"Even so. Yet I am not certain whether he knows or only guesses; but at any rate be on your guard for her sake. He has proved himself so unspeakable a villain that none can guess what he will do next. He-he it is above all-yea, above even Gifford and Ballard, who has brought us to this pa.s.s."

He was becoming fiercely agitated, but putting a force upon himself said, "Have patience, good Mr. Talbot, of your kindness, and I will tell you all, that you may understand the coilings of the serpent who led me hither, and if possible save her from them."

Antony then explained that so soon as he had become his own master he had followed the inclinations which led him to the church of his mother and of Queen Mary, the two beings he had always regarded with the most fervent affection and love. His mother's kindred had brought him in contact with the Roman Catholic priests who circulated in England, at the utmost peril of their lives, to keep up the faith of the gentry, and in many cases to intrigue for Queen Mary. Among these plotters he fell in with Cuthbert Langston, a Jesuit of the third order, though not a priest, and one of the most active agents in corresponding with Queen Mary. His small stature, colourless complexion, and insignificant features, rendered him almost a blank block, capable of a.s.suming any variety of disguise. He also knew several languages, could imitate different dialects, and counterfeit male and female voices so that very few could detect him. He had soon made himself known to Babington as the huckster Tibbott of days gone by, and had then disclosed to him that Cicely was certainly not the daughter of her supposed parents, telling of her rescue from the wreck, and hinting that her rank was exalted, and that he knew secrets respecting her which he was about to make known to the Queen of Scots. With this purpose among others, Langston had adopted the disguise of the woman selling spars with the pa.s.sword "Beads and Bracelets," and being well known as an agent of correspondence to the suite of the captive Queen, he had been able to direct Gorion's attention to the maiden, and to let him know that she was the same with the infant who had been put on board the Bride of Dunbar at Dunbar.

How much more did Langston guess? He had told Babington the story current among the outer circle of Mary's followers of the maiden being the daughter of the Scotch archer, and had taught him her true name, encouraging too, his aspirations towards her during the time of his courtship. Babington believed Langston to have been at that time still a sincere partizan of Queen Mary, but all along to have entertained a suspicion that there was a closer relationship between Bride Hepburn and the Queen than was avowed, though to Babington himself he had only given mysterious hints.

But towards the end of the captivity at Tutbury, he had made some further discovery, which confirmed his suspicions, and had led to another attempt to accost Cicely, and to make the Queen aware of his knowledge, perhaps in order to verify it, or it might be to gain power over her, a reward for the introduction, or to extort bribes to secrecy. For looking back, Antony could now perceive that by this time a certain greed of lucre had set in upon the man, who had obtained large sums of secret service money from himself; and avarice, together with the rebuff he had received from the Queen, had doubtless rendered him accessible to the temptations of the arch-plotters Gifford and Morgan. Richard could believe this, for the knowledge had been forced on him that there were an incredible number of intriguers at that time, spies and conspirators, often in the pay of both parties, impartially betraying the one to the other, and sometimes, through miscalculation, meeting the fate they richly deserved. Many a man who had begun enthusiastically to work in underground ways for what he thought the righteous cause, became so enamoured of the undermining process, and the gold there to be picked up, that from a wrong-headed partizan he became a traitor-often a double-faced one-and would work secretly in the interest of whichever cause would pay him best.

Poor Babington had been far too youthfully simple to guess what he now perceived, that he had been made the mere tool and instrument of these traitors. He had been instructed in Gifford's arrangement with the Burton brewer for conveying letters to Mary at Chartley, and had been made the means of informing her of it by means of his interview with Cicely, when he had brought the letter in the watch. The letter had been conveyed to him by Langston, the watch had been his own device. It was after this meeting, of which Richard now heard for the first time, that Langston had fully told his belief respecting the true birth of Bride Hepburn, and a.s.sured Babington that there was no hope of his wedding her, though the Queen might allow him to delude himself with the idea of her favour in order to bind him to her service.

