said Richard, meaningly. “Nay, chide me not with that lofty look; you
know that there are no secrets between Hastings and Gloucester.”
“My lord duke, the head of a noble House hath the right to dispose of
the hands of the daughters; I know nothing in Lord Warwick to forgive.”
But she turned her head as she spoke, and a tear for a moment trembled
in that haughty eye.
“Lady,” said Richard, moved to admiration, “to you let me confide my
secret. I would be your nephew. Boy though I be in years, my heart beats
as loudly as a man’s; and that heart beats for Anne.”
“The love of Richard Plantagenet honours even Warwick’s daughter!”
“Think you so? Then stand my friend; and, being thus my friend,
intercede with Warwick, if he angers at the silly holiday of this
Woodville pageant.”
“Alas, sir! you know that Warwick listens to no interceders between
himself and his passions. But what then? Grant him wronged, aggrieved,
trifled with,--what then? Can he injure the House of York?”
Richard looked in some surprise at the fair speaker.
“Can he injure the House of York?--Marry, yes,” he replied bluntly.
“But for what end? Whom else should he put upon the throne?”
“What if he forgive the Lancastrians? What if--”
“Utter not the thought, prince, breathe it not,” exclaimed the Lady
Bonville, almost fiercely. “I love and honour my brave brother,
despite--despite--” She paused a moment, blushed, and proceeded rapidly,
without concluding the sentence. “I love him as a woman of his House
must love the hero who forms its proudest boast. But if, for any
personal grudge, any low ambition, any rash humour, the son of my father
Salisbury could forget that Margaret of Anjou placed the gory head of
that old man upon the gates of York, could by word or deed abet the
cause of usurping and bloody Lancaster,--I would--I would--Out upon my
sex! I could do nought but weep the glory of Nevile and Monthermer gone
forever.”
Before Richard could reply, the sound of musical instruments, and a
procession of heralds and pages proceeding from the palace, announced
the approach of Edward. He caught the hand of the dame of Bonville,
lifted it to his lips, and saying, “May fortune one day permit me to
face as the earl’s son the earl’s foes,” made his graceful reverence,
glided from the garden, gained his barge, and was rowed to the huge pile
of Baynard’s Castle, lately reconstructed, but in a gloomy and barbaric
taste, and in which, at that time, he principally resided with his
mother, the once peerless Rose of Raby.
The Lady of Bonville paused a moment, and in that pause her countenance
recovered its composure. She then passed on, with a stately step,
towards a group of the ladies of the court, and her eye noted with proud
pleasure that the highest names of the English knighthood and nobility,
comprising the numerous connections of her family, formed a sullen
circle apart from the rest, betokening, by their grave countenances and
moody whispers, how sensitively they felt the slight to Lord Warwick’s
embassy in the visit of the Count de la Roche, and how little they were
disposed to cringe to the rising sun of the Woodvilles. There, collected
into a puissance whose discontent hard sufficed to shake a firmer throne
(the young Raoul de Fulke, the idolater of Warwick, the impersonation in
himself of the old Norman seignorie, in their centre), with folded arms
and lowering brows, stood the earl’s kinsmen, the Lords Fitzhugh and
Fauconberg: with them, Thomas Lord Stanley, a prudent noble, who rarely
sided with a malcontent, and the Lord St. John, and the heir of the
ancient Bergavennies, and many another chief, under whose banner marched
an army. Richard of Gloucester had shown his wit in refusing to mingle
in intrigues which provoked the ire of that martial phalanx. As the Lady
of Bonville swept by these gentlemen, their murmur of respectful homage,
their profound salutation, and unbonneted heads, contrasted forcibly
with the slight and grave, if not scornful, obeisance they had just
rendered to one of the queen’s sisters, who had passed a moment before
in the same direction. The lady still moved on, and came suddenly across
the path of Hastings, as, in his robes of state, he issued from the
palace. Their eyes met, and both changed colour.
“So, my lord chamberlain,” said the dame, sarcastically, “the Count de
la Roche is, I hear, consigned to your especial charge.”
“A charge the chamberlain cannot refuse, and which William Hastings does
not covet.”
“A king had never asked Montagu and Warwick to consider amongst their
duties any charge they had deemed dishonouring.”
“Dishonouring, Lady Bonville!” exclaimed Hastings, with a bent brow and
a flushed cheek,--“neither Montagu nor Warwick had, with safety, applied
to me the word that has just passed your lips.”
“I crave your pardon,” answered Katherine, bitterly. “Mine articles
of faith in men’s honour are obsolete or heretical. I had deemed it
dishonouring in a noble nature to countenance insult to a noble enemy
in his absence. I had deemed it dishonouring in a brave soldier, a
well-born gentleman (now from his valiantness, merit, and wisdom
become a puissant and dreaded lord), to sink into that lackeydom and
varletaille which falsehood and cringing have stablished in these walls,
and baptized under the name of ‘courtiers.’ Better had Katherine de
Bonville esteemed Lord Hastings had he rather fallen under a king’s
displeasure than debased his better self to a Woodville’s dastard
schemings.”
“Lady, you are cruel and unjust, like all your haughty race; and idle
were reply to one who, of all persons, should have judged me better.
For the rest, if this mummery humbles Lord Warwick, gramercy! there
is nothing in my memory that should make my share in it a gall to my
conscience; nor do I owe the Neviles so large a gratitude, that rather
than fret the pile of their pride, I should throw down the scaffolding
on which my fearless step hath clomb to as fair a height, and one
perhaps that may overlook as long a posterity, as the best baron that
ever quartered the Raven Eagle and the Dun Bull. But,” resumed Hastings,
with a withering sarcasm, “doubtless the Lady de Bonville more admires
the happy lord who holds himself, by right of pedigree, superior to
all things that make the statesman wise, the scholar learned, and the
soldier famous. Way there--back, gentles,”--and Hastings turned to the
crowd behind,--“way there, for my lord of Harrington and Bonville!”
The bystanders smiled at each other as they obeyed; and a heavy,
shambling, graceless man, dressed in the most exaggerated fopperies of
the day, but with a face which even sickliness, that refines most faces,
could not divest of the most vacant dulness, and a mien and gait to
which no attire could give dignity, passed through the group, bowing
awkwardly to the right and left, and saying, in a thick, husky voice,
“You are too good, sirs,--too good: I must not presume so overmuch on my
seignorie. The king would keep me,--he would indeed, sirs; um--um--why,
Katherine--dame--thy stiff gorget makes me ashamed of thee. Thou wouldst
not think, Lord Hastings, that Katherine had a white skin,--a parlous
white skin. La, you now, fie on these mufflers!” The courtiers sneered;
Hastings, with a look of malignant and pitiless triumph, eyed the
Lady of Bonville. For a moment the colour went and came across her
transparent cheek; but the confusion passed, and returning the insulting
gaze of her ancient lover with an eye of unspeakable majesty, she placed
her arm upon her lord’s, and saying calmly, “An English matron cares but
to be fair in her husband’s eyes,” drew him away; and the words and
the manner of the lady were so dignified and simple, that the courtiers
hushed their laughter, and for the moment the lord of such a woman was
not only envied but respected.
While this scene had passed, the procession preceding Edward had
filed into the garden in long and stately order. From another entrance
Elizabeth, the Princess Margaret, and the Duchess of Bedford, with their
trains, had already issued, and were now ranged upon a flight of marble
steps, backed by a columned alcove, hung with velvet striped into the
royal baudekin, while the stairs themselves were covered with leathern
carpets, powdered with the white rose and the fleur de lis; either side
lined by the bearers of the many banners of Edward, displaying the white
lion of March, the black bull of Clare, the cross of Jerusalem, the
dragon of Arragon, and the rising sun, which he had assumed as his
peculiar war-badge since the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Again, and
louder, came the flourish of music; and a murmur through the crowd,
succeeded by deep silence, announced the entrance of the king. He
appeared, leading by the hand the Count de la Roche, and followed by the
Lords Scales, Rivers, Dorset, and the Duke of Clarence. All eyes were
bent upon the count, and though seen to disadvantage by the side of
the comeliest and stateliest and most gorgeously-attired prince in
Christendom, his high forehead, bright sagacious eye, and powerful frame
did not disappoint the expectations founded upon the fame of one equally
subtle in council and redoubted in war.
The royal host and the princely guest made their way where Elizabeth,
blazing in jewels and cloth-of-gold, shone royally, begirt by the ladies
of her brilliant court. At her right hand stood her mother, at her left,
the Princess Margaret.
“I present to you, my Elizabeth,” said Edward, “a princely gentleman, to
whom we nevertheless wish all ill-fortune,--for we cannot desire that he
may subdue our knights, and we would fain hope that he may be conquered
by our ladies.”
“The last hope is already fulfilled,” said the count, gallantly, as
on his knee he kissed the fair hand extended to him. Then rising, and
gazing full and even boldly upon the young Princess Margaret, he added,
“I have seen too often the picture of the Lady Margaret not to be aware
that I stand in that illustrious presence.”
“Her picture! Sir Count,” said the queen; “we knew not that it had been
ever limned.”
“Pardon me, it was done by stealth.”
“And where have you seen it?”
“Worn at the heart of my brother the Count of Charolois!” answered De la
Roche, in a whispered tone.
Margaret blushed with evident pride and delight; and the wily envoy,
leaving the impression his words had made to take their due effect,
addressed himself, with all the gay vivacity he possessed, to the fair
queen and her haughty mother.
After a brief time spent in this complimentary converse, the count then
adjourned to inspect the menagerie, of which the king was very proud.
Edward, offering his hand to his queen, led the way, and the Duchess of
Bedford, directing the count to Margaret by a shrewd and silent glance
of her eye, so far smothered her dislike to Clarence as to ask his
highness to attend herself.
“Ah, lady,” whispered the count, as the procession moved along, “what
thrones would not Charolois resign for the hand that his unworthy envoy
is allowed to touch!”
“Sir,” said Margaret, demurely looking down, “the Count of Charolois is
a lord who, if report be true, makes war his only mistress.”
“Because the only loving mistress his great heart could serve is denied
to his love! Ah, poor lord and brother, what new reasons for eternal war
to Burgundy, when France, not only his foe, becomes his rival!”
Margaret sighed, and the count continued till by degrees he warmed
the royal maiden from her reserve; and his eye grew brighter, and a
triumphant smile played about his lips, when, after the visit to the
menagerie, the procession re-entered the palace, and the Lord Hastings
conducted the count to the bath prepared for him, previous to the
crowning banquet of the night. And far more luxurious and more splendid
than might be deemed by those who read but the general histories of that
sanguinary time, or the inventories of furniture in the houses even of
the great barons, was the accommodation which Edward afforded to his
guest. His apartments and chambers were hung with white silk and linen,
the floors covered with richly-woven carpets; the counterpane of his bed
was cloth-of-gold, trimmed with ermine; the cupboard shone with vessels
of silver and gold; and over two baths were pitched tents of white
cloth of Rennes fringed with silver. [See Madden’s Narrative of the Lord
Grauthuse; Archaelogia, 1830.]
Agreeably to the manners of the time, Lord Hastings assisted to disrobe
the count; and, the more to bear him company, afterwards undressed
himself and bathed in the one bath, while the count refreshed his limbs
in the other.
“Pri’thee,” said De la Roche, drawing aside the curtain of his tent, and
putting forth his head--“pri’thee, my Lord Hastings, deign to instruct
my ignorance of a court which I would fain know well, and let me weet
whether the splendour of your king, far exceeding what I was taught to
look for, is derived from his revenue as sovereign of England, or chief
of the House of York?”
“Sir,” returned Hastings, gravely, putting out his own head, “it is
Edward’s happy fortune to be the wealthiest proprietor in England,
except the Earl of Warwick, and thus he is enabled to indulge a state
which yet oppresses not his people.”
“Except the Earl of Warwick!” repeated the count, musingly, as the fumes
of the odours with which the bath was filled rose in a cloud over his
long hair,--“ill would fare that subject, in most lands, who was as
wealthy as his king! You have heard that Warwick has met King Louis at
Rouen, and that they are inseparable?”
“It becomes an ambassador to win grace of him he is sent to please.”
“But none win the grace of Louis whom Louis does not dupe.”
“You know not Lord Warwick, Sir Count. His mind is so strong and
so frank, that it is as hard to deceive him as it is for him to be
deceived.”
“Time will show,” said the count, pettishly, and he withdrew his head
into the tent.
And now there appeared the attendants, with hippocras, syrups, and
comfits, by way of giving appetite for the supper, so that no further
opportunity for private conversation was left to the two lords. While
the count was dressing, the Lord Scales entered with a superb gown,
clasped with jewels, and lined with minever, with which Edward had
commissioned him to present the Bastard. In this robe the Lord Scales
insisted upon enduing his antagonist with his own hands, and the three
knights then repaired to the banquet. At the king’s table no male
personage out of the royal family sat, except Lord Rivers--as
Elizabeth’s father--and the Count de la Roche, placed between Margaret
and the Duchess of Bedford.
At another table, the great peers of the realm feasted under the
presidence of Anthony Woodville, while, entirely filling one side of the
hall, the ladies of the court held their “mess” (so-called) apart, and
“great and mighty was the eating thereof!”
