by Mary Shelley
“In the first place to Dame Madeline’s cottage.”
“That were midsummer madness,” cried Clifford; “Frion will never rest till he ensnares his bird again — nay, though I trust he will not discover your escape till to-morrow morning, that part of my scheme may fail; and his papers from the King are such that my lord could not refuse to aid him. I pray you set space and cloudy mystery between you.”
“It shall be so. Probably I shall seek refuge at Brussels; but I must see my gentle guardian and my sweet cousin, calm their fears, and bid them farewell.”
They had descended a narrow winding staircase; Clifford unlocked a postern, opening on a dark alley. A small light-limbed horse stood without, held by a stout, almost gigantic fellow. “Here, Bryan,” said Clifford, “this is the smuggled article of which I spoke. Convey it in safety to the gate; once without, the road is known. How now, sweeting! you sit your steed as if you were used to this gear — in truth thou art a false one — yet take care, fold your cloak thus — not one kiss ere we part?” He sportively snatched the Prince’s hand, and pressing it to his lips, continued, “No weeping, lovely: my merry heart hates tears like verjuice. The Blessed Virgin protect you; I must in. Remember in every ill Robin Clifford is your fast, your sworn friend. Look at her, Bryan: one would swear by her bearing it were a beardless page, and not a long-haired girl; remember, though gamesome, she is gentle, and respect her on your life:”
Laughing at his own deceits, the guileful boy re-entered the mansion; nor could Richard avoid smiling at the merry and ready subterfuges which his friend had at command on every occasion. Bryan demurely held the rein, and hardly hazarded a look or covert joke, as with a pace that put the poney to a trot, he led the Prince through the narrow streets to the western gate. The youth breathed freely when, after having passed the hollow sounding drawbridge, he saw the dark wall of the town behind him, and before, the green plain. In his haste he scarcely bestowed a benison on his guide; but snatching the rein from his hand, and with the other throwing some money at his feet, and exclaiming “Beware of prating, as thou art willing to save thyself from the whipping-post!” he impatiently struck his unarmed heel against the horse’s sides, and bounded swiftly forward. Bryan picked up the angles, and told them slowly, as he said “I meant to have paid myself in other coin; but, by St. Julian, she rides more like a trooper than a gentle dame — and her speech — Master Robert has before now entrusted a damsel to my guidance, but they ever spoke me lovingly, with ‘fair Sir,’ and ‘sweet Bryan!’ Forsooth, Flemish girls ruffle more like pranksome pages than soft-cheeked wenches!”
The thought of his conductor had passed as swiftly from the Prince’s thoughts, as he made the ground fly from under his horse’s hoof. He was aware that he did neither the safest or best thing in seeking, like a hunted hare, the form from which he had been roused in the morning; but the desire of calming Madeline’s anxiety, and imprinting a farewell kiss on the sweet lips of her daughter, prevented him from altering his first purpose. The night was cloudy and very dark, but the road was known to him, and he continued at full speed till a voice, calling aloud, attracted his attention — the words could not be mistaken — his own name, “Perkin Warbeck!” sounded through the night. His first thought was, that he was pursued, but reflection told him that assuredly his pursuers would not halloo to him, while any sent in search of him by Madeline, might naturally so try to stop him as he rode so fast through the dark. He checked his speed, therefore, and in a few moments a Cavalier, a stranger, was at his side, mounted on a tall black horse; his form seemed gigantic, and little else could be discerned: the stranger spoke to him in French, with a foreign accent. He asked him, “Are you not he they call Perkin Warbeck?” This address was sufficiently startling; and the youth haughtily replied, “My name imports not to you, while to me this interruption is unseasonable.”
“Enough; you go towards the cottage of Madeline de Faro; I follow your Highness thither.”
Richard grasped the small poinard which hung from his belt; yet how could he, a child, contend with the tall and muscular form beside him? “Whoever thou art,” he cried, “and whoever I may be, follow me not; I am no serf to be seized and carried back to his suzerain. Depart in God’s name, that the fingers of neither may receive an ill stain!”
