“It was so; and the shout of my merry men, when they saw me amongst

their ranks on foot--all flight forbid--was Malech’s death-dirge. It

is a wondrous race,--that of Malech and his son Saladin,” continued the

earl, smiling. “When my ancestor, Aymer de Nevile, led his troops to

the Holy Land, under Coeur de Lion, it was his fate to capture a lady

beloved by the mighty Saladin. Need I say that Aymer, under a flag of

truce, escorted her ransomless, her veil never raised from her face, to

the tent of the Saracen king? Saladin, too gracious for an infidel, made

him tarry a while, an honoured guest; and Aymer’s chivalry became sorely

tried, for the lady he had delivered loved and tempted him; but the good

knight prayed and fasted, and defied Satan and all his works. The lady

(so runs the legend) grew wroth at the pious crusader’s disdainful

coldness; and when Aymer returned to his comrades, she sent, amidst the

gifts of the soldan, two coal-black steeds, male and mare, over which

some foul and weird spells had been duly muttered. Their beauty, speed,

art, and fierceness were a marvel. And Aymer, unsuspecting, prized the

boon, and selected the male destrier for his war-horse. Great were the

feats, in many a field, which my forefather wrought, bestriding his

black charger. But one fatal day, on which the sudden war-trump made him

forget his morning ave, the beast had power over the Christian, and bore

him, against bit and spur, into the thickest of the foe. He did all a

knight can do against many (pardon his descendant’s vaunting,--so runs

the tale), and the Christians for a while beheld him solitary in the

melee, mowing down moon and turban. Then the crowd closed, and the good

knight was lost to sight. ‘To the rescue!’ cried bold King Richard, and

on rushed the crusaders to Aymer’s help; when lo! and suddenly the ranks

severed, and the black steed emerged! Aymer still on the selle, but

motionless, and his helm battered and plumeless, his brand broken,

his arm drooping. On came man and horse, on,--charging on, not against

Infidel but Christian. On dashed the steed, I say, with fire bursting

from eyes and nostrils, and the pike of his chaffron bent lance-like

against the crusaders’ van. The foul fiend seemed in the destrier’s rage

and puissance. He bore right against Richard’s standard-bearer, and down

went the lion and the cross. He charged the king himself; and Richard,

unwilling to harm his own dear soldier Aymer, halted wondering, till the

pike of the destrier pierced his own charger through the barding, and

the king lay rolling in the dust. A panic seized the cross-men; they

fled, the Saracens pursued, and still with the Saracens came the black

steed and the powerless rider. At last, when the crusaders reached the

camp, and the flight ceased, there halted, also, Aymer. Not a man dared

near him. He spoke not, none spoke to him, till a holy priest and palmer

approached and sprinkled the good knight and the black barb with holy

water, and exorcised both; the spell broke, and Aymer dropped to the

earth. They unbraced his helm,--he was cold and stark. The fierce steed

had but borne a dead man.”

“Holy Paul!” cried Gloucester, with seeming sanctimony, though a covert

sneer played round the firm beauty of his pale lips, “a notable tale,

and one that proveth much of Sacred Truth, now lightly heeded. But,

verily, lord earl, I should have little loved a steed with such a

pedigree.”

“Hear the rest,” said Isabel. “King Richard ordered the destrier to be

slain forthwith; but the holy palmer who had exorcised it forbade the

sacrifice. ‘Mighty shall be the service,’ said the reverend man, ‘which

the posterity of this steed shall render to thy royal race, and great

glory shall they give to the sons of Nevile. Let the war-horse, now duly

exorcised from infidel spells, live long to bear a Christian warrior!’”

“And so,” quoth the earl, taking up the tale--“so mare and horse were

brought by Aymer’s squires to his English hall; and Aymer’s son, Sir

Reginald, bore the cross, and bestrode the fatal steed, without fear and

without scathe. From that hour the House of Nevile rose amain, in fame

and in puissance; and the legend further saith, that the same palmer

encountered Sir Reginald at Joppa, bade him treasure that race of

war-steeds as his dearest heritage, for with that race his own should

flourish and depart; and the sole one of the Infidel’s spells which

could not be broken was that which united the gift--generation after

generation, for weal or for woe, for honour or for doom--to the fate of

Aymer and his House. ‘And,’ added the palmer, ‘as with woman’s love and

woman’s craft was woven the indissoluble charm, so shall woman, whether

in craft or in love, ever shape the fortunes of thee and thine.’”

“As yet,” said the prince, “the prophecy is fulfilled in a golden sense,

for nearly all thy wide baronies, I trow, have come to thee through the

female side. A woman’s hand brought to the Nevile this castle and its

lands; [Middleham Castle was built by Robert Fitz Ranulph, grandson of

Ribald, younger brother of the Earl of Bretagne and Richmond, nephew to

the Conqueror. The founder’s line failed in male heirs, and the heiress

married Robert Nevile, son of Lord Raby. Warwick’s father held the

earldom of Salisbury in right of his wife, the heiress of Thomas de

Montacute.] from a woman came the heritage of Monthermer and Montagu,

and Salisbury’s famous earldom; and the dower of thy peerless countess

was the broad domains of Beauchamp.”

“And a woman’s craft, young prince, wrought my king’s displeasure! But

enough of these dissour’s tales; behold the son of poor Malech, whom,

forgetting all such legends, I slew at Towton. Ho, Saladin, greet thy

master!”

They stood now in the black steed’s stall.--an ample and high-vaulted

space, for halter never insulted the fierce destrier’s mighty neck,

which the God of Battles had clothed in thunder. A marble cistern

contained his limpid drink, and in a gilded manger the finest wheaten

bread was mingled with the oats of Flanders. On entering, they found

young George, Montagu’s son, with two or three boys, playing familiarly

with the noble animal, who had all the affectionate docility inherited

from an Arab origin. But at the sound of Warwick’s voice, its ears rose,

its mane dressed itself, and with a short neigh it came to his feet, and

kneeling down, in slow and stately grace, licked its master’s hand. So

perfect and so matchless a steed never had knight bestrode! Its hide

without one white hair, and glossy as the sheenest satin; a lady’s

tresses were scarcely finer than the hair of its noble mane; the

exceeding smallness of its head, its broad frontal, the remarkable and

almost human intelligence of its eye, seemed actually to elevate its

conformation above that of its species. Though the race had increased,

generation after generation, in size and strength, Prince Richard still

marvelled (when, obedient to a sign from Warwick, the destrier rose, and

leaned its head, with a sort of melancholy and quiet tenderness, upon

the earl’s shoulder) that a horse, less in height and bulk than the

ordinary battle-steed, could bear the vast weight of the giant earl in

his ponderous mail. But his surprise ceased when the earl pointed out

to him the immense strength of the steed’s ample loins, the sinewy

cleanness, the iron muscle, of the stag-like legs, the bull-like breadth

of chest, and the swelling power of the shining neck.

“And after all,” added the earl, “both in man and beast, the spirit

and the race, not the stature and the bulk, bring the prize. Mort Dieu,

Richard! it often shames me of mine own thews and broad breast,--I had

been more vain of laurels had I been shorter by the head!”

“Nevertheless,” said young George of Montagu, with a page’s pertness, “I

had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard’s, and thy broad breast

than his grace’s short neck.”

The Duke of Gloucester turned as if a snake had stung him. He gave but

one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the boy’s

remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled, even before

he heard the earl’s stern rebuke.

“Young magpies chatter, boy,--young eagles in silence measure the space

between the eyry and the sun!”

The boy hung his head, and would have slunk off, but Richard detained

him with a gentle hand. “My fair young cousin,” said he, “thy words gall

no sore, and if ever thou and I charge side by side into the foeman’s

ranks, thou shalt comprehend what thy uncle designed to say,--how, in

the hour of strait and need, we measure men’s stature not by the body

but the soul!”

“A noble answer,” whispered Anne, with something like sisterly

admiration.

“Too noble,” said the more ambitious Isabel, in the same voice, “for

Clarence’s future wife not to fear Clarence’s dauntless brother.”

“And so,” said the prince, quitting the stall with Warwick, while the

girls still lingered behind, “so Saladin hath no son! Wherefore? Can you

mate him with no bride?”

“Faith,” answered the earl, “the females of his race sleep in yonder

dell, their burial-place, and the proud beast disdains all meaner loves.

Nay, were it not so, to continue the breed, if adulterated, were but to

mar it.”

“You care little for the legend, meseems.”

“Pardieu! at times, yes, over much; but in sober moments I think that

the brave man who does his duty lacks no wizard prophecy to fulfil his

doom; and whether in prayer or in death, in fortune or defeat, his soul

goes straight to God!”

“Umph,” said Richard, musingly; and there was a pause. “Warwick,”

resumed the prince, “doubtless, even on your return to London, the

queen’s enmity and her mother’s will not cease. Clarence loves Isabel,

but Clarence knows not how to persuade the king and rule the king’s

womankind. Thou knowest how I have stood aloof from all the factions

of the court. Unhappily I go to the Borders, and can but slightly serve

thee. But--” (he stopped short, and sighed heavily).

“Speak on, Prince.”

“In a word, then, if I were thy son, Anne’s husband, I see--I see--I

see--” (thrice repeated the prince, with a vague dreaminess in his eye,

and stretching forth his hand)--“a future that might defy all foes,

opening to me and thee!”

Warwick hesitated in some embarrassment.

“My gracious and princely cousin,” he said at length, “this proffer is

indeed sweet incense to a father’s pride. But pardon me, as yet, noble

Richard, thou art so young that the king and the world would blame

me did I suffer my ambition to listen to such temptation. Enough, at

present, if all disputes between our House and the king can be smoothed

and laid at rest without provoking new ones. Nay, pardon me, prince, let

this matter cease--at least, till thy return from the Borders.”

“May I take with me hope?”

“Nay,” said Warwick, “thou knowest that I am a plain man; to bid thee

hope were to plight my word. And,” he added seriously, “there be reasons

grave and well to be considered why both the daughters of a subject

should not wed with their king’s brothers. Let this cease now, I pray

thee, sweet lord.”

Here the demoiselles joined their father, and the conference was over;

but when Richard, an hour after, stood musing alone on the battlements,

he muttered to himself, “Thou art a fool, stout earl, not to have

welcomed the union between thy power and my wit. Thou goest to a court

where without wit power is nought. Who may foresee the future? Marry,

that was a wise ancient fable, that he who seized and bound Proteus

could extract from the changeful god the prophecy of the days to come.

Yea! the man who can seize Fate can hear its voice predict to him. And

by my own heart and brain, which never yet relinquished what affection

yearned for, or thought aspired to, I read, as in a book, Anne, that

thou shalt be mine; and that where wave on yon battlements the ensigns

of Beauchamp, Monthermer, and Nevile, the Boar of Gloucester shall liege

it over their broad baronies and hardy vassals.”

BOOK VI

WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE

WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS BETTER.

LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE SAME PROLIFIC

DELUSION,--NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH’S MAJORITY) ARE WORTH

THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND

ASPIRING FEW.

CHAPTER I. NEW DISSENSIONS.

We must pass over some months. Warwick and his family had returned to

London, and the meeting between Edward and the earl had been cordial

and affectionate. Warwick was reinstated in the offices which gave him

apparently the supreme rule in England. The Princess Margaret had left

England as the bride of Charles the Bold; and the earl had attended

the procession in honour of her nuptials. The king, agreeably with the

martial objects he had had long at heart, had then declared war on

Louis XI., and parliament was addressed and troops were raised for that

impolitic purpose. [Parliamentary Rolls, 623. The fact in the text has

been neglected by most historians.] To this war, however, Warwick was

inflexibly opposed. He pointed out the madness of withdrawing from

England all her best-affected chivalry, at a time when the adherents of

Lancaster, still powerful, would require no happier occasion to raise

the Red Rose banner. He showed how hollow was the hope of steady aid

from the hot but reckless and unprincipled Duke of Burgundy, and how

different now was the condition of France under a king of consummate

sagacity and with an overflowing treasury to its distracted state in the

former conquests of the English. This opposition to the king’s will gave

every opportunity for Warwick’s enemies to renew their old accusation

of secret and treasonable amity with Louis. Although the proud and hasty

earl had not only forgiven the affront put upon him by Edward, but had

sought to make amends for his own intemperate resentment, by public

attendance on the ceremonials that accompanied the betrothal of the

princess, it was impossible for Edward ever again to love the minister

who had defied his power and menaced his crown. His humour and his

suspicions broke forth despite the restraint that policy dictated to

him: and in the disputes upon the invasion of France, a second and more

deadly breach between Edward and his minister must have yawned, had not

events suddenly and unexpectedly proved the wisdom of Warwick’s distrust

of Burgundy. Louis XI. bought off the Duke of Bretagne, patched up a

peace with Charles the Bold, and thus frustrated all the schemes and

broke all the alliances of Edward at the very moment his military

preparations were ripe. [W. Wyr, 518.]

