Part 11

A certain flattery in the analogy for an instant restored the colour to Sir Richard’s cheek. Perhaps the comparison was not so extravagant a one after all. The position of Lord Treasurer was so exalted, that, looking down from it, all lesser offices and all lesser men appeared dwarfed. It needed surely a stupendous intellect to preserve its equilibrium at that altitude. And yet, such the height, such the fall. The Treasurer’s momentary heroics came down with an anticipatory thwack which left him gasping.

If he could only avoid Cæsar’s fate while admitting the soft analogy! The illustrious Imperator had also, if he remembered rightly, received _his_ warning, and had ignored it. To ape the foolhardinesses of the great was surely not to justify one’s relation to them in the best sense.

A shrill wind blew upon the casement. Its voice had but now awakened a snug response in the Treasurer’s breast. All in a moment it spoke to him of the near approach of the Ides of March, and he shivered and dropped the paper to the floor.

“Phineas,” he said in an agitated voice, “Phineas! How came that into my pocket?”

The valet, busy about his affairs, approached deferentially but curiously, and, at a sign from his master, lifted and examined the billet, and shook his head.

“You don’t know?”

“No, indeed, my lord.”

“How do you read it, man? How do you read it?”

Phineas scratched his poll, and grinned and was silent.

“You are just an intolerable ass,” cried his master. He danced in his excitement. His dignity was all gone; he was simply a man in a shirt. “Fetch master secretary!” he cried. “Fetch master comptroller! Rouse the household, and warn the porter at the gate! Send every one in to me, here and at once.”

The valet hesitated.

“Do you hear?” shouted Sir Richard. “Why do you wait?”

“It doesn’t come down to your knees, my lord,” said Phineas.

The Treasurer leaped to a press and tore out a robe. “Go!” he screamed over his shoulder.

In a minute they all came hurrying in--comptroller, secretary, clerks, grooms, and underlings--in dress or in undress, a motley crew, as the occasion had found them.

“What is it, my lord?” asked the first, in an astonished voice. He was a tall, pallid man, so inured to method and routine that a rat behind the wainscot was enough to throw him into a flutter.

“Master Hugh,” cried the Treasurer--“Master Hugh! I found that in my pocket when I came to strip--a thing that I had never put there, or put unconsciously. What do you make of it, my friend? What does it import?”

They all gathered round the comptroller to read the billet, and, having examined it, fell apart with grave, inquiring faces.

The comptroller looked up, his lips trembling.

“My lord,” he said, “it can signify but one thing.”

“My assassination?”

“Without doubt, my lord.”

The Treasurer turned pale to the bare dome of his head. He had to the last hoped to have his worst apprehensions refuted; but it was plain that only one construction could be put upon the missive.

“How did it reach me?” he said dismally. “How did it get there?”

“Probably, my lord,” ventured the secretary, a sleek, apologetic man, “it was slipped into your lordship’s hand by one whom your lordship mistook for a chance importunate suitor, and your lordship accepted and pouched and forgot it.”

“It may have represented a threat or a friendly warning,” said the comptroller.

“Your lordship hath many and mighty enemies,” said the secretary, “as who hath not among the great and influential?”

“Your power, your imperious will, your favour in high places, my lord,” said the comptroller--“these be all incitements to the envious and unscrupulous. Without question there is some conspiracy formed against your life.”

“I could almost suspect you all of collusion in it,” cried the Treasurer bitterly, “for the relish with which you dispose of me.”

The comptroller murmured distressfully, “O, my lord, my lord!”

Sir Richard broke out, moved beyond endurance:

“What the devil do you all, moaning and croaking? I am not food yet for your commiseration. The plot may be already forward while you babble. Look under the bed, Phineas.”

The valet dived, rose, scoured the room, examined into every possible lurking-place.

“Shall I set a guard, my lord?” inquired the comptroller.

The Treasurer exploded:

“Set a guard when the thief is in! A household of braying jackasses! Go, dolt, and remedy your oversight. Shut the gates and warn the porter; beat up every hole and corner first. See that not a soul is allowed entrance on any pretext whatever. And, hark ye, Master Hugh, no eye to-night shall be shut on penalty of my high displeasure. An unwinking vigil, an unwinking vigil, Master Hugh, on the part of all. See to it. And if any one asks an audience, save of the first consequence and character, I am indisposed, Master Hugh--I am indisposed, do you hear?”

