THE STRIFE WHICH SIBYLL HAD COURTED, BETWEEN KATHERINE AND HERSELF,
COMMENCES IN SERIOUS EARNEST.
Hastings felt relieved when, the next day, several couriers arrived
with tidings so important as to merge all considerations into those of
state. A secret messenger from the French court threw Gloucester into
one of those convulsive passions of rage, to which, with all his
intellect and dissimulation, he was sometimes subject, by the news of
Anne's betrothal to Prince Edward; nor did the letter from Clarence to
the king, attesting the success of one of his schemes, comfort Richard
for the failure of the other. A letter from Burgundy confirmed the
report of the spy, announced Duke Charles's intention of sending a
fleet to prevent Warwick's invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for
his supineness in not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe.
The gay and reckless presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-
errant than a monarch, laughed at the word invasion. "Pest on
Burgundy's ships! I only wish that the earl would land!" [Com, iii.
c. 5] he said to his council. None echoed the wish! But later in the
day came a third messenger with information that roused all Edward's
ire; careless of each danger in the distance, he ever sprang into
energy and vengeance when a foe was already in the field. And the
Lord Fitzhugh (the young nobleman before seen among the rebels at
Olney, and who had now succeeded to the honours of his House) had
suddenly risen in the North, at the head of a formidable rebellion.
No man had so large an experience in the warfare of those districts,
the temper of the people, and the inclinations of the various towns
and lordships as Montagu; he was the natural chief to depute against
the rebels. Some animated discussion took place as to the dependence
to be placed in the marquis at such a crisis; but while the more wary
held it safer, at all hazards, not to leave him unemployed, and to
command his services in an expedition that would remove him from the
neighbourhood of his brother, should the latter land, as was expected,
on the coast of Norfolk, Edward, with a blindness of conceit that
seems almost incredible, believed firmly in the infatuated loyalty of
the man whom he had slighted and impoverished, and whom, by his offer
of his daughter to the Lancastrian prince, he had yet more recently
cozened and deluded. Montagu was hastily summoned, and received
orders to march at once to the North, levy forces, and assume their
command. The marquis obeyed with fewer words than were natural to
him, left the presence, sprang on his horse, and as he rode from the
palace, drew a letter from his bosom. "Ah, Edward," said he, setting
his teeth, "so, after the solemn betrothal of thy daughter to my son,
thou wouldst have given her to thy Lancastrian enemy. Coward, to
bribe his peace! recreant, to belie thy word! I thank thee for this
news, Warwick; for without that injury I feel I could never, when the
hour came, have drawn sword against this faithless man,--especially
for Lancaster. Ay, tremble, thou who deridest all truth and honour!
He who himself betrays, cannot call vengeance treason!"
Meanwhile, Edward departed, for further preparations, to the Tower of
London. New evidences of the mine beneath his feet here awaited the
incredulous king. On the door of St. Paul's, of many of the
metropolitan churches, on the Standard at Chepe, and on London Bridge,
during the past night, had been affixed, none knew by whom, the
celebrated proclamation, signed by Warwick and Clarence (drawn up in
the bold style of the earl), announcing their speedy return,
containing a brief and vigorous description of the misrule of the
realm, and their determination to reform all evils and redress all
wrongs. [See, for this proclamation, Ellis's "Original Letters," vol.
i., second series, letter 42.] Though the proclamation named not the
restoration of the Lancastrian line (doubtless from regard for Henry's
safety), all men in the metropolis were already aware of the
formidable league between Margaret and Warwick. Yet, even still,
Edward smiled in contempt, for he had faith in the letter received
from Clarence, and felt assured that the moment the duke and the earl
landed, the former would betray his companion stealthily to the king;
so, despite all these exciting subjects of grave alarm, the nightly
banquet at the Tower was never merrier and more joyous. Hastings left
the feast ere it deepened into revel, and, absorbed in various and
profound contemplation, entered his apartment. He threw himself on a
seat, and leaned his face on his hands.
"Oh, no, no!" he muttered; "now, in the hour when true greatness is
most seen, when prince and peer crowd around me for counsel, when
noble, knight, and squire crave permission to march in the troop of
which Hastings is the leader,--now I feel how impossible, how falsely
fair, the dream that I could forget all--all for a life of obscurity,
for a young girl's love! Love! as if I had not felt its delusions to
palling! love, as if I could love again: or, if love--alas, it must be
a light reflected but from memory! And Katherine is free once more!"
His eye fell as he spoke, perhaps in shame and remorse that, feeling
thus now, he had felt so differently when he bade Sibyll smile till
his return!
"It is the air of this accursed court which taints our best resolves!"
he murmured, as an apology for himself; but scarcely was the poor
excuse made, than the murmur broke into an exclamation of surprise and
joy. A letter lay before him; he recognized the hand of Katherine.
What years had passed since her writing had met his eye, since the
lines that bade him "farewell, and forget!" Those lines had been
blotted with tears, and these, as he tore open the silk that bound
them--these, the trace of tears, too, was on them! Yet they were but
few, and in tremulous characters. They ran thus:--
To-morrow, before noon, the Lord Hastings is prayed to visit one whose
life he hath saddened by the thought and the accusation that she hath
clouded and embittered his. KATHERINE DE BONVILLE.
Leaving Hastings to such meditations of fear or of hope as these lines
could call forth, we lead the reader to a room not very distant from
his own,--the room of the illustrious Friar Bungey.
The ex-tregetour was standing before the captured Eureka, and gazing
on it with an air of serio-comic despair and rage. We say the Eureka,
as comprising all the ingenious contrivances towards one single object
invented by its maker, a harmonious compound of many separate details;
but the iron creature no longer deserved that superb appellation, for
its various members were now disjointed and dislocated, and lay pell-
mell in multiform confusion.
