House of Torment Part 16

"And I had thought you were right in the thick of it," he said. "Thy very innocence, Johnnie, hath prevented thee from seeing what goes on under thy nose. Why, His Highness, Sir John Shelton, and Mr. Clarence Attwood leave the Tower night after night and hie them to old Mother Motte's in Duck Lane whenever the Queen hath the vapours and thinketh her lord is in bed, or at his prayers. Phew!"--he made a gesture of disgust. "It stinketh all over the Court. I see, Commendone, now why thou knowest nothing of this. The King chooseth for his night-bird friends ruffians like Shelton and Attwood. He would not dare ask one that is a gentleman to wallow in brothels with him. But be a.s.sured, I speak entirely the truth."

Johnnie shrugged his shoulders once more. "I know nothing of it," he said, with a quick, side-long glance at Ambrose Cholmondely. "I am not asked to be Esquire on such occasions, at any rate."

"And wouldst not go if thou wert," Cholmondely said, loudly. "Nor would any other gentleman that I know of--only the very sc.u.m and vermin of the Court. The game of love, look you, is very well. I am no purist, but I hunt after my own kind, and so should we all do. I don't bemire myself in the stews. Well, there it is. And now, much refreshed by this good wine, and much heartened by our compact, I'll leave thee. I must get back to guard at the garden gate. Her Grace will be leaving anon to dress for supper. Perchance to-night the King will be well enough to make appearance. While thou hast been away, he hath been close in his quarters and very sick. The Spanish priests have been buzzing round him like autumn wasps. And Thorne, the chirurgeon from Wood Street, a very skilful man, hath, they say, been summoned this morning to the Palace.

Addio!"

With a bright smile and a wave of his hand, he flung out of the room.

Johnnie finished the lukewarm sack in his goblet. He had learnt something that he wished to know, and as he saw his friend pa.s.s beyond the windows outside, his feet crunching the gravel and humming a little song, Johnnie smiled bitterly to himself. He knew rather more about King Philip's illness than most people in England at that moment. And as for Duck Lane--well! he knew something of that also. As the thought came to him, indeed, he shuddered. He remembered the great ham-like face of the procuress who kept this fas.h.i.+onable h.e.l.l. He heard her voice speaking to him as, very surely, she spoke to but few people who visited her there. He thought of Ambrose Cholmondely's fastidiousness, and he smiled again as he wondered what the Esquire would say if he only knew.

It was not a merry smile. There was no humour in it. It was bitter, cynical, and fraught with something of fear and expectation.

He had drunk the wine, and it had reanimated him physically; but he rose now and realised how weary he was in mind, and also--for he was always most scrupulous and careful about his dress--how stained and travel-worn in appearance.

He walked out of the Common Room, his riding sword and spurs clanking as he did so, mounted the stairway of the hall and entered the long corridor which led to his own room.

He had nearly got to his doorway when he heard, coming from a little way beyond it, a low, musical, humming voice. He remembered with a start that there was an interview before him which would mean much one way or the other to his private desires.

During the interview with the Queen and the squabble with Ambrose Cholmondely--as also afterwards, when he was drinking in the Common Room--he had lost mental sight and grip of his own private wishes and affairs. Now they all came back to him in a flash as he heard the humming voice coming from the end of the corridor--

"Bartl'my Fair! Bartl'my Fair!

Sw.a.n.ked I and drank I when I was there; Boiled and roast goose and baiting of bear, Who plays with cudgels at Bartl'my Fair?"

He turned into his own room and looked round. He saw that some of his accoutrements had been taken away. There were vacant pegs upon the walls. He sat down upon the small low bed, bent forward, clasped his hands upon his knees, and wondered whether he should speak or not. He wondered very greatly whether he dare make a query, start an investigation, nearer to his heart than anything else in the world.

At Chelmsford he had run out of the Tun Inn and touched the burly man who had killed the maddened stallion on the shoulder. He had brought him into the ordinary, sat him down in a chair, put a great stoup of ale before him, and then begun to talk to him.

