Kenilworth

“You are surely ill, my lord?” said Elizabeth, going towards him with hasty speech and hurried step, which indicated the deepest concern. “Call Masters – call our surgeon in ordinary. – Where be these loitering fools? – we lose the pride of our court through their negligence. – Or is it possible, Leicester,” she continued, looking on him with a very gentle aspect, “can fear of my displeasure have wrought so deeply on thee? Doubt not for a moment, noble Dudley, that we could blame THEE for the folly of thy retainer – thee, whose thoughts we know to be far otherwise employed. He that would climb the eagle’s nest, my lord, cares not who are catching linnets at the foot of the precipice.”

“Mark you that?” said Sussex aside to Raleigh. “The devil aids him surely; for all that would sink another ten fathom deep seems but to make him float the more easily. Had a follower of mine acted thus – ”

“Peace, my good lord,” said Raleigh, “for God’s sake, peace! Wait the change of the tide; it is even now on the turn.”

The acute observation of Raleigh, perhaps, did not deceive him; for Leicester’s confusion was so great, and, indeed, for the moment, so irresistibly overwhelming, that Elizabeth, after looking at him with a wondering eye, and receiving no intelligible answer to the unusual expressions of grace and affection which had escaped from her, shot her quick glance around the circle of courtiers, and reading, perhaps, in their faces something that accorded with her own awakened suspicions, she said suddenly, “Or is there more in this than we see – or than you, my lord, wish that we should see? Where is this Varney? Who saw him?”

“An it please your Grace,” said Bowyer, “it is the same against whom I this instant closed the door of the presence-room.”

“An it please me?” repeated Elizabeth sharply, not at that moment in the humour of being pleased with anything. – “It does NOT please me that he should pass saucily into my presence, or that you should exclude from it one who came to justify himself from an accusation.”

“May it please you,” answered the perplexed usher, “if I knew, in such case, how to bear myself, I would take heed – ”

“You should have reported the fellow’s desire to us, Master Usher, and taken our directions. You think yourself a great man, because but now we chid a nobleman on your account; yet, after all, we hold you but as the lead-weight that keeps the door fast. Call this Varney hither instantly. There is one Tressilian also mentioned in this petition. Let them both come before us.”

She was obeyed, and Tressilian and Varney appeared accordingly. Varney’s first glance was at Leicester, his second at the Queen. In the looks of the latter there appeared an approaching storm, and in the downcast countenance of his patron he could read no directions in what way he was to trim his vessel for the encounter. He then saw Tressilian, and at once perceived the peril of the situation in which he was placed. But Varney was as bold-faced and ready-witted as he was cunning and unscrupulous – a skilful pilot in extremity, and fully conscious of the advantages which he would obtain could he extricate Leicester from his present peril, and of the ruin that yawned for himself should he fail in doing so.

“Is it true, sirrah,” said the Queen, with one of those searching looks which few had the audacity to resist, “that you have seduced to infamy a young lady of birth and breeding, the daughter of Sir Hugh Robsart of Lidcote Hall?”

Varney kneeled down, and replied, with a look of the most profound contrition, “There had been some love passages betwixt him and Mistress Amy Robsart.”

Leicester’s flesh quivered with indignation as he heard his dependant make this avowal, and for one moment he manned himself to step forward, and, bidding farewell to the court and the royal favour, confess the whole mystery of the secret marriage. But he looked at Sussex, and the idea of the triumphant smile which would clothe his cheek upon hearing the avowal sealed his lips. “Not now, at least,” he thought, “or in this presence, will I afford him so rich a triumph.” And pressing his lips close together, he stood firm and collected, attentive to each word which Varney uttered, and determined to hide to the last the secret on which his court-favour seemed to depend. Meanwhile, the Queen proceeded in her examination of Varney.

“Love passages!” said she, echoing his last words; “what passages, thou knave? and why not ask the wench’s hand from her father, if thou hadst any honesty in thy love for her?”

“An it please your Grace,” said Varney, still on his knees, “I dared not do so, for her father had promised her hand to a gentleman of birth and honour – I will do him justice, though I know he bears me ill-will – one Master Edmund Tressilian, whom I now see in the presence.”

“Soh!” replied the Queen. “And what was your right to make the simple fool break her worthy father’s contract, through your love PASSAGES, as your conceit and assurance terms them?”

“Madam,” replied Varney, “it is in vain to plead the cause of human frailty before a judge to whom it is unknown, or that of love to one who never yields to the passion” – he paused an instant, and then added, in a very low and timid tone – “which she inflicts upon all others.”

Elizabeth tried to frown, but smiled in her own despite, as she answered, “Thou art a marvellously impudent knave. Art thou married to the girl?”

