“‘Your Robin,’ and ‘poor Robin,’ varlets!” cried the principal trooper.

“Have a care! What do ye mean by your Robin?”

“Marry, sir soldier,” quoth a butcher, scratching his head, and in a

humble voice, “craving your pardon and the king’s, this Master Robin

sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and

mighty glib of the tongue. Don’t ye mind, neighbours,” he added rapidly,

eager to change the conversation, “how he made us leave off when we were

just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in his den yonder?

Who else could have done that? But an’ we had known Robin had been

a rebel to sweet King Edward, we’d have roasted him along with the

wizard!”

One of the timbrel-girls, the leader of the choir, her arm round a

soldier’s neck, looked up at the last speech, and her eye followed the

gesture of the butcher, as he pointed through the open lattice to the

sombre, ruinous abode of Adam Warner.

“Was that the house ye would have burned?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes; but Robin told us the king would hang those who took on them the

king’s blessed privilege of burning nigromancers; and, sure enough,

old Adam Warner was advanced to be wizard-in-chief to the king’s own

highness a week or two afterwards.”

The friar had made a slight movement at the name of Warner; he now

pushed his stool nearer to the principal group, and drew his hood

completely over his countenance.

“Yea!” exclaimed the mechanic, whose son had been the innocent cause of

the memorable siege to poor Adam’s dilapidated fortress, related in the

first book of this narrative”--yea; and what did he when there? Did he

not devise a horrible engine for the destruction of the poor,--an engine

that was to do all the work in England by the devil’s help?--so that if

a gentleman wanted a coat of mail, or a cloth tunic; if his dame needed

a Norwich worsted; if a yeoman lacked a plough or a wagon, or his good

wife a pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the

draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the

blacksmith,--but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and

turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and wagon, kettle and pot, spick

and span new, from his brewage of vapour and sea-coal. Oh, have I not

heard enough of the sorcerer from my brother, who works in the Chepe

for Master Stokton, the mercer!--and Master Stokton was one of the

worshipful deputies to whom the old nigromancer had the front to boast

his devices.”

“It is true,” said the friar, suddenly.

“Yes, reverend father, it is true,” said the mechanic, doffing his

cap, and inclining his swarthy face to this unexpected witness of his

veracity. A murmur of wrath and hatred was heard amongst the bystanders.

The soldiers indifferently turned to their female companions. There

was a brief silence; and, involuntarily, the gossips stretched over the

table to catch sight of the house of so demoniac an oppressor of the

poor.

“See,” said the baker, “the smoke still curls from the rooftop! I heard

he had come back. Old Madge, his handmaid, has bought cimnel-cakes of me

the last week or so; nothing less than the finest wheat serves him now,

I trow. However, right’s right, and--”

“Come back!” cried the fierce mechanic; “the owl hath kept close in his

roost! An’ it were not for the king’s favour, I would soon see how the

wizard liked to have fire and water brought to bear against himself!”

“Sit down, sweetheart,” whispered one of the young tymbesteres to the

last speaker--

“Come, kiss me, my darling,

Warm kisses I trade for.”

“Avaunt!” quoth the mechanic, gruffly, and shaking off the seductive arm

of the tymbestere--“avaunt! I have neither liefe nor halfpence for thee

and thine. Out on thee!--a child of thy years! a rope’s end to thy back

were a friend’s best kindness!”

The girl’s eyes sparkled, she instinctively put her hand to her knife;

then turning to a soldier by her side, she said, “Hear you that, and sit

still?”

“Thunder and wounds!” growled the soldier thus appealed to, “more

respect to the sex, knave; if I don’t break thy fool’s costard with

my sword-hilt, it is only because Red Grisell can take care of herself

against twenty such lozels as thou. These honest girls have been to the

wars with us; King Edward grudges no man his jolly fere. Speak up for

thyself, Grisell! How many tall fellows didst thou put out of their pain

after the battle of Losecote?”

“Only five, Hal,” replied the cold-eyed girl, and showing her glittering

teeth with the grin of a young tigress; “but one was a captain. I shall

do better next time; it was my first battle, thou knowest!”

The more timid of the bystanders exchanged a glance of horror, and drew

back. The mechanic resumed sullenly,--“I seek no quarrel with lass or

lover. I am a plain, blunt man, with a wife and children, who are dear

to me; and if I have a grudge to the nigromancer, it is because he

glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!”--and he caught up a blue-eyed, handsome

boy, who had been clinging to his side, and baring the child’s arm,

showed it to the spectators; there was a large scar on the limb, and it

was shrunk and withered.

“It was my own fault,” said the little fellow, deprecatingly. The

affectionate father silenced the sufferer with a cuff on the cheek, and

resumed: “Ye note, neighbours, the day when the foul wizard took this

little one in his arms: well, three weeks afterwards--that very day

three weeks--as he was standing like a lamb by the fire, the good wife’s

caldron seethed over, without reason or rhyme, and scalded his arm till

it rivelled up like a leaf in November; and if that is not glamour, why

have we laws against witchcraft?”

“True, true!” groaned the chorus.

The boy, who had borne his father’s blow without a murmur, now again

attempted remonstrance. “The hot water went over the gray cat, too, but

Master Warner never bewitched her, daddy.”

“He takes his part!--You hear the daff laddy? He takes the old

nigromancer’s part,--a sure sign of the witchcraft; but I’ll leather it

out of thee, I will!” and the mechanic again raised his weighty arm. The

child did not this time await the blow; he dodged under the butcher’s

apron, gained the door, and disappeared. “And he teaches our own

children to fly in our faces!” said the father, in a kind of whimper.

The neighbours sighed in commiseration.

“Oh,” he exclaimed in a fiercer tone, grinding his teeth, and shaking

his clenched fist towards Adam Warner’s melancholy house, “I say again,

if the king did not protect the vile sorcerer, I would free the land

from his devilries ere his black master could come to his help.”

“The king cares not a straw for Master Warner or his inventions, my

son,” said a rough, loud voice. All turned, and saw the friar standing

in the midst of the circle. “Know ye not, my children, that the king

sent the wretch neck and crop out of the palace for having bewitched

the Earl of Warwick and his grace the Lord Clarence, so that they turned

unnaturally against their own kinsman, his highness? But ‘Manus malorum

suos bonos breaket,’--that is to say, the fists of wicked men only whack

their own bones. Ye have all heard tell of Friar Bungey, my children?”

“Ay, ay!” answered two or three in a breath,--“a wizard, it’s true, and

a mighty one; but he never did harm to the poor; though they do say he

made a quaint image of the earl, and--”

“Tut, tut!” interrupted the friar, “all Bungey did was to try to

disenchant the Lord Warwick, whom yon miscreant had spellbound. Poor

Bungey! he is a friend to the people: and when he found that Master Adam

was making a device for their ruin, he spared no toil, I assure ye, to

frustrate the iniquity. Oh, how he fasted and watched! Oh, how many a

time he fought, tooth and nail, with the devil in person, to get at the

infernal invention! for if he had that invention once in his hands, he

could turn it to good account, I can promise ye: and give ye rain for

the green blade and sun for the ripe sheaf. But the fiend got the better

at first; and King Edward, bewitched himself for the moment, would have

hanged Friar Bungey for crossing old Adam, if he had not called three

times, in a loud voice, ‘Presto pepranxenon!’ changed himself into a

bird, and flown out of the window. As soon as Master Adam Warner found

the field clear to himself, he employed his daughter to bewitch the Lord

Hastings; he set brother against brother, and made the king and Lord

George fall to loggerheads; he stirred up the rebellion; and where

he would have stopped the foul fiend only knows, if your friend Friar

Bungey, who, though a wizard as you say, is only so for your benefit

(and a holy priest into the bargain), had not, by aid of a good spirit,

whom he conjured up in the island of Tartary, disenchanted the king, and

made him see in a dream what the villanous Warner was devising against

his crown and his people,--whereon his highness sent Master Warner and

his daughter back to their roost, and, helped by Friar Bungey, beat his

enemies out of the kingdom. So, if ye have a mind to save your children

from mischief and malice, ye may set to work with good heart, always

provided that ye touch not old Adam’s iron invention. Woe betide ye, if

ye think to destroy that! Bring it safe to Friar Bungey, whom ye will

find returned to the palace, and journeyman’s wages will be a penny a

day higher for the next ten years to come!” With these words the friar

threw down his reckoning, and moved majestically to the door.

“An’ I might trust you!” said Tim’s father, laying hold of the friar’s

serge.

“Ye may, ye may!” cried the leader of the tymbesteres, starting up from

the lap of her soldier, “for it is Friar Bungey himself!”

A movement of astonishment and terror was universal. “Friar Bungey

himself!” repeated the burly impostor. “Right, lassie, right; and he now

goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in King Edward’s

ear,--spells to defeat the malignant ones, and to lower the price of

beer. Wax wobiscum!”

With that salutation, more benevolent than accurate, the friar vanished

from the room; the chief of the tymbesteres leaped lightly on the table,

put one foot on the soldier’s shoulder, and sprang through the open

lattice. She found the friar in the act of mounting a sturdy mule, which

had been tied to a post by the door.

“Fie, Graul Skellet! Fie, Graul!” said the conjurer “Respect for my

serge. We must not be noted together out of door in the daylight.

There’s a groat for thee. Vade, execrabilis,--that is, good-day to thee,

pretty rogue!”

“A word, friar, a word. Wouldst thou have the old man burned, drowned,

or torn piecemeal? He hath a daughter too, who once sought to mar our

trade with her gittern; a daughter, then in a kirtle that I would not

have nimmed from a hedge, but whom I last saw in sarcenet and lawn, with

a great lord for her fere.” The tymbestere’s eyes shone with malignant

envy, as she added, “Graul Skellet loves not to see those who have

worn worsted and say walk in sarcenet and lawn. Graul Skellet loves not

wenches who have lords for their feres, and yet who shrink from Graul

and her sisters as the sound from the leper.”

“Fegs,” answered the friar, impatiently, “I know naught against the

daughter,--a pretty lass, but too high for my kisses. And as for the

father, I want not the man’s life,--that is, not very specially,--but

his model, his mechanical. He may go free, if that can be compassed; if

not, why, the model at all risks. Serve me in this.”

“And thou wilt teach me the last tricks of the cards, and thy great art

of making phantoms glide by on the wall?”

“Bring the model intact, and I will teach thee more, Graul,--the dead

man’s candle, and the charm of the newt; and I’ll give thee, to boot,

the Gaul of the parricide that thou hast prayed me so oft for. Hum! thou

hast a girl in thy troop who hath a blinking eye that well pleases me;

but go now, and obey me. Work before play, and grace before pudding!”

The tymbestere nodded, snapped her fingers in the air, and humming no

holy ditty, returned to the house through the doorway.

This short conference betrays to the reader the relations, mutually

advantageous, which subsisted between the conjuror and the tymbesteres.

Their troop (the mothers, perchance, of the generation we treat of)

had been familiar to the friar in his old capacity of mountebank, or

tregetour, and in his clerical and courtly elevation, he did not disdain

an ancient connection that served him well with the populace; for these

grim children of vice seemed present in every place, where pastime was

gay, or strife was rampant,--in peace, at the merry-makings and the

hostelries; in war, following the camp, and seen, at night, prowling

through the battlefields to dispatch the wounded and to rifle the slain:

in merrymaking, hostelry, or in camp, they could thus still spread the

fame of Friar Bungey, and uphold his repute both for terrible lore and

for hearty love of the commons.

Nor was this all; both tymbesteres and conjuror were fortune-tellers by

profession. They could interchange the anecdotes each picked up in their

different lines. The tymbestere could thus learn the secrets of gentle

and courtier, the conjuror those of the artisan and mechanic.

Unconscious of the formidable dispositions of their neighbours, Sibyll

and Warner were inhaling the sweet air of the early spring in their

little garden. His disgrace had affected the philosopher less than might

be supposed. True, that the loss of the king’s favour was the deferring

indefinitely--perhaps for life--any practical application of his adored

theory; and yet, somehow or other, the theory itself consoled him. At

the worst, he should find some disciple, some ingenious student, more

fortunate than himself, to whom he could bequeath the secret, and who,

when Adam was in his grave, would teach the world to revere his name.

Meanwhile, his time was his own; he was lord of a home, though ruined

and desolate; he was free, with his free thoughts; and therefore, as he

paced the narrow garden, his step was lighter, his mind less absent than

when parched with feverish fear and hope for the immediate practical

success of a principle which was to be tried before the hazardous

tribunal of prejudice and ignorance.

“My child,” said the sage, “I feel, for the first time for years, the

distinction of the seasons. I feel that we are walking in the pleasant

spring. Young days come back to me like dreams; and I could almost think

thy mother were once more by my side!”

