And we see far on holy ground,
If duly purged our mental view.--KEBLE.
The King held Harry Clifford by the hand as he left St. Peter’s Church.
‘My child, my shepherd boy,’ he said, and he called Watch after him, and
interested himself in establishing a kind of suspicious peace between
the shaggy collie and his own ‘Minion,’ a small white curly-haired dog,
which belonged to a family that had been brought by Queen Margaret from
Provence.
His attendant knight, Sir Nicolas Romford, told Sir Giles Musgrave
that he had really never seemed so happy since his deliverance, and Sir
Nicolas had waited on him ever since his capture, six years previously.
He led the youth along to the royal rooms, asking on the way after his
sheep and the goodwife who had sent him presents of eggs, then showing
him the bullfinch, that greeted his return with loving chirps, and when
released from its cage came and sat upon his shoulder and played with
his hair, ‘A better pet than a fierce hawk, eh, Hal?’ he said.
He laughed when he found that Harry thought he had spent all this time
in a dark underground dungeon with fetters on his feet.
‘Oh no!’ he said; ‘they were kindly jailors. They dealt better with me
than with my Master.’
‘Sir, sir, that terrible ride through Cheapside!’ said Harry. ‘We heard
of it at Derwent-side, and we longed to have our pikes at the throats of
the villain traitors.’
The King looked as if he hardly remembered that cruel procession, when
he was set upon a sorry jade with his feet tied to the stirrups, and
shouts of ‘Behold the traitor!’ around him. Then with a sweet smile of
sudden recollection, he said, ‘Ah! I recall it, and how I rejoiced to
be led in the steps of my Lord, and how the cries sounded, “We will not
have this man to reign over us!” Gratias ago, unworthy me, who by my own
fault could not reign.’
Harry was silenced, awe-struck, and by-and-by the King took him to see
his old chamber in the White Tower, up a winding stone stair. It was
not much inferior to the royal lodgings, except in the matter of dais,
canopy, and tapestry, and the window looked out into the country, so
that the King said he had loved it, and it had many a happy thought
connected with it.
Hal followed him in a sort of silent wonder, if not awe, not daring
to answer him in monosyllables. This was not quite the hermit of
Derwentdale. It was a broader man--not with the breadth of full
strength, but of inactivity and advance of years, though the fiftieth
year was only lately completed--and the royal robe of crimson, touched
with gold, suited him far less than the brown serge of the anchoret.
The face was no longer thin, sunburnt, and worn, but pale, and his
checks slightly puffed, and the eyes and smile, with more of the strange
look of innocent happiness than of old, and of that which seemed to
bring back to his young visitor the sense of peace and well-being that
the saintly hermit had always given him.
There was consultation that evening between Lord Oxford and Sir Giles
Musgrave. It was better, they agreed, to let young Clifford remain with
the King as much as possible, but without divulging his name. The
King knew it, and indeed had known it, when he received the boy at his
hermitage, but he seemed to have forgotten it, as he had much besides.
Oxford said that though he could be roused into actual fulfilment of
such forms as were required of him, and understood what was set before
him, his memory and other powers seemed to have been much impaired, and
it was held wiser not to call on him more than could be helped, till
the Queen and her son should come to supply the energy that was wanting.
They would make the gay and brilliant appearance that the Londoners had
admired in Edward of York, and which could not be obtained from poor
Henry.
His memory for actual matters was much impaired. Never for two days
together could he recollect that his son and Warwick’s daughter were
married, and it was always by an effort that he remembered that the
Prince of Wales was not the eight-years-old child whom he had last
seen. As to young Clifford, he sometimes seemed to think the tall
nineteen-years-old stripling was just where he had left the child of
twelve or thirteen, and if he perceived the age, was so far confused
that it was not quite certain that he might not mix him up with his own
son, though the knight in constant attendance was sure that he was clear
on that point, and only looked on ‘Hal’ as the child of his teaching and
prayers.
But Harry Clifford could not persuade him to enter into that which more
and more lay near the youthful heart, the rescuing Anne St. John from
the suitor of whom little that was hopeful was heard; and the obtaining
her from his father. Of course this could not be unless Harry could win
his father’s property, and no longer be under the attaint in blood, so
as to be able to lay claim to the lands of the De Vescis through his
mother; but though the King listened with kindly interest to the
story of the children’s adventure on the Londesborough moor, and the
subsequent meeting in Westmorland, the rescue from the outlaws, and the
journey together, it was all like a romance to him--he would nod
his head and promise to do what he could, if he could, but he never
remembered it for two days together, and if Hal ventured on anything
like pressure, the only answer was, ‘Patience, my son, patience must
have her work! It is the will of God, it will be right.’
