At the "Sign of the Golden Fleece"

by Emma Leslie

MILES TO THE RESCUE.

THE Cardinal always took care that no listener should ever become possessed of his secrets, or what he might wish to communicate to his secretaries, so that it was not through anything that passed in the palace that Queen Catherine heard the next morning, before she left her closet, that her young favourite, who had recently gone to the convent, had not gone heart-whole, and that her parents might seek to delay or prevent her taking the vows of a nun when her novitiate was at an end.

The fact was that Miles had not been very careful to look about him when he went to the Controller's garden, or he would have seen that a dwarf, known about the palace as Saladin, had dogged his steps, and was hiding behind a convenient privet hedge while he was talking about Cicely to her sister.

Being of a prying, mischievous disposition, he crept close under the window when Miles went into the house, and with what he heard and what he surmised and added to the story, he went back to his friend in the palace with the tale that the little nun was to be rescued from the convent, and married to one of the King's gentlemen, for he had mistaken Miles for a young gallant who had often paid court to Mistress Cicely while she was in the service of the Queen.

Nominally, the dwarf was in the service of the girl Princess Mary, but he was allowed a good deal of freedom by his mistress, and had attached himself to the Queen's confessor, because he generally had some sweet dainty to give him when he carried him any tale of the doings of the ladies and gentlemen about the Court.

Saladin was the butt and plaything of everybody within the precincts of Placentia, and, while passing for half an idiot among those who only saw him as the dwarf to make game of, the priest was training him to become an acute observer and a careful retailer of all the sundry scraps of gossip that came in his way. From the miscellaneous collection poured out to him every evening, the watchful priest could select such as were likely to be useful to himself or his mistress, and reject the rest.

Already did this watchful friend of Queen Catherine know that grave danger threatened his mistress in the person of the merry, black-haired little lady, who had come recently from the Court of France, and who, though little more than a girl of sixteen, had sufficient strength of character to hold fast by the fashion in which the ladies dressed there, which was altogether more neat and becoming than the English fashion, which Queen Catherine had followed blindly, caring too little to approve or disapprove of the cut of a gown or wimple, so that it was splendid enough to please her husband. The Princess Margaret, the French king's sister, had done her best to teach her ladies greater simplicity in dress, which this English girl had adopted, and refused to give up now that she had returned to England. It was not the only thing either that she had learned at the French Court, he heard, for scraps of gossip had come to him, making him fear that the Lady Anne, in spite of her merry laugh and coquettish ways, had learned something of the heresy that was whispered the Princess encouraged, so that Saladin had been warned to collect all he could about the Lady Anne, and it had been a relief to the priest when he heard that Lord Percy would marry her presently.

Then, a day or two later, Saladin brought him the news that Lord Percy and Master Guildford together were going to break into the convent, and carry off Mistress Cicely, the little nun.

Father Dominic did not believe in the literal fact of this being attempted, but Saladin's story was too circumstantial not to be believed in its essential, and so he hastened to the Queen and told her that her favourite must be removed from the neighbourhood of Greenwich without delay if the King's waning affection was to be retained, and she become the mother of an heir to the English throne.

The fact was, Cicely had been devoted to the conventual life as a sort of hostage for the Queen herself. Catherine had grown very fond of the girl, and just because she was the sweetest thing about the Court to her, she must be sacrificed to the Church, that through this, and the prayers of the girl herself, the greatly desired gift of a son might be bestowed upon her, and her husband's heart turned towards her once more. If the Queen herself thought that the death of her babies was a proof of the anger of God against her, it was because she had chosen to become the Queen of England rather than the higher vocation of a nun; and so, in sending Cicely to the convent, surely heaven would pardon her sin, and accept the sweet, fresh life of the girl as an equivalent, while she would do all she could to further the power and glory of the Church through the exalted position which she occupied.