Part 4

His face transfigured, he released his hold of the priest, and was on the point of moving from the room, when a sudden soft hubbub arising outside arrested him. Always fearful of violence, he hesitated an instant, then, in a spasm of panic, tore aside the hangings. A throng of ashy faces greeted him. Instinctively he read the truth.

“My fleet!” he gasped.

A cowering courtier fell upon his knees before him.

“Destroyed, dispersed, great lord.”

“By what--by whom?”

“By shot, by fire, by tempest. The English captains in their privateers swarmed like gnats about the rolling hulks.”

“Like gnats? Was Drake among them?”

“The first and worst.”

The King staggered, recovered himself, stiffened, and turned towards his oratory.

“No more,” he said. “I take it kneeling.”

He moved away stupidly, stopped, turned again, and addressed himself, as if groping, towards the Jesuit:

“I take it kneeling, I say. The land of God--England--can it be--and I----?”

Some insect droned in the dead silence; the King was seen to start, to stoop, to block his ears with his hands.

“Tell them,” he said thickly, “to let the seaman go, in God’s name and the King’s. It is our will.”

George Buchanan

Two boys were quarrelling in the privy garden of Stirling Castle on the Forth. Their shrill little passions rose ludicrously inconsonant with the majestic gravity of the old historic pile. That had its roots deep-striking into the mighty rock from which it had sprung; and, above, every lusty tower, every folded roof, every soaring pinnacle of the massed congeries of hall and chapel and battlement which comprised the royal rookery was a living testimony to the fecundity of the source from which those roots had drunk. Stirling Castle, in common with other impregnable fortresses of its kind, had grown fat and strong, like a strapping vine, on the blood which soaked its bases--so strong that, in this year of stormy grace 1576, it was still the residence confidently appropriated to a regal minor.

The Castle, massive and somnolent, commanded imperturbably from its height the beautiful open champaign--with its meandering river like a silver uncoiled spring--in the midst of which it was set; the angry small voices vexed its serenity about as much as a buzzing fly might vex a mammoth. Yet they had this right in common with the great voices of the past; one of them came from the lungs of a nestling of the right eagle breed.

He, this nestling--the one destined to be our first Stuart monarch--was a stubby, commonplace boy of ten. His face was pale and somewhat meaty, his features were undistinguished in a pawky good-humoured way, his hair was longish and of a bright auburn, which was to deepen later on. Now, under the influence of anger, its roots were flushed red, which gave it an inflamed look, and the young gentleman’s close-buttoned doublet was sadly disordered, and its lace torn at the wrists.

And what _was_ the subject of dispute, meet to environments so stern and so imposing? Why just a tame sparrow, which King Jamie was bent on appropriating from his young playmate, the Master of Mar, to whom it had been presented by a diplomatic gardener.

“Gie it me, Geordie,” cried his Majesty, snatching and struggling. “I wull hae it. Saul of my body, man, dinna ye ken the voice of royalty?”

The other, a ferrety, pink-lidded and ginger-headed boy, lithe but no match in avoirdupois for his thicker-set antagonist, answered only by cries and contortions. In the result, the sparrow changed hands, a crushed and lifeless little body. Geordie broke away, and made, howling, for a certain room in the Castle.

It was a room well known to him, sombre, rude in its scholastic appointments, but with the stony acerbities of its walls somewhat softened by a good lining of books. An old man of seventy, sitting reading by the bare strong table, raised his head as the intruder entered.

“Ye’ll be comin’ to tell me of some new act of tyranny, Geordie man?” he said.

He looked a very shrewd, observant old fellow, in the falling collar and long black tunic and gown of a grammarian. He had a high, bald forehead backing into a sparse crop of hair, like a track losing itself on a hill; a rough, bulbous nose, and rugged cheeks shaven down to where a thick moustache lost itself in a thicker chin-beard. There were plentiful bags and crow’s-feet about his eyes, which were like bright buttons in soft wrinkled leather.

The boy, thus encouraged, made the utmost of his wrong. In the midst his Majesty entered, a little shamefaced, but defiant. He condescended to avow his act and to justify it, and he exclaimed on his playfellow for a “snoovin’ taed,” which was the Scots for sneaking toad.

Papa Buchanan--Majesty’s preceptor--listened very serenely, slipping in a word here and there where the angry brabble permitted it. Probably in the end he would have summed up and dismissed the squabble with a warning, had not Master Jamie, incensed by some hint of correction, muttered just audibly an invitation to anyone to whom the peril of the essay might appeal “to come and bell the cat”--a challenge to which authority, in its own interests, was bound to respond. It did, in fact, respond promptly, with an amazing vigour for its years, and with the pliant persuasion of a leathern “tawse” kept for the purpose; and, when it had done with Majesty, it administered a similar dose to the other disputant, as the shortest way to restoring amity through fellow-suffering.

