The Last of the Barons — Complete

“Who,” said one of these gallants, “who is that comely young fellow just below us, with the Nevile cognizance of the Bull on his hat? He has the air of one I should know.”

“I never saw him before, my Lord of Northumberland,” answered one of the gentlemen thus addressed; “but, pardieu, he who knows all the Neviles by eye must know half England.” The Lord Montagu—for though at that moment invested with the titles of the Percy, by that name Earl Warwick’s brother is known to history, and by that, his rightful name, he shall therefore be designated in these pages—the Lord Montagu smiled graciously at this remark, and a murmur through the crowd announced that the competition for the silver arrow was about to commence. The butts, formed of turf, with a small white mark fastened to the centre by a very minute peg, were placed apart, one at each end, at the distance of eleven score yards. At the extremity where the shooting commenced, the crowd assembled, taking care to keep clear from the opposite butt, as the warning word of “Fast” was thundered forth; but eager was the general murmur, and many were the wagers given and accepted, as some well-known archer tried his chance. Near the butt that now formed the target, stood the marker with his white wand; and the rapidity with which archer after archer discharged his shaft, and then, if it missed, hurried across the ground to pick it up (for arrows were dear enough not to be lightly lost), amidst the jeers and laughter of the bystanders, was highly animated and diverting. As yet, however, no marksman had hit the white, though many had gone close to it, when Nicholas Alwyn stepped forward; and there was something so unwarlike in his whole air, so prim in his gait, so careful in his deliberate survey of the shaft and his precise adjustment of the leathern gauntlet that protected the arm from the painful twang of the string, that a general burst of laughter from the bystanders attested their anticipation of a signal failure.

“‘Fore Heaven!” said Montagu, “he handles his bow an’ it were a yard-measure. One would think he were about to bargain for the bow-string, he eyes it so closely.”

“And now,” said Nicholas, slowly adjusting the arrow, “a shot for the honour of old Westmoreland!” And as he spoke, the arrow sprang gallantly forth, and quivered in the very heart of the white. There was a general movement of surprise among the spectators, as the marker thrice shook his wand over his head. But Alwyn, as indifferent to their respect as he had been to their ridicule, turned round and said, with a significant glance at the silent nobles, “We springals of London can take care of our own, if need be.”

“These fellows wax insolent. Our good king spoils them,” said Montagu, with a curl of his lip. “I wish some young squire of gentle blood would not disdain a shot for the Nevile against the craftsman. How say you, fair sir?” And with a princely courtesy of mien and smile, Lord Montagu turned to the young man he had noticed as wearing the cognizance of the First House in England. The bow was not the customary weapon of the well-born; but still, in youth, its exercise formed one of the accomplishments of the future knight; and even princes did not disdain, on a popular holiday, to match a shaft against the yeoman’s cloth-yard. [At a later period, Henry VIII. was a match for the best bowman in his kingdom. His accomplishment was hereditary, and distinguished alike his wise father and his pious son.] The young man thus addressed, and whose honest, open, handsome, hardy face augured a frank and fearless nature, bowed his head in silence, and then slowly advancing to the umpires, craved permission to essay his skill, and to borrow the loan of a shaft and bow. Leave given and the weapons lent, as the young gentleman took his stand, his comely person, his dress, of a better quality than that of the competitors hitherto, and, above all, the Nevile badge worked in silver on his hat, diverted the general attention from Nicholas Alwyn. A mob is usually inclined to aristocratic predilections, and a murmur of goodwill and expectation greeted him, when he put aside the gauntlet offered to him, and said, “In my youth I was taught so to brace the bow that the string should not touch the arm; and though eleven score yards be but a boy’s distance, a good archer will lay his body into his bow [‘My father taught me to lay my body in my bow,’ etc.,” said Latimer, in his well-known sermon before Edward VI.,—1549. The bishop also herein observes that “it is best to give the bow so much bending that the string need never touch the arm. This,” he adds, “is practised by many good archers with whom I am acquainted, as much as if he were to hit the blanc four hundred yards away.”

“A tall fellow this!” said Montagu; “and one I wot from the North,” as the young gallant fitted the shaft to the bow. And graceful and artistic was the attitude he assumed,—the head slightly inclined, the feet firmly planted, the left a little in advance, and the stretched sinews of the bow-hand alone evincing that into that grasp was pressed the whole strength of the easy and careless frame. The public expectation was not disappointed,—the youth performed the feat considered of all the most dexterous; his arrow, disdaining the white mark, struck the small peg which fastened it to the butts, and which seemed literally invisible to the bystanders.

“Holy Saint Dunstan! there’s but one man who can beat me in that sort that I know of,” muttered Nicholas, “and I little expected to see him take a bite out of his own hip.” With that he approached his successful rival.

