The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

have succeeded in eluding. When he does that,

then will I hold my hand. But not before.

 

“That, madame, is my story,” said Don Antonio, after a pause, and

from narrowing eyes looked at the beauty who had heard him through.

 

Daylight had faded whilst the tale was telling. Night was come, and

lights had long since been fetched, the curtains drawn over the long

windows that looked out across the parkland to the river.

 

Twice only had he paused in all that narrative. Once when he had

described the avowal of his love for Anne, Princess of Eboli, when

a burst of sobs from her had come to interrupt him; again when a

curious bird-note had rung out upon the gathering dusk. Then he

stopped to listen.

 

“Curious that,” he had said - “an eagle’s cry. I have not heard it

these many months, not since I left the hills of Aragon.”

 

Thereafter he had continued to the end.

 

Considering her now, his glance inscrutable, he said:

 

“You weep, madame. Tell me, what is it that has moved you - the

contemplation of my sufferings, or of your own duplicity?”

 

She started up, very white, her eyes scared.

 

“I do not understand you. What do you mean, sir?”

 

“I mean, madame, that God did not give you so much beauty that you

should use it in the decoying of an unfortunate, that you should

hire it at an assassin’s fee to serve the crapulous King of Spain.”

 

He rose and towered before her, a figure at once of anger, dignity,

and some compassion.

 

“So much ardour from youth and beauty to age and infirmity was in

itself suspicious. The Catholic King has the guile of Satan, I

remembered. I wondered, and hoped my suspicions might be unfounded.

Yet prudence made me test them, that the danger, if it existed,

should manifest itself and be destroyed. So I came to tell you all

my story, so that if you did the thing I feared, you might come to

the knowledge of precisely what it was you did. I have learnt whilst

here that what I suspected is - alas! quite true. You were a lure,

a decoy sent to work my ruin, to draw me into a trap where daggers

waited for me. Why did you do this? What was the bribe that could

corrupt you, lovely lady?”

 

Sobs shook her. Her will gave way before his melancholy sternness.

 

“I do not know by what wizardry you have discovered it!” she cried.

“It was true; but it is true no longer. I knew not what I did. By

that window, across the meadows, you can reach the river in safety.”

She rose, controlling her emotion that she might instruct him.

“They wait for you in the enclosed garden.”

 

He smiled wistfully.

 

“They waited, madame. They wait no longer, unless it be for death.

That eagle’s cry, thrice repeated, was the signal from my faithful

Gil, not only that the trap was discovered, but that those who baited

it were taken. Suspecting what I did, I took my measures ere I came.

Antonio Perez, as I have told you, is not an easy man to murder.

Unlike Philip, I do not make war on women, and I have no reckoning

to present to you. But I am curious, madame, to know what led you

to this baseness.”

 

“I - I thought you evil, and - and they bribed me. I was offered

ten thousand ducats for your head. We are very poor, we Chantenacs,

and so I fell. But, sir - sir” - she was on her knees to him now,

and she had caught his hand in hers- “poor as I am, all that I have

is yours to do with as you will, to help to avenge yourself upon

that Spanish monster. Take what you will. Take all I have.”

 

His smile grew gentler. Gently he raised her.

 

“Madame,” he said, “I am myself a sinner, as I have shown you, a

man unequal to resisting temptation when it took me in its trammels.

Of all that you offer, I will take only the right to this kiss.”

 

And bending, be bore her hand to his lips.

 

Then he went out to join Gil and his men, who waited in the

courtyard, guarding three prisoners they had taken.

 

Perez considered them by the light of the lantern that Gil held

aloft for him.

 

“One of you,” he announced, “shall return to Castile and give tidings

to Philip, his master, that Antonio Perez leaves for England and the

Court of Elizabeth, to aid her, by his knowledge of the affairs of

Spain, in her measures against the Catholic King, and to continue

his holy work, which is to make the name of Philip II stink in the

nostrils of all honest men. One of you I will spare for that

purpose. You shall draw lots for it in the morning. The other two

must hang.”

 

IV. THE NIGHT OF CHARITY

 

THE CASE OF THE LADY ALICE LISLE

 

0f all the cases tried in the course of that terrible circuit,

justly known as the Bloody Assizes, the only one that survives at

all in the popular memory is the case of the Lady Alice Lisle. Her

advanced age, the fact that she was the first woman known in English

history to have suffered death for no worse an offence than that of

having exercised the feminine prerogative of mercy, and the further

fact that, even so, this offence - technical as it was - was never

fully proved against her, are all circumstances which have left

their indelible stamp of horror upon the public mind. There is also

the further circumstance that hers was the first case tried in the

West by that terrible Chief Justice, Baron Jeffreys of Wem.

 

But the feature that renders her case peculiarly interesting to the

historical psychologist - and it is a feature that is in danger of

being overlooked - is that she cannot really be said to have suffered

for the technical offence for which she took her trial. That was

the pretext rather than the cause. In reality she was the innocent

victim of a relentless, undiscerning Nemesis.

