by Mary Shelley
She understood not what — a kind of wooden machine in which the lord of her heart sat. There had been a time when pride and royal majesty of soul had shed such grandeur over York, that, when exposed as a show, he had excited reverence, not scoffing. Now he was evidently labouring under great physical suffering; his brow was streaked with mortal paleness, his cheeks were colourless; his fair hair fell in disordered ringlets round his youthful but wan countenance; he leaned his head against the side of the machine; his eyes were half shut; it was not shame, but suffering, that weighed upon their lids, and diffused an air of languor and pain over his whole person. Katherine hastened towards him, she knelt on the unworthy earth at his side, she kissed his chained hands. “You are ill, my love; my ever dear Richard, what has happened? for you are very ill.”
Rouzed by such music from the lethargy that oppressed him, yet still overcome, he replied, “Yes; and I do believe that all will soon end, and that I am stricken to the death.”
She grew pale; she called him cruel; asking him how he could dream of leaving her, who was a part of him, alone in the desolate world. “Because,” he answered with a faint smile, “the world is kind to all, save me. No taint, dear love, attaches itself to your name; no ill will mark your fate, when you are no longer linked to such a thing as I. God has spoken, and told me that this earth is no dwelling for one, who, from his cradle to this last shame, has been fortune’s step-child, and her despised toy. How often have I been dragged to the utmost verge of life: I have felt indignation, anger, despair: now I am resigned; I feel the hand of the Mighty One on me, and I bow to it. In very truth, I am subdued; I sleep away the weary hours, and death will end them all.”
With every expression of tenderness, Katherine endeavoured to recall him to life and to herself. She spoke of another escape, which it would be her care to achieve, of the solitude, of the paradise of love they would enjoy together. “My poor girl,” he replied, “teach your young heart to seek these blessings apart from me: I were the very wretch Tudor stigmatizes me, could I live under a memory like this. Forget me, my White Rose; paint with gaudier colours the sickly emblem of my fortunes; forget, that, duped by some strange forgery, you were wedded to — Perkin Warbeck.”
In spite of himself large drops gathered in his eyes, swelling the downcast lids, and then stealing down. Katherine kissed them from his cheek: “a thousand times more noble, royal, godlike, she called him; had not the best and worthiest suffered ignominious punishment; even our blessed Lord himself? His own acknowledgment alone could disgrace him; he must recal the false words wrung from his agony; this last vile act of his enemy must awaken each sovereign on his throne to indignation; each would see in him a mirror of what might befal themselves, if fallen. James, her royal Cousin, roused by her, should resent the stigma affixed to his kinsman.”
“For your own sake, sweet, do so; my soul dying within me is alive again with indignation, to think that your plighted wedded love is he, who is exposed to contumely; but for that, me-thinks, I would call myself by that wretched name I dared pronounce, so that the annals of the House of York escaped this stain: yet even thus I seem more closely allied to them; for violent death, treachery, and ill have waited on each descendant of Mortimer; my grandfather bore a paper crown in shame upon his kingly brow.”
He was interrupted by the officer, who unclosed the instrument of disgrace. Richard, weak and failing, was assisted to rise; Katherine supported him as a young mother her feeble offspring; she twined her arms round him as his prop, and, in spite of misery, was enraptured once again to see, to hear, to touch him from whom she had been absent so long. “This is not well; it must not be; his Majesty will be much displeased,” said the chief of the guard, witnessing the compassion her tender care inspired, “You must return to the palace, Lady.”
“One little step,” pleaded Katherine; “if I should never see him more, how should I curse your cruelty! I will not speak, as I half thought I would to these good people, to tell them that they may well honour him a Princess loves: drag me not away yet — one more good bye! — farewell, noble York, Kate’s only love; — we meet again; this parting is but mockery.”
She wept on his bosom; the sound of wailing arose in the crowd; the Prince’s eyes alone were dry; he whispered comfort to her; he promised to live, to baffle his foe again for her sake; the words revived her, and she saw him depart with hope, with new joy kindled in her bosom.
