When Knighthood Was in Flower Part 16

To the lord mayor we accordingly went without further delay. He was only too glad to liberate Brandon when he heard my story, which the king had ordered me to repeat. The only hesitancy was from a doubt of its truth.

The lord mayor was kind enough to say that he felt little doubt of my word, but that friends.h.i.+p would often drive a man to any extremity, even falsehood, to save a friend.

Then I offered to go into custody myself and pay the penalty, death, for helping a convicted felon to escape, if I told not the truth, to be confirmed or denied by the princess and her first lady in waiting.

I knew Jane and was willing to risk her truthfulness without a doubt--it was so p.r.o.nounced as to be troublesome at times--and as to Mary--well, I had no doubt of her, either. If she would but stop to think out the right she was sure to do it.

I have often wondered how much of the general fund of evil in this world comes from thoughtlessness. Cultivate thought and you make virtue--I believe. But this is no time to philosophize.

My offer was satisfactory, for what more can a man do than pledge his life for his friend? We have scripture for that, or something like it.

The lord mayor did not require my proffered pledge, but readily consented that the king should write an order for Brandon's pardon and release. This was done at once, and we, that is, I, together with a sheriff's sergeant and his four yeomen, hastened to Newgate, while Henry went over to Wolsey's to settle Mary's fate.

Brandon was brought up with chains and manacles at his ankles and wrists. When he entered the room and saw me, he exclaimed: "Ah!

Caskoden, is that you? I thought they had brought me up to hang me, and was glad for the change; but I suppose you would not come to help at that, even if you have left me here to rot; G.o.d only knows how long; I have forgotten."

I could not restrain the tears at sight of him.

"Your words are more than just," I said; and, being anxious that he should know at once that my fault had not been so great as it looked, continued hurriedly: "The king sent me to France upon an hour's notice, the day after your arrest. I know only too well I should not have gone without seeing you out of this, but you had enjoined silence upon me, and--and I trusted to the promises of another."

"I thought as much. You are in no way to blame, my friend; all I ask is that you never mention the subject again."

"My friend!" Ah! the words were dear to me as words of love from a sweetheart's lips.

I hardly recognized him, he was so frightfully covered with filth and dirt and creeping things. His hair and beard were unkempt and matted, and his eyes and cheeks were l.u.s.terless and sunken; but I will describe him no further. Suffering had well-nigh done its work, and nothing but the hardihood gathered in his years of camp life and war could have saved him from death. I bathed and reclothed him as well as I could at Newgate, and then took him home to Greenwich in a horse litter, where my man and I thoroughly washed, dressed and sheared the poor fellow and put him to bed.

"Ah! this bed is a foretaste of paradise," he said, as he lay upon the mattress.

It was a pitiful sight, and I could hardly refrain from tears. I sent my man to fetch a certain Moor, a learned scholar, though a hated foreigner, who lived just off Cheap and sold small arms, and very soon he was with us. Brandon and I both knew him well, and admired his learning and gentleness, and loved him for his sweet philosophy of life, the leaven of which was charity--a modest little plant too often overshadowed by the rank growth of pompous dogmatism.

The Moor was learned in the healing potions of the east, and insisted, privately, of course, that all the shrines and relics in Christendom put together could not cure an ache in a baby's little finger. This, perhaps, was going too far, for there are some relics that have undoubted potency, but in cases where human agency can cure, the people of the east are unquestionably far in advance of us in knowledge of remedies. The Moor at once gave Brandon a soothing drink, which soon put him into a sweet sleep. He then bathed him as he slept, with some strengthening lotion, made certain learned signs, and spoke a few cabalistic words, and, sure enough, so strong were the healing remedies and incantations that the next morning Brandon was another man, though very far from well and strong. The Moor recommended nutritious food, such as roast beef and generous wine, and, although this advice was contrary to the general belief, which is, with apparent reason, that the evil spirit of disease should be starved and driven out, yet so great was our faith in him that we followed his directions, and in a few days Brandon had almost regained his old-time strength.

