House of Torment

The lady had piped this out in a rush of excited words. Then suddenly she saw Johnnie, who had turned round and stood by the fire, bowing. His face was drawn and white, and he was trembling.

"Catherine," Mr. Cressemer said, "strange things are happening to-night, of which I must speak with you anon. But this is Mr. John Commendone, son of our dear Knight of Kent, who hath come to see me, and who haply or by design of God was forced to witness the death of Dr. Rowland this morning."

Johnnie made a low bow, the little lady a lower curtsey.

Then, heedless of all etiquette, with the tears streaming down her cheeks, she trotted up to the young man and caught hold of both his hands, looking up at him with the saddest, kindest face he had ever seen.

"Oh, boy, boy," she said, "thou hast come at the right time. We know with what constancy the Doctor died, but our lamb will be well content to hear of it from kindly lips, for she is very strong and stedfast, the pretty dear! And thou hast a good face, and surely art a true son of thy father, Sir Henry of Commendone."

CHAPTER VI

A KING AND A VICTIM. TWO GRIM MEN

There was a "Red Mass," a votive Mass of the Holy Ghost, sung on the next morning in the Tower.

The King and Queen, with all the Court, were present.

Johnnie knelt with the gentlemen attached to the persons of the King and Queen, the gentlemen ushers behind them, and then the military officers of the guard.

The Veni Creator Spiritus was intoned by the Chancellor, and the music of the Mass was that of Dom Giovanni Palestrina, director of sacred music at the Vatican at that time.

The music, which by its dignity and beauty had alone prevented the Council of Trent from prohibiting polyphonic music at the Mass, had a marvellous appeal to the Esquire. It was founded upon a canto fermo, a melody of an ancient plain song of the Middle Ages, and used in High Mass from a very remote period.

The six movements of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei were of a superlative technical excellence. The trained ear, the musical mind, were alike enthralled by them. Tinel, Waddington, and Christopher Tye had written no music then, and the mellow angelic harmonies of Messer Palestrina were all new and fresh in their inspiration of dignity, grandeur, and devotion, most precious incense, as it were, about the feet of the Lord.

The Bishop of London was celebrant, and Father Deza deacon. The Queen and King received in the one Kind, while two of the re-established Carthusians from Sheen, and two Brigittine monks from Sion, held a white cloth before Their Graces.

This was not liked by many there – it had always been the privilege of peers.

But of this Commendone knew nothing. The hour was for him one of the deepest devotion and solemnity. He had not slept all the night long. For a few moments he had seen Elizabeth, had spoken with her, had held her by the hand. His life was utterly and absolutely changed. His mind, excited with want of sleep, irrevocably stamped and impressed by the occupation of the last two days, was caught up by the exquisite music into a passionate surrender of self as he vowed his life to God and his lady.

Earth and all it held – save only her – was utterly dissolved and swept away. An unspeakable peace and stillness was in his heart.

Much, we read, is required from those to whom much is given, and Johnnie was to go through places far more terrible than the Valley of the Shadow of Death ever is to most men before he saw the Dawn.

When the Mass was said – the final "Missa est" was to ring in the young man's ears for many a long day – he went to breakfast. He took nothing in the Common Room, however, but John Hull brought him food in his own chamber.

The man's brown, keen face beamed with happiness. He was like some faithful dog that had lost one master and found another. He could not do enough for Johnnie now – after the visit to Mr. Cressemer's house. He took charge of him as if he had been his man for years. There was a quiet assumption which secretly delighted Commendone. There they were, master and man, a relationship fixed and settled.

On that afternoon there was to be a tournament in the tilting yard, and Johnnie meant to ride – he had nearly carried away the ring at the last joust. Hull knew of it – in a few hours the fellow seemed to have fallen into his place in an extraordinary fashion – and he had been busy with his master's armour since early dawn.

While Johnnie was making his breakfast, though he would very willingly have been alone, and indeed had retired for that very purpose, Hull came bustling in and out of the armour-room his face a brown wedge of pleasure and excitement. The volante pièce, the mentonnière, the grande-garde of his master's exquisite suite of light Milan armour shone like a newly-minted coin. The black and lacquered cuirasse, with a line of light blue enamel where it would meet the gorget, was oiled and polished – he had somehow found the little box of bandrols with the Commendone colour and cypher which were to be tied above the coronels of Johnnie's lances.

