BOOK XII

THE BATTLE OF BARNET

CHAPTER

I A King in his City hopes to recover his Realm--A Woman in

her Chamber fears to forfeit her own

II Sharp is the Kiss of the Falcon’s Bear

III A Pause

IV-VI The Battle

VII The last Pilgrims in the long Procession to the Common Bourne

BOOK I. THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE.

CHAPTER I. THE PASTIME-GROUND OF OLD COCKAIGNE.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but even then no longer solitary,

hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered

houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented

the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of

Westminster and London. Scarcely need we say that open spaces for the

popular games and diversions were then numerous in the suburbs of the

metropolis,--grateful to some the fresh pools of Islington; to others,

the grass-bare fields of Finsbury; to all, the hedgeless plains of vast

Mile-end. But the site to which we are now summoned was a new and maiden

holiday-ground, lately bestowed upon the townsfolk of Westminster by the

powerful Earl of Warwick.

Raised by a verdant slope above the low, marsh-grown soil of

Westminster, the ground communicated to the left with the Brook-fields,

through which stole the peaceful Ty-bourne, and commanded prospects,

on all sides fair, and on each side varied. Behind, rose the twin green

hills of Hampstead and Highgate, with the upland park and chase of

Marybone,--its stately manor-house half hid in woods. In front might be

seen the Convent of the Lepers, dedicated to Saint James, now a palace;

then to the left, York House, [The residence of the Archbishops of

York] now Whitehall; farther on, the spires of Westminster Abbey and the

gloomy tower of the Sanctuary; next, the Palace, with its bulwark and

vawmure, soaring from the river; while eastward, and nearer to

the scene, stretched the long, bush-grown passage of the Strand,

picturesquely varied with bridges, and flanked to the right by the

embattled halls of feudal nobles, or the inns of the no less powerful

prelates; while sombre and huge amidst hall and inn, loomed the gigantic

ruins of the Savoy, demolished in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. Farther

on, and farther yet, the eye wandered over tower and gate, and arch

and spire, with frequent glimpses of the broad sunlit river, and the

opposite shore crowned by the palace of Lambeth, and the Church of St.

Mary Overies, till the indistinct cluster of battlements around the

Fortress-Palatine bounded the curious gaze. As whatever is new is for

a while popular, so to this pastime-ground, on the day we treat of,

flocked, not only the idlers of Westminster, but the lordly dwellers of

Ludgate and the Flete, and the wealthy citizens of tumultuous Chepe.

The ground was well suited to the purpose to which it was devoted.

About the outskirts, indeed, there were swamps and fish-pools; but a

considerable plot towards the centre presented a level sward, already

worn bare and brown by the feet of the multitude. From this, towards

the left, extended alleys, some recently planted, intended to afford,

in summer, cool and shady places for the favourite game of bowls; while

scattered clumps, chiefly of old pollards, to the right broke the space

agreeably enough into detached portions, each of which afforded its

separate pastime or diversion. Around were ranged many carts, or wagons;

horses of all sorts and value were led to and fro, while their owners

were at sport. Tents, awnings, hostelries, temporary buildings, stages

for showmen and jugglers, abounded, and gave the scene the appearance of

a fair; but what particularly now demands our attention was a broad plot

in the ground, dedicated to the noble diversion of archery. The reigning

House of York owed much of its military success to the superiority of

the bowmen under its banners, and the Londoners themselves were jealous

of their reputation in this martial accomplishment. For the last fifty

years, notwithstanding the warlike nature of the times, the practice of

the bow, in the intervals of peace, had been more neglected than seemed

wise to the rulers. Both the king and his loyal city had of late taken

much pains to enforce the due exercise of “Goddes instrumente,” [So

called emphatically by Bishop Latimer, in his celebrated Sixth Sermon.]

upon which an edict had declared that “the liberties and honour of

England principally rested!”

And numerous now was the attendance, not only of the citizens,

the burghers, and the idle populace, but of the gallant nobles who

surrounded the court of Edward IV., then in the prime of his youth,--the

handsomest, the gayest, and the bravest prince in Christendom.

The royal tournaments (which were, however, waning from their ancient

lustre to kindle afresh, and to expire in the reigns of the succeeding

Tudors), restricted to the amusements of knight and noble, no doubt

presented more of pomp and splendour than the motley and mixed assembly

of all ranks that now grouped around the competitors for the silver

arrow, or listened to the itinerant jongleur, dissour, or minstrel, or,

seated under the stunted shade of the old trees, indulged, with eager

looks and hands often wandering to their dagger-hilts, in the absorbing

passion of the dice; but no later and earlier scenes of revelry ever,

perhaps, exhibited that heartiness of enjoyment, that universal holiday,

which attended this mixture of every class, that established a rude

equality for the hour between the knight and the retainer, the burgess

and the courtier.

The revolution that placed Edward IV. upon the throne had, in fact, been

a popular one. Not only had the valour and moderation of his father,

Richard, Duke of York, bequeathed a heritage of affection to his brave

and accomplished son; not only were the most beloved of the great barons

the leaders of his party; but the king himself, partly from inclination,

partly from policy, spared no pains to win the good graces of that

slowly rising, but even then important part of the population,--the

Middle Class. He was the first king who descended, without loss of

dignity and respect, from the society of his peers and princes, to join

familiarly in the feasts and diversions of the merchant and the trader.

The lord mayor and council of London were admitted, on more than one

solemn occasion, into the deliberations of the court; and Edward had not

long since, on the coronation of his queen, much to the discontent of

certain of his barons, conferred the Knighthood of the hath upon four of

the citizens. On the other hand, though Edward’s gallantries--the

only vice which tended to diminish his popularity with the sober

burgesses--were little worthy of his station, his frank, joyous

familiarity with his inferiors was not debased by the buffooneries

that had led to the reverses and the awful fate of two of his royal

predecessors. There must have been a popular principle, indeed, as well

as a popular fancy, involved in the steady and ardent adherence which

the population of London in particular, and most of the great cities,

exhibited to the person and the cause of Edward IV. There was a feeling

that his reign was an advance in civilization upon the monastic virtues

of Henry VI., and the stern ferocity which accompanied the great

qualities of “The Foreign Woman,” as the people styled and regarded

Henry’s consort, Margaret of Anjou. While thus the gifts, the courtesy,

and the policy of the young sovereign made him popular with the middle

classes, he owed the allegiance of the more powerful barons and the

favour of the rural population to a man who stood colossal amidst the

iron images of the Age,--the greatest and the last of the old Norman

chivalry, kinglier in pride, in state, in possessions, and in renown

than the king himself, Richard Nevile, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.

This princely personage, in the full vigour of his age, possessed all

the attributes that endear the noble to the commons. His valour in the

field was accompanied with a generosity rare in the captains of the

time. He valued himself on sharing the perils and the hardships of his

meanest soldier. His haughtiness to the great was not incompatible

with frank affability to the lowly. His wealth was enormous, but it

was equalled by his magnificence, and rendered popular by his lavish

hospitality. No less than thirty thousand persons are said to have

feasted daily at the open tables with which he allured to his countless

castles the strong hands and grateful hearts of a martial and unsettled

population. More haughty than ambitious, he was feared because he

avenged all affront; and yet not envied, because he seemed above all

favour.

The holiday on the archery-ground was more than usually gay, for the

rumour had spread from the court to the city that Edward was about to

increase his power abroad, and to repair what he had lost in the eyes of

Europe through his marriage with Elizabeth Gray, by allying his sister

Margaret with the brother of Louis XI., and that no less a person than

the Earl of Warwick had been the day before selected as ambassador on

the important occasion.

Various opinions were entertained upon the preference given to France

in this alliance over the rival candidate for the hand of the

princess,--namely, the Count de Charolois, afterwards Charles the Bold,

Duke of Burgundy.

“By ‘r Lady,” said a stout citizen about the age of fifty, “but I am not

over pleased with this French marriage-making! I would liefer the stout

earl were going to France with bows and bills than sarcenets and satins.

What will become of our trade with Flanders,--answer me that, Master

Stokton? The House of York is a good House, and the king is a good king,

but trade is trade. Every man must draw water to his own mill.”

“Hush, Master Heyford!” said a small lean man in a light-gray surcoat.

“The king loves not talk about what the king does. ‘T is ill jesting

with lions. Remember William Walker, hanged for saying his son should be

heir to the crown.”

“Troth,” answered Master Heyford, nothing daunted, for he belonged to

one of the most powerful corporations of London,--“it was but a scurvy

Pepperer [old name for Grocer] who made that joke; but a joke from a

worshipful goldsmith, who has moneys and influence, and a fair wife of

his own, whom the king himself has been pleased to commend, is another

guess sort of matter. But here is my grave-visaged headman, who always

contrives to pick up the last gossip astir, and has a deep eye into

millstones. Why, ho, there! Alwyn--I say, Nicholas Alwyn!--who would

have thought to see thee with that bow, a good half-ell taller than

thyself? Methought thou wert too sober and studious for such man-at-arms

sort of devilry.”

“An’ it please you, Master Heyford,” answered the person thus

addressed,--a young man, pale and lean, though sinewy and large-boned,

with a countenance of great intelligence, but a slow and somewhat formal

manner of speech, and a strong provincial accent,--“an’ it please you,

King Edward’s edict ordains every Englishman to have a bow of his

own height; and he who neglects the shaft on a holiday forfeiteth one

halfpenny and some honour. For the rest, methinks that the citizens of

London will become of more worth and potency every year; and it shall

not be my fault if I do not, though but a humble headman to your

worshipful mastership, help to make them so.”

“Why, that’s well said, lad; but if the Londoners prosper, it is because

they have nobles in their gipsires, [a kind of pouch worn at the girdle]

not bows in their hands.”

“Thinkest thou then, Master Heyford, that any king at a pinch would

leave them the gipsire, if they could not protect it with the bow? That

Age may have gold, let not Youth despise iron.”

“Body o’ me!” cried Master Heyford, “but thou hadst better curb in thy

tongue. Though I have my jest,--as a rich man and a corpulent,--a lad

who has his way to make good should be silent and--But he’s gone.”

“Where hooked you up that young jack fish?” said Master Stokton, the

thin mercer, who had reminded the goldsmith of the fate of the grocer.

“Why, he was meant for the cowl, but his mother, a widow, at his own

wish, let him make choice of the flat cap. He was the best ‘prentice

ever I had. By the blood of Saint Thomas, he will push his way in good

time; he has a head, Master Stokton,--a head, and an ear; and a

great big pair of eyes always looking out for something to his proper

advantage.”

In the mean while, the goldsmith’s headman had walked leisurely up to

the archery-ground; and even in his gait and walk, as he thus repaired

to a pastime, there was something steady, staid, and business-like.

The youths of his class and calling were at that day very different from

their equals in this. Many of them the sons of provincial retainers,

some even of franklins and gentlemen, their childhood had made them

familiar with the splendour and the sports of knighthood; they had

learned to wrestle, to cudgel, to pitch the bar or the quoit, to draw

the bow, and to practise the sword and buckler, before transplanted from

the village green to the city stall. And even then, the constant

broils and wars of the time, the example of their betters, the holiday

spectacle of mimic strife, and, above all, the powerful and corporate

association they formed amongst themselves, tended to make them as wild,

as jovial, and as dissolute a set of young fellows as their posterity

are now sober, careful, and discreet. And as Nicholas Alwyn, with

a slight inclination of his head, passed by, two or three loud,

swaggering, bold-looking groups of apprentices--their shaggy hair

streaming over their shoulders, their caps on one side, their short

cloaks of blue torn or patched, though still passably new, their

bludgeons under their arms, and their whole appearance and manner not

very dissimilar from the German collegians in the last century--notably

contrasted Alwyn’s prim dress, his precise walk, and the feline care

with which he stepped aside from any patches of mire that might sully

the soles of his square-toed shoes.

The idle apprentices winked and whispered, and lolled out their tongues

at him as he passed. “Oh, but that must be as good as a May-Fair

day,--sober Nick Alwyn’s maiden flight of the shaft! Hollo, puissant

archer, take care of the goslings yonder! Look this way when thou

pull’st, and then woe to the other side!” Venting these and many similar

specimens of the humour of Cockaigne, the apprentices, however, followed

their quondam colleague, and elbowed their way into the crowd gathered

around the competitors at the butt; and it was at this spot, commanding

a view of the whole space, that the spectator might well have formed

some notion of the vast following of the House of Nevile. For everywhere

along the front lines, everywhere in the scattered groups, might be

seen, glistening in the sunlight, the armourial badges of that mighty

family. The Pied Bull, which was the proper cognizance [Pied Bull

the cognizance, the Dun Bull’s head the crest] of the Neviles, was

principally borne by the numerous kinsmen of Earl Warwick, who rejoiced

in the Nevile name. The Lord Montagu, Warwick’s brother, to whom

the king had granted the forfeit title and estates of the earls of

Northumberland, distinguished his own retainers, however, by the special

request of the ancient Montagus.--a Gryphon issuant from a ducal crown.