He was so, in very truth, as he drove them all out, and locked the door upon himself, and sank into a seat before the fire. A sickness of apprehension stirred in his bile and made his face like yellow wax. This business had given him such a shock as he had never before experienced. What did it mean--what could it mean? No doubt the secretary’s theory was the right one: he was incessantly being importuned by petitioners, and often, to get rid of them, he would accept their memorials, and pocket and forget all about them. So must it have been with this paper, thrust into his hand amidst a crowd. It was merciful chance alone that had restored it to his notice before too late. But, accepting all that, _why_ was his life threatened? His heart was full of an emotional complaint and protest against destiny. He was not an unjust man as things went--certainly not so signally as to merit this fatal distinction.

He passed a terrible night, shrinking from every shadow, starting at every sound. Morning when it came only added to his sick perplexity. What course was he to pursue, fearful of the lurking terror, to preserve his dignity and his life at once? He dressed in a sort of mental palsy, crept breakfastless to his library, and sent for the comptroller’s report. So far, it appeared, the night had passed without event. No doubt the deed was destined for the open air.

As he stood, trying to deliberate his policy, a visitor, the Earl of Tullibardine, was announced as craving an audience. His lordship was a personal friend of his, and beyond suspicion. Reluctantly Sir Richard gave the order for his admittance.

The nobleman came in breezily, and with much concern expressed over the report of the Treasurer’s indisposition. “Which,” said he, “maketh me loth to trouble your lordship on a personal matter, which, saving the pressure of the occasion, I would forbear. But the business calls for dispatch, and your lordship had promised me an answer.”

Sir Richard put a hand to his forehead.

“Not well,” he murmured, “and overtaxed. You must pardon me, my lord. What business?”

“Why,” cried the Earl, “have you forgot how you promised me three days ago to speak to the King about appointing my kinsman, Robert Cæsar, to a vacant clerkship of the Rolls, and how, asking me for a memorandum of the matter, I writ ‘_Remember Cæsar_’ on a slip of paper and gave it you?”

Sir Richard stood staring a moment, then burst into an uproarious laugh.

MARGARET OF ANJOU

The sun was setting over Hexham in Northumberland as the last remnants of the Lancastrian force broke and scattered before the explosive charges of the Yorkists under Montacute, Warden of the East Marches. Thenceforth all was mad flight and frenzied pursuit. No quarter was given or expected. The hurtling fragments of the rout flew in a thousand directions, to be pursued and overtaken and stamped to extinction where they fell. Steel and flesh and harness, swept into mangled heaps, dotted acres of the country, like manure laid ready for its potent dressing. Hardly a cry or a movement issued from these fermenting masses. Montacute had ordered his work thoroughly, and the chase as it swept on and away had seen to it that the fallen should yield no hangman’s perquisites. Only a spark struck out from steel here and there witnessed to the sharp eviction of a soul betrayed through its agony.

The young May moon stole up and out, and, in sickness at the sight, drew a passing cloud across her face. The horse that, miles away, carried a frantic woman and her child, stumbled in the shadow, and, half recovering itself, and again sinking, pitched its riders upon the turf.

They rose immediately, to find themselves upon the fringe of a dense wood, remote, unknown, but a haven of desperate refuge in their plight.

“Art thou hurt, child?” whispered the breathless woman.

“No, mother.”

“Come, then. No other choice is ours but death and outrage. We must take shelter where we can.”

She seized his hand--he was a pretty, delicate boy of eleven--and together they entered among the trees. All was strange and voiceless there, yet the leaves were not so full-grown but that the moonlight penetrating might help them a little on their way. It sparkled softly on the woman’s girdle, and on her little turbaned cap, and on the jewels, which she had not thought in her haste to remove or hide, clasped about her white neck; it peopled the glades with moving phantoms, mystic and watchful. She felt the little hand in hers clutch and quiver, and squeezed it, drearily responsive.

“Better,” she said, “these thousand spectres than a single sword of the usurper.”

