THE TOWER IN COMMOTION.
On quitting the Tower, Alwyn regained the boat, and took his way to
the city; and here, whatever credit that worthy and excellent
personage may lose in certain eyes, his historian is bound to confess
that his anxiety for Sibyll did not entirely distract his attention
from interest or ambition. To become the head of his class, to rise
to the first honours of his beloved city of London, had become to
Nicholas Alwyn a hope and aspiration which made as much a part of his
being as glory to a warrior, power to a king, a Eureka to a scholar;
and, though more mechanically than with any sordid calculation or
self-seeking, Nicholas Alwyn repaired to his ware in the Chepe. The
streets, when he landed, already presented a different appearance from
the disorder and tumult noticeable when he had before passed them.
The citizens now had decided what course to adopt; and though the
shops, or rather booths, were carefully closed, streamers of silk,
cloth of arras and gold, were hung from the upper casements; the
balconies were crowded with holiday gazers; the fickle populace (the
same herd that had hooted the meek Henry when led to the Tower) were
now shouting, "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!" and pouring throng after
throng, to gaze upon the army, which, with the mayor and aldermen, had
already entered the city. Having seen to the security of his costly
goods, and praised his apprentices duly for their care of his
interests, and their abstinence from joining the crowd, Nicholas then
repaired to the upper story of his house, and set forth from his
casements and balcony the richest stuffs he possessed. However, there
was his own shrewd, sarcastic smile on his firm lips, as he said to
his apprentices, "When these are done with, lay them carefully by
against Edward of York's re-entry."
Meanwhile, preceded by trumpets, drums, and heralds, the Earl of
Warwick and his royal son-in-law rode into the shouting city. Behind
came the litter of the Duchess of Clarence, attended by the Earl of
Oxford, Lord Fitzhugh, the Lords Stanley and Shrewsbury, Sir Robert de
Lytton, and a princely cortege of knights, squires, and nobles; while,
file upon file, rank upon rank, followed the long march of the
unresisted armament.
Warwick, clad in complete armour of Milan steel,--save the helmet,
which was borne behind him by his squire,--mounted on his own noble
Saladin, preserved upon a countenance so well suited to command the
admiration of a populace the same character as heretofore of manly
majesty and lofty frankness. But to a nearer and more searching gaze
than was likely to be bent upon him in such an hour, the dark, deep
traces of care, anxiety, and passion might have been detected in the
lines which now thickly intersected the forehead, once so smooth and
furrowless; and his kingly eye, not looking, as of old, right forward
as he moved, cast unquiet, searching glances about him and around, as
he bowed his bare head from side to side of the welcoming thousands.
A far greater change, to outward appearance, was visible in the fair
young face of the Duke of Clarence. His complexion, usually sanguine
and blooming, like his elder brother's, was now little less pale than
that of Richard. A sullen, moody, discontented expression, which not
all the heartiness of the greetings he received could dispel,
contrasted forcibly with the good-humoured, laughing recklessness,
which had once drawn a "God bless him!" from all on whom rested his
light-blue joyous eye. He was unarmed, save by a corselet richly
embossed with gold. His short manteline of crimson velvet, his hosen
of white cloth laced with gold, and his low horseman's boots of
Spanish leather curiously carved and broidered, with long golden
spurs; his plumed and jewelled cap; his white charger with housings
enriched with pearls and blazing with cloth-of-gold; his broad collar
of precious stones, with the order of St. George; his general's
truncheon raised aloft, and his Plantagenet banner borne by the herald
over his royal head, caught the eyes of the crowd only the more to
rivet them on an aspect ill fitting the triumph of a bloodless
victory. At his left hand, where the breadth of the streets
permitted, rode Henry Lee, the mayor, uttering no word, unless
appealed to, and then answering but with chilling reverence and dry
monosyllables.
A narrow winding in the streets, which left Warwick and Clarence alone
side by side, gave the former the opportunity he had desired.
"How, prince and son," he said in a hollow whisper, "is it with this
brow of care that thou saddenest our conquest, and enterest the
capital we gain without a blow?"
"By Saint George!" answered Clarence, sullenly, and in the same tone,
"thinkest thou it chafes not the son of Richard of York, after such
toils and bloodshed, to minister to the dethronement of his kin and
the restoration of the foe of his race?"
"Thou shouldst have thought of that before," returned Warwick, but
with sadness and pity in the reproach.
"Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother,"
retorted Clarence, bitterly.
"Hush!" said the earl, "and calm thy brow. Not thus didst thou speak
at Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous. But
regrets are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it."
And with that, in the action of a man who would escape his own
thoughts, Warwick made his black steed demivolte; and the crowd
shouted again the louder at the earl's gallant horsemanship, and
Clarence's dazzling collar of jewels.
While thus the procession of the victors, the nominal object of all
this mighty and sudden revolution--of this stir and uproar, of these
shining arms and flaunting banners, of this heaven or hell in the deep
passions of men--still remained in his prison-chamber of the Tower, a
true type of the thing factions contend for; absent, insignificant,
unheeded, and, save by a few of the leaders and fanatical priests,
absolutely forgotten!
To this solitary chamber we are now transported; yet solitary is a
word of doubtful propriety; for though the royal captive was alone, so
far as the human species make up a man's companionship and solace,
though the faithful gentlemen, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, had, on
the news of Warwick's landing, been thrust from his chamber, and were
now in the ranks of his new and strange defenders, yet power and
jealousy had not left his captivity all forsaken. There was still the
starling in its cage, and the fat, asthmatic spaniel still wagged its
tail at the sound of its master's voice, or the rustle of his long
gown. And still from the ivory crucifix gleamed the sad and holy face
of the God, present alway, and who, by faith and patience, linketh
evermore grief to joy,--but earth to heaven.
The august prisoner had not been so utterly cut off from all knowledge
of the outer life as to be ignorant of some unwonted and important
stir in the fortress and the city. The squire who had brought him his
morning meal had been so agitated as to excite the captive's
attention, and had then owned that the Earl of Warwick had proclaimed
Henry king, and was on his march to London. But neither the squire
nor any of the officers of the Tower dared release the illustrious
captive, or even remove him as yet to the state apartments vacated by
Elizabeth. They knew not what might be the pleasure of the stout earl
or the Duke of Clarence, and feared over-officiousness might be their
worst crime. But naturally imagining that Henry's first command, at
the new position of things, might be for liberty, and perplexed
whether to yield or refuse, they absented themselves from his summons,
and left the whole tower in which he was placed actually deserted.
From his casement the king could see, however, the commotion, and the
crowds upon the wharf and river, with the gleam of arms and banners;
and hear the sounds of "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!" "Long live good
Henry VI.!" A strange combination of names, which disturbed and
amazed him much! But by degrees the unwonted excitement of perplexity
and surprise settled back into the calm serenity of his most gentle
mind and temper. That trust in an all-directing Providence, to which
he had schooled himself, had (if we may so say with reverence) driven
his beautiful soul into the opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of
life,--the error that deadens and benumbs the energy of free will and
the noble alertness of active duty. Why strain and strive for the
things of this world? God would order all for the best. Alas! God
hath placed us in this world, each, from king to peasant, with nerves
and hearts and blood and passions to struggle with our kind; and, no
matter how heavenly the goal, to labour with the million in the race!
"Forsooth," murmured the king, as, his hands clasped behind him, he
paced slowly to and fro the floor, "this ill world seemeth but a
feather, blown about by the winds, and never to be at rest. Hark!
Warwick and King Henry,--the lion and the lamb! Alack, and we are
fallen on no Paradise, where such union were not a miracle! Foolish
bird!"--and with a pitying smile upon that face whose holy sweetness
might have disarmed a fiend, he paused before the cage and
contemplated his fellow-captive--"foolish bird, the uneasiness and
turmoil without have reached even to thee. Thou beatest thy wings
against the wires, thou turnest thy bright eyes to mine restlessly.
Why? Pantest thou to be free, silly one, that the hawk may swoop on
its defenceless prey? Better, perhaps, the cage for thee, and the
prison for thy master. Well, out if thou wilt! Here at least thou
art safe!" and opening the cage, the starling flew to his bosom, and
nestled there, with its small clear voice mimicking the human sound,--
"Poor Henry, poor Henry! Wicked men, poor Henry!"
The king bowed his meek head over his favourite, and the fat spaniel,
jealous of the monopolized caress, came waddling towards its master,
with a fond whine, and looked up at him with eyes that expressed more
of faith and love than Edward of York, the ever wooing and ever wooed,
had read in the gaze of woman.
