At the end of a few minutes, a young gentleman covered with dust, pale, and evidently sinking with fatigue, was introduced into the cabinet; and the king, fixing his eyes upon him, demanded--"What news?--You are Sir John Hutton's nephew, if I mistake not."
"The same, my liege," replied the young man, in a feeble tone. "Would that my uncle had been still in Britanny, methinks he had watched better."
"Speak, speak," said the king, in as calm a voice as he could command. "Some mischief has happened--say what has gone amiss."
"The earl of Richmond, my gracious lord, has escaped from Vannes," replied the young man. "He was pursued with all speed, tracked by his own dog; but he reached the gates of Angers just as the duke's men were at his heels."
Richard sat for a moment as if stupified. Then turning fiercely to Fulmer, he exclaimed, "Is this a time to talk of marriages? To horse, Lord Fulmer, and away. Your instructions shall be ready in an hour. Serve the king well, and the brightest lady in all the land shall be yours, if you but ask her. Fail, and as I live I will give her to another. By Heaven, we will take hostages of all men; there is too little faith on earth. The lady's hand for the best doer! Till then, I'll keep her sure. Away, let me hear no more!"
Fulmer dared not express the feeling which these words called up, but hastened from the room, with a flushed brow and cheek, while Richard, leaning his head upon his hand, muttered once or twice, "'Tis time to buckle on our armour."
The two gentlemen who had brought him the intelligence which had so moved him remained standing before him without receiving the slightest notice, for some five minutes, though one was hardly able to stand from fatigue, and both were somewhat alarmed at the absent and unusual mood into which the king was plunged. His face was agitated, while he thus thought, with a thousand shades of emotion. Now he bit his lip, and fixed his keen eye upon the floor; now his brow contracted, and his lip quivered; now he raised his eyes to the fretted and painted ceiling over head, with a sort of vacant look, from which all expression was banished; and when he at length ended this fit of meditation with a loud laugh, both the spectators feared his powerful mind had become affected, by the disappointment he had lately undergone. They tried, indeed, to suppress all signs of wonder; but he seemed to read their thoughts, the moment his spirit was re-called to the immediate business of the hour.
"Strange, Sir Arthur," he said, "that the things which--seen through rage and disappointment--are magnified, as in a mist, into giant evils, should, under a moment's calm reflection, diminish to their own pigmy reality. Here now, a minute or two ago, I thought the escape of this earl of Richmond from Britanny, and the reception in France, a mighty great disaster, the earl of Oxford's flight from Ham a portentous incident. Now it moves my merriment to think how I would whip the dame of Derby's beggar boy back to his Breton almshouse, if he dared to set his foot within this realm of England. By holy St. Paul, I would give him safe conduct over the narrow seas, and not place a galliot to impede his coming, for the mere jest of scourging him like a truant back to school, but that our realm has bled too much already, and that I hold the life of every subject dear. Who is this Richmond? Where is his name in arms? On what fields has he gained glory? Where learned he the art of war? And is it such a man as this shall come to battle for a crown, with one whose cradle was a corslet, his nursery a bloody fight, his schools Hexham, and Barnet, and Tewksbury, his pedagogues York, and Salisbury, and Warwick and Edward? Where are his generals? Will Dorset--feeble, vacillating, frippery Dorset, lead the van, and order the battle? Methinks, it is indeed meet matter for merriment; and I may well laugh, to think that I should have given an anxious look towards the movements of this Tudor boy. Say, my good friend, have all the fugitive lords gone with him into France? But you are weary. Sit you in that chair--nay, the king, wills it. Now answer me."
"No, my gracious liege," replied young John Hutton; "he gave them all the slip, I hear; sent them to the duke's court, to compliment him on his recovery; and thus having lulled suspicion, by the sacrifice of his friends, he fled away with only four in company?"
"Is the good duke then well again?" asked Richard, with a slight frown once more contracting his brow; "what news of Master Landais?"