Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

A thousand of his cavaliers advanced, as though about to charge the trenches at full speed, with lances lowered, and with their wonted _ensenzie_, “God aid!” But as they neared the palisades, by preconcerted stratagem, as if they had lost heart, they suddenly drew bridle, all as a single man, and fled, as it appeared, in irretrievable disorder, back, back to the main body! Meanwhile, throughout the lines, the banners were waved to and fro disorderly, and the ranks shifted, and spears rose and fell, and all betokened their complete disorganization. The sight was too much even for the cool hardihood of Saxon courage. With one tremendous shout they rushed from their entrenchments--which, had they held to them, not forty-fold the force of William could have successfully assailed--and, wielding with both hands their bills and axes, plunged headlong in pursuit. That instant, all was over! For, at a moment’s notice, at a concerted signal of a single trumpet, the very men they deemed defeated wheeled into line; and with their spears projecting ten feet, at the least, before their chargers’ poitrels, their long plumes floating backward in the current caused by their own quick motion, the chivalry of France bore down on their pursuers, breathless, confused, and struggling. It was a massacre, but not a rout; for not a man turned on his heel, or even thought to fly: but back to back, in desperate groups, they fought after their ranks were broken, hewing with their short weapons at the mail-clad lancers, who securely speared them from the backs of their barbed horses--asking not, nor receiving quarter--true sons of England to the last, annihilated but not conquered! Night fell, and Gurth, and Leofwyn, and Harold, lay dead around their standard--pierced with innumerable wounds, gory, and not to be discerned, so were their features and their forms defaced and mangled by friend or foeman. Yet still, when all was lost, without array or order, standards, or chiefs, or hopes, the Englishmen fought on--till total darkness sank down on the field of slaughter, and utter inability to slay caused a brief pause in the unsparing havoc. Such was the vengeance of the Norman!

THE FAITH OF WOMAN.

“Two things there be on earth that ne’er forget--
A woman, and a dog--where once their love is set!”--OLD MS.

It was the morning after the exterminating fight at Hastings. The banner blessed of the Roman pontiff streamed on the tainted air, from the same hillock whence the dragon standard of the Saxons had shone unconquered to the sun of yester-even! Hard by was pitched the proud pavilion of the conqueror, who, after the tremendous strife and perilous labors of the preceding day, reposed himself in fearless and untroubled confidence upon the field of his renown; secure in the possession of the land, which he was destined to transmit to his posterity for many a hundred years, by the red title of the sword.

To the defeated Saxons, morning, however, brought but a renewal of those miseries which, having yesterday commenced with the first victory of their Norman lords, were never to conclude, or even to relax, until the complete amalgamation of the rival races should leave no Normans to torment, no Saxons to endure; all being merged at last into one general name of English, and by their union giving origin to the most powerful, and brave, and intellectual people, the world has ever looked upon since the extinction of Rome’s freedom.

At the time of which we are now speaking, nothing was thought of by the victors save how to rivet most securely on the necks of the unhappy natives their yoke of iron; nothing by the poor, subjugated Saxons, but how to escape for the moment the unrelenting massacre which was urged far and wide by the remorseless conquerors throughout the devastated country. With the defeat of Harold’s host, all national hope of freedom was at once lost to England. Though, to a man, the English population were brave and loyal, and devoted to their country’s rights, the want of leaders--all having perished side by side on that disastrous field--of combination, without which myriads are but dust in the scale against the force of one united handful--rendered them quite unworthy of any serious fears, and even of consideration, to the bloodthirsty barons of the invading army. Over the whole expanse of level country which might be seen from the slight elevation whereon was pitched the camp of William, on every side might be descried small parties of the Norman horse, driving in with their bloody lances, as if they were mere cattle, the unhappy captives; a few of whom they now began to spare, not from the slightest sentiment of mercy, but literally that their arms were weary with the task of slaying, although their hearts were yet insatiate of blood.

It must be taken now into consideration by those who listen with dismay and wonder to the accounts of pitiless barbarity--of ruthless, indiscriminating slaughter on the part of men whom they have hitherto been taught to look upon as brave indeed as lions in the field, but not partaking of the lion’s nature after the field was won--not only that the seeds of enmity had long been sown between those rival people, but that the deadly crop of hatred had grown up, watered abundantly by the tears and blood of either; and, lastly, that the fierce fanaticism of religious persecution was added to the natural rancor of a war waged for the ends of conquest or extermination. The Saxon nation, from the king downward to the meanest serf who fought beneath his banner, or buckled on the arms of liberty, were all involved under the common ban of the pope’s interdict. They were accursed of God, and handed over by his holy church to the kind mercies of the secular arm; and therefore, though but yesterday they were a powerful and united nation, to-day they were but a vile horde of scattered outlaws, whom any man might slay wherever he should find them, whether in arms or otherwise--amenable for blood neither to any mortal jurisdiction, nor even to the ultimate tribunal to which all must submit hereafter, unless deprived of their appeal like these poor fugitives, by excommunication from the pale of Christianity. For thirty miles around the Norman camp, pillars of smoke by day, continually streaming upward to the polluted heaven, and the red glare of nightly conflagration, told fatally the doom of many a happy home! Neither the castle nor the cottage might preserve their male inhabitants from the sword’s edge, their females from more barbarous persecution. Neither the sacred hearth of hospitality nor the more sacred altars of God’s churches might protect the miserable fugitives; neither the mail-shirt of the man-at-arms nor the monk’s frock of serge availed against the thrust of the fierce Norman spear. All was dismay and havoc, such as the land wherein those horrors were enacted has never witnessed since, through many a following age.