With those companions, and with thoughts growing more and more
composed and rapt from all that had roused and vexed his interest in
the forenoon, Henry remained till the hour had long passed for his
evening meal. Surprised at last by a negligence which (to do his
jailers justice) had never before occurred, and finding no response to
his hand-bell, no attendant in the anteroom, the outer doors locked as
usual, but the sentinel's tread in the court below hushed and still, a
cold thrill for a moment shot through his blood.--"Was he left for
hunger to do its silent work?" Slowly he bent his way from the outer
rooms back to his chamber; and, as he passed the casement again, he
heard, though far in the distance, through the dim air of the
deepening twilight, the cry of "Long live King Henry!"
This devotion without, this neglect within, was a wondrous contrast!
Meanwhile the spaniel, with that instinct of fidelity which divines
the wants of the master, had moved snuffling and smelling round and
round the chambers, till it stopped and scratched at a cupboard in the
anteroom, and then with a joyful bark flew back to the king, and
taking the hem of his gown between its teeth, led him towards the spot
it had discovered; and there, in truth, a few of those small cakes,
usually served up for the night's livery, had been carelessly left.
They sufficed for the day's food, and the king, the dog, and the
starling shared them peacefully together. This done, Henry carefully
replaced his bird in its cage, bade the dog creep to the hearth and
lie still; passed on to his little oratory, with the relics of cross
and saint strewed around the solemn image,--and in prayer forgot the
world! Meanwhile darkness set in: the streets had grown deserted,
save where in some nooks and by-lanes gathered groups of the soldiery;
but for the most part the discipline in which Warwick held his army
had dismissed those stern loiterers to the various quarters provided
for them, and little remained to remind the peaceful citizens that a
throne had been uprooted, and a revolution consummated, that eventful
day.
It was at this time that a tall man, closely wrapped in his large
horseman's cloak, passed alone through the streets and gained the
Tower. At the sound of his voice by the great gate, the sentinel
started in alarm; a few moments more, and all left to guard the
fortress were gathered round him. From these he singled out one of
the squires who usually attended Henry, and bade him light his steps
to the king's chamber. As in that chamber Henry rose from his knees,
he saw the broad red light of a torch flickering under the chinks of
the threshold; he heard the slow tread of approaching footsteps; the
spaniel uttered a low growl, its eyes sparkling; the door opened, and
the torch borne behind by the squire, and raised aloft so that its
glare threw a broad light over the whole chamber, brought into full
view the dark and haughty countenance of the Earl of Warwick.
The squire, at a gesture from the earl, lighted the sconces on the
wall, the tapers on the table, and quickly vanished. King-maker and
king were alone! At the first sight of Warwick, Henry had turned
pale, and receded a few paces, with one hand uplifted in adjuration or
command, while with the other he veiled his eyes,--whether that this
startled movement came from the weakness of bodily nerves, much
shattered by sickness and confinement, or from the sudden emotions
called forth by the aspect of one who had wrought him calamities so
dire. But the craven's terror in the presence of a living foe was,
with all his meekness, all his holy abhorrence of wrath and warfare,
as unknown to that royal heart as to the high blood of his hero-sire.
And so, after a brief pause, and a thought that took the shape of
prayer, not for safety from peril, but for grace to forgive the past,
Henry VI. advanced to Warwick, who still stood dumb by the threshold,
combating with his own mingled and turbulent emotions of pride and
shame, and said, in a voice majestic even from its very mildness,--
"What tale of new woe and evil hath the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick
come to announce to the poor captive who was once a king?"
"Forgive me! Forgiveness, Henry, my lord,--forgiveness!" exclaimed
Warwick, falling on his knee. The meek reproach; the touching words;
the mien and visage altered, since last beheld, from manhood into age;
the gray hairs and bended form of the king, went at once to that proud
heart; and as the earl bent over the wan, thin hand resigned to his
lips, a tear upon its surface out-sparkled all the jewels that it
wore.
"Yet no," continued the earl (impatient, as proud men are, to hurry
from repentance to atonement, for the one is of humiliation and the
other of pride),--"yet no, my liege, not now do I crave thy pardon.
No; but when begirt, in the halls of thine ancestors, with the peers
of England, the victorious banner of Saint George waving above the
throne which thy servant hath rebuilt,--then, when the trumpets are
sounding thy rights without the answer of a foe; then, when from shore
to shore of fair England the shout of thy people echoes to the vault
of heaven,--then will Warwick kneel again to King Henry, and sue for
the pardon he hath not ignobly won!
