Mistress of Mistresses

The Chancellor lifted a cold eye upon him. ‘You have seen the Duke?’

Jeronimy’s eyes took on that look that a dog’s eyes have when, under a detecting gaze, he suddenly bethinks him that this eating of that bit of meat or chewing up of that bird, albeit good and reasonable in his estimation, was yet questionable in the sight of others, and fraught, may be, with consequences he till then ne’er thought upon. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I am come straight from him to you. Perhaps I should a seen you first. I’m sorry, my lord.’

‘You are dark to me yet,’ said the Chancellor. ‘Did your lordship inform the Duke of this last turn: I mean this offer I told you of?’

‘In a manner, yes,’ answered Jeronimy.

‘Had I stood in your shoes, my lord Admiral,’ said the Chancellor, ‘I should have given you the opportunity to come with me upon such an errand.’

‘You and I,’ said the Admiral, ‘did conclude upon speedy action. A-riding home I did view the matter from all points, and did at last conceive in a manner but one safe way betwixt these quicksands. Brief, I did resign but now into the Duke’s hand, as well for present as prospectively, the office of Regent: bade him take it up and defend it, and we would go through and second him.’

He paused. The Chancellor’s jaw set, and his lean face turned ashy. He stood up from his chair, pushed the letter across the table to Jeronimy, and stalked to the window. The Admiral took out his perspective-glass and read the letter, blowing softly with his cheeks the while. ‘Your lordship hath an art in drafting of such matters,’ he said: ‘’tis beyond admiration excellent.’ He looked cautiously up, met the Chancellor’s eye, and looked away.

For a minute the Lord Beroald abode silent. When he mastered himself to speak, the words came like chips of ice clinking down an ice-slope. ‘Lessingham,’ he said, ‘is an able politician. You and me, my lord, he but turneth to his purpose. You have made a fine hand of it.’

Jeronimy slowly shook his head. ‘I did play for a firm line and no stragglers,’ said he. ‘We should not have held the Duke with us had we ta’en, in a manner, the course you formerly thought on: had I complied and ta’en up the regency ’pon Lessingham’s conditions.’

‘You have now by your act,’ said Beroald, ‘disburdened him of all conditions, and left us open to all injuries. You have, in face of dangerous enemies, set aside the law, which was our strength and our justification; you have struck wide division in our counsels, when a single mind was most needful; you have unleashed the Duke on a course may be shall prove his ruin and ours. Had you gone cap in hand to my Lord Lessingham and professed yourself ready to do his bidding so as to make fair success of his mission hither, he could a thought on no better means to bid you take than these you have taken.’

Jeronimy’s face became drawn and his kindly eyes darkened with anger. He rose from his chair. ‘This talk,’ he said, thickly, ‘doth more disgrace than it helpeth or graceth us. Let us say no more but good night, my lord Chancellor. May be morning shall bring us riper wisdom.’

On the morrow towards midday the Lord Lessingham took horse and rode with Amaury from his lodgings in the old Leantine palace in the northern quarter down through the market-place, and so, turning right along Stonegate and Paddockgate, up into the driving-road that ran by the water-side along the top of the town wall of old red sandstone for a quarter of a mile or more; thence, turning inland at the Heugh, through some winding cobbled streets, they came out into the sunlight of the piazza of the Winds, and, crossing that from north to south, took the Way of the Seven Hundred Pillars. At a walking-pace they climbed its wide zig-zags, pleasant with the shade of ancient holm-oaks and the heavy scent of the mimosa-trees, and came at length a little before noon up to the main gate of the citadel. A guard of honour, of seven of the Duke’s red-bearded swordsmen, conducted them up the shining stairs that were built of panteron stone, black green and purple, and so by many courts and colonnades to silver doors and through them to a narrow and high-roofed corridor which opened at its far end, with silver doors, upon that garden of everlasting afternoon. Here, in the low slanting rays under the tufted shade of strawberry-trees, that ancient man stood to do them welcome, Doctor Vandermast.

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