High noon approached, and in the conqueror’s tent a gorgeous feast was spread. The red wine flowed profusely, and song and minstrelsy arose with their heart-soothing tones, to which the feeble groans of dying wretches bore a dread burden from the plain whereon they still lay struggling in their great agonies, too sorely maimed to live, too strong as yet to die. But, ever and anon, their wail waxed feebler and less frequent; for many a plunderer was on foot, licensed to ply his odious calling in the full light of day--reaping his first if not his richest booty from the dead bodies of their slaughtered foemen. Ill fared the wretches who lay there, untended by the hand of love or mercy, “scorched by the death-thirst, and writhing in vain;” but worse fared they who showed a sign of life to the relentless robbers of the dead, for then the dagger--falsely called that of mercy--was the dispenser of immediate immortality. The conqueror sat at his triumphant board, and barons drank his health: “First English monarch, of the pure blood of Normandy!”--“King by the right of the sword’s edge!”--“Great, glorious, and sublime!” Yet was not his heart softened, nor was his bitter hate toward the unhappy prince who had so often ridden by his side in war, and feasted at the same board with him in peace, relinquished or abated. Even while the feast was at the highest, while every heart was jocund and sublime, a trembling messenger approached, craving on bended knee permission to address the conqueror and king--for so he was already schooled by brief but hard experience to style the devastator of his country.

“Speak out, Dog Saxon!” cried the ferocious prince; “but since thou must speak, see that thy speech be brief, an’ thou wouldst keep thy tongue uncropped thereafter!”

“Great duke and mighty,” replied the trembling envoy, “I bear you greeting from Elgitha, herewhile the noble wife of Godwin, the queenly mother of our late monarch--now, as she bade me style her, the humblest of your suppliants and slaves. Of your great nobleness and mercy, mighty king, she sues you, that you will grant her the poor leave to search amid the heaps of those our Saxon dead, that her three sons may at least lie in consecrated earth--so may God send you peace and glory here, and everlasting happiness hereafter!”

“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as if in wonder toward his nobles; “hear to the Saxon slave, that dares to speak of consecrated earth, and of interment for the accursed body of that most perjured, excommunicated liar! Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog, whom you have dared to style your king, that for the interdicted and accursed dead the sands of the seashore are but too good a sepulchre!”

“She bade me proffer humbly to your acceptance the weight of Harold’s body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified and cringing messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”

“Proffer us gold! what gold, or whose? Know, villain, all the gold throughout this conquered realm _is_ ours. Hence, dog and outcast, hence! nor presume e’er again to come, insulting us by proffering, as a boon to our acceptance, that which we _own_ already, by the most indefeasible and ancient right of conquest!--Said I not well, knights, vavasours, and nobles?”

“Well! well and nobly!” answered they, one and all. “The land is ours, and all that therein is: their dwellings, their demesnes, their wealth, whether of gold, or silver, or of cattle--yea, they themselves are ours! themselves, their sons, their daughters, and their wives--our portion and inheritance, to be our slaves for ever!”

“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the duke, spurning him with his foot; “and hark ye, arbalast-men and archers, if any Saxon more approach us on like errand, see if his coat of skin be proof against the quarrel of the shaft!”

And once again the feast went on; and louder rang the revelry, and faster flew the wine-cup, round the tumultuous board. All day the banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on that fatal field, watered sufficiently already by the rich gore of many a noble heart. All day the banquet lasted, and far was it prolonged into the watches of the night; when, rising with the wine-cup in his hand--“Nobles and barons,” cried the duke, “friends, comrades, conquerors, bear witness to my vow! Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory, and where our last foe fell--there will I raise an abbey to his eternal praise and glory. Richly endowed, it shall be, from the first fruits of this our land. BATTLE, it shall be called, to send the memory of this, the great and singular achievement of our race, to far posterity; and, by the splendor of our God, wine shall be plentier among the monks of Battle, than water in the noblest and richest cloister else, search the world over! This do I swear: so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted us for _our_ renown, and will not now deny his help, when it be asked for _his own_ glory!”

