WAGER OF BATTLE;
A
TALE OF SAXON SLAVERY
IN
SHERWOOD FOREST.

BY HENRY W. HERBERT,

AUTHOR OF "HENRY VIII AND HIS SIX WIVES," "THE CAPTAINS OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN REPUBLICS," "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," "MARMADUKE WYVIL," "OLIVER CROMWELL," ETC. ETC. ETC.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY MASON BROTHERS,
23 PARK ROW.
1855.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by
MASON BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY
THOMAS B. SMITH,
82 & 84 Beekman St.

PRINTED BY
JOHN A. GRAY,
79 Cliff St.

TO

ISRAEL DE WOLF ANDREWS, ESQ.,

OF EASTPORT, MAINE,

THIS HISTORICAL ROMANCE,

Descriptive of the manners, customs and institutions of our mutual ancestry, Saxon and Norman, at the period of their fusion into the great race, speaking the English tongue, by whatever name, in distant and widely severed isles and continents, it is destined to be known, and illustrative of the nature of Saxon serfdom in the twelfth century of our era, is dedicated, as a slight token of great esteem, of gratitude for many good offices, and of friendship, which, he hopes and wishes, will stand all tests of time and change, unaltered,

By his sincere friend and servant,

HENRY WM. HERBERT.

The Cedars, July 20, 1855.

PREFACE.

It is, perhaps, unfortunate that the period and, in some degree, the scene of my present work, coincide nearly with those of the most magnificent and gorgeous of historical romances, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.

It is hoped, however, that—notwithstanding this similarity, and the fact that in both works the interest turns in some degree on the contrast between the manners of the Saxon and Norman inhabitants of the isle, and the state of things preceding the fusion of the two races into one—notwithstanding, also, that in each a portion of the effect depends on the introduction of a judicial combat, or "Wager of Battle"—the resemblance will be found to be external and incidental only, and that, neither in matter, manner, nor subject, is there any real similarity between the books, much less any imitation or absurd attempt, on my part, at rivalry with that which is admitted to be incomparable. It will be seen, at once, by those who have the patience to peruse the following pages, that I have aimed at something more than a mere delineation of outward habits, customs, and details of martial or pacific life; that I have entered largely into the condition of classes, the peculiar institution of Serfdom, or White Slavery, as it existed among our own ancestors—that portion of whom, from which our blood is in the largest degree descended, being the servile population of the island—in the twelfth century, and the steps which led to its gradual abolition.

In doing this, I have been unavoidably led into the necessity of dealing with the ancient jurisprudence of our race, the common law of the land, the institution of Trial by Jury, and that singular feature in our old judicial system, the reference of cases to the direct decision of the Almighty by Wager of Battle, or, as it was also called, "the Judgment of God."

I will here merely observe that, while the gist of my tale lies in the adventures and escape of a fugitive Saxon Slave from the tyranny of his Norman Lord, my work contains no reference to the peculiar institution of any portion of this country, nor conceals any oblique insinuation against, or covert attack upon, any part of the inhabitants of the Continent, or any interest guaranteed to them by the Constitution. Nevertheless, I would recommend no person to open a page of this volume, who is prepared to deny that slavery per se is an evil and a wrong, and its effects deteriorating to all who are influenced by its contact, governors alike and governed, since they will find nothing agreeable, but much adverse to their way of thinking.

That it is an evil and a wrong, in itself, and a source of serious detriment to all parties concerned, I can not but believe; and that, like all other wrongs and evils, it will in the end, by God's wisdom, be provided for and pass away, without violence or greater indirect wrong and evil, I both believe and hope.

But I neither arrogate to myself the wisdom of imagining how this is to be peacefully brought about in the lapse of ages, nor hesitate to dissent from the intemperance of those who would cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander, with the sword, reckless if the same blow should sever the sacred bonds that consolidate the fabric of the Union.

Henry Wm. Herbert.

The Cedars, September, 1st., 1855.

CONTENTS.

SHERWOOD FOREST;

OR,

WAGER OF BATTLE.

CHAPTER I.
THE FOREST.

"He rode half a mile the way;

He saw no light that came of day;

Then came he to a river broad,

Never man over such one rode;

Within he saw a place of green,

Such one had he never erst seen."

Early Metrical Romaunts. Guy of Warwick.

In the latter part of the twelfth century—when, in the reign of Henry II., fourth successor of the Conqueror, and grandson of the first prince of that name, known as Beauclerc, the condition of the vanquished Saxons had begun in some sort to amend, though no fusion of the races had as yet commenced, and tranquillity was partially restored to England—the greater part of the northern counties, from the Trent to the mouths of Tyne and Solway, was little better than an unbroken chase or forest, with the exception of the fiefs of a few great barons, or the territories of a few cities and free borough towns; and thence, northward to the Scottish frontier, all was a rude and pathless desert of morasses, moors, and mountains, untrodden save by the foot of the persecuted Saxon outlaw.

In the West and North Ridings of the great and important Shire of York, there were, it is true, already a few towns of more than growing importance; several of which had been originally the sites, or had grown up in the vicinity and under the shelter of Roman Stative encampments; whereof not a few of them have retained the evidence in their common termination, caster, while others yet retain the more modern Saxon appellations. Of these two classes, Doncaster, Pontefract, Rotherham, Sheffield, Ripon, may be taken as examples, which were even then flourishing, and, for the times, even opulent manufacturing boroughs, while the vastly larger and more wealthy commercial places, which have since sprung up, mushroom-like, around them, had then neither hearths nor homes, names nor existence.

In addition to these, many great lords and powerful barons already possessed vast demesnes and manors, and had erected almost royal fortalices, the venerable ruins of which still bear evidence to the power and the martial spirit of the Norman lords of England; and even more majestic and more richly endowed institutions of the church, such as Fountains, Jorvaulx, and Bolton Abbayes, still the wonder and reproach of modern architecture, and the admiration of modern artists, had created around themselves garden-like oases among the green glades and grassy aisles of the immemorial British forests; while, emulating the example of their feudal or clerical superiors, many a military tenant, many a gray-frocked friar, had reared his tower of strength, or built his lonely cell, upon some moat-surrounded mount, or in some bosky dingle of the wood.

In the East Riding, all to the north of the ancient city of the Shire, even then famous for its minster and its castle, even then the see and palace of the second archbishop of the realm, was wilder yet, ruder and more uncivilized. Even to this day, it is, comparatively speaking, a bleak and barren region, overswept by the cold gusts from the German ocean, abounding more in dark and stormy wolds than in the cheerful green of copse or wildwood, rejoicing little in pasture, less in tillage, and boasting of nothing superior to the dull market towns of the interior, and the small fishing villages nested among the crags of its iron coast.

Most pitilessly had this district been ravaged by the Conqueror and his immediate successor, after its first desperate and protracted resistance to the arms of the Norman; after the Saxon hope of England fell, to arise no more, upon the bloody field of Hastings; and after each one of the fierce Northern risings.

The people were of the hard, old, stubborn, Danish stock, more pertinacious, even, and more stubborn, than the enduring Saxon, but with a dash of a hotter and more daring spirit than belonged to their slower and more sluggish brethren.

These men would not yield, could not be subdued by the iron-sheathed cavalry of the intrusive kings. They were destroyed by them, the lands were swept bare,[1] the buildings burned, the churches desecrated. Manors, which under the native rule of the Confessor had easily yielded sixty shillings of annual rent, without distress to their occupants, scarcely paid five to their foreign lords; and estates, which under the ancient rule opulently furnished forth a living to two[2] English gentlemen of rank with befitting households, now barely supported two miserable Saxon cultivators, slaves of the soil, paying their foreign lords, with the blood of their hands and the sweat of their brows, scarcely the twelfth part of the revenue drawn from them by the old proprietors.

When, in a subsequent insurrection, the Norman king again marched northward, in full resolve to carry his conquering arms to the frontiers of Scotland, and, sustained by his ferocious energy, did actually force his way through the misty moorlands and mountainous mid-regions of Durham, Northumberland, and Westmoreland, he had to traverse about sixty miles of country, once not the least fertile of his newly-conquered realm, in which his mail-clad men-at-arms saw neither green leaves on the trees, nor green crops in the field; for the ax and the torch had done their work, not negligently; passed neither standing roof nor burning hearth; encountered neither human being nor cattle of the field; only the wolves, which had become so numerous from desuetude to the sight of man, that they scarce cared to fly before the clash and clang of the marching squadrons.

To the northward and north-westward, yet, of Yorkshire, including what are now Lancashire, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and Cumberland, though the Conqueror, in his first irresistible prosecution of red-handed victory, had marched and countermarched across them, there was, even at the time of my narrative, when nearly a century had fled, little if any thing of permanent progress or civilization, beyond the establishment of a few feudal holds and border fortresses, each with its petty hamlet clustered beneath its shelter. The marches, indeed, of Lancashire, toward its southern extremity, were in some degree permanently settled by military colonists, in not a few instances composed of Flemings, as were the Welch frontiers of the neighboring province of Cheshire, planted there to check the inroads of the still unconquered Cymri, to the protection of whose mountains, and late-preserved independence, their whilom enemies, the now persecuted Saxons, had fled in their extremity.

It is from these industrious artisans, then the scorn of the high-born men-at-arms, that the trade had its origin, which has filled the bleak moors, and every torrent gorge of Lancaster and Western York, with a teeming population and a manufacturing opulence, such as, elsewhere, the wide earth has not witnessed. Even at the time of which I write, the clack of their fulling-mills, the click of their looms, and the din of their trip-hammers, resounded by the side of many a lonely Cheshire stream; but all to the north and westward, where the wildest hillsides and most forbidding glens are now more populous and richer than the greatest cities of those days, all was desolate as the aspect of the scenery, and inhospitable as the climate that lowers over it in constant mist and darkness.

Only in the south-western corner of Westmoreland, the lovely land of lakes and mountains and green pastoral glens, beyond Morecambe Bay and the treacherous sands of Lancaster, had the Norman nobles, as the entering tide swept upward through the romantic glens and ghylls of Netherdale and Wharfedale, past the dim peaks of Pennigant and Ingleborough, established their lines in those pleasant places, and reared their castellated towers, and laid out their noble chases, where they had little interruption to apprehend from the tyrannic forest laws of the Norman kings, which, wherever their authority extended, bore not more harshly on the Saxon serf than on the Norman noble.

To return, however, toward the midland counties, and the rich regions with which this brief survey of Northern England in the early years of the twelfth century commenced—a vast tract of country, including much of the northern portions of Nottingham and Derbyshire, and all the south of the West Riding of York, between the rivers Trent and Eyre, was occupied almost exclusively by that most beautiful and famous of all British forests, the immemorial and time-honored Sherwood—theme of the oldest and most popular of English ballads—scene of the most stirring of the old Romaunts—scene of the most magnificent of modern novels, incomparable Ivanhoe—home of that half historic personage, King of the Saxon greenwoods, Robin Hood, with all his northern merry-men, Scathelock, and Friar Tuck, and Little John, Allen-a-Dale, wild forest minstrel, and the blythe woodland queen, Maid Marion—last leafy fortalice, wherein, throughout all England proper, lingered the sole remains of Saxon hardihood and independence—red battle-field of the unsparing conflicts of the rival Roses.

There stand they still, those proud, majestic kings of bygone ages; there stand they still, the

"Hallowed oaks,

Who, British-born, the last of British race,

Hold their primeval rights by nature's charter,

Not at the nod of Cæsar;"

there stand they still, erect, earth-fast, and massive, grasping the green-sward with their gnarled and knotty roots, waving "their free heads in the liberal air," full of dark, leafy umbrage clothing their lower limbs; but far aloft, towering with bare, stag-horned, and splintered branches toward the unchanged sky from which so many centuries of sunshine have smiled down, of tempest frowned upon their "secular life of ages."

