Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/397

Rh might be the gale to speed him to the harbour of his hopes. The royal cousins met again and again; nor was it long before their own desires, and Henry's craft, began to weave that fatal web which entangled them even in the very mode the hard-hearted king devised.

Summer was gone: quicker than he was wont, the sun withdrew his embattled array of light and heat; and cold and tempest, erewhile driven to mountain fastnesses, or to their own frozen kingdoms in the north, took courage and force, and broke with wild fury upon the defenceless world: the bleak winds were their coursers; savagely they yelled and howled over the land they desolated. First, the growth of flowers was their prey; the fruits, and then the verdure of the earth, while the sun, each day retreating, afforded further scope to their inroads. York resolved not to pass another winter in prison. He had quickly perceived that his purpose could only be effected by corrupting their guards, and then all would depend upon the fidelity of these men. His first attempts were followed by an almost too easy success: good-hearted, dull-headed Long Roger heard with unreplying credulity the assertions of Warwick, that Richard must succeed in all he undertook, and readily promised his aid. Abel Blewet, in spite of his dogged, sinister aspects yielded at once to the seduction of a promised bribe. Two others, by his advice, were associated as necessary to their success. Strangeways, a ruffling drunken fellow, who had been thrice dismissed, but whose pretty wife each time procured his reappointment; and Astwood, a saving miser, who lent money to his fellow-servitors on usury. With these instruments the cousins went to work. Warwick in full belief of success: York, perceiving treason and discovery close to them, but ready to defy these bloodhounds to their worst.

"And now, coz," said Warwick, "in very truth there needs no further delay. Methinks were the drawbridge down, you would mistrust some gin, and wait to throw an arch of your own across the moat. Sooth, my lord, I am a weary of your sloth."

There was a caressing sweetness in Warwick's voice and manner: an ignorant, indolent, confiding enthusiasm, so unlike quick-witted Clifford, or auy of Duke Richard's former friends, that he felt a new emotion towards him—hitherto he had been the protected, served, and waited on, of his associates, now he played the protector and the guardian,

"My gentle cousin," he replied, "even as you trust, so you shall find me—wait but a little, and all will be past. Yet I grieve to say, where you see escape, I perceive an ambushment