"D'ye take me now, my lord?" the plotter cried, with a savage grimace. "That concerns the King's service I think; and yet--I dare you to make use of it. Ay, my Lord Secretary, I dare you to make use of it!" he repeated, his unwholesome face deep red with excitement. "For why? Because you know that there will be a day of reckoning presently--and sooner, mayhap, than some think. You know that. Sooner or later it will come--it will come, and then 'Touch not mine anointed!' Or rather, touch but a hair of his Jamie's head, and his Majesty'll no forgive! He'll no forgive! There will be mercy for my Lord Devonshire, and my Lord Admiral, ay, and for that incarnate liar and devil, John Churchill! Ay, even for him, for he has made all safe both sides and so have the others. But do you touch the King's blood, though it be bastard--do you send to-night to the Bishop's and take him, and go on to what follows--and you may kneel like Monmouth, and plead like my Lady Russell, and you'll to the axe and the sawdust, when the time comes! Ay, you will! you will! you will!"
Though his harsh voice rose almost to a shriek with the last words, and the room rang with them, the Duke stood mutely regarding him, and made no answer. After an interval, Ferguson himself went on, but in a lower tone. "That is the one course you may take, my lord," he said, "and the result of it! If you follow my advice, however, you will not adopt that course. Instead you will let FitzJames be. You will act as if you had not seen me to-day, nor heard that he was in London. You'll wipe this meeting from your memory and live as if it had not been. And so, at the Restoration, you will have nothing to fear on that head. But--but in the meantime," Ferguson continued with an ugly grin, "it may be the worse for your Grace if the truth, and your knowledge of the truth, come to the Prince's ears, whose Minister you are; and worse again if it comes to Bentinck's, who, I am told, is some trouble to your Grace already."
The Duke's face was a picture. "You villain!" he said again. "What do you want?"
"For my silence?"
"For your silence? No. What is your aim? What is your object? You betray one and the other. The son of your King to prison and death. Me, if you can, to ruin and shame. And why? Why, man? What do you?"
"What do I gain? What shall I gain, you mean," Ferguson answered, smiling cunningly. "Only your Grace's signature to a scrap of paper--give me that, and I am mum, and neither Berwick nor you will be a penny the worse."
"What, money?" cried my lord, surprised, I think.
"Oh, no, not money," said the plotter coolly. "And yet--it may be money's worth to me over there."
[CHAPTER XXII]
"It is this way, my lord," he continued after a pause. "Lord Middleton said some things over there in your Grace's name--that would be four years back; but you never acted on them, though it was whispered you paid dearly for them here. In the interval it has been the aim of a good many to get something more definite from your Grace; the rather as you stand almost alone, the main part of the Court, and more than you know, having made their peace. But the efforts of those persons failed with your Grace because they went about it in the wrong way. Now, I, Robert Ferguson," the plotter continued, patting himself on the chest, and bowing with grotesque conceit, "have gone about it in the right way; and I shall not fail. The position is this. You must either arrest the Duke of Berwick, or you must let him go. That is clear. If you do the former, you offend beyond pardon, and your head will fall at the Restoration, whoever goes clear. On the other hand, if you let the Duke escape and it comes to the Prince of Orange's ears that you knew of his presence, you will be ruined with your present party. The only course left to you, therefore, is to let him go, but to purchase my silence--that it may not reach the Prince's ears--by signing a few words on a paper, which shall be sealed here, and opened only by His Majesty in his closet. Now, my lord, what do you say to that?"