“Haud your rowt, Geordie, like a gude mannie, and rin awa,” said the breathed pedagogue, as he prepared to sit down and resume his reading. But it was not to be. Attracted by the uproar, the Countess of Mar--widowed sister-in-law to Mr. Alexander Erskine, the King’s present guardian--came hurrying into the room, and gathering, from the position of the royal hand, the true state of the case, caught the vociferous victim into her arms, and, rounding on the grammarian, demanded passionately of him how he dared lay his hands on the Lord’s anointed.

“The end justifies the means,” responded the pedagogue coolly. “I marle your ladyship’s confusion of pairts. The Lord shall keep to his ain and I to mine.”

“Yours, ye presumptuous fool!” cried the angry woman. “But ’tis time this arrogance ended.”

Master Buchanan, a practised psychologist, decided, in the words of the proverb, to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” He withdrew.

The King forgot all about his chastisement, and its indignity, in a day or two. But not so the Countess. The act had brought to a head in her a long-swelling process of exasperation. That this audacious pedagogue should dare to claim a privilege denied to his colleagues, when a whipping-boy, common to all of them, was provided in the person of the young Sir Mungo Malagrowther, was simply intolerable. Her smouldering resentment took fire in a determination to bring this domineering will to its knees. And, as luck would have it, an opportunity seemed quickly given her.

One day her son, the young Master of Mar (who had by no means forgotten, or forgotten to resent, _his_ clouting), came to her, triumphant, with some notes which he had picked up while spying about in his absent preceptor’s room. These notes were incriminating, they positively smelt of treason, and the Countess was fiercely jubilant. She abode her time.

But Buchanan had in the meanwhile discovered his loss for himself, and, putting this and that together--Geordie’s new air of defiance, and his lady mother’s conscious looks--had formed a shrewd guess as to the state of affairs.

That day he appeared before the King with a sifflication, or petition, which he desired his young pupil to sign, convinced that the thoughtless, good-natured boy would never trouble to examine into more than its purport. And his surmise was justified.

“What is it a’ aboot?” was the indifferent demand.

“Just a bit place at Court, Jamie, my man,” answered the pedagogue, “for a worthy chield, more fitted than mony to adorn his office.”

The King signed, and the strategist retired with his spoil.

That night the storm burst. A message reached Buchanan, desiring his immediate attendance in the royal cabinet. He obeyed the summons without hurry, an odd smile on his dry old lips. He found Erskine, the Countess, and the young Master of Mar gathered about the King’s chair. Her ladyship lost no time in opening the proceedings.

“D’ye ken those papers, Maister Buchanan?” she cried, flinging the notes down on the table under the pedagogue’s nose.

“Vera weel,” he answered--“and who stole them from my room?”

“The Lord shall justify the theft,” she cried, “since it hath revealed a treason to His anointed.”

Erskine, half bored, half amused, bade the pedagogue take up the notes and explain them as he could.

“They are for a work I am projecting,” said Buchanan--“_De Jure Regni apud Scotos_--which is just a compendium of poleetical philosophy.”

“Read,” cried the Countess; and, without hesitation, Buchanan obeyed, giving the whole of what is here only the gist:

“If a King should do things tending to the dissolution of human society, for the preservation of which he has been made, he is a tyrant, ergo an enemy of all mankind. Is there not a just cause of war against such an enemy, and is it not lawful in such war for the whole people, or one, or any, to kill that enemy? May not any out of all mankind lawfully kill a tyrant, as one who has broken the bond made between himself and mankind?”

“Haud!” cried her ladyship, rabid to seize her point. “What ca’ ye that, brother, but a direct incitement to treason? Heard ye aye such sedeetious blether! A bond, the deil hae’t! I tell ye, ye misleared pedant, there’s na bond save between the Lord and His anointed, and whosoever thinks otherwise, or designs in ony way to injure the King, is guilty of treason to the Lord.”

“I submit,” said Buchanan. “It is treason to design in ony way to injure the King. Oot of your ain mouth, woman, do you stand convict.”

He took a paper from his pocket and threw it on the table.

“Read!” he commanded, in his turn.

Dumbfounded, but somehow impelled, the Countess lifted the paper, glanced at it, and, uttering a shriek, threw it down before Erskine, who, also perusing it, gave a sudden snort, and handed it, with an amused ironic bow, to the King.

It was a document, signed by his own Majesty, vesting his title and authority for the space of fifteen days in the person of his faithful servant George Buchanan.

The pedagogue, with a stern aspect, advanced, and, motioning the King out of his chair--a dictate which the pupil instinctively obeyed--assumed the vacant place.

“D’ye deny your ain sign-manual, James Stuart?” he asked.

The boy, looking very sheepish, shook his head.

