The youth of Edward IV. was as the youth of an ancient Titan, of an

Italian Borgia; through its veins the hasty blood rolled as a devouring

flame. This impetuous and fiery temperament was rendered yet more

fearful by the indulgence of every intemperance; it fed on wine and

lust; its very virtues strengthened its vices,--its courage stifled

every whisper of prudence; its intellect, uninured to all discipline,

taught it to disdain every obstacle to its desires. Edward could,

indeed, as we have seen, be false and crafty, a temporizer, a

dissimulator; but it was only as the tiger creeps,--the better to

spring, undetected, on its prey. If detected, the cunning ceased, the

daring rose, and the mighty savage had fronted ten thousand foes, secure

in its fangs and talons, its bold heart and its deadly spring. Hence,

with all Edward’s abilities, the astonishing levities and indiscretions

of his younger years. It almost seemed, as we have seen him play fast

and loose with the might of Warwick, and with that power, whether of

barons or of people, which any other prince of half his talents would

have trembled to arouse against an unrooted throne,--it almost seemed

as if he loved to provoke a danger for the pleasure it gave the brain

to baffle or the hand to crush it. His whole nature coveting excitement,

nothing was left to the beautiful, the luxurious Edward, already wearied

with pomp and pleasure, but what was unholy and forbidden. In his court

were a hundred ladies, perhaps not less fair than Anne, at least of a

beauty more commanding the common homage, but these he had only to smile

on with ease to win. No awful danger, no inexpiable guilt, attended

those vulgar frailties, and therefore they ceased to tempt. But here

the virgin guest, the daughter of his mightiest subject, the beloved

treasure of the man whose hand had built a throne, whose word had

dispersed an army--here, the more the reason warned, the conscience

started, the more the hell-born passion was aroused.

Like men of his peculiar constitution, Edward was wholly incapable of

pure and steady love. His affection for his queen the most resembled

that diviner affection; but when analyzed, it was composed of feelings

widely distinct. From a sudden passion, not otherwise to be gratified,

he had made the rashest sacrifices for an unequal marriage. His vanity,

and something of original magnanimity, despite his vices, urged him to

protect what he himself had raised,--to secure the honour of the subject

who was honoured by the king. In common with most rude and powerful

natures, he was strongly alive to the affections of a father, and the

faces of his children helped to maintain the influence of the mother.

But in all this, we need scarcely say that that true love, which is at

once a passion and a devotion, existed not. Love with him cared not for

the person loved, but solely for its own gratification; it was desire

for possession,--nothing more. But that desire was the will of a king

who never knew fear or scruple; and, pampered by eternal indulgence,

it was to the feeble lusts of common men what the storm is to the west

wind. Yet still, as in the solitude of night he paced his chamber, the

shadow of the great crime advancing upon his soul appalled even that

dauntless conscience. He gasped for breath; his cheeks flushed crimson,

and the next moment grew deadly pale. He heard the loud beating of his

heart. He stopped still. He flung himself on a seat, and hid his face

with his hands; then starting up, he exclaimed, “No, no! I cannot shut

out that sweet face, those blue eyes from my gaze. They haunt me to my

destruction and her own. Yet why say destruction? If she love me, who

shall know the deed? If she love me not, will she dare to reveal her

shame? Shame!--nay, a king’s embrace never dishonours. A king’s bastard

is a House’s pride. All is still,--the very moon vanishes from heaven.

The noiseless rushes in the gallery give no echo to the footstep. Fie on

me! Can a Plantagenet know fear?” He allowed himself no further time to

pause; he opened the door gently and stole along the gallery. He knew

well the chamber, for it was appointed by his command, and, besides the

usual door from the corridor, a small closet conducted to a secret panel

behind the arras. It was the apartment occupied, in her visits to the

court, by the queen’s rival, the Lady Elizabeth Lucy. He passed into the

closet; he lifted the arras; he stood in that chamber, which gratitude

and chivalry and hospitable faith should have made sacred as a shrine.

And suddenly, as he entered, the moon, before hid beneath a melancholy

cloud, broke forth in awful splendour, and her light rushed through

the casement opposite his eye, and bathed the room with the beams of a

ghostlier day.

The abruptness of the solemn and mournful glory scared him as the

rebuking face of a living thing; a presence as if not of earth seemed to

interpose between the victim and the guilt. It was, however, but for a

moment that his step halted. He advanced: he drew aside the folds of

the curtain heavy with tissue of gold, and the sleeping face of Anne

lay hushed before him. It looked pale in the moonlight, but ineffably

serene, and the smile on its lips seemed still sweeter than that which

it wore awake. So fixed was his gaze, so ardently did his whole heart

and being feed through his eyes upon that exquisite picture of innocence

and youth, that he did not see for some moments that the sleeper was not

alone. Suddenly an exclamation rose to his lips. He clenched his hand

in jealous agony; he approached; he bent over; he heard the regular

breathing which the dreams of guilt never know; and then, when he saw

that pure and interlaced embrace,--the serene yet somewhat melancholy

face of Sibyll, which seemed hueless as marble in the moonlight, bending

partially over that of Anne, as if even in sleep watchful; both charming

forms so linked and woven that the two seemed as one life, the very

breath in each rising and ebbing with the other; the dark ringlets of

Sibyll mingling with the auburn gold of Anne’s luxuriant hair, and the

darkness and the gold, tress within tress, falling impartially over

either neck, that gleamed like ivory beneath that common veil,--when

he saw this twofold loveliness, the sentiment, the conviction of that

mysterious defence which exists in purity, thrilled like ice through his

burning veins. In all his might of monarch and of man, he felt the awe

of that unlooked-for protection,--maidenhood sheltering maidenhood,

innocence guarding innocence. The double virtue appalled and baffled

him; and that slight arm which encircled the neck he would have perilled

his realm to clasp, shielded his victim more effectually than the

bucklers of all the warriors that ever gathered round the banner of the

lofty Warwick. Night and the occasion befriended him; but in vain. While

Sibyll was there, Anne was saved. He ground his teeth, and muttered to

himself. At that moment Anne turned restlessly. This movement disturbed

the light sleep of her companion. She spoke half inaudibly, but the

sound was as the hoot of shame in the ear of the guilty king. He let

fall the curtain, and was gone. And if one who lived afterwards to hear

and to credit the murderous doom which, unless history lies, closed the

male line of Edward, had beheld the king stealing, felon-like, from

the chamber,--his step reeling to and fro the gallery floors, his face

distorted by stormy passion, his lips white and murmuring, his beauty

and his glory dimmed and humbled,--the spectator might have half

believed that while Edward gazed upon those harmless sleepers, A VISION

OF THE TRAGEDY TO COME had stricken down his thought of guilt, and

filled up its place with horror,--a vision of a sleep as pure, of two

forms wrapped in an embrace as fond, of intruders meditating a crime

scarce fouler than his own; and the sins of the father starting into

grim corporeal shapes, to become the deathsmen of the sons!

CHAPTER III. NEW DANGERS TO THE HOUSE OF YORK--AND THE KING’S HEART

ALLIES ITSELF WITH REBELLION AGAINST THE KING’S THRONE.

Oh, beautiful is the love of youth to youth, and touching the tenderness

of womanhood to woman; and fair in the eyes of the happy sun is the

waking of holy sleep, and the virgin kiss upon virgin lips smiling and

murmuring the sweet “Good-morrow!”

Anne was the first to wake; and as the bright winter morn, robust with

frosty sunbeams shone cheerily upon Sibyll’s face, she was struck with

a beauty she had not sufficiently observed the day before; for in the

sleep of the young the traces of thought and care vanish, the aching

heart is lulled in the body’s rest, the hard lines relax into flexile

ease, a softer, warmer bloom steals over the cheek, and, relieved

from the stiff restraints of dress, the rounded limbs repose in a more

alluring grace! Youth seems younger in its slumber, and beauty more

beautiful, and purity more pure. Long and dark, the fringe of the

eyelash rested upon the white lids, and the freshness of the parting

pouted lips invited the sister kiss that wakened up the sleeper.

“Ah, lady,” said Sibyll, parting her tresses from her dark blue eyes,

“you are here, you are safe!--blessed be the saints and our Lady! for I

had a dream in the night that startled and appalled me.”

“And my dreams were all blithe and golden,” said Anne. “What was thine?”

“Methought you were asleep and in this chamber, and I not by your side,

but watching you at a little distance; and lo! a horrible serpent glided

from yon recess, and, crawling to your pillow, I heard its hiss, and

strove to come to your aid, but in vain; a spell seemed to chain my

limbs. At last I found voice, I cried aloud, I woke; and mock me not,

but I surely heard a parting footstep, and the low grating of some

sliding door.”

“It was the dream’s influence, enduring beyond the dream. I have often

felt it so,--nay, even last night; for I, too, dreamed of another,

dreamed that I stood by the altar with one far away, and when I

woke--for I woke also--it was long before I could believe it was thy

hand I held, and thine arm that embraced me.”

The young friends rose, and their toilet was scarcely ended, when again

appeared in the chamber all the stateliness of retinue allotted to the

Lady Anne. Sibyll turned to depart. “And whither go you?” asked Anne.

“To visit my father; it is my first task on rising,” returned Sibyll, in

a whisper.

“You must let me visit him, too, at a later hour. Find me here an hour

before noon, Sibyll.”

The early morning was passed by Anne in the queen’s company. The

refection, the embroidery frame, the closheys, filled up the hours.

The Duchess of Clarence had left the palace with her lord to visit

the king’s mother at Baynard’s Castle; and Anne’s timid spirits were

saddened by the strangeness of the faces round her, and Elizabeth’s

habitual silence. There was something in the weak and ill-fated queen

that ever failed to conciliate friends. Though perpetually striving to

form and create a party, she never succeeded in gaining confidence

or respect. And no one raised so high was ever left so friendless as

Elizabeth, when, in her awful widowhood, her dowry home became the

sanctuary. All her power was but the shadow of her husband’s royal sun,

and vanished when the orb prematurely set; yet she had all gifts of

person in her favour, and a sleek smoothness of manner that seemed to

the superficial formed to win; but the voice was artificial, and the

eye cold and stealthy. About her formal precision there was an

eternal consciousness of self, a breathing egotism. Her laugh was

displeasing,--cynical, not mirthful; she had none of that forgetfulness

of self, that warmth when gay, that earnestness when sad, which create

sympathy. Her beauty was without loveliness, her character without

charm; every proportion in her form might allure the sensualist; but

there stopped the fascination. The mind was trivial, though cunning

and dissimulating; and the very evenness of her temper seemed but

the clockwork of a heart insensible to its own movements. Vain in

prosperity, what wonder that she was so abject in misfortune? What

wonder that even while, in later and gloomier years, [Grafton, 806]

accusing Richard III. of the murder of her royal sons, and knowing him,

at least, the executioner of her brother and her child by the bridegroom

of her youth, [Anthony Lord Rivers, and Lord Richard Gray. Not the least

instance of the frivolity of Elizabeth’s mind is to be found in her

willingness, after all the woes of her second widowhood, and when she

was not very far short of sixty years old, to take a third husband,

James III., of Scotland,--a marriage prevented only by the death of the

Scotch king.] she consented to send her daughters to his custody, though

subjected to the stain of illegitimacy, and herself only recognized as

the harlot?

The king, meanwhile, had ridden out betimes alone, and no other of the

male sex presumed in his absence to invade the female circle. It was

with all a girl’s fresh delight that Anne escaped at last to her own

chamber, where she found Sibyll; and, with her guidance, she threaded

the gloomy mazes of the Tower. “Let me see,” she whispered, “before we

visit your father, let me see the turret in which the unhappy Henry is

confined.”

And Sibyll led her through the arch of that tower, now called “The

Bloody,” and showed her the narrow casement deep sunk in the mighty

wall, without which hung the starling in the cage, basking its plumes in

the wintry sun. Anne gazed with that deep interest and tender reverence

which the parent of the man she loves naturally excites in a woman; and

while thus standing sorrowful and silent, the casement was unbarred,

and she saw the mild face of the human captive; he seemed to talk to

the bird, which, in shrill tones and with clapping wings, answered

his address. At that time a horn sounded at a little distance off; a

clangour of arms, as the sentries saluted, was heard; the demoiselles

retreated through the arch, and mounted the stair conducting to the

very room, then unoccupied, in which tradition records the murder of the

Third Richard’s nephews; and scarcely had they gained this retreat, ere

towards the Bloody Gate, and before the prison tower, rode the king who

had mounted the captive’s throne. His steed, gaudy with its housing, his

splendid dress, the knights and squires who started forward from every

corner to hold his gilded stirrup, his vigorous youth, so blooming and

so radiant,--all contrasted, with oppressive force, the careworn face

that watched him meekly through the little casement of the Wakefield

tower. Edward’s large, quick blue eye caught sudden sight of the once

familiar features. He looked up steadily, and his gaze encountered the

fallen king’s. He changed countenance: but with the external chivalry

that made the surface of his hollow though brilliant character, he bowed

low to his saddle-bow as he saw his captive, and removed the plumed cap

from his high brow.

Henry smiled sadly, and shook his reverend head, as if gently to rebuke

the mockery; then he closed the casement; and Edward rode into the yard.