Still the angry feelings that the dispute had occasioned between Edward

and the earl were not removed with the cause; and under pretence of

guarding against hostilities from Louis, the king requested Warwick to

depart to his government of Calais, the most important and honourable

post, it is true, which a subject could then hold: but Warwick

considered the request as a pretext for his removal from the court. A

yet more irritating and insulting cause of offence was found in Edward’s

withholding his consent to Clarence’s often-urged demand for permission

to wed with the Lady Isabel. It is true that this refusal was

accompanied with the most courteous protestations of respect for the

earl, and placed only upon the general ground of state policy.

“My dear George,” Edward would say, “the heiress of Lord Warwick is

certainly no mal-alliance for a king’s brother; but the safety of the

throne imperatively demands that my brothers should strengthen my

rule by connections with foreign potentates. I, it is true, married

a subject, and see all the troubles that have sprung from my boyish

passion! No, no! Go to Bretagne. The duke hath a fair daughter, and we

will make up for any scantiness in the dower. Weary me no more, George.

Fiat voluntas mea!”

But the motives assigned were not those which influenced the king’s

refusal. Reasonably enough, he dreaded that the next male heir to his

crown should wed the daughter of the subject who had given that crown,

and might at any time take it away. He knew Clarence to be giddy,

unprincipled, and vain. Edward’s faith in Warwick was shaken by the

continual and artful representations of the queen and her family. He

felt that the alliance between Clarence and the earl would be the union

of two interests almost irresistible if once arrayed against his own.

But Warwick, who penetrated into the true reason for Edward’s obstinacy,

was yet more resentful against the reasons than the obstinacy itself.

The one galled him through his affections, the other through his pride;

and the first were as keen as the last was morbid. He was the more

chafed, inasmuch as his anxiety of father became aroused. Isabel was

really attached to Clarence, who, with all his errors, possessed every

superficial attraction that graced his House,--gallant and handsome, gay

and joyous, and with manners that made him no less popular than Edward

himself.

And if Isabel’s affections were not deep, disinterested, and tender,

like those of Anne, they were strengthened by a pride which she

inherited from her father, and a vanity which she took from her sex.

It was galling in the extreme to feel that the loves between her and

Clarence were the court gossip, and the king’s refusal the court jest.

Her health gave way, and pride and love both gnawed at her heart.

It happened, unfortunately for the king and for Warwick, that

Gloucester, whose premature acuteness and sagacity would have the more

served both, inasmuch as the views he had formed in regard to Anne

would have blended his interest in some degree with that of the Duke of

Clarence, and certainly with the object of conciliation between Edward

and his minister,--it happened, we say, unfortunately, that Gloucester

was still absent with the forces employed on the Scottish frontier,

whither he had repaired on quitting Middleham, and where his

extraordinary military talents found their first brilliant opening; and

he was therefore absent from London during all the disgusts he might

have removed and the intrigues he might have frustrated.

But the interests of the House of Warwick, during the earl’s sullen and

indignant sojourn at his government of Calais, were not committed to

unskilful hands; and Montagu and the archbishop were well fitted to cope

with Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford.

Between these able brothers, one day, at the More, an important

conference took place.

“I have sought you,” said Montagu, with more than usual care upon his

brow--“I have sought you in consequence of an event that may lead

to issues of no small moment, whether for good or evil. Clarence has

suddenly left England for Calais.”

“I know it, Montagu; the duke confided to me his resolution to proclaim

himself old enough to marry,--and discreet enough to choose for

himself.”

“And you approved?”

“Certes; and, sooth to say, I brought him to that modest opinion of his

own capacities. What is more still, I propose to join him at Calais.”

“George!”

“Look not so scared, O valiant captain, who never lost a battle,--where

the Church meddles, all prospers. Listen!” And the young prelate

gathered himself up from his listless posture, and spoke with earnest

unction. “Thou knowest that I do not much busy myself in lay schemes;

when I do, the object must be great. Now, Montagu, I have of late

narrowly and keenly watched that spidery web which ye call a court, and

I see that the spider will devour the wasp, unless the wasp boldly break

the web,--for woman-craft I call the spider, and soldier-pride I style

the wasp. To speak plainly, these Woodvilles must be bravely breasted

and determinately abashed. I do not mean that we can deal with the

king’s wife and her family as with any other foes; but we must convince

them that they cannot cope with us, and that their interests will best

consist in acquiescing in that condition of things which places the rule

of England in the hands of the Neviles.”

“My own thought, if I saw the way!”

“I see the way in this alliance; the Houses of York and Warwick must

become so indissolubly united, that an attempt to injure the one must

destroy both. The queen and the Woodvilles plot against us; we must

raise in the king’s family a counterpoise to their machinations. It

brings no scandal on the queen to conspire against Warwick, but it would

ruin her in the eyes of England to conspire against the king’s brother;

and Clarence and Warwick must be as one. This is not all! If our

sole aid was in giddy George, we should but buttress our House with a

weathercock. This connection is but as a part of the grand scheme on

which I have set my heart,--Clarence shall wed Isabel, Gloucester wed

Anne, and (let thy ambitious heart beat high, Montagu) the king’s eldest

daughter shall wed thy son,--the male representative of our triple

honours. Ah, thine eyes sparkle now! Thus the whole royalty of England

shall centre in the Houses of Nevile and York; and the Woodvilles will

be caught and hampered in their own meshes, their resentment impotent;

for how can Elizabeth stir against us, if her daughter be betrothed

to the son of Montagu, the nephew of Warwick? Clarence, beloved by the

shallow commons; [Singular as it may seem to those who know not that

popularity is given to the vulgar qualities of men, and that where a

noble nature becomes popular (a rare occurrence), it is despite the

nobleness,--not because of it. Clarence was a popular idol even to the

time of his death.--Croyl., 562.] Gloucester, adored both by the army

and the Church; and Montagu and Warwick, the two great captains of the

age,--is not this a combination of power that may defy Fate?”

“O George!” said Montagu, admiringly, “what pity that the Church should

spoil such a statesman!”

“Thou art profane, Montagu; the Church spoils no man,--the Church

leads and guides ye all; and, mark, I look farther still. I would have

intimate league with France; I would strengthen ourselves with Spain

and the German Emperor; I would buy or seduce the votes of the sacred

college; I would have thy poor brother, whom thou so pitiest because he

has no son to marry a king’s daughter, no daughter to wed with a king’s

son--I would have thy unworthy brother, Montagu, the father of the whole

Christian world, and, from the chair of the Vatican, watch over the weal

of kingdoms. And now, seest thou why with to-morrow’s sun I depart for

Calais, and lend my voice in aid of Clarence’s for the first knot in

this complicated bond?”

“But will Warwick consent while the king opposes? Will his pride--”

“His pride serves us here; for so long as Clarence did not dare to

gainsay the king, Warwick in truth might well disdain to press his

daughter’s hand upon living man. The king opposes, but with what right?

Warwick’s pride will but lead him, if well addressed, to defy affront

and to resist dictation. Besides, our brother has a woman’s heart for

his children; and Isabel’s face is pale, and that will plead more than

all my eloquence.”

“But can the king forgive your intercession and Warwick’s contumacy?”

“Forgive!--the marriage once over, what is left for him to do? He

is then one with us, and when Gloucester returns all will be smooth

again,--smooth for the second and more important nuptials; and the

second shall preface the third; meanwhile, you return to the court. To

these ceremonials you need be no party: keep but thy handsome son from

breaking his neck in over-riding his hobby, and ‘bide thy time!’”

Agreeably with the selfish but sagacious policy thus detailed, the

prelate departed the next day for Calais, where Clarence was already

urging his suit with the ardent impatience of amorous youth. The

archbishop found, however, that Warwick was more reluctant than he

had anticipated, to suffer his daughter to enter any House without

the consent of its chief; nor would the earl, in all probability, have

acceded to the prayers of the princely suitor, had not Edward, enraged

at the flight of Clarence, and worked upon by the artful queen,

committed the imprudence of writing an intemperate and menacing letter

to the earl, which called up all the passions of the haughty Warwick.

“What!” he exclaimed, “thinks this ungrateful man not only to dishonour

me by his method of marrying his sisters, but will he also play the

tyrant with me in the disposal of mine own daughter! He threats!

he!--enough. It is due to me to show that there lives no man whose

threats I have not the heart to defy!” And the prelate finding him in

this mood had no longer any difficulty in winning his consent. This

ill-omened marriage was, accordingly, celebrated with great and regal

pomp at Calais, and the first object of the archbishop was attained.

While thus stood affairs between the two great factions of the state,

those discontents which Warwick’s presence at court had a while laid at

rest again spread, broad and far, throughout the land. The luxury and

indolence of Edward’s disposition in ordinary times always surrendered

him to the guidance of others. In the commencement of his reign he

was eminently popular, and his government, though stern, suited to the

times; for then the presiding influence was that of Lord Warwick. As the

queen’s counsels prevailed over the consummate experience and masculine

vigour of the earl, the king’s government lost both popularity and

respect, except only in the metropolis; and if, at the close of his

reign, it regained all its earlier favour with the people, it must be

principally ascribed to the genius of Hastings, then England’s most

powerful subject, and whose intellect calmly moved all the springs of

action. But now everywhere the royal authority was weakened; and while

Edward was feasting at Shene and Warwick absent at Calais, the provinces

were exposed to all the abuses which most gall a population. The poor

complained that undue exactions were made on them by the hospitals,

abbeys, and barons; the Church complained that the queen’s relations had

seized and spent Church moneys; the men of birth and merit complained

of the advancement of new men who had done no service: and all these

several discontents fastened themselves upon the odious Woodvilles, as

the cause of all. The second breach, now notorious, between the king and

the all-beloved Warwick, was a new aggravation of the popular hatred to

the queen’s family, and seemed to give occasion for the malcontents to

appear with impunity, at least so far as the earl was concerned: it

was, then, at this critical time that the circumstances we are about to

relate occurred.

CHAPTER II. THE WOULD-BE IMPROVERS OF JOVE’S FOOTBALL, EARTH.--THE SAD

FATHER AND THE SAD CHILD.--THE FAIR RIVALS.

Adam Warner was at work on his crucible when the servitor commissioned

to attend him opened the chamber door, and a man dressed in the black

gown of a student entered.

He approached the alchemist, and after surveying him for a moment in a

silence that seemed not without contempt, said, “What, Master Warner,

are you so wedded to your new studies that you have not a word to bestow

on an old friend?”

Adam turned, and after peevishly gazing at the intruder a few moments,

his face brightened up into recognition.

“En iterum!” he said. “Again, bold Robin Hilyard, and in a scholar’s

garb! Ha! doubtless thou hast learned ere this that peaceful studies do

best insure man’s weal below, and art come to labour with me in the high

craft of mind-work!”

“Adam,” quoth Hilyard, “ere I answer, tell me this: Thou with thy

science wouldst change the world: art thou a jot nearer to thy end?”

“Well-a-day,” said poor Adam, “you know little what I have undergone.

For danger to myself by rack and gibbet I say nought. Man’s body is

fair prey to cruelty, and what a king spares to-day the worm shall gnaw

to-morrow. But mine invention--my Eureka--look!” and stepping aside, he

lifted a cloth, and exhibited the mangled remains of the unhappy model.

“I am forbid to restore it,” continued Adam, dolefully. “I must work day

and night to make gold, and the gold comes not; and my only change of

toil is when the queen bids me construct little puppet-boxes for her

children! How, then, can I change the world? And thou,” he added,

doubtingly and eagerly--“thou, with thy plots and stratagem, and active

demagogy, thinkest thou that thou hast changed the world, or extracted

one drop of evil out of the mixture of gall and hyssop which man is born

to drink?”

Hilyard was silent, and the two world-betterers--the philosopher and the

demagogue--gazed on each other, half in sympathy, half in contempt. At

last Robin said,--

“Mine old friend, hope sustains us both; and in the wilderness we yet

behold the Pisgah! But to my business. Doubtless thou art permitted to

visit Henry in his prison.”

“Not so,” replied Adam; “and for the rest, since I now eat King Edward’s

bread, and enjoy what they call his protection, ill would it beseem me

to lend myself to plots against his throne.”

“Ah, man, man, man,” exclaimed Hilyard, bitterly, “thou art like all the

rest,--scholar or serf, the same slave; a king’s smile bribes thee from

a people’s service!”

Before Adam could reply, a panel in the wainscot slid back and the bald

head of a friar peered into the room. “Son Adam,” said the holy man,

“I crave your company an instant, oro vestrem aurem;” and with this

abominable piece of Latinity the friar vanished.

With a resigned and mournful shrug of the shoulders, Adam walked across

the room, when Hilyard, arresting his progress, said, crossing himself,

and in a subdued and fearful whisper, “Is not that Friar Bungey, the

notable magician?”