And all the time John Hull chattered and worked, perfectly happy, perfectly at home. Already, to Commendone's intense amusement, the man had become dictatorial – as old and trusted servants are. He had got some powder of resin, and was about to pour it into the jointed steel gauntlet of the lance hand.

"It gives the grip, master," he said. "By this means the hand fitteth better to the joints of the steel."

"But 'tis never used that I know of. 'Tis not like the grip of a bare hand on the ash stave of a pike…"

There was a technical discussion, which ended in Johnnie's defeat – at least, John Hull calmly powdered the inside of the glaive.

He was got rid of at last, sent to his meal with the other serving-men, and Commendone was left alone. He had an hour to himself, an hour in which to recall the brief but perfect joy of the night before.

They had taken him to Elizabeth after supper, his good host and hostess. There was something piteously sweet in the tall slim girl in her black dress – the dear young mouth trembling, the blue eyes full of a mist of unshed tears, the hair ripest wheat or brownest barley.

She had taken his hand – hers was like cool white ivory – and listened to him as a sister might.

He had sat beside her, and told her of her father's glorious death. His dark and always rather melancholy face had been lit with sympathy and tenderness. Quite unconscious of his own grace and grave young dignity, he had dwelt upon the Martyr's joy at setting out upon his last journey, with an incomparable delicacy and perfection of phrase.

His voice, though he knew it not, was full of music. His extreme good looks, the refinement and purity of his face, came to the poor child with a wonderful message of consolation.

When he told her how a brutal yeoman had thrown a faggot at the Archdeacon, she shuddered and moaned a little.

Mr. Cressemer and his sister looked at Johnnie with reproach.

But he had done it of set purpose. "And then, Mistress Elizabeth," he continued, "the Doctor said, 'Friend, I have harm enough. What needeth that?'"

His hand had been upon his knee. She caught it up between her own – innocent, as to a brother, unutterably sweet.

"Oh, dear Father!" she cried. "It is just what he would have said. It is so like him!"

"It is liker Christ our Lord," Robert Cressemer broke in, his deep voice shaking with sorrow. "For what, indeed, said He at His cruel nailing? '[Greek: Pater, aphes autois ou gar oidasi ti poiusi.]'"

… And then they had sent Johnnie away, marvelling at the goodness, shrewdness, and knowledge of the Alderman, with his whole being one sob of love, pity, and protection for his dear simple mourner – so crystal clear, so sisterlike and sweet!

It was time to go upon duty.

Johnnie looked at his thick oval watch – a "Nuremberg Egg," as it was called in those days – cut short his reverie of sweet remembrance, and went straight to the King Consort's wing of the Palace.

When he was come into the King's room he found him alone with Torromé, his valet, sitting in a big leather-covered arm-chair, his ruff and doublet taken off, and wearing a long dressing-gown of brown stuff, a friar's gown it almost seemed.

The melancholy yellow face brightened somewhat as the Esquire came in.

"I am home again, Señor," he said in Spanish, though "en casa" was the word he used for home, and that had a certain pathos in it. "There is a torneo, a justa, after dinner, so they tell me. I had wished to ride myself, but I am weary from our viajero into the country. I shall sit with the Queen, and you, Señor, will attend me."

He must have seen a slight, fleeting look of disappointment upon Commendone's face.

Himself, as the envoy Suriano said of him in 1548, "deficient in that energy which becometh a man, sluggish in body and timid in martial enterprise," he nevertheless affected an exaggerated interest in manly sports. He had, it is true, mingled in some tournaments at Brussels in the past, and Calvera says that he broke his lances, "very much to the satisfaction of his father and aunts." But in England, at any rate, he had done nothing of the sort, and his voice to Commendone was almost apologetic.

"We will break a lance together some day," he said, "but you must forego the lists this afternoon."

Johnnie bowed very low. This was extraordinary favour. He knew, of course, that the King would never tilt with him, but he recognised the compliment.

He knew, again, that his star was high in the ascendant. The son of the great Charles V was reserved, cautious, suspicious of all men – except when, in private, he would unbend to buffoons and vulgar rascals like Sir John Shelton – and the icy gravity of his deportment to courtiers seldom varied.