The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a Saxon had presumed, since the intolerant message of the duke, to come to look upon his dead. But now the ground was needed whereon to lay the first stone of the abbey William had vowed to God. The ground was needed; and, moreover, the foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential on the winds of heaven. And now, by trumpet-sound, and proclamation through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain of death, to come and seek their dead, lest the health of the conquerors should suffer from the pollution they themselves had wrought. Scarce had the blast sounded, and the glad tidings been announced once only, ere from their miserable shelters, where they had herded with the wild beasts of the forest--from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might escape the Norman spear--forth crept the relics of that persecuted race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and steps that tottered no less from the effect of terror than of age--maidens, and youths, and infants--too happy to obtain permission to search amid those festering heaps, dabbling their hands in the corrupt and pestilential gore which filled each nook and hollow of the dinted soil, so they might bear away, and water with their tears, and yield to consecrated ground, the relics of those brave ones, once loved so fondly, and now so bitterly lamented. It was toward the afternoon of that same day, when a long train was seen approaching, with crucifix, and cross, and censer--the monks of Waltham abbey, coming to offer homage for themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals, to him whom they acknowledged as their king; expressing their submission to the high will of the Norman pontiff--justified, as they said, and proved by the assertion of God’s judgment upon the hill of Hastings. Highly delighted by this absolute submission, the first he had received from any English tongue, the conqueror received the monks with courtesy and favor, granting them high immunities, and promising them free protection, and the unquestioned tenor of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he had answered their address, he detained two of their number--men of intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he instantly discovered--from whom to derive information as to the nature of his newly-acquired country and newly-conquered subjects. Osgad and Ailric, the deputed messengers from the respected principal of their community, had yet a further and higher object than to tender their submission to the conqueror. Their orders were, at all and every risk, to gain permission to consign the corpse of their late king and founder to the earth previously denied to him. And soon, emboldened by the courtesy and kindness of the much-dreaded Norman, they took courage to approach the subject, knowing it interdicted, even on pain of death; and, to their wonder and delight, it was unhesitatingly granted.

Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled defeat and slaughter, those old men might be seen toiling among the naked carcasses, disfigured, maimed, and festering in the sun, toiling to find the object of their devoted veneration. But vain were all their labors--vain was their search, even when they called in the aid of his most intimate attendants, ay, of the mother that had borne him! The corpses of his brethren, Leofwyn and Gurth, were soon discovered; but not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him, could now distinguish the maimed features of the king.

At last, when hope itself was now almost extinct, some one named Edith--Edith the Swan-necked! She had been the mistress--years ere he had been, or dreamed of being, king--to the brave son of Godwin. She had beloved him in her youth with that one, single-minded, constant, never-ending love, which but few, even of her devoted sex, can feel, and they but once, and for one cherished object. Deserted and dishonored when he she loved was elevated to the throne, she had not ceased from her true adoration; but, quitting her now-joyless home, had shared her heart between her memories and her God, in the sequestered cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland. More days elapsed ere she could reach the fatal spot, and the increased corruption denied the smallest hope of his discovery: yet, from the moment when the mission was named to her, she expressed her full and confident conviction that she could recognise that loved one so long as but one hair remained on that head she had once so cherished! It was night when she arrived on the fatal field, and by the light of torches once more they set out on their awful duty. “Show me the spot,” she said, “where the last warrior fell;” and she was led to the place where had been found the corpses of his gallant brethren: and, with an instinct that nothing could deceive, she went straight to the corpse of Harold! It had been turned already to and fro many times by those who sought it; his mother had looked on it, and pronounced it not her son’s: but that devoted heart knew it at once--and broke! Whom rank, and wealth, and honors had divided, defeat and death made one!--and the same grave contained the cold remains of Edith the Swan-necked and the last scion of the Saxon kings of England.

THE ERRING ARROW.

“’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in good green-wood,
When the navis and merle are singing,
When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter’s horn is ringing.”--LADY OF THE LAKE.

As beautiful a summer’s morning as ever chased the stars from heaven, was dawning over that wide tract of waste and woodland, which still, though many a century has now mossed over the ancestral oaks which then were in their lusty prime, retains the name by which it was at that day styled appropriately--the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed since the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God’s own altars, making the roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of the grim wolf or antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured vales to barren and desolate wastes--to gratify his furious passion for that sport which has so justly been entitled the mimicry of warfare. Few years had then elapsed, yet not a symptom of their old fertility could now be traced in the wild plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom, and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance with which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign once smiling like a goodly garden with every meet production for the sustenance of man.

It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer’s morning as ever eye of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the verge of his great orb above the low horizon, was checkering the mossy greensward with long, fantastic lines of light and shadow, and tinging the gnarled limbs of the huge oaks with ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly on every blade of grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt his power, nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of the firmament; nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that waked above it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles through every variation of the wildest forest-scenery--here traversing in easy curves wide undulations clothed with the purple heather; here sinking downward to the brink of sheets of limpid water; now running straight through lines of mighty trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly mingled with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to make twilight of the hottest noontide. Such were the leading features of the country which had most deeply felt, and has borne down to later days most evident memorials of, the Norman’s tyranny.

Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes--surrounded by its flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring streamlet, with barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences that marked the architecture of the conquering race--stood Malwood keep, the favorite residence of Rufus, no less than it had been of his more famous sire. Here, early as was the hour, all was already full of life, full of the joyous and inspiriting confusion that still characterizes, though in a less degree than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro--some leading powerful and blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the earth, and neighed till every turret echoed to the din; some struggling to restrain the mighty bloodhounds which bayed and strove indignantly against the leash; while others, lying in scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf, furbished their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which, for the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field of Hastings.

It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue that mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint phrase of the day the noble sport was designated. A hundred horses, at the least, of the most costly and admired breeds, were there paraded: the huge, coal-black _destrier_ of Flanders, limbed like an elephant, but with a coat that might have shamed the richest velvet by its sleekness; the light and graceful Andalusian, with here and there a Spaniard, springy, and fleet, and fearless--while dogs, in numbers infinitely greater, and of races yet more various, made up the moving picture: bloodhounds to track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent; slowhounds to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to outstrip him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel beasts of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor were these all, for birds themselves were there, trained to make war on their own race: the long-winged hawks of Norway, with lanners from the isle of Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and gosshawks. No tongue could tell the beauty of the creatures thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed, and showing their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing eyes; some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they are more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare boast himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the superb and lavish gorgeousness of their equipment.

A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were in the stirrup. Again if rang, longer and keener than before, and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows, over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the followers and comrades of their king.

Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe, and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the second William. His hair, from which he had derived his famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head; his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and passion--suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French; “the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel, shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against these gay gallants?”

“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed. A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein, bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could bend. “Right jovially will we--an’ they dare cope with us! What sayest thou, De Beauchamp--darest thou wager thy black boar-hound against a cast of merlins--thyself and Vermandois against his grace and me?”

“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed; “thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow save thine!”

“To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his! Never drew Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks the sleight, I trow, so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must hold him pleased if he rate second i’ the field.”

“How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou this bold De Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers?--not thou, I warrant me, though it be to thy king!”

“So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “’tis but a sleight to ’scape our wager--’scaping the shame beside of yielding! He deems us over-strong for him, and so would part us!”

“Nay, by my halydom,” Rufus replied with a gay smile, “but we will have it so. We two will ride in company, each shooting his own shaft for his own hand. I dare uphold my arrow for twenty marks of gold, and my white Alan, against thy Barbary bay. Darest thou, Sir Walter?”

“I know not _that_--I dare not!” answered Tyrrel; “but your grace wagers high, nor will I lightly lose Bay Barbary: if so our wager stand, I shoot no roving shaft.”

“Shoot as thou wilt, so stands it!”

“Amen!” cried Tyrrel, “and I doubt not to hear your grace confess Tyrrel hath struck the lordlier quarry.”

“Away, then, all! away!” and, setting spurs to his curveting horse, the monarch led the way at a hard gallop, followed by all his train--a long and bright procession, their gay plumes and many-colored garments offering a lively contrast to the deep, leafy verdure of July, and their clear weapons glancing lifelike to the sunshine.

They had careered along, with merriment and music, perhaps three miles into the forest, when the deep baying of a hound was heard, at some short distance to the right, from a thick verge of coppice. Instantly the king curbed in his fiery horse, and raised his hand on high, waving a silent halt. “Ha! have we outlaws here?” he whispered close in the ear of Tyrrel. “’Fore God, but they shall rue it!”

Scarcely had he spoken, when a buck burst from a thicket, and, ere it made three bounds, leaped high into the air and fell, its heart pierced through and through by the unerring shaft of an outlying ranger, who the next instant stepped out of his covert, and, catching sight of the gay cavalcade confronting him--the sounds of whose approach he must have overlooked entirely in the excitement of his sport--turned hastily as if to fly. But it was all too late: a dozen of the king’s retainers had dashed their rowels into their horses’ flanks the instant he appeared, and scarcely had he discovered their advance before he was their prisoner.

“A Saxon, by my soul,” cried Rufus, with a savage scowl, “taken red-hand, and in the fact! Out with thy wood-knife, Damian! By the most holy Virgin, we will first mar his archery, and then present him with such a taste of venison as shall, I warrant me, appease his hankering for one while. Off with his thumb and finger! off with them speedily, I say, an’ thou wouldst ’scape his doom! Ha! grinnest thou, villain?” he continued, as a contortion writhed the bold visage of his victim, who, certain of his fate, and hopeless of resistance or of rescue, yielded with stubborn resolution to his torturers--“an’ this doth make thee smile, thou shalt laugh outright shortly! Hence with him, now, Damian and Hugonet; and thou, Raoul, away with thee--set toils enow, uncouple half a score of brachs and slowhounds, and see thou take me a right stag of ten ere vespers!--Barebacked shalt thou ride on him to the forest, thou unhanged Saxon thief, and see how his horned kinsmen will entreat thee! See that the dog escape ye not, or ye shall swing for it. Bind him, and drag him hence to the old church of Lyme; hold him there, on your lives, till sunset! And ye--lead thither his wild charger: we will sup there upon the greensward, as we return to Malwood, and thou shalt make us merry with thy untutored horsemanship. Now for our wager, Walter! Forward--hurrah!” and on again they dashed, until they reached the choicest hunting-ground of all that spacious woodland--the desolate and desert spot where once had stood the fairest village of the land.

