The Story of Francis Cludde

"Unless we let him go safe and unhurt before sunset."

"They will never consent to it," he answered, shaking his head.

"Then they will hang!" I cried.

He looked hard at me a moment, discerning something strange in the bitterness of my last words. "Come, lad," he said, "you have not told me all. What else have you learned?"

"How can I tell you?" I cried wildly, waving him off, and going to the lattice that my face might be hidden from him. "Heaven has cursed me!" I added, my voice breaking.

He came and laid his hand on my shoulder. "Heaven curses no one," he said. "Most of our curses we make for ourselves. What is it, lad?"

I covered my face with my hands. "He-he is my father," I muttered. "Do you understand? Do you see what I have done? He is my father!"

"Ha!" Master Bertie uttered that one exclamation in intense astonishment; then he said no more. But the pressure of his hand told me that he understood, that he felt with me, that he would help me. And that silent comprehension, that silent assurance, gave the sweetest comfort. "He must be allowed to go, then, for this time," he resumed gravely, after a pause in which I had had time to recover myself. "We will see to it. But there will be difficulties. You must be strong and brave. The truth must be told. It is the only way."

I saw that it was, though I shrank exceedingly from the ordeal before me. Master Bertie advised, when I grew more calm, that we should be the first at the rendezvous, lest by some chance Penruddocke's orders should be anticipated; and accordingly, soon after two o'clock, we mounted, and set forth. I remarked that my companion looked very carefully to his arms, and, taking the hint, I followed his example.

It was a silent, melancholy, anxious ride. However successful we might be in rescuing my father-alas! that I should have to-day and always to call that man father-I could not escape the future before me. I had felt shame while he was but a name to me; how could I endure to live, with his infamy always before my eyes? Petronilla, of whom I had been thinking so much since I returned to England, whose knot of velvet had never left my breast nor her gentle face my heart-how could I go back to her now? I had thought my father dead, and his name and fame old tales. But the years of foreign life which yesterday had seemed a sufficient barrier between his past and myself-of what use were they now? Or the foreign service I had fondly regarded as a kind of purification?

Master Bertie broke in on my reverie much as if he had followed its course. "Understand one thing, lad!" he said, laying his hand on the withers of my horse. "Yours must not be the hand to punish your father. But after to-day you will owe him no duty. You will part from him to-day and he will be a stranger to you. He deserted you when you were a child; and if you owe reverence to any one, it is to your uncle and not to him. He has himself severed the ties between you."

"Yes," I said. "I will go abroad. I will go back to Wilna."

"If ill comes of our enterprise-as I fear ill will come-we will both go back, if we can," he answered. "If good by any chance should come of it, then you shall be my brother, our family shall be your family. The Duchess is rich enough," he added with a smile, "to allow you a younger brother's portion."

I could not answer him as I desired, for we passed at that moment under the archway, and became instantly involved in the bustle going forward in the courtyard. Near the principal door of the inn stood eight or nine horses gayly caparisoned and in the charge of three foreign-looking men, who, lounging in their saddles, were passing a jug from hand to hand. They turned as we rode in and looked at us curiously, but not with any impertinence. Apparently they were waiting for the rest of their party, who were inside the house. Civilly disposed as they seemed, the fact that they were armed, and wore rich liveries of black and gold, caused me, and I think both of us, a momentary alarm.

"Who are they?" Master Bertie asked in a low voice, as he rode to the opposite door and dismounted with his back to them.

"They are Spaniards, I fancy," I said, scanning them over the shoulders of my horse as I too got off. "Old friends, so to speak."

"They seem wonderfully subdued for them," he answered, "and on their best behavior. If half the tales we heard this morning be true, they are not wont to carry themselves like this."

