Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (298 page)

“Oho! oho!” the King said. “Now at last I myself extract the truth that has been kept from my ears about this realm of mine!” Two of the lords behind him looked into each other’s eyes, and one of them shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“Sire,” Anne Jeal said, “this Edward Colman is fast linked with these mutineers. He is married to the presbyter of them, for they do marry contrary to all rule and decencies in holes by themselves. He is linked with them and they do his bidding, so that your loyal town of Rye—” The lord who had shrugged his shoulders shrugged them again at this and turned half away, and seeing this Anne Jeal faltered, but she stuck to her faith in the King, though at the bottom of her mind there was the thought that he was a bitter fool to believe her. “Sire,” she cried out, “this is the true truth of the matter.
 
Your town of Rye is the most loyal town that you have. In it you will find no man but goes to church weekly to pray for you; in it you will find no owlers, no Papists, no traitors, no single man but blesses Heaven for his King, not one save only this black traitor, Edward Colman, and his Puritan band of fellows. It is they who are the traitors, it is they who are the owlers, it is they who have given to us our evil name in the land.”

The King shrugged his shoulders at the council behind him.

“We believe you,” he said, “for these folk have no bishops — and no bishop, no King! We have said it a thousand times.”

The fair courtier had now his elbows on the King’s shoulders; he leered at Anne Jeal from first one side and then the other of the King’s hat, and with this backing the King peered up at her with a sort of hunchbacked gravity.

“Maiden,” he said, “we are beholden to ye for these depositions; this state of things hath been withheld from us by our council, th’of we ha’e suspected it. Ye shall kneel down to us and ask us what boon ye will have.”

Anne Jeal knelt down upon the hard floor; it went against the grain, as all things went against the grain that men did for this King.

“Sire,” she said, “first I will ask you that you confirm the charters of the town of Rye that have not yet been confirmed. And secondly I will ask you that you unmake this marriage between this traitor, Edward Colman, and this traitor’s daughter that is pastor of the Anabaptists of our town.”

The King said, “Eh! eh!” in an astonished grunt. “Sire,” she pleaded, “for myself I ask nothing, but only such things as are for the good of your realm.” The King’s face wore a look of cunning interest. “How shall it profit my realm to unmake a marriage?” he asked.

“Sire,” she pleaded again, “these people are very haughty, but much it should discredit and bewray them and cast them down if this daughter of their accursed breed should be disgraced and called shame on for a no-marriage, and her children made bastard and disinherited.”

The King leaned still more forward with the weight of the courtier upon his shoulders.

“Child,” he said, “we see that you mean well by us and love us well.”

“Of a truth I love your Grace well,” she said; “and by this taking away from the Knipperdollincks of the power to make marriages you shall much hurt them.”

“Ah!” he said, “now you speak sense. We will meditate upon taking away from these people the power to make marriages in the future. But, child” — and he took on a manner of serious gravity—”there is one thing that We will not do; there are bastards enow in our realms,” and he looked up, away, at the face of the courtier above him as if this were a keen witticism. “We will do nought to make more. It hath always been the policy and endeavour of the Supreme Head of all churches to recognize and not to break every statutory marriage.” He pushed the courtier back off his shoulders by leaning forcibly to rearwards. “Therefore we would not unmake this marriage if we could.”

Anne Jeal bit her lip furiously. She had profited nothing so far.

“But,” the King said, “the charters of your town you have a right to. It hath never been said that James Stuart regarded not the rights of his servants. They, we promise you, shall be confirmed.” He paused, and added, “Subject to their paying the usual fines and amercements — the usual fines and amercements. Now get you up.”

She stood up upon her feet: she was fit to scream with rage, she had advanced herself so little. She had asked for the charters of Rye so that she might be able to aver to her townsmen, on her return, that she had done a good stroke for them and so that she might retain the full glories of Mayoress. But the goodwill of the townsmen was as nothing to her; it was as nothing to her to be Mayoress; she desired only that she should be revenged upon this Magdalena and upon Edward Colman. And this King with his mouthings, and sputterings, and gazing down his nose, and air of wisdom filled her with such rage that she could have spat upon him. She had not yet got over thinking that the King must be a kind of god. And yet it was for this that she had come from the world’s end. Why, in Rye with a word from her ten score youths would have fallen upon the Anabaptist huts and torn them to the ground! James Stuart was meandering along, mouthing the English that he spoke, so that she could understand him, but with a wry face, because he held that the Scots was the only speaking for men.

“For the Anabaptists and Puritans we ourselves are thinking upon speeches and sermons against them. And if these will not serve, we will have recourse to other matters.”

