WHAT BEFELL ADAM WARNER AND SIBYLL WHEN MADE SUBJECT TO THE GREAT
FRIAR BUNGEY.
We must now return to the Tower of London,--not, indeed, to its lordly
halls and gilded chambers, but to the room of Friar Bungey. We must
go back somewhat in time; and on the day following the departure of
the king and his lords, conjure up in that strangely furnished
apartment the form of the burly friar, standing before the
disorganized Eureka, with Adam Warner by his side.
Graul, as we have seen, had kept her word, and Sibyll and her father,
having fallen into the snare, were suddenly gagged, bound, led through
by-paths to a solitary hut, where a covered wagon was in waiting, and
finally, at nightfall, conducted to the Tower. The friar, whom his
own repute, jolly affability, and favour with the Duchess of Bedford
made a considerable person with the authorities of the place, had
already obtained from the deputy-governor an order to lodge two
persons, whom his zeal for the king sought to convict of necromantic
practices in favour of the rebellion, in the cells set apart for such
unhappy captives. Thither the prisoners were conducted. The friar
did not object to their allocation in contiguous cells; and the jailer
deemed him mighty kind and charitable, when he ordered that they might
be well served and fed till their examination.
He did not venture, however, to summon his captives till the departure
of the king, when the Tower was in fact at the disposition of his
powerful patroness, and when he thought he might stretch his authority
as far as he pleased, unquestioned and unchid.
Now, therefore, on the day succeeding Edward's departure, Adam Warner
was brought from his cell, and led to the chamber where the triumphant
friar received him in majestic state. The moment Warner entered, he
caught sight of the chaos to which his Eureka was resolved, and
uttering a cry of mingled grief and joy, sprang forward to greet his
profaned treasure. The friar motioned away the jailer (whispering him
to wait without), and they were left alone. Bungey listened with
curious and puzzled attention to poor Adam's broken interjections of
lamentation and anger, and at last, clapping him roughly on the back,
said,--
"Thou knowest the secret of this magical and ugly device: but in thy
hands it leads only to ruin and perdition. Tell me that secret, and
in my hands it shall turn to honour and profit. Porkey verbey! I am a
man of few words. Do this, and thou shalt go free with thy daughter,
and I will protect thee, and give thee moneys, and my fatherly
blessing; refuse to do it, and thou shalt go from thy snug cell into a
black dungeon full of newts and rats, where thou shalt rot till thy
nails are like birds' talons, and thy skin shrivelled up into mummy,
and covered with hair like Nebuchadnezzar!"
"Miserable varlet! Give thee my secret, give thee my fame, my life!
Never! I scorn and spit at thy malice!"
The friar's face grew convulsed with rage. "Wretch!" he roared forth,
"darest thou unslip thy hound-like malignity upon great Bungey?
Knowest thou not that he could bid the walls open and close upon thee;
that he could set yon serpents to coil round thy limbs, and yon lizard
to gnaw out thine entrails? Despise not my mercy, and descend to
plain sense. What good didst thou ever reap from thy engine? Why
shouldst thou lose liberty--nay, life--if I will, for a thing that has
cursed thee with man's horror and hate?"
"Art thou Christian and friar to ask me why? Were not Christians
themselves hunted by wild beasts, and burned at the stake, and boiled
in the caldron for their belief? Knave, whatever is holiest men ever
persecute. Read thy Bible!"
"Read the Bible!" exclaimed Bungey, in pious horror at such a
proposition. "Ah, blasphemer, now I have thee! Thou art a heretic
and Lollard. Hollo, there!"
The friar stamped his foot, the door opened; but to his astonishment
and dismay appeared, not the grim jailer, but the Duchess of Bedford
herself, preceded by Nicholas Alwyn. "I told your Grace truly--see,
lady!" cried the goldsmith. "Vile impostor, where hast thou hidden
this wise man's daughter?"