Sibyll pressed her father’s hand, and a soft but melancholy sigh stirred

her rosy lips. She, too, felt the balm of the young year; yet her

father’s words broke upon sad and anxious musings. Not to youth as to

age, not to loving fancy as to baffled wisdom, has seclusion charms that

compensate for the passionate and active world! On coming back to the

old house, on glancing round its mildewed walls, comfortless and bare,

the neglected, weed-grown garden, Sibyll had shuddered in dismay. Had

her ambition fallen again into its old abject state? Were all her hopes

to restore her ancestral fortunes, to vindicate her dear father’s fame,

shrunk into this slough of actual poverty,--the butterfly’s wings folded

back into the chrysalis shroud of torpor? The vast disparity between

herself and Hastings had not struck her so forcibly at the court; here,

at home, the very walls proclaimed it. When Edward had dismissed the

unwelcome witnesses of his attempted crime, he had given orders that

they should be conducted to their house through the most private ways.

He naturally desired to create no curious comment upon their departure.

Unperceived by their neighbours, Sibyll and her father had gained access

by the garden gate. Old Madge received them in dismay; for she had been

in the habit of visiting Sibyll weekly at the palace, and had gained,

in the old familiarity subsisting, then, between maiden and nurse, some

insight into her heart. She had cherished the fondest hopes for the fate

of her young mistress; and now, to labour and to penury had the fate

returned! The guard who accompanied them, according to Edward’s orders,

left some pieces of gold, which Adam rejected, but Madge secretly

received and judiciously expended. And this was all their wealth. But

not of toil nor of penury in themselves thought Sibyll; she thought

but of Hastings,--wildly, passionately, trustfully, unceasingly, of the

absent Hastings. Oh, he would seek her, he would come, her reverse would

but the more endear her to him! Hastings came not. She soon learned the

wherefore. War threatened the land,--he was at his post, at the head of

armies.

Oh, with what panoply of prayer she sought to shield that beloved

breast! And now the old man spoke of the blessed spring, the holiday

time of lovers and of love, and the young girl, sighing, said to her

mournful heart, “The world hath its sun,--where is mine?”

The peacock strutted up to his poor protectors, and spread his plumes to

the gilding beams. And then Sibyll recalled the day when she had walked

in that spot with Marmaduke, and he had talked of his youth, ambition,

and lusty hopes, while, silent and absorbed, she had thought within

herself, “Could the world be open to me as to him,--I too have ambition,

and it should find its goal.” Now what contrast between the two,--the

man enriched and honoured, if to-day in peril or in exile, to-morrow

free to march forward still on his career, the world the country to him

whose heart was bold and whose name was stainless! and she, the woman,

brought back to the prison-home, scorn around her, impotent to avenge,

and forbidden to fly! Wherefore?--Sibyll felt her superiority of mind,

of thought, of nature,--wherefore the contrast? The success was that

of man, the discomfiture that of woman. Woe to the man who precedes his

age; but never yet has an age been in which genius and ambition are safe

to woman!

The father and the child turned into their house. The day was declining.

Adam mounted to his studious chamber, Sibyll sought the solitary

servant.

“What tidings, oh, what tidings? The war, you say, is over; the

great earl, his sweet daughter, safe upon the seas, but Hastings--ob,

Hastings! what of him?”

“My bonnibell, my lady-bird, I have none but good tales to tell thee. I

saw and spoke with a soldier who served under Lord Hastings himself;

he is unscathed, he is in London. But they say that one of his bands

is quartered in the suburb, and that there is a report of a rising in

Hertfordshire.”

“When will peace come to England and to me!” sighed Sibyll.

CHAPTER IV. THE WORLD’S JUSTICE, AND THE WISDOM OF OUR ANCESTORS.

The night had now commenced, and Sibyll was still listening--or,

perhaps, listening not--to the soothing babble of the venerable servant.

They were both seated in the little room that adjoined the hall, and

their only light came through the door opening on the garden,--a gray,

indistinct twilight, relieved by the few earliest stars. The peacock,

his head under his wing, roosted on the balustrade, and the song of the

nightingale, from amidst one of the neighbouring copses, which studded

the ground towards the chase of Marybone, came soft and distant on the

serene air. The balm and freshness of spring were felt in the dews, in

the skies, in the sweet breath of young herb and leaf; through the calm

of ever-watchful nature, it seemed as if you might mark, distinct and

visible, minute after minute, the blessed growth of April into May.

Suddenly Madge uttered a cry of alarm, and pointed towards the opposite

wall. Sibyll, startled from her revery, looked up, and saw something

dusk and dwarf-like perched upon the crumbling eminence. Presently this

apparition leaped lightly into the garden, and the alarm of the women

was lessened on seeing a young boy creep stealthily over the grass and

approach the open door.

“Hey, child!” said Madge, rising. “What wantest thou?”

“Hist, gammer, hist! Ah, the young mistress? That’s well. Hist! I say

again.” The boy entered the room. “I’m in time to save you. In half

an hour your house will be broken into, perhaps burned. The boys are

clapping their hands now at the thoughts of the bonfire. Father and all

the neighbours are getting ready. Hark! hark! No, it is only the wind!

The tymbesteres are to give note. When you hear their bells tinkle, the

mob will meet. Run for your lives, you and the old man, and don’t ever

say it was poor Tim who told you this, for Father would beat me to

death. Ye can still get through the garden into the fields. Quick!”

“I will go to the master,” exclaimed Madge, hurrying from the room.

The child caught Sibyll’s cold hand through the dark. “And I say,

mistress, if his worship is a wizard, don’t let him punish Father and

Mother, or poor Tim, or his little sister; though Tim was once naughty,

and hooted Master Warner. Many, many, many a time and oft have I seen

that kind, mild face in my sleep, just as when it bent over me, while I

kicked and screamed, and the poor gentleman said, ‘Thinkest thou I would

harm thee?’ But he’ll forgive me now, will he not? And when I turned

the seething water over myself, and they said it was all along of the

wizard, my heart pained more than the arm. But they whip me, and groan

out that the devil is in me, if I don’t say that the kettle upset of

itself! Oh, those tymbesteres! Mistress, did you ever see them? They

fright me. If you could hear how they set on all the neighbours! And

their laugh--it makes the hair stand on end! But you will get away,

and thank Tim too? Oh, I shall laugh then, when they find the old house

empty!”

“May our dear Lord bless thee--bless thee, child,” sobbed Sibyll,

clasping the boy in her arms, and kissing him, while her tears bathed

his cheeks.

A light gleamed on the threshold; Madge, holding a candle, appeared with

Warner, his hat and cloak thrown on in haste. “What is this?” said the

poor scholar. “Can it be true? Is mankind so cruel? What have I done,

woe is me! what have I done to deserve this?”

“Come, dear father, quick,” said Sibyll, drying her tears, and wakened

by the presence of the old man into energy and courage. “But put thy

hand on this boy’s head, and bless him; for it is he who has, haply,

saved us.”

The boy trembled a moment as the long-bearded face turned towards

him, but when he caught and recognized those meek, sweet eyes, his

superstition vanished, and it was but a holy and grateful awe that

thrilled his young blood, as the old man placed both withered hands over

his yellow hair, and murmured,--

“God shield thy youth! God make thy manhood worthy! God give thee

children in thine old age with hearts like thine!” Scarcely had the

prayer ceased when the clash of timbrels, with their jingling bells,

was heard in the street. Once, twice, again, and a fierce yell closed

in chorus,--caught up and echoed from corner to corner, from house to

house.

“Run! run!” cried the boy, turning white with terror.

“But the Eureka--my hope--my mind’s child!” exclaimed Adam, suddenly,

and halting at the door.

“Eh, eh!” said Madge, pushing him forward. “It is too heavy to move;

thou couldst not lift it. Think of thine own flesh and blood, of thy

daughter, of her dead mother! Save her life, if thou carest not for

thine own!”

“Go, Sibyll, go, and thou, Madge; I will stay. What matters my life,--it

is but the servant of a thought! Perish master, perish slave!”

“Father, unless you come with me, I stir not. Fly or perish, your fate

is mine! Another minute--Oh, Heaven of mercy, that roar again! We are

both lost!”

“Go, sir, go; they care not for your iron,--iron cannot feel. They will

not touch that! Have not your daughter’s life upon your soul!”

“Sibyll, Sibyll, forgive me! Come!” said Warner, conscience-stricken at

the appeal.

Madge and the boy ran forwards; the old woman unbarred the garden-gate;

Sibyll and her father went forth; the fields stretched before them calm

and solitary; the boy leaped up, kissed Sibyll’s pale cheek, and then

bounded across the grass, and vanished.

“Loiter not, Madge. Come!” cried Sibyll.

“Nay,” said the old woman, shrinking back, “they bear no grudge to me;

I am too old to do aught but burthen ye. I will stay, and perchance save

the house and the chattels, and poor master’s deft contrivance. Whist!

thou knowest his heart would break if none were by to guard it.”

With that the faithful servant thrust the broad pieces that yet remained

of the king’s gift into the gipsire Sibyll wore at her girdle, and then

closed and rebarred the door before they could detain her.

“It is base to leave her,” said the scholar-gentleman.

The noble Sibyll could not refute her father. Afar they heard the

tramping of feet; suddenly, a dark red light shot up into the blue air,

a light from the flame of many torches.

“The wizard, the wizard! Death to the wizard, who would starve the

poor!” yelled forth, and was echoed by a stern hurrah.

Adam stood motionless, Sibyll by his side.

“The wizard and his daughter!” shrieked a sharp single voice, the voice

of Graul the tymbestere.

Adam turned. “Fly, my child,--they now threaten thee. Come, come, come!”

and, taking her by the hand, he hurried her across the fields, skirting

the hedge, their shadows dodging, irregular and quaint, on the starlit

sward. The father had lost all thought, all care but for the daughter’s

life. They paused at last, out of breath and exhausted: the sounds at

the distance were lulled and hushed. They looked towards the direction

of the home they had abandoned, expecting to see the flames destined to

consume it reddening the sky; but all was dark,--or, rather, no light

save the holy stars and the rising moon offended the majestic heaven.

“They cannot harm the poor old woman; she hath no lore. On her gray

hairs has fallen not the curse of men’s hate!” said Warner.

“Right, Father! when they found us flown, doubtless the cruel ones

dispersed. But they may search yet for thee. Lean on me, I am strong and

young. Another effort, and we gain the safe coverts of the Chase.”

While yet the last word hung on her lips, they saw, on the path they

had left, the burst of torch-light, and heard the mob hounding on their

track. But the thick copses, with their pale green just budding into

life, were at hand. On they fled. The deer started from amidst the

entangled fern, but stood and gazed at them without fear; the playful

hares in the green alleys ceased not their nightly sports at the

harmless footsteps; and when at last, in the dense thicket, they sunk

down on the mossy roots of a giant oak, the nightingales overhead

chanted as if in melancholy welcome. They were saved!

But in their home, fierce fires glared amidst the tossing torch-light;

the crowd, baffled by the strength of the door, scaled the wall, broke

through the lattice-work of the hall window, and streaming through

room after room, roared forth, “Death to the wizard!” Amidst the sordid

dresses of the men, the soiled and faded tinsel of the tymbesteres

gleamed and sparkled. It was a scene the she-fiends revelled in,--dear

are outrage and malice, and the excitement of turbulent passions, and

the savage voices of frantic men, and the thirst of blood to those

everlasting furies of a mob, under whatever name we know them, in

whatever time they taint with their presence,--women in whom womanhood

is blasted!

Door after door was burst open with cries of disappointed rage; at last

they ascended the turret-stairs, they found a small door barred and

locked. Tim’s father, a huge axe in his brawny arm, shivered the panels;

the crowd rushed in, and there, seated amongst a strange and motley

litter, they found the devoted Madge. The poor old woman had collected

into this place, as the stronghold of the mansion, whatever portable

articles seemed to her most precious, either from value or association.

Sibyll’s gittern (Marmaduke’s gift) lay amidst a lumber of tools and

implements; a faded robe of her dead mother’s, treasured by Madge and

Sibyll both, as a relic of holy love; a few platters and cups of pewter,

the pride of old Madge’s heart to keep bright and clean; odds and ends

of old hangings; a battered silver brooch (a love-gift to Madge herself

when she was young),--these, and suchlike scraps of finery, hoards

inestimable to the household memory and affection, lay confusedly heaped

around the huge grim model, before which, mute and tranquil, sat the

brave old woman.

The crowd halted, and stared round in superstitious terror and dumb

marvel.

The leader of the tymbesteres sprang forward.

“Where is thy master, old hag, and where the bonny maid who glamours

lords, and despises us bold lasses?”

“Alack! master and the damsel have gone hours ago! I am alone in the

house; what’s your will?”

“The crone looks parlous witchlike!” said Tim’s father; crossing

himself, and somewhat retreating from her gray, unquiet eyes. And,

indeed, poor Madge, with her wrinkled face, bony form, and high cap,

corresponded far more with the vulgar notions of a dabbler in the black

art than did Adam Warner, with his comely countenance and noble mien.

“So she doth, indeed, and verily,” said a hump-backed tinker; “if we

were to try a dip in the horsepool yonder it could do no harm.”

