The Tangled Skein

"Then let me be even with you, sweet singer, and tell me your name."

Ursula darted a sudden shy look at him. Obviously he was conveying the truth; he did not know who she was.

A quick thought crossed her mind; she looked demurely down her nose and said placidly, —

"My name is Fanny."

"Fanny?"

"Yes.. you do not like it?"

"I didn't before," he said with a smile, "but now I adore it."

"I am getting to like it better too," she added thoughtfully.

"But, sweet Fanny, tell me how is it I never have seen you before."

"Your Grace does not know all the ladies of the Court."

"No! but I thought I knew all the pretty ones. Yet meseems that beauty was but an empty word now that I have seen its queen."

"Ah, my lord! I fear me your reputation doth not wrong you after all!" she added with a quaint little sigh.

"Why? What is my reputation?"

"They call you fickle, and say the Duke of Wessex loves many women a little.. but constantly, not at all."

He came a step closer to her, and tried to meet her eyes.

"Then will you let me prove them wrong?" he said with sudden seriousness, which perhaps then he could not himself have accounted for.

"I?." she said artlessly, "what must I do for that?"

"Anything you like," he replied.

"Nay, I have no power; for I fear me nothing short of putting Your Grace under lock and key would cure you of that fickleness."

"Then put me under lock and key," he suggested gaily.

"In an inaccessible tower?"

"Wherever you please."

She gave a merry, happy little laugh, for he was standing quite close to her now, his proud head slightly bent so that the quick, whispered words might easily reach her ears; and there was an unmistakable look of ardent admiration in his eyes. A demon of mischief suddenly seized her. She wondered whether he had guessed who she was and tried to nettle him into betraying himself.

"And to whom shall I give the key of that tower?" she said demurely. "To the Lady Ursula Glynde?"

"No," he replied. "Come inside and throw the key out of the window."

"But the Lady Ursula?" she persisted.

He made a quick gesture of mock impatience.

"What wanton cruelty to mention that name now," he said, "when mine ears are tuned to 'Fanny.'"

"Tis wrong they should be so tuned – Lady Ursula, they say, is your promised wife."

"But I do not love her.. never could love her whilst —

"They say she is not ill-favoured."

"Ill-favoured to me, like the bitter pills the medicine man gives us, whilst you – "

Once more she interrupted him quickly.

"You have never seen her," she protested, "you do not even know what she is like."

"Nay, I can guess. The Glyndes are all alike – sandy, angular, large-footed.."

She laughed, a long, merry, rippling laugh which set his ears tingling with the desire to hear it once again. Ursula was indeed enjoying herself thoroughly.

"They all have brown eyes," he continued gaily, "and just now I feel as if I could not endure brown eyes."

She cast down her own, veiling them with her long lashes.

"What eyes could Your Grace best endure for the moment?" she said, with the same tantalizing demureness.

But something magnetic must have passed at that moment between these two young people, some subtle current from him to her, which forced the innocent young girl to raise her eyes almost against her will. He looked straight into their wonderful depths, and murmured softly, —

"The very bluest of the blue, and yet so grey, that I should feel they must somehow be green.."

A little shudder had gone through her when first she met his ardent gaze; she tried to free herself from a sudden strange and delicious feeling of obsession, and said with somewhat forced merriment now:

"The Queen has greenish eyes, and Lady Ursula's are grey."

Then she held out the marguerite to him.

"Would you like to know which you love best?" she added. "Consult the marguerite, and take one petal at a time."

But he took the hand which held the flower.

"One petal at a time," he whispered. He took the slender fingers and kissed each in its turn: "This the softest.. that the whitest.. all rose-tipped.. and a feast for the gods.."

"My lord!."

"Now you are frowning – you are not angry?"

"Very angry!"

"I'll make amends," he said humbly.

"How?"

"Give me the other hand, and I'll show you."

"Nay! I cannot do that, for we are told that the left hand must never know what the right hand doeth."

"It shall not," he rejoined earnestly, "for I'll tell it a different tale."

"What is it?"

"Give me the hand and you shall know."

