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Come Rack! Come Rope! by Robert Hugh Benson

R >> Robert Hugh Benson >> Come Rack! Come Rope!




* * * * *

For a minute or two it was all that he could do to hold himself in
consciousness. It appeared to him a necessity to do so. He could see a
smoke-stained roof of beams and rafters, and on these he fixed his eyes,
thinking that he could hold himself so, as by thin, wiry threads of
sight, from falling again into the pit where all was black or
blood-colour. The pain was appalling, but he thought he had gripped it
at last, and could hold it so, like a wrestler.

As the pain began to resolve itself into throbs and stabs, from the
continuous strain in which at first it had shown itself--a strain that
was like a shrill horn blowing, or a blaze of bluish light--he began to
see more, and to understand a little. There were four or five faces
looking down on him: one was the face of a man he had seen somewhere in
an inn ... it was at Fotheringay; it was my lord Shrewsbury's man.
Another was a lean face; a black hat came and went behind it; the lips
were drawn in a sort of smile, so that he could see the teeth.... Then
he perceived next that he himself was lying in a kind of shallow trough
of wood upon the floor. He could see his bare feet raised a little and
tied with cords.

Then, one by one, these sights fitted themselves into one another and
made sense. He remembered that he was in Derby gaol--not in his own
cell; that the lean face was of a man called Topcliffe; that a physician
was there as well as the others; that they had been questioning him on
various points, and that some of these points he had answered, while
others he had not, and must not. Some of them concerned her Grace of the
Scots.... These he had answered. Then, again, association came back....

"As Thy arms, O Christ ..." he whispered.

"Now then," came the sharp voice in his ear, so close and harsh as to
distress him. "These questions again.... Were there any other places
besides at Padley and Booth's Edge, in the parish of Hathersage, where
you said mass?"

"... O Christ, were extended on the Cross--" began the tortured man
dreamily. "Ah-h-h!"....

It was a scream, whispered rather than shrieked, that was torn from him
by the sharpness of the agony. His body had lifted from the floor
without will of his own, twisting a little; and what seemed as strings
of fiery pain had shot upwards from his feet and downwards from his
wrists as the roller was suddenly jerked again. He hung there perhaps
ten or fifteen seconds, conscious only of the blinding pain--questions,
questioners, roof and faces all gone and drowned again in a whirling
tumult of darkness and red streaks. The sweat poured again suddenly from
his whole body.... Then again he sank relaxed upon the floor, and the
pulses beat in his head, and he thought that Marjorie and her mother and
his own father were all looking at him....

He heard presently the same voice talking:

"--and answer the questions that are put to you.... Now then, we will
begin the others, if it please you better.... In what month was it that
you first became privy to the plot against her Grace?"

"Wait!" whispered the priest. "Wait, and I will answer that." (He
understood that there was a trap here. The question had been framed
differently last time. But his mind was all a-whirl; and he feared he
might answer wrongly if he could not collect himself. He still wondered
why so many friends of his were in the room--even Father Campion....)

He drew a breath again presently, and tried to speak; but his voice
broke like a shattered trumpet, and he could not command it.... He must
whisper.

"It was in August, I think.... I think it was August, two years ago."...

"August ... you mean May or April."

"No; it was August.... At least, all that I know of the plot was when
... when--" (His thoughts became confused again; it was like strings of
wool, he thought, twisted violently together; a strand snapped now and
again. He made a violent effort and caught an end as it was slipping
away.) "It was in August, I think; the day that Mr. Babington fled, that
he wrote to me; and sent me--" (He paused: he became aware that here,
too, lurked a trap if he were to say he had seen Mary; he would surely
be asked what he had seen her for, and his priesthood might be so proved
against him.... He could not remember whether that had been proved; and
so ... would Father Campion advise him perhaps whether....)

The voice jarred again; and startled him into a flash of coherence. He
thought he saw a way out.

"Well?" snapped the voice. "Sent you?... Sent you whither?"

"Sent me to Chartley; where I saw her Grace ... her Grace of the Scots;
and ... 'As Thy arms, O Christ....'"

"Now then; now then--! So your saw her Grace? And what was that for?"

"I saw her Grace ... and ... and told her what Mr. Babington had told
me."

"What was that, then?"

"That ... that he was her servant till death; and ... and a thousand if
he had them. And so, 'As Thy arms, O--'"

"Water," barked the voice.

