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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Tangled Skein', Emma Orczy masterfully weaves a thrilling historical novel set during the French Revolution, filled with political intrigue, secret plots, and daring rescues. Her elegant prose brings to life the tumultuous atmosphere of the time, capturing the reader's imagination with vivid descriptions and heart-pounding action. The intricate plot twists keep the reader guessing until the very end, making this a compelling and engaging read for history enthusiasts and fans of suspenseful fiction. Orczy's attention to detail and meticulous research shine through in this gripping tale of loyalty, betrayal, and redemption. 'The Tangled Skein' is a literary gem that showcases Orczy's talent for crafting captivating historical narratives with a timeless appeal. Emma Orczy's own experiences growing up amidst political unrest and social upheaval in Hungary undoubtedly influenced her portrayal of revolution and resistance in this poignant novel. Her deep understanding of human nature and unwavering belief in the power of courage and sacrifice are evident throughout the story, adding depth and authenticity to the characters and their struggles. Readers who enjoy historical fiction with a thrilling twist will find 'The Tangled Skein' to be a must-read, offering a unique blend of suspense, romance, and historical intrigue that will leave them eager for more. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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The Tangled Skein: Historical Novel
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Table of Contents
Introduction
In a world where the marriage bed doubles as a treaty table, the heart learns to speak the guarded language of statecraft. This is the living tension that animates The Tangled Skein, a historical novel by Emma Orczy, whose name is indelibly linked with high-stakes intrigue and romantic adventure. From its first pages, the book conjures a courtly arena where personal desire moves in step with diplomatic necessity, and every gesture might carry the force of law. The result is a narrative climate of suspense, honor, and perilous attraction, in which private vows and public loyalties are constantly tested.
Emma Orczy—Baroness Orczy—was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright best known for The Scarlet Pimpernel, yet her imaginative range extended across many historical settings. Written in the early twentieth century, The Tangled Skein bears the hallmarks of that energetic period in popular fiction: richly costumed atmospheres, dramatic set pieces, and psychologically charged confrontations. Without revealing its later turns, the premise is straightforward and irresistible: at a European court, political calculations entwine with a developing bond between central figures whose fortunes may advance—or collapse—through marriage, reputation, and the shifting allegiance of powerful factions.
Readers return to this novel because it earns a classic’s regard through craft and clarity of purpose. Orczy fuses swift storytelling with evocative historical texture, allowing the past to feel immediate without sacrificing the aura of distance that historical fiction demands. Her dramaturgical instincts, honed on the stage, shape scenes that arrive with a keen sense of timing and consequence. The Tangled Skein’s thematic economy—honor, duty, and love set against the pageantry of power—speaks across generations. The book’s lasting appeal lies not in antiquarian detail alone, but in the way those details pressure the choices that define character.
Orczy’s historical romances helped to crystallize a popular mode of swashbuckling fiction—part courtly intrigue, part moral drama—that later writers adapted to their own eras. The Tangled Skein showcases techniques that became fixtures: masked intentions, perilous misunderstandings, strategic misdirection, and the choreography of revelation. While The Scarlet Pimpernel is her most cited touchstone, this novel demonstrates how her broader oeuvre established a grammar for historical adventure in prose. Its influence is less about direct lineage than about a narrative toolkit—propulsive chapters, theatrical reversals, and elevated language—that subsequent storytellers have found durable and adaptable.
Context matters, and the book emerges from an age that prized speed, spectacle, and sentiment in equal measure. The early twentieth century saw readers eager for narratives that could outpace everyday life while contemplating timeless obligations. Orczy’s background in theatre inflects the work: entrances and exits have meaning; props—rings, letters, emblems—carry political weight; and a chamber’s placement in a palace can determine the outcome of a conversation. The Tangled Skein feels both intimate and public at once, with private corridors opening onto ceremonial halls where the slightest breach of etiquette can ripple into crisis.
The title itself signals the organizing metaphor: strands of motive, rank, and affection interlaced into patterns no single hand controls. Duty competes with desire; the need to belong collides with the impulse to dissent; loyalty to a sovereign meets loyalty to a conscience. Orczy excels at staging conflicts that are not merely external but ethical, forcing figures to weigh the value of a promise against the cost of keeping it. The skein tightens with each social encounter. Personal independence proves difficult to maintain when one’s name, attire, and future are public commodities negotiated in full view of the court.
The novel’s character work deepens these pressures. Orczy gives her protagonists agency: courage is not only a matter of swordplay but of speech, strategy, and silence. The central figures must read rooms as deftly as they read hearts, managing appearances while guarding vulnerabilities. Opposing forces are not caricatures so much as embodiments of institutional interests—dynastic ambition, clerical caution, or bureaucratic advantage. Even secondary players leave impressions through crisp gestures and calculated courtesies, underscoring a central truth of the book: in a realm governed by ritual, personality is itself a political instrument.
Orczy’s historical fabric is tactile without pedantry. She evokes the architecture of power—corridors, galleries, private chapels—alongside the choreography of ceremony, travel, and negotiation. Clothing signifies rank and intention; weaponry and escorts suggest danger without becoming catalogues. The novel’s world persuades through selective detail, allowing readers to sense the cost of a misstep, the meaning of a seal, or the risk residing in an unguarded staircase. This fidelity to the felt life of a period enriches the plot, ensuring that intrigue arises from credible constraints rather than arbitrary accidents.
Stylistically, the prose balances flourish and restraint. Orczy favors clear momentum, shaped by exchanges of wit, feint, and counterfeint, while reserving vivid descriptive bursts for moments that demand grandeur. She controls pace through chapter rhythms that build toward decisive beats, then release tension with a measured grace. Dialogue carries much of the power, revealing how authority declares itself and how defiance disguises itself. The result is a reading experience both brisk and ceremonious, where the turn of a phrase can wound, and a pause can shield a reputation as effectively as armor.
Within Orczy’s body of work, The Tangled Skein stands as a companion to her more famous tales of daring while maintaining its own identity. It is not an echo of the French Revolutionary exploits that made her famous, but a separate exploration of how love and political necessity intersect in an earlier courtly milieu. Readers who admire the nobility of sacrifice, the ethics of concealment, and the thrill of well-timed revelation will recognize familiar pleasures here, reframed by a different ceremonial order and a different calculus of risk, reputation, and reward.
Approaching the novel for the first time, a few cues enhance appreciation without intruding on discovery. Attend to how public scenes exert force on private vows, and how small tokens alter the stakes of larger negotiations. Notice that early chapters outline a proposed union with consequences beyond romance, and that each successive meeting tightens obligations rather than loosening them. Above all, trust that the narrative’s glamour serves its moral inquiry: the spectacle of power is never merely scenic, but the measure by which characters test their courage, patience, and humanity.
