How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?
Macbeth.
“I desire some conference with you.” The words were simple in themselves, but Lord Leicester was in that alarmed and feverish state of mind when the most ordinary occurrences seem fraught with alarming import; and he turned hastily round to survey the person by whom they had been spoken. There was nothing remarkable in the speaker’s appearance, which consisted of a black silk doublet and short mantle, with a black vizard on his face; for it appeared he had been among the crowd of masks who had thronged into the hall in the retinue of Merlin, though he did not wear any of the extravagant disguises by which most of them were distinguished.
“Who are you, or what do you want with me?” said Leicester, not without betraying, by his accents, the hurried state of his spirits.
“No evil, my lord,” answered the mask, “but much good and honour, if you will rightly understand my purpose. But I must speak with you more privately.”
“I can speak with no nameless stranger,” answered Leicester, dreading he knew not precisely what from the request of the stranger; “and those who are known to me must seek another and a fitter time to ask an interview.”
He would have hurried away, but the mask still detained him.
“Those who talk to your lordship of what your own honour demands have a right over your time, whatever occupations you may lay aside in order to indulge them.”
“How! my honour? Who dare impeach it?” said Leicester.
“Your own conduct alone can furnish grounds for accusing it, my lord, and it is that topic on which I would speak with you.”
“You are insolent,” said Leicester, “and abuse the hospitable license of the time, which prevents me from having you punished. I demand your name!”
“Edmund Tressilian of Cornwall,” answered the mask. “My tongue has been bound by a promise for four-and-twenty hours. The space is passed,— I now speak, and do your lordship the justice to address myself first to you.”
The thrill of astonishment which had penetrated to Leicester’s very heart at hearing that name pronounced by the voice of the man he most detested, and by whom he conceived himself so deeply injured, at first rendered him immovable, but instantly gave way to such a thirst for revenge as the pilgrim in the desert feels for the water-brooks. He had but sense and self-government enough left to prevent his stabbing to the heart the audacious villain, who, after the ruin he had brought upon him, dared, with such unmoved assurance, thus to practise upon him further. Determined to suppress for the moment every symptom of agitation, in order to perceive the full scope of Tressilian’s purpose, as well as to secure his own vengeance, he answered in a tone so altered by restrained passion as scarce to be intelligible, “And what does Master Edmund Tressilian require at my hand?”
“Justice, my lord,” answered Tressilian, calmly but firmly.
“Justice,” said Leicester, “all men are entitled to. You, Master Tressilian, are peculiarly so, and be assured you shall have it.”
“I expect nothing less from your nobleness,” answered Tressilian; “but time presses, and I must speak with you to-night. May I wait on you in your chamber?”
“No,” answered Leicester sternly, “not under a roof, and that roof mine own. We will meet under the free cope of heaven.”
“You are discomposed or displeased, my lord,” replied Tressilian; “yet there is no occasion for distemperature. The place is equal to me, so you allow me one half-hour of your time uninterrupted.”
“A shorter time will, I trust, suffice,” answered Leicester. “Meet me in the Pleasance when the Queen has retired to her chamber.”
“Enough,” said Tressilian, and withdrew; while a sort of rapture seemed for the moment to occupy the mind of Leicester.
“Heaven,” he said, “is at last favourable to me, and has put within my reach the wretch who has branded me with this deep ignominy — who has inflicted on me this cruel agony. I will blame fate no more, since I am afforded the means of tracing the wiles by which he means still further to practise on me, and then of at once convicting and punishing his villainy. To my task — to my task! I will not sink under it now, since midnight, at farthest, will bring me vengeance.”
While these reflections thronged through Leicester’s mind, he again made his way amid the obsequious crowd, which divided to give him passage, and resumed his place, envied and admired, beside the person of his Sovereign. But could the bosom of him thus admired and envied have been laid open before the inhabitants of that crowded hall, with all its dark thoughts of guilty ambition, blighted affection, deep vengeance, and conscious sense of meditated cruelty, crossing each other like spectres in the circle of some foul enchantress, which of them, from the most ambitious noble in the courtly circle down to the most wretched menial who lived by shifting of trenchers, would have desired to change characters with the favourite of Elizabeth, and the Lord of Kenilworth?
New tortures awaited him as soon as he had rejoined Elizabeth.
“You come in time, my lord,” she said, “to decide a dispute between us ladies. Here has Sir Richard Varney asked our permission to depart from the Castle with his infirm lady, having, as he tells us, your lordship’s consent to his absence, so he can obtain ours. Certes, we have no will to withhold him from the affectionate charge of this poor young person; but you are to know that Sir Richard Varney hath this day shown himself so much captivated with these ladies of ours, that here is our Duchess of Rutland says he will carry his poor insane wife no farther than the lake, plunge her in to tenant the crystal palaces that the enchanted nymph told us of, and return a jolly widower, to dry his tears and to make up the loss among our train. How say you, my lord? We have seen Varney under two or three different guises — you know what are his proper attributes — think you he is capable of playing his lady such a knave’s trick?”
Leicester was confounded, but the danger was urgent, and a reply absolutely necessary. “The ladies,” he said, “think too lightly of one of their own sex, in supposing she could deserve such a fate; or too ill of ours, to think it could be inflicted upon an innocent female.”
“Hear him, my ladies,” said Elizabeth; “like all his sex, he would excuse their cruelty by imputing fickleness to us.”
“Say not us, madam,” replied the Earl. “We say that meaner women, like the lesser lights of heaven, have revolutions and phases; but who shall impute mutability to the sun, or to Elizabeth?”