“Magician or not,” answered Warner, with a lip of inexpressible contempt

and a heavy sigh, “God pardon his mother for giving birth to such

a numskull!” and with this pious and charitable ejaculation Adam

disappeared in the adjoining chamber, appropriated to the friar.

“Hum,” soliloquized Hilyard, “they say that Friar Bungey is employed

by the witch duchess in everlasting diabolisms against her foes. A peep

into his den might suffice me for a stirring tale to the people.”

No sooner did this daring desire arise than the hardy Robin resolved to

gratify it; and stealing on tiptoe along the wall, he peered cautiously

through the aperture made by the sliding panel. An enormous stuffed

lizard hung from the ceiling, and various strange reptiles, dried into

mummy, were ranged around, and glared at the spy with green glass eyes.

A huge book lay open on a tripod stand, and a caldron seethed over a

slow and dull fire. A sight yet more terrible presently awaited the rash

beholder.

“Adam,” said the friar, laying his broad palm on the student’s reluctant

shoulders, “inter sapentes.”

“Sapientes, brother,” groaned Adam.

“That’s the old form, Adam,” quoth the friar, superciliously,--“sapentes

is the last improvement. I say, between wise men there is no envy. Our

noble and puissant patroness, the Duchess of Bedford, hath committed to

me a task that promiseth much profit. I have worked at it night and day

stotis filibus.”

“O man, what lingo speakest thou?--stotis filibus!”

“Tush, if it is not good Latin, it does as well, son Adam. I say I have

worked at it night and day, and it is now advanced eno’ for experiment.

But thou art going to sleep.”

“Despatch! speak out! speak on!” said Adam, desperately,--“what is thy

achievement?”

“See!” answered the friar, majestically; and drawing aside a black pall,

he exhibited to the eyes of Adam, and to the more startled gaze of Robin

Hilyard, a pale, cadaverous, corpse-like image, of pigmy proportions,

but with features moulded into a coarse caricature of the lordly

countenance of the Earl of Warwick.

“There,” said the friar, complacently, and rubbing his hands, “that is

no piece of bungling, eh? As like the stout earl as one pea to another.”

“And for what hast thou kneaded up all this waste of wax?” asked Adam.

“Forsooth, I knew not you had so much of ingenious art; algates, the toy

is somewhat ghastly.”

“Ho, ho!” quoth the friar, laughing so as to show a set of jagged,

discoloured fangs from ear to ear, “surely thou, who art so notable a

wizard and scholar, knowest for what purpose we image forth our enemies.

Whatever the duchess inflicts upon this figure, the Earl of Warwick,

whom it representeth, will feel through his bones and marrow,--waste

wax, waste man!”

“Thou art a devil to do this thing, and a blockhead to think it, O

miserable friar!” exclaimed Adam, roused from all his gentleness.

“Ha!” cried the friar, no less vehemently, and his burly face purple

with passion, “dost thou think to bandy words with me? Wretch! I will

set goblins to pinch thee black and blue! I will drag thee at night over

all the jags of Mount Pepanon, at the tail of a mad nightmare! I will

put aches in all thy bones, and the blood in thy veins shall run into

sores and blotches. Am I not Friar Bungey? And what art thou?”

At these terrible denunciations, the sturdy Robin, though far less

superstitious than most of his contemporaries, was seized with a

trembling from head to foot; and expecting to see goblins and imps start

forth from the walls, he retired hastily from his hiding-place, and,

without waiting for further commune with Warner, softly opened the

chamber door and stole down the stairs. Adam, however, bore the storm

unquailingly, and when the holy man paused to take breath, he said

calmly,--

“Verily, if thou canst do these things, there must be secrets in Nature

which I have not yet discovered. Howbeit, though thou art free to try

all thou canst against me, thy threats make it necessary that this

communication between us should be nailed up, and I shall so order.”

The friar, who was ever in want of Adam’s aid, either to construe a bit

of Latin, or to help him in some chemical illusion, by no means relished

this quiet retort; and holding out his huge hand to Adam, said, with

affected cordiality,--

“Pooh! we are brothers, and must not quarrel. I was over hot, and thou

too provoking; but I honour and love thee, man,--let it pass. As for

this figure, doubtless we might pink it all over, and the earl be never

the worse. But if our employers order these things and pay for them, we

cunning men make profit by fools!”

“It is men like thee that bring shame on science,” answered Adam,

sternly; “and I will not listen to thee longer.”

“Nay, but you must,” said the friar, clutching Adam’s robe, and

concealing his resentment by an affected grin. “Thou thinkest me a mere

ignoramus--ha! ha!--I think the same of thee. Why, man, thou hast never

studied the parts of the human body, I’ll swear.”

“I’m no leech,” said Adam. “Let me go.”

“No, not yet. I will convict thee of ignorance. Thou dost not even know

where the liver is placed.”

“I do,” answered Adam, shortly; “but what then?”

“Thou dost?--I deny it. Here is a pin; stick it into this wax, man,

where thou sayest the liver lies in the human frame.”

Adam unsuspiciously obeyed.

“Well! the liver is there, eh? Ah, but where are the lungs?”

“Why, here.”

“And the midriff?”

“Here, certes.”

“Right!--thou mayest go now,” said the friar, dryly. Adam disappeared

through the aperture, and closed the panel.

“Now I know where the lungs, midriff, and liver are,” said the friar

to himself, “I shall get on famously. ‘T is a useful fellow, that, or I

should have had him hanged long ago!”

Adam did not remark on his re-entrance that his visitor, Hilyard,

had disappeared, and the philosopher was soon reimmersed in the fiery

interest of his thankless labours.

It might be an hour afterwards, when, wearied and exhausted by perpetual

hope and perpetual disappointment, he flung himself on his seat; and

that deep sadness, which they who devote themselves in this noisy

world to wisdom and to truth alone can know, suffused his thoughts, and

murmured from his feverish lips.

“Oh, hard condition of my life!” groaned the sage,--“ever to strive,

and never to accomplish. The sun sets and the sun rises upon my eternal

toils, and my age stands as distant from the goal as stood my youth!

Fast, fast the mind is wearing out the frame, and my schemes have but

woven the ropes of sand, and my name shall be writ in water. Golden

dreams of my young hope, where are ye? Methought once, that could I

obtain the grace of royalty, the ear of power, the command of wealth,

my path to glory was made smooth and sure; I should become the grand

inventor of my time and land; I should leave my lore a heritage and

blessing wherever labour works to civilize the round globe. And now my

lodging is a palace, royalty my patron; they give me gold at my desire;

my wants no longer mar my leisure. Well, and for what? On condition that

I forego the sole task for which patronage, wealth, and leisure were

desired! There stands the broken iron, and there simmers the ore I am to

turn to gold,--the iron worth more than all the gold, and the gold

never to be won! Poor, I was an inventor, a creator, the true magician;

protected, patronized, enriched, I am but the alchemist, the bubble, the

dupe or duper, the fool’s fool. God, brace up my limbs! Let me escape!

give me back my old dream, and die at least, if accomplishing nothing,

hoping all!”

He rose as he spoke; he strode across the chamber with majestic step,

with resolve upon his brow. He stopped short, for a sharp pain shot

across his heart. Premature age and the disease that labour brings were

at their work of decay within: the mind’s excitement gave way to the

body’s weakness, and he sank again upon his seat, breathing hard,

gasping, pale, the icy damps upon his brow. Bubblingly seethed the

molten metals, redly glowed the poisonous charcoal, the air of death was

hot within the chamber where the victim of royal will pandered to the

desire of gold. Terrible and eternal moral for Wisdom and for Avarice,

for sages and for kings,--ever shall he who would be the maker of gold

breathe the air of death!

“Father,” said the low and touching voice of one who had entered

unperceived, and who now threw her arms round Adam’s neck, “Father, thou

art ill, and sorely suffering--”

“At heart--yes, Sibyll. Give me thine arm; let us forth and taste the

fresher air.”

It was so seldom that Warner could be induced to quit his chamber, that

these words almost startled Sibyll, and she looked anxiously in his

face, as she wiped the dews from his forehead.

“Yes--air--air!” repeated Adam, rising.

Sibyll placed his bonnet over his silvered locks, drew his gown more

closely round him, and slowly and in silence they left the chamber, and

took their way across the court to the ramparts of the fortress-palace.

The day was calm and genial, with a low but fresh breeze stirring gently

through the warmth of noon. The father and child seated themselves on

the parapet, and saw, below, the gay and numerous vessels that glided

over the sparkling river, while the dark walls of Baynard’s Castle,

the adjoining bulwark and battlements of Montfichet, and the tall

watch-tower of Warwick’s mighty mansion frowned in the distance against

the soft blue sky. “There,” said Adam, quietly, and pointing to the

feudal roofs, “there seems to rise power, and yonder (glancing to the

river), yonder seems to flow Genius! A century or so hence the walls

shall vanish, but the river shall roll on. Man makes the castle, and

founds the power,--God forms the river and creates the Genius. And yet,

Sibyll, there may be streams as broad and stately as yonder Thames, that

flow afar in the waste, never seen, never heard by man. What profits the

river unmarked; what the genius never to be known?”

It was not a common thing with Adam Warner to be thus eloquent. Usually

silent and absorbed, it was not his gift to moralize or declaim. His

soul must be deeply moved before the profound and buried sentiment

within it could escape into words.

Sibyll pressed her father’s hand, and, though her own heart was very

heavy, she forced her lips to smile and her voice to soothe. Adam

interrupted her.

“Child, child, ye women know not what presses darkest and most bitterly

on the minds of men. You know not what it is to form out of immaterial

things some abstract but glorious object,--to worship, to serve it,

to sacrifice to it, as on an altar, youth, health, hope, life,--and

suddenly in old age to see that the idol was a phantom, a mockery, a

shadow laughing us to scorn, because we have sought to clasp it.”

“Oh, yes, Father, women have known that illusion.”

“What! Do they study?”

“No, Father, but they feel!”

“Feel! I comprehend thee not.”

“As man’s genius to him is woman’s heart to her,” answered Sibyll, her

dark and deep eyes suffused with tears. “Doth not the heart create,

invent? Doth it not dream? Doth it not form its idol out of air? Goeth

it not forth into the future, to prophesy to itself? And sooner or

later, in age or youth, doth it not wake at last, and see how it hath

wasted its all on follies? Yes, Father, my heart can answer, when thy

genius would complain.”

“Sibyll,” said Warner, roused and surprised, and gazing on her

wistfully, “time flies apace. Till this hour I have thought of thee but

as a child, an infant. Thy words disturb me now.”

“Think not of them, then. Let me never add one grief to thine.”

“Thou art brave and gay in thy silken sheen,” said Adam, curiously

stroking down the rich, smooth stuff of Sibyll’s tunic; “her grace the

duchess is generous to us. Thou art surely happy here!”

“Happy!”

“Not happy!” exclaimed Adam, almost joyfully, “wouldst thou that we were

back once more in our desolate, ruined home?”

“Yes, ob, yes!--but rather away, far away, in some quiet village, some

green nook; for the desolate, ruined home was not safe for thine old

age.”

“I would we could escape, Sibyll,” said Adam, earnestly, in a whisper,

and with a kind of innocent cunning in his eye, “we and the poor Eureka!

This palace is a prison-house to me. I will speak to the Lord Hastings,

a man of great excellence, and gentle too. He is ever kind to us.”

“No, no, Father, not to him,” cried Sibyll, turning pale,--“let him not

know a word of what we would propose, nor whither we would fly.”

“Child, he loves me, or why does he seek me so often, and sit and talk

not?”

Sibyll pressed her clasped hands tightly to her bosom, but made no

answer; and while she was summoning courage to say something that seemed

to oppress her thoughts with intolerable weight, a footstep sounded

gently near, and the Lady of Bonville (then on a visit to the queen),

unseen and unheard by the two, approached the spot. She paused, and

gazed at Sibyll, at first haughtily; and then, as the deep sadness of

that young face struck her softer feelings, and the pathetic picture of

father and child, thus alone in their commune, made its pious and sweet

effect, the gaze changed from pride to compassion, and the lady said

courteously,--

“Fair mistress, canst thou prefer this solitary scene to the gay company

about to take the air in her grace’s gilded barge?”

Sibyll looked up in surprise, not unmixed with fear. Never before had

the great lady spoken to her thus gently. Adam, who seemed for a while

restored to the actual life, saluted Katherine with simple dignity, and

took up the word,--

“Noble lady, whoever thou art, in thine old age, and thine hour of care,

may thy child, like this poor girl, forsake all gayer comrades for a

parent’s side!”

The answer touched the Lady of Bonville, and involuntarily she extended

her hand to Sibyll. With a swelling heart, Sibyll, as proud as herself,

bent silently over that rival’s hand. Katherine’s marble cheek coloured,

as she interpreted the girl’s silence.

