Читать книгу The Bright Pavilions - Hugh Walpole - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Chilled to the spleen, mired with the filth of the uneven track under Skiddaw, Nicholas and his cynical man arrived late at the Keswick inn. The hour, the dark, the dripping melancholic snow made no difference to the welcome. The host was out in the yard, servants were running; one took Juno, was for rubbing her, giving her her feed. But Nicholas, even before he saw his brother, must be sure that Juno was well suited, and so there he was in the stables, rubbing his stout snub nose on Juno’s coat, murmuring in her ear, and she, in the sharp light of the held-high stable lantern, flashing her imperious, brilliant eye, her ears raised for a sound, her nostrils distended, then quietening as she knew that her friend and master was caring for her and would see that she came to no ill.

And so, back in the inn again, Nicholas was calling: ‘My brother, Mr. Herries? He has arrived?’

‘Four hours ago, sir. The room is ready, a fire burning, supper prepared.’

He ran up the wide oak stair, the host and a bundle of servants looking up after him in open-mouthed admiration of his size and vigour.

He flung back the door.

‘Robin! Robin! Where are you? Come from your pent-house. Where are you hiding?’

Then, inside the door, he stood a moment lost childishly in the pleasure and delight of seeing his little brother again.

Robin Herries was there, warming himself in front of the fire. He was dressed entirely in black, with a diamond at his neck and diamond buckles to his shoes. He wore white cuffs of delicate lace turned back on the sleeve, his white ruff reaching up against his deep dark-brown hair. He bore no resemblance to his brother save for the Herries sharp bone formation that gave a kind of horse-strength to all Herries faces.

His features were almost delicate, saved from femininity by the strength of the eye and the strong broadness of the forehead. His face had much beauty of seriousness and grace of breeding, the eyes dark and lambent, the carriage of the head on the neck full of unconscious dignity, the cheeks delicately smooth. It was the face of a boy in a certain ingenuousness and purity, but the face of a man in its thoughtfulness and intelligence. His body was perfectly formed, slight and elegant but of a strong carriage and dignity. The ‘Portrait of a Gentleman’ by Nicholas Hilliard has been supposed by some to be a likeness of Robin Herries.

Now his face was illuminated with pleasure at the sight of his big, joyful, bustling brother. The love that there had always been between them was indeed ‘passing the love of woman.’ They were the exact complement the one of the other, Robin’s gentleness, passion for the arts, mystical spirit, love of all beauty, mingling perfectly with Nicholas’ animality, out-of-doors eagerness, excitement in worldly adventure. Robin, like any other young gentleman, could ride, fence, play tennis, dance, be a proper courtier, but his heart and mind were already preoccupied with other matters. He gave himself with great difficulty to others whereas Nicholas was anyone’s friend or enemy. He had not as yet fallen in love and Nicholas had been in love a thousand times. They shared a devotion to their home, their father and mother, but even here Robin kept something in reserve. Nicholas’ patriotism was simple: whatever the Queen did was right. Robin, as Nicholas had of late, with concern, noticed, was moving towards the Catholic religion. At home there had been a priest, Stephen Rodney, frequently in his company. His father and mother were of the Queen’s religion, Lutheran. Sir Michael detested extremes whether of Puritan, Calvinist or Catholic. Nicholas’ own spiritual business was with this present enchanting world than which he wanted none better. There were many elements in his brother’s nature that he did not at all understand. These were the very things therefore that he must protect. He felt often that Robin was his child, ignorant of the world although so brilliant, weak physically (but Robin wasn’t weak).

Now he moved forward, caught him in his arms, held him to his great chest, kissed him, hugged him, stood him back with his hands that he might look at him, hugged him again.

‘Robin! Robin! . . . I’m all of a muck, and you as elegant as though you were going to Court.’

‘I’ve been here since afternoon waiting for you,’ Robin said.

Nicholas threw himself on to a stool, stretching out his legs. Then he jumped up, opened the door, roared out into the passage for someone to come, then threw himself down again.

‘We’ll have supper here.’

He got up again, bent in front of the fire, rubbing his hands.

‘It’s been a bitter ride. And there’s been another thing. On the moor I found a man, a fugitive. He said he was a London bookseller, wrongly suspected of a part in the rising. He was in Durham when they sacked the Cathedral. Poor devil, he was naked and eaten with fear. And he had reason, for, after I’d taken him on my horse, one Philip Irvine—you remember him at Henry Sidney’s—came up and demanded me to deliver him. I tried what I could do, but the poor devil ran and the dogs had him. Then Irvine and I had a word or two and I ran him through the arm. Then I came on here.’

This was like Nicholas, who always must pour out all his own doings before he enquired of anyone else’s. Directly after two servants came in, pulled off his boots, brought in a wooden tub of hot water. Jack Oates appeared with luggage. Nicholas stripped, bathed, dressed in an elegant silver-grey doublet and hose, had all cleared away and supper things laid before the fire. Through all of this he was talking, asking questions and not waiting for an answer, swinging his arms, slapping his chest, then scenting himself, combing his hair, fastening his points as delicately as a woman.

The candles were lighted on the table, food and drink appeared, Oates, with a friendly kick, was speeded down to the servants’ quarters, and the two brothers sat down to their meal, under a delicate painting of Venus and Adonis. The snow had turned to sleet and now beat against the windows, which were of horn and so gave a smart but not uncosy rattling response to the weather.