Overhead in the green bosquets of yew a group of starlings began to twitter. The sun was just beginning to sink down in the west, throwing round the head of the fair young girl an aureole of gold. He stood watching her, happy in this the supreme moment of his life. A magic veil seemed to envelop him and her, shutting out all that portion of the world which was not poetic and beautiful; and she, the priestess of this exquisite new universe in which he had just entered, was smilingly holding out her dainty hand to him.

He seized it, and a sudden wave of passion caused him to bend over it and to kiss its soft rosy palm.

"Nay, my lord," she murmured, confused, "that Your Grace should think of such follies!"

"Yet, when you look at me," he said, "I think of worse follies still."

"Women say that there is no worse folly than to listen to His Grace of Wessex."

"Do you think they are right?"

"How can I tell?"

"By listening to me for half an hour."

"Here, in this garden?"

"No!.. there!.. by the river.."

And he pointed beyond the enclosure of the garden, there where the soft evening breeze gently stirred the rushes in the stream.

"Oh!.. what would everybody say?" she exclaimed in mock alarm.

"Nothing! envy of my good fortune would make them dumb."

"But the Queen will be asking for you, and the Duchess of Lincoln wondering where I am."

"They shall not find us.. for we'll pull the boat beyond the reeds.. just you and I alone.. with the gloaming all round us.. and the twitter of the birds when they go to rest. Shall we go?."

Her heart had already consented. His voice was low and persuasive, a strange earnestness seemed to vibrate through it, as he begged her to come with him.

Slowly she began to walk by his side towards the stream. She seemed scarcely alive now, a being from another world wandering in the land of dreams. He said nothing more, for the world was too beautiful for speech. Youth, love, delight were coursing through his veins, and as he led the young girl towards the bank it seemed to him as if he were taking her away from this dull world of prose and humanity, far, far away through mysterious golden gates beyond the sunset, to a land where she would reign as queen.

The river beckoned to them, and the soft, misty horizon seemed to call. The intoxicating odour of summer's dying roses filled the air, whilst in the distance across the stream a nightingale began to sing.

CHAPTER XVI

THE ULTIMATUM

The envoy of His Holiness had departed.

Mary Tudor had dismissed her ladies, for she wished to speak with the Cardinal de Moreno alone.

Throughout the audience with the papal Nuncio, His Eminence had already seen the storm-clouds gathering thick and fast on the Queen's brow. His Grace of Wessex, gone to fetch a breviary left accidentally on the terrace-coping, had been gone half an hour, and moreover had not yet returned.

Her Majesty had sent a page to request His Grace's presence. The page returned with the intimation that His Grace could not be found.

Someone had spied him in the distance walking towards the river, in company with a lady dressed in white.

Then the storm-clouds had burst.

The Queen peremptorily ordered every one out of the room, then she turned with real Tudor-like fury upon His Eminence.

"My lord Cardinal," she said in a quivering voice, which she did not even try to steady, "an you had your master's wishes at heart, you have indeed gone the wrong way to work."

The Cardinal's keen grey eyes had watched Mary's growing wrath with much amusement. What was a woman's wrath to him? Nothing but an asset, an additional advantage in the political game which he was playing.

Never for a moment did he depart, however, from his attitude of deepest respect, nor from his tone of suave urbanity.

"I seem to have offended Your Majesty," he said gently; "unwittingly, I assure you.."

But Mary was in no mood to bandy polite words with the man who had played her this clever trick. She was angered with herself for having fallen into so clumsy a trap. A thousand suggestions now occurred to her of what she might have done to prevent the meeting between Wessex and Ursula, which the Cardinal had obviously planned.

"Nay! masks off, I pray Your Eminence," she said, "that trick just now with your breviary.. Own to it, man!.. own to it.. are you not proud to have tricked Mary Tudor so easily?"

She was trembling with rage, yet looked nigh to bursting into tears. A shade almost of pity crossed His Eminence's cold and clever face. It seemed almost wantonly useless to have aided Fate in snatching a young and handsome lover from this ill-favoured, middle-aged woman.

But the Cardinal never allowed worldly sentiments of any kind to interfere, for more than one or two seconds, with the object he had in view. The look of pity quickly faded from his eyes, giving place to the same mask of respectful deference.