“Away with her, away!” cried several voices at that humane suggestion.

“Nay, nay,” quoth the baker, “she is a douce creature after all,

and hath dealt with me many years. I don’t care what becomes of the

wizard,--every one knows,” he added with pride, “that I was one of the

first to set fire to his house when Robin gainsayed it! but right’s

right--burn the master, not the drudge!”

This intercession might have prevailed, but unhappily, at that moment

Graul Skellet, who had secured two stout fellows to accomplish the

object so desired by Friar Bungey, laid hands on the model, and, at her

shrill command, the men advanced and dislodged it from its place. At the

same tine the other tymbesteres, caught by the sight of things pleasing

to their wonted tastes, threw themselves, one upon the faded robe

Sibyll’s mother had worn in her chaste and happy youth; another, upon

poor Madge’s silver brooch; a third, upon the gittern.

These various attacks roused up all the spirit and wrath of the old

woman: her cries of distress as she darted from one to the other,

striking to the right and left with her feeble arms, her form trembling

with passion, were at once ludicrous and piteous; and these were

responded to by the shrill exclamations of the fierce tymbesteres, as

they retorted scratch for scratch, and blow for blow. The spectators

grew animated by the sight of actual outrage and resistance; the

humpbacked tinker, whose unwholesome fancy one of the aggrieved

tymbesteres had mightily warmed, hastened to the relief of his virago;

and rendered furious by finding ten nails fastened suddenly on his face,

he struck down the poor creature by a blow that stunned her, seized her

in his arms,--for deformed and weakly as the tinker was, the old woman,

now sense and spirit were gone, was as light as skin and bone could

be,--and followed by half a score of his comrades, whooping and

laughing, bore her down the stairs. Tim’s father, who, whether from

parental affection, or, as is more probable, from the jealous hatred

and prejudice of ignorant industry, was bent upon Adam’s destruction,

hallooed on some of his fierce fellows into the garden, tracked the

footsteps of the fugitives by the trampled grass, and bounded over the

wall in fruitless chase. But on went the more giddy of the mob, rather

in sport than in cruelty, with a chorus of drunken apprentices and

riotous boys, to the spot where the humpbacked tinker had dragged

his passive burden. The foul green pond near Master Sancroft’s hostel

reflected the glare of torches; six of the tymbesteres, leaping and

wheeling, with doggerel song and discordant music, gave the signal for

the ordeal of the witch,--

“Lake or river, dyke or ditch,

Water never drowns the witch.

Witch or wizard would ye know?

Sink or swim, is ay or no.

Lift her, swing her, once and twice,

Lift her, swing her o’er the brim,--

Lille--lera--twice and thrice

Ha! ha! mother, sink or swim!”

And while the last line was chanted, amidst the full jollity of laughter

and clamour and clattering timbrels, there was a splash in the sullen

water; the green slough on the surface parted with an oozing gurgle, and

then came a dead silence.

“A murrain on the hag! she does not even struggle!” said, at last, the

hump-backed tinker.

“No,--no! she cares not for water. Try fire! Out with her! out!” cried

Red Grisell.

“Aroint her! she is sullen!” said the tinker, as his lean fingers

clutched up the dead body, and let it fall upon the margin. “Dead!” said

the baker, shuddering; “we have done wrong,--I told ye so! She dealt

with me many a year. Poor Madge! Right’s right. She was no witch!”

“But that was the only way to try it,” said the humpbacked tinker; “and

if she was not a witch, why did she look like one? I cannot abide ugly

folks!”

The bystanders shook their heads. But whatever their remorse, it was

diverted by a double sound: first, a loud hurrah from some of the mob

who had loitered for pillage, and who now emerged from Adam’s house,

following two men, who, preceded by the terrible Graul, dancing before

them, and tossing aloft her timbrel, bore in triumph the captured

Eureka; and, secondly, the blast of a clarion at the distance, while

up the street marched--horse and foot, with pike and banner--a goodly

troop. The Lord Hastings in person led a royal force, by a night march,

against a fresh outbreak of the rebels, not ten miles from the city,

under Sir Geoffrey Gates, who had been lately arrested by the Lord

Howard at Southampton, escaped, collected a disorderly body of such

restless men as are always disposed to take part in civil commotion, and

now menaced London itself. At the sound of the clarion the valiant mob

dispersed in all directions, for even at that day mobs had an instinct

of terror at the approach of the military, and a quick reaction from

outrage to the fear of retaliation.

But, at the sound of martial music, the tymbesteres silenced their own

instruments, and instead of flying, they darted through the crowd, each

to seek the other, and unite as for counsel. Graul, pointing to Mr.

Sancroft’s hostelry, whispered the bearers of the Eureka to seek refuge

there for the present, and to bear their trophy with the dawn to Friar

Bungey at the Tower; and then, gliding nimbly through the fugitive

rioters, sprang into the centre of the circle formed by her companions.

“Ye scent the coming battle?” said the arch-tymbestere.

“Ay, ay, ay!” answered the sisterhood.

“But we have gone miles since noon,--I am faint and weary!” said one

amongst them.

Red Grisell, the youngest of the band, struck her comrade on the

cheek--“Faint and weary, ronion, with blood and booty in the wind!”

The tymbesteres smiled grimly on their young sister; but the leader

whispered “Hush!” and they stood for a second or two with outstretched

throats, with dilated nostrils, with pent breath, listening to the

clarion and the hoofs and the rattling armour, the human vultures

foretasting their feast of carnage; then, obedient to a sign from

their chieftainess, they crept lightly and rapidly into the mouth of a

neighbouring alley, where they cowered by the squalid huts, concealed.

The troop passed on,--a gallant and serried band, horse and foot, about

fifteen hundred men. As they filed up the thoroughfare, and the tramp

of the last soldiers fell hollow on the starlit ground, the tymbesteres

stole from their retreat, and, at the distance of some few hundred

yards, followed the procession, with long, silent, stealthy strides,--as

the meaner beasts, in the instinct of hungry cunning, follow the lion

for the garbage of his prey.

CHAPTER V. THE FUGITIVES ARE CAPTURED--THE TYMBESTERES

REAPPEAR--MOONLIGHT ON THE REVEL OF THE LIVING--MOONLIGHT ON THE SLUMBER

OF THE DEAD.

The father and child made their resting-place under the giant oak. They

knew not whither to fly for refuge; the day and the night had become the

same to them,--the night menaced with robbers, the day with the mob. If

return to their home was forbidden, where in the wide world a shelter

for the would-be world-improver? Yet they despaired not, their hearts

failed them not. The majestic splendour of the night, as it deepened in

its solemn calm; as the shadows of the windless trees fell larger and

sharper upon the silvery earth; as the skies grew mellower and more

luminous in the strengthening starlight, inspired them with the serenity

of faith,--for night, to the earnest soul, opens the Bible of the

universe, and on the leaves of Heaven is written, “God is everywhere.”

Their hands were clasped each in each, their pale faces were upturned;

they spoke not, neither were they conscious that they prayed, but their

silence was thought, and the thought was worship.

Amidst the grief and solitude of the pure, there comes, at times, a

strange and rapt serenity,--a sleep-awake,--over which the instinct

of life beyond the grave glides like a noiseless dream; and ever that

heaven that the soul yearns for is coloured by the fancies of the fond

human heart, each fashioning the above from the desires unsatisfied

below.

“There,” thought the musing maiden, “cruelty and strife shall cease;

there, vanish the harsh differences of life; there, those whom we have

loved and lost are found, and through the Son, who tasted of mortal

sorrow, we are raised to the home of the Eternal Father!”

“And there,” thought the aspiring sage, “the mind, dungeoned and chained

below, rushes free into the realms of space; there, from every mystery

falls the veil; there, the Omniscient smiles on those who, through the

darkness of life, have fed that lamp, the soul; there, Thought, but the

seed on earth, bursts into the flower and ripens to the fruit!”

And on the several hope of both maid and sage the eyes of the angel

stars smiled with a common promise.

At last, insensibly, and while still musing, so that slumber but

continued the revery into visions, father and daughter slept.

The night passed away; the dawn came slow and gray; the antlers of the

deer stirred above the fern; the song of the nightingale was hushed; and

just as the morning star waned back, while the reddening east announced

the sun, and labour and trouble resumed their realm of day, a fierce

band halted before those sleeping forms.

These men had been Lancastrian soldiers, and, reduced to plunder for a

living, had, under Sir Geoffrey Gates, formed the most stalwart part of

the wild, disorderly force whom Hilyard and Coniers had led to Olney.

They had heard of the new outbreak, headed by their ancient captain, Sir

Geoffrey (who was supposed to have been instigated to his revolt by the

gold and promises of the Lancastrian chiefs), and were on their way to

join the rebels; but as war for them was but the name for booty, they

felt the wonted instinct of the robber, when they caught sight of the

old man and the fair maid.

Both Adam and his daughter wore, unhappily, the dresses in which they

had left the court, and Sibyll’s especially was that which seemed to

betoken a certain rank and station.

“Awake, rouse ye!” said the captain of the band, roughly shaking the arm

which encircled Sibyll’s slender waist. Adam started, opened his eyes,

and saw himself begirt by figures in rusty armour, with savage faces

peering under their steel sallets.

“How came you hither? Yon oak drops strange acorns,” quoth the chief.

“Valiant sir,” replied Adam, still seated, and drawing his gown

instinctively over Sibyll’s face, which nestled on his bosom, in slumber

so deep and heavy, that the gruff voice had not broken it, “valiant

sir! we are forlorn and houseless, an old man and a simple girl. Some

evil-minded persons invaded our home; we fled in the night, and--”

“Invaded your house! ha, it is clear,” said the chief. “We know the

rest.”

At this moment Sibyll woke, and starting to her feet in astonishment and

terror at the sight on which her eyes opened, her extreme beauty made a

sensible effect upon the bravoes.

“Do not be daunted, young demoiselle,” said the captain, with an air

almost respectful; “it is necessary thou and Sir John should follow us,

but we will treat you well, and consult later on the ransom ye will pay

us. Jock, discharge the young sumpter mule; put its load on the black

one. We have no better equipment for thee, lady; but the first haquenee

we find shall replace the mule, and meanwhile my knaves will heap their

cloaks for a pillion.”

“But what mean you?--you mistake us!” exclaimed Sibyll. “We are poor; we

cannot ransom ourselves.”

“Poor!--tut!” said the captain, pointing significantly to the costly

robe of the maiden--“moreover his worship’s wealth is well known. Mount

in haste,--we are pressed.” And without heeding the expostulations of

Sibyll and the poor scholar, the rebel put his troop into motion, and

marched himself at their head, with his lieutenant.

Sibyll found the subalterns sterner than their chief; for as Warner

offered to resist, one of them lifted his gisarme, with a frightful

oath, and Sibyll was the first to persuade her father to submit. She

mildly, however, rejected the mule, and the two captives walked together

in the midst of the troop.

“Pardie!” said the lieutenant, “I see little help to Sir Geoffrey in

these recruits, captain!”

“Fool!” said the chief, disdainfully, “if the rebellion fail, these

prisoners may save our necks. Will Somers last night was to break into

the house of Sir John Bourchier, for arms and moneys, of which the

knight hath a goodly store. Be sure, Sir John slinked off in the siege,

and this is he and his daughter. Thou knowest he is one of the greatest

knights, and the richest, whom the Yorkists boast of; and we may name

our own price for his ransom.”

“But where lodge them while we go to the battle?”

“Ned Porpustone hath a hostelry not far from the camp, and Ned is a good

Lancastrian, and a man to be trusted.”

“We have not searched the prisoners,” said the lieutenant; “they may

have some gold in their pouches.”

“Marry, when Will Somers storms a hive, little time does he leave to the

bees to fly away with much money. Nathless, thou mayest search the old

knight, but civilly, and with gentle excuses.”

“And the damsel?”

“Nay! that were unmannerly, and the milder our conduct, the larger the

ransom,--when we have great folks to deal with.”

The lieutenant accordingly fell back to search Adam’s gipsire, which

contained only a book and a file, and then rejoined his captain, without

offering molestation to Sibyll.

The mistake made by the bravo was at least so far not wholly unfortunate

that the notion of the high quality of the captives--for Sir John

Bourchier was indeed a person of considerable station and importance (a

notion favoured by the noble appearance of the scholar and the

delicate and highborn air of Sibyll)--procured for them all the respect

compatible with the circumstances. They had not gone far before they

entered a village, through which the ruffians marched with the most

perfect impunity; for it was a strange feature in those civil wars that

the mass of the population, except in the northern districts, remained

perfectly supine and neutral. And as the little band halted at a small

inn to drink, the gossips of the village collected round them, with the

same kind of indolent, careless curiosity which is now evinced in some

hamlet at the halt of a stage-coach. Here the captain learned, however,

some intelligence important to his objects,--namely, the night march of

the troop under Lord Hastings, and the probability that the conflict

was already begun. “If so,” muttered the rebel, “we can see how the tide

turns, before we endanger ourselves; and at the worst, our prisoners

will bring something of prize-money.”