Unroofed and doorless, in different stages of decay, a score or two of cottages, once hospitable, happy homes of a free peasantry, stood here and there amid the brushwood which had encroached upon the precincts; while in the midst the desecrated church of Lyme reared its gray tower, now overgrown with ivy, and crumbling in silent ruin. Upon the cross which crowned the lowly tower, there sat, as they approached, a solitary raven--nor, though the whoop and horn rang close below his perch, did he show any sign of wildness or of fear; but, rising slowly on his wing, flapped round and round in two or three slow circles, and then with a hoarse croak resumed his station. The raven was a favorite bird with the old hunters; and when the deer was slain he had his portion, thence named “the raven’s bone.” Indeed, so usual was the practice, that this bird, the wildest by its nature of all the things that fly, would rarely shun a company which its sagacity descried to be pursuers of the sylvan game.

“What! sittest thou there, old black-frock, in our presence?” shouted the king, bending his bow; “but we will teach thee manners!” Still, the bird moved not, but again sent forth his ominous and sullen croak above the jocund throng. The bow was raised--the cord was drawn back to the monarch’s ear: it twanged, and the next moment the hermit-bird came fluttering down, transfixed by the long shaft, with painful and discordant cries, and fell close at the feet of Rufus’s charger.

There was a murmur in the crowd; and one, a page who waited on the king, whispered with a pale face and agitated voice into his fellow’s ear: “I have heard say--

‘Whose shaft ’gainst raven’s life is set,
Shaft’s feather his heart-blood shall wet!’”

The red king caught the whisper, and turning with an inflamed countenance and flashing eye on the unwitting wakener of his wrath--“Dastard and fool!” he shouted; and, clinching his gloved hand, he dealt the boy so fierce a blow upon the chest, that he fell to the earth like a lifeless body, plunging so heavily upon the sod head-foremost, that the blood gushed from nose, ears, mouth, and he lay senseless and inanimate as the surrounding clay. With a low, sneering laugh, the tyrant once more spurred his charger forward, amid the smothered execrations of his Norman followers, boiling with indignation for that one of their noble and victorious race should have endured the foul wrong of a blow, though it were dealt him by a monarch’s hand. And there were scowling brows, and teeth set hard, among the very noblest of his train; and, as the glittering band swept on, the father of the injured boy--a dark-browed, aged veteran, who had couched lance at Hastings to win the throne of earth’s most lovely island for that base tyrant’s sire--reined in his horse, and, leaping to the earth, upraised the body from the gory turf, and wiped away the crimson stream from the pale features, and dashed pure water, brought from a neighboring brooklet in a comrade’s bacinet, upon the fair young brow--but it was all in vain! The dying child rolled upward his faint eyes; they rested on the anxious lineaments of that war-beaten sire, who, stern and fiery to all else, had ever to that motherless boy been soft and tender as a woman. “Father,” he gasped, while a brief, painful smile illuminated with a transient gleam his ashy lips--“mercy, kind mother Mary! Father--father”--the words died in the utterance; the dim eyes wavered--closed; the head fell back upon the stalwart arm that had supported it, and, with one long and quivering convulsion, the innocent soul departed!

Some three or four--inferior barons of the train, yet each a gentleman of lineage and prowess in the field, each one in his own estimate a prince’s peer--had paused around the desolate father and his murdered child; and now, as the old man gazed hopelessly upon the features of his first-born and his only, the sympathy which had moistened their hard eyes and relaxed their iron features was swallowed up in a fierce glare of indignation, irradiating their scarred and war-seamed visages with that sublime expression, from which, when glowing on the face of a resolute and fearless man, the wildest savage of the forest will shrink in mute dismay. The father, after a long and fearful struggle with his more tender feelings--wringing his hard hands till the blood-drops started redly from beneath every nail--lifted his face, more pale and ashy in its hues than that of the inanimate form which he had loved so tenderly; and as he lifted it he caught the fierce glow mantling on the front of each well-tried companion, and his own features lightened with the self-same blaze: his hand sank downward to the hilt of the long poniard at his girdle, and the fingers worked with a convulsive tremor as they griped the well-known pommel, and an exulting smile curled his mustached lip, prophetic of revenge. Once more he bowed above the dead; he laid his broad hand on the pulseless heart, and printed a long kiss on the forehead; then lifting, with as much tenderness as though they still had sense and feeling, the relics of the only thing he loved on earth, he bore them from the roadside into the shelter of a tangled coppice; unbuckled his long military mantle, and spreading it above them, secured it at each corner by heavy stones, a temporary shelter from insult or intrusion. This done, in total silence he rejoined his friends, who had foreborne to offer aid where they perceived it would be held superfluous. Without one word, he grasped the bridle of his charger, tightened his girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup, vaulted almost without an effort into the steel-bound demipique. Raising his arm aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest, wherein the followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.

