"I am glad that you think me good," replied the lady, smiling; "you will have less fear in trusting yourself with me: your noble friend has confided your grace to my care, if, indeed, you will condescend to live with me, and be as a son to me. I have just lost a little nephew whom I fondly loved; will you supply his place, and take his name?"
"Fair cousin," said the prince, caressing his kind friend as he spoke, "I will wait on you, and serve you as no nephew ever served. What name did your lost kinsman bear? Quickly tell me, that I may know my own, and hereafter call myself by it."
"Perkin Warbeck," said Madeline.
"Now you mock me," cried Richard: "that has long been my name; but I knew not that it gave me a claim to so pretty a relation."
"This courtly language," replied the lady, "betrays your grace's princeliness. What will our Flemish boors say, when I present the nursling of royalty as mine? You will shame our homely breeding, Duke Richard."
"I beseech you, fair mistress," said Lovel, who now joined them, "to forget, even in private, such high-sounding titles. It is dangerous to play at majesty, unaided by ten thousand armed asserters of our right. Remember this noble child only as your loving nephew, Perkin Warbeck: he, who well knows the misery of regal claims unallied to regal authority, will shelter himself gladly and gratefully under the shadow of your lowly bower."
And now, as the wintry sun rose higher, the travellers prepared for their departure. Warbeck first left them to find and to dismiss his domestics, who would have been aware of the deception practised in the person of Richard. He returned in a few hours for his sister. The duke and Lord Lovel then separated. The intervening time had been employed by the noble in schooling the boy as to his future behaviour, in recounting to him his plans and hopes, and in instructing him how to conduct himself with his mother, if indeed he saw her; for Lovel was ignorant how Lady Brampton had succeeded at Winchester, and how far it would be possible to bring about an interview between the queen and her son. At length Warbeck returned; the travellers mounted, and Lord Lovel, watching from the cottage door, beheld with melancholy regret the prince depart: the long habit of intercourse, the uncertain future, his high pretensions, and his present state, had filled the cavalier with moody thoughts, unlike his usual sanguine anticipations, and energetic resolves. "This is womanly," at last he thought, as the reflection that he was alone, and had, perhaps, seen his beloved charge for the last time, filled his eyes with unwonted tears. "To horse! To my friends!—There to plan, scheme, devise—and then again to the field!"
Days and weeks passed, replete with doubt and anxiety to the queen and her enthusiastic friend at Winchester. Each day, many, many times, Lady Brampton visited the cathedral to observe whether the silver heart was suspended near the altar, which she had agreed with Lord Lovel should be the sign of the duke's arrival. The part Elizabeth Woodville had to play meanwhile was difficult and painful—she lived in constant intercourse with the countess of Richmond; the wishes and thoughts of all around were occupied by the hope of an heir to the crown, which the young queen would soon bestow on England. The birth of a son, it was prognosticated, would win her husband's affection, and all idea of future disturbance, of further risings and disloyalty, through the existence of this joint offspring of the two Roses, would be for ever at an end. While these hopes and expectations formed, it was supposed, the most flattering and agreeable subject of congratulation for the dowager queen, she remained sleepless and watchful, under the anticipation of seeing her fugitive son, the outcast and discrowned claimant of all that was to become the birthright of the unborn child.
At length the unwearied cares of Lady Brampton were rewarded; a small silver heart, bearing the initials of Richard, duke of York, was suspended near the shrine; and as she turned to look who placed it there, the soft voice of Madeline uttered the word of recognition agreed upon; joy filled Lady Brampton's heart, as the brief answers to her hurried questions assured her of Richard's safety. The same evening she visited, in disguise, the abode of Warbeck, and embraced, in a transport of delight, the princely boy, in whose fate she interested herself with all the fervour of her warm heart. She now learnt the design Lord Lovel had of placing Richard in safety under Madeline's care in Flanders, until his friends had prepared for him a triumphant return to England. She concerted with her new friends the best mode of introducing Richard into his mother's presence; and it was agreed that, early on the following morning, Madeline and the duke should seek one of the small chapels of the cathedral of Winchester, and that Elizabeth should there meet her son. With an overflowing heart, Lady Brampton returned to communicate this intelligence to the royal widow, and to pass with her the intervening hours in oft-renewed conjectures and anticipations concerning the duke of York.
To modern and Protestant England, a cathedral or a church may appear a strange place for private assignations and concealed meetings. It was otherwise in the days of our ancestors, when, through similarity of religion, our manners bore a greater resemblance than they now do to those of foreign countries. The churches stood always open, ready to receive the penitent, who sought the stillness of the holy asylum the more entirely to concentrate his thoughts in prayer. As rank did not exempt its possessors from sin nor sorrow, neither did it from acts of penitence, nor from those visitations of anguish, when the sacred temple was sought, as bringing the votarist into more immediate communication with the Deity. The queen dowager excited, therefore, no suspicion, when, with her rosary formed of the blessed wood of Lebanon encased in gold in her hand, with Lady Brampton for her sole attendant, she sought at five in the morning the dark aisle of the cathedral of Winchester, there to perform her religious duties. Two figures already knelt near the altar of the chapel designated as the place of meeting; Elizabeth's breath came thick, her knees bent under her, she leaned against a buttress, while a fair-haired boy turned at the sound. He first looked timidly on her, and then, encouraged by the smile that visited her quivering lips, he sprung forward, and kneeling at her feet, buried his face in her dress, sobbing, while, bending over him, her own tears fell on his glossy hair. Lady Brampton and Madeline retired up the aisle, leaving the mother and child alone.