Leicester’s feelings became so complicated and so painfully intense, that it seemed to him as if his life was to depend on the answer made by Varney, who, after a moment’s real hesitation, answered, “Yes.”

“Thou false villain!” said Leicester, bursting forth into rage, yet unable to add another word to the sentence which he had begun with such emphatic passion.

“Nay, my lord,” said the Queen, “we will, by your leave, stand between this fellow and your anger. We have not yet done with him. – Knew your master, my Lord of Leicester, of this fair work of yours? Speak truth, I command thee, and I will be thy warrant from danger on every quarter.”

“Gracious madam,” said Varney, “to speak Heaven’s truth, my lord was the cause of the whole matter.”

“Thou villain, wouldst thou betray me?” said Leicester.

“Speak on,” said the Queen hastily, her cheek colouring, and her eyes sparkling, as she addressed Varney – “speak on. Here no commands are heard but mine.”

“They are omnipotent, gracious madam,” replied Varney; “and to you there can be no secrets. – Yet I would not,” he added, looking around him, “speak of my master’s concerns to other ears.”

“Fall back, my lords,” said the Queen to those who surrounded her, “and do you speak on. What hath the Earl to do with this guilty intrigue of thine? See, fellow, that thou beliest him not!”

“Far be it from me to traduce my noble patron,” replied Varney; “yet I am compelled to own that some deep, overwhelming, yet secret feeling hath of late dwelt in my lord’s mind, hath abstracted him from the cares of the household which he was wont to govern with such religious strictness, and hath left us opportunities to do follies, of which the shame, as in this case, partly falls upon our patron. Without this, I had not had means or leisure to commit the folly which has drawn on me his displeasure – the heaviest to endure by me which I could by any means incur, saving always the yet more dreaded resentment of your Grace.”

“And in this sense, and no other, hath he been accessory to thy fault?” said Elizabeth.

“Surely, madam, in no other,” replied Varney; “but since somewhat hath chanced to him, he can scarce be called his own man. Look at him, madam, how pale and trembling he stands! how unlike his usual majesty of manner! – yet what has he to fear from aught I can say to your Highness? Ah! madam, since he received that fatal packet!”

“What packet, and from whence?” said the Queen eagerly.

“From whence, madam, I cannot guess; but I am so near to his person that I know he has ever since worn, suspended around his neck and next to his heart, that lock of hair which sustains a small golden jewel shaped like a heart. He speaks to it when alone – he parts not from it when he sleeps – no heathen ever worshipped an idol with such devotion.”

“Thou art a prying knave to watch thy master so closely,” said Elizabeth, blushing, but not with anger; “and a tattling knave to tell over again his fooleries. – What colour might the braid of hair be that thou pratest of?”

Varney replied, “A poet, madam, might call it a thread from the golden web wrought by Minerva; but to my thinking it was paler than even the purest gold – more like the last parting sunbeam of the softest day of spring.”

“Why, you are a poet yourself, Master Varney,” said the Queen, smiling. “But I have not genius quick enough to follow your rare metaphors. Look round these ladies – is there” – (she hesitated, and endeavoured to assume an air of great indifference) – “is there here, in this presence, any lady, the colour of whose hair reminds thee of that braid? Methinks, without prying into my Lord of Leicester’s amorous secrets, I would fain know what kind of locks are like the thread of Minerva’s web, or the – what was it? – the last rays of the May-day sun.”

Varney looked round the presence-chamber, his eye travelling from one lady to another, until at length it rested upon the Queen herself, but with an aspect of the deepest veneration. “I see no tresses,” he said, “in this presence, worthy of such similies, unless where I dare not look on them.”

“How, sir knave?” said the Queen; “dare you intimate – ”

“Nay, madam,” replied Varney, shading his eyes with his hand, “it was the beams of the May-day sun that dazzled my weak eyes.”

“Go to – go to,” said the Queen; “thou art a foolish fellow” – and turning quickly from him she walked up to Leicester.

Intense curiosity, mingled with all the various hopes, fears, and passions which influence court faction, had occupied the presence-chamber during the Queen’s conference with Varney, as if with the strength of an Eastern talisman. Men suspended every, even the slightest external motion, and would have ceased to breathe, had Nature permitted such an intermission of her functions. The atmosphere was contagious, and Leicester, who saw all around wishing or fearing his advancement or his fall forgot all that love had previously dictated, and saw nothing for the instant but the favour or disgrace which depended on the nod of Elizabeth and the fidelity of Varney. He summoned himself hastily, and prepared to play his part in the scene which was like to ensue, when, as he judged from the glances which the Queen threw towards him, Varney’s communications, be they what they might, were operating in his favour. Elizabeth did not long leave him in doubt; for the more than favour with which she accosted him decided his triumph in the eyes of his rival, and of the assembled court of England. “Thou hast a prating servant of this same Varney, my lord,” she said; “it is lucky you trust him with nothing that can hurt you in our opinion, for believe me, he would keep no counsel.”

