MARGARET OF ANJOU
The sun was setting over Hexham in Northumberland as the last remnants of the Lancastrian force broke and scattered before the explosive charges of the Yorkists under Montacute, Warden of the East Marches. Thenceforth all was mad flight and frenzied pursuit. No quarter was given or expected. The hurtling fragments of the rout flew in a thousand directions, to be pursued and overtaken and stamped to extinction where they fell. Steel and flesh and harness, swept into mangled heaps, dotted acres of the country, like manure laid ready for its potent dressing. Hardly a cry or a movement issued from these fermenting masses. Montacute had ordered his work thoroughly, and the chase as it swept on and away had seen to it that the fallen should yield no hangman’s perquisites. Only a spark struck out from steel here and there witnessed to the sharp eviction of a soul betrayed through its agony.
The young May moon stole up and out, and, in sickness at the sight, drew a passing cloud across her face. The horse that, miles away, carried a frantic woman and her child, stumbled in the shadow, and, half recovering itself, and again sinking, pitched its riders upon the turf.
They rose immediately, to find themselves upon the fringe of a dense wood, remote, unknown, but a haven of desperate refuge in their plight.
“Art thou hurt, child?” whispered the breathless woman.
“No, mother.”
“Come, then. No other choice is ours but death and outrage. We must take shelter where we can.”
She seized his hand—he was a pretty, delicate boy of eleven—and together they entered among the trees. All was strange and voiceless there, yet the leaves were not so full-grown but that the moonlight penetrating might help them a little on their way. It sparkled softly on the woman’s girdle, and on her little turbaned cap, and on the jewels, which she had not thought in her haste to remove or hide, clasped about her white neck; it peopled the glades with moving phantoms, mystic and watchful. She felt the little hand in hers clutch and quiver, and squeezed it, drearily responsive.
“Better,” she said, “these thousand spectres than a single sword of the usurper.”
She was only thirty-four, and of those years she had spent five in the Tower. Yet, born as she was a child of sorrow, always the sport of faction, her baby rattle the roll of drums, her games real warriors and real warfare, her indomitable spirit, wasting itself for ever in fruitless struggles and on timorous souls, refused still to acknowledge its own eclipse. She had fought, had she known it, her weak husband’s cause to within sight of the end, but the fire in her heart, though in the full front of this disaster, was not yet wholly extinguished. Only a tragic woe lined her beautiful face, and she clung half hysterically to this one shadow out of all her dreams which remained to her.
She had been a child herself when her gentle boy was born. They were even now more like brother and mothering sister than son and parent. What hope remained to her was centred entirely in him and his passionate preservation. She carried him into the woods, as a frightened woodcock bears its fledgling, with one only instinct—to put as far and as obscure an interval as possible between their enemies and themselves.
Yet, in the end, worn with grief and terror and the actual fatigues of that bloody day, they faltered and sunk down exhausted at the lip of a little clearing situated but a few hundred yards within the forest-edge. There was a mossy bank there, and on it, under the shadow of a spreading oak-tree, they fell and clung together.
“Neddy, my babe, my little woeful prince!” wept the mother. “There, hide thee thy face within my bosom, and try to sleep. It shall force my bursting heart to still itself to be thy quiet pillow.”
The boy obeyed, crying silently. Yet, so it happened that, spent with emotion, in a little a merciful oblivion overtook him, and, listening to his regular breathing as to soft music, the woman too sank presently drowned in a sea of forgetfulness. And there they lay at peace in the quiet night, with moss for their bedding and green leaves for their canopy.
A sense of light, of human neighbourhood, awoke them almost at the same moment, and they sat up together with a start. It was bright morning in the forest, and three evil, uncouth men stood gloating down upon them.
The woman’s heart seemed to stop. The rose and warmth of slumber, mortal lures to villainy, froze upon her cheek. Instinctively her hand stole to the haft of a little dagger stuck at her waist. For minutes dead silence prevailed, and then she spoke, in a voice which strove vainly to command itself:
“Pray you mercy, gentle sirs! What would you with us? O, not to betray our weakness!”
Her very plea was provocation to such cattle—a reassurance and an invitation. She had supposed them, in the first shock of discovery, to be Yorkist soldiers, but a moment’s thought had undeceived her. Shaggy, unkempt, grossly attired and rudely armed, there was nothing to associate these with the bearing of regular troops. They were mere prowling revers of the woods, beasts and marauders, who took their toll of lonely travellers, and ravished and murdered as the chance came to them.
One of the three, a huge, bull-like ruffian, in hood and battered breastplate, rose from the bow on which he leaned, and turned to his comrades.
“What say you, gossips—a pretty finch to pull? Their weakness, sooth! Do we not love all weakness in such guise?”
One, who stood behind in a high scarlet cap, peering over his friend’s shoulders, clucked in his throat, and cracked his fingers. He was grotesquely tall, lean, misshapen, with long, hungry chaps and a frosty nose.
“Gossips,” he said, in a thin, sharp-set voice, “shall we not pluck this pigeon ere we feast on her? My blood is cold, and sack would be very warming.”
The Queen wrenched a gold chain from her arm, and, rising hurriedly, flung it to the ground.
“Take it, in God’s pity,” she said, “and let us go! Gentlemen—sweet gentlemen! a broken woman throws herself upon your charity. O, teach her that some mercy still remains to men!”
“A’s unprotected,” said the third fellow, his eyes burning—“likely some little sow that flees and squeaks before the boars of York.”
