Title: The Last of the Barons — Complete
Author: Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Language: English
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THE LAST OF THE BARONS

By Edward Bulwer Lytton



DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me
to attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and the
Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher than
mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs it
worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the characters
he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the general
historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines
of the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued by
pseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his theme
should necessarily tend to increase the reader’s practical and familiar
acquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of thought
which constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age. More than all, to
Fiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis which is
denied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and enlightened
by that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can neither harm
nor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up much that
were otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and difficulties of
contradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human heart.

My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited me
made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of English
historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the most
brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of high
and merited reputation. But however the annals of our History have been
exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally pressed
on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the delineation of
character, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of historical
truths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly untrodden
by his predecessors in the Land of Fiction.

Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,
on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of that
established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste. Whatever
the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least, to have
cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own heifer.

The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up the
great elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called
into power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the
ancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl of
Warwick, popularly called the King-maker, “the greatest as well as the
last of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown,” [Hume
adds, “and rendered the people incapable of civil government,”--a
sentence which, perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at issue
in our earlier history, between the jealousy of the barons and the
authority of the king.] was involved the very principle of our existing
civilization. It adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which ever loves
to explore the twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed, “No part
of English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so uncertain, so
little authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars between the two
Roses.” It adds also to the importance of that conjectural research
in which Fiction may be made so interesting and so useful, that “this
profound darkness falls upon us just on the eve of the restoration of
letters;” [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we perceive the movement of
those great and heroic passions in which Fiction finds delineations
everlastingly new, and are brought in contact with characters
sufficiently familiar for interest, sufficiently remote for adaptation
to romance, and above all, so frequently obscured by contradictory
evidence, that we lend ourselves willingly to any one who seeks to help
our judgment of the individual by tests taken from the general knowledge
of mankind.

Round the great image of the “Last of the Barons” group Edward the
Fourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood of
Richard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, “a good knight and gentle,
but somewhat dissolute of living;” [Chronicle of Edward V., in Stowe]
the vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her “holy
Henry,” and the pale shadow of their son. There may we see, also, the
gorgeous Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the enthusiasm and
energy which had formerly upheld the Ancient Church pass into the
stern and persecuted votaries of the New; we behold, in that social
transition, the sober Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of the rude
retainer or rustic franklin, from whom he is sprung--recognizing
sagaciously, and supporting sturdily, the sectarian interests of his
order, and preparing the way for the mighty Middle Class, in which our
Modern Civilization, with its faults and its merits, has established its
stronghold; while, in contrast to the measured and thoughtful notions
of liberty which prudent Commerce entertains, we are reminded of the
political fanaticism of the secret Lollard,--of the jacquerie of the
turbulent mob-leader; and perceive, amidst the various tyrannies of the
time, and often partially allied with the warlike seignorie, [For it
is noticeable that in nearly all the popular risings--that of Cade, of
Robin of Redesdale, and afterwards of that which Perkin Warbeck made
subservient to his extraordinary enterprise--the proclamations of the
rebels always announced, among their popular grievances, the depression
of the ancient nobles and the elevation of new men.]--ever jealous
against all kingly despotism,--the restless and ignorant movement of a
democratic principle, ultimately suppressed, though not destroyed, under
the Tudors, by the strong union of a Middle Class, anxious for security
and order, with an Executive Authority determined upon absolute sway.

Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy
began to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined
stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think and
to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which appeared
in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute will in
Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and specious
purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally attained
the object which justified all its villanies to the princes of its
native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and the
establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.

Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great invention
that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and durability of the
printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what would have been
the fate of any scientific achievement for which the world was less
prepared. The reception of printing into England chanced just at the
happy period when Scholarship and Literature were favoured by the great.
The princes of York, with the exception of Edward IV. himself, who had,
however, the grace to lament his own want of learning, and the taste
to appreciate it in others, were highly educated. The Lords Rivers and
Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton’s warmest
patrons, but that nobleman was no more at the time in which printing is
said to have been actually introduced into England.] were accomplished
in all the “witte and lere” of their age. Princes and peers vied with
each other in their patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his
brief reign, spared no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention
destined to transmit his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all
succeeding time. But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the
gracious and fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which
science is made manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. The
mathematics in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art.
Accusations of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange
to say, those who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science,
[Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular
callings. Thus, “Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge,” is styled (Rolls
Parl. 6, p. 273) Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, “History
of England,” vol iv. p. 6. Burke, “History of Richard III.”] and
contrived to make their deceptions profitable to some unworthy political
purpose, appear to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while
those who, occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits
uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were despatched
without mercy. The mathematician and astronomer Bolingbroke (the
greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as a wizard, while
not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited a certain Friar
Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which greatly befriended
Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.

Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran high
against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled conditions
of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it appears that
certain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a special anathema in
the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused of having sought, “by
subtle imagination,” the destruction of the original makers of hats and
bonnets by man’s strength,--that is, with hands and feet; and an act of
parliament was passed (22d of Edward IV.) to put down the fabrication
of the said hats and bonnets by mechanical contrivance.] so probably,
in the very instinct and destiny of Genius which ever drive it to a war
with popular prejudice, it would be towards such contrivances that a
man of great ingenuity and intellect, if studying the physical sciences,
would direct his ambition.

Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his philosopher
(Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a conception so
much in advance of the time, they who have examined such of the works
of Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best decide; but
the assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most acknowledged
prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important question will
obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have constructed his model,
but whether, having so constructed it, the fate that befell him was
probable and natural.

Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, in
meditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which your
eloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of the
multiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to our
interests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish that the
powers of the author were worthier of the theme.

It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of the
Historical portions of this narrative. The charming and popular “History
of Hume,” which, however, in its treatment of the reign of Edward IV. is
more than ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon the minds of many
of my readers, who may not have directed their attention to more
recent and accurate researches into that obscure period, an erroneous
impression of the causes which led to the breach between Edward IV. and
his great kinsman and subject, the Earl of Warwick. The general notion
is probably still strong that it was the marriage of the young king to
Elizabeth Gray, during Warwick’s negotiations in France for the alliance
of Bona of Savoy (sister-in-law to Louis XI.), which exasperated the
fiery earl, and induced his union with the House of Lancaster. All our
more recent historians have justly rejected this groundless fable,
which even Hume (his extreme penetration supplying the defects of his
superficial research) admits with reserve. [“There may even some doubt
arise with regard to the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy,”
 etc.--HUME, note to p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.] A short summary of
the reasons for this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexed
below. [“Many writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from his
disappointment caused by Edward’s clandestine marriage with Elizabeth.
If we may believe them, the earl was at the very time in France
negotiating on the part of the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy,
sister to the Queen of France; and having succeeded in his mission,
brought back with him the Count of Dampmartin as ambassador from Louis.
To me the whole story appears a fiction. 1. It is not to be found in the
more ancient historians. 2. Warwick was not at the time in France. On
the 20th of April, ten days before the marriage, he was employed in
negotiating a truce with the French envoys in London (Rym. xi. 521), and
on the 26th of May, about three weeks after it, was appointed to treat
of another truce with the King of Scots (Rym. xi. 424). 3. Nor could he
bring Dampmartin with him to England; for that nobleman was committed a
prisoner to the Bastile in September, 1463, and remained there till
May, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97, 109). Three contemporary and well-informed
writers, the two continuators of the History of Croyland and Wyrcester,
attribute his discontent to the marriages and honours granted to the
Wydeviles, and the marriage of the princess Margaret with the Duke of
Burgundy.”--LINGARD, vol. iii. c. 24, pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.] And, indeed,
it is a matter of wonder that so many of our chroniclers could have
gravely admitted a legend contradicted by all the subsequent conduct
of Warwick himself; for we find the earl specially doing honour to the
publication of Edward’s marriage, standing godfather to his first-born
(the Princess Elizabeth), employed as ambassador or acting as minister,
and fighting for Edward, and against the Lancastrians, during the five
years that elapsed between the coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick’s
rebellion.

The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired his
title of King-maker, appear to have been these.

It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner:
History of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointed
that, since Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the more
suitable marriage he might have formed with the earl’s eldest daughter;
and it is impossible but that the earl should have been greatly chafed,
in common with all his order, by the promotion of the queen’s relations,
[W. Wyr. 506, 7. Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate Lancastrians. But it
is clear that these causes for discontent never weakened his zeal for
Edward till the year 1467, when we chance upon the true origin of the
romance concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first open dissension between
Edward and the earl.

In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with Louis
XI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which of the
princes this was does not appear, and can scarcely be conjectured. The
“Pictorial History of England” (Book v. 102) in a tone of easy decision
says “it was one of the sons of Louis XI.” But Louis had no living
sons at all at the time. The Dauphin was not born till three years
afterwards. The most probable person was the Duke of Guienne, Louis’s
brother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during this period, Edward
received the bastard brother of Charles, Count of Charolois, afterwards
Duke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage between Margaret and the
count.

Warwick’s embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was aggravated
by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred. [The Croyland
Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record extends, is the
best authority for the time of Edward IV., very decidedly states the
Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of Warwick’s displeasure,
rather than the king’s marriage with Elizabeth: “Upon which (the
marriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,
who had for so many years taken party with the French against the
Burgundians, conceived great indignation; and I hold this to be the
truer cause of his resentment than the king’s marriage with Elizabeth,
for he had rather have procured a husband for the aforesaid princess
Margaret in the kingdom of France.” The Croyland Historian also speaks
emphatically of the strong animosity existing between Charolois and
Warwick.--Cont. Croyl. 551.] The earl retired in disgust to his castle.
But Warwick’s nature, which Hume has happily described as one of
“undesigning frankness and openness,” [Hume, “Henry VI.,” vol. iii. p.
172, edit. 1825.] does not seem to have long harboured this
resentment. By the intercession of the Archbishop of York and others,
a reconciliation was effected, and the next year, 1468, we find Warwick
again in favour, and even so far forgetting his own former cause
of complaint as to accompany the procession in honour of Margaret’s
nuptials with his private foe. [Lingard.] In the following year,
however, arose the second dissension between the king and his
minister,--namely, in the king’s refusal to sanction the marriage of his
brother Clarence with the earl’s daughter Isabel,--a refusal which was
attended with a resolute opposition that must greatly have galled the
pride of the earl, since Edward even went so far as to solicit the Pope
to refuse his sanction, on the ground of relationship. [Carte. Wm. Wyr.]
The Pope, nevertheless, grants the dispensation, and the marriage takes
place at Calais. A popular rebellion then breaks out in England. Some of
Warwick’s kinsmen--those, however, belonging to the branch of the Nevile
family that had always been Lancastrians, and at variance with the
earl’s party--are found at its head. The king, who is in imminent
danger, writes a supplicating letter to Warwick to come to his aid.
[“Paston Letters,” cxcviii. vol. ii., Knight’s ed. See Lingard, c. 24,
for the true date of Edward’s letters to Warwick, Clarence, and
the Archbishop of York.] The earl again forgets former causes for
resentment, hastens from Calais, rescues the king, and quells the
rebellion by the influence of his popular name.

We next find Edward at Warwick’s castle of Middleham, where, according
to some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated by
others as a contemptible invention. This question will be examined
in the course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the true
construction of the story, we find that Warwick and the king are still
on such friendly terms, that the earl marches in person against a
rebellion on the borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebel
leader (the earl’s own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York. We
find that, immediately after this supposed detention, Edward speaks of
Warwick and his brothers “as his best friends;” [“Paston Letters,” cciv.
vol. ii., Knight’s ed. The date of this letter, which puzzled the worthy
annotator, is clearly to be referred to Edward’s return from York,
after his visit to Middleham in 1469. No mention is therein made by
the gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward had suffered
imprisonment. He enters the city in state, as having returned safe and
victorious from a formidable rebellion. The letter goes on to say: “The
king himself hath (that is, holds) good language of the Lords Clarence,
of Warwick, etc., saying ‘they be his best friends.’” Would he say
this if just escaped from a prison? Sir John Paston, the writer of
the letter, adds, it is true, “But his household men have (hold) other
language.” very probably, for the household men were the court creatures
always at variance with Warwick, and held, no doubt, the same language
they had been in the habit of holding before.] that he betroths his
eldest daughter to Warwick’s nephew, the male heir of the family. And
then suddenly, only three months afterwards (in February, 1470), and
without any clear and apparent cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion,
animated by a deadly hatred to the king, refusing, from first to last,
all overtures of conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance,
that he bows a pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehement
insolence of Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance with
the Lancastrian party, in the destruction of which his whole life had
previously been employed.

Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl’s female relations. “And farther it erreth
not from the truth,” says Hall, “that the king did attempt a thing once
in the earl’s house, which was much against the earl’s honesty; but
whether it was the daughter or the niece,” adds the chronicler, “was
not, for both their honours, openly known; but surely such a thing WAS
attempted by King Edward,” etc.

Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as
to the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore, the
same date he erroneously gives to Warwick’s other grudges (namely, a
period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date at
which Warwick was still Edward’s fastest friend.

Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability
is conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received without
scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the whole
obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at once.
Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never to be
proclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was implicated in
hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in concealing the offence.
That if ever the insult were attempted, it must have been just previous
to the earl’s declared hostility is clear. Offences of that kind
hurry men to immediate action at the first, or else, if they stoop to
dissimulation the more effectually to avenge afterwards, the outbreak
bides its seasonable time. But the time selected by the earl for his
outbreak was the very worst he could have chosen, and attests the
influence of a sudden passion,--a new and uncalculated cause of
resentment. He had no forces collected; he had not even sounded his own
brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was uncertain of his intentions);
while, but a few months before, had he felt any desire to dethrone the
king, he could either have suffered him to be crushed by the popular
rebellion the earl himself had quelled, or have disposed of his person
as he pleased when a guest at his own castle of Middleham. His evident
want of all preparation and forethought--a want which drove into rapid
and compulsory flight from England the baron to whose banner, a few
months afterwards, flocked sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of
his alienation was fresh and recent.

If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl’s revolt. The
next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whether
a niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one married
brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters were married
to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the sisters married to
Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though Fitzhugh, or rather his son,
broke into rebellion, it was for some cause in which Warwick did not
sympathize, for by Warwick himself was that rebellion put down; nor
could the aggrieved lady have been a daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was
a stanch, though not avowed, Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully
kept aloof from the court.] and Montagu seems to have had no daughter
out of childhood, [Montagu’s wife could have been little more than
thirty at the time of his death. She married again, and had a family by
her second husband.] while that nobleman himself did not share Warwick’s
rebellion at the first, but continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward.
We cannot reasonably, then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more
revengeful than the parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour
of a daughter. It is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden
should have been one of Lord Warwick’s daughters; and this is the
general belief. Carte plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel it
could hardly have been. She was then married to Edward’s brother, the
Duke of Clarence, and within a month of her confinement. The earl had
only one other daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and
though Isabel appears to have possessed a more striking character of
beauty, Anne must have had no inconsiderable charms to have won the
love of the Lancastrian Prince Edward, and to have inspired a tender and
human affection in Richard Duke of Gloucester. [Not only does Majerus,
the Flemish annalist, speak of Richard’s early affection to Anne, but
Richard’s pertinacity in marrying her, at a time when her family was
crushed and fallen, seems to sanction the assertion. True, that Richard
received with her a considerable portion of the estates of her parents.
But both Anne herself and her parents were attainted, and the whole
property at the disposal of the Crown. Richard at that time had
conferred the most important services on Edward. He had remained
faithful to him during the rebellion of Clarence; he had been the
hero of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury. His reputation was then
exceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a legitimate reward,
the lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward could not well have
refused them. He certainly had a much better claim than the only other
competitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the perjured and
despicable Clarence. For Anne’s reluctance to marry Richard, and the
disguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland’s “Life of Anne of Warwick.”
 For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to whose memory one
crime more or less matters but little, it may here be observed that
so far from there being any ground to suppose that Gloucester was an
accomplice in the assassination of the young prince Edward of Lancaster,
there is some ground to believe that that prince was not assassinated at
all, but died (as we would fain hope the grandson of Henry V. did
die) fighting manfully in the field.--“Harleian Manuscripts;” Stowe,
“Chronicle of Tewksbury;” Sharon Turner, vol. iii. p. 335.] It is also
noticeable, that when, not as Shakspeare represents, but after long
solicitation, and apparently by positive coercion, Anne formed her
second marriage, she seems to have been kept carefully by Richard from
his gay brother’s court, and rarely, if ever, to have appeared in London
till Edward was no more.

That considerable obscurity should always rest upon the facts connected
with Edward’s meditated crime,--that they should never be published
amongst the grievances of the haughty rebel is natural from the very
dignity of the parties, and the character of the offence; that in such
obscurity sober History should not venture too far on the hypothesis
suggested by the chronicler, is right and laudable. But probably it will
be conceded by all, that here Fiction finds its lawful province, and
that it may reasonably help, by no improbable nor groundless conjecture,
to render connected and clear the most broken and the darkest fragments
of our annals.

I have judged it better partially to forestall the interest of the
reader in my narrative, by stating thus openly what he may expect, than
to encounter the far less favourable impression (if he had been hitherto
a believer in the old romance of Bona of Savoy), [I say the old romance
of Bona of Savoy, so far as Edward’s rejection of her hand for that
of Elizabeth Gray is stated to have made the cause of his quarrel with
Warwick. But I do not deny the possibility that such a marriage had
been contemplated and advised by Warwick, though he neither sought
to negotiate it, nor was wronged by Edward’s preference of his fair
subject.] that the author was taking an unwarrantable liberty with the
real facts, when, in truth, it is upon the real facts, as far as they
can be ascertained, that the author has built his tale, and his boldest
inventions are but deductions from the amplest evidence he could
collect. Nay, he even ventures to believe, that whoever hereafter shall
write the history of Edward IV. will not disdain to avail himself of
some suggestions scattered throughout these volumes, and tending to
throw new light upon the events of that intricate but important period.

It is probable that this work will prove more popular in its nature
than my last fiction of “Zanoni,” which could only be relished by those
interested in the examinations of the various problems in human life
which it attempts to solve. But both fictions, however different and
distinct their treatment, are constructed on those principles of art
to which, in all my later works, however imperfect my success, I have
sought at least steadily to adhere.

To my mind, a writer should sit down to compose a fiction as a painter
prepares to compose a picture. His first care should be the conception
of a whole as lofty as his intellect can grasp, as harmonious and
complete as his art can accomplish; his second care, the character of
the interest which the details are intended to sustain.

It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of
imagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of the
different schools which exist in each; for common both to the author
and the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar, the
Picturesque, and the Intellectual. By recurring to this comparison we
can, without much difficulty, classify works of Fiction in their
proper order, and estimate the rank they should severally hold. The
Intellectual will probably never be the most widely popular for the
moment. He who prefers to study in this school must be prepared for much
depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if he achieve them, are
not the most obvious to the many. In discussing, for instance, a modern
work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some striking passage, some
prominent character; but when do we ever hear any comment on its harmony
of construction, on its fulness of design, on its ideal character,--on
its essentials, in short, as a work of art? What we hear most valued in
the picture, we often find the most neglected in the book,--namely, the
composition; and this, simply because in England painting is recognized
as an art, and estimated according to definite theories; but in
literature we judge from a taste never formed, from a thousand
prejudices and ignorant predilections. We do not yet comprehend that the
author is an artist, and that the true rules of art by which he should
be tested are precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantastic
caprices of the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise or
censure, its passion and reaction. At one while, its solemn contempt for
Wordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry. At one while we are stunned
by the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told that he
can scarcely be called a poet. Each of these variations in the public is
implicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a few years back our
journals vied with each other in ridiculing Wordsworth for the faults
which he did not possess, they vie now with each other in eulogiums upon
the merits which he has never displayed.

These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism utterly
unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and entitle the
humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while they ought to
render the greatest suspicious of its praise.

It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of his
own superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense, that
every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest is
permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury before
which he is first heard. The literary history of the day consists of a
series of judgments set aside.

But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student, however
lowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which must ever
be more or less at variance with the popular canons. It is its hard
necessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar taste; for
unless it did so, it could neither elevate nor move. He who resigns the
Dutch art for the Italian must continue through the dark to explore
the principles upon which he founds his design, to which he adapts his
execution; in hope or in despondence still faithful to the theory which
cares less for the amount of interest created than for the sources from
which the interest is to be drawn; seeking in action the movement of the
grander passions or the subtler springs of conduct, seeking in repose
the colouring of intellectual beauty.

The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended. They
depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the
characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the
emotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether of
sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high. There
is nothing high in a boor’s head by Teniers, there is nothing low in
a boor’s head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two? The
absence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge of the
merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it requires a
connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the Intellectual.

I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarcasm,
because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespass
upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, my
avowal of the principles upon which it and its later predecessors have
been composed. You know well, however others may dispute the fact,
the earnestness with which those principles have been meditated and
pursued,--with high desire, if but with poor results.

It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than the
success, is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a critic
is only impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition to
over-estimate the person you profess to esteem! Adieu, my sincere and
valued friend; and accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard,
these flowers gathered in the Garden where we have so often roved
together.     E. L. B.

  LONDON, January, 1843.



PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS

This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground. Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of comparison
with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed that that great
writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether unoccupied the
peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author has here sought to
bring into cultivation. In “The Last of the Barons,” as in “Harold,”
 the aim has been to illustrate the actual history of the period, and
to bring into fuller display than general History itself has done the
characters of the principal personages of the time, the motives by which
they were probably actuated, the state of parties, the condition of
the people, and the great social interests which were involved in what,
regarded imperfectly, appear but the feuds of rival factions.

“The Last of the Barons” has been by many esteemed the best of the
Author’s romances; and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character,
and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it
may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike
than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand.

It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced are
very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order not
to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they are
represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of the
real events. Of these imaginary characters, the most successful is
Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an ideal
portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and the
most finished in execution, of any to be found in my numerous prose
works, “Zanoni” alone excepted.

For the rest, I venture to think that the general reader will obtain
from these pages a better notion of the important age, characterized by
the decline of the feudal system, and immediately preceding that great
change in society which we usually date from the accession of Henry
VII., than he could otherwise gather, without wading through a vast mass
of neglected chronicles and antiquarian dissertations.



TABLE OF CONTENTS

 BOOK I

 THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE

  CHAPTER

      I  The Pastime-ground of old Cockaigne
     II  The Broken Gittern
    III  The Trader and the Gentle; or, the Changing Generation
     IV  Ill fares the Country Mouse in the Traps of Town
      V  Weal to the Idler, Woe to the Workman
     VI  Master Marmaduke Nevile fears for the Spiritual Weal of his
         Host and Hostess
    VII  There is a Rod for the Back of every Fool who would be Wiser
         than his Generation

 BOOK II

 THE KING’S COURT

  CHAPTER

      I  Earl Warwick the King-maker
     II  King Edward the Fourth
    III  The Antechamber

 BOOK III

 IN WHICH THE HISTORY PASSES FROM THE KING’S COURT TO THE STUDENT’S
   CELL, AND RELATES THE PERILS THAT BEFELL A PHILOSOPHER FOR
   MEDDLING WITH THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD

  CHAPTER

      I  The Solitary Sage and the Solitary Maid
     II  Master Adam Warner grows a Miser, and behaves Shamefully
    III  A Strange Visitor--All Ages of the World breed World-
           Betters
     IV  Lord Hastings
      V  Master Adam Warner and King Henry the Sixth
     VI  How, on leaving King Log, Foolish Wisdom runs a-muck on
           King Stork
    VII  My Lady Duchess’s Opinion of the Utility of Master Warner’s
           Invention, and her esteem for its Explosion
   VIII  The Old Woman talks of Sorrows, the Young Woman dreams
           of Love; the Courtier flies from Present Power to
           Remembrances of Past Hopes, and the World-Bettered opens
           Utopia, with a View of the Gibbet for the Silly Sage he
           has seduced into his Schemes,--so, ever and evermore,
           runs the World away
     IX  How the Destructive Organ of Prince Richard promises Goodly
           Development

 BOOK IV

 INTRIGUES OF THE COURT OF EDWARD IV

  CHAPTER

      I  Margaret of Anjou
     II  In which are laid Open to the Reader the Character of Edward
           the Fourth and that of his Court, with the Machinations of
           the Woodvilles against the Earl of Warwick
    III  Wherein Master Nicholas Alwyn visits the Court, and there
           learns Matter of which the Acute Reader will judge for
           himself
     IV  Exhibiting the Benefits which Royal Patronage confers on
           Genius,--also the Early Loves of the Lord Hastings; with
           other Matters Edifying and Delectable
      V  The Woodville Intrigue prospers--Montagu confers with
           Hastings, visits the Archbishop of York, and is met on the
           Road by a strange Personage
     VI  The Arrival of the Count de la Roche, and the various
           Excitement produced on many Personages by that Event
    VII  The Renowned Combat between Sir Anthony Woodville and the
           Bastard of Burgundy
   VIII  How the Bastard of Burgundy prospered more in his Policy than
           With the Pole-axe--and how King Edward holds his Summer
           Chase in the Fair Groves of Shene
     IX  The Great Actor returns to fill the Stage
      X  How the Great Lords come to the King-maker, and with what
           Proffers

 BOOK V

 THE LAST OF THE BARONS IN HIS FATHERS HALLS

  CHAPTER

      I  Rural England in the Middle Ages--Noble Visitors seek the
           Castle
         Of Middleham
     II  Councils and Musings
    III  The Sisters
     IV  The Destrier

 BOOK VI

 WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE
   WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS
   BETTER.  LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE
   SAME PROLIFIC DELUSION,--NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH’S
   MAJORITY) ARE WORTH THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE
   EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND ASPIRING FEW.

  CHAPTER
      I  New Dissentions
     II  The Would-be Improvers of Jove’s Football, Earth--The Sad
           Father and the Sad Child--The Fair Rivals
    III  Wherein the Demagogue seeks the Courtier
     IV  Sibyll
      V  Katherine
     VI  Joy for Adam, and Hope for Sibyll--and Popular Friar Bungey!
    VII  A Love Scene

 BOOK VII

 THE POPULAR REBELLION

  CHAPTER

      I  The White Lion of March shakes his Mane
     II  The Camp at Olney
    III  The Camp of the Rebels
     IV  The Norman Earl and the Saxon Demagogue confer
      V  What Faith Edward IV purposeth to keep with Earl and People
     VI  What befalls King Edward on his Escape from Olney
    VII  How King Edward arrives at the Castle of Middleham
   VIII  The Ancients rightly gave to the Goddess of Eloquence a Crown
     IX  Wedded Confidence and Love--the Earl and the Prelate--the
           Prelate and the King--Schemes--Wiles--and the Birth of a
           Dark Thought destined to eclipse a Sun

 BOOK VIII

 IN WHICH THE LAST LINK BETWEEN KING-MAKER AND KING SNAPS ASUNDER

  CHAPTER

      I  The Lady Anne visits the Court
     II  The Sleeping Innocence--the Wakeful Crime
    III  New Dangers to the House of York--and the King’s Heart
           allies itself with Rebellion against the King’s Throne
     IV  The Foster-brothers
      V  The Lover and the Gallant--Woman’s Choice
     VI  Warwick returns-appeases a Discontented Prince-and confers
           with a Revengeful Conspirator
    VII  The Fear and the Flight
   VIII  The Group round the Death-bed of the Lancastrian Widow

 BOOK IX.

 THE WANDERERS AND THE EXILES

  CHAPTER

      I  How the Great Baron becomes as Great a Rebel
     II  Many Things briefly told
    III  The Plot of the Hostelry--the Maid and the Scholar in
           their Home
     IV  The World’s Justice, and the Wisdom of our Ancestors
      V  The Fugitives are captured--the Tymbesteres reappear--
           Moonlight on the Revel of the Living--Moonlight on the
           Slumber of the Dead

     VI  The Subtle Craft of Richard of Gloucester
    VII  Warwick and his Family in Exile
   VIII  How the Heir of Lancaster meets the King-maker
     IX  The Interview of Earl Warwick and Queen Margaret
      X  Love and Marriage--Doubts of Conscience--Domestic Jealousy--
           and Household Treason

 BOOK X.

 THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER

  CHAPTER

      I  The Maid’s Hope, the Courtier’s Love, and the Sage’s Comfort
     II  The Man awakes in the Sage, and the She-wolf again hath
           tracked the Lamb
    III  Virtuous Resolves submitted to the Test of Vanity and the
           World
     IV  The Strife which Sibyll had courted, between Katherine and
           herself, commences in Serious Earnest
      V  The Meeting of Hastings and Katherine
     VI  Hastings learns what has befallen Sibyll, repairs to the
           King, and encounters an old Rival
    VII  The Landing of Lord Warwick, and the Events that ensue
           thereon
   VIII  What befell Adam Warner and Sibyll when made subject to the
           Great Friar Bungey
     IX  The Deliberations of Mayor and Council, while Lord Warwick
           marches upon London
      X  The Triumphal Entry of the Earl--the Royal Captive in the
           Tower--the Meeting between King-maker and King
     XI  The Tower in Commotion

 BOOK XI

 THE NEW POSITION OF THE KING-MAKER

  CHAPTER

      I  Wherein Master Adam Warner is notably commended and
           advanced--and Greatness says to Wisdom, “Thy Destiny
           be mine, Amen”
      II  The Prosperity of the Outer Show--the Cares of the Inner Man
    III  Further Views into the Heart of Man, and the Conditions
           of Power
     IV  The Return of Edward of York
      V  The Progress of the Plantagenet
     VI  Lord Warwick, with the Foe in the field and the Traitor at
           The Hearth

 BOOK XII

 THE BATTLE OF BARNET

  CHAPTER

      I  A King in his City hopes to recover his Realm--A Woman in
           her Chamber fears to forfeit her own
     II  Sharp is the Kiss of the Falcon’s Bear
    III  A Pause
  IV-VI  The Battle
    VII  The last Pilgrims in the long Procession to the Common Bourne



BOOK I. THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE.



CHAPTER I. THE PASTIME-GROUND OF OLD COCKAIGNE.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but even then no longer solitary,
hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered
houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented
the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of
Westminster and London. Scarcely need we say that open spaces for the
popular games and diversions were then numerous in the suburbs of the
metropolis,--grateful to some the fresh pools of Islington; to others,
the grass-bare fields of Finsbury; to all, the hedgeless plains of vast
Mile-end. But the site to which we are now summoned was a new and maiden
holiday-ground, lately bestowed upon the townsfolk of Westminster by the
powerful Earl of Warwick.

Raised by a verdant slope above the low, marsh-grown soil of
Westminster, the ground communicated to the left with the Brook-fields,
through which stole the peaceful Ty-bourne, and commanded prospects,
on all sides fair, and on each side varied. Behind, rose the twin green
hills of Hampstead and Highgate, with the upland park and chase of
Marybone,--its stately manor-house half hid in woods. In front might be
seen the Convent of the Lepers, dedicated to Saint James, now a palace;
then to the left, York House, [The residence of the Archbishops of
York] now Whitehall; farther on, the spires of Westminster Abbey and the
gloomy tower of the Sanctuary; next, the Palace, with its bulwark and
vawmure, soaring from the river; while eastward, and nearer to
the scene, stretched the long, bush-grown passage of the Strand,
picturesquely varied with bridges, and flanked to the right by the
embattled halls of feudal nobles, or the inns of the no less powerful
prelates; while sombre and huge amidst hall and inn, loomed the gigantic
ruins of the Savoy, demolished in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. Farther
on, and farther yet, the eye wandered over tower and gate, and arch
and spire, with frequent glimpses of the broad sunlit river, and the
opposite shore crowned by the palace of Lambeth, and the Church of St.
Mary Overies, till the indistinct cluster of battlements around the
Fortress-Palatine bounded the curious gaze. As whatever is new is for
a while popular, so to this pastime-ground, on the day we treat of,
flocked, not only the idlers of Westminster, but the lordly dwellers of
Ludgate and the Flete, and the wealthy citizens of tumultuous Chepe.

The ground was well suited to the purpose to which it was devoted.
About the outskirts, indeed, there were swamps and fish-pools; but a
considerable plot towards the centre presented a level sward, already
worn bare and brown by the feet of the multitude. From this, towards
the left, extended alleys, some recently planted, intended to afford,
in summer, cool and shady places for the favourite game of bowls; while
scattered clumps, chiefly of old pollards, to the right broke the space
agreeably enough into detached portions, each of which afforded its
separate pastime or diversion. Around were ranged many carts, or wagons;
horses of all sorts and value were led to and fro, while their owners
were at sport. Tents, awnings, hostelries, temporary buildings, stages
for showmen and jugglers, abounded, and gave the scene the appearance of
a fair; but what particularly now demands our attention was a broad plot
in the ground, dedicated to the noble diversion of archery. The reigning
House of York owed much of its military success to the superiority of
the bowmen under its banners, and the Londoners themselves were jealous
of their reputation in this martial accomplishment. For the last fifty
years, notwithstanding the warlike nature of the times, the practice of
the bow, in the intervals of peace, had been more neglected than seemed
wise to the rulers. Both the king and his loyal city had of late taken
much pains to enforce the due exercise of “Goddes instrumente,” [So
called emphatically by Bishop Latimer, in his celebrated Sixth Sermon.]
upon which an edict had declared that “the liberties and honour of
England principally rested!”

And numerous now was the attendance, not only of the citizens,
the burghers, and the idle populace, but of the gallant nobles who
surrounded the court of Edward IV., then in the prime of his youth,--the
handsomest, the gayest, and the bravest prince in Christendom.

The royal tournaments (which were, however, waning from their ancient
lustre to kindle afresh, and to expire in the reigns of the succeeding
Tudors), restricted to the amusements of knight and noble, no doubt
presented more of pomp and splendour than the motley and mixed assembly
of all ranks that now grouped around the competitors for the silver
arrow, or listened to the itinerant jongleur, dissour, or minstrel, or,
seated under the stunted shade of the old trees, indulged, with eager
looks and hands often wandering to their dagger-hilts, in the absorbing
passion of the dice; but no later and earlier scenes of revelry ever,
perhaps, exhibited that heartiness of enjoyment, that universal holiday,
which attended this mixture of every class, that established a rude
equality for the hour between the knight and the retainer, the burgess
and the courtier.

The revolution that placed Edward IV. upon the throne had, in fact, been
a popular one. Not only had the valour and moderation of his father,
Richard, Duke of York, bequeathed a heritage of affection to his brave
and accomplished son; not only were the most beloved of the great barons
the leaders of his party; but the king himself, partly from inclination,
partly from policy, spared no pains to win the good graces of that
slowly rising, but even then important part of the population,--the
Middle Class. He was the first king who descended, without loss of
dignity and respect, from the society of his peers and princes, to join
familiarly in the feasts and diversions of the merchant and the trader.
The lord mayor and council of London were admitted, on more than one
solemn occasion, into the deliberations of the court; and Edward had not
long since, on the coronation of his queen, much to the discontent of
certain of his barons, conferred the Knighthood of the hath upon four of
the citizens. On the other hand, though Edward’s gallantries--the
only vice which tended to diminish his popularity with the sober
burgesses--were little worthy of his station, his frank, joyous
familiarity with his inferiors was not debased by the buffooneries
that had led to the reverses and the awful fate of two of his royal
predecessors. There must have been a popular principle, indeed, as well
as a popular fancy, involved in the steady and ardent adherence which
the population of London in particular, and most of the great cities,
exhibited to the person and the cause of Edward IV. There was a feeling
that his reign was an advance in civilization upon the monastic virtues
of Henry VI., and the stern ferocity which accompanied the great
qualities of “The Foreign Woman,” as the people styled and regarded
Henry’s consort, Margaret of Anjou. While thus the gifts, the courtesy,
and the policy of the young sovereign made him popular with the middle
classes, he owed the allegiance of the more powerful barons and the
favour of the rural population to a man who stood colossal amidst the
iron images of the Age,--the greatest and the last of the old Norman
chivalry, kinglier in pride, in state, in possessions, and in renown
than the king himself, Richard Nevile, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.

This princely personage, in the full vigour of his age, possessed all
the attributes that endear the noble to the commons. His valour in the
field was accompanied with a generosity rare in the captains of the
time. He valued himself on sharing the perils and the hardships of his
meanest soldier. His haughtiness to the great was not incompatible
with frank affability to the lowly. His wealth was enormous, but it
was equalled by his magnificence, and rendered popular by his lavish
hospitality. No less than thirty thousand persons are said to have
feasted daily at the open tables with which he allured to his countless
castles the strong hands and grateful hearts of a martial and unsettled
population. More haughty than ambitious, he was feared because he
avenged all affront; and yet not envied, because he seemed above all
favour.

The holiday on the archery-ground was more than usually gay, for the
rumour had spread from the court to the city that Edward was about to
increase his power abroad, and to repair what he had lost in the eyes of
Europe through his marriage with Elizabeth Gray, by allying his sister
Margaret with the brother of Louis XI., and that no less a person than
the Earl of Warwick had been the day before selected as ambassador on
the important occasion.

Various opinions were entertained upon the preference given to France
in this alliance over the rival candidate for the hand of the
princess,--namely, the Count de Charolois, afterwards Charles the Bold,
Duke of Burgundy.

“By ‘r Lady,” said a stout citizen about the age of fifty, “but I am not
over pleased with this French marriage-making! I would liefer the stout
earl were going to France with bows and bills than sarcenets and satins.
What will become of our trade with Flanders,--answer me that, Master
Stokton? The House of York is a good House, and the king is a good king,
but trade is trade. Every man must draw water to his own mill.”

“Hush, Master Heyford!” said a small lean man in a light-gray surcoat.
“The king loves not talk about what the king does. ‘T is ill jesting
with lions. Remember William Walker, hanged for saying his son should be
heir to the crown.”

“Troth,” answered Master Heyford, nothing daunted, for he belonged to
one of the most powerful corporations of London,--“it was but a scurvy
Pepperer [old name for Grocer] who made that joke; but a joke from a
worshipful goldsmith, who has moneys and influence, and a fair wife of
his own, whom the king himself has been pleased to commend, is another
guess sort of matter. But here is my grave-visaged headman, who always
contrives to pick up the last gossip astir, and has a deep eye into
millstones. Why, ho, there! Alwyn--I say, Nicholas Alwyn!--who would
have thought to see thee with that bow, a good half-ell taller than
thyself? Methought thou wert too sober and studious for such man-at-arms
sort of devilry.”

“An’ it please you, Master Heyford,” answered the person thus
addressed,--a young man, pale and lean, though sinewy and large-boned,
with a countenance of great intelligence, but a slow and somewhat formal
manner of speech, and a strong provincial accent,--“an’ it please you,
King Edward’s edict ordains every Englishman to have a bow of his
own height; and he who neglects the shaft on a holiday forfeiteth one
halfpenny and some honour. For the rest, methinks that the citizens of
London will become of more worth and potency every year; and it shall
not be my fault if I do not, though but a humble headman to your
worshipful mastership, help to make them so.”

“Why, that’s well said, lad; but if the Londoners prosper, it is because
they have nobles in their gipsires, [a kind of pouch worn at the girdle]
not bows in their hands.”

“Thinkest thou then, Master Heyford, that any king at a pinch would
leave them the gipsire, if they could not protect it with the bow? That
Age may have gold, let not Youth despise iron.”

“Body o’ me!” cried Master Heyford, “but thou hadst better curb in thy
tongue. Though I have my jest,--as a rich man and a corpulent,--a lad
who has his way to make good should be silent and--But he’s gone.”

“Where hooked you up that young jack fish?” said Master Stokton, the
thin mercer, who had reminded the goldsmith of the fate of the grocer.

“Why, he was meant for the cowl, but his mother, a widow, at his own
wish, let him make choice of the flat cap. He was the best ‘prentice
ever I had. By the blood of Saint Thomas, he will push his way in good
time; he has a head, Master Stokton,--a head, and an ear; and a
great big pair of eyes always looking out for something to his proper
advantage.”

In the mean while, the goldsmith’s headman had walked leisurely up to
the archery-ground; and even in his gait and walk, as he thus repaired
to a pastime, there was something steady, staid, and business-like.

The youths of his class and calling were at that day very different from
their equals in this. Many of them the sons of provincial retainers,
some even of franklins and gentlemen, their childhood had made them
familiar with the splendour and the sports of knighthood; they had
learned to wrestle, to cudgel, to pitch the bar or the quoit, to draw
the bow, and to practise the sword and buckler, before transplanted from
the village green to the city stall. And even then, the constant
broils and wars of the time, the example of their betters, the holiday
spectacle of mimic strife, and, above all, the powerful and corporate
association they formed amongst themselves, tended to make them as wild,
as jovial, and as dissolute a set of young fellows as their posterity
are now sober, careful, and discreet. And as Nicholas Alwyn, with
a slight inclination of his head, passed by, two or three loud,
swaggering, bold-looking groups of apprentices--their shaggy hair
streaming over their shoulders, their caps on one side, their short
cloaks of blue torn or patched, though still passably new, their
bludgeons under their arms, and their whole appearance and manner not
very dissimilar from the German collegians in the last century--notably
contrasted Alwyn’s prim dress, his precise walk, and the feline care
with which he stepped aside from any patches of mire that might sully
the soles of his square-toed shoes.

The idle apprentices winked and whispered, and lolled out their tongues
at him as he passed. “Oh, but that must be as good as a May-Fair
day,--sober Nick Alwyn’s maiden flight of the shaft! Hollo, puissant
archer, take care of the goslings yonder! Look this way when thou
pull’st, and then woe to the other side!” Venting these and many similar
specimens of the humour of Cockaigne, the apprentices, however, followed
their quondam colleague, and elbowed their way into the crowd gathered
around the competitors at the butt; and it was at this spot, commanding
a view of the whole space, that the spectator might well have formed
some notion of the vast following of the House of Nevile. For everywhere
along the front lines, everywhere in the scattered groups, might be
seen, glistening in the sunlight, the armourial badges of that mighty
family. The Pied Bull, which was the proper cognizance [Pied Bull
the cognizance, the Dun Bull’s head the crest] of the Neviles, was
principally borne by the numerous kinsmen of Earl Warwick, who rejoiced
in the Nevile name. The Lord Montagu, Warwick’s brother, to whom
the king had granted the forfeit title and estates of the earls of
Northumberland, distinguished his own retainers, however, by the special
request of the ancient Montagus.--a Gryphon issuant from a ducal crown.
But far more numerous than Bull or Gryphon (numerous as either seemed)
were the badges worn by those who ranked themselves among the peculiar
followers of the great Earl of Warwick. The cognizance of the Bear
and Ragged Staff, which he assumed in right of the Beauchamps, whom he
represented through his wife, the heiress of the lords of Warwick,
was worn in the hats of the more gentle and well-born clansmen and
followers, while the Ragged Staff alone was worked front and back on
the scarlet jackets of his more humble and personal retainers. It was
a matter of popular notice and admiration that in those who wore these
badges, as in the wearers of the hat and staff of the ancient Spartans,
might be traced a grave loftiness of bearing, as if they belonged to
another caste, another race, than the herd of men. Near the place where
the rivals for the silver arrow were collected, a lordly party had
reined in their palfreys, and conversed with each other, as the judges
of the field were marshalling the competitors.

“Who,” said one of these gallants, “who is that comely young fellow just
below us, with the Nevile cognizance of the Bull on his hat? He has the
air of one I should know.”

“I never saw him before, my Lord of Northumberland,” answered one of the
gentlemen thus addressed; “but, pardieu, he who knows all the Neviles by
eye must know half England.” The Lord Montagu--for though at that moment
invested with the titles of the Percy, by that name Earl Warwick’s
brother is known to history, and by that, his rightful name, he
shall therefore be designated in these pages--the Lord Montagu smiled
graciously at this remark, and a murmur through the crowd announced that
the competition for the silver arrow was about to commence. The butts,
formed of turf, with a small white mark fastened to the centre by a
very minute peg, were placed apart, one at each end, at the distance of
eleven score yards. At the extremity where the shooting commenced, the
crowd assembled, taking care to keep clear from the opposite butt,
as the warning word of “Fast” was thundered forth; but eager was the
general murmur, and many were the wagers given and accepted, as some
well-known archer tried his chance. Near the butt that now formed the
target, stood the marker with his white wand; and the rapidity with
which archer after archer discharged his shaft, and then, if it missed,
hurried across the ground to pick it up (for arrows were dear enough not
to be lightly lost), amidst the jeers and laughter of the bystanders,
was highly animated and diverting. As yet, however, no marksman had hit
the white, though many had gone close to it, when Nicholas Alwyn stepped
forward; and there was something so unwarlike in his whole air, so prim
in his gait, so careful in his deliberate survey of the shaft and his
precise adjustment of the leathern gauntlet that protected the arm from
the painful twang of the string, that a general burst of laughter from
the bystanders attested their anticipation of a signal failure.

“‘Fore Heaven!” said Montagu, “he handles his bow an’ it were a
yard-measure. One would think he were about to bargain for the
bow-string, he eyes it so closely.”

“And now,” said Nicholas, slowly adjusting the arrow, “a shot for the
honour of old Westmoreland!” And as he spoke, the arrow sprang gallantly
forth, and quivered in the very heart of the white. There was a general
movement of surprise among the spectators, as the marker thrice shook
his wand over his head. But Alwyn, as indifferent to their respect as
he had been to their ridicule, turned round and said, with a significant
glance at the silent nobles, “We springals of London can take care of
our own, if need be.”

“These fellows wax insolent. Our good king spoils them,” said Montagu,
with a curl of his lip. “I wish some young squire of gentle blood would
not disdain a shot for the Nevile against the craftsman. How say you,
fair sir?” And with a princely courtesy of mien and smile, Lord Montagu
turned to the young man he had noticed as wearing the cognizance of
the First House in England. The bow was not the customary weapon of
the well-born; but still, in youth, its exercise formed one of the
accomplishments of the future knight; and even princes did not disdain,
on a popular holiday, to match a shaft against the yeoman’s cloth-yard.
[At a later period, Henry VIII. was a match for the best bowman in his
kingdom. His accomplishment was hereditary, and distinguished alike his
wise father and his pious son.] The young man thus addressed, and whose
honest, open, handsome, hardy face augured a frank and fearless nature,
bowed his head in silence, and then slowly advancing to the umpires,
craved permission to essay his skill, and to borrow the loan of a shaft
and bow. Leave given and the weapons lent, as the young gentleman took
his stand, his comely person, his dress, of a better quality than that
of the competitors hitherto, and, above all, the Nevile badge worked in
silver on his hat, diverted the general attention from Nicholas Alwyn.
A mob is usually inclined to aristocratic predilections, and a murmur
of goodwill and expectation greeted him, when he put aside the gauntlet
offered to him, and said, “In my youth I was taught so to brace the bow
that the string should not touch the arm; and though eleven score yards
be but a boy’s distance, a good archer will lay his body into his bow
[‘My father taught me to lay my body in my bow,’ etc.,” said Latimer, in
his well-known sermon before Edward VI.,--1549. The bishop also herein
observes that “it is best to give the bow so much bending that the
string need never touch the arm. This,” he adds, “is practised by many
good archers with whom I am acquainted, as much as if he were to hit
the blanc four hundred yards away.”

“A tall fellow this!” said Montagu; “and one I wot from the North,” as
the young gallant fitted the shaft to the bow. And graceful and artistic
was the attitude he assumed,--the head slightly inclined, the feet
firmly planted, the left a little in advance, and the stretched sinews
of the bow-hand alone evincing that into that grasp was pressed the
whole strength of the easy and careless frame. The public expectation
was not disappointed,--the youth performed the feat considered of all
the most dexterous; his arrow, disdaining the white mark, struck the
small peg which fastened it to the butts, and which seemed literally
invisible to the bystanders.

“Holy Saint Dunstan! there’s but one man who can beat me in that sort
that I know of,” muttered Nicholas, “and I little expected to see him
take a bite out of his own hip.” With that he approached his successful
rival.

“Well, Master Marmaduke,” said he, “it is many a year since you showed
me that trick at your father, Sir Guy’s--God rest him! But I scarce take
it kind in you to beat your own countryman!”

“Beshrew me!” cried the youth, and his cheerful features brightened into
hearty and cordial pleasure, “but if I see in thee, as it seems to me,
my old friend and foster-brother, Nick Alwyn, this is the happiest hour
I have known for many a day. But stand back and let me look at thee,
man. Thou! thou a tame London trader! Ha! ha! is it possible?”

“Hout, Master Marmaduke,” answered Nicholas, “every crow thinks his own
baird bonniest, as they say in the North. We will talk of this anon an’
thou wilt honour me. I suspect the archery is over now. Few will think
to mend that shot.”

And here, indeed, the umpires advanced, and their chief--an old mercer,
who had once borne arms, and indeed been a volunteer at the battle of
Towton--declared that the contest was over,--“unless,” he added, in
the spirit of a lingering fellow-feeling with the Londoner, “this young
fellow, whom I hope to see an alderman one of these days, will demand
another shot, for as yet there hath been but one prick each at the
butts.”

“Nay, master,” returned Alwyn, “I have met with my betters,--and, after
all,” he added indifferently, “the silver arrow, though a pretty bauble
enough, is over light in its weight.”

“Worshipful sir,” said the young Nevile, with equal generosity, “I
cannot accept the prize for a mere trick of the craft,--the blanc was
already disposed of by Master Alwyn’s arrow. Moreover; the contest was
intended for the Londoners, and I am but an interloper, beholden to
their courtesy for a practice of skill, and even the loan of a bow;
wherefore the silver arrow be given to Nicholas Alwyn.”

“That may not be, gentle sir,” said the umpire, extending the prize.
“Sith Alwyn vails of himself, it is thine, by might and by right.”

The Lord Montagu had not been inattentive to this dialogue, and he
now said, in a loud tone that silenced the crowd, “Young Badgeman, thy
gallantry pleases me no less than thy skill. Take the arrow, for thou
hast won it; but as thou seemest a new comer, it is right thou shouldst
pay thy tax upon entry,--this be my task. Come hither, I pray thee, good
sir,” and the nobleman graciously beckoned to the mercer; “be these five
nobles the prize of whatever Londoner shall acquit himself best in the
bold English combat of quarter-staff, and the prize be given in this
young archer’s name. Thy name, youth?”

“Marmaduke Nevile, good my lord.”

Montagu smiled, and the umpire withdrew to make the announcement to the
bystanders. The proclamation was received with a shout that traversed
from group to group and line to line, more hearty from the love and
honour attached to the name of Nevile than even from a sense of the
gracious generosity of Earl Warwick’s brother. One man alone, a sturdy,
well-knit fellow, in a franklin’s Lincoln broadcloth, and with a hood
half-drawn over his features, did not join the popular applause. “These
Yorkists,” he muttered, “know well how to fool the people.”

Meanwhile the young Nevile still stood by the gilded stirrup of the
great noble who had thus honoured him, and contemplated him with that
respect and interest which a youth’s ambition ever feels for those who
have won a name.

The Lord Montagu bore a very different character from his puissant
brother. Though so skilful a captain that he had never been known to
lose a battle, his fame as a warrior was, strange to say, below that
of the great earl, whose prodigious strength had accomplished those
personal feats that dazzled the populace, and revived the legendary
renown of the earlier Norman knighthood. The caution and wariness,
indeed, which Montagu displayed in battle probably caused his success as
a general, and the injustice done to him (at least by the vulgar) as a
soldier. Rarely had Lord Montagu, though his courage was indisputable,
been known to mix personally in the affray. Like the captains of modern
times, he contented himself with directing the manoeuvres of his
men, and hence preserved that inestimable advantage of coolness and
calculation, which was not always characteristic of the eager hardihood
of his brother. The character of Montagu differed yet more from that
of the earl in peace than in war. He was supposed to excel in all those
supple arts of the courtier which Warwick neglected or despised; and if
the last was on great occasions the adviser, the other in ordinary life
was the companion of his sovereign. Warwick owed his popularity to his
own large, open, daring, and lavish nature. The subtler Montagu sought
to win, by care and pains, what the other obtained without an effort. He
attended the various holiday meetings of the citizens, where Warwick
was rarely seen. He was smooth-spoken and courteous to his equals, and
generally affable, though with constraint, to his inferiors. He was a
close observer, and not without that genius for intrigue, which in rude
ages passes for the talent of a statesman. And yet in that thorough
knowledge of the habits and tastes of the great mass, which gives wisdom
to a ruler, he was far inferior to the earl. In common with his brother,
he was gifted with the majesty of mien which imposes on the eye; and his
port and countenance were such as became the prodigal expense of velvet,
minever, gold, and jewels, by which the gorgeous magnates of the day
communicated to their appearance the arrogant splendour of their power.

“Young gentleman,” said the earl, after eying with some attention the
comely archer, “I am pleased that you bear the name of Nevile. Vouchsafe
to inform me to what scion of our House we are this day indebted for the
credit with which you have upborne its cognizance?”

“I fear,” answered the youth, with a slight but not ungraceful
hesitation, “that my lord of Montagu and Northumberland will hardly
forgive the presumption with which I have intruded upon this assembly
a name borne by nobles so illustrious, especially if it belong to those
less fortunate branches of his family which have taken a different
side from himself in the late unhappy commotions. My father was Sir Guy
Nevile, of Arsdale, in Westmoreland.”

Lord Montagu’s lip lost its gracious smile; he glanced quickly at the
courtiers round him, and said gravely, “I grieve to hear it. Had I
known this, certes my gipsire had still been five nobles the richer.
It becomes not one fresh from the favour of King Edward IV. to show
countenance to the son of a man, kinsman though he was, who bore arms
for the usurpers of Lancaster. I pray thee, sir, to doff, henceforth, a
badge dedicated only to the service of Royal York. No more, young man;
we may not listen to the son of Sir Guy Nevile.--Sirs, shall we ride to
see how the Londoners thrive at quarter-staff?”

With that, Montagu, deigning no further regard at Nevile, wheeled his,
palfrey towards a distant part of the ground, to which the multitude was
already pressing its turbulent and noisy way.

“Thou art hard on thy namesake, fair my lord,” said a young noble, in
whose dark-auburn hair, aquiline, haughty features, spare but powerful
frame, and inexpressible air of authority and command, were found all
the attributes of the purest and eldest Norman race,--the Patricians of
the World.

“Dear Raoul de Fulke,” returned Montagu, coldly, “when thou hast reached
my age of thirty and four, thou wilt learn that no man’s fortune casts
so broad a shadow as to shelter from the storm the victims of a fallen
cause.”

“Not so would say thy bold brother,” answered Raoul de Fulke, with a
slight curl of his proud lip. “And I hold, with him, that no king is so
sacred that we should render to his resentments our own kith and kin.
God’s wot, whosoever wears the badge and springs from the stem of Raoul
de Fulke shall never find me question over much whether his father
fought for York or Lancaster.”

“Hush, rash babbler!” said Montagu, laughing gently; “what would King
Edward say if this speech reached his ears? Our friend,” added the
courtier, turning to the rest, “in vain would bar the tide of change;
and in this our New England, begirt with new men and new fashions,
affect the feudal baronage of the worn-out Norman. But thou art a
gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier.”

“The saints keep me so!” returned De Fulke. “From overgluttony, from
over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king’s leman, from quaking at a
king’s frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old
crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his
sons! Amen!” This speech, in which every sentence struck its stinging
satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by an awkward
silence, which Montagu was the first to break.

“Pardieu!” he said, “when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair face
can have lured the truant?”

“He left us suddenly on the archery-ground,” answered the young Lovell.
“But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord William’s
sigh to maid or matron.”

While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their
mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile’s eye
pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride
and impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it
receives from Power.



CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN GITTERN.

Rousing himself from his indignant revery, Marmaduke Nevile followed one
of the smaller streams into which the crowd divided itself on dispersing
from the archery-ground, and soon found himself in a part of the holiday
scene appropriated to diversions less manly, but no less characteristic
of the period than those of the staff and arrow. Beneath an awning,
under which an itinerant landlord dispensed cakes and ale, the humorous
Bourdour (the most vulgar degree of minstrel, or rather tale-teller)
collected his clownish audience; while seated by themselves--apart, but
within hearing--two harpers, in the king’s livery, consoled each other
for the popularity of their ribald rival, by wise reflections on the
base nature of common folk. Farther on, Marmaduke started to behold
what seemed to him the heads of giants at least six yards high; but on
a nearer approach these formidable apparitions resolved themselves to
a company of dancers upon stilts. There, one joculator exhibited the
antics of his well-tutored ape; there, another eclipsed the attractions
of the baboon by a marvellous horse that beat a tabor with his forefeet;
there, the more sombre Tregetour, before a table raised upon a lofty
stage, promised to cut off and refix the head of a sad-faced little boy,
who in the mean time was preparing his mortal frame for the operation by
apparently larding himself with sharp knives and bodkins. Each of these
wonder-dealers found his separate group of admirers, and great was the
delight and loud the laughter in the pastime-ground of old Cockaigne.

While Marmaduke, bewildered by this various bustle, stared around him,
his eye was caught by a young maiden, in evident distress, struggling in
vain to extricate herself from a troop of timbrel-girls, or tymbesteres
(as they were popularly called), who surrounded her with mocking
gestures, striking their instruments to drown her remonstrances, and
dancing about her in a ring at every effort towards escape. The girl
was modestly attired as one of the humbler ranks, and her wimple in
much concealed her countenance; but there was, despite her strange
and undignified situation and evident alarm, a sort of quiet, earnest
self-possession,--an effort to hide her terror, and to appeal to the
better and more womanly feelings of her persecutors. In the intervals of
silence from the clamour, her voice, though low, clear, well-tuned, and
impressive, forcibly arrested the attention of young Nevile; for at that
day, even more than this (sufficiently apparent as it now is), there was
a marked distinction in the intonation, the accent, the modulation of
voice, between the better bred and better educated and the inferior
classes. But this difference, so ill according with her dress and
position, only served to heighten more the bold insolence of the musical
Bacchantes, who, indeed, in the eyes of the sober, formed the most
immoral nuisance attendant on the sports of the time, and whose hardy
license and peculiar sisterhood might tempt the antiquary to search
for their origin amongst the relics of ancient Paganism. And now, to
increase the girl’s distress, some half-score of dissolute apprentices
and journeymen suddenly broke into the ring of the Maenads, and were
accosting her with yet more alarming insults, when Marmaduke, pushing
them aside, strode to her assistance. “How now, ye lewd varlets! ye make
me blush for my countrymen in the face of day! Are these the sports of
merry England,--these your manly contests,--to strive which can best
affront a poor maid? Out on ye, cullions and bezonians! Cling to me,
gentle donzel, and fear not. Whither shall I lead thee?” The apprentices
were not, however, so easily daunted. Two of them approached to the
rescue, flourishing their bludgeons about their heads with formidable
gestures. “Ho, ho!” cried one, “what right hast thou to step between the
hunters and the doe? The young quean is too much honoured by a kiss from
a bold ‘prentice of London.”

Marmaduke stepped back, and drew the small dagger which then formed the
only habitual weapon of a gentleman. [Swords were not worn, in peace, at
that period.] This movement, discomposing his mantle, brought the silver
arrow he had won (which was placed in his girdle) in full view of the
assailants. At the same time they caught sight of the badge on his hat.
These intimidated their ardour more than the drawn poniard.

“A Nevile!” said one, retreating. “And the jolly marksman who beat Nick
Alwyn,” said the other, lowering his bludgeon, and doffing his cap.
“Gentle sir, forgive us, we knew not your quality. But as for the
girl--your gallantry misleads you.”

“The Wizard’s daughter! ha, ha! the Imp of Darkness!” screeched the
timbrel-girls, tossing up their instruments, and catching them again on
the points of their fingers. “She has enchanted him with her glamour.
Foul is fair! Foul fair thee, young springal, if thou go to the nets.
Shadow and goblin to goblin and shadow! Flesh and blood to blood and
flesh!”--and dancing round him, with wanton looks and bare arms, and
gossamer robes that brushed him as they circled, they chanted,--

    “Come, kiss me, my darling,
       Warm kisses I trade for;
     Wine, music, and kisses
       What else was life made for?”

With some difficulty, and with a disgust which was not altogether
without a superstitious fear of the strange words and the outlandish
appearance of these loathsome Delilahs, Marmaduke broke from the ring
with his new charge; and in a few moments the Nevile and the maiden
found themselves, unmolested and unpursued, in a deserted quarter of
the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they hurried,
wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously to the
young man’s ear. “Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is
fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,--and the devil will have his
own!”

“And what mischance, my poor girl,” asked the Nevile, soothingly,
“brought thee into such evil company?”

“I know not, fair sir,” said the girl, slowly recovering her self; “but
my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday occasions one
who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few groats from the
courtesy of the bystanders. So I stole out with my serving-woman,
and had already got more than I dared hope, when those wicked
timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the money from
them. And then they called an officer of the ground, who asked me my
name and holding; so when I answered, they called my father a wizard,
and the man broke my poor gittern,--see!”--and she held it up, with
innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her lips,--“and they
soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no more till you,
worshipful sir, took pity on me.”

“But why,” asked the Nevile, “did they give to your father so unholy a
name?”

“Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying
what he says will one day be of good to the people.”

“Humph!” said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time,
who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and
abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl’s
artless answer,

“Humph! your father--but--” checking what he was about, perhaps harshly,
to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent face lifted
to his own--“but it is hard to punish the child for the father’s
errors.”

“Errors, sir!” repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain
in her face and voice. “But yes, wisdom is ever, perhaps, the saddest
error!”

This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which
had preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the
simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that
character made up. For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and
countenance, she added, after a short pause, “They took the money! The
gittern--see, they left that, when they had made it useless.”

“I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire,” said
Marmaduke.

The girl coloured deeply. “Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg.” Marmaduke
did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by the stunted
trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at him from
their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave looks, he
began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had hitherto done,
to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen walking in
public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful repute.
Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the least,
suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were divided with
iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke him of gentle
quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the humbler orders,
in broad day too, was far more open to censure. The blood mounted to
his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and altered voice: “My
good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger; it would ill beseem
you, so young and so comely, to go farther with one not old enough to be
your protector; so, in God’s name, depart quickly, and remember me when
you buy your new gittern, poor child!” So saying, he attempted to place
a piece of money in her hand. She put it back, and the coin fell on the
ground. “Nay, this is foolish,” said he.

“Alas, sir!” said the girl, gravely, “I see well that you are ashamed of
your goodness. But my father begs not. And once--but that matters not.”

“Once what?” persisted Marmaduke, interested in her manner, in spite of
himself.

“Once,” said the girl, drawing herself up, and with an expression that
altered the whole character of her face--“the beggar ate at my father’s
gate. He is a born gentleman and a knight’s son.”

“And what reduced him thus?”

“I have said,” answered the girl, simply, yet with the same half-scorn
on her lip that it had before betrayed; “he is a scholar, and thought
more of others than himself.”

“I never saw any good come to a gentleman from those accursed books,”
 said the Nevile,--“fit only for monks and shavelings. But still, for
your father’s sake, though I am ashamed of the poorness of the gift--”

“No; God be with you, sir, and reward you.” She stopped short, drew
her wimple round her face, and was gone. Nevile felt an uncomfortable
sensation of remorse and disapproval at having suffered her to quit him
while there was yet any chance of molestation or annoyance, and his eye
followed her till a group of trees veiled her from his view.

The young maiden slackened her pace as she found herself alone under
the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,--a desolate spot, made
melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through
which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name
(though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the
most polished quarters of the metropolis. Upon a mound formed by the
gnarled roots of the dwarfed and gnome-like oak, she sat down and wept.
In our earlier years, most of us may remember that there was one day
which made an epoch in life,--that day that separated Childhood from
Youth; for that day seems not to come gradually, but to be a sudden
crisis, an abrupt revelation. The buds of the heart open to close no
more. Such a day was this in that girl’s fate. But the day was not yet
gone! That morning, when she dressed for her enterprise of filial love,
perhaps for the first time Sibyll Warner felt that she was fair--who
shall say whether some innocent, natural vanity had not blended with the
deep, devoted earnestness, which saw no shame in the act by which the
child could aid the father? Perhaps she might have smiled to listen to
old Madge’s praises of her winsome face, old Madge’s predictions that
the face and the gittern would not lack admirers on the gay ground;
perhaps some indistinct, vague forethoughts of the Future to which the
sex will deem itself to be born might have caused the cheek--no, not to
blush, but to take a rosier hue, and the pulse to beat quicker, she knew
not why. At all events, to that ground went the young Sibyll, cheerful,
and almost happy, in her inexperience of actual life, and sure, at
least, that youth and innocence sufficed to protect from insult. And now
she sat down under the leafless tree to weep; and in those bitter tears,
childhood itself was laved from her soul forever.

“What ailest thou, maiden?” asked a deep voice; and she felt a hand laid
lightly on her shoulder. She looked up in terror and confusion, but
it was no form or face to inspire alarm that met her eye. It was a
cavalier, holding by the rein a horse richly caparisoned; and though his
dress was plainer and less exaggerated than that usually worn by men
of rank, its materials were those which the sumptuary laws (constantly
broken, indeed, as such laws ever must be) confined to nobles. Though
his surcoat was but of cloth, and the colour dark and sober, it was
woven in foreign looms,--an unpatriotic luxury, above the degree of
knight,--and edged deep with the costliest sables. The hilt of the
dagger, suspended round his breast, was but of ivory, curiously wrought,
but the scabbard was sown with large pearls. For the rest, the stranger
was of ordinary stature, well knit and active rather than powerful, and
of that age (about thirty-five) which may be called the second prime
of man. His face was far less handsome than Marmaduke Nevile’s, but
infinitely more expressive, both of intelligence and command,--the
features straight and sharp, the complexion clear and pale, and under
the bright gray eyes a dark shade spoke either of dissipation or of
thought.

“What ailest thou, maiden,--weepest thou some faithless lover? Tush!
love renews itself in youth, as flower succeeds flower in spring.”

Sibyll made no reply; she rose and moved a few paces, then arrested her
steps, and looked around her. She had lost all clew to her way homeward,
and she saw with horror, in the distance, the hateful timbrel-girls,
followed by the rabble, and weaving their strange dances towards the
spot.

“Dost thou fear me, child? There is no cause,” said the stranger,
following her. “Again I say, What ailest thou?” This time his voice was
that of command, and the poor girl involuntarily obeyed it. She related
her misfortunes, her persecution by the tymbesteres, her escape,--thanks
to the Nevile’s courtesy,--her separation from her attendant, and her
uncertainty as to the way she should pursue.

The nobleman listened with interest: he was a man sated and wearied
by pleasure and the world, and the evident innocence of Sibyll was a
novelty to his experience, while the contrast between her language and
her dress moved his curiosity. “And,” said he, “thy protector left thee,
his work half done; fie on his chivalry! But I, donzel, wear the spurs
of knighthood, and to succour the distressed is a duty my oath will
not let me swerve from. I will guide thee home, for I know well all the
purlieus of this evil den of London. Thou hast but to name the suburb in
which thy father dwells.”

Sibyll involuntarily raised her wimple, lifted her beautiful eyes to the
stranger, in bewildered gratitude and surprise. Her childhood had passed
in a court, her eye, accustomed to rank, at once perceived the high
degree of the speaker. The contrast between this unexpected and delicate
gallantry and the condescending tone and abrupt desertion of Marmaduke
affected her again to tears.

“Ah, worshipful sir!” she said falteringly, “what can reward thee for
this unlooked-for goodness?”

“One innocent smile, sweet virgin!--for such I’ll be sworn thou art.”

He did not offer her his hand, but hanging the gold-enamelled rein over
his arm, walked by her side; and a few words sufficing for his guidance,
led her across the ground, through the very midst of the throng. He felt
none of the young shame, the ingenious scruples of Marmaduke, at the
gaze he encountered, thus companioned. But Sibyll noted that ever and
anon bonnet and cap were raised as they passed along, and the respectful
murmur of the vulgar, who had so lately jeered her anguish, taught her
the immeasurable distance in men’s esteem between poverty shielded by
virtue, and poverty protected by power.

But suddenly a gaudy tinsel group broke through the crowd, and wheeling
round their path, the foremost of them daringly approached the nobleman,
and looking full into his disdainful face, exclaimed, “Tradest thou,
too, for kisses? Ha, ha! life is short,--the witch is outwitched by
thee! But witchcraft and death go together, as peradventure thou mayest
learn at the last, sleek wooer.” Then darting off, and heading her
painted, tawdry throng, the timbrel-girl sprang into the crowd and
vanished.

This incident produced no effect upon the strong and cynical intellect
of the stranger. Without allusion to it, he continued to converse with
his young companion, and artfully to draw out her own singular but
energetic and gifted mind. He grew more than interested,--he was both
touched and surprised. His manner became yet more respectful, his voice
more subdued and soft.

On what hazards turns our fate! On that day, a little, and Sibyll’s pure
but sensitive heart had, perhaps, been given to the young Nevile. He had
defended and saved her; he was fairer than the stranger, he was more
of her own years and nearer to her in station; but in showing himself
ashamed to be seen with her, he had galled her heart, and moved the
bitter tears of her pride. What had the stranger done? Nothing but
reconciled the wounded delicacy to itself; and suddenly he became to her
one ever to be remembered, wondered at,--perhaps more. They reached an
obscure suburb, and parted at the threshold of a large, gloomy, ruinous
house, which Sibyll indicated as her father’s home.

The girl lingered before the porch; and the stranger gazed, with the
passionless admiration which some fair object of art produces on one
who has refined his taste, but who has survived enthusiasm, upon the
downcast cheek that blushed beneath his gaze. “Farewell!” he said; and
the girl looked up wistfully. He might, without vanity, have supposed
that look to imply what the lip did not dare to say,--“And shall we meet
no more?”

But he turned away, with formal though courteous salutation; and as he
remounted his steed, and rode slowly towards the interior of the city,
he muttered to himself, with a melancholy smile upon his lips, “Now
might the grown infant make to himself a new toy; but an innocent heart
is a brittle thing, and one false vow can break it. Pretty maiden! I
like thee well eno’ not to love thee. So, as my young Scotch minstrel
sings and plays,--

    ‘Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
     Sic peril lies in paramours!’”

[A Scotch poet, in Lord Hailes’s Collection, has the following lines in
the very pretty poem called “Peril in Paramours:”--

    “Wherefore I pray, in termys short,
     Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
     Fra false lovers and their disport,
     Sic peril lies in paramours.”]

We must now return to Marmaduke. On leaving Sibyll, and retracing his
steps towards the more crowded quarter of the space, he was agreeably
surprised by encountering Nicholas Alwyn, escorted in triumph by a
legion of roaring apprentices from the victory he had just obtained over
six competitors at the quarter-staff.

When the cortege came up to Marmaduke, Nicholas halted, and fronting
his attendants, said, with the same cold and formal stiffness that
had characterized him from the beginning, “I thank you, lads, for your
kindness. It is your own triumph. All I cared for was to show that you
London boys are able to keep up your credit in these days, when there’s
little luck in a yard-measure, if the same hand cannot bend a bow, or
handle cold steel. But the less we think of the strife when we are in
the stall, the better for our pouches. And so I hope we shall hear no
more about it, until I get a ware of my own, when the more of ye that
like to talk of such matters the better ye will be welcome,--always
provided ye be civil customers, who pay on the nail, for as the saw
saith, ‘Ell and tell makes the crypt swell.’ For the rest, thanks are
due to this brave gentleman, Marmaduke Nevile, who, though the son of a
knight-banneret who never furnished less to the battle-field than fifty
men-at-arms, has condescended to take part and parcel in the sports of
us peaceful London traders; and if ever you can do him a kind turn--for
turn and turn is fair play--why, you will, I answer for it. And so
one cheer for old London, and another for Marmaduke Nevile. Here goes!
Hurrah, my lads!” And with this pithy address Nicholas Alwyn took off
his cap and gave the signal for the shouts, which, being duly performed,
he bowed stiffly to his companions, who departed with a hearty laugh,
and coming to the side of Nevile, the two walked on to a neighbouring
booth, where, under a rude awning, and over a flagon of clary, they were
soon immersed in the confidential communications each had to give and
receive.



CHAPTER III. THE TRADER AND THE GENTLE; OR, THE CHANGING GENERATION.

“No, my dear foster-brother,” said the Nevile, “I do not yet comprehend
the choice you have made. You were reared and brought up with such
careful book-lere, not only to read and to write--the which, save the
mark! I hold to be labour eno’--but chop Latin and logic and theology
with Saint Aristotle (is not that his hard name?) into the bargain, and
all because you had an uncle of high note in Holy Church. I cannot say
I would be a shaveling myself; but surely a monk with the hope of
preferment is a nobler calling to a lad of spirit and ambition than
to stand out at a door and cry, ‘Buy, buy,’ ‘What d’ye lack?’ to spend
youth as a Flat-cap, and drone out manhood in measuring cloth, hammering
metals, or weighing out spices?”

“Fair and softly, Master Marmaduke,” said Alwyn, “you will understand
me better anon. My uncle, the sub-prior, died,--some say of austerities,
others of ale,--that matters not; he was a learned man and a cunning.
‘Nephew Nicholas,’ said he on his death-bed, ‘think twice before you tie
yourself up to the cloister; it’s ill leaping nowadays in a sackcloth
bag. If a pious man be moved to the cowl by holy devotion, there is
nothing to be said on the subject; but if he take to the Church as a
calling, and wish to march ahead like his fellows, these times show him
a prettier path to distinction. The nobles begin to get the best things
for themselves; and a learned monk, if he is the son of a yeoman, cannot
hope, without a specialty of grace, to become abbot or bishop. The king,
whoever he be, must be so drained by his wars, that he has little land
or gold to bestow on his favourites; but his gentry turn an eye to
the temporalities of the Church, and the Church and the king wish to
strengthen themselves by the gentry. This is not all; there are
free opinions afloat. The House of Lancaster has lost ground, by its
persecutions and burnings. Men dare not openly resist, but they
treasure up recollections of a fried grandfather, or a roasted
cousin,--recollections which have done much damage to the Henries, and
will shake Holy Church itself one of these days. The Lollards lie hid,
but Lollardism will never die. There is a new class rising amain, where
a little learning goes a great way, if mixed with spirit and sense.
Thou likest broad pieces and a creditable name,--go to London and be
a trader. London begins to decide who shall wear the crown, and the
traders to decide what king London shall befriend. Wherefore, cut thy
trace from the cloister, and take thy road to the shop.’ The next day
my uncle gave up the ghost.--They had better clary than this at the
convent, I must own; but every stone has its flaw.”

“Yet,” said Marmaduke, “if you took distaste to the cowl, from reasons
that I pretend not to judge of, but which seem to my poor head very bad
ones, seeing that the Church is as mighty as ever, and King Edward is
no friend to the Lollards, and that your uncle himself was at least a
sub-prior--”

“Had he been son to a baron, he had been a cardinal,” interrupted
Nicholas, “for his head was the longest that ever came out of the north
country. But go on; you would say my father was a sturdy yeoman, and I
might have followed his calling?”

“You hit the mark, Master Nicholas.”

“Hout, man. I crave pardon of your rank, Master Nevile. But a yeoman is
born a yeoman, and he dies a yeoman--I think it better to die Lord Mayor
of London; and so I craved my mother’s blessing and leave, and a part
of the old hyde has been sold to pay for the first step to the red gown,
which I need not say must be that of the Flat-cap. I have already taken
my degrees, and no longer wear blue. I am headman to my master, and my
master will be sheriff of London.”

“It is a pity,” said the Nevile, shaking his head; “you were ever a
tall, brave lad, and would have made a very pretty soldier.”

“Thank you, Master Marmaduke, but I leave cut and thrust to the gentles.
I have seen eno’ of the life of a retainer. He goes out on foot with his
shield and his sword, or his bow and his quiver, while Sir Knight sits
on horseback, armed from the crown to the toe, and the arrow slants off
from rider and horse, as a stone from a tree. If the retainer is not
sliced and carved into mincemeat, he comes home to a heap of ashes,
and a handful of acres, harried and rivelled into a common; Sir Knight
thanks him for his valour, but he does not build up his house; Sir
Knight gets a grant from the king, or an heiress for his son, and Hob
Yeoman turns gisarme and bill into ploughshares. Tut, tut, there’s no
liberty, no safety, no getting on, for a man who has no right to the
gold spurs, but in the guild of his fellows; and London is the place for
a born Saxon like Nicholas Alwyn.”

As the young aspirant thus uttered the sentiments, which though others
might not so plainly avow and shrewdly enforce them, tended towards that
slow revolution, which, under all the stormy events that the superficial
record we call HISTORY alone deigns to enumerate, was working that great
change in the thoughts and habits of the people,--that impulsion of the
provincial citywards, that gradual formation of a class between knight
and vassal,--which became first constitutionally visible and distinct
in the reign of Henry VII., Marmaduke Nevile, inly half-regretting and
half-despising the reasonings of his foster-brother, was playing with
his dagger, and glancing at his silver arrow.

“Yet you could still have eno’ of the tall yeoman and the stout retainer
about you to try for this bauble, and to break half a dozen thick heads
with your quarter-staff!”

“True,” said Nicholas; “you must recollect we are only, as yet, between
the skin and the selle,--half-trader, half-retainer. The old leaven will
out,--‘Eith to learn the cat to the kirn,’ as they say in the North. But
that’s not all; a man, to get on, must win respect from those who are
to jostle him hereafter, and it’s good policy to show those roystering
youngsters that Nick Alwyn, stiff and steady though he be, has the old
English metal in him, if it comes to a pinch; it’s a lesson to yon lords
too, save your quality, if they ever wish to ride roughshod over our
guilds and companies. But eno’ of me.--Drawer, another stoup of the
clary--Now, gentle sir, may I make bold to ask news of yourself? I saw,
though I spake not before of it, that my Lord Montagu showed a cold face
to his kinsman. I know something of these great men, though I be but a
small one,--a dog is no bad guide in the city he trots through.”

“My dear foster-brother,” said the Nevile, “you had ever more brains
than myself, as is meet that you should have, since you lay by the steel
casque,--which, I take it, is meant as a substitute for us gentlemen
and soldiers who have not so many brains to spare; and I will willingly
profit by your counsels. You must know,” he said, drawing nearer to the
table, and his frank, hardy face assuming a more earnest expression,
“that though my father, Sir Guy, at the instigation of his chief, the
Earl of Westmoreland, and of the Lord Nevile, bore arms at the first for
King Henry--”

“Hush! hush! for Henry of Windsor!”

“Henry of Windsor!--so be it! yet being connected, like the nobles I
have spoken of, with the blood of Warwick and Salisbury, it was ever
with doubt and misgiving, and rather in the hope of ultimate compromise
between both parties (which the Duke of York’s moderation rendered
probable) than of the extermination of either. But when, at the battle
of York, Margaret of Anjou and her generals stained their victory by
cruelties which could not fail to close the door on all conciliation;
when the infant son of the duke himself was murdered, though a prisoner,
in cold blood; when my father’s kinsman, the Earl of Salisbury, was
beheaded without trial; when the head of the brave and good duke,
who had fallen in the field, was, against all knightly and king-like
generosity, mockingly exposed, like a dishonoured robber, on the gates
of York, my father, shocked and revolted, withdrew at once from the
army, and slacked not bit or spur till he found himself in his hall at
Arsdale. His death, caused partly by his travail and vexation of spirit,
together with his timely withdrawal from the enemy, preserved his name
from the attainder passed on the Lords Westmoreland and Nevile; and my
eldest brother, Sir John, accepted the king’s proffer of pardon, took
the oaths of allegiance to Edward, and lives safe, if obscure, in his
father’s halls. Thou knowest, my friend, that a younger brother has but
small honour at home. Peradventure, in calmer times, I might have bowed
my pride to my calling, hunted my brother’s dogs, flown his hawks,
rented his keeper’s lodge, and gone to my grave contented. But to a
young man, who from his childhood had heard the stirring talk of
knights and captains, who had seen valour and fortune make the way to
distinction, and whose ears of late had been filled by the tales of
wandering minstrels and dissours, with all the gay wonders of Edward’s
court, such a life soon grew distasteful. My father, on his death-bed
(like thy uncle, the sub-prior), encouraged me little to follow his own
footsteps. ‘I see,’ said he, ‘that King Henry is too soft to rule his
barons, and Margaret too fierce to conciliate the commons; the only hope
of peace is in the settlement of the House of York. Wherefore, let not
thy father’s errors stand in the way of thy advancement;’ and therewith
he made his confessor--for he was no penman himself, the worthy old
knight!--indite a letter to his great kinsman, the Earl of Warwick,
commending me to his protection. He signed his mark, and set his seal to
this missive, which I now have at mine hostelrie, and died the same day.
My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof; and condemned me
to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three, I could bear no
more! So having sold him my scant share in the heritage, and turned,
like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a party of horse in their
journey to London, and arrived yesterday at Master Sackbut’s hostelrie
in Eastchepe. I went this morning to my Lord of Warwick; but he was gone
to the king’s, and hearing of the merry-makings here, I came hither
for kill-time. A chance word of my Lord of Montagu--whom Saint Dunstan
confound!--made me conceit that a feat of skill with the cloth-yard
might not ill preface my letter to the great earl. But, pardie! it
seems I reckoned without my host, and in seeking to make my fortunes too
rashly, I have helped to mar them.” Wherewith he related the particulars
of his interview with Montagu.

Nicholas Alwyn listened to him with friendly and thoughtful interest,
and, when he had done, spoke thus,--

“The Earl of Warwick is a generous man, and though hot, bears little
malice, except against those whom he deems misthink or insult him; he is
proud of being looked up to as a protector, especially by those of his
own kith and name. Your father’s letter will touch the right string,
and you cannot do better than deliver it with a plain story. A young
partisan like thee is not to be despised. Thou must trust to Lord
Warwick to set matters right with his brother; and now, before I say
further, let me ask thee, plainly, and without offence, Dost thou so
love the House of York that no chance could ever make thee turn sword
against it? Answer as I ask,--under thy breath; those drawers are
parlous spies!”

And here, in justice to Marmaduke Nevile and to his betters, it is
necessary to preface his reply by some brief remarks, to which we must
crave the earnest attention of the reader. What we call PATRIOTISM,
in the high and catholic acceptation of the word, was little if at all
understood in days when passion, pride, and interest were motives little
softened by reflection and education, and softened still less by the
fusion of classes that characterized the small States of old, and marks
the civilization of a modern age. Though the right by descent of the
House of York, if genealogy alone were consulted, was indisputably
prior to that of Lancaster, yet the long exercise of power in the latter
House, the genius of the Fourth Henry, and the victories of the Fifth,
would no doubt have completely superseded the obsolete claims of the
Yorkists, had Henry VI. possessed any of the qualities necessary for
the time. As it was, men had got puzzled by genealogies and cavils; the
sanctity attached to the king’s name was weakened by his doubtful right
to his throne, and the Wars of the rival Roses were at last (with two
exceptions, presently to be noted) the mere contests of exasperated
factions, in which public considerations were scarcely even made the
blind to individual interest, prejudice, or passion.

Thus, instances of desertion, from the one to the other party, even by
the highest nobles, and on the very eve of battle, had grown so common
that little if any disgrace was attached to them; and any knight or
captain held an affront to himself an amply sufficient cause for the
transfer of his allegiance. It would be obviously absurd to expect in
any of the actors of that age the more elevated doctrines of party faith
and public honour, which clearer notions of national morality, and the
salutary exercise of a large general opinion, free from the passions of
single individuals, have brought into practice in our more enlightened
days. The individual feelings of the individual MAN, strong in
himself, became his guide, and he was free in much from the regular and
thoughtful virtues, as well as from the mean and plausible vices, of
those who act only in bodies and corporations. The two exceptions to
this idiosyncrasy of motive and conduct were, first, in the general
disposition of the rising middle class, especially in London, to connect
great political interests with the more popular House of York. The
commons in parliament had acted in opposition to Henry the Sixth, as
the laws they wrung from him tended to show, and it was a popular and
trading party that came, as it were, into power under King Edward. It
is true that Edward was sufficiently arbitrary in himself; but a
popular party will stretch as much as its antagonists in favour of
despotism,--exercised, on its enemies. And Edward did his best to
consult the interests of commerce, though the prejudices of the
merchants interpreted those interests in a way opposite to that in which
political economy now understands them. The second exception to the mere
hostilities of individual chiefs and feudal factions has, not less than
the former, been too much overlooked by historians. But this was a still
more powerful element in the success of the House of York. The hostility
against the Roman Church and the tenets of the Lollards were shared by
an immense part of the population. In the previous century an ancient
writer computes that one half the population were Lollards; and though
the sect were diminished and silenced by fear, they still ceased not to
exist, and their doctrines not only shook the Church under Henry VIII.,
but destroyed the throne by the strong arm of their children, the
Puritans, under Charles I. It was impossible that these men should not
have felt the deepest resentment at the fierce and steadfast persecution
they endured under the House of Lancaster; and without pausing to
consider how far they would benefit under the dynasty of York, they
had all those motives of revenge which are mistaken so often for the
counsels of policy, to rally round any standard raised against their
oppressors. These two great exceptions to merely selfish policy, which
it remains for the historian clearly and at length to enforce, these:
and these alone will always, to a sagacious observer, elevate the Wars
of the Roses above those bloody contests for badges which we are at
first sight tempted to regard them. But these deeper motives animated
very little the nobles and the knightly gentry; [Amongst many instances
of the self-seeking of the time, not the least striking is the
subservience of John Mowbray, the great Duke of Norfolk, to his old
political enemy, the Earl of Oxford, the moment the last comes into
power, during the brief restoration of Henry VI. John Paston, whose
family had been sufficiently harassed by this great duke, says, with
some glee, “The Duke and Duchess (of Norfolk) sue to him (Lord Oxford)
as humbly as ever I did to them.”--Paston Letters, cccii.] and with them
the governing principles were, as we have just said, interest, ambition,
and the zeal for the honour and advancement of Houses and chiefs.

“Truly,” said Marmaduke, after a short and rather embarrassed pause,
“I am little beholden as yet to the House of York. There where I see a
noble benefactor, or a brave and wise leader, shall I think my sword and
heart may best proffer allegiance.”

“Wisely said,” returned Alwyn, with a slight but half sarcastic smile;
“I asked thee the question because--draw closer--there are wise men in
our city who think the ties between Warwick and the king less strong
than a ship’s cable; and if thou attachest thyself to Warwick, he will
be better pleased, it may be, with talk of devotion to himself than
professions of exclusive loyalty to King Edward. He who has little
silver in his pouch must have the more silk on his tongue. A word to a
Westmoreland or a Yorkshire man is as good as a sermon to men not born
so far north. One word more, and I have done. Thou art kind and affable
and gentle, my dear foster-brother, but it will not do for thee to be
seen again with the goldsmith’s headman. If thou wantest me, send for
me at nightfall; I shall be found at Master Heyford’s, in the Chepe. And
if,” added Nicholas, with a prudent reminiscence, “thou succeedest at
court, and canst recommend my master,--there is no better goldsmith,--it
may serve me when I set up for myself, which I look to do shortly.”

“But to send for thee, my own foster-brother, at nightfall, as if I were
ashamed!”

“Hout, Master Marmaduke, if thou wert not ashamed of me, I should be
ashamed to be seen with a gay springal like thee. Why, they would say in
the Chepe that Nick Alwyn was going to ruin. No, no. Birds of a feather
must keep shy of those that moult other colours; and so, my dear young
master, this is my last shake of the hand. But hold: dost thou know thy
way back?”

“Oh, yes,--never fear!” answered Marmaduke; “though I see not why so
far, at least, we may not be companions.”

“No, better as it is; after this day’s work they will gossip about both
of us, and we shall meet many who know my long visage on the way back.
God keep thee; avise me how thou prosperest.”

So saying, Nicholas Alwyn walked off, too delicate to propose to pay his
share of the reckoning with a superior; but when he had gone a few paces
he turned back, and accosting the Nevile, as the latter was rebuckling
his mantle, said,--

“I have been thinking, Master Nevile, that these gold nobles, which it
has been my luck to bear off, would be more useful in thy gipsire
than mine. I have sure gains and small expenses; but a gentleman gains
nothing, and his hand must be ever in his pouch, so--”

“Foster-brother,” said Marmaduke, haughtily, “a gentleman never
borrows,--except of the Jews, and with due interest. Moreover, I too
have my calling; and as thy stall to thee, so to me my good sword.
Saints keep thee! Be sure I will serve thee when I can.”

“The devil’s in these young strips of the herald’s tree,” muttered
Alwyn, as he strode off; “as if it were dishonest to borrow a broad
piece without cutting a throat for it! Howbeit, money is a prolific
mother: and here is eno’ to buy me a gold chain against I am alderman
of London. Hout, thus goes the world,--the knight’s baubles become the
alderman’s badges--so much the better!”



CHAPTER IV. ILL FARES THE COUNTRY MOUSE IN THE TRAPS OF TOWN.

We trust we shall not be deemed discourteous, either, on the one hand,
to those who value themselves on their powers of reflection, or, on the
other, to those who lay claim to what, in modern phrenological jargon,
is called the Organ of Locality, when we venture to surmise that the two
are rarely found in combination; nay, that it seems to us a very evident
truism, that in proportion to the general activity of the intellect
upon subjects of pith and weight, the mind will be indifferent to those
minute external objects by which a less contemplative understanding will
note, and map out, and impress upon the memory, the chart of the road
its owner has once taken. Master Marmaduke Nevile, a hardy and acute
forester from childhood, possessed to perfection the useful faculty
of looking well and closely before him as he walked the earth; and
ordinarily, therefore, the path he had once taken, however intricate
and obscure, he was tolerably sure to retrace with accuracy, even at no
inconsiderable distance of time,--the outward senses of men are usually
thus alert and attentive in the savage or the semi-civilized state. He
had not, therefore, over-valued his general acuteness in the note and
memory of localities, when he boasted of his power to refind his way to
his hostelrie without the guidance of Alwyn. But it so happened that
the events of this day, so memorable to him, withdrew his attention from
external objects, to concentrate it within. And in marvelling and musing
over the new course upon which his destiny had entered, he forgot to
take heed of that which his feet should pursue; so that, after wandering
unconsciously onward for some time, he suddenly halted in perplexity
and amaze to find himself entangled in a labyrinth of scattered suburbs,
presenting features wholly different from the road that had conducted
him to the archery-ground in the forenoon. The darkness of the night had
set in; but it was relieved by a somewhat faint and mist-clad moon, and
some few and scattered stars, over which rolled, fleetly, thick clouds,
portending rain. No lamps at that time cheered the steps of the belated
wanderer; the houses were shut up, and their inmates, for the most part,
already retired to rest, and the suburbs did not rejoice, as the city,
in the round of the watchman with his drowsy call to the inhabitants,
“Hang out your lights!” The passengers, who at first, in various small
groups and parties, had enlivened the stranger’s way, seemed to him,
unconscious as he was of the lapse of time, to have suddenly vanished
from the thoroughfares; and he found himself alone in places thoroughly
unknown to him, waking to the displeasing recollection that the
approaches to the city were said to be beset by brawlers and ruffians
of desperate characters, whom the cessation of the civil wars had flung
loose upon the skirts of society, to maintain themselves by deeds of
rapine and plunder. As might naturally be expected, most of these had
belonged to the defeated party, who had no claim to the good offices or
charity of those in power. And although some of the Neviles had sided
with the Lancastrians, yet the badge worn by Marmaduke was considered
a pledge of devotion to the reigning House, and added a new danger to
those which beset his path. Conscious of this--for he now called to mind
the admonitions of his host in parting from the hostelrie--he deemed it
but discreet to draw the hood of his mantle over the silver ornament;
and while thus occupied, he heard not a step emerging from a lane at his
rear, when suddenly a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder. He started,
turned, and before him stood a man, whose aspect and dress betokened
little to lessen the alarm of the uncourteous salutation. Marmaduke’s
dagger was bare on the instant.

“And what wouldst thou with me?” he asked.

“Thy purse and thy dagger!” answered the stranger.

“Come and take them,” said the Nevile, unconscious that he uttered a
reply famous in classic history, as he sprang backward a step or so, and
threw himself into an attitude of defence. The stranger slowly raised
a rude kind of mace, or rather club, with a ball of iron at the end,
garnished with long spikes, as he replied, “Art thou mad eno’ to fight
for such trifles?”

“Art thou in the habit of meeting one Englishman who yields his goods
without a blow to another?” retorted Marmaduke. “Go to! thy club does
not daunt me.” The stranger warily drew back a step, and applied a
whistle to his mouth. The Nevile sprang at him, but the stranger warded
off the thrust of the poniard with a light flourish of his heavy weapon;
and had not the youth drawn back on the instant, it had been good-night
and a long day to Marmaduke Nevile. Even as it was, his heart beat
quick, as the whirl of the huge weapon sent the air like a strong wind
against his face. Ere he had time to renew his attack, he was suddenly
seized from behind, and found himself struggling in the arms of two men.
From these he broke, and his dagger glanced harmless against the tough
jerkin of his first assailant. The next moment his right arm fell to his
side, useless and deeply gashed. A heavy blow on the head--the moon,
the stars reeled in his eyes--and then darkness,--he knew no more. His
assailants very deliberately proceeded to rifle the inanimate body, when
one of them, perceiving the silver badge, exclaimed, with an oath, “One
of the rampant Neviles! This cock at least shall crow no more.” And
laying the young man’s head across his lap, while he stretched back the
throat with one hand, with the other he drew forth a long sharp knife,
like those used by huntsmen in despatching the hart. Suddenly, and in
the very moment when the blade was about to inflict the fatal gash, his
hand was forcibly arrested, and a man, who had silently and unnoticed
joined the ruffians, said in a stern whisper, “Rise and depart from thy
brotherhood forever. We admit no murderer.”

The ruffian looked up in bewilderment. “Robin--captain--thou here!” he
said falteringly.

“I must needs be everywhere, I see, if I would keep such fellows as thou
and these from the gallows. What is this?--a silver arrow--the young
archer--Um.”

“A Nevile!” growled the would-be murderer.

“And for that very reason his life should be safe. Knowest thou not that
Richard of Warwick, the great Nevile, ever spares the commons? Begone!
I say.” The captain’s low voice grew terrible as he uttered the last
words. The savage rose, and without a word stalked away.

“Look you, my masters,” said Robin, turning to the rest, “soldiers must
plunder a hostile country. While York is on the throne, England is a
hostile country to us Lancastrians. Rob, then, rifle, if ye will; but
he who takes life shall lose it. Ye know me!” The robbers looked down,
silent and abashed. Robin bent a moment over the youth. “He will live,”
 he muttered. “So! he already begins to awaken. One of these houses will
give him shelter. Off, fellows, and take care of your necks!”

When Marmaduke, a few minutes after this colloquy, began to revive, it
was with a sensation of dizziness, pain, and extreme cold. He strove to
lift himself from the ground, and at length succeeded. He was alone;
the place where he had lain was damp and red with stiffening blood. He
tottered on for several paces, and perceived from a lattice, at a little
distance, a light still burning. Now reeling, now falling, he still
dragged on his limbs as the instinct attracted him to that sign of
refuge. He gained the doorway of a detached and gloomy house, and sank
on the stone before it to cry aloud; but his voice soon sank into deep
groans, and once more, as his efforts increased the rapid gush of the
blood, became insensible. The man styled Robin, who had so opportunely
saved his life, now approached from the shadow of a wall, beneath which
he had watched Marmaduke’s movements. He neared the door of the house,
and cried, in a sharp, clear voice, “Open, for the love of Christ!”

A head was now thrust from the lattice, the light vanished; a minute
more, the door opened; and Robin, as if satisfied, drew hastily back,
and vanished, saying to himself, as he strode along, “A young man’s
life must needs be dear to him; yet had the lad been a lord, methinks I
should have cared little to have saved for the people one tyrant more.”

After a long interval, Marmaduke again recovered, and his eyes turned
with pain from the glare of a light held to his face.

“He wakes, Father,--he will live!” cried a sweet voice. “Ay, he will
live, child!” answered a deeper tone; and the young man muttered to
himself, half audibly, as in a dream, “Holy Mother be blessed! it is
sweet to live.” The room in which the sufferer lay rather exhibited
the remains of better fortunes than testified to the solid means of the
present possessor. The ceiling was high and groined, and some tints
of faded but once gaudy painting blazoned its compartments and hanging
pendants. The walls had been rudely painted (for arras [Mr. Hallam
(“History of the Middle Ages,” chap. ix. part 2) implies a doubt whether
great houses were furnished with hangings so soon as the reign of Edward
IV.; but there is abundant evidence to satisfy our learned historian
upon that head. The Narrative of the “Lord of Grauthuse,” edited by Sir
F. Madden, specifies the hangings of cloth of gold in the apartments in
which that lord was received by Edward IV.; also the hangings of white
silk and linen in the chamber appropriated to himself at Windsor.
But long before this period (to say nothing of the Bayeux
Tapestry),--namely, in the reign of Edward III. (in 1344),--a writ was
issued to inquire into the mystery of working tapestry; and in 1398 Mr.
Britton observes that the celebrated arras hangings at Warwick
Castle are mentioned. (See Britton’s “Dictionary of Architecture
and Archaelogy,” art. “Tapestry.”)] then was rare, even among the
wealthiest); but the colours were half obliterated by time and damp. The
bedstead on which the wounded man reclined was curiously carved, with a
figure of the Virgin at the head, and adorned with draperies, in which
were wrought huge figures from scriptural subjects, but in the dress
of the date of Richard II.,--Solomon in pointed upturned shoes, and
Goliath, in the armour of a crusader, frowning grimly upon the sufferer.
By the bedside stood a personage, who, in reality, was but little past
the middle age, but whose pale visage, intersected with deep furrows,
whose long beard and hair, partially gray, gave him the appearance of
advanced age: nevertheless there was something peculiarly striking in
the aspect of the man. His forehead was singularly high and massive; but
the back of the head was disproportionately small, as if the intellect
too much preponderated over all the animal qualities for strength in
character and success in life. The eyes were soft, dark, and brilliant,
but dreamlike and vague; the features in youth must have been regular
and beautiful, but their contour was now sharpened by the hollowness of
the cheeks and temples. The form, in the upper part, was nobly shaped,
sufficiently muscular, if not powerful, and with the long throat and
falling shoulders which always gives something of grace and dignity to
the carriage; but it was prematurely bent, and the lower limbs were thin
and weak, as is common with men who have sparely used them; they seemed
disproportioned to that broad chest, and still more to that magnificent
and spacious brow. The dress of this personage corresponded with the
aspect of his abode. The materials were those worn by the gentry, but
they were old, threadbare, and discoloured with innumerable spots and
stains. His hands were small and delicate, with large blue veins, that
spoke of relaxed fibres; but their natural whiteness was smudged with
smoke-stains, and his beard--a masculine ornament utterly out of fashion
among the younger race in King Edward’s reign, but when worn by the
elder gentry carefully trimmed and perfumed--was dishevelled into all
the spiral and tangled curls displayed in the sculptured head of some
old Grecian sage or poet.

On the other side of the bed knelt a young girl of about sixteen, with a
face exquisitely lovely in its delicacy and expression. She seemed
about the middle stature, and her arms and neck, as displayed by the
close-fitting vest, had already the smooth and rounded contour of
dawning womanhood, while the face had still the softness, innocence, and
inexpressible bloom of a child. There was a strong likeness between her
and her father (for such the relationship, despite the difference of
sex and years),--the same beautiful form of lip and brow, the same rare
colour of the eyes, dark-blue, with black fringing lashes; and perhaps
the common expression, at that moment, of gentle pity and benevolent
anxiety contributed to render the resemblance stronger.

“Father, he sinks again!” said the girl.

“Sibyll,” answered the man, putting his finger upon a line in a
manuscript book that he held, “the authority saith, that a patient so
contused should lose blood, and then the arm must be tightly bandaged.
Verily we lack the wherewithal.”

“Not so, Father!” said the girl, and blushing, she turned aside, and
took off the partelet of lawn, upon which holiday finery her young eyes
perhaps that morning had turned with pleasure, and white as snow was the
neck which was thus displayed; “this will suffice to bind his arm.”

“But the book,” said the father, in great perplexity--“the book telleth
us not how the lancet should be applied. It is easy to say, ‘Do this and
do that;’ but to do it once, it should have been done before. This is
not among my experiments.”

Luckily, perhaps, for Marmaduke, at this moment there entered an old
woman, the solitary servant of the house, whose life, in those warlike
times, had made her pretty well acquainted with the simpler modes of
dealing with a wounded arm and a broken head. She treated with great
disdain the learned authority referred to by her master; she bound the
arm, plastered the head, and taking upon herself the responsibility to
promise a rapid cure, insisted upon the retirement of father and child,
and took her solitary watch beside the bed.

“If it had been any other mechanism than that of the vile human body!”
 muttered the philosopher, as if apologizing to himself; and with that he
recovered his self-complacency and looked round him proudly.



CHAPTER V. WEAL TO THE IDLER, WOE TO THE WORKMAN.

As Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, so it possibly might
conform the heads of that day to a thickness suitable for the blows and
knocks to which they were variously subjected; yet it was not without
considerable effort and much struggling that Marmaduke’s senses
recovered the shock received, less by his flesh-wound and the loss of
blood, than a blow on the seat of reason that might have despatched a
passable ox of these degenerate days. Nature, to say nothing of Madge’s
leechcraft, ultimately triumphed, and Marmaduke woke one morning in full
possession of such understanding as Nature had endowed him with. He
was then alone, and it was with much simple surprise that he turned his
large hazel eyes from corner to corner of the unfamiliar room. He began
to retrace and weave together sundry disordered and vague reminiscences:
he commenced with the commencement, and clearly satisfied himself that
he had been grievously wounded and sorely bruised; he then recalled the
solitary light at the high lattice, and his memory found itself at
the porch of the large, lonely, ruinous old house; then all became a
bewildered and feverish dream. He caught at the vision of an old man
with a long beard, whom he associated, displeasingly, with recollections
of pain; he glanced off to a fair face, with eyes that looked tender
pity whenever he writhed or groaned under the tortures that, no doubt,
that old accursed carle had inflicted upon him. But even this face
did not dwell with pleasure in his memory,--it woke up confused and
labouring associations of something weird and witchlike, of sorceresses
and tymbesteres, of wild warnings screeched in his ear, of incantations
and devilries and doom. Impatient of these musings, he sought to leap
from his bed, and was amazed that the leap subsided into a tottering
crawl. He found an ewer and basin, and his ablutions refreshed and
invigorated him. He searched for his raiment, and discovered it all
except the mantle, dagger, hat, and girdle; and while looking for these,
his eye fell on an old tarnished steel mirror. He started as if he had
seen his ghost; was it possible that his hardy face could have waned
into that pale and almost femininely delicate visage? With the
pride (call it not coxcombry) that then made the care of person the
distinction of gentle birth, he strove to reduce into order the tangled
locks of the long hair, of which a considerable portion above a part
that seemed peculiarly sensitive to the touch had been mercilessly
clipped; and as he had just completed this task, with little
satisfaction and much inward chafing at the lack of all befitting
essences and perfumes, the door gently opened, and the fair face he had
dreamed of appeared at the aperture.

The girl uttered a cry of astonishment and alarm at seeing the patient
thus arrayed and convalescent, and would suddenly have retreated; but
the Nevile advanced, and courteously taking her hand--

“Fair maiden,” said he, “if, as I trow, I owe to thy cares my tending
and cure--nay, it may be a life hitherto of little worth, save to
myself--do not fly from my thanks. May Our Lady of Walsingham bless and
reward thee!”

“Sir,” answered Sibyll, gently withdrawing her hands from his clasp,
“our poor cares have been a slight return for thy generous protection to
myself.”

“To thee! ah, forgive me--how could I be so dull? I remember thy face
now; and, perchance, I deserve the disaster I met with in leaving thee
so discourteously. My heart smote me for it as my light footfall passed
from thy side.”

A slight blush, succeeded by a thoughtful smile--the smile of one who
recalls and caresses some not displeasing remembrance--passed over
Sibyll’s charming countenance, as the sufferer said this with something
of the grace of a well-born man, whose boyhood had been taught to serve
God and the Ladies.

There was a short pause before she answered, looking down, “Nay, sir, I
was sufficiently beholden to you; and for the rest, all molestation was
over. But I will now call your nurse--for it is to our servant, not
us, that your thanks are due--to see to your state, and administer the
proper medicaments.”

“Truly, fair damsel, it is not precisely medicaments that I hunger and
thirst for; and if your hospitality could spare me from the larder a
manchet, or a corner of a pasty, and from the cellar a stoup of wine
or a cup of ale, methinks it would tend more to restore me than those
potions which are so strange to my taste that they rather offend than
tempt it; and, pardie, it seemeth to my poor senses as if I had not
broken bread for a week!”

“I am glad to hear you of such good cheer,” answered Sibyll; “wait but a
moment or so, till I consult your physician.”

And, so saying, she closed the door, slowly descended the steps, and
pursued her way into what seemed more like a vault than a habitable
room, where she found the single servant of the household. Time, which
makes changes so fantastic in the dress of the better classes, has a
greater respect for the costume of the humbler; and though the
garments were of a very coarse sort of serge, there was not so great a
difference, in point of comfort and sufficiency, as might be supposed,
between the dress of old Madge and that of some primitive servant in
the North during the last century. The old woman’s face was thin and
pinched; but its sharp expression brightened into a smile as she caught
sight, through the damps and darkness, of the gracious form of her young
mistress. “Ah, Madge,” said Sibyll, with a sigh, “it is a sad thing to
be poor!”

“For such as thou, Mistress Sibyll, it is indeed. It does not matter for
the like of us. But it goes to my old heart when I see you shut up here,
or worse, going out in that old courtpie and wimple,--you, a knight’s
grandchild; you, who have played round a queen’s knees, and who might
have been so well-to-do, an’ my master had thought a little more of the
gear of this world. But patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us
a long day. And when the master has done what he looks for, why, the
king--sith we must so call the new man on the throne--will be sure to
reward him; but, sweetheart, tarry not here; it’s an ill air for your
young lips to drink in. What brings you to old Madge?”

“The stranger is recovered, and--”

“Ay, I warrant me, I have cured worse than he. He must have a spoonful
of broth,--I have not forgot it. You see I wanted no dinner myself--what
is dinner to old folks!--so I e’en put it all in the pot for him. The
broth will be brave and strong.”

“My poor Madge, God requite you for what you suffer for us! But he has
asked”--here was another sigh, and a downcast look that did not dare to
face the consternation of Madge, as she repeated, with a half-smile--“he
has asked--for meat, and a stoup of wine, Madge!”

“Eh, sirs! And where is he to get them? Not that it will be bad for the
lad, either. Wine! There’s Master Sancroft of the Oak will not trust us
a penny, the seely hilding, and--”

“Oh, Madge, I forgot!--we can still sell the gittern for something. Get
on your wimple, Madge--quick,--while I go for it.”

“Why, Mistress Sibyll, that’s your only pleasure when you sit all alone,
the long summer days.”

“It will be more pleasure to remember that it supplied the wants of my
father’s guest,” said Sibyll; and retracing the way up the stairs, she
returned with the broken instrument, and despatched Madge with it, laden
with instructions that the wine should be of the best. She then once
more mounted the rugged steps, and halting a moment at Marmaduke’s
door, as she heard his feeble step walking impatiently to and fro, she
ascended higher, where the flight, winding up a square, dilapidated
turret, became rougher, narrower, and darker, and opened the door of her
father’s retreat.

It was a room so bare of ornament and furniture that it seemed merely
wrought out of the mingled rubble and rough stones which composed the
walls of the mansion, and was lighted towards the street by a narrow
slit, glazed, it is true,--which all the windows of the house were
not,--but the sun scarcely pierced the dull panes and the deep walls
in which they were sunk. The room contained a strong furnace and a rude
laboratory. There were several strange-looking mechanical contrivances
scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken shelves, and
a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner. In that
poverty-stricken house, the money spent on fuel alone, in the height
of summer, would have comfortably maintained the inmates; but neither
Sibyll nor Madge ever thought to murmur at this waste, dedicated to what
had become the vital want of a man who drew air in a world of his own.
This was the first thing to be provided for; and Science was of more
imperative necessity than even Hunger.

Adam Warner was indeed a creature of remarkable genius,--and genius, in
an age where it is not appreciated, is the greatest curse the iron Fates
can inflict on man. If not wholly without the fond fancies which led the
wisdom of the darker ages to the philosopher’s stone and the elixir, he
had been deterred from the chase of a chimera by want of means to pursue
it! for it required the resources or the patronage of a prince or noble
to obtain the costly ingredients consumed in the alchemist’s crucible.
In early life, therefore, and while yet in possession of a competence
derived from a line of distinguished and knightly ancestors, Adam
Warner had devoted himself to the surer and less costly study of the
mathematics, which then had begun to attract the attention of the
learned, but which was still looked upon by the vulgar as a branch
of the black art. This pursuit had opened to him the insight into
discoveries equally useful and sublime. They necessitated a still more
various knowledge; and in an age when there was no division of labour
and rare and precarious communication among students, it became
necessary for each discoverer to acquire sufficient science for his own
collateral experiments.

In applying mathematics to the practical purposes of life, in
recognizing its mighty utilities to commerce and civilization, Adam
Warner was driven to conjoin with it, not only an extensive knowledge
of languages, but many of the rudest tasks of the mechanist’s art;
and chemistry was, in some of his researches, summoned to his aid.
By degrees, the tyranny that a man’s genius exercises over his life,
abstracted him from all external objects. He had loved his wife
tenderly, but his rapid waste of his fortune in the purchase of
instruments and books, then enormously dear, and the neglect of all
things not centred in the hope to be the benefactor of the world, had
ruined her health and broken her heart. Happily Warner perceived not her
decay till just before her death; happily he never conceived its cause,
for her soul was wrapped in his. She revered, and loved, and never
upbraided him. Her heart was the martyr to his mind. Had she foreseen
the future destinies of her daughter, it might have been otherwise. She
could have remonstrated with the father, though not with the husband.
But, fortunately, as it seemed to her, she (a Frenchwoman by birth) had
passed her youth in the service of Margaret of Anjou, and that haughty
queen, who was equally warm to friends and inexorable to enemies, had,
on her attendant’s marriage, promised to ensure the fortunes of her
offspring. Sibyll at the age of nine--between seven and eight years
before the date the story enters on, and two years prior to the fatal
field of Towton, which gave to Edward the throne of England--had been
admitted among the young girls whom the custom of the day ranked amidst
the attendants of the queen; and in the interval that elapsed before
Margaret was obliged to dismiss her to her home, her mother died. She
died without foreseeing the reverses that were to ensue, in the hope
that her child, at least, was nobly provided for, and not without
the belief (for there is so much faith in love!) that her husband’s
researches, which in his youth had won favour of the Protector Duke of
Gloucester, the most enlightened prince of his time, would be crowned at
last with the rewards and favours of his king. That precise period was,
indeed, the fairest that had yet dawned upon the philosopher. Henry VI.,
slowly recovering from one of those attacks which passed for imbecility,
had condescended to amuse himself with various conversations with
Warner, urged to it first by representations of the unholy nature of
the student’s pursuits; and, having satisfied his mind of his learned
subject’s orthodoxy, the poor monarch had taken a sort of interest, not
so much, perhaps, in the objects of Warner’s occupations, as in that
complete absorption from actual life which characterized the subject,
and gave him in this a melancholy resemblance to the king. While the
House of Lancaster was on the throne, the wife felt that her husband’s
pursuits would be respected, and his harmless life safe from the fierce
prejudices of the people; and the good queen would not suffer him to
starve, when the last mark was expended in devices how to benefit his
country:--and in these hopes the woman died!

A year afterwards, all at court was in disorder,--armed men supplied the
service of young girls, and Sibyll, with a purse of broad pieces, soon
converted into manuscripts, was sent back to her father’s desolate home.
There had she grown a flower amidst ruins, with no companion of her own
age, and left to bear, as her sweet and affectionate nature well did,
the contrast between the luxuries of a court and the penury of a hearth
which, year after year, hunger and want came more and more sensibly to
invade.

Sibyll had been taught, even as a child, some accomplishments little
vouchsafed then to either sex,--she could read and write; and Margaret
had not so wholly lost, in the sterner North, all reminiscence of
the accomplishments that graced her father’s court as to neglect the
education of those brought up in her household. Much attention was given
to music, for it soothed the dark hours of King Henry; the blazoning of
missals or the lives of saints, with the labours of the loom, were also
among the resources of Sibyll’s girlhood, and by these last she had,
from time to time, served to assist the maintenance of the little
family of which, child though she was, she became the actual head. But
latterly--that is, for the last few weeks--even these sources failed
her; for as more peaceful times allowed her neighbours to interest
themselves in the affairs of others, the dark reports against Warner had
revived. His name became a by-word of horror; the lonely light at the
lattice burning till midnight, against all the early usages and habits
of the day; the dark smoke of the furnace, constant in summer as in
winter, scandalized the religion of the place far and near. And finding,
to their great dissatisfaction, that the king’s government and the
Church interfered not for their protection, and unable themselves
to volunteer any charges against the recluse (for the cows in the
neighbourhood remained provokingly healthy), they came suddenly, and,
as it were by one of those common sympathies which in all times the huge
persecutor we call the PUBLIC manifests when a victim is to be crushed,
to the pious resolution of starving where they could not burn. Why buy
the quaint devilries of the wizard’s daughter?--no luck could come of
it. A missal blazoned by such hands, an embroidery worked at such a
loom, was like the Lord’s Prayer read backwards. And one morning, when
poor Sibyll stole out as usual to vend a month’s labour, she was driven
from door to door with oaths and curses.

Though Sibyll’s heart was gentle, she was not without a certain strength
of mind. She had much of the patient devotion of her mother, much of the
quiet fortitude of her father’s nature. If not comprehending to the full
the loftiness of Warner’s pursuits, she still anticipated from them an
ultimate success which reconciled her to all temporary sacrifices. The
violent prejudices, the ignorant cruelty, thus brought to bear against
existence itself, filled her with sadness, it is true, but not unmixed
with that contempt for her persecutors, which, even in the meekest
tempers, takes the sting from despair. But hunger pressed. Her father
was nearing the goal of his discoveries, and in a moment of that pride
which in its very contempt for appearances braves them all, Sibyll
had stolen out to the pastime-ground,--with what result has been seen
already. Having thus accounted for the penury of the mansion, we return
to its owner.

Warner was contemplating with evident complacency and delight the
model of a machine which had occupied him for many years, and which he
imagined he was now rapidly bringing to perfection. His hands and
face were grimed with the smoke of his forge, and his hair and beard,
neglected as usual, looked parched and dried up, as if with the constant
fever that burned within.

“Yes, yes!” he muttered, “how they will bless me for this! What Roger
Bacon only suggested I shall accomplish! How it will change the face of
the globe! What wealth it will bestow on ages yet unborn!”

“My father,” said the gentle voice of Sibyll, “my poor father, thou hast
not tasted bread to-day.”

Warner turned, and his face relaxed into a tender expression as he saw
his daughter.

“My child,” he said, pointing to his model, “the time comes when it will
live! Patience! patience!”

“And who would not have patience with thee, and for thee, Father?” said
Sibyll, with enthusiasm speaking on every feature. “What is the valour
of knight and soldier--dull statues of steel--to thine? Thou, with
thy naked breast, confronting all dangers,--sharper than the lance and
glaive, and all--”

“All to make England great!”

“Alas! what hath England merited from men like thee? The people, more
savage than their rulers, clamour for the stake, the gibbet, and the
dungeon, for all who strive to make them wiser. Remember the death of
Bolingbroke, [A mathematician accused as an accomplice, in sorcery, of
Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and hanged upon
that charge. His contemporary (William Wyrcestre) highly extols his
learning.]--a wizard, because, O Father!--because his pursuits were
thine!”

Adam, startled by this burst, looked at his daughter with more attention
than he usually evinced to any living thing. “Child,” he said at length,
shaking his head in grave reproof, “let me not say to thee, ‘O thou of
little faith!’ There were no heroes were there no martyrs!”

“Do not frown on me, Father,” said Sibyll, sadly; “let the world
frown,--not thou! Yes, thou art right. Thou must triumph at last.”
 And suddenly, her whole countenance changing into a soft and caressing
endearment, she added, “But now come, Father. Thou hast laboured
well for this morning. We shall have a little feast for thee in a few
minutes. And the stranger is recovered, thanks to our leechcraft. He is
impatient to see and thank thee.”

“Well, well, I come, Sibyll,” said the student, with a regretful,
lingering look at his model, and a sigh to be disturbed from its
contemplation; and he slowly quitted the room with Sibyll.

“But not, dear sir and father, not thus--not quite thus--will you go to
the stranger, well-born like yourself? Oh, no! your Sibyll is proud,
you know,--proud of her father.” So saying, she clung to him fondly,
and drew him mechanically, for he had sunk into a revery, and heeded her
not, into an adjoining chamber, in which he slept. The comforts even of
the gentry, of men with the acres that Adam had sold, were then few
and scanty. The nobles and the wealthy merchants, indeed, boasted many
luxuries that excelled in gaud and pomp those of their equals now.
But the class of the gentry who had very little money at command were
contented with hardships from which a menial of this day would revolt.
What they could spend in luxury was usually consumed in dress and the
table they were obliged to keep. These were the essentials of dignity.
Of furniture there was a woful stint. In many houses, even of knights,
an edifice large enough to occupy a quadrangle was composed more of
offices than chambers inhabited by the owners; rarely boasting more than
three beds, which were bequeathed in wills as articles of great value.
The reader must, therefore, not be surprised that Warner’s abode
contained but one bed, properly so called, and that was now devoted to
Nevile. The couch which served the philosopher for bed was a wretched
pallet, stretched on the floor, stuffed with straw,--with rough say,
or serge, and an old cloak for the coverings. His daughter’s, in a room
below, was little better. The walls were bare; the whole house boasted
but one chair, which was in Marmaduke’s chamber; stools or settles of
rude oak elsewhere supplied their place. There was no chimney except in
Nevile’s room, and in that appropriated to the forge.

To this chamber, then, resembling a dungeon in appearance, Sibyll drew
the student, and here, from an old worm-eaten chest, she carefully
extracted a gown of brown velvet, which his father, Sir Armine, had
bequeathed to him by will,--faded, it is true, but still such as the
low-born wore not, [By the sumptuary laws only a knight was entitled to
wear velvet.] trimmed with fur, and clasped with a brooch of gold. And
then she held the ewer and basin to him, while, with the docility of a
child, he washed the smoke-soil from his hands and face. It was
touching to see in this, as in all else, the reverse of their natural
position,--the child tending and heeding and protecting, as it were, the
father; and that not from his deficiency, but his greatness; not because
he was below the vulgar intelligences of life, but above them. And
certainly, when, his patriarchal hair and beard smoothed into order,
and his velvet gown flowing in majestic folds around a figure tall and
commanding, Sibyll followed her father into Marmaduke’s chamber, she
might well have been proud of his appearance; and she felt the innocent
vanity of her sex and age in noticing the half-start of surprise with
which Marmaduke regarded his host, and the tone of respect in which he
proffered him his salutations and thanks. Even his manner altered to
Sibyll; it grew less frank and affable, more courtly and reserved: and
when Madge came to announce that the refection was served, it was with a
blush of shame, perhaps, at his treatment of the poor gittern-player
on the pastime-ground, that the Nevile extended his left hand, for his
right was still not at his command, to lead the damsel to the hall.

This room, which was divided from the entrance by a screen, and, except
a small closet that adjoined it, was the only sitting-room in a day
when, as now on the Continent, no shame was attached to receiving
visitors in sleeping apartments, was long and low; an old and very
narrow table, that might have feasted thirty persons, stretched across
a dais raised upon a stone floor; there was no rere-dosse, or fireplace,
which does not seem at that day to have been an absolute necessity in
the houses of the metropolis and its suburbs, its place being supplied
by a movable brazier. Three oak stools were placed in state at the
board, and to one of these Marmaduke, in a silence unusual to him,
conducted the fair Sibyll.

“You will forgive our lack of provisions,” said Warner, relapsing into
the courteous fashions of his elder days, which the unwonted spectacle
of a cold capon, a pasty, and a flask of wine brought to his mind by a
train of ideas that actively glided by the intervening circumstances,
which ought to have filled him with astonishment at the sight, “for
my Sibyll is but a young housewife, and I am a simple scholar, of few
wants.”

“Verily,” answered Marmaduke, finding his tongue as he attacked the
pasty, “I see nothing that the most dainty need complain of; fair
Mistress Sibyll, your dainty lips will not, I trow, refuse me the
waisall. [I.e. waissail or wassal; the spelling of the time is adopted
in the text.] To you also, worshipful sir! Gramercy! it seems that there
is nothing which better stirs a man’s appetite than a sick bed. And,
speaking thereof, deign to inform me, kind sir, how long I have been
indebted to your hospitality. Of a surety, this pasty hath an excellent
flavour, and if not venison, is something better. But to return, it
mazes me much to think what time hath passed since my encounter with the
robbers.”

“They were robbers, then, who so cruelly assailed thee?” observed
Sibyll.

“Have I not said so--surely, who else? And, as I was remarking to your
worshipful father, whether this mischance happened hours, days, months,
or years ago, beshrew me if I can venture the smallest guess.”

Master Warner smiled, and observing that some reply was expected from
him, said, “Why, indeed, young sir, I fear I am almost as oblivious as
yourself. It was not yesterday that you arrived, nor the day before,
nor--Sibyll, my child, how long is it since this gentleman hath been our
guest?”

“This is the fifth day,” answered Sibyll.

“So long! and I like a senseless log by the wayside, when others are
pushing on, bit and spur, to the great road. I pray you, sir, tell me
the news of the morning. The Lord Warwick is still in London, the court
still at the Tower?”

Poor Adam, whose heart was with his model, and who had now satisfied
his temperate wants, looked somewhat bewildered and perplexed by this
question. “The king, save his honoured head,” said he, inclining his
own, “is, I fear me, always at the Tower, since his unhappy detention,
but he minds it not, sir,--he heeds it not; his soul is not on this side
Paradise.”

Sibyll uttered a faint exclamation of fear at this dangerous
indiscretion of her father’s absence of mind; and drawing closer to
Nevile, she put her hand with touching confidence on his arm, and
whispered, “You will not repeat this, Sir! my father lives only in his
studies, and he has never known but one king!”

Marmaduke turned his bold face to the maid, and pointed to the
salt-cellar, as he answered in the same tone, “Does the brave man betray
his host?”

There was a moment’s silence. Marmaduke rose. “I fear,” said he, “that
I must now leave you; and while it is yet broad noon, I must indeed be
blind if I again miss my way.”

This speech suddenly recalled Adam from his meditations; for whenever
his kindly and simple benevolence was touched, even his mathematics and
his model were forgotten. “No, young sir,” said he, “you must not
quit us yet; your danger is not over. Exercise may bring fever. Celsus
recommends quiet. You must consent to tarry with us a day or two more.”

“Can you tell me,” said the Nevile, hesitatingly, “what distance it is
to the Temple-gate, or the nearest wharf on the river?”

“Two miles, at the least,” answered Sibyll.

“Two miles!--and now I mind me, I have not the accoutrements that beseem
me. Those hildings have stolen my mantle (which, I perceive, by the way,
is but a rustic garment, now laid aside for the super-tunic), and my hat
and dague, nor have they left even a half groat to supply their place.
Verily, therefore, since ye permit me to burden your hospitality longer,
I will not say ye nay, provided you, worshipful sir, will suffer one of
your people to step to the house of one Master Heyford, goldsmith, in
the Chepe, and crave one Nicholas Alwyn, his freedman, to visit me. I
can commission him touching my goods left at mine hostelrie, and learn
some other things which it behooves me to know.”

“Assuredly. Sibyll, tell Simon or Jonas to put himself under our guest’s
order.”

Simon or Jonas! The poor Adam absolutely forgot that Simon and Jonas had
quitted the house these six years! How could he look on the capon, the
wine, and the velvet gown trimmed with fur, and not fancy himself back
in the heyday of his wealth?

Sibyll half smiled and half sighed, as she withdrew to consult with her
sole counsellor, Madge, how the guest’s orders were to be obeyed, and
how, alas! the board was to be replenished for the evening meal. But in
both these troubles she was more fortunate than she anticipated.
Madge had sold the broken gittern, for musical instruments were then,
comparatively speaking, dear (and this had been a queen’s gift), for
sufficient to provide decently for some days; and, elated herself with
the prospect of so much good cheer, she readily consented to be the
messenger to Nicholas Alwyn. When with a light step and a lighter heart
Sibyll tripped back to the hall, she was scarcely surprised to find the
guest alone. Her father, after her departure, had begun to evince much
restless perturbation. He answered Marmaduke’s queries but by abstracted
and desultory monosyllables; and seeing his guest at length engaged in
contemplating some old pieces of armour hung upon the walls, he stole
stealthily and furtively away, and halted not till once more before his
beloved model.

Unaware of his departure, Marmaduke, whose back was turned to him, was,
as he fondly imagined, enlightening his host with much soldier-like
learning as to the old helmets and weapons that graced the hall.
“Certes, my host,” said he, musingly, “that sort of casque, which has
not, I opine, been worn this century, had its merits; the vizor is less
open to the arrows. But as for these chain suits, they suited only--I
venture, with due deference, to declare--the Wars of the Crusades, where
the enemy fought chiefly with dart and scymetar. They would be but a
sorry defence against the mace and battle-axe; nevertheless, they were
light for man and horse, and in some service, especially against foot,
might be revived with advantage. Think you not so?”

He turned, and saw the arch face of Sibyll.

“I crave pardon for my blindness, gentle damsel,” said he, in some
confusion, “but your father was here anon.”

“His mornings are so devoted to labour,” answered Sibyll, “that he
entreats you to pardon his discourtesy. Meanwhile if you would wish to
breathe the air, we have a small garden in the rear;” and so saying, she
led the way into the small withdrawing-room, or rather closet, which was
her own favourite chamber, and which communicated, by another door, with
a broad, neglected grassplot, surrounded by high walls, having a raised
terrace in front, divided by a low stone Gothic palisade from the green
sward.

On the palisade sat droopingly, and half asleep, a solitary peacock; but
when Sibyll and the stranger appeared at the door, he woke up suddenly,
descended from his height, and with a vanity not wholly unlike his
young mistress’s wish to make the best possible display in the eyes of
a guest, spread his plumes broadly in the sun. Sibyll threw him some
bread, which she had taken from the table for that purpose; but the
proud bird, however hungry, disdained to eat, till he had thoroughly
satisfied himself that his glories had been sufficiently observed.

“Poor proud one,” said Sibyll, half to herself, “thy plumage lasts with
thee through all changes.”

“Like the name of a brave knight,” said Marmaduke, who overheard her.

“Thou thinkest of the career of arms.”

“Surely,--I am a Nevile!”

“Is there no fame to be won but that of a warrior?”

“Not that I weet of, or heed for, Mistress Sibyll.”

“Thinkest thou it were nothing to be a minstrel, who gave delight; a
scholar, who dispelled darkness?”

“For the scholar? Certes, I respect holy Mother Church, which they tell
me alone produces that kind of wonder with full safety to the soul, and
that only in the higher prelates and dignitaries. For the minstrel, I
love him, I would fight for him, I would give him at need the last penny
in my gipsire; but it is better to do deeds than to sing them.”

Sibyll smiled, and the smile perplexed and half displeased the young
adventurer. But the fire of the young man had its charm.

By degrees, as they walked to and fro the neglected terrace, their talk
flowed free and familiar; for Marmaduke, like most young men full of
himself, was joyous with the happy egotism of a frank and careless
nature. He told his young confidante of a day his birth, his history,
his hopes, and fears; and in return he learned, in answer to the
questions he addressed to her, so much, at least, of her past and
present life, as the reverses of her father, occasioned by costly
studies, her own brief sojourn at the court of Margaret, and the
solitude, if not the struggles, in which her youth was consumed. It
would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander
to hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so
unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might
unite in one. But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest, and
found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, was ever and anon secretly
comparing him to one, the charm of whose voice still lingered in her
ears; and her intellect, cultivated and acute, detected in Marmaduke
deficient education, and that limited experience which is the folly and
the happiness of the young.

On the other hand, whatever admiration Nevile might conceive was
strangely mixed with surprise, and, it might almost be said, with fear.
This girl, with her wise converse and her child’s face, was a character
so thoroughly new to him. Her language was superior to what he had ever
heard, the words more choice, the current more flowing: was that to be
attributed to her court-training or her learned parentage?

“Your father, fair mistress,” said he, rousing himself in one of the
pauses of their conversation--“your father, then, is a mighty scholar,
and I suppose knows Latin like English?”

“Why, a hedge-priest pretends to know Latin,” said Sibyll, smiling; “my
father is one of the six men living who have learned the Greek and the
Hebrew.”

“Gramercy!” cried Marmaduke, crossing himself. “That is awsome indeed!
He has taught you his lere in the tongues?”

“Nay, I know but my own and the French; my mother was a native of
France.”

“The Holy Mother be praised!” said Marmaduke, breathing more freely;
“for French I have heard my father and uncle say is a language fit for
gentles and knights, specially those who come, like the Neviles, from
Norman stock. This Margaret of Anjou--didst thou love her well, Mistress
Sibyll?”

“Nay,” answered Sibyll, “Margaret commanded awe, but she scarcely
permitted love from an inferior: and though gracious and well-governed
when she so pleased, it was but to those whom she wished to win. She
cared not for the heart, if the hand or the brain could not assist her.
But, poor queen, who could blame her for this?--her nature was turned
from its milk; and, when, more lately, I have heard how many she trusted
most have turned against her, I rebuked myself that--”

“Thou wert not by her side?” added the Nevile, observing her pause, and
with the generous thought of a gentleman and a soldier.

“Nay, I meant not that so expressly, Master Nevile, but rather that I
had ever murmured at her haste and shrewdness of mood. By her side, said
you?--alas! I have a nearer duty at home; my father is all in this world
to me! Thou knowest not, Master Nevile, how it flatters the weak to
think there is some one they can protect. But eno’ of myself. Thou wilt
go to the stout earl, thou wilt pass to the court, thou wilt win the
gold spurs, and thou wilt fight with the strong hand, and leave others
to cozen with the keen head.”

“She is telling my fortune!” muttered Marmaduke, crossing himself again.
“The gold spurs--I thank thee, Mistress Sibyll!--will it be on the
battle-field that I shall be knighted, and by whose hand?”

Sibyll glanced her bright eye at the questioner, and seeing his wistful
face, laughed outright.

“What, thinkest thou, Master Nevile, I can read thee all riddles without
my sieve and my shears?”

“They are essentials, then, Mistress Sibyll?” said the Nevile, with
blunt simplicity. “I thought ye more learned damozels might tell by the
palm, or the--why dost thou laugh at me?”

“Nay,” answered Sibyll, composing herself. “It is my right to be
angered. Sith thou wouldst take me to be a witch, all that I can tell
thee of thy future” (she added touchingly) “is from that which I have
seen of thy past. Thou hast a brave heart, and a gentle; thou hast a
frank tongue, and a courteous; and these qualities make men honoured and
loved,--except they have the gifts which turn all into gall, and bring
oppression for honour, and hate for love.”

“And those gifts, gentle Sibyll?”

“Are my father’s,” answered the girl, with another and a sadder change
in her expressive countenance. And the conversation flagged till
Marmaduke, feeling more weakened by his loss of blood than he had
conceived it possible, retired to his chamber to repose himself.



CHAPTER VI. MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE FEARS FOR THE SPIRITUAL WEAL OF HIS
HOST AND HOSTESS.

Before the hour of supper, which was served at six o’clock, Nicholas
Alwyn arrived at the house indicated to him by Madge. Marmaduke, after
a sound sleep, which was little flattering to Sibyll’s attractions, had
descended to the hall in search of the maiden and his host, and finding
no one, had sauntered in extreme weariness and impatience into the
little withdrawing-closet, where as it was now dusk, burned a single
candle in a melancholy and rustic sconce; standing by the door that
opened on the garden, he amused himself with watching the peacock,
when his friend, following Madge into the chamber, tapped him on the
shoulder.

“Well, Master Nevile. Ha! by Saint Thomas, what has chanced to thee?
Thine arm swathed up, thy locks shorn, thy face blanched! My honoured
foster-brother, thy Westmoreland blood seems over-hot for Cockaigne!”

“If so, there are plenty in this city of cut-throats to let out the
surplusage,” returned Marmaduke; and he briefly related his adventure to
Nicholas.

When he had done, the kind trader reproached himself for having
suffered Marmaduke to find his way alone. “The suburbs abound with these
miscreants,” said he; “and there is more danger in a night walk near
London than in the loneliest glens of green Sherwood--more shame to the
city! An’ I be Lord Mayor one of these days, I will look to it better.
But our civil wars make men hold human life very cheap, and there’s
parlous little care from the great of the blood and limbs of the
wayfarers. But war makes thieves--and peace hangs them! Only wait till I
manage affairs!”

“Many thanks to thee, Nicholas,” returned the Nevile; “but foul befall
me if ever I seek protection from sheriff or mayor! A man who cannot
keep his own life with his own right hand merits well to hap-lose it;
and I, for one, shall think ill of the day when an Englishman looks more
to the laws than his good arm for his safety; but, letting this pass, I
beseech thee to avise me if my Lord Warwick be still in the city?”

“Yes, marry, I know that by the hostelries, which swarm with his badges,
and the oxen, that go in scores to the shambles! It is a shame to the
Estate to see one subject so great, and it bodes no good to our peace.
The earl is preparing the most magnificent embassage that ever crossed
the salt seas--I would it were not to the French, for our interests lie
contrary; but thou hast some days yet to rest here and grow stout, for I
would not have thee present thyself with a visage of chalk to a man who
values his kind mainly by their thews and their sinews. Moreover, thou
shouldst send for the tailor, and get thee trimmed to the mark. It would
be a long step in thy path to promotion, an’ the earl would take thee
in his train; and the gaudier thy plumes, why, the better chance for
thy flight. Wherefore, since thou sayest they are thus friendly to
thee under this roof, bide yet a while peacefully; I will send thee the
mercer, and the clothier, and the tailor, to divert thy impatience. And
as these fellows are greedy, my gentle and dear Master Nevile, may I
ask, without offence, how thou art provided?”

“Nay, nay, I have moneys at the hostelrie, an’ thou wilt send me my
mails. For the rest, I like thy advice, and will take it.”

“Good!” answered Nicholas. “Hem! thou seemest to have got into a poor
house,--a decayed gentleman, I wot, by the slovenly ruin!”

“I would that were the worst,” replied Marmaduke, solemnly, and under
his breath; and therewith he repeated to Nicholas the adventure on the
pastime-ground, the warnings of the timbrel-girls, and the “awsome”
 learning and strange pursuits of his host. As for Sibyll, he was
evidently inclined to attribute to glamour the reluctant admiration with
which she had inspired him. “For,” said he, “though I deny not that the
maid is passing fair, there be many with rosier cheeks, and taller by
this hand!”

Nicholas listened, at first, with the peculiar expression of shrewd
sarcasm which mainly characterized his intelligent face, but his
attention grew more earnest before Marmaduke had concluded.

“In regard to the maiden,” said he, smiling and shaking his head, “it is
not always the handsomest that win us the most,--while fair Meg went a
maying, black Meg got to church; and I give thee more reasonable warning
than thy timbrel-girls, when, in spite of thy cold language, I bid
thee take care of thyself against her attractions; for, verily, my dear
foster-brother, thou must mend and not mar thy fortune, by thy love
matters; and keep thy heart whole for some fair one with marks in her
gipsire, whom the earl may find out for thee. Love and raw pease are two
ill things in the porridge-pot. But the father!--I mind me now that I
have heard of his name, through my friend Master Caxton, the mercer, as
one of prodigious skill in the mathematics. I should like much to see
him, and, with thy leave (an’ he ask me), will tarry to supper. But what
are these?”--and Nicholas took up one of the illuminated manuscripts
which Sibyll had prepared for sale. “By the blood! this is couthly and
marvellously blazoned.”

The book was still in his hands when Sibyll entered. Nicholas stared at
her, as he bowed with a stiff and ungraceful embarrassment, which often
at first did injustice to his bold, clear intellect, and his perfect
self-possession in matters of trade or importance.

“The first woman face,” muttered Nicholas to himself, “I ever saw that
had the sense of a man’s. And, by the rood, what a smile!”

“Is this thy friend, Master Nevile?” said Sibyll, with a glance at
the goldsmith. “He is welcome. But is it fair and courteous, Master
Nelwyn--”

“Alwyn, an’ it please you, fair mistress. A humble name, but good
Saxon,--which, I take it, Nelwyn is not,” interrupted Nicholas.

“Master Alwyn, forgive me; but can I forgive thee so readily for thy
espial of my handiwork, without license or leave?”

“Yours, comely mistress!” exclaimed Nicholas, opening his eyes,
and unheeding the gay rebuke--“why, this is a master-hand. My Lord
Scales--nay, the Earl of Worcester himself--hath scarce a finer in all
his amassment.”

“Well, I forgive thy fault for thy flattery; and I pray thee, in my
father’s name, to stay and sup with thy friend.” Nicholas bowed low,
and still riveted his eyes on the book with such open admiration, that
Marmaduke thought it right to excuse his abstraction; but there was
something in that admiration which raised the spirits of Sibyll, which
gave her hope when hope was well-nigh gone; and she became so vivacious,
so debonair, so charming, in the flow of a gayety natural to her, and
very uncommon with English maidens, but which she took partly, perhaps,
from her French blood, and partly from the example of girls and maidens
of French extraction in Margaret’s court, that Nicholas Alwyn thought he
had never seen any one so irresistible. Madge had now served the evening
meal, put in her head to announce it, and Sibyll withdrew to summon her
father.

“I trust he will not tarry too long, for I am sharp set!” muttered
Marmaduke. “What thinkest thou of the damozel?”

“Marry,” answered Alwyn, thoughtfully, “I pity and marvel at her. There
is eno’ in her to furnish forth twenty court beauties. But what good can
so much wit and cunning do to an honest maiden?”

“That is exactly my own thought,” said Marmaduke; and both the young men
sunk into silence, till Sibyll re-entered with her father.

To the surprise of Marmaduke, Nicholas Alwyn, whose less gallant manner
he was inclined to ridicule, soon contrived to rouse their host from his
lethargy, and to absorb all the notice of Sibyll; and the surprise was
increased, when he saw that his friend appeared not unfamiliar with
those abstruse and mystical sciences in which Adam was engaged.

“What!” said Adam, “you know, then, my deft and worthy friend Master
Caxton! He hath seen notable things abroad--”

“Which, he more than hints,” said Nicholas, “will lower the value of
those manuscripts this fair damozel has so couthly enriched; and that
he hopes, ere long, to show the Englishers how to make fifty, a
hundred,--nay even five hundred exemplars of the choicest book, in a
much shorter time than a scribe would take in writing out two or three
score pages in a single copy.”

“Verily,” said Marmaduke, with a smile of compassion, “the poor man must
be somewhat demented; for I opine that the value of such curiosities
must be in their rarity; and who would care for a book, if five hundred
others had precisely the same?--allowing always, good Nicholas, for thy
friend’s vaunting and over-crowing. Five hundred! By’r Lady, there would
be scarcely five hundred fools in merry England to waste good nobles on
spoilt rags, specially while bows and mail are so dear.”

“Young gentleman,” said Adam, rebukingly, “meseemeth that thou wrongest
our age and country, to the which, if we have but peace and freedom, I
trust the birth of great discoveries is ordained. Certes, Master Alwyn,”
 he added, turning to the goldsmith, “this achievement maybe readily
performed, and hath existed, I heard an ingenious Fleming say years ago,
for many ages amongst a strange people [Query, the Chinese?] known to
the Venetians! But dost thou think there is much appetite among those
who govern the State to lend encouragement to such matters?”

“My master serves my Lord Hastings, the king’s chamberlain, and my lord
has often been pleased to converse with me, so that I venture to say,
from my knowledge of his affection to all excellent craft and lere,
that whatever will tend to make men wiser will have his countenance and
favour with the king.”

“That is it, that is it!” exclaimed Adam, rubbing his hands. “My
invention shall not die!”

“And that invention--”

“Is one that will multiply exemplars of books without hands; works of
craft without ‘prentice or journeyman; will move wagons and litters
without horses; will direct ships without sails; will--But, alack! it is
not yet complete, and, for want of means, it never may be.”

Sibyll still kept her animated countenance fixed on Alwyn, whose
intelligence she had already detected, and was charmed with the profound
attention with which he listened. But her eye glancing from his sharp
features to the handsome, honest face of the Nevile, the contrast was so
forcible, that she could not restrain her laughter, though, the moment
after, a keen pang shot through her heart. The worthy Marmaduke had
been in the act of conveying his cup to his lips; the cup stood arrested
midway, his jaws dropped, his eyes opened to their widest extent, an
expression of the most evident consternation and dismay spoke in every
feature; and when he heard the merry laugh of Sibyll, he pushed his
stool from her as far as he well could, and surveyed her with a look of
mingled fear and pity.

“Alas! thou art sure my poor father is a wizard now?”

“Pardie!” answered the Nevile. “Hath he not said so? Hath he not spoken
of wagons without horses, ships without sails? And is not all this what
every dissour and jongleur tells us of in his stories of Merlin? Gentle
maiden,” he added earnestly, drawing nearer to her, and whispering in a
voice of much simple pathos, “thou art young, and I owe thee much.
Take care of thyself. Such wonders and derring-do are too solemn for
laughter.”

“Ah,” answered Sibyll, rising, “I fear they are. How can I expect the
people to be wiser than thou, or their hard natures kinder in their
judgment than thy kind heart?” Her low and melancholy voice went to the
heart thus appealed to. Marmaduke also rose, and followed her into the
parlour, or withdrawing-closet, while Adam and the goldsmith continued
to converse (though Alwyn’s eye followed the young hostess), the former
appearing perfectly unconscious of the secession of his other listeners.
But Alwyn’s attention occasionally wandered, and he soon contrived to
draw his host into the parlour.

When Nicholas rose, at last, to depart, he beckoned Sibyll aside. “Fair
mistress,” said he, with some awkward hesitation, “forgive a plain,
blunt tongue; but ye of the better birth are not always above aid, even
from such as I am. If you would sell these blazoned manuscripts, I can
not only obtain you a noble purchaser in my Lord Scales, or in my
Lord Hastings, an equally ripe scholar, but it may be the means of my
procuring a suitable patron for your father; and, in these times, the
scholar must creep under the knight’s manteline.”

“Master Alwyn,” said Sibyll, suppressing her tears, “it was for
my father’s sake that these labours were wrought. We are poor and
friendless. Take the manuscripts, and sell them as thou wilt, and God
and Saint Mary requite thee!”

“Your father is a great man,” said Alwyn, after a pause.

“But were he to walk the streets, they would stone him,” replied Sibyll,
with a quiet bitterness.

Here the Nevile, carefully shunning the magician, who, in the nervous
excitement produced by the conversation of a mind less uncongenial than
he had encountered for many years, seemed about to address him--here, I
say, the Nevile chimed in, “Hast thou no weapon but thy bludgeon? Dear
foster-brother, I fear for thy safety.”

“Nay, robbers rarely attack us mechanical folk; and I know my way better
than thou. I shall find a boat near York House; so pleasant night and
quick cure to thee, honoured foster-brother. I will send the tailor and
other craftsmen to-morrow.”

“And at the same time,” whispered Marmaduke, accompanying his friend
to the door, “send me a breviary, just to patter an ave or so. This
gray-haired carle puts my heart in a tremble. Moreover, buy me a
gittern--a brave one--for the damozel. She is too proud to take money,
and, ‘fore Heaven, I have small doubts the old wizard could turn my
hose into nobles an’ he had a mind for such gear. Wagons without horses,
ships without sails, quotha!”

As soon as Alwyn had departed, Madge appeared with the final
refreshment, called “the Wines,” consisting of spiced hippocras and
confections, of the former of which the Nevile partook in solemn
silence.



CHAPTER VII. THERE IS A ROD FOR THE BACK OF EVERY FOOL WHO WOULD BE
WISER THAN HIS GENERATION.

The next morning, when Marmaduke descended to the hall, Madge, accosting
him on the threshold, informed him that Mistress Sibyll was unwell, and
kept her chamber, and that Master Warner was never visible much before
noon. He was, therefore, prayed to take his meal alone. “Alone” was
a word peculiarly unwelcome to Marmaduke Nevile, who was an animal
thoroughly social and gregarious. He managed, therefore, to detain the
old servant, who, besides the liking a skilful leech naturally takes to
a thriving patient, had enough of her sex about her to be pleased with
a comely face and a frank, good-humoured voice. Moreover, Marmaduke,
wishing to satisfy his curiosity, turned the conversation upon Warner
and Sibyll, a theme upon which the old woman was well disposed to be
garrulous. He soon learned the poverty of the mansion and the sacrifice
of the gittern; and his generosity and compassion were busily engaged in
devising some means to requite the hospitality he had received, without
wounding the pride of his host, when the arrival of his mails, together
with the visits of the tailor and mercer, sent to him by Alwyn, diverted
his thoughts into a new channel.

Between the comparative merits of gowns and surcoats, broad-toed shoes
and pointed, some time was disposed of with much cheerfulness and
edification; but when his visitors had retired, the benevolent mind of
the young guest again recurred to the penury of his host. Placing his
marks before him on the table in the little withdrawing parlour,
he began counting them over, and putting aside the sum he meditated
devoting to Warner’s relief. “But how,” he muttered, “how to get him to
take the gold. I know, by myself, what a gentleman and a knight’s son
must feel at the proffer of alms--pardie! I would as lief Alwyn had
struck me as offered me his gipsire,--the ill-mannered, affectionate
fellow! I must think--I must think--”

And while still thinking, the door softly opened, and Warner himself,
in a high state of abstraction and revery, stalked noiselessly into
the room, on his way to the garden, in which, when musing over some new
spring for his invention, he was wont to peripatize. The sight of the
gold on the table struck full on the philosopher’s eyes, and waked him
at once from his revery. That gold--oh, what precious instruments, what
learned manuscripts it could purchase! That gold, it was the breath of
life to his model! He walked deliberately up to the table, and laid his
hand upon one of the little heaps. Marmaduke drew back his stool, and
stared at him with open mouth.

“Young man, what wantest thou with all this gold?” said Adam, in a
petulant, reproachful tone. “Put it up! put it up! Never let the poor
see gold; it tempts them, sir,--it tempts them.” And so saying, the
student abruptly turned away his eyes, and moved towards the garden.
Marmaduke rose and put himself in Adam’s way. “Honoured sir,” said the
young man, “you say justly what want I with all this gold? The only gold
a young man should covet is eno’ to suffice for the knight’s spurs
to his heels. If, without offence, you would--that is--ahem!--I
mean,--Gramercy! I shall never say it, but I believe my father owed your
father four marks, and he bade me repay them. Here, sir!” He held out
the glittering coins; the philosopher’s hand closed on them as the
fish’s maw closes on the bait. Adam burst into a laugh, that sounded
strangely weird and unearthly upon Marmaduke’s startled ear.

“All this for me!” he exclaimed. “For me! No, no, no! for me, for IT--I
take it--I take it, sir! I will pay it back with large usury. Come to me
this day year, when this world will be a new world, and Adam Warner
will be--ha! ha! Kind Heaven, I thank thee!” Suddenly turning away, the
philosopher strode through the hall, opened the front door, and escaped
into the street.

“By’r Lady,” said Marmaduke, slowly recovering his surprise, “I need
not have been so much at a loss; the old gentleman takes to my gold as
kindly as if it were mother’s milk. ‘Fore Heaven, mine host’s laugh is
a ghastly thing!” So soliloquizing, he prudently put up the rest of his
money, and locked his mails.

As time went on, the young man became exceedingly weary of his own
company. Sibyll still withheld her appearance; the gloom of the old
hall, the uncultivated sadness of the lonely garden, preyed upon his
spirits. At length, impatient to get a view of the world without, he
mounted a high stool in the hall, and so contrived to enjoy the prospect
which the unglazed wicker lattice, deep set in the wall, afforded. But
the scene without was little more animated than that within,--all was
so deserted in the neighbourhood,--the shops mean and scattered, the
thoroughfare almost desolate. At last he heard a shout, or rather hoot,
at a distance; and, turning his attention whence it proceeded, he beheld
a figure emerge from an alley opposite the casement, with a sack under
one arm, and several books heaped under the other. At his heels followed
a train of ragged boys, shouting and hallooing, “The wizard!
the wizard!--Ah! Bah! The old devil’s kin!” At this cry the dull
neighbourhood seemed suddenly to burst forth into life. From the
casements and thresholds of every house curious faces emerged, and many
voices of men and women joined, in deeper bass, with the shrill tenor
of the choral urchins, “The wizard! the wizard! out at daylight!” The
person thus stigmatized, as he approached the house, turned his face
with an expression of wistful perplexity from side to side. His lips
moved convulsively, and his face was very pale, but he spoke not. And
now, the children, seeing him near his refuge, became more outrageous.
They placed themselves menacingly before him, they pulled his robe,
they even struck at him; and one, bolder than the rest, jumped up, and
plucked his beard. At this last insult, Adam Warner, for it was he,
broke silence; but such was the sweetness of his disposition, that it
was rather with pity than reproof in his voice, that he said,--

“Fie, little one! I fear me thine own age will have small honour if thou
thus mockest mature years in me.”

This gentleness only served to increase the audacity of his persecutors,
who now, momently augmenting, presented a formidable obstacle to
further progress. Perceiving that he could not advance without offensive
measures on his own part, the poor scholar halted; and looking at the
crowd with mild dignity, he asked, “What means this, my children? How
have I injured you?”

“The wizard! the wizard!” was the only answer he received. Adam shrugged
his shoulders, and strode on with so sudden a step, that one of the
smaller children, a curly-headed laughing rogue, of about eight years
old, was thrown down at his feet, and the rest gave way. But the
poor man, seeing one of his foes thus fallen, instead of pursuing his
victory, again paused, and forgetful of the precious burdens he carried,
let drop the sack and books, and took up the child in his arms. On
seeing their companion in the embrace of the wizard, a simultaneous cry
of horror broke from the assemblage, “He is going to curse poor Tim!”

“My child! my boy!” shrieked a woman, from one of the casements; “let go
my child!”

On his part, the boy kicked and shrieked lustily, as Adam, bending his
noble face tenderly over him, said, “Thou art not hurt, child. Poor
boy! thinkest thou I would harm thee?” While he spoke a storm of
missiles--mud, dirt, sticks, bricks, stones--from the enemy, that had
now fallen back in the rear, burst upon him. A stone struck him on the
shoulder. Then his face changed; an angry gleam shot from his deep, calm
eyes; he put down the child, and, turning steadily to the grown people
at the windows, said, “Ye train your children ill;” picked up his sack
and books, sighed, as he saw the latter stained by the mire, which he
wiped with his long sleeve, and too proud to show fear, slowly made for
his door. Fortunately Sibyll had heard the clamour, and was ready to
admit her father, and close the door upon the rush which instantaneously
followed his escape. The baffled rout set up a yell of wrath, and the
boys were now joined by several foes more formidable from the adjacent
houses; assured in their own minds that some terrible execration
had been pronounced upon the limbs and body of Master Tim, who still
continued bellowing and howling, probably from the excitement of finding
himself raised to the dignity of a martyr, the pious neighbours poured
forth, with oaths and curses, and such weapons as they could seize in
haste, to storm the wizard’s fortress.

From his casement Marmaduke Nevile had espied all that had hitherto
passed, and though indignant at the brutality of the persecutors, he
had thought it by no means unnatural. “If men, gentlemen born, will read
uncanny books, and resolve to be wizards, why, they must reap what they
sow,” was the logical reflection that passed through the mind of that
ingenuous youth; but when he now perceived the arrival of more important
allies, when stones began to fly through the wicker lattice, when
threats of setting fire to the house and burning the sorcerer who
muttered spells over innocent little boys were heard, seriously
increasing in depth and loudness, Marmaduke felt his chivalry called
forth, and with some difficulty opening the rusty wicket in the
casement, he exclaimed: “Shame on you, my countrymen, for thus
disturbing in broad day a peaceful habitation! Ye call mine host a
wizard. Thus much say I on his behalf: I was robbed and wounded a few
nights since in your neighbourhood, and in this house alone I found
shelter and healing.”

The unexpected sight of the fair young face of Marmaduke Nevile, and the
healthful sound of his clear ringing voice, produced a momentary effect
on the besiegers, when one of them, a sturdy baker, cried out, “Heed him
not,--he is a goblin. Those devil-mongers can bake ye a dozen such every
moment, as deftly as I can draw loaves from the oven!”

This speech turned the tide, and at that instant a savage-looking man,
the father of the aggrieved boy, followed by his wife, gesticulating and
weeping, ran from his house, waving a torch in his right hand, his arm
bare to the shoulder; and the cry of “Fire the door!” was universal.

In fact, the danger now grew imminent: several of the party were already
piling straw and fagots against the threshold, and Marmaduke began to
think the only chance of life to his host and Sibyll was in flight by
some back way, when he beheld a man, clad somewhat in the fashion of a
country yeoman, a formidable knotted club in his hand, pushing his way,
with Herculean shoulders, through the crowd; and stationing himself
before the threshold and brandishing aloft his formidable weapon, he
exclaimed, “What! In the devil’s name, do you mean to get yourselves all
hanged for riot? Do you think that King Edward is as soft a man as King
Henry was, and that he will suffer any one but himself to set fire to
people’s houses in this way? I dare say you are all right enough in the
main, but by the blood of Saint Thomas, I will brain the first man who
advances a step,--by way of preserving the necks of the rest!”

“A Robin! a Robin!” cried several of the mob. “It is our good friend
Robin. Harken to Robin. He is always right.”

“Ay, that I am!” quoth the defender; “you know that well enough. If I
had my way, the world should be turned upside down, but what the poor
folk should get nearer to the sun! But what I say is this, never go
against law, while the law is too strong. And it were a sad thing to see
fifty fine fellows trussed up for burning an old wizard. So, be off
with you, and let us, at least all that can afford it, make for Master
Sancroft’s hostelrie and talk soberly over our ale. For little, I trow,
will ye work now your blood’s up.”

This address was received with a shout of approbation. The father of the
injured child set his broad foot on his torch, the baker chucked up his
white cap, the ragged boys yelled out, “A Robin! a Robin!” and in
less than two minutes the place was as empty as it had been before the
appearance of the scholar. Marmaduke, who, though so ignorant of books,
was acute and penetrating in all matters of action, could not help
admiring the address and dexterity of the club-bearer; and the danger
being now over, withdrew from the casement, in search of the inmates of
the house. Ascending the stairs, he found on the landing-place, near
his room, and by the embrasure of a huge casement which jutted from the
wall, Adam and his daughter. Adam was leaning against the wall, with his
arms folded, and Sibyll, hanging upon him, was uttering the softest and
most soothing words of comfort her tenderness could suggest.

“My child,” said the old man, shaking his head sadly, “I shall never
again have heart for these studies,--never! A king’s anger I could
brave, a priest’s malice I could pity; but to find the very children,
the young race for whose sake I have made thee and myself paupers, to
find them thus--thus--” He stopped, for his voice failed him, and the
tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Come and speak comfort to my father, Master Nevile,” exclaimed Sibyll;
“come and tell him that whoever is above the herd, whether knight or
scholar, must learn to despise the hootings that follow Merit. Father,
Father, they threw mud and stones at thy king as he passed through
the streets of London. Thou art not the only one whom this base world
misjudges.”

“Worthy mine host!” said Marmaduke, thus appealed to, “Algates, it were
not speaking truth to tell thee that I think a gentleman of birth and
quality should walk the thoroughfares with a bundle of books under his
arm; yet as for the raptril vulgar, the hildings and cullions who
hiss one day what they applaud the next, I hold it the duty of every
Christian and well-born man to regard them as the dirt on the crossings.
Brave soldiers term it no disgrace to receive a blow from a base hind.
An’ it had been knights and gentles who had insulted thee, thou mightest
have cause for shame. But a mob of lewd rascallions and squalling
infants--bah! verily, it is mere matter for scorn and laughter.”

These philosophical propositions and distinctions did not seem to have
their due effect upon Adam. He smiled, however, gently upon his guest,
and with a blush over his pale face, said, “I am rightly chastised, good
young man; mean was I, methinks, and sordid to take from thee thy good
gold. But thou knowest not what fever burns in the brain of a man who
feels that, had he wealth, his knowledge could do great things,--such
things!--I thought to repay thee well. Now the frenzy is gone, and
I, who an hour ago esteemed myself a puissant sage, sink in mine own
conceit to a miserable blinded fool. Child, I am very weak; I will lay
me down and rest.”

So saying, the poor philosopher went his way to his chamber, leaning on
his daughter’s arm.

In a few minutes Sibyll rejoined Marmaduke, who had returned to the
hall, and informed him that her father had lain down a while to compose
himself.

“It is a hard fate, sir,” said the girl, with a faint smile,--“a hard
fate, to be banned and accursed by the world, only because one has
sought to be wiser than the world is.”

“Douce maiden,” returned the Nevile, “it is happy for thee that thy sex
forbids thee to follow thy father’s footsteps, or I should say his hard
fate were thy fair warning.”

Sibyll smiled faintly, and after a pause, said, with a deep blush,--

“You have been generous to my father; do not misjudge him. He would give
his last groat to a starving beggar. But when his passion of scholar and
inventor masters him, thou mightest think him worse than miser. It is an
overnoble yearning that ofttimes makes him mean.”

“Nay,” answered Marmaduke, touched by the heavy sigh and swimming eyes
with which the last words were spoken; “I have heard Nick Alwyn’s uncle,
who was a learned monk, declare that he could not constrain himself to
pray to be delivered from temptation, seeing that he might thereby lose
an occasion for filching some notable book! For the rest,” he added,
“you forget how much I owe to Master Warner’s hospitality.”

He took her hand with a frank and brotherly gallantry as he spoke; but
the touch of that small, soft hand, freely and innocently resigned to
him, sent a thrill to his heart--and again the face of Sibyll seemed to
him wondrous fair.

There was a long silence, which Sibyll was the first to break. She
turned the conversation once more upon Marmaduke’s views in life. It had
been easy for a deeper observer than he was to see that, under all
that young girl’s simplicity and sweetness, there lurked something of
dangerous ambition. She loved to recall the court-life her childhood had
known, though her youth had resigned it with apparent cheerfulness. Like
many who are poor and fallen, Sibyll built herself a sad consolation out
of her pride; she never forgot that she was well-born. But Marmaduke, in
what was ambition, saw but interest in himself, and his heart beat more
quickly as he bent his eyes upon that downcast, thoughtful, earnest
countenance.

