The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: a Romance
Copyright© 2025 by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
Chapter 53
DEATH OF CLIFFORD
Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’erskreen my bad—my good allow?
SHAKSPEARE.
On the fourth day of her restraint, imprisonment it could hardly be called. Lady Katherine was brought up to Westminster; she was carried in a close litter, and no familiar face or accustomed attendant came near. Her anxiety, her anguish weighed intolerably upon her—sleep had not visited her eyes; she lived in perpetual terror that each sound was freighted with fatal tidings. It was in vain that even reason bade her nourish hope—a stronger power than reason dwelt in her heart, turning all its yearnings to despair.
As she approached the city, she thought each step must reveal the truth of what she was to suffer. Lo! the palace was entered—her habitual chamber—silence and solitude alone manifested that some change was even now in its effect; she had no tear? to spend upon her grief; her changing colour, her quickened respiration showed that every faculty was possessed by terror. Two hours, each minute stretched to a long, long century, —two hours passed, when a little scroll was delivered to her; it came from the queen, and contained these words, “My White Rose! the tempest has past—leaving, alas! devastation: we yet remain to each other—come——”
These expressions spoke the worst to her fear-stricken mind—no subsequent agony might ever compare to the pang that made her very life-blood pause in her failing heart at that moment. Had the present and the future become void for him, to whom she was wedded heart and soul?—wedded in youth, when our hopes stretch themselves not merely to to-day and to-morrow, but even to eternity. In this state of human woe, we do not describe the disheartening and carking sorrows of those who lag on life’s highway—but the swift, poignant, intolerable agonies of the young, to whom the aspiration for happiness is a condition of being. The queen had been accustomed to witness and admire Katherine’s self-command and quiet fortitude; she was awe-struck on beholding the devastation of the last four days, and the expression of wild horror on her soft features. With feminine instinct she read her heart, her first words were, “Sweet love, he lives—and he will live—his life is spared, and we may still hope.”
Tears at last flowed from the mourner’s eyes, as she asked, “What then will be his fate?—Shall I ever see him more?”
“How can we guess the hidden purposes of the king? By your enforced solitude you have escaped his scowling brow, his violence, his sarcasms; again he smiles. My gentle Kate, my sweet, courageous sufferer, hitherto we have played with the lion’s fangs—they are unsheathed in anger now—let us prepare: he will be here anon.”
The princess desired not to exhibit too humiliating a spectacle of misery to her cruel foe—she checked her weeping—she endeavoured to forget the burning agony that tortured her beating heart. “Let him but live; let me but once more see him;” and the unbidden tears flowed again. The king soon broke in upon them; his look was haughty even to insolence: an expression of vulgar triumph was in his eyes, that baffled the eager scanning gaze of the hapless princess. He said, scoffingly (and was it in man’s nature, or only in Henry’s, to look on the sad, but lovely countenance of his victim, and to mock her woe?), “We congratulate you, lady, on the return of the gentle Perkin to our good city of Westminster—do not weep—he is in safe keeping now, very safe—it is no feathered shoe our Mercury wears this day.”
“Holy Virgin!” cried Katherine, “your grace does not surely mean——”
“Fear not—he lives,” continued Henry, his scorn growing more bitter as he spoke; “he lives, and shall live, till the White Rose acknowledge on what base stock she is grafted, or he twist the rope by some new sleight. Is Perkin’s honoured dame satisfied?”
“Oh, no, no, no; some covert meaning you have; in pity for a woman, speak.” The agony her countenance expressed was the mute echo of the frightful idea that convulsed her frame. “Oh, let me see him! you have tormented me too cruelly; even if my worst fears prove true, he suffers not more than I; and can it be that the young limbs of my own loved Richard are put to torture!”
Elizabeth, grew ashy white; the king listened with a sarcastic smile, saying, “I had not thought of that; you are a silly girl to mention such things.”
“I do not believe you,” exclaimed the princess, “your looks belie your words; let me but see him afar off, let me catch a glimpse of my princely love—is he in the Tower?”
“Neither the Tower, nor any royal palace, detains your lord; he is taking the air, pleasantly I hope, in the high places of our town. To finish this war of words, and your incredulity, will you visit your prince of plotters, and behold him on whom the king of Scotland bestowed your virgin hand?”
“See him! Oh, even in death to clasp his decaying limbs were better than this absence!”
An indefinable expression passed over Henry’s countenance as he replied, “Be it as you wish; you must hasten, for in an hour the occasion will be past; it is but a few steps; you shall be attended.”
