CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE HEIR OF LANCASTER MEETS THE KING-MAKER.

In truth, the young prince, in obedience to a secret message from the

artful Louis, had repaired to the court of Amboise under the name of the

Count de F----. The French king had long before made himself acquainted

with Prince Edward’s romantic attachment to the earl’s daughter, through

the agent employed by Edward to transmit his portrait to Anne at

Rouen; and from him, probably, came to Oxford the suggestion which that

nobleman had hazarded to Montagu; and now that it became his policy

seriously and earnestly to espouse the cause of his kinswoman Margaret,

he saw all the advantage to his cold statecraft which could be drawn

from a boyish love. Louis had a well-founded fear of the warlike spirit

and military talents of Edward IV.; and this fear had induced him

hitherto to refrain from openly espousing the cause of the Lancastrians,

though it did not prevent his abetting such seditions and intrigues as

could confine the attention of the martial Plantagenet to the perils of

his own realm. But now that the breach between Warwick and the king had

taken place; now that the earl could no longer curb the desire of

the Yorkist monarch to advance his hereditary claims to the fairest

provinces of France,--nay, peradventure, to France itself,--while the

defection of Lord Warwick gave to the Lancastrians the first fair hope

of success in urging their own pretensions to the English throne,

he bent all the powers of his intellect and his will towards the

restoration of a natural ally and the downfall of a dangerous foe.

But he knew that Margaret and her Lancastrian favourers could not

of themselves suffice to achieve a revolution,--that they could only

succeed under cover of the popularity and the power of Warwick, while

he perceived all the art it would require to make Margaret forego her

vindictive nature and long resentment, and to supple the pride of the

great earl into recognizing as a sovereign the woman who had branded him

as a traitor.

Long before Lord Oxford’s arrival, Louis, with all that address which

belonged to him, had gradually prepared the earl to familiarize himself

to the only alternative before him, save that, indeed, of powerless

sense of wrong and obscure and lasting exile. The French king looked

with more uneasiness to the scruples of Margaret; and to remove these,

he trusted less to his own skill than to her love for her only son.

His youth passed principally in Anjou--that court of minstrels--young

Edward’s gallant and ardent temper had become deeply imbued with the

southern poetry and romance. Perhaps the very feud between his House and

Lord Warwick’s, though both claimed their common descent from John of

Gaunt, had tended, by the contradictions in the human heart, to endear

to him the recollection of the gentle Anne. He obeyed with joy the

summons of Louis, repaired to the court, was presented to Anne as the

Count de F----, found himself recognized at the first glance (for his

portrait still lay upon her heart, as his remembrance in its core), and,

twice before the song we have recited, had ventured, agreeably to the

sweet customs of Anjou, to address the lady of his love under the shade

of the starlit summer copses. But on this last occasion, he had departed

from his former discretion; hitherto he had selected an hour of deeper

night, and ventured but beneath the lattice of the maiden’s chamber when

the rest of the palace was hushed in sleep. And the fearless declaration

of his rank and love now hazarded was prompted by one who contrived to

turn to grave uses the wildest whim of the minstrel, the most romantic

enthusiasm of youth.

Louis had just learned from Oxford the result of his interview with

Warwick. And about the same time the French king had received a letter

from Margaret, announcing her departure from the castle of Verdun for

Tours, where she prayed him to meet her forthwith, and stating that she

had received from England tidings that might change all her schemes, and

more than ever forbid the possibility of a reconciliation with the Earl

of Warwick.

The king perceived the necessity of calling into immediate effect the

aid on which he had relied, in the presence and passion of the young

prince. He sought him at once; he found him in a remote part of the

gardens, and overheard him breathing to himself the lay he had just

composed.

“Pasque Dieu!” said the king, laying his hand on the young man’s

shoulder, “if thou wilt but repeat that song where and when I bid thee,

I promise that before the month ends Lord Warwick shall pledge thee his

daughter’s hand; and before the year is closed thou shalt sit beside

Lord Warwick’s daughter in the halls of Westminster.”

And the royal troubadour took the counsel of the king.

The song had ceased; the minstrel emerged from the bosquets, and stood

upon the sward, as, from the postern of the palace, walked with a slow

step, a form from which it became him not, as prince or as lover, in

peace or in war, to shrink. The first stars had now risen; the light,

though serene, was pale and dim. The two men--the one advancing, the

other motionless--gazed on each other in grave silence. As Count

de F----, amidst the young nobles in the king’s train, the earl had

scarcely noticed the heir of England. He viewed him now with a different

eye: in secret complacency, for, with a soldier’s weakness, the

soldier-baron valued men too much for their outward seeming, he surveyed

a figure already masculine and stalwart, though still in the graceful

symmetry of fair eighteen.

“A youth of a goodly presence,” muttered the earl, “with the dignity

that commands in peace, and the sinews that can strive against hardship

and death in war.”

He approached, and said calmly: “Sir minstrel, he who woos either fame

or beauty may love the lute, but should wield the sword. At least, so

methinks had the Fifth Henry said to him who boasts for his heritage the

sword of Agincourt.”

“O noble earl!” exclaimed the prince, touched by words far gentler than

he had dared to hope, despite his bold and steadfast mien, and giving

way to frank and graceful emotion, “O noble earl! since thou knowest me;

since my secret is told; since, in that secret, I have proclaimed a hope

as dear to me as a crown and dearer far than life, can I hope that thy

rebuke but veils thy favour, and that, under Lord Warwick’s eye, the

grandson of Henry V. shall approve himself worthy of the blood that

kindles in his veins?”

“Fair sir and prince,” returned the earl, whose hardy and generous

nature the emotion and fire of Edward warmed and charmed, “there are,

alas! deep memories of blood and wrong--the sad deeds and wrathful words

of party feud and civil war--between thy royal mother and myself; and

though we may unite now against a common foe, much I fear that the Lady

Margaret would brook ill a closer friendship, a nearer tie, than the

exigency of the hour between Richard Nevile and her son.”

“No, Sir Earl, let me hope you misthink her. Hot and impetuous, but not

mean and treacherous, the moment that she accepts the service of

thine arm she must forget that thou hast been her foe; and if I, as my

father’s heir, return to England, it is in the trust that a new era will

commence. Free from the passionate enmities of either faction, Yorkist

and Lancastrian are but Englishmen to me. Justice to all who serve us,

pardon for all who have opposed.”

The prince paused, and, even in the dim light, his kingly aspect gave

effect to his kingly words. “And if this resolve be such as you approve;

if you, great earl, be that which even your foes proclaim, a man whose

power depends less on lands and vassals--broad though the one, and

numerous though the other--than on well-known love for England, her

glory and her peace, it rests with you to bury forever in one grave the

feuds of Lancaster and York! What Yorkist who hath fought at Towton or

St. Albans under Lord Warwick’s standard, will lift sword against the

husband of Lord Warwick’s daughter? What Lancastrian will not forgive a

Yorkist, when Lord Warwick, the kinsman of Duke Richard, becomes father

to the Lancastrian heir, and bulwark to the Lancastrian throne? O

Warwick, if not for my sake, nor for the sake of full redress against

the ingrate whom thou repentest to have placed on my father’s throne, at

least for the sake of England, for the healing of her bleeding wounds,

for the union of her divided people, hear the grandson of Henry V., who

sues to thee for thy daughter’s hand!”

The royal wooer bent his knee as he spoke. The mighty subject saw and

prevented the impulse of the prince who had forgotten himself in the

lover; the hand which he caught he lifted to his lips, and the next

moment, in manly and soldierlike embrace, the prince’s young arm was

thrown over the broad shoulder of the king-maker.

CHAPTER IX. THE INTERVIEW OF EARL WARWICK AND QUEEN MARGARET.

Louis hastened to meet Margaret at Tours; thither came also her father

Rene, her brother John of Calabria, Yolante her sister, and the Count of

Vaudemonte. The meeting between the queen and Rene was so touching as to

have drawn tears to the hard eyes of Louis XI.; but, that emotion over,

Margaret evinced how little affliction had humbled her high spirit, or

softened her angry passions: she interrupted Louis in every argument for

reconciliation with Warwick. “Not with honour to myself and to my son,”

she exclaimed, “can I pardon that cruel earl, the main cause of King

Henry’s downfall! in vain patch up a hollow peace between us,--a peace

of form and parchment! My spirit never can be contented with him, ne

pardon!”

For several days she maintained a language which betrayed the chief

cause of her own impolitic passions, that had lost her crown. Showing

to Louis the letter despatched to her, proffering the hand of the Lady

Elizabeth to her son, she asked if that were not a more profitable

party [See, for this curious passage of secret history, Sir H. Ellis’s

“Original Letters from the Harleian Manuscripts,” second series,

vol. i., letter 42.], and if it were necessary that she should

forgive,--whether it were not more queenly to treat with Edward than

with a twofold rebel?

In fact, the queen would perhaps have fallen into Gloucester’s artful

snare, despite all the arguments and even the half-menaces [Louis

would have thrown over Margaret’s cause if Warwick had demanded it; he

instructed MM. de Concressault and du Plessis to assure the earl that

he would aid him to the utmost to reconquer England either for the Queen

Margaret or for any one else he chose (on pour qui il voudra): for that

he loved the earl better than Margaret or her son.--BRANTE, t. ix. 276.]

of the more penetrating Louis, but for a counteracting influence which

Richard had not reckoned upon. Prince Edward, who had lingered behind

Louis, arrived from Amboise, and his persuasions did more than all the

representations of the crafty king. The queen loved her son with that

intenseness which characterizes the one soft affection of violent

natures. Never had she yet opposed his most childish whim, and now he

spoke with the eloquence of one who put his heart and his life’s life

into his words. At last, reluctantly, she consented to an interview with

Warwick. The earl, accompanied by Oxford, arrived at Tours, and the two

nobles were led into the presence of Margaret by King Louis.

The reader will picture to himself a room darkened by thick curtains

drawn across the casement, for the proud woman wished not the earl

to detect on her face either the ravages of years or the emotions

of offended pride. In a throne chair, placed on the dais, sat the

motionless queen, her hands clasping, convulsively, the arms of the

fauteuil, her features pale and rigid; and behind the chair leaned the

graceful figure of her son. The person of the Lancastrian prince was

little less remarkable than that of his hostile namesake, but its

character was distinctly different. [“According to some of the French

chroniclers, the Prince of Wales, who was one of the handsomest and

most accomplished princes in Europe, was very desirous of becoming the

husband of Anne Nevile,” etc.--Miss STRICKLAND: Life of Margaret of

Anjou.] Spare, like Henry V., almost to the manly defect of leanness,

his proportions were slight to those which gave such portly majesty to

the vast-chested Edward, but they evinced the promise of almost equal

strength,--the muscles hardened to iron by early exercise in arms,

the sap of youth never wasted by riot and debauch. His short purple

manteline, trimmed with ermine, was embroidered with his grandfather’s

favourite device, “the silver swan;” he wore on his breast the badge of

St. George; and the single ostrich plume, which made his cognizance as

Prince of Wales, waved over a fair and ample forehead, on which were

even then traced the lines of musing thought and high design; his

chestnut hair curled close to his noble head; his eye shone dark

and brilliant beneath the deep-set brow, which gives to the human

countenance such expression of energy and intellect,--all about him,

in aspect and mien, seemed to betoken a mind riper than his years,

a masculine simplicity of taste and bearing, the earnest and grave

temperament mostly allied in youth to pure and elevated desires, to an

honourable and chivalric soul.

Below the dais stood some of the tried and gallant gentlemen who had

braved exile, and tasted penury in their devotion to the House of

Lancaster, and who had now flocked once more round their queen, in the

hope of better days. There were the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, their

very garments soiled and threadbare,--many a day had those great lords

hungered for the beggar’s crust! [Philip de Comines says he himself

had seen the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset in the Low Countries in as

wretched a plight as common beggars.] There stood Sir John Fortescue,

the patriarch authority of our laws, who had composed his famous

treatise for the benefit of the young prince, overfond of exercise with

lance and brand, and the recreation of knightly song. There were Jasper

of Pembroke, and Sir Henry Rous, and the Earl of Devon, and the Knight

of Lytton, whose House had followed, from sire to son, the fortunes of

the Lancastrian Rose; [Sir Robert de Lytton (whose grandfather had been

Comptroller to the Household of Henry IV., and Agister of the Forests

allotted to Queen Joan), was one of the most powerful knights of the

time; and afterwards, according to Perkin Warbeck, one of the ministers

most trusted by Henry VII. He was lord of Lytton, in Derbyshire (where

his ancestors had been settled since the Conquest), of Knebworth in

Herts (the ancient seat and manor of Plantagenet de Brotherton, Earl

of Norfolk and Earl Marshal), of Myndelesden and Langley, of Standyarn,

Dene, and Brekesborne, in Northamptonshire, and became in the reign of

Henry VII. Privy Councillor, Uuder-Treasurer, and Keeper of the great

Wardrobe.] and, contrasting the sober garments of the exiles, shone the

jewels and cloth-of-gold that decked the persons of the more prosperous

foreigners, Ferri, Count of Vaudemonte, Margaret’s brother, the Duke

of Calabria, and the powerful form of Sir Pierre de Breze, who had

accompanied Margaret in her last disastrous campaigns, with all the

devotion of a chevalier for the lofty lady adored in secret. [See,

for the chivalrous devotion of this knight (Seneschal of Normandy) to

Margaret, Miss Strickland’s Life of that queen.]