"I know who you are," he said, "very well, because I was one of the gentlemen riding from town to Hadley with your late master, Dr. Taylor.

I saw you when his Reverence was wis.h.i.+ng good-bye outside St. Botolph, his church, and I heard the words your master said--eke that you were the 'faithfullest servant that ever a man had.' What do you here now, John Hull?"

The man had drunk his great stoup of ale very calmly. The daring deed in which he had been engaged had seemed to affect his nerves in no way at all. He was shortish, thick-set, with a broad chest measurement, and a huge thickness between chest and back. His face was tanned to the colour of an old saddle, very keen and alert, and he was clean-shaved, a rather odd and distinguis.h.i.+ng feature in a serving-man of that time.

He told Johnnie that, now he knew, he recognised him as one of the company who rode with Dr. Taylor to his death. He had followed the cavalcade almost immediately, and on foot. The way was long, and he had arrived at Chelmsford faint and weary with very little money in his pouch, and been compelled to wait there a time for rest and food. His design was to proceed to Hadley, where he knew he could get work and would be welcome.

Mr. Peter Lacel, he told Johnnie in the inn, would doubtless employ him, for though a Catholic gentleman, he had been a friend of the Rector's in the past.

"You want work, then?" Johnnie had said. "You do not wish to be a masterless man, a hedge-dodger, poacher, or a rogue?"

"Work I must have, sir," John Hull replied, "but it must be with a good master. Mr. Peter Lacel will take me on. Masterless, I should be a very great rogue."

All this happened in the dining-room of the Chelmsford inn, Johnnie sitting in his chair and looking at the thick, brown-faced man with a cool scrutiny which well disguised the throbbing excitement he felt at seeing him--at meeting him in this strange, and surely pre-ordained fas.h.i.+on.

"I'll tell thee who I am," Johnnie had said to the man, naming himself and his state. "That the Doctor spoke of you as he did when going to his death is enough recommendation to me of your fidelity. I need a servant myself, but I would ask you this, John Hull: You are, doubtless, of a certain party. If I took you to my service, how would you square with who and what I am? A led man of mine must be loyal."

Hull had answered but very little. "Ye can but try me, sir," he said, "but I will come with you to London very joyfully. And I well think----"

He stopped, mumbled something, and stood there, his hands stained with the blood of the horse he had killed, rather clumsy, very much tongue-tied, but with something faithful and even hungry in his eyes.

Johnnie's own servant was a man called Thumb, a dissolute London fellow, who had been with him for a month, and who had performed his duties in a very perfunctory way. Life had been so quick and vivid, so full of movement and the newness of Court life, that the Groom of the Body had hardly had time to remember the personal discomfort he endured from the fellow who had been recommended to him by one of the lieutenants of the Queen's Archers. He had always meant to get rid of him at the first opportunity. Now the opportunity presented itself, though it was not for mere convenience that Commendone had engaged his new servitor.

He had not the slightest doubt in his own mind that the man was sent to him--put in his way--by the Power which ruled and controlled the fortunes of men. Living as he did, and had done for many years, in a quiet, fastidious, but very real dream and communion with things that the hand or body do not touch and see, he had always known within himself that the goings-in and goings-out of those who believe depend not at all upon chance. Like all men of that day, Commendone was deeply religious. His religion had not made him bigoted, though he clung to the Church in which he had been brought up. But, nevertheless, it was very real to him. There were good and bad angels in those days, who fought for the souls of men. The powers of good and evil were invoked....

The Esquire was certain that this st.u.r.dy John Hull had come into his life with a set purpose.

He was riding back to London with one fixed idea in his mind. One word rang and chimed in his brain--the word was "Elizabeth!"