After an hour thus passed, Sibyll left the guest, and remounted to her
father’s chamber. She found Adam pacing the narrow floor, and muttering
to himself. He turned abruptly as she entered, and said, “Come hither,
child; I took four marks from that young man, for I wanted books and
instruments, and there are two left; see, take them back to him.”

“My father, he will not receive them. Fear not, thou shalt repay him
some day.”

“Take them, I say, and if the young man says thee nay, why, buy thyself
gauds and gear, or let us eat, and drink, and laugh. What else is life
made for? Ha, ha! Laugh, child, laugh!”

There was something strangely pathetic in this outburst, this terrible
mirth, born of profound dejection. Alas for this guileless, simple
creature, who had clutched at gold with a huckster’s eagerness! who,
forgetting the wants of his own child, had employed it upon the service
of an Abstract Thought, and whom the scorn of his kind now pierced
through all the folds of his close-webbed philosophy and self forgetful
genius. Awful is the duel between MAN and THE AGE in which he lives! For
the gain of posterity, Adam Warner had martyrized existence,--and the
children pelted him as he passed the streets! Sibyll burst into tears.

“No, my father, no,” she sobbed, pushing back the money into his hands.
“Let us both starve rather than you should despond. God and man will
bring you justice yet.”

“Ah,” said the baffled enthusiast, “my whole mind is one sore now! I
feel as if I could love man no more. Go, and leave me. Go, I say!” and
the poor student, usually so mild and gall-less, stamped his foot in
impotent rage. Sibyll, weeping as if her heart would break, left him.

Then Adam Warner again paced to and fro restlessly, and again muttered
to himself for several minutes. At last he approached his Model,--the
model of a mighty and stupendous invention, the fruit of no chimerical
and visionary science; a great Promethean THING, that, once matured,
would divide the Old World from the New, enter into all operations
of Labour, animate all the future affairs, colour all the practical
doctrines of active men. He paused before it, and addressed it as if
it heard and understood him: “My hair was dark, and my tread was firm,
when, one night, a THOUGHT passed into my soul,--a thought to make
Matter the gigantic slave of Mind. Out of this thought, thou, not yet
born after five-and-twenty years of travail, wert conceived. My coffers
were then full, and my name was honoured; and the rich respected and the
poor loved me. Art thou a devil, that has tempted me to ruin, or a god,
that has lifted me above the earth? I am old before my time, my hair is
blanched, my frame is bowed, my wealth is gone, my name is sullied. And
all, dumb idol of Iron and the Element, all for thee! I had a wife whom
I adored; she died,--I forgot her loss in the hope of thy life. I have
a child still--God and our Lady forgive me! she is less dear to me than
thou hast been. And now”--the old man ceased abruptly, and folding his
arms, looked at the deaf iron sternly, as on a human foe. By his side
was a huge hammer, employed in the toils of his forge; suddenly he
seized and swung it aloft. One blow, and the labour of years was
shattered into pieces! One blow!--But the heart failed him, and the
hammer fell heavily to the ground.

“Ay!” he muttered, “true, true! if thou, who hast destroyed all else,
wert destroyed too, what were left me? Is it a crime to murder Alan?--a
greater crime to murder Thought, which is the life of all men! Come, I
forgive thee!”

And all that day and all that night the Enthusiast laboured in his
chamber, and the next day the remembrance of the hooting, the pelting,
the mob, was gone,--clean gone from his breast. The Model began to move,
life hovered over its wheels; and the Martyr of Science had forgotten
the very world for which he, groaning and rejoicing, toiled!



CHAPTER VIII. MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE MAKES LOVE, AND IS FRIGHTENED.

For two or three days Marmaduke and Sibyll were necessarily brought much
together. Such familiarity of intercourse was peculiarly rare in that
time, when, except perhaps in the dissolute court of Edward IV., the
virgins of gentle birth mixed sparingly, and with great reserve, amongst
those of opposite sex. Marmaduke, rapidly recovering from the effect
of his wounds, and without other resource than Sibyll’s society in the
solitude of his confinement, was not proof against the temptation which
one so young and so sweetly winning brought to his fancy or his senses.
The poor Sibyll--she was no faultless paragon,--she was a rare and
singular mixture of many opposite qualities in heart and in intellect!
She was one moment infantine in simplicity and gay playfulness; the next
a shade passed over her bright face, and she uttered some sentence of
that bitter and chilling wisdom, which the sense of persecution, the
cruelty of the world, had already taught her. She was, indeed, at that
age when the Child and the Woman are struggling against each other. Her
character was not yet formed,--a little happiness would have ripened
it at once into the richest bloom of goodness. But sorrow, that ever
sharpens the intellect, might only serve to sour the heart. Her mind
was so innately chaste and pure, that she knew not the nature of the
admiration she excited; but the admiration pleased her as it pleases
some young child; she was vain then, but it was an infant’s vanity, not
a woman’s. And thus, from innocence itself, there was a fearlessness, a
freedom, a something endearing and familiar in her manner, which might
have turned a wiser head than Marmaduke Nevile’s. And this the more,
because, while liking her young guest, confiding in him, raised in her
own esteem by his gallantry, enjoying that intercourse of youth with
youth so unfamiliar to her, and surrendering herself the more to its
charm from the joy that animated her spirits, in seeing that her father
had forgotten his humiliation, and returned to his wonted labours,--she
yet knew not for the handsome Nevile one sentiment that approached to
love. Her mind was so superior to his own, that she felt almost as if
older in years, and in their talk her rosy lips preached to him in grave
advice.

On the landing, by Marmaduke’s chamber, there was a large oriel casement
jutting from the wall. It was only glazed at the upper part, and that
most imperfectly, the lower part being closed at night or in inclement
weather with rude shutters. The recess formed by this comfortless
casement answered, therefore, the purpose of a balcony; it commanded
a full view of the vicinity without, and gave to those who might be
passing by the power also of indulging their own curiosity by a view of
the interior.

Whenever he lost sight of Sibyll, and had grown weary of the peacock,
this spot was Marmaduke’s favourite haunt. It diverted him, poor youth,
to look out of the window upon the livelier world beyond. The place, it
is true, was ordinarily deserted, but still the spires and turrets of
London were always discernible,--and they were something.

Accordingly, in this embrasure stood Marmaduke, when one morning,
Sibyll, coming from her father’s room, joined him.

“And what, Master Nevile,” said Sibyll, with a malicious yet charming
smile, “what claimed thy meditations? Some misgiving as to the trimming
of thy tunic, or the length of thy shoon?”

“Nay,” returned Marmaduke, gravely, “such thoughts, though not without
their importance in the mind of a gentleman, who would not that his
ignorance of court delicacies should commit him to the japes of his
equals, were not at that moment uppermost. I was thinking--”

“Of those mastiffs, quarrelling for a bone. Avow it.”

“By our Lady, I saw them not, but now I look, they are brave dogs. Ha!
seest thou how gallantly each fronts the other, the hair bristling, the
eyes fixed, the tail on end, the fangs glistening? Now the lesser one
moves slowly round and round the bigger, who, mind you, Mistress
Sibyll, is no dullard, but moves, too, quick as thought, not to be
taken unawares. Ha! that is a brave spring! Heigh, dogs, Neigh! a good
sight!--it makes the blood warm! The little one hath him by the throat!”

“Alack,” said Sibyll, turning away her eyes, “can you find pleasure in
seeing two poor brutes mangle each other for a bone?”

“By Saint Dunstan! doth it matter what may be the cause of quarrel, so
long as dog or man bears himself bravely, with a due sense of honour and
derring-do? See! the big one is up again. Ah, foul fall the butcher, who
drives them away! Those seely mechanics know not the joyaunce of fair
fighting to gentle and to hound. For a hound, mark you, hath nothing
mechanical in his nature. He is a gentleman all over,--brave against
equal and stranger, forbearing to the small and defenceless, true in
poverty and need where he loveth, stern and ruthless where he hateth,
and despising thieves, hildings, and the vulgar as much as e’er a gold
spur in King Edward’s court! Oh, certes, your best gentleman is the best
hound!”

“You moralize to-day; and I know not how to gainsay you,” returned
Sibyll, as the dogs, reluctantly beaten off, retired each from each,
snarling and reluctant, while a small black cur, that had hitherto sat
unobserved at the door of a small hostelrie, now coolly approached and
dragged off the bone of contention. “But what sayst thou now? See! see!
the patient mongrel carries off the bone from the gentleman-hounds. Is
that the way of the world?”

“Pardie! it is a naught world, if so, and much changed from the time of
our fathers, the Normans. But these Saxons are getting uppermost again,
and the yard measure, I fear me, is more potent in these holiday times
than the mace or the battle-axe.” The Nevile paused, sighed, and changed
the subject: “This house of thine must have been a stately pile in its
day. I see but one side of the quadrangle is left, though it be easy to
trace where the other three have stood.”

“And you may see their stones and their fittings in the butcher’s and
baker’s stalls over the way,” replied Sibyll.

“Ay!” said the Nevile, “the parings of the gentry begin to be the wealth
of the varlets.”

“Little ought we to pine at that,” returned Sibyll, “if the varlets were
but gentle with our poverty; but they loathe the humbled fortunes on
which they rise, and while slaves to the rich, are tyrants to the poor.”

This was said so sadly, that the Nevile felt his eyes overflow; and the
humble dress of the girl, the melancholy ridges which evinced the site
of a noble house, now shrunk into a dismal ruin, the remembrance of the
pastime-ground, the insults of the crowd, and the broken gittern, all
conspired to move his compassion, and to give force to yet more tender
emotions.

“Ah,” he said suddenly, and with a quick faint blush over his handsome
and manly countenance,--“ah, fair maid--fair Sibyll--God grant that I
may win something of gold and fortune amidst yonder towers, on which the
sun shines so cheerly. God grant it, not for my sake,--not for mine; but
that I may have something besides a true heart and a stainless name to
lay at thy feet. Oh, Sibyll! By this hand, by my father’s soul, I love
thee, Sibyll! Have I not said it before? Well, hear me now,--I love
thee!”

As he spoke, he clasped her hand in his own, and she suffered it for one
instant to rest in his. Then withdrawing it, and meeting his enamoured
eyes with a strange sadness in her own darker, deeper, and more
intelligent orbs, she said,--

“I thank thee,--thank thee for the honour of such kind thoughts; and
frankly I answer, as thou hast frankly spoken. It was sweet to me, who
have known little in life not hard and bitter,--sweet to wish I had a
brother like thee, and, as a brother, I can love and pray for thee.
But ask not more, Marmaduke. I have aims in life which forbid all other
love.”

“Art thou too aspiring for one who has his spurs to win?”

“Not so; but listen. My mother’s lessons and my own heart have made my
poor father the first end and object of all things on earth to me. I
live to protect him, work for him, honour him; and for the rest, I have
thoughts thou canst not know, an ambition thou canst not feel. Nay,” she
added, with that delightful smile which chased away the graver thought
which had before saddened her aspect, “what would thy sober friend
Master Alwyn say to thee, if he heard thou hadst courted the wizard’s
daughter?”

“By my faith,” exclaimed Marmaduke, “thou art a very April,--smiles
and clouds in a breath! If what thou despisest in me be my want of
bookcraft, and such like, by my halidame I will turn scholar for thy
sake; and--”

Here, as he had again taken Sibyll’s hand, with the passionate ardour of
his bold nature, not to be lightly daunted by a maiden’s first “No,” a
sudden shrill, wild burst of laughter, accompanied with a gusty fit
of unmelodious music from the street below, made both maiden and youth
start, and turn their eyes; there, weaving their immodest dance, tawdry
in their tinsel attire, their naked arms glancing above their heads, as
they waved on high their instruments, went the timbrel-girls.

“Ha, ha!” cried their leader, “see the gallant and the witch-leman! The
glamour has done its work! Foul is fair! foul is fair! and the devil
will have his own!”

But these creatures, whose bold license the ancient chronicler records,
were rarely seen alone. They haunted parties of pomp and pleasure;
they linked together the extremes of life,--the grotesque Chorus that
introduced the terrible truth of foul vice and abandoned wretchedness
in the midst of the world’s holiday and pageant. So now, as they wheeled
into the silent, squalid street, they heralded a goodly company of dames
and cavaliers on horseback, who were passing through the neighbouring
plains into the park of Marybone to enjoy the sport of falconry. The
splendid dresses of this procession, and the grave and measured dignity
with which it swept along, contrasted forcibly with the wild movements
and disorderly mirth of the timbrel-players. These last darted round
and round the riders, holding out their instruments for largess, and
retorting, with laugh and gibe, the disdainful look or sharp rebuke with
which their salutations were mostly received.

Suddenly, as the company, two by two, paced up the street, Sibyll
uttered a faint exclamation, and strove to snatch her hand from the
Nevile’s grasp. Her eye rested upon one of the horsemen, who rode last,
and who seemed in earnest conversation with a dame, who, though scarcely
in her first youth, excelled all her fair companions in beauty of face
and grace of horsemanship, as well as in the costly equipments of the
white barb that caracoled beneath her easy hand. At the same moment the
horseman looked up and gazed steadily at Sibyll, whose countenance
grew pale, and flushed, in a breath. His eye then glanced rapidly at
Marmaduke; a half-smile passed his pale, firm lips; he slightly raised
the plumed cap from his brow, inclined gravely to Sibyll, and, turning
once more to his companion, appeared to answer some question she
addressed to him as to the object of his salutation, for her look,
which was proud, keen, and lofty, was raised to Sibyll, and then dropped
somewhat disdainfully, as she listened to the words addressed her by the
cavalier.

The lynx eyes of the tymbesteres had seen the recognition; and their
leader, laying her bold hand on the embossed bridle of the horseman,
exclaimed, in a voice shrill and loud enough to be heard in the balcony
above, “Largess! noble lord, largess! for the sake of the lady thou
lovest best!”

The fair equestrian turned away her head at these words; the nobleman
watched her a moment, and dropped some coins into the timbrel.

“Ha, ha!” cried the tymbestere, pointing her long arm to Sibyll, and
springing towards the balcony,--

                “The cushat would mate
                 Above her state,
     And she flutters her wings round the falcon’s beak;
                 But death to the dove
                 Is the falcon’s love!
     Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon’s beak!”

Before this rude song was ended, Sibyll had vanished from the place;
the cavalcade had disappeared. The timbrel-players, without deigning to
notice Marmaduke, darted elsewhere to ply their discordant trade, and
the Nevile, crossing himself devoutly, muttered, “Jesu defend us! Those
she Will-o’-the-wisps are eno’ to scare all the blood out of one’s body.
What--a murrain on them!--do they portend, flitting round and round, and
skirting off, as if the devil’s broomstick was behind them! By the Mass!
they have frighted away the damozel, and I am not sorry for it. They
have left me small heart for the part of Sir Launval.”

His meditations were broken off by the sudden sight of Nicholas Alwyn,
mounted on a small palfrey, and followed by a sturdy groom on horseback,
leading a steed handsomely caparisoned. In another moment, Marmaduke had
descended, opened the door, and drawn Alwyn into the hall.



CHAPTER IX. MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE LEAVES THE WIZARD’S HOUSE FOR THE
GREAT WORLD.

“Right glad am I,” said Nicholas, “to see you so stout and hearty, for
I am the bearer of good news. Though I have been away, I have not
forgotten you; and it so chanced that I went yesterday to attend my
Lord of Warwick with some nowches [buckles and other ornaments] and
knackeries, that he takes out as gifts and exemplars of English work.
They were indifferently well wrought, specially a chevesail, of which
the--”

“Spare me the fashion of thy mechanicals, and come to the point,”
 interrupted Marmaduke, impatiently.

“Pardon me, Master Nevile. I interrupt thee not when thou talkest of
bassinets and hauberks,--every cobbler to his last. But, as thou sayest,
to the point: the stout earl, while scanning my workmanship, for in much
the chevesail was mine, was pleased to speak graciously of my skill with
the bow, of which he had heard; and he then turned to thyself, of whom
my Lord Montagu had already made disparaging mention. When I told the
earl somewhat more about thy qualities and disposings, and when I spoke
of thy desire to serve him, and the letter of which thou art the bearer,
his black brows smoothed mighty graciously, and he bade me tell thee to
come to him this afternoon, and he would judge of thee with his own eyes
and ears. Wherefore I have ordered the craftsman to have all thy gauds
and gear ready at thine hostelrie, and I have engaged thee henchmen and
horses for thy fitting appearance. Be quick: time and the great wait for
no man. So take whatever thou needest for present want from thy mails,
and I will send a porter for the rest ere sunset.”

“But the gittern for the damozel?”

“I have provided that for thee, as is meet.” And Nicholas, stepping
back, eased the groom of a case which contained a gittern, whose
workmanship and ornaments delighted the Nevile.

“It is of my lord the young Duke of Gloucester’s own musical-vendor; and
the duke, though a lad yet, is a notable judge of all appertaining to
the gentle craft. [For Richard III.’s love of music, and patronage of
musicians and minstrels, see the discriminating character of that prince
in Sharon Turner’s “History of England,” vol. IV. p. 66.] So despatch,
and away!”

Marmaduke retired to his chamber, and Nicholas, after a moment spent in
silent thought, searched the room for the hand-bell, which then made the
mode of communication between the master and domestics. Not finding this
necessary luxury, he contrived at last to make Madge hear his voice
from her subterranean retreat; and on her arrival, sent her in quest of
Sibyll.

The answer he received was, that Mistress Sibyll was ill, and unable to
see him. Alwyn looked disconcerted at this intelligence, but, drawing
from his girdle a small gipsire, richly broidered, he prayed Madge to
deliver it to her young mistress, and inform her that it was the fruit
of the commission with which she had honoured him.

“It is passing strange,” said he, pacing the hall alone,--“passing
strange, that the poor child should have taken such hold on me. After
all, she would be a bad wife for a plain man like me. Tush! that is the
trader’s thought all over. Have I brought no fresher feeling out of my
fair village-green? Would it not be sweet to work for her, and rise in
life, with her by my side? And these girls of the city, so prim and so
brainless!--as well marry a painted puppet. Sibyll! Am I dement? Stark
wode? What have I to do with girls and marriage? Humph! I marvel what
Marmaduke still thinks of her,--and she of him.”

While Alwyn thus soliloquized, the Nevile having hastily arranged his
dress, and laden himself with the moneys his mails contained, summoned
old Madge to receive his largess, and to conduct him to Warner’s
chamber, in order to proffer his farewell.

With somewhat of a timid step he followed the old woman (who kept
muttering thanks and benedicites as she eyed the coin in her palm) up
the ragged stairs, and for the first time knocked at the door of the
student’s sanctuary. No answer came. “Eh, sir! you must enter,” said
Madge; “an’ you fired a bombard under his ear he would not heed you.”
 So, suiting the action to the word, she threw open the door, and closed
it behind him, as Marmaduke entered.

The room was filled with smoke, through which mirky atmosphere the clear
red light of the burning charcoal peered out steadily like a Cyclop’s
eye. A small, but heaving, regular, labouring, continuous sound, as of
a fairy hammer, smote the young man’s ear. But as his gaze, accustoming
itself to the atmosphere, searched around, he could not perceive what
was its cause. Adam Warner was standing in the middle of the room, his
arms folded, and contemplating something at a little distance, which
Marmaduke could not accurately distinguish. The youth took courage, and
approached. “Honoured mine host,” said he, “I thank thee for
hospitality and kindness, I crave pardon for disturbing thee in thy
incanta--ehem!--thy--thy studies, and I come to bid thee farewell.”

Adam turned round with a puzzled, absent air, as if scarcely recognizing
his guest; at length, as his recollection slowly came back to him, he
smiled graciously, and said: “Good youth, thou art richly welcome to
what little it was in my power to do for thee. Peradventure a time may
come when they who seek the roof of Adam Warner may find less homely
cheer, a less rugged habitation,--for look you!” he exclaimed suddenly,
with a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm--and laying his hand on
Nevile’s arm, as, through all the smoke and grime that obscured his
face, flashed the ardent soul of the triumphant Inventor,--“look you!
since you have been in this house, one of my great objects is well-nigh
matured,--achieved. Come hither,” and he dragged the wondering Marmaduke
to his model, or Eureka, as Adam had fondly named his contrivance. The
Nevile then perceived that it was from the interior of this machine that
the sound which had startled him arose; to his eye the THING was uncouth
and hideous; from the jaws of an iron serpent, that, wreathing round it,
rose on high with erect crest, gushed a rapid volume of black smoke,
and a damp spray fell around. A column of iron in the centre kept in
perpetual and regular motion, rising and sinking successively, as the
whole mechanism within seemed alive with noise and action.

“The Syracusan asked an inch of earth, beyond the earth, to move the
earth,” said Adam; “I stand in the world, and lo! with this engine the
world shall one day be moved.”

“Holy Mother!” faltered Marmaduke; “I pray thee, dread sir, to ponder
well ere thou attemptest any such sports with the habitation in which
every woman’s son is so concerned. Bethink thee, that if in moving the
world thou shouldst make any mistake, it would--”

“Now stand there and attend,” interrupted Adam, who had not heard one
word of this judicious exhortation.

“Pardon me, terrible sir!” exclaimed Marmaduke, in great trepidation,
and retreating rapidly to the door; “but I have heard that the fiends
are mighty malignant to all lookers-on not initiated.”

While he spoke, fast gushed the smoke, heavily heaved the fairy hammers,
up and down, down and up, sank or rose the column, with its sullen
sound. The young man’s heart sank to the soles of his feet.

“Indeed and in truth,” he stammered out, “I am but a dolt in these
matters; I wish thee all success compatible with the weal of a
Christian, and bid thee, in sad humility, good day:” and he added, in a
whisper--“the Lord’s forgiveness! Amen!”

Marmaduke then fairly rushed through the open door, and hurried out of
the chamber as fast as possible.

He breathed more freely as he descended the stairs. “Before I would
call that gray carle my father, or his child my wife, may I feel all
the hammers of the elves and sprites he keeps tortured within that
ugly little prison-house playing a death’s march on my body! Holy Saint
Dunstan, the timbrel-girls came in time! They say these wizards always
have fair daughters, and their love can be no blessing!”

As he thus muttered, the door of Sibyll’s chamber opened, and she stood
before him at the threshold. Her countenance was very pale, and bore
evidence of weeping. There was a silence on both sides, which the girl
was the first to break.

“So, Madge tells me thou art about to leave us?”

“Yes, gentle maiden! I--I--that is, my Lord of Warwick has summoned me.
I wish and pray for all blessings on thee! and--and--if ever it be mine
to serve or aid thee, it will be--that is--verily, my tongue falters,
but my heart--that is--fare thee well, maiden! Would thou hadst a less
wise father; and so may the saints (Saint Anthony especially, whom the
Evil One was parlous afraid of) guard and keep thee!”

With this strange and incoherent address, Marmaduke left the maiden
standing by the threshold of her miserable chamber. Hurrying into the
hall, he summoned Alwyn from his meditations, and, giving the gittern
to Madge, with an injunction to render it to her mistress, with his
greeting and service, he vaulted lightly on his steed; the steady and
more sober Alwyn mounted his palfrey with slow care and due caution.
As the air of spring waved the fair locks of the young cavalier, as the
good horse caracoled under his lithesome weight, his natural temper of
mind, hardy, healthful, joyous, and world-awake, returned to him. The
image of Sibyll and her strange father fled from his thoughts like
sickly dreams.



BOOK II. THE KING’S COURT.



CHAPTER I. EARL WARWICK THE KING-MAKER.

The young men entered the Strand, which, thanks to the profits of a
toll-bar, was a passable road for equestrians, studded towards the
river, as we have before observed, with stately and half-fortified
mansions; while on the opposite side, here and there, were straggling
houses of a humbler kind,--the mediaeval villas of merchant and trader
(for, from the earliest period since the Conquest, the Londoners had
delight in such retreats), surrounded with blossoming orchards, [On
all sides, without the suburbs, are the citizens’ gardens and orchards,
etc.--FITZSTEPHEN.] and adorned in front with the fleur-de-lis, emblem
of the vain victories of renowned Agincourt. But by far the greater
portion of the road northward stretched, unbuilt upon, towards a
fair chain of fields and meadows, refreshed by many brooks, “turning
water-mills with a pleasant noise.” High rose, on the thoroughfare,
the famous Cross, at which “the Judges Itinerant whilome sate, without
London.” [Stowe.] There, hallowed and solitary, stood the inn for the
penitent pilgrims, who sought “the murmuring runnels” of St. Clement’s
healing well; for in this neighbourhood, even from the age of the Roman,
springs of crystal wave and salubrious virtue received the homage of
credulous disease. Through the gloomy arches of the Temple Gate and
Lud, our horsemen wound their way, and finally arrived in safety at
Marmaduke’s hostelrie in the East Chepe. Here Marmaduke found the
decorators of his comely person already assembled. The simpler yet more
manly fashions he had taken from the provinces were now exchanged for an
attire worthy the kinsman of the great minister of a court unparalleled,
since the reign of William the Red King, for extravagant gorgeousness of
dress. His corset was of the finest cloth, sown with seed pearls; above
it the lawn shirt, worn without collar, partially appeared, fringed
with gold; over this was loosely hung a super-tunic of crimson sarcenet,
slashed and pounced with a profusion of fringes. His velvet cap,
turned up at the sides, extended in a point far over the forehead. His
hose--under which appellation is to be understood what serves us of the
modern day both for stockings and pantaloons--were of white cloth; and
his shoes, very narrow, were curiously carved into chequer work at the
instep, and tied with bobbins of gold thread, turning up like skates
at the extremity, three inches in length. His dagger was suspended by a
slight silver-gilt chain, and his girdle contained a large gipsire, or
pouch, of embossed leather, richly gilt.

And this dress, marvellous as it seemed to the Nevile, the tailor
gravely assured him was far under the mark of the highest fashion,
and that an’ the noble youth had been a knight, the shoes would have
stretched at least three inches farther over the natural length of the
feet, the placard have shone with jewels, and the tunic luxuriated in
flowers of damacene. Even as it was, however, Marmaduke felt a natural
diffidence of his habiliments, which cost him a round third of his
whole capital; and no bride ever unveiled herself with more shamefaced
bashfulness than did Marmaduke Nevile experience when he remounted his
horse, and, taking leave of his foster-brother, bent his way to Warwick
Lane, where the earl lodged.

The narrow streets were, however, crowded with equestrians whose dress
eclipsed his own, some bending their way to the Tower, some to the
palaces of the Flete. Carriages there were none, and only twice he
encountered the huge litters, in which some aged prelate or some
high-born dame veiled greatness from the day. But the frequent vistas
to the river gave glimpses of the gay boats and barges that crowded the
Thames, which was then the principal thoroughfare for every class, but
more especially the noble. The ways were fortunately dry and clean for
London, though occasionally deep holes and furrows in the road menaced
perils to the unwary horseman. The streets themselves might well
disappoint in splendour the stranger’s eye; for although, viewed at a
distance, ancient London was incalculably more picturesque and stately
than the modern, yet when fairly in its tortuous labyrinths, it seemed
to those who had improved the taste by travel the meanest and the
mirkiest capital of Christendom. The streets were marvellously narrow,
the upper stories, chiefly of wood, projecting far over the lower, which
were formed of mud and plaster. The shops were pitiful booths, and the
‘prentices standing at the entrance bare-headed and cap in hand, and
lining the passages, as the old French writer avers, comme idoles,
[Perlin] kept up an eternal din with their clamorous invitations,
often varied by pert witticisms on some churlish passenger, or loud
vituperations of each other. The whole ancient family of the London
criers were in full bay. Scarcely had Marmaduke’s ears recovered
the shock of “Hot peascods,--all hot!” than they were saluted with
“Mackerel!” “Sheep’s feet! hot sheep’s feet!” At the smaller taverns
stood the inviting vociferaters of “Cock-pie,” “Ribs of beef,--hot
beef!” while, blended with these multi-toned discords, whined the
vielle, or primitive hurdy-gurdy, screamed the pipe, twanged the harp,
from every quarter where the thirsty paused to drink, or the idler stood
to gape. [See Lydgate: London Lyckpenny.]

Through this Babel Marmaduke at last slowly wound his way, and arrived
before the mighty mansion in which the chief baron of England held his
state.

As he dismounted and resigned his steed to the servitor hired for him by
Alwyn, Marmaduke paused a moment, struck by the disparity, common as
it was to eyes more accustomed to the metropolis, between the stately
edifice and the sordid neighbourhood. He had not noticed this so much
when he had repaired to the earl’s house on his first arrival in London,
for his thoughts then had been too much bewildered by the general
bustle and novelty of the scene; but now it seemed to him that he better
comprehended the homage accorded to a great noble in surveying, at a
glance, the immeasurable eminence to which he was elevated above his
fellow-men by wealth and rank.

Far on either side of the wings of the earl’s abode stretched, in
numerous deformity, sheds rather than houses, of broken plaster and
crazy timbers. But here and there were open places of public reception,
crowded with the lower followers of the puissant chief; and the eye
rested on many idle groups of sturdy swash-bucklers, some half-clad
in armour, some in rude jerkins of leather, before the doors of these
resorts,--as others, like bees about a hive, swarmed in and out with a
perpetual hum.

The exterior of Warwick House was of a gray but dingy stone, and
presented a half-fortified and formidable appearance. The windows, or
rather loop-holes, towards the street were few, and strongly barred.
The black and massive arch of the gateway yawned between two huge square
towers; and from a yet higher but slender tower on the inner side, the
flag gave the “White Bear and Ragged Staff” to the smoky air. Still,
under the portal as he entered, hung the grate of the portcullis, and
the square court which he saw before him swarmed with the more
immediate retainers of the earl, in scarlet jackets, wrought with
their chieftain’s cognizance. A man of gigantic girth and stature,
who officiated as porter, leaning against the wall under the arch, now
emerged from the shadow, and with sufficient civility demanded the young
visitor’s name and business. On hearing the former, he bowed low as he
doffed his hat, and conducted Marmaduke through the first quadrangle.
The two sides to the right and left were devoted to the offices and
rooms of retainers, of whom no less than six hundred, not to speak of
the domestic and more orderly retinue, attested the state of the Last of
the English Barons on his visits to the capital. Far from being then, as
now, the object of the great to thrust all that belongs to the service
of the house out of sight, it was their pride to strike awe into the
visitor by the extent of accommodation afforded to their followers: some
seated on benches of stone ranged along the walls; some grouped in the
centre of the court; some lying at length upon the two oblong patches of
what had been turf, till worn away by frequent feet,--this domestic
army filled the young Nevile with an admiration far greater than the
gay satins of the knights and nobles who had gathered round the lord of
Montagu and Northumberland at the pastime-ground.

This assemblage, however, were evidently under a rude discipline of
their own. They were neither noisy nor drunk. They made way with surly
obeisance as the cavalier passed, and closing on his track like some
horde of wild cattle, gazed after him with earnest silence, and then
turned once more to their indolent whispers with each other.

And now Nevile entered the last side of the quadrangle. The huge hall,
divided from the passage by a screen of stone fretwork, so fine as to
attest the hand of some architect in the reign of Henry III., stretched
to his right; and so vast, in truth, it was, that though more than fifty
persons were variously engaged therein, their number was lost in the
immense space. Of these, at one end of the longer and lower table
beneath the dais, some squires of good dress and mien were engaged at
chess or dice; others were conferring in the gloomy embrasures of
the casements; some walking to and fro, others gathered round the
shovel-board. At the entrance of this hall the porter left Marmaduke,
after exchanging a whisper with a gentleman whose dress eclipsed the
Nevile’s in splendour; and this latter personage, who, though of high
birth, did not disdain to perform the office of chamberlain, or usher,
to the king-like earl, advanced to Marmaduke with a smile, and said,--

“My lord expects you, sir, and has appointed this time to receive you,
that you may not be held back from his presence by the crowds that crave
audience in the forenoon. Please to follow me!” This said, the gentleman
slowly preceded the visitor, now and then stopping to exchange a
friendly word with the various parties he passed in his progress; for
the urbanity which Warwick possessed himself, his policy inculcated as
a duty on all who served him. A small door at the other extremity of the
hall admitted into an anteroom, in which some half score pages, the sons
of knights and barons, were gathered round an old warrior, placed
at their head as a sort of tutor, to instruct them in all knightly
accomplishments; and beckoning forth one of these youths from the ring,
the earl’s chamberlain said, with a profound reverence, “Will you be
pleased, my young lord, to conduct your cousin, Master Marmaduke Nevile,
to the earl’s presence?” The young gentleman eyed Marmaduke with a
supercilious glance.

“Marry!” said he, pertly, “if a man born in the North were to feed all
his cousins, he would soon have a tail as long as my uncle, the stout
earl’s. Come, sir cousin, this way.” And without tarrying even to
give Nevile information of the name and quality of his new-found
relation,--who was no less than Lord Montagu’s son, the sole male
heir to the honours of that mighty family, though now learning the
apprenticeship of chivalry amongst his uncle’s pages,--the boy
passed before Marmaduke with a saunter, that, had they been in plain
Westmoreland, might have cost him a cuff from the stout hand of the
indignant elder cousin. He raised the tapestry at one end of the room,
and ascending a short flight of broad stairs, knocked gently on the
panels of an arched door sunk deep in the walls.

“Enter!” said a clear, loud voice, and the next moment Marmaduke was in
the presence of the King-maker.

He heard his guide pronounce his name, and saw him smile maliciously at
the momentary embarrassment the young man displayed, as the boy passed
by Marmaduke, and vanished. The Earl of Warwick was seated near a
door that opened upon an inner court, or rather garden, which gave
communication to the river. The chamber was painted in the style of
Henry III., with huge figures representing the battle of Hastings,
or rather, for there were many separate pieces, the conquest of Saxon
England. Over each head, to enlighten the ignorant, the artist had taken
the precaution to insert a label, which told the name and the subject.
The ceiling was groined, vaulted, and emblazoned with the richest
gilding and colours. The chimneypiece (a modern ornament) rose to the
roof, and represented in bold reliefs, gilt and decorated, the signing
of Magna Charta. The floor was strewed thick with dried rushes and
odorous herbs; the furniture was scanty, but rich. The low-backed
chairs, of which there were but four, carved in ebony, had cushions
of velvet with fringes of massive gold; a small cupboard, or beaufet,
covered with carpetz de cuir (carpets of gilt and painted leather),
of great price, held various quaint and curious ornaments of plate
inwrought with precious stones; and beside this--a singular contrast--on
a plain Gothic table lay the helmet, the gauntlets, and the battle-axe
of the master. Warwick himself, seated before a large, cumbrous desk,
was writing,--but slowly and with pain,--and he lifted his finger as
the Nevile approached, in token of his wish to conclude a task probably
little congenial to his tastes. But Marmaduke was grateful for the
moments afforded him to recover his self-possession, and to examine his
kinsman.

The earl was in the lusty vigour of his age. His hair, of the deepest
black, was worn short, as if in disdain of the effeminate fashions of
the day; and fretted bare from the temples by the constant and early
friction of his helmet, gave to a forehead naturally lofty yet more
majestic appearance of expanse and height. His complexion, though dark
and sunburned, glowed with rich health. The beard was closely shaven,
and left in all its remarkable beauty the contour of the oval face and
strong jaw,--strong as if clasped in iron. The features were marked and
aquiline, as was common to those of Norman blood. The form spare, but of
prodigious width and depth of chest, the more apparent from the fashion
of the short surcoat, which was thrown back, and left in broad expanse
a placard, not of holiday velvet and satins, but of steel polished as a
mirror, and inlaid with gold. And now as, concluding his task, the earl
rose and motioned Marmaduke to a stool by his side, his great stature,
which, from the length of his limbs, was not so observable when he sat,
actually startled his guest. Tall as Marmaduke was himself, the earl
towered [The faded portrait of Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick, in the
Rous Roll, preserved at the Herald’s College, does justice, at least, to
the height and majesty of his stature. The portrait of Edward IV. is the
only one in that long series which at all rivals the stately proportions
of the King-maker.] above him,--with his high, majestic, smooth,
unwrinkled forehead,--like some Paladin of the rhyme of poet or
romancer; and, perhaps, not only in this masculine advantage, but in
the rare and harmonious combination of colossal strength with graceful
lightness, a more splendid union of all the outward qualities we are
inclined to give to the heroes of old never dazzled the eye or impressed
the fancy. But even this effect of mere person was subordinate to that
which this eminent nobleman created--upon his inferiors, at least--by
a manner so void of all arrogance, yet of all condescension, so simple,
open, cordial, and hero-like, that Marmaduke Nevile, peculiarly alive
to external impressions, and subdued and fascinated by the earl’s first
word, and that word was “Welcome!” dropped on his knee, and kissing the
hand extended to him, said, “Noble kinsman, in thy service and for
thy sake let me live and die!” Had the young man been prepared by the
subtlest master of courtcraft for this interview, so important to his
fortunes, he could not have advanced a hundredth part so far with the
great earl as he did by that sudden, frank burst of genuine emotion; for
Warwick was extremely sensitive to the admiration he excited,--vain or
proud of it, it matters not which; grateful as a child for love, and
inexorable as a woman for slight or insult: in rude ages, one sex has
often the qualities of the other.

“Thou hast thy father’s warm heart and hasty thought, Marmaduke,” said
Warwick, raising him; “and now he is gone where, we trust, brave men,
shrived of their sins, look down upon us, who should be thy friend but
Richard Nevile? So--so--yes, let me look at thee. Ha! stout Guy’s honest
face, every line of it: but to the girls, perhaps, comelier, for wanting
a scar or two. Never blush,--thou shalt win the scars yet. So thou hast
a letter from thy father?”

“It is here, noble lord.”

“And why,” said the earl, cutting the silk with his dagger--“why hast
thou so long hung back from presenting it? But I need not ask thee.
These uncivil times have made kith and kin doubt worse of each other
than thy delay did of me. Sir Guy’s mark, sure eno’! Brave old man! I
loved him the better for that, like me, the sword was more meet than the
pen for his bold hand.” Here Warwick scanned, with some slowness, the
lines dictated by the dead to the priest; and when he had done, he
laid the letter respectfully on his desk, and bowing his head over it,
muttered to himself,--it might be an Ave for the deceased. “Well,” he
said, reseating himself, and again motioning Marmaduke to follow his
example, “thy father was, in sooth, to blame for the side he took in the
Wars. What son of the Norman could bow knee or vail plume to that shadow
of a king, Henry of Windsor? And for his bloody wife--she knew no more
of an Englishman’s pith and pride than I know of the rhymes and roundels
of old Rene, her father. Guy Nevile--good Guy--many a day in my boyhood
did he teach me how to bear my lance at the crest, and direct my sword
at the mail joints. He was cunning at fence--thy worshipful father--but
I was ever a bad scholar; and my dull arm, to this day, hopes more from
its strength than its craft.”

“I have heard it said, noble earl, that the stoutest hand can scarcely
lift your battle-axe.”

“Fables! romaunt!” answered the earl, smiling; “there it lies,--go and
lift it.”

Marmaduke went to the table, and, though with some difficulty, raised
and swung this formidable weapon.

“By my halidame, well swung, cousin mine! Its use depends not on the
strength, but the practice. Why, look you now, there is the boy Richard
of Gloucester, who comes not up to thy shoulder, and by dint of custom
each day can wield mace or axe with as much ease as a jester doth his
lathesword. Ah, trust me, Marmaduke, the York House is a princely one;
and if we must have a king, we barons, by stout Saint George, let no
meaner race ever furnish our lieges. But to thyself, Marmaduke--what are
thy views and thy wishes?”

“To be one of thy following, noble Warwick.”

“I thank and accept thee, young Nevile; but thou hast heard that I am
about to leave England, and in the mean time thy youth would run danger
without a guide.” The earl paused a moment, and resumed: “My brother of
Montagu showed thee cold countenance; but a word from me will win
thee his grace and favour. What sayest thou, wilt thou be one of his
gentlemen? If so, I will tell thee the qualities a man must have,--a
discreet tongue, a quick eye, the last fashion in hood and shoe-bobbins,
a perfect seat on thy horse, a light touch for the gittern, a voice for
a love-song, and--”

“I have none of these save the horsemanship, gracious my lord; and if
thou wilt not receive me thyself, I will not burden my Lord of Montagu
and Northumberland.”

“Hot and quick! No! John of Montagu would not suit thee, nor thou him.
But how to provide for thee till my return I know not.”

“Dare I not hope, then, to make one of your embassage, noble earl?”

Warwick bent his brows, and looked at him in surprise. “Of our
embassage! Why, thou art haughty, indeed! Nay, and so a soldier’s son
and a Nevile should be! I blame thee not; but I could not make thee
one of my train, without creating a hundred enemies--to me (but that’s
nothing) and to thee, which were much. Knowest thou not that there is
scarce a gentleman of my train below the state of a peer’s son, and that
I have made, by refusals, malcontents eno’, as it is?--Yet, bold! there
is my learned brother, the Archbishop of York. Knowest thou Latin and
the schools?”

“‘Fore Heaven, my lord,” said the Nevile, bluntly, “I see already I had
best go back to green Westmoreland, for I am as unfit for his grace the
archbishop as I am for my Lord Montagu.”

“Well, then,” said the earl, dryly, “since thou hast not yet station
enough for my train, nor glosing for Northumberland, nor wit and lere
for the archbishop, I suppose, my poor youth, I must e’en make you only
a gentleman about the king! It is not a post so sure of quick rising and
full gipsires as one about myself or my brethren, but it will be less
envied, and is good for thy first essay. How goes the clock? Oh, here is
Nick Alwyn’s new horologe. He tells me that the English will soon rival
the Dutch in these baubles. [Clockwork appears to have been introduced
into England in the reign of Edward III., when three Dutch horologers
were invited over from Delft. They must soon have passed into common
use, for Chaucer thus familiarly speaks of them:--

       “Full sickerer was his crowing in his loge
        Than is a clock or any abbey orloge.”]

The more the pity!--our red-faced yeomen, alas, are fast sinking into
lank-jawed mechanics! We shall find the king in his garden within the
next half-hour. Thou shalt attend me.”

Marmaduke expressed, with more feeling than eloquence, the thanks he
owed for an offer that, he was about to say, exceeded his hopes; but he
had already, since his departure from Westmoreland, acquired sufficient
wit to think twice of his words. And so eagerly, at that time, did the
youth of the nobility contend for the honour of posts about the person
of Warwick, and even of his brothers, and so strong was the belief that
the earl’s power to make or to mar fortune was all-paramount in England,
that even a place in the king’s household was considered an inferior
appointment to that which made Warwick the immediate patron and
protector. This was more especially the case amongst the more haughty
and ancient gentry since the favour shown by Edward to the relations
of his wife, and his own indifference to the rank and birth of his
associates. Warwick had therefore spoken with truth when he expressed
a comparative pity for the youth, whom he could not better provide for
than by a place about the court of his sovereign!

The earl then drew from Marmaduke some account of his early training,
his dependence on his brother, his adventures at the archery-ground, his
misadventure with the robbers, and even his sojourn with Warner,--though
Marmaduke was discreetly silent as to the very existence of Sibyll. The
earl, in the mean while, walked to and fro the chamber with a light,
careless stride, every moment pausing to laugh at the frank simplicity
of his kinsman, or to throw in some shrewd remark, which he cast
purposely in the rough Westmoreland dialect; for no man ever attains to
the popularity that rejoiced or accursed the Earl of Warwick, without a
tendency to broad and familiar humour, without a certain commonplace
of character in its shallower and more every-day properties. This
charm--always great in the great--Warwick possessed to perfection; and
in him--such was his native and unaffected majesty of bearing, and
such the splendour that surrounded his name--it never seemed coarse or
unfamiliar, but “everything he did became him best.” Marmaduke had just
brought his narrative to a conclusion, when, after a slight tap at the
door, which Warwick did not hear, two fair young forms bounded joyously
in, and not seeing the stranger, threw themselves upon Warwick’s breast
with the caressing familiarity of infancy.

“Ah, Father,” said the elder of these two girls, as Warwick’s hand
smoothed her hair fondly, “you promised you would take us in your barge
to see the sports on the river, and now it will be too late.”

“Make your peace with your young cousins here,” said the earl, turning
to Marmaduke; “you will cost them an hour’s joyaunce. This is my eldest
daughter, Isabel; and this soft-eyed, pale-cheeked damozel--too loyal
for a leaf of the red rose--is the Lady Anne.”

The two girls had started from their father’s arms at the first address
to Marmaduke, and their countenances had relapsed from their caressing
and childlike expression into all the stately demureness with which
they had been brought up to regard a stranger. Howbeit, this reserve, to
which he was accustomed, awed Marmaduke less than the alternate gayety
and sadness of the wilder Sibyll, and he addressed them with all the
gallantry to the exercise of which he had been reared, concluding his
compliments with a declaration that he would rather forego the advantage
proffered him by the earl’s favour with the king, than foster one
obnoxious and ungracious memory in damozels so fair and honoured.

A haughty smile flitted for a moment over the proud young face of Isabel
Nevile; but the softer Anne blushed, and drew bashfully behind her
sister.

As yet these girls, born for the highest and fated to the most wretched
fortunes, were in all the bloom of earliest youth; but the difference
between their characters might be already observable in their mien
and countenance. Isabel; of tall and commanding stature, had some
resemblance to her father, in her aquiline features, rich, dark hair,
and the lustrous brilliancy of her eyes; while Anne, less striking, yet
not less lovely, of smaller size and slighter proportions, bore in her
pale, clear face, her dove-like eyes, and her gentle brow an expression
of yielding meekness not unmixed with melancholy, which, conjoined with
an exquisite symmetry of features, could not fail of exciting interest
where her sister commanded admiration. Not a word, however, from either
did Marmaduke abstract in return for his courtesies, nor did either
he or the earl seem to expect it; for the latter, seating himself and
drawing Anne on his knee, while Isabella walked with stately grace
towards the table that bore her father’s warlike accoutrements, and
played, as it were, unconsciously with the black plume on his black
burgonet, said to Nevile,

“Well, thou hast seen enough of the Lancastrian raptrils to make thee
true to the Yorkists. I would I could say as much for the king himself,
who is already crowding the court with that venomous faction, in honour
of Dame Elizabeth Gray, born Mistress Woodville, and now Queen of
England. Ha, my proud Isabel, thou wouldst have better filled the throne
that thy father built!”

And at these words a proud flash broke from the earl’s dark eyes,
betraying even to Marmaduke the secret of perhaps his earliest
alienation from Edward IV. Isabella pouted her rich lip, but said
nothing. “As for thee, Anne,” continued the earl, “it is a pity that
monks cannot marry,--thou wouldst have suited some sober priest better
than a mailed knight. ‘Fore George, I would not ask thee to buckle my
baldrick when the war-steeds were snorting, but I would trust Isabel
with the links of my hauberk.”

“Nay, Father,” said the low, timid voice of Anne, “if thou wert going to
danger, I could be brave in all that could guard thee!”

“Why, that’s my girl! kiss me! Thou hast a look of thy mother now,--so
thou hast! and I will not chide thee the next time I hear thee muttering
soft treason in pity of Henry of Windsor.”

“Is he not to be pitied?--Crown, wife, son, and Earl Warwick’s stout arm
lost--lost!”

“No!” said Isabel, suddenly; “no, sweet sister Anne, and fie on thee for
the words! He lost all, because he had neither the hand of a knight nor
the heart of a man! For the rest--Margaret of Anjou, or her butchers,
beheaded our father’s father.”

“And may God and Saint George forget me, when I forget those gray and
gory hairs!” exclaimed the earl; and putting away the Lady Anne somewhat
roughly, he made a stride across the room, and stood by his hearth. “And
yet Edward, the son of Richard of York, who fell by my father’s side--he
forgets, he forgives! And the minions of Rivers the Lancastrian tread
the heels of Richard of Warwick.”

At this unexpected turn in the conversation, peculiarly unwelcome, as
it may be supposed, to the son of one who had fought on the Lancastrian
side in the very battle referred to, Marmaduke felt somewhat uneasy; and
turning to the Lady Anne, he said, with the gravity of wounded pride, “I
owe more to my lord, your father, than I even wist of,--how much he must
have overlooked to--”

“Not so!” interrupted Warwick, who overheard him,--“not so; thou
wrongest me! Thy father was shocked at those butcheries; thy father
recoiled from that accursed standard; thy father was of a stock
ancient and noble as my own! But, these Woodvilles!--tush! my passion
overmasters me. We will go to the king,--it is time.”

Warwick here rang the hand-bell on his table, and on the entrance of his
attendant gentleman, bade him see that the barge was in readiness; then
beckoning to his kinsman, and with a nod to his daughters, he caught up
his plumed cap, and passed at once into the garden.

“Anne,” said Isabel, when the two girls were alone, “thou hast vexed my
father, and what marvel? If the Lancastrians can be pitied, the Earl of
Warwick must be condemned!”

“Unkind!” said Anne, shedding tears; “I can pity woe and mischance,
without blaming those whose hard duty it might be to achieve them.”

“In good sooth cannot I! Thou wouldst pity and pardon till thou leftst
no distinction between foeman and friend, leife and loathing. Be it
mine, like my great father, to love and to hate!”

“Yet why art thou so attached to the White Rose?” said Anne, stung, if
not to malice, at least to archness. “Thou knowest my father’s nearest
wish was that his eldest daughter might be betrothed to King Edward.
Dost thou not pay good for evil when thou seest no excellence out of the
House of York?”

“Saucy Anne,” answered Isabel, with a half smile, “I am not raught by
thy shafts, for I was a child for the nurses when King Edward sought a
wife for his love. But were I chafed--as I may be vain enough to know
myself--whom should I blame?--Not the king, but the Lancastrian who
witched him!”

She paused a moment, and, looking away, added in a low tone, “Didst
thou hear, sister Anne, if the Duke of Clarence visited my father the
forenoon?”

“Ah, Isabel, Isabel!”

“Ah, sister Anne, sister Anne! Wilt thou know all my secrets ere I know
them myself?”--and Isabel, with something of her father’s playfulness,
put her hands to Anne’s laughing lips.

Meanwhile Warwick, after walking musingly a few moments along the
garden, which was formed by plots of sward, bordered with fruit-trees,
and white rose-trees not yet in blossom, turned to his silent kinsman,
and said, “Forgive me, cousin mine, my mannerless burst against thy
brave father’s faction; but when thou hast been a short while at court,
thou wilt see where the sore is. Certes, I love this king!” Here his
dark face lighted up. “Love him as a king,--ay, and as a son! And
who would not love him; brave as his sword, gallant, and winning, and
gracious as the noonday in summer? Besides, I placed him on his throne;
I honour myself in him!”

The earl’s stature dilated as he spoke the last sentence, and his
hand rested on his dagger hilt. He resumed, with the same daring and
incautious candour that stamped his dauntless, soldier-like nature, “God
hath given me no son. Isabel of Warwick had been a mate for William the
Norman; and my grandson, if heir to his grandsire’s soul, should have
ruled from the throne of England over the realms of Charlemagne! But it
hath pleased Him whom the Christian knight alone bows to without shame,
to order otherwise. So be it. I forgot my just pretensions,--forgot
my blood, and counselled the king to strengthen his throne with the
alliance of Louis XI. He rejected the Princess Bona of Savoy, to marry
widow Elizabeth Gray; I sorrowed for his sake, and forgave the slight to
my counsels. At his prayer I followed the train of his queen, and hushed
the proud hearts of our barons to obeisance. But since then, this Dame
Woodville, whom I queened, if her husband mated, must dispute this
roiaulme with mine and me,--a Nevile, nowadays, must vail his plume to a
Woodville! And not the great barons whom it will suit Edward’s policy
to win from the Lancastrians--not the Exeters and the Somersets--but the
craven varlets and lackeys and dross of the camp--false alike to Henry
and to Edward--are to be fondled into lordships and dandled into power.
Young man, I am speaking hotly--Richard Nevile never lies nor conceals;
but I am speaking to a kinsman, am I not? Thou hearest,--thou wilt not
repeat?”

“Sooner would I pluck forth my tongue by the roots.”

“Enough!” returned the earl, with a pleased smile. “When I come from
France, I will speak more to thee. Meanwhile be courteous to all men,
servile to none. Now to the king.”

So speaking, he shook back his surcoat, drew his cap over his brow,
and passed to the broad stairs, at the foot of which fifty rowers, with
their badges on their shoulders, waited in the huge barge, gilt richly
at prow and stern, and with an awning of silk, wrought with the earl’s
arms and cognizance. As they pushed off, six musicians, placed towards
the helm, began a slow and half Eastern march, which, doubtless, some
crusader of the Temple had brought from the cymbals and trumps of
Palestine.



CHAPTER II. KING EDWARD THE FOURTH.

The Tower of London, more consecrated to associations of gloom and blood
than those of gayety and splendour, was, nevertheless, during the reign
of Edward IV., the seat of a gallant and gorgeous court. That king,
from the first to the last so dear to the people of London, made it his
principal residence when in his metropolis; and its ancient halls and
towers were then the scene of many a brawl and galliard. As Warwick’s
barge now approached its huge walls, rising from the river, there was
much that might either animate or awe, according to the mood of the
spectator. The king’s barge, with many lesser craft reserved for the
use of the courtiers, gay with awnings and streamers and painting and
gilding, lay below the wharfs, not far from the gate of St. Thomas, now
called the Traitor’s Gate. On the walk raised above the battlemented
wall of the inner ward, not only paced the sentries, but there dames and
knights were inhaling the noonday breezes, and the gleam of their rich
dresses of cloth-of-gold glanced upon the eye at frequent intervals from
tower to tower. Over the vast round turret, behind the Traitor’s Gate,
now called “The Bloody Tower,” floated cheerily in the light wind the
royal banner. Near the Lion’s Tower, two or three of the keepers of the
menagerie, in the king’s livery, were leading forth, by a strong chain,
the huge white bear that made one of the boasts of the collection, and
was an especial favourite with the king and his brother Richard. The
sheriffs of London were bound to find this grisly minion his chain and
his cord, when he deigned to amuse himself with bathing or “fishing” in
the river; and several boats, filled with gape-mouthed passengers, lay
near the wharf, to witness the diversions of Bruin. These folks set up
a loud shout of--“A Warwick! a Warwick!” “The stout earl, and God
bless him!” as the gorgeous barge shot towards the fortress. The earl
acknowledged their greeting by vailing his plumed cap; and passing the
keepers with a merry allusion to their care of his own badge, and a
friendly compliment to the grunting bear, he stepped ashore, followed
by his kinsman. Now, however, he paused a moment; and a more thoughtful
shade passed over his countenance, as, glancing his eye carelessly aloft
towards the standard of King Edward, he caught sight of the casement in
the neighbouring tower, of the very room in which the sovereign of his
youth, Henry the Sixth, was a prisoner, almost within hearing of the
revels of his successor; then, with a quick stride, he hurried on
through the vast court, and, passing the White Tower, gained the royal
lodge. Here, in the great hall, he left his companion, amidst a group of
squires and gentlemen, to whom he formally presented the Nevile as his
friend and kinsman, and was ushered by the deputy-chamberlain (with an
apology for the absence of his chief, the Lord Hastings, who had gone
abroad to fly his falcon) into the small garden, where Edward was idling
away the interval between the noon and evening meals,--repasts to which
already the young king inclined with that intemperate zest and ardour
which he carried into all his pleasures, and which finally destroyed the
handsomest person and embruted one of the most vigorous intellects of
the age.

The garden, if bare of flowers, supplied their place by the various
and brilliant-coloured garbs of the living beauties assembled on its
straight walks and smooth sward. Under one of those graceful cloisters,
which were the taste of the day, and had been recently built and gayly
decorated, the earl was stopped in his path by a group of ladies playing
at closheys (ninepins) of ivory; [Narrative of Louis of Bruges, Lord
Grauthuse. Edited by Sir F. Madden, “Archaelogia,” 1836.] and one of
these fair dames, who excelled the rest in her skill, had just bowled
down the central or crowned pin,--the king of the closheys. This lady,
no less a person than Elizabeth, the Queen of England, was then in her
thirty-sixth year,--ten years older than her lord; but the peculiar
fairness and delicacy of her complexion still preserved to her beauty
the aspect and bloom of youth. From a lofty headgear, embroidered with
fleur-de-lis, round which wreathed a light diadem of pearls, her hair,
of the pale yellow considered then the perfection of beauty, flowed so
straight and so shining down her shoulders, almost to the knees, that
it seemed like a mantle of gold. The baudekin stripes (blue and gold) of
her tunic attested her royalty. The blue courtpie of satin was bordered
with ermine, and the sleeves, sitting close to an arm of exquisite
contour, shone with seed pearls. Her features were straight and regular,
yet would have been insipid, but for an expression rather of cunning
than intellect; and the high arch of her eyebrows, with a slight curve
downward of a mouth otherwise beautiful, did not improve the expression,
by an addition of something supercilious and contemptuous, rather than
haughty or majestic.

“My lord of Warwick,” said Elizabeth, pointing to the fallen closhey,
“what would my enemies say if they heard I had toppled down the king?”

“They would content themselves with asking which of your Grace’s
brothers you would place in his stead,” answered the hardy earl, unable
to restrain the sarcasm.

The queen blushed, and glanced round her ladies with an eye which never
looked direct or straight upon its object, but wandered sidelong with
a furtive and stealthy expression, that did much to obtain for her the
popular character of falseness and self-seeking. Her displeasure was yet
more increased by observing the ill-concealed smile which the taunt had
called forth.

“Nay, my lord,” she said, after a short pause, “we value the peace of
our roiaulme too much for so high an ambition. Were we to make a brother
even the prince of the closheys, we should disappoint the hopes of a
Nevile.”

The earl disdained pursuing the war of words, and answering coldly, “The
Neviles are more famous for making ingrates than asking favours. I leave
your Highness to the closheys”--turned away, and strode towards the
king, who, at the opposite end of the garden, was reclining on a bench
beside a lady, in whose ear, to judge by her downcast and blushing
cheek, he was breathing no unwelcome whispers.

“Mort-Dieu!” muttered the earl, who was singularly exempt, himself, from
the amorous follies of the day, and eyed them with so much contempt that
it often obscured his natural downright penetration into character, and
never more than when it led him afterwards to underrate the talents of
Edward IV.,--“Mort-Dieu! if, an hour before the battle of Towton, some
wizard had shown me in his glass this glimpse of the gardens of the
Tower, that giglet for a queen, and that squire of dames for a king, I
had not slain my black destrier (poor Malech!), that I might conquer or
die for Edward Earl of March.”

“But see!” said the lady, looking up from the enamoured and conquering
eyes of the king, “art thou not ashamed, my lord?--the grim earl comes
to chide thee for thy faithlessness to thy queen, whom he loves so
well.”

“Pasque-Dieu! as my cousin Louis of France says or swears,” answered
the king, with an evident petulance in his altered voice, “I would that
Warwick could be only worn with one’s armour! I would as lief try to
kiss through my vizor as hear him talk of glory and Towton, and King
John and poor Edward II., because I am not always in mail. Go! leave
us, sweet bonnibel! we must brave the bear alone!” The lady inclined her
head, drew her hood round her face, and striking into the contrary path
from that in which Warwick was slowly striding, gained the group round
the queen, whose apparent freedom from jealousy, the consequence of
cold affections and prudent calculation, made one principal cause of the
empire she held over the powerful mind, but the indolent temper, of the
gay and facile Edward.

The king rose as Warwick now approached him; and the appearance of these
two eminent persons was in singular contrast. Warwick, though richly and
even gorgeously attired,--nay, with all the care which in that age
was considered the imperative duty a man of station and birth owed to
himself,--held in lofty disdain whatever vagary of custom tended to
cripple the movements or womanize the man. No loose flowing robes, no
shoon half a yard long, no flaunting tawdriness of fringe and aiglet,
characterized the appearance of the baron, who, even in peace, gave his
address a half-martial fashion.

But Edward, who, in common with all the princes of the House of York,
carried dress to a passion, had not only reintroduced many of the most
effeminate modes in vogue under William the Red King, but added to them
whatever could tend to impart an almost oriental character to the old
Norman garb. His gown (a womanly garment which had greatly superseded,
with men of the highest rank, not only the mantle but the surcoat)
flowed to his heels, trimmed with ermine, and broidered with large
flowers of crimson wrought upon cloth-of-gold. Over this he wore a
tippet of ermine, and a collar or necklace of uncut jewels set in
filigree gold; the nether limbs were, it is true, clad in the more manly
fashion of tight-fitting hosen, but the folds of the gown, as the day
was somewhat fresh, were drawn around so as to conceal the only part of
the dress which really betokened the male sex. To add to this unwarlike
attire, Edward’s locks of a rich golden colour, and perfuming the whole
air with odours, flowed not in curls, but straight to his shoulders, and
the cheek of the fairest lady in his court might have seemed less fair
beside the dazzling clearness of a complexion at once radiant with
health and delicate with youth. Yet, in spite of all this effeminacy,
the appearance of Edward IV. was not effeminate. From this it was
preserved, not only by a stature little less commanding than that of
Warwick himself, and of great strength and breadth of shoulder, but also
by features, beautiful indeed, but pre-eminently masculine,--large
and bold in their outline, and evincing by their expression all the
gallantry and daring characteristic of the hottest soldier, next to
Warwick, and without any exception the ablest captain, of the age.

“And welcome,--a merry welcome, dear Warwick, and cousin mine,” said
Edward, as Warwick slightly bent his proud knee to his king; “your
brother, Lord Montagu, has but left us. Would that our court had the
same, joyaunce for you as for him.”

“Dear and honoured my liege,” answered Warwick, his brow smoothing at
once,--for his affectionate though hasty and irritable nature was
rarely proof against the kind voice and winning smile of his young
sovereign,--“could I ever serve you at the court as I can with the
people, you would not complain that John of Montagu was a better
courtier than Richard of Warwick. But each to his calling. I depart
to-morrow for Calais, and thence to King Louis. And, surely, never envoy
or delegate had better chance to be welcome than one empowered to treat
of an alliance that will bestow on a prince deserving, I trust, his
fortunes, the sister of the bravest sovereign in Christian Europe.”

“Now, out on thy flattery, my cousin; though I must needs own I provoked
it by my complaint of thy courtiership. But thou hast learned only half
thy business, good Warwick; and it is well Margaret did not hear thee.
Is not the prince of France more to be envied for winning a fair lady
than having a fortunate soldier for his brother-in-law?”

“My liege,” replied Warwick, smiling, “thou knowest I am a poor judge of
a lady’s fair cheek, though indifferently well skilled as to the valour
of a warrior’s stout arm. Algates, the Lady Margaret is indeed worthy in
her excellent beauties to become the mother of brave men.”

“And that is all we can wring from thy stern lip, man of iron? Well,
that must content us. But to more serious matters.” And the king,
leaning his hand on the earl’s arm, and walking with him slowly to and
fro the terrace, continued: “Knowest thou not, Warwick, that this French
alliance, to which thou hast induced us, displeases sorely our good
traders of London?”

“Mort-Dieu!” returned Warwick, bluntly, “and what business have the
flat-caps with the marriage of a king’s sister? Is it for them to
breathe garlic on the alliances of Bourbons and Plantagenets? Faugh!
You have spoiled them, good my lord king,--you have spoiled them by your
condescensions. Henry IV. staled not his majesty to consultations with
the mayor of his city. Henry V. gave the knighthood of the hath to the
heroes of Agincourt, not to the vendors of cloth and spices.”

“Ah, my poor knights of the Bath!” said Edward, good-humouredly, “wilt
thou never let that sore scar quietly over? Ownest thou not that the men
had their merits?”

“What the merits were, I weet not,” answered the earl,--“unless,
peradventure, their wives were comely and young.”

“Thou wrongest me, Warwick,” said the king, carelessly; “Dame Cook was
awry, Dame Philips a grandmother, Dame Jocelyn had lost her front teeth,
and Dame Waer saw seven ways at once! But thou forgettest, man, the
occasion of those honours,--the eve before Elizabeth was crowned,--and
it was policy to make the city of London have a share in her honours.
As to the rest,” pursued the king, earnestly and with dignity, “I and my
House have owed much to London. When the peers of England, save thee and
thy friends, stood aloof from my cause, London was ever loyal and true.
Thou seest not, my poor Warwick, that these burgesses are growing up
into power by the decline of the orders above them. And if the sword
is the monarch’s appeal for his right, he must look to contented and
honoured industry for his buckler in peace. This is policy,--policy,
Warwick; and Louis XI. will tell thee the same truths, harsh though they
grate in a warrior’s ear.”

The earl bowed his haughty head, and answered shortly, but with a
touching grace, “Be it ever thine, noble king, to rule as it likes thee,
and mine to defend with my blood even what I approve not with my brain!
But if thou doubtest the wisdom of this alliance, it is not too late
yet. Let me dismiss my following, and cross not the seas. Unless thy
heart is with the marriage, the ties I would form are threads and
cobwebs.”

“Nay,” returned Edward, irresolutely: “in these great state matters
thy wit is elder than mine; but men do say the Count of Charolois is a
mighty lord; and the alliance with Burgundy will be more profitable to
staple and mart.”

“Then, in God’s name, so conclude it!” said the earl, hastily, but with
so dark a fire in his eyes that Edward, who was observing him, changed
countenance; “only ask me not, my liege, to advance such a marriage. The
Count of Charolois knows me as his foe--shame were mine did I shun to
say where I love, where I hate. That proud dullard once slighted me when
we met at his father’s court, and the wish next to my heart is to pay
back my affront with my battle-axe. Give thy sister to the heir of
Burgundy, and forgive me if I depart to my castle of Middleham.”

Edward, stung by the sharpness of this reply, was about to answer as
became his majesty of king, when Warwick more deliberately resumed: “Yet
think well; Henry of Windsor is thy prisoner, but his cause lives in
Margaret and his son. There is but one power in Europe that can threaten
thee with aid to the Lancastrians; that power is France. Make Louis thy
friend and ally, and thou givest peace to thy life and thy lineage; make
Louis thy foe, and count on plots and stratagems and treason, uneasy
days and sleepless nights. Already thou hast lost one occasion to secure
that wiliest and most restless of princes, in rejecting the hand of the
Princess Bona. Happily, this loss now can be retrieved. But alliance
with Burgundy is war with France,--war more deadly because Louis is
a man who declares it not; a war carried on by intrigue and bribe, by
spies and minions, till some disaffection ripens the hour when young
Edward of Lancaster shall land on thy coasts, with the Oriflamme and
the Red Rose, with French soldiers and English malcontents. Wouldst thou
look to Burgundy for help?--Burgundy will have enough to guard its own
frontiers from the gripe of Louis the Sleepless. Edward, my king, my
pupil in arms, Edward, my loved, my honoured liege, forgive Richard
Nevile his bluntness, and let not his faults stand in bar of his
counsels.”

“You are right, as you are ever, safeguard of England, and pillar of my
state,” said the king, frankly, and pressing the arm he still held. “Go
to France and settle all as thou wilt.”

Warwick bent low and kissed the hand of his sovereign. “And,” said
he, with a slight, but a sad smile, “when I am gone, my liege will not
repent, will not misthink me, will not listen to my foes, nor suffer
merchant and mayor to sigh him back to the mechanics of Flanders?”

“Warwick, thou deemest ill of thy king’s kingliness.”

“Not of thy kingliness; but that same gracious quality of yielding to
counsel which bows this proud nature to submission often makes me fear
for thy firmness, when thy will is, won through thy heart. And now, good
my liege, forgive me one sentence more. Heaven forefend that I should
stand in the way of thy princely favours. A king’s countenance is a sun
that should shine on all. But bethink thee well, the barons of England
are a stubborn and haughty race; chafe not thy most puissant peers by
too cold a neglect of their past services, and too lavish a largess to
new men.”

“Thou aimest at Elizabeth’s kin,” interrupted Edward, withdrawing his
hand from his minister’s arm, “and I tell thee once for all times, that
I would rather sink again to mine earldom of March, with a subject’s
right to honour where he loves, than wear crown and wield sceptre
without a king’s unquestioned prerogative to ennoble the line and blood
of one he has deemed worthy of his throne. As for the barons, with whose
wrath thou threatenest me, I banish them not. If they go in gloom from
my court, why, let them chafe themselves sleek again.”

“King Edward,” said Warwick, moodily, “tried services merit not this
contempt. It is not as the kith of the queen that I regret to see lands
and honours lavished upon men rooted so newly to the soil that the first
blast of the war-trump will scatter their greenness to the winds; but
what sorrows me is to mark those who have fought against thee preferred
to the stout loyalty that braved block and field for thy cause. Look
round thy court; where are the men of bloody York and victorious
Towton?--unrequited, sullen in their strongholds, begirt with their
yeomen and retainers. Thou standest--thou, the heir of York--almost
alone (save where the Neviles--whom one day thy court will seek also
to disgrace and discard--vex their old comrades in arms by their
defection)--thou standest almost alone among the favourites and minions
of Lancaster. Is there no danger in proving to men that to have served
thee is discredit, to have warred against thee is guerdon and grace?”

“Enough of this, cousin,” replied the king, with an effort which
preserved his firmness. “On this head we cannot agree. Take what else
thou wilt of royalty,--make treaties and contract marriages, establish
peace or proclaim war; but trench not on my sweetest prerogative to give
and to forgive. And now, wilt thou tarry and sup with us? The ladies
grow impatient of a commune that detains from their eyes the stateliest
knight since the Round Table was chopped into fire-wood.”

“No, my liege,” said Warwick, whom flattery of this sort rather angered
than soothed, “I have much yet to prepare. I leave your Highness to
fairer homage and more witching counsels than mine.” So saying, he
kissed the king’s hand, and was retiring, when he remembered his
kinsman, whose humble interests in the midst of more exciting topics
he had hitherto forgotten, and added, “May I crave, since you are so
merciful to the Lancastrians, one grace for my namesake,--a Nevile whose
father repented the side he espoused, a son of Sir Guy of Arsdale?”

“Ah,” said the king, smiling maliciously, “it pleaseth us much to find
that it is easier to the warm heart of our cousin Warwick to preach
sententiaries of sternness to his king than to enforce the same by his
own practice!”

“You misthink me, sire. I ask not that Marmaduke Nevile should supplant
his superiors and elders; I ask not that he should be made baron and
peer; I ask only that, as a young gentleman who hath taken no part
himself in the wars, and whose father repented his error, your Grace
should strengthen your following by an ancient name and a faithful
servant. But I should have remembered me that his name of Nevile would
have procured him a taunt in the place of advancement.”

“Saw man ever so froward a temper?” cried Edward, not without reason.
“Why, Warwick, thou art as shrewish to a jest as a woman to advice. Thy
kinsman’s fortunes shall be my care. Thou sayest thou hast enemies,--I
weet not who they be. But to show what I think of them, I make thy
namesake and client a gentleman of my chamber. When Warwick is false to
Edward, let him think that Warwick’s kinsman wears a dagger within reach
of the king’s heart day and night.”

This speech was made with so noble and touching a kindness of voice and
manner, that the earl, thoroughly subdued, looked at his sovereign with
moistened eyes, and only trusting himself to say,--“Edward, thou art
king, knight, gentleman, and soldier; and I verily trow that I love thee
best when my petulant zeal makes me anger thee most,”--turned away with
evident emotion, and passing the queen and her ladies with a lowlier
homage than that with which he had before greeted them, left the garden.
Edward’s eye followed him musingly. The frank expression of his face
vanished, and with the deep breath of a man who is throwing a weight
from his heart, he muttered,--

“He loves me,--yes; but will suffer no one else to love me! This must
end some day. I am weary of the bondage.” And sauntering towards the
ladies, he listened in silence, but not apparently in displeasure, to
his queen’s sharp sayings on the imperious mood and irritable temper of
the iron-handed builder of his throne.



CHAPTER III. THE ANTECHAMBER.

As Warwick passed the door that led from the garden, he brushed by a
young man, the baudekin stripes of whose vest announced his relationship
to the king, and who, though far less majestic than Edward, possessed
sufficient of family likeness to pass for a very handsome and comely
person; but his countenance wanted the open and fearless expression
which gave that of the king so masculine and heroic a character. The
features were smaller, and less clearly cut, and to a physiognomical
observer there was much that was weak and irresolute in the light blue
eyes and the smiling lips which never closed firmly over the teeth. He
did not wear the long gown then so much in vogue, but his light figure
was displayed to advantage by a vest, fitting it exactly, descending
half-way down the thigh, and trimmed at the border and the collar with
ermine. The sleeves of the doublet were slit, so as to show the white
lawn beneath, and adorned with aiglets and knots of gold.

Over the left arm hung a rich jacket of furs and velvet, something
like that adopted by the modern hussar. His hat, or cap, was high and
tiara-like, with a single white plume, and the ribbon of the Garter
bound his knee. Though the dress of this personage was thus far less
effeminate than Edward’s, the effect of his appearance was infinitely
more so,--partly, perhaps, from a less muscular frame, and partly
from his extreme youth; for George Duke of Clarence was then, though
initiated not only in the gayeties, but all the intrigues of the court,
only in his eighteenth year. Laying his hand, every finger of which
sparkled with jewels, on the earl’s shoulder--“Hold!” said the young
prince, in a whisper, “a word in thy ear, noble Warwick!”

The earl, who, next to Edward, loved Clarence the most of his princely
House, and who always found the latter as docile as the other (when
humour or affection seized him) was intractable, relaxed into a familiar
smile at the duke’s greeting, and suffered the young prince to draw him
aside from the groups of courtiers with whom the chamber was filled, to
the leaning-places (as they were called) of a large mullion window.
In the mean while, as they thus conferred, the courtiers interchanged
looks, and many an eye of fear and hate was directed towards the stately
form of the earl. For these courtiers were composed principally of the
kindred or friends of the queen, and though they dared not openly
evince the malice with which they retorted Warwick’s lofty scorn and
undisguised resentment at their new fortunes, they ceased not to hope
for his speedy humiliation and disgrace, reeking little what storm might
rend the empire, so that it uprooted the giant oak, which still in some
measure shaded their sunlight and checked their growth. True, however,
that amongst these were mingled, though rarely, men of a hardier stamp
and nobler birth,--some few of the veteran friends of the king’s great
father; and these, keeping sternly and loftily aloof from the herd,
regarded Warwick with the same almost reverential and yet affectionate
admiration which he inspired amongst the yeomen, peasants, and
mechanics,--for in that growing but quiet struggle of the burgesses, as
it will often happen in more civilized times, the great Aristocracy and
the Populace were much united in affection, though with very different
objects; and the Middle and Trading Class, with whom the earl’s desire
for French alliances and disdain of commerce had much weakened his
popularity, alone shared not the enthusiasm of their countrymen for the
lion-hearted minister.

Nevertheless, it must here be owned that the rise of Elizabeth’s kindred
introduced a far more intellectual, accomplished, and literary race into
court favour than had for many generations flourished in so uncongenial
a soil: and in this ante-chamber feud, the pride of education and mind
retaliated with juster sarcasm the pride of birth and sinews.

Amongst those opposed to the earl, and fit in all qualities to be the
head of the new movement,--if the expressive modern word be allowed
us,--stood at that moment in the very centre of the chamber Anthony
Woodville, in right of the rich heiress he had married the Lord Scales.
As, when some hostile and formidable foe enters the meads where the
flock grazes, the gazing herd gather slowly round their leader,
so grouped the queen’s faction slowly, and by degrees, round this
accomplished nobleman, at the prolonged sojourn of Warwick.

“Gramercy!” said the Lord Scales, in a somewhat affected intonation
of voice, “the conjunction of the bear and the young lion is a parlous
omen, for the which I could much desire we had a wise astrologer’s
reading.”

“It is said,” observed one of the courtiers, “that the Duke of Clarence
much affects either the lands or the person of the Lady Isabel.”

“A passably fair damozel,” returned Anthony, “though a thought or so
too marked and high in her lineaments, and wholly unlettered, no doubt;
which were a pity, for George of Clarence has some pretty taste in the
arts and poesies. But as Occleve hath it--

    ‘Gold, silver, jewel, cloth, beddyng, array,’

would make gentle George amorous of a worse-featured face than
high-nosed Isabel; ‘strange to spell or rede,’ as I would wager my best
destrier to a tailor’s hobby, the damozel surely is.”

“Notest thou yon gaudy popinjay?” whispered the Lord of St. John to one
of his Towton comrades, as, leaning against the wall, they overheard the
sarcasms of Anthony, and the laugh of the courtiers, who glassed their
faces and moods to his. “Is the time so out of joint that Master Anthony
Woodville can vent his scurrile japes on the heiress of Salisbury and
Warwick in the king’s chamber?”

“And prate of spelling and reading as if they were the cardinal
virtues?” returned his sullen companion. “By my halidame, I have two
fair daughters at home who will lack husbands, I trow, for they can
only spin and be chaste,--two maidenly gifts out of bloom with the White
Rose.”

In the mean while, unwitting, or contemptuous, of the attention they
excited, Warwick and Clarence continued yet more earnestly to confer.

“No, George, no,” said the earl, who, as the descendant of John of
Gaunt, and of kin to the king’s blood, maintained, in private,
a father’s familiarity with the princes of York, though on state
occasions, and when in the hearing of others, he sedulously marked his
deference for their rank--“no, George, calm and steady thy hot mettle,
for thy brother’s and England’s sake. I grieve as much as thou to hear
that the queen does not spare even thee in her froward and unwomanly
peevishness. But there is a glamour in this, believe me, that must melt
away soon or late, and our kingly Edward recover his senses.”

“Glamour!” said Clarence; “thinkest thou, indeed, that her mother,
Jacquetta, has bewitched the king? One word of thy belief in such
spells, spread abroad amongst the people, would soon raise the same
storm that blew Eleanor Cobham from Duke Humphrey’s bed, along London
streets in her penance-shift.”

“Troth,” said the earl, indifferently, “I leave such grave questions as
these to prelate and priest; the glamour I spoke of is that of a fair
face over a wanton heart; and Edward is not so steady a lover that this
should never wear out.”

“It amates me much, noble cousin, that thou leavest the court in this
juncture. The queen’s heart is with Burgundy, the city’s hate is with
France; and when once thou art gone, I fear that the king will be teased
into mating my sister with the Count of Charolois.”

“Ho!” exclaimed Warwick, with an oath so loud that it rung through the
chamber, and startled every ear that heard it. Then, perceiving his
indiscretion, he lowered his tone into a deep and hollow whisper, and
griped the prince’s arm almost fiercely as he spoke.

“Could Edward so dishonour my embassy, so palter and juggle with my
faith, so flout me in the eyes of Christendom, I would--I would--” he
paused, and relaxed his hold of the duke, and added, with an altered
voice--“I would leave his wife and his lemans, and yon things of silk,
whom he makes peers (that is easy) but cannot make men, to guard his
throne from the grandson of Henry V. But thy fears, thy zeal, thy love
for me, dearest prince and cousin, make thee misthink Edward’s kingly
honour and knightly faith. I go with the sure knowledge that by
alliance with France I shut the House of Lancaster from all hope of this
roiaulme.”

“Hadst thou not better, at least, see my sister Margaret? She has a high
spirit, and she thinks thou mightest, at least, woo her assent, and tell
her of the good gifts of her lord to be!”

“Are the daughters of York spoiled to this by the manners and guise of
a court, in which beshrew me if I well know which the woman and whom
the man? Is it not enough to give peace to broad England, root to
her brother’s stem? Is it not enough to wed the son of a king, the
descendant of Charlemagne and Saint Louis? Must I go bonnet in hand and
simper forth the sleek personals of the choice of her kith and House;
swear the bridegroom’s side-locks are as long as King Edward’s, and
that he bows with the grace of Master Anthony Woodville? Tell her this
thyself, gentle Clarence, if thou wilt: all Warwick could say would but
anger her ear, if she be the maid thou bespeakest her.”

The Duke of Clarence hesitated a moment, and then, colouring slightly,
said, “If, then, the daughter’s hand be the gift of her kith alone,
shall I have thy favour when the Lady Isabel--”

“George,” interrupted Warwick, with a fond and paternal smile, “when we
have made England safe, there is nothing the son of Richard of York can
ask of Warwick in vain. Alas!” he added mournfully, “thy father and mine
were united in the same murtherous death, and I think they will smile
down on us from their seats in heaven when a happier generation cements
that bloody union with a marriage bond!”

Without waiting for further parlance, the earl turned suddenly away,
threw his cap on his towering head, and strode right through the centre
of the whispering courtiers, who shrunk, louting low, from his haughty
path, to break into a hubbub of angry exclamations or sarcastic jests
at his unmannerly bearing, as his black plume disappeared in the arch of
the vaulted door.

While such the scene in the interior chambers of the palace, Marmaduke,
with the frank simpleness which belonged to his youth and training, had
already won much favour and popularity, and he was laughing loud with a
knot of young men by the shovel-board when Warwick re-entered. The earl,
though so disliked by the courtiers more immediately about the person
of the king, was still the favourite of the less elevated knights and
gentry who formed the subordinate household and retainers; and with
these, indeed, his manner, so proud and arrogant to his foes and rivals,
relapsed at once into the ease of the manly and idolized chief. He was
pleased to see the way made by his young namesake, and lifting his cap,
as he nodded to the group and leaned his arm upon Marmaduke’s shoulder,
he said, “Thanks, and hearty thanks, to you, knights and gentles, for
your courteous reception of an old friend’s young son. I have our king’s
most gracious permission to see him enrolled one of the court you grace.
Ah, Master Falconer, and how does thy worthy uncle?--braver knight never
trod. What young gentleman is yonder?--a new face and a manly one; by
your favour, present him. The son of a Savile! Sir, on my return, be
not the only Savile who shuns our table of Warwick Court. Master Dacres,
commend me to the lady, your mother; she and I have danced many a
measure together in the old time,--we all live again in our children.
Good den to you, sirs. Marmaduke, follow me to the office,--you lodge
in the palace. You are gentleman to the most gracious and, if Warwick
lives, to the most puissant of Europe’s sovereigns. I shall see Montagu
at home; he shall instruct thee in thy duties, and requite thee for all
discourtesies on the archery-ground.”



BOOK III. IN WHICH THE HISTORY PASSES FROM THE KING’S COURT TO THE
STUDENT’S CELL, AND RELATES THE PERILS THAT BEFELL A PHILOSOPHER FOR
MEDDLING WITH THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD.



CHAPTER I. THE SOLITARY SAGE AND THE SOLITARY MAID.

While such the entrance of Marmaduke Nevile into a court, that if far
less intellectual and refined than those of later days, was yet more
calculated to dazzle the fancy, to sharpen the wit, and to charm the
senses,--for round the throne of Edward IV. chivalry was magnificent,
intrigue restless, and pleasure ever on the wing,--Sibyll had ample
leisure in her solitary home to muse over the incidents that had
preceded the departure of the young guest. Though she had rejected
Marmaduke’s proffered love, his tone, so suddenly altered, his abrupt,
broken words and confusion, his farewell, so soon succeeding his
passionate declaration, could not fail to wound that pride of woman
which never sleeps till modesty is gone. But this made the least cause
of the profound humiliation which bowed down her spirit. The meaning
taunt conveyed in the rhyme of the tymbesteres pierced her to the quick;
the calm, indifferent smile of the stranger, as he regarded her, the
beauty of the dame he attended, woke mingled and contrary feelings, but
those of jealousy were perhaps the keenest: and in the midst of all she
started to ask herself if indeed she had suffered her vain thoughts to
dwell too tenderly upon one from whom the vast inequalities of human
life must divide her evermore. What to her was his indifference?
Nothing,--yet had she given worlds to banish that careless smile from
her remembrance.

Shrinking at last from the tyranny of thoughts till of late unknown, her
eye rested upon the gipsire which Alwyn had sent her by the old servant.
The sight restored to her the holy recollection of her father, the sweet
joy of having ministered to his wants. She put up the little treasure,
intending to devote it all to Warner; and after bathing her heavy eyes,
that no sorrow of hers might afflict the student, she passed with a
listless step into her father’s chamber.

There is, to the quick and mercurial spirits of the young, something of
marvellous and preternatural in that life within life, which the strong
passion of science and genius forms and feeds,--that passion so much
stronger than love, and so much more self-dependent; which asks no
sympathy, leans on no kindred heart; which lives alone in its works and
fancies, like a god amidst his creations.

The philosopher, too, had experienced a great affliction since they met
last. In the pride of his heart he had designed to show Marmaduke the
mystic operations of his model, which had seemed that morning to open
into life; and when the young man was gone, and he made the experiment
alone, alas! he found that new progress but involved him in new
difficulties. He had gained the first steps in the gigantic creation
of modern days, and he was met by the obstacle that baffled so long the
great modern sage. There was the cylinder, there the boiler; yet, work
as he would, the steam failed to keep the cylinder at work. And now,
patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken web, his untiring ardour
was bent upon constructing a new cylinder of other materials. “Strange,”
 he said to himself, “that the heat of the mover aids not the movement;”
 and so, blundering near the truth, he laboured on.

Sibyll, meanwhile, seated herself abstractedly on a heap of fagots piled
in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on the dusty floor
with the point of her tiny slipper. So fresh and fair and young she
seemed, in that murky atmosphere, that strange scene, and beside that
worn man, that it might have seemed to a poet as if the youngest of the
Graces were come to visit Mulciber at his forge.

The man pursued his work, the girl renewed her dreams, the dark evening
hour gradually stealing over both. The silence was unbroken, for the
forge and the model were now at rest, save by the grating of Adam’s
file upon the metal, or by some ejaculation of complacency now and
then vented by the enthusiast. So, apart from the many-noised, gaudy,
babbling world without, even in the midst of that bloody, turbulent, and
semi-barbarous time, went on (the one neglected and unknown, the other
loathed and hated) the two movers of the ALL that continues the airy
life of the Beautiful from age to age,--the Woman’s dreaming Fancy and
the Man’s active Genius.



CHAPTER II. MASTER ADAM WARNER GROWS A MISER, AND BEHAVES SHAMEFULLY.

For two or three days nothing disturbed the outward monotony of the
recluse’s household. Apparently all had settled back as before the
advent of the young cavalier. But Sibyll’s voice was not heard singing,
as of old, when she passed the stairs to her father’s room. She sat with
him in his work no less frequently and regularly than before; but
her childish spirits no longer broke forth in idle talk or petulant
movements, vexing the good man from his absorption and his toils.
The little cares and anxieties, which had formerly made up so much of
Sibyll’s day by forethought of provision for the morrow, were suspended;
for the money transmitted to her by Alwyn in return for the emblazoned
manuscripts was sufficient to supply their modest wants for months to
come. Adam, more and more engrossed in his labours, did not appear to
perceive the daintier plenty of his board, nor the purchase of some
small comforts unknown for years. He only said one morning, “It is
strange, girl, that as that gathers in life (and he pointed to the
model), it seems already to provide, to my fantasy, the luxuries it will
one day give to us all in truth. Methought my very bed last night seemed
wondrous easy, and the coverings were warmer, for I woke not with the
cold.”

“Ah,” thought the sweet daughter, smiling through moist eyes, “while
my cares can smooth thy barren path through life, why should I cark and
pine?”

Their solitude was now occasionally broken in the evenings by the visits
of Nicholas Alwyn. The young goldsmith was himself not ignorant of the
simpler mathematics; he had some talent for invention, and took pleasure
in the construction of horologes, though, properly speaking, not a
part of his trade. His excuse for his visits was the wish to profit by
Warner’s mechanical knowledge; but the student was so rapt in his
own pursuits, that he gave but little instruction to his visitor.
Nevertheless Alwyn was satisfied, for he saw Sibyll. He saw her in the
most attractive phase of her character,--the loving, patient, devoted
daughter; and the view of her household virtues affected more and more
his honest English heart. But, ever awkward and embarrassed, he gave
no vent to his feelings. To Sibyll he spoke little, and with formal
constraint; and the girl, unconscious of her conquest, was little less
indifferent to his visits than her abstracted father.

But all at once Adam woke to a sense of the change that had taken place;
all at once he caught scent of gold, for his works were brought to a
pause for want of some finer and more costly materials than the coins
in his own possession (the remnant of Marmaduke’s gift) enabled him to
purchase. He had stolen out at dusk, unknown to Sibyll, and lavished
the whole upon the model; but in vain! The model in itself was, indeed,
completed; his invention had mastered the difficulty that it had
encountered. But Adam had complicated the contrivance by adding to it
experimental proofs of the agency it was intended to exercise. It was
necessary in that age, if he were to convince others, to show more
than the principle of his engine,--he must show also something of its
effects; turn a mill without wind or water, or set in motion some mimic
vehicle without other force than that the contrivance itself supplied.
And here, at every step, new obstacles arose. It was the misfortune
to science in those days, not only that all books and mathematical
instruments were enormously dear, but that the students, still
struggling into light, through the glorious delusions of alchemy and
mysticism, imagined that, even in simple practical operations, there
were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and certain precious stones. A link
in the process upon which Adam was engaged failed him; his ingenuity was
baffled, his work stood still; and in poring again and again over the
learned manuscripts--alas! now lost--in which certain German doctors
had sought to explain the pregnant hints of Roger Bacon, he found
it inculcated that the axle of a certain wheel must be composed of a
diamond. Now, in truth, it so happened that Adam’s contrivance, which
(even without the appliances which were added in illustration of the
theory) was infinitely more complicated than modern research has found
necessary, did not even require the wheel in question, much less the
absent diamond; it happened, also, that his understanding, which, though
so obtuse in common life, was in these matters astonishingly clear,
could not trace any mathematical operations by which the diamond axle
would in the least correct the difficulty that had suddenly started up;
and yet the accursed diamond began to haunt him,--the German authority
was so positive on the point, and that authority had in many respects
been accurate. Nor was this all,--the diamond was to be no vulgar
diamond; it was to be endowed, by talismanic skill, with certain
properties and virtues; it was to be for a certain number of hours
exposed to the rays of the full moon; it was to be washed in a primitive
and wondrous elixir, the making of which consumed no little of the
finest gold. This diamond was to be to the machine what the soul is to
the body,--a glorious, all-pervading, mysterious principle of activity
and life. Such were the dreams that obscured the cradle of infant
science! And Adam, with all his reasoning powers, big lore in the hard
truths of mathematics, was but one of the giant children of the dawn.
The magnificent phrases and solemn promises of the mystic Germans got
firm hold of his fancy. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the diamond,
basking in the silence of the full moon, sparkled before his eyes.
Meanwhile all was at a stand. In the very last steps of his discovery he
was arrested. Then suddenly looking round for vulgar moneys to purchase
the precious gem, and the materials for the soluble elixir, he saw that
MONEY had been at work around him,--that he had been sleeping softly
and faring sumptuously. He was seized with a divine rage. How had Sibyll
dared to secrete from him this hoard; how presumed to waste upon
the base body what might have so profited the eternal mind? In his
relentless ardour, in his sublime devotion and loyalty to his abstract
idea, there was a devouring cruelty, of which this meek and gentle
scholar was wholly unconscious. The grim iron model, like a Moloch,
ate up all things,--health, life, love; and its jaws now opened for
his child. He rose from his bed,--it was daybreak,--he threw on his
dressing-robe, he strode into his daughter’s room; the gray twilight
came through the comfortless, curtainless casement, deep sunk into the
wall. Adam did not pause to notice that the poor child, though she had
provoked his anger by refitting his dismal chamber, had spent nothing in
giving a less rugged frown to her own.

The scanty worm-worn furniture, the wretched pallet, the poor attire
folded decently beside,--nothing save that inexpressible purity and
cleanliness which, in the lowliest hovel, a pure and maiden mind gathers
round it; nothing to distinguish the room of her whose childhood had
passed in courts from the but of the meanest daughter of drudgery and
toil! No,--he who had lavished the fortunes of his father and big child
into the grave of his idea--no--he saw nothing of this self-forgetful
penury--the diamond danced before him! He approached the bed; and oh!
the contrast of that dreary room and peasant pallet to the delicate,
pure, enchanting loveliness of the sleeping inmate. The scanty covering
left partially exposed the snow-white neck and rounded shoulder; the
face was pillowed upon the arm, in an infantine grace; the face was
slightly flushed, and the fresh red lips parted into a smile,--for in
her sleep the virgin dreamed,--a happy dream! It was a sight to have
touched a father’s heart, to have stopped his footstep, and hushed his
breath into prayer. And call not Adam hard--unnatural--that he was not
then, as men far more harsh than he--for the father at that moment was
not in his breast, the human man was gone--he himself, like his model,
was a machine of iron!--his life was his one idea!

“Wake, child, wake!” he said, in a loud but hollow voice. “Where is the
gold thou hast hidden from me? Wake! confess!”

Roused from her gracious dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw
the eager, darkened face of her father. Its expression was peculiar
and undefinable, for it was not threatening, angry, stern; there was a
vacancy in the eyes, a strain in the features, and yet a wild, intense
animation lighting and pervading all,--it was as the face of one walking
in his sleep, and, at the first confusion of waking, Sibyll thought
indeed that such was her father’s state. But the impatience with which
he shook the arm he grasped, and repeated, as he opened convulsively
his other hand, “The gold, Sibyll, the gold! Why didst thou hide it
from me?” speedily convinced her that her father’s mind was under the
influence of the prevailing malady that made all its weakness and all
its strength.

“My poor father!” she said pityingly, “wilt thou not leave thyself the
means whereby to keep strength and health for thine high hopes? Ah,
Father, thy Sibyll only hoarded her poor gains for thee!”

“The gold!” said Adam, mechanically, but in a softer voice,--“all--all
thou hast! How didst thou get it,--how?”

“By the labours of these hands. Ah, do not frown on me!”

“Thou--the child of knightly fathers--thou labour!” said Adam, an
instinct of his former state of gentle-born and high-hearted youth
flashing from his eyes. “It was wrong in thee!”

“Dost thou not labour too?”

“Ay, but for the world. Well, the gold!”

Sibyll rose, and modestly throwing over her form the old mantle which
lay on the pallet, passed to a corner of the room, and opening a chest,
took from it the gipsire, and held it out to her father.

“If it please thee, dear and honoured sir, so be it; and Heaven prosper
it in thy hands!”

Before Adam’s clutch could close on the gipsire, a rude hand was laid
on his shoulder, the gipsire was snatched from Sibyll, and the gaunt,
half-clad form of old Madge interposed between the two.

“Eh, sir!” she said, in her shrill, cracked tone, “I thought when I
heard your door open, and your step hurrying down, you were after no
good deeds. Fie, master, fie! I have clung to you when all reviled, and
when starvation within and foul words without made all my hire; for I
ever thought you a good and mild man, though little better than stark
wode. But, augh! to rob your child thus, to leave her to starve and
pine! We old folks are used to it. Look round, look round! I remember
this chamber, when ye first came to your father’s hall. Saints of
heaven! There stood the brave bed all rustling with damask of silk; on
those stone walls once hung fine arras of the Flemings,--a marriage gift
to my lady from Queen Margaret, and a mighty show to see, and good for
the soul’s comforts, with Bible stories wrought on it. Eh, sir! don’t
you call to mind your namesake, Master Adam, in his brave scarlet hosen,
and Madam Eve, in her bonny blue kirtle and laced courtpie? and now--now
look round, I say, and see what you have brought your child to!”

“Hush! hush! Madge, bush!” cried Sibyll, while Adam gazed in evident
perturbation and awakening shame at the intruder, turning his eyes round
the room as she spoke, and heaving from time to time short, deep sighs.

“But I will not hush,” pursued the old woman; “I will say my say, for
I love ye both, and I loved my poor mistress who is dead and gone. Ah,
sir, groan! it does you good. And now when this sweet damsel is growing
up, now when you should think of saving a marriage dower for her (for no
marriage where no pot boils), do you rend from her the little that she
has drudged to gain!--She! Oh, out on your heart! And for what,--for
what, sir? For the neighbours to set fire to your father’s house, and
the little ones to--”

“Forbear, woman!” cried Adam, in a voice of thunder; “forbear! Heavens!”
 And he waved his hand as he spoke, with so unexpected a majesty that
Madge was awed into sudden silence, and, darting a look of compassion at
Sibyll, she hobbled from the room. Adam stood motionless an instant;
but when he felt his child’s soft arms round his neck, when he heard
her voice struggling against tears, praying him not to heed the foolish
words of the old servant,--to take--to take all, that it would be easy
to gain more,--the ice of his philosophy melted at once; the man broke
forth, and, clasping Sibyll to his heart, and kissing her cheek, her
lips, her hands, he faltered out, “No! no! forgive me! Forgive thy cruel
father! Much thought has maddened me, I think,--it has indeed! Poor
child, poor Sibyll,” and he stroked her cheek gently, and with a
movement of pathetic pity--“poor child, thou art pale, and so slight and
delicate! And this chamber--and thy loneliness--and--ah! my life hath
been a curse to thee, yet I meant to bequeath it a boon to all!

“Father, dear father, speak not thus. You break my heart. Here, here,
take the gold--or rather, for thou must not venture out to insult again,
let me purchase with it what thou needest. Tell me, trust me--”

“No!” exclaimed Adam, with that hollow energy by which a man resolves
to impose restraint on himself; “I will not, for all that science ever
achieved,--I will not lay this shame on my soul! Spend this gold on
thyself, trim this room, buy thee raiment,--all that thou needest,--I
order, I command it! And hark thee, if thou gettest more, hide it from
me, hide it well; men’s desires are foul tempters! I never knew, in
following wisdom, that I had a vice. I wake and find myself a miser and
a robber!”

And with these words he fled from the girl’s chamber, gained his own,
and locked the door.



CHAPTER III. A STRANGE VISITOR.--ALL AGES OF THE WORLD BREED
WORLD-BETTERS.

Sibyll, whose soft heart bled for her father, and who now reproached
herself for having concealed from him her little hoard, began hastily to
dress that she might seek him out, and soothe the painful feelings
which the honest rudeness of Madge had aroused. But before her task was
concluded, there pealed a loud knock at the outer door. She heard the
old housekeeper’s quivering voice responding to a loud clear tone; and
presently Madge herself ascended the stairs to Warner’s room, followed
by a man whom Sibyll instantly recognized--for he was not one easily to
be forgotten--as their protector from the assault of the mob. She drew
back hastily as he passed her door, and in some wonder and alarm
awaited the descent of Madge. That venerable personage having with some
difficulty induced her master to open his door and admit the stranger,
came straight into her young lady’s chamber. “Cheer up, cheer up,
sweetheart,” said the old woman; “I think better days will shine soon;
for the honest man I have admitted says he is but come to tell Master
Warner something that will redound much to his profit. Oh, he is a
wonderful fellow, this same Robin! You saw how he turned the cullions
from burning the old house!”

“What! you know this man, Madge! What is he, and who?”

Madge looked puzzled. “That is more than I can say, sweet mistress. But
though he has been but some weeks in the neighbourhood, they all hold
him in high count and esteem. For why--it is said he is a rich man and a
kind one. He does a world of good to the poor.”

While Sibyll listened to such explanations as Madge could give her, the
stranger, who had carefully closed the door of the student’s chamber,
after regarding Adam for a moment with silent but keen scrutiny, thus
began,--

“When last we met, Adam Warner, it was with satchells on our backs. Look
well at me!”

“Troth,” answered Adam, languidly, for he was still under the deep
dejection that had followed the scene with Sibyll, “I cannot call you to
mind, nor seems it veritable that our schooldays passed together,
seeing that my hair is gray and men call me old; but thou art in all the
lustihood of this human life.”

“Nathless,” returned the stranger, “there are but two years or so
between thine age and mine. When thou wert poring over the crabbed text,
and pattering Latin by the ell, dost thou not remember a lack-grace
good-for-naught, Robert Hilyard, who was always setting the school in
an uproar, and was finally outlawed from that boy-world, as he hath been
since from the man’s world, for inciting the weak to resist the strong?”

“Ah,” exclaimed Adam, with a gleam of something like joy on his face,
“art thou indeed that riotous, brawling, fighting, frank-hearted, bold
fellow, Robert Hilyard? Ha! ha!--those were merry days! I have known
none like them--” The old schoolfellows shook hands heartily.

“The world has not fared well with thee in person or pouch, I fear me,
poor Adam,” said Hilyard; “thou canst scarcely have passed thy fiftieth
year, and yet thy learned studies have given thee the weight of sixty;
while I, though ever in toil and bustle, often wanting a meal, and even
fearing the halter, am strong and hearty as when I shot my first fallow
buck in the king’s forest, and kissed the forester’s pretty daughter.
Yet, methinks, Adam, if what I hear of thy tasks be true, thou and I
have each been working for one end; thou to make the world other than it
is, and I to--”

“What! hast thou, too, taken nourishment from the bitter milk of
Philosophy,--thou, fighting Rob?”

“I know not whether it be called philosophy, but marry, Edward of York
would call it rebellion; they are much the same, for both war against
rules established!” returned Hilyard, with more depth of thought than
his careless manner seemed to promise. He paused, and laying his broad
brown hand on Warner’s shoulder, resumed, “Thou art poor, Adam!”

“Very poor,--very, very!”

“Does thy philosophy disdain gold?”

“What can philosophy achieve without it? She is a hungry dragon, and her
very food is gold!”

“Wilt thou brave some danger--thou went ever a fearless boy when thy
blood was up, though so meek and gentle--wilt thou brave some danger for
large reward?”

“My life braves the scorn of men, the pinchings of famine, and, it may
be, the stake and the fagot. Soldiers brave not the dangers that are
braved by a wise man in an unwise age!”

“Gramercy! thou hast a hero’s calm aspect while thou speakest, and thy
words move me! Listen! Thou wert wont, when Henry of Windsor was King
of England, to visit and confer with him on learned matters. He is now
a captive in the Tower; but his jailers permit him still to receive the
visits of pious monks and harmless scholars. I ask thee to pay him such
a visit, and for this office I am empowered, by richer men than myself,
to award thee the guerdon of twenty broad pieces of gold.”

“Twenty!--A mine! a Tmolus!” exclaimed Adam, in uncontrollable glee.
“Twenty! O true friend, then my work will be born at last!”

“But hear me further, Adam, for I will not deceive thee; the visit hath
its peril! Thou must first see if the mind of King Henry, for king he
is, though the usurper wear his holy crown, be clear and healthful. Thou
knowest he is subject to dark moods,--suspension of man’s reason; and if
he be, as his friends hope, sane and right-judging, thou wilt give him
certain papers, which, after his hand has signed them, thou wilt bring
back to me. If in this thou succeedest, know that thou mayst restore the
royalty of Lancaster to the purple and the throne; that thou wilt have
princes and earls for favourers and protectors to thy learned life; that
thy fortunes and fame are made! Fail, be discovered,--and Edward of York
never spares!--thy guerdon will be the nearest tree and the strongest
rope!”

“Robert,” said Adam, who had listened to this address with unusual
attention, “thou dealest with me plainly, and as man should deal with
man. I know little of stratagem and polity, wars and kings; and save
that King Henry, though passing ignorant in the mathematics, and more
given to alchemists than to solid seekers after truth, was once or twice
gracious to me, I could have no choice, in these four walls, between an
Edward and a Henry on the throne. But I have a king whose throne is
in mine own breast, and, alack, it taxeth me heavily, and with sore
burdens.”

“I comprehend,” said the visitor, glancing round the room,--“I
comprehend: thou wantest money for thy books and instruments, and thy
melancholic passion is thy sovereign. Thou wilt incur the risk?”

“I will,” said Adam. “I would rather seek in the lion’s den for what I
lack than do what I well-nigh did this day.”

“What crime was that, poor scholar?” said Robin, smiling.

“My child worked for her bread and my luxuries--I would have robbed her,
old schoolfellow. Ha, ha! what is cord and gibbet to one so tempted?”

A tear stood in the bright gray eyes of the bluff visitor. “Ah, Adam,”
 he said sadly, “only by the candle held in the skeleton hand of Poverty
can man read his own dark heart. But thou, Workman of Knowledge,
hast the same interest as the poor who dig and delve. Though strange
circumstance hath made me the servant and emissary of Margaret, think
not that I am but the varlet of the great.” Hilyard paused a moment, and
resumed,--

“Thou knowest, peradventure, that my race dates from an elder date than
these Norman nobles, who boast their robber-fathers. From the
renowned Saxon Thane, who, free of hand and of cheer, won the name of
Hildegardis, [Hildegardis, namely, old German, a person of noble or
generous disposition. Wotton’s “Baronetage,” art. Hilyard, or Hildyard,
of Pattrington.] our family took its rise. But under these Norman barons
we sank with the nation to which we belonged. Still were we called
gentlemen, and still were dubbed knights. But as I grew up to man’s
estate, I felt myself more Saxon than gentleman, and, as one of a
subject and vassal race, I was a son of the Saxon people. My father,
like thee, was a man of thought and bookcraft. I dare own to thee
that he was a Lollard; and with the religion of those bold foes to
priest-vice, goes a spirit that asks why the people should be evermore
the spoil and prey of lords and kings. Early in my youth, my father,
fearing rack and fagot in England, sought refuge in the Hans town
of Lubeck. There I learned grave truths,--how liberty can be won and
guarded. Later in life I saw the republics of Italy, and I asked why
they were so glorious in all the arts and craft of civil life, while the
braver men of France and England seemed as savages by the side of the
Florentine burgess, nay, of the Lombard vine-dresser. I saw that, even
when those republics fell a victim to some tyrant or podesta, their men
still preserved rights and uttered thoughts which left them more free
and more great than the Commons of England after all their boasted wars.
I came back to my native land and settled in the North, as my franklin
ancestry before me. The broad lands of my forefathers had devolved on
the elder line, and gave a knight’s fee to Sir Robert Hilyard, who fell
afterwards at Towton for the Lancastrians. But I had won gold in the
far countree, and I took farm and homestead near Lord Warwick’s tower of
Middleham. The feud between Lancaster and York broke forth; Earl Warwick
summoned his retainers, myself amongst them, since I lived upon his
land; I sought the great earl, and I told him boldly--him whom the
Commons deemed a friend, and a foe to all malfaisance and abuse--I told
him that the war he asked me to join seemed to me but a war of ambitious
lords, and that I saw not how the Commons were to be bettered, let who
would be king. The earl listened and deigned to reason; and when he saw
I was not convinced, he left me to my will; for he is a noble chief,
and I admired even his angry pride, when he said, ‘Let no man fight
for Warwick whose heart beats not in his cause.’ I lived afterwards to
discharge my debt to the proud earl, and show him how even the lion
may be meshed, and how even the mouse may gnaw the net. But to my own
tragedy. So I quitted those parts, for I feared my own resolution near
so great a man; I made a new home not far from the city of York. So,
Adam, when all the land around bristled with pike and gisarme, and while
my own cousin and namesake, the head of my House, was winning laurels
and wasting blood--I, thy quarrelsome, fighting friend--lived at home in
peace with my wife and child (for I was now married, and wife and child
were dear to me), and tilled my lands. But in peace I was active and
astir, for my words inflamed the bosoms of labourers and peasants, and
many of them, benighted as they were, thought with me. One day--I was
absent from home, selling my grain in the marts of York--one day there
entered the village a young captain, a boy-chief, Edward Earl of March,
beating for recruits. Dost thou heed me, Adam? Well, man--well, the
peasants stood aloof from tromp and banner, and they answered, to all
the talk of hire and fame, ‘Robin Hilyard tells us we have nothing to
gain but blows,--leave us to hew and to delve.’ Oh, Adam, this boy, this
chief, the Earl of March, now crowned King Edward, made but one reply,
‘This Robin Hilyard must be a wise man,--show me his house.’ They
pointed out the ricks, the barns, the homestead, and in five minutes
all--all were in flames. ‘Tell the hilding, when he returns, that thus
Edward of March, fair to friends and terrible to foes, rewards the
coward who disaffects the men of Yorkshire to their chief.’ And by the
blazing rafters, and the pale faces of the silent crowd, he rode on his
way to battle and the throne!”

Hilyard paused, and the anguish of his countenance was terrible to
behold.

“I returned to find a heap of ashes; I returned to find my wife a
maniac; I returned to find my child--my boy--great God!--he had run to
hide himself, in terror at the torches and the grim men; they had failed
to discover him, till, too late, his shrieks, amidst the crashing walls,
burst on his mother’s ear,--and the scorched, mangled, lifeless corpse
lay on that mother’s bosom!”

Adam rose; his figure was transformed. Not the stooping student, but
the knight-descended man, seemed to tower in the murky chamber; his hand
felt at his side, as for a sword; he stifled a curse, and Hilyard, in
that suppressed low voice which evinces a strong mind in deep emotion,
continued his tale.

“Blessed be the Divine Intercessor, the mother of the dead died too!
Behold me, a lonely, ruined, wifeless, childless wretch! I made all the
world my foe! The old love of liberty (alone left me) became a crime;
I plunged into the gloom of the forest, a robber-chief, sparing--no,
never-never--never one York captain, one spurred knight, one belted
lord! But the poor, my Saxon countrymen, they had suffered, and were
safe!

“One dark twilight--thou hast heard the tale, every village minstrel
sets it to his viol--a majestic woman, a hunted fugitive, crossed my
path; she led a boy in her hand, a year or so younger than my murdered
child. ‘Friend!’ said the woman, fearlessly, ‘save the son of your king;
I am Margaret, Queen of England!’ I saved them both. From that hour the
robber-chief, the Lollard’s son, became a queen’s friend. Here opened,
at least, vengeance against the fell destroyer. Now see you why I seek
you, why tempt you into danger? Pause, if you will, for my passion heats
my blood,--and all the kings since Saul, it may be, are not worth one
scholar’s life! And yet,” continued Hilyard, regaining his ordinary
calm tone, “and yet, it seemeth to me, as I said at first, that all
who labour have in this a common cause and interest with the poor. This
woman-king, though bloody man, with his wine-cups and his harlots, this
usurping York--his very existence flaunts the life of the sons of toil.
In civil war and in broil, in strife that needs the arms of the people,
the people shall get their own.”

“I will go,” said Adam, and he advanced to the door. Hilyard caught his
arm. “Why, friend, thou hast not even the documents, and how wouldst
thou get access to the prison? Listen to me; or,” added the conspirator,
observing poor Adam’s abstracted air, “or let me rather speak a word
to thy fair daughter; women have ready wit, and are the pioneers to
the advance of men! Adam, Adam! thou art dreaming!”--He shook the
philosopher’s arm roughly.

“I heed you,” said Warner, meekly.

“The first thing required,” renewed Hilyard, “is a permit to see King
Henry. This is obtained either from the Lord Worcester, governor of
the Tower, a cruel man, who may deny it, or the Lord Hastings, Edward’s
chamberlain, a humane and gentle one, who will readily grant it. Let not
thy daughter know why thou wouldst visit Henry; let her suppose it is
solely to make report of his health to Margaret; let her not know there
is scheming or danger,--so, at least, her ignorance will secure her
safety. But let her go to the lord chamberlain, and obtain the order
for a learned clerk to visit the learned prisoner--to--ha! well thought
of--this strange machine is, doubtless, the invention of which thy
neighbours speak; this shall make thy excuse; thou wouldst divert the
prisoner with thy mechanical--comprehendest thou, Adam?”

“Ah, King Henry will see the model, and when he is on the throne--”

“He will protect the scholar!” interrupted Hilyard. “Good! good! Wait
here; I will confer with thy daughter.” He gently pushed aside Adam,
opened the door, and on descending the stairs, found Sibyll by the large
casement where she had stood with Marmaduke, and heard the rude stave of
the tymbesteres.

The anxiety the visit of Hilyard had occasioned her was at once allayed,
when he informed her that he had been her father’s schoolmate, and
desired to become his friend. And when he drew a moving picture of the
exiled condition of Margaret and the young prince, and their natural
desire to learn tidings of the health of the deposed king, her gentle
heart, forgetting the haughty insolence with which her royal mistress
had often wounded and chilled her childhood, felt all the generous
and compassionate sympathy the conspirator desired to awaken. “The
occasion,” added Hilyard, “for learning the poor captive’s state now
offers! He hath heard of your father’s labours; he desires to learn
their nature from his own lips. He is allowed to receive, by an order
from King Edward’s chamberlain, the visits of those scholars in
whose converse he was ever wont to delight. Wilt thou so far aid the
charitable work as to seek the Lord Hastings, and crave the necessary
license? Thou seest that thy father has wayward and abstract moods; he
might forget that Henry of Windsor is no longer king, and might give him
that title in speaking to Lord Hastings,--a slip of the tongue which the
law styles treason.”

“Certes,” said Sibyll, quickly, “if my father would seek the poor
captive, I will be his messenger to my Lord Hastings. But oh, sir, as
thou hast known my father’s boyhood, and as thou hopest for mercy in the
last day, tempt to no danger one so guileless!”

Hilyard winced as he interrupted her hastily,

“There is no danger if thou wilt obtain the license. I will say more,--a
reward awaits him, that will not only banish his poverty but save his
life.”

“His life!”

“Ay! seest thou not, fair mistress, that Adam Warner is dying, not of
the body’s hunger, but of the soul’s? He craveth gold, that his toils
may reap their guerdon. If that gold be denied, his toils will fret him
to the grave!”

“Alas! alas! it is true.”

“That gold he shall honourably win! Nor is this all. Thou wilt see the
Lord Hastings: he is less learned, perhaps, than Worcester, less dainty
in accomplishments and gifts than Anthony Woodville, but his mind is
profound and vast; all men praise him save the queen’s kin. He loves
scholars; he is mild to distress; he laughs at the superstitions of the
vulgar. Thou wilt see the Lord Hastings, and thou mayst interest him in
thy father’s genius and his fate!”

“There is frankness in thy voice, and I will trust thee,” answered
Sibyll. “When shall I seek this lord?”

“This day, if thou wilt. He lodges at the Tower, and gives access, it is
said, to all who need his offices, or seek succour from his power.”

“This day, then, be it!” answered Sibyll, calmly.

Hilyard gazed at her countenance, rendered so noble in its youthful
resignation, in its soft firmness of expression, and muttering, “Heaven
prosper thee, maiden; we shall meet tomorrow,” descended the stairs, and
quitted the house.

His heart smote him when he was in the street. “If evil should come to
this meek scholar, to that poor child’s father, it would be a sore sin
to my soul. But no; I will not think it. The saints will not suffer this
bloody Edward to triumph long; and in this vast chessboard of vengeance
and great ends, we must move men to and fro, and harden our natures to
the hazard of the game.”

Sibyll sought her father; his mind had flown back to the model. He was
already living in the life that the promised gold would give to the dumb
thought. True that all the ingenious additions to the engine--additions
that were to convince the reason and startle the fancy--were not yet
complete (for want, of course, of the diamond bathed in moonbeams);
but still there was enough in the inventions already achieved to excite
curiosity and obtain encouragement. So, with care and diligence and
sanguine hope the philosopher prepared the grim model for exhibition to
a man who had worn a crown, and might wear again. But with that innocent
and sad cunning which is so common with enthusiasts of one idea, the
sublime dwellers of the narrow border between madness and inspiration,
Adam, amidst his excitement, contrived to conceal from his daughter all
glimpse of the danger he ran, of the correspondence of which he was to
be the medium,--or rather, may we think that he had forgotten both! Not
the stout Warwick himself, in the roar of battle, thought so little of
peril to life and limb as that gentle student, in the reveries of his
lonely closet; and therefore, all unsuspicious, and seeing but diversion
to Adam’s recent gloom of despair, an opening to all his bright
prospects, Sibyll attired herself in her holiday garments, drew her
wimple closely round her face, and summoning Madge to attend her, bent
her way to the Tower. Near York House, within view of the Sanctuary and
the Palace of Westminster, they took a boat, and arrived at the stairs
of the Tower.



CHAPTER IV. LORD HASTINGS.

William Lord Hastings was one of the most remarkable men of the age.
Philip de Comines bears testimony to his high repute for wisdom and
virtue. Born the son of a knight of ancient lineage but scanty lands,
he had risen, while yet in the prime of life, to a rank and an influence
second, perhaps, only to the House of Nevile. Like Lord Montagu, he
united in happy combination the talents of a soldier and a courtier. But
as a statesman, a schemer, a thinker, Montagu, with all his craft, was
inferior to Hastings. In this, the latter had but two equals,--namely,
George, the youngest of the Nevile brothers, Archbishop of York; and
a boy, whose intellect was not yet fully developed, but in whom was
already apparent to the observant the dawn of a restless, fearless,
calculating, and subtle genius. That boy, whom the philosophers of
Utrecht had taught to reason, whom the lessons of Warwick had trained to
arms, was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, famous even now for his skill in
the tilt-yard and his ingenuity in the rhetoric of the schools.

The manners of Lord Hastings had contributed to his fortunes. Despite
the newness of his honours, even the haughtiest of the ancient nobles
bore him no grudge, for his demeanour was at once modest and manly. He
was peculiarly simple and unostentatious in his habits, and possessed
that nameless charm which makes men popular with the lowly and welcome
to the great. [On Edward’s accession so highly were the services of
Hastings appreciated by the party, that not only the king, but many of
the nobility, contributed to render his wealth equal to his new station,
by grants of lands and moneys. Several years afterwards, when he
went with Edward into France, no less than two lords, nine knights,
fifty-eight squires, and twenty gentlemen joined his train.--Dugdale:
Baronage, p. 583. Sharon Turner: History of England, vol. iii. p. 380.]
But in that day a certain mixture of vice was necessary to success; and
Hastings wounded no self-love by the assumption of unfashionable purism.
He was regarded with small favour by the queen, who knew him as the
companion of Edward in his pleasures, and at a later period accused him
of enticing her faithless lord into unworthy affections. And certain it
is, that he was foremost amongst the courtiers in those adventures which
we call the excesses of gayety and folly, though too often leading to
Solomon’s wisdom and his sadness. But profligacy with Hastings had the
excuse of ardent passions: he had loved deeply, and unhappily, in his
earlier youth, and he gave in to the dissipation of the time with the
restless eagerness common to strong and active natures when the heart is
not at ease; and under all the light fascination of his converse; or
the dissipation of his life, lurked the melancholic temperament of a man
worthy of nobler things. Nor was the courtly vice of the libertine the
only drawback to the virtuous character assigned to Hastings by Comines.
His experience of men had taught him something of the disdain of the
cynic, and he scrupled not at serving his pleasures or his ambition by
means which his loftier nature could not excuse to his clear sense.
[See Comines, book vi., for a curious anecdote of what Mr. Sharon Turner
happily calls “the moral coquetry” of Hastings,--an anecdote which
reveals much of his character.] Still, however, the world, which
had deteriorated, could not harden him. Few persons so able acted
so frequently from impulse; the impulses were for the most part
affectionate and generous, but then came the regrets of caution and
experience; and Hastings summoned his intellect to correct the movement
of his heart,--in other words, reflection sought to undo what impulse
had suggested. Though so successful a gallant, he had not acquired
the ruthless egotism of the sensualist; and his conduct to women often
evinced the weakness of giddy youth rather than the cold deliberation
of profligate manhood. Thus in his veriest vices there was a spurious
amiability, a seductive charm; while in the graver affairs of life the
intellectual susceptibility of his nature served but to quicken his
penetration and stimulate his energies, and Hastings might have said,
with one of his Italian contemporaries, “That in subjection to the
influences of women he had learned the government of men.” In a word,
his powers to attract, and his capacities to command, may be guessed by
this,--that Lord Hastings was the only man Richard III. seems to have
loved, when Duke of Gloucester, [Sir Thomas More, “Life of Edward V.,”
 speaks of “the great love” Richard bore to Hastings.] and the only man
he seems to have feared, when resolved to be King of England.

Hastings was alone in the apartments assigned to him in the Tower, when
his page, with a peculiar smile, announced to him the visit of a young
donzell, who would not impart her business to his attendants.

The accomplished chamberlain looked up somewhat impatiently from the
beautiful manuscripts, enriched with the silver verse of Petrarch,
which lay open on his table, and after muttering to himself, “It is only
Edward to whom the face of a woman never is unwelcome,” bade the page
admit the visitor. The damsel entered, and the door closed upon her.

“Be not alarmed, maiden,” said Hastings, touched by the downcast bend
of the hooded countenance, and the unmistakable and timid modesty of his
visitor’s bearing. “What hast thou to say to me?”

At the sound of his voice, Sibyll Warner started, and uttered a
faint exclamation. The stranger of the pastime-ground was before her.
Instinctively she drew the wimple yet more closely round her face, and
laid her hand upon the bolt of the door as if in the impulse of retreat.

The nobleman’s curiosity was roused. He looked again and earnestly on
the form that seemed to shrink from his gaze; then rising slowly, he
advanced, and laid his band on her arm. “Donzell, I recognize thee,” he
said, in a voice that sounded cold and stern. “What service wouldst thou
ask me to render thee? Speak! Nay! I pray thee, speak.”

“Indeed, good my lord,” said Sibyll, conquering her confusion; and,
lifting her wimple, her dark blue eyes met those bent on her, with
fearless truth and innocence, “I knew not, and you will believe me,--I
knew not till this moment that I had such cause for gratitude to the
Lord Hastings. I sought you but on the behalf of my father, Master Adam
Warner, who would fain have the permission accorded to other scholars,
to see the Lord Henry of Windsor, who was gracious to him in other days,
and to while the duress of that princely captive with the show of a
quaint instrument he has invented.”

“Doubtless,” answered Hastings, who deserved his character (rare in that
day) for humanity and mildness--“doubt less it will pleasure me, nor
offend his grace the king, to show all courtesy and indulgence to the
unhappy gentleman and lord, whom the weal of England condemns us to hold
incarcerate. I have heard of thy father, maiden, an honest and simple
man, in whom we need not fear a conspirator; and of thee, young
mistress, I have heard also, since we parted.”

“Of me, noble sir?”

“Of thee,” said Hastings, with a smile; and, placing a seat for her,
he took from the table an illuminated manuscript. “I have to thank thy
friend Master Alwyn for procuring me this treasure!”

“What, my lord!” said Sibyll, and her eyes glistened, “were you--you
the--the--”

“The fortunate person whom Alwyn has enriched at so slight a cost? Yes.
Do not grudge me my good fortune in this. Thou hast nobler treasures,
methinks, to bestow on another!”

“My good lord!”

“Nay, I must not distress thee. And the young gentleman has a fair face;
may it bespeak a true heart!”

These words gave Sibyll an emotion of strange delight. They seemed
spoken sadly, they seemed to betoken a jealous sorrow; they awoke
the strange, wayward woman-feeling, which is pleased at the pain that
betrays the woman’s influence: the girl’s rosy lips smiled maliciously.
Hastings watched her, and her face was so radiant with that rare gleam
of secret happiness,--so fresh, so young, so pure, and withal so arch
and captivating, that hackneyed and jaded as he was in the vulgar
pursuit of pleasure, the sight moved better and tenderer feelings than
those of the sensualist. “Yes,” he muttered to himself, “there are some
toys it were a sin to sport with and cast away amidst the broken rubbish
of gone passions!”

He turned to the table, and wrote the order of admission to Henry’s
prison, and as he gave it to Sibyll, he said, “Thy young gallant, I see,
is at the court now. It is a perilous ordeal, and especially to one for
whom the name of Nevile opens the road to advancement and honour. Men
learn betimes in courts to forsake Love for Plutus, and many a wealthy
lord would give his heiress to the poorest gentleman who claims kindred
to the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.”

“May my father’s guest so prosper,” answered Sibyll, “for he seems of
loyal heart and gentle nature!”

“Thou art unselfish, sweet mistress,” said Hastings; and, surprised
by her careless tone, he paused a moment: “or art thou, in truth,
indifferent? Saw I not thy hand in his, when even those loathly
tymbesteres chanted warning to thee for loving, not above thy merits,
but, alas, it may be, above thy fortunes?”

Sibyll’s delight increased. Oh, then, he had not applied that hateful
warning to himself! He guessed not her secret. She blushed, and the
blush was so chaste and maidenly, while the smile that went with it
was so ineffably animated and joyous, that Hastings exclaimed, with
unaffected admiration, “Surely, fair donzell, Petrarch dreamed of thee,
when he spoke of the woman-blush and the angel-smile of Laura. Woe to
the man who would injure thee! Farewell! I would not see thee too often,
unless I saw thee ever.”

He lifted her hand to his lips with a chivalrous respect as he spoke;
opened the door, and called his page to attend her to the gates.

Sibyll was more flattered by the abrupt dismissal than if he had knelt
to detain her. How different seemed the world as her light step wended
homeward!



CHAPTER V. MASTER ADAM WARNER AND KING HENRY THE SIXTH.

The next morning Hilyard revisited Warner with the letters for Henry.
The conspirator made Adam reveal to him the interior mechanism of the
Eureka, to which Adam, who had toiled all night, had appended one of
the most ingenious contrivances he had as yet been enabled (sans the
diamond) to accomplish, for the better display of the agencies which
the engine was designed to achieve. This contrivance was full of strange
cells and recesses, in one of which the documents were placed. And there
they lay, so well concealed as to puzzle the minutest search, if not
aided by the inventor, or one to whom he had communicated the secrets of
the contrivance.

After repeated warnings and exhortations to discretion, Hilyard then,
whose busy, active mind had made all the necessary arrangements,
summoned a stout-looking fellow, whom he had left below, and with his
aid conveyed the heavy machine across the garden, to a back lane, where
a mule stood ready to receive the burden.

“Suffer this trusty fellow to guide thee, dear Adam; he will take thee
through ways where thy brutal neighbours are not likely to meet and
molest thee. Call all thy wits to the surface. Speed and prosper!”

“Fear not,” said Adam, disdainfully. “In the neighbourhood of kings,
science is ever safe. Bless thee, child,” and he laid his hand upon
Sibyll’s head, for she had accompanied them thus far in silence, “now go
in.”

“I go with thee, Father,” said Sibyll, firmly. “Master Hilyard, it
is best so,” she whispered; “what if my father fall into one of his
reveries?”

“You are right: go with him, at least, to the Tower gate. Hard by is the
house of a noble dame and a worthy, known to our friend Hugh, where thou
mayest wait Master Warner’s return. It will not suit thy modesty and sex
to loiter amongst the pages and soldiery in the yard. Adam, thy daughter
must wend with thee.”

Adam had not attended to this colloquy, and mechanically bowing his
head, he set off, and was greatly surprised, on gaining the river-side
(where a boat was found large enough to accommodate not only the human
passengers, but the mule and its burden), to see Sibyll by his side.

The imprisonment of the unfortunate Henry, though guarded with
sufficient rigour against all chances of escape, was not, as the reader
has perceived, at this period embittered by unnecessary harshness.
His attendants treated him with respect, his table was supplied more
abundantly and daintily than his habitual abstinence required, and the
monks and learned men whom he had favoured, were, we need not repeat,
permitted to enliven his solitude with their grave converse.

On the other hand, all attempts at correspondence between Margaret or
the exiled Lancastrians and himself had been jealously watched, and when
detected, the emissaries had been punished with relentless severity. A
man named Hawkins had been racked for attempting to borrow money for the
queen from the great London merchant, Sir Thomas Cook. A shoemaker
had been tortured to death with red-hot pincers for abetting her
correspondence with her allies. Various persons had been racked for
similar offences; but the energy of Margaret and the zeal of her
adherents were still unexhausted and unconquered.

Either unconscious or contemptuous of the perils to which he was
subjected, the student, with his silent companions, performed the
voyage, and landed in sight of the Fortress-Palatine. And now Hugh
stopped before a house of good fashion, knocked at the door, which was
opened by an old servitor, disappeared for a few moments, and returning,
informed Sibyll, in a meaning whisper, that the gentlewoman within was
a good Lancastrian, and prayed the donzell to rest in her company till
Master Warner’s return.

Sibyll, accordingly, after pressing her father’s hand without fear--for
she had deemed the sole danger Adam risked was from the rabble by the
way--followed Hugh into a fair chamber, strewed with rushes, where an
aged dame, of noble air and aspect, was employed at her broidery frame.
This gentlewoman, the widow of a nobleman who had fallen in the service
of Henry, received her graciously, and Hugh then retired to complete
his commission. The student, the mule, the model, and the porter pursued
their way to the entrance of that part of the gloomy palace inhabited
by Henry. Here they were stopped, and Adam, after rummaging long in vain
for the chamberlain’s passport, at last happily discovered it, pinned to
his sleeve, by Sibyll’s forethought. On this a gentleman was summoned
to inspect the order, and in a few moments Adam was conducted to the
presence of the illustrious prisoner.

“And what,” said a subaltern officer, lolling by the archway of the (now
styled) “Bloody Tower,” hard by the turret devoted to the prisoner, [The
Wakefield Tower] and speaking to Adam’s guide, who still mounted guard
by the model,--“what may be the precious burden of which thou art the
convoy?”

“Marry, sir,” said Hugh, who spoke in the strong Yorkshire dialect,
which we are obliged to render into intelligible English--“marry, I weet
not,--it is some curious puppet-box, or quiet contrivance, that Master
Warner, whom they say is a very deft and ingenious personage, is
permitted to bring hither for the Lord Henry’s diversion.”

“A puppet-box!” said the officer, with much animated curiosity. “‘Fore
the Mass! that must be a pleasant sight. Lift the lid, fellow!”

“Please your honour, I do not dare,” returned Hugh,--“I but obey
orders.”

“Obey mine, then. Out of the way,” and the officer lifted the lid of the
pannier with the point of his dagger, and peered within. He drew back,
much disappointed. “Holy Mother!” said he, “this seemeth more like an
instrument of torture than a juggler’s merry device. It looks parlous
ugly!”

“Hush!” said one of the lazy bystanders, with whom the various gateways
and courts of the Palace-Fortress were crowded, “hush--thy cap and thy
knee, sir!”

The officer started; and, looking round, perceived a young man of
low stature, followed by three or four knights and nobles, slowly
approaching towards the arch, and every cap in the vicinity was off, and
every knee bowed.

The eye of this young man was already bent, with a searching and keen
gaze, upon the motionless mule, standing patiently by the Wakefield
Tower; and turning from the mule to the porter, the latter shrunk, and
grew pale, at that dark, steady, penetrating eye, which seemed to pierce
at once into the secrets and hearts of men.

“Who may this young lord be?” he whispered to the officer.

“Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, man,” was the answer. “Uncover,
varlet!”

“Surely,” said the prince, pausing by the gate, “surely this is no
sumpter-mule, bearing provisions to the Lord Henry of Windsor. It would
be but poor respect to that noble person, whom, alas the day! his grace
the king is unwillingly compelled to guard from the malicious designs
of rebels and mischief-seekers, that one not bearing the king’s livery
should attend to any of the needful wants of so worshipful a lord and
guest!”

“My lord,” said the officer at the gate, “one Master Adam Warner hath
just, by permission, been conducted to the Lord Henry’s presence, and
the beast beareth some strange and grim-looking device for my lord’s
diversion.”

The singular softness and urbanity which generally characterized the
Duke of Gloucester’s tone and bearing at that time,--which in a court so
full of factions and intrigues made him the enemy of none and seemingly
the friend of all, and, conjoined with abilities already universally
acknowledged, had given to his very boyhood a pre-eminence of grave
repute and good opinion, which, indeed, he retained till the terrible
circumstances connected with his accession to the throne, under the
bloody name of Richard the Third, roused all men’s hearts and reasons
into the persuasion that what before had seemed virtue was but
dissimulation,--this singular sweetness, we say, of manner and voice,
had in it, nevertheless, something that imposed and thrilled and awed.
And in truth, in our common and more vulgar intercourse with life,
we must have observed, that where external gentleness of bearing is
accompanied by a repute for iron will, determined resolution, and a
serious, profound, and all-inquiring intellect, it carries with it a
majesty wholly distinct from that charm which is exercised by one whose
mildness of nature corresponds with the outward humility; and, if it
does not convey the notion of falseness, bears the appearance of that
perfect self-possession, that calm repose of power, which intimidates
those it influences far more than the imperious port and the loud voice.
And they who best knew the duke, knew also that, despite this general
smoothness of mien, his temperament was naturally irritable, quick,
and subject to stormy gusts of passion, the which defects his admirers
praised him for labouring hard and sedulously to keep in due control.
Still, to a keen observer, the constitutional tendencies of that nervous
temperament were often visible, even in his blandest moments, even when
his voice was most musical, his smile most gracious. If something stung
or excited him, an uneasy gnawing of the nether lip, a fretful playing
with his dagger, drawing it up and down from its sheath, [Pol. Virg.
565] a slight twitching of the muscles of the face, and a quiver of the
eyelid, betokened the efforts he made at self-command; and now, as his
dark eyes rested upon Hugh’s pale countenance, and then glanced upon the
impassive mule, dozing quietly under the weight of poor Adam’s model,
his hand mechanically sought his dagger-hilt, and his face took a
sinister and sombre expression.

“Thy name, friend?”

“Hugh Withers, please you, my lord duke.”

“Um! North country, by thine accent. Dost thou serve this Master
Warner?”

“No, my lord, I was only hired with my mule to carry--”

“Ah, true! to carry what thy pannier contains; open it. Holy Paul! a
strange jonglerie indeed! This Master Adam Warner,--methinks, I
have heard his name--a learned man--um--let me see his safe conduct.
Right,--it is Lord Hastings’s signature.” But still the prince held the
passport, and still suspiciously eyed the Eureka and its appliances,
which, in their complicated and native ugliness of doors, wheels,
pipes, and chimney, were exposed to his view. At this moment, one of the
attendants of Henry descended the stairs of the Wakefield Tower, with a
request that the model might be carried up to divert the prisoner.

Richard paused a moment, as the officer hesitatingly watched his
countenance before giving the desired permission. But the prince,
turning to him, and smoothing his brow, said mildly, “Certes! all
that can divert the Lord Henry must be innocent pastime. And I am well
pleased that he hath this cheerful mood for recreation. It gainsayeth
those who would accuse us of rigour in his durance. Yes, this warrant
is complete and formal;” and the prince returned the passport to
the officer, and walked slowly on through that gloomy arch ever more
associated with Richard of Gloucester’s memory, and beneath the very
room in which our belief yet holds that the infant sons of Edward IV.
breathed their last; still, as Gloucester moved, he turned and turned,
and kept his eye furtively fixed upon the porter.

“Lovell,” he said to one of the gentlemen who attended him, and who was
among the few admitted to his more peculiar intimacy, “that man is of
the North.”

“Well, my lord?”

“The North was always well affected to the Lancastrians. Master Warner
hath been accused of witchcraft. Marry, I should like to see his
device--um; Master Catesby, come hither,--approach, sir. Go back, and
the instant Adam Warner and his contrivance are dismissed, bring them
both to me in the king’s chamber. Thou understandest? We too would
see his device,--and let neither man nor mechanical, when once they
reappear, out of thine eye’s reach. For divers and subtle are the
contrivances of treasonable men!”

Catesby bowed, and Richard, without speaking further, took his way to
the royal apartments, which lay beyond the White Tower, towards the
river, and are long since demolished.

Meanwhile the porter, with the aid of one of the attendants, had carried
the model into the chamber of the august captive. Henry, attired in a
loose robe, was pacing the room with a slow step, and his head sunk on
his bosom,--while Adam with much animation was enlarging on the wonders
of the contrivance he was about to show him. The chamber was commodious,
and furnished with sufficient attention to the state and dignity of the
prisoner; for Edward, though savage and relentless when his blood was
up, never descended into the cool and continuous cruelty of detail.

The chamber may yet be seen,--its shape a spacious octagon; but the
walls now rude and bare were then painted and blazoned with scenes
from the Old Testament. The door opened beneath the pointed arch in
the central side (not where it now does), giving entrance from a small
anteroom, in which the visitor now beholds the receptacle for old rolls
and papers. At the right, on entering, where now, if our memory mistake
not, is placed a press, stood the bed, quaintly carved, and with
hangings of damascene. At the farther end the deep recess which faced
the ancient door was fitted up as a kind of oratory. And there were to
be seen, besides the crucifix and the Mass-book, a profusion of small
vessels of gold and crystal, containing the relics, supposed or real, of
saint and martyr, treasures which the deposed king had collected in
his palmier days at a sum that, in the minds of his followers, had been
better bestowed on arms and war-steeds. A young man named Allerton--one
of the three gentlemen personally attached to Henry, to whom Edward had
permitted general access, and who, in fact, lodged in other apartments
of the Wakefield Tower, and might be said to share his captivity--was
seated before a table, and following the steps of his musing master,
with earnest and watchful eyes.

One of the small spaniels employed in springing game--for Henry, despite
his mildness, had been fond of all the sports of the field--lay curled
round on the floor, but started up, with a shrill bark, at the entrance
of the bearer of the model, while a starling in a cage by the window,
seemingly delighted at the disturbance, flapped his wings, and screamed
out, “Bad men! Bad world! Poor Henry!”

The captive paused at that cry, and a sad and patient smile of
inexpressible melancholy and sweetness hovered over his lips. Henry
still retained much of the personal comeliness he possessed at the time
when Margaret of Anjou, the theme of minstrel and minne singer, left
her native court of poets for the fatal throne of England. But beauty,
usually so popular and precious a gift to kings, was not in him of that
order which commanded the eye and moved the admiration of a turbulent
people and a haughty chivalry. The features, if regular, were small;
their expression meek and timid; the form, though tall, was not
firm-knit and muscular; the lower limbs were too thin, the body had too
much flesh, the delicate hands betrayed the sickly paleness of feeble
health; there was a dreamy vagueness in the clear soft blue eyes, and
a listless absence of all energy in the habitual bend, the slow, heavy,
sauntering tread,--all about that benevolent aspect, that soft voice,
that resigned mien, and gentle manner, spoke the exquisite, unresisting
goodness, which provoked the lewd to taunt, the hardy to despise, the
insolent to rebel; for the foes of a king in stormy times are often less
his vices than his virtues.

“And now, good my lord,” said Adam, hastening, with eager hands, to
assist the bearer in depositing the model on the table--“now will I
explain to you the contrivance which it hath cost me long years of
patient toil to shape from thought into this iron form.”

“But first,” said Allerton, “were it not well that these good people
withdrew? A contriver likes not others to learn his secret ere the time
hath come to reap its profits.”

“Surely, surely!” said Adam, and alarmed at the idea thus suggested, he
threw the folds of his gown over the model.

The attendant bowed and retired; Hugh followed him, but not till he had
exchanged a significant look with Allerton. As soon as the room was
left clear to Adam, the captive, and Master Allerton, the last rose, and
looking hastily round the chamber, approached the mechanician. “Quick,
sir!” said he, in a whisper, “we are not often left without witnesses.”

“Verily,” said Adam, who had now forgotten kings and stratagems, plots
and counterplots, and was all absorbed in his invention, “verily, young
man, hurry not in this fashion,--I am about to begin. Know, my lord,”
 and he turned to Henry, who, with an indolent, dreamy gaze, stood
contemplating the Eureka,--“know that more than a hundred years before
the Christian era, one Hero, an Alexandrian, discovered the force
produced by the vapour begot by heat on water. That this power was not
unknown to the ancient sages, witness the contrivance, not otherwise to
be accounted for, of the heathen oracles; but to our great countryman
and predecessor, Roger Bacon, who first suggested that vehicles might be
drawn without steeds or steers, and ships might--”

“Marry, sir,” interrupted Allerton, with great impatience, “it is not to
prate to us of such trivial fables of Man, or such wanton sports of the
Foul Fiend, that thou hast risked limb and life. Time is precious. I
have been prevised that thou hast letters for King Henry; produce them,
quick!”

A deep glow of indignation had overspread the enthusiast’s face at the
commencement of this address; but the close reminded him, in truth, of
his errand.

“Hot youth,” said he, with dignity, “a future age may judge differently
of what thou deemest trivial fables, and may rate high this poor
invention when the brawls of York and Lancaster are forgotten.”

“Hear him,” said Henry, with a soft smile, and laying his hand on the
shoulder of the young man, who was about to utter a passionate and
scornful retort,--“hear him, sir. Have I not often and ever said this
same thing to thee? We children of a day imagine our contests are the
sole things that move the world. Alack! our fathers thought the same;
and they and their turmoils sleep forgotten! Nay, Master Warner,”--for
here Adam, poor man, awed by Henry’s mildness into shame at his
discourteous vaunting, began to apologize,--“nay, sir, nay--thou art
right to contemn our bloody and futile struggles for a crown of thorns;
for--”

    ‘Kingdoms are but cares,
       State is devoid of stay
     Riches are ready snares,
       And hasten to decay.’

[Lines ascribed to Henry VI., with commendation “as a prettie verse,” by
Sir John Harrington, in the “Nugae Antiquate.” They are also given, with
little alteration, to the unhappy king by Baldwin, in his tragedy of
“King Henry VI.”]

“And yet, sir, believe me, thou hast no cause for vain glory in thine
own craft and labours; for to wit and to lere there are the same vanity
and vexation of spirit as to war and empire. Only, O would-be wise
man, only when we muse on Heaven do our souls ascend from the fowler’s
snare!”

“My saint-like liege,” said Allerton, bowing low, and with tears in his
eyes, “thinkest thou not that thy very disdain of thy rights makes thee
more worthy of them? If not for thine, for thy son’s sake, remember
that the usurper sits on the throne of the conqueror of Agincourt!--Sir
Clerk, the letters.”

Adam, already anxious to retrieve the error of his first forgetfulness,
here, after a moment’s struggle for the necessary remembrance, drew the
papers from the labyrinthine receptacle which concealed them; and
Henry uttered an exclamation of joy as, after cutting the silk, his eye
glanced over the writing--

“My Margaret! my wife!” Presently he grew pale, and his hands trembled.
“Saints defend her! Saints defend her! She is here, disguised, in
London!”

“Margaret! our hero-queen! the manlike woman!” exclaimed Allerton,
clasping his hands. “Then be sure that--” He stopped, and abruptly
taking Adam’s arm, drew him aside, while Henry continued to
read--“Master Warner, we may trust thee,--thou art one of us; thou art
sent here, I know; by Robin of Redesdale,--we may trust thee?”

“Young sir,” replied the philosopher, gravely, “the fears and hopes
of power are not amidst the uneasier passions of the student’s mind. I
pledged myself but to bear these papers hither, and to return with what
may be sent back.”

“But thou didst this for love of the cause, the truth, and the right?”

“I did it partly from Hilyard’s tale of wrong, but partly, also, for
the gold,” answered Adam, simply; and his noble air, his high brow, the
serene calm of his features, so contrasted with the meanness implied in
the latter words of his confession, that Allerton stared at him amazed,
and without reply.

Meanwhile Henry had concluded the letter, and with a heavy sigh glanced
over the papers that accompanied it. “Alack! alack! more turbulence,
more danger and disquiet, more of my people’s blood!” He motioned to
the young man, and drawing him to the window, while Adam returned to his
model, put the papers in his hand. “Allerton,” he said, “thou lovest me,
but thou art one of the few in this distraught land who love also God.
Thou art not one of the warriors, the men of steel. Counsel me. See:
Margaret demands my signature to these papers; the one, empowering and
craving the levy of men and arms in the northern counties; the other,
promising free pardon to all who will desert Edward; the
third--it seemeth to me more strange and less kinglike than the
others--undertaking to abolish all the imposts and all the laws that
press upon the commons, and (is this a holy and pious stipulation?) to
inquire into the exactions and persecutions of the priesthood of our
Holy Church!”

“Sire!” said the young man, after he had hastily perused the papers, “my
lady liege showeth good argument for your assent to two, at least, of
these undertakings. See the names of fifty gentlemen ready to take arms
in your cause if authorized by your royal warrant. The men of the North
are malcontent with the usurper, but they will not yet stir, unless
at your own command. Such documents will, of course, be used with
discretion, and not to imperil your Grace’s safety.”

“My safety!” said Henry, with a flash of his father’s hero soul in his
eyes--“of that I think not! If I have small courage to attack, I have
some fortitude to bear. But three months after these be signed, how many
brave hearts will be still! how many stout hands be dust! O Margaret!
Margaret! why temptest thou? Wert thou so happy when a queen?” The
prisoner broke from Allerton’s arm, and walked, in great disorder and
irresolution, to and fro the chamber; and strange it was to see the
contrast between himself and Warner,--both in so much alike, both
so purely creatures out of the common world, so gentle, abstract, so
utterly living in the life apart: and now the student so calm, the
prince so disturbed! The contrast struck Henry himself! He paused
abruptly, and, folding his arms, contemplated the philosopher, as, with
an affectionate complacency, Adam played and toyed, as it were, with his
beloved model; now opening and shutting again its doors, now brushing
away with his sleeve some particles of dust that had settled on it, now
retiring a few paces to gaze the better on its stern symmetry.

“Oh, my Allerton!” cried Henry, “behold! the kingdom a man makes out of
his own mind is the only one that it delighteth man to govern! Behold,
he is lord over its springs and movements; its wheels revolve and stop
at his bidding. Here, here, alone, God never asketh the ruler, ‘Why was
the blood of thousands poured forth like water, that a worm might wear a
crown?’”

“Sire,” said Allerton, solemnly, “when our Heavenly King appoints his
anointed representative on earth, He gives to that human delegate no
power to resign the ambassade and trust. What suicide is to a man,
abdication is to a king! How canst thou dispose of thy son’s rights? And
what becomes of those rights if thou wilt prefer for him the exile, for
thyself the prison, when one effort may restore a throne!”

Henry seemed struck by a tone of argument that suited both his own mind
and the reasoning of the age. He gazed a moment on the face of the young
man, muttered to himself, and suddenly moving to the table, signed the
papers, and restored them to Adam, who mechanically replaced them in
their iron hiding-place.

“Now begone, Sir!” whispered Allerton, afraid that Henry’s mind might
again change.

“Will not my lord examine the engine?” asked Warner, half-beseechingly.

“Not to-day! See, he has already retired to his oratory, he is in
prayer!” and, going to the door, Allerton summoned the attendants in
waiting to carry down the model.

“Well, well, patience, patience! thou shalt have thine audience at
last,” muttered Adam, as he retired from the room, his eyes fixed upon
the neglected infant of his brain.



CHAPTER VI. HOW, ON LEAVING KING LOG, FOOLISH WISDOM RUNS A-MUCK ON KING
STORK.

At the outer door of the Tower by which he had entered, the philosopher
was accosted by Catesby,--a man who, in imitation of his young patron,
exhibited the soft and oily manner which concealed intense ambition and
innate ferocity.

“Worshipful my master,” said he, bowing low, but with a half sneer on
his lips, “the king and his Highness the Duke of Gloucester have
heard much of your strange skill, and command me to lead you to their
presence. Follow, sir, and you, my men, convey this quaint contrivance
to the king’s apartments.”

With this, not waiting for any reply, Catesby strode on. Hugh’s face
fell; he turned very pale, and, imagining himself unobserved, turned
round to slink away. But Catesby, who seemed to have eyes at the back of
his head, called out, in a mild tone,--

“Good fellow, help to bear the mechanical--you, too, may be needed.”

“Cog’s wounds!” muttered Hugh, “an’ I had but known what it was to set
my foot in a king’s palace! Such walking may do for the silken shoon,
but the hobnail always gets into a hobble.” With that, affecting a
cheerful mien, he helped to replace the model on the mule.

Meanwhile, Adam, elated, poor man! at the flattery of the royal mandate,
persuaded that his fame had reached Edward’s ears, and chafed at the
little heed paid by the pious Henry to his great work, stalked on, his
head in the air. “Verily,” mused the student, “King Edward may have
been a cruel youth, and over hasty; it is horrible to think of Robert
Hilyard’s calamities! But men do say he hath an acute and masterly
comprehension. Doubtless, he will perceive at a glance how much I
can advantage his kingdom.” With this, we grieve to say, selfish
reflection--which, if the thought of his model could have slept a
while, Adam would have blushed to recall, as an affront to Hilyard’s
wrongs--the philosopher followed Catesby across the spacious yard, along
a narrow passage, and up a winding turret-stair, to a room in the third
story, which opened at one door into the king’s closet, at the other
into the spacious gallery, which was already a feature in the plan of
the more princely houses. In another minute Adam and his model were in
the presence of the king. The part of the room in which Edward sat was
distinguished from the rest by a small eastern carpet on the floor (a
luxury more in use in the palaces of that day than it appears to have
been a century later); [see the Narrative of the Lord Grauthuse, before
referred to] a table was set before him, on which the model was placed.
At his right hand sat Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, the queen’s mother;
at his left, Prince Richard. The duchess, though not without the remains
of beauty, had a stern, haughty, scornful expression in her sharp
aquiline features, compressed lips, and imperious eye. The paleness of
her complexion, and the careworn, anxious lines of her countenance, were
ascribed by the vulgar to studies of no holy cast. Her reputation for
sorcery and witchcraft was daily increasing, and served well the purpose
of the discontented barons, whom the rise of her children mortified and
enraged.

“Approach, Master--What say you his name is, Richard?”

“Adam Warner,” replied the sweet voice of the Duke of Gloucester; “of
excellent skill in the mathematics.”

“Approach, sir, and show us the nature of this notable invention.”

“I desire nothing better, my lord king,” said Adam, boldly; “but first
let me crave a small modicum of fuel. Fire, which is the life of
the world, as the wise of old held it, is also the soul of this, my
mechanical.”

“Peradventure,” whispered the duchess, “the wizard desireth to consume
us.”

“More likely,” replied Richard, in the same undertone, “to consume
whatever of treasonable nature may lurk concealed in his engine.”

“True,” said Edward, and then, speaking aloud, “Master Warner,” he
added, “put thy puppet to its purpose without fire,--we will it.”

“It is impossible, my lord,” said Adam, with a lofty smile. “Science and
nature are more powerful than a king’s word.”

“Do not say that in public, my friend,” said Edward, dryly, “or we must
hang thee! I would not my subjects were told anything so treasonable.
Howbeit, to give thee no excuse in failure, thou shalt have what thou
needest.”

“But surely not in our presence,” exclaimed the duchess. “This may be a
device of the Lancastrians for our perdition.”

“As you please, belle mere,” said Edward, and he motioned to a
gentleman, who stood a few paces behind his chair, and who, from the
entrance of the mechanician, had seemed to observe him with intense
interest. “Master Nevile, attend this wise man; supply his wants, and
hark, in thy ear, watch well that he abstract nothing from the womb of
his engine; observe what he doeth; be all eyes.” Marmaduke bowed low to
conceal his change of countenance, and, stepping forward, made a sign to
Adam to follow him.

“Go also, Catesby,” said Richard to his follower, who had taken his post
near him, “and clear the chamber.”

As soon as the three members of the royal family were left alone, the
king, stretching himself, with a slight yawn, observed, “This man looks
not like a conspirator, brother Richard, though his sententiary as to
nature and science lacked loyalty and respect.”

“Sire and brother,” answered Richard, “great leaders often dupe their
own tools; at least, meseemeth that they would reason well so to
do. Remember, I have told thee that there is strong cause to suppose
Margaret to be in London. In the suburbs of the city has also appeared,
within the last few weeks, that strange and dangerous person, whose very
objects are a mystery, save that he is our foe,--Robin of Redesdale. The
men of the North have exhibited a spirit of insurrection; a man of that
country attends this reputed wizard, and he himself was favoured in past
times by Henry of Windsor. These are ominous signs when the conjunctions
be considered!”

“It is well said; but a fair day for breathing our palfrey is
half-spent!” returned the indolent prince. “By’r Lady! I like the
fashion of thy super-tunic well, Richard; but thou hast it too much
puffed over the shoulders.”

Richard’s dark eye shot fire, and he gnawed his lip as he answered, “God
hath not given to me the fair shape of my kinsmen.”

“Thy pardon, dear boy,” said Edward, kindly; “yet little needest thou
our broad backs and strong sinews, for thou hast a tongue to charm women
and a wit to command men.”

Richard bowed his face, little less beautiful than his brother’s,
though wholly different from it in feature, for Edward had the long oval
countenance, the fair hair, the rich colouring, and the large outline
of his mother, the Rose of Raby. Richard, on the contrary, had the short
face, the dark brown locks, and the pale olive complexion of his father,
whom he alone of the royal brothers strikingly resembled. [Pol. Virg.
544.]

The cheeks, too, were somewhat sunken, and already, though scarcely past
childhood, about his lips were seen the lines of thoughtful manhood. But
then those small features, delicately aquiline, were so regular; that
dark eye was so deep, so fathomless in its bright, musing intelligence;
that quivering lip was at once so beautifully formed and so expressive
of intellectual subtlety and haughty will; and that pale forehead was so
massive, high, and majestic,--that when, at a later period, the Scottish
prelate [Archibald Quhitlaw.--“Faciem tuam summo imperio principatu
dignam inspicit, quam moralis et heroica, virtus illustrat,” etc.--We
need scarcely observe that even a Scotchman would not have risked a
public compliment to Richard’s face, if so inappropriate as to seem a
sarcasm, especially as the orator immediately proceeds to notice the
shortness of Richard’s stature,--a comment not likely to have been
peculiarly acceptable in the Rous Roll, the portrait of Richard
represents him as undersized, but compactly and strongly built, and
without any sign of deformity, unless the inelegant defect of a short
neck can be so called.] commended Richard’s “princely countenance,” the
compliment was not one to be disputed, much less contemned. But now as
he rose, obedient to a whisper from the duchess, and followed her to the
window, while Edward appeared engaged in admiring the shape of his
own long, upturned shoes, those defects in his shape which the popular
hatred and the rise of the House of Tudor exaggerated into the absolute
deformity that the unexamining ignorance of modern days and Shakspeare’s
fiery tragedy have fixed into established caricature, were sufficiently
apparent. Deformed or hunchbacked we need scarcely say he was not, for
no man so disfigured could have possessed that great personal strength
which he invariably exhibited in battle, despite the comparative
slightness of his frame. He was considerably below the ordinary height,
which the great stature of his brother rendered yet more disadvantageous
by contrast; but his lower limbs were strong-jointed and muscular.
Though the back was not curved, yet one shoulder was slightly higher
than the other, which was the more observable from the evident pains
that he took to disguise it, and the gorgeous splendour, savouring of
personal coxcombry--from which no Plantagenet was ever free,--that
he exhibited in his dress. And as, in a warlike age, the physical
conformation of men is always critically regarded, so this defect and
that of his low stature were not so much redeemed as they would be in
our day by the beauty and intelligence of his face. Added to this, his
neck was short, and a habit of bending his head on his bosom (arising
either from thought, or the affectation of humility, which was a part of
his character) made it seem shorter still. But this peculiarity, while
taking from the grace, added to the strength of his frame, which, spare,
sinewy, and compact, showed to an observer that power of endurance,
that combination of solid stubbornness and active energy, which, at
the battle of Barnet, made him no less formidable to encounter than the
ruthless sword of the mighty Edward.

“So, prince,” said the duchess, “this new gentleman of the king’s is,
it seems, a Nevile. When will Edward’s high spirit cast off that hateful
yoke?”

Richard sighed and shook his head. The duchess, encouraged by these
signs of sympathy, continued,--

“Your brother Clarence, Prince Richard, despises us, to cringe to the
proud earl. But you--”

“I am not suitor to the Lady Isabel; Clarence is overlavish, and Isabel
has a fair face and a queenly dowry.”

“May I perish,” said the duchess, “ere Warwick’s daughter wears the
baudekin of royalty, and sits in as high a state as the queen’s mother!
Prince, I would fain confer with thee; we have a project to abase and
banish this hateful lord. If you but join us, success is sure; the Count
of Charolois--”

“Dear lady,” interrupted Richard, with an air of profound humility,
“tell me nothing of plot or project; my years are too few for such high
and subtle policy; and the Lord Warwick hath been a leal friend to our
House of York.”

The duchess bit her lip--“Yet I have heard you tell Edward that a
subject can be too powerful?”

“Never, lady! you have never heard me.”

“Then Edward has told Elizabeth that you so spoke.”

“Ah,” said Richard, turning away with a smile, “I see that the king’s
conscience hath a discreet keeper. Pardon me, Edward, now that he hath
sufficiently surveyed his shoon, must marvel at this prolonged colloquy.
And see, the door opens.”

With this, the duke slowly moved to the table, and resumed his seat.

Marmaduke, full of fear for his ancient host, had in vain sought an
opportunity to address a few words of exhortation to him to forbear all
necromancy, and to abstain from all perilous distinctions between the
power of Edward IV. and that of his damnable Nature and Science; but
Catesby watched him with so feline a vigilance, that he was unable to
slip in more than--“Ah, Master Warner, for our blessed Lord’s sake,
recollect that rack and cord are more than mere words here!” To the
which pleasant remark, Adam, then busy in filling his miniature boiler,
only replied by a wistful stare, not in the least recognizing the Nevile
in his fine attire, and the new-fashioned mode of dressing his long
hair.

But Catesby watched in vain for the abstraction of any treasonable
contents in the engine, which the Duke of Gloucester had so shrewdly
suspected. The truth must be told. Adam had entirely forgotten that in
the intricacies of his mechanical lurked the papers that might overthrow
a throne! Magnificent Incarnation was he (in that oblivion) of Science
itself, which cares not a jot for men and nations, in their ephemeral
existences; which only remembers THINGS,--things that endure for
ages; and in its stupendous calculations loses sight of the unit of a
generation! No, he had thoroughly forgotten Henry, Edward, his own limbs
and life,--not only York and Lancaster, but Adam Warner and the
rack. Grand in his forgetfulness, he stood before the tiger and the
tiger-cat,--Edward and--Richard,--A Pure Thought, a Man’s Soul; Science
fearless in the presence of Cruelty, Tyranny, Craft, and Power.

In truth, now that Adam was thoroughly in his own sphere, was in the
domain of which he was king, and those beings in velvet and ermine were
but as ignorant savages admitted to the frontier of his realm, his form
seemed to dilate into a majesty the beholders had not before recognized;
and even the lazy Edward muttered involuntarily, “By my halidame, the
man has a noble presence!”

“I am prepared now, sire,” said Adam, loftily, “to show to my king and
to this court, that, unnoticed and obscure, in study and retreat, often
live those men whom kings may be proud to call their subjects. Will it
please you, my lords, this way!” and he motioned so commandingly to the
room in which he had left the Eureka, that his audience rose by a common
impulse, and in another minute stood grouped round the model in the
adjoining chamber. This really wonderful invention--so wonderful,
indeed, that it will surpass the faith of those who do not pause to
consider what vast forestallments of modern science have been made and
lost in the darkness of ages not fitted to receive them--was, doubtless,
in many important details not yet adapted for the practical uses
to which Adam designed its application. But as a mere model, as a
marvellous essay, for the suggestion of gigantic results, it was,
perhaps, to the full as effective as the ingenuity of a mechanic of our
own day could construct. It is true that it was crowded with unnecessary
cylinders, slides, cocks, and wheals--hideous and clumsy to the eye--but
through this intricacy the great simple design accomplished its main
object. It contrived to show what force and skill man can obtain from
the alliance of nature; the more clearly, inasmuch as the mechanism
affixed to it, still more ingenious than itself, was well calculated to
illustrate practically one of the many uses to which the principle was
destined to be applied.

Adam had not yet fathomed the secret by which to supply the miniature
cylinder with sufficient steam for any prolonged effect,--the great
truth of latent heat was unknown to him; but he had contrived to
regulate the supply of water so as to make the engine discharge
its duties sufficiently for the satisfaction of curiosity and the
explanation of its objects. And now this strange thing of iron was in
full life. From its serpent chimney issued the thick rapid smoke, and
the groan of its travail was heard within.

