“I may well build tennis courts,” he said, and his voice had a ring of wild and malignant passion. “I may well build courts for tennis play. Nothing else is left for me to do.”
In the blackness no word came from his listeners.
“You too may do the like,” the Bishop said. “But I would you do it quickly, for soon neither the one nor the other of you but will be stripped so bare that you shall not have enough to buy balls with.”
The Duke made an impatient sound like a drawing in of his breath, but still he spoke no word.
“I tell you, both of you,” the Bishop’s voice came, “that all of us have been fooled. Who was it that helped to set on high this one that now presses us down? I did! I! …
“It was I that called the masque at my house where first the King did see her. It was I that advised her how to bear herself. And what gratitude has been shown me? I have been sent to sequester myself in my see; I have been set to gnaw my fingers as they had been old bones thrown to a dog. Truly, no juicy meats have been my share. Yet it was I set this woman where she sits. …”
“I too have my griefs,” the Duke of Norfolk’s voice came.
“And I, God wot,” came Wriothesley’s.
“Why, you have been fooled,” Gardiner’s voice; “and well you know it. For who was it that sent you both, one after the other, into France thinking that you might make a match between the Lady Royal and the Duke of Orleans?—Who but the Queen?—For well she knew that ye loved the French and their King as they had been your brothers. And well we know now that never in the mind of her, nor in that of the King whom she bewitches and enslaves, was there any thought save that the Lady Royal should be wedded to Spain. So ye are fooled.”
He let his voice sink low; then he raised it again—
“Fooled! Fooled! Fooled! You two and I. For who of your friends the French shall ever believe again word that you utter. And all your goods and lands this Queen will have for the Church, so that she may have utter power with a parcel of new shavelings, that will not withstand her. So all the land will come in to her leash. … We are fooled and ruined, ye and I alike.”
“Well, we know this,” the Duke’s voice said distastefully. “You have no need to rehearse griefs that too well we feel. There is no lord, either of our part or of the other, that would not have her down.”
“But what will ye do?” Gardiner said.
“Nothing may we do!” the voice of Wriothesley with its dismal terror came to their ears. “The King is too firmly her Highness’s man.”
“Her ‘Highness,’ ” the Bishop mocked him with a bitter scorn. “I believe you would yet curry favour with this Queen of straw.”
“It is a man’s province to be favourable in the eyes of his Prince,” the buried voice came again. “If I could win her favour I would. But well ye know there is no way.”
“Ye ha’ mingled too much with Lutheran swine,” the Bishop said. “Now it is too late for you.”
“So it is,” Wriothesley said. “I think you, Bishop, would have done it too had you been able to make your account of it.”
The Bishop snarled invisibly.
But the voice of Norfolk came malignantly upon them.
“This is all of a piece with your silly schemings. Did I come here to hear ye wrangle? It is peril enow to come here. What will ye do?”
“I will make a pact with him of the other side?” the Bishop said.
“Misery!” the Duke said; “did I come here to hear this madness? You and Cranmer have sought each other’s heads this ten years. Will you seek his aid now? What may he do? He is as rotten a reed as thou or Wriothesley.”
The Bishop cried suddenly with a loud voice—
“Ho, there! Come you out!”
Norfolk set his hand to his sword and so did Wriothesley. It was in both their minds, as it were one thought, that if this was a treason of the Bishop’s he should there die.
From the blackness of the wall sides where the grille was there came the sound of a terroring lock and a creaking door.
“God!” Norfolk said; “who is this?”
There came the sound of breathing of one man who walked with noiseless shoes.
“Have you heard enow to make you believe that these lords’ hearts are true to the endeavour of casting the Queen down?”
“I have heard enow,” a smooth voice said. “I never thought it had been otherwise.”
“Who is this?” Wriothesley said. “I will know who this is that has heard us.”
“You fool,” Gardiner said; “this man is of the other side.”
“They have come to you!” Norfolk said.
“To whom else should we come,” the voice answered.
A subtler silence of agitation and thought was between these two men. At last Gardiner said—
“Tell these lords what you would have of us?”
“We would have these promises,” the voice said; “first, of you, my Lord Duke, that if by our endeavours your brother’s child be brought to a trial for unchastity you will in no wise aid her at that trial with your voice or your encouragement.”
“A trial!” and “Unchastity!” the Duke said. “This is a winter madness. Ye know that my niece—St. Kevin curse her for it—is as chaste as the snow.”
“So was your other niece, Anne Boleyn, for all you knew, yet you dogged her to death,” Gardiner said. “Then you plotted with Papists; now it is the turn of the Lutherans. It is all one, so we are rid of this pest.”
“Well, I will promise it,” the Duke said. “Ye knew I would. It was not worth while to ask me.”
“Secondly,” the voice said, “of you, my Lord Duke, we would
