Chapter 19
THE KING’S FRIEND
Overfield Court was mildly stirred at the news that Master Christopher would stay there a few days on his way back from London to Lewes. It was not so exciting as when Master Ralph was to come, as the latter made more demands than a mere monk; for the one the horses must be in the pink of condition, the game neither too wild nor too tame, his rooms must be speckless, neither too full nor too empty of furniture; for the other it did not matter so much, for he was now not only a younger brother, but a monk, and therefore accustomed to contradiction and desirous to acquiesce in arrangements.
Lady Torridon indeed took no steps at all when she heard that Chris was coming, beyond expressing a desire that she might not be called upon to discuss the ecclesiastical situation at every meal; and when Chris finally arrived a week after Bishop Fisher’s execution, having parted with the Prior at Cuckfield, she was walking in her private garden beyond the moat.
Sir James was in a very different state. He had caused two rooms to be prepared, that his son might take his choice, one next to Mr. Carleton’s and therefore close to the chapel, and the other the old chamber that Chris had occupied before he went to Lewes; and when the monk at last rode up on alone on his tired mule with his little bag strapped to the crupper, an hour before sunset, his father was out at the gatehouse to meet him, and walked up beside him to the house, with his hand laid on his son’s knee.
They hardly spoke a word as they went; Sir James had looked up at Chris’s white strained face, and had put one question; and the other had nodded; and the hearts of both were full as they went together to the house.
The father and son supped together alone that night in the private parlour, for no one had dared to ask Lady Torridon to postpone her usual supper hour; and as soon as that was over and Chris had told what he had seen, with many silences, they went into the oak-room where Lady Torridon and Mr. Carleton were awaiting them by the hearth with the Flemish tiles.
The mother was sitting as usual in her tall chair, with her beautiful hands on her lap, and smiled with a genial contempt as she ran her eyes up and down her son’s figure.
“The habit suits you very well, my son--in every way,” she added, looking at him curiously.
Chris had greeted her an hour before at his arrival, so there was no ceremony of salute to be gone through now. He sat down by his father.
“You have seen Ralph, I hear,” observed Lady Torridon.
Chris did not know how much she knew, and simply assented. He had told his father everything.
“I have some news,” she went on in an unusually talkative mood, “for you both. Ralph is to marry Beatrice Atherton--the girl you saw in his rooms, Christopher.”
Sir James gave an exclamation and leant forward; and Chris tightened his lips.
“She is a friend of Mr. More’s,” went on Lady Torridon, apparently unconscious of the sensation she was making, “but that is Ralph’s business, I suppose.”
“Why did Ralph not write to me?” asked his father, with a touch of sternness.
Lady Torridon answered him by a short pregnant silence, and then went on--
“I suppose he wished me to break it to you. It will not be for two or three years. She says she cannot leave Mrs. More for the present.”
Chris’s brain was confused by the news, and yet it all seemed external to him. As he had ridden up to the house in the evening he had recognised for the first time how he no longer belonged to the place; his two years at Lewes had done their work, and he came to his home now not as a son but as a guest. He had even begun to perceive the difference after his quarrel with Ralph, for he had not been conscious of the same personal sting at his brother’s sins that he would have felt five years ago. And now this news, while it affected him, did not penetrate to the still sanctuary that he had hewn out of his heart during those months of discipline.
But his father was roused.
“He should have written to me,” he said sternly. “And, my wife, I will beg you to remember that I have a right to my son’s business.”
Lady Torridon did not move or answer. He leaned back again, and passed his hand tenderly through Chris’s arm.
* * * * *
It was very strange to the younger son to find himself a few minutes later up again in the west gallery of the chapel, where he had knelt two years before; and for a few moments he almost felt himself at home. But the mechanical shifting of his scapular aside as he sat down for the psalms, recalled facts. Then he had been in his silk suit, his hands had been rough with his cross-bow, his beard had been soft on his chin, and the blood hot in his cheeks. Now he was in his habit, smooth-faced and shaven, tired and oppressed, still weak from the pangs of soul-birth. He was further from human love, but nearer the Divine, he thought.