“And what propose you to yourself and to the kingdom in all this, Master
Adam?” asked Edward, curiously bending his tall person over the tortured
iron.

“I propose to make Nature the labourer of man,” answered Warner. “When I
was a child of some eight years old, I observed that water swelleth into
vapour when fire is applied to it. Twelve years afterwards, at the age
of twenty, I observed that while undergoing this change it exerts a
mighty mechanical force. At twenty-five, constantly musing, I said, ‘Why
should not that force become subject to man’s art?’ I then began the
first rude model, of which this is the descendant. I noticed that the
vapour so produced is elastic,--that is, that as it expands, it presses
against what opposes it; it has a force applicable everywhere force is
needed by man’s labour. Behold a second agency of gigantic resources!
And then, still studying this, I perceived that the vapour thus
produced can be reconverted into water, shrinking necessarily, while
so retransformed, from the space it filled as vapour, and leaving that
space a vacuum. But Nature abhors a vacuum; produce a vacuum, and
the bodies that surround rush into it. Thus, the vapour again, while
changing back into water, becomes also a force,--our agent. And all the
while these truths were shaping themselves to my mind, I was devising
and improving also the material form by which I might render them useful
to man; so at last, out of these truths, arose this invention!”

“Pardie,” said Edward, with the haste natural to royalty, “what in
common there can be between thy jargon of smoke and water and this huge
ugliness of iron passeth all understanding. But spare us thy speeches,
and on to thy puppet-show.”

Adam stared a moment at the king in the surprise that one full of his
subject feels when he sees it impossible to make another understand it,
sighed, shook his head, and prepared to begin.

“Observe,” he said, “that there is no juggling, no deceit. I will place
in this deposit this small lump of brass--would the size of this toy
would admit of larger experiment! I will then pray ye to note, as I
open door after door, how the metal passes through various changes,
all operated by this one agency of vapour. Heed and attend. And if the
crowning work please thee, think, great king, what such an agency upon
the large scale would be to thee; think how it would multiply all arts
and lessen all labour; think that thou hast, in this, achieved for a
whole people the true philosopher’s stone. Now note!”

He placed the rough ore in its receptacle, and suddenly it seemed seized
by a vice within, and vanished. He proceeded then, while dexterously
attending to the complex movements, to open door after door, to show
the astonished spectators the rapid transitions the metal underwent,
and suddenly, in the midst of his pride, he stopped short, for, like
a lightning-flash, came across his mind the remembrance of the fatal
papers. Within the next door he was to open, they lay concealed. His
change of countenance did not escape Richard, and he noted the door
which Adam forbore to open, as the student hurriedly, and with some
presence of mind, passed to the next, in which the metal was shortly to
appear.

“Open this door,” said the prince, pointing to the handle. “No! forbear!
There is danger! forbear!” exclaimed the mechanician.

“Danger to thine own neck, varlet and impostor!” exclaimed the duke;
and he was about himself to open the door, when suddenly a loud roar, a
terrific explosion was heard. Alas! Adam Warner had not yet discovered
for his engine what we now call the safety-valve. The steam contained
in the miniature boiler had acquired an undue pressure; Adam’s attention
had been too much engrossed to notice the signs of the growing increase,
and the rest may be easily conceived. Nothing could equal the stupor and
the horror of the spectators at this explosion, save only the boy-duke,
who remained immovable, and still frowning. All rushed to the door,
huddling one on the other, scarcely knowing what next was to befall
them, but certain that the wizard was bent upon their destruction.
Edward was the first to recover himself; and seeing that no lives were
lost, his first impulse was that of ungovernable rage.

“Foul traitor!” he exclaimed, “was it for this that thou hast pretended
to beguile us with thy damnable sorceries? Seize him! Away to the Tower
Hill! and let the priest patter an ave while the doomsman knots the
rope.”

Not a hand stirred; even Catesby would as lief have touched the king’s
lion before meals, as that poor mechanician, standing aghast, and
unheeding all, beside his mutilated engine.

“Master Nevile,” said the king, sternly, “dost thou hear us?

“Verily,” muttered the Nevile, approaching very slowly, “I knew what
would happen; but to lay hands on my host, an’ he were fifty times a
wizard--No! My liege,” he said in a firm tone, but falling on his
knee, and his gallant countenance pale with generous terror, “my liege,
forgive me. This man succoured me when struck down and wounded by
a Lancastrian ruffian; this man gave me shelter, food, and healing.
Command me not, O gracious my lord, to aid in taking the life of one to
whom I owe my own.”

“His life!” exclaimed the Duchess of Bedford,--“the life of this most
illustrious person! Sire, you do not dream it!”

“Heh! by the saints, what now?” cried the king, whose choler, though
fierce and ruthless, was as short-lived as the passions of the indolent
usually are, and whom the earnest interposition of his mother-in-law
much surprised and diverted. “If, fair belle-mere, thou thinkest it so
illustrious a deed to frighten us out of our mortal senses, and narrowly
to ‘scape sending us across the river like a bevy of balls from a
bombard, there is no disputing of tastes. Rise up, Master Nevile,
we esteem thee not less for thy boldness; ever be the host and the
benefactor revered by English gentlemen and Christian youth. Master
Warner may go free.”

Here Warner uttered so deep and hollow a groan, that it startled all
present.

“Twenty-five years of labour, and not to have seen this!” he ejaculated.
“Twenty and five years, and all wasted! How repair this disaster? O
fatal day!”

“What says he? What means he?” said Jacquetta.

“Come home!--home!” said Marmaduke, approaching the philosopher, in
great alarm lest he should once more jeopardize his life. But Adam,
shaking him off, began eagerly, and with tremulous hands, to examine the
machine, and not perceiving any mode by which to guard in future against
a danger that he saw at once would, if not removed, render his invention
useless, tottered to a chair and covered his face with his hands.

“He seemeth mightily grieved that our bones are still whole!” muttered
Edward. “And why, belle-mere mine, wouldst thou protect this pleasant
tregetour?”

“What!” said the duchess, “see you not that a man capable of such
devices must be of doughty service against our foes?”

“Not I. How?”

“Why, if merely to signify his displeasure at our young Richard’s
over-curious meddling, he can cause this strange engine to shake the
walls,--nay, to destroy itself,--think what he might do were his power
and malice at our disposing. I know something of these nigromancers.”

“And would you knew less! for already the commons murmur at your favour
to them. But be it as you will. And now--ho, there! let our steeds be
caparisoned.”

“You forget, sire,” said Richard, who had hitherto silently watched
the various parties, “the object for which we summoned this worthy man.
Please you now, sir, to open that door.”

“No, no!” exclaimed the king, hastily, “I will have no more provoking
the foul fiend; conspirator or not, I have had enough of Master Warner.
Pah! My poor placard is turned lampblack. Sweet mother-in-law, take him
under thy protection; and Richard, come with me.”

So saying, the king linked his arm in that of the reluctant Gloucester,
and quitted the room. The duchess then ordered the rest also to depart,
and was left alone with the crest-fallen philosopher.



CHAPTER VII. MY LADY DUCHESS’S OPINION OF THE UTILITY OF MASTER WARNER’S
INVENTION, AND HER ESTEEM FOR ITS--EXPLOSION.

Adam, utterly unheeding, or rather deaf to, the discussion that had
taken place, and his narrow escape from cord and gibbet, lifted his
head peevishly from his bosom, as the duchess rested her hand almost
caressingly on his shoulder, and thus addressed him,--

“Most puissant Sir, think not that I am one of those who, in their
ignorance and folly, slight the mysteries of which thou art clearly so
great a master. When I heard thee speak of subjecting Nature to Man, I
at once comprehended thee, and blushed for the dulness of my kindred.”

“Ah, lady, thou hast studied, then, the mathematics. Alack! this is a
grievous blow; but it is no inherent fault in the device. I am clearly
of mind that it can be remedied. But oh! what time, what thought, what
sleepless nights, what gold will be needed!”

“Give me thy sleepless nights and thy grand thoughts, and thou shalt not
want gold.”

“Lady,” cried Adam, starting to his feet, “do I hear aright? Art thou,
in truth, the patron I have so long dreamed of? Hast thou the brain and
the heart to aid the pursuits of science?”

“Ay! and the power to protect the students! Sage, I am the Duchess of
Bedford, whom men accuse of witchcraft,--as thee of wizardy. From the
wife of a private gentleman, I have become the mother of a queen. I
stand amidst a court full of foes; I desire gold to corrupt, and wisdom
to guard against, and means to destroy them. And I seek all these in men
like thee!”

Adam turned on her his bewildered eyes, and made no answer.

“They tell me,” said the duchess, “that Henry of Windsor employed
learned men to transmute the baser metals into gold. Wert thou one of
them?”

“No.”

“Thou knowest that art?”

“I studied it in my youth, but the ingredients of the crucible were too
costly.”

“Thou shalt not lack them with me. Thou knowest the lore of the stars,
and canst foretell the designs of enemies,--the hour whether to act or
to forbear?”

“Astrology I have studied, but that also was in youth; for there
dwelleth in the pure mathematics that have led me to this invention--”

“Truce with that invention, whatever it be; think of it no more,--it
has served its end in the explosion, which proved thy power of mischief.
High objects are now before thee. Wilt thou be of my household, one of
my alchemists and astrologers? Thou shalt have leisure, honour, and all
the moneys thou canst need.”

“Moneys!” said Adam, eagerly, and casting his eyes upon the mangled
model. “Well, I agree; what you will,--alchemist, astrologist,
wizard,--what you will. This shall all be repaired,--all; I begin to
see now, all! I begin to see; yes, if a pipe by which the too-excessive
vapour could--ay, ay!--right, right,” and he rubbed his hands.

Jacquetta was struck with his enthusiasm. “But surely, Master Warner,
this has some virtue you have not vouchsafed to explain; confide in me,
can it change iron to gold?”

“No; but--”

“Can it predict the future?”

“No; but--”

“Can it prolong life?”

“No; but--”

“Then, in God’s name let us waste no more time about it!” said the
duchess, impatiently,--“your art is mine now. Ho, there!--I will send
my page to conduct thee to thy apartments, and thou shalt lodge next
to Friar Bungey, a man of wondrous lere, Master Warner, and a worthy
confrere in thy researches. Hast thou any one of kith and kin at home to
whom thou wilt announce thy advancement?”

“Ah, lady! Heaven forgive me, I have a daughter,--an only child,--my
Sibyll; I cannot leave her alone, and--”

“Well, nothing should distract thy cares from thine art,--she shall be
sent for. I will rank her amongst my maidens. Fare-thee-well, Master
Warner! At night I will send for thee, and appoint the tasks I would
have thee accomplish.”

So saying, the duchess quitted the room, and left Adam alone, bending
over his model in deep revery.

From this absorption it was the poor man’s fate to be again aroused.

The peculiar character of the boy-prince of Gloucester was that of one
who, having once seized upon an object, never willingly relinquished it.
First, he crept and slid and coiled round it as the snake. But if craft
failed, his passion, roused by resistance, sprang at his prey with
a lion’s leap: and whoever examines the career of this extraordinary
personage, will perceive, that whatever might be his habitual hypocrisy,
he seemed to lose sight of it wholly when once resolved upon force. Then
the naked ferocity with which the destructive propensity swept away
the objects in his path becomes fearfully and startlingly apparent, and
offers a strange contrast to the wily duplicity with which, in calmer
moments, he seems to have sought to coax the victim into his folds.
Firmly convinced that Adam’s engine had been made the medium of
dangerous and treasonable correspondence with the royal prisoner, and of
that suspicious, restless, feverish temperament which never slept when
a fear was wakened, a doubt conceived, he had broke from his brother,
whose more open valour and less unquiet intellect were ever willing to
leave the crown defended but by the gibbet for the detected traitor,
the sword for the declared foe; and obtaining Edward’s permission “to
inquire further into these strange matters,” he sent at once for the
porter who had conveyed the model to the Tower; but that suspicious
accomplice was gone. The sound of the explosion of the engine had no
less startled the guard below than the spectators above. Releasing
their hold of their prisoner, they had some taken fairly to their heels,
others rushed into the palace to learn what mischief had ensued; and
Hugh, with the quick discretion of his north country, had not lost so
favourable an opportunity for escape. There stood the dozing mule at the
door below, but the guide was vanished. More confirmed in his suspicions
by this disappearance of Adam’s companion, Richard, giving some
preparatory orders to Catesby, turned at once to the room which still
held the philosopher and his device. He closed the door on entering, and
his brow was dark and sinister as he approached the musing inmate. But
here we must return to Sibyll.



CHAPTER VIII. THE OLD WOMAN TALKS OF SORROWS, THE YOUNG WOMAN DREAMS
OF LOVE; THE COURTIER FLIES FROM PRESENT POWER TO REMEMBRANCES OF PAST
HOPES, AND THE WORLD-BETTERED OPENS UTOPIA, WITH A VIEW OF THE GIBBET
FOR THE SILLY SAGE HE HAS SEDUCED INTO HIS SCHEMES,--SO, EVER AND
EVERMORE, RUNS THE WORLD AWAY!

The old lady looked up from her embroidery-frame, as Sibyll sat musing
on a stool before her; she scanned the maiden with a wistful and
somewhat melancholy eye.

“Fair girl,” she said, breaking a silence that had lasted for some
moments, “it seems to me that I have seen thy face before. Wert thou
never in Queen Margaret’s court?”

“In childhood, yes, lady.”

“Do you not remember me, the dame of Longueville?” Sibyll started in
surprise, and gazed long before she recognized the features of her
hostess; for the dame of Longueville had been still, when Sibyll was
a child at the court, renowned for matronly beauty, and the change
was greater than the lapse of years could account for. The lady smiled
sadly: “Yes, you marvel to see me thus bent and faded. Maiden, I lost my
husband at the battle of St. Alban’s, and my three sons in the field of
Towton. My lands and my wealth have been confiscated to enrich new men;
and to one of them--one of the enemies of the only king whom Alice de
Longueville will acknowledge--I owe the food for my board and the roof
for my head. Do you marvel now that I am so changed?”

Sibyll rose and kissed the lady’s hand, and the tear that sparkled on
its surface was her only answer.

“I learn,” said the dame of Longueville, “that your father has an order
from the Lord Hastings to see King Henry. I trust that he will rest here
as he returns, to tell me how the monarch-saint bears his afflictions.
But I know: his example should console us all.” She paused a moment, and
resumed, “Sees your father much of the Lord Hastings?”

“He never saw him that I weet of,” answered Sibyll, blushing; “the order
was given, but as of usual form to a learned scholar.”

“But given to whom?” persisted the lady. “To--to me,” replied Sibyll,
falteringly. The dame of Longueville smiled.

“Ah, Hastings could scarcely say no to a prayer from such rosy lips. But
let me not imply aught to disparage his humane and gracious heart. To
Lord Hastings, next to God and his saints, I owe all that is left to
me on earth. Strange that he is not yet here! This is the usual day and
hour on which he comes, from pomp and pleasurement, to visit the lonely
widow.” And, pleased to find an attentive listener to her grateful
loquacity, the dame then proceeded, with warm eulogies upon her
protector, to inform Sibyll that her husband had, in the first outbreak
of the Civil War, chanced to capture Hastings, and, moved by his valour
and youth, and some old connections with his father, Sir Leonard, had
favoured his escape from the certain death that awaited him from the
wrath of the relentless Margaret. After the field of Towton, Hastings
had accepted one of the manors confiscated from the attainted House of
Longueville, solely that he might restore it to the widow of the
fallen lord; and with a chivalrous consideration, not contented with
beneficence, he omitted no occasion to show to the noblewoman whatever
homage and respect might soothe the pride, which, in the poverty of
those who have been great, becomes disease. The loyalty of the Lady
Longueville was carried to a sentiment most rare in that day, and rather
resembling the devotion inspired by the later Stuarts. She made her home
within the precincts of the Tower, that, morning and eve, when Henry
opened his lattice to greet the rising and the setting sun, she might
catch a dim and distant glance of the captive king, or animate, by that
sad sight, the hopes and courage of the Lancastrian emissaries, to whom,
fearless of danger, she scrupled not to give counsel, and, at need,
asylum.

While Sibyll, with enchanted sense, was listening to the praise of
Hastings, a low knock at the door was succeeded by the entrance of that
nobleman himself. Not to Elizabeth, in the alcoves of Shene, or on
the dais of the palace hall, did the graceful courtier bend with more
respectful reverence than to the powerless widow, whose very bread was
his alms; for the true high-breeding of chivalry exists not without
delicacy of feeling, formed originally by warmth of heart; and though
the warmth may lose its glow, the delicacy endures, as the steel that
acquires through heat its polish retains its lustre, even when the shine
but betrays the hardness.

“And how fares my noble lady of Longueville? But need I ask? for her
cheek still wears the rose of Lancaster. A companion? Ha! Mistress
Warner, I learn now how much pleasure exists in surprise!”

“My young visitor,” said the dame, “is but an old friend; she was one of
the child-maidens reared at the court of Queen Margaret.”

“In sooth!” exclaimed Hastings; and then, in an altered tone, he added,
“but I should have guessed so much grace had not come all from Nature.
And your father has gone to see the Lord Henry, and you rest, here,
his return? Ah, noble lady, may you harbour always such innocent
Lancastrians!” The fascinations of this eminent person’s voice and
manner were such that they soon restored Sibyll, to the ease she had
lost at his sudden entrance. He conversed gayly with the old dame upon
such matters of court anecdote as in all the changes of state were still
welcome to one so long accustomed to court air; but from time to time
he addressed himself to Sibyll, and provoked replies which startled
herself--for she was not yet well aware of her own gifts--by their
spirit and intelligence.

“You do not tell us,” said the Lady Longueville, sarcastically, “of the
happy spousailles of Elizabeth’s brother with the Duchess of Norfolk,--a
bachelor of twenty, a bride of some eighty-two. [The old chronicler
justly calls this a “diabolical marriage.” It greatly roused the wrath
of the nobles and indeed of all honourable men, as a proof of the
shameless avarice of the queen’s family.] Verily, these alliances are
new things in the history of English royalty. But when Edward, who, even
if not a rightful king, is at least a born Plantagenet, condescended to
marry Mistress Elizabeth, a born Woodville, scarce of good gentleman’s
blood, naught else seems strange enough to provoke marvel.”

“As to the last matter,” returned Hastings, gravely, “though her grace
the queen be no warm friend to me, I must needs become her champion and
the king’s. The lady who refused the dishonouring suit of the fairest
prince and the boldest knight in the Christian world thereby made
herself worthy of the suit that honoured her; it was not Elizabeth
Woodville alone that won the purple. On the day she mounted a throne,
the chastity of woman herself was crowned.”

“What!” said the Lady Longueville, angrily, “mean you to say that there
is no disgrace in the mal-alliance of kite and falcon, of Plantagenet
and Woodville, of high-born and mud-descended?”

“You forget, lady, that the widow of Henry the Fifth, Catherine of
Valois, a king’s daughter, married the Welsh soldier, Owen Tudor; that
all England teems with brave men born from similar spousailles, where
love has levelled all distinctions, and made a purer hearth, and raised
a bolder offspring, than the lukewarm likings of hearts that beat but
for lands and gold. Wherefore, lady, appeal not to me, a squire of
dames, a believer in the old Parliament of Love; whoever is fair and
chaste, gentle and loving, is, in the eyes of William de Hastings, the
mate and equal of a king!”

Sibyll turned involuntarily as the courtier spoke thus, with animation
in his voice, and fire in his eyes; she turned, and her breath came
quick; she turned, and her look met his, and those words and that look
sank deep into her heart; they called forth brilliant and ambitious
dreams; they rooted the growing love, but they aided to make it holy;
they gave to the delicious fancy what before it had not paused, on its
wing, to sigh for; they gave it that without which all fancy sooner or
later dies; they gave it that which, once received in a noble heart, is
the excuse for untiring faith; they gave it,--HOPE!

“And thou wouldst say,” replied the lady of Longueville, with a meaning
smile, still more emphatically--“thou wouldst say that a youth, brave
and well nurtured, ambitious and loving, ought, in the eyes of rank and
pride, to be the mate and equal of--”

“Ah, noble dame,” interrupted Hastings, quickly, “I must not prolong
encounter with so sharp a wit. Let me leave that answer to this fair
maiden, for by rights it is a challenge to her sex, not to mine.”

“How say you, then, Mistress Warner?” said the dame. “Suppose a young
heiress, of the loftiest birth, of the broadest lands, of the comeliest
form--suppose her wooed by a gentleman poor and stationless, but with
a mighty soul, born to achieve greatness, would she lower herself by
hearkening to his suit?”

“A maiden, methinks,” answered Sibyll, with reluctant but charming
hesitation, “cannot love truly if she love unworthily; and if she love
worthily, it is not rank nor wealth she loves.”

“But her parents, sweet mistress, may deem differently; and should not
her love refuse submission to their tyranny?” asked Hastings.

“Nay, good my lord, nay,” returned Sibyll, shaking her head with
thoughtful demureness. “Surely the wooer, if he love worthily, will not
press her to the curse of a child’s disobedience and a parent’s wrath!”

“Shrewdly answered,” said the dame of Longueville. “Then she would
renounce the poor gentleman if the parent ordain her to marry a rich
lord. Ah, you hesitate, for a woman’s ambition is pleased with the
excuse of a child’s obedience.”

Hastings said this so bitterly that Sibyll could not but perceive that
some personal feeling gave significance to his words. Yet how could they
be applied to him,--to one now in rank and repute equal to the highest
below the throne?

“If the demoiselle should so choose,” said the dame of Longueville, “it
seemeth to me that the rejected suitor might find it facile to disdain
and to forget.”

Hastings made no reply; but that remarkable and deep shade of melancholy
which sometimes in his gayest hours startled those who beheld it, and
which had, perhaps, induced many of the prophecies that circulated as
to the untimely and violent death that should close his bright career,
gathered like a cloud over his brow. At this moment the door opened
gently, and Robert Hilyard stood at the aperture. He was clad in the
dress of a friar, but the raised cowl showed his features to the lady of
Longueville, to whom alone he was visible; and those bold features were
literally haggard with agitation and alarm. He lifted his finger to his
lips, and motioning the lady to follow him, closed the door.

The dame of Longueville rose, and praying her visitors to excuse her
absence for a few moments, she left Hastings and Sibyll to themselves.

“Lady,” said Hilyard, in a hollow whisper, as soon as the dame appeared
in the low hall, communicating on the one hand with the room just left,
on the other with the street, “I fear all will be detected. Hush!
Adam and the iron coffer that contains the precious papers have been
conducted to Edward’s presence. A terrible explosion, possibly connected
with the contrivance, caused such confusion among the guards that Hugh
escaped to scare me with his news. Stationed near the gate in this
disguise, I ventured to enter the courtyard, and saw--saw--the
TORMENTOR! the torturer, the hideous, masked minister of agony, led
towards the chambers in which our hapless messenger is examined by the
ruthless tyrants. Gloucester, the lynx-eyed mannikin, is there!”

“O Margaret, my queen,” exclaimed the lady of Longueville, “the papers
will reveal her whereabout.”

“No, she is safe!” returned Hilyard; “but thy poor scholar, I tremble
for him, and for the heads of all whom the papers name.”

“What can be done! Ha! Lord Hastings is here,--he is ever humane and
pitiful. Dare we confide in him?”

A bright gleam shot over Hilyard’s face. “Yes, yes; let me confer with
him alone. I wait him here,--quick!” The lady hastened back. Hastings
was conversing in a low voice with Sibyll. The dame of Longueville
whispered in the courtier’s ear, drew him into the hall, and left him
alone with the false friar, who had drawn the cowl over his face.

“Lord Hastings,” said Hilyard, speaking rapidly, “you are in danger,
if not of loss of life, of loss of favour. You gave a passport to
one Warner to see the ex-king Henry. Warner’s simplicity (for he is
innocent) hath been duped,--he is made the bearer of secret intelligence
from the unhappy gentlemen who still cling to the Lancaster cause. He is
suspected, he is examined; he may be questioned by the torture. If the
treason be discovered, it was thy hand that signed the passport; the
queen, thou knowest, hates thee, the Woodvilles thirst for thy downfall.
What handle may this give them! Fly! my lord,--fly to the Tower; thou
mayst yet be in time; thy wit can screen all that may otherwise be bare.
Save this poor scholar, conceal this correspondence. Hark ye, lord!
frown not so haughtily,--that correspondence names thee as one who hast
taken the gold of Count Charolois, and whom, therefore, King Louis may
outbuy. Look to thyself!”

A slight blush passed over the pale brow of the great statesman, but he
answered with a steady voice, “Friar or layman, I care not which, the
gold of the heir of Burgundy was a gift, not a bribe. But I need no
threats to save, if not too late, from rack and gibbet the life of a
guiltless man. I am gone. Hold! bid the maiden, the scholar’s daughter,
follow me to the Tower.”



CHAPTER IX. HOW THE DESTRUCTIVE ORGAN OF PRINCE RICHARD PROMISES GOODLY
DEVELOPMENT.

The Duke of Gloucester approached Adam as he stood gazing on his model.
“Old man,” said the prince, touching him with the point of his sheathed
dagger, “look up and answer. What converse hast thou held with Henry
of Windsor, and who commissioned thee to visit him in his confinement?
Speak, and the truth! for by holy Paul, I am one who can detect a lie,
and without that door stands--the Tormentor!”

Upon a pleasing and joyous dream broke these harsh words; for Adam then
was full of the contrivance by which to repair the defect of the engine,
and with this suggestion was blent confusedly the thought that he was
now protected by royalty, that he should have means and leisure to
accomplish his great design, that he should have friends whose power
could obtain its adoption by the king. He raised his eyes, and that
young dark face frowned upon him,--the child menacing the sage, brute
force in a pigmy shape, having authority of life and death over the
giant strength of genius. But these words, which recalled Warner from
his existence as philosopher, woke that of the gentle but brave and
honourable man which he was, when reduced to earth.

“Sir,” he said gravely, “if I have consented to hold converse with the
unhappy, it was not as the tell-tale and the spier. I had formal warrant
for my visit, and I was solicited to render it by an early friend and
comrade, who sought to be my benefactor in aiding with gold my poor
studies for the king’s people.”

“Tut!” said Richard, impatiently, and playing with his dagger hilt; “thy
words, stealthy and evasive, prove thy guilt! Sure am I that this iron
traitor with its intricate hollows and recesses holds what, unless
confessed, will give thee to the hangman! Confess all, and thou art
spared.”

“If,” said Adam, mildly, “your Highness--for though I know not your
quality, I opine that no one less than royal could so menace--if your
Highness imagines that I have been intrusted by a fallen man, wrong
me not by supposing that I could fear death more than dishonour; for
certes!” continued Adam, with innocent pedantry, “to put the case
scholastically, and in the logic familiar, doubtless, to your Highness,
either I have something to confess or I have not; if I have--”

“Hound!” interrupted the prince, stamping his foot, “thinkest thou to
banter me,--see!” As his foot shook the floor, the door opened, and a
man with his arms bare, covered from head to foot in a black gown of
serge, with his features concealed by a hideous mask, stood ominously at
the aperture.

The prince motioned to the torturer (or tormentor, as he was technically
styled) to approach, which he did noiselessly, till he stood, tall,
grim, and lowering, beside Adam, like some silent and devouring monster
by its prey.

“Dost thou repent thy contumacy? A moment, and I render my questioning
to another!”

“Sir,” said Adam, drawing himself up, and with so sudden a change of
mien, that his loftiness almost awed even the dauntless Richard,--“sir,
my fathers feared not death when they did battle for the throne of
England; and why?--because in their loyal valour they placed not the
interests of a mortal man, but the cause of imperishable honour! And
though their son be a poor scholar, and wears not the spurs of gold;
though his frame be weak and his hairs gray, he loveth honour also well
eno’ to look without dread on death!”

Fierce and ruthless, when irritated and opposed, as the prince was, he
was still in his first youth,--ambition had here no motive to harden
him into stone. He was naturally so brave himself that bravery could not
fail to win from him something of respect and sympathy, and he was taken
wholly by surprise in hearing the language of a knight and hero from
one whom he had regarded but as the artful impostor or the despicable
intriguer.

He changed countenance as Warner spoke, and remained a moment silent.
Then as a thought occurred to him, at which his features relaxed into
a half-smile, he beckoned to the tormentor, said a word in his ear, and
the horrible intruder nodded and withdrew.

“Master Warner,” then said the prince, in his customary sweet and
gliding tones, “it were a pity that so gallant a gentleman should be
exposed to peril for adhesion to a cause that can never prosper, and
that would be fatal, could it prosper, to our common country. For look
you, this Margaret, who is now, we believe, in London” (here he examined
Adam’s countenance, which evinced surprise), “this Margaret, who is
seeking to rekindle the brand and brennen of civil war, has already sold
for base gold to the enemy of the realm, to Louis XI., that very Calais
which your fathers, doubtless, lavished their blood to annex to our
possessions. Shame on the lewd harlot! What woman so bloody and so
dissolute? What man so feeble and craven as her lord?”

“Alas! sir,” said Adam, “I am unfitted for these high considerations of
state. I live but for my art, and in it. And now, behold how my kingdom
is shaken and rent!” he pointed with so touching a smile, and so simple
a sadness, to the broken engine, that Richard was moved.

“Thou lovest this, thy toy? I can comprehend that love for some
dumb thing that we have toiled for. Ay!” continued the prince,
thoughtfully,--“ay! I have noted myself in life that there are objects,
senseless as that mould of iron, which if we labour at them wind round
our hearts as if they were flesh and blood. So some men love learning,
others glory, others power. Well, man, thou lovest that mechanical? How
many years hast thou been about it?”

“From the first to the last, twenty-five years, and it is still
incomplete.”

“Um!” said the prince, smiling, “Master Warner, thou hast read of the
judgment of Solomon,--how the wise king discovered the truth by ordering
the child’s death?”

“It was indeed,” said Adam, unsuspectingly, “a most shrewd suggestion of
native wit and clerkly wisdom.”

“Glad am I thou approvest it, Master Warner,” said Richard. And as he
spoke the tormentor reappeared with a smith, armed with the implements
of his trade.

“Good smith, break into pieces this stubborn iron; bare all its
receptacles; leave not one fragment standing on the other! ‘Delenda est
tua Carthago,’ Master Warner. There is Latin in answer to thy logic.”

It is impossible to convey any notion of the terror, the rage, the
despair, which seized upon the unhappy sage when these words smote his
ear, and he saw the smith’s brawny arms swing on high the ponderous
hammer. He flung himself between the murderous stroke and his beloved
model. He embraced the grim iron tightly. “Kill me!” he exclaimed
sublimely, “kill me!--not my THOUGHT!”

“Solomon was verily and indeed a wise king,” said the duke, with a low
inward laugh. “And now, man, I have thee! To save thy infant, thine
art’s hideous infant, confess the whole!”

It was then that a fierce struggle evidently took place in Adam’s bosom.
It was, perhaps--O reader! thou whom pleasure, love, ambition, hatred,
avarice, in thine and our ordinary existence, tempt--it was, perhaps, to
him the one arch-temptation of a life. In the changing countenance, the
heaving breast, the trembling lip, the eyes that closed and opened to
close again, as if to shut out the unworthy weakness,--yea, in the whole
physical man,--was seen the crisis of the moral struggle. And what, in
truth, to him an Edward or a Henry, a Lancaster or a York? Nothing. But
still that instinct, that principle, that conscience, ever strongest in
those whose eyes are accustomed to the search of truth, prevailed. So
he rose suddenly and quietly, drew himself apart, left his work to the
Destroyer, and said,--

“Prince, thou art a boy! Let a boy’s voice annihilate that which should
have served all time. Strike!”

Richard motioned; the hammer descended, the engine and its appurtenances
reeled and crashed, the doors flew open, the wheels rattled, the sparks
flew. And Adam Warner fell to the ground, as if the blow had broken his
own heart. Little heeding the insensible victim of his hard and cunning
policy, Richard advanced to the inspection of the interior recesses of
the machinery. But that which promised Adam’s destruction saved him. The
heavy stroke had battered in the receptacle of the documents, had
buried them in the layers of iron. The faithful Eureka, even amidst its
injuries and wrecks, preserved the secret of its master.

The prince, with impatient hands, explored all the apertures yet
revealed, and after wasting many minutes in a fruitless search, was
about to bid the smith complete the work of destruction, when the door
suddenly opened and Lord Hastings entered. His quick eye took in the
whole scene; he arrested the lifted arm of the smith, and passing
deliberately to Gloucester, said, with a profound reverence, but a
half-reproachful smile, “My lord! my lord! your Highness is indeed
severe upon my poor scholar.”

“Canst thou answer for thy scholar’s loyalty?” said the duke, gloomily.

Hastings drew the prince aside, and said, in a low tone, “His loyalty!
poor man, I know not; but his guilelessness, surely, yes. Look you,
sweet prince, I know the interest thou hast in keeping well with the
Earl of Warwick, whom I, in sooth, have slight cause to love. Thou hast
trusted me with thy young hopes of the Lady Anne; this new Nevile placed
about the king, and whose fortunes Warwick hath made his care, hath,
I have reason to think, some love passages with the scholar’s
daughter,--the daughter came to me for the passport. Shall this
Marmaduke Nevile have it to say to his fair kinswoman, with the
unforgiving malice of a lover’s memory, that the princely Gloucester
stooped to be the torturer of yon poor old man? If there be treason in
the scholar or in yon battered craft-work, leave the search to me!”

The duke raised his dark, penetrating eyes to those of Hastings, which
did not quail; for here world-genius encountered world-genius, and art,
art.

“Thine argument hath more subtlety and circumlocution than suit with
simple truth,” said the prince, smiling. “But it is enough to Richard
that Hastings wills protection even to a spy!”

Hastings kissed the duke’s hand in silence, and going to the door, he
disappeared a moment and returned with Sibyll. As she entered, pale and
trembling, Adam rose, and the girl with a wild cry flew to his bosom.

“It is a winsome face, Hastings,” said the duke, dryly. “I pity Master
Nevile the lover, and envy my Lord Chamberlain the protector.”

Hastings laughed, for he was well pleased that Richard’s suspicion took
that turn.

“And now,” he said, “I suppose Master Nevile and the Duchess of
Bedford’s page may enter. Your guard stopped them hitherto. They come
for this gentleman from her highness the queen’s mother.”

“Enter, Master Nevile, and you, Sir Page. What is your errand?”

“My lady, the duchess,” said the page, “has sent me to conduct Master
Warner to the apartments prepared for him as her special multiplier and
alchemist.”

“What!” said the prince, who, unlike the irritable Clarence, made it
his policy to show all decorous homage to the queen’s kin, “hath that
illustrious lady taken this gentleman into her service? Why announced
you not, Master Warner, what at once had saved you from further
questioning? Lord Hastings, I thank you now for your intercession.”

Hastings, in answer, pointed archly at Marmaduke, who was aiding Sibyll
to support her father. “Do you suspect me still, prince?” he whispered.

The duke shrugged his shoulders, and Adam, breaking from Marmaduke
and Sibyll, passed with tottering steps to the shattered labour of his
solitary life. He looked at the ruin with mournful despondence, with
quivering lips. “Have you done with me?” then he said, bowing his head
lowlily, for his pride was gone; “may we--that is, I and this, my poor
device--withdraw from your palace? I see we are not fit for kings!”

“Say not so,” said the young duke, gently: “we have now convinced
ourselves of our error, and I crave thy pardon, Master Warner, for my
harsh dealings. As for this, thy toy, the king’s workmen shall set it
right for thee. Smith, call the fellows yonder, to help bear this to--”
 He paused, and glanced at Hastings.

“To my apartments,” said the chamberlain. “Your Highness may be sure
that I will there inspect it. Fear not, Master Warner; no further harm
shall chance to thy contrivance.”

“Come, sir, forgive me,” said the duke. With gracious affability the
young prince held out his hand, the fingers of which sparkled with
costly gems, to the old man. The old man bowed as if his beard would
have swept the earth, but he did not touch the hand. He seemed still in
a state between dream and reason, life and death: he moved not, spoke
not, till the men came to bear the model; and he then followed it, his
arms folded in his gown, till, on entering the court, it was borne in
a contrary direction from his own, to the chamberlain’s apartment; then
wistfully pursuing it with his eyes, he uttered such a sigh as might
have come from a resigned father losing the last glimpse of a beloved
son.

Richard hesitated a moment, loth to relinquish his research, and
doubtful whether to follow the Eureka for renewed investigation; but
partly unwilling to compromise his dignity in the eyes of Hastings,
should his suspicions prove unfounded, and partly indisposed to risk the
displeasure of the vindictive Duchess of Bedford by further molestation
of one now under her protection, he reluctantly trusted all further
inquiry to the well-known loyalty of Hastings. “If Margaret be in
London,” he muttered to himself as he turned slowly away, “now is the
time to seize and chain the lioness! Ho, Catesby,--hither (a
valuable man that Catesby--a lawyer’s nurturing with a bloodhound’s
nature!)--Catesby, while King Edward rides for pleasure, let thou and
I track the scent of his foes. If the she-wolf of Anjou hath ventured
hither, she hides in some convent or monastery, be sure. See to our
palfreys, Catesby! Strange,” added the prince, muttering to himself,
“that I am more restless to guard the crown than he who wears it! Nay,
a crown is a goodly heirloom in a man’s family, and a fair sight to see
near--and near--and near--”

The prince abruptly paused, opened and shut his right hand convulsively,
and drew a long sigh.



BOOK IV. INTRIGUES OF THE COURT OF EDWARD IV.


CHAPTER I. MARGARET OF ANJOU.

The day after the events recorded in the last section of this narrative,
and about the hour of noon, Robert Hilyard (still in the reverend
disguise in which he had accosted Hastings) bent his way through the
labyrinth of alleys that wound in dingy confusion from the Chepe towards
the river.

The purlieus of the Thames, in that day of ineffective police, sheltered
many who either lived upon plunder, or sought abodes that proffered, at
alarm, the facility of flight. Here, sauntering in twos or threes, or
lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, might be seen that
refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civil war,--disbanded
soldiers of either Rose, too inured to violence and strife for peaceful
employment, and ready for any enterprise by which keen steel wins bright
gold. At length our friend stopped before the gate of a small house, on
the very marge of the river, which belonged to one of the many religious
orders then existing; but from its site and aspect denoted the poverty
seldom their characteristic. Here he knocked; the door was opened by a
lay-brother; a sign and a smile were interchanged, and the visitor was
ushered into a room belonging to the superior, but given up for the last
few days to a foreign priest, to whom the whole community appeared to
consider the reverence of a saint was due. And yet this priest, who,
seated alone, by a casement which commanded a partial view of the
distant Tower of London, received the conspirator, was clad in the
humblest serge. His face was smooth and delicate; and the animation of
the aspect, the vehement impatience of the gesture, evinced little of
the holy calm that should belong to those who have relinquished the
affairs of earth for meditation on the things of heaven. To this
personage the sturdy Hilyard bowed his manly knees; and casting himself
at the priest’s feet, his eyes, his countenance, changed from their
customary hardihood and recklessness into an expression at once of
reverence and of pity.

“Well, man--well, friend--good friend, tried and leal friend, speak!
speak!” exclaimed the priest, in an accent that plainly revealed a
foreign birth.

“Oh, gracious lady! all hope is over; I come but to bid you fly. Adam
Warner was brought before the usurper; he escaped, indeed, the torture,
and was faithful to the trust. But the papers--the secret of the
rising--are in the hands of Hastings.”

“How long, O Lord,” said Margaret of Anjou, for she it was, under that
reverend disguise, “how long wilt Thou delay the hour of triumph and
revenge?”

The princess as she spoke had suffered her hood to fall back, and
her pale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery and
terrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man had
read his doom,--an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passion that
pervaded it did not distort the features, but left them locked, rigid,
and marble-like in beauty, as the head of the Medusa.

“The day will dawn at last,” said Hilyard; “but the judgments of Heaven
are slow. We are favoured, at the least, that our secret is confined
to a man more merciful than his tribe.” He then related to Margaret
his interview with Hastings at the house of the Lady Lougueville, and
continued: “This morning, not an hour since, I sought him (for last
evening he did not leave Edward, a council met at the Tower), and
learned that he had detected the documents in the recesses of Warner’s
engine. Knowing from your Highness and your spies that he had been open
to the gifts of Charolois, I spoke to him plainly of the guerdon that
should await his silence. ‘Friar,’ he answered, ‘if in this court and
this world I have found it were a fool’s virtue to be more pure than
others, and if I know that I should but provoke the wrath of those who
profit by Burgundian gold, were I alone to disdain its glitter, I have
still eno’ of my younger conscience left me not to make barter of
human flesh. Did I give these papers to King Edward, the heads of fifty
gallant men, whose error is but loyalty to their ancient sovereign,
would glut the doomsman; but,’ he continued, ‘I am yet true to my king
and his cause; I shall know how to advise Edward to the frustrating all
your schemes. The districts where you hoped a rising will be guarded,
the men ye count upon will be watched: the Duke of Gloucester, whose
vigilance never sleeps, has learned that the Lady Margaret is in
England, disguised as a priest. To-morrow all the religious houses will
be searched; if thou knowest where she lies concealed, bid her lose not
an hour to fly.’”

“I Will NOT fly!” exclaimed Margaret; “let Edward, if he dare, proclaim
to my people that their queen is in her city of London. Let him send his
hirelings to seize her. Not in this dress shall she be found. In robes
of state, the sceptre in her hand, shall they drag the consort of their
king to the prison-house of her palace.”

“On my knees, great queen, I implore you to be calm; with the loss
of your liberty ends indeed all hope of victory, all chance even of
struggle. Think not Edward’s fears would leave to Margaret the life that
his disdain has spared to your royal spouse. Between your prison and
your grave, but one secret and bloody step! Be ruled; no time to lose!
My trusty Hugh even now waits with his boat below. Relays of horses
are ready, night and day, to bear you to the coast; while seeking your
restoration, I have never neglected the facilities for flight. Pause
not, O gracious lady; let not your son say, ‘My mother’s passion has
lost me the hope of my grandsire’s crown.’”

“My boy; my princely boy, my Edward!” exclaimed Margaret, bursting
into tears, all the warrior-queen merged in the remembrance of the fond
mother. “Ah, faithful friend! he is so gallant and so beautiful! Oh, he
shall reward thee well hereafter!”

“May he live to crush these barons, and raise this people!” said the
demagogue of Redesdale. “But now, save thyself!”

“But what! is it not possible yet to strike the blow? Rather let us spur
to the north; rather let us hasten the hour of action, and raise the Red
Rose through the length and breadth of England!”

“Ah, lady, if without warrant from your lord; if without foreign
subsidies; if without having yet ripened the time; if without gold,
without arms, and without one great baron on our side, we forestall a
rising, all that we have gained is lost; and instead of war, you can
scarcely provoke a riot. But for this accursed alliance of Edward’s
daughter with the brother of icy-hearted Louis, our triumph had been
secure. The French king’s gold would have manned a camp, bribed the
discontented lords, and his support have sustained the hopes of the more
leal Lancastrians. But it is in vain to deny, that if Lord Warwick win
Louis--”

“He will not! he shall not!--Louis, mine own kinsman!” exclaimed
Margaret, in a voice in which the anguish pierced through the louder
tone of resentment and disdain.

“Let us hope that he will not,” replied Hilyard, soothingly; “some
chance may yet break off these nuptials, and once more give us France
as our firm ally. But now we must be patient. Already Edward is fast
wearing away the gloss of his crown; already the great lords desert his
court; already, in the rural provinces, peasant and franklin complain of
the exactions of his minions; already the mighty House of Nevile frowns
sullen on the throne it built. Another year, and who knows but the Earl
of Warwick,--the beloved and the fearless, whose statesman-art alone
hath severed from you the arms and aid of France, at whose lifted
finger all England would bristle with armed men--may ride by the side of
Margaret through the gates of London?”

“Evil-omened consoler, never!” exclaimed the princess, starting to her
feet, with eyes that literally shot fire. “Thinkest thou that the spirit
of a queen lies in me so low and crushed, that I, the descendant of
Charlemagne, could forgive the wrongs endured from Warwick and his
father? But thou, though wise and loyal, art of the Commons; thou
knowest not how they feel through whose veins rolls the blood of kings!”

A dark and cold shade fell over the bold face of Robin of Redesdale at
these words.

“Ah, lady,” he said, with bitterness, “if no misfortune can curb
thy pride, in vain would we rebuild thy throne. It is these Commons,
Margaret of Anjou--these English Commons--this Saxon People, that can
alone secure to thee the holding of the realm which the right arm wins.
And, beshrew me, much as I love thy cause, much as thou hast with thy
sorrows and thy princely beauty glamoured and spelled my heart and
my hand,--ay, so that I, the son of a Lollard, forget the wrongs the
Lollards sustained from the House of Lancaster; so that I, who have seen
the glorious fruitage of a Republic, yet labour for thee, to overshadow
the land with the throne of ONE--yet--yet, lady--yet, if I thought thou
wert to be the same Margaret as of old, looking back to thy dead kings,
and contemptuous of thy living people, I would not bid one mother’s son
lift lance or bill on thy behalf.”

So resolutely did Robin of Redesdale utter these words, that the queen’s
haughty eye fell abashed as he spoke; and her craft, or her intellect,
which was keen and prompt where her passions did not deafen and blind
her judgment, instantly returned to her. Few women equalled this once
idol of knight and minstrel, in the subduing fascination that she could
exert in her happier moments. Her affability was as gracious as her
wrath was savage; and with a dignified and winning frankness, she
extended her hand to her ally, as she answered, in a sweet, humble,
womanly, and almost penitent voice,--

“O bravest and lealest of friends, forgive thy wretched queen. Her
troubles distract her brain,--chide her not if they sour her speech.
Saints above! will ye not pardon Margaret if at times her nature be
turned from the mother’s milk into streams of gall and bloody purpose,
when ye see, from your homes serene, in what a world of strife and
falsehood her very womanhood hath grown unsexed?” She paused a moment,
and her uplifted eyes shed tears fast and large. Then, with a sigh,
she turned to Hilyard, and resumed more calmly, “Yes, thou art
right,--adversity hath taught me much. And though adversity will too
often but feed and not starve our pride, yet thou--thou hast made me
know that there is more of true nobility in the blunt Children of the
People than in many a breast over which flows the kingly robe. Forgive
me, and the daughter of Charlemagne shall yet be a mother to the
Commons, who claim thee as their brother!”

Thoroughly melted, Robin of Redesdale bowed over the hand held to his
lips, and his rough voice trembled as he answered, though that answer
took but the shape of prayer.

“And now,” said the princess, smiling, “to make peace lasting between
us, I conquer myself, I yield to thy counsels. Once more the fugitive, I
abandon the city that contains Henry’s unheeded prison. See, I am ready.
Who will know Margaret in this attire? Lead on!”

Rejoiced to seize advantage of this altered and submissive mood,
Robin instantly took the way through a narrow passage, to a small door
communicating with the river. There Hugh was waiting in a small boat,
moored to the damp and discoloured stairs.

Robin, by a gesture, checked the man’s impulse to throw himself at the
feet of the pretended priest, and bade him put forth his best speed.
The princess seated herself by the helm, and the little boat cut
rapidly through the noble stream. Galleys, gay and gilded, with armorial
streamers, and filled with nobles and gallants, passed them, noisy with
mirth or music, on their way. These the fallen sovereign heeded not;
but, with all her faults, the woman’s heart beating in her bosom--she
who in prosperity had so often wrought ruin, and shame, and woe to
her gentle lord; she who had been reckless of her trust as queen; and
incurred grave--but, let us charitably hope, unjust--suspicion of her
faith as wife, still fixed her eyes on the gloomy tower that contained
her captive husband, and felt that she could have forgotten a while even
the loss of power if but permitted to fall on that plighted heart, and
weep over the past with the woe-worn bridegroom of her youth.



CHAPTER II. IN WHICH ARE LAID OPEN TO THE READER THE CHARACTER OF
EDWARD THE FOURTH AND THAT OF HIS COURT, WITH THE MACHINATIONS OF THE
WOODVILLES AGAINST THE EARL OF WARWICK.

Scarcely need it be said to those who have looked with some philosophy
upon human life, that the young existence of Master Marmaduke Nevile,
once fairly merged in the great common sea, will rarely reappear before
us individualized and distinct. The type of the provincial cadet of the
day hastening courtwards to seek his fortune, he becomes lost amidst
the gigantic characters and fervid passions that alone stand forth in
history. And as, in reading biography, we first take interest in the
individual who narrates, but if his career shall pass into that broader
and more stirring life, in which he mingles with men who have left a
more dazzling memory than his own, we find the interest change from the
narrator to those by whom he is surrounded and eclipsed,--so, in this
record of a time, we scarce follow our young adventurer into the court
of the brilliant Edward ere the scene itself allures and separates us
from our guide; his mission is, as it were, well-nigh done. We leave,
then, for a while this bold, frank nature-fresh from the health of
the rural life--gradually to improve, or deprave itself, in the
companionship it finds. The example of the Lords Hastings, Scales, and
Worcester, and the accomplishments of the two younger Princes of York,
especially the Duke of Gloucester, had diffused among the younger
and gayer part of the court that growing taste for letters which
had somewhat slept during the dynasty of the House of Lancaster; and
Marmaduke’s mind became aware that learning was no longer the peculiar
distinction of the Church, and that Warwick was behind his age when he
boasted “that the sword was more familiar to him than the pen.” He had
the sagacity to perceive that the alliance with the great earl did not
conduce to his popularity at court; and even in the king’s presence,
the courtiers permitted themselves many taunts and jests at the fiery
Warwick, which they would have bitten out their tongues ere they would
have vented before the earl himself. But though the Nevile sufficiently
controlled his native candour not to incur unprofitable quarrel by
ill-mannered and unseasonable defence of the hero-baron when sneered at
or assailed, he had enough of the soldier and the man in him not to be
tainted by the envy of the time and place,--not to lose his gratitude to
his patron, nor his respect for the bulwark of the country. Rather, it
may be said, that Warwick gained in his estimation whenever compared
with the gay and silken personages who avenged themselves by words for
his superiority in deeds. Not only as a soldier, but as a statesman, the
great and peculiar merits of the earl were visible in all those measures
which emanated solely from himself. Though so indifferently educated,
his busy, practical career, his affable mixing with all classes, and
his hearty, national sympathies made him so well acquainted with the
interests of his country and the habits of his countrymen, that he was
far more fitted to rule than the scientific Worcester or the learned
Scales. The Young Duke of Gloucester presented a marked contrast to the
general levity of the court, in speaking of this powerful nobleman. He
never named him but with respect, and was pointedly courteous to
even the humblest member of the earl’s family. In this he appeared to
advantage by the side of Clarence, whose weakness of disposition made
him take the tone of the society in which he was thrown, and who, while
really loving Warwick, often smiled at the jests against him,--not,
indeed, if uttered by the queen or her family, of whom he ill concealed
his jealousy and hatred.

The whole court was animated and pregnant with a spirit of intrigue,
which the artful cunning of the queen, the astute policy of Jacquetta,
and the animosity of the different factions had fomented to a degree
quite unknown under former reigns. It was a place in which the wit of
young men grew old rapidly; amidst stratagem, and plot, and ambitious
design, and stealthy overreaching, the boyhood of Richard III. passed
to its relentless manhood: such is the inevitable fruit of that era in
civilization when a martial aristocracy first begins to merge into a
voluptuous court.

Through this moving and shifting web of ambition and intrigue the royal
Edward moved with a careless grace: simple himself, because his object
was won, and pleasure had supplanted ambition. His indolent, joyous
temper served to deaden his powerful intellect; or, rather, his
intellect was now lost in the sensual stream through which it flowed.
Ever in pursuit of some new face, his schemes and counterschemes
were limited to cheat a husband or deceive a wife; and dexterous and
successful no doubt they were. But a vice always more destructive
than the love of women began also to reign over him,--namely, the
intemperance of the table. The fastidious and graceful epicurism of the
early Normans, inclined to dainties but abhorring excess, and regarding
with astonished disdain the heavy meals and deep draughts of the Saxon,
had long ceased to characterize the offspring of that noblest of
all noble races. Warwick, whose stately manliness was disgusted with
whatever savoured of effeminacy or debauch, used to declare that he
would rather fight fifty battles for Edward IV. than once sup with him!
Feasts were prolonged for hours, and the banquets of this king of the
Middle Ages almost resembled those of the later Roman emperors. The Lord
Montagu did not share the abstemiousness of his brother of Warwick. He
was, next to Hastings, the king’s chosen and most favourite companion.
He ate almost as much as the king, and drank very little less. Of few
courtiers could the same be said! Over the lavish profligacy and excess
of the court, however, a veil dazzling to the young and high-spirited
was thrown. Edward was thoroughly the cavalier, deeply imbued with the
romance of chivalry, and, while making the absolute woman his plaything,
always treated the ideal woman as a goddess. A refined gallantry, a
deferential courtesy to dame and demoiselle, united the language of
an Amadis with the licentiousness of a Gaolor; and a far more
alluring contrast than the court of Charles II. presented to the grim
Commonwealth seduced the vulgar in that of this most brave and most
beautiful prince, when compared with the mournful and lugubrious circles
in which Henry VI. had reigned and prayed. Edward himself, too, it
was so impossible to judge with severe justice, that his extraordinary
popularity in London, where he was daily seen, was never diminished by
his faults; he was so bold in the field, yet so mild in the chamber;
when his passions slept, he was so thoroughly good-natured and social,
so kind to all about his person, so hearty and gladsome in his talk and
in his vices, so magnificent and so generous withal; and, despite his
indolence, his capacities for business were marvellous,--and these last
commanded the reverence of the good Londoners; he often administered
justice himself, like the caliphs of the East, and with great acuteness
and address. Like most extravagant men, he had a wholesome touch
of avarice. That contempt for commerce which characterizes a modern
aristocracy was little felt by the nobles of that day, with the
exception of such blunt patricians as Lord Warwick or Raoul de Fulke.
The great House of De la Pole (Duke of Suffolk), the heir of which
married Edward’s sister Elizabeth, had been founded by a merchant of
Hull. Earls and archbishops scrupled not to derive revenues from what
we should now esteem the literal resources of trade. [The Abbot of
St. Alban’s (temp. Henry III.) was a vendor of Yarmouth bloaters. The
Cistercian Monks were wool-merchants; and Macpherson tells us of
a couple of Iceland bishops who got a license from Henry VI. for
smuggling. (Matthew Paris. Macpherson’s “Annals of Commerce,” 10.)
As the Whig historians generally have thought fit to consider the
Lancastrian cause the more “liberal” of the two, because Henry IV. was
the popular choice, and, in fact, an elected, not an hereditary king, so
it cannot be too emphatically repeated, that the accession of Edward IV.
was the success of two new and two highly--popular principles,--the one
that of church reform, the other that of commercial calculation. All
that immense section, almost a majority of the people, who had been
persecuted by the Lancastrian kings as Lollards, revenged on Henry the
aggrieved rights of religious toleration. On the other hand, though
Henry IV., who was immeasurably superior to his warlike son in intellect
and statesmanship, had favoured the growing commercial spirit, it had
received nothing but injury under Henry V., and little better than
contempt under Henry VI. The accession of the Yorkists was, then, on
two grounds a great popular movement; and it was followed by a third
advantage to the popular cause,--namely, in the determined desire both
of Edward and Richard III. to destroy the dangerous influence of the
old feudal aristocracy. To this end Edward laboured in the creation of
a court noblesse; and Richard, with the more dogged resolution that
belonged to him, went at once to the root of the feudal power, in
forbidding the nobles to give badges and liveries (this also was
forbidden, it is true, by the edict of Edward IV. as well as by his
predecessors from the reign of Richard II.; but no king seems to have
had the courage to enforce the prohibition before Richard III.),--in
other words, to appropriate armies under the name of retainers.
Henry VII., in short, did not originate the policy for which he has
monopolized the credit; he did but steadily follow out the theory of
raising the middle class and humbling the baronial, which the House of
York first put into practice.] shown itself on this point more liberal
in its policy, more free from feudal prejudices, than that of the
Plantagenets. Even Edward II. was tenacious of the commerce with Genoa,
and an intercourse with the merchant princes of that republic probably
served to associate the pursuits of commerce with the notion of rank and
power. Edward III. is still called the Father of English Commerce; but
Edward IV. carried the theories of his ancestors into far more extensive
practice, for his own personal profit. This king, so indolent in the
palace, was literally the most active merchant in the mart. He traded
largely in ships of his own, freighted with his own goods; and though,
according to sound modern economics, this was anything but an aid to
commerce, seeing that no private merchant could compete with a royal
trader who went out and came in duty-free, yet certainly the mere
companionship and association in risk and gain, and the common
conversation that it made between the affable monarch and the homeliest
trader, served to increase his popularity, and to couple it with respect
for practical sense. Edward IV. was in all this pre-eminently THE MAN
OF HIS AGE,--not an inch behind it or before! And, in addition to this
happy position, he was one of those darlings of Nature, so affluent and
blest in gifts of person, mind, and outward show, that it is only at the
distance of posterity we ask why men of his own age admired the false,
the licentious, and the cruel, where those contemporaries, over-dazzled,
saw but the heroic and the joyous, the young, the beautiful,--the
affable to friend, and the terrible to foe!

It was necessary to say thus much on the commercial tendencies of
Edward, because, at this epoch, they operated greatly, besides other
motives shortly to be made clear, in favour of the plot laid by the
enemies of the Earl of Warwick, to dishonour that powerful minister and
drive him from the councils of the king.

One morning Hastings received a summons to attend Edward, and on
entering the royal chamber, he found already assembled Lord Rivers, the
queen’s father, Anthony Woodville, and the Earl of Worcester.

The king seemed thoughtful; he beckoned Hastings to approach, and placed
in his hand a letter, dated from Rouen. “Read and judge, Hastings,” said
Edward.

The letter was from a gentleman in Warwick’s train. It gave a glowing
account of the honours accorded to the earl by Louis XI., greater than
those ever before manifested to a subject, and proceeded thus:--

“But it is just I should apprise you that there be strange rumours as to
the marvellous love that King Louis shows my lord the earl. He lodgeth
in the next house to him, and hath even had an opening made in the
partition-wall between his own chamber and the earl’s. Men do say that
the king visits him nightly, and there be those who think that so much
stealthy intercourse between an English ambassador and the kinsman of
Margaret of Anjou bodeth small profit to our grace the king.”

“I observe,” said Hastings, glancing to the superscription, “that this
letter is addressed to my Lord Rivers. Can he avouch the fidelity of his
correspondent?”

“Surely, yes,” answered Rivers; “it is a gentleman of my own blood.”

“Were he not so accredited,” returned Hastings, “I should question the
truth of a man who can thus consent to play the spy upon his lord and
superior.”

“The public weal justifies all things,” said the Earl of Worcester (who,
though by marriage nearly connected to Warwick, eyed his power with
the jealous scorn which the man of book-lore often feels for one whose
talent lies in action),--“so held our masters in all state-craft, the
Greek and Roman.”

“Certes,” said Sir Anthony Woodville, “it grieveth the pride of an
English knight that we should be beholden for courtesies to the born foe
of England, which I take the Frenchman naturally to be.”

“Ah,” said Edward, smiling sternly, “I would rather be myself, with
banner and trump, before the walls of Paris, than sending my cousin the
earl to beg the French king’s brother to accept my sister as a bride.
And what is to become of my good merchant-ships if Burgundy take umbrage
and close its ports?”

“Beau sire,” said Hastings, “thou knowest how little cause I have to
love the Earl of Warwick. We all here, save your gracious self, bear the
memory of some affront rendered to us by his pride and heat of mood! but
in this council I must cease to be William de Hastings, and be all and
wholly the king’s servant. I say first, then, with reference to these
noble peers, that Warwick’s faith to the House of York is too well
proven to become suspected because of the courtesies of King Louis,--an
artful craft, as it clearly seems to me, of the wily Frenchman, to
weaken your throne, by provoking your distrust of its great supporter.
Fall we not into such a snare! Moreover, we may be sure that Warwick
cannot be false, if he achieve the object of his embassy,--namely,
detach Louis from the side of Margaret and Lancaster by close alliance
with Edward and York. Secondly, sire, with regard to that alliance,
which it seems you would repent,--I hold now, as I have held ever, that
it is a master-stroke in policy, and the earl in this proves his sharp
brain worthy his strong arm; for as his highness the Duke of Gloucester
hath now clearly discovered that Margaret of Anjou has been of late
in London, and that treasonable designs were meditated, though now
frustrated, so we may ask why the friends of Lancaster really stood
aloof; why all conspiracy was, and is, in vain?--Because, sire, of this
very alliance with France; because the gold and subsidies of Louis are
not forthcoming; because the Lancastrians see that if once Lord Warwick
win France from the Red Rose, nothing short of such a miracle as their
gaining Warwick instead can give a hope to their treason. Your Highness
fears the anger of Burgundy, and the suspension of your trade with the
Flemings; but--forgive me--this is not reasonable. Burgundy dare not
offend England, matched, as its arms are, with France; the Flemings gain
more by you than you gain by the Flemings, and those interested burghers
will not suffer any prince’s quarrel to damage their commerce. Charolois
may bluster and threat, but the storm will pass, and Burgundy will be
contented, if England remain neutral in the feud with France. All these
reasons, sire, urge me to support my private foe, the Lord Warwick,
and to pray you to give no ear to the discrediting his Honour and his
embassy.”

The profound sagacity of these remarks, the repute of the speaker, and
the well-known grudge between him and Warwick, for reasons hereafter
to be explained, produced a strong effect upon the intellect of Edward,
always vigorous, save when clouded with passion. But Rivers, whose
malice to the earl was indomitable, coldly recommenced,--

“With submission to the Lord Hastings, sire, whom we know that love
sometimes blinds, and whose allegiance to the earl’s fair sister, the
Lady of Bonville, perchance somewhat moves him to forget the day when
Lord Warwick--”

“Cease, my lord,” said Hastings, white with suppressed anger; “these
references beseem not the councils of grave men.”

“Tut, Hastings,” said Edward, laughing merrily, “women mix themselves
up in all things: board or council, bed or battle,--wherever there
is mischief astir, there, be sure, peeps a woman’s sly face from her
wimple. Go on, Rivers.”

“Your pardon, my Lord Hastings,” said Rivers, “I knew not my thrust went
so home; there is another letter I have not yet laid before the king.”
 He drew forth a scroll from his bosom, and read as follows:--

“Yesterday the earl feasted the king, and as, in discharge of mine
office, I carved for my lord, I heard King Louis say, ‘Pasque Dieu, my
Lord Warwick, our couriers bring us word that Count Charolois declares
he shall yet wed the Lady Margaret, and that he laughs at your
ambassage. What if our brother, King Edward, fall back from the treaty?’
‘He durst not!’ said the earl.”

“Durst not!” exclaimed Edward, starting to his feet, and striking the
table with his clenched hand, “durst not! Hastings, hear you that?”

Hastings bowed his head in assent. “Is that all, Lord Rivers?”

“All! and methinks enough.”

“Enough, by my halidame!” said Edward, laughing bitterly; “he shall see
what a king dares, when a subject threatens. Admit the worshipful
the deputies from our city of London,--lord chamberlain, it is thine
office,--they await in the anteroom.”

Hastings gravely obeyed, and in crimson gowns, with purple hoods and
gold chains, marshalled into the king’s presence a goodly deputation
from the various corporate companies of London.

These personages advanced within a few paces of the dais, and there
halted and knelt, while their spokesman read, on his knees, a long
petition, praying the king to take into his gracious consideration
the state of the trade with the Flemings; and though not absolutely
venturing to name or to deprecate the meditated alliance with France,
beseeching his grace to satisfy them as to certain rumours, already very
prejudicial to their commerce, of the possibility of a breach with the
Duke of Burgundy. The merchant-king listened with great attention and
affability to this petition; and replied shortly, that he thanked the
deputation for their zeal for the public weal,--that a king would have
enough to do if he contravened every gossip’s tale; but that it was
his firm purpose to protect, in all ways, the London traders, and to
maintain the most amicable understanding with the Duke of Burgundy.

The supplicators then withdrew from the royal presence.

“Note you how gracious the king was to me?” whispered Master Heyford to
one of his brethren; “he looked at me while he answered.”

“Coxcomb!” muttered the confidant, “as if I did not catch his eye when
he said, ‘Ye are the pillars of the public weal!’ But because Master
Heyford has a handsome wife he thinks he tosseth all London on his own
horns!”

As the citizens were quitting the palace, Lord Rivers joined them. “You
will thank me for suggesting this deputation, worthy sirs,” said he,
smiling significantly; “you have timed it well!”--and passing by them,
without further comment, he took the way to the queen’s chamber.

Elizabeth was playing with her infant daughter, tossing the child in
the air, and laughing at its riotous laughter. The stern old Duchess of
Bedford, leaning over the back of the state-chair, looked on with all
a grandmother’s pride, and half chanted a nursery rhyme. It was a
sight fair to see! Elizabeth never seemed more lovely: her artificial,
dissimulating smile changed into hearty, maternal glee, her smooth
cheek flushed with exercise, a stray ringlet escaping from the stiff
coif!--And, alas, the moment the two ladies caught sight of Rivers, all
the charm was dissolved; the child was hastily put on the floor; the
queen, half ashamed of being natural, even before her father, smoothed
back the rebel lock, and the duchess, breaking off in the midst of her
grandam song, exclaimed,--

“Well, well! how thrives our policy?”

“The king,” answered Rivers, “is in the very mood we could desire. At
the words, ‘He durst not!’ the Plantagenet sprung up in his breast; and
now, lest he ask to see the rest of the letter, thus I destroy it;” and
flinging the scroll in the blazing hearth, he watched it consume.

“Why this, sir?” said the queen.

“Because, my Elizabeth, the bold words glided off into a decent
gloss,--‘He durst not,’ said Warwick, ‘because what a noble heart dares
least is to belie the plighted word, and what the kind heart shuns most
is to wrong the confiding friend.”

“It was fortunate,” said the duchess, “that Edward took heat at the
first words, nor stopped, it seems, for the rest!”

“I was prepared, Jacquetta; had he asked to see the rest, I should have
dropped the scroll into the brazier, as containing what I would not
presume to read. Courage! Edward has seen the merchants; he has flouted
Hastings,--who would gainsay us. For the rest, Elizabeth, be it yours
to speak of affronts paid by the earl to your highness; be it yours,
Jacquetta, to rouse Edward’s pride by dwelling on Warwick’s overweening
power; be it mine to enlist his interest on behalf of his merchandise;
be it Margaret’s to move his heart by soft tears for the bold Charolois;
and ere a month be told, Warwick shall find his embassy a thriftless
laughing-stock, and no shade pass between the House of Woodville and the
sun of England.”

“I am scarce queen while Warwick is minister,” said Elizabeth,
vindictively. “How he taunted me in the garden, when we met last!”

“But hark you, daughter and lady liege, hark you! Edward is not prepared
for the decisive stroke. I have arranged with Anthony, whose chivalrous
follies fit him not for full comprehension of our objects, how upon
fair excuse the heir of Burgundy’s brother--the Count de la Roche--shall
visit London; and the count once here, all is ours! Hush! take up the
little one,--Edward comes!”



CHAPTER III. WHEREIN MASTER NICHOLAS ALWYN VISITS THE COURT, AND THERE
LEARNS MATTER OF WHICH THE ACUTE READER WILL JUDGE FOR HIMSELF.

It was a morning towards the end of May (some little time after Edward’s
gracious reception of the London deputies), when Nicholas Alwyn,
accompanied by two servitors armed to the teeth,--for they carried with
them goods of much value, and even in the broad daylight and amidst
the most frequented parts of the city, men still confided little in the
security of the law,--arrived at the Tower, and was conducted to the
presence of the queen.

Elizabeth and her mother were engaged in animated but whispered
conversation when the goldsmith entered; and there was an unusual gayety
in the queen’s countenance as she turned to Alwyn and bade him show her
his newest gauds.

While with a curiosity and eagerness that seemed almost childlike
Elizabeth turned over rings, chains, and brooches, scarcely listening
to Alwyn’s comments on the lustre of the gems or the quaintness of the
fashion, the duchess disappeared for a moment, and returned with the
Princess Margaret.

This young princess had much of the majestic beauty of her royal
brother; but, instead of the frank, careless expression so fascinating
in Edward, there was, in her full and curved lip and bright large eye,
something at once of haughtiness and passion, which spoke a decision and
vivacity of character beyond her years.

“Choose for thyself, sweetheart and daughter mine,” said the duchess,
affectionately placing her hand on Margaret’s luxuriant hair, “and let
the noble visitor we await confess that our rose of England outblooms
the world.”

The princess coloured with complaisant vanity at these words, and,
drawing near the queen, looked silently at a collar of pearls, which
Elizabeth held.

“If I may adventure so to say,” observed Alwyn, “pearls will mightily
beseem her highness’s youthful bloom; and lo! here be some adornments
for the bodice or partelet, to sort with the collar; not,” added the
goldsmith, bowing low, and looking down,--“not perchance displeasing
to her highness, in that they are wrought in the guise of the fleur de
lis--”

An impatient gesture in the queen, and a sudden cloud over the fair
brow of Margaret, instantly betokened to the shrewd trader that he
had committed some most unwelcome error in this last allusion to the
alliance with King Louis of France, which, according to rumour, the Earl
of Warwick had well-nigh brought to a successful negotiation; and to
convince him yet more of his mistake, the duchess said haughtily, “Good
fellow, be contented to display thy goods, and spare us thy comments.
As for thy hideous fleur de lis, an’ thy master had no better device, he
would not long rest the king’s jeweller.”

“I have no heart for the pearls,” said Margaret, abruptly; “they are
at best pale and sicklied. What hast thou of bolder ornament and more
dazzling lustrousness?”

“These emeralds, it is said, were once among the jewels of the great
House of Burgundy,” observed Nicholas, slowly, and fixing his keen,
sagacious look on the royal purchasers.

“Of Burgundy!” exclaimed the queen.

“It is true,” said the Duchess of Bedford, looking at the ornament with
care, and slightly colouring,--for in fact the jewels had been a present
from Philip the Good to the Duke of Bedford, and the exigencies of the
civil wars had led, some time since, first to their mortgage, or rather
pawn, and then to their sale.

The princess passed her arm affectionately round Jacquetta’s neck, and
said, “If you leave me my choice, I will have none but these emeralds.”

The two elder ladies exchanged looks and smiles. “Hast thou travelled,
young man?” asked the duchess.

“Not in foreign parts, gracious lady, but I have lived much with those
who have been great wanderers.”

“Ah, and what say they of the ancient friends of mine House, the princes
of Burgundy?”

“Lady, all men agree that a nobler prince and a juster than Duke Philip
never reigned over brave men; and those who have seen the wisdom of his
rule, grieve sorely to think so excellent and mighty a lord should have
trouble brought to his old age by the turbulence of his son, the Count
of Charolois.”

Again Margaret’s fair brow lowered, and the duchess hastened to
answer, “The disputes between princes, young man, can never be rightly
understood by such as thou and thy friends. The Count of Charolois is
a noble gentleman; and fire in youth will break out. Richard the Lion
Hearted of England was not less puissant a king for the troubles he
occasioned to his sire when prince.”

Alwyn bit his lip, to restrain a reply that might not have been well
received; and the queen, putting aside the emeralds and a few other
trinkets, said, smilingly, to the duchess, “Shall the king pay for
these, or have thy learned men yet discovered the great secret?”

“Nay, wicked child,” said the duchess, “thou lovest to banter me; and
truth to say, more gold has been melted in the crucible than as yet
promises ever to come out of it; but my new alchemist, Master Warner,
seems to have gone nearer to the result than any I have yet known.
Meanwhile, the king’s treasurer must, perforce, supply the gear to the
king’s sister.”

The queen wrote an order on the officer thus referred to, who was no
other than her own father, Lord Rivers; and Alwyn, putting up his goods,
was about to withdraw, when the duchess said carelessly, “Good youth,
the dealings of our merchants are more with Flanders than with France,
is it not so?”

“Surely,” said Alwyn; “the Flemings are good traders and honest folk.”

“It is well known, I trust, in the city of London, that this new
alliance with France is the work of their favourite, the Lord Warwick,”
 said the duchess, scornfully; “but whatever the earl does is right with
ye of the hood and cap, even though he were to leave yon river without
one merchant-mast.”

“Whatever be our thoughts, puissant lady,” said Alwyn, cautiously, “we
give them not vent to the meddling with state affairs.”

“Ay,” persisted Jacquetta, “thine answer is loyal and discreet. But an’
the Lord Warwick had sought alliance with the Count of Charolois, would
there have been brighter bonfires than ye will see in Smithfield, when
ye hear that business with the Flemings is surrendered for fine words
from King Louis the Cunning?”

“We trust too much to our king’s love for the citizens of London to fear
that surrender, please your Highness,” answered Alwyn; “our king himself
is the first of our merchants, and he hath given a gracious answer to
the deputation from our city.”

“You speak wisely, sir,” said the queen; “and your king will yet defend
you from the plots of your enemies. You may retire.”

Alwyn, glad to be released from questionings but little to his taste,
hastened to depart. At the gate of the royal lodge, he gave his
caskets to the servitors who attended him, and passing slowly along the
courtyard, thus soliloquized:

“Our neighbours the Scotch say, ‘It is good fishing in muddy waters;’
but he who fishes into the secrets of courts must bait with his head.
What mischief doth that crafty queen, the proud duchess, devise? Um!
They are thinking still to match the young princess with the hot Count
of Charolois. Better for trade, it is true, to be hand in hand with the
Flemings; but there are two sides to a loaf. If they play such a trick
on the stout earl, he is not a man to sit down and do nothing. More food
for the ravens, I fear,--more brown bills and bright lances in the green
fields of poor England!--and King Louis is an awful carle to sow flax in
his neighbour’s house, when the torches are burning. Um! Where is
fair Marmaduke. He looks brave in his gay super-tunic. Well, sir and
foster-brother, how fare you at court?”

“My dear Nicholas, a merry welcome and hearty to your sharp, thoughtful
face. Ah, man! we shall have a gay time for you venders of gewgaws.
There are to be revels and jousts, revels in the Tower and jousts in
Smithfield. We gentles are already hard at practice in the tilt-yard.”

“Sham battles are better than real ones, Master Nevile! But what is in
the wind?”

“A sail, Nicholas! a sail bound to England! Know that the Count of
Charolois has permitted Sir Anthony Count de la Roche, his bastard
brother, to come over to London, to cross lances with our own Sir
Anthony Lord Scales. It is an old challenge, and right royally will the
encounter be held.”

“Um!” muttered Alwyn, “this bastard, then, is the carrier pigeon.--And,”
 said he, aloud, “is it only to exchange hard blows that Sir Anthony of
Burgundy comes over to confer with Sir Anthony of England? Is there no
court rumour of other matters between them?”

“Nay. What else? Plague on you craftsmen! You cannot even comprehend the
pleasure and pastime two knights take in the storm of the lists!”

“I humbly avow it, Master Nevile. But it seemeth, indeed, strange to me
that the Count of Charolois should take this very moment to send envoys
of courtesy when so sharp a slight has been put on his pride, and so
dangerous a blow struck at his interests, as the alliance between the
French prince and the Lady Margaret. Bold Charles has some cunning, I
trow, which your kinsman of Warwick is not here to detect.”

“Tush, man! Trade, I see, teaches ye all so to cheat and overreach,
that ye suppose a knight’s burgonet is as full of tricks and traps as
a citizen’s flat-cap. Would, though, that my kinsman of Warwick were
here,” added Marmaduke, in a low whisper, “for the women and the
courtiers are doing their best to belie him.”

“Keep thyself clear of them all, Marmaduke,” said Alwyn; “for, by the
Lord, I see that the evil days are coming once more, fast and dark,
and men like thee will again have to choose between friend and friend,
kinsman and king. For my part, I say nothing; for I love not fighting,
unless compelled to it. But if ever I do fight, it will not be by thy
side, under Warwick’s broad flag.”

“Eh, man?” interrupted Nevile.

“Nay, nay,” continued Nicholas, shaking his head, “I admire the great
earl, and were I lord or gentle, the great earl should be my chief.
But each to his order; and the trader’s tree grows not out of a baron’s
walking-staff. King Edward may be a stern ruler, but he is a friend
to the goldsmiths, and has just confirmed our charter. ‘Let every man
praise the bridge he goes over,’ as the saw saith. Truce to this talk,
Master Nevile. I hear that your young hostess--ehem!--Mistress Sibyll,
is greatly marvelled at among the court gallants, is it so?”

Marmaduke’s frank face grew gloomy. “Alas! dear foster-brother,” he
said, dropping the somewhat affected tone in which he had before spoken,
“I must confess to my shame, that I cannot yet get the damsel out of my
thoughts, which is what I consider it a point of manhood and spirit to
achieve.”

“How so?”

“Because, when a maiden chooseth steadily to say nay to your wooing, to
follow her heels, and whine and beg, is a dog’s duty, not a man’s.”

“What!” exclaimed Alwyn, in a voice of great eagerness, “mean you to say
that you have wooed Sibyll Warner as your wife?”

“Verily, yes!”

“And failed?”

“And failed.”

“Poor Marmaduke!”

“There is no ‘poor’ in the matter, Nick Alwyn,” returned Marmaduke,
sturdily; “if a girl likes me, well; if not, there are too many others
in the wide world for a young fellow to break his heart about one. Yet,”
 he added, after a short pause, and with a sigh,--“yet, if thou hast
not seen her since she came to the court, thou wilt find her wondrously
changed.”

“More’s the pity!” said Alwyn, reciprocating his friend’s sigh.

“I mean that she seems all the comelier for the court air. And beshrew
me, I think the Lord Hastings, with his dulcet flatteries, hath made it
a sort of frenzy for all the gallants to flock round her.”

“I should like to see Master Warner again,” said Alwyn; “where lodges
he?”

“Yonder, by the little postern, on the third flight of the turret that
flanks the corridor, [This description refers to that part of the Tower
called the King’s or Queen’s Lodge, and long since destroyed.] next to
Friar Bungey, the magician; but it is broad daylight, and therefore not
so dangerous,--not but thou mayest as well patter an ave in going up
stairs.”

“Farewell, Master Nevile,” said Alwyn, smiling; “I will seek the
mechanician, and if I find there Mistress Sibyll, what shall I say from
thee?”

“That young bachelors in the reign of Edward IV. will never want fair
feres,” answered the Nevile, debonairly smoothing his lawn partelet.



CHAPTER IV. EXHIBITING THE BENEFITS WHICH ROYAL PATRONAGE CONFERS ON
GENIUS,--ALSO THE EARLY LOVES OF THE LORD HASTINGS; WITH OTHER MATTERS
EDIFYING AND DELECTABLE.

The furnace was still at work, the flame glowed, the bellows heaved;
but these were no longer ministering to the service of a mighty and
practical invention. The mathematician, the philosopher, had descended
to the alchemist. The nature of the TIME had conquered the nature of
a GENIUS meant to subdue time. Those studies that had gone so far
to forestall the master-triumph of far later ages were exchanged for
occupations that played with the toys of infant wisdom. O true Tartarus
of Genius, when its energies are misapplied, when the labour but rolls
the stone up the mountain, but pours water upon water through the sieve!

There is a sanguineness in men of great intellect which often leads them
into follies avoided by the dull. When Adam Warner saw the ruin of his
contrivance; when he felt that time and toil and money were necessary to
its restoration; and when the gold he lacked was placed before him as a
reward for alchemical labours, he at first turned to alchemy as he would
have turned to the plough,--as he had turned to conspiracy,--simply as a
means to his darling end. But by rapid degrees the fascination which all
the elder sages experienced in the grand secret exercised its witchery
over his mind. If Roger Bacon, though catching the notion of the
steam-engine, devoted himself to the philosopher’s stone; if even in so
much more enlightened an age Newton had wasted some precious hours in
the transmutation of metals, it was natural that the solitary sage of
the reign of Edward IV. should grow, for a while at least, wedded to a
pursuit which promised results so august. And the worst of alchemy is,
that it always allures on its victims: one gets so near and so near the
object,--it seems that so small an addition will complete the sum!
So there he was--this great practical genius--hard at work on turning
copper into gold!

“Well, Master Warner,” said the young goldsmith, entering the student’s
chamber, “methinks you scarcely remember your friend and visitor,
Nicholas Alwyn?”

“Remember, oh, certes! doubtless one of the gentlemen present when they
proposed to put me to the brake [the old word for rack]. Please to stand
a little on this side--what is your will?”

“I am not a gentleman, and I should have been loth to stand idly by
when the torture was talked of for a free-born Englishman, let alone a
scholar. And where is your fair daughter, Master Warner? I suppose you
see but little of her now she is the great dame’s waiting-damsel?”

“And why so, Master Alwyn?” asked a charming voice; and Alwyn for the
first time perceived the young form of Sibyll, by the embrasure of a
window, from which might be seen in the court below a gay group of lords
and courtiers, with the plain, dark dress of Hastings, contrasting their
gaudy surcoats, glittering with cloth-of-gold. Alwyn’s tongue clove
to his mouth; all he had to say was forgotten in a certain bashful and
indescribable emotion.

The alchemist had returned to his furnace, and the young man and the
girl were as much alone as if Adam Warner had been in heaven.

“And why should the daughter forsake the sire more in a court, where
love is rare, than in the humbler home, where they may need each other
less?”

“I thank thee for the rebuke, mistress,” said Alwyn, delighted with her
speech; “for I should have been sorry to see thy heart spoiled by the
vanities that kill most natures.” Scarcely had he uttered these words,
than they seemed to him overbold and presuming; for his eye now took in
the great change of which Marmaduke had spoken. Sibyll’s dress beseemed
the new rank which she held: the corset, fringed with gold, and made of
the finest thread, showed the exquisite contour of the throat and
neck, whose ivory it concealed. The kirtle of rich blue became the
fair complexion and dark chestnut hair; and over all she wore that
most graceful robe, called the sasquenice, of which the old French poet
sang,--

    “Car nulie robe n’est si belle
     A dame ne a demoiselle.”

This garment, worn over the rest of the dress, had perhaps a classical
origin, and with slight variations may be seen on the Etruscan vases;
it was long and loose, of the whitest and finest linen, with hanging
sleeves, and open at the sides. But it was not the mere dress that
had embellished the young maiden’s form and aspect,--it was rather an
indefinable alteration in the expression and the bearing. She looked as
if born to the airs of courts; still modest indeed, and simple, but with
a consciousness of dignity, and almost of power; and in fact the
woman had been taught the power that womanhood possesses. She had been
admired, followed, flattered; she had learned the authority of beauty.
Her accomplishments, uncommon in that age among her sex, had aided her
charm of person; her natural pride, which, though hitherto latent, was
high and ardent, fed her heart with sweet hopes; a bright career seemed
to extend before her; and, at peace as to her father’s safety, relieved
from the drudging cares of poverty, her fancy was free to follow
the phantasms of sanguine youth through the airy land of dreams. And
therefore it was that the maid was changed!

At the sight of the delicate beauty, the self-possessed expression,
the courtly dress, the noble air of Sibyll, Nicholas Alwyn recoiled and
turned pale; he no longer marvelled at her rejection of Marmaduke, and
he started at the remembrance of the bold thoughts which he had dared
himself to indulge.

The girl smiled at the young man’s confusion.

“It is not prosperity that spoils the heart,” she said touchingly,
“unless it be mean indeed. Thou rememberest, Master Alwyn, that when God
tried His saint, it was by adversity and affliction.”

“May thy trial in these last be over,” answered Alwyn; “but the humble
must console their state by thinking that the great have their trials
too; and, as our homely adage hath it, ‘That is not always good in
the maw which is sweet in the mouth.’ Thou seest much of my gentle
foster-brother, Mistress Sibyll?”

“But in the court dances, Master Alwyn; for most of the hours in which
my lady duchess needs me not are spent here. Oh, my father hopes great
things! and now at last fame dawns upon him.”

“I rejoice to hear it, mistress; and so, having paid ye both my homage,
I take my leave, praying that I may visit you from time to time, if it
be only to consult this worshipful master touching certain improvements
in the horologe, in which his mathematics can doubtless instruct me.
Farewell. I have some jewels to show to the Lady of Bonville.”

“The Lady of Bonville!” repeated Sibyll, changing colour; “she is a dame
of notable loveliness.”

“So men say,--and mated to a foolish lord; but scandal, which spares
few, breathes not on her,--rare praise for a court dame. Few Houses can
have the boast of Lord Warwick’s,--‘that all the men are without fear,
and all the women without stain.’”

“It is said,” observed Sibyll, looking down, “that my Lord Hastings once
much affectioned the Lady Bonville. Hast thou heard such gossip?”

“Surely, yes; in the city we hear all the tales of the court; for many
a courtier, following King Edward’s exemplar, dines with the citizen
to-day, that he may borrow gold from the citizen to-morrow. Surely, yes;
and hence, they say, the small love the wise Hastings bears to the stout
earl.”

“How runs the tale? Be seated, Master Alwyn.”

“Marry, thus: when William Hastings was but a squire, and much favoured
by Richard, Duke of York, he lifted his eyes to the Lady Katherine
Nevile, sister to the Earl of Warwick, and in beauty and in dower, as in
birth, a mate for a king’s son.”

“And, doubtless, the Lady Katherine returned his love?”

“So it is said, maiden; and the Earl of Salisbury her father and Lord
Warwick her brother discovered the secret, and swore that no new man
(the stout earl’s favourite word of contempt), though he were made a
duke, should give to an upstart posterity the quarterings of Montagu
and Nevile. Marry, Mistress Sibyll, there is a north country and pithy
proverb, ‘Happy is the man whose father went to the devil.’ Had some old
Hastings been a robber and extortioner, and left to brave William the
heirship of his wickedness in lordships and lands, Lord Warwick had not
called him ‘a new man.’ Master Hastings was dragged, like a serf’s son,
before the earl on his dais; and be sure he was rated soundly, for
his bold blood was up, and he defied the earl, as a gentleman born, to
single battle. Then the earl’s followers would have fallen on him; and
in those days, under King Henry, he who bearded a baron in his hall must
have a troop at his back, or was like to have a rope round his neck;
but the earl (for the lion is not as fierce as they paint him) came down
from his dais, and said, ‘Man, I like thy spirit, and I myself will dub
thee knight that I may pick up thy glove and give thee battle.’”

“And they fought? Brave Hastings!”

“No. For whether the Duke of York forbade it, or whether the Lady
Katherine would not hear of such strife between fere and frere, I know
not; but Duke Richard sent Hastings to Ireland, and, a month after, the
Lady Katherine married Lord Bonville’s son and heir,--so, at least,
tell the gossips and sing the ballad-mongers. Men add that Lord Hastings
still loves the dame, though, certes, he knows how to console himself.”

“Loves her! Nay, nay,--I trove not,” answered Sibyll, in a low voice,
and with a curl of her dewy lip.

At this moment the door opened gently and Lord Hastings himself entered.
He came in with the familiarity of one accustomed to the place.

“And how fares the grand secret, Master Warner? Sweet mistress! thou
seemest lovelier to me in this dark chamber than outshining all in the
galliard. Ha! Master Alwyn, I owe thee many thanks for making me know
first the rare arts of this fair emblazoner. Move me yon stool, good
Alwyn.”

As the goldsmith obeyed, he glanced from Hastings to the blushing face
and heaving bosom of Sibyll, and a deep and exquisite pang shot through
his heart. It was not jealousy alone; it was anxiety, compassion,
terror. The powerful Hastings, the ambitious lord, the accomplished
libertine--what a fate for poor Sibyll, if for such a man the cheek
blushed and the bosom heaved!

“Well, Master Warner,” resumed Hastings, “thou art still silent as to
thy progress.”

The philosopher uttered an impatient groan. “Ah, I comprehend. The
goldmaker must not speak of his craft before the goldsmith. Good Alwyn,
thou mayest retire. All arts have their mysteries.”

Alwyn, with a sombre brow, moved to the door.

“In sooth,” he said, “I have overtarried, good my lord. The Lady
Bonville will chide me; for she is of no patient temper.”

“Bridle thy tongue, artisan, and begone!” said Hastings, with unusual
haughtiness and petulance.

“I stung him there,” muttered Alwyn, as he withdrew. “Oh, fool that
I was to--nay, I thought it never, I did but dream it. What wonder we
traders hate these silken lords! They reap, we sow; they trifle, we
toil; they steal with soft words into the hearts which--Oh, Marmaduke,
thou art right-right!--Stout men sit not down to weep beneath the
willow. But she--the poor maiden--she looked so haughty and so happy.
This is early May; will she wear that look when the autumn leaves are
strewn?”



CHAPTER V. THE WOODVILLE INTRIGUE PROSPERS.--MONTAGU CONFERS WITH
HASTINGS, VISITS THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, AND IS MET ON THE ROAD BY A
STRANGE PERSONAGE.

And now the one topic at the court of King Edward IV. was the expected
arrival of Anthony of Burgundy, Count de la Roche, bastard brother of
Charolois, afterwards, as Duke of Burgundy, so famous as Charles
the Bold. Few, indeed, out of the immediate circle of the Duchess of
Bedford’s confidants regarded the visit of this illustrious foreigner as
connected with any object beyond the avowed one of chivalrous encounter
with Anthony Woodville, the fulfilment of a challenge given by the
latter two years before, at the time of the queen’s coronation. The
origin of this challenge, Anthony Woodville Lord Scales has himself
explained in a letter to the bastard, still extant, and of which an
extract may be seen in the popular and delightful biographies of Miss
Strickland. [Queens of England, vol. iii. p. 380] It seems that, on the
Wednesday before Easter Day, 1465, as Sir Anthony was speaking to his
royal sister, “on his knees,” all the ladies of the court gathered
round him, and bound to his left knee a band of gold adorned with stones
fashioned into the letters S. S. (souvenance or remembrance), and to
this band was suspended an enamelled “Forget-me-not.” “And one of the
ladies said that ‘he ought to take a step fitting for the times.’” This
step was denoted by a letter on vellum, bound with a gold thread, placed
in his cap; and having obtained the king’s permission to bring the
adventure of the flower of souvenance to a conclusion, the gallant
Anthony forwarded the articles and the enamelled flower to the Bastard
of Burgundy, beseeching him to touch the latter with his knightly hand,
in token of his accepting the challenge. The Count de la Roche did
so, but was not sent by his brother amongst the knights whom Charolois
despatched to England, and the combat had been suspended to the present
time.

But now the intriguing Rivers and his duchess gladly availed themselves
of so fair a pretext for introducing to Edward the able brother of
Warwick’s enemy and the French prince’s rival, Charles of Burgundy;
and Anthony Woodville, too gentle and knightly a person to have abetted
their cunning projects in any mode less chivalrous, willingly consented
to revive a challenge in honour of the ladies of England.

The only one amongst the courtiers who seemed dissatisfied with the
meditated visit of the doughty Burgundian champion was the Lord Montagu.
This penetrating and experienced personage was not to be duped by an
affectation of that chivalry which, however natural at the court of
Edward III., was no longer in unison with the more intriguing and
ambitious times over which presided the luxurious husband of Elizabeth
Woodville. He had noticed of late, with suspicion, that Edward had held
several councils with the anti-Nevile faction, from which he himself was
excluded. The king, who heretofore had delighted in his companionship,
had shown him marks of coldness and estrangement; and there was an
exulting malice in the looks of the Duchess of Bedford, which augured
some approaching triumph over the great family which the Woodvilles so
openly laboured to supplant. One day, as Marmaduke was loitering in
the courtyard of the Tower, laughing and jesting with his friends, Lord
Montagu, issuing from the king’s closet, passed him with a hurried step
and a thoughtful brow. This haughty brother of the Earl of Warwick had
so far attended to the recommendation of the latter, that he had with
some courtesy excused himself to Marmaduke for his language in the
archery-ground, and had subsequently, when seeing him in attendance
on the king, honoured him with a stately nod, or a brief “Good morrow,
young kinsman.” But as his eye now rested on Marmaduke, while the group
vailed their bonnets to the powerful courtier, he called him forth, with
a familiar smile he had never before assumed, and drawing him apart, and
leaning on his shoulder, much to the envy of the standers by, he said
caressingly,--

“Dear kinsman Guy--”

“Marmaduke, please you, my lord.”

“Dear kinsman Marmaduke, my brother esteems you for your father’s sake.
And, sooth to say, the Neviles are not so numerous in court as they
were. Business and state matters have made me see too seldom those whom
I would most affect. Wilt thou ride with me to the More Park? I would
present thee to my brother the archbishop.”

“If the king would graciously hold me excused.”

“The king, sir! when I--I forgot,” said Montagu, checking himself--“oh,
as to that, the king stirs not out to-day! He hath with him a score of
tailors and armourers in high council on the coming festivities. I will
warrant thy release; and here comes Hastings, who shall confirm it.”

“Fair my lord!”--as at that moment Hastings emerged from the little
postern that gave egress from the apartments occupied by the alchemist
of the Duchess of Bedford--“wilt thou be pleased, in thy capacity of
chamberlain, to sanction my cousin in a day’s absence? I would confer
with him on family matters.”

“Certes, a small favour to so deserving a youth. I will see to his
deputy.”

“A word with you, Hastings,” said Montagu, thoughtfully, and he
drew aside his fellow courtier: “what thinkest thou of this Burgundy
bastard’s visit?”

“That it has given a peacock’s strut to the popinjay Anthony Woodville.”

“Would that were all!” returned Montagu. “But the very moment that
Warwick is negotiating with Louis of France, this interchange of
courtesies with Louis’s deadly foe, the Count of Charolois, is out of
season.”

“Nay, take it not so gravely,--a mere pastime.”

“Hastings, thou knowest better. But thou art no friend of my great
brother.”

“Small cause have I to be so,” answered Hastings, with a quivering lip.
“To him and your father I owe as deep a curse as ever fell on the heart
of man. I have lived to be above even Lord Warwick’s insult. Yet young,
I stand amongst the warriors and peers of England with a crest as haught
and a scutcheon as stainless as the best. I have drunk deep of the
world’s pleasures. I command, as I list, the world’s gaudy pomps, and I
tell thee, that all my success in life countervails not the agony of the
hour when all the bloom and loveliness of the earth faded into winter,
and the only woman I ever loved was sacrificed to her brother’s pride.”

The large drops stood on the pale brow of the fortunate noble as he thus
spoke, and his hollow voice affected even the worldly Montagu.

“Tush, Hastings!” said Montagu, kindly; “these are but a young man’s
idle memories. Are we not all fated, in our early years, to love in
vain?--even I married not the maiden I thought the fairest, and held
the dearest. For the rest, bethink thee,--thou wert then but a simple
squire.”

“But of as ancient and pure a blood as ever rolled its fiery essence
through a Norman’s veins.”

“It may be so; but old Houses, when impoverished, are cheaply held. And
thou must confess thou wert then no mate for Katherine. Now, indeed, it
were different; now a Nevile might be proud to call Hastings brother.”

“I know it,” said Hastings, proudly,--“I know it, lord; and why?
Because I have gold, and land, and the king’s love, and can say, as the
Centurion, to my fellow-man, ‘Do this, and he doeth it;’ and yet I tell
thee, Lord Montagu, that I am less worthy now the love of beauty, the
right hand of fellowship from a noble spirit, than I was then, when--the
simple squire--my heart full of truth and loyalty, with lips that had
never lied, with a soul never polluted by unworthy pleasures or mean
intrigues, I felt that Katherine Nevile should never blush to own her
fere and plighted lord in William de Hastings. Let this pass, let it
pass! You call me no friend to Warwick. True! but I am a friend to
the king he has served, and the land of my birth to which he has given
peace; and therefore, not till Warwick desert Edward, not till he wake
the land again to broil and strife, will I mingle in the plots of those
who seek his downfall. If in my office and stated rank I am compelled to
countenance the pageant of this mock tournament, and seem to honour the
coming of the Count de la Roche, I will at least stand aloof and free
from all attempt to apply a gaudy pageant to a dangerous policy; and on
this pledge, Montagu, I give you my knightly hand.”

“It suffices,” answered Montagu, pressing the hand extended to him. “But
the other day I heard the king’s dissour tell him a tale of some tyrant,
who silently showed a curious questioner how to govern a land, by
cutting down, with his staff, the heads of the tallest poppies; and the
Duchess of Bedford turned to me, and asked, ‘What says a Nevile to
the application?’ ‘Faith, lady,’ said I, ‘the Nevile poppies have oak
stems.’ Believe me, Hastings, these Woodvilles may grieve and wrong and
affront Lord Warwick, but woe to all the pigmy goaders when the lion
turns at bay!”

With this solemn menace, Montagu quitted Hastings, and passed on,
leaning upon Marmaduke, and with a gloomy brow.

At the gate of the palace waited the Lord Montagu’s palfrey and his
retinue of twenty squires and thirty grooms. “Mount, Master Marmaduke,
and take thy choice among these steeds, for we shall ride alone. There
is no Nevile amongst these gentlemen.” Marmaduke obeyed. The earl
dismissed his retinue, and in little more than ten minutes,--so
different, then, was the extent of the metropolis,--the noble and the
squire were amidst the open fields.

They had gone several miles at a brisk trot before the earl opened his
lips, and then, slackening his pace, he said abruptly, “How dost thou
like the king? Speak out, youth; there are no eavesdroppers here.”

“He is a most gracious master and a most winning gentleman.”

“He is both,” said Montagu, with a touch of emotion that surprised
Marmaduke; “and no man can come near without loving him. And yet,
Marmaduke (is that thy name?)--yet whether it be weakness or falseness,
no man can be sure of his king’s favour from day to day. We Neviles must
hold fast to each other. Not a stick should be lost if the fagot is to
remain unbroken. What say you?” and the earl’s keen eye turned sharply
on the young man.

“I say, my lord, that the Earl of Warwick was to me patron, lord, and
father, when I entered yon city a friendless orphan; and that, though
I covet honours, and love pleasure, and would be loth to lift finger or
speak word against King Edward, yet were that princely lord--the head of
mine House--an outcast and a beggar, by his side I would wander, for his
bread I would beg.”

“Young man,” exclaimed Montagu, “from this hour I admit thee to my
heart! Give me thy hand. Beggar and outcast?--No! If the storm come, the
meaner birds take to shelter, the eagle remains solitary in heaven!” So
saying, he relapsed into silence, and put spurs to his steed. Towards
the decline of day they drew near to the favourite palace of the
Archbishop of York. There the features of the country presented a more
cultivated aspect than it had hitherto worn. For at that period the
lands of the churchmen were infinitely in advance of those of the laity
in the elementary arts of husbandry, partly because the ecclesiastic
proprietors had greater capital at their command, partly because their
superior learning had taught them to avail themselves, in some
measure, of the instructions of the Latin writers. Still the prevailing
characteristic of the scenery was pasture land,--immense tracts of
common supported flocks of sheep; the fragrance of new-mown hay breathed
sweet from many a sunny field. In the rear stretched woods of Druid
growth; and in the narrow lanes, that led to unfrequent farms and
homesteads, built almost entirely either of wood or (more primitive
still) of mud and clay, profuse weeds, brambles, and wild-flowers almost
concealed the narrow pathway, never intended for cart or wagon, and
arrested the slow path of the ragged horse bearing the scanty produce
of acres to yard or mill. But though to the eye of an economist or
philanthropist broad England now, with its variegated agriculture, its
wide roads, its white-walled villas, and numerous towns, may present a
more smiling countenance, to the early lover of Nature, fresh from the
child-like age of poetry and romance, the rich and lovely verdure which
gave to our mother-country the name of “Green England;” its wild woods
and covert alleys, proffering adventure to fancy; its tranquil heaths,
studded with peaceful flocks, and vocal, from time to time, with the
rude scrannel of the shepherd,--had a charm which we can understand
alone by the luxurious reading of our elder writers. For the country
itself ministered to that mingled fancy and contemplation which the
stirring and ambitious life of towns and civilization has in much
banished from our later literature.

Even the thoughtful Montagu relaxed his brow as he gazed around, and he
said to Marmaduke, in a gentle and subdued voice,--

“Methinks, young cousin, that in such scenes, those silly rhymes taught
us in our childhood of the green woods and the summer cuckoos, of bold
Robin and Maid Marian, ring back in our ears. Alas that this fair land
should be so often dyed in the blood of her own children! Here, how the
thought shrinks from broils and war,--civil war, war between brother
and brother, son and father! In the city and the court, we forget others
overmuch, from the too keen memory of ourselves.”

Scarcely had Montagu said these words, before there suddenly emerged
from a bosky lane to the right a man mounted upon a powerful roan
horse. His dress was that of a substantial franklin; a green surtout
of broadcloth, over a tight vest of the same colour, left, to the
admiration of a soldierly eye, an expanse of chest that might have vied
with the mighty strength of Warwick himself. A cap, somewhat like a
turban, fell in two ends over the left cheek, till they touched
the shoulder, and the upper part of the visage was concealed by a
half-vizard, not unfrequently worn out of doors with such head-gear,
as a shade from the sun. Behind this person rode, on a horse equally
powerful, a man of shorter stature, but scarcely less muscular a frame,
clad in a leathern jerkin, curiously fastened with thongs, and wearing a
steel bonnet, projecting far over the face.

The foremost of these strangers, coming thus unawares upon the
courtiers, reined in his steed, and said in a clear, full voice, “Good
evening to you, my masters. It is not often that these roads witness
riders in silk and pile.”

“Friend,” quoth the Montagu, “may the peace we enjoy under the White
Rose increase the number of all travellers through our land, whether in
pile or russet!”

“Peace, sir!” returned the horseman, roughly,--“peace is no blessing to
poor men, unless it bring something more than life,--the means to live
in security and ease. Peace hath done nothing for the poor of England.
Why, look you towards yon gray tower,--the owner is, forsooth, gentleman
and knight; but yesterday he and his men broke open a yeoman’s house,
carried off his wife and daughters to his tower, and refuseth to
surrender them till ransomed by half the year’s produce on the yeoman’s
farm.”

“A caitiff and illegal act,” said Montagu.

“Illegal! But the law will notice it not,--why should it? Unjust, if it
punish the knight and dare not touch the king’s brother!”

“How, sir?”

“I say the king’s brother! Scarcely a month since, twenty-four persons
under George Duke of Clarence entered by force a lady’s house,
and seized her jewels and her money, upon some charge, God wot, of
contriving mischief to the boy-duke. [See for this and other instances
of the prevalent contempt of law in the reign of Edward IV.,
and, indeed, during the fifteenth century, the extracts from the
Parliamentary Rolls, quoted by Sharon Turner, “History of England,”
 vol. iii. p. 399.] Are not the Commons ground by imposts for the queen’s
kindred? Are not the king’s officers and purveyors licensed spoilers and
rapiners? Are not the old chivalry banished for new upstarts? And in all
this, is peace better than war?”

“Knowest thou not that these words are death, man?”

“Ay, in the city! but in the fields and waste thought is free. Frown
not, my lord. Ah, I know you, and the time may come when the baron will
act what the franklin speaks. What! think you I see not the signs of the
storm? Are Warwick and Montagu more safe with Edward than they were with
Henry? Look to thyself! Charolois will outwit King Louis, and ere the
year be out, the young Margaret of England will be lady of your brave
brother’s sternest foe!”

“And who art thou, knave?” cried Montagu, aghast, and laying his gloved
hand on the bold prophet’s bridle.

“One who has sworn the fall of the House of York, and may live to fight,
side by side, in that cause with Warwick; for Warwick, whatever be his
faults, has an English heart, and loves the Commons.”

Montagu, uttering an exclamation of astonishment, relaxed hold of the
franklin’s bridle; and the latter waved his hand, and spurring his steed
across the wild chain of commons, disappeared with his follower.

“A sturdy traitor!” muttered the earl, following him with his eye. “One
of the exiled Lancastrian lords, perchance. Strange how they pierce into
our secrets! Heardst thou that fellow, Marmaduke?”

“Only in a few sentences, and those brought my hand to my dagger. But
as thou madest no sign, I thought his grace the king could not be much
injured by empty words.”

“True! and misfortune has ever a shrewish tongue.”

“An’ it please you, my lord,” quoth Marmaduke, “I have seen the man
before, and it seemeth to me that he holds much power over the rascal
rabble.” And here Marmaduke narrated the attack upon Warner’s house, and
how it was frustrated by the intercession of Robin of Redesdale.

“Art thou sure it is the same man, for his face was masked?”

“My lord, in the North, as thou knowest, we recognize men by their
forms, not faces,--as in truth we ought, seeing that it is the sinews
and bulk, not the lips and nose, that make a man a useful friend or
dangerous foe.”

Montagu smiled at this soldierly simplicity. “And heard you the name the
raptrils shouted?”

“Robin, my lord. They cried out ‘Robin,’ as if it had been a ‘Montagu I
or a ‘Warwick.’”

“Robin! ah, then I guess the man,--a most perilous and stanch
Lancastrian. He has more weight with the poor than had Cade the rebel,
and they say Margaret trusts him as much as she does an Exeter or
Somerset. I marvel that he should show himself so near the gates
of London. It must be looked to. But come, cousin. Our steeds are
breathed,--let us on!”

On arriving at the More, its stately architecture, embellished by the
prelate with a facade of double arches, painted and blazoned somewhat in
the fashion of certain old Italian houses, much dazzled Marmaduke. And
the splendour of the archbishop’s retinue--less martial indeed than
Warwick’s--was yet more imposing to the common eye. Every office that
pomp could devise for a king’s court was to be found in the household
of this magnificent prelate,--master of the horse and the hounds,
chamberlain, treasurer, pursuivant, herald, seneschal, captain of the
body-guard, etc.,--and all emulously sought for and proudly held by
gentlemen of the first blood and birth. His mansion was at once a court
for middle life, a school for youth, an asylum for age; and thither, as
to a Medici, fled the letters and the arts.

Through corridor and hall, lined with pages and squires, passed Montagu
and Marmaduke, till they gained a quaint garden, the wonder and envy of
the time, planned by an Italian of Mantua, and perhaps the stateliest
one of the kind existent in England. Straight walks, terraces, and
fountains, clipped trees, green alleys, and smooth bowling-greens
abounded; but the flowers were few and common: and if here and there a
statue might be found, it possessed none of the art so admirable in our
earliest ecclesiastical architecture, but its clumsy proportions were
made more uncouth by a profusion of barbaric painting and gilding. The
fountains, however, were especially curious, diversified, and elaborate:
some shot up as pyramids, others coiled in undulating streams, each jet
chasing the other as serpents; some, again, branched off in the form of
trees, while mimic birds, perched upon leaden boughs, poured water
from their bills. Marmaduke, much astonished and bewildered, muttered
a paternoster in great haste; and even the clerical rank of the prelate
did not preserve him from the suspicion of magical practices in the
youth’s mind.

Remote from all his train, in a little arbour overgrown with the
honeysuckle and white rose, a small table before him bearing fruits,
confectionery, and spiced wines (for the prelate was a celebrated
epicure, though still in the glow of youth), they found George Nevile,
reading lazily a Latin manuscript.

“Well, my dear lord and brother,” said Montagu, laying his arm on the
prelate’s shoulder, “first let me present to thy favour a gallant youth,
Marmaduke Nevile, worthy his name and thy love.”

“He is welcome, Montagu, to our poor house,” said the archbishop,
rising, and complacently glancing at his palace, splendidly gleaming
through the trellis-work. “‘Puer ingenui vultus.’ Thou art acquainted,
doubtless, young sir, with the Humaner Letters?”

“Well-a-day, my lord, my nurturing was somewhat neglected in the
province,” said Marmaduke, disconcerted, and deeply blushing, “and only
of late have I deemed the languages fit study for those not reared for
our Mother Church.”

“Fie, sir, fie! Correct that error, I pray thee. Latin teaches the
courtier how to thrive, the soldier how to manoeuvre, the husbandman
how to sow; and if we churchmen are more cunning, as the profane call us
(and the prelate smiled) than ye of the laity, the Latin must answer for
the sins of our learning.”

With this, the archbishop passed his arm affectionately through his
brother’s, and said, “Beshrew me, Montagu, thou lookest worn and weary.
Surely thou lackest food, and supper shall be hastened. Even I, who have
but slender appetite, grow hungered in these cool gloaming hours.”

“Dismiss my comrade, George,--I would speak to thee,” whispered Montagu.

“Thou knowest not Latin?” said the archbishop, turning with a
compassionate eye to Nevile, whose own eye was amorously fixed on the
delicate confectioneries,--“never too late to learn. Hold, here is a
grammar of the verbs, that, with mine own hand, I have drawn up for
youth. Study thine amo and thy moneo, while I confer on Church matters
with giddy Montagu. I shall expect, ere we sup, that thou wilt have
mastered the first tenses.”

“But--”

“Oh, nay, nay; but me no buts. Thou art too tough, I fear me, for
flagellation, a wondrous improver of tender youth,”--and the prelate
forced his grammar into the reluctant hands of Marmaduke, and sauntered
down one of the solitary alleys with his brother.

Long and earnest was their conference, and at one time keen were their
dispute’s.

The archbishop had very little of the energy of Montagu or the
impetuosity of Warwick, but he had far more of what we now call mind, as
distinct from talent, than either; that is, he had not their capacities
for action, but he had a judgment and sagacity that made him considered
a wise and sound adviser: this he owed principally to the churchman’s
love of ease, and to his freedom from the wear and tear of the passions
which gnawed the great minister and the aspiring courtier; his natural
intellect was also fostered by much learning. George Nevile had been
reared, by an Italian ecclesiastic, in all the subtle diplomacy of the
Church; and his ambition, despising lay objects (though he consented to
hold the office of chancellor), was concentrated in that kingdom over
kings which had animated the august dominators of religious Rome.
Though, as we have said, still in that age when the affections are
usually vivid, [He was consecrated Bishop of Exeter at the age of
twenty; at twenty-six he became Archbishop of York, and was under thirty
at the time referred to in the text.] George Nevile loved no human
creature,--not even his brothers; not even King Edward, who, with all
his vices, possessed so eminently the secret that wins men’s hearts.
His early and entire absorption in the great religious community, which
stood apart from the laymen in order to control them, alienated him from
his kind; and his superior instruction only served to feed him with a
calm and icy contempt for all that prejudice, as he termed it, held dear
and precious. He despised the knight’s wayward honour, the burgher’s
crafty honesty. For him no such thing as principle existed; and
conscience itself lay dead in the folds of a fancied exemption from all
responsibility to the dull herd, that were but as wool and meat to the
churchman shepherd. But withal, if somewhat pedantic, he had in his
manner a suavity and elegance and polish which suited well his high
station, and gave persuasion to his counsels. In all externals he was as
little like a priest as the high-born prelates of that day usually were.
In dress he rivalled the fopperies of the Plantagenet brothers; in the
chase he was more ardent than Warwick had been in his earlier youth; and
a dry sarcastic humour, sometimes elevated into wit, gave liveliness to
his sagacious converse.

Montagu desired that the archbishop and himself should demand solemn
audience of Edward, and gravely remonstrate with the king on the
impropriety of receiving the brother of a rival suitor, while Warwick
was negotiating the marriage of Margaret with a prince of France.

“Nay,” said the archbishop, with a bland smile, that fretted Montagu
to the quick, “surely even a baron, a knight, a franklin, a poor priest
like myself, would rise against the man who dictated to his hospitality.
Is a king less irritable than baron, knight, franklin, and priest,--or
rather, being, as it were, per legem, lord of all, hath he not
irritability eno’ for all four? Ay, tut and tush as thou wilt, John, but
thy sense must do justice to my counsel at the last. I know Edward well;
he hath something of mine own idlesse and ease of temper, but with more
of the dozing lion than priests, who have only, look you, the mildness
of the dove. Prick up his higher spirit, not by sharp remonstrance, but
by seeming trust. Observe to him, with thy gay, careless laugh--which,
methinks, thou hast somewhat lost of late--that with any other prince
Warwick might suspect some snare, some humiliating overthrow of his
embassage, but that all men know how steadfast in faith and honour is
Edward IV.”

“Truly,” said Montagu, with a forced smile, “you understand mankind; but
yet, bethink you--suppose this fail, and Warwick return to England to
hear that he hath been cajoled and fooled; that the Margaret he had
crossed the seas to affiance to the brother of Louis is betrothed to
Charolois--bethink you, I say, what manner of heart beats under our
brother’s mail.”

“Impiger, iracundus!” said the archbishop; “a very Achilles, to whom our
English Agamemnon, if he cross him, is a baby. All this is sad truth;
our parents spoilt him in his childhood, and glory in his youth, and
wealth, power, success, in his manhood. Ay! if Warwick be chafed,
it will be as the stir of the sea-serpent, which, according to the
Icelanders, moves a world. Still, the best way to prevent the danger is
to enlist the honour of the king in his behalf,--to show that our
eyes are open, but that we disdain to doubt, and are frank to confide.
Meanwhile send messages and warnings privately to Warwick.”

These reasonings finally prevailed with Montagu, and the brothers
returned with one mind to the house. Here, as after their ablutions they
sat down to the evening meal, the archbishop remembered poor Marmaduke,
and despatched to him one of his thirty household chaplains. Marmaduke
was found fast asleep over the second tense of the verb amo.



CHAPTER VI. THE ARRIVAL OF THE COUNT DE LA ROCHE, AND THE VARIOUS
EXCITEMENT PRODUCED ON MANY PERSONAGES BY THAT EVENT.

The prudence of the archbishop’s counsel was so far made manifest, that
on the next day Montagu found all remonstrance would have been too late.
The Count de la Roche had already landed, and was on his way to London.
The citizens, led by Rivers partially to suspect the object of the
visit, were delighted not only by the prospect of a brilliant pageant,
but by the promise such a visit conveyed of a continued peace with their
commercial ally; and the preparations made by the wealthy merchants
increased the bitterness and discontent of Montagu. At length, at the
head of a gallant and princely retinue, the Count de la Roche entered
London. Though Hastings made no secret of his distaste to the Count de
la Roche’s visit, it became his office as lord chamberlain to meet the
count at Blackwall, and escort him and his train, in gilded barges, to
the palace.

In the great hall of the Tower, in which the story of Antiochus was
painted by the great artists employed under Henry III., and on the
elevation of the dais, behind which, across Gothic columns, stretched
draperies of cloth-of-gold, was placed Edward’s chair of state. Around
him were grouped the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the Lords
Worcester, Montagu, Rivers, D’Eyncourt, St. John, Raoul de Fulke, and
others. But at the threshold of the chamber stood Anthony Woodville, the
knightly challenger, his knee bound by the ladye-badge of the S. S.,
and his fine person clad in white-flowered velvet of Genoa, adorned with
pearls. Stepping forward, as the count appeared, the gallant Englishman
bent his knee half-way to the ground, and raising the count’s hand to
his lips, said in French, “Deign, noble sir, to accept the gratitude of
one who were not worthy of encounter from so peerless a hand, save
by the favour of the ladies of England, and your own courtesy, which
ennobles him whom it stoops to.” So saying, he led the count towards the
king.

De la Roche, an experienced and profound courtier, and justly deserving
Hall’s praise as a man of “great witte, courage, valiantness, and
liberalitie,” did not affect to conceal the admiration which the
remarkable presence of Edward never failed to excite; lifting his hand
to his eyes, as if to shade them from a sudden blaze of light, he would
have fallen on both knees, but Edward with quick condescension raised
him, and, rising himself, said gayly,--

“Nay, Count de la Roche, brave and puissant chevalier, who hath crossed
the seas in honour of knighthood and the ladies, we would, indeed,
that our roiaulme boasted a lord like thee, from whom we might ask such
homage. But since thou art not our subject, it consoles us at least that
thou art our guest. By our halidame, Lord Scales, thou must look well
to thy lance and thy steed’s girths, for never, I trow, hast thou met a
champion of goodlier strength and knightlier mettle.”

“My lord king,” answered the count, “I fear me, indeed, that a knight
like the Sieur Anthony, who fights under the eyes of such a king, will
prove invincible. Did kings enter the lists with kings, where, through
broad Christendom, find a compeer for your Highness?”

“Your brother, Sir Count, if fame lies not,” returned Edward, slightly
laughing, and lightly touching the Bastard’s shoulder, “were a fearful
lance to encounter, even though Charlemagne himself were to revive with
his twelve paladins at his back. Tell us, Sir Count,” added the king,
drawing himself up,--“tell us, for we soldiers are curious in such
matters, hath not the Count of Charolois the advantage of all here in
sinews and stature?”

“Sire,” returned De la Roche, “my princely brother is indeed mighty
with the brand and battle-axe, but your Grace is taller by half the
head,--and, peradventure, of even a more stalwart build; but that mere
strength in your Highness is not that gift of God which strikes the
beholder most.”

Edward smiled good-humouredly at a compliment the truth of which was too
obvious to move much vanity, and said with a royal and knightly grace,
“Our House of York hath been taught, Sir Count, to estimate men’s beauty
by men’s deeds, and therefore the Count of Charolois hath long been
known to us--who, alas, have seen him not!--as the fairest gentleman
of Europe. My Lord Scales, we must here publicly crave your pardon. Our
brother-in-law, Sir Count, would fain have claimed his right to hold you
his guest, and have graced himself by exclusive service to your person.
We have taken from him his lawful office, for we kings are jealous, and
would not have our subjects more honoured than ourselves.” Edward turned
round to his courtiers as he spoke, and saw that his last words had
called a haughty and angry look to the watchful countenance of Montagu.
“Lord Hastings,” he continued, “to your keeping, as our representative,
we intrust this gentleman. He must need refreshment ere we present him
to our queen.”

The count bowed to the ground, and reverently withdrew from the royal
presence, accompanied by Hastings. Edward then, singling Anthony
Woodville and Lord Rivers from the group, broke up the audience, and,
followed by those two noblemen, quitted the hall.

Montagu, whose countenance had recovered the dignified and high-born
calm habitual to it, turned to the Duke of Clarence, and observed
indifferently, “The Count de la Roche hath a goodly mien, and a fair
tongue.”

“Pest on these Burgundians!” answered Clarence, in an undertone, and
drawing Montagu aside. “I would wager my best greyhound to a scullion’s
cur that our English knights will lower their burgonets.”

“Nay, sir, an idle holiday show. What matters whose lance breaks, or
whose destrier stumbles?”

“Will you not, yourself, cousin Montagu--you who are so peerless in the
joust--take part in the fray?”

“I, your Highness,--I, the brother of the Earl of Warwick, whom this
pageant hath been devised by the Woodvilles to mortify and disparage in
his solemn embassy to Burgundy’s mightiest foe!--I!”

“Sooth to say,” said the young prince, much embarrassed, “it grieves
me sorely to hear thee speak as if Warwick would be angered at this
pastime. For, look you, Montagu, I, thinking only of my hate to Burgundy
and my zeal for our English honour, have consented, as high constable,
and despite my grudge to the Woodvilles, to bear the bassinet of our own
champion, and--”

“Saints in heaven!” exclaimed Montagu, with a burst of his fierce
brother’s temper, which he immediately checked, and changed into a tone
that concealed, beneath outward respect, the keenest irony, “I crave
your pardon humbly for my vehemence, Prince of Clarence. I suddenly
remember me that humility is the proper virtue of knighthood. Your
Grace does indeed set a notable example of that virtue to the peers of
England; and my poor brother’s infirmity of pride will stand rebuked for
aye, when he hears that George Plantagenet bore the bassinet of Anthony
Woodville.”

“But it is for the honour of the ladies,” said Clarence, falteringly;
“in honour of the fairest maid of all--the flower of English beauty--the
Lady Isabel--that I--”

“Your Highness will pardon me,” interrupted Montagu; “but I do trust to
your esteem for our poor and insulted House of Nevile so far as to be
assured that the name of my niece Isabel will not be submitted to the
ribald comments of a base-born Burgundian.”

“Then I will break no lance in the lists!”

“As it likes you, prince,” replied Montagu, shortly; and, with a low
bow, he quitted the chamber, and was striding to the outer gate of the
Tower, when a sweet, clear voice behind him called him by his name.
He turned abruptly, to meet the dark eye and all-subduing smile of the
boy-Duke of Gloucester.

“A word with you, Montagu, noblest and most prized, with your princely
brothers, of the champions of our House,--I read your generous
indignation with our poor Clarence. Ay, sir! ay!--it was a weakness in
him that moved even me. But you have not now to learn that his nature,
how excellent soever, is somewhat unsteady. His judgment alone lacks
weight and substance,--ever persuaded against his better reason by
those who approach his infirmer side; but if it be true that our cousin
Warwick intends for him the hand of the peerless Isabel, wiser heads
will guide his course.”

“My brother,” said Montagu, greatly softened, “is much beholden to your
Highness for a steady countenance and friendship, for which I also,
believe me--and the families of Beauchamp, Montagu, and Nevile--are duly
grateful. But to speak plainly (which your Grace’s youthful candour,
so all-acknowledged, will permit), the kinsmen of the queen do now so
aspire to rule this land, to marry or forbid to marry, not only our own
children, but your illustrious father’s, that I foresee in this visit of
the bastard Anthony the most signal disgrace to Warwick that ever king
passed upon ambassador or gentleman. And this moves me more!--yea, I vow
to Saint George, my patron, it moves me more--by the thought of
danger to your royal House than by the grief of slight to mine; for
Warwick--but you know him.”

“Montagu, you must soothe and calm your brother if chafed. I impose that
task on your love for us. Alack, would that Edward listened more to me
and less to the queen’s kith! These Woodvilles!--and yet they may live
to move not wrath but pity. If aught snapped the thread of Edward’s life
(Holy Paul forbid!), what would chance to Elizabeth, her brothers, her
children?”

“Her children would mount the throne that our right hands built,” said
Montagu, sullenly.

“Ah, think you so?--you rejoice me! I had feared that the barons might,
that the commons would, that the Church must, pronounce the unhappy
truth, that--but you look amazed, my lord! Alas, my boyish years are too
garrulous!”

“I catch not your Highness’s meaning.”

“Pooh, pooh! By Saint Paul, your seeming dulness proves your loyalty;
but with me, the king’s brother, frankness were safe. Thou knowest well
that the king was betrothed before to the Lady Eleanor Talbot; that
such betrothal, not set aside by the Pope, renders his marriage with
Elizabeth against law; that his children may (would to Heaven it were
not so!) be set aside as bastards, when Edward’s life no longer shields
them from the sharp eyes of men.”

“Ah,” said Montagu, thoughtfully; “and in that case, George of Clarence
would wear the crown, and his children reign in England.”

“Our Lord forefend,” said Richard, “that I should say that Warwick
thought of this when he deemed George worthy of the hand of Isabel. Nay,
it could not be so; for, however clear the claim, strong and powerful
would be those who would resist it, and Clarence is not, as you will
see, the man who can wrestle boldly,--even for a throne. Moreover, he is
too addicted to wine and pleasure to bid fair to outlive the king.”

Montagu fixed his penetrating eyes on Richard, but dropped them,
abashed, before that steady, deep, unrevealing gaze, which seemed to
pierce into other hearts, and show nothing of the heart within.

“Happy Clarence!” resumed the prince, with a heavy sigh, and after a
brief pause,--“a Nevile’s husband and a Warwick’s son--what can the
saints do more for men? You must excuse his errors--all our errors--to
your brother. You may not know, peradventure, sweet Montagu, how deep
an interest I have in maintaining all amity between Lord Warwick and the
king. For methinks there is one face fairer than fair Isabel’s, and one
man more to be envied than even Clarence. Fairest face to me in the wide
world is the Lady Anne’s! happiest man between the cradle and the grave
is he whom the Lady Anne shall call her lord! and if I--oh, look you,
Montagu, let there be no breach between Warwick and the king! Fare you
well, dear lord and cousin,--I go to Baynard’s Castle till these feasts
are over.”

“Does not your Grace,” said Montagu, recovering from the surprise into
which one part of Gloucester’s address had thrown him--“does not your
Grace--so skilled in lance and horsemanship--preside at the lists?”

“Montagu, I love your brother well enough to displease my king. The
great earl shall not say, at least, that Richard Plantagenet in his
absence forgot the reverence due to loyalty and merit. Tell him that;
and if I seem (unlike Clarence) to forbear to confront the queen and
her kindred, it is because you should make no enemies,--not the less for
that should princes forget no friends.”

Richard said this with a tone of deep feeling, and, folding his arms
within his furred surcoat, walked slowly on to a small postern admitting
to the river; but there, pausing by a buttress which concealed him till
Montagu had left the yard, instead of descending to his barge, he turned
back into the royal garden. Here several of the court of both sexes
were assembled, conferring on the event of the day. Richard halted at a
distance, and contemplated their gay dresses and animated countenances
with something between melancholy and scorn upon his young brow. One
of the most remarkable social characteristics of the middle ages is
the prematurity at which the great arrived at manhood, shared in its
passions, and indulged its ambitions. Among the numerous instances in
our own and other countries that might be selected from history, few are
more striking than that of this Duke of Gloucester, great in camp and
in council at an age when nowadays a youth is scarcely trusted to the
discipline of a college. The whole of his portentous career was closed,
indeed, before the public life of modern ambition usually commences.
Little could those accustomed to see on our stage “the elderly ruffian”
 [Sharon Turner] our actors represent, imagine that at the opening
of Shakspeare’s play of “Richard the Third” the hero was but in his
nineteenth year; but at the still more juvenile age in which he appears
in this our record, Richard of Gloucester was older in intellect,
and almost in experience, than many a wise man at the date of
thirty-three,--the fatal age when his sun set forever on the field of
Bosworth!

The young prince, then, eyed the gaudy, fluttering, babbling assemblage
before him with mingled melancholy and scorn. Not that he felt, with the
acuteness which belongs to modern sentiment, his bodily defects amidst
that circle of the stately and the fair, for they were not of a nature
to weaken his arm in war or lessen his persuasive influences in peace.
But it was rather that sadness which so often comes over an active and
ambitious intellect in early youth, when it pauses to ask, in sorrow and
disdain, what its plots and counterplots, its restlessness and strife,
are really worth. The scene before him was of pleasure,--but in pleasure
neither the youth nor the manhood of Richard III. was ever pleased;
though not absolutely of the rigid austerity of Amadis or our Saxon
Edward, he was comparatively free from the licentiousness of his times.
His passions were too large for frivolous excitements. Already the
Italian, or, as it is falsely called, the Machiavelian policy, was
pervading the intellect of Europe, and the effects of its ruthless,
grand, and deliberate statecraft are visible from the accession of
Edward IV. till the close of Elizabeth’s reign. With this policy, which
reconciled itself to crime as a necessity of wisdom, was often blended a
refinement of character which disdained vulgar vices. Not skilled alone
in those knightly accomplishments which induced Caxton, with propriety,
to dedicate to Richard “The Book of the Order of Chivalry,” the Duke of
Gloucester’s more peaceful amusements were borrowed from severer Graces
than those which presided over the tastes of his royal brothers. He
loved, even to passion, the Arts, Music,--especially of the more Doric
and warlike kind,--Painting and Architecture; he was a reader of books,
as of men,--the books that become princes,--and hence that superior
knowledge of the principles of law and of commerce which his brief reign
evinced. More like an Italian in all things than the careless Norman
or the simple Saxon, Machiavel might have made of his character a
companion, though a contrast to that of Castruccio Castrucani.

The crowd murmured and rustled at the distance, and still with folded
arms Richard gazed aloof, when a lady, entering the garden from the
palace, passed by him so hastily that she brushed his surcoat, and,
turning round in surprise, made a low reverence, as she exclaimed,
“Prince Richard! and alone amidst so many!”

“Lady,” said the duke, “it was a sudden hope that brought me into this
garden,--and that was the hope to see your fair face shining above the
rest.”

“Your Highness jests,” returned the lady, though her superb countenance
and haughty carriage evinced no opinion of herself so humble as her
words would imply.

“My Lady of Bonville,” said the young duke, laying his hand on her arm,
“mirth is not in my thoughts at this hour.”

“I believe your Highness; for the Lord Richard Plantagenet is not one of
the Woodvilles. The mirth is theirs to-day.”

“Let who will have mirth,--it is the breath of a moment. Mirth cannot
tarnish glory,--the mirror in which the gods are glassed.”

“I understand you, my lord,” said the proud lady; and her face, before
stern and high, brightened into so lovely a change, so soft and winning
a smile, that Gloucester no longer marvelled that that smile had rained
so large an influence on the fate and heart of his favourite Hastings.
The beauty of this noble woman was indeed remarkable in its degree, and
peculiar in its character. She bore a stronger likeness in feature to
the archbishop than to either of her other brothers; for the prelate
had the straight and smooth outline of the Greeks,--not like Montagu and
Warwick, the lordlier and manlier aquiline of the Norman race,--and
his complexion was feminine in its pale clearness. But though in this
resembling the subtlest of the brethren, the fair sister shared with
Warwick an expression, if haughty, singularly frank and candid in its
imperious majesty; she had the same splendid and steady brilliancy
of eye, the same quick quiver of the lip, speaking of nervous
susceptibility and haste of mood. The hateful fashion of that day which
pervaded all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, was the prodigal
use of paints and cosmetics, and all imaginable artificial adjuncts of a
spurious beauty. This extended often even to the men, and the sturdiest
warrior deemed it no shame to recur to such arts of the toilet as the
vainest wanton in our day would never venture to acknowledge. But the
Lady Bonville, proudly confident of her beauty, and possessing a purity
of mind that revolted from the littleness of courting admiration,
contrasted forcibly in this the ladies of the court. Her cheek was of a
marble whiteness, though occasionally a rising flush through the clear,
rich, transparent skin showed that in earlier youth the virgin bloom had
not been absent from the surface. There was in her features, when they
reposed, somewhat of the trace of suffering,--of a struggle, past it may
be, but still remembered. But when she spoke, those features lighted
up and undulated in such various and kindling life as to dazzle, to
bewitch, or to awe the beholder, according as the impulse moulded the
expression. Her dress suited her lofty and spotless character. Henry
VI. might have contemplated with holy pleasure its matronly decorum; the
jewelled gorget ascended to the rounded and dimpled chin; the arms were
bare only at the wrists, where the blue veins were seen through a
skin of snow; the dark glossy locks, which her tirewoman boasted, when
released, swept the ground, were gathered into a modest and simple
braid, surmounted by the beseeming coronet that proclaimed her rank. The
Lady Bonville might have stood by the side of Cornelia, the model of
a young and high-born matron, in whose virtue the honour of man might
securely dwell.

“I understand you, my lord,” she said, with her bright, thankful smile;
“and as Lord Warwick’s sister, I am grateful.”

“Your love for the great earl proves you are noble enough to forgive,”
 said Richard, meaningly. “Nay, chide me not with that lofty look; you
know that there are no secrets between Hastings and Gloucester.”

“My lord duke, the head of a noble House hath the right to dispose of
the hands of the daughters; I know nothing in Lord Warwick to forgive.”

But she turned her head as she spoke, and a tear for a moment trembled
in that haughty eye.

“Lady,” said Richard, moved to admiration, “to you let me confide my
secret. I would be your nephew. Boy though I be in years, my heart beats
as loudly as a man’s; and that heart beats for Anne.”

“The love of Richard Plantagenet honours even Warwick’s daughter!”

“Think you so? Then stand my friend; and, being thus my friend,
intercede with Warwick, if he angers at the silly holiday of this
Woodville pageant.”

“Alas, sir! you know that Warwick listens to no interceders between
himself and his passions. But what then? Grant him wronged, aggrieved,
trifled with,--what then? Can he injure the House of York?”

Richard looked in some surprise at the fair speaker.

“Can he injure the House of York?--Marry, yes,” he replied bluntly.

“But for what end? Whom else should he put upon the throne?”

“What if he forgive the Lancastrians? What if--”

“Utter not the thought, prince, breathe it not,” exclaimed the Lady
Bonville, almost fiercely. “I love and honour my brave brother,
despite--despite--” She paused a moment, blushed, and proceeded rapidly,
without concluding the sentence. “I love him as a woman of his House
must love the hero who forms its proudest boast. But if, for any
personal grudge, any low ambition, any rash humour, the son of my father
Salisbury could forget that Margaret of Anjou placed the gory head of
that old man upon the gates of York, could by word or deed abet the
cause of usurping and bloody Lancaster,--I would--I would--Out upon my
sex! I could do nought but weep the glory of Nevile and Monthermer gone
forever.”

Before Richard could reply, the sound of musical instruments, and a
procession of heralds and pages proceeding from the palace, announced
the approach of Edward. He caught the hand of the dame of Bonville,
lifted it to his lips, and saying, “May fortune one day permit me to
face as the earl’s son the earl’s foes,” made his graceful reverence,
glided from the garden, gained his barge, and was rowed to the huge pile
of Baynard’s Castle, lately reconstructed, but in a gloomy and barbaric
taste, and in which, at that time, he principally resided with his
mother, the once peerless Rose of Raby.

The Lady of Bonville paused a moment, and in that pause her countenance
recovered its composure. She then passed on, with a stately step,
towards a group of the ladies of the court, and her eye noted with proud
pleasure that the highest names of the English knighthood and nobility,
comprising the numerous connections of her family, formed a sullen
circle apart from the rest, betokening, by their grave countenances and
moody whispers, how sensitively they felt the slight to Lord Warwick’s
embassy in the visit of the Count de la Roche, and how little they were
disposed to cringe to the rising sun of the Woodvilles. There, collected
into a puissance whose discontent hard sufficed to shake a firmer throne
(the young Raoul de Fulke, the idolater of Warwick, the impersonation in
himself of the old Norman seignorie, in their centre), with folded arms
and lowering brows, stood the earl’s kinsmen, the Lords Fitzhugh and
Fauconberg: with them, Thomas Lord Stanley, a prudent noble, who rarely
sided with a malcontent, and the Lord St. John, and the heir of the
ancient Bergavennies, and many another chief, under whose banner marched
an army. Richard of Gloucester had shown his wit in refusing to mingle
in intrigues which provoked the ire of that martial phalanx. As the Lady
of Bonville swept by these gentlemen, their murmur of respectful homage,
their profound salutation, and unbonneted heads, contrasted forcibly
with the slight and grave, if not scornful, obeisance they had just
rendered to one of the queen’s sisters, who had passed a moment before
in the same direction. The lady still moved on, and came suddenly across
the path of Hastings, as, in his robes of state, he issued from the
palace. Their eyes met, and both changed colour.

“So, my lord chamberlain,” said the dame, sarcastically, “the Count de
la Roche is, I hear, consigned to your especial charge.”

“A charge the chamberlain cannot refuse, and which William Hastings does
not covet.”

“A king had never asked Montagu and Warwick to consider amongst their
duties any charge they had deemed dishonouring.”

“Dishonouring, Lady Bonville!” exclaimed Hastings, with a bent brow and
a flushed cheek,--“neither Montagu nor Warwick had, with safety, applied
to me the word that has just passed your lips.”

“I crave your pardon,” answered Katherine, bitterly. “Mine articles
of faith in men’s honour are obsolete or heretical. I had deemed it
dishonouring in a noble nature to countenance insult to a noble enemy
in his absence. I had deemed it dishonouring in a brave soldier, a
well-born gentleman (now from his valiantness, merit, and wisdom
become a puissant and dreaded lord), to sink into that lackeydom and
varletaille which falsehood and cringing have stablished in these walls,
and baptized under the name of ‘courtiers.’ Better had Katherine de
Bonville esteemed Lord Hastings had he rather fallen under a king’s
displeasure than debased his better self to a Woodville’s dastard
schemings.”

“Lady, you are cruel and unjust, like all your haughty race; and idle
were reply to one who, of all persons, should have judged me better.
For the rest, if this mummery humbles Lord Warwick, gramercy! there
is nothing in my memory that should make my share in it a gall to my
conscience; nor do I owe the Neviles so large a gratitude, that rather
than fret the pile of their pride, I should throw down the scaffolding
on which my fearless step hath clomb to as fair a height, and one
perhaps that may overlook as long a posterity, as the best baron that
ever quartered the Raven Eagle and the Dun Bull. But,” resumed Hastings,
with a withering sarcasm, “doubtless the Lady de Bonville more admires
the happy lord who holds himself, by right of pedigree, superior to
all things that make the statesman wise, the scholar learned, and the
soldier famous. Way there--back, gentles,”--and Hastings turned to the
crowd behind,--“way there, for my lord of Harrington and Bonville!”

The bystanders smiled at each other as they obeyed; and a heavy,
shambling, graceless man, dressed in the most exaggerated fopperies of
the day, but with a face which even sickliness, that refines most faces,
could not divest of the most vacant dulness, and a mien and gait to
which no attire could give dignity, passed through the group, bowing
awkwardly to the right and left, and saying, in a thick, husky voice,
“You are too good, sirs,--too good: I must not presume so overmuch on my
seignorie. The king would keep me,--he would indeed, sirs; um--um--why,
Katherine--dame--thy stiff gorget makes me ashamed of thee. Thou wouldst
not think, Lord Hastings, that Katherine had a white skin,--a parlous
white skin. La, you now, fie on these mufflers!” The courtiers sneered;
Hastings, with a look of malignant and pitiless triumph, eyed the
Lady of Bonville. For a moment the colour went and came across her
transparent cheek; but the confusion passed, and returning the insulting
gaze of her ancient lover with an eye of unspeakable majesty, she placed
her arm upon her lord’s, and saying calmly, “An English matron cares but
to be fair in her husband’s eyes,” drew him away; and the words and
the manner of the lady were so dignified and simple, that the courtiers
hushed their laughter, and for the moment the lord of such a woman was
not only envied but respected.

While this scene had passed, the procession preceding Edward had
filed into the garden in long and stately order. From another entrance
Elizabeth, the Princess Margaret, and the Duchess of Bedford, with their
trains, had already issued, and were now ranged upon a flight of marble
steps, backed by a columned alcove, hung with velvet striped into the
royal baudekin, while the stairs themselves were covered with leathern
carpets, powdered with the white rose and the fleur de lis; either side
lined by the bearers of the many banners of Edward, displaying the white
lion of March, the black bull of Clare, the cross of Jerusalem, the
dragon of Arragon, and the rising sun, which he had assumed as his
peculiar war-badge since the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Again, and
louder, came the flourish of music; and a murmur through the crowd,
succeeded by deep silence, announced the entrance of the king. He
appeared, leading by the hand the Count de la Roche, and followed by the
Lords Scales, Rivers, Dorset, and the Duke of Clarence. All eyes were
bent upon the count, and though seen to disadvantage by the side of
the comeliest and stateliest and most gorgeously-attired prince in
Christendom, his high forehead, bright sagacious eye, and powerful frame
did not disappoint the expectations founded upon the fame of one equally
subtle in council and redoubted in war.

The royal host and the princely guest made their way where Elizabeth,
blazing in jewels and cloth-of-gold, shone royally, begirt by the ladies
of her brilliant court. At her right hand stood her mother, at her left,
the Princess Margaret.

“I present to you, my Elizabeth,” said Edward, “a princely gentleman, to
whom we nevertheless wish all ill-fortune,--for we cannot desire that he
may subdue our knights, and we would fain hope that he may be conquered
by our ladies.”

“The last hope is already fulfilled,” said the count, gallantly, as
on his knee he kissed the fair hand extended to him. Then rising, and
gazing full and even boldly upon the young Princess Margaret, he added,
“I have seen too often the picture of the Lady Margaret not to be aware
that I stand in that illustrious presence.”

“Her picture! Sir Count,” said the queen; “we knew not that it had been
ever limned.”

“Pardon me, it was done by stealth.”

“And where have you seen it?”

“Worn at the heart of my brother the Count of Charolois!” answered De la
Roche, in a whispered tone.

Margaret blushed with evident pride and delight; and the wily envoy,
leaving the impression his words had made to take their due effect,
addressed himself, with all the gay vivacity he possessed, to the fair
queen and her haughty mother.

After a brief time spent in this complimentary converse, the count then
adjourned to inspect the menagerie, of which the king was very proud.
Edward, offering his hand to his queen, led the way, and the Duchess of
Bedford, directing the count to Margaret by a shrewd and silent glance
of her eye, so far smothered her dislike to Clarence as to ask his
highness to attend herself.

“Ah, lady,” whispered the count, as the procession moved along, “what
thrones would not Charolois resign for the hand that his unworthy envoy
is allowed to touch!”

“Sir,” said Margaret, demurely looking down, “the Count of Charolois is
a lord who, if report be true, makes war his only mistress.”

“Because the only loving mistress his great heart could serve is denied
to his love! Ah, poor lord and brother, what new reasons for eternal war
to Burgundy, when France, not only his foe, becomes his rival!”

Margaret sighed, and the count continued till by degrees he warmed
the royal maiden from her reserve; and his eye grew brighter, and a
triumphant smile played about his lips, when, after the visit to the
menagerie, the procession re-entered the palace, and the Lord Hastings
conducted the count to the bath prepared for him, previous to the
crowning banquet of the night. And far more luxurious and more splendid
than might be deemed by those who read but the general histories of that
sanguinary time, or the inventories of furniture in the houses even of
the great barons, was the accommodation which Edward afforded to his
guest. His apartments and chambers were hung with white silk and linen,
the floors covered with richly-woven carpets; the counterpane of his bed
was cloth-of-gold, trimmed with ermine; the cupboard shone with vessels
of silver and gold; and over two baths were pitched tents of white
cloth of Rennes fringed with silver. [See Madden’s Narrative of the Lord
Grauthuse; Archaelogia, 1830.]

Agreeably to the manners of the time, Lord Hastings assisted to disrobe
the count; and, the more to bear him company, afterwards undressed
himself and bathed in the one bath, while the count refreshed his limbs
in the other.

“Pri’thee,” said De la Roche, drawing aside the curtain of his tent, and
putting forth his head--“pri’thee, my Lord Hastings, deign to instruct
my ignorance of a court which I would fain know well, and let me weet
whether the splendour of your king, far exceeding what I was taught to
look for, is derived from his revenue as sovereign of England, or chief
of the House of York?”

“Sir,” returned Hastings, gravely, putting out his own head, “it is
Edward’s happy fortune to be the wealthiest proprietor in England,
except the Earl of Warwick, and thus he is enabled to indulge a state
which yet oppresses not his people.”

“Except the Earl of Warwick!” repeated the count, musingly, as the fumes
of the odours with which the bath was filled rose in a cloud over his
long hair,--“ill would fare that subject, in most lands, who was as
wealthy as his king! You have heard that Warwick has met King Louis at
Rouen, and that they are inseparable?”

“It becomes an ambassador to win grace of him he is sent to please.”

“But none win the grace of Louis whom Louis does not dupe.”

“You know not Lord Warwick, Sir Count. His mind is so strong and
so frank, that it is as hard to deceive him as it is for him to be
deceived.”

“Time will show,” said the count, pettishly, and he withdrew his head
into the tent.

And now there appeared the attendants, with hippocras, syrups, and
comfits, by way of giving appetite for the supper, so that no further
opportunity for private conversation was left to the two lords. While
the count was dressing, the Lord Scales entered with a superb gown,
clasped with jewels, and lined with minever, with which Edward had
commissioned him to present the Bastard. In this robe the Lord Scales
insisted upon enduing his antagonist with his own hands, and the three
knights then repaired to the banquet. At the king’s table no male
personage out of the royal family sat, except Lord Rivers--as
Elizabeth’s father--and the Count de la Roche, placed between Margaret
and the Duchess of Bedford.

At another table, the great peers of the realm feasted under the
presidence of Anthony Woodville, while, entirely filling one side of the
hall, the ladies of the court held their “mess” (so-called) apart, and
“great and mighty was the eating thereof!”

The banquet ended, the dance began. The admirable “featliness” of the
Count de la Roche, in the pavon, with the Lady Margaret, was rivalled
only by the more majestic grace of Edward and the dainty steps of
Anthony Woodville. But the lightest and happiest heart which beat in
that revel was one in which no scheme and no ambition but those of love
nursed the hope and dreamed the triumph.

Stung by the coldness even more than by the disdain of the Lady
Bonville, and enraged to find that no taunt of his own, however galling,
could ruffle a dignity which was an insult both to memory and to
self-love, Hastings had exerted more than usual, both at the banquet and
in the revel, those general powers of pleasing, which, even in an age
when personal qualifications ranked so high, had yet made him no less
renowned for successes in gallantry than the beautiful and youthful
king. All about this man witnessed to the triumph of mind over the
obstacles that beset it,--his rise without envy, his safety amidst
foes, the happy ease with which he moved through the snares and pits
of everlasting stratagem and universal wile! Him alone the arts of the
Woodvilles could not supplant in Edward’s confidence and love; to him
alone dark Gloucester bent his haughty soul; him alone, Warwick, who
had rejected his alliance, and knew the private grudge the rejection
bequeathed,--him alone, among the “new men,” Warwick always treated with
generous respect, as a wise patriot and a fearless soldier; and in
the more frivolous scenes of courtly life, the same mind raised one no
longer in the bloom of youth, with no striking advantages of person, and
studiously disdainful of all the fopperies of the time, to an equality
with the youngest, the fairest, the gaudiest courtier, in that rivalship
which has pleasure for its object and love for its reward. Many a heart
beat quicker as the graceful courtier, with that careless wit which
veiled his profound mournfulness of character, or with that delicate
flattery which his very contempt for human nature had taught him, moved
from dame to donzell; till at length, in the sight and hearing of the
Lady Bonville, as she sat, seemingly heedless of his revenge, amidst
a group of matrons elder than herself, a murmur of admiration made him
turn quickly, and his eye, following the gaze of the bystanders, rested
upon the sweet, animated face of Sibyll, flushed into rich bloom at the
notice it excited. Then as he approached the maiden, his quick glance
darting to the woman he had first loved told him that he had at last
discovered the secret how to wound. An involuntary compression of
Katherine’s proud lips, a hasty rise and fall of the stately neck, a
restless, indescribable flutter, as it were, of the whole frame, told
the experienced woman-reader of the signs of jealousy and fear. And he
passed at once to the young maiden’s side. Alas! what wonder that Sibyll
that night surrendered her heart to the happiest dreams; and finding
herself on the floors of a court, intoxicated by its perfumed air,
hearing on all sides the murmured eulogies which approved and justified
the seeming preference of the powerful noble, what wonder that she
thought the humble maiden, with her dower of radiant youth and exquisite
beauty, and the fresh and countless treasures of virgin love, might be
no unworthy mate of the “new lord”?

It was morning [The hours of our ancestors, on great occasions, were not
always more seasonable than our own. Froissart speaks of court balls, in
the reign of Richard II., kept up till day.] before the revel ended; and
when dismissed by the Duchess of Bedford, Sibyll was left to herself,
not even amidst her happy visions did the daughter forget her office.
She stole into her father’s chamber. He, too, was astir and up,--at work
at the untiring furnace, the damps on his brow, but all Hope’s vigour at
his heart. So while Pleasure feasts, and Youth revels, and Love deludes
itself, and Ambition chases its shadows (chased itself by Death),--so
works the world-changing and world-despised SCIENCE, the life within
life, for all living,--and to all dead!



CHAPTER VII. THE RENOWNED COMBAT BETWEEN SIR ANTHONY WOODVILLE AND THE
BASTARD OF BURGUNDY.

And now the day came for the memorable joust between the queen’s brother
and the Count de la Roche. By a chapter solemnly convoked at St. Paul’s,
the preliminaries were settled; upon the very timber used in decking the
lists King Edward expended half the yearly revenue derived from all the
forests of his duchy of York. In the wide space of Smithfield, destined
at a later day to blaze with the fires of intolerant bigotry, crowded
London’s holiday population: and yet, though all the form and parade
of chivalry were there; though in the open balconies never presided
a braver king or a comelier queen; though never a more accomplished
chevalier than Sir Anthony Lord of Scales, nor a more redoubted knight
than the brother of Charles the Bold, met lance to lance,--it was
obvious to the elder and more observant spectators, that the true spirit
of the lists was already fast wearing out from the influences of the
age; that the gentleman was succeeding to the knight, that a more silken
and scheming race had become the heirs of the iron men, who, under
Edward III., had realized the fabled Paladins of Charlemagne and Arthur.
But the actors were less changed than the spectators,--the Well-born
than the People. Instead of that hearty sympathy in the contest, that
awful respect for the champions, that eager anxiety for the honour of
the national lance, which, a century or more ago, would have moved the
throng as one breast, the comments of the bystanders evinced rather the
cynicism of ridicule, the feeling that the contest was unreal, and that
chivalry was out of place in the practical temper of the times. On the
great chessboard the pawns were now so marshalled, that the knight’s
moves were no longer able to scour the board and hold in check both
castle and king.

“Gramercy,” said Master Stokton, who sat in high state as sheriff,
[Fabyan] “this is a sad waste of moneys; and where, after all, is the
glory in two tall fellows, walled a yard thick in armor, poking at each
other with poles of painted wood?”

“Give me a good bull-bait!” said a sturdy butcher, in the crowd below;
“that’s more English, I take it, than these fooleries.”

Amongst the ring, the bold ‘prentices of London, up and away betimes,
had pushed their path into a foremost place, much to the discontent of
the gentry, and with their flat caps, long hair, thick bludgeons, loud
exclamations, and turbulent demeanour, greatly scandalized the formal
heralds. That, too, was a sign of the times. Nor less did it show
the growth of commerce, that, on seats very little below the regal
balconies, and far more conspicuous than the places of earls and barons,
sat in state the mayor (that mayor a grocer!) [Sir John Yonge.--Fabyan]
and aldermen of the city.

A murmur, rising gradually into a general shout, evinced the admiration
into which the spectators were surprised, when Anthony Woodville Lord
Scales--his head bare--appeared at the entrance of the lists,--so bold
and so fair was his countenance, so radiant his armour, and so richly
caparisoned his gray steed, in the gorgeous housings that almost swept
the ground; and around him grouped such an attendance of knights and
peers as seldom graced the train of any subject, with the Duke of
Clarence at his right hand, bearing his bassinet.

But Anthony’s pages, supporting his banner, shared at least the popular
admiration with their gallant lord: they were, according to the old
custom, which probably fell into disuse under the Tudors, disguised in
imitation of the heraldic beasts that typified his armourial cognizance;
[Hence the origin of Supporters] and horrible and laidly looked they in
the guise of griffins, with artful scales of thin steel painted green,
red forked tongues, and griping the banner in one huge claw, while, much
to the marvel of the bystanders, they contrived to walk very statelily
on the other. “Oh, the brave monsters!” exclaimed the butcher. “Cogs
bones, this beats all the rest!”

But when the trumpets of the heralds had ceased, when the words “Laissez
aller!” were pronounced, when the lances were set and the charge began,
this momentary admiration was converted into a cry of derision, by the
sudden restiveness of the Burgundian’s horse. This animal, of the pure
race of Flanders, of a bulk approaching to clumsiness, of a rich bay,
where, indeed, amidst the barding and the housings, its colour could be
discerned, had borne the valiant Bastard through many a sanguine field,
and in the last had received a wound which had greatly impaired its
sight. And now, whether scared by the shouting, or terrified by its
obscure vision, and the recollection of its wound when last bestrode by
its lord, it halted midway, reared on end, and, fairly turning round,
despite spur and bit, carried back the Bastard, swearing strange oaths,
that grumbled hoarsely through his vizor, to the very place whence he
had started.

The uncourteous mob yelled and shouted and laughed, and wholly
disregarding the lifted wands and drowning the solemn rebukes of the
heralds, they heaped upon the furious Burgundian all the expressions of
ridicule in which the wit of Cockaigne is so immemorially rich. But the
courteous Anthony of England, seeing the strange and involuntary flight
of his redoubted foe, incontinently reined in, lowered his lance, and
made his horse, without turning round, back to the end of the lists in
a series of graceful gambadas and caracoles. Again the signal was
given, and this time the gallant bay did not fail his rider; ashamed,
doubtless, of its late misdemeanour, arching its head till it almost
touched the breast, laying its ears level on the neck, and with a snort
of anger and disdain, the steed of Flanders rushed to the encounter.
The Bastard’s lance shivered fairly against the small shield of the
Englishman; but the Woodville’s weapon, more deftly aimed, struck full
on the count’s bassinet, and at the same time the pike projecting from
the gray charger’s chaffron pierced the nostrils of the unhappy bay,
which rage and shame had blinded more than ever. The noble animal, stung
by the unexpected pain, and bitted sharply by the rider, whose seat
was sorely shaken by the stroke on his helmet, reared again, stood an
instant perfectly erect, and then fell backwards, rolling over and over
the illustrious burden it had borne. Then the debonair Sir Anthony of
England, casting down his lance, drew his sword, and dexterously caused
his destrier to curvet in a close circle round the fallen Bastard,
courteously shaking at him the brandished weapon, but without attempt to
strike.

“Ho, marshal!” cried King Edward, “assist to his legs the brave count.”

The marshal hastened to obey. “Ventrebleu!” quoth the Bastard, when
extricated from the weight of his steed, “I cannot hold by the clouds,
but though my horse failed me, surely I will not fail my companions;”
 and as he spoke, he placed himself in so gallant and superb a posture,
that he silenced the inhospitable yell which had rejoiced in the
foreigner’s discomfiture. Then, observing that the gentle Anthony
had dismounted, and was leaning gracefully against his destrier, the
Burgundian called forth,--

“Sir Knight, thou hast conquered the steed, not the rider. We are now
foot to foot. The pole-axe, or the sword,--which? Speak!”

“I pray thee, noble sieur,” quoth the Woodville, mildly, “to let the
strife close for this day, and when rest bath--”

“Talk of rest to striplings,--I demand my rights!”

“Heaven forefend,” said Anthony Woodville, lifting his hand on high,
“that I, favoured so highly by the fair dames of England, should demand
repose on their behalf. But bear witness,” he said (with the generosity
of the last true chevalier of his age, and lifting his vizor, so as
to be heard by the king, and even through the foremost ranks of the
crowd)--“bear witness, that in this encounter, my cause hath befriended
me, not mine arm. The Count de la Roche speaketh truly; and his steed
alone be blamed for his mischance.”

“It is but a blind beast!” muttered the Burgundian.

“And,” added Anthony, bowing towards the tiers rich with the beauty of
the court--“and the count himself assureth me that the blaze of yonder
eyes blinded his goodly steed.” Having delivered himself of this
gallant conceit, so much in accordance with the taste of the day, the
Englishman, approaching the king’s balcony, craved permission to finish
the encounter with the axe or brand.

“The former, rather please you, my liege; for the warriors of Burgundy
have ever been deemed unconquered in that martial weapon.”

Edward, whose brave blood was up and warm at the clash of steel, bowed
his gracious assent, and two pole-axes were brought into the ring.

The crowd now evinced a more earnest and respectful attention than they
had hitherto shown, for the pole-axe, in such stalwart hands, was no
child’s toy. “Hum,” quoth Master Stokton, “there may be some merriment
now,--not like those silly poles! Your axe lops off a limb mighty
cleanly.” The knights themselves seemed aware of the greater gravity of
the present encounter. Each looked well to the bracing of his vizor;
and poising their weapons with method and care, they stood apart some
moments, eying each other steadfastly,--as adroit fencers with the small
sword do in our schools at this day.

At length the Burgundian, darting forward, launched a mighty stroke at
the Lord Scales, which, though rapidly parried, broke down the guard,
and descended with such weight on the shoulder that but for the
thrice-proven steel of Milan, the benevolent expectation of Master
Stokton had been happily fulfilled. Even as it was, the Lord Scales
uttered a slight cry,--which might be either of anger or of pain,--and
lifting his axe with both hands, levelled a blow on the Burgundian’s
helmet that well nigh brought him to his knee. And now for the space
of some ten minutes, the crowd with charmed suspense beheld the almost
breathless rapidity with which stroke on stroke was given and parried;
the axe shifted to and fro, wielded now with both hands, now the left,
now the right, and the combat reeling, as it were, to and fro,--so that
one moment it raged at one extreme of the lists, the next at the other;
and so well inured, from their very infancy, to the weight of mail were
these redoubted champions, that the very wrestlers on the village green,
nay, the naked gladiators of old, might have envied their lithe agility
and supple quickness.

At last, by a most dexterous stroke, Anthony Woodville forced the point
of his axe into the vizor of the Burgundian, and there so firmly did
it stick, that he was enabled to pull his antagonist to and fro at his
will, while the Bastard, rendered as blind as his horse by the stoppage
of the eye-hole, dealt his own blows about at random, and was placed
completely at the mercy of the Englishman. And gracious as the gentle
Sir Anthony was, he was still so smarting under many a bruise felt
through his dinted mail, that small mercy, perchance, would the Bastard
have found, for the gripe of the Woodville’s left hand was on his foe’s
throat, and the right seemed about to force the point deliberately
forward into the brain, when Edward, roused from his delight at that
pleasing spectacle by a loud shriek from his sister Margaret, echoed by
the Duchess of Bedford, who was by no means anxious that her son’s axe
should be laid at the root of all her schemes, rose, and crying, “Hold!”
 with that loud voice which had so often thrilled a mightier field, cast
down his warderer.

Instantly the lists opened; the marshals advanced, severed the
champions, and unbraced the count’s helmet. But the Bastard’s martial
spirit, exceedingly dissatisfied at the unfriendly interruption,
rewarded the attention of the marshals by an oath worthy his
relationship to Charles the Bold; and hurrying straight to the king, his
face flushed with wrath and his eyes sparkling with fire,--

“Noble sire and king,” he cried, “do me not this wrong! I am not
overthrown nor scathed nor subdued,--I yield not. By every knightly law
till one champion yields he can call upon the other to lay on and do his
worst.”

Edward paused, much perplexed and surprised at finding his intercession
so displeasing. He glanced first at the Lord Rivers, who sat a little
below him, and whose cheek grew pale at the prospect of his son’s
renewed encounter with one so determined, then at the immovable aspect
of the gentle and apathetic Elizabeth, then at the agitated countenance
of the duchess, then at the imploring eyes of Margaret, who, with an
effort, preserved herself from swooning; and finally beckoning to him
the Duke of Clarence, as high constable, and the Duke of Norfolk, as
earl marshal, he said, “Tarry a moment, Sir Count, till we take
counsel in this grave affair.” The count bowed sullenly; the spectators
maintained an anxious silence; the curtain before the king’s gallery was
closed while the council conferred. At the end of some three minutes,
however, the drapery was drawn aside by the Duke of Norfolk; and Edward,
fixing his bright blue eye upon the fiery Burgundian, said gravely,
“Count de la Roche, your demand is just. According to the laws of the
list, you may fairly claim that the encounter go on.”

“Oh, knightly prince, well said! My thanks. We lose time.--Squires, my
bassinet!”

