——“Guilty! guilty! I shall despair! There is no creature loves me: And, if I die, no soul will pity me! Nay, wherefore should they? since I myself Find in myself no mercy to myself!”—King Richard III.
The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster. It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard.
A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost noiseless steps—his corslet and the broad394 head of his shouldered partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal residence—distinguished by no prouder decorations—of her before whose wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel, and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place.
The prolonged cry of the watcher, telling at each successive hour that all was well, had scarcely passed his lips, before the distant tramp of a horse, and the challenge of a sentry from the bridge, came heavily up the wind. For a moment the yeoman listened with all his senses; then, as it became evident that the rider was approaching, he stirred the nearest sleeper with the butt of his heavy halbert. “Up, Gilbert! up, man, and to your tools, ere they be wanted. What though the earl’s proud head lie low?—he hath friends and fautors enough in the city, I trow, to raise a coil whene’er it lists them!” The slumbers of the yeomen were exchanged on the instant for the guarded bustle of preparations; and, before the horseman, whose approach had caused so much excitement, drew bridle at the palace-gate, a dozen bright sparks glimmering under the dark portal, like glow-worms beneath some bushy coppice, announced the readiness of as many levelled matchlocks.
“Stand, ho! the word—”
“A post to her grace of England!” was the irregular reply, as the rider, hastily throwing himself from off his jaded hackney, advanced toward the yeoman.
“Stand there, I say!—no nearer, on your life! Shoot, Gilbert, shoot, an’ he stir but a hand-breadth!”
395 “Tush! friend, delay me not,” replied the intruder, halting, however, as he was required to do; “my haste is urgent, and that which I bear with me passeth ceremony—a letter to the queen! On your heads be it, if I meet impediment! See that ye pass it to her grace forthwith.”
“A letter? ha! There may be some device in this; yet pass it hitherward.” A broad parchment, secured by a fold of floss silk, with its deeply-sealed wax attached, was placed in his hand. A light was obtained from the hatch of a caliver, and the superscription, evidently too important for delay, hurried the guards to action. “The earl of Nottingham”—it ran—“to his most high and sovereign lady, Elizabeth of England. For life! for life! for life!—Ride and run—haste, haste, post-haste, till this be delivered!”
After a moment’s conference among the warders, the bearer was directed to advance; a yeoman led the panting horse away to the royal meuf; and the corporal of the guard, striking the wicket with his dagger-hilt, shortly obtained a hearing and admission from the gentleman-pensioner on duty. Within the palace no result was immediately perceived from the occurrence which had caused so much bustle outside the gates; the soldiers on duty conversed for a while in stifled whispers, then relapsed into their customary silence; the night wore on without further interruption to their watch, and ere they were relieved they had well nigh forgotten the messenger’s arrival.
Not so, however, was the letter received by the inmates of the royal residence. Ushers and pages were awakened, lights glanced, and hurried steps and whispering voices echoed through the corridors. The chamberlain, so great was considered the urgency of the matter, was summoned from his pillow; and he with no small trepidation proceeded at once to the apartment of Elizabeth. His hesitating tap at the door of the ante-chamber—occupied by the ladies whose duty it was to watch the person of their imperious mistress by night—failed indeed to396 excite the attention of the sleeping maidens, but caught at once the ear of the extraordinary woman whom they served.
“Without there!” she cried, in a clear, unbroken tone, although full sixty winters had passed over her head.
“Hunsdon, so please your grace, with a despatch of import from the earl of Nottingham.”
“God’s death! ye lazy wenches! hear ye not the man without, that I must rive my throat with clamoring? Up, hussies, up—or, by the soul of my father, ye shall sleep for ever!” The frightened girls sprang from their couches at the raised voice of their angry queen, like a covey of partridges at the yelp of the springer, and for a moment all was confusion.
“What now, ye fools!” she cried again, in harsh and excited accents, that reached the ears of the old earl without—“hear ye not that my chamberlain awaits an audience? Fling yonder robe of velvet o’er our person, and rid us of this night-gear—so!—the mirror now! my ruff and curch! and now—admit him!”
“Admit him! an’ it list your grace, it were scarce seemly in ladies to appear thus disarrayed—”
“Heard ye, or heard ye not? I say, admit him! Think ye old Hunsdon cares to look upon such trumpery as ye, or must I wait upon my wenches’ pleasure? God’s head, but ye grow malapert!”
The old queen’s voice had not yet ceased, before the door was opened; and although the ladies had taken the precaution of extinguishing the light, and seeking such concealment as the angles of the chamber afforded, the sturdy old earl—who, notwithstanding the queen’s assertion, had as quick an eye for beauty as many a younger gallant—could easily discover that the modesty which had demurred to the admission of a man was not by any means uncalled for or even squeamish. Had he been, however, much more inclined to linger by the way397 than his old-fashioned courtesy permitted, he must have been a bold man to delay; for twice, ere he could cross the floor to her chamber, did his name reach his ears in the impatient accents of Elizabeth: “Hunsdon! I say—Hunsdon! ’s death! art thou crippled, man?”
