House of Torment

Seated at another and smaller table in a window embrasure Queen Mary was bending over a large flat book. It was open at an illuminated page, and the sunlight fell upon the gold and vermilion, the rouge-de-fer and powder-blue, so that it gleamed like a little parterre of jewels.

It was the second time that John Commendone had been admitted to the Privy Closet. He had been in waiting at supper, the Queen had spoken to him once or twice; he was often in the King Consort's lodging, and was already a favourite among the members of the Spanish suite. But this was quite different. He knew it at once. He realised immediately that he was here – present at this "domestic interior," so to speak, for some important purpose. Had he known the expressive idiom of our day, he would have said to himself, "I have arrived!"

Philip looked up. His small, intensely serious eyes gave a gleam of recognition.

"Buenos dias, señor," he said.

John bowed very low.

Suddenly the room was filled with a harsh and hoarse volume of sound, a great booming, resonant voice, like the voice of a strong, rough man.

It came from the Queen.

"Mr. Commendone, come you here. His Highness hath work to do. Art a lutanist, Lady Paget tells me, then look at this new book of tablature with the voice part very well writ and the painting of the initial most skilfully done."

The young man advanced to the Queen. She held out her left hand, a little shrivelled hand, for him to kiss. He did so, and then, rising, bent over the wonderfully illuminated music book.

The six horizontal lines of the lute notation, each named after a corresponding note of the instrument, were drawn in scarlet. The Arabic numerals which indicated the frets to be used in producing the notes were black and orange, the initial H was a wealth of flat heraldic colour.

"His golden locks time hath to filuer turnde"

the Queen read out in her great masculine voice, – a little subdued now, but still fierce and strong, like the purring of a panther. "What think you of my new book of songs, Mr. Commendone?"

"A beautiful book, Madam, and fit for Your Grace's skill, who hath no rival with the lute."

"'Tis kind of you to say so, Mr. Commendone, but you over compliment me."

She bent her brows together, lost in serious thought for a moment, and drummed with lean fingers upon the table.

Suddenly she looked up and her face cleared.

"I can say truly," she continued, "that I am a very skilled player. For a woman I can fairly put myself in the first rank. But I have met others surpassing me greatly."

She had thought it out with perfect fairness, with an almost pedantic precision. Woman-like, she was pleased with what the young courtier had said, but she weighed truth in grains and scruples – tithe of mint and cummin, the very word and article of bald fact; always her way.

"And here, Mr. Commendone," she continued, "is my new virginal. It hath come from Firenze, and was made by Nicolo Pedrini himself. My Lord Mayor begged Our acceptance of it."

The virginal was a fine instrument – spinet it came to be called in Elizabeth's reign, from the spines or crow-quills which were attached to the "jacks" and plucked at the strings.

The case was made of cypress wood, inlaid with whorls of thin silver and enamels of various colours.

"We were pleased at the Lord Mayor's courtesy," the Queen concluded, and the change in pronoun showed John that the interview was over in its personal sense, and that he had been very highly honoured.

He bowed, with a murmur of assent, and drew aside to the wall of the room, waiting easily there, a fresh and gallant figure, for any further commands.

Nor did it escape him that the Queen had given him a look of prim, but quite marked approval – as an old maid may look upon a handsome and well-mannered boy.

The Queen pressed down the levers of the spinet once or twice, and the thin, sweet chords like the ghost of a harp rang out into the room.

John watched her from the wall.

The divine right of monarchs was a doctrine very firmly implanted in his mind by his upbringing and the time in which he lived. The absolutism of Henry VIII had had an extraordinary influence on public thought.

To a man such as John Commendone the monarch of England was rather more than human.

At the same time his cool and clever brain was busily at work, drinking in details, criticising, appraising, wondering.

The Queen wore a robe of claret-coloured velvet, fringed with gold thread and furred with powdered ermine. Over her rather thin hair, already turning very grey, she wore the simple caul of the period, a head-dress which was half bonnet, half skull-cap, made of cloth of tinsel set with pearls.

