Adam shrugged his shoulders in impatient disdain. “Unless I gave thee my science, my secret were profitless to thee. Villain and numskull, do thy worst.”
The friar made a sign to a soldier who stood behind Adam, and the soldier silently drew the end of the rope which girded the scholar’s neck round a bough of the leafless tree. “Hold!” whispered the friar, “not till I give the word. The earl may recover himself yet,” he added to himself; and therewith he began once more to vociferate his incantations. Meanwhile the eyes of Sibyll had turned for a moment from her father; for the burst of sunshine, lighting up the valley below, had suddenly given to her eyes, in the distance, the gable-ends of the old farmhouse, with the wintry orchard,—no longer, alas! smiling with starry blossoms. Far remote from the battlefield was that abode of peace,—that once happy home, where she had watched the coming of the false one!
Loftier and holier were the thoughts of the fated king. He had turned his face from the field, and his eyes were fixed upon the tower of the church behind. And while he so gazed, the knoll from the belfry began solemnly to chime. It was now near the hour of the Sabbath prayers, and amidst horror and carnage, still the holy custom was not suspended.
“Hark!” said the king, mournfully, “that chime summons many a soul to God!”
While thus the scene on the eminence of Hadley, Edward, surrounded by Hastings, Gloucester, and his principal captains, took advantage of the unexpected sunshine to scan the foe and its position, with the eye of his intuitive genius for all that can slaughter man. “This day,” he said, “brings no victory, assures no crown, if Warwick escape alive. To you, Lovell and Ratcliffe, I intrust two hundred knights,—your sole care the head of the rebel earl!”
“And Montagu?” said Ratcliffe.
“Montagu? Nay, poor Montagu, I loved him as well once as my own mother’s son; and Montagu,” he muttered to himself, “I never wronged, and therefore him I can forgive. Spare the marquis.—I mislike that wood; they must have more force within than that handful on the skirts betrays. Come hither, D’Eyncourt.”
And a few minutes afterwards, Warwick and his men saw two parties of horse leave the main body, one for the right hand, one the left, followed by long detachments of pikes, which they protected; and then the central array marched slowly and steadily on towards the scanty foe. The design was obvious,—to surround on all sides the enemy, driven to its last desperate bay. But Montagu and his brother had not been idle in the breathing-pause; they had planted the greater portion of the archers skilfully among the trees. They had placed their pikemen on the verge of the barricades made by sharp stakes and fallen timber, and where their rampart was unguarded by the pass which had been left free for the horsemen, Hilyard and his stoutest fellows took their post, filling the gap with breasts of iron.
And now, as with horns and clarions, with a sea of plumes and spears and pennons, the multitudinous deathsmen came on, Warwick, towering in the front, not one feather on his eagle crest despoiled or shorn, stood, dismounted, his visor still raised, by his renowned steed. Some of the men had by Warwick’s order removed the mail from the destrier’s breast; and the noble animal, relieved from the weight, seemed as unexhausted as its rider; save where the champed foam had bespecked its glossy hide, not a hair was turned; and the on-guard of the Yorkists heard its fiery snort as they moved slowly on. This figure of horse and horseman stood prominently forth amidst the little band. And Lovell, riding by Ratcliffe’s side, whispered, “Beshrew me, I would rather King Edward had asked for mine own head than that gallant earl’s!”
“Tush, youth,” said the inexorable Ratcliffe, “I care not of what steps the ladder of mine ambition may be made!”