The Snow Driver/Chapter 2

Y LORD of Stratford sat late at table the evening he summoned Ralph Thorne to his quarters and looked long upon the flagon, both Rhenish and Burgundy. He had a hard, gray head for drink. It helped him make decisions, a vexatious necessity of late.

In a long chamber gown he sat at his ease, a pair of barnacles on his nose and a book printed in the new manner from black letters on his knees. My lord had excellent eyesight and did not need the spectacles; and, although he was not scholar enough to read the book, he firmly believed that it was a mistake to be found doing nothing.

“Master Thorne,” he greeted the armiger, “there is a saying—Quis custodiat ipsos custodies? Who shall watch the watchmen themselves?”

He put aside the volume and cleared his throat.

“I have been at some pains to learn who you are.”

Thorne bowed acknowledgement in silence. He had no patron at court, and the duke was powerful. He had entered upon his duties in the guards with high hopes. In the camps over the sea the name and character of the boy king had aroused the loyalty of the lads who were beginning their military service in the petty wars of the lowlands and they had waited anxiously for the time when they could appear at their own court.

Now, lacking any one to take his part, and with Edward unapproachable, a word from Stratford could disgrace him or restore him to honest service.

“Your father, sirrah, is Master Robert Thorne who once rendered yeoman aid to his country by bringing out of Spain a mappamundi faithfully drawn. He is known as the Cosmographer, and he dwells on the coast at Orfordnesse.”

Again the squire bowed assent.

“You have a reputation. 'Tis said you use a sword like a fiend out of, which is to say with skill but little forethought. You have been in more broils than any dozen of your fellows. Once, I hear, you presumed to go forth alone in the guise of a wherryman. So habited you ventured rashly to row armed men across a river within the hostile camp.”

“My lord, we had need of information.”

“So it was said. But you forgot your part of a spy and fought a knight of the Burgundian party in the skiff. The matter ended with your placing the Burgundian adrift, fully armed as he was, a nosegay in his hands and candles lighted at his head. In this guise he was discovered by his friends who buried the body.”

“'Twas fairly fought between us, my lord, in the boat. He had the worst. It would have been foul shame to throw an honorable foeman into the water.”

The man at the table paused to snuff the candles that stood on either hand and to glance curiously at the youth, his visitor. To draw steel on an adversary in full armor in a small skiff was a thing seldom done, and Thorne had not despoiled the body.

“Stap my vitals!” he laughed. “You have a queer head on you. Now thank Sts. Matthew and Mark and your patron of that fellowship that it has pleased Edward to stand your friend.”

Thorne flushed with pleasure and strode forward to the table.

“Grant me but the chance to serve the king's majesty!”

“Humph! As a spy you are not worth your salt. But the king is minded to send you upon a mission.”

He glanced upward fleetingly and saw only eagerness in the boy's clear eyes.

“You have learned to handle your sword, but not to handle men. You will want seasoning. The king is pleased to lay command upon you to journey to Orfordnesse and there await the setting out of Sir Hugh's fleet. Do aught that within you lies to aid Sir Hugh in his venture. Your prince hath the matter much at heart.

“Take a horse from my stables, and here—” Stratford signed to one of his servitors who stood by the buffet—“is a small purse for your needs.”

Thorne, who had not one silver piece to jingle against another, accepted the gift with a bow.

Stratford hesitated, then rose and came around the table.

“Hark in your ear, young sir. The Spaniards who hold the sea would be well pleased to spoil this venture of Sir Hugh's. Watch your fellow travelers well upon the road and keep your sword loosened in scabbard. Be silent as to this mission, and hasten not back, but return at leisure with Master Cabot. Greet your father well for me.”

“A good night to you, my lord. And accept the thanks of the Thornes.”

Stratford smiled.

“Body o' me! 'Tis said the Thornes are more generous with blows than thanks. A good night, young sir.”

He waited until the armiger had left the room, then went to the door and, closing it, shot home the bolt himself. Idly he turned the hour glass in which the sands had run out.

“Another hour brings other guests. Well, 'tis an easy road to a boy's heart to promise him danger i' the wind. Paul—” he nodded at the servant—“have in D'Alaber and his cozening friend. And,” he added under his breath, “may your sainted name sake grant that young Thorne's wit be dull as his sword point is sharp.”

HE two men who entered the cabinet of my lord Duke of Stratford were dressed in the height of fashion, and one, who wore a doublet of green silk, who bore in his left hand a high crowned and plumed hat, bowed with all the grace of an accomplished courtier, his cloak draped over the end of a long Spanish rapier. He had the small features of a woman, utterly devoid of color.