The banquet ended, the dance began. The admirable “featliness” of the
Count de la Roche, in the pavon, with the Lady Margaret, was rivalled
only by the more majestic grace of Edward and the dainty steps of
Anthony Woodville. But the lightest and happiest heart which beat in
that revel was one in which no scheme and no ambition but those of love
nursed the hope and dreamed the triumph.
Stung by the coldness even more than by the disdain of the Lady
Bonville, and enraged to find that no taunt of his own, however galling,
could ruffle a dignity which was an insult both to memory and to
self-love, Hastings had exerted more than usual, both at the banquet and
in the revel, those general powers of pleasing, which, even in an age
when personal qualifications ranked so high, had yet made him no less
renowned for successes in gallantry than the beautiful and youthful
king. All about this man witnessed to the triumph of mind over the
obstacles that beset it,--his rise without envy, his safety amidst
foes, the happy ease with which he moved through the snares and pits
of everlasting stratagem and universal wile! Him alone the arts of the
Woodvilles could not supplant in Edward’s confidence and love; to him
alone dark Gloucester bent his haughty soul; him alone, Warwick, who
had rejected his alliance, and knew the private grudge the rejection
bequeathed,--him alone, among the “new men,” Warwick always treated with
generous respect, as a wise patriot and a fearless soldier; and in
the more frivolous scenes of courtly life, the same mind raised one no
longer in the bloom of youth, with no striking advantages of person, and
studiously disdainful of all the fopperies of the time, to an equality
with the youngest, the fairest, the gaudiest courtier, in that rivalship
which has pleasure for its object and love for its reward. Many a heart
beat quicker as the graceful courtier, with that careless wit which
veiled his profound mournfulness of character, or with that delicate
flattery which his very contempt for human nature had taught him, moved
from dame to donzell; till at length, in the sight and hearing of the
Lady Bonville, as she sat, seemingly heedless of his revenge, amidst
a group of matrons elder than herself, a murmur of admiration made him
turn quickly, and his eye, following the gaze of the bystanders, rested
upon the sweet, animated face of Sibyll, flushed into rich bloom at the
notice it excited. Then as he approached the maiden, his quick glance
darting to the woman he had first loved told him that he had at last
discovered the secret how to wound. An involuntary compression of
Katherine’s proud lips, a hasty rise and fall of the stately neck, a
restless, indescribable flutter, as it were, of the whole frame, told
the experienced woman-reader of the signs of jealousy and fear. And he
passed at once to the young maiden’s side. Alas! what wonder that Sibyll
that night surrendered her heart to the happiest dreams; and finding
herself on the floors of a court, intoxicated by its perfumed air,
hearing on all sides the murmured eulogies which approved and justified
the seeming preference of the powerful noble, what wonder that she
thought the humble maiden, with her dower of radiant youth and exquisite
beauty, and the fresh and countless treasures of virgin love, might be
no unworthy mate of the “new lord”?
It was morning [The hours of our ancestors, on great occasions, were not
always more seasonable than our own. Froissart speaks of court balls, in
the reign of Richard II., kept up till day.] before the revel ended; and
when dismissed by the Duchess of Bedford, Sibyll was left to herself,
not even amidst her happy visions did the daughter forget her office.
She stole into her father’s chamber. He, too, was astir and up,--at work
at the untiring furnace, the damps on his brow, but all Hope’s vigour at
his heart. So while Pleasure feasts, and Youth revels, and Love deludes
itself, and Ambition chases its shadows (chased itself by Death),--so
works the world-changing and world-despised SCIENCE, the life within
life, for all living,--and to all dead!
CHAPTER VII. THE RENOWNED COMBAT BETWEEN SIR ANTHONY WOODVILLE AND THE
BASTARD OF BURGUNDY.
And now the day came for the memorable joust between the queen’s brother
and the Count de la Roche. By a chapter solemnly convoked at St. Paul’s,
the preliminaries were settled; upon the very timber used in decking the
lists King Edward expended half the yearly revenue derived from all the
forests of his duchy of York. In the wide space of Smithfield, destined
at a later day to blaze with the fires of intolerant bigotry, crowded
London’s holiday population: and yet, though all the form and parade
of chivalry were there; though in the open balconies never presided
a braver king or a comelier queen; though never a more accomplished
chevalier than Sir Anthony Lord of Scales, nor a more redoubted knight
than the brother of Charles the Bold, met lance to lance,--it was
obvious to the elder and more observant spectators, that the true spirit
of the lists was already fast wearing out from the influences of the
age; that the gentleman was succeeding to the knight, that a more silken
and scheming race had become the heirs of the iron men, who, under
Edward III., had realized the fabled Paladins of Charlemagne and Arthur.
But the actors were less changed than the spectators,--the Well-born
than the People. Instead of that hearty sympathy in the contest, that
awful respect for the champions, that eager anxiety for the honour of
the national lance, which, a century or more ago, would have moved the
throng as one breast, the comments of the bystanders evinced rather the
cynicism of ridicule, the feeling that the contest was unreal, and that
chivalry was out of place in the practical temper of the times. On the
great chessboard the pawns were now so marshalled, that the knight’s
moves were no longer able to scour the board and hold in check both
castle and king.
“Gramercy,” said Master Stokton, who sat in high state as sheriff,
[Fabyan] “this is a sad waste of moneys; and where, after all, is the
glory in two tall fellows, walled a yard thick in armor, poking at each
other with poles of painted wood?”
“Give me a good bull-bait!” said a sturdy butcher, in the crowd below;
“that’s more English, I take it, than these fooleries.”
Amongst the ring, the bold ‘prentices of London, up and away betimes,
had pushed their path into a foremost place, much to the discontent of
the gentry, and with their flat caps, long hair, thick bludgeons, loud
exclamations, and turbulent demeanour, greatly scandalized the formal
heralds. That, too, was a sign of the times. Nor less did it show
the growth of commerce, that, on seats very little below the regal
balconies, and far more conspicuous than the places of earls and barons,
sat in state the mayor (that mayor a grocer!) [Sir John Yonge.--Fabyan]
and aldermen of the city.
A murmur, rising gradually into a general shout, evinced the admiration
into which the spectators were surprised, when Anthony Woodville Lord
Scales--his head bare--appeared at the entrance of the lists,--so bold
and so fair was his countenance, so radiant his armour, and so richly
caparisoned his gray steed, in the gorgeous housings that almost swept
the ground; and around him grouped such an attendance of knights and
peers as seldom graced the train of any subject, with the Duke of
Clarence at his right hand, bearing his bassinet.
But Anthony’s pages, supporting his banner, shared at least the popular
admiration with their gallant lord: they were, according to the old
custom, which probably fell into disuse under the Tudors, disguised in
imitation of the heraldic beasts that typified his armourial cognizance;
[Hence the origin of Supporters] and horrible and laidly looked they in
the guise of griffins, with artful scales of thin steel painted green,
red forked tongues, and griping the banner in one huge claw, while, much
to the marvel of the bystanders, they contrived to walk very statelily
on the other. “Oh, the brave monsters!” exclaimed the butcher. “Cogs
bones, this beats all the rest!”
But when the trumpets of the heralds had ceased, when the words “Laissez
aller!” were pronounced, when the lances were set and the charge began,
this momentary admiration was converted into a cry of derision, by the
sudden restiveness of the Burgundian’s horse. This animal, of the pure
race of Flanders, of a bulk approaching to clumsiness, of a rich bay,
where, indeed, amidst the barding and the housings, its colour could be
discerned, had borne the valiant Bastard through many a sanguine field,
and in the last had received a wound which had greatly impaired its
sight. And now, whether scared by the shouting, or terrified by its
obscure vision, and the recollection of its wound when last bestrode by
its lord, it halted midway, reared on end, and, fairly turning round,
despite spur and bit, carried back the Bastard, swearing strange oaths,
that grumbled hoarsely through his vizor, to the very place whence he
had started.
The uncourteous mob yelled and shouted and laughed, and wholly
disregarding the lifted wands and drowning the solemn rebukes of the
heralds, they heaped upon the furious Burgundian all the expressions of
ridicule in which the wit of Cockaigne is so immemorially rich. But the
courteous Anthony of England, seeing the strange and involuntary flight
of his redoubted foe, incontinently reined in, lowered his lance, and
made his horse, without turning round, back to the end of the lists in
a series of graceful gambadas and caracoles. Again the signal was
given, and this time the gallant bay did not fail his rider; ashamed,
doubtless, of its late misdemeanour, arching its head till it almost
touched the breast, laying its ears level on the neck, and with a snort
of anger and disdain, the steed of Flanders rushed to the encounter.
The Bastard’s lance shivered fairly against the small shield of the
Englishman; but the Woodville’s weapon, more deftly aimed, struck full
on the count’s bassinet, and at the same time the pike projecting from
the gray charger’s chaffron pierced the nostrils of the unhappy bay,
which rage and shame had blinded more than ever. The noble animal, stung
by the unexpected pain, and bitted sharply by the rider, whose seat
was sorely shaken by the stroke on his helmet, reared again, stood an
instant perfectly erect, and then fell backwards, rolling over and over
the illustrious burden it had borne. Then the debonair Sir Anthony of
England, casting down his lance, drew his sword, and dexterously caused
his destrier to curvet in a close circle round the fallen Bastard,
courteously shaking at him the brandished weapon, but without attempt to
strike.
“Ho, marshal!” cried King Edward, “assist to his legs the brave count.”
The marshal hastened to obey. “Ventrebleu!” quoth the Bastard, when
extricated from the weight of his steed, “I cannot hold by the clouds,
but though my horse failed me, surely I will not fail my companions;”
and as he spoke, he placed himself in so gallant and superb a posture,
that he silenced the inhospitable yell which had rejoiced in the
foreigner’s discomfiture. Then, observing that the gentle Anthony
had dismounted, and was leaning gracefully against his destrier, the
Burgundian called forth,--
“Sir Knight, thou hast conquered the steed, not the rider. We are now
foot to foot. The pole-axe, or the sword,--which? Speak!”
“I pray thee, noble sieur,” quoth the Woodville, mildly, “to let the
strife close for this day, and when rest bath--”
“Talk of rest to striplings,--I demand my rights!”
“Heaven forefend,” said Anthony Woodville, lifting his hand on high,
“that I, favoured so highly by the fair dames of England, should demand
repose on their behalf. But bear witness,” he said (with the generosity
of the last true chevalier of his age, and lifting his vizor, so as
to be heard by the king, and even through the foremost ranks of the
crowd)--“bear witness, that in this encounter, my cause hath befriended
me, not mine arm. The Count de la Roche speaketh truly; and his steed
alone be blamed for his mischance.”
“It is but a blind beast!” muttered the Burgundian.
“And,” added Anthony, bowing towards the tiers rich with the beauty of
the court--“and the count himself assureth me that the blaze of yonder
eyes blinded his goodly steed.” Having delivered himself of this
gallant conceit, so much in accordance with the taste of the day, the
Englishman, approaching the king’s balcony, craved permission to finish
the encounter with the axe or brand.
“The former, rather please you, my liege; for the warriors of Burgundy
have ever been deemed unconquered in that martial weapon.”
Edward, whose brave blood was up and warm at the clash of steel, bowed
his gracious assent, and two pole-axes were brought into the ring.
The crowd now evinced a more earnest and respectful attention than they
had hitherto shown, for the pole-axe, in such stalwart hands, was no
child’s toy. “Hum,” quoth Master Stokton, “there may be some merriment
now,--not like those silly poles! Your axe lops off a limb mighty
cleanly.” The knights themselves seemed aware of the greater gravity of
the present encounter. Each looked well to the bracing of his vizor;
and poising their weapons with method and care, they stood apart some
moments, eying each other steadfastly,--as adroit fencers with the small
sword do in our schools at this day.
At length the Burgundian, darting forward, launched a mighty stroke at
the Lord Scales, which, though rapidly parried, broke down the guard,
and descended with such weight on the shoulder that but for the
thrice-proven steel of Milan, the benevolent expectation of Master
Stokton had been happily fulfilled. Even as it was, the Lord Scales
uttered a slight cry,--which might be either of anger or of pain,--and
lifting his axe with both hands, levelled a blow on the Burgundian’s
helmet that well nigh brought him to his knee. And now for the space
of some ten minutes, the crowd with charmed suspense beheld the almost
breathless rapidity with which stroke on stroke was given and parried;
the axe shifted to and fro, wielded now with both hands, now the left,
now the right, and the combat reeling, as it were, to and fro,--so that
one moment it raged at one extreme of the lists, the next at the other;
and so well inured, from their very infancy, to the weight of mail were
these redoubted champions, that the very wrestlers on the village green,
nay, the naked gladiators of old, might have envied their lithe agility
and supple quickness.
