The Caged Lion
TextCHAPTER XII: THE LAST PILGRIMAGE
The summer morning came; the réveille sounded, Mass was sung in the chapel tent, without which Henry never moved; and Malcolm tried to reassure his sinking heart by there pledging his vow to St. Andrew.
The English king was not present; but the troops were drawing up in complete array, that he might inspect them before the march. And a glorious array they were, of steel-clad men-at-arms on horseback, in bands around their leader’s banner, and of ranks of sturdy archers, with their long-bows in leathern cases; the orderly multitude, stretching as far as the eye could reach, glittering in the early sun, and waiting with bold and glad hearts to greet the much-loved king, who had always led them to victory.
The only unarmed knight was James of Scotland. He stood in the space beside the standard of England, in his plain suit of chamois leather, his crimson cloak over his shoulder, but with no weapon about him, waiting with crossed arms for the morning’s decision.
Close outside the royal tent waited Henry’s horse, and those of his brother and other immediate attendants; and after a short interval the King came forth in his brightest armour, with the coronal on his helmet, and the beaver up; and as he mounted, not without considerable aid, enthusiastic shouts of ‘Long live King Harry!’ broke forth, and came echoing back and back from troop to troop, gathering fervour as they rose.
The King rode forward towards the standard; but while yet the shouts were pealing from the army, be suddenly caught at his saddle-bow, reeled visibly, and would have fallen before Bedford could bring his horse to his side, had not James sprung forward, and laid one arm round him, and a hand on his rein.
‘It is nothing,’ said Henry. ‘Let me alone.’
Ere the words were finished, he put his hand to his side, dropped his bridle, and gasped, while a look of intense suffering passed over his features; and he was passive while his horse was led back to the tent, and he was lifted down and placed on the couch he had just quitted.
‘Loose my belt,’ he gasped; then trying to smile, ‘Percy has strained it three holes tighter.’
Alas! though it was indeed thus drawn in, his armour was hanging on him like the shell of a last year’s nut. They released him from it, and he lay against the cushions with short painful respiration, and frequent cough.
‘You must go on with the men at once, John,’ he said. ‘I will but be blooded, and follow in the litter.’
‘Warwick and Salisbury—’ began Bedford.
‘No, no!’ peremptorily gasped Henry. ‘It must be you or I, I would, but this stitch in the side catches me, so that I can neither ride nor speak. Go, instantly. You know what I have ordered. I’ll be up with you ere the battle.’
He brooked no resistance. His impatience, and with it the oppression and pain, only grew by remonstrance; and Bedford was forced to obey the command to go himself, and leave no one he could help behind him.
‘You will stay, at least,’ said John, in his distress, turning to the Scottish king.
‘I must,’ said James.
‘You hold not your wrath?’ said Bedford. ‘It will madden me to leave him to any save you in this stress. Some are dull; some he will not heed.’
‘I will tend him like yourself, John,’ said the Scot, taking his hand. ‘Do what he may, Harry is Harry still. Hasten to your command, John; he will be calmer when you are gone.’
Bedford groaned. It was hard to leave his brother at a moment when he must be more than himself—become general of an army, with a battle imminent; but he was under dire necessity, and forced himself to listen to and gather the import of the few terse orders and directions that Henry, breathless as he was, rendered clear and trenchant as ever.
The King almost drove his brother away at last, while a barber was taking a copious stream of blood from him; and as the army had already been set in motion, a great stillness soon prevailed, no one being left save a small escort, and part of the King’s own immediate household, for Henry had himself ordered away Montagu, his chamberlain, Percy, and almost all on whom his eyes fell. The bleeding relieved him; he breathed less tightly, but became deadly pale, and sank into a doze of extreme exhaustion.
‘Who is here?’ he said, awakening. ‘Some drink! What you, Jamie! You that were on fire to see a stricken field!’
‘Not so much as to see you better at ease,’ said James.
‘I am better,’ said Henry. ‘I could move now; and I must. This tent will stifle me by noon.’
‘You will not go forward?’
‘No; I’ll go back. A sick man is best with his wife. And I can battle it no further, nor grudge the glory of the day to John. He deserves it.’
The irascible sharpness had passed from his voice and manner, and given place to a certain languid cheerfulness, as arrangements were made for his return to Vincennes.
