Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

Lord Pembroke was consequently despatched to Guyenne, with several of those unmanageable honest men, whose straightforward honour is the stumbling-block of evil intentions. Lord Salisbury was left once more to protect Touraine with very inefficient forces; and John himself retreated across the Loire, with the prisoners and the bulk of his army.

Each day's march changed his demeanour towards Arthur and his unfortunate companions. His kingly courtesy became gradually scanty kindness, manifest neglect, and, at last, cruel ill usage. The revolted nobles of Poitou had given quite sufficient excuse for the king's severity, towards them, at least; and with little ceremony, either of time or manner, they were consigned to separate prisons, scattered over the face of Maine and Brittany. Arthur and De Coucy were granted a few days more of comparative liberty, following the English army, strongly escorted indeed; but still breathing the free air, and enjoying the sight of fair nature's face. At length, as the army passed through Normandy, their escort, already furnished with instructions to that effect, turned from the line of march, and deposited them within the walls of the castle of Falaise; from which place they were removed to Rouen in the midst of the winter, and confined in the chamber we have already described.

Arthur's mind had borne up at Falaise; so far, at least, that, though he grieved over the breaking of his first splendid hopes, and felt, with all the eager restlessness of youth, the uncomforts of imprisonment, the privation of exercise, the dull monotonous round of daily hours, the want of novelty, and the wearisome continuity of one unchanging train of thought; yet hope was still alive--nay, even expectation; and ceaselessly would he build those blessed castles in the air, that, like the portrait of an absent friend, picture forth the sweet features of distant happiness, far away, but not lost for ever. The air of the prison had there been fresh and light, the governor mild and urbane; and though, there, he had been lodged in a different chamber from De Coucy, yet his spirits had not sunk, even under solitude.

At Rouen, however, though the jailer, for his own convenience, rather than their comfort, placed the two prisoners in the same apartment, Arthur's cheerfulness quickly abandoned him; his health failed, and his hopes and expectations passed away like dreams, as they were. The air, though cold, was close and heavy; and the dim, grey light of the chamber seemed to encourage every melancholy thought.

When De Coucy strove to console him, he would but shake his head with an impatient start, as if the very idea of better days was but a mockery of his hopelessness; and at other times he would sit, with the silent tears of anguish and despair chasing each other down his fair, pale cheeks, hour after hour; as if weeping had become his occupation. As one day followed another, his depression seemed to increase. The only sign of interest he had shown in what was passing in the busy world without, had been the questions which he asked the jailer, morning and evening, when their food or a light was brought them. Then, he had been accustomed anxiously to demand when his uncle John was expected to return from England, and sometimes to comment on the reply; but, after a while, this too ceased, and his whole energies seemed benumbed with despair, from the rising till the setting of the sun.

After it was down, however, he seemed in a degree to re-awaken; and then alone he showed an interest in any thing unconnected with his own immediate fate, when the day had gone, and by the light of the lamp that was given them at night, De Coucy would relate to him many a battle and adventure in the Holy Land--scenes of danger, and terror, and excitement; and deeds of valour, and strength, and generosity, all lighted up with the romantic and chivalrous spirit of the age, and tinged with that wild and visionary superstition which cast a vague sort of shadowy grandeur over all the tales of those days.

Then Arthur's cheek would glow with a flush of feverish interest; and he would ask many an eager question, and listen to long and minute descriptions, that would weary beyond all patience any modern ears; and, in the end, he would wish that, instead of having embarked his hopes in the fatal endeavour of recovering lost kingdoms, and wresting his heritage from the usurper, he had given his life and hopes to the recovery of Christ's blessed cross and sepulchre.

This, however, was only, as we have said, after the sun had gone down, and when the lamp was lighted; for it seemed that then, when the same darkness was apportioned to every one, and when every one sought a refuge within the walls of their dwellings, that he felt not his imprisonment so painfully as when day had risen--day, which to him was without any of day's enjoyments. He could not taste the fresh air--he could not catch the sunshine of the early spring--he could not stretch his enfeebled limbs in the sports of the morning--he could not gaze upon all the unrivalled workmanship of God's glorious, beauty-spreading hand. Daylight to him was all privation; and even the sunbeam that found its way through the loophole in the masonry, seemed but given to wring him with the memory of sweets he could not taste. He thus therefore turned his back towards it, as we have at first depicted him; and burying his eyes upon his arms, gave himself up to the recollection of broken hopes, long-gone visions of empiry and dominion, stifled aspirations after honour and fame, brilliant past schemes of justice and equity, and universal benevolence, and all those bright materials given to youth, out of which manhood preserves so few to carry on into old age. Powerful feelings and generous designs are, alas! too like the inheritance of a miser in the hands of some spendthrift heir--lavished away on trifles in our early years, and needed, but not possessed, in our riper age.

None had been more endowed in such sort than Arthur Plantagenet; but it seemed the will of Fortune, to snatch from him, piece by piece, each portion of his heritage, and to crush the energies of his mind at the same time that she tore from him his right of dominion; and thus, while he lay and pondered over all he had once hoped, there was a touch of bitterness mingled with his grief, to feel that the noblest wishes are but the mock and sport of Fate. Born to a kingdom, yet doomed to a prison; as a child he had entered on the career of a man; he had mingled the bright aspirations of youth with the ambitious yearnings of maturity; and now his infancy lay crushed under the misfortunes of manhood.

De Coucy gazed on him with feelings of deep and painful interest. What he might have been, and what he was; his youth, and his calamities; his crushed mind, and its former gallant energy, stood forth in strong contrast to the eyes of De Coucy, as, leaning against the arch, he contemplated the unhappy prince, whose thin, pale hands, appearing from beneath the curls of his glossy hair, spoke plainly the ravages that confinement and sorrow had worked upon him.