There had been another, the public gaze, till Katherine came to draw all eyes to a newer wonder. An emaciated, pale woman, in a garb of penury, who knelt, telling her beads beside York’s prison; her face was hid; but her hands were thin and white to ghastliness; during the last scene she had sobbed to agony, and now as the place cleared, went her way silently, with slow, feeble steps. Many marked her with surprize and curiosity; few knew that she was the Jane Shore, whose broken heart whispered misery, as she thought that she beheld King Edward’s guilt, in which she had shared, visited on his son. This cruel lesson of religion was a canker in her heart, and most true it was, as far as regarded her royal lover, that his light loves, and careless playing with sacred ties, had caused the blot of base birth to be affixed to his legitimate offspring, and so strewed the sad way that led them to untimely death.
Henry, cruel as he was, had not the courage to encounter his insulted prisoner on her return. Katherine’s feelings were wrought too high for any display of passion; her anxiety was spent on how she could sooth York’s wounded feelings, and restore his health; it were vain to ask, she feared; yet, if the King would permit her to attend on him, under whatever restrictions, they should be obeyed; and this while poor Elizabeth besought her pardon with tears, for being the wife of her insolent adversary. She, a proud Plantagenet, was more sorely stung than the White Rose, by the indignity offered to her house; and she intreated her not to love her brother less because of this foul disgrace. “So doing,” said the quick-sighted Queen, “you fulfil his dearest wish. While you are Richard’s loving wife, he, even he, the fallen and humiliated, is an object of envy to his Majesty, who sought, by making you witness his ignominy, to detach you from him.”
“How strange a mistake,” replied Katherine, “for one so sage as the King: the lower my sweet Richard falls, the more need he surely has of me. But that love, such as ours, knits us too indivisibly to admit a reciprocity of benefit, I should say that it is to make me rich indeed, to enable me to bestow, to lavish good on my Lord; but we are one, and I but give to myself, and myself receive, if my weakness is of any strength to him. Dear sister mine, your liege, wise as he may be, is a tyro in our woman’s lore — in the mysteries of devoted love; he never felt one inspiration of the mighty sprite.”
This was not quite true. For some few days Henry had been so inspired; but love, an exotic in his heart, degenerated from being a fair, fragrant flower, into a wild, poisonous weed. Love, whose essence is the excess of sympathy, and consequently of self-abandonment and generosity, when it alights on an unworthy soil, appears there at first in all its native bloom, a very wonder even to the heart in which it has taken root. The cold, selfish, narrow-hearted Richmond was lulled to some slight forgetfulness of self, when first he was fascinated by Katherine, and he decked himself with ill-assorted virtues to merit her approbation. This lasted but a brief interval; the uncongenial clime in which the new plant grew, impregnated it with its own poison. Envy, arrogance, base desire to crush the fallen, were his natural propensities; and, when love refused to minister to these, it changed to something like hate in his bosom; it excited his desire to have power over her, if not for her good, then for her bane.
The Duke of York was imprisoned in the Tower. No further measures were apparently in action against him. Katherine no longer hoped any thing from her foe; and day and night there lay beneath her eye-lids the image of Richard, wasting and dying in captivity. Something must be done, some aid afforded him; she was anxious also to learn the details of his flight, and how again he fell into the hands of his
foe. Monina, who in a thousand disguises had been used to penetrate every where, was seen no more. Still public report informed her of many things.