I will ask you to go back with me for a moment.

During the week, between Brandon's interview with Mary in the ante-room of the king's bed-chamber and the tragedy at Billingsgate, he and I had many conversations about the extraordinary situation in which he found himself.

At one time, I remember, he said: "I was safe enough before that afternoon. I believe I could have gone away and forgotten her eventually, but our mutual avowal seems to have dazed me and paralyzed every power for effort. I sometimes feel helpless, and, although I have succeeded in keeping away from her since then, I often find myself wavering in my determination to leave England. That was what I feared if I allowed the matter to go to the point of being sure of her love. I only wanted it before, and very easily made myself believe it was impossible, and not for me. But now that I know she loves me it is like holding my breath to live without her. I feel every instant that I can hold it no longer. I know only too well that if I but see her face once more I shall breathe. She is the very breath of life for me.

She is mine by the gift of G.o.d. Curses upon those who keep us apart."

Then musingly and half interrogatively: "She certainly does love me.

She could not have treated me as she did unless her love was so strong that she could not resist it."

"Let no doubt of that trouble you," I answered.

"A woman like Mary cannot treat two men as she treated you. Many a woman may love, or think she loves many times, but there is only one man who receives the full measure of her best. Other women, again, have nothing to give but their best, and when they have once given that, they have given all. Unless I have known her in vain, Mary, with all her faults, is such a woman. Again I say, let no doubt of that trouble you."

Brandon answered with a sad little smile from the midst of his reverie. "It is really not so much the doubt as the certainty of it that troubles me." Then, starting to his feet: "If I thought she had lied to me; if I thought she could wantonly lead me on to suffer so for her, I would kill her, so help me G.o.d."

"Do not think that. Whatever her faults, and she has enough, there is no man on earth for her but you. Her love has come to her through a struggle against it because it was her master. That is the strongest and best, in fact the only, love; worth all the self-made pa.s.sions in the world."

"Yes, I believe it. I know she has faults; even my partiality cannot blind me to them, but she is as pure and chaste as a child, and as gentle, strong and true as--as--a woman. I can put it no stronger. She has these, her redeeming virtues, along with her beauty, from her plebeian grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville, who, with them, won a royal husband and elevated herself to the throne beside the chivalrous Edward. This sweet plebeian heritage bubbles up in the heart of Mary, and will not down, but neutralizes the royal poison in her veins and makes a G.o.ddess of her." Then with a sigh: "But if her faults were a thousand times as many, and if each fault were a thousand times as great, her beauty would atone for all. Such beauty as hers can afford to have faults. Look at Helen and Cleopatra, and Agnes Sorel. Did their faults make them less attractive? Beauty covereth more sins than charity--and maketh more grief than pestilence."

The last clause was evidently an afterthought.

After his month in Newgate with the hangman's noose about his neck all because of Mary's cruel neglect, I wondered if her beauty would so easily atone for her faults. I may as well tell you that he changed his mind concerning this particular doctrine of atonement.

_CHAPTER XI_

_Louis XII a Suitor_

As soon as I could leave Brandon, I had intended to go down to Windsor and give vent to my indignation toward the girls, but the more I thought about it, the surer I felt there had, somehow, been a mistake.

I could not bring myself to believe that Mary had deliberately permitted matters to go to such an extreme when it was in her power to prevent it. She might have neglected her duty for a day or two, but, sooner or later, her good impulses always came to her rescue, and, with Jane by her side to urge her on, I was almost sure she would have liberated Brandon long ago--barring a blunder of some sort.

So I did not go to Windsor until a week after Brandon's release, when the king asked me to go down with him, Wolsey and de Longueville, the French amba.s.sador-special, for the purpose of officially offering to Mary the hand of Louis XII, and the honor of becoming queen of France.

