Young Babington was half-flattered and half-frightened at the commotion he had excited. "Am I going to the Tower?" he asked, in a low voice, awestricken, yet not without a certain ring of self-importance, when he saw his mails brought down, and was bidden to put on his boots and his travelling dress.
And Captain Talbot had a cruel satisfaction in replying, "No, Master Babington; the Tower is not for refractory boys. You are going to your schoolmaster."
But where the school was to be Richard kept an absolute secret by special desire, in order that no communication should be kept up through any of the household. He was to avoid Chatsworth, and to return as soon as possible to endeavour to trace the supposed huckster-woman at Chesterfield.
When once away from home, he ceased to treat young Babington as a criminal, but rode in a friendly manner with him through lanes and over moors, till the young fellow began to thaw towards him, and even went so far as to volunteer one day that he would not have brought Mistress Cicely into the matter if there had been any other sure way of getting the letter delivered in his absence.
"Ah, boy!" returned Richard, "when once we swerve from the open and direct paths, there is no saying into what tangles we may bring ourselves and others."
Antony winced a little, and said, "Whoever says I lied, lies in his throat."
"No one hath said thou wert false in word, but how as to thy deed?"
"Sir," said Antony, "surely when a high emprise and great right is to be done, there is no need to halt over such petty quibbles."
"Master Babington, no great right was ever done through a little wrong. Depend on it, if you cannot aid without a breach of trust, it is the sure sign that it is not the will of God that you should be the one to do it."
Captain Talbot mused whether he should convince or only weary the lad by an argument he had once heard in a sermon, that the force of Satan's temptation to our blessed Lord, when showing Him all the kingdoms of the world, must have been the absolute and immediate vanishing of all kinds of evil, by a voluntary abdication on the part of the Prince of this world, instead not only of the coming anguish of the strife, but of the long, long, often losing, battle which has been waging ever since. Yet for this great achievement He would not commit the moment's sin. He was just about to begin when Antony broke in, "Then, sir, you do deem it a great wrong?"
"That I leave to wiser heads than mine," returned the sailor. "My duty is to obey my Lord, his duty is to obey her Grace. That is all a plain man needs to see."
"But an if the true Queen be thus mewed up, sir?" asked Antony. Richard was too wise a man to threaten the suggestion down as rank treason, well knowing that thus he should never root it out.
"Look you here, Antony," he said; "who ought to reign is a question of birth, such as neither of us can understand nor judge. But we know thus much, that her Grace, Queen Elizabeth, hath been crowned and anointed and received oaths of fealty as her due, and that is quite enough for any honest man."
"Even when she keeps in durance the Queen, who came as her guest in dire distress?"
"Nay, Master Antony, you are not old enough to remember that the durance began not until the Queen of Scots tried to form a party for herself among the English liegemen. And didst thou know, thou simple lad, what the letter bore, which thou didst carry, and what it would bring on this peaceful land?"
Antony looked a little startled when he heard of the burning of the kennel, but he averred that Don John was a gallant prince.
"I have seen more than one gallant Spaniard under whose power I should grieve to see any friend of mine."
All the rest of the way Richard Talbot entertained the young gentleman with stories of his own voyages and adventures, into which he managed to bring traits of Spanish cruelty and barbarity as shown in the Low Countries, such as, without actually drawing the moral every time, might show what was to be expected if Mary of Scotland and Don John of Austria were to reign over England, armed with the Inquisition.
Antony asked a good many questions, and when he found that the captain had actually been an eye-witness of the state of a country harried by the Spaniards, he seemed a good deal struck.
"I think if I had the training of him I could make a loyal Englishman of him yet," said Richard Talbot to his wife on his return. "But I fear me there is that in his heart and his conscience which will only grow, while yonder sour-faced doctor, with whom I had to leave him at Cambridge, preaches to him of the perdition of Pope and Papists."
"If his mother were indeed a concealed Papist," said Susan, "such sermons will only revolt the poor child."
"Yea, truly. If my Lord wanted to make a plotter and a Papist of the boy he could scarce find a better means. I myself never could away with yonder lady's blandishments. But when he thinks of her in contrast to yonder divine, it would take a stronger head than his not to be led away. The best chance for him is that the stir of the world about him may put captive princesses out of his head."
CHAPTER VIII
THE KEY OF THE CIPHER
Where is the man who does not persuade himself that when he gratifies his own curiosity he does so for the sake of his womankind? So Richard Talbot, having made his protest, waited two days, but when next he had any leisure moments before him, on a Sunday evening, he said to his wife, "Sue, what hast thou done with that scroll of Cissy's? I trow thou wilt not rest till thou art convinced it is but some lying horoscope or Popish charm."
Susan had in truth been resting in perfect quietness, being extremely busy over her spinning, so as to be ready for the weaver who came round periodically to direct the more artistic portions of domestic work. However, she joyfully produced the scroll from the depths of the casket where she kept her chief treasures, and her spindle often paused in its dance as she watched her husband over it, with his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, from whence he only removed them now and then to set down a letter or two by way of experiment. She had to be patient, for she heard nothing that night but that he believed it was French, that the father of deceits himself might be puzzled with the thing, and that she might as well ask him for his head at once as propose his consulting Master Francis.
The next night he unfolded it with many a groan, and would say nothing at all; but he sat up late and waked in early dawn to pore over it again, and on the third day of study he uttered a loud exclamation of dismay, but he ordered Susan off to bed in the midst, and did not utter anything but a perplexed groan or two when he followed her much later.
It was not till the next night that she heard anything, and then, in the darkness, he began, "Susan, thou art a good wife and a discreet woman."
Perhaps her heart leapt as she thought to herself, "At last it is coming, I knew it would!" but she only made some innocent note of attention.
"Thou hast asked no questions, nor tried to pry into this unhappy mystery," he went on.
"I knew you would tell me what was fit for me to hear," she replied.
"Fit! It is fit for no one to hear! Yet I needs must take counsel with thee, and thou hast shown thou canst keep a close mouth so far."
"Concerns it our Cissy, husband?"
"Ay does it Our Cissy, indeed! What wouldst say, Sue, to hear she was daughter to the lady yonder."
"To the Queen of Scots?"
"Hush! hush!" fairly grasping her to hinder the words from being uttered above her breath.
"And her father?"
"That villain, Bothwell, of course. Poor lassie, she is ill fathered!"
"You may say so. Is it in the scroll?"
"Ay!