While thus soliloquizing, he spied one of those cumbrous vehicles of

the day called whirlicotes [Whirlicotes were in use from a very early

period, but only among the great, till, in the reign of Richard II., his

queen, Anne, introduced side-saddles, when the whirlicote fell out of

fashion, but might be found at different hostelries on the main roads

for the accommodation of the infirm or aged.] standing in the yard of

the hostelry; and seizing upon it, vi et armis, in spite of all the

cries and protestations of the unhappy landlord, he ordered his captives

to enter, and recommenced his march.

As the band proceeded farther on their way, they were joined by fresh

troops of the same class as themselves, and they pushed on gayly, till,

about the hour of eight, they halted before the hostelry the captain had

spoken of. It stood a little out of the high road, not very far from

the village of Hadley, and the heath or chase of Gladsmore, on which was

fought, some time afterwards, the battle of Barnet. It was a house of

good aspect, and considerable size, for it was much frequented by all

caravanserais and travellers from the North to the metropolis. The

landlord, at heart a stanch Lancastrian, who had served in the French

wars, and contrived, no one knew how, to save moneys in the course of an

adventurous life, gave to his hostelry the appellation and sign of the

Talbot, in memory of the old hero of that name; and, hiring a tract of

land, joined the occupation of a farmer to the dignity of a host. The

house, which was built round a spacious quadrangle, represented the

double character of its owner, one side being occupied by barns and

a considerable range of stabling, while cows, oxen, and ragged colts

grouped amicably together in a space railed off in the centre of

the yard. At another side ran a large wooden staircase, with an open

gallery, propped on wooden columns, conducting to numerous chambers,

after the fashion of the Tabard in Southwark, immortalized by Chaucer.

Over the archway, on entrance, ran a labyrinth of sleeping lofts for

foot passengers and muleteers; and the side facing the entrance was

nearly occupied by a vast kitchen, the common hall, and the bar, with

the private parlour of the host, and two or three chambers in the second

story. The whirlicote jolted and rattled into the yard. Sibyll and

her father were assisted out of the vehicle, and, after a few words

interchanged with the host, conducted by Master Porpustone himself up

the spacious stairs into a chamber, well furnished and fresh littered,

with repeated assurances of safety, provided they maintained silence,

and attempted no escape.

“Ye are in time,” said Ned Porpustone to the captain. “Lord Hastings

made proclamation at daybreak that he gave the rebels two hours to

disperse.”

“Pest! I like not those proclamations. And the fellows stood their

ground?”

“No; for Sir Geoffrey, like a wise soldier, mended the ground by

retreating a mile to the left, and placing the wood between the Yorkists

and himself. Hastings, by this, must have remarshalled his men. But to

pass the wood is slow work, and Sir Geoffrey’s crossbows are no doubt

doing damage in the covert. Come in, while your fellows snatch a morsel

without; five minutes are not thrown away on filling their bellies.”

“Thanks, Ned, thou art a good fellow; and if all else fail, why, Sir

John’s ransom shall pay the reckoning. Any news of bold Robin?”

“Ay, he has ‘scaped with a whole skin, and gone back to the North,”

answered the host, leading the way to his parlour, where a flask of

strong wine and some cold meat awaited his guest. “If Sir Geoffrey Gates

can beat off the York troopers, tell him, from me, not to venture to

London, but to fall back into the marshes. He will be welcome there, I

foreguess; for every northman is either for Warwick or for Lancaster,

and the two must unite now, I trow.”

“But Warwick is flown!” quoth the captain.

“Tush! he has only flown as the falcon flies when he has a heron to

fight with,--wheeling and soaring. Woe to the heron when the falcon

swoops! But you drink not!”

“No; I must keep the head cool to-day; for Hastings is a perilous

captain. Thy fist, friend! If I fall, I leave you Sir John and his girl

to wipe off old scores; if we beat off the Yorkists I vow to Our Lady of

Walsingham an image of wax of the weight of myself.” The marauder then

started up, and strode to his men, who were snatching a hasty meal on

the space before the hostel. He paused a moment or so, while his host

whispered,--

“Hastings was here before daybreak: but his men only got the sour beer;

yours fight upon huffcap.”

“Up, men! to your pikes! Dress to the right!” thundered the captain,

with a sufficient pause between each sentence. “The York lozels have

starved on stale beer,--shall they beat huffcap and Lancaster? Frisk

and fresh-up with the Antelope banner [The antelope was one of the

Lancastrian badges. The special cognizance of Henry VI. was two feathers

in saltire.], and long live Henry the Sixth!”

The sound of the shout that answered this harangue shook the thin walls

of the chamber in which the prisoners were confined, and they heard

with joy the departing tramp of the soldiers. In a short time, Master

Porpustone himself, a corpulent, burly fellow, with a face by no

means unprepossessing, mounted to the chamber, accompanied by a comely

housekeeper, linked to him, as scandal said, by ties less irksome than

Hymen’s, and both bearing ample provisions, with rich pigment and lucid

clary [clary was wine clarified], which they spread with great formality

on an oak table before their involuntary guest.

“Eat, your worship, eat!” cried mine host, heartily. “Eat,

lady-bird,--nothing like eating to kill time and banish care. Fortune

of war, Sir John,--fortune of war, never be daunted! Up to-day, down

to-morrow. Come what may--York or Lancaster--still a rich man always

falls on his legs. Five hundred or so to the captain; a noble or two,

out of pure generosity, to Ned Porpustone (I scorn extortion), and you

and the fair young dame may breakfast at home to-morrow, unless the

captain or his favourite lieutenant is taken prisoner; and then, you

see, they will buy off their necks by letting you out of the bag. Eat, I

say,--eat!”

“Verily,” said Adam, seating himself solemnly, and preparing to obey, “I

confess I’m a hungered, and the pasty hath a savoury odour; but I pray

thee to tell me why I am called Sir John. Adam is my baptismal name.”

“Ha! ha! good--very good, your honour--to be sure, and your father’s

name before you. We are all sons of Adam, and every son, I trow, has a

just right and a lawful to his father’s name.”

With that, followed by the housekeeper, the honest landlord, chuckling

heartily, rolled his goodly bulk from the chamber, which he carefully

locked.

“Comprehendest thou yet, Sibyll?”

“Yes, dear sir and father, they mistake us for fugitives of mark and

importance; and when they discover their error, no doubt we shall go

free. Courage, dear father!”

“Me seemeth,” quoth Adam, almost merrily, as the good man filled his cup

from the wine flagon, “me seemeth that, if the mistake could continue,

it would be no weighty misfortune; ha! ha!” He stopped abruptly in the

unwonted laughter, put down the cup; his face fell. “Ah, Heaven forgive

me!--and the poor Eureka and faithful Madge!”

“Oh, Father! fear not; we are not without protection. Lord Hastings is

returned to London,--we will seek him; he will make our cruel neighbours

respect thee. And Madge--poor Madge!--will be so happy at our return,

for they could not harm her,--a woman, old and alone; no, no, man is not

fierce enough for that.”

“Let us so pray; but thou eatest not, child.”

“Anon, Father, anon; I am sick and weary. But, nay--nay, I am better

now,--better. Smile again, Father. I am hungered, too; yes, indeed and

in sooth, yes. Ah, sweet Saint Mary, give me life and strength, and hope

and patience, for his dear sake!”

The stirring events which had within the last few weeks diversified

the quiet life of the scholar had somewhat roused him from his wonted

abstraction, and made the actual world a more sensible and living thing

than it had hitherto seemed to his mind; but now, his repast ended, the

quiet of the place (for the inn was silent and almost deserted) with the

fumes of the wine--a luxury he rarely tasted--operated soothingly upon

his thought and fancy, and plunged him into those reveries, so dear

alike to poet and mathematician. To the thinker the most trifling

external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer’s chain, extend,

link after link; from earth to heaven. The sunny motes, that in a

glancing column came through the lattice, called Warner from the real

day,--the day of strife and blood, with thousands hard by driving each

other to the Hades,--and led his scheming fancy into the ideal and

abstract day,--the theory of light itself; and the theory suggested

mechanism, and mechanism called up the memory of his oracle, old Roger

Bacon; and that memory revived the great friar’s hints in the Opus

magnus,--hints which outlined the grand invention of the telescope; and

so, as over some dismal precipice a bird swings itself to and fro upon

the airy bough, the schoolman’s mind played with its quivering fancy,

and folded its calm wings above the verge of terror.

Occupied with her own dreams, Sibyll respected those of her father; and

so in silence, not altogether mournful, the morning and the noon passed,

and the sun was sloping westward, when a confused sound below called

Sibyll’s gaze to the lattice, which looked over the balustrade of the

staircase into the vast yard. She saw several armed men, their harness

hewed and battered, quaffing ale or wine in haste, and heard one of them

say to the landlord,--

“All is lost! Sir Geoffrey Gates still holds out, but it is butcher

work. The troops of Lord Hastings gather round him as a net round the

fish!”

Hastings!--that name!--he was at hand! he was near! they would be saved!

Sibyll’s heart beat loudly.

“And the captain?” asked Porpustone.

“Alive, when I last saw him; but we must be off. In another hour all

will be hurry and skurry, flight and chase.” At this moment from one of

the barns there emerged, one by one, the female vultures of the battle.

The tymbesteres, who had tramped all night to the spot, had slept

off their fatigue during the day, and appeared on the scene as the

neighbouring strife waxed low, and the dead and dying began to cumber

the gory ground. Graul Skellet, tossing up her timbrel, darted to the

fugitives and grinned a ghastly grin when she heard the news,--for the

tymbesteres were all loyal to a king who loved women, and who had a wink

and a jest for every tramping wench! The troopers tarried not, however,

for further converse, but, having satisfied their thirst, hurried and

clattered from the yard. At the sight of the ominous tymbesteres Sibyll

had drawn back, without daring to close the lattice she had opened; and

the women, seating themselves on a bench, began sleeking their long hair

and smoothing their garments from the scraps of straw and litter which

betokened the nature of their resting-place.

“Ho, girls!” said the fat landlord, “ye will pay me for board and bed,

I trust, by a show of your craft. I have two right worshipful lodgers

up yonder, whose lattice looks on the yard, and whom ye may serve to

divert.”

Sibyll trembled, and crept to her father’s side.

“And,” continued the landlord, “if they like the clash of your musicals,

it may bring ye a groat or so, to help ye on your journey. By the way,

whither wend ye, wenches?”

“To a bonny, jolly fair,” answered the sinister voice of Graul,--

“Where a mighty SHOWMAN dyes

The greenery into red;

Where, presto! at the word

Lies his Fool without a head;

Where he gathers in the crowd

To the trumpet and the drum,

With a jingle and a tinkle,

Graul’s merry lasses come!”

As the two closing lines were caught by the rest of the tymbesteres,

striking their timbrels, the crew formed themselves into a semicircle,

and commenced their dance. Their movements, though wanton and fantastic,

were not without a certain wild grace; and the address with which,

from time to time, they cast up their instruments and caught them

in descending, joined to the surprising agility with which, in the

evolutions of the dance, one seemed now to chase, now to fly from, the

other, darting to and fro through the ranks of her companions, winding

and wheeling,--the chain now seemingly broken in disorder, now

united link to link, as the whole force of the instruments clashed in

chorus,--made an exhibition inexpressibly attractive to the vulgar.

The tymbesteres, however, as may well be supposed, failed to draw

Sibyll or Warner to the window; and they exchanged glances of spite and

disappointment.

“Marry,” quoth the landlord, after a hearty laugh at the diversion, “I

do wrong to be so gay, when so many good friends perhaps are lying stark

and cold. But what then? Life is short,--laugh while we can!”

“Hist!” whispered his housekeeper; “art wode, Ned? Wouldst thou have

it discovered that thou hast such quality birds in the cage--noble

Yorkists--at the very time when Lord Hastings himself may be riding this

way after the victory?”

“Always right, Meg,--and I’m an ass!” answered the host, in the same

undertone. “But my good nature will be the death of me some day. Poor

gentlefolks, they must be unked dull, yonder!”

“If the Yorkists come hither,--which we shall soon know by the

scouts,--we must shift Sir John and the damsel to the back of the house,

over thy tap-room.”

“Manage it as thou wilt, Meg; but thou seest they keep quiet and snug.

Ho, ho, ho! that tall tymbestere is supple enough to make an owl hold

his sides with laughing. Ah! hollo, there, tymbesteres, ribaudes,

tramps, the devil’s chickens,--down, down!”

The host was too late in his order. With a sudden spring, Graul, who had

long fixed her eye on the open lattice of the prisoners, had wreathed

herself round one of the pillars that supported the stairs, swung

lightly over the balustrade; and with a faint shriek the startled Sibyll

beheld the tymbestere’s hard, fierce eyes, glaring upon her through the

lattice, as her long arm extended the timbrel for largess. But no sooner

had Sibyll raised her face than she was recognized.