The Tangled Skein remains timely because its questions remain our questions. How do individuals navigate institutions that claim their futures? What compromise, if any, preserves dignity when love and ambition collide? In an era that still scrutinizes public image, manages alliances, and negotiates identity in contested arenas, Orczy’s court feels close at hand. The novel’s classic status endures through its keen understanding of performance and principle, and through the resilient hope it offers—that integrity, intelligently wielded, can find a path through the tightest weave of circumstance.
Synopsis
The Tangled Skein: Historical Novel by Emma Orczy is an early twentieth-century work that blends courtly pageantry with a tale of pride, duty, and concealed feeling. Set in Tudor England, it places private hearts against the pressure of public power. Orczy frames the story at the royal court, where the monarch’s every decision carries diplomatic weight and personal consequences ripple outward through households and retainers. Within this ceremonial world, a promised union between a high-born lady and a powerful favorite becomes the thread that draws disparate interests together. The novel proceeds by tracing how that promise is tested amid the competing claims of loyalty, ambition, and reputation.
At the outset, court life hums with ceremonial order, yet unease lingers. The new reign seeks stability, and advisers look to foreign alliances to secure it. Into this atmosphere steps a spirited young noblewoman, pledged from childhood to a man whose rank and influence make him both a prize and a peril. Their first encounters are marked by coolness, mutual misjudgment, and the wary observation of a court that thrives on rumor. Orczy uses these awkward meetings to establish contrasts of temperament—youthful candor against polished self-command—and to show how appearances, more than truth, guide early judgments within the palace.
The political chessboard frames every private exchange. The sovereign’s counselors weigh a match that could link the realm with Spain, while eyes also watch the movements of the royal sister whose name stirs hopes and fears in equal measure. Ambassadors and courtiers calculate, and every whisper can tilt influence. In this charged setting, the pledged couple find themselves assigned roles they would not have chosen, performing delicacy before spectators who note each glance. The heroine’s pride resists easy surrender, the hero’s authority risks sliding into hauteur, and a single misinterpreted gesture can become a lever for factional maneuvering.
As envoys arrive and ceremonial progresses multiply, opportunities for mischief expand. Masques, progresses, and public devotions give cover to private designs. Orczy shows how a glance exchanged by the betrothed can be recast as strategy or defiance depending on the viewer’s interest. The heroine tests the boundaries of courtly obedience, refusing to be merely an ornament to policy. The man she is meant to wed, repeatedly entrusted with delicate business, meets her resistance with a blend of admiration and restraint that only deepens misunderstanding. Their wary dance unfolds against tapestries of protocol that elevate slight offenses into perceived threats.
Gossip becomes an instrument. A careless word, a delayed letter, or a missed audience can ripple into suspicion of treachery. Those who stand to gain from discord nudge matters along, presenting plausible slanders to patrons eager for confirmation of what they already fear. Orczy traces how small provocations widen the breach between the would-be partners. The young woman’s insistence on dignity reads as defiance to some, while the man’s measured silence seems chilling indifference. Around them, lesser figures jostle for advantage, cloaking self-interest in piety or patriotism, and the court’s bright corridors echo with calculated half-truths.
The sovereign’s proposed foreign marriage draws nearer, sharpening tensions. Public ceremonies amplify private stakes, as the court prepares to display unity before foreign eyes. The heroine, increasingly visible, discovers that every act of kindness or rebuke can be read as signal. The favored nobleman, bound by service, finds his impartiality questioned by those who would tether him to a faction. Orczy keeps the focus on how honor can become a trap: duty requires composure, yet composure can look like coldness; sincerity invites candor, yet candor can invite reprisal. In this climate, the pledged pair struggle to protect their names without betraying themselves.
A series of misread incidents brings matters to a dangerous edge. A chance encounter appears compromising; a message intended to mend fences arrives too late or in the wrong hands. The heroine’s courage emerges not in grand gestures but in refusals—refusal to accept a slight, refusal to barter integrity for expedience. The man’s steadiness, forged by service, begins to look like obstinacy even to his allies. Orczy charts the slow accrual of pressures that force choices: whether to trust what has not been proven, whether to risk favor for truth, whether to concede pride in the hope of peace.
As diplomatic outcomes come into view, personal reckonings cannot be deferred. The court, momentarily united for display, remains divided in spirit, and the smallest misstep could unspool carefully woven plans. The heroine and her intended confront the tangled skein of promise and perception, recognizing how others’ designs have tightened knots they barely felt forming. Orczy allows motives to surface—jealousy masked as counsel, fervor masked as faith—without reducing any figure to a simple role. The final approach turns on recognition rather than spectacle, as characters reassess what they owe the Crown, their households, and their own declared word.
Without disclosing the resolution, the novel’s enduring significance lies in its clear-eyed view of how public life entangles private allegiance. Orczy presents love not as sanctuary from politics but as another arena where power and pride seek advantage. Yet she also suggests that steadfastness has a quiet force equal to intrigue, and that honor, once understood rather than performed, can cut through misapprehension. The Tangled Skein remains notable for its poised blend of romance and statecraft, its careful pacing through ceremony and rumor, and its reminder that history’s grand alliances are braided from countless private, contested threads.
Historical Context
Emma Orczy’s The Tangled Skein unfolds against the mid-sixteenth-century backdrop of Tudor England, primarily during the reign of Mary I (1553–1558). The setting centers on royal palaces in and around London—Whitehall, St. James’s, Hampton Court—and the ceremonial and administrative machinery of monarchy, Privy Council, and Parliament. Dominant institutions include a reasserted Roman Catholic Church, the crown’s courts of law, and the foreign embassies that mediated alliances. The plot’s intrigues are framed by dynastic priorities, questions of succession, and the politics of royal marriage. Courtly display, diplomatic ceremony, and religious ritual shape the atmosphere, while a restless London, the Thames, and the watchful Tower provide the city’s political and psychological landscape.
The novel’s historical matrix begins with the succession crisis of 1553. Edward VI died in July 1553, after which a bid to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne—engineered by the Duke of Northumberland—briefly succeeded. Mary Tudor rallied supporters in East Anglia, gathered noble and popular backing, and entered London in early August to broad acclaim. Jane’s nine-day regime collapsed; Northumberland was executed. These events left a legacy of insecurity and shifting loyalties at court, a reality mirrored in fiction through anxious councils, hurried proclamations, and courtiers testing their fortunes amidst rapid constitutional change and heightened stakes for service, patronage, and allegiance.