Again came the rush as of cataracts; and a sensation of drowning. There
followed an instant's glow of life; and then the intolerable pain came
back; and the heavy, red-streaked darkness....


II

He found himself, after some period, lying more easily. He could not
move hand or foot. His body only appeared to live. From his shoulders to
his thighs he was alive; the rest was nothing. But he opened his eyes
and saw that his arms were laid by his side; and that he was no longer
in the wooden trough. He wondered at his hands; he wondered even if they
were his ... they were of an unusual colour and bigness; and there was
something like a tight-fitting bracelet round each wrist. Then he
perceived that he was shirtless and hoseless; and that the bracelets
were not bracelets, but rings of swollen flesh. But there was no longer
any pain or even sensation in them; and he was aware that his mouth
glowed as if he had drunk ardent spirits.

He was considering all this, slowly, like a child contemplating a new
toy. Then there came something between him and the light; he saw a
couple of faces eyeing him. Then the voice began again, at first
confused and buzzing, then articulate; and he remembered.

"Now, then," said the voice, "you have had but a taste of it...." ("A
taste of it; a taste of it." The phrase repeated itself like the catch
of a song.... When he regained his attention, the sentence had moved
on.)

"... these questions. I will put them to you again from the beginning.
You will give your answer to each. And if my lord is not satisfied, we
must try again."

"My lord!" thought the priest. He rolled his eyes round a little
further. (He dared not move his head; the sinews of his throat burned
like red-hot steel cords at the thought of it.) And he saw a little
table floating somewhere in the dark; a candle burned on it; and a
melancholy face with dreamy eyes was brightly illuminated.... That was
my lord Shrewsbury, he considered....

"... in what month that you first became privy to the plot against her
Grace?"

(Sense was coming back to him again now. He remembered what he had said
just now.)

"It was in August," he whispered, "in August, I think; two years ago.
Mr. Babington wrote to me of it."

"And you went to the Queen of the Scots, you say?"

"Yes."

"And what did you there?"

"I gave the message."

"What was that?"

"... That Mr. Babington was her servant always; that he regretted
nothing, save that he had failed. He begged her to pray for his soul,
and for all that had been with him in the enterprise."

(It appeared to him that he was astonishingly voluble, all at once. He
reflected that he must be careful.)

"And what did she say to that?"

"She declared herself guiltless of the plot ... that she knew nothing of
it; and that--"

"Now then; now then. You expect my lord to believe that?"

"I do not know.... But it was what was said."

"And you profess that you knew nothing of the plot till then?"

"I knew nothing of it till then," whispered the priest steadily. "But--"

(A face suddenly blotted out more of the light.)

"Yes?"

"Anthony--I mean Mr. Babington--had spoken to me a great while
before--in ... in some village inn.... I forget where. It was when I was
a lad. He asked whether I would join in some enterprise. He did not say
what it was.... But I thought it to be against the Queen of England....
And I would not."...

He closed his eyes again. There had begun a slow heat of pain in ankles
and wrists, not wholly unbearable, and a warmth began to spread in his
body. A great shudder or two shook him. The voice said something he
could not hear. Then a metal rim was pressed to his mouth; and a stream
of something at once icy and fiery ran into his mouth and out at the
corners. He swallowed once or twice; and his senses came back.

"You do not expect us to believe all that!" came the voice.

"It is the truth, for all that," murmured the priest.

The next question came sudden as a shot fired:

"You were at Fotheringay?"

"Yes."

"In what house?"

"I was in the inn--the 'New Inn,' I think it is.

"And you spoke with her Grace again?"

"No; I could not get at her. But--"

"Well?"

"I was in the court of the castle when her Grace was executed."

There was a murmur of voices. He thought that someone had moved over to
the table where my lord sat; but he could not move his eyes again, the
labour was too great.

"Who was with you in the inn--as your friend, I mean?"

"A ... a young man was with me. His name was Merton. He is in France, I
think."

"And he knew you to be a priest?" came the voice without an instant's
hesitation.

"Why--" Then he stopped short, just in time.

"Well?"

"How should he think that?" asked Robin.

There was a laugh somewhere. Then the voice went on, almost
good-humouredly.

