The Tangled Skein

Thus in Wessex' heart!

Had his sovereign liege – that sovereign being a man – dared to put forth a base insinuation against him, he would have forgotten the kingship and struck the man, who impeached his honour, fearlessly in the face. Nothing but conscious guilt would have stayed his avenging hand, or silenced the indignant words on his lips.

Of course he could not see what was actually passing: he could but surmise, and a fevered, tortured brain is an uncertain counsellor.

He could not understand Ursula's attitude. The girlish weakness, the submission to the highest authority in the land born of centuries of tradition, the maidenly bashfulness at the monstrosity of the accusation, were so many little feminine traits which at this moment appeared to him as so many admissions of guilt.

He would have loved them at other times: loved them in her especially, because they were so characteristic of her simple nature, bred in the country, half woman and wholly child. Just now they were repellent to his pride, incomprehensible to his manhood, and for the first time his faith began to waver.

Pity him, my masters! for he suffered intensely.

Pity him, mistress, for he loved her with his whole soul.

Nay! do not sneer. Love-at-first-sight is a great and wonderful thing, and, more than that, it is real – genuinely, absolutely, completely real. But it is not immutable. It is the basis, the solid foundation of what will become the lasting passion. In itself it has one great weakness – the absence of knowledge.

Wessex loved with his soul, but not yet with his reason. How could he? Reason is always the last to fall into line with the other slaves of passion. At present he worshipped in her that which he had conceived her to be, and the very sublimity of this whole-hearted love was a bar to the existence of perfect trust and faith.

There had been a long silence whilst Ursula mounted the stairs and finally disappeared, but the rustle of her silk skirt did not penetrate through the solid panels of the closet door. Wessex did not know whether she had gone, or had been ordered to wait until Her Majesty had quitted the room. He wondered now how soon he would meet her, how she would look when she finally released him from this torture-chamber. He knew that he would not upbraid her, and feared but one awful eventuality, his own weakness if she were guilty.

Love such as his oft makes cowards of men.

To the Cardinal's poisoned shaft he paid but little heed. The weary soul had come to the end of its tether. It could not suffer more.

Beyond that lay madness or crime.

Silence became oppressive.

Then it seemed as if the key was being gently turned in the lock.

CHAPTER XXV

THE CARDINAL'S MOVE

His Eminence had been left all alone in the room after the passage of Her Majesty to her own apartments.

"And now, what is the next move in this game of chess?" he mused, as he took the key of the closet door from his pocket and thoughtfully contemplated this tiny engine of his far-reaching and elaborate schemes.

"For the moment my guess was a shrewd one. His Grace of Wessex is in there, and had I not locked that door he would have precipitated a climax, which had sent Queen Mary into a fever of jealous rage, and the Spanish ambassador and myself back to Spain to-morrow."

He listened intently for a second or so; no sound came from the inner room. Then he glanced up towards the gallery.

There was, of course, no sign of Lady Ursula. Even if she intended anon to rejoin His Grace, she would certainly wait a little while ere she once more ventured to sally forth.

The Cardinal very softly put the key back into the lock, and waited.

Very soon the door was vigorously shaken. His Eminence retired to the further end of the room and called loudly —

"Who goes there?"

"By Our Lady!" came in strong accents from the other side of the locked door, "whoever you may be, an you don't open this door, it shall fall in splinters atop of you."

Time to once more recross the room, and turn a small key, and a second later the Cardinal stood face to face with the Duke of Wessex.

"His Grace of Wessex!" he murmured, with an expression of boundless astonishment.

"Himself in person, my lord," rejoined Wessex, trying with all his might to appear unconcerned before this man, whom he knew to be his deadliest enemy. "Marry!" he added, with well-acted gaiety, "the next moment, an Your Eminence had not released me, I might have lost my temper."

"A precious trifle Your Grace would no doubt have quickly found again," said His Eminence with marked suavity. "Ah! I well recollect in my young days being locked in.. just like Your Grace.. by a lady who was no less fair."

Had he entertained the slightest doubt as to whether the little dramatic episode just enacted had borne its bitter fruit, he would have seen it summarily dispelled with the first glance which he had cast at Wessex.