"Alack, sir," said the king, with accents of mournful yet half-
reproving kindness, "it was not amidst trump and banners that the Son
of God set mankind the exemplar and pattern of charity to foes. When
thy hand struck the spurs from my heel, when thou didst parade me
through the booting crowd to this solitary cell, then, Warwick, I
forgave thee, and prayed to Heaven for pardon for thee, if thou didst
wrong me,--for myself, if a king's fault had deserved a subject's
harshness. Rise, Sir Earl; our God is a jealous God, and the attitude
of worship is for Him alone."
Warwick rose from his knee; and the king, perceiving and
compassionating the struggle which shook the strong man's breast, laid
his hand on the earl's shoulder, and said, "Peace be with thee!--thou
hast done me no real harm. I have been as happy in these walls as in
the green parks of Windsor; happier than in the halls of state or in
the midst of wrangling armies. What tidings now?"
"My liege, is it possible that you know not that Edward is a fugitive
and a beggar, and that Heaven hath permitted me to avenge at once your
injuries and my own? This day, without a blow, I have regained your
city of London; its streets are manned with my army. From the council
of peers and warriors and prelates assembled at my house, I have
stolen hither alone and in secret, that I might be the first to hail
your Grace's restoration to the throne of Henry V."
The king's face so little changed at this intelligence, that its calm
sadness almost enraged the impetuous Warwick, and with difficulty he
restrained from giving utterance to the thought, "He is not worthy of
a throne who cares so little to possess it!"
"Well-a-day!" said Henry, sighing, "Heaven then hath sore trials yet
in store for mine old age! Tray, Tray!" and stooping, he gently
patted his dog, who kept watch at his feet, still glaring suspiciously
at Warwick, "we are both too old for the chase now!--Will you be
seated, my lord?"
"Trust me," said the earl, as he obeyed the command, having first set
chair and footstool for the king, who listened to him with downcast
eyes and his head drooping on his bosom--"trust me, your later days,
my liege, will be free from the storms of your youth. All chance of
Edward's hostility is expired. Your alliance, though I seem boastful
so to speak,--your alliance with one in whom the people can confide
for some skill in war, and some more profound experience of the habits
and tempers of your subjects than your former councillors could
possess, will leave your honoured leisure free for the holy
meditations it affects; and your glory, as your safety, shall be the
care of men who can awe this rebellious world."
"Alliance!" said the king, who had caught but that one word; "of what
speakest thou, Sir Earl?"
"These missives will explain all, my liege; this letter from my lady
the Queen Margaret, and this from your gracious son, the Prince of
Wales."
"Edward! my Edward!" exclaimed the king, with a father's burst of
emotion. "Thou hast seen him, then,--bears he his health well, is he
of cheer and heart?"
"He is strong and fair, and full of promise, and brave as his
grandsire's sword."
"And knows he--knows he well--that we all are the potter's clay in the
hands of God?"
"My liege," said Warwick, embarrassed, "he has as much devotion as
befits a Christian knight and a goodly prince."
"Ah," sighed the king, "ye men of arms have strange thoughts on these
matters;" and cutting the silk of the letters, he turned from the
warrior. Shading his face with his hand, the earl darted his keen
glance on the features of the king, as, drawing near to the table, the
latter read the communications which announced his new connection with
his ancient foe.
But Henry was at first so affected by the sight of Margaret's well-
known hand, that he thrice put down her letter and wiped the moisture
from his eyes.
"My poor Margaret, how thou hast suffered!" he murmured; "these very
characters are less firm and bold than they were. Well, well!" and at
last he betook himself resolutely to the task. Once or twice his
countenance changed, and he uttered an exclamation of surprise. But
the proposition of a marriage between Prince Edward and the Lady Anne
did not revolt his forgiving mind, as it had the haughty and stern
temper of his consort. And when he had concluded his son's epistle,
full of the ardour of his love and the spirit of his youth, the king
passed his left hand over his brow, and then extending his right to
Warwick, said, in accents which trembled with emotion, "Serve my son,
since he is thine, too; give peace to this distracted kingdom, repair
my errors, press not hard upon those who contend against us, and Jesu
and His saints will bless this bond!"