“How can the king hold here a court and here a prison? Oh, hard heart!”

murmured Anne, as, when Edward had disappeared, the damsels bent their

way to Adam’s chamber.

“Would the Earl Warwick approve thy pity, sweet Lady Anne?” asked

Sibyll.

“My father’s heart is too generous to condemn it,” returned Anne, wiping

the tears from her eyes; “how often in the knight’s galliard shall I see

that face!”

The turret in which Warner’s room was placed flanked the wing inhabited

by the royal family and their more distinguished guests (namely,

the palace, properly speaking, as distinct from the fortress), and

communicated with the regal lodge by a long corridor, raised above

cloisters and open to a courtyard. At one end of this corridor a door

opened upon the passage, in which was situated the chamber of the Lady

Anne; the other extremity communicated with a rugged stair of stone,

conducting to the rooms tenanted by Warner. Leaving Sibyll to present

her learned father to the gentle Anne, we follow the king into the

garden, which he entered on dismounting. He found here the Archbishop

of York, who had come to the palace in his barge, and with but a slight

retinue, and who was now conversing with Hastings in earnest whispers.

The king, who seemed thoughtful and fatigued, approached the two, and

said, with a forced smile, “What learned sententiary engages you two

scholars?”

“Your Grace,” said the archbishop, “Minerva was not precisely the

goddess most potent over our thoughts at that moment. I received a

letter last evening from the Duke of Gloucester, and as I know the love

borne by the prince to the Lord Hastings, I inquired of your chamberlain

how far he would have foreguessed the news it announced.”

“And what may the tidings be?” asked Edward, absently.

The prelate hesitated.

“Sire,” he said gravely, “the familiar confidence with which both your

Highness and the Duke of Gloucester distinguish the chamberlain, permits

me to communicate the purport of the letter in his presence. The young

duke informs me that he hath long conceived an affection which he would

improve into marriage, but before he address either the demoiselle or

her father, he prays me to confer with your Grace, whose pleasure in

this, as in all things, will be his sovereign law.”

“Ah, Richard loves me with a truer love than George of Clarence! But who

can he have seen on the Borders worthy to be a prince’s bride?”

“It is no sudden passion, sire, as I before hinted; nay, it has been for

some time sufficiently notorious to his friends and many of the court;

it is an affection for a maiden known to him in childhood, connected to

him by blood,--my niece, Anne Nevile.”

As if stung by a scorpion, Edward threw off the prelate’s arm, on which

he had been leaning with his usual caressing courtesy.

“This is too much!” said he, quickly, and his face, before somewhat

pale, grew highly flushed. “Is the whole royalty of England to be one

Nevile? Have I not sufficiently narrowed the basis of my throne? Instead

of mating my daughter to a foreign power,--to Spain or to Bretagne,--she

is betrothed to young Montagu! Clarence weds Isabel, and now

Gloucester--no, prelate, I will not consent!”

The archbishop was so little prepared for this burst, that he remained

speechless. Hastings pressed the king’s arm, as if to caution him

against so imprudent a display of resentment; but the king walked on,

not heeding him, and in great disturbance. Hastings interchanged looks

with the archbishop, and followed his royal master.

“My king,” he said, in an earnest whisper, “whatever you decide, do not

again provoke unhappy feuds laid at rest. Already this morning I

sought your chamber, but you were abroad, to say that I have received

intelligence of a fresh rising of the Lancastrians in Lincolnshire,

under Sir Robert Welles, and the warlike knight of Scrivelsby, Sir

Thomas Dymoke. This is not yet an hour to anger the pride of the

Neviles!”

“O Hastings! Hastings!” said the king, in a tone of passionate emotion,

“there are moments when the human heart cannot dissemble! Howbeit your

advice is wise and honest! No, we must not anger the Neviles!”

He turned abruptly; rejoined the archbishop, who stood on the spot on

which the king had left him, his arms folded on his breast, his face

calm, but haughty.

“My most worshipful cousin,” said Edward, “forgive the well-known

heat of my hasty moods! I had hoped that Richard would, by a foreign

alliance, have repaired the occasion of confirming my dynasty abroad,

which Clarence lost. But no matter! Of these things we will speak anon.

Say naught to Richard till time ripens maturer resolutions: he is a

youth yet. What strange tidings are these from Lincolnshire?”

“The house of your purveyor, Sir Robert de Burgh, is burned, his lands

wasted. The rebels are headed by lords and knights. Robin of Redesdale,

who, methinks, bears a charmed life, has even ventured to rouse the

disaffected in my brother’s very shire of Warwick.”

“O Henry,” exclaimed the king, casting his eyes towards the turret

that held his captive, “well mightest then call a crown ‘a wreath of

thorns!’”

“I have already,” said the archbishop, “despatched couriers to my

brother, to recall him from Warwick, whither he went on quitting your

Highness. I have done more; prompted by a zeal that draws me from the

care of the Church to that of the State, I have summoned the Lords

St. John, De Fulke, and others, to my house of the More,--praying your

Highness to deign to meet them, and well sure that a smile from your

princely lips will regain their hearts and confirm heir allegiance, at a

moment when new perils require all strong arms.”

“You have done most wisely. I will come to your palace,--appoint your

own day.”

“It will take some days for the barons to arrive from their castles. I

fear not ere the tenth day from this.”

“Ah,” said the king, with a vivacity that surprised his listeners, aware

of his usual impetuous energy, “the delay will but befriend us; as

for Warwick, permit me to alter your arrangements; let him employ the

interval, not in London, where he is useless, but in raising men in

the neighbourhood of his castle, and in defeating the treason of this

Redesdale knave. We will give commission to him and to Clarence to levy

troops; Hastings, see to this forthwith. Ye say Sir Robert Welles leads

the Lincolnshire varlets; I know the nature of his father, the Lord

Welles,--a fearful and timorous one; I will send for him, and the

father’s head shall answer for the son’s faith. Pardon me, dear cousin,

that I leave you to attend these matters. Prithee visit our queen,

meanwhile, she holds you our guest.”

“Nay, your Highness must vouchsafe my excuse; I also have your royal

interests too much at heart to while an hour in my pleasurement. I will

but see the friends of our House now in London, and then back to the

More, and collect the force of my tenants and retainers.”

“Ever right, fair speed to you, cardinal that shall be! Your arm,

Hastings.”

The king and his favourite took their way into the state chambers.

“Abet not Gloucester in this alliance,--abet him not!” said the king,

solemnly.

“Pause, sire! This alliance gives to Warwick a wise counsellor, instead

of the restless Duke of Clarence. Reflect what danger may ensue if an

ambitious lord, discontented with your reign, obtains the hand of the

great earl’s coheiress, and the half of a hundred baronies that command

an army larger than the crown’s.”

Though these reasonings at a calmer time might well have had their

effect on Edward, at that moment they were little heeded by his

passions. He stamped his foot violently on the floor. “Hastings!” he

exclaimed, “be silent! or--” He stopped short, mastered his emotion.

“Go, assemble our privy council. We have graver matters than a boy’s

marriage now to think of.”

It was in vain that Edward sought to absorb the fire of his nature in

state affairs, in all needful provisions against the impending perils,

in schemes of war and vengeance. The fatal frenzy that had seized him

haunted him everywhere, by day and by night. For some days after the

unsuspected visit which he had so criminally stolen to his guest’s

chamber, something of knightly honour, of religious scruple, of common

reason,--awakened in him the more by the dangers which had sprung up and

which the Neviles were now actively employed in defeating,--struggled

against his guilty desire, and roused his conscience to a less feeble

resistance than it usually displayed when opposed to passion; but the

society of Anne, into which he was necessarily thrown so many hours in

the day, and those hours chiefly after the indulgences of the banquet,

was more powerful than all the dictates of a virtue so seldom exercised

as to have none of the strength of habit. And as the time drew near when

he must visit the archbishop, head his army against the rebels (whose

force daily increased, despite the captivity of Lord Welles and

Sir Thomas Dymoke, who, on the summons of the king, had first taken

sanctuary, and then yielded their persons on the promise of pardon and

safety), and restore Anne to her mother,--as this time drew near, his

perturbation of mind became visible to the whole court; but, with the

instinct of his native craft, he contrived to conceal its cause. For the

first time in his life he had no confidant--he did not dare trust his

secret to Hastings. His heart gnawed itself. Neither, though constantly

stealing to Anne’s side, could he venture upon language that might

startle and enlighten her. He felt that even those attentions, which

on the first evening of her arrival had been noticed by the courtiers,

could not be safely renewed. He was grave and constrained, even when by

her side, and the etiquette of the court allowed him no opportunity for

unwitnessed conference. In this suppressed and unequal struggle with

himself the time passed, till it was now but the day before that fixed

for his visit to the More. And, as he rose at morning from his restless

couch, the struggle was over, and the soul resolved to dare the crime.

His first thought was to separate Anne from Sibyll. He affected to

rebuke the queen for giving to his high-born guest an associate below

her dignity, and on whose character, poor girl, rested the imputation

of witchcraft; and when the queen replied that Lady Anne herself had

so chosen, he hit upon the expedient of visiting Warner himself, under

pretence of inspecting his progress,--affected to be struck by the

sickly appearance of the sage, and sending for Sibyll, told her, with

an air of gracious consideration, that her first duty was to attend her

parent; that the queen released her for some days from all court duties;

and that he had given orders to prepare the room adjoining Master

Warner’s, and held by Friar Bungey, till that worthy had retired with

his patroness from the court, to which she would for the present remove.

Sibyll, wondering at this novel mark of consideration in the careless

king, yet imputing it to the high value set on her father’s labours,

thanked Edward with simple earnestness, and withdrew. In the anteroom

she encountered Hastings, on his way to the king. He started in

surprise, and with a jealous pang: “What! thou, Sibyll! and from the

king’s closet! What led thee thither?”

“His grace’s command.” And too noble for the pleasure of exciting the

distrust that delights frivolous minds as the proof of power, Sibyll

added, “The king has been kindly speaking to me of my father’s health.”

The courtier’s brow cleared; he mused a moment, and said, in a whisper,

“I beseech thee to meet me an hour hence at the eastern rampart.”

Since the return of Lord Hastings to the palace there had been an

estrangement and distance in his manner, ill suiting one who enjoyed the

rights of an accepted suitor, and wounding alike to Sibyll’s affection

and her pride; but her confidence in his love and truth was entire. Her

admiration for him partook of worship, and she steadily sought to reason

away any causes for alarm by recalling the state cares which pressed

heavily upon him, and whispering to herself that word of “wife,” which,

coming in passionate music from those beloved lips, had thrown a mist

over the present, a glory over the future! and in the king’s retention

of Adam Warner, despite the Duchess of Bedford’s strenuous desire

to carry him off with Friar Bungey, and restore him to his tasks of

alchemist and multiplier, as well as in her own promotion to the queen’s

service, Sibyll could not but recognize the influence of her powerful

lover. His tones now were tender, though grave and earnest. Surely, in

the meeting he asked, all not comprehended would be explained. And so,

with a light heart, she passed on.

Hastings sighed as his eye followed her from the room, and thus said he

to himself, “Were I the obscure gentleman I once was, how sweet a lot

would that girl’s love choose to me from the urn of fate! But, oh! when

we taste of power and greatness, and master the world’s dark wisdom,

what doth love shrink to?--an hour’s bliss and a life’s folly.” His

delicate lip curled, and breaking from his soliloquy, he entered the

king’s closet. Edward was resting his face upon the palms of his hands,

and his bright eyes dwelt upon vacant space, till they kindled into

animation as they lighted on his favourite.

“Dear Will,” said the king, “knowest thou that men say thou art

bewitched?”

“Beau sire, often have men, when a sweet face hath captured thy great

heart, said the same of thee!”

“It may be so with truth, for verily love is the arch-devil’s birth.”

The king rose, and strode his chamber with a quick step; at last

pausing,--

“Hastings,” he said, “so thou lovest the multiplier’s pretty daughter?

She has just left me. Art thou jealous?”

“Happily your Highness sees no beauty in looks that have the gloss of

the raven, and eyes that have the hue of the violet.”

“No, I am a constant man, constant to one idea of beauty in a thousand

forms,--eyes like the summer’s light-blue sky, and locks like its

golden sunbeams! But to set thy mind at rest, Will, know that I have

but compassionated the sickly state of the scholar, whom thou prizest so

highly; and I have placed thy fair Sibyll’s chamber near her father’s.

Young Lovell says thou art bent on wedding the wizard’s daughter.”

“And if I were, beau sire?”

Edward looked grave.

“If thou wert, my poor Will, thou wouldst lose all the fame for shrewd

wisdom which justifies thy sudden fortunes. No, no; thou art the flower

and prince of my new seignorie,--thou must mate thyself with a name and

a barony that shall be worthy thy fame and thy prospects. Love beauty,

but marry power, Will. In vain would thy king draw thee up, if a

despised wife draw thee down!”

Hastings listened with profound attention to these words. The king did

not wait for his answer, but added laughingly,--

“It is thine own fault, crafty gallant, if thou dost not end all her

spells.”

“What ends the spells of youth and beauty, beau sire?”

“Possession!” replied the king, in a hollow and muttered voice.

Hastings was about to answer, when the door opened, and the officer in

waiting announced the Duke of Clarence. “Ha!” said Edward, “George comes

to importune me for leave to depart to the government of Ireland, and I

have to make him weet that I think my Lord Worcester a safer viceroy of

the two.”