Commendone was quite aware that the King did not class him with men of Shelton's stamp. He was the more signally honoured therefore.

"This night," His Grace continued, "after the jousts, your attendance will be excused, Señor. I retire early to rest."

The Esquire bowed, but he had caught a certain gleam in the King's small eyes. "Duck Lane or Bankside!" he thought to himself. "Thank God he hath not commanded me to be with him."

Johnnie was beginning to understand, more than he had hitherto done, something of his sudden rise to favour and almost intimacy. The King Consort was trying him, testing him in every way, hoping to find at length a companion less dangerous and drunken, a reputation less blown upon, a servant more discreet…

He could have spat in his disgust. What he had tolerated in others before, though loftily repudiated for himself, now became utterly loathsome – in King or commoner, black and most foul.

The King wore a mask; Johnnie wore one also – there was finesse in the game between master and servant. And to-night the King would wear a literal mask, the "maschera," which Badovardo speaks of when he set down the frailties of this monarch for after generations to read of: "Nelle piaceri delle donnè è incontinente, predendo dilletatione d'andare in maschera la notte et nei tempi de negotii gravi."

Then and there Johnnie made a resolution, one which had been nascent in his mind for many hours. He would have done with the Court as soon as may be. Ambition, so new a child of his brain, was already dead. He would marry, retire from pageant and splendour even as his father had done years and years ago. With Elizabeth by his side he would once more live happily among the woods and wolds of Commendone.

Torromé, the criado or valet, came into the room again from the bed-chamber. His Highness was to change his clothes once more – at high noon he must be with the Queen upon State affairs. The Chancellor and Lord Wharton were coming, and with them Brookes, the Bishop of Gloucester, the papal sub-delegate, and the Royal Proctors, Mr. Martin and Mr. Storey.

The prelates, Ridley and Latimer, were lying in prison – their ultimate fate was to be discussed on that morning.

The King had but hardly gone into his bed-chamber when the door of the Closet opened and Don Diego Deza entered, unannounced, and with the manner of habitude and use.

He greeted Commendone heartily, shaking him by the hand with considerable warmth, his clear-cut, inscrutable face wearing an expression of fixed kindliness – put on for the occasion, meant to appear sincere, there for a purpose.

"I will await His Grace here," the priest said, glancing at the door leading to the bedroom, which was closed. "I am to attend him to the Council Chamber, where there is much business to be done. So next week, Mr. Commendone, you'll be at Whitehall! The Court will be gayer there – more suited to you young gallants."

"For my part," Johnnie answered, "I like the Tower well enough."

"Hast a contented mind, Señor," the priest answered brightly. "But I hap to know that the Queen will be glad to be gone from the City. This hath been a necessary visit, one of ceremony, but Her Grace liketh the Palace of Westminster better, and her Castle of Windsor best of all. I shall meet you at Windsor in the new year, and hope to see you more advanced. Wilt be wearing the gold spurs then, I believe, and there will be two knights of the honoured name of Commendone!"

Johnnie answered: "I think not, Father," he said, turning over his own secret resolve in his mind with an inward smile. "But why at Windsor? Doubtless we shall meet near every day."

"Say nothing, Mr. Commendone," the priest answered in a low voice. "There can be no harm in telling you – who are privy to so much – but I sail for Spain to-morrow morn, and shall be some months absent upon His Most Catholic Majesty's affairs."

Shortly after this, the King came out of his room, three of his Spanish gentlemen were shown in, and with Johnnie, the Dominican, and his escort, His Highness walked to the Council Chamber, round the tower of which stood a company of the Queen's Archers, showing that Her Grace had already arrived.

Then for two hours Johnnie kicked his heels in the Ante-room, watching this or that great man pass in and out of the Council Chamber, chatting with the members of the Spanish suite – bored to death.

At half-past one the Council was over, and Their Majesties went to dinner, as did also Johnnie in the Common Room.

At half-past three of the clock the Esquire was standing in the Royal box behind the King and Queen, among a group of other courtiers, and looking down on the great tilting yard, where he longed himself to be.

The Royal Gallery was at one end of the yard, a great stage-box, as it were, into which two carved chairs were set, and which was designated, as a somewhat fervent chronicler records, "the gallery, or place at the end of the tilting yard adjoining to Her Grace's Palace of the Tower, whereat her person should be placed. It was called, and with good cause, the Castle, or Fortress of Perfect Beauty, forasmuch as Her Highness should be there included."