“Gentle sir,” she said, after a short pause, “wilt thou permit me a few

words with thy fair daughter? And if in aught, since thou speakest of

care, Lord Warwick’s sister can serve thee, prithee bid thy young maiden

impart it, as to a friend.”

“Tell her, then, my Sibyll,--tell Lord Warwick’s sister to ask the king

to give back to Adam Warner his poverty, his labour, and his hope,” said

the scholar, and his noble head sank gloomily on his bosom.

The Lady of Bonville, still holding Sibyll’s hand, drew her a few paces

up the walk, and then she said suddenly, and with some of that blunt

frankness which belonged to her great brother, “Maiden, can there be

confidence between thee and me?”

“Of what nature, lady?”

Again Katherine blushed, but she felt the small hand she held tremble in

her clasp, and was emboldened,--

“Maiden, thou mayst resent and marvel at my words; but when I had fewer

years than thou, my father said, ‘There are many carks in life which a

little truth could end.’ So would I heed his lesson. William de Hastings

has followed thee with an homage that has broken, perchance, many as

pure a heart,--nay, nay, fair child, hear me on. Thou hast heard that in

youth he wooed Katherine Nevile,--that we loved, and were severed.

They who see us now marvel whether we hate or love,--no, not love--that

question were an insult to Lord Bonville’s wife!--Ofttimes we seem

pitiless to each other,--why? Lord Hastings would have wooed me, an

English matron, to forget mine honour and my House’s. He chafes that he

moves me not. I behold him debasing a great nature to unworthy triflings

with man’s conscience and a knight’s bright faith. But mark me!--the

heart of Hastings is everlastingly mine, and mine alone! What seek I in

this confidence? To warn thee. Wherefore? Because for months, amidst all

the vices of this foul court-air, amidst the flatteries of the softest

voice that ever fell upon woman’s ear, amidst, peradventure, the

pleadings of thine own young and guileless love, thine innocence is

unscathed. And therefore Katherine of Bonville may be the friend of

Sibyll Warner.”

However generous might be the true spirit of these words, it was

impossible that they should not gall and humiliate the young and

flattered beauty to whom they were addressed. They so wholly discarded

all belief in the affection of Hastings for Sibyll; they so haughtily

arrogated the mastery over his heart; they so plainly implied that his

suit to the poor maiden was but a mockery or dishonour, that they made

even the praise for virtue an affront to the delicate and chaste ear

on which they fell. And, therefore, the reader will not be astonished,

though the Lady of Bonville certainly was, when Sibyll, drawing her hand

from Katherine’s clasp, stopping short, and calmly folding her arms upon

her bosom, said,--

“To what this tends, lady, I know not. The Lord Hastings is free to

carry his homage where he will. He has sought me,--not I Lord Hastings.

And if to-morrow he offered me his hand, I would reject it, if I were

not convinced that the heart--”

“Damsel,” interrupted the Lady Bonville, in amazed contempt, “the hand

of Lord Hastings! Look ye indeed so high, or has he so far paltered with

your credulous youth as to speak to you, the daughter of the alchemist,

of marriage? If so, poor child, beware!

“I knew not,” replied Sibyll, bitterly, “that Sibyll Warner was more

below the state of Lord Hastings than Master Hastings was once below the

state of Lady Katherine Nevile.”

“Thou art distraught with thy self-conceit,” answered the dame,

scornfully; and, losing all the compassion and friendly interest she had

before felt, “my rede is spoken,--reject it if thou wilt in pride. Rue

thy folly thou wilt in shame!”

She drew her wimple round her face as she said these words, and,

gathering up her long robe, swept slowly on.

CHAPTER III. WHEREIN THE DEMAGOGUE SEEKS THE COURTIER.

On quitting Adam’s chamber, Hilyard paused not till he reached a stately

house, not far from Warwick Lane, which was the residence of the Lord

Montagu.

That nobleman was employed in reading, or rather, in pondering over, two

letters, with which a courier from Calais had just arrived, the one

from the archbishop, the other from Warwick. In these epistles were

two passages, strangely contradictory in their counsel. A sentence in

Warwick’s letter ran thus:--

“It hath reached me that certain disaffected men meditate a rising

against the king, under pretext of wrongs from the queen’s kin. It is

even said that our kinsmen, Copiers and Fitzhugh, are engaged therein.

Need I caution thee to watch well that they bring our name into no

disgrace or attaint? We want no aid to right our own wrongs; and if the

misguided men rebel, Warwick will best punish Edward by proving that he

is yet of use.”

On the other hand, thus wrote the prelate:--

“The king, wroth with my visit to Calais, has taken from me the

chancellor’s seal. I humbly thank him, and shall sleep the lighter for

the fardel’s loss. Now, mark me, Montagu: our kinsman, Lord Fitzhugh’s

son, and young Henry Nevile, aided by old Sir John Copiers, meditate

a fierce and well-timed assault upon the Woodvilles. Do thou keep

neuter,--neither help nor frustrate it. Howsoever it end, it will answer

our views, and shake our enemies.”

Montagu was yet musing over these tidings, and marvelling that he

in England should know less than his brethren in Calais of events so

important, when his page informed him that a stranger, with urgent

messages from the north country, craved an audience. Imagining that

these messages would tend to illustrate the communications just

received, he ordered the visitor to be admitted.

He scarcely noticed Hilyard on his entrance, and said abruptly, “Speak

shortly, friend,--I have but little leisure.”

“And yet, Lord Montagu, my business may touch thee home.”

Montagu, surprised, gazed more attentively on his visitor: “Surely, I

know thy face, friend,--we have met before.”

“True; thou wert then on thy way to the More.”

“I remember me; and thou then seemedst, from thy bold words, on a still

shorter road to the gallows.”

“The tree is not planted,” said Robin, carelessly, “that will serve for

my gibbet. But were there no words uttered by me that thou couldst

not disapprove? I spoke of lawless disorders, of shameful malfaisance

throughout the land, which the Woodvilles govern under a lewd tyrant--”

“Traitor, hold!”

“A tyrant,” continued Robin, heeding not the interruption nor the

angry gesture of Montagu, “a tyrant who at this moment meditates the

destruction of the House of Nevile. And not contented with this world’s

weapons, palters with the Evil One for the snares and devilries of

witchcraft.”

“Hush, man! Not so loud,” said Montagu, in an altered voice. “Approach

nearer,--nearer yet. They who talk of a crowned king, whose right hand

raises armies, and whose left hand reposes on the block, should beware

how they speak above their breath. Witchcraft, sayest thou? Make thy

meaning clear.”

Here Robin detailed, with but little exaggeration, the scene he had

witnessed in Friar Bungey’s chamber,--the waxen image, the menaces

against the Earl of Warwick, and the words of the friar, naming the

Duchess of Bedford as his employer. Montagu listened in attentive

silence. Though not perfectly free from the credulities of the time,

shared even by the courageous heart of Edward and the piercing intellect

of Gloucester, he was yet more alarmed by such proofs of determined

earthly hostility in one so plotting and so near to the throne as the

Duchess of Bedford, than by all the pins and needles that could be

planted into the earl’s waxen counterpart.

“A devilish malice, indeed,” said he, when Hilyard had concluded; “and

yet this story, if thou wilt adhere to it, may serve us well at need. I

thank thee, trusty friend, for thy confidence, and beseech thee to come

at once with me to the king. There will I denounce our foe, and, with

thine evidence, we will demand her banishment.”

“By your leave, not a step will I budge, my Lord Montagu,” quoth Robin,

bluntly,--“I know how these matters are managed at court. The king will

patch up a peace between the duchess and you, and chop off my ears and

nose as a liar and common scandal-maker. No, no; denounce the duchess

and all the Woodvilles I will; but it shall not be in the halls of the

Tower, but on the broad plains of Yorkshire, with twenty thousand men at

my back.”

“Ha! thou a leader of armies,--and for what end,--to dethrone the king?”

“That as it may be,--but first for justice to the people; it is the

people’s rising that I will head, and not a faction’s. Neither White

Rose nor Red shall be on my banner; but our standard shall be the gory

head of the first oppressor we can place upon a pole.”

“What is it the people, as you word it, would demand?”

“I scarce know what we demand as yet,--that must depend upon how we

prosper,” returned Hilyard, with a bitter laugh; “but the rising will

have some good, if it shows only to you lords and Normans that a Saxon

people does exist, and will turn when the iron heel is upon its neck. We

are taxed, ground, pillaged, plundered,--sheep, maintained to be

sheared for your peace or butchered for your war. And now will we have

a petition and a charter of our own, Lord Montagu. I speak frankly. I

am in thy power; thou canst arrest me, thou canst strike off the head of

this revolt. Thou art the king’s friend,--wilt thou do so? No, thou and

thy House have wrongs as well as we, the people. And a part at least of

our demands and our purpose is your own.”

“What part, bold man?”

“This: we shall make our first complaint the baneful domination of the

queen’s family; and demand the banishment of the Woodvilles, root and

stem.”

“Hem!” said Montagu, involuntarily glancing over the archbishop’s

letter,--“hem, but without outrage to the king’s state and person?”

“Oh, trust me, my lord, the franklin’s head contains as much

north-country cunning as the noble’s. They who would speed well must

feel their way cautiously.”

“Twenty thousand men--impossible! Who art thou, to collect and head

them?”

“Plain Robin of Redesdale.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Montagu, “is it indeed as I was taught to suspect?

Art thou that bold, strange, mad fellow, whom, by pike and brand--a

soldier’s oath--I, a soldier, have often longed to see. Let me look at

thee. ‘Fore Saint George, a tall man, and well knit, with dareiment on

thy brow. Why, there are as many tales of thee in the North as of my

brother the earl. Some say thou art a lord of degree and birth, others

that thou art the robber of Hexham to whom Margaret of Anjou trusted her

own life and her son’s.”

“Whatever they say of me,” returned Robin, “they all agree in

this,--that I am a man of honest word and bold deed; that I can stir

up the hearts of men, as the wind stirreth fire; that I came an

unknown stranger into the parts where I abide; and that no peer in this

roiaulme, save Warwick himself, can do more to raise an army or shake a

throne.”

“But by what spell?”

“By men’s wrongs, lord,” answered Robin, in a deep voice; “and now, ere

this moon wanes, Redesdale is a camp!”

“What the immediate cause of complaint?”

“The hospital of St. Leonard’s has compelled us unjustly to render them

a thrave of corn.”

“Thou art a cunning knave! Pinch the belly if you would make Englishmen

rise.”

“True,” said Robin, smiling grimly; “and now--what say you--will you

head us?”

“Head you! No!”

“Will you betray us?”

“It is not easy to betray twenty thousand men; if ye rise merely to free

yourselves from a corn-tax and England from the Woodvilles, I see no

treason in your revolt.”

“I understand you, Lord Montagu,” said Robin, with a stern and

half-scornful smile,--“you are not above thriving by our danger; but we

need now no lord and baron,--we will suffice for ourselves. And the hour

will come, believe me, when Lord Warwick, pursued by the king, must fly

to the Commons. Think well of these things and this prophecy, when the

news from the North startles Edward of March in the lap of his harlots.”

Without saying another word, he turned and quitted the chamber as

abruptly as he had entered.

Lord Montagu was not, for his age, a bad man; though worldly, subtle,

and designing, with some of the craft of his prelate brother he united

something of the high soul of his brother soldier. But that age had

not the virtue of later times, and cannot be judged by its standard.

He heard this bold dare-devil menace his country with civil war upon

grounds not plainly stated nor clearly understood,--he aided not, but he

connived: “Twenty thousand men in arms,” he muttered to himself,--“say

half-well, ten thousand--not against Edward, but the Woodvilles! It must

bring the king to his senses; must prove to him how odious the mushroom

race of the Woodvilles, and drive him for safety and for refuge to

Montagu and Warwick. If the knaves presume too far,” (and Montagu

smiled), “what are undisciplined multitudes to the eye of a skilful

captain? Let the storm blow, we will guide the blast. In this world man

must make use of man.”

CHAPTER IV. SIBYLL.

