Book 10 - Chapter 11

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_ BOOK X
CHAPTER XI. THE TOWER IN COMMOTION.

On quitting the Tower, Alwyn regained the boat, and took his way to the city; and here, whatever credit that worthy and excellent personage may lose in certain eyes, his historian is bound to confess that his anxiety for Sibyll did not entirely distract his attention from interest or ambition. To become the head of his class, to rise to the first honours of his beloved city of London, had become to Nicholas Alwyn a hope and aspiration which made as much a part of his being as glory to a warrior, power to a king, a Eureka to a scholar; and, though more mechanically than with any sordid calculation or self-seeking, Nicholas Alwyn repaired to his ware in the Chepe. The streets, when he landed, already presented a different appearance from the disorder and tumult noticeable when he had before passed them. The citizens now had decided what course to adopt; and though the shops, or rather booths, were carefully closed, streamers of silk, cloth of arras and gold, were hung from the upper casements; the balconies were crowded with holiday gazers; the fickle populace (the same herd that had hooted the meek Henry when led to the Tower) were now shouting, "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!" and pouring throng after throng, to gaze upon the army, which, with the mayor and aldermen, had already entered the city. Having seen to the security of his costly goods, and praised his apprentices duly for their care of his interests, and their abstinence from joining the crowd, Nicholas then repaired to the upper story of his house, and set forth from his casements and balcony the richest stuffs he possessed. However, there was his own shrewd, sarcastic smile on his firm lips, as he said to his apprentices, "When these are done with, lay them carefully by against Edward of York's re-entry."

Meanwhile, preceded by trumpets, drums, and heralds, the Earl of Warwick and his royal son-in-law rode into the shouting city. Behind came the litter of the Duchess of Clarence, attended by the Earl of Oxford, Lord Fitzhugh, the Lords Stanley and Shrewsbury, Sir Robert de Lytton, and a princely cortege of knights, squires, and nobles; while, file upon file, rank upon rank, followed the long march of the unresisted armament.

Warwick, clad in complete armour of Milan steel,--save the helmet, which was borne behind him by his squire,--mounted on his own noble Saladin, preserved upon a countenance so well suited to command the admiration of a populace the same character as heretofore of manly majesty and lofty frankness. But to a nearer and more searching gaze than was likely to be bent upon him in such an hour, the dark, deep traces of care, anxiety, and passion might have been detected in the lines which now thickly intersected the forehead, once so smooth and furrowless; and his kingly eye, not looking, as of old, right forward as he moved, cast unquiet, searching glances about him and around, as he bowed his bare head from side to side of the welcoming thousands.

A far greater change, to outward appearance, was visible in the fair young face of the Duke of Clarence. His complexion, usually sanguine and blooming, like his elder brother's, was now little less pale than that of Richard. A sullen, moody, discontented expression, which not all the heartiness of the greetings he received could dispel, contrasted forcibly with the good-humoured, laughing recklessness, which had once drawn a "God bless him!" from all on whom rested his light-blue joyous eye. He was unarmed, save by a corselet richly embossed with gold. His short manteline of crimson velvet, his hosen of white cloth laced with gold, and his low horseman's boots of Spanish leather curiously carved and broidered, with long golden spurs; his plumed and jewelled cap; his white charger with housings enriched with pearls and blazing with cloth-of-gold; his broad collar of precious stones, with the order of St. George; his general's truncheon raised aloft, and his Plantagenet banner borne by the herald over his royal head, caught the eyes of the crowd only the more to rivet them on an aspect ill fitting the triumph of a bloodless victory. At his left hand, where the breadth of the streets permitted, rode Henry Lee, the mayor, uttering no word, unless appealed to, and then answering but with chilling reverence and dry monosyllables.

A narrow winding in the streets, which left Warwick and Clarence alone side by side, gave the former the opportunity he had desired.

"How, prince and son," he said in a hollow whisper, "is it with this brow of care that thou saddenest our conquest, and enterest the capital we gain without a blow?"

"By Saint George!" answered Clarence, sullenly, and in the same tone, "thinkest thou it chafes not the son of Richard of York, after such toils and bloodshed, to minister to the dethronement of his kin and the restoration of the foe of his race?"

"Thou shouldst have thought of that before," returned Warwick, but with sadness and pity in the reproach.