There proved to be a large and commodious barge, in which the transit could be effected on the river, with less of discomfort than in the springless horse litter by which he had travelled the day before; and this was at once prepared.
Malcolm had meanwhile remained, as in duty bound, in attendance on his king. James had found time to enjoin him to stay, being, to say the truth, unwilling to trust one so inexperienced and fragile in the mêlée without himself; nor indeed would this have been a becoming moment for him to put himself forward to win his spurs in the English cause.
Nothing had passed about Patrick Drummond, nor the high words of last night. Henry seemed to have forgotten them, between his bodily suffering and the anxiety of being forced to relinquish the command just before a battle; and James would have felt it ungenerous to harass him at such a moment, when absolutely committed to his charge. For the present, there was no fear of the prisoner being summarily executed by any lawful authority, since the King had promised to take cognizance of the case; and the chief danger was from his chance discovery by some lawless man-at-arms, who would think himself doing good service by killing a concealed Scot under any circumstances.
Drummond himself, after his delirious night, had sunk into a heavy sleep; and the King thought the best hope for him would be to remain under the care of Sir Nigel Baird for the present, until he could obtain favour for him from Henry, and could send back orders from Vincennes. He would not leave Malcolm to share the care of him, declaring that the canny Sir Nigel would have quite enough to do in averting suspicion without him; and, besides, he needed Malcolm himself, in the scarcity of attendants who had any tenderness or dexterity of hand to wait upon the suffering King.
Henry had rallied enough to walk down to the river, leaning upon James; and he smiled thanks when he was assisted by Trenton and Kitson to lie along on cushions. ‘So, my Yorkshire knights,’ he said, ‘’tis you that have had to stop from the battle to watch a sick man home!’
‘Ay, Sir,’ said Sir Christopher; ‘I did it with the better will, that Trenton here has not been his own man since the fever; and ‘twere no fair play in the matter your Grace wets of, did I go into battle whole and sound, and he sick and sorry.’
Henry’s look of amusement brightened him into his old self, as he said, ‘Honester guards could I scarce have, good friend.’
At that moment, after a nudge or two from Trenton, Kitson and he came suddenly down on their knees, with an impetus that must have tried the boards of the bottom of the barge. ‘Sir,’ said Kitson, always the spokesman, ‘we have a grace to ask of you.’
‘Say on,’ said Henry. ‘Any boon, save the letting you cut one another’s throats.’
‘No, Sir. Will Trenton’s scarce my match now, more’s the pity; and, moreover, we’ve lost the good will to it we once had. No, Sir; ’twas license to go a pilgrimage.’
‘On pilgrimage!’
‘Ay, Sir; to yon shrine at Breuil—St. Fiacre’s, as they call him. Some of our rogues pillaged his shrine, as you know, Sir; and those that know these parts best, say he was a Scottish hermit, and bears malice like a Scot, saint though he be; and that your sickness, my lord, is all along of that. So we two have vowed to go barefoot there for your healing, my liege, if so be we have your license.’
‘And welcome, with my best thanks, good friends,’ said Henry, exerting himself to lean forward and give his hand to their kiss. Then, as they fell back into their places, with a few inarticulate blessings and assurances that they only wished they could go to Rome, or to Jerusalem, if it would restore their king, Henry said, smiling, as he looked at James, ‘Scotsmen here, there, and everywhere—in Heaven as well as earth! What was it last night about a Scot that moved thine ire, Jamie? Didst not tender me thy sword? By my faith, thou hast it not! What was the rub?’
James now told the story in its fulness. How he had met Sir Patrick Drummond at Glenuskie; how, afterwards, the knight had stood by him in the encounter at Meaux; and how it had been impossible to leave him senseless to the flames; and how he had trusted that a capture made thus, accidentally, of a helpless man, would not fall under Henry’s strict rules against accepting Scottish prisoners.
‘Hm!’ said Henry; ‘it must be as you will; only I trust to you not to let him loose on us, either here or on the Border. Take back your sword, Jamie. If I spoke over hotly last night—a man hardly knows what he says when he has a goad in the side—you forgive it, Jamie.’ And as the Scots king, with the dew in his eyes, wrung his hand, he added anxiously, ‘Your sword! What, not here! Here’s mine. Which is it?’ Then, as James handed it to him: ‘Ay, I would fain you wore it! ’Tis the sword of my knighthood, when poor King Richard dubbed me in Ireland; and many a brave scheme came with it!’