“Ho, the wizard and the wizard’s daughter! Ho, the girl who glamours

lords, and wears sarcenet and lawn! Ho, the nigromancer who starves the

poor!”

At the sound of their leader’s cry, up sprang, up climbed the hellish

sisters! One after the other, they darted through the lattice into the

chamber.

“The ronions! the foul fiend has distraught them!” groaned the landlord,

motionless with astonishment; but the more active Meg, calling to the

varlets and scullions, whom the tymbesteres had collected in the yard,

to follow her, bounded up the stairs, unlocked the door, and arrived

in time to throw herself between the captives and the harpies, whom

Sibyll’s rich super-tunic and Adam’s costly gown had inflamed into all

the rage of appropriation.

“What mean ye, wretches?” cried the bold Meg, purple with anger. “Do

ye come for this into honest folk’s hostelries, to rob their guests in

broad day--noble guests--guests of mark! Oh, Sir John! Sir John! what

will ye think of us?”

“Oh, Sir John! Sir John!” groaned the landlord, who had now moved his

slow bulk into the room. “They shall be scourged, Sir John! They shall

be put in the stocks, they shall be brent with hot iron, they--”

“Ha, ha!” interrupted the terrible Graul, “guests of mark! noble guests,

trow ye! Adam Warner, the wizard, and his daughter, whom we drove last

night from their den, as many a time, sisters, and many, we have driven

the rats from charnel and cave.”

“Wizard! Adam! Blood of my life!” stammered the landlord, “is his name

Adam after all?”

“My name is Adam Warner,” said the old man, with dignity, “no wizard--a

humble scholar, and a poor gentleman, who has injured no one. Wherefore,

women--if women ye are--would ye injure mine and me?”

“Faugh, wizard!” returned Graul, folding her arms. “Didst thou not send

thy spawn, yonder, to spoil our mart with her gittern? Hast thou not

taught her the spells to win love from the noble and young? Ho, how

daintily the young witch robes herself! Ho, laces and satins, and we

shiver with the cold, and parch with the heat--and--doff thy tunic,

minion!”

And Graul’s fierce gripe was on the robe, when the landlord interposed

his huge arm, and held her at bay.

“Softly, my sucking dove, softly! Clear the room and be off!”

“Look to thyself, man. If thou harbourest a wizard against law,--a

wizard whom King Edward hath given up to the people,--look to thy

barns,--they shall burn; look to thy cattle,--they shall rot; look to

thy secrets,--they shall be told. Lancastrian, thou shalt hang! We go!

we go! We have friends amongst the mailed men of York. We go,--we will

return! Woe to thee, if thou harbourest the wizard and the succuba!”

With that Graul moved slowly to the door. Host and housekeeper, varlet,

groom, and scullion made way for her in terror; and still, as she moved,

she kept her eyes on Sibyll, till her sisters, following in successive

file, shut out the hideous aspect: and Meg, ordering away her gaping

train, closed the door.

The host and the housekeeper then gazed gravely at each other. Sibyll

lay in her father’s arms breathing hard and convulsively. The old man’s

face bent over her in silence. Meg drew aside her master. “You must rid

the house at once of these folks. I have heard talk of yon tymbesteres;

they are awsome in spite and malice. Every man to himself!”

“But the poor old gentleman, so mild, and the maid, so winsome!”

The last remark did not over-please the comely Meg. She advanced at once

to Adam, and said shortly,--

“Master, whether wizard or not is no affair of a poor landlord, whose

house is open to all; but ye have had food and wine,--please to pay the

reckoning, and God speed ye; ye are free to depart.”

“We can pay you, mistress!” exclaimed Sibyll, springing up. “We have

moneys yet. Here, here!” and she took from her gipsire the broad pieces

which poor Madge’s precaution had placed therein, and which the bravoes

had fortunately spared.

The sight of the gold somewhat softened the housewife. “Lord Hastings is

known to us,” continued Sibyll, perceiving the impression she had

made; “suffer us to rest here till he pass this way, and ye will find

yourselves repaid for the kindness.”

“By my troth,” said the landlord, “ye are most welcome to all my poor

house containeth; and as for these tymbesteres, I value them not a

straw. No one can say Ned Porpustone is an ill man or inhospitable.

Whoever can pay reasonably is sure of good wine and civility at the

Talbot.”

With these and many similar protestations and assurances, which were

less heartily re-echoed by the housewife, the landlord begged to conduct

them to an apartment not so liable to molestation; and after having led

them down the principal stairs, through the bar, and thence up a narrow

flight of steps, deposited them in a chamber at the back of the house,

and lighted a sconce therein, for it was now near the twilight. He

then insisted on seeing after their evening meal, and vanished with his

assistant. The worthy pair were now of the same mind; for guests known

to Lord Hastings it was worth braving the threats of the tymbesteres;

especially since Lord Hastings, it seems, had just beaten the

Lancastrians.

But alas! while the active Meg was busy on the hippocras, and the worthy

landlord was inspecting the savoury operations of the kitchen, a vast

uproar was heard without. A troop of disorderly Yorkist soldiers, who

had been employed in dispersing the flying rebels, rushed helter-skelter

into the house, and poured into the kitchen, bearing with them the

detested tymbesteres, who had encountered them on their way. Among these

soldiers were those who had congregated at Master Sancroft’s the day

before, and they were well prepared to support the cause of their

griesly paramours. Lord Hastings himself had retired for the night to

a farmhouse nearer the field of battle than the hostel; and as in those

days discipline was lax enough after a victory, the soldiers had a right

to license. Master Porpustone found himself completely at the mercy

of these brawling customers, the more rude and disorderly from the

remembrance of the sour beer in the morning, and Graul Skellet’s

assurances that Master Porpustone was a malignant Lancastrian. They laid

hands on all the provisions in the house, tore the meats from the spit,

devouring them half raw; set the casks running over the floors; and

while they swilled and swore, and filled the place with the uproar of a

hell broke loose, Graul Skellet, whom the lust for the rich garments of

Sibyll still fired and stung, led her followers up the stairs towards

the deserted chamber. Mine host perceived, but did not dare openly to

resist the foray; but as he was really a good-natured knave, and as,

moreover, he feared ill consequences might ensue if any friends of Lord

Hastings were spoiled, outraged,--nay, peradventure murdered,--in his

house, he resolved, at all events, to assist the escape of his guests.

Seeing the ground thus clear of the tymbesteres, he therefore stole from

the riotous scene, crept up the back stairs, gained the chamber to which

he had so happily removed his persecuted lodgers, and making them, in a

few words, sensible that he was no longer able to protect them, and

that the tymbesteres were now returned with an armed force to back their

malice, conducted them safely to a wide casement only some three or four

feet from the soil of the solitary garden, and bade them escape and save

themselves.

“The farm,” he whispered, “where they say my Lord Hastings is quartered

is scarcely a mile and a half away; pass the garden wicket, leave

Gladsmore Chase to the left hand, take the path to the right, through

the wood, and you will see its roof among the apple-blossoms. Our Lady

protect you, and say a word to my lord on behalf of poor Ned.”

Scarce had he seen his guests descend into the garden before he heard

the yell of the tymbesteres, in the opposite part of the house, as

they ran from room to room after their prey. He hastened to regain the

kitchen; and presently the tymbesteres, breathless and panting, rushed

in, and demanded their victims.

“Marry,” quoth the landlord, with the self-possession of a cunning old

soldier-“think ye I cumbered my house with such cattle after pretty

lasses like you had given me the inkling of what they were? No wizard

shall fly away with the sign of the Talbot, if I can help it. They

skulked off I can promise ye, and did not even mount a couple of

broomsticks which I handsomely offered for their ride up to London.”

“Thunder and bombards!” cried a trooper, already half-drunk, and seizing

Graul in his iron arms, “put the conjuror out of thine head now, and

buss me, Graul, buss me!”

Then the riot became hideous; the soldiers, following their comrade’s

example, embraced the grim glee-women, tearing and hauling them to and

fro, one from the other, round and round, dancing, hallooing, chanting,

howling, by the blaze of a mighty fire,--many a rough face and hard hand

smeared with blood still wet, communicating the stain to the cheeks and

garb of those foul feres, and the whole revel becoming so unutterably

horrible and ghastly, that even the veteran landlord fled from the spot,

trembling and crossing himself. And so, streaming athwart the lattice,

and silvering over that fearful merry-making, rose the moon.

But when fatigue and drunkenness had done their work, and the soldiers

fell one over the other upon the floor, the tables, the benches, into

the heavy sleep of riot, Graul suddenly rose from amidst the huddled

bodies, and then, silently as ghouls from a burial-ground, her sisters

emerged also from their resting-places beside the sleepers. The dying

light of the fire contended but feebly with the livid rays of the moon,

and played fantastically over the gleaming robes of the tymbesteres.

They stood erect for a moment, listening, Graul with her finger on

her lips; then they glided to the door, opened and reclosed it, darted

across the yard, scaring the beasts that slept there; the watch-dog

barked, but drew back, bristling, and showing his fangs, as Red Grisell,

undaunted, pointed her knife, and Graul flung him a red peace-sop of

meat. They launched themselves through the open entrance, gained the

space beyond, and scoured away to the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Sibyll and her father were still under the canopy of heaven,

they had scarcely passed the garden and entered the fields, when they

saw horsemen riding to and fro in all directions. Sir Geoffrey Gates,

the rebel leader, had escaped; the reward of three hundred marks was set

on his head, and the riders were in search of the fugitive. The human

form itself had become a terror to the hunted outcasts; they crept under

a thick hedge till the horsemen had disappeared, and then resumed their

way. They gained the wood; but there again they halted at the sound

of voices, and withdrew themselves under covert of some entangled

and trampled bushes. This time it was but a party of peasants, whom

curiosity had led to see the field of battle, and who were now returning

home. Peasants and soldiers both were human, and therefore to be shunned

by those whom the age itself put out of the pale of law. At last the

party also left the path free; and now it was full night. They pursued

their way, they cleared the wood; before them lay the field of battle;

and a deeper silence seemed to fall over the world! The first stars had

risen, but not yet the moon. The gleam of armour from prostrate bodies,

which it had mailed in vain, reflected the quiet rays; here and there

flickered watchfires, where sentinels were set, but they were scattered

and remote. The outcasts paused and shuddered, but there seemed no

holier way for their feet; and the roof of the farmer’s homestead

slept on the opposite side of the field, amidst white orchard blossoms,

whitened still more by the stars. They went on, hand in hand,--the

dead, after all, were less terrible than the living. Sometimes a stern,

upturned face, distorted by the last violent agony, the eyes unclosed

and glazed, encountered them with its stony stare; but the weapon was

powerless in the stiff hand, the menace and the insult came not from

the hueless lips; persecution reposed, at last, in the lap of slaughter.

They had gone midway through the field, when they heard from a spot

where the corpses lay thickest piled, a faint voice calling upon God for

pardon; and, suddenly, it was answered by a tone of fiercer agony,--that

did not pray, but curse.

By a common impulse, the gentle wanderers moved silently to the spot.

The sufferer in prayer was a youth scarcely passed from boyhood: his

helm had been cloven, his head was bare, and his long light hair,

clotted with gore, fell over his shoulders. Beside him lay a

strong-built, powerful form, which writhed in torture, pierced under

the arm by a Yorkist arrow, and the shaft still projecting from the

wound,--and the man’s curse answered the boy’s prayer.

“Peace to thy parting soul, brother!” said Warner, bending over the man.

“Poor sufferer!” said Sibyll to the boy; “cheer thee, we will send

succour; thou mayest live yet!”

“Water! water!--hell and torture!--water, I say!” groaned the man; “one

drop of water!”

It was the captain of the maurauders who had captured the wanderers.

“Thine arm! lift me! move me! That evil man scares my soul from heaven!”

gasped the boy.

And Adam preached penitence to the one that cursed, and Sibyll knelt

down and prayed with the one that prayed. And up rose the moon!

Lord Hastings sat with his victorious captains--over mead, morat, and

wine--in the humble hall of the farm.

“So,” said he, “we have crushed the last embers of the rebellion! This

Sir Geoffrey Gates is a restless and resolute spirit; pity he escapes

again for further mischief. But the House of Nevile, that overshadowed

the rising race, hath fallen at last,--a waisall, brave sirs, to the new

men!”

The door was thrown open, and an old soldier entered abruptly.

“My lord! my lord! Oh, my poor son! he cannot be found! The women, who

ever follow the march of soldiers, will be on the ground to despatch the

wounded, that they may rifle the corpses! O God! if my son, my boy, my

only son--”

“I wist not, my brave Mervil, that thou hadst a son in our bands; yet I

know each man by name and sight. Courage! Our wounded have been removed,

and sentries are placed to guard the field.”

“Sentries! O my lord, knowest thou not that they wink at the crime that

plunders the dead? Moreover, these corpse-riflers creep stealthily and

unseen, as the red earth-worms, to the carcass. Give me some few of thy

men, give me warrant to search the field! My son, my boy--not sixteen

summers--and his mother!”

