"Nay, nay," replied the Count of Vaudemont; "my word is given, and I cannot retract it. We are less harsh than you, my lord, and doubt not that this n.o.ble knight will say nothing against the cause of those who grant him this permission."

"On no such subjects will I treat, sirs," answered Richard of Woodville; "the matter of my letter will be simple enough, my own liberation being all the object."

"You must be quick, however," said the Lord of Vaudemont; "for, at morning song, to-morrow, the messenger departs."

The young knight replied that his letters would be ready in an hour, and the three n.o.blemen withdrew for a moment; but he could hear that they continued speaking together in the pa.s.sage; and the next instant, the Duke of Orleans and the Count of Armagnac returned. "We cannot suffer long letters, sir knight," said the latter, as soon as he entered; "if all you wish is to treat for your ransom, and to induce your friends to exert themselves for your liberation, you can send messages by word of mouth, which we can hear and judge of."

"But how will my friends know that such messages really come from me?"

demanded Woodville, with deep mortification.

"Why," replied the Count, after a moment's thought, "you may send a few words in the French tongue, in our presence--for we have heard of inks and inventions which escape the eye of all but the persons for whom they are intended--you may send a few words, I say, merely telling the gentlemen to whom you write, to give credit to what the bearer shall speak."

Woodville paused and meditated; but then, having formed his resolution, he replied, "Well, my good lord, if better may not be, so will I do. Send me the messenger when you will, and I will give him the credentials required."

"Call him now, my fair Lord of Armagnac," said the Duke of Orleans, with a significant look. "He is below."

The count soon reappeared with a stout, plain-looking man, habited as a soldier; and Woodville, after inquiring if he had ever been in England before, and finding that such was not the case, gave him directions for seeking out Sir John Grey in Winchester, from which town the letters that had been conveyed to him were dated. He then gave him messages to Mary's father; and, pointing out that it would be better to lose any amount of money, rather than remain longer in prison, he besought the knight to borrow a sum for him, to the value of one-half of his estates, and offer it to the Lord of Vaudemont as his ransom, adding, somewhat bitterly, "Tell the good knight that I find, in France, the fine old spirit of chivalry is at an end, which led each n.o.ble gentleman to fix at once a reasonable ransom for an honourable prisoner, and that nothing but an excessive sum will gain a captive's liberty."

The Duke of Orleans frowned, but made no observation in reply, merely speaking a few words in a low tone to the Count of Armagnac, who went to the door and called aloud for a strip of parchment and some ink.

What he required was soon brought; and he laid before the young knight a narrow slip, not large enough to contain more than a sentence or two, saying, "There, fair sir, you can write in the usual form, as follows,"

Richard of Woodville took the pen and addressed the letter at the top to Sir John Grey: the Duke of Orleans coming round and looking over his shoulder, while the Count of Armagnac stood on the opposite side of the table, and dictated what he was to write.

"You can say," he proceeded, "'These are to beg of you, by your love and regard for me, to hear and believe what the bearer will tell you on my part;' and then put your name."

Richard of Woodville wrote as he directed, word for word, till he came to the conclusion, but then, he added rapidly, "touching my ransom,"

and affixed his signature so close, that nothing could be interpolated.

"What, have you written more?" cried the Count, whose eye was fixed upon his hand.

"Touching my ransom," said the Duke of Orleans, gazing across. The Count s.n.a.t.c.hed up the parchment, and read it with a frowning brow, as if angry that his dictation had not been exactly followed; and then, beckoning to the Duke of Orleans and the messenger, he hurried abruptly out of the room. The door was not yet shut by the inferior person, who went out last, when the young prisoner heard the Count of Armagnac say to the Duke, in a low growling tone, "This will not do."

"Let me see," said the voice of the Lord of Vaudemont, who had apparently been waiting behind the door. A blasphemous oath followed; and Richard of Woodville heard no more; but a smile crossed his countenance, for they had evidently sought to use him for some secret purpose of their own, and had been frustrated.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE FLIGHT.

A month had pa.s.sed, and Richard of Woodville sat alone in his solitary chamber, on a dark and stormy night, towards the end of September, reading by the glimmering lamp-light, a book which had been procured for him in the town by his page. The rain blew, the wind whistled, the small panes of gla.s.s in the cas.e.m.e.nt rattled and shook, and the howling of the breeze, as it swept round the old tower, seemed full of melancholy thoughts. His own imaginations were heavy and desponding enough--and he eagerly strove to withdraw his attention, both from the voice of the storm without, and from the dark images that rose up in his own heart. But he could not govern his mind as he desired; and still from the pages of the book, he would lift his eyes, and gazing into vacancy revolve every point in his fate, gaining, alas! nothing but fresh matter for sad reflection. He had seen no more of the Count de Vaudemont, the Duke of Orleans, or the Count of Armagnac, and had learned that they had quitted Montl'herry early on the day following that during which he had received their visit. He little heeded their departure, indeed, or desired to see them; for he felt convinced that their only object had been to make a tool of him for secret purposes of their own; and that, disappointed therein, they were in no degree disposed to show him favour, or even to listen to just remonstrance.