It was then that Babington consented to Lady Shrewsbury's new match with the well-endowed Eleanor Ratcliffe. If he could not have Cicely, he cared not whom he had. He had been leading a wild and extravagant life about town, when (as poor Tichborne afterwards said on the scaffold) the flourishing estate of Babington and Tichborne was the talk of Fleet Street and the Strand, and he had also many calls for secret service money, so that all his thought was to have more to spend in the service of Queen Mary and her daughter.

"Oh, sir! I have been as one distraught all this past year," he said. "How often since I have been shut up here, and I have seen how I have been duped and gulled, have your words come back to me, that to enter on crooked ways was the way to destruction for myself and others, and that I might only be serving worse men than myself! And yet they were priests who misled me!"

"Even in your own religion there are many priests who would withhold you from such crimes," said Richard.

"There are! I know it! I have spoken with them. They say no priest can put aside the eternal laws of G.o.d's justice. So these others, Chidiock here, Donne and Salisbury, always cried out against the slaying of the Queen, though-wretch that I was-and gulled by Ballard and Savage, I deemed the exploit so n.o.ble and praiseworthy that I even joined Tichborne with me in that accursed portraiture! Yea, you may well deem me mad, but it was Gifford who encouraged me in having it made, no doubt to a.s.sure our ruin. Oh, Mr. Talbot! was ever man so cruelly deceived as me?"

"It is only too true, Antony. My heart is full of rage and indignation when I think thereof. And yet, my poor lad, what concerns thee most is to lay aside all such thoughts as may not tend to repentance before G.o.d."

"I know it, I know it, sir. All the more that we shall die without the last sacraments. Commend us to the prayers of our Queen, sir, and of her. But to proceed with what imports you to know for her sake, while I have s.p.a.ce to speak."

He proceeded to tell how, between dissipation and intrigue, he had lived in a perpetual state of excitement, going backwards and forwards between London and Lichfield to attend to the correspondence with Queen Mary and the Spanish amba.s.sador in France, and to arrange the details of the plot; always being worked up to the highest pitch by Gifford and Ballard, while Langston continued to be the great a.s.sistant in all the correspondence. All the time Sir Francis Walsingham, who was really aware of all, if not the prime mover in the intrigue, appeared perfectly unsuspicious; often received Babington at his house, and discussed a plan of sending him on a commission to France, while in point of fact every letter that travelled in the Burton barrels was deciphered by Phillipps, and laid before the Secretary before being read by the proper owners. In none of these, however, as Babington could a.s.sure Mr. Talbot, had Cicely been mentioned,-the only danger to her was through Langston.

Things had come to a climax in July, when Babington had been urged to obtain from Mary such definite approbation of his plans as might satisfy his confederates, and had in consequence written the letter and obtained the answer, copies of which had been read to him at his private examination, and which certainly contained fatal matter to both him and the Queen.

They had no doubt been called forth with that intent, and a doubt had begun to arise in the victim's mind whether the last reply had been really the Queen's own. It had been delivered to him in the street, not by the usual channel, but by a blue-coated serving-man. Two or three days later Humfrey had told him of Langston's interview with Walsingham, which he had at the time laughed to scorn, thinking himself able to penetrate any disguise of that Proteus, and likewise believing that he was blinding Walsingham.

He first took alarm a few days after Humfrey's departure, and wrote to Queen Mary to warn her, convinced that the traitor must be Langston. Ballard became himself suspected, and after lurking about in various disguises was arrested in Babington's own lodgings. To disarm suspicion, Antony went to Walsingham to talk about the French Mission, and tried to resume his usual habits, but in a tavern, he became aware that Langston, under some fresh shape, was watching him, and hastily throwing down the reckoning, he fled without his cloak or sword to Gage's house at Westminster, where he took horse, hid himself in St. John's Wood, and finally was taken, half starved, in an outhouse at Harrow, belonging to a farmer, whose mercy involved him in the like doom.

