The White Rose of Langley Part 29

The age of the King was thirty-eight, and he was one of the tallest men in his kingdom. The colour of his hair, whiskers, and small forked beard, was only one remove from black. Dark pencilled eyebrows, of that surprised shape which many persons admire, arched over keen liquid dark eyes. The general type of the features was Grecian; their regularity was perfect, but the nose was a trifle too prominent for pure Grecian.

About the set of the lips, delicately as they were cut, there was a peculiarity which a physiognomist might have interpreted to mean that when their owner had once placed a particular end before him, no considerations of right on the one hand, or of friendship on the other, would be allowed to interfere with its attainment. This was a very clever man, a very sagacious, far-seeing man, a very handsome man, a very popular man; yet a man whom no human heart ever loved, and who never loved any human being--a man who could stand alone, and who did stand alone, to the hour when, "with all his imperfections on his head,"

he stood before the bar of G.o.d.

"The match is no serviceable one," said the Archbishop.

"Truth to tell," replied the King a little doubtfully, "I scarce do account my cousin herself an heretic:--yet I wis not--she may be. But she hath been rocked in the heresy in her cradle, and ever sithence hath been within earshot thereof. You wot well, holy Father, what her lord was; and his mother, with whom she hath dwelt these ten years or more, is worser than himself. Now it shall never serve to have Kent lost to the Church her cause. You set affiance on him, I know, and I the like: and if he be not misturned, methinks he may yet prove a good servant.

But here is this alliance cast in our way! I know they be wed without my licence: yet what should it serve to fine or prison him? To prison her might be other matter; but we cannot touch her. So this done should not serve our turn. Father, is there any means that you can devise to break this marriage?"

"The priest that wed them is a Gospeller," returned the Archbishop with a peculiar smile.

"A priest in full orders," objected the King, "of good life and unblemished conversation. Even you, holy Father, so fertile in wise plans, shall scarce, methinks, be able to lay finger on him."

"Scantly; without he were excommunicate of heresy at the time this wedding were celebrate."

"Which he was not," answered the King rather impatiently. "Would to Saint Edmund he had so been! It were then no marriage."

The Archbishop made no reply in words, but drawing towards him a sheet of paper which lay upon the table, he slowly traced upon it a date some two months previous--the date of the Sunday before Constance's marriage.

The King watched him in equal silence, with knitted brows and set lips.

Then the two conspirators' eyes met.

"Could that be done?" asked the royal layman, under his breath.

"Is it not done, Sire?" calmly responded the priestly villain, pointing to the paper.

The King was silent for a minute; but, unprincipled as he was, his conscience was not quite so seared as that of Arundel.

"The end halloweth the means, trow?" he said inquiringly.

"All means be holy, Sire, where the end is the glory of G.o.d," replied Arundel, with a hypocritical a.s.sumption of piety. "And the glory of G.o.d is the service and avancement of holy Church."

Still Henry's mind misgave him. His conscience appears at times to have tortured him in his later years, and he shrank from burdening it yet further.

"Father, if sin be herein, you must bear this burden!"

"I have borne heavier," replied Arundel with a cynical smile.

And truly, to a man upon whose soul eleven murders lay lightly, an invalidated marriage was likely to be no oppressive weight.

"Yet even now," resumed the King, again knitting his brows uneasily, "methinks all hardships be scarce vanished. Our good cousin of Kent is he that should not be turned aside from his quarry [object of pursuit; a hunting phrase] by a brook in his way."

"Not if an eagle arose beyond the heron he pursued?" suggested Arundel, significantly.

"Ha!" said the King.

"He is marvellous taken with beauty," resumed his priestly counsellor.

"And the Lady Custance is not the sole woman in the world."

"You have some further thought, Father," urged Henry.

"Methinks your Grace hath a good friend in the Lord Galeas, Duke of Milan?"

"Ay, of olden time," answered the King, with a sigh. Was it caused by the regretful thought that if he could bring back that olden time, when young Henry of Bolingbroke was learning Italian at Milan and Venice, he might be a happier man than now?

"He hath sisters, methinks, that bear high fame for fair and lovesome?"

"None higher in Christendom."

"And the youngest-born, the Lady Lucy, I take it, is yet unwed?"

"She is so."

"And cometh not behind her sisters for beauty?"

"She was but a little child when I was at Milan," said the King; "but I hear tell of her as fairest of all the fair Visconti."

"Were it impossible, Sire, that the lady, in company of her young brothers, should visit your Highness' Court?"

Henry readily owned that it was by no means impossible, if he were to ask it: but he reminded the Archbishop that the Duke of Milan was poor, though proud; and that while he would consider the Princess Lucia eternally disgraced by marrying beneath her, he probably would not scruple to sell her hand to the highest bidder of those ill.u.s.trious persons who stood on the list of eligibles. And Kent, semi-royal though he were, was not a rich man, his family having suffered severely from repeated attainders.

"And what riches he hath goeth in velvet and ouches," [jewellery] said the Archbishop, with his cold, sarcastic smile. "Well--if the Duke's Grace would fain pick up ducats even in the mire, mayhap he shall find them as plenty in England as otherwhere. Your Highness can heald [pour forth] gold with any Prince in Italy. And when the lady is. .h.i.ther, 'twere easy to bid an hunting party, an' your Grace so list. My cousin of Kent loveth good hawking."

Again that keen, cruel smile parted the priestly lips.

"Moreover, Sire, she must be a Prince's daughter, or my cousin, who likewise loveth grandeur and high degree, may count the cost ere he swallow the bait. The Lady Custance is not lightly matched for blood."

"You desire this thing, holy Father?"

The eyes of the two evil counsellors met again.

"It were an holy and demeritous work, Sire," said the priest.

"Be it as you will," returned Henry hastily. "But mind you, holy Father! you bear what there may be of sin."

"I can carry it, Sire!"

The royal and reverend conspirators parted; and the Archbishop, mounting his richly-caparisoned mule (an animal used by priests out of affected humility, in imitation of the a.s.s's colt on which Christ rode into Jerusalem), rode straight to Coldharbour, the town residence of his niece, Joan d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of York. He found her at work in the midst of her bower-women; but no sooner did she hear the announcement of her Most Reverend uncle, than she hurriedly commanded them all to leave the room.

"Well?" she said breathlessly, as soon as they were alone.

"Thy woman's wit hath triumphed, Joan. 'Twas a brave thought of thine, touching the Lady Lucy of Milan. The King fell in therewith, like a fowl into a net."

"Nay, the Lady Lucy was your thought, holy Father; I did but counsel to tempt him with some other. Then it shall be done?"

"It shall be done."

"Thanks be to All-Hallows!" cried the d.u.c.h.ess, with mirth which it would scarcely be too strong a term to call fiend-like. "Now shall the proud minx be brought to lower her lofty head! I hate her!"

"'Tis allowed to hate an heretic," said the Archbishop calmly. "And if the Lady Le Despenser be no heretic, she hath sorely abused her opportunities."