At last she was to see him; this assurance filled and satisfied her; there was no place in her heart for any other thought, sinister as were her torturer’s looks. Her eyes grew bright, her cheek resumed its vermeil tint, never had she looked more lovely; it was a dazzling beauty; one of those ineffable expressions, which, unless language could express music, or painting image fire, it is in vain to attempt to describe: an irradiation of love passed over her countenance; her form; something like it dwells in Raphael’s Madonnas and Guido’s Angel of Annunciation, —Henry was awe-struck, yet did not falter in his purpose; he let the bright angel go forth on her mission of good and love, to meet on her way a sight fiends might rejoice over. Human life and human nature are, alas! a dread, inexplicable web of suffering and of infliction.
In Westminster, in sight of the abbey where his ancestors had been crowned kings, the spectacle, intended to be so opprobrious, was set forth. Henry, in his angry fear on his escape, in his exultation at his re-capture, forgot the soft tyranny of Katherine’s looks; or rather he despised himself for the obedience he had yielded to them; and, in the true spirit of baseness, was glad to revenge on her the ill effects that had resulted to him through his involuntary enslavement. It was a triumph to him to disgrace the object of her care, for he was ill-read, his understanding affording him no key to the unknown language, in that illuminated page of the history of feminine excellence, which tells the delight she feels in exhausting her treasures of devoted love on the fallen, because they need it most: he believed, that to present her husband to her, under the very infliction of ignominy, would turn her affection to cold disdain—he permitted her to go. Attended by some of the body-guard and a gentleman usher, she hastened through the courts of the palace into the open square: there was assembled a crowd of common people, hushed to universal silence: at a distance from the centre some were talking aloud, and the name of “Perkin” was the burthen of their speech; but pity stilled those nearest to the spot, towards which, to the surprise and horror of all, she hastened. The crowd instinctively closed to bar her advance; and, when forced to make way, in spite of the despotism of the times, the word “Shame” burst from the lips of many, especially the women. She was agitated by the obstacles, by the numerous uncourtly eyes turned on her; still she went on, and soon saw—
She understood not what—a kind of wooden machine, in which the lord of her heart sat. There had been a time when pride and royal majesty of soul had shed such grandeur over York, that, when exposed as a show, he had excited reverence, not scoffing. Now he was evidently labouring under great physical suffering; his brow was streaked with mortal paleness, his cheeks were colourless; his fair hair fell in disordered ringlets round his youthful but wan countenance; he leaned his head against the side of the machine: his eyes were half shut; it was not shame, but suffering, that weighed upon their lids, and diffused an air of languor and pain over his whole person. Katherine hastened towards him, she knelt on the unworthy earth at his side, she kissed his chained hands. “You are ill, my love; my ever dear Richard, what has happened? for you are very ill.”
Roused by such music from the lethargy that oppressed him, yet still overcome, he replied, “Yes; and I do believe that all will soon end, and that I am stricken to the death.”
She grew pale; she called him cruel; asking him how he could dream of leaving her, who was a part of him, alone in the desolate world. “Because,” he answered with a faint smile, “the world is kind to all, save me. No taint, dear love, attaches itself to your name; no ill will mark your fate, when you are no longer linked to such a thing as I. God has spoken, and told me that this earth is no dwelling for one, who, from his cradle to this last shame, has been fortune’s step-child, and her despised toy. How often have I been dragged to the utmost verge of life: I have felt indignation, anger, despair; now I am resigned; I feel the hand of the Mighty One on me, and I bow to it. In very truth, I am subdued; I sleep away the weary hours, and death will end them all.”
With every expression of tenderness, Katherine endeavoured to recall him to life and to herself. She spoke of another escape, which it would be her care to achieve, of the solitude, of the paradise of love they would enjoy together. “My poor girl,” he replied, “teach your young heart to seek these blessings apart from me; I were the very wretch Tudor stigmatises me, could I live under a memory like this. Forget me, my White Rose; paint with gaudier colours the sickly emblem of my fortunes; forget that, duped by some strange forgery, you were wedded to—Perkin Warbeck.”
In spite of himself, large drops gathered in his eyes, swelling the downcast lids, and then stealing down. Catherine kissed them from his cheek; a thousand times more noble, royal, godlike, she called him; had not the best and worthiest suffered ignominious punishment; even our blessed Lord himself? His own acknowledgment alone could disgrace him; he must recall the false words wrung from his agony; this last vile act of his enemy must awaken each sovereign on his throne to indignation; each would see in him a mirror of what might befall themselves, if fallen. James, her royal cousin, roused by her, should resent the stigma affixed to his kinsman.
“For your own sake, sweet, do so; my soul dying within me is alive again with indignation, to think that your plighted wedded love is he, who is exposed to contumely; but for that, methinks I would call myself by that wretched name I dared pronounce, so that the annals of the House of York escaped this stain: yet even thus I seem more closely allied to them; for violent death, treachery, and ill have waited on each descendant of Mortimer; my grandfather bore a paper crown in shame upon his kingly brow.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.