“I remember you, Mr. Norris, very well at Greenwich; you spoke up sharply enough, and you looked me in the eyes now and then as I like a man to do; and then Minnie loved you, too. I wish to show you kindness for her sake.”
Anthony’s heart began to fail him, for he guessed now what was coming and the bitter struggle that lay before him.
“Now, I know well that the Commissioners have had you before them; they are tiresome busybodies. Walsingham started all that and set them a-spying and a-defending of my person and the rest of it; but they are loyal folk, and I suppose they asked you where you had been and with whom you had stayed, and so on?”
“They did, your Grace.”
“And you would not tell them, I suppose?”
“I could not, madam; it would have been against justice and charity to do so.”
“Well, well, there is no need now, for I mean to take you out of their hands.”
A great leap of hope made itself felt in Anthony’s heart; he did not know how heavy the apprehension lay on him till this light shone through.
“They will be wrath with me, I know, and will tell me that they cannot defend me if I will not help them; but, when all is said, I am Queen. Now I do not ask you to be a minister of my Church, for that, I think, you would never be; but I think you would like to be near me—is it not so? And I wish you to have some post about the Court; I must see what it is to be.”
Anthony’s heart began to sink again as he watched the Queen’s face as she sat tapping a foot softly and looking on the floor as she talked. Those lines of self-will about the eyes and mouth surely meant something.