by Mary Shelley
The capricious, but really noble heart of the Scottish King was at this time put to a hard trial. One of the preliminaries of peace, most insisted upon by Henry, was, that his rival should be given up to him: — this was, at the word, refused. But even to dismiss him from his kingdom, seemed so dastardly an act towards one allied to him by his own choice, that the swelling heart of the cavalier could not yet tame itself to the statesman’s necessity. Some of his subjects, meanwhile, were ready enough to cut the Gordian knot by which he was entangled. Tudor had many emissaries in Edinburgh; and Lord Moray, Lord Buchan, and the dark Bothwell, whose enmity had become fierce personal hate, were still egged on by various letters and messages from England to some deed of sanguinary violence.
Sir John Ramsay was sought out by Frion. That goodly diplomatist must have entertained a high opinion of his mollifying eloquence, when he dared encounter the hot temper of him he had dishonoured in the eyes of the English Prince, and of his own countryman Hamilton. But Frion knew that in offering revenge he bought pardon: he was of little mark in Ramsay’s eyes, while the man he had injured, and whom he consequently detested beyond every other, survived to tell the grating tale of the defeated villany of the assassin, and the godlike magnanimity of him who pardoned.
Frion’s own feelings, which had vacillated, were now fixed to betray the Prince. He had wavered, because he had a kind of personal affection for the noble adventurer. Somehow he managed to fancy him a creature of his own: he had worked so long, and at one time so well for him, that he had fostered the vain belief that his dearest hopes, and best pretensions, would vanish like morning mist, if he blew unkindly on them. It was not so: James had been his friend: Huntley had given him his daughter without his interference; and the Irish project, with Keating at its head, who treated Frion with galling contempt, filled up the measure of his discontents. If anything else had been needed, the Lady Katherine’s favour to Astley, and some offices of trust in which York himself had used him, sufficed to add the last sting to malice. “If they will not let me make, they shall rue the day when I shall mar; learn shall they, that Frion can clip an eagle’s wings even in its pride of flight.”
It is common to say that there is honour among thieves and villains. It is not honour; but an acknowledged loss of shame and conscience, and a mutual trust in the instinctive hatred the bad must bear the good, which strongly unites them. In spite of the Frenchman’s former treachery, Balmayne felt that he could now confide, that his guilt would stretch far enough to encircle in its embrace the very act he desired; and he again trusted, and used him as the chief agent of his plots.
The Earl of Surrey was ravaging Scotland; and King James, with the chivalrous spirit of the times, challenged him to single combat. The Earl, in answer, refused to place his master’s interests at the hazard of his single prowess, though ready for any other cause to accept the honour tendered him. The herald that brought this reply, Frion reported to Richard to be charged with a letter to him. Its purpose was to declare, that though, while aided and comforted by the enemies of England, the Earl warred against him, yet the Howard remembered the ancient attachments of his house; and that, if the White Rose, wholly renouncing the Scotch, would trust to the honour of the representative of a race of nobles, the army now in the field to his detriment should be turned to an engine of advantage. “Time pressed,” the letter concluded by saying—”and if the Duke of York were willing to give his sails to the favouring wind, let him repair with a small company to Greenock, where he would find zealous and powerful friends.”
At first this intimation filled the Prince with exultation and delight. The time was at last come when he should lead the native nobility of England to the field, and meet his enemy in worthy guise. There was but one check; he could not join Surrey, while Surrey was in arms against his once generous friend; so that, by a strange shifting of events, he now became anxious for peace between Scotland and England; eager that the seal should be set that destroyed the alliance and amity which had so lately been the sole hope of his life. Neville and Plantagenet entered into his views; and, while seemingly at the bottom of Fortune’s scale, a new spirit of gladness animated this little knot of Englishmen.
For one thing young Richard was not prepared: the preliminaries of peace he knew were arranged, and he was aware that its conclusion would take the sword out of James’s hand. They had rarely met lately; and this, while it lessened the familiarity, rather added to the apparent kindness of their interviews. There was in both these young Princes a genuine warmth of heart, and brightness of spirit, that drew them close whenever they did meet. James honoured the integrity and the unconquered soul of the outcast monarch, while his own genius, his vivacity, and polished courtesy, in spite of his caprice and late falling off, spread a charm around that forced admiration and affection even from him he injured. It was at this period, that, notwithstanding their real disunion, Richard felt it as strange to find his royal host confused in manner, and backward of speech. They had been at a hunting party, where Lord Moray’s haughty glance of triumph, and the sneer that curled the Earl of Buchan’s lip, would have disclosed some victory gained by them, had York deigned to regard their aspects. At length, after much hesitation, while riding apart from his peers, James asked—”If there were any news from the Lady Margaret of Burgundy?”
