Part 3, 6 thru 8, Part 4, 1 thru 3

[Manny]

Summary

Robin spends his time in his old grounds with his Catholic friends. They hear that Mary Queen of Scots has been relocated in Farthingay, which is still within two day’s reach from Derby. Marjorie receives a letter that it is expected that Mary will be executed and there will be a need for a priest. She is reluctant to tell Robin, but in the end she does. Robin decides to risk his life and travel to Farthingay.

When Robin arrives at Farthingay, he cannot find the means to visit the Queen. He tries to make contact with those inside but they put him off. Everyone anticipates her execution but none is scheduled. Even on the night before her execution, they will not allow a priest for her last rites. But suddenly folks that night gathered beneath the Castle’s tower. As Robin tries to get to the front of the mob that morning, suddenly with fanfare instruments and a roar from the crowd, in an open window a man presents to the crowd on a platter the severed head of the Queen.

A year later, the Catholics still continue to have their Masses and sacraments in secret through the ingenuity of Marjorie Manners. However, news of priests being captured continues to filter in. Slowly more Catholics, such as Mr. Simpson, are beginning to give in to the authorities. The Protestant Lord Shrewsbury has it seems taken a more aggressive role in rooting out the Catholics in the Derby region. More and more searches are repressing the Catholics.

Attacks on Catholic homes are now more frequent, and more lay Catholics are being jailed as well. The area is down to three priests: Garlick, Ludlam, and Robin. The three priests one day meet at the house of old Mr. FitzHerbert, and the four have a wonderful, peaceful dinner. The next morning, the three priests all celebrate a Mass each. Upon finishing the last, they hear a loud ruckus outside of a posse coming from Lord Shrewsbury. They have been found out, and Garlick and Ludlam hide inside a two man priest hole on the ground floor while Robin hides in the one man priest hole on the floor above.

The Shrewsbury posse crash the house and break walls searching for the hiding priests. Robin can hear as they tap and puncture the walls. He hears the shuffling movements, the sounds, and the talk of Garlick and Ludlam being discovered and restrained. They come close to breaking the wall at Robin’s hole as well but by fortune the posse stops short. The posse leaves eventually and Robin stays many hours to ensure that all have left. Finally he crawls out to only find a weeping maid servant.

[Casey]

I thought I was caught up and now see I'm falling behind again. just want to say thanks for the discussion. it has kept me engaged in a book I was tempted to give up on early and I've gotten a lot more out of it than I otherwise would have.

[Joseph]

Robin is almost like the English Reformation Forrest Gump. He's in the middle of all of it, but it also makes very real just how bad things were in the 1580s.

[Manny]

Two points strike me as I read this last section.

First, the allusions to Spain in these chapters are significant. The Babington Plot included the addition of the Spanish army invading England once Elizabeth I had been assassinated and replaced by Mary Queen of Scots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babingt... Even after Mary was executed Catholics hoped on Spain to overthrow the Protestant government. Indeed Spanish Armada had plans of invading England, but the English Navy defeated them in 1588. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish... That is the year after Mary was beheaded, so the threat from Spain was co-terminus with the events of the novel. English fear of Spain was at a high, and so the persecution of the Catholics became more intense. The novel captures this perfectly.

Second, the intensity of the persecution is very intense, especially when you consider these are fellow countrymen who are torturing and killing their fellow townsmen. When a country or people turn against Catholicism, it is with savage intensity. Recall the Roman persecution of the first three centuries of the Common Era. Think ahead then in the Enlightenment persecution of Revolutionary France, or the Japanese persecutions in Medieval Japan, the Bolshevik Revolution, Mexican persecutions, or the Spanish Civil War. Catholicism’s refusal to give the state the primary role in their lives sets off fury in those who oppose it.

[Casey]

What comes to mind for me is the "call to adventure" theme that Jordan Peterson often references. Here we have excellent examples of both the masculine and feminine calls to adventure. Two ordinary, unremarkable, insignificant people sacrificing everything in defense of the great transcendent and finding remarkable significance. Sacrificing even romantic love for one another for the transcendent love of God. And in the process perfecting and purifying their own love for one another. This all contrasted with the father's "safe" choices and the torment he experiences trapped in that safety. In this sense, the book is extraordinarily relevant.

[Manny]

The highlight of these chapters is that of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. But the chapter is filled with more than just her execution. Let’s start at the beginning of Part 3, Chapter VIII. Part I of the chapter is so superbly written than it should be quoted in its entirety.

Overhead lay the heavy sky of night-clouds like a curved sheet of dark steel, glimmering far away to the left with gashes of pale light. In front towered the twin gateway, seeming in the gloom to lean forward to its fall. Lights shone here and there in the windows, vanished and appeared again, flashing themselves back from the invisible water beneath. About, behind and on either side, there swayed and murmured this huge crowd—invisible in the darkness—peasants, gentlemen, clerks, grooms—all on an equality at last, awed by a common tragedy into silence, except for words exchanged here and there in an undertone, or whispered and left unanswered, or sudden murmured prayers to a God who hid Himself indeed. Now and again, from beyond the veiling walls came the tramp of men; once, three or four brisk notes blown on a horn; once, the sudden rumble of a drum; and once, when the silence grew profound, three or four blows of iron on wood. But at that the murmur rose into a groan and drowned it again….

