudently remained behind, I could, through the open window, hear as well as see what passed. The leading spirits had naturally struggled out first, and were gathered, sullen and full of dangerous possibilities, about the porch.

I suppose the Bishop's messenger saw in them nothing but a crowd of country clowns, for he came hectoring toward the door, smiting his boot with his whip, and puffing out his red cheeks mightily. He felt brave enough, now that he had dined and had at his back three stout constables sworn to keep the Queen's peace.

"Make way! Make way, there, do you hear?" he cried in a husky, pompous voice. "Make way!" he repeated, lightly touching the nearest man with his switch. "I am on the Queen's service, boobies, and must not be hindered."

The man swore at him, but did not budge, and the bully, brought up thus sharply, awoke to the lowering faces and threatening looks which confronted him. He changed color a little. But the ale was still in him, and, forgetting his natural discretion, he thought to carry matters with a high hand. "Come! come!" he exclaimed angrily. "I have a warrant, and you resist me at your peril. I have to enter this house. Clear the way, Master Hundredman, and break these fellows' heads if they withstand you."

A growl as of a dozen bulldogs answered him, and he drew back, as a child might who has trodden on an adder. "You fools!" he spluttered, glaring at them viciously. "Are you mad? Do you know what you are doing? Do you see this?" He whipped out from some pocket a short white staff and brandished it. "I come direct from the Lord Chancellor and upon his business, do you hear, and if you resist me it is treason. Treason, you dogs!" he cried, his rage getting the better of him, "and like dogs you will hang for it. Master Hundredman, I order you to take in your constables and arrest that man!"

"What man?" quoth Tom Miller, eying him fixedly.

"The stranger who came in an hour ago, and is inside the house."

"Him, he means, who told about the purveyor across the road," explained the monk with a wink.

That wink sufficed. There was a roar of execration, and in the twinkling of an eye the Jack-in-office, tripped up this way and shoved that, was struggling helplessly in the grasp of half a dozen men, who fought savagely for his body with the Hundredman and the constables.

"To the river! To the Ouse with him!" yelled the mob. "In the Queen's name!" shouted the officers. But these were to those as three to a score, and taken by surprise besides, and doubtful of the rights of the matter. Yet for an instant, as the crowd went reeling and fighting down the road, they prevailed; the constables managed to drag their leader free, and I caught a glimpse of him, wild-eyed and frantic with fear, his clothes torn from his back, standing at bay like some animal, and brandishing his staff in one hand, a packet of letters in the other.

"I have letters, letters of state!" he screamed shrilly. "Let me alone, I tell you! Let me go, you curs!"

But in vain. The next instant the mob were upon him again. The packet of letters went one way, the staff was dashed another. He was thrown down and plucked up again, and hurried, bruised and struggling, toward the river, his screams for mercy and furious threats rising shrilly above the oaths and laughter.

I felt myself growing pale as scream followed scream. "They will kill him!" I exclaimed trembling, and prepared to follow. "I cannot see this done."

But the monk, who had returned to my side, grasped my arm. "Don't be a fool," he said sharply. "I will answer for it they will not kill him. Tom Miller is not a fool, though he is angry. He will duck him, and let him go. But I will trouble you for that bit of gold, young gentleman."

I gave it to him.

"Now," he continued with a leer, "I will give you a hint in return. If you are wise, you will be out of this county in twelve hours. Tethered to the gate over there is a good horse which belongs to a certain purveyor now in the river. Take it! There is no one to say you nay. And begone!"

I looked hard at him for a minute, my heart beating fast. This was horse-stealing. And horse-stealing was a hanging matter. But I had done so much already that I felt I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. I was not sure that I had not incited to treason, and what was stealing a horse beside that? "I will do it!" I said desperately.

"Don't lose time, then," quoth my mentor.

I went out then and there, and found he had told the truth. Every soul in the place had gone to see the ducking, and the street was empty. Kicked aside in the roadway lay the bundle of letters, soiled but not torn, and in the gutter was the staff. I stooped and picked up one and the other--in for a lamb, in for a sheep! and they might be useful some day. Then I jumped into the saddle, and twitched the reins off the hook.