There stand they, still, I say; alone, or scattered here and there, or in dark, stately groups, adorning many a noble park of modern days, or looming up in solemn melancholy upon some "one-tree hill," throughout the fertile region which lies along the line of that great ancient road, known in the Saxon days as Ermine-street, but now, in common parlance, called "the Dukeries," from seven contiguous domains, through which it sweeps, of England's long-lined nobles.

Not now, as then, embracing in its green bosom sparse tracts of cultivated lands, with a few borough-towns, and a few feudal keeps, or hierarchal abbayes, but itself severed into divers and far-distant parcels, embosomed in broad stretches of the deepest meadows, the most teeming pastures, or girded on its swelling, insulated knolls by the most fertile corn-lands, survives the ancient Sherwood.

Watered by the noblest and most beautiful of northern rivers, the calm and meadowy Trent, the sweet sylvan Idle, the angler's favorite, fairy-haunted Dee, the silver Eyre, mountainous Wharfe, and pastoral Ure and Swale; if I were called upon to name the very garden-gem of England, I know none that compares with this seat of the old-time Saxon forest.

You can not now travel a mile through that midland region of plenty and prosperity without hearing the merry chime of village bells from many a country spire, without passing the happy doors of hundreds of low cottage homes, hundreds of pleasant hamlets courting the mellow sunshine from some laughing knoll, or nestling in the shrubberies of some orchard-mantled hollow.

Nor are large, prosperous, and thriving towns, rich marts of agricultural produce, or manufactures of wealth richer than gold of El Dorado, so far apart but that a good pedestrian may travel through the streets of a half a dozen in a day's journey, and yet stand twenty times agaze between their busy precincts in admiration—to borrow the words of the great northern Romancer, with the scene and period of whose most splendid effort my humble tale unfortunately coincides—in admiration of the "hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed, perhaps, the stately march of the Roman soldiers."

And here, let none imagine these to be mere exaggerations, sprung from the overflowing brain of the Romancer, for, not fifty miles distant from the scene described above, there is yet to be seen a venerable patriarch of Sherwood, which boasted still, within a few short years, some garlands of surviving green—the oak of Cowthorpe—probably the largest in the island; which is to this day the boundary corner of two marching properties, and has been such since it was constituted so in Doomsday Book, wherein it was styled quercum ingentem, the gigantic oak.

Since the writing of those words eight centuries have passed, and there are many reasons for believing that those centuries have added not an inch to its circumference, but rather detracted from its vigor and its growth; and, to me, it seems far more probable that it was a full-grown tree, with all its leafy honors rife upon it, when the first Cæsar plunged, waist-deep, into the surges of the British Channel from the first Roman prow, than that it should have sprung up, like the gourd of a Jonah, in a single night, to endure a thousand years' decay without entirely perishing.

In those days, however, a man might ride from "eve to morn, from morn to dewy eve," and hear no sound more human than the deep "belling" of the red deer, if it chanced to be in the balmy month of June; the angry grunt of the tusky boar, startled from his mud-bath in some black morass; or, it may be, the tremendous rush of the snow-white, black-maned bull, crashing his way through shivered saplings and rent under-brush, mixed with the hoarse cooings of the cushat dove, the rich song-gushes of the merle and mavis, or the laughing scream of the green woodpecker.

Happy, if in riding all day in the green leafy twilight, which never, at high noon, admitted one clear ray of daylight, and, long before the sun was down, degenerated into murky gloom, he saw no sights more fearful than the rabbits glancing across the path, and disappearing in the thickets; or the slim doe, daintily picking her way among the heather, with her speckled fawns frolicking around her. Thrice happy, if, as night was falling, cold and gray, the tinkling of some lonely chapel bell might give him note where some true anchorite would share his bed of fern, and meal of pulse and water, or jolly clerk of Copmanhurst would broach the pipe of Malvoisie, bring pasties of the doe, to greet the belated wayfarer.

Such was the period, such the region, when, on a glorious July morning, so early that the sun had not yet risen high enough to throw one sweeping yellow ray over the carpet of thick greensward between the long aisles of the forest, or checker it with one cool shadow—while the dew still hung in diamonds on every blade of grass, on every leaf of bush or brackens; while the light blue mists were still rising, thinner and thinner as they soared into the clear air, from many a woodland pool or sleepy streamlet—two men, of the ancient Saxon race, sat watching, as if with some eager expectation, on a low, rounded, grassy slope, the outpost, as it seemed, of a chain of gentle hills, running down eastward to the beautiful brimful Idle.

Around the knoll on which they sat, covered by the short mossy turf, and over-canopied by a dozen oaks, such as they have been described, most of them leafy and in their prime, but two or three showing above their foliage the gray stag-horns of age, the river, clear as glass, and bright as silver, swept in a semicircle, fringed with a belt of deep green rushes and broad-leaved water-lilies, among which two or three noble swans—so quietly sat the watchers on the hill—were leading forth their little dark-gray black-legged cygnets, to feed on the aquatic flies and insects, which dimpled the tranquil river like a falling shower. Across the stream was thrown a two-arched freestone bridge, high-backed and narrow, and half covered with dense ivy, the work, evidently, of the Roman conquerors of the island, from which a yellow, sandy road wound deviously upward, skirting the foot of the rounded hill, and showing itself in two or three ascending curves, at long intervals, above the tree-tops, till it was lost in the distant forest; while, far away to the eastward, the topmost turret of what seemed a tall Norman keep, with a square banner drooping from its staff in the breezeless air, towering above the dim-wood distance, indicated whither it led so indirectly.

In the rear of the slope or knoll, so often mentioned, was a deep tangled dell, or dingle, filled with a thickset growth of holly, birch, and alder, with here a feathery juniper, and there a graceful fern bush; and behind this arose a higher ridge, clothed with tall, thrifty oaks and beeches, of the second growth, and cutting off in that direction all view beyond its own near horizon.

It was not in this direction, however, nor up the road toward the remote castle, nor down across the bridge over the silver Idle, that the watchers turned their eager eyes, expecting the more eagerly, as, at times, the distant woods before them—lying beyond a long stretch of native savanna, made probably by the beaver, while that industrious animal yet figured in the British fauna—seemed to mourn and labor with a deep, indefinite murmuring sound, half musical, half solemn, but liker to an echo than to any known utterance of any living human being. It was too varied for the noise of falling waters, too modulated for the wind harp of the west, which was sighing fitfully among the branches. Eagerly they watched, with a wild look of almost painful expectation in their keen, light-blue eyes, resembling in no respect the lively glance with which the jovial hunter awaits his gallant quarry; there was something that spoke of apprehension in the haggard eye—perhaps the fear of ill-performing an unwilling duty.

And if it were so, it was not unnatural; not at that day, alas! uncommon; for dress, air, aspect, and demeanor, all told them at first sight, to be of that most wretched, if not most abject class, the Saxon serfs of England. They were both clad alike, in short, close-cut frocks, or tunics, of tanned leather, gathered about their waists with broad buff belts, fastened with brazen buckles, in each of which stuck a long buckhorn-hafted two-edged Sheffield whittle; both were bare-headed, both shod with heavy-clouted shoes, and both wore, soldered about their necks, broad brazen dog-collars, having the brand of their condition, with their own names and qualities, and that and the condition of their master.

Here, however, ended the direct resemblance, even of their garb; for, while the taller and better formed man of the two, who was also somewhat the darker haired and finer featured, wore a species of rude leather gauntlets, with buskins of the same material, reaching as high as the binding of the frock, the other man was bare-armed and bare-legged also, with the exception of an inartificial covering of thongs of boar-hide, plaited from the ankle to the knee upward. The latter also carried no weapon but a long quarter-staff, though he held a brace of noble snow-white alans—the wire-haired grayhounds of the day—in a leash of twisted buckskin; while his brother—for so strong was their personal resemblance, that their kinship could scarcely be doubted—carried a short, steel-headed javelin in his hand, and had beside him, unrestrained, a large coarser hound, of a deep brindled gray color, with clear, hazel eyes; and what was strange to say, in view of the condition of this man, unmaimed, according to the cruel forest code of the Norman kings.

This difference in the apparel, and, it may be added, in the neatness, well-being, and general superior bearing of him who was the better armed, might perhaps be explained by a glance at the engraving on the respective collars. For while that of the one, and he the better clad and better looking, bore that he was "Kenric the Dark, thral of the land to Philip de Morville," that of the other stamped him "Eadwulf the Red, gros thral" of the same Norman lord.

Both Saxon serfs of the mixed Northern race, which, largely intermixed with Danish blood, produced a nobler, larger-limbed, loftier, and more athletic race than the pure Saxons of the southern counties—they had fallen, with the properties of the Saxon thane, to whom they had belonged in common, into the hands of the foreign conqueror. Yet Kenric was of that higher class—for there were classes even among these miserable beings—which could not be sold, nor parted from the soil on which they were born, but at their own option; while Eadwulf, although his own twin-brother, for some cause into which it were needless to inquire, could be sold at any time, or to any person, or even swapped for an animal, or gambled away at the slightest caprice of his owner.

To this may be added, that, probably from caprice, or perhaps from some predilection for his personal appearance and motions, which were commanding, and even graceful, or for his bearing, which was evidently less churlish than that of his countrymen in general, his master had distinguished him in some respects from the other serfs of the soil; and, without actually raising him to any of the higher offices reserved to the Normans, among whom the very servitors claimed to be, and indeed were, gentlemen, had employed him in subordinate stations under his huntsman, and intrusted him so far as occasionally to permit his carrying arms into the field.

With him, as probably is the case in most things, the action produced reaction; and what had been the effect of causes, came in time to be the cause of effects. Some real or supposed advantages procured for him the exceeding small dignity of some poor half-conceded rights; and those rights, the effect of perhaps an imaginary superiority, soon became the causes of something more real—of a sentiment of half independence, a desire of achieving perfect liberty.

In this it was that he excelled his brother; but we must not anticipate. What were the characters of the men, and from their characters what events grew, and what fates followed, it is for the reader of these pages to decipher.

After our men had tarried where we found them, waiting till expectation should grow into certainty for above half an hour, and the morning had become clear and sunny, the distant indescribable sound, heard indistinctly in the woods, ripened into that singularly modulated, all sweet, but half-discordant crash, which the practiced ear is not slow to recognize as the cry of a large pack of hounds, running hard on a hot scent in high timber.

Anon the notes of individual hounds could be distinguished; now the sharp, savage treble of some fleet brach, now the deep bass of some southron talbot, rising above or falling far below the diapason of the pack—and now, shrill and clear, the long, keen flourish of a Norman bugle.

At the last signal, Kenric rose silently but quickly to his feet, while his dog, though evidently excited by the approaching rally of the chase, remained steady at his couchant position, expectant of his master's words. The snow-white alans, on the contrary, fretted, and strained, and whimpered, fighting against their leashes, while Eadwulf sat still, stubborn or stupid, and animated by no ambition, by no hope, perhaps scarce even by a fear.

But, as the chase drew nigher, "Up, Eadwulf!" cried his brother, quickly, "up, and away. Thou'lt have to stretch thy legs, even now, to reach the four lane ends, where the relays must be, when the stag crosses. Up, man, I say! Is this the newer spirit you spoke of but now? this the way you would earn largess whereby to win your freedom? Out upon it! that I should say so of my own brother, but thou'lt win nothing but the shackles, if not the thong. Away! lest my words prove troth."

