of other collections of people about the churches and in the villages. One distant flash after another showed where fresh fires were kindled; and red smoke-clouds floated here and there, as far as anything could be seen.
“See,” cried Polly, “how the people below are looking up all at once! Let us go upon the terrace and show them how happy we are.”
“Stay!” cried De Naon. “It is not to be thought of.”
“But I know them so well!” said Polly. “There can be scarcely a face there that I do not know: and they are so happy! and so are we! See how their faces are all upturned at once!”
“We must withdraw from the windows,” De Naon declared. “We may not have been seen; but we must do nothing without the Queen’s order;—no, not even rejoice.”
His voice chilled the hearts of his companions; and so did the countenance of the Earl as he came forth, and signed to the ladies to return to their mistress. As he opened the door to the corridor, two armed men entered and carried off the secretary.
Mary was not fainting; but she was stunned, though the Earl had discharged his duty as gently as he knew how. He said no word to her of her own danger in his hands. The Countess thought this pusillanimous, and almost disloyal; but it was a point on which the Earl was firm. It might be unnecessary ever to use the warrant which he held: the Queen and the Council might change their minds; time might bring about explanations of many things; and, if the maintenance of the religion and the peace of the realm should be found compatible with the life of the Queen of Scots, she might be spared the knowledge of what was now proposed. The Countess was positively forbidden to reveal the fact of the warrant being in the castle to any person whatever: and the secret was in fact well kept for some years. Bess of Hardwick had not supposed that she could come so near quailing before any event as she now found possible. Many a shudder came over her during the day; and she started from her sleep at night when the thought occurred of the black scaffold and the headsman in her own halls, and of a guest, a royal guest, being carried forth a headless corpse from her gates. As she watched the roads for approaching horsemen, forgetting the passage of the hours, she grew more apprehensive of messages from London than the Earl himself.
To Mary the Earl would have given more comfort than terror by producing her death-warrant that night. It was a night never to be referred to again, and such an one as could scarcely have been borne twice. The wreck of hope was complete. The Duke of Norfolk was arrested; the northern Earls were summoned to London, but had fled. No foreign force had arrived to support the Scots; and the Scots had marched back again. The burning of the Bible and Prayer-book in Durham Cathedral had exasperated the whole country round. What the spirit of the realm was might be seen by the way in which the news was everywhere taken. Everywhere the people turned out for their Protestant Queen, rang their bells, lighted their bonfires, and cursed the Popish witch who betrayed to death every man who came under the glance of her eye, and the tone of her voice. The Earl said as little as he could; and Mary could not make inquiry, because it was her part to appear ignorant of any conspiracy. But what she heard was as much as she could bear. All! all lost! Every one who had perilled all for her, doomed and lost! Her own life a blank! to be passed in a loathed prison like this! A life spent with Bess of Hardwick for a gaoler! And the realm not recovered for the Church, but fresh strength given to the damning heresy of the age! The world seemed God-forsaken that night; and, when morning came, the worn and sleepless group started from each other’s looks, and might well bar their doors against all witnesses of their woe.
Yet evil tidings found entrance to them in their closest seclusion. The Countess considered it good for their souls that they should know the mischief for which she considered her royal prisoner responsible. She despised the weakness of concealing from Mary the fact that her head was in the Earl’s power; but she was so positively forbidden to disclose the truth that there was no help for it; and she made amends by conveying to the secluded ladies the assurance that they would never again see the pair of devoted anglers fishing in the Dove.
Mr. Felton had been ordered for trial on the charge of posting the Pope’s bull on the church-door and the Castle-gate; and the evidence of eye-witnesses left him no chance of escape. His friend would suffer with him; for of their complicity with the conspiracy there could be no doubt. The Countess was less eager to tell of the prospects of the Queen’s late needleman. She had been so resolute in rebuking the Earl’s suspicions of the clever tailor she had hired for the Queen’s service, that she would not believe to the last moment that she had been duped by a popish priest. She pitied him as one of those victims sure to be drawn into the vortex of destruction when unscrupulous treason is making its plunge down the precipice. The poor man would be lost, she said, unless the Earl would allow her to take his case in hand. The Earl committed the case to those whose proper business it was; and the disclosures which ensued humbled the Countess in a very wholesome way. On the day of his execution, she sighed, and said he deserved his fate ten times over for bringing his plots into the house of a good subject, and making a fool of a patron to whom he pretended to defer. The effect of her contrition was seen in her allowing her husband, without any interference, to make his own appointments when the Queen’s servants were changed; and when at length he was able to repair to Court to receive further instructions, and, as he hoped, to deliver up the burden of the power over Mary’s life, the Lady Bess was really glad to have the assistance of the Earl of Huntingdon in guarding the prisoners till her husband should return to conduct them to Fotheringay Castle.
