Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

"Oh! your worship," said Heartley, "I can't reason the matter with your reverence, you'd pose me in a minute; but, nevertheless, I'll keep my oath, and I can give you a good reason for it. It would do my lord no good if I was to break it: there are twenty people round about who would all join to stop him if I were to let him out this moment, and with my young lady's three servants to boot, we should still be beaten by the numbers. We must wait till after dark; ay, and till after the bell rings to bed at eleven; but then I will find means to free my lord."

"But may they not have thus time to commit some evil deed?" demanded Lady Constance, "and your tardy succour may come too late."

"No, no, my lady," replied Longpole; "I heard yon Portingallo, who is just riding away, tell his rascally slavish crew, as he was locking them up in the granary, that at half-past one he was to be back; and then they were to carry down the two prisoners to the ship, for which they were to have two hundred gold angels amongst them. Now, we shall be far enough before half-past one."

"At all events, my lord," said Lady Constance, "it will not be long before we are at Canterbury, from whence we can send you sufficient succour, backed with authority competent to procure your release."

"But remember, lady," said the knight, "that I am but Sir Osborne Maurice, and no one must know me as anything else if it can be avoided; for it is of the utmost consequence to my interest, that at present I should not appear before our noble but somewhat wayward king, as I really am. And now, let me return you a thousand and a thousand thanks for your kind interest past and present; to which but add one favour. When I am free, give me but one little glove from this fair hand," and he raised it to his lips, "and I will place it on my pennon's pike, and write underneath it, gratitude; and if it fall in the listed field, or the battle plain, Darnley is dead."

"Nay, nay, my lord," replied Lady Constance, with a blush and smile, "too gallant by half! But you are a prisoner, and I believe promises made in prison are not held valid. Wait, therefore, till you are free, and in the mean time you shall have my prayers and best wishes, and such aid as I can send you from Canterbury I will."

There is a witchery in the sympathy of a beautiful woman, whose influence all men must have experienced, and all women understand; and though our hero felt the most devout conviction that he was not the least in love in the world with Lady Constance de Grey, there is no knowing how far his gratitude for the interest she took in his fate might have carried him, had she remained there much longer; and even when she left him, and he heard the horses' feet repass the window of his prison, he felt as if he were ten times more a prisoner than before.

There was something so kind and so gentle in her manner, and her smile illuminated her countenance with such angelic light, that while she was there, even though speaking of them, his sorrows and his dangers seemed all forgot. She was so young, and so beautiful too, and there was in her look and her gesture and her tone so much of that undefiled simplicity which we love to suppose in a higher nature of beings, that the young knight, as an admirer of everything that is excellent, might well make the fair creature that had just left him the theme of his thoughts long after she was gone; and in such dreams absorbed, he paced up and down the strong-room, finding out that loss of rank and fortune was a much greater misfortune than ever, till then, he had deemed it.

At the same time that Lady Constance departed, our friend Longpole also left the prisoners; promising, however, to see them from time to time during the day, and to find means of liberating them at night. In this arrangement Jekin Groby took care to be specially included; and trusting implicitly to the promises of Dick Heartley on the score of his freedom, his only farther consideration was concerning his bags.

"Don't you think, my lord," said he, after waiting a moment or two in order to see whether Lord Darnley would finish his meditative perambulations; "don't you think King Harry will make this Sir Payan, or Sir Pagan as they ought to call him, refund my angels? Hey! my lord?"