CHAPTER IV.
THE DESTRIER.
It was three days afterwards that the earl, as, according to custom,
Anne knelt to him for his morning blessing in the oratory where the
Christian baron at matins and vespers offered up his simple worship,
drew her forth into the air, and said abruptly,--
"Wouldst thou be happy if Richard of Gloucester were thy betrothed?"
Anne started, and with more vivacity than usually belonged to her,
exclaimed, "Oh, no, my father!"
"This is no maiden's silly coyness, Anne? It is a plain yea or nay
that I ask from thee!"
"Nay, then," answered Anne, encouraged by her father's tone,--"nay, if
it so please you."
"It doth please me," said the earl, shortly; and after a pause, he
added, "Yes, I am well pleased. Richard gives promise of an
illustrious manhood; but, Anne, thou growest so like thy mother, that
whenever my pride seeks to see thee great, my heart steps in, and only
prays that it may see thee happy!--so much so, that I would not have
given thee to Clarence, whom it likes me well to view as Isabel's
betrothed, for, to her, greatness and bliss are one; and she is of
firm nature, and can rule in her own house; but thou--where out of
romaunt can I find a lord loving enough for thee, soft child?"
Inexpressibly affected, Anne threw herself on her father's breast and
wept. He caressed and soothed her fondly; and before her emotion was
well over, Gloucester and Isabel joined them.
"My fair cousin," said the duke, "hath promised to show me thy
renowned steed, Saladin; and since, on quitting thy halls, I go to my
apprenticeship in war on the turbulent Scottish frontier, I would fain
ask thee for a destrier of the same race as that which bears the
thunderbolt of Warwick's wrath through the storm of battle."
"A steed of the race of Saladin," answered the earl, leading the way
to the destrier's stall, apart from all other horses, and rather a
chamber of the castle than a stable, "were indeed a boon worthy a
soldier's gift and a prince's asking. But, alas! Saladin, like
myself, is sonless,--the last of a long line."
"His father, methinks, fell for us on the field of Towton. Was it not
so? I have heard Edward say that when the archers gave way, and the
victory more than wavered, thou, dismounting, didst slay thy steed
with thine own hand, and kissing the cross of thy sword, swore on that
spot to stem the rush of the foe, and win Edward's crown or Warwick's
grave." ["Every Palm Sunday, the day on which the battle of Towton
was fought, a rough figure, called the Red Horse, on the side of a
hill in Warwickshire, is scoured out. This is suggested to be done in
commemoration of the horse which the Earl of Warwick slew on that day,
determined to vanquish or die."--Roberts: York and Lancaster, vol. i.
p. 429.]
"It was so; and the shout of my merry men, when they saw me amongst
their ranks on foot--all flight forbid--was Malech's death-dirge. It
is a wondrous race,--that of Malech and his son Saladin," continued
the earl, smiling. "When my ancestor, Aymer de Nevile, led his troops
to the Holy Land, under Coeur de Lion, it was his fate to capture a
lady beloved by the mighty Saladin. Need I say that Aymer, under a
flag of truce, escorted her ransomless, her veil never raised from her
face, to the tent of the Saracen king? Saladin, too gracious for an
infidel, made him tarry a while, an honoured guest; and Aymer's
chivalry became sorely tried, for the lady he had delivered loved and
tempted him; but the good knight prayed and fasted, and defied Satan
and all his works. The lady (so runs the legend) grew wroth at the
pious crusader's disdainful coldness; and when Aymer returned to his
comrades, she sent, amidst the gifts of the soldan, two coal-black
steeds, male and mare, over which some foul and weird spells had been
duly muttered. Their beauty, speed, art, and fierceness were a
marvel. And Aymer, unsuspecting, prized the boon, and selected the
male destrier for his war-horse. Great were the feats, in many a
field, which my forefather wrought, bestriding his black charger. But
one fatal day, on which the sudden war-trump made him forget his
morning ave, the beast had power over the Christian, and bore him,
against bit and spur, into the thickest of the foe. He did all a
knight can do against many (pardon his descendant's vaunting,--so runs
the tale), and the Christians for a while beheld him solitary in the
melee, mowing down moon and turban. Then the crowd closed, and the
good knight was lost to sight. 'To the rescue!' cried bold King
Richard, and on rushed the crusaders to Aymer's help; when lo! and
suddenly the ranks severed, and the black steed emerged! Aymer still
on the selle, but motionless, and his helm battered and plumeless, his
brand broken, his arm drooping. On came man and horse, on,--charging
on, not against Infidel but Christian. On dashed the steed, I say,
with fire bursting from eyes and nostrils, and the pike of his
chaffron bent lance-like against the crusaders' van. The foul fiend
seemed in the destrier's rage and puissance. He bore right against
Richard's standard-bearer, and down went the lion and the cross. He
charged the king himself; and Richard, unwilling to harm his own dear
soldier Aymer, halted wondering, till the pike of the destrier pierced
his own charger through the barding, and the king lay rolling in the
dust. A panic seized the cross-men; they fled, the Saracens pursued,
and still with the Saracens came the black steed and the powerless
rider. At last, when the crusaders reached the camp, and the flight
ceased, there halted, also, Aymer. Not a man dared near him. He
spoke not, none spoke to him, till a holy priest and palmer approached
and sprinkled the good knight and the black barb with holy water, and
exorcised both; the spell broke, and Aymer dropped to the earth. They
unbraced his helm,--he was cold and stark. The fierce steed had but
borne a dead man."