He sat with his father a few minutes after compline; and Sir James spoke more frankly of the news that they had heard.
“If she is really a friend of Mr. More’s,” he said, “she may be his salvation. I am sorely disappointed in him. I did not know Master Cromwell when I sent him to him, as I do now. Is it my fault, Chris?”
* * * * *
Chris told his father presently of what the Prior had said as to Ralph’s assistance in the matter of the visit that the two monks had paid to the Tower; and asked an interpretation.
Sir James sat quiet a minute or two, stroking his pointed grey beard softly, and looking into the hearth.
“God forgive me if I am wrong, my son,” he said at last, “but I wonder whether they let the my Lord Prior go to the Tower in order to shake the confidence of both. Do you think so, Chris?”
Chris too was silent a moment; he knew he must not speak evil of dignities.
“It may be so. I know that my Lord Prior--”
“Well, my son?”
“My Lord Prior has been very anxious--”
Sir James patted his son on the knee, and reassured him.
“Prior Crowham is a very holy man, I think; but--but somewhat delicate. However their designs have come to nothing. The bishop is in glory; and the other more courageous than he was.”
Chris also had a few words with Mr. Carleton before he went to bed, sitting where he had sat in the moonlight two years before.
“If they have done so much,” said the priest, “they will do more. When a man has slipped over a precipice he cannot save his fall. Master More will be the next to go; I make no doubt of that. You are to be a priest soon, Chris?”
“They have applied for leave,” said the monk shortly. “In two years I shall be a priest, no doubt, if God wills.”
“You are happy?” asked the other.
Chris made a little gesture.
“I do not know what that means,” he said, “but I know I have done right. I feel nothing. God’s ways and His world are too strange.”
The priest looked at him oddly, without speaking.
“Well, father?” asked Chris, smiling.
“You are right,” said the chaplain brusquely. “You have done well. You have crossed the border.”
Chris felt the blood surge in his temples.
“The border?” he asked.
“The border of dreams. They surround the Religious Life; and you have passed through them.”
Chris still looked at him with parted lips. This praise was sweet, after the bitterness of his failure with Ralph. The priest seemed to know what was passing in his mind.
“Oh! you will fail sometimes,” he said, “but not finally. You are a monk, my son, and a man.”
* * * * *
Lady Torridon retired into her impregnable silence again after her sallies of speech on the previous evening; but as the few days went on that Chris had been allowed to spend with his parents he was none the less aware that her attitude towards him was one of contempt. She showed it in a hundred ways--by not appearing to see him, by refusing to modify her habits in the smallest particular for his convenience, by a rigid silence on the subject that was in the hearts of both him and his father. She performed her duties as punctually and efficiently as ever, dealt dispassionately and justly with an old servant who had been troublesome, and with regard to whom her husband was both afraid and tender; but never asked for confidences or manifested the minutest detail of her own accord.
* * * * *
On the fourth day after Chris’s arrival news came that Sir Thomas More had been condemned, but it roused no more excitement than the fall of a threatening rod. It had been known to be inevitable. And then on Chris’s last evening at home came the last details.
* * * * *
Sir James and Chris had been out for a long ride up the estate, talking but little, for each knew what was in the heart of the other; and they were just dismounting at the terrace-steps when there was a sound of furious galloping; and a couple of riders burst through the gateway a hundred yards away.
Chris felt his heart leap and hammer in his throat, but stood passively awaiting what he knew was coming; and a few seconds later, Nicholas Maxwell checked his horse passionately at the steps.
“God damn them!” he cried, with a crimson quivering face.
Sir James stepped up at once and took him by the arm.
“Nick,” he said, and glanced at the staring grooms.
Nicholas showed his teeth like a dog.
“God damn them!” he said again.
The other rider had come up by now; he was dusty and seemed spent. He was a stranger to the father and son who waited on the steps; but he looked like a groom, and slipped off his horse deftly and took Sir Nicholas’s bridle.