"Mr. Alban; what is the use of this fencing? You were taken in a
hiding-hole with the very vestments at your feet. We _know_ you to be a
priest. We are not seeking to entrap you in that, for there is no need.
But there are other matters altogether which we must have from you. You
have been made priest beyond the seas, in Rheims--"

"I swear to you that I was not," whispered Robin instantly and eagerly,
thinking he saw a loophole.

"Well, then, at Chalons, or Douay: it matters not where. That is not our
affair to-day. All that will be dealt with before my lords at the
Assizes. But what we must have from you now is your answer to some other
questions."

"Assuming me to be a priest?"

"Mr. Alban, I will talk no more on that point. I tell you we know it.
But we must have answers on other points. I will come back to Merton
presently. These are the questions. I will read them through to you.
Then we will deal with them one by one."

There was the rustle of a paper. An extraordinary desire for sleep came
down on the priest; it was only by twitching his head a little, and
causing himself acute shoots of pain in his neck that he could keep
himself awake. He knew that he must not let his attention wander again.
He remembered clearly how that Father Campion was dead, and that
Marjorie could not have been here just now.... He must take great care
not to become so much confused again.

* * * * *

"The first question," read the voice slowly, "is, Whether you have said
mass in other places beside Padley and the manor at Booth's Edge. We
know that you must have done so; but we must have the names of the
places, and of the parties present, so far as you can remember them.

"The second question is, the names of all those other priests with whom
you have spoken in England, since you came from Rheims; and the names of
all other students, not yet priests, or scarcely, whom you knew at
Rheims, and who are for England.

"The third question is, the names of all those whom you know to be
friends of Mr. John FitzHerbert, Mr. Bassett and Mr. Fenton--not being
priests; but Papists.

"These three questions will do as a beginning. When you have answered
these, there is a number more. Now, sir."

The last two words were rapped out sharply. Robin opened his eyes.

"As to the first two questions," he whispered. "These assume that I am
a priest myself. Yet that is what you, have to prove against me. The
third question concerns ... concerns my loyalty to my friends. But I
will tell you--"

"Yes?" (The voice was sharp and eager.)

"I will tell you the names of two friends of each of those gentlemen you
have named."

A pen suddenly scratched on paper. He could not see who held it.

"Yes?" said the voice again.

"Well, sir. The names of two of the friends of Mr. FitzHerbert are, Mr.
Bassett and Mr. Fenton. The names--"

"Bah!" (The word sounded like the explosion of a gun.)

"You are playing with us--"

"The names," murmured the priest slowly, "of two of Mr. Fenton's friends
are Mr. FitzHerbert and--"

A face, upside-down, thrust itself suddenly almost into his. He could
feel the hot breath on his forehead.

"See here, Mr. Alban. You are fooling us. Do you think this is a
Christmas game? I tell you it is not yet three o'clock. There are three
hours more yet--"

A smooth, sad voice interrupted. (The reversed face vanished.)

"You have threatened the prisoner," it said, "but you have not yet told
him the alternative."

"No, my lord.... Yes, my lord. Listen, Mr. Alban. My lord here says that
if you will answer these questions he will use his influence on your
behalf. Your life is forfeited, as you know very well. There is not a
dog's chance for you. Yet, if you will but answer these three
questions--and no more--(No more, my lord?)--Yes; these three questions
and no more, my lord will use his influence for you. He can promise
nothing, he says, but that; but my lord's influence--well, we need say
no more on that point. If you refuse to answer, on the other hand, there
are yet three hours more to-day; there is all to-morrow, and the next
day. And, after that, your case will be before my lords at the Assizes.
You have had but a taste of what we can do.... And then, sir, my lord
does not wish to be harsh...."

There was a pause.

Robin was counting up the hours. It was three o'clock now. Then he had
been on the rack, with intervals, since nine o'clock. That was six
hours. There was but half that again for to-day. Then would come the
night. He need not consider further than that.... But he must guard his
tongue. It might speak, in spite---

"Well, Mr. Alban?"

He opened his eyes.

"Well, sir?"

"Which is it to be?"

The priest smiled and closed his eyes again. If he could but fix his
attention on the mere pain, he thought, and refuse utterly to consider
the way of escape, he might be able to keep his unruly tongue in check.

"You will not, then?"

"No."

* * * * *

The appalling pain ran through him again like fiery snakes of iron--from
wrist to shoulders, from ankles to thighs, as the hands seized him and
lifted him....