“Well, Master Marmaduke,” said he, “it is many a year since you showed me that trick at your father, Sir Guy’s—God rest him! But I scarce take it kind in you to beat your own countryman!”

“Beshrew me!” cried the youth, and his cheerful features brightened into hearty and cordial pleasure, “but if I see in thee, as it seems to me, my old friend and foster-brother, Nick Alwyn, this is the happiest hour I have known for many a day. But stand back and let me look at thee, man. Thou! thou a tame London trader! Ha! ha! is it possible?”

“Hout, Master Marmaduke,” answered Nicholas, “every crow thinks his own baird bonniest, as they say in the North. We will talk of this anon an’ thou wilt honour me. I suspect the archery is over now. Few will think to mend that shot.”

And here, indeed, the umpires advanced, and their chief—an old mercer, who had once borne arms, and indeed been a volunteer at the battle of Towton—declared that the contest was over,—“unless,” he added, in the spirit of a lingering fellow-feeling with the Londoner, “this young fellow, whom I hope to see an alderman one of these days, will demand another shot, for as yet there hath been but one prick each at the butts.”

“Nay, master,” returned Alwyn, “I have met with my betters,—and, after all,” he added indifferently, “the silver arrow, though a pretty bauble enough, is over light in its weight.”

“Worshipful sir,” said the young Nevile, with equal generosity, “I cannot accept the prize for a mere trick of the craft,—the blanc was already disposed of by Master Alwyn’s arrow. Moreover; the contest was intended for the Londoners, and I am but an interloper, beholden to their courtesy for a practice of skill, and even the loan of a bow; wherefore the silver arrow be given to Nicholas Alwyn.”

“That may not be, gentle sir,” said the umpire, extending the prize. “Sith Alwyn vails of himself, it is thine, by might and by right.”

The Lord Montagu had not been inattentive to this dialogue, and he now said, in a loud tone that silenced the crowd, “Young Badgeman, thy gallantry pleases me no less than thy skill. Take the arrow, for thou hast won it; but as thou seemest a new comer, it is right thou shouldst pay thy tax upon entry,—this be my task. Come hither, I pray thee, good sir,” and the nobleman graciously beckoned to the mercer; “be these five nobles the prize of whatever Londoner shall acquit himself best in the bold English combat of quarter-staff, and the prize be given in this young archer’s name. Thy name, youth?”

“Marmaduke Nevile, good my lord.”

Montagu smiled, and the umpire withdrew to make the announcement to the bystanders. The proclamation was received with a shout that traversed from group to group and line to line, more hearty from the love and honour attached to the name of Nevile than even from a sense of the gracious generosity of Earl Warwick’s brother. One man alone, a sturdy, well-knit fellow, in a franklin’s Lincoln broadcloth, and with a hood half-drawn over his features, did not join the popular applause. “These Yorkists,” he muttered, “know well how to fool the people.”

Meanwhile the young Nevile still stood by the gilded stirrup of the great noble who had thus honoured him, and contemplated him with that respect and interest which a youth’s ambition ever feels for those who have won a name.

The Lord Montagu bore a very different character from his puissant brother. Though so skilful a captain that he had never been known to lose a battle, his fame as a warrior was, strange to say, below that of the great earl, whose prodigious strength had accomplished those personal feats that dazzled the populace, and revived the legendary renown of the earlier Norman knighthood. The caution and wariness, indeed, which Montagu displayed in battle probably caused his success as a general, and the injustice done to him (at least by the vulgar) as a soldier. Rarely had Lord Montagu, though his courage was indisputable, been known to mix personally in the affray. Like the captains of modern times, he contented himself with directing the manoeuvres of his men, and hence preserved that inestimable advantage of coolness and calculation, which was not always characteristic of the eager hardihood of his brother. The character of Montagu differed yet more from that of the earl in peace than in war. He was supposed to excel in all those supple arts of the courtier which Warwick neglected or despised; and if the last was on great occasions the adviser, the other in ordinary life was the companion of his sovereign. Warwick owed his popularity to his own large, open, daring, and lavish nature. The subtler Montagu sought to win, by care and pains, what the other obtained without an effort. He attended the various holiday meetings of the citizens, where Warwick was rarely seen. He was smooth-spoken and courteous to his equals, and generally affable, though with constraint, to his inferiors. He was a close observer, and not without that genius for intrigue, which in rude ages passes for the talent of a statesman. And yet in that thorough knowledge of the habits and tastes of the great mass, which gives wisdom to a ruler, he was far inferior to the earl. In common with his brother, he was gifted with the majesty of mien which imposes on the eye; and his port and countenance were such as became the prodigal expense of velvet, minever, gold, and jewels, by which the gorgeous magnates of the day communicated to their appearance the arrogant splendour of their power.

