The White Rose

It Never Snows in November...

It had been a long day near Chelsea. The King was out hunting. A crisp snow had fallen that night, leaving a thin layer of white upon the ground. Edward ignored the advice of the Duke of Gloucester: 

"It never snows in November, my brother. The proverbs say that one should be wary."

In the woods, accompanied by the escort (at least for part of the way), Edward saw a stag. He trotted his horse on after it. The White Rose failed to notice that his retainers had not quite kept pace.

There seemed to the King to be something peculiar about the stag'santlers; there seemed to be something upon them which glittered from timeto time and then went out. There was, however, nothing about it of thefabulous and legendary stags which one never meets in fact, such as thefamous stag of Saint Hubert with a golden cross growing upon its forehead. 

This one was no more than a great, exhausted beast, which had behavedwith a curious lack of cunning during the hunt, running straight acrosscountry from its fear. It would soon be brought to bay.With Lombard at its heels, it entered a copse of beech-trees and remainedin it. And now the King heard Lombard's baying take on that higher moresonorous note, at once furious and poignant, that hounds give tongue towhen the hunted beast is at bay.The King went into the copse; the rays of the sun filtered through thebranches but without heat, turning the crisp, frozen snow to rose. 

The King came to a halt and loosened the hilt of his short sword.Lombard was baying continuously. There was the stag, his back to a tree, atbay, his head lowered and his muzzle almost touching the ground, his coatrunning wet and steaming. Between his enormous horns, there was indeed across, as high as the cross upon an altar. It was shining in the light. For aninstant the King was aware of this vision, for in that moment hisstupefaction turned to appalling fear; his body had ceased to obey him. Hewished to dismount, but his foot would not leave the stirrup; his legs werelike two marble boots against the horse's flanks. Then the King, terrified,wished to call for help upon his horn, but where was it? He no longer had it,he could no longer remember where he had lost it, and his hands, loosingthe reins, were immovable. He tried to shout, but no sound came from histhroat. 

The stag had raised its head and, its tongue hanging, looked with hugetragic eyes upon the horseman from whom it expected death, the horsemanupon whom sudden petrification had fallen. Among his horns the crossshone out again. Before the King's eyes, the trees, the ground, the wholeaspect of the world were taking on a new shape. He felt an appallingbursting sensation in his head, and then he subsided into total darkness.A few moments later, when the rest of the hunt reached the copse, thebody of the King of France was found lying at his horse's feet. Lombardwas still baying before the hunted stag, whose tines were seen to be ladenwith two dead branches, caught up doubtless in the undergrowth. They hadassumed the shape of a cross and shone in the sunlight because of theircoating of frost. But there was no time to lose with the stag; while the whipsstopped the pack, it galloped off again, somewhat rested now and followedonly by a few of the keener hounds which would hunt it till nightfall, ordrive it into the lake to drown. 

It was Anthony Woodville who arrived first at Edward the Handsome's body. Herealized that the King was still breathing and cried:

'The King lives!' 

With two poles cut with their swords, and belts and cloaks, they produceda makeshift stretcher upon which the King was laid. He but moved a little tovomit and to void from every orifice like a duck that is being strangled. Hiseyes were glazed. Where was the athlete who but a short time ago couldmake two men-at-arms bend low merely by placing his hands on theirshoulders?He was carried thus to Chelsea Post where, that night, some of his power ofspeech returned. The doctors, sent for hurriedly, had bled him.