Eadwulf the Red arose with a scowl, but without a word, shook himself like a water-spaniel, and set off at a dogged swinging trot, the beautiful high-bred dogs bounding before his steps like winged creatures, and struggling with the leashes that debarred their perfect freedom—the man degraded, by the consciousness of misery and servitude, into the type of a soulless brute—the brutes elevated, by high breeding, high cultivation, and high treatment, almost into the similitude of intellectual beings.

Kenric looked after him, as he departed, with a troubled eye, and shook his head, as he lost sight of him among the trees in the fore-ground. "Alack!" he said, "for Eadwulf, my brother! He waxes worse, not better." But, as he spoke, a nearer crash of the hounds' music came pealing through the tree-tops, and with a stealthy step he crossed over the summit to the rear of the hillock, where he concealed himself behind the boll of a stupendous oak, making his grayhound lie down in tall fern beside him.

The approaching hounds came to a sudden fault, and silence, deep as that of haunted midnight, fell on the solitary place.

[1 ] Omnia sunt wasta. Modo omnino wasta. Ex maxima parte wasta.—Doomsday Book, vol. i. fol. 309.

[2 ] Duo Taini tenueri. ibi sunt ii villani cum I carruca. valuit xl solidos. modo ilii sol.—Ibid. vol. i. fol. 845.

CHAPTER II.
THE GOOD SERVICE.

"'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood,

When mavis 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.

There is something exceedingly singular in the depth of almost palpable silence which seems to fall upon a tract of woodland country, on the sudden cessation of a full cry of stag-hounds; which cry has in itself, apart from its stirring harmony of discords, something of cheerfulness and sociality, conveyed by its sound, even to the lonely wayfarer.

Although, during that hush of the woods, the carol of the birds, the hum of insects, the breezy voice of the tree-tops, the cooing of the ringdove, the murmur of falling waters, and all the undistinguished harmonies of nature, unheard before, and drowned in that loud brattling, sound forth and fill the listener's ear, yet they disturb it not, nor seem to dissipate, but rather to augment, the influence of the silence.

Kenric had not the educated sentiments which lead the most highly civilized of men to sympathize most deeply with the beautiful sounds and sights of nature. Yet still, as is mostly the case with dwellers in the forest or on the wild mountain tops, he had a certain untutored eye to take in and note effects—an unlearned ear with which to receive pleasant sounds, and acquire a fuller pleasure from them than he could perfectly comprehend or explain to his own senses. And now, when the tumult of the chase had fallen asleep, he leaned against the gnarled and mossy trunk, with his boar-spear resting listlessly against his thigh, and a quiet, meditative expression replacing on his grave, stern features the earnest and excited gaze, with which he had watched the approach of the hunt.

The check, however, lasted not long; the clear, shrill challenge of a favorite hound soon rose from the woodlands, accompanied by loud cheers, "Taró, Taró, tantáro!" and followed by the full crash of the reassembled pack, as they rallied to their leader, and struck again on the hot and steaming scent.

Nearer and nearer came the cry, and ever and anon uprose, distant and mellow, the cadenced nourishes of the clear French horns, giving new life to the trackers of the deer, and filling the hearts of the riders with almost mad excitement. Ere long, several cushats might be seen wheeling above the tree-tops, disturbed from their procreant cradles by the progress of the fierce din below them. A moment afterward, dislodged from their feeding-grounds along the boggy margin of the Idle, a dozen woodcock flapped up from the alder-bushes near the brink, and came drifting along before the soft wind, on their feebly whistling pinions, and, fluttering over the head of the watcher, dropped into the shelter of the dingle in his rear, with its thick shade of varnished hollies. The next instant, a superb red deer, with high branching antlers, leaped with a mighty spring over and partly through the crashing branches of the thicket, and swept with long, graceful bounds across the clear savanna. A single shout, "Tayho!" announced the appearance of the quarry in the open, and awakened a responsive clangor of the horns, which, all at once, sounded their gay tantivy, while the sharp, redoubled clang of the whips, and the cries of "arriere! arriere!" which succeeded, told Kenric that the varlets and attendants of the chase were busy stopping the slow hounds, whose duty was accomplished so soon as the stag was forced into the field; and which were now to be replaced by the fleet and fiery alans, used to course and pull down the quarry by dint of downright strength and speed.

The stretch of green savanna, of which I have spoken as running along the northern margin of the Idle, below the wooded ridges of the lower hills, could not have been less than four miles in length, and was traversed by two sandy paths, unguarded by any fence or hedge-row, which intersected each other within a few hundred yards of the belt of underwood, whence the hunted deer had broken covert. At this point of intersection, known as the Four-Lane-Ends, a general term in Yorkshire for such cross-roads, stood a gigantic oak, short-boughed, but of vast diameter, with gnarled and tortuous branches sweeping down almost to the rank greensward which surrounded it, and concealing any person who stood within their circumference, as completely as if he were within an artificial pavilion.

That way, winged by terror, bounded the beautiful hart royal; for no less did his ten-tined antlers, with their huge cupped tops denote him; and, though it presented no real obstacle to his passage, when he saw the yellow road, winding like a rivulet through the deep grass, he gathered all his feet together, made four or five quick, short buck-leaps, and then, soaring into the air like a bird taking wing, swept over it, and alighted ten feet on the hither side, apparently without an effort—a miracle of mingled grace, activity, and beauty.

As he alighted, he paused a moment, turned his long, swan-like neck, and gazed backward for a few seconds with his large, lustrous, melancholy eyes, until, seeing no pursuers, nor hearing any longer the crash which had aroused him from his harbor, he tossed his antlers proudly, and sailed easily and leisurely across the gentle green.

But at this moment, Eadwulf the Red, who was stationed beneath that very oak-tree with the first relay of grayhounds, uttered a long, shrill whoop, and casting loose the leashes, slipped the two snow-white alans on the quarry. The whoop was answered immediately, and, at about half a mile's distance from the spot where the deer had issued, two princely-looking Norman nobles, clearly distinguishable as such by their richly-furred short hunting-coats, tight hose, and golden spurs of knighthood, came into sight, spurring their noble Andalusian coursers—at that period the fleetest strain in the world, which combined high blood with the capacity to endure the weight of a man-at-arms in his full panoply—to their fullest speed; and followed by a long train of attendants—some mounted, some on foot, huntsmen and verdurers, and yeomen prickers, with falconers, and running footmen, some leading alans in the leash, and some with nets and spears for the chase of the wild boar, which still roamed not unfrequent in the woody swamps that intersected the lower grounds and lined many of the river beds of Sherwood.

It was a gay and stirring scene. The meadow, late so quiet in its uniform green garniture, was now alive with fluttering plumes, and glittering with many-colored scarfs and cassocks, noble steeds of all hues, blood-bay and golden chestnut, dappled and roan, and gleamy blacks, and one, on which rode the foremost of the noble Normans, white as December's snow; and in the middle of the picture, aroused by the shouts in his rear, and aware of the presence of his fresh pursuers, the superb stag, with his neck far stretched out, and his grand antlers pressed close along his back, straining every nerve, and literally seeming to fly over the level sward; while the snow-white alans, with their fierce black eyes glowing like coals of fire, and their blood-red tongues lolling from their open jaws, breathless and mute, but stanch as vindictive fiends, hung hard upon his traces.

At first, the hunted stag laid his course upward, diagonally, aiming for the forest land on the hillside; and although, at first, he had scarce thirty yards of law, and was, moreover, so nearly matched in speed by his relentless enemies, that, for many hundred yards, he neither gained nor lost a yard's distance, still he gradually gathered way, as yards fell into furlongs, furlongs into miles, and drew ahead slowly, but surely, until it appeared almost certain that he must soon gain the shelter of the tall timber, where the keen eyes of the alans, impotent of scent, would be worthless in pursuit, and where he must again be dislodged by slow hounds, or the chase abandoned.

Just as he was within fifty yards, however, of the desired covert's edge, Sir Philip de Morville—for he it was who rode the foremost—raised his bugle to his lips, and sounded it long and shrill, in a most peculiar strain, to which a whoop responded, almost from the point for which the stag was making, and, at the same time, a second brace of alans—one a jet black, and the other a deep-brindled fawn color—darted out, and flew down the gentle slope, right at the head of the yet unwearied quarry.

Springing high into air, he instantly made a perfect demivolte, with an angry toss of his antlers, and shot, with redoubled efforts in the contrary direction, cutting across the very noses of his original pursuers, which, when they had turned likewise, were brought within fifty yards of his haunches, and away like an arrow toward the bridge across the Idle. From this moment, the excitement of the spectacle was redoubled; nor could any one, even the coldest of spectators, have looked on without feeling the blood course, like molten lava, through his veins.

It was no longer a stern chase, where the direct speed only of the rival and hostile animals was brought into play; for, as the stag turned to the left about, the black and brindled alans, which had been started at his head, were thrown by the movement some thirty yards wide on his right quarter; while the white dogs, who had pursued him so savagely from the beginning, were brought to a position nearly equidistant on his left flank.

Henceforth it was a course of fleet bounds, short turns, and windings of wonderful agility; and at this instant a new spectator, or spectatress rather, was added to the scene.

This was a young girl of some sixteen or seventeen years, at the utmost, beautifully formed, and full of easy grace and symmetry, who came careering down the road, from the direction of the castle, as fast as the flying bounds of a beautiful red roan Arab—with mane and tail of silver, scarcely larger or less fleet than the deer in the plain below—could carry her.

Her face and features were not less beautiful than her form; the latter would have been perfectly Grecian and classical but for the slightest possible upward turn in the delicate thin nose, which imparted an arch, half-saucy meaning to her rich, laughing face. Her eyes were clear, bright blue, with long, dark lashes, a pure complexion, ripe, crimson lips, and a flood of dark auburn tresses, which had escaped from the confinement of her purple velvet bonnet, and flowed on the light breeze in a flood of glittering ringlets, completed her attractions.

Her garb was the rich attire peculiar to her age, rank, and the period of which we write—the most picturesque, perhaps, and appropriate to set off the perfections of a female figure of rare symmetry, that ever has been invented. A closely-fitting jacket, following every curve and sinuous line of her beauteous shape, of rich green velvet, furred deeply at the cape and cuffs with white swansdown, and bordered at the hips by a broad band of the same pure garniture; loose-flowing skirts, of heavy sendal of the same hue, a crimson velvet shoulder-belt supporting a richly-embroidered hawking-pouch, a floating plume of white ostrich feathers, and a crimson-hooded merlin on her wrist, with golden bells and jesses, completed her person's adornment; and combined, with the superb housings and velvet headstall of her exquisite palfrey, to form a charming picture.

So rapidly did she ride, that a single page—a boy of ten or twelve years, who followed her—spurring with all his might, could scarcely keep her in sight; and, as she careered down toward the bridge, which she had almost reached, was lost to view in the valley immediately behind the ridge, the southern slope of which she was descending.

The stag, by this time, which had been aiming hitherto to cross the road on which she was galloping, had been turned several times by the fresh relay of alans, which were untired and unimpaired of speed, and had been thus edged gradually away from the road and bridge, toward the white dogs, which were now running, as it is technically termed, cunning, laying up straight ahead, on a parallel line, and almost abreast with the deer. Now they drew forward, shot ahead, and passed him. At once, seeing his peril, he wheeled on his haunches, and, with a desperate last effort, headed once more for the road, striving, for life! for life! to cut across the right-hand couple of deer grayhounds; but, fleet as he was, fleeter now did they show themselves, and once more he was forced to turn, only to find the white dogs directly in his path.

