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.