House of Torment

"That is easy done," said Mr. Lacel. "I can horse your yeomen also. In four days I ride myself to Westminster, where I spend a sennight with my brother, and hope to pay my duties at the Court when it moveth to Whitehall, as I hear it is about to do. The horses I shall lend you, Mr. Commendone, can be sent to my brother's, Sir Frank Lacel, of Lacel House."

"I thank you very much, sir," Johnnie answered, "you are very kind." And with that he said farewell, and in a very few minutes was riding over Aldham Common, on his way back to London.

Right in the centre of the Common there was still a large crowd of people, and he saw a farm cart with two horses standing there.

He made a wide detour, however, to get into the main road for Hadley, shrinking with a sudden horror, more poignant and more physically sickening than anything he had known before, from the last sordid and grisly details of the martyr's obsequies.

… No! Anything would be better than to see this dreadful cleaning up…

The big rawbone mare which he was riding was fresh and playful. Johnnie was a consummate horseman, and he was glad of the distraction of keeping the beast under control. She had a hard mouth, and needed all his skill.

For four or five miles, followed by his attendants at a distance of two or three hundred yards, he rode at a fast canter, now and then letting the mare stretch her legs upon the turf which bordered the rough country road. After this, when the horse began to settle down to steady work, he went on at a fast trot, but more mechanically, and thought began to be born within him again.

Until now he had seemed to be walking and moving in a dream. Even the horrors he had seen had been hardly real. Inexperienced as he was in many aspects of life, he yet knew well that the man with an imagination and sensitive nerves suffers far more in the memory of a dreadful thing than he does at the actual witnessing of it. The very violence of what he had seen done that day had deadened all the nerves, forbidding full sensation – as a man wounded in battle, or with a limb lopped off by sword or shot, is often seen looking with an amazed incredulity at himself, feeling no pain whatever for the moment.

It was now that John Commendone began to suffer. Every detail of Dr. Taylor's death etched themselves in upon his brain in a succession of pictures which burnt like fire.

As this or that detail – in colour, movement, and sound – came back to him so vividly, his heart began to drum, his eyes to fill with tears, or grow dry with horror, the palms of his hands to become wet. He lived the whole thing over again. And once more his present surroundings became dream-like, as he cantered through the lanes, and what was past became hideously, dreadfully real.

Yet, as the gallant mare bore him swiftly onwards, he realised that the horror and disgust he felt were in reality subservient to something else within him. His whole being seemed quickened, infinitely more alert, ready for action, than it had ever been before. He was like a man who had all his life been looking out upon the world through smoked or tinted glasses – very pleased and delighted with all he saw, unable to realise that there could be anything more true, more vivid.

Then, suddenly, the glass is removed. The neutral greyness which he has taken for the natural, commendable view of things, changes and falls away. The whole world is seen in an infinity of light and colour undreamed of, unexpected, wonderfully, passionately new.

It was thus with Johnnie, and the fact for some time was stunning and paralysing.

Then, as the brain adjusted itself slowly to fresh and marvellous conditions, he began to question himself.

What did it mean? What did it mean to him? What lay before?

Quite suddenly the explanation came, and he knew.

It was the face of a tall girl, who stood by St. Botolph's tower in the ghostly dawn that had done this thing. It was her voice that had rent aside the veil; it was her eyes of agony which lit up the world so differently.

With that knowledge, with the quick hammering of love at a virgin heart, there came also an enormous expectation. Till now life had been pleasant and happy. All the excitements of the past seemed but incidents in a long tranquillity.

The orchestra had finished the prelude to the play. Now the traverse was drawn aside, and action began.

As the young man realised this, and the white splendour of the full summer sun was answered by the inexpressible glow within, he realised, physically, that he was galloping madly along the road, pressing his spurs to his horse's flanks, riding with loose rein, the stirrups behind him, crouching forward upon the peaked saddle. He pulled his horse up within two or three hundred yards, though with considerable difficulty, the animal seeming, in some subtle way, to share and be part of that which was rioting within his brain.

He pulled her up, however, and she stood trembling and breathing hard, with great clots of white foam covering the rings of the bit. He soothed her, patting the strong veined neck with his hand, bringing it away from the darkening hide covered with sweat. Then, when she was a little more at ease, he slipped from the saddle and led her a few paces along the road to where in the hedge a stile was set, upon which he sat himself.

He held hold of the rein for a minute until he saw the mare begin to crop the roadside grass quietly enough, when he released her.

