Come Rack! Come Rope! Part 69

"August ... you mean May or April."

"No; it was August.... At least, all that I know of the plot was when ... when--" (His thoughts became confused again; it was like strings of wool, he thought, twisted violently together; a strand snapped now and again. He made a violent effort and caught an end as it was slipping away.) "It was in August, I think; the day that Mr. Babington fled, that he wrote to me; and sent me--" (He paused: he became aware that here, too, lurked a trap if he were to say he had seen Mary; he would surely be asked what he had seen her for, and his priesthood might be so proved against him.... He could not remember whether that had been proved; and so ... would Father Campion advise him perhaps whether....)

The voice jarred again; and startled him into a flash of coherence. He thought he saw a way out.

"Well?" snapped the voice. "Sent you?... Sent you whither?"

"Sent me to Chartley; where I saw her Grace ... her Grace of the Scots; and ... 'As Thy arms, O Christ....'"

"Now then; now then--! So your saw her Grace? And what was that for?"

"I saw her Grace ... and ... and told her what Mr. Babington had told me."

"What was that, then?"

"That ... that he was her servant till death; and ... and a thousand if he had them. And so, 'As Thy arms, O--'"

"Water," barked the voice.

Again came the rush as of cataracts; and a sensation of drowning. There followed an instant's glow of life; and then the intolerable pain came back; and the heavy, red-streaked darkness....

II

He found himself, after some period, lying more easily. He could not move hand or foot. His body only appeared to live. From his shoulders to his thighs he was alive; the rest was nothing. But he opened his eyes and saw that his arms were laid by his side; and that he was no longer in the wooden trough. He wondered at his hands; he wondered even if they were his ... they were of an unusual colour and bigness; and there was something like a tight-fitting bracelet round each wrist. Then he perceived that he was s.h.i.+rtless and hoseless; and that the bracelets were not bracelets, but rings of swollen flesh. But there was no longer any pain or even sensation in them; and he was aware that his mouth glowed as if he had drunk ardent spirits.

He was considering all this, slowly, like a child contemplating a new toy. Then there came something between him and the light; he saw a couple of faces eyeing him. Then the voice began again, at first confused and buzzing, then articulate; and he remembered.

"Now, then," said the voice, "you have had but a taste of it...." ("A taste of it; a taste of it." The phrase repeated itself like the catch of a song.... When he regained his attention, the sentence had moved on.)

"... these questions. I will put them to you again from the beginning.

You will give your answer to each. And if my lord is not satisfied, we must try again."

"My lord!" thought the priest. He rolled his eyes round a little further. (He dared not move his head; the sinews of his throat burned like red-hot steel cords at the thought of it.) And he saw a little table floating somewhere in the dark; a candle burned on it; and a melancholy face with dreamy eyes was brightly illuminated.... That was my lord Shrewsbury, he considered....

"... in what month that you first became privy to the plot against her Grace?"

(Sense was coming back to him again now. He remembered what he had said just now.)

"It was in August," he whispered, "in August, I think; two years ago.

Mr. Babington wrote to me of it."

"And you went to the Queen of the Scots, you say?"

"Yes."

"And what did you there?"

"I gave the message."

"What was that?"

"... That Mr. Babington was her servant always; that he regretted nothing, save that he had failed. He begged her to pray for his soul, and for all that had been with him in the enterprise."

(It appeared to him that he was astonis.h.i.+ngly voluble, all at once. He reflected that he must be careful.)

"And what did she say to that?"

"She declared herself guiltless of the plot ... that she knew nothing of it; and that--"

"Now then; now then. You expect my lord to believe that?"

"I do not know.... But it was what was said."

"And you profess that you knew nothing of the plot till then?"

"I knew nothing of it till then," whispered the priest steadily. "But--"

(A face suddenly blotted out more of the light.)

"Yes?"

"Anthony--I mean Mr. Babington--had spoken to me a great while before--in ... in some village inn.... I forget where. It was when I was a lad. He asked whether I would join in some enterprise. He did not say what it was.... But I thought it to be against the Queen of England....

And I would not."...

He closed his eyes again. There had begun a slow heat of pain in ankles and wrists, not wholly unbearable, and a warmth began to spread in his body. A great shudder or two shook him. The voice said something he could not hear. Then a metal rim was pressed to his mouth; and a stream of something at once icy and fiery ran into his mouth and out at the corners. He swallowed once or twice; and his senses came back.

"You do not expect us to believe all that!" came the voice.

"It is the truth, for all that," murmured the priest.

The next question came sudden as a shot fired:

"You were at Fotheringay?"

"Yes."

"In what house?"

"I was in the inn--the 'New Inn,' I think it is.

"And you spoke with her Grace again?"

"No; I could not get at her. But--"

"Well?"

"I was in the court of the castle when her Grace was executed."