"My breviary?" he said blandly. "Nay! I am still at a loss to understand… Ah, yes! I remember now… I had left it on the balustrade. His Grace of Wessex, a pattern of chivalry, offered to fetch it for me, and – "

"A fine scheme indeed, my lord," interrupted the Queen impatiently, "to send the Duke of Wessex courting after my waiting-maid."

"The Duke of Wessex?" rejoined His Eminence with well-played astonishment. "Nay, methought I spied him just now in the distance, keeping the vows he once made to the Lady Ursula Glynde."

"I pray you do not repeat that silly fairy-tale. His Grace made no promise. 'Twas the Earl of Truro desired the marriage, and the Duke had half forgotten this, until Your Eminence chose to interfere."

"Nay! but Your Majesty does me grave injustice. What have the amours of His Grace of Wessex to do with me, who am the envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain?"

"'Twere wiser, certainly," retorted Mary coldly, "if the King of Spain's envoy did not concern himself with rousing the Queen of England's anger."

His Eminence smiled as amiably, as unconcernedly as before. Throughout the length of a very distinguished career he had often been obliged to weather storms of royal wrath. He was none the worse for it, and knew how to let the floods of princely anger pass over his shrewd head, without losing grip of the ground on which he stood. Nothing ever ruffled him. Supremely conscious of his own dignity, justly proud of his position and attainments, he had, at the bottom of his heart, a complete contempt for those exalted puppets of his own political schemes. Mary Tudor, a weak and soured woman, an all-too-ready prey of her own passions, swayed hither and thither by her loves and by her hates, was nothing to this proud prince of the Church but a pawn in a European game of chess. It was for his deft fingers to move this pawn in the direction in which he list.

"Nay," he said, with gentle suavity, "my only desire is to rouse in the heart of the Queen of England love for my royal master, the King of Spain. He is young and goodly to look at, a faithful and gallant gentleman, whom it will be difficult to lure from Your Grace's side, once you have deigned to allow him to kneel at your feet."

"You speak, my lord, as if you were sure of my answer."

"Sure is a momentous word, Your Majesty. But I hope – "

"Nay! 'tis not yet done, remember," retorted Mary, with ever-increasing vehemence, "and if this trick of yours should succeed, if Wessex weds the Lady Ursula, then I will send my answer to your master, and it shall be 'No!'"

There was a quick, sudden flash in the Cardinal's eye, a look of astonishment, perhaps, at this unexpected phase of feminine jealousy. Be that as it may, it was quickly veiled by an expression of pronounced sarcasm.

"As a trophy for the vanity of His Grace of Wessex?" he asked pointedly.

"No! – merely as a revenge against your interference. So look to it, my lord Cardinal; the tangle in the skein was made by your hand. See that you unravel it, or you and the Spanish ambassador leave my Court to-morrow."

With a curt nod of the head she dismissed him from her presence. He was far too shrewd to attempt another word just now. Perhaps for the first time in his life he felt somewhat baffled. He had allowed his own impatience to outrun his discretion – an unpardonable fault in a diplomatist. He blamed himself very severely for his attempt at brusquing Fate. Surely time and the Duke's own fastidious disposition would have parted him from Mary quite as readily as this sudden meeting with beautiful Lady Ursula.

The Cardinal had withdrawn from the Queen's presence after an obeisance marked with deep respect. He wished to be alone to think over this new aspect of the situation. Through the tall bay windows of the Great Hall which he traversed, the last rays of the setting sun came slanting in. His Eminence glided along the smooth oak floors, his crimson robes making but a gentle frou-frou of sound behind him, a ghostlike, whispering accompaniment to his perturbed thoughts. Somehow the softness of the evening air lured him towards the terrace and the gardens. There lacked an hour yet to supper-time, and Mary Tudor was scarce likely to be in immediate need of His Eminence's company.

He crossed the Clock Tower gates and soon found himself once more on the terrace. The gardens beyond looked tenderly poetic in the fast-gathering dusk. The Cardinal's shrewd eyes wandered restlessly over the parterres and bosquets, vainly endeavouring to spy the silhouettes of two young people, whom his diplomacy had brought together and whom his shrewd wit would have to part again.

He descended the terrace steps and slowly walked towards the pond, where, but an hour ago, a sweet and poetic idyll had been enacted. There was nothing to mark the passage of a fair young dream, born this lovely October afternoon, save a few dead marguerites and the scattered flakes of their snow-white petals.

