ASH WEDNESDAY
“Mostrocci un ombra da l’ un canto sola
Dicendo ‘Colui feese in grembo a Dio
Lo cuor che’n su Tamigi ancor si cola.’”
DANTE. _Inferno_.
SHROVETIDE had come, and the Prince had, before leaving Trapani, been
taking some share in the entertainments of the Carnival. Personally, his
grave reserve made gaieties distasteful to him; and the disastrous
commencement of the Crusade weighed on his spirits. But when state and
show were necessary, he provided for them with royal bounty and
magnificence, and caused them to be regulated with the admirable taste of
that age of exceeding beauty in which he lived.
Thus, in this festal season, banquets were provided, and military shows
took place, for the benefit of the Sicilian nobility and of the citizens
of Trapani, on such a scale, that the English rose high in general
esteem; and many were the secret wishes that Edmund of Lancaster rather
than Charles of Anjou had been able to make good the grant from the Pope.
Splendid were the displays, and no slight toil did they involve on the
part of the immediate train of the Prince, few in number as they were,
and destitute of the appliances of the resident court. Richard hurrying
hither and thither, and waiting upon every one, had little of the
diversion of the affair; but he would willingly have taken treble the
care and toil in the relief it was to be free from the prying mistrustful
eyes of Hamlyn de Valence. Looking after little John of Dunster was,
however, no small part of his trouble; the urchin was so certain to get
into some mischief if left to himself—now treading on a lady’s train, now
upsetting a flagon of wine, now nearly impaling himself upon the point of
a whole spitful of ortolans that were being handed round to the company,
now becoming uncivilly deaf upon his French ear. Altogether, it was a
relief to Richard’s mind when he stumbled upon the little fellow fast
asleep, even though it was in the middle of the Princess’s violet velvet
and ermine mantle, which she had laid down in order to tread a stately
measure with Sire Guillaume de Porçeles.
After all Richard’s exertions that evening, it was no wonder that the
morning found him fast asleep at the unexampled hour of eight! His
wakening was a strange one. His little fellow-page was standing beside
him with a strange frightened yet important air.
“What is the matter, John? It is late? Is the Prince gone to Mass? Has
he missed me?” cried Richard, starting up in dismay, for unpunctuality
was a great offence with Edward.
“He is gone to Mass,” said John, “but, before he comes back,” he came
near and lowered his voice, “Hob Longbow sent me to say you had better
flee.”
“Flee! Boy, why should I flee? Are _your_ senses fleeing?”
“O Richard,” cried John, his face clearing up, “then it is not true! You
are not one of the traitor Montforts!”
“If I were a hundred Montforts, what has that to do with it?”
“Then all is well,” exclaimed the boy. “I said you were no such thing!
I’ll tell Hob he lied in his throat.”
“If he said I was a traitor, verily he did; but as to being a
Montfort—But, how now, John, what means all this?”
“Then it is so! O Richard, Richard, you cannot be one of them! You
cannot have written that letter to warn them to murder Prince Henry.”
“To murder Prince Henry!” Richard stood transfixed. “Not the Prince’s
little son!”
“Oh no, Prince Henry of Almayne! At Viterbo! Hamlyn de Valence saw it.
He is come back. It was in the Cathedral. O Richard—at the elevation of
the Host! Guy and Simon de Montfort fell on him, stabbed him to the
heart, and rushed out. Then they came back again, and dragged him by the
hair of his head into the mire, and shouted that so their father had been
dragged through the streets of Evesham. And then they went off to the
Maremma! And,” continued the boy breathlessly, “Hob Long-bow is on
guard, and he bade me tell you, that for love of your father he will let
you pass; and then you can hide; if only you can go ere the Prince comes
forth.”
“Hide! Wherefore should I hide? This is most horrible, but it is no
deed of mine!” said Richard. “Who dares to think it is?”
“Then you are none of them! You had no part in it! I shall tell Hob he
is a villain—”
“Stay,” said Richard, laying a detaining hand on the boy. “Why does Hob
think me in danger? Is anything stirring against me?”