“Come in Nick,” said Sir James. “We can talk in the house.”
As the three went up together, with the strange rider at a respectful distance behind, Nicholas broke out again in one sentence.
“They have done it,” he said, “he is dead. Mother of God!”
His whip twitched in his clenching hand. He turned and jerked his head beckoningly to the man who followed; and the four went on together, through the hall and into Sir James’s parlour. Sir James shut the door.
“Tell us, Nick.”
Nicholas stood at the hearth, glaring and shifting.
“This fellow knows--he saw it; tell them, Dick.”
The man gave his account. He was one of the servants of Sir Nicholas’ younger brother, who lived in town, and had been sent down to Great Keynes immediately after the execution that had taken place that morning. He was a man of tolerable education, and told his story well.
Sir James sat as he listened, with his hand shading his eyes; Nicholas was fidgetting at the hearth, interrupting the servant now and again with questions and reminders; and Chris leaned in the dark corner by the window. There floated vividly before his mind as he listened the setting of the scene that he had looked upon a few days ago, though there were new actors in it now.
“It was this morning, sir, on Tower Hill. There was a great company there long before the time. He came out bravely enough, walking with the Lieutenant that was his friend, and with a red cross in his hand.”
“You were close by,” put in Nicholas
“Yes, sir; I was beside the stairs. They shook as he went up; they were crazy steps, and he told the Lieutenant to have a care to him.”
“The words, man, the words!”
“I am not sure, sir; but they were after this fashion: ‘See me safe up, Master Lieutenant; I will shift for myself at the coming down.’ So he got up safe, and stamped once or twice merrily to see if all were firm. Then he made a speech, sir, and begged all there to pray for him. He told them that he was to die for the faith of the Catholic Church, as my Lord of Rochester did.”
“Have you heard of my lord’s head being taken to Nan Boleyn?” put in Nicholas fiercely.
Sir James looked up.
“Presently, Nick,” he said.
The man went on.
“Master More kneeled down presently at his prayers; and all the folk kept very quiet. There was not one that cried against him. Then he stood up again, put off his gown, so that his neck was bare; and passed his hand over it smiling. Then he told the headsman that it was but a short one, and bade him be brave and strike straight, lest his good name should suffer. Then he laid himself down to the block, and put his neck on it; but he moved again before he gave the sign, and put his beard out in front--for he had grown one in prison”--
“Give us the words,” snarled Nicholas.
“He said, sir, that his beard had done no treason, and need not therefore suffer as he had to do. And then he thrust out his hand for a sign--and ’twas done at a stroke.”
“God damn them!” hissed Nicholas again as a kind of Amen, turning swiftly to the fire-place so that his face could not be seen.
There was complete silence for a few seconds. The groom had his eyes cast down, and stood there--then again he spoke.
“As to my Lord of Rochester’s head, that was taken off to the--the Queen, they say, in a white bag, and she struck it on the mouth.”
Nicholas dropped his head against his hand that rested on the wood-work.
“And the body rested naked all day on the scaffold, with the halberd-men drinking round about; and ’twas tumbled into a hole in Barking Churchyard that night.”
“At whose orders?”
“At Master Cromwell’s, sir.”
Again there was silence; and again the groom broke it.
“There was more said, sir--” and hesitated.
The old man signed to him to go on.
“They say that my lord’s head shone with light each night on the bridge,” said the man reverently; “there was a great press there, I know, all day, so that the streets were blocked, and none could come or go. And so they tumbled that into the river at last; at least ’tis supposed so--for ’twas gone when I looked.”
Nicholas turned round; and his eyes were bright and his face fiery and discoloured.
Sir James stood up, and his voice was broken as he spoke.
“Thank you, my man. You have told your story well.”
* * * * *
As the groom turned to go out, Sir Nicholas wheeled round swiftly to the hearth, and buried his face on his arm; and Chris saw a great heaving begin to shake his broad shoulders.
THE KING’S TRIUMPH--BOOK II