One, the taller and swifter of the two, was a few yards in advance of the other, and, as the stag turned full into his foaming jaws, sprang at its throat with a wild yell. But the deer bounded too, and bounded higher than the dog, and, as they met in mid air, its keen, sharp-pointed hoofs struck the brave staghound in the chest, and hurled him to the ground stunned, if not lifeless. Four strides more, and he swept like a swallow over a narrow reach of the little river; and then, having once more brought the three surviving hounds directly astern, turned to the westward along the river shore, and cantering away lightly, no longer so hard pressed, seemed likely to make his escape toward a broad belt of forest, which lay some mile and a half that way, free from ambuscade or hidden peril.

At this turn of the chase, fiercer was the excitement, and wilder waxed the shouting and the bugle blasts of the discomfited followers of the chase, none of whom were nearer to the bridge than a full half mile. But so animated was the beautiful young lady, whose face had flushed crimson, and then turned ashy pale, with the sudden excitement of that bold exploit of dog and deer, that she clapped her hands joyously together, unhooding and casting loose her merlin, though without intention, in the act, and crying, gayly, "Well run, brave Hercules! well leaped, brave Hart o' Grease;" and, as she saw the hunters scattered over the wide field, none so near to the sport as she, she flung her arm aloft, and with her pretty girlish voice set up a musical whoop of defiance.

Now, at the very moment when the deer's escape seemed almost more than certain—as often is the case in human affairs, no less than cervine—"a new foe in the field" changed the whole aspect of the case. The great brindled gray deerhound, which had lain thus far peaceful by Kenric's side, seeing what had passed, sprang out of the fern, unbidden, swam across the Idle in a dozen strokes, and once more headed the hunted deer.

The young girl was now within six horses' length of the bridge, when the deer, closely pursued by its original assailants, and finding itself now intercepted by Kenric's dog "Kilbuck" in front, turned once again in the only direction now left it, and wheeled across the bridge at full speed, black with sweat, flecked with white foam-flakes, its tongue hanging from its swollen jaws, its bloodshot eyeballs almost starting from its head, mad with terror and despair. All at once, the Arab horse and the gorgeous trappings of the rider glanced across its line of vision; fire seemed, to the affrighted girl, to flash from its glaring eyes, as it lowered its mighty antlers, and charged with a fierce, angry bray.

Pale as death, the gallant girl yet retained her courage and her faculties; she pulled so sharply on her left rein, striking the palfrey on the shoulder with her riding-rod, that he wheeled short on his haunches, and presented his right flank to the infuriated deer, protecting his fair rider by the interposition of his body.

No help was nigh, though the Norman nobles saw her peril, and spurred madly to the rescue; though Kenric started from his lair with a portentous whoop, and, poising his boar spear, rushed down, in the hope to turn the onset to himself. But it was too late; and, strong as was his hand, and his eyes steady, he dared not to hurl such a weapon as that he held, in such proximity to her he would defend.

With an appalling sound, a soft, dead, crushing thrust, the terrible brow antlers were plunged into the defenseless flanks of the poor palfrey; which hung, for a second on the cruel prongs, and then, with a long, shivering scream, rolled over on its side, with collapsed limbs, and, after a few convulsive struggles, lay dead, with the lovely form of its mistress rolled under it, pale, motionless, with the long golden hair disordered in the dust, and the blue eyes closed, stunned, cold, and spiritless, at least, if not lifeless.

Attracted by the gay shoulder-belt of the poor girl, again the savage beast stooped to gore; but a strong hand was on his antler, and a keen knife-point buried in his breast. Sore stricken he was, yet, not slain; and, rearing erect on his hind legs, he dealt such a storm of blows from his sharp hoofs, each cutting almost like a knife, about the head and shoulders of his dauntless antagonist, as soon hurled him, in no better condition than she, beside the lady he had risked so much to rescue.

Then the dogs closed and seized him, and savage and appalling was the strife of the fierce brutes, with long-drawn, choking sighs, and throttling yells, as they raved, and tore, and stamped, and battled, over the prostrate group.

It was a fearful sight that met the eyes of the first comer. He was the Norman who had ridden second in the chase, but now, having outstripped his friendly rival in the neck-or-nothing skurry that succeeded, thundered the first into the road, where the dogs were now mangling the slaughtered stag, and besmearing the pale face of the senseless girl with blood and bestial foam.

To spring from his saddle and drop on his knees beside her, was but a moment's work.

"My child! my child! they have slaughtered thee. Woe! woe!"

CHAPTER III.
THE GUERDON OF GOOD SERVICE.

"'Twere better to die free, than live a slave."

Euripides.

It was fortunate, for all concerned, that no long time elapsed before more efficient aid came on the ground, than the gentleman who first reached the spot, and who, although a member of that dauntless chivalry, trained from their cradles to endure hardship, to despise danger, and to look death steadfastly and unmoved in the face, was so utterly paralyzed by what he deemed, not unnaturally, the death of his darling, that he made no effort to relieve her from the weight of the slaughtered animal, though it rested partially on her lower limbs, and on one arm, which lay extended, nevertheless, as it had fallen, in the dust. But up came, in an instant, Philip de Morville, on his superb, snow-white Andalusian, a Norman baron to the life—tall, powerful, thin-flanked, deep-chested, with the high aquiline features and dark chestnut hair of his race, nor less with its dauntless valor, grave courtesy, and heart as impassive to fear or tenderness or pity, as his own steel hauberk. Up came esquires and pages, foresters and grooms, and springing tumultuously to the ground, under the short, prompt orders of their lord, raised the dead palfrey bodily up, while Sir Philip drew the fair girl gently from under it, and raising her in his arms more tenderly than he had ever been known to entreat any thing, unless it were his favorite falcon, laid her on the short, soft greensward, under the shadow of one of the huge, broad-headed oaks by the wayside.

"Cheer thee, my noble lord and brother," he exclaimed, "the Lady Guendolen is not dead, nor like to die this time. 'Tis only fear, and perchance her fall, for it was a heavy one, that hath made her faint. Bustle, knaves, bustle. Bring water from the spring yonder. Has no one a leathern bottiau? You, Damian, gallop, as if you would win your spurs of gold by riding, to the sumpter mule with the panniers. It should be at the palmer's spring by this time; for, hark, the bells from the gray brothers' chapel, in the valley by the river, are chiming for the noontide service. Bring wine and essences, electuaries and ambergris, if the refectioner have any with him. You, Raoul," he continued, addressing a sturdy, grim-featured old verdurer, who was hanging over the still senseless girl with an expression of solicitude hardly natural to his rugged and scar-seamed countenance, "take a led horse, and hie thee to the abbey; tell the good prior what hath befallen, and pray the brother mediciner he will ride this way, as speedily as he may; and you," turning to the old, white-haired seneschal, "send up some of the varlets to the castle, for the horse-litter; she may not ride home this day."

In the mean time, while he was accumulating order on order, while pages and horse-boys, grooms and esquires, were galloping off, in different directions, as if with spurs of fire, and while the barons themselves were awkwardly endeavoring to perform those ministrations for the fair young creature, which they were much more used themselves to receive at the hands of the softer sex, who were in those rude days often the chirurgeons and leeches, as well as the comforters and soothers of the bed of pain and sickness, than to do such offices for others, the bold defender of Guendolen—Kenric the dark-haired—lay in his blood, stark and cold, deemed dead, and quite forgotten, even by the lowest of the Norman varletry, who held themselves too noble to waste services upon a Saxon, much more upon a thral and bondsman.

They—such of them, that is to say, as were not needed in direct attendance on the persons of the nobles, or as had not been dispatched in search of aid—applied themselves, with characteristic zeal and eagerness, to tend and succor the nobler animals, as they held them, of the chase; while they abandoned their brother man and fellow-countryman, military Levites as they were, to his chances of life or death, without so much as even caring to ask or examine whether he were numbered with the living or the dead.

The palfrey was first seen to, and pronounced dead; when his rich housings were stripped off carefully, and cleaned as well as time and place permitted; when the carcass was dragged off the road, and concealed, for the moment, with fern leaves and boughs lopped from the neighboring bushes, while something was said among the stable boys of sending out some of the "dog Saxon serfs" to bury him on the morrow.

The deer was then dragged roughly whence it lay, across the breast of Kenric, in whose left shoulder one of its terrible brow antlers had made a deep gash, while his right arm was badly shattered by a blow of its sharp hoofs. So careless were the men of inflicting pain on the living, or dishonor on the dead, that one of them, in removing the quarry, set his booted foot square on the Saxon's chest, and forced, by the joint effect of the pressure and the pain, a stifled, choking sound, half involuntary, half a groan, from the pale lips of the motionless sufferer. With a curse, and a slight, contemptuous kick, the Norman groom turned away, with his antlered burthen, muttering a ribald jest on "the death-grunt of the Saxon boar;" and drawing his keen wood-knife, was soon deep in the mysteries of the cureé, and deeper yet in blood and grease, prating of "nombles, briskets, flankards, and raven-bones," then the usual terms of the art of hunting, or butchery, whichever the reader chooses to call it, which are now probably antiquated. The head was cabbaged, as it was called, and, with the entrails, given as a reward to the fierce hounds, which glared with ravenous eyes on the gory carcass. Even its peculiar morsel was chucked to the attendant raven, the black bird of St. Hubert, which—free from any apprehension of the gentle hunters, who affected to treat him with respectful and reverential awe—sat on the stag-horned peak of an aged oak-tree, awaiting his accustomed portion, with an observant eye and an occasional croak. By-and-by, when the sumpter mule came up, with kegs of ale and bottiaus of mead and hypocras, and wine of Gascony and Anjou, before even the riders' throats were slaked by the generous liquor, the bridle-bits and cavessons, nose-bags and martingales of the coursers were removed, and liberal drenches were bestowed on them, partly in guerdon of past services, partly in order to renew their strength and stimulate their valiant ardor.

Long ere this, however, fanned by two or three pages with fans of fern wreaths, and sprinkled with cold spring-water by the hands of her solicitous kinsman, the young girl had given symptoms of returning life, and a brighter expression returned to the dark, melancholy visage of her father.

Two or three long, faint, fluttering sighs came from her parted lips; and then, regular, though low and feeble, her breathing made itself heard, and her girlish bosom rose and fell responsive.

Her father, who had been chafing her hands assiduously, pressed one of them caressingly, at this show of returning animation, and raised it to his lips; when, awakening at the accustomed tenderness, her languid eyes opened, a faint light of intelligence shone forth from them, a pale glow of hectic color played over her face, and a smile glittered for a second on her quivering lips.

"Dear father," she whispered, faintly; but, the next moment, an expression of fear was visible in all her features, and a palpable shiver shook all her frame. "The stag!" she murmured; "the stag! save me, save"—and before the word, uttered simultaneously by the two lords—"He is dead, dear one," "He will harm no one any more"—had reached her ears, she again relapsed into insensibility, while with equal care, but renewed hope, they tended and caressed her.

But Kenric no one tended, no one caressed, save, "faithful still, where all were faithless found," the brindled staghound, "Kilbuck," who licked his face assiduously, with his grim, gory tongue and lips, and besmearing his face with blood and foam, rendered his aspect yet more terrible and death-like.

But now the returning messengers began to ride in, fast and frequent; first, old Raoul, the huntsman, surest, although not fleetest, and with him, shaking in his saddle, between the sense of peril and the perplexity occasioned him by the high, hard trot of the Norman war-horse pressed into such unwonted service, "like a boar's head in aspick jelly," the brother mediciner from the neighboring convent, with his wallet of simples and instruments of chirurgery.

