When Hugh had shown his writing tools and told his errand, they smoothed their tone and bade him stand aside, in the cleared space. The others—strange knight, his rude captors, the mummer-gentleman—all were swallowed up behind the barrier into the throng which snarled, and surged, and gnashed its teeth, in weltering heat and evil smells, under the spell of the scent of blood.
After a little while there rose an echoing blast of trumpets from the market-place without, riding as it were on the crest of a great wave of cheering. Then hurriedly the officers brought forth from an outer room two high chairs of state, gilded, and bearing the town's arms, and set them upon the floor-cloth under a canopy, and put behind these, on either side of the dais, other chairs and stools—and then bowed low as the doors in the centre were flung open with loud knocks, and two heralds, in blazoned tabards, entered. Behind these, with stately step, by twos came a score of great warriors and lords, mailed to the throat, and with pages bearing their cumbrous head-gear; then others of distinction, for the most part advanced in years, who wore rich gowns and chains, and held velvet caps in their hands; and lastly, two young men in gowns who wore their caps on their heads. And one of these, of a square, thick-featured aspect, with broad breast, and reddish hair, was Earl Marshal of England, yet had scarce a look from any one, so bent were all thoughts upon the other.
This other—clad in sober colors, with a broad chain upon his breast and a black close-curling plume in his cap—came sedately forward and sat in the large chair a hand's breadth in front of his companion's. He let his glance rest easily upon the crowded half of the room, as if noting things in idleness the while his mind was elsewhere.
The heralds called out each his master's exalted office, and what matters they had come now to rightly judge upon; and Hugh, having been seated at a desk by the window, hung with all his eyes to the face of the youth in the foremost chair.
It was a thin, thoughtful face, dark of skin and with a saddened air. The bended nose was long, the point well out in air to bespeak an inborn swiftness of scent. And above, wide apart, there burned a steady flame of great-hearted wisdom in two deep iron-gray eyes which embraced all things, searched calmly and comprehended all things. This Prince, though first subject and foremost soldier under the King, his brother, was even now but nineteen years of age; and Hugh, gazing in rapt timidity upon him, flushed with shame at thought of his own years, close treading upon those of this Prince, and of his own weak unworthiness.
The boy wrote down what the old men in gowns bade him say concerning the dreadful things that now were toward, and, writing, contrived also to look and listen with an awed, ashen face and bewildered mind.
Other soldiers had entered the room, and, making a weapon-lined lane between the door and the throng, brought forward now, one after another, the captive lords and knights taken red-handed from the Abbey or found in hiding in the town. Each in his turn, with elbows thong-bound at his back, with torn raiment and dishevelled if not bandaged head, was haled before the dais, and looked into these deep-glancing eyes of his boy judge.
Richard held them in his calm, engirdling gaze with never sign of heat or pity, and to each spoke in tones high and sharp-cut enough for all to hear, but of a level in cold dignity. When they in turn replied, he listened gravely, with lip uplifted so that his teeth were seen. Ever and again his fingers toyed with the hilt of the baslard at his girdle the while he listened; and these to whom he hearkened thus trembled rightly at the omen. When all needful words were spent, the Prince leaned for a moment to his right and whispered apart with Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; but this for very form's sake, and not to seek counsel. Then, still in the same chilled, equable voice, he would mete out the judgment, suiting to each with apposite words his deliverance, whether they should lose their heads for their treason on the morrow, or depart under the King's mercy as free men, paying fines in gold or land, or suffering no penalty whatsoever. Well nigh two score and ten passed thus before the Prince, and of this number two-and-twenty were sent to the block. Of these, the greatest in estate was Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, blood-cousin to his judge, and to whom gray hairs had brought neither wisdom nor control. With him Prince Richard parleyed at length, pointing out how the Beaufort line of John of Gaunt, beginning in dishonor with Katherine Swynford, and filtering through envious trickery and disloyalty, would on the morrow run itself miserably out in muddy lees upon the scaffold. And then they led the childless Duke away amid the angered hootings of the crowd.
None but this Somerset, and Sir John Longstrother, who was called the Prior of St. John's, had courage wherewith to accuse the King of broken faith, in that he had sworn to give mercy to all who sought refuge in the Abbey. To this young Gloster, still deadly calm, made answer that the King had given no such pledge, but only granted some old monk's prayer that all of gentle blood who met their death, either in battle or on the scaffold, might be buried in the Abbey without dismemberment; this, and nothing more.
Of a sudden, Hugh, grown at home among these horrors, saw advancing under guard between the glittering lines of bills, the mailed figure he knew so well. The boy held his breath as the strange Knight stood before the dais, helmeted and erect—and as he noted that the morris-dancer, fiercely pushing his way, had followed close behind.