Central to Mary’s reign—and to the period atmosphere of Orczy’s story—was the proposed marriage to Philip of Spain (later Philip II). Negotiated in 1553–1554 with heavy Habsburg input and shaped by the counsel of the imperial ambassador Simon Renard, the alliance promised dynastic security and a powerful Catholic partner. The marriage treaty (1554) limited Philip’s authority in England, barred foreigners from holding English office, and confirmed that sovereignty remained with Mary. Yet public anxiety flared over fears of Spanish dominance and England’s entanglement in Habsburg conflicts. The novel echoes this charged climate, dramatizing how diplomatic designs and private interests intersected at a court where marriage was statecraft.
Popular discontent over the Spanish match helped ignite Wyatt’s Rebellion in early 1554. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger led the Kentish rising, part of a larger, poorly coordinated plan that also anticipated uprisings in the west and midlands. Wyatt’s forces marched toward London, exploiting fears of foreign influence. The Privy Council, city militia, and loyal nobles contained the danger; Wyatt was captured and executed. Elizabeth, Mary’s half-sister, was interrogated and briefly imprisoned in the Tower before being placed under house arrest. In historical romance, this rebellion furnishes episodes of musters, barricaded gates, double agents, and tense river crossings that underscore the volatility of policy grounded in marriage diplomacy.
Mary’s government moved swiftly to reverse Protestant reforms enacted since the 1540s. Her first Parliament (1553) repealed Edwardian innovations; in 1554–1555 legislation restored papal authority, and Cardinal Reginald Pole arrived as papal legate to reconcile the realm with Rome. Bishops like Stephen Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor, steered policy until his death (1555), after which Pole’s influence increased. Monastic lands seized under Henry VIII were not broadly restored, reflecting legal and property realities. The book’s depiction of churchmen at court, richly staged liturgies, and penitential rhetoric resonates with this phase of confessional realignment, when ritual, vestments, and altars reappeared across parishes under royal auspices.
Restoration of Catholic orthodoxy brought renewed prosecution of heresy from 1555 onward. Around 280–300 Protestants were executed by burning during the Marian persecutions, including prominent figures such as Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer (1555) and Thomas Cranmer (1556). These proceedings were conducted by English ecclesiastical courts, not by the Spanish Inquisition, though polemic often blurred the distinction. Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (first published 1563) later fixed the Protestant memory of the reign. In fiction, this climate appears as a moral and emotional pressure—whispers of arrest lists, tense sermons, and the peril of unguarded words—without needing to reproduce the trials themselves to convey fear’s effect on behavior.
Foreign war compounded the regime’s burdens. England, bound by Marian policy and Habsburg ties, entered the Italian Wars’ concluding phase against France in 1557. The campaign culminated in January 1558 with the loss of Calais—the last English foothold on the continent, held since 1347. Calais’s fall was perceived as a national humiliation and strategic setback, later etched into historical memory as emblematic of the dangers of continental entanglement. Orczy’s evocation of diplomatic bargaining and martial rumor speaks to this geopolitical anxiety. Characters poised between loyalty and self-preservation mirror a polity unsure whether foreign alliance promised security or peril.
Ceremony and spectacle organized Tudor politics and public meaning. Mary’s coronation (1 October 1553) at Westminster Abbey, conducted by Gardiner, asserted the legitimacy of a queen regnant. Her marriage to Philip at Winchester Cathedral (25 July 1554) unfolded with elaborate processions, heraldry, and negotiated precedence between English and Spanish households. Royal entries, state banquets, and river pageants on the Thames displayed authority and sought to pacify unrest. Mary undertook fewer progresses than Henry VIII, but patronage and favor were dispensed in richly choreographed spaces. The novel’s scenes of audiences, kneeling supplicants, and guarded privy galleries derive their realism from this ritualized courtly world.
Mary’s accession also intensified debates about female rule. Though medieval precedent existed, she was the first queen to rule England in her own right. The 1554 marriage treaty underscored that the crown remained hers, even as Philip took the title of king during her lifetime. Political theorists grappled with female sovereignty; later polemic, such as John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet (1558), denounced the “monstruous regiment of women,” though it was aimed chiefly at Marian regimes in England and Scotland. In this context, Orczy’s portrayal of a woman wielding power amidst male courtiers reflects historical tensions over authority, conjugal politics, and counsel.
Economic and social pressures formed the texture of everyday life. Mid-sixteenth-century England experienced sustained inflation linked to currency debasement and increased silver flows from the New World into Europe. Poor harvests in the mid-1550s, notably 1555–1556, deepened scarcity and hunger. Marian administrators pursued grain market regulation, poor relief, and plans for recoinage; the comprehensive reform of the coinage would be implemented under Elizabeth in 1560–1561, but its framework took shape earlier. Meanwhile, the cloth trade dominated exports, drawing merchants to London and ports like Southampton. Such conditions, present in the background of the novel, help explain restive apprentices, anxious aldermen, and counsels preoccupied with order and supply.
London itself was both a stage and an actor. With perhaps 60,000–75,000 inhabitants, it was England’s largest city, a dense hive of parishes, guilds, markets, and wharves. The Thames functioned as the chief artery for movement between palaces, the City, Westminster, and Southwark, where inns and playhouses would proliferate later in the century. The Tower of London loomed as a prison and symbol of royal justice; London Bridge displayed the grim trophies of treason. The novel’s river journeys, crowded lanes, and guarded gates draw on this geography, where proximity to the court meant opportunity—and peril—and rumor traveled as fast as the tide.
Diplomacy under Mary was an art of letters, intercepts, and informants. Ambassadors like Simon Renard reported constantly to Charles V, using cipher and trusted couriers; their dispatches remain key sources for historians. The Privy Council, meeting almost daily, issued proclamations, managed intelligence, and responded to crises from urban disorder to foreign plots. In such a world, a misplaced letter could ruin a household, and a whispered promise could redirect policy. Orczy’s entanglements of secret interviews, misdelivered messages, and eavesdropping retain historical plausibility because surveillance, patronage networks, and factional rivalry were routine features of mid-Tudor governance.
Justice and punishment were public theater as well as policy. Treason trials followed uprisings or conspiracies, with executions at Tower Hill or Tyburn. Heresy prosecutions were conducted in ecclesiastical courts; sentences, including burning at Smithfield, were meant to terrify and instruct. The government also pursued seditious speech and libel, seeking to control the spread of inflammatory rumor. These practices provided cautionary frames for courtiers and citizens alike. In a romance set at Mary’s court, the stakes of disloyalty, and the rituals by which offenders were shamed or erased, underscore the cost of failed factional bets and the fragility of proximity to power.