But before I could drive in the spurs, a hand fell on the bridle, and the monk's face appeared at my knee. "Well?" I said, glaring down at him--I was burning to be away.

"That is a good cloak you have got there," he muttered hurriedly. "There, strapped to the saddle, you fool. You do not want that, give it me. Do you hear? Quick, give it me," he cried, raising his voice and clutching at it fiercely, his face dark with greed and fear.

"I see," I replied, as I unstrapped it. "I am to steal the horse that you may get the cloak. And then you will lay the lot on my shoulders. Well, take it!" I cried, "and go your way as fast as you can."

Throwing it at him as hard as I could, I shook up the reins and went off down the road at a gallop. The wind whistled pleasantly past my ears. The sounds of the town grew faint and distant. Each bound of the good hack carried me farther and farther from present danger, farther and farther from the old life. In the exhilaration and excitement of the moment I forgot my condition; forgot that I had not a penny-piece in my pocket, and that I had left an unpaid bill behind me; forgot even that I rode a--well, a borrowed horse.

CHAPTER IV.

[TWO SISTERS OF MERCY.]

A younger generation has often posed me finely by asking, "What, Sir Francis! Did you not see one bishop burned? Did you not know one of the martyrs? Did you never come face to face with Queen Mary?" To all which questions I have one answer, No, and I watch small eyes grow large with astonishment. But the truth is, a man can only be at one place at a time. And though, in this very month of February, 1555, Prebendary Rogers--a good, kindly man, as I have heard, who had a wife and nine children--was burned in Smithfield in London for religion, and the Bishop of Gloucester suffered in his own city, and other inoffensive men were burned to death, and there was much talk of these things, and in thousands of breasts a smoldering fire was kindled which blazed high enough by and by--why, I was at Coton End, or on the London Road, at the time, and learned such things only dimly and by hearsay.

But the rill joins the river at last; and ofttimes suddenly and at a bound, as it were. On this very day, while I cantered easily southward with my face set toward St. Albans, Providence was at work shaping a niche for me in the lives of certain people who were at the time as unconscious of my existence as I was of theirs. In a great house in the Barbican in London there was much stealthy going and coming on this February afternoon and evening. Behind locked doors, and in fear and trembling, mails were being packed and bags strapped, and fingers almost too delicate for the task were busy with nails and hammers, securing this and closing that. The packers knew nothing of me, nor I of them. Yet but for me all that packing would have been of no avail; and but for them my fate might have been very different. Still, the sound of the hammer did not reach my ears, or, doing so, was covered by the steady tramp of the roadster; and no vision, so far as I ever heard, of a dusty youth riding Londonward came between the secret workers and their task.

I had made up my mind to sleep at St. Albans that night, and for this reason, and for others relating to the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, in which county Stony Stratford lies, I pushed on briskly. I presently found time, however, to examine the packet of letters of which I had made spoil. On the outer wrapper I found there was no address, only an exhortation to be speedy. Off this came, therefore, without ceremony, and was left in the dirt. Inside I found two sealed epistles, each countersigned on the wrapper, "Stephen Winton."

"Ho! ho!" said I. "I did well to take them."

Over the signature on the first letter--it seemed to be written on parchment--were the words, "Haste! haste! haste!" This was the thicker and heavier of the two, and was addressed to Sir Maurice Berkeley, at St. Mary Overy's, Southwark, London. I turned it over and over in my hands, and peeped into it, hesitating. Twice I muttered, "All is fair in love and war!" And at last, with curiosity fully awake, and a glance behind me to make sure that the act was unobserved, I broke the seal. The document proved to be as short and pithy as it was startling. It was an order commanding Sir Maurice Berkeley forthwith in the Queen's name, and by the authority of the Council, and so on, and so on, to arrest Katherine Willoughby de Eresby, Duchess of Suffolk, and to deliver her into the custody of the Lieutenant of the Tower, "These presents to be his waranty for the detention of the said Duchess of Suffolk until her Grace's pleasure in the matter be known."