“Sir Roderick Lalayne returned to her a month ago,” replied York, “and with him went my dear and zealous Lady Brampton, to urge fresh succour for one, to whom fortune has so long shown a wintry face, that methinks spring must at last be nigh at hand, herald of bright, blossoming summer.”
“What promises then my lady Duchess?” said the King, eagerly.
“Alas! her promises are as blank as her power,” replied Richard. “Even when the old Dukes of Burgundy were as Emperors in Christendom, they were but as provosts and city-magistrates in the free towns of Flanders; and these towns resolve on peace with England.”
“It is the cry of the world,” said James with a sigh; “this Tudor is a mighty man. Why, even I, a Scot, a warrior, and a king, am forced to join the universal voice, and exclaim, ‘Peace with England,’ even though my honour is the sacrifice.”
“Your Majesty imparts no strange truth to me,” said York. “I have long known that this must be; but surely you speak in soreness of spirit, when you speak of the sacrifice of honour. I thought the terms agreed on were favourable to Scotland.”
“King Henry demanded, in the first place, the delivery of your. Highness into his hands.” James blushed deeply as he said these words.
“Or he will come seize me,” rejoined the Duke, with a laugh. “In good hour. I will deliver myself, if he will walk through the bristling lances, and set at naught the wide-mouthed cannon that will below in his path.”
“Have you then new hopes?” cried the King; “Oh! say but so; and half my shame, and all my sorrow vanishes. Say that you have hope of speedy good in some other country; for I have sworn, ere April wear into May, Scotland shall be made poor by your Highness’s absence.”
A long pause followed these words. James felt as if he had given words to his own concealed dishonour, and struck his iron-girdled side with the bitter thought. “O! spirit of my father, this may not atone; but I must pay also in shame and torturous self-contempt for my heavy guilt.” A sudden blow, a precipitous fall when unaware his feet had reached the crumbling brink of a beetling precipice, would not have made such commotion in Richard’s heart, as the forced and frightful conviction that the friend he had trusted heaped this insult on him. For the first time in his life perhaps, pride conquered every other feeling; for reproach had been more friendly, than the spirit that impelled him, with a placid voice, and a glance of haughty condescension, to reply:—”Now that your Majesty dismisses me, I find it fittest season to thank you heartily for your many favours. That you deny me to the suit of your new ally, and send me forth scaithless from your kingdom, is the very least of these. Shall I forget that, when, a wanderer and a stranger,
I came hither, you were a brother to me? That when an outcast from the world, Scotland became a home of smiles, and its King my dearest friend? These are lesser favours; for your love was of more value to me than your power, though you used it for my benefit; and, when you gave me the Lady Katherine, I incurred such a debt of gratitude, that it were uncancelled, though you cast me, bound hand and foot, at Tudor’s footstool. That I am bankrupt even in thanks, is my worst misery; yet, if the eye of favour, which I believe Fortune is now opening on me, brighten into noon-day splendour, let James of Scotland ask, and, when England shall be added to his now barren name, Richard will give, though it were himself.”
“Gentle cousin,” replied the King, “you gloss with horrid words a bitter pill to both; for though the skaithe seem yours, mine is the punishment. I lose what I can ill spare, a kinsman, and a friend.”
“Never!” cried York; “Scotland bids a realmless monarch, a beggar prince, depart: the King of Scotland, moved by strong state-necessity is no longer the ally of the disinherited orphan of Edward the Fourth: but James is Richard’s friend; he will rejoice, when he sees him, borne with the flowing tide, rise from lowness to the highest top at which he aims. And now, dear my Lord, grant me one other boon. I am about to depart, even of my own will; dismiss then every rankling feeling; lay no more to your generous, wounded heart a need, which is even more mine than yours; but let smiles and love attend your kinsman to the end, unalloyed by a deeper regret, than that fate wills it, and we must separate.”
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER I.
