The White Rose of Langley Part 47

Note 1. The oriflamme was _the_ banner of France, kept in the Cathedral of Saint Denis, and held almost sacred.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE GARDEN OF G.o.d.

I'm kneeling at the threshold, aweary, faint, and sore; I'm waiting for the dawning, for the opening of the door; I'm waiting till the Master shall bid me rise and come To the glory of His presence, the gladness of His home.

A weary path I've travelled, mid darkness, storm, and strife, Bearing many a burden, contending for my life; But now the morn is breaking,--my toil will soon be o'er; I'm kneeling at the threshold, my hand is at the door.

O Lord, I wait Thy pleasure! Thy time and way are best: But I'm wasted, worn, and weary:--my Father, bid me rest!

_Dr Alexander_.

The full glory of summer had come at last. Over Southampton Water broke a cloudless August day. The musical cries of the sailors who were at work on the Saint Mary, the James, and the Catherine, in the offing-- preparing for the King's voyage to France--came pleasantly from the distance. From the country farms, girls with baskets poised on their heads, filled with market produce, came into the crowded sea-port town, where the whole Court awaited a fair wind. There was no wind from any quarter that day. Earth and sea and sky presented a dead calm: and the only place which was not calm was the heart of fallen man. For a few steps from the busy gates and the crowded market is Southampton Green, and there, draped in mourning, stands the scaffold, and beside it the state headsman.

All the Court are gathered here. It is a break in the monotony of existence--the tiresome dead level of waiting for the wind to change.

The first victim is brought out. Trembling and timidly he comes--Henry Le Scrope of Upsal, the luckless husband of the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of York, Treasurer of the Household, only a few days since in the highest favour.

He was arrested, tried, and sentenced in twenty-four hours, just a week before. No voice pleads for poor Scrope,--a simple, single-minded man, who never made an enemy till now. He dies to-day--"on suspicion of being suspected" of high treason.

The block and the axe are wiped clean of Scrope's blood, and the headsman stands waiting for the Sheriff to bring the second victim.

He comes forward calmly, with quiet dignity; a stately, fair-haired man,--ready to die, because ready to meet G.o.d. And we know the face of Richard of Conisborough, the finest and purest character of the royal line, the fairest bud of the White Rose. He has little wish to live longer. Life was stripped of its flowers for him four years ago, when he heard the earth cast on the coffin of his pale desert flower. She is in Heaven; and Christ is in Heaven; and Heaven is better than earth. So what matter, though the pa.s.sage be low and dark which leads up to the gate of the Garden of G.o.d? Yet this is no easy nor honourable death to die. No easy death to a man of high sense of chivalrous honour; no light burden, thus to be led forth before the mult.i.tude, to a death of shame,--on his part undeserved. Perhaps men will know some day how little he deserved it. At any rate, G.o.d knows. And whatever shameful end be decreed for the servant, it can never surpa.s.s that of the Master.

The utmost that any child of G.o.d can suffer for Christ, can never equal what Christ has suffered for him.

And so, calm in mien, willing in heart, Richard of Conisborough went through the dark pa.s.sage, to the Garden of G.o.d. But if ever a judicial murder were committed in this world, it was done that day on Southampton Green, when the blood of the Lollard Prince dyed the dust of the scaffold.

The accusation brought against the victims was high treason. The indictment bore falsehood on its face by going too far. It a.s.serted, not only that they had conspired to raise March to the throne--which might perhaps have been believed; but also that they had plotted the a.s.sa.s.sination of King Henry--which no one who knew them could believe; that March, taken into their counsels, had asked for an hour to consider the matter, and had then gone straight to the King and revealed the plot--which no one who knew March could believe. The whole accusation was a tissue of improbabilities and inconsistencies. No evidence was offered; the conclusion was foregone from the beginning. So they died on Southampton Green.

Perhaps Henry's heart failed him at the last moment. For some reason, Richard of Conisborough was spared the last and worst ignominy of a traitor's death--the exposure of the severed head on some city gate.