The man stopped, and sobbed.

“Willingly!” said the gentle Hastings, “willingly! And woe to the

sentries if it be as thou sayest! I will go myself and see! Torches

there--what ho!--the good captain careth even for his dead!--Thy son! I

marvel I knew him not! Whom served he under?”

“My lord! my lord! pardon him! He is but a boy--they misled him! he

fought for the rebels. He crossed my path to-day, my arm was raised; we

knew each other, and he fled from his father’s sword! Just as the strife

was ended I saw him again, I saw him fall!--Oh, mercy, mercy! do not let

him perish of his wounds or by the rifler’s knife, even though a rebel!”

“Homo sum!” quoth the noble chief; “I am a man; and, even in these

bloody times, Nature commands when she speaks in a father’s voice!

Mervil, I marked thee to-day! Thou art a brave fellow. I meant thee

advancement; I give thee, instead, thy son’s pardon, if he lives; ten

Masses if he died as a soldier’s son should die, no matter under what

flag,--antelope or lion, pierced manfully in the breast, his feet to the

foe! Come, I will search with thee!”

The boy yielded up his soul while Sibyll prayed, and her sweet voice

soothed the last pang; and the man ceased to curse while Adam spoke of

God’s power and mercy, and his breath ebbed, gasp upon gasp, away. While

thus detained, the wanderers saw not pale, fleeting figures, that had

glided to the ground, and moved, gleaming, irregular, and rapid, as

marsh-fed vapours, from heap to heap of the slain. With a loud, wild

cry, the robber Lancastrian half sprung to his feet, in the paroxysm of

the last struggle, and then fell on his face, a corpse!

The cry reached the tymbesteres, and Graul rose from a body from which

she had extracted a few coins smeared with blood, and darted to the

spot; and so, as Adam raised his face from contemplating the dead, whose

last moments he had sought to soothe, the Alecto of the battlefield

stood before him, her knife bare in her gory arm. Red Grisell, who had

just left (with a spurn of wrath--for the pouch was empty) the corpse of

a soldier, round whose neck she had twined her hot clasp the day before,

sprang towards Sibyll; the rest of the sisterhood flocked to the place,

and laughed in glee as they beheld their unexpected prey. The danger

was horrible and imminent; no pity was seen in those savage eyes. The

wanderers prepared for death--when, suddenly, torches flashed over

the ground. A cry was heard, “See, the riflers of the dead!” Armed men

bounded forward, and the startled wretches uttered a shrill, unearthly

scream, and fled from the spot, leaping over the carcasses, and doubling

and winding, till they had vanished into the darkness of the wood.

“Provost!” said a commanding voice, “hang me up those sentinels at

day-break!”

“My son! my boy! speak, Hal,--speak to me. He is here, he is found!”

exclaimed the old soldier, kneeling beside the corpse at Sibyll’s feet.

“My lord! my beloved! my Hastings!” And Sibyll fell insensible before

the chief.

CHAPTER VI. THE SUBTLE CRAFT OF RICHARD OF GLOUCESTER.

It was some weeks after the defeat of Sir Geoffrey Gates, and Edward

was at Shene, with his gay court. Reclined at length within a pavilion

placed before a cool fountain, in the royal gardens, and surrounded

by his favourites, the king listened indolently to the music of his

minstrels, and sleeked the plumage of his favourite falcon, perched upon

his wrist. And scarcely would it have been possible to recognize in

that lazy voluptuary the dauntless soldier, before whose lance, as deer

before the hound, had so lately fled, at bloody Erpingham, the chivalry

of the Lancastrian Rose; but remote from the pavilion, and in one of the

deserted bowling alleys, Prince Richard and Lord Montagu walked apart,

in earnest conversation. The last of these noble personages had remained

inactive during these disturbances, and Edward had not seemed to

entertain any suspicion of his participation in the anger and revenge

of Warwick. The king took from him, it is true, the lands and earldom of

Northumberland, and restored them to the Percy, but he had accompanied

this act with gracious excuses, alleging the necessity of conciliating

the head of an illustrious House, which had formally entered into

allegiance to the dynasty of York, and bestowed upon his early

favourite, in compensation, the dignity of marquis. [Montagu said

bitterly of this new dignity, “He takes from me the Earldom and domains

of Northumberland, and makes me a Marquis, with a pie’s nest to maintain

it withal.”--STOWE: Edward IV.--Warkworth Chronicle.] The politic king,

in thus depriving Montagu of the wealth and the retainers of the

Percy, reduced him, as a younger brother, to a comparative poverty

and insignificance, which left him dependent on Edward’s favour, and

deprived him, as he thought, of the power of active mischief; at the

same time more than ever he insisted on Montagu’s society, and

summoning his attendance at the court, kept his movements in watchful

surveillance.

“Nay, my lord,” said Richard, pursuing with much unction the

conversation he had commenced, “you wrong me much, Holy Paul be my

witness, if you doubt the deep sorrow I feel at the unhappy events which

have led to the severance of my kinsmen! England seems to me to have

lost its smile in losing the glory of Earl Warwick’s presence, and

Clarence is my brother, and was my friend; and thou knowest, Montagu,

thou knowest, how dear to my heart was the hope to win for my wife and

lady the gentle Anne.”

“Prince,” said Montagu, abruptly, “though the pride of Warwick and the

honour of our House may have forbidden the public revelation of the

cause which fired my brother to rebellion, thou, at least, art privy to

a secret--”

“Cease!” exclaimed Richard, in great emotion, probably sincere, for his

face grew livid, and its muscles were nervously convulsed. “I would not

have that remembrance stirred from its dark repose. I would fain forget

a brother’s hasty frenzy, in the belief of his lasting penitence.” He

paused and turned his face, gasped for breath, and resumed: “The cause

justified the father; it had justified me in the father’s cause, had

Warwick listened to my suit, and given me the right to deem insult to

his daughter injury to myself.”

“And if, my prince,” returned Montagu, looking round him, and in a

subdued whisper, “if yet the hand of Lady Anne were pledged to you?”

“Tempt me not, tempt me not!” cried the prince, crossing himself.

Montagu continued,--

“Our cause, I mean Lord Warwick’s cause, is not lost, as the king deems

it.”

“Proceed,” said Richard, casting down his eyes, while his countenance

settled back into its thoughtful calm.

“I mean,” renewed Montagu, “that in my brother’s flight, his retainers

were taken by surprise. In vain the king would confiscate his lands,--he

cannot confiscate men’s hearts. If Warwick to-morrow set his armed heel

upon the soil, trowest thou, sagacious and clear-judging prince, that

the strife which would follow would be but another field of Losecote?

[The battle of Erpingham, so popularly called, in contempt of the rebel

lions runaways.] Thou hast heard of the honours with which King Louis

has received the earl. Will that king grudge him ships and moneys? And

meanwhile, thinkest thou that his favourers sleep?”

“But if he land, Montagu,” said Richard, who seemed to listen with an

attention that awoke all the hopes of Montagu, coveting so powerful an

ally--“if he land, and make open war on Edward--we must say the word

boldly--what intent can he proclaim? It is not enough to say King Edward

shall not reign; the earl must say also what king England should elect!”

“Prince,” answered Montagu, “before I reply to that question, vouchsafe

to hear my own hearty desire and wish. Though the king has deeply

wronged my brother, though he has despoiled me of the lands, which were,

peradventure, not too large a reward for twenty victories in his cause,

and restored them to the House that ever ranked amongst the strongholds

of his Lancastrian foe, yet often when I am most resentful, the memory

of my royal seigneur’s past love and kindness comes over me,--above all,

the thought of the solemn contract between his daughter and my son; and

I feel (now the first heat of natural anger at an insult offered to

my niece is somewhat cooled) that if Warwick did land, I could almost

forget my brother for my king.”

“Almost!” repeated Richard, smiling.

“I am plain with your Highness, and say but what I feel. I would even

now fain trust that, by your mediation, the king may be persuaded to

make such concessions and excuses as in truth would not misbeseem him,

to the father of Lady Anne, and his own kinsman; and that yet, ere it

be too late, I may be spared the bitter choice between the ties of blood

and my allegiance to the king.”

“But failing this hope (which I devoutly share),--and Edward, it must be

owned, could scarcely trust to a letter,--still less to a messenger, the

confession of a crime,--failing this, and your brother land, and I side

with him for love of Anne, pledged to me as a bride,--what king would he

ask England to elect?”

“The Duke of Clarence loves you dearly, Lord Richard,” replied Montagu.

“Knowest thou not how often he hath said, ‘By sweet Saint George, if

Gloucester would join me, I would make Edward know we were all one man’s

sons, who should be more preferred and promoted than strangers of his

wife’s blood?’” [Hall.]

Richard’s countenance for a moment evinced disappointment; but he said

dryly: “Then Warwick would propose that Clarence should be king?--and

the great barons and the honest burghers and the sturdy yeomen would,

you think, not stand aghast at the manifesto which declares, not that

the dynasty of York is corrupt and faulty, but that the younger son

should depose the elder,--that younger son, mark me! not only unknown in

war and green in council, but gay, giddy, vacillating; not subtle of wit

and resolute of deed, as he who so aspires should be!--Montagu, a vain

dream!”--Richard paused and then resumed, in a low tone, as to himself,

“Oh, not so--not so are kings cozened from their thrones! a pretext

must blind men,--say they are illegitimate, say they are too young, too

feeble, too anything, glide into their place, and then, not war--not

war. You slay them not,--they disappear!” The duke’s face, as he

muttered, took a sinister and a dark expression, his eyes seemed to gaze

on space. Suddenly recovering himself as from a revery, he turned, with

his wonted sleek and gracious aspect, to the startled Montagu, and said,

“I was but quoting from Italian history, good my lord,--wise lore, but

terrible and murderous. Return we to the point. Thou seest Clarence

could not reign, and as well,” added the prince, with a slight

sigh,--“as well or better (for, without vanity, I have more of a king’s

mettle in me), might I--even I--aspire to my brother’s crown!” Here he

paused, and glanced rapidly and keenly at the marquis; but whether

or not in these words he had sought to sound Montagu, and that glance

sufficed to show him it were bootless or dangerous to speak more

plainly, he resumed with an altered voice, “Enough of this: Warwick will

discover the idleness of such design; and if he land, his trumpets

must ring to a more kindling measure. John Montagu, thinkest thou that

Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrians will not rather win thy brother

to their side? There is the true danger to Edward,--none elsewhere.”

“And if so?” said Montagu, watching his listener’s countenance. Richard

started, and gnawed his lip. “Mark me,” continued the marquis, “I repeat

that I would fain hope yet that Edward may appease the earl; but if not,

and, rather than rest dishonoured and aggrieved, Warwick link himself

with Lancaster, and thou join him as Anne’s betrothed and lord, what

matters who the puppet on the throne?--we and thou shall be the rulers;

or, if thou reject,” added the marquis, artfully, as he supposed,

exciting the jealousy of the duke, “Henry has a son--a fair, and they

say, a gallant prince--carefully tutored in the knowledge of our English

laws, and who my lord of Oxford, somewhat in the confidence of the

Lancastrians, assures me would rejoice to forget old feuds, and call

Warwick ‘father,’ and my niece ‘Lady and Princess of Wales.’”

With all his dissimulation, Richard could ill conceal the emotions of

fear, of jealousy, of dismay, which these words excited.

“Lord Oxford!” he cried, stamping his foot. “Ha, John de Vere, pestilent

traitor, plottest thou thus? But we can yet seize thy person, and will

have thy head.”

Alarmed at this burst, and suddenly made aware that he had laid his

breast too bare to the boy, whom he had thought to dazzle and seduce to

his designs, Montagu said falteringly, “But, my lord, our talk is but

in confidence: at your own prayer, with your own plighted word of prince

and of kinsman, that whatever my frankness may utter should not pass

farther. Take,” added the nobleman, with proud dignity--“take my head

rather than Lord Oxford’s; for I deserve death, if I reveal to one who

can betray the loose words of another’s intimacy and trust!”

“Forgive me, my cousin,” said Richard, meekly; “my love to Anne

transported me too far. Lord Oxford’s words, as you report them, had

conjured up a rival, and--but enough of this. And now,” added the

prince, gravely, and with a steadiness of voice and manner that gave a

certain majesty to his small stature, “now as thou hast spoken openly,

openly also will I reply. I feel the wrong to the Lady Anne as to

myself; deeply, burningly, and lastingly, will it live in my mind; it

may be, sooner or later, to rise to gloomy deeds, even against Edward

and Edward’s blood. But no, I have the king’s solemn protestations

of repentance; his guilty passion has burned into ashes, and he now

sighs--gay Edward--for a lighter fere. I cannot join with Clarence,

less can I join with the Lancastrians. My birth makes me the prop of the

throne of York,--to guard it as a heritage (who knows?) that may descend

to mine,--nay, to me! And, mark me well if Warwick attempt a war of

fratricide, he is lost; if, on the other hand, he can submit himself to

the hands of Margaret, stained with his father’s gore, the success of an

hour will close in the humiliation of a life. There is a third way

left, and that way thou hast piously and wisely shown. Let him, like

me, resign revenge, and, not exacting a confession and a cry of peccavi,

which no king, much less King Edward the Plantagenet, can whimper forth,

let him accept such overtures as his liege can make. His titles and

castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost

assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can so negotiate) as all my

ambition, his daughter’s hand. Muse on this, and for the peace and weal

of the realm so limit all thy schemes, my lord and cousin!”

