TREASON
Full many a glorious morning: have I seen,
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon, permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face.
SHAKSPEARE.
The duke of York, urged so earnestly to fly, felt that to do so was to
save himself at the expense of his friends, on whom Henry's vengeance
would severely fall, when he found himself balked of his victim. He
consented to leave Jane Shore's abode, with the resolve not of effecting
his escape, but of securing, by surrendering himself, the safety of his
defenceless adherents united under her lowly roof. He directed his
course as he believed into the very centre of danger, entering the
narrow straggling street whence the sound of the advance of the troop of
horse had been heard. He entered the lane; it was empty. The ominous
sounds were still sharp and near; it seemed as if they were in some
street parallel to the one which he threaded. He turned at right angles
into another, to reach the spot: again he turned, led by the baffling
noise, in another direction. It was just four in the morning; there were
but few abroad so early: he saw a monk gliding stealthily from under a
dark archway, and a poor fellow, who looked as if he had slept beneath
heaven's roof, and had not wherewithal to break his fast. True to the
kindly instincts of his nature, Richard felt at his girdle for his
purse; it was long since he had possessed the smallest coin of his
adversary's realm. "I, a prince!" his feeling had been more bitter, but
that his fingers came in contact with his dagger's hilt, and the
conviction of freedom burst with fresh delight upon him. Free, even in
spite of its intents; for the tramp which had gradually grown fainter,
was dying absolutely away.
They had probably reached the hut: thither he must return. It was no
easy thing to find his way to it, he had so entangled himself in the
narrow lanes, and wretched assemblages of dwellings huddled together on
the outskirts of London. At length they opened before him: there was the
dingy field, there the hut, standing in quiet beneath the rays of the
morning sun, of the opening, summer, soft, sweet day. He was quickly at
its threshold; he entered. Jane was within, alone, seated in her wooden
chair; her hands clasped; her pale face sunk on her bosom: big tears
were gathering in her eyes, and rolling down her faded cheeks unheeded.
Jane's aspect was usually so marble (a miraculous chiselling of resigned
hopelessness), her mien so unbending, that these signs of emotion struck
the prince with wonder and compassion.
He knelt at her feet and pressed her thin, but little hand to his lips,
saying, "Mother, where are my friends? Mother, bless me before I go."
She dried the drops raining from her eyes, saying in a voice that
expressed how occupied she was by her own emotion, "I am a sinful woman;
well do these tones remind me of the same: those days are quite, quite
gone, even from the memory of all; but once they were as the present
hour, when so he spoke, and I was lost, and still am lost; for, through
hunger and cold and shame, I love, and cannot quite repent. Will the
hour ever come when I can regret that once I was happy?"
Many, many sad years had passed since words like these had dropped from
poor Jane's lips; her feelings fed on her, possessed her, but she had
been mute; overflowing now, her accent was calm; she spoke as if she was
unaware that her thoughts framed speech, and that she had an auditor.
"You have paid a dear penalty, and are surely forgiven," said York,
striving in his compassion to find the words that might be balm to her.
"Prince," she continued, "some time ago,--I have lost all date; now the
chasm seems nought, now a long eternity; it was when my poor heart knew
nothing of love, save its strong necessity and its delight; methought I
would see your father's fair offspring, for I loved them for his sake.
At the festival of Easter I placed myself near the gate of the royal
chapel: I thought to be unseen. The happy queen held her sons each by
the hand; you were then, as now, his image, a little sportive blue-eyed
cherub. The prince of Wales had his mother's look: her large, dark eye,
her soft, rosy mouth, her queenlike brow; her beauty which had won
Edward, her chaste sweetness, which had made her his wife; my
presence--I thought to conceal it better--was revealed. The queen
turned her face away; there was anguish surely written there, for the
prince darted on me a look of such withering scorn--yes, even he--his
stainless, fair brow was knit, his bright angel's face clouded: the look
sank in my heart. Edward's beautiful, pure child reproved me, hated me:
for three days I felt that I would never see the deluder more: you do
not share his abhorrence; you do not hate the pale ghost of Shore's
wife?"
Such clinging to the past, such living memory of what was so absolutely
dead to all except herself, awe-struck the prince: "We are all sinners
in the eye of God," he said, "but thy faults are surely forgiven thee,
gentle one: thy tears have washed every trace away, and my brother, my
poor murdered Edward, now blesses thee. Alas! would that I could soften
this last stage of your suffering earthly life."