"Ay, before Edward of Lancaster was made my lord and brother," retorted Clarence, bitterly.

"Hush!" said the earl, "and calm thy brow. Not thus didst thou speak at Amboise; either thou wert then less frank or more generous. But regrets are vain: we have raised the whirlwind, and must rule it."

And with that, in the action of a man who would escape his own thoughts, Warwick made his black steed demivolte; and the crowd shouted again the louder at the earl's gallant horsemanship, and Clarence's dazzling collar of jewels.

While thus the procession of the victors, the nominal object of all this mighty and sudden revolution--of this stir and uproar, of these shining arms and flaunting banners, of this heaven or hell in the deep passions of men--still remained in his prison-chamber of the Tower, a true type of the thing factions contend for; absent, insignificant, unheeded, and, save by a few of the leaders and fanatical priests, absolutely forgotten!

To this solitary chamber we are now transported; yet solitary is a word of doubtful propriety; for though the royal captive was alone, so far as the human species make up a man's companionship and solace, though the faithful gentlemen, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, had, on the news of Warwick's landing, been thrust from his chamber, and were now in the ranks of his new and strange defenders, yet power and jealousy had not left his captivity all forsaken. There was still the starling in its cage, and the fat, asthmatic spaniel still wagged its tail at the sound of its master's voice, or the rustle of his long gown. And still from the ivory crucifix gleamed the sad and holy face of the God, present alway, and who, by faith and patience, linketh evermore grief to joy,--but earth to heaven.

The august prisoner had not been so utterly cut off from all knowledge of the outer life as to be ignorant of some unwonted and important stir in the fortress and the city. The squire who had brought him his morning meal had been so agitated as to excite the captive's attention, and had then owned that the Earl of Warwick had proclaimed Henry king, and was on his march to London. But neither the squire nor any of the officers of the Tower dared release the illustrious captive, or even remove him as yet to the state apartments vacated by Elizabeth. They knew not what might be the pleasure of the stout earl or the Duke of Clarence, and feared over-officiousness might be their worst crime. But naturally imagining that Henry's first command, at the new position of things, might be for liberty, and perplexed whether to yield or refuse, they absented themselves from his summons, and left the whole tower in which he was placed actually deserted.

From his casement the king could see, however, the commotion, and the crowds upon the wharf and river, with the gleam of arms and banners; and hear the sounds of "A Warwick!" "A Clarence!" "Long live good Henry VI.!" A strange combination of names, which disturbed and amazed him much! But by degrees the unwonted excitement of perplexity and surprise settled back into the calm serenity of his most gentle mind and temper. That trust in an all-directing Providence, to which he had schooled himself, had (if we may so say with reverence) driven his beautiful soul into the opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of life,--the error that deadens and benumbs the energy of free will and the noble alertness of active duty. Why strain and strive for the things of this world? God would order all for the best. Alas! God hath placed us in this world, each, from king to peasant, with nerves and hearts and blood and passions to struggle with our kind; and, no matter how heavenly the goal, to labour with the million in the race!

"Forsooth," murmured the king, as, his hands clasped behind him, he paced slowly to and fro the floor, "this ill world seemeth but a feather, blown about by the winds, and never to be at rest. Hark! Warwick and King Henry,--the lion and the lamb! Alack, and we are fallen on no Paradise, where such union were not a miracle! Foolish bird!"--and with a pitying smile upon that face whose holy sweetness might have disarmed a fiend, he paused before the cage and contemplated his fellow-captive--"foolish bird, the uneasiness and turmoil without have reached even to thee. Thou beatest thy wings against the wires, thou turnest thy bright eyes to mine restlessly. Why? Pantest thou to be free, silly one, that the hawk may swoop on its defenceless prey? Better, perhaps, the cage for thee, and the prison for thy master. Well, out if thou wilt! Here at least thou art safe!" and opening the cage, the starling flew to his bosom, and nestled there, with its small clear voice mimicking the human sound,--

"Poor Henry, poor Henry! Wicked men, poor Henry!"

The king bowed his meek head over his favourite, and the fat spaniel, jealous of the monopolized caress, came waddling towards its master, with a fond whine, and looked up at him with eyes that expressed more of faith and love than Edward of York, the ever wooing and ever wooed, had read in the gaze of woman.

