The Story of Francis Cludde. Weyman Stanley John
know all that. It is an old story to you. So I make, and I pray you to make for the sake of the house, some allowance. He conforms; he undoubtedly conforms."
"Enough!" Gardiner assented. "The rest is for the good priest here, whose ministrations will no doubt in time avail. But a word with this young gentleman, Sir Anthony, on another subject. If it was not to the holy office he objected, perhaps it was to the Queen's Chancellor, or to the Queen?" He raised his voice with the last words and bent his brows, so that I could scarcely believe it was the same man speaking. "Eh, sir, was that so?" he continued severely, putting aside Sir Anthony's remonstrance and glowering at me. "It may be that we have a rebel here instead of a heretic."
"God forbid!" cried the knight, unable to contain himself. It was clear that he repented already of his ill-timed discipline. "I will answer for it that we have no Wyatts here, my lord."
"That is well!" the Chancellor replied. "That is well!" he repeated, his eyes leaving me and roving the hall with so proud a menace in their glance that all quailed, even the fool. "That is very well," he said, drumming on the table with his fingers; "but let Master Francis speak for himself."
"I never heard," said I boldly-I had had a moment for thought-"that Sir Thomas Wyatt had any following in this country. None to my knowledge. As for the Queen's marriage with the Prince of Spain, which was the ground, as we gathered here, of Wyatt's rising with the Kentish folk, it seems a matter rather for the Queen's grace than her subjects. But if that be not so, I, for my part, would rather have seen her married to a stout Englishman-ay, or to a Frenchman."
"And why, young gentleman?"
"Because I would we kept at peace with France. We have more to gain by fighting Spain than fighting France," I answered bluntly.
My uncle held up his hands. "The boy is clean mad!" he groaned. "Who ever heard of such a thing? With all France, the rightful estate of her Majesty, waiting to be won back, he talks of fighting Spain! And his own grandmother was a Spaniard!"
"I am none the less an Englishman for that!" I said; whereon there was a slight murmur of applause in the hall below. "And for France," I continued, carried away by this, "we have been fighting it, off and on, as long as men remember; and what are we the better? We have only lost what we had to begin. Besides, I am told that France is five times stronger than it was in Henry the Fifth's time, and we should only spend our strength in winning what we could not hold. While as to Spain-"
"Ay, as to Spain?" grumbled Sir Anthony, forgetting his formidable neighbor, and staring at me with eyes of wonder. "Why, my father fought the French at Guinegate, and my grandfather at Cherbourg, and his father at Agincourt! But there! As to Spain, you popinjay?"
"Why, she is conquering here," I answered warmly, "and colonizing there among the newly-discovered countries of the world, and getting all the trade and all the seaports and all the gold and silver; and Spain after all is a nation with no greater strength of men than England. Ay, and I hear," I cried, growing more excited and raising my voice, "that now is our time or never! The Spaniards and the Portuguese have discovered a new world over seas.
"A Castilla y á Leon
Nuevo mundo dió Coton!
say they; but depend upon it, every country that is to be rich and strong in the time that is coming must have part in it. We cannot conquer either Spain or France; we have not men enough. But we have docks and sailors, and ships in London and Fowey, and Bristol and the Cinque Ports, enough to fight Spain over the great seas, and I say, 'Have at her!'"
"What next?" groaned Sir Anthony piteously. "Did man ever hear such crackbrained nonsense?"
But I think it was not nonsense, for his words were almost lost in the cry which ran through the hall as I ceased speaking-a cry of English voices. One moment my heart beat high and proudly with a new sense of power; the next, as a shadow of a cloud falls on a sunny hillside, the cold sneer on the statesman's face fell on me and chilled me. His set look had neither thawed nor altered, his color had neither come nor gone. "You speak your lesson well, lad," he said. "Who taught you statecraft?"
I grew smaller, shrinking with each word he uttered; and faltered, and was dumb.
"Come," he said, "you see but a little way; yet country lads do not talk of Fowey and Bristol! Who primed you?"
"I met a Master Sebastian Cabot," I said reluctantly at last, when he had pressed me more than once, "who stayed a while at a house not far from here, and had been Inspector of the Navy to King Edward. He had been a seaman seventy years, and he talked-"
"Too fast!" said Gardiner, with a curt nod. "But enough, I understand. I know the man. He is dead."
He was silent then, and seemed to have fallen suddenly into thought, as a man well might who had the governing of a kingdom on his shoulders.
Seemingly he had done with me. I looked at Sir Anthony. "Ay, go!" he said irritably, waving me off. "Go!"
And I went. The ordeal was over, and over so successfully that I felt the humiliation of the afternoon cheap at the price of this triumph; for, as I stepped down, there was a buzz around me, a murmur of congratulation and pride and excitement. On every Coton face I marked a flush, in every Coton eye I read a sparkle, and every flush and every sparkle was for me. Even the Chancellor's secretaries, grave, down-looking men, all secrecy and caution, cast curious glances at me, as though I were something out of the common; and the Chancellor's pages made way for me with new-born deference. "There is for country wits!" I heard Baldwin Moor cry gleefully, while the man who put food before me murmured of "the Cludde bull-pup!" If I read in Father Carey's face, as indeed I did, solicitude as well as relief and gladness, I marked the latter only, and hugged a natural pride to my breast. When Martin Luther said boldly that it was not only Bishop could fill a bowl, it was by an effort I refrained from joining in the laugh which followed.
For an hour I enjoyed this triumph, and did all but brag of it. Especially I wished Petronilla had witnessed it. At the end of that time-Finis, as the book says. I was crossing the courtyard, one-half of which was bathed in a cold splendor of moonlight, and was feeling the first sobering touch of the night air on my brow, when I heard some one call out my name. I turned, to find one of the Chancellor's servants, a sleek, substantial fellow, with a smug mouth, at my elbow.
"What is it?" I said.
"I am bidden to fetch you at once, Master Cludde," he answered, a gleam of sly malice peeping through the gravity of his demeanor. "The Chancellor would see you in his room, young sir."
CHAPTER II
IN THE BISHOP'S ROOM
Chancellor was lodged in the great chamber on the southern side of the courtyard, a room which we called the Tapestried Chamber, and in which tradition said that King Henry the Sixth had once slept. It was on the upper floor, and for this reason free from the damp air which in autumn and winter rose from the moat and hung about the lower range of rooms. It was besides, of easy access from the hall, a door in the gallery of the latter leading into an anteroom, which again opened into the Tapestried Chamber; while a winding staircase, starting from a dark nook in the main passage of the house, also led to this state apartment, but by another and more private door.
I reached the antechamber with a stout heart in my breast, though a little sobered by my summons, and feeling such a reaction from the heat of a few minutes before as follows a plunge into cold water. In the anteroom I was bidden to wait while the great man's will was taken, which seemed strange to me, then unused to the mummery of Court folk. But before I had time to feel much surprise, the inner door was opened, and I was told to enter.
The great room, which I had seldom seen in use, had now an appearance quite new to me. A dull red fire was glowing comfortably on the hearthstone, before which a posset stool was standing. Near this, seated at a table strewn with a profusion of papers and documents, was a secretary writing busily. The great oaken bedstead, with its nodding tester, lay in a background of shadows, which played about the figures broidered on the hangings, or were lost in the darkness of the corners; while near the fire, in the light cast by the sconces fixed above the hearth, lay part of the Chancellor's equipment. The fur rugs and cloak of sable, the saddle-bags, the dispatch-boxes, and the silver chafing-dish,