Thorne Guy
House of Torment
She had only seen him once. She had never received his little posy of white flowers, but he was "Johnnie" to her.
"They have not hurt you, my maid?" he said. "Tell me they have not harmed you."
She shook her head. Happiness sponged away the horror which had been upon her face. "No, Johnnie," she answered, clinging, her fingers clutching for a firmer hold of him. "No, Johnnie, only they took me away, and Alice, that is my maid. They took me away violently, and I have been penned up here in this place until that man came and said strange things to me, and would embrace me."
"Sit you here, my darling maid," the young man said, "sit you here," guiding her to the couch hard by. "He shall do you no harm. Thou art with me, and thy good friend there, thy father's yeoman."
She had not seen John Hull before, but now she looked up at him over Johnnie's arm, and smiled. "'Tis all well now," she murmured, drooping and half-faint. "Hull is here, and thou also, Johnnie."
Even in the wild joy of finding her, and knowing instinctively that she was to be his, that she had thought of him so much, Commendone lost nothing of his sang-froid.
He knew that desperate as had been his adventure when he started out from the Tower, it was now more desperate still. He and Hull had taken their lives in their hands when they went to Duck Lane. Their enterprise had so far been successful, their rescue complete, but – and he was in no way mistaken – the enterprise was not over, and his life was worth even a smaller price than it had been before.
With that, he turned from the girl, and strode up to the King, before whom John Hull had been standing, grimly silent.
Commendone's sword was still in his hand; he had not relinquished it even when he had embraced Elizabeth, and now he stood before his master, the point upon the floor, his young face set into judgment.
"And now, Sire?" he said, shortly and quickly.
Philip's face was flushed with shame and fear, but at these sharp words, he drew himself to his full height.
"Señor," he said, "you are going to do something which will damn you for ever in the sight of God and Our Lady. You are going to slay the anointed of the Lord. I will meet death at your hands, and doubtless for my sins I have deserved death; but, nevertheless, you will be damned."
Then he threw his arms out wide, and there came a sob into his voice as the liquid Spanish poured from him.
"But to die thus!" he said. "Mother of God! to die thus! unshrived, with my sins upon me!"
Johnnie tapped impatiently with the point of his sword upon the floor.
"Kill you, Sire?" he said. "I have sworn the oath of allegiance to Her Grace, the Queen, and eke to you. I break no oaths. Kill you I will not. Kill you I cannot. I dare not raise my hand against the King."
He dropped on one knee. "Sire," he said again, "I am your Gentleman, and you will go free from this vile house as you came into it."
Then he rose, took his sword, snapped it across his knee – staining his hands in doing so – and flung it into the corner of the room.
"And that is that," he said, with a different manner. "So now as man to man, as from one gentleman to another, hear my voice. You are a gentleman of high degree, and you are King also of half this globe, named, and glad to be named His Most Catholic Majesty. Of your kingship I am not at this moment aware. I am not Royal. But as a gentleman and a Christian, I tell you to your face that you are low and vile. You deceive a wife that loveth you. You take maidens to force them to your will. If you were a simple gentleman I would kill you where you stood. No! If thou wert a simple gentleman, I would not cross swords with thee, because thou art unworthy of my sword. I would tell my man here to slit thee and have done. But as thou art a King" – he spat upon the floor in his disgust – "and I am sworn to thee, I cannot punish thee as I would, thou son of hell, thou very scurvy, lying, and most dirty knave."
The King's face was a dead white now. He lifted his hands and beat with them upon his breast. "Mea culpa! Mea culpa! What have I done that I should endure this?"
"What no King should ever do, what no gentleman could ever do."
The King's hands dropped to his side.
"I am wearing no sword," he said quietly, "as you see, Señor, but doubtless you will provide me with one. If you will meet me here and now, as a simple gentleman, then I give you licence to kill me. I will defend myself as best I am able."
Johnnie hesitated, irresolutely. All the training of his life was up in arms with the wishes and the emotions of the moment – until he heard the voice of common sense.
