Thorne Guy
House of Torment

As they came up the bar swung open.

"Mr. Commendone?" said the keeper, an elderly man in a leather jerkin.

Johnnie nodded.

"Pass through, sir," the man replied, saluting, as did also the two soldiers who were standing there.

The little cavalcade went slowly over the bridge between the tall houses on either side, which at certain points almost met with their overhanging eaves. The shutters were up all over the little jewellers' shops. Here and there a lamp burned from an upstairs window, and the swish and swirl of the river below could be heard quite distinctly.

At the middle of the bridge, just by the well-known armourer's shop of Guido Ponzio, the Italian sword-smith, whose weapons were eagerly purchased by members of the Court and the officers both of the Tower and Whitehall, another halberdier was standing, who again saluted Commendone as he rode by.

It was quite obvious to Johnnie that every precaution had been taken so that the King's excursion into les coulisses might be undisturbed.

The pike was swung open for them on the south side of the bridge directly they drew near, and putting their horses to the trot, they cantered over a hundred yards of trodden grass round which houses were standing in the form of a little square, and in a few minutes more turned into Duck Lane.

At this hour of the night the narrow street of heavily-timbered houses was quite dark and silent. It seemed there was not a soul abroad, and this surprised Johnnie, who had been led to understand that at midnight "The Lane" was frequently the scene of roistering activity. Now, however, the houses were all blind and dark, and the three horsemen might have been moving down a street in the city of the dead.

Only the big honey-coloured moon threw a primrose light upon the topmost gables of the houses on the left side of "The Lane" – all the rest being black velvet, sombreness and shadow.

John's mouth curved a little in disdain under his small dark moustache, as he noted all this and realised exactly what it meant.

When a king set out for furtive pleasures, lesser men of vice must get them to their kennels! Lights were out, all manifestation of evil was thickly curtained. The shameless folk of that wicked quarter of the town must have shame imposed upon them for the night.

The King was taking his pleasure.

John Commendone, since his arrival in London, and at the Court, had quietly refused to be a member of any of those hot-blooded parties of young men who sallied out from the Tower or from Whitehall when the reputable world was sleeping. It was not to his taste. He was perfectly capable of tolerating vice in others – looking on it, indeed, as a natural manifestation of human nature and event. But for himself he had preferred aloofness.

Nevertheless, from the descriptions of his friends, he knew that Duck Lane to-night was wearing an aspect which it very seldom wore, and as he rode slowly down that blind and sinister thoroughfare with his attendants, he realised with a little cold shudder what it was to be a king.

He himself was the servant of a king, one of those whom good fortune and opportunity had promoted to be a minister to those almost super-human beings who could do no wrong, and ruled and swayed all other men by means of their Divine Right.

This was a position he perfectly accepted, had accepted from the first. Already he was rising high in the course of life he had started to pursue. He had no thought of questioning the deeds of princes. He knew that it was his duty, his métier, in life to be a pawn in the great game. What affected him now, however, as they came up to a big house of free-stone and timber, where a lanthorn of horn hung over a door painted a dull scarlet, was a sense of the enormous and irrevocable power of those who were set on high to rule.

No! They were not human, they were not as other men and women are.

He had been in the Queen's Closet that morning, and had seen the death warrant signed. The great convulsion of nature, the furious thunders of God, had only been, as it were, a mere accompaniment to the business of the four people in the Queen's lodge.

A scratch of a pen – a man to die.

And then, during the evening, he had seen, once more, the King and Queen, bright, glittering and radiant, surrounded by the highest and noblest of England, serene, unapproachable, the centre of the stupendous pageant of the hour.

And now, again, he was come to the stews, to the vile quarter of London, and even here the secret presence of a king closed all doors, and kept the pandars and victims of evil silent in their dens like crouching hares.

As they came up to the big, dark house, a little breeze from the river swirled down the Lane, and fell fresh upon Johnnie's cheek. As it did so, he knew that he was hot and fevered, that the riot of thought within him had risen the temperature of his blood. It was cool and grateful – this little clean breeze of the water, and he longed once more, though only for a single second, that he was home in the stately park of Commendone, and had never heard the muffled throb of the great machine of State, of polity, and the going hither and thither of kings and queens.

But it only lasted for a moment.