With those companions, and with thoughts growing more and more composed and rapt from all that had roused and vexed his interest in the forenoon, Henry remained till the hour had long passed for his evening meal. Surprised at last by a negligence which (to do his jailers justice) had never before occurred, and finding no response to his hand-bell, no attendant in the anteroom, the outer doors locked as usual, but the sentinel's tread in the court below hushed and still, a cold thrill for a moment shot through his blood.--"Was he left for hunger to do its silent work?" Slowly he bent his way from the outer rooms back to his chamber; and, as he passed the casement again, he heard, though far in the distance, through the dim air of the deepening twilight, the cry of "Long live King Henry!"

This devotion without, this neglect within, was a wondrous contrast! Meanwhile the spaniel, with that instinct of fidelity which divines the wants of the master, had moved snuffling and smelling round and round the chambers, till it stopped and scratched at a cupboard in the anteroom, and then with a joyful bark flew back to the king, and taking the hem of his gown between its teeth, led him towards the spot it had discovered; and there, in truth, a few of those small cakes, usually served up for the night's livery, had been carelessly left. They sufficed for the day's food, and the king, the dog, and the starling shared them peacefully together. This done, Henry carefully replaced his bird in its cage, bade the dog creep to the hearth and lie still; passed on to his little oratory, with the relics of cross and saint strewed around the solemn image,--and in prayer forgot the world! Meanwhile darkness set in: the streets had grown deserted, save where in some nooks and by-lanes gathered groups of the soldiery; but for the most part the discipline in which Warwick held his army had dismissed those stern loiterers to the various quarters provided for them, and little remained to remind the peaceful citizens that a throne had been uprooted, and a revolution consummated, that eventful day.

It was at this time that a tall man, closely wrapped in his large horseman's cloak, passed alone through the streets and gained the Tower. At the sound of his voice by the great gate, the sentinel started in alarm; a few moments more, and all left to guard the fortress were gathered round him. From these he singled out one of the squires who usually attended Henry, and bade him light his steps to the king's chamber. As in that chamber Henry rose from his knees, he saw the broad red light of a torch flickering under the chinks of the threshold; he heard the slow tread of approaching footsteps; the spaniel uttered a low growl, its eyes sparkling; the door opened, and the torch borne behind by the squire, and raised aloft so that its glare threw a broad light over the whole chamber, brought into full view the dark and haughty countenance of the Earl of Warwick.

The squire, at a gesture from the earl, lighted the sconces on the wall, the tapers on the table, and quickly vanished. King-maker and king were alone! At the first sight of Warwick, Henry had turned pale, and receded a few paces, with one hand uplifted in adjuration or command, while with the other he veiled his eyes,--whether that this startled movement came from the weakness of bodily nerves, much shattered by sickness and confinement, or from the sudden emotions called forth by the aspect of one who had wrought him calamities so dire. But the craven's terror in the presence of a living foe was, with all his meekness, all his holy abhorrence of wrath and warfare, as unknown to that royal heart as to the high blood of his hero-sire. And so, after a brief pause, and a thought that took the shape of prayer, not for safety from peril, but for grace to forgive the past, Henry VI. advanced to Warwick, who still stood dumb by the threshold, combating with his own mingled and turbulent emotions of pride and shame, and said, in a voice majestic even from its very mildness,--

"What tale of new woe and evil hath the Earl of Salisbury and Warwick come to announce to the poor captive who was once a king?"

"Forgive me! Forgiveness, Henry, my lord,--forgiveness!" exclaimed Warwick, falling on his knee. The meek reproach; the touching words; the mien and visage altered, since last beheld, from manhood into age; the gray hairs and bended form of the king, went at once to that proud heart; and as the earl bent over the wan, thin hand resigned to his lips, a tear upon its surface out-sparkled all the jewels that it wore.

"Yet no," continued the earl (impatient, as proud men are, to hurry from repentance to atonement, for the one is of humiliation and the other of pride),--"yet no, my liege, not now do I crave thy pardon. No; but when begirt, in the halls of thine ancestors, with the peers of England, the victorious banner of Saint George waving above the throne which thy servant hath rebuilt,--then, when the trumpets are sounding thy rights without the answer of a foe; then, when from shore to shore of fair England the shout of thy people echoes to the vault of heaven,--then will Warwick kneel again to King Henry, and sue for the pardon he hath not ignobly won!