The discourse presently afterwards assumed a less perilous tendency, and Leicester continued to support his part in it with spirit, at whatever expense of mental agony. So pleasing did it seem to Elizabeth, that the Castle bell had sounded midnight ere she retired from the company, a circumstance unusual in her quiet and regular habits of disposing of time. Her departure was, of course, the signal for breaking up the company, who dispersed to their several places of repose, to dream over the pastimes of the day, or to anticipate those of the morrow.
The unfortunate Lord of the Castle, and founder of the proud festival, retired to far different thoughts. His direction to the valet who attended him was to send Varney instantly to his apartment. The messenger returned after some delay, and informed him that an hour had elapsed since Sir Richard Varney had left the Castle by the postern gate with three other persons, one of whom was transported in a horse-litter.
“How came he to leave the Castle after the watch was set?” said Leicester. “I thought he went not till daybreak.”
“He gave satisfactory reasons, as I understand,” said the domestic, “to the guard, and, as I hear, showed your lordship’s signet —”
“True — true,” said the Earl; “yet he has been hasty. Do any of his attendants remain behind?”
“Michael Lambourne, my lord,” said the valet, “was not to be found when Sir Richard Varney departed, and his master was much incensed at his absence. I saw him but now saddling his horse to gallop after his master.”
“Bid him come hither instantly,” said Leicester; “I have a message to his master.”
The servant left the apartment, and Leicester traversed it for some time in deep meditation. “Varney is over-zealous,” he said, “over-pressing. He loves me, I think; but he hath his own ends to serve, and he is inexorable in pursuit of them. If I rise, he rises; and he hath shown himself already but too, eager to rid me of this obstacle which seems to stand betwixt me and sovereignty. Yet I will not stoop to bear this disgrace. She shall be punished, but it shall be more advisedly. I already feel, even in anticipation, that over-haste would light the flames of hell in my bosom. No — one victim is enough at once, and that victim already waits me.”
He seized upon writing materials, and hastily traced these words:— “Sir Richard Varney, we have resolved to defer the matter entrusted to your care, and strictly command you to proceed no further in relation to our Countess until our further order. We also command your instant return to Kenilworth as soon as you have safely bestowed that with which you are entrusted. But if the safe-placing of your present charge shall detain you longer than we think for, we command you in that case to send back our signet-ring by a trusty and speedy messenger, we having present need of the same. And requiring your strict obedience in these things, and commending you to God’s keeping, we rest your assured good friend and master,
R. Leicester.
“Given at our Castle of Kenilworth, the tenth of July, in the year of Salvation one thousand five hundred and seventy-five.”
As Leicester had finished and sealed this mandate, Michael Lambourne, booted up to mid-thigh, having his riding-cloak girthed around him with a broad belt, and a felt cap on his head, like that of a courier, entered his apartment, ushered in by the valet.
“What is thy capacity of service?” said the Earl.
“Equerry to your lordship’s master of the horse,” answered Lambourne, with his customary assurance.
“Tie up thy saucy tongue, sir,” said Leicester; “the jests that may suit Sir Richard Varney’s presence suit not mine. How soon wilt thou overtake thy master?”
“In one hour’s riding, my lord, if man and horse hold good,” said Lambourne, with an instant alteration of demeanour, from an approach to familiarity to the deepest respect. The Earl measured him with his eye from top to toe.
“I have heard of thee,” he said “men say thou art a prompt fellow in thy service, but too much given to brawling and to wassail to be trusted with things of moment.”
“My lord,” said Lambourne, “I have been soldier, sailor, traveller, and adventurer; and these are all trades in which men enjoy today, because they have no surety of tomorrow. But though I may misuse mine own leisure, I have never neglected the duty I owe my master.”
“See that it be so in this instance,” said Leicester, “and it shall do thee good. Deliver this letter speedily and carefully into Sir Richard Varney’s hands.”
“Does my commission reach no further?” said Lambourne.
“No,” answered Leicester; “but it deeply concerns me that it be carefully as well as hastily executed.”
“I will spare neither care nor horse-flesh,” answered Lambourne, and immediately took his leave.
“So, this is the end of my private audience, from which I hoped so much!” he muttered to himself, as he went through the long gallery, and down the back staircase. Cogs bones! I thought the Earl had wanted a cast of mine office in some secret intrigue, and it all ends in carrying a letter! Well, his pleasure shall be done, however; and as his lordship well says, it may do me good another time. The child must creep ere he walk, and so must your infant courtier. I will have a look into this letter, however, which he hath sealed so sloven-like.” Having accomplished this, he clapped his hands together in ecstasy, exclaiming, “The Countess the Countess! I have the secret that shall make or mar me.— But come forth, Bayard,” he added, leading his horse into the courtyard, “for your flanks and my spurs must be presently acquainted.”
Lambourne mounted, accordingly, and left the Castle by the postern gate, where his free passage was permitted, in consequence of a message to that effect left by Sir Richard Varney.
As soon as Lambourne and the valet had left the apartment, Leicester proceeded to change his dress for a very plain one, threw his mantle around him, and taking a lamp in his hand, went by the private passage of communication to a small secret postern door which opened into the courtyard, near to the entrance of the Pleasance. His reflections were of a more calm and determined character than they had been at any late period, and he endeavoured to claim, even in his own eyes, the character of a man more sinned against than sinning.
“I have suffered the deepest injury,” such was the tenor of his meditations, “yet I have restricted the instant revenge which was in my power, and have limited it to that which is manly and noble. But shall the union which this false woman has this day disgraced remain an abiding fetter on me, to check me in the noble career to which my destinies invite me? No; there are other means of dis............