“Yea,” renewed Edward, “bring hither the count’s bassinet. By the laws,
the combat may go on at thine asking,--I retract my warderer. But, Count
de la Roche, by those laws you appeal to, the said combat must go on
precisely at the point at which it was broken off. Wherefore brace on
thy bassinet, Count de la Roche; and thou, Anthony Lord Scales, fix the
pike of thine axe, which I now perceive was inserted exactly where the
right eye giveth easy access to the brain, precisely in the same place.
So renew the contest, and the Lord have mercy on thy soul, Count de la
Roche!”

At this startling sentence, wholly unexpected, and yet wholly according
to those laws of which Edward was so learned a judge, the Bastard’s
visage fell. With open mouth and astounded eyes, he stood gazing at the
king, who, majestically reseating himself, motioned to the heralds.

“Is that the law, sire?” at length faltered forth the Bastard.

“Can you dispute it? Can any knight or gentleman gainsay it?”

“Then,” quoth the Bastard, gruffly, and throwing his axe to the ground,
“by all the saints in the calendar, I have had enough! I came hither to
dare all that beseems a chevalier, but to stand still while Sir Anthony
Woodville deliberately pokes out my right eye were a feat to show that
very few brains would follow. And so, my Lord Scales, I give thee my
right hand, and wish thee joy of thy triumph, and the golden collar.”
 [The prize was a collar of gold, enamelled with the flower of the
souvenance.]

“No triumph,” replied the Woodville, modestly, “for thou art only, as
brave knights should be, subdued by the charms of the ladies, which no
breast, however valiant, can with impunity dispute.”

So saying, the Lord Scales led the count to a seat of honour near
the Lord Rivers; and the actor was contented, perforce, to become a
spectator of the ensuing contests. These were carried on till late at
noon between the Burgundians and the English, the last maintaining the
superiority of their principal champion; and among those in the
melee, to which squires were admitted, not the least distinguished and
conspicuous was our youthful friend, Master Marmaduke Nevile.



CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE BASTARD OF BURGUNDY PROSPERED MORE IN HIS POLICY
THAN WITH THE POLE-AXE.-AND HOW KING EDWARD HOLDS HIS SUMMER CHASE IN
THE FAIR GROVES OF SHENE.

It was some days after the celebrated encounter between the Bastard and
Lord Scales, and the court had removed to the Palace of Shene. The Count
de la Roche’s favour with the Duchess of Bedford and the young princess
had not rested upon his reputation for skill with the pole-axe, and it
had now increased to a height that might well recompense the diplomatist
for his discomfiture in the lists.

In the mean while, the arts of Warwick’s enemies had been attended with
signal success. The final preparations for the alliance now virtually
concluded with Louis’s brother still detained the earl at Rouen, and
fresh accounts of the French king’s intimacy with the ambassador were
carefully forwarded to Rivers, and transmitted to Edward. Now, we have
Edward’s own authority for stating that his first grudge against Warwick
originated in this displeasing intimacy, but the English king was too
clear-sighted to interpret such courtesies into the gloss given them by
Rivers. He did not for a moment conceive that Lord Warwick was led
into any absolute connection with Louis which could link him to the
Lancastrians, for this was against common-sense; but Edward, with all
his good humour, was implacable and vindictive, and he could not endure
the thought that Warwick should gain the friendship of the man he
deemed his foe. Putting aside his causes of hatred to Louis in the
encouragement which that king had formerly given to the Lancastrian
exiles, Edward’s pride as sovereign felt acutely the slighting disdain
with which the French king had hitherto treated his royalty and his
birth. The customary nickname with which he was maligned in Paris was
“the Son of the Archer,” a taunt upon the fair fame of his mother, whom
scandal accused of no rigid fidelity to the Duke of York. Besides this,
Edward felt somewhat of the jealousy natural to a king, himself so
spirited and able, of the reputation for profound policy and statecraft
which Louis XI. was rapidly widening and increasing throughout the
courts of Europe. And, what with the resentment and what with the
jealousy, there had sprung up in his warlike heart a secret desire to
advance the claims of England to the throne of France, and retrieve the
conquests won by the Fifth Henry to be lost under the Sixth. Possessing
these feelings and these views, Edward necessarily saw in the alliance
with Burgundy all that could gratify both his hate and his ambition. The
Count of Charolois had sworn to Louis the most deadly enmity, and would
have every motive, whether of vengeance or of interest, to associate
himself heart in hand with the arms of England in any invasion of
France; and to these warlike objects Edward added, as we have so often
had cause to remark, the more peaceful aims and interests of commerce.
And, therefore, although he could not so far emancipate himself from
that influence, which both awe and gratitude invested in the Earl of
Warwick, as to resist his great minister’s embassy to Louis; and though,
despite all these reasons in favour of connection with Burgundy, he
could not but reluctantly allow that Warwick urged those of a still
larger and wiser policy, when showing that the infant dynasty of York
could only be made secure by effectually depriving Margaret of the sole
ally that could venture to assist her cause,--yet no sooner had Warwick
fairly departed than he inly chafed at the concession he had made, and
his mind was open to all the impressions which the earl’s enemies sought
to stamp upon it. As the wisdom of every man, however able, can but run
through those channels which are formed by the soil of the character, so
Edward with all his talents never possessed the prudence which fear
of consequences inspires. He was so eminently fearless, so scornful
of danger, that he absolutely forgot the arguments on which
the affectionate zeal of Warwick had based the alliance with
Louis,--arguments as to the unceasing peril, whether to his person
or his throne, so long as the unprincipled and plotting genius of the
French king had an interest against both; and thus he became only alive
to the representations of his passions, his pride, and his mercantile
interests. The Duchess of Bedford, the queen, and all the family of
Woodville, who had but one object at heart,--the downfall of Warwick and
his House,--knew enough of the earl’s haughty nature to be aware that
he would throw up the reins of government the moment he knew that Edward
had discredited and dishonoured his embassy; and, despite the suspicions
they sought to instil into their king’s mind, they calculated upon
the earl’s love and near relationship to Edward, upon his utter and
seemingly irreconcilable breach with the House of Lancaster, to render
his wrath impotent, and to leave him only the fallen minister, not the
mighty rebel.

Edward had been thus easily induced to permit the visit of the Count de
la Roche, although he had by no means then resolved upon the course he
should pursue. At all events, even if the alliance with Louis was to
take place, the friendship of Burgundy was worth much to maintain. But
De la Roche soon made aware by the Duchess of Bedford of the ground on
which he stood, and instructed by his brother to spare no pains and to
scruple no promise that might serve to alienate Edward from Louis and
win the hand and dower of Margaret, found it a more facile matter than
his most sanguine hopes had deemed to work upon the passions and the
motives which inclined the king to the pretensions of the heir of
Burgundy. And what more than all else favoured the envoy’s mission was
the very circumstance that should most have defeated it,--namely, the
recollection of the Earl of Warwick; for in the absence of that powerful
baron and master-minister, the king had seemed to breathe more freely.
In his absence, he forgot his power. The machine of government, to his
own surprise, seemed to go on as well; the Commons were as submissive,
the mobs as noisy in their shouts, as if the earl were by. There was no
longer any one to share with Edward the joys of popularity, the sweets
of power.

Though Edward was not Diogenes, he loved the popular sunshine, and
no Alexander now stood between him and its beams. Deceived by the
representations of his courtiers, hearing nothing but abuse of Warwick
and sneers at his greatness, he began to think the hour had come when he
might reign alone, and he entered, though tacitly, and not acknowledging
it even to himself, into the very object of the womankind about
him,--namely, the dismissal of his minister.

The natural carelessness and luxurious indolence of Edward’s temper did
not however permit him to see all the ingratitude of the course he was
about to adopt. The egotism a king too often acquires, and no king so
easily as one like Edward IV., not born to a throne, made him consider
that he alone was entitled to the prerogatives of pride. As sovereign
and as brother, might he not give the hand of Margaret as he listed?
If Warwick was offended, pest on his disloyalty and presumption! And so
saying to himself, he dismissed the very thought of the absent earl,
and glided unconsciously down the current of the hour. And yet,
notwithstanding all these prepossessions and dispositions, Edward might
no doubt have deferred at least the meditated breach with his great
minister until the return of the latter, and then have acted with the
delicacy and precaution that became a king bound by ties of
gratitude and blood to the statesman he desired to discard, but for
a habit,--which, while history mentions, it seems to forget, in
the consequences it ever engenders,--the habit of intemperance.
Unquestionably to that habit many of the imprudences and levities of a
king possessed of so much ability are to be ascribed; and over his cups
with the wary and watchful De la Roche Edward had contrived to entangle
himself far more than in his cooler moments he would have been disposed
to do.

Having thus admitted our readers into those recesses of that cor
inscrutabile,--the heart of kings,--we summon them to a scene peculiar
to the pastimes of the magnificent Edward. Amidst the shades of the
vast park, or chase, which then appertained to the Palace of Shene, the
noonday sun shone upon such a spot as Armida might have dressed for the
subdued Rinaldo. A space had been cleared of trees and underwood, and
made level as a bowling-green. Around this space the huge oak and
the broad beech were hung with trellis-work, wreathed with jasmine,
honeysuckle, and the white rose, trained in arches. Ever and anon
through these arches extended long alleys, or vistas, gradually lost
in the cool depth of foliage; amidst these alleys and around this space
numberless arbours, quaint with all the flowers then known in England,
were constructed. In the centre of the sward was a small artificial
lake, long since dried up, and adorned then with a profusion of
fountains, that seemed to scatter coolness around the glowing air.
Pitched in various and appropriate sites were tents of silk and the
white cloth of Rennes, each tent so placed as to command one of the
alleys; and at the opening of each stood cavalier or dame, with the bow
or crossbow, as it pleased the fancy or suited best the skill, looking
for the quarry, which horn and hound drove fast and frequent across the
alleys. Such was the luxurious “summer-chase” of the Sardanapalus of the
North. Nor could any spectacle more thoroughly represent that poetical
yet effeminate taste, which, borrowed from the Italians, made a short
interval between the chivalric and the modern age. The exceeding beauty
of the day, the richness of the foliage in the first suns of bright
July, the bay of the dogs, the sound of the mellow horn, the fragrance
of the air, heavy with noontide flowers, the gay tents, the rich dresses
and fair faces and merry laughter of dame and donzell,--combined to
take captive every sense, and to reconcile ambition itself, that eternal
traveller through the future, to the enjoyment of the voluptuous hour.
But there were illustrious exceptions to the contentment of the general
company.

A courier had arrived that morning to apprise Edward of the unexpected
debarkation of the Earl of Warwick, with the Archbishop of Narbonne and
the Bastard of Bourbon,--the ambassadors commissioned by Louis to settle
the preliminaries of the marriage between Margaret and his brother. This
unwelcome intelligence reached Edward at the very moment he was sallying
from his palace gates to his pleasant pastime. He took aside Lord
Hastings, and communicated the news to his able favourite. “Put spurs to
thy horse, Hastings, and hie thee fast to Baynard’s Castle. Bring back
Gloucester. In these difficult matters that boy’s head is better than a
council.”

“Your Highness,” said Hastings, tightening his girdle with one hand,
while with the other he shortened his stirrups, “shall be obeyed. I
foresaw, sire, that this coming would occasion much that my Lords Rivers
and Worcester have overlooked. I rejoice that you summon the Prince
Richard, who hath wisely forborne all countenance to the Burgundian
envoy. But is this all, sire? Is it not well to assemble also your
trustiest lords and most learned prelates, if not to overawe Lord
Warwick’s anger, at least to confer on the fitting excuses to be made to
King Louis’s ambassadors?”

“And so lose the fairest day this summer hath bestowed upon us?
Tush!--the more need for pleasaunce to-day since business must come
to-morrow. Away with you, dear Will!”

Hastings looked grave; but he saw all further remonstrance would be in
vain, and hoping much from the intercession of Gloucester, put spurs to
his steed and vanished. Edward mused a moment; and Elizabeth, who knew
every expression and change of his countenance, rode from the circle of
her ladies, and approached him timidly. Casting down her eyes, which she
always affected in speaking to her lord, the queen said softly,--

“Something hath disturbed my liege and my life’s life.”

“Marry, yes, sweet Bessee. Last night, to pleasure thee and thy kin (and
sooth to say, small gratitude ye owe me, for it also pleased myself), I
promised Margaret’s hand, through De la Roche, to the heir of Burgundy.”

“O princely heart!” exclaimed Elizabeth, her whole face lighted up with
triumph, “ever seeking to make happy those it cherishes. But is it that
which disturbs thee, that which thou repentest?”

“No, sweetheart,--no. Yet had it not been for the strength of the clary,
I should have kept the Bastard longer in suspense. But what is done
is done. Let not thy roses wither when thou hearest Warwick is in
England,--nay, nay, child, look not so appalled; thine Edward is no
infant, whom ogre and goblin scare; and”--glancing his eye proudly round
as he spoke, and saw the goodly cavalcade of his peers and knights, with
his body-guard, tall and chosen veterans, filling up the palace-yard,
with the show of casque and pike--“and if the struggle is to come
between Edward of England and his subject, never an hour more ripe
than this; my throne assured, the new nobility I have raised around it,
London true, marrow and heart true, the provinces at peace, the ships
and the steel of Burgundy mine allies! Let the white Bear growl as he
list, the Lion of March is lord of the forest. And now, my Bessee,”
 added the king, changing his haughty tone into a gay, careless laugh,
“now let the lion enjoy his chase.”

He kissed the gloved hand of his queen, gallantly bending over his
saddle-bow, and the next moment he was by the side of a younger if not
a fairer lady, to whom he was devoting the momentary worship of his
inconstant heart. Elizabeth’s eyes shot an angry gleam as she beheld her
faithless lord thus engaged; but so accustomed to conceal and control
the natural jealousy that it never betrayed itself to the court or to
her husband, she soon composed her countenance to its ordinary smooth
and artificial smile, and rejoining her mother she revealed what had
passed. The proud and masculine spirit of the duchess felt only joy at
the intelligence. In the anticipated humiliation of Warwick, she forgot
all cause for fear. Not so her husband and son, the Lords Rivers and
Scales, to whom the news soon travelled.

“Anthony,” whispered the father, “in this game we have staked our
heads.”

“But our right hands can guard them well, sir,” answered Anthony; “and
so God and the ladies for our rights!”

Yet this bold reply did not satisfy the more thoughtful judgment of the
lord treasurer, and even the brave Anthony’s arrows that day wandered
wide of their quarry.

Amidst this gay scene, then, there were anxious and thoughtful bosoms.
Lord Rivers was silent and abstracted; his son’s laugh was hollow and
constrained; the queen, from her pavilion, cast, ever and anon, down the
green alleys more restless and prying looks than the hare or the deer
could call forth; her mother’s brow was knit and flushed. And keenly
were those illustrious persons watched by one deeply interested in the
coming events. Affecting to discharge the pleasant duty assigned him
by the king, the Lord Montagu glided from tent to tent, inquiring
courteously into the accommodation of each group, lingering, smiling,
complimenting, watching, heeding, studying, those whom he addressed. For
the first time since the Bastard’s visit he had joined in the diversions
in its honour; and yet so well had Montagu played his part at the court
that he did not excite amongst the queen’s relatives any of the hostile
feelings entertained towards his brother. No man, except Hastings,
was so “entirely loved” by Edward; and Montagu, worldly as he was, and
indignant against the king as he could not fail to be, so far repaid
the affection, that his chief fear at that moment sincerely was not for
Warwick but Edward. He alone of those present was aware of the cause of
Warwick’s hasty return, for he had privately despatched to him the news
of the Bastard’s visit, its real object, and the inevitable success of
the intrigues afloat, unless the earl could return at once, his mission
accomplished, and the ambassadors of France in his train; and even
before the courier despatched to the king had arrived at Shene, a
private hand had conveyed to Montagu the information that Warwick,
justly roused and alarmed, had left the state procession behind at
Dover, and was hurrying, fast as relays of steeds and his own fiery
spirit could bear him, to the presence of the ungrateful king.

Meanwhile the noon had now declined, the sport relaxed, and the sound
of the trumpet from the king’s pavilion proclaimed that the lazy pastime
was to give place to the luxurious banquet.

At this moment, Montagu approached a tent remote from the royal
pavilions, and, as his noiseless footstep crushed the grass, he heard
the sound of voices in which there was little in unison with the worldly
thoughts that filled his breast.

“Nay, sweet mistress, nay,” said a young man’s voice, earnest with
emotion, “do not misthink me, do not deem me bold and overweening. I
have sought to smother my love, and to rate it, and bring pride to my
aid, but in vain; and, now, whether you will scorn my suit or not,
I remember, Sibyll--O Sibyll! I remember the days when we conversed
together; and as a brother, if nothing else--nothing dearer--I pray you
to pause well, and consider what manner of man this Lord Hastings is
said to be!”

“Master Nevile, is this generous? Why afflict me thus; why couple my
name with so great a lord’s?”

“Because--beware--the young gallants already so couple it, and their
prophecies are not to thine honour, Sibyll. Nay, do not frown on me. I
know thou art fair and winsome, and deftly gifted, and thy father may,
for aught I know, be able to coin thee a queen’s dower out of his awsome
engines. But Hastings will not wed thee, and his wooing, therefore, but
stains thy fair repute; while I--”

“You!” said Montagu, entering suddenly--“you, kinsman, may look to
higher fortunes than the Duchess of Bedford’s waiting-damsel can bring
to thy honest love. How now, mistress, say, wilt thou take this young
gentleman for loving fere and plighted spouse? If so, he shall give thee
a manor for jointure, and thou shalt wear velvet robe and gold chain, as
a knight’s wife.”

This unexpected interference, which was perfectly in character with the
great lords, who frequently wooed in very peremptory tones for their
clients and kinsmen, [See, in Miss Strickland’s “Life of Elizabeth
Woodville,” the curious letters which the Duke of York and the Earl
of Warwick addressed to her, then a simple maiden, in favour of their
protege, Sir R. Johnes.] completed the displeasure which the blunt
Marmaduke had already called forth in Sibyll’s gentle but proud nature.
“Speak, maiden,--ay or no?” continued Montagu, surprised and angered at
the haughty silence of one whom he just knew by sight and name, though
he had never before addressed her.

“No, my lord,” answered Sibyll, keeping down her indignation at this
tone, though it burned in her cheek, flashed in her eye, and swelled in
the heave of her breast. “No! and your kinsman might have spared this
affront to one whom--but it matters not.” She swept from the tent as she
said this, and passed up the alley into that of the queen’s mother.

“Best so; thou art too young for marriage, Marmaduke,” said Montagu,
coldly. “We will find thee a richer bride ere long. There is Mary of
Winstown, the archbishop’s ward, with two castles and seven knight’s
fees.”

“But so marvellously ill-featured, my lord,” said poor Marmaduke,
sighing.

Montagu looked at him in surprise. “Wives, sir,” he said, “are not made
to look at,--unless, indeed, they be the wives of other men. But dismiss
these follies for the nonce. Back to thy post by the king’s pavilion;
and by the way ask Lord Fauconberg and Aymer Nevile, whom thou wilt pass
by yonder arbour, ask them, in my name, to be near the pavilion while
the king banquets. A word in thine ear,--ere yon sun gilds the top of
those green oaks, the Earl of Warwick will be with Edward IV.; and come
what may, some brave hearts should be by to welcome him. Go!”

Without tarrying for an answer, Montagu turned into one of the tents,
wherein Raoul de Fulke and the Lord St. John, heedless of hind and
hart, conferred; and Marmaduke, much bewildered, and bitterly wroth with
Sibyll, went his way.



CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT ACTOR RETURNS TO FILL THE STAGE.

And now in various groups these summer foresters were at rest in their
afternoon banquet,--some lying on the smooth sward around the lake, some
in the tents, some again in the arbours; here and there the forms of
dame and cavalier might be seen, stealing apart from the rest, and
gliding down the alleys till lost in the shade, for under that reign
gallantry was universal. Before the king’s pavilion a band of those
merry jongleurs, into whom the ancient and honoured minstrels were fast
degenerating, stood waiting for the signal to commence their sports,
and listening to the laughter that came in frequent peals from the royal
tent. Within feasted Edward, the Count de la Roche, the Lord Rivers;
while in a larger and more splendid pavilion at some little distance,
the queen, her mother, and the great dames of the court held their own
slighter and less noisy repast.

“And here, then,” said Edward, as he put his lips to a gold goblet,
wrought with gems, and passed it to Anthony the Bastard,--“here, count,
we take the first wassail to the loves of Charolois and Margaret!”

The count drained the goblet, and the wine gave him new fire.

“And with those loves, king,” said he, “we bind forever Burgundy and
England. Woe to France!”

“Ay, woe to France!” exclaimed Edward, his face lighting up with that
martial joy which it ever took at the thoughts of war,--“for we will
wrench her lands from this huckster Louis. By Heaven! I shall not rest
in peace till York hath regained what Lancaster hath lost! and out of
the parings of the realm which I will add to England thy brother of
Burgundy shall have eno’ to change his duke’s diadem for a king’s. How
now, Rivers? Thou gloomest, father mine.”

“My liege,” said Rivers, wakening himself, “I did but think that if the
Earl of Warwick--”

“Ah, I had forgotten,” interrupted Edward; “and, sooth to say, Count
Anthony, I think if the earl were by, he would not much mend our
boon-fellowship!”

“Yet a good subject,” said De la Roche, sneeringly, “usually dresses his
face by that of his king.”

“A subject! Ay, but Warwick is much such a subject to England as William
of Normandy or Duke Rollo was to France. Howbeit, let him come,--our
realm is at peace, we want no more his battle-axe; and in our new
designs on France, thy brother, bold count, is an ally that might
compensate for a greater loss than a sullen minister. Let him come!”

As the king spoke, there was heard gently upon the smooth turf the sound
of the hoofs of steeds. A moment more, and from the outskirts of the
scene of revel, where the king’s guards were stationed, there arose a
long, loud shout. Nearer and nearer came the hoofs of the steeds; they
paused. Doubtless Richard of Gloucester by that shout! “The soldiers
love that brave boy,” said the king.

Marmaduke Nevile, as gentleman in waiting, drew aside the curtain of
the pavilion; and as he uttered a name that paled the cheeks of all who
heard, the Earl of Warwick entered the royal presence.

The earl’s dress was disordered and soiled by travel; the black plume on
his cap was broken, and hung darkly over his face; his horseman’s boots,
coming half way up the thigh, were sullied with the dust of the journey;
and yet as he entered, before the majesty of his mien, the grandeur
of his stature, suddenly De Roche, Rivers, even the gorgeous Edward
himself, seemed dwarfed into common men! About the man--his air, his
eye, his form, his attitude--there was THAT which, in the earlier
times, made kings by the acclamation of the crowd,--an unmistakable
sovereignty, as of one whom Nature herself had shaped and stamped for
power and for rule. All three had risen as he entered; and to a deep
silence succeeded an exclamation from Edward, and then again all was
still.

The earl stood a second or two calmly gazing on the effect he had
produced; and turning his dark eye from one to the other, till it rested
full upon De la Roche, who, after vainly striving not to quail beneath
the gaze, finally smiled with affected disdain, and, resting his hand on
his dagger, sank back into his seat.

“My liege,” then said Warwick, doffing his cap, and approaching the king
with slow and grave respect, “I crave pardon for presenting myself to
your Highness thus travel-worn and disordered; but I announce that news
which insures my welcome. The solemn embassy of trust committed to me
by your Grace has prospered with God’s blessing; and the Fils de Bourbon
and the Archbishop of Narbonne are on their way to your metropolis.
Alliance between the two great monarchies of Europe is concluded on
terms that insure the weal of England and augment the lustre of your
crown. Your claims on Normandy and Guienne King Louis consents to submit
to the arbitrement of the Roman Pontiff, [The Pope, moreover, was to
be engaged to decide the question within four years. A more brilliant
treaty for England, Edward’s ambassador could not have effected.] and to
pay to your treasury annual tribute; these advantages, greater than your
Highness even empowered me to demand, thus obtained, the royal brother
of your new ally joyfully awaits the hand of the Lady Margaret.”

“Cousin,” said Edward, who had thoroughly recovered himself, motioning
the earl to a seat, “you are ever welcome, no matter what your news; but
I marvel much that so deft a statesman should broach these matters
of council in the unseasonable hour and before the gay comrades of a
revel.”

“I speak, sire,” said Warwick, calmly, though the veins in his forehead
swelled, and his dark countenance was much flushed--“I speak openly of
that which hath been done nobly; and this truth has ceased to be matter
of council, since the meanest citizen who has ears and eyes ere this
must know for what purpose the ambassadors of King Louis arrive in
England with your Highness’s representative.”

Edward, more embarrassed at this tone than he could have foreseen,
remained silent; but De la Roche, impatient to humble his brother’s foe,
and judging it also discreet to arouse the king, said carelessly,--

“It were a pity, Sir Earl, that the citizens, whom you thus deem privy
to the thoughts of kings, had not prevised the Archbishop of Narbonne
that if he desire to see a fairer show than even the palaces of
Westminster and the Tower, he will hasten back to behold the banners of
Burgundy and England waving from the spires of Notre Dame.”

Ere the Bastard had concluded, Rivers, leaning back, whispered the king,
“For Christ’s sake, sire, select some fitter scene for what must follow!
Silence your guest!”

But Edward, on the contrary, pleased to think that De la Roche was
breaking the ice, and hopeful that some burst from Warwick would give
him more excuse than he felt at present for a rupture, said sternly,
“Hush, my lord, and meddle not!”

“Unless I mistake,” said Warwick, coldly, “he who now accosts me is the
Count de la Roche,--a foreigner.”

“And the brother of the heir of Burgundy,” interrupted De la
Roche,--“brother to the betrothed and princely spouse of Margaret of
England.”

“Doth this man lie, sire?” said Warwick, who had seated himself a
moment, and who now rose again.

The Bastard sprung also to his feet; but Edward, waving him back, and
reassuming the external dignity which rarely forsook him, replied,
“Cousin, thy question lacketh courtesy to our noble guest: since thy
departure, reasons of state, which we will impart to thee at a meeter
season, have changed our purpose, and we will now that our sister
Margaret shall wed with the Count of Charolois.”

“And this to me, king!” exclaimed the earl; all his passions at once
released--“this to me! Nay, frown not, Edward,--I am of the race of
those who, greater than kings, have built thrones and toppled them! I
tell thee, thou hast misused mine honour, and belied thine own; thou
hast debased thyself in juggling me, delegated as the representative of
thy royalty!--Lord Rivers, stand back,--there are barriers eno’ between
truth and a king!”

“By Saint George and my father’s head!” cried Edward, with a rage no
less fierce than Warwick’s,--“thou abusest, false lord, my mercy and
our kindred blood. Another word, and thou leavest this pavilion for the
Tower!”

“King,” replied Warwick, scornfully, and folding his arms on his broad
breast, “there is not a hair on this head which thy whole house, thy
guards, and thine armies could dare to touch. ME to the Tower! Send
me,--and when the third sun reddens the roof of prison-house and palace,
look round broad England, and miss a throne!”

“What, ho there!” exclaimed Edward, stamping his foot; and at that
instant the curtain of the pavilion was hastily torn aside, and Richard
of Gloucester entered, followed by Lord Hastings, the Duke of Clarence,
and Anthony Woodville.

“Ah,” continued the king, “ye come in time. George of Clarence, Lord
High Constable of England, arrest yon haughty man, who dares to menace
his liege and suzerain!”

Gliding between Clarence, who stood dumb and thunder-stricken, and the
Earl of Warwick, Prince Richard said, in a voice which, though even
softer than usual, had in it more command over those who heard than when
it rolled in thunder along the ranks of Barnet or of Bosworth, “Edward,
my brother, remember Towton, and forbear! Warwick, my cousin, forget not
thy king nor his dead father!”

At these last words the earl’s face fell, for to that father he had
sworn to succour and defend the sons; his sense, recovering from his
pride, showed him how much his intemperate anger had thrown away his
advantages in the foul wrong he had sustained from Edward. Meanwhile the
king himself, with flashing eyes and a crest as high as Warwick’s, was
about perhaps to overthrow his throne by the attempt to enforce his
threat, when Anthony Woodville, who followed Clarence, whispered to him,
“Beware, sire! a countless crowd that seem to have followed the earl’s
steps have already pierced the chase, and can scarcely be kept from the
spot, so great is their desire to behold him. Beware!”--and Richard’s
quick ear catching these whispered words, the duke suddenly backed them
by again drawing aside the curtain of the tent. Along the sward, the
guard of the king, summoned from their unseen but neighbouring
post within the wood, were drawn up as if to keep back an immense
multitude,--men, women, children, who swayed and rustled and murmured
in the rear. But no sooner was the curtain drawn aside, and the guards
themselves caught sight of the royal princes and the great earl towering
amidst them, than supposing in their ignorance the scene thus given to
them was intended for their gratification, from that old soldiery or
Towton rose a loud and long “Hurrah! Warwick and the king!”--“The king
and the stout earl!” The multitude behind caught the cry; they rushed
forward, mingling with the soldiery, who no longer sought to keep them
back.

“A Warwick! a Warwick!” they shouted. “God bless the people’s friend!”

Edward, startled and aghast, drew sullenly into the rear of the tent.

De la Roche grew pale; but with the promptness of a practised statesman,
he hastily advanced, and drew the curtain. “Shall varlets,” he said to
Richard, in French, “gloat over the quarrels of their lords?”

“You are right, Sir Count,” murmured Richard, meekly; his purpose was
effected, and leaning on his riding staff, he awaited what was to ensue.

A softer shade had fallen over the earl’s face, at the proof of the love
in which his name was held; it almost seemed to his noble though haughty
and impatient nature, as if the affection of the people had reconciled
him to the ingratitude of the king. A tear started to his proud eye;
but he twinkled it away, and approaching Edward (who remained erect, and
with all a sovereign’s wrath, though silent on his lip, lowering on his
brow), he said, in a tone of suppressed emotion,--

“Sire, it is not for me to crave pardon of living man, but the grievous
affront put upon my state and mine honour hath led my words to an excess
which my heart repents. I grieve that your Grace’s highness hath chosen
this alliance; hereafter you may find at need what faith is to be placed
in Burgundy.”

“Darest thou gainsay it?” exclaimed De la Roche.

“Interrupt me not, sir!” continued Warwick, with a disdainful gesture.
“My liege, I lay down mine offices, and I leave it to your Grace to
account as it lists you to the ambassadors of France,--I shall vindicate
myself to their king. And now, ere I depart for my hall of Middleham, I
alone here, unarmed and unattended, save at least by a single squire,
I, Richard Nevile, say, that if any man, peer or knight, can be found
to execute your Grace’s threat, and arrest me, I will obey your royal
pleasure, and attend him to the Tower.” Haughtily he bowed his head
as he spoke, and raising it again, gazed around--“I await your Grace’s
pleasure.”

“Begone where thou wilt, earl. From this day Edward IV. reigns alone,”
 said the king. Warwick turned.

“My Lord Scales,” said he, “lift the curtain; nay, sir, it misdemeans
you not. You are still the son of the Woodville, I still the descendant
of John of Gaunt.”

“Not for the dead ancestor, but for the living warrior,” said the Lord
Scales, lifting the curtain, and bowing with knightly grace as the earl
passed. And scarcely was Warwick in the open space than the crowd fairly
broke through all restraint, and the clamour of their joy filled with
its hateful thunders the royal tent.

“Edward,” said Richard, whisperingly, and laying his finger on his
brother’s arm, “forgive me if I offended; but had you at such a time
resolved on violence--”

“I see it all,--you were right. But is this to be endured forever?”

“Sire,” returned Richard, with his dark smile, “rest calm; for the age
is your best ally, and the age is outgrowing the steel and hauberk. A
little while, and--”

“And what--”

“And--ah, sire, I will answer that question when our brother George
(mark him!) either refrains from listening, or is married to Isabel
Nevile, and hath quarrel with her father about the dowry. What, he,
there!--let the jongleurs perform.”

“The jongleurs!” exclaimed the king; “why, Richard, thou hast more
levity than myself!”

“Pardon me! Let the jongleurs perform, and bid the crowd stay. It is by
laughing at the mountebanks that your Grace can best lead the people to
forget their Warwick!”



CHAPTER X. HOW THE GREAT LORDS COME TO THE KING-MAKER, AND WITH WHAT
PROFFERS.

Mastering the emotions that swelled within him, Lord Warwick returned
with his wonted cheerful courtesy the welcome of the crowd and the
enthusiastic salutation of the king’s guard; but as, at length, he
mounted his steed, and attended but by the squire who had followed him
from Dover, penetrated into the solitudes of the chase, the recollection
of the indignity he had suffered smote his proud heart so sorely that
he groaned aloud. His squire, fearing the fatigue he had undergone might
have affected even that iron health, rode up at the sound of the groan,
and Warwick’s face was hueless as he said, with a forced smile, “It is
nothing, Walter. But these heats are oppressive, and we have forgotten
our morning draught, friend. Hark! I hear the brawl of a rivulet, and
a drink of fresh water were more grateful now than the daintiest
hippocras.” So saying, he flung himself from his steed; following the
sound of the rivulet, he gained its banks, and after quenching his
thirst in the hollow of his hand, laid himself down upon the long grass,
waving coolly over the margin, and fell into profound thought. From this
revery he was aroused by a quick footstep, and as he lifted his gloomy
gaze, he beheld Marmaduke Nevile by his side.

“Well, young man,” said he, sternly, “with what messages art thou
charged?”

“With none, my lord earl. I await now no commands but thine.”

“Thou knowest not, poor youth, that I can serve thee no more. Go back to
the court.”

“Oh, Warwick,” said Marmaduke, with simple eloquence, “send me not from
thy side! This day I have been rejected by the maid I loved. I loved her
well, and my heart chafed sorely, and bled within! but now, methinks,
it consoles me to have been so cast off,--to have no faith, no love,
but that which is best of all, to a brave man,--love and faith for a
hero-chief! Where thy fortunes, there be my humble fate,--to rise or
fall with thee!”

Warwick looked intently upon his young kinsman’s face, and said, as to
himself, “Why, this is strange! I gave no throne to this man, and he
deserts me not! My friend,” he added aloud, “have they told thee already
that I am disgraced?”

“I heard the Lord Scales say to the young Lovell that thou wert
dismissed from all thine offices; and I came hither; for I will serve no
more the king who forgets the arm and heart to which he owes a kingdom.”

“Man, I accept thy loyalty!” exclaimed Warwick, starting to his feet;
“and know that thou hast done more to melt and yet to nerve my spirit
than--But complaints in one are idle, and praise were no reward to
thee.”

“But see, my lord, if the first to join thee, I am not the sole one.
See, brave Raoul de Fulke, the Lords of St. John, Bergavenny, and
Fitzhugh, ay, and fifty others of the best blood of England, are on thy
track.”

And as he spoke, plumes and tunics were seen gleaming up the forest
path, and in another moment a troop of knights and gentlemen, comprising
the flower of such of the ancient nobility as yet lingered round the
court, came up to Warwick, bareheaded.

“Is it possible,” cried Raoul de Fulke, “that we have heard aright,
noble earl? And has Edward IV. suffered the base Woodvilles to triumph
over the bulwark of his realm?”

“Knights and gentles!” said Warwick, with a bitter smile, “is it so
uncommon a thing that men in peace should leave the battle-axe and brand
to rust? I am but a useless weapon, to be suspended at rest amongst the
trophies of Towton in my hall of Middleham.”

“Return with us,” said the Lord of St. John, “and we will make Edward do
thee justice, or, one and all, we will abandon a court where knaves and
varlets have become mightier than English valour and nobler than Norman
birth.”

“My friends,” said the earl, laying his hand on St. John’s shoulder,
“not even in my just wrath will I wrong my king. He is punished eno’
in the choice he hath made. Poor Edward and poor England! What woes and
wars await ye both, from the gold and the craft and the unsparing hate
of Louis XI! No; if I leave Edward, he hath more need of you. Of mine
own free will I have resigned mine offices.”

“Warwick,” interrupted Raoul de Fulke, “this deceives us not; and in
disgrace to you the ancient barons of England behold the first blow at
their own state. We have wrongs we endured in silence while thou wert
the shield and sword of yon merchant-king. We have seen the ancient
peers of England set aside for men of yesterday; we have seen
our daughters, sisters,--nay, our very mothers, if widowed and
dowered,--forced into disreputable and base wedlock with creatures
dressed in titles, and gilded with wealth stolen from ourselves.
Merchants and artificers tread upon our knightly heels, and the avarice
of trade eats up our chivalry as a rust. We nobles, in our greater day,
have had the crown at our disposal, and William the Norman dared not
think what Edward Earl of March hath been permitted with impunity to do.
We, Sir Earl--we knights and barons--would a king simple in his manhood
and princely in his truth. Richard Earl of Warwick, thou art of royal
blood, the descendant of old John of Gaunt. In thee we behold the true,
the living likeness of the Third Edward, and the Hero-Prince of Cressy.
Speak but the word, and we make thee king!”

The descendant of the Norman, the representative of the mighty faction
that no English monarch had ever braved in vain, looked round as he said
these last words, and a choral murmur was heard through the whole of
that august nobility, “We make thee king!”

“Richard, descendant of the Plantagenet, [By the female side, through
Joan Beaufort, or Plantagenet, Warwick was third in descent from John
of Gaunt, as Henry VII., through the male line, was fourth in descent.]
speak the word,” repeated Raoul de Fulke.

“I speak it not,” interrupted Warwick; “nor shalt thou continue, brave
Raoul de Fulke. What, my lords and gentlemen,” he added, drawing himself
up, and with his countenance animated with feelings it is scarcely
possible in our times to sympathize with or make clear--“what! think you
that Ambition limits itself to the narrow circlet of a crown Greater,
and more in the spirit of our mighty fathers, is the condition of men
like us, THE BARONS who make and unmake kings. What! who of us would not
rather descend from the chiefs of Runnymede than from the royal craven
whom they controlled and chid? By Heaven, my lords, Richard Nevile has
too proud a soul to be a king! A king--a puppet of state and form; a
king--a holiday show for the crowd, to hiss or hurrah, as the humour
seizes; a king--a beggar to the nation, wrangling with his parliament
for gold! A king!--Richard II. was a king, and Lancaster dethroned him.
Ye would debase me to a Henry of Lancaster. Mort Dieu! I thank ye. The
Commons and the Lords raised him, forsooth,--for what? To hold him as
the creature they had made, to rate him, to chafe him, to pry into his
very household, and quarrel with his wife’s chamberlains and lavourers.
[Laundresses. The parliamentary rolls, in the reign of Henry IV.,
abound in curious specimens of the interference of the Commons with the
household of Henry’s wife, Queen Joan.] What! dear Raoul de Fulke, is
thy friend fallen now so low, that he--Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick,
chief of the threefold race of Montagu, Monthermer, and Nevile, lord of
a hundred baronies, leader of sixty thousand followers--is not greater
than Edward of March, to whom we will deign still, with your permission,
to vouchsafe the name and pageant of a king?”

This extraordinary address, strange to say, so thoroughly expressed
the peculiar pride of the old barons, that when it ceased a sound of
admiration and applause circled through that haughty audience, and Raoul
de Fulke, kneeling suddenly, kissed the earl’s hand. “Oh, noble earl,”
 he said, “ever live as one of us, to maintain our order, and teach kings
and nations what WE are.”

“Fear it not, Raoul! fear it not,--we will have our rights yet. Return,
I beseech ye. Let me feel I have such friends about the king. Even at
Middleham my eye shall watch over our common cause; and till seven feet
of earth suffice him, your brother baron, Richard Nevile, is not a man
whom kings and courts can forget, much less dishonour. Sirs, our honour
is in our bosoms,--and there is the only throne armies cannot shake, nor
cozeners undermine.”

With these words he gently waved his hand, motioned to his squire, who
stood out of hearing with the steeds, to approach, and mounting, gravely
rode on. Ere he had got many paces, he called to Marmaduke, who was
on foot, and bade him follow him to London that night. “I have strange
tidings to tell the French envoys, and for England’s sake I must soothe
their anger, if I can,--then to Middleham.”

The nobles returned slowly to the pavilions. And as they gained the open
space, where the gaudy tents still shone against the setting sun, they
beheld the mob of that day, whom Shakspeare hath painted with such
contempt, gathering, laughing and loud, around the mountebank and the
conjurer, who had already replaced in their thoughts (as Gloucester had
foreseen) the hero-idol of their worship.



BOOK V.


CHAPTER I. RURAL ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES--NOBLE VISITORS SEEK THE
CASTLE OF MIDDLEHAM.

Autumn had succeeded to summer, winter to autumn, and the spring of 1468
was green in England, when a gallant cavalcade was seen slowly winding
the ascent of a long and gradual hill, towards the decline of day.
Different, indeed, from the aspect which that part of the country now
presents was the landscape that lay around them, bathed in the smiles
of the westering sun. In a valley to the left, a full view of which
the steep road commanded (where now roars the din of trade through a
thousand factories), lay a long, secluded village. The houses, if so
they might be called, were constructed entirely of wood, and that of the
more perishable kind,--willow, sallow, elm, and plum-tree. Not one could
boast a chimney; but the smoke from the single fire in each, after duly
darkening the atmosphere within, sent its surplusage lazily and fitfully
through a circular aperture in the roof. In fact, there was long in the
provinces a prejudice against chimneys! The smoke was considered good
both for house and owner; the first it was supposed to season, and the
last to guard “from rheums, catarrhs, and poses.” [So worthy Hollinshed,
Book II. c. 22.--“Then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did
never ache. For as the smoke, in those days, was supposed to be a
sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a
far better medicine to keep the goodman and his familie from the quacke,
or pose, wherewith as then very few were oft acquainted.”] Neither
did one of these habitations boast the comfort of a glazed window, the
substitute being lattice, or chequer-work,--even in the house of the
franklin, which rose statelily above the rest, encompassed with barns
and outsheds. And yet greatly should we err did we conceive that these
deficiencies were an index to the general condition of the working
class. Far better off was the labourer when employed, than now. Wages
were enormously high, meat extremely low; [See Hallam: Middle Ages,
Chap. xx. Part II. So also Hollinsbed, Book XI., c. 12, comments on the
amazement of the Spaniards, in Queen Mary’s time, when they saw “what
large diet was used in these so homelie cottages,” and reports one of
the Spaniards to have said, “These English have their houses of sticks
and dirt, but they fare commonlie so well as the king!”] and our
motherland bountifully maintained her children.

On that greensward, before the village (now foul and reeking with the
squalid population whom commerce rears up,--the victims, as the movers,
of the modern world) were assembled youth and age; for it was a holiday
evening, and the stern Puritan had not yet risen to sour the face of
Mirth. Well clad in leathern jerkin, or even broadcloth, the young
peasants vied with each other in quoits and wrestling; while the merry
laughter of the girls, in their gay-coloured kirtles and ribboned
hair, rose oft and cheerily to the ears of the cavalcade. From a gentle
eminence beyond the village, and half veiled by trees, on which the
first verdure of spring was budding (where now, around the gin-shop,
gather the fierce and sickly children of toil and of discontent), rose
the venerable walls of a monastery, and the chime of its heavy bell
swung far and sweet over the pastoral landscape. To the right of the
road (where now stands the sober meeting-house) was one of those small
shrines so frequent in Italy, with an image of the Virgin gaudily
painted, and before it each cavalier in the procession halted an instant
to cross himself and mutter an ave. Beyond, still to the right, extended
vast chains of woodland, interspersed with strips of pasture, upon which
numerous flocks were grazing, with horses, as yet unbroken to bit and
selle, that neighed and snorted as they caught scent of their more
civilized brethren pacing up the road.

In front of the cavalcade rode two, evidently of superior rank to the
rest,--the one small and slight, with his long hair flowing over his
shoulders; and the other, though still young, many years older, and
indicating his clerical profession by the absence of all love-locks,
compensated by a curled and glossy beard, trimmed with the greatest
care. But the dress of the ecclesiastic was as little according to our
modern notions of what beseems the Church as can well be conceived:
his tunic and surcoat, of a rich amber, contrasted well with the clear
darkness of his complexion; his piked shoes, or beakers, as they were
called, turned up half-way to the knee; the buckles of his dress were
of gold, inlaid with gems; and the housings of his horse, which was
of great power, were edged with gold fringe. By the side of his steed
walked a tall greyhound, upon which he ever and anon glanced with
affection. Behind these rode two gentlemen, whose golden spurs announced
knighthood; and then followed a long train of squires and pages, richly
clad and accoutred, bearing generally the Nevile badge of the Bull;
though interspersed amongst the retinue might be seen the grim Boar’s
head, which Richard of Gloucester, in right of his duchy, had assumed as
his cognizance.

“Nay, sweet prince,” said the ecclesiastic, “I pray thee to consider
that a greyhound is far more of a gentleman than any other of the canine
species. Mark his stately yet delicate length of limb, his sleek coat,
his keen eye, his haughty neck.”

“These are but the externals, my noble friend. Will the greyhound attack
the lion, as our mastiff doth? The true character of the gentleman is to
know no fear, and to rush through all danger at the throat of his foe;
wherefore I uphold the dignity of the mastiff above all his tribe,
though others have a daintier hide and a statelier crest. Enough of such
matters, archbishop,--we are nearing Middleham.”

“The saints be praised! for I am hungered,” observed the archbishop,
piously: “but, sooth to say, my cook at the More far excelleth what we
can hope to find at the board of my brother. He hath some faults, our
Warwick! Hasty and careless, he hath not thought eno’ of the blessings
he might enjoy, and many a poor abbot hath daintier fare on his humble
table.”

“Oh, George Nevile! who that heard thee, when thou talkest of hounds
and interments, [entremets (side dishes)] would recognize the Lord
Chancellor of England,--the most learned dignitary, the most subtle
statesman?”

“And oh, Richard Plantagenet!” retorted the archbishop, dropping the
mincing and affected tone, which he, in common with the coxcombs of that
day, usually assumed, “who that heard thee when thou talkest of humility
and devotion, would recognize the sternest heart and the most daring
ambition God ever gave to prince?”

Richard started at these words, and his eye shot fire as it met the keen
calm glance of the prelate.

“Nay, your Grace wrongs me,” he said, gnawing his lip,--“or I should not
say wrongs, but flatters; for sternness and ambition are no vices in a
Nevile’s eyes.”

“Fairly answered, royal son,” said the archbishop, laughing; “but let us
be frank. Thou hast persuaded me to accompany thee to Lord Warwick as
a mediator; the provinces in the North are disturbed; the intrigues of
Margaret of Anjou are restless; the king reaps what he has sown in the
Court of France, and, as Warwick foretold, the emissaries and gold of
Louis are ever at work against his throne; the great barons are moody
and discontented; and our liege King Edward is at last aware that, if
the Earl of Warwick do not return to his councils, the first blast of a
hostile trumpet may drive him from his throne. Well, I attend thee: my
fortunes are woven with those of York, and my interest and my loyalty
go hand in hand. Be equally frank with me. Hast thou, Lord Richard, no
interest to serve in this mission save that of the public weal?”

“Thou forgettest that the Lady Isabel is dearly loved by Clarence, and
that I would fain see removed all barrier to his nuptial bliss. But
yonder rise the towers of Middleham. Beloved walls, which sheltered my
childhood! and, by holy Paul, a noble pile, which would resist an army,
or hold one.”

While thus conversed the prince and the archbishop, the Earl of Warwick,
musing and alone, slowly paced the lofty terrace that crested the
battlements of his outer fortifications.

In vain had that restless and powerful spirit sought content in
retirement. Trained from his childhood to active life, to move mankind
to and fro at his beck, this single and sudden interval of repose in the
prime of his existence, at the height of his fame, served but to swell
the turbulent and dangerous passions to which all vent was forbidden.

The statesman of modern days has at least food for intellect in letters
when deprived of action; but with all his talents, and thoroughly
cultivated as his mind was in the camp, the council, and the state, the
great earl cared for nothing in book-lore except some rude ballad that
told of Charlemagne or Rollo. The sports that had pleased the leisure of
his earlier youth were tedious and flat to one snatched from so mighty
a career. His hound lay idle at his feet, his falcon took holiday on the
perch, his jester was banished to the page’s table. Behold the repose of
this great unlettered spirit! But while his mind was thus debarred from
its native sphere, all tended to pamper Lord Warwick’s infirmity of
pride. The ungrateful Edward might forget him; but the king seemed to
stand alone in that oblivion. The mightiest peers, the most renowned
knights, gathered to his hall. Middleham,--not Windsor nor Shene nor
Westminster nor the Tower--seemed the COURT OF ENGLAND. As the Last
of the Barons paced his terrace, far as his eye could reach, his broad
domains extended, studded with villages and towns and castles swarming
with his retainers. The whole country seemed in mourning for his
absence. The name of Warwick was in all men’s mouths, and not a group
gathered in market-place or hostel but what the minstrel who had some
ballad in praise of the stout earl had a rapt and thrilling audience.

“And is the river of my life,” muttered Warwick, “shrunk into this
stagnant pool? Happy the man who hath never known what it is to taste of
fame,--to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!”

Rapt in this gloomy self-commune, he heard not the light step that
sought his side, till a tender arm was thrown around him, and a face in
which sweet temper and pure thought had preserved to matronly beauty all
the bloom of youth, looked up smilingly to his own.

“My lord, my Richard,” said the countess, “why didst thou steal so
churlishly from me? Hath there, alas! come a time when thou deemest me
unworthy to share thy thoughts, or soothe thy troubles?”

“Fond one! no,” said Warwick, drawing the form still light, though
rounded, nearer to his bosom. “For nineteen years hast thou been to me a
leal and loving wife. Thou wert a child on our wedding-day, m’amie, and
I but a beardless youth; yet wise enough was I then to see, at the first
glance of thy blue eye, that there was more treasure in thy heart than
in all the lordships thy hand bestowed.”

“My Richard!” murmured the countess, and her tears of grateful delight
fell on the hand she kissed.

“Yes, let us recall those early and sweet days,” continued Warwick, with
a tenderness of voice and manner that strangers might have marvelled
at, forgetting how tenderness is almost ever a part of such peculiar
manliness of character; “yes, sit we here under this spacious elm, and
think that our youth has come back to us once more. For verily, m’amie,
nothing in life has ever been so fair to me as those days when we
stood hand in hand on its threshold, and talked, boy-bridegroom and
child-bride as we were, of the morrow that lay beyond.”

“Ah, Richard, even in those days thy ambition sometimes vexed my woman’s
vanity, and showed me that I could never be all in all to so large a
heart!”

“Ambition! No, thou mistakest,--Montagu is ambitious, I but proud.
Montagu ever seeks to be higher than he is, I but assert the right to be
what I am and have been; and my pride, sweet wife, is a part of my love
for thee. It is thy title, Heiress of Warwick, and not my father’s, that
I bear; thy badge, and not the Nevile’s, which I have made the symbol
of my power. Shame, indeed, on my knighthood, if the fairest dame in
England could not justify my pride! Ah, belle amie, why have we not a
son?”

“Peradventure, fair lord,” said the countess, with an arch yet
half-melancholy smile, “because that pride, or ambition, name it as thou
wilt, which thou excusest so gallantly, would become too insatiate and
limitless if thou sawest a male heir to thy greatness; and God, perhaps,
warns thee that, spread and increase as thou wilt,--yea, until half our
native country becometh as the manor of one man,--all must pass from the
Beauchamp and the Nevile into new Houses; thy glory indeed an eternal
heirloom, but only to thy land,--thy lordships and thy wealth melting
into the dowry of a daughter.”

“At least no king hath daughters so dowried,” answered Warwick; “and
though I disdain for myself the hard vassalage of a throne, yet if the
channel of our blood must pass into other streams, into nothing meaner
than the veins of royalty should it merge.” He paused a moment, and
added with a sigh, “Would that Clarence were more worthy Isabel!”

“Nay,” said the countess, gently, “he loveth her as she merits. He is
comely, brave, gracious, and learned.”

“A pest upon that learning,--it sicklies and womanizes men’s minds!”
 exclaimed Warwick, bluntly. “Perhaps it is his learning that I am to
thank for George of Clarence’s fears and doubts and calculations and
scruples. His brother forbids his marriage with any English donzell, for
Edward dares not specialize what alone he dreads. His letters burn with
love, and his actions freeze with doubts. It was not thus I loved thee,
sweetheart. By all the saints in the calendar, had Henry V. or the Lion
Richard started from the tomb to forbid me thy hand, it would but have
made me a hotter lover! Howbeit Clarence shall decide ere the moon
wanes, and but for Isabel’s tears and thy entreaties, my father’s
grandchild should not have waited thus long the coming of so hesitating
a wooer. But lo, our darlings! Anne hath thine eyes, m’amie; and she
groweth more into my heart every day, since daily she more favours
thee.”

While he thus spoke, the fair sisters came lightly and gayly up the
terrace: the arm of the statelier Isabel was twined round Anne’s
slender waist; and as they came forward in that gentle link, with their
lithesome and bounding step, a happier blending of contrasted beauty was
never seen. The months that had passed since the sisters were presented
first to the reader had little changed the superb and radiant loveliness
of Isabel, but had added surprisingly to the attractions of Anne. Her
form was more rounded, her bloom more ripened; and though something of
timidity and bashfulness still lingered about the grace of her movements
and the glance of her dove-like eye, the more earnest thoughts of the
awakening woman gave sweet intelligence to her countenance, and that
divinest of all attractions--the touching and conscious modesty--to the
shy but tender smile, and the blush that so came and went, so went and
came, that it stirred the heart with a sort of delighted pity for one
so evidently susceptible to every emotion of pleasure and of pain. Life
seemed too rough a thing for so soft a nature, and gazing on her, one
sighed to guess her future.

“And what brings ye hither, young truants?” said the earl, as Anne,
leaving her sister, clung lovingly to his side (for it was ever her
habit to cling to some one), while Isabel kissed her mother’s hand, and
then stood before her parents, colouring deeply, and with downcast eyes.
“What brings ye hither, whom I left so lately deep engaged in the loom,
upon the helmet of Goliath, with my burgonet before you as a sample?
Wife, you are to blame,--our rooms of state will be arrasless for the
next three generations, if these rosy fingers are suffered thus to play
the idlers.”

“My father,” whispered Anne, “guests are on their way hither,--a noble
cavalcade; you note them not from this part of the battlements, but from
our turret it was fair to see how their plumes and banners shone in the
setting sun.”

“Guests!” echoed the earl; “well, is that so rare an honour that your
hearts should beat like village girls at a holiday? Ah, Isabel! look at
her blushes. Is it George of Clarence at last? Is it?”

“We see the Duke of Gloucester’s cognizance,” whispered Anne, “and our
own Nevile Bull. Perchance our cousin George, also, may--”

Here she was interrupted by the sound of the warder’s horn, followed a
moment after by the roar of one of the bombards on the keep.

“At least,” said Warwick, his face lighting up, “that signal announces
the coming of king’s blood. We must honour it,--for it is our own. We
will go forth and meet our guests--your hand, countess.”

And gravely and silently, and in deep but no longer gloomy thought,
Warwick descended from the terrace, followed by the fair sisters; and
who that could have looked upon that princely pair and those lovely
and radiant children, could have foreseen that in that hour, Fate, in
tempting the earl once more to action, was busy on their doom!



CHAPTER II. COUNCILS AND MUSINGS.

The lamp shone through the lattice of Warwick’s chamber at the unwonted
hour of midnight, and the earl was still in deep commune with his
guests. The archbishop, whom Edward, alarmed by the state of the country
and the disaffection of his barons, had reluctantly commissioned to
mediate with Warwick, was, as we have before said, one of those men
peculiar to the early Church. There was nothing more in the title of
Archbishop of York than in that of the Bishop of Osnaburg (borne by the
royal son of George III.) [The late Duke of York.] to prevent him who
enjoyed it from leading armies, guiding States, or indulging pleasure.
But beneath the coxcombry of George Nevile, which was what he shared
most in common with the courtiers of the laity, there lurked a true
ecclesiastic’s mind. He would have made in later times an admirable
Jesuit, and no doubt in his own time a very brilliant Pope. His objects
in his present mission were clear and perspicuous; any breach between
Warwick and the king must necessarily weaken his own position, and
the power of his House was essential to all his views. The object of
Gloucester in his intercession was less defined, but not less personal:
in smoothing the way to his brother’s marriage with Isabel, he removed
all apparent obstacle to his own with Anne. And it is probable that
Richard, who, whatever his crimes, was far from inaccessible to
affection, might have really loved his early playmate, even while his
ambition calculated the wealth of the baronies that would swell the
dower of the heiress and gild the barren coronet of his duchy. [Majerns,
the Flemish chronicler, quoted by Bucke (“Life of Richard III”),
mentions the early attachment of Richard to Anne. They were much
together, as children, at Middleham.]

“God’s truth!” said Warwick, as he lifted his eyes from the scroll
in the king’s writing, “ye know well, princely cousin, and thou, my
brother, ye know well how dearly I have loved King Edward; and the
mother’s milk overflows my heart when I read these gentle and tender
words which he deigns to bestow upon his servant. My blood is hasty and
over-hot, but a kind thought from those I love puts out much fire. Sith
he thus beseeches me to return to his councils, I will not be sullen
enough to hold back; but, oh, Prince Richard! is it indeed a matter past
all consideration that your sister, the Lady Margaret, must wed with the
Duke of Burgundy?”

“Warwick,” replied the prince, “thou mayest know that I never looked
with favour on that alliance; that when Clarence bore the Bastard’s
helmet, I withheld my countenance from the Bastard’s presence. I
incurred Edward’s anger by refusing to attend his court while the Count
de la Roche was his guest. And therefore you may trust me when I say now
that Edward, after promises, however rash, most solemn and binding, is
dishonoured forever if he break off the contract. New circumstances,
too, have arisen, to make what were dishonour danger also. By the death
of his father, Charolois has succeeded to the Duke of Burgundy’s diadem.
Thou knowest his warlike temper; and though in a contest popular in
England we need fear no foe, yet thou knowest also that no subsidies
could be raised for strife with our most profitable commercial ally.
Wherefore we earnestly implore thee magnanimously to forgive the past,
accept Edward’s assurance of repentance, and be thy thought--as it has
been ever--the weal of our common country.”

“I may add, also,” said the archbishop, observing how much Warwick was
touched and softened,--“that in returning to the helm of state, our
gracious king permits me to say, that, save only in the alliance with
Burgundy, which toucheth his plighted word, you have full liberty
to name conditions, and to ask whatever grace or power a monarch can
bestow.”

“I name none but my prince’s confidence,” said Warwick, generously;
“in that, all else is given, and in return for that, I will make the
greatest sacrifice that my nature knoweth, or can conceive,--I will
mortify my familiar demon, I will subdue my PRIDE. If Edward can
convince me that it is for the good of England that his sister should
wed with mine ancient and bitter foe, I will myself do honour to his
choice. But of this hereafter. Enough now that I forget past wrongs in
present favour; and that for peace or war, I return to the side of that
man whom I loved as my son before I served him as my king.”

Neither Richard nor the archbishop was prepared for a conciliation so
facile, for neither quite understood that peculiar magnanimity which
often belongs to a vehement and hasty temper, and which is as eager
to forgive as prompt to take offence,--which, ever in extremes, is
not contented with anything short of fiery aggression or trustful
generosity, and where it once passes over an offence, seeks to oblige
the offender. So, when, after some further conversation on the state
of the country, the earl lighted Gloucester to his chamber, the young
prince said to himself, musingly,--

“Does ambition besot and blind men? Or can Warwick think that Edward can
ever view him but as one to be destroyed when the hour is ripe?”

Catesby, who was the duke’s chamberlain, was in attendance as the prince
unrobed.

“A noble castle this,” said the duke, “and one in the midst of a warlike
population,--our own countrymen of York.”

“It would be no mean addition to the dowry of the Lady Isabel,” said
Catesby, with his bland, false smile.

“Methinks rather that the lordships of Salisbury (and this is the
chief) pass to the Lady Anne,” said Richard, musingly. “No, Edward were
imprudent to suffer this stronghold to fall to the next heir to his
throne. Marked you the Lady Anne?--her beauty is most excellent.”

“Truly, your Highness,” answered Catesby, unsuspiciously, “the Lady
Isabel seems to me the taller and the statelier.”

“When man’s merit and woman’s beauty are measured by the ell, Catesby,
Anne will certainly be less fair than Isabel, and Richard a dolt
compared to Clarence. Open the casement; my dressing-robe; good-night to
you!”



CHAPTER III. THE SISTERS.

The next morning, at an hour when modern beauty falls into its first
sickly sleep, Isabel and Anne conversed on the same terrace, and near
the same spot, which had witnessed their father’s meditations the
day before. They were seated on a rude bench in an angle of the wall,
flanked by a low, heavy bastion. And from the parapet their gaze might
have wandered over a goodly sight, for on a broad space, covered with
sand and sawdust, within the vast limits of the castle range, the
numerous knights and youths who sought apprenticeship in arms and
gallantry under the earl were engaged in those martial sports which,
falling elsewhere in disuse, the Last of the Barons kinglily maintained.
There, boys of fourteen, on their small horses, ran against each other
with blunted lances. There, those of more advanced adolescence, each
following the other in a circle, rode at the ring; sometimes (at the
word of command from an old knight who had fought at Agincourt, and was
the preceptor in these valiant studies) leaping from their horses at
full speed, and again vaulting into the saddle. A few grim old warriors
sat by to censure or applaud. Most skilled among the younger was the son
of Lord Montagu; among the maturer, the name of Marmaduke Nevile was the
most often shouted. If the eye turned to the left, through the barbican
might be seen flocks of beeves entering to supply the mighty larder;
and at a smaller postern, a dark crowd of mendicant friars, and the more
destitute poor, waited for the daily crumbs from the rich man’s table.
What need of a poor-law then? The baron and the abbot made the parish!
But not on these evidences of wealth and state turned the eyes, so
familiar to them, that they woke no vanity, and roused no pride.

With downcast looks and a pouting lip, Isabel listened to the silver
voice of Anne.

“Dear sister, be just to Clarence. He cannot openly defy his king and
brother. Believe that he would have accompanied our uncle and cousin had
he not deemed that their meditation would be more welcome, at least to
King Edward, without his presence.”

“But not a letter! not a line!”

“Yet when I think of it, Isabel, are we sure that he even knew of the
visit of the archbishop and his brother?”

“How could he fail to know?”

“The Duke of Gloucester last evening told me that the king had sent him
southward.”

“Was it about Clarence that the duke whispered to thee so softly by the
oriel window?”

“Surely, yes,” said Anne, simply. “Was not Richard as a brother to us
when we played as children on yon greensward?”

“Never as a brother to me,--never was Richard of Gloucester one whom
I could think of without fear and even loathing,” answered Isabel,
quickly.

It was at this turn in the conversation that the noiseless step
of Richard himself neared the spot, and hearing his own name thus
discourteously treated, he paused, screened from their eyes by the
bastion in the angle.

“Nay, nay, sister,” said Anne; “what is there in Richard that misbeseems
his princely birth?”

“I know not, but there is no youth in his eye and in his heart. Even
as a child he had the hard will and the cold craft of gray hairs. Pray
Saint Mary you give me not Gloucester for a brother!”

Anne sighed and smiled. “Ah, no,” she said, after a short pause, “when
thou art Princess of Clarence may I--”

“May thou what?”

“Pray for thee and thine in the house of God! Ah, thou knowest not,
sweet Isabel, how often at morn and even mine eyes and heart turn to the
spires of yonder convent!” She rose as she said this, her lip quivered,
and she moved on in the opposite direction to that in which Richard
stood, still unseen, and no longer within his hearing. Isabel rose also,
and hastening after her, threw her arms round Anne’s neck, and kissed
away the tears that stood in those meek eyes.

“My sister, my Anne! Ah, trust in me, thou hast some secret, I know it
well,--I have long seen it. Is it possible that thou canst have placed
thy heart, thy pure love--Thou blushest! Ah, Anne! Anne! thou canst not
have loved beneath thee?”

“Nay,” said Anne, with a spark of her ancestral fire lighting her meek
eyes through its tears, “not beneath me, but above. What do I say!
Isabel, ask me no more. Enough that it is a folly, a dream, and that I
could smile with pity at myself to think from what light causes love and
grief can spring.”

“Above thee!” repeated Isabel, in amaze; “and who in England is above
the daughter of Earl Warwick? Not Richard of Gloucester? If so, pardon
my foolish tongue.”

“No, not Richard,--though I feel kindly towards him, and his sweet voice
soothes me when I listen,--not Richard. Ask no more.”

“Oh, Anne, speak, speak!--we are not both so wretched? Thou lovest not
Clarence? It is--it must be!”

“Canst thou think me so false and treacherous,--a heart pledged to thee?
Clarence! Oh, no!”

“But who then--who then?” said Isabel, still suspiciously. “Nay, if thou
wilt not speak, blame thyself if I must still wrong thee.”

Thus appealed to, and wounded to the quick by Isabel’s tone and eye,
Anne at last with a strong effort suppressed her tears, and, taking her
sister’s hand, said in a voice of touching solemnity, “Promise, then,
that the secret shall be ever holy; and, since I know that it will move
thine anger--perhaps thy scorn--strive to forget what I will confess to
thee.”

Isabel for answer pressed her lips on the hand she held; and the
sisters, turning under the shadow of a long row of venerable oaks,
placed themselves on a little mound, fragrant with the violets of
spring. A different part of the landscape beyond was now brought in
view; calmly slept in the valley the roofs of the subject town of
Middleham, calmly flowed through the pastures the noiseless waves of
Ure. Leaning on Isabel’s bosom, Anne thus spake, “Call to mind, sweet
sister, that short breathing-time in the horrors of the Civil War, when
a brief peace was made between our father and Queen Margaret. We were
left in the palace--mere children that we were--to play with the young
prince, and the children in Margaret’s train.”

“I remember.”

“And I was unwell and timid, and kept aloof from the sports with a girl
of my own years, whom I think--see how faithful my memory!--they called
Sibyll; and Prince Edward, Henry’s son, stealing from the rest, sought
me out; and we sat together, or walked together alone, apart from all,
that day and the few days we were his mother’s guests. Oh, if you could
have seen him and heard him then,--so beautiful, so gentle, so wise
beyond his years, and yet so sweetly sad; and when we parted, he bade me
ever love him, and placed his ring on my finger, and wept,--as we kissed
each other, as children will.”

“Children! ye were infants!” exclaimed Isabel, whose wonder seemed
increased by this simple tale.

“Infant though I was, I felt as if my heart would break when I left him;
and then the wars ensued; and do you not remember how ill I was, and
like to die, when our House triumphed, and the prince and heir of
Lancaster was driven into friendless exile? From that hour my fate was
fixed. Smile if you please at such infant folly, but children often feel
more deeply than later years can weet of.”

“My sister, this is indeed a wilful invention of sorrow for thine own
scourge. Why, ere this, believe me, the boy-prince hath forgotten thy
very name.”

“Not so, Isabel,” said Anne, colouring, and quickly, “and perchance, did
all rest here, I might have outgrown my weakness. But last year, when we
were at Rouen with my father--”

“Well?”

“One evening on entering my chamber, I found a packet,--how left I know
not, but the French king and his suite, thou rememberest, made our house
almost their home,--and in this packet was a picture, and on its back
these words, Forget not the exile who remembers thee!”

“And that picture was Prince Edward’s?”

Anne blushed, and her bosom heaved beneath the slender and high-laced
gorget. After a pause, looking round her, she drew forth a small
miniature, which lay on the heart that beat thus sadly, and placed it in
her sister’s hands.

“You see I deceive you not, Isabel. And is not this a fair excuse for--”

She stopped short, her modest nature shrinking from comment upon the
mere beauty that might have won the heart. And fair indeed was the face
upon which Isabel gazed admiringly, in spite of the stiff and rude
art of the limner; full of the fire and energy which characterized the
countenance of the mother, but with a tinge of the same profound and
inexpressible melancholy that gave its charm to the pensive features
of Henry VI.,--a face, indeed, to fascinate a young eye, even if not
associated with such remembrances of romance and pity.

Without saying a word, Isabel gave back the picture; but she pressed the
hand that took it, and Anne was contented to interpret the silence into
sympathy.

“And now you know why I have so often incurred your anger by compassion
for the adherents of Lancaster; and for this, also, Richard of
Gloucester hath been endeared to me,--for fierce and stern as he may
be called, he hath ever been gentle in his mediation for that unhappy
House.”

“Because it is his policy to be well with all parties. My poor Anne, I
cannot bid you hope; and yet, should I ever wed with Clarence, it may be
possible--that--that--but you in turn will chide me for ambition.”

“How?”

“Clarence is heir to the throne of England, for King Edward has no male
children; and the hour may arrive when the son of Henry of Windsor may
return to his native land, not as sovereign, but as Duke of Lancaster,
and thy hand may reconcile him to the loss of a crown.”

“Would love reconcile thee to such a loss, proud Isabel?” said Anne,
shaking her head, and smiling mournfully.

“No,” answered Isabel, emphatically.

“And are men less haught than we?” said Anne. “Ah, I know not if I could
love him so well could he resign his rights, or even could he regain
them. It is his position that gives him a holiness in my eyes. And this
love, that must be hopeless, is half pity and half respect.”

At this moment a loud shout arose from the youths in the yard, or
sporting-ground, below, and the sisters, startled, and looking up,
saw that the sound was occasioned by the sight of the young Duke
of Gloucester, who was standing on the parapet near the bench the
demoiselles had quitted, and who acknowledged the greeting by a wave
of his plumed cap, and a lowly bend of his head; at the same time
the figures of Warwick and the archbishop, seemingly in earnest
conversation, appeared at the end of the terrace. The sisters rose
hastily, and would have stolen away, but the archbishop caught a glimpse
of their robes, and called aloud to them. The reverent obedience,
at that day, of youth to relations left the sisters no option but to
advance towards their uncle, which they did with demure reluctance.

“Fair brother,” said the archbishop, “I would that Gloucester were to
have my stately niece instead of the gaudy Clarence.”

“Wherefore?”

“Because he can protect those he loves, and Clarence will ever need a
protector.”

“I like George not the less for that,” said Warwick, “for I would not
have my son-in-law my master.”

“Master!” echoed the archbishop, laughing; “the Soldan of Babylon
himself, were he your son-in-law, would find Lord Warwick a tolerably
stubborn servant!”

“And yet,” said Warwick, also laughing, but with a franker tone,
“beshrew me, but much as I approve young Gloucester, and deem him the
hope of the House of York, I never feel sure, when we are of the same
mind, whether I agree with him, or whether he leadeth me. Ah, George!
Isabel should have wedded the king, and then Edward and I would have had
a sweet mediator in all our quarrels. But not so hath it been decreed.”

There was a pause.

“Note how Gloucester steals to the side of Anne. Thou mayst have him for
a son-in-law, though no rival to Clarence. Montagu hath hinted that the
duke so aspires.”

“He has his father’s face--well,” said the earl, softly. “But yet,” he
added, in an altered and reflective tone, “the boy is to me a riddle.
That he will be bold in battle and wise in council I foresee; but would
he had more of a young man’s honest follies! There is a medium between
Edward’s wantonness and Richard’s sanctimony; and he who in the heyday
of youth’s blood scowls alike upon sparkling wine and smiling woman, may
hide in his heart darker and more sinful fancies. But fie on me! I will
not wrongfully mistrust his father’s son. Thou spokest of Montagu; he
seems to have been mighty cold to his brother’s wrongs,--ever at the
court, ever sleek with Villein and Woodville.”

“But the better to watch thy interests,--I so counselled him.”

“A priest’s counsel! Hate frankly or love freely is a knight’s and
soldier’s motto. A murrain on all doubledealing!”

The archbishop shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his nostrils a
small pouncet-box of dainty essences.

“Come hither, my haughty Isabel,” said the prelate, as the demoiselles
now drew near. He placed his niece’s arm within his own, and took her
aside to talk of Clarence; Richard remained with Anne, and the young
cousins were joined by Warwick. The earl noted in silence the soft
address of the eloquent prince, and his evident desire to please Anne.
And strange as it may seem, although he had hitherto regarded Richard
with admiration and affection, and although his pride for both daughters
coveted alliances not less than royal, yet, in contemplating Gloucester
for the first time as a probable suitor to his daughter (and his
favourite daughter), the anxiety of a father sharpened his penetration,
and placed the character of Richard before him in a different point
from that in which he had hitherto looked only on the fearless heart and
accomplished wit of his royal godson.



CHAPTER IV. THE DESTRIER.

It was three days afterwards that the earl, as, according to custom,
Anne knelt to him for his morning blessing in the oratory where the
Christian baron at matins and vespers offered up his simple worship,
drew her forth into the air, and said abruptly,--

“Wouldst thou be happy if Richard of Gloucester were thy betrothed?”

Anne started, and with more vivacity than usually belonged to her,
exclaimed, “Oh, no, my father!”

“This is no maiden’s silly coyness, Anne? It is a plain yea or nay that
I ask from thee!”

“Nay, then,” answered Anne, encouraged by her father’s tone,--“nay, if
it so please you.”

“It doth please me,” said the earl, shortly; and after a pause, he
added, “Yes, I am well pleased. Richard gives promise of an illustrious
manhood; but, Anne, thou growest so like thy mother, that whenever my
pride seeks to see thee great, my heart steps in, and only prays that
it may see thee happy!--so much so, that I would not have given thee to
Clarence, whom it likes me well to view as Isabel’s betrothed, for, to
her, greatness and bliss are one; and she is of firm nature, and can
rule in her own house; but thou--where out of romaunt can I find a lord
loving enough for thee, soft child?”

Inexpressibly affected, Anne threw herself on her father’s breast and
wept. He caressed and soothed her fondly; and before her emotion was
well over, Gloucester and Isabel joined them.

“My fair cousin,” said the duke, “hath promised to show me thy
renowned steed, Saladin; and since, on quitting thy halls, I go to my
apprenticeship in war on the turbulent Scottish frontier, I would
fain ask thee for a destrier of the same race as that which bears the
thunderbolt of Warwick’s wrath through the storm of battle.”

“A steed of the race of Saladin,” answered the earl, leading the way to
the destrier’s stall, apart from all other horses, and rather a chamber
of the castle than a stable, “were indeed a boon worthy a soldier’s gift
and a prince’s asking. But, alas! Saladin, like myself, is sonless,--the
last of a long line.”

“His father, methinks, fell for us on the field of Towton. Was it not
so? I have heard Edward say that when the archers gave way, and the
victory more than wavered, thou, dismounting, didst slay thy steed with
thine own hand, and kissing the cross of thy sword, swore on that spot
to stem the rush of the foe, and win Edward’s crown or Warwick’s grave.”
 [“Every Palm Sunday, the day on which the battle of Towton was fought,
a rough figure, called the Red Horse, on the side of a hill in
Warwickshire, is scoured out. This is suggested to be done in
commemoration of the horse which the Earl of Warwick slew on that day,
determined to vanquish or die.”--Roberts: York and Lancaster, vol. i. p.
429.]

“It was so; and the shout of my merry men, when they saw me amongst
their ranks on foot--all flight forbid--was Malech’s death-dirge. It
is a wondrous race,--that of Malech and his son Saladin,” continued the
earl, smiling. “When my ancestor, Aymer de Nevile, led his troops to
the Holy Land, under Coeur de Lion, it was his fate to capture a lady
beloved by the mighty Saladin. Need I say that Aymer, under a flag of
truce, escorted her ransomless, her veil never raised from her face, to
the tent of the Saracen king? Saladin, too gracious for an infidel, made
him tarry a while, an honoured guest; and Aymer’s chivalry became sorely
tried, for the lady he had delivered loved and tempted him; but the good
knight prayed and fasted, and defied Satan and all his works. The lady
(so runs the legend) grew wroth at the pious crusader’s disdainful
coldness; and when Aymer returned to his comrades, she sent, amidst the
gifts of the soldan, two coal-black steeds, male and mare, over which
some foul and weird spells had been duly muttered. Their beauty, speed,
art, and fierceness were a marvel. And Aymer, unsuspecting, prized the
boon, and selected the male destrier for his war-horse. Great were the
feats, in many a field, which my forefather wrought, bestriding his
black charger. But one fatal day, on which the sudden war-trump made him
forget his morning ave, the beast had power over the Christian, and bore
him, against bit and spur, into the thickest of the foe. He did all a
knight can do against many (pardon his descendant’s vaunting,--so runs
the tale), and the Christians for a while beheld him solitary in the
melee, mowing down moon and turban. Then the crowd closed, and the good
knight was lost to sight. ‘To the rescue!’ cried bold King Richard, and
on rushed the crusaders to Aymer’s help; when lo! and suddenly the ranks
severed, and the black steed emerged! Aymer still on the selle, but
motionless, and his helm battered and plumeless, his brand broken,
his arm drooping. On came man and horse, on,--charging on, not against
Infidel but Christian. On dashed the steed, I say, with fire bursting
from eyes and nostrils, and the pike of his chaffron bent lance-like
against the crusaders’ van. The foul fiend seemed in the destrier’s rage
and puissance. He bore right against Richard’s standard-bearer, and down
went the lion and the cross. He charged the king himself; and Richard,
unwilling to harm his own dear soldier Aymer, halted wondering, till the
pike of the destrier pierced his own charger through the barding, and
the king lay rolling in the dust. A panic seized the cross-men; they
fled, the Saracens pursued, and still with the Saracens came the black
steed and the powerless rider. At last, when the crusaders reached the
camp, and the flight ceased, there halted, also, Aymer. Not a man dared
near him. He spoke not, none spoke to him, till a holy priest and palmer
approached and sprinkled the good knight and the black barb with holy
water, and exorcised both; the spell broke, and Aymer dropped to the
earth. They unbraced his helm,--he was cold and stark. The fierce steed
had but borne a dead man.”

“Holy Paul!” cried Gloucester, with seeming sanctimony, though a covert
sneer played round the firm beauty of his pale lips, “a notable tale,
and one that proveth much of Sacred Truth, now lightly heeded. But,
verily, lord earl, I should have little loved a steed with such a
pedigree.”

“Hear the rest,” said Isabel. “King Richard ordered the destrier to be
slain forthwith; but the holy palmer who had exorcised it forbade the
sacrifice. ‘Mighty shall be the service,’ said the reverend man, ‘which
the posterity of this steed shall render to thy royal race, and great
glory shall they give to the sons of Nevile. Let the war-horse, now duly
exorcised from infidel spells, live long to bear a Christian warrior!’”

“And so,” quoth the earl, taking up the tale--“so mare and horse were
brought by Aymer’s squires to his English hall; and Aymer’s son, Sir
Reginald, bore the cross, and bestrode the fatal steed, without fear and
without scathe. From that hour the House of Nevile rose amain, in fame
and in puissance; and the legend further saith, that the same palmer
encountered Sir Reginald at Joppa, bade him treasure that race of
war-steeds as his dearest heritage, for with that race his own should
flourish and depart; and the sole one of the Infidel’s spells which
could not be broken was that which united the gift--generation after
generation, for weal or for woe, for honour or for doom--to the fate of
Aymer and his House. ‘And,’ added the palmer, ‘as with woman’s love and
woman’s craft was woven the indissoluble charm, so shall woman, whether
in craft or in love, ever shape the fortunes of thee and thine.’”

“As yet,” said the prince, “the prophecy is fulfilled in a golden sense,
for nearly all thy wide baronies, I trow, have come to thee through the
female side. A woman’s hand brought to the Nevile this castle and its
lands; [Middleham Castle was built by Robert Fitz Ranulph, grandson of
Ribald, younger brother of the Earl of Bretagne and Richmond, nephew to
the Conqueror. The founder’s line failed in male heirs, and the heiress
married Robert Nevile, son of Lord Raby. Warwick’s father held the
earldom of Salisbury in right of his wife, the heiress of Thomas de
Montacute.] from a woman came the heritage of Monthermer and Montagu,
and Salisbury’s famous earldom; and the dower of thy peerless countess
was the broad domains of Beauchamp.”

“And a woman’s craft, young prince, wrought my king’s displeasure! But
enough of these dissour’s tales; behold the son of poor Malech, whom,
forgetting all such legends, I slew at Towton. Ho, Saladin, greet thy
master!”

They stood now in the black steed’s stall.--an ample and high-vaulted
space, for halter never insulted the fierce destrier’s mighty neck,
which the God of Battles had clothed in thunder. A marble cistern
contained his limpid drink, and in a gilded manger the finest wheaten
bread was mingled with the oats of Flanders. On entering, they found
young George, Montagu’s son, with two or three boys, playing familiarly
with the noble animal, who had all the affectionate docility inherited
from an Arab origin. But at the sound of Warwick’s voice, its ears rose,
its mane dressed itself, and with a short neigh it came to his feet, and
kneeling down, in slow and stately grace, licked its master’s hand. So
perfect and so matchless a steed never had knight bestrode! Its hide
without one white hair, and glossy as the sheenest satin; a lady’s
tresses were scarcely finer than the hair of its noble mane; the
exceeding smallness of its head, its broad frontal, the remarkable and
almost human intelligence of its eye, seemed actually to elevate its
conformation above that of its species. Though the race had increased,
generation after generation, in size and strength, Prince Richard still
marvelled (when, obedient to a sign from Warwick, the destrier rose, and
leaned its head, with a sort of melancholy and quiet tenderness, upon
the earl’s shoulder) that a horse, less in height and bulk than the
ordinary battle-steed, could bear the vast weight of the giant earl in
his ponderous mail. But his surprise ceased when the earl pointed out
to him the immense strength of the steed’s ample loins, the sinewy
cleanness, the iron muscle, of the stag-like legs, the bull-like breadth
of chest, and the swelling power of the shining neck.

“And after all,” added the earl, “both in man and beast, the spirit
and the race, not the stature and the bulk, bring the prize. Mort Dieu,
Richard! it often shames me of mine own thews and broad breast,--I had
been more vain of laurels had I been shorter by the head!”

“Nevertheless,” said young George of Montagu, with a page’s pertness, “I
had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard’s, and thy broad breast
than his grace’s short neck.”

The Duke of Gloucester turned as if a snake had stung him. He gave but
one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the boy’s
remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled, even before
he heard the earl’s stern rebuke.

“Young magpies chatter, boy,--young eagles in silence measure the space
between the eyry and the sun!”

The boy hung his head, and would have slunk off, but Richard detained
him with a gentle hand. “My fair young cousin,” said he, “thy words gall
no sore, and if ever thou and I charge side by side into the foeman’s
ranks, thou shalt comprehend what thy uncle designed to say,--how, in
the hour of strait and need, we measure men’s stature not by the body
but the soul!”

“A noble answer,” whispered Anne, with something like sisterly
admiration.

“Too noble,” said the more ambitious Isabel, in the same voice, “for
Clarence’s future wife not to fear Clarence’s dauntless brother.”

“And so,” said the prince, quitting the stall with Warwick, while the
girls still lingered behind, “so Saladin hath no son! Wherefore? Can you
mate him with no bride?”

“Faith,” answered the earl, “the females of his race sleep in yonder
dell, their burial-place, and the proud beast disdains all meaner loves.
Nay, were it not so, to continue the breed, if adulterated, were but to
mar it.”

“You care little for the legend, meseems.”

“Pardieu! at times, yes, over much; but in sober moments I think that
the brave man who does his duty lacks no wizard prophecy to fulfil his
doom; and whether in prayer or in death, in fortune or defeat, his soul
goes straight to God!”

“Umph,” said Richard, musingly; and there was a pause. “Warwick,”
 resumed the prince, “doubtless, even on your return to London, the
queen’s enmity and her mother’s will not cease. Clarence loves Isabel,
but Clarence knows not how to persuade the king and rule the king’s
womankind. Thou knowest how I have stood aloof from all the factions
of the court. Unhappily I go to the Borders, and can but slightly serve
thee. But--” (he stopped short, and sighed heavily).

“Speak on, Prince.”

“In a word, then, if I were thy son, Anne’s husband, I see--I see--I
see--” (thrice repeated the prince, with a vague dreaminess in his eye,
and stretching forth his hand)--“a future that might defy all foes,
opening to me and thee!”

Warwick hesitated in some embarrassment.

“My gracious and princely cousin,” he said at length, “this proffer is
indeed sweet incense to a father’s pride. But pardon me, as yet, noble
Richard, thou art so young that the king and the world would blame
me did I suffer my ambition to listen to such temptation. Enough, at
present, if all disputes between our House and the king can be smoothed
and laid at rest without provoking new ones. Nay, pardon me, prince, let
this matter cease--at least, till thy return from the Borders.”

“May I take with me hope?”

“Nay,” said Warwick, “thou knowest that I am a plain man; to bid thee
hope were to plight my word. And,” he added seriously, “there be reasons
grave and well to be considered why both the daughters of a subject
should not wed with their king’s brothers. Let this cease now, I pray
thee, sweet lord.”

Here the demoiselles joined their father, and the conference was over;
but when Richard, an hour after, stood musing alone on the battlements,
he muttered to himself, “Thou art a fool, stout earl, not to have
welcomed the union between thy power and my wit. Thou goest to a court
where without wit power is nought. Who may foresee the future? Marry,
that was a wise ancient fable, that he who seized and bound Proteus
could extract from the changeful god the prophecy of the days to come.
Yea! the man who can seize Fate can hear its voice predict to him. And
by my own heart and brain, which never yet relinquished what affection
yearned for, or thought aspired to, I read, as in a book, Anne, that
thou shalt be mine; and that where wave on yon battlements the ensigns
of Beauchamp, Monthermer, and Nevile, the Boar of Gloucester shall liege
it over their broad baronies and hardy vassals.”



BOOK VI

WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE
WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS BETTER.
LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE SAME PROLIFIC
DELUSION,--NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH’S MAJORITY) ARE WORTH
THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND
ASPIRING FEW.



CHAPTER I. NEW DISSENSIONS.

We must pass over some months. Warwick and his family had returned to
London, and the meeting between Edward and the earl had been cordial
and affectionate. Warwick was reinstated in the offices which gave him
apparently the supreme rule in England. The Princess Margaret had left
England as the bride of Charles the Bold; and the earl had attended
the procession in honour of her nuptials. The king, agreeably with the
martial objects he had had long at heart, had then declared war on
Louis XI., and parliament was addressed and troops were raised for that
impolitic purpose. [Parliamentary Rolls, 623. The fact in the text has
been neglected by most historians.] To this war, however, Warwick was
inflexibly opposed. He pointed out the madness of withdrawing from
England all her best-affected chivalry, at a time when the adherents of
Lancaster, still powerful, would require no happier occasion to raise
the Red Rose banner. He showed how hollow was the hope of steady aid
from the hot but reckless and unprincipled Duke of Burgundy, and how
different now was the condition of France under a king of consummate
sagacity and with an overflowing treasury to its distracted state in the
former conquests of the English. This opposition to the king’s will gave
every opportunity for Warwick’s enemies to renew their old accusation
of secret and treasonable amity with Louis. Although the proud and hasty
earl had not only forgiven the affront put upon him by Edward, but had
sought to make amends for his own intemperate resentment, by public
attendance on the ceremonials that accompanied the betrothal of the
princess, it was impossible for Edward ever again to love the minister
who had defied his power and menaced his crown. His humour and his
suspicions broke forth despite the restraint that policy dictated to
him: and in the disputes upon the invasion of France, a second and more
deadly breach between Edward and his minister must have yawned, had not
events suddenly and unexpectedly proved the wisdom of Warwick’s distrust
of Burgundy. Louis XI. bought off the Duke of Bretagne, patched up a
peace with Charles the Bold, and thus frustrated all the schemes and
broke all the alliances of Edward at the very moment his military
preparations were ripe. [W. Wyr, 518.]

Still the angry feelings that the dispute had occasioned between Edward
and the earl were not removed with the cause; and under pretence of
guarding against hostilities from Louis, the king requested Warwick to
depart to his government of Calais, the most important and honourable
post, it is true, which a subject could then hold: but Warwick
considered the request as a pretext for his removal from the court. A
yet more irritating and insulting cause of offence was found in Edward’s
withholding his consent to Clarence’s often-urged demand for permission
to wed with the Lady Isabel. It is true that this refusal was
accompanied with the most courteous protestations of respect for the
earl, and placed only upon the general ground of state policy.

“My dear George,” Edward would say, “the heiress of Lord Warwick is
certainly no mal-alliance for a king’s brother; but the safety of the
throne imperatively demands that my brothers should strengthen my
rule by connections with foreign potentates. I, it is true, married
a subject, and see all the troubles that have sprung from my boyish
passion! No, no! Go to Bretagne. The duke hath a fair daughter, and we
will make up for any scantiness in the dower. Weary me no more, George.
Fiat voluntas mea!”

But the motives assigned were not those which influenced the king’s
refusal. Reasonably enough, he dreaded that the next male heir to his
crown should wed the daughter of the subject who had given that crown,
and might at any time take it away. He knew Clarence to be giddy,
unprincipled, and vain. Edward’s faith in Warwick was shaken by the
continual and artful representations of the queen and her family. He
felt that the alliance between Clarence and the earl would be the union
of two interests almost irresistible if once arrayed against his own.

But Warwick, who penetrated into the true reason for Edward’s obstinacy,
was yet more resentful against the reasons than the obstinacy itself.
The one galled him through his affections, the other through his pride;
and the first were as keen as the last was morbid. He was the more
chafed, inasmuch as his anxiety of father became aroused. Isabel was
really attached to Clarence, who, with all his errors, possessed every
superficial attraction that graced his House,--gallant and handsome, gay
and joyous, and with manners that made him no less popular than Edward
himself.

And if Isabel’s affections were not deep, disinterested, and tender,
like those of Anne, they were strengthened by a pride which she
inherited from her father, and a vanity which she took from her sex.
It was galling in the extreme to feel that the loves between her and
Clarence were the court gossip, and the king’s refusal the court jest.
Her health gave way, and pride and love both gnawed at her heart.

It happened, unfortunately for the king and for Warwick, that
Gloucester, whose premature acuteness and sagacity would have the more
served both, inasmuch as the views he had formed in regard to Anne
would have blended his interest in some degree with that of the Duke of
Clarence, and certainly with the object of conciliation between Edward
and his minister,--it happened, we say, unfortunately, that Gloucester
was still absent with the forces employed on the Scottish frontier,
whither he had repaired on quitting Middleham, and where his
extraordinary military talents found their first brilliant opening; and
he was therefore absent from London during all the disgusts he might
have removed and the intrigues he might have frustrated.

But the interests of the House of Warwick, during the earl’s sullen and
indignant sojourn at his government of Calais, were not committed to
unskilful hands; and Montagu and the archbishop were well fitted to cope
with Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford.

Between these able brothers, one day, at the More, an important
conference took place.

“I have sought you,” said Montagu, with more than usual care upon his
brow--“I have sought you in consequence of an event that may lead
to issues of no small moment, whether for good or evil. Clarence has
suddenly left England for Calais.”

“I know it, Montagu; the duke confided to me his resolution to proclaim
himself old enough to marry,--and discreet enough to choose for
himself.”

“And you approved?”

“Certes; and, sooth to say, I brought him to that modest opinion of his
own capacities. What is more still, I propose to join him at Calais.”

“George!”

“Look not so scared, O valiant captain, who never lost a battle,--where
the Church meddles, all prospers. Listen!” And the young prelate
gathered himself up from his listless posture, and spoke with earnest
unction. “Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes;
when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late
narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and
I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break
the web,--for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style
the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted
and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the
king’s wife and her family as with any other foes; but we must convince
them that they cannot cope with us, and that their interests will best
consist in acquiescing in that condition of things which places the rule
of England in the hands of the Neviles.”

“My own thought, if I saw the way!”

“I see the way in this alliance; the Houses of York and Warwick must
become so indissolubly united, that an attempt to injure the one must
destroy both. The queen and the Woodvilles plot against us; we must
raise in the king’s family a counterpoise to their machinations. It
brings no scandal on the queen to conspire against Warwick, but it would
ruin her in the eyes of England to conspire against the king’s brother;
and Clarence and Warwick must be as one. This is not all! If our
sole aid was in giddy George, we should but buttress our House with a
weathercock. This connection is but as a part of the grand scheme on
which I have set my heart,--Clarence shall wed Isabel, Gloucester wed
Anne, and (let thy ambitious heart beat high, Montagu) the king’s eldest
daughter shall wed thy son,--the male representative of our triple
honours. Ah, thine eyes sparkle now! Thus the whole royalty of England
shall centre in the Houses of Nevile and York; and the Woodvilles will
be caught and hampered in their own meshes, their resentment impotent;
for how can Elizabeth stir against us, if her daughter be betrothed
to the son of Montagu, the nephew of Warwick? Clarence, beloved by the
shallow commons; [Singular as it may seem to those who know not that
popularity is given to the vulgar qualities of men, and that where a
noble nature becomes popular (a rare occurrence), it is despite the
nobleness,--not because of it. Clarence was a popular idol even to the
time of his death.--Croyl., 562.] Gloucester, adored both by the army
and the Church; and Montagu and Warwick, the two great captains of the
age,--is not this a combination of power that may defy Fate?”

“O George!” said Montagu, admiringly, “what pity that the Church should
spoil such a statesman!”

“Thou art profane, Montagu; the Church spoils no man,--the Church
leads and guides ye all; and, mark, I look farther still. I would have
intimate league with France; I would strengthen ourselves with Spain
and the German Emperor; I would buy or seduce the votes of the sacred
college; I would have thy poor brother, whom thou so pitiest because he
has no son to marry a king’s daughter, no daughter to wed with a king’s
son--I would have thy unworthy brother, Montagu, the father of the whole
Christian world, and, from the chair of the Vatican, watch over the weal
of kingdoms. And now, seest thou why with to-morrow’s sun I depart for
Calais, and lend my voice in aid of Clarence’s for the first knot in
this complicated bond?”

“But will Warwick consent while the king opposes? Will his pride--”

“His pride serves us here; for so long as Clarence did not dare to
gainsay the king, Warwick in truth might well disdain to press his
daughter’s hand upon living man. The king opposes, but with what right?
Warwick’s pride will but lead him, if well addressed, to defy affront
and to resist dictation. Besides, our brother has a woman’s heart for
his children; and Isabel’s face is pale, and that will plead more than
all my eloquence.”

“But can the king forgive your intercession and Warwick’s contumacy?”

“Forgive!--the marriage once over, what is left for him to do? He
is then one with us, and when Gloucester returns all will be smooth
again,--smooth for the second and more important nuptials; and the
second shall preface the third; meanwhile, you return to the court. To
these ceremonials you need be no party: keep but thy handsome son from
breaking his neck in over-riding his hobby, and ‘bide thy time!’”

Agreeably with the selfish but sagacious policy thus detailed, the
prelate departed the next day for Calais, where Clarence was already
urging his suit with the ardent impatience of amorous youth. The
archbishop found, however, that Warwick was more reluctant than he
had anticipated, to suffer his daughter to enter any House without
the consent of its chief; nor would the earl, in all probability, have
acceded to the prayers of the princely suitor, had not Edward, enraged
at the flight of Clarence, and worked upon by the artful queen,
committed the imprudence of writing an intemperate and menacing letter
to the earl, which called up all the passions of the haughty Warwick.

“What!” he exclaimed, “thinks this ungrateful man not only to dishonour
me by his method of marrying his sisters, but will he also play the
tyrant with me in the disposal of mine own daughter! He threats!
he!--enough. It is due to me to show that there lives no man whose
threats I have not the heart to defy!” And the prelate finding him in
this mood had no longer any difficulty in winning his consent. This
ill-omened marriage was, accordingly, celebrated with great and regal
pomp at Calais, and the first object of the archbishop was attained.

While thus stood affairs between the two great factions of the state,
those discontents which Warwick’s presence at court had a while laid at
rest again spread, broad and far, throughout the land. The luxury and
indolence of Edward’s disposition in ordinary times always surrendered
him to the guidance of others. In the commencement of his reign he
was eminently popular, and his government, though stern, suited to the
times; for then the presiding influence was that of Lord Warwick. As the
queen’s counsels prevailed over the consummate experience and masculine
vigour of the earl, the king’s government lost both popularity and
respect, except only in the metropolis; and if, at the close of his
reign, it regained all its earlier favour with the people, it must be
principally ascribed to the genius of Hastings, then England’s most
powerful subject, and whose intellect calmly moved all the springs of
action. But now everywhere the royal authority was weakened; and while
Edward was feasting at Shene and Warwick absent at Calais, the provinces
were exposed to all the abuses which most gall a population. The poor
complained that undue exactions were made on them by the hospitals,
abbeys, and barons; the Church complained that the queen’s relations had
seized and spent Church moneys; the men of birth and merit complained
of the advancement of new men who had done no service: and all these
several discontents fastened themselves upon the odious Woodvilles, as
the cause of all. The second breach, now notorious, between the king and
the all-beloved Warwick, was a new aggravation of the popular hatred to
the queen’s family, and seemed to give occasion for the malcontents to
appear with impunity, at least so far as the earl was concerned: it
was, then, at this critical time that the circumstances we are about to
relate occurred.



CHAPTER II. THE WOULD-BE IMPROVERS OF JOVE’S FOOTBALL, EARTH.--THE SAD
FATHER AND THE SAD CHILD.--THE FAIR RIVALS.

Adam Warner was at work on his crucible when the servitor commissioned
to attend him opened the chamber door, and a man dressed in the black
gown of a student entered.

He approached the alchemist, and after surveying him for a moment in a
silence that seemed not without contempt, said, “What, Master Warner,
are you so wedded to your new studies that you have not a word to bestow
on an old friend?”

Adam turned, and after peevishly gazing at the intruder a few moments,
his face brightened up into recognition.

“En iterum!” he said. “Again, bold Robin Hilyard, and in a scholar’s
garb! Ha! doubtless thou hast learned ere this that peaceful studies do
best insure man’s weal below, and art come to labour with me in the high
craft of mind-work!”

“Adam,” quoth Hilyard, “ere I answer, tell me this: Thou with thy
science wouldst change the world: art thou a jot nearer to thy end?”

“Well-a-day,” said poor Adam, “you know little what I have undergone.
For danger to myself by rack and gibbet I say nought. Man’s body is
fair prey to cruelty, and what a king spares to-day the worm shall gnaw
to-morrow. But mine invention--my Eureka--look!” and stepping aside, he
lifted a cloth, and exhibited the mangled remains of the unhappy model.

“I am forbid to restore it,” continued Adam, dolefully. “I must work day
and night to make gold, and the gold comes not; and my only change of
toil is when the queen bids me construct little puppet-boxes for her
children! How, then, can I change the world? And thou,” he added,
doubtingly and eagerly--“thou, with thy plots and stratagem, and active
demagogy, thinkest thou that thou hast changed the world, or extracted
one drop of evil out of the mixture of gall and hyssop which man is born
to drink?”

Hilyard was silent, and the two world-betterers--the philosopher and the
demagogue--gazed on each other, half in sympathy, half in contempt. At
last Robin said,--

“Mine old friend, hope sustains us both; and in the wilderness we yet
behold the Pisgah! But to my business. Doubtless thou art permitted to
visit Henry in his prison.”

“Not so,” replied Adam; “and for the rest, since I now eat King Edward’s
bread, and enjoy what they call his protection, ill would it beseem me
to lend myself to plots against his throne.”

“Ah, man, man, man,” exclaimed Hilyard, bitterly, “thou art like all the
rest,--scholar or serf, the same slave; a king’s smile bribes thee from
a people’s service!”

Before Adam could reply, a panel in the wainscot slid back and the bald
head of a friar peered into the room. “Son Adam,” said the holy man,
“I crave your company an instant, oro vestrem aurem;” and with this
abominable piece of Latinity the friar vanished.

With a resigned and mournful shrug of the shoulders, Adam walked across
the room, when Hilyard, arresting his progress, said, crossing himself,
and in a subdued and fearful whisper, “Is not that Friar Bungey, the
notable magician?”

“Magician or not,” answered Warner, with a lip of inexpressible contempt
and a heavy sigh, “God pardon his mother for giving birth to such
a numskull!” and with this pious and charitable ejaculation Adam
disappeared in the adjoining chamber, appropriated to the friar.

“Hum,” soliloquized Hilyard, “they say that Friar Bungey is employed
by the witch duchess in everlasting diabolisms against her foes. A peep
into his den might suffice me for a stirring tale to the people.”

No sooner did this daring desire arise than the hardy Robin resolved to
gratify it; and stealing on tiptoe along the wall, he peered cautiously
through the aperture made by the sliding panel. An enormous stuffed
lizard hung from the ceiling, and various strange reptiles, dried into
mummy, were ranged around, and glared at the spy with green glass eyes.
A huge book lay open on a tripod stand, and a caldron seethed over a
slow and dull fire. A sight yet more terrible presently awaited the rash
beholder.

“Adam,” said the friar, laying his broad palm on the student’s reluctant
shoulders, “inter sapentes.”

“Sapientes, brother,” groaned Adam.

“That’s the old form, Adam,” quoth the friar, superciliously,--“sapentes
is the last improvement. I say, between wise men there is no envy. Our
noble and puissant patroness, the Duchess of Bedford, hath committed to
me a task that promiseth much profit. I have worked at it night and day
stotis filibus.”

“O man, what lingo speakest thou?--stotis filibus!”

“Tush, if it is not good Latin, it does as well, son Adam. I say I have
worked at it night and day, and it is now advanced eno’ for experiment.
But thou art going to sleep.”

“Despatch! speak out! speak on!” said Adam, desperately,--“what is thy
achievement?”

“See!” answered the friar, majestically; and drawing aside a black pall,
he exhibited to the eyes of Adam, and to the more startled gaze of Robin
Hilyard, a pale, cadaverous, corpse-like image, of pigmy proportions,
but with features moulded into a coarse caricature of the lordly
countenance of the Earl of Warwick.

“There,” said the friar, complacently, and rubbing his hands, “that is
no piece of bungling, eh? As like the stout earl as one pea to another.”

“And for what hast thou kneaded up all this waste of wax?” asked Adam.
“Forsooth, I knew not you had so much of ingenious art; algates, the toy
is somewhat ghastly.”

“Ho, ho!” quoth the friar, laughing so as to show a set of jagged,
discoloured fangs from ear to ear, “surely thou, who art so notable a
wizard and scholar, knowest for what purpose we image forth our enemies.
Whatever the duchess inflicts upon this figure, the Earl of Warwick,
whom it representeth, will feel through his bones and marrow,--waste
wax, waste man!”

“Thou art a devil to do this thing, and a blockhead to think it, O
miserable friar!” exclaimed Adam, roused from all his gentleness.

“Ha!” cried the friar, no less vehemently, and his burly face purple
with passion, “dost thou think to bandy words with me? Wretch! I will
set goblins to pinch thee black and blue! I will drag thee at night over
all the jags of Mount Pepanon, at the tail of a mad nightmare! I will
put aches in all thy bones, and the blood in thy veins shall run into
sores and blotches. Am I not Friar Bungey? And what art thou?”

At these terrible denunciations, the sturdy Robin, though far less
superstitious than most of his contemporaries, was seized with a
trembling from head to foot; and expecting to see goblins and imps start
forth from the walls, he retired hastily from his hiding-place, and,
without waiting for further commune with Warner, softly opened the
chamber door and stole down the stairs. Adam, however, bore the storm
unquailingly, and when the holy man paused to take breath, he said
calmly,--

“Verily, if thou canst do these things, there must be secrets in Nature
which I have not yet discovered. Howbeit, though thou art free to try
all thou canst against me, thy threats make it necessary that this
communication between us should be nailed up, and I shall so order.”

The friar, who was ever in want of Adam’s aid, either to construe a bit
of Latin, or to help him in some chemical illusion, by no means relished
this quiet retort; and holding out his huge hand to Adam, said, with
affected cordiality,--

“Pooh! we are brothers, and must not quarrel. I was over hot, and thou
too provoking; but I honour and love thee, man,--let it pass. As for
this figure, doubtless we might pink it all over, and the earl be never
the worse. But if our employers order these things and pay for them, we
cunning men make profit by fools!”

“It is men like thee that bring shame on science,” answered Adam,
sternly; “and I will not listen to thee longer.”

“Nay, but you must,” said the friar, clutching Adam’s robe, and
concealing his resentment by an affected grin. “Thou thinkest me a mere
ignoramus--ha! ha!--I think the same of thee. Why, man, thou hast never
studied the parts of the human body, I’ll swear.”

“I’m no leech,” said Adam. “Let me go.”

“No, not yet. I will convict thee of ignorance. Thou dost not even know
where the liver is placed.”

“I do,” answered Adam, shortly; “but what then?”

“Thou dost?--I deny it. Here is a pin; stick it into this wax, man,
where thou sayest the liver lies in the human frame.”

Adam unsuspiciously obeyed.

“Well! the liver is there, eh? Ah, but where are the lungs?”

“Why, here.”

“And the midriff?”

“Here, certes.”

“Right!--thou mayest go now,” said the friar, dryly. Adam disappeared
through the aperture, and closed the panel.

“Now I know where the lungs, midriff, and liver are,” said the friar
to himself, “I shall get on famously. ‘T is a useful fellow, that, or I
should have had him hanged long ago!”

Adam did not remark on his re-entrance that his visitor, Hilyard,
had disappeared, and the philosopher was soon reimmersed in the fiery
interest of his thankless labours.

It might be an hour afterwards, when, wearied and exhausted by perpetual
hope and perpetual disappointment, he flung himself on his seat; and
that deep sadness, which they who devote themselves in this noisy
world to wisdom and to truth alone can know, suffused his thoughts, and
murmured from his feverish lips.

“Oh, hard condition of my life!” groaned the sage,--“ever to strive,
and never to accomplish. The sun sets and the sun rises upon my eternal
toils, and my age stands as distant from the goal as stood my youth!
Fast, fast the mind is wearing out the frame, and my schemes have but
woven the ropes of sand, and my name shall be writ in water. Golden
dreams of my young hope, where are ye? Methought once, that could I
obtain the grace of royalty, the ear of power, the command of wealth,
my path to glory was made smooth and sure; I should become the grand
inventor of my time and land; I should leave my lore a heritage and
blessing wherever labour works to civilize the round globe. And now my
lodging is a palace, royalty my patron; they give me gold at my desire;
my wants no longer mar my leisure. Well, and for what? On condition that
I forego the sole task for which patronage, wealth, and leisure were
desired! There stands the broken iron, and there simmers the ore I am to
turn to gold,--the iron worth more than all the gold, and the gold
never to be won! Poor, I was an inventor, a creator, the true magician;
protected, patronized, enriched, I am but the alchemist, the bubble, the
dupe or duper, the fool’s fool. God, brace up my limbs! Let me escape!
give me back my old dream, and die at least, if accomplishing nothing,
hoping all!”

He rose as he spoke; he strode across the chamber with majestic step,
with resolve upon his brow. He stopped short, for a sharp pain shot
across his heart. Premature age and the disease that labour brings were
at their work of decay within: the mind’s excitement gave way to the
body’s weakness, and he sank again upon his seat, breathing hard,
gasping, pale, the icy damps upon his brow. Bubblingly seethed the
molten metals, redly glowed the poisonous charcoal, the air of death was
hot within the chamber where the victim of royal will pandered to the
desire of gold. Terrible and eternal moral for Wisdom and for Avarice,
for sages and for kings,--ever shall he who would be the maker of gold
breathe the air of death!

“Father,” said the low and touching voice of one who had entered
unperceived, and who now threw her arms round Adam’s neck, “Father, thou
art ill, and sorely suffering--”

“At heart--yes, Sibyll. Give me thine arm; let us forth and taste the
fresher air.”

It was so seldom that Warner could be induced to quit his chamber, that
these words almost startled Sibyll, and she looked anxiously in his
face, as she wiped the dews from his forehead.

“Yes--air--air!” repeated Adam, rising.

Sibyll placed his bonnet over his silvered locks, drew his gown more
closely round him, and slowly and in silence they left the chamber, and
took their way across the court to the ramparts of the fortress-palace.

The day was calm and genial, with a low but fresh breeze stirring gently
through the warmth of noon. The father and child seated themselves on
the parapet, and saw, below, the gay and numerous vessels that glided
over the sparkling river, while the dark walls of Baynard’s Castle,
the adjoining bulwark and battlements of Montfichet, and the tall
watch-tower of Warwick’s mighty mansion frowned in the distance against
the soft blue sky. “There,” said Adam, quietly, and pointing to the
feudal roofs, “there seems to rise power, and yonder (glancing to the
river), yonder seems to flow Genius! A century or so hence the walls
shall vanish, but the river shall roll on. Man makes the castle, and
founds the power,--God forms the river and creates the Genius. And yet,
Sibyll, there may be streams as broad and stately as yonder Thames, that
flow afar in the waste, never seen, never heard by man. What profits the
river unmarked; what the genius never to be known?”

It was not a common thing with Adam Warner to be thus eloquent. Usually
silent and absorbed, it was not his gift to moralize or declaim. His
soul must be deeply moved before the profound and buried sentiment
within it could escape into words.

Sibyll pressed her father’s hand, and, though her own heart was very
heavy, she forced her lips to smile and her voice to soothe. Adam
interrupted her.

“Child, child, ye women know not what presses darkest and most bitterly
on the minds of men. You know not what it is to form out of immaterial
things some abstract but glorious object,--to worship, to serve it,
to sacrifice to it, as on an altar, youth, health, hope, life,--and
suddenly in old age to see that the idol was a phantom, a mockery, a
shadow laughing us to scorn, because we have sought to clasp it.”

“Oh, yes, Father, women have known that illusion.”

“What! Do they study?”

“No, Father, but they feel!”

“Feel! I comprehend thee not.”

“As man’s genius to him is woman’s heart to her,” answered Sibyll, her
dark and deep eyes suffused with tears. “Doth not the heart create,
invent? Doth it not dream? Doth it not form its idol out of air? Goeth
it not forth into the future, to prophesy to itself? And sooner or
later, in age or youth, doth it not wake at last, and see how it hath
wasted its all on follies? Yes, Father, my heart can answer, when thy
genius would complain.”

“Sibyll,” said Warner, roused and surprised, and gazing on her
wistfully, “time flies apace. Till this hour I have thought of thee but
as a child, an infant. Thy words disturb me now.”

“Think not of them, then. Let me never add one grief to thine.”

“Thou art brave and gay in thy silken sheen,” said Adam, curiously
stroking down the rich, smooth stuff of Sibyll’s tunic; “her grace the
duchess is generous to us. Thou art surely happy here!”

“Happy!”

“Not happy!” exclaimed Adam, almost joyfully, “wouldst thou that we were
back once more in our desolate, ruined home?”

“Yes, ob, yes!--but rather away, far away, in some quiet village, some
green nook; for the desolate, ruined home was not safe for thine old
age.”

“I would we could escape, Sibyll,” said Adam, earnestly, in a whisper,
and with a kind of innocent cunning in his eye, “we and the poor Eureka!
This palace is a prison-house to me. I will speak to the Lord Hastings,
a man of great excellence, and gentle too. He is ever kind to us.”

“No, no, Father, not to him,” cried Sibyll, turning pale,--“let him not
know a word of what we would propose, nor whither we would fly.”

“Child, he loves me, or why does he seek me so often, and sit and talk
not?”

Sibyll pressed her clasped hands tightly to her bosom, but made no
answer; and while she was summoning courage to say something that seemed
to oppress her thoughts with intolerable weight, a footstep sounded
gently near, and the Lady of Bonville (then on a visit to the queen),
unseen and unheard by the two, approached the spot. She paused, and
gazed at Sibyll, at first haughtily; and then, as the deep sadness of
that young face struck her softer feelings, and the pathetic picture of
father and child, thus alone in their commune, made its pious and sweet
effect, the gaze changed from pride to compassion, and the lady said
courteously,--

“Fair mistress, canst thou prefer this solitary scene to the gay company
about to take the air in her grace’s gilded barge?”

Sibyll looked up in surprise, not unmixed with fear. Never before had
the great lady spoken to her thus gently. Adam, who seemed for a while
restored to the actual life, saluted Katherine with simple dignity, and
took up the word,--

“Noble lady, whoever thou art, in thine old age, and thine hour of care,
may thy child, like this poor girl, forsake all gayer comrades for a
parent’s side!”

The answer touched the Lady of Bonville, and involuntarily she extended
her hand to Sibyll. With a swelling heart, Sibyll, as proud as herself,
bent silently over that rival’s hand. Katherine’s marble cheek coloured,
as she interpreted the girl’s silence.

“Gentle sir,” she said, after a short pause, “wilt thou permit me a few
words with thy fair daughter? And if in aught, since thou speakest of
care, Lord Warwick’s sister can serve thee, prithee bid thy young maiden
impart it, as to a friend.”

“Tell her, then, my Sibyll,--tell Lord Warwick’s sister to ask the king
to give back to Adam Warner his poverty, his labour, and his hope,” said
the scholar, and his noble head sank gloomily on his bosom.

The Lady of Bonville, still holding Sibyll’s hand, drew her a few paces
up the walk, and then she said suddenly, and with some of that blunt
frankness which belonged to her great brother, “Maiden, can there be
confidence between thee and me?”

“Of what nature, lady?”

Again Katherine blushed, but she felt the small hand she held tremble in
her clasp, and was emboldened,--

“Maiden, thou mayst resent and marvel at my words; but when I had fewer
years than thou, my father said, ‘There are many carks in life which a
little truth could end.’ So would I heed his lesson. William de Hastings
has followed thee with an homage that has broken, perchance, many as
pure a heart,--nay, nay, fair child, hear me on. Thou hast heard that in
youth he wooed Katherine Nevile,--that we loved, and were severed.
They who see us now marvel whether we hate or love,--no, not love--that
question were an insult to Lord Bonville’s wife!--Ofttimes we seem
pitiless to each other,--why? Lord Hastings would have wooed me, an
English matron, to forget mine honour and my House’s. He chafes that he
moves me not. I behold him debasing a great nature to unworthy triflings
with man’s conscience and a knight’s bright faith. But mark me!--the
heart of Hastings is everlastingly mine, and mine alone! What seek I in
this confidence? To warn thee. Wherefore? Because for months, amidst all
the vices of this foul court-air, amidst the flatteries of the softest
voice that ever fell upon woman’s ear, amidst, peradventure, the
pleadings of thine own young and guileless love, thine innocence is
unscathed. And therefore Katherine of Bonville may be the friend of
Sibyll Warner.”

However generous might be the true spirit of these words, it was
impossible that they should not gall and humiliate the young and
flattered beauty to whom they were addressed. They so wholly discarded
all belief in the affection of Hastings for Sibyll; they so haughtily
arrogated the mastery over his heart; they so plainly implied that his
suit to the poor maiden was but a mockery or dishonour, that they made
even the praise for virtue an affront to the delicate and chaste ear
on which they fell. And, therefore, the reader will not be astonished,
though the Lady of Bonville certainly was, when Sibyll, drawing her hand
from Katherine’s clasp, stopping short, and calmly folding her arms upon
her bosom, said,--

“To what this tends, lady, I know not. The Lord Hastings is free to
carry his homage where he will. He has sought me,--not I Lord Hastings.
And if to-morrow he offered me his hand, I would reject it, if I were
not convinced that the heart--”

“Damsel,” interrupted the Lady Bonville, in amazed contempt, “the hand
of Lord Hastings! Look ye indeed so high, or has he so far paltered with
your credulous youth as to speak to you, the daughter of the alchemist,
of marriage? If so, poor child, beware!

“I knew not,” replied Sibyll, bitterly, “that Sibyll Warner was more
below the state of Lord Hastings than Master Hastings was once below the
state of Lady Katherine Nevile.”

“Thou art distraught with thy self-conceit,” answered the dame,
scornfully; and, losing all the compassion and friendly interest she had
before felt, “my rede is spoken,--reject it if thou wilt in pride. Rue
thy folly thou wilt in shame!”

She drew her wimple round her face as she said these words, and,
gathering up her long robe, swept slowly on.



CHAPTER III. WHEREIN THE DEMAGOGUE SEEKS THE COURTIER.

On quitting Adam’s chamber, Hilyard paused not till he reached a stately
house, not far from Warwick Lane, which was the residence of the Lord
Montagu.

That nobleman was employed in reading, or rather, in pondering over, two
letters, with which a courier from Calais had just arrived, the one
from the archbishop, the other from Warwick. In these epistles were
two passages, strangely contradictory in their counsel. A sentence in
Warwick’s letter ran thus:--

“It hath reached me that certain disaffected men meditate a rising
against the king, under pretext of wrongs from the queen’s kin. It is
even said that our kinsmen, Copiers and Fitzhugh, are engaged therein.
Need I caution thee to watch well that they bring our name into no
disgrace or attaint? We want no aid to right our own wrongs; and if the
misguided men rebel, Warwick will best punish Edward by proving that he
is yet of use.”

On the other hand, thus wrote the prelate:--

“The king, wroth with my visit to Calais, has taken from me the
chancellor’s seal. I humbly thank him, and shall sleep the lighter for
the fardel’s loss. Now, mark me, Montagu: our kinsman, Lord Fitzhugh’s
son, and young Henry Nevile, aided by old Sir John Copiers, meditate
a fierce and well-timed assault upon the Woodvilles. Do thou keep
neuter,--neither help nor frustrate it. Howsoever it end, it will answer
our views, and shake our enemies.”

Montagu was yet musing over these tidings, and marvelling that he
in England should know less than his brethren in Calais of events so
important, when his page informed him that a stranger, with urgent
messages from the north country, craved an audience. Imagining that
these messages would tend to illustrate the communications just
received, he ordered the visitor to be admitted.

He scarcely noticed Hilyard on his entrance, and said abruptly, “Speak
shortly, friend,--I have but little leisure.”

“And yet, Lord Montagu, my business may touch thee home.”

Montagu, surprised, gazed more attentively on his visitor: “Surely, I
know thy face, friend,--we have met before.”

“True; thou wert then on thy way to the More.”

“I remember me; and thou then seemedst, from thy bold words, on a still
shorter road to the gallows.”

“The tree is not planted,” said Robin, carelessly, “that will serve for
my gibbet. But were there no words uttered by me that thou couldst
not disapprove? I spoke of lawless disorders, of shameful malfaisance
throughout the land, which the Woodvilles govern under a lewd tyrant--”

“Traitor, hold!”

“A tyrant,” continued Robin, heeding not the interruption nor the
angry gesture of Montagu, “a tyrant who at this moment meditates the
destruction of the House of Nevile. And not contented with this world’s
weapons, palters with the Evil One for the snares and devilries of
witchcraft.”

“Hush, man! Not so loud,” said Montagu, in an altered voice. “Approach
nearer,--nearer yet. They who talk of a crowned king, whose right hand
raises armies, and whose left hand reposes on the block, should beware
how they speak above their breath. Witchcraft, sayest thou? Make thy
meaning clear.”

Here Robin detailed, with but little exaggeration, the scene he had
witnessed in Friar Bungey’s chamber,--the waxen image, the menaces
against the Earl of Warwick, and the words of the friar, naming the
Duchess of Bedford as his employer. Montagu listened in attentive
silence. Though not perfectly free from the credulities of the time,
shared even by the courageous heart of Edward and the piercing intellect
of Gloucester, he was yet more alarmed by such proofs of determined
earthly hostility in one so plotting and so near to the throne as the
Duchess of Bedford, than by all the pins and needles that could be
planted into the earl’s waxen counterpart.

“A devilish malice, indeed,” said he, when Hilyard had concluded; “and
yet this story, if thou wilt adhere to it, may serve us well at need. I
thank thee, trusty friend, for thy confidence, and beseech thee to come
at once with me to the king. There will I denounce our foe, and, with
thine evidence, we will demand her banishment.”

“By your leave, not a step will I budge, my Lord Montagu,” quoth Robin,
bluntly,--“I know how these matters are managed at court. The king will
patch up a peace between the duchess and you, and chop off my ears and
nose as a liar and common scandal-maker. No, no; denounce the duchess
and all the Woodvilles I will; but it shall not be in the halls of the
Tower, but on the broad plains of Yorkshire, with twenty thousand men at
my back.”

“Ha! thou a leader of armies,--and for what end,--to dethrone the king?”

“That as it may be,--but first for justice to the people; it is the
people’s rising that I will head, and not a faction’s. Neither White
Rose nor Red shall be on my banner; but our standard shall be the gory
head of the first oppressor we can place upon a pole.”

“What is it the people, as you word it, would demand?”

“I scarce know what we demand as yet,--that must depend upon how we
prosper,” returned Hilyard, with a bitter laugh; “but the rising will
have some good, if it shows only to you lords and Normans that a Saxon
people does exist, and will turn when the iron heel is upon its neck. We
are taxed, ground, pillaged, plundered,--sheep, maintained to be
sheared for your peace or butchered for your war. And now will we have
a petition and a charter of our own, Lord Montagu. I speak frankly. I
am in thy power; thou canst arrest me, thou canst strike off the head of
this revolt. Thou art the king’s friend,--wilt thou do so? No, thou and
thy House have wrongs as well as we, the people. And a part at least of
our demands and our purpose is your own.”

“What part, bold man?”

“This: we shall make our first complaint the baneful domination of the
queen’s family; and demand the banishment of the Woodvilles, root and
stem.”

“Hem!” said Montagu, involuntarily glancing over the archbishop’s
letter,--“hem, but without outrage to the king’s state and person?”

“Oh, trust me, my lord, the franklin’s head contains as much
north-country cunning as the noble’s. They who would speed well must
feel their way cautiously.”

“Twenty thousand men--impossible! Who art thou, to collect and head
them?”

“Plain Robin of Redesdale.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Montagu, “is it indeed as I was taught to suspect?
Art thou that bold, strange, mad fellow, whom, by pike and brand--a
soldier’s oath--I, a soldier, have often longed to see. Let me look at
thee. ‘Fore Saint George, a tall man, and well knit, with dareiment on
thy brow. Why, there are as many tales of thee in the North as of my
brother the earl. Some say thou art a lord of degree and birth, others
that thou art the robber of Hexham to whom Margaret of Anjou trusted her
own life and her son’s.”

“Whatever they say of me,” returned Robin, “they all agree in
this,--that I am a man of honest word and bold deed; that I can stir
up the hearts of men, as the wind stirreth fire; that I came an
unknown stranger into the parts where I abide; and that no peer in this
roiaulme, save Warwick himself, can do more to raise an army or shake a
throne.”

“But by what spell?”

“By men’s wrongs, lord,” answered Robin, in a deep voice; “and now, ere
this moon wanes, Redesdale is a camp!”

“What the immediate cause of complaint?”

“The hospital of St. Leonard’s has compelled us unjustly to render them
a thrave of corn.”

“Thou art a cunning knave! Pinch the belly if you would make Englishmen
rise.”

“True,” said Robin, smiling grimly; “and now--what say you--will you
head us?”

“Head you! No!”

“Will you betray us?”

“It is not easy to betray twenty thousand men; if ye rise merely to free
yourselves from a corn-tax and England from the Woodvilles, I see no
treason in your revolt.”

“I understand you, Lord Montagu,” said Robin, with a stern and
half-scornful smile,--“you are not above thriving by our danger; but we
need now no lord and baron,--we will suffice for ourselves. And the hour
will come, believe me, when Lord Warwick, pursued by the king, must fly
to the Commons. Think well of these things and this prophecy, when the
news from the North startles Edward of March in the lap of his harlots.”

Without saying another word, he turned and quitted the chamber as
abruptly as he had entered.

Lord Montagu was not, for his age, a bad man; though worldly, subtle,
and designing, with some of the craft of his prelate brother he united
something of the high soul of his brother soldier. But that age had
not the virtue of later times, and cannot be judged by its standard.
He heard this bold dare-devil menace his country with civil war upon
grounds not plainly stated nor clearly understood,--he aided not, but he
connived: “Twenty thousand men in arms,” he muttered to himself,--“say
half-well, ten thousand--not against Edward, but the Woodvilles! It must
bring the king to his senses; must prove to him how odious the mushroom
race of the Woodvilles, and drive him for safety and for refuge to
Montagu and Warwick. If the knaves presume too far,” (and Montagu
smiled), “what are undisciplined multitudes to the eye of a skilful
captain? Let the storm blow, we will guide the blast. In this world man
must make use of man.”



CHAPTER IV. SIBYLL.

While Montagu in anxious forethought awaited the revolt that Robin of
Redesdale had predicted; while Edward feasted and laughed, merry-made
with his courtiers, and aided the conjugal duties of his good citizens
in London; while the queen and her father, Lord Rivers, more and more
in the absence of Warwick encroached on all the good things power can
bestow and avarice seize; while the Duchess of Bedford and Friar Bungey
toiled hard at the waxen effigies of the great earl, who still held his
royal son-in-law in his court at Calais,--the stream of our narrative
winds from its noisier channels, and lingers, with a quiet wave, around
the temple of a virgin’s heart. Wherefore is Sibyll sad? Some short
month since and we beheld her gay with hope and basking in the sunny
atmosphere of pleasure and of love. The mind of this girl was a singular
combination of tenderness and pride,--the first wholly natural, the last
the result of circumstance and position. She was keenly conscious of her
gentle birth and her earlier prospects in the court of Margaret; and
the poverty and distress and solitude in which she had grown up from the
child into the woman had only served to strengthen what, in her nature,
was already strong, and to heighten whatever was already proud. Ever in
her youngest dreams of the future ambition had visibly blent itself with
the vague ideas of love. The imagined wooer was less to be young and
fair than renowned and stately. She viewed him through the mists of the
future, as the protector of her persecuted father, as the rebuilder of a
fallen House, as the ennobler of a humbled name; and from the moment in
which her girl’s heart beat at the voice of Hastings, the ideal of her
soul seemed found. And when, transplanted to the court, she learned to
judge of her native grace and loveliness by the common admiration they
excited, her hopes grew justified to her inexperienced reason. Often and
ever the words of Hastings, at the house of Lady Longueville, rang in
her ear, and thrilled through the solitude of night,--“Whoever is fair
and chaste, gentle and loving, is in the eyes of William de Hastings the
mate and equal of a king.” In visits that she had found opportunity to
make to the Lady Longueville, these hopes were duly fed; for the old
Lancastrian detested the Lady Bonville, as Lord Warwick’s sister,
and she would have reconciled her pride to view with complacency his
alliance with the alchemist’s daughter, if it led to his estrangement
from the memory of his first love; and, therefore, when her quick eye
penetrated the secret of Sibyll’s heart, and when she witnessed--for
Hastings often encountered (and seemed to seek the encounter) the young
maid at Lady Longueville’s house--the unconcealed admiration which
justified Sibyll in her high-placed affection, she scrupled not to
encourage the blushing girl by predictions in which she forced her own
better judgment to believe. Nor, when she learned Sibyll’s descent from
a family that had once ranked as high as that of Hastings, would she
allow that there was any disparity in the alliance she foretold. But
more, far more than Lady Longueville’s assurances, did the delicate
and unceasing gallantries of Hastings himself flatter the fond faith
of Sibyll. True, that he spoke not actually of love, but every look
implied, every whisper seemed to betray it. And to her he spoke as to an
equal, not in birth alone, but in mind; so superior was she in culture,
in natural gifts, and, above all, in that train of high thought and
elevated sentiment, in which genius ever finds a sympathy, to the
court-flutterers of her sex, that Hastings, whether or not he cherished
a warmer feeling, might well take pleasure in her converse, and feel
the lovely infant worthy the wise man’s trust. He spoke to her without
reserve of the Lady Bonville, and he spoke with bitterness. “I
loved her,” he said, “as woman is rarely loved. She deserted me for
another--rather should she have gone to the convent than the altar; and
now, forsooth, she deems she hath the right to taunt and to rate me, to
dictate to me the way I should walk, and to flaunt the honours I have
won.”

“May that be no sign of a yet tender interest?” said Sibyll, timidly.

The eyes of Hastings sparkled for a moment, but the gleam vanished.
“Nay, you know her not. Her heart is marble, as hard and as cold;
her very virtue but the absence of emotion,--I would say, of gentler
emotion; for, pardieu, such emotions as come from ire and pride and
scorn are the daily growth of that stern soil. Oh, happy was my escape!
Happy the desertion which my young folly deemed a curse! No!” he added,
with a sarcastic quiver of his lip--“no; what stings and galls the Lady
of Harrington and Bonville, what makes her countenance change in my
presence, and her voice sharpen at my accost, is plainly this: in
wedding her dull lord and rejecting me, Katherine Nevile deemed she
wedded power and rank and station; and now, while we are both young,
how proves her choice? The Lord of Harrington and Bonville is so noted a
dolt, that even the Neviles cannot help him to rise,--the meanest office
is above his mind’s level; and, dragged down by the heavy clay to which
her wings are yoked, Katherine, Lady of Harrington and Bonville--oh,
give her her due titles!--is but a pageant figure in the court. If the
war-trump blew, his very vassals would laugh at a Bonville’s banner, and
beneath the flag of poor William Hastings would gladly march the
best chivalry of the land. And this it is, I say, that galls her. For
evermore she is driven to compare the state she holds as the dame of
the accepted Bonville with that she lost as the wife of the disdained
Hastings.”

And if, in the heat and passion that such words betrayed, Sibyll sighed
to think that something of the old remembrance yet swelled and burned,
they but impressed her more with the value of a heart in which the
characters once writ endured so long, and roused her to a tender
ambition to heal and to console.

Then looking into her own deep soul, Sibyll beheld there a fund of such
generous, pure, and noble affection, such reverence as to the fame, such
love as to the man, that she proudly felt herself worthier of Hastings
than the haughty Katherine. She entered then, as it were, the lists with
this rival,--a memory rather, so she thought, than a corporeal being;
and her eye grew brighter, her step statelier, in the excitement of the
contest, the anticipation of the triumph. For what diamond without its
flaw? What rose without its canker? And bedded deep in that exquisite
and charming nature lay the dangerous and fatal weakness which has
cursed so many victims, broken so many hearts,--the vanity of the sex.
We may now readily conceive how little predisposed was Sibyll to the
blunt advances and displeasing warnings of the Lady Bonville, and the
more so from the time in which they chanced. For here comes the answer
to the question, “Why was Sibyll sad?”

The reader may determine for himself what were the ruling motives of
Lord Hastings in the court he paid to Sibyll. Whether to pique the Lady
Bonville, and force upon her the jealous pain he restlessly sought
to inflict; whether, from the habit of his careless life, seeking the
pleasure of the moment, with little forethought of the future, and
reconciling itself to much cruelty, by that profound contempt for human
beings, man, and still more for woman, which sad experience often brings
to acute intellect; or whether, from the purer and holier complacency
with which one whose youth has fed upon nobler aspirations than manhood
cares to pursue, suns itself back to something of its earlier lustre
in the presence and the converse of a young bright soul,--whatever,
in brief, the earlier motives of gallantries to Sibyll, once begun,
constantly renewed, by degrees wilder and warmer and guiltier emotions
roused up in the universal and all-conquering lover the vice of his
softer nature. When calm and unimpassioned, his conscience had said
to him, “Thou shalt spare that flower.” But when once the passion was
roused within him, the purity of the flower was forgotten in the breath
of its voluptuous sweetness.

And but three days before the scene we have described with Katherine,
Sibyll’s fabric of hope fell to the dust. For Hastings spoke for the
first time of love, for the first time knelt at her feet, for the
first time, clasping to his heart that virgin hand, poured forth the
protestation and the vow. And oh! woe--woe! for the first time she
learned how cheaply the great man held the poor maiden’s love, how
little he deemed that purity and genius and affection equalled the
possessor of fame and wealth and power; for plainly visible, boldly
shown and spoken, the love that she had foreseen as a glory from the
heaven sought but to humble her to the dust.

The anguish of that moment was unspeakable,--and she spoke it not. But
as she broke from the profaning clasp, as escaping to the threshold she
cast on the unworthy wooer one look of such reproachful sorrow as told
at once all her love and all her horror, the first act in the eternal
tragedy of man’s wrong and woman’s grief was closed. And therefore was
Sibyll sad!



CHAPTER V. KATHERINE.

For several days Hastings avoided Sibyll; in truth, he felt remorse for
his design, and in his various, active, and brilliant life he had not
the leisure for obstinate and systematic siege to a single virtue, nor
was he, perhaps, any longer capable of deep and enduring passion; his
heart, like that of many a chevalier in the earlier day, had lavished
itself upon one object, and sullenly, upon regrets and dreams, and vain
anger and idle scorn, it had exhausted those sentiments which make
the sum of true love. And so, like Petrarch, whom his taste and fancy
worshipped, and many another votary of the gentil Dieu, while his
imagination devoted itself to the chaste and distant ideal--the
spiritual Laura--his senses, ever vagrant and disengaged, settled
without scruple upon the thousand Cynthias of the minute. But then those
Cynthias were, for the most part, and especially of late years, easy and
light-won nymphs; their coyest were of another clay from the tender but
lofty Sibyll. And Hastings shrunk from the cold-blooded and deliberate
seduction of one so pure, while he could not reconcile his mind to
contemplate marriage with a girl who could give nothing to his ambition;
and yet it was not in this last reluctance only his ambition that
startled and recoiled. In that strange tyranny over his whole soul which
Katherine Bonville secretly exercised, he did not dare to place a new
barrier evermore between her and himself. The Lord Bonville was of
infirm health; he had been more than once near to death’s door; and
Hastings, in every succeeding fancy that beguiled his path, recalled the
thrill of his heart when it had whispered “Katherine, the loved of thy
youth, may yet be thine!” And then that Katherine rose before him,
not as she now swept the earth, with haughty step and frigid eye and
disdainful lip, but as--in all her bloom of maiden beauty, before the
temper was soured or the pride aroused--she had met him in the summer
twilight, by the trysting-tree, broken with him the golden ring of
faith, and wept upon his bosom.

And yet, during his brief and self-inflicted absence from Sibyll, this
wayward and singular personage, who was never weak but to women, and
ever weak to them, felt that she had made herself far dearer to him than
he had at first supposed it possible. He missed that face, ever,
till the last interview, so confiding in the unconsciously betrayed
affection. He felt how superior in sweetness and yet in intellect Sibyll
was to Katherine; there was more in common between her mind and his in
all things, save one. But oh, that one exception!--what a world lies
within it,--the memory of the spring of life! In fact, though Hastings
knew it not, he was in love with two objects at once; the one, a
chimera, a fancy, an ideal, an Eidolon, under the name of Katherine;
the other, youth and freshness and mind and heart and a living shape of
beauty, under the name of Sibyll. Often does this double love happen to
men; but when it does, alas for the human object! for the shadowy and
the spiritual one is immortal,--until, indeed, it be possessed!

It might be, perhaps, with a resolute desire to conquer the new love and
confirm the old that Hastings, one morning, repaired to the house of the
Lady Bonville, for her visit to the court had expired. It was a large
mansion, without the Lud Gate.

He found the dame in a comely chamber, seated in the sole chair the room
contained, to which was attached a foot-board that served as a
dais, while around her, on low stools, sat some spinning, others
broidering--some ten or twelve young maidens of good family, sent to
receive their nurturing under the high-born Katherine, [And strange
as it may seem to modern notions, the highest lady who received such
pensioners accepted a befitting salary for their board and education.]
while two other and somewhat elder virgins sat a little apart, but close
under the eye of the lady, practising the courtly game of “prime:” for
the diversion of cards was in its zenith of fashion under Edward IV.,
and even half a century later was considered one of the essential
accomplishments of a well-educated young lady. [So the Princess
Margaret, daughter of Henry VIL, at the age of fourteen, exhibits
her skill, in prime or trump, to her betrothed husband, James IV.
of Scotland; so, among the womanly arts of the unhappy Katherine of
Arragon, it is mentioned that she could play at “cards and dyce.” (See
Strutt: Games and Pastimes, Hones’ edition, p. 327.) The legislature
was very anxious to keep these games sacred to the aristocracy, and
very wroth with ‘prentices and the vulgar for imitating the ruinous
amusements of their betters.] The exceeding stiffness, the solemn
silence of this female circle, but little accorded with the mood of
the graceful visitor. The demoiselles stirred not at his entrance, and
Katherine quietly motioned him to a seat at some distance.

“By your leave, fair lady,” said Hastings, “I rebel against so distant
an exile from such sweet company;” and he moved the tabouret close to
the formidable chair of the presiding chieftainess.

Katherine smiled faintly, but not in displeasure.

“So gay a presence,” she said, “must, I fear me, a little disturb these
learners.”

Hastings glanced at the prim demureness written on each blooming visage,
and replied,--

“You wrong their ardour in such noble studies. I would wager that
nothing less than my entering your bower on horseback, with helm on
head and lance in rest, could provoke even a smile from one pair of
the twenty rosy lips round which, methinks, I behold Cupido hovering in
vain!”

The baroness bent her stately brows, and the twenty rosy lips were all
tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the wicked
courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the twenty lips
broke into a smile,--but a smile so tortured, constrained, and nipped in
the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the features it was
forbidden to enliven.

“And what brings the Lord Hastings hither?” asked the baroness, in a
formal tone.

“Can you never allow for motive the desire of pleasure, fair dame?”

That peculiar and exquisite blush, which at moments changed the whole
physiognomy of Katherine, flitted across her smooth cheek, and vanished.
She said gravely,--

“So much do I allow it in you, my lord, that hence my question.”

“Katherine!” exclaimed Hastings, in a voice of tender reproach, and
attempting to seize her hand, forgetful of all other presence save that
to which the blush, that spoke of old, gave back the ancient charm.

Katherine cast a hurried and startled glance over the maiden group,
and her eye detected on the automaton faces one common expression of
surprise. Humbled and deeply displeased, she rose from the awful chair,
and then, as suddenly reseating herself, she said, with a voice and
lip of the most cutting irony, “My lord chamberlain is, it seems, so
habituated to lackey his king amidst the goldsmiths and grocers, that he
forgets the form of language and respect of bearing which a noblewoman
of repute is accustomed to consider seemly.”

Hastings bit his lip, and his falcon eye shot indignant fire.

“Pardon, my Lady of Bonville and Harrington, I did indeed forget what
reasons the dame of so wise and so renowned a lord hath to feel pride
in the titles she hath won. But I see that my visit hath chanced out of
season. My business, in truth, was rather with my lord, whose counsel in
peace is as famous as his truncheon in war!”

“It is enough,” replied Katherine, with a dignity that rebuked the
taunt, “that Lord Bonville has the name of an honest man,--who never
rose at court.”

“Woman, without one soft woman-feeling!” muttered Hastings, between his
ground teeth, as he approached the lady and made his profound obeisance.
The words were intended only for Katherine’s ear, and they reached it.
Her bosom swelled beneath the brocaded gorget, and when the door closed
on Hastings, she pressed her hands convulsively together, and her dark
eyes were raised upward.

“My child, thou art entangling thy skein,” said the lady of Bonville,
as she passed one of the maidens, towards the casement, which she
opened,--“the air to-day weighs heavily!”



CHAPTER VI. JOY FOR ADAM, AND HOPE FOR SIBYLL--AND POPULAR FRIAR BUNGEY!

Leaping on his palfrey, Hastings rode back to the Tower, dismounted at
the gate, passed on to the little postern in the inner court, and paused
not till he was in Warner’s room. “How now, friend Adam? Thou art idle.”

“Lord Hastings, I am ill.”

“And thy child not with thee?”

“She is gone to her grace the duchess, to pray her to grant me leave to
go home, and waste no more life on making gold.”

“Home! Go hence! We cannot hear it! The duchess must not grant it. I
will not suffer the king to lose so learned a philosopher.”

“Then pray the king to let the philosopher achieve that which is in
the power of labour.” He pointed to the Eureka. “Let me be heard in the
king’s council, and prove to sufficing judges what this iron can do for
England.”

“Is that all? So be it. I will speak to his highness forthwith. But
promise that thou wilt think no more of leaving the king’s palace.”

“Oh, no, no! If I may enter again into mine own palace, mine own royalty
of craft and hope, the court or the dungeon all one to me!”

“Father,” said Sibyll, entering, “be comforted. The duchess forbids
thy departure, but we will yet flee--” She stopped short as she saw
Hastings. He approached her timidly, and with so repentant, so earnest a
respect in his mien and gesture, that she had not the heart to draw back
the fair hand he lifted to his lips.

“No, flee not, sweet donzell; leave not the desert court, without the
flower and the laurel, the beauty and the wisdom, that scent the hour,
and foretype eternity. I have conferred with thy father,--I will obtain
his prayer from the king. His mind shall be free to follow its own
impulse, and thou”--he whispered--“pardon--pardon an offence of too much
love. Never shall it wound again.”

Her eyes, swimming with delicious tears, were fixed upon the floor.
Poor child! with so much love, how could she cherish anger? With so
much purity, how distrust herself? And while, at least, he spoke, the
dangerous lover was sincere. So from that hour peace was renewed between
Sibyll and Lord Hastings.--Fatal peace! alas for the girl who loves--and
has no mother!

True to his word, the courtier braved the displeasure of the Duchess of
Bedford, in inducing the king to consider the expediency of permitting
Adam to relinquish alchemy, and repair his model. Edward summoned a
deputation from the London merchants and traders, before whom Adam
appeared and explained his device. But these practical men at first
ridiculed the notion as a madman’s fancy, and it required all the art of
Hastings to overcome their contempt, and appeal to the native acuteness
of the king. Edward, however, was only caught by Adam’s incidental
allusions to the application of his principle to ships. The
merchant-king suddenly roused himself to attention, when it was promised
to him that his galleys should cross the seas without sail, and against
wind and tide.

“By Saint George!” said he, then, “let the honest man have his whim.
Mend thy model, and every saint in the calendar speed thee! Master
Heyford, tell thy comely wife that I and Hastings will sup with
her to-morrow, for her hippocras is a rare dainty. Good day to
you, worshipful my masters. Hastings, come hither; enough of these
trifles,--I must confer with thee on matters really pressing,--this
damnable marriage of gentle George’s!”

And now Adam Warner was restored to his native element of thought; now
the crucible was at rest, and the Eureka began to rise from its ruins.
He knew not the hate that he had acquired in the permission he had
gained; for the London deputies, on their return home, talked of nothing
else for a whole week but the favour the king had shown to a strange
man, half-maniac, half-conjuror, who had undertaken to devise a
something which would throw all the artisans and journeymen out of work!
From merchant to mechanic travelled the news, and many an honest man
cursed the great scholar, as he looked at his young children, and wished
to have one good blow at the head that was hatching such devilish malice
against the poor! The name of Adam Warner became a byword of scorn and
horror. Nothing less than the deep ditch and strong walls of the Tower
could have saved him from the popular indignation; and these prejudices
were skilfully fed by the jealous enmity of his fellow-student, the
terrible Friar Bungey. This man, though in all matters of true learning
and science worthy the utmost contempt Adam could heap upon him, was by
no means of despicable abilities in the arts of imposing upon men. In
his youth he had been an itinerant mountebank, or, as it was called,
tregetour. He knew well all the curious tricks of juggling that then
amazed the vulgar, and, we fear, are lost to the craft of our modern
necromancers. He could clothe a wall with seeming vines, that vanished
as you approached; he could conjure up in his quiet cell the likeness
of a castle manned with soldiers, or a forest tenanted by deer. [See
Chaucer, House of Time, Book III.; also the account given by Baptista
Porta, of his own Magical Delusions, of which an extract may be seen in
the “Curiosities of Literature” Art., Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.]
Besides these illusions, probably produced by more powerful magic
lanterns than are now used, the friar had stumbled upon the wondrous
effects of animal magnetism, which was then unconsciously practised by
the alchemists and cultivators of white or sacred magic. He was an adept
in the craft of fortune-telling; and his intimate acquaintance with all
noted characters in the metropolis, their previous history and present
circumstances, enabled his natural shrewdness to hit the mark, at least
now and then, in his oracular predictions. He had taken, for safety and
for bread, the friar’s robes, and had long enjoyed the confidence of
the Duchess of Bedford, the traditional descendant of the serpent-witch,
Melusina. Moreover, and in this the friar especially valued himself,
Bungey had, in the course of his hardy, vagrant early life, studied,
as shepherds and mariners do now, the signs of the weather; and as
weather-glasses were then unknown, nothing could be more convenient
to the royal planners of a summer chase or a hawking company than the
neighbourhood of a skilful predictor of storm and sunshine. In fact,
there was no part in the lore of magic which the popular seers found so
useful and studied so much as that which enabled them to prognosticate
the humours of the sky, at a period when the lives of all men were
principally spent in the open air.

The fame of Friar Bungey had travelled much farther than the repute of
Adam Warner: it was known in the distant provinces: and many a northern
peasant grew pale as he related to his gaping listeners the tales he had
heard of the Duchess Jacquetta’s dread magician.

And yet, though the friar was an atrocious knave and a ludicrous
impostor, on the whole he was by no means unpopular, especially in
the metropolis, for he was naturally a jolly, social fellow; he often
ventured boldly forth into the different hostelries and reunions of the
populace, and enjoyed the admiration he there excited, and pocketed the
groats he there collected. He had no pride,--none in the least, this
Friar Bungey!--and was as affable as a magician could be to the
meanest mechanic who crossed his broad horn palm. A vulgar man is never
unpopular with the vulgar. Moreover, the friar, who was a very cunning
person, wished to keep well with the mob: he was fond of his own
impudent, cheating, burly carcass, and had the prudence to foresee that
a time might come when his royal patrons might forsake him, and a mob
might be a terrible monster to meet in his path; therefore he always
affected to love the poor, often told their fortunes gratis, now and
then gave them something to drink, and was esteemed a man exceedingly
good-natured, because he did not always have the devil at his back.

Now Friar Bungey had naturally enough evinced from the first a great
distaste and jealousy of Adam Warner; but occasionally profiting by the
science of the latter, he suffered his resentment to sleep latent till
it was roused into fury by learning the express favour shown to Adam by
the king, and the marvellous results expected from his contrivance. His
envy, then, forbade all tolerance and mercy; the world was not large
enough to contain two such giants,--Bungey and Warner, the genius and
the quack. To the best of our experience, the quacks have the same creed
to our own day. He vowed deep vengeance upon his associate, and spared
no arts to foment the popular hatred against him. Friar Bungey would
have been a great critic in our day!

But besides his jealousy, the fat friar had another motive for desiring
poor Adam’s destruction; he coveted his model! True, he despised the
model, he jeered the model, he abhorred the model; but, nevertheless,
for the model every string in his bowels fondly yearned. He believed
that if that model were once repaired, and in his possession, he could
do--what he knew not, but certainly all that was wanting to complete his
glory, and to bubble the public.

Unconscious of all that was at work against him, Adam threw his whole
heart and soul into his labour; and happy in his happiness, Sibyll once
more smiled gratefully upon Hastings, from whom the rapture came.



CHAPTER VII. A LOVE SCENE.

More than ever chafed against Katherine, Hastings surrendered himself
without reserve to the charm he found in the society of Sibyll. Her
confidence being again restored, again her mind showed itself to
advantage, and the more because her pride was further roused to assert
the equality with rank and gold which she took from nature and from God.

It so often happens that the first love of woman is accompanied with
a bashful timidity, which overcomes the effort, while it increases the
desire, to shine, that the union of love and timidity has been called
inseparable, in the hackneyed language of every love-tale. But this is
no invariable rule, as Shakspeare has shown us in the artless Miranda,
in the eloquent Juliet, in the frank and healthful Rosalind;--and the
love of Sibyll was no common girl’s spring-fever of sighs and blushes.
It lay in the mind, the imagination, the intelligence, as well as in the
heart and fancy. It was a breeze that stirred from the modest leaves
of the rose all their diviner odour. It was impossible but what this
strong, fresh young nature--with its free gayety when happy, its earnest
pathos when sad, its various faculties of judgment and sentiment, and
covert play of innocent wit--should not contrast forcibly, in the mind
of a man who had the want to be amused and interested, with the cold
pride of Katherine, the dull atmosphere in which her stiff, unbending
virtue breathed unintellectual air, and still more with the dressed
puppets, with painted cheeks and barren talk, who filled up the common
world, under the name of women.

His feelings for Sibyll, therefore, took a more grave and respectful
colour, and his attentions, if gallant ever, were those of a man wooing
one whom he would make his wife, and studying the qualities to which
he was disposed to intrust his happiness; and so pure was Sibyll’s
affection, that she could have been contented to have lived forever
thus,--have seen and heard him daily, have talked but the words of
friendship though with the thoughts of love; for some passions refine
themselves through the very fire of the imagination into which the
senses are absorbed, and by the ideal purification elevated up to
spirit. Rapt in the exquisite happiness she now enjoyed, Sibyll
perceived not, or, if perceiving, scarcely heeded; that the admirers,
who had before fluttered round her, gradually dropped off; that the
ladies of the court, the damsels who shared her light duties, grew
distant and silent at her approach; that strange looks were bent on
her; that sometimes when she and Hastings were seen together, the stern
frowned and the godly crossed themselves.

The popular prejudices had reacted on the court. The wizard’s daughter
was held to share the gifts of her sire, and the fascination of beauty
was imputed to evil spells. Lord Hastings was regarded--especially by
all the ladies he had once courted and forsaken--as a man egregiously
bewitched!

One day it chanced that Sibyll encountered Hastings in the walk that
girded the ramparts of the Tower. He was pacing musingly, with folded
arms, when he raised his eyes and beheld her.

“And whither go you thus alone, fair mistress?”

“The duchess bade me seek the queen, who is taking the air yonder. My
lady has received some tidings she would impart to her highness.”

“I was thinking of thee, fair damsel, when thy face brightened on my
musings; and I was comparing thee to others who dwell in the world’s
high places, and marvelling at the whims of fortune.”

Sibyll smiled faintly, and answered, “Provoke not too much the aspiring
folly of my nature. Content is better than ambition.”

“Thou ownest thy ambition?” asked Hastings, curiously.

“Ah, sir, who hath it not?”

“But for thy sweet sex ambition has so narrow and cribbed a field.”

“Not so; for it lives in others. I would say,” continued Sibyll,
colouring, fearful that she had betrayed herself, “for example, that
so long as my father toils for fame, I breathe in his hope, and am
ambitious for his honour.”

“And so, if thou wert wedded to one worthy of thee, in his ambition thou
wouldst soar and dare?”

“Perhaps,” answered Sibyll, coyly.

“But if thou wert wedded to sorrow and poverty and troublous care, thine
ambition, thus struck dead, would of consequence strike dead thy love?”

“Nay, noble lord, nay; canst thou so wrong womanhood in me unworthy? for
surely true ambition lives not only in the goods of fortune. Is there
no nobler ambition than that of the vanity? Is there no ambition of the
heart,--an ambition to console, to cheer the griefs of those who love
and trust us; an ambition to build a happiness out of the reach of
fate; an ambition to soothe some high soul, in its strife with a mean
world,--to lull to sleep its pain, to smile to serenity its cares? Oh,
methinks a woman’s true ambition would rise the bravest when, in the
very sight of death itself, the voice of him in whom her glory had dwelt
through life should say, ‘Thou fearest not to walk to the grave and to
heaven by my side!”’

Sweet and thrilling were the tones in which these words were said, lofty
and solemn the upward and tearful look with which they closed.

And the answer struck home to the native and original heroism of the
listener’s nature, before debased into the cynic sourness of worldly
wisdom. Never had Katherine herself more forcibly recalled to Hastings
the pure and virgin glory of his youth.

“Oh, Sibyll!” he exclaimed passionately, and yielding to the impulse of
the moment,--“oh, that for me, as to me, such high words were said! Oh,
that all the triumphs of a life men call prosperous were excelled by the
one triumph of waking such an ambition in such a heart!”

Sibyll stood before him transformed,--pale, trembling, mute,--and
Hastings, clasping her hand and covering it with kisses, said,--

“Dare I arede thy silence? Sibyll, thou lovest me--O Sibyll, speak!”

With a convulsive effort, the girl’s lips moved, then closed, then moved
again, into low and broken words.

“Why this, why this? Thou hadst promised not to--not to--”

“Not to insult thee by unworthy vows! Nor do I. But as my wife.” He
paused abruptly, alarmed at his own impetuous words, and scared by the
phantom of the world that rose like a bodily thing before the generous
impulse, and grinned in scorn of his folly.

But Sibyll heard only that one holy word of WIFE, and so sudden and so
great was the transport it called forth, that her senses grew faint
and dizzy, and she would have fallen to the earth but for the arms that
circled her, and the breast upon which, now, the virgin might veil the
blush that did not speak of shame.

With various feelings, both were a moment silent. But oh, that moment!
what centuries of bliss were crowded into it for the nobler and fairer
nature!

At last, gently releasing herself, she put her hands before her eyes, as
if to convince herself she was awake, and then, turning her lovely face
full upon the wooer, Sibyll said ingenuously,--

“Oh, my lord--oh, Hastings! if thy calmer reason repent not these words,
if thou canst approve in me what thou didst admire in Elizabeth the
queen, if thou canst raise one who has no dower but her heart to the
state of thy wife and partner, by this hand, which I place fearlessly
in thine, I pledge thee to such a love as minstrel hath never sung. No!”
 she continued, drawing loftily up her light stature,--“no, thou shalt
not find me unworthy of thy name,--mighty though it is, mightier though
it shall be. I have a mind that can share thine objects, I have pride
that can exult in thy power, courage to partake thy dangers, and
devotion--” she hesitated, with the most charming blush--“but of that,
sweet lord, thou shalt judge hereafter! This is my dowry,--it is all!”

“And all I ask or covet,” said Hastings. But his cheek had lost its
first passionate glow. Lord of many a broad land and barony, victorious
captain in many a foughten field, wise statesman in many a thoughtful
stratagem, high in his king’s favour, and linked with a nation’s
history,--William de Hastings at that hour was as far below as earth is
to heaven the poor maiden whom he already repented to have so honoured,
and whose sublime answer woke no echo from his heart.

Fortunately, as he deemed it, at that very instant he heard many steps
rapidly approaching, and his own name called aloud by the voice of the
king’s body-squire.

“Hark! Edward summons me,” he said, with a feeling of reprieve.
“Farewell, dear Sibyll, farewell for a brief while,--we shall meet
anon.”

At this time they were standing in that part of the rampart walk which
is now backed by the barracks of a modern soldiery, and before which,
on the other side of the moat, lay a space that had seemed solitary and
deserted; but as Hastings, in speaking his adieu, hurriedly pressed
his lips on Sibyll’s forehead, from a tavern without the fortress, and
opposite the spot on which they stood, suddenly sallied a disorderly
troop of half-drunken soldiers, with a gang of the wretched women that
always continue the classic associations of a false Venus with a brutal
Mars; and the last words of Hastings were scarcely spoken, before a loud
laugh startled both himself and Sibyll, and a shudder came over her when
she beheld the tinsel robes of the tymbesteres glittering in the sun,
and heard their leader sing, as she darted from the arms of a reeling
soldier,--

              “Ha! death to the dove
               Is the falcon’s love.
     Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon’s beak!”



BOOK VII. THE POPULAR REBELLION.



CHAPTER I. THE WHITE LION OF MARCH SHAKES HIS MANE.

“And what news?” asked Hastings, as he found himself amidst the king’s
squires; while yet was heard the laugh of the tymbesteres, and yet
gliding through the trees might be seen the retreating form of Sibyll.

“My lord, the king needs you instantly. A courier has just arrived from
the North. The Lords St. John, Rivers, De Fulke, and Scales are already
with his highness.”

“Where?”

“In the great council chamber.”

To that memorable room [it was from this room that Hastings was hurried
to execution, June 13, 1483] in the White Tower, in which the visitor,
on entrance, is first reminded of the name and fate of Hastings, strode
the unprophetic lord.

He found Edward not reclining on cushions and carpets, not womanlike in
loose robes, not with his lazy smile upon his sleek beauty. The king had
doffed his gown, and stood erect in the tight tunic, which gave in full
perfection the splendid proportions of a frame unsurpassed in activity
and strength. Before him, on the long table, lay two or three open
letters, beside the dagger with which Edward had cut the silk that bound
them. Around him gravely sat Lord Rivers, Anthony Woodville, Lord St.
John, Raoul de Fulke, the young and valiant D’Eyncourt, and many other
of the principal lords. Hastings saw at once that something of pith and
moment had occurred; and by the fire in the king’s eye, the dilation of
his nostril, the cheerful and almost joyous pride of his mien and brow,
the experienced courtier read the signs of WAR.

“Welcome, brave Hastings,” said Edward, in a voice wholly changed from
its wonted soft affectation,--loud, clear, and thrilling as it went
through the marrow and heart of all who heard its stirring and trumpet
accent,--“welcome now to the field as ever to the banquet! We have news
from the North that bids us brace on the burgonet and buckle-to the
brand,--a revolt that requires a king’s arm to quell. In Yorkshire
fifteen thousand men are in arms, under a leader they call Robin of
Redesdale,--the pretext, a thrave of corn demanded by the Hospital of
St. Leonard’s, the true design that of treason to our realm. At the same
time, we hear from our brother of Gloucester, now on the Border, that
the Scotch have lifted the Lancaster Rose. There is peril if these two
armies meet. No time to lose,--they are saddling our war-steeds; we
hasten to the van of our royal force. We shall have warm work, my lords.
But who is worthy of a throne that cannot guard it?”

“This is sad tidings indeed, sire,” said Hastings, gravely.

“Sad! Say it not, Hastings! War is the chase of kings! Sir Raoul de
Fulke, why lookest thou so brooding and sorrowful?”

“Sire, I but thought that had Earl Warwick been in England, this--”

“Ha!” interrupted Edward, haughtily and hastily, “and is Warwick the sun
of heaven that no cloud can darken where his face may shine? The
rebels shall need no foe, my realm no regent, while I, the heir of the
Plantagenets, have the sword for one, the sceptre for the other. We
depart this evening ere the sun be set.”

“My liege,” said the Lord St. John, gravely, “on what forces do you
count to meet so formidable an array?”

“All England, Lord of St. John!”

“Alack! my liege, may you not deceive yourself! But in this crisis it is
right that your leal and trusty subjects should speak out, and plainly.
It seems that these insurgents clamour not against yourself, but against
the queen’s relations,--yes, my Lord Rivers, against you and your
House,--and I fear me that the hearts of England are with them here.”

“It is true, sire,” put in Raoul de Fulke, boldly; “and if these--new
men are to head your armies, the warriors of Towton will stand
aloof,--Raoul de Fulke serves no Woodville’s banner. Frown not, Lord de
Scales! it is the griping avarice of you and yours that has brought this
evil on the king. For you the commons have been pillaged; for you the
daughters of peers have been forced into monstrous marriages, at war
with birth and with nature herself; for you, the princely Warwick, near
to the throne in blood, and front and pillar of our time-honoured order
of seigneur and of knight, has been thrust from our suzerain’s favour.
And if now ye are to march at the van of war,--you to be avengers of
the strife of which ye are the cause,--I say that the soldiers will lack
heart, and the provinces ye pass through will be the country of a foe!”

“Vain man!” began Anthony Woodville, when Hastings laid his hand on his
arm, while Edward, amazed at this outburst from two of the supporters
on whom he principally counted, had the prudence to suppress his
resentment, and remained silent,--but with the aspect of one resolved to
command obedience, when he once deemed it right to interfere.