“Young gentleman,” said the earl, after eying with some attention the comely archer, “I am pleased that you bear the name of Nevile. Vouchsafe to inform me to what scion of our House we are this day indebted for the credit with which you have upborne its cognizance?”

“I fear,” answered the youth, with a slight but not ungraceful hesitation, “that my lord of Montagu and Northumberland will hardly forgive the presumption with which I have intruded upon this assembly a name borne by nobles so illustrious, especially if it belong to those less fortunate branches of his family which have taken a different side from himself in the late unhappy commotions. My father was Sir Guy Nevile, of Arsdale, in Westmoreland.”

Lord Montagu’s lip lost its gracious smile; he glanced quickly at the courtiers round him, and said gravely, “I grieve to hear it. Had I known this, certes my gipsire had still been five nobles the richer. It becomes not one fresh from the favour of King Edward IV. to show countenance to the son of a man, kinsman though he was, who bore arms for the usurpers of Lancaster. I pray thee, sir, to doff, henceforth, a badge dedicated only to the service of Royal York. No more, young man; we may not listen to the son of Sir Guy Nevile.—Sirs, shall we ride to see how the Londoners thrive at quarter-staff?”

With that, Montagu, deigning no further regard at Nevile, wheeled his, palfrey towards a distant part of the ground, to which the multitude was already pressing its turbulent and noisy way.

“Thou art hard on thy namesake, fair my lord,” said a young noble, in whose dark-auburn hair, aquiline, haughty features, spare but powerful frame, and inexpressible air of authority and command, were found all the attributes of the purest and eldest Norman race,—the Patricians of the World.

“Dear Raoul de Fulke,” returned Montagu, coldly, “when thou hast reached my age of thirty and four, thou wilt learn that no man’s fortune casts so broad a shadow as to shelter from the storm the victims of a fallen cause.”

“Not so would say thy bold brother,” answered Raoul de Fulke, with a slight curl of his proud lip. “And I hold, with him, that no king is so sacred that we should render to his resentments our own kith and kin. God’s wot, whosoever wears the badge and springs from the stem of Raoul de Fulke shall never find me question over much whether his father fought for York or Lancaster.”

“Hush, rash babbler!” said Montagu, laughing gently; “what would King Edward say if this speech reached his ears? Our friend,” added the courtier, turning to the rest, “in vain would bar the tide of change; and in this our New England, begirt with new men and new fashions, affect the feudal baronage of the worn-out Norman. But thou art a gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier.”

“The saints keep me so!” returned De Fulke. “From overgluttony, from over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king’s leman, from quaking at a king’s frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his sons! Amen!” This speech, in which every sentence struck its stinging satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by an awkward silence, which Montagu was the first to break.

“Pardieu!” he said, “when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair face can have lured the truant?”

“He left us suddenly on the archery-ground,” answered the young Lovell. “But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord William’s sigh to maid or matron.”

While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile’s eye pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride and impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it receives from Power.

CHAPTER II. THE BROKEN GITTERN

Rousing himself from his indignant revery, Marmaduke Nevile followed one of the smaller streams into which the crowd divided itself on dispersing from the archery-ground, and soon found himself in a part of the holiday scene appropriated to diversions less manly, but no less characteristic of the period than those of the staff and arrow. Beneath an awning, under which an itinerant landlord dispensed cakes and ale, the humorous Bourdour (the most vulgar degree of minstrel, or rather tale-teller) collected his clownish audience; while seated by themselves—apart, but within hearing—two harpers, in the king’s livery, consoled each other for the popularity of their ribald rival, by wise reflections on the base nature of common folk. Farther on, Marmaduke started to behold what seemed to him the heads of giants at least six yards high; but on a nearer approach these formidable apparitions resolved themselves to a company of dancers upon stilts. There, one joculator exhibited the antics of his well-tutored ape; there, another eclipsed the attractions of the baboon by a marvellous horse that beat a tabor with his forefeet; there, the more sombre Tregetour, before a table raised upon a lofty stage, promised to cut off and refix the head of a sad-faced little boy, who in the mean time was preparing his mortal frame for the operation by apparently larding himself with sharp knives and bodkins. Each of these wonder-dealers found his separate group of admirers, and great was the delight and loud the laughter in the pastime-ground of old Cockaigne.