And when Hal began to despair and work himself up and seek to do more
with one so impracticable, Lord Oxford and Sir Giles warned him not to
force his real name and claims too much, for he did not need too many
enemies nor to have Lord St. John and the Nevil who held his lands both
anxious to sweep him from their path.
Nor was anything heard from or of the Prioress of Greystone, and
whenever the name of George Nevil, the Chancellor and Archbishop of
York, was heard, Hal’s heart burnt with anxiety, and fear that the lady
had forgotten him, though as Dick Nevil, who held the lands of Clifford,
was known to be in his suite, it was probable that she was acting out of
prudence.
The turmoil of anxious impatience seemed to be quelled when Hal sat on
a stool before the King, with Watch leaning against his knee. The
instruction or meditation seemed to be taken up much where it had been
left six years before, with the same unanswerable questions, only the
youth had thought out a great deal more, and the hermit had advanced in
a wisdom which was not that of the rough, practical world.
Part of Clifford’s day was spent in the tilt-yard, where his two
friends, as well as himself, were anxious that he should acquire
proficiency and ease such as would become his station, when he recovered
it; and a martinet old squire of Oxford proved himself nearly as hard a
master as ever Simon Bunce had been.
One very joyous day came to Henry in his regal capacity. Christmas Day
had been quietly spent. There was much noisy revelling in the city,
and the guards in the castle had their feastings, but Warwick was
daily expected to return from France, and neither his brother nor
the Archbishop thought that there was much policy in making a public
spectacle of a puppet King.
But there was one ceremony from which Henry would not be debarred. He
would make the public offering on the Epiphany in Westminster Abbey. He
had done so ever since he was old enough to totter up to the altar and
hold the offerings; and his heart was set on doing so once more. So a
large and quiet cream-coloured Flemish horse was brought for him, he was
robed in purple and ermine, with a coronal around the cap that covered
his hair, fast becoming white. His train in full array followed him, and
the streets were thronged, but there was an ominous lack of applause,
and even a few audible jeers at the monk dressed up like the jackdaw
in peacock’s plumes, and comparisons with Edward, in sooth a king worth
looking at.
Henry seemed not to heed or hear. His blue eyes looked upward, his face
was set in peaceful contemplation, his lips were moving, and those who
were near enough caught murmurs of ‘Vidimus enim stellam Ejus in Oriente
et venimus adorare Eum.’ Truly the one might be a king to suit the
kingdoms of this world, the other had a soul near the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Dean and choir received him at the west door, and with the same rapt
countenance he paced up to the sanctuary, and knelt before the chair
appropriated to him, while the grand Epiphany Celebration was gone
through, in all its glory and beauty of sound and sight, and with the
King kneeling with clasped hands, and a radiant look of happiness almost
transfiguring that worn face.
When the offertory anthem was sung, he rose up, and advanced to the
altar. A salver of gold coins was presented to him, which he took and
solemnly laid on the altar, but paused for a moment, and removed his
crown with both hands, placing it likewise on the altar, and kneeling
for a moment ere he turned to take the vase whence breathed the fragrant
odour of frankincense; and presenting this, and afterwards kneeling and
bowing low with clasped hands, he again took the salver in which the
myrrh was laid. This again he placed on the altar, and remained kneeling
in intense devotion through the remainder of the service, only looking
up at the ‘Sursum Corda,’ when those near enough to see his countenance
said that they never knew before the full import of those words, nor how
the heart could be uplifted.
It was the first time that Hal Clifford had ever joined in the full
ceremonial of the Church, or in such splendid accompaniment, for though
there had been the rightful ritual at St. Peter’s in the Tower, the
space had been confined, and the clergy few, and the whole, even on
Christmas Day, had been more or less a training to him to enter into
what he now saw and heard. He had in these last weeks gathered much
of the meaning of all this from the King, who perhaps never fully
disentangled the full-grown youth from the boy he had taught at
Derwentdale, but who, perhaps for that very cause, really suited better
the strange mixture of ignorance, simplicity, observation and aspiration
of the shepherd lord.
