MARGARET OF ANJOU.
The day after the events recorded in the last section of this
narrative, and about the hour of noon, Robert Hilyard (still in the
reverend disguise in which he had accosted Hastings) bent his way
through the labyrinth of alleys that wound in dingy confusion from the
Chepe towards the river.
The purlieus of the Thames, in that day of ineffective police,
sheltered many who either lived upon plunder, or sought abodes that
proffered, at alarm, the facility of flight. Here, sauntering in twos
or threes, or lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, might
be seen that refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civil
war,--disbanded soldiers of either Rose, too inured to violence and
strife for peaceful employment, and ready for any enterprise by which
keen steel wins bright gold. At length our friend stopped before the
gate of a small house, on the very marge of the river, which belonged
to one of the many religious orders then existing; but from its site
and aspect denoted the poverty seldom their characteristic. Here he
knocked; the door was opened by a lay-brother; a sign and a smile were
interchanged, and the visitor was ushered into a room belonging to the
superior, but given up for the last few days to a foreign priest, to
whom the whole community appeared to consider the reverence of a saint
was due. And yet this priest, who, seated alone, by a casement which
commanded a partial view of the distant Tower of London, received the
conspirator, was clad in the humblest serge. His face was smooth and
delicate; and the animation of the aspect, the vehement impatience of
the gesture, evinced little of the holy calm that should belong to
those who have relinquished the affairs of earth for meditation on the
things of heaven. To this personage the sturdy Hilyard bowed his
manly knees; and casting himself at the priest's feet, his eyes, his
countenance, changed from their customary hardihood and recklessness
into an expression at once of reverence and of pity.
"Well, man--well, friend--good friend, tried and leal friend, speak!
speak!" exclaimed the priest, in an accent that plainly revealed a
foreign birth.
"Oh, gracious lady! all hope is over; I come but to bid you fly. Adam
Warner was brought before the usurper; he escaped, indeed, the
torture, and was faithful to the trust. But the papers--the secret of
the rising--are in the hands of Hastings."
"How long, O Lord," said Margaret of Anjou, for she it was, under that
reverend disguise, "how long wilt Thou delay the hour of triumph and
revenge?"
The princess as she spoke had suffered her hood to fall back, and her
pale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery and
terrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man had
read his doom,--an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passion
that pervaded it did not distort the features, but left them locked,
rigid, and marble-like in beauty, as the head of the Medusa.
"The day will dawn at last," said Hilyard; "but the judgments of
Heaven are slow. We are favoured, at the least, that our secret is
confined to a man more merciful than his tribe." He then related to
Margaret his interview with Hastings at the house of the Lady
Lougueville, and continued: "This morning, not an hour since, I sought
him (for last evening he did not leave Edward, a council met at the
Tower), and learned that he had detected the documents in the recesses
of Warner's engine. Knowing from your Highness and your spies that he
had been open to the gifts of Charolois, I spoke to him plainly of the
guerdon that should await his silence. 'Friar,' he answered, 'if in
this court and this world I have found it were a fool's virtue to be
more pure than others, and if I know that I should but provoke the
wrath of those who profit by Burgundian gold, were I alone to disdain
its glitter, I have still eno' of my younger conscience left me not to
make barter of human flesh. Did I give these papers to King Edward,
the heads of fifty gallant men, whose error is but loyalty to their
ancient sovereign, would glut the doomsman; but,' he continued, 'I am
yet true to my king and his cause; I shall know how to advise Edward
to the frustrating all your schemes. The districts where you hoped a
rising will be guarded, the men ye count upon will be watched: the
Duke of Gloucester, whose vigilance never sleeps, has learned that the
Lady Margaret is in England, disguised as a priest. To-morrow all the
religious houses will be searched; if thou knowest where she lies
concealed, bid her lose not an hour to fly.'"
"I Will NOT fly!" exclaimed Margaret; "let Edward, if he dare,
proclaim to my people that their queen is in her city of London. Let
him send his hirelings to seize her. Not in this dress shall she be
found. In robes of state, the sceptre in her hand, shall they drag
the consort of their king to the prison-house of her palace."
"On my knees, great queen, I implore you to be calm; with the loss of
your liberty ends indeed all hope of victory, all chance even of
struggle. Think not Edward's fears would leave to Margaret the life
that his disdain has spared to your royal spouse. Between your prison
and your grave, but one secret and bloody step! Be ruled; no time to
lose! My trusty Hugh even now waits with his boat below. Relays of
horses are ready, night and day, to bear you to the coast; while
seeking your restoration, I have never neglected the facilities for
flight. Pause not, O gracious lady; let not your son say, 'My
mother's passion has lost me the hope of my grandsire's crown.'"
"My boy; my princely boy, my Edward!" exclaimed Margaret, bursting
into tears, all the warrior-queen merged in the remembrance of the
fond mother. "Ah, faithful friend! he is so gallant and so beautiful!
Oh, he shall reward thee well hereafter!"
"May he live to crush these barons, and raise this people!" said the
demagogue of Redesdale. "But now, save thyself!"
"But what! is it not possible yet to strike the blow? Rather let us
spur to the north; rather let us hasten the hour of action, and raise
the Red Rose through the length and breadth of England!"