When it was too late I trembled to think what I had done. To meddle with matters of state might be more dangerous a hundred times than stealing horses, or even than ducking the Chancellor's messenger! Seeing at this moment a party of travelers approach, I crammed the letter into my pocket, and rode by them with a red face, and a tongue that stuttered so feebly that I could scarcely return their greetings. When they had gone by I pulled out the warrant again, having it in my mind to tear it up without a moment's delay--to tear it into the smallest morsels, and so get rid of a thing most dangerous. But the great red seal dangling at the foot of the parchment caught my eye, and I paused to think. It was so red, so large, so imposing, it seemed a pity to destroy it. It must surely be good for something. I folded up the warrant again, and put it away in my safest pocket. Yes, it might be good for something.

I took out the other letter. It was bound with green ribbon and sealed with extreme care, being directed simply to Mistress Clarence--there was no address. But over Gardiner's signature on the wrapper were the words, "These, on your peril, very privately."

I turned it over and over, and said the same thing about love and war, and even repeated to myself my old proverb about a sheep and a lamb. But somehow I could not do it. The letter was a woman's letter; the secret, her secret; and though my fingers itched as they hovered about the seals, my cheek tingled too. So at last, with a muttered, "What would Petronilla say?" I put it away unopened in the pocket where the warrant lay. The odds were immense that Mistress Clarence would never get it; but at least her secret should remain hers, my honor mine!

It was dark when I rode, thoroughly jaded, into St. Albans. I was splashed with mud up to the waist and wetted by a shower, and looked, I have no doubt, from the effect of my journeying on foot and horseback, as disreputable a fellow as might be. The consciousness too that I was without a penny, and the fear lest, careful as I had been to let no one outsrip me, the news of the riot at Stratford might have arrived, did not tend to give me assurance. I poked my head timidly into the great room, hoping that I might have it to myself. To my disgust it was full of people. Half-a-dozen travelers and as many townsfolk were sitting round the fire, talking briskly over their evening draught. Yet I had no choice. I was hungry, and the thing had to be done, and I swaggered in, something of the sneak, no doubt, peeping through my bravado. I remarked, as I took my seat by the fire and set to drying myself, that I was greeted by a momentary silence, and that two or three of the company began to eye me suspiciously.

There was one man, who sat on the settle in the warmest corner of the chimney, who seemed in particular to resent my damp neighborhood. His companions treated him with so much reverence, and he snubbed them so regularly, that I wondered who he was; and presently, listening to the conversation which went on round me, I had my curiosity satisfied. He was no less a personage than the Bailiff of St. Albans, and his manner befitted such a man; for it seemed to indicate that he thought himself heir to all the powers of the old Abbots under whose broad thumb his father and grandfather had groaned.

My conscience pricking me, I felt some misgiving when I saw him, after staring at me and whispering to two or three of his neighbors, beckon the landlord aside. His big round face and burly figure gave him a general likeness to bluff King Hal and he appeared to be aware of this himself, and to be inclined to ape the stout king's ways, which, I have heard my uncle say, were ever ways heavy for others' toes. For a while, however, seeing my supper come in, I forgot him. The bare-armed girl who brought it to me, and in whom my draggled condition seemed to provoke feelings of a different nature, lugged up a round table to the fire. On this she laid my meal, not scrupling to set aside some of the snug dry townsfolk. Then she set a chair for me well in the blaze, and folding her arms in her apron stood to watch me fall to. I did so with a will, and with each mouthful of beef and draught of ale, spirit and strength came back to me. The cits round me might sneer and shake their heads, and the travelers smile at my appetite. In five minutes I cared not a whit! I could give them back joke for joke, and laugh with the best of them.

Indeed, I had clean forgotten the Bailiff, when he stalked back to his place. But the moment our eyes met, I guessed there was trouble afoot. The landlord came with him and stood looking at me, sending off the wench with a flea in her ear; and I felt under his eye an uncomfortable consciousness that my purse was empty. Two or three late arrivals, to whom I suppose Master Bailiff had confided his suspicions, took their stand also in a half-circle and scanned me queerly. Altogether it struck me suddenly that I was in a tight place, and had need of my wits.

"Ahem!" said the Bailiff abruptly, taking skillful advantage of a lull in the talk. "Where from last, young man?" He spoke in a deep choky voice, and, if I was not mistaken, he winked one of his small eyes in the direction of his friends, as though to say, "Now see me pose him!"