John Hull broke in. The man had not understood one word of the Spanish, but he had realised its meaning, and the keen, untutored intelligence, focused upon the flying minutes, saw very clearly into the future.
"Master," he said, "cannot ye see that all this is but chivalry and etiquette of courts? Cannot ye see that if ye kill His Highness, England will not be big enough to hide thee? Cannot ye see, also, that if thou dost not kill him, but let him go, England will not be big enough to hide thee either? Master, we must settle this business with speed, and get far away before the hue and cry, for I tell thee, that this bloody night's work will bring thee, and Mistress Elizabeth, and myself to the rack and worse torture, to the stake, and worse than that. Haste! speed! we must be gone. There is but one thing to be done."
"And what is that, John Hull?"
"Why, thou art lost in a dream, master! To tie up His Highness so that he cannot move or speak for several hours. To send that Spaniard which is his man, away from the door outside, and then to fly from this accursed house, you, I, and the little mistress, and hide ourselves, if God will let us, from the wrath to come."
The quick, decisive words were so absolutely true, so utterly unanswerable, that Johnnie nodded, though he shuddered as he did so.
Upon that, John Hull strode up to the King.
"Put your hands behind you, Sire," he said.
The King was wearing a dagger in his belt. As Hull came up to him, his face was transfixed with fury. He drew it out and lunged at the man's heart.
Hull was standing a little obliquely to the blow, the dagger glanced upon his leather surcoat, cut a long groove, and glanced harmlessly away.
With that, Hull raised his great brown fist and smote King Philip in the face, driving him to the floor. He was on him in a moment, crouching over him with one hand upon the Royal throat.
"Quick, master; quick, master! Quick, master! Bonds! Bonds! We must e'en truss him up, as we did her ladyship below."
It was done. The King was tied and bound. It was done as gently as possible, and they did not gag him.
Together they laid him upon the floor.
Slow, half-strangled, and venomous words came, came in gouts of poisonous sound, which made the sweet Spanish hideous…
"The whole world, Mr. Commendone, will not be wide enough to hide you, your paramour, and this villain from my vengeance."
Johnnie would have heard anything but that one word – that shameful word. At the word "paramour," hardly knowing what he did, he lifted his hand and struck the bound and helpless King upon the face.
A timepiece from the next room beat. It was one o'clock in the morning.
Johnnie turned to Elizabeth. "Come, sweetheart," he said, in a hurried, agitated voice, "come away from this place."
He took her by the arm, half leading, half supporting her, and together they passed out of the room, without so much as a backward glance at the bound figure upon the floor. As they went through the broken doorway in the ante-room, John Hull pressed after them, and walked on the other side of Elizabeth, talking to her quickly in a cheery voice.
As he looked over the girl's head at his servant, Johnnie knew what Hull was doing. He was hiding the corpse of Sir John Shelton from the girl's view.
They came into the corridor, and descended the stairs. Just as they were about to open the door in the arras, Hull stopped them upon the lowest step.
"I will go first, master," he said, and again Johnnie realised what was meant.
When a few seconds afterwards, he and Elizabeth entered the tapestry-hung room; the great pile of cushions upon the left-hand side was a little higher, but that was all.
The girl raised her hands to her throat. "Oh," she said, "Johnnie, thank God you came! I cannot bear it. Take me home, take me home now, to Mr. Cressemer and Aunt Catherine."
Johnnie took her hands in his own, holding her very firmly by the wrists, and looked full into her face.
"Dear," he said, "you cannot go to Mr. Cressemer's. You know nothing of what has happened this night. You do not realise anything at all. Will you trust in me?"
"Yes," she faltered, though her eyes were firm.
"Then, if you do that, and if God helps us," he said, with a gasp in his throat, "we may yet win to safety and life, though I doubt it. Sweetheart, it is right that I should tell you that man upstairs in the room is the King Consort, husband of Her Grace the Queen."
The girl gave a loud, startled cry, and instantly Commendone saw comprehension flash into her face.
"Sit here," he said to her, putting a chair for her.
Then he turned. Behind the ebony table, motionless, vast, and purple in the face, was the great mummy of the procuress.