When the door opened, and gave to the eyes of those proud exiles the

form of their puissant enemy, they with difficulty suppressed the murmur

of their resentment, and their looks turned with sympathy and grief to

the hueless face of their queen.

The earl himself was troubled; his step was less firm, his crest less

haughty, his eye less serenely steadfast.

But beside him, in a dress more homely than that of the poorest exile

there, and in garb and in aspect, as he lives forever in the portraiture

of Victor Hugo and our own yet greater Scott, moved Louis, popularly

called “The Fell.”

“Madame and cousin,” said the king, “we present to you the man for whose

haute courage and dread fame we have such love and respect, that we

value him as much as any king, and would do as much for him as for man

living [Ellis: Original Letters, vol. i., letter 42, second series]; and

with my lord of Warwick, see also this noble earl of Oxford, who, though

he may have sided awhile with the enemies of your Highness, comes now to

pray your pardon, and to lay at your feet his sword.”

Lord Oxford (who had ever unwillingly acquiesced in the Yorkist

dynasty), more prompt than Warwick, here threw himself on his knees

before Margaret, and his tears fell on her hand, as he murmured

“Pardon.”

“Rise, Sir John de Vere,” said the queen, glancing with a flashing eye

from Oxford to Lord Warwick. “Your pardon is right easy to purchase, for

well I know that you yielded but to the time,--you did not turn the time

against us; you and yours have suffered much for King Henry’s cause.

Rise, Sir Earl.”

“And,” said a voice, so deep and so solemn, that it hushed the very

breath of those who heard it,--“and has Margaret a pardon also for the

man who did more than all others to dethrone King Henry, and can do more

than all to restore his crown?”

“Ha!” cried’ Margaret, rising in her passion, and casting from her the

hand her son had placed upon her shoulder, “ha! Ownest thou thy wrongs,

proud lord? Comest thou at last to kneel at Queen Margaret’s feet?

Look round and behold her court,--some half-score brave and unhappy

gentlemen, driven from their hearths and homes, their heritage the prey

of knaves and varlets, their sovereign in a prison, their sovereign’s

wife, their sovereign’s son, persecuted and hunted from the soil! And

comest thou now to the forlorn majesty of sorrow to boast, ‘Such deeds

were mine?’”

“Mother and lady,” began the prince

“Madden me not, my son. Forgiveness is for the prosperous, not for

adversity and woe.”

“Hear me,” said the earl,--who, having once bowed his pride to the

interview, had steeled himself against the passion which, in his

heart, he somewhat despised as a mere woman’s burst of inconsiderate

fury,--“for I have this right to be heard,--that not one of these

knights, your lealest and noblest friends, can say of me that I ever

stooped to gloss mine acts, or palliate bold deeds with wily words. Dear

to me as comrade in arms, sacred to me as a father’s head, was Richard

of York, mine uncle by marriage with Lord Salisbury’s sister. I speak

not now of his claims by descent (for those even King Henry could not

deny), but I maintain them, even in your Grace’s presence, to be such as

vindicate, from disloyalty and treason, me and the many true and gallant

men who upheld them through danger, by field and scaffold. Error, it

might be,--but the error of men who believed themselves the defenders

of a just cause. Nor did I, Queen Margaret, lend myself wholly to my

kinsman’s quarrel, nor share one scheme that went to the dethronement of

King Henry, until--pardon, if I speak bluntly; it is my wont, and would

be more so now, but for thy fair face and woman’s form, which awe me

more than if confronting the frown of Coeur de Lion, or the First Great

Edward--pardon me, I say, if I speak bluntly, and aver that I was not

King Henry’s foe until false counsellors had planned my destruction, in

body and goods, land and life. In the midst of peace, at Coventry, my

father and myself scarcely escaped the knife of the murderer. [See Hall

(236), who says that Margaret had laid a snare for Salisbury and Warwick

at Warwick, and “if they had not suddenly departed, their life’s thread

had been broken.”] In the streets of London the very menials and

hangmen employed in the service of your Highness beset me unarmed [Hall,

Fabyan]; a little time after and my name was attainted by an illegal

Parliament. [Parl. Rolls, 370; W. Wyr. 478.] And not till after these

things did Richard Duke of York ride to the hall of Westminster, and

lay his hand upon the throne; nor till after these things did I and

my father Salisbury say to each other, ‘The time has come when neither

peace nor honour can be found for us under King Henry’s reign.’ Blame

me if you will, Queen Margaret; reject me if you need not my sword; but

that which I did in the gone days was such as no nobleman so outraged

and despaired [Warwick’s phrase. See Sir H. Ellis’s “Original Letters,”

vol. i., second series.] would have forborne to do,--remembering that

England is not the heritage of the king alone, but that safety and

honour, and freedom and justice, are the rights of his Norman gentlemen

and his Saxon people. And rights are a mockery and a laughter if they do

not justify resistance, whensoever, and by whomsoever, they are invaded

and assailed.”

It had been with a violent effort that Margaret had refrained

from interrupting this address, which had, however, produced no

inconsiderable effect upon the knightly listeners around the dais.

And now, as the earl ceased, her indignation was arrested by dismay on

seeing the young prince suddenly leave his post and advance to the side

of Warwick.

“Right well hast thou spoken, noble earl and cousin,--right well, though

right plainly. And I,” added the prince, “saving the presence of my

queen and mother,--I, the representative of my sovereign father, in his

name will pledge thee a king’s oblivion and pardon for the past, if

thou on thy side acquit my princely mother of all privity to the snares

against thy life and honour of which thou hast spoken, and give thy

knightly word to be henceforth leal to Lancaster. Perish all memories of

the past that can make walls between the souls of brave men.”

Till this moment, his arms folded in his gown, his thin, fox-like face

bent to the ground, Louis had listened, silent and undisturbed. He now

deemed it the moment to second the appeal of the prince. Passing his

hand hypocritically over his tearless eyes, the king turned to Margaret

and said,--

“Joyful hour! happy union! May Madame La Vierge and Monseigneur Saint

Martin sanctify and hallow the bond by which alone my beloved kinswoman

can regain her rights and roiaulme. Amen.”

Unheeding this pious ejaculation, her bosom heaving, her eyes wandering

from the earl to Edward, Margaret at last gave vent to her passion.

“And is it come to this, Prince Edward of Wales, that thy mother’s

wrongs are not thine? Standest thou side by side with my mortal foe,

who, instead of repenting treason, dares but to complain of injury? Am

I fallen so low that my voice to pardon or disdain is counted but as a

sough of idle air! God of my fathers, hear me! Willingly from my heart

I tear the last thought and care for the pomps of earth. Hateful to me

a crown for which the wearer must cringe to enemy and rebel! Away, Earl

Warwick! Monstrous and unnatural seems it to the wife of captive Henry

to see thee by the side of Henry’s son!”

Every eye turned in fear to the aspect of the earl, every ear listened

for the answer which might be expected from his well-known heat and

pride,--an answer to destroy forever the last hope of the Lancastrian

line. But whether it was the very consciousness of his power to raise

or to crush that fiery speaker, or those feelings natural to brave men,

half of chivalry, half contempt, which kept down the natural anger by

thoughts of the sex and sorrows of the Anjouite, or that the wonted

irascibility of his temper had melted into one steady and profound

passion of revenge against Edward of York, which absorbed all lesser and

more trivial causes of resentment,--the earl’s face, though pale as the

dead, was unmoved and calm, and, with a grave and melancholy smile, he

answered,--

“More do I respect thee, O queen, for the hot words which show a truth

rarely heard from royal lips than hadst thou deigned to dissimulate the

forgiveness and kindly charity which sharp remembrance permits thee not

to feel! No, princely Margaret, not yet can there be frank amity between

thee and me! Nor do I boast the affection yon gallant gentlemen have

displayed. Frankly, as thou hast spoken, do I say, that the wrongs I

have suffered from another alone move me to allegiance to thyself! Let

others serve thee for love of Henry; reject not my service, given but

for revenge on Edward,--as much, henceforth, am I his foe as formerly

his friend and maker! [Sir H. Ellis: Original Letters, vol. i., second

series.] And if, hereafter, on the throne, thou shouldst remember and

resent the former wars, at least thou hast owed me no gratitude, and

thou canst not grieve my heart and seethe my brain, as the man whom I

once loved better than a son! Thus, from thy presence I depart, chafing

not at thy scornful wrath; mindful, young prince, but of thy just and

gentle heart, and sure, in the calm of my own soul (on which this much,

at least, of our destiny is reflected as on a glass), that when, high

lady, thy colder sense returns to thee, thou wilt see that the league

between us must be made!--that thine ire as woman must fade before thy

duties as a another, thy affection as a wife, and thy paramount and

solemn obligations to the people thou hast ruled as queen! In the

dead of night thou shalt hear the voice of Henry in his prison asking

Margaret to set him free; the vision of thy son shall rise before thee

in his bloom and promise, to demand why his mother deprives him of a

crown; and crowds of pale peasants, grinded beneath tyrannous exaction,

and despairing fathers mourning for dishonoured children, shall ask the

Christian queen if God will sanction the unreasoning wrath which rejects

the only instrument that can redress her people.”

This said, the earl bowed his head and turned; but, at the first sign of

his departure, there was a general movement among the noble bystanders.

Impressed by the dignity of his bearing, by the greatness of his power,

and by the unquestionable truth that in rejecting him Margaret cast

away the heritage of her son, the exiles, with a common impulse, threw

themselves at the queen’s feet, and exclaimed, almost in the same

words,--

“Grace! noble queen!--Grace for the great Lord Warwick!”

“My sister,” whispered John of Calabria, “thou art thy son’s ruin if the

earl depart!”

“Pasque Dieu! Vex not my kinswoman,--if she prefer a convent to a

throne, cross not the holy choice!” said the wily Louis, with a mocking

irony on his pinched lips.

The prince alone spoke not, but stood proudly on the same spot, gazing

on the earl, as he slowly moved to the door.

“Oh, Edward! Edward, my son!” exclaimed the unhappy Margaret, “if for

thy sake--for thine--I must make the past a blank, speak thou for me!”

“I have spoken,” said the prince, gently, “and thou didst chide me,

noble mother; yet I spoke, methinks, as Henry V. had done, if of a

mighty enemy he had had the power to make a noble friend.”

A short, convulsive sob was heard from the throne chair; and as suddenly

as it burst, it ceased. Queen Margaret rose, not a trace of that

stormy emotion upon the grand and marble beauty of her face. Her voice,

unnaturally calm, arrested the steps of the departing earl.

“Lord Warwick, defend this boy, restore his rights, release his sainted

father, and for years of anguish and of exile, Margaret of Anjou

forgives the champion of her son!”

In an instant Prince Edward was again by the earl’s side; a moment more,

and the earl’s proud knee bent in homage to the queen, joyful tears were

in the eyes of her friends and kindred, a triumphant smile on the lips

of Louis, and Margaret’s face, terrible in its stony and locked repose,

was raised above, as if asking the All-Merciful pardon--for the pardon

which the human sinner had bestowed! [Ellis: Original Letters from the

Harleian Manuscripts, letter 42.]

CHAPTER X. LOVE AND MARRIAGE--DOUBTS OF CONSCIENCE--DOMESTIC

JEALOUSY--AND HOUSEHOLD TREASON.

The events that followed this tempestuous interview were such as the

position of the parties necessarily compelled. The craft of Louis, the

energy and love of Prince Edward, the representations of all her

kindred and friends, conquered, though not without repeated struggles,

Margaret’s repugnance to a nearer union between Warwick and her son. The

earl did not deign to appear personally in this matter. He left it, as

became him, to Louis and the prince, and finally received from them the

proposals, which ratified the league, and consummated the schemes of his

revenge.

Upon the Very Cross [Miss Strickland observes upon this interview: “It

does not appear that Warwick mentioned the execution of his father, the

Earl of Salisbury, which is almost a confirmation of the statements of

those historians who deny that he was beheaded by Margaret.”] in St.

Mary’s Church of Angers, Lord Warwick swore without change to hold the

party of King Henry. Before the same sacred symbol, King Louis and his

brother, Duke of Guienne, robed in canvas, swore to sustain to their

utmost the Earl of Warwick in behalf of King Henry; and Margaret

recorded her oath “to treat the earl as true and faithful, and never for

deeds past to make him any reproach.”

Then were signed the articles of marriage between Prince Edward and the

Lady Anne,--the latter to remain with Margaret, but the marriage not to

be consummated “till Lord Warwick had entered England and regained the

realm, or most part, for King Henry,”--a condition which pleased the

earl, who desired to award his beloved daughter no less a dowry than a

crown.

An article far more important than all to the safety of the earl and

to the permanent success of the enterprise, was one that virtually

took from the fierce and unpopular Margaret the reins of government, by

constituting Prince Edward (whose qualities endeared him more and more

to Warwick, and were such as promised to command the respect and love of

the people) sole regent of all the realm, upon attaining his majority.

For the Duke of Clarence were reserved all the lands and dignities of

the duchy of York, the right to the succession of the throne to him

and his posterity,--failing male heirs to the Prince of Wales,--with a

private pledge of the viceroyalty of Ireland.