Yet they certainly were Spanish, for I overheard them speaking to one another in that language; and before we had well dismounted, their leader-whom they received with great respect, one of them jumping down to hold his stirrup-came out with three or four more and got to horse again. Turning his rein to lead the way out through the north gate he passed near us, and as he settled himself in his saddle took a good look at us. The look passed harmlessly over me, but reaching Master Bertie became concentrated. The rider started and smiled faintly. He seemed to pause, then he raised his plumed cap and bowed low-covered himself again and rode on. His train all followed his example and saluted us as they passed. Master Bertie's face, which had flushed a fiery red under the other's gaze, grew pale again. He looked at me, when they had gone by, with startled eyes.

"Do you know who that was?" he said, speaking like one who had received a blow and did not yet know how much he was hurt.

"No," I said.

"It was the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador," he answered. "And he recognized me. I met him often, years ago. I knew him again as soon as he came out, but I did not think he would by any chance recognize me in this dress."

"Are you sure," I asked in amazement, "that it was he?"

"Quite sure," he answered.

"But why did he not have you arrested, or at least detained? The warrants are still out against you."

Master Bertie shook his head. "I cannot tell," he said darkly. "He is a Spaniard. But come, we have the less time to lose. We must join our friends and take their advice; we seem to be surrounded by pitfalls."

At this moment the lame ostler came up, and grumbling at us as if he had never seen us in his life before, and never wished to see us again, took our horses. We went into the kitchen, and taking the first chance of slipping upstairs to No. 15, we were admitted with the same precautions as before, and descending the shaft gained the cellar.

Here we were not, as we had looked to be, the first on the scene. I suppose a sense of the insecurity of our meeting-place had led every one to come early, so as to be gone early. Penruddocke indeed was not here yet, but Kingston and half a score of others were sitting about conversing in low tones. It was plain that the distrust and suspicion which we had remarked on the previous day had not been allayed by the discovery of Clarence's treachery.

Indeed, it was clear that the distrust and despondency had to-day become a panic. Men glared at one another and at the door, and talked in whispers and started at the slightest sound. I glanced round. The one I sought for with eager yet shrinking eyes was not to be seen. I turned to Master Bertie, my face mutely calling on him to ask the question. "Where is the prisoner?" he said sharply.

A moment I hung in suspense. Then one of the men said, "He is in there. He is safe enough!" He pointed, as he spoke, to a door which seemed to lead to an inner cellar.

"Right," said Master Bertie, still standing. "I have two pieces of bad news for you nevertheless. Firstly I have just been recognized by the Spanish Ambassador, whom I met in the courtyard above."

Half the men rose to their feet. "What is he doing here?" they cried, one boldly, the others with the quaver very plain in their voices.

"I do not know; but he recognized me. Why he took no steps to detain or arrest me I cannot tell. He rode away by the north road."

They gazed at one another and we at them. The wolfish look which fear brings into some faces grew stronger in theirs.

"What is your other bad news?" said Kingston, with an oath.

"A person outside, a friend of the prisoner, has a list of our names, and knows our meeting-place and our plans. She threatens to use the knowledge unless the man Clarence or Crewdson be set free."

There was a loud murmur of wrath and dismay, amid which Kingston alone preserved his composure. "We might have been prepared for that," he said quietly. "It is an old precaution of such folk. But how did you come to hear of it?"

"My friend here saw the messenger and heard the terms. The man must be set free by sunset."

"And what warranty have we that he will not go straight with his plans and his list to the Council?"

Master Bertie could not answer that, neither could I; we had no surety, and if we set him free could take none save his word. His word! Could even I ask them to accept that? To stake the life of the meanest of them on it?

I saw the difficulties of the position, and when Master Kingston pronounced coolly that this was a waste of time, and that the only wise course was to dispose of the principal witness, both in the interests of justice and our own safety, and then shift for ourselves before the storm broke, I acknowledged in my heart the wisdom of the course, and felt that yesterday it would have received my assent.

"The risk is about the same either way," Master Bertie said.

"Not at all," Kingston objected, a sparkle of malice in his eye. Last night we had thwarted him. To-night it was his turn; and the dark lowering looks of those round him showed that numbers were with him. "This fellow can hang us all. His accomplice who escapes can know nothing save through him, and could give only vague and uncertain evidence. No, no. Let us cast lots who shall do it, get it done quickly, and begone."