"Alack, sir," said the king, with accents of mournful yet half-reproving kindness, "it was not amidst trump and banners that the Son of God set mankind the exemplar and pattern of charity to foes. When thy hand struck the spurs from my heel, when thou didst parade me through the booting crowd to this solitary cell, then, Warwick, I forgave thee, and prayed to Heaven for pardon for thee, if thou didst wrong me,--for myself, if a king's fault had deserved a subject's harshness. Rise, Sir Earl; our God is a jealous God, and the attitude of worship is for Him alone."

Warwick rose from his knee; and the king, perceiving and compassionating the struggle which shook the strong man's breast, laid his hand on the earl's shoulder, and said, "Peace be with thee!--thou hast done me no real harm. I have been as happy in these walls as in the green parks of Windsor; happier than in the halls of state or in the midst of wrangling armies. What tidings now?"

"My liege, is it possible that you know not that Edward is a fugitive and a beggar, and that Heaven hath permitted me to avenge at once your injuries and my own? This day, without a blow, I have regained your city of London; its streets are manned with my army. From the council of peers and warriors and prelates assembled at my house, I have stolen hither alone and in secret, that I might be the first to hail your Grace's restoration to the throne of Henry V."

The king's face so little changed at this intelligence, that its calm sadness almost enraged the impetuous Warwick, and with difficulty he restrained from giving utterance to the thought, "He is not worthy of a throne who cares so little to possess it!"

"Well-a-day!" said Henry, sighing, "Heaven then hath sore trials yet in store for mine old age! Tray, Tray!" and stooping, he gently patted his dog, who kept watch at his feet, still glaring suspiciously at Warwick, "we are both too old for the chase now!--Will you be seated, my lord?"

"Trust me," said the earl, as he obeyed the command, having first set chair and footstool for the king, who listened to him with downcast eyes and his head drooping on his bosom--"trust me, your later days, my liege, will be free from the storms of your youth. All chance of Edward's hostility is expired. Your alliance, though I seem boastful so to speak,--your alliance with one in whom the people can confide for some skill in war, and some more profound experience of the habits and tempers of your subjects than your former councillors could possess, will leave your honoured leisure free for the holy meditations it affects; and your glory, as your safety, shall be the care of men who can awe this rebellious world."

"Alliance!" said the king, who had caught but that one word; "of what speakest thou, Sir Earl?"

"These missives will explain all, my liege; this letter from my lady the Queen Margaret, and this from your gracious son, the Prince of Wales."

"Edward! my Edward!" exclaimed the king, with a father's burst of emotion. "Thou hast seen him, then,--bears he his health well, is he of cheer and heart?"

"He is strong and fair, and full of promise, and brave as his grandsire's sword."

"And knows he--knows he well--that we all are the potter's clay in the hands of God?"

"My liege," said Warwick, embarrassed, "he has as much devotion as befits a Christian knight and a goodly prince."

"Ah," sighed the king, "ye men of arms have strange thoughts on these matters;" and cutting the silk of the letters, he turned from the warrior. Shading his face with his hand, the earl darted his keen glance on the features of the king, as, drawing near to the table, the latter read the communications which announced his new connection with his ancient foe.

But Henry was at first so affected by the sight of Margaret's well-known hand, that he thrice put down her letter and wiped the moisture from his eyes.

"My poor Margaret, how thou hast suffered!" he murmured; "these very characters are less firm and bold than they were. Well, well!" and at last he betook himself resolutely to the task. Once or twice his countenance changed, and he uttered an exclamation of surprise. But the proposition of a marriage between Prince Edward and the Lady Anne did not revolt his forgiving mind, as it had the haughty and stern temper of his consort. And when he had concluded his son's epistle, full of the ardour of his love and the spirit of his youth, the king passed his left hand over his brow, and then extending his right to Warwick, said, in accents which trembled with emotion, "Serve my son, since he is thine, too; give peace to this distracted kingdom, repair my errors, press not hard upon those who contend against us, and Jesu and His saints will bless this bond!"