“Your Highness will pardon me; but, though I deemed you too generous in

the appointment, it were dangerous now to annul it.”

“More dangerous to confirm it. Elizabeth has caused me to see the folly

of a grant made over the malmsey,--a wine, by the way, in which poor

George swears he would be content to drown himself. Viceroy of Ireland!

My father had that government, and once tasting the sweets of royalty,

ceased to be a subject! No, no, Clarence--”

“Can never meditate treason against a brother’s crown. Has he the wit or

the energy or the genius for so desperate an ambition?”

“No; but he hath the vanity. And I will wager thee a thousand marks to

a silver penny that my jester shall talk giddie Georgie into advancing a

claim to be soldan of Egypt or Pope of Rome!”

CHAPTER IV. THE FOSTER-BROTHERS.

Sir Marmaduke Nevile was sunning his bravery in the Tower Green, amidst

the other idlers of the court, proud of the gold chain and the gold

spurs which attested his new rank, and not grieved to have exchanged the

solemn walls of Middleham for the gay delights of the voluptuous palace,

when to his pleasure and surprise, he perceived his foster-brother enter

the gateway; and no sooner had Nicholas entered, than a bevy of the

younger courtiers hastened eagerly towards him.

“Gramercy!” quoth Sir Marmaduke, to one of the bystanders, “what hath

chanced to make Nick Alwyn a man of such note, that so many wings

of satin and pile should flutter round him like sparrows round an

owl?--which, by the Holy Rood, his wise face somewhat resembleth.”

“Know you not that Master Alwyn, since he hath commenced trade for

himself, hath acquired already the repute of the couthliest goldsmith

in London? No dague-hilts, no buckles are to be worn, save those that he

fashions; and--an he live, and the House of York prosper--verily, Master

Alwyn the goldsmith will ere long be the richest and best man from

Mile-end to the Sanctuary.”

“Right glad am I to hear it,” said honest Marmaduke, heartily; and

approaching Alwyn, he startled the precise trader by a friendly slap on

the shoulder.

“What, man, art thou too proud to remember Marmaduke Nevile? Come to my

lodgment yonder, and talk of old days over the king’s canary.”

“I crave your pardon, dear Master Nevile.”

“Master--avaunt! Sir Marmaduke,--knighted by the hand of Lord

Warwick,--Sir Marmaduke Nevile, lord of a manor he hath never yet seen,

sober Alwyn.”

Then drawing his foster-brother’s arm in his, Marmaduke led him to the

chamber in which he lodged.

The young men spent some minutes in congratulating each other on their

respective advances in life: the gentleman who had attained competence

and station simply by devotion to a powerful patron, the trader who had

already won repute and the prospect of wealth by ingenuity, application,

and toil; and yet, to do justice, as much virtue went to Marmaduke’s

loyalty to Warwick as to Alwyn’s capacities for making a fortune. Mutual

compliments over, Alwyn said hesitatingly,--

“And dost thou find Mistress Sibyll more gently disposed to thee than

when thou didst complain to me of her cruelty?”

“Marry, good Nicholas, I will be frank with thee. When I left the court

to follow Lord Warwick, there were rumours of the gallantries of Lord

Hastings to the girl, which grieved me to the heart. I spoke to her

thereof bluntly and honourably, and got but high looks and scornful

words in return. Good fellow, I thank thee for that squeeze of the hand

and that doleful sigh. In my absence at Middleham, I strove hard to

forget one who cared so little for me. My dear Alwyn, those Yorkshire

lasses are parlously comely, and mighty douce and debonaire. So I

stormed cruel Sibyll out of my heart perforce of numbers.”

“And thou lovest her no more?”

“Not I, by this goblet! On coming back, it is true, I felt pleased

to clank my gold spurs in her presence, and curious to see if my new

fortunes would bring out a smile of approval; and verily, to speak

sooth, the donzell was kind and friendly, and spoke to me so cheerly of

the pleasure she felt in my advancement, that I adventured again a few

words of the old folly. But my lassie drew up like a princess, and I am

a cured man.”

“By your troth?”

“By my troth!”

Alwyn’s head sank on his bosom in silent thought. Sir Marmaduke emptied

his goblet; and really the young knight looked so fair and so gallant,

in his new surcoat of velvet, that it was no marvel if he should find

enough food for consolation in a court where men spent six hours a day

in making love,--nor in vain.

“And what say they still of the Lord Hastings?” asked Alwyn, breaking

silence. “Nothing, I trow and trust, that arraigns the poor lady’s

honour, though much that may scoff at her simple faith in a nature so

vain and fickle. ‘The tongue’s not steel, yet it cuts,’ as the proverb

saith of the slanderer.”

“No! scandal spares her virtue as woman, to run down her cunning

as witch! They say that Hastings hath not prevailed, nor sought to

prevail,--that he is spell-bound. By Saint Thomas, from a maid of such

character Marmaduke Nevile is happily rescued!”

“Sir Marmaduke,” then said Alwyn, in a grave and earnest voice, “it

behooves me, as true friend, though humble, and as honest man, to give

thee my secret, in return for thine own. I love this girl. Ay, ay! thou

thinkest that love is a strange word on a craftsman’s lips, but ‘cold

flint hides hot fire.’ I would not have been thy rival, Heaven forefend!

hadst thou still cherished a hope, or if thou now wilt forbid my

aspiring; but if thou wilt not say me nay, I will try my chance in

delivering a pure soul from a crafty wooer.”

Marmaduke stared in great surprise at his foster-brother; and though, no

doubt, he spoke truth when he said he was cured of his love for Sibyll,

he yet felt a sort of jealousy at Alwyn’s unexpected confession, and

his vanity was hurt at the notion that the plain-visaged trader should

attempt where the handsome gentleman had failed.--However, his blunt,

generous, manly nature after a brief struggle got the better of these

sore feelings; and holding out his hand to Alwyn, he said, “My dear

foster-brother, try the hazard and cast thy dice, if thou wilt. Heaven

prosper thee, if success be for thine own good! But if she be given to

witchcraft (plague on thee, man, sneer not at the word), small comfort

to bed and hearth can such practices bring!”

“Alas!” said Alwyn, “the witchcraft is on the side of Hastings,--the

witchcraft of fame and rank, and a glozing tongue and experienced art.

But she shall not fall, if a true arm can save her; and ‘though Hope be

a small child; she can carry a great anchor.’”

These words were said so earnestly, that they opened new light into

Marmaduke’s mind; and his native generosity standing in lieu of

intellect, he comprehended sympathetically the noble motives which

actuated the son of commerce.

“My poor Alwyn,” he said, “if thou canst save this young maid,--whom

by my troth I loved well, and who tells me yet that she loveth me as a

sister loves,--right glad shall I be. But thou stakest thy peace of mind

against hers! Fair luck to thee, say I again,--and if thou wilt risk thy

chance at once (for suspense is love’s purgatory), seize the moment. I

saw Sibyll, just ere we met, pass to the ramparts, alone; at this sharp

season the place is deserted; go.”

“I will, this moment!” said Alwyn, rising and turning very pale; but

as he gained the door, he halted--“I had forgot, Master Nevile, that I

bring the king his signet-ring, new set, of the falcon and fetter-lock.”

“They will keep thee three hours in the anteroom. The Duke of Clarence

is now with the king. Trust the ring to me, I shall see his highness ere

he dines.”

Even in his love, Alwyn had the Saxon’s considerations of business; he

hesitated--“May I not endanger thereby the king’s favour and loss of

custom?” said the trader.

“Tush, man! little thou knowest King Edward; he cares naught for the

ceremonies: moreover, the Neviles are now all-puissant in favour. I

am here in attendance on sweet Lady Anne, whom the king loves as a

daughter, though too young for sire to so well-grown a donzell; and a

word from her lip, if need be, will set all as smooth as this gorget of

lawn!”

Thus assured, Alwyn gave the ring to his friend, and took his way at

once to the ramparts. Marmaduke remained behind to finish the canary and

marvel how so sober a man should form so ardent a passion. Nor was he

much less surprised to remark that his friend, though still speaking

with a strong provincial accent, and still sowing his discourse with

rustic saws and proverbs, had risen in language and in manner with the

rise of his fortunes. “An he go on so, and become lord mayor,” muttered

Marmaduke, “verily he will half look like a gentleman!”

To these meditations the young knight was not long left in peace. A

messenger from Warwick House sought and found him, with the news that

the earl was on his road to London, and wished to see Sir Marmaduke the

moment of his arrival, which was hourly expected. The young knight’s

hardy brain somewhat flustered by the canary, Alwyn’s secret, and this

sudden tidings, he hastened to obey his chief’s summons, and forgot,

till he gained the earl’s mansion, the signet ring intrusted to him by

Alwyn. “What matters it?” said he then, philosophically,--“the king hath

rings eno’ on his fingers not to miss one for an hour or so, and I dare

not send any one else with it. Marry, I must plunge my head in cold

water, to get rid of the fumes of the wine.”

CHAPTER V. THE LOVER AND THE GALLANT--WOMAN’S CHOICE.

Alwyn bent his way to the ramparts, a part of which then resembled

the boulevards of a French town, having rows of trees, green sward, a

winding walk, and seats placed at frequent intervals for the repose

of the loungers. During the summer evenings, the place was a favourite

resort of the court idlers; but now, in winter, it was usually deserted,

save by the sentries, placed at distant intervals. The trader had not

gone far in his quest when he perceived, a few paces before him, the

very man he had most cause to dread; and Lord Hastings, hearing the

sound of a footfall amongst the crisp, faded leaves that strewed the

path, turned abruptly as Alwyn approached his side.

At the sight of his formidable rival, Alwyn had formed one of those

resolutions which occur only to men of his decided, plain-spoken,

energetic character. His distinguishing shrewdness and penetration had

given him considerable insight into the nobler as well as the weaker

qualities of Hastings; and his hope in the former influenced the

determination to which he came. The reflections of Hastings at that

moment were of a nature to augur favourably to the views of the humbler

lover; for, during the stirring scenes in which his late absence

from Sibyll had been passed, Hastings had somewhat recovered from her

influence; and feeling the difficulties of reconciling his honour

and his worldly prospects to further prosecution of the love, rashly

expressed but not deeply felt, he had determined frankly to cut the

Gordian knot he could not solve, and inform Sibyll that marriage between

them was impossible. With that view he had appointed this meeting, and

his conference with the king but confirmed his intention. It was in this

state of mind that he was thus accosted by Alwyn:--

“My lord, may I make bold to ask for a few moments your charitable

indulgence to words you may deem presumptuous?”

“Be brief, then, Master Alwyn,--I am waited for.”

“Alas, my lord! I can guess by whom,--by the one whom I seek myself,--by

Sibyll Warner.”

“How, Sir Goldsmith!” said Hastings, haughtily, “what knowest thou of my

movements, and what care I for thine?”

“Hearken, my Lord Hastings,--hearken!” said Alwyn, repressing his

resentment, and in a voice so earnest that it riveted the entire

attention of the listener--“hearken, and judge not as noble judges

craftsman, but as man should judge man. As the saw saith, ‘We all lie

alike in our graves.’ From the first moment I saw this Sibyll Warner I

loved her. Yes; smile disdainfully, but listen still. She was obscure

and in distress. I loved her not for her fair looks alone; I loved her

for her good gifts, for her patient industry, for her filial duty, for

her struggles to give bread to her father’s board. I did not say to

myself, ‘This girl will make a comely fere, a delicate paramour!’ I

said, ‘This good daughter will make a wife whom an honest man may take

to his heart and cherish!’” Poor Alwyn stopped, with tears in his

voice, struggled with his emotions, and pursued: “My fortunes were more

promising than hers; there was no cause why I might not hope. True, I

had a rival then; young as myself, better born, comelier; but she loved

him not. I foresaw that his love for her--if love it were--would cease.

Methought that her mind would understand mine; as mine--verily I say

it--yearned for hers! I could not look on the maidens of mine own rank,

and who had lived around me, but what--oh, no, my lord, again I say, not

the beauty, but the gifts, the mind, the heart of Sibyll, threw them

all into the shade. You may think it strange that I--a plain, steadfast,

trading, working, careful man--should have all these feelings; but I

will tell you wherefore such as I sometimes have them, nurse them, brood

on them, more than you lords and gentlemen, with all your graceful arts

in pleasing. We know no light loves! no brief distractions to the one

arch passion! We sober sons of the stall and the ware are no general

gallants,--we love plainly, we love but once, and we love heartily. But

who knows not the proverb, ‘What’s a gentleman but his pleasure?’--and

what’s pleasure but change? When Sibyll came to the palace, I soon heard

her name linked with yours; I saw her cheek blush when you spoke. Well,

well, well! after all, as the old wives tell us, ‘Blushing is virtue’s

livery.’ I said, ‘She is a chaste and high-hearted girl.’ This will

pass, and the time will come when she can compare your love and mine.

Now, my lord, the time has come. I know that you seek her. Yea, at

this moment, I know that her heart beats for your footstep. Say but

one word,--say that you love Sibyll Warner with the thought of wedding

her,--say that, on your honour, noble Hastings, as gentleman and peer,

and I will kneel at your feet, and beg your pardon for my vain follies,

and go back to my ware, and work, and not repine. Say it! You are

silent? Then I implore you, still as peer and gentleman, to let the

honest love save the maiden from the wooing that will blight her

peace and blast her name! And now, Lord Hastings, I wait your gracious

answer.”

