CHAPTER VIII.
THE ANCIENTS RIGHTLY GAVE TO THE GODDESS OF ELOQUENCE A CROWN.
The lady of Warwick stood at the threshold of the porch, which, in the
inner side of the broad quadrangle, admitted to the apartments used by
the family; and, heading the mighty train that, line after line,
emerged through the grim jaws of the arch, came the earl on his black
destrier, and the young king.
Even where she stood, the anxious chatelaine beheld the moody and
gloomy air with which Edward glanced around the strong walls of the
fortress, and up to the battlements that bristled with the pikes and
sallets of armed men, who looked on the pomp below, in the silence of
military discipline.
"Oh, Anne!" she whispered to her youngest daughter, who stood beside
her, "what are women worth in the strife of men? Would that our
smiles could heal the wounds which a taunt can make in a proud man's
heart!"
Anne, affected and interested by her mother's words, and with a secret
curiosity to gaze upon the man who ruled on the throne of the prince
she loved, came nearer and more in front; and suddenly, as he turned
his head, the king's regard rested upon her intent eyes and blooming
face.
"Who is that fair donzell, cousin of Warwick?" he asked.
"My daughter, sire."
"Ah, your youngest!--I have not seen her since she was a child."
Edward reined in his charger, and the earl threw himself from his
selle, and held the king's stirrup to dismount. But he did so with a
haughty and unsmiling visage. "I would be the first, sire," said he,
with a slight emphasis, and as if excusing to himself his
condescension, "to welcome to Middleham the son of Duke Richard."
"And your suzerain, my lord earl," added Edward, with no less proud a
meaning, and leaning his hand lightly on Warwick's shoulder, he
dismounted slowly. "Rise, lady," he said, raising the countess, who
knelt at the porch, "and you too, fair demoiselle. Pardieu, we envy
the knee that hath knelt to you." So saying, with royal graciousness,
he took the countess's hand, and they entered the hall as the
musicians, in the gallery raised above, rolled forth their stormy
welcome.
The archbishop, who had followed close to Warwick and the king,
whispered now to his brother,
"Why would Edward address the captains?"
"I know not."
"He hath made himself familiar with many in the march."
"Familiarity with a steel casque better becomes a king than waisall
with a greasy flat-cap."
"You do not fear lest he seduce from the White Bear its retainers?"
"As well fear that he can call the stars from their courses around the
sun."
While these words were interchanged, the countess conducted the king
to a throne-chair raised upon the dais, by the side of which were
placed two seats of state, and, from the dais, at the same time,
advanced the Duke and Duchess of Clarence. The king prevented their
kneeling, and kissed Isabel slightly and gravely on the forehead.
"Thus, noble lady, I greet the entrance of the Duchess of Clarence
into the royalty of England."
Without pausing for reply, he passed on and seated himself on the
throne, while Isabel and her husband took possession of the state
chairs on either hand. At a gesture of the king's the countess and
Anne placed themselves on seats less raised, but still upon the dais.
But now as Edward sat, the hall grew gradually full of lords and
knights who commanded in Warwick's train, while the earl and the
archbishop stood mute in the centre, the one armed cap-a-pie, leaning
on his sword, the other with his arms folded in his long robes.
The king's eye, clear, steady, and majestic, roved round that martial
audience, worthy to be a monarch's war-council, and not one of whom
marched under a monarch's banner! Their silence, their discipline,
the splendour of their arms, the greater splendour of their noble
names, contrasted painfully with the little mutinous camp of Olney,
and the surly, untried recruits of Anthony Woodville. But Edward,
whose step, whose form, whose aspect, proclaimed the man conscious of
his rights to be lord of all, betrayed not to those around him the
kingly pride, the lofty grief, that swelled within his heart. Still
seated, he raised his left hand to command silence; with the right he
replaced his plumed cap upon his brow.
"Lords and gentlemen," he said (arrogating to himself at once, as a
thing of course, that gorgeous following), "we have craved leave of
our host to address to you some words,--words which it pleases a king
to utter, and which may not be harsh to the ears of a loyal subject.
Nor will we, at this great current of unsteady fortune, make excuse,
noble ladies, to you, that we speak of war to knighthood, which is
ever the sworn defender of the daughter and the wife,--the daughters
and the wife of our cousin Warwick have too much of hero-blood in
their blue veins to grow pale at the sight of heroes. Comrades in
arms! thus far towards our foe upon the frontier we have marched,
without a sword drawn or an arrow launched from an archer's bow. We
believe that a blessing settles on the head of a true king, and that
the trumpet of a good angel goes before his path, announcing the
victory which awaits him. Here, in the hall of the Earl of Warwick,
our captain-general, we thank you for your cheerful countenance and
your loyal service; and here, as befits a king, we promise to you
those honours a king alone worthily can bestow." He paused, and his
keen eye glanced from chief to chief as he resumed: "We are informed
that certain misguided and traitor lords have joined the Rose of
Lancaster. Whoever so doth is attainted, life and line, evermore!
His lands and dignities are forfeit to enrich and to ennoble the men
who strike for me. Heaven grant I may have foes eno' to reward all my
friends! To every baron who owns Edward IV. king (ay, and not king in
name, king in banquet and in bower, but leader and captain in the
war), I trust to give a new barony, to every knight a new knight's
fee, to every yeoman a hyde of land, to every soldier a year's pay.
What more I can do, let it be free for any one to suggest,--for my
domains of York are broad, and my heart is larger still!"
A murmur of applause and reverence went round. Vowed, as those
warriors were, to the earl, they felt that A MONARCH was amongst them.
"What say you, then? We are ripe for glory. Three days will we halt
at Middleham, guest to our noble subject."