He was disciplined, he was under orders. He pulled himself together, banished all wild and speculative thought – sat up in the saddle, gripped the sides of his cob with his knees, and set his left arm akimbo.

"This is the house, sir," said the trooper, saluting.

"Very well," Johnnie answered, as his servant dismounted and took his horse by the bridle.

Johnnie leapt to the ground, pulled his sword-belt into position, settled his hat upon his head, and with his gloved fist beat upon the big red door before him.

In ten seconds he heard a step on the other side of the door. It swung open, and a tall, thin person, wearing a scarlet robe and a mask of black velvet over the upper part of the face, bowed low before him, and with a gesture invited him to enter.

Johnnie turned round.

"You will stay here," he said to the men. "Be quite silent, and don't stray away a yard from the door."

Then he followed the tall, thin figure, which closed the door, and flitted down a short passage in front of him with noiseless footsteps.

He knew at once that he was in Queer Street.

The nondescript figure in its fantastic robe and mask struck a chill of disgust to his blood.

It was a fantastic age, and all aberrations – all deviations – from the normal were constantly accentuated by means of costumes and theatric effect.

The superficial observer of the manners of our day is often apt to exclaim upon the decadence of our time. One has heard perfectly sincere and healthy Englishmen inveigh with anger upon the literature of the moment, the softness and luxury of life and art, the invasion of sturdy English ideals by the corrupt influences of France.

"Give me the days of Good Queen Bess, the hearty, healthy, strong Tudor life," is the sort of exclamation by no means rare in our time.

… "Bluff King Hal! Drake, Raleigh, all that rough, brave, and splendid time! Think of Shakespeare, my boy!"

Whether or no our own days are deficient in hardihood and endurance is not a question to be discussed here – though the private records of England's last war might very well provide a complete answer to the query. It is certain, however, that in an age when personal prowess with arms was still a title to fortune, when every gentleman of position and birth knew and practised the use of weapons, the under-currents of life, the hidden sides of social affairs, were at least as "curious" and "decadent" as anything Montmartre or the Quartier Latin have to show.

It must be remembered that in the late Tudor Age almost every one of good family, each gentleman about the Court, was not only a trained soldier, but also a highly cultured person as well. The Renaissance in Italy was in full swing and activity. Its culture had crossed the Alps, its art was borne upon the wings of its advance to our northern shores.

Grossness was refined…

Johnnie twirled his moustache as he followed the nondescript sexless figure which flitted down the dimly-lit panelled passage before him like some creature from a masque.

At the end of the passage there was a door.

Arrived at it, a long, thin arm, in a sleeve of close-fitting black silk, shot out from the red robe. A thin ivory-coloured hand, with fingers of almost preternatural length, rose to a painted scarlet slit which was the creature's mouth.

The masked head dropped a little to one side, one lean finger, shining like a fish-bone, tapped the mouth significantly, the door opened, some heavy curtains of Flanders tapestry were pushed aside, and the Equerry walked into a place as strange and sickly as he had ever met in some fantastic or disordered dream.

Johnnie heard the door close softly behind him, the "swish, swish" of the falling curtains. And then he stood up, his eyes blinking a little in the bright light which streamed upon them – his hand upon his sword-hilt – and looked around to find himself. He was in a smallish room, hung around entirely with an arras of scarlet cloth, powdered at regular intervals with a pattern of golden bats.

The floor was covered with a heavy carpet of Flanders pile – a very rare and luxurious thing in those days – and the whole room was lit by its silver lamps, which hung from the ceiling upon chains. On one side, opposite the door, was a great pile of cushions, going half-way up the wall towards the ceiling – cushions as of strange barbaric colours, violent colours that smote upon the eye and seemed almost to do the brain a violence.

In the middle of the room, right in the centre, was a low oak stool, upon which was a silver tray. In the middle of the tray was a miniature chafing-dish, beneath which some volatile amethyst-coloured flame was burning, and from the dish itself a pastille, smouldering and heated, sent up a thin, grey whip of odorous smoke.

The whole air of this curious tented room was heavy and languorous with perfume. Sickly, and yet with a sensuous allurement, the place seemed to reel round the young man, to disgust one side of him, the real side; and yet, in some low, evil fashion, to beckon to base things in his blood – base thoughts, physical influences which he had never known before, and which now seemed to suddenly wake out of a long sleep, and to whisper in his ears.

