'Ah, verily, Madam, we swear it,' answered they, 'for our own sakes as well as for his.'
'Then the letter and the ring shall be ready to-morrow night,' replied Elizabeth, 'and shall be delivered to you by lord Stanley. And now, my lords, I will bid you farewell.' And, attended as before by a solitary horseman, with a beating heart she made her way back to the palace. Only when safe in her own room did she breathe freely; and well might she fear, for had Richard guessed her absence, short would have been her shrift.
As it was the conspirators were just in time. Somehow or other the news of the king's intended marriage with his niece leaked out, and so deep was the disgust of the people that Richard saw that his crown would not be safe for a single day if he were to persist. So, in order to appease his subjects, as well as to avenge himself on Elizabeth for her ill-concealed hatred of him, he dismissed her from court, and despatched her under a strong guard to the castle of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, where the owner, her cousin, the young earl of Warwick, was then living. Oh! how thankful Elizabeth was to escape from London, and to know that hundreds of miles lay between her and her persecutor. To be sure, her mother and sisters were still there; but it was she, and not they, whose life was in danger, for had it not been foretold that the crown of England should rest on her head? What peace it was to roam in the castle gardens, or to sit by the window of her little room embroidering strange devices, or looking out on the broad moorland where the larks and thrushes sang all day long! Only one thing spoiled her content, and that was anxiety as to how the messenger had sped who had gone over the seas to the earl of Richmond.
That tale has been told in another place, and how king Henry sent an escort, after the battle of Bosworth, to bring his future queen to London. As she rode along, under summer skies, the nobles and people thronged to meet her and do homage, and at length the happy day came when openly and fearlessly she could join her mother in Westminster Palace. It was no light task to settle things in England after a strife which had lasted for thirty years; and besides, a terrible plague, known as the Sweating Sickness, was raging in London, so it was not till January 18, 1486, a month before Elizabeth's twentieth birthday, that the much-talked-of marriage took place. The papal legate, a cousin of Elizabeth's, performed the ceremony in the Abbey, and London, which had so long looked forward to the event, celebrated it with banquets and bonfires—rather dangerous in a city whose houses were mostly of wood. 'By which marriage,' says the chronicler, 'peace was thought to descend out of heaven into England.'
And there we leave Elizabeth, her childhood being over.
RICHARD THE FEARLESS
Nearly a thousand years ago a little boy was living in a castle which stood on the edge of a lake in the midst of a very large forest. We should have to go a long way nowadays before we could find any so big; but then there were fewer people in Europe than at present, and so for the most part the wild animals were left undisturbed. In the forest that surrounded the lake, which from the stillness of its waters was called Morte-mer, or the Dead Sea, there were plenty of bears, besides boars and deer. Of course, from time to time the lord of the castle, William Longsword, whose father Rollo had come from over the seas to settle in Normandy, called his friends and his men round him, and had a great hunt, which lasted two or three days. Then everyone in the castle would be busy, some in taking off the skins of the animals and hanging them out to dry, before turning them into coverings for the beds or floors, or coats to wear in the long cold winter; while others cut up the meat and salted it, so that they might never lack food. In summer the skins were rolled up and put away, and instead rushes were cut from the neighbouring swamps—for around the Morte-mer not even rushes would grow—and silk hangings were hung from the walls or the ceilings, instead of deer skins, and occasionally a rough box planted with wild roses or honeysuckle might be seen standing in a corner of the great hall.
But when little Richard was not much more than a year old a dreadful thing happened to him. As often occurred in those days, duke William sent away his wife, Richard's mother, who was poor and low-born, in order to marry a noble lady called Liutgarda, whose father, the rich and powerful count of Vermandois, might be of use in the wars which William was always carrying on with somebody. Although Liutgarda had no children of her own, she hated Richard, and never rested till she had prevailed on her husband to send him away to the palace of Fécamp, where he was born. William, though fickle and even treacherous to his friends, was fond of his little boy, and for a long while he refused to listen to anything Liutgarda said; but when he was leaving home he suddenly bethought him that the child might be safer if he were removed from the hands of the duchess, so he pretended to agree to her proposal. Summoning before him the three men in whom he had most faith, Botho, count of Bayeux, Oslac, and Bernard the Dane, he placed Richard in their care, and bade them to take heed to the child and teach him what it was fitting he should learn.