"Three days, sire!" repeated Warwick, in a voice of surprise.
"Yes; and this, fair cousin, and ye, lords and gentlemen, is my reason
for the delay. I have despatched Sir William, Lord de Hastings, to
the Duke of Gloucester, with command to join us here (the archbishop
started, but instantly resumed his earnest, placid aspect); to the
Lord Montagu, Earl of Northumberland, to muster all the vassals of our
shire of York. As three streams that dash into the ocean, shall our
triple army meet and rush to the war. Not even, gentlemen, not even
to the great Earl of Warwick will Edward IV. be so beholden for
roiaulme and renown, as to march but a companion to the conquest. If
ye were raised in Warwick's name, not mine,--why, be it so! I envy
him such friends; but I will have an army of mine own, to show mine
English soldiery how a Plantagenet battles for his crown. Gentlemen,
ye are dismissed to your repose. In three days we march! and if any
of you know in these fair realms the man, be he of York or of
Lancaster, more fit to command brave subjects than he who now
addresses you, I say to that man, turn rein, and leave us! Let
tyrants and cowards enforce reluctant service,--my crown was won by
the hearts of my people! Girded by those hearts, let me reign, or,
mourned by them, let me fall! So God and Saint George favour me as I
speak the truth!"
And as the king ceased, he uncovered his head, and kissed the cross of
his sword. A thrill went through the audience. Many were there,
disaffected to his person, and whom Warwick's influence alone could
have roused to arms; but at the close of an address spirited and loyal
in itself, and borrowing thousand-fold effect by the voice and mien of
the speaker, no feeling but that of enthusiastic loyalty, of almost
tearful admiration, was left in those steel-clad breasts.
As the king lifted on high the cross of his sword, every blade leaped
from its scabbard, and glittered in the air; and the dusty banners in
the hall waved, as to a mighty blast, when, amidst the rattle of
armour, burst forth the universal cry, "Long live Edward IV.! Long
live the king!"
The sweet countess, even amidst the excitement, kept her eyes
anxiously fixed on Warwick, whose countenance, however shaded by the
black plumes of his casque, though the visor was raised, revealed
nothing of his mind. Her daughters were more powerfully affected; for
Isabel's intellect was not so blinded by her ambition but that the
kingliness of Edward forced itself upon her with a might and solemn
weight, which crushed, for the moment, her aspiring hopes.
Was this the man unfit to reign? This the man voluntarily to resign a
crown? This the man whom George of Clarence, without fratricide,
could succeed? No!--there spoke the soul of the First and the Third
Edward! There shook the mane and there glowed the eye of the
indomitable lion of the august Plantagenets! And the same conviction,
rousing softer and holier sorrow, sat on the heart of Anne; she saw,
as for the first time, clearly before her the awful foe with whom her
ill-omened and beloved prince had to struggle for his throne. In
contrast beside that form, in the prime of manly youth--a giant in its
strength, a god in its beauty--rose the delicate shape of the
melancholy boy who, afar in exile, coupled in his dreams, the sceptre
and the bride! By one of those mysteries which magnetism seeks to
explain, in the strong intensity of her emotions, in the tremor of her
shaken nerves, fear seemed to grow prophetic. A stream as of blood
rose up from the dizzy floors. The image of her young prince, bound
and friendless, stood before the throne of that warrior-king. In the
waving glitter of the countless swords raised on high, she saw the
murderous blade against the boy-heir of Lancaster descend--descend!
Her passion, her terror, at the spectre which fancy thus evoked,
seized and overcame her; and ere the last hurrah sent its hollow echo
to the raftered roof, she sank from her chair to the ground, hueless
and insensible as the dead.
The king had not without design permitted the unwonted presence of the
women in this warlike audience,--partly because he was not unaware of
the ambitious spirit of Isabel, partly because he counted on the
affection shown to his boyhood by the countess, who was said to have
singular influence over her lord, but principally because in such a
presence he trusted to avoid all discussion and all questioning, and
to leave the effect of his eloquence, in which he excelled all his
contemporaries, Gloucester alone excepted, single and unimpaired; and
therefore, as he rose, and returned with a majestic bend the
acclamation of the warriors, his eye now turned towards the chairs
where the ladies sat, and he was the first to perceive the swoon of
the fair Anne.
With the tender grace that always characterized his service to women,
he descended promptly from his throne, and raised the lifeless form in
his stalwart arms; and Anne, as he bent over her, looked so strangely
lovely in her marble stillness, that even in that hour a sudden thrill
shot through a heart always susceptible to beauty as the harp-string
to the breeze.
"It is but the heat, lady," said he, to the alarmed countess, "and let
me hope that interest which my fair kinswoman may take in the fortunes
of Warwick and of York, hitherto linked together--"
"May they ever be so!" said Warwick, who, on seeing his daughter's
state, had advanced hastily to the dais; and, moved by the king's
words, his late speech, the evils that surrounded his throne, the
gentleness shown to the beloved Anne, forgetting resentment and
ceremony alike, he held out his mailed hand. The king, as he resigned
Anne to her mother's arms, grasped with soldierly frankness, and with
the ready wit of the cold intellect which reigned beneath the warm
manner, the hand thus extended, and holding still that iron gauntlet
in his own ungloved and jewelled fingers, he advanced to the verge of
the dais, to which, in the confusion occasioned by Anne's swoon, the
principal officers had crowded, and cried aloud,--
"Behold! Warwick and Edward thus hand in hand, as they stood when the
clarions sounded the charge at Towton! and that link what swords
forged on a mortal's anvil can rend or sever?"
In an instant every knee there knelt; and Edward exultingly beheld
that what before had been allegiance to the earl was now only homage
to the king.
