The White Rose of Langley: A Story of the Olden TimeHolt, Emily Sarah
History
The White Rose of Langley: A Story of the Olden Time
Holt, Emily Sarah
Great Britain -- History -- Lancaster and York, 1399-1485 -- Fiction
We shall see no more of Edmund Mortimer. He ended life as he began it--
as much like a vegetable as a human being could well make himself. Few
Mortimers attained old age, nor did he. He died in his thirty-fourth
year, issueless and unwept; and Richard Duke of York, the son of Anne
Mortimer and Richard of Conisborough, succeeded to the White Rose's
"heritage of woe."
A week after the execution, the King sailed for Harfleur.
The campaign was short, for those days of long campaigns; but pestilence
raged among the troops, and cut off some of the finest men. The Earl of
Suffolk died before they left Harfleur, and ere they reached Picardy,
the Earl of Arundel. But the King pressed onward, till on the night of
the 24th of October, he encamped, ready to give battle, near the little
village of Azincour, to be thenceforward for ever famous, under its
English name of Agincourt.
The army was in a very sober mood. The night was spent quietly, by the
more careless in sleep, by the more thoughtful in prayer. The Duke of
York was among the former; the King among the latter. Henry is said to
have wrestled earnestly with God that no sins of his might be remembered
against him, to lead to the discomfiture of his army. There was need
for the entreaty. Perchance, had he slept that night, some such ghostly
visions, born of his own conscience, might have disturbed his sleep, as
those which troubled one of his successors on the eve of Bosworth Field.
When morning came, and the King was at breakfast with his brother Prince
Humphrey, the Duke of York presented himself with a request that he
might be permitted to lead the vanguard.
Humphrey, who was of a sarcastic turn of mind, amused himself by a few
jokes on the obesity of the royal applicant; but the request was
granted, and York rode off well pleased.
"Stand thou at my stirrup, Calverley," said York to his squire. "I cast
no doubt thou wilt win this day thy spurs; and for me, I look to come
off covered with glory."
"How many yards of glory shall it take to cover his Grace?" whispered
one of the irreverent varlets behind them.
"Howsoe'er, little matter," pursued the Duke. "I can scantly go higher
than I am: wherefore howso I leave the field, little reck I."
Hugh Calverley looked up earnestly at his master.
"Sir Duke," he said, "hath it come into your Grace's mind that no less
yourself than your servants may leave this field dead corpses?"
"Tut, man! croak not," said York. "I have no intent to leave it other
than alive--thou canst do as it list thee."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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