He felt the thin old sinews under his hand contract suddenly, and paused.

"Go on, sir," whispered the old voice.

"A letter to her Grace, sir. I was to use my discretion whether I carried it with me, or learned it by rote. I have other interests at stake besides this, and I used my discretion, and destroyed the letter."

"But you have some writing, no doubt--"

"I have none," said Robin. "I have my word only."

There was a pause.

"Was the message private?"

"Private only to her Grace's enemies. I will tell you the substance of it now, if you will."

The old man, without answering, steered his companion nearer to the wall; then he relinquished the supporting arm, and leaned himself against the stones, fixing his eyes full upon the priest, and searching, as it seemed, every feature of his face and every detail of his dress.

"Was the message important, sir?"

"Important only to those who value love and fidelity."

"I could deliver it myself, then?"

"Certainly, sir. If you will give me your word to deliver it to her Grace, as I deliver it to you, and to none else, I will ride on and trouble you no more."

"That is enough," said the physician decidedly. "I am completely satisfied, Mr. Alban. All that remains is to consider how I can get you to her Grace."

"But if you yourself will deliver--" began Robin.

An extraordinary spasm pa.s.sed over the other's face, that might denote any fierce emotion, either of anger or grief.

"Do you think it is that?" he hissed. "Why, man, where is your priesthood? Do you think the poor dame within would not give her soul for a priest?... Why, I have prayed G.o.d night and day to send us a priest. She is half mad with sorrow; and who knows whether ever again in this world--"

He broke off, his face all distorted with pain; and Robin felt a strange thrill of glory at the thought that he bore with him, in virtue of his priesthood only, so much consolation. He faced for the first time that tremendous call of which he had heard so much in Rheims--that desolate cry of souls that longed and longed in vain for those gifts which a priest of Christ could alone bestow....

"... The question is," the old man was saying more quietly, "how to get you in to her Grace. Why, Sir Amyas opens her letters even, and reseals them again! He thinks me a fool, and that I do not know what he does....

Do you know aught of medicine?" he asked abruptly.

"I know only what country folks know of herbs."

"And their names--their Latin names, man?" pursued the other, leaning forward.

Robin half smiled.

"Now you speak of it," he said, "I have learned a good many, as a pastime, when I was a boy. I was something of a herbalist, even. But I have forgotten--"

"Bah! that would be enough for Sir Amyas--"

He turned and spat venomously at the name.

"Sir Amyas knows nothing save his own vile trade. He is a lout--no more.

He is as grim as a goose, always. And you have a town air about you," he went on, running his eyes critically over the young man's dress. "Those are French clothes?"

"They were bought in France."

The two stood silent. Robin's excitement beat in all his veins, in spite of his weariness. He had come to bear a human message only to a bereaved Queen; and it seemed as if his work were to be rather the bearing of a Divine message to a lonely soul. He watched the old man's face eagerly. It was sunk in thought.... Then Mr. Bourgoign took him abruptly by the arm.

"Give me your arm again," he said. "I am an old man. We must be going back again. It seems as if G.o.d heard our prayers after all. I will see you disposed for to-night--you and your man and the horses, and I will send for you myself in the morning. Could you say ma.s.s, think you? if I found you a secure place--and bring Our Lord's Body with you in the morning?"

He checked the young man, to hear his answer.

"Why, yes," said Robin. "I have all things that are needed."

"Then you shall say ma.s.s in any case ... and reserve our Lord's Body in a pyx.... Now listen to me. If my plan falls as I hope, you must be a physician to-morrow, and have practised your trade in Paris. You have been in Paris?"

"No, sir."

"Bah!... Well, no more has Sir Amyas!... You have practised your trade in Paris, and G.o.d has given you great skill in the matter of herbs. And, upon hearing that I was in Chartley, you inquired for your old friend, whose acquaintance you had made in Paris, five years ago. And I, upon hearing you were come, secured your willingness to see my patient, if you would but consent. Your reputation has reached me even here; you have attended His Majesty in Paris on three occasions; you restored Mademoiselle elise, of the family of Guise, from the very point of death. You are but a young man still; yet--Bah! It is arranged. You understand? Now come with me."

CHAPTER IV

I

In spite of his plans and his hopes and his dreams, it was with an amazement beyond all telling, that Mr. Robert Alban found himself, at nine o'clock next morning, conducted by two men through the hall at Chartley to the little parlour where he was to await Sir Amyas Paulet and the Queen's apothecary.