Robin’s questions were all of the Rebellion. How far had it gone? There were stories in Keswick that the Northern Lords were defeated and fled to Scotland. Most of the better class in the North were Catholic. Moreover, in everyone’s mind lay the thought of Mary of Scotland, who, however wicked she may have been, was a prisoner in England against Elizabeth’s given word. Moreover for these young men the whole matter had an especial interest, for their own distant cousin, Lord Herries, had crossed the border with Mary and was intermediary between her and Elizabeth. They felt almost as though it were a family concern.

‘I tell you what it is, Robin,’ Nicholas said, taking a chicken bone in his hands and eagerly gnawing it. ‘Mary will be no light trouble for our Queen. What’s to be done? They can’t send her back to Scotland to the tender mercies of her brother. France has no wish for her. To keep her here in England as prisoner is to break the Queen’s word and to rouse every Catholic in the country. To execute her is to repeat the murder that she herself committed on Darnley.’

‘It is no certain thing,’ Robin said, ‘that she was privy to her husband’s death.’

‘She not privy!’ Nicholas exploded. ‘Was she to forget the Italian falling at her very feet, sixty daggers in his body. Was not Darnley doomed from that very instant? Did she not marry Darnley’s murderer some bare months after his putting away? Has she ever wished to bring him to any justice? She may be a queen and fair, but she is no lady for my bedding.’

He laughed and, stretching out, took Robin’s slight hand in his.

‘There’s a straight path and an easy, brother Robin. We have a Queen and we are her servants. There’s no other duty for us but that.’

Then he told Robin some more of the things that he had heard in Carlisle about the Rebellion: how at Raby the conspirators had been all but scattered, forgoing their project, when Lady Westmorland, Surrey’s daughter, threw herself among them ‘weeping bitterly’ and crying that ‘they and their country were shamed for ever, and that they would seek holes to creep into.’

How Mary of Scotland was moved from Tutbury but just in time; that on November 23rd a courier dashed in from London with an order for the Queen of Scots’ instant removal, and that Shrewsbury and Huntingdon then rode, with an escort of four hundred men, and conveyed her to Coventry, which town they entered at night to avoid the gaze of the people. Had the Northern Lords secured her at Tutbury the whole country might have risen.

It was here that Robin sighed. Nicholas looked at him in consternation.

‘Robin . . . you don’t mean——’

‘It might be better for the country. God may be angry with us that this Roman religion——’

Nicholas jumped to his feet.

‘Be quiet, Robin! Think where you are! Men suffer the rack for less. . . .’

Robin looked up at him, smiling.

‘What do I care for politics? That is not my world nor ever will be. My imagination works perhaps. That distraught Queen, hurried by rough soldiers, conveyed into a town secretly by night——’

‘Don’t waste your pity.’ Nicholas sat down beside his brother, putting his arm around him. ‘She’s as tough as the horn in that window there. She’ll ride or shoot or curse or murder with any horse-trooper in her company. I’ll swear that my Lord Bothwell, now pirate in the Orkneys they say, was hided like a porcupine, stank of drink like an ordure-barrel and tugged her hair in his amorous ecstasy till the lady screamed again. Didn’t she wear man’s dress to bide with him, and scream from the windows of Holyrood like a fishwife and dance while the powder blew up Kirk o’ Field. Waste no pity, Robin. She’d have her talons in our Queen’s throat or pour poison down her royal gullet had she her way. Waste no pity, Robin. . . . Waste no pity.’

Robin, staring into the fire, said at last:

‘Who knows the truth of it? The letters they have in London are forgeries, no question. Moray, her own brother, hunts her to the death. I can only say that she is a sad, pursued Queen who, if she loved wildly, loved truly, and had her destiny in a country of bare stones and wild savages.’ Then, smiling again, he pressed his brother’s arm. ‘Come, Nick. You look like a boy whose porridge has been taken from him. We are together and what else matters? This is a pleasant, happy little place, I was by the edge of the Lake with the snow falling and a wan light on the opposite hills. It’s a kind of fairy place.’

Nicholas sighed, looking perplexed.

‘I don’t know what it is, Robin. That man who asked me for protection. I think I shall never forget him. There was something noble about him although he was naked and blue with the cold. He asked me for protection and trusted me and I broke his trust. I feel as though there were evil in this meeting. There’s a sort of foreboding in it. At least,’ and his face suddenly lightened—he was happy and confident again—‘there is Mr. Philip Irvine to have a reckoning with. There is an enemy most happily made, and here,’ he said, taking the flagon from the table, ‘is to his merry and utter destruction.’

They were not due at their uncle’s house, which was only a few miles from Keswick, until the following evening, so early in the next afternoon they strolled about the town. A lovely day, the sun glittered down upon the thin scattering of snow, sparkling upon the eaves and posts and wooden galleries, upon the colours and movement, music and shouting, as if it loved the world that it must illumine. They walked first down to the Lake and looked across it, with its dark studs of islands, to the hills beyond, now all carpeted with snow and silver-sharp against the cloudless blue sky.