Margaret had attached to her consent one condition highly obnoxious

to her high-spirited son, and to which he was only reconciled by the

arguments of Warwick: she stipulated that he should not accompany the

earl to England, nor appear there till his father was proclaimed

king. In this, no doubt, she was guided by maternal fears, and by some

undeclared suspicion, either of the good faith of Warwick, or of his

means to raise a sufficient army to fulfil his promise. The brave prince

wished to be himself foremost in the battles fought in his right and for

his cause. But the earl contended, to the surprise and joy of Margaret,

that it best behooved the prince’s interests to enter England without

one enemy in the field, leaving others to clear his path, free himself

from all the personal hate of hostile factions, and without a drop of

blood upon the sword of one heralded and announced as the peace-maker

and impartial reconciles of all feuds. So then (these high conditions

settled), in the presence of the Kings Rene and Louis, of the Earl

and Countess of Warwick, and in solemn state, at Amboise, Edward of

Lancaster plighted his marriage-troth to his beloved and loving Anne.

It was deep night, and high revel in the Palace of Amboise crowned the

ceremonies of that memorable day. The Earl of Warwick stood alone in the

same chamber in which he had first discovered the secret of the young

Lancastrian. From the brilliant company, assembled in the halls of

state, he had stolen unperceived away, for his great heart was full to

overflowing. The part he had played for many days was over, and with

it the excitement and the fever. His schemes were crowned,--the

Lancastrians were won to his revenge; the king’s heir was the betrothed

of his favourite child; and the hour was visible in the distance, when,

by the retribution most to be desired, the father’s hand should lead

that child to the throne of him who would have degraded her to the dust.

If victory awaited his sanguine hopes, as father to his future queen,

the dignity and power of the earl became greater in the court of

Lancaster than, even in his palmiest day, amidst the minions of

ungrateful York; the sire of two lines,--if Anne’s posterity should

fail, the crown would pass to the sons of Isabel,--in either case

from him (if successful in his invasion) would descend the royalty

of England. Ambition, pride, revenge, might well exult in viewing the

future, as mortal wisdom could discern it. The House of Nevile never

seemed brightened by a more glorious star: and yet the earl was heavy

and sad at heart. However he had concealed it from the eyes of others,

the haughty ire of Margaret must have galled him in his deepest soul.

And even as he had that day contemplated the holy happiness in the

face of Anne, a sharp pang had shot through his breast. Were those the

witnesses of fair-omened spousailles? How different from the hearty

greeting of his warrior-friends was the measured courtesy of foes who

had felt and fled before his sword! If aught chanced to him in the

hazard of the field, what thought for his child ever could speak in pity

from the hard and scornful eyes of the imperious Anjouite?

The mist which till then had clouded his mind, or left visible to his

gaze but one stern idea of retribution, melted into air. He beheld

the fearful crisis to which his life had passed,--he had reached the

eminence to mourn the happy gardens left behind. Gone, forever gone,

the old endearing friendships, the sweet and manly remembrances of brave

companionship and early love! Who among those who had confronted war by

his side for the House of York would hasten to clasp his hand and hail

his coming as the captain of hated Lancaster? True, could he bow his

honour to proclaim the true cause of his desertion, the heart of every

father would beat in sympathy with his; but less than ever could the

tale that vindicated his name be told. How stoop to invoke malignant

pity to the insult offered to a future queen? Dark in his grave

must rest the secret no words could syllable, save by such vague and

mysterious hint and comment as pass from baseless gossip into dubious

history. [Hall well explains the mystery which wrapped the king’s

insult to a female of the House of Warwick by the simple sentence, “The

certainty was not, for both their honours, openly known!”] True, that in

his change of party he was not, like Julian of Spain, an apostate to his

native land. He did not meditate the subversion of his country by the

foreign foe; it was but the substitution of one English monarch for

another,--a virtuous prince for a false and a sanguinary king. True,

that the change from rose to rose had been so common amongst the

greatest and the bravest, that even the most rigid could scarcely

censure what the age itself had sanctioned. But what other man of his

stormy day had been so conspicuous in the downfall of those he was now

as conspicuously to raise? What other man had Richard of York taken

so dearly to his heart, to what other man had the august father said,

“Protect my sons”? Before him seemed literally to rise the phantom of

that honoured prince, and with clay-cold lips to ask, “Art thou, of all

the world, the doomsman of my first-born?” A groan escaped the breast of

the self-tormentor; he fell on his knees and prayed: “Oh, pardon, thou

All-seeing!--plead for me, Divine Mother! if in this I have darkly

erred, taking my heart for my conscience, and mindful only of a selfish

wrong! Oh, surely, no! Had Richard of York himself lived to know what

I have suffered from his unworthy son,--causeless insult, broken faith,

public and unabashed dishonour; yea, pardoning, serving, loving on

through all, till, at the last, nothing less than the foulest taint that

can light upon ‘scutcheon and name was the cold, premeditated reward for

untired devotion,--surely, surely, Richard himself had said, ‘Thy honour

at last forbids all pardon!’”

Then, in that rapidity with which the human heart, once seizing upon

self-excuse, reviews, one after one, the fair apologies, the earl

passed from the injury to himself to the mal-government of his land, and

muttered over the thousand instances of cruelty and misrule which

rose to his remembrance,--forgetting, alas, or steeling himself to the

memory, that till Edward’s vices had assailed his own hearth and honour,

he had been contented with lamenting them, he had not ventured

to chastise. At length, calm and self-acquitted, he rose from his

self-confession, and leaning by the open casement, drank in the reviving

and gentle balm of the summer air. The state apartments he had left,

formed as we have before observed, an angle to the wing in which

the chamber he had now retired to was placed. They were brilliantly

illumined, their windows opened to admit the fresh, soft breeze of

night; and he saw, as if by daylight, distinct and gorgeous, in their

gay dresses, the many revellers within. But one group caught and riveted

his eye. Close by the centre window he recognized his gentle Anne,

with downcast looks; he almost fancied he saw her blush, as her young

bridegroom, young and beautiful as herself, whispered love’s flatteries

in her ear. He saw farther on, but yet near, his own sweet countess, and

muttered, “After twenty years of marriage, may Anne be as dear to him as

thou art now to me!” And still he saw, or deemed he saw, his lady’s eye,

after resting with tender happiness on the young pair, rove wistfully

around, as if missing and searching for her partner in her mother’s joy.

But what form sweeps by with so haughty a majesty, then pauses by the

betrothed, addresses them not, but seems to regard them with so fixed a

watch? He knew by her ducal diadem, by the baudekin colours of her

robe, by her unmistakable air of pride, his daughter Isabel. He did not

distinguish the expression of her countenance, but an ominous thrill

passed through his heart; for the attitude itself had an expression, and

not that of a sister’s sympathy and love. He turned away his face

with an unquiet recollection of the altered mood of his discontented

daughter. He looked again: the duchess had passed on, lost amidst the

confused splendour of the revel. And high and rich swelled the merry

music that invited to the stately pavon. He gazed still; his lady had

left her place, the lovers too had vanished, and where they stood, stood

now in close conference his ancient enemies, Exeter and Somerset. The

sudden change from objects of love to those associated with hate had

something which touched one of those superstitions to which, in all

ages, the heart, when deeply stirred, is weakly sensitive. And again,

forgetful of the revel, the earl turned to the serener landscape of the

grove and the moonlit green sward, and mused and mused, till a soft arm

thrown round him woke his revery. For this had his lady left the revel.

Divining, by the instinct born of love, the gloom of her husband, she

had stolen from pomp and pleasure to his side.

“Ah, wherefore wouldst thou rob me,” said the countess, “of one hour

of thy presence, since so few hours remain; since, when the sun that

succeeds the morrow’s shines upon these walls, the night of thine

absence will have closed upon me?”

“And if that thought of parting, sad to me as thee, suffice not, belle

amie, to dim the revel,” answered the earl, “weetest thou not how ill

the grave and solemn thoughts of one who sees before him the emprise

that would change the dynasty of a realm can suit with the careless

dance and the wanton music? But not at that moment did I think of those

mightier cares; my thoughts were nearer home. Hast thou noted, sweet

wife, the silent gloom, the clouded brow of Isabel, since she learned

that Anne was to be the bride of the heir of Lancaster?”

The mother suppressed a sigh. “We must pardon, or glance lightly over,

the mood of one who loves her lord, and mourns for his baffled hopes!

Well-a-day! I grieve that she admits not even me to her confidence. Ever

with the favourite lady who lately joined her train,--methinks that new

friend gives less holy counsel than a mother!”

“Ha! and yet what counsels can Isabel listen to from a comparative

stranger? Even if Edward, or rather his cunning Elizabeth, had suborned

this waiting-woman, our daughter never could hearken, even in an hour of

anger, to the message from our dishonourer and our foe.”

“Nay, but a flatterer often fosters by praising the erring thought.

Isabel hath something, dear lord, of thy high heart and courage; and

ever from childhood, her vaulting spirit, her very character of stately

beauty, hath given her a conviction of destiny and power loftier

than those reserved for our gentle Anne. Let us trust to time and

forbearance, and hope that the affection of the generous sister will

subdue the jealousy of the disappointed princess.”

“Pray Heaven, indeed, that it so prove! Isabel’s ascendancy over

Clarence is great, and might be dangerous. Would that she consented to

remain in France with thee and Anne! Her lord, at least, it seems I have

convinced and satisfied. Pleased at the vast fortunes before him, the

toys of viceregal power, his lighter nature reconciles itself to the

loss of a crown, which, I fear, it could never have upheld. For the more

I have read his qualities in our household intimacy, the more it seems

that I could scarcely have justified the imposing on England a king

not worthy of so great a people. He is young yet, but how different the

youth of Lancastrian Edward! In him what earnest and manly spirit! What

heaven-born views of the duties of a king! Oh, if there be a sin in the

passion that hath urged me on, let me, and me alone, atone! and may I be

at least the instrument to give to England a prince whose virtues shall

compensate for all!”

While yet the last word trembled upon the earl’s lips, a light flashed

along the floors, hitherto illumined but by the stars and the full moon.

And presently Isabel, in conference with the lady whom her mother had

referred to, passed into the room, on her way to her private chamber.

The countenance of this female diplomatist, whose talent for intrigue

Philip de Comines [Comines, iii. 5; Hall, Lingard, Hume, etc.] has

commemorated, but whose name, happily for her memory, history has

concealed, was soft and winning in its expression to the ordinary

glance, though the sharpness of the features, the thin compression of

the lips, and the harsh dry redness of the hair corresponded with the

attributes which modern physiognomical science truly or erringly assigns

to a wily and treacherous character. She bore a light in her hand, and

its rays shone full on the disturbed and agitated face of the duchess.

Isabel perceived at once the forms of her parents, and stopped short in

some whispered conversation, and uttered a cry almost of dismay.

“Thou leavest the revel betimes, fair daughter,” said the earl,

examining her countenance with an eye somewhat stern.

“My lady,” said the confidant, with a lowly reverence, “was anxious for

her babe.”

“Thy lady, good waiting-wench,” said Warwick, “needs not thy tongue to

address her father. Pass on.”

The gentlewoman bit her lips, but obeyed, and quitted the room. The earl

approached, and took Isabel’s hand,--it was cold as stone.

“My child,” said he, tenderly, “thou dost well to retire to rest; of

late thy cheek hath lost its bloom. But just now, for many causes, I

was wishing thee not to brave our perilous return to England; and now,

I know not whether it would make me the more uneasy, to fear for thy

health if absent or thy safety if with me!”

“My lord,” replied Isabel, coldly, “my duty calls me to my husband’s

side, and the more, since now it seems he dares the battle but reaps not

its rewards! Let Edward and Anne rest in safety, Clarence and Isabel go

to achieve the diadem and orb for others!”

“Be not bitter with thy father, girl; be not envious of thy sister!”

said the earl, in grave rebuke; then, softening his tone, he added,

“The women of a noble House should have no ambition of their own,--their

glory and their honour they should leave, unmurmuring, in the hands of

men! Mourn not if thy sister mounts the throne of him who would have

branded the very name to which thou and she were born!”

“I have made no reproach, my lord. Forgive me, I pray you, if I now

retire; I am so weary, and would fain have strength and health not to be

a burden to you when you depart.”

The duchess bowed with proud submission, and moved on. “Beware!” said

the earl, in a low voice.

“Beware!--and of what?” said Isabel, startled.

“Of thine own heart, Isabel. Ay, go to thine infant’s couch ere thou

seek thine own, and, before the sleep of innocence, calm thyself back to

womanhood.”

The duchess raised her head quickly, but habitual awe of her father

checked the angry answer; and kissing, with formal reverence, the hand

the countess extended to her, she left the room. She gained the chamber

in which was the cradle of her son, gorgeously canopied with silks,

inwrought with the blazoned arms of royal Clarence;--and beside the

cradle sat the confidant.

The duchess drew aside the drapery, and contemplated the rosy face of

the infant slumberer.

Then, turning to her confidant, she said,--

“Three months since, and I hoped my first-born would be a king! Away

with those vain mockeries of royal birth! How suit they the destined

vassal of the abhorred Lancastrian?”

“Sweet lady,” said the confidant, “did I not warn thee from the first

that this alliance, to the injury of my lord duke and this dear boy,

was already imminent? I had hoped thou mightst have prevailed with the

earl!”