“Thou art a gallant boy!” cried the stranger, as placing his hand on the youth’s arm, his most gentle touch was felt as an iron vice pressing on his flesh: “Pardon, my Lord, the interference of one unknown to you, though I will not call myself a stranger. I am Hernan de Faro, the husband of Dame Madeline; now stay not your speed, while we hasten to relieve her thousand fears. I am come in search of you.”
The heart of Richard warmed towards his new friend: he felt, that with him on his side, he might defy Frion, Fitzwater, and all their followers; for there was something in de Faro’s mien, which spoke of a thousand combats, and as many victories; his deep voice out-roared the elements; his hand might arrest a wild horse in mid career. When they arrived at the wicket entrance to the cot, he lifted the boy from the saddle, as a child would handle a toy, and shouted aloud in his own language, “Viva el Duque de Inglatierra y el Marinero, Hernan de Faro.”
The dangers Richard had run, and the delight she experienced in seeing him, when again under her roof, stopped all Madeline’s reproaches. “Is he not worthy all my fears?” she said to her husband, who stood eyeing the boy as he caressed his daughter. De Faro stretched out his hand, saying, “Will you, Señor Don Ricardo, accept my services, and my vow to protect you till the death, so help me the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Trinity.”
De Faro was a mariner who had sailed in the service of the King of Portugal, along the unsounded shores of Africa, and sought beyond the equator a route to the spicy Indian land. His dark skin was burnt to a nearly negro die; his black curled hair, his beard and mustachios of the same dusky hue, half hid his face; his brow somewhat lowered over eyes dark as night; but, when he smiled, his soft mouth and pearly teeth, softened the harshness of his physiognomy, and he looked gentle and kind. Every nerve, every muscle, had been worn and hardened by long toilsome navigation; his strong limbs had withstood the tempest, his hands held unmoved the cordage, which the whirlwind strove vainly to tear from his grasp. He was a tower of a man; yet withal one, to whom the timid and endangered would recur for refuge, secure of his generosity and dauntless nature. He heard the story of Richard’s dangers; his plan was formed swiftly: he said, “If you choose, Sir Prince, to await your foes here, I am ready, having put these girls in safety, to barricade the doors, and with arquebus and sword to defend you to the last: but there is a safer and better way for us all. I am come to claim my Madeline and our child, and to carry them with me to my native Spain. My vessel now rides off Ostend. I had meant to make greater preparation, and to have laid up some weeks here before we went on our home-bound voyage; but, as it is, let us depart to-night.”
The door suddenly opened as he spoke — Madeline shrieked — Richard sprung upon his feet, while de Faro rose more slowly, placing himself like a vast buttress of stone before the intruder. It was Clifford.
“All is safe for the night,” he cried; “your Grace has a few hours the start, and but a few; dally not here!”
Again the discussion of whither he should fly was renewed, and the Duke spoke of Brussels — of his aunt. “Of poison and pit-falls,” cried Robert; “think you, boy, as you are, and under pardon, no conjuror, that the King will not contrive your destruction?”
Probably self-interested motives swayed Clifford; but he entered warmly into de Faro’s idea of hastening to the sea-coast, and of sailing direct for Spain. “In a few years you will be a man — in a few years—”
“Forgotten! Yes — I may go; but a few months shall mark my return. I go on one condition; that you, Clifford, watch for the return of my cousin, Sir Edmund, and direct him where to find me.”
“I will not fail. Sir Mariner, whither are you bound?”
“To Malaga
.”
And now, urged and quickened by Clifford, who promised to attend to all that this sudden resolve left incomplete, the few arrangements for their departure were made. Favoured by night, and the Prince’s perfect knowledge of the country, they were speedily on their way to Ostend. Clifford returned to Lisle, to mark and enjoy Frion’s rage and Fitzwater’s confusion, when, on the morrow, the quarry was found to have stolen from its lair. Without a moment’s delay, the Secretary followed, he hoped, upon his track: he directed his steps to Brussels. A letter meanwhile from Ostend, carefully worded, informed Clifford of the arrival and embarkation of his friends: again he was reminded of Plantagenet; nor had he long to wait before he fulfilled this last commission.