Henry allowed his remains to receive quiet and honourable burial.

The next day a decree was pa.s.sed, pardoning March for all crimes and offences. The only offence which he had ever committed against the House of Lancaster was his own existence; and for that he could scarcely be held responsible, either in law or equity. But can we say as much for the offence against G.o.d and man which he committed on that sixth of August, when he suffered himself to be dragged to the judge's bench, on which he sat with others to condemn the husband of that sister Anne who had been his all but mother?

We shall see no more of Edmund Mortimer. He ended life as he began it-- as much like a vegetable as a human being could well make himself. Few Mortimers attained old age, nor did he. He died in his thirty-fourth year, issueless and unwept; and Richard Duke of York, the son of Anne Mortimer and Richard of Conisborough, succeeded to the White Rose's "heritage of woe."

A week after the execution, the King sailed for Harfleur.

The campaign was short, for those days of long campaigns; but pestilence raged among the troops, and cut off some of the finest men. The Earl of Suffolk died before they left Harfleur, and ere they reached Picardy, the Earl of Arundel. But the King pressed onward, till on the night of the 24th of October, he encamped, ready to give battle, near the little village of Azincour, to be thenceforward for ever famous, under its English name of Agincourt.

The army was in a very sober mood. The night was spent quietly, by the more careless in sleep, by the more thoughtful in prayer. The Duke of York was among the former; the King among the latter. Henry is said to have wrestled earnestly with G.o.d that no sins of his might be remembered against him, to lead to the discomfiture of his army. There was need for the entreaty. Perchance, had he slept that night, some such ghostly visions, born of his own conscience, might have disturbed his sleep, as those which troubled one of his successors on the eve of Bosworth Field.

When morning came, and the King was at breakfast with his brother Prince Humphrey, the Duke of York presented himself with a request that he might be permitted to lead the vanguard.

Humphrey, who was of a sarcastic turn of mind, amused himself by a few jokes on the obesity of the royal applicant; but the request was granted, and York rode off well pleased.

"Stand thou at my stirrup, Calverley," said York to his squire. "I cast no doubt thou wilt win this day thy spurs; and for me, I look to come off covered with glory."

"How many yards of glory shall it take to cover his Grace?" whispered one of the irreverent varlets behind them.

"Howsoe'er, little matter," pursued the Duke. "I can scantly go higher than I am: wherefore howso I leave the field, little reck I."

Hugh Calverley looked up earnestly at his master.

"Sir Duke," he said, "hath it come into your Grace's mind that no less yourself than your servants may leave this field dead corpses?"

"Tut, man! croak not," said York. "I have no intent to leave it other than alive--thou canst do as it list thee."

Two months had elapsed since that August evening when, terrified by his brother's sudden and violent death, Edward Duke of York had dictated his will in terms of such abject penitence. The effect of that terror was wearing away. The unseen world, which had come very near, receded into the far distance; and the visible world returned to its usual prominence. And York's aim had always been, not "so to pa.s.s through things temporal that he lost not the things eternal," but so to pa.s.s towards things eternal that he lost not the things temporal. His own choice proved his heaviest punishment: "for he in his life-time received his good things."

It was a terrible battle which that day witnessed at Agincourt. In one quarter of the field Prince Humphrey lay half dead upon the sward; when the King, riding up and recognising his brother, sprang from his saddle, took his stand over the prostrate body, and waving his good battle-axe in his strong firm hand, kept the enemy at bay, and saved his brother's life. In another direction, a sudden charge of the French pressed a little band of English officers and men close together, till not one in the inner ranks could move hand or foot--crushed them closer, closer, as if the object had been to compress them into a consolidated ma.s.s. At last help came, the French were beaten off, and the living wall was free to separate into its component atoms of human bodies. But as it did so, from the interior of the ma.s.s one man fell to the ground, dead. No one needed to ask who it was. The royal fleurs-de-lis and lions on the surcoat, with an escocheon of pretence bearing the arms of Leon and Castilla--the princely coronet surrounding the helmet--were enough to tell the tale. Other men might come alive out of the fight of Agincourt, but Edward Duke of York would only leave it a corpse.

