“You!” said Montagu, entering suddenly—“you, kinsman, may look to higher fortunes than the Duchess of Bedford’s waiting-damsel can bring to thy honest love. How now, mistress, say, wilt thou take this young gentleman for loving fere and plighted spouse? If so, he shall give thee a manor for jointure, and thou shalt wear velvet robe and gold chain, as a knight’s wife.”
This unexpected interference, which was perfectly in character with the great lords, who frequently wooed in very peremptory tones for their clients and kinsmen, [See, in Miss Strickland’s “Life of Elizabeth Woodville,” the curious letters which the Duke of York and the Earl of Warwick addressed to her, then a simple maiden, in favour of their protege, Sir R. Johnes.] completed the displeasure which the blunt Marmaduke had already called forth in Sibyll’s gentle but proud nature. “Speak, maiden,—ay or no?” continued Montagu, surprised and angered at the haughty silence of one whom he just knew by sight and name, though he had never before addressed her.
“No, my lord,” answered Sibyll, keeping down her indignation at this tone, though it burned in her cheek, flashed in her eye, and swelled in the heave of her breast. “No! and your kinsman might have spared this affront to one whom—but it matters not.” She swept from the tent as she said this, and passed up the alley into that of the queen’s mother.
“Best so; thou art too young for marriage, Marmaduke,” said Montagu, coldly. “We will find thee a richer bride ere long. There is Mary of Winstown, the archbishop’s ward, with two castles and seven knight’s fees.”
“But so marvellously ill-featured, my lord,” said poor Marmaduke, sighing.
Montagu looked at him in surprise. “Wives, sir,” he said, “are not made to look at,—unless, indeed, they be the wives of other men. But dismiss these follies for the nonce. Back to thy post by the king’s pavilion; and by the way ask Lord Fauconberg and Aymer Nevile, whom thou wilt pass by yonder arbour, ask them, in my name, to be near the pavilion while the king banquets. A word in thine ear,—ere yon sun gilds the top of those green oaks, the Earl of Warwick will be with Edward IV.; and come what may, some brave hearts should be by to welcome him. Go!”
Without tarrying for an answer, Montagu turned into one of the tents, wherein Raoul de Fulke and the Lord St. John, heedless of hind and hart, conferred; and Marmaduke, much bewildered, and bitterly wroth with Sibyll, went his way.
CHAPTER IX. THE GREAT ACTOR RETURNS TO FILL THE STAGE.
And now in various groups these summer foresters were at rest in their afternoon banquet,—some lying on the smooth sward around the lake, some in the tents, some again in the arbours; here and there the forms of dame and cavalier might be seen, stealing apart from the rest, and gliding down the alleys till lost in the shade, for under that reign gallantry was universal. Before the king’s pavilion a band of those merry jongleurs, into whom the ancient and honoured minstrels were fast degenerating, stood waiting for the signal to commence their sports, and listening to the laughter that came in frequent peals from the royal tent. Within feasted Edward, the Count de la Roche, the Lord Rivers; while in a larger and more splendid pavilion at some little distance, the queen, her mother, and the great dames of the court held their own slighter and less noisy repast.