Edmund had found the Lady Margaret glad to receive tidings of her nephew; eager to ensure his safety and careful bringing up, but dispirited by the late overthrow, and deeply grieved by the death of the noble and beloved Lincoln; no attack could now be made; it would be doubly dangerous to bring forward the young Richard at this juncture. She commissioned Plantagenet to accompany him to Brussels that she might see him; and then they could confer upon some fitting plan for the privacy and security of his future life, until maturer age fitted him to enter on his destined struggles.
Edmund returned with brightened hopes to Tournay, to find the cottage deserted, his friends gone. It may easily be imagined that this unexpected blank was a source of terror, almost of despair to the adventurer. He feared to ask questions, and when he did propound a few, the answers only increased his perplexity and fears. It was not until his third hopeless visit to the empty dwelling, that he met a stripling page, who with an expression of slyness in his face, spoke the watchword of the friends of York. Edmund gladly exchanged the countersign, and then the boy asked him, whether he called himself cousin to the fugitive Duke of York, laughing the while at the consternation his auditor exhibited at the utterance of this hidden and sacred word: “You come to seek your prince,” he continued, “and wonder whither he may be flown, and what corner of earth’s wilderness affords him an abode. He is now, by my calculations, tossing about in a weatherbeaten caravel, commanded by Hernan de Faro, in the Bay of Biscay; in another month he may anchor in the port of Malaga; and the dark-eyed girls of Andalusia will inform you in what nook of their sunny land the fair-haired son of England dwells. The King is defeated, master Frion balked, and Lord Fitzwater gone on a bootless errand: the White Rose flourishes free as those that bloom in our Kentish hedges.”
Without waiting for a reply, but with his finger on his lip to repel further speech, the youth vaulted on his horse, and was out of sight in a moment. Edmund doubted for some time whether he should act upon this singular communication. He endeavoured to learn who his informant was, and at last became assured that it was Robert Clifford, a young esquire in Lord Fitzwater’s train. He was the younger son of the Lord Clifford who fell for Lancaster at the battle of St. Alban’s. By birth, by breeding he was of the Red Rose, yet it was evident that his knowledge was perfect as to the existence of the Duke of York; and the return of Lord Fitzwater and King Henry’s secretary to Lisle, disappointed and foiled, served to inspire confidence in the information he had bestowed. After much reflection Plantagenet resolved to visit Paris, where he knew that the brother of Madeline, old John Warbeck, then sojourned; and, if he did not gain surer intelligence from him, to proceed by way of Bordeaux to Spain.
CHAPTER XI.
A day will come when York shall claim his own;
Then York be still a while, till time do serve.
— SHAKSPEARE.
The further Edmund journeyed from the late abode of his lost cousin, the more he felt displeased at the step he had taken; but on his arrival in Paris his uncertainty ended. War-beck had received intimation of the hurried embarkation of his sister, and here also he found Lady Brampton, whose husband had taken refuge in Paris after the battle of Stoke. Like the Queen Dowager, the fate of Margaret of Anjou’s son haunted this lady, and she warmly espoused the idea of bringing the Duke of York up in safe obscurity, until his own judgment might lead him to choose another line of action, or the opposing politics of Europe promised some support to his cause. She agreed to repair herself to Brussels, to take counsel with the Duchess, to use all her influence and arts, and as soon as time was ripe to proceed herself to Spain to announce it to the Prince. Meanwhile Plantagenet, following his former purpose, would take up his abode with Richard in Spain; teach him the science of arms, and the more difficult lessons of courage, self-command, and prudent conduct. In pursuance of this plan, Edmund lost no time in going to Bordeaux, whence he embarked for Malaga, and following his friend’s steps, arrived shortly after him at the retreat de Faro had chosen among the foldings of the mountains on the borders of Andalusia.