By the side of the friar stood a female, enveloped in a long scarlet
mantle, with the hood partially drawn over the face, but still leaving
visible the hard, thin, villanous lips, the stern, sharp chin, and the
jaw resolute and solid as if hewed from stone.
"I tell thee, Graul," said the friar, "that thou hast had far the best
of the bargain. I have put this diabolical contrivance to all manner
of shapes, and have muttered over it enough Latin to have charmed a
monster into civility. And the accursed thing, after nearly pinching
off three fingers, and scalding me with seething water, and
spluttering and sputtering enough to have terrified any man but Friar
Bungey out of his skin, is obstinatus ut mulum,--dogged as a mule; and
was absolutely good for nought, till I happily thought of separating
this vessel from all the rest of the gear, and it serves now for the
boiling my eggs! But by the soul of Father Merlin, whom the saints
assoil, I need not have given myself all this torment for a thing
which, at best, does the work of a farthing pipkin!"
"Quick, master; the hour is late! I must go while yet the troopers
and couriers and riders, hurrying to and fro, keep the gates from
closing. What wantest thou with Graul?"
"More reverence, child!" growled the friar. "What I want of thee is
briefly told, if thou hast the wit to serve me. This miserable Warner
must himself expound to me the uses and trick of his malignant
contrivance. Thou must find and bring him hither!"
"And if he will not expound?"
"The deputy governor of the Tower will lend me a stone dungeon, and,
if need be, the use of the brake to unlock the dotard's tongue."
"On what plea?"
"That Adam Warner is a wizard, in the pay of Lord Warwick, whom a more
mighty master like myself alone can duly examine and defeat."
"And if I bring thee the sorcerer, what wilt thou teach me in return?"
"What desirest thou most?"
Graul mused, and said, "There is war in the wind. Graul follows the
camp, her trooper gets gold and booty. But the trooper is stronger
than Graul; and when the trooper sleeps it is with his knife by his
side, and his sleep is light and broken, for he has wicked dreams.
Give me a potion to make sleep deep, that his eyes may not open when
Graul filches his gold, and his hand may be too heavy to draw the
knife from its sheath!"
"Immunda, detestabilis! thine own paramour!"
"He hath beat me with his bridle rein, he hath given a silver broad
piece to Grisell; Grisell hath sat on his knee; Graul never pardons!"
The friar, rogue as he was, shuddered. "I cannot help thee to murder,
I cannot give thee the potion; name some other reward."
"I go--"
"Nay, nay, think, pause."
"I know where Warner is hid. By this hour to-morrow night, I can
place him in thy power. Say the word, and pledge me the draught."
"Well, well, mulier abominabilis!--that is, irresistible bonnibell. I
cannot give thee the potion; but I will teach thee an art which can
make sleep heavier than the anodyne, and which wastes not like the
essence, but strengthens by usage,--an art thou shalt have at thy
fingers' ends, and which often draws from the sleeper the darkest
secrets of his heart." [We have before said that animal magnetism was
known to Bungey, and familiar to the necromancers, or rather
theurgists, of the Middle Ages.]
"It is magic," said Graul, with joy.
"Ay, magic."
"I will bring thee the wizard. But listen; he never stirs abroad,
save with his daughter. I must bring both."
"Nay, I want not the girl."
"But I dare not throttle her, for a great lord loves her, who would
find out the deed and avenge it; and if she be left behind, she will
go to the lord, and the lord will discover what thou hast done with
the wizard, and thou wilt hang!"
"Never say 'Hang' to me, Graul: it is ill-mannered and ominous. Who
is the lord?"
"Hastings."
"Pest!--and already he hath been searching for the thing yonder; and I
have brooded over it night and day, like a hen over a chalk egg,--only
that the egg does not snap off the hen's claws, as that diabolism
would fain snap off my digits. But the war will carry Hastings away
in its whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will
bear me through all. So, thou mayst bring the girl; and strangle her
not; for no good ever comes of a murder,--unless, indeed, it be
absolutely necessary!"
"I know the men who will help me, bold ribauds, whom I will guerdon
myself; for I want not thy coins, but thy craft. When the curfew has
tolled, and the bat hunts the moth, we will bring thee the quarry--"
Graul turned; but as she gained the door, she stopped, and said
abruptly, throwing back her hood,--
"What age dost thou deem me?"
"Marry," quoth the friar, "an' I had not seen thee on thy mother's
knee when she followed my stage of tregetour, I should have guessed
thee for thirty; but thou hast led too jolly a life to look still in
the blossom. Why speer'st thou the question?"
"Because when trooper and ribaud say to me, 'Graul, thou art too worn
and too old to drink of our cup and sit in the lap, to follow the
young fere to the battle, and weave the blithe dance in the fair,' I
would depart from my sisters, and have a hut of my own, and a black
cat without a white hair, and steal herbs by the new moon, and bones
from the charnel, and curse those whom I hate, and cleave the misty
air on a besom, like Mother Halkin of Edmonton. Ha, ha! Master, thou
shalt present me then to the Sabbat. Graul has the mettle for a bonny
witch!"
The tymbestere vanished with a laugh. The friar muttered a
paternoster for once, perchance, devoutly, and after having again
deliberately scanned the disjecta membra of the Eureka, gravely took
forth a duck's egg from his cupboard, and applied the master-agent of
the machine which Warner hoped was to change the face of the globe to
the only practical utility it possessed to the mountebank's
comprehension.