The Duke's grave face was deadly pale, and the violent effort which he made to contain himself was apparent in the heavily swollen veins of his temples and the almost imperceptible tremor of his hands. But his voice was quite steady as he said lightly —

"Nay! why should Your Eminence speak of a lady in this case?"

"What have I said?" quoth the Cardinal, throwing up his be-ringed hands in mock alarm. "Nay! Your Grace need have no fear. Discretion is an integral portion of my calling. I was merely indulging in reminiscences. My purple robes do not, as you know, conceal a priest. Though a prince of the Church, I am an ecclesiastic only in name, and therefore may remember, without a blush, that I was twenty once and very hot-tempered. The lady in my case put me under lock and key whilst she went to another gallant."

"Again you speak of a lady, my lord," said the Duke, with the same light indifference. "May I ask – "

"Nay, nay! I pray you ask me nothing.. I saw nothing, believe me."

He paused a moment. Wessex had turned to his dog, who, yawning and stretching, after the manner of his kind, and not the least upset by his recent incarceration, had just appeared in the doorway of the inner room.

"I saw nothing," continued the Cardinal, with a voice full of gentle, good-natured indulgence, "save a charming lady standing here alone, close to that door, when I entered with Her Majesty. What Queen Mary guessed or feared, alas! I cannot tell. The charming lady had just turned the key in the lock.. and this set me thinking of my own youth and follies… But Your Grace must pardon an old man who has but one affection left in life. Don Miguel is as a son to me – "

"I pray you, my lord," here interrupted Wessex haughtily, "what has the Marquis de Suarez' name to do with me?"

"Only this, my son," rejoined the Cardinal with truly paternal benevolence, "Don Miguel is a stranger in England.. I had almost hoped that hospitality would prevent Your Grace from flying your hawk after his birds..

"Don Miguel would be hard hit," he added quickly, seeing that Wessex, at the end of his patience, was about to make an angry retort, "for we all know that where His Grace of Wessex desires to conquer, other vows and other lovers are very soon forgotten.. But the Marquis is young.. I would like to plead his cause.."

His keen eyes had never for a moment strayed from the proud face of the Duke. He was shrewd enough to know that in speaking thus, he was reaching the outermost limits of His Grace's forbearance. His robes and his age rendered him to a certain extent immune from an actual quarrel with a man of Wessex' physique, nor did fear for his own personal safety ever enter into the far-seeing calculations of this astute diplomatist. Whatever his weaknesses might be, cowardice was not one of them, and he pursued his own aims boldly and relentlessly.

But he had had to endure a great deal through the personality and the presence of the Duke of Wessex: the humiliation put upon him this very afternoon by Mary Tudor still rankled deeply in his mind, and the vein of cruelty, almost inseparable from his nationality, rendered the present situation peculiarly pleasing to this dissector of human hearts.

Until this moment he had perhaps not quite realized that His Grace of Wessex had been hard hit. Having wilfully put away from his own life every tender sentiment, he did not understand the quick rise of a great and whole-souled passion. The Duke had been ever noted for his gallantry, his chivalry, and his numerous and light amourettes, and the Cardinal never imagined that in the daring game which he had planned, and which with the help of the wench Mirrab he was about to play, he would have to reckon with something more serious than a passing flirtation.

To his feline disposition, his callous estimate of human nature, his real hatred for this political rival, there was now a delicious satisfaction in dealing a really mortal wound to the man for whose sake he had oft been humiliated.

He felt a thrill of real and cruel delight in seeing this haughty Englishman half broken under the strain of this mental torture, which his slanderous words helped to aggravate. With half-closed eyes His Eminence was watching the quiver of the proud lip, ever ready with laughter and jest, the tremor of the slender hands, that peculiar stiffening of the whole figure which denotes a fierce struggle 'twixt raging passion and iron self-control. Was it not a joy to watch this gaping wound, into which he himself was pouring a deadly poison with a steady and unerring hand?