De Faro’s was a singular history. In those days that part of Andalusia which comprised the kingdom of Granada, was the seat of perpetual wars, and even when armies did not meet to deluge its fertile plains and valleys with their blood, troops led by noble cavaliers and illustrious commanders overran its districts in search of plunder and glory. During one of these incursions, in the year 1452, some impulse of religion or humanity made a Spanish soldier snatch from a couch in the country-house of a noble wealthy Moor, already half consumed, an infant hardly a year old; the band was already in full retreat, and, fortunately, this incident took place on the very frontiers of Granada, or the benevolence of the soldier would hardly have been proof against the trouble his little charge occasioned him. Toiling up the mountains on their return to the kingdom of Jaen, they entered the little town of Alcala-la-Real, where on the side of the mountainous road rose the walls of a monastery. “How better,” thought the soldier, “save the soul of this boy than by giving him to the monks?” It was not perhaps the present they would most readily have selected, but compassion and piety forbade them to refuse it: the little Moor became a Christian by the name of Hernan, and was brought up within the sacred precincts of the convent. Though the monks were able to make a zealous Catholic of their nursling, they did not succeed so well in taming his fiery spirit, nor could they induce him to devote himself to the inactive and mortifying life of a priest. Yet he was generous and daring, and thus acquired their affection; next to being a recluse vowed to God, the vocation of a soldier for the faith, in the eyes of these holy men, was to be selected. Hernan advancing in life, and shooting up into strong and premature manhood, was recommended by the Abbot to his cousin, the illustrious Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Marquess of Cadiz. He fought several times under his banners, and in the year 1471 entered with him the kingdom of Granada, and was wounded at the taking of Cardela. In this last action it was, that a sudden horror of taking up arms against his countrymen sprung up in Hernan’s breast. He quitted Spain in consequence; and, visiting Lisbon, he was led to embrace a sea-faring life, and entered the marine service of the king of Portugal; at one time visiting Holland, where he sought and won the hand of Madeline: and afterwards, with Bartholomew Diaz, he made one of the crew that discovered the Cape of Good Hope. He sailed with three vessels, one of which lost company of the others, and its crew underwent various and dreadful perils at sea, and from the blacks on land: after nine months they again fell in with their companions, three sailors only remaining. One of these was Hernan de Faro; his skill, valour, and fortitude had saved the vessel; he was exalted to its command, and now, in safer voyage over seas more known, he had freighted it with the fugitives from Tournay.
During all his wanderings, even in the gay and rich Portugal, Hernan turned with fond regret to his mountain home. To its rugged peaks, its deep and silent dells; its torrents, its verdure, its straggling and precipitous paths; its prospect over the rich and laughing Vega of Granada. He had promised himself, after weary toils, a long repose in this beloved spot; and hither he now led his wife, resolving to set up his tent for ever in the land of his childhood, his happy childhood. It was a strange place to choose, bordering on Granada, which at that time was as lists
in which Death and Havock sat umpires. But the situation of Alcala-la-Real preserved it secure, notwithstanding its dangerous neighbourhood. It was perched high upon the mountain, overlooking a plain which had been for many years the scene of ruthless carnage and devastation, being in itself an asylum for fugitives — a place of rest for the victor — an eagle’s nest, unassailable by the vultures of the plain.
Here then Plantagenet found his cousin; here in lovely and romantic Spain. Though defaced and torn by war, Andalusia presented an aspect of rich and various beauty, intoxicating to one whose life had been spent in the plains of England, or the dull flats of Flanders. The purple vineyards; the olive plantations clothing the burning hill-side; the groves of mulberry, cork, pomegranate, and citron, that diversified the fertile vegas or plains; the sweet flowing rivers, with their banks adorned by scarlet geranium and odoriferous myrtle, made this spot Nature’s own favoured garden, a paradise unequalled upon earth. On such a scene did the mountainhome of the exiles look down. Alcala too had beauties of her own. Ilex and pine woods clothed the defiles of the rugged Sierra, which stretched far and wide, torn by winter torrents into vast ravines; variegated by a thousand intersecting lines, formed by the foldings of the hills; the clouds found a home on the lofty summits; the wandering mists crept along the abrupt precipices; alternate light and shadow, rich in purple and golden hues, arrayed each rocky peak or verdant slope in radiance all their own.