“He heeds me not, he cares not for me!” exclaimed Isabel; “his whole

love is for Anne,--Anne, who, without energy and pride, I scarcely have

looked on as my equal! And now to my younger sister I must bow my knee,

pleased if she deign to bid me hold the skirt of her queenly robe!

Never,--no, never!”

“Calm thyself; the courier must part this night. My Lord of Clarence is

already in his chamber; he waits but thine assent to write to Edward,

that he rejects not his loving messages.”

The duchess walked to and fro, in great disorder. “But to be thus secret

and false to my father?”

“Doth be merit that thou shouldst sacrifice thy child to him? Reflect!

the king has no son! The English barons acknowledge not in girls a

sovereign; [Miss Strickland (“Life of Elizabeth of York”) remarks, “How

much Norman prejudice in favour of Salic law had corrupted the common

or constitutional law of England regarding the succession!” The remark

involves a controversy.] and, with Edward on the throne, thy son is

heir-presumptive. Little chance that a male heir shall now be born to

Queen Elizabeth, while from Anne and her bridegroom a long line may

spring. Besides, no matter what parchment treaties may ordain, how can

Clarence and his offspring ever be regarded by a Lancastrian king but as

enemies to feed the prison or the block, when some false invention gives

the seemly pretext for extirpating the lawful race?”

“Cease, cease, cease!” cried Isabel, in terrible struggles with herself.

“Lady, the hour presses! And, reflect, a few lines are but words, to be

confirmed or retracted as occasion suits! If Lord Warwick succeed, and

King Edward lose his crown, ye can shape as ye best may your conduct

to the time. But if the earl lose the day, if again he be driven

into exile, a few words now release you and yours from everlasting

banishment; restore your boy to his natural heritage; deliver you from

the insolence of the Anjouite, who, methinks, even dared this very day

to taunt your highness--”

“She did--she did! Oh that my father had been by to hear! She bade me

stand aside that Anne might pass,--‘not for the younger daughter of

Lord Warwick, but for the lady admitted into the royalty of Lancaster!’

Elizabeth Woodville, at least, never dared this insolence!”

“And this Margaret the Duke of Clarence is to place on the throne which

your child yonder might otherwise aspire to mount!”

Isabel clasped her hands in mute passion.

“Hark!” said the confidant, throwing open the door--

And along the corridor came, in measured pomp, a stately procession, the

chamberlain in front, announcing “Her Highness the Princess of Wales;”

and Louis XI., leading the virgin bride (wife but in name and honour,

till her dowry of a kingdom was made secure) to her gentle rest. The

ceremonial pomp, the regal homage that attended the younger sister thus

raised above herself, completed in Isabel’s jealous heart the triumph of

the Tempter. Her face settled into hard resolve, and she passed at once

from the chamber into one near at hand, where the Duke of Clarence sat

alone, the rich wines of the livery, not untasted, before him, and the

ink yet wet upon a scroll he had just indited.

He turned his irresolute countenance to Isabel as she bent over him and

read the letter. It was to Edward; and after briefly warning him of the

meditated invasion, significantly added, “and if I may seem to share

this emprise, which, here and alone, I cannot resist, thou shalt find

me still, when the moment comes, thy affectionate brother and loyal

subject.”

“Well, Isabel,” said the duke, “thou knowest I have delayed this till

the last hour to please thee; for verily, lady mine, thy will is my

sweetest law. But now, if thy heart misgives thee--”

“It does, it does!” exclaimed the duchess, bursting into tears.

“If thy heart misgives thee,” continued Clarence, who with all his

weakness had much of the duplicity of his brothers, “why, let it pass.

Slavery to scornful Margaret, vassalage to thy sister’s spouse, triumph

to the House which both thou and I were taught from childhood to deem

accursed,--why, welcome all! so that Isabel does not weep, and our boy

reproach us not in the days to come!”

For all answer, Isabel, who had seized the letter, let it drop on the

table, pushed it, with averted face, towards the duke, and turned back

to the cradle of her child, whom she woke with her sobs, and who wailed

its shrill reply in infant petulance and terror, snatched from its

slumber to the arms of the remorseful mother.

A smile of half contemptuous joy passed over the thin lips of the

she-Judas, and, without speaking, she took her way to Clarence. He had

sealed and bound his letter, first adding these words, “My lady and

duchess, whatever her kin, has seen this letter, and approves it,

for she is more a friend to York than to the earl, now he has turned

Lancastrian;” and placed it in a small iron coffer.

He gave the coffer, curiously clasped and locked, to the gentlewoman,

with a significant glance--“Be quick, or she repents! The courier waits,

his steed saddled! The instant you give it, he departs,--he hath his

permit to pass the gates.”

“All is prepared; ere the clock strike, he is on his way.” The confidant

vanished; the duke sank in his chair, and rubbed his hands.

“Oho, father-in-law, thou deemest me too dull for a crown! I am not dull

enough for thy tool. I have had the wit, at least, to deceive thee,

and to hide resentment beneath a smiling brow! Dullard, thou to believe

aught less than the sovereignty of England could have bribed Clarence to

thy cause!” He turned to the table and complacently drained his goblet.

Suddenly, haggard and pale as a spectre, Isabel stood before him.

“I was mad--mad, George! The letter! the letter--it must not go!”

At that moment the clock struck.

“Bel enfant,” said the duke, “it is too late!”

BOOK X. THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER.

CHAPTER I. THE MAID’S HOPE, THE COURTIER’S LOVE, AND THE SAGE’S COMFORT.

Fair are thy fields, O England; fair the rural farm and the orchards in

which the blossoms have ripened into laughing fruits; and fairer than

all, O England, the faces of thy soft-eyed daughters!

From the field where Sibyll and her father had wandered amidst the dead,

the dismal witnesses of war had vanished; and over the green pastures

roved the gentle flocks. And the farm to which Hastings had led the

wanderers looked upon that peaceful field through its leafy screen; and

there father and daughter had found a home.

It was a lovely summer evening; and Sibyll put aside the broidery frame,

at which, for the last hour, she had not worked, and gliding to the

lattice, looked wistfully along the winding lane. The room was in the

upper story, and was decorated with a care which the exterior of the

house little promised, and which almost approached to elegance. The

fresh green rushes that strewed the floor were intermingled with dried

wild thyme and other fragrant herbs. The bare walls were hung with serge

of a bright and cheerful blue; a rich carpet de cuir covered the oak

table, on which lay musical instruments, curiously inlaid, with a few

manuscripts, chiefly of English and Provencal poetry. The tabourets

were covered with cushions of Norwich worsted, in gay colours. All was

simple, it is true, yet all betokened a comfort--ay, a refinement, an

evidence of wealth--very rare in the houses even of the second order of

nobility.

As Sibyll gazed, her face suddenly brightened; she uttered a joyous cry,

hurried from the room, descended the stairs, and passed her father, who

was seated without the porch, and seemingly plunged in one of his most

abstracted reveries. She kissed his brow (he heeded her not), bounded

with a light step over the sward of the orchard, and pausing by a wicket

gate, listened with throbbing heart to the advancing sound of a horse’s

hoofs. Nearer came the sound, and nearer. A cavalier appeared in sight,

sprang from his saddle, and, leaving his palfrey to find his way to the

well-known stable, sprang lightly over the little gate.

“And thou hast watched for me, Sibyll?”

The girl blushingly withdrew from the eager embrace, and said

touchingly, “My heart watcheth for thee alway. Oh, shall I thank or

chide thee for so much care? Thou wilt see how thy craftsmen have

changed the rugged homestead into the daintiest bower!”

“Alas! my Sibyll! would that it were worthier of thy beauty, and our

mutual troth! Blessings on thy trust and sweet patience; may the day

soon come when I may lead thee to a nobler home, and hear knight and

baron envy the bride of Hastings!”

“My own lord!” said Sibyll, with grateful tears in confiding eyes; but,

after a pause, she added timidly, “Does the king still bear so stern a

memory against so humble a subject?”

“The king is more wroth than before, since tidings of Lord Warwick’s

restless machinations in France have soured his temper. He cannot hear

thy name without threats against thy father as a secret adherent of

Lancaster, and accuseth thee of witching his chamberlain,--as, in truth,

thou hast. The Duchess of Bedford is more than ever under the influence

of Friar Bungey, to whose spells and charms, and not to our good swords,

she ascribes the marvellous flight of Warwick and the dispersion of

our foes; and the friar, methinks, has fostered and yet feeds Edward’s

suspicions of thy harmless father. The king chides himself for

having suffered poor Warner to depart unscathed, and even recalls the

disastrous adventure of the mechanical, and swears that from the first

thy father was in treasonable conspiracy with Margaret. Nay, sure I am,

that if I dared to wed thee while his anger lasts, he would condemn thee

as a sorceress, and give me up to the secret hate of my old foes the

Woodvilles. But fie! be not so appalled, my Sibyll; Edward’s passions,

though fierce, are changeful, and patience will reward us both.”

“Meanwhile, thou lovest me, Hastings!” said Sibyll, with great emotion.

“Oh, if thou knewest how I torment myself in thine absence! I see thee

surrounded by the fairest and the loftiest, and say to myself, ‘Is

it possible that he can remember me?’ But thou lovest me

still--still--still, and ever! Dost thou not?”

And Hastings said and swore.

“And the Lady Bonville?” asked Sibyll, trying to smile archly, but with

the faltering tone of jealous fear.

“I have not seen her for months,” replied the noble, with a slight

change of countenance. “She is at one of their western manors. They say

her lord is sorely ill; and the Lady Bonville is a devout hypocrite, and

plays the tender wife. But enough of such ancient and worn-out memories.

Thy father--sorrows he still for his Eureka? I can learn no trace of

it.”

“See,” said Sibyll, recalled to her filial love, and pointing to Warner

as they now drew near the house, “see, he shapes another Eureka from his

thoughts!”

“How fares it, dear Warner?” asked the noble, taking the scholar’s hand.

“Ah,” cried the student, roused at the sight of his powerful

protector, “bringest thou tidings of IT? Thy cheerful eye tells me

that--no--no--thy face changes! They have destroyed it! Oh, that I could

be young once more!”

“What!” said the world-wise man, astonished. “If thou hadst another

youth, wouldst thou cherish the same delusion, and go again through a

life of hardship, persecution, and wrong?”

“My noble son,” said the philosopher, “for hours when I have felt the

wrong, the persecution, and the hardship, count the days and the nights

when I felt only the hope and the glory and the joy! God is kinder to us

all than man can know; for man looks only to the sorrow on the surface,

and sees not the consolation in the deeps of the unwitnessed soul.”

Sibyll had left Hastings by her father’s side, and tripped lightly

to the farther part of the house, inhabited by the rustic owners who

supplied the homely service, to order the evening banquet,--the happy

banquet; for hunger gives not such flavour to the viand, nor thirst such

sparkle to the wine, as the presence of a beloved guest.

And as the courtier seated himself on the rude settle under the

honeysuckles that wreathed the porch, a delicious calm stole over his

sated mind. The pure soul of the student, released a while from the

tyranny of an earthly pursuit,--the drudgery of a toil, that however

grand, still but ministered to human and material science,--had found

for its only other element the contemplation of more solemn and eternal

mysteries. Soaring naturally, as a bird freed from a golden cage,

into the realms of heaven, he began now, with earnest and spiritual

eloquence, to talk of the things and visions lately made familiar to his

thoughts. Mounting from philosophy to religion, he indulged in his large

ideas upon life and nature: of the stars that now came forth in heaven;

of the laws that gave harmony to the universe; of the evidence of a God

in the mechanism of creation; of the spark from central divinity, that,

kindling in a man’s soul, we call “genius;” of the eternal resurrection

of the dead, which makes the very principle of being, and types, in the

leaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He was

sublimer, that gray old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his

words, than ever is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and

deeds but blunderingly and lamely seek it.

And the sad and gifted and erring intellect of Hastings, rapt from its

little ambition of the hour, had no answer when his heart asked,

“What can courts and a king’s smile give me in exchange for serene

tranquillity and devoted love?”

CHAPTER II. THE MAN AWAKES IN THE SAGE, AND THE SHE-WOLF AGAIN HATH

TRACKED THE LAMB.

From the night in which Hastings had saved from the knives of the

tymbesteres Sibyll and her father, his honour and chivalry had made him

their protector. The people of the farm (a widow and her children, with

the peasants in their employ) were kindly and simple folks. What safer

home for the wanderers than that to which Hastings had removed them? The

influence of Sibyll over his variable heart or fancy was renewed. Again

vows were interchanged and faith plighted. Anthony Woodville, Lord

Rivers, who, however gallant an enemy, was still more than ever, since

Warwick’s exile, a formidable one, and who shared his sister’s dislike

to Hastings, was naturally at that time in the fullest favour of King

Edward, anxious to atone for the brief disgrace his brother-in-law

had suffered during the later days of Warwick’s administration. And

Hastings, offended by the manners of the rival favourite, took one of

the disgusts so frequent in the life of a courtier, and, despite his

office of chamberlain, absented himself much from his sovereign’s

company. Thus, in the reaction of his mind, the influence of Sibyll was

greater than it otherwise might have been. His visits to the farm were

regular and frequent. The widow believed him nearly related to Sibyll,

and suspected Warner to be some attainted Lancastrian, compelled to hide

in secret till his pardon was obtained; and no scandal was attached to

the noble’s visits, nor any surprise evinced at his attentive care for

all that could lend a grace to a temporary refuge unfitting the quality

of his supposed kindred.