With these words the prince pressed the hand of the marquis, and walked

slowly towards the king’s pavilion.

“Shame on my ripe manhood and lore of life,” muttered Montagu, enraged

against himself, and deeply mortified. “How sentence by sentence and

step by step yon crafty pigmy led me on, till all our projects, all our

fears and hopes, are revealed to him who but views them as a foe. Anne

betrothed to one who even in fiery youth can thus beguile and dupe!

Warwick decoyed hither upon fair words, at the will of one whom Italy

(boy, there thou didst forget thy fence of cunning!) has taught how the

great are slain not, but disappear! no, even this defeat instructs me

now. But right, right! the reign of Clarence is impossible, and that

of Lancaster is ill-omened and portentous; and after all, my son stands

nearer to the throne than any subject, in his alliance with the Lady

Elizabeth. Would to Heaven the king could yet--But out on me! this is

no hour for musing on mine own aggrandizement; rather let me fly at

once and warn Oxford--imperilled by my imprudence--against that dark eye

which hath set watch upon his life.”

At that thought, which showed that Montagu, with all his worldliness,

was not forgetful of one of the first duties of knight and gentleman,

the marquis hastened up the alley, in the opposite direction to that

taken by Gloucester, and soon found himself in the courtyard, where a

goodly company were mounting their haquenees and palfreys, to enjoy a

summer ride through the neighbouring chase. The cold and half-slighting

salutations of these minions of the hour, which now mortified the

Nevile, despoiled of the possessions that had rewarded his long and

brilliant services, contrasting forcibly the reverential homage he had

formerly enjoyed, stung Montagu to the quick.

“Whither ride you, brother Marquis?” said young Lord Dorset (Elizabeth’s

son by her first marriage), as Montagu called to his single squire, who

was in waiting with his horse. “Some secret expedition, methinks, for

I have known the day when the Lord Montagu never rode from his king’s

palace with less than thirty squires.”

“Since my Lord Dorset prides himself on his memory,” answered the

scornful lord, “he may remember also the day when, if a Nevile mounted

in haste, he bade the first Woodville he saw hold the stirrup.”

And regarding “the brother marquis” with a stately eye that silenced and

awed retort, the long-descended Montagu passed the courtiers, and

rode slowly on till out of sight of the palace; he then pushed into a

hand-gallop, and halted not till he had reached London, and gained the

house in which then dwelt the Earl of Oxford, the most powerful of all

the Lancastrian nobles not in exile, and who had hitherto temporized

with the reigning House.

Two days afterwards the news reached Edward that Lord Oxford and Jasper

of Pembroke--uncle to the boy afterwards Henry VII.--had sailed from

England.

The tidings reached the king in his chamber, where he was closeted with

Gloucester. The conference between them seemed to have been warm and

earnest, for Edward’s face was flushed, and Gloucester’s brow was

perturbed and sullen.

“Now Heaven be praised!” cried the king, extending to Richard the letter

which communicated the flight of the disaffected lords. “We have

two enemies the less in our roiaulme, and many a barony the more to

confiscate to our kingly wants. Ha, ha! these Lancastrians only serve to

enrich us. Frowning still, Richard? smile, boy!”

“Foi de mon ame, Edward,” said Richard, with a bitter energy, strangely

at variance with his usual unctious deference to the king, “your

Highness’s gayety is ill-seasoned; you reject all the means to assure

your throne, you rejoice in all the events that imperil it. I prayed you

to lose not a moment in conciliating, if possible, the great lord whom

you own you have wronged, and you replied that you would rather lose

your crown than win back the arm that gave it you.”

“Gave it me! an error, Richard! that crown was at once the heritage of

my own birth and the achievement of my own sword. But were it as you

say, it is not in a king’s nature to bear the presence of a power more

formidable than his own, to submit to a voice that commands rather than

counsels; and the happiest chance that ever befell me is the exile of

this earl. How, after what hath chanced, can I ever see his face again

without humiliation, or he mine without resentment?”

“So you told me anon, and I answered, if that be so, and your Highness

shrinks from the man you have injured, beware at least that Warwick, if

he may not return as a friend, come not back as an irresistible foe. If

you will not conciliate, crush! Hasten by all arts to separate Clarence

from Warwick. Hasten to prevent the union of the earl’s popularity and

Henry’s rights. Keep eye upon all the Lancastrian lords, and see that

none quit the realm where they are captives, to join a camp where they

can rise into leaders. And at the very moment I urge you to place strict

watch upon Oxford, to send your swiftest riders to seize Jasper of

Pembroke, you laugh with glee to hear that Oxford and Pembroke are gone

to swell the army of your foes!”

“Better foes out of my realm than in it,” answered Edward, dryly.

“My liege, I say no more,” and Richard rose. “I would forestall a

danger; it but remains for me to share it.”

The king was touched. “Tarry yet, Richard,” he said; and then, fixing

his brother’s eye, he continued, with a half smile and a heightened

colour, “though we knew thee true and leal to us, we yet know also,

Richard, that thou hast personal interest in thy counsels. Thou wouldst

by one means or another soften or constrain the earl into giving thee

the hand of Anne. Well, then, grant that Warwick and Clarence expel King

Edward from his throne, they may bring a bride to console thee for the

ruin of a brother.”

“Thou hast no right to taunt or to suspect me, my liege,” returned

Richard, with a quiver in his lip. “Thou hast included me in thy

meditated wrong to Warwick; and had that wrong been done--”

“Peradventure it had made thee espouse Warwick’s quarrel?”

“Bluntly, yes!” exclaimed Richard, almost fiercely, and playing with his

dagger. “But” (he added, with a sudden change of voice) “I understand

and know thee better than the earl did or could. I know what in thee

is but thoughtless impulse, haste of passion, the habit kings form of

forgetting all things save the love or hate, the desire or anger, of a

moment. Thou hast told me thyself, and with tears, of thy offence; thou

hast pardoned my boy’s burst of anger; I have pardoned thy evil thought;

thou hast told me thyself that another face has succeeded to the brief

empire of Anne’s blue eye, and hast further pledged me thy kingly

word, that if I can yet compass the hand of a cousin dear to me from

childhood, thou wilt confirm the union.”

“It is true,” said Edward. “But if thou wed thy bride, keep her aloof

from the court,--nay, frown not, my boy, I mean simply that I would not

blush before my brother’s wife!”

Richard bowed low in order to conceal the expression of his face,

and went on without further notice of the explanation. “And all

this considered, Edward, I swear by Saint Paul, the holiest saint to

thoughtful men, and by Saint George, the noblest patron to high-born

warriors, that thy crown and thine honour are as dear to me as if they

were mine own. Whatever sins Richard of Gloucester may live to harbour

and repent, no man shall ever say of him that he was a recreant to the

honour of his country [so Lord Bacon observes of Richard, with that

discrimination, even in the strongest censure, of which profound judges

of mankind are alone capable, that he was “a king jealous of the honor

of the English nation”], or slow to defend the rights of his ancestors

from the treason of a vassal or the sword of a foreign foe. Therefore, I

say again, if thou reject my honest counsels; if thou suffer Warwick

to unite with Lancaster and France; if the ships of Louis bear to your

shores an enemy, the might of whom your reckless daring undervalues,

foremost in the field in battle, nearest to your side in exile,

shall Richard Plantagenet be found!” These words, being uttered with

sincerity, and conveying a promise never forfeited, were more impressive

than the subtlest eloquence the wily and accomplished Gloucester ever

employed as the cloak to guile, and they so affected Edward, that he

threw his arms around his brother; and after one of those bursts of

emotion which were frequent in one whose feelings were never deep and

lasting, but easily aroused and warmly spoken, he declared himself

really to listen to and adopt all means which Richard’s art could

suggest for the better maintenance of their common weal and interests.

And then, with that wondrous, if somewhat too restless and over-refining

energy which belonged to him, Richard rapidly detailed the scheme of his

profound and dissimulating policy. His keen and intuitive insight into

human nature had shown him the stern necessity which, against their very

will, must unite Warwick with Margaret of Anjou. His conversation with

Montagu had left no doubt of that peril on his penetrating mind. He

foresaw that this union might be made durable and sacred by the marriage

of Anne and Prince Edward; and to defeat this alliance was his first

object, partly through Clarence, partly through Margaret herself. A

gentlewoman in the Duchess of Clarence’s train had been arrested on the

point of embarking to join her mistress. Richard had already seen and

conferred with this lady, whose ambition, duplicity, and talent for

intrigue were known to him. Having secured her by promises of the most

lavish dignities and rewards, he proposed that she should be permitted

to join the duchess with secret messages to Isabel and the duke, warning

them both that Warwick and Margaret would forget their past feud in

present sympathy, and that the rebellion against King Edward, instead

of placing them on the throne, would humble them to be subordinates and

aliens to the real profiters, the Lancastrians. [Comines, 3, c. 5; Hall;

Hollinshed] He foresaw what effect these warnings would have upon the

vain duke and the ambitious Isabel, whose character was known to him

from childhood. He startled the king by insisting upon sending, at the

same time, a trusty diplomatist to Margaret of Anjou, proffering to give

the princess Elizabeth (betrothed to Lord Montagu’s son) to the young

Prince Edward. [“Original Letters from Harleian Manuscripts.” Edited by

Sir H. Ellis (second series).] Thus, if the king, who had, as yet, no

son, were to die, Margaret’s son, in right of his wife, as well as in

that of his own descent, would peaceably ascend the throne. “Need I

say that I mean not this in sad and serious earnest?” observed Richard,

interrupting the astonished king. “I mean it but to amuse the Anjouite,

and to deafen her ears to any overtures from Warwick. If she listen,

we gain time; that time will inevitably renew irreconcilable quarrel

between herself and the earl. His hot temper and desire of revenge

will not brook delay. He will land, unsupported by Margaret and

her partisans, and without any fixed principle of action which can

strengthen force by opinion.”

“You are right, Richard,” said Edward, whose faithless cunning

comprehended the more sagacious policy it could not originate. “All be

it as you will.”

“And in the mean while,” added Richard, “watch well, but anger not,

Montagu and the archbishop. It were dangerous to seem to distrust them

till proof be clear; it were dull to believe them true. I go at once to

fulfil my task.”

CHAPTER VII. WARWICK AND HIS FAMILY IN EXILE.

We now summon the reader on a longer if less classic journey than from

Thebes to Athens, and waft him on a rapid wing from Shene to Amboise. We

must suppose that the two emissaries of Gloucester have already arrived

at their several destinations,--the lady has reached Isabel, the envoy

Margaret.

In one of the apartments appropriated to the earl in the royal palace,

within the embrasure of a vast Gothic casement, sat Anne of Warwick; the

small wicket in the window was open, and gave a view of a wide and fair

garden, interspersed with thick bosquets and regular alleys, over which

the rich skies of the summer evening, a little before sunset, cast

alternate light and shadow. Towards this prospect the sweet face of the

Lady Anne was turned musingly. The riveted eye, the bended neck, the

arms reclining on the knee, the slender fingers interlaced,--gave to her

whole person the character of revery and repose.

In the same chamber were two other ladies; the one was pacing the floor

with slow but uneven steps, with lips moving from time to time, as if in

self-commune, with the brow contracted slightly: her form and face took

also the character of revery, but not of repose.

The third female (the gentle and lovely mother of the other two) was

seated, towards the centre of the room, before a small table, on which

rested one of those religious manuscripts, full of the moralities and

the marvels of cloister sanctity, which made so large a portion of the

literature of the monkish ages. But her eye rested not on the Gothic

letter and the rich blazon of the holy book. With all a mother’s fear

and all a mother’s fondness, it glanced from Isabel to Anne, from Anne

to Isabel, till at length in one of those soft voices, so rarely heard,

which makes even a stranger love the speaker, the fair countess said,--

“Come hither, my child Isabel; give me thy hand, and whisper me what

hath chafed thee.”

“My mother,” replied the duchess, “it would become me ill to have a

secret not known to thee, and yet, methinks, it would become me less to

say aught to provoke thine anger!”

“Anger, Isabel! Who ever knew anger for those they love?”

“Pardon me, my sweet mother,” said Isabel, relaxing her haughty brow,

and she approached and kissed her mother’s cheek.

The countess drew her gently to a seat by her side.

“And now tell me all,--unless, indeed, thy Clarence hath, in some

lover’s hasty mood, vexed thy affection; for of the household secrets

even a mother should not question the true wife.”

