A sound of hoofs behind made the franklin turn his head, and he saw a goodly troop, armed to the teeth, emerge from the earl’s house and follow the lead of Marmaduke. Meanwhile Warwick was closeted with Montagu.
Worldly as the latter was, and personally attached to Edward, he was still keenly alive to all that touched the honour of his House; and his indignation at the deadly insult offered to his niece was even more loudly expressed than that of the fiery earl.
“To deem,” he exclaimed, “to deem Elizabeth Woodville worthy of his throne, and to see in Anne Nevile the only worthy to be his leman!”
“Ay!” said the earl, with a calmness perfectly terrible, from its unnatural contrast to his ordinary heat, when but slightly chafed, “ay! thou sayest it! But be tranquil; cold,—cold as iron, and as hard! We must scheme now, not storm and threaten—I never schemed before! You are right,—honesty is a fool’s policy! Would I had known this but an hour before the news reached me! I have already dismissed our friends to their different districts, to support King Edward’s cause—he is still king,—a little while longer king! Last night, I dismissed them—last night, at the very hour when—O God, give me patience!” He paused, and added in a low voice, “Yet—yet—how long the moments are how long! Ere the sun sets, Edward, I trust, will be in my power!”
“How?”
“He goes, to-day, to the More,—he will not go the less for what hath chanced; he will trust to the archbishop to make his peace with me,—churchmen are not fathers! Marmaduke Nevile hath my orders; a hundred armed men, who would march against the fiend himself, if I said the word, will surround the More, and seize the guest!”
“But what then? Who, if Edward, I dare not say the word—who is to succeed him?”
“Clarence is the male heir.”
“But with what face to the people proclaim—”
“There—there it is!” interrupted Warwick. “I have thought of that,—I have thought of all things; my mind seems to have traversed worlds since daybreak! True! all commotion to be successful must have a cause that men can understand. Nevertheless, you, Montagu—you have a smoother tongue than I; go to our friends—to those who hate Edward—seek them, sound them!”