The earl's object, perhaps, in seeking a meeting with Henry so private and unwitnessed, had been that none, not even his brother, might hearken to the reproaches he anticipated to receive, or say hereafter that he heard Warwick, returned as victor and avenger to his native land, descend, in the hour of triumph, to extenuation and excuse. So affronted, imperilled, or to use his own strong word, "so despaired," had he been in the former rule of Henry, that his intellect, which, however vigorous in his calmer moods, was liable to be obscured and dulled by his passions, had half confounded the gentle king with his ferocious wife and stern councillors, and he had thought he never could have humbled himself to the man, even so far as knighthood's submission to Margaret's sex had allowed him to the woman. But the sweetness of Henry's manners and disposition, the saint-like dignity which he had manifested throughout this painful interview, and the touching grace and trustful generosity of his last words,--words which consummated the earl's large projects of ambition and revenge,--had that effect upon Warwick which the preaching of some holy man, dwelling upon the patient sanctity of the Saviour, had of old on a grim Crusader, all incapable himself of practising such meek excellence, and yet all moved and penetrated by its loveliness in another; and, like such Crusader, the representation of all mildest and most forgiving singularly stirred up in the warrior's mind images precisely the reverse,--images of armed valour and stern vindication, as if where the Cross was planted sprang from the earth the standard and the war-horse!

"Perish your foes! May war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it? How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude and thy Christian heroism, seems the savage valour of false Edward! Shame upon one who can betray the trust thou hast placed in him! Never will I!--Never! I swear it! No! though all England desert thee, I will stand alone with my breast of mail before thy throne! Oh, would that my triumph had been less peaceful and less bloodless! would that a hundred battlefields were yet left to prove how deeply--deeply in his heart of hearts--Warwick feels the forgiveness of his king!"

"Not so, not so, not so! not battlefields, Warwick!" said Henry. "Ask not to serve the king by shedding one subject's blood."

"Your pious will be obeyed!" replied Warwick. "We will see if mercy can effect in others what thy pardon effects in me. And now, my liege, no longer must these walls confine thee. The chambers of the palace await their sovereign. What ho, there!" and going to the door he threw it open, and agreeably to the orders he had given below, all the officers left in the fortress stood crowded together in the small anteroom, bareheaded, with tapers in their hands, to conduct the monarch to the halls of his conquered foe.

At the sudden sight of the earl, these men, struck involuntarily and at once by the grandeur of his person and his animated aspect, burst forth with the rude retainer's cry, "A Warwick! a Warwick!"

"Silence!" thundered the earl's deep voice. "Who names the subject in the sovereign's presence? Behold your king!" The men, abashed by the reproof, bowed their heads and sank on their knees, as Warwick took a taper from the table, to lead the way from the prison.

Then Henry turned slowly, and gazed with a lingering eye upon the walls which even sorrow and solitude had endeared. The little oratory, the crucifix, the relics, the embers burning low on the hearth, the rude time-piece,--all took to his thoughtful eye an almost human aspect of melancholy and omen; and the bird, roused, whether by the glare of the lights, or the recent shout of the men, opened its bright eyes, and fluttering restlessly to and fro, shrilled out its favourite sentence, "Poor Henry! poor Henry!--wicked men!--who would be a king?"

"Thou hearest it, Warwick?" said Henry, shaking his head.

"Could an eagle speak, it would have another cry than the starling," returned the earl, with a proud smile.

"Why, look you," said the king, once more releasing the bird, which settled on his wrist, "the eagle had broken his heart in the narrow cage, the eagle had been no comforter for a captive; it is these gentler ones that love and soothe us best in our adversities. Tray, Tray, fawn not now, sirrah, or I shall think thou hast been false in thy fondness heretofore! Cousin, I attend you."

And with his bird on his wrist, his dog at his heels, Henry VI. followed the earl to the illuminated hall of Edward, where the table was spread for the royal repast, and where his old friends, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, stood weeping for joy; while from the gallery raised aloft, the musicians gave forth the rough and stirring melody which had gradually fallen out of usage, but which was once the Norman's national air, and which the warlike Margaret of Anjou had retaught her minstrels,--"THE BATTLE HYMN OF ROLLO." _

Read next: Book 11: Chapter 1

Read previous: Book 10: Chapter 10

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