He had almost promised Master Robert Catesby before this to visit him in his river-side house. Doubtless this was the very place for which he was now bound. Anything like an adventure was agreeable to one of Cuthbert's imaginative nature, and a spice of possible danger did not detract from the sense of fascination, even though he might not see wherein the danger lay.
The wherry he was wont to use lay moored near to the Three Cranes, and no one heeded or questioned him as he stepped in and pushed off into the river. A couple of soldiers were lounging upon the little wharf and watching the small craft as they came and went. They appeared to take some note of Cuthbert, as of others who passed by, but they did not speak to him, and he wondered what their business was there.
A fragment of talk between two watermen reached him as he began rowing out in the direction of the Cherry Blossom; for he did not wish to take the upstream direction till twilight should have fallen and his movements would escape unheeded, and the voices of these men as they passed him reached him clearly over the water.
"On the lookout for the runaway priest, I take it. Thou surely didst hear how he gave them the slip in the fog, just when they thought they had him safe. He had been well bruised and battered. It was a marvel how he got free. But he knew the narrow lanes well, and doubled like a hare. Doubtless he had his friends in waiting, for he slipped into some craft and eluded pursuit. But for the fog they would have made sure of him that time. They say he--"
But the rest of the sentence was lost in the distance, and Cuthbert laughed silently as he plied his oars.
"Beshrew me, but they make a mighty coil anent this good Father Urban. One would have thought they could have made shift to lay hands on him before were he so notable a miscreant. He was not in hiding when I saw him first; he appeared to go about the city fearlessly. Doubtless it is but some new panic on the part of the King. God help us all now that we be ruled over by such a poor poltroon!"
Cuthbert had caught the prevailing contempt for the foolish and feeble James that was shared by the nation in general, and London in particular.
They put up with him to avoid the horrors and confusion of a disputed succession and a possible repetition of the bloody strife of the Roses; but there was not one section of the community with whom he was popular: even the ecclesiastics of the Episcopal party despised whilst they flattered and upheld him. Cuthbert felt an access of zeal in his present mission in the thought that it would be displeasing to the unkingly mind of the King. He had seen the ungainly monarch riding through Westminster one day not long since, and the sight of his slovenly and undignified figure, trapped out in all the extravagance of an extravagant age, his clumsy seat on horseback (of which, nevertheless, he was not a little proud), and his goggle eyes and protruding tongue, filled the young man with disgust and dislike. But for the noble bearing and boyish beauty of the Prince of Wales, who rode beside his father, his disgust would have been greater; and all men were somewhat more patient with the defects of the father in prognosticating better and happier times when young Henry should succeed to the throne.
Nevertheless treasonable plottings at this juncture did not appear as fearful and horrible as they had done in the days of "good Queen Bess," who, with all her faults and follies, contrived to keep her people's affection in a marvellous fashion, as her sire had done before her. Men who would have recoiled with horror at a whisper against the Queen's Majesty, shrugged their shoulders with comparative indifference when they heard vague whispers of Popish or Puritan plots directed more or less against the person of King James. Any warm personal love and loyalty was altogether lacking to the nation, and with it was lacking the element which has always been the strongest bulwark of the sovereign's safety.
James appears to have been dimly conscious of this, always insisting on wearing heavy and cumbersome garments, quilted so strongly as to defy the thrust of a dagger. A monarch who goes about in habitual fear of assassination betrays his knowledge that he has failed to win the love or veneration of his subjects.