The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

“What King?” said Cousin Richard.

“King James the First,” said Elfrida. “Why⁠—what⁠—” for Cousin Richard had sprung to his feet, and old Parrot-nose had Elfrida by the wrist.

He sat down on the seat and drew her gently till she stood in front of him⁠—gently, but it was like the hand of iron in the velvet glove (of which, no doubt, you have often read).

“Now, Mistress Arden,” he said softly, “tell me over again this romance that you tell your cousin.”

Elfrida told it.

“And where did you hear this pretty story?” he asked.

“Where are we now?” gasped Elfrida, who was beginning to understand.

“Here in the garden⁠—where else?” said Cousin Richard, who seemed to understand nothing of the matter.

“Here⁠—in my custody,” said the tutor, who thought he understood everything. “Now tell me all⁠—every name, every particular⁠—or it will be the worse for thee and thy father.”

“Come, sir,” said Cousin Richard, “you frighten my cousin. It is but a tale she told. She is always merry, and full of many inventions.”

“It is a tale she shall tell again before those of higher power than I,” said the tutor, in a thoroughly disagreeable way, and his hand tightened on Elfrida’s wrist.

“But⁠—but⁠—it’s history,” cried Elfrida, in despair. “It’s in all the books.”

“Which books?” he asked keenly.

“I don’t know⁠—all of them,” she sullenly answered; sullenly, because she now really did understand just the sort of adventure in which her unusual knowledge of history, and, to do her justice, her almost equally unusual desire to show off, had landed her.

“Now,” said the hateful tutor, for such Elfrida felt him to be, “tell me the names of the conspirators.”

“It can’t do any harm,” Elfrida told herself. “This is James the First’s time, and I’m in it. But it’s three hundred years ago all the same, and it all has happened, and it can’t make any difference what I say, so I’d better tell all the names I know.”

The hateful tutor shook her.

“Yes, all right,” she said; and to herself she added, “It’s only a sort of dream; I may as well tell.” Yet when she opened her mouth to tell all the names she could remember of the conspirators of the poor old Gunpowder Plot that didn’t come off, all those years ago, she found herself not telling those names at all. Instead, she found herself saying⁠—

“I’m not going to tell. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sorry I said anything about it. It’s all nonsense⁠—I mean, it’s only history, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, listening behind doors⁠—I mean, out of doors behind stone seats, when people are talking nonsense to their own cousins.”

Elfrida does not remember very exactly what happened after this. She was furiously angry, and when you are furiously angry things get mixed and tangled up in a sort of dreadful red mist. She only remembers that the tutor was very horrid, and twisted her wrists to make her tell, and she screamed and tried to kick him; that Cousin Richard, who did not scream, did, on the other hand, succeed in kicking the tutor; that she was dragged indoors and shut up in a room without a window, so that it was quite dark.

“If only I’d got Edred here,” she said to herself, with tears of rage and mortification, “I’d try to make some poetry and get the Mouldiwarp to come and fetch us away. But it’s no use till he comes home.”

When he did come home⁠—after the bear-baiting and the cockfighting and the banquet and the masque⁠—Lord and Lady Arden came with him, of course. And they found their house occupied by an armed guard, and in the dark little room a pale child exhausted with weeping, who assured them again and again that it was all nonsense, it was only history, and she hadn’t meant to tell⁠—indeed she hadn’t. Lady Arden took her in her arms and held her close and tenderly, in spite of the grand red velvet and the jewels.

“Thou’st done no harm,” said Lord Arden; “a pack of silly tales. Tomorrow I’ll see my Lord Salisbury and prick this silly bubble. Go thou to bed, sweetheart,” he said to his wife, “and let the little maid lie with thee⁠—she is all a-tremble with tears and terrors. Tomorrow, my Lord Secretary shall teach these popinjays their place, and Arden House shall be empty of them, and we shall laugh at this fine piece of work that a solemn marplot has made out of a name or two and a young child’s fancies. By tomorrow night all will be well, and we shall lie down in peace.”

But when tomorrow night came it had, as all nights have, the day’s work behind it. Lord Arden and his lady and the little children lay, not in Arden House in Soho, not in Arden Castle on the downs by the sea, but in the Tower of London, charged with high treason and awaiting their trial.

For my Lord Salisbury had gone to those vaults under the Houses of Parliament, and had found that bold soldier of fortune, Guy Fawkes, with his dark eyes, his dark lantern, and his dark intent; and the names of those in the conspiracy had been given up, and King James was saved, and the Parliaments⁠—but the Catholic gentlemen whom he had deceived, and who had turned against him and his deceits, were face to face with the rack and the scaffold.

And I can’t explain it at all⁠—because, of course, Elfrida knew as well as I do that it all happened three hundred years ago⁠—or, if you prefer to put it that way, that it had never happened, and that anyway, it was Mr. Tresham’s letter to Lord Monteagle, and not Elfrida’s singing of that silly rhyme, that had brought the Ardens and all these other gentlemen to the Tower and to the shadow of death. And yet she felt that it was she who had betrayed them. She felt also that if she had betrayed