She was only thirty-four, and of those years she had spent five in the Tower. Yet, born as she was a child of sorrow, always the sport of faction, her baby rattle the roll of drums, her games real warriors and real warfare, her indomitable spirit, wasting itself for ever in fruitless struggles and on timorous souls, refused still to acknowledge its own eclipse. She had fought, had she known it, her weak husband’s cause to within sight of the end, but the fire in her heart, though in the full front of this disaster, was not yet wholly extinguished. Only a tragic woe lined her beautiful face, and she clung half hysterically to this one shadow out of all her dreams which remained to her.

She had been a child herself when her gentle boy was born. They were even now more like brother and mothering sister than son and parent. What hope remained to her was centred entirely in him and his passionate preservation. She carried him into the woods, as a frightened woodcock bears its fledgling, with one only instinct--to put as far and as obscure an interval as possible between their enemies and themselves.

Yet, in the end, worn with grief and terror and the actual fatigues of that bloody day, they faltered and sunk down exhausted at the lip of a little clearing situated but a few hundred yards within the forest-edge. There was a mossy bank there, and on it, under the shadow of a spreading oak-tree, they fell and clung together.

“Neddy, my babe, my little woeful prince!” wept the mother. “There, hide thee thy face within my bosom, and try to sleep. It shall force my bursting heart to still itself to be thy quiet pillow.”

The boy obeyed, crying silently. Yet, so it happened that, spent with emotion, in a little a merciful oblivion overtook him, and, listening to his regular breathing as to soft music, the woman too sank presently drowned in a sea of forgetfulness. And there they lay at peace in the quiet night, with moss for their bedding and green leaves for their canopy.

A sense of light, of human neighbourhood, awoke them almost at the same moment, and they sat up together with a start. It was bright morning in the forest, and three evil, uncouth men stood gloating down upon them.

The woman’s heart seemed to stop. The rose and warmth of slumber, mortal lures to villainy, froze upon her cheek. Instinctively her hand stole to the haft of a little dagger stuck at her waist. For minutes dead silence prevailed, and then she spoke, in a voice which strove vainly to command itself:

“Pray you mercy, gentle sirs! What would you with us? O, not to betray our weakness!”

Her very plea was provocation to such cattle--a reassurance and an invitation. She had supposed them, in the first shock of discovery, to be Yorkist soldiers, but a moment’s thought had undeceived her. Shaggy, unkempt, grossly attired and rudely armed, there was nothing to associate these with the bearing of regular troops. They were mere prowling revers of the woods, beasts and marauders, who took their toll of lonely travellers, and ravished and murdered as the chance came to them.

One of the three, a huge, bull-like ruffian, in hood and battered breastplate, rose from the bow on which he leaned, and turned to his comrades.

“What say you, gossips--a pretty finch to pull? Their weakness, sooth! Do we not love all weakness in such guise?”

One, who stood behind in a high scarlet cap, peering over his friend’s shoulders, clucked in his throat, and cracked his fingers. He was grotesquely tall, lean, misshapen, with long, hungry chaps and a frosty nose.

“Gossips,” he said, in a thin, sharp-set voice, “shall we not pluck this pigeon ere we feast on her? My blood is cold, and sack would be very warming.”

The Queen wrenched a gold chain from her arm, and, rising hurriedly, flung it to the ground.

“Take it, in God’s pity,” she said, “and let us go! Gentlemen--sweet gentlemen! a broken woman throws herself upon your charity. O, teach her that some mercy still remains to men!”

“A’s unprotected,” said the third fellow, his eyes burning--“likely some little sow that flees and squeaks before the boars of York.”

“We’ll make her squeak, I warrant,” said the first speaker.

The lank creature skipped to the front, and snatched up the chain.

“Drink first,” he cried, “drink, drink! I’ll with this to the ‘Chequers’ and return anon with sack.”

The bull-headed man threw himself on him in a fury; in a second they were all fighting together for possession of the chain. The strongest, the first-mentioned, secured it.

“Drink,” he roared. “Much drink, I trow, for those remaining. Trust _thee_ the chain, Jake Andrews? Marry I will when Tib’s eve is come.”

The other wriggled, cracking his finger-joints.

“Take it thyself, then, Cuckoo, only speed fast and bring us good store.”