"Holy Paul!" cried Gloucester, with seeming sanctimony, though a
covert sneer played round the firm beauty of his pale lips, "a notable
tale, and one that proveth much of Sacred Truth, now lightly heeded.
But, verily, lord earl, I should have little loved a steed with such a
pedigree."
"Hear the rest," said Isabel. "King Richard ordered the destrier to
be slain forthwith; but the holy palmer who had exorcised it forbade
the sacrifice. 'Mighty shall be the service,' said the reverend man,
'which the posterity of this steed shall render to thy royal race, and
great glory shall they give to the sons of Nevile. Let the war-horse,
now duly exorcised from infidel spells, live long to bear a Christian
warrior!'"
"And so," quoth the earl, taking up the tale--"so mare and horse were
brought by Aymer's squires to his English hall; and Aymer's son, Sir
Reginald, bore the cross, and bestrode the fatal steed, without fear
and without scathe. From that hour the House of Nevile rose amain, in
fame and in puissance; and the legend further saith, that the same
palmer encountered Sir Reginald at Joppa, bade him treasure that race
of war-steeds as his dearest heritage, for with that race his own
should flourish and depart; and the sole one of the Infidel's spells
which could not be broken was that which united the gift--generation
after generation, for weal or for woe, for honour or for doom--to the
fate of Aymer and his House. 'And,' added the palmer, 'as with
woman's love and woman's craft was woven the indissoluble charm, so
shall woman, whether in craft or in love, ever shape the fortunes of
thee and thine.'"
"As yet," said the prince, "the prophecy is fulfilled in a golden
sense, for nearly all thy wide baronies, I trow, have come to thee
through the female side. A woman's hand brought to the Nevile this
castle and its lands; [Middleham Castle was built by Robert Fitz
Ranulph, grandson of Ribald, younger brother of the Earl of Bretagne
and Richmond, nephew to the Conqueror. The founder's line failed in
male heirs, and the heiress married Robert Nevile, son of Lord Raby.
Warwick's father held the earldom of Salisbury in right of his wife,
the heiress of Thomas de Montacute.] from a woman came the heritage of
Monthermer and Montagu, and Salisbury's famous earldom; and the dower
of thy peerless countess was the broad domains of Beauchamp."
"And a woman's craft, young prince, wrought my king's displeasure!
But enough of these dissour's tales; behold the son of poor Malech,
whom, forgetting all such legends, I slew at Towton. Ho, Saladin,
greet thy master!"
They stood now in the black steed's stall.--an ample and high-vaulted
space, for halter never insulted the fierce destrier's mighty neck,
which the God of Battles had clothed in thunder. A marble cistern
contained his limpid drink, and in a gilded manger the finest wheaten
bread was mingled with the oats of Flanders. On entering, they found
young George, Montagu's son, with two or three boys, playing
familiarly with the noble animal, who had all the affectionate
docility inherited from an Arab origin. But at the sound of Warwick's
voice, its ears rose, its mane dressed itself, and with a short neigh
it came to his feet, and kneeling down, in slow and stately grace,
licked its master's hand. So perfect and so matchless a steed never
had knight bestrode! Its hide without one white hair, and glossy as
the sheenest satin; a lady's tresses were scarcely finer than the hair
of its noble mane; the exceeding smallness of its head, its broad
frontal, the remarkable and almost human intelligence of its eye,
seemed actually to elevate its conformation above that of its species.