 

The battle of Sedgemoor had been fought and lost by the Protestant

champion, James, Duke of Monmouth. In the West, which had answered

the Duke’s summons to revolt, there was established now a horrible

reign of terror reflecting the bigoted, pitiless, vindictive nature

of the King. Faversham had left Colonel Percy Kirke in command at

Bridgwater, a ruthless ruffian, who at one time had commanded the

“Tangier garrison, and whose men were full worthy of their commander.

Kirke’s Lambs they were called, in an irony provoked by the emblem

of the Paschal Lamb on the flag of this, the First Tangier Regiment,

originally levied to wage war upon the infidel.

 

>From Bridgwater Colonel Kirke made a horrible punitive progress to

Taunton, where he put up at the White Hart Inn. Now, there was a

very solid signpost standing upon a triangular patch of green

before the door of the White Hart, and Colonel Kirke conceived

the quite facetious notion of converting this advertisement of

hospitality into a gallows - a signpost of temporal welfare into

a signpost of eternity. So forth he fetched the prisoners he had

brought in chains from Bridgwater, and proceeded, without any form

of trial whatsoever, to string them up before the inn. The story

runs that as they were hoisted to that improvised gibbet, Kirke

and his officers, standing at the windows, raised their glasses to

pledge their happy deliverance; then, when the victims began to

kick convulsively, Kirke would order the drums to strike up, so

that the gentlemen might have music for their better dancing.

 

The colonel, you see, was a humorist, as humour was then understood

upon the northern shores of Africa, where he had been schooled.

 

When, eventually, Colonel Kirke was recalled and reprimanded, it

was not because of his barbarities many of which transcend the

possibilities of decent print - but because of a lenity which this

venal gentleman began to display when he discovered that many of

his victims were willing to pay handsomely for mercy.

 

Meanwhile, under his reign of terror, men who had cause to fear the

terrible hand of the King’s vengeance went into hiding wherever they

could. Among those who escaped into Hampshire, thinking themselves

safer in a county that had not participated in the war, were a

dissenting parson named George Hicks, who had been in Monmouth’s

army, and a lawyer named Richard Nelthorp, outlawed for participation

in the Rye House Plot. In his desperate quest for shelter, Hicks

bethought him of the charitable Nonconformist lady of Moyle’s Court,

the widow of that John Lisle who had been one of Cromwell’s Lords

Commissioners of the Great Seal, and most active in bringing King

Charles I to justice.

 

John Lisle had fled to Switzerland at the Restoration; but Stuart

vengeance had followed him, set a price upon his head, and procured

his murder at Lausanne. That was twenty years ago. Since then his

lady, because she was known to have befriended and sheltered many

Royalists, and because she had some stout Tory friends to plead for

her, was allowed to remain in tranquil possession of her estates.

And there the Lady Alice Lisle - so called by courtesy, since

Cromwell’s titles did not at law survive the Restoration - might

have ended her days in peace, but that it was written that those

who hated her - innocent and aged though she was - for the name she

bore, who included her in the rancour which had procured her

husband’s assassination, were to be fully satisfied. And the

instrument of fate was this parson Hicks. He prevailed upon Dunne,

a baker of Warminster, and a Nonconformist, to convey to the Lady

Lisle his prayer for shelter. With that message Dunne set out on

July 25th for Ellingham, a journey of some twenty miles. He went

by way of Fovant and Chalk to Salisbury Plain. But as he did not

know the way thence, he sought out a co-religionist named Barter,

who undertook, for a consideration, to go with him and direct him.

 

Together the pair came in the late afternoon of that Saturday to

the handsome house of Moyle’s Court, and to my lady’s steward, who

received them. Dunne, who appears to have been silly and imprudent,

states that he is sent to know if my lady will entertain a minister

named Hicks.

 

Carpenter, the steward, a staid, elderly fellow, took fright at

once. Although he may not have associated an absconding Presbyterian

parson with the late rebellion, he must have supposed at least that

he was one of those against whom there were warrants for preaching

in forbidden private meetings. So to her ladyship above stairs

Carpenter conveyed a warning with the message.

 

But that slight, frail, homely lady of seventy, with kindly eyes of

a faded blue, smiled upon his fears. She had sheltered fugitives

before - in the old days of the Commonwealth - and nothing but good

had ever come of it. She would see this messenger.

 

With misgivings, Carpenter haled Dunne into her presence, and left

them alone together. The impression conveyed by Dunne was that

Hicks was in hiding from the warrants that were out against all

Nonconformist preachers. But when he mentioned that Hicks had a

companion, she desired to know his name.

 

“I do not know, my lady. But I do not think he has been in the

army, either.”

 

She considered a while. But in the end pity conquered doubt in