All this, this surveyal of the place in which he found himself, took but a moment, and he had hardly stood there for three seconds – tall, upright, and debonair, amid the wicked luxury of the room – when he heard a sound to his left, and, turning, saw that he was not alone.

Behind a little table of Italian filigree work, upon which were a pair of tiny velvet slippers, embroidered with burnt silver, a sprunking-glass – or pocket mirror – and a tall-stemmed bottle of wine, sat a vast, pink, fleshy, elderly woman.

Her face, which was as big as a ham, was painted white and scarlet. Her eyebrows were pencilled with deep black, the heavy eyes shared the vacuity of glass, with an evil and steadfast glitter of welcome.

There were great pouches underneath the eyes; the nose was hawk-like, the chins pendulous, the lips once, perhaps, well curved and beautiful enough, now full, bloated, and red with horrid invitation.

The woman was dressed with extreme richness.

Fat and powdered fingers were covered with rings. Her corsage was jewelled – she was like some dreadful mummy of what youth had been, a sullen caricature of a long-past youth, when she also might have walked in the fields under God's sky, heard bird-music, and seen the dew upon the bracken at dawn.

Johnnie stirred and blinked at this apparition for a moment; then his natural courtesy and training came to him, and he bowed.

As he did so, the fat old woman threw out her jewelled arms, leant back in her chair, stuttering and choking with amusement.

"Tiens!" she said in French, "Monsieur qui arrive! Why have you never been to see me before, my dear?"

Johnnie said nothing at all. His head was bent a little forward. He was regarding this old French procuress with grave attention.

He knew now at once who she was. He had heard her name handed about the Court very often – Madame La Motte.

"You are a little out of my way, Madame," Johnnie answered. "I come not over Thames. You see, I am but newly arrived at the Court."

He said it perfectly politely, but with a little tiny, half-hidden sneer, which the woman was quick to notice.

"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "you are here on duty. Merci, that I know very well. Those for whom you have come will be down from above stairs very soon, and then you can go about your business. But you will take a glass of wine with me?"

"I shall be very glad, Madame," Johnnie answered, as he watched the fat, trembling hand, with all its winking jewels, pouring Vin de Burgogne into a glass. He raised it and bowed.

The old painted woman raised her glass also, and lifted it to her lips, tossing the wine down with a sudden smack of satisfaction.

Then, in that strange perfumed room, the two oddly assorted people looked at each other straightly for a moment.

Neither spoke.

At length Madame La Motte, of the great big house with the red door, heaved herself out of her arm-chair, and waddled round the table. She was short and fat; she put one hand upon the shoulder of the tall, clean young man in his riding suit and light armour.

"Mon ami," she said thickly, "don't come here again."

Johnnie looked down at the hideous old creature, but with a singular feeling of pity and compassion.

"Madame," he said, "I don't propose to come again."

"Thou art limn and debonair, and a very pretty boy, but come not here, because in thy face I see other things for thee. Lads of the Court come to see me and my girls, proper lads too, but in their faces there is not what I discern in thy face. For them it matters nothing; for thee 'twould be a stain for all thy life. Thou knowest well whom I am, Monsieur, and canst guess well where I shall go – e'en though His Most Catholic Majesty be above stairs, and will get absolution for all he is pleased to do here. But you – thou wilt be a clean boy. Is it not so?"

The fat hand trembled upon the young man's arm, the hoarse, sodden voice was full of pleading.

"Ma mère," Johnnie answered her in her own language, "have no fear for me. I thank you – but I did not understand…"

"Boy," she cried, "thou canst not understand. Many steps down hellwards have I gone, and in the pit there is knowledge. I knew good as thou knowest it. Evil now I know as, please God, thou wilt never know it. But, look you, from my very knowledge of evil, I am given a tongue with which to speak to thee. Keep virgin. Thou art virgin now; my hand upon thy sword-arm tells me that. Keep virgin until the day cometh and bringeth thy lady and thy destined love to thee."

There were tears in the young man's eyes as he looked down into the great pendulous painted face, from which now the evil seemed to be wiped away as a cloth wipes away a chalk mark upon a slate.

