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The day after the events recorded in the last section of thisnarrative, and about the hour of noon, Robert Hilyard (still in thereverend disguise in which he had accosted Hastings) bent his waythrough the labyrinth of alleys that wound in dingy confusion from theChepe towards the river.
The purlieus of the Thames, in that day of ineffective police,sheltered many who either lived upon plunder, or sought abodes thatproffered, at alarm, the facility of flight. Here, sauntering in twosor threes, or lazily reclined by the threshold of plaster huts, mightbe seen that refuse population which is the unholy offspring of civilwar,—disbanded soldiers of either Rose, too inured to violence andstrife for peaceful employment, and ready for any enterprise by whichkeen steel wins bright gold. At length our friend stopped before thegate of a small house, on the very marge of the river, which belongedto one of the many religious orders then existing; but from its siteand aspect denoted the poverty seldom their characteristic. Here heknocked; the door was opened by a lay-brother; a sign and a smile wereinterchanged, and the visitor was ushered into a room belonging to thesuperior, but given up for the last few days to a foreign priest, towhom the whole community appeared to consider the reverence of a saintwas due. And yet this priest, who, seated alone, by a casement whichcommanded a partial view of the distant Tower of London, received theconspirator, was clad in the humblest serge. His face was smooth anddelicate; and the animation of the aspect, the vehement impatience ofthe gesture, evinced little of the holy calm that should belong tothose who have relinquished the affairs of earth for meditation on thethings of heaven. To this personage the sturdy Hilyard bowed hismanly knees; and casting himself at the priest's feet, his eyes, hiscountenance, changed from their customary hardihood and recklessnessinto an expression at once of reverence and of pity.
"Well, man—well, friend—good friend, tried and leal friend, speak!speak!" exclaimed the priest, in an accent that plainly revealed aforeign birth.
"Oh, gracious lady! all hope is over; I come but to bid you fly. AdamWarner was brought before the usurper; he escaped, indeed, thetorture, and was faithful to the trust. But the papers—the secret ofthe rising—are in the hands of Hastings."
"How long, O Lord," said Margaret of Anjou, for she it was, under thatreverend disguise, "how long wilt Thou delay the hour of triumph andrevenge?"
The princess as she spoke had suffered her hood to fall back, and herpale, commanding countenance, so well fitted to express fiery andterrible emotion, wore that aspect in which many a sentenced man hadread his doom,—an aspect the more fearful, inasmuch as the passionthat pervaded it did not distort the features, but left them locked,rigid, and marble-like in beauty, as the head of the Medusa.
"The day will dawn at last," said Hilyard; "but the judgments ofHeaven are slow. We are favoured, at the least, that our secret isconfined to a man more merciful than his tribe." He then related toMargaret his interview with Hastings at the house of the LadyLougueville, and continued: "This morning, not an hour since, I soughthim (for last evening he did not leave Edward, a council met at theTower), and learned that he had detected the documents in the recessesof Warner's engine.