There was little of the neatness or taste of modern days displayed in the decorations of the royal chamber. Tapestries there were, and velvet hangings, carpets from Turkey, and huge mirrors of Venetian steel; but a plentiful lack of linen, and of those thousand nameless comforts, which a peasant’s dame would miss to-day, uncared for in those rude times by princesses. Huge waxen torches flared in the wind, which found its way through the ill-constructed lattice; and a greater proportion of the smoke, from the logs smouldering in the jams of a chimney wider than that of a modern kitchen, reeked upward to the blackened rafters of the unceiled roof.
Rigid and haughty, in the midst of this strange medley of negligence and splendor, sat the dreaded monarch, approached by none even of her most favored ministers save with fear and trembling. Her person, tall and slender from her earliest years, and now emaciated to almost superhuman leanness by the workings of her own restless spirit, even more than by her years, presented an aspect terrible, yet magnificent withal. It seemed as though the dauntless firmness of a more than masculine soul had won the power to support and animate a frame which it had rescued from the grave; it seemed as though the years which had blighted had failed in their efforts to destroy; it seemed as though that faded tenement of clay might yet endure, like the blasted oak, for countless years, although the summer foliage, which rendered it so beautiful of yore, had long since been scattered by the wild autumnal hurricane, or seared by the nipping frosts of winter. Her eye alone, in the general decay of her person, retained its wonted brilliancy, shining398 forth from her pale and withered features with a lustre so remarkable as to appear almost supernatural.
“So! give us the letter—there! Pause not for thy knee, man; give us the letter!”—and tearing the frail band by which it was secured asunder, she was in a moment entirely engrossed, as it would seem, in its contents. Her countenance waxed paler and paler as she read; and the shadows of an autumn morning flit not more changefully across the landscape, as cloud after cloud is driven over the sun’s disk, than did the varying expressions of anxiety, doubt, and sorrow, chase one another from the speaking lineaments of Elizabeth.
“Ha!” she exclaimed, after a long pause, “this must be looked to. See that our barge be manned forthwith, and tarry not for aught of state or ceremony. Thyself will go with us, and stop not thou to don thy newest-fashioned doublet: this is no matter that brooks ruffling!—’Sdeath, man! ’tis life or death! And now begone, sir! we lack our tirewoman’s service!”
An hour had not elapsed before a barge—easily distinguished as one belonging to the royal household, by its decorations, and the garb of the rowers—shot through a side arch of Westminster bridge, and passed rapidly, under sail and oar, down the swift current of the river, now almost at ebb tide. It was not, however, the barge of state, in which the progresses of the sovereign were usually made; nor was it followed by the long train of vessels, freighted with ladies of the court, guards, and musicians, which were wont to follow in its wake. In the stern-sheets sat two persons: a man advanced in years, and remarkable for an air of nobility, which could not be disguised even by the thick boat-cloak he had wrapped about him, as much perhaps to afford protection against the eyes of the inquisitive as against the dense mists of the Thames; and a lady, whose tall person was folded in wrappings so voluminous as to defy399 the closest scrutiny. At a short distance in the rear, another boat came sweeping along, in the crew and passengers of which it would have required a penetrating glance to discover a dozen or two of the yeomen of the guard, in their undress liveries of gray and black, without either badge or cognizance, and their carbines concealed beneath a pile of cloaks.
It was Elizabeth herself, who, in compliance with the mysterious despatch she had so lately received, was braving the cold damps of the river at an hour so unusual, and in a guise so far short of her accustomed state. The moon had already set, and the stars were feebly twinkling through the haze that rose in massive volumes from the steaming surface of the water, but no symptoms of approaching day were as yet visible in the east; the buildings on the shore were entirely shrouded from view by the fog, and the few lighters and smaller craft, moored here and there between the bridges, could scarcely be discovered in time to suffer the barge to be sheered clear of their moorings. It was perhaps on account of these obstacles that their progress was less rapid than might reasonably have been expected from the rate at which they cut the water.
Of the six stately piles which may now be seen spanning the noble stream, but two were standing at the period of which we write; and several long reaches were to be passed before the fantastic mass of London bridge, with its dwelling-houses and stalls for merchandise towering above the irregular thoroughfares of the city, loomed darkly up against the horizon. Scarcely had they threaded its narrow and cavern-like arches, before a pale and sickly light, of a faint yellow hue, more resembling the glare of torches than the blessed radiance of the sun, gilded the decreasing fog-wreaths,............