As the last ray of a setting sun sometimes touches to a fugitive glory – a last fugitive glory – some ugly, sordid building of a town, so here he saw something maternal and sweet upon the face of this old brothel-keeper, this woman who had amassed a huge fortune in ministering to the pride of life, the pomp, vanity, and lusts of Principalities and Powers.

He turned half round, and took the woman's left hand in his.

"My mother," he said, with an infinitely winning and yet very melancholy gaze, "my mother, I think, indeed, that love will never come to me. I am not made so. May the Mother of God shield me from that which is not love, but natheless seemeth to have love's visage when one is hot in wine or stirred to excitement. But thou, thou wert not ever…"

She broke in upon him quickly.

Her great red lips pouted out like a ripe plum. The protruding fishy eyes positively lit up with disdain of herself and of her life.

"Mon cher," she said, "Holà! I was a young girl once in Lorraine. I had a brother – I will tell you little of that old time – but I have blood."

"Yes," she continued, throwing back her head, till the great rolls of flesh beneath her chin stretched into tightness, "yes, I have blood. There was a day when I was a child, when the poet Jean D'Aquis wrote of us —

 
'Quand nous habitions tous ensemble
Sur nos collines d'autrefois,
Où l'eau court, où le buisson tremble
Dans la maison qui touche aux bois.'
 

… It was." Suddenly she left Johnnie standing in the middle of the room, and with extraordinary agility for her weight and years, glided round the little table, and sank once more into her seat.

The door at the other end of the room opened, and a tall girl, with a white face and thin, wicked mouth, and a glorious coronal of red hair came into the room.

"'Tis finished," she said, to the mistress of the house. "Sir John Shelton is far in drink. He – " she stopped suddenly, as she saw Johnnie, gave him a keen, questioning glance, and then looked once more towards the fat woman in the chair.

Madame nodded. "This is His Highness's gentleman," she said, "awaiting him. So it's finished?"

The girl nodded, beginning to survey Johnnie with a cruel, wicked scrutiny, which made him flush with mingled embarrassment and anger.

"His Highness is coming down, Mr. Esquire," she said, pushing out a little red tip of tongue from between her lips. "His Highness…"

The old woman in the chair suddenly leapt up. She ran at the tall, red-haired girl, caught her by the throat, and beat her about the face with her fat, jewelled hands, cursing her in strange French oaths, clutching at her hair, shaking her, swinging her about with a dreadful vulgar ferocity which turned John's blood cold.

As he stood there he caught a glimpse, never to be forgotten, of all that underlay this veneer of midnight luxury. He saw vile passions at work, he realised – for the first time truly and completely – in what a hideous place he was.

The tall girl, sobbing and bleeding in the face, disappeared behind the arras. The old woman turned to Johnnie. Her face was almost purple with exertion, her eyes blazed, her hawk-like nose seemed to twitch from side to side, she panted out an apology:

"She dared, Monsieur, she dared, one of my girls, one of my slaves! Hist!"

A loud voice was heard from above, feet trampled upon stairs, through the open door which led to the upper parts of the house of ill-fame came Sir John Shelton, a big, gross, athletic man, obviously far gone in wine.

He saw Johnnie. "Ah, Mr. Commendone," he said thickly. "Here we are, and here are you! God's teeth! I like well to see you. I myself am well gone in wine, though I will sit my horse, as thou wilt see."

He lurched up to Johnnie and whispered in the young man's ear, with hot, wine-tainted breath.

"He's coming down," he whispered. "It's your part to take charge of His Highness. He's – "

Sir John stood upright, swaying a little from the shoulders, as down the stairway, framed in the lintel of the door, came King Philip of Spain.

The King was dressed very much as Johnnie himself was dressed; his long, melancholy face was a little flushed – though not with wine. His eyes were bright, his thin lips moved and worked.

Directly he saw Commendone his face lit up with recognition. It seemed suddenly to change.

"Ah, you are here, Mr. Commendone," he said in Spanish. "I am glad to see you. We have had our amusements, and now we go upon serious business."

The alteration in the King's demeanour was instant. Temperate, as all Spaniards were and are, he was capable at a moment's notice of dismissing what had passed, and changing from bon viveur into a grave potentate in a flash.

He came up to Johnnie. "Now, Mr. Commendone," he said, in a quiet, decisive voice, "we will get to horse and go upon our business. The señor don here is gone in wine, but he will recover as we ride to Hadley. You are in charge. Let's begone from this house."