Small, lean, sickly, painfully near-sighted, yet with an eye full of fierceness and fire – your true Tudor-tiger eye – she was yet singularly feminine. As she sat there, her face wrinkled by care and evil passions even more than by time, touching the keys of her spinet, picking up a piece of embroidery, and frequently glancing at her husband with quick, hungry looks of fretful and even suspicious affection, she was far more woman than queen.

The great booming voice which terrified strong men, coming from this frail and sinister figure, was silent now. There was pathos even in her attitude. A submissive wife of Philip with her woman's gear.

The King of Spain went on writing, coldly, carefully, and with concentrated attention, and John's eyes fell upon him also, his new master, the most powerful man in the world of that day. King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Duke of Milan, Lord of Franche Comté and the Netherlands, Ruler of Tunis and the Barbary coast, the Canaries, Cape de Verd Islands, Philippines and Spice Islands, the huge West Indian colonies, and the vast territories of Mexico and Peru – an almost unthinkable power was in the hands of this man.

As it all came to him, Johnnie shuddered for a moment. His nerves were tense, his imagination at work, it seemed difficult to breathe the same air as these two super-normal beings in the still, warm chamber.

From outside came the snarling of trumpets, the stir and noise of soldiery – here, warm silence, the scratching of a pen upon parchment, the echo of a voice which rolled like a kettle-drum…

Suddenly the King laid down his pen and rose to his feet, a tall, lean, sombre-faced man in black and gold. He spoke a few words to Father Diego Deza and then went up to the Queen in the window.

The monk went on arranging papers in orderly bundles, and tying some of them with cords of green silk, which he drew from a silver box.

John saw the Queen's face. It lit up and became almost beautiful for a second as Philip approached. Then as husband and wife conversed in low voices, the equerry saw yet another change come over Mary's twitching and expressive countenance. It hardened and froze, the thin lips tightened to a line of dull pink, the eyes grew bitter bright, the head nodded emphatically several times, as if in agreement at something the King was saying.

Then John felt some one touch his arm, and found that the Dominican had come to him noiselessly, and was smiling into his face with a flash of white teeth and steady, watchful eyes.

He started violently and turned his head from the Royal couple in some confusion. He felt as though he had been detected in some breach of manners, of espionage almost.

"Buenos dias, señor, como anda usted?" Don Diego asked in a low voice.

"Thank you, I am very well," Johnnie answered in Spanish.

"Como está su padre?"

"My father is very well also. He has just left me to ride home to Kent," John replied, wondering how in the world this foreign priest knew of the old knight's visit.

It was true, then, what Sir James Clinton had said! He was being carefully watched. Even in the Royal Closet his movements were known.

"A loyal gentleman and a good son of the Church," said the priest, "we have excellent reports of him, and of you also, señor," he concluded, with another smile.

John bowed.

"Los negocios del politica– affairs of state," the chaplain whispered with a half-glance at the couple in the window. "There are great times coming for England, señor. And if you prove yourself a loyal servant and good Catholic, you are destined to go far. His Most Catholic Majesty has need of an English gentleman such as you in his suite, of good birth, of the true religion, with Spanish blood in his veins, and speaking Spanish."

Again the young man bowed. He knew very well that these words were inspired. This suave ecclesiastic was the power behind the throne. He held the King's conscience, was his confessor, more powerful than any great lord or Minister – the secret, unofficial director of world-wide policies.

His heart beat high within him. The prospects opening before him were enough to dazzle the oldest and most experienced courtier; he was upon the threshold of such promotion and intimacies as he, the son of a plain country gentleman, had never dared to hope for.

It had grown very hot; he remarked upon it to the priest, noticing, as he did so, that the room was darker than before.

The air of the closet was heavy and oppressive, and glancing at the windows, he saw that it was no fancy of strained and excited nerves, but that the sky over the river was darkening, and the buildings upon London Bridge stood out with singular sharpness.

"A storm of thunder," said Don Diego indifferently, and then, with a gleam in his eyes, "and such a storm shall presently break over England that the air shall be cleared of heresy by the lightnings of Holy Church – ah! here cometh His Grace of London!"

The Captain of the Guard had suddenly beaten upon the door. It was flung open, and Sir James Clinton, who had come down the passage from the Ante-room, preceded the Bishop, and announced him in a loud, sonorous voice.

