The Captive Queen of Scots - Plaidy Jean (читать книги онлайн бесплатно без сокращение бесплатно txt) 📗

There was silence for a while then Mary said: “They are bringing him back now. What does it mean, Seton? What are they planning now?”

SIR RALPH LOOKED into the face of the man who had been brought to him for questioning.

“I have told you all I know,” said Rowland Kitchyn.

“How can we be sure of that?”

“I have nothing else to say.”

“We have means of extracting the truth,” said Sir Ralph.

He saw that the man had turned pale, and he noticed that he was a frail man, a man more accustomed to wielding a pen than a sword.

“You mean you would torture me?”

“We would consider the means were unimportant if through them we arrived at the truth.”

“Do men speak truth under torture? You know they do not always do so, my lord. They cry out what is demanded of them . . . anything to stop the torture.”

Sir Ralph looked into that pale face and saw the sweat at the temples; the fear in the eyes. It was not the fear of pain, so much as the fear that he would not be able to withstand it. There was a difference, and Sir Ralph was wise enough to see it. He wondered whether it would only be necessary to talk of torture. He hoped so, for he was not a violent man.

“Think about this,” he said. “Tomorrow you will be brought before me again. I am eager to know the truth.”

Rowland Kitchyn was taken back to his cell; he was sick with fear. He did not know how he would stand up to torture. He had never suffered it. He was a man of great imagination, and he was afraid . . . terribly afraid that his body would take possession of his mind and insist on his saying that which was false, in order to save it from pain.

ROWLAND KITCHYN awoke in the night. He felt the cold of the stone floor through his pallet, yet he was sweating. He had dreamed that he was in a dungeon of this evil Tutbury and there they had tortured him; and that as the pain possessed him he lost all sense of decency, all sense of honor; thinking only to save his wretched limbs from pain, he had cried out lies against his master.

“I must not, I must not,” he moaned. “I will not.”

But how could he be sure? He knew full well that under torture men lost all sense of reason, all sense of justice.

They wished him to betray his master.

“I will never do it. I never will,” he whispered.

But in his dream he had done so; and how could he be sure when awake he would be more brave?

A terrible belief had come to him. The dream was a warning. He would betray his master under torture.

“I never will. I never will,” he moaned.

But how could he be sure?

There was a way. It was the only way. He lay in the dark, thinking of it.

SIR RALPH SADLER said to Somers: “I am sure that fellow Briggs was a vengeful rogue, and I am certain that both Langford and his secretary Kitchyn are guiltless of intrigue against the Queen. Catholics they are, alas. But there are many Catholics in England.”

“What do you suggest we should do? Release Kitchyn?”

Sir Ralph nodded. “Come with me to his cell. We will tell him that he is a free man.”

Together the pair made their way to the prisoner. Sir Ralph unlocked the door and, peering into the gloom, saw Kitchyn lying on his pallet; he was very still.

The two men approached, and Sadler murmured: “Kitchyn, wake up. We are come to speak to you.”

There was no answer and, bending over the figure of the man on the pallet, Sadler gave a sudden exclamation, which brought Somers to his side.

Both men stood staring down at the lifeless body of the prisoner, who had strangled himself.

HER WOMEN HAD NOT yet come into her bedchamber to help her rise, but Mary was awake. Something had awakened her early on this morning, some evil foreboding which prevented her from sleeping.

She had felt uneasy ever since she had seen that poor man being dragged across the courtyard to the chapel. The persecution of others never failed to move her deeply, perhaps because she had suffered so much herself.

She lay for a moment, wondering whether it was some unusual sound of activity which had awakened her; there was no sound now in the courtyard below.

As it was impossible to sleep, she rose and put her wrap about her; she went to the window and looked out.

For a moment as she stared at the horror which confronted her, she thought that she was living in some nightmare.

“No . . . ” she whispered, but it was so. That man who was hanging from the turret opposite her window was the prisoner whom they had been holding in the castle for the last three weeks.

For some seconds she stood staring at the lifeless form hanging there. Why had they hung him opposite her window? There could be only one answer. They were saying to her: This man offended us because he was a Catholic. You are a Catholic also.

On whose orders had that man been hung there?

Turning shuddering away, Mary went back to her bed and lay there.

It was thus that Seton found her.

“Seton!” she cried. “We have never been in such danger as we are now. I have felt it in my bones. And now I have proof.”

“What proof?” asked Seton.

“Go to the window and you will see.”

Seton went, and Mary heard the exclamation which escaped from her before, white and trembling, she came back to the bed.

THERE WAS NOT A CATHOLIC in Mary’s household who did not see in the fate of Rowland Kitchyn a grim warning to themselves.

Now an atmosphere of dread and suspicion existed throughout the castle. Looking back, Mary thought with longing of the early days when she had been in the charge of the Shrewsburys, before Bess had conceived her absurd lies.

Trouble was coming. Every day she expected to hear that she herself would meet the fate of Rowland Kitchyn. Young Bessie told her that he had strangled himself, but she did not believe that. He had been taken, she was certain, imprisoned in Tutbury and hanged as a warning to her of what she might expect.

She called Jacques Nau to her and asked him to repeat what Elizabeth had said to him on the subject of freedom of religion.

“Her Majesty assured me,” answered Jacques, “that it was never her wish that any of her subjects should suffer for the sake of conscience or religion.”

“But there are fanatics in this land,” she said. “I fear them, Jacques.”

“I am of the opinion that Queen Elizabeth is not one of them.”

“You comfort me,” Mary told him; and he wondered whether now was the moment to tell her of his desire to marry Bessie. No, he decided. At this time she was too anxious about other matters. They must wait, he and Bessie. There must be no betrayal of their secret until they were sure. The fact that Lord Percy had been selected for Bessie was going to raise great difficulties. There was too much at stake to risk their future happiness.

Mary dismissed Jacques and wrote to Elizabeth.

. . . If it should ever come to pass that an open attack were made on me for my religion, I am perfectly ready, with the Grace of God to bow my neck beneath the axe, that my blood may be shed before all Christendom; and I should esteem it the greatest happiness to be the first to do so. I do not say this out of vainglory while the danger is remote . . .

When she had finished writing this she resolutely took up a pen and wrote to her aunt Renee at Rheims.

She was not going to plead with Seton any more. She was going to order her to go to France. Seton was in danger even as she was; she could no longer bear to watch her dearest friend growing a little more haggard, a little more crippled every day, sacrificing life itself for her sake. When she had written those letters and dispatched them, she sent for Seton.

“My dear friend,” she said, “I have written to Rheims. You must prepare to leave.”

Seton was speechless, but Mary had become regal.

“It is an order, Seton—one I should have given long ago.”