The Story of the Scabbard

In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes Bolingbroke.  The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was presently crowned King of England in Richard’s place.  All persons, saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley Bower.  Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.

Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable.  But at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman’s business.  It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read simply, “Now is England fit pasture for the White Hart.”  Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he rode to Sycharth.

There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long stewardship.  It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless machinations with which we have no immediate concern:  in brief, the barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt.  “By the God I do not altogether serve,” Owain ended, “you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours.”

Richard spoke with narrowed eyes.  “You forget that while Henry of Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in these islands.  Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil for once in a way to serve God.”

“Oh, but there is a boundary appointed,” Glyndwyr moodily returned.  “You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved son.  But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which we need not speak of,—­I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take.  For there is a boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would.”