Johnnie instinctively drew himself up to attention, the chaplain hastened forward, King Philip, in the window, stood upright, and the Queen remained seated. From the wall Johnnie saw all that happened quite distinctly. The scene was one which he never forgot.

There was the sudden stir and movement of his lordship's entrance, the alteration and grouping of the people in the closet, the challenge of the captain at the door, the heralding voice of Sir James – and then, into the room, which was momentarily growing darker as the thunder clouds advanced on London, Bishop Bonner came.

The man pressed into the room, swift, sudden, assertive. In his scarlet chimere and white rochet, with his bullet head and bristling beard, it was as though a shell had fallen into the room.

A streak of livid light fell upon his face – set, determined, and alive with purpose – and the man's eyes, greenish brown and very bright, caught a baleful fire from the waning gleam.

Then, with almost indecent haste, he brushed past John Commendone and the eager Spanish monk, and knelt before the Queen.

He kissed her hand, and the hand of the King Consort also, with some murmured words which Johnnie could not catch. Then he rose, and the Queen, as she had done upon her arrival from Winchester after her marriage, knelt for his blessing.

Commendone and the chaplain knelt also; the King of Spain bowed his head, as the rapid, breathless pattering Latin filled the place, and one outstretched hand – two white fingers and one white thumb – quivered for a moment and sank in the leaden light.

There was a new grouping of figures, some quick talk, and then the Queen's great voice filled the room.

"Mr. Commendone! See that there are lights!"

Johnnie stumbled out of the closet, now dark as at late evening, strode down the passage, burst into the Ante-room, and called out loudly, "Bring candles, bring candles!"

Even as he said it there was a terrible crash of thunder high in the air above the Palace, and a simultaneous flash of lightning, which lit up the sombre Ante-room with a blinding and ghostly radiance for the fraction of a second.

White faces immobile as pictures, tense forms of all waiting there, and then the voice of Sir James and the hurrying of feet as the servants rushed away…

It was soon done. While the thunder pealed and stammered overhead, the amethyst lightning sheets flickered and cracked, the white whips of the fork-lightning cut into the black and purple gloom, a little procession was made, and gentlemen ushers followed Johnnie back to the Royal Closet, carrying candles in their massive silver sconces, dozens of twinkling orange points to illumine what was to be done.

The door was closed. The King, Queen, and the Bishop sat down at the central table upon which all the lights were set.

Don Diego Deza stood behind Philip's chair.

The Queen turned to John.

"Stand at the door, Mr. Commendone," she said, "and with your sword drawn. No one is to come in. We are engaged upon affairs of state."

Her voice was a second to the continuous mutter of the thunder, low, fierce, and charged with menace. Save for the candles, the room was now quite dark.

A furious wind had risen and blew great gouts of hot rain upon the window-panes with a rattle as of distant artillery.

Johnnie drew his sword, held it point downwards, and stood erect, guarding the door. He could feel the tapestry which covered it moving behind him, bellying out and pressing gently upon his back.

He could see the faces of the people at the table very distinctly.

The King of Spain and his chaplain were in profile to him. The Queen and the Bishop of London he saw full-face. He had not met the Bishop before, though he had heard much about him, and it was on the prelate's countenance that his glance of curiosity first fell.

Young as he was, Johnnie had already begun to cultivate that cool scrutiny and estimation of character which was to stand him in such stead during the years that were to come. He watched the face of Edmund Bonner, or Boner, as the Bishop was more generally called at that time, with intense interest. Boner was to the Queen what the Dominican Deza was to her husband. The two priests ruled two monarchs.

In the yellow candle-light, an oasis of radiance in the murk and gloom of the storm, the faces of the people round the table hid nothing. The Bishop was bullet-headed, had protruding eyes, a bright colour, and his moustache and beard only partially hid lips that were red and full. The lips were red and full, there was a coarseness, and even sensuality, about them, which was, nevertheless, oddly at war with their determination and inflexibility. The young man, pure and fastidious himself, immediately realised that Boner was not vicious in the ordinary meaning of the word. One hears a good deal about "thin, cruel lips" – the Queen had them, indeed – but there are full and blood-charged lips which are cruel too. And these were the lips of the Bishop of London.