By his advice, the plentiful application of cold water, with essences and stimulants in abundance, a generous draught of rich wine of Burgundy, and, when animation seemed thoroughly revived, the gentle breathing of a vein, soon restored the young lady to her perfect senses and complete self-possession, though she was sorely bruised, and so severely shaken that it was enjoined on her to remain perfectly quiet, where she lay, with a Lincoln-green furred hunting-cloak around her, until the arrival of the litter should furnish means of return to the castle of her father's host and kinsman.

And, in good season, down the hill, slowly and toilsomely came the horse-litter, poor substitute for a wheeled vehicle; but even thus the best, if not only, conveyance yet adopted for the transport of the wounded, the feeble, or the luxurious, and, as such, used only by the wealthy and the noble.

With the litter came three or four women; one or two, Norman maidens, the immediate attendants of the Lady Guendolen, and the others, Saxon slave girls of the household of Sir Philip de Morville, who hurried down, eager to gain favor by show of zealous duty, or actuated by woman's feelings for woman's suffering, even in different grades and station.

The foremost of them all, bounding along with all the wild agility and free natural gracefulness of wood-nymph or bacchante, was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, not above the middle height of her sex, but plump as a partridge, with limbs exquisitely formed and rounded, a profusion of flaxen tresses floating unrestrained on the air, large dark-blue eyes, and a complexion all of milk and roses—the very type of rural Saxon youth and beauty.

As she outstripped all the rest in speed, she was the first to tender gentle service to the Lady Guendolen, who received her with a smile, calling her "Edith the Fair," and thanking her for her ready aid.

But, ere long, as the courtlier maidens arrived on the ground, poor Edith was set aside, as is too often the case with humble merit, while the others lifted the lady into the horse-litter, covered her with light and perfumed garlands, and soon had all ready for her departure.

But, in the mean time, Edith had turned a hasty glance around her; and descrying the inanimate body of the Saxon serf, lying alone and untended, moved by the gentle sympathy of woman for the humblest unknown sufferer, she hastened to assist, if assistance were still possible. But, as she recognized the limbs, stately, though cold and still, and the features, still noble through gore and defilement, a swift horror smote her, that she shook like a leaf, and fell, with a wild, thrilling shriek, "O, Kenric, Kenric!" on the body of the wounded man.

"Ha! what is this?" cried Sir Philip, who now first saw or remembered what had passed. "How is this? Knaves, is there a man hurt here?"

"A Saxon churl, Beausire," replied one of the pages, flippantly, "who has gotten his brisket unseamed by his brother Saxon yonder!" and he pointed to the dead carcass of the stag.

"Our lady save us," murmured the gentle Guendolen, who seemed about to relapse into insensibility; "he saved my life, and have ye let him perish?"

"Now, by the splendor of our lady's eyes!" cried Yvo de Taillebois, the father of the fair young lady, "this is the gallant lad we saw afar, in such bold hand-to-hand encounter with yon mad brute. We have been ingrately, shamefully remiss. This must be amended, Philip de Morville."

"It shall, it shall, my noble friend," cried Philip; "and ye, dogs, that have let the man perish untended thus, for doing of his devoir better than all the best of ye, bestir yourselves. If the man die, as it seems like enow, ye shall learn ere ye are one day older, what pleasant bed-rooms are the vaults of Waltheofstow, and how tastes the water of the moat."

Meantime the monk trotted up, and, after brief examination, announced that, though badly hurt, his life was in no immediate peril, and set himself at once to comfort and revive him.

"He is not slain; he will not die, my child," said Sir Yvo, softly, bending over the litter to his pale lily, who smiled faintly as she whispered in reply—

"Dear father, nor be a slave any longer?"

"Not if I may redeem him," he answered; "but I will speak with Sir Philip at once. Meanwhile be tranquil, and let them convey you homeward. Forward, there, with the litter—gently, forward!"

And, therewith, he turned and spoke eagerly to De Morville, who listened with a grave brow, and answered;

"If it may be, my noble friend and brother. If it may be. But there are difficulties. Natheless, on my life, I desire to pleasure you."

"Nay! it comports not with our name or station, that the noble Guendolen de Taillebois should owe life to a collared thral—a mere brute animal. My lord, your word on it! He must be free, since Yvo de Taillebois is his debtor."

"My word is pledged on it," replied De Morville. "If it can be at all, it shall be. Nay, look not so black on it. It shall be. We will speak farther of it at the castle! And now, lo! how he opes his eyes and stares. He will be right, anon; and ye, knaves, bear him to the castle, when the good brother bids ye, and gently, if ye would escape a reckoning with me. And now, good friends, to horse! to horse! The litter is half-way to the castle gates already. To horse! to horse! and God send us no more such sorry huntings."

CHAPTER IV.
THE NORMAN LORDS.

"Oh! it is excellent

To have a giant's strength, but tyrannous

To use it like a giant."

Measure for Measure.

High up in a green, gentle valley, a lap among the hills, which, though not very lofty, were steep and abrupt with limestone crags and ledges, heaving themselves above the soil on their upper slopes and summits, perched on a small isolated knoll, or hillock, so regular in form, and so evenly scarped and rounded, that it bore the appearance of an artificial work, stood the tall Norman fortalice of Philip de Morville.

It was not a very large building, consisting principally of a single lofty square keep, with four lozenge-shaped turrets at the angles, attached to the body of the place, merlonwise, as it is termed in heraldry, or corner to corner, rising some twenty feet or more above the flat roof of the tower, which was surrounded with heavy projecting battlements widely overhanging the base, and pierced with crenelles for archery, and deep machicolations, by which to pour down boiling oil, or molten lead, upon any who should attempt the walls.

In the upper stories only, of this strong place, were there any windows, such as deserved the name, beyond mere loops and arrowslits; but there, far above the reach of any scaling-ladder, they looked out, tall and shapely, glimmering in the summer sunshine, in the rich and gorgeous hues of the stained glass—at that time the most recent and costly of foreign luxuries, opening on a projecting gallery, or bartizan, of curiously-carved stonework, which ran round all the four sides of the building, and rendered the dwelling apartments of the castellan and his family both lightsome and commodious. One of the tall turrets, which have been described, contained the winding staircase, which gave access to the halls and guard-rooms which occupied all the lower floors, and to the battlements above, while each of the others contained sleeping-chambers of narrow dimensions, on each story, opening into the larger apartments.

This keep, with the exception of the tall battlemented flanking walls, with their esplanades and turrets, and advanced barbican or gate-house, was the only genuine Norman portion of the castle, and occupied the very summit of the knoll; but below it, and for the most part concealed and covered by the ramparts on which it abutted, was a long, low, roomy stone building, which had been in old times the mansion of the Saxon thane, who had occupied the rich and fertile lands of that upland vale, in the happy days before the advent of the fierce and daring Normans, to whom he had lost both life and lands, and left an empty name alone to the inheritance, which was not to descend to any of his race or lineage.

Below the walls, which encircled the hillock about midway between the base and summit, except at one spot, where the gate-house was thrust forward to the brink of a large and rapid brook, which had been made by artificial means completely to encircle the little hill, the slopes were entirely bare of trees or underwood, every thing that could possibly cover the advances of an enemy being carefully cut down or uprooted, and were clothed only by a dense carpet of short, thick greensward, broidered with daisies pied, and silver lady's smocks; but beyond the rivulet, covering all the bottom of the valley with rich and verdant shade, were pleasant orchards and coppices, among which peeped out the thatched roofs and mud walls of the little village, inhabited by the few free laborers, and the more numerous thralls and land-serfs, who cultivated the demesnes of the foreign noble, who possessed them by right of the sword.

Through this pleasant little hamlet, the yellow road, which led up to the castle, wound devious, passing in its course by an open green, on which half a dozen sheep and two or three asses were feeding on the short herbage, with a small Saxon chapel, distinguished by its low, round, wolf-toothed arch and belfry, on the farther side; and, in singular proximity to the sacred edifice, a small space, inclosed by a palisade, containing a gallows, a whipping-post, and a pair of stocks—sad monuments of Saxon slavery, and Norman tyranny and wrong.

In one of the upper chambers of the feudal keep, a small square room, with a vaulted roof, springing from four clustered columns in the corners, with four groined ribs, meeting in the middle, from which descended a long, curiously-carved pendant of stone, terminating in a gilt iron candelabrum of several branches, two men were seated at a board, on which, though the solid viands of the mid-day meal had been removed, there were displayed several silver dishes, with wastel bread, dried fruits, and light confections, as well as two or three tall, graceful flasks of the light fragrant wines of Gascony and Anjou, and several cups and tankards of richly-chased and gilded metal, intermixed with several large-bowled and thin-stemmed goblets of purple and ruby-colored glass.

The room was a very pleasant one, lighted by two tall windows, on two different sides, which stood wide open, admitting the soft, balmy, summer air, and the fresh smell of the neighboring greenwoods, the breezy voice of which came gently in, whispering through the casement. The walls were hung with tapestries of embossed and gilded Spanish leather, adorned with spirited figures of Arab skirmishers and Christian chivalry, engaged in the stirring game of warfare; while, no unfit decoration for a wall so covered, two or three fine suits of chain and plate armor, burnished so brightly that they shone like silver, with their emblazoned shields and appropriate weapons, stood, like armed knights on constant duty, in canopied niches, framed especially to receive them.

Varlets, pages, and attendants, had all withdrawn; and the two Norman barons sat alone, sipping their wine in silence, and apparently reflecting on some subject which they found it difficult to approach without offense or embarrassment. At last, the younger of the two, Sir Philip de Morville, after drawing his open hand across his fair, broad forehead, as if he would have swept away some cloud which gloomed over his mind, and drinking off a deep goblet of wine, opened the conversation with evident confusion and reluctance.

"Well, well," he said, "it must out, Sir Yvo, and though it is not very grateful to speak of such things, I must needs do so, lest I appear to you uncourtly and ungracious, in hesitating to do to you, mine own most tried and trusty friend, to whom I owe no less than my own life, so small a favor as the granting liberty to one poor devil of a Saxon. I told you I would do it, if I might; yet, by my father's soul, I know not how to do it!"

"Where is the rub, my friend?" replied the other, kindly. "I doubt not, if we put both our heads together, we can accomplish even a greater thing than making a free English yeoman of a Saxon thrall."

"I never was rich, as you well know, De Taillebois; but at the time of the king's late incursion into Wales, when I was summoned to lead out my power, I had no choice but to mortgage this my fortalice, with its demesne of Waltheofstow, and all its plenishing and stock, castle and thralls, and crops and fisheries, to Abraham of Tadcaster, for nineteen thousand zecchins, to buy their outfitting, horses, and armor; and this prohibits me from manumitting this man, Kenric, although I would do so right willingly, not for that it would pleasure you only, but that he is a faithful and an honest fellow for a thrall, and right handy, both with arbalast and longbow. I know not well how to accomplish it."

"Easily, easily, Philip," answered Sir Yvo, laughing. "Never shall it be said that nineteen thousand zecchins stood between Yvo de Taillebois and his gratitude; besides, this will shoot double game with a single arrow. It will relieve our trusty Kenric from the actual bondage of a corporeal lord and master, and liberate my right good friend and brother in arms, Philip de Morville, from the more galling spiritual bondage of that foul tyrant and perilous oppressor, debt. Tush! no denial, I say," he continued, perceiving that Sir Philip was about to make some demur; "it is a mere trifle, this, and a matter of no moment. I am, as you well know, passing rich, what with my rents in Westmoreland, and my estates beyond the sea. I have even now well-nigh twice the sum that you name, lying idle in my bailiff's hands at Kendall, until I may find lands to purchase. It was my intent to have bought those border lands of Clifford's, that march with my moorlands on Hawkshead, but it seems he will not sell, and I am doubly glad that it gives me the occasion to serve you. I will direct my bailiff at once to take horse for Tadcaster and redeem your mortgage, and you can take your own time and pleasure to repay it. There is no risk, Heaven knows, for Waltheofstow is well worth nineteen thousand zecchins three times told, and, in lieu of usance money, you shall transfer the man Kenric from thee and thine to me and mine, forever. So shall my gratitude be preserved intact, and my pretty Guendolen have her fond fancy gratified."