“They all—all of poor Prince Henry’s meiné, that are come back with
Hamlyn—say that you are a Montfort too, and—oh! do not look so
fierce!—that you sent a letter to warn your brethren where to meet, and
fall on the Prince. And the murderers being fled, they are keen to have
your life; and, Richard, you know I saw you write the letter.”
“That you saw me write a letter, is as certain as that my name is
Montfort,” said Richard, “but I am not therefore leagued with traitors or
murderers! In the church, saidst thou? Oh, well that the Prince forbade
me to visit Guy!”
“Then you will not flee?”
“No, forsooth. I will stay and prove my innocence.”
“But you are a Montfort! And I saw you write the letter.”
“Did you speak of my having written the letter?” asked Richard, pausing.
The boy hung his head, and muttered something about Dame Idonea.
By this time, even if Richard had thought of flight, it would have been
impossible. Two archers made their presence apparent at the entrance of
the tent, and in brief gruff tones informed Richard that the Prince
required his presence. The space between his tent and the royal pavilion
was short, but in those few steps Richard had time to glance over the
dangers of his position, and take up his resolution though with a certain
stunned sense that nothing could be before the member of a proscribed
family, but failure, suspicion, and ruin.
The two brothers, Edward and Edmund, with the Earl of Gloucester, and
their other chief councillors, were assembled; and there were looks of
deep concern on the faces of all, making Edward’s more than ever like a
rigid marble statue; while Edmund had evidently been weeping bitterly,
though his features were full of fierce indignation. Hamlyn de Valence,
and a few other members of the murdered Prince’s suite, stood near in
deep mourning suits.
“Richard de Montfort,” said Prince Edward, looking at him with a
sorrowful reproachful sternness that went to his heart, “we have sent for
you to answer for yourself, on a grave charge. You have heard of that
which has befallen?”
“I have heard, my Lord, of a foul crime which my soul abhors. I trust
none present here think me capable of sharing in it! Whoever dares to
accuse me, shall be answered by my sword!” and he glanced fiercely at
Hamlyn.
“Hold!” said Edward severely, “no one is so senseless as to accuse you of
taking actual part in a crime that took place beyond the sea; but there
is only too much reason to believe that you have been tampered with by
your brothers.”
Then, as his brother Edmund made some suggestion to him, he added, “Is
John de Mohun of Dunster here?”
“Yea, my Lord,” said the little boy, coming forward, with a flush on his
face, and a bold though wistful look, “but verily Richard is no traitor,
be he who he may!”
“That is not what we wished to ask of you,” said the Prince, too sad and
earnest to be amused even for a moment. “Tell us whom you said, even
now, you had seen in the tent you shared with him in Africa.”
“I said I had seen his wraith,” said John.
No smile lighted upon the Prince’s features; they were as serious as
those of the boy, as he commented, “His likeness—his exact likeness—you
mean.”
“Ay,” said the boy; “but Richard proved to me after, that it had been
less tall, and was bearded likewise. So I hoped it did not bode him
ill.”
“Worse, I fear, than if it had in sooth been his double,” said Gloucester
to Prince Edmund. The Prince added the question whether this visitor had
spoken; and John related the inquiry for Richard by the name of Montfort,
and his own reply, which elicited a murmur of amused applause among the
bystanders.
The Prince, however, continued in the same grave manner to draw from the
little witness his account of Richard’s injunction to secresy; and then
asked about the letter-writing, of which John gave his plain account.
The Prince then said, “Speak now, Hamlyn.”
“This, then, I have to add, my Lord, that I, as all the world, remarked
that Richard de Montfort consorted much with Sir Reginald de Ferrières,
who, as we all remember, is the son of a family deeply concerned in the
Mad Parliament. By Sir Reginald, on his arrival at Castel San Giovanni,
a messenger is despatched, bearing letters to the Hospital at Florence,
and it is immediately after his arrival there, that the two Montforts
speed from the Maremma to the unhappy and bloody Mass at Viterbo.”
“You hear, Richard!” said the Prince. “I bade you choose between me and
your brothers. Had you believed me that you could not serve both, it had
been better for you. I credit not that you incited them to the
assassination; but your tidings led them to perpetrate it. I cannot
retain the spy of the Montforts in my camp.”