“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate, between his grinded teeth; “what need of words? Are not we soldiers, gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not deeds speak for us?”

_Truly_ he said, their thoughts were one!--for each had severally steeled his heart as by a common impulse: and now, without a word, or sign, or any interchange of sentiments, feeling that each understood the other, they wheeled their horses on the tyrant’s track, and at a hard trot rode away, resolved on instant vengeance.

Meanwhile, the hunters had arrived at their appointed ground. The slowhounds were uncoupled and cast loose; varlets with hunting-poles, and mounted grooms, pressed through the underwood; while, in each open glade and riding of the forest, yeomen were stationed with relays of tall and stately gazehounds, to slip upon the hart the instant he should break from the thick covert. The knights and nobles galloped off, each with his long-bow strung, and cloth-yard arrow notched and ready, to posts assigned to them--some singly, some in pairs; all was replete with animation and with fiery joy.

According to the monarch’s pleasure, Tyrrel rode at his bridle-hand, for that day’s space admitted as his comrade and his rival. Two splendid bloodhounds, coal-black, but tawny on the muzzle and the breast, so accurately trained that they required no leash to check their ardor, ran at the red king’s heel; but neither page nor squire, such was his special mandate, accompanied their master. And now the loud shouts of the foresters and the deep baying of the pack gave note that the chase was on foot; and by the varied cadences and different points whence pealed the soul-exciting clamors, Rufus, a skilful and sagacious sportsman, immediately perceived that two if not three of the noble animals they hunted must have been roused at once. For a few seconds he stood upright in his stirrups, his hand raised to his ear, lest the slight summer breeze should interrupt the welcome sounds.

“This way,” he said, in low and guarded tones, “this way they bend; and with the choicest buck--hark to old Hubert’s holloa! and _there, there_, Tyrrel, list to that burst--list to that long, sharp yell! Beshrew my soul, if that be not stanch Palamon--that hound is worth ten thousand. Ha! they are now at fault. Again! brave Palamon again! and now they turn; hark how the echoes roar! Ay, they are crossing now the Deer-leap dingle; and now, now, as their notes ring out distinct and tuneful, they gain the open moorland. Spur, Tyrrel, for your life! spur, spur! we see him not again till we reach Bolderwood”--and, with the word, he raised his bugle to his lips, and wound it lustily and well till every oak replied to the long flourish.

Away they flew, driving their foaming chargers, now through the tangled underwood with tightened reins, now with free heads careering along the level glades, now sweeping over the wide brooks that intersect the forest as though their steeds were winged, and now, at distant intervals, pausing to catch the fitful music of the pack. After a furious chase of at least two hours, the sounds still swelling on their right, nearer and nearer as they rode the farther, the avenue through which they had been galloping for many minutes was intersected at right angles by one yet wider though neglected, and, as it would seem, disused, for many marshy pools might be seen glittering to the sun, which was now fast descending to the westward, and many plants of ash and tufted hazels had sprung up, marring the smoothness of its surface. Here, by a simultaneous motion, and as it seemed obedient to a common thought, both riders halted.

“He must cross, Tyrrel, he _must_ cross here,” cried the excited monarch; “ay, by the life of Him who made us--and that before we be ten minutes older. I will take stand even here, where I command both alleys: ride thou some fifty yards or so, to the right; stand by yon rowan sapling. And mark me--see’st thou yon scathed but giant oak?--Now, if he pass on this side, mine is the first shot; if on the other, thine. I will not balk thy fortunes; meddle not thou with mine!”

They parted--the king sitting like a statue on his well-trained but fiery Andalusian, the rein thrown loosely on the horse’s neck, and the bow already half bent in the vigorous right hand; the baron riding, as he had been commanded, down the neglected avenue, till he had reached the designated tree, when he wheeled round his courser and remained likewise motionless, facing the king, at that brief interval.

Nearer and nearer came the baying of the pack, while ever and anon a sharp and savage treble, mixed with the deeper notes, gave token to the skilful foresters that they were running with the game in view. Nearer it came, and nearer; and now it was so close, that not an echo could be traced amid the stormy music: but with the crash no human shout was blended, no bugle lent its thrilling voice to the blithe uproar, no clang of hoofs announced the presence of pursuers. All, even the best and boldest riders, saving those two who waited there in calm, deliberate impatience, had long been foiled by the quick turns and undiminished pace maintained by the stout quarry.