While Montagu in anxious forethought awaited the revolt that Robin of

Redesdale had predicted; while Edward feasted and laughed, merry-made

with his courtiers, and aided the conjugal duties of his good citizens

in London; while the queen and her father, Lord Rivers, more and more

in the absence of Warwick encroached on all the good things power can

bestow and avarice seize; while the Duchess of Bedford and Friar Bungey

toiled hard at the waxen effigies of the great earl, who still held his

royal son-in-law in his court at Calais,--the stream of our narrative

winds from its noisier channels, and lingers, with a quiet wave, around

the temple of a virgin’s heart. Wherefore is Sibyll sad? Some short

month since and we beheld her gay with hope and basking in the sunny

atmosphere of pleasure and of love. The mind of this girl was a singular

combination of tenderness and pride,--the first wholly natural, the last

the result of circumstance and position. She was keenly conscious of her

gentle birth and her earlier prospects in the court of Margaret; and

the poverty and distress and solitude in which she had grown up from the

child into the woman had only served to strengthen what, in her nature,

was already strong, and to heighten whatever was already proud. Ever in

her youngest dreams of the future ambition had visibly blent itself with

the vague ideas of love. The imagined wooer was less to be young and

fair than renowned and stately. She viewed him through the mists of the

future, as the protector of her persecuted father, as the rebuilder of a

fallen House, as the ennobler of a humbled name; and from the moment in

which her girl’s heart beat at the voice of Hastings, the ideal of her

soul seemed found. And when, transplanted to the court, she learned to

judge of her native grace and loveliness by the common admiration they

excited, her hopes grew justified to her inexperienced reason. Often and

ever the words of Hastings, at the house of Lady Longueville, rang in

her ear, and thrilled through the solitude of night,--“Whoever is fair

and chaste, gentle and loving, is in the eyes of William de Hastings the

mate and equal of a king.” In visits that she had found opportunity to

make to the Lady Longueville, these hopes were duly fed; for the old

Lancastrian detested the Lady Bonville, as Lord Warwick’s sister,

and she would have reconciled her pride to view with complacency his

alliance with the alchemist’s daughter, if it led to his estrangement

from the memory of his first love; and, therefore, when her quick eye

penetrated the secret of Sibyll’s heart, and when she witnessed--for

Hastings often encountered (and seemed to seek the encounter) the young

maid at Lady Longueville’s house--the unconcealed admiration which

justified Sibyll in her high-placed affection, she scrupled not to

encourage the blushing girl by predictions in which she forced her own

better judgment to believe. Nor, when she learned Sibyll’s descent from

a family that had once ranked as high as that of Hastings, would she

allow that there was any disparity in the alliance she foretold. But

more, far more than Lady Longueville’s assurances, did the delicate

and unceasing gallantries of Hastings himself flatter the fond faith

of Sibyll. True, that he spoke not actually of love, but every look

implied, every whisper seemed to betray it. And to her he spoke as to an

equal, not in birth alone, but in mind; so superior was she in culture,

in natural gifts, and, above all, in that train of high thought and

elevated sentiment, in which genius ever finds a sympathy, to the

court-flutterers of her sex, that Hastings, whether or not he cherished

a warmer feeling, might well take pleasure in her converse, and feel

the lovely infant worthy the wise man’s trust. He spoke to her without

reserve of the Lady Bonville, and he spoke with bitterness. “I

loved her,” he said, “as woman is rarely loved. She deserted me for

another--rather should she have gone to the convent than the altar; and

now, forsooth, she deems she hath the right to taunt and to rate me, to

dictate to me the way I should walk, and to flaunt the honours I have

won.”

“May that be no sign of a yet tender interest?” said Sibyll, timidly.

The eyes of Hastings sparkled for a moment, but the gleam vanished.

“Nay, you know her not. Her heart is marble, as hard and as cold;

her very virtue but the absence of emotion,--I would say, of gentler

emotion; for, pardieu, such emotions as come from ire and pride and

scorn are the daily growth of that stern soil. Oh, happy was my escape!

Happy the desertion which my young folly deemed a curse! No!” he added,

with a sarcastic quiver of his lip--“no; what stings and galls the Lady

of Harrington and Bonville, what makes her countenance change in my

presence, and her voice sharpen at my accost, is plainly this: in

wedding her dull lord and rejecting me, Katherine Nevile deemed she

wedded power and rank and station; and now, while we are both young,

how proves her choice? The Lord of Harrington and Bonville is so noted a

dolt, that even the Neviles cannot help him to rise,--the meanest office

is above his mind’s level; and, dragged down by the heavy clay to which

her wings are yoked, Katherine, Lady of Harrington and Bonville--oh,

give her her due titles!--is but a pageant figure in the court. If the

war-trump blew, his very vassals would laugh at a Bonville’s banner, and

beneath the flag of poor William Hastings would gladly march the

best chivalry of the land. And this it is, I say, that galls her. For

evermore she is driven to compare the state she holds as the dame of

the accepted Bonville with that she lost as the wife of the disdained

Hastings.”

And if, in the heat and passion that such words betrayed, Sibyll sighed

to think that something of the old remembrance yet swelled and burned,

they but impressed her more with the value of a heart in which the

characters once writ endured so long, and roused her to a tender

ambition to heal and to console.

Then looking into her own deep soul, Sibyll beheld there a fund of such

generous, pure, and noble affection, such reverence as to the fame, such

love as to the man, that she proudly felt herself worthier of Hastings

than the haughty Katherine. She entered then, as it were, the lists with

this rival,--a memory rather, so she thought, than a corporeal being;

and her eye grew brighter, her step statelier, in the excitement of the

contest, the anticipation of the triumph. For what diamond without its

flaw? What rose without its canker? And bedded deep in that exquisite

and charming nature lay the dangerous and fatal weakness which has

cursed so many victims, broken so many hearts,--the vanity of the sex.

We may now readily conceive how little predisposed was Sibyll to the

blunt advances and displeasing warnings of the Lady Bonville, and the

more so from the time in which they chanced. For here comes the answer

to the question, “Why was Sibyll sad?”

The reader may determine for himself what were the ruling motives of

Lord Hastings in the court he paid to Sibyll. Whether to pique the Lady

Bonville, and force upon her the jealous pain he restlessly sought

to inflict; whether, from the habit of his careless life, seeking the

pleasure of the moment, with little forethought of the future, and

reconciling itself to much cruelty, by that profound contempt for human

beings, man, and still more for woman, which sad experience often brings

to acute intellect; or whether, from the purer and holier complacency

with which one whose youth has fed upon nobler aspirations than manhood

cares to pursue, suns itself back to something of its earlier lustre

in the presence and the converse of a young bright soul,--whatever,

in brief, the earlier motives of gallantries to Sibyll, once begun,

constantly renewed, by degrees wilder and warmer and guiltier emotions

roused up in the universal and all-conquering lover the vice of his

softer nature. When calm and unimpassioned, his conscience had said

to him, “Thou shalt spare that flower.” But when once the passion was

roused within him, the purity of the flower was forgotten in the breath

of its voluptuous sweetness.

And but three days before the scene we have described with Katherine,

Sibyll’s fabric of hope fell to the dust. For Hastings spoke for the

first time of love, for the first time knelt at her feet, for the

first time, clasping to his heart that virgin hand, poured forth the

protestation and the vow. And oh! woe--woe! for the first time she

learned how cheaply the great man held the poor maiden’s love, how

little he deemed that purity and genius and affection equalled the

possessor of fame and wealth and power; for plainly visible, boldly

shown and spoken, the love that she had foreseen as a glory from the

heaven sought but to humble her to the dust.

The anguish of that moment was unspeakable,--and she spoke it not. But

as she broke from the profaning clasp, as escaping to the threshold she

cast on the unworthy wooer one look of such reproachful sorrow as told

at once all her love and all her horror, the first act in the eternal

tragedy of man’s wrong and woman’s grief was closed. And therefore was

Sibyll sad!

CHAPTER V. KATHERINE.

For several days Hastings avoided Sibyll; in truth, he felt remorse for

his design, and in his various, active, and brilliant life he had not

the leisure for obstinate and systematic siege to a single virtue, nor

was he, perhaps, any longer capable of deep and enduring passion; his

heart, like that of many a chevalier in the earlier day, had lavished

itself upon one object, and sullenly, upon regrets and dreams, and vain

anger and idle scorn, it had exhausted those sentiments which make

the sum of true love. And so, like Petrarch, whom his taste and fancy

worshipped, and many another votary of the gentil Dieu, while his

imagination devoted itself to the chaste and distant ideal--the

spiritual Laura--his senses, ever vagrant and disengaged, settled

without scruple upon the thousand Cynthias of the minute. But then those

Cynthias were, for the most part, and especially of late years, easy and

light-won nymphs; their coyest were of another clay from the tender but

lofty Sibyll. And Hastings shrunk from the cold-blooded and deliberate

seduction of one so pure, while he could not reconcile his mind to

contemplate marriage with a girl who could give nothing to his ambition;

and yet it was not in this last reluctance only his ambition that

startled and recoiled. In that strange tyranny over his whole soul which

Katherine Bonville secretly exercised, he did not dare to place a new

barrier evermore between her and himself. The Lord Bonville was of

infirm health; he had been more than once near to death’s door; and

Hastings, in every succeeding fancy that beguiled his path, recalled the

thrill of his heart when it had whispered “Katherine, the loved of thy

youth, may yet be thine!” And then that Katherine rose before him,

not as she now swept the earth, with haughty step and frigid eye and

disdainful lip, but as--in all her bloom of maiden beauty, before the

temper was soured or the pride aroused--she had met him in the summer

twilight, by the trysting-tree, broken with him the golden ring of

faith, and wept upon his bosom.

And yet, during his brief and self-inflicted absence from Sibyll, this

wayward and singular personage, who was never weak but to women, and

ever weak to them, felt that she had made herself far dearer to him than

he had at first supposed it possible. He missed that face, ever,

till the last interview, so confiding in the unconsciously betrayed

affection. He felt how superior in sweetness and yet in intellect Sibyll

was to Katherine; there was more in common between her mind and his in

all things, save one. But oh, that one exception!--what a world lies

within it,--the memory of the spring of life! In fact, though Hastings

knew it not, he was in love with two objects at once; the one, a

chimera, a fancy, an ideal, an Eidolon, under the name of Katherine;

the other, youth and freshness and mind and heart and a living shape of

beauty, under the name of Sibyll. Often does this double love happen to

men; but when it does, alas for the human object! for the shadowy and

the spiritual one is immortal,--until, indeed, it be possessed!

It might be, perhaps, with a resolute desire to conquer the new love and

confirm the old that Hastings, one morning, repaired to the house of the

Lady Bonville, for her visit to the court had expired. It was a large

mansion, without the Lud Gate.

He found the dame in a comely chamber, seated in the sole chair the room

contained, to which was attached a foot-board that served as a

dais, while around her, on low stools, sat some spinning, others

broidering--some ten or twelve young maidens of good family, sent to

receive their nurturing under the high-born Katherine, [And strange

as it may seem to modern notions, the highest lady who received such

pensioners accepted a befitting salary for their board and education.]

while two other and somewhat elder virgins sat a little apart, but close

under the eye of the lady, practising the courtly game of “prime:” for

the diversion of cards was in its zenith of fashion under Edward IV.,

and even half a century later was considered one of the essential

accomplishments of a well-educated young lady. [So the Princess

Margaret, daughter of Henry VIL, at the age of fourteen, exhibits

her skill, in prime or trump, to her betrothed husband, James IV.

of Scotland; so, among the womanly arts of the unhappy Katherine of

Arragon, it is mentioned that she could play at “cards and dyce.” (See

Strutt: Games and Pastimes, Hones’ edition, p. 327.) The legislature

was very anxious to keep these games sacred to the aristocracy, and

very wroth with ‘prentices and the vulgar for imitating the ruinous

amusements of their betters.] The exceeding stiffness, the solemn

silence of this female circle, but little accorded with the mood of

the graceful visitor. The demoiselles stirred not at his entrance, and

Katherine quietly motioned him to a seat at some distance.

“By your leave, fair lady,” said Hastings, “I rebel against so distant

an exile from such sweet company;” and he moved the tabouret close to

the formidable chair of the presiding chieftainess.

Katherine smiled faintly, but not in displeasure.

“So gay a presence,” she said, “must, I fear me, a little disturb these

learners.”

Hastings glanced at the prim demureness written on each blooming visage,

and replied,--

“You wrong their ardour in such noble studies. I would wager that

nothing less than my entering your bower on horseback, with helm on

head and lance in rest, could provoke even a smile from one pair of

the twenty rosy lips round which, methinks, I behold Cupido hovering in

vain!”

The baroness bent her stately brows, and the twenty rosy lips were all

tightly pursed up, to prevent the indecorous exhibition which the wicked

courtier had provoked. But it would not do: one and all the twenty lips

broke into a smile,--but a smile so tortured, constrained, and nipped in

the bud, that it only gave an expression of pain to the features it was

forbidden to enliven.

“And what brings the Lord Hastings hither?” asked the baroness, in a

formal tone.

“Can you never allow for motive the desire of pleasure, fair dame?”

That peculiar and exquisite blush, which at moments changed the whole

physiognomy of Katherine, flitted across her smooth cheek, and vanished.

She said gravely,--

“So much do I allow it in you, my lord, that hence my question.”

“Katherine!” exclaimed Hastings, in a voice of tender reproach, and

attempting to seize her hand, forgetful of all other presence save that

to which the blush, that spoke of old, gave back the ancient charm.

Katherine cast a hurried and startled glance over the maiden group,

and her eye detected on the automaton faces one common expression of

surprise. Humbled and deeply displeased, she rose from the awful chair,

and then, as suddenly reseating herself, she said, with a voice and

lip of the most cutting irony, “My lord chamberlain is, it seems, so

habituated to lackey his king amidst the goldsmiths and grocers, that he

forgets the form of language and respect of bearing which a noblewoman

of repute is accustomed to consider seemly.”