But far more numerous than Bull or Gryphon (numerous as either seemed)

were the badges worn by those who ranked themselves among the peculiar

followers of the great Earl of Warwick. The cognizance of the Bear

and Ragged Staff, which he assumed in right of the Beauchamps, whom he

represented through his wife, the heiress of the lords of Warwick,

was worn in the hats of the more gentle and well-born clansmen and

followers, while the Ragged Staff alone was worked front and back on

the scarlet jackets of his more humble and personal retainers. It was

a matter of popular notice and admiration that in those who wore these

badges, as in the wearers of the hat and staff of the ancient Spartans,

might be traced a grave loftiness of bearing, as if they belonged to

another caste, another race, than the herd of men. Near the place where

the rivals for the silver arrow were collected, a lordly party had

reined in their palfreys, and conversed with each other, as the judges

of the field were marshalling the competitors.

“Who,” said one of these gallants, “who is that comely young fellow just

below us, with the Nevile cognizance of the Bull on his hat? He has the

air of one I should know.”

“I never saw him before, my Lord of Northumberland,” answered one of the

gentlemen thus addressed; “but, pardieu, he who knows all the Neviles by

eye must know half England.” The Lord Montagu--for though at that moment

invested with the titles of the Percy, by that name Earl Warwick’s

brother is known to history, and by that, his rightful name, he

shall therefore be designated in these pages--the Lord Montagu smiled

graciously at this remark, and a murmur through the crowd announced that

the competition for the silver arrow was about to commence. The butts,

formed of turf, with a small white mark fastened to the centre by a

very minute peg, were placed apart, one at each end, at the distance of

eleven score yards. At the extremity where the shooting commenced, the

crowd assembled, taking care to keep clear from the opposite butt,

as the warning word of “Fast” was thundered forth; but eager was the

general murmur, and many were the wagers given and accepted, as some

well-known archer tried his chance. Near the butt that now formed the

target, stood the marker with his white wand; and the rapidity with

which archer after archer discharged his shaft, and then, if it missed,

hurried across the ground to pick it up (for arrows were dear enough not

to be lightly lost), amidst the jeers and laughter of the bystanders,

was highly animated and diverting. As yet, however, no marksman had hit

the white, though many had gone close to it, when Nicholas Alwyn stepped

forward; and there was something so unwarlike in his whole air, so prim

in his gait, so careful in his deliberate survey of the shaft and his

precise adjustment of the leathern gauntlet that protected the arm from

the painful twang of the string, that a general burst of laughter from

the bystanders attested their anticipation of a signal failure.

“‘Fore Heaven!” said Montagu, “he handles his bow an’ it were a

yard-measure. One would think he were about to bargain for the

bow-string, he eyes it so closely.”

“And now,” said Nicholas, slowly adjusting the arrow, “a shot for the

honour of old Westmoreland!” And as he spoke, the arrow sprang gallantly

forth, and quivered in the very heart of the white. There was a general

movement of surprise among the spectators, as the marker thrice shook

his wand over his head. But Alwyn, as indifferent to their respect as

he had been to their ridicule, turned round and said, with a significant

glance at the silent nobles, “We springals of London can take care of

our own, if need be.”

“These fellows wax insolent. Our good king spoils them,” said Montagu,

with a curl of his lip. “I wish some young squire of gentle blood would

not disdain a shot for the Nevile against the craftsman. How say you,

fair sir?” And with a princely courtesy of mien and smile, Lord Montagu

turned to the young man he had noticed as wearing the cognizance of

the First House in England. The bow was not the customary weapon of

the well-born; but still, in youth, its exercise formed one of the

accomplishments of the future knight; and even princes did not disdain,

on a popular holiday, to match a shaft against the yeoman’s cloth-yard.

[At a later period, Henry VIII. was a match for the best bowman in his

kingdom. His accomplishment was hereditary, and distinguished alike his

wise father and his pious son.] The young man thus addressed, and whose

honest, open, handsome, hardy face augured a frank and fearless nature,

bowed his head in silence, and then slowly advancing to the umpires,

craved permission to essay his skill, and to borrow the loan of a shaft

and bow. Leave given and the weapons lent, as the young gentleman took

his stand, his comely person, his dress, of a better quality than that

of the competitors hitherto, and, above all, the Nevile badge worked in

silver on his hat, diverted the general attention from Nicholas Alwyn.

A mob is usually inclined to aristocratic predilections, and a murmur

of goodwill and expectation greeted him, when he put aside the gauntlet

offered to him, and said, “In my youth I was taught so to brace the bow

that the string should not touch the arm; and though eleven score yards

be but a boy’s distance, a good archer will lay his body into his bow

[‘My father taught me to lay my body in my bow,’ etc.,” said Latimer, in

his well-known sermon before Edward VI.,--1549. The bishop also herein

observes that “it is best to give the bow so much bending that the

string need never touch the arm. This,” he adds, “is practised by many

good archers with whom I am acquainted, as much as if he were to hit

the blanc four hundred yards away.”

“A tall fellow this!” said Montagu; “and one I wot from the North,” as

the young gallant fitted the shaft to the bow. And graceful and artistic

was the attitude he assumed,--the head slightly inclined, the feet

firmly planted, the left a little in advance, and the stretched sinews

of the bow-hand alone evincing that into that grasp was pressed the

whole strength of the easy and careless frame. The public expectation

was not disappointed,--the youth performed the feat considered of all

the most dexterous; his arrow, disdaining the white mark, struck the

small peg which fastened it to the butts, and which seemed literally

invisible to the bystanders.

“Holy Saint Dunstan! there’s but one man who can beat me in that sort

that I know of,” muttered Nicholas, “and I little expected to see him

take a bite out of his own hip.” With that he approached his successful

rival.

“Well, Master Marmaduke,” said he, “it is many a year since you showed

me that trick at your father, Sir Guy’s--God rest him! But I scarce take

it kind in you to beat your own countryman!”

“Beshrew me!” cried the youth, and his cheerful features brightened into

hearty and cordial pleasure, “but if I see in thee, as it seems to me,

my old friend and foster-brother, Nick Alwyn, this is the happiest hour

I have known for many a day. But stand back and let me look at thee,

man. Thou! thou a tame London trader! Ha! ha! is it possible?”

“Hout, Master Marmaduke,” answered Nicholas, “every crow thinks his own

baird bonniest, as they say in the North. We will talk of this anon an’

thou wilt honour me. I suspect the archery is over now. Few will think

to mend that shot.”

And here, indeed, the umpires advanced, and their chief--an old mercer,

who had once borne arms, and indeed been a volunteer at the battle of

Towton--declared that the contest was over,--“unless,” he added, in

the spirit of a lingering fellow-feeling with the Londoner, “this young

fellow, whom I hope to see an alderman one of these days, will demand

another shot, for as yet there hath been but one prick each at the

butts.”

“Nay, master,” returned Alwyn, “I have met with my betters,--and, after

all,” he added indifferently, “the silver arrow, though a pretty bauble

enough, is over light in its weight.”

“Worshipful sir,” said the young Nevile, with equal generosity, “I

cannot accept the prize for a mere trick of the craft,--the blanc was

already disposed of by Master Alwyn’s arrow. Moreover; the contest was

intended for the Londoners, and I am but an interloper, beholden to

their courtesy for a practice of skill, and even the loan of a bow;

wherefore the silver arrow be given to Nicholas Alwyn.”

“That may not be, gentle sir,” said the umpire, extending the prize.

“Sith Alwyn vails of himself, it is thine, by might and by right.”

The Lord Montagu had not been inattentive to this dialogue, and he

now said, in a loud tone that silenced the crowd, “Young Badgeman, thy

gallantry pleases me no less than thy skill. Take the arrow, for thou

hast won it; but as thou seemest a new comer, it is right thou shouldst

pay thy tax upon entry,--this be my task. Come hither, I pray thee, good

sir,” and the nobleman graciously beckoned to the mercer; “be these five

nobles the prize of whatever Londoner shall acquit himself best in the

bold English combat of quarter-staff, and the prize be given in this

young archer’s name. Thy name, youth?”

“Marmaduke Nevile, good my lord.”

Montagu smiled, and the umpire withdrew to make the announcement to the

bystanders. The proclamation was received with a shout that traversed

from group to group and line to line, more hearty from the love and

honour attached to the name of Nevile than even from a sense of the

gracious generosity of Earl Warwick’s brother. One man alone, a sturdy,

well-knit fellow, in a franklin’s Lincoln broadcloth, and with a hood

half-drawn over his features, did not join the popular applause. “These

Yorkists,” he muttered, “know well how to fool the people.”

Meanwhile the young Nevile still stood by the gilded stirrup of the

great noble who had thus honoured him, and contemplated him with that

respect and interest which a youth’s ambition ever feels for those who

have won a name.

The Lord Montagu bore a very different character from his puissant

brother. Though so skilful a captain that he had never been known to

lose a battle, his fame as a warrior was, strange to say, below that

of the great earl, whose prodigious strength had accomplished those

personal feats that dazzled the populace, and revived the legendary

renown of the earlier Norman knighthood. The caution and wariness,

indeed, which Montagu displayed in battle probably caused his success as

a general, and the injustice done to him (at least by the vulgar) as a

soldier. Rarely had Lord Montagu, though his courage was indisputable,

been known to mix personally in the affray. Like the captains of modern

times, he contented himself with directing the manoeuvres of his

men, and hence preserved that inestimable advantage of coolness and

calculation, which was not always characteristic of the eager hardihood

of his brother. The character of Montagu differed yet more from that

of the earl in peace than in war. He was supposed to excel in all those

supple arts of the courtier which Warwick neglected or despised; and if

the last was on great occasions the adviser, the other in ordinary life

was the companion of his sovereign. Warwick owed his popularity to his

own large, open, daring, and lavish nature. The subtler Montagu sought

to win, by care and pains, what the other obtained without an effort. He

attended the various holiday meetings of the citizens, where Warwick

was rarely seen. He was smooth-spoken and courteous to his equals, and

generally affable, though with constraint, to his inferiors. He was a

close observer, and not without that genius for intrigue, which in rude

ages passes for the talent of a statesman. And yet in that thorough

knowledge of the habits and tastes of the great mass, which gives wisdom

to a ruler, he was far inferior to the earl. In common with his brother,

he was gifted with the majesty of mien which imposes on the eye; and his

port and countenance were such as became the prodigal expense of velvet,

minever, gold, and jewels, by which the gorgeous magnates of the day

communicated to their appearance the arrogant splendour of their power.

“Young gentleman,” said the earl, after eying with some attention the

comely archer, “I am pleased that you bear the name of Nevile. Vouchsafe

to inform me to what scion of our House we are this day indebted for the

credit with which you have upborne its cognizance?”

“I fear,” answered the youth, with a slight but not ungraceful

hesitation, “that my lord of Montagu and Northumberland will hardly

forgive the presumption with which I have intruded upon this assembly

a name borne by nobles so illustrious, especially if it belong to those

less fortunate branches of his family which have taken a different

side from himself in the late unhappy commotions. My father was Sir Guy

Nevile, of Arsdale, in Westmoreland.”

Lord Montagu’s lip lost its gracious smile; he glanced quickly at the

courtiers round him, and said gravely, “I grieve to hear it. Had I

known this, certes my gipsire had still been five nobles the richer.

It becomes not one fresh from the favour of King Edward IV. to show

countenance to the son of a man, kinsman though he was, who bore arms

for the usurpers of Lancaster. I pray thee, sir, to doff, henceforth, a

badge dedicated only to the service of Royal York. No more, young man;

we may not listen to the son of Sir Guy Nevile.--Sirs, shall we ride to

see how the Londoners thrive at quarter-staff?”

With that, Montagu, deigning no further regard at Nevile, wheeled his,

palfrey towards a distant part of the ground, to which the multitude was

already pressing its turbulent and noisy way.

“Thou art hard on thy namesake, fair my lord,” said a young noble, in

whose dark-auburn hair, aquiline, haughty features, spare but powerful

frame, and inexpressible air of authority and command, were found all

the attributes of the purest and eldest Norman race,--the Patricians of

the World.

“Dear Raoul de Fulke,” returned Montagu, coldly, “when thou hast reached

my age of thirty and four, thou wilt learn that no man’s fortune casts

so broad a shadow as to shelter from the storm the victims of a fallen

cause.”

“Not so would say thy bold brother,” answered Raoul de Fulke, with a

slight curl of his proud lip. “And I hold, with him, that no king is so

sacred that we should render to his resentments our own kith and kin.

God’s wot, whosoever wears the badge and springs from the stem of Raoul

de Fulke shall never find me question over much whether his father

fought for York or Lancaster.”

“Hush, rash babbler!” said Montagu, laughing gently; “what would King

Edward say if this speech reached his ears? Our friend,” added the

courtier, turning to the rest, “in vain would bar the tide of change;

and in this our New England, begirt with new men and new fashions,

affect the feudal baronage of the worn-out Norman. But thou art a

gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier.”

“The saints keep me so!” returned De Fulke. “From overgluttony, from

over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king’s leman, from quaking at a

king’s frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old

crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his

sons! Amen!” This speech, in which every sentence struck its stinging

satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by an awkward

silence, which Montagu was the first to break.

“Pardieu!” he said, “when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair face

can have lured the truant?”

“He left us suddenly on the archery-ground,” answered the young Lovell.

“But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord William’s

sigh to maid or matron.”

While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their

mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile’s eye

pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride

and impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it

receives from Power.

CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN GITTERN.

Rousing himself from his indignant revery, Marmaduke Nevile followed one

of the smaller streams into which the crowd divided itself on dispersing

from the archery-ground, and soon found himself in a part of the holiday

scene appropriated to diversions less manly, but no less characteristic

of the period than those of the staff and arrow. Beneath an awning,

under which an itinerant landlord dispensed cakes and ale, the humorous

Bourdour (the most vulgar degree of minstrel, or rather tale-teller)

collected his clownish audience; while seated by themselves--apart, but

within hearing--two harpers, in the king’s livery, consoled each other

for the popularity of their ribald rival, by wise reflections on the

base nature of common folk. Farther on, Marmaduke started to behold

what seemed to him the heads of giants at least six yards high; but on

a nearer approach these formidable apparitions resolved themselves to

a company of dancers upon stilts. There, one joculator exhibited the

antics of his well-tutored ape; there, another eclipsed the attractions

of the baboon by a marvellous horse that beat a tabor with his forefeet;

there, the more sombre Tregetour, before a table raised upon a lofty

stage, promised to cut off and refix the head of a sad-faced little boy,

who in the mean time was preparing his mortal frame for the operation by

apparently larding himself with sharp knives and bodkins. Each of these

wonder-dealers found his separate group of admirers, and great was the

delight and loud the laughter in the pastime-ground of old Cockaigne.

While Marmaduke, bewildered by this various bustle, stared around him,

his eye was caught by a young maiden, in evident distress, struggling in

vain to extricate herself from a troop of timbrel-girls, or tymbesteres

(as they were popularly called), who surrounded her with mocking

gestures, striking their instruments to drown her remonstrances, and

dancing about her in a ring at every effort towards escape. The girl

was modestly attired as one of the humbler ranks, and her wimple in

much concealed her countenance; but there was, despite her strange

and undignified situation and evident alarm, a sort of quiet, earnest

self-possession,--an effort to hide her terror, and to appeal to the

better and more womanly feelings of her persecutors. In the intervals of

silence from the clamour, her voice, though low, clear, well-tuned, and

impressive, forcibly arrested the attention of young Nevile; for at that

day, even more than this (sufficiently apparent as it now is), there was

a marked distinction in the intonation, the accent, the modulation of

voice, between the better bred and better educated and the inferior

classes. But this difference, so ill according with her dress and

position, only served to heighten more the bold insolence of the musical

Bacchantes, who, indeed, in the eyes of the sober, formed the most

immoral nuisance attendant on the sports of the time, and whose hardy

license and peculiar sisterhood might tempt the antiquary to search

for their origin amongst the relics of ancient Paganism. And now, to

increase the girl’s distress, some half-score of dissolute apprentices

and journeymen suddenly broke into the ring of the Maenads, and were

accosting her with yet more alarming insults, when Marmaduke, pushing

them aside, strode to her assistance. “How now, ye lewd varlets! ye make

me blush for my countrymen in the face of day! Are these the sports of

merry England,--these your manly contests,--to strive which can best

affront a poor maid? Out on ye, cullions and bezonians! Cling to me,

gentle donzel, and fear not. Whither shall I lead thee?” The apprentices

were not, however, so easily daunted. Two of them approached to the

rescue, flourishing their bludgeons about their heads with formidable

gestures. “Ho, ho!” cried one, “what right hast thou to step between the

hunters and the doe? The young quean is too much honoured by a kiss from

a bold ‘prentice of London.”

Marmaduke stepped back, and drew the small dagger which then formed the

only habitual weapon of a gentleman. [Swords were not worn, in peace, at

that period.] This movement, discomposing his mantle, brought the silver

arrow he had won (which was placed in his girdle) in full view of the

assailants. At the same time they caught sight of the badge on his hat.

These intimidated their ardour more than the drawn poniard.

“A Nevile!” said one, retreating. “And the jolly marksman who beat Nick

Alwyn,” said the other, lowering his bludgeon, and doffing his cap.

“Gentle sir, forgive us, we knew not your quality. But as for the

girl--your gallantry misleads you.”

“The Wizard’s daughter! ha, ha! the Imp of Darkness!” screeched the

timbrel-girls, tossing up their instruments, and catching them again on

the points of their fingers. “She has enchanted him with her glamour.

Foul is fair! Foul fair thee, young springal, if thou go to the nets.

Shadow and goblin to goblin and shadow! Flesh and blood to blood and

flesh!”--and dancing round him, with wanton looks and bare arms, and

gossamer robes that brushed him as they circled, they chanted,--

“Come, kiss me, my darling,

Warm kisses I trade for;

Wine, music, and kisses

What else was life made for?”

With some difficulty, and with a disgust which was not altogether

without a superstitious fear of the strange words and the outlandish

appearance of these loathsome Delilahs, Marmaduke broke from the ring

with his new charge; and in a few moments the Nevile and the maiden

found themselves, unmolested and unpursued, in a deserted quarter of

the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they hurried,

wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously to the

young man’s ear. “Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is

fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,--and the devil will have his

own!”

“And what mischance, my poor girl,” asked the Nevile, soothingly,

“brought thee into such evil company?”

“I know not, fair sir,” said the girl, slowly recovering her self; “but

my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday occasions one

who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few groats from the

courtesy of the bystanders. So I stole out with my serving-woman,

and had already got more than I dared hope, when those wicked

timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the money from

them. And then they called an officer of the ground, who asked me my

name and holding; so when I answered, they called my father a wizard,

and the man broke my poor gittern,--see!”--and she held it up, with

innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her lips,--“and they

soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no more till you,

worshipful sir, took pity on me.”

“But why,” asked the Nevile, “did they give to your father so unholy a

name?”

“Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying

what he says will one day be of good to the people.”

“Humph!” said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time,

who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and

abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl’s

artless answer,

“Humph! your father--but--” checking what he was about, perhaps harshly,

to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent face lifted

to his own--“but it is hard to punish the child for the father’s

errors.”

“Errors, sir!” repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain

in her face and voice. “But yes, wisdom is ever, perhaps, the saddest

error!”

This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which

had preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the

simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that

character made up. For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and

countenance, she added, after a short pause, “They took the money! The

gittern--see, they left that, when they had made it useless.”

“I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire,” said

Marmaduke.

The girl coloured deeply. “Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg.” Marmaduke

did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by the stunted

trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at him from

their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave looks, he

began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had hitherto done,

to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen walking in

public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful repute.

Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the least,

suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were divided with

iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke him of gentle

quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the humbler orders,

in broad day too, was far more open to censure. The blood mounted to

his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and altered voice: “My

good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger; it would ill beseem

you, so young and so comely, to go farther with one not old enough to be

your protector; so, in God’s name, depart quickly, and remember me when

you buy your new gittern, poor child!” So saying, he attempted to place

a piece of money in her hand. She put it back, and the coin fell on the

ground. “Nay, this is foolish,” said he.

“Alas, sir!” said the girl, gravely, “I see well that you are ashamed of

your goodness. But my father begs not. And once--but that matters not.”

“Once what?” persisted Marmaduke, interested in her manner, in spite of

himself.

“Once,” said the girl, drawing herself up, and with an expression that

altered the whole character of her face--“the beggar ate at my father’s

gate. He is a born gentleman and a knight’s son.”

“And what reduced him thus?”

“I have said,” answered the girl, simply, yet with the same half-scorn

on her lip that it had before betrayed; “he is a scholar, and thought

more of others than himself.”

“I never saw any good come to a gentleman from those accursed books,”

said the Nevile,--“fit only for monks and shavelings. But still, for

your father’s sake, though I am ashamed of the poorness of the gift--”

“No; God be with you, sir, and reward you.” She stopped short, drew

her wimple round her face, and was gone. Nevile felt an uncomfortable

sensation of remorse and disapproval at having suffered her to quit him

while there was yet any chance of molestation or annoyance, and his eye

followed her till a group of trees veiled her from his view.

The young maiden slackened her pace as she found herself alone under

the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,--a desolate spot, made

melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through

which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name

(though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the

most polished quarters of the metropolis. Upon a mound formed by the

gnarled roots of the dwarfed and gnome-like oak, she sat down and wept.

In our earlier years, most of us may remember that there was one day

which made an epoch in life,--that day that separated Childhood from

Youth; for that day seems not to come gradually, but to be a sudden

crisis, an abrupt revelation. The buds of the heart open to close no

more. Such a day was this in that girl’s fate. But the day was not yet

gone! That morning, when she dressed for her enterprise of filial love,

perhaps for the first time Sibyll Warner felt that she was fair--who

shall say whether some innocent, natural vanity had not blended with the

deep, devoted earnestness, which saw no shame in the act by which the

child could aid the father? Perhaps she might have smiled to listen to

old Madge’s praises of her winsome face, old Madge’s predictions that

the face and the gittern would not lack admirers on the gay ground;

perhaps some indistinct, vague forethoughts of the Future to which the

sex will deem itself to be born might have caused the cheek--no, not to

blush, but to take a rosier hue, and the pulse to beat quicker, she knew

not why. At all events, to that ground went the young Sibyll, cheerful,

and almost happy, in her inexperience of actual life, and sure, at

least, that youth and innocence sufficed to protect from insult. And now

she sat down under the leafless tree to weep; and in those bitter tears,

childhood itself was laved from her soul forever.

“What ailest thou, maiden?” asked a deep voice; and she felt a hand laid

lightly on her shoulder. She looked up in terror and confusion, but

it was no form or face to inspire alarm that met her eye. It was a

cavalier, holding by the rein a horse richly caparisoned; and though his

dress was plainer and less exaggerated than that usually worn by men

of rank, its materials were those which the sumptuary laws (constantly

broken, indeed, as such laws ever must be) confined to nobles. Though

his surcoat was but of cloth, and the colour dark and sober, it was

woven in foreign looms,--an unpatriotic luxury, above the degree of

knight,--and edged deep with the costliest sables. The hilt of the

dagger, suspended round his breast, was but of ivory, curiously wrought,

but the scabbard was sown with large pearls. For the rest, the stranger

was of ordinary stature, well knit and active rather than powerful, and

of that age (about thirty-five) which may be called the second prime

of man. His face was far less handsome than Marmaduke Nevile’s, but

infinitely more expressive, both of intelligence and command,--the

features straight and sharp, the complexion clear and pale, and under

the bright gray eyes a dark shade spoke either of dissipation or of

thought.

“What ailest thou, maiden,--weepest thou some faithless lover? Tush!

love renews itself in youth, as flower succeeds flower in spring.”

Sibyll made no reply; she rose and moved a few paces, then arrested her

steps, and looked around her. She had lost all clew to her way homeward,

and she saw with horror, in the distance, the hateful timbrel-girls,

followed by the rabble, and weaving their strange dances towards the

spot.

“Dost thou fear me, child? There is no cause,” said the stranger,

following her. “Again I say, What ailest thou?” This time his voice was

that of command, and the poor girl involuntarily obeyed it. She related

her misfortunes, her persecution by the tymbesteres, her escape,--thanks

to the Nevile’s courtesy,--her separation from her attendant, and her

uncertainty as to the way she should pursue.

The nobleman listened with interest: he was a man sated and wearied

by pleasure and the world, and the evident innocence of Sibyll was a

novelty to his experience, while the contrast between her language and

her dress moved his curiosity. “And,” said he, “thy protector left thee,

his work half done; fie on his chivalry! But I, donzel, wear the spurs

of knighthood, and to succour the distressed is a duty my oath will

not let me swerve from. I will guide thee home, for I know well all the

purlieus of this evil den of London. Thou hast but to name the suburb in

which thy father dwells.”

Sibyll involuntarily raised her wimple, lifted her beautiful eyes to the

stranger, in bewildered gratitude and surprise. Her childhood had passed

in a court, her eye, accustomed to rank, at once perceived the high

degree of the speaker. The contrast between this unexpected and delicate

gallantry and the condescending tone and abrupt desertion of Marmaduke

affected her again to tears.

“Ah, worshipful sir!” she said falteringly, “what can reward thee for

this unlooked-for goodness?”

“One innocent smile, sweet virgin!--for such I’ll be sworn thou art.”

He did not offer her his hand, but hanging the gold-enamelled rein over

his arm, walked by her side; and a few words sufficing for his guidance,

led her across the ground, through the very midst of the throng. He felt

none of the young shame, the ingenious scruples of Marmaduke, at the

gaze he encountered, thus companioned. But Sibyll noted that ever and

anon bonnet and cap were raised as they passed along, and the respectful

murmur of the vulgar, who had so lately jeered her anguish, taught her

the immeasurable distance in men’s esteem between poverty shielded by

virtue, and poverty protected by power.

But suddenly a gaudy tinsel group broke through the crowd, and wheeling

round their path, the foremost of them daringly approached the nobleman,

and looking full into his disdainful face, exclaimed, “Tradest thou,

too, for kisses? Ha, ha! life is short,--the witch is outwitched by

thee! But witchcraft and death go together, as peradventure thou mayest

learn at the last, sleek wooer.” Then darting off, and heading her

painted, tawdry throng, the timbrel-girl sprang into the crowd and

vanished.