"'Tis better as it is," she answered hastily, "once I felt disgrace and
privation keenly; perhaps that may atone. Now, would it were more
bitter, that so I might wean myself from him whose very memory will lose
my soul. You are good, and Our Lady will requite you. Now, listen: the
damsel Monina and Master O'Water have gone towards Southend: your
remaining friends watch for you here. I shall see them again to-night:
meanwhile it is to be feared that Clifford plots vengeance, and you must
fly; you must at every hazard go towards Southend. Beyond the town, on
the lone sands, there is a wooden cross, telling where one escaped
dreadful peril through the might of Him who died on it for us; the
smallest sign, the waving of your cap, will be watched for by the
Adalid, they will send a boat to take you on board. Now swiftly depart:
your life hangs on the hour; this purse will furnish you with means Lady
Brampton left it for you."
"Bless me, mother, ere I go."
"Can a sinner's blessing avail? fear rather that God punish me through
you, where my heart is garnered. Oh, may He indeed bless and save you;
and I shall die in peace."
He kissed her withered hand and was gone; she dragged her failing limbs
to the casement; he was already lost among the straggling tenements that
bounded her field.
Again York was flying from his foe; again studying to elude pursuit,
with how different feelings. Before, his flight was peremptory, for the
preservation of others, while he blindly longed to deliver himself to
slavery. Now liberty, for its own dear sake, was worth the world to him.
He had tasted to its dregs the misery of captivity, and loathed the very
name; whatever might betide, he would never submit willingly again to
one hour's thraldom. He felt his dagger's hilt; he drew it from the
sheath, and eyed its polished blade with gladness; for eight months he
had been living unarmed, under the perpetual keeping of armed jailors;
what wonder that he looked on this sharp steel as the key to set him
free from every ill.
He got clear of the town: the open sky, the expanse of summer--adorned
earth was before him. It was the "leafy month of June;" the far-spread
corn-fields were getting yellow; and on their weltering surface played
the shadows of a few clouds, relics of the last night's storm: the sun
was bright, the breeze balmy, already the very foot-paths were dry, and
scarcely from its inmost leaves did any tree shake moisture: yet there
was a freshness in the scene, a lightness in the air, the gift of
tempest. The dazzling sun rose higher, and each island-vapour sank on
the horizon; the garish light clothed all things; the lazy shadows crept
up around the objects which occasioned them, while both object and its
shade seemed to bask in the sunshine. Now overhead the meeting boughs of
trees scarce sufficed to shield him from the penetrating glare; now in
the open path he was wholly exposed to it, as his diminished shadow
clung almost to the horse's hoofs. The birds twittered above; the lazy
mare was stretched basking, while her colt gambolled around; each slight
thing spoke of the voluptuous indolence of summer, and the wafted scent
of hay, or gummy exhalation of evergreens, distilled by the warm noon,
fed with languid sweets every delighted sense. If paradise be ever of
this world it now embowered Richard. All was yet insecure; his White
Rose was far: but nature showered such ecstasy on him that his whole
being was given up to her influence. Latterly the form of man had been
ever before his aching sight under the aspect of an enemy; the absence
of every fellow-creature he hailed with gladness--free and alone, alone
and free! With the pertinacious dwelling on one idea, which is
characteristic of overpowering feeling, this combination of words and
ideas haunted his thoughts, fell from his lips, and made a part of the
soul-subduing rapture now his portion.
May it be added--we must address the unhappy and imaginative, who _know_
that the future is so linked with the present as to have an influence
over that present, when we add--that the intensity of the liberated
prince's feelings was wrought even to pain, by its being the last time
that unalloyed delight would ever be his--the last when he might feel
himself the nursling of nature, allied by the bond of enjoyment to all
her offspring. He knew not this himself. Immersed in the sense of all
that he now possessed, he did not pause to reflect whether this were the
last time, that he, the victim of chance and change, might ever see the
waving corn or shadowy trees, or hear the carolling birds, or the
murmurs of the fresh free brooks gurgling round some pendant bough or
jutting stone; but that so it was to be, gave poignancy to his pleasure,
a dreamy halo to the whole scene.