While Marmaduke, bewildered by this various bustle, stared around him, his eye was caught by a young maiden, in evident distress, struggling in vain to extricate herself from a troop of timbrel-girls, or tymbesteres (as they were popularly called), who surrounded her with mocking gestures, striking their instruments to drown her remonstrances, and dancing about her in a ring at every effort towards escape. The girl was modestly attired as one of the humbler ranks, and her wimple in much concealed her countenance; but there was, despite her strange and undignified situation and evident alarm, a sort of quiet, earnest self-possession,—an effort to hide her terror, and to appeal to the better and more womanly feelings of her persecutors. In the intervals of silence from the clamour, her voice, though low, clear, well-tuned, and impressive, forcibly arrested the attention of young Nevile; for at that day, even more than this (sufficiently apparent as it now is), there was a marked distinction in the intonation, the accent, the modulation of voice, between the better bred and better educated and the inferior classes. But this difference, so ill according with her dress and position, only served to heighten more the bold insolence of the musical Bacchantes, who, indeed, in the eyes of the sober, formed the most immoral nuisance attendant on the sports of the time, and whose hardy license and peculiar sisterhood might tempt the antiquary to search for their origin amongst the relics of ancient Paganism. And now, to increase the girl’s distress, some half-score of dissolute apprentices and journeymen suddenly broke into the ring of the Maenads, and were accosting her with yet more alarming insults, when Marmaduke, pushing them aside, strode to her assistance. “How now, ye lewd varlets! ye make me blush for my countrymen in the face of day! Are these the sports of merry England,—these your manly contests,—to strive which can best affront a poor maid? Out on ye, cullions and bezonians! Cling to me, gentle donzel, and fear not. Whither shall I lead thee?” The apprentices were not, however, so easily daunted. Two of them approached to the rescue, flourishing their bludgeons about their heads with formidable gestures. “Ho, ho!” cried one, “what right hast thou to step between the hunters and the doe? The young quean is too much honoured by a kiss from a bold ‘prentice of London.”

Marmaduke stepped back, and drew the small dagger which then formed the only habitual weapon of a gentleman. [Swords were not worn, in peace, at that period.] This movement, discomposing his mantle, brought the silver arrow he had won (which was placed in his girdle) in full view of the assailants. At the same time they caught sight of the badge on his hat. These intimidated their ardour more than the drawn poniard.

“A Nevile!” said one, retreating. “And the jolly marksman who beat Nick Alwyn,” said the other, lowering his bludgeon, and doffing his cap. “Gentle sir, forgive us, we knew not your quality. But as for the girl—your gallantry misleads you.”

“The Wizard’s daughter! ha, ha! the Imp of Darkness!” screeched the timbrel-girls, tossing up their instruments, and catching them again on the points of their fingers. “She has enchanted him with her glamour. Foul is fair! Foul fair thee, young springal, if thou go to the nets. Shadow and goblin to goblin and shadow! Flesh and blood to blood and flesh!”—and dancing round him, with wanton looks and bare arms, and gossamer robes that brushed him as they circled, they chanted,—

“Come, kiss me, my darling, Warm kisses I trade for; Wine, music, and kisses What else was life made for?”

With some difficulty, and with a disgust which was not altogether without a superstitious fear of the strange words and the outlandish appearance of these loathsome Delilahs, Marmaduke broke from the ring with his new charge; and in a few moments the Nevile and the maiden found themselves, unmolested and unpursued, in a deserted quarter of the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they hurried, wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously to the young man’s ear. “Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,—and the devil will have his own!”

“And what mischance, my poor girl,” asked the Nevile, soothingly, “brought thee into such evil company?”

“I know not, fair sir,” said the girl, slowly recovering her self; “but my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday occasions one who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few groats from the courtesy of the bystanders. So I stole out with my serving-woman, and had already got more than I dared hope, when those wicked timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the money from them. And then they called an officer of the ground, who asked me my name and holding; so when I answered, they called my father a wizard, and the man broke my poor gittern,—see!”—and she held it up, with innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her lips,—“and they soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no more till you, worshipful sir, took pity on me.”

“But why,” asked the Nevile, “did they give to your father so unholy a name?”

“Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying what he says will one day be of good to the people.”

“Humph!” said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time, who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl’s artless answer,

“Humph! your father—but—” checking what he was about, perhaps harshly, to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent face lifted to his own—“but it is hard to punish the child for the father’s errors.”

“Errors, sir!” repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain in her face and voice. “But yes, wisdom is ever, perhaps, the saddest error!”

This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which had preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that character made up. For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and countenance, she added, after a short pause, “They took the money! The gittern—see, they left that, when they had made it useless.”

“I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire,” said Marmaduke.

The girl coloured deeply. “Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg.” Marmaduke did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by the stunted trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at him from their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave looks, he began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had hitherto done, to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen walking in public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful repute. Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the least, suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were divided with iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke him of gentle quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the humbler orders, in broad day too, was far more open to censure. The blood mounted to his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and altered voice: “My good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger; it would ill beseem you, so young and so comely, to go farther with one not old enough to be your protector; so, in God’s name, depart quickly, and remember me when you buy your new gittern, poor child!” So saying, he attempted to place a piece of money in her hand. She put it back, and the coin fell on the ground. “Nay, this is foolish,” said he.