grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him against the
wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that
their august late father’s prisons had sometimes contained as high
as sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his
admirable reign he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and
robbers over to death by the executioner, {9} the boy was filled
with generous indignation, and commanded her to go to her closet,
and beseech God to take away the stone that was in her breast, and
give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful
prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot
zeal to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate?
Yes; his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled
with painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere
longings for his return, and happy restoration to his native
rights and splendours. But as time wore on, and the prince did
not come, Tom’s mind became more and more occupied with his new
and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished
monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did
intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome
spectre, for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom’s poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his
mind. At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to
see them, but later, the thought of their coming some day in their
rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling
him down from his lofty place, and dragging him back to penury and
degradation and the slums, made him shudder. At last they ceased
to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. And he was content, even
glad: for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise
before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms
that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to
sleep in his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals,
and surrounded by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow
was the day appointed for his solemn crowning as King of England.
At that same hour, Edward, the true king, hungry and thirsty,
soiled and draggled, worn with travel, and clothed in rags and
shreds–his share of the results of the riot–was wedged in among
a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest certain
hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for
the royal coronation.
Chapter XXXI. The Recognition procession.
When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a
thunderous murmur: all the distances were charged with it. It
was music to him; for it meant that the English world was out in
its strength to give loyal welcome to the great day.
Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a
wonderful floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom
the ‘recognition procession’ through London must start from the
Tower, and he was bound thither.
When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed
suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a
red tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening
explosion followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude,
and made the ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the
explosions, were repeated over and over again with marvellous
celerity, so that in a few moments the old Tower disappeared in
the vast fog of its own smoke, all but the very top of the tall
pile called the White Tower; this, with its banners, stood out
above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak projects above a
cloud-rack.
Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose
rich trappings almost reached to the ground; his ‘uncle,’ the Lord
Protector Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the
King’s Guard formed in single ranks on either side, clad in