The soft movement of the barge upon the water had a soothing influence; and he was certainly in a less suffering state, though silent and dreamy, as he lay half raised on cushions under an awning, James anxiously watching over him, and Malcolm with a few other attendants near at hand; stout bargemen propelling the craft, and the guard keeping along the bank of the river.
His thoughts were perhaps with the battle, for presently he looked up, and murmured the verse:
‘“I had a dream, a weary dream,
Ayont the Isle of Skye;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I.”
That stave keeps ringing in my brain; nor can I tell where or when I have heard it.’
‘’Tis from the Scottish ballad that sings of the fight of Otterburn,’ said James; ‘I brought it with me from Scotland.’
‘And got little thanks for your pains,’ said Henry, smiling. ‘But, methinks, since no Percy is in the way, I would hear it again; there was true knighthood in the Douglas that died there.’
James’s harp was never far off; and again his mellow voice went through that gallant and plaintive strain, though in a far more subdued manner than the first time he had sung it; and Henry, weakened and softened, actually dropped a brave man’s tear at the ‘bracken bush upon the lily lea,’ and the hero who lay there.
‘That I should weep for a Douglas!’ he said, half laughing; ‘but the hearts of all honest men lie near together, on whatever side they draw their swords. God have mercy on whosoever may fall to-morrow! I trow, Jamie, thou couldst not sing that rough rhyme of Agincourt. I was bashful and ungracious enough to loathe the very sound of it when I came home in my pride of youth; but I would lief hear it once more. Or, stay—Yorkshiremen always have voices;’ and raising his tone, he unspeakably gratified Trenton and Kitson by the request; and their voices, deep and powerful, and not uncultivated, poured forth the Lay of Agincourt to the waves of the French river, and to its mighty victor:
‘Our King went forth to Normandye.’
Long and lengthily chanted was the triumphant song, with the Latin choruses, which were echoed back by the escort on the bank; while Henry lay, listening and musing; and Malcolm had time for many a thought and impulse.
Patrick’s life was granted; although it had been promised too late to send the intelligence back to the tent at Corbeil. So far, the purpose of his vow to St. Andrew had been accomplished; but with the probability that he should soon again be associated with Patrick, came the sense of the failure in purpose and in promise. Patrick would not reproach him, he well knew—nay, would rejoice in the change; but even this certainty galled him, and made him dread his cousin’s presence as likely to bring him a sense of shame. What would Patrick think of his letting a lady be absolutely compelled to marry him? Might he not say it was the part of Walter Stewart over again? Indeed, Malcolm remembered how carefully King James was prevented from hearing the means by which the Countess intended to make the lady his own; and a sensation came over him, that it was profanation to call on St. Andrew to bless what was to be brought about by such means. Why was it that, as his eyes fell on the face of King Henry, the whole world and all his projects acquired so different a colouring? and a sentence he had once heard Esclairmonde quote would come to him constantly: ‘My son, think not to buy off God. It is thyself that He requires, not thy gifts.’
But the long lay of victory was over; and King Henry had roused himself to thank the singers, then sighed, and said, ‘How long ago that was!’
‘Six years,’ said James.
‘The whole space from the hope and pride of youth to the care and toil of eld,’ said Henry. ‘Your Scots made an old man of me the day they slew Thomas.’
‘Yet that has been your sole mishap,’ said James.
‘Yea, truly! But thenceforth I have learnt that the road to Jerusalem is not so straight and plain as I deemed it when I stood victorious at Agincourt. The Church one again—the Holy Sepulchre redeemed! It seemed then before my eyes, and that I was the man called to do it.’
‘So it may be yet,’ said James. ‘Sickness alters everything, and raises mountains before us.’
‘It may be so,’ said Henry; ‘and yet—Jerusalem! Jerusalem! It was my father’s cry; it was King Edward’s cry; it was St. Louis’ cry; and yet they never got there.’
‘St. Louis was far on his way,’ said James.
‘Ay! he never turned aside!’ said Henry, sighing, and moving restlessly and wearily with something of returning fever.
