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The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series

R >> Rafael Sabatini >> The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series




For a year and more his name had been coupled with the Queen's in
a tale that hurt her honour as a woman and imperilled her dignity
as a sovereign. Already in October of 1559 Alvarez de Quadra, the
Spanish ambassador, had written home: "I have learnt certain
things as to the terms on which the Queen and Lord Robert stand
towards each other which I could not have believed."

That was at a time when de Quadra was one of a dozen ambassadors
who were competing for her hand, and Lord Robert had, himself,
appeared to be an ally of de Quadra and an advocate of the
Spanish marriage with the Archduke Charles. But it was a presence
which nowise deceived the astute Spaniard, who employed a legion
of spies to keep him well informed.

"All the dallying with us," he wrote, "all the dallying with the
Swede, all the dallying there will be with the rest, one after
another, is merely to keep Lord Robert's enemies in play until
his villainy about his wife can be executed."

What that particular villainy was, the ambassador had already
stated earlier in his letter. "I have learnt from a person who
usually gives me true information that Lor d Robert has sent to
have his wife poisoned."

What had actually happened was that Sir Richard Verney--a trusted
retainer of Lord Robert's--had reported to Dr. Bayley, of New
College, Oxford, that Lady Robert Dudley was "sad and ailing,"
and had asked him for a potion. But the doctor was learned in
more matters than physic. He had caught an echo of the tale of
Lord Robert's ambition; he had heard a whisper that whatever
suitors might come from overseas for Elizabeth, she would marry
none but "my lord"--as Lord Robert was now commonly styled. More,
he had aforetime heard rumours of the indispositions of Lady
Robert, yet had never found those rumours verified by the fact.
Some months ago, it had been reported that her ladyship was
suffering from cancer of the breast and likely soon to die of it.
Yet Dr. Bayley had reason to know that a healthier woman did not
live in Berkshire.

The good doctor was a capable deductive reasoner, and the
conclusion to which he came was that if they poisoned her under
cover of his potion--she standing in no need of physic--he might
afterwards be hanged as a cover for their crime. So he refused to
prescribe as he was invited, nor troubled to make a secret of
invitation and refusal.

For awhile, then, Lord Robert had prudently held his hand;
moreover, the urgency there had been a year ago, when that host
of foreign suitors laid siege to Elizabeth of England, had
passed, and his lordship could afford to wait. But now of a
sudden the urgency was returned. Under the pressure brought to
bear upon her to choose a husband, Elizabeth had half-committed
herself to marry the Archduke Charles, promising the Spanish
ambassador a definite answer within a few days.

Lord Robert had felt the earth to be quaking under him; he had
seen the ruin of his high ambitions; he had watched with rage the
expanding mockery upon the countenances of Norfolk, Sussex, and
those others who hated and despised him; and he had cursed that
wife of his who knew not when to die. But for that obstinacy with
which she clung to life he had been the Queen's husband these
many months, so making an end to suspense and to the danger that
lies in delay.

To-night the wantonness with which the Queen flaunted before the
eyes of all her court the predilection in which she held him,
came not merely to lull his recent doubts and fears, to feed his
egregious vanity, and to assure him that in her heart he need
fear no rival; it came also to set his soul Quiver impotent rage.
He had but to put forth his hands to possess himself of this
splendid prize. Yet those hands of his were bound while that
woman lived at Cumnor. Conceive his feelings as they stole away
together like any pair of lovers.

Arm in arm they came by a stone gallery, where a stalwart scarlet
sentinel, a yeoman of the guard, with a Tudor rose embroidered in
gold upon his back, stood under a lamp set in the wall, with
grounded pike and body stiffly erect.

The tall young Queen was in crimson satin with cunningly-wrought
silver embroideries, trimmed with tufted silver fringe, her
stomacher stiff with silver bullion studded with gold rosettes
and Roman pearls, her bodice cut low to display her splendid
neck, decked by a carcanet of pearls and rubies, and surmounted
by a fan-like cuff of guipure, high behind and sloping towards
the bust. Thus she appeared to the sentinel as the rays of the
single lamp behind him struck fire from her red-gold hair. As if
by her very gait to express the wantonness of her mood, she
pointed her toes and walked with head thrown back, smiling up
into the gipsy face of her companion, who was arrayed from head
to foot in shimmering ivory satin, with an elegance no man in
England could have matched.