Johnnie stood and watched it all with eyes in which there was but little animation. A few days before nothing would have gladdened him more than such a spectacle as this. To-day it was as nothing to him.

Down below was a device of painted canvas, imitating a rolling-trench, which was supposed to be the besieging works of those who attempted the "Fortress of Perfect Beauty."

"Upon the top of it were set two cannons wrought of wood, and coloured so passing well, as, indeed, they seemed to be two fair field-pieces of ordnance. And by them were placed two men for gunners in cloth and crimson sarcanet, with baskets of earth for defence of their bodies withal."

At the far end of the lists there came a clanking and hammering of the farriers' and armourers' forges.

Grooms in mandilions – the loose, sleeveless jacket of their calling – were running about everywhere, leading the chargers trapped with velvet and gold in their harness. Gentlemen in short cloaks and Venetian hose bustled about among the knights, and here and there from the stables, and withdrawing sheds outside the lists, great armoured figures came, the sun shining upon their plates – russet-coloured, fluted, damascened with gold in a hundred points of fire.

Nothing could be more splendid, as the trumpeters advanced into the lists, and the fierce fanfaronade snarled up to the sky. The Garter King-at-arms in his tabard, mounted on a white horse with gold housings, rode out into the centre of the yard, and behind him, though on foot, were Blue-mantle and Rouge-dragon.

The afternoon air was full of martial noise, the clank of metal, the brazen notes of horns, the stir and murmur of a great company.

To Johnnie it seemed that he did not know the shadow from the substance. It all passed before him in a series of coloured pictures, unreal and far away. Had he been down there among the knights and lords, he felt that he would but have fought with shadows. It was as though a weird seizure had taken hold on him, a waking dream enmeshed him in its drowsy impalpable net, so that on a sudden, in the midst of men and day, while he walked and talked and stood as ever before, he yet seemed to move among a world of ghosts, to feel himself the shadow of a dream. Once when Sir Charles Paston Cooper, a very clever rider at the swinging ring, and also doughty in full shock of combat, had borne down his adversary, the Queen clapped her hands.

"Habet!" she cried, like any Roman empress, excited and glad, because young Sir Charles was a very strong adherent of the Crown, and known to be bitterly opposed to the pretensions of the Lady Elizabeth. "Habet!" the Queen cried again, with a shriek of delight.

She looked at her husband, whose head was a little bent, whose sallow face was lost in thought. She did not venture to disturb his reverie, but glanced behind him and above his chair to where John Commendone was standing.

"C'est bien fait, n'est-ce pas, Monsieur?" she said in French.

The young man's face, also, was frozen into immobility. It did not waken to the Queen's joyous exclamation. The eyes were turned inwards, he was hearing nothing of it all.

Her Grace's face flushed a little. She said no more, but wondered exceedingly.

The stately display-at-arms went on. The sun declined towards his western bower, and blue shadows crept slowly over the sand.

A little chill wind arose suddenly, and as it did so, Commendone awoke.

Everything flashed back to him. In the instant that it did so, and the dreaming of his mind was blown away, the curtain before his subconscious intelligence rolled up and showed him the real world. The first thing he saw was the head of King Philip just below him. The tall conical felt hat moved suddenly, leaning downwards towards a corner of the arena just below the Royal box.

Johnnie saw the King's profile, the lean, sallow jowl, the corner of the curved, tired, and haughty lip – the small eye suddenly lit up.

Following the King's glance, he saw below the figure of Sir John Shelton, dressed very quietly in ordinary riding costume, and by the side of the knight, Torromé, the valet of His Highness.

Both men nodded, and the King slightly inclined his head in reply.

Then His Highness leant back in his chair, and a little hissing noise, a sigh of relief or pleasure, came from his lips.

Immediately he turned to the Queen, placed one hand upon her jewelled glove, and began to speak with singular animation and brightness.

The Queen changed in a moment. The lassitude and disappointment went from her face in a flash. She turned to her husband, radiant and happy, and once more her face became beautiful.

It was the last time that John Commendone ever saw the face of Queen Mary. In after years he preferred always to think of her as he saw her then.