“From your Highness,” said Leicester, dropping gracefully on one knee, “it were treason he should. I would that my heart itself lay before you, barer than the tongue of any servant could strip it.”

“What, my lord,” said Elizabeth, looking kindly upon him, “is there no one little corner over which you would wish to spread a veil? Ah! I see you are confused at the question, and your Queen knows she should not look too deeply into her servants’ motives for their faithful duty, lest she see what might, or at least ought to, displease her.”

Relieved by these last words, Leicester broke out into a torrent of expressions of deep and passionate attachment, which perhaps, at that moment, were not altogether fictitious. The mingled emotions which had at first overcome him had now given way to the energetic vigour with which he had determined to support his place in the Queen’s favour; and never did he seem to Elizabeth more eloquent, more handsome, more interesting, than while, kneeling at her feet, he conjured her to strip him of all his power, but to leave him the name of her servant. – “Take from the poor Dudley,” he exclaimed, “all that your bounty has made him, and bid him be the poor gentleman he was when your Grace first shone on him; leave him no more than his cloak and his sword, but let him still boast he has – what in word or deed he never forfeited – the regard of his adored Queen and mistress!”

“No, Dudley!” said Elizabeth, raising him with one hand, while she extended the other that he might kiss it. “Elizabeth hath not forgotten that, whilst you were a poor gentleman, despoiled of your hereditary rank, she was as poor a princess, and that in her cause you then ventured all that oppression had left you – your life and honour. Rise, my lord, and let my hand go – rise, and be what you have ever been, the grace of our court and the support of our throne! Your mistress may be forced to chide your misdemeanours, but never without owning your merits. – And so help me God,” she added, turning to the audience, who, with various feelings, witnessed this interesting scene – “so help me God, gentlemen, as I think never sovereign had a truer servant than I have in this noble Earl!”

A murmur of assent rose from the Leicestrian faction, which the friends of Sussex dared not oppose. They remained with their eyes fixed on the ground, dismayed as well as mortified by the public and absolute triumph of their opponents. Leicester’s first use of the familiarity to which the Queen had so publicly restored him was to ask her commands concerning Varney’s offence, “although,” he said, “the fellow deserves nothing from me but displeasure, yet, might I presume to intercede – ”

“In truth, we had forgotten his matter,” said the Queen; “and it was ill done of us, who owe justice to our meanest as well as to our highest subject. We are pleased, my lord, that you were the first to recall the matter to our memory. – Where is Tressilian, the accuser? – let him come before us.”

Tressilian appeared, and made a low and beseeming reference. His person, as we have elsewhere observed, had an air of grace and even of nobleness, which did not escape Queen Elizabeth’s critical observation. She looked at him with, attention as he stood before her unabashed, but with an air of the deepest dejection.

“I cannot but grieve for this gentleman,” she said to Leicester. “I have inquired concerning him, and his presence confirms what I heard, that he is a scholar and a soldier, well accomplished both in arts and arms. We women, my lord, are fanciful in our choice – I had said now, to judge by the eye, there was no comparison to be held betwixt your follower and this gentleman. But Varney is a well-spoken fellow, and, to say truth, that goes far with us of the weaker sex. – look you, Master Tressilian, a bolt lost is not a bow broken. Your true affection, as I will hold it to be, hath been, it seems, but ill requited; but you have scholarship, and you know there have been false Cressidas to be found, from the Trojan war downwards. Forget, good sir, this Lady Light o’ Love – teach your affection to see with a wiser eye. This we say to you, more from the writings of learned men than our own knowledge, being, as we are, far removed by station and will from the enlargement of experience in such idle toys of humorous passion. For this dame’s father, we can make his grief the less by advancing his son-in-law to such station as may enable him to give an honourable support to his bride. Thou shalt not be forgotten thyself, Tressilian – follow our court, and thou shalt see that a true Troilus hath some claim on our grace. Think of what that arch-knave Shakespeare says – a plague on him, his toys come into my head when I should think of other matters. Stay, how goes it?

‘Cressid was yours, tied with the bonds of heaven;
These bonds of heaven are slipt, dissolved, and loosed,
And with another knot five fingers tied,
The fragments of her faith are bound to Diomed.’

You smile, my Lord of Southampton – perchance I make your player’s verse halt through my bad memory. But let it suffice let there be no more of this mad matter.”