"Ah! your grace knows that I am discreet," replied the footman.
"Ay, as discreet as the babbling echo, or a jay, or a magpie," cried Henry; "but get thee gone, quick! and return by the path we came, for we follow slowly. Lend me your arm, Sir Osborne. We will round by yon little bridge. A curse upon the leaping-pole, say I! By my fay, I will have all the creeks in England stopped. I owe my life to you, but hereafter we will speak of that: I will find means to repay it."
"I am more than repaid, your grace," said Sir Osborne, "by the knowledge that, but for my poor aid, England might have lost her king, and within a few hours the whole realm might have been drowned in tears."
"Ay, poor souls! I do believe they would regret me," said the monarch; "for, heaven knows, it is my wish to see them happy. A king's best elegy is to be found in the tears of his subjects, Sir Osborne; and every king should strive to merit their love when living and their regret when dead."
Strange as it may seem, to those accustomed to picture themselves Henry the Eighth as the sanguinary and remorseless tyrant which he appeared in later years, such were the sentiments with which he set out in his regal career, while youth, prosperity, and power were all in their first freshness: 'twas the tale of the spoiled child, which was always good-humoured when it was pleased. Now the first twelve years of Henry's reign offered nought but pleasure, and during their lapse he appeared a gay, light-hearted, gallant monarch, fit to rule and win the hearts of a brave people; for nothing yet had arisen to call into action the mighty vices that lay latent in his nature. Gradually, however, luxury produced disease, and disease pain, and pain called up cruelty; while long prosperity and uncontradicted sway made him imperious, irascible, and almost frantic under opposition. But such was not the case now, and it was only the close observer of human nature that could at all perceive in the young and splendid monarch the traits that promised what he would afterwards become.
Discoursing on the unlucky termination of their sport, Henry proceeded with Sir Osborne into the park, and there awaited the coming of the servant with their cloaks; feeling a sort of foppish unwillingness to enter the palace in the state in which his fall had left him, his whole dress being stiff with mud, and both face and hands in anything but a comely condition. Many men might have taken advantage of Sir Osborne's situation to urge their suit; but notwithstanding the very great claim that the accident of the morning had given him upon Henry, the knight was hardly satisfied that it had occurred. He deemed that, in common decency, he should be obliged to delay the communication which he had proposed to make that very evening, and thereby allow Wolsey to arrive before the event was decided, which for every reason he had hoped to avoid. Were he to press his suit now, it would seem, he thought, surprising from the king's gratitude what his justice might have denied, and indelicately to solicit a high reward for an accidental service. His great hope, however, was that in the course of the evening the king might himself renew the subject, and, by offering some token of his thanks, afford him an opportunity of pleading for justice for his father and himself.
The discomfited falconers waited not long in the park before they were rejoined by the servant bearing the cloaks which the king had commanded; but although they soon reached the palace, the clammy wetness of his whole dress caused several slight shiverings to pass over the limbs of Henry, and after some persuasion by Sir Osborne he was induced to ask the counsel of his surgeon, who recommended him instantly to bathe, and then endeavour to sleep.
This was, of course, a signal for the young knight to withdraw; and taking leave of the king, he retired to his apartments to change his own dress, which was not in a much more comfortable state than that of the monarch. Our old friend Longpole soon answered to his call; and while aiding him in his arrangements, without any comment upon the state of his clothes, which he seemed to regard as nothing extraordinary, the honest custrel often paused to give a glance at his master's face, as one who has something to communicate, the nature of which may not be very palatable to the hearer.
"Well, Longpole," said the knight, after observing several of these looks, "when you have trussed these three points, you shall tell me what is the matter, for I see you have something on your mind."
"I only wished to ask your worship," said the custrel, "if you had seen him; for he's lurking about here, like a blackbird under a cherry-tree."