“Is it Tom?” said the Dowager.
“There be no news of my Lord, nor from Langley,” said Bertram. “But my Lord’s Grace of Hereford, and Sir Thomas de Arundel, sometime Archbishop, be landed at Ravenspur.”
“Landed at Ravenspur!—Banished men!”
The loyal soul of Elizabeth Le Despenser could imagine nothing more atrocious.
“Well, let them land!” she added in a minute. “The Duke’s Grace of York shall wit how to deal with them. Be any gathered to them?”
“Hundreds and thousands,” was the ominous answer.
“Ay me!” sighed the Dowager. “Well! ‘the Lord reigneth.’”
Constance’s only comment on the remarks was a quiet, incredulous shrug of her shoulders. She knew her father.
And she was right. Like many another, literally and figuratively, York went over to the enemy’s ground to parley, and ended in staying there. One of the two was talked over—but that one was not the rebel, but the Regent.
Poor York! Looking back on those days, out of the smoke of the battle, one sees him a man so wretchedly weak and incapable that it is hardly possible to be angry with him. It does not appear to have been conviction, nor cowardice, nor choice in any sense, which caused his desertion, but simply his miserable incapacity to stand alone, or to resist the influence of any stronger character on either side. He go to parley with the enemy! He might as well have sent his baby grandson to parley with a box of sugar-plums.