By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson (large ebook reader txt) 📖

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Then Anthony had to talk, and tell all the foreign news of Douai and Rome and Cardinal Allen; and of Father Persons' scheme for a college at Valladolid.

"Father Robert is a superb beggar--as he is superb in all things," said Mr. Buxton. "I dare not think how much he got from me for his college; and then I do not even approve of his college. His principles are too logical for me. I have ever had a weakness for the non sequitur."

This led on to the Armada; Anthony told his experience of it; how he had seen at least the sails of Lord Howard's squadron far away against the dawn; and this led on again to a sharp discussion when the servants had left the room.

"I do not know," said Mary at last; "it is difficult--is not the choice between God and Elizabeth? If I were a man, why should I not take up arms to defend my religion? Since I am a woman, why should I not pray for Philip's success? It is a bitter hard choice, I know; but why need I prefer my country to my faith? Tell me that, Father Anthony."

"I can only tell you my private opinion," said Anthony, "and that is, that both duties may be done. As Mr. Buxton here used to tell me, the duty to Caesar is as real as the duty to God. A man is bound to both; for each has its proper bounds. When either oversteps them it must be resisted. When Elizabeth bids me deny my faith, I tell her I would sooner die. When a priest bids me deny my country, I tell him I would sooner be damned."

Mary clapped her hands.

"I like to hear a man talk like that," she cried. "But what of the Holy Father and his excommunication of her Grace?"

Anthony looked up at her sharply, and then smiled; Isabel watched him with a troubled face.

"Aquinas holds," he said, "that an excommunication of sovereign and people in a lump is invalid. And until the Holy Father tells me himself that Aquinas is wrong, I shall continue to think he is right."

"God-a-mercy!" burst in Mr. Buxton, "what a to-do! Leave it alone until the choice must be made; and meanwhile say your prayers for Pope and Queen too, and hear mass and tell your beads and hold your tongue: that is what I say to myself. Mistress Mary, I will not have my chaplain heckled; here is his lady sister all a-tremble between heresy and treason."

They sat long over the supper-table, talking over the last six years and the times generally. More than once Mary showed a strange bitterness against the Queen. At last Mr. Buxton showed his astonishment plainly.

"I do not understand you," he said. "I know that at heart you are loyal; and yet one might say you meditated her murder."

Mary's face grew white with passion and her eyes blazed.

"Ah!" she hissed, "you do not understand, you say? Then where is your heart? But then you did not see Mary Stuart die."

Anthony looked at her, amazed.

"And you did, Mistress Mary?" he asked.

Mary bowed, with her lips set tight to check their trembling.

"I will tell you," she said, "if our host permits"; and she glanced at him.

"Then come this way," he said, and they rose from table.

They went back again to the withdrawing-room; a little cedar-fire had been kindled under the wide chimney; and the room was full of dancing shadows. The great plaster-pendants, the roses, the crowns, and the portcullises on the ceiling seemed to waver in the firelight, for Mr. Buxton at a sign from Mary blew out the four tapers that were burning in the sconces. They all sat down in the chairs that were set round the fire, Mary in a tall porter's chair with flaps that threw a shadow on her face when she leaned back; and she took a fan in her hand to keep the fire, or her friends' eyes, from her face should she need it.

She first told them very briefly of the last months of Mary's life, of the web that was spun round her by Walsingham's tactics, and her own friends' efforts, until it was difficult for her to stir hand or foot without treason, real or pretended, being set in motion somewhere. Then she described how at Christmas '86 Elizabeth had sent her--Mary Corbet--as a Catholic, up to the Queen of the Scots at Fotheringay, on a private mission to attempt to win the prisoner's confidence, and to persuade her to confess to having been privy to Babington's conspiracy; and how the Scottish Queen had utterly denied it, even in the most intimate conversations. Sentence had been already passed, but the warrant had not been signed; and it never would have been signed, said Mistress Corbet, if Mary had owned to the crime of which she was accused.

"Ah! how they insulted her!" cried Mary Corbet indignantly. "She showed me one day the room where her throne had stood. Now the cloth of state had been torn down by Sir Amyas Paulet's men, and he himself dared to sit with his hat on his head in the sovereign's presence! The insolence of the hound! But the Queen showed me how she had hung a crucifix where her royal arms used to hang. 'J'appelle,' she said to me, 'de la reine au roi des rois.'"