The Cardinal's footsteps crushed them unheeded. He was thinking how best he could dispel that dream, which he himself had helped to call forth.

"Woman! woman!" he sighed impatiently as he looked back upon the graceful outline of the Palace behind him, "thy moods are many and thy logic scant."

"A tangled skein indeed," he mused, "which will take some unravelling. If Wessex weds the Lady Ursula, the Queen will say 'No' to Philip, out of revenge for my interference. She'll turn to Noailles mayhap and wed the Dauphin to spite me, or keep him and Scheyfne dangling on awhile whilst trying to reconquer the volatile Duke's allegiance. But if Wessex does not wed the Lady Ursula.. what then? Will his friends prevail? Yet there's more obstinacy than indolence in his composition, I fancy, and the dubious position of King Consort would scarce suit his proud Grace. Still, if I do not succeed in parting those two young people whom my diplomacy hath brought together, then Mary Tudor sends me and the Spanish Ambassador back to Philip to-morrow."

CHAPTER XVII

AN ARMED TRUCE

So intent was His Eminence in these complicated musings that he scarcely noticed how fast the shadows gathered round him. He had gradually wandered down towards the low wall which divided the Palace gardens from the river beyond.

He had always been very partial to this remote portion of the grounds, for it was little frequented, and he felt that here at least in his lonely walks he could lay aside that mask of perpetual blandness which he was obliged to wear all day, whatever his moods might be.

It was seldom that he met anybody when his footsteps led him thus far. Great was his astonishment therefore when he suddenly spied a figure leaning over the wall, evidently intent on prying into the darkness below.

The Cardinal drew nearer and recognized Lord Everingham, the closest friend, the most intimate companion His Grace of Wessex was known to have.

The young man had not heard His Eminence's footsteps on the sanded path; he started on hearing his name.

"Ah! my lord Everingham," said the Cardinal lightly. "I little thought to see any one here. I myself am fond of communing with Nature in these gathering shadows; but you are a young man, there are gayer attractions for you within the Palace."

It was too dark by now even for His Eminence's keen eyes to read the expression on Lord Everingham's face. The astute diplomatist, however, more than guessed what the young man's purpose was in thus scanning the river. His Grace of Wessex had not yet returned to the Palace, and it was generally known throughout the Court circle that Her Majesty was furious at his absence.

The Cardinal's ruse in the early part of the afternoon had been the subject of universal gossip; sundry rumours had also been current that the Duke had been seen in the company of the Queen's most beautiful maid-of-honour.

"Verily," thought His Eminence, "His Grace's partisans must be on tenterhooks. All along they must have dreaded this meeting, which chance and diplomacy has so unexpectedly brought about."

Was not Wessex' position with regard to the Lady Ursula a peculiar one? Tied to her and yet free, affianced, yet not necessarily bound, his own attitude towards her was sure to be influenced by the girl's own personality.

And every cavalier and diplomatist now at Hampton Court readily conceded that the daughter of the Earl of Truro was the most beautiful woman in England, and the most likely to captivate the roving fancy of His Grace.

No wonder that my lord of Everingham was anxious for the Duke's return, before the Queen's access of pique and jealousy had found vent in sudden revenge. But the young Englishman had no desire to display this anxiety before his triumphant opponent.

"Like your Eminence," he said carelessly, "I was lured into the garden by the softness of the air. The river looked so cool and placid, and 'tis not often one can hear the nightingale in October."

"Nay! your sudden fancy for the evening breeze is entirely my gain, my dear lord," rejoined the Cardinal in his most suave manner; "as a matter of fact I was, even at this moment, meditating how best I could secure an interview with you."

"With me?"

"Yes. Are you not His Grace of Wessex' most intimate friend?"

"I have indeed that honour," replied Everingham stiffly, "but I do not quite understand how – "

"How the matter concerns me?" interrupted His Eminence pleasantly. "An you will allow me, I can explain. Shall we walk along this path? I thank you," he added courteously, as the young man, after a moment's hesitation, turned to walk beside him.

"Have I been misinformed," continued the Cardinal, "or is it a fact that your lordship is about to quit Hampton Court?"

