The envoy of His Holiness had departed.
Mary Tudor had dismissed her ladies, for she wished to speak with the Cardinal de Moreno alone.
Throughout the audience with the papal Nuncio, His Eminence had already seen the storm-clouds gathering thick and fast on the Queen's brow. His Grace of Wessex, gone to fetch a breviary left accidentally on the terrace-coping, had been gone half an hour, and moreover had not yet returned.
Her Majesty had sent a page to request His Grace's presence. The page returned with the intimation that His Grace could not be found.
Someone had spied him in the distance walking towards the river, in company with a lady dressed in white.
Then the storm-clouds had burst.
The Queen peremptorily ordered every one out of the room, then she turned with real Tudor-like fury upon His Eminence.
"My lord Cardinal," she said in a quivering voice, which she did not even try to steady, "an you had your master's wishes at heart, you have indeed gone the wrong way to work."
The Cardinal's keen grey eyes had watched Mary's growing wrath with much amusement. What was a woman's wrath to him? Nothing but an asset, an additional advantage in the political game which he was playing.
Never for a moment did he depart, however, from his attitude of deepest respect, nor from his tone of suave urbanity.
"I seem to have offended Your Majesty," he said gently; "unwittingly, I assure you. . . ."
But Mary was in no mood to bandy polite words with the man who had played her this clever trick. She was angered with herself for having fallen into so clumsy a trap. A thousand suggestions now occurred to her of what she might have done to prevent the meeting between Wessex and Ursula, which the Cardinal had obviously planned.
"Nay! masks off, I pray Your Eminence," she said, "that trick just now with your breviary . . . Own to it, man! . . . own to it . . . are you not proud to have tricked Mary Tudor so easily?"
She was trembling with rage, yet looked nigh to bursting into tears. A shade almost of pity crossed His Eminence's cold and clever face. It seemed almost wantonly useless to have aided Fate in snatching a young and handsome lover from this ill-favoured, middle-aged woman.
But the Cardinal never allowed worldly sentiments of any kind to interfere, for more than one or two seconds, with the object he had in view. The look of pity quickly faded from his eyes, giving place to the same mask of respectful deference.
"My breviary?" he said blandly. "Nay! I am still at a loss to understand. . . . Ah, yes! I remember now. . . . I had left it on the balustrade. His Grace of Wessex, a pattern of chivalry, offered to fetch it for me, and——"
"A fine scheme indeed, my lord," interrupted the Queen impatiently, "to send the Duke of Wessex courting after my waiting-maid."
"The Duke of Wessex?" rejoined His Eminence with well-played astonishment. "Nay, methought I spied him just now in the distance, keeping the vows he once made to the Lady Ursula Glynde."
"I pray you do not repeat that silly fairy-tale. His Grace made no promise. 'Twas the Earl of Truro desired the marriage, and the Duke had half forgotten this, until Your Eminence chose to interfere."
"Nay! but Your Majesty does me grave injustice. What have the amours of His Grace of Wessex to do with me, who am the envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain?"
"'Twere wiser, certainly," retorted Mary coldly, "if the King of Spain's envoy did not concern himself with rousing the Queen of England's anger."
His Eminence smiled as amiably, as unconcernedly as before. Throughout the length of a very distinguished career he had often been obliged to weather storms of royal wrath. He was none the worse for it, and knew how to let the floods of princely anger pass over his shrewd head, without losing grip of the ground on which he stood. Nothing ever ruffled him. Supremely conscious of his own dignity, justly proud of his position and attainments, he had, at the bottom of his heart, a complete contempt for those exalted puppets of his own political schemes. Mary Tudor, a weak and soured woman, an all-too-ready prey of her own passions, swayed hither and thither by her loves and by her hates, was nothing to this proud prince of the Church but a pawn in a European game of chess. It was for his deft fingers to move this pawn in the direction in which he list.
"Nay," he said, with gentle suavity, "my only desire is to rouse in the heart of the Queen of England love for my royal master, the King of Spain. He is young and goodly to look at, a faithful and gallant gentleman, whom it will be difficult to lure from Your Grace's side, once you have deigned to allow him to kneel at your feet."
"You speak, my lord, as if you were sure of my answer."
"Sure is a momentous word, Your Majesty. But I hope——"
"Nay! 'tis not yet done, remember," retorted Mary, with ever-increasing vehemence, "and if this trick of yours should succeed, if Wessex weds the Lady Ursula, then I will send my answer to your master, and it shall be 'No!'"
There was a quick, sudden flash in the Cardinal's eye, a look of astonishment, perhaps, at this unexpected phase of feminine jealousy. Be that as it may, it was quickly veiled by an expression of pronounced sarcasm.
"As a trophy for the vanity of His Grace of Wessex?" he asked pointedly.
"No!—merely as a revenge against your interference. So look to it, my lord Cardinal; the tangle in the skein was made by your hand. See that you unravel it, or you and the Spanish ambassador leave my Court to-morrow."
With a curt nod of the head she dismissed him from her presence. He was far too shrewd to attempt another word just now. Perhaps for the first time in his life he felt somewhat baffled. He had allowed his own impatience to outrun his discretion—an unpardonable fault in a diplomatist. He blamed himself very severely for his attempt at brusquing Fate. Surely time and the Duke's own fastidious disposition would have parted him from Mary quite as readily as this sudden meeting with beautiful Lady Ursula.
The Cardinal had withdrawn from the Queen's presence after an obeisance marked with deep respect. He wished to be alone to think over this new aspect of the situation. Through the tall bay windows of the Great Hall which he traversed, the last rays of the setting sun came slanting in. His Eminence glided along the smooth oak floors, his crimson robes making but a gentle frou-frou of sound behind him, a ghostlike, whispering accompaniment to his perturbed thoughts. Somehow the softness of the evening air lured him towards the terrace and the gardens. There lacked an hour yet to supper-time, and Mary Tudor was scarce likely to be in immediate need of His Eminence's company.
He crossed the Clock Tower gates and soon found himself once more on the terrace. The gardens beyond looked tenderly poetic in the fast-gathering dusk. The Cardinal's shrewd eyes wandered restlessly over the parterres and bosquets, vainly endeavouring to spy the silhouettes of two young people, whom his diplomacy had brought together and whom his shrewd wit would have to part again.
He descended the terrace steps and slowly walked towards the pond, where, but an hour ago, a sweet and poetic idyll had been enacted. There was nothing to mark the passage of a fair young dream, born this lovely October afternoon, save a few dead marguerites and the scattered flakes of their snow-white petals.
The Cardinal's footsteps crushed them unheeded. He was thinking how best he could dispel that dream, which he himself had helped to call forth.
"Woman! woman!" he sighed impatiently as he looked back upon the graceful outline of the Palace behind him, "thy moods are many and thy logic scant."
"A tangled skein indeed," he mused, "which will take some unravelling. If Wessex weds the Lady Ursula, the Queen will say 'No' to Philip, out of revenge for my interference. She'll turn to Noailles mayhap and wed the Dauphin to spite me, or keep him and Scheyfne dangling on awhile whilst trying to reconquer the volatile Duke's allegiance. But if Wessex does not wed the Lady Ursula . . . what then? Will his friends prevail? Yet there's more obstinacy than indolence in his composition, I fancy, and the dubious position of King Consort would scarce suit his proud Grace. Still, if I do not succeed in parting those two young people whom my diplomacy hath brought together, then Mary Tudor sends me and the Spanish Ambassador back to Philip to-morrow."