"Ah, lady, if without warrant from your lord; if without foreign
subsidies; if without having yet ripened the time; if without gold,
without arms, and without one great baron on our side, we forestall a
rising, all that we have gained is lost; and instead of war, you can
scarcely provoke a riot. But for this accursed alliance of Edward's
daughter with the brother of icy-hearted Louis, our triumph had been
secure. The French king's gold would have manned a camp, bribed the
discontented lords, and his support have sustained the hopes of the
more leal Lancastrians. But it is in vain to deny, that if Lord
Warwick win Louis--"
"He will not! he shall not!--Louis, mine own kinsman!" exclaimed
Margaret, in a voice in which the anguish pierced through the louder
tone of resentment and disdain.
"Let us hope that he will not," replied Hilyard, soothingly; some
chance may yet break off these nuptials, and once more give us France
as our firm ally. But now we must be patient. Already Edward is fast
wearing away the gloss of his crown; already the great lords desert
his court; already, in the rural provinces, peasant and franklin
complain of the exactions of his minions; already the mighty House of
Nevile frowns sullen on the throne it built. Another year, and who
knows but the Earl of Warwick,--the beloved and the fearless, whose
statesman-art alone hath severed from you the arms and aid of France,
at whose lifted finger all England would bristle with armed men--may
ride by the side of Margaret through the gates of London?"
"Evil-omened consoler, never!" exclaimed the princess, starting to her
feet, with eyes that literally shot fire. "Thinkest thou that the
spirit of a queen lies in me so low and crushed, that I, the
descendant of Charlemagne, could forgive the wrongs endured from
Warwick and his father? But thou, though wise and loyal, art of the
Commons; thou knowest not how they feel through whose veins rolls the
blood of kings!"
A dark and cold shade fell over the bold face of Robin of Redesdale at
these words.
"Ah, lady," he said, with bitterness, "if no misfortune can curb thy
pride, in vain would we rebuild thy throne. It is these Commons,
Margaret of Anjou--these English Commons--this Saxon People, that can
alone secure to thee the holding of the realm which the right arm
wins. And, beshrew me, much as I love thy cause, much as thou hast
with thy sorrows and thy princely beauty glamoured and spelled my
heart and my hand,--ay, so that I, the son of a Lollard, forget the
wrongs the Lollards sustained from the House of Lancaster; so that I,
who have seen the glorious fruitage of a Republic, yet labour for
thee, to overshadow the land with the throne of ONE--yet--yet, lady--
yet, if I thought thou wert to be the same Margaret as of old, looking
back to thy dead kings, and contemptuous of thy living people, I would
not bid one mother's son lift lance or bill on thy behalf."
So resolutely did Robin of Redesdale utter these words, that the
queen's haughty eye fell abashed as he spoke; and her craft, or her
intellect, which was keen and prompt where her passions did not deafen
and blind her judgment, instantly returned to her. Few women equalled
this once idol of knight and minstrel, in the subduing fascination
that she could exert in her happier moments. Her affability was as
gracious as her wrath was savage; and with a dignified and winning
frankness, she extended her hand to her ally, as she answered, in a
sweet, humble, womanly, and almost penitent voice,--
"O bravest and lealest of friends, forgive thy wretched queen. Her
troubles distract her brain,--chide her not if they sour her speech.
Saints above! will ye not pardon Margaret if at times her nature be
turned from the mother's milk into streams of gall and bloody purpose,
when ye see, from your homes serene, in what a world of strife and
falsehood her very womanhood hath grown unsexed?" She paused a moment,
and her uplifted eyes shed tears fast and large. Then, with a sigh,
she turned to Hilyard, and resumed more calmly, "Yes, thou art right,
--adversity hath taught me much. And though adversity will too often
but feed and not starve our pride, yet thou--thou hast made me know
that there is more of true nobility in the blunt Children of the
People than in many a breast over which flows the kingly robe.
Forgive me, and the daughter of Charlemagne shall yet be a mother to
the Commons, who claim thee as their brother!"
Thoroughly melted, Robin of Redesdale bowed over the hand held to his
lips, and his rough voice trembled as he answered, though that answer
took but the shape of prayer.
"And now," said the princess, smiling, "to make peace lasting between
us, I conquer myself, I yield to thy counsels. Once more the
fugitive, I abandon the city that contains Henry's unheeded prison.
See, I am ready. Who will know Margaret in this attire? Lead on!"
Rejoiced to seize advantage of this altered and submissive mood, Robin
instantly took the way through a narrow passage, to a small door
communicating with the river. There Hugh was waiting in a small boat,
moored to the damp and discoloured stairs.
Robin, by a gesture, checked the man's impulse to throw himself at the
feet of the pretended priest, and bade him put forth his best speed.
The princess seated herself by the helm, and the little boat cut
rapidly through the noble stream. Galleys, gay and gilded, with
armorial streamers, and filled with nobles and gallants, passed them,
noisy with mirth or music, on their way. These the fallen sovereign
heeded not; but, with all her faults, the woman's heart beating in her
bosom--she who in prosperity had so often wrought ruin, and shame, and
woe to her gentle lord; she who had been reckless of her trust as
queen; and incurred grave--but, let us charitably hope, unjust--
suspicion of her faith as wife, still fixed her eyes on the gloomy
tower that contained her captive husband, and felt that she could have
forgotten a while even the loss of power if but permitted to fall on
that plighted heart, and weep over the past with the woe-worn
bridegroom of her youth.