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.
He gripped his horse by the knees, his left hand holding the leather reins, hung with little tassels of vermilion silk, his right hand resting upon the handle of his sword.
They came up to the porch of the church, and suddenly the foremost men-at-arms halted, the slight backward movement of their horses sending those who followed backward also. There was a pawing of hooves, a rattle of accoutrements, a sharp order from somewhere in front, and then they were all sitting motionless.
The moment had arrived. John Commendone saw what he had come to see. From that instant his real life began. All that had gone before, as he saw in after years, had been but a leading up and preparation for