Religion permeated daily rhythms. Under Mary, Latin liturgy, processions, and images returned to parish life; altars were restored in many churches, and traditional devotions revived. Parish guilds and charitable fraternities resumed roles where possible, though the wholesale restoration of monastic institutions did not occur. Printed primers, catechisms, and polemical tracts circulated alongside proclamations and sermons from episcopal visitations. The novel can suggest this world—bells calling to mass, roods reinstated, vestments revived—while also acknowledging that reception varied: some communities embraced the changes; others complied uneasily, and a minority resisted silently or fled into exile.
The presence of foreigners—especially Spaniards connected to Philip’s household—sharpened questions of identity. Stranger communities from the Low Countries already operated in English ports and London’s wards, chiefly in the cloth trade, but the 1554 marriage drew high-ranking Spanish nobles and servants into the court orbit. The marriage treaty restricted their access to office, reflecting sensitivity to xenophobia and sovereignty. Jostling for precedence, language barriers, and rumor fed a climate in which foreign counsel could be portrayed as either prudent statecraft or sinister meddling. Orczy’s scenes of cross-cultural misunderstanding, rivalry, and alliance echo the documented frictions and courtesies of this moment.
The Tangled Skein also belongs to a late Victorian and Edwardian revival of historical romance. Published in 1901, it preceded the runaway success of Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) but shares traits: admiration for chivalric codes, interest in costume and pageantry, and a focus on high politics refracted through personal loyalty. Hungarian-born and long resident in Britain, Orczy drew on the tradition of Sir Walter Scott while writing for an audience eager for melodrama and national myth. Her fiction often idealizes aristocratic honor and loyalty to crown, using carefully chosen historical fixtures—ceremonies, councils, embassies—as anchor points for invented protagonists.
While the novel invents courtiers and intrigues, its scaffolding rests on verifiable events and institutions: Mary’s accession, the Spanish marriage treaty, Wyatt’s Rebellion, the Marian restoration, and England’s alignment in Habsburg–Valois conflict. Orczy filters these through the tastes of her era, emphasizing gallantry, peril, and the moral testing of individuals. Readers encounter the anxieties of a female sovereign balancing affection, counsel, and policy; the resentments stoked by foreign alliance; and the perils of confessional zeal. As a mirror, the book reflects the 1550s struggle over sovereignty and faith; as a critique, it warns of how private passion and public principle become a single tangled skein.
Author Biography
Baroness Emma Orczy (1865–1947) was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright whose work helped define popular historical adventure in the early twentieth century. Best known for creating the Scarlet Pimpernel, she blended melodrama, romance, and swashbuckling intrigue into narratives that reached vast audiences on stage and in print. Her career bridged late Victorian tastes and modern mass culture, and her stories of daring rescues and secret identities influenced later espionage fiction and the development of masked-hero archetypes. Beyond adventure tales, she wrote detective fiction and historical romances, leaving a prolific oeuvre that remained widely read and frequently adapted across multiple media.
Raised in continental Europe and later settled in London, Orczy received formal artistic training at the West London School of Art and at Heatherley School of Fine Art. Although she first pursued painting and illustration, the cosmopolitan literary and theatrical life of fin-de-siècle London drew her steadily toward writing. She admired the grand tradition of historical romance and adventure—readers and critics often noted affinities with the narrative momentum of Alexandre Dumas and with popular stage melodrama. This blend of visual sensibility, theatrical instinct, and historical curiosity shaped her approach: vivid settings, energetic plots, and emblematic heroes and villains.
Orczy’s earliest publications appeared at the turn of the century, when she was writing short fiction and historical novels while also contributing to magazines. She developed a practical understanding of audience expectations, especially the appetite for fast-paced, morally legible stories. Collaborating closely with the theatre world honed her skill in constructing suspense and dramatic reversals. Before her breakthrough, she was already experimenting with tales of crime and mystery, interests that would later yield a notable series of armchair-detective stories. These formative years established her as a professional writer adaptable to both period settings and contemporary formats.
Her defining success came with the Scarlet Pimpernel, first realized as a stage play co-written with her husband, Montagu Barstow. Premiering in the early 1900s and becoming a West End sensation in 1905, the production ran for years and toured widely. Orczy soon novelized the material, launching a bestselling franchise. Set during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the saga follows a secretive English rescuer who outwits revolutionary authorities to save those condemned to the guillotine. Audiences embraced its mix of romantic chivalry, clever disguises, and cliffhanger escapes, and critics noted its theatrical verve and instantly memorable premise.
Orczy expanded the Pimpernel universe through sequels and prequels, including I Will Repay, The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, The Elusive Pimpernel, El Dorado, The Laughing Cavalier, and The First Sir Percy. Parallel to these adventure tales, she enriched early crime fiction with series such as The Old Man in the Corner—featuring an armchair sleuth who solves cases through deductive reasoning—and the pioneering Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, centered on a female investigator. These works broadened her readership and demonstrated her capacity to adapt formula and character to evolving popular tastes without abandoning clear narrative momentum.
Orczy’s public stances were visible during the First World War, when she helped found the Women of England’s Active Service League, advocating patriotic support for recruitment. Her fiction often expressed monarchist sympathies and skepticism toward revolutionary violence, perspectives that framed the moral universe of the Pimpernel stories. While some contemporaries and later readers regarded these positions as ideologically conservative, others valued the tales for their craftsmanship and entertainment, separating political outlook from narrative appeal. Orczy also wrote essays and commentary, and near the end of her life published an autobiography, reflecting on her career in letters and on the theatre.
In her later decades Orczy continued to publish novels and story collections, and her creations found renewed life in film, radio, and eventually television, ensuring that new generations encountered the Pimpernel’s exploits. She died in 1947, by then firmly associated with one of popular fiction’s most enduring heroes. Her legacy persists through ongoing reprints, adaptations, and critical reassessments that situate her at the crossroads of historical romance, early detective fiction, and the modern adventure genre. The elegant resourcefulness of her protagonists and her brisk storytelling remain influential touchstones in discussions of genre, identity, and spectacle.
The Tangled Skein: Historical Novel
PART I MIRRAB — THE WITCH
CHAPTER I EAST MOLESEY FAIR
Even Noailles, in his letters to his royal master, admits that the weather was glorious, and that the climatic conditions left nothing to be desired.
Even Noailles! Noailles, who detested England as the land of humid atmospheres and ill-dressed women!