“‘O bona patria, lumina sobria te speculantur—”
Boy, are you there?’ as, in turning, his eye fell on Malcolm. ‘Take warning: the straight road is the best. You see, I have never come to Jerusalem.’ Then again he murmured:
“‘Hic breve vivitur, hic breve plangitur, hic breve fletur;
Non breve vivere, non breve plangere, retribuetur.”
And James, seeing that nothing lulled him like song, offered to sing that mysteriously beautiful rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix.
‘Ay, prithee do so,’ said Henry. ‘There’s a rest there, when the Agincourt lay rings hollow. Well, there is a Jerusalem where our shortcomings are made up; only the straight way—the straight way.’
Malcolm took his part with James in singing the rhythm, which he had learnt long ago at Coldingham, and which thus in every note brought back the vanished aspirations and self-dedication to ‘the straight way.’
For such, an original purpose of self-devotion must ever be—not of course exclusively to the monastic life; but whoever lowers his aims of serving God under any worldly inducement, is deviating from the straight way: and, thought Malcolm, if King Harry feels Agincourt an empty word beside the song of Sion, must not all I have sought for be a very vanity?
Sometimes dozing, but sometimes restless, and with the pain of breathing constantly increasing on him, Henry wore through the greater part of the day, upon the river, until it was necessary to land, and be taken through the forest in his litter. He was now obliged to be lifted from the barge; and his weariness rendered the conveyance very distressing, save that his patient smile never faded; and still he said, ‘All will be well when I come to my Kate!’
Alas! when the gates were reached, James hardly knew how to tell him that the Queen had gone that morning to Paris with her mother. Yet still he was cheerful. ‘If the physicians deal hard with me,’ he said, ‘it will be well that she should not be here till the worst is over.’
The physicians were there. A messenger had gone direct from Corbeil to summon them; and Henry delivered himself up into their hands, to fight out the battle with disease, as he had set himself to fight out many another battle in his time.
A sharp conflict it was—between a keen and aggravated disease, apparently pleurisy coming upon pulmonary affection of long standing, and a strong and resolute nature, unquenched by suffering, and backed by the violent remedies of a half-instructed period. Those who watched him, and strove to fulfil the directions of the physicians, hardly marked the lapse of hours; even though more than one day and night had passed ere in the early twilight of a long summer’s morn he sank into a sleep, his face still distressed, but less acutely, and his breath heavy and labouring, though without the severe pain.
The watchers felt that here might be the turning point, and stood or sat around, not daring to change their postures, or utter the slightest word. Suddenly, James, who stood nearest, leaning against the wall, with his eyes fixed on the face of the sleeper, was aware of a hand on his shoulder, and looking round, saw in the now full light Bedford’s face—so pale, haggard, and replete with anxiety, so dusty and travel-stained, that Henry, awakening at that moment, exclaimed, ‘Ha, John!’ And as his brother was slow to reply—‘Has the day gone against thee? How was it? Never fear to speak, brother; thou art safe; and I know thou hast done valiantly. Valour is never lost, whether in defeat or success. Speak, John. Take it not so much to heart.’
‘There has been no battle, Harry,’ said Bedford, gathering voice with difficulty. ‘The Dauphin would not abide our coming, but broke up his camp.’
‘Beshrew thee, man!’ said Henry; ‘but I thought thou wast just off a flight!’
‘Dost think one can ride fast only for a flight?’ said Bedford. ‘Ah, would that it had been the loss of ten battles rather than this!’
And he fell on his knees, grasping Henry’s hand, and hiding his face against the bed, with the same instinct of turning to him for comfort with which the young motherless children of Henry of Bolingbroke, when turned adrift among the rude Beaufort progeny of John of Gaunt, had clung to their eldest brother, and found tenderness in his love and protection in his fearlessness; so that few royal brethren ever loved better than Henry and John of Lancaster.
‘It was well and kindly done, John,’ said Henry; ‘and thou hast come at a good time; for, thanks be to God, the pain hath left me; and if it were not for this burthen of heaviness and weariness, I should be more at ease than I have been for many weeks.’
But as he spoke, there was that both in his face and voice that chilled with a dread certainty the hearts of those who hung over him.
‘Is my wife come? I could see her now,’ he wistfully asked.
Alas! no. Sir Lewis Robsart, the knight attached to her service, faltered, with a certain shame and difficulty, that the Queen would come when her orisons at Notre Dame were performed.