At last, by a most dexterous stroke, Anthony Woodville forced the point
of his axe into the vizor of the Burgundian, and there so firmly did
it stick, that he was enabled to pull his antagonist to and fro at his
will, while the Bastard, rendered as blind as his horse by the stoppage
of the eye-hole, dealt his own blows about at random, and was placed
completely at the mercy of the Englishman. And gracious as the gentle
Sir Anthony was, he was still so smarting under many a bruise felt
through his dinted mail, that small mercy, perchance, would the Bastard
have found, for the gripe of the Woodville’s left hand was on his foe’s
throat, and the right seemed about to force the point deliberately
forward into the brain, when Edward, roused from his delight at that
pleasing spectacle by a loud shriek from his sister Margaret, echoed by
the Duchess of Bedford, who was by no means anxious that her son’s axe
should be laid at the root of all her schemes, rose, and crying, “Hold!”
with that loud voice which had so often thrilled a mightier field, cast
down his warderer.
Instantly the lists opened; the marshals advanced, severed the
champions, and unbraced the count’s helmet. But the Bastard’s martial
spirit, exceedingly dissatisfied at the unfriendly interruption,
rewarded the attention of the marshals by an oath worthy his
relationship to Charles the Bold; and hurrying straight to the king, his
face flushed with wrath and his eyes sparkling with fire,--
“Noble sire and king,” he cried, “do me not this wrong! I am not
overthrown nor scathed nor subdued,--I yield not. By every knightly law
till one champion yields he can call upon the other to lay on and do his
worst.”
Edward paused, much perplexed and surprised at finding his intercession
so displeasing. He glanced first at the Lord Rivers, who sat a little
below him, and whose cheek grew pale at the prospect of his son’s
renewed encounter with one so determined, then at the immovable aspect
of the gentle and apathetic Elizabeth, then at the agitated countenance
of the duchess, then at the imploring eyes of Margaret, who, with an
effort, preserved herself from swooning; and finally beckoning to him
the Duke of Clarence, as high constable, and the Duke of Norfolk, as
earl marshal, he said, “Tarry a moment, Sir Count, till we take
counsel in this grave affair.” The count bowed sullenly; the spectators
maintained an anxious silence; the curtain before the king’s gallery was
closed while the council conferred. At the end of some three minutes,
however, the drapery was drawn aside by the Duke of Norfolk; and Edward,
fixing his bright blue eye upon the fiery Burgundian, said gravely,
“Count de la Roche, your demand is just. According to the laws of the
list, you may fairly claim that the encounter go on.”
“Oh, knightly prince, well said! My thanks. We lose time.--Squires, my
bassinet!”
“Yea,” renewed Edward, “bring hither the count’s bassinet. By the laws,
the combat may go on at thine asking,--I retract my warderer. But, Count
de la Roche, by those laws you appeal to, the said combat must go on
precisely at the point at which it was broken off. Wherefore brace on
thy bassinet, Count de la Roche; and thou, Anthony Lord Scales, fix the
pike of thine axe, which I now perceive was inserted exactly where the
right eye giveth easy access to the brain, precisely in the same place.
So renew the contest, and the Lord have mercy on thy soul, Count de la
Roche!”
At this startling sentence, wholly unexpected, and yet wholly according
to those laws of which Edward was so learned a judge, the Bastard’s
visage fell. With open mouth and astounded eyes, he stood gazing at the
king, who, majestically reseating himself, motioned to the heralds.
“Is that the law, sire?” at length faltered forth the Bastard.
“Can you dispute it? Can any knight or gentleman gainsay it?”
“Then,” quoth the Bastard, gruffly, and throwing his axe to the ground,
“by all the saints in the calendar, I have had enough! I came hither to
dare all that beseems a chevalier, but to stand still while Sir Anthony
Woodville deliberately pokes out my right eye were a feat to show that
very few brains would follow. And so, my Lord Scales, I give thee my
right hand, and wish thee joy of thy triumph, and the golden collar.”
[The prize was a collar of gold, enamelled with the flower of the
souvenance.]
“No triumph,” replied the Woodville, modestly, “for thou art only, as
brave knights should be, subdued by the charms of the ladies, which no
breast, however valiant, can with impunity dispute.”
So saying, the Lord Scales led the count to a seat of honour near
the Lord Rivers; and the actor was contented, perforce, to become a
spectator of the ensuing contests. These were carried on till late at
noon between the Burgundians and the English, the last maintaining the
superiority of their principal champion; and among those in the
melee, to which squires were admitted, not the least distinguished and
conspicuous was our youthful friend, Master Marmaduke Nevile.
CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE BASTARD OF BURGUNDY PROSPERED MORE IN HIS POLICY
THAN WITH THE POLE-AXE.-AND HOW KING EDWARD HOLDS HIS SUMMER CHASE IN
THE FAIR GROVES OF SHENE.
It was some days after the celebrated encounter between the Bastard and
Lord Scales, and the court had removed to the Palace of Shene. The Count
de la Roche’s favour with the Duchess of Bedford and the young princess
had not rested upon his reputation for skill with the pole-axe, and it
had now increased to a height that might well recompense the diplomatist
for his discomfiture in the lists.
In the mean while, the arts of Warwick’s enemies had been attended with
signal success. The final preparations for the alliance now virtually
concluded with Louis’s brother still detained the earl at Rouen, and
fresh accounts of the French king’s intimacy with the ambassador were
carefully forwarded to Rivers, and transmitted to Edward. Now, we have
Edward’s own authority for stating that his first grudge against Warwick
originated in this displeasing intimacy, but the English king was too
clear-sighted to interpret such courtesies into the gloss given them by
Rivers. He did not for a moment conceive that Lord Warwick was led
into any absolute connection with Louis which could link him to the
Lancastrians, for this was against common-sense; but Edward, with all
his good humour, was implacable and vindictive, and he could not endure
the thought that Warwick should gain the friendship of the man he
deemed his foe. Putting aside his causes of hatred to Louis in the
encouragement which that king had formerly given to the Lancastrian
exiles, Edward’s pride as sovereign felt acutely the slighting disdain
with which the French king had hitherto treated his royalty and his
birth. The customary nickname with which he was maligned in Paris was
“the Son of the Archer,” a taunt upon the fair fame of his mother, whom
scandal accused of no rigid fidelity to the Duke of York. Besides this,
Edward felt somewhat of the jealousy natural to a king, himself so
spirited and able, of the reputation for profound policy and statecraft
which Louis XI. was rapidly widening and increasing throughout the
courts of Europe. And, what with the resentment and what with the
jealousy, there had sprung up in his warlike heart a secret desire to
advance the claims of England to the throne of France, and retrieve the
conquests won by the Fifth Henry to be lost under the Sixth. Possessing
these feelings and these views, Edward necessarily saw in the alliance
with Burgundy all that could gratify both his hate and his ambition. The
Count of Charolois had sworn to Louis the most deadly enmity, and would
have every motive, whether of vengeance or of interest, to associate
himself heart in hand with the arms of England in any invasion of
France; and to these warlike objects Edward added, as we have so often
had cause to remark, the more peaceful aims and interests of commerce.
And, therefore, although he could not so far emancipate himself from
that influence, which both awe and gratitude invested in the Earl of
Warwick, as to resist his great minister’s embassy to Louis; and though,
despite all these reasons in favour of connection with Burgundy, he
could not but reluctantly allow that Warwick urged those of a still
larger and wiser policy, when showing that the infant dynasty of York
could only be made secure by effectually depriving Margaret of the sole
ally that could venture to assist her cause,--yet no sooner had Warwick
fairly departed than he inly chafed at the concession he had made, and
his mind was open to all the impressions which the earl’s enemies sought
to stamp upon it. As the wisdom of every man, however able, can but run
through those channels which are formed by the soil of the character, so
Edward with all his talents never possessed the prudence which fear
of consequences inspires. He was so eminently fearless, so scornful
of danger, that he absolutely forgot the arguments on which
the affectionate zeal of Warwick had based the alliance with
Louis,--arguments as to the unceasing peril, whether to his person
or his throne, so long as the unprincipled and plotting genius of the
French king had an interest against both; and thus he became only alive
to the representations of his passions, his pride, and his mercantile
interests. The Duchess of Bedford, the queen, and all the family of
Woodville, who had but one object at heart,--the downfall of Warwick and
his House,--knew enough of the earl’s haughty nature to be aware that
he would throw up the reins of government the moment he knew that Edward
had discredited and dishonoured his embassy; and, despite the suspicions
they sought to instil into their king’s mind, they calculated upon
the earl’s love and near relationship to Edward, upon his utter and
seemingly irreconcilable breach with the House of Lancaster, to render
his wrath impotent, and to leave him only the fallen minister, not the
mighty rebel.
Edward had been thus easily induced to permit the visit of the Count de
la Roche, although he had by no means then resolved upon the course he
should pursue. At all events, even if the alliance with Louis was to
take place, the friendship of Burgundy was worth much to maintain. But
De la Roche soon made aware by the Duchess of Bedford of the ground on
which he stood, and instructed by his brother to spare no pains and to
scruple no promise that might serve to alienate Edward from Louis and
win the hand and dower of Margaret, found it a more facile matter than
his most sanguine hopes had deemed to work upon the passions and the
motives which inclined the king to the pretensions of the heir of
Burgundy. And what more than all else favoured the envoy’s mission was
the very circumstance that should most have defeated it,--namely, the
recollection of the Earl of Warwick; for in the absence of that powerful
baron and master-minister, the king had seemed to breathe more freely.
In his absence, he forgot his power. The machine of government, to his
own surprise, seemed to go on as well; the Commons were as submissive,
the mobs as noisy in their shouts, as if the earl were by. There was no
longer any one to share with Edward the joys of popularity, the sweets
of power.
Though Edward was not Diogenes, he loved the popular sunshine, and
no Alexander now stood between him and its beams. Deceived by the
representations of his courtiers, hearing nothing but abuse of Warwick
and sneers at his greatness, he began to think the hour had come when he
might reign alone, and he entered, though tacitly, and not acknowledging
it even to himself, into the very object of the womankind about
him,--namely, the dismissal of his minister.
The natural carelessness and luxurious indolence of Edward’s temper did
not however permit him to see all the ingratitude of the course he was
about to adopt. The egotism a king too often acquires, and no king so
easily as one like Edward IV., not born to a throne, made him consider
that he alone was entitled to the prerogatives of pride. As sovereign
and as brother, might he not give the hand of Margaret as he listed?
If Warwick was offended, pest on his disloyalty and presumption! And so
saying to himself, he dismissed the very thought of the absent earl,
and glided unconsciously down the current of the hour. And yet,
notwithstanding all these prepossessions and dispositions, Edward might
no doubt have deferred at least the meditated breach with his great
minister until the return of the latter, and then have acted with the
delicacy and precaution that became a king bound by ties of
gratitude and blood to the statesman he desired to discard, but for
a habit,--which, while history mentions, it seems to forget, in
the consequences it ever engenders,--the habit of intemperance.
Unquestionably to that habit many of the imprudences and levities of a
king possessed of so much ability are to be ascribed; and over his cups
with the wary and watchful De la Roche Edward had contrived to entangle
himself far more than in his cooler moments he would have been disposed
to do.
Having thus admitted our readers into those recesses of that cor
inscrutabile,--the heart of kings,--we summon them to a scene peculiar
to the pastimes of the magnificent Edward. Amidst the shades of the
vast park, or chase, which then appertained to the Palace of Shene, the
noonday sun shone upon such a spot as Armida might have dressed for the
subdued Rinaldo. A space had been cleared of trees and underwood, and
made level as a bowling-green. Around this space the huge oak and
the broad beech were hung with trellis-work, wreathed with jasmine,
honeysuckle, and the white rose, trained in arches. Ever and anon
through these arches extended long alleys, or vistas, gradually lost
in the cool depth of foliage; amidst these alleys and around this space
numberless arbours, quaint with all the flowers then known in England,
were constructed. In the centre of the sward was a small artificial
lake, long since dried up, and adorned then with a profusion of
fountains, that seemed to scatter coolness around the glowing air.
Pitched in various and appropriate sites were tents of silk and the
white cloth of Rennes, each tent so placed as to command one of the
alleys; and at the opening of each stood cavalier or dame, with the bow
or crossbow, as it pleased the fancy or suited best the skill, looking
for the quarry, which horn and hound drove fast and frequent across the
alleys. Such was the luxurious “summer-chase” of the Sardanapalus of the
North. Nor could any spectacle more thoroughly represent that poetical
yet effeminate taste, which, borrowed from the Italians, made a short
interval between the chivalric and the modern age. The exceeding beauty
of the day, the richness of the foliage in the first suns of bright
July, the bay of the dogs, the sound of the mellow horn, the fragrance
of the air, heavy with noontide flowers, the gay tents, the rich dresses
and fair faces and merry laughter of dame and donzell,--combined to
take captive every sense, and to reconcile ambition itself, that eternal
traveller through the future, to the enjoyment of the voluptuous hour.
But there were illustrious exceptions to the contentment of the general
company.
A courier had arrived that morning to apprise Edward of the unexpected
debarkation of the Earl of Warwick, with the Archbishop of Narbonne and
the Bastard of Bourbon,--the ambassadors commissioned by Louis to settle
the preliminaries of the marriage between Margaret and his brother. This
unwelcome intelligence reached Edward at the very moment he was sallying
from his palace gates to his pleasant pastime. He took aside Lord
Hastings, and communicated the news to his able favourite. “Put spurs to
thy horse, Hastings, and hie thee fast to Baynard’s Castle. Bring back
Gloucester. In these difficult matters that boy’s head is better than a
council.”