They wrangled yet awhile, but in the end the holder of the chain went off, with threats of fierce reprisals should the two remaining venture to take advantage of his absence. They leered at one another oddly as he disappeared.

“A’ll claim, as ever, the first and the best of everything,” growled the short, thick-set man under his breath.

“Shall he now, Thomas Kite, shall he?” answered the long scarecrow eagerly. Bending with a grotesque writhe, he jerked himself suddenly stiff again, a staring smile on his face. “Cometh our chance long sought, Thomas Kite,” he whispered. “Shall the Cuckoo always claim the Cuckoo’s share? Not if one be quick and clever, gossip.”

He squeaked, and leaping, dodged and screwed behind the other. The Queen, knife in hand, her teeth set, her muscles rigid, was almost upon them. As she lifted her arm, the stubby rogue ran under, and caught her round the waist.

She struck and struck at him, but her shortened blows fell harmless. She could not get one home so long as he held her thus, and he knew it and cried out, straining:

“Cut me the whelp’s throat, Jake Andrews, and so get behind her.”

The boy, terror-struck and whimpering, held to his mother’s skirts. With a mortal effort, she wrenched herself free from her captor, and, throwing down her blade, which Jake instantly secured, seized the child convulsively into her clutch.

“No, no!” she cried, “I am disarmed. In God’s name spare him! See, we will stand like the wretched sheep, dumbly beseeching your mercy. There, take all I have--my jewels----”

She began, with feverish fingers, to unclasp the collet from her neck. Jake, leering and humping his shoulders, stopped her mid-way.

“What now,” growled the Kite; “shall they not be ours, then?”

“Patience, good gossip, patience!” said the other softly in his ear. “Would not the Cuckoo, returning, note at once their absence, and so be moved to fury? No suspicion, Thomas Kite--none. Lull him, lull him, and then--one blow, and all is ours--wine, jewels, gold, and--hum!” He hugged himself, gluttonously contorted. “Is not a half share better than a third,” he said, “or none at all? And as for the little pretty, pleasant tit-bit----”

The Kite roared out suddenly on the captives:

“Down with ye both asquat on grass bank yonder, and move so much as an eyelid at your peril!”

Trembling and distraught, the Queen dragged the boy to a place beside her on the turf, and so, clasped together, they cowered, awaiting the end.

Despair was in her heart. So remote, so utterly unfriended, she knew not where to look for hope or remedy. Cursed and proscribed in the thick of enemies, no self-confession that she might venture but must prove her worst damnation. Outlawed herself, she was the natural prey to outlaws. To reveal her identity were to forgo the smallest consideration a threat of vengeful justice might otherwise perhaps enforce--were to unmuzzle these ravening beasts finally and effectively. And yet she dared not threaten justice, lest passions so reckless should be fired thereby to instant retaliation.

She could only pray to her gods in a dumb agony of supplication to contrive some means for their escape; for herself she could think of no possible way, unless at the last to snatch death from some ill-guarded weapon.

What long torture of mind she endured while sitting there facing her brutal captors, awaiting the Cuckoo’s return and thereafter the final struggle, one may imagine in a measure. A suffocating lump seemed to rise in her throat when at length she heard his footsteps on the twig-strewn turf, and her arm tightened convulsively about her boy.

The returned ruffian, when he hove into sight, had been obviously priming himself for the affray. He was not drunk, but his huge cheeks were blistered red and a fire blinked in his eyes. He carried over his shoulder a net containing a jar of sack and a couple of curved drinking-horns, and, striding across to his comrades, he bent, with a fierce inquiring oath, to sling his burden to the grass. As he thus stooped, Jake and the Kite, standing on either side of him, drove each a sudden knife, handle-deep, into the thick of his neck. The monster, with one slobbering choke, heaved forward and went down like an ox. His fingers raked, his legs jerked for a little, and then the whole welter relaxed and subsided. Simultaneously with its cessation of movement the two murderers, as if by one impulse, made for the wine-jar. Their hands were shaking, their cheeks spotted with white. They spilled as much as they gained, but each in the end succeeded in gulping a hornful between his chattering teeth. And then!----

The woods echoed with their screeches; they writhed like scalded snakes upon the grass. For the Cuckoo, coveting not a half but the whole of the spoil, had gone even a step further than his confederates, and had poisoned the wine he brought them with some swift corrosive acid snatched up from the “Chequers” harness-room.