“My Lord,” said Richard, at last finding space for speech, “I deny all
collusion with my brothers. I have neither seen, spoken with, nor sent
to them by letter nor word.”
“Then to whom was this letter?” demanded the Prince.
“To Sir Robert Darcy, the Grand Prior of England,” answered Richard.
A murmur of incredulous amazement was heard.
“The purport?” continued Edward.
“That, my Lord, it consorts not with my duty to tell.”
“Look here, Richard,” interposed Gilbert of Gloucester, “this is an
unlikely tale. You can have no cause for secresy, save in connection
with these brothers; and if you will point to some way of clearing
yourself of being art and part in this foul act of murder, you may be
sent scot free from the camp; but if you wilfully maintain this denial,
what can we do but treat you as a traitor? No obstinacy! What can a lad
like you have to say to good old Sir Robert Darcy, that all the world
might not know?”
“My Lord of Gloucester,” said Richard, “I am bound in honour not to
reveal the matters between me and Sir Robert; I can only declare on the
faith of a Christian gentleman that I have neither had, nor attempted to
have, any dealings with either of my brothers, Guy or Simon; and if any
man says I have, I will prove his falsehood on his body.” And Richard
flung down his glove before the Prince.
At the same moment Hamlyn de Valence sprang forward.
“Then, Richard de Montfort, I take up the gage. I give thee the lie in
thy throat, and will prove on thy body that thou art a man-sworn traitor,
in league with thy false brethren.”
“I commit me to the judgment of God,” said Richard, looking upwards.
“My Lord,” said Hamlyn, “have we your permission to fight out the
matter?”
“You have,” said Edward, “since to that holy judgment Richard hath
appealed.”
But the Prince looked far from contented with the appeal. He allowed the
preliminaries of place and time to be fixed without his interposition;
and when the council broke up, he fixed his clear deep eyes upon Richard
in a manner which seemed to the boy to upbraid him with the want of
confidence, for which, however, he would not condescend to ask. Richard
felt that, let the issue of the combat be what it would, he had lost that
full trust on the part of the Prince, which had hitherto been his one
drop of comfort; and if he were dismissed from the camp, he should be
more than ever desolate, for his soul could scarce yet bring itself to
grasp the horror of the crime of his brothers.
The combat could not take place for two days—waiting, on one, in order
that Hamlyn might have time to rest, and recover his full strength after
his voyage, and the next, because it was Ash Wednesday. In the meantime
Richard was left solitary; under no restraint, but universally avoided.
The judicial combat did not make him uneasy; the two youths had often
measured their strength together, and though Hamlyn was the elder,
Richard was the taller, and had inherited something of the Plantagenet
frame, so remarkable in those two
Lords of the biting axe and beamy spear,
“wide conquering Edward” and “Lion Richard”; and each believed in the
righteousness of his own cause sufficiently to have implicit confidence
that the right would be shown on his side.
In fact, Richard soon understood that though Prince Edward, with a sense
of the value of definite evidence far in advance of the time, and
befitting the English Justinian, had only allowed the charge to be
brought against him which could in a manner be substantiated, yet that
the general belief went much further. Proved to be a Montfort, and to
have written a letter, he was therefore convicted, by universal consent,
of a league with his brothers for the revenge of their house; to have
instigated the assassination at Viterbo, and to be only biding his time
for the like act at Trapani. Even the Prince was deeply offended by his
silence, and imputed it to no good motive; trust and affection were gone,
and Richard felt no tie to retain him where he was, save his duty as a
crusader. Let him fail in the combat, and the best he could look for
would be to be ignominiously branded and expelled: let him gain, and he
much doubted whether, though the ordeal of battle was always respected,
he would regain his former position. With keen suffering and
indignation, he rebelled against Edward’s harshness and distrust. He—who
had brought him there—who ought to have known him better! Moreover,
there was the crushing sense of the guilt of his brothers; guilt most
horrible in its sacrilegious audacity, and doubly shocking to the
feelings of a family where the grim sanctity of the first Simon de
Montfort, and the enlightened devotion of the second, formed such a
contrast to the savage outrage of him who now bore their name. Richard,
as with bare feet and ashes whitening his dark locks he knelt on the cold
stones of the dark Norman church at Trapani, wept hot and bitter tears of
humiliation over the family crimes that had brought them so low; prayed
in an agony for repentance for his brothers; and for himself, some
opening for expiating their sin against at least the generous royal
family. “O! could I but die for my Prince, and know that he forgave and
they repented!”