“Your Highness,” said Hastings, tightening his girdle with one hand,
while with the other he shortened his stirrups, “shall be obeyed. I
foresaw, sire, that this coming would occasion much that my Lords Rivers
and Worcester have overlooked. I rejoice that you summon the Prince
Richard, who hath wisely forborne all countenance to the Burgundian
envoy. But is this all, sire? Is it not well to assemble also your
trustiest lords and most learned prelates, if not to overawe Lord
Warwick’s anger, at least to confer on the fitting excuses to be made to
King Louis’s ambassadors?”
“And so lose the fairest day this summer hath bestowed upon us?
Tush!--the more need for pleasaunce to-day since business must come
to-morrow. Away with you, dear Will!”
Hastings looked grave; but he saw all further remonstrance would be in
vain, and hoping much from the intercession of Gloucester, put spurs to
his steed and vanished. Edward mused a moment; and Elizabeth, who knew
every expression and change of his countenance, rode from the circle of
her ladies, and approached him timidly. Casting down her eyes, which she
always affected in speaking to her lord, the queen said softly,--
“Something hath disturbed my liege and my life’s life.”
“Marry, yes, sweet Bessee. Last night, to pleasure thee and thy kin (and
sooth to say, small gratitude ye owe me, for it also pleased myself), I
promised Margaret’s hand, through De la Roche, to the heir of Burgundy.”
“O princely heart!” exclaimed Elizabeth, her whole face lighted up with
triumph, “ever seeking to make happy those it cherishes. But is it that
which disturbs thee, that which thou repentest?”
“No, sweetheart,--no. Yet had it not been for the strength of the clary,
I should have kept the Bastard longer in suspense. But what is done
is done. Let not thy roses wither when thou hearest Warwick is in
England,--nay, nay, child, look not so appalled; thine Edward is no
infant, whom ogre and goblin scare; and”--glancing his eye proudly round
as he spoke, and saw the goodly cavalcade of his peers and knights, with
his body-guard, tall and chosen veterans, filling up the palace-yard,
with the show of casque and pike--“and if the struggle is to come
between Edward of England and his subject, never an hour more ripe
than this; my throne assured, the new nobility I have raised around it,
London true, marrow and heart true, the provinces at peace, the ships
and the steel of Burgundy mine allies! Let the white Bear growl as he
list, the Lion of March is lord of the forest. And now, my Bessee,”
added the king, changing his haughty tone into a gay, careless laugh,
“now let the lion enjoy his chase.”
He kissed the gloved hand of his queen, gallantly bending over his
saddle-bow, and the next moment he was by the side of a younger if not
a fairer lady, to whom he was devoting the momentary worship of his
inconstant heart. Elizabeth’s eyes shot an angry gleam as she beheld her
faithless lord thus engaged; but so accustomed to conceal and control
the natural jealousy that it never betrayed itself to the court or to
her husband, she soon composed her countenance to its ordinary smooth
and artificial smile, and rejoining her mother she revealed what had
passed. The proud and masculine spirit of the duchess felt only joy at
the intelligence. In the anticipated humiliation of Warwick, she forgot
all cause for fear. Not so her husband and son, the Lords Rivers and
Scales, to whom the news soon travelled.
“Anthony,” whispered the father, “in this game we have staked our
heads.”
“But our right hands can guard them well, sir,” answered Anthony; “and
so God and the ladies for our rights!”
Yet this bold reply did not satisfy the more thoughtful judgment of the
lord treasurer, and even the brave Anthony’s arrows that day wandered
wide of their quarry.
Amidst this gay scene, then, there were anxious and thoughtful bosoms.
Lord Rivers was silent and abstracted; his son’s laugh was hollow and
constrained; the queen, from her pavilion, cast, ever and anon, down the
green alleys more restless and prying looks than the hare or the deer
could call forth; her mother’s brow was knit and flushed. And keenly
were those illustrious persons watched by one deeply interested in the
coming events. Affecting to discharge the pleasant duty assigned him
by the king, the Lord Montagu glided from tent to tent, inquiring
courteously into the accommodation of each group, lingering, smiling,
complimenting, watching, heeding, studying, those whom he addressed. For
the first time since the Bastard’s visit he had joined in the diversions
in its honour; and yet so well had Montagu played his part at the court
that he did not excite amongst the queen’s relatives any of the hostile
feelings entertained towards his brother. No man, except Hastings,
was so “entirely loved” by Edward; and Montagu, worldly as he was, and
indignant against the king as he could not fail to be, so far repaid
the affection, that his chief fear at that moment sincerely was not for
Warwick but Edward. He alone of those present was aware of the cause of
Warwick’s hasty return, for he had privately despatched to him the news
of the Bastard’s visit, its real object, and the inevitable success of
the intrigues afloat, unless the earl could return at once, his mission
accomplished, and the ambassadors of France in his train; and even
before the courier despatched to the king had arrived at Shene, a
private hand had conveyed to Montagu the information that Warwick,
justly roused and alarmed, had left the state procession behind at
Dover, and was hurrying, fast as relays of steeds and his own fiery
spirit could bear him, to the presence of the ungrateful king.
Meanwhile the noon had now declined, the sport relaxed, and the sound
of the trumpet from the king’s pavilion proclaimed that the lazy pastime
was to give place to the luxurious banquet.
At this moment, Montagu approached a tent remote from the royal
pavilions, and, as his noiseless footstep crushed the grass, he heard
the sound of voices in which there was little in unison with the worldly
thoughts that filled his breast.
“Nay, sweet mistress, nay,” said a young man’s voice, earnest with
emotion, “do not misthink me, do not deem me bold and overweening. I
have sought to smother my love, and to rate it, and bring pride to my
aid, but in vain; and, now, whether you will scorn my suit or not,
I remember, Sibyll--O Sibyll! I remember the days when we conversed
together; and as a brother, if nothing else--nothing dearer--I pray you
to pause well, and consider what manner of man this Lord Hastings is
said to be!”
“Master Nevile, is this generous? Why afflict me thus; why couple my
name with so great a lord’s?”
“Because--beware--the young gallants already so couple it, and their
prophecies are not to thine honour, Sibyll. Nay, do not frown on me. I
know thou art fair and winsome, and deftly gifted, and thy father may,
for aught I know, be able to coin thee a queen’s dower out of his awsome
engines. But Hastings will not wed thee, and his wooing, therefore, but
stains thy fair repute; while I--”
“You!” said Montagu, entering suddenly--“you, kinsman, may look to
higher fortunes than the Duchess of Bedford’s waiting-damsel can bring
to thy honest love. How now, mistress, say, wilt thou take this young
gentleman for loving fere and plighted spouse? If so, he shall give thee
a manor for jointure, and thou shalt wear velvet robe and gold chain, as
a knight’s wife.”
This unexpected interference, which was perfectly in character with the
great lords, who frequently wooed in very peremptory tones for their
clients and kinsmen, [See, in Miss Strickland’s “Life of Elizabeth
Woodville,” the curious letters which the Duke of York and the Earl
of Warwick addressed to her, then a simple maiden, in favour of their
protege, Sir R. Johnes.] completed the displeasure which the blunt
Marmaduke had already called forth in Sibyll’s gentle but proud nature.
“Speak, maiden,--ay or no?” continued Montagu, surprised and angered at
the haughty silence of one whom he just knew by sight and name, though
he had never before addressed her.
“No, my lord,” answered Sibyll, keeping down her indignation at this
tone, though it burned in her cheek, flashed in her eye, and swelled in
the heave of her breast. “No! and your kinsman might have spared this
affront to one whom--but it matters not.” She swept from the tent as she
said this, and passed up the alley into that of the queen’s mother.
“Best so; thou art too young for marriage, Marmaduke,” said Montagu,
coldly. “We will find thee a richer bride ere long. There is Mary of
Winstown, the archbishop’s ward, with two castles and seven knight’s
fees.”
“But so marvellously ill-featured, my lord,” said poor Marmaduke,
sighing.
Montagu looked at him in surprise. “Wives, sir,” he said, “are not made
to look at,--unless, indeed, they be the wives of other men. But dismiss
these follies for the nonce. Back to thy post by the king’s pavilion;
and by the way ask Lord Fauconberg and Aymer Nevile, whom thou wilt pass
by yonder arbour, ask them, in my name, to be near the pavilion while
the king banquets. A word in thine ear,--ere yon sun gilds the top of
those green oaks, the Earl of Warwick will be with Edward IV.; and come
what may, some brave hearts should be by to welcome him. Go!”
Without tarrying for an answer, Montagu turned into one of the tents,
wherein Raoul de Fulke and the Lord St. John, heedless of hind and
hart, conferred; and Marmaduke, much bewildered, and bitterly wroth with
Sibyll, went his way.
CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT ACTOR RETURNS TO FILL THE STAGE.
And now in various groups these summer foresters were at rest in their
afternoon banquet,--some lying on the smooth sward around the lake, some
in the tents, some again in the arbours; here and there the forms of
dame and cavalier might be seen, stealing apart from the rest, and
gliding down the alleys till lost in the shade, for under that reign
gallantry was universal. Before the king’s pavilion a band of those
merry jongleurs, into whom the ancient and honoured minstrels were fast
degenerating, stood waiting for the signal to commence their sports,
and listening to the laughter that came in frequent peals from the royal
tent. Within feasted Edward, the Count de la Roche, the Lord Rivers;
while in a larger and more splendid pavilion at some little distance,
the queen, her mother, and the great dames of the court held their own
slighter and less noisy repast.
“And here, then,” said Edward, as he put his lips to a gold goblet,
wrought with gems, and passed it to Anthony the Bastard,--“here, count,
we take the first wassail to the loves of Charolois and Margaret!”
The count drained the goblet, and the wine gave him new fire.
“And with those loves, king,” said he, “we bind forever Burgundy and
England. Woe to France!”
“Ay, woe to France!” exclaimed Edward, his face lighting up with that
martial joy which it ever took at the thoughts of war,--“for we will
wrench her lands from this huckster Louis. By Heaven! I shall not rest
in peace till York hath regained what Lancaster hath lost! and out of
the parings of the realm which I will add to England thy brother of
Burgundy shall have eno’ to change his duke’s diadem for a king’s. How
now, Rivers? Thou gloomest, father mine.”
“My liege,” said Rivers, wakening himself, “I did but think that if the
Earl of Warwick--”
“Ah, I had forgotten,” interrupted Edward; “and, sooth to say, Count
Anthony, I think if the earl were by, he would not much mend our
boon-fellowship!”
“Yet a good subject,” said De la Roche, sneeringly, “usually dresses his
face by that of his king.”
“A subject! Ay, but Warwick is much such a subject to England as William
of Normandy or Duke Rollo was to France. Howbeit, let him come,--our
realm is at peace, we want no more his battle-axe; and in our new
designs on France, thy brother, bold count, is an ally that might
compensate for a greater loss than a sullen minister. Let him come!”
As the king spoke, there was heard gently upon the smooth turf the sound
of the hoofs of steeds. A moment more, and from the outskirts of the
scene of revel, where the king’s guards were stationed, there arose a
long, loud shout. Nearer and nearer came the hoofs of the steeds; they
paused. Doubtless Richard of Gloucester by that shout! “The soldiers
love that brave boy,” said the king.
Marmaduke Nevile, as gentleman in waiting, drew aside the curtain of
the pavilion; and as he uttered a name that paled the cheeks of all who
heard, the Earl of Warwick entered the royal presence.
The earl’s dress was disordered and soiled by travel; the black plume on
his cap was broken, and hung darkly over his face; his horseman’s boots,
coming half way up the thigh, were sullied with the dust of the journey;
and yet as he entered, before the majesty of his mien, the grandeur
of his stature, suddenly De Roche, Rivers, even the gorgeous Edward
himself, seemed dwarfed into common men! About the man--his air, his
eye, his form, his attitude--there was THAT which, in the earlier
times, made kings by the acclamation of the crowd,--an unmistakable
sovereignty, as of one whom Nature herself had shaped and stamped for
power and for rule. All three had risen as he entered; and to a deep
silence succeeded an exclamation from Edward, and then again all was
still.
The earl stood a second or two calmly gazing on the effect he had
produced; and turning his dark eye from one to the other, till it rested
full upon De la Roche, who, after vainly striving not to quail beneath
the gaze, finally smiled with affected disdain, and, resting his hand on
his dagger, sank back into his seat.
“My liege,” then said Warwick, doffing his cap, and approaching the king
with slow and grave respect, “I crave pardon for presenting myself to
your Highness thus travel-worn and disordered; but I announce that news
which insures my welcome. The solemn embassy of trust committed to me
by your Grace has prospered with God’s blessing; and the Fils de Bourbon
and the Archbishop of Narbonne are on their way to your metropolis.