"What shall we do?" he said to Hull.
"The first thing, master, is to send the Spanish valet away; that you must do, and therein lies our chance."
Johnnie nodded. He passed out into the passage, went to the front door, pulled aside three huge bolts which worked with a lever very silently, for they were all oiled, and let in a puff of fresh wind from the street.
For a moment he could see nothing in the dark. He called in Spanish: "Torromé, Torromé, where are you? Come here at once." He had hardly done so when the cloaked figure of the valet came out from behind a buttress.
"Ah, Señor," he said, "I am perished with this cold wind. His Highness is ready, then?"
Johnnie shook his head. "No," he answered, "His Highness and Sir John are still engaged, but I am sent to tell you that you may go home. I and my man will attend His Highness to the Tower, but we shall not come until dawn. Go you back to the King's lodging, and if His Highness doth not come in due time, keep all inquiries at bay. He will be sick – you understand?"
Torromé nodded.
"Then get you to horse, leave His Highness's horse with ours, and speed back to the Tower as soon as may be."
Commendone waited until the man had mounted, very glad to be relieved of his long waiting, and was trotting towards London Bridge. Then he closed the door, pulled the lever, and went back into the red, scented room.
He saw that Hull had cut the strips of red velvet that bound Madame La Motte, the gag was taken from her mouth, and he was holding a goblet of wine to the thick, swollen, and bleeding lips.
There was a long deep sigh and gurgle. The woman shuddered, gasped again, and then some light and understanding came into her eyes, and she stared out in front of her.
"What are we to do?" Johnnie asked his servant once more.
"What have ye done, masters?" came in a dry whisper from the old woman – it was like the noise a man makes walking through parched grass in summer. "What have ye done, masters?"
Hull answered: "We have killed your servitor, as ye saw," he said, with a half glance towards the piled cushions against the wall. "Sir John Shelton is dead also; Mr. Commendone killed him in fair fight."
"And the King, the King?" – the whisper was dreadful in its anxiety and fear.
"He lieth bound in that room of shame where you took my lady."
There was silence for a moment, and the old woman glanced backwards and forwards at Hull and Commendone. What she read in their faces terrified her, and again she shook horribly.
"Sir," she said to Commendone, "if this be my last hour, then so mote it be, but I swear that I knew nothing. I was told at high noon yesterday that a girl was to be sent here, that Sir John and the valet of His Highness would bring her. I knew, and know nothing of who she is. I did but do as I have always done in my trade. And, messieurs, it was the King's command. Now ye have come, and there is the lady unharmed, please God."
"Please God!" Johnnie said brutally. "You hag of hell, who are you to use that name?"
The fat, artificially whitened hands, with their glittering rings fell upon the table with a dull thud.
"Who am I, indeed?" she said. "You may well ask that, but I tell you others of my women received this lady. I have not seen her until now."
"Indeed she hath not," came in a low, startled voice from Elizabeth.
"Sir," La Motte went on, "I see now that this is the end of my sinful life. Kill me an ye wish, I care not, for I am dead already, and so also are you, and the young mistress there, and your man too."
"What mean you?" Johnnie said.
"What mean I? Why, upstairs lieth the King, bound. We all have two or three miserable hours, and then we shall be found, and what we shall endure will pass the bitterness of death before death comes. That, messieurs, you know very well.
"So what matters it," she continued, her extraordinary vitality overcoming everything, her voice growing stronger each moment, "what matters it! Let us drink wine one to the other, to death! in this house of death, in this house to which worse than death cometh apace."
She reached out for the flagon of wine before her with a cackle of laughter.
It was too true. Commendone knew it well. He looked at Hull, and together they both looked at Elizabeth Taylor.
The girl, in the long white robe which they had put on her, rose from her seat and came between them, tall, slim, and now composed. She put one hand upon Johnnie's shoulder and laid the other with an affectionate gesture upon Hull's arm.
"Look you," she said, "Mr. Commendone, and you, John Hull, my father's friend, what matters it at all? I see now all that hath passed. There is no hope for us, none at all. Therefore let us praise God, pray to Him, and die. We shall soon be with my father in heaven; and, sure, he seeth all this, and is waiting for us."
