Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/182

174 a necessary safeguard, and received with infinite disgust her husband’s commands to abstain from visiting her guest uninvited. To ascertain that her Grace was safe, morning and evening, was the Earl’s own business: and more was not needed.

Meantime Polly, in another part of the Castle, had found her tongue. She had once little thought that she could speak in the presence of royalty as she was doing now.

She began her complaints to Father Berthon: but he presently bade her wait while he took her Grace’s pleasure about the silk nets which occasioned Polly’s visit. In a few moments he beckoned her to an inner apartment, and brought her and her wares into the presence of three ladies, one of whom was the Queen of Scots. He informed her Grace that the young woman had been devoted to her from the first moment she had seen her.

“And when was that?” Queen Mary asked.

“That winter evening, when the nobles and ladies came riding through the wood, and up to the Castle,” Polly said, “and when the Queen herself looked—”

Polly stopped short.

“Looked like what?” asked the Queen, smiling.

“Like a vision of the twilight,” Polly said, boldly,—“like a spirit,—like a downcast angel—”

“Enough, enough!” Queen Mary said,—not with any displeasure in her tone. “You are married to the young man Sampson?”

This time Polly made no evasions. Father Berthon had married her to Sampson; and it was as Sampson’s wife that she came to speak now. She was bidden to speak; and she asked:

“Where is my husband? I am very unhappy; everything is going wrong; and I do not know where my husband is.”

Father Berthon looked at the Queen, and received permission to speak at his discretion.

“Sampson is not far off,” he said, “and you will see him soon. You shall be protected meantime. What is your trouble? Tell her Majesty what the people are saying and doing below.”

“Let me hear it all,” said Mary.

“First,” said Polly, producing the medal-case, “I must entreat your Majesty or Father Berthon to take charge of this case and what is in it. Sampson compelled me to keep it, as my warrant if sent before your Majesty; and now it is not safe with me, day or night, and I get no rest.”

The priest well knew the spring and the device. He handed it open to the Queen; and she forgot everything else in contemplating the device and signature of the deliverer from whom everything was expected, if England should fail to be restored to the true Church before Christmas. If France did not seat Mary in London as Queen of England within the next few weeks, Spain must take up the enterprise; and here, by the hands of a weaver’s wife, arrived a token of Philip’s good intentions. Such tokens were in the hands of high and low: Philip had spies and agents of all ranks and degrees; and no one of them ever offered his credentials to the gaze of the captive Queen without seeing her eyes fill with tears, and the pale cheeks flush with hope.

“This is indeed too precious to be put to risk,” Mary observed, still contemplating the signature. “We will keep it safely for Sampson. We may promise that?” she inquired of Father Berthon.

“To keep it, or dispose of it safely,” the priest declared. “But what is the special danger?” he inquired of Polly, as if he had not already heard.

“They have found out that I am married,” said Polly; “and my father rages against me so that I am afraid for my life. His eye is never off me, and there is nothing that he does not say of me.”

“What does he say?”

With a burst of tears, Polly told that her father charged her with having killed her little brother,—the little brother she was so fond of! “He must be mad,” the priest observed; and Polly said he was like the rest,—all seemed mad together, except her mother and one or two more. Two girls, who happened to come in when the child had just died, were ready to swear that they caught Polly making magical signs over the body, and neither weeping nor making moan. It was most unfortunate that she was alone,—the whole household being out in the harvest-field, and nobody within call. Her father had taken advice, and she believed he would have her put in prison and charged with the murder; and she had dreaded being searched while she carried that token. The Queen inquired how long the child had been ill; and when she found the case was one of decline of many months, she cast up her eyes at the accusation of murder. Polly was eloquent on the madness, as well as the cruelty, of supposing that there was a woman in the world who could caress and tend a near relation,—one with whom she had been familiar, and whom she had ever loved,—and then murder him. As she spoke, a streak of paleness appeared round the beautiful mouth of the Queen, and spread and spread till Polly, in the midst of her excitement, observed it, and suddenly stopped. Father Berthon was frowning so that Polly’s heart stood still. The Queen cleared her voice, and quietly observed that she did not understand this now. Why should the girl murder her brother?

“It is witchcraft, your Majesty, they say.”

“Then they have discovered your return to the Church?”

“Yes; but that is not all. There is a general fear of something,—of the Devil’s doings, to say the truth,” said Polly. “They take one after another of us to be bewitched, till I do not know where they will stop.”

“Do they think I am bewitched?” asked Mary.

“They think your Grace is the witch,” Polly replied.

The priest and the ladies would have laughed, but that the Queen sighed, while she smiled.

“Do they take Father Berthon for a sorcerer?” she asked.

“No, madam; but they take another to be so. The Wise Man ought to have warning of what they may do. I would have tried to run through the wood to him, but I was so watched!”

“He shall have warning,” said the priest, “though, if he is such a wise man, he should not need it. But what is their plot?”