Alliance between the two great monarchies of Europe is concluded on
terms that insure the weal of England and augment the lustre of your
crown. Your claims on Normandy and Guienne King Louis consents to submit
to the arbitrement of the Roman Pontiff, [The Pope, moreover, was to
be engaged to decide the question within four years. A more brilliant
treaty for England, Edward’s ambassador could not have effected.] and to
pay to your treasury annual tribute; these advantages, greater than your
Highness even empowered me to demand, thus obtained, the royal brother
of your new ally joyfully awaits the hand of the Lady Margaret.”
“Cousin,” said Edward, who had thoroughly recovered himself, motioning
the earl to a seat, “you are ever welcome, no matter what your news; but
I marvel much that so deft a statesman should broach these matters
of council in the unseasonable hour and before the gay comrades of a
revel.”
“I speak, sire,” said Warwick, calmly, though the veins in his forehead
swelled, and his dark countenance was much flushed--“I speak openly of
that which hath been done nobly; and this truth has ceased to be matter
of council, since the meanest citizen who has ears and eyes ere this
must know for what purpose the ambassadors of King Louis arrive in
England with your Highness’s representative.”
Edward, more embarrassed at this tone than he could have foreseen,
remained silent; but De la Roche, impatient to humble his brother’s foe,
and judging it also discreet to arouse the king, said carelessly,--
“It were a pity, Sir Earl, that the citizens, whom you thus deem privy
to the thoughts of kings, had not prevised the Archbishop of Narbonne
that if he desire to see a fairer show than even the palaces of
Westminster and the Tower, he will hasten back to behold the banners of
Burgundy and England waving from the spires of Notre Dame.”
Ere the Bastard had concluded, Rivers, leaning back, whispered the king,
“For Christ’s sake, sire, select some fitter scene for what must follow!
Silence your guest!”
But Edward, on the contrary, pleased to think that De la Roche was
breaking the ice, and hopeful that some burst from Warwick would give
him more excuse than he felt at present for a rupture, said sternly,
“Hush, my lord, and meddle not!”
“Unless I mistake,” said Warwick, coldly, “he who now accosts me is the
Count de la Roche,--a foreigner.”
“And the brother of the heir of Burgundy,” interrupted De la
Roche,--“brother to the betrothed and princely spouse of Margaret of
England.”
“Doth this man lie, sire?” said Warwick, who had seated himself a
moment, and who now rose again.
The Bastard sprung also to his feet; but Edward, waving him back, and
reassuming the external dignity which rarely forsook him, replied,
“Cousin, thy question lacketh courtesy to our noble guest: since thy
departure, reasons of state, which we will impart to thee at a meeter
season, have changed our purpose, and we will now that our sister
Margaret shall wed with the Count of Charolois.”
“And this to me, king!” exclaimed the earl; all his passions at once
released--“this to me! Nay, frown not, Edward,--I am of the race of
those who, greater than kings, have built thrones and toppled them! I
tell thee, thou hast misused mine honour, and belied thine own; thou
hast debased thyself in juggling me, delegated as the representative of
thy royalty!--Lord Rivers, stand back,--there are barriers eno’ between
truth and a king!”
“By Saint George and my father’s head!” cried Edward, with a rage no
less fierce than Warwick’s,--“thou abusest, false lord, my mercy and
our kindred blood. Another word, and thou leavest this pavilion for the
Tower!”
“King,” replied Warwick, scornfully, and folding his arms on his broad
breast, “there is not a hair on this head which thy whole house, thy
guards, and thine armies could dare to touch. ME to the Tower! Send
me,--and when the third sun reddens the roof of prison-house and palace,
look round broad England, and miss a throne!”
“What, ho there!” exclaimed Edward, stamping his foot; and at that
instant the curtain of the pavilion was hastily torn aside, and Richard
of Gloucester entered, followed by Lord Hastings, the Duke of Clarence,
and Anthony Woodville.
“Ah,” continued the king, “ye come in time. George of Clarence, Lord
High Constable of England, arrest yon haughty man, who dares to menace
his liege and suzerain!”
Gliding between Clarence, who stood dumb and thunder-stricken, and the
Earl of Warwick, Prince Richard said, in a voice which, though even
softer than usual, had in it more command over those who heard than when
it rolled in thunder along the ranks of Barnet or of Bosworth, “Edward,
my brother, remember Towton, and forbear! Warwick, my cousin, forget not
thy king nor his dead father!”
At these last words the earl’s face fell, for to that father he had
sworn to succour and defend the sons; his sense, recovering from his
pride, showed him how much his intemperate anger had thrown away his
advantages in the foul wrong he had sustained from Edward. Meanwhile the
king himself, with flashing eyes and a crest as high as Warwick’s, was
about perhaps to overthrow his throne by the attempt to enforce his
threat, when Anthony Woodville, who followed Clarence, whispered to him,
“Beware, sire! a countless crowd that seem to have followed the earl’s
steps have already pierced the chase, and can scarcely be kept from the
spot, so great is their desire to behold him. Beware!”--and Richard’s
quick ear catching these whispered words, the duke suddenly backed them
by again drawing aside the curtain of the tent. Along the sward, the
guard of the king, summoned from their unseen but neighbouring
post within the wood, were drawn up as if to keep back an immense
multitude,--men, women, children, who swayed and rustled and murmured
in the rear. But no sooner was the curtain drawn aside, and the guards
themselves caught sight of the royal princes and the great earl towering
amidst them, than supposing in their ignorance the scene thus given to
them was intended for their gratification, from that old soldiery or
Towton rose a loud and long “Hurrah! Warwick and the king!”--“The king
and the stout earl!” The multitude behind caught the cry; they rushed
forward, mingling with the soldiery, who no longer sought to keep them
back.
“A Warwick! a Warwick!” they shouted. “God bless the people’s friend!”
Edward, startled and aghast, drew sullenly into the rear of the tent.
De la Roche grew pale; but with the promptness of a practised statesman,
he hastily advanced, and drew the curtain. “Shall varlets,” he said to
Richard, in French, “gloat over the quarrels of their lords?”
“You are right, Sir Count,” murmured Richard, meekly; his purpose was
effected, and leaning on his riding staff, he awaited what was to ensue.
A softer shade had fallen over the earl’s face, at the proof of the love
in which his name was held; it almost seemed to his noble though haughty
and impatient nature, as if the affection of the people had reconciled
him to the ingratitude of the king. A tear started to his proud eye;
but he twinkled it away, and approaching Edward (who remained erect, and
with all a sovereign’s wrath, though silent on his lip, lowering on his
brow), he said, in a tone of suppressed emotion,--
“Sire, it is not for me to crave pardon of living man, but the grievous
affront put upon my state and mine honour hath led my words to an excess
which my heart repents. I grieve that your Grace’s highness hath chosen
this alliance; hereafter you may find at need what faith is to be placed
in Burgundy.”
“Darest thou gainsay it?” exclaimed De la Roche.
“Interrupt me not, sir!” continued Warwick, with a disdainful gesture.
“My liege, I lay down mine offices, and I leave it to your Grace to
account as it lists you to the ambassadors of France,--I shall vindicate
myself to their king. And now, ere I depart for my hall of Middleham, I
alone here, unarmed and unattended, save at least by a single squire,
I, Richard Nevile, say, that if any man, peer or knight, can be found
to execute your Grace’s threat, and arrest me, I will obey your royal
pleasure, and attend him to the Tower.” Haughtily he bowed his head
as he spoke, and raising it again, gazed around--“I await your Grace’s
pleasure.”
“Begone where thou wilt, earl. From this day Edward IV. reigns alone,”
said the king. Warwick turned.
“My Lord Scales,” said he, “lift the curtain; nay, sir, it misdemeans
you not. You are still the son of the Woodville, I still the descendant
of John of Gaunt.”
“Not for the dead ancestor, but for the living warrior,” said the Lord
Scales, lifting the curtain, and bowing with knightly grace as the earl
passed. And scarcely was Warwick in the open space than the crowd fairly
broke through all restraint, and the clamour of their joy filled with
its hateful thunders the royal tent.
“Edward,” said Richard, whisperingly, and laying his finger on his
brother’s arm, “forgive me if I offended; but had you at such a time
resolved on violence--”
“I see it all,--you were right. But is this to be endured forever?”
“Sire,” returned Richard, with his dark smile, “rest calm; for the age
is your best ally, and the age is outgrowing the steel and hauberk. A
little while, and--”
“And what--”
“And--ah, sire, I will answer that question when our brother George
(mark him!) either refrains from listening, or is married to Isabel
Nevile, and hath quarrel with her father about the dowry. What, he,
there!--let the jongleurs perform.”
“The jongleurs!” exclaimed the king; “why, Richard, thou hast more
levity than myself!”
“Pardon me! Let the jongleurs perform, and bid the crowd stay. It is by
laughing at the mountebanks that your Grace can best lead the people to
forget their Warwick!”
CHAPTER X. HOW THE GREAT LORDS COME TO THE KING-MAKER, AND WITH WHAT
PROFFERS.
Mastering the emotions that swelled within him, Lord Warwick returned
with his wonted cheerful courtesy the welcome of the crowd and the
enthusiastic salutation of the king’s guard; but as, at length, he
mounted his steed, and attended but by the squire who had followed him
from Dover, penetrated into the solitudes of the chase, the recollection
of the indignity he had suffered smote his proud heart so sorely that
he groaned aloud. His squire, fearing the fatigue he had undergone might
have affected even that iron health, rode up at the sound of the groan,
and Warwick’s face was hueless as he said, with a forced smile, “It is
nothing, Walter. But these heats are oppressive, and we have forgotten
our morning draught, friend. Hark! I hear the brawl of a rivulet, and
a drink of fresh water were more grateful now than the daintiest
hippocras.” So saying, he flung himself from his steed; following the
sound of the rivulet, he gained its banks, and after quenching his
thirst in the hollow of his hand, laid himself down upon the long grass,
waving coolly over the margin, and fell into profound thought. From this
revery he was aroused by a quick footstep, and as he lifted his gloomy
gaze, he beheld Marmaduke Nevile by his side.
“Well, young man,” said he, sternly, “with what messages art thou
charged?”
“With none, my lord earl. I await now no commands but thine.”
“Thou knowest not, poor youth, that I can serve thee no more. Go back to
the court.”
“Oh, Warwick,” said Marmaduke, with simple eloquence, “send me not from
thy side! This day I have been rejected by the maid I loved. I loved her
well, and my heart chafed sorely, and bled within! but now, methinks,
it consoles me to have been so cast off,--to have no faith, no love,
but that which is best of all, to a brave man,--love and faith for a
hero-chief! Where thy fortunes, there be my humble fate,--to rise or
fall with thee!”
Warwick looked intently upon his young kinsman’s face, and said, as to
himself, “Why, this is strange! I gave no throne to this man, and he
deserts me not! My friend,” he added aloud, “have they told thee already
that I am disgraced?”
“I heard the Lord Scales say to the young Lovell that thou wert
dismissed from all thine offices; and I came hither; for I will serve no
more the king who forgets the arm and heart to which he owes a kingdom.”
“Man, I accept thy loyalty!” exclaimed Warwick, starting to his feet;
“and know that thou hast done more to melt and yet to nerve my spirit
than--But complaints in one are idle, and praise were no reward to
thee.”
“But see, my lord, if the first to join thee, I am not the sole one.
See, brave Raoul de Fulke, the Lords of St. John, Bergavenny, and
Fitzhugh, ay, and fifty others of the best blood of England, are on thy
track.”
And as he spoke, plumes and tunics were seen gleaming up the forest
path, and in another moment a troop of knights and gentlemen, comprising
the flower of such of the ancient nobility as yet lingered round the
court, came up to Warwick, bareheaded.
“Is it possible,” cried Raoul de Fulke, “that we have heard aright,
noble earl? And has Edward IV. suffered the base Woodvilles to triumph
over the bulwark of his realm?”
“Knights and gentles!” said Warwick, with a bitter smile, “is it so
uncommon a thing that men in peace should leave the battle-axe and brand
to rust? I am but a useless weapon, to be suspended at rest amongst the
trophies of Towton in my hall of Middleham.”
“Return with us,” said the Lord of St. John, “and we will make Edward do
thee justice, or, one and all, we will abandon a court where knaves and
varlets have become mightier than English valour and nobler than Norman
birth.”
“My friends,” said the earl, laying his hand on St. John’s shoulder,
“not even in my just wrath will I wrong my king. He is punished eno’
in the choice he hath made. Poor Edward and poor England! What woes and
wars await ye both, from the gold and the craft and the unsparing hate
of Louis XI! No; if I leave Edward, he hath more need of you. Of mine
own free will I have resigned mine offices.”
“Warwick,” interrupted Raoul de Fulke, “this deceives us not; and in
disgrace to you the ancient barons of England behold the first blow at
their own state. We have wrongs we endured in silence while thou wert
the shield and sword of yon merchant-king. We have seen the ancient
peers of England set aside for men of yesterday; we have seen
our daughters, sisters,--nay, our very mothers, if widowed and
dowered,--forced into disreputable and base wedlock with creatures
dressed in titles, and gilded with wealth stolen from ourselves.