Renard, who was more of a diplomatist and kept his opinions on the fogs and wenches of Old England very much to himself, declared enthusiastically in his letter to the Emperor Charles V, dated October 2nd, 1553, that never had he seen the sky so blue, the sun so bright, nor the people of this barbarous island more merry than on the memorable first day of East Molesey Fair: as all who will, may read for themselves in Vol. III of the Granvelle Papers: —
"Aulcungs ne pourroient contempler ciel plus bleu soleil plus brillianct ni peuple plus joieult."
Yet what have we to do with the opinions of these noble ambassadors of great and mighty foreign monarchs?
Our own chroniclers tell us that East Molesey Fair was the maddest, merriest, happiest time the goodly folk of the Thames Valley had had within memory of the oldest inhabitant.
Was not good Queene Marye, beloved daughter of the great King Henry VIII, crowned at last? crowned in Westminster Abbey, as all her loyal subjects had desired that she should be, despite His Grace of Northumberland and his treasonable faction, whom God and the Queene's most lawful Majesty would punish all in good time?
In the meanwhile let us be joyful and make merry!
Such a motley crowd as never was seen. Here's a sheriff from London City, pompous and dignified in dark doublet and hose, with scarlet mantle and velvet cap; beside him his lady trips right merrily, her damask kirtle held well above her high-heeled shoes, her flowered paniers looped in the latest style, with just the suggestion of a farthingale beneath her robes, to give dignity to her figure and value to the slimness of her waist.
Here a couple of solemn burgesses in velvet cloaks edged with fur, and richly slashed doublets, are discussing the latest political events; whilst a group of Hampton merchants, more soberly clad, appraise the wares of a cutler lately hailed from Spain.
Then the dames and maidens with puffed paniers of blue or vivid scarlet, moving swiftly from booth to booth, babbling like so many gaily-plumaged birds, squabbling with the vendors and chaffing the criers.
Here and there the gaudy uniform of one of the liveried Companies will attract the eye, anon the dark cloak and close black mask which obviously hides the Court gallant.
Men of all ranks and of all stations have come out to East Molesey to-day. Merchants, shopkeepers, workers, aldermen and servants, all with their womenkind, all with pouches more or less well filled, for who would go to Molesey Fair but to spend money, to drink, to eat, or to make merry?
Then there were the 'prentices!
They had no money to spend, save a copper or so to throw to a mountebank, but nevertheless they contrived to enjoy themselves right royally.
Such imps of mischief!
No whipping-post to-day! Full licence for all their pranks and madcap jokes. The torment of all these worthy burgesses out on a holiday.
Oh! these 'prentices!
Hundreds of them out here this afternoon. They've come down from Esher and Hampton, Kingston and Westminster and London City, like so many buzzing insects seeking whom they can annoy.
Now on the ground, suddenly tripping a pompous dame off her feet; anon in rows, some half-dozen of them, elbow to elbow, head foremost, charging the more serious crowd, and with a hoot and a yell scattering it like a number of frightened goslings. Yet again at the confect booth, to the distraction of the vendors of honey-cakes, stealing sugar-plums and damson cheese, fighting, quarrelling, screeching, their thin legs encased in hose of faded blue or grey worsted, their jerkins loose, their shirt sleeves flapping in the breeze, a cool note of white amidst the dark-coloured gowns of the older men.
Heavens above! what a to-do!
A group of women be-coiffed, apparelled in best kirtles and modish shoes, were pressing round a booth where pantoufles, embroidered pouches, kerchiefs, and velveted paniers were laid out in tempting array.
Just beyond, a number of buxom country wenches, with round red arms, showing bare to the grilling sun, and laughing eyes, aglow with ill-concealed gourmandise, were gaping at a mighty display of pullets, hares, and pigeons, sides of roebuck and haunches of wild boar, ready spiked, trussed, and skewered, fit to tempt Her Majesty's Grace's own royal palate.
Sprigs of sweet-scented marjoram, thyme, and wool-blade tastefully disposed, further enhanced the attractions of this succulent show. 'Twas enough to make the sweetest mouth water with anticipatory delight. A brown-eyed, apple-cheeked wench in paniers of brilliant red was unaffectedly licking her pretty lips.
"This way, mistress, this way!" shouted the vendor of these appetizing wares. A sturdy fellow, he, with ginger-coloured pate, and wielding a long narrow-bladed knife in his fleshy hand. "This way! a haunch of buck from the royal venery! a hare from Her Liege Majesty's own chase! a pullet from —— "
"Nay, thou gorbellied knave!" responded a vendor of drugs and herbs close by, whose stall was somewhat deserted, and whose temper was obviously suffering — "Nay! an thou speakest the truth thou art a thief, but if not, then thou'rt a liar! In either case art fit for the hangman's rope!"
"This way, my masters! this way!" came in loud, stentorian cries from a neighbouring booth; "this way for Peter the juggler, the greatest conjurer the world has ever seen!"
"This way! I pray you, worthy sirs!" this from yet another place of entertainment, "this way for John the tumbler!"
"Peter the juggler will swallow a cross-bow of steel before your very eyes!" shouted one crier.
"John the tumbler will climb Saint Ethelburga's steeple without help of rope or ladder," called the other.
"Peter will show you how to shoe a turkey, how to put salt on a swallow's tail, and how to have your cake and eat it!"
"John will sit on two stools without coming to the ground!"
"Marry! and ye both lie faster than my mule can trot!" came in hilarious accents from one of the crowd.
"And Peter the juggler will show thee how to make thy mule trot faster than thou canst lie, friend," responded Peter's crier unabashed, "and a mighty difficult task 'twill be, I'll warrant."
Laughing, joking, ogling like some fickle jade, the crowd passed from booth to booth: now dropping a few coins in Peter the juggler's hat, now watching the antics of John the tumbler; anon looking on amazed, half terrified at the evolutions of a gigantic brown bear, led by the nose by a vigorous knave in leather jerkin and cross-gartered hose, and accompanied by a youngster who was blowing on a mighty sackbut[1] until his cheeks looked nigh to bursting.
But adsheart! who shall tell of all the attractions which were set forth on that memorable day before the loyal subjects of good Queene Marye?
There were the trestles where one could play at ball and knuckle-bone, or chance and mumchance; another, where evens and odds and backgammon proved tempting. He who willed could tilt at Weekie, play quoits or lansquenet, at ball or at the billiards, or risk his coppers on such games as one-and-thirty, or at the pass ten; he might try his skill, too, at throwing the dart, or his strength at putting the stone.
