 | Mary Stuart |  |
65
Scene I.
Windsor Castle.Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Walsingham.
Elizabeth.
What will ye make me? Let the council know
I am yet their loving mistress, but they lay
Too strange a burden on my love who send
As to their servant word what ways to take,
What sentence of my subjects given subscribe
And in mine own name utter. Bid them wait;
Have I not patience? and was never quick
To teach my tongue the deadly word of death,
Lest one day strange tongues blot my fame with blood;
The red addition of my sister's name
Shall brand not mine.
Walsingham.
God grant your mercy shown
Mark not your memory like a martyr's red
With pure imperial heart's-blood of your own
Shed through your own sweet-spirited height of heart
That held your hand from justice.
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I would rather
Stand in God's sight so signed with mine own blood
Than with a sister's—innocent; or indeed
Though guilty—being a sister's—might I choose,
As being a queen I may not surely—no—
I may not choose, you tell me.
Walsingham.
Nay, no man
Hath license of so large election given
As once to choose, being servant called of God,
If he will serve or no, or save the name
And slack the service.
Elizabeth.
Yea, but in his Word
I find no word that whets for king-killing
The sword kings bear for justice; yet I doubt,
Being drawn, it may not choose but strike at root—
Being drawn to cut off treason. Walsingham,
You are more a statesman than a gospeller;
Take for your tongue's text now no text of God's,
But what the devil has put into their lips
Who should have slain me; nay, what by God's grace,
Who bared their purpose to us, through pain or fear
Hath been wrung thence of secrets writ in fire
At bottom of their hearts. Have they confessed?
Walsingham.
The twain trapped first in London.
Elizabeth.
What, the priest?
Their twice-turned Ballard, ha?
Walsingham.
Madam, not he.
Elizabeth.
God's blood! ye have spared not him the torment, knaves?
Of all I would not spare him.
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Verily, no;
The rack hath spun his life's thread out so fine
There is but left for death to slit in twain
The thickness of a spider's.
Elizabeth.
Ay, still dumb?
Walsingham.
Dumb for all good the pains can get of him;
Had he drunk dry the chalice of his craft
Brewed in design abhorred of even his friends
With poisonous purpose toward your majesty,
He had kept scarce harder silence.
Elizabeth.
Poison? ay—
That should be still the churchman's household sword
Or saintly staff to bruise crowned heads from far
And break them with his precious balms that smell
Rank as the jaws of death, or festal fume
When Rome yet reeked with Borgia; but the rest
Had grace enow to grant me for goodwill
Some death more gracious than a rat's? God wot,
I am bounden to them, and will charge for this
The hangman thank them heartily; they shall not
Lack daylight means to die by. God, meseems,
Will have me not die darkling like a dog,
Who hath kept my lips from poison and my heart
From shot of English knave or Spanish, both
Dubbed of the devil or damned his doctors, whom
My riddance from all ills that plague man's life
Should have made great in record; and for wage
Your Ballard hath not better hap to fee
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As dumb in bonds as those dead dogs in earth,
You say, but of his fellows newly ta'en
There are that keep not silence: what say these?
Pour in mine ears the poison of their plot
Whose fangs have stung the silly snakes to death.
Walsingham.
The first a soldier, Savage, in these wars
That sometime serving sought a traitor's luck
Under the prince Farnese, then of late
At Rheims was tempted of our traitors there,
Of one in chief, Gifford the seminarist,
My smock-faced spy's good uncle, to take off
Or the earl of Leicester or your gracious self;
And since his passage hither, to confirm
His hollow-hearted hardihood, hath had
Word from this doctor more solicitous yet
Sent by my knave his nephew, who of late
Was in the seminary of so deadly seed
Their reader in philosophy, that their head,
Even Cardinal Allen, holds for just and good
The purpose laid upon his hand; this man
Makes yet more large confession than of this,
Saying from our Gilbert's trusty mouth he had
Assurance that in Italy the Pope
Hath levies raised against us, to set forth
For seeming succour toward the Parmesan,
But in their actual aim bent hither, where
With French and Spaniards in one front of war
They might make in upon us; but from France
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Till—so they phrase it—by these Catholics here
Your majesty be taken, or—
Elizabeth.
No more—
But only taken? springed but bird-like? Ha!
They are something tender of our poor personal chance—
Temperately tender: yet I doubt the springe
Had haply maimed me no less deep than life
Sits next the heart most mortal. Or—so be it
I slip the springe—what yet may shackle France,
Hang weights upon their purpose who should else
Be great of heart against us? They take time
Till I be taken—or till what signal else
As favourable?
Walsingham.
Till she they serve be brought
Safe out of Paulet's keeping.
Elizabeth.