The King did not help more but less than he had done before in Hal’s
researches and wonderings about natural objects; he had forgotten
the philosophies he had once read, and the supposed circuits of moon,
planets and stars only perplexed and worried his brain. It was much more
satisfactory to refer all to ‘He hath made them fast for ever and ever,
He hath given them a law which shall not be broken,’ and he could not
understand Hal’s desire to find out what that law was, and far less his
calculations about the tides. He had scarcely ever seen the sea, and as
to its motions, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come and no farther’ was sufficient
explanation, and when Hal tried to show him the correspondence between
spring tides and full moons he either waved him away or fell asleep.
But on the spiritual side of his mind there was no torpor. He loved to
explain the sense of the prayers to his willing pupil, and to tell
him the Gospel story, dwelling on whatever could waken or carry on the
Christian life; and between the tiltyard and the oratory Hal spent a
strange life.
That question which had occurred to him on the journey Hal ventured to
lay before his King--‘Was it really and truly better and more acceptable
worship that came to breathe through him when alone with God under the
open vault of Heaven, with endless stars above and beyond, or was the
best that which was beautified and guided by priests, with all that
man’s devices could lavish upon its embellishment?’ Such, though in more
broken and hesitating words, was the herd boy’s difficulty, and Henry
put his head back, and after having once said, ‘Adam had the one, God
directed the other,’ he shut his eyes, and Hal feared he would put it
aside as he had with the moon and the tides, but after some delay, he
leant forward and said, ‘My son, if man had always been innocent, that
worship as Adam and Eve had it might--nay, would--have sufficed them.
The more innocent man is, the better his heart rises. But sin came into
the world, and expiation was needed, not only here on earth, but before
the just God in Heaven above. Therefore doth He, who hath once offered
Himself in sacrifice for us, eternally present His offering in Heaven
before the Mercy-Seat, and we endeavour as much as our poor feeble
efforts can, to take part in what He does above, and bring it home to
our senses by all that can represent to us the glories of Heaven.’
There was much in this that went beyond Hal, who knitted his brow,
and would have asked further, but the King fell into a state of
contemplation, and noticed nothing, until presently he broke out into
a thanksgiving: ‘Blessed be my Lord, who hath granted me once more to
follow in the steps of the kings of the East, though but as in a dream,
and lay my crown and my prayer before Him. Once more I thank Thee, O my
true King of kings, and Lord of lords.’
‘Oh, do not say once more!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘Again and again, I trust,
sir. It is no dream. It is real.’
The King smiled and shook his head. ‘It is all a dream to me,’ he said,
‘the pageants and the whole. They will not last! Oh, no! It is all but
an empty show.’
Hal looked up anxiously, and the King went on: ‘Well do I remember the
day when, scarce able to walk, and weighed down by my robes, I tottered
up to the altar and was well pleased to make my offering, and how my
Lord of Warwick, who was then, took me in his arms, and showed me my
great father’s figure on his grave, and told me I was bound to be such a
king as he! Alas! was it mine own error that I so failed?&&
Henry born at Monmouth shall short live and gain all,
Henry born at Windsor shall long live and lose all.’
‘Oh, sir, sir, do not speak of that old saw!’
Still the King smiled. ‘It has come true, my child. All is lost, and
it may be well for my soul that thus it should be, and that I should
go into the presence of my God freed from the load of what was gained
unjustly. I know not whether, if my hand had been stronger, I should
have striven to have borne up the burthen of these two realms, but they
never ought to have been mine, and if the sins of the forefathers be
visited on the children to the third and fourth generation, no marvel
that my brain and mine arm could but sink under the weight. Would that
I had yielded at once, and spared the bloodshed and sacrilege! Miserere
mei! My son was a temptation. Oh, my poor boy! is he to be the heir to
all that has come on me? Have pity on him, good Lord!’
‘Nay, sir, your brave son will come home to comfort you, and help you
and make all well.’
‘I know not! I know not! I cannot believe that I shall see him again,
or that the visitation of these crimes is not still to come! My son, my
sweet son, I can only pray that he might give up his soul sackless and
freer of guilt than his father can be, when I remember all that I ought
to have hindered when I could think and use my will! Now, now all is but
confusion! God has taken away my judgment, even as He did with my French
grandsire, and I can only let others act as they will, and pray for them
and for myself.’
He had never spoken at such length, nor so clearly, and whenever he was
required to come forward, he merely walked, rode, sat or signed rolls
as he was told to do, and continually made mistakes as to the persons
brought to him, generally calling them by their fathers’ names, if
he recognised them at all, but still to his nearest attendants, and
especially to his beloved herd boy, he was the same gentle, affectionate
being, never so happy as at his prayers, and sometimes speaking of holy
things as one almost inspired.