The Caged Lion, Charlotte M. Yonge [dark books to read TXT] 📗

straight way: and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity?

Sometimes dozing, but sometimes restless, and with the pain of breathing constantly increasing on him, Henry wore through the greater part of the day, upon the river, until it was necessary to land, and be taken through the forest in his litter.  He was now obliged to be lifted from the barge; and his weariness rendered the conveyance very distressing, save that his patient smile never faded; and still he said, ‘All will be well when I come to my Kate!’

Alas! when the gates were reached, James hardly knew how to tell him that the Queen had gone that morning to Paris with her mother.  Yet still he was cheerful.  ‘If the physicians deal hard with me,’ he said, ‘it will be well that she should not be here till the worst is over.’

The physicians were there.  A messenger had gone direct from Corbeil to summon them; and Henry delivered himself up into their hands, to fight out the battle with disease, as he had set himself to fight out many another battle in his time.

A sharp conflict it was—between a keen and aggravated disease, apparently pleurisy coming upon pulmonary affection of long standing, and a strong and resolute nature, unquenched by suffering, and backed by the violent remedies of a half-instructed period.  Those who watched him, and strove to fulfil the directions of the physicians, hardly marked the lapse of hours; even though more than one day and night had passed ere in the early twilight of a long summer’s morn he sank into a sleep, his face still distressed, but less acutely, and his breath heavy and labouring, though without the severe pain.

The watchers felt that here might be the turning point, and stood or sat around, not daring to change their postures, or utter the slightest word.  Suddenly, James, who stood nearest, leaning against the wall, with his eyes fixed on the face of the sleeper, was aware of a hand on his shoulder, and looking round, saw in the now full light Bedford’s face—so pale, haggard, and replete with anxiety, so dusty and travel-stained, that Henry, awakening at that moment, exclaimed, ‘Ha, John!’  And as his brother was slow to reply—‘Has the day gone against thee?  How was it?  Never fear to speak, brother; thou art safe; and I know thou hast done valiantly.  Valour is never lost, whether in defeat or success.  Speak, John.  Take it not so much to heart.’

‘There has been no battle, Harry,’ said Bedford, gathering voice with difficulty.  ‘The Dauphin would not abide our coming, but broke up his camp.’

‘Beshrew thee, man!’ said Henry; ‘but I thought thou wast just off a flight!’

‘Dost think one can ride fast only for a flight?’ said Bedford.  ‘Ah, would that it had been the loss of ten battles rather than this!’

And he fell on his knees, grasping Henry’s hand, and hiding his face against the bed, with the same instinct of turning to him for comfort with which the young motherless children of Henry of Bolingbroke, when turned adrift among the rude Beaufort progeny of John of Gaunt, had clung to their eldest brother, and found tenderness in his love and protection in his fearlessness; so that few royal brethren ever loved better than Henry and John of Lancaster.

‘It was well and kindly done, John,’ said Henry; ‘and thou hast come at a good time; for, thanks be to God, the pain hath left me; and if it were not for this burthen of heaviness and weariness, I should be more at ease than I have been for many weeks.’

But as he spoke, there was that both in his face and voice that chilled with a dread certainty the hearts of those who hung over him.

‘Is my wife come?  I could see her now,’ he wistfully asked.

Alas! no.  Sir Lewis Robsart, the knight attached to her service, faltered, with a certain shame and difficulty, that the Queen would come when her orisons at Notre Dame were performed.

It was his last disappointment; but still he bore it cheerily.

‘Best,’ he said.  ‘My fair one was not made for sights like this; and were she here’—his lip trembled—‘I might bear me less as a Christian man should.  My sweet Catherine!  Take care of her, John; she will be the most desolate being in the world.’

John promised with all his heart; though pity for cold-hearted Catherine was not the predominant feeling there.

‘I would I had seen my child’s face, and blessed him,’ continued Henry.  ‘Poor boy!  I would have him Warwick’s charge.’

‘Warwick is waiting admission,’ said Bedford.  ‘He and Salisbury and Exeter rode with me.’

The King’s face lighted up with joy as he heard this.  ‘It is good for a man to have his friends about him,’ he said; and as they entered he held out his hand to them and thanked them.

Then took place the well-known scene, when, looking back on his career, he pronounced it to have been his endeavour to serve God and his people, and declared himself ready to face death fearlessly, since such was the will of his Maker: grieving only for the infancy of his son, but placing his hope and comfort in his brother John, and commending the babe to the fatherly charge of Warwick.  ‘You cannot love him for his own sake as yet; but if you think you owe me aught, repay it to him.’  And as he thought over the fate of other infant kings, he spoke of some having hated the father and loved the child, others who had loved the father and hated the child.

To Humfrey of Gloucester he sent stringent warnings against giving way to his hot and fiery nature, offending Burgundy, or rushing into a doubtful wedlock with Jaqueline of Hainault; speaking of him with an elder brother’s fatherly affection, but turning ever to John of Bedford with full trust and reliance, as one like-minded, and able to carry out all his intentions.  For the French prisoners, they might not be released, ‘lest more fire be kindled in one day than can be quenched in three.’

