THE HOUNDS OF GOD _A Romance_ BY RAFAEL SABATINI BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge [COPYRIGHT] COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY RAFAEL SABATINI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM CONTENTS I. The Misanthrope II. The Lover III. In Calais Roads IV. Sir Gervase V. Flotsam VI. Surrender VII. Margaret’s Prisoner VIII. Don Pedro’s Letter IX. The Assault-at-Arms X. The Ransom XI. The Departure XII. The Secretary of State XIII. The Queen XIV. Frey Luis XV. Scylla XVI. Charybdis XVII. The Holy Office XVIII. Domini Canes XIX. Philip II XX. The King’s Conscience XXI. The Cardinal’s Conscience XXII. The Royal Confessor XXIII. The Auto de Fé XXIV. Recognition THE HOUNDS OF GOD CHAPTER I. THE MISANTHROPE /It/ was Walsingham who said of Roger Trevanion, Earl of Garth, that he preferred the company of the dead to that of the living. This was a sneering allusion to the recluse, studious habits of his lordship. His lordship, no doubt, would have regarded the sneer as a thunderbolt of lath; that is, if he regarded it as a thunderbolt at all. It is much more likely that he would have accepted the statement in its literal sense, admitted the preference and justified it by answering that the only good men were dead men. This because, being dead, they could no longer work any evil. You conceive that the experience of life which brings a man to such a conclusion cannot have been pleasant. His misanthropy dated from his adolescence, arose out of his close friendship for the gallant Thomas Seymour, who was brother to one queen and husband to another, and who, under the spur of ambition and perhaps indeed of love, would, upon the death of Katherine Parr, have married the Princess Elizabeth. As Seymour’s devoted and admiring friend, he had seen at close quarters the slimy web of intrigue in which the Lord Admiral was taken, and he had narrowly escaped being taken with him and with him sent to the block. He had witnessed the evil working of the envious ambition of the Protector Somerset, who, fearful lest fruition of the affair between the Lord Admiral and the Princess should lead to his own ultimate supersession, had not scrupled to bring his own brother to the scaffold upon a fabricated charge of high-treason. It was pretended that the Admiral was already the lover of the Princess and that he conspired with her to overthrow the established regency and to seize the reins of power with his own hands. Indeed, the full pretence was that his courtship of the Princess was no more than a step in the promotion of his schemes. The two offences were made so interdependent that either might be established upon evidence of the other.