Merchants and artificers tread upon our knightly heels, and the avarice
of trade eats up our chivalry as a rust. We nobles, in our greater day,
have had the crown at our disposal, and William the Norman dared not
think what Edward Earl of March hath been permitted with impunity to do.
We, Sir Earl--we knights and barons--would a king simple in his manhood
and princely in his truth. Richard Earl of Warwick, thou art of royal
blood, the descendant of old John of Gaunt. In thee we behold the true,
the living likeness of the Third Edward, and the Hero-Prince of Cressy.
Speak but the word, and we make thee king!”
The descendant of the Norman, the representative of the mighty faction
that no English monarch had ever braved in vain, looked round as he said
these last words, and a choral murmur was heard through the whole of
that august nobility, “We make thee king!”
“Richard, descendant of the Plantagenet, [By the female side, through
Joan Beaufort, or Plantagenet, Warwick was third in descent from John
of Gaunt, as Henry VII., through the male line, was fourth in descent.]
speak the word,” repeated Raoul de Fulke.
“I speak it not,” interrupted Warwick; “nor shalt thou continue, brave
Raoul de Fulke. What, my lords and gentlemen,” he added, drawing himself
up, and with his countenance animated with feelings it is scarcely
possible in our times to sympathize with or make clear--“what! think you
that Ambition limits itself to the narrow circlet of a crown Greater,
and more in the spirit of our mighty fathers, is the condition of men
like us, THE BARONS who make and unmake kings. What! who of us would not
rather descend from the chiefs of Runnymede than from the royal craven
whom they controlled and chid? By Heaven, my lords, Richard Nevile has
too proud a soul to be a king! A king--a puppet of state and form; a
king--a holiday show for the crowd, to hiss or hurrah, as the humour
seizes; a king--a beggar to the nation, wrangling with his parliament
for gold! A king!--Richard II. was a king, and Lancaster dethroned him.
Ye would debase me to a Henry of Lancaster. Mort Dieu! I thank ye. The
Commons and the Lords raised him, forsooth,--for what? To hold him as
the creature they had made, to rate him, to chafe him, to pry into his
very household, and quarrel with his wife’s chamberlains and lavourers.
[Laundresses. The parliamentary rolls, in the reign of Henry IV.,
abound in curious specimens of the interference of the Commons with the
household of Henry’s wife, Queen Joan.] What! dear Raoul de Fulke, is
thy friend fallen now so low, that he--Earl of Salisbury and of Warwick,
chief of the threefold race of Montagu, Monthermer, and Nevile, lord of
a hundred baronies, leader of sixty thousand followers--is not greater
than Edward of March, to whom we will deign still, with your permission,
to vouchsafe the name and pageant of a king?”
This extraordinary address, strange to say, so thoroughly expressed
the peculiar pride of the old barons, that when it ceased a sound of
admiration and applause circled through that haughty audience, and Raoul
de Fulke, kneeling suddenly, kissed the earl’s hand. “Oh, noble earl,”
he said, “ever live as one of us, to maintain our order, and teach kings
and nations what WE are.”
“Fear it not, Raoul! fear it not,--we will have our rights yet. Return,
I beseech ye. Let me feel I have such friends about the king. Even at
Middleham my eye shall watch over our common cause; and till seven feet
of earth suffice him, your brother baron, Richard Nevile, is not a man
whom kings and courts can forget, much less dishonour. Sirs, our honour
is in our bosoms,--and there is the only throne armies cannot shake, nor
cozeners undermine.”
With these words he gently waved his hand, motioned to his squire, who
stood out of hearing with the steeds, to approach, and mounting, gravely
rode on. Ere he had got many paces, he called to Marmaduke, who was
on foot, and bade him follow him to London that night. “I have strange
tidings to tell the French envoys, and for England’s sake I must soothe
their anger, if I can,--then to Middleham.”
The nobles returned slowly to the pavilions. And as they gained the open
space, where the gaudy tents still shone against the setting sun, they
beheld the mob of that day, whom Shakspeare hath painted with such
contempt, gathering, laughing and loud, around the mountebank and the
conjurer, who had already replaced in their thoughts (as Gloucester had
foreseen) the hero-idol of their worship.
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I. RURAL ENGLAND IN THE MIDDLE AGES--NOBLE VISITORS SEEK THE
CASTLE OF MIDDLEHAM.
Autumn had succeeded to summer, winter to autumn, and the spring of 1468
was green in England, when a gallant cavalcade was seen slowly winding
the ascent of a long and gradual hill, towards the decline of day.
Different, indeed, from the aspect which that part of the country now
presents was the landscape that lay around them, bathed in the smiles
of the westering sun. In a valley to the left, a full view of which
the steep road commanded (where now roars the din of trade through a
thousand factories), lay a long, secluded village. The houses, if so
they might be called, were constructed entirely of wood, and that of the
more perishable kind,--willow, sallow, elm, and plum-tree. Not one could
boast a chimney; but the smoke from the single fire in each, after duly
darkening the atmosphere within, sent its surplusage lazily and fitfully
through a circular aperture in the roof. In fact, there was long in the
provinces a prejudice against chimneys! The smoke was considered good
both for house and owner; the first it was supposed to season, and the
last to guard “from rheums, catarrhs, and poses.” [So worthy Hollinshed,
Book II. c. 22.--“Then had we none but reredosses, and our heads did
never ache. For as the smoke, in those days, was supposed to be a
sufficient hardening for the timber of the house, so it was reputed a
far better medicine to keep the goodman and his familie from the quacke,
or pose, wherewith as then very few were oft acquainted.”] Neither
did one of these habitations boast the comfort of a glazed window, the
substitute being lattice, or chequer-work,--even in the house of the
franklin, which rose statelily above the rest, encompassed with barns
and outsheds. And yet greatly should we err did we conceive that these
deficiencies were an index to the general condition of the working
class. Far better off was the labourer when employed, than now. Wages
were enormously high, meat extremely low; [See Hallam: Middle Ages,
Chap. xx. Part II. So also Hollinsbed, Book XI., c. 12, comments on the
amazement of the Spaniards, in Queen Mary’s time, when they saw “what
large diet was used in these so homelie cottages,” and reports one of
the Spaniards to have said, “These English have their houses of sticks
and dirt, but they fare commonlie so well as the king!”] and our
motherland bountifully maintained her children.
On that greensward, before the village (now foul and reeking with the
squalid population whom commerce rears up,--the victims, as the movers,
of the modern world) were assembled youth and age; for it was a holiday
evening, and the stern Puritan had not yet risen to sour the face of
Mirth. Well clad in leathern jerkin, or even broadcloth, the young
peasants vied with each other in quoits and wrestling; while the merry
laughter of the girls, in their gay-coloured kirtles and ribboned
hair, rose oft and cheerily to the ears of the cavalcade. From a gentle
eminence beyond the village, and half veiled by trees, on which the
first verdure of spring was budding (where now, around the gin-shop,
gather the fierce and sickly children of toil and of discontent), rose
the venerable walls of a monastery, and the chime of its heavy bell
swung far and sweet over the pastoral landscape. To the right of the
road (where now stands the sober meeting-house) was one of those small
shrines so frequent in Italy, with an image of the Virgin gaudily
painted, and before it each cavalier in the procession halted an instant
to cross himself and mutter an ave. Beyond, still to the right, extended
vast chains of woodland, interspersed with strips of pasture, upon which
numerous flocks were grazing, with horses, as yet unbroken to bit and
selle, that neighed and snorted as they caught scent of their more
civilized brethren pacing up the road.
In front of the cavalcade rode two, evidently of superior rank to the
rest,--the one small and slight, with his long hair flowing over his
shoulders; and the other, though still young, many years older, and
indicating his clerical profession by the absence of all love-locks,
compensated by a curled and glossy beard, trimmed with the greatest
care. But the dress of the ecclesiastic was as little according to our
modern notions of what beseems the Church as can well be conceived:
his tunic and surcoat, of a rich amber, contrasted well with the clear
darkness of his complexion; his piked shoes, or beakers, as they were
called, turned up half-way to the knee; the buckles of his dress were
of gold, inlaid with gems; and the housings of his horse, which was
of great power, were edged with gold fringe. By the side of his steed
walked a tall greyhound, upon which he ever and anon glanced with
affection. Behind these rode two gentlemen, whose golden spurs announced
knighthood; and then followed a long train of squires and pages, richly
clad and accoutred, bearing generally the Nevile badge of the Bull;
though interspersed amongst the retinue might be seen the grim Boar’s
head, which Richard of Gloucester, in right of his duchy, had assumed as
his cognizance.
“Nay, sweet prince,” said the ecclesiastic, “I pray thee to consider
that a greyhound is far more of a gentleman than any other of the canine
species. Mark his stately yet delicate length of limb, his sleek coat,
his keen eye, his haughty neck.”
“These are but the externals, my noble friend. Will the greyhound attack
the lion, as our mastiff doth? The true character of the gentleman is to
know no fear, and to rush through all danger at the throat of his foe;
wherefore I uphold the dignity of the mastiff above all his tribe,
though others have a daintier hide and a statelier crest. Enough of such
matters, archbishop,--we are nearing Middleham.”
“The saints be praised! for I am hungered,” observed the archbishop,
piously: “but, sooth to say, my cook at the More far excelleth what we
can hope to find at the board of my brother. He hath some faults, our
Warwick! Hasty and careless, he hath not thought eno’ of the blessings
he might enjoy, and many a poor abbot hath daintier fare on his humble
table.”
“Oh, George Nevile! who that heard thee, when thou talkest of hounds
and interments, [entremets (side dishes)] would recognize the Lord
Chancellor of England,--the most learned dignitary, the most subtle
statesman?”
“And oh, Richard Plantagenet!” retorted the archbishop, dropping the
mincing and affected tone, which he, in common with the coxcombs of that
day, usually assumed, “who that heard thee when thou talkest of humility
and devotion, would recognize the sternest heart and the most daring
ambition God ever gave to prince?”
Richard started at these words, and his eye shot fire as it met the keen
calm glance of the prelate.
“Nay, your Grace wrongs me,” he said, gnawing his lip,--“or I should not
say wrongs, but flatters; for sternness and ambition are no vices in a
Nevile’s eyes.”
“Fairly answered, royal son,” said the archbishop, laughing; “but let us
be frank. Thou hast persuaded me to accompany thee to Lord Warwick as
a mediator; the provinces in the North are disturbed; the intrigues of
Margaret of Anjou are restless; the king reaps what he has sown in the
Court of France, and, as Warwick foretold, the emissaries and gold of
Louis are ever at work against his throne; the great barons are moody
and discontented; and our liege King Edward is at last aware that, if
the Earl of Warwick do not return to his councils, the first blast of a
hostile trumpet may drive him from his throne. Well, I attend thee: my
fortunes are woven with those of York, and my interest and my loyalty
go hand in hand. Be equally frank with me. Hast thou, Lord Richard, no
interest to serve in this mission save that of the public weal?”
“Thou forgettest that the Lady Isabel is dearly loved by Clarence, and
that I would fain see removed all barrier to his nuptial bliss. But
yonder rise the towers of Middleham. Beloved walls, which sheltered my
childhood! and, by holy Paul, a noble pile, which would resist an army,
or hold one.”
While thus conversed the prince and the archbishop, the Earl of Warwick,
musing and alone, slowly paced the lofty terrace that crested the
battlements of his outer fortifications.
In vain had that restless and powerful spirit sought content in
retirement. Trained from his childhood to active life, to move mankind
to and fro at his beck, this single and sudden interval of repose in the
prime of his existence, at the height of his fame, served but to swell
the turbulent and dangerous passions to which all vent was forbidden.
The statesman of modern days has at least food for intellect in letters
when deprived of action; but with all his talents, and thoroughly
cultivated as his mind was in the camp, the council, and the state, the
great earl cared for nothing in book-lore except some rude ballad that
told of Charlemagne or Rollo. The sports that had pleased the leisure of
his earlier youth were tedious and flat to one snatched from so mighty
a career. His hound lay idle at his feet, his falcon took holiday on the
perch, his jester was banished to the page’s table. Behold the repose of
this great unlettered spirit! But while his mind was thus debarred from
its native sphere, all tended to pamper Lord Warwick’s infirmity of
pride. The ungrateful Edward might forget him; but the king seemed to
stand alone in that oblivion. The mightiest peers, the most renowned
knights, gathered to his hall. Middleham,--not Windsor nor Shene nor
Westminster nor the Tower--seemed the COURT OF ENGLAND. As the Last
of the Barons paced his terrace, far as his eye could reach, his broad
domains extended, studded with villages and towns and castles swarming
with his retainers. The whole country seemed in mourning for his
absence. The name of Warwick was in all men’s mouths, and not a group
gathered in market-place or hostel but what the minstrel who had some
ballad in praise of the stout earl had a rapt and thrilling audience.
“And is the river of my life,” muttered Warwick, “shrunk into this
stagnant pool? Happy the man who hath never known what it is to taste of
fame,--to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!”
Rapt in this gloomy self-commune, he heard not the light step that
sought his side, till a tender arm was thrown around him, and a face in
which sweet temper and pure thought had preserved to matronly beauty all
the bloom of youth, looked up smilingly to his own.