And, in her entire confidence and reverential affection, Sibyll’s very

pride was rather soothed than wounded by obligations which were but

proofs of love, and to which plighted troth gave her a sweet right. As

for Warner, he had hitherto seemed to regard the great lord’s attentions

only as a tribute to his own science, and a testimony of the interest

which a statesman might naturally feel in the invention of a thing that

might benefit the realm. And Hastings had been delicate in the pretexts

of his visits. One time he called to relate the death of poor Madge,

though he kindly concealed the manner of it, which he had discovered,

but which opinion, if not law, forbade him to attempt to punish:

drowning was but the orthodox ordeal of a suspected witch, and it was

not without many scruples that the poor woman was interred in holy

ground. The search for the Eureka was a pretence that sufficed for

countless visits; and then, too, Hastings had counselled Adam to sell

the ruined house, and undertaken the negotiation; and the new comforts

of their present residence, and the expense of the maintenance, were

laid to the account of the sale. Hastings had begun to consider Adam

Warner as utterly blind and passive to the things that passed under his

eyes; and his astonishment was great when, the morning after the visit

we have just recorded, Adam, suddenly lifting his eyes, and seeing the

guest whispering soft tales in Sibyll’s ear, rose abruptly, approached

the nobleman, took him gently by the arm, led him into the garden, and

thus addressed him,--

“Noble lord, you have been tender and generous in our misfortunes. The

poor Eureka is lost to me and the world forever. God’s will be done!

Methinks Heaven designs thereby to rouse me to the sense of nearer

duties; and I have a daughter whose name I adjure you not to sully,

and whose heart I pray you not to break. Come hither no more, my Lord

Hastings.”

This speech, almost the only one which showed plain sense and judgment

in the affairs of this life that the man of genius had ever uttered, so

confounded Hastings, that he with difficulty recovered himself enough to

say,--

“My poor scholar, what hath so suddenly kindled suspicions which wrong

thy child and me?”

“Last eve, when we sat together, I saw your hand steal into hers, and

suddenly I remembered the day when I was young, and wooed her mother!

And last night I slept not, and sense and memory became active for my

living child, as they were wont to be only for the iron infant of my

mind, and I said to myself, ‘Lord Hastings is King Edward’s friend; and

King Edward spares not maiden honour. Lord Hastings is a mighty peer,

and he will not wed the dowerless and worse than nameless girl!’ Be

merciful! Depart, depart!”

“But,” exclaimed Hastings, “if I love thy sweet Sibyll in all honesty,

if I have plighted to her my troth--”

“Alas, alas!” groaned Adam.

“If I wait but my king’s permission to demand her wedded hand, couldst

thou forbid me the presence of my affianced?”

“She loves thee, then?” said Adam, in a tone of great anguish,--“she

loves thee,--speak!”

“It is my pride to think it.”

“Then go,--go at once; come back no more till thou hast wound up thy

courage to brave the sacrifice; no, not till the priest is ready at the

altar, not till the bridegroom can claim the bride. And as that time

will never come--never--never--leave me to whisper to the breaking

heart, ‘Courage; honour and virtue are left thee yet, and thy mother

from heaven looks down on a stainless child!’”

The resuscitation of the dead could scarcely have startled and awed

the courtier more than this abrupt development of life and passion and

energy in a man who had hitherto seemed to sleep in the folds of his

thought, as a chrysalis in its web. But as we have always seen that

ever, when this strange being woke from his ideal abstraction, he awoke

to honour and courage and truth, so now, whether, as he had said, the

absence of the Eureka left his mind to the sense of practical duties,

or whether their common suffering had more endeared to him his gentle

companion, and affection sharpened reason, Adam Warner became puissant

and majestic in his rights and sanctity of father,--greater in his

homely household character, than when, in his mania of inventor, and

the sublime hunger of aspiring genius, he had stolen to his daughter’s

couch, and waked her with the cry of “Gold!”

Before the force and power of Adam’s adjuration, his outstretched

hand, the anguish, yet authority, written on his face, all the art

and self-possession of the accomplished lover deserted him, as one

spell-bound.

He was literally without reply; till, suddenly, the sight of Sibyll,

who, surprised by this singular conference, but unsuspecting its nature,

now came from the house, relieved and nerved him; and his first impulse

was then, as ever, worthy and noble, such as showed, though dimly, how

glorious a creature he had been, if cast in a time and amidst a race

which could have fostered the impulse into habit.

“Brave old man!” he said, kissing the hand still raised in command,

“thou hast spoken as beseems thee; and my answer I will tell thy child.”

Then hurrying to the wondering Sibyll, he resumed: “Your father says

well, that not thus, dubious and in secret, should I visit the home

blest by thy beloved presence. I obey; I leave thee, Sibyll. I go to

my king, as one who hath served him long and truly, and claims his

guerdon,--thee!”

“Oh, my lord!” exclaimed Sibyll, in generous terror, “bethink thee well;

remember what thou saidst but last eve. This king so fierce, my name so

hated! No, no! leave me. Farewell forever, if it be right, as what thou

and my father say must be. But thy life, thy liberty, thy welfare,--they

are my happiness; thou hast no right to endanger them!” And she fell at

his knees. He raised and strained her to his heart; then resigning her

to her father’s arms, he said in a voice choked with emotion,--

“Not as peer and as knight, but as man, I claim my prerogative of

home and hearth. Let Edward frown, call back his gifts, banish me his

court,--thou art more worth than all! Look for me, sigh not, weep not,

smile till we meet again!” He left them with these words, hastened to

the stall where his steed stood, caparisoned it with his own hands,

and rode with the speed of one whom passion spurs and goads towards the

Tower of London.

But as Sibyll started from her father’s arms, when she heard the

departing hoofs of her lover’s steed,--to listen and to listen for the

last sound that told of him,--a terrible apparition, ever ominous of woe

and horror, met her eye. On the other side of the orchard fence, which

concealed her figure, but not her well-known face, which peered above,

stood the tymbestere, Graul. A shriek of terror at this recognition

burst from Sibyll, as she threw herself again upon Adam’s breast; but

when he looked round to discover the cause of her alarm, Graul was gone.

CHAPTER III. VIRTUOUS RESOLVES SUBMITTED TO THE TEST OF VANITY AND THE

WORLD.

On reaching his own house, Hastings learned that the court was still

at Shene. He waited but till the retinue which his rank required were

equipped and ready, and reached the court, from which of late he had

found so many excuses to absent himself, before night. Edward was then

at the banquet, and Hastings was too experienced a courtier to disturb

him at such a time. In a mood unfit for companionship, he took his way

to the apartments usually reserved for him, when a gentleman met him by

the way, and apprised him, with great respect, that the Lord Scales

and Rivers had already appropriated those apartments to the principal

waiting-lady of his countess,--but that other chambers, if less

commodious and spacious, were at his command.

Hastings had not the superb and more than regal pride of Warwick and

Montagu; but this notice sensibly piqued and galled him.

“My apartments as Lord Chamberlain, as one of the captain-generals in

the king’s army, given to the waiting-lady of Sir Anthony Woodville’s

wife! At whose orders, sir?”

“Her highness the queen’s; pardon me, my lord,” and the gentleman,

looking round, and sinking his voice, continued, “pardon me, her

highness added, ‘If my Lord Chamberlain returns not ere the week ends,

he may find not only the apartment, but the office, no longer free.’ My

lord, we all love you--forgive my zeal, and look well if you would guard

your own.”

“Thanks, sir. Is my lord of Gloucester in the palace?”

“He is,--and in his chamber. He sits not long at the feast.”

“Oblige me by craving his grace’s permission to wait on him at leisure;

I attend his answer here.”

Leaning against the wall of the corridor, Hastings gave himself up

to other thoughts than those of love. So strong is habit, so powerful

vanity or ambition, once indulged, that this puny slight made a sudden

revulsion in the mind of the royal favourite; once more the agitated and

brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,--that life, so wearisome

when secure, became sweeter when imperilled. To counteract his foes, to

humble his rivals, to regain the king’s countenance, to baffle, with the

easy art of his skilful intellect, every hostile stratagem,--such were

the ideas that crossed and hurtled themselves, and Sibyll was forgotten.

The gentleman reappeared. “Prince Richard besought my lord’s presence

with loving welcome;” and to the duke’s apartment went Lord Hastings.

Richard, clad in a loose chamber robe, which concealed the defects of

his shape, rose from before a table covered with papers, and embraced

Hastings with cordial affection.

“Never more gladly hail to thee, dear William. I need thy wise counsels

with the king, and I have glad tidings for thine own ear.”

“Pardieu, my prince; the king, methinks, will scarce heed the counsels

of a dead man.”

“Dead?”

“Ay. At court it seems men are dead,--their rooms filled, their places

promised or bestowed,--if they come not, morn and night, to convince

the king that they are alive.” And Hastings, with constrained gayety,

repeated the information he had received.

“What would you, Hastings?” said the duke, shrugging his shoulders,

but with some latent meaning in his tone. “Lord Rivers were nought in

himself; but his lady is a mighty heiress, [Elizabeth secured to her

brother, Sir Anthony, the greatest heiress in the kingdom, in the

daughter of Lord Scales,--a wife, by the way, who is said to have been

a mere child at the time of the marriage.] and requires state, as she

bestows pomp. Look round, and tell me what man ever maintained himself

in power without the strong connections, the convenient dower, the

acute, unseen, unsleeping woman-influence of some noble wife? How can a

poor man defend his repute, his popular name, that airy but all puissant

thing we call dignity or station, against the pricks and stings of

female intrigue and female gossip? But he marries, and, lo, a host of

fairy champions, who pinch the rival lozels unawares: his wife hath

her army of courtpie and jupon, to array against the dames of his foes!

Wherefore, my friend, while thou art unwedded, think not to cope with

Lord Rivers, who hath a wife with three sisters, two aunts, and a score

of she-cousins!”

“And if,” replied Hastings, more and more unquiet under the duke’s

truthful irony,--“if I were now to come to ask the king permission to

wed--”

“If thou wert, and the bride-elect were a lady with power and wealth and

manifold connections, and the practice of a court, thou wouldst be the

mightiest lord in the kingdom since Warwick’s exile.”

“And if she had but youth, beauty, and virtue?”

“Oh, then, my Lord Hastings, pray thy patron saint for a war,--for in

peace thou wouldst be lost amongst the crowd. But truce to these jests;

for thou art not the man to prate of youth, virtue, and such like, in

sober earnest, amidst this work-day world, where nothing is young and

nothing virtuous;--and listen to grave matters.”

The duke then communicated to Hastings the last tidings received of the

machinations of Warwick. He was in high spirits; for those last tidings

but reported Margaret’s refusal to entertain the proposition of a

nuptial alliance with the earl, though, on the other hand, the Duke of

Burgundy, who was in constant correspondence with his spies, wrote word

that Warwick was collecting provisions, from his own means, for more

than sixty thousand men; and that, with Lancaster or without, the earl

was prepared to match his own family interest against the armies of

Edward.

“And,” said Hastings, “if all his family joined with him, what foreign

king could be so formidable an invader? Maltravers and the Mowbrays,

Fauconberg, Westmoreland, Fitzhugh, Stanley, Bonville, Worcester--”

“But happily,” said Gloucester, “the Mowbrays have been allied also to

the queen’s sister; Worcester detests Warwick; Stanley always murmurs

against us, a sure sign that he will fight for us; and Bonville--I have

in view a trusty Yorkist to whom the retainers of that House shall be

assigned. But of that anon. What I now wish from thy wisdom is, to aid

me in rousing Edward from his lethargy; he laughs at his danger, and

neither communicates with his captains nor mans his coasts. His courage

makes him a dullard.”

After some further talk on these heads, and more detailed account of the

preparations which Gloucester deemed necessary to urge on the king, the

duke, then moving his chair nearer to Hastings, said with a smile,--

“And now, Hastings, to thyself: it seems that thou hast not heard the

news which reached us four days since. The Lord Bonville is dead,--died

three months ago at his manor house in Devon. [To those who have read

the “Paston Letters” it will not seem strange that in that day the death

of a nobleman at his country seat should be so long in reaching the

metropolis,--the ordinary purveyors of communication were the itinerant

attendants of fairs; and a father might be ignorant for months together

of the death of his son.] Thy Katherine is free, and in London. Well,

man, where is thy joy?”

“Time is, time was!” said Hastings, gloomily. “The day has passed when

this news could rejoice me.”

“Passed! nay, thy good stars themselves have fought for thee in delay.

Seven goodly manors swell the fair widow’s jointure; the noble dowry she

brought returns to her. Her very daughter will bring thee power. Young

Cecily Bonville [afterwards married to Dorset], the heiress, Lord Dorset

demands in betrothal. Thy wife will be mother-in-law to thy queen’s son;

on the other hand, she is already aunt to the Duchess of Clarence;

and George, be sure, sooner or later, will desert Warwick, and win his

pardon. Powerful connections, vast possessions, a lady of immaculate

name and surpassing beauty, and thy first love!--(thy hand

trembles!)--thy first love, thy sole love, and thy last!”

“Prince--Prince! forbear! Even if so--In brief, Katherine loves me not!”

“Thou mistakest! I have seen her, and she loves thee not the less

because her virtue so long concealed the love.” Hastings uttered an

exclamation of passionate joy, but again his face darkened.