Though the race had increased, generation after generation, in size
and strength, Prince Richard still marvelled (when, obedient to a sign
from Warwick, the destrier rose, and leaned its head, with a sort of
melancholy and quiet tenderness, upon the earl's shoulder) that a
horse, less in height and bulk than the ordinary battle-steed, could
bear the vast weight of the giant earl in his ponderous mail. But his
surprise ceased when the earl pointed out to him the immense strength
of the steed's ample loins, the sinewy cleanness, the iron muscle, of
the stag-like legs, the bull-like breadth of chest, and the swelling
power of the shining neck.
"And after all," added the earl, "both in man and beast, the spirit
and the race, not the stature and the bulk, bring the prize. Mort
Dieu, Richard! it often shames me of mine own thews and broad breast,
--I had been more vain of laurels had I been shorter by the head!"
"Nevertheless," said young George of Montagu, with a page's pertness,
"I had rather have thine inches than Prince Richard's, and thy broad
breast than his grace's short neck."
The Duke of Gloucester turned as if a snake had stung him. He gave
but one glance to the speaker, but that glance lived forever in the
boy's remembrance, and the young Montagu turned pale and trembled,
even before he heard the earl's stern rebuke.
"Young magpies chatter, boy,--young eagles in silence measure the
space between the eyry and the sun!"
The boy hung his head, and would have slunk off, but Richard detained
him with a gentle hand. "My fair young cousin," said he, "thy words
gall no sore, and if ever thou and I charge side by side into the
foeman's ranks, thou shalt comprehend what thy uncle designed to say,
--how, in the hour of strait and need, we measure men's stature not by
the body but the soul!"
"A noble answer," whispered Anne, with something like sisterly
admiration.
"Too noble," said the more ambitious Isabel, in the same voice, "for
Clarence's future wife not to fear Clarence's dauntless brother."
"And so," said the prince, quitting the stall with Warwick, while the
girls still lingered behind, "so Saladin hath no son! Wherefore? Can
you mate him with no bride?"
"Faith," answered the earl, "the females of his race sleep in yonder
dell, their burial-place, and the proud beast disdains all meaner
loves. Nay, were it not so, to continue the breed, if adulterated,
were but to mar it."
"You care little for the legend, meseems."
"Pardieu! at times, yes, over much; but in sober moments I think that
the brave man who does his duty lacks no wizard prophecy to fulfil his
doom; and whether in prayer or in death, in fortune or defeat, his
soul goes straight to God!"
"Umph," said Richard, musingly; and there was a pause. "Warwick,"
resumed the prince, "doubtless, even on your return to London, the
queen's enmity and her mother's will not cease. Clarence loves
Isabel, but Clarence knows not how to persuade the king and rule the
king's womankind. Thou knowest how I have stood aloof from all the
factions of the court. Unhappily I go to the Borders, and can but
slightly serve thee. But--"(he stopped short, and sighed heavily).
"Speak on, Prince."
"In a word, then, if I were thy son, Anne's husband, I see--I see--I
see--" (thrice repeated the prince, with a vague dreaminess in his
eye, and stretching forth his hand)--"a future that might defy all
foes, opening to me and thee!"
Warwick hesitated in some embarrassment.
"My gracious and princely cousin," he said at length, "this proffer is
indeed sweet incense to a father's pride. But pardon me, as yet,
noble Richard, thou art so young that the king and the world would
blame me did I suffer my ambition to listen to such temptation.
Enough, at present, if all disputes between our House and the king can
be smoothed and laid at rest without provoking new ones. Nay, pardon
me, prince, let this matter cease--at least, till thy return from the
Borders."
"May I take with me hope?"
"Nay," said Warwick, "thou knowest that I am a plain man; to bid thee
hope were to plight my word. And," he added seriously, "there be
reasons grave and well to be considered why both the daughters of a
subject should not wed with their king's brothers. Let this cease
now, I pray thee, sweet lord."
Here the demoiselles joined their father, and the conference was over;
but when Richard, an hour after, stood musing alone on the
battlements, he muttered to himself, "Thou art a fool, stout earl, not
to have welcomed the union between thy power and my wit. Thou goest
to a court where without wit power is nought. Who may foresee the
future? Marry, that was a wise ancient fable, that he who seized and
bound Proteus could extract from the changeful god the prophecy of the
days to come. Yea! the man who can seize Fate can hear its voice
predict to him. And by my own heart and brain, which never yet
relinquished what affection yearned for, or thought aspired to, I
read, as in a book, Anne, that thou shalt be mine; and that where wave
on yon battlements the ensigns of Beauchamp, Monthermer, and Nevile,
the Boar of Gloucester shall liege it over their broad baronies and
hardy vassals."