What Nicholas felt at once was that this was a little world apart. Carlisle, and all the Border country, was alive with fear and anger. Raids and burnings and hangings were all in the day’s work, but this present Rebellion had strained nerves to hysteria, and now that it looked to have failed who knew what vengeance might follow?

Here in the little country town there seemed to be none of this. The Lake sparkled in the sun as though it were outside man’s foolish history. The hills were so marked with quietude that only when one cloud for a moment invaded the sun and a purple shadow passed across the snow-flanks was there any change.

Nicholas drew in a breath of the sharp cold air.

‘I love this place and always shall. I shall come back here, perhaps make my home here. From the moment I entered the North something happened to me. My heart enlarged.’

‘Why, you’re a poet!’ Robin said, laughing.

‘That I’m not,’ Nicholas answered indignantly. ‘But I am certain that there is sport here and the men hold their heads proudly and everywhere there’s a sound of running water. If that’s poetry then I’m a poet.’

‘As thus,’ said Robin, and staring on to the glittering water and beyond, he repeated, as though to himself:

‘What sweet relief the showers to thirsty plains we see,

What dear delight the blooms to bees, my true love is to me!

As fresh and lusty Ver foul winter doth exceed—

As morning bright, with scarlet sky, doth pass the evening’s weed—

As mellow pears above the crabs esteemèd be—

So doth my love surmount them all, whom yet I hap to see.’

Nicholas was always unhappy when anyone repeated poetry, so he turned his brother up into the town again.

‘All the more,’ he said, ‘that you yourself have no love—poor fish-veined brother that you are! But I, now! Before half an hour is out in this blessèd place I shall have a girl in my arms.’

It was a true prophecy and came about thus:

He was in a state of the highest animal spirits, with the sparkling weather, his own good sleep, ale and toast at six-thirty, and at midday a fine meal of venison and the best beef he’d ever eaten in his life and a tart of apricots; moreover, he was greatly pleased with the Keswick inn, which was superior to most country inns he knew, for there was a big window of glass in the hall and some of the rooms had matting rather than rushes, and even where the rushes were they were fresh ones instead of stinking as they often did. Also he had slept like the doomed, in the naked bed, his arm across Robin’s chest; slept in a sweetness of love and charity to all the world, especially to his dear brother.

So he marched singing into the little Square and presently stood, Robin quietly at his side, lost in pleasure at the sights he saw. Charming was the place with the Town Hall with its whitewash and black timber, the houses, snow glittering on the eaves, and the fields and gardens leading down to the Lake, and the snow-crinkled hills guarding all.

It was but a day or two before Christmas, and a body of rogues and vagabonds had marched into town. Not far from them a man was fiddling and girls and boys dancing. There was a puppet-show with dolls showing the History of Charlemagne. Boards were laid out on trestles, and sweetmeats, trinkets, household goods, were for sale. To the left, at the side of the meadows leading to the Lake, there were games—football, wrestling and playing at the catch.

Nevertheless, besides all this noise and bustle and colour, common to any country town at Christmas-time, there was, both for Nicholas and Robin, something especial—the air and savour of a newly-opened world, as you might gaze in the opening of a shell to find glistening water and bright stirring colours. Everywhere there was the scent of the country. Sheep moved up the street, the dog barking at their heels; a bull was led past the boards and trestles; serious, gravefaced men, in rough clothes but with most unusual dignity and reserve, stood talking in groups. Moreover, not a soldier was to be seen, nor any burning buildings. The bells of Crosthwaite Church were ringing; there was the stir of voices, laughter, the movements of the animals, the fresh breeze from the mountains and the sun shining on the water.

On the other hand, the natives of Keswick had not let the brothers go past without observation. The thews and sinews of Nicholas caused attention wherever he might be, and the delicacy and breeding of Robin marked him out as someone not in the ordinary. Even though Keswick might be aloof from the trouble on the Border, it was alive enough to what was going on, and it eagerly speculated as to the identity of these two gentlemen. Some thought that they might be Recorders sent up from London or Commissioners with orders for investigation: but, no, they were little more than youths, and the one who was a giant was clearly by his laughter and easy friendliness there for his own enjoyment with no thought in his mind of Northern Rebellion or the hunting down of fugitives.

Nicholas soon asked a stout farmer standing beside him with two sheep-dogs how much liberty they gave the vagabonds in Keswick. The farmer’s brow wrinkled with disgust.

‘Aye—’tis Christmas-time and there’s no reason to be too hard on them this day or two. But we’ve the stocks handy, and out by Druids’ Circle there’s two Clapperdogens hanging to an oak tree that have been there these two months. There was a man whipped through Keswick for counterfeiting only last week.’

But by now Nicholas had noticed something else. Moving in and out, standing watching the puppet-show or the game of football in the meadow were men, women and children of quite another breed from the Cumbrians. Nicholas had never, in fact, seen people of their like before. They were plainly foreigners, and even the roughest of them—and some of the men were rough indeed—wore a quiet, almost stern aloofness that marked them out. Plain and ordinary though their clothes were, there was often something—the set of a cap, the workmanship of a silver clasp, the fur of the coat or gloves—that set them apart. Just then a man and woman of these people passed by, and Nicholas, catching their guttural accent, asked his friend as to their identity.

‘They be Germans from Magdeburg and such towns.’