Gloucester watched him in silence; besides any motive suggested by the

affection he then sincerely bore to Hastings, policy might well interest

the duke in the securing to so loyal a Yorkist the hand and the wealth

of Lord Warwick’s sister; but, prudently not pressing the subject

further, he said, in an altered and careless voice, “Pardon me if I

have presumed on matters on which each man judges for himself. But as,

despite all obstacle, one day or other Anne Nevile shall be mine, it

would have delighted me to know a near connection in Lord Hastings. And

now the hour grows late, I prithee let Edward find thee in his chamber.”

When Hastings attended the king, he at once perceived that Edward’s

manner was changed to him. At first, he attributed the cause to the ill

offices of the queen and her brother; but the king soon betrayed the

true source of his altered humour.

“My lord,” he said abruptly, “I am no saint, as thou knowest; but there

are some ties, par amour, which, in my mind, become not knights and

nobles about a king’s person.”

“My liege, I arede you not.”

“Tush, William!” replied the king, more gently, “thou hast more than

once wearied me with application for the pardon of the nigromancer

Warner,--the whole court is scandalized at thy love for his daughter.

Thou hast absented thyself from thine office on poor pretexts! I know

thee too well not to be aware that love alone can make thee neglect thy

king,--thy time has been spent at the knees or in the arms of this young

sorceress! One word for all times,--he whom a witch snares cannot be a

king’s true servant! I ask of thee as a right, or as a grace, see this

fair ribaude no more! What, man, are there not ladies enough in merry

England, that thou shouldst undo thyself for so unchristian a fere?”

“My king! how can this poor maid have angered thee thus?”

“Knowest thou not”--began the king, sharply, and changing colour as he

eyed his favourite’s mournful astonishment,--“ah, well!” he muttered to

himself, “they have been discreet hitherto, but how long will they be

so? I am in time yet. It is enough,”--he added, aloud and gravely--“it

is enough that our learned [it will be remembered that Edward himself

was a man of no learning] Bungey holds her father as a most pestilent

wizard, whose spells are muttered for Lancaster and the rebel Warwick;

that the girl hath her father’s unholy gifts, and I lay my command on

thee, as liege king, and I pray thee, as loving friend, to see no more

either child or sire! Let this suffice--and now I will hear thee on

state matters.”

Whatever Hastings might feel, he saw that it was no time to venture

remonstrance with the king, and strove to collect his thoughts, and

speak indifferently on the high interests to which Edward invited him;

but he was so distracted and absent that he made but a sorry counsellor,

and the king, taking pity on him, dismissed his chamberlain for the

night.

Sleep came not to the couch of Hastings; his acuteness perceived

that whatever Edward’s superstition, and he was a devout believer in

witchcraft, some more worldly motive actuated him in his resentment

to poor Sibyll. But as we need scarcely say that neither from the

abstracted Warner nor his innocent daughter had Hastings learned the

true cause, he wearied himself with vain conjectures, and knew not that

Edward involuntarily did homage to the superior chivalry of his gallant

favourite, when he dreaded that, above all men, Hastings should be made

aware of the guilty secret which the philosopher and his child could

tell. If Hastings gave his name and rank to Sibyll, how powerful a

weight would the tale of a witness now so obscure suddenly acquire!

Turning from the image of Sibyll, thus beset with thoughts of danger,

embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, ruin, Lord Hastings recalled the

words of Gloucester; and the stately image of Katherine, surrounded with

every memory of early passion, every attribute of present ambition, rose

before him; and he slept at last, to dream not of Sibyll and the humble

orchard, but of Katherine in her maiden bloom, of the trysting-tree by

the halls of Middleham, of the broken ring, of the rapture and the woe

of his youth’s first high-placed love.

CHAPTER IV. THE STRIFE WHICH SIBYLL HAD COURTED, BETWEEN KATHERINE AND

HERSELF, COMMENCES IN SERIOUS EARNEST.

Hastings felt relieved when, the next day, several couriers arrived with

tidings so important as to merge all considerations into those of state.

A secret messenger from the French court threw Gloucester into one of

those convulsive passions of rage, to which, with all his intellect and

dissimulation, he was sometimes subject, by the news of Anne’s betrothal

to Prince Edward; nor did the letter from Clarence to the king,

attesting the success of one of his schemes, comfort Richard for the

failure of the other. A letter from Burgundy confirmed the report of the

spy, announced Duke Charles’s intention of sending a fleet to prevent

Warwick’s invasion, and rated King Edward sharply for his supineness in

not preparing suitably against so formidable a foe. The gay and reckless

presumption of Edward, worthier of a knight-errant than a monarch,

laughed at the word invasion. “Pest on Burgundy’s ships! I only wish

that the earl would land!” [Com, iii. c. 5] he said to his council.

None echoed the wish! But later in the day came a third messenger with

information that roused all Edward’s ire; careless of each danger in

the distance, he ever sprang into energy and vengeance when a foe was

already in the field. And the Lord Fitzhugh (the young nobleman before

seen among the rebels at Olney, and who had now succeeded to the

honours of his House) had suddenly risen in the North, at the head of a

formidable rebellion. No man had so large an experience in the warfare

of those districts, the temper of the people, and the inclinations of

the various towns and lordships as Montagu; he was the natural chief to

depute against the rebels. Some animated discussion took place as to the

dependence to be placed in the marquis at such a crisis; but while the

more wary held it safer, at all hazards, not to leave him unemployed,

and to command his services in an expedition that would remove him

from the neighbourhood of his brother, should the latter land, as was

expected, on the coast of Norfolk, Edward, with a blindness of conceit

that seems almost incredible, believed firmly in the infatuated loyalty

of the man whom he had slighted and impoverished, and whom, by his offer

of his daughter to the Lancastrian prince, he had yet more recently

cozened and deluded. Montagu was hastily summoned, and received orders

to march at once to the North, levy forces, and assume their command.

The marquis obeyed with fewer words than were natural to him, left the

presence, sprang on his horse, and as he rode from the palace, drew a

letter from his bosom. “Ah, Edward,” said he, setting his teeth, “so,

after the solemn betrothal of thy daughter to my son, thou wouldst

have given her to thy Lancastrian enemy. Coward, to bribe his peace!

recreant, to belie thy word! I thank thee for this news, Warwick; for

without that injury I feel I could never, when the hour came, have

drawn sword against this faithless man,--especially for Lancaster. Ay,

tremble, thou who deridest all truth and honour! He who himself betrays,

cannot call vengeance treason!”

Meanwhile, Edward departed, for further preparations, to the Tower of

London. New evidences of the mine beneath his feet here awaited the

incredulous king. On the door of St. Paul’s, of many of the metropolitan

churches, on the Standard at Chepe, and on London Bridge, during

the past night, had been affixed, none knew by whom, the celebrated

proclamation, signed by Warwick and Clarence (drawn up in the bold style

of the earl), announcing their speedy return, containing a brief

and vigorous description of the misrule of the realm, and their

determination to reform all evils and redress all wrongs. [See, for this

proclamation, Ellis’s “Original Letters,” vol. i., second series,

letter 42.] Though the proclamation named not the restoration of the

Lancastrian line (doubtless from regard for Henry’s safety), all men

in the metropolis were already aware of the formidable league between

Margaret and Warwick. Yet, even still, Edward smiled in contempt, for

he had faith in the letter received from Clarence, and felt assured that

the moment the duke and the earl landed, the former would betray

his companion stealthily to the king; so, despite all these exciting

subjects of grave alarm, the nightly banquet at the Tower was never

merrier and more joyous. Hastings left the feast ere it deepened into

revel, and, absorbed in various and profound contemplation, entered his

apartment. He threw himself on a seat, and leaned his face on his hands.

“Oh, no, no!” he muttered; “now, in the hour when true greatness is

most seen, when prince and peer crowd around me for counsel, when noble,

knight, and squire crave permission to march in the troop of which

Hastings is the leader,--now I feel how impossible, how falsely fair,

the dream that I could forget all--all for a life of obscurity, for a

young girl’s love! Love! as if I had not felt its delusions to palling!

love, as if I could love again: or, if love--alas, it must be a light

reflected but from memory! And Katherine is free once more!” His eye

fell as he spoke, perhaps in shame and remorse that, feeling thus now,

he had felt so differently when he bade Sibyll smile till his return!

“It is the air of this accursed court which taints our best resolves!”

he murmured, as an apology for himself; but scarcely was the poor excuse

made, than the murmur broke into an exclamation of surprise and joy. A

letter lay before him; he recognized the hand of Katherine. What years

had passed since her writing had met his eye, since the lines that bade

him “farewell, and forget!” Those lines had been blotted with tears,

and these, as he tore open the silk that bound them--these, the trace

of tears, too, was on them! Yet they were but few, and in tremulous

characters. They ran thus:--

To-morrow, before noon, the Lord Hastings is prayed to visit one whose

life he hath saddened by the thought and the accusation that she hath

clouded and embittered his. KATHERINE DE BONVILLE.

Leaving Hastings to such meditations of fear or of hope as these lines

could call forth, we lead the reader to a room not very distant from his

own,--the room of the illustrious Friar Bungey.

The ex-tregetour was standing before the captured Eureka, and gazing on

it with an air of serio-comic despair and rage. We say the Eureka, as

comprising all the ingenious contrivances towards one single object

invented by its maker, a harmonious compound of many separate details;

but the iron creature no longer deserved that superb appellation,

for its various members were now disjointed and dislocated, and lay

pell-mell in multiform confusion.

By the side of the friar stood a female, enveloped in a long scarlet

mantle, with the hood partially drawn over the face, but still leaving

visible the hard, thin, villanous lips, the stern, sharp chin, and the

jaw resolute and solid as if hewed from stone.

“I tell thee, Graul,” said the friar, “that thou hast had far the best

of the bargain. I have put this diabolical contrivance to all manner of

shapes, and have muttered over it enough Latin to have charmed a monster

into civility. And the accursed thing, after nearly pinching off three

fingers, and scalding me with seething water, and spluttering and

sputtering enough to have terrified any man but Friar Bungey out of his

skin, is obstinatus ut mulum,--dogged as a mule; and was absolutely good

for nought, till I happily thought of separating this vessel from all

the rest of the gear, and it serves now for the boiling my eggs! But by

the soul of Father Merlin, whom the saints assoil, I need not have given

myself all this torment for a thing which, at best, does the work of a

farthing pipkin!”

“Quick, master; the hour is late! I must go while yet the troopers and

couriers and riders, hurrying to and fro, keep the gates from closing.

What wantest thou with Graul?”

“More reverence, child!” growled the friar. “What I want of thee is

briefly told, if thou hast the wit to serve me. This miserable

Warner must himself expound to me the uses and trick of his malignant

contrivance. Thou must find and bring him hither!”

“And if he will not expound?”

“The deputy governor of the Tower will lend me a stone dungeon, and, if

need be, the use of the brake to unlock the dotard’s tongue.”

“On what plea?”

“That Adam Warner is a wizard, in the pay of Lord Warwick, whom a more

mighty master like myself alone can duly examine and defeat.”

“And if I bring thee the sorcerer, what wilt thou teach me in return?”

“What desirest thou most?”

Graul mused, and said, “There is war in the wind. Graul follows the

camp, her trooper gets gold and booty. But the trooper is stronger than

Graul; and when the trooper sleeps it is with his knife by his side,

and his sleep is light and broken, for he has wicked dreams. Give me a

potion to make sleep deep, that his eyes may not open when Graul filches

his gold, and his hand may be too heavy to draw the knife from its

sheath!”

“Immunda, detestabilis! thine own paramour!”

“He hath beat me with his bridle rein, he hath given a silver broad

piece to Grisell; Grisell hath sat on his knee; Graul never pardons!”

The friar, rogue as he was, shuddered. “I cannot help thee to murder, I

cannot give thee the potion; name some other reward.”

“I go--”

“Nay, nay, think, pause.”

“I know where Warner is hid. By this hour to-morrow night, I can place

him in thy power. Say the word, and pledge me the draught.”

“Well, well, mulier abominabilis!--that is, irresistible bonnibell. I

cannot give thee the potion; but I will teach thee an art which can make

sleep heavier than the anodyne, and which wastes not like the essence,

but strengthens by usage,--an art thou shalt have at thy fingers’

ends, and which often draws from the sleeper the darkest secrets of his

heart.” [We have before said that animal magnetism was known to Bungey,

and familiar to the necromancers, or rather theurgists, of the Middle

Ages.]

“It is magic,” said Graul, with joy.

“Ay, magic.”

“I will bring thee the wizard. But listen; he never stirs abroad, save

with his daughter. I must bring both.”

“Nay, I want not the girl.”

“But I dare not throttle her, for a great lord loves her, who would find

out the deed and avenge it; and if she be left behind, she will go

to the lord, and the lord will discover what thou hast done with the

wizard, and thou wilt hang!”

“Never say ‘Hang’ to me, Graul: it is ill-mannered and ominous. Who is

the lord?”

“Hastings.”

“Pest!--and already he hath been searching for the thing yonder; and I

have brooded over it night and day, like a hen over a chalk egg,--only

that the egg does not snap off the hen’s claws, as that diabolism would

fain snap off my digits. But the war will carry Hastings away in its

whirlwind; and, in danger, the duchess is my slave, and will bear me

through all. So, thou mayst bring the girl; and strangle her not; for

no good ever comes of a murder,--unless, indeed, it be absolutely

necessary!”