The sensations experienced by Hastings, as Alwyn thus concluded, were

manifold and complicated; but, at the first, admiration and pity were

the strongest.

“My poor friend,” said he, kindly, “if you thus love a demoiselle

deserving all my reverence, your words and your thoughts bespeak you no

unworthy pretender; but take my counsel, good Alwyn. Come not--thou from

the Chepe--come not to the court for a wife. Forget this fantasy.”

“My lord, it is impossible! Forget I cannot, regret I may.

“Thou canst not succeed, man,” resumed the nobleman, more coldly,

“nor couldst if William Hastings had never lived. The eyes of women

accustomed to gaze on the gorgeous externals of the world are blinded

to plain worth like thine. It might have been different had the donzell

never abided in a palace; but as it is, brave fellow, learn how these

wounds of the heart scar over, and the spot becomes hard and callous

evermore. What art thou, Master Nicholas Alwyn,” continued Hastings,

gloomily, and with a withering smile--“what art thou, to ask for a bliss

denied to me--to all of us,--the bliss of carrying poetry into life,

youth into manhood, by winning--the FIRST LOVED? But think not, sir

lover, that I say this in jealousy or disparagement. Look yonder, by the

leafless elm, the white robe of Sibyll Warner. Go and plead thy suit.”

“Do I understand you, my lord?” said Alwyn, somewhat confused and

perplexed by the tone and the manner Hastings adopted. “Does report err,

and you do not love this maiden?”

“Fair master,” returned Hastings, scornfully, “thou hast no right that

I trow of to pry into my thoughts and secrets; I cannot acknowledge

my judge in thee, good jeweller and goldsmith,--enough, surely, in all

courtesy, that I yield thee the precedence. Tell thy tale, as movingly,

if thou wilt, as thou hast told it to me; say of me all that thou

fanciest thou hast reason to suspect; and if, Master Alwyn, thou woo and

win the lady, fail not to ask me to thy wedding!”

There was in this speech and the bearing of the speaker that superb

levity, that inexpressible and conscious superiority, that cold,

ironical tranquillity, which awe and humble men more than grave disdain

or imperious passion. Alwyn ground his teeth as he listened, and gazed

in silent despair and rage upon the calm lord. Neither of these men

could strictly be called handsome. Of the two, Alwyn had the advantage

of more youthful prime, of a taller stature, of a more powerful, though

less supple and graceful, frame. In their very dress, there was little

of that marked distinction between classes which then usually prevailed,

for the dark cloth tunic and surcoat of Hastings made a costume even

simpler than the bright-coloured garb of the trader, with its broad

trimmings of fur, and its aiglettes of elaborate lace. Between man

and man, then, where was the visible, the mighty, the insurmountable

difference in all that can charm the fancy and captivate the eye, which,

as he gazed, Alwyn confessed to himself there existed between the two?

Alas! how the distinctions least to be analyzed are ever the sternest!

What lofty ease in that high-bred air; what histories of triumph seemed

to speak in that quiet eye, sleeping in its own imperious lustre; what

magic of command in that pale brow; what spells of persuasion in that

artful lip! Alwyn muttered to himself, bowed his head involuntarily, and

passed on at once from Hastings to Sibyll, who now, at the distance of

some yards, had arrested her steps, in surprise to see the conference

between the nobleman and the burgher.

But as he approached Sibyll, poor Alwyn felt all the firmness and

courage he had exhibited with Hastings melt away. And the trepidation

which a fearful but deep affection ever occasions in men of his

character, made his movements more than usually constrained and awkward,

as he cowered beneath the looks of the maid he so truly loved.

“Seekest thou me, Master Alwyn?” asked Sibyll, gently, seeing that,

though he paused by her side, he spoke not.

“I do,” returned Alwyn, abruptly, and again he was silent. At length,

lifting his eyes and looking round him, he saw Hastings at the distance,

leaning against the rampart, with folded arms; and the contrast of his

rival’s cold and arrogant indifference, and his own burning veins and

bleeding heart, roused up his manly spirit, and gave to his tongue the

eloquence which emotion gains when it once breaks the fetters it forges

for itself.

“Look, look, Sibyll!” he said, pointing to Hastings “look! that man you

believe loves you. If so--if he loved thee,--would he stand yonder--mark

him--aloof, contemptuous, careless--while he knew that I was by your

side?”

Sibyll turned upon the goldsmith eyes full of innocent surprise,--eyes

that asked, plainly as eyes could speak, “And wherefore not, Master

Alwyn?”

Alwyn so interpreted the look, and replied, as if she had spoken:

“Because he must know how poor and tame is that feeble fantasy which

alone can come from a soul worn bare with pleasure, to that which I

feel and now own for thee,--the love of youth, born of the heart’s first

vigour; because he ought to fear that that love should prevail with

thee; because that love ought to prevail. Sibyll, between us there are

not imparity and obstacle. Oh, listen to me,--listen still! Frown not,

turn not away.” And, stung and animated by the sight of his rival, fired

by the excitement of a contest on which the bliss of his own life and

the weal of Sibyll’s might depend, his voice was as the cry of a mortal

agony, and affected the girl to the inmost recesses of her soul. “Oh,

Alwyn, I frown not!” she said sweetly; “oh, Alwyn, I turn not away! Woe

is me to give pain to so kind and brave a heart; but--”

“No, speak not yet. I have studied thee, I have read thee as a scholar

would read a book. I know thee proud; I know thee aspiring; I know thou

art vain of thy gentle blood, and distasteful of my yeoman’s birth.

There, I am not blind to thy faults, but I love thee despite them; and

to please those faults I have toiled, schemed, dreamed, risen. I offer

to thee the future with the certainty of a man who can command it.

Wouldst thou wealth?--be patient (as ambition ever is): in a few years

thou shalt have more gold than the wife of Lord Hastings can command;

thou shalt lodge more statelily, fare more sumptuously; [This was no

vain promise of Master Alwyn. At that time a successful trader made a

fortune with signal rapidity, and enjoyed greater luxuries than most of

the barons. All the gold in the country flowed into the coffers of

the London merchants.] thou shalt walk on cloth-of-gold if thou wilt!

Wouldst thou titles?--I will win them. Richard de la Pole, who founded

the greatest duchy in the realm, was poorer than I, when he first served

in a merchant’s ware. Gold buys all things now. Oh, would to Heaven it

could but buy me thee!”

“Master Alwyn, it is not gold that buys love. Be soothed. What can I say

to thee to soften the harsh word ‘Nay’?”

“You reject me, then, and at once? I ask not your hand now. I will wait,

tarry, hope,--I care not if for years; wait till I can fulfil all I

promise thee!”

Sibyll, affected to tears, shook her head mournfully; and there was a

long and painful silence. Never was wooing more strangely circumstanced

than this,--the one lover pleading while the other was in view; the one,

ardent, impassioned, the other, calm and passive; and the silence of the

last, alas! having all the success which the words of the other lacked.

It might be said that the choice before Sibyll was a type of the choice

ever given, but in vain, to the child of genius. Here a secure and

peaceful life, an honoured home, a tranquil lot, free from ideal

visions, it is true, but free also from the doubt and the terror, the

storms of passion; there, the fatal influence of an affection, born of

imagination, sinister, equivocal, ominous, but irresistible. And the

child of genius fulfilled her destiny!

“Master Alwyn,” said Sibyll, rousing herself to the necessary exertion,

“I shall never cease gratefully to recall thy generous friendship, never

cease to pray fervently for thy weal below. But forever and forever let

this content thee,--I can no more.”

Impressed by the grave and solemn tone of Sibyll, Alwyn hushed the groan

that struggled to his lips, and gloomily replied: “I obey you, fair

mistress, and I return to my workday life; but ere I go, I pray you

misthink me not if I say this much: not alone for the bliss of hoping

for a day in which I might call thee mine have I thus importuned, but,

not less--I swear not less--from the soul’s desire to save thee from

what I fear will but lead to woe and wayment, to peril and pain, to

weary days and sleepless nights. ‘Better a little fire that warms than

a great that burns.’ Dost thou think that Lord Hastings, the vain, the

dissolute--”

“Cease, sir!” said Sibyll, proudly; “me reprove if thou wilt, but lower

not my esteem for thee by slander against another!”

“What!” said Alwyn, bitterly; “doth even one word of counsel chafe thee?

I tell thee that if thou dreamest that Lord Hastings loves Sibyll Warner

as man loves the maiden he would wed, thou deceivest thyself to thine

own misery. If thou wouldst prove it, go to him now,--go and say, ‘Wilt

thou give me that home of peace and honour, that shelter for my father’s

old age under a son’s roof which the trader I despise proffers me in

vain?”

“If it were already proffered me--by him?” said Sibyll, in a low voice,

and blushing deeply.

Alwyn started. “Then I wronged him; and--and--” he added generously,

though with a faint sickness at his heart, “I can yet be happy in

thinking thou art so. Farewell, maiden, the saints guard thee from one

memory of regret at what hath passed between us!”

He pulled his bonnet hastily over his brows, and departed with unequal

and rapid strides. As he passed the spot where Hastings stood leaning

his arm upon the wall, and his face upon his hand, the nobleman looked

up, and said,--

“Well, Sir Goldsmith, own at least that thy trial hath been a fair one!”

Then struck with the anguish written upon Alwyn’s face, he walked up

to him, and, with a frank, compassionate impulse, laid his hand on

his shoulder. “Alwyn,” he said, “I have felt what you feel now; I have

survived it, and the world hath not prospered with me less! Take with

you a compassion that respects, and does not degrade you.”

“Do not deceive her, my lord,--she trusts and loves you! You never

deceived man,--the wide world says it,--do not deceive woman! Deeds kill

men, words women!” Speaking thus simply, Alwyn strode on, and vanished.

Hastings slowly and silently advanced to Sibyll. Her rejection of Alwyn

had by no means tended to reconcile him to the marriage he himself had

proffered. He might well suppose that the girl, even if unguided by

affection, would not hesitate between a mighty nobleman and an obscure

goldsmith. His pride was sorely wounded that the latter should have even

thought himself the equal of one whom he had proposed, though but in

a passionate impulse, to raise to his own state. And yet as he neared

Sibyll, and, with a light footstep, she sprang forward to meet him, her

eyes full of sweet joy and confidence, he shrank from an avowal which

must wither up a heart opening thus all its bloom of youth and love to

greet him.

“Ah, fair lord,” said the maiden, “was it kindly in thee to permit

poor Alwyn to inflict on me so sharp a pain, and thou to stand calmly

distant? Sure, alas! that had thy humble rival proffered a crown, it had

been the same to Sibyll! Oh, how the grief it was mine to cause

grieved me; and yet, through all, I had one selfish, guilty gleam of

pleasure,--to think that I had not been loved so well, if I were all

unworthy the sole love I desire or covet!”

“And yet, Sibyll, this young man can in all, save wealth and a sounding

name, give thee more than I can,--a heart undarkened by moody memories,

a temper unsoured by the world’s dread and bitter lore of man’s frailty

and earth’s sorrow. Ye are not far separated by ungenial years, and

might glide to a common grave hand in hand; but I, older in heart than

in age, am yet so far thine elder in the last, that these hairs will

be gray, and this form bent, while thy beauty is in its prime, and--but

thou weepest!”

“I weep that thou shouldst bring one thought of time to sadden my

thoughts, which are of eternity. Love knows no age, it foresees no

grave! its happiness and its trust behold on the earth but one glory,

melting into the hues of heaven, where they who love lastingly pass

calmly on to live forever! See, I weep not now!”

“And did not this honest burgher,” pursued Hastings, softened and

embarrassed, but striving to retain his cruel purpose, “tell thee to

distrust me; tell thee that my vows were false?”

“Methinks, if an angel told me so, I should disbelieve!”

“Why, look thee, Sibyll, suppose his warning true; suppose that at this

hour I sought thee with intent to say that that destiny which ambition

weaves for itself forbade me to fulfil a word hotly spoken; that I could

not wed thee,--should I not seem to thee a false wooer, a poor trifler

with thy earnest heart; and so, couldst thou not recall the love of him

whose truer and worthier homage yet lingers in thine ear, and with him

be happy?”

Sibyll lifted her dark eyes, yet humid, upon the unrevealing face of

the speaker, and gazed on him with wistful and inquiring sadness; then,

shrinking from his side, she crossed her arms meekly on her bosom, and

thus said,--

“If ever, since we parted, one such thought hath glanced across

thee--one thought of repentance at the sacrifice of pride, or the

lessening of power--which (she faltered, broke off the sentence, and

resumed)--in one word, if thou wouldst retract, say it now, and I will

not accuse thy falsehood, but bless thy truth.”

“Thou couldst be consoled, then, by thy pride of woman, for the loss of

an unworthy lover?”

“My lord, are these questions fair?”

Hastings was silent. The gentler part of his nature struggled severely

with the harder. The pride of Sibyll moved him no less than her trust;

and her love in both was so evident, so deep, so exquisitely contrasting

the cold and frivolous natures amidst which his lot had fallen, that

he recoiled from casting away forever a heart never to be replaced.