‘What are they doing here?’

‘Working in the mines up at Newlands and other places—silver and lead—sent here by the Queen to work for her and make money for her.’

‘Are there many of them?’ Nicholas asked.

‘Plenty enough. Foreigners is foreigners all the world over.’

‘Do you Keswick people suit with them?’

‘Well enough when they’re quiet. And for the most part they’re peaceful. ’Tis religion mostly causes the trouble, for they’re Lutheran and Protestant and there’s plenty of Catholics hereabout. There’s times when something stirs in them and they’re like a swarm of bees, buzzing and whirring. Last Whitsun feast there was a fight down on the meadows there between a posse of they miners and fifty or more of our own lads. Five of them were killed and two of them hung for murder.

‘For the most part they’re quiet enough.’ He spat and then chuckled, deep in his throat. ‘Their women are handsome time and time and our men are lusty as young men should be, I reckon.’

‘That’s a strange thing,’ Nicholas said. ‘Are there none of your own men can mine sufficiently well?’

‘There’s a trick in it, I reckon, and we men of Cumberland have better things to do—above ground with the sun shining on you and the rain in your face, walking the Tops gathering the sheep . . .’

He broke off. He had been staring at Nicholas for a long time.

‘Pardon me, sir, but you’re the strongest-looking young gentleman I’ve seen in a score of seasons.’

‘I’m strong as men go,’ Nicholas said, laughing. He was not boastful; he looked on his size and strength as pleasant accompaniments to daily life, nothing to his credit, but useful and amusing features.

His body often moved before his brain, so that now, without thinking at all, he strode forward to the trunk of a tree that was lying in front of one of the trestle-tables where goods were sold. It lay there, waiting to be used on a new building near by. He bent down and without strain raised it in his arms, held it above his head, then hurled it through space on to the edge of the meadow beyond.

This feat attracted, of course, very general attention. He was suddenly aware that he might seem vainglorious, so, blushing like a boy, he turned to a round, rosy country woman who, exactly in front of him, was selling cakes and sweetmeats. He adored sweet things, and here were some of the best. He stood eyeing them and grinning.

There was marchpane made of pounded almonds, pistachio nuts, sugar and flour; sugar cake of rose water and oranges; and, best of all, his dear Eringo which he had never hoped to see in a little country town. Eringo, Eringo, the candied root of sea-holly, whose sharp tang, soaked in sugar with a flavour of burning, he had enjoyed on summer nights at home, lying under the oak tree with a girl, stuffing her mouth with it and then tasting the crisp sugar on her lips.

He had been a great attraction to the rogues and vagabonds, who, gathered in a group under the Town Hall wall, were doing a brisk business in a diversity of ways. They were an odd company, very thick over England at this time because of the cessation of the monasteries as places of hospitality. The wars, too, had left a whole army of vagrants. Their headquarters was in London. They moved up and down England, their common purpose to live without work, their common end the gallows.

In this group there was an old bearded man frothing at the mouth and crying out. Soap was his aid. There were the one-legged and the one-armed. There was an Egyptian or two, with the dark visage, the gilt earrings, the shabby crimson coat. They were known as Moon-Men, and one of them now was busy telling the fortune of a mouth-open country boy. But quite close to Nicholas were three of the greatest rogues in all Christendom. He knew at once what they were about. They had a table in front of them and about this a small crowd was gathered. There was first the Taker-Up or Setter. This was a little man, like a weasel, in a torn, dirty doublet, a feather in his hat, his impudent, small nose seeking out his victim. Standing beside the Setter was the Verser, in this case a broad, stout fellow, dressed not too ill with gilt buttons to his doublet. It was he who, pretending not to know the Setter, was suddenly interested in the cards laid out on the table and thought that, in all innocence, he would have a try to discover the coin under the card. Discover the coin he invariably did, and so the rest of the innocent world was encouraged to try too! At the table was the Barnard, this time a thin pock-marked man with a virtuous, unctuous voice who cried: ‘Come, friends all, and try your fortune. As honest as the lady moon! See, this worthy gentleman is to venture. Why! You are fortunate at the first choice, sir, and have doubled your money!’

Nicholas was watching, with amused indifference, their simple trickery that was as old as Ptolemy, when Fate suddenly had him by his heart and liver, as in fact it was accustomed to do a dozen times a day. A girl, who had been standing in the little crowd, seemed to decide that she would try her fortune. She pushed her way forward and, in a voice that had a slight foreign accent, said softly: ‘I’ve a fancy to venture.’ That would in the ordinary way have been nothing to Nicholas, but here there was something! She was like a boy in build, with a boy’s straight gaze from blue eyes, her flaxen hair coiled about her head; she was laughing. She was as clean and strong and healthy as a young tree in the sun. Her hair shone, her eyes were full of light, her cheeks were rosy, her gown was of thick common stuff but blue like the Lake. She seemed to him a radiant, flaming, joyful splendour, and her splendour passed through him and set him on fire.

So, quite simply, he put one hand on the neck of the stout Verser and the other on the bony throttle of the seated Barnard and lifted them both in the air, kicking over the table with his foot.

The fat Verser he threw into the crowd, the Barnard he carried for a way, the little man screaming like a chicken and kicking his thin legs in their miserable hose. Then contemptuously he flung him into a huddle of sheep that were bleating up the street.