The game had become doubly interesting now, and so much more important. The Duke, obviously deeply in love with Lady Ursula, would certainly never turn to another woman again. If the intrigue contrived by His Eminence and the Marquis de Suarez succeeded in accordance with their expectations, then not only would His Grace be parted from the lady in accordance with Queen Mary's ultimatum, but he would probably bury his disillusionment and sorrow on some remote estate of his, far from Court and political strife.

Chance had indeed been kind to the envoys of the King of Spain.

Chance, and the natural sequence of events, skilfully guided by the Cardinal's gentle hands.

But His Eminence was clever enough to know exactly how far he might dare venture. For the moment he certainly had said enough. The Duke seemed partly dazed and had altogether forgotten his presence.

Without a sound the Cardinal glided out of the room.

The closing of the door roused Wessex from the torpor into which he had fallen. The hall looked sombre and dreary, the wax tapers flickered feebly in their sockets, whilst strange shadows seemed to jeer at him from the dark corners around. He would not look up at the gallery, the steps whereon she stood, for it seemed to him as if some mocking witch wearing her face and her golden hair would look down at him from there, and laugh and sneer, until she finally faded from his sight in the arms of the Marquis de Suarez.

"Other vows and other lovers," he mused, whilst trying to shut away from his eyes the hellish visions which tortured him. "So my beautiful Fanny is not mine at all.. but the Spaniard's.. or another's.. what matter whose? Not true and proud, but a frisky wench, ready for intrigue, of whom these foreigners speak with a coarse laugh and a shrug of the shoulders."

"Harry Plantagenet, my friend," he added, as the dog, seeming to feel the presence of sorrow, gave his master's hand a gentle lick, "His Grace of Wessex has been made a fool of by a woman… Ah, fortune! fickle fortune! one or two turns of your relentless wheel and a host of illusions.. the last I fear me.. have been scattered to the winds… Shall we go, old Harry? Meseems you are the only honest person in this poison-infected Court. We'll not stay in it, friend, I promise you… I am thirsting for the pure air of our Devon moors… Come, now.. we must to bed.. and sleep… Not dream, old Harry!.. whatever else we do.. for God's sake, let us not dream.."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PROVOCATION

When Ursula finally succeeded in escaping from her room, where she had been forcibly confined – almost a prisoner – in the charge of two waiting-women, she returned to the hall, vaguely hoping that Wessex would still be there. She found no one. The closet door was open; taking one of the wax tapers in her hand she peeped into the inner room and saw that it was empty.

On the fur rug, on the floor, was still the impress of Harry Plantagenet's body, as he had curled himself up patiently to wait and sleep.

A sudden draught extinguished the taper and left the small room in total darkness; to her overwrought nerves it seemed cold and lonely, like a newly opened grave. Wessex had gone because he had heard that she had deceived him. The slanders uttered against her had found credence in his heart. Thus she mused, guessing at the truth, perhaps not even realizing how much he had suffered.

She would not go back to her room just yet. She knew that she could not rest. Though the room was empty there seemed something of him still in it, even in its cold and deserted aspect.

She lingered here, sitting in the chair where he had sat and heard. She could not cry, she would not give way, for she wished to think. Therefore she lingered.

Thus fate worked its will in this strange history of that night.

Wessex did not know that she had returned. After the Cardinal had left him he waited awhile, but he never guessed that she would come back. Had he not heard that her kindest favours had been the Spaniard's, ere his noble Grace had come across her path? With that almost morbid humility which is such a peculiar and inalienable characteristic of a great love, he thought it quite natural that she should love Don Miguel, or any other man, rather than him, and now he was only too willing to suppose that she had gone to her favoured gallant, leaving him in the ridiculous and painful position in which she had wantonly placed him.

He had waited in a desultory fashion, not really hoping that she would come. Then, as silence began to fall more and more upon the Palace, and the clock in the great tower boomed the midnight hour, he had finally turned his steps towards his own apartments.

To reach them he had to go along the cloisters, and traverse the great audience chamber, which lay between his suite of rooms and that occupied by the Cardinal de Moreno and Don Miguel de Suarez.

As he entered the vast room he was unpleasantly surprised to see the young Spaniard standing beside the distant window.