They came by that stone gallery to a little terrace above the
Privy Steps. A crescent moon hung low over the Lambeth marshes
across the river. From a barge that floated gay with lights in
mid-stream came a tinkle of lutes, and the sweet voice of a
singing boy. A moment the lovers stood at gaze, entranced by the
beauty of the soft, tepid September night, so subtly adapted to
their mood. Then she fetched a sigh, and hung more heavily upon
his arm, leaned nearer to his tall, vigorous, graceful figure.

"Robin, Robin!" was all she said, but in her voice throbbed a
world of passionate longing, an exquisite blend of delight and
pain.

Judging the season ripe, his arm flashed round her, and drew her
fiercely close. For a moment she was content to yield, her head
against his stalwart shoulder, a very woman nestling to the mate
of her choice, surrendering to her master. Then the queen in her
awoke and strangled nature. Roughly she disengaged herself from
his arm, and stood away, her breathing quickened.


"God's Death, Robin!" There was a harsh note in the voice that
lately had cooed so softly. "You are strangely free, I think."

But he, impudence incarnate, nothing abashed, accustomed to her
gusty moods, to her alternations between the two natures she had
inherited--from overbearing father and wanton mother--was
determined at all costs to take the fullest advantage of the
hour, to make an end of suspense.

"I am not free, but enslaved--by love and worship of you. Would
you deny me; Would you?"

"Not I, but fate," she answered heavily, and he knew that the
woman at Cumnor was in her mind.

"Fate will soon mend the wrong that fate has done--very soon
now." He took her hand, and, melted again from her dignity, she
let it lie in his. "When that is done, sweet, then will I claim
you for my own."

"When that is done, Robin?" she questioned almost fearfully, as
if a sudden dread suspicion broke upon her mind. "When what is
done?"

He paused a moment to choose his words, what time she stared
intently into the face that gleamed white in the surrounding
gloom.

"When that poor ailing spirit is at rest." And he added: "It will
be soon."

"Thou hast said the same aforetime, Robin. Yet it has not so
fallen out."

"She has clung to life beyond what could have been believed of
her condition," he explained, unconscious of any sinister
ambiguity. "But the end, I know, is very near--a matter but of
days."

"Of days!" she shivered, and moved forward to the edge of the
terrace, he keeping step beside her. Then she stood awhile in
silence, looking down at the dark oily surge of water. "You loved
her once, Robin?" she asked, in a queer, unnatural voice.

"I never loved but once," answered that perfect courtier.

"Yet you married her--men say it was a love marriage. It was a
marriage, anyway, and you can speak so calmly of her death?" Her
tone was brooding. She sought understanding that should silence
her own lingering doubt of him.

"Where lies the blame? Who made me what I am?" Again his bold arm
encompassed her. Side by side they peered down through the gloom
at the rushing waters, and he seized an image from them. "Our
love is like that seething tide," he said. "To resist it is to
labour in agony awhile, and then to perish."

"And to yield is to be swept away."

"To happiness," he cried, and reverted to his earlier prayer.
"Say that when . . . that afterwards, I may claim you for my own.
Be true to yourself, obey the voice of instinct, and so win to
happiness."

She looked up at him, seeking to scan the handsome face in that
dim light that baffled her, and he observed the tumultuous heave
of her white breast.

"Can I trust thee, Robin? Can I trust thee? Answer me true!" she
implored him, adorably weak, entirely woman now.

"What does your own heart answer you?" quoth he, loaning close
above her.

"I think I can, Robin. And, anyway, I must. I cannot help myself.
I am but a woman, after all," she murmured, and sighed. "Be it as
thou wilt. Come to me again when thou art free."

He bent lower, murmuring incoherently, and she put up a hand to
pat his swarthy bearded cheek.

"I shall make thee greater than any man in England, so thou make
me happier than any woman."

He caught the hand in his and kissed it passionately, his soul
singing a triumph song within him. Norfolk and Sussex and those
other scowling ones should soon be whistled to the master's heel.

As they turned arm in arm into the gallery to retrace their
steps, they came suddenly face to face with a slim, sleek
gentleman, who bowed profoundly, a smile upon h is crafty,
shaven, priestly face. In a smooth voice and an accent markedly
foreign, he explained that he, too, sought the cool of the
terrace, not thinking to intrude; and upon that, bowing again, he
passed on and effaced himself. It was Alvarez de Quadra, Bishop
of Aquila, the argus-eyed ambassador of Spain.

The young face of the Queen hardened.