“Ah, signior,” exclaimed Stratford as soon as the door closed upon Paul, “you are behind your time. I have been awaiting your ship this se'nnight.”

“From the secrecy with which I am received,” responded the young D'Alaber in excellent English, “it would seem that I am before my time.”

And, turning his back rudely on his host he walked up to a long Venetian mirror, fingering the ruff at his throat.

“Is the Fox in London, my lord?” he demanded, turning sharply on Stratford, his sleepy eyes downcast yet missing no shade of expression in the nobleman.

“Renard has taken coach to Orfordnesse.”

“And why?”

“Signior,” said Stratford slowly, and more respectfully than the younger man of lesser rank had addressed him, “who knows? Perhaps the Fox prefers not to be in London when—if”

“Edward dies,” amended the Spaniard coolly.

The duke started and glanced uneasily at the closed door. Then he poured out with his own hand a measure of Burgundy into a gold goblet on the table. This he offered to D'Alaber who glanced at it quizzically and waited until he was certain that his host would drink from the same flagon.

“To the happy alliance between our two peoples!” cried Stratford, gulping down his wine. “Nay, do you fancy the goblet, D'Alaber? Then, I pray you, keep the thing.”

The Spaniard turned it in his fingers indifferently and handed it to the other man, who made less ado about thrusting it into the breast of his robe, first weighing it in his great fist covetously.

He wore the dull damask of a merchant, yet his sword with its inlaid hilt was costly. He stood utterly still—and few men can do that—looking down from his looming height on the two noblemen as if he were the solitary spectator of a rare play.

And, in reality, he was attending upon a discussion only too common in these eventful days, wherein the fate of England rested in the balance. While Cornelius Durforth and D'Alaber sat on either hand, Stratford talked feverishly, giving the Spaniard the tidings of what was passing in the court, and at the same time justifying himself.

Edward was dying. Stratford and certain other officers of the royal household had contrived to keep this secret until now. And secrecy they must have to gain time to raise their on land and sea and discover who was of their party.

Stratford and the Papists of the kingdom supported Lady Mary, the elder sister of the king. She was daughter of Catharine of Aragon, the first wife of the late king, Henry the Eighth.

Others of the Protestant nobles favored the Lady Jane Grey, or the young Princess Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had inherited her father's love of hawking and the chase and carelessness of affairs of state. Meanwhile Parliament, ignorant of the true condition of the king, did nothing. A few weeks, and the Papist nobles near London would have enough swords to cut down all opposition to Lady Mary.

“And the king?” D'Alaber asked thoughtfully. “No one suspects his evil case?”

“No one,” nodded the duke, “save”

“Ah. It was your part, my lord duke, to draw a veil around his sinking.”

The Spaniard spoke courteously, but his words were like dagger pricks.

“A chuckle-headed squire—a niddering—a nobody overheard Edward make lament that his time was drawing to an end.”

“And you?”

“I sent the youth on a bootless errand to Orfordnesse, saying that it was Edward's will. Nay, he will not set foot in London again till all is over.”

“And there you blundered, my lord. Only one physic will keep a tongue from wagging. His name and time of setting forth?”

“The lad is Master Thorne of Orfordnesse. On the morrow at dawn he hies him hence.”

“Then—” D'Alaber tapped a lean finger on the hilt of his poinard and glanced at Durforth, whose eyes, so dark that they appeared to be without expression, were fixed on him reflectively—“we must try phlebotemy, a trifle of blood letting. And now, messers, I deliver me of my charge.”

Unfastening one of the laces of his doublet, he drew out two papers folded and sealed with the royal signet of Spain. These he handed to Durforth who looked at the seal and thrust them into his wallet. Stratford seemed afire with curiosity as to the nature of these papers, but D'Alaber vouchsafed him no satisfaction. Durforth, however, spoke up, twisting powerful fingers in his black beard!

“My lord Duke, you are now one of us; you must run with the hounds now, not with the hare. In your presence I have received from his august majesty, Charles, Emperor of Spain, a letter of commission. The other missive I understand to be a matter of state to be delivered when the voyage hath achieved its end.”

The duke filled his goblet moodily, chafing inwardly at the insolence of the Spaniard. He could not do without their aid, but he found that their countryman Renard, advisor to Princess Mary, was taking the leadership from him. Stratford knew there was in England at that time a man who was called the Fox by those who had dealings with him; who had caused to be slain secretly some of the nobles who opposed Mary. And he suspected that this Fox was Renard the philosopher.