It was known, that Sir Robert Clifford, the old spy and traitor of the White Rose, had become aware of the measures taken by York’s adherents to insure his escape from England. He had followed him down the river, and by a knowledge of the signs and countersigns of the party, decoyed him into a boat that was to convey his victim back to his prison-house. The deceit was discovered, and a mortal struggle ensured on board the tiny bark; it sunk, and many perished, Clifford among the rest. On the morrow his body was found upon the beach, stiff and stark; a gaping wound in his neck showed that the waters alone had not been his foe; in his clenched hand he grasped a mass of golden hairs, severed by some sharp implement from the head to which they grew: as if nought else could liberate his enemy from his hold. There he lay, bold Robin Clifford, the dauntless, wily boy, hunted through life by his own fell passions, envy, cupidity, and libertinism; they had tracked him to this death; his falsehood were now mute, his deceptions passed away; he could never more win by his smiles, or stab by his lying words; death alone had a share in him, death and the cold sands beneath which he was interred, leaving a name, the mark of scorn, the symbol of treachery.
They had struggled beneath the strangling waves, Richard and his adversary. The Prince was wounded in the scuffle, and became enfeebled almost to insensibility before he could sever from his enemy’s grasp the fair locks he clutched — he swam away, as well as he might, and, with the instinct of self-preservation, made for the shore — he forgot, that England was a wide prison — he only strove to master the fate which beat him to the ground. He reached the sands — he sought the covert of some near underwood, and threw himself upon the earth in blind thankfulness; exhausted, almost inanimate, he lay there, given up only to the sense of repose, and safety from death, which visited his failing heart with a strange sense of pleasure.
The following morning was far advanced, before he could rouse himself from this lethargy. He looked upon the waters; but the Adalid was no more to be seen — he was quite alone; he needed succour; and none was afforded him. Well he knew that every field, lane, dingle and copse swarmed with enemies, and he shuddered at the likelihood that unarmed, and weak as he was, he should fall into their hands. He desired to reach London again as his sole refuge; and he journeyed, as he hoped, towards it, all unknowing of the route. No way-worn traveller in savage lands, pursued by barbarous enemies, ever suffered more than the offspring of Edward the Fourth amidst the alienated fields of his paternal kingdom. Cold and rain succeeded to the pleasant summer weather: — during night he lay exposed to the tempests — during day he toiled on, his limbs benumbed, his heart wasted by hunger and fatigue; yet never, at the head of the Scottish chivalry, never in Burgundy or in England, did he feel more resolute not to submit, but, baffling fortune and his enemy’s power, to save himself in spite of fate. He had wandered far inland, and knew not where he was — he had indeed passed beyond London, and got up as high as Barnes. It was the fourth day from that of his escape — he had tasted little food, and no strength remained in him, except that which gave energy to his purpose. He found himself on a wide, heathy common, studded with trees, or desolately open — the rainy day closed, and a bleak east wind swept over the plain, and curled the leaden coloured waters of the river — his love of life, his determination not to yield, quailed before the physical miseries of his lot; for some few moments, he thought that he would lie down and die.
At this time another human figure appeared upon the scene. A Benedictine lay-brother, who in the freedom of solitude, in defiance of wind and rain, trolled a ditty, fitter for a ruffling swaggerer’s bonnet, than a monk’s cowl. He started not a little, on perceiving our wanderer leaning against the scathed trunk of a solitary tree; nor less did he wonder when he recognised the fallen Prince. It was Heron himself, the magnanimous mercer, who having effected his escape with a well-hoarded purse, contrived to introduce himself into the house of Bethlem, at Shene, which was called the Priory. He was a little frightened to perceive his ancient leader; but pity succeeded to fear; and with many fair words and persuasions he induced him to permit himself to be conducted to the Priory. There, since he believed himself to be dying, he might receive the last sacraments — there perhaps, for some few minutes, he might again behold his Katherine.
Thus was the fugitive again led within the pale of his enemy’s power. The Prior, a man esteemed for holiness, did not delay to make his sovereign acquainted with the capture of his rival. His awe of Katharine having vanished, Henry was left at liberty to follow the ungenerous dictates of his groveling spirit. Many a courtier, true man or false, counselled the death of the aspiring youth; and they praised their master’s magnanimity, when he rejected this advice, and in lieu exposed him, whom he knew to be the descendant of a line of kings, to beggarly disgrace. Thus worn and weak, the ill-fated son of York was made a public spectacle of infamy. But Henry went a step too far; and, when he thrust the Scottish Princess forward on the scene, he turned defeat to triumph.