The crowd laughed and shouted, for anyone could do to a vagabond what he was able. They were anyone’s game. Nicholas turned and, leading the bewildered girl behind the puppet-show, bowed, kissed her on the forehead quite reverently and asked her her name.

‘Catherine Hodstetter.’

‘Well, Catherine, trust no one in future but myself. I am the only honest man in this hood-man company. My name is Nicholas Herries. Repeat it after me.’

‘Nicholas Herries.’

‘Good. Remember it. I will return. I’ll kiss you again that you may remember it the better.’

He kissed her again, this time not so reverently.

She watched him, her hand up against the sun, striding off. He seemed to her doubtless a god among men, come down for a brief visit from heaven.

An hour later, Nicholas and Robin were riding at the Lake side, along into Borrowdale towards the hamlet of Rosthwaite where their uncle’s house was.

They had started none too early, for the winter day was all too short and the sun was already sinking behind the hills that rested, like couched animals, on the farther side of the Lake. The Lake’s waters were molten gold, but already there sighed the trembling foreboding of the grey evening. The reeds and rushes at the water’s edge shuddered and a flight of wild duck slowly winged towards the snow-darkening hills.

Peace was supreme, and, after the jolly noise of the town, the world was consecrated to some deeper interest, revealing a business that was not mortal.

Even Nicholas felt it.

‘I shall ride this way again,’ he said, ‘and others of our line after me. Even they are riding beside me now. I have never felt that before in any other place. In these last two days I have met a man I failed, a man I hate and a girl I love.’

He looked longingly at the wild duck that were now like flecks of dust in the last blaze of the sunlight. He would have liked dearly to have had a try at them.

If this evening’s peace so wrought upon Nicholas, how much more then upon Robin! It was this very peace that he loved when, without disturbance from the outer world, he could let his mind dig into what was the real world, the world of the intellect and spirit. The gentleness, purity, sweetness, of his nature came largely from the fact that the life of the bustling, material sort was for him a kind of pageant, a play performed on a stage by actors who were none of them what they seemed. He was not himself what he seemed and it appeared to him that it was a kind of law to play a game with the rest; to eat, drink, love, fight, wear clothes, sleep, so that, through all this, the real life might pursue its secret, destined way unchecked. Like all thinking young men of his time he was fascinated by the new learning, the Humanists, the discoverers and explorers, the scientists and doctors. The world was expanding under his very nose. He could not keep pace with it.

At this moment Robin was only thirty years before Edward Wright’s great map, the first ever to be drawn on Mercator’s principles of projection. Fifty years before this December evening, Magellan had sailed from Spain into the ‘South Sea of Discovery’ and the Philippines. Off Patagonia he had seen great men clad in llama-skins and heard them bellow like bulls. Fifty years were gone since Spaniards or Portuguese had discovered all that part of America lying south of the latitude of Europe, and the west coasts of Africa and India. In 1497 Cabot had discovered Newfoundland and the neighbouring American continent. Less than twenty years before this December, Chancellor, in the Bonaventure, had been near to where Archangel now is and had travelled overland to Moscow, and the Muscovy Company had been formed in 1555. The English merchants had trafficked to the Canaries, Morocco and the Guinea Coast beyond Cape Verde. John Hawkins in 1562 had made West Africa half-way house to the West Indies. The battle for sea dominion was now ocean-wide. English captains plundered and Spanish officials tortured, burnt and made galley-slaves. Young men like Robin Herries were hearing, every day of their lives, of wonders, horrors, deeds of stupendous courage and sacrifice. No wonder that their hearts were fired within them!

In the Sciences too there were new wonders at every hour. In 1543 Copernicus had sent out to the world from his death-bed his great work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and so laid the basis for ever of the new system of astronomy. There were the alchemists struggling to turn base metal into gold; there were the doctors for ever experimenting on the human body for the better comfort of poor mankind.

But, best of all for Robin, there was the world of letters. He was, like most of his friends, a sufficient Latin and Greek scholar, but it was in his own dear tongue that the new learning was breeding and fostering a fresh and wonderful life. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia was his own darling book and he was for ever dreaming, as did that splendid creator, of how the filth and disease and close darkness of his own towns and poor houses might be transformed into the light and space and clarity of another world. He had Tottel’s Miscellany of Songs and Sonnets, that had first appeared twelve years ago, by heart. Wyatt and Henry Howard and Nicholas Grimald were his constant dear companions. He was, but secretly, a poet himself! All this life of discovery and science and letters was there chiefly to feed his inner, truer life.

Ever since his babyhood he had been interested in religion. As a mewling and puking infant he had looked up into the stout and worldly features of Mr. Hogben, the family Protestant chaplain, and wondered why he pinched up his nose and talked in that sing-song voice. Robin had been born in the winter of 1549, the very year in which Cranmer drew up the first English Prayer Book. Tyndale had been executed by the Spaniards in 1536, but before then had published in full the English New Testament. Coverdale followed him, and the Great Bible was officially adopted in 1539 and placed in all English churches by order of Henry VIII. Robin Herries was familiar with it from his earliest days—old Mr. Hogben was for ever reading from it, and as soon as Robin could speak he was reciting, in a shrill treble, passages out of it. He soon knew, too, Cranmer’s First Book of Homilies and, later, most loved of all, until he found the Utopia, were Latimer’s magnificent Sermons.