Standing on that bridge of life, with age before and youth behind, he

felt that never again could he be so loved, or, if so loved by one so

worthy of whatever of pure affection, of young romance, was yet left to

his melancholy and lonely soul.

He took her hand, and, as she felt its touch, her firmness forsook her,

her head drooped upon her bosom, and she burst into an agony of tears.

“Oh, Sibyll, forgive me! Smile on me again, Sibyll!” exclaimed Hastings,

subdued and melted. But, alas! the heart once bruised and galled

recovers itself but slowly, and it was many minutes before the softest

words the eloquent lover could shape to sound sufficed to dry those

burning tears, and bring back the enchanting smile,--nay, even then the

smile was forced and joyless. They walked on for some moments, both in

thought, till Hastings said: “Thou lovest me, Sibyll, and art worthy of

all the love that man can feel for maid; and yet, canst thou solve me

this question, nor chide me that I ask it, Dost thou not love the world

and the world’s judgments more than me? What is that which women call

honour? What makes them shrink from all love that takes not the form and

circumstance of the world’s hollow rites? Does love cease to be love,

unless over its wealth of trust and emotion the priest mouths his empty

blessing? Thou in thy graceful pride art angered if I, in wedding thee,

should remember the sacrifice which men like me--I own it fairly--deem

as great as man can make; and yet thou wouldst fly my love if it wooed

thee to a sacrifice of thine own.”

Artfully was the question put, and Hastings smiled to himself in

imagining the reply it must bring; and then Sibyll answered, with the

blush which the very subject called forth,

“Alas, my lord, I am but a poor casuist, but I feel that if I asked thee

to forfeit whatever men respect,--honour and repute for valour, to be

traitor and dastard,--thou couldst love me no more; and marvel you if,

when man woos woman to forfeit all that her sex holds highest,--to be in

woman what dastard and traitor is in man,--she hears her conscience

and her God speak in a louder voice than can come from a human lip? The

goods and pomps of the world we are free to sacrifice, and true love

heeds and counts them not; but true love cannot sacrifice that which

makes up love,--it cannot sacrifice the right to be loved below; the

hope to love on in the realm above; the power to pray with a pure soul

for the happiness it yearns to make; the blessing to seem ever good and

honoured in the eyes of the one by whom alone it would be judged. And

therefore, sweet lord, true love never contemplates this sacrifice; and

if once it believes itself truly loved, it trusts with a fearless faith

in the love on which it leans.”

“Sibyll, would to Heaven I had seen thee in my youth! Would to Heaven I

were more worthy of thee!” And in that interview Hastings had no

heart to utter what he had resolved, “Sibyll, I sought thee but to say

Farewell.”

CHAPTER VI. WARWICK RETURNS--APPEASES A DISCONTENTED PRINCE--AND CONFERS

WITH A REVENGEFUL CONSPIRATOR.

It was not till late in the evening that Warwick arrived at his vast

residence in London, where he found not only Marmaduke Nevile ready to

receive him, but a more august expectant, in George Duke of Clarence.

Scarcely had the earl crossed the threshold, when the duke seized his

arm, and leading him into the room that adjoined the hall, said,--

“Verily, Edward is besotted no less than ever by his wife’s leech-like

family. Thou knowest my appointment to the government of Ireland;

Isabel, like myself, cannot endure the subordinate vassalage we must

brook at the court, with the queen’s cold looks and sour words. Thou

knowest, also, with what vain pretexts Edward has put me of; and now,

this very day, he tells me that he hath changed his humour,--that I

am not stern enough for the Irish kernes; that he loves me too well to

banish me, forsooth; and that Worcester, the people’s butcher but the

queen’s favourite, must have the post so sacredly pledged to me. I see

in this Elizabeth’s crafty malice. Is this struggle between king’s blood

and queen’s kith to go on forever?”

“Calm thyself, George; I will confer with the king tomorrow, and hope

to compass thy not too arrogant desire. Certes, a king’s brother is

the fittest vice-king for the turbulent kernes of Ireland, who are

ever flattered into obeisance by ceremony and show. The government was

pledged to thee--Edward can scarcely be serious. Moreover, Worcester,

though forsooth a learned man--Mort-Dieu! methinks that same learning

fills the head to drain the heart!--is so abhorred for his cruelties

that his very landing in Ireland will bring a new rebellion to add to

our already festering broils and sores. Calm thyself, I say. Where didst

thou leave Isabel?”

“With my mother.”

“And Anne?--the queen chills not her young heart with cold grace?”

“Nay, the queen dare not unleash her malice against Edward’s will; and,

to do him justice, he hath shown all honour to Lord Warwick’s daughter.”

“He is a gallant prince, with all his faults,” said the father,

heartily, “and we must bear with him, George; for verily he hath bound

men by a charm to love him. Stay thou and share my hasty repast, and

over the wine we will talk of thy views. Spare me now for a moment;

I have to prepare work eno’ for a sleepless night. This Lincolnshire

rebellion promises much trouble. Lord Willoughby has joined it; more

than twenty thousand men are in arms. I have already sent to convene the

knights and barons on whom the king can best depend, and must urge their

instant departure for their halls, to raise men and meet the foe. While

Edward feasts, his minister must toil. Tarry a while till I return.” The

earl re-entered the hall, and beckoned to Marmaduke, who stood amongst a

group of squires.

“Follow me; I may have work for thee.” Warwick took a taper from one of

the servitors, and led the way to his own more private apartment. On the

landing of the staircase, by a small door, stood his body-squire--“Is

the prisoner within?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good!”--The earl opened the door by which the squire had mounted guard,

and bade Marmaduke wait without.

The inmate of the chamber, whose dress bore the stains of fresh travel

and hard riding, lifted his face hastily as the earl entered.

“Robin Hilyard,” said Warwick, “I have mused much how to reconcile my

service to the king with the gratitude I owe to a man who saved me from

great danger. In the midst of thy unhappy and rebellious designs thou

wert captured and brought to me; the papers found on thee attest a

Lancastrian revolt, so ripening towards a mighty gathering, and so

formidable from the adherents whom the gold and intrigues of King Louis

have persuaded to risk land and life for the Red Rose, that all the

king’s friends can do to save his throne is now needed. In this revolt

thou hast been the scheming brain, the master hand, the match to the

bombard, the fire brand to the flax. Thou smilest, man! Alas! seest thou

not that it is my stern duty to send thee bound hand and foot before the

king’s council, for the brake to wring from thee thy guilty secrets, and

the gibbet to close thy days?”

“I am prepared,” said Hilyard; “when the bombard explodes, the match

has become useless; when the flame smites the welkin, the firebrand is

consumed!”

“Bold man! what seest thou in this rebellion that can profit thee?”

“I see, looming through the chasms and rents made in the feudal order by

civil war, the giant image of a free people.”

“And thou wouldst be a martyr for the multitude, who deserted thee at

Olney?”

“As thou for the king who dishonoured thee at Shene!”

Warwick frowned, and there was a moment’s pause; at last, said the earl:

“Look you, Robin, I would fain not have on my hands the blood of a man

who saved my life. I believe thee, though a fanatic and half madman,--I

believe thee true in word as rash of deed. Swear to me on the cross

of this dagger that thou wilt lay aside all scheme and plot for this

rebellion, all aid and share in civil broil and dissension, and thy life

and liberty are restored to thee. In that intent, I have summoned my own

kinsman, Marmaduke Nevile. He waits without the door; he shall conduct

thee safely to the seashore; thou shalt gain in peace my government

of Calais, and my seneschal there shall find thee all thou canst

need,--meat for thy hunger and moneys for thy pastime. Accept my mercy,

take the oath, and begone.”

“My lord,” answered Hilyard, much touched and affected, “blame not

thyself if this carcass feed the crows--my blood be on mine own head!

I cannot take this oath; I cannot live in peace; strife and broil are

grown to me food and drink. Oh, my lord! thou knowest not what dark and

baleful memories made me an agent in God’s hand against this ruthless

Edward!” and then passionately, with whitening lips and convulsive

features, Hilyard recounted to the startled Warwick the same tale which

had roused the sympathy of Adam Warner.

The earl, whose affections were so essentially homely and domestic, was

even more shocked than the scholar by the fearful narrative.

“Unhappy man!” he said with moistened eyes, “from the core of my heart

I pity thee. But thou, the scathed sufferer from civil war, wilt thou be

now its dread reviver?”

“If Edward had wronged thee, great earl, as me, poor franklin, what

would be thine answer? In vain moralize to him whom the spectre of a

murdered child and the shriek of a maniac wife haunt and hound on to

vengeance! So send me to rack and halter. Be there one curse more on the

soul of Edward!”

“Thou shalt not die through my witness,” said the earl, abruptly; and he

quitted the chamber.

Securing the door by a heavy bolt on the outside, he gave orders to his

squire to attend to the comforts of the prisoner; and then turning into

his closet with Marmaduke, said: “I sent for thee, young cousin, with

design to commit to thy charge one whose absence from England I deemed

needful--that design I must abandon. Go back to the palace, and see,

if thou canst, the king before he sleeps; say that this rising

in Lincolnshire is more than a riot,--it is the first burst of a

revolution! that I hold council here to-night, and every shire, ere

the morrow, shall have its appointed captain. I will see the king at

morning. Yet stay--gain sight of my child Anne; she will leave the court

to-morrow. I will come for her; bid her train be prepared; she and the

countess must away to Calais,--England again hath ceased to be a home

for women! What to do with this poor rebel?” muttered the earl, when

alone; “release him I cannot; slay him I will not. Hum, there is space

enough in these walls to inclose a captive.”

CHAPTER VII. THE FEAR AND THE FLIGHT.

King Edward feasted high, and Sibyll sat in her father’s chamber,--she

silent with thought of love, Adam silent in the toils of science. The

Eureka was well-nigh finished, rising from its ruins more perfect, more

elaborate, than before. Maiden and scholar, each seeming near to the

cherished goal,--one to love’s genial altar, the other to fame’s lonely

shrine.

Evening advanced, night began, night deepened. King Edward’s feast was

over, but still in his perfumed chamber the wine sparkled in the golden

cup. It was announced to him that Sir Marmaduke Nevile, just arrived

from the earl’s house, craved an audience. The king, pre-occupied in

deep revery, impatiently postponed it till the morrow.

“To-morrow,” said the gentleman in attendance, “Sir Marmaduke bids me

say, fearful that the late hour would forbid his audience, that

Lord Warwick himself will visit your Grace. I fear, sire, that the

disturbances are great indeed, for the squires and gentlemen in Lady

Anne’s train have orders to accompany her to Calais to-morrow.”

“To-morrow, to-morrow!” repeated the king--“well, sir, you are

dismissed.”

The Lady Anne (to whom Sibyll had previously communicated the king’s

kindly consideration for Master Warner) had just seen Marmaduke, and

learned the new dangers that awaited the throne and the realm. The

Lancastrians were then openly in arms for the prince of her love, and

against her mighty father!

The Lady Anne sat a while, sorrowful and musing, and then, before yon

crucifix, the Lady Anne knelt in prayer. Sir Marmaduke Nevile descends

to the court below, and some three or four busy, curious gentlemen, not

yet a-bed, seize him by the arm, and pray him to say what storm is in

the wind.

The night deepened still. The wine is drained in King Edward’s goblet;

King Edward has left his chamber; and Sibyll, entreating her father, but

in vain, to suspend his toil, has kissed the damps from his brow, and

is about to retire to her neighbouring room. She has turned to the

threshold, when, hark! a faint--a distant cry, a woman’s shriek, the

noise of a clapping door! The voice--it is the voice of Anne! Sibyll

passed the threshold, she is in the corridor; the winter moon shines

through the open arches, the air is white and cold with frost. Suddenly

the door at the farther end is thrown wide open, a form rushes into the

corridor, it passes Sibyll, halts, turns round. “Oh, Sibyll!” cried the

Lady Anne, in a voice wild with horror, “save me--aid--help! Merciful

Heaven, the king!”

Instinctively, wonderingly, tremblingly, Sibyll drew Anne into the

chamber she had just quitted, and as they gained its shelter, as Anne

sank upon the floor, the gleam of cloth-of-gold flashed through the dim

atmosphere, and Edward, yet in the royal robe in which he had dazzled

all the eyes at his kingly feast, stood within the chamber. His

countenance was agitated with passion, and its clear hues flushed red

with wine. At his entrance Anne sprang from the floor, and rushed to

Warner, who, in dumb bewilderment, had suspended his task, and stood

before the Eureka, from which steamed and rushed the dark, rapid smoke,

while round and round, labouring and groaning, rolled its fairy wheels.

[The gentle reader will doubtless bear in mind that Master Warner’s

complicated model had but little resemblance to the models of the

steam-engine in our own day, and that it was usually connected with

other contrivances, for the better display of the principle it was

intended to illustrate.]

“Sir,” cried Anne, clinging to him convulsively, “you are a father; by

your child’s soul, protect Lord Warwick’s daughter!”

Roused from his abstraction by this appeal, the poor scholar wound

his arm round the form thus clinging to him, and raising his head with

dignity, replied, “Thy name, youth, and sex protect thee!”