What grieved and depressed him more, was the unaccountable disappearance of the young clerk who had brought him the letters from Sir John Grey, but who had been no more seen by the page, after the arrival of the Count de Vaudemont in the town. The boy inquired at the widow's where the clerk had lodged, and was told he had left the place: and no farther trace could be discovered of the course he had pursued, or whither he had turned his steps. The distracted state of the country, indeed, the young knight thought, might have scared the novice away; for the page brought him daily reports of strange events taking place around, of factions, strife, and bloodshed, in almost every province of France, and of rumours that daily grew in strength and consistency, of foreign wars being speedily added to the miseries of the land. Large bodies of armed men pa.s.sed through the town at different times; the garrison of the castle was diminished to swell the forces preparing for some unexplained enterprise; and the Chatelain himself was called to lead them to the field.

But a stricter guard was kept upon the prisoner than ever. Of the scanty band that remained in the castle, one always remained in arms at his door; and another was stationed at the foot of the stairs.

Night and day he was closely watched; and the page himself was not permitted to go in and out, except at certain hours. All chance of escape seemed removed; and bitterly did Richard of Woodville ponder upon the prospect of long captivity, at the very time when, under other circ.u.mstances, opportunity must have occurred for the exertion of all those energies by which he had fondly hoped to win glory, station, and renown.

He struggled hard against such thoughts, and all the bitterness they brought with them; and, after indulging them for a few minutes, turned ever to the page of the book he was reading, and laboured through the crabbed lines of the ill-written ma.n.u.script; finding perhaps as much interest in making out the words as in their sense. It was after one of the fits of meditation we have spoken of, that he thus again applied himself to read, and turned over several pages carelessly, to see what would come next in the dull old romaunt, when, suddenly he saw a fresher page than any of the others, and found upon it, written in English, and in a different hand from the rest, but in lines of equal length, so as to deceive a careless eye, and lead to a belief that the words were but a continuation of the poem, the following warning and intelligence:

"Be prepared. Lie not down to rest. Take not off your clothes. King Henry is in France. The Earl of Cambridge, the Lord Scrope, and Sir Thomas Grey, have been executed for treason. Harfleur has been taken; and the King is marching on through the land."

There ended the lines, and the young knight, closing the book, started up and clasped his hands with agitation and surprise. "Harfleur taken, and I not there!" he cried. "This is bitter, indeed! I shall go mad if they do not free me soon--Sir Thomas Grey! surely it cannot be written by mistake. I remember one Sir Thomas Grey, a powerful knight of Northumberland. The Lord Scrope, too; why, he was the King's chamberlain! What can all this mean? Prepared--I will be prepared, indeed. Hark, they are changing the guard at the door. I must not let them see me thus agitated, if they look in;" and seating himself again, he opened the book and seemed to read.

No one came near, however, for another hour, and Richard of Woodville gathered together all that might be needful in case his escape should be more near than he ventured to hope--the little stock of money that remained, a few jewels, and trinkets of gold and silver, and a dagger which he had kept concealed since his capture; for the rest of his arms and his armour had been taken from him as fair spoil. After this was done, he sat and watched; but all was silent in the chateau, except when the guard at his door rose and paced up and down the pa.s.sage, or hummed a verse or two of some idle song to while away the hours.

At length, however, after a long, dead pause, he heard a whisper; and then the bolt of the door was undrawn without, and rising quietly, he gazed towards it as it opened. The only figure that presented itself was that of the guard, whom he had often seen before, and noticed as apparently a gay, good-humoured man, who treated him civilly, and asked after health in a kindly tone whenever he had occasion to visit him. The man's face was now grave, and Woodville thought a little anxious, and besides his own arms, he bore in his hand a sheathed sword with its baldric, and a large coil of rope upon his arm. Without uttering a word, he crossed the chamber, came close up to the young knight, and put the sword in his hands. Then advancing to the window, he opened it, fastened one end of the rope tight to the iron bar which ran up the centre of the cas.e.m.e.nt, and suffered the other to drop gently down on the outside. Richard of Woodville gazed with some interest at this proceeding, as may be supposed. In the state of his mind at that moment, no means of escape could seem too desperate for him to adopt; and although he doubted that the rope, though strong, would bear his weight, he resolved to make the attempt, notwithstanding the tremendous height of the window from the ground.

Approaching the man, he whispered, "Would it not be better for you to turn the rope round the bar and let me down? My hands have been so long in prison, that I doubt their holding their grasp very tightly."

The man merely waved his finger and shook his head, without reply, finished what he was about, and, taking from the table one of the gloves which the young knight had worn under his gauntlets, much to the spectator's surprise, dropped it out of the window.