"Be it so, then, in God's name; and by my faith I thank you for the loan right heartily; for, on mine honor! that same blood-sucker of Israel hath pumped me like the veriest horse-leech, these last twelve months, and I know not but I should have had to sell, after all. We must have Kenric's consent, however, that all may be in form; for he is no common thrall, but a serf of the soil, and may not be removed from it, nor manumitted even, save with his own free will."

"Who ever heard of a serf refusing to be free, more than of a Jew not loving ducats? My life on it, he will not be slow to consent!"

"I trow not, I trow not, De Taillebois, but let us set about it presently; a good deed can not well be done too quickly. You pass the wine cup, too, I notice. Let us take cap and cloak, and stroll down into the hamlet yonder; it is a pleasant ramble in the cool afternoon, and we can see him in his den; he will be scant of wind, I trow, and little fit to climb the castle hill this evensong, after the battering he received from that stout forester. But freedom will be a royal salve, I warrant me, for his worst bruises. Shall we go?"

"Willingly, willingly. I would have it to tell Guendolen at her wakening. 'T will be a cure to her also. She is a tender-hearted child ever, and was so from her cradle. Why, I have known her cry like the lady Niobe, that the prior of St. Albans told us of—who wept till she was changed into a chipping fountain, when blessed St. Michael and St. George slew all her tribe of children, for that she likened herself, in her vain pride of beauty, to the most holy virgin mother, St. Mary of Sienna—at the killing of a deer by a stray shaft, that had a suckling fawn beside her foot; and when I caused them to imprison Wufgitha, that was her nurse's daughter, for selling of a hundred pounds of flax that was given her to spin, she took sick, and kept to her bed two days and more, all for that she fancied the wench would pine; though her prison-house was the airiest and most lightsome turret chamber in my house at Kendal, and she was not in gyves nor on prison diet. Faith! I had no peace with her, till I gave the whole guidance of the women into her hands. They are all ladies since that day at Kendal, or next akin to it."

"Over god's forbode!" answered Philip, laughing. "It must have been a black day for your seneschal. How rules he your warders, since? My fellow, Hundibert, swears that the girls need more watching than the laziest swine in the whole Saxon herd. But come; let us be moving."

With that they descended the winding stone stairway into the great hall or guard-room, which occupied the whole of one floor of the castle—a noble vaulted room, stone-arched and stone-paved, its walls hung with splendid arms and well-used weapons,

"Old swords, and pikes, and bows,

And good old shields, and targets, that had borne some stout old blows."

Thence, through an echoing archway, above which in its grooves of stone hung the steel-clinched portcullis, and down a steep and almost precipitous flight of steps, without any rail or breastwork, they reached the large court-yard, where some of the retainers were engaged in trying feats of strength and skill, throwing the hammer, wrestling, or shooting with arbalasts at a mark, while others were playing at games of chance in a cool shadowy angle of the walls, moistening their occupation with an occasional pull at a deep, black tankard, which stood beside them on the board.

After tarrying a few minutes in the court, observing the wrestlers and cross-bowmen, and throwing in an occasional word of good-humored encouragement at any good shot or happy fall, the lords passed the drawbridge, which was lowered, giving access to the pleasant country, over which the warder was gazing half-wistfully, and watching a group of pretty girls, who were washing clothes in the brook at about half a mile's distance, laughing as merrily and singing as tunefully as though they had been free maidens of gentle Norman lineage, instead of contemned and outlawed Saxons, the children, and the wives and mothers of slaves and bond-men in the to be hereafter.

"Hollo! old Stephen," cried the Knight of Morville, gayly, as he passed the stout dependent; "I thought thou wert too resolute a bachelor to cast a sheep's-eye on the lasses, and too thorough-paced a Norman to let the prettiest Saxon of them all find favor in your sight."

"I don't know, sir; I don't know that," answered the man, with a grin, half-bashfully, and between bantering and earnest. "There's little Edith down yonder; and, bond or free, there's not a girl about the castle, or within ten miles of it, for that matter, that has got an eye to come near those blue sparklers of her's; and as for her voice, when she's singing, it would wile the birds out of heaven, let alone the wits of a poor soldier's brain-pan. Hark to her now, Sir Philip. Sang ever nightingale so sweetly as yon trill, Sir Knight?"

"Win her, Stephen. Win her, I'll grant you my permission, for your paramour; and if you do, I'll give her to you for your own. I owe you a boon of some sort, for that service you did me when you knocked that Welch churl on the head, who would have driven his long knife into my ribs, that time I was dismounted in the pass near Dunmailraise. Win her, therefore, if you may, Stephen, and yours she shall be, as surely and as steadfastly as though she were the captive of your spear."

"Small chance, Sir Philip," replied the man, slowly; "all thanks to you, natheless. But she's troth-plighted to that tall, well-made fellow, Kenric, they say, that saved the lady Guendolen from the stag this morning. They'll be asking your consent to the wedding and the bedding, one of these days, Beausire. To-morrow, as like as not, seeing this feat of the good youth's will furnish forth a sort of plea for the asking of a favor."

"That will not much concern you, warder," said Sir Yvo. "Your rival will be out of your way shortly. I have asked his freedom but now of Sir Philip, and shall have him away with me the next week, to the North country."

"I don't know that will do me much good. They say she loves him parlously, and he her; and she ever looks coldly on me."

"A little perseverance is a certain remedy for cold looks, Stephen. So, don't be down-hearted. You will have a clear field soon."

"I am not so sure of that, sir. I should not wonder if he refused to go."

"Refused to go—to be free—to be his own master, and a thrall and slave no longer!"

"Who can tell, sir?" answered the man. "Saxon or Norman, bond or free, we're all men, after all; and women have made fools of us all, since the days of Sir Adam in Paradise, and will, I fancy, to the end of all time. I'd do and suffer a good deal myself to win such a look out of Edith's blue eyes, as I saw her give yon Saxon churl, when he came to after we had thrown cold water on him. And, after all, if Sir Hercules, of Greece, made a slave of himself, and a she-slave, too, as that wandering minstrel sang to us in the hall the other day, all to win the love of the beautiful Sultana, Omphale, I don't see, for myself, why a Saxon serf, that's been a serf all his life, and got pretty well used to it by this time, shouldn't stay a serf all the rest of it, to keep the love of Edith, who is prettier a precious sight than the fair Turk, Omphale, I'll warrant. I don't know but what I would myself."

"Pshaw! Stephen; that smacks Norman—smacks of the gai science, chivalry, sentiment, and fine high romance. You'll never see a Saxon sing 'all for love,' I'll warrant you."

"Well, sir, well. We shall see. A Saxon's a man, as I said before; and a Saxon in love is a man in love; and a man in love isn't a man in his senses any more than Sir Hercules of Greece was, and when a Saxon's in love, and out of his senses, there's no saying what he'll do; only one may guess it will be nothing over wise. And so, as I said before, I should not wonder if Kenric should not part with collar, thong, and shackles, if he must needs part too with little Edith the Fair. I would not, any wise, if I were he, Beausire."

CHAPTER V.
THE SERF'S QUARTER.

"As they sat in Englyshe wood,

Under the greenwode tree,

They thought they heard a woman wepe,

But her they mought not see."

Adam Bell, etc.

Leaving the warder lounging listlessly at his post, as in a well-settled district and in "piping times of peace," with no feudal enemies at hand, and no outlaws in the vicinity, none at least so numerous as to render any guard necessary, except as a matter of dignity and decorum, the two knights strolled down the sandy lane toward the village, or quarter of the serfs; who were not admitted generally to reside within the walls, partly as a precaution, lest, in case of some national affray, they might so far outnumber the Norman men-at-arms as to become dangerous, partly because they were not deemed fitting associates for the meanest of the feudal servitors.

The two gentlemen in question were excellent specimens of the Norman baron of the day, without, however, being heroes or geniuses, or in any particular—except perhaps for good temper and the lack of especial temptation toward evil—manifestly superior to others of their class, caste, and period. Neither of them was in any respect a tyrant, individually cruel, or intentionally an oppressor; but both were, as every one of us is at this day, used to look at things as we find them, through our own glasses, and to seek rather for what is the custom, than for what is right, and therefore ought to be; for what it suits us, and is permitted to us by law to do to others, than for what we should desire others to do unto us.

Reckless of life themselves, brought up from their cradles to regard pain as a thing below consideration, and death as a thing to be risked daily, they were not like to pay much regard to the mere physical sufferings of others, or to set human life at a value, such as to render it worth the preserving, when great stakes were to be won or lost on its hazard. Accustomed to set their own lives on the die, for the most fantastic whim of honor, or at the first call of their feudal suzerains, accustomed to see their Norman vassals fall under shield, and deem such death honorable and joyous, at their own slightest bidding, how should they have thought much of the life, far more of the physical or mental sufferings, of the Saxon serf, whom they had found, on their arrival in their newly-conquered England, a thing debased below the value, in current coin, of an ox, a dog, or a war-horse—a thing, the taking of whose life was compensated by a trivial fine, and whom they naturally came to regard as a dull, soulless, inanimate, stupid senseless animal, with the passions only, but without the intellect of the man. Of the two barons, Sir Yvo de Taillebois was the superior, both in intellect and culture; he was in easy circumstances also, while his far younger friend, Sir Philip de Morville, was embarrassed by the res angusta domi, and by the importunity of relentless creditors, which often drives men to do, as well as to suffer, extremes.

It was no hardness of nature or cruelty of disposition, therefore, which led either of these noble men—for they were noble, not in birth only, but in sentiment and soul, according to the notions of their age, which were necessarily their notions, and to the lights vouchsafed to them—to speak concerning the Saxon serfs, and act toward them, ever as if they were beasts of burden, worthy of care, kindness, and some degree of physical consideration, rather than like men, as themselves, endowed with hearts to feel and souls to comprehend. Had they been other than they were, they had been monsters; as it was, they were excellent men, as men went then, and go now, fully up to the spirit of their own times, and to the strain of morality and justice understood thereby, but not one whit above it. Therefore, Sir Yvo de Taillebois, finding himself indebted for his daughter's life to the hardihood and courage of the Saxon serf, whom he regarded much as he would have done his charger or his hound, desired, as a point of honor, rather than of gratitude, to secure to the serf an indemnity from toil, punishment, or want, during the rest of his life, just as he would have assigned a stall, with free rack and manger, to the superannuated charger which had saved his own life in battle; or given the run of kitchen, buttery, and hall, to the hound which had run the foremost of his pack. The sensibilities of the Saxon were as incomprehensible to him as those of the charger or the staghound, and he thought no more of considering him in his social or family relations, than the animals to which, in some sort, he likened him.

He would not, it is true, if asked as a philosophical truth, whether the life of a Saxon serf and of an Andalusian charger were equivalent, have replied in the affirmative; for he was, according to his lights, a Christian, and knew that a Saxon had a soul to be saved; nor would he have answered, that the colt of the high-bred mare, or the whelp of the generous brach, stood exactly in the same relation as the child of the serf to its human parent; but use had much deadened his perceptions to the distinction; and the impassive and stolid insensibility of the Saxon race, imbruted and degraded by ages of serfdom, caused him to overlook the faint and rarely seen displays of human sensibilities, which would have led him less to undervalue the sense and sentiment of his helpless fellow-countrymen. As it was, he would as soon have expected his favorite charger or best brood mare to pine hopelessly, and grieve as one who could not be consoled, at being liberated from spur and saddle, and turned out to graze at liberty forever in a free and fertile pasture, while its colts should remain in life-long bondage, as he would have supposed it possible for the Saxon serf to be affected beyond consolation by the death, the deportation, or the disasters of his family.