Only when on his way back to the camp was he sensible of the murmurs of
censure at his hypocrisy in joining the penitential procession at all.
Dame Idonea, in a complete suit of sackcloth, was informing her friends
that she had made a vow not to wash her face till the whole adder brood
of Montfort had been crushed; and that she trusted to see the beginning
of justice done to-morrow. She had offered a candle to St. James to that
effect, hoping to induce him to turn away his patronage from the family.
Every one, knight or squire, shrank away from Richard, if he did but look
towards them; and he was seriously discomfited by the difficulty of
obtaining a godfather for the combat. No one chose even to be asked,
lest they might be suspected of approving of the murder of Prince Henry;
and the unhappy page re-entered his tent with the most desolate sense of
being abandoned by heaven and man.
Fastened upon the pole of the tent by an arrowhead, a small scroll of
parchment met his eyes. He read in English—“A steed and a lance are
ready for the lioncel who would rather avenge his father than lick the
tyrant’s feet. A guide awaits thee.”
Some weeks since, this might have been a tempting summons; but now the
sickening sense of the sacrilegious murder, and of the life of outlawry
utterly unrestrained, passed over Richard. Yet, if he should not accept
the offer, what was before him? A shameful death, perhaps; if he failed
in the ordeal, disgrace, captivity, or expulsion; if he succeeded,
bondage and distrust for ever. Some new accusation! some deeper fall!
There was a low growl from Leonillo; the hangings of the tent were
raised, and an archer bending his head said, “A word with you, Sir.”
“Who art thou?” demanded Richard.
“Hob Longbow, Sir. Remember you not old passages—in the forest,
there—and Master Adam?”
Richard did remember the archer in the days of his outlaw life, in a very
different capacity.
“You were grown so tall, Sir, and so hand and glove with the Longshanks,
that Nick Dustifoot and I knew not an if it were yourself—but now your
name is out, and the wind is in another quarter”—he grinned, then seeing
Richard impatient of the approach to familiarity, “You did not know Nick
Dustifoot? He was one of young Sir Simon’s men-at-arms, you see, and
took to the woods, like other folk, after Kenilworth was given up, till
stout men were awanting for this Crusade. And he knew Sir Guy when he
came to the camp yon by Tunis, and spake with him; moreover, he went in
the train of him of Almayne to Viterbo, and had speech again with Sir
Simon, who gave him this scroll. And if you will meet him at the Syren’s
Rock to-night, my Lord Richard, he will bring you to those who will
conduct you to Sir Guy’s brave castle, where he laughs kings and counts
to scorn! We have the guard, and will see you safe past the gates of the
camp.”
The way to liberty was open: Richard deliberated. The atmosphere of
distrust and suspicion under the Prince’s coldness was well-nigh
unbearable. Danger faced him for the next day! Disgrace was everywhere.
Should he leave it behind, where, at least, he would not hear and feel
it? Should he, when all had turned from him, meet a brotherly welcome?
Then came back on him the thought of what Simon and Guy had made
themselves; the thought of his father’s grief at former doings of theirs,
which had fallen so far short of the atrocity of this. He knew that his
father had rather have seen each one of his five sons slain, or helpless
cripples like the firstborn, than have been thus avenged. Nay, had he
this morning prayed for the pardon of a crime, to which he would thus
become a consenting party?
He looked up resolutely. “No, Hob Longbow. Hap what hap, my part can
never be with those who have stained the Church with blood. Let my
brothers know that my heart yearned to them before, but now all is over
between us. I can only bear the doom they have brought upon me!”
It was not possible to remain and argue. A tent was a dangerous place
for secret conferences, and Hob Longbow could only growl, “As you will,
Sir. Now nor you nor any one else can say I have not done my charge.”
“Alack, alack!” sighed Richard, “would that, my honour once redeemed,
Hamlyn might make an end of me! But for thee, my poor Leonillo, I have
no comforter or friend!” and he flung his arms round the dog’s neck.