“Unhand that lady, vile sorcerer,” exclaimed the king, “I am her

protector. Come, Anne, sweet Anne, fair lady, thou mistakest,--come!” he

whispered. “Give not to these low natures matter for guesses that do but

shame thee. Let thy king and cousin lead thee back to thy sweet rest.”

He sought, though gently, to loosen the arms that wound themselves

round the old man; but Anne, not heeding, not listening, distracted by

a terror that seemed to shake her whole frame and to threaten her very

reason, continued to cry out loudly upon her father’s name,--her great

father, wakeful, then, for the baffled ravisher’s tottering throne!

Edward had still sufficient possession of his reason to be alarmed lest

some loiterer or sentry in the outer court might hear the cries which

his attempts to soothe but the more provoked. Grinding his teeth, and

losing patience, he said to Adam, “Thou knowest me, friend,--I am thy

king. Since the Lady Anne, in her bewilderment, prefers thine aid to

mine, help to bear her back to her apartment; and thou, young mistress,

lend thine arm. This wizard’s den is no fit chamber for our high-born

guest.”

“No, no; drive me not hence, Master Warner--that man--that king--give me

not up to his--his--”

“Beware!” exclaimed the king.

It was not till now that Adam’s simple mind comprehended the true cause

of Anne’s alarm, which Sibyll still conjectured not, but stood trembling

by her friend’s side, and close to her father.

“Do not fear, maiden;” said Adam Warner, laying his hand upon the

loosened locks that swept over his bosom, “for though I am old and

feeble, God and his angels are in every spot where virtue trembles and

resists. My lord king, thy sceptre extends not over a human soul!”

“Dotard, prate not to me!” said Edward, laying his hand on his dagger.

Sibyll saw the movement, and instinctively placed herself between her

father and the king. That slight form, those pure, steadfast eyes, those

features, noble at once and delicate, recalled to Edward the awe which

had seized him in his first dark design; and again that awe came over

him. He retreated.

“I mean harm to none,” said he, almost submissively; “and if I am so

unhappy as to scare with my presence the Lady Anne, I will retire,

praying you, donzell, to see to her state, and lead her back to her

chamber when it so pleases herself. Saying this much, I command you, old

man, and you, maiden, to stand back while I but address one sentence to

the Lady Anne.”

With these words he gently advanced to Anne, and took her hand; but,

snatching it from him, the poor lady broke from Adam, rushed to the

casement, opened it, and seeing some figures indistinct and distant in

the court below, she called out in a voice of such sharp agony that it

struck remorse and even terror into Edward’s soul.

“Alas!” he muttered, “she will not listen to me! her mind is distraught!

What frenzy has been mine! Pardon--pardon, Anne,--oh, pardon!”

Adam Warner laid his hand on the king’s arm, and he drew the imperious

despot away as easily as a nurse leads a docile child.

“King!” said the brave old man, “may God pardon thee; for if the last

evil hath been wrought upon this noble lady, David sinned not more

heavily than thou.”

“She is pure, inviolate,--I swear it!” said the king, humbly. “Anne,

only say that I am forgiven.”

But Anne spoke not: her eyes were fixed, her lips had fallen; she was

insensible as a corpse,--dumb and frozen with her ineffable dread.

Suddenly steps were heard upon the stairs; the door opened, and

Marmaduke Nevile entered abruptly.

“Surely I heard my lady’s voice,--surely! What marvel this?--the king!

Pardon, my liege!” and he bent his knee.

The sight of Marmaduke dissolved the spell of awe and repentant

humiliation which had chained a king’s dauntless heart. His wonted guile

returned to him with his self-possession.

“Our wise craftsman’s strange and weird invention”--and Edward pointed

to the Eureka--“has scared our fair cousin’s senses, as, by sweet Saint

George, it well might! Go back, Sir Marmaduke, we will leave Lady Anne

for the moment to the care of Mistress Sibyll. Donzell, remember my

command. Come, sir”--(and he drew the wondering Marmaduke from the

chamber); but as soon as he had seen the knight descend the stairs and

regain the court, he returned to the room, and in a low, stern voice,

said, “Look you, Master Warner, and you, damsel, if ever either of

ye breathe one word of what has been your dangerous fate to hear and

witness, kings have but one way to punish slanderers, and silence but

one safeguard!--trifle not with death!”

He then closed the door, and resought his own chamber. The Eastern

spices, which were burned in the sleeping-rooms of the great, still made

the air heavy with their feverish fragrance. The king seated himself,

and strove to recollect his thoughts, and examine the peril he had

provoked. The resistance and the terror of Anne had effectually banished

from his heart the guilty passion it had before harboured; for emotions

like his, and in such a nature, are quick of change. His prevailing

feeling was one of sharp repentance and reproachful shame. But as he

roused himself from a state of mind which light characters ever seek

to escape, the image of the dark-browed earl rose before him, and fear

succeeded to mortification; but even this, however well-founded, could

not endure long in a disposition so essentially scornful of all danger.

Before morning the senses of Anne must return to her. So gentle a bosom

could be surely reasoned out of resentment, or daunted, at least, from

betraying to her stern father a secret that, if told, would smear the

sward of England with the gore of thousands. What woman will provoke war

and bloodshed? And for an evil not wrought, for a purpose not fulfilled?

The king was grateful that his victim had escaped him. He would see Anne

before the earl could, and appease her anger, obtain her silence! For

Warner and for Sibyll, they would not dare to reveal; and, if they did,

the lips that accuse a king soon belie themselves, while a rack can

torture truth, and the doomsman be the only judge between the subject

and the head that wears a crown.

Thus reasoning with himself, his soul faced the solitude. Meanwhile

Marmaduke regained the courtyard, where, as we have said, he had been

detained in conferring with some of the gentlemen in the king’s service,

who, hearing that he brought important tidings from the earl, had

abstained from rest till they could learn if the progress of the new

rebellion would bring their swords into immediate service. Marmaduke,

pleased to be of importance, had willingly satisfied their curiosity,

as far as he was able, and was just about to retire to his own chamber,

when the cry of Anne had made him enter the postern-door which led up

the stairs to Adam’s apartment, and which was fortunately not locked;

and now, on returning, he had again a new curiosity to allay. Having

briefly said that Master Warner had taken that untoward hour to frighten

the women with a machine that vomited smoke and howled piteously,

Marmaduke dismissed the group to their beds, and was about to seek his

own, when, looking once more towards the casement, he saw a white hand

gleaming in the frosty moonlight, and beckoning to him.

The knight crossed himself, and reluctantly ascended the stairs, and

re-entered the wizard’s den.

The Lady Anne had so far recovered herself, that a kind of unnatural

calm had taken possession of her mind, and changed her ordinary sweet

and tractable nature into one stern, obstinate resolution,--to escape,

if possible, that unholy palace. And as soon as Marmaduke re-entered,

Anne met him at the threshold, and laying her hand convulsively on his

arm, said, “By the name you bear, by your love to my father, aid me to

quit these walls.”

In great astonishment, Marmaduke stared, without reply. “Do you deny me,

sir?” said Anne, almost sternly.

“Lady and mistress mine,” answered Marmaduke, “I am your servant in all

things. Quit these walls, the palace!--How?--the gates are closed. Nay,

and what would my lord say, if at night--”

“If at night!” repeated Anne, in a hollow voice; and then pausing, burst

into a terrible laugh. Recovering herself abruptly, she moved to the

door, “I will go forth alone, and trust in God and Our Lady.”

Sibyll sprang forward to arrest her steps, and Marmaduke hastened to

Adam, and whispered, “Poor lady, is her mind unsettled? Hast thou, in

truth, distracted her with thy spells and glamour?”

“Hush!” answered the old man; and he whispered in Nevile’s ear.

Scarcely had the knight caught the words, than his cheek paled, his

eyes flashed fire. “The great earl’s daughter!” he exclaimed.

“Infamy--horror--she is right!” He broke from the student, approached

Anne, who still struggled with Sibyll, and kneeling before her, said, in

a voice choked with passions at once fierce and tender,--

“Lady, you are right. Unseemly it may be for one of your quality and

sex to quit this place with me, and alone; but at least I have a man’s

heart, a knight’s honour. Trust to me your safety, noble maiden, and

I will cut your way, even through yon foul king’s heart, to your great

father’s side!”

Anne did not seem quite to understand his words; but she smiled on him

as he knelt, and gave him her hand. The responsibility he had assumed

quickened all the intellect of the young knight. As he took and kissed

the hand extended to him, he felt the ring upon his finger,--the ring

intrusted to him by Alwyn, the king’s signet-ring, before which would

fly open every gate. He uttered a joyous exclamation, loosened his long

night-cloak, and praying Anne to envelop her form in its folds, drew

the hood over her head; he was about to lead her forth when he halted

suddenly.

“Alack,” said he, turning to Sibyll, “even though we may escape the

Tower, no boatman now can be found on the river. The way through the

streets is dark and perilous, and beset with midnight ruffians.”

“Verily,” said Warner, “the danger is past now. Let the noble demoiselle

rest here till morning. The king dare not again--”

“Dare not!” interrupted Marmaduke. “Alas! you little know King Edward.”

At that name Anne shuddered, opened the door, and hurried down the

stairs; Sibyll and Marmaduke followed her.

“Listen, Sir Marmaduke,” said Sibyll. “Close without the Tower is the

house of a noble lady, the dame of Longueville, where Anne may rest

in safety, while you seek Lord Warwick. I will go with you, if you can

obtain egress for us both.”

“Brave damsel!” said Marmaduke, with emotion; “but your own safety--the

king’s anger--no--besides a third, your dress not concealed, would

create the warder’s suspicion. Describe the house.”

“The third to the left, by the river’s side, with an arched porch, and

the fleur-de-lis embossed on the walls.”

“It is not so dark but we shall find it. Fare you well, gentle

mistress.”

While they yet spoke, they had both reached the side of Anne. Sibyll

still persisted in the wish to accompany her friend; but Marmaduke’s

representation of the peril to life itself that might befall her father,

if Edward learned she had abetted Anne’s escape, finally prevailed. The

knight and his charge gained the outer gate.

“Haste, haste, Master Warder!” he cried, beating at the door with his

dagger till it opened jealously,--“messages of importance to the Lord

Warwick. We have the king’s signet. Open!”

The sleepy warder glanced at the ring; the gates were opened; they were

without the fortress, they hurried on. “Cheer up, noble lady; you are

safe, you shall be avenged!” said Marmaduke, as he felt the steps of

his companion falter. But the reaction had come. The effort Anne had

hitherto made was for escape, for liberty; the strength ceased, the

object gained; her head drooped, she muttered a few incoherent words,

and then sense and life left her. Marmaduke paused in great perplexity

and alarm. But lo, a light in a house before him! That house the third

to the river,--the only one with the arched porch described by Sibyll.

He lifted the light and holy burden in his strong arms, he gained the

door; to his astonishment it was open; a light burned on the stairs; he

heard, in the upper room, the sound of whispered voices, and quick, soft

footsteps hurrying to and fro. Still bearing the insensible form of

his companion, he ascended the staircase, and entered at once upon

a chamber, in which, by a dim lamp, he saw some two or three persons

assembled round a bed in the recess. A grave man advanced to him, as he

paused at the threshold.

“Whom seek you?”

“The Lady Longueville.”

“Hush?”

“Who needs me?” said a faint voice, from the curtained recess.

“My name is Nevile,” answered Marmaduke, with straightforward brevity.

“Mistress Sibyll Warner told me of this house, where I come for an

hour’s shelter to my companion, the Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of

Warwick.”

Marmaduke resigned his charge to an old woman, who was the nurse in that

sick-chamber, and who lifted the hood and chafed the pale, cold hands

of the young maiden; the knight then strode to the recess. The Lady of

Longueville was on the bed of death--an illness of two days had brought

her to the brink of the grave; but there was in her eye and countenance

a restless and preternatural animation, and her voice was clear and

shrill, as she said,--

“Why does the daughter of Warwick, the Yorkist, seek refuge in the house

of the fallen and childless Lancastrian?”

“Swear by thy hopes in Christ that thou will tend and guard her while I

seek the earl, and I reply.”

“Stranger, my name is Longueville, my birth noble,--those pledges of

hospitality and trust are stronger than hollow oaths. Say on!”

“Because, then,” whispered the knight, after waving the bystanders

from the spot, “because the earl’s daughter flies dishonour in a king’s

palace, and her insulter is the king!”

Before the dying woman could reply, Anne, recovered by the cares of the

experienced nurse, suddenly sprang to the recess, and kneeling by the

bedside, exclaimed wildly,--“Save me! bide me! save me!”

“Go and seek the earl, whose right hand destroyed my house and his

lawful sovereign’s throne,--go! I will live till he arrives!” said

the childless widow, and a wild gleam of triumph shot over her haggard

features.

CHAPTER VIII. THE GROUP ROUND THE DEATH-BED OF THE LANCASTRIAN WIDOW.

The dawning sun gleamed through gray clouds upon a small troop of men,

armed in haste, who were grouped round a covered litter by the outer

door of the Lady Longueville’s house; while in the death-chamber, the

Earl of Warwick, with a face as pale as the dying woman’s, stood beside

the bed, Anne calmly leaning on his breast, her eyes closed, and tears

yet moist on her long fringes.