The tourney was over. Everybody had left the tilting yard and its vicinity, save only the farriers, the armour smiths, and grooms.

In front of the old palace hardly a soul was to be seen, except the sentinels and men of the guard, who paced up and down the terraces.

It was eight o'clock, and twilight was falling. All the windows were lit, every one was dressing for supper, and now and then little roulades of flutes, the twanging of viols being tuned, the mellow clarionette-like voice of the piccolo-milanese showed that the Royal band was preparing for the feast.

Johnnie was off duty; his time was his own now, and he could do as he would.

He longed more than anything to go to Chepe to be with the Cressemers again, to see Elizabeth; but, always punctilious upon points of etiquette, and especially remembering the sad case and dolour of his love, he felt it would be better not to go. Nevertheless, he took a sheet of paper from his case into the Common Room, and wrote a short letter of greeting to the Alderman. With this he also sent a posy of white roses, which he bribed a serving-man to get from the Privy Garden, desiring that the flowers should be given to Mistress Elizabeth Taylor.

This done, he sought and found his servant.

"To-night, John Hull," he said, "I shall not need thee, and thou mayest go into the City and do as thou wilt. I am going to rest early, for I am very tired. Come you back before midnight – you can get the servant's pass from the lieutenant of the guard if you mention my name – and wake me and bring me some milk. But while thou art away, take this letter and these flowers to the house of Master Robert Cressemer. Do not deliver them at once when thou goest, but at ten or a little later, and desire them to be taken at once to His Worship."

This he said, knowing something of the habits of the great house in Chepeside, and thinking that his posy would be taken to Elizabeth when she was retiring to her sleep.

"Perchance she may think of me all night," said cunning Johnnie to himself.

Hull took the letter and the flowers, and departed. Johnnie went to his chamber, disembarrassing himself of his stiff starched ruff, took off his sword, and put on the cassock-coat, which was the undress for the young gentlemen of the Court when they met in the Common Room for a meal.

He designed to take some food, and then to go straight to bed and sleep until his servant should wake him with the milk he had ordered, and especially with the message of how he had done in Chepe.

He had just arrayed himself and was wearily stretching out his arms, wondering whether after all he should go downstairs to sup or no, when the door of his bedroom was pushed open and Ambrose Cholmondely entered.

Johnnie was glad to see his friend.

"Holà!" he said, "I was in need of some one with whom to talk. You come in a good moment, mon ami."

Cholmondely sat down upon the bed.

"Well," he said, "didst come off well at the tourney?"

Johnnie shook his head. "I didn't ride," he said, "I was in attendance upon His Grace, rather to my disgust, for I had hoped for some exercise. But you? Where were you, Ambrose?"

"I? Well, Johnnie, I was excused attendance this afternoon. I made interest with Mr. Champneys, and so I got off."

"Venus, her service, I doubt me," Johnnie answered.

Ambrose Cholmondely nodded.

"Yes," he said, "i' faith, a very bootless quest it was. A girl at an inn that I lit upon some time agone – you would not know it – 'tis a big hostel of King Henry's time without Aldgate, the 'Woolsack.'"

Johnnie started. "I went there once," he said.

"I should well have thought," Cholmondely replied, "it would have been out of your purview. Never mind. My business came not to a satisfactory end. The girl was very coy. But I tell you what I did see, and that hath given me much reason for thought. Along the road towards Essex, where I was walking, hoping to meet my inamorata, came a damsel walking, by her dress and bearing of gentle birth, and with a serving-maid by her side. I was not upon the high road, but sat under a sycamore tree in a field hard by, but I saw all that passed very well. A carriage came slowly down the road towards this lady. Out of it jumped that bully-rook John Shelton, and close behind him the Spanish valet Torromé, that is the King's private servant. They caught hold of the girl, Shelton clapped a hand upon her mouth, and they had her in the carriage in a moment and her maid with her – which immediately turned round and went back at a quick pace through Aldgate. I would have interfered, but I could not get to the high road in time; 'twas so quickly done. Johnnie, there will be great trouble in London, if Shelton and these Spaniards he is so friendly with are to do such things in England. It may go on well enough for a time, but suddenly the bees will be roused from their hive, and there will be such a to-do and turmoil, such a candle will be lit as will not easily be put out."