There was a moment or two of relief as he sank down once more into the
trough of torture. He could feel that his feet were being handled, but
it appeared as if nothing touched his flesh. He gave a great sighing
moan as his arms were drawn back over his head; and the sweat poured
again from all over his body.

Then, as the cords tightened:

"As Thy arms, O Christ, were extended ..." he whispered.




CHAPTER IX


I

A great murmuring crowd filled every flat spot of ground and pavement
and parapet. They stood even on the balustrade of St. Mary's Bridge;
there were fringes of them against the sky on the edges of roofs a
quarter of a mile away. No flat surface was to be seen anywhere except
on the broad reach of the river, and near the head of the bridge, in the
circular space, ringed by steel caps and pike-points, where the gallows
and ladder rose. Close beside them a column of black smoke rose heavily
into the morning air, bellying away into the clear air. A continual
steady low murmur of talking went up continually.

* * * * *

There had been no hanging within the memory of any that had roused such
interest. Derbyshire men had been hung often enough; a criminal usually
had a dozen friends at least in the crowd to whom he shouted from the
ladder. Seminary priests had been executed often enough now to have
destroyed the novelty of it for the mob; why, three had been done to
death here little more than two months ago in this very place. They gave
no sport, certainly; they died too quietly; and what peculiar interest
there was in it lay in the contemplation of the fact that it was for
religion that they died. Gentlemen, too, had been hanged here now and
then--polished persons, dressed in their best, who took off their outer
clothes carefully, and in one or two cases had handed them to a servant;
gentlemen with whom the sheriff shook hands before the end, who eyed the
mob imperturbably or affected even not to be aware of the presence of
the vulgar. But this hanging was sublime.

First, he was a Derbyshire man, a seminary priest and a gentleman--three
points. Yet this was no more than the groundwork of his surpassing
interest. For, next, he had been racked beyond belief. It was for three
days before his sentence that Mr. Topcliffe himself had dealt with him.
(Yes, Mr. Topcliffe was the tall man that had his rooms in the
market-place, and always went abroad with two servants.... He was to
have Padley, too, it was said, as a reward for all his zeal.) Of course,
young Mr. Audrey (for that was his real name--not Alban; that was a
Popish _alias_ such as they all used)--Mr. Audrey had not been on the
rack for the whole of every day. But he had been in the rack-house eight
or nine hours on the first day, four the second, and six or seven the
third. And he had not answered one single question differently from the
manner in which he had answered it before ever he had been on the rack
at all. (There was a dim sense of pride with regard to this, in many
Derbyshire minds. A Derbyshire man, it appeared, was more than a match
for even a Londoner and a sworn servant of her Grace.) It was said that
Mr. Audrey would have to be helped up the ladder, even though he had not
been racked for a whole week since his sentence.

Next, the trial itself had been full of interest. A Papist priest was,
of course, fair game. (Why, the Spanish Armada itself had been full of
them, it was said, all come to subdue England.... Well, they had had
their bellyful of salt water and English iron by now.) But this Papisher
had hit back and given sport. He had flatly refused to be caught, though
the questions were swift and subtle enough to catch any clerk. Certainly
he had not denied that he was a priest; but he had said that that was
what the Crown must prove: he was not there as a witness, he had said,
but as a prisoner; he had even entreated them to respect their own
legal dignities! But there had been a number of things against him, and
even if none of these had been proved, still, the mere sum of them was
enough; there could be no smoke without fire, said the proverb-quoters.
It was alleged that he had been privy to the plot against the Queen (the
plot of young Mr. Babington, who had sold his house down there a week or
two only before his arrest); he had denied this, but he had allowed that
he had spoken with her Grace immediately after the plot; and this was a
highly suspicious circumstance: if he allowed so much as this, the rest
might be safely presumed. Again, it was said that he had had part in
attempts to free the Queen of the Scots, even from Fotheringay itself;
and had been in the castle court, with a number of armed servants, at
the very time of her execution. Again, if he allowed that he had been
present, even though he denied the armed servants, the rest might be
presumed. Finally, since he were a priest, and had seen her Grace at a
time when there was no chaplain allowed to her, it was certain that he
must have ministered their Popish superstitions to her, and this was
neither denied nor affirmed: he had said to this that they had yet to
prove him a priest at all. The very spectacle of the trial, too, had
been remarkable; for, first, there was the extraordinary appearance of
the prisoner, bent double like an old man, with the face of a dead one,
though he could not be above thirty years old at the very most; and then
there was the unusual number of magistrates present in court besides the
judges, and my lord Shrewsbury himself, who had presided at the racking.
It was one of my lord's men, too, that had helped to identify the
prisoner.