Nor, again, did he regard liberty or servitude in an abstract sense, apart from ideas of incarceration, torture, or extreme privation, as great and inherent right or wrong.

The serf owed him absolute service; the free laborer, or villeyn, service, in some sort, less absolute; his vassals, man-service, according to their degree, either in the field of daily labor, the hunting-field, or the battle-field; he himself owed service to his suzerain; his suzerain to the King. It was all service, and the difference was but in the degree; and if the service of the serf was degraded, it was a usual, a habitual degradation, to which, it might be presumed, he was so well accustomed, that he felt it not more than the charger his demipique, or the hawk his bells and jesses; and, for the most part, he did not feel it more, nor regret it, nor know the lack of liberty, save as connected with the absence of the fetters or the lash.

And this, indeed, is the great real evil of slavery, wheresoever and under whatsoever form it exists, that it is not more, but less, hurtful to the slave than to the master, and that its ill effects are in a much higher and more painful degree intellectual than physical; that, while it degrades and lowers the inferiors almost to the level of mere brutes, through the consciousness of degradation, the absence of all hope to rise in the scale of manhood, and the lack of every stimulus to ambition or exertion, it hardens the heart, and deadens the sensibilities of the master, and renders him, through the strange power of circumstance and custom, blind to the existence of wrongs, sufferings, and sorrows, at the mere narration of which, under a different phase of things, his blood would boil with indignation.

Such, then, was in some considerable degree, the state of mind, arising from habit and acquaintance with the constitution of freedom and slavery, intermingled every where in the then world, any thing to the contrary of which they had never seen nor even heard of, in which the two Norman lords took their way down the village street, if it could be so called, being a mere sandy tract, passable only to horsemen, or carts and vehicles of the very rudest construction, unarmed, except with their heavy swords, and wholly unattended, on an errand, as they intended, of liberality and mercy.

The quarter of the serfs of Sir Philip de Morville was, for the most part, very superior to the miserable collection of huts, liker to dog-houses than to any human habitation, which generally constituted the dwellings of this forlorn and miserable race; for the knight was, as it has been stated, an even-tempered and good-natured, though common-place man; and being endowed with rather an uncommon regard for order and taste for the picturesque, he consequently looked more than usual to the comfort of his serfs, both in allotting them small plots of garden-ground and orchards, and in bestowing on them building materials of superior quality and appearance.

All the huts, therefore, rudely framed of oak beams, having the interstices filled in with a cement of clay and ruddle, with thatched roofs and wooden lattices instead of windows, were whole, and for the most part weather-proof. Many of the inhabitants had made porches, covered with natural wild runners, as the woodbine and sweet-brier; all had made gardens in front, which they might cultivate in their hours of leisure, when the day's task-work should be done, and which displayed evidently enough, by their orderly or slovenly culture, the character and disposition of their occupants.

The few men whom the lords met on their way, mostly driving up beasts laden with fire-wood or forage to the cattle, for the day was not yet far spent, nor the hours devoted to toil well-nigh passed, were hale, strong, sturdy varlets, in good physical condition, strong-limbed, and giving plentiful evidences in their appearance of ample coarse subsistence; they were well-dressed, moreover, although in the plainest and coarsest habiliments, made, for the most part, of the tanned hides of beasts with the hair outward, or in some cases of cheap buff leather, their feet protected by clumsy home-made sandals, and their heads uncovered, save by the thick and matted elf-locks of their unkempt and dingy hair.

They louted low as their lord passed them by, but no gleam of recognition, much less any smile of respectful greeting, such as passes between the honored superior and the valued servant, played over their stolid and heavy countenance, begrimed for the most part with filth, and half-covered with disordered beards and unshorn mustaches.

Neither in form, motion, nor attire, did they show any symptom of misusage; there were no scars, as of the stripes, the stocks, or the fetters, on their bare arms and legs; they were in good physical condition, well-fed, warmly-lodged, sufficiently-clad—perhaps in the best possible condition for the endurance of continuous labor, and the performance of works requiring strength and patience, rather than agility or energetic exertion.

But so also were the mules, oxen, or horses, which they were employed in driving, and which, in all these respects, were fully equal to their drivers, while they had this manifest advantage over them, that they were rubbed down and curry-combed, and cleaned, and showed their hides glossy and sleek, and their manes free from scurf and burrs, which is far more than could be stated of their human companions, who looked for the most part as if their tanned and swart complexions were as innocent of water as were their beards and elf-locks of brush or currycomb.

In addition, however, to their grim and sordid aspect, and their evident ignorance, or carelessness, of their base appearance, there was a dull, sullen, dogged expression on all their faces—a look not despairing, nor even sorrowful, but perfectly impassive, as if they had nothing to hope for, or regret, or fear; the look of a caged bear, wearied and fattened out of his fierceness, not tamed, civilized, or controlled by any human teaching.

The stature and bearing, even of the freeborn and noble Saxon, in the day when his fair isle of Albion was his own, and he trod the soil its proud proprietor, had never been remarkable for its beauty, grace, or dignity. He was, for the most part, short, thick-set, sturdy-limbed, bull-necked, bullet-headed; a man framed more for hardihood, endurance, obstinate resolve, indomitable patience to resist, than for vivid energy, brilliant impulsive vigor, or ardor, whether intellectual or physical; but these men, though they neither lounged nor lagged behind, plodded along with a heavy, listless gait, their frowning brows turned earthward, their dull gray eyes rolling beneath their light lashes, meaningless and spiritless, and the same scowl on every gloomy face.

The younger women, a few of whom were seen about the doors or gardens, busied in churning butter, making cheese, or performing other duties of the farm and dairy, were somewhat more neatly, and, in some few cases, even tastefully attired. Some were of rare beauty, with a profusion of auburn, light brown, or flaxen hair, bright rosy complexions, large blue eyes, and voluptuous figures; and these bore certainly a more cheerful aspect, as the nature of woman is more hopeful than that of man, and a more gentle mood than their fellows; yet there were no songs enlivening their moments of rest or alleviating their hours of toil—no jests, no romping, as we are wont to see among young girls of tender years, occupied in the lighter and more feminine occupations of agricultural life.

Some one or two of these, indeed, smiled as they courtesied to their lord, but the smile was wan and somewhat sickly, nor seemed to come from the heart; it gave no pleasure, one would say, to her who gave—no pleasure to him who received it.

The little children, however, who tumbled about in the dust, or built mud-houses by the puddles in the road, were the saddest sight of all. Half-naked, sturdy-limbed, filthy little savages, utterly untaught and untamed, scarcely capable of making themselves understood, even in their own rude dialect; wild-eyed, and fierce or sullen-looking as it might, subject to no control or correction, receiving no education, no culture whatsoever—not so much even as the colt, which is broken at least to the menage, or the hound-puppy, which is entered at the quarry which he is to chase; ignorant of every moral or divine truth—ignorant even that each one of them was the possessor of a mortal body, far more of an immortal soul!

But not a thought of these things ever crossed the mind of the stately and puissant Normans. No impression such as these, which must needs now strike home to the soul of every chance beholder, had ever been made on their imaginations, by the sight of things, which, seeing every day, they had come to consider only as things which were customary, and were, therefore, right and proper—not the exception even to the rule, but the rule without exception.

So differently, indeed, did the circumstances above related strike Sir Yvo de Taillebois, that he even complimented his friend on the general comfort of his villenage, and the admirable condition of his people, the air of capacity of his men, and the beauty of his women; nay! he commented even upon the plump forms and brawny muscles of the young savages, who fled diverse from before their footsteps, shrieking and terrified at the lordly port and resounding strides of their masters, as indicative of their future strength, and probable size and stature.

And Philip replied, laughing, "Ay! ay! they are a stout and burly set of knaves and good workers on the main. The hinges of the stocks are rusted hard for want of use, and the whipping-post has not heard the crack of the boar's hide these two years or better; but then I work them lightly and feed them roundly, and I find that they do me the more work for it, and the better; besides, the food they consume is all of their own producing, and I have no use for it. They raise me twice as much now as I can expend, on this manor. Now I work my folk but ten hours to the day, and give them meat, milk, and cheese, daily, and have not flogged a man since Martinmas two twelvemonths; and I have thrice the profit of them that my friend and neighbor, Reginald Maltravers, has, though his thralls toil from matin to curfew, with three lenten days to the week, and the thong ever sounding. It is bad policy, I say, to over-do the work or under-do the feeding. Besides, poor devils, they have not much fun in life, and if you fill their bellies, you fill them with all the pleasure and contentment they are capable of knowing. But, hold! here is Kenric's home—the best cabin in the quarter, as the owner is the best man. Let us go in."

"And carry him a welcome cure for his aching bones," said Sir Yvo, as they entered the little gate of a pretty garden, which stretched from the door down to a reach of the winding stream, overshadowed by several large and handsome willows. "By my faith! he must needs be a good man," resumed the speaker—"why, it is as neat as a thane's manor, and neater, too, than many I have seen."

But as he spoke, the shrill and doleful wail of women came from the porch of the house. "Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! that I should live to see it. Soul of my soul, Kenric, my first-born and my best one—thou first borne in, almost a corpse; and then, my darling and delight—my fair-haired Edgar's son dead of this doleful fever. Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! Would God that I were dead also, most miserable that I am, of women!"

And then the manly voice of Kenric replied, but faint for his wounds and wavering for the loss of blood; "Wail not for me, mother," he said; "wail not for me, for I am strong yet, and like to live this many a day—until thy toils are ended, and then God do to me as seems him good. But, above all, I say to thee, wail not for Adhemar the white-haired. His weakness and his innocence are over, here on earth. He has never known the collar or the gyves—has never felt how bitter and how hard a thing it is to be the slave of the best earthly master! His dream—his fever-dream of life is over; he is free from yoke and chain; he has awoken out of human servitude, to be the slave of the everlasting God, whose strictest slavery is perfect liberty and perfect love."

But still the woman wailed—"Ah, well-a-day! ah, well-a-day! would God that I were dead, most miserable of mothers that I am!"

And the Norman barons stood unseen and silent, smitten into dumbness before the regal majesty of the slave's maternal sorrow, perhaps awakened to some dim vision of the truth, which never had dawned on them until that day, in the serf's quarter.

CHAPTER VI.
THE SAXON'S CONSTANCY.

"And I'll be true to thee, Mary,

As thou'lt be true to me;

And I never will leave thee, never, Mary,

As slave man or as free;

For we're bound forever and ever, Mary,

Till death shall set us free—

Free from the chain of the flesh, Mary,

Free from the devil's chain—

Free from the collar and gyves, Mary,

And slavery's cursed pain;

And then, when we're free in heaven, Mary,

We'll pray to be bound again."

Old English Song.

It was with grave and somewhat downcast brows, and nothing of haughtiness or pride of port or demeanor, that the lord and his friend entered under the lowly roof, invested for the moment with a majesty which was not its own, by the strange sacredness of grief and death.