There was a huge force about the man. He was plebeian, common, but strong.

Don Diego, Commendone himself, the Queen and her husband, were all aristocrats in their different degree, bred from a line – pedigree people.

That was the bond between them.

The Bishop was outside all this, impatient of it, indeed; but even while the groom of the body twirled his moustache with an almost mechanical gesture of disgust and misliking, he felt the power of the man.

And no historian has ever ventured to deny that. The natural son of the hedge-priest, George Savage – himself a bastard – walked life with a shield of brutal power as his armour. The blood-stained man from whom – a few years after – Queen Elizabeth turned away with a shudder of irrepressible horror, was the man who had dared to browbeat and bully Pope Clement VII himself. He took a personal and undignified delight in the details of physical and mental torture of his victims. In 1546 he had watched with his own eyes the convulsions of Dame Anne Askew upon the rack. He was sincere, inflexible, and remarkable for obstinacy in everything except principle. As Ambassador to Paris in Henry's reign he had smuggled over printed sheets of Coverdale's and Grafton's translation of the Bible in his baggage – the personal effects of an ambassador being then, as now, immune from prying eyes. During the Protectorate he had lain in prison, and now the strenuous opposer of papal claims in olden days was a bishop in full communion with Rome.

… He was speaking now, in a loud and vulgar voice, which even the presence of their Majesties failed to soften or subdue.

– "And this, so please Your Grace, is but a sign and indication of the spirit abroad. There is no surcease from it. We shall do well to gird us up and scourge this heresy from England. This letter was delivered by an unknown woman to my chaplain, Father Holmes. 'Tis a sign of the times."

He unfolded a paper and began to read.

"I see that you are set all in a rage like a ravening wolf against the poor lambs of Christ appointed to the slaughter for the testimony of the truth. Indeed, you are called the common cut-throat and general slaughter-slave to all the bishops of England; and therefore 'tis wisdom for me and all other simple sheep of the Lord to keep us out of your butcher's stall as long as we can. The very papists themselves begin now to abhor your blood-thirstiness, and speak shame of your tyranny. Like tyranny, believe me, my lord, any child that can any whit speak, can call you by your name and say, 'Bloody Boner is Bishop of London'; and every man hath it as perfectly upon his fingers'-ends as his Paternoster, how many you, for your part, have burned with fire and famished in prison; they say the whole sum surmounteth to forty persons within this three-quarters of this year. Therefore, my lord, though your lordship believeth that there is neither heaven nor hell nor God nor devil, yet if your lordship love your own honesty, which was lost long agone, you were best to surcease from this cruel burning of Christian men, and also from murdering of some in prison, for that, indeed, offendeth men's minds most. Therefore, say not but a woman gave you warning, if you list to take it. And as for the obtaining of your popish purpose in suppressing the Truth, I put you out of doubt, you shall not obtain it as long as you go to work this way as ye do; for verily I believe that you have lost the hearts of twenty thousand that were rank papists within this twelve months."

The Bishop put the letter down upon the table and beat upon it with his clenched fist. His face was alight with inquiry and anger.

Every one took it in a different fashion.

Philip crossed himself and said nothing, formal, cold, and almost uninterested. Don Diego crossed himself also. His face was stern, but his eyes flitted hither and thither, sparkling in the light.

Then the Queen's great voice boomed out into the place, drowning the thunder and the beating rain upon the window-panes, pressing in gouts of sound on the hot air of the closet.

Her face was bagged and pouched like a quilt. All womanhood was wiped out of it – lips white, eyes like ice…

"I'll stamp it out of this realm! I'll burn it out. Jesus! but we will burn it out!"

The Bishop's face was trembling with excitement. He thrust a paper in front of the Queen.

"Madam," he said, "this is the warrant for Doctor Rowland Taylor."

Mary caught up a pen and wrote her name at the foot of the document in the neat separated letters of one accustomed to write in Greek, below the signature of the Chancellor Gardiner and the Lords Montague and Wharton, judges of the Legantine Court for the trial of heretics.