But the supreme interest lay in even more startling circumstances--in
the history of Mistress Manners, who was present through the trial with
Mr. Biddell the lawyer, and who had obtained at least two interviews
with the prisoner, one before the torture and the other after sentence.
It was in Mistress Manners' house at Booth's Edge that the priest had
been taken; and it was freely rumoured that although Mr. Audrey had once
been betrothed to her, yet that she had released and sent him herself to
Rheims, and all to end like this. And yet she could bear to come and see
him again; and, it was said, would be present somewhere in the crowd
even at his death.

Finally, the tale of how the priest had been taken by his own
father--old Mr. Audrey of Matstead--him that was now lying sick in Mr.
Columbell's house--this put the crown on all the rest. A hundred rumours
flew this way and that: one said that the old man had known nothing of
his son's presence in the country, but had thought him to be still in
foreign parts. Another, that he knew him to be in England, but not that
he was in the county; a third, that he knew very well who it was in the
house he went to search, and had searched it and taken him on purpose to
set his own loyalty beyond question. Opinions differed as to the
propriety of such an action....

* * * * *

So then the great crowd of heads--men from all the countryside, from
farms and far-off cottages and the wild hills, mingling with the
townsfolk--this crowd, broken up into levels and patches by river and
houses and lanes, moved to and fro in the October sunshine, and sent up,
with the column of smoke that eddied out from beneath the bubbling
tar-cauldron by the gallows, a continual murmur of talking, like the
sound of slow-moving wheels of great carts.

He felt dazed and blind, yet with a kind of lightness too as he came
out of the gaol-gate into that packed mass of faces, held back by guards
from the open space where the horse and the hurdle waited. A dozen
persons or so were within the guards; he knew several of them by sight;
two or three were magistrates; another was an officer; two were
ministers with their Bibles.

It is hard to say whether he were afraid. Fear was there, indeed--he
knew well enough that in his case, at any rate, the execution would be
done as the law ordered; that he would be cut down before he had time to
die, and that the butchery would be done on him while he would still be
conscious of it. Death, too, was fearful, in any case.... Yet there were
so many other things to occupy him--there was the exhilarating knowledge
that he was to die for his faith and nothing else; for they had offered
him his life if he would go to church; and they had proved nothing as to
any complicity of his in any plot, and how could they, since there was
none? There was the pain of his tormented body to occupy him; a pain
that had passed from the acute localized agonies of snapped sinews and
wrenched joints into one vast physical misery that soaked his whole body
as in a flood; a pain that never ceased; of which he dreamed darkly, as
a hungry man dreams of food which he cannot eat, to which he awoke again
twenty times a night as to a companion nearer to him than the thoughts
with which he attempted to distract himself. This pain, at least, would
have an end presently. Again, there was an intermittent curiosity as to
how and what would befall his flying soul when the butchery was done.
"To sup in Heaven" was a phrase used by one of his predecessors on the
threshold of death.... For what did that stand?... And at other times
there had been no curiosity, but an acquiescence in old childish images.
Heaven at such times appeared to him as a summer garden, with pavilions,
and running water and the song of birds ... a garden where he would lie
at ease at last from his torn body and that feverish mind, which was all
that his pain had left to him; where Mary went, gracious and motherly,
with her virgins about her; where the Crucified Lamb of God would talk
with him as a man talks with his friend, and allow him to lie at the
Pierced Feet ... where the glory of God rested like eternal sunlight on
all that was there; on the River of Life, and the wood of the trees that
are for the healing of all hurts.

And, last of all, there was a confused medley of more human thoughts
that concerned persons other than himself. He could not remember all the
persons clearly; their names and their faces came and went. Marjorie,
his father, Mr. John FitzHerbert and Mr. Anthony, who had been allowed
to come and see him; Dick Sampson, who had come in with Marjorie the
second time and had kissed his hands. One thing at least he remembered
clearly as he stood here, and that was how he had bidden Mistress
Manners, even now, not to go overseas and become a nun, as she had
wished; but rather to continue her work in Derbyshire, if she could.

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