This was the substance of the story told by the unfortunate young man to Richard Talbot, whom he owned as the best and wisest friend he had ever had-going back to the warnings twice given, that no cause is served by departing from the right; no kingdom safely won by worshipping the devil: "And sure I did worship him when I let myself be led by Gifford," he said.

His chief anxiety was not for his wife and her child, who he said would be well taken care of by the Ratcliffe family, and who, alas! had never won his heart. In fact he was relieved that he was not permitted to see the young thing, even had she wished it; it could do no good to either of them, though he had written a letter, which she was to deliver, for the Queen, commending her to her Majesty's mercy.

His love had been for Cicely, and even that had never been, as Richard saw, such purifying, restraining, self-sacrificing affection as was Humfrey's. It was half romance, half a sort of offshoot from his one great and absorbing pa.s.sion of devotion to the Queen of Scots, which was still as strong as ever. He entrusted Richard with his humblest commendations to her, and strove to rest in the belief that as many a conspirator before-such as Norfolk, Throckmorton, Parry-had perished on her behalf while she remained untouched, that so it might again be, since surely, if she were to be tried, he would have been kept alive as a witness. The peculiar custom of the time in State prosecutions of hanging the witnesses before the trial had not occurred to him.

But how would it be with Cicely? "Is what this fellow guessed the very truth?" he asked.

Richard made a sign of affirmation, saying, "Is it only a guess on his part?"

Babington believed the man stopped short of absolute certainty, though he had declared himself to have reason to believe that a child must have been born to the captive queen at Lochleven; and if so, where else could she be? Was he waiting for clear proof to make the secret known to the Council? Did he intend to make profit of it and obtain in the poor girl a subject for further intrigue? Was he withheld by consideration for Richard Talbot, for whom Babington declared that if such a villain could be believed in any respect, he had much family regard and deep grat.i.tude, since Richard had stood his friend when all his family had cast him off in much resentment at his change of purpose and opinion.

At any rate he had in his power Cicely's welfare and liberty, if not the lives of her adopted parents, since in the present juncture of affairs, and of universal suspicion, the concealment of the existence of one who stood so near the throne might easily be represented as high treason. Where was he?

No one knew. For appearance sake, Gifford had fled beyond seas, happily only to fall into a prison of the Duke of Guise: and they must hope that Langston might have followed the same course. Meantime, Richard could but go on as before, Cicely being now in her own mother's hands. The avowal of her ident.i.ty must remain for the present as might be determined by her who had the right to decide.

"I would I could feel hope for any I leave behind me," said poor Antony. "I trow you will not bear the maiden my message, for you will deem it a sin that I have loved her, and only her, to the last, though I have been false to that love as to all else beside. Tell Humfrey how I long that I had been like him, though he too must love on without hope."

He sent warm greetings to good Mistress Susan Talbot and craved her prayers. He had one other care, namely to commend to Mr. Talbot an old body servant, Harry Gillingham by name, who had attended on him in his boyhood at Sheffield, and had been with him all his life, being admitted even now, under supervision from the warders, to wait on him when dressing and at his meals. The poor man was broken-hearted, and so near desperation that his master wished much to get him out of London before the execution. So, as Mr. Talbot meant to sail for Hull by the next day's tide in the Mastiff, he promised to take the poor fellow with him back to Bridgefield.

All this had taken much time. Antony did not seem disposed to go farther into his own feelings in the brief s.p.a.ce that remained, but he took up a paper from the table, and indicating Tichborne, who still affected sleep, he asked whether it was fit that a man, who could write thus, should die for a plot against which he had always protested. Richard read these touching lines:-

My prime of youth is but a frost of care, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my goods is but vain hope of gain.

The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun; And now I live, and now my life is done.

My spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung; The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green; My youth is past, and yet I am but young; I saw the world, and yet I was not seen.

