Page:The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck.djvu/402

394 threshold of his prison was followed by a shriek—almost a woman's shriek, it was so shrill and piercing. What he quailed before, gave presence of mind to York—experienced in ills. Whatever the new evil might be, he went out to meet it calmly. A party of archers and yeomen were drawn up in the courtyard. "This truly is a mime," he said, "in which one at least wins. Our good lieutenant is safe; we are lost."

Grim Sir John had much disliked even this masque of murder. He saw their seizure with a grin of delight. He abhorred Richard, as the prime mover of the meditated assassination; but he hated Warwick more, who thus could lay in ambush for the life of one, who he believed had been a most courteous and soft-hearted jailor to him—he commanded his myrmidons to lead the royal kinsmen to the strongest ward-rooms of the Tower, with dogged, savage joy.

In dark and separate cells, in solitude and night, these ill-fated victims of craft and ambition were consigned to biting reflection and sinister anticipation. Warwick, worn out by the unusual excitement of the last weeks, by his eager hopes, and overwhelming despair, had no one thought, but ten thousand thoughts, making a chaos and hell of his poor heart. Richard felt more for his cousin than for himself. "But for me," he repeated internally, "he had still been a patient prisoner. Yet to break prison is not crime capital—he may yet be saved. Elizabeth will intercede; Tudor, for very shame, cannot do further wrong to one so near akin, so powerless and unfortunate. For myself:—I am dead already: the duke of York died, when first I became a slave. So that my memory survive in my own White Rose's heart—let the victor dispose at his pleasure of this mere shell of Richard."

morning of the first of November dawned: a cheery day. Men went to their usual works: the earth, despoiled of her summer garniture, yet bore the change with sober content; for