He had left Chelmsford with John Hull definitely enrolled as his servant, had hired a horse for him from the landlord of the "Tun," and had taken him straight to the Tower. When he had entered within the walls, he had told his man Thumb that he would dismiss him on the morrow, and pay him his wages due. He had told him, moreover, that--just as he was hurrying to the Privy Garden with news for the Queen--he must take John Hull to his quarters and put him into the way of service. For a moment, Thumb had been inclined to be insolent, but one single look from the dark, cool eyes, one hinted flash of anger upon the oval olive-coloured face, had sent the Londoner humbly to what he had to do; while the fellow looked, not without a certain apprehension, at the thick-set quiet man who followed him to be shown his new duties....

"The Spanish don came over seas, Hey ho nonino; A Gracious Lady tried to please, Hey ho nonny.

The country fellows strung their bows, Hey ho nonino; What 'twill be, no jack man knows!

Hey ho nonny."

Johnnie jumped up from his bed, strode out of the room, walked a yard or two down the corridor, and entered another and larger room, which he shared with three other members of the suite.

It was the place where they kept their armour, their riding-boots, and some of their swords.

As he came in he saw that Hull was sitting upon an overturned barrel, which had held quarels for cross-bows.

The man had tied a piece of sacking round his waist and over his breeches, and was hard at work.

Johnnie's three or four damascened daggers were rubbed bright with hog's lard and sand. His extra set of holster pistols gleamed fresh and new--the rust had been all removed from flint-locks and hammers; while the stocks shone with porpoise oil.

And now the new servant was polis.h.i.+ng a high-peaked Spanish saddle, and all the leather trappings of a charger, with an inside crust of barley bread and a piece of apple rind.

Directly the man saw his new master he stood up and made a saluting motion with his hand.

Johnnie looked at him coldly, though inwardly he felt an extreme pleasure at the sight of his new recruit so lately added to him, so swift to get to work, and withal so blithe about it.

"You must not sing the songs I have heard you singing," he said, shortly. "Don't you know where you are?"

"I had forgotten, sir," the man replied. "I have a plaguey knowledge of rhymes. They do run in my head, and must out."

"They must not, I a.s.sure you," Johnnie answered, "but I like this well enough. Hast got thee to work at once, then."

"I love it, sir. To handle such stuff as yours is rare for a man like me. Look you here, sir"--he lifted up a small dagger which he withdrew from its sheath of stag's leather, dyed vermilion--"Hear how it ringeth!"

He tw.a.n.ged the supple blade with his forefinger, and the little s.h.i.+vering noise rang out into the room.

The man's keen, brown face was lit up with simple enjoyment. "I love weapons, master," he said, as if in apology.

Johnnie knew at once that here was the man he had been looking for for weeks. The man who cared, the faithful man; but he knew also, or thought he knew, that it was but poor policy to praise a servant unduly.

"Well, well," he said, "you can get on with your work. To-morrow morning, I will see you fitted out as becometh my body servant. To-night you will go below with the other men. I have spoken to the intendant that I have a new servant, and you will have your evening-meat and a place to lie in."

He turned to go.

With all his soul he was longing to ask this man certain questions. He believed that he had been sent to him to tell him of the whereabouts of the girl to whom, so strangely, at such a dreadful hour, he had vowed his life. But the long control over temperament and emotion which old Father Chilches had imposed upon him--the very qualities which made him, already, a successful courtier--stood him in good stead now. The dominant desire of his heart was to be repressed. He knew very well, he realised perfectly clearly, how intimate a member of Dr. Taylor's household this faithful servant--"the faithfullest servant that ever man had"--must have been. And knowing it, he felt sure that the time was not yet come to ask John Hull any questions. He must arouse no suspicions within the man's mind. Hull had entered his service gladly, and promised to be more than adequate and worthy of any trust that could be reposed in him. But he had seen Johnnie riding away with his beloved master, one of those who had taken him to torture and death. The very shrewdness and cleverness imprinted upon the fellow's face were enough to say that he would at once take alarm at any questioning about Dr. Taylor's family, at this moment.