“Children!” cried Warwick, “droop not! Henry at Agincourt had worse odds than we!”
But the murmur among the archers, the lealest part of the earl’s retainers, continued, till there stepped forth their captain, a gray old man, but still sinewy and unbent, the iron relic of a hundred battles.
“Back to your men, Mark Forester!” said the earl, sternly.
The old man obeyed not. He came on to Warwick, and fell on his knees beside his stirrup.
“Fly, my lord! escape is possible for you and your riders. Fly through the wood, we will screen your path with our bodies. Your children, father of your followers, your children of Middleham, ask no better fate than to die for you! Is it not so?” and the old man, rising, turned to those in hearing. They answered by a general acclamation.
“Mark Forester speaks well,” said Montagu. “On you depends the last hope of Lancaster. We may yet join Oxford and Somerset! This way through the wood,—come!” and he laid his hand on the earl’s rein.
“Knights and sirs,” said the earl, dismounting, and partially raising his visor as he turned to the horsemen, “let those who will, fly with Lord Montagu! Let those who, in a just cause, never despair of victory, nor, even at the worst, fear to face their Maker, fresh from the glorious death of heroes, dismount with me!” Every knight sprang from his steed, Montagu the first. “Comrades!” continued the earl, then addressing the retainers, “when the children fight for a father’s honour, the father flies not from the peril into which he has drawn the children. What to me were life, stained by the blood of mine own beloved retainers, basely deserted by their chief? Edward has proclaimed that he will spare none. Fool! he gives us, then, the superhuman mightiness of despair! To your bows!—one shaft—if it pierce the joints of the tyrant’s mail—one shaft may scatter yon army to the winds! Sir Marmaduke has gone to rally noble Somerset and his riders; if we make good our defence one little hour, the foe may be yet smitten in the rear, and the day retrieved! Courage and heart then!” Here the earl lifted his visor to the farthest bar, and showed his cheerful face—“Is this the face of a man who thinks all hope is gone?”
In this interval, the sudden sunshine revealed to King Henry, where he stood, the dispersion of his friends. To the rear of the palisades, which protected the spot where he was placed, already grouped “the lookers-on and no fighters,” as the chronicler [Fabyan] words it, who, as the guns slackened, ventured forth to learn the news, and who now, filling the churchyard of Hadley, strove hard to catch a peep of Henry the saint, or of Bungey the sorcerer. Mingled with these gleamed the robes of the tymbesteres, pressing nearer and nearer to the barriers, as wolves, in the instinct of blood, come nearer and nearer round the circling watch-fire of some northern travellers. At this time the friar, turning to one of the guards who stood near him, said, “The mists are needed no more now; King Edward hath got the day, eh?”
“Certes, great master,” quoth the guard, “nothing now lacks to the king’s triumph except the death of the earl.”
“Infamous nigromancer, hear that!” cried Bungey to Adam. “What now avail thy bombards and thy talisman! Hark yet—tell me the secret of the last,—of the damnable engine under my feet, and I may spare thy life.”