John Hull's face was knitted into thought. He hardly seemed to hear the girl's voice at all.
"Mistress Lizzie," he said, almost peevishly, "pr'ythee be silent a moment. Master, look you. 'Tis this way. They will come again and find His Highness when he returneth not to the Tower, but he will dare do nothing against us openly for fear of the Queen's Grace. Were it known that he had come to such a stew as this, the Queen would ne'er give him her confidence again. She would ne'er forgive him. Doubtless the vengeance will pursue us, but it cannot be put in motion for some hours until the King is rescued, and has had time to confer with his familiars and think out a plan. After that, when they catch us, nothing will avail us, because nothing we can say will be believed. But we are not caught yet."
Johnnie, who for the last few moments had been quite without hope, looked up quickly at his servant's words.
"You are right," he said, "in what you say; there speaketh good sense. Very well, then we must get away at once. But where shall we go? If we go to His Worship's house, we shall soon be discovered, and bring His Worship and Mistress Catherine with us to the rack and stake. If we go to my father's house in Kent, he will not be able to hide us; it will be the first place to which they will look."
He spread his arms out in a gesture of despair.
"You see," he said, "we in this room to-night have no refuge nor harbour. For a few hours, a day it may be, we can lie lost from vengeance. But after that no earthly power can save us. We have done the thing for which there is no pardon."
"I don't like, master, to wait for death in this way," Hull answered. "But art wiser than I, and so it must be. But pr'ythee let us have a little course. The hounds may come, but let us run before them, and then, if death is at the end of it, well – well, there's an end on't; and so say I."
There was a voice behind them, a voice speaking in broken but fluent English.
"You have broken into my house, you have killed my servant, you have prevented me from calling for help from you, a King lies bound in my upper chamber, v'là! And now you go to run a little course, to scurry hither and thither before the dogs are at your throats. You are all prepared to die. I also am ready to die if it must be so, but it need not be so if you will listen to me."
"What mean you?" Johnnie said.
As he spoke he saw, with a mingling of surprise and disgust, that the big painted face of Madame La Motte was full of animation and excitement. She seemed as if the events of the last hour had but stirred her to endeavour, had given a fillip to her sluggish life.
More astonishing than all, she rose from her chair, gathering together her vast, unwieldy bulk, came round from behind the table, and joined their conference almost with vivacity.
"Tiens," she said, "there are other countries than this. An army beaten in an engagement is not always routed. Retreat is possible within friendly frontiers."
The horrible old creature had such a strength and personality about her that, with her blood-stained mouth, her great panting body, her trembling jewelled hands, she yet in that moment dominated them all.
"There is one last chance. At dawn – and dawn is near by – the ship St. Iago sails from the Thames for foreign parts. The master of the ship, Clark, is" – she lowered her voice and spoke only to Commendone – "is a client of mine here. He is much indebted to me in many ways, and ere day breaks we may all be aboard of her and sailing away. What is't to be, messieurs?"
They all looked at each other for a moment in silence.
Then Elizabeth put her arms round the old woman's neck and kissed her.
"Madame," she said, "surely God put this into your heart to save us all. I will come with you, and Johnnie will come, and good John Hull withal, and so we may escape and live."
The old Frenchwoman patted the slim girl upon the back. "Bien, chérie," she said, "that's a thing done. I will look after you and be a mother to you, and so we will all be happy."
Commendone and his servant looked on in amazement. At this dreadful hour, in this moment of extremest peril, the wicked old woman seemed to take charge of them all. She did not seem wicked now, only genial and competent, though there was a tremor of fear in her voice and her movements were hurried and decisive.
"Jean-Marie," she called suddenly, and then, "Phut! I forgot. It is under the cushions. Well, we must even do without a messenger. Have you money, Master Commendone?"
Johnnie shook his head. "Not here."
"Mais, mon Dieu! I have a plenty," she answered, "which is good for all of us. Wait you here."
She hurried away, and went up the stair towards the rooms above.