The crashing of the branches might now be heard distinctly, as they were separated by some body in swift motion; and next the laboring sobs of a beast overdone with toil and anguish; the waving of the coppice followed in a long, sinuous line, resembling in some degree the wake of a fleet ship among the rolling billows. Midway it furrowed the dense thicket between the king and Tyrrel, but with an inclination toward the former. His quick eye noted his advantage: his bow rose slowly and with a steady motion to its level; it was drawn to its full extent--the forked steel head pressing against the polished yew, the silken string stretched home to the right ear. The brambles were forced violently outward, and with a mighty but laborious effort the hunted stag dashed into the more open space. Scarcely had he cleared the thicket, before a sharp and ringing twang announced the shot of Rufus. So true had been his aim, that the barbed arrow grazed the withers of the game--a hart of grease, with ten tines on his noble antlers--leaving a gory line where it had razed the skin; and so strong was the arm that launched it, that the shaft, glancing downward, owing to the king’s elevation and the short distance of the mark at which he aimed, was buried nearly to the feathers in the soft, mossy greensward. The wounded stag bounded at least six feet into the air; and Tyrrel, deeming the work already done, lowered his weapon. But the king’s sight was truer. Raising his bridle-hand to screen his eyes from the rays, now nearly level, of the setting sun--“Ho!” he cried, “Tyrrel, shoot--in the fiend’s name shoot!”

Before the words had reached his ear, the baron saw his error; for, instantly recovering, the gallant deer dashed onward, passing immediately beneath the oak-tree which Rufus had already mentioned. Raising his bow with a rapidity which seemed incredible, Tyrrel discharged his arrow. It struck, just at the correct elevation, against the gnarled trunk of the giant tree; but, swift as was its flight, the motion of the wounded deer was yet more rapid: he had already crossed the open glade, and was lost in the thicket opposite. Diverted from its course, but unabated in its force, the Norman shaft sped onward; full, full and fairly it plunged into the left side of the hapless monarch, unguarded by the arm which he had cast aloft. The keen point actually drove clear through his body, and through his stout buff coat, coming out over his right hip; while the goose-feather, which had winged it to its royal mark, was literally dabbled in his life-blood!

Without a breath, a groan, a struggle, the Conqueror’s son dropped lifeless from his saddle. His horse, freed from the pressure of the master-limbs that had so well controlled him, reared upright as the monarch fell, and, with a wild, quick snort of terror, rushed furiously away into the forest. The bloodhounds had already, by the fierce cunning of their race, discovered that their game was wounded, and had joined freshly with his old pursuers; while he, who did the deed, gazed for one moment horror-stricken on the work of his right hand, and then, without so much as drawing nigh to see if anything of life remained to his late master, casting his fatal bow into the bushes, put spurs to his unwearied horse, and drew not bridle till he reached the coast; whence, taking ship, he crossed the seas, and fell in Holy Land, hoping by many deeds of wilful bloodshed--such is the inconsistency of man--to win God’s pardon for one involuntary slaughter.

Hours rolled away. The sun had set already, and his last gleams were rapidly departing from the skies, nor had the moon yet risen, when six horsemen came slowly, searching as it were for traces on the earth, up the same alley along which Tyrrel and the king had ridden with such furious speed since noontide. The lingering twilight did not suffice to show the features of the group, but the deep tones of the second rider were those of the bereaved and vengeful father.

“How now?” he said, addressing his words to the man who led the way, mounted upon a shaggy forest-pony; “how now, Sir Saxon!--is it for this we saved thee from the tyrant’s hangmen, that thou shouldst prove a blind guide in this matter?”

“Norman,” replied the other, still scanning, as he spoke, the ground dinted and torn by the fresh hoof-tracks, “my heart thirsts for vengeance not less than thine; nor is our English blood less stanch, although it be less fiery, than the hottest stream that swells the veins of your proud race! I tell you, Rufus hath passed here, and he hath not turned back. You _shall_ have your revenge!”

Even as he spoke, the beast which he bestrode set his feet firm and snuffed the air, staring as though his eyeballs would start from their sockets, and uttering a tremulous, low neigh. “Blood hath been shed here! and that, I trow, since sunset! Jesu! what have we now?” he cried, as his eye fell upon the carcass that so lately had exulted in the possession of health, and energy, and strength, and high dominion. “By Thor the Thunderer, it is the tyrant’s corpse!”

“And slain,” replied the father, “slain by another’s hand than mine! Curses, ten thousand curses, on him who shot this shaft!” While he was speaking he dismounted, approached the body of his destined victim, and gazed with an eye of hatred most insatiably savage upon the rigid face and stiffening limbs; then drawing his broad dagger--“I have sworn!” he muttered, as he besmeared its blade with the dark, curdled gore--“I have sworn! Lie there and _rot_,” he added, spurning the body with his foot. “And now we must away, for we are known and noted; and, whoso did the deed, ’tis we shall bear the blame of it. We must see other lands. I will but leave a brief word with the monks of Lymington, that they commit my poor boy to a hallowed tomb, and then farewell, fair England!” And they, too, rode away, nor were they ever seen again on British soil; nor--though shrewd search was made for them until the confessor of Tyrrel, when that bold spirit had departed, revealed the real slayer of the king--did any rumor of their residence or fortunes reach any mortal ear.