“Burn down their houses, your Grace!” she cried out, and she clenched her hands. “Ye will have no peace in England till ye have their houses and them.”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“We wonder much and we commend much your loyalty,” he said. “Mebbe ‘twill come to burning.” He looked more brightly. “And for yourself, maiden,” he continued, “certainly — for that my council will meddle in all things — you must come before my council to have your answers written down in books and to be examined. For, after the manner of this country, these lords will aye be having their say—” He faltered, and then said, “But you shall be hospitably bestowed during your stay here. You shall live with the constable’s wife, for are you not the daughter of a baron? You are a good living maiden, therefore you shall be junketed and made to see many sights. Videlicet, there are my lions here, and sights of armour and men hanging in chains at Tyburn and elsewhere. We will find for you—”

He looked up at the fair courtier behind him to ask, “What is it that maidens most love in this our city?” He was looking up with a childlike innocence, but the fair courtier raised his brows and tittered, and, leaning down, whispered in his ear. The King tittered with an odd pleasure in turn, and smacked gently his creature’s face.

“Ye are nae decent to y’r Sovereign Master,” he said, then he waved his hands distractedly. “Get ye gone, maiden,” he said. “We have many other things to think of. But ye s’all ha’e fine junketings and a safe-conduct to your home.”

She was lodged in a little stone room, next that of the constable’s wife, of the Tower. And she saw, indeed, the lions pacing their little cells, the halberds and partisans for six hundred men, that were kept always oiled and sharpened in case any riotings arose in the city of London; and she saw bears chained to posts, their red eyes dripping blood upon the muzzles of dogs and bulls, baited in rings by mastiffs; and she saw the streets filled with great crowds and the playhouses, where men spoke a tongue it was hard for her to follow about passions of love and revenge and murder and hatred and jealousy and madness, that she knew more of than they did. For three separate mornings she was called to wait upon the council that sat at Westminster, but they did not have her in before them; thus they forgot her for seven days more, and did not send for her till the second day of March.

They sat, the six men that she had seen before, at six round black tables in a round room, painted to resemble the blue sky with gilt stars upon it. At a seventh table was a man with an engrossed face, long hair and a large white collar that fell down to his shoulders; he did not speak, but wrote incessantly, and there was a constant coming and going of men with letters all the time that her examination lasted.

It was a different thing being before these six men; they asked her questions in cold voices, and she could not tell whether they believed her or no. Five of them asked many questions and one only a few, but he was the most deadly to parry. He had a little, long black beard, a ruff edged with black and a black hat with a square brim that was Stiff and curved out in the crown of it.

How, they questioned her, if the other burgesses were so loyal, had they suffered this Edward Colman to grow so formidable in disloyalty?

She answered that he had done it very secretly at first, and had grown upon them as if in the night time.

How, they asked her, if this Edward Colman had threatened to murder any that gave information against him, had he not murdered her?

She answered that it was because he had an affection for her he had protected her; he had many times molested her with his offers of love.

They asked her: why, if this man so loved her, he had wedded himself to this daughter of an Anabaptist?

She answered that it was to have the more power with these people.

They asked: why, then, had he done it so lately?

And she answered that it was to protect his own property against these people because he must go across the sea.

The councillor that spoke least frequently asked her: why, if this man molested her with his love and it was distasteful to her, she had sought to break this marriage that was her best protection?

She answered that it was out of her great love to the King, and he fell silent again.

They wearied her so with all sorts of questions, of things she knew and of things she had never even heard of, that at last she herself grew incredulous of the story that she had worked herself into believing, for she believed with a hot faith that all that she had said was true. And then they all fell into a dead silence.

The man who had least spoken cleared his throat —

“My lords,” he said, “if it is your pleasure, I believe this is all a tale of a mare’s nest; I report that this man is in Amsterdam, and has applied to sue out his pardon. If it is your pleasure I move that this man be granted his pardon subject to proper fines and subject to his coming hither to face this witness here present.”

A lord, with much of grey in his beard, said, “She must be held till he come.”

“Gentlemen,” she cried out, “you have heard how the King did hear me out and believe!”

“Why, be silent,” a lord said to her across his shoulder.

“She must be held till he come,” the dark lord said, “or she may depart to her home if he is long in coming under surety for her return.” He motioned her, with a long and white hand, to begone, and already all their heads and ruffs went towards each other, debating upon another matter.

Her teeth chattered as if with pest; she had never before known such rage; she had dressed herself in her finest finery, that had cost her father ‘five hundred pounds, so that she was as grand as Queen Elizabeth had ever been. She knew she was a woman good to look upon, and she wore a gown of sky-coloured satin, wrought and embroidered with silver, with a farthingale, a chain of jewels and a fair necklace of pearls, with pendants of diamonds in her ears, and she could make any man that married her a baron of her own right, yet she had never before been handled as if she were such a thing of nought; she had never known what it was to lie before, for she had never lied so desperately and been so coldly disbelieved. These men had not even looked at her, many of them.

It was a thing she had never before imagined that she could be with men and they not look at her. She imagined it must be because she was dark, and all the fashion in this town then was for fair women; all the sonnets and stanzas of the day were written about women with white skins and fair or reddish hair. And her hatred against Edward Colman grew till it was tenfold as great. She saw nothing on her homeward journey; she sat upon her mule, and but that it followed the horses of her guard she would never have reached the Tower. She saw no houses, no people, no stalls, booths or so much as a coach upon wheels, though that was such a novelty that one of her two guards turned in his saddle to point it out to her near Paul’s Church where the fountain was.