The lights had been put out, but the two enormous bays were open, letting in a flood of brilliant moonlight. The night was peculiarly balmy and sweet, and through the window could be seen the exquisite panorama of the gardens and terraces of Hampton Court, with the river beyond bathed in silvery light.

Wessex had paused at the door, his eyes riveted on that distant picture, which recalled so vividly to his aching senses the poetic idyll of this afternoon.

It was strange that Don Miguel should be standing just where he was, between him and that vision so full of memories now.

Wessex turned his eyes on the Marquis, who had not moved when he entered, and seemed absorbed in thought.

"And there is the man who before me has looked in Ursula's eyes," mused the Duke. "To think that I have a fancy for killing that young reprobate, because he happens to be more attractive than myself.. or because."

He suddenly tried to check his thoughts. They were beginning to riot in his brain. Until this very moment, when he saw the Spaniard standing before him, he had not realized how much he hated him. All that is primitive, passionate, semi-savage in man rose in him at the sight of his rival. A wild desire seized him to grip that weakling by the throat, to make him quake and suffer, if only one thousandth part of the agony which had tortured him this past hour.

He deliberately crossed the room, then opened the door which led to his own apartments.

"Harry, old friend," he called to his dog, "go, wait for me within. I have no need for thy company just now."

The beautiful creature, with that peculiar unerring instinct of the faithful beast, seemed quite reluctant to obey. He stopped short, wagged his tail, indulged in all the tricks which he knew usually appealed to his master, begging in silent and pathetic language to be allowed to remain. But Wessex was quite inexorable, and Harry Plantagenet had perforce to go.

The door closed upon the Duke's most devoted friend. In the meanwhile Don Miguel had evidently perceived His Grace, and now when Wessex turned towards him he exclaimed half in surprise, half in tones of thinly veiled vexation —

"Ah! His Grace of Wessex? Still astir, my lord, at this hour?"

"At your service, Marquis," rejoined the Duke coldly. "Has His Eminence gone to his apartments?.. Can I do aught for you?"

"Nay, I thank Your Grace.. I thought you too had retired," stammered the young man, now in visible embarrassment. "I must confess I did not think to see you here."

"Whom did you expect to see, then?" queried Wessex curtly.

"Nay! methought Your Grace had said that questions could not be indiscreet."

"Well?"

"Marry!.. your question this time, my lord."

"Was indiscreet?"

"Oh!" said the Spaniard deprecatingly.

"Which means that you expect a lady."

"Has Your Grace any objection to that?" queried Don Miguel with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"None at all," replied Wessex, who felt his patience and self-control oozing away from him bit by bit. "I am not your guardian; yet, methinks, it ill becomes a guest of your rank to indulge in low amours beneath the roof of the Queen of England."

"Why should you call them low?" rejoined the Marquis, whose manner became more and more calm and bland, as Wessex seemed to wax more violent. "You, of all men, my lord, should know that we, at Court, seek for pleasure where we are most like to find it."

"Aye! and in finding the pleasure oft lose our honour."

"Your Grace is severe."

"If my words offend you, sir, I am at your service."

"Is this a quarrel?"

"As you please."

"Your Grace."

"Pardi, my lord Marquis," interrupted Wessex haughtily and in tones of withering contempt, "I did not know that there were any cowards among the grandees of Spain."

"By Our Lady, Your Grace is going too far," retorted the Spaniard.

And with a quick gesture he unsheathed his sword.

Wessex' eyes lighted up with the fire of satisfied desire. He knew now that this was what he had longed for ever since the young man's insolent laugh had first grated unpleasantly on his ear. For the moment all that was tender and poetic and noble in him was relegated to the very background of his soul. He was only a human creature who suffered and wished to be revenged, an animal who was wounded and was seeking to kill. He would have blushed to own that what he longed for now, above everything on earth, was the sight of that man's blood.

"Nay, my lord!" he said quietly, "are we children to give one another a pin-prick or so?"

And having drawn his sword, he unsheathed his long Italian dagger, and holding it in his left hand he quickly wrapped his cloak around that arm.

"You are mad," protested Don Miguel with a frown, for a sword and dagger fight meant death to one man at least, and a mortal combat with one so desperate as Wessex had not formed part of the programme so carefully arranged by the Cardinal de Moreno.