Ay? they know him
So much my servant, and his guard so good,
That sound of strange feet marching on our soil
Against us in his prisoner's name perchance
Might from the walls wherein she sits his guest
Raise a funereal echo? Yet I think
He would not dare—what think'st thou might he dare
Without my word for warrant? If I knew
This—
Walsingham.
It should profit not your grace to know
What may not be conceivable for truth
Without some stain on honour.
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Nay, I say not
That I would have him take upon his hand
More than his trust may warrant: yet have men,
Good men, for very truth of their good hearts
Put loyal hand to work as perilous—well,
God wot I would not have him so transgress—
If such be called transgressors.
Walsingham.
Let the queen
Rest well assured he shall not. So far forth
Our swordsman Savage witnesses of these
That moved him toward your murder but in trust
Thereby to bring invasion over sea:
Which one more gently natured of his birth,
Tichborne, protests with very show of truth
That he would give no ear to, knowing, he saith,
The miseries of such conquest: nor, it seems,
Heard this man aught of murderous purpose bent
Against your highness.
Elizabeth.
Naught? why then, again,
To him I am yet more bounden, who may think,
Being found but half my traitor, at my hands
To find but half a hangman.
Walsingham.
Nay, the man
Herein seems all but half his own man, being
Made merely out of stranger hearts and brains
Their engine of conspiracy; for thus
Forsooth he pleads, that Babington his friend
First showed him how himself was wrought upon
By one man's counsel and persuasion, one
Held of great judgment, Ballard, on whose head
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Elizabeth.
Yet shall each
Pay for himself red coin of ransom down
In costlier drops than gold is. But of these
Why take we thought? their natural-subject blood
Can wash not out their sanguine-sealed attempt,
Nor leave us marked as tyrant: only she
That is the head and heart of all your fears
Whose hope or fear is England's, quick or dead,
Leaves or imperilled or impeached of blood
Me that with all but hazard of mine own,
God knows, would yet redeem her. I will write
With mine own hand to her privily,—what else?—
Saying, if by word as privy from her hand
She will confess her treasonous practices,
They shall be wrapped in silence up, and she
By judgment live unscathed.
Walsingham.
Being that she is,
So surely will she deem of your great grace,
And see it but as a snare set wide, or net
Spread in the bird's sight vainly.
Elizabeth.
Why, then, well:
She, casting off my grace, from all men's grace
Cuts off herself, and even aloud avows
By silence and suspect of jealous heart
Her manifest foul conscience: on which proof
I will proclaim her to the parliament
So self-convicted. Yet I would not have
Her name and life by mortal evidence
Touched at the trial of them that now shall die
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Fall in more peril of her friends than she
Stands yet in shot of judgment.
Walsingham.
Be assured,
Madam, the process of their treasons judged
Shall tax not her before her trial-time
With public note of clear complicity
Even for that danger's sake which moves you.
Elizabeth.
Me
So much it moves not for my mere life's sake
Which I would never buy with fear of death
As for the general danger's and the shame's
Thence cast on queenship and on womanhood
By mean of such a murderess. But, for them,
I would the merited manner of their death
Might for more note of terror be referred
To me and to my council: these at least
Shall hang for warning in the world's wide eye
More high than common traitors, with more pains
Being ravished forth of their more villainous lives
Than feed the general throat of justice. Her
Shall this too touch, whom none that serves henceforth
But shall be sure of hire more terrible
Than all past wage of treason.
Walsingham.
Why, so far
As law gives leave—
Elizabeth.
What prat'st thou me of law?
God's blood! is law for man's sake made, or man
For law's sake only, to be held in bonds,
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Or child by finger, not for help or stay,
But hurt and hindrance? Is not all this land
And all its hope and surety given to time
Of sovereignty and freedom, all the fame
And all the fruit of manhood hence to be,
More than one rag or relic of its law
Wherewith all these lie shackled? as too sure
Have states no less than ours been done to death
With gentle counsel and soft-handed rule
For fear to snap one thread of ordinance
Though thence the state were strangled.
Walsingham.
Madam, yet
There need no need be here of law's least breach,
That of all else is worst necessity—
Being such a mortal medicine to the state
As poison drunk to expel a feverish taint
Which air or sleep might purge as easily.
Elizabeth.
Ay, but if air be poison-struck with plague
Or sleep to death lie palsied, fools were they,
Faint hearts and faithless, who for health's fair sake
Should fear to cleanse air, pierce and probe the trance,
With purging fire or iron. Have your way.
God send good end of all this, and procure
Some mean whereby mine enemies' craft and his
May take no feet but theirs in their own toils,
And no blood shed be innocent as mine.
| Mary Stuart | |