When Knighthood Was in Flower Part 17

Please go; I will bring her down stairs somehow."

"Ah, indeed! Jane Bolingbroke," came from the bed. "I will receive my guests myself when they are kind enough to come to my room." The cover-lid began to move, and, whether or not she was really going to carry out her threat, I cannot say, but Henry, knowing her too well to risk it, hurried us all out of the room and marched down stairs at the head of his defeated cohorts. He was swearing in a way to make a priest's flesh creep, and protesting by everything holy that Mary should be the wife of Louis or die. He went back to Mary's room at intervals, but there was enough persistence in that one girl to stop the wheels of time, if she but set herself to do it, and the king came away from each visit the victim of another rout.

Finally his anger cooled and he became amused. From the last visit he came down laughing:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I shall have to give up the fight or else put my armor on with visor down," said he; "it is not safe to go near her without it; she is a very vixen, and but now tried to scratch my eyes out."

Wolsey, who had a wonderful knack for finding the easiest means to a difficult end, took Henry off to a window where they held a whispered conversation.

It was pathetic to see a mighty king and his great minister of state consulting and planning against one poor girl; and, as angry as I felt toward Mary, I could not help pitying her, and admired, beyond the power of pen to write, the valiant and so far impregnable defense she had put up against an array of strength that would have made a king tremble on his throne.

Presently Henry gave one of his loud laughs, and slapped his thigh as if highly satisfied with some proposition of Wolsey's.

"Make ready at once," he said. "We will go back to London."

In a short time we were all at the main stairway ready to mount for the return trip.

The Lady Mary's window was just above, and I saw Jane watching us as we rode away.

After we were well out of Mary's sight the king called me to him, and he, together with de Longueville, Wolsey and myself, turned our horses' heads, rode rapidly by a circuitous path back to another door of the castle and re-entered without the knowledge of any of the inmates.

We four remained in silence, enjoined by the king, and in the course of an hour, the princess, supposing every one had gone, came down stairs and walked into the room where we were waiting.

It was a scurvy trick, and I felt a contempt for the men who had planned it. I could see that Mary's first impulse was to beat a hasty retreat back into her citadel, the bed, but in truth she had in her make-up very little disposition to retreat. She was clear grit. What a man she would have made! But what a crime it would have been in nature to have spoiled so perfect a woman. How beautiful she was! She threw one quick, surprised glance at her brother and his companions, and lifting up her exquisite head carelessly hummed a little tune under her breath as she marched to the other end of the room with a gait that Juno herself could not have improved upon.

I saw the king smile, half in pride of her, and half in amus.e.m.e.nt, and the Frenchman's little eyes feasted upon her beauty with a relish that could not be mistaken.

Henry and the amba.s.sador spoke a word in whispers, when the latter took a box from a huge side pocket and started across the room toward Mary with the king at his heels.

Her side was toward them when they came up, but she kept her att.i.tude as if she had been of bronze. She had taken up a book that was lying on the table and was examining it as they approached.

De Longueville held the box in his hand, and bowing and sc.r.a.ping said in broken English: "Permit to me, most gracious princess, that I may have the honor to offer on behalf of my august master, this little testament of his high admiration and love." With this he bowed again, smiled like a crack in a piece of old parchment, and held his box toward Mary. It was open, probably in the hope of enticing her with a sight of its contents--a beautiful diamond necklace.

She turned her face ever so little and took it all in with one contemptuous, sneering glance out of the corners of her eyes. Then quietly reaching out her hand she grasped the necklace and deliberately dashed it in poor old de Longueville's face.

"There is my answer, sir! Go home and tell your imbecile old master I scorn his suit and hate him--hate him--hate him!" Then with the tears falling unheeded down her cheeks, "Master Wolsey, you butcher's cur!

This trick was of your conception; the others had not brains enough to think of it. Are you not proud to have outwitted one poor heart-broken girl? But beware, sir; I tell you now I will be quits with you yet, or my name is not Mary."

There is a limit to the best of feminine nerve, and at that limit should always be found a flood of healthful tears. Mary had reached it when she threw the necklace and shot her bolt at Wolsey, so she broke down and hastily left the room.

The king, of course, was beside himself with rage.

"By G.o.d's soul," he swore, "she shall marry Louis of France, or I will have her whipped to death on the Smithfield pillory." And in his wicked heart--so impervious to a single lasting good impulse--he really meant it.