He stands on the page of history, a beacon for all time. No man living in his day better knew the way of righteousness; no man living took less care to walk in it. During the later years of his life, it seemed as if that dread Divine decree might have gone forth, most awful even of Divine decrees--"Let him alone." He had refused to be troubled with G.o.d, and the penalty was that G.o.d would not be troubled with him: He would not force His salvation on this unwilling soul. And now, when "behind, he heard Time's iron gates close faintly," it was too late for renewing to repentance. He that was unholy must be unholy still.

Verily, he had his reward.

The end of the struggle was now approaching. On every side the French were hemmed in and beaten down. Prince Humphrey had been earned to the royal tent, but the King was still in the field--here, there, and everywhere, as nearly ubiquitous as a man could be--riding from point to point, and now and then engaging in single-handed skirmish. A French archer, waiting for an opportunity to distinguish himself, levelled his crossbow at the royal warrior, while he remained for a moment stationary. In another second the victory of Agincourt would have been turned into a defeat, and probably a panic. But at the critical instant a squire flung himself before the King, and received the shaft intended for his Sovereign. He fell, but uttered no word.

"Truly, a gallant deed, Master Squire!" cried Henry. "Whatso be your name, rise a knight banneret."

"The squire will arise no more, Sire," said the voice of the Earl of Huntingdon behind him. "Your Highness' grace hath come too late; he is dead."

"In good sooth, I am sorry therefor," returned the King. "Never saw I braver deed, ne better done. Well! if he leave son or widow, they may receive our grace in his guerdon. Who is he? Ho, archer! thou bearest our cousin of York his livery, and so doth this squire. Win hither-- unlace his helm, and give us to wit if thou know him."

And when the helm was unlaced, and the archer had recognised the dead face, they knew that the Lollard squire, Hugh Calverley, had saved the life of the persecutor at the cost of his own.

He had spoken the simple truth. He could not fight, but he could die.

He could not write his name upon the world's roll of glory, but he could do G.o.d's will.

The public opinion of earth accounts this a mean and unworthy object.

The public opinion of Heaven is probably of a different character.

Nothing was to be done for widow or child, for Hugh Calverley left neither. He was no ascetic; he was merely a man who thought first of how he might please the Lord, and who felt himself least fettered by single life. So there was no love in his heart but the love of Christ, and nothing on earth that he desired in comparison of Him.

And on earth he had no guerdon. Even the royal words of praise he did not live to hear. But on the other side of the dark river pa.s.sed so quickly, there were the garland of honour, and the palm of victory, and the King's "Well done, good and faithful servant!" Verily, also, he had his reward.

The autumn was pa.s.sing into winter before the news reached Constance either of the battle of Agincourt or of the murder on Southampton Green.

At first she was utterly crushed and prostrated. The old legal leaven, so hard to work out of the human conscience, wrought upon her with tenfold force, and she declared that G.o.d was against her, and was wreaking His wrath upon her for the lie which she had told in denying the validity of her marriage. Was it not evidently so? she asked. Had He not first bereft her of her darling, the precious boy whom her sin had preserved to her? And now not only Edward, but the favourite brother, d.i.c.kon, were gone likewise. Herself, her stepmother, her widowed sisters-in-law [Note 1], and the two little children of Richard, were alone left of the House of York. The news of Edward's death she bore with comparative equanimity: it was the sudden and dreadful end of Richard which so completely overpowered her.

"Hold thy peace, Maude!" she said mournfully, in answer to Maude's tender efforts to console her. "G.o.d is against me and all mine House.

We have sinned; or rather, _I_ have sinned,--and have thus brought down sorrow and mourning upon the hearts that were dearest to me. I owe a debt; and it must needs be paid, even to the uttermost farthing."

"But, dear my Lady," urged Maude, not holding her peace as requested,--"what do you, to pay so much as one farthing of that debt?

Christ our Lord hath taken the same upon Him. A debt cannot be twice paid."