This incident produced no effect upon the strong and cynical intellect

of the stranger. Without allusion to it, he continued to converse with

his young companion, and artfully to draw out her own singular but

energetic and gifted mind. He grew more than interested,--he was both

touched and surprised. His manner became yet more respectful, his voice

more subdued and soft.

On what hazards turns our fate! On that day, a little, and Sibyll’s pure

but sensitive heart had, perhaps, been given to the young Nevile. He had

defended and saved her; he was fairer than the stranger, he was more

of her own years and nearer to her in station; but in showing himself

ashamed to be seen with her, he had galled her heart, and moved the

bitter tears of her pride. What had the stranger done? Nothing but

reconciled the wounded delicacy to itself; and suddenly he became to her

one ever to be remembered, wondered at,--perhaps more. They reached an

obscure suburb, and parted at the threshold of a large, gloomy, ruinous

house, which Sibyll indicated as her father’s home.

The girl lingered before the porch; and the stranger gazed, with the

passionless admiration which some fair object of art produces on one

who has refined his taste, but who has survived enthusiasm, upon the

downcast cheek that blushed beneath his gaze. “Farewell!” he said; and

the girl looked up wistfully. He might, without vanity, have supposed

that look to imply what the lip did not dare to say,--“And shall we meet

no more?”

But he turned away, with formal though courteous salutation; and as he

remounted his steed, and rode slowly towards the interior of the city,

he muttered to himself, with a melancholy smile upon his lips, “Now

might the grown infant make to himself a new toy; but an innocent heart

is a brittle thing, and one false vow can break it. Pretty maiden! I

like thee well eno’ not to love thee. So, as my young Scotch minstrel

sings and plays,--

‘Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,

Sic peril lies in paramours!’”

[A Scotch poet, in Lord Hailes’s Collection, has the following lines in

the very pretty poem called “Peril in Paramours:”--

“Wherefore I pray, in termys short,

Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,

Fra false lovers and their disport,

Sic peril lies in paramours.”]

We must now return to Marmaduke. On leaving Sibyll, and retracing his

steps towards the more crowded quarter of the space, he was agreeably

surprised by encountering Nicholas Alwyn, escorted in triumph by a

legion of roaring apprentices from the victory he had just obtained over

six competitors at the quarter-staff.

When the cortege came up to Marmaduke, Nicholas halted, and fronting

his attendants, said, with the same cold and formal stiffness that

had characterized him from the beginning, “I thank you, lads, for your

kindness. It is your own triumph. All I cared for was to show that you

London boys are able to keep up your credit in these days, when there’s

little luck in a yard-measure, if the same hand cannot bend a bow, or

handle cold steel. But the less we think of the strife when we are in

the stall, the better for our pouches. And so I hope we shall hear no

more about it, until I get a ware of my own, when the more of ye that

like to talk of such matters the better ye will be welcome,--always

provided ye be civil customers, who pay on the nail, for as the saw

saith, ‘Ell and tell makes the crypt swell.’ For the rest, thanks are

due to this brave gentleman, Marmaduke Nevile, who, though the son of a

knight-banneret who never furnished less to the battle-field than fifty

men-at-arms, has condescended to take part and parcel in the sports of

us peaceful London traders; and if ever you can do him a kind turn--for

turn and turn is fair play--why, you will, I answer for it. And so

one cheer for old London, and another for Marmaduke Nevile. Here goes!

Hurrah, my lads!” And with this pithy address Nicholas Alwyn took off

his cap and gave the signal for the shouts, which, being duly performed,

he bowed stiffly to his companions, who departed with a hearty laugh,

and coming to the side of Nevile, the two walked on to a neighbouring

booth, where, under a rude awning, and over a flagon of clary, they were

soon immersed in the confidential communications each had to give and

receive.

CHAPTER III. THE TRADER AND THE GENTLE; OR, THE CHANGING GENERATION.

“No, my dear foster-brother,” said the Nevile, “I do not yet comprehend

the choice you have made. You were reared and brought up with such

careful book-lere, not only to read and to write--the which, save the

mark! I hold to be labour eno’--but chop Latin and logic and theology

with Saint Aristotle (is not that his hard name?) into the bargain, and

all because you had an uncle of high note in Holy Church. I cannot say

I would be a shaveling myself; but surely a monk with the hope of

preferment is a nobler calling to a lad of spirit and ambition than

to stand out at a door and cry, ‘Buy, buy,’ ‘What d’ye lack?’ to spend

youth as a Flat-cap, and drone out manhood in measuring cloth, hammering

metals, or weighing out spices?”

“Fair and softly, Master Marmaduke,” said Alwyn, “you will understand

me better anon. My uncle, the sub-prior, died,--some say of austerities,

others of ale,--that matters not; he was a learned man and a cunning.

‘Nephew Nicholas,’ said he on his death-bed, ‘think twice before you tie

yourself up to the cloister; it’s ill leaping nowadays in a sackcloth

bag. If a pious man be moved to the cowl by holy devotion, there is

nothing to be said on the subject; but if he take to the Church as a

calling, and wish to march ahead like his fellows, these times show him

a prettier path to distinction. The nobles begin to get the best things

for themselves; and a learned monk, if he is the son of a yeoman, cannot

hope, without a specialty of grace, to become abbot or bishop. The king,

whoever he be, must be so drained by his wars, that he has little land

or gold to bestow on his favourites; but his gentry turn an eye to

the temporalities of the Church, and the Church and the king wish to

strengthen themselves by the gentry. This is not all; there are

free opinions afloat. The House of Lancaster has lost ground, by its

persecutions and burnings. Men dare not openly resist, but they

treasure up recollections of a fried grandfather, or a roasted

cousin,--recollections which have done much damage to the Henries, and

will shake Holy Church itself one of these days. The Lollards lie hid,

but Lollardism will never die. There is a new class rising amain, where

a little learning goes a great way, if mixed with spirit and sense.

Thou likest broad pieces and a creditable name,--go to London and be

a trader. London begins to decide who shall wear the crown, and the

traders to decide what king London shall befriend. Wherefore, cut thy

trace from the cloister, and take thy road to the shop.’ The next day

my uncle gave up the ghost.--They had better clary than this at the

convent, I must own; but every stone has its flaw.”

“Yet,” said Marmaduke, “if you took distaste to the cowl, from reasons

that I pretend not to judge of, but which seem to my poor head very bad

ones, seeing that the Church is as mighty as ever, and King Edward is

no friend to the Lollards, and that your uncle himself was at least a

sub-prior--”

“Had he been son to a baron, he had been a cardinal,” interrupted

Nicholas, “for his head was the longest that ever came out of the north

country. But go on; you would say my father was a sturdy yeoman, and I

might have followed his calling?”

“You hit the mark, Master Nicholas.”

“Hout, man. I crave pardon of your rank, Master Nevile. But a yeoman is

born a yeoman, and he dies a yeoman--I think it better to die Lord Mayor

of London; and so I craved my mother’s blessing and leave, and a part

of the old hyde has been sold to pay for the first step to the red gown,

which I need not say must be that of the Flat-cap. I have already taken

my degrees, and no longer wear blue. I am headman to my master, and my

master will be sheriff of London.”

“It is a pity,” said the Nevile, shaking his head; “you were ever a

tall, brave lad, and would have made a very pretty soldier.”

“Thank you, Master Marmaduke, but I leave cut and thrust to the gentles.

I have seen eno’ of the life of a retainer. He goes out on foot with his

shield and his sword, or his bow and his quiver, while Sir Knight sits

on horseback, armed from the crown to the toe, and the arrow slants off

from rider and horse, as a stone from a tree. If the retainer is not

sliced and carved into mincemeat, he comes home to a heap of ashes,

and a handful of acres, harried and rivelled into a common; Sir Knight

thanks him for his valour, but he does not build up his house; Sir

Knight gets a grant from the king, or an heiress for his son, and Hob

Yeoman turns gisarme and bill into ploughshares. Tut, tut, there’s no

liberty, no safety, no getting on, for a man who has no right to the

gold spurs, but in the guild of his fellows; and London is the place for

a born Saxon like Nicholas Alwyn.”

As the young aspirant thus uttered the sentiments, which though others

might not so plainly avow and shrewdly enforce them, tended towards that

slow revolution, which, under all the stormy events that the superficial

record we call HISTORY alone deigns to enumerate, was working that great

change in the thoughts and habits of the people,--that impulsion of the

provincial citywards, that gradual formation of a class between knight

and vassal,--which became first constitutionally visible and distinct

in the reign of Henry VII., Marmaduke Nevile, inly half-regretting and

half-despising the reasonings of his foster-brother, was playing with

his dagger, and glancing at his silver arrow.

“Yet you could still have eno’ of the tall yeoman and the stout retainer

about you to try for this bauble, and to break half a dozen thick heads

with your quarter-staff!”

“True,” said Nicholas; “you must recollect we are only, as yet, between

the skin and the selle,--half-trader, half-retainer. The old leaven will

out,--‘Eith to learn the cat to the kirn,’ as they say in the North. But

that’s not all; a man, to get on, must win respect from those who are

to jostle him hereafter, and it’s good policy to show those roystering

youngsters that Nick Alwyn, stiff and steady though he be, has the old

English metal in him, if it comes to a pinch; it’s a lesson to yon lords

too, save your quality, if they ever wish to ride roughshod over our

guilds and companies. But eno’ of me.--Drawer, another stoup of the

clary--Now, gentle sir, may I make bold to ask news of yourself? I saw,

though I spake not before of it, that my Lord Montagu showed a cold face

to his kinsman. I know something of these great men, though I be but a

small one,--a dog is no bad guide in the city he trots through.”

“My dear foster-brother,” said the Nevile, “you had ever more brains

than myself, as is meet that you should have, since you lay by the steel

casque,--which, I take it, is meant as a substitute for us gentlemen

and soldiers who have not so many brains to spare; and I will willingly

profit by your counsels. You must know,” he said, drawing nearer to the

table, and his frank, hardy face assuming a more earnest expression,

“that though my father, Sir Guy, at the instigation of his chief, the

Earl of Westmoreland, and of the Lord Nevile, bore arms at the first for

King Henry--”

“Hush! hush! for Henry of Windsor!”

“Henry of Windsor!--so be it! yet being connected, like the nobles I

have spoken of, with the blood of Warwick and Salisbury, it was ever

with doubt and misgiving, and rather in the hope of ultimate compromise

between both parties (which the Duke of York’s moderation rendered

probable) than of the extermination of either. But when, at the battle

of York, Margaret of Anjou and her generals stained their victory by

cruelties which could not fail to close the door on all conciliation;

when the infant son of the duke himself was murdered, though a prisoner,

in cold blood; when my father’s kinsman, the Earl of Salisbury, was

beheaded without trial; when the head of the brave and good duke,

who had fallen in the field, was, against all knightly and king-like

generosity, mockingly exposed, like a dishonoured robber, on the gates

of York, my father, shocked and revolted, withdrew at once from the

army, and slacked not bit or spur till he found himself in his hall at

Arsdale. His death, caused partly by his travail and vexation of spirit,

together with his timely withdrawal from the enemy, preserved his name

from the attainder passed on the Lords Westmoreland and Nevile; and my

eldest brother, Sir John, accepted the king’s proffer of pardon, took

the oaths of allegiance to Edward, and lives safe, if obscure, in his

father’s halls. Thou knowest, my friend, that a younger brother has but

small honour at home. Peradventure, in calmer times, I might have bowed

my pride to my calling, hunted my brother’s dogs, flown his hawks,

rented his keeper’s lodge, and gone to my grave contented. But to a

young man, who from his childhood had heard the stirring talk of

knights and captains, who had seen valour and fortune make the way to

distinction, and whose ears of late had been filled by the tales of

wandering minstrels and dissours, with all the gay wonders of Edward’s

court, such a life soon grew distasteful. My father, on his death-bed

(like thy uncle, the sub-prior), encouraged me little to follow his own

footsteps. ‘I see,’ said he, ‘that King Henry is too soft to rule his

barons, and Margaret too fierce to conciliate the commons; the only hope

of peace is in the settlement of the House of York. Wherefore, let not

thy father’s errors stand in the way of thy advancement;’ and therewith

he made his confessor--for he was no penman himself, the worthy old

knight!--indite a letter to his great kinsman, the Earl of Warwick,

commending me to his protection. He signed his mark, and set his seal to

this missive, which I now have at mine hostelrie, and died the same day.

My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof; and condemned me

to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three, I could bear no

more! So having sold him my scant share in the heritage, and turned,

like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a party of horse in their

journey to London, and arrived yesterday at Master Sackbut’s hostelrie

in Eastchepe. I went this morning to my Lord of Warwick; but he was gone

to the king’s, and hearing of the merry-makings here, I came hither

for kill-time. A chance word of my Lord of Montagu--whom Saint Dunstan

confound!--made me conceit that a feat of skill with the cloth-yard

might not ill preface my letter to the great earl. But, pardie! it

seems I reckoned without my host, and in seeking to make my fortunes too

rashly, I have helped to mar them.” Wherewith he related the particulars

of his interview with Montagu.