“My lord, my Richard,” said the countess, “why didst thou steal so
churlishly from me? Hath there, alas! come a time when thou deemest me
unworthy to share thy thoughts, or soothe thy troubles?”
“Fond one! no,” said Warwick, drawing the form still light, though
rounded, nearer to his bosom. “For nineteen years hast thou been to me a
leal and loving wife. Thou wert a child on our wedding-day, m’amie, and
I but a beardless youth; yet wise enough was I then to see, at the first
glance of thy blue eye, that there was more treasure in thy heart than
in all the lordships thy hand bestowed.”
“My Richard!” murmured the countess, and her tears of grateful delight
fell on the hand she kissed.
“Yes, let us recall those early and sweet days,” continued Warwick, with
a tenderness of voice and manner that strangers might have marvelled
at, forgetting how tenderness is almost ever a part of such peculiar
manliness of character; “yes, sit we here under this spacious elm, and
think that our youth has come back to us once more. For verily, m’amie,
nothing in life has ever been so fair to me as those days when we
stood hand in hand on its threshold, and talked, boy-bridegroom and
child-bride as we were, of the morrow that lay beyond.”
“Ah, Richard, even in those days thy ambition sometimes vexed my woman’s
vanity, and showed me that I could never be all in all to so large a
heart!”
“Ambition! No, thou mistakest,--Montagu is ambitious, I but proud.
Montagu ever seeks to be higher than he is, I but assert the right to be
what I am and have been; and my pride, sweet wife, is a part of my love
for thee. It is thy title, Heiress of Warwick, and not my father’s, that
I bear; thy badge, and not the Nevile’s, which I have made the symbol
of my power. Shame, indeed, on my knighthood, if the fairest dame in
England could not justify my pride! Ah, belle amie, why have we not a
son?”
“Peradventure, fair lord,” said the countess, with an arch yet
half-melancholy smile, “because that pride, or ambition, name it as thou
wilt, which thou excusest so gallantly, would become too insatiate and
limitless if thou sawest a male heir to thy greatness; and God, perhaps,
warns thee that, spread and increase as thou wilt,--yea, until half our
native country becometh as the manor of one man,--all must pass from the
Beauchamp and the Nevile into new Houses; thy glory indeed an eternal
heirloom, but only to thy land,--thy lordships and thy wealth melting
into the dowry of a daughter.”
“At least no king hath daughters so dowried,” answered Warwick; “and
though I disdain for myself the hard vassalage of a throne, yet if the
channel of our blood must pass into other streams, into nothing meaner
than the veins of royalty should it merge.” He paused a moment, and
added with a sigh, “Would that Clarence were more worthy Isabel!”
“Nay,” said the countess, gently, “he loveth her as she merits. He is
comely, brave, gracious, and learned.”
“A pest upon that learning,--it sicklies and womanizes men’s minds!”
exclaimed Warwick, bluntly. “Perhaps it is his learning that I am to
thank for George of Clarence’s fears and doubts and calculations and
scruples. His brother forbids his marriage with any English donzell, for
Edward dares not specialize what alone he dreads. His letters burn with
love, and his actions freeze with doubts. It was not thus I loved thee,
sweetheart. By all the saints in the calendar, had Henry V. or the Lion
Richard started from the tomb to forbid me thy hand, it would but have
made me a hotter lover! Howbeit Clarence shall decide ere the moon
wanes, and but for Isabel’s tears and thy entreaties, my father’s
grandchild should not have waited thus long the coming of so hesitating
a wooer. But lo, our darlings! Anne hath thine eyes, m’amie; and she
groweth more into my heart every day, since daily she more favours
thee.”
While he thus spoke, the fair sisters came lightly and gayly up the
terrace: the arm of the statelier Isabel was twined round Anne’s
slender waist; and as they came forward in that gentle link, with their
lithesome and bounding step, a happier blending of contrasted beauty was
never seen. The months that had passed since the sisters were presented
first to the reader had little changed the superb and radiant loveliness
of Isabel, but had added surprisingly to the attractions of Anne. Her
form was more rounded, her bloom more ripened; and though something of
timidity and bashfulness still lingered about the grace of her movements
and the glance of her dove-like eye, the more earnest thoughts of the
awakening woman gave sweet intelligence to her countenance, and that
divinest of all attractions--the touching and conscious modesty--to the
shy but tender smile, and the blush that so came and went, so went and
came, that it stirred the heart with a sort of delighted pity for one
so evidently susceptible to every emotion of pleasure and of pain. Life
seemed too rough a thing for so soft a nature, and gazing on her, one
sighed to guess her future.
“And what brings ye hither, young truants?” said the earl, as Anne,
leaving her sister, clung lovingly to his side (for it was ever her
habit to cling to some one), while Isabel kissed her mother’s hand, and
then stood before her parents, colouring deeply, and with downcast eyes.
“What brings ye hither, whom I left so lately deep engaged in the loom,
upon the helmet of Goliath, with my burgonet before you as a sample?
Wife, you are to blame,--our rooms of state will be arrasless for the
next three generations, if these rosy fingers are suffered thus to play
the idlers.”
“My father,” whispered Anne, “guests are on their way hither,--a noble
cavalcade; you note them not from this part of the battlements, but from
our turret it was fair to see how their plumes and banners shone in the
setting sun.”
“Guests!” echoed the earl; “well, is that so rare an honour that your
hearts should beat like village girls at a holiday? Ah, Isabel! look at
her blushes. Is it George of Clarence at last? Is it?”
“We see the Duke of Gloucester’s cognizance,” whispered Anne, “and our
own Nevile Bull. Perchance our cousin George, also, may--”
Here she was interrupted by the sound of the warder’s horn, followed a
moment after by the roar of one of the bombards on the keep.
“At least,” said Warwick, his face lighting up, “that signal announces
the coming of king’s blood. We must honour it,--for it is our own. We
will go forth and meet our guests--your hand, countess.”
And gravely and silently, and in deep but no longer gloomy thought,
Warwick descended from the terrace, followed by the fair sisters; and
who that could have looked upon that princely pair and those lovely
and radiant children, could have foreseen that in that hour, Fate, in
tempting the earl once more to action, was busy on their doom!
CHAPTER II. COUNCILS AND MUSINGS.
The lamp shone through the lattice of Warwick’s chamber at the unwonted
hour of midnight, and the earl was still in deep commune with his
guests. The archbishop, whom Edward, alarmed by the state of the country
and the disaffection of his barons, had reluctantly commissioned to
mediate with Warwick, was, as we have before said, one of those men
peculiar to the early Church. There was nothing more in the title of
Archbishop of York than in that of the Bishop of Osnaburg (borne by the
royal son of George III.) [The late Duke of York.] to prevent him who
enjoyed it from leading armies, guiding States, or indulging pleasure.
But beneath the coxcombry of George Nevile, which was what he shared
most in common with the courtiers of the laity, there lurked a true
ecclesiastic’s mind. He would have made in later times an admirable
Jesuit, and no doubt in his own time a very brilliant Pope. His objects
in his present mission were clear and perspicuous; any breach between
Warwick and the king must necessarily weaken his own position, and
the power of his House was essential to all his views. The object of
Gloucester in his intercession was less defined, but not less personal:
in smoothing the way to his brother’s marriage with Isabel, he removed
all apparent obstacle to his own with Anne. And it is probable that
Richard, who, whatever his crimes, was far from inaccessible to
affection, might have really loved his early playmate, even while his
ambition calculated the wealth of the baronies that would swell the
dower of the heiress and gild the barren coronet of his duchy. [Majerns,
the Flemish chronicler, quoted by Bucke (“Life of Richard III”),
mentions the early attachment of Richard to Anne. They were much
together, as children, at Middleham.]
“God’s truth!” said Warwick, as he lifted his eyes from the scroll
in the king’s writing, “ye know well, princely cousin, and thou, my
brother, ye know well how dearly I have loved King Edward; and the
mother’s milk overflows my heart when I read these gentle and tender
words which he deigns to bestow upon his servant. My blood is hasty and
over-hot, but a kind thought from those I love puts out much fire. Sith
he thus beseeches me to return to his councils, I will not be sullen
enough to hold back; but, oh, Prince Richard! is it indeed a matter past
all consideration that your sister, the Lady Margaret, must wed with the
Duke of Burgundy?”
“Warwick,” replied the prince, “thou mayest know that I never looked
with favour on that alliance; that when Clarence bore the Bastard’s
helmet, I withheld my countenance from the Bastard’s presence. I
incurred Edward’s anger by refusing to attend his court while the Count
de la Roche was his guest. And therefore you may trust me when I say now
that Edward, after promises, however rash, most solemn and binding, is
dishonoured forever if he break off the contract. New circumstances,
too, have arisen, to make what were dishonour danger also. By the death
of his father, Charolois has succeeded to the Duke of Burgundy’s diadem.
Thou knowest his warlike temper; and though in a contest popular in
England we need fear no foe, yet thou knowest also that no subsidies
could be raised for strife with our most profitable commercial ally.
Wherefore we earnestly implore thee magnanimously to forgive the past,
accept Edward’s assurance of repentance, and be thy thought--as it has
been ever--the weal of our common country.”
“I may add, also,” said the archbishop, observing how much Warwick was
touched and softened,--“that in returning to the helm of state, our
gracious king permits me to say, that, save only in the alliance with
Burgundy, which toucheth his plighted word, you have full liberty
to name conditions, and to ask whatever grace or power a monarch can
bestow.”
“I name none but my prince’s confidence,” said Warwick, generously;
“in that, all else is given, and in return for that, I will make the
greatest sacrifice that my nature knoweth, or can conceive,--I will
mortify my familiar demon, I will subdue my PRIDE. If Edward can
convince me that it is for the good of England that his sister should
wed with mine ancient and bitter foe, I will myself do honour to his
choice. But of this hereafter. Enough now that I forget past wrongs in
present favour; and that for peace or war, I return to the side of that
man whom I loved as my son before I served him as my king.”
Neither Richard nor the archbishop was prepared for a conciliation so
facile, for neither quite understood that peculiar magnanimity which
often belongs to a vehement and hasty temper, and which is as eager
to forgive as prompt to take offence,--which, ever in extremes, is
not contented with anything short of fiery aggression or trustful
generosity, and where it once passes over an offence, seeks to oblige
the offender. So, when, after some further conversation on the state
of the country, the earl lighted Gloucester to his chamber, the young
prince said to himself, musingly,--
“Does ambition besot and blind men? Or can Warwick think that Edward can
ever view him but as one to be destroyed when the hour is ripe?”
Catesby, who was the duke’s chamberlain, was in attendance as the prince
unrobed.
“A noble castle this,” said the duke, “and one in the midst of a warlike
population,--our own countrymen of York.”
“It would be no mean addition to the dowry of the Lady Isabel,” said
Catesby, with his bland, false smile.
“Methinks rather that the lordships of Salisbury (and this is the
chief) pass to the Lady Anne,” said Richard, musingly. “No, Edward were
imprudent to suffer this stronghold to fall to the next heir to his
throne. Marked you the Lady Anne?--her beauty is most excellent.”
“Truly, your Highness,” answered Catesby, unsuspiciously, “the Lady
Isabel seems to me the taller and the statelier.”
“When man’s merit and woman’s beauty are measured by the ell, Catesby,
Anne will certainly be less fair than Isabel, and Richard a dolt
compared to Clarence. Open the casement; my dressing-robe; good-night to
you!”
CHAPTER III. THE SISTERS.
The next morning, at an hour when modern beauty falls into its first
sickly sleep, Isabel and Anne conversed on the same terrace, and near
the same spot, which had witnessed their father’s meditations the
day before. They were seated on a rude bench in an angle of the wall,
flanked by a low, heavy bastion. And from the parapet their gaze might
have wandered over a goodly sight, for on a broad space, covered with
sand and sawdust, within the vast limits of the castle range, the
numerous knights and youths who sought apprenticeship in arms and
gallantry under the earl were engaged in those martial sports which,
falling elsewhere in disuse, the Last of the Barons kinglily maintained.
There, boys of fourteen, on their small horses, ran against each other
with blunted lances. There, those of more advanced adolescence, each
following the other in a circle, rode at the ring; sometimes (at the
word of command from an old knight who had fought at Agincourt, and was
the preceptor in these valiant studies) leaping from their horses at
full speed, and again vaulting into the saddle. A few grim old warriors
sat by to censure or applaud. Most skilled among the younger was the son
of Lord Montagu; among the maturer, the name of Marmaduke Nevile was the
most often shouted. If the eye turned to the left, through the barbican
might be seen flocks of beeves entering to supply the mighty larder;
and at a smaller postern, a dark crowd of mendicant friars, and the more
destitute poor, waited for the daily crumbs from the rich man’s table.
What need of a poor-law then? The baron and the abbot made the parish!
But not on these evidences of wealth and state turned the eyes, so
familiar to them, that they woke no vanity, and roused no pride.
With downcast looks and a pouting lip, Isabel listened to the silver
voice of Anne.
“Dear sister, be just to Clarence. He cannot openly defy his king and
brother. Believe that he would have accompanied our uncle and cousin had
he not deemed that their meditation would be more welcome, at least to
King Edward, without his presence.”