The earl's object, perhaps, in seeking a meeting with Henry so private
and unwitnessed, had been that none, not even his brother, might
hearken to the reproaches he anticipated to receive, or say hereafter
that he heard Warwick, returned as victor and avenger to his native
land, descend, in the hour of triumph, to extenuation and excuse. So
affronted, imperilled, or to use his own strong word, "so despaired,"
had he been in the former rule of Henry, that his intellect, which,
however vigorous in his calmer moods, was liable to be obscured and
dulled by his passions, had half confounded the gentle king with his
ferocious wife and stern councillors, and he had thought he never
could have humbled himself to the man, even so far as knighthood's
submission to Margaret's sex had allowed him to the woman. But the
sweetness of Henry's manners and disposition, the saint-like dignity
which he had manifested throughout this painful interview, and the
touching grace and trustful generosity of his last words,--words which
consummated the earl's large projects of ambition and revenge,--had
that effect upon Warwick which the preaching of some holy man,
dwelling upon the patient sanctity of the Saviour, had of old on a
grim Crusader, all incapable himself of practising such meek
excellence, and yet all moved and penetrated by its loveliness in
another; and, like such Crusader, the representation of all mildest
and most forgiving singularly stirred up in the warrior's mind images
precisely the reverse,--images of armed valour and stern vindication,
as if where the Cross was planted sprang from the earth the standard
and the war-horse!
"Perish your foes! May war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My
liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering
voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood
so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it?
How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude and thy Christian
heroism, seems the savage valour of false Edward! Shame upon one who
can betray the trust thou hast placed in him! Never will I!--Never!
I swear it! No! though all England desert thee, I will stand alone
with my breast of mail before thy throne! Oh, would that my triumph
had been less peaceful and less bloodless! would that a hundred
battlefields were yet left to prove how deeply--deeply in his heart of
hearts--Warwick feels the forgiveness of his king!"
"Not so, not so, not so! not battlefields, Warwick!" said Henry. "Ask
not to serve the king by shedding one subject's blood."
"Your pious will be obeyed!" replied Warwick. "We will see if mercy
can effect in others what thy pardon effects in me. And now, my
liege, no longer must these walls confine thee. The chambers of the
palace await their sovereign. What ho, there!" and going to the door
he threw it open, and agreeably to the orders he had given below, all
the officers left in the fortress stood crowded together in the small
anteroom, bareheaded, with tapers in their hands, to conduct the
monarch to the halls of his conquered foe.
At the sudden sight of the earl, these men, struck involuntarily and
at once by the grandeur of his person and his animated aspect, burst
forth with the rude retainer's cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick!"
"Silence!" thundered the earl's deep voice. "Who names the subject in
the sovereign's presence? Behold your king!" The men, abashed by the
reproof, bowed their heads and sank on their knees, as Warwick took a
taper from the table, to lead the way from the prison.
Then Henry turned slowly, and gazed with a lingering eye upon the
walls which even sorrow and solitude had endeared. The little
oratory, the crucifix, the relics, the embers burning low on the
hearth, the rude time-piece,--all took to his thoughtful eye an almost
human aspect of melancholy and omen; and the bird, roused, whether by
the glare of the lights, or the recent shout of the men, opened its
bright eyes, and fluttering restlessly to and fro, shrilled out its
favourite sentence, "Poor Henry! poor Henry!--wicked men!--who would
be a king?"
"Thou hearest it, Warwick?" said Henry, shaking his head.
"Could an eagle speak, it would have another cry than the starling,"
returned the earl, with a proud smile.
"Why, look you," said the king, once more releasing the bird, which
settled on his wrist, "the eagle had broken his heart in the narrow
cage, the eagle had been no comforter for a captive; it is these
gentler ones that love and soothe us best in our adversities. Tray,
Tray, fawn not now, sirrah, or I shall think thou hast been false in
thy fondness heretofore! Cousin, I attend you."
And with his bird on his wrist, his dog at his heels, Henry VI.
followed the earl to the illuminated hall of Edward, where the table
was spread for the royal repast, and where his old friends, Manning,
Bedle, and Allerton, stood weeping for joy; while from the gallery
raised aloft, the musicians gave forth the rough and stirring melody
which had gradually fallen out of usage, but which was once the
Norman's national air, and which the warlike Margaret of Anjou had
retaught her minstrels,--"THE BATTLE HYMN OF ROLLO."