Mistress Corbet went on to tell of the arrival of Walsingham's brother-in-law, Mr. Beale, with the death-warrant on that February Sunday evening.

"I saw his foxy face look sideways up at the windows as he got off his horse in the courtyard; and I knew that our foes had triumphed. Then the other bloodhounds began to arrive; my lord of Kent on the Monday and Shrewsbury on the Tuesday. Then they came in to us after dinner; and they told her Grace it was to be for next day. I was behind her chair and saw her hand on the boss of the arm, and it did not stir nor clench; she said it could not be. She could not believe it of Elizabeth.

"When she did at last believe it, there was no wild weeping or crying for mercy; but she set her affairs in order, queenly, and yet sedately too. She first thought of her soul, and desired that M. de Preau might come to her and hear her confession; but they would not permit it. They offered her Dr. Fletcher instead, 'a godly man,' as my lord of Kent called him. 'Je ne m'en doute pas,' she said, smiling. But it was hard not to have a priest.

"Then she set her earthly affairs in order when she had examined her soul and made confession to God without the Dean's assistance. We all supped together when it was growing late; and I thought, Father Anthony--indeed I did--of another Supper long ago. Then M. Gorion was sent for to arrange some messages and gifts; and until two of the clock in the morning we watched with her or served her as she wrote and gave orders. The court outside was full of comings and goings. As I passed down the passage I saw the torches of the visitors that were come to see the end; and once I heard a hammering from the great hall. Then she went to her bed; and I think few lay as quiet as she in the castle that night. I was with her ladies when they waked her before dawn; and it was hard to see that sweet face on the pillow open its eyes again to what was before her.

"Then when she was dressed I went in again, and we all went to the oratory, where she received our Saviour from the golden pyx which the Holy Father had sent her; for, you see, they would allow no priest to come near her....

"Presently the gentlemen knocked. When we tried to follow we were prevented; they wished her to die alone among her enemies; but at last two of the ladies were allowed to go with her.

"I ran out another way, and sent a message to my Lord Shrewsbury, who knew me at court. As I waited in the courtyard, the musicians there were playing 'The Witches' Dirge,' as is done at the burnings--and all to mock at my queen! At last a halberdier was sent to bring me in."

Mary Corbet was silent a moment or two and leaned back in her chair; and the others dared not speak. The strange emotion of her voice and the stillness of that sparkling figure in the porter's chair affected them profoundly. Her face was now completely shaded by a fan.

"It was in the hall, where a great fire was burning on the hearth. The stage stood at the upper end; all was black. The crowd of gentlemen filled the hall and all were still and reverent except--except a devil who laughed as my queen came in, all in black. She was smiling and brave, and went up the steps and sat on her black throne and looked about her. The--the things were just in front of her.

"Then the warrant was read by Beale, and I saw the lords glance at her as it ended; but there was nought but joyous hope in her face. She looked now and again gently on the ivory crucifix in her hand, as she listened; and her lips moved to--to--Him who was delivered to death for her."

Mary Corbet gave one quick sob, and was silent again for an instant. Then she went on in a yet lower voice.

"Dr. Fletcher tried to address her, but he stammered and paused three or four times; and the queen smiled on him and bade him not trouble himself, for that she lived and died a Catholic. But they would not let her be; so she looked on her crucifix and was silent; and even then my lord of Kent badgered her and told her Christ crucified in her hand would not save her, except He was engraved on her heart.

"Then she knelt at her chair and tried to pray softly to herself; but Fletcher would not have that, and prayed himself, aloud, and all the gentlemen in the hall began to pray aloud with him. But Mary prayed on in Latin and English aloud, and prevailed, for all were silent at the end but she.

"And at last she kissed the crucifix and cried in a sweet piercing voice, 'As thine arms, O Jesus, were spread upon the Cross, so receive me into Thy mercy and forgive me my sins!'"

Again Mistress Corbet was silent; and Anthony drew a long sobbing breath of pure pity, and Isabel was crying quietly to herself.

"When the headsmen offered to assist her," went on the low voice, "the queen smiled at the gentlemen and said that she had never had such grooms before; and then they let the ladies come up. When they began to help her with her dress I covered my face--I could not help it. There was such a stillness now that I could hear her beads chink at her girdle. When I looked again, she was ready, with her sweet neck uncovered: all round her was black but the headsman, who wore a white apron