Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

Trusting to the protection of the French king, who had virtually rendered himself responsible for his safety, he had never dreamed of danger; and for a moment or two he stood in silent surprise, till the sergeant demanded, "Do you surrender, my lord?"

"Of course, of course!" replied the knight, "though I will own that this has fallen upon me unexpectedly. Pr'ythee, good sergeant, if thou knowest, tell me how this has come about, for to me it is inexplicable."

"In truth, my lord, I Know nothing," replied the officer, "though I believe that the whole arose from something that happened this morning in his grace's bed-chamber. I was sent for by the back staircase, and received orders to attach you here. It is an unpleasant duty, my lord, but one which we are too often called to perform: I can, therefore, but beg your forgiveness, and say that you must come with me."

Sir Osborne followed in silence, meditating more than ever over his strange fate. His hopes had again been buoyed up, again to be cast down in a more cruel manner than before. There was not now a shade of doubt left: whatever he was accused of was aimed at him under his real name; and it was evident, from the unremitted persecution which he suffered, that Wolsey, or whosoever it was that thus pursued him, was resolved on accomplishing his destruction by all or any means.

That Wolsey was the originator of the whole he could not doubt; and the virulence of his jealousy was too well known to hope that justice or clemency would be shown where his enmity had been incurred. "However," thought the knight, "at last I can but die: I have fronted death a hundred times in the battle-field, and I will not shrink from him now." But to die as a traitor was bitter, he who had never been aught but loyal and true; yet still his conscious innocence, he thought, would rob the block and axe of their worst horror; the proud knowledge that he had acted well in every relationship of life: to his king, to his country, to those he loved. Then came the thought of Constance de Grey, in all her summer beauty, and all her gentle loveliness, and all her sweet smiles: was he never to see them again? To be cut off from all those kind sympathies he had felt, to go down into the cold dark grave where they could reach him never more--it was too much.

While these thoughts were busy in his bosom, the sergeant-at-arms led him down the great staircase, and across the hall on the ground-floor of the castle; then, opening a door to the right, he entered into a long narrow passage, but scantily lighted, that terminated in another spiral staircase, down which one of the soldiers, who had procured a lamp in the hall, proceeded first to light them. Sir Osborne followed in silence, though his heart somewhat burned at the idea of being committed to a dungeon. Arrived at the bottom of the steps, several doors presented themselves; and, seeing the sergeant examining a large bunch of keys, with whose various marks he did not seem very well acquainted, the knight could not refrain from demanding, if it were by the king's command that he was about to give him such a lodging.

"No, my lord," replied the sergeant, "the king did not direct me to place you in a dungeon; but I must secure your lordship's person till such time as the horses are ready to convey you to Calais, and every other place in the castle but that where I am going to put you is full.

"Well, sir," replied the knight, "only beware of what treatment you do show me, lest you may be sorry for it hereafter."

"Indeed, my lord," answered the man, with a good-humoured smile, rarely met with on the faces of his brethren, "I should be very sorry to make your lordship any way uncomfortable; and, if you will give me your word of honour, as a knight, neither to escape nor to make any attempt to escape while you are there, I will lock you up in the chapel of the new palace, which is empty enough, God knows, and for half-an-hour you will be as well there as anywhere else better than in a dungeon certainly."

The knight readily gave his promise, and the sergeant, after examining the keys again, without better success than before, began to try them, one after another, upon a small iron door in the wall, saying that they could get out that way to the chapel. One of them at length fitted the lock, and two enormous bolts and an iron bar being removed, the door was swung back, giving egress from the body of the fortress into a long lightsome passage, where the full sun shone through a long row of windows on each side; while the gilded pillars and the enamelled ornaments round the windows, the rich arras hangings between them, and the fine carpets spread over the floor, formed a strange and magical contrast with the place they had just quitted, with its rough, damp stone walls, its dark and gloomy passages, and the massy rudeness of all its features.