So the minutes passed…. Since soon after midnight the folks had been gathering here. Many had not slept all night, ever since the report had run like fire through the little town last evening, that the sentence had been delivered to the prisoner. From that time onwards the road that led down past the Castle had never been empty. It was now moving on to dawn, the late dawn of February; and every instant the scene grew more distinct. It was possible for those pushed against the wall, or against the chains of the bridge that had been let down an hour ago, to look down into the chilly water of the moat; to see not the silhouette only of the huge fortress, but the battlements of the wall, and now and again a steel cap and a pike-point pass beyond it as the sentry went to and fro. Noises within the Castle grew more frequent. The voice of an officer was heard half a dozen times; the rattle of pike-butts, the clash of steel. The melancholy bray of the horn-blower ran up a minor scale and down again; the dub-dub of a drum rang out, and was thrown back in throbs by the encircling walls. The galloping of horses was heard three or four times as a late-comer tore up the village street and was forced to halt far away on the outskirts of the crowd—some country squire, maybe, to whom the amazing news had come an hour ago. Still there was no movement of the great doors across the bridge. The men on guard there shifted their positions; nodded a word or two across to one another; changed their pikes from one hand to the other. It seemed as if day would come and find the affair no further advanced….

Then, without warning (for so do great climaxes always come), the doors wheeled back on their hinges, disclosing a line of pikemen drawn up under the vaulted entrance; a sharp command was uttered by an officer at their head, causing the two sentries to advance across the bridge; a great roaring howl rose from the surging crowd; and in an instant the whole lane was in confusion. Robin felt himself pushed this way and that; he struggled violently, driving his elbows right and left; was lifted for a moment clean from his feet by the pressure about him; slipped down again; gained a yard or two; lost them; gained three or four in a sudden swirl; and immediately found his feet on wood instead of earth; and himself racing desperately as a loose group of runners, across the bridge; and beneath the arch of the castle-gate.
(pp. 246-247).

Notice Benson describes the dark clouds in the first sentence as “night-clouds like a curved sheet of dark steel.” That alludes to the dark steel of the blade that will behead the Queen. And the “gashes of pale light” is an image foreshadowing the violence of the act. The scene is so beautifully drawn: the gathering crowd, the rush, the energy. It’s interesting how an execution gathers so many people. It would not be something that would draw me, but then this execution is a political gathering too. So there is a mixture of political interest with the spectacle of a death in front of one’s eyes. Later, Robin’s contemplation on the Queen’s execution has intertextual significance.

And now that the priest was in his place, he began again to think over that answer of the Queen. The very words of it, indeed, he did not know for a month or two later, when Mr. Bourgoign wrote to him at length; but this, at least, he knew, that her Grace had said (and no man contradicted her at that time) that she would shed her blood to-morrow with all the happiness in the world, since it was for the cause of the Catholic and Roman Church that she died. It was not for any plot that she was to die: she professed again, kissing her Bible as she did so, that she was utterly guiltless of any plot against her sister. She died because she was of that Faith in which she had been born, and which Elizabeth had repudiated. As for death, she did not fear it; she had looked for it during all the eighteen years of her imprisonment.

It was at a martyrdom, then, that he was to assist…. He had known that, without a doubt, ever since the day that Mary had declared her innocence at Chartley. There had been no possibility of thinking otherwise; and, as he reflected on this, he remembered that he, too, was guilty of the same crime;… and he wondered whether he, too, would die as manfully, if the need for it ever came.

Then, in an instant, he was called back, by the sudden crash of horns and drums playing all together. He saw again the ranks of heads before him: the great arched windows of the hall on the other side of the court, the grim dominating keep, and the merciless February morning sky over all.

It was impossible to tell what was going on.
(pp. 249-250)

Robin wonders if he will face the same martyrdom manfully. This is another foreshadow. We know he will. Finally the simple pathos of the Queen’s beheading.

Then suddenly the heads grew still; a wave of motionlessness passed over them, as if some strange sympathy were communicated from within those tall windows. The moments passed and passed. It was impossible to hear those murmurs, through the blare of the instruments; there was one sound only that could penetrate them; and this, rising from what seemed at first the wailing of a child, grew and grew into the shrill cries of a dog in agony. At the noise once more a roar of low questioning surged up and fell. Simultaneously the music came to an abrupt close; and, as if at a signal, there sounded a great roar of voices, all shouting together within the hall. It rose yet louder, broke out of doors, and was taken up by those outside. The court was now one sea of tossing heads and open mouths shouting—as if in exultation or in anger. Robin fought for his place on the projecting stones, clung to the rough wall, gripped a window-bar and drew himself yet higher.

Then, as he clenched himself tight and stared out again towards the tall windows that shone in bloody flakes of fire from the roaring logs within; a sudden and profound silence fell once more before being shattered again by a thousand roaring throats….

For there, in full view beyond the clear glass stood a tall, black figure, masked to the mouth, who held in his out-stretched hands a wide silver dish, in which lay something white and round and slashed with crimson….
(pp. 250-251)

The blare of music, the intervals of quiet hush of the crowd with the roar of the crowd, and the dramatic display of the Queen’s head, not even distinct, makes for such a dramatic scene.