Hastings bit his lip, and his falcon eye shot indignant fire.

“Pardon, my Lady of Bonville and Harrington, I did indeed forget what

reasons the dame of so wise and so renowned a lord hath to feel pride

in the titles she hath won. But I see that my visit hath chanced out of

season. My business, in truth, was rather with my lord, whose counsel in

peace is as famous as his truncheon in war!”

“It is enough,” replied Katherine, with a dignity that rebuked the

taunt, “that Lord Bonville has the name of an honest man,--who never

rose at court.”

“Woman, without one soft woman-feeling!” muttered Hastings, between his

ground teeth, as he approached the lady and made his profound obeisance.

The words were intended only for Katherine’s ear, and they reached it.

Her bosom swelled beneath the brocaded gorget, and when the door closed

on Hastings, she pressed her hands convulsively together, and her dark

eyes were raised upward.

“My child, thou art entangling thy skein,” said the lady of Bonville,

as she passed one of the maidens, towards the casement, which she

opened,--“the air to-day weighs heavily!”

CHAPTER VI. JOY FOR ADAM, AND HOPE FOR SIBYLL--AND POPULAR FRIAR BUNGEY!

Leaping on his palfrey, Hastings rode back to the Tower, dismounted at

the gate, passed on to the little postern in the inner court, and paused

not till he was in Warner’s room. “How now, friend Adam? Thou art idle.”

“Lord Hastings, I am ill.”

“And thy child not with thee?”

“She is gone to her grace the duchess, to pray her to grant me leave to

go home, and waste no more life on making gold.”

“Home! Go hence! We cannot hear it! The duchess must not grant it. I

will not suffer the king to lose so learned a philosopher.”

“Then pray the king to let the philosopher achieve that which is in

the power of labour.” He pointed to the Eureka. “Let me be heard in the

king’s council, and prove to sufficing judges what this iron can do for

England.”

“Is that all? So be it. I will speak to his highness forthwith. But

promise that thou wilt think no more of leaving the king’s palace.”

“Oh, no, no! If I may enter again into mine own palace, mine own royalty

of craft and hope, the court or the dungeon all one to me!”

“Father,” said Sibyll, entering, “be comforted. The duchess forbids

thy departure, but we will yet flee--” She stopped short as she saw

Hastings. He approached her timidly, and with so repentant, so earnest a

respect in his mien and gesture, that she had not the heart to draw back

the fair hand he lifted to his lips.

“No, flee not, sweet donzell; leave not the desert court, without the

flower and the laurel, the beauty and the wisdom, that scent the hour,

and foretype eternity. I have conferred with thy father,--I will obtain

his prayer from the king. His mind shall be free to follow its own

impulse, and thou”--he whispered--“pardon--pardon an offence of too much

love. Never shall it wound again.”

Her eyes, swimming with delicious tears, were fixed upon the floor.

Poor child! with so much love, how could she cherish anger? With so

much purity, how distrust herself? And while, at least, he spoke, the

dangerous lover was sincere. So from that hour peace was renewed between

Sibyll and Lord Hastings.--Fatal peace! alas for the girl who loves--and

has no mother!

True to his word, the courtier braved the displeasure of the Duchess of

Bedford, in inducing the king to consider the expediency of permitting

Adam to relinquish alchemy, and repair his model. Edward summoned a

deputation from the London merchants and traders, before whom Adam

appeared and explained his device. But these practical men at first

ridiculed the notion as a madman’s fancy, and it required all the art of

Hastings to overcome their contempt, and appeal to the native acuteness

of the king. Edward, however, was only caught by Adam’s incidental

allusions to the application of his principle to ships. The

merchant-king suddenly roused himself to attention, when it was promised

to him that his galleys should cross the seas without sail, and against

wind and tide.

“By Saint George!” said he, then, “let the honest man have his whim.

Mend thy model, and every saint in the calendar speed thee! Master

Heyford, tell thy comely wife that I and Hastings will sup with

her to-morrow, for her hippocras is a rare dainty. Good day to

you, worshipful my masters. Hastings, come hither; enough of these

trifles,--I must confer with thee on matters really pressing,--this

damnable marriage of gentle George’s!”

And now Adam Warner was restored to his native element of thought; now

the crucible was at rest, and the Eureka began to rise from its ruins.

He knew not the hate that he had acquired in the permission he had

gained; for the London deputies, on their return home, talked of nothing

else for a whole week but the favour the king had shown to a strange

man, half-maniac, half-conjuror, who had undertaken to devise a

something which would throw all the artisans and journeymen out of work!

From merchant to mechanic travelled the news, and many an honest man

cursed the great scholar, as he looked at his young children, and wished

to have one good blow at the head that was hatching such devilish malice

against the poor! The name of Adam Warner became a byword of scorn and

horror. Nothing less than the deep ditch and strong walls of the Tower

could have saved him from the popular indignation; and these prejudices

were skilfully fed by the jealous enmity of his fellow-student, the

terrible Friar Bungey. This man, though in all matters of true learning

and science worthy the utmost contempt Adam could heap upon him, was by

no means of despicable abilities in the arts of imposing upon men. In

his youth he had been an itinerant mountebank, or, as it was called,

tregetour. He knew well all the curious tricks of juggling that then

amazed the vulgar, and, we fear, are lost to the craft of our modern

necromancers. He could clothe a wall with seeming vines, that vanished

as you approached; he could conjure up in his quiet cell the likeness

of a castle manned with soldiers, or a forest tenanted by deer. [See

Chaucer, House of Time, Book III.; also the account given by Baptista

Porta, of his own Magical Delusions, of which an extract may be seen in

the “Curiosities of Literature” Art., Dreams at the Dawn of Philosophy.]

Besides these illusions, probably produced by more powerful magic

lanterns than are now used, the friar had stumbled upon the wondrous

effects of animal magnetism, which was then unconsciously practised by

the alchemists and cultivators of white or sacred magic. He was an adept

in the craft of fortune-telling; and his intimate acquaintance with all

noted characters in the metropolis, their previous history and present

circumstances, enabled his natural shrewdness to hit the mark, at least

now and then, in his oracular predictions. He had taken, for safety and

for bread, the friar’s robes, and had long enjoyed the confidence of

the Duchess of Bedford, the traditional descendant of the serpent-witch,

Melusina. Moreover, and in this the friar especially valued himself,

Bungey had, in the course of his hardy, vagrant early life, studied,

as shepherds and mariners do now, the signs of the weather; and as

weather-glasses were then unknown, nothing could be more convenient

to the royal planners of a summer chase or a hawking company than the

neighbourhood of a skilful predictor of storm and sunshine. In fact,

there was no part in the lore of magic which the popular seers found so

useful and studied so much as that which enabled them to prognosticate

the humours of the sky, at a period when the lives of all men were

principally spent in the open air.

The fame of Friar Bungey had travelled much farther than the repute of

Adam Warner: it was known in the distant provinces: and many a northern

peasant grew pale as he related to his gaping listeners the tales he had

heard of the Duchess Jacquetta’s dread magician.

And yet, though the friar was an atrocious knave and a ludicrous

impostor, on the whole he was by no means unpopular, especially in

the metropolis, for he was naturally a jolly, social fellow; he often

ventured boldly forth into the different hostelries and reunions of the

populace, and enjoyed the admiration he there excited, and pocketed the

groats he there collected. He had no pride,--none in the least, this

Friar Bungey!--and was as affable as a magician could be to the

meanest mechanic who crossed his broad horn palm. A vulgar man is never

unpopular with the vulgar. Moreover, the friar, who was a very cunning

person, wished to keep well with the mob: he was fond of his own

impudent, cheating, burly carcass, and had the prudence to foresee that

a time might come when his royal patrons might forsake him, and a mob

might be a terrible monster to meet in his path; therefore he always

affected to love the poor, often told their fortunes gratis, now and

then gave them something to drink, and was esteemed a man exceedingly

good-natured, because he did not always have the devil at his back.

Now Friar Bungey had naturally enough evinced from the first a great

distaste and jealousy of Adam Warner; but occasionally profiting by the

science of the latter, he suffered his resentment to sleep latent till

it was roused into fury by learning the express favour shown to Adam by

the king, and the marvellous results expected from his contrivance. His

envy, then, forbade all tolerance and mercy; the world was not large

enough to contain two such giants,--Bungey and Warner, the genius and

the quack. To the best of our experience, the quacks have the same creed

to our own day. He vowed deep vengeance upon his associate, and spared

no arts to foment the popular hatred against him. Friar Bungey would

have been a great critic in our day!

But besides his jealousy, the fat friar had another motive for desiring

poor Adam’s destruction; he coveted his model! True, he despised the

model, he jeered the model, he abhorred the model; but, nevertheless,

for the model every string in his bowels fondly yearned. He believed

that if that model were once repaired, and in his possession, he could

do--what he knew not, but certainly all that was wanting to complete his

glory, and to bubble the public.

Unconscious of all that was at work against him, Adam threw his whole

heart and soul into his labour; and happy in his happiness, Sibyll once

more smiled gratefully upon Hastings, from whom the rapture came.

CHAPTER VII. A LOVE SCENE.

More than ever chafed against Katherine, Hastings surrendered himself

without reserve to the charm he found in the society of Sibyll. Her

confidence being again restored, again her mind showed itself to

advantage, and the more because her pride was further roused to assert

the equality with rank and gold which she took from nature and from God.

It so often happens that the first love of woman is accompanied with

a bashful timidity, which overcomes the effort, while it increases the

desire, to shine, that the union of love and timidity has been called

inseparable, in the hackneyed language of every love-tale. But this is

no invariable rule, as Shakspeare has shown us in the artless Miranda,

in the eloquent Juliet, in the frank and healthful Rosalind;--and the

love of Sibyll was no common girl’s spring-fever of sighs and blushes.

It lay in the mind, the imagination, the intelligence, as well as in the

heart and fancy. It was a breeze that stirred from the modest leaves

of the rose all their diviner odour. It was impossible but what this

strong, fresh young nature--with its free gayety when happy, its earnest

pathos when sad, its various faculties of judgment and sentiment, and

covert play of innocent wit--should not contrast forcibly, in the mind

of a man who had the want to be amused and interested, with the cold

pride of Katherine, the dull atmosphere in which her stiff, unbending

virtue breathed unintellectual air, and still more with the dressed

puppets, with painted cheeks and barren talk, who filled up the common

world, under the name of women.

His feelings for Sibyll, therefore, took a more grave and respectful

colour, and his attentions, if gallant ever, were those of a man wooing

one whom he would make his wife, and studying the qualities to which

he was disposed to intrust his happiness; and so pure was Sibyll’s

affection, that she could have been contented to have lived forever

thus,--have seen and heard him daily, have talked but the words of

friendship though with the thoughts of love; for some passions refine

themselves through the very fire of the imagination into which the

senses are absorbed, and by the ideal purification elevated up to

spirit. Rapt in the exquisite happiness she now enjoyed, Sibyll

perceived not, or, if perceiving, scarcely heeded; that the admirers,

who had before fluttered round her, gradually dropped off; that the

ladies of the court, the damsels who shared her light duties, grew

distant and silent at her approach; that strange looks were bent on

her; that sometimes when she and Hastings were seen together, the stern

frowned and the godly crossed themselves.

The popular prejudices had reacted on the court. The wizard’s daughter

was held to share the gifts of her sire, and the fascination of beauty

was imputed to evil spells. Lord Hastings was regarded--especially by

all the ladies he had once courted and forsaken--as a man egregiously

bewitched!

One day it chanced that Sibyll encountered Hastings in the walk that

girded the ramparts of the Tower. He was pacing musingly, with folded

arms, when he raised his eyes and beheld her.

“And whither go you thus alone, fair mistress?”

“The duchess bade me seek the queen, who is taking the air yonder. My

lady has received some tidings she would impart to her highness.”

“I was thinking of thee, fair damsel, when thy face brightened on my

musings; and I was comparing thee to others who dwell in the world’s

high places, and marvelling at the whims of fortune.”

Sibyll smiled faintly, and answered, “Provoke not too much the aspiring

folly of my nature. Content is better than ambition.”

“Thou ownest thy ambition?” asked Hastings, curiously.

“Ah, sir, who hath it not?”

“But for thy sweet sex ambition has so narrow and cribbed a field.”

“Not so; for it lives in others. I would say,” continued Sibyll,

colouring, fearful that she had betrayed herself, “for example, that

so long as my father toils for fame, I breathe in his hope, and am

ambitious for his honour.”

“And so, if thou wert wedded to one worthy of thee, in his ambition thou

wouldst soar and dare?”

“Perhaps,” answered Sibyll, coyly.

“But if thou wert wedded to sorrow and poverty and troublous care, thine

ambition, thus struck dead, would of consequence strike dead thy love?”