For a mile or more the road by which he had come stretched white and empty in the sun. There was no trace of his men. He waited there till they could come up to him.

He began to talk to himself in slow, measured terms, his own voice sounding strange in his ears, coming to them with a certain comfort. It was as though once more he had regained full command and captaincy of his own soul. There were great things to be done, he was commander of his own legions, and, like a general before a battle, he was issuing measured orders to his staff.

"So that it must be; it must be just that; I must find Elizabeth" – his subconscious brain heard with a certain surprise and wonder how the slow voice trembled at the word – "I must find Elizabeth. And then, when I have found her, I must tell her that she, and she alone, is to be my wife, and my lady ever more. I must sue and woo her, and then she must be my wife. It is that which I have to do. The Court is nothing; my service is nothing; it is Elizabeth!"

The mare raised her head, her mouth full of long sweet grass, and she looked at him with mild, brown eyes.

He rose from the stile, put his hand within his doublet, and pulled out a little crucifix of ebony, with a Christ of gold nailed to it.

He kissed it, and then, singularly heartened and resolute in mind, he mounted again, seeing, as he did so, that his men were coming up behind. He waited till they were near and then trotted off, and in an hour came to the outskirts of Chelmsford town.

It was now more than two hours after noon, and he halted with his men at the "Tun," the principal inn of the place, and adjacent to a brewery of red brick, where the famous Chelmsford ale – no less celebrated then than now – was brewed.

He rode into the courtyard of the inn, and the ostlers came hurrying up and took his horse away, while he went into the ordinary and sat down before a great round of beef.

The landlord, seeing a gentleman of quality, bustled in and carved for him – a pottle-bellied, voluble man, with something eminently kindly and human in his eye.

"From the Court, sir, I do not doubt?" he said.

Johnnie nodded.

"If I mistake not, you are one of the gentlemen who rode with the Sheriff and Dr. Rowland Taylor this morning?"

"That was I," Johnnie answered, looking keenly at the man.

"I would have wagered it was, sir. We saw the party go by early. Is the Doctor dead, sir?"

Johnnie nodded once more.

"And a very right and proper thing it is," the landlord continued, "that such should die the death."

"And why think you that, landlord?" Johnnie asked.

The landlord scratched his head, looking doubtfully at his guest.

"It is not for me to say, sir," he replied, after a moment's hesitation. "I am but a tradesman, and have no concern with affairs of State. I am a child in these things, but doubtless what was done was done very well."

Johnnie pushed away the pewter plate in front of him. "My man," he said, "you can speak freely to me. What think you in truth?"

The landlord stared at him for a moment, and then suddenly sat down at the table.

"I don't know, sir," he said, "who or what you may be. As thou art from the Court, thou art a good Catholic doubtless, or wouldst not be there, but you have an honest face, and I will tell you what I think. Under King Hal I gat me to church, and profited well thereby in that reign, for the abbey being broke up, and the friars dispersed, there was no more free beer for any rogue or masterless man to get from the buttery, aye, and others of this town with property, and well-liked men, who would drink the monks' brew free rather than pay for mine own. So, God bless King Henry, I say, who brought much custom to mine inn, being a wise prince. And now, look you, I go to Mass, and custom diminisheth not at all. I have had this inn for thirty years, my father before me for fifty; and in this inn, sir, I mean to die. It is nothing to me whether bread and wine are but bread and wine, or whether they be That which all must now believe. I am but a simple man, and let wiser than I decide, keeping always with those who must certainly know better than I. Meanwhile I shall sell my beer and bring up my family as an honest man should do – God's death! What is that?"

He started from his chair as Johnnie did likewise, for even as the man spoke a most horrid and untoward noise filled all the air.

Both men rushed to the bulging window of leaded glass, which looked out into the High Street.

There was a huge shouting, a frightful stamp and clatter as of feet and horses' hooves upon the stones, but above all there came a shrill, snarling, neighing noise, ululating with a ferocity that was not human, a vibration of rage, which was like nothing Commendone had ever heard before.

"Jesus! But what is this?" Johnnie cried, flinging open the casement, his face suddenly white with fear – so utterly outside all experience was the dreadful screeching, which now seemed a thousand times louder.

He peered out into the street and saw people rushing to the doors and windows of all the houses opposite, with faces as white and startled as his own. He looked to the right, for it was from there the pealing horror of sound was coming, but he could see nothing, because less than twenty yards away the High Street made a sudden turn at right angles towards the Market Place.

"It is some devil, certes," the landlord panted. "Apollyon must have just such a voice. What – "