And now the Eureka was a luxury as peremptorily forbid to the astrologer as it had been to the alchemist! Again the true science was despised, and the false cultivated and honoured. Condemned to calculations which no man (however wise) in that age held altogether delusive, and which yet Adam Warner studied with very qualified belief, it happened by some of those coincidences, which have from time to time appeared to confirm the credulous in judicial astrology, that Adam’s predictions became fulfilled. The duchess was prepared for the first tidings that Edward’s foes fled before him. She was next prepared for the very day in which Warwick landed; and then her respect for the astrologer became strangely mingled with suspicion and terror, when she found that he proceeded to foretell but ominous and evil events; and when at last, still in corroboration of the unhappily too faithful horoscope, came the news of the king’s flight, and the earl’s march upon London, she fled to Friar Bungey in dismay. And Friar Bungey said,—
“Did I not warn you, daughter? Had you suffered me to—”
“True, true!” interrupted the duchess. “Now take, hang, rack, drown, or burn your horrible rival, if you will, but undo the charm, and save us from the earl!”
The friar’s eyes twinkled, but to the first thought of spite and vengeance succeeded another: if he who had made the famous waxen effigies of the Earl of Warwick were now to be found guilty of some atrocious and positive violence upon Master Adam Warner, might not the earl be glad of so good an excuse to put an end to Himself?
“Daughter,” said the friar, at that reflection, and shaking his head mysteriously and sadly, “daughter, it is too late.”
The duchess in great despair flew to the queen. Hitherto she had concealed from her royal daughter the employment she had given to Adam; for Elizabeth, who had herself suffered from the popular belief in Jacquetta’s sorceries, had of late earnestly besought her to lay aside all practices that could be called into question. Now, however, when she confessed to the agitated and distracted queen the retaining of Adam Warner, and his fatal predictions, Elizabeth, who, from discretion and pride, had carefully hidden from her mother (too vehement to keep a secret) that offence in the king, the memory of which had made Warner peculiarly obnoxious to him, exclaimed,—
“Unhappy mother, thou hast employed the very man my fated husband would the most carefully have banished from the palace, the very man who could blast his name.”
The duchess was aghast and thunderstricken.
“If ever I forsake Friar Bungey again!” she muttered; “OH, THE GREAT MAN!”
But events which demand a detailed recital now rapidly pressing on, gave the duchess not even the time to seek further explanation of Elizabeth’s words, much less to determine the doubt that rose in her enlightened mind whether Adam’s spells might not be yet unravelled by the timely execution of the sorcerer!