“Hold, Sir Anthony!” said Hastings, who, the moment he found himself
with men, woke to all the manly spirit and profound wisdom that had
rendered his name illustrious--“hold, and let me have the word; my Lords
St. John and De Fulke, your charges are more against me than against
these gentlemen, for I am a new man,--a squire by birth, and proud to
derive mine honours from the same origin as all true nobility,--I mean
the grace of a noble liege and the happy fortune of a soldier’s sword.
It may be” (and here the artful favourite, the most beloved of the whole
court, inclined himself meekly)--“it may be that I have not borne those
honours so mildly as to disarm blame. In the war to be, let me atone.
My liege, hear your servant: give me no command,--let me be a simple
soldier, fighting by your side. My example who will not follow?--proud
to ride but as a man of arms along the track which the sword of his
sovereign shall cut through the ranks of battle! Not you, Lord de
Scales, redoubtable and invincible with lance and axe; let us new men
soothe envy by our deeds; and you, Lords St. John and De Fulke, you
shall teach us how your fathers led warriors who did not fight more
gallantly than we will. And when rebellion is at rest, when we meet
again in our suzerain’s hall, accuse us new men, if you can find us
faulty, and we will answer you as we best may.”

This address, which could have come from no man with such effect as from
Hastings, touched all present. And though the Woodvilles, father and
son, saw in it much to gall their pride, and half believed it a snare
for their humiliation, they made no opposition. Raoul de Fulke, ever
generous as fiery, stretched forth his hand, and said,--

“Lord Hastings, you have spoken well. Be it as the king wills.”

“My lords,” returned Edward, gayly, “my will is that ye be friends while
a foe is in the field. Hasten, then, I beseech you, one and all, to
raise your vassals, and join our standard at Fotheringay. I will find ye
posts that shall content the bravest.”

The king made a sign to break up the conference, and dismissing even the
Woodvilles, was left alone with Hastings.

“Thou hast served me at need, Will;” said the king. “But I shall
remember” (and his eye flashed a tiger’s fire) “the mouthing of those
mock-pieces of the lords at Runnymede. I am no John, to be bearded by
my vassals. Enough of them now. Think you Warwick can have abetted this
revolt?”

“A revolt of peasants and yeomen! No, sire. If he did so, farewell
forever to the love the barons bear him.”

“Um! and yet Montagu, whom I dismissed ten days since to the Borders,
hearing of disaffection, hath done nought to check it. But come what
may, his must be a bold lance that shivers against a king’s mail. And
now one kiss of my lady Bessee, one cup of the bright canary, and then
God and Saint George for the White Rose!”



CHAPTER II. THE CAMP AT OLNEY.

It was some weeks after the citizens of London had seen their gallant
king, at the head of such forces as were collected in haste in the
metropolis, depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels.
Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the interim. At first,
indeed, there were hopes that the insurrection had been put down by
Montagu, who had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale, near the
city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader. But the spirit
of discontent was only fanned by an adverse wind. The popular hatred to
the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion as Edward advanced to
the scene of action, the country rose in arms, as Raoul de Fulke had
predicted. Leaders of lordly birth now headed the rebellion; the sons
of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen of the House of Nevile)
lent their names to the cause and Sir John Coniers, an experienced
soldier, whose claims had been disregarded by Edward, gave to the
insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for war. In every mouth was
the story of the Duchess of Bedford’s witchcraft; and the waxen figure
of the earl did more to rouse the people than perhaps the earl himself
could have done in person. [See “Parliamentary Rolls,” vi. 232, for the
accusation of witchcraft, and the fabrication of a necromantic image
of Lord Warwick, circulated against the Duchess of Bedford. She
herself quotes and complains of them.] As yet, however, language of
the insurgents was tempered with all personal respect to the king; they
declared in their manifestoes that they desired only the banishment
of the Woodvilles and the recall of Warwick, whose name they used
unscrupulously, and whom they declared they were on their way to meet.
As soon as it was known that the kinsmen of the beloved earl were in the
revolt, and naturally supposed that the earl himself must countenance
the enterprise, the tumultuous camp swelled every hour, while knight
after knight, veteran after veteran, abandoned the royal standard. The
Lord d’Eyncourt (one of the few lords of the highest birth and greatest
following over whom the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the
Woodvilles no grudge) had, in his way to Lincolnshire,--where his
personal aid was necessary to rouse his vassals, infected by the common
sedition,--been attacked and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus
Edward’s camp lost one of its greatest leaders. Fierce dispute broke out
in the king’s councils; and when the witch Jacquetta’s practices against
the earl travelled from the hostile into the royal camp, Raoul de Fulke,
St. John, and others, seized with pious horror, positively declared
they would throw down their arms and retire to their castles, unless
the Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp and the Earl of Warwick was
recalled to England. To the first demand the king was constrained to
yield; with the second he temporized. He marched from Fotheringay to
Newark; but the signs of disaffection, though they could not dismay
him as a soldier, altered his plans as a captain of singular military
acuteness; he fell back on Nottingham, and despatched, with his own
hands, letters to Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and Warwick. To the
last he wrote touchingly.

“We do not believe” (said the letter) “that ye should be of any such
disposition towards us as the rumour here runneth, considering the
trust and affection we bear you,--and cousin, we think ye shall be to us
welcome.” [Paston Letters, ccxcviii. (Knight’s edition), vol. ii. p.
59. See also Lingard, vol. iii. p. 522 (4to edition), note 43, for the
proper date to be assigned to Edward’s letter to Warwick, etc.]

But ere these letters reached their destination, the crown seemed
well-nigh lost. At Edgecote the Earl of Pembroke was defeated and slain,
and five thousand royalists were left on the field. Earl Rivers and his
son, Sir John Woodville, [This Sir John Woodville was the most obnoxious
of the queen’s brothers, and infamous for the avarice which had led him
to marry the old Duchess of Norfolk, an act which according to the old
laws of chivalry would have disabled him from entering the lists of
knighthood, for the ancient code disqualified and degraded any knight
who should marry any old woman for her money! Lord Rivers was the more
odious to the people at the time of the insurrection because, in
his capacity of treasurer, he had lately tampered with the coin and
circulation.] who in obedience to the royal order had retired to the
earl’s country seat of Grafton, were taken prisoners, and beheaded by
the vengeance of the insurgents. The same lamentable fate befell
the Lord Stafford, on whom Edward relied as one of his most puissant
leaders; and London heard with dismay that the king, with but a handful
of troops, and those lukewarm and disaffected, was begirt on all sides
by hostile and marching thousands.

From Nottingham, however, Edward made good his retreat to a village
called Olney, which chanced at that time to be partially fortified
with a wall and a strong gate. Here the rebels pursued him; and Edward,
hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville, who conceived that the fate of his
father and brother cancelled all motive for longer absence from
the contest, was busy in collecting a force in the neighbourhood of
Coventry, while other assistance might be daily expected from London,
strengthened the fortifications as well as the time would permit, and
awaited the assault of the insurgents.

It was at this crisis, and while throughout all England reigned terror
and commotion, that one day, towards the end of July, a small troop of
horsemen were seen riding rapidly towards the neighbourhood of Olney. As
the village came in view of the cavalcade, with the spire of its church
and its gray stone gateway, so also they beheld, on the pastures that
stretched around wide and far, a moving forest of pikes and plumes.

“Holy Mother!” said one of the foremost riders, “good the knight and
strong man though Edward be, it were sharp work to cut his way from
that hamlet through yonder fields! Brother, we were more welcome, had we
brought more bills and bows at our backs!”

“Archbishop,” answered the stately personage thus addressed, “we bring
what alone raises armies and disbands them,--a NAME that a People
honours! From the moment the White Bear is seen on yonder archway side
by side with the king’s banner, that army will vanish as smoke before
the wind.”

“Heaven grant it, Warwick!” said the Duke of Clarence; “for though
Edward hath used us sorely, it chafes me as Plantagenet and as prince to
see how peasants and varlets can hem round a king.”

“Peasants and varlets are pawns in the chessboard, cousin George,” said
the prelate; “and knight and bishop find them mighty useful when pushing
forward to an attack. Now knight and bishop appear themselves and take
up the game. Warwick,” added the prelate, in a whisper, unheard by
Clarence, “forget not, while appeasing rebellion, that the king is in
your power.”

“For shame, George! I think not now of the unkind king; I think only
of the brave boy I dandled on my knee, and whose sword I girded on at
Towton. How his lion heart must chafe, condemned to see a foe whom his
skill as captain tells him it were madness to confront!”

“Ay, Richard Nevile, ay,” said the prelate, with a slight sneer, “play
the Paladin, and become the dupe; release the prince, and betray the
people!”

“No! I can be true to both. Tush! brother, your craft is slight to the
plain wisdom of bold honesty. You slacken your steeds, sirs; on! on! see
the march of the rebels! On, for an Edward and a Warwick!” and, spurring
to full speed, the little company arrived at the gates. The loud bugle
of the new comers was answered by the cheerful note of the joyous
warder, while dark, slow, and solemn over the meadows crept on the
mighty crowd of the rebel army.

“We have forestalled the insurgents!” said the earl, throwing himself
from his black steed. “Marmaduke Nevile, advance our banner; heralds,
announce the Duke of Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and the Earl of
Salisbury and Warwick.”

Through the anxious town, along the crowded walls and housetops, into
the hall of an old mansion (that then adjoined the church), where the
king, in complete armour, stood at bay, with stubborn and disaffected
officers, rolled the thunder cry, “A Warwick! a Warwick! all saved! a
Warwick!”

Sharply, as he heard the clamour, the king turned upon his startled
council. “Lords and captains!” said he, with that inexpressible majesty
which he could command in his happier hours, “God and our Patron Saint
have sent us at least one man who has the heart to fight fifty times the
odds of yon miscreant rabble, by his king’s side, and for the honour of
loyalty and knighthood!”

“And who says, sire,” answered Raoul de Fulke, “that we, your lords and
captains, would not risk blood and life for our king and our knighthood
in a just cause? But we will not butcher our countrymen for echoing
our own complaint, and praying your Grace that a grasping and ambitious
family which you have raised to power may no longer degrade your nobles
and oppress your commons. We shall see if the Earl of Warwick blame us
or approve.”

“And I answer,” said Edward, loftily, “that whether Warwick approve or
blame, come as friend or foe, I will sooner ride alone through yonder
archway, and carve out a soldier’s grave amongst the ranks of rebellious
war, than be the puppet of my subjects, and serve their will by
compulsion. Free am I--free ever will I be, while the crown of the
Plantagenet is mine, to raise those whom I love, to defy the threats of
those sworn to obey me. And were I but Earl of March, instead of king
of England, this hall should have swum with the blood of those who
have insulted the friends of my youth, the wife of my bosom. Off,
Hastings!--I need no mediator with my servants. Nor here, nor
anywhere in broad England, have I my equal, and the king forgives or
scorns--construe it as ye will, my lords--what the simple gentleman
would avenge.”

It were in vain to describe the sensation that this speech produced.
There is ever something in courage and in will that awes numbers, though
brave themselves. And what with the unquestioned valour of Edward; what
with the effect of his splendid person, towering above all present by
the head, and moving lightly, with each impulse, through the mass of
a mail that few there could have borne unsinking, this assertion
of absolute power in the midst of mutiny--an army marching to the
gates--imposed an unwilling reverence and sullen silence mixed with
anger, that, while it chafed, admired. They who in peace had despised
the voluptuous monarch, feasting in his palace, and reclining on the lap
of harlot-beauty, felt that in war all Mars seemed living in his
person. Then, indeed, he was a king; and had the foe, now darkening the
landscape, been the noblest chivalry of France, not a man there but had
died for a smile from that haughty lip. But the barons were knit heart
in heart with the popular outbreak, and to put down the revolt seemed to
them but to raise the Woodvilles. The silence was still unbroken, save
where the persuasive whisper of Lord Hastings might be faintly heard in
remonstrance with the more powerful or the more stubborn of the chiefs,
when the tread of steps resounded without, and, unarmed, bareheaded, the
only form in Christendom grander and statelier than the king’s strode
into the hall.

Edward, as yet unaware what course Warwick would pursue, and half
doubtful whether a revolt that had borrowed his name and was led by his
kinsmen might not originate in his consent, surrounded by those to whom
the earl was especially dear, and aware that if Warwick were against him
all was lost, still relaxed not the dignity of his mien; and leaning on
his large two-handed sword, with such inward resolves as brave kings
and gallant gentlemen form, if the worst should befall, he watched the
majestic strides of his great kinsman, and said, as the earl approached,
and the mutinous captains louted low,--

“Cousin, you are welcome! for truly do I know that when you have aught
whereof to complain, you take not the moment of danger and disaster. And
whatever has chanced to alienate your heart from me, the sound of the
rebel’s trumpet chases all difference, and marries your faith to mine.”

“Oh, Edward, my king, why did you so misjudge me in the prosperous
hour!” said Warwick, simply, but with affecting earnestness: “since in
the adverse hour you arede me well?”

As he spoke, he bowed his head, and, bending his knee, kissed the hand
held out to him.

Edward’s face grew radiant, and, raising the earl, he glanced proudly at
the barons, who stood round, surprised and mute.

“Yes, my lords and sirs, see,--it is not the Earl of Warwick, next to
our royal brethren the nearest subject to the throne, who would desert
me in the day of peril!”

“Nor do we, sire,” retorted Raoul de Fulke; “you wrong us before our
mighty comrade if you so misthink us. We will fight for the king, but
not for the queen’s kindred; and this alone brings on us your anger.”

“The gates shall be opened to ye. Go! Warwick and I are men enough for
the rabble yonder.”

The earl’s quick eye and profound experience of his time saw at once
the dissension and its causes. Nor, however generous, was he willing
to forego the present occasion for permanently destroying an influence
which he knew hostile to himself and hurtful to the realm. His was not
the generosity of a boy, but of a statesman. Accordingly, as Raoul de
Fulke ceased, he took up the word.

“My liege, we have yet an hour good ere the foe can reach the gates.
Your brother and mine accompany me. See, they enter! Please you, a few
minutes to confer with them; and suffer me, meanwhile, to reason with
these noble captains.”

Edward paused; but before the open brow of the earl fled whatever
suspicion might have crossed the king’s mind.

“Be it so, cousin; but remember this,--to councillors who can menace me
with desertion at such an hour, I concede nothing.”

Turning hastily away, he met Clarence and the prelate midway in the
hall, threw his arm caressingly over his brother’s shoulder, and, taking
the archbishop by the hand, walked with them towards the battlements.

“Well, my friends,” said Warwick, “and what would you of the king?”

“The dismissal of all the Woodvilles, except the queen; the revocation
of the grants and land accorded to them, to the despoiling the ancient
noble; and, but for your presence, we had demanded your recall.”

“And, failing these, what your resolve?”

“To depart, and leave Edward to his fate. These granted, we doubt little
but that the insurgents will disband. These not granted, we but waste
our lives against a multitude whose cause we must approve.”

“The cause! But ye know not the real cause,” answered Warwick. “I know
it; for the sons of the North are familiar to me, and their rising hath
deeper meaning than ye deem. What! have they not decoyed to their head
my kinsmen, the heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, and bold Coniers, whose
steel calque should have circled a wiser brain? Have they not taken my
name as their battle-cry? And do ye think this falsehood veils nothing
but the simple truth of just complaint?”

“Was their rising, then,” asked St. John, in evident surprise, “wholly
unauthorized by you?”

“So help me Heaven! if I would resort to arms to redress a wrong, think
not that I myself would be absent from the field! No, my lords, friends,
and captains, time presses; a few words must suffice to explain what as
yet may be dark to you. I have letters from Montagu and others, which
reached me the same day as the king’s, and which clear up the purpose
of our misguided countrymen. Ye know well that ever in England, but
especially since the reign of Edward III., strange, wild notions of some
kind of liberty other than that we enjoy have floated loose through the
land. Among the commons, a half-conscious recollection that the nobles
are a different race from themselves feeds a secret rancour and
mislike, which, at any fair occasion for riot, shows itself bitter and
ruthless,--as in the outbreak of Cade and others. And if the harvest
fail, or a tax gall, there are never wanting men to turn the popular
distress to the ends of private ambition or state design. Such a man has
been the true head and front of this commotion.”

“Speak you of Robin of Redesdale, now dead?” asked one of the captains.

“He is not dead. [The fate of Robin of Redesdale has been as obscure as
most of the incidents in this most perplexed part of English history.
While some of the chroniclers finish his career according to the report
mentioned in the text, Fabyan not only more charitably prolongs his
life, but rewards him with the king’s pardon; and according to the
annals of his ancient and distinguished family (who will pardon, we
trust, a license with one of their ancestry equally allowed by history
and romance), as referred to in Wotton’s “English Baronetage” (Art.
“Hilyard”), and which probably rests upon the authority of the life of
Richard III., in Stowe’s “Annals,” he is represented as still living in
the reign of that king. But the whole account of this famous demagogue
in Wotton is, it must be owned, full of historical mistakes.] Montagu
informs me that the report was false. He was defeated off York, and
retired for some days into the woods; but it is he who has enticed
the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh into the revolt, and resigned his
own command to the martial cunning of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of
Redesdale is no common man. He hath had a clerkly education, he hath
travelled among the Free Towns of Italy, he hath deep purpose in all he
doth; and among his projects is the destruction of the nobles here, as
it was whilome effected in Florence, the depriving us of all offices and
posts, with other changes, wild to think of and long to name.”

“And we would have suffered this man to triumph!” exclaimed De Fulke:
“we have been to blame.”

“Under fair pretence he has gathered numbers, and now wields an army. I
have reason to know that, had he succeeded in estranging ye from Edward,
and had the king fallen, dead or alive, into his hands, his object would
have been to restore Henry of Windsor, but on conditions that would have
left king and baron little more than pageants in the state. I knew this
man years ago. I have watched him since; and, strange though it may seem
to you, he hath much in him that I admire as a subject and should fear
were I a king. Brief, thus runs my counsel: For our sake and the realm’s
safety, we must see this armed multitude disbanded; that done, we must
see the grievances they with truth complain of fairly redressed. Think
not, my lords, I avenge my own wrongs alone, when I go with you in your
resolve to banish from the king’s councils the baleful influence of the
queen’s kin. Till that be compassed, no peace for England. As a leprosy,
their avarice crawls over the nobler parts of the state, and devours
while it sullies. Leave this to me; and, though we will redress
ourselves, let us now assist our king!”

With one voice the unruly officers clamoured their assent to all the
earl urged, and expressed their readiness to sally at once from the
gates, and attack the rebels.

“But,” observed an old veteran, “what are we amongst so many? Here a
handful--there an army!”

“Fear not, reverend sir,” answered Warwick, with an assured smile; “is
not this army in part gathered from my own province of Yorkshire? Is it
not formed of men who have eaten of my bread and drunk of my cup? Let
me see the man who will discharge one arrow at the walls which contain
Richard Nevile of Warwick. Now each to your posts,--I to the king.”

Like the pouring of new blood into a decrepit body seemed the arrival,
at that feeble garrison, of the Earl of Warwick. From despair into the
certainty of triumph leaped every heart. Already at the sight of his
banner floating by the side of Edward’s, the gunner had repaired to his
bombard, the archer had taken up his bow; the village itself, before
disaffected, poured all its scanty population--women, and age, and
children--to the walls. And when the earl joined the king upon the
ramparts, he found that able general sanguine and elated, and pointing
out to Clarence the natural defences of the place. Meanwhile, the
rebels, no doubt apprised by their scouts of the new aid, had already
halted in their march, and the dark swarm might be seen indistinctly
undulating, as bees ere they settle, amidst the verdure of the plain.

“Well, cousin,” said the king, “have ye brought these Hotspurs to their
allegiance?”

“Sire, yes,” said Warwick, gravely; “but we have here no force to resist
yon army.”

“Bring you not succours?” said the king, astonished. “You must have
passed through London. Have you left no troops upon the road?”

“I had no time, sire; and London is well-nigh palsied with dismay. Had
I waited to collect troops, I might have found a king’s head blackening
over those gates.”

“Well,” returned Edward, carelessly, “few or many, one gentleman is more
worth than a hundred varlets. ‘We are eno’ for glory,’ as Henry said at
Agincourt.”

“No, sire; you are too skilful and too wise to believe your boast. These
men we cannot conquer,--we must disperse them.”

“By what spell?”

“By their king’s word to redress their complaints.”

“And banish my queen?”

“Heaven forbid that man should part those whom God has joined,” returned
Warwick. “Not my lady, your queen, but my lady’s kindred.”

“Rivers is dead, and gallant John,” said Edward, sadly; “is not that
enough for revenge?”

“It is not revenge that we require, but pledges for the land’s safety,”
 answered Warwick. “And to be plain, without such a promise these walls
may be your tomb.”

Edward walked apart, strongly debating within himself. In his character
were great contrasts: no man was more frank in common, no man more false
when it suited; no man had more levity in wanton love, or more firm
affection for those he once thoroughly took to his heart. He was the
reverse of grateful for service yielded, yet he was warm in protecting
those on whom service was conferred. He was resolved not to give up the
Woodvilles, and after a short self-commune, he equally determined not to
risk his crown and life by persevering in resistance to the demand for
their downfall. Inly obstinate, outwardly yielding, he concealed his
falsehood with his usual soldierly grace.

“Warwick,” he said, returning to the earl’s side, “you cannot advise
me to what is misbeseeming, and therefore in this strait I resign my
conduct to your hands. I will not unsay to yon mutinous gentlemen what I
have already said; but what you judge it right to promise in my name
to them or to the insurgents, I will not suppose that mime honour will
refuse to concede. But go not hence, O noblest friend that ever stood
by a king’s throne!--go not hence till the grasp of your hand assures me
that all past unkindness is gone and buried; yea, and by this hand,
and while its pressure is warm in mine, bear not too hard on thy king’s
affection for his lady’s kindred.”

“Sire,” said Warwick, though his generous nature well-nigh melted
into weakness, and it was with an effort that he adhered to his
purpose,--“sire, if dismissed for a while, they shall not be degraded.
And if it be, on consideration, wise to recall from the family
of Woodville your grants of lands and lordships, take from your
Warwick--who, rich in his king’s love, hath eno’ to spare--take the
double of what you would recall. Oh, be frank with me, be true, be
steadfast, Edward, and dispose of my lands, whenever you would content a
favourite.”

“Not to impoverish thee, my Warwick,” answered Edward, smiling, “did I
call thee to my aid; for the rest, my revenues as Duke of York are at
least mine to bestow. Go now to the hostile camp,--go as sole minister
and captain-general of this realm; go with all powers and honours a king
can give; and when these districts are at peace, depart to our Welsh
provinces, as chief justiciary of that principality. Pembroke’s mournful
death leaves that high post in my gift. It cannot add to your greatness,
but it proves to England your sovereign’s trust.”

“And while that trust is given,” said Warwick, with tears in his
eyes, “may Heaven strengthen my arm in battle, and sharpen my brain in
council! But I play the laggard. The sun wanes westward; it should not
go down while a hostile army menaces the son of Richard of York.”

The earl rode rapidly away, reached the broad space where his followers
still stood, dismounted, but beside their steeds,--

“Trumpets advance, pursuivants and heralds go before! Marmaduke, mount!
The rest I need not. We ride to the insurgent camp.”



CHAPTER III. THE CAMP OF THE REBELS.

The rebels had halted about a mile from the town, and were already
pitching their tents for the night. It was a tumultuous, clamorous, but
not altogether undisciplined array; for Coniers was a leader of singular
practice in reducing men into the machinery of war, and where his skill
might have failed, the prodigious influence and energy of Robin of
Redesdale ruled the passions and united the discordant elements. This
last was, indeed, in much worthy the respect in which Warwick held his
name. In times more ripe for him, he would have been a mighty demagogue
and a successful regenerator. His birth was known but to few; his
education and imperious temper made him vulgarly supposed of noble
origin; but had he descended from a king’s loins, Robert Hilyard had
still been the son of the Saxon people. Warwick overrated, perhaps,
Hilyard’s wisdom; for, despite his Italian experience, his ideas were
far from embracing any clear and definite system of democracy. He had
much of the frantic levelism and jacquerie of his age and land, and
could probably not have explained to himself all the changes he desired
to effect; but, coupled with his hatred to the nobles, his deep and
passionate sympathy with the poor, his heated and fanatical chimeras of
a republic, half-political and half-religious, he had, with no uncommon
inconsistency, linked the cause of a dethroned king. For as the
Covenanters linked with the Stuarts against the succeeding and more
tolerant dynasty, never relinquishing their own anti-monarchic theories;
as in our time, the extreme party on the popular side has leagued with
the extreme of the aristocratic, in order to crush the medium policy,
as a common foe,--so the bold leveller united with his zeal for Margaret
the very cause which the House of Lancaster might be supposed the least
to favour. He expected to obtain from a sovereign dependent upon a
popular reaction for restoration, great popular privileges. And as the
Church had deserted the Red Rose for the White, he sought to persuade
many of the Lollards, ever ready to show their discontent, that Margaret
(in revenge on the hierarchy) would extend the protection they had never
found in the previous sway of her husband and Henry V. Possessed of
extraordinary craft, and even cunning in secular intrigues, energetic,
versatile, bold, indefatigable, and, above all, marvellously gifted with
the arts that inflame, stir up, and guide the physical force of masses,
Robert Hilyard had been, indeed, the soul and life of the present
revolt; and his prudent moderation in resigning the nominal command to
those whose military skill and high birth raised a riot into the dignity
of rebellion, had given that consistency and method to the rising which
popular movements never attain without aristocratic aid.

In the principal tent of the encampment the leaders of the insurrection
were assembled.

There was Sir John Coniers, who had married one of the Neviles, the
daughter of Fauconberg, Lord High Admiral, but who had profited little
by this remote connection with Warwick; for, with all his merit, he was
a greedy, grasping man, and he had angered the hot earl in pressing
his claims too imperiously. This renowned knight was a tall, gaunt man,
whose iron frame sixty winters had not bowed. There were the young heirs
of Latimer and Fitzhugh, in gay gilded armour and scarlet mantelines;
and there, in a plain cuirass, trebly welded, and of immense weight, but
the lower limbs left free and unincumbered in thick leathern hose, stood
Robin of Redesdale. Other captains there were, whom different motives
had led to the common confederacy. There might be seen the secret
Lollard, hating either Rose, stern and sour, and acknowledging no leader
but Hilyard, whom he knew as a Lollard’s son; there might be seen the
ruined spendthrift, discontented with fortune, and regarding civil war
as the cast of a die,--death for the forfeiture, lordships for the gain;
there, the sturdy Saxon squire, oppressed by the little baron of his
province, and rather hopeful to abase a neighbour than dethrone a king
of whom he knew little, and for whom he cared still less; and there,
chiefly distinguished from the rest by grizzled beard, upturned
mustache, erect mien, and grave, not thoughtful aspect, were the men
of a former period,--the soldiers who had fought against the Maid of
Are,--now without place, station, or hope in peaceful times, already
half robbers by profession, and decoyed to any standard that promised
action, pay, or plunder.

The conclave were in high and warm debate.

“If this be true,” said Coniers, who stood at the head of the table,
his helmet, axe, truncheon, and a rough map of the walls of Olney before
him--“if this be true, if our scouts are not deceived, if the Earl
of Warwick is in the village, and if his banner float beside King
Edward’s,--I say, bluntly, as soldiers should speak, that I have been
deceived and juggled!”

“And by whom, Sir Knight and cousin?” said the heir of Fitzhugh,
reddening.

“By you, young kinsman, and this hot-mouthed dare-devil, Robin of
Redesdale! Ye assured me, both, that the earl approved the rising; that
he permitted the levying yon troops in his name; that he knew well the
time was come to declare against the Woodvilles, and that no sooner was
an army mustered than he would place himself at its bead; and I say, if
this be not true, you have brought these gray hairs into dishonour!”

“And what, Sir John Coniers,” exclaimed Robin, rudely, “what honour had
your gray hairs till the steel cap covered them? What honour, I say,
under lewd Edward and his lusty revellers? You were thrown aside, like a
broken scythe, Sir John Coniers! You were forsaken in your rust! Warwick
himself, your wife’s great kinsman, could do nought in your favour! You
stand now, leader of thousands, lord of life and death, master of Edward
and the throne! We have done this for you, and you reproach us!”

“And,” began the heir of Fitzhugh, encouraged by the boldness of
Hilyard, “we had all reason to believe my noble uncle, the Earl of
Warwick, approved our emprise. When this brave fellow (pointing to
Robin) came to inform me that, with his own eyes, he had seen the
waxen effigies of my great kinsman, the hellish misdeed of the queen’s
witch-dam, I repaired to my Lord Montagu; and though that prudent
courtier refused to declare openly, he let me see that war with the
Woodvilles was not unwelcome to him.”

“Yet this same Montagu,” observed one of the ringleaders, “when Hilyard
was well-nigh at the gates of York, sallied out and defeated him, sans
ruth, sans ceremony.”

“Yes, but he spared my life, and beheaded the dead body of poor Hugh
Withers in my stead: for John Nevile is cunning, and he picks his nuts
from the brennen without lesing his own paw. It was not the hour for him
to join us, so he beat us civilly, and with discretion. But what hath he
done since? He stands aloof while our army swells, while the bull of the
Neviles and the ragged staff of the earl are the ensigns of our war, and
while Edward gnaws out his fierce heart in yon walls of Olney. How say
ye, then, that Warwick, even if now in person with the king, is in heart
against us? Nay, he may have entered Olney but to capture the tyrant.”

“If so,” said Coniers, “all is as it should be: but if Earl Warwick,
who, though he hath treated me ill, is a stour carle, and to be feared
if not loved, join the king, I break this wand, and ye will seek out
another captain.”

“And a captain shall be found!” cried Robin. “Are we so poor in valour,
that when one man leaves us we are headless and undone? What if Warwick
so betray us and himself,--he brings no forces. And never, by God’s
blessing, should we separate till we have redressed the wrongs of our
countrymen!”

“Good!” said the Saxon squire, winking, and looking wise,--“not till we
have burned to the ground the Baron of Bullstock’s castle!”

“Not,” said a Lollard, sternly, “till we have shortened the purple gown
of the churchman; not till abbot and bishop have felt on their backs
the whip wherewith they have scourged the godly believer and the humble
saint.”

“Not,” added Robin, “till we have assured bread to the poor man, and the
filling of the flesh-pot, and the law to the weak, and the scaffold to
the evil-doer.”

“All this is mighty well,” said, bluntly, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the leader
of the mercenaries, a skilful soldier, but a predatory and lawless
bravo; “but who is to pay me and my tall fellows?”

At this pertinent question, there was a general hush of displeasure and
disgust.

“For, look you, my masters,” continued Sir Geoffrey, “as long as I and
my comrades here believed that the rich earl, who hath half England
for his provant, was at the head or the tail of this matter, we were
contented to wait a while; but devil a groat hath yet gone into my
gipsire; and as for pillage, what is a farm or a homestead? an’ it were
a church or a castle there might be pickings.”

“There is much plate of silver, and a sack or so of marks and royals,
in the stronghold of the Baron of Bullstock,” quoth the Saxon squire,
doggedly hounding on to his revenge.

“You see, my friends,” said Coniers, with a smile, and shrugging his
shoulders, “that men cannot gird a kingdom with ropes of sand. Suppose
we conquer and take captive--nay, or slay--King Edward, what then?”

“The Duke of Clarence, male heir to the throne,” said the heir of
Latimer, “is Lord Warwick’s son-in-law, and therefore akin to you, Sir
John.”

“That is true,” observed Coniers, musingly.

“Not ill thought of, sir,” said Sir Geoffrey Gates; “and my advice is to
proclaim Clarence king and Warwick lord protector. We have some chance
of the angels then.”

“Besides,” said the heir of Fitzhugh, “our purpose once made clear, it
will be hard either for Warwick or Clarence to go against us,--harder
still for the country not to believe them with us. Bold measures are our
wisest councillors.”

“Um!” said the Lollard, “Lord Warwick is a good man, and has never,
though his brother be a bishop, abetted the Church tyrannies. But as for
George of Clarence--”

“As for Clarence,” said Hilyard, who saw with dismay and alarm that
the rebellion he designed to turn at the fitting hour to the service of
Lancaster, might now only help to shift from one shoulder to the other
the hated dynasty of York--“as for Clarence, he hath Edward’s vices
without his manhood.” He paused, and seeing that the crisis had ripened
the hour for declaring himself, his bold temper pushed at once to its
object. “No!” he continued, folding his arms, raising his head, and
comprehending the whole council in his keen and steady gaze,--“no! lords
and gentlemen, since speak I must in this emergency, hear me calmly.
Nothing has prospered in England since we abandoned our lawful king. If
we rid ourselves of Edward, let it not be to sink from a harlot-monger
to a drunkard. In the Tower pines our true lord, already honoured as a
saint. Hear me, I say,--hear me out! On the frontiers an army that keeps
Gloucester at bay hath declared for Henry and Margaret. Let us, after
seizing Olney, march thither at once, and unite forces. Margaret is
already prepared to embark for England. I have friends in London who
will attack the Tower, and deliver Henry. To you, Sir John Coniers, in
the queen’s name, I promise an earldom and the garter; to you, the heirs
of Latimer and Fitzhugh, the high posts that beseem your birth; to
all of you, knights and captains, just share and allotment in the
confiscated lands of the Woodvilles and the Yorkists; to you, brethren,”
 and addressing the Lollards, his voice softened into a meaning accent
that, compelled to worship in secret, they yet understood, “shelter from
your foes and mild laws; and to you, brave soldiers, that pay which
a king’s coffers alone can supply. Wherefore I say, down with all
subject-banners! up with the Red Rose and the Antelope, and long live
Henry the Sixth!”

This address, however subtle in its adaptation to the various passions
of those assembled, however aided by the voice, spirit, and energy of
the speaker, took too much by surprise those present to produce at once
its effect.

The Lollards remembered the fires lighted for their martyrs by the House
of Lancaster; and though blindly confident in Hilyard, were not yet
prepared to respond to his call. The young heir of Fitzhugh, who had, in
truth, but taken arms to avenge the supposed wrongs of Warwick, whom
he idolized, saw no object gained in the rise of Warwick’s enemy, Queen
Margaret. The mercenaries called to mind the woful state of Henry’s
exchequer in the former time. The Saxon squire muttered to himself, “And
what the devil is to become of the castle of Bullstock?” But Sir Henry
Nevile (Lord Latimer’s son), who belonged to that branch of his House
which had espoused the Lancaster cause, and who was in the secret
councils of Hilyard, caught up the cry, and said, “Hilyard doth not
exceed his powers; and he who strikes for the Red Rose shall carve out
his own lordship from the manors of every Yorkist that he slays.” Sir
John Coniers hesitated: poor, long neglected, ever enterprising and
ambitious, he was dazzled by the proffered bribe; but age is slow to
act, and he expressed himself with the measured caution of gray hairs.

“A king’s name,” said he, “is a tower of strength, especially when
marching against a king; but this is a matter for general assent and
grave forethought.”

Before any other (for ideas did not rush at once to words in those days)
found his tongue, a mighty uproar was heard without. It did not syllable
itself into distinct sound; it uttered no name; it was such a shout as
numbers alone could raise; and to such a shout would some martial leader
have rejoiced to charge to battle, so full of depth and fervour, and
enthusiasm and good heart, it seemed, leaping from rank to rank, from
breast to breast, from earth to heaven. With one accord the startled
captains made to the entrance of the tent, and there they saw, in the
broad space before them, inclosed by the tents which were grouped in a
wide semicircle,--for the mass of the hardy rebel army slept in the
open air, and the tents were but for leaders,--they saw, we say, in that
broad space, a multitude kneeling, and in the midst, upon his good steed
Saladin, bending graciously down, the martial countenance, the lofty
stature, of the Earl of Warwick. Those among the captains who knew him
not personally recognized him by the popular description,--by the black
war-horse, whose legendary fame had been hymned by every minstrel; by
the sensation his appearance had created; by the armourial insignia of
his heralds, grouped behind him, and whose gorgeous tabards blazed with
his cognizance and quarterings in azure, or, and argent. The sun was
slowly setting, and poured its rays upon the bare head of the mighty
noble, gathering round it in the hazy atmosphere like a halo. The homage
of the crowd to that single form, unarmed, and scarce attended, struck a
death-knell to the hopes of Hilyard,--struck awe into all his comrades!
The presence of that one man seemed to ravish from them, as by magic,
a vast army; power, and state, and command left them suddenly to be
absorbed in HIM! Captains, they were troopless,--the wielder of men’s
hearts was amongst them, and from his barb assumed reign, as from his
throne!

“Gads my life!” said Coniers, turning to his comrades, “we have now,
with a truth, the earl amongst us; but unless he come to lead us on to
Olney, I would as lief see the king’s provost at my shoulder.”

“The crowd separates, he rides this way!” said the heir of Fitzhugh.
“Shall we go forth to meet him?”

“Not so!” exclaimed Hilyard, “we are still the leaders of this army; let
him find us deliberating on the siege of Olney!”

“Right!” said Coniers; “and if there come dispute, let not the rabble
hear it.”

The captains re-entered the tent, and in grave silence awaited the
earl’s coming; nor was this suspense long. Warwick, leaving the
multitude in the rear, and taking only one of the subaltern officers
in the rebel camp as his guide and usher, arrived at the tent, and was
admitted into the council.

The captains, Hilyard alone excepted, bowed with great reverence as the
earl entered.

“Welcome, puissant sir and illustrious kinsman!” said Coniers, who had
decided on the line to be adopted; “you are come at last to take the
command of the troops raised in your name, and into your hands I resign
this truncheon.”

“I accept it, Sir John Coniers,” answered Warwick, taking the place of
dignity; “and since you thus constitute me your commander, I proceed at
once to my stern duties. How happens it, knights and gentlemen, that in
my absence ye have dared to make my name the pretext of rebellion? Speak
thou, my sister’s son!”

“Cousin and lord,” said the heir of Fitzhugh, reddening but not abashed,
“we could not believe but what you would smile on those who have risen
to assert your wrongs and defend your life.” And he then briefly related
the tale of the Duchess of Bedford’s waxen effigies, and pointed to
Hilyard as the eye-witness.

“And,” began Sir Henry Nevile, “you, meanwhile, were banished,
seemingly, from the king’s court; the dissensions between you and Edward
sufficiently the land’s talk, the king’s vices the land’s shame!

“Nor did we act without at least revealing our intentions to my uncle
and your brother, the Lord Montagu,” added the heir of Fitzhugh.

“Meanwhile,” said Robin of Redesdale, “the commons were oppressed, the
people discontented, the Woodvilles plundering, and the king wasting
our substance on concubines and minions. We have had cause eno’ for our
rising!” The earl listened to each speaker in stern silence.

“For all this,” he said at last, “you have, without my leave or
sanction, levied armed men in my name, and would have made Richard
Nevile seem to Europe a traitor, without the courage to be a rebel! Your
lives are in my power, and those lives are forfeit to the laws.”

“If we have incurred your disfavour from our over-zeal for you,” said
the son of Lord Fitzhugh, touchingly, “take our lives, for they are of
little worth.” And the young nobleman unbuckled his sword, and laid it
on the table.

“But,” resumed Warwick, not seeming to heed his nephew’s humility,
“I, who have ever loved the people of England, and before king and
parliament have ever pleaded their cause,--I, as captain-general and
first officer of these realms, here declare, that whatever motives of
ambition or interest may have misled men of mark and birth, I believe
that the commons at least never rise in arms without some excuse for
their error. Speak out then, you, their leaders; and, putting aside all
that relates to me as the one man, say what are the grievances of which
the many would complain.”

And now there was silence, for the knights and gentlemen knew little
of the complaints of the populace; the Lollards did not dare to expose
their oppressed faith, and the squires and franklins were too uneducated
to detail the grievances they had felt. But then the immense superiority
of the man of the people at once asserted itself; and Hilyard, whose
eye the earl had hitherto shunned, lifted his deep voice. With clear
precision, in indignant but not declamatory eloquence, he painted the
disorders of the time,--the insolent exactions of the hospitals and
abbeys, the lawless violence of each petty baron, the weakness of the
royal authority in restraining oppression, its terrible power in aiding
the oppressor. He accumulated instance on instance of misrule; he showed
the insecurity of property, the adulteration of the coin, the burden
of the imposts; he spoke of wives and maidens violated, of industry
defrauded, of houses forcibly entered, of barns and granaries despoiled,
of the impunity of all offenders, if high-born, of the punishment of all
complaints, if poor and lowly. “Tell us not,” he said, “that this is
the necessary evil of the times, the hard condition of mankind. It was
otherwise, Lord Warwick, when Edward first swayed; for you then made
yourself dear to the people by your justice. Still men talk, hereabouts,
of the golden rule of Earl Warwick; but since you have been, though
great in office, powerless in deed, absent in Calais, or idle at
Middleham, England hath been but the plaything of the Woodvilles, and
the king’s ears have been stuffed with flattery as with wool. And,”
 continued Hilyard, warming with his subject, and, to the surprise of the
Lollards, entering boldly on their master-grievance--“and this is not
all. When Edward ascended the throne, there was, if not justice, at
least repose, for the persecuted believers who hold that God’s word
was given to man to read, study, and digest into godly deeds. I speak
plainly. I speak of that faith which your great father Salisbury and
many of the House of York were believed to favour,--that faith which is
called the Lollard, and the oppression of which, more than aught else,
lost to Lancaster the hearts of England. But of late, the Church,
assuming the power it ever grasps the most under the most licentious
kings (for the sinner prince hath ever the tyrant priest!), hath put
in vigour old laws for the wronging man’s thought and conscience; [The
Lollards had greatly contributed to seat Edward on the throne; and much
of the subsequent discontent, no doubt, arose from their disappointment,
when, as Sharon Turner well expresses it, “his indolence allied him to
the Church,” and he became “hereticorum severissimus hostis.”--CROYL.,
p. 564.] and we sit at our doors under the shade, not of the vine-tree,
but the gibbet. For all these things we have drawn the sword; and if
now, you, taking advantage of the love borne to you by the sons of
England, push that sword back into the sheath, you, generous, great,
and princely though you be, well deserve the fate that I foresee and
can foretell. Yes!” cried the speaker, extending his arms, and gazing
fixedly on the proud face of the earl, which was not inexpressive of
emotion--“yes! I see you, having deserted the people, deserted by them
also in your need; I see you, the dupe of an ungrateful king, stripped
of power and honour, an exile and an outlaw; and when you call in vain
upon the people, in whose hearts you now reign, remember, O fallen star,
son of the morning! that in the hour of their might you struck down the
people’s right arm, and paralyzed their power. And now, if you will,
let your friends and England’s champions glut the scaffolds of your
woman-king!”

He ceased. A murmur went round the conclave; every breast breathed hard,
every eye turned to Warwick. That mighty statesman mastered the effect
which the thrilling voice of the popular pleader produced on him; but
at that moment he had need of all his frank and honourable loyalty to
remind him that he was there but to fulfil a promise and discharge a
trust,--that he was the king’s delegate, not the king’s judge.

“You have spoken, bold men,” said he, “as, in an hour when the rights of
princes are weighed in one scale, the subject’s sword in the other, I,
were I king, would wish free men to speak. And now you, Robert Hilyard,
and you, gentlemen, hear me, as envoy to King Edward IV. To all of you
I promise complete amnesty and entire pardon. His highness believes you
misled, not criminal, and your late deeds will not be remembered in your
future services. So much for the leaders. Now for the commons. My liege
the king is pleased to recall me to the high powers I once exercised,
and to increase rather than to lessen them. In his name, I pledge myself
to full and strict inquiry into all the grievances Robin of Redesdale
hath set forth, with a view to speedy and complete redress. Nor is this
all. His highness, laying aside his purpose of war with France, will
have less need of impost on his subjects, and the burdens and taxes will
be reduced. Lastly, his grace, ever anxious to content his people, hath
most benignly empowered me to promise that, whether or not ye rightly
judge the queen’s kindred, they will no longer have part or weight
in the king’s councils. The Duchess of Bedford, as beseems a lady so
sorrowfully widowed, will retire to her own home; and the Lord Scales
will fulfil a mission to the court of Spain. Thus, then, assenting
to all reasonable demands, promising to heal all true grievances,
proffering you gracious pardon, I discharge my duty to king and to
people. I pray that these unhappy sores may be healed evermore, under
the blessing of God and our patron saint; and in the name of Edward IV.,
Lord Suzerain of England and of France, I break up this truncheon and
disband this army!”

Among those present, this moderate and wise address produced a general
sensation of relief; for the earl’s disavowal of the revolt took away
all hope of its success. But the common approbation was not shared by
Hilyard. He sprang upon the table, and, seizing the broken fragments of
the truncheon, which the earl had snapped as a willow twig, exclaimed,
“And thus, in the name of the people, I seize the command that ye
unworthily resign! Oh, yes, what fools were yonder drudges of the hard
hand and the grimed brow and the leathern jerkin, to expect succour from
knight and noble!”

So saying, he bounded from the tent, and rushed towards the multitude at
the distance.

“Ye knights and lords, men of blood and birth, were but the tools of a
manlier and wiser Cade!” said Warwick, calmly. “Follow me.”

The earl strode from the tent, sprang upon his steed, and was in the
midst of the troops with his heralds by his side, ere Hilyard had
been enabled to begin the harangue he had intended. Warwick’s trumpets
sounded to silence; and the earl himself, in his loud clear voice,
briefly addressed the immense audience. Master, scarcely less than
Hilyard, of the popular kind of eloquence, which--short, plain,
generous, and simple--cuts its way at once through the feelings to the
policy, Warwick briefly but forcibly recapitulated to the commons the
promises he had made to the captains; and as soon as they heard of taxes
removed, the coinage reformed, the corn thrave abolished, the Woodvilles
dismissed, and the earl recalled to power, the rebellion was at an end.
They answered with a joyous shout his order to disperse and retire to
their homes forthwith. But the indomitable Hilyard, ascending a small
eminence, began his counter-agitation. The earl saw his robust form and
waving hand, he saw the crowd sway towards him; and too well acquainted
with mankind to suffer his address, he spurred to the spot, and turning
to Marmaduke, said, in a loud voice, “Marmaduke Nevile, arrest that man
in the king’s name!”

Marmaduke sprang from his steed, and laid his hand on Hilyard’s
shoulder. Not one of the multitude stirred on behalf of their demagogue.
As before the sun recede the stars, all lesser lights had died in
the blaze of Warwick’s beloved name. Hilyard griped his dagger, and
struggled an instant; but when he saw the awe and apathy of the armed
mob, a withering expression of disdain passed over his hardy face.

“Do ye suffer this?” he said. “Do ye suffer me, who have placed swords
in your hands, to go forth in bonds, and to the death?”

“The stout earl wrongs no man,” said a single voice, and the populace
echoed the word.

“Sir, then, I care not for life, since liberty is gone. I yield myself
your prisoner.”

“A horse for my captive!” said Warwick, laughing; “and hear me promise
you, that he shall go unscathed in goods and in limbs. God wot, when
Warwick and the people meet, no victim should be sacrificed! Hurrah for
King Edward and fair England!”

He waved his plumed cap as he spoke, and within the walls of Olney was
heard the shout that answered.

Slowly the earl and his scanty troop turned the rein; as he receded,
the multitude broke up rapidly, and when the moon rose, that camp was a
solitude. [The dispersion of the rebels at Olney is forcibly narrated by
a few sentences, graphic from their brief simplicity, in the “Pictorial
History of England,” Book V, p. 104. “They (Warwick, etc.) repaired in a
very friendly manner to Olney, where they found Edward in a most unhappy
condition; his friends were dead or scattered, flying for their lives,
or hiding themselves in remote places: the insurgents were almost
upon him. A word from Warwick sent the insurgents quietly back to the
North.”]

Such--for our nature is ever grander in the individual than the
mass--such is the power of man above mankind!



CHAPTER IV. THE NORMAN EARL AND THE SAXON DEMAGOGUE CONFER.

On leaving the camp, Warwick rode in advance of his train, and his
countenance was serious and full of thought. At length, as a turn in the
road hid the little band from the view of the rebels, the earl motioned
to Marmaduke to advance with his prisoner. The young Nevile then fell
back, and Robin and Warwick rode breast to breast out of hearing of the
rest.

“Master Hilyard, I am well content that my brother, when you fell into
his hands, spared your life out of gratitude for the favour you once
showed to mine.”

“Your noble brother, my lord,” answered Robin, dryly, “is, perhaps, not
aware of the service I once rendered you. Methinks he spared me rather,
because, without me, an enterprise which has shaken the Woodvilles from
their roots around the throne, and given back England to the Neviles,
had been nipped in the bud!--Your brother is a deep thinker!”

“I grieve to hear thee speak thus of the Lord Montagu. I know that he
hath wilier devices than become, in my eyes, a well-born knight and a
sincere man; but he loves his king, and his ends are juster than his
means. Master Hilyard, enough of the past evil. Some months after the
field of Hexham, I chanced to fall, when alone, amongst a band of roving
and fierce Lancastrian outlaws. Thou, their leader, recognizing the
crest on my helm, and mindful of some slight indulgence once shown to
thy strange notions of republican liberty, didst save me from the swords
of thy followers: from that time I have sought in vain to mend thy
fortunes. Thou hast rejected all mine offers, and I know well that thou
hast lent thy service to the fatal cause of Lancaster. Many a time
I might have given thee to the law; but gratitude for thy aid in the
needful strait, and to speak sooth, my disdain of all individual efforts
to restore a fallen House, made me turn my eyes from transgressions
which, once made known to the king, had placed thee beyond pardon. I
see now that thou art a man of head and arm to bring great danger upon
nations; and though this time Warwick bids thee escape and live, if once
more thou offend, know me only as the king’s minister. The debt between
us is now cancelled. Yonder lies the path that conducts to the forest.
Farewell. Yet stay!--poverty may have led thee into treason?”

“Poverty,” interrupted Hilyard,--“poverty, Lord Warwick, leads men to
sympathize with the poor, and therefore I have done with riches.” He
paused, and his breast heaved. “Yet,” he added sadly, “now that I have
seen the cowardice and ingratitude of men, my calling seems over, and my
spirit crushed.”

“Alas!” said Warwick, “whether man be rich or poor, ingratitude is the
vice of men; and you, who have felt it from the mob, menace me with it
from the king. But each must carve out his own way through this earth,
without over care for applause or blame; and the tomb is the sole judge
of mortal memory.”

Robin looked hard at the earl’s face, which was dark and gloomy, as he
thus spoke, and approaching nearer, he said, “Lord Warwick, I take
from you liberty and life the more willingly, because a voice I cannot
mistake tells me, and hath long told, that, sooner or later, time will
bind us to each other. Unlike other nobles, you have owed your power not
so much to lordship, land, and birth, and a king’s smile, as to the love
you have nobly won; you alone, true knight and princely Christian,--you
alone, in war, have spared the humble; you alone, stalwart and
resistless champion, have directed your lance against your equals, and
your order hath gone forth to the fierce of heart, ‘Never smite the
commons!’ In peace, you alone have stood up in your haughty parliament
for just law or for gentle mercy; your castle hath had a board for the
hungry and a shelter for the houseless; your pride, which hath bearded
kings and humbled upstarts, hath never had a taunt for the lowly; and
therefore I--son of the people--in the people’s name, bless you living,
and sigh to ask whether a people’s gratitude will mourn you dead!
Beware Edward’s false smile, beware Clarence’s fickle faith, beware
Gloucester’s inscrutable wile! Mark, the sun sets!--and while we speak,
yon dark cloud gathers over your plumed head.”

He pointed to the heavens as he ceased, and a low roll of gathering
thunder seemed to answer his ominous warning. Without tarrying for the
earl’s answer, Hilyard shook the reins of his steed, and disappeared in
the winding of the lane through which he took his way.



CHAPTER V. WHAT FAITH EDWARD IV. PURPOSETH TO KEEP WITH EARL AND PEOPLE.

Edward received his triumphant envoy with open arms and profuse
expressions of gratitude. He exerted himself to the utmost in the
banquet that crowned the day, not only to conciliate the illustrious new
comers, but to remove from the minds of Raoul de Fulke and his officers
all memory of their past disaffection. No gift is rarer or more
successful in the intrigues of life than that which Edward eminently
possessed,--namely, the hypocrisy of frankness. Dissimulation is often
humble, often polished, often grave, sleek, smooth, decorous; but it
is rarely gay and jovial, a hearty laughter, a merry, cordial, boon
companion. Such, however, was the felicitous craft of Edward IV.; and,
indeed, his spirits were naturally so high, his good humour so flowing,
that this joyous hypocrisy cost him no effort. Elated at the dispersion
of his foes, at the prospect of his return to his ordinary life of
pleasure, there was something so kindly and so winning in his mirth,
that he subjugated entirely the fiery temper of Raoul de Fulke and the
steadier suspicions of the more thoughtful St. John. Clarence, wholly
reconciled to Edward, gazed on him with eyes swimming with affection,
and soon drank himself into uproarious joviality. The archbishop, more
reserved, still animated the society by the dry and epigrammatic wit not
uncommon to his learned and subtle mind. But Warwick in vain endeavoured
to shake off an uneasy, ominous gloom. He was not satisfied with
Edward’s avoidance of discussion upon the grave matters involved in the
earl’s promise to the insurgents, and his masculine spirit regarded with
some disdain, and more suspicion, a levity that he considered ill-suited
to the emergence.

The banquet was over, and Edward, having dismissed his other attendants,
was in his chamber with Lord Hastings, whose office always admitted him
to the wardrobe of the king.

Edward’s smile had now left his lip; he paced the room with a hasty
stride, and then suddenly opening the casement, pointed to the landscape
without, which lay calm and suffused in moonlight.

“Hastings,” said he, abruptly, “a few hours since and the earth grew
spears! Behold the landscape now!”

“So vanish all the king’s enemies!”

“Ay, man, ay,--if at the king’s word, or before the king’s battle-axe;
but at a subject’s command--No, I am not a king while another scatters
armies in my realm at his bare will. ‘Fore Heaven, this shall not last!”

Hastings regarded the countenance of Edward, changed from affable beauty
into terrible fierceness, with reflections suggested by his profound and
mournful wisdom. “How little a man’s virtues profit him in the eyes of
men!” thought he. “The subject saves the crown, and the crown’s wearer
never pardons the presumption!”

“You do not speak, sir!” exclaimed Edward, irritated and impatient. “Why
gaze you thus on me?”

“Beau sire,” returned the favourite, calmly, “I was seeking to discover
if your pride spoke, or your nobler nature.”

“Tush!” said the king, petulantly, “the noblest part of a king’s nature
is his pride as king!” Again he strode the chamber, and again halted.
“But the earl hath fallen into his own snare,--he hath promised in my
name what I will not perform. Let the people learn that their idol hath
deceived them. He asks me to dismiss from the court the queen’s mother
and kindred!”

Hastings, who in this went thoroughly with the earl and the popular
feeling, and whose only enemies in England were the Woodvilles, replied
simply,--

“These are cheap terms, sire, for a king’s life and the crown of
England.”

Edward started, and his eyes flashed that cold, cruel fire, which makes
eyes of a light colouring so far more expressive of terrible passions
than the quicker and warmer heat of dark orbs. “Think you so, sir? By
God’s blood, he who proffered them shall repent it in every vein of his
body! Hark ye, William Hastings de Hastings, I know you to be a deep
and ambitious man; but better for you had you covered that learned
brain under the cowl of a mendicant friar than lent one thought to the
counsels of the Earl of Warwick.”

Hastings, who felt even to fondness the affection which Edward generally
inspired in those about his person, and who, far from sympathizing,
except in hate of the Woodvilles, with the earl, saw that beneath
that mighty tree no new plants could push into their fullest foliage,
reddened with anger at this imperious menace.

“My liege,” said he, with becoming dignity and spirit, “if you can thus
address your most tried confidant and your lealest friend, your most
dangerous enemy is yourself.”

“Stay, man,” said the king, softening. “I was over warm, but the wild
beast within me is chafed. Would Gloucester were here!”

“I can tell you what would be the counsels of that wise young prince,
for I know his mind,” answered Hastings.

“Ay, he and you love each other well. Speak out.”

“Prince Richard is a great reader of Italian lere. He saith that those
small States are treasuries of all experience. From that lere Prince
Richard would say to you, ‘Where a subject is so great as to be feared,
and too much beloved to be destroyed, the king must remember how Tarpeia
was crushed.”

“I remember naught of Tarpeia, and I detest parables.”

“Tarpeia, sire (it is a story of old Rome), was crushed under the
weight of presents. Oh, my liege,” continued Hastings, warming with that
interest which an able man feels in his own superior art, “were I king
for a year, by the end of it Warwick should be the most unpopular (and
therefore the weakest) lord in England!”

“And how, O wise in thine own conceit?”

“Beau sire,” resumed Hastings, not heeding the rebuke--and strangely
enough he proceeded to point out, as the means of destroying the earl’s
influence, the very method that the archbishop had detailed to Montagu
as that which would make the influence irresistible and permanent--“Beau
sire,” resumed Hastings, “Lord Warwick is beloved by the people, because
they consider him maltreated; he is esteemed by the people, because they
consider him above all bribe; he is venerated by the people, because
they believe that in all their complaints and struggles he is
independent (he alone) of the king. Instead of love, I would raise envy;
for instead of cold countenance I would heap him with grace. Instead of
esteem and veneration I would raise suspicion; for I would so knit him
to your House, that he could not stir hand or foot against you; I would
make his heirs your brothers. The Duke of Clarence hath married one
daughter,--wed the other to Lord Richard. Betroth your young princess to
Montagu’s son, the representative of all the Neviles. The earl’s immense
possessions must thus ultimately pass to your own kindred. The earl
himself will be no longer a power apart from the throne, but a part of
it. The barons will chafe against one who half ceases to be of their
order, and yet monopolizes their dignities; the people will no longer
see in the earl their champion, but a king’s favourite and deputy.
Neither barons nor people will flock to his banner.”

“All this is well and wise,” said Edward, musing; “but meanwhile my
queen’s blood? Am I to reign in a solitude?--for look you, Hastings,
you know well that, uxorious as fools have deemed me, I had purpose
and design in the elevation of new families; I wished to raise a fresh
nobility to counteract the pride of the old, and only upon new nobles
can a new dynasty rely.”

“My Lord, I will not anger you again; but still, for a while, the
queen’s relations will do well to retire.”

“Good night, Hastings,” interrupted Edward, abruptly, “my pillow in this
shall be my counsellor.”

Whatever the purpose solitude and reflection might ripen in the king’s
mind, he was saved from immediate decision by news, the next morning, of
fresh outbreaks. The commons had risen in Lincolnshire and the county
of Warwick; and Anthony Woodville wrote word that, if the king would
but show himself among the forces he had raised near Coventry, all
the gentry around would rise against the rebellious rabble. Seizing
advantage of these tidings, borne to him by his own couriers, and
eager to escape from the uncertain soldiery quartered at Olney, Edward,
without waiting to consult even with the earl, sprang to horse, and his
trumpets were the first signal of departure that he deigned to any one.

This want of ceremony displeased the pride of Warwick; but he made
no complaint, and took his place by the king’s side, when Edward said
shortly,--

“Dear cousin, this is a time that needs all our energies. I ride towards
Coventry, to give head and heart to the raw recruits I shall find there;
but I pray you and the archbishop to use all means, in this immediate
district, to raise fresh troops; for at your name armed men spring up
from pasture and glebe, dyke and hedge. Join what troops you can collect
in three days with mine at Coventry, and, ere the sickle is in the
harvest, England shall be at peace. God speed you! Ho! there, gentlemen,
away!--a franc etrier!”

Without pausing for reply,--for he wished to avoid all questioning,
lest Warwick might discover that it was to a Woodville that he was
bound,--the king put spurs to his horse, and, while his men were yet
hurrying to and fro, rode on almost alone, and was a good mile out
of the town before the force led by St. John and Raoul de Fulke, and
followed by Hastings, who held no command, overtook him.

“I misthink the king,” said Warwick, gloomily; “but my word is pledged
to the people, and it shall be kept.”

“A man’s word is best kept when his arm is the strongest,” said the
sententious archbishop; “yesterday, you dispersed an army; to-day, raise
one!”

Warwick answered not, but, after a moment’s thought, beckoned to
Marmaduke.

“Kinsman,” said he, “spur on, with ten of my little company, to join
the king. Report to me if any of the Woodvilles be in his camp near
Coventry.”

“Whither shall I send the report?”

“To my castle of Warwick.”

Marmaduke bowed his head, and, accustomed to the brevity of the earl’s
speech, proceeded to the task enjoined him. Warwick next summoned his
second squire.

“My lady and her children,” said he, “are on their way to Middleham.
This paper will instruct you of their progress. Join them with all the
rest of my troop, except my heralds and trumpeters; and say that I shall
meet them ere long at Middleham.”

“It is a strange way to raise an army,” said the archbishop, dryly, “to
begin by getting rid of all the force one possesses!”

“Brother,” answered the earl, “I would fain show my son-in-law, who may
be the father of a line of kings, that a general may be helpless at the
head of thousands, but that a man may stand alone who has the love of a
nation.”

“May Clarence profit by the lesson! Where is he all this while?”

“Abed,” said the stout earl, with a slight accent of disdain; and then,
in a softer voice, he added, “youth is ever luxurious. Better the slow
man than the false one.”

Leaving Warwick to discharge the duty enjoined him, we follow the
dissimulating king.



CHAPTER VI. WHAT BEFALLS KING EDWARD ON HIS ESCAPE FROM OLNEY.

As soon as Edward was out of sight of the spire of Olney, he slackened
his speed, and beckoned Hastings to his side.

“Dear Will,” said the king, “I have thought over thy counsel, and will
find the occasion to make experiment thereof. But, methinks, thou wilt
agree with me that concessions come best from a king who has an army of
his own. ‘Fore Heaven, in the camp of a Warwick I have less power than a
lieutenant! Now mark me. I go to head some recruits raised in haste near
Coventry. The scene of contest must be in the northern counties. Wilt
thou, for love of me, ride night and day, thorough brake, thorough
briar, to Gloucester on the Borders? Bid him march, if the Scot will let
him, back to York; and if he cannot himself quit the Borders, let
him send what men can be spared under thy banner. Failing this, raise
through Yorkshire all the men-at-arms thou canst collect. But, above
all, see Montagu. Him and his army secure at all hazards. If he demur,
tell him his son shall marry his king’s daughter, and wear the coronal
of a duke. Ha, ha! a large bait for so large a fish! I see this is no
casual outbreak, but a general convulsion of the realm; and the Earl
of Warwick must not be the only man to smile or to frown back the angry
elements.”

“In this, beau sire,” answered Hastings, “you speak as a king and
a warrior should, and I will do my best to assert your royal
motto,--‘Modus et ordo.’ If I can but promise that your Highness has for
a while dismissed the Woodville lords, rely upon it that ere two months
I will place under your truncheon an army worthy of the liege lord of
hardy England.”

“Go, dear Hastings, I trust all to thee!” answered the king. The
nobleman kissed his sovereign’s extended hand, closed his visor, and,
motioning to his body-squire to follow him, disappeared down a green
lane, avoiding such broader thoroughfares as might bring him in contact
with the officers left at Olney.

In a small village near Coventry Sir Anthony Woodville had collected
about two thousand men, chiefly composed of the tenants and vassals of
the new nobility, who regarded the brilliant Anthony as their head.
The leaders were gallant and ambitious gentlemen, as they who arrive at
fortunes above their birth mostly are; but their vassals were little
to be trusted. For in that day clanship was still strong, and these
followers had been bred in allegiance to Lancastrian lords, whose
confiscated estates were granted to the Yorkist favourites. The shout
that welcomed the arrival of the king was therefore feeble and lukewarm;
and, disconcerted by so chilling a reception, he dismounted, in less
elevated spirits than those in which he had left Olney, at the pavilion
of his brother-in-law.

The mourning-dress of Anthony, his countenance saddened by the barbarous
execution of his father and brother, did not tend to cheer the king.

But Woodville’s account of the queen’s grief and horror at the
afflictions of her House, and of Jacquetta’s indignation at the foul
language which the report of her practices put into the popular mouth,
served to endear to the king’s mind the family that he considered
unduly persecuted. Even in the coldest breasts affection is fanned by
opposition, and the more the queen’s kindred were assailed, the more
obstinately Edward clung to them. By suiting his humour, by winking at
his gallantries, by a submissive sweetness of temper, which soothed his
own hasty moods, and contrasted with the rough pride of Warwick and the
peevish fickleness of Clarence, Elizabeth had completely wound
herself into the king’s heart. And the charming graces, the elegant
accomplishments, of Anthony Woodville were too harmonious with the
character of Edward, who in all--except truth and honour--was the
perfect model of the gay gentilhomme of the time, not to have become
almost a necessary companionship. Indolent natures may be easily ruled,
but they grow stubborn when their comforts and habits are interfered
with. And the whole current of Edward’s merry, easy life seemed to him
to lose flow and sparkle if the faces he loved best were banished, or
even clouded.

He was yet conversing with Woodville, and yet assuring him that, however
he might temporize, he would never abandon the interests of his queen’s
kindred, when a gentleman entered aghast, to report that the Lords St.
John and de Fulke, on hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville was in command
of the forces, had, without even dismounting, left the camp, and carried
with them their retainers, amounting to more than half of the little
troop that rode from Olney.

“Let them go,” said Edward, frowning; “a day shall dawn upon their
headless trunks!”

“Oh, my king,” said Anthony, now Earl of Rivers,--who, by far the least
selfish of his House, was struck with remorse at the penalty Edward paid
for his love marriage,--“now that your Highness can relieve me of my
command, let me retire from the camp. I would fain go a pilgrim to the
shrine of Compostella to pray for my father’s sins and my sovereign’s
weal.”

“Let us first see what forces arrive from London,” answered the king.
“Richard ere long will be on the march from the frontiers, and whatever
Warwick resolves, Montagu, whose heart I hold in my hand, will bring his
army to my side. Let us wait.”

But the next day brought no reinforcements, nor the next; and the king
retired betimes to his tent, in much irritation and perplexity; when
at the dead of the night he was startled from slumber by the tramp of
horses, the sound of horns, the challenge of the sentinels, and, as he
sprang from his couch, and hurried on his armour in alarm, the Earl of
Warwick abruptly entered. The earl’s face was stern, but calm and
sad; and Edward’s brave heart beat loud as he gazed on his formidable
subject.

“King Edward,” said Warwick, slowly and mournfully, “you have deceived
me! I promised to the commons the banishment of the Woodvilles, and to a
Woodville you have flown.”

“Your promise was given to rebels, with whom no faith can be held; and I
passed from a den of mutiny to the camp of a loyal soldier.”

“We will not now waste words, king,” answered Warwick. “Please you to
mount and ride northward. The Scotch have gained great advantages on
the marches. The Duke of Gloucester is driven backwards. All the
Lancastrians in the North have risen. Margaret of Anjou is on the coast
of Normandy, [at this time Margaret was at Harfleur--Will. Wyre] ready
to set sail at the first decisive victory of her adherents.”

“I am with you,” answered Edward; “and I rejoice to think that at last
I may meet a foe. Hitherto it seems as if I had been chased by shadows.
Now may I hope to grasp the form and substance of danger and of battle.”

“A steed prepared for your Grace awaits you.”

“Whither ride we first?”

“To my castle of Warwick, hard by. At noon to-morrow all will be ready
for our northward march.”

Edward, by this time having armed himself, strode from the tent into the
open air. The scene was striking: the moon was extremely bright and the
sky serene, but around the tent stood a troop of torch-bearers, and the
red glare shone luridly upon the steel of the serried horsemen and the
banners of the earl, in which the grim white bear was wrought upon an
ebon ground, quartered with the dun bull, and crested in gold with the
eagle of the Monthermers. Far as the king’s eye could reach, he saw but
the spears of Warwick; while a confused hum in his own encampment told
that the troops Anthony Woodville had collected were not yet marshalled
into order. Edward drew back.

“And the Lord Anthony of Scales and Rivers?” said he, hesitatingly.

“Choose, king, between the Lord Anthony of Scales and Rivers and Richard
Nevile!” answered Warwick, in a stern whisper.

Edward paused, and at that moment Anthony himself emerged from his tent
(which adjoined the king’s) in company with the Archbishop of York, who
had rode thither in Warwick’s train.

“My liege,” said that gallant knight, putting his knee to the ground, “I
have heard from the archbishop the new perils that await your Highness,
and I grieve sorely that, in this strait, your councillors deem it meet
to forbid me the glory of fighting or falling by your side! I know too
well the unhappy odium attached to my House and name in the northern
parts, to dispute the policy which ordains my absence from your armies.
Till these feuds are over, I crave your royal leave to quit England, and
perform my pilgrimage to the sainted shrine of Compostella.”

A burning flush passed over the king’s face as he raised his
brother-in-law, and clasped him to his bosom.

“Go or stay, as you will, Anthony!” said he; “but let these proud men
know that neither time nor absence can tear you from your king’s heart.
But envy must have its hour Lord Warwick, I attend you; but it seems
rather as your prisoner than your liege.”

Warwick made no answer: the king mounted, and waved his hand to Anthony.
The torches tossed to and fro, the horns sounded, and in a silence moody
and resentful on either part Edward and his terrible subject rode on to
the towers of Warwick.

The next day the king beheld with astonishment the immense force that,
in a time so brief, the earl had collected round his standard.

From his casement, which commanded that lovely slope on which so many
a tourist now gazes with an eye that seeks to call back the stormy and
chivalric past, Edward beheld the earl on his renowned black charger,
reviewing the thousands that, file on file and rank on rank, lifted pike
and lance in the cloudless sun.

“After all,” muttered the king, “I can never make a new noble a great
baron! And if in peace a great baron overshadows the throne, in time
of war a great baron is a throne’s bulwark! Gramercy, I had been mad
to cast away such an army,--an army fit for a king to lead! They serve
Warwick now; but Warwick is less skilful in the martial art than I, and
soldiers, like hounds, love best the most dexterous huntsman!”



CHAPTER VII. HOW KING EDWARD ARRIVES AT THE CASTLE OF MIDDLEHAM.

On the ramparts of feudal Middleham, in the same place where Anne had
confessed to Isabel the romance of her childish love, again the sisters
stood, awaiting the coming of their father and the king. They had only,
with their mother, reached Middleham two days before, and the preceding
night an advanced guard had arrived at the castle to announce the
approach of the earl with his royal comrade and visitor. From the
heights, already they beheld the long array winding in glorious order
towards the mighty pile.

“Look!” exclaimed Isabel, “look! already methinks I see the white steed
of Clarence. Yes! it is he! it is my George, my husband! The banner
borne before shows his device.”

“Ah, happy Isabel!” said Anne, sighing; “what rapture to await the
coming of him one loves!”

“My sweet Anne,” returned Isabel, passing her arm tenderly round her
sister’s slender waist, “when thou hast conquered the vain folly of thy
childhood, thou wilt find a Clarence of thine own. And yet,” added the
young duchess, smiling, “it must be the opposite of a Clarence to be to
thy heart what a Clarence is to mine. I love George’s gay humour,--thou
lovest a melancholy brow. I love that charming weakness which supples to
my woman will,--thou lovest a proud nature that may command thine own.
I do not respect George less, because I know my mind stronger than his
own; but thou (like my gentle mother) wouldst have thy mate lord and
chief in all things, and live from his life as the shadow from the sun.
But where left you our mother?”

“In the oratory, at prayer.”

“She has been sad of late.”

“The dark times darken her; and she ever fears the king’s falseness or
caprice will stir the earl up to some rash emprise. My father’s letter,
brought last night to her, contains something that made her couch
sleepless.”

“Ha!” exclaimed the duchess, eagerly, “my mother confides in thee more
than me. Saw you the letter?”

“No.”

“Edward will make himself unfit to reign,” said Isabel, abruptly. “The
barons will call on him to resign; and then--and then, Anne--sister
Anne,--Warwick’s daughters cannot be born to be simple subjects!”

“Isabel, God temper your ambition! Oh, curb it, crush it down! Abuse
not your influence with Clarence. Let not the brother aspire to the
brother’s crown.”

“Sister, a king’s diadem covers all the sins schemed in the head that
wins it!”

As the duchess spoke, her eyes flashed and her form dilated. Her beauty
seemed almost terrible.

The gentle Anne gazed and shuddered; but ere she found words to rebuke,
the lovely shape of the countess-mother was seen moving slowly towards
them. She was dressed in her robes of state to receive her kingly guest;
the vest fitting high to the throat, where it joined the ermine tippet,
and thickly sown with jewels; the sleeves tight, with the second or over
sleeves, that, loose and large, hung pendent and sweeping even to the
ground; and the gown, velvet of cramousin, trimmed with ermine,--made a
costume not less graceful than magnificent, and which, where compressed,
set off the exquisite symmetry of a form still youthful, and where
flowing added majesty to a beauty naturally rather soft and feminine
than proud and stately. As she approached her children, she looked
rather like their sister than their mother, as if Time, at least, shrunk
from visiting harshly one for whom such sorrows were reserved.

The face of the countess was so sad in its aspect of calm and sweet
resignation that even the proud Isabel was touched; and kissing her
mother’s hand, she asked if any ill tidings preceded her father’s
coming.

“Alas, my Isabel, the times themselves are bad tidings! Your youth
scarcely remembers the days when brother fought against brother, and
the son’s sword rose against the father’s breast. But I, recalling them,
tremble to hear the faintest murmur that threatens a civil war.” She
paused, and forcing a smile to her lips, added, “Our woman fears must
not, however, sadden our lords with an unwelcome countenance; for men
returning to their hearths have a right to a wife’s smile; and so,
Isabel, thou and I, wives both, must forget the morrow in to-day. Hark!
the trumpets sound near and nearer! let us to the hall.”

Before, however, they had reached the castle, a shrill blast rang at the
outer gate. The portcullis was raised; the young Duke of Clarence, with
a bridegroom’s impatience, spurred alone through the gloomy arch, and
Isabel, catching sight of his countenance lifted towards the ramparts,
uttered a cry, and waved her hand. Clarence beard and saw, leaped from
his steed, and had clasped Isabel to his breast, almost before Anne or
the countess had recognized the new comer.

Isabel, however, always stately, recovered in an instant from the joy
she felt at her lord’s return, and gently escaping his embrace, she
glanced with a blush towards the battlements crowded with retainers;
Clarence caught and interpreted the look.

“Well, belle mere,” he said, turning to the countess, “and if yon
faithful followers do witness with what glee a fair bride inspires
a returning bridegroom, is there cause for shame in this cheek of
damascene?”

“Is the king still with my father?” asked Isabel, hastily, and
interrupting the countess’s reply.

“Surely, yes; and hard at hand. And pardon me that I forgot, dear lady,
to say that my royal brother has announced his intention of addressing
the principal officers of the army in Middleham Hall. This news gave me
fair excuse for hastening to you and Isabel.”

“All is prepared for his highness,” said the countess, “save our own
homage. We must quicken our steps; come, Anne.” The countess took the
arm of the younger sister, while the duchess made a sign to Clarence. He
lingered behind, and Isabel, drawing him aside, asked,

“Is my father reconciled to Edward?”

“No,--nor Edward to him.”

“Good! The king has no soldiers of his own amidst yon armed train?”

“Save a few of Anthony Woodville’s recruits, none. Raoul de Fulke and
St. John have retired to their towers in sullen dudgeon. But have you no
softer questions for my return, bella mia?”

“Pardon me, many--my king.”

“King!”

“What other name should the successor of Edward IV. bear?”

“Isabel,” said Clarence, in great emotion, “what is it you would tempt
me to? Edward IV. spares the life of Henry VI., and shall Edward IV.’s
brother conspire against his own?”

“Saints forefend!” exclaimed Isabel; “can you so wrong my honest
meaning? O George! can you conceive that your wife--Warwick’s
daughter--harbours the thought of murder? No! surely the career before
you seems plain and spotless! Can Edward reign? Deserted by the barons,
and wearing away even my father’s long-credulous love; odious! except
in luxurious and unwarlike London, to all the commons--how reign? What
other choice left? none,--save Henry of Lancaster or George of York.”

“Were it so!” said the weak duke; and yet be added falteringly, “believe
me, Warwick meditates no such changes in my favour.”

“Time is a rapid ripener,” answered Isabel; “but hark! they are lowering
the drawbridge for our guests.”



CHAPTER VIII. THE ANCIENTS RIGHTLY GAVE TO THE GODDESS OF ELOQUENCE A
CROWN.

The lady of Warwick stood at the threshold of the porch, which, in the
inner side of the broad quadrangle, admitted to the apartments used by
the family; and, heading the mighty train that, line after line, emerged
through the grim jaws of the arch, came the earl on his black destrier,
and the young king.

Even where she stood, the anxious chatelaine beheld the moody and gloomy
air with which Edward glanced around the strong walls of the fortress,
and up to the battlements that bristled with the pikes and sallets of
armed men, who looked on the pomp below, in the silence of military
discipline.

“Oh, Anne!” she whispered to her youngest daughter, who stood beside
her, “what are women worth in the strife of men? Would that our smiles
could heal the wounds which a taunt can make in a proud man’s heart!”

Anne, affected and interested by her mother’s words, and with a secret
curiosity to gaze upon the man who ruled on the throne of the prince
she loved, came nearer and more in front; and suddenly, as he turned his
head, the king’s regard rested upon her intent eyes and blooming face.

“Who is that fair donzell, cousin of Warwick?” he asked.

“My daughter, sire.”

“Ah, your youngest!--I have not seen her since she was a child.”

Edward reined in his charger, and the earl threw himself from his selle,
and held the king’s stirrup to dismount. But he did so with a haughty
and unsmiling visage. “I would be the first, sire,” said he, with a
slight emphasis, and as if excusing to himself his condescension, “to
welcome to Middleham the son of Duke Richard.”

“And your suzerain, my lord earl,” added Edward, with no less proud
a meaning, and leaning his hand lightly on Warwick’s shoulder, he
dismounted slowly. “Rise, lady,” he said, raising the countess, who
knelt at the porch, “and you too, fair demoiselle. Pardieu, we envy the
knee that hath knelt to you.” So saying, with royal graciousness, he
took the countess’s hand, and they entered the hall as the musicians, in
the gallery raised above, rolled forth their stormy welcome.

The archbishop, who had followed close to Warwick and the king,
whispered now to his brother,

“Why would Edward address the captains?”

“I know not.”

“He hath made himself familiar with many in the march.”

“Familiarity with a steel casque better becomes a king than waisall with
a greasy flat-cap.”

“You do not fear lest he seduce from the White Bear its retainers?”

“As well fear that he can call the stars from their courses around the
sun.”

While these words were interchanged, the countess conducted the king to
a throne-chair raised upon the dais, by the side of which were placed
two seats of state, and, from the dais, at the same time, advanced the
Duke and Duchess of Clarence. The king prevented their kneeling, and
kissed Isabel slightly and gravely on the forehead. “Thus, noble lady,
I greet the entrance of the Duchess of Clarence into the royalty of
England.”

Without pausing for reply, he passed on and seated himself on the
throne, while Isabel and her husband took possession of the state chairs
on either hand. At a gesture of the king’s the countess and Anne placed
themselves on seats less raised, but still upon the dais. But now
as Edward sat, the hall grew gradually full of lords and knights who
commanded in Warwick’s train, while the earl and the archbishop stood
mute in the centre, the one armed cap-a-pie, leaning on his sword, the
other with his arms folded in his long robes.

The king’s eye, clear, steady, and majestic, roved round that martial
audience, worthy to be a monarch’s war-council, and not one of whom
marched under a monarch’s banner! Their silence, their discipline, the
splendour of their arms, the greater splendour of their noble names,
contrasted painfully with the little mutinous camp of Olney, and the
surly, untried recruits of Anthony Woodville. But Edward, whose step,
whose form, whose aspect, proclaimed the man conscious of his rights to
be lord of all, betrayed not to those around him the kingly pride, the
lofty grief, that swelled within his heart. Still seated, he raised his
left hand to command silence; with the right he replaced his plumed cap
upon his brow.

“Lords and gentlemen,” he said (arrogating to himself at once, as a
thing of course, that gorgeous following), “we have craved leave of our
host to address to you some words,--words which it pleases a king to
utter, and which may not be harsh to the ears of a loyal subject. Nor
will we, at this great current of unsteady fortune, make excuse, noble
ladies, to you, that we speak of war to knighthood, which is ever the
sworn defender of the daughter and the wife,--the daughters and the wife
of our cousin Warwick have too much of hero-blood in their blue veins to
grow pale at the sight of heroes. Comrades in arms! thus far towards our
foe upon the frontier we have marched, without a sword drawn or an arrow
launched from an archer’s bow. We believe that a blessing settles on the
head of a true king, and that the trumpet of a good angel goes before
his path, announcing the victory which awaits him. Here, in the hall of
the Earl of Warwick, our captain-general, we thank you for your cheerful
countenance and your loyal service; and here, as befits a king, we
promise to you those honours a king alone worthily can bestow.” He
paused, and his keen eye glanced from chief to chief as he resumed: “We
are informed that certain misguided and traitor lords have joined
the Rose of Lancaster. Whoever so doth is attainted, life and line,
evermore! His lands and dignities are forfeit to enrich and to ennoble
the men who strike for me. Heaven grant I may have foes eno’ to reward
all my friends! To every baron who owns Edward IV. king (ay, and not
king in name, king in banquet and in bower, but leader and captain in
the war), I trust to give a new barony, to every knight a new knight’s
fee, to every yeoman a hyde of land, to every soldier a year’s pay. What
more I can do, let it be free for any one to suggest,--for my domains of
York are broad, and my heart is larger still!”

A murmur of applause and reverence went round. Vowed, as those warriors
were, to the earl, they felt that A MONARCH was amongst them.

“What say you, then? We are ripe for glory. Three days will we halt at
Middleham, guest to our noble subject.”

“Three days, sire!” repeated Warwick, in a voice of surprise.

“Yes; and this, fair cousin, and ye, lords and gentlemen, is my reason
for the delay. I have despatched Sir William, Lord de Hastings, to
the Duke of Gloucester, with command to join us here (the archbishop
started, but instantly resumed his earnest, placid aspect); to the Lord
Montagu, Earl of Northumberland, to muster all the vassals of our shire
of York. As three streams that dash into the ocean, shall our triple
army meet and rush to the war. Not even, gentlemen, not even to the
great Earl of Warwick will Edward IV. be so beholden for roiaulme and
renown, as to march but a companion to the conquest. If ye were raised
in Warwick’s name, not mine,--why, be it so! I envy him such friends;
but I will have an army of mine own, to show mine English soldiery how
a Plantagenet battles for his crown. Gentlemen, ye are dismissed to your
repose. In three days we march! and if any of you know in these fair
realms the man, be he of York or of Lancaster, more fit to command brave
subjects than he who now addresses you, I say to that man, turn rein,
and leave us! Let tyrants and cowards enforce reluctant service,--my
crown was won by the hearts of my people! Girded by those hearts, let me
reign, or, mourned by them, let me fall! So God and Saint George favour
me as I speak the truth!”

And as the king ceased, he uncovered his head, and kissed the cross
of his sword. A thrill went through the audience. Many were there,
disaffected to his person, and whom Warwick’s influence alone could have
roused to arms; but at the close of an address spirited and loyal in
itself, and borrowing thousand-fold effect by the voice and mien of the
speaker, no feeling but that of enthusiastic loyalty, of almost tearful
admiration, was left in those steel-clad breasts.

As the king lifted on high the cross of his sword, every blade leaped
from its scabbard, and glittered in the air; and the dusty banners in
the hall waved, as to a mighty blast, when, amidst the rattle of armour,
burst forth the universal cry, “Long live Edward IV.! Long live the
king!”

The sweet countess, even amidst the excitement, kept her eyes anxiously
fixed on Warwick, whose countenance, however shaded by the black plumes
of his casque, though the visor was raised, revealed nothing of
his mind. Her daughters were more powerfully affected; for Isabel’s
intellect was not so blinded by her ambition but that the kingliness
of Edward forced itself upon her with a might and solemn weight, which
crushed, for the moment, her aspiring hopes.

Was this the man unfit to reign? This the man voluntarily to resign a
crown? This the man whom George of Clarence, without fratricide, could
succeed? No!--there spoke the soul of the First and the Third Edward!
There shook the mane and there glowed the eye of the indomitable lion
of the august Plantagenets! And the same conviction, rousing softer and
holier sorrow, sat on the heart of Anne; she saw, as for the first time,
clearly before her the awful foe with whom her ill-omened and beloved
prince had to struggle for his throne. In contrast beside that form,
in the prime of manly youth--a giant in its strength, a god in its
beauty--rose the delicate shape of the melancholy boy who, afar in
exile, coupled in his dreams, the sceptre and the bride! By one of those
mysteries which magnetism seeks to explain, in the strong intensity of
her emotions, in the tremor of her shaken nerves, fear seemed to grow
prophetic. A stream as of blood rose up from the dizzy floors. The image
of her young prince, bound and friendless, stood before the throne of
that warrior-king. In the waving glitter of the countless swords raised
on high, she saw the murderous blade against the boy-heir of Lancaster
descend--descend! Her passion, her terror, at the spectre which fancy
thus evoked, seized and overcame her; and ere the last hurrah sent its
hollow echo to the raftered roof, she sank from her chair to the ground,
hueless and insensible as the dead.

The king had not without design permitted the unwonted presence of the
women in this warlike audience,--partly because he was not unaware
of the ambitious spirit of Isabel, partly because he counted on the
affection shown to his boyhood by the countess, who was said to have
singular influence over her lord, but principally because in such a
presence he trusted to avoid all discussion and all questioning, and
to leave the effect of his eloquence, in which he excelled all his
contemporaries, Gloucester alone excepted, single and unimpaired; and
therefore, as he rose, and returned with a majestic bend the acclamation
of the warriors, his eye now turned towards the chairs where the ladies
sat, and he was the first to perceive the swoon of the fair Anne.

With the tender grace that always characterized his service to women, he
descended promptly from his throne, and raised the lifeless form in his
stalwart arms; and Anne, as he bent over her, looked so strangely lovely
in her marble stillness, that even in that hour a sudden thrill shot
through a heart always susceptible to beauty as the harp-string to the
breeze.

“It is but the heat, lady,” said he, to the alarmed countess, “and let
me hope that interest which my fair kinswoman may take in the fortunes
of Warwick and of York, hitherto linked together--”

“May they ever be so!” said Warwick, who, on seeing his daughter’s
state, had advanced hastily to the dais; and, moved by the king’s words,
his late speech, the evils that surrounded his throne, the gentleness
shown to the beloved Anne, forgetting resentment and ceremony alike, he
held out his mailed hand. The king, as he resigned Anne to her mother’s
arms, grasped with soldierly frankness, and with the ready wit of the
cold intellect which reigned beneath the warm manner, the hand thus
extended, and holding still that iron gauntlet in his own ungloved and
jewelled fingers, he advanced to the verge of the dais, to which, in
the confusion occasioned by Anne’s swoon, the principal officers had
crowded, and cried aloud,--

“Behold! Warwick and Edward thus hand in hand, as they stood when the
clarions sounded the charge at Towton! and that link what swords forged
on a mortal’s anvil can rend or sever?”

In an instant every knee there knelt; and Edward exultingly beheld that
what before had been allegiance to the earl was now only homage to the
king.



CHAPTER IX. WEDDED CONFIDENCE AND LOVE--THE EARL AND THE PRELATE--THE
PRELATE AND THE KING--SCHEMES--WILES--AND THE BIRTH OF A DARK THOUGHT
DESTINED TO ECLIPSE A SUN.

While, preparatory to the banquet, Edward, as was then the daily classic
custom, relaxed his fatigues, mental or bodily, in the hospitable bath,
the archbishop sought the closet of the earl.

“Brother,” said he, throwing himself with some petulance into the only
chair the room, otherwise splendid, contained, “when you left me to
seek Edward in the camp of Anthony Woodville, what was the understanding
between us?”

“I know of none,” answered the earl, who having doffed his armour, and
dismissed his squires, leaned thoughtfully against the wall, dressed
for the banquet, with the exception of the short surcoat, which lay
glittering on the tabouret.

“You know of none? Reflect! Have you brought hither Edward as a guest or
as a prisoner?”

The earl knit his brows--“A prisoner, archbishop?”

The prelate regarded him with a cold smile.

“Warwick, you, who would deceive no other man, now seek to deceive
yourself.” The earl drew back, and his hardy countenance grew a shade
paler. The prelate resumed: “You have carried Edward from his camp, and
severed him from his troops; you have placed him in the midst of your
own followers; you have led him, chafing and resentful all the way, to
this impregnable keep; and you now pause, amazed by the grandeur of
your captive,--a man who leads to his home a tiger, a spider who has
entangled a hornet in its web!”

“Nay, reverend brother,” said the earl, calmly, “ye churchmen never know
what passes in the hearts of those who feel and do not scheme. When I
learned that the king had fled to the Woodvilles, that he was bent upon
violating the pledge given in his name to the insurgent commons, I vowed
that he should redeem my honour and his own, or that forever I would
quit his service. And here, within these walls which sheltered his
childhood, I trusted, and trust still, to make one last appeal to his
better reason.”

“For all that, men now, and history hereafter, will consider Edward as
your captive.”

“To living men my words and deeds can clear themselves; and as for
history, let clerks and scholars fool themselves in the lies of
parchment! He who has acted history, despises the gownsmen who sit in
cloistered ease, and write about what they know not.” The earl paused,
and then continued: “I confess, however, that I have had a scheme.
I have wished to convince the king how little his mushroom lords can
bestead him in the storm; and that he holds his crown only from his
barons and his people.”

“That is, from the Lord Warwick!”

“Perhaps I am the personation of both seignorie and people; but I design
this solely for his welfare. Ah, the gallant prince--how well he bore
himself to-day!”

“Ay, when stealing all hearts from thee to him.”

“And, Vive Dieu, I never loved him so well as when he did! Methinks it
was for a day like this that I reared his youth and achieved his crown.
Oh, priest, priest, thou mistakest me. I am rash, hot, haughty, hasty;
and I love not to bow my knees to a man because they call him king, if
his life be vicious and his word be false. But could Edward be ever as
to-day, then indeed should I hail a sovereign whom a baron may reverence
and a soldier serve!”

Before the archbishop could reply, the door gently opened, and the
countess appeared. Warwick seemed glad of the interruption; he turned
quickly--“And how fares my child?”

“Recovered from her strange swoon, and ready to smile at thy return. Oh,
Warwick, thou art reconciled to the king?”

“That glads thee, sister?” said the archbishop.

“Surely. Is it not for my lord’s honour?”

“May he find it so!” said the prelate, and he left the room.

“My priest-brother is chafed,” said the earl, smiling. “Pity he was not
born a trader, he would have made a shrewd hard bargain. Verily, our
priests burn the Jews out of envy! Ah, m’amie, how fair thou art to-day!
Methinks even Isabel’s cheek less blooming.” And the warrior drew the
lady towards him, and smoothed her hair, and tenderly kissed her brow.
“My letter vexed thee, I know, for thou lovest Edward, and blamest me
not for my love to him. It is true that he hath paltered with me, and
that I had stern resolves, not against his crown, but to leave him to
his fate, and in these halls to resign my charge. But while he spoke,
and while he looked, methought I saw his mother’s face, and heard his
dear father’s tone, and the past rushed over me, and all wrath was gone.
Sonless myself, why would he not be my son?” The earl’s voice trembled,
and the tears stood in his dark eyes.

“Speak thus, dear lord, to Isabel, for I fear her overvaulting spirit--”

“Ah, had Isabel been his wife!” he paused and moved away. Then, as
if impatient to escape the thoughts that tended to an ungracious
recollection, he added, “And now, sweetheart, these slight fingers have
ofttimes buckled on my mail; let them place on my breast this badge of
St. George’s chivalry; and, if angry thoughts return, it shall remind me
that the day on which I wore it first, Richard of York said to his young
Edward, ‘Look to that star, boy, if ever, in cloud and trouble, thou
wouldst learn what safety dwells in the heart which never knew deceit.’”

During the banquet, the king, at whose table sat only the Duke of
Clarence and the earl’s family, was gracious as day to all, but
especially to the Lady Anne, attributing her sudden illness to some
cause not unflattering to himself; her beauty, which somewhat resembled
that of the queen, save that it had more advantage of expression and
of youth, was precisely of the character he most admired. Even her
timidity, and the reserve with which she answered him, had their charms;
for, like many men, themselves of imperious nature and fiery will,
he preferred even imbecility in a woman to whatever was energetic or
determined; and hence perhaps his indifference to the more dazzling
beauty of Isabel. After the feast, the numerous demoiselles, high-born
and fair, who swelled the more than regal train of the countess, were
assembled in the long gallery, which was placed in the third story
of the castle and served for the principal state apartment. The dance
began; but Isabel excused herself from the pavon, and the king led
out the reluctant and melancholy Anne. The proud Isabel, who had
never forgiven Edward’s slight to herself, resented deeply his evident
admiration of her sister, and conversed apart with the archbishop, whose
subtle craft easily drew from her lips confessions of an ambition higher
even than his own. He neither encouraged nor dissuaded; he thought
there were things more impossible than the accession of Clarence to the
throne, but he was one who never plotted,--save for himself and for the
Church.

As the revel waned, the prelate approached the earl, who, with that
remarkable courtesy which charmed those below his rank and contrasted
with his haughtiness to his peers, had well played amongst his knights
the part of host, and said, in a whisper, “Edward is in a happy
mood--let us lose it not. Will you trust me to settle all differences
ere he sleep? Two proud men never can agree without a third of a gentler
temper.”

“You are right,” said Warwick, smiling; “yet the danger is that I should
rather concede too much than be too stubborn. But look you, all I demand
is satisfaction to mine own honour and faith to the army I disbanded in
the king’s name.”

“All!” muttered the archbishop, as he turned away, “but that call is
everything to provoke quarrel for you, and nothing to bring power to
me!”

The earl and the archbishop attended the king to his chamber, and after
Edward was served with the parting refection, or livery, the earl said,
with his most open smile, “Sire, there are yet affairs between us; whom
will you confer with,--me or the archbishop?”

“Oh, the archbishop, by all means, fair cousin,” cried Edward, no less
frankly; “for if you and I are left alone, the Saints help both of
us!--when flint and steel meet, fire flies, and the house may burn.”

The earl half smiled at the candour, half sighed at the levity, of the
royal answer, and silently left the room. The king, drawing round him
his loose dressing-robe, threw himself upon the gorgeous coverlid of the
bed, and lying at lazy length, motioned to the prelate to seat himself
at the foot. The archbishop obeyed. Edward raised himself on his elbow,
and, by the light of seven gigantic tapers, set in sconces of massive
silver, the priest and the king gravely gazed on each other without
speaking.

At last Edward, bursting into his hale, clear, silvery laugh, said,
“Confess, dear sir and cousin,--confess that we are like two skilful
masters of Italian fence, each fearing to lay himself open by commencing
the attack.”

“Certes,” quoth the archbishop, “your Grace over-estimates my vanity, in
opining that I deemed myself equal to so grand a duello. If there were
dispute between us, I should only win by baring my bosom.”

The king’s bow-like lip curved with a slight sneer, quickly replaced by
a serious and earnest expression. “Let us leave word-making, and to
the point, George. Warwick is displeased because I will not abandon my
wife’s kindred; you, with more reason, because I have taken from your
hands the chancellor’s great seal--”

“For myself, I humbly answer that your Grace errs. I never coveted other
honours than those of the Church.”

“Ay,” said Edward, keenly examining the young prelate’s smooth face, “is
it so? Yes, now I begin to comprehend thee. What offence have I given
to the Church? Have I suffered the law too much to sleep against the
Lollards. If so, blame Warwick.”

“On the contrary, sire, unlike other priests, I have ever deemed that
persecution heals no schism. Blow not dying embers. Rather do I think
of late that too much severity hath helped to aid, by Lollard bows and
pikes, the late rising. My lady, the queen’s mother, unjustly accused of
witchcraft, hath sought to clear herself, and perhaps too zealously, in
exciting your Grace against that invisible giant yclept heresy.”

“Pass on,” said Edward. “It is not then indifference to the ecclesia
that you complain of. Is it neglect of the ecclesiastic? Ha, ha! you
and I, though young, know the colours that make up the patchwork world.
Archbishop, I love an easy life; if your brother and his friends will
but give me that, let them take all else. Again, I say, to the point,--I
cannot banish my lady’s kindred, but I will bind your House still more
to mine. I have a daughter, failing male issue, the heiress to my crown.
I will betroth her to your nephew, my beloved Montagu’s son. They are
children yet, but their ages not unsuited. And when I return to London,
young Nevile shall be Duke of Bedford, a title hitherto reserved to the
royal race. [And indeed there was but one Yorkist duke then in England
out of the royal family,--namely, the young boy Buckingham, who
afterwards vainly sought to bend the Ulysses bow of Warwick against
Richard III.] Let that be a pledge of peace between the queen’s mother,
bearing the same honours, and the House of Nevile, to which they pass.”

The cheek of the archbishop flushed with proud pleasure; he bowed his
head, and Edward, ere he could answer, went on: “Warwick is already
so high that, pardie, I have no other step to give him, save my throne
itself, and, God’s truth, I would rather be Lord Warwick than King
of England! But for you--listen--our only English cardinal is old and
sickly; whenever he pass to Abraham’s bosom, who but you should have
the suffrage of the holy college? Thou knowest that I am somewhat in
the good favour of the sovereign pontiff. Command me to the utmost.
Now, George, are we friends?” The archbishop kissed the gracious hand
extended to him, and, surprised to find, as by magic, all his schemes
frustrated by sudden acquiescence in the objects of them all, his
voice faltered with real emotion as he gave vent to his gratitude.
But abruptly he checked himself, his brow lowered, and with a bitter
remembrance of his brother’s plain, blunt sense of honour, he said,
“Yet, alas! my liege, in all this there is nought to satisfy our
stubborn host.”

“By dear Saint George and my father’s head!” exclaimed Edward,
reddening, and starting to his feet, “what would the man have?”

“You know,” answered the archbishop, “that Warwick’s pride is only
roused when he deems his honour harmed. Unhappily, as he thinks, by your
Grace’s full consent, he pledged himself to the insurgents of Olney to
the honourable dismissal of the lords of the Woodville race. And unless
this be conceded, I fear me that all else he will reject, and the love
between ye can be but hollow!”

Edward took but three strides across the chamber, and then halted
opposite the archbishop, and lay both hands on his shoulders, as,
looking him full in the face, he said, “Answer me frankly, am I a
prisoner in these towers or not?”

“Not, sire.”

“You palter with me, priest. I have been led hither against my will.
I am almost without an armed retinue. I am at the earl’s mercy. This
chamber might be my grave, and this couch my bed of death.”

“Holy Mother! Can you think so of Warwick? Sire, you freeze my blood.”

“Well, then, if I refuse to satisfy Warwick’s pride, and disdain to give
up loyal servants to rebel insolence, what will Warwick do? Speak out,
archbishop.”

“I fear me, sire, that he will resign all office, whether of peace or
war. I fear me that the goodly army now at sleep within and around these
walls will vanish into air, and that your Highness will stand alone
amidst new men, and against the disaffection of the whole land!”

Edward’s firm hand trembled. The prelate continued, with a dry, caustic
smile,--

“Sire, Sir Anthony Woodville, now Lord Rivers, has relieved you of
all embarrassment; no doubt, my Lord Dorset and his kinsmen will be
chevaliers enough to do the same. The Duchess of Bedford will but
suit the decorous usage to retire a while into privacy, to mourn her
widowhood. And when a year is told, if these noble persons reappear at
court, your word and the earl’s will at least have been kept.”

“I understand thee,” said the king, half laughing; “but I have my pride
as well as Warwick. To concede this point is to humble the conceder.”

“I have thought how to soothe all things, and without humbling either
party. Your Grace’s mother is dearly beloved by Warwick and revered by
all. Since your marriage she hath lived secluded from all state affairs.
As so nearly akin to Warwick, so deeply interested in your Grace, she is
a fitting mediator in all disputes. Be they left to her to arbitrate.”

“Ah, cunning prelate, thou knowest how my proud mother hates the
Woodvilles; thou knowest how her judgment will decide.”

“Perhaps so; but at least your Grace will be spared all pain and all
abasement.”

“Will Warwick consent to this?”

“I trust so.”

“Learn, and report to me. Enough for to-night’s conference.” Edward was
left alone, and his mind ran rapidly over the field of action open to
him.

“I have half won the earl’s army,” he thought; “but it would be to
lose all hold in their hearts again, if they knew that these unhappy
Woodvilles were the cause of a second breach between us. Certes, the
Lancastrians are making strong head! Certes, the times must be played
with and appeased! And yet these poor gentlemen love me after my own
fashion, and not with the bear’s hug of that intolerable earl. How came
the grim man by so fair a daughter? Sweet Anne! I caught her eye often
fixed on me, and with a soft fear which my heart beat loud to read
aright. Verily, this is the fourth week I have passed without hearing
a woman’s sigh! What marvel that so fair a face enamours me! Would
that Warwick made her his ambassador; and yet it were all over with
the Woodvilles if he did! These men know not how to manage me, and
well-a-day, that task is easy eno’ to women!” He laughed gayly to
himself as he thus concluded his soliloquy, and extinguished the tapers.
But rest did not come to his pillow; and after tossing to and fro for
some time in vain search for sleep, he rose and opened his casement to
cool the air which the tapers had overheated. In a single casement, in a
broad turret, projecting from an angle in the building, below the tower
in which his chamber was placed, the king saw a solitary light
burning steadily. A sight so unusual at such an hour surprised him.
“Peradventure, the wily prelate,” thought he. “Cunning never sleeps.”
 But a second look showed him the very form that chased his slumbers.
Beside the casement, which was partially open, he saw the soft profile
of the Lady Anne; it was bent downwards; and what with the clear
moonlight, and the lamp within her chamber, he could see distinctly that
she was weeping. “Ah, Anne,” muttered the amorous king, “would that I
were by to kiss away those tears!” While yet the unholy wish murmured on
his lips, the lady rose. The fair hand, that seemed almost transparent
in the moonlight, closed the casement; and though the light lingered for
some minutes ere it left the dark walls of the castle without other sign
of life than the step of the sentry, Anne was visible no more.

“Madness! madness! madness!” again murmured the king. “These Neviles are
fatal to me in all ways,--in hatred or in love!”



BOOK VIII. IN WHICH THE LAST LINK BETWEEN KING-MAKER AND KING SNAPS
ASUNDER.



CHAPTER I. THE LADY ANNE VISITS THE COURT.

It was some weeks after the date of the events last recorded. The storm
that hung over the destinies of King Edward was dispersed for the hour,
though the scattered clouds still darkened the horizon: the Earl of
Warwick had defeated the Lancastrians on the frontier, [Croyl. 552] and
their leader had perished on the scaffold; but Edward’s mighty sword had
not shone in the battle. Chained by an attraction yet more powerful than
slaughter, he had lingered at Middleham, while Warwick led his army to
York; and when the earl arrived at the capital of Edward’s ancestral
duchy, he found that the able and active Hastings--having heard, even
before he reached the Duke of Gloucester’s camp, of Edward’s apparent
seizure by the earl and the march to Middleham--had deemed it best
to halt at York, and to summon in all haste a council of such of the
knights and barons as either love to the king or envy to Warwick could
collect. The report was general that Edward was retained against his
will at Middleham; and this rumour Hastings gravely demanded Warwick,
on the arrival of the latter at York, to disprove. The earl, to clear
himself from a suspicion that impeded all his military movements,
despatched Lord Montagu to Middleham, who returned not only with the
king, but the countess and her daughters, whom Edward, under pretence
of proving the complete amity that existed between Warwick and himself,
carried in his train. The king’s appearance at York reconciled all
differences; but he suffered Warwick to march alone against the enemy,
and not till after the decisive victory, which left his reign for a
while without an open foe, did he return to London.

Thither the earl, by the advice of his friends, also repaired, and in
a council of peers, summoned for the purpose, deigned to refute the
rumours still commonly circulated by his foes, and not disbelieved
by the vulgar, whether of his connivance at the popular rising or his
forcible detention of the king at Middleham. To this, agreeably to the
counsel of the archbishop, succeeded a solemn interview of the heads of
the Houses of York and Warwick, in which the once fair Rose of Raby (the
king’s mother) acted as mediator and arbiter. The earl’s word to
the commons at Olney was ratified. Edward consented to the temporary
retirement of the Woodvilles, though the gallant Anthony yet delayed his
pilgrimage to Compostella. The vanity of Clarence was contented by the
government of Ireland, but, under various pretences, Edward deferred
his brother’s departure to that important post. A general amnesty was
proclaimed, a parliament summoned for the redress of popular grievances,
and the betrothal of the king’s daughter to Montagu’s heir was
proclaimed: the latter received the title of Duke of Bedford; and the
whole land rejoiced in the recovered peace of the realm, the retirement
of the Woodvilles, and the reconciliation of the young king with his
all-beloved subject. Never had the power of the Neviles seemed so
secure; never did the throne of Edward appear so stable.

It was at this time that the king prevailed upon the earl and his
countess to permit the Lady Anne to accompany the Duchess of Clarence
in a visit to the palace of the Tower. The queen had submitted so
graciously to the humiliation of her family, that even the haughty
Warwick was touched and softened; and the visit of his daughter at such
a time became a homage to Elizabeth which it suited his chivalry to
render.

The public saw in this visit, which was made with great state and
ceremony, the probability of a new and popular alliance. The archbishop
had suffered the rumour of Gloucester’s attachment to the Lady Anne to
get abroad, and the young prince’s return from the North was anxiously
expected by the gossips of the day.

It was on this occasion that Warwick showed his gratitude for Marmaduke
Nevile’s devotion. “My dear and gallant kinsman,” he said, “I forget not
that when thou didst leave the king and the court for the discredited
minister and his gloomy hall,--I forget not that thou didst tell me
of love to some fair maiden, which had not prospered according to thy
merits. At least it shall not be from lack of lands, or of the gold
spur, which allows the wearer to ride by the side of king or kaisar,
that thou canst not choose thy bride as the heart bids thee. I pray
thee, sweet cousin, to attend my child Anne to the court, where the king
will show thee no ungracious countenance; but it is just to recompense
thee for the loss of thy post in his highness’s chamber. I hold the
king’s commission to make knights of such as can pay the fee, and
thy lands shall suffice for the dignity. Kneel down and rise up, Sir
Marmaduke Nevile, lord of the Manor of Borrodaile, with its woodlands
and its farms, and may God and our Lady render thee puissant in battle
and prosperous in love!”

Accordingly, in his new rank, and entitled to ruffle it with the
bravest, Sir Marmaduke Nevile accompanied the earl and the Lady Anne to
the palace of the Tower.

As Warwick, leaving his daughter amidst the brilliant circle that
surrounded Elizabeth, turned to address the king, he said, with simple
and unaffected nobleness,--

“Ah, my liege, if you needed a hostage of my faith, think that my heart
is here, for verily its best blood were less dear to me than that slight
girl,--the likeness of her mother, when her lips first felt the touch of
mine!”

Edward’s bold brow fell, and he blushed as he answered, “My Elizabeth
will hold her as a sister. But, cousin, part you not now for the North?”

“By your leave I go first to Warwick.”

“Ah, you do not wish to approve of my seeming preparations against
France?”

“Nay, your Highness is not in earnest. I promised the commons that you
would need no supplies for so thriftless a war.”

“Thou knowest I mean to fulfil all thy pledges. But the country so
swarms with disbanded soldiers, that it is politic to hold out to them a
hope of service, and so let the clouds gradually pass away.”

“Alack, my liege,” said Warwick, gravely, “I suppose that a crown
teaches the brow to scheme; but hearty peace or open war seems ever the
best to me.”

Edward smiled, and turned aside. Warwick glanced at his daughter, whom
Elizabeth flatteringly caressed, stifled a sigh, and the air seemed
lighter to the insects of the court as his proud crest bowed beneath the
doorway, and, with the pomp of his long retinue, he vanished from the
scene.

“And choose, fair Anne,” said the queen, “choose from my ladies whom
you will have for your special train. We would not that your attendance
should be less than royal.”

The gentle Anne in vain sought to excuse herself from an honour at once
arrogant and invidious, though too innocent to perceive the cunning
so characteristic of the queen; for, under the guise of a special
compliment, Anne had received the royal request to have her female
attendants chosen from the court, and Elizabeth now desired to
force upon her a selection which could not fail to mortify those not
preferred. But glancing timidly round the circle, the noble damsel’s eye
rested on one fair face, and in that face there was so much that awoke
her own interest, and stirred up a fond and sad remembrance, that she
passed involuntarily to the stranger’s side, and artlessly took her
hand. The high-born maidens, grouped around, glanced at each other with
a sneer, and slunk back. Even the queen looked surprised; but recovering
herself, inclined her head graciously, and said, “Do we read your
meaning aright, Lady Anne, and would you this gentlewoman, Mistress
Sibyll Warner, as one of your chamber?”

“Sibyll, ah, I knew that my memory failed me not,” murmured Anne; and,
after bowing assent to the queen, she said, “Do you not also recall,
fair demoiselle, our meeting, when children long years ago?”

“Well, noble dame,” [The title of dame was at that time applied
indiscriminately to ladies whether married or single, if of high birth.]
answered Sibyll. And as Anne turned, with her air of modest gentleness,
yet of lofty birth and breeding, to explain to the queen that she had
met Sibyll in earlier years, the king approached to monopolize his
guest’s voice and ear. It seemed natural to all present that Edward
should devote peculiar attention to the daughter of Warwick and the
sister of the Duchess of Clarence; and even Elizabeth suspected no
guiltier gallantry in the subdued voice, the caressing manner, which
her handsome lord adopted throughout that day, even to the close of the
nightly revel, towards a demoiselle too high (it might well appear) for
licentious homage.

But Anne herself, though too guileless to suspect the nature of Edward’s
courtesy, yet shrank from it in vague terror. All his beauty, all his
fascination, could not root from her mind the remembrance of the exiled
prince; nay, the brilliancy of his qualities made her the more averse
to him. It darkened the prospects of Edward of Lancaster that Edward
of York should wear so gracious and so popular a form. She hailed with
delight the hour when she was conducted to her chamber, and dismissing
gently the pompous retinue allotted to her, found herself alone with the
young maiden whom she had elected to her special service.

“And you remember me, too, fair Sibyll?” said Anne, with her dulcet and
endearing voice.

“Truly, who would not? for as you, then, noble lady, glided apart from
the other children, hand in hand with the young prince, in whom all
dreamed to see their future king, I heard the universal murmur of--a
false prophecy!”

“Ah! and of what?” asked Anne.

“That in the hand the prince clasped with his small rosy fingers--the
hand of great Warwick’s daughter--lay the best defence of his father’s
throne.”

Anne’s breast heaved, and her small foot began to mark strange
characters on the floor.

“So,” she said musingly, “so even here, amidst a new court, you forget
not Prince Edward of Lancaster. Oh, we shall find hours to talk of the
past days. But how, if your childhood was spent in Margaret’s court,
does your youth find a welcome in Elizabeth’s?”

“Avarice and power had need of my father’s science. He is a scholar of
good birth, but fallen fortunes, even now, and ever while night lasts,
he is at work. I belonged to the train of her grace of Bedford; but when
the duchess quitted the court, and the king retained my father in his
own royal service, her highness the queen was pleased to receive me
among her maidens. Happy that my father’s home is mine!--who else could
tend him?”

“Thou art his only child?--he must--love thee dearly?”

“Yet not as I love him; he lives in a life apart from all else that
live. But after all, peradventure it is sweeter to love than to be
loved.”

Anne, whose nature was singularly tender and woman-like, was greatly
affected by this answer. She drew nearer to Sibyll; she twined her arm
round her slight form, and kissed her forehead.

“Shall I love thee, Sibyll?” she said, with a girl’s candid simplicity,
“and wilt thou love me?”

“Ah, lady! there are so many to love thee,--father, mother, sister,--all
the world; the very sun shines more kindly upon the great!”

“Nay!” said Anne, with that jealousy of a claim to suffering to which
the gentler natures are prone, “I may have sorrows from which thou
art free. I confess to thee, Sibyll, that something I know not how to
explain draws me strangely towards thy sweet face. Marriage has lost me
my only sister, for since Isabel is wed she is changed to me--would that
her place were supplied by thee! Shall I steal thee from the queen when
I depart? Ah, my mother--at least thou wilt love her! for verily, to
love my mother you have but to breathe the same air. Kiss me, Sibyll.”

Kindness, of late, had been strange to Sibyll, especially from her own
sex, one of her own age; it came like morning upon the folded blossom.
She threw her arms round the new friend that seemed sent to her from
heaven; she kissed Anne’s face and hands with grateful tears.

“Ah!” she said at last, when she could command a voice still broken with
emotion--“if I could ever serve--ever repay thee--though those gracious
words were the last thy lips should ever deign to address to me!”

Anne was delighted; she had never yet found one to protect; she had
never yet found one in whom thoroughly to confide. Gentle as her mother
was, the distinction between child and parent was, even in the fond
family she belonged to, so great in that day, that she could never have
betrayed to the countess the wild weakness of her young heart.

The wish to communicate, to reveal, is so natural to extreme youth, and
in Anne that disposition was so increased by a nature at once open and
inclined to lean on others, that she had, as we have seen, sought a
confidante in Isabel; but with her, even at the first, she found but
the half-contemptuous pity of a strong and hard mind; and lately, since
Edward’s visit to Middleham, the Duchess of Clarence had been so rapt in
her own imperious egotism and discontented ambition, that the timid
Anne had not even dared to touch, with her, upon those secrets which it
flushed her own bashful cheek to recall. And this visit to the
court, this new, unfamiliar scene, this estrangement from all the old
accustomed affections, had produced in her that sense of loneliness
which is so irksome, till grave experience of real life accustoms us to
the common lot. So with the exaggerated and somewhat morbid sensibility
that belonged to her, she turned at once, and by impulse, to this
sudden, yet graceful friendship. Here was one of her own age, one who
had known sorrow, one whose voice and eyes charmed her, one who would
not chide even folly, one, above all, who had seen her beloved prince,
one associated with her fondest memories, one who might have a thousand
tales to tell of the day when the outlaw boy was a monarch’s heir. In
the childishness of her soft years, she almost wept at another channel
for so much natural tenderness. It was half the woman gaining a
woman-friend, half the child clinging to a new playmate.

“Ah, Sibyll,” she whispered, “do not leave me to-night; this strange
place daunts me, and the figures on the arras seem so tall and
spectre-like, and they say the old tower is haunted. Stay, dear Sibyll!”

And Sibyll stayed.



CHAPTER II. THE SLEEPING INNOCENCE--THE WAKEFUL CRIME.

While these charming girls thus innocently conferred; while, Anne’s
sweet voice running on in her artless fancies, they helped each other to
undress; while hand in hand they knelt in prayer by the crucifix in
the dim recess; while timidly they extinguished the light, and stole to
rest; while, conversing in whispers, growing gradually more faint and
low, they sank into guileless sleep,--the unholy king paced his solitary
chamber, parched with the fever of the sudden and frantic passion that
swept away from a heart in which every impulse was a giant all the
memories of honour, gratitude, and law.

The mechanism of this strong man’s nature was that almost unknown to the
modern time; it belonged to those earlier days which furnish to Greece
the terrible legends Ovid has clothed in gloomy fire, which a similar
civilization produced no less in the Middle Ages, whether of Italy or
the North,--that period when crime took a grandeur from its excess; when
power was so great and absolute that its girth burst the ligaments of
conscience; when a despot was but the incarnation of WILL; when honour
was indeed a religion, but its faith was valour, and it wrote its
decalogue with the point of a fearless sword.

The youth of Edward IV. was as the youth of an ancient Titan, of an
Italian Borgia; through its veins the hasty blood rolled as a devouring
flame. This impetuous and fiery temperament was rendered yet more
fearful by the indulgence of every intemperance; it fed on wine and
lust; its very virtues strengthened its vices,--its courage stifled
every whisper of prudence; its intellect, uninured to all discipline,
taught it to disdain every obstacle to its desires. Edward could,
indeed, as we have seen, be false and crafty, a temporizer, a
dissimulator; but it was only as the tiger creeps,--the better to
spring, undetected, on its prey. If detected, the cunning ceased, the
daring rose, and the mighty savage had fronted ten thousand foes, secure
in its fangs and talons, its bold heart and its deadly spring. Hence,
with all Edward’s abilities, the astonishing levities and indiscretions
of his younger years. It almost seemed, as we have seen him play fast
and loose with the might of Warwick, and with that power, whether of
barons or of people, which any other prince of half his talents would
have trembled to arouse against an unrooted throne,--it almost seemed
as if he loved to provoke a danger for the pleasure it gave the brain
to baffle or the hand to crush it. His whole nature coveting excitement,
nothing was left to the beautiful, the luxurious Edward, already wearied
with pomp and pleasure, but what was unholy and forbidden. In his court
were a hundred ladies, perhaps not less fair than Anne, at least of a
beauty more commanding the common homage, but these he had only to smile
on with ease to win. No awful danger, no inexpiable guilt, attended
those vulgar frailties, and therefore they ceased to tempt. But here
the virgin guest, the daughter of his mightiest subject, the beloved
treasure of the man whose hand had built a throne, whose word had
dispersed an army--here, the more the reason warned, the conscience
started, the more the hell-born passion was aroused.

Like men of his peculiar constitution, Edward was wholly incapable of
pure and steady love. His affection for his queen the most resembled
that diviner affection; but when analyzed, it was composed of feelings
widely distinct. From a sudden passion, not otherwise to be gratified,
he had made the rashest sacrifices for an unequal marriage. His vanity,
and something of original magnanimity, despite his vices, urged him to
protect what he himself had raised,--to secure the honour of the subject
who was honoured by the king. In common with most rude and powerful
natures, he was strongly alive to the affections of a father, and the
faces of his children helped to maintain the influence of the mother.
But in all this, we need scarcely say that that true love, which is at
once a passion and a devotion, existed not. Love with him cared not for
the person loved, but solely for its own gratification; it was desire
for possession,--nothing more. But that desire was the will of a king
who never knew fear or scruple; and, pampered by eternal indulgence,
it was to the feeble lusts of common men what the storm is to the west
wind. Yet still, as in the solitude of night he paced his chamber, the
shadow of the great crime advancing upon his soul appalled even that
dauntless conscience. He gasped for breath; his cheeks flushed crimson,
and the next moment grew deadly pale. He heard the loud beating of his
heart. He stopped still. He flung himself on a seat, and hid his face
with his hands; then starting up, he exclaimed, “No, no! I cannot shut
out that sweet face, those blue eyes from my gaze. They haunt me to my
destruction and her own. Yet why say destruction? If she love me, who
shall know the deed? If she love me not, will she dare to reveal her
shame? Shame!--nay, a king’s embrace never dishonours. A king’s bastard
is a House’s pride. All is still,--the very moon vanishes from heaven.
The noiseless rushes in the gallery give no echo to the footstep. Fie on
me! Can a Plantagenet know fear?” He allowed himself no further time to
pause; he opened the door gently and stole along the gallery. He knew
well the chamber, for it was appointed by his command, and, besides the
usual door from the corridor, a small closet conducted to a secret panel
behind the arras. It was the apartment occupied, in her visits to the
court, by the queen’s rival, the Lady Elizabeth Lucy. He passed into the
closet; he lifted the arras; he stood in that chamber, which gratitude
and chivalry and hospitable faith should have made sacred as a shrine.
And suddenly, as he entered, the moon, before hid beneath a melancholy
cloud, broke forth in awful splendour, and her light rushed through
the casement opposite his eye, and bathed the room with the beams of a
ghostlier day.

The abruptness of the solemn and mournful glory scared him as the
rebuking face of a living thing; a presence as if not of earth seemed to
interpose between the victim and the guilt. It was, however, but for a
moment that his step halted. He advanced: he drew aside the folds of
the curtain heavy with tissue of gold, and the sleeping face of Anne
lay hushed before him. It looked pale in the moonlight, but ineffably
serene, and the smile on its lips seemed still sweeter than that which
it wore awake. So fixed was his gaze, so ardently did his whole heart
and being feed through his eyes upon that exquisite picture of innocence
and youth, that he did not see for some moments that the sleeper was not
alone. Suddenly an exclamation rose to his lips. He clenched his hand
in jealous agony; he approached; he bent over; he heard the regular
breathing which the dreams of guilt never know; and then, when he saw
that pure and interlaced embrace,--the serene yet somewhat melancholy
face of Sibyll, which seemed hueless as marble in the moonlight, bending
partially over that of Anne, as if even in sleep watchful; both charming
forms so linked and woven that the two seemed as one life, the very
breath in each rising and ebbing with the other; the dark ringlets of
Sibyll mingling with the auburn gold of Anne’s luxuriant hair, and the
darkness and the gold, tress within tress, falling impartially over
either neck, that gleamed like ivory beneath that common veil,--when
he saw this twofold loveliness, the sentiment, the conviction of that
mysterious defence which exists in purity, thrilled like ice through his
burning veins. In all his might of monarch and of man, he felt the awe
of that unlooked-for protection,--maidenhood sheltering maidenhood,
innocence guarding innocence. The double virtue appalled and baffled
him; and that slight arm which encircled the neck he would have perilled
his realm to clasp, shielded his victim more effectually than the
bucklers of all the warriors that ever gathered round the banner of the
lofty Warwick. Night and the occasion befriended him; but in vain. While
Sibyll was there, Anne was saved. He ground his teeth, and muttered to
himself. At that moment Anne turned restlessly. This movement disturbed
the light sleep of her companion. She spoke half inaudibly, but the
sound was as the hoot of shame in the ear of the guilty king. He let
fall the curtain, and was gone. And if one who lived afterwards to hear
and to credit the murderous doom which, unless history lies, closed the
male line of Edward, had beheld the king stealing, felon-like, from
the chamber,--his step reeling to and fro the gallery floors, his face
distorted by stormy passion, his lips white and murmuring, his beauty
and his glory dimmed and humbled,--the spectator might have half
believed that while Edward gazed upon those harmless sleepers, A VISION
OF THE TRAGEDY TO COME had stricken down his thought of guilt, and
filled up its place with horror,--a vision of a sleep as pure, of two
forms wrapped in an embrace as fond, of intruders meditating a crime
scarce fouler than his own; and the sins of the father starting into
grim corporeal shapes, to become the deathsmen of the sons!



CHAPTER III. NEW DANGERS TO THE HOUSE OF YORK--AND THE KING’S HEART
ALLIES ITSELF WITH REBELLION AGAINST THE KING’S THRONE.

Oh, beautiful is the love of youth to youth, and touching the tenderness
of womanhood to woman; and fair in the eyes of the happy sun is the
waking of holy sleep, and the virgin kiss upon virgin lips smiling and
murmuring the sweet “Good-morrow!”

Anne was the first to wake; and as the bright winter morn, robust with
frosty sunbeams shone cheerily upon Sibyll’s face, she was struck with
a beauty she had not sufficiently observed the day before; for in the
sleep of the young the traces of thought and care vanish, the aching
heart is lulled in the body’s rest, the hard lines relax into flexile
ease, a softer, warmer bloom steals over the cheek, and, relieved
from the stiff restraints of dress, the rounded limbs repose in a more
alluring grace! Youth seems younger in its slumber, and beauty more
beautiful, and purity more pure. Long and dark, the fringe of the
eyelash rested upon the white lids, and the freshness of the parting
pouted lips invited the sister kiss that wakened up the sleeper.

“Ah, lady,” said Sibyll, parting her tresses from her dark blue eyes,
“you are here, you are safe!--blessed be the saints and our Lady! for I
had a dream in the night that startled and appalled me.”

“And my dreams were all blithe and golden,” said Anne. “What was thine?”

“Methought you were asleep and in this chamber, and I not by your side,
but watching you at a little distance; and lo! a horrible serpent glided
from yon recess, and, crawling to your pillow, I heard its hiss, and
strove to come to your aid, but in vain; a spell seemed to chain my
limbs. At last I found voice, I cried aloud, I woke; and mock me not,
but I surely heard a parting footstep, and the low grating of some
sliding door.”

“It was the dream’s influence, enduring beyond the dream. I have often
felt it so,--nay, even last night; for I, too, dreamed of another,
dreamed that I stood by the altar with one far away, and when I
woke--for I woke also--it was long before I could believe it was thy
hand I held, and thine arm that embraced me.”

The young friends rose, and their toilet was scarcely ended, when again
appeared in the chamber all the stateliness of retinue allotted to the
Lady Anne. Sibyll turned to depart. “And whither go you?” asked Anne.

“To visit my father; it is my first task on rising,” returned Sibyll, in
a whisper.

“You must let me visit him, too, at a later hour. Find me here an hour
before noon, Sibyll.”

The early morning was passed by Anne in the queen’s company. The
refection, the embroidery frame, the closheys, filled up the hours.
The Duchess of Clarence had left the palace with her lord to visit
the king’s mother at Baynard’s Castle; and Anne’s timid spirits were
saddened by the strangeness of the faces round her, and Elizabeth’s
habitual silence. There was something in the weak and ill-fated queen
that ever failed to conciliate friends. Though perpetually striving to
form and create a party, she never succeeded in gaining confidence
or respect. And no one raised so high was ever left so friendless as
Elizabeth, when, in her awful widowhood, her dowry home became the
sanctuary. All her power was but the shadow of her husband’s royal sun,
and vanished when the orb prematurely set; yet she had all gifts of
person in her favour, and a sleek smoothness of manner that seemed to
the superficial formed to win; but the voice was artificial, and the
eye cold and stealthy. About her formal precision there was an
eternal consciousness of self, a breathing egotism. Her laugh was
displeasing,--cynical, not mirthful; she had none of that forgetfulness
of self, that warmth when gay, that earnestness when sad, which create
sympathy. Her beauty was without loveliness, her character without
charm; every proportion in her form might allure the sensualist; but
there stopped the fascination. The mind was trivial, though cunning
and dissimulating; and the very evenness of her temper seemed but
the clockwork of a heart insensible to its own movements. Vain in
prosperity, what wonder that she was so abject in misfortune? What
wonder that even while, in later and gloomier years, [Grafton, 806]
accusing Richard III. of the murder of her royal sons, and knowing him,
at least, the executioner of her brother and her child by the bridegroom
of her youth, [Anthony Lord Rivers, and Lord Richard Gray. Not the least
instance of the frivolity of Elizabeth’s mind is to be found in her
willingness, after all the woes of her second widowhood, and when she
was not very far short of sixty years old, to take a third husband,
James III., of Scotland,--a marriage prevented only by the death of the
Scotch king.] she consented to send her daughters to his custody, though
subjected to the stain of illegitimacy, and herself only recognized as
the harlot?

The king, meanwhile, had ridden out betimes alone, and no other of the
male sex presumed in his absence to invade the female circle. It was
with all a girl’s fresh delight that Anne escaped at last to her own
chamber, where she found Sibyll; and, with her guidance, she threaded
the gloomy mazes of the Tower. “Let me see,” she whispered, “before we
visit your father, let me see the turret in which the unhappy Henry is
confined.”

And Sibyll led her through the arch of that tower, now called “The
Bloody,” and showed her the narrow casement deep sunk in the mighty
wall, without which hung the starling in the cage, basking its plumes in
the wintry sun. Anne gazed with that deep interest and tender reverence
which the parent of the man she loves naturally excites in a woman; and
while thus standing sorrowful and silent, the casement was unbarred,
and she saw the mild face of the human captive; he seemed to talk to
the bird, which, in shrill tones and with clapping wings, answered
his address. At that time a horn sounded at a little distance off; a
clangour of arms, as the sentries saluted, was heard; the demoiselles
retreated through the arch, and mounted the stair conducting to the
very room, then unoccupied, in which tradition records the murder of the
Third Richard’s nephews; and scarcely had they gained this retreat, ere
towards the Bloody Gate, and before the prison tower, rode the king who
had mounted the captive’s throne. His steed, gaudy with its housing, his
splendid dress, the knights and squires who started forward from every
corner to hold his gilded stirrup, his vigorous youth, so blooming and
so radiant,--all contrasted, with oppressive force, the careworn face
that watched him meekly through the little casement of the Wakefield
tower. Edward’s large, quick blue eye caught sudden sight of the once
familiar features. He looked up steadily, and his gaze encountered the
fallen king’s. He changed countenance: but with the external chivalry
that made the surface of his hollow though brilliant character, he bowed
low to his saddle-bow as he saw his captive, and removed the plumed cap
from his high brow.

Henry smiled sadly, and shook his reverend head, as if gently to rebuke
the mockery; then he closed the casement; and Edward rode into the yard.

“How can the king hold here a court and here a prison? Oh, hard heart!”
 murmured Anne, as, when Edward had disappeared, the damsels bent their
way to Adam’s chamber.

“Would the Earl Warwick approve thy pity, sweet Lady Anne?” asked
Sibyll.

“My father’s heart is too generous to condemn it,” returned Anne, wiping
the tears from her eyes; “how often in the knight’s galliard shall I see
that face!”

The turret in which Warner’s room was placed flanked the wing inhabited
by the royal family and their more distinguished guests (namely,
the palace, properly speaking, as distinct from the fortress), and
communicated with the regal lodge by a long corridor, raised above
cloisters and open to a courtyard. At one end of this corridor a door
opened upon the passage, in which was situated the chamber of the Lady
Anne; the other extremity communicated with a rugged stair of stone,
conducting to the rooms tenanted by Warner. Leaving Sibyll to present
her learned father to the gentle Anne, we follow the king into the
garden, which he entered on dismounting. He found here the Archbishop
of York, who had come to the palace in his barge, and with but a slight
retinue, and who was now conversing with Hastings in earnest whispers.

The king, who seemed thoughtful and fatigued, approached the two, and
said, with a forced smile, “What learned sententiary engages you two
scholars?”

“Your Grace,” said the archbishop, “Minerva was not precisely the
goddess most potent over our thoughts at that moment. I received a
letter last evening from the Duke of Gloucester, and as I know the love
borne by the prince to the Lord Hastings, I inquired of your chamberlain
how far he would have foreguessed the news it announced.”

“And what may the tidings be?” asked Edward, absently.

The prelate hesitated.

“Sire,” he said gravely, “the familiar confidence with which both your
Highness and the Duke of Gloucester distinguish the chamberlain, permits
me to communicate the purport of the letter in his presence. The young
duke informs me that he hath long conceived an affection which he would
improve into marriage, but before he address either the demoiselle or
her father, he prays me to confer with your Grace, whose pleasure in
this, as in all things, will be his sovereign law.”

“Ah, Richard loves me with a truer love than George of Clarence! But who
can he have seen on the Borders worthy to be a prince’s bride?”

“It is no sudden passion, sire, as I before hinted; nay, it has been for
some time sufficiently notorious to his friends and many of the court;
it is an affection for a maiden known to him in childhood, connected to
him by blood,--my niece, Anne Nevile.”

As if stung by a scorpion, Edward threw off the prelate’s arm, on which
he had been leaning with his usual caressing courtesy.

“This is too much!” said he, quickly, and his face, before somewhat
pale, grew highly flushed. “Is the whole royalty of England to be one
Nevile? Have I not sufficiently narrowed the basis of my throne? Instead
of mating my daughter to a foreign power,--to Spain or to Bretagne,--she
is betrothed to young Montagu! Clarence weds Isabel, and now
Gloucester--no, prelate, I will not consent!”

The archbishop was so little prepared for this burst, that he remained
speechless. Hastings pressed the king’s arm, as if to caution him
against so imprudent a display of resentment; but the king walked on,
not heeding him, and in great disturbance. Hastings interchanged looks
with the archbishop, and followed his royal master.

“My king,” he said, in an earnest whisper, “whatever you decide, do not
again provoke unhappy feuds laid at rest. Already this morning I
sought your chamber, but you were abroad, to say that I have received
intelligence of a fresh rising of the Lancastrians in Lincolnshire,
under Sir Robert Welles, and the warlike knight of Scrivelsby, Sir
Thomas Dymoke. This is not yet an hour to anger the pride of the
Neviles!”

“O Hastings! Hastings!” said the king, in a tone of passionate emotion,
“there are moments when the human heart cannot dissemble! Howbeit your
advice is wise and honest! No, we must not anger the Neviles!”

He turned abruptly; rejoined the archbishop, who stood on the spot on
which the king had left him, his arms folded on his breast, his face
calm, but haughty.

“My most worshipful cousin,” said Edward, “forgive the well-known
heat of my hasty moods! I had hoped that Richard would, by a foreign
alliance, have repaired the occasion of confirming my dynasty abroad,
which Clarence lost. But no matter! Of these things we will speak anon.
Say naught to Richard till time ripens maturer resolutions: he is a
youth yet. What strange tidings are these from Lincolnshire?”

“The house of your purveyor, Sir Robert de Burgh, is burned, his lands
wasted. The rebels are headed by lords and knights. Robin of Redesdale,
who, methinks, bears a charmed life, has even ventured to rouse the
disaffected in my brother’s very shire of Warwick.”

“O Henry,” exclaimed the king, casting his eyes towards the turret
that held his captive, “well mightest then call a crown ‘a wreath of
thorns!’”

“I have already,” said the archbishop, “despatched couriers to my
brother, to recall him from Warwick, whither he went on quitting your
Highness. I have done more; prompted by a zeal that draws me from the
care of the Church to that of the State, I have summoned the Lords
St. John, De Fulke, and others, to my house of the More,--praying your
Highness to deign to meet them, and well sure that a smile from your
princely lips will regain their hearts and confirm heir allegiance, at a
moment when new perils require all strong arms.”

“You have done most wisely. I will come to your palace,--appoint your
own day.”

“It will take some days for the barons to arrive from their castles. I
fear not ere the tenth day from this.”

“Ah,” said the king, with a vivacity that surprised his listeners, aware
of his usual impetuous energy, “the delay will but befriend us; as
for Warwick, permit me to alter your arrangements; let him employ the
interval, not in London, where he is useless, but in raising men in
the neighbourhood of his castle, and in defeating the treason of this
Redesdale knave. We will give commission to him and to Clarence to levy
troops; Hastings, see to this forthwith. Ye say Sir Robert Welles leads
the Lincolnshire varlets; I know the nature of his father, the Lord
Welles,--a fearful and timorous one; I will send for him, and the
father’s head shall answer for the son’s faith. Pardon me, dear cousin,
that I leave you to attend these matters. Prithee visit our queen,
meanwhile, she holds you our guest.”

“Nay, your Highness must vouchsafe my excuse; I also have your royal
interests too much at heart to while an hour in my pleasurement. I will
but see the friends of our House now in London, and then back to the
More, and collect the force of my tenants and retainers.”

“Ever right, fair speed to you, cardinal that shall be! Your arm,
Hastings.”

The king and his favourite took their way into the state chambers.

“Abet not Gloucester in this alliance,--abet him not!” said the king,
solemnly.

“Pause, sire! This alliance gives to Warwick a wise counsellor, instead
of the restless Duke of Clarence. Reflect what danger may ensue if an
ambitious lord, discontented with your reign, obtains the hand of the
great earl’s coheiress, and the half of a hundred baronies that command
an army larger than the crown’s.”

Though these reasonings at a calmer time might well have had their
effect on Edward, at that moment they were little heeded by his
passions. He stamped his foot violently on the floor. “Hastings!” he
exclaimed, “be silent! or--” He stopped short, mastered his emotion.
“Go, assemble our privy council. We have graver matters than a boy’s
marriage now to think of.”

It was in vain that Edward sought to absorb the fire of his nature in
state affairs, in all needful provisions against the impending perils,
in schemes of war and vengeance. The fatal frenzy that had seized him
haunted him everywhere, by day and by night. For some days after the
unsuspected visit which he had so criminally stolen to his guest’s
chamber, something of knightly honour, of religious scruple, of common
reason,--awakened in him the more by the dangers which had sprung up and
which the Neviles were now actively employed in defeating,--struggled
against his guilty desire, and roused his conscience to a less feeble
resistance than it usually displayed when opposed to passion; but the
society of Anne, into which he was necessarily thrown so many hours in
the day, and those hours chiefly after the indulgences of the banquet,
was more powerful than all the dictates of a virtue so seldom exercised
as to have none of the strength of habit. And as the time drew near when
he must visit the archbishop, head his army against the rebels (whose
force daily increased, despite the captivity of Lord Welles and
Sir Thomas Dymoke, who, on the summons of the king, had first taken
sanctuary, and then yielded their persons on the promise of pardon and
safety), and restore Anne to her mother,--as this time drew near, his
perturbation of mind became visible to the whole court; but, with the
instinct of his native craft, he contrived to conceal its cause. For the
first time in his life he had no confidant--he did not dare trust his
secret to Hastings. His heart gnawed itself. Neither, though constantly
stealing to Anne’s side, could he venture upon language that might
startle and enlighten her. He felt that even those attentions, which
on the first evening of her arrival had been noticed by the courtiers,
could not be safely renewed. He was grave and constrained, even when by
her side, and the etiquette of the court allowed him no opportunity for
unwitnessed conference. In this suppressed and unequal struggle with
himself the time passed, till it was now but the day before that fixed
for his visit to the More. And, as he rose at morning from his restless
couch, the struggle was over, and the soul resolved to dare the crime.
His first thought was to separate Anne from Sibyll. He affected to
rebuke the queen for giving to his high-born guest an associate below
her dignity, and on whose character, poor girl, rested the imputation
of witchcraft; and when the queen replied that Lady Anne herself had
so chosen, he hit upon the expedient of visiting Warner himself, under
pretence of inspecting his progress,--affected to be struck by the
sickly appearance of the sage, and sending for Sibyll, told her, with
an air of gracious consideration, that her first duty was to attend her
parent; that the queen released her for some days from all court duties;
and that he had given orders to prepare the room adjoining Master
Warner’s, and held by Friar Bungey, till that worthy had retired with
his patroness from the court, to which she would for the present remove.

Sibyll, wondering at this novel mark of consideration in the careless
king, yet imputing it to the high value set on her father’s labours,
thanked Edward with simple earnestness, and withdrew. In the anteroom
she encountered Hastings, on his way to the king. He started in
surprise, and with a jealous pang: “What! thou, Sibyll! and from the
king’s closet! What led thee thither?”

“His grace’s command.” And too noble for the pleasure of exciting the
distrust that delights frivolous minds as the proof of power, Sibyll
added, “The king has been kindly speaking to me of my father’s health.”
 The courtier’s brow cleared; he mused a moment, and said, in a whisper,
“I beseech thee to meet me an hour hence at the eastern rampart.”

Since the return of Lord Hastings to the palace there had been an
estrangement and distance in his manner, ill suiting one who enjoyed the
rights of an accepted suitor, and wounding alike to Sibyll’s affection
and her pride; but her confidence in his love and truth was entire. Her
admiration for him partook of worship, and she steadily sought to reason
away any causes for alarm by recalling the state cares which pressed
heavily upon him, and whispering to herself that word of “wife,” which,
coming in passionate music from those beloved lips, had thrown a mist
over the present, a glory over the future! and in the king’s retention
of Adam Warner, despite the Duchess of Bedford’s strenuous desire
to carry him off with Friar Bungey, and restore him to his tasks of
alchemist and multiplier, as well as in her own promotion to the queen’s
service, Sibyll could not but recognize the influence of her powerful
lover. His tones now were tender, though grave and earnest. Surely, in
the meeting he asked, all not comprehended would be explained. And so,
with a light heart, she passed on.

Hastings sighed as his eye followed her from the room, and thus said he
to himself, “Were I the obscure gentleman I once was, how sweet a lot
would that girl’s love choose to me from the urn of fate! But, oh! when
we taste of power and greatness, and master the world’s dark wisdom,
what doth love shrink to?--an hour’s bliss and a life’s folly.” His
delicate lip curled, and breaking from his soliloquy, he entered the
king’s closet. Edward was resting his face upon the palms of his hands,
and his bright eyes dwelt upon vacant space, till they kindled into
animation as they lighted on his favourite.

“Dear Will,” said the king, “knowest thou that men say thou art
bewitched?”

“Beau sire, often have men, when a sweet face hath captured thy great
heart, said the same of thee!”

“It may be so with truth, for verily love is the arch-devil’s birth.”

The king rose, and strode his chamber with a quick step; at last
pausing,--

“Hastings,” he said, “so thou lovest the multiplier’s pretty daughter?
She has just left me. Art thou jealous?”

“Happily your Highness sees no beauty in looks that have the gloss of
the raven, and eyes that have the hue of the violet.”

“No, I am a constant man, constant to one idea of beauty in a thousand
forms,--eyes like the summer’s light-blue sky, and locks like its
golden sunbeams! But to set thy mind at rest, Will, know that I have
but compassionated the sickly state of the scholar, whom thou prizest so
highly; and I have placed thy fair Sibyll’s chamber near her father’s.
Young Lovell says thou art bent on wedding the wizard’s daughter.”

“And if I were, beau sire?”

Edward looked grave.

“If thou wert, my poor Will, thou wouldst lose all the fame for shrewd
wisdom which justifies thy sudden fortunes. No, no; thou art the flower
and prince of my new seignorie,--thou must mate thyself with a name and
a barony that shall be worthy thy fame and thy prospects. Love beauty,
but marry power, Will. In vain would thy king draw thee up, if a
despised wife draw thee down!”

Hastings listened with profound attention to these words. The king did
not wait for his answer, but added laughingly,--

“It is thine own fault, crafty gallant, if thou dost not end all her
spells.”

“What ends the spells of youth and beauty, beau sire?”

“Possession!” replied the king, in a hollow and muttered voice.

Hastings was about to answer, when the door opened, and the officer in
waiting announced the Duke of Clarence. “Ha!” said Edward, “George comes
to importune me for leave to depart to the government of Ireland, and I
have to make him weet that I think my Lord Worcester a safer viceroy of
the two.”

“Your Highness will pardon me; but, though I deemed you too generous in
the appointment, it were dangerous now to annul it.”

“More dangerous to confirm it. Elizabeth has caused me to see the folly
of a grant made over the malmsey,--a wine, by the way, in which poor
George swears he would be content to drown himself. Viceroy of Ireland!
My father had that government, and once tasting the sweets of royalty,
ceased to be a subject! No, no, Clarence--”

“Can never meditate treason against a brother’s crown. Has he the wit or
the energy or the genius for so desperate an ambition?”

“No; but he hath the vanity. And I will wager thee a thousand marks to
a silver penny that my jester shall talk giddie Georgie into advancing a
claim to be soldan of Egypt or Pope of Rome!”



CHAPTER IV. THE FOSTER-BROTHERS.

Sir Marmaduke Nevile was sunning his bravery in the Tower Green, amidst
the other idlers of the court, proud of the gold chain and the gold
spurs which attested his new rank, and not grieved to have exchanged the
solemn walls of Middleham for the gay delights of the voluptuous palace,
when to his pleasure and surprise, he perceived his foster-brother enter
the gateway; and no sooner had Nicholas entered, than a bevy of the
younger courtiers hastened eagerly towards him.

“Gramercy!” quoth Sir Marmaduke, to one of the bystanders, “what hath
chanced to make Nick Alwyn a man of such note, that so many wings
of satin and pile should flutter round him like sparrows round an
owl?--which, by the Holy Rood, his wise face somewhat resembleth.”

“Know you not that Master Alwyn, since he hath commenced trade for
himself, hath acquired already the repute of the couthliest goldsmith
in London? No dague-hilts, no buckles are to be worn, save those that he
fashions; and--an he live, and the House of York prosper--verily, Master
Alwyn the goldsmith will ere long be the richest and best man from
Mile-end to the Sanctuary.”

“Right glad am I to hear it,” said honest Marmaduke, heartily; and
approaching Alwyn, he startled the precise trader by a friendly slap on
the shoulder.

“What, man, art thou too proud to remember Marmaduke Nevile? Come to my
lodgment yonder, and talk of old days over the king’s canary.”

“I crave your pardon, dear Master Nevile.”

“Master--avaunt! Sir Marmaduke,--knighted by the hand of Lord
Warwick,--Sir Marmaduke Nevile, lord of a manor he hath never yet seen,
sober Alwyn.”

Then drawing his foster-brother’s arm in his, Marmaduke led him to the
chamber in which he lodged.

The young men spent some minutes in congratulating each other on their
respective advances in life: the gentleman who had attained competence
and station simply by devotion to a powerful patron, the trader who had
already won repute and the prospect of wealth by ingenuity, application,
and toil; and yet, to do justice, as much virtue went to Marmaduke’s
loyalty to Warwick as to Alwyn’s capacities for making a fortune. Mutual
compliments over, Alwyn said hesitatingly,--

“And dost thou find Mistress Sibyll more gently disposed to thee than
when thou didst complain to me of her cruelty?”

“Marry, good Nicholas, I will be frank with thee. When I left the court
to follow Lord Warwick, there were rumours of the gallantries of Lord
Hastings to the girl, which grieved me to the heart. I spoke to her
thereof bluntly and honourably, and got but high looks and scornful
words in return. Good fellow, I thank thee for that squeeze of the hand
and that doleful sigh. In my absence at Middleham, I strove hard to
forget one who cared so little for me. My dear Alwyn, those Yorkshire
lasses are parlously comely, and mighty douce and debonaire. So I
stormed cruel Sibyll out of my heart perforce of numbers.”

“And thou lovest her no more?”

“Not I, by this goblet! On coming back, it is true, I felt pleased
to clank my gold spurs in her presence, and curious to see if my new
fortunes would bring out a smile of approval; and verily, to speak
sooth, the donzell was kind and friendly, and spoke to me so cheerly of
the pleasure she felt in my advancement, that I adventured again a few
words of the old folly. But my lassie drew up like a princess, and I am
a cured man.”

“By your troth?”

“By my troth!”

Alwyn’s head sank on his bosom in silent thought. Sir Marmaduke emptied
his goblet; and really the young knight looked so fair and so gallant,
in his new surcoat of velvet, that it was no marvel if he should find
enough food for consolation in a court where men spent six hours a day
in making love,--nor in vain.

“And what say they still of the Lord Hastings?” asked Alwyn, breaking
silence. “Nothing, I trow and trust, that arraigns the poor lady’s
honour, though much that may scoff at her simple faith in a nature so
vain and fickle. ‘The tongue’s not steel, yet it cuts,’ as the proverb
saith of the slanderer.”

“No! scandal spares her virtue as woman, to run down her cunning
as witch! They say that Hastings hath not prevailed, nor sought to
prevail,--that he is spell-bound. By Saint Thomas, from a maid of such
character Marmaduke Nevile is happily rescued!”

“Sir Marmaduke,” then said Alwyn, in a grave and earnest voice, “it
behooves me, as true friend, though humble, and as honest man, to give
thee my secret, in return for thine own. I love this girl. Ay, ay! thou
thinkest that love is a strange word on a craftsman’s lips, but ‘cold
flint hides hot fire.’ I would not have been thy rival, Heaven forefend!
hadst thou still cherished a hope, or if thou now wilt forbid my
aspiring; but if thou wilt not say me nay, I will try my chance in
delivering a pure soul from a crafty wooer.”

Marmaduke stared in great surprise at his foster-brother; and though, no
doubt, he spoke truth when he said he was cured of his love for Sibyll,
he yet felt a sort of jealousy at Alwyn’s unexpected confession, and
his vanity was hurt at the notion that the plain-visaged trader should
attempt where the handsome gentleman had failed.--However, his blunt,
generous, manly nature after a brief struggle got the better of these
sore feelings; and holding out his hand to Alwyn, he said, “My dear
foster-brother, try the hazard and cast thy dice, if thou wilt. Heaven
prosper thee, if success be for thine own good! But if she be given to
witchcraft (plague on thee, man, sneer not at the word), small comfort
to bed and hearth can such practices bring!”

“Alas!” said Alwyn, “the witchcraft is on the side of Hastings,--the
witchcraft of fame and rank, and a glozing tongue and experienced art.
But she shall not fall, if a true arm can save her; and ‘though Hope be
a small child; she can carry a great anchor.’”

These words were said so earnestly, that they opened new light into
Marmaduke’s mind; and his native generosity standing in lieu of
intellect, he comprehended sympathetically the noble motives which
actuated the son of commerce.

“My poor Alwyn,” he said, “if thou canst save this young maid,--whom
by my troth I loved well, and who tells me yet that she loveth me as a
sister loves,--right glad shall I be. But thou stakest thy peace of mind
against hers! Fair luck to thee, say I again,--and if thou wilt risk thy
chance at once (for suspense is love’s purgatory), seize the moment. I
saw Sibyll, just ere we met, pass to the ramparts, alone; at this sharp
season the place is deserted; go.”

“I will, this moment!” said Alwyn, rising and turning very pale; but
as he gained the door, he halted--“I had forgot, Master Nevile, that I
bring the king his signet-ring, new set, of the falcon and fetter-lock.”

“They will keep thee three hours in the anteroom. The Duke of Clarence
is now with the king. Trust the ring to me, I shall see his highness ere
he dines.”

Even in his love, Alwyn had the Saxon’s considerations of business; he
hesitated--“May I not endanger thereby the king’s favour and loss of
custom?” said the trader.

“Tush, man! little thou knowest King Edward; he cares naught for the
ceremonies: moreover, the Neviles are now all-puissant in favour. I
am here in attendance on sweet Lady Anne, whom the king loves as a
daughter, though too young for sire to so well-grown a donzell; and a
word from her lip, if need be, will set all as smooth as this gorget of
lawn!”

Thus assured, Alwyn gave the ring to his friend, and took his way at
once to the ramparts. Marmaduke remained behind to finish the canary and
marvel how so sober a man should form so ardent a passion. Nor was he
much less surprised to remark that his friend, though still speaking
with a strong provincial accent, and still sowing his discourse with
rustic saws and proverbs, had risen in language and in manner with the
rise of his fortunes. “An he go on so, and become lord mayor,” muttered
Marmaduke, “verily he will half look like a gentleman!”

To these meditations the young knight was not long left in peace. A
messenger from Warwick House sought and found him, with the news that
the earl was on his road to London, and wished to see Sir Marmaduke the
moment of his arrival, which was hourly expected. The young knight’s
hardy brain somewhat flustered by the canary, Alwyn’s secret, and this
sudden tidings, he hastened to obey his chief’s summons, and forgot,
till he gained the earl’s mansion, the signet ring intrusted to him by
Alwyn. “What matters it?” said he then, philosophically,--“the king hath
rings eno’ on his fingers not to miss one for an hour or so, and I dare
not send any one else with it. Marry, I must plunge my head in cold
water, to get rid of the fumes of the wine.”



CHAPTER V. THE LOVER AND THE GALLANT--WOMAN’S CHOICE.

Alwyn bent his way to the ramparts, a part of which then resembled
the boulevards of a French town, having rows of trees, green sward, a
winding walk, and seats placed at frequent intervals for the repose
of the loungers. During the summer evenings, the place was a favourite
resort of the court idlers; but now, in winter, it was usually deserted,
save by the sentries, placed at distant intervals. The trader had not
gone far in his quest when he perceived, a few paces before him, the
very man he had most cause to dread; and Lord Hastings, hearing the
sound of a footfall amongst the crisp, faded leaves that strewed the
path, turned abruptly as Alwyn approached his side.

At the sight of his formidable rival, Alwyn had formed one of those
resolutions which occur only to men of his decided, plain-spoken,
energetic character. His distinguishing shrewdness and penetration had
given him considerable insight into the nobler as well as the weaker
qualities of Hastings; and his hope in the former influenced the
determination to which he came. The reflections of Hastings at that
moment were of a nature to augur favourably to the views of the humbler
lover; for, during the stirring scenes in which his late absence
from Sibyll had been passed, Hastings had somewhat recovered from her
influence; and feeling the difficulties of reconciling his honour
and his worldly prospects to further prosecution of the love, rashly
expressed but not deeply felt, he had determined frankly to cut the
Gordian knot he could not solve, and inform Sibyll that marriage between
them was impossible. With that view he had appointed this meeting, and
his conference with the king but confirmed his intention. It was in this
state of mind that he was thus accosted by Alwyn:--

“My lord, may I make bold to ask for a few moments your charitable
indulgence to words you may deem presumptuous?”

“Be brief, then, Master Alwyn,--I am waited for.”

“Alas, my lord! I can guess by whom,--by the one whom I seek myself,--by
Sibyll Warner.”

“How, Sir Goldsmith!” said Hastings, haughtily, “what knowest thou of my
movements, and what care I for thine?”

“Hearken, my Lord Hastings,--hearken!” said Alwyn, repressing his
resentment, and in a voice so earnest that it riveted the entire
attention of the listener--“hearken, and judge not as noble judges
craftsman, but as man should judge man. As the saw saith, ‘We all lie
alike in our graves.’ From the first moment I saw this Sibyll Warner I
loved her. Yes; smile disdainfully, but listen still. She was obscure
and in distress. I loved her not for her fair looks alone; I loved her
for her good gifts, for her patient industry, for her filial duty, for
her struggles to give bread to her father’s board. I did not say to
myself, ‘This girl will make a comely fere, a delicate paramour!’ I
said, ‘This good daughter will make a wife whom an honest man may take
to his heart and cherish!’” Poor Alwyn stopped, with tears in his
voice, struggled with his emotions, and pursued: “My fortunes were more
promising than hers; there was no cause why I might not hope. True, I
had a rival then; young as myself, better born, comelier; but she loved
him not. I foresaw that his love for her--if love it were--would cease.
Methought that her mind would understand mine; as mine--verily I say
it--yearned for hers! I could not look on the maidens of mine own rank,
and who had lived around me, but what--oh, no, my lord, again I say, not
the beauty, but the gifts, the mind, the heart of Sibyll, threw them
all into the shade. You may think it strange that I--a plain, steadfast,
trading, working, careful man--should have all these feelings; but I
will tell you wherefore such as I sometimes have them, nurse them, brood
on them, more than you lords and gentlemen, with all your graceful arts
in pleasing. We know no light loves! no brief distractions to the one
arch passion! We sober sons of the stall and the ware are no general
gallants,--we love plainly, we love but once, and we love heartily. But
who knows not the proverb, ‘What’s a gentleman but his pleasure?’--and
what’s pleasure but change? When Sibyll came to the palace, I soon heard
her name linked with yours; I saw her cheek blush when you spoke. Well,
well, well! after all, as the old wives tell us, ‘Blushing is virtue’s
livery.’ I said, ‘She is a chaste and high-hearted girl.’ This will
pass, and the time will come when she can compare your love and mine.
Now, my lord, the time has come. I know that you seek her. Yea, at
this moment, I know that her heart beats for your footstep. Say but
one word,--say that you love Sibyll Warner with the thought of wedding
her,--say that, on your honour, noble Hastings, as gentleman and peer,
and I will kneel at your feet, and beg your pardon for my vain follies,
and go back to my ware, and work, and not repine. Say it! You are
silent? Then I implore you, still as peer and gentleman, to let the
honest love save the maiden from the wooing that will blight her
peace and blast her name! And now, Lord Hastings, I wait your gracious
answer.”

The sensations experienced by Hastings, as Alwyn thus concluded, were
manifold and complicated; but, at the first, admiration and pity were
the strongest.

“My poor friend,” said he, kindly, “if you thus love a demoiselle
deserving all my reverence, your words and your thoughts bespeak you no
unworthy pretender; but take my counsel, good Alwyn. Come not--thou from
the Chepe--come not to the court for a wife. Forget this fantasy.”

“My lord, it is impossible! Forget I cannot, regret I may.

“Thou canst not succeed, man,” resumed the nobleman, more coldly,
“nor couldst if William Hastings had never lived. The eyes of women
accustomed to gaze on the gorgeous externals of the world are blinded
to plain worth like thine. It might have been different had the donzell
never abided in a palace; but as it is, brave fellow, learn how these
wounds of the heart scar over, and the spot becomes hard and callous
evermore. What art thou, Master Nicholas Alwyn,” continued Hastings,
gloomily, and with a withering smile--“what art thou, to ask for a bliss
denied to me--to all of us,--the bliss of carrying poetry into life,
youth into manhood, by winning--the FIRST LOVED? But think not, sir
lover, that I say this in jealousy or disparagement. Look yonder, by the
leafless elm, the white robe of Sibyll Warner. Go and plead thy suit.”

“Do I understand you, my lord?” said Alwyn, somewhat confused and
perplexed by the tone and the manner Hastings adopted. “Does report err,
and you do not love this maiden?”

“Fair master,” returned Hastings, scornfully, “thou hast no right that
I trow of to pry into my thoughts and secrets; I cannot acknowledge
my judge in thee, good jeweller and goldsmith,--enough, surely, in all
courtesy, that I yield thee the precedence. Tell thy tale, as movingly,
if thou wilt, as thou hast told it to me; say of me all that thou
fanciest thou hast reason to suspect; and if, Master Alwyn, thou woo and
win the lady, fail not to ask me to thy wedding!”

There was in this speech and the bearing of the speaker that superb
levity, that inexpressible and conscious superiority, that cold,
ironical tranquillity, which awe and humble men more than grave disdain
or imperious passion. Alwyn ground his teeth as he listened, and gazed
in silent despair and rage upon the calm lord. Neither of these men
could strictly be called handsome. Of the two, Alwyn had the advantage
of more youthful prime, of a taller stature, of a more powerful, though
less supple and graceful, frame. In their very dress, there was little
of that marked distinction between classes which then usually prevailed,
for the dark cloth tunic and surcoat of Hastings made a costume even
simpler than the bright-coloured garb of the trader, with its broad
trimmings of fur, and its aiglettes of elaborate lace. Between man
and man, then, where was the visible, the mighty, the insurmountable
difference in all that can charm the fancy and captivate the eye, which,
as he gazed, Alwyn confessed to himself there existed between the two?
Alas! how the distinctions least to be analyzed are ever the sternest!
What lofty ease in that high-bred air; what histories of triumph seemed
to speak in that quiet eye, sleeping in its own imperious lustre; what
magic of command in that pale brow; what spells of persuasion in that
artful lip! Alwyn muttered to himself, bowed his head involuntarily, and
passed on at once from Hastings to Sibyll, who now, at the distance of
some yards, had arrested her steps, in surprise to see the conference
between the nobleman and the burgher.

But as he approached Sibyll, poor Alwyn felt all the firmness and
courage he had exhibited with Hastings melt away. And the trepidation
which a fearful but deep affection ever occasions in men of his
character, made his movements more than usually constrained and awkward,
as he cowered beneath the looks of the maid he so truly loved.

“Seekest thou me, Master Alwyn?” asked Sibyll, gently, seeing that,
though he paused by her side, he spoke not.

“I do,” returned Alwyn, abruptly, and again he was silent. At length,
lifting his eyes and looking round him, he saw Hastings at the distance,
leaning against the rampart, with folded arms; and the contrast of his
rival’s cold and arrogant indifference, and his own burning veins and
bleeding heart, roused up his manly spirit, and gave to his tongue the
eloquence which emotion gains when it once breaks the fetters it forges
for itself.

