"Nonsense!" the Queen retorted.
A great many faces had grown grave by this time; I have said that the room was filled for the most part with the Bishop's supporters. "At any rate I know nothing about it!" he exclaimed, wiping his brow and pointing to me. "I offered a reward, and that knave there found the dog." Between anger and discomfiture he stammered.
"One of my Lord's servants, I think," the Cardinal said easily.
"Oh!" the Queen answered, with a world of meaning; and she looked at me with eyes before which I quailed. "Is that true, fellow!" she said. "Are you in my Lord's service?"
I stammered an affirmative.
"Then I wish to hear no more," she replied haughtily. "No, my Lord. Enough!" she continued, raising her voice to drown his protestations. "I do not care to know whether you were more sinned against than sinning; or a greater fool than your creature is a knave. Pray take your animal away. Doubtless in a very short time I should have discovered the cheat for myself. I think I see a difference now. I am sure I do. But, as it is, I am greatly indebted to his Eminence for his aid—and his sagacity."
She brought out the last word with withering emphasis, and amid profound silence. The Bishop, staggered and puzzled, but too wise to persist longer in the dog's identity, still tried desperately to utter some word of excuse; but the Queen, whose vanity had received a serious wound—since she had not at once known her own pet—cut him short with a curt and freezing dismissal, and immediately turning to the Cardinal, she requested him to introduce to her the officers who had the colours in charge.
It may be imagined how I felt, and what terrors I experienced during this struggle; since it required no great wit to infer that the Bishop, if defeated, would wreak his vengeance on me. Already a dozen who had attended my Lord of Beauvais' levée that morning were fawning on the Cardinal; the Queen had turned her shoulder to him; a great lady over whom he bent to hide his chagrin, talked to him indeed, but flippantly, and with eyes half closed and but part of her attention. For all these slights, and the defeat which they indicated, I foresaw that I should pay with my life: and in a panic, seeing no hope but in escaping on the instant before he took his measures, I slid back and strove to steal away through the crowd.
I reached the door in safety, and even the head of the stairs. But there a hand gripped my shoulder, and the steward thrust a face, white with rage and dismay, into mine. "Not so fast, Master Plotter!" he hissed in my ear. "You have ruined us, but if your neck does not pay for this—if you are not lashed like a dog first and hung afterwards—I am a Spaniard! If for this I do not——"
"By the Queen's command," said a quiet voice in my other ear; and a hand fell on that shoulder also.