"We must wait at least," Bertie urged, "until Sir Thomas comes."

"No!" retorted Kingston, with heat. "We are all equal here. Besides the man was condemned yesterday, with the full assent of all. It only remains to carry out the sentence. Surely this gentleman," he continued, turning suddenly upon me, "who was so ready to accuse him yesterday, does not wish him spared to-day?"

"I do wish it," I said, in a low tone.

"Ho! ho!" he cried, folding his arms and throwing back his head, astonished at the success of his own question. "Then may we ask for your reasons, sir? Last night you could not lay your tongue to words too bad for him. Tonight you wish to spare him, and let him go?"

"I do," I said. I felt that every eye was upon me, and that, Master Bertie excepted, not one there would feel sympathy with me in my humiliation. They were driven to the wall. They had no time for fine feeling, for sympathy, for appreciation of the tragic, unless it touched themselves. What chance had I with them, though I was a son pleading for a father? Nay, what argument had I save that I was his son, and that I had brought him to this? No argument. Only the appeal to them that they would not make me a parricide! And I felt that at this they would mock.

And so, in view of those stern, curious faces, a new temptation seized me-the temptation to be silent. Why should I not stand by and let things take their course? Why should I not spare myself the shame which I already saw would be fruitless? When Master Kingston, with a cynical bow, said, "Your reasons, sir?" I stood mute and trembling. If I kept silence, if I refused to give my reasons, if I did not acknowledge the prisoner, but merely begged his life, he would die, and the connection between us would be known only to one or two. I should be freed from him and might go my own way. The sins of Ferdinand Cludde were well-nigh forgotten-why take to myself the sins of Clarence, which would otherwise never stain my name, would never be associated with my father or myself?

Why, indeed? It was a great and sore temptation, as I stood there before all those eyes. He had deserved death. I had given him up in perfect innocence. Had I any right to call on them to risk their lives that I might go harmless in conscience, and he in person? Had I-

What, was there after all some taint in my blood? Was I going to become like him-to take to myself a shame of my own earning, in the effort to escape from the burden of his ill-fame? I remembered in time the oath I had sworn, and when Kingston repeated his question, I answered him quickly. "I did not know yesterday who he was," I said. "I have discovered since that he is my father. I ask nothing on his account. Were he only my father I would not plead for him. I plead for myself," I murmured. "If you show no pity, you make me a parricide."

I had done them wrong. There was something in my voice, I suppose, as I said the words which cost me so much, which wrought with almost all of them in a degree. They gazed at me with awed, wondering faces, and murmured "His father!" in low tones. They were recalling the scene of last night, the moment when I had denounced him, the curse he had hurled at me, the half-told story of which that had seemed the climax. I had wronged them. They did see the tragedy of it.

Yes, they pitied me; but they showed plainly that they would still do what perhaps I should have done in their place-justice. "He knows too much!" said one. "Our lives are as good as his," muttered another-the first to become thoroughly himself again-"why should we all die for him?" The wolfish glare came back fast to their eyes. They handled their weapons impatiently. They were longing to be away. At this moment, when I saw I had indeed made my confession in vain, Master Bertie struck in. "What," he said, "if Master Carey and I take charge of him, and escorting him to his agent without, be answerable for both of them?"

"You would be only putting your necks into the noose!" said Kingston.

"We will risk that!" replied my friend-and what a friend and what a man he seemed amid that ignoble crew! – "I will myself promise you that if he refuse to remain with us until midnight, or tries wherever we are to raise an alarm or communicate with any one, I will run him through with my own hand? Will not that satisfy you?"

"No," Master Kingston retorted, "it will not! A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!"

"But the woman outside?" said one timidly.

"We must run that risk!" quoth he. "In an hour or two we shall be in hiding. Come, the lot must be drawn. For this gentleman, let him stand aside."