The King led the way out of the red room.

The old procuress bowed to the ground as he went by, but he took no notice of her.

Johnnie followed the King, Sir John Shelton came staggering after, and in a moment or two they were out in the street, where was now gathered a small company of horse, with serving-men holding up torches to illumine the blackness of the night.

They mounted and rode away slowly out of Duck Lane and across London Bridge, the noise of their passing echoing between the tall, barred houses.

Several soldiers rode first, and after them came Sir John Shelton. Commendone rode at the King's left hand, and he noticed that His Highness's broad hat was pulled low over his face and a riding cloak muffled the lower part of it. Behind them came the other men-at-arms. As soon as they were clear of the bridge the walk changed into a trot, and the cavalcade pushed toward Aldgate. Not a soul was in the streets until they came to the city gate itself, where there was the usual guard. They passed through and came up to the "Woolsack," a large inn which was just outside the wall. In the light of the torches Commendone could see that the place was obviously one of considerable importance, and had probably been a gentleman's house in the past.

Large square windows divided into many lights by mullions and transoms took up the whole of the front. The roofs were ornamental, richly crocketed and finialed, while there was a blazonry of painted heraldry and coats of arms over and around the large central porch. Large stacks of tall, slender chimney-shafts, moulded and twisted, rose up into the dark, and were ornamented over their whole surface with diaper patterns and more armorial bearings. The big central door of the "Woolsack" stood open, and a ruddy light beamed out from the hall and from the windows upon the ground-floor. As they came up, and Sir John Shelton stumbled from his horse, holding the King's stirrup for him to dismount, Commendone saw that the space in front of the inn, a wide square with a little trodden green in the centre of it, held groups of dark figures standing here and there.

Halberds rose up against the walls of the houses, showing distinctly in the occasional light from a cresset held by a man-at-arms.

Sir John Shelton strode noisily into a big panelled hall, the King and Commendone following him, Johnnie realising that, of course, His Highness was incognito.

The host of the inn, Putton, hurried forward, and behind him was one of the Sheriffs of London, who held some papers in his hand and greeted Sir John Shelton with marked civility.

The knight pulled himself together, and shook the Sheriff by the hand.

"Is everything prepared," he said, "Mr. Sheriff?"

"We are all quite ready, Sir John," the Sheriff answered, looking with inquiring eyes at Commendone and the tall, muffled figure of the King.

"Two gentlemen of the Court who have been deputed by Her Grace to see justice done," Sir John said. "And now we will to the prisoner."

Putton stepped forward. "This way, gentlemen," he said. "Dr. Taylor is with his guards in the large room. He hath taken a little succory pottage and a flagon of ale, and seemeth resigned and ready to set out."

With that the host opened a door upon the right-hand side of the hall and ushered the party into a room which was used as the ordinary of the inn, a lofty and spacious place lit with candles.

There was a high carved chimney-piece, over which were the arms of the Vintners' Company, sable and chevron cetu, three tuns argent, with the figure of Bacchus for a crest. A long table ran down the centre of the place, and at one end of it, seated in a large chair of oak, sat the late Archdeacon of Exeter. Three or four guards stood round in silence.

Dr. Rowland Taylor was a huge man, over six feet in height, and more than a little corpulent. His face, which was very pale, was strongly cast, his eyes, under shaggy white brows, bright and humorous; the big, genial mouth, half-hidden by the white moustache and beard, both kindly and strong. He wore a dark gown and a flat velvet cap upon his head, and he rose immediately as the company entered.

"We are come for you, Dr. Taylor," the Sheriff said, "and you must immediately to horse."

The big man bowed, with quiet self-possession.

"'Tis very well, Master Sheriff," he said; "I have been waiting this half-hour agone."

"Bring him out," said Sir John Shelton, in a loud, harsh voice. "Keep silence, Master Taylor, or I will find a way to silence thee."

John Commendone shivered with disgust as the leader of the party spoke.

Even as he did so he felt a hand upon his arm, and the tall, muffled figure of the King stood close behind him.

"Tell the knight, señor," the King said rapidly in Spanish, "to use the gentleman with more civility. He is to die, as is well fitting a heretic should die, for God's glory and the safety of the realm. But he is of gentle birth. Tell Sir John Shelton."