The moon rose over the New Forest broad and unclouded, and the dew fell heavy over glade and woodland. The night wore onward, and the bright planet set, and one by one the stars went out--and still the king lay there untended and alone. The morning mists were rising, when the rumbling sound of a rude cart awoke the echoes of that fearful solitude. A charcoal-burner of the forest was returning from his nocturnal labors, whistling cheerfully the burden of some Saxon ballad, as he threaded the dark mazes of the green-wood. A wiry-looking cur--maimed, in obedience to the forest-law, lest he should chase the deer reserved to the proud conquerors alone--followed the footsteps of his master, who had already passed the corpse, when a half-startled yelp, followed upon the instant by a most melancholy howl, attracted the attention of the peasant. After a moment’s search he found, although he did not recognise, the cause of his dog’s terror; and, casting it upon his loaded cart, bore it to the same church whereat but a few hours before the living sovereign had determined to glut his fierce eyes with the death-pangs of his fellow-man. Strange are the ways of Providence. That destined man lived after his intended torturer! And, stranger yet, freed from his bonds, that he might minister unto the slaughter of that self-same torturer, he found his purpose frustrate--frustrate, as it were, by its accomplishment--his meditated deed anticipated, his desperate revenge forestalled.--“Verily, vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, “and I will repay it.”

THE SAXON PRELATE’S DOOM.

“Die, prophet, in thy speech!”--KING HENRY VI.

The mightiest monarch of his age, sovereign of England--as his proud grandsire made his vaunt of yore--by right of the sword’s edge; grand duke of Normandy, by privilege of blood; and liege lord of Guienne, by marriage with its powerful heritress; the bravest, the most fortunate, the wisest of the kings of Europe, Henry the Second, held his court for the high festival of Christmas in the fair halls of Rouen. The banquet was already over, the revelry was at the highest, still, the gothic arches ringing with the merriment, the laughter, and the blended cadences of many a minstrel’s harp, of many a trouvere’s lay. Suddenly, while the din was at the loudest, piercing through all the mingled sounds, a single trumpet’s note was heard--wailing, prolonged, and ominous--as was the chill it struck to every heart in that bright company--of coming evil. During the pause which followed, for at that thrilling blast the mirth and song were hushed as if by instinct--a bustle might be heard below, the tread of many feet, and the discordant tones of many eager voices. The great doors were thrown open, not with the stately ceremonial that befitted the occasion, but with a noisy and irreverent haste that proved the urgency or the importance of the new-comers. Then, to the wonder of all present, there entered--not in their wonted pomp, with stole, and mitre, crozier dalmatique and ring, but in soiled vestments, travel-worn and dusty, with features haggard from fatigue, and sharpened by anxiety and fear--six of the noblest of old England’s prelates, led by the second dignitary of the church, York’s proud archbishop. Hurrying forward to the dais, where Henry sat in state, they halted all together at the step, and in one voice exclaimed:--

“Fair sir, and king, not for ourselves alone, but for the holy church, for your own realm and crown, for your own honor, your own safety, we beseech you--”

“What means this, holy fathers?” Henry cried, hastily, and half alarmed, as it would seem, by the excited language of the churchmen. “What means this vehemence--or who hath dared to wrong ye, and for why?”

“For that, at your behest, we dared to crown the youthful king, your son! Such, sire, is our offence. Our wrong--that we your English prelates are excommunicated, and--”

“Now, by the eyes of God!”[A] exclaimed the king, breaking abruptly in upon the bishop’s speech, his noble features crimsoned by the indignant blood, that rushed to them at mention of this foul affront, “Now, by the eyes of God, if all who have consented to his consecration be accursed, then am I so myself!”

[A] For this strange but authentic oath, see Thierry’s “Norman
Conquest,” whence most of these details are taken.

“Nor is this all,” replied the prelate, well pleased to note the growing anger of the sovereign, “nor is this all the wrong. The same bold man, who did you this affront, an’ you look not the sharper, will light a blaze in England that shall consume right speedily your royal crown itself. He marches to and fro, with troops of horse, and bands of armed footmen, stirring the Saxon churls against the gentle blood of Normandy, nay, seeking even to gain entrance into your garrisons and castles.”

“Do I hear right,” shouted the fiery prince, striking his hand upon the board with such fierce vehemence, that every flask and tankard rang. “Do I hear right--and is it but a dream that I am England’s king? What! _one_ base vassal; _one_ who has fattened on the bread of our ill-wasted charity; _one_ beggar, who first came to our court with all his fortunes on his back, bestriding a galled, spavined jade; _one_ wretch like this insult at once a line of sovereign princes--trample a realm beneath his feet--and go unpunished and scathe-free? What! was there not one man, one only, of the hordes of recreant knights who feast around my board, to free his monarch from a shaveling who dishonors and defies him? Break off the feast--break off, I say! no time for revelry and wine!--To council, lords, to council! We must indeed bestir us, an’ we would hold the crown our grandsire won, not for himself alone, nor for his race--who, by God’s grace, will wear it, spite priest, cardinal, or pope--but for the gentle blood of Norman chivalry!”