‘And for you, Jamie,’ he said, affectionately holding out his hand, ‘my friend, my brother-in-arms, I must say the same as ever.  Pardon me, Jamie; but I have not kept you out of malice, such as man must needs renounce on his death-bed.  I trust to John, and to the rest, for giving you freedom at such time as you can safely return to be such a king indeed as we have ever hoped to be.  Do you pardon me, James, for this, as for any harshness or rudeness you may have suffered from me?’

James, with full heart, murmured out his ardent love, his sense that no captive had ever been so generously treated as he.

‘And you, my young lord,’ said Henry, looking towards Malcolm, whose light touch and tender hands had made him a welcome attendant in the illness, ‘I have many a kind service to thank you for.  And I believe I mightily angered you once; but, boy, remember—ay, and you too, Ralf Percy—that he is your friend who turns you back from things sore to remember in a case like mine!’

After these, and other calm collected farewells, Henry required to know from his physicians how long his time might yet be.  There was hesitation in answering, plainly as they saw that mortification had set in.

‘What,’ he said, ‘do ye think I have faced death so many times to fear it now?’

Then came the reply given by the weeping, kneeling physician: ‘Sir, think of your soul, for, without a miracle, you cannot live two hours.’

The King beckoned his confessor, and his friends retired, to return again to take their part in the last rites, the Viaticum and Unction.

Henry was collected, and alive to all that was passing, responding duly, and evidently entering deeply into the devotions that were to aid his spirit in that awful passage; his face gravely set, but firm and fearless as ever.  The ceremonial ended, he was still sensible, though with little power of voice or motion left; but the tone, though low, was steady as ever, when he asked for the Penitential Psalms.  Still they doubted whether he were following them, for his eyes closed, and his lips ceased to move, until, as they chanted the revival note of David’s mournful penance—‘O be favourable and gracious unto Sion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem;’—at that much-loved word, the light of the blue eyes once more beamed out, and he spoke again.  ‘Jerusalem!  On the faith of a dying king, it was my earnest purpose to have composed matters here into peace and union, and so to have delivered Jerusalem.  But the will of God be done, since He saw me unworthy.’

Then his eyes closed again; he slept, or seemed to sleep; and then a strange quivering came over the face, the lips moved again, and the words broke from them, ‘Thou liest, foul spirit! thou liest!’ but, as though the parting soul had gained the victory in that conflict, peace came down on the wasted features; and with the very words of his Redeemer Himself, ‘Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,’ he did indeed fall asleep; the mighty soul passed from the worn-out frame.

CHAPTER XIII: THE RING AND THE EMPTY THRONE

No one knows how great a tree has been till it has fallen; nor how large a space a mighty man has occupied till he is removed.

King Henry V. left his friends and foes alike almost dizzy, as in place of his grand figure they found a blank; instead of the hand whose force they had constantly felt, mere emptiness.

Malcolm of Glenuskie, who had been asserting constantly that King Henry was no master of his, and had no rights over him, had nevertheless, for the last year or more, been among those to whom the King’s will was the moving spring, fixing the disposal of almost every hour, and making everything dependent thereon.

When the death-hush was broken by the ‘Depart, O Christian soul,’ and Bedford, with a face white and set like a statue, stood up from his knees, and crossed and kissed the still white brow, it was to Malcolm as if the whole universe had become as nothing.  To him there remained only the great God, the heavenly Jerusalem into which the King had entered, and himself far off from the straight way, wandering from his promise and his purpose into what seemed to him a mere hollow painted scene, such as came and went in the midst of a banquet.  Or, again, it was the grisly Dance of Death that was the only reality; Death had clutched the mightiest in the ring.  Whom would he clutch next?

He stood motionless, as one in a dream, or rather as if not knowing which was reality, and which phantom; gazing, gazing on at the bed where the King lay, round which the ecclesiastics were busying themselves, unperceiving that James, Bedford, and the nobles had quitted the apartment, till Percy first spoke to him in a whisper, then almost shook him, and led him out of the room.  ‘I am sent for you,’ he said, in a much shaken voice; ‘your king says you can be of use.’  Then tightening his grasp with the force of intense grief, ‘Oh, what a day! what a day!  My father! my father!  I never knew mine own father!  But he has been all to Harry and to me!  Oh, woe worth the day!’  And dropping into a window-seat, he covered his face with his hands, and gave way to his grief: pointing, however, to the council-room, where Malcolm found Bedford writing at the table, King James, and a few others, engaged in the same manner.

A few words from James informed him (or would have done so if he could have understood) that the Duke of Bedford, on whom at that terrible moment the weight of two kingdoms and of the war had descended, could not pause to rest, or to grieve, till letters and orders had been sent to the council in England, and to every garrison, every ally in France, to guard against any sudden panic, or faltering in friendship to England and her infant heir.  Warwick and Salisbury were already riding post haste to take charge of the army; Robsart was gone to the Queen, Exeter to the Duke of Burgundy; and as the clergy were all engaged with the tendance of the royal corpse, there was scarcely any one to lessen the Duke’s toil.  James, knowing Malcolm’s pen to be ready, had sent for him to assist in copying the brief scrolls, addressed to each captain of a fortress or town, announcing the father’s death, and commanding him to do his duty to the