‘I am your wife.
No human power can or shall divorce.
My faith from duty.
— FORD.
— With
My fortune and my seeming destiny.
He made the bond, and broke it not with me.
No human tie is snapped betwixt us two.
— SCHILLER’S WALLENSTEIN.
Frion believed that he held the strings, which commanded the movements of all the puppets about him. The intrigues of party, the habitual use of ill-means to what those around him deemed a good end, had so accustomed him to lying and forgery, that his conscience was quite seared to the iniquity of these acts; truth to him was an accident, to be welcomed or not according as it was or was not advantageous to his plots.
King James prepared a fleet for the conveyance of the Prince; and the Earl of Huntley, as a matter of course, promised to entertain his daughter royally, until, in a palace in Westminster, she should find her destined title and fit abode. The Lady Katherine thanked him, but declared that she was nothing moved from her bridal vow, and that she never would desert Richard’s side. All that her father urged was of no avail. State and dignity, or their contraries, humiliation and disgrace, could only touch her through her husband; he was her exalter or debaser, even as he rose or fell; it was too late now to repine at degradation, which it ill-beseemed the daughter of a Gordon to encounter; it was incurred when she plighted her faith at the altar; wherever she was, it must be hers. As a princess she was lost or redeemed by her husband’s fortunes. As a woman, her glory and all her honour must consist in never deviating from the strait line of duty, which forbade her absence from his side.
The Earl disdained to reason with a fond doating girl, as he called the constant-minded lady, but applied to the King, representing how it would redound to his discredit, should a princess of his blood wander a vagrant beggar over sea and land. James had passed his royal word to Katherine, that she should have her will on this point; and when, at her father’s suit he tried to dissuade her, he was at once silenced by her simple earnest words; “Ask me not,” she said, “to place myself on the list of unworthy women: for your own honour’s sake, royal cousin, permit your kinswoman to perform a wife’s part unopposed. You and my father bestowed me, a dutiful subject, an obedient daughter, according to your will; you transferred my duty and obedience, and truly as I paid it to you, so will I keep it for my lord.”
“What can we reply, my good Earl Marshall,” said James, turning to Huntley, “I rebelled against the religion through which I reign, did I deny our sweet Kate free allowance to follow the dictates of her generous heart. Nor let us grudge the White Rose this one fair bloom. Love, such as Katherine feels, love, and the dearest, best gift of God — alas! too oft denied to poor humanity, and most to me — self-complacency, arising from a good conscience, will repay her every sacrifice.”
Huntley retired in high indignation; his will was opposed; his word, which he deemed a law, had but a feather’s weight. The blood of the Gordon was stirred to rage; and he broke forth in fierce and cruel expressions of anger, calling his daughter, ingrate — her lord base, and a traitor. Such muttered curses were reported to Lord Buchan: in the scheme on foot they had somewhat dreaded to incur Huntley’s displeasure and revenge; knowing how dearly he prized the hope of royalty for his daughter; but now they fancied that they might draw him in, ere he was aware, to approve their deed. The crafty Frion was set on to sound him; the iron was hot, most easily, to their eyes, it took the desired form.
Huntley was a Scot, cunning even when angry — cautious when most passionate. The first intimations of the conspiracy were greedily received by him. He learnt the falsehood of the letter pretending to come from the Earl of Surrey; and the use that was to be made of this decoy to seize on the Duke of York’s person. He did not scruple to promise his assistance; he reiterated his angry imprecations against his unworthy son-in-law; he thanked Frion with cordial warmth for affording him this opportunity for revenge; he declared his gratitude towards the confederate nobles; and the Frenchman left him, with the full belief that he was ready to lend his best aid to deliver over the English Prince to ignominy and death.
Such was the end of King Henry’s last scheme to obtain possession of his too noble, too excelling rival, by means of Scottish fraud, and the treason of York’s dependents. The Earl of Huntley conducted the whole affair with the utmost secresy. Apparently he acted the part designed for him by the conspirators. He reconciled himself to the prince; he urged an instant compliance with Surrey’s invitation. The English had asked for some guarantee of Surrey’s truth. Huntley obviated this difficulty. Through his intervention a new and sufficing impulse was given. Richard appointed the day when he should repair to Greenock, there to meet the envoy who was to lead him to Lord Surrey’s presence. In the harbour of Greenock rode the bark which was to convey him to his English prison. King Henry’s hirelings were already there; Frion conducted the victims blindfold into the net: they had meant to have gathered together a troop of ruffian borderers to prevent all resistance; but Huntley promised to be there himself with a band of Highlanders. The whole thing only seemed too easy, too secure.