"I would I were as well served abroad as the King of Spain is
here," she said aloud, that the retreating ambassador might hear
the dubious compliment; and for my lord's ear alone she added
under her breath: "The spy! Philip of Spain will hear of this."

"So that he hears something more, what shall it signify?" quoth
my lord, and laughed.

They paced the length of the gallery in silence, past the yeoman
of the guard, who kept his watch, and into the first antechamber.
Perhaps it was that meeting with de Quadra and my lord's answer
to her comment that prompted what now she asked: "What is it ails
her, Robin?"

"A wasting sickness," he answered, never doubting to whom the
question alluded.

"You said, I think, that . . . that the end is very near."

He caught her meaning instantly. "Indeed, if she is not dead
already, she is very nearly so."

He lied, for never had Amy Dudley been in better health. And yet
he spoke the truth, for in so much as her life depended upon his
will, it was as good as spent. This was, he knew, a decisive
moment of his career. The hour was big with fate. If now he were
weak or hesitant, the chance might slip away and be for ever lost
to him. Elizabeth's moods were as uncertain as were certain the
hostile activities of my lord's enemies. He must strike quickly
whilst she was in her present frame of mind, and bring her to
wedlock, be it in public or in private. But first he must shake
off the paralysing encumbrance of that house-wife down at Cumnor.

I believe--from evidence that I account abundant--that he
considered it with the cold remorselessness of the monstrous
egotist he was. An upstart, great-grandson to a carpenter, noble
only in two descents, and in both of them stained by the block,
he found a queen--the victim of a physical passion that took no
account of the worthlessness underlying his splendid exterior--
reaching out a hand to raise him to a throne. Being what he was,
he weighed his young wife's life at naught in the evil scales of
his ambition. And yet he had loved her once, more truly perhaps
than he could now pretend to love the Queen.

It was some ten years since, as a lad of eighteen, he had taken
Sir John Robsart's nineteen-year-old daughter to wife. She had
brought him considerable wealth and still more devotion. Because
of this devotion she was content to spend her days at Cumnor,
whilst he ruffled it at court; content to take such crumbs of
attention as he could spare her upon occasion. And during the
past year, whilst he had been plotting her death, she had been
diligently caring for his interests and fostering the prosperity
of the Berkshire estate. If he thought of this at all, he allowed
no weakly sentiment to turn him from his purpose. There was too
much at stake for that--a throne, no less.

And so, on the morning after that half-surrender of Elizabeth's,
we find my lord closeted with his henchman, Sir Richard Verney.
Sir Richard--like his master--was a greedy, unscrupulous,
ambitious scoundrel, prepared to go to any lengths for the sake
of such worldly advancement as it lay in my lord's power to give
him. My lord perforce used perfect frankness with this perfect
servant.

"Thou'lt rise or fall with me, Dick," quoth he. "Help me up,
then, and so mount with me. When I am King, as soon now I shall
be, look to me. Now to the thing that is to do. Thou'lt have
guessed it."

To Sir Richard it was an easy guess, considering how much already
he had been about this business. He signified as much.

My lord shifted in his elbow-chair, and drew his embroidered
bedgown of yellow satin closer about his shapely limbs.

"Hast failed me twice before, Richard," said he. "God's death,
man, fail me not again, or the last chance may go the way of the
others. There's a magic in the number three. See that I profit by
it, or I am undone, and thou with me."

"I'd not have failed before, but for that suspicious dotard
Bayley," grumbled Verney. "Your lordship bade me see that all was
covered."

"Aye, aye. And I bid thee so again. On thy life, leave no
footprints by which we may be tracked. Bayley is not the only
physician in Oxford. About it, then, and swiftly. Time is the
very soul of fortune in this business, with the Spaniard
straining at the leash, and Cecil and the rest pleading his case
with her. Succeed, and thy fortune's made; fail, and trouble not
to seek me again."

Sir Richard bowed, and took his leave. As he reached the door,
his lordship stayed him. "If thou bungle, do not look to me. The
court goes to Windsor to-morrow. Bring me word there within the
week." He rose, magnificently tall and stately, in his bedgown of
embroidered yellow satin, his handsome head thrown back, and went
after his retainer. "Thou'lt not fail me, Dick," said he, a hand
upon the lesser scoundrel's shoulder. "There is much at issue for
me, and for thee with me."

"I will not fail you, my lord," Sir Richard rashly promised, and
on that they parted.