Beneath and beyond this reading, however, was his own eager and questioning mind. Mr. Hogben was soon little but a wheezing joke to both boys, but whereas Nicholas behaved as though the old chaplain did not exist, Robin would wonder why Tyndale and Cranmer and Latimer had suffered with such endurance and splendour for something that, in the hands of the Reverend William Hogben, was an empty farce. Was there something real here or was there not?

Soon, from listening to the talk of his elders, he began to wonder the more. Then, himself being some six or seven years of age, he realized that his father and mother were in great trouble. There came a night when they were all hurried away on horseback to an old, dark house beside silent water, and there for nearly a week were hidden in a small cupboard of a chamber.

Later again, men in armour came to their home and asked them questions and his mother wept. Finally came a day when Robin heard the bells ringing and on enquiry found that it was for ‘the new Queen, God bless her’—and the Herries’ troubles were over.

He discovered now that all these difficulties and distresses were caused by religion, and that indeed religion was the great divider of mankind, and that, because of religion, men burnt and hanged one another and tore out one another’s bowels and cut off the privy members the one of the other.

This seemed to him very strange, for, as he understood it, ‘God is Love’ and Christ Himself cared for all mankind, even the wine-bibbers and the Magdalenes. The state of the world was a great mystery to him until, some years before the present, he met an emaciated, star-eyed, fanatical priest, Stephen Rodney, who had quickly won control over him. Robin had visited Rodney in various odd places—inns and barns and London hostelries. Rodney had the habit of suddenly appearing in most unexpected quarters. Sir Michael Herries himself, being a stout and determined Lutheran, would not have tolerated him, but the active hunting of priests had not yet begun and Elizabeth’s own tactics of compromise and toleration were still very generally practised.

Robin therefore had no difficulty in meeting Rodney, and his young idealistic soul was soon won by the fiery intensity and ruthless intelligence of this man. One thing Rodney soon made clear to Robin. That the one and only Church burnt, disembowelled, tortured, heretics only out of loving-kindness and solely for the heretics’ own good. The actual sentences of death and torture were indeed never passed by the Church. Those were the business of the State. But, for the Church, the heretic’s soul was the question. In one way or another he must be saved from the punishment of eternal fire. What was a little momentary disembowelling compared with ever-lasting flames and the eternal wrath of God?

Then, following on this, it became clear that politics and religion were inextricably mixed, for how could the one and only Church rest while there was a Protestant ruler on the throne of England? Elizabeth had not married, in spite of a succession of world-public flirtations, and Mary of Scotland—a Catholic, body and soul—was her legal successor. Was it not right to wish for a Queen of the true religion, even though she had married her husband’s murderer?

It happened then that, before Robin had taken this expedition northwards, he was beginning to pass very completely beneath the influence of Stephen Rodney. One thing only prevented his entire surrender, and that was Rodney’s fierce and intolerant fanaticism. There was no strain of cruelty in Robin Herries. He was a thought too gentle for the age in which he lived. Rodney’s wild exultations over the torturings and burnings in Mary Tudor’s time found no echo in Robin’s heart.

His mind loved to dwell on a loving, kindly, all-mankind-embracing Jesus. He was sure in his heart that Jesus would have spurned the burnings and quarterings with furious anger. He longed for the coming of Christ as he longed for More’s Utopia. At this present time he was given up greatly to dreams and imaginations of a perfect world.

He was dreaming of this now as he rode beside his brother through the evening grey, pushing aside the branches that struck against his eyes, and, once and again, catching sight through a clearing of a hill range against an ice-cold, faint-green sky; a hill, moth-soft, the snow mantle faintly silver, as a moon, riding boat-wise, sailed up into still and cloudless space. An owl called. Nicholas was singing.

I can believe it shall you grieve,

And somewhat you distrain;

But afterward, your painës hard

Within a day or twain

Shall soon aslake; and ye shall take

Comfort to you again.

Why should ye ought? for, to make thought,

Your labour were in vain,

And thus I do; and pray you to,

As heartily as I can;

For I must to the greenwood go,

Alone, a banished man.

Dear Nicholas! Here was the root of all Robin’s human passion, and (it would have astonished Nicholas greatly had he known it) his burning love for his brother was protective quite as much as grateful. Nicholas had, physically, all their lives together, been his protector, and with that protection was a loving and quite unconscious patronage. Nevertheless, Robin knew all Nicholas’ faults and weaknesses: how he spoke before he thought; how, in the ardour of the moment, he would say more than he meant; how he was generous but careless; how he forgot a girl as soon as he had kissed her; how he lived on the surface of life and was intellectually lazy; how he often seemed boastful and arrogant to those who did not know him; how he could sulk like a woman; how he was often selfish and indulgent: all these weaknesses Robin knew and it was these weaknesses that he protected. It was even partly for these weaknesses that he loved him, and it was now as he saw his great dark bulk in the thin tissue light of the little moon that his heart went out to him and knew, with a sudden piercing dart of illumination, that if Stephen Rodney sentenced Nicholas Herries to the torture, he, Robin Herries, would hang Stephen Rodney scaffold-high on the nearest tree!