"Shall I follow her, master?" Hull said, his hand upon his dagger.
Johnnie shook his head.
"No," he answered, "she is in our boat. She must sink or swim with us."
They waited there for five or ten minutes, hearing the heavy noise of Madame's progress above their heads. They waited there, and as they did so the room seemed to become cold, their blood ran slowly within them, the three grouped themselves close together as if for mutual warmth and consolation.
Then they heard a high-pitched voice at the top of the stairs.
"Send your man up, Monsieur, send your man up. I have no strength to lift this bag."
At a nod from Johnnie, Hull ran up the stairs. In a moment more he came down, staggering under the burden of a great leather wallet slung over his shoulder, and was followed by Madame La Motte, now covered in a fur cloak and hood.
She held another on her arm. "Put it on, put it on," she said to Elizabeth, "quickly. We must get out of this. The dawn comes, the wind freshens, we have but an hour."
And then in the ghostly dawn the four people left the House of Shame, left it with the red door open to the winds, and hurried away towards the river.
None of them spoke. The old dame in her fur robe shuffled on with extraordinary vitality, past straggling houses, past inns from which nautical signs were hung, for a quarter of a mile towards the mud-marsh which fringed the pool of Thames. She walked down a causeway of stones, sunk in the mud and gravel, to the edge of the water.
It was now high tide and the four came out in the grey light upon a little stone quay where some sheds were set.
In front of one of them, heavily covered with tar, a lantern was still burning, wan and yellow in the coming light of day.
Madame La Motte kicked at the door of this shed with her high-heeled shoe. There was no response. She opened the door, burst into a stuffy, fœtid place where two men were lying upon coils of rope. She stirred them with her foot, but they were in heavy sleep, and only groaned and snored in answer.
"I'll wake them, Madame," Johnnie said, "I'll stir them up," his voice full of that thin, high note which comes to those who feel themselves hunted. He clapped his hand to his side to find his sword; his fingers touched an empty scabbard. Then he remembered.
"I am swordless," he cried, forgetting everything else as he realised it.
Behind him there was a thud and a clanking, as John Hull dropped the leathern bag he held.
"Say not so, master," he said, and held out to the young man a sword in a scabbard of crimson leather, its hilt of gold wire, its guard set with emeralds and rubies, the belt which hung down on either side of the blade, of polished leather studded with little stars and bosses of gold.
"What is this?"
"Look you, sir, as we passed out of Madame's room, I saw this sword leaning in a corner of the wall by the door. His Highness had left it there, doubtless, ere he went upstairs. 'So,' says I to myself, 'this is true spoil of war, and in especial for my master!'"
Johnnie took the sword, looked at it for a moment, and then unbuttoned his own belt and girded it on.
"So shall it be for a remembrance to me," he said, "for now and always."
But he did not need to use it. Madame's exertions had been sufficient. Her shrill, angry voice had wakened the watermen. They rose to their feet, wiped their eyes, and, seeing persons of quality before them, they hastened down the little hard and embarked the company in their wherry. Then they pulled out into the stream. The tide was running fast and free towards the Nore, but they made for a large ship of quite six hundred tons, which was at anchor in mid-stream. When they came up to it, and caught the hanging ladder upon the quarter with a boat-hook, the deck was already busy with seamen in red caps, and a tarry, bearded old salt, his head tied up in a woollen cloth, was standing on the high poop, and cursing the men below. Madame La Motte saw him first. She put two fat fingers in her mouth and gave a long whistle, like a street boy.
The captain looked round him, up into the rigging where the sailors were already busy upon the yards, looked to his right, looked to his left, and then straight down from the poop upon the starboard quarter, and saw Madame La Motte. He stumbled down the steps on to the main deck, and peered over the bulwarks. "Mother of God!" he cried, "and what's this, so early in the morning?"
The old Frenchwoman shrieked up at him in her broken English. "Tiens! Tiens! Send your men to help us up, Captain Clark. Thou art not awake. Do as I tell you."
The captain rubbed his eyes again, called out some orders, and in a moment or two Johnnie had mounted the ladder, and stood upon the deck.