My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun; And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought for death, and found it in the wombe; I lookt for life, and yet it was a shade; I trode the ground, and knew it was my tombe, And now I dye, and now I am but made.

The gla.s.s is full, and yet my gla.s.s is run; And now I live, and now my life is done.

Little used to poetry, these lines made the good man's eyes fill with tears as he looked at the two goodly young men about to be cut off so early-one indeed guilty, but the victim of an iniquitous act of deliberate treachery.

He asked if Mr. Tichborne wished to entrust to him aught that could be done by word of mouth, and a few commissions were given to him. Then Antony bethought him of thanks to Lord and Lady Shrewsbury for all they had done for him, and above all for sending Mr. Talbot; and a message to ask pardon for having so belied the loyal education they had given him. The divided religion of the country had been his bane: his mother's charge secretly to follow her faith had been the beginning, and then had followed the charms of stratagem on behalf of Queen Mary.

Perhaps, after all, his death, as a repentant man still single minded, saved him from lapsing into the double vileness of the veteran intriguers whose prey he had been.

"I commend me to the Mercy Master Who sees my heart," he said.

Herewith the warder returned, and at his request summoned Gillingham, a st.u.r.dy grizzled fellow, looking grim with grief. Babington told him of the arrangement made, and that he was to leave London early in the morning with Mr. Talbot, but the man immediately dropped on his knees and swore a solemn oath that nothing should induce him to leave the place while his master breathed.

"Thou foolish knave," said Antony, "thou canst do me no good, and wilt but make thyself a more piteous wretch than thou art already. Why, 'tis for love of thee that I would have thee spared the sight."

"Am I a babe to be spared?" growled the man. And all that he could be induced to promise was that he would repair to Bridgefield as soon as all was over-"Unless," said he, "I meet one of those accursed rogues, and then a halter would be sweet, if I had first had my will of them."

"Hush, Harry, or Master Warder will be locking thee up next," said Antony.

And then came the farewell. It was at last a long, speechless, sorrowful embrace; and then Antony, slipping from it to his knees, said-"Bless me! Oh bless me: thou who hast been mine only true friend. Bless me as a father!"

"May G.o.d in Heaven bless thee!" said Richard, solemnly laying his hand on his head. "May He, Who knoweth how thou hast been led astray, pardon thee! May He, Who hath felt the agonies and shame of the Cross, redeem thee, and suffer thee not for any pains of death to fall from Him!"

He was glad to hear afterwards, when broken-hearted Gillingham joined him, that the last words heard from Antony Babington's lips were-"Parce mihi, Domine JESU!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

FOTHERINGHAY.

"Is this my last journey?" said Queen Mary, with a strange, sad smile, as she took her seat in the heavy lumbering coach which had been appointed for her conveyance from Chartley, her rheumatism having set in too severely to permit her to ride.

"Say not so; your Grace has weathered many a storm before," said Marie de Courcelles. "This one will also pa.s.s over."

"Ah, my good Marie, never before have I felt this foreboding and sinking of the heart. I have always hoped before, but I have exhausted the casket of Pandora. Even hope is flown!"

Jean Kennedy tried to say something of "Darkest before dawn."

"The dawn, it may be, of the eternal day," said the Queen. "Nay, my friends, the most welcome tidings that could greet me would be that my weary bondage was over for ever, and that I should wreck no more gallant hearts. What, mignonne, art thou weeping? There will be freedom again for thee when that day comes."

"O madam, I want not freedom at such a price!" And yet Cicely had never recovered her looks since those seventeen days at Tickhill. She still looked white and thin, and her dark eyebrows lay in a heavy line, seldom lifted by the merry looks and smiles that used to flash over her face. Life had begun to press its weight upon her, and day after day, as Humfrey watched her across the chapel, and exchanged a word or two with her while crossing the yard, had he grieved at her altered mien; and vexed himself with wondering whether she had after all loved Babington, and were mourning for him.