“I know the men who will help me, bold ribauds, whom I will guerdon

myself; for I want not thy coins, but thy craft. When the curfew has

tolled, and the bat hunts the moth, we will bring thee the quarry--”

Graul turned; but as she gained the door, she stopped, and said

abruptly, throwing back her hood,--

“What age dost thou deem me?”

“Marry,” quoth the friar, “an’ I had not seen thee on thy mother’s knee

when she followed my stage of tregetour, I should have guessed thee for

thirty; but thou hast led too jolly a life to look still in the blossom.

Why speer’st thou the question?”

“Because when trooper and ribaud say to me, ‘Graul, thou art too worn

and too old to drink of our cup and sit in the lap, to follow the young

fere to the battle, and weave the blithe dance in the fair,’ I would

depart from my sisters, and have a hut of my own, and a black cat

without a white hair, and steal herbs by the new moon, and bones from

the charnel, and curse those whom I hate, and cleave the misty air on

a besom, like Mother Halkin of Edmonton. Ha, ha! Master, thou shalt

present me then to the Sabbat. Graul has the mettle for a bonny witch!”

The tymbestere vanished with a laugh. The friar muttered a paternoster

for once, perchance, devoutly, and after having again deliberately

scanned the disjecta membra of the Eureka, gravely took forth a duck’s

egg from his cupboard, and applied the master-agent of the machine which

Warner hoped was to change the face of the globe to the only practical

utility it possessed to the mountebank’s comprehension.

CHAPTER V. THE MEETING OF HASTINGS AND KATHERINE.

The next morning, while Edward was engaged in levying from his opulent

citizens all the loans he could extract, knowing that gold is the sinew

of war; while Worcester was manning the fortress of the Tower, in which

the queen, then near her confinement, was to reside during the campaign;

while Gloucester was writing commissions to captains and barons to raise

men; while Sir Anthony Lord Rivers was ordering improvements in his

dainty damasquine armour, and the whole Fortress Palatine was animated

and alive with the stir of the coming strife,--Lord Hastings escaped

from the bustle, and repaired to the house of Katherine. With

what motive, with what intentions, was not known clearly to

himself,--perhaps, for there was bitterness in his very love for

Katherine, to enjoy the retaliation due to his own wounded pride, and

say to the idol of his youth, as he had said to Gloucester, “Time is,

time was;” perhaps with some remembrance of the faith due to Sibyll,

wakened up the more now that Katherine seemed actually to escape from

the ideal image into the real woman,--to be easily wooed and won. But,

certainly, Sibyll’s cause was not wholly lost, though greatly shaken and

endangered, when Lord Hastings alighted at Lady Bonville’s gate; but his

face gradually grew paler, his mien less assured, as he drew nearer and

nearer to the apartment and the presence of the widowed Katherine.

She was seated alone, and in the same room in which he had last

seen her. Her deep mourning only served, by contrasting the pale and

exquisite clearness of her complexion, to enhance her beauty. Hastings

bowed low, and seated himself by her side in silence.

The Lady of Bonville eyed him for some moments with an unutterable

expression of melancholy and tenderness. All her pride seemed to have

gone; the very character of her face was changed: grave severity had

become soft timidity, and stately self-control was broken into the

unmistaken struggle of hope and fear.

“Hastings--William!” she said, in a gentle and low whisper, and at the

sound of that last name from those lips, the noble felt his veins thrill

and his heart throb. “If,” she continued, “the step I have taken seems

to thee unwomanly and too bold, know, at least, what was my design and

my excuse. There was a time” (and Katherine blushed) “when, thou knowest

well, that, had this hand been mine to bestow, it would have been his

who claimed the half of this ring.” And Katherine took from a small

crystal casket the well-remembered token.

“The broken ring foretold but the broken troth,” said Hastings, averting

his face.

“Thy conscience rebukes thy words,” replied Katherine, sadly; “I pledged

my faith, if thou couldst win my father’s word. What maid, and that maid

a Nevile, could so forget duty and honour as to pledge thee more? We

were severed. Pass--oh, pass over that time! My father loved me dearly;

but when did pride and ambition ever deign to take heed of the wild

fancies of a girl’s heart? Three suitors, wealthy lords, whose alliance

gave strength to my kindred in the day when their very lives depended on

their swords, were rivals for Earl Salisbury’s daughter. Earl Salisbury

bade his daughter choose. Thy great friend and my own kinsman, Duke

Richard of York, himself pleaded for thy rivals. He proved to me that my

disobedience--if, indeed, for the first time, a child of my House could

disobey its chief--would be an external barrier to thy fortune; that

while Salisbury was thy foe, he himself could not advance thy valiancy

and merit; that it was with me to forward thy ambition, though I could

not reward thy love; that from the hour I was another’s, my mighty

kinsmen themselves--for they were generous--would be the first to aid

the duke in thy career. Hastings, even then I would have prayed, at

least, to be the bride, not of man, but God. But I was trained--as what

noble demoiselle is not?--to submit wholly to a parent’s welfare and his

will. As a nun, I could but pray for the success of my father’s cause;

as a wife, I could bring to Salisbury and to York the retainers and

strongholds of a baron. I obeyed. Hear me on. Of the three suitors for

my hand, two were young and gallant,--women deemed them fair and comely;

and had my choice been one of these, thou mightest have deemed that a

new love had chased the old. Since choice was mine, I chose the man

love could not choose, and took this sad comfort to my heart, ‘He, the

forsaken Hastings, will see in my very choice that I was but the slave

of duty, my choice itself my penance.’”

Katherine paused, and tears dropped fast from her eyes. Hastings held

his hand over his countenance, and only by the heaving of his heart was

his emotion visible. Katherine resumed:--

“Once wedded, I knew what became a wife. We met again; and to thy first

disdain and anger (which it had been dishonour in me to soothe by one

word that said, ‘The wife remembers the maiden’s love’),--to these,

thy first emotions, succeeded the more cruel revenge, which would have

changed sorrow and struggle to remorse and shame. And then, then--weak

woman that I was!--I wrapped myself in scorn and pride. Nay, I felt deep

anger--was it unjust?--that thou couldst so misread and so repay the

heart which had nothing left save virtue to compensate for love. And

yet, yet, often when thou didst deem me most hard, most proof against

memory and feeling--But why relate the trial? Heaven supported me, and

if thou lovest me no longer, thou canst not despise me.”

At these last words Hastings was at her feet, bending over her hand, and

stifled by his emotions. Katherine gazed at him for a moment through her

own tears, and then resumed:--

“But thou hadst, as man, consolations no woman would desire or covet.

And oh, what grieved me most was, not--no, not the jealous, the

wounded vanity, but it was at least this self-accusation, this

remorse--that--but for one goading remembrance, of love returned and

love forsaken,--thou hadst never so descended from thy younger nature,

never so trifled with the solemn trust of TIME. Ah, when I have heard or

seen or fancied one fault in thy maturer manhood, unworthy of thy bright

youth, anger of myself has made me bitter and stern to thee; and if

I taunted or chid or vexed thy pride, how little didst thou know that

through the too shrewish humour spoke the too soft remembrance! For

this--for this; and believing that through all, alas! my image was not

replaced, when my hand was free, I was grateful that I might still--”

(the lady’s pale cheek grew brighter than the rose, her voice faltered,

and became low and indistinct)--“I might still think it mine to atone

to thee for the past. And if,” she added, with a sudden and generous

energy, “if in this I have bowed my pride, it is because by pride thou

wert wounded; and now, at last, thou hast a just revenge.”

O terrible rival for thee, lost Sibyll! Was it wonderful that, while

that head drooped upon his breast, while in that enchanted change which

Love the softener makes in lips long scornful, eyes long proud and cold,

he felt that Katherine Nevile--tender, gentle, frank without boldness,

lofty without arrogance--had replaced the austere dame of Bonville, whom

he half hated while he wooed,--oh, was it wonderful that the soul of

Hastings fled back to the old time, forgot the intervening vows and more

chill affections, and repeated only with passionate lips, “Katherine,

loved still, loved ever, mine, mine, at last!”

Then followed delicious silence, then vows, confessions, questions,

answers,--the thrilling interchange of hearts long divided, and now

rushing into one. And time rolled on, till Katherine, gently breaking

from her lover, said,--

“And now that thou hast the right to know and guide my projects,

approve, I pray thee, my present purpose. War awaits thee, and we must

part a while!” At these words her brow darkened and her lip quivered.

“Oh, that I should have lived to mourn the day when Lord Warwick,

untrue to Salisbury and to York, joined his arms with Lancaster and

Margaret,--the day when Katherine could blush for the brother she had

deemed the glory of her House! No, no” (she continued, as Hastings

interrupted her with generous excuses for the earl, and allusion to the

known slights he had received),--“no, no; make not his cause the worse

by telling me that an unworthy pride, the grudge of some thwart to his

policy or power, has made him forget what was due to the memory of his

kinsman York, to the mangled corpse of his father Salisbury. Thinkest

thou that but for this I could--” She stopped, but Hastings divined her

thought, and guessed that, if spoken, it had run thus: “That I could,

even now, have received the homage of one who departs to meet, with

banner and clarion, my brother as his foe?”

The lovely sweetness of the late expression had gone from Katherine’s

face, and its aspect showed that her high and ancestral spirit had

yielded but to one passion. She pursued,--

“While this strife lasts, it becomes my widowhood and kindred position

with the earl to retire to the convent my mother founded. To-morrow I

depart.”

“Alas!” said Hastings, “thou speakest of the strife as if but a single

field. But Warwick returns not to these shores, nor bows himself to

league with Lancaster, for a chance hazardous and desperate, as Edward

too rashly deems it. It is in vain to deny that the earl is prepared for

a grave and lengthened war, and much I doubt whether Edward can resist

his power; for the idolatry of the very land will swell the ranks of so

dread a rebel. What if he succeed; what if we be driven into exile, as

Henry’s friends before us; what if the king-maker be the king-dethroner?

Then, Katherine, then once more thou wilt be at the best of thy hostile

kindred, and once more, dowered as thou art, and thy womanhood still in

its richest bloom, thy hand will be lost to Hastings.”

“Nay, if that be all thy fear, take with thee this pledge,--that

Warwick’s treason to the House for which my father fell dissolves

his power over one driven to disown him as a brother,--knowing Earl

Salisbury, had he foreseen such disgrace, had disowned him as a son.

And if there be defeat and flight and exile, wherever thou wanderest,

Hastings, shall Katherine be found beside thee. Fare thee well, and Our

Lady shield thee! may thy lance be victorious against all foes,--save

one. Thou wilt forbear my--that is, the earl!” And Katherine, softened

at that thought, sobbed aloud.

“And come triumph or defeat, I have thy pledge?” said Hastings, soothing

her.

“See,” said Katherine, taking the broken ring from the casket; “now, for

the first time since I bore the name of Bonville, I lay this relic on my

heart; art thou answered?”

CHAPTER VI. HASTINGS LEARNS WHAT HAS BEFALLEN SIBYLL, REPAIRS TO THE

KING, AND ENCOUNTERS AN OLD RIVAL.

“It is destiny,” said Hastings to himself, when early the next morning

he was on his road to the farm--“it is destiny,--and who can resist his

fate?”

“It is destiny!”--phrase of the weak human heart! “It is destiny!” dark

apology for every error! The strong and the virtuous admit no destiny!

On earth guides conscience, in heaven watches God. And destiny is but

the phantom we invoke to silence the one, to dethrone the other!

Hastings spared not his good steed. With great difficulty had he

snatched a brief respite from imperious business, to accomplish the last

poor duty now left to him to fulfil,--to confront the maid whose heart

he had seduced in vain, and say at length, honestly and firmly, “I

cannot wed thee. Forget me, and farewell.”

Doubtless his learned and ingenious mind conjured up softer words than

these, and more purfled periods wherein to dress the iron truth. But in

these two sentences the truth lay. He arrived at the farm, he entered

the house; he felt it as a reprieve that he met not the bounding step

of the welcoming Sibyll. He sat down in the humble chamber, and waited a

while in patience,--no voice was heard. The silence at length surprised

and alarmed him. He proceeded farther. He was met by the widowed owner

of the house, who was weeping; and her first greeting prepared him for

what had chanced. “Oh, my lord, you have come to tell me they are

safe, they have not fallen into the hands of their enemies,--the good

gentleman, so meek, the poor lady, so fair!”

Hastings stood aghast; a few sentences more explained all that he

already guessed. A strange man had arrived the evening before at the

house, praying Adam and his daughter to accompany him to the Lord

Hastings, who had been thrown from his horse, and was now in a cottage

in the neighbouring lane,--not hurt dangerously, but unable to be

removed, and who had urgent matters to communicate. Not questioning the

truth of this story, Adam and Sibyll had hurried forth, and returned no

more. Alarmed by their long absence, the widow, who at first received

the message from the stranger, went herself to the cottage, and found

that the story was a fable. Every search had since been made for Adam

and his daughter, but in vain. The widow, confirmed in her previous

belief that her lodgers had been attainted Lancastrians, could but

suppose that they had been thus betrayed to their enemies. Hastings

heard this with a dismay and remorse impossible to express. His only

conjecture was that the king had discovered their retreat, and taken

this measure to break off the intercourse he had so sternly denounced.