Sir Richard did not mean to fail. He knew the importance of
succeeding, and he appreciated the urgency of the business as
much as did my lord himself. But between his cold, remorseless
will to succeed and success itself there lay a gulf which it
needed all his resource to bridge. He paid a short visit to Lady
Robert at Cumnor, and professed deepest concern to find in her a
pallor and an ailing air which no one else had yet observed. He
expressed himself on the subject to Mrs. Buttelar and the other
members of her ladyship's household, reproaching them with their
lack of care of their mistress. Mrs. Buttelar became indignant
under his reproaches.

"Nay, now, Sir Richard, do you wonder that my lady is sad and
downcast with such tales as are going of my lord's doings at
court, and of what there is 'twixt the Queen and him? Her
ladyship may be too proud to complain, but she suffers the more
for that, poor lamb. There was talk of a divorce awhile ago that
got to her ears."

"Old wives' tales," snorted Sir Richard.

"Likely," agreed Mrs. Buttelar. "Yet when my lord neither comes
to Cumnor, nor requires her ladyship to go to him, what is she to
think, poor soul?"

Sir Richard made light of all, and went off to Oxford to find a
physician more accommodating than Dr. Bayley. But Dr. Bayley had
talked too much, and it was in vain that Sir Richard pleaded with
each of the two physicians he sought that her ladyship was
ailing--"sad and heavy"--and that he must have a potion for her.

Each in turn shook his head. They had no medicine for sorrow, was
their discreet answer. From his description of her condition,
said each, it was plain that her ladyship's sickness was of the
mind, and, considering the tales that were afloat, neither was
surprised.

Sir Richard went back to his Oxford lodging with the feeling of a
man checkmated. For two whole days of that precious time he lay
there considering what to do. He thought of going to seek a
physician in Abingdon. But fearing no better success in that
quarter, fearing, indeed, that in view of the rumours abroad he
would merely be multiplying what my lord called "footprints," he
decided to take some other way to his master's ends. He was a
resourceful, inventive scoundrel, and soon he had devised a plan.

On Friday he wrote from Oxford to Lady Robert, stating that he
had a communication for her on the subject of his lordship as
secret as it was urgent. That he desired to come to her at Cumnor
again, but dared not do so openly. He would come if she would
contrive that her servants should be absent, and he exhorted her
to let no one of them know that he was coming, else he might be
ruined, out of his desire to serve her.

That letter he dispatched by the hand of his servant Nunweek,
desiring him to bring an answer. It was a communication that had
upon her ladyship's troubled mind precisely the effect that the
rascal conceived. There was about Sir Richard's personality
nothing that could suggest the villain. He was a smiling, blue-
eyed, florid gentleman, of a kindly manner that led folk to trust
him. And on the occasion of his late visit to Cumnor he had
displayed such tender solicitude that her ladyship--starved of
affection as she was--had been deeply touched.

His letter so cunningly couched filled her with vague alarm and
with anxiety. She had heard so many and such afflicting rumours,
and had received in my lord's cruel neglect of her such
circumstantial confirmation of them, that she fastened avidly
upon what she deemed the chance of learning at last the truth.
Sir Richard Verney had my lord's confidence, and was much about
the court in his attendance upon my lord. He would know the
truth, and what could this letter mean but that he was disposed
to tell it.

So she sent him back a line in answer, bidding him come on Sunday
afternoon. She would contrive to be alone in the house, so that
he need not fear being seen by any.

As she promised, so she performed, and on the Sunday packed off
her household to the fair that was being held at Abingdon that
day, using insistence with the reluctant, and particularly with
one of her women, a Mrs. Oddingsell, who expressed herself
strongly against leaving her ladyship alone in that lonely house.
At length, however, the last of them was got off, and my lady was
left impatiently to await her secret visitor. It was late
afternoon when he arrived, accompanied by Nunweek, whom he left
to hold the horses under the chestnuts in the avenue. Himself he
reached the house across the garden, where the blighting hand of
autumn was already at work.

Within the porch he found her waiting, fretted by her impatience.

"It is very good in you to have come, Sir Richard," was her
gracious greeting.

"I am your ladyship's devoted servant," was his sufficient
answer, and he doffed his plumed bonnet, and bowed 1ow before
her. "We shall be private in your bower above stairs," he added.

"Why, we are private anywhere. I am all alone, as you desired."

"That is very wise--most wise," said he. "Will your ladyship lead
the way?"

