“I have crossed the sea often enow in the good old days, and known nothing worse than a qualm or two.”
“That was to France,” said his son. “This Irish Sea is far wider and far more tossing, I know for my own part. I’d have given a knight’s fee to any one who would have thrown me overboard. I felt like an empty bag! But once there, they could not make enough of us. The Duke had got their hearts before, and odd sort of hearts they are. I was deaf with the wild kernes shouting round about in their gibberish—such figures, too, as they are, with their blue cloaks, streaming hair, and long glibbes (moustaches), and the Lords of the Pale, as they call the English sort, are nigh about as wild and savage as the mere Irish. It was as much as my Lord Duke could do to hinder two of them from coming to blows in his presence; and you should have heard them howl at one another. However, they are all with him, and a mighty force of them mean to go back with him to England. My Lord of Warwick came from Calais to hold counsel with him, and they have sworn to one another to meet with all their forces, and require the removal of the King’s evil councillors; and my Lord Duke, with his own mouth, bade me go and summon his trusty Will Dacre of Whitburn—so he spake, sir—to be with him with all the spears and bowmen you can raise or call for among the neighbours. And it is my belief, sir, that he means not to stop at the councillors, but to put forth his rights. Hurrah for King Richard of the White Rose!” ended Robert, throwing up his cap.
“Nay, now,” said his father. “I’d be loth to put down our gallant King Harry’s only son.”
“No one breathes a word against King Harry,” returned Robert, “no more than against a carven saint in a church, and he is about as much of a king as old stone King Edmund, or King Oswald, or whoever he is, over the porch. He is welcome to reign as long as he likes or lives, provided he lets our Duke govern for him, and rids the country of the foreign woman and her brat, who is no more hers than I am, but a mere babe of Westminster town carried into the palace when the poor King Harry was beside himself.”
“Nay, now, Rob!” cried his mother.
“So ’tis said!” sturdily persisted Rob. “’Tis well known that the King never looked at him the first time he was shown the little imp, and next time, when he was not so distraught, he lifted up his hands and said he wotted nought of the matter. Hap what hap, King Harry may roam from Church to shrine, from Abbey to chantry, so long as he lists, but none of us will brook to be ruled or misruled by the foreign woman and the Beauforts in his name, nor reigned over by the French dame or the beggar’s brat, and the traitor coward Beaufort, but be under our own noble Duke and the White Rose, the only badge that makes the Frenchman flee.”
The boy was scarcely fifteen, but his political tone, as of one who knew the world, made his father laugh and say, “Hark to the cockerel crowing loud. Spurs forsooth!”
“The Lords Edward and Edmund are knighted,” grunted Rob, “and there’s but few years betwixt us.”
“But a good many earldoms and lands,” said the Baron. “Hadst spoken of being out of pagedom, ’twere another thing.”
“You are coming, sir,” cried Rob, willing to put by the subject. “You are coming to see how I can win honours.”