Nicholas Alwyn listened to him with friendly and thoughtful interest,

and, when he had done, spoke thus,--

“The Earl of Warwick is a generous man, and though hot, bears little

malice, except against those whom he deems misthink or insult him; he is

proud of being looked up to as a protector, especially by those of his

own kith and name. Your father’s letter will touch the right string,

and you cannot do better than deliver it with a plain story. A young

partisan like thee is not to be despised. Thou must trust to Lord

Warwick to set matters right with his brother; and now, before I say

further, let me ask thee, plainly, and without offence, Dost thou so

love the House of York that no chance could ever make thee turn sword

against it? Answer as I ask,--under thy breath; those drawers are

parlous spies!”

And here, in justice to Marmaduke Nevile and to his betters, it is

necessary to preface his reply by some brief remarks, to which we must

crave the earnest attention of the reader. What we call PATRIOTISM,

in the high and catholic acceptation of the word, was little if at all

understood in days when passion, pride, and interest were motives little

softened by reflection and education, and softened still less by the

fusion of classes that characterized the small States of old, and marks

the civilization of a modern age. Though the right by descent of the

House of York, if genealogy alone were consulted, was indisputably

prior to that of Lancaster, yet the long exercise of power in the latter

House, the genius of the Fourth Henry, and the victories of the Fifth,

would no doubt have completely superseded the obsolete claims of the

Yorkists, had Henry VI. possessed any of the qualities necessary for

the time. As it was, men had got puzzled by genealogies and cavils; the

sanctity attached to the king’s name was weakened by his doubtful right

to his throne, and the Wars of the rival Roses were at last (with two

exceptions, presently to be noted) the mere contests of exasperated

factions, in which public considerations were scarcely even made the

blind to individual interest, prejudice, or passion.

Thus, instances of desertion, from the one to the other party, even by

the highest nobles, and on the very eve of battle, had grown so common

that little if any disgrace was attached to them; and any knight or

captain held an affront to himself an amply sufficient cause for the

transfer of his allegiance. It would be obviously absurd to expect in

any of the actors of that age the more elevated doctrines of party faith

and public honour, which clearer notions of national morality, and the

salutary exercise of a large general opinion, free from the passions of

single individuals, have brought into practice in our more enlightened

days. The individual feelings of the individual MAN, strong in

himself, became his guide, and he was free in much from the regular and

thoughtful virtues, as well as from the mean and plausible vices, of

those who act only in bodies and corporations. The two exceptions to

this idiosyncrasy of motive and conduct were, first, in the general

disposition of the rising middle class, especially in London, to connect

great political interests with the more popular House of York. The

commons in parliament had acted in opposition to Henry the Sixth, as

the laws they wrung from him tended to show, and it was a popular and

trading party that came, as it were, into power under King Edward. It

is true that Edward was sufficiently arbitrary in himself; but a

popular party will stretch as much as its antagonists in favour of

despotism,--exercised, on its enemies. And Edward did his best to

consult the interests of commerce, though the prejudices of the

merchants interpreted those interests in a way opposite to that in which

political economy now understands them. The second exception to the mere

hostilities of individual chiefs and feudal factions has, not less than

the former, been too much overlooked by historians. But this was a still

more powerful element in the success of the House of York. The hostility

against the Roman Church and the tenets of the Lollards were shared by

an immense part of the population. In the previous century an ancient

writer computes that one half the population were Lollards; and though

the sect were diminished and silenced by fear, they still ceased not to

exist, and their doctrines not only shook the Church under Henry VIII.,

but destroyed the throne by the strong arm of their children, the

Puritans, under Charles I. It was impossible that these men should not

have felt the deepest resentment at the fierce and steadfast persecution

they endured under the House of Lancaster; and without pausing to

consider how far they would benefit under the dynasty of York, they

had all those motives of revenge which are mistaken so often for the

counsels of policy, to rally round any standard raised against their

oppressors. These two great exceptions to merely selfish policy, which

it remains for the historian clearly and at length to enforce, these:

and these alone will always, to a sagacious observer, elevate the Wars

of the Roses above those bloody contests for badges which we are at

first sight tempted to regard them. But these deeper motives animated

very little the nobles and the knightly gentry; [Amongst many instances

of the self-seeking of the time, not the least striking is the

subservience of John Mowbray, the great Duke of Norfolk, to his old

political enemy, the Earl of Oxford, the moment the last comes into

power, during the brief restoration of Henry VI. John Paston, whose

family had been sufficiently harassed by this great duke, says, with

some glee, “The Duke and Duchess (of Norfolk) sue to him (Lord Oxford)

as humbly as ever I did to them.”--Paston Letters, cccii.] and with them

the governing principles were, as we have just said, interest, ambition,

and the zeal for the honour and advancement of Houses and chiefs.

“Truly,” said Marmaduke, after a short and rather embarrassed pause,

“I am little beholden as yet to the House of York. There where I see a

noble benefactor, or a brave and wise leader, shall I think my sword and

heart may best proffer allegiance.”

“Wisely said,” returned Alwyn, with a slight but half sarcastic smile;

“I asked thee the question because--draw closer--there are wise men in

our city who think the ties between Warwick and the king less strong

than a ship’s cable; and if thou attachest thyself to Warwick, he will

be better pleased, it may be, with talk of devotion to himself than

professions of exclusive loyalty to King Edward. He who has little

silver in his pouch must have the more silk on his tongue. A word to a

Westmoreland or a Yorkshire man is as good as a sermon to men not born

so far north. One word more, and I have done. Thou art kind and affable

and gentle, my dear foster-brother, but it will not do for thee to be

seen again with the goldsmith’s headman. If thou wantest me, send for

me at nightfall; I shall be found at Master Heyford’s, in the Chepe. And

if,” added Nicholas, with a prudent reminiscence, “thou succeedest at

court, and canst recommend my master,--there is no better goldsmith,--it

may serve me when I set up for myself, which I look to do shortly.”

“But to send for thee, my own foster-brother, at nightfall, as if I were

ashamed!”

“Hout, Master Marmaduke, if thou wert not ashamed of me, I should be

ashamed to be seen with a gay springal like thee. Why, they would say in

the Chepe that Nick Alwyn was going to ruin. No, no. Birds of a feather

must keep shy of those that moult other colours; and so, my dear young

master, this is my last shake of the hand. But hold: dost thou know thy

way back?”

“Oh, yes,--never fear!” answered Marmaduke; “though I see not why so

far, at least, we may not be companions.”

“No, better as it is; after this day’s work they will gossip about both

of us, and we shall meet many who know my long visage on the way back.

God keep thee; avise me how thou prosperest.”

So saying, Nicholas Alwyn walked off, too delicate to propose to pay his

share of the reckoning with a superior; but when he had gone a few paces

he turned back, and accosting the Nevile, as the latter was rebuckling

his mantle, said,--

“I have been thinking, Master Nevile, that these gold nobles, which it

has been my luck to bear off, would be more useful in thy gipsire

than mine. I have sure gains and small expenses; but a gentleman gains

nothing, and his hand must be ever in his pouch, so--”

“Foster-brother,” said Marmaduke, haughtily, “a gentleman never

borrows,--except of the Jews, and with due interest. Moreover, I too

have my calling; and as thy stall to thee, so to me my good sword.

Saints keep thee! Be sure I will serve thee when I can.”

“The devil’s in these young strips of the herald’s tree,” muttered

Alwyn, as he strode off; “as if it were dishonest to borrow a broad

piece without cutting a throat for it! Howbeit, money is a prolific

mother: and here is eno’ to buy me a gold chain against I am alderman

of London. Hout, thus goes the world,--the knight’s baubles become the

alderman’s badges--so much the better!”

CHAPTER IV. ILL FARES THE COUNTRY MOUSE IN THE TRAPS OF TOWN.

We trust we shall not be deemed discourteous, either, on the one hand,

to those who value themselves on their powers of reflection, or, on the

other, to those who lay claim to what, in modern phrenological jargon,

is called the Organ of Locality, when we venture to surmise that the two

are rarely found in combination; nay, that it seems to us a very evident

truism, that in proportion to the general activity of the intellect

upon subjects of pith and weight, the mind will be indifferent to those

minute external objects by which a less contemplative understanding will

note, and map out, and impress upon the memory, the chart of the road

its owner has once taken. Master Marmaduke Nevile, a hardy and acute

forester from childhood, possessed to perfection the useful faculty

of looking well and closely before him as he walked the earth; and

ordinarily, therefore, the path he had once taken, however intricate

and obscure, he was tolerably sure to retrace with accuracy, even at no

inconsiderable distance of time,--the outward senses of men are usually

thus alert and attentive in the savage or the semi-civilized state. He

had not, therefore, over-valued his general acuteness in the note and

memory of localities, when he boasted of his power to refind his way to

his hostelrie without the guidance of Alwyn. But it so happened that

the events of this day, so memorable to him, withdrew his attention from

external objects, to concentrate it within. And in marvelling and musing

over the new course upon which his destiny had entered, he forgot to

take heed of that which his feet should pursue; so that, after wandering

unconsciously onward for some time, he suddenly halted in perplexity

and amaze to find himself entangled in a labyrinth of scattered suburbs,

presenting features wholly different from the road that had conducted

him to the archery-ground in the forenoon. The darkness of the night had

set in; but it was relieved by a somewhat faint and mist-clad moon, and

some few and scattered stars, over which rolled, fleetly, thick clouds,

portending rain. No lamps at that time cheered the steps of the belated

wanderer; the houses were shut up, and their inmates, for the most part,

already retired to rest, and the suburbs did not rejoice, as the city,

in the round of the watchman with his drowsy call to the inhabitants,

“Hang out your lights!” The passengers, who at first, in various small

groups and parties, had enlivened the stranger’s way, seemed to him,

unconscious as he was of the lapse of time, to have suddenly vanished

from the thoroughfares; and he found himself alone in places thoroughly

unknown to him, waking to the displeasing recollection that the

approaches to the city were said to be beset by brawlers and ruffians

of desperate characters, whom the cessation of the civil wars had flung

loose upon the skirts of society, to maintain themselves by deeds of

rapine and plunder. As might naturally be expected, most of these had

belonged to the defeated party, who had no claim to the good offices or

charity of those in power. And although some of the Neviles had sided

with the Lancastrians, yet the badge worn by Marmaduke was considered

a pledge of devotion to the reigning House, and added a new danger to

those which beset his path. Conscious of this--for he now called to mind

the admonitions of his host in parting from the hostelrie--he deemed it

but discreet to draw the hood of his mantle over the silver ornament;

and while thus occupied, he heard not a step emerging from a lane at his

rear, when suddenly a heavy hand was placed on his shoulder. He started,

turned, and before him stood a man, whose aspect and dress betokened

little to lessen the alarm of the uncourteous salutation. Marmaduke’s

dagger was bare on the instant.

“And what wouldst thou with me?” he asked.

“Thy purse and thy dagger!” answered the stranger.

“Come and take them,” said the Nevile, unconscious that he uttered a

reply famous in classic history, as he sprang backward a step or so, and

threw himself into an attitude of defence. The stranger slowly raised

a rude kind of mace, or rather club, with a ball of iron at the end,

garnished with long spikes, as he replied, “Art thou mad eno’ to fight

for such trifles?”

“Art thou in the habit of meeting one Englishman who yields his goods

without a blow to another?” retorted Marmaduke. “Go to! thy club does

not daunt me.” The stranger warily drew back a step, and applied a

whistle to his mouth. The Nevile sprang at him, but the stranger warded

off the thrust of the poniard with a light flourish of his heavy weapon;

and had not the youth drawn back on the instant, it had been good-night

and a long day to Marmaduke Nevile. Even as it was, his heart beat

quick, as the whirl of the huge weapon sent the air like a strong wind

against his face. Ere he had time to renew his attack, he was suddenly

seized from behind, and found himself struggling in the arms of two men.

From these he broke, and his dagger glanced harmless against the tough

jerkin of his first assailant. The next moment his right arm fell to his

side, useless and deeply gashed. A heavy blow on the head--the moon,

the stars reeled in his eyes--and then darkness,--he knew no more. His

assailants very deliberately proceeded to rifle the inanimate body, when

one of them, perceiving the silver badge, exclaimed, with an oath, “One

of the rampant Neviles! This cock at least shall crow no more.” And

laying the young man’s head across his lap, while he stretched back the

throat with one hand, with the other he drew forth a long sharp knife,

like those used by huntsmen in despatching the hart. Suddenly, and in

the very moment when the blade was about to inflict the fatal gash, his

hand was forcibly arrested, and a man, who had silently and unnoticed

joined the ruffians, said in a stern whisper, “Rise and depart from thy

brotherhood forever. We admit no murderer.”

The ruffian looked up in bewilderment. “Robin--captain--thou here!” he

said falteringly.

“I must needs be everywhere, I see, if I would keep such fellows as thou

and these from the gallows. What is this?--a silver arrow--the young

archer--Um.”

“A Nevile!” growled the would-be murderer.

“And for that very reason his life should be safe. Knowest thou not that

Richard of Warwick, the great Nevile, ever spares the commons? Begone!

I say.” The captain’s low voice grew terrible as he uttered the last

words. The savage rose, and without a word stalked away.

“Look you, my masters,” said Robin, turning to the rest, “soldiers must

plunder a hostile country. While York is on the throne, England is a

hostile country to us Lancastrians. Rob, then, rifle, if ye will; but

he who takes life shall lose it. Ye know me!” The robbers looked down,

silent and abashed. Robin bent a moment over the youth. “He will live,”

he muttered. “So! he already begins to awaken. One of these houses will

give him shelter. Off, fellows, and take care of your necks!”