‘Here is the turn!’ Nicholas cried. ‘Before the church, over the bridge and up the hill.’

To their left, ahead of them, they could see the bare ruined walls of a destroyed church or chapel. A river ran beside them and across this was a bridge. A few rough cottages stood in the now strengthening moonlight. Over the bridge and up the hill they clattered.

‘There! There!’ Nicholas cried, whooping. ‘Our uncle’s strong castle!’

To the right, nestled comfortably into the hollow of the hill, was the prettiest miniature manor-house you ever did find.

Seen, even thus, at the first sight in the moonshine, it was the naïvest, most romantic of little dwelling-places. It was built in imitation of the grand houses of the time. It had a gateway with an arch of entrance, a small walled forecourt. The house itself was in the shape of the letter H, the hall occupying the cross-stroke of the H and the other apartments in the vertical strokes of the H. The trim hedges of the garden, cut into the likeness of peacocks, dogs and monkeys, were darkly outlined against the night sky. The walls in the pale light had the colour of faint lemon-skin. The windows shone their welcome, and there, standing in the porch, was old Sir Martin Herries, waiting to greet his dear nephews. The two boys had not seen their uncle for some years and it was difficult not to smile at the quaint figure that he presented. He was an exceedingly thin old man. Down from his head to his shoulders hung long, yellow, lank locks and within this enclosure was an old bony face, the forehead seamed with a thousand wrinkles. On his head he was wearing a steeple-shaped high black hat. In spite of his age, his hair was still a pallid yellow. On his meagre chest was a heavy gold chain.

So soon as the brothers jumped from their horses a great barking of dogs broke out and the old man was in the strongest agitation, crying out: ‘John! Peter! William! . . . Peter! William! John! Where are you, you rascals? Can’t you mind the horses? Where are you, you malt-houses? Come out, you moon-calves! . . .’ He was stamping with his feet and waving his arms. An elegant major-domo, carrying a staff and having a face with a great solemn mouth, appeared and behind him a servitor. Two hostlers bustled forward. The dogs ceased their clamour.

Sir Martin was at a moment quiet, caught both his nephews with his hands, kissed them on both cheeks and led them trippingly into the hall.

‘Wait, Uncle. I must look to Juno,’ Nicholas said, and went incontinently with the hostler to the stable.

Sir Martin stood staring after him.

‘What a size! What a bull of a young man! What sinews! Why, Robin, he’s like a giant at the fair.’

And when Nicholas returned, he must feel the muscles of his arms and his calves and finger him in the chest. But now he was all delight and happiness as he led the young men up the dark staircase to their bedroom.

‘And how’s all with you, lads? How’s my dear brother and sister? How were the roses this summer at Mallory and the new Italian fountain? Dear lads! Dear lads . . . this is but a little house to my own fancy, but all that is in it is yours!’

Later, washed and scented, Nicholas in his silver-grey doublet, Robin in black and rose, the two young men came down the stairs into the hall where they were to dine. An amusing sight met them, for instead of one old man to greet them there were three!

Sir Martin, his lank yellow hair now brushed and sleek, had on one side of him a stout old gentleman with a very red face and a bulbous nose, and on the other a sweet, precious old boy with silver-white hair and a face as pure and unravaged as a baby’s. Sir Martin introduced them.

‘Mr. Forster of Henditch—Mr. Michael Armstrong of Donnerthwaite. Friends of mine. . . .’ Then he turned to a square-set, extremely pleasant-faced, rosy young man behind him, gravely dressed in black with a white ruff, and said: ‘Mr. Anthony Pierson.’

The two old gentlemen were so greatly astonished at Nicholas that they stood with their mouths open, and there was something exceedingly comic in these three old men, side by side, motionless like images.

There were chairs, still great rarities, for Sir Martin who presided and Nicholas and Robin. Mr. Forster, Mr. Armstrong and young Mr. Pierson sat on stools. The hall itself was as clean and beautiful a little place as the boys had ever seen. Although the stone floor was strewn with rushes they were sweet-smelling and fresh. On one wall was a tapestry in colours of dark gold and vivid green and carnation showing Diana bathing. The hall was lit by candles in iron coronas suspended from the ceiling. Against the further wall was a splendid inlaid buffet of ebony mounted in silver. There was a cabinet inlaid with ivory and tortoiseshell. The oak panels of the walls were painted red with a handsome design in green. All this colour under the subdued musky light of the candles, springing into vividness on occasion with the leaping of the fire, gave a beauty and a poetry to this house that moved Robin most deeply. It seemed to him that, after riding through the sunset glow beside the still softly murmuring water, the hills gathering their evening shadow, he had passed into some good place, as it might be in his own loved Utopia, of another world. The charming faces of the three old men also delighted him. While he was feeling this, with a deep sense of happiness in his heart, he raised his eyes and met the steady gaze of young Mr. Pierson. They exchanged a long look, as though they were seeing into one another’s very souls. Robin felt that some great event occurred to him at that moment.