“Ay, ay, ay!” said the Lancastrian noblewoman, “ye men of wrath and

turbulence should reap what ye have sown! This is the king for whom ye

dethroned the sainted Henry! this the man for whom ye poured forth the

blood of England’s best! Ha! ha! Look down from heaven, my husband, my

martyr-sons! The daughter of your mightiest foe flies to this lonely

hearth,--flies to the death-bed of the powerless woman for refuge from

the foul usurper whom that foe placed upon the throne!”

“Spare me,” muttered Warwick, in a low voice, and between his grinded

teeth. The room had been cleared, and Dr. Godard (the grave man who had

first accosted Marmaduke, and who was the priest summoned to the dying)

alone--save the scarce conscious Anne herself--witnessed the ghastly and

awful conference.

“Hush, daughter,” said the man of peace, lifting the solemn

crucifix,--“calm thyself to holier thoughts.”

The lady impatiently turned from the priest, and grasping the strong

right arm of Warwick with her shrivelled and trembling fingers, resumed

in a voice that struggled to repress the gasps which broke its breath,--

“But thou--oh, thou wilt bear this indignity! thou, the chief of

England’s barons, wilt see no dishonour in the rank love of the vilest

of England’s kings! Oh, yes, ye Yorkists have the hearts of varlets, not

of men and fathers!”

“By the symbol from which thou turnest, woman!” exclaimed the earl,

giving vent to the fury which the presence of death had before

suppressed, “by Him to whom, morning and night, I have knelt in grateful

blessing for the virtuous life of this beloved child, I will have such

revenge on the recreant whom I kinged, as shall live in the rolls of

England till the trump of the Judgment Angel!”

“Father,” said Anne, startled by her father’s vehemence from her

half-swoon, half-sleep--“Father, think no more of the past,--take me to

my mother! I want the clasp of my mother’s arms!”

“Leave us,--leave the dying, Sir Earl and son,” said Godard. “I too

am Lancastrian; I too would lay down my life for the holy Henry; but I

shudder, in the hour of death, to hear yon pale lips, that should pray

for pardon, preach to thee of revenge.”

“Revenge!” shrieked out the dame of Longueville, as, sinking fast and

fast, she caught the word--“revenge! Thou hast sworn revenge on Edward

of York, Lord Warwick,--sworn it in the chamber of death, in the ear of

one who will carry that word to the hero-dead of a hundred battlefields!

Ha! the sun has risen! Priest--Godard--thine arms--support--raise--bear

me to the casement! Quick--quick! I would see my king once more!

Quick--quick! and then--then--I will hear thee pray!”

The priest, half chiding, yet half in pity, bore the dying woman to the

casement. She motioned to him to open it; he obeyed. The sun, just above

the welkin, shone over the lordly Thames, gilded the gloomy fortress of

the Tower, and glittered upon the window of Henry’s prison.

“There--there! It is he,--it is my king! Hither,--lord, rebel

earl,--hither. Behold your sovereign. Repent, revenge!”

With her livid and outstretched hand, the Lancastrian pointed to the

huge Wakefield tower. The earl’s dark eye beheld in the dim distance

a pale and reverend countenance, recognized even from afar. The dying

woman fixed her glazing eyes upon the wronged and mighty baron, and

suddenly her arm fell to her side, the face became set as into stone,

the last breath of life gurgled within, and fled; and still those

glazing eyes were fixed on the earl’s hueless face, and still in his

ear, and echoed by a thousand passions in his heart, thrilled the

word which had superseded prayer, and in which the sinner’s soul had

flown,--REVENGE!

BOOK IX. THE WANDERERS AND THE EXILES.

CHAPTER I. HOW THE GREAT BARON BECOMES AS GREAT A REBEL.

Hilyard was yet asleep in the chamber assigned to him as his prison,

when a rough grasp shook off his slumbers, and he saw the earl before

him, with a countenance so changed from its usual open majesty, so dark

and sombre, that he said involuntarily, “You send me to the doomsman,--I

am ready!”

“Hist, man! Thou hatest Edward of York?”

“An it were my last word, yes!”

“Give me thy hand--we are friends! Stare not at me with those eyes of

wonder, ask not the why nor wherefore! This last night gave Edward a

rebel more in Richard Nevile! A steed waits thee at my gates; ride fast

to young Sir Robert Welles with this letter. Bid him not be dismayed;

bid him hold out, for ere many days are past, Lord Warwick, and it may

be also the Duke of Clarence, will join their force with his. Mark, I

say not that I am for Henry of Lancaster,--I say only that I am against

Edward of York. Farewell, and when we meet again, blessed be the arm

that first cuts its way to a tyrant’s heart!”

Without another word, Warwick left the chamber. Hilyard at first could

not believe his senses; but as he dressed himself in haste, he pondered

over all those causes of dissension which had long notoriously subsisted

between Edward and the earl, and rejoiced that the prophecy that he had

long so shrewdly hazarded was at last fulfilled. Descending the stairs

he gained the gate, where Marmaduke awaited him, while a groom held

a stout haquenee (as the common riding-horse was then called), whose

points and breeding promised speed and endurance.

“Mount, Master Robin,” said Marmaduke; “I little thought we should ever

ride as friends together! Mount!--our way for some miles out of London

is the same. You go into Lincolnshire, I into the shire of Hertford.”

“And for the same purpose?” asked Hilyard, as he sprang upon his horse,

and the two men rode briskly on.

“Yes!”

“Lord Warwick is changed at last?”

“At last!”

“For long?”

“Till death!”

“Good, I ask no more!”

A sound of hoofs behind made the franklin turn his head, and he saw

a goodly troop, armed to the teeth, emerge from the earl’s house and

follow the lead of Marmaduke. Meanwhile Warwick was closeted with

Montagu.

Worldly as the latter was, and personally attached to Edward, he was

still keenly alive to all that touched the honour of his House; and

his indignation at the deadly insult offered to his niece was even more

loudly expressed than that of the fiery earl.

“To deem,” he exclaimed, “to deem Elizabeth Woodville worthy of his

throne, and to see in Anne Nevile the only worthy to be his leman!”

“Ay!” said the earl, with a calmness perfectly terrible, from its

unnatural contrast to his ordinary heat, when but slightly chafed, “ay!

thou sayest it! But be tranquil; cold,--cold as iron, and as hard! We

must scheme now, not storm and threaten--I never schemed before! You are

right,--honesty is a fool’s policy! Would I had known this but an hour

before the news reached me! I have already dismissed our friends to

their different districts, to support King Edward’s cause--he is still

king,--a little while longer king! Last night, I dismissed them--last

night, at the very hour when--O God, give me patience!” He paused, and

added in a low voice, “Yet--yet--how long the moments are how long! Ere

the sun sets, Edward, I trust, will be in my power!”

“How?”

“He goes, to-day, to the More,--he will not go the less for what

hath chanced; he will trust to the archbishop to make his peace with

me,--churchmen are not fathers! Marmaduke Nevile hath my orders; a

hundred armed men, who would march against the fiend himself, if I said

the word, will surround the More, and seize the guest!”

“But what then? Who, if Edward, I dare not say the word--who is to

succeed him?”

“Clarence is the male heir.”

“But with what face to the people proclaim--”

“There--there it is!” interrupted Warwick. “I have thought of that,--I

have thought of all things; my mind seems to have traversed worlds since

daybreak! True! all commotion to be successful must have a cause that

men can understand. Nevertheless, you, Montagu--you have a smoother

tongue than I; go to our friends--to those who hate Edward--seek them,

sound them!”

“And name to them Edward’s infamy?”

“‘S death, dost thou think it? Thou, a Monthermer and Montagu: proclaim

to England the foul insult to the hearth of an English gentleman and

peer! feed every ribald Bourdour with song and roundel of Anne’s virgin

shame! how King Edward stole to her room at the dead of night, and wooed

and pressed, and swore, and--God of Heaven, that this hand were on his

throat! No, brother, no! there are some wrongs we may not tell,--tumours

and swellings of the heart which are eased not till blood can flow!”

During this conference between the brothers, Edward, in his palace, was

seized with consternation and dismay on hearing that the Lady Anne could

not be found in her chamber. He sent forthwith to summon Adam Warner to

his presence, and learned from the simple sage, who concealed nothing,

the mode in which Anne had fled from the Tower. The king abruptly

dismissed Adam, after a few hearty curses and vague threats; and awaking

to the necessity of inventing some plausible story, to account to the

wonder of the court for the abrupt disappearance of his guest, he saw

that the person who could best originate and circulate such a tale was

the queen; and he sought her at once, with the resolution to choose his

confidant in the connection most rarely honoured by marital trust in

similar offences. He, however, so softened his narrative as to leave it

but a venial error. He had been indulging over-freely in the wine-cup,

he had walked into the corridor for the refreshing coolness of the air,

he had seen the figure of a female whom he did not recognize; and a

few gallant words, he scarce remembered what, had been misconstrued. On

perceiving whom he had thus addressed, he had sought to soothe the anger

or alarm of the Lady Anne; but still mistaking his intention, she had

hurried into Warner’s chamber; he had followed her thither, and now she

had fled the palace. Such was his story, told lightly and laughingly,

but ending with a grave enumeration of the dangers his imprudence had

incurred.

Whatever Elizabeth felt, or however she might interpret the confession,

she acted with her customary discretion; affected, after a few tender

reproaches, to place implicit credit in her lord’s account, and

volunteered to prevent all scandal by the probable story that the

earl, being prevented from coming in person for his daughter, as he

had purposed, by fresh news of the rebellion which might call him from

London with the early day, had commissioned his kinsman Marmaduke to

escort her home. The quick perception of her sex told her that, whatever

license might have terrified Anne into so abrupt a flight, the haughty

earl would shrink no less than Edward himself from making public an

insult which slander could well distort into the dishonour of his

daughter; and that whatever pretext might be invented, Warwick would not

deign to contradict it. And as, despite Elizabeth’s hatred to the earl,

and desire of permanent breach between Edward and his minister, she

could not, as queen, wife, and woman, but be anxious that some cause

more honourable in Edward, and less odious to the people, should be

assigned for quarrel, she earnestly recommended the king to repair at

once to the More, as had been before arranged, and to spare no pains,

disdain no expressions of penitence and humiliation, to secure the

mediation of the archbishop. His mind somewhat relieved by this

interview and counsel, the king kissed Elizabeth with affectionate

gratitude, and returned to his chamber to prepare for his departure

to the archbishop’s palace. But then, remembering that Adam and Sibyll

possessed his secret, he resolved at once to banish them from the Tower.

For a moment he thought of the dungeons of his fortress, of the rope of

his doomsman; but his conscience at that hour was sore and vexed. His

fierceness humbled by the sense of shame, he shrank from a new crime;

and, moreover, his strong common-sense assured him that the testimony of

a shunned and abhorred wizard ceased to be of weight the moment it was

deprived of the influence it took from the protection of a king. He gave

orders for a boat to be in readiness by the gate of St. Thomas, again

summoned Adam into his presence, and said briefly, “Master Warner, the

London mechanics cry so loudly against thine invention for lessening

labour and starving the poor, the sailors on the wharfs are so mutinous

at the thought of vessels without rowers, that, as a good king is bound,

I yield to the voice of my people. Go home, then, at once; the queen

dispenses with thy fair daughter’s service, the damsel accompanies thee.

A boat awaits ye at the stairs; a guard shall attend ye to your house.

Think what has passed within these walls has been a dream,--a dream

that, if told, is deathful, if concealed and forgotten hath no portent!”

Without waiting a reply, the king called from the anteroom one of his

gentlemen, and gave him special directions as to the departure and

conduct of the worthy scholar and his gentle daughter. Edward next

summoned before him the warder of the gate, learned that he alone was

privy to the mode of his guest’s flight, and deeming it best to leave

at large no commentator on the tale he had invented, sentenced the

astonished warder to three months’ solitary imprisonment,--for appearing

before him with soiled hosen! An hour afterwards, the king, with a small

though gorgeous retinue, was on his way to the More.

The archbishop had, according to his engagement, assembled in his palace

the more powerful of the discontented seigneurs; and his eloquence had

so worked upon them, that Edward beheld, on entering the hall, only

countenances of cheerful loyalty and respectful welcome. After the first

greetings, the prelate, according to the custom of the day, conducted

Edward into a chamber, that he might refresh himself with a brief rest

and the bath, previous to the banquet.

Edward seized the occasion, and told his tale; but however softened,

enough was left to create the liveliest dismay in his listener. The

lofty scaffolding of hope upon which the ambitious prelate was to mount

to the papal throne seemed to crumble into the dust. The king and the

earl were equally necessary to the schemes of George Nevile. He chid the

royal layman with more than priestly unction for his offence; but Edward

so humbly confessed his fault, that the prelate at length relaxed his

brow, and promised to convey his penitent assurances to the earl.

“Not an hour should be lost,” he said; “the only one who can soothe

his wrath is your Highness’s mother, our noble kinswoman. Permit me to

despatch to her grace a letter, praying her to seek the earl, while I

write by the same courier to himself.”

“Be it all as you will,” said Edward, doffing his surcoat, and dipping

his hands in a perfumed ewer; “I shall not know rest till I have knelt

to the Lady Anne, and won her pardon.”

The prelate retired, and scarcely had he left the room when Sir John

Ratcliffe, [Afterwards Lord Fitzwalter. See Lingard (note, vol. iii. p.