The princess had known of the projected arrangement for many weeks, but had no thought of the present forward condition of affairs, or she would have brought her energies to bear upon Henry long before. She could not bring herself to believe that her brother would really force her into such wretchedness, and possibly he would never have done so, much as he desired it from the standpoint of personal ambition, had it not been for the petty excuse of that fatal trip to Grouche's.

All the circ.u.mstances of the case were such as to make Mary's marriage a veritable virgin sacrifice. Louis was an old man, and an old Frenchman at that; full of French notions of morality and immorality; and besides, there were objections that cannot be written, but of which Henry and Mary had been fully informed. She might as well marry a leper. Do you wonder she was full of dread and fear, and resisted with the desperation of death?

So Mary, the person most interested, was about the last to learn that the treaty had been signed.

Windsor was nearly eight leagues from London, and at that time was occupied only by the girls and a few old ladies and servants, so that news did not travel fast in that direction from the city. It is also probable that, even if the report of the treaty and Brandon's release had reached Windsor, the persons hearing it would have hesitated to repeat it to Mary. However that may be, she had no knowledge of either until she was informed of the fact that the king and the French amba.s.sador would be at Windsor on a certain day to make the formal request for her hand and to offer the gifts of King Louis.

I had no doubt Mary was in trouble, and felt sure she had been making affairs lively about her. I knew her suffering was keen, but was glad of it in view of her treatment of Brandon.

A day or two after Brandon's liberation I had begun to speak to him of the girls, but he interrupted me with a frightful oath: "Caskoden, you are my friend, but if you ever mention their names again in my hearing you are my friend no longer. I will curse you."

I was frightened, so much stronger did his nature show than mine, and I took good care to remain silent on that subject until--but I am going too fast again; I will tell you of that hereafter.

Upon the morning appointed, the king, Wolsey, de Longueville and myself, with a small retinue, rode over to Windsor, where we found that Mary, antic.i.p.ating us, had barricaded herself in her bedroom and refused to receive the announcement. The king went up stairs to coax the fair young besieged through two inches of oak door, and to induce her, if possible, to come down. We below could plainly hear the king pleading in the voice of a Bashan bull, and it afforded us some amus.e.m.e.nt behind our hands. Then his majesty grew angry and threatened to break down the door, but the fair besieged maintained a most persistent and provoking silence throughout it all, and allowed him to carry out his threat without so much as a whimper. He was thoroughly angry, and called to us to come up to see him "compel obedience from the self-willed hussy,"--a task the magnitude of which he underrated.

The door was soon broken down, and the king walked in first, with de Longueville and Wolsey next, and the rest of us following in close procession. But we marched over broken walls to the most laughable defeat ever suffered by besieging army. Our foe, though small, was altogether too fertile in expedients for us. There seemed no way to conquer this girl; her resources were so inexhaustible that in the moment of your expected victory success was turned into defeat; nay, more, ridiculous disaster.

We found Jane crouching on the floor in a corner half dead with fright from the noise and tumult--and where do you think we found her mistress? Frightened? Not at all; she was lying in bed with her face to the wall as cool as a January morning; her clothing in a little heap in the middle of the room.

Without turning her head, she exclaimed: "Come in, brother; you are quite welcome. Bring in your friends; I am ready to receive them, though not in court attire, as you see." And she thrust her bare arm straight up from the bed to prove her words. You should have seen the Frenchman's little black eyes gloat on its beauty.

Mary went on, still looking toward the wall: "I will arise and receive you all informally, if you will but wait."

This disconcerted the imperturbable Henry, who was about at his wit's end.

"Cover that arm, you hussy," he cried in a flaming rage.

"Be not impatient, brother mine! I will jump out in just a moment."

A little scream from Jane startled everybody, and she quickly ran up to the king, saying: "I beg your majesty to go. She will do as she says so sure as you remain; you don't know her; she is very angry.