"I will make short with him," the Queen said, "and of all blasphemers and heretics. There is the paper, my lord, with my hand to it. A black knave this, they tell me, and withal very stubborn and lusty in blasphemy."

"A very black knave, Madam. I performed the ceremony of degradation upon him yestereen, and, by my troth, never did the walls of Newgate chapel shelter such a rogue before. He would not put on the vestments which I was to strip from him, and was then, at my order, robed by another. And when he was thoroughly furnished therewith, he set his hands to his sides and cried, 'How say you, my lord, am I not a goodly fool? How say you, my masters, if I were in Chepe, should I not have boys enough to laugh at these apish toys?'"

The Queen crossed herself. Her face blazed with fury. "Dog!" she cried. "Perchance he will sing another tune to-morrow morn. But what more?"

"I took my crosier-staff to smite him on the breast," the Bishop continued. "And upon that Mr. Holmes, that is my chaplain, said, 'Strike him not, my lord, for he will sure strike again.' 'Yes, and by St. Peter will I,' quoth Doctor Taylor. 'The cause is Christ's, and I were no good Christian if I would not fight in my Master's quarrel.' So I laid my curse on him, and struck him not."

The King's large, sombre face twisted into a cold sneer.

"Perro labrador nunca buen mordedor– a barking dog is never a good fighter," he said. "I shall watch this clerk-convict to-morrow. Methinks he will not be so lusty at his burning."

The Bishop looked up quickly with surprise in his face.

"My lord," the Queen said to him, "His Majesty, as is both just and right, desireth to see this blasphemer's end, and will report to me on the matter. Mr. Commendone, come here."

Johnnie advanced to the table.

"You will go to Sir John Shelton," the Queen went on, "and learn from him all that hath been arranged for the burning of this heretic. The King will ride with the party and you in close attendance upon His Majesty. Only you and Sir John will know who the King is, and your life depends upon his safety. I am weary of this business. My heart grieves for Holy Church while these wolves are not let from their wickedness. Go now, Mr. Commendone, upon your errand, and report to Father Deza this afternoon."

She held out her hand. John knelt on one knee and kissed it.

As he left the closet the rain was still lashing the window-panes, and the candles burnt yellow in the gloom.

By a sudden flash of lightning he saw the four faces looking down at the death warrant. There was a slight smile on all of them, and the expressions were very intent.

The great white crucifix upon the panelling gleamed like a ghost.

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE OF SHAME; THE LADDER OF GLORY

It was ten o'clock in the evening. The thunderstorm of the morning had long since passed away. The night was cool and still. There was no moon, but the sky above London was powdered with stars.

The Palace of the Tower was ablaze with lights. The King and Queen had supped in state at eight, and now a masque was in progress, held in the glorious hall which Henry III painted with the story of Antiochus.

The sweet music shivered out into the night as John Commendone came into the garden among the sleeping flowers.

"And the harp and the viol, the tabret and pipe, and wine are in their feasts." Commendone had never read the Bible, but the words of the Prophet would have well expressed his mood had he but known them.

For he was melancholy and ill at ease. The exaltation of the morning had quite gone. Though he was still pleasantly conscious that he was in a fair way to great good fortune, some of the savour was lost. He could not forget the lurid scene in the Closet – the four faces haunted him still. And he knew also that a strange and probably terrible experience waited him during the next few hours.

"God on the Cross," he said to himself, snapping his fingers in perplexity and misease – it was the fashion at Court to use the great Tudor oaths – "I am come to touch with life – real life at last. And I am not sure that I like it. But 'tis too new as yet. I must be as other men are, I suppose!"

As he walked alone in the night, and the cool air played upon his face, he began to realise how placid, how much upon the surface, his life had always been until now. He had come to Court perfectly equipped by nature, birth, and training for the work of pageantry, a picturesque part in the retinue of kings. He had fallen into his place quite naturally. It all came easy to him. He had no trace of the "young gentleman from the country" about him – he might have started life as a Court page.

But the real emotions of life, the under-currents, the hates, loves, and strivings, had all been a closed book. He recognised their existence, but never thought they would or could affect him. He had imagined that he would always be aloof, an interested spectator, untouched, untroubled.