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.