“It shall be a lesson and a warning to ye, Jamie,” said Buchanan. “How aften have I rebuked, and vainly, your complying good-nature! And now that easy concession has dethroned ye for the nonce, as ane day it may for gude and a’. For the future, read your sifflications before signing them.” He whipped round suddenly on the small Master of Mar. “As for this young traitor and his mither,” he bawled, “that have conspired to injure their King----”

The Countess cried out, as Geordie ran screaming into her arms, “No treason, gudeman, no treason! I allow the truth of your contention. It is maist lawful, under just provocation, to dethrone and kill a tyrant.”

“Humph!” said Buchanan, twisting into place again. “I am nane, maybe, so convinced of that as I was, and we will e’en leave the point for future discussion. In the meanwhile, as King I decree that the person of ane George Buchanan, _homo multarum literarum_, is sacred from this hour and for ever, and that onyone at ony time conspiring to injure it, shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the King’s Majesty.”

Alexander Erskine lay back in his chair and went into a roar of laughter.

The Lord Treasurer

“Phineas,” said the Lord Treasurer--“my breeches!”

The attendant, stooping to the august legs, reverentially relieved them of their small-clothes, and his lordship stood up in his shirt with his back to the fire. Even so denuded, he could never have conceived himself as anything less than a hero to his valet--no, not when, with a comfortable rearward shrug of his shoulders, he lifted the veil of his unspeakableness to the gratifying warmth.

“Let me see, Phineas,” said the Lord Treasurer. “To-morrow is Wednesday--the black velvet with the plain falling band, is it not? Very well. Empty that pocket of its papers, Phineas.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sir Richard Weston, Baron of Exchequer and Lord High Treasurer to his Majesty King Charles I, was disrobing for the night in his official residence off Chancellor’s or Chancery Lane. He was a man of inflexible routine, who changed his raiment, parcelled out his duties, and pigeon-holed his correspondence with an unswerving regularity from which nothing could ever make him deviate but a bribe. He had a suit of clothes for Monday, a suit for Wednesday, another for Friday, and so on--a change on every third day; and in the doublet of each suit was a little pocket below the waist, into which it was his custom to slip all memoranda of affairs requiring his early attention. This pocket it was the valet’s duty to explore upon every occasion of exchange into fresh habiliments.

Now, _system_ has this drawback, that it entices those who practise it into a confidence in their inability to err, which is in itself an error. Pigeon-holes are useful things, if one is convinced that every article in them is docketed under its obvious letter. But, alas! in actual fact the short cut too often proves itself the longest way round, and the pigeon has an amazing way of hiding in the unexpected compartment. He may fail to answer to his own name or his firm’s, and leave one in the last resort only his subject or his business by which to trace him--if, indeed, one can identify either under a capital letter. We have known an orderly man to tear the heart out of a nest of pigeon-holes from “B” to “Z,” only at length to find what he sought under “Anonymous.” Yet he remained no less convinced than the Treasurer that he had eliminated confusion from his category of affairs. System, in short, may provide against everything but the bad memory which most trusts to it.

Sir Richard, pleasantly conscious of his calves and upwards, reared himself on his toes and yawned and sank down again.

“Is aught there, varlet?” he demanded. “Bring me whatsoever it containeth.”

The man laid down the discarded doublet.

“Naught, my lord,” he said, “but a single scrap of paper.”

“Give it me.”

The servant crossed the room, and presented the memorandum with an obeisance. The master accepted it, glanced down, and stood suddenly rigid.

“_Remember Cæsar!_”

That was all--just those two words, written bold in ink in an unknown hand. “Remember Cæsar!”

Sir Richard was holding the paper in his right hand; dropping the veil, he brought his left to the front and stood staring in a sort of stupor. A consciousness as of chill, as of a sense of warmth and security suddenly and shockingly withdrawn, tingled through his veins. It was succeeded by a faint thrill of grievance or self-pity. He had been so exceedingly comfortable and happy a moment ago.

“Remember Cæsar!”--just those two words, no more, but how voluminous in terrific import! “Remember Cæsar!” Remember the retribution that always waited on “vaulting ambition.” A vision of a vast Senate Hall, of a throng of passionate figures holding aloft blood-stained daggers, of a silent, prostrate form in their midst, rose before him. “Remember Cæsar!” Remember Cæsar’s fate: remember what came to befall the greatest soldier, statesman, jurist of his time--possibly of all time.

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 everyone 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 anyone 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.

The Princess Elizabeth

She was really the most affectionate and harmless of little princesses, though, in the cruelty of her fate, one of the most tragic figures of her sad time. Destiny, the great bully, in the absence of any celestial S.P.C.C., often delights in torturing good children, and surely he had never vented his spite on a prettier innocence than this. She was born on the Holy Innocents’ day, actually; and that may have prejudiced the odious tyrant. A counterpane of snow covered the earth at the time, and when the sun of the New Year withdrew it, there was this smiling snowdrop underneath.