When Marmaduke, a few minutes after this colloquy, began to revive, it

was with a sensation of dizziness, pain, and extreme cold. He strove to

lift himself from the ground, and at length succeeded. He was alone;

the place where he had lain was damp and red with stiffening blood. He

tottered on for several paces, and perceived from a lattice, at a little

distance, a light still burning. Now reeling, now falling, he still

dragged on his limbs as the instinct attracted him to that sign of

refuge. He gained the doorway of a detached and gloomy house, and sank

on the stone before it to cry aloud; but his voice soon sank into deep

groans, and once more, as his efforts increased the rapid gush of the

blood, became insensible. The man styled Robin, who had so opportunely

saved his life, now approached from the shadow of a wall, beneath which

he had watched Marmaduke’s movements. He neared the door of the house,

and cried, in a sharp, clear voice, “Open, for the love of Christ!”

A head was now thrust from the lattice, the light vanished; a minute

more, the door opened; and Robin, as if satisfied, drew hastily back,

and vanished, saying to himself, as he strode along, “A young man’s

life must needs be dear to him; yet had the lad been a lord, methinks I

should have cared little to have saved for the people one tyrant more.”

After a long interval, Marmaduke again recovered, and his eyes turned

with pain from the glare of a light held to his face.

“He wakes, Father,--he will live!” cried a sweet voice. “Ay, he will

live, child!” answered a deeper tone; and the young man muttered to

himself, half audibly, as in a dream, “Holy Mother be blessed! it is

sweet to live.” The room in which the sufferer lay rather exhibited

the remains of better fortunes than testified to the solid means of the

present possessor. The ceiling was high and groined, and some tints

of faded but once gaudy painting blazoned its compartments and hanging

pendants. The walls had been rudely painted (for arras [Mr. Hallam

(“History of the Middle Ages,” chap. ix. part 2) implies a doubt whether

great houses were furnished with hangings so soon as the reign of Edward

IV.; but there is abundant evidence to satisfy our learned historian

upon that head. The Narrative of the “Lord of Grauthuse,” edited by Sir

F. Madden, specifies the hangings of cloth of gold in the apartments in

which that lord was received by Edward IV.; also the hangings of white

silk and linen in the chamber appropriated to himself at Windsor.

But long before this period (to say nothing of the Bayeux

Tapestry),--namely, in the reign of Edward III. (in 1344),--a writ was

issued to inquire into the mystery of working tapestry; and in 1398 Mr.

Britton observes that the celebrated arras hangings at Warwick

Castle are mentioned. (See Britton’s “Dictionary of Architecture

and Archaelogy,” art. “Tapestry.”)] then was rare, even among the

wealthiest); but the colours were half obliterated by time and damp. The

bedstead on which the wounded man reclined was curiously carved, with a

figure of the Virgin at the head, and adorned with draperies, in which

were wrought huge figures from scriptural subjects, but in the dress

of the date of Richard II.,--Solomon in pointed upturned shoes, and

Goliath, in the armour of a crusader, frowning grimly upon the sufferer.

By the bedside stood a personage, who, in reality, was but little past

the middle age, but whose pale visage, intersected with deep furrows,

whose long beard and hair, partially gray, gave him the appearance of

advanced age: nevertheless there was something peculiarly striking in

the aspect of the man. His forehead was singularly high and massive; but

the back of the head was disproportionately small, as if the intellect

too much preponderated over all the animal qualities for strength in

character and success in life. The eyes were soft, dark, and brilliant,

but dreamlike and vague; the features in youth must have been regular

and beautiful, but their contour was now sharpened by the hollowness of

the cheeks and temples. The form, in the upper part, was nobly shaped,

sufficiently muscular, if not powerful, and with the long throat and

falling shoulders which always gives something of grace and dignity to

the carriage; but it was prematurely bent, and the lower limbs were thin

and weak, as is common with men who have sparely used them; they seemed

disproportioned to that broad chest, and still more to that magnificent

and spacious brow. The dress of this personage corresponded with the

aspect of his abode. The materials were those worn by the gentry, but

they were old, threadbare, and discoloured with innumerable spots and

stains. His hands were small and delicate, with large blue veins, that

spoke of relaxed fibres; but their natural whiteness was smudged with

smoke-stains, and his beard--a masculine ornament utterly out of fashion

among the younger race in King Edward’s reign, but when worn by the

elder gentry carefully trimmed and perfumed--was dishevelled into all

the spiral and tangled curls displayed in the sculptured head of some

old Grecian sage or poet.

On the other side of the bed knelt a young girl of about sixteen, with a

face exquisitely lovely in its delicacy and expression. She seemed

about the middle stature, and her arms and neck, as displayed by the

close-fitting vest, had already the smooth and rounded contour of

dawning womanhood, while the face had still the softness, innocence, and

inexpressible bloom of a child. There was a strong likeness between her

and her father (for such the relationship, despite the difference of

sex and years),--the same beautiful form of lip and brow, the same rare

colour of the eyes, dark-blue, with black fringing lashes; and perhaps

the common expression, at that moment, of gentle pity and benevolent

anxiety contributed to render the resemblance stronger.

“Father, he sinks again!” said the girl.

“Sibyll,” answered the man, putting his finger upon a line in a

manuscript book that he held, “the authority saith, that a patient so

contused should lose blood, and then the arm must be tightly bandaged.

Verily we lack the wherewithal.”

“Not so, Father!” said the girl, and blushing, she turned aside, and

took off the partelet of lawn, upon which holiday finery her young eyes

perhaps that morning had turned with pleasure, and white as snow was the

neck which was thus displayed; “this will suffice to bind his arm.”

“But the book,” said the father, in great perplexity--“the book telleth

us not how the lancet should be applied. It is easy to say, ‘Do this and

do that;’ but to do it once, it should have been done before. This is

not among my experiments.”

Luckily, perhaps, for Marmaduke, at this moment there entered an old

woman, the solitary servant of the house, whose life, in those warlike

times, had made her pretty well acquainted with the simpler modes of

dealing with a wounded arm and a broken head. She treated with great

disdain the learned authority referred to by her master; she bound the

arm, plastered the head, and taking upon herself the responsibility to

promise a rapid cure, insisted upon the retirement of father and child,

and took her solitary watch beside the bed.

“If it had been any other mechanism than that of the vile human body!”

muttered the philosopher, as if apologizing to himself; and with that he

recovered his self-complacency and looked round him proudly.

CHAPTER V. WEAL TO THE IDLER, WOE TO THE WORKMAN.

As Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, so it possibly might

conform the heads of that day to a thickness suitable for the blows and

knocks to which they were variously subjected; yet it was not without

considerable effort and much struggling that Marmaduke’s senses

recovered the shock received, less by his flesh-wound and the loss of

blood, than a blow on the seat of reason that might have despatched a

passable ox of these degenerate days. Nature, to say nothing of Madge’s

leechcraft, ultimately triumphed, and Marmaduke woke one morning in full

possession of such understanding as Nature had endowed him with. He

was then alone, and it was with much simple surprise that he turned his

large hazel eyes from corner to corner of the unfamiliar room. He began

to retrace and weave together sundry disordered and vague reminiscences:

he commenced with the commencement, and clearly satisfied himself that

he had been grievously wounded and sorely bruised; he then recalled the

solitary light at the high lattice, and his memory found itself at

the porch of the large, lonely, ruinous old house; then all became a

bewildered and feverish dream. He caught at the vision of an old man

with a long beard, whom he associated, displeasingly, with recollections

of pain; he glanced off to a fair face, with eyes that looked tender

pity whenever he writhed or groaned under the tortures that, no doubt,

that old accursed carle had inflicted upon him. But even this face

did not dwell with pleasure in his memory,--it woke up confused and

labouring associations of something weird and witchlike, of sorceresses

and tymbesteres, of wild warnings screeched in his ear, of incantations

and devilries and doom. Impatient of these musings, he sought to leap

from his bed, and was amazed that the leap subsided into a tottering

crawl. He found an ewer and basin, and his ablutions refreshed and

invigorated him. He searched for his raiment, and discovered it all

except the mantle, dagger, hat, and girdle; and while looking for these,

his eye fell on an old tarnished steel mirror. He started as if he had

seen his ghost; was it possible that his hardy face could have waned

into that pale and almost femininely delicate visage? With the

pride (call it not coxcombry) that then made the care of person the

distinction of gentle birth, he strove to reduce into order the tangled

locks of the long hair, of which a considerable portion above a part

that seemed peculiarly sensitive to the touch had been mercilessly

clipped; and as he had just completed this task, with little

satisfaction and much inward chafing at the lack of all befitting

essences and perfumes, the door gently opened, and the fair face he had

dreamed of appeared at the aperture.

The girl uttered a cry of astonishment and alarm at seeing the patient

thus arrayed and convalescent, and would suddenly have retreated; but

the Nevile advanced, and courteously taking her hand--

“Fair maiden,” said he, “if, as I trow, I owe to thy cares my tending

and cure--nay, it may be a life hitherto of little worth, save to

myself--do not fly from my thanks. May Our Lady of Walsingham bless and

reward thee!”

“Sir,” answered Sibyll, gently withdrawing her hands from his clasp,

“our poor cares have been a slight return for thy generous protection to

myself.”

“To thee! ah, forgive me--how could I be so dull? I remember thy face

now; and, perchance, I deserve the disaster I met with in leaving thee

so discourteously. My heart smote me for it as my light footfall passed

from thy side.”

A slight blush, succeeded by a thoughtful smile--the smile of one who

recalls and caresses some not displeasing remembrance--passed over

Sibyll’s charming countenance, as the sufferer said this with something

of the grace of a well-born man, whose boyhood had been taught to serve

God and the Ladies.

There was a short pause before she answered, looking down, “Nay, sir, I

was sufficiently beholden to you; and for the rest, all molestation was

over. But I will now call your nurse--for it is to our servant, not

us, that your thanks are due--to see to your state, and administer the

proper medicaments.”

“Truly, fair damsel, it is not precisely medicaments that I hunger and

thirst for; and if your hospitality could spare me from the larder a

manchet, or a corner of a pasty, and from the cellar a stoup of wine

or a cup of ale, methinks it would tend more to restore me than those

potions which are so strange to my taste that they rather offend than

tempt it; and, pardie, it seemeth to my poor senses as if I had not

broken bread for a week!”

“I am glad to hear you of such good cheer,” answered Sibyll; “wait but a

moment or so, till I consult your physician.”

And, so saying, she closed the door, slowly descended the steps, and

pursued her way into what seemed more like a vault than a habitable

room, where she found the single servant of the household. Time, which

makes changes so fantastic in the dress of the better classes, has a

greater respect for the costume of the humbler; and though the

garments were of a very coarse sort of serge, there was not so great a

difference, in point of comfort and sufficiency, as might be supposed,

between the dress of old Madge and that of some primitive servant in

the North during the last century. The old woman’s face was thin and

pinched; but its sharp expression brightened into a smile as she caught

sight, through the damps and darkness, of the gracious form of her young

mistress. “Ah, Madge,” said Sibyll, with a sigh, “it is a sad thing to

be poor!”

“For such as thou, Mistress Sibyll, it is indeed. It does not matter for

the like of us. But it goes to my old heart when I see you shut up here,

or worse, going out in that old courtpie and wimple,--you, a knight’s

grandchild; you, who have played round a queen’s knees, and who might

have been so well-to-do, an’ my master had thought a little more of the

gear of this world. But patience is a good palfrey, and will carry us

a long day. And when the master has done what he looks for, why, the

king--sith we must so call the new man on the throne--will be sure to

reward him; but, sweetheart, tarry not here; it’s an ill air for your

young lips to drink in. What brings you to old Madge?”

“The stranger is recovered, and--”

“Ay, I warrant me, I have cured worse than he. He must have a spoonful

of broth,--I have not forgot it. You see I wanted no dinner myself--what

is dinner to old folks!--so I e’en put it all in the pot for him. The

broth will be brave and strong.”

“My poor Madge, God requite you for what you suffer for us! But he has

asked”--here was another sigh, and a downcast look that did not dare to

face the consternation of Madge, as she repeated, with a half-smile--“he

has asked--for meat, and a stoup of wine, Madge!”

“Eh, sirs! And where is he to get them? Not that it will be bad for the

lad, either. Wine! There’s Master Sancroft of the Oak will not trust us

a penny, the seely hilding, and--”

“Oh, Madge, I forgot!--we can still sell the gittern for something. Get

on your wimple, Madge--quick,--while I go for it.”

“Why, Mistress Sibyll, that’s your only pleasure when you sit all alone,

the long summer days.”

“It will be more pleasure to remember that it supplied the wants of my

father’s guest,” said Sibyll; and retracing the way up the stairs, she

returned with the broken instrument, and despatched Madge with it, laden

with instructions that the wine should be of the best. She then once

more mounted the rugged steps, and halting a moment at Marmaduke’s

door, as she heard his feeble step walking impatiently to and fro, she

ascended higher, where the flight, winding up a square, dilapidated

turret, became rougher, narrower, and darker, and opened the door of her

father’s retreat.