“Look, look, Sibyll!” he said, pointing to Hastings “look! that man you
believe loves you. If so--if he loved thee,--would he stand yonder--mark
him--aloof, contemptuous, careless--while he knew that I was by your
side?”

Sibyll turned upon the goldsmith eyes full of innocent surprise,--eyes
that asked, plainly as eyes could speak, “And wherefore not, Master
Alwyn?”

Alwyn so interpreted the look, and replied, as if she had spoken:
“Because he must know how poor and tame is that feeble fantasy which
alone can come from a soul worn bare with pleasure, to that which I
feel and now own for thee,--the love of youth, born of the heart’s first
vigour; because he ought to fear that that love should prevail with
thee; because that love ought to prevail. Sibyll, between us there are
not imparity and obstacle. Oh, listen to me,--listen still! Frown not,
turn not away.” And, stung and animated by the sight of his rival, fired
by the excitement of a contest on which the bliss of his own life and
the weal of Sibyll’s might depend, his voice was as the cry of a mortal
agony, and affected the girl to the inmost recesses of her soul. “Oh,
Alwyn, I frown not!” she said sweetly; “oh, Alwyn, I turn not away! Woe
is me to give pain to so kind and brave a heart; but--”

“No, speak not yet. I have studied thee, I have read thee as a scholar
would read a book. I know thee proud; I know thee aspiring; I know thou
art vain of thy gentle blood, and distasteful of my yeoman’s birth.
There, I am not blind to thy faults, but I love thee despite them; and
to please those faults I have toiled, schemed, dreamed, risen. I offer
to thee the future with the certainty of a man who can command it.
Wouldst thou wealth?--be patient (as ambition ever is): in a few years
thou shalt have more gold than the wife of Lord Hastings can command;
thou shalt lodge more statelily, fare more sumptuously; [This was no
vain promise of Master Alwyn. At that time a successful trader made a
fortune with signal rapidity, and enjoyed greater luxuries than most of
the barons. All the gold in the country flowed into the coffers of
the London merchants.] thou shalt walk on cloth-of-gold if thou wilt!
Wouldst thou titles?--I will win them. Richard de la Pole, who founded
the greatest duchy in the realm, was poorer than I, when he first served
in a merchant’s ware. Gold buys all things now. Oh, would to Heaven it
could but buy me thee!”

“Master Alwyn, it is not gold that buys love. Be soothed. What can I say
to thee to soften the harsh word ‘Nay’?”

“You reject me, then, and at once? I ask not your hand now. I will wait,
tarry, hope,--I care not if for years; wait till I can fulfil all I
promise thee!”

Sibyll, affected to tears, shook her head mournfully; and there was a
long and painful silence. Never was wooing more strangely circumstanced
than this,--the one lover pleading while the other was in view; the one,
ardent, impassioned, the other, calm and passive; and the silence of the
last, alas! having all the success which the words of the other lacked.
It might be said that the choice before Sibyll was a type of the choice
ever given, but in vain, to the child of genius. Here a secure and
peaceful life, an honoured home, a tranquil lot, free from ideal
visions, it is true, but free also from the doubt and the terror, the
storms of passion; there, the fatal influence of an affection, born of
imagination, sinister, equivocal, ominous, but irresistible. And the
child of genius fulfilled her destiny!

“Master Alwyn,” said Sibyll, rousing herself to the necessary exertion,
“I shall never cease gratefully to recall thy generous friendship, never
cease to pray fervently for thy weal below. But forever and forever let
this content thee,--I can no more.”

Impressed by the grave and solemn tone of Sibyll, Alwyn hushed the groan
that struggled to his lips, and gloomily replied: “I obey you, fair
mistress, and I return to my workday life; but ere I go, I pray you
misthink me not if I say this much: not alone for the bliss of hoping
for a day in which I might call thee mine have I thus importuned, but,
not less--I swear not less--from the soul’s desire to save thee from
what I fear will but lead to woe and wayment, to peril and pain, to
weary days and sleepless nights. ‘Better a little fire that warms than
a great that burns.’ Dost thou think that Lord Hastings, the vain, the
dissolute--”

“Cease, sir!” said Sibyll, proudly; “me reprove if thou wilt, but lower
not my esteem for thee by slander against another!”

“What!” said Alwyn, bitterly; “doth even one word of counsel chafe thee?
I tell thee that if thou dreamest that Lord Hastings loves Sibyll Warner
as man loves the maiden he would wed, thou deceivest thyself to thine
own misery. If thou wouldst prove it, go to him now,--go and say, ‘Wilt
thou give me that home of peace and honour, that shelter for my father’s
old age under a son’s roof which the trader I despise proffers me in
vain?”

“If it were already proffered me--by him?” said Sibyll, in a low voice,
and blushing deeply.

Alwyn started. “Then I wronged him; and--and--” he added generously,
though with a faint sickness at his heart, “I can yet be happy in
thinking thou art so. Farewell, maiden, the saints guard thee from one
memory of regret at what hath passed between us!”

He pulled his bonnet hastily over his brows, and departed with unequal
and rapid strides. As he passed the spot where Hastings stood leaning
his arm upon the wall, and his face upon his hand, the nobleman looked
up, and said,--

“Well, Sir Goldsmith, own at least that thy trial hath been a fair one!”
 Then struck with the anguish written upon Alwyn’s face, he walked up
to him, and, with a frank, compassionate impulse, laid his hand on
his shoulder. “Alwyn,” he said, “I have felt what you feel now; I have
survived it, and the world hath not prospered with me less! Take with
you a compassion that respects, and does not degrade you.”

“Do not deceive her, my lord,--she trusts and loves you! You never
deceived man,--the wide world says it,--do not deceive woman! Deeds kill
men, words women!” Speaking thus simply, Alwyn strode on, and vanished.

Hastings slowly and silently advanced to Sibyll. Her rejection of Alwyn
had by no means tended to reconcile him to the marriage he himself had
proffered. He might well suppose that the girl, even if unguided by
affection, would not hesitate between a mighty nobleman and an obscure
goldsmith. His pride was sorely wounded that the latter should have even
thought himself the equal of one whom he had proposed, though but in
a passionate impulse, to raise to his own state. And yet as he neared
Sibyll, and, with a light footstep, she sprang forward to meet him, her
eyes full of sweet joy and confidence, he shrank from an avowal which
must wither up a heart opening thus all its bloom of youth and love to
greet him.

“Ah, fair lord,” said the maiden, “was it kindly in thee to permit
poor Alwyn to inflict on me so sharp a pain, and thou to stand calmly
distant? Sure, alas! that had thy humble rival proffered a crown, it had
been the same to Sibyll! Oh, how the grief it was mine to cause
grieved me; and yet, through all, I had one selfish, guilty gleam of
pleasure,--to think that I had not been loved so well, if I were all
unworthy the sole love I desire or covet!”

“And yet, Sibyll, this young man can in all, save wealth and a sounding
name, give thee more than I can,--a heart undarkened by moody memories,
a temper unsoured by the world’s dread and bitter lore of man’s frailty
and earth’s sorrow. Ye are not far separated by ungenial years, and
might glide to a common grave hand in hand; but I, older in heart than
in age, am yet so far thine elder in the last, that these hairs will
be gray, and this form bent, while thy beauty is in its prime, and--but
thou weepest!”

“I weep that thou shouldst bring one thought of time to sadden my
thoughts, which are of eternity. Love knows no age, it foresees no
grave! its happiness and its trust behold on the earth but one glory,
melting into the hues of heaven, where they who love lastingly pass
calmly on to live forever! See, I weep not now!”

“And did not this honest burgher,” pursued Hastings, softened and
embarrassed, but striving to retain his cruel purpose, “tell thee to
distrust me; tell thee that my vows were false?”

“Methinks, if an angel told me so, I should disbelieve!”

“Why, look thee, Sibyll, suppose his warning true; suppose that at this
hour I sought thee with intent to say that that destiny which ambition
weaves for itself forbade me to fulfil a word hotly spoken; that I could
not wed thee,--should I not seem to thee a false wooer, a poor trifler
with thy earnest heart; and so, couldst thou not recall the love of him
whose truer and worthier homage yet lingers in thine ear, and with him
be happy?”

Sibyll lifted her dark eyes, yet humid, upon the unrevealing face of
the speaker, and gazed on him with wistful and inquiring sadness; then,
shrinking from his side, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and
thus said,--

“If ever, since we parted, one such thought hath glanced across
thee--one thought of repentance at the sacrifice of pride, or the
lessening of power--which (she faltered, broke off the sentence, and
resumed)--in one word, if thou wouldst retract, say it now, and I will
not accuse thy falsehood, but bless thy truth.”

“Thou couldst be consoled, then, by thy pride of woman, for the loss of
an unworthy lover?”

“My lord, are these questions fair?”

Hastings was silent. The gentler part of his nature struggled severely
with the harder. The pride of Sibyll moved him no less than her trust;
and her love in both was so evident, so deep, so exquisitely contrasting
the cold and frivolous natures amidst which his lot had fallen, that
he recoiled from casting away forever a heart never to be replaced.
Standing on that bridge of life, with age before and youth behind, he
felt that never again could he be so loved, or, if so loved by one so
worthy of whatever of pure affection, of young romance, was yet left to
his melancholy and lonely soul.

He took her hand, and, as she felt its touch, her firmness forsook her,
her head drooped upon her bosom, and she burst into an agony of tears.

“Oh, Sibyll, forgive me! Smile on me again, Sibyll!” exclaimed Hastings,
subdued and melted. But, alas! the heart once bruised and galled
recovers itself but slowly, and it was many minutes before the softest
words the eloquent lover could shape to sound sufficed to dry those
burning tears, and bring back the enchanting smile,--nay, even then the
smile was forced and joyless. They walked on for some moments, both in
thought, till Hastings said: “Thou lovest me, Sibyll, and art worthy of
all the love that man can feel for maid; and yet, canst thou solve me
this question, nor chide me that I ask it, Dost thou not love the world
and the world’s judgments more than me? What is that which women call
honour? What makes them shrink from all love that takes not the form and
circumstance of the world’s hollow rites? Does love cease to be love,
unless over its wealth of trust and emotion the priest mouths his empty
blessing? Thou in thy graceful pride art angered if I, in wedding thee,
should remember the sacrifice which men like me--I own it fairly--deem
as great as man can make; and yet thou wouldst fly my love if it wooed
thee to a sacrifice of thine own.”

Artfully was the question put, and Hastings smiled to himself in
imagining the reply it must bring; and then Sibyll answered, with the
blush which the very subject called forth,

“Alas, my lord, I am but a poor casuist, but I feel that if I asked thee
to forfeit whatever men respect,--honour and repute for valour, to be
traitor and dastard,--thou couldst love me no more; and marvel you if,
when man woos woman to forfeit all that her sex holds highest,--to be in
woman what dastard and traitor is in man,--she hears her conscience
and her God speak in a louder voice than can come from a human lip? The
goods and pomps of the world we are free to sacrifice, and true love
heeds and counts them not; but true love cannot sacrifice that which
makes up love,--it cannot sacrifice the right to be loved below; the
hope to love on in the realm above; the power to pray with a pure soul
for the happiness it yearns to make; the blessing to seem ever good and
honoured in the eyes of the one by whom alone it would be judged. And
therefore, sweet lord, true love never contemplates this sacrifice; and
if once it believes itself truly loved, it trusts with a fearless faith
in the love on which it leans.”

“Sibyll, would to Heaven I had seen thee in my youth! Would to Heaven I
were more worthy of thee!” And in that interview Hastings had no
heart to utter what he had resolved, “Sibyll, I sought thee but to say
Farewell.”



CHAPTER VI. WARWICK RETURNS--APPEASES A DISCONTENTED PRINCE--AND CONFERS
WITH A REVENGEFUL CONSPIRATOR.

It was not till late in the evening that Warwick arrived at his vast
residence in London, where he found not only Marmaduke Nevile ready to
receive him, but a more august expectant, in George Duke of Clarence.
Scarcely had the earl crossed the threshold, when the duke seized his
arm, and leading him into the room that adjoined the hall, said,--

“Verily, Edward is besotted no less than ever by his wife’s leech-like
family. Thou knowest my appointment to the government of Ireland;
Isabel, like myself, cannot endure the subordinate vassalage we must
brook at the court, with the queen’s cold looks and sour words. Thou
knowest, also, with what vain pretexts Edward has put me of; and now,
this very day, he tells me that he hath changed his humour,--that I
am not stern enough for the Irish kernes; that he loves me too well to
banish me, forsooth; and that Worcester, the people’s butcher but the
queen’s favourite, must have the post so sacredly pledged to me. I see
in this Elizabeth’s crafty malice. Is this struggle between king’s blood
and queen’s kith to go on forever?”

“Calm thyself, George; I will confer with the king tomorrow, and hope
to compass thy not too arrogant desire. Certes, a king’s brother is
the fittest vice-king for the turbulent kernes of Ireland, who are
ever flattered into obeisance by ceremony and show. The government was
pledged to thee--Edward can scarcely be serious. Moreover, Worcester,
though forsooth a learned man--Mort-Dieu! methinks that same learning
fills the head to drain the heart!--is so abhorred for his cruelties
that his very landing in Ireland will bring a new rebellion to add to
our already festering broils and sores. Calm thyself, I say. Where didst
thou leave Isabel?”

“With my mother.”

“And Anne?--the queen chills not her young heart with cold grace?”

“Nay, the queen dare not unleash her malice against Edward’s will; and,
to do him justice, he hath shown all honour to Lord Warwick’s daughter.”

“He is a gallant prince, with all his faults,” said the father,
heartily, “and we must bear with him, George; for verily he hath bound
men by a charm to love him. Stay thou and share my hasty repast, and
over the wine we will talk of thy views. Spare me now for a moment;
I have to prepare work eno’ for a sleepless night. This Lincolnshire
rebellion promises much trouble. Lord Willoughby has joined it; more
than twenty thousand men are in arms. I have already sent to convene the
knights and barons on whom the king can best depend, and must urge their
instant departure for their halls, to raise men and meet the foe. While
Edward feasts, his minister must toil. Tarry a while till I return.” The
earl re-entered the hall, and beckoned to Marmaduke, who stood amongst a
group of squires.

“Follow me; I may have work for thee.” Warwick took a taper from one of
the servitors, and led the way to his own more private apartment. On the
landing of the staircase, by a small door, stood his body-squire--“Is
the prisoner within?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good!”--The earl opened the door by which the squire had mounted guard,
and bade Marmaduke wait without.

The inmate of the chamber, whose dress bore the stains of fresh travel
and hard riding, lifted his face hastily as the earl entered.

“Robin Hilyard,” said Warwick, “I have mused much how to reconcile my
service to the king with the gratitude I owe to a man who saved me from
great danger. In the midst of thy unhappy and rebellious designs thou
wert captured and brought to me; the papers found on thee attest a
Lancastrian revolt, so ripening towards a mighty gathering, and so
formidable from the adherents whom the gold and intrigues of King Louis
have persuaded to risk land and life for the Red Rose, that all the
king’s friends can do to save his throne is now needed. In this revolt
thou hast been the scheming brain, the master hand, the match to the
bombard, the fire brand to the flax. Thou smilest, man! Alas! seest thou
not that it is my stern duty to send thee bound hand and foot before the
king’s council, for the brake to wring from thee thy guilty secrets, and
the gibbet to close thy days?”

“I am prepared,” said Hilyard; “when the bombard explodes, the match
has become useless; when the flame smites the welkin, the firebrand is
consumed!”

“Bold man! what seest thou in this rebellion that can profit thee?”

“I see, looming through the chasms and rents made in the feudal order by
civil war, the giant image of a free people.”

“And thou wouldst be a martyr for the multitude, who deserted thee at
Olney?”

“As thou for the king who dishonoured thee at Shene!”

Warwick frowned, and there was a moment’s pause; at last, said the earl:
“Look you, Robin, I would fain not have on my hands the blood of a man
who saved my life. I believe thee, though a fanatic and half madman,--I
believe thee true in word as rash of deed. Swear to me on the cross
of this dagger that thou wilt lay aside all scheme and plot for this
rebellion, all aid and share in civil broil and dissension, and thy life
and liberty are restored to thee. In that intent, I have summoned my own
kinsman, Marmaduke Nevile. He waits without the door; he shall conduct
thee safely to the seashore; thou shalt gain in peace my government
of Calais, and my seneschal there shall find thee all thou canst
need,--meat for thy hunger and moneys for thy pastime. Accept my mercy,
take the oath, and begone.”

“My lord,” answered Hilyard, much touched and affected, “blame not
thyself if this carcass feed the crows--my blood be on mine own head!
I cannot take this oath; I cannot live in peace; strife and broil are
grown to me food and drink. Oh, my lord! thou knowest not what dark and
baleful memories made me an agent in God’s hand against this ruthless
Edward!” and then passionately, with whitening lips and convulsive
features, Hilyard recounted to the startled Warwick the same tale which
had roused the sympathy of Adam Warner.

The earl, whose affections were so essentially homely and domestic, was
even more shocked than the scholar by the fearful narrative.

“Unhappy man!” he said with moistened eyes, “from the core of my heart
I pity thee. But thou, the scathed sufferer from civil war, wilt thou be
now its dread reviver?”

“If Edward had wronged thee, great earl, as me, poor franklin, what
would be thine answer? In vain moralize to him whom the spectre of a
murdered child and the shriek of a maniac wife haunt and hound on to
vengeance! So send me to rack and halter. Be there one curse more on the
soul of Edward!”

“Thou shalt not die through my witness,” said the earl, abruptly; and he
quitted the chamber.

Securing the door by a heavy bolt on the outside, he gave orders to his
squire to attend to the comforts of the prisoner; and then turning into
his closet with Marmaduke, said: “I sent for thee, young cousin, with
design to commit to thy charge one whose absence from England I deemed
needful--that design I must abandon. Go back to the palace, and see,
if thou canst, the king before he sleeps; say that this rising
in Lincolnshire is more than a riot,--it is the first burst of a
revolution! that I hold council here to-night, and every shire, ere
the morrow, shall have its appointed captain. I will see the king at
morning. Yet stay--gain sight of my child Anne; she will leave the court
to-morrow. I will come for her; bid her train be prepared; she and the
countess must away to Calais,--England again hath ceased to be a home
for women! What to do with this poor rebel?” muttered the earl, when
alone; “release him I cannot; slay him I will not. Hum, there is space
enough in these walls to inclose a captive.”



CHAPTER VII. THE FEAR AND THE FLIGHT.

King Edward feasted high, and Sibyll sat in her father’s chamber,--she
silent with thought of love, Adam silent in the toils of science. The
Eureka was well-nigh finished, rising from its ruins more perfect, more
elaborate, than before. Maiden and scholar, each seeming near to the
cherished goal,--one to love’s genial altar, the other to fame’s lonely
shrine.

Evening advanced, night began, night deepened. King Edward’s feast was
over, but still in his perfumed chamber the wine sparkled in the golden
cup. It was announced to him that Sir Marmaduke Nevile, just arrived
from the earl’s house, craved an audience. The king, pre-occupied in
deep revery, impatiently postponed it till the morrow.

“To-morrow,” said the gentleman in attendance, “Sir Marmaduke bids me
say, fearful that the late hour would forbid his audience, that
Lord Warwick himself will visit your Grace. I fear, sire, that the
disturbances are great indeed, for the squires and gentlemen in Lady
Anne’s train have orders to accompany her to Calais to-morrow.”

“To-morrow, to-morrow!” repeated the king--“well, sir, you are
dismissed.”

The Lady Anne (to whom Sibyll had previously communicated the king’s
kindly consideration for Master Warner) had just seen Marmaduke, and
learned the new dangers that awaited the throne and the realm. The
Lancastrians were then openly in arms for the prince of her love, and
against her mighty father!

The Lady Anne sat a while, sorrowful and musing, and then, before yon
crucifix, the Lady Anne knelt in prayer. Sir Marmaduke Nevile descends
to the court below, and some three or four busy, curious gentlemen, not
yet a-bed, seize him by the arm, and pray him to say what storm is in
the wind.

The night deepened still. The wine is drained in King Edward’s goblet;
King Edward has left his chamber; and Sibyll, entreating her father, but
in vain, to suspend his toil, has kissed the damps from his brow, and
is about to retire to her neighbouring room. She has turned to the
threshold, when, hark! a faint--a distant cry, a woman’s shriek, the
noise of a clapping door! The voice--it is the voice of Anne! Sibyll
passed the threshold, she is in the corridor; the winter moon shines
through the open arches, the air is white and cold with frost. Suddenly
the door at the farther end is thrown wide open, a form rushes into the
corridor, it passes Sibyll, halts, turns round. “Oh, Sibyll!” cried the
Lady Anne, in a voice wild with horror, “save me--aid--help! Merciful
Heaven, the king!”

Instinctively, wonderingly, tremblingly, Sibyll drew Anne into the
chamber she had just quitted, and as they gained its shelter, as Anne
sank upon the floor, the gleam of cloth-of-gold flashed through the dim
atmosphere, and Edward, yet in the royal robe in which he had dazzled
all the eyes at his kingly feast, stood within the chamber. His
countenance was agitated with passion, and its clear hues flushed red
with wine. At his entrance Anne sprang from the floor, and rushed to
Warner, who, in dumb bewilderment, had suspended his task, and stood
before the Eureka, from which steamed and rushed the dark, rapid smoke,
while round and round, labouring and groaning, rolled its fairy wheels.
[The gentle reader will doubtless bear in mind that Master Warner’s
complicated model had but little resemblance to the models of the
steam-engine in our own day, and that it was usually connected with
other contrivances, for the better display of the principle it was
intended to illustrate.]

“Sir,” cried Anne, clinging to him convulsively, “you are a father; by
your child’s soul, protect Lord Warwick’s daughter!”

Roused from his abstraction by this appeal, the poor scholar wound
his arm round the form thus clinging to him, and raising his head with
dignity, replied, “Thy name, youth, and sex protect thee!”

“Unhand that lady, vile sorcerer,” exclaimed the king, “I am her
protector. Come, Anne, sweet Anne, fair lady, thou mistakest,--come!” he
whispered. “Give not to these low natures matter for guesses that do but
shame thee. Let thy king and cousin lead thee back to thy sweet rest.”

He sought, though gently, to loosen the arms that wound themselves
round the old man; but Anne, not heeding, not listening, distracted by
a terror that seemed to shake her whole frame and to threaten her very
reason, continued to cry out loudly upon her father’s name,--her great
father, wakeful, then, for the baffled ravisher’s tottering throne!

Edward had still sufficient possession of his reason to be alarmed lest
some loiterer or sentry in the outer court might hear the cries which
his attempts to soothe but the more provoked. Grinding his teeth, and
losing patience, he said to Adam, “Thou knowest me, friend,--I am thy
king. Since the Lady Anne, in her bewilderment, prefers thine aid to
mine, help to bear her back to her apartment; and thou, young mistress,
lend thine arm. This wizard’s den is no fit chamber for our high-born
guest.”

“No, no; drive me not hence, Master Warner--that man--that king--give me
not up to his--his--”

“Beware!” exclaimed the king.

It was not till now that Adam’s simple mind comprehended the true cause
of Anne’s alarm, which Sibyll still conjectured not, but stood trembling
by her friend’s side, and close to her father.

“Do not fear, maiden;” said Adam Warner, laying his hand upon the
loosened locks that swept over his bosom, “for though I am old and
feeble, God and his angels are in every spot where virtue trembles and
resists. My lord king, thy sceptre extends not over a human soul!”

“Dotard, prate not to me!” said Edward, laying his hand on his dagger.
Sibyll saw the movement, and instinctively placed herself between her
father and the king. That slight form, those pure, steadfast eyes, those
features, noble at once and delicate, recalled to Edward the awe which
had seized him in his first dark design; and again that awe came over
him. He retreated.

“I mean harm to none,” said he, almost submissively; “and if I am so
unhappy as to scare with my presence the Lady Anne, I will retire,
praying you, donzell, to see to her state, and lead her back to her
chamber when it so pleases herself. Saying this much, I command you, old
man, and you, maiden, to stand back while I but address one sentence to
the Lady Anne.”

With these words he gently advanced to Anne, and took her hand; but,
snatching it from him, the poor lady broke from Adam, rushed to the
casement, opened it, and seeing some figures indistinct and distant in
the court below, she called out in a voice of such sharp agony that it
struck remorse and even terror into Edward’s soul.

“Alas!” he muttered, “she will not listen to me! her mind is distraught!
What frenzy has been mine! Pardon--pardon, Anne,--oh, pardon!”

Adam Warner laid his hand on the king’s arm, and he drew the imperious
despot away as easily as a nurse leads a docile child.

“King!” said the brave old man, “may God pardon thee; for if the last
evil hath been wrought upon this noble lady, David sinned not more
heavily than thou.”

“She is pure, inviolate,--I swear it!” said the king, humbly. “Anne,
only say that I am forgiven.”

But Anne spoke not: her eyes were fixed, her lips had fallen; she was
insensible as a corpse,--dumb and frozen with her ineffable dread.
Suddenly steps were heard upon the stairs; the door opened, and
Marmaduke Nevile entered abruptly.

“Surely I heard my lady’s voice,--surely! What marvel this?--the king!
Pardon, my liege!” and he bent his knee.

The sight of Marmaduke dissolved the spell of awe and repentant
humiliation which had chained a king’s dauntless heart. His wonted guile
returned to him with his self-possession.

“Our wise craftsman’s strange and weird invention”--and Edward pointed
to the Eureka--“has scared our fair cousin’s senses, as, by sweet Saint
George, it well might! Go back, Sir Marmaduke, we will leave Lady Anne
for the moment to the care of Mistress Sibyll. Donzell, remember my
command. Come, sir”--(and he drew the wondering Marmaduke from the
chamber); but as soon as he had seen the knight descend the stairs and
regain the court, he returned to the room, and in a low, stern voice,
said, “Look you, Master Warner, and you, damsel, if ever either of
ye breathe one word of what has been your dangerous fate to hear and
witness, kings have but one way to punish slanderers, and silence but
one safeguard!--trifle not with death!”

He then closed the door, and resought his own chamber. The Eastern
spices, which were burned in the sleeping-rooms of the great, still made
the air heavy with their feverish fragrance. The king seated himself,
and strove to recollect his thoughts, and examine the peril he had
provoked. The resistance and the terror of Anne had effectually banished
from his heart the guilty passion it had before harboured; for emotions
like his, and in such a nature, are quick of change. His prevailing
feeling was one of sharp repentance and reproachful shame. But as he
roused himself from a state of mind which light characters ever seek
to escape, the image of the dark-browed earl rose before him, and fear
succeeded to mortification; but even this, however well-founded, could
not endure long in a disposition so essentially scornful of all danger.
Before morning the senses of Anne must return to her. So gentle a bosom
could be surely reasoned out of resentment, or daunted, at least, from
betraying to her stern father a secret that, if told, would smear the
sward of England with the gore of thousands. What woman will provoke war
and bloodshed? And for an evil not wrought, for a purpose not fulfilled?
The king was grateful that his victim had escaped him. He would see Anne
before the earl could, and appease her anger, obtain her silence! For
Warner and for Sibyll, they would not dare to reveal; and, if they did,
the lips that accuse a king soon belie themselves, while a rack can
torture truth, and the doomsman be the only judge between the subject
and the head that wears a crown.

Thus reasoning with himself, his soul faced the solitude. Meanwhile
Marmaduke regained the courtyard, where, as we have said, he had been
detained in conferring with some of the gentlemen in the king’s service,
who, hearing that he brought important tidings from the earl, had
abstained from rest till they could learn if the progress of the new
rebellion would bring their swords into immediate service. Marmaduke,
pleased to be of importance, had willingly satisfied their curiosity,
as far as he was able, and was just about to retire to his own chamber,
when the cry of Anne had made him enter the postern-door which led up
the stairs to Adam’s apartment, and which was fortunately not locked;
and now, on returning, he had again a new curiosity to allay. Having
briefly said that Master Warner had taken that untoward hour to frighten
the women with a machine that vomited smoke and howled piteously,
Marmaduke dismissed the group to their beds, and was about to seek his
own, when, looking once more towards the casement, he saw a white hand
gleaming in the frosty moonlight, and beckoning to him.

The knight crossed himself, and reluctantly ascended the stairs, and
re-entered the wizard’s den.

The Lady Anne had so far recovered herself, that a kind of unnatural
calm had taken possession of her mind, and changed her ordinary sweet
and tractable nature into one stern, obstinate resolution,--to escape,
if possible, that unholy palace. And as soon as Marmaduke re-entered,
Anne met him at the threshold, and laying her hand convulsively on his
arm, said, “By the name you bear, by your love to my father, aid me to
quit these walls.”

In great astonishment, Marmaduke stared, without reply. “Do you deny me,
sir?” said Anne, almost sternly.

“Lady and mistress mine,” answered Marmaduke, “I am your servant in all
things. Quit these walls, the palace!--How?--the gates are closed. Nay,
and what would my lord say, if at night--”

“If at night!” repeated Anne, in a hollow voice; and then pausing, burst
into a terrible laugh. Recovering herself abruptly, she moved to the
door, “I will go forth alone, and trust in God and Our Lady.”

Sibyll sprang forward to arrest her steps, and Marmaduke hastened to
Adam, and whispered, “Poor lady, is her mind unsettled? Hast thou, in
truth, distracted her with thy spells and glamour?”

“Hush!” answered the old man; and he whispered in Nevile’s ear.

Scarcely had the knight caught the words, than his cheek paled, his
eyes flashed fire. “The great earl’s daughter!” he exclaimed.
“Infamy--horror--she is right!” He broke from the student, approached
Anne, who still struggled with Sibyll, and kneeling before her, said, in
a voice choked with passions at once fierce and tender,--

“Lady, you are right. Unseemly it may be for one of your quality and
sex to quit this place with me, and alone; but at least I have a man’s
heart, a knight’s honour. Trust to me your safety, noble maiden, and
I will cut your way, even through yon foul king’s heart, to your great
father’s side!”

Anne did not seem quite to understand his words; but she smiled on him
as he knelt, and gave him her hand. The responsibility he had assumed
quickened all the intellect of the young knight. As he took and kissed
the hand extended to him, he felt the ring upon his finger,--the ring
intrusted to him by Alwyn, the king’s signet-ring, before which would
fly open every gate. He uttered a joyous exclamation, loosened his long
night-cloak, and praying Anne to envelop her form in its folds, drew
the hood over her head; he was about to lead her forth when he halted
suddenly.

“Alack,” said he, turning to Sibyll, “even though we may escape the
Tower, no boatman now can be found on the river. The way through the
streets is dark and perilous, and beset with midnight ruffians.”

“Verily,” said Warner, “the danger is past now. Let the noble demoiselle
rest here till morning. The king dare not again--”

“Dare not!” interrupted Marmaduke. “Alas! you little know King Edward.”

At that name Anne shuddered, opened the door, and hurried down the
stairs; Sibyll and Marmaduke followed her.

“Listen, Sir Marmaduke,” said Sibyll. “Close without the Tower is the
house of a noble lady, the dame of Longueville, where Anne may rest
in safety, while you seek Lord Warwick. I will go with you, if you can
obtain egress for us both.”

“Brave damsel!” said Marmaduke, with emotion; “but your own safety--the
king’s anger--no--besides a third, your dress not concealed, would
create the warder’s suspicion. Describe the house.”

“The third to the left, by the river’s side, with an arched porch, and
the fleur-de-lis embossed on the walls.”

“It is not so dark but we shall find it. Fare you well, gentle
mistress.”

While they yet spoke, they had both reached the side of Anne. Sibyll
still persisted in the wish to accompany her friend; but Marmaduke’s
representation of the peril to life itself that might befall her father,
if Edward learned she had abetted Anne’s escape, finally prevailed. The
knight and his charge gained the outer gate.

“Haste, haste, Master Warder!” he cried, beating at the door with his
dagger till it opened jealously,--“messages of importance to the Lord
Warwick. We have the king’s signet. Open!”

The sleepy warder glanced at the ring; the gates were opened; they were
without the fortress, they hurried on. “Cheer up, noble lady; you are
safe, you shall be avenged!” said Marmaduke, as he felt the steps of
his companion falter. But the reaction had come. The effort Anne had
hitherto made was for escape, for liberty; the strength ceased, the
object gained; her head drooped, she muttered a few incoherent words,
and then sense and life left her. Marmaduke paused in great perplexity
and alarm. But lo, a light in a house before him! That house the third
to the river,--the only one with the arched porch described by Sibyll.
He lifted the light and holy burden in his strong arms, he gained the
door; to his astonishment it was open; a light burned on the stairs; he
heard, in the upper room, the sound of whispered voices, and quick, soft
footsteps hurrying to and fro. Still bearing the insensible form of
his companion, he ascended the staircase, and entered at once upon
a chamber, in which, by a dim lamp, he saw some two or three persons
assembled round a bed in the recess. A grave man advanced to him, as he
paused at the threshold.

“Whom seek you?”

“The Lady Longueville.”

“Hush?”

“Who needs me?” said a faint voice, from the curtained recess.

“My name is Nevile,” answered Marmaduke, with straightforward brevity.
“Mistress Sibyll Warner told me of this house, where I come for an
hour’s shelter to my companion, the Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of
Warwick.”

Marmaduke resigned his charge to an old woman, who was the nurse in that
sick-chamber, and who lifted the hood and chafed the pale, cold hands
of the young maiden; the knight then strode to the recess. The Lady of
Longueville was on the bed of death--an illness of two days had brought
her to the brink of the grave; but there was in her eye and countenance
a restless and preternatural animation, and her voice was clear and
shrill, as she said,--

“Why does the daughter of Warwick, the Yorkist, seek refuge in the house
of the fallen and childless Lancastrian?”

“Swear by thy hopes in Christ that thou will tend and guard her while I
seek the earl, and I reply.”

“Stranger, my name is Longueville, my birth noble,--those pledges of
hospitality and trust are stronger than hollow oaths. Say on!”

“Because, then,” whispered the knight, after waving the bystanders
from the spot, “because the earl’s daughter flies dishonour in a king’s
palace, and her insulter is the king!”

Before the dying woman could reply, Anne, recovered by the cares of the
experienced nurse, suddenly sprang to the recess, and kneeling by the
bedside, exclaimed wildly,--“Save me! bide me! save me!”

“Go and seek the earl, whose right hand destroyed my house and his
lawful sovereign’s throne,--go! I will live till he arrives!” said
the childless widow, and a wild gleam of triumph shot over her haggard
features.



CHAPTER VIII. THE GROUP ROUND THE DEATH-BED OF THE LANCASTRIAN WIDOW.

The dawning sun gleamed through gray clouds upon a small troop of men,
armed in haste, who were grouped round a covered litter by the outer
door of the Lady Longueville’s house; while in the death-chamber, the
Earl of Warwick, with a face as pale as the dying woman’s, stood beside
the bed, Anne calmly leaning on his breast, her eyes closed, and tears
yet moist on her long fringes.

“Ay, ay, ay!” said the Lancastrian noblewoman, “ye men of wrath and
turbulence should reap what ye have sown! This is the king for whom ye
dethroned the sainted Henry! this the man for whom ye poured forth the
blood of England’s best! Ha! ha! Look down from heaven, my husband, my
martyr-sons! The daughter of your mightiest foe flies to this lonely
hearth,--flies to the death-bed of the powerless woman for refuge from
the foul usurper whom that foe placed upon the throne!”

“Spare me,” muttered Warwick, in a low voice, and between his grinded
teeth. The room had been cleared, and Dr. Godard (the grave man who had
first accosted Marmaduke, and who was the priest summoned to the dying)
alone--save the scarce conscious Anne herself--witnessed the ghastly and
awful conference.

“Hush, daughter,” said the man of peace, lifting the solemn
crucifix,--“calm thyself to holier thoughts.”

The lady impatiently turned from the priest, and grasping the strong
right arm of Warwick with her shrivelled and trembling fingers, resumed
in a voice that struggled to repress the gasps which broke its breath,--

“But thou--oh, thou wilt bear this indignity! thou, the chief of
England’s barons, wilt see no dishonour in the rank love of the vilest
of England’s kings! Oh, yes, ye Yorkists have the hearts of varlets, not
of men and fathers!”

“By the symbol from which thou turnest, woman!” exclaimed the earl,
giving vent to the fury which the presence of death had before
suppressed, “by Him to whom, morning and night, I have knelt in grateful
blessing for the virtuous life of this beloved child, I will have such
revenge on the recreant whom I kinged, as shall live in the rolls of
England till the trump of the Judgment Angel!”

“Father,” said Anne, startled by her father’s vehemence from her
half-swoon, half-sleep--“Father, think no more of the past,--take me to
my mother! I want the clasp of my mother’s arms!”

“Leave us,--leave the dying, Sir Earl and son,” said Godard. “I too
am Lancastrian; I too would lay down my life for the holy Henry; but I
shudder, in the hour of death, to hear yon pale lips, that should pray
for pardon, preach to thee of revenge.”

“Revenge!” shrieked out the dame of Longueville, as, sinking fast and
fast, she caught the word--“revenge! Thou hast sworn revenge on Edward
of York, Lord Warwick,--sworn it in the chamber of death, in the ear of
one who will carry that word to the hero-dead of a hundred battlefields!
Ha! the sun has risen! Priest--Godard--thine arms--support--raise--bear
me to the casement! Quick--quick! I would see my king once more!
Quick--quick! and then--then--I will hear thee pray!”

The priest, half chiding, yet half in pity, bore the dying woman to the
casement. She motioned to him to open it; he obeyed. The sun, just above
the welkin, shone over the lordly Thames, gilded the gloomy fortress of
the Tower, and glittered upon the window of Henry’s prison.

“There--there! It is he,--it is my king! Hither,--lord, rebel
earl,--hither. Behold your sovereign. Repent, revenge!”

With her livid and outstretched hand, the Lancastrian pointed to the
huge Wakefield tower. The earl’s dark eye beheld in the dim distance
a pale and reverend countenance, recognized even from afar. The dying
woman fixed her glazing eyes upon the wronged and mighty baron, and
suddenly her arm fell to her side, the face became set as into stone,
the last breath of life gurgled within, and fled; and still those
glazing eyes were fixed on the earl’s hueless face, and still in his
ear, and echoed by a thousand passions in his heart, thrilled the
word which had superseded prayer, and in which the sinner’s soul had
flown,--REVENGE!



BOOK IX. THE WANDERERS AND THE EXILES.



CHAPTER I. HOW THE GREAT BARON BECOMES AS GREAT A REBEL.

Hilyard was yet asleep in the chamber assigned to him as his prison,
when a rough grasp shook off his slumbers, and he saw the earl before
him, with a countenance so changed from its usual open majesty, so dark
and sombre, that he said involuntarily, “You send me to the doomsman,--I
am ready!”

“Hist, man! Thou hatest Edward of York?”

“An it were my last word, yes!”

“Give me thy hand--we are friends! Stare not at me with those eyes of
wonder, ask not the why nor wherefore! This last night gave Edward a
rebel more in Richard Nevile! A steed waits thee at my gates; ride fast
to young Sir Robert Welles with this letter. Bid him not be dismayed;
bid him hold out, for ere many days are past, Lord Warwick, and it may
be also the Duke of Clarence, will join their force with his. Mark, I
say not that I am for Henry of Lancaster,--I say only that I am against
Edward of York. Farewell, and when we meet again, blessed be the arm
that first cuts its way to a tyrant’s heart!”

Without another word, Warwick left the chamber. Hilyard at first could
not believe his senses; but as he dressed himself in haste, he pondered
over all those causes of dissension which had long notoriously subsisted
between Edward and the earl, and rejoiced that the prophecy that he had
long so shrewdly hazarded was at last fulfilled. Descending the stairs
he gained the gate, where Marmaduke awaited him, while a groom held
a stout haquenee (as the common riding-horse was then called), whose
points and breeding promised speed and endurance.

“Mount, Master Robin,” said Marmaduke; “I little thought we should ever
ride as friends together! Mount!--our way for some miles out of London
is the same. You go into Lincolnshire, I into the shire of Hertford.”

“And for the same purpose?” asked Hilyard, as he sprang upon his horse,
and the two men rode briskly on.

“Yes!”

“Lord Warwick is changed at last?”

“At last!”

“For long?”

“Till death!”

“Good, I ask no more!”

A sound of hoofs behind made the franklin turn his head, and he saw
a goodly troop, armed to the teeth, emerge from the earl’s house and
follow the lead of Marmaduke. Meanwhile Warwick was closeted with
Montagu.

Worldly as the latter was, and personally attached to Edward, he was
still keenly alive to all that touched the honour of his House; and
his indignation at the deadly insult offered to his niece was even more
loudly expressed than that of the fiery earl.

“To deem,” he exclaimed, “to deem Elizabeth Woodville worthy of his
throne, and to see in Anne Nevile the only worthy to be his leman!”

“Ay!” said the earl, with a calmness perfectly terrible, from its
unnatural contrast to his ordinary heat, when but slightly chafed, “ay!
thou sayest it! But be tranquil; cold,--cold as iron, and as hard! We
must scheme now, not storm and threaten--I never schemed before! You are
right,--honesty is a fool’s policy! Would I had known this but an hour
before the news reached me! I have already dismissed our friends to
their different districts, to support King Edward’s cause--he is still
king,--a little while longer king! Last night, I dismissed them--last
night, at the very hour when--O God, give me patience!” He paused, and
added in a low voice, “Yet--yet--how long the moments are how long! Ere
the sun sets, Edward, I trust, will be in my power!”

“How?”

“He goes, to-day, to the More,--he will not go the less for what
hath chanced; he will trust to the archbishop to make his peace with
me,--churchmen are not fathers! Marmaduke Nevile hath my orders; a
hundred armed men, who would march against the fiend himself, if I said
the word, will surround the More, and seize the guest!”

“But what then? Who, if Edward, I dare not say the word--who is to
succeed him?”

“Clarence is the male heir.”

“But with what face to the people proclaim--”

“There--there it is!” interrupted Warwick. “I have thought of that,--I
have thought of all things; my mind seems to have traversed worlds since
daybreak! True! all commotion to be successful must have a cause that
men can understand. Nevertheless, you, Montagu--you have a smoother
tongue than I; go to our friends--to those who hate Edward--seek them,
sound them!”

“And name to them Edward’s infamy?”

“‘S death, dost thou think it? Thou, a Monthermer and Montagu: proclaim
to England the foul insult to the hearth of an English gentleman and
peer! feed every ribald Bourdour with song and roundel of Anne’s virgin
shame! how King Edward stole to her room at the dead of night, and wooed
and pressed, and swore, and--God of Heaven, that this hand were on his
throat! No, brother, no! there are some wrongs we may not tell,--tumours
and swellings of the heart which are eased not till blood can flow!”

During this conference between the brothers, Edward, in his palace, was
seized with consternation and dismay on hearing that the Lady Anne could
not be found in her chamber. He sent forthwith to summon Adam Warner to
his presence, and learned from the simple sage, who concealed nothing,
the mode in which Anne had fled from the Tower. The king abruptly
dismissed Adam, after a few hearty curses and vague threats; and awaking
to the necessity of inventing some plausible story, to account to the
wonder of the court for the abrupt disappearance of his guest, he saw
that the person who could best originate and circulate such a tale was
the queen; and he sought her at once, with the resolution to choose his
confidant in the connection most rarely honoured by marital trust in
similar offences. He, however, so softened his narrative as to leave it
but a venial error. He had been indulging over-freely in the wine-cup,
he had walked into the corridor for the refreshing coolness of the air,
he had seen the figure of a female whom he did not recognize; and a
few gallant words, he scarce remembered what, had been misconstrued. On
perceiving whom he had thus addressed, he had sought to soothe the anger
or alarm of the Lady Anne; but still mistaking his intention, she had
hurried into Warner’s chamber; he had followed her thither, and now she
had fled the palace. Such was his story, told lightly and laughingly,
but ending with a grave enumeration of the dangers his imprudence had
incurred.

Whatever Elizabeth felt, or however she might interpret the confession,
she acted with her customary discretion; affected, after a few tender
reproaches, to place implicit credit in her lord’s account, and
volunteered to prevent all scandal by the probable story that the
earl, being prevented from coming in person for his daughter, as he
had purposed, by fresh news of the rebellion which might call him from
London with the early day, had commissioned his kinsman Marmaduke to
escort her home. The quick perception of her sex told her that, whatever
license might have terrified Anne into so abrupt a flight, the haughty
earl would shrink no less than Edward himself from making public an
insult which slander could well distort into the dishonour of his
daughter; and that whatever pretext might be invented, Warwick would not
deign to contradict it. And as, despite Elizabeth’s hatred to the earl,
and desire of permanent breach between Edward and his minister, she
could not, as queen, wife, and woman, but be anxious that some cause
more honourable in Edward, and less odious to the people, should be
assigned for quarrel, she earnestly recommended the king to repair at
once to the More, as had been before arranged, and to spare no pains,
disdain no expressions of penitence and humiliation, to secure the
mediation of the archbishop. His mind somewhat relieved by this
interview and counsel, the king kissed Elizabeth with affectionate
gratitude, and returned to his chamber to prepare for his departure
to the archbishop’s palace. But then, remembering that Adam and Sibyll
possessed his secret, he resolved at once to banish them from the Tower.
For a moment he thought of the dungeons of his fortress, of the rope of
his doomsman; but his conscience at that hour was sore and vexed. His
fierceness humbled by the sense of shame, he shrank from a new crime;
and, moreover, his strong common-sense assured him that the testimony of
a shunned and abhorred wizard ceased to be of weight the moment it was
deprived of the influence it took from the protection of a king. He gave
orders for a boat to be in readiness by the gate of St. Thomas, again
summoned Adam into his presence, and said briefly, “Master Warner, the
London mechanics cry so loudly against thine invention for lessening
labour and starving the poor, the sailors on the wharfs are so mutinous
at the thought of vessels without rowers, that, as a good king is bound,
I yield to the voice of my people. Go home, then, at once; the queen
dispenses with thy fair daughter’s service, the damsel accompanies thee.
A boat awaits ye at the stairs; a guard shall attend ye to your house.
Think what has passed within these walls has been a dream,--a dream
that, if told, is deathful, if concealed and forgotten hath no portent!”

Without waiting a reply, the king called from the anteroom one of his
gentlemen, and gave him special directions as to the departure and
conduct of the worthy scholar and his gentle daughter. Edward next
summoned before him the warder of the gate, learned that he alone was
privy to the mode of his guest’s flight, and deeming it best to leave
at large no commentator on the tale he had invented, sentenced the
astonished warder to three months’ solitary imprisonment,--for appearing
before him with soiled hosen! An hour afterwards, the king, with a small
though gorgeous retinue, was on his way to the More.

The archbishop had, according to his engagement, assembled in his palace
the more powerful of the discontented seigneurs; and his eloquence had
so worked upon them, that Edward beheld, on entering the hall, only
countenances of cheerful loyalty and respectful welcome. After the first
greetings, the prelate, according to the custom of the day, conducted
Edward into a chamber, that he might refresh himself with a brief rest
and the bath, previous to the banquet.

Edward seized the occasion, and told his tale; but however softened,
enough was left to create the liveliest dismay in his listener. The
lofty scaffolding of hope upon which the ambitious prelate was to mount
to the papal throne seemed to crumble into the dust. The king and the
earl were equally necessary to the schemes of George Nevile. He chid the
royal layman with more than priestly unction for his offence; but Edward
so humbly confessed his fault, that the prelate at length relaxed his
brow, and promised to convey his penitent assurances to the earl.

“Not an hour should be lost,” he said; “the only one who can soothe
his wrath is your Highness’s mother, our noble kinswoman. Permit me to
despatch to her grace a letter, praying her to seek the earl, while I
write by the same courier to himself.”

“Be it all as you will,” said Edward, doffing his surcoat, and dipping
his hands in a perfumed ewer; “I shall not know rest till I have knelt
to the Lady Anne, and won her pardon.”

The prelate retired, and scarcely had he left the room when Sir John
Ratcliffe, [Afterwards Lord Fitzwalter. See Lingard (note, vol. iii. p.
507, quarto edition), for the proper date to be assigned to this royal
visit to the More,--a date we have here adopted, not, as Sharon Turner
and others place (namely, upon the authority of Hearne’s Fragm., 302,
which subsequent events disprove), after the open rebellion of Warwick,
but just before it; that is, not after Easter, but before Lent.] one of
the king’s retinue, and in waiting on his person, entered the chamber,
pale and trembling.

“My liege,” he said, in a whisper, “I fear some deadly treason awaits
you. I have seen, amongst the trees below this tower, the gleam of
steel; I have crept through the foliage, and counted no less than a
hundred armed men,--their leader is Sir Marmaduke Nevile, Earl Warwick’s
kinsman!”

“Ha!” muttered the king, and his bold face fell, “comes the earl’s
revenge so soon?”

“And,” continued Ratcliffe, “I overheard Sir Marmaduke say, ‘The door of
the Garden Tower is unguarded,--wait the signal!’ Fly, my liege! Hark!
even now I hear the rattling of arms!”

The king stole to the casement; the day was closing; the foliage grew
thick and dark around the wall; he saw an armed man emerge from the
shade,--a second, and a third.

“You are right, Ratcliffe! Flight--but how?”

“This way, my liege. By the passage I entered, a stair winds to a door
on the inner court; there I have already a steed in waiting. Deign, for
precaution, to use my hat and manteline.”

The king hastily adopted the suggestion, followed the noiseless steps
of Ratcliffe, gained the door, sprang upon his steed, and dashing
right through a crowd assembled by the gate, galloped alone and fast,
untracked by human enemy, but goaded by the foe that mounts the rider’s
steed, over field, over fell, over dyke, through hedge, and in the dead
of night reined in at last before the royal towers of Windsor.



CHAPTER II. MANY THINGS BRIEFLY TOLD.

The events that followed the king’s escape were rapid and startling. The
barons assembled at the More, enraged at Edward’s seeming distrust of
them, separated in loud anger. The archbishop learned the cause from one
of his servitors, who detected Marmaduke’s ambush, but he was too wary
to make known a circumstance suspicious to himself. He flew to London,
and engaged the mediation of the Duchess of York to assist his own.
[Lingard. See for the dates, Fabyan, 657.]

The earl received their joint overtures with stern and ominous coldness,
and abruptly repaired to Warwick, taking with him the Lady Anne. There
he was joined, the same day, by the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.

The Lincolnshire rebellion gained head: Edward made a dexterous feint
in calling, by public commission, upon Clarence and Warwick to aid in
dispersing it; if they refused, the odium of first aggression would
seemingly rest with them. Clarence, more induced by personal ambition
than sympathy with Warwick’s wrong, incensed by his brother’s recent
slights, looking to Edward’s resignation and his own consequent
accession to the throne, and inflamed by the ambition and pride of a
wife whom he at once feared and idolized, went hand in heart with the
earl; but not one lord and captain whom Montagu had sounded lent favour
to the deposition of one brother for the advancement of the next.
Clarence, though popular, was too young to be respected: many there were
who would rather have supported the earl, if an aspirant to the throne;
but that choice forbidden by the earl himself, there could be but two
parties in England,--the one for Edward IV., the other for Henry VI.
Lord Montagu had repaired to Warwick Castle to communicate in person
this result of his diplomacy. The earl, whose manner was completely
changed, no longer frank and hearty, but close and sinister, listened in
gloomy silence.

“And now,” said Montagu, with the generous emotion of a man whose nobler
nature was stirred deeply, “if you resolve on war with Edward, I am
willing to renounce my own ambition, the hand of a king’s daughter for
my son, so that I may avenge the honour of our common name. I confess
that I have so loved Edward that I would fain pray you to pause, did I
not distrust myself, lest in such delay his craft should charm me back
to the old affection. Nathless, to your arm and your great soul I have
owed all, and if you are resolved to strike the blow, I am ready to
share the hazard.”

The earl turned away his face, and wrung his brother’s hand.

“Our father, methinks, hears thee from the grave!” said he, solemnly,
and there was a long pause. At length Warwick resumed: “Return to
London; seem to take no share in my actions, whatever they be; if I
fail, why drag thee into my ruin?--and yet, trust me, I am rash and
fierce no more. He who sets his heart on a great object suddenly becomes
wise. When a throne is in the dust, when from St. Paul’s Cross a voice
goes forth to Carlisle and the Land’s End, proclaiming that the reign of
Edward the Fourth is past and gone, then, Montagu, I claim thy promise
of aid and fellowship,--not before!”

Meanwhile, the king, eager to dispel thought in action, rushed in person
against the rebellious forces. Stung by fear into cruelty, he beheaded,
against all kingly faith, his hostages, Lord Welles and Sir Thomas
Dymoke, summoned Sir Robert Welles, the leader of the revolt, to
surrender; received for answer, that Sir Robert Welles would not trust
the perfidy of the man who had murdered his father!--pushed on to
Erpingham, defeated the rebels in a signal battle, and crowned his
victory by a series of ruthless cruelties, committed to the fierce and
learned Earl of Worcester, “Butcher of England.” [Stowe. “Warkworth
Chronicle”--Cont. Croyl. Lord Worcester ordered Clapham (a squire to
Lord Warwick) and nineteen others, gentlemen and yeomen, to be impaled,
and from the horror the spectacle inspired, and the universal odium
it attached to Worcester, it is to be feared that the unhappy men were
still sensible to the agony of this infliction, though they appear first
to have been drawn, and partially hanged,--outrage confined only to the
dead bodies of rebels being too common at that day to have excited the
indignation which attended the sentence Worcester passed on his victims.
It is in vain that some writers would seek to cleanse the memory of this
learned nobleman from the stain of cruelty by rhetorical remarks on
the improbability that a cultivator of letters should be of a ruthless
disposition. The general philosophy of this defence is erroneous. In
ignorant ages a man of superior acquirements is not necessarily made
humane by the cultivation of his intellect, on the contrary, he too
often learns to look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay.
Of this truth all history is pregnant,--witness the accomplished tyrants
of Greece, the profound and cruel intellect of the Italian Borgias.
Richard III. and Henry VIII. were both highly educated for their age.
But in the case of Tiptoft, Lord Worcester, the evidence of his cruelty
is no less incontestable than that which proves his learning--the
Croyland historian alone is unimpeachable. Worcester’s popular name of
“the Butcher” is sufficient testimony in itself. The people are often
mistaken, to be sure, but can scarcely be so upon the one point, whether
a man who has sat in judgment on themselves be merciful or cruel.]

With the prompt vigour and superb generalship which Edward ever
displayed in war, he then cut his gory way to the force which Clarence
and Warwick (though their hostility was still undeclared) had levied,
with the intent to join the defeated rebels. He sent his herald, Garter
King-at-arms, to summon the earl and the duke to appear before him
within a certain day. The time expired; he proclaimed them traitors, and
offered rewards for their apprehension. [One thousand pounds in money,
or one hundred pounds a year in land; an immense reward for that day.]

So sudden had been Warwick’s defection, so rapid the king’s movements,
that the earl had not time to mature his resources, assemble his
vassals, consolidate his schemes. His very preparations, upon the night
on which Edward had repaid his services by such hideous ingratitude, had
manned the country with armies against himself. Girt but with a scanty
force collected in haste (and which consisted merely of his retainers in
the single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward cut him off from the
counties in which his name was held most dear, in which his trumpet
could raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the aid he had expected
from his powerful but self-interested brother-in-law, Lord Stanley.
Revenge had become more dear to him than life: life must not be
hazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the king; and the day
that his troops entered Exeter, Warwick, the females of his family,
with Clarence, and a small but armed retinue, took ship from Dartmouth,
sailed for Calais (before which town, while at anchor, Isabel was
confined of her first-born). To the earl’s rage and dismay his deputy
Vauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on towards Normandy,
captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token of defiance to the
earl’s old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur, where he and his
companions were received with royal honours by the Admiral of France,
and finally took their way to the court of Louis XI. at Amboise.

“The danger is past forever!” said King Edward, as the wine sparkled in
his goblet. “Rebellion hath lost its head,--and now, indeed, and for the
first time, a monarch I reign alone!” [Before leaving England, Warwick
and Clarence are generally said to have fallen in with Anthony Woodville
and Lord Audley, and ordered them to execution, from which they were
saved by a Dorsetshire gentleman. Carte, who, though his history is
not without great mistakes, is well worth reading by those whom the
character of Lord Warwick may interest, says, that the earl had “too
much magnanimity to put them to death immediately, according to the
common practice of the times, and only imprisoned them in the castle
of Wardour, from whence they were soon rescued by John Thornhill,
a gentleman of Dorsetshire.” The whole of this story is, however,
absolutely contradicted by the “Warkworth Chronicle” (p. 9, edited by
Mr. Halliwell), according to which authority Anthony Woodville was at
that time commanding a fleet upon the Channel, which waylaid Warwick on
his voyage; but the success therein attributed to the gallant Anthony,
in dispersing or seizing all the earl’s ships, save the one that bore
the earl himself and his family, is proved to be purely fabulous, by the
earl’s well-attested capture of the Flemish vessels, as he passed
from Calais to the coasts of Normandy, an exploit he could never have
performed with a single vessel of his own. It is very probable that the
story of Anthony Woodville’s capture and peril at this time originates
in a misadventure many years before, and recorded in the “Paston
Letters,” as well as in the “Chronicles.”--In the year 1459, Anthony
Woodville and his father, Lord Rivers (then zealous Lancastrians),
really did fall into the hands of the Earl of March (Edward IV.),
Warwick and Salisbury, and got off with a sound “rating” upon the rude
language which such “knaves’ sons” and “little squires” had held to
those “who were of king’s blood.”]



CHAPTER III. THE PLOT OF THE HOSTELRY--THE MAID AND THE SCHOLAR IN THEIR
HOME.

The country was still disturbed, and the adherents, whether of Henry or
the earl, still rose in many an outbreak, though prevented from swelling
into one common army by the extraordinary vigour not only of Edward,
but of Gloucester and Hastings,--when one morning, just after the events
thus rapidly related, the hostelry of Master Sancroft, in the suburban
parish of Marybone, rejoiced in a motley crowd of customers and topers.

Some half-score soldiers, returned in triumph from the royal camp, sat
round a table placed agreeably enough in the deep recess made by the
large jutting lattice; with them were mingled about as many women,
strangely and gaudily clad. These last were all young; one or two,
indeed, little advanced from childhood. But there was no expression of
youth in their hard, sinister features: coarse paint supplied the place
of bloom; the very youngest had a wrinkle on her brow; their forms
wanted the round and supple grace of early years. Living principally in
the open air, trained from infancy to feats of activity, their muscles
were sharp and prominent, their aspects had something of masculine
audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in them more loathsome
than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice had set its ineffable,
unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had sprung the tears of compassion
or woman’s gentle sorrow; on those brows never had flushed the glow of
modest shame: their very voices half belied their sex,--harsh and deep
and hoarse, their laughter loud and dissonant. Some amongst them were
not destitute of a certain beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a
common hideousness of expression,--an expression at once cunning,
bold, callous, licentious. Womanless through the worst vices of woman,
passionless through the premature waste of passion, they stood between
the sexes like foul and monstrous anomalies, made up and fashioned
from the rank depravities of both. These creatures seemed to have newly
arrived from some long wayfaring; their shoes and the hems of their
robes were covered with dust and mire; their faces were heated, and the
veins in their bare, sinewy, sunburned arms were swollen by fatigue.
Each had beside her on the floor a timbrel, each wore at her girdle a
long knife in its sheath: well that the sheaths hid the blades, for not
one--not even that which yon cold-eyed child of fifteen wore--but had on
its steel the dark stain of human blood!

The presence of soldiers fresh from the scene of action had naturally
brought into the hostelry several of the idle gossips of the suburb, and
these stood round the table, drinking into their large ears the boasting
narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the revellers,
but evidently listening with attention to all the news of the hour, sat
a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap, and ever and
anon, as he lifted his head for the purpose of drinking, glancing a
wanton eye at one of the tymbesteres.

“But an’ you had seen,” said a trooper, who was the mouthpiece of his
comrades--“an’ you had seen the raptrils run when King Edward himself
led the charge! Marry, it was like a cat in a rabbit burrow! Easy to
see, I trow, that Earl Warwick was not amongst them! His men, at least,
fight like devils!”

“But there was one tall fellow,” said a soldier, setting down his
tankard, “who made a good fight and dour, and, but for me and my
comrades, would have cut his way to the king.”

“Ay, ay, true; we saved his highness, and ought to have been
knighted,--but there’s no gratitude nowadays!”

“And who was this doughty warrior?” asked one of the bystanders, who
secretly favoured the rebellion.

“Why, it was said that he was Robin of Redesdale,--he who fought my Lord
Montagu off York.”

“Our Robin!” exclaimed several voices. “Ay, he was ever a brave
fellow--poor Robin!”

“‘Your Robin,’ and ‘poor Robin,’ varlets!” cried the principal trooper.
“Have a care! What do ye mean by your Robin?”

“Marry, sir soldier,” quoth a butcher, scratching his head, and in a
humble voice, “craving your pardon and the king’s, this Master Robin
sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and
mighty glib of the tongue. Don’t ye mind, neighbours,” he added rapidly,
eager to change the conversation, “how he made us leave off when we were
just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in his den yonder?
Who else could have done that? But an’ we had known Robin had been
a rebel to sweet King Edward, we’d have roasted him along with the
wizard!”

One of the timbrel-girls, the leader of the choir, her arm round a
soldier’s neck, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the
gesture of the butcher, as he pointed through the open lattice to the
sombre, ruinous abode of Adam Warner.

“Was that the house ye would have burned?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes; but Robin told us the king would hang those who took on them the
king’s blessed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough,
old Adam Warner was advanced to be wizard-in-chief to the king’s own
highness a week or two afterwards.”

The friar had made a slight movement at the name of Warner; he now
pushed his stool nearer to the principal group, and drew his hood
completely over his countenance.

“Yea!” exclaimed the mechanic, whose son had been the innocent cause of
the memorable siege to poor Adam’s dilapidated fortress, related in the
first book of this narrative”--yea; and what did he when there? Did he
not devise a horrible engine for the destruction of the poor,--an engine
that was to do all the work in England by the devil’s help?--so that if
a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if his dame needed
a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a wagon, or his good
wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the
draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the
blacksmith,--but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and
turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and wagon, kettle and pot, spick
and span new, from his brewage of vapour and sea-coal. Oh, have I not
heard enough of the sorcerer from my brother, who works in the Chepe
for Master Stokton, the mercer!--and Master Stokton was one of the
worshipful deputies to whom the old nigromancer had the front to boast
his devices.”

“It is true,” said the friar, suddenly.

“Yes, reverend father, it is true,” said the mechanic, doffing his
cap, and inclining his swarthy face to this unexpected witness of his
veracity. A murmur of wrath and hatred was heard amongst the bystanders.
The soldiers indifferently turned to their female companions. There
was a brief silence; and, involuntarily, the gossips stretched over the
table to catch sight of the house of so demoniac an oppressor of the
poor.

“See,” said the baker, “the smoke still curls from the rooftop! I heard
he had come back. Old Madge, his handmaid, has bought cimnel-cakes of me
the last week or so; nothing less than the finest wheat serves him now,
I trow. However, right’s right, and--”

“Come back!” cried the fierce mechanic; “the owl hath kept close in his
roost! An’ it were not for the king’s favour, I would soon see how the
wizard liked to have fire and water brought to bear against himself!”

“Sit down, sweetheart,” whispered one of the young tymbesteres to the
last speaker--

    “Come, kiss me, my darling,
       Warm kisses I trade for.”

“Avaunt!” quoth the mechanic, gruffly, and shaking off the seductive arm
of the tymbestere--“avaunt! I have neither liefe nor halfpence for thee
and thine. Out on thee!--a child of thy years! a rope’s end to thy back
were a friend’s best kindness!”

The girl’s eyes sparkled, she instinctively put her hand to her knife;
then turning to a soldier by her side, she said, “Hear you that, and sit
still?”

“Thunder and wounds!” growled the soldier thus appealed to, “more
respect to the sex, knave; if I don’t break thy fool’s costard with
my sword-hilt, it is only because Red Grisell can take care of herself
against twenty such lozels as thou. These honest girls have been to the
wars with us; King Edward grudges no man his jolly fere. Speak up for
thyself, Grisell! How many tall fellows didst thou put out of their pain
after the battle of Losecote?”

“Only five, Hal,” replied the cold-eyed girl, and showing her glittering
teeth with the grin of a young tigress; “but one was a captain. I shall
do better next time; it was my first battle, thou knowest!”

The more timid of the bystanders exchanged a glance of horror, and drew
back. The mechanic resumed sullenly,--“I seek no quarrel with lass or
lover. I am a plain, blunt man, with a wife and children, who are dear
to me; and if I have a grudge to the nigromancer, it is because he
glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!”--and he caught up a blue-eyed, handsome
boy, who had been clinging to his side, and baring the child’s arm,
showed it to the spectators; there was a large scar on the limb, and it
was shrunk and withered.

“It was my own fault,” said the little fellow, deprecatingly. The
affectionate father silenced the sufferer with a cuff on the cheek, and
resumed: “Ye note, neighbours, the day when the foul wizard took this
little one in his arms: well, three weeks afterwards--that very day
three weeks--as he was standing like a lamb by the fire, the good wife’s
caldron seethed over, without reason or rhyme, and scalded his arm till
it rivelled up like a leaf in November; and if that is not glamour, why
have we laws against witchcraft?”

“True, true!” groaned the chorus.

The boy, who had borne his father’s blow without a murmur, now again
attempted remonstrance. “The hot water went over the gray cat, too, but
Master Warner never bewitched her, daddy.”

“He takes his part!--You hear the daff laddy? He takes the old
nigromancer’s part,--a sure sign of the witchcraft; but I’ll leather it
out of thee, I will!” and the mechanic again raised his weighty arm. The
child did not this time await the blow; he dodged under the butcher’s
apron, gained the door, and disappeared. “And he teaches our own
children to fly in our faces!” said the father, in a kind of whimper.
The neighbours sighed in commiseration.

“Oh,” he exclaimed in a fiercer tone, grinding his teeth, and shaking
his clenched fist towards Adam Warner’s melancholy house, “I say again,
if the king did not protect the vile sorcerer, I would free the land
from his devilries ere his black master could come to his help.”

“The king cares not a straw for Master Warner or his inventions, my
son,” said a rough, loud voice. All turned, and saw the friar standing
in the midst of the circle. “Know ye not, my children, that the king
sent the wretch neck and crop out of the palace for having bewitched
the Earl of Warwick and his grace the Lord Clarence, so that they turned
unnaturally against their own kinsman, his highness? But ‘Manus malorum
suos bonos breaket,’--that is to say, the fists of wicked men only whack
their own bones. Ye have all heard tell of Friar Bungey, my children?”

“Ay, ay!” answered two or three in a breath,--“a wizard, it’s true, and
a mighty one; but he never did harm to the poor; though they do say he
made a quaint image of the earl, and--”

“Tut, tut!” interrupted the friar, “all Bungey did was to try to
disenchant the Lord Warwick, whom yon miscreant had spellbound. Poor
Bungey! he is a friend to the people: and when he found that Master Adam
was making a device for their ruin, he spared no toil, I assure ye, to
frustrate the iniquity. Oh, how he fasted and watched! Oh, how many a
time he fought, tooth and nail, with the devil in person, to get at the
infernal invention! for if he had that invention once in his hands, he
could turn it to good account, I can promise ye: and give ye rain for
the green blade and sun for the ripe sheaf. But the fiend got the better
at first; and King Edward, bewitched himself for the moment, would have
hanged Friar Bungey for crossing old Adam, if he had not called three
times, in a loud voice, ‘Presto pepranxenon!’ changed himself into a
bird, and flown out of the window. As soon as Master Adam Warner found
the field clear to himself, he employed his daughter to bewitch the Lord
Hastings; he set brother against brother, and made the king and Lord
George fall to loggerheads; he stirred up the rebellion; and where
he would have stopped the foul fiend only knows, if your friend Friar
Bungey, who, though a wizard as you say, is only so for your benefit
(and a holy priest into the bargain), had not, by aid of a good spirit,
whom he conjured up in the island of Tartary, disenchanted the king, and
made him see in a dream what the villanous Warner was devising against
his crown and his people,--whereon his highness sent Master Warner and
his daughter back to their roost, and, helped by Friar Bungey, beat his
enemies out of the kingdom. So, if ye have a mind to save your children
from mischief and malice, ye may set to work with good heart, always
provided that ye touch not old Adam’s iron invention. Woe betide ye, if
ye think to destroy that! Bring it safe to Friar Bungey, whom ye will
find returned to the palace, and journeyman’s wages will be a penny a
day higher for the next ten years to come!” With these words the friar
threw down his reckoning, and moved majestically to the door.

“An’ I might trust you!” said Tim’s father, laying hold of the friar’s
serge.

“Ye may, ye may!” cried the leader of the tymbesteres, starting up from
the lap of her soldier, “for it is Friar Bungey himself!”

A movement of astonishment and terror was universal. “Friar Bungey
himself!” repeated the burly impostor. “Right, lassie, right; and he now
goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in King Edward’s
ear,--spells to defeat the malignant ones, and to lower the price of
beer. Wax wobiscum!”

With that salutation, more benevolent than accurate, the friar vanished
from the room; the chief of the tymbesteres leaped lightly on the table,
put one foot on the soldier’s shoulder, and sprang through the open
lattice. She found the friar in the act of mounting a sturdy mule, which
had been tied to a post by the door.

“Fie, Graul Skellet! Fie, Graul!” said the conjurer “Respect for my
serge. We must not be noted together out of door in the daylight.
There’s a groat for thee. Vade, execrabilis,--that is, good-day to thee,
pretty rogue!”

“A word, friar, a word. Wouldst thou have the old man burned, drowned,
or torn piecemeal? He hath a daughter too, who once sought to mar our
trade with her gittern; a daughter, then in a kirtle that I would not
have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet and lawn, with
a great lord for her fere.” The tymbestere’s eyes shone with malignant
envy, as she added, “Graul Skellet loves not to see those who have
worn worsted and say walk in sarcenet and lawn. Graul Skellet loves not
wenches who have lords for their feres, and yet who shrink from Graul
and her sisters as the sound from the leper.”

“Fegs,” answered the friar, impatiently, “I know naught against the
daughter,--a pretty lass, but too high for my kisses. And as for the
father, I want not the man’s life,--that is, not very specially,--but
his model, his mechanical. He may go free, if that can be compassed; if
not, why, the model at all risks. Serve me in this.”

“And thou wilt teach me the last tricks of the cards, and thy great art
of making phantoms glide by on the wall?”

“Bring the model intact, and I will teach thee more, Graul,--the dead
man’s candle, and the charm of the newt; and I’ll give thee, to boot,
the Gaul of the parricide that thou hast prayed me so oft for. Hum! thou
hast a girl in thy troop who hath a blinking eye that well pleases me;
but go now, and obey me. Work before play, and grace before pudding!”

The tymbestere nodded, snapped her fingers in the air, and humming no
holy ditty, returned to the house through the doorway.

This short conference betrays to the reader the relations, mutually
advantageous, which subsisted between the conjuror and the tymbesteres.
Their troop (the mothers, perchance, of the generation we treat of)
had been familiar to the friar in his old capacity of mountebank, or
tregetour, and in his clerical and courtly elevation, he did not disdain
an ancient connection that served him well with the populace; for these
grim children of vice seemed present in every place, where pastime was
gay, or strife was rampant,--in peace, at the merry-makings and the
hostelries; in war, following the camp, and seen, at night, prowling
through the battlefields to dispatch the wounded and to rifle the slain:
in merrymaking, hostelry, or in camp, they could thus still spread the
fame of Friar Bungey, and uphold his repute both for terrible lore and
for hearty love of the commons.

Nor was this all; both tymbesteres and conjuror were fortune-tellers by
profession. They could interchange the anecdotes each picked up in their
different lines. The tymbestere could thus learn the secrets of gentle
and courtier, the conjuror those of the artisan and mechanic.

Unconscious of the formidable dispositions of their neighbours, Sibyll
and Warner were inhaling the sweet air of the early spring in their
little garden. His disgrace had affected the philosopher less than might
be supposed. True, that the loss of the king’s favour was the deferring
indefinitely--perhaps for life--any practical application of his adored
theory; and yet, somehow or other, the theory itself consoled him. At
the worst, he should find some disciple, some ingenious student, more
fortunate than himself, to whom he could bequeath the secret, and who,
when Adam was in his grave, would teach the world to revere his name.
Meanwhile, his time was his own; he was lord of a home, though ruined
and desolate; he was free, with his free thoughts; and therefore, as he
paced the narrow garden, his step was lighter, his mind less absent than
when parched with feverish fear and hope for the immediate practical
success of a principle which was to be tried before the hazardous
tribunal of prejudice and ignorance.

“My child,” said the sage, “I feel, for the first time for years, the
distinction of the seasons. I feel that we are walking in the pleasant
spring. Young days come back to me like dreams; and I could almost think
thy mother were once more by my side!”

Sibyll pressed her father’s hand, and a soft but melancholy sigh stirred
her rosy lips. She, too, felt the balm of the young year; yet her
father’s words broke upon sad and anxious musings. Not to youth as to
age, not to loving fancy as to baffled wisdom, has seclusion charms that
compensate for the passionate and active world! On coming back to the
old house, on glancing round its mildewed walls, comfortless and bare,
the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had shuddered in dismay. Had
her ambition fallen again into its old abject state? Were all her hopes
to restore her ancestral fortunes, to vindicate her dear father’s fame,
shrunk into this slough of actual poverty,--the butterfly’s wings folded
back into the chrysalis shroud of torpor? The vast disparity between
herself and Hastings had not struck her so forcibly at the court; here,
at home, the very walls proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the
unwelcome witnesses of his attempted crime, he had given orders that
they should be conducted to their house through the most private ways.
He naturally desired to create no curious comment upon their departure.
Unperceived by their neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access
by the garden gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been
in the habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained,
in the old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some
insight into her heart. She had cherished the fondest hopes for the fate
of her young mistress; and now, to labour and to penury had the fate
returned! The guard who accompanied them, according to Edward’s orders,
left some pieces of gold, which Adam rejected, but Madge secretly
received and judiciously expended. And this was all their wealth. But
not of toil nor of penury in themselves thought Sibyll; she thought
but of Hastings,--wildly, passionately, trustfully, unceasingly, of the
absent Hastings. Oh, he would seek her, he would come, her reverse would
but the more endear her to him! Hastings came not. She soon learned the
wherefore. War threatened the land,--he was at his post, at the head of
armies.

Oh, with what panoply of prayer she sought to shield that beloved
breast! And now the old man spoke of the blessed spring, the holiday
time of lovers and of love, and the young girl, sighing, said to her
mournful heart, “The world hath its sun,--where is mine?”

The peacock strutted up to his poor protectors, and spread his plumes to
the gilding beams. And then Sibyll recalled the day when she had walked
in that spot with Marmaduke, and he had talked of his youth, ambition,
and lusty hopes, while, silent and absorbed, she had thought within
herself, “Could the world be open to me as to him,--I too have ambition,
and it should find its goal.” Now what contrast between the two,--the
man enriched and honoured, if to-day in peril or in exile, to-morrow
free to march forward still on his career, the world the country to him
whose heart was bold and whose name was stainless! and she, the woman,
brought back to the prison-home, scorn around her, impotent to avenge,
and forbidden to fly! Wherefore?--Sibyll felt her superiority of mind,
of thought, of nature,--wherefore the contrast? The success was that
of man, the discomfiture that of woman. Woe to the man who precedes his
age; but never yet has an age been in which genius and ambition are safe
to woman!

The father and the child turned into their house. The day was declining.
Adam mounted to his studious chamber, Sibyll sought the solitary
servant.

“What tidings, oh, what tidings? The war, you say, is over; the
great earl, his sweet daughter, safe upon the seas, but Hastings--ob,
Hastings! what of him?”

“My bonnibell, my lady-bird, I have none but good tales to tell thee. I
saw and spoke with a soldier who served under Lord Hastings himself;
he is unscathed, he is in London. But they say that one of his bands
is quartered in the suburb, and that there is a report of a rising in
Hertfordshire.”

“When will peace come to England and to me!” sighed Sibyll.



CHAPTER IV. THE WORLD’S JUSTICE, AND THE WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS.

The night had now commenced, and Sibyll was still listening--or,
perhaps, listening not--to the soothing babble of the venerable servant.
They were both seated in the little room that adjoined the hall, and
their only light came through the door opening on the garden,--a gray,
indistinct twilight, relieved by the few earliest stars. The peacock,
his head under his wing, roosted on the balustrade, and the song of the
nightingale, from amidst one of the neighbouring copses, which studded
the ground towards the chase of Marybone, came soft and distant on the
serene air. The balm and freshness of spring were felt in the dews, in
the skies, in the sweet breath of young herb and leaf; through the calm
of ever-watchful nature, it seemed as if you might mark, distinct and
visible, minute after minute, the blessed growth of April into May.

Suddenly Madge uttered a cry of alarm, and pointed towards the opposite
wall. Sibyll, startled from her revery, looked up, and saw something
dusk and dwarf-like perched upon the crumbling eminence. Presently this
apparition leaped lightly into the garden, and the alarm of the women
was lessened on seeing a young boy creep stealthily over the grass and
approach the open door.

“Hey, child!” said Madge, rising. “What wantest thou?”

“Hist, gammer, hist! Ah, the young mistress? That’s well. Hist! I say
again.” The boy entered the room. “I’m in time to save you. In half
an hour your house will be broken into, perhaps burned. The boys are
clapping their hands now at the thoughts of the bonfire. Father and all
the neighbours are getting ready. Hark! hark! No, it is only the wind!
The tymbesteres are to give note. When you hear their bells tinkle, the
mob will meet. Run for your lives, you and the old man, and don’t ever
say it was poor Tim who told you this, for Father would beat me to
death. Ye can still get through the garden into the fields. Quick!”

“I will go to the master,” exclaimed Madge, hurrying from the room.

The child caught Sibyll’s cold hand through the dark. “And I say,
mistress, if his worship is a wizard, don’t let him punish Father and
Mother, or poor Tim, or his little sister; though Tim was once naughty,
and hooted Master Warner. Many, many, many a time and oft have I seen
that kind, mild face in my sleep, just as when it bent over me, while I
kicked and screamed, and the poor gentleman said, ‘Thinkest thou I would
harm thee?’ But he’ll forgive me now, will he not? And when I turned
the seething water over myself, and they said it was all along of the
wizard, my heart pained more than the arm. But they whip me, and groan
out that the devil is in me, if I don’t say that the kettle upset of
itself! Oh, those tymbesteres! Mistress, did you ever see them? They
fright me. If you could hear how they set on all the neighbours! And
their laugh--it makes the hair stand on end! But you will get away,
and thank Tim too? Oh, I shall laugh then, when they find the old house
empty!”

“May our dear Lord bless thee--bless thee, child,” sobbed Sibyll,
clasping the boy in her arms, and kissing him, while her tears bathed
his cheeks.

A light gleamed on the threshold; Madge, holding a candle, appeared with
Warner, his hat and cloak thrown on in haste. “What is this?” said the
poor scholar. “Can it be true? Is mankind so cruel? What have I done,
woe is me! what have I done to deserve this?”

“Come, dear father, quick,” said Sibyll, drying her tears, and wakened
by the presence of the old man into energy and courage. “But put thy
hand on this boy’s head, and bless him; for it is he who has, haply,
saved us.”

The boy trembled a moment as the long-bearded face turned towards
him, but when he caught and recognized those meek, sweet eyes, his
superstition vanished, and it was but a holy and grateful awe that
thrilled his young blood, as the old man placed both withered hands over
his yellow hair, and murmured,--

“God shield thy youth! God make thy manhood worthy! God give thee
children in thine old age with hearts like thine!” Scarcely had the
prayer ceased when the clash of timbrels, with their jingling bells,
was heard in the street. Once, twice, again, and a fierce yell closed
in chorus,--caught up and echoed from corner to corner, from house to
house.

“Run! run!” cried the boy, turning white with terror.

“But the Eureka--my hope--my mind’s child!” exclaimed Adam, suddenly,
and halting at the door.

“Eh, eh!” said Madge, pushing him forward. “It is too heavy to move;
thou couldst not lift it. Think of thine own flesh and blood, of thy
daughter, of her dead mother! Save her life, if thou carest not for
thine own!”

“Go, Sibyll, go, and thou, Madge; I will stay. What matters my life,--it
is but the servant of a thought! Perish master, perish slave!”

“Father, unless you come with me, I stir not. Fly or perish, your fate
is mine! Another minute--Oh, Heaven of mercy, that roar again! We are
both lost!”

“Go, sir, go; they care not for your iron,--iron cannot feel. They will
not touch that! Have not your daughter’s life upon your soul!”

“Sibyll, Sibyll, forgive me! Come!” said Warner, conscience-stricken at
the appeal.

Madge and the boy ran forwards; the old woman unbarred the garden-gate;
Sibyll and her father went forth; the fields stretched before them calm
and solitary; the boy leaped up, kissed Sibyll’s pale cheek, and then
bounded across the grass, and vanished.

“Loiter not, Madge. Come!” cried Sibyll.

“Nay,” said the old woman, shrinking back, “they bear no grudge to me;
I am too old to do aught but burthen ye. I will stay, and perchance save
the house and the chattels, and poor master’s deft contrivance. Whist!
thou knowest his heart would break if none were by to guard it.”

With that the faithful servant thrust the broad pieces that yet remained
of the king’s gift into the gipsire Sibyll wore at her girdle, and then
closed and rebarred the door before they could detain her.

“It is base to leave her,” said the scholar-gentleman.

The noble Sibyll could not refute her father. Afar they heard the
tramping of feet; suddenly, a dark red light shot up into the blue air,
a light from the flame of many torches.

“The wizard, the wizard! Death to the wizard, who would starve the
poor!” yelled forth, and was echoed by a stern hurrah.

Adam stood motionless, Sibyll by his side.

“The wizard and his daughter!” shrieked a sharp single voice, the voice
of Graul the tymbestere.

Adam turned. “Fly, my child,--they now threaten thee. Come, come, come!”
 and, taking her by the hand, he hurried her across the fields, skirting
the hedge, their shadows dodging, irregular and quaint, on the starlit
sward. The father had lost all thought, all care but for the daughter’s
life. They paused at last, out of breath and exhausted: the sounds at
the distance were lulled and hushed. They looked towards the direction
of the home they had abandoned, expecting to see the flames destined to
consume it reddening the sky; but all was dark,--or, rather, no light
save the holy stars and the rising moon offended the majestic heaven.

“They cannot harm the poor old woman; she hath no lore. On her gray
hairs has fallen not the curse of men’s hate!” said Warner.

“Right, Father! when they found us flown, doubtless the cruel ones
dispersed. But they may search yet for thee. Lean on me, I am strong and
young. Another effort, and we gain the safe coverts of the Chase.”

While yet the last word hung on her lips, they saw, on the path they
had left, the burst of torch-light, and heard the mob hounding on their
track. But the thick copses, with their pale green just budding into
life, were at hand. On they fled. The deer started from amidst the
entangled fern, but stood and gazed at them without fear; the playful
hares in the green alleys ceased not their nightly sports at the
harmless footsteps; and when at last, in the dense thicket, they sunk
down on the mossy roots of a giant oak, the nightingales overhead
chanted as if in melancholy welcome. They were saved!

But in their home, fierce fires glared amidst the tossing torch-light;
the crowd, baffled by the strength of the door, scaled the wall, broke
through the lattice-work of the hall window, and streaming through
room after room, roared forth, “Death to the wizard!” Amidst the sordid
dresses of the men, the soiled and faded tinsel of the tymbesteres
gleamed and sparkled. It was a scene the she-fiends revelled in,--dear
are outrage and malice, and the excitement of turbulent passions, and
the savage voices of frantic men, and the thirst of blood to those
everlasting furies of a mob, under whatever name we know them, in
whatever time they taint with their presence,--women in whom womanhood
is blasted!

Door after door was burst open with cries of disappointed rage; at last
they ascended the turret-stairs, they found a small door barred and
locked. Tim’s father, a huge axe in his brawny arm, shivered the panels;
the crowd rushed in, and there, seated amongst a strange and motley
litter, they found the devoted Madge. The poor old woman had collected
into this place, as the stronghold of the mansion, whatever portable
articles seemed to her most precious, either from value or association.
Sibyll’s gittern (Marmaduke’s gift) lay amidst a lumber of tools and
implements; a faded robe of her dead mother’s, treasured by Madge and
Sibyll both, as a relic of holy love; a few platters and cups of pewter,
the pride of old Madge’s heart to keep bright and clean; odds and ends
of old hangings; a battered silver brooch (a love-gift to Madge herself
when she was young),--these, and suchlike scraps of finery, hoards
inestimable to the household memory and affection, lay confusedly heaped
around the huge grim model, before which, mute and tranquil, sat the
brave old woman.

The crowd halted, and stared round in superstitious terror and dumb
marvel.

The leader of the tymbesteres sprang forward.

“Where is thy master, old hag, and where the bonny maid who glamours
lords, and despises us bold lasses?”

“Alack! master and the damsel have gone hours ago! I am alone in the
house; what’s your will?”

“The crone looks parlous witchlike!” said Tim’s father; crossing
himself, and somewhat retreating from her gray, unquiet eyes. And,
indeed, poor Madge, with her wrinkled face, bony form, and high cap,
corresponded far more with the vulgar notions of a dabbler in the black
art than did Adam Warner, with his comely countenance and noble mien.

“So she doth, indeed, and verily,” said a hump-backed tinker; “if we
were to try a dip in the horsepool yonder it could do no harm.”

“Away with her, away!” cried several voices at that humane suggestion.

“Nay, nay,” quoth the baker, “she is a douce creature after all,
and hath dealt with me many years. I don’t care what becomes of the
wizard,--every one knows,” he added with pride, “that I was one of the
first to set fire to his house when Robin gainsayed it! but right’s
right--burn the master, not the drudge!”

This intercession might have prevailed, but unhappily, at that moment
Graul Skellet, who had secured two stout fellows to accomplish the
object so desired by Friar Bungey, laid hands on the model, and, at her
shrill command, the men advanced and dislodged it from its place. At the
same tine the other tymbesteres, caught by the sight of things pleasing
to their wonted tastes, threw themselves, one upon the faded robe
Sibyll’s mother had worn in her chaste and happy youth; another, upon
poor Madge’s silver brooch; a third, upon the gittern.

These various attacks roused up all the spirit and wrath of the old
woman: her cries of distress as she darted from one to the other,
striking to the right and left with her feeble arms, her form trembling
with passion, were at once ludicrous and piteous; and these were
responded to by the shrill exclamations of the fierce tymbesteres, as
they retorted scratch for scratch, and blow for blow. The spectators
grew animated by the sight of actual outrage and resistance; the
humpbacked tinker, whose unwholesome fancy one of the aggrieved
tymbesteres had mightily warmed, hastened to the relief of his virago;
and rendered furious by finding ten nails fastened suddenly on his face,
he struck down the poor creature by a blow that stunned her, seized her
in his arms,--for deformed and weakly as the tinker was, the old woman,
now sense and spirit were gone, was as light as skin and bone could
be,--and followed by half a score of his comrades, whooping and
laughing, bore her down the stairs. Tim’s father, who, whether from
parental affection, or, as is more probable, from the jealous hatred
and prejudice of ignorant industry, was bent upon Adam’s destruction,
hallooed on some of his fierce fellows into the garden, tracked the
footsteps of the fugitives by the trampled grass, and bounded over the
wall in fruitless chase. But on went the more giddy of the mob, rather
in sport than in cruelty, with a chorus of drunken apprentices and
riotous boys, to the spot where the humpbacked tinker had dragged
his passive burden. The foul green pond near Master Sancroft’s hostel
reflected the glare of torches; six of the tymbesteres, leaping and
wheeling, with doggerel song and discordant music, gave the signal for
the ordeal of the witch,--

    “Lake or river, dyke or ditch,
     Water never drowns the witch.
     Witch or wizard would ye know?
     Sink or swim, is ay or no.
     Lift her, swing her, once and twice,
       Lift her, swing her o’er the brim,--
     Lille--lera--twice and thrice
       Ha! ha! mother, sink or swim!”

And while the last line was chanted, amidst the full jollity of laughter
and clamour and clattering timbrels, there was a splash in the sullen
water; the green slough on the surface parted with an oozing gurgle, and
then came a dead silence.

“A murrain on the hag! she does not even struggle!” said, at last, the
hump-backed tinker.

“No,--no! she cares not for water. Try fire! Out with her! out!” cried
Red Grisell.

“Aroint her! she is sullen!” said the tinker, as his lean fingers
clutched up the dead body, and let it fall upon the margin. “Dead!” said
the baker, shuddering; “we have done wrong,--I told ye so! She dealt
with me many a year. Poor Madge! Right’s right. She was no witch!”

“But that was the only way to try it,” said the humpbacked tinker; “and
if she was not a witch, why did she look like one? I cannot abide ugly
folks!”

The bystanders shook their heads. But whatever their remorse, it was
diverted by a double sound: first, a loud hurrah from some of the mob
who had loitered for pillage, and who now emerged from Adam’s house,
following two men, who, preceded by the terrible Graul, dancing before
them, and tossing aloft her timbrel, bore in triumph the captured
Eureka; and, secondly, the blast of a clarion at the distance, while
up the street marched--horse and foot, with pike and banner--a goodly
troop. The Lord Hastings in person led a royal force, by a night march,
against a fresh outbreak of the rebels, not ten miles from the city,
under Sir Geoffrey Gates, who had been lately arrested by the Lord
Howard at Southampton, escaped, collected a disorderly body of such
restless men as are always disposed to take part in civil commotion, and
now menaced London itself. At the sound of the clarion the valiant mob
dispersed in all directions, for even at that day mobs had an instinct
of terror at the approach of the military, and a quick reaction from
outrage to the fear of retaliation.

But, at the sound of martial music, the tymbesteres silenced their own
instruments, and instead of flying, they darted through the crowd, each
to seek the other, and unite as for counsel. Graul, pointing to Mr.
Sancroft’s hostelry, whispered the bearers of the Eureka to seek refuge
there for the present, and to bear their trophy with the dawn to Friar
Bungey at the Tower; and then, gliding nimbly through the fugitive
rioters, sprang into the centre of the circle formed by her companions.

“Ye scent the coming battle?” said the arch-tymbestere.

“Ay, ay, ay!” answered the sisterhood.

“But we have gone miles since noon,--I am faint and weary!” said one
amongst them.

Red Grisell, the youngest of the band, struck her comrade on the
cheek--“Faint and weary, ronion, with blood and booty in the wind!”

The tymbesteres smiled grimly on their young sister; but the leader
whispered “Hush!” and they stood for a second or two with outstretched
throats, with dilated nostrils, with pent breath, listening to the
clarion and the hoofs and the rattling armour, the human vultures
foretasting their feast of carnage; then, obedient to a sign from
their chieftainess, they crept lightly and rapidly into the mouth of a
neighbouring alley, where they cowered by the squalid huts, concealed.
The troop passed on,--a gallant and serried band, horse and foot, about
fifteen hundred men. As they filed up the thoroughfare, and the tramp
of the last soldiers fell hollow on the starlit ground, the tymbesteres
stole from their retreat, and, at the distance of some few hundred
yards, followed the procession, with long, silent, stealthy strides,--as
the meaner beasts, in the instinct of hungry cunning, follow the lion
for the garbage of his prey.



CHAPTER V. THE FUGITIVES ARE CAPTURED--THE TYMBESTERES
REAPPEAR--MOONLIGHT ON THE REVEL OF THE LIVING--MOONLIGHT ON THE SLUMBER
OF THE DEAD.

The father and child made their resting-place under the giant oak. They
knew not whither to fly for refuge; the day and the night had become the
same to them,--the night menaced with robbers, the day with the mob. If
return to their home was forbidden, where in the wide world a shelter
for the would-be world-improver? Yet they despaired not, their hearts
failed them not. The majestic splendour of the night, as it deepened in
its solemn calm; as the shadows of the windless trees fell larger and
sharper upon the silvery earth; as the skies grew mellower and more
luminous in the strengthening starlight, inspired them with the serenity
of faith,--for night, to the earnest soul, opens the Bible of the
universe, and on the leaves of Heaven is written, “God is everywhere.”

Their hands were clasped each in each, their pale faces were upturned;
they spoke not, neither were they conscious that they prayed, but their
silence was thought, and the thought was worship.

Amidst the grief and solitude of the pure, there comes, at times, a
strange and rapt serenity,--a sleep-awake,--over which the instinct
of life beyond the grave glides like a noiseless dream; and ever that
heaven that the soul yearns for is coloured by the fancies of the fond
human heart, each fashioning the above from the desires unsatisfied
below.

“There,” thought the musing maiden, “cruelty and strife shall cease;
there, vanish the harsh differences of life; there, those whom we have
loved and lost are found, and through the Son, who tasted of mortal
sorrow, we are raised to the home of the Eternal Father!”

“And there,” thought the aspiring sage, “the mind, dungeoned and chained
below, rushes free into the realms of space; there, from every mystery
falls the veil; there, the Omniscient smiles on those who, through the
darkness of life, have fed that lamp, the soul; there, Thought, but the
seed on earth, bursts into the flower and ripens to the fruit!”

And on the several hope of both maid and sage the eyes of the angel
stars smiled with a common promise.

At last, insensibly, and while still musing, so that slumber but
continued the revery into visions, father and daughter slept.

The night passed away; the dawn came slow and gray; the antlers of the
deer stirred above the fern; the song of the nightingale was hushed; and
just as the morning star waned back, while the reddening east announced
the sun, and labour and trouble resumed their realm of day, a fierce
band halted before those sleeping forms.

These men had been Lancastrian soldiers, and, reduced to plunder for a
living, had, under Sir Geoffrey Gates, formed the most stalwart part of
the wild, disorderly force whom Hilyard and Coniers had led to Olney.
They had heard of the new outbreak, headed by their ancient captain, Sir
Geoffrey (who was supposed to have been instigated to his revolt by the
gold and promises of the Lancastrian chiefs), and were on their way to
join the rebels; but as war for them was but the name for booty, they
felt the wonted instinct of the robber, when they caught sight of the
old man and the fair maid.

Both Adam and his daughter wore, unhappily, the dresses in which they
had left the court, and Sibyll’s especially was that which seemed to
betoken a certain rank and station.

“Awake, rouse ye!” said the captain of the band, roughly shaking the arm
which encircled Sibyll’s slender waist. Adam started, opened his eyes,
and saw himself begirt by figures in rusty armour, with savage faces
peering under their steel sallets.

“How came you hither? Yon oak drops strange acorns,” quoth the chief.

“Valiant sir,” replied Adam, still seated, and drawing his gown
instinctively over Sibyll’s face, which nestled on his bosom, in slumber
so deep and heavy, that the gruff voice had not broken it, “valiant
sir! we are forlorn and houseless, an old man and a simple girl. Some
evil-minded persons invaded our home; we fled in the night, and--”

“Invaded your house! ha, it is clear,” said the chief. “We know the
rest.”

At this moment Sibyll woke, and starting to her feet in astonishment and
terror at the sight on which her eyes opened, her extreme beauty made a
sensible effect upon the bravoes.

“Do not be daunted, young demoiselle,” said the captain, with an air
almost respectful; “it is necessary thou and Sir John should follow us,
but we will treat you well, and consult later on the ransom ye will pay
us. Jock, discharge the young sumpter mule; put its load on the black
one. We have no better equipment for thee, lady; but the first haquenee
we find shall replace the mule, and meanwhile my knaves will heap their
cloaks for a pillion.”

“But what mean you?--you mistake us!” exclaimed Sibyll. “We are poor; we
cannot ransom ourselves.”

“Poor!--tut!” said the captain, pointing significantly to the costly
robe of the maiden--“moreover his worship’s wealth is well known. Mount
in haste,--we are pressed.” And without heeding the expostulations of
Sibyll and the poor scholar, the rebel put his troop into motion, and
marched himself at their head, with his lieutenant.

Sibyll found the subalterns sterner than their chief; for as Warner
offered to resist, one of them lifted his gisarme, with a frightful
oath, and Sibyll was the first to persuade her father to submit. She
mildly, however, rejected the mule, and the two captives walked together
in the midst of the troop.

“Pardie!” said the lieutenant, “I see little help to Sir Geoffrey in
these recruits, captain!”

“Fool!” said the chief, disdainfully, “if the rebellion fail, these
prisoners may save our necks. Will Somers last night was to break into
the house of Sir John Bourchier, for arms and moneys, of which the
knight hath a goodly store. Be sure, Sir John slinked off in the siege,
and this is he and his daughter. Thou knowest he is one of the greatest
knights, and the richest, whom the Yorkists boast of; and we may name
our own price for his ransom.”

“But where lodge them while we go to the battle?”

“Ned Porpustone hath a hostelry not far from the camp, and Ned is a good
Lancastrian, and a man to be trusted.”

“We have not searched the prisoners,” said the lieutenant; “they may
have some gold in their pouches.”

“Marry, when Will Somers storms a hive, little time does he leave to the
bees to fly away with much money. Nathless, thou mayest search the old
knight, but civilly, and with gentle excuses.”

“And the damsel?”

“Nay! that were unmannerly, and the milder our conduct, the larger the
ransom,--when we have great folks to deal with.”

The lieutenant accordingly fell back to search Adam’s gipsire, which
contained only a book and a file, and then rejoined his captain, without
offering molestation to Sibyll.

The mistake made by the bravo was at least so far not wholly unfortunate
that the notion of the high quality of the captives--for Sir John
Bourchier was indeed a person of considerable station and importance (a
notion favoured by the noble appearance of the scholar and the
delicate and highborn air of Sibyll)--procured for them all the respect
compatible with the circumstances. They had not gone far before they
entered a village, through which the ruffians marched with the most
perfect impunity; for it was a strange feature in those civil wars that
the mass of the population, except in the northern districts, remained
perfectly supine and neutral. And as the little band halted at a small
inn to drink, the gossips of the village collected round them, with the
same kind of indolent, careless curiosity which is now evinced in some
hamlet at the halt of a stage-coach. Here the captain learned, however,
some intelligence important to his objects,--namely, the night march of
the troop under Lord Hastings, and the probability that the conflict
was already begun. “If so,” muttered the rebel, “we can see how the tide
turns, before we endanger ourselves; and at the worst, our prisoners
will bring something of prize-money.”

While thus soliloquizing, he spied one of those cumbrous vehicles of
the day called whirlicotes [Whirlicotes were in use from a very early
period, but only among the great, till, in the reign of Richard II., his
queen, Anne, introduced side-saddles, when the whirlicote fell out of
fashion, but might be found at different hostelries on the main roads
for the accommodation of the infirm or aged.] standing in the yard of
the hostelry; and seizing upon it, vi et armis, in spite of all the
cries and protestations of the unhappy landlord, he ordered his captives
to enter, and recommenced his march.

As the band proceeded farther on their way, they were joined by fresh
troops of the same class as themselves, and they pushed on gayly, till,
about the hour of eight, they halted before the hostelry the captain had
spoken of. It stood a little out of the high road, not very far from
the village of Hadley, and the heath or chase of Gladsmore, on which was
fought, some time afterwards, the battle of Barnet. It was a house of
good aspect, and considerable size, for it was much frequented by all
caravanserais and travellers from the North to the metropolis. The
landlord, at heart a stanch Lancastrian, who had served in the French
wars, and contrived, no one knew how, to save moneys in the course of an
adventurous life, gave to his hostelry the appellation and sign of the
Talbot, in memory of the old hero of that name; and, hiring a tract of
land, joined the occupation of a farmer to the dignity of a host. The
house, which was built round a spacious quadrangle, represented the
double character of its owner, one side being occupied by barns and
a considerable range of stabling, while cows, oxen, and ragged colts
grouped amicably together in a space railed off in the centre of
the yard. At another side ran a large wooden staircase, with an open
gallery, propped on wooden columns, conducting to numerous chambers,
after the fashion of the Tabard in Southwark, immortalized by Chaucer.
Over the archway, on entrance, ran a labyrinth of sleeping lofts for
foot passengers and muleteers; and the side facing the entrance was
nearly occupied by a vast kitchen, the common hall, and the bar, with
the private parlour of the host, and two or three chambers in the second
story. The whirlicote jolted and rattled into the yard. Sibyll and
her father were assisted out of the vehicle, and, after a few words
interchanged with the host, conducted by Master Porpustone himself up
the spacious stairs into a chamber, well furnished and fresh littered,
with repeated assurances of safety, provided they maintained silence,
and attempted no escape.

“Ye are in time,” said Ned Porpustone to the captain. “Lord Hastings
made proclamation at daybreak that he gave the rebels two hours to
disperse.”

“Pest! I like not those proclamations. And the fellows stood their
ground?”

“No; for Sir Geoffrey, like a wise soldier, mended the ground by
retreating a mile to the left, and placing the wood between the Yorkists
and himself. Hastings, by this, must have remarshalled his men. But to
pass the wood is slow work, and Sir Geoffrey’s crossbows are no doubt
doing damage in the covert. Come in, while your fellows snatch a morsel
without; five minutes are not thrown away on filling their bellies.”

“Thanks, Ned, thou art a good fellow; and if all else fail, why, Sir
John’s ransom shall pay the reckoning. Any news of bold Robin?”

“Ay, he has ‘scaped with a whole skin, and gone back to the North,”
 answered the host, leading the way to his parlour, where a flask of
strong wine and some cold meat awaited his guest. “If Sir Geoffrey Gates
can beat off the York troopers, tell him, from me, not to venture to
London, but to fall back into the marshes. He will be welcome there, I
foreguess; for every northman is either for Warwick or for Lancaster,
and the two must unite now, I trow.”

“But Warwick is flown!” quoth the captain.

“Tush! he has only flown as the falcon flies when he has a heron to
fight with,--wheeling and soaring. Woe to the heron when the falcon
swoops! But you drink not!”

“No; I must keep the head cool to-day; for Hastings is a perilous
captain. Thy fist, friend! If I fall, I leave you Sir John and his girl
to wipe off old scores; if we beat off the Yorkists I vow to Our Lady of
Walsingham an image of wax of the weight of myself.” The marauder then
started up, and strode to his men, who were snatching a hasty meal on
the space before the hostel. He paused a moment or so, while his host
whispered,--

“Hastings was here before daybreak: but his men only got the sour beer;
yours fight upon huffcap.”

“Up, men! to your pikes! Dress to the right!” thundered the captain,
with a sufficient pause between each sentence. “The York lozels have
starved on stale beer,--shall they beat huffcap and Lancaster? Frisk
and fresh-up with the Antelope banner [The antelope was one of the
Lancastrian badges. The special cognizance of Henry VI. was two feathers
in saltire.], and long live Henry the Sixth!”

The sound of the shout that answered this harangue shook the thin walls
of the chamber in which the prisoners were confined, and they heard
with joy the departing tramp of the soldiers. In a short time, Master
Porpustone himself, a corpulent, burly fellow, with a face by no
means unprepossessing, mounted to the chamber, accompanied by a comely
housekeeper, linked to him, as scandal said, by ties less irksome than
Hymen’s, and both bearing ample provisions, with rich pigment and lucid
clary [clary was wine clarified], which they spread with great formality
on an oak table before their involuntary guest.

“Eat, your worship, eat!” cried mine host, heartily. “Eat,
lady-bird,--nothing like eating to kill time and banish care. Fortune
of war, Sir John,--fortune of war, never be daunted! Up to-day, down
to-morrow. Come what may--York or Lancaster--still a rich man always
falls on his legs. Five hundred or so to the captain; a noble or two,
out of pure generosity, to Ned Porpustone (I scorn extortion), and you
and the fair young dame may breakfast at home to-morrow, unless the
captain or his favourite lieutenant is taken prisoner; and then, you
see, they will buy off their necks by letting you out of the bag. Eat, I
say,--eat!”

“Verily,” said Adam, seating himself solemnly, and preparing to obey, “I
confess I’m a hungered, and the pasty hath a savoury odour; but I pray
thee to tell me why I am called Sir John. Adam is my baptismal name.”

“Ha! ha! good--very good, your honour--to be sure, and your father’s
name before you. We are all sons of Adam, and every son, I trow, has a
just right and a lawful to his father’s name.”

With that, followed by the housekeeper, the honest landlord, chuckling
heartily, rolled his goodly bulk from the chamber, which he carefully
locked.

“Comprehendest thou yet, Sibyll?”

“Yes, dear sir and father, they mistake us for fugitives of mark and
importance; and when they discover their error, no doubt we shall go
free. Courage, dear father!”

“Me seemeth,” quoth Adam, almost merrily, as the good man filled his cup
from the wine flagon, “me seemeth that, if the mistake could continue,
it would be no weighty misfortune; ha! ha!” He stopped abruptly in the
unwonted laughter, put down the cup; his face fell. “Ah, Heaven forgive
me!--and the poor Eureka and faithful Madge!”

“Oh, Father! fear not; we are not without protection. Lord Hastings is
returned to London,--we will seek him; he will make our cruel neighbours
respect thee. And Madge--poor Madge!--will be so happy at our return,
for they could not harm her,--a woman, old and alone; no, no, man is not
fierce enough for that.”

“Let us so pray; but thou eatest not, child.”

“Anon, Father, anon; I am sick and weary. But, nay--nay, I am better
now,--better. Smile again, Father. I am hungered, too; yes, indeed and
in sooth, yes. Ah, sweet Saint Mary, give me life and strength, and hope
and patience, for his dear sake!”

The stirring events which had within the last few weeks diversified
the quiet life of the scholar had somewhat roused him from his wonted
abstraction, and made the actual world a more sensible and living thing
than it had hitherto seemed to his mind; but now, his repast ended, the
quiet of the place (for the inn was silent and almost deserted) with the
fumes of the wine--a luxury he rarely tasted--operated soothingly upon
his thought and fancy, and plunged him into those reveries, so dear
alike to poet and mathematician. To the thinker the most trifling
external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer’s chain, extend,
link after link; from earth to heaven. The sunny motes, that in a
glancing column came through the lattice, called Warner from the real
day,--the day of strife and blood, with thousands hard by driving each
other to the Hades,--and led his scheming fancy into the ideal and
abstract day,--the theory of light itself; and the theory suggested
mechanism, and mechanism called up the memory of his oracle, old Roger
Bacon; and that memory revived the great friar’s hints in the Opus
magnus,--hints which outlined the grand invention of the telescope; and
so, as over some dismal precipice a bird swings itself to and fro upon
the airy bough, the schoolman’s mind played with its quivering fancy,
and folded its calm wings above the verge of terror.

Occupied with her own dreams, Sibyll respected those of her father; and
so in silence, not altogether mournful, the morning and the noon passed,
and the sun was sloping westward, when a confused sound below called
Sibyll’s gaze to the lattice, which looked over the balustrade of the
staircase into the vast yard. She saw several armed men, their harness
hewed and battered, quaffing ale or wine in haste, and heard one of them
say to the landlord,--

“All is lost! Sir Geoffrey Gates still holds out, but it is butcher
work. The troops of Lord Hastings gather round him as a net round the
fish!”

Hastings!--that name!--he was at hand! he was near! they would be saved!
Sibyll’s heart beat loudly.

“And the captain?” asked Porpustone.

“Alive, when I last saw him; but we must be off. In another hour all
will be hurry and skurry, flight and chase.” At this moment from one of
the barns there emerged, one by one, the female vultures of the battle.
The tymbesteres, who had tramped all night to the spot, had slept
off their fatigue during the day, and appeared on the scene as the
neighbouring strife waxed low, and the dead and dying began to cumber
the gory ground. Graul Skellet, tossing up her timbrel, darted to the
fugitives and grinned a ghastly grin when she heard the news,--for the
tymbesteres were all loyal to a king who loved women, and who had a wink
and a jest for every tramping wench! The troopers tarried not, however,
for further converse, but, having satisfied their thirst, hurried and
clattered from the yard. At the sight of the ominous tymbesteres Sibyll
had drawn back, without daring to close the lattice she had opened; and
the women, seating themselves on a bench, began sleeking their long hair
and smoothing their garments from the scraps of straw and litter which
betokened the nature of their resting-place.

“Ho, girls!” said the fat landlord, “ye will pay me for board and bed,
I trust, by a show of your craft. I have two right worshipful lodgers
up yonder, whose lattice looks on the yard, and whom ye may serve to
divert.”

Sibyll trembled, and crept to her father’s side.

“And,” continued the landlord, “if they like the clash of your musicals,
it may bring ye a groat or so, to help ye on your journey. By the way,
whither wend ye, wenches?”

“To a bonny, jolly fair,” answered the sinister voice of Graul,--

    “Where a mighty SHOWMAN dyes
       The greenery into red;
     Where, presto! at the word
       Lies his Fool without a head;
     Where he gathers in the crowd
       To the trumpet and the drum,
     With a jingle and a tinkle,
       Graul’s merry lasses come!”

As the two closing lines were caught by the rest of the tymbesteres,
striking their timbrels, the crew formed themselves into a semicircle,
and commenced their dance. Their movements, though wanton and fantastic,
were not without a certain wild grace; and the address with which,
from time to time, they cast up their instruments and caught them
in descending, joined to the surprising agility with which, in the
evolutions of the dance, one seemed now to chase, now to fly from, the
other, darting to and fro through the ranks of her companions, winding
and wheeling,--the chain now seemingly broken in disorder, now
united link to link, as the whole force of the instruments clashed in
chorus,--made an exhibition inexpressibly attractive to the vulgar.

The tymbesteres, however, as may well be supposed, failed to draw
Sibyll or Warner to the window; and they exchanged glances of spite and
disappointment.

“Marry,” quoth the landlord, after a hearty laugh at the diversion, “I
do wrong to be so gay, when so many good friends perhaps are lying stark
and cold. But what then? Life is short,--laugh while we can!”

“Hist!” whispered his housekeeper; “art wode, Ned? Wouldst thou have
it discovered that thou hast such quality birds in the cage--noble
Yorkists--at the very time when Lord Hastings himself may be riding this
way after the victory?”

“Always right, Meg,--and I’m an ass!” answered the host, in the same
undertone. “But my good nature will be the death of me some day. Poor
gentlefolks, they must be unked dull, yonder!”

“If the Yorkists come hither,--which we shall soon know by the
scouts,--we must shift Sir John and the damsel to the back of the house,
over thy tap-room.”

“Manage it as thou wilt, Meg; but thou seest they keep quiet and snug.
Ho, ho, ho! that tall tymbestere is supple enough to make an owl hold
his sides with laughing. Ah! hollo, there, tymbesteres, ribaudes,
tramps, the devil’s chickens,--down, down!”

The host was too late in his order. With a sudden spring, Graul, who had
long fixed her eye on the open lattice of the prisoners, had wreathed
herself round one of the pillars that supported the stairs, swung
lightly over the balustrade; and with a faint shriek the startled Sibyll
beheld the tymbestere’s hard, fierce eyes, glaring upon her through the
lattice, as her long arm extended the timbrel for largess. But no sooner
had Sibyll raised her face than she was recognized.

“Ho, the wizard and the wizard’s daughter! Ho, the girl who glamours
lords, and wears sarcenet and lawn! Ho, the nigromancer who starves the
poor!”

At the sound of their leader’s cry, up sprang, up climbed the hellish
sisters! One after the other, they darted through the lattice into the
chamber.

“The ronions! the foul fiend has distraught them!” groaned the landlord,
motionless with astonishment; but the more active Meg, calling to the
varlets and scullions, whom the tymbesteres had collected in the yard,
to follow her, bounded up the stairs, unlocked the door, and arrived
in time to throw herself between the captives and the harpies, whom
Sibyll’s rich super-tunic and Adam’s costly gown had inflamed into all
the rage of appropriation.

“What mean ye, wretches?” cried the bold Meg, purple with anger. “Do
ye come for this into honest folk’s hostelries, to rob their guests in
broad day--noble guests--guests of mark! Oh, Sir John! Sir John! what
will ye think of us?”

“Oh, Sir John! Sir John!” groaned the landlord, who had now moved his
slow bulk into the room. “They shall be scourged, Sir John! They shall
be put in the stocks, they shall be brent with hot iron, they--”

“Ha, ha!” interrupted the terrible Graul, “guests of mark! noble guests,
trow ye! Adam Warner, the wizard, and his daughter, whom we drove last
night from their den, as many a time, sisters, and many, we have driven
the rats from charnel and cave.”

“Wizard! Adam! Blood of my life!” stammered the landlord, “is his name
Adam after all?”

“My name is Adam Warner,” said the old man, with dignity, “no wizard--a
humble scholar, and a poor gentleman, who has injured no one. Wherefore,
women--if women ye are--would ye injure mine and me?”

“Faugh, wizard!” returned Graul, folding her arms. “Didst thou not send
thy spawn, yonder, to spoil our mart with her gittern? Hast thou not
taught her the spells to win love from the noble and young? Ho, how
daintily the young witch robes herself! Ho, laces and satins, and we
shiver with the cold, and parch with the heat--and--doff thy tunic,
minion!”

And Graul’s fierce gripe was on the robe, when the landlord interposed
his huge arm, and held her at bay.

“Softly, my sucking dove, softly! Clear the room and be off!”

“Look to thyself, man. If thou harbourest a wizard against law,--a
wizard whom King Edward hath given up to the people,--look to thy
barns,--they shall burn; look to thy cattle,--they shall rot; look to
thy secrets,--they shall be told. Lancastrian, thou shalt hang! We go!
we go! We have friends amongst the mailed men of York. We go,--we will
return! Woe to thee, if thou harbourest the wizard and the succuba!”

With that Graul moved slowly to the door. Host and housekeeper, varlet,
groom, and scullion made way for her in terror; and still, as she moved,
she kept her eyes on Sibyll, till her sisters, following in successive
file, shut out the hideous aspect: and Meg, ordering away her gaping
train, closed the door.

The host and the housekeeper then gazed gravely at each other. Sibyll
lay in her father’s arms breathing hard and convulsively. The old man’s
face bent over her in silence. Meg drew aside her master. “You must rid
the house at once of these folks. I have heard talk of yon tymbesteres;
they are awsome in spite and malice. Every man to himself!”

“But the poor old gentleman, so mild, and the maid, so winsome!”

The last remark did not over-please the comely Meg. She advanced at once
to Adam, and said shortly,--

“Master, whether wizard or not is no affair of a poor landlord, whose
house is open to all; but ye have had food and wine,--please to pay the
reckoning, and God speed ye; ye are free to depart.”

“We can pay you, mistress!” exclaimed Sibyll, springing up. “We have
moneys yet. Here, here!” and she took from her gipsire the broad pieces
which poor Madge’s precaution had placed therein, and which the bravoes
had fortunately spared.

The sight of the gold somewhat softened the housewife. “Lord Hastings is
known to us,” continued Sibyll, perceiving the impression she had
made; “suffer us to rest here till he pass this way, and ye will find
yourselves repaid for the kindness.”

“By my troth,” said the landlord, “ye are most welcome to all my poor
house containeth; and as for these tymbesteres, I value them not a
straw. No one can say Ned Porpustone is an ill man or inhospitable.
Whoever can pay reasonably is sure of good wine and civility at the
Talbot.”

With these and many similar protestations and assurances, which were
less heartily re-echoed by the housewife, the landlord begged to conduct
them to an apartment not so liable to molestation; and after having led
them down the principal stairs, through the bar, and thence up a narrow
flight of steps, deposited them in a chamber at the back of the house,
and lighted a sconce therein, for it was now near the twilight. He
then insisted on seeing after their evening meal, and vanished with his
assistant. The worthy pair were now of the same mind; for guests known
to Lord Hastings it was worth braving the threats of the tymbesteres;
especially since Lord Hastings, it seems, had just beaten the
Lancastrians.

But alas! while the active Meg was busy on the hippocras, and the worthy
landlord was inspecting the savoury operations of the kitchen, a vast
uproar was heard without. A troop of disorderly Yorkist soldiers, who
had been employed in dispersing the flying rebels, rushed helter-skelter
into the house, and poured into the kitchen, bearing with them the
detested tymbesteres, who had encountered them on their way. Among these
soldiers were those who had congregated at Master Sancroft’s the day
before, and they were well prepared to support the cause of their
griesly paramours. Lord Hastings himself had retired for the night to
a farmhouse nearer the field of battle than the hostel; and as in those
days discipline was lax enough after a victory, the soldiers had a right
to license. Master Porpustone found himself completely at the mercy
of these brawling customers, the more rude and disorderly from the
remembrance of the sour beer in the morning, and Graul Skellet’s
assurances that Master Porpustone was a malignant Lancastrian. They laid
hands on all the provisions in the house, tore the meats from the spit,
devouring them half raw; set the casks running over the floors; and
while they swilled and swore, and filled the place with the uproar of a
hell broke loose, Graul Skellet, whom the lust for the rich garments of
Sibyll still fired and stung, led her followers up the stairs towards
the deserted chamber. Mine host perceived, but did not dare openly to
resist the foray; but as he was really a good-natured knave, and as,
moreover, he feared ill consequences might ensue if any friends of Lord
Hastings were spoiled, outraged,--nay, peradventure murdered,--in his
house, he resolved, at all events, to assist the escape of his guests.
Seeing the ground thus clear of the tymbesteres, he therefore stole from
the riotous scene, crept up the back stairs, gained the chamber to which
he had so happily removed his persecuted lodgers, and making them, in a
few words, sensible that he was no longer able to protect them, and
that the tymbesteres were now returned with an armed force to back their
malice, conducted them safely to a wide casement only some three or four
feet from the soil of the solitary garden, and bade them escape and save
themselves.

“The farm,” he whispered, “where they say my Lord Hastings is quartered
is scarcely a mile and a half away; pass the garden wicket, leave
Gladsmore Chase to the left hand, take the path to the right, through
the wood, and you will see its roof among the apple-blossoms. Our Lady
protect you, and say a word to my lord on behalf of poor Ned.”

Scarce had he seen his guests descend into the garden before he heard
the yell of the tymbesteres, in the opposite part of the house, as
they ran from room to room after their prey. He hastened to regain the
kitchen; and presently the tymbesteres, breathless and panting, rushed
in, and demanded their victims.

“Marry,” quoth the landlord, with the self-possession of a cunning old
soldier-“think ye I cumbered my house with such cattle after pretty
lasses like you had given me the inkling of what they were? No wizard
shall fly away with the sign of the Talbot, if I can help it. They
skulked off I can promise ye, and did not even mount a couple of
broomsticks which I handsomely offered for their ride up to London.”

“Thunder and bombards!” cried a trooper, already half-drunk, and seizing
Graul in his iron arms, “put the conjuror out of thine head now, and
buss me, Graul, buss me!”

Then the riot became hideous; the soldiers, following their comrade’s
example, embraced the grim glee-women, tearing and hauling them to and
fro, one from the other, round and round, dancing, hallooing, chanting,
howling, by the blaze of a mighty fire,--many a rough face and hard hand
smeared with blood still wet, communicating the stain to the cheeks and
garb of those foul feres, and the whole revel becoming so unutterably
horrible and ghastly, that even the veteran landlord fled from the spot,
trembling and crossing himself. And so, streaming athwart the lattice,
and silvering over that fearful merry-making, rose the moon.

But when fatigue and drunkenness had done their work, and the soldiers
fell one over the other upon the floor, the tables, the benches, into
the heavy sleep of riot, Graul suddenly rose from amidst the huddled
bodies, and then, silently as ghouls from a burial-ground, her sisters
emerged also from their resting-places beside the sleepers. The dying
light of the fire contended but feebly with the livid rays of the moon,
and played fantastically over the gleaming robes of the tymbesteres.
They stood erect for a moment, listening, Graul with her finger on
her lips; then they glided to the door, opened and reclosed it, darted
across the yard, scaring the beasts that slept there; the watch-dog
barked, but drew back, bristling, and showing his fangs, as Red Grisell,
undaunted, pointed her knife, and Graul flung him a red peace-sop of
meat. They launched themselves through the open entrance, gained the
space beyond, and scoured away to the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Sibyll and her father were still under the canopy of heaven,
they had scarcely passed the garden and entered the fields, when they
saw horsemen riding to and fro in all directions. Sir Geoffrey Gates,
the rebel leader, had escaped; the reward of three hundred marks was set
on his head, and the riders were in search of the fugitive. The human
form itself had become a terror to the hunted outcasts; they crept under
a thick hedge till the horsemen had disappeared, and then resumed their
way. They gained the wood; but there again they halted at the sound
of voices, and withdrew themselves under covert of some entangled
and trampled bushes. This time it was but a party of peasants, whom
curiosity had led to see the field of battle, and who were now returning
home. Peasants and soldiers both were human, and therefore to be shunned
by those whom the age itself put out of the pale of law. At last the
party also left the path free; and now it was full night. They pursued
their way, they cleared the wood; before them lay the field of battle;
and a deeper silence seemed to fall over the world! The first stars had
risen, but not yet the moon. The gleam of armour from prostrate bodies,
which it had mailed in vain, reflected the quiet rays; here and there
flickered watchfires, where sentinels were set, but they were scattered
and remote. The outcasts paused and shuddered, but there seemed no
holier way for their feet; and the roof of the farmer’s homestead
slept on the opposite side of the field, amidst white orchard blossoms,
whitened still more by the stars. They went on, hand in hand,--the
dead, after all, were less terrible than the living. Sometimes a stern,
upturned face, distorted by the last violent agony, the eyes unclosed
and glazed, encountered them with its stony stare; but the weapon was
powerless in the stiff hand, the menace and the insult came not from
the hueless lips; persecution reposed, at last, in the lap of slaughter.
They had gone midway through the field, when they heard from a spot
where the corpses lay thickest piled, a faint voice calling upon God for
pardon; and, suddenly, it was answered by a tone of fiercer agony,--that
did not pray, but curse.

By a common impulse, the gentle wanderers moved silently to the spot.

The sufferer in prayer was a youth scarcely passed from boyhood: his
helm had been cloven, his head was bare, and his long light hair,
clotted with gore, fell over his shoulders. Beside him lay a
strong-built, powerful form, which writhed in torture, pierced under
the arm by a Yorkist arrow, and the shaft still projecting from the
wound,--and the man’s curse answered the boy’s prayer.

“Peace to thy parting soul, brother!” said Warner, bending over the man.

“Poor sufferer!” said Sibyll to the boy; “cheer thee, we will send
succour; thou mayest live yet!”

“Water! water!--hell and torture!--water, I say!” groaned the man; “one
drop of water!”

It was the captain of the maurauders who had captured the wanderers.

“Thine arm! lift me! move me! That evil man scares my soul from heaven!”
 gasped the boy.

And Adam preached penitence to the one that cursed, and Sibyll knelt
down and prayed with the one that prayed. And up rose the moon!

Lord Hastings sat with his victorious captains--over mead, morat, and
wine--in the humble hall of the farm.

“So,” said he, “we have crushed the last embers of the rebellion! This
Sir Geoffrey Gates is a restless and resolute spirit; pity he escapes
again for further mischief. But the House of Nevile, that overshadowed
the rising race, hath fallen at last,--a waisall, brave sirs, to the new
men!”

The door was thrown open, and an old soldier entered abruptly.

“My lord! my lord! Oh, my poor son! he cannot be found! The women, who
ever follow the march of soldiers, will be on the ground to despatch the
wounded, that they may rifle the corpses! O God! if my son, my boy, my
only son--”

“I wist not, my brave Mervil, that thou hadst a son in our bands; yet I
know each man by name and sight. Courage! Our wounded have been removed,
and sentries are placed to guard the field.”

“Sentries! O my lord, knowest thou not that they wink at the crime that
plunders the dead? Moreover, these corpse-riflers creep stealthily and
unseen, as the red earth-worms, to the carcass. Give me some few of thy
men, give me warrant to search the field! My son, my boy--not sixteen
summers--and his mother!”

The man stopped, and sobbed.

“Willingly!” said the gentle Hastings, “willingly! And woe to the
sentries if it be as thou sayest! I will go myself and see! Torches
there--what ho!--the good captain careth even for his dead!--Thy son! I
marvel I knew him not! Whom served he under?”

“My lord! my lord! pardon him! He is but a boy--they misled him! he
fought for the rebels. He crossed my path to-day, my arm was raised; we
knew each other, and he fled from his father’s sword! Just as the strife
was ended I saw him again, I saw him fall!--Oh, mercy, mercy! do not let
him perish of his wounds or by the rifler’s knife, even though a rebel!”

“Homo sum!” quoth the noble chief; “I am a man; and, even in these
bloody times, Nature commands when she speaks in a father’s voice!
Mervil, I marked thee to-day! Thou art a brave fellow. I meant thee
advancement; I give thee, instead, thy son’s pardon, if he lives; ten
Masses if he died as a soldier’s son should die, no matter under what
flag,--antelope or lion, pierced manfully in the breast, his feet to the
foe! Come, I will search with thee!”

The boy yielded up his soul while Sibyll prayed, and her sweet voice
soothed the last pang; and the man ceased to curse while Adam spoke of
God’s power and mercy, and his breath ebbed, gasp upon gasp, away. While
thus detained, the wanderers saw not pale, fleeting figures, that had
glided to the ground, and moved, gleaming, irregular, and rapid, as
marsh-fed vapours, from heap to heap of the slain. With a loud, wild
cry, the robber Lancastrian half sprung to his feet, in the paroxysm of
the last struggle, and then fell on his face, a corpse!

The cry reached the tymbesteres, and Graul rose from a body from which
she had extracted a few coins smeared with blood, and darted to the
spot; and so, as Adam raised his face from contemplating the dead, whose
last moments he had sought to soothe, the Alecto of the battlefield
stood before him, her knife bare in her gory arm. Red Grisell, who had
just left (with a spurn of wrath--for the pouch was empty) the corpse of
a soldier, round whose neck she had twined her hot clasp the day before,
sprang towards Sibyll; the rest of the sisterhood flocked to the place,
and laughed in glee as they beheld their unexpected prey. The danger
was horrible and imminent; no pity was seen in those savage eyes. The
wanderers prepared for death--when, suddenly, torches flashed over
the ground. A cry was heard, “See, the riflers of the dead!” Armed men
bounded forward, and the startled wretches uttered a shrill, unearthly
scream, and fled from the spot, leaping over the carcasses, and doubling
and winding, till they had vanished into the darkness of the wood.

“Provost!” said a commanding voice, “hang me up those sentinels at
day-break!”

“My son! my boy! speak, Hal,--speak to me. He is here, he is found!”
 exclaimed the old soldier, kneeling beside the corpse at Sibyll’s feet.

“My lord! my beloved! my Hastings!” And Sibyll fell insensible before
the chief.



CHAPTER VI. THE SUBTLE CRAFT OF RICHARD OF GLOUCESTER.

It was some weeks after the defeat of Sir Geoffrey Gates, and Edward
was at Shene, with his gay court. Reclined at length within a pavilion
placed before a cool fountain, in the royal gardens, and surrounded
by his favourites, the king listened indolently to the music of his
minstrels, and sleeked the plumage of his favourite falcon, perched upon
his wrist. And scarcely would it have been possible to recognize in
that lazy voluptuary the dauntless soldier, before whose lance, as deer
before the hound, had so lately fled, at bloody Erpingham, the chivalry
of the Lancastrian Rose; but remote from the pavilion, and in one of the
deserted bowling alleys, Prince Richard and Lord Montagu walked apart,
in earnest conversation. The last of these noble personages had remained
inactive during these disturbances, and Edward had not seemed to
entertain any suspicion of his participation in the anger and revenge
of Warwick. The king took from him, it is true, the lands and earldom of
Northumberland, and restored them to the Percy, but he had accompanied
this act with gracious excuses, alleging the necessity of conciliating
the head of an illustrious House, which had formally entered into
allegiance to the dynasty of York, and bestowed upon his early
favourite, in compensation, the dignity of marquis. [Montagu said
bitterly of this new dignity, “He takes from me the Earldom and domains
of Northumberland, and makes me a Marquis, with a pie’s nest to maintain
it withal.”--STOWE: Edward IV.--Warkworth Chronicle.] The politic king,
in thus depriving Montagu of the wealth and the retainers of the
Percy, reduced him, as a younger brother, to a comparative poverty
and insignificance, which left him dependent on Edward’s favour, and
deprived him, as he thought, of the power of active mischief; at the
same time more than ever he insisted on Montagu’s society, and
summoning his attendance at the court, kept his movements in watchful
surveillance.

“Nay, my lord,” said Richard, pursuing with much unction the
conversation he had commenced, “you wrong me much, Holy Paul be my
witness, if you doubt the deep sorrow I feel at the unhappy events which
have led to the severance of my kinsmen! England seems to me to have
lost its smile in losing the glory of Earl Warwick’s presence, and
Clarence is my brother, and was my friend; and thou knowest, Montagu,
thou knowest, how dear to my heart was the hope to win for my wife and
lady the gentle Anne.”

“Prince,” said Montagu, abruptly, “though the pride of Warwick and the
honour of our House may have forbidden the public revelation of the
cause which fired my brother to rebellion, thou, at least, art privy to
a secret--”

“Cease!” exclaimed Richard, in great emotion, probably sincere, for his
face grew livid, and its muscles were nervously convulsed. “I would not
have that remembrance stirred from its dark repose. I would fain forget
a brother’s hasty frenzy, in the belief of his lasting penitence.” He
paused and turned his face, gasped for breath, and resumed: “The cause
justified the father; it had justified me in the father’s cause, had
Warwick listened to my suit, and given me the right to deem insult to
his daughter injury to myself.”

“And if, my prince,” returned Montagu, looking round him, and in a
subdued whisper, “if yet the hand of Lady Anne were pledged to you?”

“Tempt me not, tempt me not!” cried the prince, crossing himself.
Montagu continued,--

“Our cause, I mean Lord Warwick’s cause, is not lost, as the king deems
it.”

“Proceed,” said Richard, casting down his eyes, while his countenance
settled back into its thoughtful calm.

“I mean,” renewed Montagu, “that in my brother’s flight, his retainers
were taken by surprise. In vain the king would confiscate his lands,--he
cannot confiscate men’s hearts. If Warwick to-morrow set his armed heel
upon the soil, trowest thou, sagacious and clear-judging prince, that
the strife which would follow would be but another field of Losecote?
[The battle of Erpingham, so popularly called, in contempt of the rebel
lions runaways.] Thou hast heard of the honours with which King Louis
has received the earl. Will that king grudge him ships and moneys? And
meanwhile, thinkest thou that his favourers sleep?”

“But if he land, Montagu,” said Richard, who seemed to listen with an
attention that awoke all the hopes of Montagu, coveting so powerful an
ally--“if he land, and make open war on Edward--we must say the word
boldly--what intent can he proclaim? It is not enough to say King Edward
shall not reign; the earl must say also what king England should elect!”

“Prince,” answered Montagu, “before I reply to that question, vouchsafe
to hear my own hearty desire and wish. Though the king has deeply
wronged my brother, though he has despoiled me of the lands, which were,
peradventure, not too large a reward for twenty victories in his cause,
and restored them to the House that ever ranked amongst the strongholds
of his Lancastrian foe, yet often when I am most resentful, the memory
of my royal seigneur’s past love and kindness comes over me,--above all,
the thought of the solemn contract between his daughter and my son; and
I feel (now the first heat of natural anger at an insult offered to
my niece is somewhat cooled) that if Warwick did land, I could almost
forget my brother for my king.”

“Almost!” repeated Richard, smiling.

“I am plain with your Highness, and say but what I feel. I would even
now fain trust that, by your mediation, the king may be persuaded to
make such concessions and excuses as in truth would not misbeseem him,
to the father of Lady Anne, and his own kinsman; and that yet, ere it
be too late, I may be spared the bitter choice between the ties of blood
and my allegiance to the king.”

“But failing this hope (which I devoutly share),--and Edward, it must be
owned, could scarcely trust to a letter,--still less to a messenger, the
confession of a crime,--failing this, and your brother land, and I side
with him for love of Anne, pledged to me as a bride,--what king would he
ask England to elect?”

“The Duke of Clarence loves you dearly, Lord Richard,” replied Montagu.
“Knowest thou not how often he hath said, ‘By sweet Saint George, if
Gloucester would join me, I would make Edward know we were all one man’s
sons, who should be more preferred and promoted than strangers of his
wife’s blood?’” [Hall.]

Richard’s countenance for a moment evinced disappointment; but he said
dryly: “Then Warwick would propose that Clarence should be king?--and
the great barons and the honest burghers and the sturdy yeomen would,
you think, not stand aghast at the manifesto which declares, not that
the dynasty of York is corrupt and faulty, but that the younger son
should depose the elder,--that younger son, mark me! not only unknown in
war and green in council, but gay, giddy, vacillating; not subtle of wit
and resolute of deed, as he who so aspires should be!--Montagu, a vain
dream!”--Richard paused and then resumed, in a low tone, as to himself,
“Oh, not so--not so are kings cozened from their thrones! a pretext
must blind men,--say they are illegitimate, say they are too young, too
feeble, too anything, glide into their place, and then, not war--not
war. You slay them not,--they disappear!” The duke’s face, as he
muttered, took a sinister and a dark expression, his eyes seemed to gaze
on space. Suddenly recovering himself as from a revery, he turned, with
his wonted sleek and gracious aspect, to the startled Montagu, and said,
“I was but quoting from Italian history, good my lord,--wise lore, but
terrible and murderous. Return we to the point. Thou seest Clarence
could not reign, and as well,” added the prince, with a slight
sigh,--“as well or better (for, without vanity, I have more of a king’s
mettle in me), might I--even I--aspire to my brother’s crown!” Here he
paused, and glanced rapidly and keenly at the marquis; but whether
or not in these words he had sought to sound Montagu, and that glance
sufficed to show him it were bootless or dangerous to speak more
plainly, he resumed with an altered voice, “Enough of this: Warwick will
discover the idleness of such design; and if he land, his trumpets
must ring to a more kindling measure. John Montagu, thinkest thou that
Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians will not rather win thy brother
to their side? There is the true danger to Edward,--none elsewhere.”

“And if so?” said Montagu, watching his listener’s countenance. Richard
started, and gnawed his lip. “Mark me,” continued the marquis, “I repeat
that I would fain hope yet that Edward may appease the earl; but if not,
and, rather than rest dishonoured and aggrieved, Warwick link himself
with Lancaster, and thou join him as Anne’s betrothed and lord, what
matters who the puppet on the throne?--we and thou shall be the rulers;
or, if thou reject,” added the marquis, artfully, as he supposed,
exciting the jealousy of the duke, “Henry has a son--a fair, and they
say, a gallant prince--carefully tutored in the knowledge of our English
laws, and who my lord of Oxford, somewhat in the confidence of the
Lancastrians, assures me would rejoice to forget old feuds, and call
Warwick ‘father,’ and my niece ‘Lady and Princess of Wales.’”

With all his dissimulation, Richard could ill conceal the emotions of
fear, of jealousy, of dismay, which these words excited.

“Lord Oxford!” he cried, stamping his foot. “Ha, John de Vere, pestilent
traitor, plottest thou thus? But we can yet seize thy person, and will
have thy head.”

Alarmed at this burst, and suddenly made aware that he had laid his
breast too bare to the boy, whom he had thought to dazzle and seduce to
his designs, Montagu said falteringly, “But, my lord, our talk is but
in confidence: at your own prayer, with your own plighted word of prince
and of kinsman, that whatever my frankness may utter should not pass
farther. Take,” added the nobleman, with proud dignity--“take my head
rather than Lord Oxford’s; for I deserve death, if I reveal to one who
can betray the loose words of another’s intimacy and trust!”

“Forgive me, my cousin,” said Richard, meekly; “my love to Anne
transported me too far. Lord Oxford’s words, as you report them, had
conjured up a rival, and--but enough of this. And now,” added the
prince, gravely, and with a steadiness of voice and manner that gave a
certain majesty to his small stature, “now as thou hast spoken openly,
openly also will I reply. I feel the wrong to the Lady Anne as to
myself; deeply, burningly, and lastingly, will it live in my mind; it
may be, sooner or later, to rise to gloomy deeds, even against Edward
and Edward’s blood. But no, I have the king’s solemn protestations
of repentance; his guilty passion has burned into ashes, and he now
sighs--gay Edward--for a lighter fere. I cannot join with Clarence,
less can I join with the Lancastrians. My birth makes me the prop of the
throne of York,--to guard it as a heritage (who knows?) that may descend
to mine,--nay, to me! And, mark me well if Warwick attempt a war of
fratricide, he is lost; if, on the other hand, he can submit himself to
the hands of Margaret, stained with his father’s gore, the success of an
hour will close in the humiliation of a life. There is a third way
left, and that way thou hast piously and wisely shown. Let him, like
me, resign revenge, and, not exacting a confession and a cry of peccavi,
which no king, much less King Edward the Plantagenet, can whimper forth,
let him accept such overtures as his liege can make. His titles and
castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost
assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can so negotiate) as all my
ambition, his daughter’s hand. Muse on this, and for the peace and weal
of the realm so limit all thy schemes, my lord and cousin!”

With these words the prince pressed the hand of the marquis, and walked
slowly towards the king’s pavilion.

“Shame on my ripe manhood and lore of life,” muttered Montagu, enraged
against himself, and deeply mortified. “How sentence by sentence and
step by step yon crafty pigmy led me on, till all our projects, all our
fears and hopes, are revealed to him who but views them as a foe. Anne
betrothed to one who even in fiery youth can thus beguile and dupe!
Warwick decoyed hither upon fair words, at the will of one whom Italy
(boy, there thou didst forget thy fence of cunning!) has taught how the
great are slain not, but disappear! no, even this defeat instructs me
now. But right, right! the reign of Clarence is impossible, and that
of Lancaster is ill-omened and portentous; and after all, my son stands
nearer to the throne than any subject, in his alliance with the Lady
Elizabeth. Would to Heaven the king could yet--But out on me! this is
no hour for musing on mine own aggrandizement; rather let me fly at
once and warn Oxford--imperilled by my imprudence--against that dark eye
which hath set watch upon his life.”

At that thought, which showed that Montagu, with all his worldliness,
was not forgetful of one of the first duties of knight and gentleman,
the marquis hastened up the alley, in the opposite direction to that
taken by Gloucester, and soon found himself in the courtyard, where a
goodly company were mounting their haquenees and palfreys, to enjoy a
summer ride through the neighbouring chase. The cold and half-slighting
salutations of these minions of the hour, which now mortified the
Nevile, despoiled of the possessions that had rewarded his long and
brilliant services, contrasting forcibly the reverential homage he had
formerly enjoyed, stung Montagu to the quick.

“Whither ride you, brother Marquis?” said young Lord Dorset (Elizabeth’s
son by her first marriage), as Montagu called to his single squire, who
was in waiting with his horse. “Some secret expedition, methinks, for
I have known the day when the Lord Montagu never rode from his king’s
palace with less than thirty squires.”

“Since my Lord Dorset prides himself on his memory,” answered the
scornful lord, “he may remember also the day when, if a Nevile mounted
in haste, he bade the first Woodville he saw hold the stirrup.”

And regarding “the brother marquis” with a stately eye that silenced and
awed retort, the long-descended Montagu passed the courtiers, and
rode slowly on till out of sight of the palace; he then pushed into a
hand-gallop, and halted not till he had reached London, and gained the
house in which then dwelt the Earl of Oxford, the most powerful of all
the Lancastrian nobles not in exile, and who had hitherto temporized
with the reigning House.

Two days afterwards the news reached Edward that Lord Oxford and Jasper
of Pembroke--uncle to the boy afterwards Henry VII.--had sailed from
England.

The tidings reached the king in his chamber, where he was closeted with
Gloucester. The conference between them seemed to have been warm and
earnest, for Edward’s face was flushed, and Gloucester’s brow was
perturbed and sullen.

“Now Heaven be praised!” cried the king, extending to Richard the letter
which communicated the flight of the disaffected lords. “We have
two enemies the less in our roiaulme, and many a barony the more to
confiscate to our kingly wants. Ha, ha! these Lancastrians only serve to
enrich us. Frowning still, Richard? smile, boy!”

“Foi de mon ame, Edward,” said Richard, with a bitter energy, strangely
at variance with his usual unctious deference to the king, “your
Highness’s gayety is ill-seasoned; you reject all the means to assure
your throne, you rejoice in all the events that imperil it. I prayed you
to lose not a moment in conciliating, if possible, the great lord whom
you own you have wronged, and you replied that you would rather lose
your crown than win back the arm that gave it you.”

“Gave it me! an error, Richard! that crown was at once the heritage of
my own birth and the achievement of my own sword. But were it as you
say, it is not in a king’s nature to bear the presence of a power more
formidable than his own, to submit to a voice that commands rather than
counsels; and the happiest chance that ever befell me is the exile of
this earl. How, after what hath chanced, can I ever see his face again
without humiliation, or he mine without resentment?”

“So you told me anon, and I answered, if that be so, and your Highness
shrinks from the man you have injured, beware at least that Warwick, if
he may not return as a friend, come not back as an irresistible foe. If
you will not conciliate, crush! Hasten by all arts to separate Clarence
from Warwick. Hasten to prevent the union of the earl’s popularity and
Henry’s rights. Keep eye upon all the Lancastrian lords, and see that
none quit the realm where they are captives, to join a camp where they
can rise into leaders. And at the very moment I urge you to place strict
watch upon Oxford, to send your swiftest riders to seize Jasper of
Pembroke, you laugh with glee to hear that Oxford and Pembroke are gone
to swell the army of your foes!”

“Better foes out of my realm than in it,” answered Edward, dryly.

“My liege, I say no more,” and Richard rose. “I would forestall a
danger; it but remains for me to share it.”

The king was touched. “Tarry yet, Richard,” he said; and then, fixing
his brother’s eye, he continued, with a half smile and a heightened
colour, “though we knew thee true and leal to us, we yet know also,
Richard, that thou hast personal interest in thy counsels. Thou wouldst
by one means or another soften or constrain the earl into giving thee
the hand of Anne. Well, then, grant that Warwick and Clarence expel King
Edward from his throne, they may bring a bride to console thee for the
ruin of a brother.”

“Thou hast no right to taunt or to suspect me, my liege,” returned
Richard, with a quiver in his lip. “Thou hast included me in thy
meditated wrong to Warwick; and had that wrong been done--”

“Peradventure it had made thee espouse Warwick’s quarrel?”

“Bluntly, yes!” exclaimed Richard, almost fiercely, and playing with his
dagger. “But” (he added, with a sudden change of voice) “I understand
and know thee better than the earl did or could. I know what in thee
is but thoughtless impulse, haste of passion, the habit kings form of
forgetting all things save the love or hate, the desire or anger, of a
moment. Thou hast told me thyself, and with tears, of thy offence; thou
hast pardoned my boy’s burst of anger; I have pardoned thy evil thought;
thou hast told me thyself that another face has succeeded to the brief
empire of Anne’s blue eye, and hast further pledged me thy kingly
word, that if I can yet compass the hand of a cousin dear to me from
childhood, thou wilt confirm the union.”

“It is true,” said Edward. “But if thou wed thy bride, keep her aloof
from the court,--nay, frown not, my boy, I mean simply that I would not
blush before my brother’s wife!”

Richard bowed low in order to conceal the expression of his face,
and went on without further notice of the explanation. “And all
this considered, Edward, I swear by Saint Paul, the holiest saint to
thoughtful men, and by Saint George, the noblest patron to high-born
warriors, that thy crown and thine honour are as dear to me as if they
were mine own. Whatever sins Richard of Gloucester may live to harbour
and repent, no man shall ever say of him that he was a recreant to the
honour of his country [so Lord Bacon observes of Richard, with that
discrimination, even in the strongest censure, of which profound judges
of mankind are alone capable, that he was “a king jealous of the honor
of the English nation”], or slow to defend the rights of his ancestors
from the treason of a vassal or the sword of a foreign foe. Therefore, I
say again, if thou reject my honest counsels; if thou suffer Warwick
to unite with Lancaster and France; if the ships of Louis bear to your
shores an enemy, the might of whom your reckless daring undervalues,
foremost in the field in battle, nearest to your side in exile,
shall Richard Plantagenet be found!” These words, being uttered with
sincerity, and conveying a promise never forfeited, were more impressive
than the subtlest eloquence the wily and accomplished Gloucester ever
employed as the cloak to guile, and they so affected Edward, that he
threw his arms around his brother; and after one of those bursts of
emotion which were frequent in one whose feelings were never deep and
lasting, but easily aroused and warmly spoken, he declared himself
really to listen to and adopt all means which Richard’s art could
suggest for the better maintenance of their common weal and interests.

And then, with that wondrous, if somewhat too restless and over-refining
energy which belonged to him, Richard rapidly detailed the scheme of his
profound and dissimulating policy. His keen and intuitive insight into
human nature had shown him the stern necessity which, against their very
will, must unite Warwick with Margaret of Anjou. His conversation with
Montagu had left no doubt of that peril on his penetrating mind. He
foresaw that this union might be made durable and sacred by the marriage
of Anne and Prince Edward; and to defeat this alliance was his first
object, partly through Clarence, partly through Margaret herself. A
gentlewoman in the Duchess of Clarence’s train had been arrested on the
point of embarking to join her mistress. Richard had already seen and
conferred with this lady, whose ambition, duplicity, and talent for
intrigue were known to him. Having secured her by promises of the most
lavish dignities and rewards, he proposed that she should be permitted
to join the duchess with secret messages to Isabel and the duke, warning
them both that Warwick and Margaret would forget their past feud in
present sympathy, and that the rebellion against King Edward, instead
of placing them on the throne, would humble them to be subordinates and
aliens to the real profiters, the Lancastrians. [Comines, 3, c. 5; Hall;
Hollinshed] He foresaw what effect these warnings would have upon the
vain duke and the ambitious Isabel, whose character was known to him
from childhood. He startled the king by insisting upon sending, at the
same time, a trusty diplomatist to Margaret of Anjou, proffering to give
the princess Elizabeth (betrothed to Lord Montagu’s son) to the young
Prince Edward. [“Original Letters from Harleian Manuscripts.” Edited by
Sir H. Ellis (second series).] Thus, if the king, who had, as yet, no
son, were to die, Margaret’s son, in right of his wife, as well as in
that of his own descent, would peaceably ascend the throne. “Need I
say that I mean not this in sad and serious earnest?” observed Richard,
interrupting the astonished king. “I mean it but to amuse the Anjouite,
and to deafen her ears to any overtures from Warwick. If she listen,
we gain time; that time will inevitably renew irreconcilable quarrel
between herself and the earl. His hot temper and desire of revenge
will not brook delay. He will land, unsupported by Margaret and
her partisans, and without any fixed principle of action which can
strengthen force by opinion.”

“You are right, Richard,” said Edward, whose faithless cunning
comprehended the more sagacious policy it could not originate. “All be
it as you will.”

“And in the mean while,” added Richard, “watch well, but anger not,
Montagu and the archbishop. It were dangerous to seem to distrust them
till proof be clear; it were dull to believe them true. I go at once to
fulfil my task.”



CHAPTER VII. WARWICK AND HIS FAMILY IN EXILE.

We now summon the reader on a longer if less classic journey than from
Thebes to Athens, and waft him on a rapid wing from Shene to Amboise. We
must suppose that the two emissaries of Gloucester have already arrived
at their several destinations,--the lady has reached Isabel, the envoy
Margaret.

In one of the apartments appropriated to the earl in the royal palace,
within the embrasure of a vast Gothic casement, sat Anne of Warwick; the
small wicket in the window was open, and gave a view of a wide and fair
garden, interspersed with thick bosquets and regular alleys, over which
the rich skies of the summer evening, a little before sunset, cast
alternate light and shadow. Towards this prospect the sweet face of the
Lady Anne was turned musingly. The riveted eye, the bended neck, the
arms reclining on the knee, the slender fingers interlaced,--gave to her
whole person the character of revery and repose.

In the same chamber were two other ladies; the one was pacing the floor
with slow but uneven steps, with lips moving from time to time, as if in
self-commune, with the brow contracted slightly: her form and face took
also the character of revery, but not of repose.

The third female (the gentle and lovely mother of the other two) was
seated, towards the centre of the room, before a small table, on which
rested one of those religious manuscripts, full of the moralities and
the marvels of cloister sanctity, which made so large a portion of the
literature of the monkish ages. But her eye rested not on the Gothic
letter and the rich blazon of the holy book. With all a mother’s fear
and all a mother’s fondness, it glanced from Isabel to Anne, from Anne
to Isabel, till at length in one of those soft voices, so rarely heard,
which makes even a stranger love the speaker, the fair countess said,--

“Come hither, my child Isabel; give me thy hand, and whisper me what
hath chafed thee.”

“My mother,” replied the duchess, “it would become me ill to have a
secret not known to thee, and yet, methinks, it would become me less to
say aught to provoke thine anger!”

“Anger, Isabel! Who ever knew anger for those they love?”

“Pardon me, my sweet mother,” said Isabel, relaxing her haughty brow,
and she approached and kissed her mother’s cheek.

The countess drew her gently to a seat by her side.

“And now tell me all,--unless, indeed, thy Clarence hath, in some
lover’s hasty mood, vexed thy affection; for of the household secrets
even a mother should not question the true wife.”

Isabel paused, and glanced significantly at Anne.

“Nay, see!” said the countess, smiling, though sadly, “she, too, hath
thoughts that she will not tell to me; but they seem not such as should
alarm my fears, as thine do. For the moment ere I spoke to thee, thy
brow frowned, and her lip smiled. She hears us not,--speak on.”

“Is it then true, my mother, that Margaret of Anjou is hastening hither?
And can it be possible that King Louis can persuade my lord and father
to meet, save in the field of battle, the arch-enemy of our House?”

“Ask the earl thyself, Isabel; Lord Warwick hath no concealment from his
children. Whatever he doth is ever wisest, best, and knightliest,--so,
at least, may his children always deem!”

Isabel’s colour changed and her eye flashed. But ere she could answer,
the arras was raised, and Lord Warwick entered. But no longer did the
hero’s mien and manner evince that cordial and tender cheerfulness
which, in all the storms of his changeful life, he had hitherto
displayed when coming from power and danger, from council or from camp,
to man’s earthly paradise,--a virtuous home.

Gloomy and absorbed, his very dress--which, at that day, the
Anglo-Norman deemed it a sin against self-dignity to neglect--betraying,
by its disorder, that thorough change of the whole mind, that terrible
internal revolution, which is made but in strong natures by the tyranny
of a great care or a great passion, the earl scarcely seemed to heed his
countess, who rose hastily, but stopped in the timid fear and reverence
of love at the sight of his stern aspect; he threw himself abruptly on a
seat, passed his hand over his face, and sighed heavily.

That sigh dispelled the fear of the wife, and made her alive only to
her privilege of the soother. She drew near, and placing herself on
the green rushes at his feet, took his hand and kissed it, but did not
speak.

The earl’s eyes fell on the lovely face looking up to him through tears,
his brow softened, he drew his hand gently from hers, placed it on her
head, and said in a low voice,--“God and Our Lady bless thee, sweet
wife!”

Then, looking round, he saw Isabel watching him intently; and, rising
at once, he threw his arm round her waist, pressed her to his bosom, and
said, “My daughter, for thee and thine day and night have I striven and
planned in vain. I cannot reward thy husband as I would; I cannot give
thee, as I had hoped, a throne!”

“What title so dear to Isabel,” said the countess, “as that of Lord
Warwick’s daughter?”

Isabel remained cold and silent, and returned not the earl’s embrace.

Warwick was, happily, too absorbed in his own feelings to notice those
of his child. Moving away, he continued, as he paced the room (his habit
in emotion, which Isabel, who had many minute external traits in common
with her father, had unconsciously caught from him),--

“Till this morning I hoped still that my name and services, that
Clarence’s popular bearing and his birth of Plantagenet, would suffice
to summon the English people round our standard; that the false Edward
would be driven, on our landing, to fly the realm; and that, without
change to the dynasty of York, Clarence, as next male heir, would ascend
the throne. True, I saw all the obstacles, all the difficulties,--I was
warned of them before I left England; but still I hoped. Lord Oxford
has arrived, he has just left me. We have gone over the chart of the way
before us, weighed the worth of every name, for and against; and, alas!
I cannot but allow that all attempt to place the younger brother on
the throne of the elder would but lead to bootless slaughter and
irretrievable defeat.”

“Wherefore think you so, my lord?” asked Isabel, in evident excitement.
“Your own retainers are sixty thousand,--an army larger than Edward, and
all his lords of yesterday, can bring into the field.”

“My child,” answered the earl, with that profound knowledge of his
countrymen which he had rather acquired from his English heart than from
any subtlety of intellect, “armies may gain a victory, but they do not
achieve a throne,--unless, at least, they enforce a slavery; and it
is not for me and for Clarence to be the violent conquerors of our
countrymen, but the regenerators of a free realm, corrupted by a false
man’s rule.”

“And what then,” exclaimed Isabel,--“what do you propose, my father?
Can it be possible that you can unite yourself with the abhorred
Lancastrians, with the savage Anjouite, who beheaded my grandsire,
Salisbury? Well do I remember your own words,--‘May God and Saint George
forget me, when I forget those gray and gory hairs!’”

Here Isabel was interrupted by a faint cry from Anne, who, unobserved
by the rest, and hitherto concealed from her father’s eye by the deep
embrasure of the window, had risen some moments before, and listened,
with breathless attention, to the conversation between Warwick and the
duchess.

“It is not true, it is not true!” exclaimed Anne, passionately.
“Margaret disowns the inhuman deed.”

“Thou art right, Anne,” said Warwick; “though I guess not how thou didst
learn the error of a report so popularly believed that till of late I
never questioned its truth. King Louis assures me solemnly that that
foul act was done by the butcher Clifford, against Margaret’s knowledge,
and, when known, to her grief and anger.”

“And you, who call Edward false, can believe Louis true?”

“Cease, Isabel, cease!” said the countess. “Is it thus my child can
address my lord and husband? Forgive her, beloved Richard.”

“Such heat in Clarence’s wife misbeseems her not,” answered Warwick.
“And I can comprehend and pardon in my haughty Isabel a resentment
which her reason must at last subdue; for think not, Isabel, that it is
without dread struggle and fierce agony that I can contemplate peace and
league with mine ancient foe; but here two duties speak to me in voices
not to be denied: my honour and my hearth, as noble and as man, demand
redress, and the weal and glory of my country demand a ruler who does
not degrade a warrior, nor assail a virgin, nor corrupt a people by lewd
pleasures, nor exhaust a land by grinding imposts; and that honour shall
be vindicated, and that country shall be righted, no matter at what
sacrifice of private grief and pride.”

The words and the tone of the earl for a moment awed even Isabel; but
after a pause, she said suddenly, “And for this, then, Clarence hath
joined your quarrel and shared your exile?--for this,--that he may place
the eternal barrier of the Lancastrian line between himself and the
English throne?”

“I would fain hope,” answered the earl, calmly, “that Clarence will view
our hard position more charitably than thou. If he gain not all that
I could desire, should success crown our arms, he will, at least, gain
much; for often and ever did thy husband, Isabel, urge me to stern
measures against Edward, when I soothed him and restrained. Mort Dieu!
how often did he complain of slight and insult from Elizabeth and her
minions, of open affront from Edward, of parsimony to his wants as
prince,--of a life, in short, humbled and made bitter by all the
indignity and the gall which scornful power can inflict on dependent
pride. If he gain not the throne, he will gain, at least, the succession
in thy right to the baronies of Beauchamp, the mighty duchy, and the
vast heritage of York, the vice-royalty of Ireland. Never prince of the
blood had wealth and honours equal to those that shall await thy lord.
For the rest, I drew him not into my quarrel; long before would he have
drawn me into his; nor doth it become thee, Isabel, as child and as
sister, to repent, if the husband of my daughter felt as brave men feel,
without calculation of gain and profit, the insult offered to his lady’s
House. But if here I overgauge his chivalry and love to me and mine,
or discontent his ambition and his hopes, Mort Dieu! we hold him not
a captive. Edward will hail his overtures of peace; let him make terms
with his brother, and return.”

“I will report to him what you say, my lord,” said Isabel, with cold
brevity and, bending her haughty head in formal reverence, she advanced
to the door. Anne sprang forward and caught her hand.

“Oh, Isabel!” she whispered, “in our father’s sad and gloomy hour can
you leave him thus?” and the sweet lady burst into tears.

“Anne,” retorted Isabel, bitterly, “thy heart is Lancastrian; and what,
peradventure, grieves my father hath but joy for thee.”

Anne drew back, pale and trembling, and her sister swept from the room.

The earl, though he had not overheard the whispered sentences which
passed between his daughters, had watched them closely, and his lip
quivered with emotion as Isabel closed the door.

“Come hither, my Anne,” he said tenderly; “thou who hast thy mother’s
face, never hast a harsh thought for thy father.”

As Anne threw herself on Warwick’s breast, he continued, “And how camest
thou to learn that Margaret disowns a deed that, if done by her command,
would render my union with her cause a sacrilegious impiety to the
dead?”

Anne coloured, and nestled her head still closer to her father’s bosom.
Her mother regarded her confusion and her silence with an anxious eye.

The wing of the palace in which the earl’s apartments were situated
was appropriated to himself and household, flanked to the left by an
abutting pile containing state-chambers, never used by the austere and
thrifty Louis, save on great occasions of pomp or revel; and, as we have
before observed, looking on a garden, which was generally solitary and
deserted. From this garden, while Anne yet strove for words to answer
her father, and the countess yet watched her embarrassment, suddenly
came the soft strain of a Provencal lute; while a low voice, rich, and
modulated at once by a deep feeling and an exquisite art that would have
given effect to even simpler words, breathed--

    THE LAY OF THE HEIR OF LANCASTER

    “His birthright but a father’s name,
       A grandsire’s hero-sword,
     He dwelt within the stranger’s land,
       The friendless, homeless lord!”

    “Yet one dear hope, too dear to tell,
       Consoled the exiled man;
     The angels have their home in heaven
       And gentle thoughts in Anne.”

At that name the voice of the singer trembled, and paused a moment;
the earl, who at first had scarcely listened to what he deemed but the
ill-seasoned gallantry of one of the royal minstrels, started in proud
surprise, and Anne herself, tightening her clasp round her father’s
neck, burst into passionate sobs. The eye of the countess met that of
her lord; but she put her finger to her lips in sign to him to listen.
The song was resumed--

    “Recall the single sunny time,
       In childhood’s April weather,
     When he and thou, the boy and girl,
       Roved hand in band together.”

    “When round thy young companion knelt
       The princes of the isle;
     And priest and people prayed their God,
       On England’s heir to smile.”

The earl uttered a half-stifled exclamation, but the minstrel heard not
the interruption, and continued,--

    “Methinks the sun hath never smiled
       Upon the exiled man,
     Like that bright morning when the boy
       Told all his soul to Anne.”

