The Last of the Barons — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (reading an ebook .TXT) 📖

On the other hand, thus wrote the prelate:—

“The king, wroth with my visit to Calais, has taken from me the chancellor’s seal. I humbly thank him, and shall sleep the lighter for the fardel’s loss. Now, mark me, Montagu: our kinsman, Lord Fitzhugh’s son, and young Henry Nevile, aided by old Sir John Copiers, meditate a fierce and well-timed assault upon the Woodvilles. Do thou keep neuter,—neither help nor frustrate it. Howsoever it end, it will answer our views, and shake our enemies.”

Montagu was yet musing over these tidings, and marvelling that he in England should know less than his brethren in Calais of events so important, when his page informed him that a stranger, with urgent messages from the north country, craved an audience. Imagining that these messages would tend to illustrate the communications just received, he ordered the visitor to be admitted.

He scarcely noticed Hilyard on his entrance, and said abruptly, “Speak shortly, friend,—I have but little leisure.”

“And yet, Lord Montagu, my business may touch thee home.”

Montagu, surprised, gazed more attentively on his visitor: “Surely, I know thy face, friend,—we have met before.”

“True; thou wert then on thy way to the More.”

“I remember me; and thou then seemedst, from thy bold words, on a still shorter road to the gallows.”

“The tree is not planted,” said Robin, carelessly, “that will serve for my gibbet. But were there no words uttered by me that thou couldst not disapprove? I spoke of lawless disorders, of shameful malfaisance throughout the land, which the Woodvilles govern under a lewd tyrant—”

“Traitor, hold!”

“A tyrant,” continued Robin, heeding not the interruption nor the angry gesture of Montagu, “a tyrant who at this moment meditates the destruction of the House of Nevile. And not contented with this world’s weapons, palters with the Evil One for the snares and devilries of witchcraft.”

“Hush, man! Not so loud,” said Montagu, in an altered voice. “Approach nearer,—nearer yet. They who talk of a crowned king, whose right hand raises armies, and whose left hand reposes on the block, should beware how they speak above their breath. Witchcraft, sayest thou? Make thy meaning clear.”

Here Robin detailed, with but little exaggeration, the scene he had witnessed in Friar Bungey’s chamber,—the waxen image, the menaces against the Earl of Warwick, and the words of the friar, naming the Duchess of Bedford as his employer. Montagu listened in attentive silence. Though not perfectly free from the credulities of the time, shared even by the courageous heart of Edward and the piercing intellect of Gloucester, he was yet more alarmed by such proofs of determined earthly hostility in one so plotting and so near to the throne as the Duchess of Bedford, than by all the pins and needles that could be planted into the earl’s waxen counterpart.

“A devilish malice, indeed,” said he, when Hilyard had concluded; “and yet this story, if thou wilt adhere to it, may serve us well at need. I thank thee, trusty friend, for thy confidence, and beseech thee to come at once with me to the king. There will I denounce our foe, and, with thine evidence, we will demand her banishment.”

“By your leave, not a step will I budge, my Lord Montagu,” quoth Robin, bluntly,—“I know how these matters are managed at court. The king will patch up a peace between the duchess and you, and chop off my ears and nose as a liar and common scandal-maker. No, no; denounce the duchess and all the Woodvilles I will; but it shall not be in the halls of the Tower, but on the broad plains of Yorkshire, with twenty thousand men at my back.”

“Ha! thou a leader of armies,—and for what end,—to dethrone the king?”

“That as it may be,—but first for justice to the people; it is the people’s rising that I will head, and not a faction’s. Neither White Rose nor Red shall be on my banner; but our standard shall be the gory head of the first oppressor we can place upon a pole.”

“What is it the people, as you word it, would demand?”

“I scarce know what we demand as yet,—that must depend upon how we prosper,” returned Hilyard, with a bitter laugh; “but the rising will have some good, if it shows only to you lords and Normans that a Saxon people does exist, and will turn when the iron heel is upon its neck. We are taxed, ground, pillaged, plundered,—sheep, maintained to be sheared for your peace or butchered for your war. And now will we have a petition and a charter of our own, Lord Montagu. I speak frankly. I am in thy power; thou canst arrest me, thou canst strike off the head of this revolt. Thou art the king’s friend,—wilt thou do so? No, thou and thy House have wrongs as well as we, the people. And a part at least of our demands and our purpose is your own.”

“What part, bold man?”

“This: we shall make our first complaint the baneful domination of the queen’s family; and demand the banishment of the Woodvilles, root and stem.”

“Hem!” said Montagu, involuntarily glancing over the archbishop’s letter,—“hem, but without outrage to the king’s state and person?”

“Oh, trust me, my lord, the franklin’s head contains as much north-country cunning as the noble’s. They who would speed well must feel their way cautiously.”

“Twenty thousand men—impossible! Who art thou, to collect and head them?”

“Plain Robin of Redesdale.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Montagu, “is it indeed as I was taught to suspect? Art thou that bold, strange, mad fellow, whom, by pike and brand—a soldier’s oath—I, a soldier, have often longed to see. Let me look at thee. ‘Fore Saint George, a tall man, and well knit, with dareiment on thy brow. Why, there are as many tales of thee in the North as of my brother the earl. Some say thou art a lord of degree and birth, others that thou art the robber of Hexham to whom Margaret of Anjou trusted her own life and her son’s.”

“Whatever they say of me,” returned Robin, “they all agree in this,—that I am a man of honest word and bold deed; that I can stir up the hearts of men, as the wind stirreth fire; that I came an unknown stranger into the parts where I abide; and that no peer in this roiaulme, save Warwick himself, can do more to raise an army or shake a throne.”

“But by what spell?”

“By men’s wrongs, lord,” answered Robin, in a deep voice; “and now, ere this moon wanes, Redesdale is a camp!”

“What the immediate cause of complaint?”

“The hospital of St. Leonard’s has compelled us unjustly to render them a thrave of corn.”

“Thou art a cunning knave! Pinch the belly if you would make Englishmen rise.”

“True,” said