There were mountebanks and quacksalvers, lapidaries at work, and astrologers in their tents. For twopence one could have a bout with the back-sword or the Spanish tuck, could watch the situations and conjunctions of the fixed stars and the planets, could play a game of tennis or pelitrigone, or be combed and curled, perfumed and trimmed so as to please a dainty mistress's eye.
And through it all the loud bang! bang! bang! of the big drums, the criers proclaiming the qualities of their wares, the jarring notes of the sackbut and the allman flute, the screechy viol and the strident nine-hole pipe, all playing against one another, each striving to drown the other, and mingling with the laughter of the crowd, the yells of the 'prentices, the babble of the women, formed a huge volume of ear-splitting cacophony which must have been heard from one end of the country to the other.
All was noise, merriment, and laughter, save in one spot — an out-of-the-way, half-hidden corner of the fair, where the sister streams, the Ember and the Mole, join hands for a space, meet but to part again, and whence the distant towers and cupolas of Hampton Court appeared like those of a fairy palace floating in mid-ether, perched high aloft in the shimmering haze of this hot late summer's afternoon.
CHAPTER II THE WITCH'S TENT
There are many accounts still extant of the various doings at East Molesey Fair on this 2nd of October in the year of our Lord 1553, and several chroniclers — Renard is conspicuous among the latter — make mention of the events which very nearly turned the gay and varying comedies of that day into weird and tragic drama.
Certainly the witch's tent was a mistake.
But what would you? No doubt the worthy individual, who for purposes of mystification called himself "Abra," had tried many means of earning a livelihood before he and his associate in business took to the lucrative, yet dangerous trade of necromancy.
He was tall and gaunt, with hooked nose and deep-sunk eyes; he had cultivated a long, grey beard, and could call forth the powers of Mirrab the Witch with a remarkably solemn and guttural voice.
As for Mirrab herself, no one was allowed to see her. That was part of the business. She was a witch, a dealer in magic potions, charms and philters, a reader of the stars, and — softly be it spoken — a friend and companion of the devil! She only appeared enveloped in a thick veil, with divining wand held lightly in her hand, the ends of her gold tresses alone visible below the heavy covering which swathed her head.
It was the mystery of it all — cheap devices at best — which from the first had irritated the country-folk who thronged the Fair.
The tent itself was unlike any other ever seen at East Molesey. It stood high upon a raised wooden platform, to which a few rough steps gave access. On the right was a tall flagstaff, with black flag emblazoned with white skull and cross-bones, fluttering lazily in the breeze.
On the left a huge elm tree, with great heavy branches overshadowing the tent, had been utilized to support a placard bearing the words —
"Mirrab! the World-famed Necromancer! Sale of Magic Charms and Love Philters Horoscope Casting and Elixir of Life!"
Perched on the platform, and assisted by a humbler henchman, armed with big drum and cymbals, the worthy Abra, in high-peaked cap and flowing mantle covered with strange devices, had all day long invited customers to his booth by uttering strange, mysterious promises.
"This way, this way, my masters," he would say with imposing solemnity; "the world-famous necromancer, Mirrab, will evoke for you the spirits of Mars, of Saturn, or of the moon."
"She will show you the Grand Grimorium...!"
Now what was the Grand Grimorium? The very sound of the words suggested some agency of the devil; no Christian man had ever heard or spoken of the Grand Grimorium.
"She will show you the use of the blasting rod and the divining wand. She will call forth the elementary spirits. ..."
Some people would try to laugh. Who had ever heard of the elementary spirits? Perhaps if some of the more enlightened town worthies happened to be nigh the booth, one or two of them would begin to chaff the necromancer.
"And prithee, friend wizard," a solemn burgher would suggest, "prithee what are the elementary spirits?"
But Abra was nothing if not ready-witted.
"The elementary spirits," he would explain with imperturbable gravity, "are the green butterfly, the black pullet, the queen of the hairy flies, and the screech owl."
The weird nomenclature was enough to make any one's hair stand on end. Even the sedate burgesses would shake their heads and silently edge away, whilst their womenkind would run swiftly past the booth, muttering a quick Ave to the blessed Virgin or kissing the Holy Scapulary hung beneath their kerchiefs, as their terrified glances met the cabalistic signs on the black flag.
The humbler country-folk frankly spat upon the ground three times whenever they caught sight of the flag, and that is a sure way of sending the devil about his business.
The shadows now were beginning to lengthen.
The towers and cupolas of Hampton Court Palace[2] were studded with gold and gems by the slanting rays of the setting sun.
It had been a glorious afternoon and, except in the open space immediately in front of the witch's tent, the fun of the fair had lost none of its zest.
The witch's booth alone was solitary — weird-looking beneath the spreading branches of the overhanging elm.
The tent seemed lighted from within, for as the evening breeze stirred its hangings, gleams of brilliant red, more glowing than the sunset, appeared in zigzag streaks between its folds.
Behind, and to the right and left of it, the gentle murmur of the sister streams sounded like ghostly whisperings of evening sprites, busy spreading their grey mantles over the distant landscape.
As the afternoon wore on, the crowd in the other parts of the Fair had grown more and more dense, and now, among the plainer garb of the burgesses and townsfolk, and the jerkins and worsted hose of the yokels, could be seen quite frequently a silken doublet or velvet trunk, a masked face perhaps beneath a plumed bonnet, or the point of a sword gleaming beneath the long, dark mantle, denoting the Court gallant.
Now and then, too, hooded and closely swathed forms would flit quickly through the crowd, followed by the inquisitive glances of the humbler folk, as the dainty tip of a broidered shoe or the richly wrought hem of a silken kirtle, protruding below the cloak, betrayed the lady of rank and fashion on gay adventure bent.
Most of these veiled figures had found their way up the rough wooden steps which led to the witch's tent. The fame of Mirrab, the Soothsayer, had reached the purlieus of the palace, and Abra, the magician, had more than once seen his lean palm crossed with gold.
"This way, noble lords! this way!"
He was even now trying to draw the attention of two cloaked figures, who had just emerged in sight of the booth.
Two gentlemen of the Court evidently, for Abra's quick eye had caught a glimpse of richly chased sword-hilts, as the wind blew the heavy, dark mantles to one side.
But these gentlemen were paying little heed to the worthy magician's blandishments. They were whispering excitedly to one another, whilst eagerly scanning the crowd all round them.
"They were ladies from the Court, I feel sure," said the taller man of the two; "I swear I have seen the hem of that kirtle before."
"Carramba!" replied the other, "it promised well, but methinks we've lost track of them now."
He spoke English very fluently, yet with a strong, guttural intonation, whilst the well-known Spanish oath which he uttered betrayed his nationality.