“Nay, noble lord, nay; canst thou so wrong womanhood in me unworthy? for

surely true ambition lives not only in the goods of fortune. Is there

no nobler ambition than that of the vanity? Is there no ambition of the

heart,--an ambition to console, to cheer the griefs of those who love

and trust us; an ambition to build a happiness out of the reach of

fate; an ambition to soothe some high soul, in its strife with a mean

world,--to lull to sleep its pain, to smile to serenity its cares? Oh,

methinks a woman’s true ambition would rise the bravest when, in the

very sight of death itself, the voice of him in whom her glory had dwelt

through life should say, ‘Thou fearest not to walk to the grave and to

heaven by my side!”’

Sweet and thrilling were the tones in which these words were said, lofty

and solemn the upward and tearful look with which they closed.

And the answer struck home to the native and original heroism of the

listener’s nature, before debased into the cynic sourness of worldly

wisdom. Never had Katherine herself more forcibly recalled to Hastings

the pure and virgin glory of his youth.

“Oh, Sibyll!” he exclaimed passionately, and yielding to the impulse of

the moment,--“oh, that for me, as to me, such high words were said! Oh,

that all the triumphs of a life men call prosperous were excelled by the

one triumph of waking such an ambition in such a heart!”

Sibyll stood before him transformed,--pale, trembling, mute,--and

Hastings, clasping her hand and covering it with kisses, said,--

“Dare I arede thy silence? Sibyll, thou lovest me--O Sibyll, speak!”

With a convulsive effort, the girl’s lips moved, then closed, then moved

again, into low and broken words.

“Why this, why this? Thou hadst promised not to--not to--”

“Not to insult thee by unworthy vows! Nor do I. But as my wife.” He

paused abruptly, alarmed at his own impetuous words, and scared by the

phantom of the world that rose like a bodily thing before the generous

impulse, and grinned in scorn of his folly.

But Sibyll heard only that one holy word of WIFE, and so sudden and so

great was the transport it called forth, that her senses grew faint

and dizzy, and she would have fallen to the earth but for the arms that

circled her, and the breast upon which, now, the virgin might veil the

blush that did not speak of shame.

With various feelings, both were a moment silent. But oh, that moment!

what centuries of bliss were crowded into it for the nobler and fairer

nature!

At last, gently releasing herself, she put her hands before her eyes, as

if to convince herself she was awake, and then, turning her lovely face

full upon the wooer, Sibyll said ingenuously,--

“Oh, my lord--oh, Hastings! if thy calmer reason repent not these words,

if thou canst approve in me what thou didst admire in Elizabeth the

queen, if thou canst raise one who has no dower but her heart to the

state of thy wife and partner, by this hand, which I place fearlessly

in thine, I pledge thee to such a love as minstrel hath never sung. No!”

she continued, drawing loftily up her light stature,--“no, thou shalt

not find me unworthy of thy name,--mighty though it is, mightier though

it shall be. I have a mind that can share thine objects, I have pride

that can exult in thy power, courage to partake thy dangers, and

devotion--” she hesitated, with the most charming blush--“but of that,

sweet lord, thou shalt judge hereafter! This is my dowry,--it is all!”

“And all I ask or covet,” said Hastings. But his cheek had lost its

first passionate glow. Lord of many a broad land and barony, victorious

captain in many a foughten field, wise statesman in many a thoughtful

stratagem, high in his king’s favour, and linked with a nation’s

history,--William de Hastings at that hour was as far below as earth is

to heaven the poor maiden whom he already repented to have so honoured,

and whose sublime answer woke no echo from his heart.

Fortunately, as he deemed it, at that very instant he heard many steps

rapidly approaching, and his own name called aloud by the voice of the

king’s body-squire.

“Hark! Edward summons me,” he said, with a feeling of reprieve.

“Farewell, dear Sibyll, farewell for a brief while,--we shall meet

anon.”

At this time they were standing in that part of the rampart walk which

is now backed by the barracks of a modern soldiery, and before which,

on the other side of the moat, lay a space that had seemed solitary and

deserted; but as Hastings, in speaking his adieu, hurriedly pressed

his lips on Sibyll’s forehead, from a tavern without the fortress, and

opposite the spot on which they stood, suddenly sallied a disorderly

troop of half-drunken soldiers, with a gang of the wretched women that

always continue the classic associations of a false Venus with a brutal

Mars; and the last words of Hastings were scarcely spoken, before a loud

laugh startled both himself and Sibyll, and a shudder came over her when

she beheld the tinsel robes of the tymbesteres glittering in the sun,

and heard their leader sing, as she darted from the arms of a reeling

soldier,--

“Ha! death to the dove

Is the falcon’s love.

Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon’s beak!”

BOOK VII. THE POPULAR REBELLION.

CHAPTER I. THE WHITE LION OF MARCH SHAKES HIS MANE.

“And what news?” asked Hastings, as he found himself amidst the king’s

squires; while yet was heard the laugh of the tymbesteres, and yet

gliding through the trees might be seen the retreating form of Sibyll.

“My lord, the king needs you instantly. A courier has just arrived from

the North. The Lords St. John, Rivers, De Fulke, and Scales are already

with his highness.”

“Where?”

“In the great council chamber.”

To that memorable room [it was from this room that Hastings was hurried

to execution, June 13, 1483] in the White Tower, in which the visitor,

on entrance, is first reminded of the name and fate of Hastings, strode

the unprophetic lord.

He found Edward not reclining on cushions and carpets, not womanlike in

loose robes, not with his lazy smile upon his sleek beauty. The king had

doffed his gown, and stood erect in the tight tunic, which gave in full

perfection the splendid proportions of a frame unsurpassed in activity

and strength. Before him, on the long table, lay two or three open

letters, beside the dagger with which Edward had cut the silk that bound

them. Around him gravely sat Lord Rivers, Anthony Woodville, Lord St.

John, Raoul de Fulke, the young and valiant D’Eyncourt, and many other

of the principal lords. Hastings saw at once that something of pith and

moment had occurred; and by the fire in the king’s eye, the dilation of

his nostril, the cheerful and almost joyous pride of his mien and brow,

the experienced courtier read the signs of WAR.

“Welcome, brave Hastings,” said Edward, in a voice wholly changed from

its wonted soft affectation,--loud, clear, and thrilling as it went

through the marrow and heart of all who heard its stirring and trumpet

accent,--“welcome now to the field as ever to the banquet! We have news

from the North that bids us brace on the burgonet and buckle-to the

brand,--a revolt that requires a king’s arm to quell. In Yorkshire

fifteen thousand men are in arms, under a leader they call Robin of

Redesdale,--the pretext, a thrave of corn demanded by the Hospital of

St. Leonard’s, the true design that of treason to our realm. At the same

time, we hear from our brother of Gloucester, now on the Border, that

the Scotch have lifted the Lancaster Rose. There is peril if these two

armies meet. No time to lose,--they are saddling our war-steeds; we

hasten to the van of our royal force. We shall have warm work, my lords.

But who is worthy of a throne that cannot guard it?”

“This is sad tidings indeed, sire,” said Hastings, gravely.

“Sad! Say it not, Hastings! War is the chase of kings! Sir Raoul de

Fulke, why lookest thou so brooding and sorrowful?”

“Sire, I but thought that had Earl Warwick been in England, this--”

“Ha!” interrupted Edward, haughtily and hastily, “and is Warwick the sun

of heaven that no cloud can darken where his face may shine? The

rebels shall need no foe, my realm no regent, while I, the heir of the

Plantagenets, have the sword for one, the sceptre for the other. We

depart this evening ere the sun be set.”

“My liege,” said the Lord St. John, gravely, “on what forces do you

count to meet so formidable an array?”

“All England, Lord of St. John!”

“Alack! my liege, may you not deceive yourself! But in this crisis it is

right that your leal and trusty subjects should speak out, and plainly.

It seems that these insurgents clamour not against yourself, but against

the queen’s relations,--yes, my Lord Rivers, against you and your

House,--and I fear me that the hearts of England are with them here.”

“It is true, sire,” put in Raoul de Fulke, boldly; “and if these--new

men are to head your armies, the warriors of Towton will stand

aloof,--Raoul de Fulke serves no Woodville’s banner. Frown not, Lord de

Scales! it is the griping avarice of you and yours that has brought this

evil on the king. For you the commons have been pillaged; for you the

daughters of peers have been forced into monstrous marriages, at war

with birth and with nature herself; for you, the princely Warwick, near

to the throne in blood, and front and pillar of our time-honoured order

of seigneur and of knight, has been thrust from our suzerain’s favour.

And if now ye are to march at the van of war,--you to be avengers of

the strife of which ye are the cause,--I say that the soldiers will lack

heart, and the provinces ye pass through will be the country of a foe!”

“Vain man!” began Anthony Woodville, when Hastings laid his hand on his

arm, while Edward, amazed at this outburst from two of the supporters

on whom he principally counted, had the prudence to suppress his

resentment, and remained silent,--but with the aspect of one resolved to

command obedience, when he once deemed it right to interfere.

“Hold, Sir Anthony!” said Hastings, who, the moment he found himself

with men, woke to all the manly spirit and profound wisdom that had

rendered his name illustrious--“hold, and let me have the word; my Lords

St. John and De Fulke, your charges are more against me than against

these gentlemen, for I am a new man,--a squire by birth, and proud to

derive mine honours from the same origin as all true nobility,--I mean

the grace of a noble liege and the happy fortune of a soldier’s sword.

It may be” (and here the artful favourite, the most beloved of the whole

court, inclined himself meekly)--“it may be that I have not borne those

honours so mildly as to disarm blame. In the war to be, let me atone.

My liege, hear your servant: give me no command,--let me be a simple

soldier, fighting by your side. My example who will not follow?--proud

to ride but as a man of arms along the track which the sword of his

sovereign shall cut through the ranks of battle! Not you, Lord de

Scales, redoubtable and invincible with lance and axe; let us new men

soothe envy by our deeds; and you, Lords St. John and De Fulke, you

shall teach us how your fathers led warriors who did not fight more

gallantly than we will. And when rebellion is at rest, when we meet

again in our suzerain’s hall, accuse us new men, if you can find us

faulty, and we will answer you as we best may.”

This address, which could have come from no man with such effect as from

Hastings, touched all present. And though the Woodvilles, father and

son, saw in it much to gall their pride, and half believed it a snare

for their humiliation, they made no opposition. Raoul de Fulke, ever

generous as fiery, stretched forth his hand, and said,--

“Lord Hastings, you have spoken well. Be it as the king wills.”

“My lords,” returned Edward, gayly, “my will is that ye be friends while

a foe is in the field. Hasten, then, I beseech you, one and all, to

raise your vassals, and join our standard at Fotheringay. I will find ye

posts that shall content the bravest.”

The king made a sign to break up the conference, and dismissing even the

Woodvilles, was left alone with Hastings.

“Thou hast served me at need, Will;” said the king. “But I shall

remember” (and his eye flashed a tiger’s fire) “the mouthing of those

mock-pieces of the lords at Runnymede. I am no John, to be bearded by

my vassals. Enough of them now. Think you Warwick can have abetted this

revolt?”

“A revolt of peasants and yeomen! No, sire. If he did so, farewell

forever to the love the barons bear him.”

“Um! and yet Montagu, whom I dismissed ten days since to the Borders,

hearing of disaffection, hath done nought to check it. But come what

may, his must be a bold lance that shivers against a king’s mail. And

now one kiss of my lady Bessee, one cup of the bright canary, and then

God and Saint George for the White Rose!”

CHAPTER II. THE CAMP AT OLNEY.

It was some weeks after the citizens of London had seen their gallant

king, at the head of such forces as were collected in haste in the

metropolis, depart from their walls to the encounter of the rebels.

Surprising and disastrous had been the tidings in the interim. At first,

indeed, there were hopes that the insurrection had been put down by

Montagu, who had defeated the troops of Robin of Redesdale, near the

city of York, and was said to have beheaded their leader. But the spirit

of discontent was only fanned by an adverse wind. The popular hatred to

the Woodvilles was so great, that in proportion as Edward advanced to

the scene of action, the country rose in arms, as Raoul de Fulke had

predicted. Leaders of lordly birth now headed the rebellion; the sons

of the Lords Latimer and Fitzhugh (near kinsmen of the House of Nevile)

lent their names to the cause and Sir John Coniers, an experienced

soldier, whose claims had been disregarded by Edward, gave to the

insurgents the aid of a formidable capacity for war. In every mouth was

the story of the Duchess of Bedford’s witchcraft; and the waxen figure

of the earl did more to rouse the people than perhaps the earl himself

could have done in person. [See “Parliamentary Rolls,” vi. 232, for the

accusation of witchcraft, and the fabrication of a necromantic image

of Lord Warwick, circulated against the Duchess of Bedford. She

herself quotes and complains of them.] As yet, however, language of

the insurgents was tempered with all personal respect to the king; they

declared in their manifestoes that they desired only the banishment

of the Woodvilles and the recall of Warwick, whose name they used

unscrupulously, and whom they declared they were on their way to meet.

