halls of Dethick or Tichborne.
'Sirs,' said the young man, with a sad smile irradiating for a moment the restless despair of his countenance, 'it is not by choice that I am an intruder on your privacy; I will abstract myself so far as is possible.'
'I have no secrets from my Chidiock,' cried Babington.
'But Mr. Talbot may,' replied his friend, 'therefore I will only first inquire whether he can tell us aught of the royal lady for whose sake we suffer. They have asked us many questions, but answered none.'
Richard was able to reply that after the seclusion at Tixall she had been brought back to Chartley, and there was no difference in the manner of her custody, moreover, that she had recovered from her attack of illness, tidings he had just received in a letter from Humfrey. He did not feel it needful to inflict a pang on the men who were to die in two days' time by letting them know that she was to be immediately brought to trial on the evidence extracted from them. On hearing that her captivity was not straitened, both looked relieved, and Tichborne, thanking him, lay down on his own bed, turned his face to the wall, and drew the covering over his head.
'Ah!' sighed Babington, 'is there no hope for him-he who has done naught but guard too faithfully my unhappy secret? Is he to die for his faith and honour?'
'Alas, Antony! I am forbidden to give thee hope for any. Of that we must not speak. The time is short enough for what needs to be spoken.'
'I knew that there was none for myself,' said Antony, 'but for those whom-' There was a gesture from Tichborne as if he could not bear this, and he went on, 'Yea, there is a matter on which I must needs speak to you, sir. The young lady-where is she?'-he spoke earnestly, and lowering his voice as he bent his head.
'She is still at Chartley.'
'That is well. But, sir, she must be guarded. I fear me there is one who is aware of her parentage.'
'The Scottish archer?'
'No, the truth.'
'You knew it?'
'Not when I made my suit to her, or I should never have dared to lift my eyes so far.'
'I suppose your knowledge came from Langston,' said Richard, more perturbed than amazed at the disclosure.
'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 pass.'
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 assuming 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 password '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 assured 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 God'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 noble 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 assure 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 God.'
'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 space to speak.'
He proceeded to tell how, between dissipation and intrigue, he had lived in a perpetual state of excitement,