It would appear, in spite of the precautions taken by his enemy, that
the north bank of the Thames had been neglected. Richard met with no
impediment in his progress. Whenever he caught a sight of the river, he
perceived unusual signs of activity. Little wherries shot hither and
thither on its surface, revealing to him that keen and vigilant search
was being made. Meanwhile he rode on, the broad stream for his guide,
avoiding towns and villages. He ventured to purchase bread at a lone
farm-house--he alighted in a little grove beside a rivulet, to rest his
tired horse, and to refresh himself. The summer heat recalled Andalusia
to his mind; and scenes and objects, quite forgotten, wandered from
their oblivious recesses back into his recollection. "My happy boyhood!
My beloved Spain! Why did I leave the land of beauty, where with
Monina----?" The idea of her whose fate was so inextricably linked
with his, of his bride, who had quitted her palace home to share his
adversity, reproached him. But his imagination could not fix itself on
bleak Scotland, its wild haunts, its capricious king: it could only
build another bower among the folds of the mountains of Andalusia, and
place his White Rose therein.
Again he pursued his way. The slant beams of the descending sun were yet
more sultry, but it sank swiftly down; now casting gigantic shadows,
bathing the tree-tops in golden dew, and flooding the clouds with
splendour; now it was gone, and the landscape faded into a brown mellow
tint. The birds' last chirp was given, the beetle winged her noisy
flight, the congregated rooks had flown to the belfry of the church, or
to their nests in the churchyard trees; silence and twilight crept up
from the sedgy banks of the river, leaving the pale water alone to
reflect the struggling farewell of day. In a little time the banks
shelved away, giving place to broad yellow sand. Richard ventured to
bend his course along the beach. There was a bark upon the dim tide,
whose progress he had watched since noon, whose flapping or full sails
were the signs by which he foretold the prosperity of his destined
voyage. Now with swelling canvas it walked swiftly over the water.
He passed Southend. He perceived the tall rough-hewn cross. Two figures
were seated at its foot. He hesitated, but quickly perceiving that one
was a woman, he proceeded onwards. The stars were out; the very west was
dim; in the offing there was a vessel, whose build and tall slender
masts he thought he recognized. The broad expanse of calm ocean was
there, whose waves broke in tiny ripplets on the beach. He reached the
cross. O'Water and Monina saw his approach. The Irishman welcomed him
boisterously, in his own language. Monina uttered a benediction in
Spanish. The scene was solitary and secure. Every danger was past. There
floated the caravel which insured escape, and the stars alone witnessed
their flight. Monina gave her white veil to O'Water, who contrived to
elevate it on the cross. In a few moments the splash of oars was heard,
and a dark speck floated towards them on the waves, from the direction
of the Adalid. "They come; you are safe," murmured his lovely friend;
"this hour repays for all." The boat was already on the beach: a seaman
leaped on shore. "The White English Rose," he said: such was the word
agreed upon; and, hailing it, Monina hurried to embark with her
companions. The little boat was pushed from shore. O'Water gave vent to
his delight in a shout that resembled a yell. Monina crept close to the
duke of York: that he was safe was a truth so dear, so new, that she
forgot everything, save her wish to assure herself again and again that
so it was. At that moment of triumph, something like sadness invaded
Richard: he had quitted the land for which his friends had bled, and he
had suffered--for ever: he had left his Katherine there, where all was
arrayed against him for his destruction. This was safety; but it was the
overthrow of every childish dream, every youthful vision; it put the
seal of ineffectual nothingness on his every manhood's act.
While each, occupied by their peculiar reveries, were aware only that
they were being borne onwards on the waves, a smaller boat shot athwart
their bows, and a voice exclaimed in Spanish, "Desdichados, estais
allá?"
"My father--we are betrayed," Monina cried: and she threw her arms
round Richard, as if by such frail guard to shelter him--another
stronger grasp was upon his arm as he endeavoured to rise--a voice,
husky from passion, yet still Clifford's voice, muttered, "The day is
mine--you--she--all are mine!"
"Thou fell traitor! What ho! De Faro, to the rescue!" already the
mariner had thrown a grappling iron--already the Adalid was in motion
towards them. Clifford strove to draw his sword. York was upon him in
mortal struggle; his keen dagger, unsheathed, uplifted; the boat
lurched--his arm descended, but half the force of the intended blow was
lost, while both fell overboard. The crew rushed to the boat's side to
loosen the grappling iron, which concluded its upset. De Faro, who stood
high on the bows of his own boat, had seized Monina. Now another larger
skiff was seen approaching, "To your oars!" cried the Moor: they shot
swiftly towards the Adalid, and while the sea became alive with craft,
they reached the little caravel, who, turning her canvas to the wind,
dropped down the tide.