It was a room so bare of ornament and furniture that it seemed merely

wrought out of the mingled rubble and rough stones which composed the

walls of the mansion, and was lighted towards the street by a narrow

slit, glazed, it is true,--which all the windows of the house were

not,--but the sun scarcely pierced the dull panes and the deep walls

in which they were sunk. The room contained a strong furnace and a rude

laboratory. There were several strange-looking mechanical contrivances

scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken shelves, and

a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner. In that

poverty-stricken house, the money spent on fuel alone, in the height

of summer, would have comfortably maintained the inmates; but neither

Sibyll nor Madge ever thought to murmur at this waste, dedicated to what

had become the vital want of a man who drew air in a world of his own.

This was the first thing to be provided for; and Science was of more

imperative necessity than even Hunger.

Adam Warner was indeed a creature of remarkable genius,--and genius, in

an age where it is not appreciated, is the greatest curse the iron Fates

can inflict on man. If not wholly without the fond fancies which led the

wisdom of the darker ages to the philosopher’s stone and the elixir, he

had been deterred from the chase of a chimera by want of means to pursue

it! for it required the resources or the patronage of a prince or noble

to obtain the costly ingredients consumed in the alchemist’s crucible.

In early life, therefore, and while yet in possession of a competence

derived from a line of distinguished and knightly ancestors, Adam

Warner had devoted himself to the surer and less costly study of the

mathematics, which then had begun to attract the attention of the

learned, but which was still looked upon by the vulgar as a branch

of the black art. This pursuit had opened to him the insight into

discoveries equally useful and sublime. They necessitated a still more

various knowledge; and in an age when there was no division of labour

and rare and precarious communication among students, it became

necessary for each discoverer to acquire sufficient science for his own

collateral experiments.

In applying mathematics to the practical purposes of life, in

recognizing its mighty utilities to commerce and civilization, Adam

Warner was driven to conjoin with it, not only an extensive knowledge

of languages, but many of the rudest tasks of the mechanist’s art;

and chemistry was, in some of his researches, summoned to his aid.

By degrees, the tyranny that a man’s genius exercises over his life,

abstracted him from all external objects. He had loved his wife

tenderly, but his rapid waste of his fortune in the purchase of

instruments and books, then enormously dear, and the neglect of all

things not centred in the hope to be the benefactor of the world, had

ruined her health and broken her heart. Happily Warner perceived not her

decay till just before her death; happily he never conceived its cause,

for her soul was wrapped in his. She revered, and loved, and never

upbraided him. Her heart was the martyr to his mind. Had she foreseen

the future destinies of her daughter, it might have been otherwise. She

could have remonstrated with the father, though not with the husband.

But, fortunately, as it seemed to her, she (a Frenchwoman by birth) had

passed her youth in the service of Margaret of Anjou, and that haughty

queen, who was equally warm to friends and inexorable to enemies, had,

on her attendant’s marriage, promised to ensure the fortunes of her

offspring. Sibyll at the age of nine--between seven and eight years

before the date the story enters on, and two years prior to the fatal

field of Towton, which gave to Edward the throne of England--had been

admitted among the young girls whom the custom of the day ranked amidst

the attendants of the queen; and in the interval that elapsed before

Margaret was obliged to dismiss her to her home, her mother died. She

died without foreseeing the reverses that were to ensue, in the hope

that her child, at least, was nobly provided for, and not without

the belief (for there is so much faith in love!) that her husband’s

researches, which in his youth had won favour of the Protector Duke of

Gloucester, the most enlightened prince of his time, would be crowned at

last with the rewards and favours of his king. That precise period was,

indeed, the fairest that had yet dawned upon the philosopher. Henry VI.,

slowly recovering from one of those attacks which passed for imbecility,

had condescended to amuse himself with various conversations with

Warner, urged to it first by representations of the unholy nature of

the student’s pursuits; and, having satisfied his mind of his learned

subject’s orthodoxy, the poor monarch had taken a sort of interest, not

so much, perhaps, in the objects of Warner’s occupations, as in that

complete absorption from actual life which characterized the subject,

and gave him in this a melancholy resemblance to the king. While the

House of Lancaster was on the throne, the wife felt that her husband’s

pursuits would be respected, and his harmless life safe from the fierce

prejudices of the people; and the good queen would not suffer him to

starve, when the last mark was expended in devices how to benefit his

country:--and in these hopes the woman died!

A year afterwards, all at court was in disorder,--armed men supplied the

service of young girls, and Sibyll, with a purse of broad pieces, soon

converted into manuscripts, was sent back to her father’s desolate home.

There had she grown a flower amidst ruins, with no companion of her own

age, and left to bear, as her sweet and affectionate nature well did,

the contrast between the luxuries of a court and the penury of a hearth

which, year after year, hunger and want came more and more sensibly to

invade.

Sibyll had been taught, even as a child, some accomplishments little

vouchsafed then to either sex,--she could read and write; and Margaret

had not so wholly lost, in the sterner North, all reminiscence of

the accomplishments that graced her father’s court as to neglect the

education of those brought up in her household. Much attention was given

to music, for it soothed the dark hours of King Henry; the blazoning of

missals or the lives of saints, with the labours of the loom, were also

among the resources of Sibyll’s girlhood, and by these last she had,

from time to time, served to assist the maintenance of the little

family of which, child though she was, she became the actual head. But

latterly--that is, for the last few weeks--even these sources failed

her; for as more peaceful times allowed her neighbours to interest

themselves in the affairs of others, the dark reports against Warner had

revived. His name became a by-word of horror; the lonely light at the

lattice burning till midnight, against all the early usages and habits

of the day; the dark smoke of the furnace, constant in summer as in

winter, scandalized the religion of the place far and near. And finding,

to their great dissatisfaction, that the king’s government and the

Church interfered not for their protection, and unable themselves

to volunteer any charges against the recluse (for the cows in the

neighbourhood remained provokingly healthy), they came suddenly, and,

as it were by one of those common sympathies which in all times the huge

persecutor we call the PUBLIC manifests when a victim is to be crushed,

to the pious resolution of starving where they could not burn. Why buy

the quaint devilries of the wizard’s daughter?--no luck could come of

it. A missal blazoned by such hands, an embroidery worked at such a

loom, was like the Lord’s Prayer read backwards. And one morning, when

poor Sibyll stole out as usual to vend a month’s labour, she was driven

from door to door with oaths and curses.

Though Sibyll’s heart was gentle, she was not without a certain strength

of mind. She had much of the patient devotion of her mother, much of the

quiet fortitude of her father’s nature. If not comprehending to the full

the loftiness of Warner’s pursuits, she still anticipated from them an

ultimate success which reconciled her to all temporary sacrifices. The

violent prejudices, the ignorant cruelty, thus brought to bear against

existence itself, filled her with sadness, it is true, but not unmixed

with that contempt for her persecutors, which, even in the meekest

tempers, takes the sting from despair. But hunger pressed. Her father

was nearing the goal of his discoveries, and in a moment of that pride

which in its very contempt for appearances braves them all, Sibyll

had stolen out to the pastime-ground,--with what result has been seen

already. Having thus accounted for the penury of the mansion, we return

to its owner.

Warner was contemplating with evident complacency and delight the

model of a machine which had occupied him for many years, and which he

imagined he was now rapidly bringing to perfection. His hands and

face were grimed with the smoke of his forge, and his hair and beard,

neglected as usual, looked parched and dried up, as if with the constant

fever that burned within.

“Yes, yes!” he muttered, “how they will bless me for this! What Roger

Bacon only suggested I shall accomplish! How it will change the face of

the globe! What wealth it will bestow on ages yet unborn!”

“My father,” said the gentle voice of Sibyll, “my poor father, thou hast

not tasted bread to-day.”

Warner turned, and his face relaxed into a tender expression as he saw

his daughter.

“My child,” he said, pointing to his model, “the time comes when it will

live! Patience! patience!”

“And who would not have patience with thee, and for thee, Father?” said

Sibyll, with enthusiasm speaking on every feature. “What is the valour

of knight and soldier--dull statues of steel--to thine? Thou, with

thy naked breast, confronting all dangers,--sharper than the lance and

glaive, and all--”

“All to make England great!”

“Alas! what hath England merited from men like thee? The people, more

savage than their rulers, clamour for the stake, the gibbet, and the

dungeon, for all who strive to make them wiser. Remember the death of

Bolingbroke, [A mathematician accused as an accomplice, in sorcery, of

Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and hanged upon

that charge. His contemporary (William Wyrcestre) highly extols his

learning.]--a wizard, because, O Father!--because his pursuits were

thine!”

Adam, startled by this burst, looked at his daughter with more attention

than he usually evinced to any living thing. “Child,” he said at length,

shaking his head in grave reproof, “let me not say to thee, ‘O thou of

little faith!’ There were no heroes were there no martyrs!”

“Do not frown on me, Father,” said Sibyll, sadly; “let the world

frown,--not thou! Yes, thou art right. Thou must triumph at last.”

And suddenly, her whole countenance changing into a soft and caressing

endearment, she added, “But now come, Father. Thou hast laboured

well for this morning. We shall have a little feast for thee in a few

minutes. And the stranger is recovered, thanks to our leechcraft. He is

impatient to see and thank thee.”

“Well, well, I come, Sibyll,” said the student, with a regretful,

lingering look at his model, and a sigh to be disturbed from its

contemplation; and he slowly quitted the room with Sibyll.

“But not, dear sir and father, not thus--not quite thus--will you go to

the stranger, well-born like yourself? Oh, no! your Sibyll is proud,

you know,--proud of her father.” So saying, she clung to him fondly,

and drew him mechanically, for he had sunk into a revery, and heeded her

not, into an adjoining chamber, in which he slept. The comforts even of

the gentry, of men with the acres that Adam had sold, were then few

and scanty. The nobles and the wealthy merchants, indeed, boasted many

luxuries that excelled in gaud and pomp those of their equals now.

But the class of the gentry who had very little money at command were

contented with hardships from which a menial of this day would revolt.

What they could spend in luxury was usually consumed in dress and the

table they were obliged to keep. These were the essentials of dignity.

Of furniture there was a woful stint. In many houses, even of knights,

an edifice large enough to occupy a quadrangle was composed more of

offices than chambers inhabited by the owners; rarely boasting more than

three beds, which were bequeathed in wills as articles of great value.

The reader must, therefore, not be surprised that Warner’s abode

contained but one bed, properly so called, and that was now devoted to

Nevile. The couch which served the philosopher for bed was a wretched

pallet, stretched on the floor, stuffed with straw,--with rough say,

or serge, and an old cloak for the coverings. His daughter’s, in a room

below, was little better. The walls were bare; the whole house boasted

but one chair, which was in Marmaduke’s chamber; stools or settles of

rude oak elsewhere supplied their place. There was no chimney except in

Nevile’s room, and in that appropriated to the forge.

To this chamber, then, resembling a dungeon in appearance, Sibyll drew

the student, and here, from an old worm-eaten chest, she carefully

extracted a gown of brown velvet, which his father, Sir Armine, had

bequeathed to him by will,--faded, it is true, but still such as the

low-born wore not, [By the sumptuary laws only a knight was entitled to

wear velvet.] trimmed with fur, and clasped with a brooch of gold. And

then she held the ewer and basin to him, while, with the docility of a

child, he washed the smoke-soil from his hands and face. It was

touching to see in this, as in all else, the reverse of their natural

position,--the child tending and heeding and protecting, as it were, the

father; and that not from his deficiency, but his greatness; not because

he was below the vulgar intelligences of life, but above them. And

certainly, when, his patriarchal hair and beard smoothed into order,

and his velvet gown flowing in majestic folds around a figure tall and

commanding, Sibyll followed her father into Marmaduke’s chamber, she

might well have been proud of his appearance; and she felt the innocent

vanity of her sex and age in noticing the half-start of surprise with

which Marmaduke regarded his host, and the tone of respect in which he

proffered him his salutations and thanks. Even his manner altered to

Sibyll; it grew less frank and affable, more courtly and reserved: and

when Madge came to announce that the refection was served, it was with a

blush of shame, perhaps, at his treatment of the poor gittern-player

on the pastime-ground, that the Nevile extended his left hand, for his

right was still not at his command, to lead the damsel to the hall.

This room, which was divided from the entrance by a screen, and, except

a small closet that adjoined it, was the only sitting-room in a day

when, as now on the Continent, no shame was attached to receiving

visitors in sleeping apartments, was long and low; an old and very

narrow table, that might have feasted thirty persons, stretched across

a dais raised upon a stone floor; there was no rere-dosse, or fireplace,

which does not seem at that day to have been an absolute necessity in

the houses of the metropolis and its suburbs, its place being supplied

by a movable brazier. Three oak stools were placed in state at the

board, and to one of these Marmaduke, in a silence unusual to him,

conducted the fair Sibyll.

“You will forgive our lack of provisions,” said Warner, relapsing into

the courteous fashions of his elder days, which the unwonted spectacle

of a cold capon, a pasty, and a flask of wine brought to his mind by a

train of ideas that actively glided by the intervening circumstances,

which ought to have filled him with astonishment at the sight, “for

my Sibyll is but a young housewife, and I am a simple scholar, of few

wants.”