Matters had been arranged last night with that promptness which alone could make the tale possible. He had walked back with the old man in full view of the little hamlet, to all appearances, the best of old friends; and after providing for a room in the sick woman's house for Robin himself, another in another house for Mr. Arnold, and stabling for the horses in a shed where occasionally the spent horses of the couriers were housed when Chartley stables were overflowing--after all this had been arranged by Mr. Bourgoign in person, the two walked on to the great gates of the park, where they took an affectionate farewell within hearing of the sentry, the apothecary promising to see Sir Amyas that night and to communicate with his friend in the morning. Robin had learned previously how strict was the watch set about the Queen's person, particularly since the news of the Babington plot had first reached the authorities, and of the extraordinary difficulty to the approach of any stranger to her presence. Nau and Curle, her two secretaries, had been arrested and perhaps racked a week or ten days before; all the Queen's papers had been taken from her, and even her jewellery and pictures sent off to Elizabeth; and the only persons ordinarily allowed to speak with her, besides her gaoler, were two of her women, and Mr. Bourgoign himself.

That morning then, before six o'clock, Robin had said ma.s.s in the sick woman's room and given her communion, with her companion, who answered his ma.s.s, as it was thought more prudent that the other priest should not even be present; and, at the close of the ma.s.s he had reserved in a little pyx, hidden beneath his clothes, a consecrated particle. Mr.

Bourgoign had said that he would see to it that the Queen should be fasting up to ten o'clock that day.

And now the last miracle had been accomplished. A servant had come down late the night before, with a discreet letter from the apothecary, saying that Sir Amyas had consented to receive and examine for himself the travelling physician from Paris; and here now went Robin, striving to remember the old Latin names he had learned as a boy, and to carry a medical air with him.

The parlour in which he found himself was furnished severely and even rather sparely, owing, perhaps, he thought, to the temporary nature of the household. It was the custom in great houses to carry with the family, from house to house, all luxuries such as extra hangings or painted pictures or carpets, as well as even such things as cooking utensils; and in the Queen's sudden removal back again from Tixall, many matters must have been neglected. The oak wainscoting was completely bare; and over the upper parts of the walls in many places the stones showed through between the ill-fitting tapestries. A sheaf of pikes stood in one corner; an oil portrait of an unknown worthy in the dress of fifty years ago hung over one of the doors; a large round oak table, with ink-horn and pounce-box, stood in the centre of the room with stools beside it: there was no hearth or chimney visible; and there was no tapestry upon the floor: a skin only lay between the windows. The priest sat down and waited.

He had enough to occupy his mind; for not only had he the thought of the character he was to sustain presently under the scrutiny of a suspicious man; but he had the prospect, as he hoped, of coming into the presence of the most-talked-of woman in Europe, and of ministering to her as a priest alone could do, in her sorest need. His hand went to his breast as he considered it, and remembered What he bore ... and he felt the tiny flat circular case press upon his heart....

For his imagination was all aflame at the thought of Mary. Not only had he been kindled again and again in the old days by poor Anthony's talk, until the woman seemed to him half-deified already; but man after man had repeated the same tale, that she was, in truth, that which her lean cousin of England desired to be thought--a very paragon of women, innocent, holy, undefiled, yet of charm to drive men to their knees before her presence. It was said that she was as one of those strange moths which, confined behind gla.s.s, will draw their mates out of the darkness to beat themselves to death against her prison; she was exquisite, they said, in her pale beauty, and yet more exquisite in her pain; she exuded a faint and intoxicating perfume of womanliness, like a crushed herb. Yet she was to be worshipped, rather than loved--a sacrament to be approached kneeling, an incarnate breath of heaven, the more lovely from the vileness into which her life had been cast and the slanders that were about her name.... More marvellous than all was that those who knew her best and longest loved her most; her servants wept or groaned themselves into fevers if they were excluded from her too long; of her as of the Wisdom of old might it be said that, "They who ate her hungered yet, and they who drank her thirsted yet."... It was to this miracle of humanity, then, that this priest was to come....

He sat up suddenly, once more pressing his hand to his breast, where his Treasure lay hidden, as he heard steps crossing the paved hall outside.