"By the Mass, man," was the Duke's calm answer, "art waiting to feel my glove on thy cheek?"

"As you will, then," retorted Don Miguel, reluctantly drawing his own dagger, "but I swear that this quarrel is none of my making."

"No! 'tis of mine! en garde!"

Don Miguel was pale to the lips. Not that he was a coward; he had fought more than one serious duel before now, and risked his life often enough for mere pastime or sport. But there was such a weird glitter in the eyes of this man, whom he and his chief had so wantonly wronged for the sake of their own political advancement, such a cold determination to kill, that, much against his will, the Spaniard felt an icy shiver running down his spine.

The room too! half in darkness, with only the strange, almost unreal brilliancy of the moon shedding a pallid light over one portion of the floor, that portion where one man was to die.

The Marquis de Suarez had been provoked; his was therefore the right of selecting his own position for the combat. In the case of such a peculiar illumination this was a great initial advantage.

The Spaniard, with his back towards the great open bay, had his antagonist before him in full light, whilst his own figure appeared only as a dark silhouette, elusive and intensely deceptive. Wessex, however, seemed totally unconscious of the disadvantage of his own position. He was still dressed in the rich white satin doublet in which he had appeared at the banquet a few hours ago. The broad ribbon of the Garter, the delicate lace at the throat, the jewels which he wore, all would help in the brilliant light to guide his enemy's dagger towards his breast.

But he seemed only impatient to begin; the issue, one way or the other, mattered to him not at all. The Spaniard's death or his own was all that he desired: – perhaps his own now – for choice. He felt less bitter, less humiliated since he held his sword in his hand, and only vaguely recollected that Spaniards made a boast these days of carrying poisoned daggers in their belts.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FIGHT

Whilst Don Miguel was preparing for the fight, a slight sound suddenly caused him to turn towards that side of the room, from whence a tall oaken door led to his own and the Cardinal's apartments. His eyes, rendered peculiarly keen by the imminence of his own danger, quickly perceived a thin fillet of artificial light running upwards from the floor, which at once suggested to him that the door was slightly ajar.

It had certainly been closed when Wessex first entered the room. Behind it, as Don Miguel well knew, the Cardinal de Moreno had been watching; he was the great stage-manager of the drama which he had contrived should be enacted this night before His Grace. The young Marquis was only one of the chief actors; the principal actress being the wench Mirrab, who, surfeited with wine, impatient and violent, had been kept a close prisoner by His Eminence these last six hours past.

That little glimmer of light dispelled Don Miguel's strange obsession. The Cardinal, with the slight opening of that door, had plainly meant to indicate that he was on the alert, and that this unrehearsed scene of the drama would not be enacted without his interference. The Duke, who had his back to that portion of the room, had evidently seen and heard nothing, and the whole little episode had occurred in less than three seconds.

Now Don Miguel was ready, and the next moment the swords clashed against one another. Eye to eye these two enemies seemed to gauge one another's strength. For a moment their daggers, held in the left hand, only acted as weapons of defence, the cloaks wrapped round their arms were still efficient sheaths.

Very soon the Spaniard realized that his original fears had not been exaggerated. Wessex was a formidable opponent, absolutely calm, a skilful fencer, and with a wrist which seemed made of steel. His attack was quick and vigorous; step by step, slowly but unerringly, he forced the Marquis away from the stronghold of his position. Try how he might, parry how he could, the young Spaniard gradually found himself thrust more and more into full light, whilst his antagonist was equally steadily working his way round towards the more advantageous post.

No sound came from the Cardinal's apartments, and Don Miguel dared not even glance towards the door, for the swiftest look would have proved his undoing.

Wessex' face was like a mask, quite impassive, almost stony in its rigid expression of perfect determination. The Spaniard was still steadily losing ground, another few minutes and he would be in full light, whilst the Duke's figure would become the deceptive silhouette. Under those conditions, and against such a perfect swordsman, the Marquis knew that his doom was sealed. An icy sweat broke out from his forehead, he would have bartered half his fortune to know what was going on behind the door.