"Will your highness state them?" said the young nobleman. "I will answer them at once boldly and truly."
"I will," answered Richard. "The first is--and all the rest are secondary to that--that you have aided and comforted, contrary to our proclamation, a known and avowed traitor, Morton, bishop of Ely; that you took him in your train disguised as a friar, and carried him with you from Tamworth to the abbey of St. Clare of Atherston, for the purpose of facilitating his escape, well knowing him to be a traitor. How say you? Is this charge true?"
"In part, my lord the king," replied Chartley; "but in part also it is false."
"In what part," demanded Richard.
"In that part which alleges I knew him to be a traitor," replied Chartley, "and in that which implies that I had seen said did know your royal proclamation. I never saw it, nor knew the terms thereof, till yesterday; nor did I know or believe that the bishop was a traitor. Yet let me not say one word that can deceive. I was well aware that he had incurred your highness' displeasure; but on what grounds I was not informed."
"And, knowing it, you aided his escape?" said Richard sternly.
"I did, my lord," replied Chartley; "but, if you will hear me speak a few words, I may say something in my own excuse. I never gave you cause before, wittingly or willingly, to doubt my loyalty. I have trafficked with none of your personal enemies, nor with those of your royal estate. I have taken no part in plots or conspiracies; but this was a very different case. I found the friend, the guide, the instructor of my youth, flying from danger; and my first thought was to succour him. I know, my lord the king, that I have put my head in peril by so doing; but what man would consider such peril to save a father? and this man I looked upon as a second father. I will ask you, sire, if you would not have done a hundred times as much, to rescue the noble duke of York?--I loved Morton as much."
He touched upon a tender point--perhaps the only really tender point in Richard's heart. There are spots in the waste of memory ever green--according to the beautiful figure of the poet--oases in the desert of life. The burning sun of ambition cannot parch them, the nipping frost of eager avarice cannot wither them. The palm tree of early affection shades them for ever; the refreshing fountains of first love keep them ever verdant. They are few with most men; for all bright and beautiful things are few; but rarely as there a heart so rugged in its nature, so scorched by earthly passion, or so faded from dull indulgence, as not to have one (if not more) of those spots of brightness, which, when the eye of remembrance lights upon it, refreshes the spirit with a vision of the sweet calm joys of youth. The memory of his great father, and of the love which he had borne him, was the purest, perhaps, the only pure thing for Richard, in all the treasury of the past; and he felt the allusion with sensations, such as he had not experienced for many a long year. They were tender, deep, almost too deep; and, turning away his head, he stretched out his hand with a gesture, which seemed to command the speaker to stop.
"Pardon me, your highness," said Chartley, seeing the emotions he had aroused, and then was silent.
Richard remained musing for several minutes. His mind was busy with the past; but he had the peculiar faculty of all great and resolute spirits, that of casting from him rapidly all impressions but those of the present. He looked up again; and it was evident that the emotion was at an end. Still it would seem that it had produced some effect in its passage, for his next words were in a milder tone.