"Pardi!" he added impatiently, "I could have sworn that the damsels were bent on consulting the witch."
"Nay, only on seeing the fun of the Fair apparently," rejoined the other; "we've lain in wait here now for nigh on half an hour."
"Mirrab the Soothsayer will evoke for you the spirits of the moon, oh noble lords!" urged Abra, with ever-increasing persuasiveness. "She will give you the complaisance of the entire female sex."
"What say you, my lord," said the Englishman after a while, "shall we give up the quest after those elusive damsels and woo these obliging spirits of the moon? They say the witch has marvellous powers."
"Bah, milor!" rejoined the Spaniard gaily, "a veiled female! Think on it! Those who have entered yon mysterious tent declare that scarce an outline of that soothsayer could they glean, beneath the folds of thick draperies which hide her from view. What is a shapeless woman? I ask you, milor. And in England, too," he added with affected gallantry which had more than a touch of sarcasm in it, "where all women are shapely."
"Mirrab, the world-famous necromancer, will bring to your arms the lady of your choice, oh most noble lords!" continued the persistent Abra, "even if she were hidden beyond the outermost corners of the earth."
"By my halidame! this decides me," quoth the Englishman merrily. "I pray you come, my lord. This adventure promises better than the other. And, who knows?" he added in his turn with thinly-veiled, pleasant irony, "you Spaniards are so persuasive — the witch, if she be young and fair, might lift her veil for you."
"Allons!" responded the other, "since 'tis your wish, milor, let us consult the spirits."
And, standing aside with the courtly grace peculiar to those of his nationality, he allowed his companion to precede him up the steps which led to Mirrab's tent.
Then he too followed, and laughing and chattering the two men disappeared behind the gaudily painted draperies.
Not, however, without tossing a couple of gold pieces into the hands of the wizard. Abra, obsequious, smiling, thoroughly contented, sat himself down to rest awhile beside his patient, hard-worked henchman.
CHAPTER III MISCHIEF BREWING
At some little distance from the mysterious booth a trestle table had been erected, at which some three or four wenches in hooped paniers and short, striped kirtles, were dispensing spiced ale and sack[3] to the thirsty village folk.
Here it was that Mirrab the witch and her attendant wizard were most freely discussed — with bated breath, and with furtive glances cast hurriedly at the black flag, which was just visible above the row of other booths and gayer attractions of the Fair.
There was no doubt that as the evening began to draw in, and the sun to sink lower and lower in the west, the superstitious terror, which had all along set these worthy country yokels against the awesome mysteries of the necromancer's tent, had gradually culminated into a hysterical frenzy.
At first sullen looks had been cast towards that distant spot, whence the sound of Abra's perpetual "This way, noble lords, this way!" came every now and then as a weird and ghostly echo; but now muttered curses and even a threatening gesture from time to time had taken the place of angry silence.
As the hard pates of these louts became heated with the foaming ale, their tempers began to rise, and the girls, with characteristic love of mischief and gossip, were ready enough to add fuel to the smouldering flames.
There was also present in the minds of these wenches an obvious feeling of jealousy against this mysterious veiled witch, who had proved so attractive to the Court gallants who visited the Fair.
Her supposed charms so carefully hidden beneath thick draperies, were reputed to be irresistible, and Mistress Dorothy, Susan, and Joan, who showed their own pretty faces unblushingly, were not sufficiently versed in mountebanks' tricks to realize that Mirrab's thick veil was, without doubt, only a means for arousing the jaded curiosity of idlers from the Court.
Be that as it may, it was an established fact that no one had seen the soothsayer's face, and that Mistress Dorothy, who was pouring out a huge tankard of sack for her own attendant swain, was exceedingly annoyed thereby.
"Bah!" she said contemptuously, as Abra and his magic devices were being discussed at the table, "he is but a lout. I tell thee, Matthew, that thou'rt a fool to take count of him. But the woman," she added under her breath, "is possessed of the devil."
Matthew, the shoemaker, took the tankard, which his sweetheart had filled for him, in both hands and took a long draught before he made any reply. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, spat upon the ground, and looked significantly at the circle of friends who were gathered round him.
"I tell you, my masters," he said at last with due solemnity, "that I saw that witch last night fly out from yonder tree astride upon a giant bat."
"A bat?"
A holy shudder went round the entire assembly. Pretty Mistress Susan crossed herself furtively, whilst Joan in her terror nearly dropped the handful of mugs which she was carrying.
Every one hung on the shoemaker's lips.
Short and somewhat tubby of body, Matthew had a round and chubby face, with pale blue, bulging eyes, and slightly elevated eyebrows, which gave him the appearance of an overgrown baby. He was for some reason, which has never transpired to this day, reputed to have wonderful wisdom. His items of news, gleaned from a nephew who was scullion in the royal kitchen, were always received with boundless respect, whilst the connection itself gave him a certain social superiority of which he was proudly conscious.
Like the true-born orator, Matthew had paused a moment in order to allow the full strength of his utterance to sink into the minds of his hearers.
"Aye!" he said after a while, "she flew out from between the branches and up towards the full moon, clad only —— "
A brusque movement and a blush from Mistress Dorothy here stopped the graphic flow of his eloquence.
"Er — hem — !" he concluded more tamely, "I saw her quite plainly."
"More shame then on thee, master," retorted Dorothy, whose wrath was far from subsiding, "for thus gazing on the devil's work."
But the matter had become of far too great import to allow of feminine jealousies being taken into account.
"And I know," added an elderly matron with quaking voice, "that my sister Hannah's child caught sight of the witch outside her tent this morning, and forthwith fell into convulsions, the poor innocent lamb."
"She hath the evil eye, depend on it," quoth Dorothy decisively.
The men said nothing. They were sipping their ale in sullen silence, and looking to Matthew for further expressions of wisdom.
"Those evil spirits have oft a filthy countenance," explained the shoemaker sententiously, "and no doubt 'twas they helped to convulse Mistress Hannah's child. Some have four faces — one in the usual place, another at the back of the head, and one looking out on either side; others appear with a tall and lean body and bellow like a bull."
"Hast seen them, Matthew?" came in awed whispers from those around.
"Nay! God and the Holy Virgin forbid!" protested Matthew fervently. "God forbid that I should enter their abode of evil. I should lose my soul."
There was a long, ominous silence, broken only by quickly muttered invocations to the saints and to Our Lady.
The men looked furtively at one another. The women clung together, not daring to utter a sound. Mistress Dorothy, all the boldness gone out of her little heart, was sobbing from sheer fright.