    “No; while his birthright but a name,
       A grandsire’s hero--sword,
     He would not woo the lofty maid
       To love the banished lord.”

    “But when, with clarion, fife, and drum,
       He claims and wins his own;
     When o’er the deluge drifts his ark,
       To rest upon a throne.”

    “Then, wilt thou deign to hear the hope
       That blessed the exiled man,
     When pining for his father’s crown
       To deck the brows of Anne?”

The song ceased, and there was silence within the chamber, broken but by
Anne’s low yet passionate weeping. The earl gently strove to disengage
her arms from his neck; but she, mistaking his intention, sank on her
knees, and covering her face with her hands, exclaimed,--

“Pardon! pardon! pardon him, if not me!”

“What have I to pardon? What hast thou concealed from me? Can I think
that thou hast met, in secret, one who--”

“In secret! Never, never, Father! This is the third time only that I
have heard his voice since we have been at Amboise, save when--save
when--”

“Go on.”

“Save when King Louis presented him to me in the revel under the name
of the Count de F----, and he asked me if I could forgive his mother for
Lord Clifford’s crime.”

“It is, then, as the rhyme proclaimed; and it is Edward of Lancaster who
loves and woos the daughter of Lord Warwick!”

Something in her father’s voice made Anne remove her hands from her
face, and look up to him with a thrill of timid joy. Upon his brow,
indeed, frowned no anger, upon his lip smiled no scorn. At that moment
all his haughty grief at the curse of circumstance which drove him to
his hereditary foe had vanished. Though Montagu had obtained from
Oxford some glimpse of the desire which the more sagacious and temperate
Lancastrians already entertained for that alliance, and though Louis
had already hinted its expediency to the earl, yet, till now, Warwick
himself had naturally conceived that the prince shared the enmity of his
mother, and that such a union, however politic, was impossible; but
now indeed there burst upon him the full triumph of revenge and pride.
Edward of York dared to woo Anne to dishonour, Edward of Lancaster dared
not even woo her as his wife till his crown was won! To place upon the
throne the very daughter the ungrateful monarch had insulted; to make
her he would have humbled not only the instrument of his fall, but the
successor of his purple; to unite in one glorious strife the wrongs
of the man and the pride of the father,--these were the thoughts that
sparkled in the eye of the king-maker, and flushed with a fierce rapture
the dark cheek, already hollowed by passion and care. He raised his
daughter from the floor, and placed her in her mother’s arms, but still
spoke not.

“This, then, was thy secret, Anne,” whispered the countess; “and I half
foreguessed it, when, last night, I knelt beside thy couch to pray, and
overheard thee murmur in thy dreams.”

“Sweet mother, thou forgivest me; but my father--ah, he speaks not. One
word! Father, Father, not even his love could console me if I angered
thee!”

The earl, who had remained rooted to the spot, his eyes shining
thoughtfully under his dark brows, and his hand slightly raised, as
if piercing into the future, and mapping out its airy realm, turned
quickly,--

“I go to the heir of Lancaster; if this boy be bold and true, worthy of
England and of thee, we will change the sad ditty of that scrannel lute
into such a storm of trumpets as beseems the triumph of a conqueror and
the marriage of a prince!”



CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE HEIR OF LANCASTER MEETS THE KING-MAKER.

In truth, the young prince, in obedience to a secret message from the
artful Louis, had repaired to the court of Amboise under the name of the
Count de F----. The French king had long before made himself acquainted
with Prince Edward’s romantic attachment to the earl’s daughter, through
the agent employed by Edward to transmit his portrait to Anne at
Rouen; and from him, probably, came to Oxford the suggestion which that
nobleman had hazarded to Montagu; and now that it became his policy
seriously and earnestly to espouse the cause of his kinswoman Margaret,
he saw all the advantage to his cold statecraft which could be drawn
from a boyish love. Louis had a well-founded fear of the warlike spirit
and military talents of Edward IV.; and this fear had induced him
hitherto to refrain from openly espousing the cause of the Lancastrians,
though it did not prevent his abetting such seditions and intrigues as
could confine the attention of the martial Plantagenet to the perils of
his own realm. But now that the breach between Warwick and the king had
taken place; now that the earl could no longer curb the desire of
the Yorkist monarch to advance his hereditary claims to the fairest
provinces of France,--nay, peradventure, to France itself,--while the
defection of Lord Warwick gave to the Lancastrians the first fair hope
of success in urging their own pretensions to the English throne,
he bent all the powers of his intellect and his will towards the
restoration of a natural ally and the downfall of a dangerous foe.
But he knew that Margaret and her Lancastrian favourers could not
of themselves suffice to achieve a revolution,--that they could only
succeed under cover of the popularity and the power of Warwick, while
he perceived all the art it would require to make Margaret forego her
vindictive nature and long resentment, and to supple the pride of the
great earl into recognizing as a sovereign the woman who had branded him
as a traitor.

Long before Lord Oxford’s arrival, Louis, with all that address which
belonged to him, had gradually prepared the earl to familiarize himself
to the only alternative before him, save that, indeed, of powerless
sense of wrong and obscure and lasting exile. The French king looked
with more uneasiness to the scruples of Margaret; and to remove these,
he trusted less to his own skill than to her love for her only son.

His youth passed principally in Anjou--that court of minstrels--young
Edward’s gallant and ardent temper had become deeply imbued with the
southern poetry and romance. Perhaps the very feud between his House and
Lord Warwick’s, though both claimed their common descent from John of
Gaunt, had tended, by the contradictions in the human heart, to endear
to him the recollection of the gentle Anne. He obeyed with joy the
summons of Louis, repaired to the court, was presented to Anne as the
Count de F----, found himself recognized at the first glance (for his
portrait still lay upon her heart, as his remembrance in its core), and,
twice before the song we have recited, had ventured, agreeably to the
sweet customs of Anjou, to address the lady of his love under the shade
of the starlit summer copses. But on this last occasion, he had departed
from his former discretion; hitherto he had selected an hour of deeper
night, and ventured but beneath the lattice of the maiden’s chamber when
the rest of the palace was hushed in sleep. And the fearless declaration
of his rank and love now hazarded was prompted by one who contrived to
turn to grave uses the wildest whim of the minstrel, the most romantic
enthusiasm of youth.

Louis had just learned from Oxford the result of his interview with
Warwick. And about the same time the French king had received a letter
from Margaret, announcing her departure from the castle of Verdun for
Tours, where she prayed him to meet her forthwith, and stating that she
had received from England tidings that might change all her schemes, and
more than ever forbid the possibility of a reconciliation with the Earl
of Warwick.

The king perceived the necessity of calling into immediate effect the
aid on which he had relied, in the presence and passion of the young
prince. He sought him at once; he found him in a remote part of the
gardens, and overheard him breathing to himself the lay he had just
composed.

“Pasque Dieu!” said the king, laying his hand on the young man’s
shoulder, “if thou wilt but repeat that song where and when I bid thee,
I promise that before the month ends Lord Warwick shall pledge thee his
daughter’s hand; and before the year is closed thou shalt sit beside
Lord Warwick’s daughter in the halls of Westminster.”

And the royal troubadour took the counsel of the king.

The song had ceased; the minstrel emerged from the bosquets, and stood
upon the sward, as, from the postern of the palace, walked with a slow
step, a form from which it became him not, as prince or as lover, in
peace or in war, to shrink. The first stars had now risen; the light,
though serene, was pale and dim. The two men--the one advancing, the
other motionless--gazed on each other in grave silence. As Count
de F----, amidst the young nobles in the king’s train, the earl had
scarcely noticed the heir of England. He viewed him now with a different
eye: in secret complacency, for, with a soldier’s weakness, the
soldier-baron valued men too much for their outward seeming, he surveyed
a figure already masculine and stalwart, though still in the graceful
symmetry of fair eighteen.

“A youth of a goodly presence,” muttered the earl, “with the dignity
that commands in peace, and the sinews that can strive against hardship
and death in war.”

He approached, and said calmly: “Sir minstrel, he who woos either fame
or beauty may love the lute, but should wield the sword. At least, so
methinks had the Fifth Henry said to him who boasts for his heritage the
sword of Agincourt.”

“O noble earl!” exclaimed the prince, touched by words far gentler than
he had dared to hope, despite his bold and steadfast mien, and giving
way to frank and graceful emotion, “O noble earl! since thou knowest me;
since my secret is told; since, in that secret, I have proclaimed a hope
as dear to me as a crown and dearer far than life, can I hope that thy
rebuke but veils thy favour, and that, under Lord Warwick’s eye, the
grandson of Henry V. shall approve himself worthy of the blood that
kindles in his veins?”

“Fair sir and prince,” returned the earl, whose hardy and generous
nature the emotion and fire of Edward warmed and charmed, “there are,
alas! deep memories of blood and wrong--the sad deeds and wrathful words
of party feud and civil war--between thy royal mother and myself; and
though we may unite now against a common foe, much I fear that the Lady
Margaret would brook ill a closer friendship, a nearer tie, than the
exigency of the hour between Richard Nevile and her son.”

“No, Sir Earl, let me hope you misthink her. Hot and impetuous, but not
mean and treacherous, the moment that she accepts the service of
thine arm she must forget that thou hast been her foe; and if I, as my
father’s heir, return to England, it is in the trust that a new era will
commence. Free from the passionate enmities of either faction, Yorkist
and Lancastrian are but Englishmen to me. Justice to all who serve us,
pardon for all who have opposed.”

The prince paused, and, even in the dim light, his kingly aspect gave
effect to his kingly words. “And if this resolve be such as you approve;
if you, great earl, be that which even your foes proclaim, a man whose
power depends less on lands and vassals--broad though the one, and
numerous though the other--than on well-known love for England, her
glory and her peace, it rests with you to bury forever in one grave the
feuds of Lancaster and York! What Yorkist who hath fought at Towton or
St. Albans under Lord Warwick’s standard, will lift sword against the
husband of Lord Warwick’s daughter? What Lancastrian will not forgive a
Yorkist, when Lord Warwick, the kinsman of Duke Richard, becomes father
to the Lancastrian heir, and bulwark to the Lancastrian throne? O
Warwick, if not for my sake, nor for the sake of full redress against
the ingrate whom thou repentest to have placed on my father’s throne, at
least for the sake of England, for the healing of her bleeding wounds,
for the union of her divided people, hear the grandson of Henry V., who
sues to thee for thy daughter’s hand!”

The royal wooer bent his knee as he spoke. The mighty subject saw and
prevented the impulse of the prince who had forgotten himself in the
lover; the hand which he caught he lifted to his lips, and the next
moment, in manly and soldierlike embrace, the prince’s young arm was
thrown over the broad shoulder of the king-maker.



CHAPTER IX. THE INTERVIEW OF EARL WARWICK AND QUEEN MARGARET.

Louis hastened to meet Margaret at Tours; thither came also her father
Rene, her brother John of Calabria, Yolante her sister, and the Count of
Vaudemonte. The meeting between the queen and Rene was so touching as to
have drawn tears to the hard eyes of Louis XI.; but, that emotion over,
Margaret evinced how little affliction had humbled her high spirit, or
softened her angry passions: she interrupted Louis in every argument for
reconciliation with Warwick. “Not with honour to myself and to my son,”
 she exclaimed, “can I pardon that cruel earl, the main cause of King
Henry’s downfall! in vain patch up a hollow peace between us,--a peace
of form and parchment! My spirit never can be contented with him, ne
pardon!”

For several days she maintained a language which betrayed the chief
cause of her own impolitic passions, that had lost her crown. Showing
to Louis the letter despatched to her, proffering the hand of the Lady
Elizabeth to her son, she asked if that were not a more profitable
party [See, for this curious passage of secret history, Sir H. Ellis’s
“Original Letters from the Harleian Manuscripts,” second series,
vol. i., letter 42.], and if it were necessary that she should
forgive,--whether it were not more queenly to treat with Edward than
with a twofold rebel?

In fact, the queen would perhaps have fallen into Gloucester’s artful
snare, despite all the arguments and even the half-menaces [Louis
would have thrown over Margaret’s cause if Warwick had demanded it; he
instructed MM. de Concressault and du Plessis to assure the earl that
he would aid him to the utmost to reconquer England either for the Queen
Margaret or for any one else he chose (on pour qui il voudra): for that
he loved the earl better than Margaret or her son.--BRANTE, t. ix. 276.]
of the more penetrating Louis, but for a counteracting influence which
Richard had not reckoned upon. Prince Edward, who had lingered behind
Louis, arrived from Amboise, and his persuasions did more than all the
representations of the crafty king. The queen loved her son with that
intenseness which characterizes the one soft affection of violent
natures. Never had she yet opposed his most childish whim, and now he
spoke with the eloquence of one who put his heart and his life’s life
into his words. At last, reluctantly, she consented to an interview with
Warwick. The earl, accompanied by Oxford, arrived at Tours, and the two
nobles were led into the presence of Margaret by King Louis.

The reader will picture to himself a room darkened by thick curtains
drawn across the casement, for the proud woman wished not the earl
to detect on her face either the ravages of years or the emotions
of offended pride. In a throne chair, placed on the dais, sat the
motionless queen, her hands clasping, convulsively, the arms of the
fauteuil, her features pale and rigid; and behind the chair leaned the
graceful figure of her son. The person of the Lancastrian prince was
little less remarkable than that of his hostile namesake, but its
character was distinctly different. [“According to some of the French
chroniclers, the Prince of Wales, who was one of the handsomest and
most accomplished princes in Europe, was very desirous of becoming the
husband of Anne Nevile,” etc.--Miss STRICKLAND: Life of Margaret of
Anjou.] Spare, like Henry V., almost to the manly defect of leanness,
his proportions were slight to those which gave such portly majesty to
the vast-chested Edward, but they evinced the promise of almost equal
strength,--the muscles hardened to iron by early exercise in arms,
the sap of youth never wasted by riot and debauch. His short purple
manteline, trimmed with ermine, was embroidered with his grandfather’s
favourite device, “the silver swan;” he wore on his breast the badge of
St. George; and the single ostrich plume, which made his cognizance as
Prince of Wales, waved over a fair and ample forehead, on which were
even then traced the lines of musing thought and high design; his
chestnut hair curled close to his noble head; his eye shone dark
and brilliant beneath the deep-set brow, which gives to the human
countenance such expression of energy and intellect,--all about him,
in aspect and mien, seemed to betoken a mind riper than his years,
a masculine simplicity of taste and bearing, the earnest and grave
temperament mostly allied in youth to pure and elevated desires, to an
honourable and chivalric soul.

Below the dais stood some of the tried and gallant gentlemen who had
braved exile, and tasted penury in their devotion to the House of
Lancaster, and who had now flocked once more round their queen, in the
hope of better days. There were the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, their
very garments soiled and threadbare,--many a day had those great lords
hungered for the beggar’s crust! [Philip de Comines says he himself
had seen the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset in the Low Countries in as
wretched a plight as common beggars.] There stood Sir John Fortescue,
the patriarch authority of our laws, who had composed his famous
treatise for the benefit of the young prince, overfond of exercise with
lance and brand, and the recreation of knightly song. There were Jasper
of Pembroke, and Sir Henry Rous, and the Earl of Devon, and the Knight
of Lytton, whose House had followed, from sire to son, the fortunes of
the Lancastrian Rose; [Sir Robert de Lytton (whose grandfather had been
Comptroller to the Household of Henry IV., and Agister of the Forests
allotted to Queen Joan), was one of the most powerful knights of the
time; and afterwards, according to Perkin Warbeck, one of the ministers
most trusted by Henry VII. He was lord of Lytton, in Derbyshire (where
his ancestors had been settled since the Conquest), of Knebworth in
Herts (the ancient seat and manor of Plantagenet de Brotherton, Earl
of Norfolk and Earl Marshal), of Myndelesden and Langley, of Standyarn,
Dene, and Brekesborne, in Northamptonshire, and became in the reign of
Henry VII. Privy Councillor, Uuder-Treasurer, and Keeper of the great
Wardrobe.] and, contrasting the sober garments of the exiles, shone the
jewels and cloth-of-gold that decked the persons of the more prosperous
foreigners, Ferri, Count of Vaudemonte, Margaret’s brother, the Duke
of Calabria, and the powerful form of Sir Pierre de Breze, who had
accompanied Margaret in her last disastrous campaigns, with all the
devotion of a chevalier for the lofty lady adored in secret. [See,
for the chivalrous devotion of this knight (Seneschal of Normandy) to
Margaret, Miss Strickland’s Life of that queen.]

When the door opened, and gave to the eyes of those proud exiles the
form of their puissant enemy, they with difficulty suppressed the murmur
of their resentment, and their looks turned with sympathy and grief to
the hueless face of their queen.

The earl himself was troubled; his step was less firm, his crest less
haughty, his eye less serenely steadfast.

But beside him, in a dress more homely than that of the poorest exile
there, and in garb and in aspect, as he lives forever in the portraiture
of Victor Hugo and our own yet greater Scott, moved Louis, popularly
called “The Fell.”

“Madame and cousin,” said the king, “we present to you the man for whose
haute courage and dread fame we have such love and respect, that we
value him as much as any king, and would do as much for him as for man
living [Ellis: Original Letters, vol. i., letter 42, second series]; and
with my lord of Warwick, see also this noble earl of Oxford, who, though
he may have sided awhile with the enemies of your Highness, comes now to
pray your pardon, and to lay at your feet his sword.”

Lord Oxford (who had ever unwillingly acquiesced in the Yorkist
dynasty), more prompt than Warwick, here threw himself on his knees
before Margaret, and his tears fell on her hand, as he murmured
“Pardon.”

“Rise, Sir John de Vere,” said the queen, glancing with a flashing eye
from Oxford to Lord Warwick. “Your pardon is right easy to purchase, for
well I know that you yielded but to the time,--you did not turn the time
against us; you and yours have suffered much for King Henry’s cause.
Rise, Sir Earl.”

“And,” said a voice, so deep and so solemn, that it hushed the very
breath of those who heard it,--“and has Margaret a pardon also for the
man who did more than all others to dethrone King Henry, and can do more
than all to restore his crown?”

“Ha!” cried’ Margaret, rising in her passion, and casting from her the
hand her son had placed upon her shoulder, “ha! Ownest thou thy wrongs,
proud lord? Comest thou at last to kneel at Queen Margaret’s feet?
Look round and behold her court,--some half-score brave and unhappy
gentlemen, driven from their hearths and homes, their heritage the prey
of knaves and varlets, their sovereign in a prison, their sovereign’s
wife, their sovereign’s son, persecuted and hunted from the soil! And
comest thou now to the forlorn majesty of sorrow to boast, ‘Such deeds
were mine?’”

“Mother and lady,” began the prince

“Madden me not, my son. Forgiveness is for the prosperous, not for
adversity and woe.”

“Hear me,” said the earl,--who, having once bowed his pride to the
interview, had steeled himself against the passion which, in his
heart, he somewhat despised as a mere woman’s burst of inconsiderate
fury,--“for I have this right to be heard,--that not one of these
knights, your lealest and noblest friends, can say of me that I ever
stooped to gloss mine acts, or palliate bold deeds with wily words. Dear
to me as comrade in arms, sacred to me as a father’s head, was Richard
of York, mine uncle by marriage with Lord Salisbury’s sister. I speak
not now of his claims by descent (for those even King Henry could not
deny), but I maintain them, even in your Grace’s presence, to be such as
vindicate, from disloyalty and treason, me and the many true and gallant
men who upheld them through danger, by field and scaffold. Error, it
might be,--but the error of men who believed themselves the defenders
of a just cause. Nor did I, Queen Margaret, lend myself wholly to my
kinsman’s quarrel, nor share one scheme that went to the dethronement of
King Henry, until--pardon, if I speak bluntly; it is my wont, and would
be more so now, but for thy fair face and woman’s form, which awe me
more than if confronting the frown of Coeur de Lion, or the First Great
Edward--pardon me, I say, if I speak bluntly, and aver that I was not
King Henry’s foe until false counsellors had planned my destruction, in
body and goods, land and life. In the midst of peace, at Coventry, my
father and myself scarcely escaped the knife of the murderer. [See Hall
(236), who says that Margaret had laid a snare for Salisbury and Warwick
at Warwick, and “if they had not suddenly departed, their life’s thread
had been broken.”] In the streets of London the very menials and
hangmen employed in the service of your Highness beset me unarmed [Hall,
Fabyan]; a little time after and my name was attainted by an illegal
Parliament. [Parl. Rolls, 370; W. Wyr. 478.] And not till after these
things did Richard Duke of York ride to the hall of Westminster, and
lay his hand upon the throne; nor till after these things did I and
my father Salisbury say to each other, ‘The time has come when neither
peace nor honour can be found for us under King Henry’s reign.’ Blame
me if you will, Queen Margaret; reject me if you need not my sword; but
that which I did in the gone days was such as no nobleman so outraged
and despaired [Warwick’s phrase. See Sir H. Ellis’s “Original Letters,”
 vol. i., second series.] would have forborne to do,--remembering that
England is not the heritage of the king alone, but that safety and
honour, and freedom and justice, are the rights of his Norman gentlemen
and his Saxon people. And rights are a mockery and a laughter if they do
not justify resistance, whensoever, and by whomsoever, they are invaded
and assailed.”

It had been with a violent effort that Margaret had refrained
from interrupting this address, which had, however, produced no
inconsiderable effect upon the knightly listeners around the dais.
And now, as the earl ceased, her indignation was arrested by dismay on
seeing the young prince suddenly leave his post and advance to the side
of Warwick.

“Right well hast thou spoken, noble earl and cousin,--right well, though
right plainly. And I,” added the prince, “saving the presence of my
queen and mother,--I, the representative of my sovereign father, in his
name will pledge thee a king’s oblivion and pardon for the past, if
thou on thy side acquit my princely mother of all privity to the snares
against thy life and honour of which thou hast spoken, and give thy
knightly word to be henceforth leal to Lancaster. Perish all memories of
the past that can make walls between the souls of brave men.”

Till this moment, his arms folded in his gown, his thin, fox-like face
bent to the ground, Louis had listened, silent and undisturbed. He now
deemed it the moment to second the appeal of the prince. Passing his
hand hypocritically over his tearless eyes, the king turned to Margaret
and said,--

“Joyful hour! happy union! May Madame La Vierge and Monseigneur Saint
Martin sanctify and hallow the bond by which alone my beloved kinswoman
can regain her rights and roiaulme. Amen.”

Unheeding this pious ejaculation, her bosom heaving, her eyes wandering
from the earl to Edward, Margaret at last gave vent to her passion.

“And is it come to this, Prince Edward of Wales, that thy mother’s
wrongs are not thine? Standest thou side by side with my mortal foe,
who, instead of repenting treason, dares but to complain of injury? Am
I fallen so low that my voice to pardon or disdain is counted but as a
sough of idle air! God of my fathers, hear me! Willingly from my heart
I tear the last thought and care for the pomps of earth. Hateful to me
a crown for which the wearer must cringe to enemy and rebel! Away, Earl
Warwick! Monstrous and unnatural seems it to the wife of captive Henry
to see thee by the side of Henry’s son!”

Every eye turned in fear to the aspect of the earl, every ear listened
for the answer which might be expected from his well-known heat and
pride,--an answer to destroy forever the last hope of the Lancastrian
line. But whether it was the very consciousness of his power to raise
or to crush that fiery speaker, or those feelings natural to brave men,
half of chivalry, half contempt, which kept down the natural anger by
thoughts of the sex and sorrows of the Anjouite, or that the wonted
irascibility of his temper had melted into one steady and profound
passion of revenge against Edward of York, which absorbed all lesser and
more trivial causes of resentment,--the earl’s face, though pale as the
dead, was unmoved and calm, and, with a grave and melancholy smile, he
answered,--

“More do I respect thee, O queen, for the hot words which show a truth
rarely heard from royal lips than hadst thou deigned to dissimulate the
forgiveness and kindly charity which sharp remembrance permits thee not
to feel! No, princely Margaret, not yet can there be frank amity between
thee and me! Nor do I boast the affection yon gallant gentlemen have
displayed. Frankly, as thou hast spoken, do I say, that the wrongs I
have suffered from another alone move me to allegiance to thyself! Let
others serve thee for love of Henry; reject not my service, given but
for revenge on Edward,--as much, henceforth, am I his foe as formerly
his friend and maker! [Sir H. Ellis: Original Letters, vol. i., second
series.] And if, hereafter, on the throne, thou shouldst remember and
resent the former wars, at least thou hast owed me no gratitude, and
thou canst not grieve my heart and seethe my brain, as the man whom I
once loved better than a son! Thus, from thy presence I depart, chafing
not at thy scornful wrath; mindful, young prince, but of thy just and
gentle heart, and sure, in the calm of my own soul (on which this much,
at least, of our destiny is reflected as on a glass), that when, high
lady, thy colder sense returns to thee, thou wilt see that the league
between us must be made!--that thine ire as woman must fade before thy
duties as a another, thy affection as a wife, and thy paramount and
solemn obligations to the people thou hast ruled as queen! In the
dead of night thou shalt hear the voice of Henry in his prison asking
Margaret to set him free; the vision of thy son shall rise before thee
in his bloom and promise, to demand why his mother deprives him of a
crown; and crowds of pale peasants, grinded beneath tyrannous exaction,
and despairing fathers mourning for dishonoured children, shall ask the
Christian queen if God will sanction the unreasoning wrath which rejects
the only instrument that can redress her people.”

This said, the earl bowed his head and turned; but, at the first sign of
his departure, there was a general movement among the noble bystanders.
Impressed by the dignity of his bearing, by the greatness of his power,
and by the unquestionable truth that in rejecting him Margaret cast
away the heritage of her son, the exiles, with a common impulse, threw
themselves at the queen’s feet, and exclaimed, almost in the same
words,--

“Grace! noble queen!--Grace for the great Lord Warwick!”

“My sister,” whispered John of Calabria, “thou art thy son’s ruin if the
earl depart!”

“Pasque Dieu! Vex not my kinswoman,--if she prefer a convent to a
throne, cross not the holy choice!” said the wily Louis, with a mocking
irony on his pinched lips.

The prince alone spoke not, but stood proudly on the same spot, gazing
on the earl, as he slowly moved to the door.

“Oh, Edward! Edward, my son!” exclaimed the unhappy Margaret, “if for
thy sake--for thine--I must make the past a blank, speak thou for me!”

“I have spoken,” said the prince, gently, “and thou didst chide me,
noble mother; yet I spoke, methinks, as Henry V. had done, if of a
mighty enemy he had had the power to make a noble friend.”

A short, convulsive sob was heard from the throne chair; and as suddenly
as it burst, it ceased. Queen Margaret rose, not a trace of that
stormy emotion upon the grand and marble beauty of her face. Her voice,
unnaturally calm, arrested the steps of the departing earl.

“Lord Warwick, defend this boy, restore his rights, release his sainted
father, and for years of anguish and of exile, Margaret of Anjou
forgives the champion of her son!”

In an instant Prince Edward was again by the earl’s side; a moment more,
and the earl’s proud knee bent in homage to the queen, joyful tears were
in the eyes of her friends and kindred, a triumphant smile on the lips
of Louis, and Margaret’s face, terrible in its stony and locked repose,
was raised above, as if asking the All-Merciful pardon--for the pardon
which the human sinner had bestowed! [Ellis: Original Letters from the
Harleian Manuscripts, letter 42.]



CHAPTER X. LOVE AND MARRIAGE--DOUBTS OF CONSCIENCE--DOMESTIC
JEALOUSY--AND HOUSEHOLD TREASON.

The events that followed this tempestuous interview were such as the
position of the parties necessarily compelled. The craft of Louis, the
energy and love of Prince Edward, the representations of all her
kindred and friends, conquered, though not without repeated struggles,
Margaret’s repugnance to a nearer union between Warwick and her son. The
earl did not deign to appear personally in this matter. He left it, as
became him, to Louis and the prince, and finally received from them the
proposals, which ratified the league, and consummated the schemes of his
revenge.

Upon the Very Cross [Miss Strickland observes upon this interview: “It
does not appear that Warwick mentioned the execution of his father, the
Earl of Salisbury, which is almost a confirmation of the statements of
those historians who deny that he was beheaded by Margaret.”] in St.
Mary’s Church of Angers, Lord Warwick swore without change to hold the
party of King Henry. Before the same sacred symbol, King Louis and his
brother, Duke of Guienne, robed in canvas, swore to sustain to their
utmost the Earl of Warwick in behalf of King Henry; and Margaret
recorded her oath “to treat the earl as true and faithful, and never for
deeds past to make him any reproach.”

Then were signed the articles of marriage between Prince Edward and the
Lady Anne,--the latter to remain with Margaret, but the marriage not to
be consummated “till Lord Warwick had entered England and regained the
realm, or most part, for King Henry,”--a condition which pleased the
earl, who desired to award his beloved daughter no less a dowry than a
crown.

An article far more important than all to the safety of the earl and
to the permanent success of the enterprise, was one that virtually
took from the fierce and unpopular Margaret the reins of government, by
constituting Prince Edward (whose qualities endeared him more and more
to Warwick, and were such as promised to command the respect and love of
the people) sole regent of all the realm, upon attaining his majority.
For the Duke of Clarence were reserved all the lands and dignities of
the duchy of York, the right to the succession of the throne to him
and his posterity,--failing male heirs to the Prince of Wales,--with a
private pledge of the viceroyalty of Ireland.

Margaret had attached to her consent one condition highly obnoxious
to her high-spirited son, and to which he was only reconciled by the
arguments of Warwick: she stipulated that he should not accompany the
earl to England, nor appear there till his father was proclaimed
king. In this, no doubt, she was guided by maternal fears, and by some
undeclared suspicion, either of the good faith of Warwick, or of his
means to raise a sufficient army to fulfil his promise. The brave prince
wished to be himself foremost in the battles fought in his right and for
his cause. But the earl contended, to the surprise and joy of Margaret,
that it best behooved the prince’s interests to enter England without
one enemy in the field, leaving others to clear his path, free himself
from all the personal hate of hostile factions, and without a drop of
blood upon the sword of one heralded and announced as the peace-maker
and impartial reconciles of all feuds. So then (these high conditions
settled), in the presence of the Kings Rene and Louis, of the Earl
and Countess of Warwick, and in solemn state, at Amboise, Edward of
Lancaster plighted his marriage-troth to his beloved and loving Anne.

It was deep night, and high revel in the Palace of Amboise crowned the
ceremonies of that memorable day. The Earl of Warwick stood alone in the
same chamber in which he had first discovered the secret of the young
Lancastrian. From the brilliant company, assembled in the halls of
state, he had stolen unperceived away, for his great heart was full to
overflowing. The part he had played for many days was over, and with
it the excitement and the fever. His schemes were crowned,--the
Lancastrians were won to his revenge; the king’s heir was the betrothed
of his favourite child; and the hour was visible in the distance, when,
by the retribution most to be desired, the father’s hand should lead
that child to the throne of him who would have degraded her to the dust.
If victory awaited his sanguine hopes, as father to his future queen,
the dignity and power of the earl became greater in the court of
Lancaster than, even in his palmiest day, amidst the minions of
ungrateful York; the sire of two lines,--if Anne’s posterity should
fail, the crown would pass to the sons of Isabel,--in either case
from him (if successful in his invasion) would descend the royalty
of England. Ambition, pride, revenge, might well exult in viewing the
future, as mortal wisdom could discern it. The House of Nevile never
seemed brightened by a more glorious star: and yet the earl was heavy
and sad at heart. However he had concealed it from the eyes of others,
the haughty ire of Margaret must have galled him in his deepest soul.
And even as he had that day contemplated the holy happiness in the
face of Anne, a sharp pang had shot through his breast. Were those the
witnesses of fair-omened spousailles? How different from the hearty
greeting of his warrior-friends was the measured courtesy of foes who
had felt and fled before his sword! If aught chanced to him in the
hazard of the field, what thought for his child ever could speak in pity
from the hard and scornful eyes of the imperious Anjouite?

The mist which till then had clouded his mind, or left visible to his
gaze but one stern idea of retribution, melted into air. He beheld
the fearful crisis to which his life had passed,--he had reached the
eminence to mourn the happy gardens left behind. Gone, forever gone,
the old endearing friendships, the sweet and manly remembrances of brave
companionship and early love! Who among those who had confronted war by
his side for the House of York would hasten to clasp his hand and hail
his coming as the captain of hated Lancaster? True, could he bow his
honour to proclaim the true cause of his desertion, the heart of every
father would beat in sympathy with his; but less than ever could the
tale that vindicated his name be told. How stoop to invoke malignant
pity to the insult offered to a future queen? Dark in his grave
must rest the secret no words could syllable, save by such vague and
mysterious hint and comment as pass from baseless gossip into dubious
history. [Hall well explains the mystery which wrapped the king’s
insult to a female of the House of Warwick by the simple sentence, “The
certainty was not, for both their honours, openly known!”] True, that in
his change of party he was not, like Julian of Spain, an apostate to his
native land. He did not meditate the subversion of his country by the
foreign foe; it was but the substitution of one English monarch for
another,--a virtuous prince for a false and a sanguinary king. True,
that the change from rose to rose had been so common amongst the
greatest and the bravest, that even the most rigid could scarcely
censure what the age itself had sanctioned. But what other man of his
stormy day had been so conspicuous in the downfall of those he was now
as conspicuously to raise? What other man had Richard of York taken
so dearly to his heart, to what other man had the august father said,
“Protect my sons”? Before him seemed literally to rise the phantom of
that honoured prince, and with clay-cold lips to ask, “Art thou, of all
the world, the doomsman of my first-born?” A groan escaped the breast of
the self-tormentor; he fell on his knees and prayed: “Oh, pardon, thou
All-seeing!--plead for me, Divine Mother! if in this I have darkly
erred, taking my heart for my conscience, and mindful only of a selfish
wrong! Oh, surely, no! Had Richard of York himself lived to know what
I have suffered from his unworthy son,--causeless insult, broken faith,
public and unabashed dishonour; yea, pardoning, serving, loving on
through all, till, at the last, nothing less than the foulest taint that
can light upon ‘scutcheon and name was the cold, premeditated reward for
untired devotion,--surely, surely, Richard himself had said, ‘Thy honour
at last forbids all pardon!’”

Then, in that rapidity with which the human heart, once seizing upon
self-excuse, reviews, one after one, the fair apologies, the earl
passed from the injury to himself to the mal-government of his land, and
muttered over the thousand instances of cruelty and misrule which
rose to his remembrance,--forgetting, alas, or steeling himself to the
memory, that till Edward’s vices had assailed his own hearth and honour,
he had been contented with lamenting them, he had not ventured
to chastise. At length, calm and self-acquitted, he rose from his
self-confession, and leaning by the open casement, drank in the reviving
and gentle balm of the summer air. The state apartments he had left,
formed as we have before observed, an angle to the wing in which
the chamber he had now retired to was placed. They were brilliantly
illumined, their windows opened to admit the fresh, soft breeze of
night; and he saw, as if by daylight, distinct and gorgeous, in their
gay dresses, the many revellers within. But one group caught and riveted
his eye. Close by the centre window he recognized his gentle Anne,
with downcast looks; he almost fancied he saw her blush, as her young
bridegroom, young and beautiful as herself, whispered love’s flatteries
in her ear. He saw farther on, but yet near, his own sweet countess, and
muttered, “After twenty years of marriage, may Anne be as dear to him as
thou art now to me!” And still he saw, or deemed he saw, his lady’s eye,
after resting with tender happiness on the young pair, rove wistfully
around, as if missing and searching for her partner in her mother’s joy.
But what form sweeps by with so haughty a majesty, then pauses by the
betrothed, addresses them not, but seems to regard them with so fixed a
watch? He knew by her ducal diadem, by the baudekin colours of her
robe, by her unmistakable air of pride, his daughter Isabel. He did not
distinguish the expression of her countenance, but an ominous thrill
passed through his heart; for the attitude itself had an expression, and
not that of a sister’s sympathy and love. He turned away his face
with an unquiet recollection of the altered mood of his discontented
daughter. He looked again: the duchess had passed on, lost amidst the
confused splendour of the revel. And high and rich swelled the merry
music that invited to the stately pavon. He gazed still; his lady had
left her place, the lovers too had vanished, and where they stood, stood
now in close conference his ancient enemies, Exeter and Somerset. The
sudden change from objects of love to those associated with hate had
something which touched one of those superstitions to which, in all
ages, the heart, when deeply stirred, is weakly sensitive. And again,
forgetful of the revel, the earl turned to the serener landscape of the
grove and the moonlit green sward, and mused and mused, till a soft arm
thrown round him woke his revery. For this had his lady left the revel.
Divining, by the instinct born of love, the gloom of her husband, she
had stolen from pomp and pleasure to his side.

“Ah, wherefore wouldst thou rob me,” said the countess, “of one hour
of thy presence, since so few hours remain; since, when the sun that
succeeds the morrow’s shines upon these walls, the night of thine
absence will have closed upon me?”

“And if that thought of parting, sad to me as thee, suffice not, belle
amie, to dim the revel,” answered the earl, “weetest thou not how ill
the grave and solemn thoughts of one who sees before him the emprise
that would change the dynasty of a realm can suit with the careless
dance and the wanton music? But not at that moment did I think of those
mightier cares; my thoughts were nearer home. Hast thou noted, sweet
wife, the silent gloom, the clouded brow of Isabel, since she learned
that Anne was to be the bride of the heir of Lancaster?”

The mother suppressed a sigh. “We must pardon, or glance lightly over,
the mood of one who loves her lord, and mourns for his baffled hopes!
Well-a-day! I grieve that she admits not even me to her confidence. Ever
with the favourite lady who lately joined her train,--methinks that new
friend gives less holy counsel than a mother!”

“Ha! and yet what counsels can Isabel listen to from a comparative
stranger? Even if Edward, or rather his cunning Elizabeth, had suborned
this waiting-woman, our daughter never could hearken, even in an hour of
anger, to the message from our dishonourer and our foe.”

“Nay, but a flatterer often fosters by praising the erring thought.
Isabel hath something, dear lord, of thy high heart and courage; and
ever from childhood, her vaulting spirit, her very character of stately
beauty, hath given her a conviction of destiny and power loftier
than those reserved for our gentle Anne. Let us trust to time and
forbearance, and hope that the affection of the generous sister will
subdue the jealousy of the disappointed princess.”

“Pray Heaven, indeed, that it so prove! Isabel’s ascendancy over
Clarence is great, and might be dangerous. Would that she consented to
remain in France with thee and Anne! Her lord, at least, it seems I have
convinced and satisfied. Pleased at the vast fortunes before him, the
toys of viceregal power, his lighter nature reconciles itself to the
loss of a crown, which, I fear, it could never have upheld. For the more
I have read his qualities in our household intimacy, the more it seems
that I could scarcely have justified the imposing on England a king
not worthy of so great a people. He is young yet, but how different the
youth of Lancastrian Edward! In him what earnest and manly spirit! What
heaven-born views of the duties of a king! Oh, if there be a sin in the
passion that hath urged me on, let me, and me alone, atone! and may I be
at least the instrument to give to England a prince whose virtues shall
compensate for all!”

While yet the last word trembled upon the earl’s lips, a light flashed
along the floors, hitherto illumined but by the stars and the full moon.
And presently Isabel, in conference with the lady whom her mother had
referred to, passed into the room, on her way to her private chamber.
The countenance of this female diplomatist, whose talent for intrigue
Philip de Comines [Comines, iii. 5; Hall, Lingard, Hume, etc.] has
commemorated, but whose name, happily for her memory, history has
concealed, was soft and winning in its expression to the ordinary
glance, though the sharpness of the features, the thin compression of
the lips, and the harsh dry redness of the hair corresponded with the
attributes which modern physiognomical science truly or erringly assigns
to a wily and treacherous character. She bore a light in her hand, and
its rays shone full on the disturbed and agitated face of the duchess.
Isabel perceived at once the forms of her parents, and stopped short in
some whispered conversation, and uttered a cry almost of dismay.

“Thou leavest the revel betimes, fair daughter,” said the earl,
examining her countenance with an eye somewhat stern.

“My lady,” said the confidant, with a lowly reverence, “was anxious for
her babe.”

“Thy lady, good waiting-wench,” said Warwick, “needs not thy tongue to
address her father. Pass on.”

The gentlewoman bit her lips, but obeyed, and quitted the room. The earl
approached, and took Isabel’s hand,--it was cold as stone.

“My child,” said he, tenderly, “thou dost well to retire to rest; of
late thy cheek hath lost its bloom. But just now, for many causes, I
was wishing thee not to brave our perilous return to England; and now,
I know not whether it would make me the more uneasy, to fear for thy
health if absent or thy safety if with me!”

“My lord,” replied Isabel, coldly, “my duty calls me to my husband’s
side, and the more, since now it seems he dares the battle but reaps not
its rewards! Let Edward and Anne rest in safety, Clarence and Isabel go
to achieve the diadem and orb for others!”

“Be not bitter with thy father, girl; be not envious of thy sister!”
 said the earl, in grave rebuke; then, softening his tone, he added,
“The women of a noble House should have no ambition of their own,--their
glory and their honour they should leave, unmurmuring, in the hands of
men! Mourn not if thy sister mounts the throne of him who would have
branded the very name to which thou and she were born!”

“I have made no reproach, my lord. Forgive me, I pray you, if I now
retire; I am so weary, and would fain have strength and health not to be
a burden to you when you depart.”

The duchess bowed with proud submission, and moved on. “Beware!” said
the earl, in a low voice.

“Beware!--and of what?” said Isabel, startled.

“Of thine own heart, Isabel. Ay, go to thine infant’s couch ere thou
seek thine own, and, before the sleep of innocence, calm thyself back to
womanhood.”

The duchess raised her head quickly, but habitual awe of her father
checked the angry answer; and kissing, with formal reverence, the hand
the countess extended to her, she left the room. She gained the chamber
in which was the cradle of her son, gorgeously canopied with silks,
inwrought with the blazoned arms of royal Clarence;--and beside the
cradle sat the confidant.

The duchess drew aside the drapery, and contemplated the rosy face of
the infant slumberer.

Then, turning to her confidant, she said,--

“Three months since, and I hoped my first-born would be a king! Away
with those vain mockeries of royal birth! How suit they the destined
vassal of the abhorred Lancastrian?”

“Sweet lady,” said the confidant, “did I not warn thee from the first
that this alliance, to the injury of my lord duke and this dear boy,
was already imminent? I had hoped thou mightst have prevailed with the
earl!”

“He heeds me not, he cares not for me!” exclaimed Isabel; “his whole
love is for Anne,--Anne, who, without energy and pride, I scarcely have
looked on as my equal! And now to my younger sister I must bow my knee,
pleased if she deign to bid me hold the skirt of her queenly robe!
Never,--no, never!”

“Calm thyself; the courier must part this night. My Lord of Clarence is
already in his chamber; he waits but thine assent to write to Edward,
that he rejects not his loving messages.”

The duchess walked to and fro, in great disorder. “But to be thus secret
and false to my father?”

“Doth be merit that thou shouldst sacrifice thy child to him? Reflect!
the king has no son! The English barons acknowledge not in girls a
sovereign; [Miss Strickland (“Life of Elizabeth of York”) remarks, “How
much Norman prejudice in favour of Salic law had corrupted the common
or constitutional law of England regarding the succession!” The remark
involves a controversy.] and, with Edward on the throne, thy son is
heir-presumptive. Little chance that a male heir shall now be born to
Queen Elizabeth, while from Anne and her bridegroom a long line may
spring. Besides, no matter what parchment treaties may ordain, how can
Clarence and his offspring ever be regarded by a Lancastrian king but as
enemies to feed the prison or the block, when some false invention gives
the seemly pretext for extirpating the lawful race?”

“Cease, cease, cease!” cried Isabel, in terrible struggles with herself.

“Lady, the hour presses! And, reflect, a few lines are but words, to be
confirmed or retracted as occasion suits! If Lord Warwick succeed, and
King Edward lose his crown, ye can shape as ye best may your conduct
to the time. But if the earl lose the day, if again he be driven
into exile, a few words now release you and yours from everlasting
banishment; restore your boy to his natural heritage; deliver you from
the insolence of the Anjouite, who, methinks, even dared this very day
to taunt your highness--”

“She did--she did! Oh that my father had been by to hear! She bade me
stand aside that Anne might pass,--‘not for the younger daughter of
Lord Warwick, but for the lady admitted into the royalty of Lancaster!’
Elizabeth Woodville, at least, never dared this insolence!”

“And this Margaret the Duke of Clarence is to place on the throne which
your child yonder might otherwise aspire to mount!”

Isabel clasped her hands in mute passion.

“Hark!” said the confidant, throwing open the door--

And along the corridor came, in measured pomp, a stately procession, the
chamberlain in front, announcing “Her Highness the Princess of Wales;”
 and Louis XI., leading the virgin bride (wife but in name and honour,
till her dowry of a kingdom was made secure) to her gentle rest. The
ceremonial pomp, the regal homage that attended the younger sister thus
raised above herself, completed in Isabel’s jealous heart the triumph of
the Tempter. Her face settled into hard resolve, and she passed at once
from the chamber into one near at hand, where the Duke of Clarence sat
alone, the rich wines of the livery, not untasted, before him, and the
ink yet wet upon a scroll he had just indited.

He turned his irresolute countenance to Isabel as she bent over him and
read the letter. It was to Edward; and after briefly warning him of the
meditated invasion, significantly added, “and if I may seem to share
this emprise, which, here and alone, I cannot resist, thou shalt find
me still, when the moment comes, thy affectionate brother and loyal
subject.”

“Well, Isabel,” said the duke, “thou knowest I have delayed this till
the last hour to please thee; for verily, lady mine, thy will is my
sweetest law. But now, if thy heart misgives thee--”

“It does, it does!” exclaimed the duchess, bursting into tears.

“If thy heart misgives thee,” continued Clarence, who with all his
weakness had much of the duplicity of his brothers, “why, let it pass.
Slavery to scornful Margaret, vassalage to thy sister’s spouse, triumph
to the House which both thou and I were taught from childhood to deem
accursed,--why, welcome all! so that Isabel does not weep, and our boy
reproach us not in the days to come!”

For all answer, Isabel, who had seized the letter, let it drop on the
table, pushed it, with averted face, towards the duke, and turned back
to the cradle of her child, whom she woke with her sobs, and who wailed
its shrill reply in infant petulance and terror, snatched from its
slumber to the arms of the remorseful mother.

A smile of half contemptuous joy passed over the thin lips of the
she-Judas, and, without speaking, she took her way to Clarence. He had
sealed and bound his letter, first adding these words, “My lady and
duchess, whatever her kin, has seen this letter, and approves it,
for she is more a friend to York than to the earl, now he has turned
Lancastrian;” and placed it in a small iron coffer.

He gave the coffer, curiously clasped and locked, to the gentlewoman,
with a significant glance--“Be quick, or she repents! The courier waits,
his steed saddled! The instant you give it, he departs,--he hath his
permit to pass the gates.”

“All is prepared; ere the clock strike, he is on his way.” The confidant
vanished; the duke sank in his chair, and rubbed his hands.

“Oho, father-in-law, thou deemest me too dull for a crown! I am not dull
enough for thy tool. I have had the wit, at least, to deceive thee,
and to hide resentment beneath a smiling brow! Dullard, thou to believe
aught less than the sovereignty of England could have bribed Clarence to
thy cause!” He turned to the table and complacently drained his goblet.

Suddenly, haggard and pale as a spectre, Isabel stood before him.

“I was mad--mad, George! The letter! the letter--it must not go!”

At that moment the clock struck.

“Bel enfant,” said the duke, “it is too late!”



BOOK X. THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER.



CHAPTER I. THE MAID’S HOPE, THE COURTIER’S LOVE, AND THE SAGE’S COMFORT.

Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards in
which the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer than
all, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!

From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the dead,
the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green pastures
roved the gentle flocks. And the farm to which Hastings had led the
wanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy screen; and
there father and daughter had found a home.

It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery frame,
at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to the
lattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane. The room was in the
upper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of the
house little promised, and which almost approached to elegance. The
fresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with dried
wild thyme and other fragrant herbs. The bare walls were hung with serge
of a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir covered the oak
table, on which lay musical instruments, curiously inlaid, with a few
manuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal poetry. The tabourets
were covered with cushions of Norwich worsted, in gay colours. All was
simple, it is true, yet all betokened a comfort--ay, a refinement, an
evidence of wealth--very rare in the houses even of the second order of
nobility.

As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous cry,
hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her father, who
was seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one of his most
abstracted reveries. She kissed his brow (he heeded her not), bounded
with a light step over the sward of the orchard, and pausing by a wicket
gate, listened with throbbing heart to the advancing sound of a horse’s
hoofs. Nearer came the sound, and nearer. A cavalier appeared in sight,
sprang from his saddle, and, leaving his palfrey to find his way to the
well-known stable, sprang lightly over the little gate.

“And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?”

The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and said
touchingly, “My heart watcheth for thee alway. Oh, shall I thank or
chide thee for so much care? Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen have
changed the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!”

“Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and our
mutual troth! Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the day
soon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight and
baron envy the bride of Hastings!”

“My own lord!” said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes; but,
after a pause, she added timidly, “Does the king still bear so stern a
memory against so humble a subject?”

“The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick’s
restless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot hear
thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent of
Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in truth,
thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the influence
of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our good swords,
she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the dispersion of
our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet feeds Edward’s
suspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides himself for
having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even recalls the
disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that from the first
thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret. Nay, sure I am,
that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he would condemn thee
as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate of my old foes the
Woodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my Sibyll; Edward’s passions,
though fierce, are changeful, and patience will reward us both.”

“Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!” said Sibyll, with great emotion.
“Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence! I see thee
surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to myself, ‘Is
it possible that he can remember me?’ But thou lovest me
still--still--still, and ever! Dost thou not?”

And Hastings said and swore.

“And the Lady Bonville?” asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but with
the faltering tone of jealous fear.

“I have not seen her for months,” replied the noble, with a slight
change of countenance. “She is at one of their western manors. They say
her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout hypocrite, and
plays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and worn-out memories.
Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka? I can learn no trace of
it.”

“See,” said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to Warner
as they now drew near the house, “see, he shapes another Eureka from his
thoughts!”

“How fares it, dear Warner?” asked the noble, taking the scholar’s hand.

“Ah,” cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful
protector, “bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells me
that--no--no--thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I could
be young once more!”

“What!” said the world-wise man, astonished. “If thou hadst another
youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a
life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?”

“My noble son,” said the philosopher, “for hours when I have felt the
wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the nights
when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is kinder to us
all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow on the surface,
and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the unwitnessed soul.”

Sibyll had left Hastings by her father’s side, and tripped lightly
to the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who
supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happy
banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst such
sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.

And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the
honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his
sated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from the
tyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that however
grand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had found
for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and eternal
mysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden cage,
into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and spiritual
eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made familiar to his
thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he indulged in his large
ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that now came forth in heaven;
of the laws that gave harmony to the universe; of the evidence of a God
in the mechanism of creation; of the spark from central divinity, that,
kindling in a man’s soul, we call “genius;” of the eternal resurrection
of the dead, which makes the very principle of being, and types, in the
leaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He was
sublimer, that gray old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his
words, than ever is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and
deeds but blunderingly and lamely seek it.

And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its
little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked,
“What can courts and a king’s smile give me in exchange for serene
tranquillity and devoted love?”



CHAPTER II. THE MAN AWAKES IN THE SAGE, AND THE SHE-WOLF AGAIN HATH
TRACKED THE LAMB.

From the night in which Hastings had saved from the knives of the
tymbesteres Sibyll and her father, his honour and chivalry had made him
their protector. The people of the farm (a widow and her children, with
the peasants in their employ) were kindly and simple folks. What safer
home for the wanderers than that to which Hastings had removed them? The
influence of Sibyll over his variable heart or fancy was renewed. Again
vows were interchanged and faith plighted. Anthony Woodville, Lord
Rivers, who, however gallant an enemy, was still more than ever, since
Warwick’s exile, a formidable one, and who shared his sister’s dislike
to Hastings, was naturally at that time in the fullest favour of King
Edward, anxious to atone for the brief disgrace his brother-in-law
had suffered during the later days of Warwick’s administration. And
Hastings, offended by the manners of the rival favourite, took one of
the disgusts so frequent in the life of a courtier, and, despite his
office of chamberlain, absented himself much from his sovereign’s
company. Thus, in the reaction of his mind, the influence of Sibyll was
greater than it otherwise might have been. His visits to the farm were
regular and frequent. The widow believed him nearly related to Sibyll,
and suspected Warner to be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide
in secret till his pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to
the noble’s visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for
all that could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality
of his supposed kindred.

And, in her entire confidence and reverential affection, Sibyll’s very
pride was rather soothed than wounded by obligations which were but
proofs of love, and to which plighted troth gave her a sweet right. As
for Warner, he had hitherto seemed to regard the great lord’s attentions
only as a tribute to his own science, and a testimony of the interest
which a statesman might naturally feel in the invention of a thing that
might benefit the realm. And Hastings had been delicate in the pretexts
of his visits. One time he called to relate the death of poor Madge,
though he kindly concealed the manner of it, which he had discovered,
but which opinion, if not law, forbade him to attempt to punish:
drowning was but the orthodox ordeal of a suspected witch, and it was
not without many scruples that the poor woman was interred in holy
ground. The search for the Eureka was a pretence that sufficed for
countless visits; and then, too, Hastings had counselled Adam to sell
the ruined house, and undertaken the negotiation; and the new comforts
of their present residence, and the expense of the maintenance, were
laid to the account of the sale. Hastings had begun to consider Adam
Warner as utterly blind and passive to the things that passed under his
eyes; and his astonishment was great when, the morning after the visit
we have just recorded, Adam, suddenly lifting his eyes, and seeing the
guest whispering soft tales in Sibyll’s ear, rose abruptly, approached
the nobleman, took him gently by the arm, led him into the garden, and
thus addressed him,--

“Noble lord, you have been tender and generous in our misfortunes. The
poor Eureka is lost to me and the world forever. God’s will be done!
Methinks Heaven designs thereby to rouse me to the sense of nearer
duties; and I have a daughter whose name I adjure you not to sully,
and whose heart I pray you not to break. Come hither no more, my Lord
Hastings.”

This speech, almost the only one which showed plain sense and judgment
in the affairs of this life that the man of genius had ever uttered, so
confounded Hastings, that he with difficulty recovered himself enough to
say,--

“My poor scholar, what hath so suddenly kindled suspicions which wrong
thy child and me?”

“Last eve, when we sat together, I saw your hand steal into hers, and
suddenly I remembered the day when I was young, and wooed her mother!
And last night I slept not, and sense and memory became active for my
living child, as they were wont to be only for the iron infant of my
mind, and I said to myself, ‘Lord Hastings is King Edward’s friend; and
King Edward spares not maiden honour. Lord Hastings is a mighty peer,
and he will not wed the dowerless and worse than nameless girl!’ Be
merciful! Depart, depart!”

“But,” exclaimed Hastings, “if I love thy sweet Sibyll in all honesty,
if I have plighted to her my troth--”

“Alas, alas!” groaned Adam.

“If I wait but my king’s permission to demand her wedded hand, couldst
thou forbid me the presence of my affianced?”

“She loves thee, then?” said Adam, in a tone of great anguish,--“she
loves thee,--speak!”

“It is my pride to think it.”

“Then go,--go at once; come back no more till thou hast wound up thy
courage to brave the sacrifice; no, not till the priest is ready at the
altar, not till the bridegroom can claim the bride. And as that time
will never come--never--never--leave me to whisper to the breaking
heart, ‘Courage; honour and virtue are left thee yet, and thy mother
from heaven looks down on a stainless child!’”

The resuscitation of the dead could scarcely have startled and awed
the courtier more than this abrupt development of life and passion and
energy in a man who had hitherto seemed to sleep in the folds of his
thought, as a chrysalis in its web. But as we have always seen that
ever, when this strange being woke from his ideal abstraction, he awoke
to honour and courage and truth, so now, whether, as he had said, the
absence of the Eureka left his mind to the sense of practical duties,
or whether their common suffering had more endeared to him his gentle
companion, and affection sharpened reason, Adam Warner became puissant
and majestic in his rights and sanctity of father,--greater in his
homely household character, than when, in his mania of inventor, and
the sublime hunger of aspiring genius, he had stolen to his daughter’s
couch, and waked her with the cry of “Gold!”

Before the force and power of Adam’s adjuration, his outstretched
hand, the anguish, yet authority, written on his face, all the art
and self-possession of the accomplished lover deserted him, as one
spell-bound.

He was literally without reply; till, suddenly, the sight of Sibyll,
who, surprised by this singular conference, but unsuspecting its nature,
now came from the house, relieved and nerved him; and his first impulse
was then, as ever, worthy and noble, such as showed, though dimly, how
glorious a creature he had been, if cast in a time and amidst a race
which could have fostered the impulse into habit.

“Brave old man!” he said, kissing the hand still raised in command,
“thou hast spoken as beseems thee; and my answer I will tell thy child.”
 Then hurrying to the wondering Sibyll, he resumed: “Your father says
well, that not thus, dubious and in secret, should I visit the home
blest by thy beloved presence. I obey; I leave thee, Sibyll. I go to
my king, as one who hath served him long and truly, and claims his
guerdon,--thee!”

“Oh, my lord!” exclaimed Sibyll, in generous terror, “bethink thee well;
remember what thou saidst but last eve. This king so fierce, my name so
hated! No, no! leave me. Farewell forever, if it be right, as what thou
and my father say must be. But thy life, thy liberty, thy welfare,--they
are my happiness; thou hast no right to endanger them!” And she fell at
his knees. He raised and strained her to his heart; then resigning her
to her father’s arms, he said in a voice choked with emotion,--

“Not as peer and as knight, but as man, I claim my prerogative of
home and hearth. Let Edward frown, call back his gifts, banish me his
court,--thou art more worth than all! Look for me, sigh not, weep not,
smile till we meet again!” He left them with these words, hastened to
the stall where his steed stood, caparisoned it with his own hands,
and rode with the speed of one whom passion spurs and goads towards the
Tower of London.

But as Sibyll started from her father’s arms, when she heard the
departing hoofs of her lover’s steed,--to listen and to listen for the
last sound that told of him,--a terrible apparition, ever ominous of woe
and horror, met her eye. On the other side of the orchard fence, which
concealed her figure, but not her well-known face, which peered above,
stood the tymbestere, Graul. A shriek of terror at this recognition
burst from Sibyll, as she threw herself again upon Adam’s breast; but
when he looked round to discover the cause of her alarm, Graul was gone.



CHAPTER III. VIRTUOUS RESOLVES SUBMITTED TO THE TEST OF VANITY AND THE
WORLD.

On reaching his own house, Hastings learned that the court was still
at Shene. He waited but till the retinue which his rank required were
equipped and ready, and reached the court, from which of late he had
found so many excuses to absent himself, before night. Edward was then
at the banquet, and Hastings was too experienced a courtier to disturb
him at such a time. In a mood unfit for companionship, he took his way
to the apartments usually reserved for him, when a gentleman met him by
the way, and apprised him, with great respect, that the Lord Scales
and Rivers had already appropriated those apartments to the principal
waiting-lady of his countess,--but that other chambers, if less
commodious and spacious, were at his command.

Hastings had not the superb and more than regal pride of Warwick and
Montagu; but this notice sensibly piqued and galled him.

“My apartments as Lord Chamberlain, as one of the captain-generals in
the king’s army, given to the waiting-lady of Sir Anthony Woodville’s
wife! At whose orders, sir?”

“Her highness the queen’s; pardon me, my lord,” and the gentleman,
looking round, and sinking his voice, continued, “pardon me, her
highness added, ‘If my Lord Chamberlain returns not ere the week ends,
he may find not only the apartment, but the office, no longer free.’ My
lord, we all love you--forgive my zeal, and look well if you would guard
your own.”

“Thanks, sir. Is my lord of Gloucester in the palace?”

“He is,--and in his chamber. He sits not long at the feast.”

“Oblige me by craving his grace’s permission to wait on him at leisure;
I attend his answer here.”

Leaning against the wall of the corridor, Hastings gave himself up
to other thoughts than those of love. So strong is habit, so powerful
vanity or ambition, once indulged, that this puny slight made a sudden
revulsion in the mind of the royal favourite; once more the agitated and
brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,--that life, so wearisome
when secure, became sweeter when imperilled. To counteract his foes, to
humble his rivals, to regain the king’s countenance, to baffle, with the
easy art of his skilful intellect, every hostile stratagem,--such were
the ideas that crossed and hurtled themselves, and Sibyll was forgotten.

The gentleman reappeared. “Prince Richard besought my lord’s presence
with loving welcome;” and to the duke’s apartment went Lord Hastings.
Richard, clad in a loose chamber robe, which concealed the defects of
his shape, rose from before a table covered with papers, and embraced
Hastings with cordial affection.

“Never more gladly hail to thee, dear William. I need thy wise counsels
with the king, and I have glad tidings for thine own ear.”

“Pardieu, my prince; the king, methinks, will scarce heed the counsels
of a dead man.”

“Dead?”

“Ay. At court it seems men are dead,--their rooms filled, their places
promised or bestowed,--if they come not, morn and night, to convince
the king that they are alive.” And Hastings, with constrained gayety,
repeated the information he had received.

“What would you, Hastings?” said the duke, shrugging his shoulders,
but with some latent meaning in his tone. “Lord Rivers were nought in
himself; but his lady is a mighty heiress, [Elizabeth secured to her
brother, Sir Anthony, the greatest heiress in the kingdom, in the
daughter of Lord Scales,--a wife, by the way, who is said to have been
a mere child at the time of the marriage.] and requires state, as she
bestows pomp. Look round, and tell me what man ever maintained himself
in power without the strong connections, the convenient dower, the
acute, unseen, unsleeping woman-influence of some noble wife? How can a
poor man defend his repute, his popular name, that airy but all puissant
thing we call dignity or station, against the pricks and stings of
female intrigue and female gossip? But he marries, and, lo, a host of
fairy champions, who pinch the rival lozels unawares: his wife hath
her army of courtpie and jupon, to array against the dames of his foes!
Wherefore, my friend, while thou art unwedded, think not to cope with
Lord Rivers, who hath a wife with three sisters, two aunts, and a score
of she-cousins!”

“And if,” replied Hastings, more and more unquiet under the duke’s
truthful irony,--“if I were now to come to ask the king permission to
wed--”

“If thou wert, and the bride-elect were a lady with power and wealth and
manifold connections, and the practice of a court, thou wouldst be the
mightiest lord in the kingdom since Warwick’s exile.”

“And if she had but youth, beauty, and virtue?”

“Oh, then, my Lord Hastings, pray thy patron saint for a war,--for in
peace thou wouldst be lost amongst the crowd. But truce to these jests;
for thou art not the man to prate of youth, virtue, and such like, in
sober earnest, amidst this work-day world, where nothing is young and
nothing virtuous;--and listen to grave matters.”

The duke then communicated to Hastings the last tidings received of the
machinations of Warwick. He was in high spirits; for those last tidings
but reported Margaret’s refusal to entertain the proposition of a
nuptial alliance with the earl, though, on the other hand, the Duke of
Burgundy, who was in constant correspondence with his spies, wrote word
that Warwick was collecting provisions, from his own means, for more
than sixty thousand men; and that, with Lancaster or without, the earl
was prepared to match his own family interest against the armies of
Edward.

“And,” said Hastings, “if all his family joined with him, what foreign
king could be so formidable an invader? Maltravers and the Mowbrays,
Fauconberg, Westmoreland, Fitzhugh, Stanley, Bonville, Worcester--”

“But happily,” said Gloucester, “the Mowbrays have been allied also to
the queen’s sister; Worcester detests Warwick; Stanley always murmurs
against us, a sure sign that he will fight for us; and Bonville--I have
in view a trusty Yorkist to whom the retainers of that House shall be
assigned. But of that anon. What I now wish from thy wisdom is, to aid
me in rousing Edward from his lethargy; he laughs at his danger, and
neither communicates with his captains nor mans his coasts. His courage
makes him a dullard.”

After some further talk on these heads, and more detailed account of the
preparations which Gloucester deemed necessary to urge on the king, the
duke, then moving his chair nearer to Hastings, said with a smile,--

“And now, Hastings, to thyself: it seems that thou hast not heard the
news which reached us four days since. The Lord Bonville is dead,--died
three months ago at his manor house in Devon. [To those who have read
the “Paston Letters” it will not seem strange that in that day the death
of a nobleman at his country seat should be so long in reaching the
metropolis,--the ordinary purveyors of communication were the itinerant
attendants of fairs; and a father might be ignorant for months together
of the death of his son.] Thy Katherine is free, and in London. Well,
man, where is thy joy?”

“Time is, time was!” said Hastings, gloomily. “The day has passed when
this news could rejoice me.”

“Passed! nay, thy good stars themselves have fought for thee in delay.
Seven goodly manors swell the fair widow’s jointure; the noble dowry she
brought returns to her. Her very daughter will bring thee power. Young
Cecily Bonville [afterwards married to Dorset], the heiress, Lord Dorset
demands in betrothal. Thy wife will be mother-in-law to thy queen’s son;
on the other hand, she is already aunt to the Duchess of Clarence;
and George, be sure, sooner or later, will desert Warwick, and win his
pardon. Powerful connections, vast possessions, a lady of immaculate
name and surpassing beauty, and thy first love!--(thy hand
trembles!)--thy first love, thy sole love, and thy last!”

“Prince--Prince! forbear! Even if so--In brief, Katherine loves me not!”

“Thou mistakest! I have seen her, and she loves thee not the less
because her virtue so long concealed the love.” Hastings uttered an
exclamation of passionate joy, but again his face darkened.

Gloucester watched him in silence; besides any motive suggested by the
affection he then sincerely bore to Hastings, policy might well interest
the duke in the securing to so loyal a Yorkist the hand and the wealth
of Lord Warwick’s sister; but, prudently not pressing the subject
further, he said, in an altered and careless voice, “Pardon me if I
have presumed on matters on which each man judges for himself. But as,
despite all obstacle, one day or other Anne Nevile shall be mine, it
would have delighted me to know a near connection in Lord Hastings. And
now the hour grows late, I prithee let Edward find thee in his chamber.”

When Hastings attended the king, he at once perceived that Edward’s
manner was changed to him. At first, he attributed the cause to the ill
offices of the queen and her brother; but the king soon betrayed the
true source of his altered humour.

“My lord,” he said abruptly, “I am no saint, as thou knowest; but there
are some ties, par amour, which, in my mind, become not knights and
nobles about a king’s person.”

“My liege, I arede you not.”

“Tush, William!” replied the king, more gently, “thou hast more than
once wearied me with application for the pardon of the nigromancer
Warner,--the whole court is scandalized at thy love for his daughter.
Thou hast absented thyself from thine office on poor pretexts! I know
thee too well not to be aware that love alone can make thee neglect thy
king,--thy time has been spent at the knees or in the arms of this young
sorceress! One word for all times,--he whom a witch snares cannot be a
king’s true servant! I ask of thee as a right, or as a grace, see this
fair ribaude no more! What, man, are there not ladies enough in merry
England, that thou shouldst undo thyself for so unchristian a fere?”

“My king! how can this poor maid have angered thee thus?”

“Knowest thou not”--began the king, sharply, and changing colour as he
eyed his favourite’s mournful astonishment,--“ah, well!” he muttered to
himself, “they have been discreet hitherto, but how long will they be
so? I am in time yet. It is enough,”--he added, aloud and gravely--“it
is enough that our learned [it will be remembered that Edward himself
was a man of no learning] Bungey holds her father as a most pestilent
wizard, whose spells are muttered for Lancaster and the rebel Warwick;
that the girl hath her father’s unholy gifts, and I lay my command on
thee, as liege king, and I pray thee, as loving friend, to see no more
either child or sire! Let this suffice--and now I will hear thee on
state matters.”

Whatever Hastings might feel, he saw that it was no time to venture
remonstrance with the king, and strove to collect his thoughts, and
speak indifferently on the high interests to which Edward invited him;
but he was so distracted and absent that he made but a sorry counsellor,
and the king, taking pity on him, dismissed his chamberlain for the
night.

Sleep came not to the couch of Hastings; his acuteness perceived
that whatever Edward’s superstition, and he was a devout believer in
witchcraft, some more worldly motive actuated him in his resentment
to poor Sibyll. But as we need scarcely say that neither from the
abstracted Warner nor his innocent daughter had Hastings learned the
true cause, he wearied himself with vain conjectures, and knew not that
Edward involuntarily did homage to the superior chivalry of his gallant
favourite, when he dreaded that, above all men, Hastings should be made
aware of the guilty secret which the philosopher and his child could
tell. If Hastings gave his name and rank to Sibyll, how powerful a
weight would the tale of a witness now so obscure suddenly acquire!

Turning from the image of Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger,
embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the
words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded with
every memory of early passion, every attribute of present ambition, rose
before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of Sibyll and the humble
orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom, of the trysting-tree by
the halls of Middleham, of the broken ring, of the rapture and the woe
of his youth’s first high-placed love.



CHAPTER IV. THE STRIFE WHICH SIBYLL HAD COURTED, BETWEEN KATHERINE AND
HERSELF, COMMENCES IN SERIOUS EARNEST.

Hastings felt relieved when, the next day, several couriers arrived with
tidings so important as to merge all considerations into those of state.
A secret messenger from the French court threw Gloucester into one of
those convulsive passions of rage, to which, with all his intellect and
dissimulation, he was sometimes subject, by the news of Anne’s betrothal
to Prince Edward; nor did the letter from Clarence to the king,
attesting the success of one of his schemes, comfort Richard for the
failure of the other. A letter from Burgundy confirmed the report of the
spy, announced Duke Charles’s intention of sending a fleet to prevent
Warwick’s invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for his supineness in
not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe. The gay and reckless
presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-errant than a monarch,
laughed at the word invasion. “Pest on Burgundy’s ships! I only wish
that the earl would land!” [Com, iii. c. 5] he said to his council.
None echoed the wish! But later in the day came a third messenger with
information that roused all Edward’s ire; careless of each danger in
the distance, he ever sprang into energy and vengeance when a foe was
already in the field. And the Lord Fitzhugh (the young nobleman before
seen among the rebels at Olney, and who had now succeeded to the
honours of his House) had suddenly risen in the North, at the head of a
formidable rebellion. No man had so large an experience in the warfare
of those districts, the temper of the people, and the inclinations of
the various towns and lordships as Montagu; he was the natural chief to
depute against the rebels. Some animated discussion took place as to the
dependence to be placed in the marquis at such a crisis; but while the
more wary held it safer, at all hazards, not to leave him unemployed,
and to command his services in an expedition that would remove him
from the neighbourhood of his brother, should the latter land, as was
expected, on the coast of Norfolk, Edward, with a blindness of conceit
that seems almost incredible, believed firmly in the infatuated loyalty
of the man whom he had slighted and impoverished, and whom, by his offer
of his daughter to the Lancastrian prince, he had yet more recently
cozened and deluded. Montagu was hastily summoned, and received orders
to march at once to the North, levy forces, and assume their command.
The marquis obeyed with fewer words than were natural to him, left the
presence, sprang on his horse, and as he rode from the palace, drew a
letter from his bosom. “Ah, Edward,” said he, setting his teeth, “so,
after the solemn betrothal of thy daughter to my son, thou wouldst
have given her to thy Lancastrian enemy. Coward, to bribe his peace!
recreant, to belie thy word! I thank thee for this news, Warwick; for
without that injury I feel I could never, when the hour came, have
drawn sword against this faithless man,--especially for Lancaster. Ay,
tremble, thou who deridest all truth and honour! He who himself betrays,
cannot call vengeance treason!”

Meanwhile, Edward departed, for further preparations, to the Tower of
London. New evidences of the mine beneath his feet here awaited the
incredulous king. On the door of St. Paul’s, of many of the metropolitan
churches, on the Standard at Chepe, and on London Bridge, during
the past night, had been affixed, none knew by whom, the celebrated
proclamation, signed by Warwick and Clarence (drawn up in the bold style
of the earl), announcing their speedy return, containing a brief
and vigorous description of the misrule of the realm, and their
determination to reform all evils and redress all wrongs. [See, for this
proclamation, Ellis’s “Original Letters,” vol. i., second series,
letter 42.] Though the proclamation named not the restoration of the
Lancastrian line (doubtless from regard for Henry’s safety), all men
in the metropolis were already aware of the formidable league between
Margaret and Warwick. Yet, even still, Edward smiled in contempt, for
he had faith in the letter received from Clarence, and felt assured that
the moment the duke and the earl landed, the former would betray
his companion stealthily to the king; so, despite all these exciting
subjects of grave alarm, the nightly banquet at the Tower was never
merrier and more joyous. Hastings left the feast ere it deepened into
revel, and, absorbed in various and profound contemplation, entered his
apartment. He threw himself on a seat, and leaned his face on his hands.

“Oh, no, no!” he muttered; “now, in the hour when true greatness is
most seen, when prince and peer crowd around me for counsel, when noble,
knight, and squire crave permission to march in the troop of which
Hastings is the leader,--now I feel how impossible, how falsely fair,
the dream that I could forget all--all for a life of obscurity, for a
young girl’s love! Love! as if I had not felt its delusions to palling!
love, as if I could love again: or, if love--alas, it must be a light
reflected but from memory! And Katherine is free once more!” His eye
fell as he spoke, perhaps in shame and remorse that, feeling thus now,
he had felt so differently when he bade Sibyll smile till his return!

“It is the air of this accursed court which taints our best resolves!”
 he murmured, as an apology for himself; but scarcely was the poor excuse
made, than the murmur broke into an exclamation of surprise and joy. A
letter lay before him; he recognized the hand of Katherine. What years
had passed since her writing had met his eye, since the lines that bade
him “farewell, and forget!” Those lines had been blotted with tears,
and these, as he tore open the silk that bound them--these, the trace
of tears, too, was on them! Yet they were but few, and in tremulous
characters. They ran thus:--

To-morrow, before noon, the Lord Hastings is prayed to visit one whose
life he hath saddened by the thought and the accusation that she hath
clouded and embittered his. KATHERINE DE BONVILLE.

Leaving Hastings to such meditations of fear or of hope as these lines
could call forth, we lead the reader to a room not very distant from his
own,--the room of the illustrious Friar Bungey.

The ex-tregetour was standing before the captured Eureka, and gazing on
it with an air of serio-comic despair and rage. We say the Eureka, as
comprising all the ingenious contrivances towards one single object
invented by its maker, a harmonious compound of many separate details;
but the iron creature no longer deserved that superb appellation,
for its various members were now disjointed and dislocated, and lay
pell-mell in multiform confusion.

By the side of the friar stood a female, enveloped in a long scarlet
mantle, with the hood partially drawn over the face, but still leaving
visible the hard, thin, villanous lips, the stern, sharp chin, and the
jaw resolute and solid as if hewed from stone.

“I tell thee, Graul,” said the friar, “that thou hast had far the best
of the bargain. I have put this diabolical contrivance to all manner of
shapes, and have muttered over it enough Latin to have charmed a monster
into civility. And the accursed thing, after nearly pinching off three
fingers, and scalding me with seething water, and spluttering and
sputtering enough to have terrified any man but Friar Bungey out of his
skin, is obstinatus ut mulum,--dogged as a mule; and was absolutely good
for nought, till I happily thought of separating this vessel from all
the rest of the gear, and it serves now for the boiling my eggs! But by
the soul of Father Merlin, whom the saints assoil, I need not have given
myself all this torment for a thing which, at best, does the work of a
farthing pipkin!”

“Quick, master; the hour is late! I must go while yet the troopers and
couriers and riders, hurrying to and fro, keep the gates from closing.
What wantest thou with Graul?”

“More reverence, child!” growled the friar. “What I want of thee is
briefly told, if thou hast the wit to serve me. This miserable
Warner must himself expound to me the uses and trick of his malignant
contrivance. Thou must find and bring him hither!”

“And if he will not expound?”

“The deputy governor of the Tower will lend me a stone dungeon, and, if
need be, the use of the brake to unlock the dotard’s tongue.”

“On what plea?”

“That Adam Warner is a wizard, in the pay of Lord Warwick, whom a more
mighty master like myself alone can duly examine and defeat.”

“And if I bring thee the sorcerer, what wilt thou teach me in return?”

“What desirest thou most?”

Graul mused, and said, “There is war in the wind. Graul follows the
camp, her trooper gets gold and booty. But the trooper is stronger than
Graul; and when the trooper sleeps it is with his knife by his side,
and his sleep is light and broken, for he has wicked dreams. Give me a
potion to make sleep deep, that his eyes may not open when Graul filches
his gold, and his hand may be too heavy to draw the knife from its
sheath!”

“Immunda, detestabilis! thine own paramour!”

“He hath beat me with his bridle rein, he hath given a silver broad
piece to Grisell; Grisell hath sat on his knee; Graul never pardons!”

The friar, rogue as he was, shuddered. “I cannot help thee to murder, I
cannot give thee the potion; name some other reward.”

“I go--”

“Nay, nay, think, pause.”

“I know where Warner is hid. By this hour to-morrow night, I can place
him in thy power. Say the word, and pledge me the draught.”

“Well, well, mulier abominabilis!--that is, irresistible bonnibell. I
cannot give thee the potion; but I will teach thee an art which can make
sleep heavier than the anodyne, and which wastes not like the essence,
but strengthens by usage,--an art thou shalt have at thy fingers’
ends, and which often draws from the sleeper the darkest secrets of his
heart.” [We have before said that animal magnetism was known to Bungey,
and familiar to the necromancers, or rather theurgists, of the Middle
Ages.]

“It is magic,” said Graul, with joy.

“Ay, magic.”

“I will bring thee the wizard. But listen; he never stirs abroad, save
with his daughter. I must bring both.”

“Nay, I want not the girl.”

“But I dare not throttle her, for a great lord loves her, who would find
out the deed and avenge it; and if she be left behind, she will go
to the lord, and the lord will discover what thou hast done with the
wizard, and thou wilt hang!”

“Never say ‘Hang’ to me, Graul: it is ill-mannered and ominous. Who is
the lord?”

“Hastings.”

“Pest!--and already he hath been searching for the thing yonder; and I
have brooded over it night and day, like a hen over a chalk egg,--only
that the egg does not snap off the hen’s claws, as that diabolism would
fain snap off my digits. But the war will carry Hastings away in its
whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will bear me
through all. So, thou mayst bring the girl; and strangle her not; for
no good ever comes of a murder,--unless, indeed, it be absolutely
necessary!”

“I know the men who will help me, bold ribauds, whom I will guerdon
myself; for I want not thy coins, but thy craft. When the curfew has
tolled, and the bat hunts the moth, we will bring thee the quarry--”

Graul turned; but as she gained the door, she stopped, and said
abruptly, throwing back her hood,--

“What age dost thou deem me?”

“Marry,” quoth the friar, “an’ I had not seen thee on thy mother’s knee
when she followed my stage of tregetour, I should have guessed thee for
thirty; but thou hast led too jolly a life to look still in the blossom.
Why speer’st thou the question?”

“Because when trooper and ribaud say to me, ‘Graul, thou art too worn
and too old to drink of our cup and sit in the lap, to follow the young
fere to the battle, and weave the blithe dance in the fair,’ I would
depart from my sisters, and have a hut of my own, and a black cat
without a white hair, and steal herbs by the new moon, and bones from
the charnel, and curse those whom I hate, and cleave the misty air on
a besom, like Mother Halkin of Edmonton. Ha, ha! Master, thou shalt
present me then to the Sabbat. Graul has the mettle for a bonny witch!”

The tymbestere vanished with a laugh. The friar muttered a paternoster
for once, perchance, devoutly, and after having again deliberately
scanned the disjecta membra of the Eureka, gravely took forth a duck’s
egg from his cupboard, and applied the master-agent of the machine which
Warner hoped was to change the face of the globe to the only practical
utility it possessed to the mountebank’s comprehension.



CHAPTER V. THE MEETING OF HASTINGS AND KATHERINE.

The next morning, while Edward was engaged in levying from his opulent
citizens all the loans he could extract, knowing that gold is the sinew
of war; while Worcester was manning the fortress of the Tower, in which
the queen, then near her confinement, was to reside during the campaign;
while Gloucester was writing commissions to captains and barons to raise
men; while Sir Anthony Lord Rivers was ordering improvements in his
dainty damasquine armour, and the whole Fortress Palatine was animated
and alive with the stir of the coming strife,--Lord Hastings escaped
from the bustle, and repaired to the house of Katherine. With
what motive, with what intentions, was not known clearly to
himself,--perhaps, for there was bitterness in his very love for
Katherine, to enjoy the retaliation due to his own wounded pride, and
say to the idol of his youth, as he had said to Gloucester, “Time is,
time was;” perhaps with some remembrance of the faith due to Sibyll,
wakened up the more now that Katherine seemed actually to escape from
the ideal image into the real woman,--to be easily wooed and won. But,
certainly, Sibyll’s cause was not wholly lost, though greatly shaken and
endangered, when Lord Hastings alighted at Lady Bonville’s gate; but his
face gradually grew paler, his mien less assured, as he drew nearer and
nearer to the apartment and the presence of the widowed Katherine.

She was seated alone, and in the same room in which he had last
seen her. Her deep mourning only served, by contrasting the pale and
exquisite clearness of her complexion, to enhance her beauty. Hastings
bowed low, and seated himself by her side in silence.

The Lady of Bonville eyed him for some moments with an unutterable
expression of melancholy and tenderness. All her pride seemed to have
gone; the very character of her face was changed: grave severity had
become soft timidity, and stately self-control was broken into the
unmistaken struggle of hope and fear.

“Hastings--William!” she said, in a gentle and low whisper, and at the
sound of that last name from those lips, the noble felt his veins thrill
and his heart throb. “If,” she continued, “the step I have taken seems
to thee unwomanly and too bold, know, at least, what was my design and
my excuse. There was a time” (and Katherine blushed) “when, thou knowest
well, that, had this hand been mine to bestow, it would have been his
who claimed the half of this ring.” And Katherine took from a small
crystal casket the well-remembered token.

“The broken ring foretold but the broken troth,” said Hastings, averting
his face.

“Thy conscience rebukes thy words,” replied Katherine, sadly; “I pledged
my faith, if thou couldst win my father’s word. What maid, and that maid
a Nevile, could so forget duty and honour as to pledge thee more? We
were severed. Pass--oh, pass over that time! My father loved me dearly;
but when did pride and ambition ever deign to take heed of the wild
fancies of a girl’s heart? Three suitors, wealthy lords, whose alliance
gave strength to my kindred in the day when their very lives depended on
their swords, were rivals for Earl Salisbury’s daughter. Earl Salisbury
bade his daughter choose. Thy great friend and my own kinsman, Duke
Richard of York, himself pleaded for thy rivals. He proved to me that my
disobedience--if, indeed, for the first time, a child of my House could
disobey its chief--would be an external barrier to thy fortune; that
while Salisbury was thy foe, he himself could not advance thy valiancy
and merit; that it was with me to forward thy ambition, though I could
not reward thy love; that from the hour I was another’s, my mighty
kinsmen themselves--for they were generous--would be the first to aid
the duke in thy career. Hastings, even then I would have prayed, at
least, to be the bride, not of man, but God. But I was trained--as what
noble demoiselle is not?--to submit wholly to a parent’s welfare and his
will. As a nun, I could but pray for the success of my father’s cause;
as a wife, I could bring to Salisbury and to York the retainers and
strongholds of a baron. I obeyed. Hear me on. Of the three suitors for
my hand, two were young and gallant,--women deemed them fair and comely;
and had my choice been one of these, thou mightest have deemed that a
new love had chased the old. Since choice was mine, I chose the man
love could not choose, and took this sad comfort to my heart, ‘He, the
forsaken Hastings, will see in my very choice that I was but the slave
of duty, my choice itself my penance.’”

Katherine paused, and tears dropped fast from her eyes. Hastings held
his hand over his countenance, and only by the heaving of his heart was
his emotion visible. Katherine resumed:--

“Once wedded, I knew what became a wife. We met again; and to thy first
disdain and anger (which it had been dishonour in me to soothe by one
word that said, ‘The wife remembers the maiden’s love’),--to these,
thy first emotions, succeeded the more cruel revenge, which would have
changed sorrow and struggle to remorse and shame. And then, then--weak
woman that I was!--I wrapped myself in scorn and pride. Nay, I felt deep
anger--was it unjust?--that thou couldst so misread and so repay the
heart which had nothing left save virtue to compensate for love. And
yet, yet, often when thou didst deem me most hard, most proof against
memory and feeling--But why relate the trial? Heaven supported me, and
if thou lovest me no longer, thou canst not despise me.”

At these last words Hastings was at her feet, bending over her hand, and
stifled by his emotions. Katherine gazed at him for a moment through her
own tears, and then resumed:--

“But thou hadst, as man, consolations no woman would desire or covet.
And oh, what grieved me most was, not--no, not the jealous, the
wounded vanity, but it was at least this self-accusation, this
remorse--that--but for one goading remembrance, of love returned and
love forsaken,--thou hadst never so descended from thy younger nature,
never so trifled with the solemn trust of TIME. Ah, when I have heard or
seen or fancied one fault in thy maturer manhood, unworthy of thy bright
youth, anger of myself has made me bitter and stern to thee; and if
I taunted or chid or vexed thy pride, how little didst thou know that
through the too shrewish humour spoke the too soft remembrance! For
this--for this; and believing that through all, alas! my image was not
replaced, when my hand was free, I was grateful that I might still--”
 (the lady’s pale cheek grew brighter than the rose, her voice faltered,
and became low and indistinct)--“I might still think it mine to atone
to thee for the past. And if,” she added, with a sudden and generous
energy, “if in this I have bowed my pride, it is because by pride thou
wert wounded; and now, at last, thou hast a just revenge.”

O terrible rival for thee, lost Sibyll! Was it wonderful that, while
that head drooped upon his breast, while in that enchanted change which
Love the softener makes in lips long scornful, eyes long proud and cold,
he felt that Katherine Nevile--tender, gentle, frank without boldness,
lofty without arrogance--had replaced the austere dame of Bonville, whom
he half hated while he wooed,--oh, was it wonderful that the soul of
Hastings fled back to the old time, forgot the intervening vows and more
chill affections, and repeated only with passionate lips, “Katherine,
loved still, loved ever, mine, mine, at last!”

Then followed delicious silence, then vows, confessions, questions,
answers,--the thrilling interchange of hearts long divided, and now
rushing into one. And time rolled on, till Katherine, gently breaking
from her lover, said,--

“And now that thou hast the right to know and guide my projects,
approve, I pray thee, my present purpose. War awaits thee, and we must
part a while!” At these words her brow darkened and her lip quivered.
“Oh, that I should have lived to mourn the day when Lord Warwick,
untrue to Salisbury and to York, joined his arms with Lancaster and
Margaret,--the day when Katherine could blush for the brother she had
deemed the glory of her House! No, no” (she continued, as Hastings
interrupted her with generous excuses for the earl, and allusion to the
known slights he had received),--“no, no; make not his cause the worse
by telling me that an unworthy pride, the grudge of some thwart to his
policy or power, has made him forget what was due to the memory of his
kinsman York, to the mangled corpse of his father Salisbury. Thinkest
thou that but for this I could--” She stopped, but Hastings divined her
thought, and guessed that, if spoken, it had run thus: “That I could,
even now, have received the homage of one who departs to meet, with
banner and clarion, my brother as his foe?”

The lovely sweetness of the late expression had gone from Katherine’s
face, and its aspect showed that her high and ancestral spirit had
yielded but to one passion. She pursued,--

“While this strife lasts, it becomes my widowhood and kindred position
with the earl to retire to the convent my mother founded. To-morrow I
depart.”

“Alas!” said Hastings, “thou speakest of the strife as if but a single
field. But Warwick returns not to these shores, nor bows himself to
league with Lancaster, for a chance hazardous and desperate, as Edward
too rashly deems it. It is in vain to deny that the earl is prepared for
a grave and lengthened war, and much I doubt whether Edward can resist
his power; for the idolatry of the very land will swell the ranks of so
dread a rebel. What if he succeed; what if we be driven into exile, as
Henry’s friends before us; what if the king-maker be the king-dethroner?
Then, Katherine, then once more thou wilt be at the best of thy hostile
kindred, and once more, dowered as thou art, and thy womanhood still in
its richest bloom, thy hand will be lost to Hastings.”

“Nay, if that be all thy fear, take with thee this pledge,--that
Warwick’s treason to the House for which my father fell dissolves
his power over one driven to disown him as a brother,--knowing Earl
Salisbury, had he foreseen such disgrace, had disowned him as a son.
And if there be defeat and flight and exile, wherever thou wanderest,
Hastings, shall Katherine be found beside thee. Fare thee well, and Our
Lady shield thee! may thy lance be victorious against all foes,--save
one. Thou wilt forbear my--that is, the earl!” And Katherine, softened
at that thought, sobbed aloud.

“And come triumph or defeat, I have thy pledge?” said Hastings, soothing
her.

“See,” said Katherine, taking the broken ring from the casket; “now, for
the first time since I bore the name of Bonville, I lay this relic on my
heart; art thou answered?”



CHAPTER VI. HASTINGS LEARNS WHAT HAS BEFALLEN SIBYLL, REPAIRS TO THE
KING, AND ENCOUNTERS AN OLD RIVAL.

“It is destiny,” said Hastings to himself, when early the next morning
he was on his road to the farm--“it is destiny,--and who can resist his
fate?”

“It is destiny!”--phrase of the weak human heart! “It is destiny!” dark
apology for every error! The strong and the virtuous admit no destiny!
On earth guides conscience, in heaven watches God. And destiny is but
the phantom we invoke to silence the one, to dethrone the other!

Hastings spared not his good steed. With great difficulty had he
snatched a brief respite from imperious business, to accomplish the last
poor duty now left to him to fulfil,--to confront the maid whose heart
he had seduced in vain, and say at length, honestly and firmly, “I
cannot wed thee. Forget me, and farewell.”

Doubtless his learned and ingenious mind conjured up softer words than
these, and more purfled periods wherein to dress the iron truth. But in
these two sentences the truth lay. He arrived at the farm, he entered
the house; he felt it as a reprieve that he met not the bounding step
of the welcoming Sibyll. He sat down in the humble chamber, and waited a
while in patience,--no voice was heard. The silence at length surprised
and alarmed him. He proceeded farther. He was met by the widowed owner
of the house, who was weeping; and her first greeting prepared him for
what had chanced. “Oh, my lord, you have come to tell me they are
safe, they have not fallen into the hands of their enemies,--the good
gentleman, so meek, the poor lady, so fair!”

Hastings stood aghast; a few sentences more explained all that he
already guessed. A strange man had arrived the evening before at the
house, praying Adam and his daughter to accompany him to the Lord
Hastings, who had been thrown from his horse, and was now in a cottage
in the neighbouring lane,--not hurt dangerously, but unable to be
removed, and who had urgent matters to communicate. Not questioning the
truth of this story, Adam and Sibyll had hurried forth, and returned no
more. Alarmed by their long absence, the widow, who at first received
the message from the stranger, went herself to the cottage, and found
that the story was a fable. Every search had since been made for Adam
and his daughter, but in vain. The widow, confirmed in her previous
belief that her lodgers had been attainted Lancastrians, could but
suppose that they had been thus betrayed to their enemies. Hastings
heard this with a dismay and remorse impossible to express. His only
conjecture was that the king had discovered their retreat, and taken
this measure to break off the intercourse he had so sternly denounced.
Full of these ideas, he hastily remounted, and stopped not till once
more at the gates of the Tower. Hastening to Edward’s closet, the moment
he saw the king, he exclaimed, in great emotion, “My liege, my liege, do
not at this hour, when I have need of my whole energy to serve thee,
do not madden my brain, and palsy my arm. This old man--the poor
maid--Sibyll--Warner,--speak, my liege--only tell me they are safe;
promise me they shall go free, and I swear to obey thee in all else! I
will thank thee in the battlefield!”

“Thou art mad, Hastings!” said the king, in great astonishment. “Hush!”
 and he glanced significantly at a person who stood before several
heaps of gold, ranged upon a table in the recess of the room. “See,”
 he whispered, “yonder is the goldsmith, who hath brought me a loan from
himself and his fellows! Pretty tales for the city thy folly will send
abroad!”

But before Hastings could vent his impatient answer, this person,
to Edward’s still greater surprise, had advanced from his place, and
forgetting all ceremony, had seized Hastings by the hem of his surcoat,
exclaiming,--

“My lord, my lord, what new horror is this? Sibyll!--methought she was
worthless, and had fled to thee!”

“Ten thousand devils!” shouted the king, “am I ever to be tormented by
that damnable wizard and his witch child? And is it, Sir Peer and Sir
Goldsmith, in your king’s closet that ye come, the very eve before he
marches to battle, to speer and glower at each other like two madmen as
ye are?”

Neither peer nor goldsmith gave way, till the courtier, naturally
recovering himself the first, fell on his knee; and said, with firm
though profound respect: “Sire, if poor William Hastings has ever
merited from the king one kindly thought, one generous word, forgive
now whatever may displease thee in his passion or his suit, and tell
him what prison contains those whom it would forever dishonour his
knighthood to know punished and endangered but for his offence.”

“My lord,” answered the king, softened but still surprised, “think you
seriously that I, who but reluctantly in this lovely month leave my
green lawns of Shene to save a crown, could have been vexing my brain by
stratagems to seize a lass, whom I swear by Saint George I do not envy
thee in the least? If that does not suffice, incredulous dullard, why
then take my kingly word, never before passed for so slight an occasion,
that I know nothing whatsoever of thy damsel’s whereabout nor her
pestilent father’s,--where they abode of late, where they now be; and,
what is more, if any man has usurped his king’s right to imprison
the king’s subjects, find him out, and name his punishment. Art thou
convinced?”

“I am, my liege,” said Hastings.

“But--” began the goldsmith.

“Holloa, you, too, sir! This is too much! We have condescended to answer
the man who arms three thousand retainers--”

“And I, please your Highness, bring you the gold to pay them,” said the
trader, bluntly.

The king bit his lip, and then burst into his usual merry laugh.

“Thou art in the right, Master Alwyn. Finish counting the pieces,
and then go and consult with my chamberlain,--he must off with the
cock-crow; but, since ye seem to understand each other, he shall make
thee his lieutenant of search, and I will sign any order he pleases
for the recovery of the lost wisdom and the stolen beauty. Go and calm
thyself, Hastings.”

“I will attend you presently, my lord,” said Alwyn, aside, “in your own
apartment.”

“Do so,” said Hastings; and, grateful for the king’s consideration, he
sought his rooms. There, indeed, Alwyn soon joined him, and learned from
the nobleman what filled him at once with joy and terror. Knowing that
Warner and Sibyll had left the Tower, he had surmised that the girl’s
virtue had at last succumbed; and it delighted him to hear from Lord
Hastings, whose word to men was never questionable, the solemn
assurance of her unstained chastity. But he trembled at this mysterious
disappearance, and knew not to whom to impute the snare, till the
penetration of Hastings suddenly alighted near, at least, to the clew.
“The Duchess of Bedford,” said he, “ever increasing in superstition
as danger increases, may have desired to refind so great a scholar and
reputed an astrologer and magician; if so, all is safe. On the other
hand, her favourite, the friar, ever bore a jealous grudge to poor Adam,
and may have sought to abstract him from her grace’s search; here there
may be molestation to Adam, but surely no danger to Sibyll. Hark ye,
Alwyn, thou lovest the maid more worthily, and--” Hastings stopped
short; for such is infirm human nature, that, though he had mentally
resigned Sibyll forever, he could not yet calmly face the thought of
resigning her to a rival. “Thou lovest her,” he renewed, more coldly,
“and to thee, therefore, I may safely trust the search which time and
circumstance and a soldier’s duty forbid to me. And believe--oh, believe
that I say not this from a passion which may move thy jealousy, but
rather with a brother’s holy love. If thou canst but see her safe, and
lodged where no danger nor wrong can find her, thou hast no friend in
the wide world whose service through life thou mayst command like mine.”

“My lord,” said Alwyn, dryly, “I want no friends! Young as I am, I have
lived long enough to see that friends follow fortune, but never make it!
I will find this poor maid and her honoured father, if I spend my last
groat on the search. Get me but such an order from the king as may place
the law at my control, and awe even her grace of Bedford,--and I promise
the rest!”

Hastings, much relieved, deigned to press the goldsmith’s reluctant
hand; and, leaving him alone for a few minutes, returned with a
warrant from the king, which seemed to Alwyn sufficiently precise and
authoritative. The goldsmith then departed, and first he sought the
friar, but found him not at home. Bungey had taken with him, as was
his wont, the keys of his mysterious apartment. Alwyn then hastened
elsewhere, to secure those experienced in such a search, and to head
it in person. At the Tower, the evening was passed in bustle and
excitement,--the last preparations for departure. The queen, who was
then far advanced towards her confinement, was, as we before said, to
remain at the Tower, which was now strongly manned. Roused from her
wonted apathy by the imminent dangers that awaited Edward, the night
was passed by her in tears and prayers, by him in the sound sleep of
confident valour. The next morning departed for the North the several
leaders,--Gloucester, Rivers, Hastings, and the king.



CHAPTER VII. THE LANDING OF LORD WARWICK, AND THE EVENTS THAT ENSUE
THEREON.

And Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, “prepared such a greate navie
as lightly hath not been seene before gathered in manner of all nations,
which armie laie at the mouth of the Seyne ready to fight with the Earl
of Warwick, when he should set out of his harborowe.” [Hall, p. 282, ed.
1809.]

But the winds fought for the Avenger. In the night came “a terrible
tempest,” which scattered the duke’s ships “one from another, so that
two of them were not in compagnie together in one place;” and when the
tempest had done its work, it passed away; and the gales were fair,
and the heaven was clear, when, the next day, the earl “halsed up the
sayles,” and came in sight of Dartmouth.

It was not with an army of foreign hirelings that Lord Warwick set forth
on his mighty enterprise. Scanty indeed were the troops he brought from
France,--for he had learned from England that “men so much daily and
hourely desired and wished so sore his arrival and return, that almost
all men were in harness, looking for his landyng.” [The popular feeling
in favour of the earl is described by Hall, with somewhat more eloquence
and vigour than are common with that homely chronicler: “The absence of
the Earle of Warwick made the common people daily more and more to long
and bee desirous to have the sight of him, and presently to behold his
personage. For they judged that the sunne was clerely taken from the
world when hee was absent. In such high estimation amongst the people
was his name, that neither no one manne they had in so much honour,
neither no one persone they so much praised, or to the clouds so highly
extolled. What shall I say? His only name sounded in every song, in the
mouth of the common people, and his persone [effigies] was represented
with great reverence when publique plaies or open triumphes should bee
skewed or set furthe abrode in the stretes,” etc. This lively passage,
if not too highly coloured, serves to show us the rude saturnalian kind
of liberty that existed, even under a king so vindictive as Edward IV.
Though an individual might be banged for the jest that he would make his
son heir to the crown (namely, the grocer’s shop, which bore that sign),
yet no tyranny could deal with the sentiment of the masses. In our own
day it would be less safe than in that to make public exhibition “in
plaies and triumphes” of sympathy with a man attainted as a traitor, and
in open rebellion to the crown.] As his ships neared the coast, and the
banner of the Ragged Staff, worked in gold, shone in the sun, the shores
swarmed with armed crowds, not to resist but to welcome. From cliff to
cliff, wide and far, blazed rejoicing bonfires; and from cliff to cliff,
wide and far, burst the shout, when, first of all his men, bareheaded,
but, save the burgonet, in complete mail, the popular hero leaped to
shore.

“When the earl had taken land, he made a proclamation, in the name of
King Henry VI., upon high paynes commanding and charging all men apt or
able to bear armour, to prepare themselves to fight against Edward, Duke
of York, who had untruly usurped the croune and dignity of this realm.”
 [Hall, p. 82.]

And where was Edward? Afar, following the forces of Fitzhugh and
Robin of Redesdale, who by artful retreat drew him farther and farther
northward, and left all the other quarters of the kingdom free to send
their thousands to the banners of Lancaster and Warwick. And even as the
news of the earl’s landing reached the king, it spread also through all
the towns of the North; and all the towns of the North were in “a great
rore, and made fires, and sang songs, crying, ‘King Henry! King Henry! a
Warwicke! a Warwicke!’” But his warlike and presumptuous spirit forsook
not the chief of that bloody and fatal race,--the line of the English
Pelops,--“bespattered with kindred gore.” [Aeschylus: Agamemnon] A
messenger from Burgundy was in his tent when the news reached him. “Back
to the duke!” cried Edward; “tell him to recollect his navy, guard the
sea, scour the streams, that the earl shall not escape, nor return to
France; for the doings in England, let me alone! I have ability and
puissance to overcome all enemies and rebels in mine own realm.” [Hall,
p. 283.]

And therewith he raised his camp, abandoned the pursuit of Fitzhugh,
summoned Montagu to join him (it being now safer to hold the marquis
near him, and near the axe, if his loyalty became suspected), and
marched on to meet the earl. Nor did the earl tarry from the encounter.
His army, swelling as he passed, and as men read his proclamations to
reform all grievances and right all wrongs, he pressed on to meet the
king, while fast and fast upon Edward’s rear came the troops of Fitzhugh
and Hilyard, no longer flying but pursuing. The king was the more
anxious to come up to Warwick, inasmuch as he relied greatly upon the
treachery of Clarence, either secretly to betray or openly to desert the
earl. And he knew that if he did the latter on the eve of a battle, it
could not fail morally to weaken Warwick, and dishearten his army by
fear that desertion should prove, as it ever does, the most contagious
disease that can afflict a camp. It is probable, however, that the
enthusiasm which had surrounded the earl with volunteers so numerous had
far exceeded the anticipations of the inexperienced Clarence, and would
have forbid him that opportunity of betraying the earl. However this be,
the rival armies drew nearer and nearer. The king halted in his rapid
march at a small village, and took up his quarters in a fortified house,
to which there was no access but by a single bridge. [Sharon Turner,
Comines.] Edward himself retired for a short time to his couch, for he
had need of all his strength in the battle he foresaw; but scarce had he
closed his eyes, when Alexander Carlile [Hearne: Fragment], the serjeant
of the royal minstrels, followed by Hastings and Rivers (their jealousy
laid at rest for a time in the sense of their king’s danger), rushed
into his room.

“Arm, sire, arm!--Lord Montagu has thrown off the mask, and rides
through thy troops, shouting ‘Long live King Henry!’”

“Ah, traitor!” cried the king, leaping from his bed. “From Warwick hate
was my due, but not from Montagu! Rivers, help to buckle on my mail.
Hastings, post my body-guard at the bridge. We will sell our lives
dear.”

Hastings vanished. Edward had scarcely hurried on his helm, cuirass, and
greaves, when Gloucester entered, calm in the midst of peril.

“Your enemies are marching to seize you, brother. Hark! behind you rings
the cry, ‘A Fitzhugh! a Robin! death to the tyrant!’ Hark! in front, ‘A
Montagu! a Warwick! Long live King Henry!’ I come to redeem my word,--to
share your exile or your death. Choose either while there is yet time.
Thy choice is mine!”

And while he spoke, behind, before, came the various cries nearer and
nearer. The lion of March was in the toils.

“Now, my two-handed sword!” said Edward. “Gloucester, in this weapon
learn my choice!”

But now all the principal barons and captains, still true to the king
whose crown was already lost, flocked in a body to the chamber. They
fell on their knees, and with tears implored him to save himself for a
happier day.

“There is yet time to escape,” said D’Eyncourt, “to pass the bridge, to
gain the seaport! Think not that a soldier’s death will be left thee.
Numbers will suffice to encumber thine arm, to seize thy person. Live
not to be Warwick’s prisoner,--shown as a wild beast in its cage to the
hooting crowd!”

“If not on thyself,” exclaimed Rivers, “have pity on these loyal
gentlemen, and for the sake of their lives preserve thine own. What is
flight? Warwick fled!”

“True,--and returned!” added Gloucester. “You are right, my lords. Come,
sire, we must fly. Our rights fly not with us, but shall fight for us in
absence!”

The calm WILL of this strange and terrible boy had its effect upon
Edward. He suffered his brother to lead him from the chamber, grinding
his teeth in impotent rage. He mounted his horse, while Rivers held
the stirrup, and with some six or seven knights and earls rode to the
bridge, already occupied by Hastings and a small but determined guard.

“Come, Hastings,” said the king, with a ghastly smile,--“they tell us we
must fly!”

“True, sire, haste, haste! I stay but to deceive the enemy by feigning
to defend the pass, and to counsel, as I best may, the faithful soldiers
we leave behind.”

“Brave Hastings!” said Gloucester, pressing his hand, “you do well, and
I envy you the glory of this post. Come, sire.”

“Ay, ay,” said the king, with a sudden and fierce cry, “we go,--but
at least slaughtering as we go. See! yon rascal troop! ride we through
their midst! Havock and revenge!”

He set spurs to his steed, galloped over the bridge, and before his
companions could join him, dashed alone into the very centre of the
advanced guard sent to invest the fortress, and while they were yet
shouting, “Where is the tyrant, where is Edward?”

“Here!” answered a voice of thunder,--“here, rebels and faytors, in your
ranks!”

This sudden and appalling reply, even more than the sweep of the
gigantic sword, before which were riven sallet and mail as the woodman’s
axe rives the fagot, created amongst the enemy that singular panic,
which in those ages often scattered numbers before the arm and the name
of one. They recoiled in confusion and dismay. Many actually threw down
their arms and fled. Through a path broad and clear amidst the forest
of pikes, Gloucester and the captains followed the flashing track of the
king, over the corpses, headless or limbless, that he felled as he rode.

Meanwhile, with a truer chivalry, Hastings, taking advantage of the
sortie which confused and delayed the enemy, summoned such of the loyal
as were left in the fortress, advised them, as the only chance of life,
to affect submission to Warwick; but when the time came, to remember
their old allegiance, [Sharon Turner, vol. iii. 280.] and promising that
he would not desert them, save with life, till their safety was pledged
by the foe, reclosed his visor, and rode back to the front of the
bridge.

And now the king and his comrades had cut their way through all barrier,
but the enemy still wavered and lagged, till suddenly the cry of “Robin
of Redesdale!” was heard, and sword in hand, Hilyard, followed by a
troop of horse, dashed to the head of the besiegers, and, learning the
king’s escape, rode off in pursuit. His brief presence and sharp rebuke
reanimated the falterers, and in a few minutes they gained the bridge.

“Halt, sirs,” cried Hastings; “I would offer capitulation to your
leader! Who is he?”

A knight on horseback advanced from the rest. Hastings lowered the point
of his sword.

“Sir, we yield this fortress to your hands upon one condition,--our men
yonder are willing to submit, and shout with you for Henry VI. Pledge
me your word that you and your soldiers spare their lives and do them no
wrong, and we depart.”

“And if I pledge it not?” said the knight.

“Then for every warrior who guards this bridge count ten dead men
amongst your ranks.”

“Do your worst,--our bloods are up! We want life for life! revenge for
the subjects butchered by your tyrant chief! Charge! to the attack!
charge! pike and bill!” The knight spurred on, the Lancastrians
followed, and the knight reeled from his horse into the moat below,
felled by the sword of Hastings.

For several minutes the pass was so gallantly defended that the strife
seemed uncertain, though fearfully unequal, when Lord Montagu himself,
hearing what had befallen, galloped to the spot, threw down his
truncheon, cried “Hold!” and the slaughter ceased. To this nobleman
Hastings repeated the terms he had proposed.

“And,” said Montagu, turning with anger to the Lancastrians, who formed
a detachment of Fitzhugh’s force--“can Englishmen insist upon butchering
Englishmen? Rather thank we Lord Hastings that he would spare good King
Henry so many subjects’ lives! The terms are granted, my lord; and your
own life also, and those of your friends around you, vainly brave in a
wrong cause. Depart!”

“Ah, Montagu,” said Hastings, touched, and in a whisper, “what pity that
so gallant a gentleman should leave a rebel’s blot upon his scutcheon!”

“When chiefs and suzerains are false and perjured, Lord Hastings,”
 answered Montagu, “to obey them is not loyalty, but serfdom; and revolt
is not disloyalty, but a freeman’s duty. One day thou mayst know that
truth, but too late.” [It was in the midst of his own conspiracy against
Richard of Gloucester that the head of Lord Hastings fell.]

Hastings made no reply, waved his hand to his fellow-defenders of the
bridge, and, followed by them, went slowly and deliberately on, till
clear of the murmuring and sullen foe; then putting spurs to their
steeds, these faithful warriors rode fast to rejoin their king; overtook
Hilyard on the way, and after a fierce skirmish, a blow from Hastings
unhorsed and unhelmed the stalwart Robin, and left him so stunned as to
check further pursuit. They at last reached the king, and gaining, with
him and his party, the town of Lynn, happily found one English and two
Dutch vessels on the point of sailing. Without other raiment than the
mail they wore, without money, the men a few hours before hailed as
sovereign or as peers fled from their native land as outcasts
and paupers. New dangers beset them on the sea: the ships of the
Easterlings, at war both with France and England, bore down upon their
vessels. At the risk of drowning they ran ashore near Alcmaer. The large
ships of the Easterlings followed as far as the low water would permit,
“intendeing at the fludde to have obtained their prey.” [Hall.] In this
extremity, the lord of the province (Louis of Grauthuse) came aboard
their vessels, protected the fugitives from the Easterlings,
conducted them to the Hague, and apprised the Duke of Burgundy how his
brother-in-law had lost his throne. Then were verified Lord Warwick’s
predictions of the faith of Burgundy! The duke for whose alliance
Edward had dishonoured the man to whom he owed his crown, so feared the
victorious earl, that “he had rather have heard of King Edward’s death
than of his discomfiture;” [Hall, p. 279] and his first thought was to
send an embassy to the king-maker, praying the amity and alliance of the
restored dynasty.



CHAPTER VIII. WHAT BEFELL ADAM WARNER AND SIBYLL WHEN MADE SUBJECT TO
THE GREAT FRIAR BUNGEY.

We must now return to the Tower of London,--not, indeed, to its lordly
halls and gilded chambers, but to the room of Friar Bungey. We must go
back somewhat in time; and on the day following the departure of the
king and his lords, conjure up in that strangely furnished apartment the
form of the burly friar, standing before the disorganized Eureka, with
Adam Warner by his side.

Graul, as we have seen, had kept her word, and Sibyll and her father,
having fallen into the snare, were suddenly gagged, bound, led through
by-paths to a solitary hut, where a covered wagon was in waiting, and
finally, at nightfall, conducted to the Tower. The friar, whom his own
repute, jolly affability, and favour with the Duchess of Bedford made
a considerable person with the authorities of the place, had already
obtained from the deputy-governor an order to lodge two persons, whom
his zeal for the king sought to convict of necromantic practices
in favour of the rebellion, in the cells set apart for such unhappy
captives. Thither the prisoners were conducted. The friar did not object
to their allocation in contiguous cells; and the jailer deemed him
mighty kind and charitable, when he ordered that they might be well
served and fed till their examination.

He did not venture, however, to summon his captives till the departure
of the king, when the Tower was in fact at the disposition of his
powerful patroness, and when he thought he might stretch his authority
as far as he pleased, unquestioned and unchid.

Now, therefore, on the day succeeding Edward’s departure, Adam Warner
was brought from his cell, and led to the chamber where the triumphant
friar received him in majestic state. The moment Warner entered, he
caught sight of the chaos to which his Eureka was resolved, and uttering
a cry of mingled grief and joy, sprang forward to greet his profaned
treasure. The friar motioned away the jailer (whispering him to wait
without), and they were left alone. Bungey listened with curious and
puzzled attention to poor Adam’s broken interjections of lamentation and
anger, and at last, clapping him roughly on the back, said,--

“Thou knowest the secret of this magical and ugly device: but in thy
hands it leads only to ruin and perdition. Tell me that secret, and in
my hands it shall turn to honour and profit. Porkey verbey! I am a man
of few words. Do this, and thou shalt go free with thy daughter, and
I will protect thee, and give thee moneys, and my fatherly blessing;
refuse to do it, and thou shalt go from thy snug cell into a black
dungeon full of newts and rats, where thou shalt rot till thy nails are
like birds’ talons, and thy skin shrivelled up into mummy, and covered
with hair like Nebuchadnezzar!”

“Miserable varlet! Give thee my secret, give thee my fame, my life!
Never! I scorn and spit at thy malice!”

The friar’s face grew convulsed with rage. “Wretch!” he roared forth,
“darest thou unslip thy hound-like malignity upon great Bungey? Knowest
thou not that he could bid the walls open and close upon thee; that he
could set yon serpents to coil round thy limbs, and yon lizard to gnaw
out thine entrails? Despise not my mercy, and descend to plain sense.
What good didst thou ever reap from thy engine? Why shouldst thou lose
liberty--nay, life--if I will, for a thing that has cursed thee with
man’s horror and hate?”

“Art thou Christian and friar to ask me why? Were not Christians
themselves hunted by wild beasts, and burned at the stake, and boiled
in the caldron for their belief? Knave, whatever is holiest men ever
persecute. Read thy Bible!”

“Read the Bible!” exclaimed Bungey, in pious horror at such a
proposition. “Ah, blasphemer, now I have thee! Thou art a heretic and
Lollard. Hollo, there!”

The friar stamped his foot, the door opened; but to his astonishment
and dismay appeared, not the grim jailer, but the Duchess of Bedford
herself, preceded by Nicholas Alwyn. “I told your Grace truly--see,
lady!” cried the goldsmith. “Vile impostor, where hast thou hidden this
wise man’s daughter?”

The friar turned his dull, bead-like eyes in vacant consternation from
Nicholas to Adam, from Adam to the duchess. “Sir friar,” said Jacquetta,
mildly--for she wished to conciliate the rival seers--“what means this
over-zealous violation of law? Is it true, as Master Alwyn affirms,
that thou hast stolen away and seducted this venerable sage and his
daughter,--a maid I deemed worthy of a post in my own household?”

“Daughter and lady,” said the friar, sullenly, “this ill faytor, I have
reason to know, has been practising spells for Lord Warwick and the
enemy. I did but summon him hither that my art might undo his charms;
and as for his daughter, it seemed more merciful to let her attend him
than to leave her alone and unfriended; specially,” added the friar with
a grin, “since the poor lord she hath witched is gone to the wars.”

“It is true, then, wretch, that thou or thy caitiffs have dared to lay
hands on a maiden of birth and blood!” exclaimed Alwyn. “Tremble!--see,
here, the warrant signed by the king, offering a reward for thy
detection, empowering me to give thee up to the laws. By Saint Dunstan,
but for thy friar’s frock, thou shouldst hang!”

“Tut, tut, Master Goldsmith,” said the duchess, haughtily, “lower
thy tone. This holy man is under my protection, and his fault was but
over-zeal. What were this sage’s devices and spells?”

“Marry,” said the friar, “that is what your Grace just hindereth my
knowing. But he cannot deny that he is a pestilent astrologer, and
sends word to the rebels what hours are lucky or fatal for battle and
assault.”

“Ha!” said the duchess, “he is an astrologer! true, and came nearer to
the alchemist’s truth than any multiplier that ever served me! My own
astrologer is just dead,--why died he at such a time? Peace, peace!
be there peace between two so learned men. Forgive thy brother, Master
Warner!” Adam had hitherto disdained all participation in this dialogue.
In fact, he had returned to the Eureka, and was silently examining
if any loss of the vital parts had occurred in its melancholy
dismemberment. But now he turned round and said, “Lady, leave the lore
of the stars to their great Maker. I forgive this man, and thank your
Grace for your justice. I claim these poor fragments, and crave your
leave to suffer me to depart with my device and my child.”

“No, no!” said the duchess, seizing his hand. “Hist! whatever Lord
Warwick paid thee, I will double. No time now for alchemy; but for the
horoscope, it is the veriest season. I name thee my special astrologer.”

“Accept, accept,” whispered Alwyn; “for your daughter’s sake--for your
own--nay, for the Eureka’s!”

Adam bowed his head, and groaned forth, “But I go not hence--no, not a
foot--unless this goes with me. Cruel wretch, how he hath deformed it!”

“And now,” cried Alwyn, eagerly, “this wronged and unhappy maiden?”

“Go! be it thine to release and bring her to our presence, good Alwyn,”
 said the duchess; “she shall lodge with her father, and receive all
honour. Follow me, Master Warner.”

No sooner, however, did the friar perceive that Alwyn had gone in search
of the jailer, than he arrested the steps of the duchess, and said, with
the air of a much-injured man,--

“May it please your Grace to remember that unless the greater magician
have all power and aid in thwarting the lesser, the lesser can prevail;
and therefore, if your Grace finds, when too late, that Lord Warwick’s
or Lord Fitzhugh’s arms prosper, that woe and disaster befall the king,
say not it was the fault of Friar Bungey! Such things may be. Nathless
I shall still sweat and watch and toil; and if, despite your unhappy
favour and encouragement to this hostile sorcerer, the king should beat
his enemies, why, then, Friar Bungey is not so powerless as your
Grace holds him. I have said--Porkey verbey!--Figilabo et conabo--et
perspirabo--et hungerabo--pro vos et vestros, Amen!”

The duchess was struck by this eloquent appeal; but more and more
convinced of the dread science of Adam by the evident apprehensions
of the redoubted Bungey, and firmly persuaded that she could bribe or
induce the former to turn a science that would otherwise be hostile into
salutary account, she contented herself with a few words of conciliation
and compliment, and summoning the attendants who had followed her,
bade them take up the various members of the Eureka (for Adam clearly
demonstrated that he would not depart without them) and conducted the
philosopher to a lofty chamber, fitted up for the defunct astrologer.

Hither, in a short time, Alwyn had the happiness of leading Sibyll,
and witnessing the delighted reunion of the child and father. And then,
after he had learned the brief details of their abduction, he related
how, baffled in all attempt to trace their clew, he had convinced
himself that either the duchess or Bungey was the author of the snare,
returned to the Tower, shown the king’s warrant, learned that an old
man and a young female had indeed been admitted into the fortress, and
hurried at once to the duchess, who, surprised at his narration and
complaint, and anxious to regain the services of Warner, had accompanied
him at once to the friar.

“And though,” added the goldsmith, “I could indeed procure you lodgings
more welcome to ye elsewhere, yet it is well to win the friendship of
the duchess, and royalty is ever an ill foe. How came ye to quit the
palace?”

Sibyll changed countenance, and her father answered gravely, “We
incurred the king’s displeasure, and the excuse was the popular hatred
of me and the Eureka.”

“Heaven made the people, and the devil makes three-fourths of what is
popular!” bluntly said the man of the middle class, ever against both
extremes.

“And how,” asked Sibyll, “how, honoured and true friend, didst thou
obtain the king’s warrant, and learn the snare into which we had
fallen?”

This time it was Alwyn who changed countenance. He mused a moment,
and then frankly answering, “Thou must thank Lord Hastings,” gave the
explanation already known to the reader.

But the grateful tears this relation called forth from Sibyll, her
clasped hands, her evident emotion of delight and love, so pained poor
Alwyn, that he rose abruptly and took his leave.

And now the Eureka was a luxury as peremptorily forbid to the astrologer
as it had been to the alchemist! Again the true science was despised,
and the false cultivated and honoured. Condemned to calculations which
no man (however wise) in that age held altogether delusive, and which
yet Adam Warner studied with very qualified belief, it happened by some
of those coincidences, which have from time to time appeared to confirm
the credulous in judicial astrology, that Adam’s predictions became
fulfilled. The duchess was prepared for the first tidings that Edward’s
foes fled before him. She was next prepared for the very day in which
Warwick landed; and then her respect for the astrologer became strangely
mingled with suspicion and terror, when she found that he proceeded
to foretell but ominous and evil events; and when at last, still in
corroboration of the unhappily too faithful horoscope, came the news of
the king’s flight, and the earl’s march upon London, she fled to Friar
Bungey in dismay. And Friar Bungey said,--

“Did I not warn you, daughter? Had you suffered me to--”

“True, true!” interrupted the duchess. “Now take, hang, rack, drown, or
burn your horrible rival, if you will, but undo the charm, and save us
from the earl!”

The friar’s eyes twinkled, but to the first thought of spite and
vengeance succeeded another: if he who had made the famous waxen
effigies of the Earl of Warwick were now to be found guilty of some
atrocious and positive violence upon Master Adam Warner, might not the
earl be glad of so good an excuse to put an end to Himself?

“Daughter,” said the friar, at that reflection, and shaking his head
mysteriously and sadly, “daughter, it is too late.”

The duchess in great despair flew to the queen. Hitherto she had
concealed from her royal daughter the employment she had given to Adam;
for Elizabeth, who had herself suffered from the popular belief in
Jacquetta’s sorceries, had of late earnestly besought her to lay aside
all practices that could be called into question. Now, however, when
she confessed to the agitated and distracted queen the retaining of Adam
Warner, and his fatal predictions, Elizabeth, who, from discretion and
pride, had carefully hidden from her mother (too vehement to keep a
secret) that offence in the king, the memory of which had made Warner
peculiarly obnoxious to him, exclaimed,--

“Unhappy mother, thou hast employed the very man my fated husband would
the most carefully have banished from the palace, the very man who could
blast his name.”

The duchess was aghast and thunderstricken.

“If ever I forsake Friar Bungey again!” she muttered; “OH, THE GREAT
MAN!”

But events which demand a detailed recital now rapidly pressing on, gave
the duchess not even the time to seek further explanation of Elizabeth’s
words, much less to determine the doubt that rose in her enlightened
mind whether Adam’s spells might not be yet unravelled by the timely
execution of the sorcerer!



CHAPTER IX. THE DELIBERATIONS OF MAYOR AND COUNCIL, WHILE LORD WARWICK
MARCHES UPON LONDON.

It was a clear and bright day in the first week of October, 1470, when
the various scouts employed by the mayor and council of London came
back to the Guild, at which that worshipful corporation were
assembled,--their steeds blown and jaded, themselves panting and
breathless,--to announce the rapid march of the Earl of Warwick. The
lord mayor of that year, Richard Lee, grocer and citizen, sat in the
venerable hall in a huge leather chair, over which a pall of velvet had
been thrown in haste, clad in his robes of state, and surrounded by his
aldermen and the magnates of the city. To the personal love which the
greater part of the body bore to the young and courteous king was added
the terror which the corporation justly entertained of the Lancastrian
faction. They remembered the dreadful excesses which Margaret had
permitted to her army in the year 1461,--what time, to use the
expression of the old historian, “the wealth of London looked pale;”
 and how grudgingly she had been restrained from condemning her revolted
metropolis to the horrors of sack and pillage. And the bearing of this
august representation of the trade and power of London was not, at the
first, unworthy of the high influence it had obtained. The agitation
and disorder of the hour had introduced into the assembly several of the
more active and accredited citizens not of right belonging to it; but
they sat, in silent discipline and order, on long benches beyond the
table crowded by the corporate officers. Foremost among these, and
remarkable by the firmness and intelligence of his countenance, and
the earnest self-possession with which he listened to his seniors, was
Nicholas Alwyn, summoned to the council from his great influence with
the apprentices and younger freemen of the city.

As the last scout announced his news and was gravely dismissed, the lord
mayor rose; and being, perhaps, a better educated man than many of
the haughtiest barons, and having more at stake than most of them,
his manner and language had a dignity and earnestness which might have
reflected honour on the higher court of parliament.

“Brethren and citizens,” he said, with the decided brevity of one who
felt it no time for many words, “in two hours we shall hear the clarions
of Lord Warwick at our gates; in two hours we shall be summoned to give
entrance to an army assembled in the name of King Henry. I have done my
duty,--I have manned the walls, I have marshalled what soldiers we can
command, I have sent to the deputy-governor of the Tower--”

“And what answer gives he, my lord mayor?” interrupted Humfrey Heyford.

“None to depend upon. He answers that Edward IV., in abdicating the
kingdom, has left him no power to resist; and that between force and
force, king and king, might makes right.”

A deep breath, like a groan, went through the assembly.

Up rose Master John Stokton, the mercer. He rose, trembling from limb to
limb.

“Worshipful my lord mayor,” said he, “it seems to me that our first duty
is to look to our own selves!”

Despite the gravity of the emergence, a laugh burst forth, and was at
once silenced at this frank avowal.

“Yes,” continued the mercer, turning round, and striking the table with
his fist, in the action of a nervous man--“yes; for King Edward has set
us the example. A stout and a dauntless champion, whose whole youth has
been war, King Edward has fled from the kingdom. King Edward takes care
of himself,--it is our duty to do the same!”

Strange though it may seem, this homely selfishness went at once through
the assembly like a flash of conviction. There was a burst of applause,
and, as it ceased, the sullen explosion of a bombard (or cannon) from
the city wall announced that the warder had caught the first glimpse of
the approaching army.

Master Stokton started as if the shot had gone near to himself, and
dropped at once into his seat, ejaculating, “The Lord have mercy upon
us!” There was a pause of a moment, and then several of the corporation
rose simultaneously. The mayor, preserving his dignity, fixed on the
sheriff.

“Few words, my lord, and I have done,” said Richard Gardyner--“there is
no fighting without men. The troops at the Tower are not to be counted
on. The populace are all with Lord Warwick, even though he brought the
devil at his back. If you hold out, look to rape and plunder before
sunset to-morrow. If ye yield, go forth in a body, and the earl is not
the man to suffer one Englishman to be injured in life or health who
once trusts to his good faith. My say is said.”

“Worshipful my lord,” said a thin, cadaverous alderman, who rose
next, “this is a judgment of the Lord and His saints. The Lollards and
heretics have been too much suffered to run at large, and the wrath of
Heaven is upon us.”

An impatient murmuring attested the unwillingness of the larger part
of the audience to listen further; but an approving buzz from the elder
citizens announced that the fanaticism was not without its favourers.
Thus stimulated and encouraged, the orator continued; and concluded an
harangue, interrupted more stormily than all that had preceded, by an
exhortation to leave the city to its fate, and to march in a body to
the New Prison, draw forth five suspected Lollards, and burn them at
Smithfield, in order to appease the Almighty and divert the tempest!

This subject of controversy once started might have delayed the audience
till the ragged staves of the Warwickers drove them forth from their
hall, but for the sagacity and promptitude of the mayor.

“Brethren,” he said, “it matters not to me whether the counsel suggested
be good or bad, in the main; but this have I heard,--there is small
safety in death-bed repentance. It is too late now to do, through fear
of the devil, what we omitted to do through zeal for the Church. The
sole question is, ‘Fight or make terms.’ Ye say we lack men; verily,
yes, while no leaders are found! Walworth, my predecessor, saved
London from Wat Tyler. Men were wanting then till the mayor and his
fellow-citizens marched forth to Mile End. It may be the same now. Agree
to fight, and we’ll try it. What say you, Nicholas Alwyn?--you know the
temper of our young men.”

Thus called upon, Alwyn rose, and such was the good name he had already
acquired, that every murmur hushed into eager silence.

“My lord mayor,” he said, “there is a proverb in my country which says,
‘Fish swim best that’s bred in the sea;’ which means, I take it, that
men do best what they are trained for! Lord Warwick and his men are
trained for fighting. Few of the fish about London Bridge are bred in
that sea. Cry, ‘London to the rescue!’--put on hauberk and helm, and
you will have crowns enough to crack around you. What follows?--Master
Stokton hath said it: pillage and rape for the city, gibbet and cord for
mayor and aldermen. Do I say this, loving the House of Lancaster? No; as
Heaven shall judge me, I think that the policy King Edward hath chosen,
and which costs him his crown to-day, ought to make the House of York
dear to burgess and trader. He hath sought to break up the iron rule of
the great barons,--and never peace to England till that be done. He has
failed; but for a day. He has yielded for a time; so must we. ‘There’s a
time to squint, and a time to look even.’ I advise that we march out
to the earl, that we make honourable terms for the city, that we take
advantage of one faction to gain what we have not gained with the
other; that we fight for our profit, not with swords, where we shall
be worsted, but in council and parliament, by speech and petition.
New power is ever gentle and douce. What matters to us York or
Lancaster?--all we want is good laws. Get the best we can from
Lancaster, and when King Edward returns, as return he will, let him bid
higher than Henry for our love. Worshipful my lords and brethren, while
barons and knaves go to loggerheads, honest men get their own. Time
grows under us like grass. York and Lancaster may pull down each
other,--and what is left? Why, three things that thrive in all
weather,--London, industry; and the people! We have fallen on a rough
time. Well, what says the proverb? ‘Boil stones in butter, and you may
sup the broth.’ I have done.”

This characteristic harangue, which was fortunate enough to accord with
the selfishness of each one, and yet give the manly excuse of sound
sense and wise policy to all, was the more decisive in its effect,
inasmuch as the young Alwyn, from his own determined courage, and his
avowed distaste to the Lancaster faction, had been expected to favour
warlike counsels. The mayor himself, who was faithfully and personally
attached to Edward, with a deep sigh gave way to the feeling of the
assembly. And the resolution being once come to, Henry Lee was the first
to give it whatever advantage could be derived from prompt and speedy
action.

“Go we forth at once,” said he,--“go, as becomes us, in our robes of
state, and with the insignia of the city. Never be it said that the
guardians of the city of London could neither defend with spirit, nor
make terms with honour. We give entrance to Lord Warwick. Well, then, it
must be our own free act. Come! Officers of our court, advance.”

“Stay a bit, stay a bit,” whispered Stokton, digging sharp claws into
Alwyn’s arm; “let them go first,--a word with you, cunning Nick,--a
word.”

Master Stokton, despite the tremor of his nerves, was a man of such
wealth and substance, that Alwyn might well take the request, thus
familiarly made, as a compliment not to be received discourteously;
moreover, he had his own reasons for hanging back from a procession
which his rank in the city did not require him to join.

While, therefore, the mayor and the other dignitaries left the hall with
as much state and order as if not going to meet an invading army, but to
join a holiday festival, Nicholas and Stokton lingered behind.

“Master Alwyn,” said Stokton, then, with a sly wink of his eye, “you
have this day done yourself great credit; you will rise, I have my eye
on you! I have a daughter, I have a daughter! Aha! a lad like you may
come to great things!”

“I am much bounden to you, Master Stokton,” returned Alwyn, somewhat
abstractedly; “but what’s your will?”

“My will!--hum, I say, Nicholas, what’s your advice? Quite right not to
go to blows. Odds costards! that mayor is a very tiger! But don’t you
think it would be wiser not to join this procession? Edward IV., an’
he ever come back, has a long memory. He deals at my ware, too,--a
good customer at a mercer’s; and, Lord! how much money he owes the
city!--hum!--I would not seem ungrateful.”

“But if you go not out with the rest, there be other mercers who will
have King Henry’s countenance and favour; and it is easy to see that a
new court will make vast consumption in mercery.”

Master Stokton looked puzzled.

“That were a hugeous pity, good Nicholas; and, certes, there is Wat
Smith, in Eastgate, who would cheat that good King Henry, poor man!
which were a shame to the city; but, on the other hand, the Yorkists
mostly pay on the nail (except King Edward, God save him!), and the
Lancastrians are as poor as mice. Moreover, King Henry is a meek man,
and does not avenge; King Edward, a hot and a stern man, and may call it
treason to go with the Red Rose! I wish I knew how to decide! I have a
daughter, an only daughter,--a buxom lass, and well dowered. I would I
had a sharp son-in-law to advise me!”

“Master Stokton, in one word, then, he never goes far wrong who can run
with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Good-day to you, I have business
elsewhere.”

So saying, Nicholas rather hastily shook off the mercer’s quivering
fingers, and hastened out of the hall.

“Verily,” murmured the disconsolate Stokton, “run with the hare,
quotha!--that is, go with King Edward; but hunt with the hounds,--that
is, go with King Henry. Odds costards; it’s not so easily done by a
plain man not bred in the North. I’d best go--home, and do nothing!”

With that, musing and bewildered, the poor man sneaked out, and was soon
lost amidst the murmuring, gathering, and swaying crowds, many amongst
which were as much perplexed as himself.

In the mean while, with his cloak muffled carefully round his face, and
with a long, stealthy, gliding stride, Alwyn made his way through
the streets, gained the river, entered a boat in waiting for him, and
arrived at last at the palace of the Tower.



CHAPTER X. THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY OF THE EARL--THE ROYAL CAPTIVE IN THE
TOWER--THE MEETING BETWEEN KING-MAKER AND KING.

All in the chambers of the metropolitan fortress exhibited the greatest
confusion and dismay. The sentinels, it is true, were still at their
posts, men-at-arms at the outworks, the bombards were loaded, the flag
of Edward IV. still waved aloft from the battlements; but the officers
of the fortress and the captains of its soldiery were, some assembled
in the old hall, pale with fear, and wrangling with each other; some had
fled, none knew whither; some had gone avowedly and openly to join the
invading army.

Through this tumultuous and feeble force, Nicholas Alwyn was conducted
by a single faithful servitor of the queen’s (by whom he was expected);
and one glance of his quick eye, as he passed along, convinced him of
the justice of his counsels. He arrived at last, by a long and winding
stair, at one of the loftiest chambers, in one of the loftiest towers,
usually appropriated to the subordinate officers of the household.

And there, standing by the open casement, commanding some extended view
of the noisy and crowded scene beyond, both on stream and land, he saw
the queen of the fugitive monarch. By her side was the Lady Scrope,
her most familiar friend and confidant, her three infant children,
Elizabeth, Mary, and Cicely, grouped round her knees, playing with each
other, and unconscious of the terrors of the times; and apart from the
rest stood the Duchess of Bedford, conferring eagerly with Friar Bungey,
whom she had summoned in haste, to know if his art could not yet prevail
over enemies merely mortal.

The servitor announced Alwyn, and retired; the queen turned--“What news,
Master Alwyn? Quick! What tidings from the lord mayor?”

“Gracious my queen and lady,” said Alwyn, falling on his knees, “you
have but one course to pursue. Below yon casement lies your barge, to
the right see the round gray tower of Westminster Sanctuary; you have
time yet, and but time!”

The old Duchess of Bedford turned her sharp, bright, gray eyes from the
pale and trembling friar to the goldsmith, but was silent. The queen
stood aghast. “Mean you,” she faltered, at last, “that the city of
London forsakes the king? Shame on the cravens!”

“Not cravens, my lady and queen,” said Alwyn, rising. “He must have iron
nails that scratches a bear,--and the white bear above all. The king has
fled, the barons have fled, the soldiers have fled, the captains have
fled,--the citizens of London alone fly not; but there is nothing save
life and property left to guard.”

“Is this thy boasted influence with the commons and youths of the city?”

“My humble influence, may it please your Grace (I say it now openly,
and I will say it a year hence, when King Edward will hold his court in
these halls once again), my influence, such as it is, has been used
to save lives which resistance would waste in vain. Alack, alack! ‘No
gaping against an oven,’ gracious lady! Your barge is below. Again I say
there is yet time,--when the bell tolls the next hour that time will be
past!”

“Then Jesu defend these children!” said Elizabeth, bending over her
infants, and weeping bitterly; “I will go!”

“Hold!” said the Duchess of Bedford, “men desert us, but do the spirits
also forsake us?--Speak, friar! canst thou yet do aught for us?--and if
not, thinkest thou it is the right hour to yield and fly?”

“Daughter,” said the friar, whose terror might have moved pity, “as I
said before, thank yourself. This Warner, this--in short, the lesser
magician hath been aided and cockered to countervail the greater, as I
forewarned. Fly! run! fly! Verily and indeed it is the prosperest of all
times to save ourselves; and the stars and the book and my familiar all
call out, ‘Off and away!’”

“‘Fore heaven!” exclaimed Alwyn, who had hitherto been dumb with
astonishment at this singular interlude, “sith he who hath shipped the
devil must make the best of him, thou art for once an honest man and a
wise counsellor. Hark! the second gun! The earl is at the gates of the
city!”

The queen lingered no longer; she caught her youngest child in her arms;
the Lady Scrope followed with the two others. “Come, follow, quick,
Master Alwyn,” said the duchess, who, now that she was compelled to
abandon the world of prediction and soothsaying, became thoroughly the
sagacious, plotting, ready woman of this life; “come, your face and name
will be of service to us, an’ we meet with obstruction.”

Before Alwyn could reply, the door was thrown abruptly open, and
several of the officers of the household rushed pell-mell into the royal
presence.

“Gracious queen!” cried many voices at once, each with a different
sentence of fear and warning, “fly! We cannot depend on the soldiers;
the populace are up,--they shout for King Henry; Dr. Godard is preaching
against you at St. Paul’s Cross; Sir Geoffrey Gates has come out of the
sanctuary, and with him all the miscreants and outlaws; the mayor is now
with the rebels! Fly! the sanctuary, the sanctuary!”

“And who amongst you is of highest rank?” asked the duchess, calmly;
for Elizabeth, completely overwhelmed, seemed incapable of speech or
movement.

“I, Giles de Malvoisin, knight banneret,” said an old warrior armed
cap-a-pie, who had fought in France under the hero Talbot.

“Then, sir,” said the duchess, with majesty, “to your hands I confide
the eldest daughter of your king. Lead on!--we follow you. Elizabeth,
lean on me.”

With this, supporting Elizabeth, and leading her second grandchild, the
duchess left the chamber.

The friar followed amidst the crowd, for well he knew that if the
soldiers of Warwick once caught hold of him, he had fared about as
happily as the fox amidst the dogs; and Alwyn, forgotten in the general
confusion, hastened to Adam’s chamber.

The old man, blessing any cause that induced his patroness to dispense
with his astrological labours and restored him to the care of his
Eureka, was calmly and quietly employed in repairing the mischief
effected by the bungling friar; and Sibyll, who at the first alarm
had flown to his retreat, joyfully hailed the entrance of the friendly
goldsmith.

Alwyn was indeed perplexed what to advise, for the principal sanctuary
would, no doubt, be crowded by ruffians of the worst character; and
the better lodgments which that place, a little town in itself,
[the Sanctuary of Westminster was fortified] contained, be already
preoccupied by the Yorkists of rank; and the smaller sanctuaries were
still more liable to the same objection. Moreover, if Adam should be
recognized by any of the rabble that would meet them by the way, his
fate, by the summary malice of a mob, was certain. After all, the
Tower would be free from the populace; and as soon as, by a few rapid
questions, Alwyn learned from Sibyll that she had reason to hope her
father would find protection with Lord Warwick, and called to mind that
Marmaduke Nevile was necessarily in the earl’s train, he advised them to
remain quiet and concealed in their apartments, and promised to see
and provide for them the moment the Tower was yielded up to the new
government.

The counsel suited both Sibyll and Warner. Indeed, the philosopher could
not very easily have been induced to separate himself again from the
beloved Eureka; and Sibyll was more occupied at that hour with
thoughts and prayers for the beloved Hastings,--afar, a wanderer and an
exile,--than with the turbulent events amidst which her lot was cast.

In the storms of a revolution which convulsed a kingdom and hurled
to the dust a throne, Love saw but a single object, Science but its
tranquil toil. Beyond the realm of men lies ever with its joy and
sorrow, its vicissitude and change, the domain of the human heart.
In the revolution, the toy of the scholar was restored to him; in the
revolution, the maiden mourned her lover. In the movement of the mass,
each unit hath its separate passion. The blast that rocks the trees
shakes a different world in every leaf.



CHAPTER XI. THE TOWER IN COMMOTION.

On quitting the Tower, Alwyn regained the boat, and took his way to the
city; and here, whatever credit that worthy and excellent personage may
lose in certain eyes, his historian is bound to confess that his anxiety
for Sibyll did not entirely distract his attention from interest or
ambition. To become the head of his class, to rise to the first honours
of his beloved city of London, had become to Nicholas Alwyn a hope and
aspiration which made as much a part of his being as glory to a warrior,
power to a king, a Eureka to a scholar; and, though more mechanically
than with any sordid calculation or self-seeking, Nicholas Alwyn
repaired to his ware in the Chepe. The streets, when he landed, already
presented a different appearance from the disorder and tumult noticeable
when he had before passed them. The citizens now had decided what course
to adopt; and though the shops, or rather booths, were carefully closed,
streamers of silk, cloth of arras and gold, were hung from the upper
casements; the balconies were crowded with holiday gazers; the fickle
populace (the same herd that had hooted the meek Henry when led to the
Tower) were now shouting, “A Warwick!” “A Clarence!” and pouring throng
after throng, to gaze upon the army, which, with the mayor and aldermen,
had already entered the city. Having seen to the security of his costly
goods, and praised his apprentices duly for their care of his interests,
and their abstinence from joining the crowd, Nicholas then repaired
to the upper story of his house, and set forth from his casements and
balcony the richest stuffs he possessed. However, there was his own
shrewd, sarcastic smile on his firm lips, as he said to his apprentices,
“When these are done with, lay them carefully by against Edward of
York’s re-entry.”

Meanwhile, preceded by trumpets, drums, and heralds, the Earl of Warwick
and his royal son-in-law rode into the shouting city. Behind came the
litter of the Duchess of Clarence, attended by the Earl of Oxford, Lord
Fitzhugh, the Lords Stanley and Shrewsbury, Sir Robert de Lytton, and a
princely cortege of knights, squires, and nobles; while, file upon file,
rank upon rank, followed the long march of the unresisted armament.

Warwick, clad in complete armour of Milan steel,--save the helmet, which
was borne behind him by his squire,--mounted on his own noble Saladin,
preserved upon a countenance so well suited to command the admiration of
a populace the same character as heretofore of manly majesty and lofty
frankness. But to a nearer and more searching gaze than was likely to be
bent upon him in such an hour, the dark, deep traces of care, anxiety,
and passion might have been detected in the lines which now thickly
intersected the forehead, once so smooth and furrowless; and his kingly
eye, not looking, as of old, right forward as he moved, cast unquiet,
searching glances about him and around, as he bowed his bare head from
side to side of the welcoming thousands.

A far greater change, to outward appearance, was visible in the fair
young face of the Duke of Clarence. His complexion, usually sanguine and
blooming, like his elder brother’s, was now little less pale than that
of Richard. A sullen, moody, discontented expression, which not all
the heartiness of the greetings he received could dispel, contrasted
forcibly with the good-humoured, laughing recklessness, which had once
drawn a “God bless him!” from all on whom rested his light-blue joyous
eye. He was unarmed, save by a corselet richly embossed with gold. His
short manteline of crimson velvet, his hosen of white cloth laced with
gold, and his low horseman’s boots of Spanish leather curiously carved
and broidered, with long golden spurs; his plumed and jewelled cap;
his white charger with housings enriched with pearls and blazing with
cloth-of-gold; his broad collar of precious stones, with the order of
St. George; his general’s truncheon raised aloft, and his Plantagenet
banner borne by the herald over his royal head, caught the eyes of the
crowd only the more to rivet them on an aspect ill fitting the triumph
of a bloodless victory. At his left hand, where the breadth of the
streets permitted, rode Henry Lee, the mayor, uttering no word, unless
appealed to, and then answering but with chilling reverence and dry
monosyllables.

A narrow winding in the streets, which left Warwick and Clarence alone
side by side, gave the former the opportunity he had desired.

“How, prince and son,” he said in a hollow whisper, “is it with this
brow of care that thou saddenest our conquest, and enterest the capital
we gain without a blow?”

“By Saint George!” answered Clarence, sullenly, and in the same tone,
“thinkest thou it chafes not the son of Richard of York, after such
toils and bloodshed, to minister to the dethronement of his kin and the
restoration of the foe of his race?”

“Thou shouldst have thought of that before,” returned Warwick, but with
sadness and pity in the reproach.

“Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother,” retorted
Clarence, bitterly.

“Hush!” said the earl, “and calm thy brow. Not thus didst thou speak at
Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous. But regrets
are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it.”

And with that, in the action of a man who would escape his own thoughts,
Warwick made his black steed demivolte; and the crowd shouted again
the louder at the earl’s gallant horsemanship, and Clarence’s dazzling
collar of jewels.

While thus the procession of the victors, the nominal object of all this
mighty and sudden revolution--of this stir and uproar, of these shining
arms and flaunting banners, of this heaven or hell in the deep passions
of men--still remained in his prison-chamber of the Tower, a true type
of the thing factions contend for; absent, insignificant, unheeded,
and, save by a few of the leaders and fanatical priests, absolutely
forgotten!

To this solitary chamber we are now transported; yet solitary is a word
of doubtful propriety; for though the royal captive was alone, so far as
the human species make up a man’s companionship and solace, though the
faithful gentlemen, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, had, on the news of
Warwick’s landing, been thrust from his chamber, and were now in the
ranks of his new and strange defenders, yet power and jealousy had not
left his captivity all forsaken. There was still the starling in its
cage, and the fat, asthmatic spaniel still wagged its tail at the sound
of its master’s voice, or the rustle of his long gown. And still from
the ivory crucifix gleamed the sad and holy face of the God, present
alway, and who, by faith and patience, linketh evermore grief to
joy,--but earth to heaven.

The august prisoner had not been so utterly cut off from all knowledge
of the outer life as to be ignorant of some unwonted and important stir
in the fortress and the city. The squire who had brought him his morning
meal had been so agitated as to excite the captive’s attention, and had
then owned that the Earl of Warwick had proclaimed Henry king, and was
on his march to London. But neither the squire nor any of the officers
of the Tower dared release the illustrious captive, or even remove him
as yet to the state apartments vacated by Elizabeth. They knew not what
might be the pleasure of the stout earl or the Duke of Clarence, and
feared over-officiousness might be their worst crime. But naturally
imagining that Henry’s first command, at the new position of things,
might be for liberty, and perplexed whether to yield or refuse, they
absented themselves from his summons, and left the whole tower in which
he was placed actually deserted.

From his casement the king could see, however, the commotion, and the
crowds upon the wharf and river, with the gleam of arms and banners;
and hear the sounds of “A Warwick!” “A Clarence!” “Long live good Henry
VI.!” A strange combination of names, which disturbed and amazed him
much! But by degrees the unwonted excitement of perplexity and surprise
settled back into the calm serenity of his most gentle mind and temper.
That trust in an all-directing Providence, to which he had schooled
himself, had (if we may so say with reverence) driven his beautiful soul
into the opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of life,--the error
that deadens and benumbs the energy of free will and the noble alertness
of active duty. Why strain and strive for the things of this world? God
would order all for the best. Alas! God hath placed us in this world,
each, from king to peasant, with nerves and hearts and blood and
passions to struggle with our kind; and, no matter how heavenly the
goal, to labour with the million in the race!

“Forsooth,” murmured the king, as, his hands clasped behind him,
he paced slowly to and fro the floor, “this ill world seemeth but
a feather, blown about by the winds, and never to be at rest. Hark!
Warwick and King Henry,--the lion and the lamb! Alack, and we are fallen
on no Paradise, where such union were not a miracle! Foolish bird!”--and
with a pitying smile upon that face whose holy sweetness might have
disarmed a fiend, he paused before the cage and contemplated his
fellow-captive--“foolish bird, the uneasiness and turmoil without have
reached even to thee. Thou beatest thy wings against the wires, thou
turnest thy bright eyes to mine restlessly. Why? Pantest thou to be
free, silly one, that the hawk may swoop on its defenceless prey?
Better, perhaps, the cage for thee, and the prison for thy master. Well,
out if thou wilt! Here at least thou art safe!” and opening the cage,
the starling flew to his bosom, and nestled there, with its small clear
voice mimicking the human sound,--

“Poor Henry, poor Henry! Wicked men, poor Henry!”

The king bowed his meek head over his favourite, and the fat spaniel,
jealous of the monopolized caress, came waddling towards its master,
with a fond whine, and looked up at him with eyes that expressed more of
faith and love than Edward of York, the ever wooing and ever wooed, had
read in the gaze of woman.

With those companions, and with thoughts growing more and more composed
and rapt from all that had roused and vexed his interest in the
forenoon, Henry remained till the hour had long passed for his evening
meal. Surprised at last by a negligence which (to do his jailers
justice) had never before occurred, and finding no response to his
hand-bell, no attendant in the anteroom, the outer doors locked as
usual, but the sentinel’s tread in the court below hushed and still,
a cold thrill for a moment shot through his blood.--“Was he left for
hunger to do its silent work?” Slowly he bent his way from the outer
rooms back to his chamber; and, as he passed the casement again, he
heard, though far in the distance, through the dim air of the deepening
twilight, the cry of “Long live King Henry!”

This devotion without, this neglect within, was a wondrous contrast!
Meanwhile the spaniel, with that instinct of fidelity which divines the
wants of the master, had moved snuffling and smelling round and round
the chambers, till it stopped and scratched at a cupboard in the
anteroom, and then with a joyful bark flew back to the king, and taking
the hem of his gown between its teeth, led him towards the spot it had
discovered; and there, in truth, a few of those small cakes, usually
served up for the night’s livery, had been carelessly left. They
sufficed for the day’s food, and the king, the dog, and the starling
shared them peacefully together. This done, Henry carefully replaced his
bird in its cage, bade the dog creep to the hearth and lie still; passed
on to his little oratory, with the relics of cross and saint strewed
around the solemn image,--and in prayer forgot the world! Meanwhile
darkness set in: the streets had grown deserted, save where in some
nooks and by-lanes gathered groups of the soldiery; but for the most
part the discipline in which Warwick held his army had dismissed those
stern loiterers to the various quarters provided for them, and little
remained to remind the peaceful citizens that a throne had been
uprooted, and a revolution consummated, that eventful day.

It was at this time that a tall man, closely wrapped in his large
horseman’s cloak, passed alone through the streets and gained the Tower.
At the sound of his voice by the great gate, the sentinel started in
alarm; a few moments more, and all left to guard the fortress were
gathered round him. From these he singled out one of the squires who
usually attended Henry, and bade him light his steps to the king’s
chamber. As in that chamber Henry rose from his knees, he saw the broad
red light of a torch flickering under the chinks of the threshold; he
heard the slow tread of approaching footsteps; the spaniel uttered a low
growl, its eyes sparkling; the door opened, and the torch borne behind
by the squire, and raised aloft so that its glare threw a broad light
over the whole chamber, brought into full view the dark and haughty
countenance of the Earl of Warwick.

The squire, at a gesture from the earl, lighted the sconces on the wall,
the tapers on the table, and quickly vanished. King-maker and king were
alone! At the first sight of Warwick, Henry had turned pale, and receded
a few paces, with one hand uplifted in adjuration or command, while with
the other he veiled his eyes,--whether that this startled movement
came from the weakness of bodily nerves, much shattered by sickness and
confinement, or from the sudden emotions called forth by the aspect of
one who had wrought him calamities so dire. But the craven’s terror in
the presence of a living foe was, with all his meekness, all his holy
abhorrence of wrath and warfare, as unknown to that royal heart as to
the high blood of his hero-sire. And so, after a brief pause, and a
thought that took the shape of prayer, not for safety from peril, but
for grace to forgive the past, Henry VI. advanced to Warwick, who
still stood dumb by the threshold, combating with his own mingled and
turbulent emotions of pride and shame, and said, in a voice majestic
even from its very mildness,--

“What tale of new woe and evil hath the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick
come to announce to the poor captive who was once a king?”

“Forgive me! Forgiveness, Henry, my lord,--forgiveness!” exclaimed
Warwick, falling on his knee. The meek reproach; the touching words; the
mien and visage altered, since last beheld, from manhood into age;
the gray hairs and bended form of the king, went at once to that proud
heart; and as the earl bent over the wan, thin hand resigned to his
lips, a tear upon its surface out-sparkled all the jewels that it wore.

“Yet no,” continued the earl (impatient, as proud men are, to hurry from
repentance to atonement, for the one is of humiliation and the other of
pride),--“yet no, my liege, not now do I crave thy pardon. No; but when
begirt, in the halls of thine ancestors, with the peers of England,
the victorious banner of Saint George waving above the throne which thy
servant hath rebuilt,--then, when the trumpets are sounding thy rights
without the answer of a foe; then, when from shore to shore of fair
England the shout of thy people echoes to the vault of heaven,--then
will Warwick kneel again to King Henry, and sue for the pardon he hath
not ignobly won!

“Alack, sir,” said the king, with accents of mournful yet half-reproving
kindness, “it was not amidst trump and banners that the Son of God
set mankind the exemplar and pattern of charity to foes. When thy hand
struck the spurs from my heel, when thou didst parade me through the
booting crowd to this solitary cell, then, Warwick, I forgave thee,
and prayed to Heaven for pardon for thee, if thou didst wrong me,--for
myself, if a king’s fault had deserved a subject’s harshness. Rise, Sir
Earl; our God is a jealous God, and the attitude of worship is for Him
alone.”

Warwick rose from his knee; and the king, perceiving and compassionating
the struggle which shook the strong man’s breast, laid his hand on the
earl’s shoulder, and said, “Peace be with thee!--thou hast done me no
real harm. I have been as happy in these walls as in the green parks of
Windsor; happier than in the halls of state or in the midst of wrangling
armies. What tidings now?”

“My liege, is it possible that you know not that Edward is a fugitive
and a beggar, and that Heaven hath permitted me to avenge at once your
injuries and my own? This day, without a blow, I have regained your
city of London; its streets are manned with my army. From the council
of peers and warriors and prelates assembled at my house, I have stolen
hither alone and in secret, that I might be the first to hail your
Grace’s restoration to the throne of Henry V.”

The king’s face so little changed at this intelligence, that its calm
sadness almost enraged the impetuous Warwick, and with difficulty he
restrained from giving utterance to the thought, “He is not worthy of a
throne who cares so little to possess it!”

“Well-a-day!” said Henry, sighing, “Heaven then hath sore trials yet in
store for mine old age! Tray, Tray!” and stooping, he gently patted his
dog, who kept watch at his feet, still glaring suspiciously at Warwick,
“we are both too old for the chase now!--Will you be seated, my lord?”

“Trust me,” said the earl, as he obeyed the command, having first set
chair and footstool for the king, who listened to him with downcast
eyes and his head drooping on his bosom--“trust me, your later days,
my liege, will be free from the storms of your youth. All chance of
Edward’s hostility is expired. Your alliance, though I seem boastful
so to speak,--your alliance with one in whom the people can confide for
some skill in war, and some more profound experience of the habits and
tempers of your subjects than your former councillors could possess,
will leave your honoured leisure free for the holy meditations it
affects; and your glory, as your safety, shall be the care of men who
can awe this rebellious world.”

“Alliance!” said the king, who had caught but that one word; “of what
speakest thou, Sir Earl?”

“These missives will explain all, my liege; this letter from my lady the
Queen Margaret, and this from your gracious son, the Prince of Wales.”

“Edward! my Edward!” exclaimed the king, with a father’s burst of
emotion. “Thou hast seen him, then,--bears he his health well, is he of
cheer and heart?”

“He is strong and fair, and full of promise, and brave as his
grandsire’s sword.”

“And knows he--knows he well--that we all are the potter’s clay in the
hands of God?”

“My liege,” said Warwick, embarrassed, “he has as much devotion as
befits a Christian knight and a goodly prince.”

“Ah,” sighed the king, “ye men of arms have strange thoughts on these
matters;” and cutting the silk of the letters, he turned from the
warrior. Shading his face with his hand, the earl darted his keen glance
on the features of the king, as, drawing near to the table, the latter
read the communications which announced his new connection with his
ancient foe.

But Henry was at first so affected by the sight of Margaret’s well-known
hand, that he thrice put down her letter and wiped the moisture from his
eyes.

“My poor Margaret, how thou hast suffered!” he murmured; “these very
characters are less firm and bold than they were. Well, well!” and
at last he betook himself resolutely to the task. Once or twice his
countenance changed, and he uttered an exclamation of surprise. But the
proposition of a marriage between Prince Edward and the Lady Anne did
not revolt his forgiving mind, as it had the haughty and stern temper
of his consort. And when he had concluded his son’s epistle, full of the
ardour of his love and the spirit of his youth, the king passed his left
hand over his brow, and then extending his right to Warwick, said, in
accents which trembled with emotion, “Serve my son, since he is thine,
too; give peace to this distracted kingdom, repair my errors, press not
hard upon those who contend against us, and Jesu and His saints will
bless this bond!”

The earl’s object, perhaps, in seeking a meeting with Henry so private
and unwitnessed, had been that none, not even his brother, might hearken
to the reproaches he anticipated to receive, or say hereafter that
he heard Warwick, returned as victor and avenger to his native
land, descend, in the hour of triumph, to extenuation and excuse. So
affronted, imperilled, or to use his own strong word, “so despaired,”
 had he been in the former rule of Henry, that his intellect, which,
however vigorous in his calmer moods, was liable to be obscured and
dulled by his passions, had half confounded the gentle king with his
ferocious wife and stern councillors, and he had thought he never could
have humbled himself to the man, even so far as knighthood’s submission
to Margaret’s sex had allowed him to the woman. But the sweetness of
Henry’s manners and disposition, the saint-like dignity which he had
manifested throughout this painful interview, and the touching grace
and trustful generosity of his last words,--words which consummated the
earl’s large projects of ambition and revenge,--had that effect upon
Warwick which the preaching of some holy man, dwelling upon the patient
sanctity of the Saviour, had of old on a grim Crusader, all incapable
himself of practising such meek excellence, and yet all moved and
penetrated by its loveliness in another; and, like such Crusader, the
representation of all mildest and most forgiving singularly stirred up
in the warrior’s mind images precisely the reverse,--images of armed
valour and stern vindication, as if where the Cross was planted sprang
from the earth the standard and the war-horse!

“Perish your foes! May war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My
liege, my royal master,” continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering
voice, “why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood so
many between Warwick’s devotion and a king so worthy to command it?
How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude and thy Christian heroism,
seems the savage valour of false Edward! Shame upon one who can betray
the trust thou hast placed in him! Never will I!--Never! I swear it!
No! though all England desert thee, I will stand alone with my breast of
mail before thy throne! Oh, would that my triumph had been less peaceful
and less bloodless! would that a hundred battlefields were yet left
to prove how deeply--deeply in his heart of hearts--Warwick feels the
forgiveness of his king!”

“Not so, not so, not so! not battlefields, Warwick!” said Henry. “Ask
not to serve the king by shedding one subject’s blood.”

“Your pious will be obeyed!” replied Warwick. “We will see if mercy can
effect in others what thy pardon effects in me. And now, my liege, no
longer must these walls confine thee. The chambers of the palace await
their sovereign. What ho, there!” and going to the door he threw it
open, and agreeably to the orders he had given below, all the officers
left in the fortress stood crowded together in the small anteroom,
bareheaded, with tapers in their hands, to conduct the monarch to the
halls of his conquered foe.

At the sudden sight of the earl, these men, struck involuntarily and at
once by the grandeur of his person and his animated aspect, burst forth
with the rude retainer’s cry, “A Warwick! a Warwick!”