Isabel paused, and glanced significantly at Anne.

“Nay, see!” said the countess, smiling, though sadly, “she, too, hath

thoughts that she will not tell to me; but they seem not such as should

alarm my fears, as thine do. For the moment ere I spoke to thee, thy

brow frowned, and her lip smiled. She hears us not,--speak on.”

“Is it then true, my mother, that Margaret of Anjou is hastening hither?

And can it be possible that King Louis can persuade my lord and father

to meet, save in the field of battle, the arch-enemy of our House?”

“Ask the earl thyself, Isabel; Lord Warwick hath no concealment from his

children. Whatever he doth is ever wisest, best, and knightliest,--so,

at least, may his children always deem!”

Isabel’s colour changed and her eye flashed. But ere she could answer,

the arras was raised, and Lord Warwick entered. But no longer did the

hero’s mien and manner evince that cordial and tender cheerfulness

which, in all the storms of his changeful life, he had hitherto

displayed when coming from power and danger, from council or from camp,

to man’s earthly paradise,--a virtuous home.

Gloomy and absorbed, his very dress--which, at that day, the

Anglo-Norman deemed it a sin against self-dignity to neglect--betraying,

by its disorder, that thorough change of the whole mind, that terrible

internal revolution, which is made but in strong natures by the tyranny

of a great care or a great passion, the earl scarcely seemed to heed his

countess, who rose hastily, but stopped in the timid fear and reverence

of love at the sight of his stern aspect; he threw himself abruptly on a

seat, passed his hand over his face, and sighed heavily.

That sigh dispelled the fear of the wife, and made her alive only to

her privilege of the soother. She drew near, and placing herself on

the green rushes at his feet, took his hand and kissed it, but did not

speak.

The earl’s eyes fell on the lovely face looking up to him through tears,

his brow softened, he drew his hand gently from hers, placed it on her

head, and said in a low voice,--“God and Our Lady bless thee, sweet

wife!”

Then, looking round, he saw Isabel watching him intently; and, rising

at once, he threw his arm round her waist, pressed her to his bosom, and

said, “My daughter, for thee and thine day and night have I striven and

planned in vain. I cannot reward thy husband as I would; I cannot give

thee, as I had hoped, a throne!”

“What title so dear to Isabel,” said the countess, “as that of Lord

Warwick’s daughter?”

Isabel remained cold and silent, and returned not the earl’s embrace.

Warwick was, happily, too absorbed in his own feelings to notice those

of his child. Moving away, he continued, as he paced the room (his habit

in emotion, which Isabel, who had many minute external traits in common

with her father, had unconsciously caught from him),--

“Till this morning I hoped still that my name and services, that

Clarence’s popular bearing and his birth of Plantagenet, would suffice

to summon the English people round our standard; that the false Edward

would be driven, on our landing, to fly the realm; and that, without

change to the dynasty of York, Clarence, as next male heir, would ascend

the throne. True, I saw all the obstacles, all the difficulties,--I was

warned of them before I left England; but still I hoped. Lord Oxford

has arrived, he has just left me. We have gone over the chart of the way

before us, weighed the worth of every name, for and against; and, alas!

I cannot but allow that all attempt to place the younger brother on

the throne of the elder would but lead to bootless slaughter and

irretrievable defeat.”

“Wherefore think you so, my lord?” asked Isabel, in evident excitement.

“Your own retainers are sixty thousand,--an army larger than Edward, and

all his lords of yesterday, can bring into the field.”

“My child,” answered the earl, with that profound knowledge of his

countrymen which he had rather acquired from his English heart than from

any subtlety of intellect, “armies may gain a victory, but they do not

achieve a throne,--unless, at least, they enforce a slavery; and it

is not for me and for Clarence to be the violent conquerors of our

countrymen, but the regenerators of a free realm, corrupted by a false

man’s rule.”

“And what then,” exclaimed Isabel,--“what do you propose, my father?

Can it be possible that you can unite yourself with the abhorred

Lancastrians, with the savage Anjouite, who beheaded my grandsire,

Salisbury? Well do I remember your own words,--‘May God and Saint George

forget me, when I forget those gray and gory hairs!’”

Here Isabel was interrupted by a faint cry from Anne, who, unobserved

by the rest, and hitherto concealed from her father’s eye by the deep

embrasure of the window, had risen some moments before, and listened,

with breathless attention, to the conversation between Warwick and the

duchess.

“It is not true, it is not true!” exclaimed Anne, passionately.

“Margaret disowns the inhuman deed.”

“Thou art right, Anne,” said Warwick; “though I guess not how thou didst

learn the error of a report so popularly believed that till of late I

never questioned its truth. King Louis assures me solemnly that that

foul act was done by the butcher Clifford, against Margaret’s knowledge,

and, when known, to her grief and anger.”

“And you, who call Edward false, can believe Louis true?”

“Cease, Isabel, cease!” said the countess. “Is it thus my child can

address my lord and husband? Forgive her, beloved Richard.”

“Such heat in Clarence’s wife misbeseems her not,” answered Warwick.

“And I can comprehend and pardon in my haughty Isabel a resentment

which her reason must at last subdue; for think not, Isabel, that it is

without dread struggle and fierce agony that I can contemplate peace and

league with mine ancient foe; but here two duties speak to me in voices

not to be denied: my honour and my hearth, as noble and as man, demand

redress, and the weal and glory of my country demand a ruler who does

not degrade a warrior, nor assail a virgin, nor corrupt a people by lewd

pleasures, nor exhaust a land by grinding imposts; and that honour shall

be vindicated, and that country shall be righted, no matter at what

sacrifice of private grief and pride.”

The words and the tone of the earl for a moment awed even Isabel; but

after a pause, she said suddenly, “And for this, then, Clarence hath

joined your quarrel and shared your exile?--for this,--that he may place

the eternal barrier of the Lancastrian line between himself and the

English throne?”

“I would fain hope,” answered the earl, calmly, “that Clarence will view

our hard position more charitably than thou. If he gain not all that

I could desire, should success crown our arms, he will, at least, gain

much; for often and ever did thy husband, Isabel, urge me to stern

measures against Edward, when I soothed him and restrained. Mort Dieu!

how often did he complain of slight and insult from Elizabeth and her

minions, of open affront from Edward, of parsimony to his wants as

prince,--of a life, in short, humbled and made bitter by all the

indignity and the gall which scornful power can inflict on dependent

pride. If he gain not the throne, he will gain, at least, the succession

in thy right to the baronies of Beauchamp, the mighty duchy, and the

vast heritage of York, the vice-royalty of Ireland. Never prince of the

blood had wealth and honours equal to those that shall await thy lord.

For the rest, I drew him not into my quarrel; long before would he have

drawn me into his; nor doth it become thee, Isabel, as child and as

sister, to repent, if the husband of my daughter felt as brave men feel,

without calculation of gain and profit, the insult offered to his lady’s

House. But if here I overgauge his chivalry and love to me and mine,

or discontent his ambition and his hopes, Mort Dieu! we hold him not

a captive. Edward will hail his overtures of peace; let him make terms

with his brother, and return.”

“I will report to him what you say, my lord,” said Isabel, with cold

brevity and, bending her haughty head in formal reverence, she advanced

to the door. Anne sprang forward and caught her hand.

“Oh, Isabel!” she whispered, “in our father’s sad and gloomy hour can

you leave him thus?” and the sweet lady burst into tears.

“Anne,” retorted Isabel, bitterly, “thy heart is Lancastrian; and what,

peradventure, grieves my father hath but joy for thee.”

Anne drew back, pale and trembling, and her sister swept from the room.

The earl, though he had not overheard the whispered sentences which

passed between his daughters, had watched them closely, and his lip

quivered with emotion as Isabel closed the door.

“Come hither, my Anne,” he said tenderly; “thou who hast thy mother’s

face, never hast a harsh thought for thy father.”

As Anne threw herself on Warwick’s breast, he continued, “And how camest

thou to learn that Margaret disowns a deed that, if done by her command,

would render my union with her cause a sacrilegious impiety to the

dead?”

Anne coloured, and nestled her head still closer to her father’s bosom.

Her mother regarded her confusion and her silence with an anxious eye.

The wing of the palace in which the earl’s apartments were situated

was appropriated to himself and household, flanked to the left by an

abutting pile containing state-chambers, never used by the austere and

thrifty Louis, save on great occasions of pomp or revel; and, as we have

before observed, looking on a garden, which was generally solitary and

deserted. From this garden, while Anne yet strove for words to answer

her father, and the countess yet watched her embarrassment, suddenly

came the soft strain of a Provencal lute; while a low voice, rich, and

modulated at once by a deep feeling and an exquisite art that would have

given effect to even simpler words, breathed--

THE LAY OF THE HEIR OF LANCASTER

“His birthright but a father’s name,

A grandsire’s hero-sword,

He dwelt within the stranger’s land,

The friendless, homeless lord!”

“Yet one dear hope, too dear to tell,

Consoled the exiled man;

The angels have their home in heaven

And gentle thoughts in Anne.”

At that name the voice of the singer trembled, and paused a moment;

the earl, who at first had scarcely listened to what he deemed but the

ill-seasoned gallantry of one of the royal minstrels, started in proud

surprise, and Anne herself, tightening her clasp round her father’s

neck, burst into passionate sobs. The eye of the countess met that of

her lord; but she put her finger to her lips in sign to him to listen.

The song was resumed--

“Recall the single sunny time,

In childhood’s April weather,

When he and thou, the boy and girl,

Roved hand in band together.”

“When round thy young companion knelt

The princes of the isle;

And priest and people prayed their God,

On England’s heir to smile.”

The earl uttered a half-stifled exclamation, but the minstrel heard not

the interruption, and continued,--

“Methinks the sun hath never smiled

Upon the exiled man,

Like that bright morning when the boy

Told all his soul to Anne.”

“No; while his birthright but a name,

A grandsire’s hero--sword,

He would not woo the lofty maid

To love the banished lord.”

“But when, with clarion, fife, and drum,

He claims and wins his own;

When o’er the deluge drifts his ark,

To rest upon a throne.”

“Then, wilt thou deign to hear the hope

That blessed the exiled man,

When pining for his father’s crown

To deck the brows of Anne?”

The song ceased, and there was silence within the chamber, broken but by

Anne’s low yet passionate weeping. The earl gently strove to disengage

her arms from his neck; but she, mistaking his intention, sank on her

knees, and covering her face with her hands, exclaimed,--

“Pardon! pardon! pardon him, if not me!”

“What have I to pardon? What hast thou concealed from me? Can I think

that thou hast met, in secret, one who--”

“In secret! Never, never, Father! This is the third time only that I

have heard his voice since we have been at Amboise, save when--save

when--”

“Go on.”

“Save when King Louis presented him to me in the revel under the name

of the Count de F----, and he asked me if I could forgive his mother for

Lord Clifford’s crime.”

“It is, then, as the rhyme proclaimed; and it is Edward of Lancaster who

loves and woos the daughter of Lord Warwick!”

Something in her father’s voice made Anne remove her hands from her

face, and look up to him with a thrill of timid joy. Upon his brow,

indeed, frowned no anger, upon his lip smiled no scorn. At that moment

all his haughty grief at the curse of circumstance which drove him to

his hereditary foe had vanished. Though Montagu had obtained from

Oxford some glimpse of the desire which the more sagacious and temperate

Lancastrians already entertained for that alliance, and though Louis

had already hinted its expediency to the earl, yet, till now, Warwick

himself had naturally conceived that the prince shared the enmity of his

mother, and that such a union, however politic, was impossible; but

now indeed there burst upon him the full triumph of revenge and pride.

Edward of York dared to woo Anne to dishonour, Edward of Lancaster dared

not even woo her as his wife till his crown was won! To place upon the

throne the very daughter the ungrateful monarch had insulted; to make

her he would have humbled not only the instrument of his fall, but the

successor of his purple; to unite in one glorious strife the wrongs

of the man and the pride of the father,--these were the thoughts that

sparkled in the eye of the king-maker, and flushed with a fierce rapture

the dark cheek, already hollowed by passion and care. He raised his

daughter from the floor, and placed her in her mother’s arms, but still

spoke not.

“This, then, was thy secret, Anne,” whispered the countess; “and I half

foreguessed it, when, last night, I knelt beside thy couch to pray, and

overheard thee murmur in thy dreams.”

“Sweet mother, thou forgivest me; but my father--ah, he speaks not. One

word! Father, Father, not even his love could console me if I angered

thee!”

The earl, who had remained rooted to the spot, his eyes shining

thoughtfully under his dark brows, and his hand slightly raised, as

if piercing into the future, and mapping out its airy realm, turned

quickly,--

“I go to the heir of Lancaster; if this boy be bold and true, worthy of

England and of thee, we will change the sad ditty of that scrannel lute

into such a storm of trumpets as beseems the triumph of a conqueror and

the marriage of a prince!”