After they had been eating for a while, four men quietly entered and, seating themselves at the end of the hall, began to play on their instruments and then to sing very softly. They sang ‘Winter wakeneth all my care,’ ‘I sing of a maiden,’ ‘And wilt thou leave me thus?’ and others. So gentle were their voices that they seemed like the melody of running water. Indeed Robin, when he had stood by his horse in the courtyard before being welcomed by his uncle, had heard the stream running on the hill most melodiously through the evening. The voices now seemed to carry on that harmony.

Nicholas, meanwhile, was more disturbed. He had begun his meal vigorously, as usual, with his hearty appetite, but when he had tasted his eel-pie, pullets and grease-gammon and pease before going on to further things, he looked about him and considered. He discovered that the three old gentlemen were talking, with quivering excitement, of the Northern Rebellion and that he, because he nodded with his mouth full, was apparently in agreement with them. This was the last thing that he wanted, for, by listening a little, his big ears pricked up over his food, he discovered that what the old gentlemen were talking, over the soft gentle melody of the madrigals, was treason of the most dangerous kind.

His Uncle Martin, waving his arms with a half-picked capon bone between his fingers, was lamenting, tears in his eyes, groans in his voice, that so many noble gentlemen had come to disaster and must chase their heels into Scotland. And why had they come to disaster? Because the beautiful Queen, the rightful ruler of England, had been snatched out of their care and protection and hurried into a new bondage by those who had sworn to cherish purely her trust in them!

‘But this is crazy treason,’ thought Nicholas, looking anxiously about him. There seemed no cause for alarm. The long, bony major-domo with the large mouth was motioning with his staff to the two men-servants and the pretty maid who were carrying the dishes. The four men at the room’s end were quietly playing on their viols and softly singing. Three dogs lay snoring in front of the great log fire. On the tapestry the naked Diana, in her golden-coloured skin, moved chastely to the purple stream, and as the tapestry rose ever so gently in the air her knee and thigh stirred as though in real truth she lived. No cause for alarm here! The old red-faced boy was talking ardently of Westmorland and Cumberland, of their sympathies with the rebels, how they would have risen as one man had they but been given time. . . .

‘They take it for surety,’ Nicholas thought, ‘that we are of their own political party.’

Then with a flash of revelation he saw it all. His uncle was a Catholic and so were these old men too. This was a Catholic house. This square-shouldered, smiling, round-faced young man Pierson was, in all probability, a Catholic priest. It had not been so five years ago. Martin Herries had not been a Catholic then. Or had he been so and kept it from his brother?

In any case, whatever it had been then there was no doubt now. Nicholas looked anxiously across the table at young Robin. This was the last thing that he would have wished, to bring young Robin into a Catholic house, a nest of rebels against the Queen, his own very uncle too. He thought of rising and saying something in protest. But he stayed quiet. Unlike his customary habit he did nothing. A great unease seized him. An apprehension that had been with him, it seemed to him now, ever since the man on the moor had looked up at him with those pleading eyes. The candles seemed to shiver in their iron sockets, the fire to dim. He was afraid.

Meanwhile the meal had joyfully proceeded, all three old gentlemen were drunk, and Robin Herries was standing close to Anthony Pierson in the window embrasure beyond the stairs. Robin was aware now of the dark depth in Anthony Pierson’s eyes. At first sight you would say ‘This is a stout, commonplace, cheerful young man.’ At a closer view you would deny all those adjectives. Although his cheeks were round, his limbs were hard; although his smile was amiable, his eyes were stern and penetrating; although outwardly he smiled, behind his smile was a passionate purpose.

Robin, at first sight of him, had loved him. This was the second love of his life, his brother being the first. There was to be a third.

Pierson’s voice was soft and melodious.

‘Mr. Rodney sent me a message that you would be here, Mr. Herries. I came especially to meet you. I am a Jesuit priest from Douai, a foundation recently instituted by Mr. Allen. I wish to be of service to you.’

Their eyes met once again in a concentrated gaze.

‘I feel that already we are friends,’ Robin said. Then he went on in a low voice: ‘But I must tell you that I am not a Catholic. My parents are Lutheran and my brother here is of violent anti-Catholic opinions. He would say that he has no political or religious opinions at all, but he is ardently for the Queen and counts anyone his enemy who is against her. We were neither of us aware that our uncle had become a Catholic. We would not have come had we been aware. We have not seen our uncle for five years—and no rumour of this had reached our father.’

‘And yourself? What are your opinions, Mr. Herries?’ Pierson asked him.

‘I? Oh, I am very young. I am interested in the humanities. I am, I hope, a loyal servant of Her Majesty.’

‘Have you given any thought to religion?’

‘Of course I have thought of religion. I have had many talks with Stephen Rodney. I am altogether at odds with him in his eagerness for the persecution and burning of those who are not of his faith. I believe that Christ Himself would have forbidden these burnings and quarterings. . . .’ Robin stopped. His voice was shaking with his emotion.

Anthony Pierson laid his broad, square hand on his arm.

‘I too,’ he said, ‘am for gentleness and love. We will discuss these matters again. I feel that already we are friends. And also, if you will not think it impertinent, I am aware that you see even now the bright pavilions on the horizon and have begun your journey thither.’

‘The bright pavilions?’ asked Robin.

‘The bright pavilions of God, the only resting-place for the bodies and souls of blundering, weary travellers.’

He held out his hand. Robin took it.

‘I need a friend,’ Pierson said.

‘I also,’ Robin answered.