"Ah! how true it is," said he, "that desire for fame and power is but an insatiate parasite which gluts and fattens upon the care-free joys of youth. What is this glittering panoply, pray, but a mask? A shining veneer, shielding from view the process of decay within? And now, after yielding nearly all—my health, my strength, my happiness—you ask of me that I shall spill the blood of my dearest friend. The companion of my joyous youth. Him, say you, must I offer up on the gory altar of public expediency. That I must perforce still the one brave heart that beats with an unselfish devotion to my cause and person."
"'Tis needless to tell thee, my liege," purred Stanley, who was ever careful to guard his precedence at the throne, "that the peace and integrity of a nation depend upon thy secure hold upon this very seat. Even that which but remotely menaces should be rendered impotent. These expressions of thy tender sentiment, your highness, are attuned in harmony with thy noble character as a man, but——"
"Yea, Stanley," interrupted Henry, making a show of partial surrender to the flatterer's wiles, "but am I longer a man? There's the question, my lord. Dare I think as a man, and not as a fear-stricken, fettered monarch? Is it not true that the ruler hath swallowed up the mortal, leaving naught but an outward pageant? An effigy of cold and heartless clay upon which to drape a tawdry robe; to set a jeweled crown; to hang a golden scepter?"
Stanley ventured no reply, and a somewhat prolonged interval of silence followed Henry's theatric outburst.
"Think not that I am mad, my lord of Stanley," the King at length resumed, and in a tone so low, melancholy, and sad, that its false note was scarcely to be perceived. "It is indeed true that my first concern must ever be to safeguard my beloved people. Hath these rumors concerning the young knight been spread broadcast, my lord? It were an ill time to essay a cure of the malady, and it had festered over all England."
"It hath not done so, your majesty," Lord Stanley assured him. "The aged seaman and all but two of the seditious leaders are now imprisoned within the tower. The pair who escaped the meshes of my net are now journeying hither from London in disguise. I have their names and know well what like they are."
"'Tis well. Thy station be the forfeit, an they elude thee. Still all their busy tongues, my lord. We lay upon thee royal warrant of their death, and that speedily. Concerning the young knight's progenitors, Lord Stanley, it doth please us to make of thee our single confidant. This noble is in truth the son of the Duke of Clarence—the good Duke, who came to his untimely end at the gentle hands of our esteemed father-in-law. Thou dost remember well that he was attainted of high treason, and that we took measures accordingly to have his issue pronounced illegitimate. 'Twas done, as thou canst see, to guard against such a contingency as hath now arisen. But to my tale. Sir Richard, when but a suckling infant, was carried secretly to Brittany, and enjoyed there, with me, the powerful protection of Duke Francis. Why the die of England's sovereignty was cast in my favor, I know not. God wot, Stanley, I wish that it had not been! Now, my lord, attend our every word. The weak stripling, whom base Richard the Third believed to be the true Earl of Warwick hath, under our command, for long been immured within the tower. It is perhaps the better part of wisdom that we should lesson thee that an exchange of infants was many years ago covertly effected by one Dame Tyrrell, wife of Sir James Tyrrell, the same who was bribed by Richard to strangle his two nephews, the boy dukes remaining betwixt himself and the throne. Within a fortnight, Stanley, do thou undertake to have the news of the death of this changeling early published over all our kingdom. 'Twere the more seemly, mayhap, and it appeared to have transpired through natural causes. A return of the sweating sickness, or some like subterfuge."
"And the young knight, Rohan; what of him, most mighty liege?"
"Him, we would have thee to know," said Henry, "we love and trust above any man, saving thyself, in all the length and breadth of England.
"Aye, marry, but——"