“But not a letter! not a line!”
“Yet when I think of it, Isabel, are we sure that he even knew of the
visit of the archbishop and his brother?”
“How could he fail to know?”
“The Duke of Gloucester last evening told me that the king had sent him
southward.”
“Was it about Clarence that the duke whispered to thee so softly by the
oriel window?”
“Surely, yes,” said Anne, simply. “Was not Richard as a brother to us
when we played as children on yon greensward?”
“Never as a brother to me,--never was Richard of Gloucester one whom
I could think of without fear and even loathing,” answered Isabel,
quickly.
It was at this turn in the conversation that the noiseless step
of Richard himself neared the spot, and hearing his own name thus
discourteously treated, he paused, screened from their eyes by the
bastion in the angle.
“Nay, nay, sister,” said Anne; “what is there in Richard that misbeseems
his princely birth?”
“I know not, but there is no youth in his eye and in his heart. Even
as a child he had the hard will and the cold craft of gray hairs. Pray
Saint Mary you give me not Gloucester for a brother!”
Anne sighed and smiled. “Ah, no,” she said, after a short pause, “when
thou art Princess of Clarence may I--”
“May thou what?”
“Pray for thee and thine in the house of God! Ah, thou knowest not,
sweet Isabel, how often at morn and even mine eyes and heart turn to the
spires of yonder convent!” She rose as she said this, her lip quivered,
and she moved on in the opposite direction to that in which Richard
stood, still unseen, and no longer within his hearing. Isabel rose also,
and hastening after her, threw her arms round Anne’s neck, and kissed
away the tears that stood in those meek eyes.
“My sister, my Anne! Ah, trust in me, thou hast some secret, I know it
well,--I have long seen it. Is it possible that thou canst have placed
thy heart, thy pure love--Thou blushest! Ah, Anne! Anne! thou canst not
have loved beneath thee?”
“Nay,” said Anne, with a spark of her ancestral fire lighting her meek
eyes through its tears, “not beneath me, but above. What do I say!
Isabel, ask me no more. Enough that it is a folly, a dream, and that I
could smile with pity at myself to think from what light causes love and
grief can spring.”
“Above thee!” repeated Isabel, in amaze; “and who in England is above
the daughter of Earl Warwick? Not Richard of Gloucester? If so, pardon
my foolish tongue.”
“No, not Richard,--though I feel kindly towards him, and his sweet voice
soothes me when I listen,--not Richard. Ask no more.”
“Oh, Anne, speak, speak!--we are not both so wretched? Thou lovest not
Clarence? It is--it must be!”
“Canst thou think me so false and treacherous,--a heart pledged to thee?
Clarence! Oh, no!”
“But who then--who then?” said Isabel, still suspiciously. “Nay, if thou
wilt not speak, blame thyself if I must still wrong thee.”
Thus appealed to, and wounded to the quick by Isabel’s tone and eye,
Anne at last with a strong effort suppressed her tears, and, taking her
sister’s hand, said in a voice of touching solemnity, “Promise, then,
that the secret shall be ever holy; and, since I know that it will move
thine anger--perhaps thy scorn--strive to forget what I will confess to
thee.”
Isabel for answer pressed her lips on the hand she held; and the
sisters, turning under the shadow of a long row of venerable oaks,
placed themselves on a little mound, fragrant with the violets of
spring. A different part of the landscape beyond was now brought in
view; calmly slept in the valley the roofs of the subject town of
Middleham, calmly flowed through the pastures the noiseless waves of
Ure. Leaning on Isabel’s bosom, Anne thus spake, “Call to mind, sweet
sister, that short breathing-time in the horrors of the Civil War, when
a brief peace was made between our father and Queen Margaret. We were
left in the palace--mere children that we were--to play with the young
prince, and the children in Margaret’s train.”
“I remember.”
“And I was unwell and timid, and kept aloof from the sports with a girl
of my own years, whom I think--see how faithful my memory!--they called
Sibyll; and Prince Edward, Henry’s son, stealing from the rest, sought
me out; and we sat together, or walked together alone, apart from all,
that day and the few days we were his mother’s guests. Oh, if you could
have seen him and heard him then,--so beautiful, so gentle, so wise
beyond his years, and yet so sweetly sad; and when we parted, he bade me
ever love him, and placed his ring on my finger, and wept,--as we kissed
each other, as children will.”
“Children! ye were infants!” exclaimed Isabel, whose wonder seemed
increased by this simple tale.
“Infant though I was, I felt as if my heart would break when I left him;
and then the wars ensued; and do you not remember how ill I was, and
like to die, when our House triumphed, and the prince and heir of
Lancaster was driven into friendless exile? From that hour my fate was
fixed. Smile if you please at such infant folly, but children often feel
more deeply than later years can weet of.”
“My sister, this is indeed a wilful invention of sorrow for thine own
scourge. Why, ere this, believe me, the boy-prince hath forgotten thy
very name.”
“Not so, Isabel,” said Anne, colouring, and quickly, “and perchance, did
all rest here, I might have outgrown my weakness. But last year, when we
were at Rouen with my father--”
“Well?”
“One evening on entering my chamber, I found a packet,--how left I know
not, but the French king and his suite, thou rememberest, made our house
almost their home,--and in this packet was a picture, and on its back
these words, Forget not the exile who remembers thee!”
“And that picture was Prince Edward’s?”
Anne blushed, and her bosom heaved beneath the slender and high-laced
gorget. After a pause, looking round her, she drew forth a small
miniature, which lay on the heart that beat thus sadly, and placed it in
her sister’s hands.
“You see I deceive you not, Isabel. And is not this a fair excuse for--”
She stopped short, her modest nature shrinking from comment upon the
mere beauty that might have won the heart. And fair indeed was the face
upon which Isabel gazed admiringly, in spite of the stiff and rude
art of the limner; full of the fire and energy which characterized the
countenance of the mother, but with a tinge of the same profound and
inexpressible melancholy that gave its charm to the pensive features
of Henry VI.,--a face, indeed, to fascinate a young eye, even if not
associated with such remembrances of romance and pity.
Without saying a word, Isabel gave back the picture; but she pressed the
hand that took it, and Anne was contented to interpret the silence into
sympathy.
“And now you know why I have so often incurred your anger by compassion
for the adherents of Lancaster; and for this, also, Richard of
Gloucester hath been endeared to me,--for fierce and stern as he may
be called, he hath ever been gentle in his mediation for that unhappy
House.”
“Because it is his policy to be well with all parties. My poor Anne, I
cannot bid you hope; and yet, should I ever wed with Clarence, it may be
possible--that--that--but you in turn will chide me for ambition.”
“How?”
“Clarence is heir to the throne of England, for King Edward has no male
children; and the hour may arrive when the son of Henry of Windsor may
return to his native land, not as sovereign, but as Duke of Lancaster,
and thy hand may reconcile him to the loss of a crown.”
“Would love reconcile thee to such a loss, proud Isabel?” said Anne,
shaking her head, and smiling mournfully.
“No,” answered Isabel, emphatically.
“And are men less haught than we?” said Anne. “Ah, I know not if I could
love him so well could he resign his rights, or even could he regain
them. It is his position that gives him a holiness in my eyes. And this
love, that must be hopeless, is half pity and half respect.”
At this moment a loud shout arose from the youths in the yard, or
sporting-ground, below, and the sisters, startled, and looking up,
saw that the sound was occasioned by the sight of the young Duke
of Gloucester, who was standing on the parapet near the bench the
demoiselles had quitted, and who acknowledged the greeting by a wave
of his plumed cap, and a lowly bend of his head; at the same time
the figures of Warwick and the archbishop, seemingly in earnest
conversation, appeared at the end of the terrace. The sisters rose
hastily, and would have stolen away, but the archbishop caught a glimpse
of their robes, and called aloud to them. The reverent obedience,
at that day, of youth to relations left the sisters no option but to
advance towards their uncle, which they did with demure reluctance.
“Fair brother,” said the archbishop, “I would that Gloucester were to
have my stately niece instead of the gaudy Clarence.”
“Wherefore?”
“Because he can protect those he loves, and Clarence will ever need a
protector.”
“I like George not the less for that,” said Warwick, “for I would not
have my son-in-law my master.”
“Master!” echoed the archbishop, laughing; “the Soldan of Babylon
himself, were he your son-in-law, would find Lord Warwick a tolerably
stubborn servant!”
“And yet,” said Warwick, also laughing, but with a franker tone,
“beshrew me, but much as I approve young Gloucester, and deem him the
hope of the House of York, I never feel sure, when we are of the same
mind, whether I agree with him, or whether he leadeth me. Ah, George!
Isabel should have wedded the king, and then Edward and I would have had
a sweet mediator in all our quarrels. But not so hath it been decreed.”
There was a pause.
“Note how Gloucester steals to the side of Anne. Thou mayst have him for
a son-in-law, though no rival to Clarence. Montagu hath hinted that the
duke so aspires.”
“He has his father’s face--well,” said the earl, softly. “But yet,” he
added, in an altered and reflective tone, “the boy is to me a riddle.
That he will be bold in battle and wise in council I foresee; but would
he had more of a young man’s honest follies! There is a medium between
Edward’s wantonness and Richard’s sanctimony; and he who in the heyday
of youth’s blood scowls alike upon sparkling wine and smiling woman, may
hide in his heart darker and more sinful fancies. But fie on me! I will
not wrongfully mistrust his father’s son. Thou spokest of Montagu; he
seems to have been mighty cold to his brother’s wrongs,--ever at the
court, ever sleek with Villein and Woodville.”
“But the better to watch thy interests,--I so counselled him.”
“A priest’s counsel! Hate frankly or love freely is a knight’s and
soldier’s motto. A murrain on all doubledealing!”
The archbishop shrugged his shoulders, and applied to his nostrils a
small pouncet-box of dainty essences.
“Come hither, my haughty Isabel,” said the prelate, as the demoiselles
now drew near. He placed his niece’s arm within his own, and took her
aside to talk of Clarence; Richard remained with Anne, and the young
cousins were joined by Warwick. The earl noted in silence the soft
address of the eloquent prince, and his evident desire to please Anne.
And strange as it may seem, although he had hitherto regarded Richard
with admiration and affection, and although his pride for both daughters
coveted alliances not less than royal, yet, in contemplating Gloucester
for the first time as a probable suitor to his daughter (and his
favourite daughter), the anxiety of a father sharpened his penetration,
and placed the character of Richard before him in a different point
from that in which he had hitherto looked only on the fearless heart and
accomplished wit of his royal godson.
CHAPTER IV. THE DESTRIER.
It was three days afterwards that the earl, as, according to custom,
Anne knelt to him for his morning blessing in the oratory where the
Christian baron at matins and vespers offered up his simple worship,
drew her forth into the air, and said abruptly,--
“Wouldst thou be happy if Richard of Gloucester were thy betrothed?”
Anne started, and with more vivacity than usually belonged to her,
exclaimed, “Oh, no, my father!”
“This is no maiden’s silly coyness, Anne? It is a plain yea or nay that
I ask from thee!”
“Nay, then,” answered Anne, encouraged by her father’s tone,--“nay, if
it so please you.”
“It doth please me,” said the earl, shortly; and after a pause, he
added, “Yes, I am well pleased. Richard gives promise of an illustrious
manhood; but, Anne, thou growest so like thy mother, that whenever my
pride seeks to see thee great, my heart steps in, and only prays that
it may see thee happy!--so much so, that I would not have given thee to
Clarence, whom it likes me well to view as Isabel’s betrothed, for, to
her, greatness and bliss are one; and she is of firm nature, and can
rule in her own house; but thou--where out of romaunt can I find a lord
loving enough for thee, soft child?”
Inexpressibly affected, Anne threw herself on her father’s breast and
wept. He caressed and soothed her fondly; and before her emotion was
well over, Gloucester and Isabel joined them.
“My fair cousin,” said the duke, “hath promised to show me thy
renowned steed, Saladin; and since, on quitting thy halls, I go to my
apprenticeship in war on the turbulent Scottish frontier, I would
fain ask thee for a destrier of the same race as that which bears the
thunderbolt of Warwick’s wrath through the storm of battle.”
“A steed of the race of Saladin,” answered the earl, leading the way to
the destrier’s stall, apart from all other horses, and rather a chamber
of the castle than a stable, “were indeed a boon worthy a soldier’s gift
and a prince’s asking. But, alas! Saladin, like myself, is sonless,--the
last of a long line.”
“His father, methinks, fell for us on the field of Towton. Was it not
so? I have heard Edward say that when the archers gave way, and the
victory more than wavered, thou, dismounting, didst slay thy steed with
thine own hand, and kissing the cross of thy sword, swore on that spot
to stem the rush of the foe, and win Edward’s crown or Warwick’s grave.”
[“Every Palm Sunday, the day on which the battle of Towton was fought,
a rough figure, called the Red Horse, on the side of a hill in
Warwickshire, is scoured out. This is suggested to be done in
commemoration of the horse which the Earl of Warwick slew on that day,
determined to vanquish or die.”--Roberts: York and Lancaster, vol. i. p.
429.]