Commendone stepped up to Sir John. "Sir," he said, in a voice which, try as he would, he could not keep from being very disdainful and cold – "Sir, His Highness bids me to tell you to use Dr. Taylor with civility, as becomes a man of his birth."

The half-drunken captain glared at the cool young courtier for a moment, but he said nothing, and, turning on his heel, clanked out of the room with a rattle of his sword and an aggressive, ruffling manner.

Dr. Taylor, with guards on each side, the Sheriff immediately preceding him, walked down the room and out into the hall.

Commendone and the King came last.

Johnnie was seized with a sudden revulsion of feeling towards his master. This man, cruel and bigoted as he was, the man whom he had seen with fanaticism and the blood lust blazing in his eye, the man whom he had seen calmly leaving a vile house, was nevertheless a king and a gentleman. The young man could hardly understand or realise the extraordinary combination of qualities in the austere figure by his side of the man who ruled half the known world. Again, he felt that sense of awe, almost of fear, in the presence of one so far removed from ordinary men, so swift in his alterations from coarseness to kingliness, from relentless cruelty to cold, sombre decorum.

Dr. Taylor was mounted upon a stout cob, closely surrounded by guards, and with a harsh word of command from Sir John, the party set out.

The host of the "Woolsack" stood at his lighted door, where there was a little group of serving-men and halberdiers, sharply outlined against the red-litten façade of the quaint old building, and then, as they turned a corner, it all flashed away, and they went forward quietly and steadily through a street of tall gabled houses.

Directly the lights of the inn and the square in front of it were left behind, they saw at once that dawn was about to begin. The houses were grey now, each moment more grey and ghostly, and they were no longer sable and shapeless. The air, too, had a slight stir and chill within it, and each moment of their advance the ghostly light grew stronger, more wan and spectral than ever the dark had been.

Pursuant to his instructions, Commendone kept close to the King, who rode silently with a drooping head, as one lost in thought. In front of them were the backs of the guards in their steel corselets, and in the centre of the group was the massive figure of the man who was riding to his death, a huge, black outline, erect and dignified.

John rode with the rest as a man in a dream. His mind and imagination were in a state in which the moving figures around him, the cavalcade of which he himself was a part, seemed but phantoms playing fantastic parts upon the stage of some unreal theatre of dreams.

He heard once more the great man-like voice of Queen Mary, but it seemed very far away, a sinister thing, echoing from a time long past.

The music of the dance in the Palace tinkled and vibrated through his subconscious brain, and then once more he heard the voice of the evil old woman of the red house, the voice of one in hell, telling him to flee youthful lusts, telling him to wait stainless until love should come to him.

Love! He smiled unconsciously to himself. Love! – why should the thoughts of love come to a heart-whole man riding upon this sad errand of death; through ghostly streets, stark and grey?..

He looked up dreamily and saw before him, cutting into a sky which was now big and tremulous with dawn, the tower of St. Botolph's Church, a faint, misty purple. Far away in the east the sky was faintly streaked with pink and orange, the curtain of the dark was shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning. The western sky over St. Paul's was already aglow with a red, reflected light.

The transition was extraordinarily sudden. Every instant the aspect of things changed; the whole visible world was being re-created, second by second, not gradually, but with a steady, pressing onrush, in which time seemed merged and forgotten, to be of no account at all, and a thing that was not.

Johnnie had seen the great copper-coloured moon heave itself out of the sea just like that – the world turning to splendour before his eyes.

But it was dawn now, and in the miraculously clear, inspiring light, the countless towers and pinnacles of the city rose with sharp outline into the quiet sky.

The breeze from the river rustled and whispered by them like the trailing skirts of unseen presences, and as the cool air in all its purity came over the silent town, the feverishness and sense of unreality in the young man's mind were dissolved and blown away.

How silent London was! – the broad street stretched out before them like a ribbon of silver-grey, but the tower of St. Botolph's was already solid stone, and no longer mystic purple.

And then, for some reason or other, John Commendone's heart began to beat furiously. He could not have said why or how. There seemed no reason to account for it, but all his pulses were stirred. A sense of expectancy, which was painful in its intensity, and unlike anything he had ever known before in his life, pervaded all his consciousness.