The wily secretary had overshot his mark in taking so readily for granted Huntley’s assent to the ruin of the Duke of York. He had come upon him in his angry hour: his honied words were a dew of poison; his adjurations for peace, oil to fire. Then, as the noble strode through the hall, imprecating vengeance, he slid in words that made him stop in full career. Men are apt to see their wishes mirrored in the object before them; and, when the Earl bent his grey eyes upon the Provençal and knit his time-furrowed brow in attention and interest, Frion saw the satisfaction of a man on the brink of dear revenge. He was far a-field. The very rage in which the Earl had indulged, by a natural reaction, softened him towards his children: and, when the traitor spoke of schemes ripe to deliver York into his adversary’s hands, he recoiled at once from the path of vengeance opened before him, and listened with horror to the detail of a conspiracy which would tear the very shadow of a diadem from his daughter’s brow; yet he listened, and his words still enticed the over wily Frion. “Balmayne,” said the Earl, “all must succeed, even to the death. Where he intermeddles, he is ruthless;” thus ran his comments: “My good Lord Buchan, what the Foul Fiend makes him so busy? English gold! Yes: Buchan loves the gilding better than the strong iron that it hides. The honour of the royal
house, my most reverend uncle! Is his animosity so stirring? Oh! priests are your only haters. So Richard’s tale is told. The chroniclers will speak of Duke Perkin, of the canker that ate out the heart of Gordon’s fair rose, the gibbet, instead of a throne, to which she was wed; a fair eminence! My Kate will hardly ascend it with him: she must halt at the gallows’ foot.” These words, said with bitterness, seemed to Frion the boiling sarcasm of an exasperated parent. The man’s vanity was the trap in which he was caught: he could not believe that a savage Scot, an untaught Highlander, could enter the lists with one nurtured in the subtle atmosphere of Provence, with the pupil of Louis the Eleventh; a man schooled in eastern lore, who had passed a whole life of contrivance and deceit.
The Scottish nobles, Moray, Buchan, and Bothwell, were satisfied in having given their countenance to the English hirelings; and, now that the more powerful Huntley promised to watch over the execution of their designs, they were glad enough to withdraw from the rude and inhospitable act. Huntley had every thing in his own hands. He, with a party of Highlanders, escorted the Duke and Duchess of York, with their friends and attendants, to Greenock. Frion had never shown himself so humble or so courteous; he seemed afraid that any one of his victims should escape: he was particularly anxious to entice his old enemy, the Prior of Kilmainham, into the snare. His readiness and vivacity were remarked by all: it was attributed to the high hopes he entertained of his royal master’s success through the alliance of the Earl of Surrey; and, while York expressed his affectionate approbation, he smiled blandly, and painted every feature in the very colouring he wished it to wear.
The vessel rode at anchor; the English sailors, on the arrival of York, went on board, got her under weigh, and dropt down the coast. With the dawn Lord Howard of Effingham, with a chosen troop, was, according to the false hopes of Richard, to arrive at the rendezvous, a wood about two miles south of the town, bordering the sands of the sea. Here the English emissaries were congregated, and here a score of Highlanders were in ambush, to assist in the capture of the White Rose. Hither, even before dawn, the wakeful Frion came, to announce the speedy arrival of his lord. He found his English friends in some anxiety. Clifford, who, under the name of Wiatt, had been chief among them, was seized with panic or remorse, and had gone on board the vessel, which had cast anchor but a few furlongs from the shore. The others were mean underlings: Frion’s presence gave them courage; he was elated; his laugh was free; he had neither doubt nor scruple; no, not even when he turned from the vulgar, brutalized countenances of these ruffians, to behold the princely victim in all the splendour of innocence, with one beside him so lovely, that the spirit of good itself had selected her form for its best earthly bower; or to see Edmund, whose dark eyes beamed with unknown joy, and Neville, whose haughty glance was exchanged for a glad smile. The man’s sole thought was exultation at his own cleverness and success, in having inveigled so many of the noble and the brave to this dark fate.