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.