But I only put another morsel in my mouth. For a moment indeed the temptation to reply "Towcester," seeing that such a journey over a middling road was something to brag of before the Highway Law came in, almost overcame me. But in time I bethought me of Stephen Gardiner's maxim, "Be slow to speak!" and I put another morsel in my mouth.

The Bailiff's face grew red, or rather, redder. "Come, young man, did you hear me speak?" he said pompously. "Where from last?"

"From the road, sir," I replied, turning to him as if I had not heard him before. "And a very wet road it was."

A man who sat next me chuckled, being apparently a stranger like myself. But the Bailiff puffed himself into a still more striking likeness to King Henry, and including him in his scowl shouted at me, "Sirrah! don't bandy words with me! Which way did you come along the road, I asked."

It was on the tip of my tongue to answer saucily, "The right way!" But I reflected that I might be stopped; and to be stopped might mean to be hanged at worst, and something very unpleasant at best. So I controlled myself, and answered--though the man's arrogance was provoking enough--"I have come from Stratford, and I am going to London. Now you know as much as I do."

"Do I?" he said, with a sneer and a wink at the landlord.

"Yes, I think so," I answered patiently.

"Well, I don't!" he retorted, in vulgar triumph. "I don't. It is my opinion that you have come from London."

I went on with my supper.

"Do you hear?" he asked pompously, sticking his arms akimbo and looking round for sympathy. "You will have to give an account of yourself, young man. We will have no penniless rogues and sturdy vagabonds wandering about St. Albans."

"Penniless rogues do not go a-horseback," I answered. But it was wonderful how my spirits sank again under that word "penniless." It hit me hard.

"Wait a bit," he said, raising his finger to command attention for his next question. "What is your religion, young man?"

"Oh!" I replied, putting down my knife and looking open scorn at him, "you are an inquisitor, are you?" At which words of mine there was a kind of stir. "You would burn me as I hear they burned Master Sandars at Coventry last week, would you? They were talking about it down the road."

"You will come to a bad end, young man!" he retorted viciously, his outstretched finger shaking as if the palsy had seized him. For this time my taunt had gone home, and more than one of the listeners standing on the outer edge of the group, and so beyond his ken, had muttered "shame." More than one face had grown dark. "You will come to a bad end!" he repeated. "If it be not here, then somewhere else! It is my opinion that you have come from London, and that you have been in trouble. There is a hue-and-cry out for a young fellow just your age, and a cock of your hackle, I judge, who is wanted for heresy. A Londoner too. You do not leave here until you have given an account of yourself, Master Jack-a-Dandy!" The party had all risen round me, and some of the hindmost had got on benches to see me the better. Among these, between two bacon flitches, I caught a glimpse of the serving-maid's face as she peered at me, pale and scared, and a queer impulse led me to nod to her--a reassuring little nod. I found myself growing cool and confident, seeing myself so cornered.

"Easy! easy!" I said, "let a man finish his supper and get warmed in peace."

"Bishop Bonner will warm you!" cried the Bailiff.

"I dare say--as they warm people in Spain!" I sneered.

"He will be Bishop Burner to you!" shrieked the Bailiff, almost beside himself with rage at being so bearded by a lad.

"Take care!" I retorted. "Do not you speak evil of dignitaries, or you will be getting into trouble!"

He fairly writhed under this rejoinder.

"Landlord!" he spluttered. "I shall hold you responsible! If this person leaves your house, and is not forthcoming when wanted, you will suffer for it!"

The landlord scratched his head, being a good-natured fellow; but a bailiff is a bailiff, especially at St. Albans. And I was muddy and travel-stained, and quick of my tongue for one so young; which the middle-aged never like, though the old bear it better. He hesitated.

"Do not be a fool, Master Host!" I said. "I have something here----" and I touched my pocket, which happened to be near my sword-hilt--"that will make you rue it if you interfere with me!"

"Ho! ho!" cried the Bailiff, in haste and triumph. "So that is his tone! We have a tavern-brawler here, have we! A young swashbuckler! His tongue will not run so fast when he finds his feet in the stocks. Master landlord, call the watch! Call the watch at once, I command you!"