Immediately after this, the king, de Longueville and Wolsey set out for London.

I remained behind hoping to see the girls, and after a short time a page plucked me by the sleeve, saying the princess wished to see me.

The page conducted me to the same room in which had been fought the battle with Mary in bed. The door had been placed on its hinges again, but the bed was tumbled as Mary had left it, and the room was in great disorder.

"Oh, Sir Edwin," began Mary, who was weeping, "was ever woman in such frightful trouble? My brother is killing me. Can he not see that I could not live through a week of this marriage? And I have been deserted by all my friends, too, excepting Jane. She, poor thing, cannot leave."

"You know I would not go," said Jane, parenthetically. Mary continued: "You, too, have been home an entire week and have not been near me."

I began to soften at the sight of her grief, and concluded, with Brandon, that, after all, her beauty could well cover a mult.i.tude of sins; perhaps even this, her great transgression against him.

The princess was trying to check her weeping, and in a moment took up the thread of her unfinished sentence: "And Master Brandon, too, left without so much as sending me one little word--not a line nor a syllable. He did not come near me, but went off as if I did not care--or he did not. Of course _he_ did not care, or he would not have behaved so, knowing I was in so much trouble. I did not see him at all after--one afternoon in the king's--about a week before that awful night in London, except that night, when I was so frightened I could not speak one word of all the things I wished to say."

This sounded strange enough, and I began more than ever to suspect something wrong. I, however, kept as firm a grasp as possible upon the stock of indignation I had brought with me.

"How did you expect to see or hear from him," asked I, "when he was lying in a loathsome dungeon without one ray of light, condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered, because of your selfish neglect to save him who, at the cost of half his blood, and almost his life, had saved so much for you?"

Her eyes grew big, and the tears were checked by genuine surprise.

I continued: "Lady Mary, no one could have made me believe that you would stand back and let the man, to whom you owed so great a debt, lie so long in such misery, and be condemned to such a death for the act that saved you. I could never have believed it!"

"Imp of h.e.l.l!" screamed Mary; "what tale is this you bring to torture me? Have I not enough already? Tell me it is a lie, or I will have your miserable little tongue torn out by the root."

"It is no lie, princess, but an awful truth, and a frightful shame to you."

I was determined to tell her all and let her see herself as she was.

She gave a hysterical laugh, and throwing up her hands, with her accustomed little gesture, fell upon the bed in utter abandonment, shaking as with a spasm. She did not weep; she could not; she was past that now. Jane went over to the bed and tried to soothe her.

In a moment Mary sprang to her feet, exclaiming: "Master Brandon condemned to death and you and I here talking and moaning and weeping?

Come, come, we will go to the king at once. We will start to walk, Edwin--I must be doing something--and Jane can follow with the horses and overtake us. No; I will not dress; just as I am; this will do.

Bring me a hat, Jane; any one, any one." While putting on hat and gloves she continued: "I will see the king at once and tell him all!

all! I will do anything; I will marry that old king of France, or forty kings, or forty devils; it's all one to me; anything! anything!

to save him. Oh! to think that he has been in that dungeon all this time." And the tears came unheeded in a deluge.

She was under such headway, and spoke and moved so rapidly, that I could not stop her until she was nearly ready to go. Then I held her by the arm while I said:

"It is not necessary now; you are too late."

A look of horror came into her face, and I continued slowly: "I procured Brandon's release nearly a week ago; I did what you should have done, and he is now at our rooms in Greenwich."

Mary looked at me a moment, and, turning pale, pressed her hands to her heart and leaned against the door frame.

After a short silence she said: "Edwin Caskoden--fool! Why could you not have told me that at first? I thought my brain would burn and my heart burst."

"I should have told you had you given me time. As to the pain it gave you"--this was the last charge of my large magazine of indignation--"I care very little about that. You deserve it. I do not know what explanation you have to offer, but nothing can excuse you. An explanation, however good, would have been little comfort to you had Brandon failed you in Billingsgate that night."

She had fallen into a chair by this time and sat in reverie, staring at nothing. Then the tears came again, but more softly.

"You are right; nothing can excuse me. I am the most selfish, ungrateful, guilty creature ever born. A whole month in that dungeon!"

And she covered her drooping face with her hands.