As the Queen spoke, his promise and all its consequences rushed on the
mind of the unfortunate Tressilian, and while it controlled his natural
inclination to pronounce that a falsehood which he knew from the
evidence of his senses to be untrue, gave an indecision and irresolution
to his appearance and utterance which made strongly against him in
the mind of Elizabeth, as well as of all who beheld him. He turned
the papers over and over, as if he had been an idiot, incapable of
comprehending their contents. The Queen's impatience began to become
visible. "You are a scholar, sir," she said, "and of some note, as I
have heard; yet you seem wondrous slow in reading text hand. How say
you, are these certificates true or no?"
"Madam," said Tressilian, with obvious embarrassment and hesitation,
anxious to avoid admitting evidence which he might afterwards have
reason to confute, yet equally desirous to keep his word to Amy, and to
give her, as he had promised, space to plead her own cause in her own
way--"Madam--Madam, your Grace calls on me to admit evidence which ought
to be proved valid by those who found their defence upon them."
"Why, Tressilian, thou art critical as well as poetical," said the
Queen, bending on him a brow of displeasure; "methinks these writings,
being produced in the presence of the noble Earl to whom this Castle
pertains, and his honour being appealed to as the guarantee of their
authenticity, might be evidence enough for thee. But since thou listest
to be so formal--Varney, or rather my Lord of Leicester, for the affair
becomes yours" (these words, though spoken at random, thrilled through
the Earl's marrow and bones), "what evidence have you as touching these
certificates?"
Varney hastened to reply, preventing Leicester--"So please your Majesty,
my young Lord of Oxford, who is here in presence, knows Master Anthony
Foster's hand and his character."
The Earl of Oxford, a young unthrift, whom Foster had more than once
accommodated with loans on usurious interest, acknowledged, on this
appeal, that he knew him as a wealthy and independent franklin, supposed
to be worth much money, and verified the certificate produced to be his
handwriting.
"And who speaks to the Doctor's certificate?" said the Queen. "Alasco,
methinks, is his name."
Masters, her Majesty's physician (not the less willingly that he
remembered his repulse from Sayes Court, and thought that his present
testimony might gratify Leicester, and mortify the Earl of Sussex and
his faction), acknowledged he had more than once consulted with Doctor
Alasco, and spoke of him as a man of extraordinary learning and hidden
acquirements, though not altogether in the regular course of practice.
The Earl of Huntingdon, Lord Leicester's brother-in-law, and the old
Countess of Rutland, next sang his praises, and both remembered the
thin, beautiful Italian hand in which he was wont to write his receipts,
and which corresponded to the certificate produced as his.