507, quarto edition), for the proper date to be assigned to this royal

visit to the More,--a date we have here adopted, not, as Sharon Turner

and others place (namely, upon the authority of Hearne’s Fragm., 302,

which subsequent events disprove), after the open rebellion of Warwick,

but just before it; that is, not after Easter, but before Lent.] one of

the king’s retinue, and in waiting on his person, entered the chamber,

pale and trembling.

“My liege,” he said, in a whisper, “I fear some deadly treason awaits

you. I have seen, amongst the trees below this tower, the gleam of

steel; I have crept through the foliage, and counted no less than a

hundred armed men,--their leader is Sir Marmaduke Nevile, Earl Warwick’s

kinsman!”

“Ha!” muttered the king, and his bold face fell, “comes the earl’s

revenge so soon?”

“And,” continued Ratcliffe, “I overheard Sir Marmaduke say, ‘The door of

the Garden Tower is unguarded,--wait the signal!’ Fly, my liege! Hark!

even now I hear the rattling of arms!”

The king stole to the casement; the day was closing; the foliage grew

thick and dark around the wall; he saw an armed man emerge from the

shade,--a second, and a third.

“You are right, Ratcliffe! Flight--but how?”

“This way, my liege. By the passage I entered, a stair winds to a door

on the inner court; there I have already a steed in waiting. Deign, for

precaution, to use my hat and manteline.”

The king hastily adopted the suggestion, followed the noiseless steps

of Ratcliffe, gained the door, sprang upon his steed, and dashing

right through a crowd assembled by the gate, galloped alone and fast,

untracked by human enemy, but goaded by the foe that mounts the rider’s

steed, over field, over fell, over dyke, through hedge, and in the dead

of night reined in at last before the royal towers of Windsor.

CHAPTER II. MANY THINGS BRIEFLY TOLD.

The events that followed the king’s escape were rapid and startling. The

barons assembled at the More, enraged at Edward’s seeming distrust of

them, separated in loud anger. The archbishop learned the cause from one

of his servitors, who detected Marmaduke’s ambush, but he was too wary

to make known a circumstance suspicious to himself. He flew to London,

and engaged the mediation of the Duchess of York to assist his own.

[Lingard. See for the dates, Fabyan, 657.]

The earl received their joint overtures with stern and ominous coldness,

and abruptly repaired to Warwick, taking with him the Lady Anne. There

he was joined, the same day, by the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.

The Lincolnshire rebellion gained head: Edward made a dexterous feint

in calling, by public commission, upon Clarence and Warwick to aid in

dispersing it; if they refused, the odium of first aggression would

seemingly rest with them. Clarence, more induced by personal ambition

than sympathy with Warwick’s wrong, incensed by his brother’s recent

slights, looking to Edward’s resignation and his own consequent

accession to the throne, and inflamed by the ambition and pride of a

wife whom he at once feared and idolized, went hand in heart with the

earl; but not one lord and captain whom Montagu had sounded lent favour

to the deposition of one brother for the advancement of the next.

Clarence, though popular, was too young to be respected: many there were

who would rather have supported the earl, if an aspirant to the throne;

but that choice forbidden by the earl himself, there could be but two

parties in England,--the one for Edward IV., the other for Henry VI.

Lord Montagu had repaired to Warwick Castle to communicate in person

this result of his diplomacy. The earl, whose manner was completely

changed, no longer frank and hearty, but close and sinister, listened in

gloomy silence.

“And now,” said Montagu, with the generous emotion of a man whose nobler

nature was stirred deeply, “if you resolve on war with Edward, I am

willing to renounce my own ambition, the hand of a king’s daughter for

my son, so that I may avenge the honour of our common name. I confess

that I have so loved Edward that I would fain pray you to pause, did I

not distrust myself, lest in such delay his craft should charm me back

to the old affection. Nathless, to your arm and your great soul I have

owed all, and if you are resolved to strike the blow, I am ready to

share the hazard.”

The earl turned away his face, and wrung his brother’s hand.

“Our father, methinks, hears thee from the grave!” said he, solemnly,

and there was a long pause. At length Warwick resumed: “Return to

London; seem to take no share in my actions, whatever they be; if I

fail, why drag thee into my ruin?--and yet, trust me, I am rash and

fierce no more. He who sets his heart on a great object suddenly becomes

wise. When a throne is in the dust, when from St. Paul’s Cross a voice

goes forth to Carlisle and the Land’s End, proclaiming that the reign of

Edward the Fourth is past and gone, then, Montagu, I claim thy promise

of aid and fellowship,--not before!”

Meanwhile, the king, eager to dispel thought in action, rushed in person

against the rebellious forces. Stung by fear into cruelty, he beheaded,

against all kingly faith, his hostages, Lord Welles and Sir Thomas

Dymoke, summoned Sir Robert Welles, the leader of the revolt, to

surrender; received for answer, that Sir Robert Welles would not trust

the perfidy of the man who had murdered his father!--pushed on to

Erpingham, defeated the rebels in a signal battle, and crowned his

victory by a series of ruthless cruelties, committed to the fierce and

learned Earl of Worcester, “Butcher of England.” [Stowe. “Warkworth

Chronicle”--Cont. Croyl. Lord Worcester ordered Clapham (a squire to

Lord Warwick) and nineteen others, gentlemen and yeomen, to be impaled,

and from the horror the spectacle inspired, and the universal odium

it attached to Worcester, it is to be feared that the unhappy men were

still sensible to the agony of this infliction, though they appear first

to have been drawn, and partially hanged,--outrage confined only to the

dead bodies of rebels being too common at that day to have excited the

indignation which attended the sentence Worcester passed on his victims.

It is in vain that some writers would seek to cleanse the memory of this

learned nobleman from the stain of cruelty by rhetorical remarks on

the improbability that a cultivator of letters should be of a ruthless

disposition. The general philosophy of this defence is erroneous. In

ignorant ages a man of superior acquirements is not necessarily made

humane by the cultivation of his intellect, on the contrary, he too

often learns to look upon the uneducated herd as things of another clay.

Of this truth all history is pregnant,--witness the accomplished tyrants

of Greece, the profound and cruel intellect of the Italian Borgias.

Richard III. and Henry VIII. were both highly educated for their age.

But in the case of Tiptoft, Lord Worcester, the evidence of his cruelty

is no less incontestable than that which proves his learning--the

Croyland historian alone is unimpeachable. Worcester’s popular name of

“the Butcher” is sufficient testimony in itself. The people are often

mistaken, to be sure, but can scarcely be so upon the one point, whether

a man who has sat in judgment on themselves be merciful or cruel.]

With the prompt vigour and superb generalship which Edward ever

displayed in war, he then cut his gory way to the force which Clarence

and Warwick (though their hostility was still undeclared) had levied,

with the intent to join the defeated rebels. He sent his herald, Garter

King-at-arms, to summon the earl and the duke to appear before him

within a certain day. The time expired; he proclaimed them traitors, and

offered rewards for their apprehension. [One thousand pounds in money,

or one hundred pounds a year in land; an immense reward for that day.]

So sudden had been Warwick’s defection, so rapid the king’s movements,

that the earl had not time to mature his resources, assemble his

vassals, consolidate his schemes. His very preparations, upon the night

on which Edward had repaid his services by such hideous ingratitude, had

manned the country with armies against himself. Girt but with a scanty

force collected in haste (and which consisted merely of his retainers in

the single shire of Warwick), the march of Edward cut him off from the

counties in which his name was held most dear, in which his trumpet

could raise up hosts. He was disappointed in the aid he had expected

from his powerful but self-interested brother-in-law, Lord Stanley.

Revenge had become more dear to him than life: life must not be

hazarded, lest revenge be lost. On still marched the king; and the day

that his troops entered Exeter, Warwick, the females of his family,

with Clarence, and a small but armed retinue, took ship from Dartmouth,

sailed for Calais (before which town, while at anchor, Isabel was

confined of her first-born). To the earl’s rage and dismay his deputy

Vauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on towards Normandy,

captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token of defiance to the

earl’s old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur, where he and his

companions were received with royal honours by the Admiral of France,

and finally took their way to the court of Louis XI. at Amboise.

“The danger is past forever!” said King Edward, as the wine sparkled in

his goblet. “Rebellion hath lost its head,--and now, indeed, and for the

first time, a monarch I reign alone!” [Before leaving England, Warwick

and Clarence are generally said to have fallen in with Anthony Woodville

and Lord Audley, and ordered them to execution, from which they were

saved by a Dorsetshire gentleman. Carte, who, though his history is

not without great mistakes, is well worth reading by those whom the

character of Lord Warwick may interest, says, that the earl had “too

much magnanimity to put them to death immediately, according to the

common practice of the times, and only imprisoned them in the castle

of Wardour, from whence they were soon rescued by John Thornhill,

a gentleman of Dorsetshire.” The whole of this story is, however,

absolutely contradicted by the “Warkworth Chronicle” (p. 9, edited by

Mr. Halliwell), according to which authority Anthony Woodville was at

that time commanding a fleet upon the Channel, which waylaid Warwick on

his voyage; but the success therein attributed to the gallant Anthony,

in dispersing or seizing all the earl’s ships, save the one that bore

the earl himself and his family, is proved to be purely fabulous, by the

earl’s well-attested capture of the Flemish vessels, as he passed

from Calais to the coasts of Normandy, an exploit he could never have

performed with a single vessel of his own. It is very probable that the

story of Anthony Woodville’s capture and peril at this time originates

in a misadventure many years before, and recorded in the “Paston

Letters,” as well as in the “Chronicles.”--In the year 1459, Anthony

Woodville and his father, Lord Rivers (then zealous Lancastrians),

really did fall into the hands of the Earl of March (Edward IV.),

Warwick and Salisbury, and got off with a sound “rating” upon the rude

language which such “knaves’ sons” and “little squires” had held to

those “who were of king’s blood.”]

CHAPTER III. THE PLOT OF THE HOSTELRY--THE MAID AND THE SCHOLAR IN THEIR

HOME.

The country was still disturbed, and the adherents, whether of Henry or

the earl, still rose in many an outbreak, though prevented from swelling

into one common army by the extraordinary vigour not only of Edward,

but of Gloucester and Hastings,--when one morning, just after the events

thus rapidly related, the hostelry of Master Sancroft, in the suburban

parish of Marybone, rejoiced in a motley crowd of customers and topers.

Some half-score soldiers, returned in triumph from the royal camp, sat

round a table placed agreeably enough in the deep recess made by the

large jutting lattice; with them were mingled about as many women,

strangely and gaudily clad. These last were all young; one or two,

indeed, little advanced from childhood. But there was no expression of

youth in their hard, sinister features: coarse paint supplied the place

of bloom; the very youngest had a wrinkle on her brow; their forms

wanted the round and supple grace of early years. Living principally in

the open air, trained from infancy to feats of activity, their muscles

were sharp and prominent, their aspects had something of masculine

audacity and rudeness; health itself seemed in them more loathsome

than disease. Upon those faces of bronze, vice had set its ineffable,

unmistaken seal. To those eyes never had sprung the tears of compassion

or woman’s gentle sorrow; on those brows never had flushed the glow of

modest shame: their very voices half belied their sex,--harsh and deep

and hoarse, their laughter loud and dissonant. Some amongst them were

not destitute of a certain beauty, but it was a beauty of feature with a

common hideousness of expression,--an expression at once cunning,

bold, callous, licentious. Womanless through the worst vices of woman,

passionless through the premature waste of passion, they stood between

the sexes like foul and monstrous anomalies, made up and fashioned

from the rank depravities of both. These creatures seemed to have newly

arrived from some long wayfaring; their shoes and the hems of their

robes were covered with dust and mire; their faces were heated, and the

veins in their bare, sinewy, sunburned arms were swollen by fatigue.

Each had beside her on the floor a timbrel, each wore at her girdle a

long knife in its sheath: well that the sheaths hid the blades, for not

one--not even that which yon cold-eyed child of fifteen wore--but had on

its steel the dark stain of human blood!

The presence of soldiers fresh from the scene of action had naturally

brought into the hostelry several of the idle gossips of the suburb, and

these stood round the table, drinking into their large ears the boasting

narratives of the soldiers. At a small table, apart from the revellers,

but evidently listening with attention to all the news of the hour, sat

a friar, gravely discussing a mighty tankard of huffcap, and ever and

anon, as he lifted his head for the purpose of drinking, glancing a

wanton eye at one of the tymbesteres.

“But an’ you had seen,” said a trooper, who was the mouthpiece of his

comrades--“an’ you had seen the raptrils run when King Edward himself

led the charge! Marry, it was like a cat in a rabbit burrow! Easy to

see, I trow, that Earl Warwick was not amongst them! His men, at least,

fight like devils!”

“But there was one tall fellow,” said a soldier, setting down his

tankard, “who made a good fight and dour, and, but for me and my

comrades, would have cut his way to the king.”

“Ay, ay, true; we saved his highness, and ought to have been

knighted,--but there’s no gratitude nowadays!”

“And who was this doughty warrior?” asked one of the bystanders, who

secretly favoured the rebellion.

“Why, it was said that he was Robin of Redesdale,--he who fought my Lord

Montagu off York.”

“Our Robin!” exclaimed several voices. “Ay, he was ever a brave

fellow--poor Robin!”