So they went up that steep, spiral staircase, which had loomed so
prominently in the plans the ingenious scoundrel had evolved.
Across the gallery on the first floor they entered a little room
whose windows overlooked the garden. This was her bower--an
intimate cosy room, reflecting on every hand the gentle,
industrious personality of the owner. On an oak table near the
window were spread some papers and account-books concerned with
the estate--with which she had sought to beguile the time of
waiting. She led the way towards this, and, sinking into the
high-backed chair that stood before it, she looked up at him
expectantly. She was pale, there were dark stains under her eyes,
and wistful lines had crept into the sweet face of that neglected
wife.

Contemplating his poor victim now, Sir Richard may have compared
her with the woman by whom my lord desired so impatiently to
supplant her. She was tall and beautifully shaped, despite an
almost maidenly slenderness. Her countenance was gentle and
adorable, with its soft grey eyes and light brown hair, and
tender, wistful mouth.

It was not difficult to believe that Lord Robert had as ardently
desired her to wife five years ago as he now desired to be rid of
her. Then he obeyed the insistent spur of passion; now he obeyed
the remorseless spur of ambition. In reality, then as now, his
beacon-light was love of self.

Seeing her so frail and trusting, trembling in her anxious
impatience to hear the news of her lord which he had promised
her, Sir Richard may have felt some pang of pity. But, like my
lord, he was of those whose love of self suffers the rivalry of
no weak emotion.

"Your news, Sir Richard," she besought him, her dove-like glance
upon his florid face--less florid now than was its wont.

He leaned against the table, his back to the window. "Why, it is
briefly this," said he. "My lord . . ." And then he checked, and
fell into a listening attitude.

"What was that? Did you hear anything, my lady?"

"No. What is it?" Her face betrayed alarm, her anxiety mounting
under so much mystery.

"Sh! Stay you here," he enjoined. "If we are spied upon . . ." He
left the sentence there. Already he was moving quickly,
stealthily, towards the door. He paused before opening it. "Stay
where you are, my lady," he enjoined again, so gravely that she
could have no thought of disobeying him. "I will return at once."

He stepped out, closed the door, and crossed to the stairs. There
he stopped. From his pouch he had drawn a fine length of
whipcord, attached at one end to a tiny bodkin of needle
sharpness. That bodkin he drove into the edge of one of the
panels of the wainscot, in line with the topmost step; drawing
the cord taut at a height of a foot or so above this step, he
made fast its other end to the newel-post at the stair-head. He
had so rehearsed the thing in his mind that the performance of it
occupied but a few seconds. Such dim light of that autumn
afternoon as reached the spot would leave that fine cord
invisible.

Sir Richard went back to her ladyship. She had not moved in his
absence, so brief as scarcely to have left her time in which to
resolve upon disobeying his injunction.

"We move in secret like conspirators," said he, "and so we are
easily affrighted.. I should have known it could be none but my
lord himself . . . here?"

"My lord!" she interrupted, coming excitedly to her feet. "Lord
Robert?"

"To be sure, my lady. It was he had need to visit you in secret--
for did the Queen have knowledge of his coming here, it would
mean the Tower for him. You cannot think what, out of love for
you, his lordship suffers. The Queen . . I,

"But do you say that he is here, man", her voice shrilled up in
excitement.

"He is below, my lady. Such is his peril that he dared not set
foot in Cumnor until he was certain beyond doubt that you are
here alone."

"He is below!" she cried, and a flush dyed her pale cheeks, a
light of gladness quickened her sad eyes. Already she had
gathered from his cunning words a new and comforting explanation
of the things reported to her. "He is below!" she repeated. "Oh!"
She turned from him, and in an instant was speeding towards the
door.

He stood rooted there, his nether lip between his teeth, his face
a ghastly white, whilst she ran on.

"My lord! Robin! Robin!" he heard her calling, as she crossed the
corridor. Then came a piercing scream that echoed through the
silent house; a pause; a crashing thud below; and--silence.

Sir Richard remained by the table, immovable. Blood was trickling
down his chin. He had sunk his teeth through his lip when that
scream rang out. A long moment thus, as if entranced, awe-
stricken. Then he braced himself, and went forward, reeling at
first like a drunken man. But by the time he had reached the
stairs he was master of himself again. Swiftly, for all his
trembling fingers, he unfastened the cord's end from the newel-
post. The wrench upon it had already pulled the bodkin from the
wainscot. He went down that abrupt spiral staircase at a moderate
pace, mechanically coiling the length of whip-cord, and bestowing
it with the bodkin in his pouch again, and all the while his eyes
were fixed upon the grey bundle that lay so still at the stairs'
foot.

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