It was his last disappointment; but still he bore it cheerily.
‘Best,’ he said. ‘My fair one was not made for sights like this; and were she here’—his lip trembled—‘I might bear me less as a Christian man should. My sweet Catherine! Take care of her, John; she will be the most desolate being in the world.’
John promised with all his heart; though pity for cold-hearted Catherine was not the predominant feeling there.
‘I would I had seen my child’s face, and blessed him,’ continued Henry. ‘Poor boy! I would have him Warwick’s charge.’
‘Warwick is waiting admission,’ said Bedford. ‘He and Salisbury and Exeter rode with me.’
The King’s face lighted up with joy as he heard this. ‘It is good for a man to have his friends about him,’ he said; and as they entered he held out his hand to them and thanked them.
Then took place the well-known scene, when, looking back on his career, he pronounced it to have been his endeavour to serve God and his people, and declared himself ready to face death fearlessly, since such was the will of his Maker: grieving only for the infancy of his son, but placing his hope and comfort in his brother John, and commending the babe to the fatherly charge of Warwick. ‘You cannot love him for his own sake as yet; but if you think you owe me aught, repay it to him.’ And as he thought over the fate of other infant kings, he spoke of some having hated the father and loved the child, others who had loved the father and hated the child.
To Humfrey of Gloucester he sent stringent warnings against giving way to his hot and fiery nature, offending Burgundy, or rushing into a doubtful wedlock with Jaqueline of Hainault; speaking of him with an elder brother’s fatherly affection, but turning ever to John of Bedford with full trust and reliance, as one like-minded, and able to carry out all his intentions. For the French prisoners, they might not be released, ‘lest more fire be kindled in one day than can be quenched in three.’
‘And for you, Jamie,’ he said, affectionately holding out his hand, ‘my friend, my brother-in-arms, I must say the same as ever. Pardon me, Jamie; but I have not kept you out of malice, such as man must needs renounce on his death-bed. I trust to John, and to the rest, for giving you freedom at such time as you can safely return to be such a king indeed as we have ever hoped to be. Do you pardon me, James, for this, as for any harshness or rudeness you may have suffered from me?’
James, with full heart, murmured out his ardent love, his sense that no captive had ever been so generously treated as he.
‘And you, my young lord,’ said Henry, looking towards Malcolm, whose light touch and tender hands had made him a welcome attendant in the illness, ‘I have many a kind service to thank you for. And I believe I mightily angered you once; but, boy, remember—ay, and you too, Ralf Percy—that he is your friend who turns you back from things sore to remember in a case like mine!’
After these, and other calm collected farewells, Henry required to know from his physicians how long his time might yet be. There was hesitation in answering, plainly as they saw that mortification had set in.
‘What,’ he said, ‘do ye think I have faced death so many times to fear it now?’
Then came the reply given by the weeping, kneeling physician: ‘Sir, think of your soul, for, without a miracle, you cannot live two hours.’
The King beckoned his confessor, and his friends retired, to return again to take their part in the last rites, the Viaticum and Unction.
Henry was collected, and alive to all that was passing, responding duly, and evidently entering deeply into the devotions that were to aid his spirit in that awful passage; his face gravely set, but firm and fearless as ever. The ceremonial ended, he was still sensible, though with little power of voice or motion left; but the tone, though low, was steady as ever, when he asked for the Penitential Psalms. Still they doubted whether he were following them, for his eyes closed, and his lips ceased to move, until, as they chanted the revival note of David’s mournful penance—‘O be favourable and gracious unto Sion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem;’—at that much-loved word, the light of the blue eyes once more beamed out, and he spoke again. ‘Jerusalem! On the faith of a dying king, it was my earnest purpose to have composed matters here into peace and union, and so to have delivered Jerusalem. But the will of God be done, since He saw me unworthy.’
Then his eyes closed again; he slept, or seemed to sleep; and then a strange quivering came over the face, the lips moved again, and the words broke from them, ‘Thou liest, foul spirit! thou liest!’ but, as though the parting soul had gained the victory in that conflict, peace came down on the wasted features; and with the very words of his Redeemer Himself, ‘Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,’ he did indeed fall asleep; the mighty soul passed from the worn-out frame.