Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/265

Rh in death upon the soldiery; suddenly he recognized his countrymen; pleasure gleamed in his sunken eyes, "Ye will avenge us! Deliver the land!—The hand of God will lead ye on!"

Plantagenet rushed forward—"Father!" he cried, "do I find you here?"

The old man spoke, looked faintly; Edmund bent over him: "My father, it is I, Edmund, your boy, your murde"

"My son," said the monk, "I behold you again, and die content! You are in arms, but by the blessing of the saints your sword's point is turned against the cruel invader. Not one, oh! not one Englishman will fall by his brother's hand, for not one will fight for that base deceit, the ill-nurtured Perkin, to whom God in his wrath has given such show of right as brings the Scot upon us. Once I thought—but no son of York would ally himself to these cruel border-robbers. God of my country, oh curse, curse him and his cause!"

The dying man spoke with difficulty; a few moments more, a spasm crossed his features, and they settled into stony insensibility. Edmund threw himself on the body; a deathlike silence reigned in the building; every heart beat with breathless horror; the curse uttered by the murdered man was even then breathed before God, and accepted. York spoke first with a calm, firm voice, "Arise, my cousin," he said; "do not thou fix yet more deeply the barbed arrow, which has entered my heart."

There are periods when remorse and horror conquer by their intensity every lesser impulse, and reign kings of the waste; this was no time for words or tears. Oh! welcome the grief or crime, which the bitterest of these could express or extenuate; it would insult this sad effigy of death to imagine that the impiety could be expiated. In silence they bore the reverend corpse to the vaults of the church, and then continued their way; some of the under-officers and men whispered together; but when again the chiefs conversed, they did not allude to this frightful scene, or to the awful imprecation which they felt suspended over their heads, shadowing their souls with unknown horror.

This was but the opening scene to worse wretchedness; hitherto they had seen the waste of war, now they came upon its active atrocities. A dense smoke, the flickering of pale flames, marked the progress of devastation; fierceness gleamed in the open blue eyes of Richard; he bit his lips, and at a quicker pace went forward; screams and horrid shrieks, mixed with shouts—oh! may not a veil be drawn over such horrors—flying children, mothers who stayed to die, fathers who unarmed