Blackburn Wendell - The Amorous Adventures of Belinda

Robert leaned against the corner of the ruined mansion, catching his breath. He couldn't stay away too long without running the chance of being missed, and the house was not as close to the hollow as he had supposed. The wind carried to him a distorted version of the cacophony he had left behind, and the moon grew tormented shadows across the neglected lawn. The wind sweeping through the shattered upperstories of the gutted shell sounded like the keening of damned souls. Robert felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He would rather face a brace of first class assassins than venture into the dungeons of this castle of the doomed, but it had to be done. Pulling himself together, he pushed aside the great oaken door, hanging drunkenly from one hinge, and stepped into the black, cavernous hall. He took a dozen paces, trying to accustom his eyes to the almost total darkness, then stopped, hugging the wall. Had he heard something? He listened, straining to catch the sound again over the shrill cry of the wind. Damn! Was it just the old timbers settling, or was it something else?

Moving quickly, he found the door to the lower regions at the end of the long hall. Forcing it open, he carefully descended the stone steps. He had no light, but at least it was quiet under the house, and he had often found that in a search of this nature, his ears served him every bit as well as his eyes.

The huge cellars seemed never ending, and although Robert's search was nasty it was thorough. It was a long time-too long a time-before he found his way back to the staircase, as much by accident as by design. Thorough though his search had been, it had also been fruitless. He climbed the stairs quietly and sat for a moment on the upper step, thinking.

It was quite possible, of course, that there was nothing to find, but he was not satisfied. Sir David's informants were reliable, and Robert himself had a feeling that he was not alone in the great house. He stood up and started down the hall, planning to inspect the groundfloor rooms as best he could. Suddenly he stopped. The front door was being pushed in, and as he crouched by the ruined balustrade of the huge, central staircase, he saw a figure silhouetted in the pale light. The figure entered; another; another. Three people came into the house, walked a short distance down the hall and disappeared.

For some moments Robert remained where he was, then crept silently from his hiding place. So Sir David was right. The house was being used, under disguise of the rites held near by, for nefarious purposes. He had no time for further investigation now; already he had stayed away too long. Tomorrow he would return, armed, and find whatever there was to find if he had to tear the place down stone by stone.

He gained the yard and hastened across it. Just as he reached the protecting woods, he looked back.

A figure, indistinct but unmistakably a figure, was standing just outside the doorway. As Robert watched, the figure turned and disappeared inside. As it did so, Robert made out the line of the long, cowled robe worn by the hated Jesuits.

He was tempted for a moment to go back, but decided against it. He would need weapons and, perhaps, assistance, before he wiped out this viper's nest.

He turned and ran toward the witches' clearing.

This Day the First of November, Anno Domini 1586.

A messenger has come from Whitehall, informing me that The Gay Dart has returned. Captain Fothering again successful. My portion doth increase my riches vastly and it is in my mind to soon make off to the Indies, and there establish myself. I am sore weary of this chancing game and vexed too often with the foul humors of my years. The Most Gracious Queen doth yet have fear of dangerous enemies, but there are those more capable than I to look to her protection. 'Tis a crabbed existence that weighs most heavy on me, and I would feign my dotage came in ease and quiet.

This night I must make end to that foulness I discovered. It is decided by me to take one other with me, and fire the cursed hole. Perhaps, like rats, the rogues can best be laid by the heels by-

If this book ends abruptly, it is because my material was also abruptly terminated. It is Robert Finch's story, not mine, and if I am to be faithful to it, it must end here. The last entry of Finch's diary has been given as I found it. The bottom part of the sheet had rotted away and if there were any further entries, they have not been found.

Did Finch run into trouble he couldn't handle, on his last recorded mission? Did he succeed and go away from England as he planned to do? We do not know. It isn't important that we know. The importance of this book lies in the vivid descriptions it gives us of daily life in Elizabethan England.

As we know, Mary of Scotland was at last caught out in her plotting and beheaded in 1587. Walsingham, himself, was her chief prosecutor and it was the evidence of his agents that brought about her conviction. At the news of her execution, all England breathed more easily. All, that is, except Elizabeth. Although, in the light of damning evidence, she had had no choice but to sign the death warrant, she was deeply grieved by the death of the woman who would have snuffed out the Queen's life without a qualm-rather, with the greatest of pleasure.

Elizabeth was a strange woman. In her lifetime many understood her partially, none wholly, and at this distance it is impossible to do better than her contemporaries.

That her England was licentious in the extreme is not to be denied, but nor is it to be denied that England was also as flourishing as at any time in her long history. Excesses were rife, debauchery the norm. The Elizabethans themselves were a baffling maze of contradictions. Man, no doubt, would cease to be man were he not inconsistent, but the inconsistency of the Elizabethan much exceeds the limits permitted to human beings. Their subtlety and their naivete, their delicacy and their brutality; their grossness and their modesty, their piety and their lust. What kind of mental fabric was woven from the warp of filthy, savage, 16th century London and the wool of an impassioned familiarity with the splendor of Tamburlaine, and the exquisiteness of Venus and Adonis? How can we fully comprehend those iron-nerved creatures who passed so readily from listening to some divine madrigal sung to a lute by a gentle boy in a tavern to the spectre of mauled and bleeding dogs savaging a chained bear to it's death?

We cannot understand, as, doubtless, they could not understand themselves, and it little behooves us now to judge them. One of the greatest of all the great men of that time, put into the mouth of Marc Anthony the words;

“The evil that men do lives after them: The good is oft inter'd with their bones.” In the case of the Elizabethan, exactly the opposite is true. Had he not his failings, would he have had his virtues? Had he not his lusts and violent passions, would he have had the drive to lift England from the status of foundling to that of the greatest nation on earth?

Whatever their vices, great and appalling though they certainly were, we are much too deeply in their debts to slap their wrists.

Blackburn Wendell

London