The White Rose of Langley Part 24

There was an instant's dead silence. It was broken by the mother's cry of anguish--

"Tom, Tom! My lad, my last lad!"

"Drowned, Master Lyngern?" asked a score of voices.

Bertram tacitly ignored the question. He walked languidly up the hall, and dropping on one knee before the Princess, presented to her a sapphire signet-ring--the last token sent by her dead husband.

Constance took it mechanically; and Bertram, going back to his usual seat, filled a goblet with Gascon wine, and drank it like a man who was faint and exhausted.

"Sit, Master Lyngern, and rest you," pursued the Dowager; "but when you be refreshed, give us to wit the rest."

The tone of her voice seemed to say that the worst which could come, had come; and the dreadful fact known, the details mattered little.

Bertram attempted to eat, but almost immediately he pushed away his trencher, and regardless of etiquette, laid his forehead upon his arm on the table.

"I cannot eat! And how shall I speak what I must say? I would have died for him." Then, suddenly lifting his head, he spoke quickly, as if he wished to come at once to the end of his miserable task. "n.o.ble ladies, my Lord of Salisbury is beheaden of the rabble at Cirencester, and my Lord of Exeter at Pleshy; and men say that Lord Richard the King lieth dead at Pomfret, and that G.o.d wot how."

Constance spoke at last, but in a voice not like her own.

"G.o.d doom Henry of Bolingbroke!"

The words, if repeated, might have doomed her; but she feared no man.

That evening, Bertram told the details of that woeful story.

The barge-master whom they had accosted was sailing westwards, and he readily agreed to take Le Despenser and his suite over to Ireland.

Somewhat too readily, Bertram thought; and he feared treachery from the first. When the boat had pulled off to some distance, the barge-master asked to what port his pa.s.sengers wished to go. He was told that any Irish port on the eastern coast would suit them; and he then altered his tone, and roughly refused to carry them anywhere but to Bristol. The man's evil intentions were manifest now; and Le Despenser, drawing his sword, sternly commanded him to continue his voyage to Ireland, if he valued his life. The barge-master's only reply was a low signal-whistle, in answer to which twenty men, concealed in the hold, sprang on deck and overwhelmed the little band of fugitives. The barge then put about for Bristol, and on landing, the n.o.ble captive was delivered by the treacherous barge-master into the custody of the Mayor.

That officer put him in close prison, and despatched a fleet messenger to Henry to inquire what should be done with him. But before the answer arrived, the capture became known in Bristol, and a clamorous mob a.s.sembled before the Castle. The Mayor, to his credit, did his best to resist the rabble, and to save his prisoner; but the mob were stronger than authority. They carried the gates, rushed pell-mell into the Castle, and dragged the captive forth into the market-place. And then Bertram saw his master again--a helpless prisoner, in the hands of a furious mob, among whom several priests were active. As he appeared, there was a great shout of "Traitor!" and a few cries, lower yet more terrible, of "Heretic!" They dragged him to the block erected in the midst of the market-place, by which stood the public executioner. Le Despenser saw unmistakably that his last hour had come; and he had not been so far from antic.i.p.ating that closing scene, that he was unprepared for its coming.

"Sir," he said, turning to the executioner with his ordinary courtesy, "I pray you of your grace to grant me time for prayer, and strike not ere"--touching his handkerchief--"I shall let this fall."

The executioner, a quiet, practical man, unpossessed by the fury of the mob, promised what was asked of him. Meantime Bertram Lyngern contrived to squeeze himself inch by inch through the crowd, until at last he stood beside his master.

"Ah, my trusty squire!" was the prisoner's greeting. "Look you--have here my signet, which with Master Mayor's gentle allowing, you shall bear unto my Lady."

The Mayor nodded permission. He was vexed and ashamed.

"Farewell, good friend," resumed Le Despenser, with a parting grasp of his squire's hand. "Be sure to tell Madam my mother that I died true to G.o.d and the King--and say unto my Lady that my last thought was of her."

Then he knelt down to commune with G.o.d. But he asked for no priest; and when they saw it, the cries of the mob became fiercer than ever.

"Traitor!" and "Heretic!" were roared from every part of the vast square.

Le Despenser rose, and faced his enemies.

"I am no traitor to my true King, and no heretic to the living G.o.d!" he cried earnestly. "I was ever a true man to G.o.d, and to the King, and to my Lady: touching which ye are not my judge, but G.o.d."

His voice was drowned by another roar of execration. Then he knelt again--and the handkerchief fell. But just as the executioner raised his arm--

"Just ere the falling axe did part The burning brain from the true heart--"

One word trembled on the dying lips--"Custance!"

In another minute, lifting the severed head by its dark auburn hair, the executioner shouted to the sovereign mob--"This is the head of a traitor!"

"Thou liest!" broke in a low fierce whisper from Bertram Lyngern.

"I wis that, Master!" returned the poor executioner.

He was not the first man, nor the last, who has been required to p.r.o.nounce officially what his conscience individually refused to sanction.

The severed head was sent to London, a ghastly gift to the usurper. It was set up on London Bridge, beside that of Exeter. The body was carried into the Castle, saved by the Mayor from insult; and a few days afterwards they bore it by slow stages to Tewkesbury Abbey, and laid him in his father's grave.

Surrey and Exeter died for their King alone. But it was only half for King Richard that Salisbury and Le Despenser died; and the other half was for the word of G.o.d, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. They were both hereditary Lollards and chiefs of the Lollard party; and they were both beheaded, not by Henry's authority, but by a priest-ridden mob. And at that Bar where the cup of cold water shall in no wise lose its reward, surely such semi-martyrdom as that day beheld at Bristol will not be forgotten before G.o.d.

Note 1.

"Jesu, in Thy dear love behold, And set this soul in Thy safe fold."

These lines were spoken by the figure called "Pity," in the painting termed the "Five Wells" or wounds of Christ.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

MOVES ON THE CHESSBOARD.

"O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for themselves, By taking true for false, or false for true!"

_Tennyson_.

Three months had rolled away since that thirteenth of January which had made Constance a widow. Her versatile, volatile nature soon recovered the shock of her husband's violent death. The white garments of widowhood which draped her found little response either in the gravity of her demeanour or in the expression of her face. But on the Dowager Lady the effect was very different. She became an old, infirm woman all at once; but her manner was softer and gentler. She learned to make more allowance for temperaments which entirely differed from hers.

There were no further efforts to repress her little grandson's noisy glee, no more cold responses to his occasionally troublesome demonstrations of affection. The alteration was quiet, but lasting.

It was an hour after dinner, and Maude sat alone at work in the banquet-hall. She was almost unconsciously humming to herself the air of a troubadour chanson--an air as well-known to ourselves as to her, though we have turned it into a hymn tune, and have christened it Innocents, or Durham. A fresh stave was just begun, when the hall door opened, and a voice at the further end announced--

"A messenger from my Lord of Aumerle!"

Maude rose as the messenger approached her.

"Your servant, sir! If you bear any letter, I will carry the same unto my Lady."

"Here is the letter, Mistress Maude," replied the messenger with a smile. "Methinks I am more changed than you be."

Maude looked more narrowly at him.

"I know you now, Master Calverley," she said, a smile breaking over her lips. "But you ware not that beard the last time I did see you."