With the Duke came two other persons—the brothers of Warwick, John Lord Montague and George Archbishop of York. They were about as much given to tergiversation as their better-known brother, with the proviso that in their innermost hearts they were a shade more determinately Yorkist than he. Montague in particular was remarkable for his power of versatility. His personal convictions were in favour of Edward, but the least offence given to him by his chosen master was enough to make him veer round like a weathercock to the opposite quarter. At the present moment some such annoyance was rankling in his narrow mind, and he was therefore just in a fit state to lend an ear to the persuasive representations of his brother of Warwick. The marvel of the matter is how these three crafty, changeable, unprincipled men contrived to trust each other.
During two previous years, Warwick had been dexterously drawing his net around his brothers. But now matters were almost ripe for action. For the whole of the autumn he had kept quiet and matured his plans. His reverend brother was quite as ready to his hand as the secular one. Any thing which involved a plot or a tumult seems to have been to the taste of this gentleman, who in seeking holy orders had certainly not taken the course for which nature intended him.
The four chamberers of the Countess of Warwick slept in one room, into which opened the smaller one of Mother Bonham. The furniture of the chamber consisted of two beds, large square ones with a tester, or head, the one having curtains of verder, or tapestry, and the other of dark crimson say, which was a coarse silk chiefly used in upholstery. In the first bed slept Eleanor and Theobalda, in the second Frideswide and Avice. The remaining articles were a large chest at the bottom of each bed, with a division across it, each young lady having a half to herself; a chair, two stools, and a fire-fork. Wardrobes were then kept in a separate chamber; while dressing-tables and washstands were luxuries of the future. There was a mirror fixed to the wall, almost too high to see—a position adopted for the discouragement of personal vanity: while every morning a bowl of water and a towel (to serve all four) was brought up by a slip-shod girl, one of half-a-dozen who did the dirtiest work of the house.
One evening in November, after the lights were out, and Mother Bonham and Theobalda were peacefully asleep, while Eleanor was perpetrating a sound so nearly akin to snoring that her fastidious taste would have been shocked had she known it, Frideswide, whose eyes were disinclined to close, heard a soft whisper from Avice beside her.
"Are you waking?"
"Oh aye," she said in a similar tone, and turning round towards Avice to hear the better what she wished to say.
"Your father, if I err not, is the Lord Marnell, that dwelleth at Lovell Tower, on the wolds?"
"Aye so," said Frideswide.
"Were you loth I should know of what kin you be to the Lady Margery, that died, an old man's life past, on Tower Hill?"
It was no wonder if Frideswide held her breath for a moment, and listened whether all the rest were safely asleep. The reference to a Lollard and a martyr, in the past of any family, had been safe enough during the latter half of Henry VI.'s reign, but it had already been pretty plainly shown not to be equally wise in that of Edward IV.