“We’ll make her squeak, I warrant,” said the first speaker.
The lank creature skipped to the front, and snatched up the chain.
“Drink first,” he cried, “drink, drink! I’ll with this to the ‘Chequers’ and return anon with sack.”
The bull-headed man threw himself on him in a fury; in a second they were all fighting together for possession of the chain. The strongest, the first-mentioned, secured it.
“Drink,” he roared. “Much drink, I trow, for those remaining. Trust thee the chain, Jake Andrews? Marry I will when Tib’s eve is come.”
The other wriggled, cracking his finger-joints.
“Take it thyself, then, Cuckoo, only speed fast and bring us good store.”
They wrangled yet awhile, but in the end the holder of the chain went off, with threats of fierce reprisals should the two remaining venture to take advantage of his absence. They leered at one another oddly as he disappeared.
“A’ll claim, as ever, the first and the best of everything,” growled the short, thick-set man under his breath.
“Shall he now, Thomas Kite, shall he?” answered the long scarecrow eagerly. Bending with a grotesque writhe, he jerked himself suddenly stiff again, a staring smile on his face. “Cometh our chance long sought, Thomas Kite,” he whispered. “Shall the Cuckoo always claim the Cuckoo’s share? Not if one be quick and clever, gossip.”
He squeaked, and leaping, dodged and screwed behind the other. The Queen, knife in hand, her teeth set, her muscles rigid, was almost upon them. As she lifted her arm, the stubby rogue ran under, and caught her round the waist.
She struck and struck at him, but her shortened blows fell harmless. She could not get one home so long as he held her thus, and he knew it and cried out, straining:
“Cut me the whelp’s throat, Jake Andrews, and so get behind her.”
The boy, terror-struck and whimpering, held to his mother’s skirts. With a mortal effort, she wrenched herself free from her captor, and, throwing down her blade, which Jake instantly secured, seized the child convulsively into her clutch.
“No, no!” she cried, “I am disarmed. In God’s name spare him! See, we will stand like the wretched sheep, dumbly beseeching your mercy. There, take all I have—my jewels——”
She began, with feverish fingers, to unclasp the collet from her neck. Jake, leering and humping his shoulders, stopped her mid-way.
“What now,” growled the Kite; “shall they not be ours, then?”
“Patience, good gossip, patience!” said the other softly in his ear. “Would not the Cuckoo, returning, note at once their absence, and so be moved to fury? No suspicion, Thomas Kite—none. Lull him, lull him, and then—one blow, and all is ours—wine, jewels, gold, and—hum!” He hugged himself, gluttonously contorted. “Is not a half share better than a third,” he said, “or none at all? And as for the little pretty, pleasant tit-bit——”
The Kite roared out suddenly on the captives:
“Down with ye both asquat on grass bank yonder, and move so much as an eyelid at your peril!”
Trembling and distraught, the Queen dragged the boy to a place beside her on the turf, and so, clasped together, they cowered, awaiting the end.
Despair was in her heart. So remote, so utterly unfriended, she knew not where to look for hope or remedy. Cursed and proscribed in the thick of enemies, no self-confession that she might venture but must prove her worst damnation. Outlawed herself, she was the natural prey to outlaws. To reveal her identity were to forgo the smallest consideration a threat of vengeful justice might otherwise perhaps enforce—were to unmuzzle these ravening beasts finally and effectively. And yet she dared not threaten justice, lest passions so reckless should be fired thereby to instant retaliation.
She could only pray to her gods in a dumb agony of supplication to contrive some means for their escape; for herself she could think of no possible way, unless at the last to snatch death from some ill-guarded weapon.
What long torture of mind she endured while sitting there facing her brutal captors, awaiting the Cuckoo’s return and thereafter the final struggle, one may imagine in a measure. A suffocating lump seemed to rise in her throat when at length she heard his footsteps on the twig-strewn turf, and her arm tightened convulsively about her boy.
The returned ruffian, when he hove into sight, had been obviously priming himself for the affray. He was not drunk, but his huge cheeks were blistered red and a fire blinked in his eyes. He carried over his shoulder a net containing a jar of sack and a couple of curved drinking-horns, and, striding across to his comrades, he bent, with a fierce inquiring oath, to sling his burden to the grass. As he thus stooped, Jake and the Kite, standing on either side of him, drove each a sudden knife, handle-deep, into the thick of his neck. The monster, with one slobbering choke, heaved forward and went down like an ox. His fingers raked, his legs jerked for a little, and then the whole welter relaxed and subsided. Simultaneously with its cessation of movement the two murderers, as if by one impulse, made for the wine-jar. Their hands were shaking, their cheeks spotted with white. They spilled as much as they gained, but each in the end succeeded in gulping a hornful between his chattering teeth. And then!——
The woods echoed with their screeches; they writhed like scalded snakes upon the grass. For the Cuckoo, coveting not a half but the whole of the spoil, had gone even a step further than his confederates, and had poisoned the wine he brought them with some swift corrosive acid snatched up from the “Chequers” harness-room.
Was the biter bit ever mangled with a longer tooth? The pale Queen, risen throughout this bloody drama, watching half-paralysed its course, with but reason enough left to hold the child’s face hidden from it, was even minutes in guessing the truth. But when at length she realised it, with a sob of thankfulness she seized her boy’s hand, and, avoiding those prostrate, faintly-gasping horrors, fled deep and deeper into the forest, until, as history relates, she found that chivalrous one whose generosity was to obtain her means to cross the water.