“Verily,” answered Marmaduke, finding his tongue as he attacked the

pasty, “I see nothing that the most dainty need complain of; fair

Mistress Sibyll, your dainty lips will not, I trow, refuse me the

waisall. [I.e. waissail or wassal; the spelling of the time is adopted

in the text.] To you also, worshipful sir! Gramercy! it seems that there

is nothing which better stirs a man’s appetite than a sick bed. And,

speaking thereof, deign to inform me, kind sir, how long I have been

indebted to your hospitality. Of a surety, this pasty hath an excellent

flavour, and if not venison, is something better. But to return, it

mazes me much to think what time hath passed since my encounter with the

robbers.”

“They were robbers, then, who so cruelly assailed thee?” observed

Sibyll.

“Have I not said so--surely, who else? And, as I was remarking to your

worshipful father, whether this mischance happened hours, days, months,

or years ago, beshrew me if I can venture the smallest guess.”

Master Warner smiled, and observing that some reply was expected from

him, said, “Why, indeed, young sir, I fear I am almost as oblivious as

yourself. It was not yesterday that you arrived, nor the day before,

nor--Sibyll, my child, how long is it since this gentleman hath been our

guest?”

“This is the fifth day,” answered Sibyll.

“So long! and I like a senseless log by the wayside, when others are

pushing on, bit and spur, to the great road. I pray you, sir, tell me

the news of the morning. The Lord Warwick is still in London, the court

still at the Tower?”

Poor Adam, whose heart was with his model, and who had now satisfied

his temperate wants, looked somewhat bewildered and perplexed by this

question. “The king, save his honoured head,” said he, inclining his

own, “is, I fear me, always at the Tower, since his unhappy detention,

but he minds it not, sir,--he heeds it not; his soul is not on this side

Paradise.”

Sibyll uttered a faint exclamation of fear at this dangerous

indiscretion of her father’s absence of mind; and drawing closer to

Nevile, she put her hand with touching confidence on his arm, and

whispered, “You will not repeat this, Sir! my father lives only in his

studies, and he has never known but one king!”

Marmaduke turned his bold face to the maid, and pointed to the

salt-cellar, as he answered in the same tone, “Does the brave man betray

his host?”

There was a moment’s silence. Marmaduke rose. “I fear,” said he, “that

I must now leave you; and while it is yet broad noon, I must indeed be

blind if I again miss my way.”

This speech suddenly recalled Adam from his meditations; for whenever

his kindly and simple benevolence was touched, even his mathematics and

his model were forgotten. “No, young sir,” said he, “you must not

quit us yet; your danger is not over. Exercise may bring fever. Celsus

recommends quiet. You must consent to tarry with us a day or two more.”

“Can you tell me,” said the Nevile, hesitatingly, “what distance it is

to the Temple-gate, or the nearest wharf on the river?”

“Two miles, at the least,” answered Sibyll.

“Two miles!--and now I mind me, I have not the accoutrements that beseem

me. Those hildings have stolen my mantle (which, I perceive, by the way,

is but a rustic garment, now laid aside for the super-tunic), and my hat

and dague, nor have they left even a half groat to supply their place.

Verily, therefore, since ye permit me to burden your hospitality longer,

I will not say ye nay, provided you, worshipful sir, will suffer one of

your people to step to the house of one Master Heyford, goldsmith, in

the Chepe, and crave one Nicholas Alwyn, his freedman, to visit me. I

can commission him touching my goods left at mine hostelrie, and learn

some other things which it behooves me to know.”

“Assuredly. Sibyll, tell Simon or Jonas to put himself under our guest’s

order.”

Simon or Jonas! The poor Adam absolutely forgot that Simon and Jonas had

quitted the house these six years! How could he look on the capon, the

wine, and the velvet gown trimmed with fur, and not fancy himself back

in the heyday of his wealth?

Sibyll half smiled and half sighed, as she withdrew to consult with her

sole counsellor, Madge, how the guest’s orders were to be obeyed, and

how, alas! the board was to be replenished for the evening meal. But in

both these troubles she was more fortunate than she anticipated.

Madge had sold the broken gittern, for musical instruments were then,

comparatively speaking, dear (and this had been a queen’s gift), for

sufficient to provide decently for some days; and, elated herself with

the prospect of so much good cheer, she readily consented to be the

messenger to Nicholas Alwyn. When with a light step and a lighter heart

Sibyll tripped back to the hall, she was scarcely surprised to find the

guest alone. Her father, after her departure, had begun to evince much

restless perturbation. He answered Marmaduke’s queries but by abstracted

and desultory monosyllables; and seeing his guest at length engaged in

contemplating some old pieces of armour hung upon the walls, he stole

stealthily and furtively away, and halted not till once more before his

beloved model.

Unaware of his departure, Marmaduke, whose back was turned to him, was,

as he fondly imagined, enlightening his host with much soldier-like

learning as to the old helmets and weapons that graced the hall.

“Certes, my host,” said he, musingly, “that sort of casque, which has

not, I opine, been worn this century, had its merits; the vizor is less

open to the arrows. But as for these chain suits, they suited only--I

venture, with due deference, to declare--the Wars of the Crusades, where

the enemy fought chiefly with dart and scymetar. They would be but a

sorry defence against the mace and battle-axe; nevertheless, they were

light for man and horse, and in some service, especially against foot,

might be revived with advantage. Think you not so?”

He turned, and saw the arch face of Sibyll.

“I crave pardon for my blindness, gentle damsel,” said he, in some

confusion, “but your father was here anon.”

“His mornings are so devoted to labour,” answered Sibyll, “that he

entreats you to pardon his discourtesy. Meanwhile if you would wish to

breathe the air, we have a small garden in the rear;” and so saying, she

led the way into the small withdrawing-room, or rather closet, which was

her own favourite chamber, and which communicated, by another door, with

a broad, neglected grassplot, surrounded by high walls, having a raised

terrace in front, divided by a low stone Gothic palisade from the green

sward.

On the palisade sat droopingly, and half asleep, a solitary peacock; but

when Sibyll and the stranger appeared at the door, he woke up suddenly,

descended from his height, and with a vanity not wholly unlike his

young mistress’s wish to make the best possible display in the eyes of

a guest, spread his plumes broadly in the sun. Sibyll threw him some

bread, which she had taken from the table for that purpose; but the

proud bird, however hungry, disdained to eat, till he had thoroughly

satisfied himself that his glories had been sufficiently observed.

“Poor proud one,” said Sibyll, half to herself, “thy plumage lasts with

thee through all changes.”

“Like the name of a brave knight,” said Marmaduke, who overheard her.

“Thou thinkest of the career of arms.”

“Surely,--I am a Nevile!”

“Is there no fame to be won but that of a warrior?”

“Not that I weet of, or heed for, Mistress Sibyll.”

“Thinkest thou it were nothing to be a minstrel, who gave delight; a

scholar, who dispelled darkness?”

“For the scholar? Certes, I respect holy Mother Church, which they tell

me alone produces that kind of wonder with full safety to the soul, and

that only in the higher prelates and dignitaries. For the minstrel, I

love him, I would fight for him, I would give him at need the last penny

in my gipsire; but it is better to do deeds than to sing them.”

Sibyll smiled, and the smile perplexed and half displeased the young

adventurer. But the fire of the young man had its charm.

By degrees, as they walked to and fro the neglected terrace, their talk

flowed free and familiar; for Marmaduke, like most young men full of

himself, was joyous with the happy egotism of a frank and careless

nature. He told his young confidante of a day his birth, his history,

his hopes, and fears; and in return he learned, in answer to the

questions he addressed to her, so much, at least, of her past and

present life, as the reverses of her father, occasioned by costly

studies, her own brief sojourn at the court of Margaret, and the

solitude, if not the struggles, in which her youth was consumed. It

would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander

to hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so

unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might

unite in one. But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest, and

found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, was ever and anon secretly

comparing him to one, the charm of whose voice still lingered in her

ears; and her intellect, cultivated and acute, detected in Marmaduke

deficient education, and that limited experience which is the folly and

the happiness of the young.

On the other hand, whatever admiration Nevile might conceive was

strangely mixed with surprise, and, it might almost be said, with fear.

This girl, with her wise converse and her child’s face, was a character

so thoroughly new to him. Her language was superior to what he had ever

heard, the words more choice, the current more flowing: was that to be

attributed to her court-training or her learned parentage?

“Your father, fair mistress,” said he, rousing himself in one of the

pauses of their conversation--“your father, then, is a mighty scholar,

and I suppose knows Latin like English?”

“Why, a hedge-priest pretends to know Latin,” said Sibyll, smiling; “my

father is one of the six men living who have learned the Greek and the

Hebrew.”

“Gramercy!” cried Marmaduke, crossing himself. “That is awsome indeed!

He has taught you his lere in the tongues?”

“Nay, I know but my own and the French; my mother was a native of

France.”

“The Holy Mother be praised!” said Marmaduke, breathing more freely;

“for French I have heard my father and uncle say is a language fit for

gentles and knights, specially those who come, like the Neviles, from

Norman stock. This Margaret of Anjou--didst thou love her well, Mistress

Sibyll?”

“Nay,” answered Sibyll, “Margaret commanded awe, but she scarcely

permitted love from an inferior: and though gracious and well-governed

when she so pleased, it was but to those whom she wished to win. She

cared not for the heart, if the hand or the brain could not assist her.

But, poor queen, who could blame her for this?--her nature was turned

from its milk; and, when, more lately, I have heard how many she trusted

most have turned against her, I rebuked myself that--”

“Thou wert not by her side?” added the Nevile, observing her pause, and

with the generous thought of a gentleman and a soldier.

“Nay, I meant not that so expressly, Master Nevile, but rather that I

had ever murmured at her haste and shrewdness of mood. By her side, said

you?--alas! I have a nearer duty at home; my father is all in this world

to me! Thou knowest not, Master Nevile, how it flatters the weak to

think there is some one they can protect. But eno’ of myself. Thou wilt

go to the stout earl, thou wilt pass to the court, thou wilt win the

gold spurs, and thou wilt fight with the strong hand, and leave others

to cozen with the keen head.”

“She is telling my fortune!” muttered Marmaduke, crossing himself again.

“The gold spurs--I thank thee, Mistress Sibyll!--will it be on the

battle-field that I shall be knighted, and by whose hand?”

Sibyll glanced her bright eye at the questioner, and seeing his wistful

face, laughed outright.

“What, thinkest thou, Master Nevile, I can read thee all riddles without

my sieve and my shears?”

“They are essentials, then, Mistress Sibyll?” said the Nevile, with

blunt simplicity. “I thought ye more learned damozels might tell by the

palm, or the--why dost thou laugh at me?”

“Nay,” answered Sibyll, composing herself. “It is my right to be

angered. Sith thou wouldst take me to be a witch, all that I can tell

thee of thy future” (she added touchingly) “is from that which I have

seen of thy past. Thou hast a brave heart, and a gentle; thou hast a

frank tongue, and a courteous; and these qualities make men honoured and

loved,--except they have the gifts which turn all into gall, and bring

oppression for honour, and hate for love.”

“And those gifts, gentle Sibyll?”

“Are my father’s,” answered the girl, with another and a sadder change

in her expressive countenance. And the conversation flagged till

Marmaduke, feeling more weakened by his loss of blood than he had

conceived it possible, retired to his chamber to repose himself.

CHAPTER VI. MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE FEARS FOR THE SPIRITUAL WEAL OF HIS

HOST AND HOSTESS.

Before the hour of supper, which was served at six o’clock, Nicholas

Alwyn arrived at the house indicated to him by Madge. Marmaduke, after

a sound sleep, which was little flattering to Sibyll’s attractions, had

descended to the hall in search of the maiden and his host, and finding

no one, had sauntered in extreme weariness and impatience into the

little withdrawing-closet, where as it was now dusk, burned a single

candle in a melancholy and rustic sconce; standing by the door that

opened on the garden, he amused himself with watching the peacock,

when his friend, following Madge into the chamber, tapped him on the

shoulder.

“Well, Master Nevile. Ha! by Saint Thomas, what has chanced to thee?

Thine arm swathed up, thy locks shorn, thy face blanched! My honoured

foster-brother, thy Westmoreland blood seems over-hot for Cockaigne!”

“If so, there are plenty in this city of cut-throats to let out the

surplusage,” returned Marmaduke; and he briefly related his adventure to

Nicholas.

When he had done, the kind trader reproached himself for having

suffered Marmaduke to find his way alone. “The suburbs abound with these

miscreants,” said he; “and there is more danger in a night walk near

London than in the loneliest glens of green Sherwood--more shame to the

city! An’ I be Lord Mayor one of these days, I will look to it better.

But our civil wars make men hold human life very cheap, and there’s

parlous little care from the great of the blood and limbs of the

wayfarers. But war makes thieves--and peace hangs them! Only wait till I

manage affairs!”

“Many thanks to thee, Nicholas,” returned the Nevile; “but foul befall

me if ever I seek protection from sheriff or mayor! A man who cannot

keep his own life with his own right hand merits well to hap-lose it;

and I, for one, shall think ill of the day when an Englishman looks more

to the laws than his good arm for his safety; but, letting this pass, I

beseech thee to avise me if my Lord Warwick be still in the city?”