"Now the ladies," he said in a quick, authoritative voice.
Elizabeth came up to the side, and then it was the question of Madame La Motte. John Hull stood in the tossing, heaving wherry, and gave the woman her first impetus. She clawed the side ropes, cursing and spitting like a cat as she did so, mounting the low waist of the ship like a great black slug. As soon as she got within arm's length of the captain and a couple of sailors, they caught her and heaved her on board as if she had been a sack, and within ten seconds afterwards John Hull, with the leather bag over his shoulder, stood on the deck beside them. Johnnie felt in his pocket and found some coins there. He flung them over to the watermen, and they fell in the centre of the boat as it sheered off.
Mr. Clark, captain of the St. Iago, was now very wide awake.
"I will thank ye, Madame," he said, "to explain your boarding of my ship with your friends."
The quick-witted Frenchwoman went up to him, put her fat arms round his neck, pulled his head down, and spoke in his ear for a minute. When she had finished the captain raised his head, scratched his ear, and looked doubtfully at Commendone, Elizabeth, and John Hull.
"Well," he said, in a thick voice, "since you say it, I suppose I must, though there is little accommodation on board for the likes of you. You pay your passage, Madame, I suppose?"
"Phut! I will make you rich."
The captain's eyes contracted with leery cunning.
"There is more in this than meets mine eye – that ye should be so eager to leave London. What have ye done, that is what I would like to know? I must inquire into this, though we are due to sail. I must send a man ashore to speak with the Sheriff – "
"The Sheriff! And where would any of your dirty sailors find the Sheriff at this hour of the morning? You'll lose the tide, Master Clark, and you'll lose your money, too."
The captain scratched his head again.
"Natheless, I am not sure," he began.
Then Johnnie stepped forward.
"Captain Clark?" he said, in short, quick accents of authority.
"That am I," said the captain.
"Very good. Then you will take these ladies and bestow them as well as you are able, and you will set sail at once. This ship, I believe, belongs to His Worship the Alderman, Master Robert Cressemer?"
The captain touched his forehead.
"Yes, sir, indeed she does," he answered, in a very different voice.
Johnnie, from where he had been standing, had looked down into the waist, and had seen the great bags of wool with the Alderman's trade-mark upon them. "Very well," he said, "you'll heave anchor at once, and this is my warrant."
He put his hand into his doublet and pulled out the Alderman's letter. He showed him the last paragraph of it.
It was enough.
"I crave your pardon, master," the captain said. "I did not know that you came from His Worship. That old Moll, I was ready to oblige her, though it seemed a queer thing her coming aboard just as we were setting sail. Why did you not speak at first, sir? Well, all is right. The wind is favourable, and off we go."
Turning away from Johnnie, he rushed up to the poop again, put his hand to his mouth, and bellowed out a crescendo of orders.
The yards swarmed with men, there was a "Heave ho and a rumbelow," a clanking of the winch as the anchor came up, a flapping of unfurled topsails at the three square-rigged masts, and in five minutes more the St. Iago began to move down the river.
Johnnie walked along the open planking of the waist, mounted to the poop, and heard the "lap, lap" and ripple of the river waves against the rudder. He turned and saw not far away to his left the White Tower growing momentarily more distinct and clear in the dawn.
The whole of the Palace and Citadel was clear to view, the two flags of England and Spain were just hoisted, running out before the breeze. To his left, as he turned right round, were huddled houses at the southern end of London Bridge. In one of them, empty, lit and blown through by the morning winds, His Most Catholic Majesty was lying, silent and helpless.
He turned again, looked forward, and took in a great breath of the salt air.
The cordage began to creak, the sails to belly out, the hoarse voice of the pilot by Johnnie's side to call directions. Presently Sheppey Island came into view, and the sky above it was all streaked with the promise of daylight.
Regardless of Captain Clark and two other men, who were busied coiling ropes and making the poop ship-shape for the Channel, Johnnie fell upon his knees, brought the cross-belt of the King's sword to his lips, and thanked God that he was away with his love.