He was not to die — but rather to pine out a miserable existence — or had the sage monarch any other scheme? The high-spirited Prince was to be cooped up within the Tower — there, where the Earl of Warwick wasted his wretched life. Did he imagine that the resolved and ardent soul of Richard would, on its revival, communicate a part of its energy to the son of Clarence, and that ere long they would be enveloped in one ruin? Some words had transpired that appeared to reveal such an intention; and his order to the Lieutenant of the Tower, that, without permitting, he should connive at any covert intercourse between the two — his recommendation of a noted spy and hireling to a high trust, and the order this fellow had to bring each day intelligence to the palace from the prison — spoke loudly of some design; for Henry never did aught in vain. It was in circulation also among the lower officers in the fortress, that an attempt to escape was expected on the part of the prisoners, and that rich reward would attend its discovery.
CHAPTER XVIII.
And bare, at once, Captivity displayed.
Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate;
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day
And tasteless food.
— BYRON.
The Lady Katherine, no longer trusting the good intentions of the insolent tyrant, was eager to communicate with her royal cousin of Scotland, to urge him to save from death or disgrace, if not to effect the liberation, of him to whom he had given her hand. The difficulty of finding a messenger was great. The Queen, all amiable and sorrowing as she was, shrunk from any act, which, if discovered, would enrage the King. Where did Monina tarry while her friend was in this strait? Of all his sometime associates was there not one who would risk all to retard the last steps of fate. Since York’s escape she had been so vigilantly guarded, that a thousand schemes she had formed for her own evasion proved abortive at their very outset.
Help was at length afforded her unexpectedly, when most despairing. Edmund Plantagenet stood before her: changed indeed from what he had been; she had not seen him since the siege of Exeter, where he was wounded; but slight was his bodily hurt in comparison to the deathblow his mind received.
Plantagenet was one of those concentrated characters, whose very outward show of softness and gentleness serves the more to force the texture of their souls to receive one indelible impression. He had passed a boyhood of visions, given up to mighty aspirations and engrossing reverie. His thoughts were stirring as the acts of others; his forest-school had so tutored him, that he could live in bodily repose, while his mind ruminated: he could be quickened to hope and fear, to lofty ambition, to generosity, and devoted courage, feeling in his heart the keenest impulses — while around him were the mute trees of the wild wood and pathless glades. He could be satisfied with such dreamy illusions; so that action with him was never the result of physical restlessness, nor of youthful emulation, nor of
that stirring spirit of life which forces us to abhor repose. It flowed from an imperious sense of duty; it welled up from the very sources of his soul. Other men perform the various parts allotted to them, and yet are something else the while; as is the actor, even while he struts in the garb of royalty: but Edmund yielded himself wholly up, and was the mere creature of the thought within.
To be great and good — great from the good he should effect, was his boyhood’s aspiration. It is probable that, if he had not been subjected to extraneous influence, he would have devoted himself to religion, and become a saint or martyr; for his all, his understanding, heart, and person, would have been given up to the holy cause he espoused. His being led him to King Richard’s tent, the night before the battle of Bosworth Field, gave a new and inextinguishable law to his life. Unknown duties were imposed. The first and dearest was, to redeem his father’s soul from the guilt of murderous ambition, by elevating his injured nephew to his original greatness. He devoted himself to his cousin. Soon he learned to love Richard as the work of his own hands. He had reared his tender infancy; he had been his tutor in martial exercises, teaching him to curb the fiery steed, to wield the lance, and, more than all, to meet danger in the field fearlessly; to be honourable, brave and kind. He had led him to war; and shielded him with his own body from the cruel Moor. If ever they were divided, his thoughts dwelt only the more carefully with him. Last, he had brought him from glorious combats in Spain, to conquer his ancestral kingdom, and set him up the rival of a powerful king — the mark of his vengeance.