The friar turned his dull, bead-like eyes in vacant consternation from
Nicholas to Adam, from Adam to the duchess. "Sir friar," said
Jacquetta, mildly--for she wished to conciliate the rival seers--"what
means this over-zealous violation of law? Is it true, as Master Alwyn
affirms, that thou hast stolen away and seducted this venerable sage
and his daughter,--a maid I deemed worthy of a post in my own
household?"
"Daughter and lady," said the friar, sullenly, "this ill faytor, I
have reason to know, has been practising spells for Lord Warwick and
the enemy. I did but summon him hither that my art might undo his
charms; and as for his daughter, it seemed more merciful to let her
attend him than to leave her alone and unfriended; specially," added
the friar with a grin, "since the poor lord she hath witched is gone
to the wars."
"It is true, then, wretch, that thou or thy caitiffs have dared to lay
hands on a maiden of birth and blood!" exclaimed Alwyn. "Tremble!--
see, here, the warrant signed by the king, offering a reward for thy
detection, empowering me to give thee up to the laws. By Saint
Dunstan, but for thy friar's frock, thou shouldst hang!"
"Tut, tut, Master Goldsmith," said the duchess, haughtily, "lower thy
tone. This holy man is under my protection, and his fault was but
over-zeal. What were this sage's devices and spells?"
"Marry," said the friar, "that is what your Grace just hindereth my
knowing. But he cannot deny that he is a pestilent astrologer, and
sends word to the rebels what hours are lucky or fatal for battle and
assault."
"Ha!" said the duchess, "he is an astrologer! true, and came nearer to
the alchemist's truth than any multiplier that ever served me! My own
astrologer is just dead,--why died he at such a time? Peace, peace!
be there peace between two so learned men. Forgive thy brother,
Master Warner!" Adam had hitherto disdained all participation in this
dialogue. In fact, he had returned to the Eureka, and was silently
examining if any loss of the vital parts had occurred in its
melancholy dismemberment. But now he turned round and said, "Lady,
leave the lore of the stars to their great Maker. I forgive this man,
and thank your Grace for your justice. I claim these poor fragments,
and crave your leave to suffer me to depart with my device and my
child."
"No, no!" said the duchess, seizing his hand. "Hist! whatever Lord
Warwick paid thee, I will double. No time now for alchemy; but for
the horoscope, it is the veriest season. I name thee my special
astrologer."
"Accept, accept," whispered Alwyn; "for your daughter's sake--for your
own--nay, for the Eureka's!"
Adam bowed his head, and groaned forth, "But I go not hence--no, not a
foot--unless this goes with me. Cruel wretch, how he hath deformed
it!"
"And now," cried Alwyn, eagerly, "this wronged and unhappy maiden?"
"Go! be it thine to release and bring her to our presence, good
Alwyn," said the duchess; "she shall lodge with her father, and
receive all honour. Follow me, Master Warner."
No sooner, however, did the friar perceive that Alwyn had gone in
search of the jailer, than he arrested the steps of the duchess, and
said, with the air of a much-injured man,--
"May it please your Grace to remember that unless the greater magician
have all power and aid in thwarting the lesser, the lesser can
prevail; and therefore, if your Grace finds, when too late, that Lord
Warwick's or Lord Fitzhugh's arms prosper, that woe and disaster
befall the king, say not it was the fault of Friar Bungey! Such
things may be. Nathless I shall still sweat and watch and toil; and
if, despite your unhappy favour and encouragement to this hostile
sorcerer, the king should beat his enemies, why, then, Friar Bungey is
not so powerless as your Grace holds him. I have said--Porkey
verbey!--Figilabo et conabo--et perspirabo--et hungerabo--pro vos et
vestros, Amen!"
The duchess was struck by this eloquent appeal; but more and more
convinced of the dread science of Adam by the evident apprehensions of
the redoubted Bungey, and firmly persuaded that she could bribe or
induce the former to turn a science that would otherwise be hostile
into salutary account, she contented herself with a few words of
conciliation and compliment, and summoning the attendants who had
followed her, bade them take up the various members of the Eureka (for
Adam clearly demonstrated that he would not depart without them) and
conducted the philosopher to a lofty chamber, fitted up for the
defunct astrologer.
