The Queen nodded her head sympathetically. She was following every word with the closest attention. And indeed the pregnant manner of the story’s telling compelled it.
“The young man’s disadvantage is very great inasmuch that he has the ill-hap to inspire the covetous envy of a wicked kinsman. It is a simple stroke of ill-fortune, as your grace will see, which he cannot help and for which he is not in any wise responsible. This kinsman, his father’s brother, although himself a man of property and well placed in the world, is yet consumed with a desire to add to his own demesne his nephew’s broad lands in the west country. He is a bitter-hearted and envious man, who has carried on a perpetual war with fortune because she has not made him the elder brother.
“Chance puts a weapon in the hands of this covetous man. The age is one of peril and unrest. It is a time in which every man suspects his neighbor. Nothing is easier for a base man who is also bold than to bring a charge of misfeasance against one he would remove and whose lands he would inherit. And this is what the uncle decides to do in the matter of his nephew. He procures two evil men to accuse the young man of having borne a part in a wicked and vile conspiracy against the person of the sovereign. In the age in which the play is cast such things are unhappily too common, and this is a bad man’s opportunity.
“To be brief, your grace, the plot is laid, the charge is made, the young man is brought to trial and condemned upon the evidence of two suborners. He is unable to refute the accusation, so cunning are the rogues by whom he is beset; moreover the author of the plot has always passed for a just and disinterested man.
“To add to this unfortunate young man’s mischances, his trial is held behind closed doors, for, as I say, the times are greatly perilous and the public mind is much inflamed. And he is condemned privily to the block, and is sent to a strong fortress in the country, there to die by the ax on a certain day. He makes an appeal to his sovereign, an august and gracious lady whom he has faithfully served. But stealthy serpent tongues have done their work only too well. The Queen will not heed the appeals of this innocent, unhappy youth, and he is left to his cruel fate.
“The decree of heaven is otherwise, however. The inscrutable Providence which has used the young man tenderly in all things save one and in that one so unkindly, begins to relent toward him, and, as your grace shall hear, he is not left to die.”
The playwright paused for a moment. The attention of his hearers was riveted by the force and cogency of a narrative which was given with a solemnity so impressive that it was made to appear a veritable page from life itself. The Queen, her ladies and her gentlemen, were spellbound by the vivid power of the recital. But Cecil and other high officers of the household, who were able to trace the parallel of the story were transfixed by the man’s audacity.
Only too clearly did they recognize the source of the plot of the dreadful drama this man was daring to unfold. And if they could have done so they would have stopped this hopelessly indiscreet recital of it. Blank consternation was written in the faces of those who knew whence the story came.
“Stop the mouth of that madman, for God’s sake!” cried the Lord Treasurer in the ear of Pembroke.
But not Cecil and not Pembroke and not mortal man in that assembly could stop the mouth of the player now.