Stratford knew that another conspiracy was in the wind. Durforth, who had in past years been a merchant of Flanders and the North Sea, had been seen in company with Renard. Durforth, alone of the navigators, knew the coast of Norway. So he had been chosen by the council of Cabot's merchant-adventurers to go with Sir Hugh Willoughby as master of one of the three ships.

Of traffic and discoveries my lord of Stratford recked little. He wondered fleetingly why D'Alaber and Renard set such importance on the voyage of Sir Hugh. He had spoken truly to Ralph Thorne when he declared that the Spaniards would like to make an end of Sir Hugh and his ships. And why were they giving letters to Durforth to bear upon this voyage?

Aloud he said to the merchant—

“Your dallying here hath aroused no suspicion?”

“Not a jot,” responded Durforth with his usual bluntness, “thanks to gaffer Cabot. The old cockatrice was afire to sail with Sir Hugh as far as Orfordnesse. So I yielded my place to him and will strike across the country to that haven with D'Alaber.”

“Who will return to London,” put in Stratford meaningly, “in the train of Princess—shall we say, Queen Mary?”

D'Alaber's dark eyes lighted with some amusement.

“Señores, porque se tardo tanto—why this beating about the bush? Nay, it shall be Mary future wife of Philip of Spain, King of England.”

“What?” cried the nobleman, the blood rushing to his brow. “Now by my soul and honor, that will never be. Your emperor's dark-faced brat will not be King of England!”

“Mary,” made answer D'Alaber, heedless of the other's surprize and wrath, “is ill favored and shrewish. She hath overpassed thirty years and dotes on Philip, who is yet willing to have her for his bride. I see no hindrance to the match.”

“But the men of England—Parliament”

“Will not take kindly at first to a nobler monarch than the Tudor lineage can show. But Mary will have her way, and you of the court have gone too far to draw back, unless you would care to make your excuses to the Fox.”

“'Tis the fable of Master Æsop come true,” grunted Durforth, who cared little about matters of state, so he was permitted to trade as he listed. “The gentry who were weary of King Log called for King Stork and had sorrow thereby.”

“Por estas honradas barbas!” cried D'Alaber, drawing himself up in his first flash of temper. “You rovers and cloth pedlers have no wit to see where power lies. Philip will be monarch of Spain before many years.”

He swept his hand about the bare rush-floored chamber of his host.

“Instead of on this filth, you will walk on the carpets of Araby and these foul walls will be covered with the silks of Cathay. Your table will bear its spices, which now it lacks. For—” his eloquent voice rang with the arrogance of one schooled in a militant and conquering court—“you will be allied to the master of Christiandom, to Charles, Emperor of the Romans, King of Spain, Germany and the Two Sicilies. Lord of Jerusalem and Hungary, Archduke of Austria, and Duke of Burgundy and Brabant, Earl of Flanders, and”

One finger, bearing rings set with flawless, blue diamonds, tapped the table before the stricken nobleman.

“—and sole monarch of the New World, with all its riches.”

His words, sinking into the spirit of my lord of Stratford, left the man silent, sucking in his thin lips. D'Alaber, who had dealt with defeated noblemen before now, glanced at him as a physician might study a patient in convalescence and took Durforth's arm.

“Sir, I leave you to the meditations of prudence and I count upon your pledged aid. Send post to Orfordnesse if Edward nears the end, and so—fare you well.”

But Stratford was voiceless, beholding in the eyes of his imagination the chains that were to be put upon him, no less binding for that they were of gold.

D'Alaber shrugged and whispered Durforth.

“Our islander hath served his turn, but for you señor we have a worthy commission.”

“And a mort of danger.”

“Ah, true. Have you put upon your ship the globe prepared by us.”

“That I have, and a fine piece it is, bearing a mappamundi of all the known world.”

“Use it. You know the course you are to sail, and what is to befall in the Ice Sea?”

Durforth nodded and smiled.

“'Twill be a merry company gathered at our setting forth. Nay, how will you keep this lad of Edward's from spying upon us? Had you forgotten him?”

Passing by the long mirror D'Alaber paused to adjust the clasp of his cloak.

“Memory is a good servant but a poor mistress. 'Tis my part to remember this unfortunate youth, yours to forget him. Study your part, Durforth, and remember that many an actor hath fallen foul of the pit by mistaking his cue.”