"Friends," said Matthew at last, as if with sudden resolution, "if that woman be possessed of the devil, what's to be done?"
There was no reply, but obviously they all understood one another, for each wore a shame-faced look all of a sudden, and dared not meet his neighbour's eye. But the danger was great. The devil in their midst would mean poisoned wells, the sweating sickness, some dire calamity for sure; and it was the duty of every true-hearted countryman to protect his home and family from such terrible disasters.
Therefore when Matthew in his wisdom said, "What's to be done?" the men fully understood.
The women, too, knew that mischief was brewing. They drew closer to one another and shivered with cold beneath their kerchiefs, in spite of the warmth of this beautiful late summer's afternoon.
"Beware of her, Matthew," entreated Mistress Dorothy tearfully.
She drew a small piece of blue cloth from the bosom of her dress: it was pinked and broidered, and had the image of the Holy Virgin painted on one side of it. Quickly she slipped it under her lover's jerkin.
"Take it," she whispered, "the scapulary of Our Lady will protect thee."
This momentous conclave was here interrupted by the approach of the small detachment of the town guard which had been sent hither to ensure order amongst the holiday-makers.
Matthew and his friends began ostentatiously to talk of the weather and other such trifling matters, until after the guard had passed, then once more they put their heads together.
But this time they bade the women go. What had to be discussed now was men's work and unfit for wenches' ears.
CHAPTER IV FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
In the meanwhile the two gallants were returning from their visit to the witch's tent.
As they came down the steps more than one voice among the passers-by inquired eagerly —
"What fortune, sirs?"
"In truth she hath strange powers," was the somewhat guarded response.
The two men strolled up to a neighbouring wine-vendor and ordered some wine. They had thrown their cloaks aside and removed their masks, for the air was close. The rich, slashed doublets, thus fully displayed, the fine lace at throat and wrist, the silken hose and chased daggers, all betokened the high quality and wealth of the wearers.
Neither of them seemed much above thirty years of age; each had the air of a man in the prime of life, and in the full enjoyment of all the good things which the world can give.
But in their actual appearance they presented a marked contrast.
The one tall and broad-shouldered, florid of complexion, and somewhat reddish about the hair and small pointed beard; the other short, slender, and alert, with keen, restless eyes, and with sensuous lips for ever curled in a smile of thinly veiled sarcasm.
Though outwardly on most familiar terms together, there was distinctly apparent between the two men an air of reserve, and even of decided, if perhaps friendly, antagonism.
"Well, milor Everingham," said the Spaniard after a while, "what say you to our adventure?"
"I say first and foremost, my lord," replied Everingham with studied gallantry, "that my prophecy proved correct — the mysterious necromancer was no proof against Spanish wiles; she unveiled at a smile from Don Miguel, Marquis de Suarez, the envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty[4]."
"Nay," rejoined Don Miguel, affecting not to notice the slight tone of sarcasm in his friend's pleasant voice, "I scarce caught a glimpse of the wench's face. The tent was so dark and her movements so swift."
There was a moment's silence. Lord Everingham seemed lost in meditation.
"You are thoughtful, milor," remarked Don Miguel. "Have the genii of the moon conquered your own usually lively spirits?"
"Nay, I was thinking of the curious resemblance," mused Everingham.
"A resemblance? — to whom?"
"As you say, the tent was dark and the wench's movements swift, yet I could see that, though coarsely clad and ill-kempt, that witch, whom they call Mirrab, is the very physical counterpart of the new Court beauty, the Lady Ursula Glynde."
"The fiancée of the Duke of Wessex!" exclaimed the Spaniard. "Impossible!"
"Nay, my lord," rejoined Everingham pointedly, "she scarce can be called His Grace's fiancée as yet. They were children in their cradles when her father plighted their troth."
The Spaniard made no immediate reply. With an affected, effeminate gesture he was gently stroking his long, black moustache. Everingham, on the other hand, was eyeing him keenly, with a certain look of defiance and challenge, and in a moment the antagonism between the two men appeared more marked than before.
"But gossip has it," said the Marquis at last, with assumed nonchalance, "that Lady Ursula's father — the Earl of Truro, was it not? — swore upon his honour and on his deathbed that she should wed the Duke of Wessex, whenever he claimed her hand, or live her life in a convent. Nay, I but repeat the rumour which has reached me," he added lightly; "put me right if I am in error, my lord. I am but a stranger, and have not yet had the honour of meeting His Grace."
"Bah!" said Everingham impatiently, "His Grace is in no humour to wed, nor do the Earl of Truro's deathbed vows bind him in any way."
He took up his bumper, and looking long and thoughtfully into it, he said with slow emphasis —
"If the Duke of Wessex be inclined to marry, believe me, my lord Marquis, that it shall be none other than the Queen of England! Whom may God bless and protect," he added, reverently lifting his plumed hat with one hand, whilst with the other he held the bumper to his lips and tossed down the full measure of wine at one draught.
"Amen to that," responded Don Miguel with the same easy nonchalance.
He too drained his bumper to the dregs; then he said quietly —
"But that is where we differ, milor. His Eminence the Cardinal de Moreno and myself both hope that the Queen of England will wed our master King Philip of Spain."
Everingham seemed as if he would reply. But with a certain effort he checked the impatient words which had risen to his lips. Englishmen had only just begun to learn the tricks and wiles of Spanish diplomacy, the smiles which hide antagonisms, the suave words which disguise impulsive thoughts.
Lord Everingham had not wholly assimilated the lesson. He had frowned impatiently when the question of the marriage of his queen had been broached by the foreigner. It was a matter which roused the temper of every loyal Englishman just then; they would not see Mary Tudor wedded to a stranger. England was beginning to feel her own independence; her children would not see her under another yoke.
Mary, in spite of her Spanish mother, was English to the backbone. Tudor-like, she had proved her grit and her pluck when opposing factions tried to wrest her crown from her. She was Harry's daughter. Her loyal subjects were proud of her and proud of her descent, and many of them had sworn that none but an English husband should share her throne with her.
With the same sarcastic smile still lurking round his full lips the Spaniard had watched his friend closely the while. He knew full well what was going on behind that florid countenance, knew the antagonism which the proposed Spanish marriage was rousing just then in the hearts and minds of Englishmen of all classes.
But he certainly did not care to talk over such momentous questions at a country fair, with the eyes and mouths of hundreds of yokels gaping astonishment at him.
As far as he was concerned the half-amicable discussion was closed. He and his friend had agreed to differ. According to Spanish ideas, divergence in political opinions need not interfere with pleasant camaraderie.