Full of these ideas, he hastily remounted, and stopped not till once

more at the gates of the Tower. Hastening to Edward’s closet, the moment

he saw the king, he exclaimed, in great emotion, “My liege, my liege, do

not at this hour, when I have need of my whole energy to serve thee,

do not madden my brain, and palsy my arm. This old man--the poor

maid--Sibyll--Warner,--speak, my liege--only tell me they are safe;

promise me they shall go free, and I swear to obey thee in all else! I

will thank thee in the battlefield!”

“Thou art mad, Hastings!” said the king, in great astonishment. “Hush!”

and he glanced significantly at a person who stood before several

heaps of gold, ranged upon a table in the recess of the room. “See,”

he whispered, “yonder is the goldsmith, who hath brought me a loan from

himself and his fellows! Pretty tales for the city thy folly will send

abroad!”

But before Hastings could vent his impatient answer, this person,

to Edward’s still greater surprise, had advanced from his place, and

forgetting all ceremony, had seized Hastings by the hem of his surcoat,

exclaiming,--

“My lord, my lord, what new horror is this? Sibyll!--methought she was

worthless, and had fled to thee!”

“Ten thousand devils!” shouted the king, “am I ever to be tormented by

that damnable wizard and his witch child? And is it, Sir Peer and Sir

Goldsmith, in your king’s closet that ye come, the very eve before he

marches to battle, to speer and glower at each other like two madmen as

ye are?”

Neither peer nor goldsmith gave way, till the courtier, naturally

recovering himself the first, fell on his knee; and said, with firm

though profound respect: “Sire, if poor William Hastings has ever

merited from the king one kindly thought, one generous word, forgive

now whatever may displease thee in his passion or his suit, and tell

him what prison contains those whom it would forever dishonour his

knighthood to know punished and endangered but for his offence.”

“My lord,” answered the king, softened but still surprised, “think you

seriously that I, who but reluctantly in this lovely month leave my

green lawns of Shene to save a crown, could have been vexing my brain by

stratagems to seize a lass, whom I swear by Saint George I do not envy

thee in the least? If that does not suffice, incredulous dullard, why

then take my kingly word, never before passed for so slight an occasion,

that I know nothing whatsoever of thy damsel’s whereabout nor her

pestilent father’s,--where they abode of late, where they now be; and,

what is more, if any man has usurped his king’s right to imprison

the king’s subjects, find him out, and name his punishment. Art thou

convinced?”

“I am, my liege,” said Hastings.

“But--” began the goldsmith.

“Holloa, you, too, sir! This is too much! We have condescended to answer

the man who arms three thousand retainers--”

“And I, please your Highness, bring you the gold to pay them,” said the

trader, bluntly.

The king bit his lip, and then burst into his usual merry laugh.

“Thou art in the right, Master Alwyn. Finish counting the pieces,

and then go and consult with my chamberlain,--he must off with the

cock-crow; but, since ye seem to understand each other, he shall make

thee his lieutenant of search, and I will sign any order he pleases

for the recovery of the lost wisdom and the stolen beauty. Go and calm

thyself, Hastings.”

“I will attend you presently, my lord,” said Alwyn, aside, “in your own

apartment.”

“Do so,” said Hastings; and, grateful for the king’s consideration, he

sought his rooms. There, indeed, Alwyn soon joined him, and learned from

the nobleman what filled him at once with joy and terror. Knowing that

Warner and Sibyll had left the Tower, he had surmised that the girl’s

virtue had at last succumbed; and it delighted him to hear from Lord

Hastings, whose word to men was never questionable, the solemn

assurance of her unstained chastity. But he trembled at this mysterious

disappearance, and knew not to whom to impute the snare, till the

penetration of Hastings suddenly alighted near, at least, to the clew.

“The Duchess of Bedford,” said he, “ever increasing in superstition

as danger increases, may have desired to refind so great a scholar and

reputed an astrologer and magician; if so, all is safe. On the other

hand, her favourite, the friar, ever bore a jealous grudge to poor Adam,

and may have sought to abstract him from her grace’s search; here there

may be molestation to Adam, but surely no danger to Sibyll. Hark ye,

Alwyn, thou lovest the maid more worthily, and--” Hastings stopped

short; for such is infirm human nature, that, though he had mentally

resigned Sibyll forever, he could not yet calmly face the thought of

resigning her to a rival. “Thou lovest her,” he renewed, more coldly,

“and to thee, therefore, I may safely trust the search which time and

circumstance and a soldier’s duty forbid to me. And believe--oh, believe

that I say not this from a passion which may move thy jealousy, but

rather with a brother’s holy love. If thou canst but see her safe, and

lodged where no danger nor wrong can find her, thou hast no friend in

the wide world whose service through life thou mayst command like mine.”

“My lord,” said Alwyn, dryly, “I want no friends! Young as I am, I have

lived long enough to see that friends follow fortune, but never make it!

I will find this poor maid and her honoured father, if I spend my last

groat on the search. Get me but such an order from the king as may place

the law at my control, and awe even her grace of Bedford,--and I promise

the rest!”

Hastings, much relieved, deigned to press the goldsmith’s reluctant

hand; and, leaving him alone for a few minutes, returned with a

warrant from the king, which seemed to Alwyn sufficiently precise and

authoritative. The goldsmith then departed, and first he sought the

friar, but found him not at home. Bungey had taken with him, as was

his wont, the keys of his mysterious apartment. Alwyn then hastened

elsewhere, to secure those experienced in such a search, and to head

it in person. At the Tower, the evening was passed in bustle and

excitement,--the last preparations for departure. The queen, who was

then far advanced towards her confinement, was, as we before said, to

remain at the Tower, which was now strongly manned. Roused from her

wonted apathy by the imminent dangers that awaited Edward, the night

was passed by her in tears and prayers, by him in the sound sleep of

confident valour. The next morning departed for the North the several

leaders,--Gloucester, Rivers, Hastings, and the king.

CHAPTER VII. THE LANDING OF LORD WARWICK, AND THE EVENTS THAT ENSUE

THEREON.

And Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, “prepared such a greate navie

as lightly hath not been seene before gathered in manner of all nations,

which armie laie at the mouth of the Seyne ready to fight with the Earl

of Warwick, when he should set out of his harborowe.” [Hall, p. 282, ed.

1809.]

But the winds fought for the Avenger. In the night came “a terrible

tempest,” which scattered the duke’s ships “one from another, so that

two of them were not in compagnie together in one place;” and when the

tempest had done its work, it passed away; and the gales were fair,

and the heaven was clear, when, the next day, the earl “halsed up the

sayles,” and came in sight of Dartmouth.

It was not with an army of foreign hirelings that Lord Warwick set forth

on his mighty enterprise. Scanty indeed were the troops he brought from

France,--for he had learned from England that “men so much daily and

hourely desired and wished so sore his arrival and return, that almost

all men were in harness, looking for his landyng.” [The popular feeling

in favour of the earl is described by Hall, with somewhat more eloquence

and vigour than are common with that homely chronicler: “The absence of

the Earle of Warwick made the common people daily more and more to long

and bee desirous to have the sight of him, and presently to behold his

personage. For they judged that the sunne was clerely taken from the

world when hee was absent. In such high estimation amongst the people

was his name, that neither no one manne they had in so much honour,

neither no one persone they so much praised, or to the clouds so highly

extolled. What shall I say? His only name sounded in every song, in the

mouth of the common people, and his persone [effigies] was represented

with great reverence when publique plaies or open triumphes should bee

skewed or set furthe abrode in the stretes,” etc. This lively passage,

if not too highly coloured, serves to show us the rude saturnalian kind

of liberty that existed, even under a king so vindictive as Edward IV.

Though an individual might be banged for the jest that he would make his

son heir to the crown (namely, the grocer’s shop, which bore that sign),

yet no tyranny could deal with the sentiment of the masses. In our own

day it would be less safe than in that to make public exhibition “in

plaies and triumphes” of sympathy with a man attainted as a traitor, and

in open rebellion to the crown.] As his ships neared the coast, and the

banner of the Ragged Staff, worked in gold, shone in the sun, the shores

swarmed with armed crowds, not to resist but to welcome. From cliff to

cliff, wide and far, blazed rejoicing bonfires; and from cliff to cliff,

wide and far, burst the shout, when, first of all his men, bareheaded,

but, save the burgonet, in complete mail, the popular hero leaped to

shore.

“When the earl had taken land, he made a proclamation, in the name of

King Henry VI., upon high paynes commanding and charging all men apt or

able to bear armour, to prepare themselves to fight against Edward, Duke

of York, who had untruly usurped the croune and dignity of this realm.”

[Hall, p. 82.]

And where was Edward? Afar, following the forces of Fitzhugh and

Robin of Redesdale, who by artful retreat drew him farther and farther

northward, and left all the other quarters of the kingdom free to send

their thousands to the banners of Lancaster and Warwick. And even as the

news of the earl’s landing reached the king, it spread also through all

the towns of the North; and all the towns of the North were in “a great

rore, and made fires, and sang songs, crying, ‘King Henry! King Henry! a

Warwicke! a Warwicke!’” But his warlike and presumptuous spirit forsook

not the chief of that bloody and fatal race,--the line of the English

Pelops,--“bespattered with kindred gore.” [Aeschylus: Agamemnon] A

messenger from Burgundy was in his tent when the news reached him. “Back

to the duke!” cried Edward; “tell him to recollect his navy, guard the

sea, scour the streams, that the earl shall not escape, nor return to

France; for the doings in England, let me alone! I have ability and

puissance to overcome all enemies and rebels in mine own realm.” [Hall,

p. 283.]

And therewith he raised his camp, abandoned the pursuit of Fitzhugh,

summoned Montagu to join him (it being now safer to hold the marquis

near him, and near the axe, if his loyalty became suspected), and

marched on to meet the earl. Nor did the earl tarry from the encounter.

His army, swelling as he passed, and as men read his proclamations to

reform all grievances and right all wrongs, he pressed on to meet the

king, while fast and fast upon Edward’s rear came the troops of Fitzhugh

and Hilyard, no longer flying but pursuing. The king was the more

anxious to come up to Warwick, inasmuch as he relied greatly upon the

treachery of Clarence, either secretly to betray or openly to desert the

earl. And he knew that if he did the latter on the eve of a battle, it

could not fail morally to weaken Warwick, and dishearten his army by

fear that desertion should prove, as it ever does, the most contagious

disease that can afflict a camp. It is probable, however, that the

enthusiasm which had surrounded the earl with volunteers so numerous had

far exceeded the anticipations of the inexperienced Clarence, and would

have forbid him that opportunity of betraying the earl. However this be,

the rival armies drew nearer and nearer. The king halted in his rapid

march at a small village, and took up his quarters in a fortified house,

to which there was no access but by a single bridge. [Sharon Turner,

Comines.] Edward himself retired for a short time to his couch, for he

had need of all his strength in the battle he foresaw; but scarce had he

closed his eyes, when Alexander Carlile [Hearne: Fragment], the serjeant

of the royal minstrels, followed by Hastings and Rivers (their jealousy

laid at rest for a time in the sense of their king’s danger), rushed

into his room.

“Arm, sire, arm!--Lord Montagu has thrown off the mask, and rides

through thy troops, shouting ‘Long live King Henry!’”

“Ah, traitor!” cried the king, leaping from his bed. “From Warwick hate

was my due, but not from Montagu! Rivers, help to buckle on my mail.

Hastings, post my body-guard at the bridge. We will sell our lives

dear.”

Hastings vanished. Edward had scarcely hurried on his helm, cuirass, and

greaves, when Gloucester entered, calm in the midst of peril.

“Your enemies are marching to seize you, brother. Hark! behind you rings

the cry, ‘A Fitzhugh! a Robin! death to the tyrant!’ Hark! in front, ‘A

Montagu! a Warwick! Long live King Henry!’ I come to redeem my word,--to

share your exile or your death. Choose either while there is yet time.

Thy choice is mine!”

And while he spoke, behind, before, came the various cries nearer and

nearer. The lion of March was in the toils.

“Now, my two-handed sword!” said Edward. “Gloucester, in this weapon

learn my choice!”

But now all the principal barons and captains, still true to the king

whose crown was already lost, flocked in a body to the chamber. They

fell on their knees, and with tears implored him to save himself for a

happier day.

“There is yet time to escape,” said D’Eyncourt, “to pass the bridge, to

gain the seaport! Think not that a soldier’s death will be left thee.

Numbers will suffice to encumber thine arm, to seize thy person. Live

not to be Warwick’s prisoner,--shown as a wild beast in its cage to the

hooting crowd!”

“If not on thyself,” exclaimed Rivers, “have pity on these loyal

gentlemen, and for the sake of their lives preserve thine own. What is

flight? Warwick fled!”

“True,--and returned!” added Gloucester. “You are right, my lords. Come,

sire, we must fly. Our rights fly not with us, but shall fight for us in

absence!”

The calm WILL of this strange and terrible boy had its effect upon

Edward. He suffered his brother to lead him from the chamber, grinding

his teeth in impotent rage. He mounted his horse, while Rivers held

the stirrup, and with some six or seven knights and earls rode to the

bridge, already occupied by Hastings and a small but determined guard.

“Come, Hastings,” said the king, with a ghastly smile,--“they tell us we

must fly!”