Was the biter bit ever mangled with a longer tooth? The pale Queen, risen throughout this bloody drama, watching half-paralysed its course, with but reason enough left to hold the child’s face hidden from it, was even minutes in guessing the truth. But when at length she realised it, with a sob of thankfulness she seized her boy’s hand, and, avoiding those prostrate, faintly-gasping horrors, fled deep and deeper into the forest, until, as history relates, she found that chivalrous one whose generosity was to obtain her means to cross the water.

“KING COLLEY”

“We will now, my dear people,” said Mr. Cibber, “proceed to investigate the ecclesiastical Phœnix which has reared its giant head from the ashes of the conflagration, and to criticise its claims to a greatness commensurate with its bulk.”

He spoke of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which, in this summer of 1721, had stood some years completed, the stupendous “monument without a tomb” to its creator’s genius.

Mr. Cibber had been entertaining a party of provincial actors and actresses to luncheon at the “Globe” tavern, in Fleet Street, where, amongst other things, they had consumed a half-gallon of arrack punch at six shillings the quart. The company was in consequence very merry, and, though still properly impressed with the magnitude of the occasion, a little more inclined than heretofore, perhaps, to familiarity with its host, and even to a touch of that professional sportiveness whose cheap but characteristic quality seems somehow to this day to suggest the missing link, much sought and unaccountably overlooked, between men and monkeys. Mr. Cibber, however, genial as always in self-sufficiency, recked nothing of the change. He walked at the height of pompous good-humour, his usually pasty countenance flushed, his hat under his arm, and his full wig pushed a trifle back from his forehead. He wore a heavily embroidered claret-coloured coat with stiff skirts, buttoned at the waist alone, black velvet breeches, ruffles, and a “bosom” of Mechlin lace, pearl silk stockings with gold clocks, and scarlet heels to his shoes. His magnificence put into the shade the somewhat meretricious finery of his companions, and that was exactly as it should have been. King Colley would have wished to impress upon the public in general the fact that he was merely acting cicerone, in a spirit of tolerant condescension, to certain country insignificances whom it was his humour to patronise, and that there was something a little fine in his taking these humble, unsophisticated souls under his personal protection, and exhibiting to them the lions of the Metropolis.

The party, chattering, laughing, and gaping, went down Fleet Street, and paused a moment at the ruined gateway on Ludgate Hill. It had been gutted by the great fire, but the mutilated statues of King Lud and his sons still remained to its west front. Mr. Cibber pointed out the middle figure.

“King Lud,” he said.

“Lud!” responded Mrs. Lightfoot, and Mr. Barney Bellingham, low comedian, laughed suddenly, and then looked preternaturally solemn.

They were some five or six in all, including a “heavy father” and spouse, “Sweet Corinna,” so called, the most affectedly rapturous of _ingénues_, and the two above-mentioned. Mrs. Lightfoot, a faded coquette in a soiled “paysanne,” had once played Hypolita in the Laureate’s own “She Would and She Would Not,” and could claim some kinship with genius.

“A fabulous monarch,” said Mr. Cibber grandiloquently, “and therefore figuring not inappropriately on the portal, as one might call it, to Pretence. Your servant, sir.”

He addressed a little old gentleman who at that moment had alighted from a chair which had been deposited close beside the speaker. The stranger was the most withered small creature it was possible to conceive--a nonagenarian at least by his looks--a fledgling of second childhood, his head, naked and skinny, in a great wig like a nest. His eyes were dim, his nose was a rasped claw, his fingers were horny talons. He was dressed very plainly, almost like a farmer, in a drab-coloured coat and breeches; and something of rustic vigour showed in the positive sprightliness with which, in spite of his years, he stepped out upon the stones. Mr. Cibber, a practised reader of character, distinguished the country cousin in him at once, and was moved to some affable patronage.

“If you are going our way, sir,” he said, “and an arm would be of any service to you? My name is Cibber--Colley Cibber, sir, of whom it is just possible you may have heard.”