"Need I say to you, Sir Aymer de Lacy, and you, Sir Ralph de Wilton," said Hastings, "how deeply I appreciate your great kindness in coming with me here. Place yourselves in my position and you will know the comfort you have given me. It would be foolish to say I am willing to die; I love life as well as any man; yet bear me witness that I meet my doom as becomes a Peer of England. I have but two requests to make of you, my friends—for though you both are of Gloucester's Household, yet have you been friends to me this day, as Knight to Knight, for you owe me no obligation. I ask that when yonder deed be done you recall to the Lord Protector his brother Edward's dying wish that I might lie by his side in Windsor Chapel. And lastly, I pray you bear to my sweet Countess the assurance of my endless love and adoration. Give her this ring and (pressing it to his lips) say that it bears my dying kiss. Tell her"—and his voice broke, and for the first time in this man's life tears started to his eyes and trickled down his ruddy cheeks—"tell her that my last thought was of her … tell her that I wish not Heaven save it bring her dear face to me." He mastered his emotion. "Farewell, my friends," extending his hands, and they silently grasped them, "may God, in His Providence, grant you a kinder death than mine."
Then with placid face and voice he turned to Raynor Royk, who stood leaning on his axe in evident distress of mind.
"I am at your service, my good man," he said. "Dispatch the business quickly and do not, I pray you, bungle it at the stroke."
Removing his handsome cloak, he opened his doublet at the neck, and with quiet dignity walked to the piece of heavy timber that had been used in repaving the Chapel only the previous day, and which lay across the green. Raynor Royk made a motion, and a tall soldier stepped forth. Hastings knelt as the man stopped beside him and drew back his doublet, baring his neck for the blow.
"Strike true, fellow," he said, and calmly placed his head upon the timber's end.
XII
THE KING'S WORD
From this moment Gloucester moved with no uncertain nor halting steps toward the object of his ambition. With the death of Hastings was removed the only man in England who might have blocked his purpose through either power or ability; and he and Buckingham were left free to play out to its end the wonderful game that won a kingdom without a single disturbance or the drawing of a sword. The moves followed one another in bewildering rapidity, yet with such consummate skill, that when in the great chamber of Baynard's Castle the final offer of the Crown was made, and the Lord Protector with seeming diffidence accepted it on Stafford's urging, it appeared but a natural consequence of spontaneous events, brought about only by the force of circumstances and through no deliberate human agency.
In some of these events Sir Aymer de Lacy was an actor, while in others he was but a spectator or bore no part at all. From the grim death-scene in the Tower he had gone back to Crosby Hall and a long talk with Sir John de Bury, wherein he learned what had brought the old Knight so hastily to London and the Lord Chamberlain to the block; and which, ere nightfall, was to send Sir Ralph de Wilton galloping back to Pontefract, bearing an order constituting the Earl of Northumberland Lord High Steward, and directing the trial of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan for the same crime that had proven Hastings' doom: conspiracy against the Lord Protector. He had chanced to ride by St. Paul's Cross while Dr. Shaw was in the midst of his sermon on "Bastard slips shall not take deep root." He had gone with Buckingham to the Guild Hall two days later; had listened with strong approval to the speech wherein Stafford boldly advocated the setting aside of the young Edward in favor of his uncle; and had lent his own voice to the cry: "King Richard! King Richard!" He had witnessed the tender at Baynard's Castle and the halting acceptance by the Duke—had heard the heralds proclaim the new King in the streets of London—and had seen him ascend the marble seat at Westminster and begin the reign that promised so bright a future. He had ridden in the cavalcade that accompanied the King from the Tower on the Saturday preceding the formal coronation, and had formed one of the throng that participated in the gorgeous ceremony of that July Sunday, when all the power of England's nobility passed from the Palace to the Abbey to honor him who was to be the last of his Line.