"Only for a very few weeks," rejoined Everingham. "Her Majesty has entrusted me with an amicable mission to the Queen Regent of Scotland. I start for town to-night on my way North."

"Ah! then I am only just in time," said His Eminence.

"In time for what?"

"In time to correct what we poor mortals are all liable to make, my lord – an error."

"Indeed!" said Everingham, with a touch of sarcasm. "Your Eminence must make so few."

"Nay! but the error this time is none of my making, my lord. 'Tis you, I think, who look upon me as an enemy."

"Oh!.. your Eminence." protested the young man.

"Well, an antagonist, if you will. Confess that you thought – and still think – that I have been scheming to bring the Duke of Wessex to the feet of Lady Ursula Glynde, his promised wife."

"A scheme in which Your Eminence succeeded over well, I fancy," retorted Everingham bitterly.

"But that is where you are in error, my dear lord; for, believe me, that, at the present moment, my sole desire is to put an insuperable barrier between His Grace and that beautiful young lady."

"Your sole desire, my lord?"

As the night was dark Everingham could see nothing of His Eminence's expression of face. If he had, he probably would only have seen the same mask of polite blandness which the Cardinal usually wore.

The young man, certes, was no match for these astute Spaniards, who had all the wiles and artifices of diplomacy at their finger-tips; his love for Wessex and the earnestness of his own political views gave him a certain amount of shrewdness, but even that shrewdness was at fault in the face of this extraordinary statement suddenly made by the Cardinal.

"You are surprised?" commented His Eminence.

"Boundlessly, I confess."

"Ah! Diplomacy is full of surprises. But you are pleased?"

Everingham, however, was not prepared to admit anything to this man, whose face he could not read, but whose tortuous ways he more than half mistrusted.

"I hardly know how to understand Your Eminence," he said guardedly. "I need hardly say that my fondest hope was to see Queen Mary wedded to Wessex, for that is common knowledge. But since His Grace's meeting with the beautiful Lady Ursula, I fully expect to hear him declare his intention of keeping his troth to her."

"You think her so very irresistible, then? – or His Grace so very susceptible?"

"I think that the Duke has always kept at the back of his mind an idea that he was in some measure bound to Lady Ursula."

"Let us add, my lord, that the charm and grace of the lady will inevitably tend to develop that idea. Eh?"

"And that Your Eminence will probably triumph in consequence."

"You, therefore, my lord, have by now set your heart on undoing what to-day's chance meeting may, perchance, have accomplished. By you I also mean your friends, the nobility and gentry of England, who would mourn to see His Grace wedded to Lady Ursula Glynde."

"Our loss will be your Eminence's gain, probably," rejoined Everingham with a sigh.

The Cardinal waited a moment before he continued the conversation. He had deliberately sought this interchange of ideas. Openness and frankness in matters political were not usually a part of His Eminence's programme, but this evening he seemed desirous to gain this young Englishman's confidence.

"But," he said after a while, with charming bonhomie, "but suppose that instead of gloating in the triumph which you, my lord, so readily prophesy – suppose that I were to ask you to let me help you – you and your friends – in parting the volatile Duke from his latest flame?.. Would you accept my help?"

"Your Eminence.. I." murmured Everingham, somewhat at a loss what to say.

"You would wish to consult with your friends, eh?" continued the Cardinal placidly. "Lord Derby, Lord Bath, the Earl of Oxford – nay, the whole string of patriotic Englishmen who desire to see one of their own kind on the English throne, and naturally look upon me as a monster of artifice and vice."

"Your Eminence." protested Everingham.

"Yet what are we but political antagonists, who can honour one another in private, whilst rending one another to pieces on the arena of public life? Do you not agree with me, my lord?"

"Certainly."

"Then why should you disdain my help, now that – momentarily – we have the same object in view?"

"I am hors de cause, Your Eminence, as I have only the next few hours at my disposal. After that I go to Scotland."

"Much may be done in a few hours, my lord, with an ounce of luck and a grain of tact."

"But I do not understand why Your Eminence should be at one with me and my friends over this."

The Cardinal smiled with gentle benevolence. Versed though he was in all the tricks and deceptions which were an integral part of his calling, no one knew better than he did the value of an occasional truth. With easy familiarity he linked his arm in that of his interlocutor.