The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary by Robert Hugh Benson (reading tree .TXT) 📕

more--my lord cardinal and the great nobles and the grooms and the rest--till the room was half full of them.

The door was put to behind them, but I could see the line of light that shewed it, where the candle burned in the parlour beyond; and I could hear the sound of their breathing and the rustle once and again of their feet upon the rushes.

Then I knelt down, when the others had knelt, and waited for the agony to begin, when I should begin the last commendation.

My children, I have prayed by many death-beds, but I have never seen one like this.

The curtains were wide, and the windows, behind me, that he might have breath to send out his spirit; and without, as I saw when I turned to kneel, the heavens were bright with stars. This was all the light that was in the room; it was no more than dark twilight, and I could see no more of him than what I saw before, the glimmer of his face upon the pillow and his long hair beside it. His fingers were in mine, but they were very cold by now.

But he had said that there would be light enough, and so there was.

It may have been half an hour afterwards that the room began to lighten softly, as the sky brightened at moonrise, and I could see a little more plainly. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be breathing very softly through his lips.

Then the moon rose, and the light lay upon the floor at my side. Then a little after it was upon the fringes of the coverlet, and it crept up moment by moment across the leopards and lilies that were broidered in gold and blue.

At last it lay half across the bed, and I could see the King's face very pale and melancholy upon the other side, and Master Blytchett a little behind him.

And presently it reached Master Richard's hand and my own that lay together, but my arm was so numbed that I could feel nothing in it; I could see only that his fingers were in mine.

So the light crept up his arm to the shoulder, and when it reached his face we saw that he was gone to his reward.



Of his Burying

Quam dilecta tabernacula tua: Domine virtutum.

How lovely are Thy tabernacles: O Lord of Hosts.--Ps. lxxxiii. 1.

XVI


It was upon the next day that we took Master Richard's body down again to the country, and there was such an attendant company as I should not have thought that all London held.

The King had ordered a great plenty of tapers and hangings and a herse such as is used....

[The MS. ends abruptly at the foot of the page.]

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Publication Date: 08-24-2010

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