As soon as it was known that the kinsmen of the beloved earl were in the

revolt, and naturally supposed that the earl himself must countenance

the enterprise, the tumultuous camp swelled every hour, while knight

after knight, veteran after veteran, abandoned the royal standard. The

Lord d’Eyncourt (one of the few lords of the highest birth and greatest

following over whom the Neviles had no influence, and who bore the

Woodvilles no grudge) had, in his way to Lincolnshire,--where his

personal aid was necessary to rouse his vassals, infected by the common

sedition,--been attacked and wounded by a body of marauders, and thus

Edward’s camp lost one of its greatest leaders. Fierce dispute broke out

in the king’s councils; and when the witch Jacquetta’s practices against

the earl travelled from the hostile into the royal camp, Raoul de Fulke,

St. John, and others, seized with pious horror, positively declared

they would throw down their arms and retire to their castles, unless

the Woodvilles were dismissed from the camp and the Earl of Warwick was

recalled to England. To the first demand the king was constrained to

yield; with the second he temporized. He marched from Fotheringay to

Newark; but the signs of disaffection, though they could not dismay

him as a soldier, altered his plans as a captain of singular military

acuteness; he fell back on Nottingham, and despatched, with his own

hands, letters to Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and Warwick. To the

last he wrote touchingly.

“We do not believe” (said the letter) “that ye should be of any such

disposition towards us as the rumour here runneth, considering the

trust and affection we bear you,--and cousin, we think ye shall be to us

welcome.” [Paston Letters, ccxcviii. (Knight’s edition), vol. ii. p.

59. See also Lingard, vol. iii. p. 522 (4to edition), note 43, for the

proper date to be assigned to Edward’s letter to Warwick, etc.]

But ere these letters reached their destination, the crown seemed

well-nigh lost. At Edgecote the Earl of Pembroke was defeated and slain,

and five thousand royalists were left on the field. Earl Rivers and his

son, Sir John Woodville, [This Sir John Woodville was the most obnoxious

of the queen’s brothers, and infamous for the avarice which had led him

to marry the old Duchess of Norfolk, an act which according to the old

laws of chivalry would have disabled him from entering the lists of

knighthood, for the ancient code disqualified and degraded any knight

who should marry any old woman for her money! Lord Rivers was the more

odious to the people at the time of the insurrection because, in

his capacity of treasurer, he had lately tampered with the coin and

circulation.] who in obedience to the royal order had retired to the

earl’s country seat of Grafton, were taken prisoners, and beheaded by

the vengeance of the insurgents. The same lamentable fate befell

the Lord Stafford, on whom Edward relied as one of his most puissant

leaders; and London heard with dismay that the king, with but a handful

of troops, and those lukewarm and disaffected, was begirt on all sides

by hostile and marching thousands.

From Nottingham, however, Edward made good his retreat to a village

called Olney, which chanced at that time to be partially fortified

with a wall and a strong gate. Here the rebels pursued him; and Edward,

hearing that Sir Anthony Woodville, who conceived that the fate of his

father and brother cancelled all motive for longer absence from

the contest, was busy in collecting a force in the neighbourhood of

Coventry, while other assistance might be daily expected from London,

strengthened the fortifications as well as the time would permit, and

awaited the assault of the insurgents.

It was at this crisis, and while throughout all England reigned terror

and commotion, that one day, towards the end of July, a small troop of

horsemen were seen riding rapidly towards the neighbourhood of Olney. As

the village came in view of the cavalcade, with the spire of its church

and its gray stone gateway, so also they beheld, on the pastures that

stretched around wide and far, a moving forest of pikes and plumes.

“Holy Mother!” said one of the foremost riders, “good the knight and

strong man though Edward be, it were sharp work to cut his way from

that hamlet through yonder fields! Brother, we were more welcome, had we

brought more bills and bows at our backs!”

“Archbishop,” answered the stately personage thus addressed, “we bring

what alone raises armies and disbands them,--a NAME that a People

honours! From the moment the White Bear is seen on yonder archway side

by side with the king’s banner, that army will vanish as smoke before

the wind.”

“Heaven grant it, Warwick!” said the Duke of Clarence; “for though

Edward hath used us sorely, it chafes me as Plantagenet and as prince to

see how peasants and varlets can hem round a king.”

“Peasants and varlets are pawns in the chessboard, cousin George,” said

the prelate; “and knight and bishop find them mighty useful when pushing

forward to an attack. Now knight and bishop appear themselves and take

up the game. Warwick,” added the prelate, in a whisper, unheard by

Clarence, “forget not, while appeasing rebellion, that the king is in

your power.”

“For shame, George! I think not now of the unkind king; I think only

of the brave boy I dandled on my knee, and whose sword I girded on at

Towton. How his lion heart must chafe, condemned to see a foe whom his

skill as captain tells him it were madness to confront!”

“Ay, Richard Nevile, ay,” said the prelate, with a slight sneer, “play

the Paladin, and become the dupe; release the prince, and betray the

people!”

“No! I can be true to both. Tush! brother, your craft is slight to the

plain wisdom of bold honesty. You slacken your steeds, sirs; on! on! see

the march of the rebels! On, for an Edward and a Warwick!” and, spurring

to full speed, the little company arrived at the gates. The loud bugle

of the new comers was answered by the cheerful note of the joyous

warder, while dark, slow, and solemn over the meadows crept on the

mighty crowd of the rebel army.

“We have forestalled the insurgents!” said the earl, throwing himself

from his black steed. “Marmaduke Nevile, advance our banner; heralds,

announce the Duke of Clarence, the Archbishop of York, and the Earl of

Salisbury and Warwick.”

Through the anxious town, along the crowded walls and housetops, into

the hall of an old mansion (that then adjoined the church), where the

king, in complete armour, stood at bay, with stubborn and disaffected

officers, rolled the thunder cry, “A Warwick! a Warwick! all saved! a

Warwick!”

Sharply, as he heard the clamour, the king turned upon his startled

council. “Lords and captains!” said he, with that inexpressible majesty

which he could command in his happier hours, “God and our Patron Saint

have sent us at least one man who has the heart to fight fifty times the

odds of yon miscreant rabble, by his king’s side, and for the honour of

loyalty and knighthood!”

“And who says, sire,” answered Raoul de Fulke, “that we, your lords and

captains, would not risk blood and life for our king and our knighthood

in a just cause? But we will not butcher our countrymen for echoing

our own complaint, and praying your Grace that a grasping and ambitious

family which you have raised to power may no longer degrade your nobles

and oppress your commons. We shall see if the Earl of Warwick blame us

or approve.”

“And I answer,” said Edward, loftily, “that whether Warwick approve or

blame, come as friend or foe, I will sooner ride alone through yonder

archway, and carve out a soldier’s grave amongst the ranks of rebellious

war, than be the puppet of my subjects, and serve their will by

compulsion. Free am I--free ever will I be, while the crown of the

Plantagenet is mine, to raise those whom I love, to defy the threats of

those sworn to obey me. And were I but Earl of March, instead of king

of England, this hall should have swum with the blood of those who

have insulted the friends of my youth, the wife of my bosom. Off,

Hastings!--I need no mediator with my servants. Nor here, nor

anywhere in broad England, have I my equal, and the king forgives or

scorns--construe it as ye will, my lords--what the simple gentleman

would avenge.”

It were in vain to describe the sensation that this speech produced.

There is ever something in courage and in will that awes numbers, though

brave themselves. And what with the unquestioned valour of Edward; what

with the effect of his splendid person, towering above all present by

the head, and moving lightly, with each impulse, through the mass of

a mail that few there could have borne unsinking, this assertion

of absolute power in the midst of mutiny--an army marching to the

gates--imposed an unwilling reverence and sullen silence mixed with

anger, that, while it chafed, admired. They who in peace had despised

the voluptuous monarch, feasting in his palace, and reclining on the lap

of harlot-beauty, felt that in war all Mars seemed living in his

person. Then, indeed, he was a king; and had the foe, now darkening the

landscape, been the noblest chivalry of France, not a man there but had

died for a smile from that haughty lip. But the barons were knit heart

in heart with the popular outbreak, and to put down the revolt seemed to

them but to raise the Woodvilles. The silence was still unbroken, save

where the persuasive whisper of Lord Hastings might be faintly heard in

remonstrance with the more powerful or the more stubborn of the chiefs,

when the tread of steps resounded without, and, unarmed, bareheaded, the

only form in Christendom grander and statelier than the king’s strode

into the hall.

Edward, as yet unaware what course Warwick would pursue, and half

doubtful whether a revolt that had borrowed his name and was led by his

kinsmen might not originate in his consent, surrounded by those to whom

the earl was especially dear, and aware that if Warwick were against him

all was lost, still relaxed not the dignity of his mien; and leaning on

his large two-handed sword, with such inward resolves as brave kings

and gallant gentlemen form, if the worst should befall, he watched the

majestic strides of his great kinsman, and said, as the earl approached,

and the mutinous captains louted low,--

“Cousin, you are welcome! for truly do I know that when you have aught

whereof to complain, you take not the moment of danger and disaster. And

whatever has chanced to alienate your heart from me, the sound of the

rebel’s trumpet chases all difference, and marries your faith to mine.”

“Oh, Edward, my king, why did you so misjudge me in the prosperous

hour!” said Warwick, simply, but with affecting earnestness: “since in

the adverse hour you arede me well?”

As he spoke, he bowed his head, and, bending his knee, kissed the hand

held out to him.

Edward’s face grew radiant, and, raising the earl, he glanced proudly at

the barons, who stood round, surprised and mute.

“Yes, my lords and sirs, see,--it is not the Earl of Warwick, next to

our royal brethren the nearest subject to the throne, who would desert

me in the day of peril!”

“Nor do we, sire,” retorted Raoul de Fulke; “you wrong us before our

mighty comrade if you so misthink us. We will fight for the king, but

not for the queen’s kindred; and this alone brings on us your anger.”

“The gates shall be opened to ye. Go! Warwick and I are men enough for

the rabble yonder.”

The earl’s quick eye and profound experience of his time saw at once

the dissension and its causes. Nor, however generous, was he willing

to forego the present occasion for permanently destroying an influence

which he knew hostile to himself and hurtful to the realm. His was not

the generosity of a boy, but of a statesman. Accordingly, as Raoul de

Fulke ceased, he took up the word.

“My liege, we have yet an hour good ere the foe can reach the gates.

Your brother and mine accompany me. See, they enter! Please you, a few

minutes to confer with them; and suffer me, meanwhile, to reason with

these noble captains.”

Edward paused; but before the open brow of the earl fled whatever

suspicion might have crossed the king’s mind.

“Be it so, cousin; but remember this,--to councillors who can menace me

with desertion at such an hour, I concede nothing.”

Turning hastily away, he met Clarence and the prelate midway in the

hall, threw his arm caressingly over his brother’s shoulder, and, taking

the archbishop by the hand, walked with them towards the battlements.

“Well, my friends,” said Warwick, “and what would you of the king?”

“The dismissal of all the Woodvilles, except the queen; the revocation

of the grants and land accorded to them, to the despoiling the ancient

noble; and, but for your presence, we had demanded your recall.”

“And, failing these, what your resolve?”

“To depart, and leave Edward to his fate. These granted, we doubt little

but that the insurgents will disband. These not granted, we but waste

our lives against a multitude whose cause we must approve.”

“The cause! But ye know not the real cause,” answered Warwick. “I know

it; for the sons of the North are familiar to me, and their rising hath

deeper meaning than ye deem. What! have they not decoyed to their head

my kinsmen, the heirs of Latimer and Fitzhugh, and bold Coniers, whose

steel calque should have circled a wiser brain? Have they not taken my

name as their battle-cry? And do ye think this falsehood veils nothing

but the simple truth of just complaint?”

“Was their rising, then,” asked St. John, in evident surprise, “wholly

unauthorized by you?”

“So help me Heaven! if I would resort to arms to redress a wrong, think

not that I myself would be absent from the field! No, my lords, friends,

and captains, time presses; a few words must suffice to explain what as

yet may be dark to you. I have letters from Montagu and others, which

reached me the same day as the king’s, and which clear up the purpose

of our misguided countrymen. Ye know well that ever in England, but

especially since the reign of Edward III., strange, wild notions of some

kind of liberty other than that we enjoy have floated loose through the

land. Among the commons, a half-conscious recollection that the nobles

are a different race from themselves feeds a secret rancour and

mislike, which, at any fair occasion for riot, shows itself bitter and

ruthless,--as in the outbreak of Cade and others. And if the harvest

fail, or a tax gall, there are never wanting men to turn the popular

distress to the ends of private ambition or state design. Such a man has

been the true head and front of this commotion.”