"Ah well," and the birdlike face began to beam and twitch, "and--and there is nothing of confidence in yourself and your works--and--and there is no talk of Holy Mary in the matter?"
Anthony smiled again. He wished to avoid useless controversy.
"Briefly," he said, "my belief is that I am a very great sinner, that I deserve eternal h.e.l.l; but I humbly place all my trust in the Precious Blood of my Saviour, and in that alone. Does that satisfy you?"
Mr. Dent"s face was breaking into smiles, and at the end he took the priest"s face in his hands and kissed him gently twice on the cheeks.
"Then, my dear boy, I fear nothing for you. May that salvation you hope for be yours." And then without a word he was gone.
Anthony"s conscience reproached him a little that he had said nothing of the Church to the minister; but Mr. Dent had been so peremptory about doctrine that it was hard for the younger man to say what he would have wished. He told him, however, plainly on his next visit that he held whole-heartedly too that the Catholic Church was the treasury of Grace that Christ had inst.i.tuted, and added a little speech about his longing to see his old friend a Catholic too; but Mr. Dent shook his head. The corners of his eyes wrinkled a little, and a shade of his old fretfulness pa.s.sed over his face.
"Nay, if you talk like that," he said, "I must be gone. I am no theologian. You must let me alone."
He gave him news this time of Mr. Buxton.
"He is in the Counter, as you know," he said, "and is a very bright and cheerful person, it seems to me. Mistress Isabel asked me to see him and give her news of him, for she cannot get admittance. He is in a cell, little and nasty; but he said to me that a Protestant prison was a Papist"s pleasaunce--in fact he said it twice. And he asked very eagerly after you and Mistress Isabel. He tried, too, to inveigle me into talk of Peter his prerogative, but I would not have it. It was Lammas Day when I saw him, and he spoke much of it."
Anthony asked whether there was anything said of what punishment Mr.
Buxton would suffer.
"Well," said Mr. Dent, "the Lieutenant of the Tower told me that her Grace was so sad at the death of Mistress Corbet that she was determined that no more blood should be shed than was obliged over this matter; and that Mr. Buxton, he thought, would be but deprived of his estates and banished; but I know not how that may be. But we shall soon know."
These weeks of waiting were full of consolation and refreshment to Anthony: the nervous stress of the life of the seminary priest in England, full of apprehension and suspense, crowned, as it had been in his case, by the fierce excitement of the last days of his liberty--all this had strained and distracted his soul, and the peace of the prison life, with the certainty that no efforts of his own could help him now, quieted and strengthened him for the ordeal he foresaw. At this time, too, he used to spend two or three hours a day in meditation, and found the greatest benefit in following the tranquil method of prayer prescribed by Louis de Blois, with whose writings he had made acquaintance at Douai. Each morning, too, he said a "dry ma.s.s," and during the whole of his imprisonment at the Clink managed to make his confession at least once a week, and besides his communion at ma.s.s on Sundays, communicated occasionally from the Reserved Sacrament, which he was able to keep in a neighbouring cell, unknown to his gaoler.
And so the days went by, as orderly as in a Religious House; he rose at a fixed hour, observed the greatest exactness in his devotions, and did his utmost to prevent any visitors being admitted to see him, or any from another cell coming into his own, until he had finished his first meditation and said his office. And there began to fall upon him a kind of mellow peace that rose at times of communion and prayer to a point so ravishing, that he began to understand that it would not be a light cross for which such preparatory graces were necessary.
Towards the middle of September he received intelligence that evidence had been gathering against him, and that one or two were come from Lancashire under guard; and that he would be brought before the Commissioners again immediately.
Within two days this came about. He was sent for across the water to the Tower, and after waiting an hour or two with his gaoler downstairs in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the White Tower, was taken up into the great Hall where the Council sat. There was a table at the farther end where they were sitting, and as Anthony looked round he saw through openings all round in the inner wall the little pa.s.sage where the sentries walked, and heard their footfalls.
The preliminaries of identification and the like had been disposed of at previous examinations before Mr. Young--a name full of sinister suggestiveness to the Catholics; and so, after he had been given a seat at a little distance from the table behind which the Commissioners sat, he was questioned minutely as to his journey in the North of England.
"What were you there for, Mr. Norris?" inquired the Secretary of the Council.
"I went to see friends, and to do my business."
"Then that resolves itself into two heads: One, Who are your friends.
Two, What was your business?"
Now it had been established beyond a doubt at previous examinations that he was a priest; a student of Douai who had apostatised had positively identified him; so Anthony answered boldly:
"My friends were Catholics; and my business was the reconciling of souls to their Creator."
"And to the Pope of Rome," put in Wade.
"Who is Christ"s Vicar," continued Anthony.
"And a pestilent knave," concluded a fiery-faced man whom Anthony did not know.
But the Commissioners wanted more than that; it was true that Anthony was already convicted of high treason in having been ordained beyond the seas and in exercising his priestly functions in England; but the exacting of the penalty for religion alone was apt to raise popular resentment; and it was far preferable in the eyes of the authorities to entangle a priest in the political net before killing him. So they pa.s.sed over for the present his priestly functions and first demanded a list of all the places where he had stayed in the north.
"You ask what is impossible," said Anthony, with his eyes on the ground and his heart beating sharply, for he knew that now peril was near.
"Well," said Wade, "let us put it another way. We know that you were at Speke Hall, Blainscow, and other places. I have a list here," and he tapped the table, "but we want your name to it."
"Let me see the paper," said Anthony.
"Nay, nay, tell us first."
"I cannot sign the paper except I see it," said Anthony, smiling.
"Give it him," said a voice from the end of the table.
"Here then," said Wade unwillingly.
Anthony got up and took the paper from him, and saw one or two places named where he had not been, and saw that it had been drawn up at any rate partly on guesswork.
He put the paper down and went back to his chair and sat down.
"It is not true," he said, looking steadily at the Secretary; "I cannot sign it."
"Do you deny that you have been to any of these places?" inquired Wade indignantly.
"The paper is not true," said Anthony again.
"Well, then, show us what is not true upon it."
"I cannot."
"We will find means to persuade you," said the Secretary.
"If G.o.d permits," said Anthony.
Wade glanced round inquiringly and shrugged his shoulders; one or two shook their heads.
"Well, then, we will turn to another point. There are known to have been certain Jesuit priests in Lancashire in November of last year--do you deny that, sir?"
"You ask too much," said Anthony, smiling again; "they may have been there for aught I know, for I certainly did not see them elsewhere at the time you mention."
Wade frowned, but the one at the end laughed loud.
"He has you there, Wade," he said.
"This is foolery," said the Secretary. "Well, these two, Father Edward Oldcorne and Father Holtby were in Lancashire in November; and you, Mr.
Norris, spoke with them then. We wish to know where they are now, and you must tell us."