“Silence!” thundered the earl’s deep voice. “Who names the subject in
the sovereign’s presence? Behold your king!” The men, abashed by the
reproof, bowed their heads and sank on their knees, as Warwick took a
taper from the table, to lead the way from the prison.

Then Henry turned slowly, and gazed with a lingering eye upon the walls
which even sorrow and solitude had endeared. The little oratory, the
crucifix, the relics, the embers burning low on the hearth, the rude
time-piece,--all took to his thoughtful eye an almost human aspect of
melancholy and omen; and the bird, roused, whether by the glare of the
lights, or the recent shout of the men, opened its bright eyes, and
fluttering restlessly to and fro, shrilled out its favourite sentence,
“Poor Henry! poor Henry!--wicked men!--who would be a king?”

“Thou hearest it, Warwick?” said Henry, shaking his head.

“Could an eagle speak, it would have another cry than the starling,”
 returned the earl, with a proud smile.

“Why, look you,” said the king, once more releasing the bird, which
settled on his wrist, “the eagle had broken his heart in the narrow
cage, the eagle had been no comforter for a captive; it is these gentler
ones that love and soothe us best in our adversities. Tray, Tray, fawn
not now, sirrah, or I shall think thou hast been false in thy fondness
heretofore! Cousin, I attend you.”

And with his bird on his wrist, his dog at his heels, Henry VI. followed
the earl to the illuminated hall of Edward, where the table was spread
for the royal repast, and where his old friends, Manning, Bedle, and
Allerton, stood weeping for joy; while from the gallery raised aloft,
the musicians gave forth the rough and stirring melody which had
gradually fallen out of usage, but which was once the Norman’s
national air, and which the warlike Margaret of Anjou had retaught her
minstrels,--“THE BATTLE HYMN OF ROLLO.”



BOOK XI. THE NEW POSITION OF THE KING-MAKER



CHAPTER I. WHEREIN MASTER ADAM WARNER IS NOTABLY COMMENDED AND
ADVANCED--AND GREATNESS SAYS TO WISDOM, “THY DESTINY BE MINE, AMEN.”

The Chronicles inform us, that two or three days after the entrance
of Warwick and Clarence,--namely, on the 6th of October,--those two
leaders, accompanied by the Lords Shrewsbury, Stanley, and a numerous
and noble train, visited the Tower in formal state, and escorted
the king, robed in blue velvet, the crown on his head, to public
thanksgivings at St. Paul’s, and thence to the Bishop’s Palace, [not to
the Palace at Westminster, as some historians, preferring the French to
the English authorities, have asserted,--that palace was out of repair]
where he continued chiefly to reside.

The proclamation that announced the change of dynasty was received with
apparent acquiescence through the length and breadth of the kingdom,
and the restoration of the Lancastrian line seemed yet the more firm and
solid by the magnanimous forbearance of Warwick and his councils. Not
one execution that could be termed the act of a private revenge stained
with blood the second reign of the peaceful Henry. One only head fell on
the scaffold,--that of the Earl of Worcester. [Lord Warwick himself did
not sit in judgment on Worcester. He was tried and condemned by Lord
Oxford. Though some old offences in his Irish government were alleged
against him, the cruelties which rendered him so odious were of recent
date. He had (as we before took occasion to relate) impaled twenty
persons after Warwick’s flight into France. The “Warkworth Chronicle”
 says, “He was ever afterwardes greatly behated among the people for this
disordynate dethe that he used, contrary to the laws of the lande.”]
This solitary execution, which was regarded by all classes as a due
concession to justice, only yet more illustrated the general mildness of
the new rule.

It was in the earliest days of this sudden restoration that Alwyn found
the occasion to serve his friends in the Tower. Warwick was eager to
conciliate all the citizens, who, whether frankly or grudgingly, had
supported his cause; and, amongst these, he was soon informed of the
part taken in the Guildhall by the rising goldsmith. He sent for Alwyn
to his house in Warwick-lane, and after complimenting him on his advance
in life and repute, since Nicholas had waited on him with baubles for
his embassy to France, he offered him the special rank of goldsmith to
the king.

The wary, yet honest, trader paused a moment in some embarrassment
before he answered,--

“My good lord, you are noble and gracious eno’ to understand and forgive
me when I say that I have had, in the upstart of my fortunes, the
countenance of the late King Edward and his queen; and though the public
weal made me advise my fellow-citizens not to resist your entry, I would
not, at least, have it said that my desertion had benefited my private
fortunes.”

Warwick coloured, and his lip curled. “Tush, man, assume not virtues
which do not exist amongst the sons of trade, nor, much I trow, amongst
the sons of Adam. I read thy mind. Thou thinkest it unsafe openly to
commit thyself to the new state. Fear not,--we are firm.”

“Nay, my lord,” returned Alwyn, “it is not so. But there are many better
citizens than I, who remember that the Yorkists were ever friends to
commerce. And you will find that only by great tenderness to our crafts
you can win the heart of London, though you have passed its gates.”

“I shall be just to all men,” answered the earl, dryly; “but if the
flat-caps are false, there are eno’ of bonnets of steel to watch over
the Red Rose!”

“You are said, my lord,” returned Alwyn, bluntly, “to love the barons,
the knights, the gentry, the yeomen, and the peasants, but to despise
the traders,--I fear me that report in this is true.”

“I love not the trader spirit, man,--the spirit that cheats, and
cringes, and haggles, and splits straws for pence, and roasts eggs
by other men’s blazing rafters. Edward of York, forsooth, was a great
trader! It was a sorry hour for England when such as ye, Nick Alwyn,
left your green villages for loom and booth. But thus far have I spoken
to you as a brave fellow, and of the north countree. I have no time to
waste on words. Wilt thou accept mine offer, or name another boon in
my power? The man who hath served me wrongs me,--till I have served him
again!”

“My lord, yes; I will name such a boon,--safety, and, if you will,
some grace and honour, to a learned scholar now in the Tower, one Adam
Warner, whom--”

“Now in the Tower! Adam Warner! And wanting a friend, I no more an
exile! That is my affair, not thine. Grace, honour,--ay, to his heart’s
content. And his noble daughter? Mort Dieu! she shall choose her
bridegroom among the best of England. Is she, too, in the fortress?”

“Yes,” said Alwyn, briefly, not liking the last part of the earl’s
speech.

The earl rang the bell on his table. “Send hither Sir Marmaduke Nevile.”

Alwyn saw his former rival enter, and heard the earl commission him to
accompany, with a fitting train, his own litter to the Tower. “And
you, Alwyn, go with your foster-brother, and pray Master Warner and his
daughter to be my guests for their own pleasure. Come hither, my rude
Northman,--come. I see I shall have many secret foes in this city: wilt
not thou at least be Warwick’s open friend?”

Alwyn found it hard to resist the charm of the earl’s manner and voice;
but, convinced in his own mind that the age was against Warwick, and
that commerce and London would be little advantaged by the earl’s rule,
the trading spirit prevailed in his breast.

“Gracious my lord,” he said, bending his knee in no servile homage, “he
who befriends my order, commands me.”

The proud noble bit his lip, and with a silent wave of his hand
dismissed the foster-brothers.

“Thou art but a churl at best, Nick,” said Marmaduke, as the door closed
on the young men. “Many a baron would have sold his father’s hall for
such words from the earl’s lip.”

“Let barons sell their free conduct for fair words. I keep myself
unshackled to join that cause which best fills the market and reforms
the law. But tell me, I pray thee, Sir Knight, what makes Warner and his
daughter so dear to your lord?”

“What! know you not?--and has she not told you?--Ah, what was I about to
say?”

“Can there be a secret between the earl and the scholar?” asked Alwyn,
in wonder.

“If there be, it is our place to respect it,” returned the Nevile,
adjusting his manteline; “and now we must command the litter.”

In spite of all the more urgent and harassing affairs that pressed upon
him, the earl found an early time to attend to his guests. His welcome
to Sibyll was more than courteous,--it was paternal. As she approached
him, timidly and with a downcast eye, he advanced, placed his hand upon
her head,--

“The Holy Mother ever have thee in her charge, child!--This is a
father’s kiss, young mistress,” added the earl, pressing his lips to her
forehead; “and in this kiss, remember that I pledge to thee care for thy
fortunes, honour for thy name, my heart to do thee service, my arm to
shield from wrong! Brave scholar, thy lot has become interwoven with my
own. Prosperous is now my destiny,--my destiny be thine! Amen!”

He turned then to Warner, and without further reference to a past which
so galled his proud spirit, he made the scholar explain to him the
nature of his labours. In the mind of every man who has passed much of
his life in successful action, there is a certain, if we may so say,
untaught mathesis,--but especially among those who have been bred to the
art of war. A great soldier is a great mechanic, a great mathematician,
though he may know it not; and Warwick, therefore, better than many
a scholar comprehended the principle upon which Adam founded his
experiments. But though he caught also a glimpse of the vast results
which such experiments in themselves were calculated to effect, his
strong common-sense perceived yet more clearly that the time was not
ripe for such startling inventions.

“My friend,” he said, “I comprehend thee passably. It is clear to me,
that if thou canst succeed in making the elements do the work of man
with equal precision, but with far greater force and rapidity, thou must
multiply eventually, and, by multiplying, cheapen, all the products of
industry; that thou must give to this country the market of the world;
and that thine would be the true alchemy that turneth all to gold.”

“Mighty intellect, thou graspest the truth!” exclaimed Adam.

“But,” pursued the earl, with a mixture of prejudice and judgment,
“grant thee success to the full, and thou wouldst turn this bold land
of yeomanry and manhood into one community of griping traders and sickly
artisans. Mort Dieu! we are over-commerced as it is,--the bow is already
deserted for the ell-measure. The town populations are ever the most
worthless in war. England is begirt with mailed foes; and if by one
process she were to accumulate treasure and lose soldiers, she would
but tempt invasion and emasculate defenders. Verily, I avise and implore
thee to turn thy wit and scholarship to a manlier occupation!”

“My life knows no other object; kill my labour and thou destroyest me,”
 said Adam, in a voice of gloomy despair. Alas, it seemed that, whatever
the changes of power, no change could better the hopes of science in
an age of iron! Warwick was moved. “Well,” he said, after a pause, “be
happy in thine own way. I will do my best at least to protect thee.
To-morrow resume thy labours; but this day, at least, thou must feast
with me.”

And at his banquet that day, among the knights and barons, and the
abbots and the warriors, Adam sat on the dais near the earl, and Sibyll
at “the mess” of the ladies of the Duchess of Clarence. And ere the
feast broke up, Warwick thus addressed his company:--

“My friends, though I, and most of us reared in the lap of war, have
little other clerkship than sufficed our bold fathers before us, yet in
the free towns of Italy and the Rhine,--yea, and in France, under her
politic king,--we may see that a day is dawning wherein new knowledge
will teach many marvels to our wiser sons. Wherefore it is good that a
State should foster men who devote laborious nights and weary days to
the advancement of arts and letters, for the glory of our common land. A
worthy gentleman, now at this board, hath deeply meditated contrivances
which may make our English artisans excel the Flemish loons, who now
fatten upon our industry to the impoverishment of the realm. And, above
all, he also purposes to complete an invention which may render our
ship-craft the most notable in Europe. Of this I say no more at present;
but I commend our guest, Master Adam Warner, to your good service,
and pray you especially, worshipful sirs of the Church now present, to
shield his good name from that charge which most paineth and endangereth
honest men. For ye wot well that the commons, from ignorance, would
impute all to witchcraft that passeth their understanding. Not,” added
the earl, crossing himself, “that witchcraft does not horribly infect
the land, and hath been largely practised by Jacquetta of Bedford, and
her confederates, Bungey and others. But our cause needeth no such aid;
and all that Master Warner purposes is in behalf of the people, and in
conformity with Holy Church. So this wassail to his health and House.”

This characteristic address being received with respect, though with
less applause than usually greeted the speeches of the great earl,
Warwick added, in a softer and more earnest tone, “And in the fair
demoiselle, his daughter, I pray you to acknowledge the dear friend of
my beloved lady and child, Anne, Princess of Wales; and for the sake of
her highness and in her name, I arrogate to myself a share with Master
Warner in this young donzell’s guardianship and charge. Know ye, my
gallant gentles and fair squires, that he who can succeed in achieving,
either by leal love or by bold deeds, as best befit a wooer, the grace
of my young ward, shall claim from my hands a knight’s fee, with as much
of my best land as a bull’s hide can cover; and when heaven shall grant
safe passage to the Princess Anne and her noble spouse, we will hold at
Smithfield a tourney in honor of Saint George and our ladies, wherein,
pardie, I myself would be sorely tempted to provoke my jealous countess,
and break a lance for the fame of the demoiselle whose fair face is
married to a noble heart.”

That evening, in the galliard, many an admiring eye turned to Sibyll,
and many a young gallant, recalling the earl’s words, sighed to win
her grace. There had been a time when such honour and such homage would
have, indeed, been welcome; but now ONE saw them not, and they were
valueless. All that, in her earlier girlhood, Sibyll’s ambition had
coveted, when musing on the brilliant world, seemed now well-nigh
fulfilled,--her father protected by the first noble of the land, and
that not with the degrading condescension of the Duchess of Bedford,
but as Power alone should protect Genius, honoured while it honours; her
gentle birth recognized; her position elevated; fair fortunes smiling
after such rude trials; and all won without servility or abasement.
But her ambition having once exhausted itself in a diviner passion, all
excitement seemed poor and spiritless compared to the lonely waiting
at the humble farm for the voice and step of Hastings. Nay, but for her
father’s sake, she could almost have loathed the pleasure and the pomp,
and the admiration and the homage, which seemed to insult the reverses
of the wandering exile.

The earl had designed to place Sibyll among Isabel’s ladies, but the
haughty air of the duchess chilled the poor girl; and pleading the
excuse that her father’s health required her constant attendance, she
prayed permission to rest with Warner wherever he might be lodged. Adam
himself, now that the Duchess of Bedford and Friar Bungey were no longer
in the Tower, entreated permission to return to the place where he had
worked the most successfully upon the beloved Eureka; and, as the Tower
seemed a safer residence than any private home could be, from popular
prejudice and assault, Warwick kindly offered apartments, far more
commodious than they had yet occupied, to be appropriated to the father
and daughter. Several attendants were assigned to them, and never was
man of letters or science more honoured now than the poor scholar who,
till then, had been so persecuted and despised.

Who shall tell Adam’s serene delight? Alchemy and astrology at rest,
no imperious duchess, no hateful Bungey, his free mind left to its
congenial labours! And Sibyll, when they met, strove to wear a cheerful
brow, praying him only never to speak to her of Hastings. The good
old man, relapsing into his wonted mechanical existence, hoped she had
forgotten a girl’s evanescent fancy.

But the peculiar distinction showed by the earl to Warner confirmed
the reports circulated by Bungey,--“that he was, indeed, a fearful
nigromancer, who had much helped the earl in his emprise.” The earl’s
address to his guests in behalf both of Warner and Sibyll, the high
state accorded to the student, reached even the Sanctuary; for the
fugitives there easily contrived to learn all the gossip of the city.
Judge of the effect the tale produced upon the envious Bungey! judge of
the representations it enabled him to make to the credulous duchess! It
was clear now to Jacquetta as the sun in noonday that Warwick rewarded
the evil-predicting astrologer for much dark and secret service, which
Bungey, had she listened to him, might have frustrated; and she promised
the friar that, if ever again she had the power, Warner and the Eureka
should be placed at his sole mercy and discretion.

The friar himself, however, growing very weary of the dulness of the
Sanctuary, and covetous of the advantages enjoyed by Adam, began to
meditate acquiescence in the fashion of the day, and a transfer of his
allegiance to the party in power. Emboldened by the clemency of the
victors, learning that no rewards for his own apprehension had been
offered, hoping that the stout earl would forget or forgive the old
offence of the waxen effigies, and aware of the comparative security his
friar’s gown and cowl afforded him, he resolved one day to venture
forth from his retreat. He even flattered himself that he could cajole
Adam--whom he really believed the possessor of some high and weird
secrets, but whom otherwise he despised as a very weak creature--into
forgiving his past brutalities, and soliciting the earl to take him into
favour.

At dusk, then, and by the aid of one of the subalterns of the Tower,
whom he had formerly made his friend, the friar got admittance
into Warner’s chamber. Now it so chanced that Adam, having his own
superstitions, had lately taken it into his head that all the various
disasters which had befallen the Eureka, together with all the little
blemishes and defects that yet marred its construction, were owing to
the want of the diamond bathed in the mystic moonbeams, which his German
authority had long so emphatically prescribed; and now that a monthly
stipend far exceeding his wants was at his disposal, and that it became
him to do all possible honour to the earl’s patronage, he resolved that
the diamond should be no longer absent from the operations it was to
influence. He obtained one of passable size and sparkle, exposed it the
due number of nights to the new moon, and had already prepared its place
in the Eureka, and was contemplating it with solemn joy, when Bungey
entered.

“Mighty brother,” said the friar, bowing to the ground, “be merciful as
thou art strong! Verily thou hast proved thyself the magician, and I but
a poor wretch in comparison,--for lo! thou art rich and honoured, and I
poor and proscribed. Deign to forgive thine enemy, and take him as thy
slave by right of conquest. Oh, Cogsbones! oh, Gemini! what a jewel thou
hast got!”

“Depart! thou disturbest me,” said Adam, oblivious, in his absorption,
of the exact reasons for his repugnance, but feeling indistinctly that
something very loathsome and hateful was at his elbow; and, as he spoke,
he fitted the diamond into its socket.

“What! a jewel, a diamond--in the--in the--in the--MECHANICAL!” faltered
the friar, in profound astonishment, his mouth watering at the sight.
If the Eureka were to be envied before, how much more enviable now.
“If ever I get thee again, O ugly talisman,” he muttered to himself, “I
shall know where to look for something better than a pot to boil eggs.”

“Depart, I say!” repeated Adam, turning round at last, and shuddering as
he now clearly recognized the friar, and recalled his malignity. “Darest
thou molest me still?”

The friar abjectly fell on his knees, and, after a long exordium of
penitent excuses, entreated the scholar to intercede in his favour with
the earl.

“I want not all thy honours and advancement, great Adam, I want only to
serve thee, trim thy furnace, and hand thee thy tools, and work out my
apprenticeship under thee, master. As for the earl, he will listen to
thee, I know, if thou tellest him that I had the trust of his foe, the
duchess; that I can give him all her closest secrets; that I--”

“Avaunt! Thou art worse than I deemed thee, wretch! Cruel and ignorant I
knew thee,--and now mean and perfidious! I work with thee! I commend
to the earl a living disgrace to the name of scholar! Never! If thou
wantest bread and alms, those I can give, as a Christian gives to want;
but trust and honour, and learned repute and noble toils, those are not
for the impostor and the traitor. There, there, there!” And he ran to
the closet, took out a handful of small coins, thrust them into the
friar’s hands, and, pushing him to the door, called to the servants to
see his visitor to the gates. The friar turned round with a scowl. He
did not dare to utter a threat, but he vowed a vow in his soul, and went
his way.

It chanced, some days after this, that Adam, in one of his musing
rambles about the precincts of the Tower, which (since it was not
then inhabited as a palace) was all free to his rare and desultory
wanderings, came by some workmen employed in repairing a bombard; and as
whatever was of mechanical art always woke his interest, he paused, and
pointed out to them a very simple improvement which would necessarily
tend to make the balls go farther and more direct to their object. The
principal workman, struck with his remarks, ran to one of the officers
of the Tower; the officer came to listen to the learned man, and then
went to the earl of Warwick to declare that Master Warner had the most
wonderful comprehension of military mechanism. The earl sent for Warner,
seized at once upon the very simple truth he suggested as to the proper
width of the bore, and holding him in higher esteem than he had ever
done before, placed some new cannon he was constructing under his
superintendence. As this care occupied but little of his time, Warner
was glad to show gratitude to the earl, looking upon the destructive
engines as mechanical contrivances, and wholly unconscious of the new
terror he gave to his name.

Soon did the indignant and conscience-stricken Duchess of Bedford hear,
in the Sanctuary, that the fell wizard she had saved from the clutches
of Bungey was preparing the most dreadful, infallible, and murtherous
instruments of war against the possible return of her son-in-law!

Leaving Adam to his dreams, and his toils, and his horrible reputation,
we return to the world upon the surface,--the Life of Action.



CHAPTER II. THE PROSPERITY OF THE OUTER SHOW--THE CARES OF THE INNER
MAN.

The position of the king-maker was, to a superficial observer, such as
might gratify to the utmost the ambition and the pride of man. He had
driven from the land one of the most gorgeous princes and one of the
boldest warriors that ever sat upon a throne. He had changed a dynasty
without a blow. In the alliances of his daughters, whatever chanced, it
seemed certain that by one or the other his posterity would be the kings
of England.

The easiness of his victory appeared to prove of itself that the hearts
of the people were with him; and the parliament that he hastened to
summon confirmed by law the revolution achieved by a bloodless sword.
[Lingard, Hume, etc.]

Nor was there aught abroad which menaced disturbance to the peace at
home. Letters from the Countess of Warwick and Lady Anne announced their
triumphant entry at Paris, where Margaret of Anjou was received with
honours never before rendered but to a queen of France.

A solemn embassy, meanwhile, was preparing to proceed from Paris to
London to congratulate Henry, and establish a permanent treaty of peace
and commerce, [Rymer, xi., 682-690] while Charles of Burgundy himself
(the only ally left to Edward) supplicated for the continuance of
amicable relations with England, stating that they were formed with the
country, not with any special person who might wear the crown; [Hume,
Comines] and forbade his subjects by proclamation to join any enterprise
for the recovery of his throne which Edward might attempt.

The conduct of Warwick, whom the parliament had declared, conjointly
with Clarence, protector of the realm during the minority of the Prince
of Wales, was worthy of the triumph he had obtained. He exhibited now
a greater genius for government than he had yet displayed; for all
his passions were nerved to the utmost, to consummate his victory and
sharpen his faculties. He united mildness towards the defeated faction
with a firmness which repelled all attempt at insurrection. [Habington.]

In contrast to the splendour that surrounded his daughter Anne, all
accounts spoke of the humiliation to which Charles subjected the exiled
king; and in the Sanctuary, amidst homicides and felons, the wife of the
earl’s defeated foe gave birth to a male child, baptized and christened
(says the chronicler) “as the son of a common man.” For the Avenger and
his children were regal authority and gorgeous pomp, for the fugitive
and his offspring were the bread of the exile, or the refuge of the
outlaw.

But still the earl’s prosperity was hollow, the statue of brass stood on
limbs of clay. The position of a man with the name of subject, but the
authority of king, was an unpopular anomaly in England. In the principal
trading-towns had been long growing up that animosity towards the
aristocracy of which Henry VII. availed himself to raise a despotism
(and which, even in our day, causes the main disputes of faction); but
the recent revolution was one in which the towns had had no share.
It was a revolution made by the representative of the barons and his
followers. It was connected with no advancement of the middle class;
it seemed to the men of commerce but the violence of a turbulent and
disappointed nobility. The very name given to Warwick’s supporters was
unpopular in the towns. They were not called the Lancastrians, or the
friends of King Henry,--they were styled then, and still are so, by
the old chronicler, “The Lord’s Party.” Most of whatever was still
feudal--the haughtiest of the magnates, the rudest of the yeomanry,
the most warlike of the knights--gave to Warwick the sanction of their
allegiance; and this sanction was displeasing to the intelligence of the
towns.

Classes in all times have a keen instinct of their own class-interests.
The revolution which the earl had effected was the triumph of
aristocracy; its natural results would tend to strengthen certainly the
moral, and probably the constitutional, power already possessed by that
martial order. The new parliament was their creature, Henry VI. was a
cipher, his son a boy with unknown character, and according to vulgar
scandal, of doubtful legitimacy, seemingly bound hand and foot in the
trammels of the archbaron’s mighty House; the earl himself had never
scrupled to evince a distaste to the change in society which was slowly
converting an agricultural into a trading population.

It may be observed, too, that a middle class as rarely unites itself
with the idols of the populace as with the chiefs of a seignorie. The
brute attachment of the peasants and the mobs to the gorgeous and lavish
earl seemed to the burgesses the sign of a barbaric clanship, opposed
to that advance in civilization towards which they half unconsciously
struggled.

And here we must rapidly glance at what, as far as a statesman may
foresee, would have been the probable result of Warwick’s ascendancy,
if durable and effectual. If attached, by prejudice and birth, to the
aristocracy, he was yet by reputation and habit attached also to the
popular party,--that party more popular than the middle class,--the
majority, the masses. His whole life had been one struggle against
despotism in the crown. Though far from entertaining such schemes as
in similar circumstances might have occurred to the deep sagacity of
an Italian patrician for the interest of his order, no doubt his policy
would have tended to this one aim,--the limitation of the monarchy by
the strength of an aristocracy endeared to the agricultural population,
owing to that population its own powers of defence, with the wants
and grievances of that population thoroughly familiar, and willing to
satisfy the one and redress the other: in short, the great baron would
have secured and promoted liberty according to the notions of a seigneur
and a Norman, by making the king but the first nobleman of the realm.
Had the policy lasted long enough to succeed, the subsequent despotism,
which changed a limited into an absolute monarchy under the Tudors,
would have been prevented, with all the sanguinary reaction in which
the Stuarts were the sufferers. The earl’s family, and his own “large
father-like heart,” had ever been opposed to religious persecution; and
timely toleration to the Lollards might have prevented the long-delayed
revenge of their posterity, the Puritans. Gradually, perhaps, might
the system he represented (of the whole consequences of which he was
unconscious) have changed monarchic into aristocratic government,
resting, however, upon broad and popular institutions; but no doubt,
also, the middle, or rather the commercial class, with all the blessings
that attend their power, would have risen much more slowly than
when made as they were already, partially under Edward IV., and more
systematically under Henry VIL, the instrument for destroying feudal
aristocracy, and thereby establishing for a long and fearful interval
the arbitrary rule of the single tyrant. Warwick’s dislike to the
commercial biases of Edward was, in fact, not a patrician prejudice
alone. It required no great sagacity to perceive that Edward had
designed to raise up a class that, though powerful when employed against
the barons, would long be impotent against the encroachments of the
crown; and the earl viewed that class not only as foes to his own order,
but as tools for the destruction of the ancient liberties.

Without presuming to decide which policy, upon the whole, would have
been the happier for England,--the one that based a despotism on the
middle class, or the one that founded an aristocracy upon popular
affection,--it was clear to the more enlightened burgesses of the
great towns, that between Edward of York and the Earl of Warwick a vast
principle was at stake, and the commercial king seemed to them a more
natural ally than the feudal baron; and equally clear it is to us, now,
that the true spirit of the age fought for the false Edward, and against
the honest earl.

Warwick did not, however, apprehend any serious results from the passive
distaste of the trading towns. His martial spirit led him to despise the
least martial part of the population. He knew that the towns would not
rise in arms so long as their charters were respected; and that slow,
undermining hostility which exists only in opinion, his intellect, so
vigorous in immediate dangers, was not far-sighted enough to comprehend.
More direct cause for apprehension would there have been to a suspicious
mind in the demeanour of the earl’s colleague in the Protectorate,--the
Duke of Clarence. It was obviously Warwick’s policy to satisfy this weak
but ambitious person. The duke was, as before agreed, declared heir
to the vast possessions of the House of York. He was invested with the
Lieutenancy of Ireland, but delayed his departure to his government till
the arrival of the Prince of Wales. The personal honours accorded him in
the mean while were those due to a sovereign; but still the duke’s brow
was moody, though, if the earl noticed it, Clarence rallied into seeming
cheerfulness, and reiterated pledges of faith and friendship.

The manner of Isabel to her father was varying and uncertain: at one
time hard and cold; at another, as if in the reaction of secret remorse,
she would throw herself into his arms, and pray him, weepingly, to
forgive her wayward humours. But the curse of the earl’s position was
that which he had foreseen before quitting Amboise, and which, more or
less, attends upon those who from whatever cause suddenly desert the
party with which all their associations, whether of fame or friendship,
have been interwoven. His vengeance against one had comprehended many
still dear to him. He was not only separated from his old companions in
arms, but he had driven their most eminent into exile. He stood
alone amongst men whom the habits of an active life had indissolubly
connected, in his mind, with recollections of wrath and wrong. Amidst
that princely company which begirt him, he hailed no familiar face.
Even many of those who most detested Edward (or rather the Woodvilles)
recoiled from so startling a desertion to the Lancastrian foe. It was a
heavy blow to a heart already bruised and sore, when the fiery Raoul de
Fulke, who had so idolized Warwick, that, despite his own high lineage,
he had worn his badge upon his breast, sought him at the dead of night,
and thus said,--

“Lord of Salisbury and Warwick, I once offered to serve thee as a
vassal, if thou wouldst wrestle with lewd Edward for the crown which
only a manly brow should wear; and hadst thou now returned, as Henry
of Lancaster returned of old, to gripe the sceptre of the Norman with a
conqueror’s hand, I had been the first to cry, ‘Long live King Richard,
namesake and emulator of Coeur de Lion!’ But to place upon the throne
yon monk-puppet, and to call on brave hearts to worship a patterer of
aves and a counter of beads; to fix the succession of England in
the adulterous offspring of Margaret, the butcher-harlot [One of the
greatest obstacles to the cause of the Red Rose was the popular belief
that the young prince was not Henry’s son. Had that belief not been
widely spread and firmly maintained, the lords who arbitrated between
Henry VI. and Richard Duke of York, in October, 1460, could scarcely
have come to the resolution to set aside the Prince of Wales altogether,
to accord Henry the crown for his life, and declare the Duke of York his
heir. Ten years previously (in November, 1450), before the young
prince was born or thought of, and the proposition was really just and
reasonable, it was moved in the House of Commons to declare Richard Duke
of York next heir to Henry; which, at least, by birthright, he certainly
was; but the motion met with little favour and the mover was sent to
the Tower.]; to give the power of the realm to the men against whom thou
thyself hast often led me to strive with lance and battle-axe, is to
open a path which leads but to dishonour, and thither Raoul de Fulke
follows not even the steps of the Lord of Warwick. Interrupt me not!
speak not! As thou to Edward, so I now to thee, forswear allegiance, and
I bid thee farewell forever!”

“I pardon thee,” answered Warwick; “and if ever thou art wronged as I
have been, thy heart will avenge me. Go!” But when this haughty visitor
was gone, the earl covered his face with his hands, and groaned aloud.
A defection perhaps even more severely felt came next. Katherine de
Bonville had been the earl’s favourite sister; he wrote to her at the
convent to which she had retired, praying her affectionately to come to
London, “and cheer his vexed spirit, and learn the true cause, not to
be told by letter, which had moved him to things once farthest from his
thought.” The messenger came back, the letter unopened; for Katherine
had left the convent, and fled into Burgundy, distrustful, as it seemed
to Warwick, of her own brother. The nature of this lion-hearted man was,
as we have seen, singularly kindly, frank, and affectionate; and now
in the most critical, the most anxious, the most tortured period of his
life, confidence and affection were forbidden to him. What had he not
given for one hour of the soothing company of his wife, the only being
in the world to whom his pride could have communicated the grief of his
heart, or the doubts of his conscience! Alas! never on earth should he
hear that soft voice again! Anne, too, the gentle, childlike Anne, was
afar; but she was happy,--a basker in the brief sunshine, and blind to
the darkening clouds. His elder child, with her changeful moods, added
but to his disquiet and unhappiness. Next to Edward, Warwick of all
the House of York had loved Clarence, though a closer and more domestic
intimacy had weakened the affection by lessening the esteem. But looking
further into the future, he now saw in this alliance the seeds of many
a rankling sorrow. The nearer Anne and her spouse to power and fame,
the more bitter the jealousy of Clarence and his wife. Thus, in the very
connections which seemed most to strengthen his House, lay all which
must destroy the hallowed unity and peace of family and home.

The Archbishop of York had prudently taken no part whatever in the
measures that had changed the dynasty. He came now to reap the
fruits; did homage to Henry VI., received the Chancellor’s seals, and
recommenced intrigues for the Cardinal’s hat. But between the bold
warrior and the wily priest there could be but little of the endearment
of brotherly confidence and love. With Montagu alone could the earl
confer in cordiality and unreserve; and their similar position, and
certain points of agreement in their characters, now more clearly
brought out and manifest, served to make their friendship for each other
firmer and more tender, in the estrangement of all other ties, than ever
it had been before. But the marquis was soon compelled to depart from
London, to his post as warden of the northern marches; for Warwick had
not the rash presumption of Edward, and neglected no precaution against
the return of the dethroned king.

So there, alone, in pomp and in power, vengeance consummated, ambition
gratified, but love denied; with an aching heart and a fearless front;
amidst old foes made prosperous, and old friends alienated and ruined,
stood the king-maker! and, day by day, the untimely streaks of gray
showed more and more amidst the raven curls of the strong man.



CHAPTER III. FURTHER VIEWS INTO THE HEART OF MAN, AND THE CONDITIONS OF
POWER.

But woe to any man who is called to power with exaggerated expectations
of his ability to do good! Woe to the man whom the populace have
esteemed a popular champion, and who is suddenly made the guardian of
law! The Commons of England had not bewailed the exile of the good
earl simply for love of his groaning table and admiration of his huge
battle-axe,--it was not merely either in pity, or from fame, that his
“name had sounded in every song,” and that, to use the strong expression
of the chronicler, the people “judged that the sun was clearly taken
from the world when he was absent.”

They knew him as one who had ever sought to correct the abuses of power,
to repair the wrongs of the poor; who even in war had forbidden his
knights to slay the common men. He was regarded, therefore, as a
reformer; and wonderful indeed were the things, proportioned to his
fame and his popularity, which he was expected to accomplish; and his
thorough knowledge of the English character, and experience of every
class,--especially the lowest as the highest,--conjoined with the vigour
of his robust understanding, unquestionably enabled him from the very
first to put a stop to the lawless violences which had disgraced the
rule of Edward. The infamous spoliations of the royal purveyors ceased;
the robber-like excesses of the ruder barons and gentry were severely
punished; the country felt that a strong hand held the reins of power.
But what is justice when men ask miracles? The peasant and mechanic were
astonished that wages were not doubled, that bread was not to be had for
asking, that the disparities of life remained the same,--the rich still
rich, the poor still poor. In the first days of the revolution, Sir
Geoffrey Gates, the freebooter, little comprehending the earl’s merciful
policy, and anxious naturally to turn a victory into its accustomed
fruit of rapine and pillage, placed himself at the head of an armed mob,
marched from Kent to the suburbs of London, and, joined by some of the
miscreants from the different Sanctuaries, burned and pillaged, ravished
and slew. The earl quelled this insurrection with spirit and ease;
[Hall, Habington] and great was the praise he received thereby. But
all-pervading is the sympathy the poor feel for the poor. And when even
the refuse of the populace once felt the sword of Warwick, some portion
of the popular enthusiasm must have silently deserted him.

Robert Hilyard, who had borne so large a share in the restoration of the
Lancastrians, now fixed his home in the metropolis; and anxious as
ever to turn the current to the popular profit, he saw with rage and
disappointment that as yet no party but the nobles had really triumphed.
He had longed to achieve a revolution that might be called the People’s;
and he had abetted one that was called “the Lord’s doing.” The affection
he had felt for Warwick arose principally from his regarding him as an
instrument to prepare society for the more democratic changes he panted
to effect; and, lo! he himself had been the instrument to strengthen the
aristocracy. Society resettled after the storm, the noble retained his
armies, the demagogue had lost his mobs! Although through England were
scattered the principles which were ultimately to destroy feudalism,
to humble the fierce barons into silken lords, to reform the Church,
to ripen into a commonwealth through the representative system,--the
principles were but in the germ; and when Hilyard mingled with the
traders or the artisans of London, and sought to form a party which
might comprehend something of steady policy and definite object, he
found himself regarded as a visionary fanatic by some, as a dangerous
dare-devil by the rest. Strange to say, Warwick was the only man who
listened to him with attention; the man behind the age and the man
before the age ever have some inch of ground in common both desired to
increase liberty; both honestly and ardently loved the masses; but each
in the spirit of his order,--Warwick defended freedom as against the
throne, Hilyard as against the barons. Still, notwithstanding their
differences, each was so convinced of the integrity of the other,--that
it wanted only a foe in the field to unite them as before. The natural
ally of the popular baron was the leader of the populace.

Some minor, but still serious, griefs added to the embarrassment of the
earl’s position. Margaret’s jealousy had bound him to defer all rewards
to lords and others, and encumbered with a provisional council all great
acts of government, all grants of offices, lands, or benefits. [Sharon
Turner] And who knows not the expectations of men after a successful
revolution? The royal exchequer was so empty that even the ordinary
household was suspended; [See Ellis: Original Letters from Harleian
Manuscripts, second series, vol. i., letter 42.] and as ready money was
then prodigiously scarce, the mighty revenues of Warwick barely sufficed
to pay the expenses of the expedition which, at his own cost, had
restored the Lancastrian line. Hard position, both to generosity and to
prudence, to put off and apologize to just claims and valiant service!

With intense, wearying, tortured anxiety, did the earl await the coming
of Margaret and her son. The conditions imposed on him in their absence
crippled all his resources. Several even of the Lancastrian nobles held
aloof, while they saw no authority but Warwick’s. Above all, he relied
upon the effect that the young Prince of Wales’s presence, his beauty,
his graciousness, his frank spirit--mild as his fathers, bold as his
grandsire’s--would create upon all that inert and neutral mass of the
public, the affection of which, once gained, makes the solid strength
of a government. The very appearance of that prince would at once dispel
the slander on his birth. His resemblance to his heroic grandfather
would suffice to win him all the hearts by which, in absence, he was
regarded as a stranger, a dubious alien. How often did the earl groan
forth, “If the prince were but here, all were won!” Henry was worse than
a cipher,--he was an eternal embarrassment. His good intentions, his
scrupulous piety, made him ever ready to interfere. The Church had got
hold of him already, and prompted him to issue proclamations against
the disguised Lollards, which would have lost him at one stroke half his
subjects. This Warwick prevented, to the great discontent of the honest
prince. The moment required all the prestige that an imposing presence
and a splendid court could bestow. And Henry, glad of the poverty of his
exchequer, deemed it a sin to make a parade of earthly glory. “Heaven
will punish me again,” said he, meekly, “if, just delivered from a
dungeon, I gild my unworthy self with all the vanities of perishable
power.”

There was not a department which the chill of this poor king’s virtue
did not somewhat benumb. The gay youths, who had revelled in the
alluring court of Edward IV., heard, with disdainful mockery, the grave
lectures of Henry on the length of their lovelocks and the beakers
of their shoes. The brave warriors presented to him for praise were
entertained with homilies on the guilt of war. Even poor Adam was
molested and invaded by Henry’s pious apprehensions that he was seeking,
by vain knowledge, to be superior to the will of Providence.

Yet, albeit perpetually irritating and chafing the impetuous spirit of
the earl, the earl, strange to say, loved the king more and more. This
perfect innocence, this absence from guile and self-seeking, in the
midst of an age never excelled for fraud, falsehood, and selfish
simulation, moved Warwick’s admiration as well as pity. Whatever
contrasted Edward IV. had a charm for him. He schooled his hot temper,
and softened his deep voice, in that holy presence; and the intimate
persuasion of the hollowness of all worldly greatness, which worldly
greatness itself had forced upon the earl’s mind, made something
congenial between the meek saint and the fiery warrior. For the
hundredth time groaned Warwick, as he quitted Henry’s presence,--

“Would that my gallant son-in-law were come! His spirit will soon learn
how to govern; then Warwick may be needed no more! I am weary, sore
weary of the task of ruling men!”

“Holy Saint Thomas!” bluntly exclaimed Marmaduke, to whom these sad
words were said,--“whenever you visit the king you come back--pardon me,
my lord--half unmanned. He would make a monk of you!”

“Ah,” said Warwick, thoughtfully, “there have been greater marvels than
that. Our boldest fathers often died the meekest shavelings. An’ I had
ruled this realm as long as Henry,--nay, an’ this same life I lead now
were to continue two years, with its broil and fever,--I could well
conceive the sweetness of the cloister and repose. How sets the wind?
Against them still! against them still! I cannot bear this suspense!”

The winds had ever seemed malignant to Margaret of Anjou, but never more
than now. So long a continuance of stormy and adverse weather was never
known in the memory of man; and we believe that it has scarcely its
parallel in history.

The earl’s promise to restore King Henry was fulfilled in October. From
November to the following April, Margaret, with the young and royal
pair, and the Countess of Warwick, lay at the seaside, waiting for
a wind. [Fabyan, 502.] Thrice, in defiance of all warnings from the
mariners of Harfleur, did she put to sea, and thrice was she driven back
on the coast of Normandy, her ships much damaged. Her friends protested
that this malice of the elements was caused by sorcery, [Hall, Warkworth
Chronicle]--a belief which gained ground in England, exhilarated the
Duchess of Bedford, and gave new fame to Bungey, who arrogated all
the merit, and whose weather wisdom, indeed, had here borne out his
predictions. Many besought Margaret not to tempt Providence, not to
trust the sea; but the queen was firm to her purpose, and her son
laughed at omens,--yet still the vessels could only leave the harbour to
be driven back upon the land.

Day after day the first question of Warwick, when the sun rose, was,
“How sets the wind?” Night after night, ere he retired to rest, “Ill
sets the wind!” sighed the earl. The gales that forbade the coming of
the royal party sped to the unwilling lingerers courier after courier,
envoy after envoy; and at length Warwick, unable to bear the sickening
suspense at distance, went himself to Dover [Hall], and from its white
cliffs looked, hour by hour, for the sails which were to bear “Lancaster
and its fortunes.” The actual watch grew more intolerable than the
distant expectation, and the earl sorrowfully departed to his castle
of Warwick, at which Isabel and Clarence then were. Alas! where the old
smile of home?



CHAPTER IV. THE RETURN OF EDWARD OF YORK.

And the winds still blew, and the storm was on the tide, and Margaret
came not when, in the gusty month of March, the fishermen of the Humber
beheld a single ship, without flag or pennon, and sorely stripped and
rivelled by adverse blasts, gallantly struggling towards the shore. The
vessel was not of English build, and resembled in its bulk and fashion
those employed by the Easterlings in their trade, half merchantman, half
war-ship.

The villagers of Ravenspur,--the creek of which the vessel now rapidly
made to,--imagining that it was some trading craft in distress, grouped
round the banks, and some put out their boats: But the vessel held on
its way, and, as the water was swelled by the tide, and unusually deep,
silently cast anchor close ashore, a quarter of a mile from the crowd.

The first who leaped on land was a knight of lofty stature, and in
complete armour richly inlaid with gold arabesques. To him succeeded
another, also in mail, and, though well guilt and fair proportioned, of
less imposing presence. And then, one by one, the womb of the dark ship
gave forth a number of armed soldiers, infinitely larger than it could
have been supposed to contain, till the knight who first landed stood
the centre of a group of five hundred men. Then were lowered from the
vessel, barbed and caparisoned, some five score horses; and, finally,
the sailors and rowers, armed but with steel caps and short swords, came
on shore, till not a man was left on board.

“Now praise,” said the chief knight, “to God and Saint George that we
have escaped the water! and not with invisible winds but with bodily
foes must our war be waged.”

“Beau sire,” cried one knight, who had debarked immediately after the
speaker, and who seemed, from his bearing and equipment, of higher rank
than those that followed, “beau sire, this is a slight army to reconquer
a king’s realm! Pray Heaven that our bold companions have also escaped
the deep!”

“Why, verily, we are not eno’ at the best, to spare one man,” said the
chief knight, gayly, “but, lo! we are not without welcomers.” And he
pointed to the crowd of villagers who now slowly neared the warlike
group, but halting at a little distance, continued to gaze at them in
some anxiety and alarm.

“Ho there! good fellows!” cried the leader, striding towards the throng,
“what name give you to this village?”

“Ravenspur, please your worship,” answered one of the peasants.

“Ravenspur, hear you that, lords and friends? Accept the omen! On this
spot landed from exile Henry of Bolingbroke, known afterwards in our
annals as King Henry IV.! Bare is the soil of corn and of trees,--it
disdains meaner fruit; it grows kings! Hark!” The sound of a bugle was
heard at a little distance, and in a few moments a troop of about a
hundred men were seen rising above an undulation in the ground, and
as the two bands recognized each other, a shout of joy was given and
returned.

As this new reinforcement advanced, the peasantry and fishermen,
attracted by curiosity and encouraged by the peaceable demeanour of the
debarkers, drew nearer, and mingled with the first comers.

“What manner of men be ye, and what want ye?” asked one of the
bystanders, who seemed of better nurturing than the rest, and who,
indeed, was a small franklin.

No answer was returned by those he more immediately addressed; but the
chief knight heard the question, and suddenly unbuckling his helmet,
and giving it to one of those beside him, he turned to the crowd a
countenance of singular beauty at once animated and majestic, and said
in a loud voice, “We are Englishmen, like you, and we come here to claim
our rights. Ye seem tall fellows and honest.--Standard bearer, unfurl
our flag!” And as the ensign suddenly displayed the device of a sun in
a field azure, the chief continued, “March under this banner, and for
every day ye serve, ye shall have a month’s hire.”

“Marry!” quoth the franklin, with a suspicious, sinister look, “these
be big words. And who are you, Sir Knight, who would levy men in King
Henry’s kingdom?”

“Your knees, fellows!” cried the second knight. “Behold your true liege
and suzerain, Edward IV.! Long live King Edward!”

The soldiers caught up the cry, and it was re-echoed lustily by the
smaller detachment that now reached the spot; but no answer came from
the crowd. They looked at each other in dismay, and retreated rapidly
from their place amongst the troops. In fact, the whole of the
neighbouring district was devoted to Warwick, and many of the peasantry
about had joined the former rising under Sir John Coniers. The franklin
alone retreated not with the rest; he was a bluff, plain, bold fellow,
with good English blood in his veins. And when the shout ceased, he said
shortly, “We hereabouts know no king but King Henry. We fear you would
impose upon us. We cannot believe that a great lord like him you call
Edward IV. would land with a handful of men to encounter the armies of
Lord Warwick. We forewarn you to get into your ship and go back as fast
as ye came, for the stomach of England is sick of brawls and blows; and
what ye devise is treason!”

Forth from the new detachment stepped a youth of small stature, not in
armour, and with many a weather-stain on his gorgeous dress. He laid his
hand upon the franklin’s shoulder. “Honest and plain-dealing fellow,”
 said he, “you are right: pardon the foolish outburst of these brave men,
who cannot forget as yet that their chief has worn the crown. We come
back not to disturb this realm, nor to effect aught against King Henry,
whom the saints have favoured. No, by Saint Paul, we come but back to
claim our lands unjustly forfeit. My noble brother here is not king of
England, since the people will it not, but he is Duke of York, and he
will be contented if assured of the style and lands our father left him.
For me, called Richard of Gloucester, I ask nothing but leave to spend
my manhood where I have spent my youth, under the eyes of my renowned
godfather, Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick. So report of us. Whither
leads yon road?”

“To York,” said the franklin, softened, despite his judgment, by the
irresistible suavity of the voice that addressed him.

“Thither will we go, my lord duke and brother, with your leave,” said
Prince Richard, “peaceably and as petitioners. God save ye, friends and
countrymen, pray for us, that King Henry and the parliament may do us
justice. We are not over rich now, but better times may come. Largess!”
 and filling both hands with coins from his gipsire, he tossed the bounty
among the peasants.

“Mille tonnere! What means he with this humble talk of King Henry and
the parliament?” whispered Edward to the Lord Say, while the crowd
scrambled for the largess, and Richard smilingly mingled amongst them,
and conferred with the franklin.

“Let him alone, I pray you, my liege; I guess his wise design. And now
for our ships. What orders for the master?”

“For the other vessels, let them sail or anchor as they list. But
for the bark that has borne Edward king of England to the land of his
ancestors there is no return!”

The royal adventurer then beckoned the Flemish master of the ship, who,
with every sailor aboard, had debarked, and the loose dresses of the
mariners made a strong contrast to the mail of the warriors with whom
they mingled.

“Friend,” said Edward, in French, “thou hast said that thou wilt share
my fortunes, and that thy good fellows are no less free of courage and
leal in trust.”

“It is so, sire. Not a man who has gazed on thy face, and heard thy
voice, but longs to serve one on whose brow Nature has written king.”

“And trust me,” said Edward, “no prince of my blood shall be dearer to
me than you and yours, my friends in danger and in need. And sith it
be so, the ship that hath borne such hearts and such hopes should, in
sooth, know no meaner freight. Is all prepared?”

“Yes, sire, as you ordered. The train is laid for the brennen.”

“Up, then, with the fiery signal, and let it tell, from cliff to
cliff, from town to town, that Edward the Plantagenet, once returned to
England, leaves it but for the grave!”

The master bowed, and smiled grimly. The sailors, who had been prepared
for the burning, arranged before between the master and the prince, and
whose careless hearts Edward had thoroughly won to his person and his
cause, followed the former towards the ship, and stood silently grouped
around the shore. The soldiers, less informed, gazed idly on, and
Richard now regained Edward’s side.

“Reflect,” he said, as he drew him apart, “that, when on this spot
landed Henry of Bolingbroke, he gave not out that he was marching to the
throne of Richard II. He professed but to claim his duchy,--and men were
influenced by justice, till they became agents of ambition. This be
your policy; with two thousand men you are but Duke of York; with ten
thousand men you are King of England! In passing hither, I met with
many, and sounding the temper of the district, I find it not ripe to
share your hazard. The world soon ripens when it hath to hail success!”

“O young boy’s smooth face! O old man’s deep brain!” said Edward,
admiringly, “what a king hadst thou made!” A sudden flush passed over
the prince’s pale cheek, and, ere it died away, a flaming torch was
hurled aloft in the air; it fell whirling into the ship--a moment, and a
loud crash; a moment, and a mighty blaze! Up sprung from the deck, along
the sails, the sheeted fire,--

    “A giant beard of flame.”  [Aeschylus: Agamemnon, 314]

It reddened the coast, the skies, from far and near; it glowed on the
faces and the steel of the scanty army; it was seen, miles away, by the
warders of many a castle manned with the troops of Lancaster; it brought
the steed from the stall, the courier to the selle; it sped, as of old
the beacon fire that announced to Clytemnestra the return of the Argive
king. From post to post rode the fiery news, till it reached Lord
Warwick in his hall, King Henry in his palace, Elizabeth in her
sanctuary. The iron step of the dauntless Edward was once more pressed
upon the soil of England.



CHAPTER V. THE PROGRESS OF THE PLANTAGENET.

A few words suffice to explain the formidable arrival we have just
announced. Though the Duke of Burgundy had by public proclamation
forbidden his subjects to aid the exiled Edward, yet, whether moved
by the entreaties of his wife, or wearied by the remonstrances of his
brother-in-law, he at length privately gave the dethroned monarch fifty
thousand florins to find troops for himself, and secretly hired Flemish
and Dutch vessels to convey him to England. [Comines, Hall, Lingard, S.
Turner] But so small was the force to which the bold Edward trusted his
fortunes, that it almost seemed as if Burgundy sent him forth to his
destruction. He sailed from the coast of Zealand; the winds, if less
unmanageable than those that blew off the seaport where Margaret and her
armament awaited a favouring breeze, were still adverse. Scared from the
coast of Norfolk by the vigilance of Warwick and Oxford, who had filled
that district with armed men, storm and tempest drove him at last to
Humber Head, where we have seen him land, and whence we pursue his
steps.

The little band set out upon its march, and halted for the night at a
small village two miles inland. Some of the men were then sent out on
horseback for news of the other vessels, that bore the remnant of the
invading force. These had, fortunately, effected a landing in various
places; and, before daybreak, Anthony Woodville, and the rest of the
troops, had joined the leader of an enterprise that seemed but the
rashness of despair, for its utmost force, including the few sailors
allured to the adventurer’s standard, was about two thousand men.
[Fifteen hundred, according to the Croyland historian.] Close and
anxious was the consultation then held. Each of the several detachments
reported alike of the sullen indifference of the population, which
each had sought to excite in favour of Edward. Light riders [Hall]
were despatched in various directions, still further to sound the
neighbourhood. All returned ere noon, some bruised and maltreated by the
stones and staves of the rustics, and not a voice had been heard to echo
the cry, “Long live King Edward!” The profound sagacity of Gloucester’s
guileful counsel was then unanimously recognized. Richard despatched a
secret letter to Clarence; and it was resolved immediately to proceed
to York, and to publish everywhere along the road that the fugitive had
returned but to claim his private heritage, and remonstrate with the
parliament which had awarded the duchy of York to Clarence, his younger
brother.

“Such a power,” saith the Chronicle, “hath justice ever among men, that
all, moved by mercy or compassion, began either to favour or not
to resist him.” And so, wearing the Lancastrian Prince of Wales’s
cognizance of the ostrich feather, crying out as they marched, “Long
live King Henry!” the hardy liars, four days after their debarkation,
arrived at the gates of York.

Here, not till after much delay and negotiation, Edward was admitted
only as Duke of York, and upon condition that he would swear to be a
faithful and loyal servant to King Henry; and at the gate by which he
was to enter, Edward actually took that oath, “a priest being by to
say Mass in the Mass tyme, receiving the body of our blessed Saviour!”
 [Hall.]

Edward tarried not long in York; he pushed forward. Two great nobles
guarded those districts,--Montagu and the Earl of Northumberland, to
whom Edward had restored his lands and titles, and who, on condition of
retaining them, had re-entered the service of Lancaster. This last, a
true server of the times, who had sided with all parties, now judged it
discreet to remain neutral. [This is the most favourable interpretation
of his conduct: according to some he was in correspondence with Edward,
who showed his letters.] But Edward must pass within a few miles of
Pontefract castle, where Montagu lay with a force that could destroy him
at a blow. Edward was prepared for the assault, but trusted to deceive
the marquis, as he had deceived the citizens of York,--the more for the
strong personal love Montagu had ever shown him. If not, he was prepared
equally to die in the field rather than eat again the bitter bread of
the exile. But to his inconceivable joy and astonishment, Montagu,
like Northumberland, lay idle and supine. Edward and his little troop
threaded safely the formidable pass. Alas! Montagu had that day received
a formal order from the Duke of Clarence, as co-protector of the realm,
[Our historians have puzzled their brains in ingenious conjectures
of the cause of Montagu’s fatal supineness at this juncture, and have
passed over the only probable solution of the mystery, which is to be
found simply enough stated thus in Stowe’s Chronicle: “The Marquess
Montacute would have fought with King Edward, but that he had received
letters from the Duke of Clarence that he should not fight till hee
came.” This explanation is borne out by the Warkworth Chronicler and
others, who, in an evident mistake of the person addressed, state that
Clarence wrote word to Warwick not to fight till he came. Clarence could
not have written so to Warwick, who, according to all authorities, was
mustering his troops near London, and not in the way to fight Edward;
nor could Clarence have had authority to issue such commands to his
colleague, nor would his colleague have attended to them, since we have
the amplest testimony that Warwick was urging all his captains to attack
Edward at once. The duke’s order was, therefore, clearly addressed to
Montagu.] to suffer Edward to march on, provided his force was small,
and he had taken the oaths to Henry, and assumed but the title of Duke
of York,--“for your brother the earl hath had compunctious visitings,
and would fain forgive what hath passed, for my father’s sake, and unite
all factions by Edward’s voluntary abdication of the throne; at all
hazards, I am on my way northward, and you will not fight till I come.”
 The marquis,--who knew the conscientious doubts which Warwick had
entertained in his darker hours, who had no right to disobey the
co-protector, who knew no reason to suspect Lord Warwick’s son-in-law,
and who, moreover, was by no means anxious to be, himself, the
executioner of Edward, whom he had once so truly loved,--though a little
marvelling at Warwick’s softness, yet did not discredit the letter, and
the less regarded the free passage he left to the returned exiles, from
contempt for the smallness of their numbers, and his persuasion that
if the earl saw fit to alter his counsels, Edward was still more in his
power the farther he advanced amidst a hostile population, and towards
the armies which the Lords Exeter and Oxford were already mustering.

But that free passage was everything to Edward! It made men think that
Montagu, as well as Northumberland, favoured his enterprise; that
the hazard was less rash and hopeless than it had seemed; that Edward
counted upon finding his most powerful allies among those falsely
supposed to be his enemies. The popularity Edward had artfully acquired
amongst the captains of Warwick’s own troops, on the march to Middleham,
now bestead him. Many of them were knights and gentlemen residing in the
very districts through which he passed. They did not join him, but they
did not oppose. Then rapidly flocked to “the Sun of York,” first the
adventurers and condottieri who in civil war adopt any side for pay;
next came the disappointed, the ambitious, and the needy. The hesitating
began to resolve, the neutral to take a part. From the state of
petitioners supplicating a pardon, every league the Yorkists marched
advanced them to the dignity of assertors of a cause. Doncaster first,
then Nottingham, then Leicester,--true to the town spirit we have before
described,--opened their gates to the trader prince.

Oxford and Exeter reached Newark with their force. Edward marched on
them at once. Deceived as to his numbers, they took panic and fled.
When once the foe flies, friends ever start up from the very earth!
Hereditary partisans--gentlemen, knights, and nobles--now flocked fast
round the adventurer. Then came Lovell and Cromwell and D’Eyncourt, ever
true to York; and Stanley, never true to any cause. Then came the brave
knights Parr and Norris and De Burgh; and no less than three thousand
retainers belonging to Lord Hastings--the new man--obeyed the summons of
his couriers and joined their chief at Leicester.

Edward of March, who had landed at Ravenspur with a handful of brigands,
now saw a king’s army under his banner. [The perplexity and confusion
which involve the annals of this period may be guessed by this,--that
two historians, eminent for research (Lingard and Sharon Turner), differ
so widely as to the numbers who had now joined Edward, that Lingard
asserts that at Nottingham he was at the head of fifty or sixty thousand
men; and Turner gives him, at the most, between six and seven thousand.
The latter seems nearer to the truth. We must here regret that Turner’s
partiality to the House of York induces him to slur over Edward’s
detestable perjury at York, and to accumulate all rhetorical arts to
command admiration for his progress,--to the prejudice of the salutary
moral horror we ought to feel for the atrocious perfidy and violation
of oath to which he owed the first impunity that secured the after
triumph.] Then the audacious perjurer threw away the mask; then, forth
went--not the prayer of the attainted Duke of York--but the proclamation
of the indignant king. England now beheld two sovereigns, equal in their
armies. It was no longer a rebellion to be crushed; it was a dynasty to
be decided.



CHAPTER VI. LORD WARWICK, WITH THE FOE IN THE FIELD AND THE TRAITOR AT
THE HEARTH.

Every precaution which human wisdom could foresee had Lord Warwick taken
to guard against invasion, or to crush it at the onset. [Hall.] All the
coasts on which it was most probable Edward would land had been strongly
guarded. And if the Humber had been left without regular troops, it was
because prudence might calculate that the very spot where Edward did
land was the very last he would have selected,--unless guided by fate to
his destruction,--in the midst of an unfriendly population, and in face
of the armies of Northumberland and of Montagu. The moment the earl
heard of Edward’s reception at York,--far from the weakness which the
false Clarence (already in correspondence with Gloucester) imputed to
him,--he despatched to Montagu, by Marmaduke Nevile, peremptory orders
to intercept Edward’s path, and give him battle before he could advance
farther towards the centre of the island. We shall explain presently why
this messenger did not reach the marquis. But Clarence was some hours
before him in his intelligence and his measures.

When the earl next heard that Edward had passed Pontefract with
impunity, and had reached Doncaster, he flew first to London, to arrange
for its defence; consigned the care of Henry to the Archbishop of
York, mustered a force already quartered in the neighbourhood of the
metropolis, and then marched rapidly back towards Coventry, where he
had left Clarence with seven thousand men; while he despatched new
messengers to Montagu and Northumberland, severely rebuking the former
for his supineness, and ordering him to march in all haste to attack
Edward in the rear. The earl’s activity, promptitude, all-provident
generalship, form a mournful contrast to the errors, the pusillanimity,
and the treachery of others, which hitherto, as we have seen, made all
his wisest schemes abortive. Despite Clarence’s sullenness, Warwick had
discovered no reason, as yet, to doubt his good faith. The oath he had
taken--not only to Henry in London, but to Warwick at Amboise--had been
the strongest which can bind man to man. If the duke had not gained all
he had hoped, he had still much to lose and much to dread by desertion
to Edward. He had been the loudest in bold assertions when he heard of
the invasion; and above all, Isabel, whose influence over Clarence
at that time the earl overrated, had, at the tidings of so imminent a
danger to her father, forgot all her displeasure and recovered all her
tenderness.

During Warwick’s brief absence, Isabel had indeed exerted her utmost
power to repair her former wrongs, and induce Clarence to be faithful to
his oath. Although her inconsistency and irresolution had much weakened
her influence with the duke, for natures like his are governed but
by the ascendancy of a steady and tranquil will, yet still she so far
prevailed, that the duke had despatched to Richard a secret courier,
informing him that he had finally resolved not to desert his
father-in-law.

This letter reached Gloucester as the invaders were on their march to
Coventry, before the strong walls of which the Duke of Clarence lay
encamped. Richard, after some intent and silent reflection, beckoned to
him his familiar Catesby.

“Marmaduke Nevile, whom our scouts seized on his way to Pontefract, is
safe, and in the rear?”

“Yes, my lord; prisoners but encumber us; shall I give orders to the
provost to end his captivity?”

“Ever ready, Catesby!” said the duke, with a fell smile. “No; hark ye,
Clarence vacillates. If he hold firm to Warwick, and the two forces
fight honestly against us, we are lost; on the other hand, if Clarence
join us, his defection will bring not only the men he commands, all of
whom are the retainers of the York lands and duchy, and therefore free
from peculiar bias to the earl, and easily lured back to their proper
chief; but it will set an example that will create such distrust and
panic amongst the enemy, and give such hope of fresh desertions to our
own men, as will open to us the keys of the metropolis. But Clarence,
I say, vacillates; look you, here is his letter from Amboise to King
Edward; see, his duchess, Warwick’s very daughter, approves the promise
it contains! If this letter reach Warwick, and Clarence knows it is in
his hand, George will have no option but to join us. He will never dare
to face the earl, his pledge to Edward once revealed--”

“Most true; a very legal subtlety, my lord,” said the lawyer Catesby,
admiringly.

“You can serve us in this. Fall back; join Sir Marmaduke; affect to
sympathize with him; affect to side with the earl; affect to make terms
for Warwick’s amity and favour; affect to betray us; affect to have
stolen this letter. Give it to young Nevile, artfully effect his escape,
as if against our knowledge, and commend him to lose not an hour--a
moment--in gaining the earl, and giving him so important a forewarning
of the meditated treason of his son-in-law.”

“I will do all,--I comprehend; but how will the duke learn in time that
the letter is on its way to Warwick?”

“I will seek the duke in his own tent.”

“And how shall I effect Sir Marmaduke’s escape?”

“Send hither the officer who guards the prisoner; I will give him orders
to obey thee in all things.”

The invaders marched on. The earl, meanwhile, had reached Warwick,
hastened thence to throw himself into the stronger fortifications of
the neighbouring Coventry, without the walls of which Clarence was
still encamped; Edward advanced on the town of Warwick thus vacated;
and Richard, at night, rode along to the camp of Clarence. [Hall, and
others.]

The next day, the earl was employed in giving orders to his lieutenants
to march forth, join the troops of his son-in-law, who were a mile from
the walls, and advance upon Edward, who had that morning quitted Warwick
town, when suddenly Sir Marmaduke Nevile rushed into his presence, and,
faltering out, “Beware, beware!” placed in his hands the fatal letter
which Clarence had despatched from Amboise.

Never did blow more ruthless fall upon man’s heart! Clarence’s
perfidy--that might be disdained; but the closing lines, which revealed
a daughter’s treachery--words cannot express the father’s anguish.

The letter dropped from his hand, a stupor seized his senses, and, ere
yet recovered, pale men hurried into his presence to relate how, amidst
joyous trumpets and streaming banners, Richard of Gloucester had led
the Duke of Clarence to the brotherly embrace of Edward. [Hall. The
chronicler adds: “It was no marvell that the Duke of Clarence with so
small persuasion and less exhorting turned from the Earl of Warwick’s
party, for, as you have heard before, this marchandise was laboured,
conducted, and concluded by a damsell, when the duke was in the French
court, to the earl’s utter confusion.” Hume makes a notable mistake in
deferring the date of Clarence’s desertion to the battle of Barnet.]

Breaking from these messengers of evil news, that could not now
surprise, the earl strode on, alone, to his daughter’s chamber.

He placed the letter in her hands, and folding his arms said, “What
sayest thou of this, Isabel of Clarence?” The terror, the shame, the
remorse, that seized upon the wretched lady, the death-like lips, the
suppressed shriek, the momentary torpor, succeeded by the impulse which
made her fall at her father’s feet and clasp his knees,--told the earl,
if he had before doubted, that the letter lied not; that Isabel had
known and sanctioned its contents.

He gazed on her (as she grovelled at his feet) with a look that her eyes
did well to shun.

“Curse me not! curse me not!” cried Isabel, awed by his very silence.
“It was but a brief frenzy. Evil counsel, evil passion! I was maddened
that my boy had lost a crown. I repented, I repented! Clarence shall yet
be true. He hath promised it, vowed it to me; hath written to Gloucester
to retract all,--to--”

“Woman! Clarence is in Edward’s camp!”

Isabel started to her feet, and uttered a shriek so wild and despairing,
that at least it gave to her father’s lacerated heart the miserable
solace of believing the last treason had not been shared. A softer
expression--one of pity, if not of pardon--stole over his dark face.

“I curse thee not,” he said; “I rebuke thee not. Thy sin hath its own
penance. Ill omen broods on the hearth of the household traitor! Never
more shalt thou see holy love in a husband’s smile. His kiss shall have
the taint of Judas. From his arms thou shalt start with horror, as from
those of thy wronged father’s betrayer,--perchance his deathsman! Ill
omen broods on the cradle of the child for whom a mother’s ambition
was but a daughter’s perfidy. Woe to thee, wife and mother! Even my
forgiveness cannot avert thy doom!”

“Kill me! kill me!” exclaimed Isabel, springing towards him; but seeing
his face averted, his arms folded on his breast,--that noble breast,
never again her shelter,--she fell lifeless on the floor. [As our
narrative does not embrace the future fate of the Duchess of Clarence,
the reader will pardon us if we remind him that her first-born (who bore
his illustrious grandfather’s title of Earl of Warwick) was cast into
prison on the accession of Henry VII., and afterwards beheaded by that
king. By birth, he was the rightful heir to the throne. The ill-fated
Isabel died young (five years after the date at which our tale has
arrived). One of her female attendants was tried and executed on the
charge of having poisoned her. Clarence lost no time in seeking to
supply her place. He solicited the hand of Mary of Burgundy, sole
daughter and heir of Charles the Bold. Edward’s jealousy and fear
forbade him to listen to an alliance that might, as Lingard observes,
enable Clarence “to employ the power of Burgundy to win the crown of
England;” and hence arose those dissensions which ended in the secret
murder of the perjured duke.]

The earl looked round, to see that none were by to witness his weakness,
took her gently in his arms, laid her on her couch, and, bending over
her a moment, prayed to God to pardon her.

He then hastily left the room, ordered her handmaids and her litter, and
while she was yet unconscious, the gates of the town opened, and forth
through the arch went the closed and curtained vehicle which bore the
ill-fated duchess to the new home her husband had made with her father’s
foe! The earl watched it from the casement of his tower, and said to
himself,--

“I had been unmanned, had I known her within the same walls. Now forever
I dismiss her memory and her crime. Treachery hath done its worst, and
my soul is proof against all storms!”

At night came messengers from Clarence and Edward, who had returned
to Warwick town, with offers of pardon to the earl, with promises of
favour, power, and grace. To Edward the earl deigned no answer; to the
messenger of Clarence he gave this: “Tell thy master I had liefer be
always like myself than like a false and a perjured duke, and that I
am determined never to leave the war till I have lost mine own life, or
utterly extinguished and put down my foes.” [Hall.]

After this terrible defection, neither his remaining forces, nor the
panic amongst them which the duke’s desertion had occasioned, nor
the mighty interests involved in the success of his arms, nor the
irretrievable advantage which even an engagement of equivocal result
with the earl in person would give to Edward, justified Warwick in
gratifying the anticipations of the enemy,--that his valour and wrath
would urge him into immediate and imprudent battle.

Edward, after the vain bravado of marching up to the walls of Coventry,
moved on towards London. Thither the earl sent Marmaduke, enjoining the
Archbishop of York and the lord mayor but to hold out the city for three
days, and he would come to their aid with such a force as would insure
lasting triumph. For, indeed, already were hurrying to his banner
Montagu, burning to retrieve his error, Oxford and Exeter, recovered
from, and chafing at, their past alarm. Thither his nephew, Fitzhugh,
led the earl’s own clansmen of Middleham; thither were spurring Somerset
from the west, [Most historians state that Somerset was then in London;
but Sharon Turner quotes “Harleian Manuscripts,” 38, to show that he had
left the metropolis “to raise an army from the western counties,” and
ranks him amongst the generals at the battle of Barnet.] and Sir Thomas
Dymoke from Lincolnshire, and the Knight of Lytton, with his hardy
retainers, from the Peak. Bold Hilyard waited not far from London, with
a host of mingled yeomen and bravos, reduced, as before, to discipline
under his own sturdy energies and the military craft of Sir John
Coniers. If London would but hold out till these forces could unite,
Edward’s destruction was still inevitable.



BOOK XII. THE BATTLE OF BARNET.



CHAPTER I. A KING IN HIS CITY HOPES TO RECOVER HIS REALM--A WOMAN IN HER
CHAMBER FEARS TO FORFEIT HER OWN.

Edward and his army reached St. Alban’s. Great commotion, great joy,
were in the Sanctuary of Westminster! The Jerusalem Chamber, therein,
was made the high council-hall of the friends of York. Great commotion,
great terror, were in the city of London. Timid Master Stokton had been
elected mayor; horribly frightened either to side with an Edward or
a Henry, timid Master Stokton feigned or fell ill. Sir Thomas Cook, a
wealthy and influential citizen, and a member of the House of Commons,
had been appointed deputy in his stead. Sir Thomas Cook took fright
also, and ran away. [Fabyan.] The power of the city thus fell into the
hands of Ureswick, the Recorder, a zealous Yorkist. Great commotion,
great scorn, were in the breasts of the populace, as the Archbishop of
York, hoping thereby to rekindle their loyalty, placed King Henry
on horseback, and paraded him through the streets from Chepeside to
Walbrook, from Walbrook to St. Paul’s; for the news of Edward’s arrival,
and the sudden agitation and excitement it produced on his enfeebled
frame, had brought upon the poor king one of the epileptic attacks to
which he had been subject from childhood, and which made the cause of
his frequent imbecility; and, just recovered from such a fit,--his eyes
vacant, his face haggard, his head drooping,--the spectacle of such
an antagonist to the vigorous Edward moved only pity in the few and
ridicule in the many. Two thousand Yorkist gentlemen were in the various
Sanctuaries; aided and headed by the Earl of Essex, they came forth
armed and clamorous, scouring the streets, and shouting, “King Edward!”
 with impunity. Edward’s popularity in London was heightened amongst the
merchants by prudent reminiscences of the vast debts he had incurred,
which his victory only could ever enable him to repay to his good
citizens. [Comines.] The women, always, in such a movement, active
partisans, and useful, deserted their hearths to canvass all strong arms
and stout hearts for the handsome woman-lover. [Comines.] The Yorkist
Archbishop of Canterbury did his best with the ecclesiastics, the
Yorkist Recorder his best with the flat-caps. Alwyn, true to his
anti-feudal principles, animated all the young freemen to support the
merchant-king, the favourer of commerce, the man of his age! The city
authorities began to yield to their own and the general metropolitan
predilections. But still the Archbishop of York had six thousand
soldiers at his disposal, and London could be yet saved to Warwick, if
the prelate acted with energy and zeal and good faith. That such was his
first intention is clear, from his appeal to the public loyalty in King
Henry’s procession; but when he perceived how little effect that pageant
had produced; when, on re-entering the Bishop of London’s palace, he
saw before him the guileless, helpless puppet of contending factions,
gasping for breath, scarcely able to articulate, the heartless prelate
turned away, with a muttered ejaculation of contempt.

“Clarence had not deserted,” said he to himself, “unless he saw greater
profit with King Edward!” And then he began to commune with himself, and
to commune with his brother-prelate of Canterbury; and in the midst
of all this commune arrived Catesby, charged with messages to the
archbishop from Edward,--messages full of promise and affection on the
one hand, of menace and revenge upon the other. Brief: Warwick’s cup of
bitterness had not yet been filled; that night the archbishop and the
mayor of London met, and the Tower was surrendered to Edward’s friends.
The next day Edward and his army entered, amidst the shouts of the
populace; rode to St. Paul’s, where the archbishop [Sharon Turner. It is
a comfort to think that this archbishop was, two years afterwards,
first robbed, and then imprisoned, by Edward IV.; nor did he recover
his liberty till a few weeks before his death, in 1476 (five years
subsequently to the battle of Barnet).] met him, leading Henry by the
hand, again a captive; thence Edward proceeded to Westminster Abbey,
and, fresh from his atrocious perjury at York, offered thanksgiving for
its success. The Sanctuary yielded up its royal fugitives, and, in joy
and in pomp, Edward led his wife and her new-born babe, with Jacquetta
and his elder children, to Baynard’s Castle.

The next morning (the third day), true to his promise, Warwick marched
towards London with the mighty armament he had now collected. Treason
had done its worst,--the metropolis was surrendered, and King Henry in
the Tower.

“These things considered,” says the Chronicler, “the earl saw that all
calculations of necessity were brought to this end,--that they must now
be committed to the hazard and chance of one battle.” [Hall.] He halted,
therefore, at St. Alban’s, to rest his troops; and marching thence
towards Barnet, pitched his tents on the upland ground, then called the
Heath or Chase of Gladsmoor, and waited the coming foe.

Nor did Edward linger long from that stern meeting. Entering London on
the 11th of April, he prepared to quit it on the 13th. Besides the force
he had brought with him, he had now recruits in his partisans from the
Sanctuaries and other hiding-places in the metropolis, while London
furnished him, from her high-spirited youths, a gallant troop of bow
and bill men, whom Alwyn had enlisted, and to whom Edward willingly
appointed, as captain, Alwyn himself,--who had atoned for his submission
to Henry’s restoration by such signal activity on behalf of the young
king, whom he associated with the interests of his class, and the weal
of the great commercial city, which some years afterwards rewarded his
affection by electing him to her chief magistracy. [Nicholas Alwyn,
the representative of that generation which aided the commercial and
anti-feudal policy of Edward IV. and Richard III., and welcomed its
consummation under their Tudor successor, rose to be Lord Mayor of
London in the fifteenth year of the reign of Henry VII.--FABYAN.]

It was on that very day, the 13th of April, some hours before the
departure of the York army, that Lord Hastings entered the Tower, to
give orders relative to the removal of the unhappy Henry, whom Edward
had resolved to take with him on his march.

And as he had so ordered and was about to return, Alwyn, emerging from
one of the interior courts, approached him in much agitation, and
said thus: “Pardon me, my lord, if in so grave an hour I recall your
attention to one you may haply have forgotten.”

“Ah, the poor maiden; but you told me, in the hurried words that we have
already interchanged, that she was safe and well.”

“Safe, my lord,--not well. Oh, hear me. I depart to battle for your
cause and your king’s. A gentleman in your train has advised me that you
are married to a noble dame in the foreign land. If so, this girl whom
I have loved so long and truly may yet forget you, may yet be mine. Oh,
give me that hope to make me a braver soldier.”

“But,” said Hastings, embarrassed, and with a changing countenance, “but
time presses, and I know not where the demoiselle--”

“She is here,” interrupted Alwyn; “here, within these walls, in yonder
courtyard. I have just left her. You, whom she loves, forgot her! I,
whom she disdains, remembered. I went to see to her safety, to counsel
her to rest here for the present, whatever betides; and at every word I
said, she broke in upon me with but one name,--that name was thine! And
when stung, and in the impulse of the moment, I exclaimed, ‘He deserves
not this devotion. They tell me, Sibyll, that Lord Hastings has found a
wife in exile.’ Oh, that look! that cry! they haunt me still. ‘Prove it,
prove it, Alwyn,’ she cried. ‘And--’ I interrupted, ‘and thou couldst
yet, for thy father’s sake, be true wife to me?’”

“Her answer, Alwyn?”

“It was this, ‘For my father’s sake only, then, could I live on; and--’
her sobs stopped her speech, till she cried again, ‘I believe it not!
thou hast deceived me. Only from his lips will I hear the sentence.’ Go
to her, manfully and frankly, as becomes you, high lord,--go! It Is but
a single sentence thou hast to say, and thy heart will be the lighter,
and thine arm the stronger for those honest words.”

Hastings pulled his cap over his brow, and stood a moment as if in
reflection; he then said, “Show me the way; thou art right. It is due to
her and to thee; and as by this hour to-morrow my soul may stand before
the Judgment-seat, that poor child’s pardon may take one sin from the
large account.”



CHAPTER II. SHARP IS THE KISS OF THE FALCON’S BEAR.

Hastings stood in the presence of the girl to whom he had pledged his
truth. They were alone; but in the next chamber might be heard the
peculiar sound made by the mechanism of the Eureka. Happy and lifeless
mechanism, which moves, and toils, and strives on, to change the destiny
of millions, but hath neither ear nor eye, nor sense nor heart,--the
avenues of pain to man! She had--yes, literally--she had recognized her
lover’s step upon the stair, she had awakened at once from that dull and
icy lethargy with which the words of Alwyn had chained life and soul.
She sprang forward as Hastings entered; she threw herself in delirious
joy upon his bosom. “Thou art come, thou art! It is not true, not true.
Heaven bless thee! thou art come!” But sudden as the movement was the
recoil. Drawing herself back, she gazed steadily on his face, and said,
“Lord Hastings, they tell me thy hand is another’s. Is it true?”

“Hear me!” answered the nobleman. “When first I--”

“O God! O God! he answers not, he falters! Speak! Is it true?”

“It is true. I am wedded to another.”

Sibyll did not fall to the ground, nor faint, nor give vent to noisy
passion. But the rich colour, which before had been varying and fitful,
deserted her cheek, and left it of an ashen whiteness; the lips, too,
grew tightly compressed, and her small fingers, interlaced, were clasped
with strained and convulsive energy, so that the quivering of the very
arms was perceptible. In all else she seemed composed, as she said,
“I thank you, my lord, for the simple truth; no more is needed. Heaven
bless you and yours! Farewell!”

“Stay! you shall--you must hear me on. Thou knowest how dearly in youth
I loved Katherine Nevile. In manhood the memory of that love haunted me,
but beneath thy sweet smile I deemed it at last effaced; I left thee
to seek the king, and demand his assent to our union. I speak not of
obstacles that then arose; in the midst of them I learned Katherine was
lone and widowed,--was free. At her own summons I sought her
presence, and learned that she had loved me ever,--loved me still. The
intoxication of my early dream returned; reverse and exile followed
close; Katherine left her state, her fortunes, her native land, and
followed the banished man; and so memory and gratitude and destiny
concurred, and the mistress of my youth became my wife. None other could
have replaced thy image; none other have made me forget the faith I
pledged thee. The thought of thee has still pursued me,--will pursue me
to the last. I dare not say now that I love thee still, but yet--” He
paused, but rapidly resumed, “Enough, enough! dear art thou to me, and
honoured,--dearer, more honoured than a sister. Thank Heaven, at least,
and thine own virtue, my falsehood leaves thee pure and stainless. Thy
hand may yet bless a worthier man. If our cause triumphs, thy fortunes,
thy father’s fate, shall be my fondest care. Never, never will my sleep
be sweet, and my conscience laid to rest, till I hear thee say, as
honoured wife--perchance, as blessed and blessing mother--‘False one, I
am happy!’”

A cold smile, at these last words, flitted over the girl’s face,--the
smile of a broken heart; but it vanished, and with that strange mixture
of sweetness and pride,--mild and forgiving, yet still spirited and
firm,--which belonged to her character, she nerved herself to the last
and saddest effort to preserve dignity and conceal despair. “Farther
words, my lord, are idle; I am rightly punished for a proud folly. Let
not woman love above her state. Think no more of my destiny.”

“No, no,” interrupted the remorseful lord, “thy destiny must haunt me
till thou hast chosen one with a better right to protect thee.”

At the repetition of that implied desire to transfer her also to
another, a noble indignation came to mar the calm for which she had
hitherto not vainly struggled. “Oh, man!” she exclaimed, with
passion, “does thy deceit give me the right to deceive another? I--I
wed!--I--I--vow at the altar--a love dead, dead forever--dead as my own
heart! Why dost thou mock me with the hollow phrase, ‘Thou art pure and
stainless?’ Is the virginity of the soul still left? Do the tears I have
shed for thee; doth the thrill of my heart when I heard thy voice;
doth the plighted kiss that burns, burns now into my brow, and on my
lips,--do these, these leave me free to carry to a new affection the
cinders and ashes of a soul thou hast ravaged and deflowered? Oh, coarse
and rude belief of men, that naught is lost if the mere form be pure!
The freshness of the first feelings, the bloom of the sinless thought,
the sigh, the blush of the devotion--never, never felt but once! these,
these make the true dower a maiden should bring to the hearth to which
she comes as wife. Oh, taunt! Oh, insult! to speak to me of happiness,
of the altar! Thou never knewest, lord, how I really loved thee!” And
for the first time, a violent gush of tears came to relieve her heart.

Hastings was almost equally overcome. Well experienced as he was in
those partings when maids reproach and gallants pray for pardon, but
still sigh, “Farewell,”--he had now no words to answer that burst of
uncontrollable agony; and he felt at once humbled and relieved, when
Sibyll again, with one of those struggles which exhaust years of
life, and almost leave us callous to all after-trial, pressed back the
scalding tears, and said, with unnatural sweetness: “Pardon me, my lord,
I meant not to reproach; the words escaped me,--think of them no more. I
would fain, at least, part from you now as I had once hoped to part
from you at the last hour of life,--without one memory of bitterness and
anger, so that my conscience, whatever its other griefs, might say, ‘My
lips never belied my heart, my words never pained him!’ And now then,
Lord Hastings, in all charity, we part. Farewell forever, and forever!
Thou hast wedded one who loves thee, doubtless, as tenderly as I had
done. Ah, cherish that affection! There are times even in thy career
when a little love is sweeter than much fame. If thou thinkest I have
aught to pardon thee, now with my whole heart I pray, as while life is
mine that prayer shall be murmured, ‘Heaven forgive this man, as I do!
Heaven make his home the home of peace, and breathe into those now near
and dear to him, the love and the faith that I once--’” She stopped, for
the words choked her, and, hiding her face, held out her hand, in sign
of charity and of farewell.

“Ah, if I dared pray like thee,” murmured Hastings, pressing his
lips upon that burning hand, “how should I weary Heaven to repair,
by countless blessings, the wrong which I have done thee! And Heaven
will--oh, it surely will!” He pressed the hand to his heart, dropped it,
and was gone.

In the courtyard he was accosted by Alwyn--

“Thou hast been frank, my lord?”

“I have.”

“And she bears it, and--”

“See how she forgives, and how I suffer!” said Hastings, turning his
face towards his rival; and Alwyn saw that the tears were rolling
down his cheeks--“Question me no more.” There was a long silence.
They quitted the precincts of the Tower, and were at the river-side.
Hastings, waving his hand to Alwyn, was about to enter the boat which
was to bear him to the war council assembled at Baynard’s Castle, when
the trader stopped him, and said anxiously,--

“Think you not, for the present, the Tower is the safest asylum
for Sibyll and her father? If we fail and Warwick returns, they are
protected by the earl; if we triumph, thou wilt insure their safety from
all foes?”

“Surely; in either case, their present home is the most secure.”

The two men then parted. And not long afterwards, Hastings, who led the
on-guard, was on his way towards Barnet; with him also went the foot
volunteers under Alwyn. The army of York was on its march. Gloucester,
to whose vigilance and energy were left the final preparations, was
necessarily the last of the generals to quit the city. And suddenly,
while his steed was at the gate of Baynard’s Castle, he entered, armed
cap-a-pie, into the chamber where the Duchess of Bedford sat with her
grandchildren.

“Madame,” said he, “I have a grace to demand from you, which will,
methinks, not be displeasing. My lieutenants report to me that an alarm
has spread amongst my men,--a religious horror of some fearful bombards
and guns which have been devised by a sorcerer in Lord Warwick’s pay.
Your famous Friar Bungey has been piously amongst them, promising,
however, that the mists which now creep over the earth shall last
through the night and the early morrow; and if he deceive us not, we may
post our men so as to elude the hostile artillery. But, sith the friar
is so noted and influential, and sith there is a strong fancy that the
winds which have driven back Margaret obeyed his charm, the soldiers
clamour out for him to attend us, and, on the very field itself,
counteract the spells of the Lancastrian nigromancer. The good friar,
more accustomed to fight with fiends than men, is daunted, and resists.
As much may depend on his showing us good will, and making our fellows
suppose we have the best of the witchcraft, I pray you to command his
attendance, and cheer up his courage. He waits without.”

“A most notable, a most wise advice, beloved Richard!” cried the
duchess. “Friar Bungey is, indeed, a potent man. I will win him at once
to your will;” and the duchess hurried from the room.

The friar’s bodily fears, quieted at last by assurances that he should
be posted in a place of perfect safety during the battle, and his
avarice excited by promises of the amplest rewards, he consented to
accompany the troops, upon one stipulation,--namely, that the atrocious
wizard, who had so often baffled his best spells,--the very wizard who
had superintended the accursed bombards, and predicted Edward’s previous
defeat and flight (together with the diabolical invention, in which all
the malice and strength of his sorcery were centred),--might, according
to Jacquetta’s former promise, be delivered forthwith to his mercy, and
accompany him to the very spot where he was to dispel and counteract
the Lancastrian nigromancer’s enchantments. The duchess, too glad to
purchase the friar’s acquiescence on such cheap terms, and to whose
superstitious horror for Adam’s lore in the black art was now added a
purely political motive for desiring him to be made away with,--inasmuch
as in the Sanctuary she had at last extorted from Elizabeth the dark
secret which might make him a very dangerous witness against the
interests and honour of Edward,--readily and joyfully consented to this
proposition.

A strong guard was at once despatched to the Tower with the friar
himself, followed by a covered wagon, which was to serve for conveyance
to Bungey and his victim.

In the mean while, Sibyll, after remaining for some time in the chamber
which Hastings had abandoned to her solitary woe, had passed to the room
in which her father held mute commune with his Eureka.

The machine was now thoroughly completed,--improved and perfected,
to the utmost art the inventor ever could attain. Thinking that the
prejudice against it might have arisen from its uncouth appearance,
the poor philosopher had sought now to give it a gracious and imposing
appearance. He had painted and gilt it with his own hands; it looked
bright and gaudy in its gay hues; its outward form was worthy of the
precious and propitious jewel which lay hidden in its centre.

“See, child, see!” said Adam; “is it not beautiful and comely?”

“My dear father, yes!” answered the poor girl, as still she sought to
smile; then, after a short silence, she continued, “Father, of late,
methinks, I have too much forgotten thee; pardon me, if so. Henceforth,
I have no care in life but thee; henceforth let me ever, when thou
toilest, come and sit by thy side. I would not be alone,--I dare not!
Father, Father! God shield thy harmless life! I have nothing to love
under heaven but thee!”

The good man turned wistfully, and raised, with tremulous hands, the sad
face that had pressed itself on his bosom. Gazing thereon mournfully, he
said, “Some new grief hath chanced to thee, my child. Methought I heard
another voice besides thine in yonder room. Ah, has Lord Hastings--”

“Father, spare me! Thou wert too right; thou didst judge too wisely.
Lord Hastings is wedded to another! But see, I can smile still, I am
calm. My heart will not break so long as it hath thee to love and pray
for!”

She wound her arms round him as she spoke, and he roused himself from
his world out of earth again. Though he could bring no comfort, there
was something, at least, to the forlorn one, in his words of love, in
his tears of pity.

They sat down together, side by side, as the evening darkened,--the
Eureka forgotten in the hour of its perfection! They noted not the
torches which flashed below, reddened at intervals the walls of their
chamber, and gave a glow to the gay gilding and bright hues of the gaudy
model. Yet those torches flickered round the litter that was to convey
Henry the Peaceful to the battlefield, which was to decide the dynasty
of his realm! The torches vanished, and forth from the dark fortress
went the captive king.

Night succeeded to eve, when again the red glare shot upward on the
Eureka, playing with fantastic smile on its quaint aspect. Steps and
voices, and the clatter of arms, sounded in the yard, on the stairs,
in the adjoining chamber; and suddenly the door was flung open, and,
followed by some half score soldiers, strode in the terrible friar.

“Aha, Master Adam! who is the greater nigromancer now? Seize him! Away!
And help you, Master Sergeant, to bear this piece of the foul fiend’s
cunning devising. Ho, ho! see you how it is tricked out and furbished
up,--all for the battle, I warrant ye!”

The soldiers had already seized upon Adam, who, stupefied by
astonishment rather than fear, uttered no sound, and attempted no
struggle. But it was in vain they sought to tear from him Sibyll’s
clinging and protecting arms. A supernatural strength, inspired by a
kind of superstition that no harm could chance to him while she was
by, animated her slight form; and fierce though the soldiers were, they
shrunk from actual and brutal violence to one thus young and fair. Those
small hands clung so firmly, that it seemed that nothing but the edge of
the sword could sever the child’s clasp from the father’s neck.

“Harm him not, harm him at your peril, friar!” she cried, with flashing
eyes. “Tear him from me, and if King Edward win the day, Lord Hastings
shall have thy life; if Lord Warwick, thy days are numbered, too.
Beware, and avaunt!”

The friar was startled. He had forgotten Lord Hastings in the zest of
his revenge. He feared that, if Sibyll were left behind, the tale she
might tell would indeed bring on him a powerful foe in the daughter’s
lover; on the other hand, should Lord Warwick get the better, what
vengeance would await her appeal to the great protector of her father!
He resolved, therefore, on the instant, to take Sibyll as well as her
father; and if the fortune of the day allowed him to rid himself of
Warner, a good occasion might equally occur to dispose forever of the
testimony of Sibyll. He had already formed a cunning calculation
in desiring Warner’s company; for while, should Edward triumph, the
sacrifice of the hated Warner was resolved upon, yet, should the earl
get the better, he could make a merit to Warner that he (the friar) had
not only spared, but saved, his life, in making him his companion. It
was in harmony with this double policy that the friar mildly answered to
Sibyll,--

“Tusk, my daughter! Perhaps if your father be true to King Edward, and
aid my skill instead of obstructing it, he may be none the worse for the
journey he must take; and if thou likest to go with him, there’s room in
the vehicle, and the more the merrier. Harm them not, soldiers; no doubt
they will follow quietly.”

As he said this, the men, after first crossing themselves, had already
hoisted up the Eureka; and when Adam saw it borne from the room, he
instinctively followed the bearers. Sibyll, relieved by the thought
that, for weal or for woe, she should, at least, share her father’s
fate, and scarce foreboding much positive danger from the party which
contained Hastings and Alwyn, attempted no further remonstrance.

The Eureka was placed in the enormous vehicle,--it served as a barrier
between the friar and his prisoners.

The friar himself, as soon as the wagon was in motion, addressed himself
civilly enough to his fellow-travellers, and assured them there was
nothing to fear, unless Adam thought fit to disturb his incantations.
The captives answered not his address, but nestled close to each other,
interchanging, at intervals, words of comfort, and recoiling as far
as possible from the ex-tregetour, who, having taken with him a more
congenial companion in the shape of a great leathern bottle, finally
sunk into the silent and complacent doze which usually rewards the
libations to the Bromian god.

The vehicle, with many other baggage-wagons in the rear of the army in
that memorable night-march, moved mournfully on; the night continued
wrapped in fog and mist, agreeably to the weatherwise predictions of the
friar. The rumbling groan of the vehicle, the tramp of the soldiers, the
dull rattle of their arms, with now and then the neigh of some knight’s
steed in the distance, were the only sounds that broke the silence, till
once, as they neared their destination, Sibyll started from her father’s
bosom, and shudderingly thought she recognized the hoarse chant and the
tinkling bells of the ominous tymbesteres.



CHAPTER III. A PAUSE.

In the profound darkness of the night and the thick fog, Edward had
stationed his men at a venture upon the heath at Gladsmoor, [Edward “had
the greater number of men.”--HALL, p. 296.] and hastily environed
the camp with palisades and trenches. He had intended to have rested
immediately in front of the foe, but, in the darkness, mistook the
extent of the hostile line; and his men were ranged only opposite to
the left side of the earl’s force (towards Hadley), leaving the right
unopposed. Most fortunate for Edward was this mistake; for Warwick’s
artillery, and the new and deadly bombards he had constructed, were
placed on the right of the earl’s army; and the provident earl,
naturally supposing Edward’s left was there opposed to him, ordered
his gunners to cannonade all night. Edward, “as the flashes of the
guns illumined by fits the gloom of midnight, saw the advantage of
his unintentional error; and to prevent Warwick from discovering it,
reiterated his orders for the most profound silence.” [Sharon Turner.]
Thus even his very blunders favoured Edward more than the wisest
precautions had served his fated foe.

Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April, the
Easter Sabbath. In the fortunes of that day were involved those of all
the persons who hitherto, in the course of this narrative, may have
seemed to move in separate orbits from the fiery star of Warwick. Now,
in this crowning hour, the vast and gigantic destiny of the great earl
comprehended all upon which its darkness or its light had fallen: not
only the luxurious Edward, the perjured Clarence, the haughty Margaret,
her gallant son, the gentle Anne, the remorseful Isabel, the dark guile
of Gloucester, the rising fortunes of the gifted Hastings,--but on the
hazard of that die rested the hopes of Hilyard, and the interests of the
trader Alwyn, and the permanence of that frank, chivalric, hardy, still
half Norman race, of which Nicholas Alwyn and his Saxon class were the
rival antagonistic principle, and Marmaduke Nevile the ordinary type.
Dragged inexorably into the whirlpool of that mighty fate were even
the very lives of the simple Scholar, of his obscure and devoted child.
Here, into this gory ocean, all scattered rivulets and streams had
hastened to merge at last.

But grander and more awful than all individual interests were those
assigned to the fortunes of this battle, so memorable in the English
annals,--the ruin or triumph of a dynasty; the fall of that warlike
baronage, of which Richard Nevile was the personation, the crowning
flower, the greatest representative and the last,--associated with
memories of turbulence and excess, it is true, but with the proudest and
grandest achievements in our early history; with all such liberty as had
been yet achieved since the Norman Conquest; with all such glory as had
made the island famous,--here with Runnymede, and there with Cressy; the
rise of a crafty, plotting, imperious Despotism, based upon the growing
sympathy of craftsmen and traders, and ripening on the one hand to the
Tudor tyranny, the Republican reaction under the Stuarts, the slavery,
and the civil war, but on the other hand to the concentration of all
the vigour and life of genius into a single and strong government, the
graces, the arts, the letters of a polished court, the freedom, the
energy, the resources of a commercial population destined to rise above
the tyranny at which it had first connived, and give to the emancipated
Saxon the markets of the world. Upon the victory of that day all these
contending interests, this vast alternative in the future, swayed and
trembled. Out, then, upon that vulgar craving of those who comprehend
neither the vast truths of life nor the grandeur of ideal art, and
who ask from poet or narrator the poor and petty morality of “Poetical
Justice,”--a justice existing not in our work-day world; a justice
existing not in the sombre page of history; a justice existing not
in the loftier conceptions of men whose genius has grappled with the
enigmas which art and poetry only can foreshadow and divine,--unknown
to us in the street and the market, unknown to us on the scaffold of the
patriot or amidst the flames of the martyr, unknown to us in the Lear
and the Hamlet, in the Agamemnon and the Prometheus. Millions upon
millions, ages upon ages, are entered but as items in the vast account
in which the recording angel sums up the unerring justice of God to man.

Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April. And
on that very day Margaret and her son, and the wife and daughter of Lord
Warwick, landed, at last, on the shores of England. [Margaret landed at
Weymouth; Lady Warwick, at Portsmouth.] Come they for joy or for woe,
for victory or despair? The issue of this day’s fight on the heath of
Gladsmoor will decide. Prank thy halls, O Westminster, for the triumph
of the Lancastrian king,--or open thou, O Grave, to receive the
saint-like Henry and his noble son. The king-maker goes before ye,
saint-like father and noble son, to prepare your thrones amongst the
living or your mansions amongst the dead!



CHAPTER IV. THE BATTLE.

Raw, cold, and dismal dawned the morning of the fourteenth of April. The
heavy mist still covered both armies, but their hum and stir was already
heard through the gloaming,--the neighing of steeds, and the clangour
of mail. Occasionally a movement of either force made dim forms, seeming
gigantic through the vapour, indistinctly visible to the antagonistic
army; and there was something ghastly and unearthlike in these ominous
shapes, suddenly seen, and suddenly vanishing, amidst the sullen
atmosphere. By this time, Warwick had discovered the mistake of his
gunners; for, to the right of the earl, the silence of the Yorkists was
still unbroken, while abruptly, from the thick gloom to the left, broke
the hoarse mutter and low growl of the awakening war. Not a moment was
lost by the earl in repairing the error of the night: his artillery
wheeled rapidly from the right wing, and, sudden as a storm of
lightning, the fire from the cannon flashed through the dun and heavy
vapour, and, not far from the very spot where Hastings was marshalling
the wing intrusted to his command, made a deep chasm in the serried
ranks. Death had begun his feast!

At that moment, however, from the centre of the Yorkist army, arose,
scarcely drowned by the explosion, that deep-toned shout of enthusiasm,
which he who has once heard it, coming, as it were, from the one
heart of an armed multitude, will ever recall as the most kindling
and glorious sound which ever quickened the pulse and thrilled the
blood,--for along that part of the army now rode King Edward. His mail
was polished as a mirror, but otherwise unadorned, resembling that which
now invests his effigies at the Tower, [The suit of armour, however,
which the visitor to the Royal Armoury is expected to believe King
Edward could have worn, is infinitely too small for such credulity.
Edward’s height was six feet two inches.] and the housings of his steed
were spangled with silver suns, for the silver sun was the cognizance on
all his banners. His head was bare, and through the hazy atmosphere the
gold of his rich locks seemed literally to shine. Followed by his body
squire, with his helm and lance, and the lords in his immediate staff,
his truncheon in his hand, he passed slowly along the steady line, till,
halting where he deemed his voice could be farthest heard, he reined
in, and lifting his hand, the shout of the soldiery was hushed; though
still, while he spoke, from Warwick’s archers came the arrowy shower,
and still the gloom was pierced and the hush interrupted by the flash
and the roar of the bombards.

“Englishmen and friends,” said the martial chief, “to bold deeds go
but few words. Before you is the foe! From Ravenspur to London I have
marched, treason flying from my sword, loyalty gathering to my standard.
With but two thousand men, on the fourteenth of March, I entered
England; on the fourteenth of April, fifty thousand is my muster roll.
Who shall say, then, that I am not king, when one month mans a monarch’s
army from his subjects’ love? And well know ye, now, that my cause is
yours and England’s! Those against us are men who would rule in despite
of law,--barons whom I gorged with favours, and who would reduce this
fair realm of King, Lords, and Commons to be the appanage and property
of one man’s measureless ambition,--the park, forsooth, the homestead to
Lord Warwick’s private house! Ye gentlemen and knights of England, let
them and their rabble prosper, and your properties will be despoiled,
your lives insecure, all law struck dead. What differs Richard of
Warwick from Jack Cade, save that if his name is nobler, so is his
treason greater? Commoners and soldiers of England, freemen, however
humble, what do these rebel lords (who would rule in the name of
Lancaster) desire? To reduce you to villeins and to bondsmen, as your
forefathers were to them. Ye owe freedom from the barons to the just
laws of my sires, your kings. Gentlemen and knights, commoners and
soldiers, Edward IV. upon his throne will not profit by a victory more
than you. This is no war of dainty chivalry,--it is a war of true men
against false. No quarter! Spare not either knight or hilding. Warwick,
forsooth, will not smite the Commons. Truly not,--the rabble are his
friends! I say to you--” and Edward, pausing in the excitement and
sanguinary fury of his tiger nature,--the soldiers, heated like himself
to the thirst of blood, saw his eyes sparkle, and his teeth gnash, as he
added in a deeper and lower, but not less audible voice, “I say to you,
SLAY ALL! [Hall.] What heel spares the viper’s brood?”

“We will! we will!” was the horrid answer, which came hissing and
muttered forth from morion and cap of steel.

“Hark! to their bombards!” resumed Edward. “The enemy would fight from
afar, for they excel us in their archers and gunners. Upon them, then,
hand to hand, and man to man! Advance banners, sound trumpets! Sir
Oliver, my bassinet! Soldiers, if my standard falls, look for the plume
upon your king’s helmet! Charge!”

Then, with a shout wilder and louder than before, on through the hail
of the arrows, on through the glare of the bombards, rather with a rush
than in a march, advanced Edward’s centre against the array of Somerset;
but from a part of the encampment where the circumvallation seemed
strongest, a small body of men moved not with the general body.

To the left of the churchyard of Hadley, at this day, the visitor may
notice a low wall; on the other side of that wall is a garden, then but
a rude eminence on Gladsmoor Heath. On that spot a troop in complete
armour, upon destriers pawing impatiently, surrounded a man upon a sorry
palfrey, and in a gown of blue,--the colour of royalty and of servitude;
that man was Henry the Sixth. In the same space stood Friar Bungey,
his foot on the Eureka, muttering incantations, that the mists he had
foretold, [Lest the reader should suppose that the importance of Friar
Bungey upon this bloody day has been exaggerated by the narrator, we
must cite the testimony of sober Allerman Fabyan: “Of the mists and
other impediments which fell upon the lords’ party, by reason of the
incantations wrought by Friar Bungey, as the fame went, me list not to
write.”] and which had protected the Yorkists from the midnight guns,
might yet last, to the confusion of the foe. And near him, under a
gaunt, leafless tree, a rope round his neck, was Adam Warner, Sibyl
still faithful to his side, nor shuddering at the arrows and the guns,
her whole fear concentrated upon the sole life for which her own was
prized. Upon this eminence, then, these lookers-on stood aloof. And
the meek ears of Henry heard through the fog the inexplicable, sullen,
jarring clash,--steel had met steel.

“Holy Father!” exclaimed the kingly saint, “and this is the Easter
Sabbath, Thy most solemn day of peace!”

“Be silent,” thundered the friar; “thou disturbest my spells.
Barabbarara, Santhinoa, Foggibus increscebo, confusio inimicis,
Garabbora, vapor et mistes!”

We must now rapidly survey the dispositions of the army under Warwick.
In the right wing, the command was entrusted to the Earl of Oxford
and the Marquis of Montagu. The former, who led the cavalry of that
division, was stationed in the van; the latter, according to his usual
habit--surrounded by a strong body-guard of knights and a prodigious
number of squires as aides-de-camp--remained at the rear, and directed
thence by his orders the general movement. In this wing the greater
number were Lancastrian, jealous of Warwick, and only consenting to the
generalship of Montagu because shared by their favourite hero, Oxford.
In the mid-space lay the chief strength of the bowmen, with a goodly
number of pikes and bills, under the Duke of Somerset; and this division
also was principally Lancastrian, and shared the jealousy of Oxford’s
soldiery. The left wing, composed for the most part of Warwick’s
yeomanry and retainers, was commanded by the Duke of Exeter, conjointly
with the earl himself. Both armies kept a considerable body in reserve,
and Warwick, besides this resource, had selected from his own retainers
a band of picked archers, whom he had skilfully placed in the outskirts
of a wood that then stretched from Wrotham Park to the column that now
commemorates the battle of Barnet, on the high northern road. He had
guarded these last-mentioned archers (where exposed in front to Edward’s
horsemen) by strong tall barricades, leaving only such an opening
as would allow one horseman at a time to pass, and defending by a
formidable line of pikes this narrow opening left for communication, and
to admit to a place of refuge in case of need. These dispositions made,
and ere yet Edward had advanced on Somerset, the earl rode to the front
of the wing under his special command, and, agreeably to the custom of
the time, observed by his royal foe, harangued the troops. Here were
placed those who loved him as a father, and venerated him as something
superior to mortal man; here the retainers who had grown up with him
from his childhood, who had followed him to his first fields of war, who
had lived under the shelter of his many castles, and fed, in that rude
equality of a more primeval age which he loved still to maintain, at his
lavish board. And now Lord Warwick’s coal-black steed halted, motionless
in the van. His squire behind bore his helmet, overshadowed by the eagle
of Monthermer, the outstretched wings of which spread wide into sable
plumes; and as the earl’s noble face turned full and calm upon the
bristling lines, there arose not the vulgar uproar that greeted the
aspect of the young Edward. By one of those strange sympathies which
pass through multitudes, and seize them with a common feeling, the whole
body of those adoring vassals became suddenly aware of the change which
a year had made in the face of their chief and father. They saw the
gray flakes in his Jove-like curls, the furrows in that lofty brow, the
hollows in that bronzed and manly visage, which had seemed to their rude
admiration to wear the stamp of the twofold Divinity,--Beneficence and
Valour. A thrill of tenderness and awe shot through the veins of every
one, tears of devotion rushed into many a hardy eye. No! there was not
the ruthless captain addressing his hireling butchers; it was the chief
and father rallying gratitude and love and reverence to the crisis of
his stormy fate.

“My friends, my followers, and my children,” said the earl, “the field
we have entered is one from which there is no retreat; here must your
leader conquer or here die. It is not a parchment pedigree, it is not a
name derived from the ashes of dead men, that make the only charter of a
king. We Englishmen were but slaves, if, in giving crown and sceptre
to a mortal like ourselves, we asked not in return the kingly virtues.
Beset of old by evil counsellors, the reign of Henry VI. was obscured,
and the weal of the realm endangered. Mine own wrongs seemed to me
great, but the disasters of my country not less. I deemed that in the
race of York, England would know a wiser and happier rule. What was, in
this, mine error, ye partly know. A prince dissolved in luxurious vices,
a nobility degraded by minions and blood-suckers, a people plundered by
purveyors, and a land disturbed by brawl and riot. But ye know not all:
God makes man’s hearth man’s altar: our hearths were polluted, our wives
and daughters were viewed as harlots, and lechery ruled the realm. A
king’s word should be fast as the pillars of the world. What man ever
trusted Edward and was not deceived? Even now the unknightly liar stands
in arms with the weight of perjury on his soul. In his father’s town
of York, ye know that he took, three short weeks since, solemn oath
of fealty to King Henry. And now King Henry is his captive, and King
Henry’s holy crown upon his traitor’s head. ‘Traitors’ calls he Us? What
name, then, rank enough for him? Edward gave the promise of a brave man,
and I served him. He proved a base, a false, a licentious, and a cruel
king, and I forsook him; may all free hearts in all free lands so serve
kings when they become tyrants! Ye fight against a cruel and atrocious
usurper, whose bold hand cannot sanctify a black heart; ye fight not
only for King Henry, the meek and the godly,--ye fight not for him
alone, but for his young and princely son, the grandchild of Henry of
Agincourt, who, old men tell me, has that hero’s face, and who, I know,
has that hero’s frank and royal and noble soul; ye fight for the freedom
of your land, for the honour of your women, for what is better than any
king’s cause,--for justice and mercy, for truth and manhood’s virtues
against corruption in the laws, slaughter by the scaffold, falsehood
in a ruler’s lips, and shameless harlotry in the councils of ruthless
power. The order I have ever given in war I give now; we war against
the leaders of evil, not against the hapless tools; we war against our
oppressors, not against our misguided brethren. Strike down every plumed
crest, but when the strife is over, spare every common man! Hark! while
I speak, I hear the march of your foe! Up standards!--blow trumpets! And
now, as I brace my bassinet, may God grant us all a glorious victory,
or a glorious grave! On, my merry men! show these London loons the stout
hearts of Warwickshire and Yorkshire. On, my merry men! A Warwick! A
Warwick!”

As he ended, he swung lightly over his head the terrible battle-axe
which had smitten down, as the grass before the reaper, the chivalry of
many a field; and ere the last blast of the trumpets died, the troops of
Warwick and of Gloucester met, and mingled hand to hand.

Although the earl had, on discovering the position of the enemy, moved
some of his artillery from his right wing, yet there still lay the great
number and strength of his force. And there, therefore, Montagu, rolling
troop on troop to the aid of Oxford, pressed so overpoweringly upon
the soldiers under Hastings, that the battle very soon wore a most
unfavourable aspect for the Yorkists. It seemed, indeed, that the
success which had always hitherto attended the military movements of
Montagu was destined for a crowning triumph. Stationed, as we have said,
in the rear, with his light-armed squires, upon fleet steeds, around
him, he moved the springs of the battle with the calm sagacity which at
that moment no chief in either army possessed. Hastings was thoroughly
outflanked, and though his men fought with great valour, they could not
resist the weight of superior numbers.

In the midst of the carnage in the centre, Edward reined in his steed as
he heard the cry of victory in the gale.

“By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “our men at the left are cravens! they fly!
they fly!--Ride to Lord Hastings, Sir Humphrey Bourchier, bid him defile
hither what men are left him; and now, ere our fellows are well
aware what hath chanced yonder, charge we, knights and gentlemen, on,
on!--break Somerset’s line; on, on, to the heart of the rebel earl!”

Then, visor closed, lance in rest, Edward and his cavalry dashed through
the archers and billmen of Somerset; clad in complete mail, impervious
to the weapons of the infantry, they slaughtered as they rode, and their
way was marked by corpses and streams of blood. Fiercest and fellest of
all was Edward himself; when his lance shivered, and he drew his knotty
mace from its sling by his saddlebow, woe to all who attempted to stop
his path. Vain alike steel helmet or leathern cap, jerkin or coat of
mail. In vain Somerset threw himself into the melee. The instant Edward
and his cavalry had made a path through the lines for his foot-soldiery,
the fortunes of the day were half retrieved. It was no rapid passage,
pierced and reclosed, that he desired to effect,--it was the wedge in
the oak of war. There, rooted in the very midst of Somerset’s troops,
doubling on each side, passing on but to return again, where helm could
be crashed and man overthrown, the mighty strength of Edward widened the
breach more and more, till faster and faster poured in his bands,
and the centre of Warwick’s army seemed to reel and whirl round the
broadening gap through its ranks, as the waves round some chasm in a
maelstrom.

But in the interval, the hard-pressed troops commanded by Hastings were
scattered and dispersed; driven from the field, they fled in numbers
through the town of Barnet; many halted not till they reached London,
where they spread the news of the earl’s victory and Edward’s ruin.
[Sharon Turner.]

Through the mist, Friar Bungey discerned the fugitive Yorkists under
Hastings, and heard their cries of despair; through the mist, Sibyll
saw, close beneath the intrenchments which protected the space on which
they stood, an armed horseman with the well-known crest of Hastings on
his helmet, and, with lifted visor, calling his men to the return, in
the loud voice of rage and scorn. And then she herself sprang forwards,
and forgetting his past cruelty in his present danger, cried his
name,--weak cry, lost in the roar of war! But the friar, now fearing he
had taken the wrong side, began to turn from his spells, to address the
most abject apologies to Adam, to assure him that he would have been
slaughtered at the Tower but for the friar’s interruption; and that
the rope round his neck was but an insignificant ceremony due to the
prejudices of the soldiers. “Alas, Great Man,” he concluded, “I see
still that thou art mightier than I am; thy charms, though silent, are
more potent than mine, though my lungs crack beneath them! Confusio
Inimicis Taralorolu, I mean no harm to the earl. Garrabora, mistes et
nubes!--Lord, what will become of me!”

Meanwhile, Hastings--with a small body of horse, who being composed of
knights and squires, specially singled out for the sword, fought
with the pride of disdainful gentlemen, and the fury of desperate
soldiers--finding it impossible to lure back the fugitives, hewed their
own way through Oxford’s ranks to the centre, where they brought fresh
aid to the terrible arm of Edward.



CHAPTER V. THE BATTLE.

The mist still continued so thick that Montagu was unable to discern
the general prospects of the field; but, calm and resolute in his post,
amidst the arrows which whirled round him, and often struck, blunted,
against his Milan mail, the marquis received the reports of his
aides-de-camp (may that modern word be pardoned?) as one after one they
emerged through the fog to his side.

“Well,” he said, as one of these messengers now spurred to the spot, “we
have beaten off Hastings and his hirelings; but I see not ‘the Silver
Star’ of Lord Oxford’s banner.” [The Silver Star of the De Veres had its
origin in a tradition that one of their ancestors, when fighting in
the Holy Land, saw a falling star descend upon his shield. Fatal to men
nobler even than the De Veres was that silver falling star.]

“Lord Oxford, my lord, has followed the enemy he routed to the farthest
verge of the heath.”

“Saints help us! Is Oxford thus headstrong? He will ruin all if he be
decoyed from the field! Ride back, sir! Yet hold!”--as another of the
aides-de-camp appeared. “What news from Lord Warwick’s wing?”

“Sore beset, bold marquis. Gloucester’s line seems countless; it already
outflanks the earl. The duke himself seems inspired by hell! Twice has
his slight arm braved even the earl’s battle-axe, which spared the boy
but smote to the dust his comrades!”

“Well, and what of the centre, sir?” as a third form now arrived.

“There rages Edward in person. He hath pierced into the midst. But
Somerset still holds on gallantly!” Montagu turned to the first
aide-de-camp.

“Ride, sir! Quick! This to Oxford--No pursuit! Bid him haste, with all
his men, to the left wing, and smite Gloucester in the rear. Ride, ride,
for life and victory! If he come but in time the day is ours!” [Fabyan.]

The aide-de-camp darted off, and the mist swallowed up horse and
horseman.

“Sound trumpets to the return!” said the marquis. Then, after a moment’s
musing, “Though Oxford hath drawn off our main force of cavalry, we have
still some stout lances left; and Warwick must be strengthened. On to
the earl! Laissez aller! A Montagu! a Montagu!” And lance in rest,
the marquis and the knights immediately around him, and hitherto not
personally engaged, descended the hillock at a hand-gallop, and were met
by a troop outnumbering their own, and commanded by the Lords D’Eyncourt
and Say.

At this time Warwick was indeed in the same danger that had routed the
troops of Hastings; for, by a similar position, the strength of the
hostile numbers being arrayed with Gloucester, the duke’s troops had
almost entirely surrounded him [Sharon Turner]; and Gloucester himself
wondrously approved the trust that had consigned to his stripling
arm the flower of the Yorkist army. Through the mists the blood-red
manteline he wore over his mail, the grinning teeth of the boar’s head
which crested his helmet, flashed and gleamed wherever his presence was
most needed to encourage the flagging or spur on the fierce. And there
seemed to both armies something ghastly and preternatural in the savage
strength of this small slight figure thus startlingly caparisoned, and
which was heard evermore uttering its sharp war-cry, “Gloucester to the
onslaught! Down with the rebels, down!”

Nor did this daring personage disdain, in the midst of his fury, to
increase the effect of valour by the art of a brain that never ceased
to scheme on the follies of mankind. “See, see!” he cried, as he shot
meteor-like from rank to rank, “see, these are no natural vapours!
Yonder the mighty friar, who delayed the sails of Margaret, chants his
spells to the Powers that ride the gale. Fear not the bombards,--their
enchanted balls swerve from the brave! The dark legions of Air fight
for us! For the hour is come when the fiend shall rend his prey!” And
fiendlike seemed the form thus screeching forth its predictions from
under the grim head-gear; and then darting and disappearing amidst the
sea of pikes, cleaving its path of blood!

But still the untiring might of Warwick defied the press of numbers
that swept round him tide upon tide. Through the mist, his black armour,
black plume, black steed, gloomed forth like one thundercloud in the
midst of a dismal heaven. The noble charger bore along that mighty
rider, animating, guiding all, with as much ease and lightness as the
racer bears its puny weight; the steed itself was scarce less terrible
to encounter than the sweep of the rider’s axe. Protected from arrow and
lance by a coat of steel, the long chaffron, or pike, which projected
from its barbed frontal dropped with gore as it scoured along. No line
of men, however serried, could resist the charge of that horse and
horseman. And vain even Gloucester’s dauntless presence and thrilling
battle-cry, when the stout earl was seen looming through the vapour, and
his cheerful shout was heard, “My merry men, fight on!”

For a third time, Gloucester, spurring forth from his recoiling and
shrinking followers, bending low over his saddle-bow, covered by his
shield, and with the tenth lance (his favourite weapon, because the one
in which skill best supplied strength) he had borne that day, launched
himself upon the vast bulk of his tremendous foe. With that dogged
energy, that rapid calculation, which made the basis of his character,
and which ever clove through all obstacles at the one that, if
destroyed, destroyed the rest,--in that, his first great battle, as in
his last at Bosworth, he singled out the leader, and rushed upon the
giant as the mastiff on the horns and dewlap of the bull. Warwick, in
the broad space which his arm had made around him in the carnage, reined
in as he saw the foe and recognized the grisly cognizance and scarlet
mantle of his godson. And even in that moment, with all his heated blood
and his remembered wrong and his imminent peril, his generous and lion
heart felt a glow of admiration at the valour of the boy he had trained
to arms,--of the son of the beloved York. “His father little thought,”
 muttered the earl, “that that arm should win glory against his old
friend’s life!” And as the half-uttered word died on his lips, the
well-poised lance of Gloucester struck full upon his bassinet, and,
despite the earl’s horsemanship and his strength, made him reel in his
saddle, while the prince shot by, and suddenly wheeling round, cast away
the shivered lance, and assailed him sword in hand.

“Back, Richard! boy, back!” said the earl, in a voice that sounded
hollow through his helmet; “it is not against thee that my wrongs call
for blood,--pass on!”

“Not so, Lord Warwick,” answered Richard, in a sobered and almost solemn
voice, dropping for the moment the point of his sword, and raising his
visor, that he might be the better heard,--“on the field of battle all
memories sweet in peace must die! Saint Paul be my judge, that even in
this hour I love you well; but I love renown and glory more. On the
edge of my sword sit power and royalty, and what high souls prize
most,--ambition; these would nerve me against my own brother’s breast,
were that breast my barrier to an illustrious future. Thou hast given
thy daughter to another! I smite the father to regain my bride. Lay on,
and spare not!--for he who hates thee most would prove not so fell a foe
as the man who sees his fortunes made or marred, his love crushed or yet
crowned, as this day’s battle closes in triumph or defeat. REBEL, DEFEND
THYSELF!”

No time was left for further speech; for as Richard’s sword descended,
two of Gloucester’s followers, Parr and Milwater by name, dashed from
the halting lines at the distance, and bore down to their young prince’s
aid. At the same moment, Sir Marmaduke Nevile and the Lord Fitzhugh
spurred from the opposite line; and thus encouraged, the band on either
side came boldly forward, and the melee grew fierce and general. But
still Richard’s sword singled out the earl, and still the earl, parrying
his blows, dealt his own upon meaner heads. Crushed by one sweep of the
axe fell Milwater to the earth; down, as again it swung on high, fell
Sir Humphrey Bourchier, who had just arrived to Gloucester with messages
from Edward, never uttered in the world below. Before Marmaduke’s lance
fell Sir Thomas Parr; and these three corpses making a barrier between
Gloucester and the earl, the duke turned fiercely upon Marmaduke, while
the earl, wheeling round, charged into the midst of the hostile line,
which scattered to the right and left.

“On! my merry men, on!” rang once more through the heavy air. “They give
way, the London tailors,--on!” and on dashed, with their joyous cry, the
merry men of Yorkshire and Warwick, the warrior yeomen! Separated thus
from his great foe, Gloucester, after unhorsing Marmaduke, galloped off
to sustain that part of his following which began to waver and retreat
before the rush of Warwick and his chivalry.

This, in truth, was the regiment recruited from the loyalty of London;
and little accustomed, we trow, were the worthy heroes of Cockaigne to
the discipline of arms, nor trained to that stubborn resistance which
makes, under skilful leaders, the English peasants the most enduring
soldiery that the world has known since the day when the Roman sentinel
perished amidst the falling columns and lava floods [at Pompeii], rather
than, though society itself dissolved, forsake his post unbidden. “Saint
Thomas defend us!” muttered a worthy tailor, who in the flush of his
valour, when safe in the Chepe, had consented to bear the rank of
lieutenant; “it is not reasonable to expect men of pith and substance
to be crushed into jellies and carved into subtleties by horse-hoofs
and pole-axes. Right about face! Fly!”--and throwing down his sword and
shield, the lieutenant fairly took to his heels as he saw the charging
column, headed by the raven steed of Warwick, come giant-like through
the fog. The terror of one man is contagious, and the Londoners actually
turned their backs, when Nicholas Alwyn cried, in his shrill voice and
northern accent, “Out on you! What will the girls say of us in East-gate
and the Chepe? Hurrah for the bold hearts of London! Round me, stout
‘prentices! let the boys shame the men! This shaft for Cockaigne!” And
as the troop turned irresolute, and Alwyn’s arrow left his bow, they saw
a horseman by the side of Warwick reel in his saddle and fall at once
to the earth; and so great evidently was the rank of the fallen man that
even Warwick reined in, and the charge halted midway in its career.
It was no less a person than the Duke of Exeter whom Alwyn’s shaft had
disabled for the field. This incident, coupled with the hearty
address of the stout goldsmith, served to reanimate the flaggers, and
Gloucester, by a circuitous route, reaching their line a moment after,
they dressed their ranks, and a flight of arrows followed their loud
“Hurrah for London Town!”

But the charge of Warwick had only halted, and (while the wounded Exeter
was borne back by his squires to the rear) it dashed into the midst of
the Londoners, threw their whole line into confusion, and drove them,
despite all the efforts of Gloucester, far back along the plain. This
well-timed exploit served to extricate the earl from the main danger of
his position; and, hastening to improve his advantage, he sent forthwith
to command the reserved forces under Lord St. John, the Knight of
Lytton, Sir John Coniers, Dymoke, and Robert Hilyard, to bear down to
his aid.

At this time Edward had succeeded, after a most stubborn fight, in
effecting a terrible breach through Somerset’s wing; and the fog
continued still so dense and mirk, that his foe itself--for Somerset had
prudently drawn back to re-form his disordered squadron--seemed vanished
from the field. Halting now, as through the dim atmosphere came from
different quarters the many battle-cries of that feudal-day, by which
alone he could well estimate the strength or weakness of those in
the distance, his calmer genius as a general cooled, for a time, his
individual ferocity of knight and soldier. He took his helmet from his
brow to listen with greater certainty; and the lords and riders round
him were well content to take breath and pause from the weary slaughter.

The cry of “Gloucester to the onslaught!” was heard no more. Feebler
and feebler, scatteringly as it were, and here and there, the note had
changed into “Gloucester to the rescue!”

Farther off rose, mingled and blent together, the opposing shouts, “A
Montagu! a Montagu! Strike for D’Eyncourt and King Edward!”--“A Say! A
Say!”

“Ha!” said Edward, thoughtfully, “bold Gloucester fails, Montagu is
bearing on to Warwick’s aid, Say and D’Eyncourt stop his path. Our doom
looks dark! Ride, Hastings,--ride; retrieve thy laurels, and bring up
the reserve under Clarence. But hark ye, leave not his side,--he may
desert again! Ho! ho! Again, ‘Gloucester to the rescue!’ Ah, how lustily
sounds the cry of ‘Warwick!’ By the flaming sword of Saint Michael, we
will slacken that haughty shout, or be evermore dumb ourself, ere the
day be an hour nearer to the eternal judgment!”

Deliberately Edward rebraced his helm, and settled himself in his
saddle, and with his knights riding close each to each, that they might
not lose themselves in the darkness, regained his infantry, and led
them on to the quarter where the war now raged fiercest, round the black
steed of Warwick and the blood-red manteline of the fiery Richard.



CHAPTER VI. THE BATTLE.

It was now scarcely eight in the morning, though the battle had endured
three hours; and, as yet, victory so inclined to the earl that nought
but some dire mischance could turn the scale. Montagu had cut his way to
Warwick; Somerset had re-established his array. The fresh vigour
brought by the earl’s reserve had well-nigh completed his advantage
over Gloucester’s wing. The new infantry under Hilyard, the unexhausted
riders under Sir John Coniers and his knightly compeers, were dealing
fearful havoc, as they cleared the plain; and Gloucester, fighting inch
by inch, no longer outnumbering but outnumbered, was driven nearer and
nearer towards the town, when suddenly a pale, sickly, and ghostlike ray
of sunshine, rather resembling the watery gleam of a waning moon than
the radiance of the Lord of Light, broke through the mists, and showed
to the earl’s eager troops the banner and badges of a new array hurrying
to the spot. “Behold,” cried the young Lord Fitzhugh, “the standard and
the badge of the Usurper,--a silver sun! Edward himself is delivered
into our hands! Upon them, bill and pike, lance and brand, shaft and
bolt! Upon them, and crown the day!”

The same fatal error was shared by Hilyard, as he caught sight of the
advancing troop, with their silvery cognizance. He gave the word, and
every arrow left its string. At the same moment, as both horse and foot
assailed the fancied foe, the momentary beam vanished from the heaven,
the two forces mingled in the sullen mists, when, after a brief
conflict, a sudden and horrible cry of “Treason! Treason!” resounded
from either band. The shining star of Oxford, returning from the
pursuit, had been mistaken for Edward’s cognizance of the sun.
[Cont. Croyl., 555; Fabyan, Habington, Hume, S. Turner.] Friend was
slaughtering friend, and when the error was detected, each believed the
other had deserted to the foe. In vain, here Montagu and Warwick, and
there Oxford and his captains, sought to dispel the confusion, and unite
those whose blood had been fired against each other. While yet in
doubt, confusion, and dismay, rushed full into the centre Edward of York
himself, with his knights and riders; and his tossing banners, scarcely
even yet distinguished from Oxford’s starry ensigns, added to the
general incertitude and panic. Loud in the midst rose Edward’s trumpet
voice, while through the midst, like one crest of foam upon a roaring
sea, danced his plume of snow. Hark! again, again--near and nearer--the
tramp of steeds, the clash of steel, the whiz and hiss of arrows, the
shout of “Hastings to the onslaught!” Fresh, and panting for glory and
for blood, came on King Edward’s large reserve; from all the scattered
parts of the field spurred the Yorkist knights, where the uproar, so
much mightier than before, told them that the crisis of the war was
come. Thither, as vultures to the carcass, they flocked and wheeled;
thither D’Eyncourt and Lovell, and Cromwell’s bloody sword, and
Say’s knotted mace; and thither, again rallying his late half-beaten
myrmidons, the grim Gloucester, his helmet bruised and dinted, but the
boar’s teeth still gnashing wrath and horror from the grisly crest. But
direst and most hateful of all in the eyes of the yet undaunted earl,
thither, plainly visible, riding scarcely a yard before him, with the
cognizance of Clare wrought on his gay mantle, and in all the pomp and
bravery of a holiday suit, came the perjured Clarence. Conflict now it
could scarce be called: as well might the Dane have rolled back the sea
from his footstool, as Warwick and his disordered troop (often and aye,
dazzled here by Oxford’s star, there by Edward’s sun, dealing random
blows against each other) have resisted the general whirl and torrent
of the surrounding foe. To add to the rout, Somerset and the on-guard
of his wing had been marching towards the earl at the very time that the
cry of “treason” had struck their ears, and Edward’s charge was made;
these men, nearly all Lancastrians, and ever doubting Montagu, if not
Warwick, with the example of Clarence and the Archbishop of York fresh
before them, lost heart at once,--Somerset himself headed the flight of
his force.

“All is lost!” said Montagu, as side by side with Warwick the brothers
fronted the foe, and for one moment stayed the rush.

“Not yet,” returned the earl; “a band of my northern archers still guard
yon wood; I know them,--they will fight to the last gasp! Thither, then,
with what men we may. You so marshal our soldiers, and I will make good
the retreat. Where is Sir Marmaduke Nevile?”

“Here!”

“Horsed again, young cousin! I give thee a perilous commission. Take the
path down the hill; the mists thicken in the hollows, and may hide thee.
Overtake Somerset; he hath fled westward, and tell him, from me, if
he can yet rally but one troop of horse--but one--and charge Edward
suddenly in the rear, he will yet redeem all. If he refuse, the ruin of
his king and the slaughter of the brave men he deserts be on his head!
Swift, a tout bride, Marmaduke. Yet one word,” added the earl, in
a whisper,--“if you fail with Somerset, come not back, make to the
Sanctuary. You are too young to die, cousin! Away! keep to the hollows
of the chase.”

As the knight vanished, Warwick turned to his comrades “Bold nephew
Fitzhugh, and ye brave riders round me,--so we are fifty knights! Haste
thou, Montagu, to the wood! the wood!”

So noble in that hero age was the Individual MAN, even amidst the
multitudes massed by war, that history vies with romance in showing how
far a single sword could redress the scale of war. While Montagu,
with rapid dexterity, and a voice yet promising victory, drew back the
remnant of the lines, and in serried order retreated to the outskirts
of the wood, Warwick and his band of knights protected the movement
from the countless horsemen who darted forth from Edward’s swarming
and momently thickening ranks. Now dividing and charging singly, now
rejoining, and breast to breast, they served to divert and perplex and
harass the eager enemy. And never in all his wars, in all the former
might of his indomitable arm, had Warwick so excelled the martial
chivalry of his age, as in that eventful and crowning hour. Thrice
almost alone he penetrated into the very centre of Edward’s body-guard,
literally felling to the earth all before him. Then perished by his
battle-axe Lord Cromwell and the redoubted Lord of Say; then, no longer
sparing even the old affection, Gloucester was hurled to the ground. The
last time he penetrated even to Edward himself, smiting down the king’s
standard-bearer, unhorsing Hastings, who threw himself on his path;
and Edward, setting his teeth in stern joy as he saw him, rose in his
stirrups, and for a moment the mace of the king, the axe of the earl,
met as thunder encounters thunder; but then a hundred knights rushed
into the rescue, and robbed the baffled avenger of his prey. Thus
charging and retreating, driving back with each charge farther and
farther the mighty multitude hounding on to the lion’s death, this
great chief and his devoted knights, though terribly reduced in number,
succeeded at last in covering Montagu’s skilful retreat; and when they
gained the outskirts of the wood, and dashed through the narrow opening
between the barricades, the Yorkshire archers approved their lord’s
trust, and, shouting, as to a marriage feast, hailed his coming.

But few, alas! of his fellow-horsemen had survived that marvellous
enterprise of valour and despair. Of the fifty knights who had shared
its perils, eleven only gained the wood; and, though in this number
the most eminent (save Sir John Coniers, either slain or fled) might
be found, their horses, more exposed than themselves, were for the most
part wounded and unfit for further service. At this time the sun again,
and suddenly as before, broke forth,--not now with a feeble glimmer, but
a broad and almost a cheerful beam, which sufficed to give a fuller view
than the day had yet afforded of the state and prospects of the field.

To the right and to the left, what remained of the cavalry of Warwick
were seen flying fast,--gone the lances of Oxford, the bills of
Somerset. Exeter, pierced by the shaft of Alwyn, was lying cold and
insensible, remote from the contest, and deserted even by his squires.

In front of the archers and such men as Montagu had saved from the
sword, halted the immense and murmuring multitude of Edward, their
thousand banners glittering in the sudden sun; for, as Edward beheld
the last wrecks of his foe, stationed near the covert, his desire of
consummating victory and revenge made him cautious, and, fearing an
ambush, he had abruptly halted.

When the scanty followers of the earl thus beheld the immense force
arrayed for their destruction, and saw the extent of their danger, and
their loss,--here the handful, there the multitude,--a simultaneous
exclamation of terror and dismay broke from their ranks.

“Children!” cried Warwick, “droop not! Henry at Agincourt had worse odds
than we!”

But the murmur among the archers, the lealest part of the earl’s
retainers, continued, till there stepped forth their captain, a gray old
man, but still sinewy and unbent, the iron relic of a hundred battles.

“Back to your men, Mark Forester!” said the earl, sternly.

The old man obeyed not. He came on to Warwick, and fell on his knees
beside his stirrup.

“Fly, my lord! escape is possible for you and your riders. Fly through
the wood, we will screen your path with our bodies. Your children,
father of your followers, your children of Middleham, ask no better fate
than to die for you! Is it not so?” and the old man, rising, turned to
those in hearing. They answered by a general acclamation.

“Mark Forester speaks well,” said Montagu. “On you depends the last hope
of Lancaster. We may yet join Oxford and Somerset! This way through the
wood,--come!” and he laid his hand on the earl’s rein.

“Knights and sirs,” said the earl, dismounting, and partially raising
his visor as he turned to the horsemen, “let those who will, fly with
Lord Montagu! Let those who, in a just cause, never despair of victory,
nor, even at the worst, fear to face their Maker, fresh from the
glorious death of heroes, dismount with me!” Every knight sprang from
his steed, Montagu the first. “Comrades!” continued the earl, then
addressing the retainers, “when the children fight for a father’s
honour, the father flies not from the peril into which he has drawn the
children. What to me were life, stained by the blood of mine own beloved
retainers, basely deserted by their chief? Edward has proclaimed that he
will spare none. Fool! he gives us, then, the superhuman mightiness
of despair! To your bows!--one shaft--if it pierce the joints of
the tyrant’s mail--one shaft may scatter yon army to the winds! Sir
Marmaduke has gone to rally noble Somerset and his riders; if we make
good our defence one little hour, the foe may be yet smitten in the
rear, and the day retrieved! Courage and heart then!” Here the earl
lifted his visor to the farthest bar, and showed his cheerful face--“Is
this the face of a man who thinks all hope is gone?”

In this interval, the sudden sunshine revealed to King Henry, where
he stood, the dispersion of his friends. To the rear of the palisades,
which protected the spot where he was placed, already grouped “the
lookers-on and no fighters,” as the chronicler [Fabyan] words it, who,
as the guns slackened, ventured forth to learn the news, and who now,
filling the churchyard of Hadley, strove hard to catch a peep of Henry
the saint, or of Bungey the sorcerer. Mingled with these gleamed the
robes of the tymbesteres, pressing nearer and nearer to the barriers,
as wolves, in the instinct of blood, come nearer and nearer round the
circling watch-fire of some northern travellers. At this time the friar,
turning to one of the guards who stood near him, said, “The mists are
needed no more now; King Edward hath got the day, eh?”

“Certes, great master,” quoth the guard, “nothing now lacks to the
king’s triumph except the death of the earl.”

“Infamous nigromancer, hear that!” cried Bungey to Adam. “What now
avail thy bombards and thy talisman! Hark yet--tell me the secret of the
last,--of the damnable engine under my feet, and I may spare thy life.”

Adam shrugged his shoulders in impatient disdain. “Unless I gave thee my
science, my secret were profitless to thee. Villain and numskull, do thy
worst.”

The friar made a sign to a soldier who stood behind Adam, and the
soldier silently drew the end of the rope which girded the scholar’s
neck round a bough of the leafless tree. “Hold!” whispered the friar,
“not till I give the word. The earl may recover himself yet,” he
added to himself; and therewith he began once more to vociferate his
incantations. Meanwhile the eyes of Sibyll had turned for a moment from
her father; for the burst of sunshine, lighting up the valley below, had
suddenly given to her eyes, in the distance, the gable-ends of the
old farmhouse, with the wintry orchard,--no longer, alas! smiling with
starry blossoms. Far remote from the battlefield was that abode of
peace,--that once happy home, where she had watched the coming of the
false one!

Loftier and holier were the thoughts of the fated king. He had turned
his face from the field, and his eyes were fixed upon the tower of the
church behind. And while he so gazed, the knoll from the belfry began
solemnly to chime. It was now near the hour of the Sabbath prayers, and
amidst horror and carnage, still the holy custom was not suspended.

“Hark!” said the king, mournfully, “that chime summons many a soul to
God!”

While thus the scene on the eminence of Hadley, Edward, surrounded by
Hastings, Gloucester, and his principal captains, took advantage of the
unexpected sunshine to scan the foe and its position, with the eye of
his intuitive genius for all that can slaughter man. “This day,” he
said, “brings no victory, assures no crown, if Warwick escape alive.
To you, Lovell and Ratcliffe, I intrust two hundred knights,--your sole
care the head of the rebel earl!”

“And Montagu?” said Ratcliffe.

“Montagu? Nay, poor Montagu, I loved him as well once as my own mother’s
son; and Montagu,” he muttered to himself, “I never wronged, and
therefore him I can forgive. Spare the marquis.--I mislike that wood;
they must have more force within than that handful on the skirts
betrays. Come hither, D’Eyncourt.”

And a few minutes afterwards, Warwick and his men saw two parties
of horse leave the main body, one for the right hand, one the left,
followed by long detachments of pikes, which they protected; and then
the central array marched slowly and steadily on towards the scanty foe.
The design was obvious,--to surround on all sides the enemy, driven to
its last desperate bay. But Montagu and his brother had not been idle in
the breathing-pause; they had planted the greater portion of the archers
skilfully among the trees. They had placed their pikemen on the verge of
the barricades made by sharp stakes and fallen timber, and where their
rampart was unguarded by the pass which had been left free for the
horsemen, Hilyard and his stoutest fellows took their post, filling the
gap with breasts of iron.

And now, as with horns and clarions, with a sea of plumes and spears and
pennons, the multitudinous deathsmen came on, Warwick, towering in the
front, not one feather on his eagle crest despoiled or shorn, stood,
dismounted, his visor still raised, by his renowned steed. Some of the
men had by Warwick’s order removed the mail from the destrier’s breast;
and the noble animal, relieved from the weight, seemed as unexhausted
as its rider; save where the champed foam had bespecked its glossy hide,
not a hair was turned; and the on-guard of the Yorkists heard its fiery
snort as they moved slowly on. This figure of horse and horseman
stood prominently forth amidst the little band. And Lovell, riding by
Ratcliffe’s side, whispered, “Beshrew me, I would rather King Edward had
asked for mine own head than that gallant earl’s!”

“Tush, youth,” said the inexorable Ratcliffe, “I care not of what steps
the ladder of mine ambition may be made!”

While they were thus speaking, Warwick, turning to Montagu and his
knights, said,--

“Our sole hope is in the courage of our men. And, as at Towton, when
I gave the throne to yon false man, I slew, with my own hand, my noble
Malech, to show that on that spot I would win or die, and by that
sacrifice so fired the soldiers, that we turned the day, so now--oh,
gentlemen, in another hour ye would jeer me, for my hand fails: this
hand that the poor beast hath so often fed from! Saladin, last of thy
race, serve me now in death as in life. Not for my sake, oh noblest
steed that ever bore a knight,--not for mine this offering!”

He kissed the destrier on his frontal, and Saladin, as if conscious
of the coming blow, bent his proud crest humbly, and licked his lord’s
steel-clad hand. So associated together had been horse and horseman,
that had it been a human sacrifice, the bystanders could not have been
more moved. And when, covering the charger’s eyes with one hand, the
earl’s dagger descended, bright and rapid, a groan went through the
ranks. But the effect was unspeakable! The men knew at once that to
them, and them alone, their lord intrusted his fortunes and his life;
they were nerved to more than mortal daring. No escape for Warwick--why,
then, in Warwick’s person they lived and died! Upon foe as upon friend,
the sacrifice produced all that could tend to strengthen the last refuge
of despair. Even Edward, where he rode in the van, beheld and knew the
meaning of the deed. Victorious Towton rushed back upon his memory with
a thrill of strange terror and remorse.

“He will die as he has lived,” said Gloucester, with admiration. “If I
live for such a field, God grant me such a death!”

As the words left the duke’s lips, and Warwick, one foot on his dumb
friend’s corpse, gave the mandate, a murderous discharge from the
archers in the covert rattled against the line of the Yorkists, and the
foe, still advancing, stepped over a hundred corpses to the conflict.
Despite the vast preponderance of numbers, the skill of Warwick’s
archers, the strength of his position, the obstacle to the cavalry made
by the barricades, rendered the attack perilous in the extreme.

But the orders of Edward were prompt and vigorous. He cared not for the
waste of life, and as one rank fell, another rushed on. High before
the barricades stood Montagu, Warwick, and the rest of that indomitable
chivalry, the flower of the ancient Norman heroism. As idly beat the
waves upon a rock as the ranks of Edward upon that serried front of
steel. The sun still shone in heaven, and still Edward’s conquest was
unassured. Nay, if Marmaduke could yet bring back the troops of Somerset
upon the rear of the foe, Montagu and the earl felt that the victory
might be for them. And often the earl paused, to hearken for the cry of
“Somerset” on the gale, and often Montagu raised his visor to look for
the banners and the spears of the Lancastrian duke. And ever, as the
earl listened and Montagu scanned the field, larger and larger seemed to
spread the armament of Edward. The regiment which boasted the stubborn
energy of Alwyn was now in movement, and, encouraged by the young
Saxon’s hardihood, the Londoners marched on, unawed by the massacre
of their predecessors. But Alwyn, avoiding the quarter defended by the
knights, defiled a little towards the left, where his quick eye, inured
to the northern fogs, had detected the weakness of the barricade in the
spot where Hilyard was stationed; and this pass Alwyn (discarding the
bow) resolved to attempt at the point of the pike, the weapon answering
to our modern bayonet. The first rush which he headed was so impetuous
as to effect an entry. The weight of the numbers behind urged on the
foremost, and Hilyard had not sufficient space for the sweep of the
two-handed sword which had done good work that day. While here the
conflict became fierce and doubtful, the right wing led by D’Eyncourt
had pierced the wood, and, surprised to discover no ambush, fell upon
the archers in the rear. The scene was now inexpressibly terrific; cries
and groans, and the ineffable roar and yell of human passion, resounded
demonlike through the shade of the leafless trees. And at this moment,
the provident and rapid generalship of Edward had moved up one of his
heavy bombards. Warwick and Montagu and most of the knights were called
from the barricades to aid the archers thus assailed behind; but an
instant before that defence was shattered into air by the explosion
of the bombard. In another minute horse and foot rushed through the
opening. And amidst all the din was heard the voice of Edward, “Strike,
and spare not; we win the day!” “We win the day! victory! victory!”
 repeated the troops behind. Rank caught the sound from rank, and file
from file; it reached the captive Henry, and he paused in prayer; it
reached the ruthless friar, and he gave the sign to the hireling at his
shoulder; it reached the priest as he entered, unmoved, the church
of Hadley. And the bell, changing its note into a quicker and sweeter
chime, invited the living to prepare for death, and the soul to rise
above the cruelty and the falsehood, and the pleasure and the pomp,
and the wisdom and the glory of the world! And suddenly, as the
chime ceased, there was heard, from the eminence hard by, a shriek of
agony,--a female shriek,--drowned by the roar of a bombard in the field
below.

On pressed the Yorkists through the pass forced by Alwyn. “Yield thee,
stout fellow,” said the bold trader to Hilyard, whose dogged energy,
resembling his own, moved his admiration, and in whom, by the accent in
which Robin called his men, he recognized a north-countryman; “yield,
and I will see that thou goest safe in life and limb. Look round, ye are
beaten.”

“Fool!” answered Hilyard, setting his teeth, “the People are never
beaten!” And as the words left his lips, the shot from the recharged
bombard shattered him piecemeal.

“On for London and the crown!” cried Alwyn,--“the citizens are the
People!”

At this time, through the general crowd of the Yorkists, Ratcliffe and
Lovell, at the head of their appointed knights, galloped forward to
accomplish their crowning mission.

Behind the column which still commemorates “the great battle” of that
day, stretches now a trilateral patch of pasture-land, which faces a
small house. At that time this space was rough forest-ground, and
where now, in the hedge, rise two small trees, types of the diminutive
offspring of our niggard and ignoble civilization, rose then two huge
oaks, coeval with the warriors of the Norman Conquest. They grew close
together; yet, though their roots interlaced, though their branches
mingled, one had not taken nourishment from the other. They stood, equal
in height and grandeur, the twin giants of the wood. Before these
trees, whose ample trunks protected them from the falchions in the rear,
Warwick and Montagu took their last post. In front rose, literally,
mounds of the slain, whether of foe or friend; for round the two
brothers to the last had gathered the brunt of war, and they towered
now, almost solitary in valour’s sublime despair, amidst the wrecks of
battle and against the irresistible march of fate. As side by side they
had gained this spot, and the vulgar assailants drew back, leaving the
bodies of the dead their last defence from death, they turned their
visors to each other, as for one latest farewell on earth.

“Forgive me, Richard,” said Montagu,--“forgive me thy death; had I not
so blindly believed in Clarence’s fatal order, the savage Edward had
never passed alive through the pass of Pontefract.”

“Blame not thyself,” replied Warwick. “We are but the instruments of
a wiser Will. God assoil thee, brother mine. We leave this world to
tyranny and vice. Christ receive our souls!”

For a moment their hands clasped, and then all was grim silence.

Wide and far, behind and before, in the gleam of the sun, stretched
the victorious armament, and that breathing-pause sufficed to show the
grandeur of their resistance,--the grandest of all spectacles, even in
its hopeless extremity,--the defiance of brave hearts to the brute force
of the many. Where they stood they were visible to thousands, but not a
man stirred against them. The memory of Warwick’s past achievements, the
consciousness of his feats that day, all the splendour of his fortunes
and his name, made the mean fear to strike, and the brave ashamed to
murder! The gallant D’Eyncourt sprang from his steed, and advanced to
the spot. His followers did the same.

“Yield, my lords, yield! Ye have done all that men could do!”

“Yield, Montagu,” whispered Warwick. “Edward can harm not thee. Life has
sweets; so they say, at least.”

“Not with power and glory gone.--We yield not, Sir Knight,” answered the
marquis, in a calm tone.

“Then die, and make room for the new men whom ye so have scorned!”
 exclaimed a fierce voice; and Ratcliffe, who had neared the spot,
dismounted and hallooed on his bloodhounds.

Seven points might the shadow have traversed on the dial, and, before
Warwick’s axe and Montagu’s sword, seven souls had gone to judgment. In
that brief crisis, amidst the general torpor and stupefaction and awe of
the bystanders, round one little spot centred still a war.

But numbers rushed on numbers, as the fury of conflict urged on the
lukewarm. Montagu was beaten to his knee, Warwick covered him with his
body; a hundred axes resounded on the earl’s stooping casque, a hundred
blades gleamed round the joints of his harness. A simultaneous cry was
heard; over the mounds of the slain, through the press into the shadow
of the oaks, dashed Gloucester’s charger. The conflict had ceased, the
executioners stood mute in a half-circle. Side by side, axe and sword
still griped in their iron hands, lay Montagu and Warwick.

The young duke, his visor raised, contemplated the fallen foes in
silence. Then dismounting, he unbraced with his own hand the earl’s
helmet. Revived for a moment by the air, the hero’s eyes unclosed, his
lips moved, he raised, with a feeble effort, the gory battle-axe,
and the armed crowd recoiled in terror. But the earl’s soul, dimly
conscious, and about to part, had escaped from that scene of strife, its
later thoughts of wrath and vengeance, to more gentle memories, to such
memories as fade the last from true and manly hearts!

“Wife! child!” murmured the earl, indistinctly. “Anne! Anne! Dear ones,
God comfort ye!” And with these words the breath went, the head fell
heavily on its mother earth, the face set, calm and undistorted, as the
face of a soldier should be, when a brave death has been worthy of a
brave life.

“So,” muttered the dark and musing Gloucester, unconscious of the
throng, “so perishes the Race of Iron. Low lies the last baron who could
control the throne and command the people. The Age of Force expires with
knighthood and deeds of arms. And over this dead great man I see the New
Cycle dawn. Happy, henceforth, he who can plot and scheme, and fawn and
smile!” Waking with a start from his revery, the splendid dissimulator
said, as in sad reproof, “Ye have been over hasty, knights and
gentlemen. The House of York is mighty enough to have spared such noble
foes. Sound trumpets! Fall in file! Way, there,--way! King Edward comes.
Long live the king!”



CHAPTER VII. THE LAST PILGRIMS IN THE LONG PROCESSION TO THE COMMON
BOURNE.

The king and his royal brothers, immediately after the victory, rode
back to London to announce their triumph. The foot-soldiers still stayed
behind to recruit themselves after the sore fatigue. And towards the
eminence by Hadley church, the peasants and villagers of the district
had pressed in awe and in wonder; for on that spot had Henry (now sadly
led back to a prison, never again to unclose to his living form) stood
to watch the destruction of the host gathered in his name; and to that
spot the corpses of Warwick and Montagu were removed, while a bier was
prepared to convey their remains to London; [The bodies of Montagu and
the earl were exhibited bareheaded at St. Paul’s church for three days,
“that no pretence of their being alive might stir up any rebellion
afterwards;... they were then carried down to the Priory of Bisham, in
Berkshire, where among their ancestors by the mother’s side (the Earls
of Salisbury), the two unquiet brothers rest in one tomb.... The large
river of their blood, divided now into many streams, runs so small, they
are hardly observed as they flow by.” (Habington’s “Life of Edward IV.,”
 one of the most eloquent compositions in the language, though incorrect
as a history).--“Sic transit gloria mundi.”] and on that spot had the
renowned friar conjured the mists, exorcised the enchanted guns, and
defeated the horrible machinations of the Lancastrian wizard.

And towards the spot, and through the crowd, a young Yorkist captain
passed with a prisoner he had captured, and whom he was leading to the
tent of the Lord Hastings, the only one of the commanders from whom
mercy might be hoped, and who had tarried behind the king and his royal
brothers to make preparations for the removal of the mighty dead.

“Keep close to me, Sir Marmaduke,” said the Yorkist; “we must look to
Hastings to appease the king: and, if he hope not to win your pardon, he
may, at least, after such a victory, aid one foe to fly.”

“Care not for me, Alwyn,” said the knight; “when Somerset was deaf save
to his own fears, I came back to die by my chieftain’s side, alas, too
late! too late! Better now death than life! What kin, kith, ambition,
love, were to other men was Lord Warwick’s smile to me!”

Alwyn kindly respected his prisoner’s honest emotion, and took advantage
of it to lead him away from the spot where he saw knights and
warriors thickest grouped, in soldier-like awe and sadness, round
the Hero-Brothers. He pushed through a humbler crowd of peasants and
citizens, and women with babes at their breast; and suddenly saw a troop
of timbrel-women dancing round a leafless tree, and chanting some wild
but mirthful and joyous doggerel.

“What obscene and ill-seasoned revelry is this?” said the trader to a
gaping yeoman.

“They are but dancing, poor girls, round the wicked wizard whom Friar
Bungey caused to be strangled, and his witch daughter.”

A chill foreboding seized upon Alwyn: he darted forward, scattering
peasant and tymbestere with his yet bloody sword. His feet stumbled
against some broken fragments; it was the poor Eureka, shattered, at
last, for the sake of the diamond! Valueless to the great friar, since
the science of the owner could not pass to his executioner,--valueless
the mechanism and the invention, the labour and the genius; but the
superstition and the folly and the delusion had their value, and the
impostor who destroyed the engine clutched the jewel!

From the leafless tree was suspended the dead body of a man; beneath,
lay a female, dead too; but whether by the hand of man or the mercy
of Heaven, there was no sign to tell. Scholar and Child, Knowledge
and Innocence, alike were cold; the grim Age had devoured them, as it
devours ever those before, as behind, its march, and confounds, in one
common doom, the too guileless and the too wise!

“Why crowd ye thus, knaves?” said a commanding voice.

“Ha, Lord Hastings! approach! behold!” exclaimed Alwyn.

“Ha, ha!” shouted Graul, as she led her sisters from the spot, wheeling,
and screaming, and tossing up their timbrels, “ha! the witch and her
lover! Ha, ha! Foul is fair! Ha, ha! Witchcraft and death go together,
as thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer.”

And, peradventure, when, long years afterwards, accusations of
witchcraft, wantonness, and treason resounded in the ears of Hastings,
and, at the signal of Gloucester, rushed in the armed doomsman, those
ominous words echoed back upon his soul!

At that very hour the gates of the Tower were thrown open to the
multitude. Fresh from his victory, Edward and his brothers had gone
to render thanksgivings at St. Paul’s (they were devout, those three
Plantagenets!), thence to Baynard’s Castle, to escort the queen and her
children once more to the Tower. And, now, the sound of trumpets stilled
the joyous uproar of the multitude, for in the balcony of the casement
that looked towards the chapel the herald had just announced that King
Edward would show himself to the people. On every inch of the courtyard,
climbing up wall and palisade, soldier, citizen, thief, harlot, age,
childhood, all the various conditions and epochs of multiform life,
swayed, clung, murmured, moved, jostled, trampled,--the beings of the
little hour!

High from the battlements against the weltering beam floated Edward’s
conquering flag,--a sun shining to the sun. Again, and a third time,
rang the trumpets, and on the balcony, his crown upon his head, but
his form still sheathed in armour, stood the king. What mattered to the
crowd his falseness and his perfidy, his licentiousness and cruelty? All
vices ever vanish in success! Hurrah for King Edward! THE MAN OF THE AGE
suited the age, had valour for its war and cunning for its peace, and
the sympathy of the age was with him! So there stood the king; at his
right hand, Elizabeth, with her infant boy (the heir of England) in her
arms, the proud face of the duchess seen over the queen’s shoulder. By
Elizabeth’s side was the Duke of Gloucester, leaning on his sword, and
at the left of Edward, the perjured Clarence bowed his fair head to the
joyous throng! At the sight of the victorious king, of the lovely queen,
and, above all, of the young male heir, who promised length of days to
the line of York, the crowd burst forth with a hearty cry, “Long
live the king and the king’s son!” Mechanically Elizabeth turned her
moistened eyes from Edward to Edward’s brother, and suddenly, as with
a mother’s prophetic instinct, clasped her infant closer to her bosom,
when she caught the glittering and fatal eye of Richard, Duke of
Gloucester (York’s young hero of the day, Warwick’s grim avenger in the
future), fixed upon that harmless life, destined to interpose a feeble
obstacle between the ambition of a ruthless intellect and the heritage
of the English throne!



NOTES.

I. The badge of the Bear and Ragged Staff was so celebrated in the
fifteenth century, that the following extract from a letter addressed
by Mr. Courthope, Rouge Croix, to the author, will no doubt interest
the reader, and the author is happy in the opportunity afforded of
expressing his acknowledgments for the courteous attention with which
Mr. Courthope has honoured his inquiries:--

“COLLEGE OF ARMS. As regards the badge of Richard Nevile, Earl of
Warwick,--namely, the Bear and Staff,--I agree with you, certainly, as
to the probability of his having sometimes used the whole badge, and
sometimes the Staff only, which accords precisely with the way in which
the Bear and Staff are set forth in the Rous Roll to the early earls
(Warwick) before the Conquest. We there find them figured with the Staff
upon their shields and the Bear at their feet, and the Staff alone is
introduced as a quartering upon their shields.

“The story of the origin of these badges is as follows:

“Arth, or Arthgal, is reputed to have been the first Earl of Warwick,
and being one of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, it behooved
him to have a cognizance; and Arth or Narth signifying in British
the same as Ursus in Latin, he took the Bear for such cognizance. His
successor, Morvidus, Earl of Warwick, in single combat, overcame a
mighty giant (who had encountered him with a tree pulled up from the
root, the boughs of which had been torn from it), and in token of his
success assumed the Ragged Staff. You will thus see that the origins
of the two were different, which would render the bearing of them
separately not unlikely, and you will likewise infer that both came
through the Beauchamps. I do not find the Ragged Staff ever attributed
to the Neviles before the match with Beauchamp.

“As regards the crest or cognizance of Nevile, the Pied Bull has been
the cognizance of that family from a very early time, and the Bull’s
head, its crest, and both the one and the other may have been used by
the king-maker, and by his brother, the Marquis Montagu; the said Bull
appears at the feet of Richard Nevile in the Rous Roll, accompanied by
the Eagle of Monthermer; the crests on either side of him are those of
Montagu and Nevile. Besides these two crests, both of which the Marquis
Montagu may have used, he certainly did use the Gryphon, issuant out
of a ducal coronet, as this appears alone for his crest, on his garter
plate, as a crest for Montagu, he having given the arms of that family
precedence over his paternal coat of Nevile; the king-maker, likewise,
upon his seal, gives the precedence to Montagu and Monthermer, and they
alone appear upon his shield.”


II. Hume, Rapin, and Carte, all dismiss the story of Edward’s actual
imprisonment at Middleham, while Lingard, Sharon Turner, and others,
adopt it implicitly. And yet, though Lingard has successfully grappled
with some of Hume’s objections, he has left others wholly unanswered.
Hume states that no such fact is mentioned in Edward’s subsequent
proclamation against Clarence and Warwick. Lingard answers, after
correcting an immaterial error in Hume’s dates, “that the proclamation
ought not to have mentioned it, because it was confined to the
enumeration of offences only committed after the general amnesty in
1469;” and then, surely with some inconsistency, quotes the attainder
of Clarence many years afterwards, in which the king enumerates it among
his offences, “as jeopardyng the king’s royal estate, person, and
life, in strait warde, putting him thereby from all his libertye
after procuring great commotions.” But it is clear that if the amnesty
hindered Edward from charging Warwick with this imprisonment only
one year after it was granted, it would, a fortiori, hinder him from
charging Clarence with it nine years after. Most probable is it that
this article of accusation does not refer to any imprisonment, real or
supposed, at Middleham, in 1469, but to Clarence’s invasion of England
in 1470, when Edward’s state, person, and life were jeopardized by his
narrow escape from the fortified house, where he might fairly be called
“in straite warde;” especially as the words, “after procuring great
commotions,” could not apply to the date of the supposed detention in
Middleham, when, instead of procuring commotions, Clarence had helped
Warwick to allay them, but do properly apply to his subsequent rebellion
in 1470. Finally, Edward’s charges against his brother, as Lingard
himself has observed elsewhere, are not proofs, and that king never
scrupled at any falsehood to serve his turn. Nothing, in short, can
be more improbable than this tale of Edward’s captivity,--there was no
object in it. At the very time it is said to have taken place, Warwick
is absolutely engaged in warfare against the king’s foes. The moment
Edward leaves Middleham, instead of escaping to London, he goes
carelessly and openly to York, to judge and execute the very captain of
the rebels whom Warwick has subdued, and in the very midst of Warwick’s
armies! Far from appearing to harbour the natural resentment so
vindictive a king must have felt (had so great an indignity been offered
to him), almost immediately after he leaves York, he takes the Nevile
family into greater power than ever, confers new dignities upon Warwick,
and betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick’s nephew. On the whole,
then, perhaps some such view of the king’s visit to Middleham which has
been taken in this narrative, may be considered not the least probable
compromise of the disputed and contradictory evidence on the subject.


THE END.





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