Hither, in a short time, Alwyn had the happiness of leading Sibyll,
and witnessing the delighted reunion of the child and father. And
then, after he had learned the brief details of their abduction, he
related how, baffled in all attempt to trace their clew, he had
convinced himself that either the duchess or Bungey was the author of
the snare, returned to the Tower, shown the king's warrant, learned
that an old man and a young female had indeed been admitted into the
fortress, and hurried at once to the duchess, who, surprised at his
narration and complaint, and anxious to regain the services of Warner,
had accompanied him at once to the friar.
"And though," added the goldsmith, "I could indeed procure you
lodgings more welcome to ye elsewhere, yet it is well to win the
friendship of the duchess, and royalty is ever an ill foe. How came
ye to quit the palace?"
Sibyll changed countenance, and her father answered gravely, "We
incurred the king's displeasure, and the excuse was the popular hatred
of me and the Eureka."
"Heaven made the people, and the devil makes three-fourths of what is
popular!" bluntly said the man of the middle class, ever against both
extremes.
"And how," asked Sibyll, "how, honoured and true friend, didst thou
obtain the king's warrant, and learn the snare into which we had
fallen?"
This time it was Alwyn who changed countenance. He mused a moment,
and then frankly answering, "Thou must thank Lord Hastings," gave the
explanation already known to the reader.
But the grateful tears this relation called forth from Sibyll, her
clasped hands, her evident emotion of delight and love, so pained poor
Alwyn, that he rose abruptly and took his leave.
And now the Eureka was a luxury as peremptorily forbid to the
astrologer as it had been to the alchemist! Again the true science
was despised, and the false cultivated and honoured. Condemned to
calculations which no man (however wise) in that age held altogether
delusive, and which yet Adam Warner studied with very qualified
belief, it happened by some of those coincidences, which have from
time to time appeared to confirm the credulous in judicial astrology,
that Adam's predictions became fulfilled. The duchess was prepared
for the first tidings that Edward's foes fled before him. She was
next prepared for the very day in which Warwick landed; and then her
respect for the astrologer became strangely mingled with suspicion and
terror, when she found that he proceeded to foretell but ominous and
evil events; and when at last, still in corroboration of the unhappily
too faithful horoscope, came the news of the king's flight, and the
earl's march upon London, she fled to Friar Bungey in dismay. And
Friar Bungey said,--
"Did I not warn you, daughter? Had you suffered me to--"
"True, true!" interrupted the duchess. "Now take, hang, rack, drown,
or burn your horrible rival, if you will, but undo the charm, and save
us from the earl!"
The friar's eyes twinkled, but to the first thought of spite and
vengeance succeeded another: if he who had made the famous waxen
effigies of the Earl of Warwick were now to be found guilty of some
atrocious and positive violence upon Master Adam Warner, might not the
earl be glad of so good an excuse to put an end to Himself?
"Daughter," said the friar, at that reflection, and shaking his head
mysteriously and sadly, "daughter, it is too late."
The duchess in great despair flew to the queen. Hitherto she had
concealed from her royal daughter the employment she had given to
Adam; for Elizabeth, who had herself suffered from the popular belief
in Jacquetta's sorceries, had of late earnestly besought her to lay
aside all practices that could be called into question. Now, however,
when she confessed to the agitated and distracted queen the retaining
of Adam Warner, and his fatal predictions, Elizabeth, who, from
discretion and pride, had carefully hidden from her mother (too
vehement to keep a secret) that offence in the king, the memory of
which had made Warner peculiarly obnoxious to him, exclaimed,--
"Unhappy mother, thou hast employed the very man my fated husband
would the most carefully have banished from the palace, the very man
who could blast his name."
The duchess was aghast and thunderstricken.
"If ever I forsake Friar Bungey again!" she muttered; "OH, THE GREAT
MAN!"
But events which demand a detailed recital now rapidly pressing on,
gave the duchess not even the time to seek further explanation of
Elizabeth's words, much less to determine the doubt that rose in her
enlightened mind whether Adam's spells might not be yet unravelled by
the timely execution of the sorcerer!