I leaned against the wall, dazed and horror-stricken. Now that I had identified myself with him I felt a great longing to save him. I scarcely noticed the group drawing pieces of paper at the table. My every thought was taken up with the low door over there, and the wretched man lying bound in the darkness behind it. What must be the horror, the black despair, the hate and defiance of his mind as he lay there, trapped at last like any beast of prey? It was horrible! horrible! horrible!

I covered my face and could not restrain the cry of unutterable distress which rose to my lips. They looked round, two or three of them, from the table. But the impression my appeal had made upon them had faded away already, and they only shrugged their shoulders and turned again to their task. Master Bertie alone stood apart, his arms folded, his face grave and dark. He too had abandoned hope. There seemed no hope, when suddenly there came a knocking at the door. The papers were dropped, and while some stood as if stiffened into stone, others turned and gazed at their neighbors. It was a knocking more hasty and imperative than the usual summons, though given in the same fashion. At last a man found tongue. "It is Sir Thomas," he suggested, with a sigh of relief. "He is in a hurry and brings news. I know his knock."

"Then open the door, fool," cried Kingston. "If you can see through a two-inch plank, why do you stand there like a gaby?"

Master Bertie anticipated the man, and himself opened the door and admitted the knocker. Penruddocke it was; he came in, still drumming on the door with his fist, his eyes sparkling, his ruddy cheeks aglow. He crossed the threshold with a swagger, and looking at us all burst into a strange peal of laughter. "Yoicks! Gone to earth!" he shouted, waving his hand as if he had a whip in it. "Gone to earth-gone forever! Did you think it was the Lords of the Council, my lads?"

He had left the door wide open behind him, and we now saw in the doorway the seafaring man who usually guarded the room above. "What does this mean, Sir Thomas?" Kingston said sternly. He thought, I fancy, as many of us did, that the knight was drunk. "Have you given that man permission to leave his post?"

"Post? There are no more posts," cried Sir Thomas, with a strange jollity. He certainly was drunk, but perhaps not with liquor. "Except good fat posts," he continued, smacking Master Bertie on the shoulder, "for loyal men who have done the state service, and risked their lives in evil times! Posts? I shall get so drunk to-night that the stoutest post on Ludgate will not hold me up!"

"You seem to have gone far that way already," my friend said coldly.

"So will you, when you hear the news!" Penruddocke replied more soberly. "Lads, the Queen is dying!"

In the vaulted room his statement was received in silence; a silence dictated by no feeling for the woman going before her Maker-how should we who were plotting against her feel for her, we who were for the most part homeless and proscribed through her? – but the silence of men in doubt, in doubt whether this might mean all that from Sir Thomas's aspect it seemed to mean.

"She cannot live a week!" Penruddocke continued. "The doctors have given up hope, and at the palace all is in confusion. She has named the Princess Elizabeth her successor, and even now Cecil is drawing up the proclamations. To show that the game is really up, the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, has gone this very day to Hatfield to pay his respects to the coming queen."

Then indeed the vaulted roof did ring-ring and ring again with shouts of "The Coming Queen!" Men over whom the wings of death had seemed a minute ago to be hovering, darkening all things to them, looked up and saw the sun. "The Coming Queen!" they cried.

"You need fear nothing!" continued Penruddocke wildly. "No one will dare to execute the warrants. The Bishops are shaking in their miters. Pole is said to be dying. Bonner is more likely to hang himself than burn others. Up and out and play the man! Away to your counties and get ready your tar-barrels! Now we will give them a taste of the Cujus Regio! Ho! drawer, there! A cup of ale!"

He turned, and shouting a scrap of a song, swaggered back into the shaft and began to ascend. They all trooped after him, talking and laughing, a reckless, good-natured crew, looking to a man as if they had never known fear or selfishness-as if distrust were a thing impossible to them. Master Kingston alone, whom his losses had soured and who still brooded over his revenge, went off moodily.

I was for stopping one of them; but Master Bertie directed my eyes by a gesture of his hand to the door at the far end of the cellar, and I saw that the key was in the lock. He wrung my hand hard. "Tell him all," he muttered. "I will wait above."