"Now come with me," he whispered; "it is needful for us who stay behind, to have it thought for a day or two that you have made your escape without help. The demoiselle has paid us half the money, as she promised; and we will keep our word with her. There shall no danger attend you. We have better means of getting you out than breaking your neck by a fall from the cas.e.m.e.nt."

"But you were to give me a word," said Richard of Woodville.

"Ay," answered the man, "I recollect: it was Mary Markham--Follow me."

Without hesitation, the prisoner accompanied him; but paused for an instant in some surprise on finding two armed men at the back of the door, one holding a lamp in his hand. The guard who was with him, however, took no notice; but, receiving the lamp from the other, led the way in a different direction from the staircase up which Woodville had been brought, when first he was conducted to his chamber of captivity. Then opening a door on the right, he entered a room, in the wall of which appeared a low archway, exposing to the eye, as the light flashed forward, the top of a steep, small staircase.

"I will go down first with the lamp," whispered the man, "that you may see where you are going. Give a heed to your footing, too, for it is mighty slippery, especially on such a damp night as this."

Thus saying, he led the way; and Richard of Woodville followed down the winding steps, cut apparently in the thickness of the wall. Green mould and clammy slime hung upon all the stones as they descended, except where, every here and there, a loophole admitted the free air of heaven and chased the damp away. The steps seemed interminable, one after another, one after another, till Woodville became sure that they were descending to a greater depth than the mere base of the castle; and, looking round, as the lamplight gleamed upon the walls, he beheld no more the hewn stone work which had appeared above, but the rough excavation of the solid rock. At length the steps ceased, as pa.s.sing along a vault of masonry, perhaps forty or fifty feet long, the man unbolted and unbarred a small but solid door covered with iron plates; and in a moment the lamp was extinguished by the blast from without.

All seemed dark and impenetrable to the eye; the wind roared through the vault; the rain dashed in the faces of Woodville and his companion; but, giving the lamp an oath, as if it had been to blame for what the storm had done, the man set it down behind the door, and then walked on, saying, "Keep close to me, for it is steep here."

Following down a little path as the man led, the young knight's eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and he thought he descried, at a short distance, a group of men and horses standing under a light feathery tree. Hurrying on, with eager hope, he demanded of his guide who the persons were whom he saw before him.

"Your saucy page is one," said the guard; "but who the others are I do not know. The young clerk, I suppose, is one, and his servant the other; for I dare say the demoiselle would not come out on such a night as this, and faith, I cannot well see whether they be men or women in this light;" and he shaded his eyes with his hands, with very needless precaution, where scarcely a ray pierced the welkin.

At that moment, however, one of the figures moved towards him, asking, "Is all right?"

"All, all," answered the guard; "have you brought the rest of the money, master clerk? Here stands the prisoner free; so my part of the bargain is done."

"And there is the rest of the gold, good fellow," replied the other speaker; "all right money, and well counted."

"Ay, I must take it on your word," said the man who had brought Woodville thither, "my lamp has been blown out; but I may well trust you; for the other half was full tale and a piece over."

"That was for chaff.a.ge," replied the youth; "and if this n.o.ble knight gets safe to the King's camp, you shall have a hundred pieces more; so go, and keep his escape, and the way he has taken, as secret as possible."

"That I will, for mine own sake," answered the soldier; "or I should soon know gibbet and cord. Good night, good night!" and waving his hand, he turned away, while the young clerk addressed Woodville, saying, "You must put yourself under my guidance, n.o.ble sir, for a few hours, and then we shall be safe."

"I have much to thank you for, young gentleman," answered Woodville, following, as the other hurried on to the horses; and in a few minutes the knight, his page, the clerk, and the clerk's servant were on their way. But to Woodville's surprise, instead of taking any of the by-roads that led on through the country to remote villages and hamlets, they followed the direct high road towards Paris, which he had gazed upon for many a day from his solitary chamber in the tower.

After proceeding some way in silence, without hearing any sounds which could lead them to believe that the knight's escape had been discovered, and that they were pursued, Woodville endeavoured to gain some information from the clerk of Sir John Grey, as to the means which had been taken to effect his liberation, and more particularly, as to the lady who had been mentioned by the guard.

On the latter point the youth replied not; and on the former he merely said, "The means were very simple, n.o.ble knight, and you yourself saw some of them employed. Money, which unlocks all doors, was the key of your prison. The man who refuses ransom to a captive, had better see that he guard him sure; for that which is a small sum to him, may be a great one to a gaoler, and one quarter of the amount offered for your redemption, served to set you free. But I think, sir," he added, "we had better speak as little as possible upon any head, till we have pa.s.sed the capital, for the tongue of an escaped prisoner, like the track of gore to the bloodhound, often brings him within the fangs of his pursuers."