There never probably, in the whole history of the world, has been a race of men, which entertained in their own persons a more boundless contempt of death, or assigned less value to the mere quality of life, than the warlike Normans. Not a man of them, while in the heyday of life and manhood, would have hesitated for a moment in choosing a death under shield, a death of violence and anguish, winning renown and conferring deathless honor, to the gentlest decay, the most peaceful dissolution. Not a man would have shed a tear, or shown a sign of sorrow, had he seen his favorite son, his most familiar friend, his noblest brother in arms, felled from his saddle in the mêlée, and trampled out of the very form of humanity beneath the hoofs of the charging cavalry. Not a man but would have ridden over a battlefield, gorged with carcasses and drunk with gore, without expressing a thought of terror, a sentiment beyond the victory, the glory, and the gain. But such is the sovereignty of death, in the silence and solitude of its natural gloom, stripped of the pomp and paraphernalia of funereal honors, and unadorned by the empty braveries of human praise and glory—such is the empire of humble, simple, overruling sorrow, that, as they entered the low-roofed, undecorated chamber, where lay the corpse of the neglected, despised serf—the being, while in life, scarce equal to the animals of the chase—with his nearest of kin, serfs likewise, abject, ignorant, down-trodden, and debased—in so far as man can debase God's creations—mourning in Christian sorrow over him, the nobles felt, for a moment, that their nobility was nothing in the presence of the awful dead; and that they, too, for all their pride of antique blood, for all their strength of limb and heaven-daring valor, for all their lands and lordships, must be brought down one day to the dust, like the poor slave, and go forth, as they entered this world, bearing nothing out, before one common Lord and Master, who must in the end sit in universal judgment.

Such meditations are not, perhaps, very common to the great, the powerful, and the fortunate of men, in any time or place, so long as the light of this world shine about, and their ways are ways of pleasantness; but if rare always, and under all ordinary circumstances, with the chivalrous, high-hearted, and hot-headed knights of the twelfth century, they were assuredly of the rarest.

Yet now so powerfully did they come over the strong minds of the two grave nobles, that they paused a moment on the threshold before entering; and Yvo de Taillebois, who was the elder man, and of deeper thoughts and higher imagination than his friend, raised his plumed bonnet from his brow, and bowed his head in silence.

It was a strange and moving scene on which they looked. The room, which was the ordinary dwelling-place of the family, was rather a large, dark parallelogram, lighted only through the door and a couple of narrow latticed windows, which, if closed, would have admitted few half-intercepted rays, but which now stood wide open, to admit the fresh and balmy air, so that from one, at the western end of the cottage, a clear ruddy beam of the declining sun shot in a long pencil of light, bringing out certain objects in strong relief against the surrounding gloom.

The door, at which the two knights stood, chanced to be so placed under the shadow of one of the great trees which overhung the house, that there was little light for them to intercept. Hence, those who were within, occupied by their own sad and bitter thoughts, did not at first so much as observe their presence. Facing the entrance, a large fire-place, with great projecting jambs, inclosing on each side a long oaken settle, occupied one half the length of the room; and on one of these, propped up with some spare bedding and clothing, lay the wounded man, Kenric, to whom the Baron de Taillebois owed his beloved child's life, half recumbent, pale from the loss of blood, yet chafing with annoyance, that he should be thus bedridden, when his strength might have been of avail to others, feebler and less able to exert themselves almost than he, bruised though he was, and gored from the rude encounter.

A little fire was burning low on the hearth, with a pot simmering over it—for, in their bitterest times of anguish and desolation, the very poor must bestir themselves, at least, to house service—and from the logs, which had fallen forward on the hearth, volumes of smoke were rolling up and hanging thick about the dingy rafters, and the few hams and flitches which, with strings of oat-cakes garnished the roof, its only ornament.

But, wholly unconscious of the ill-odored reek, though it streamed up close under his very eyes, and seeing nothing of the chevaliers, who were watching not six paces from him, Kenric lay helpless, straining his nerveless eyes toward the spot where the ruddy western sunlight fell, like a glory, on the pale, quiet features of the dead child, and on the cold, gray, impassive head of the aged mourner, aged far beyond the ordinary course of mortal life, who bent over the rude bier; and, strange contrast, on the sunny flaxen curls, and embrowned ruddy features of two or three younger children, clustered around the grandam's knee, silent through awe rather than sorrow, for they were too young as yet to know what death meant, or to comprehend what was that awful gloom which had fallen upon hearth and home.

Every thing in that humble and poor apartment was scrupulously clean and tidy; a white cloth was on the table, with two or three platters and porringers of coarse earthenware, as if the evening meal had been prepared when death had entered in, and interposed his awful veto—some implements of rustic husbandry, an ax or two, several specimens of the old English bill and Sheffield whittle; and one short javelin, with a heavy head, hung on the walls, with all the iron work brightly polished and in good order; fresh rushes were strewn on the floor, a broken pitcher, full of newly-gathered field-flowers, adorned the window-sill; and what was strange indeed at that age, and in such a place, two or three old, much tattered, dingy manuscripts graced a bare shelf above the chimney corner.

The aged woman had ceased from the wild outbreak of grief with which she had bewailed the first sign of death on the sick boy's faded brow, and was now rocking herself to and fro above the body, with a dull, monotonous murmur, half articulate, combining fragments of some old Saxon hymn with fondling epithets and words of unmeaning sorrow, while the tears slowly trickled down her wan cheeks, and fell into her lap unheeded. Kenric was silent, for he had no consolation to offer, even if consolation could have been availing, in that

The first dark hour of nothingness,

The last of danger and distress.

Such was the spectacle which met the eyes of those high-born men, who had come down from their high place into the lowly village, with the intention of bestowing happiness and awakening gratitude, and who now found themselves placed front to front with one far mightier than themselves, whose presence left no room for joy, even with those the least used to such emotion.

It is, however, I fear, but too much the case even with the more refined and better nurtured classes of the present century, while they are compassionating the sorrows and even endeavoring to alleviate the miseries of their poorer and less-cultivated brethren, to undervalue the depth of their sensations, to fancy that the same events harrow not up their less vivid sensibilities, and inflict not on their coarser and less intellectual natures the same agonies, which they effect upon their own. But, although it may be true that, in the very poor, the necessity of immediate labor, of all-engrossing occupation, rendering thought and reflection on the past impossible, sooner removes from them the pressure of past grief, than from those who can afford to brood over it in indolent despair, and indulge in morbid and selfish woe, there can be no doubt that, in the early moments of a new bereavement, the agony is as acute to the dullest and heaviest as to the loftiest and most imaginative intellect. Since it is the heart itself, that is touched in the first instance; and, though in after hours imagination may assume its share, so that the most imaginative minds dwell longest on the bygone suffering, the heart is the same in the peasant as in the peer, and that of the wisest of the sons of men bleeds neither more nor less profusely than that of the rudest clown.

And so, perchance, in some sort it was now. For, after pausing and looking reverently on the sad picture, until it was evident that they were entirely overlooked, if not unseen, Sir Philip de Morville took a step or two forward into the cottage, his sounding tread at once calling all eyes toward his person, in a sort of half-stupid mixture of alarm and astonishment.

For in those days, the steps of a Norman baron rarely descended to the serf's quarters, unless they were echoed by the clanking strides of armed subordinates, and too often followed by the clash of shackles or the sound of the hated scourge. Sir Philip was indeed, as it has been observed, an even-tempered and just master, as things went in those times; that is to say, he was neither personally cruel nor exacting of labor; nor was he niggardly in providing for his people; nor did he, when it came before his eyes, tolerate oppression, or permit useless severity on the part of subordinates, who were often worse tyrants and tormentors than the lords. Still, his kindliest mood amounted to little more than bare indifference; and he certainly knew and studied less concerning any thing beyond the mere physical wants and condition of his thralls and bondsmen, than he did of the nurture of his hawks or hounds.

All the inmates, therefore, looked up in wonder, not altogether unmixed with fear, as, certainly for the first time in his life, the castellan entered the humble tenement of the serf of the soil.

But all idea of fear passed away on the instant; for the knight's face was open and calm, though grave, and his voice was gentle, and even subdued, as he spoke.

"Soh!" he said, "what is this, Kenric, which causes us, in coming down to see if we might not heal up thy heart and cheer thy spirits by good tidings, to find worse sorrow, for which we looked not, nor can reverse it by any mortal doing. Who is the boy?"

"Pardon that I rise not, beausire, to reply to you," answered the serf, "but this right leg of mine will not bear me; and when the hand of sickness hold us down, good will must make shift in lieu of good service. It is my nephew Adhemar, Sir Philip, the only son of my youngest brother Edgar, who was drowned a year since in the great flood of the Idle."

"In striving to rescue my old blind destrier Sir Roland, ah! I remember him; a stout and willing lad! But I knew not, or forgot, that he was thy brother. And so this is his son," he added, striding up to the side of the rude bier, and laying his broad hand upon his brow. "He is young," he said, musingly, "very young to die. But we must all die one day, Kenric; and who knows but it is best to die young?"

"At least, the ancient Greeks and Romans said so," interposed Yvo de Taillebois, speaking for the first time. "They have a proverb, that, whomsoever the gods love, dies young."

"I think it is best, beausire," answered the serf; "it is never cold in the grave, in the dreariest storms; nor sultry in the scorching August. And they are never hungry there, nor sorefooted, nor weary unto death. I think it is best to die young, before one has tasted overmuch sorrow here on earth to burden his heart and make him stubborn and malicious. It was this I was saying to old Bertha, as your noblenesses entered; but she has never held her head up since my brother, Edgar, died; he was her favorite, since she always held that he had most favor of our grandfather."

"She is very old?" said Sir Philip, half questioning, half musing. "She is very old?"

"Above ninety years, Sir Philip, I have heard Father Eadbald say, who died twenty years since, at the abbey, come next Michaelmas. It should have been he who married her. Her mother was the last free woman of our race. We had three hydes of land, I've heard her tell, in those days, down by the banks of Idle, held of old Waltheof, who gave his name to this your noble castle. But they are all gone before us, and we must follow them when our day comes. And then, as I tell Bertha, we shall be free, all, if not equal; for the most virtuous must be first there, as Father Engelram tells us. May Mary and the saints be about us!"

"Come, Kenric," said De Morville, cheeringly, "thou talkest now more like to a gray brother, than to the stout woodman who struckest yon brave blow but a while since, and saved Sir Yvo's fair lady, Guendolen. Faith! it was bravely done, and well; and well shall come of it to you, believe me. It is to speak of that to thee that we came hither, but this boy's death hath put it from our minds. But, hark ye, boy! I will send down some wenches hither from the castle, with ale and mead for his lykewake, and linen for a shroud; and Father Engelram shall see to the church-service; and there shall be a double dole to the poor at the abbey; and I myself will pay ten marks, in masses for his soul. If he died a serf, he shall be buried as though he were a freeman, and a franklin's son; and all for thy sake, and for the good blow thou struckest but three hours agone."

Kenric's brow flushed high, whether it was with gratification, or gratitude, or from wounded pride; but he stuttered confusedly, as he attempted to thank his lord, and only found his tongue as he related to his grandmother, in his native language, the promises and goodly proffers of the castellan; and she, for a moment, spoke eagerly in reply, but then seemed to forget, and was silent. A word or two passed in French between the nobles, Yvo de Taillebois urging that the time was inopportune for speaking of the matter on which they had come down; for that it was not well to mingle great joys with great sorrows; but Sir Philip insisted, declaring that there was no so good way to cure a past grief as by the news of a coming joy.

"So, hark you, Kenric," he said; "the cure we came to bring you for your bruised bones, and the guerdon for your gallant deed, in two words, is this—I may not, as you may have heard tell, liberate my serfs, under condition, but I may sell; and I have sold thee to mine ancient friend and brother in arms, Yvo de Taillebois."

"Not to hold in thrall," exclaimed Yvo de Taillebois, eagerly, as he saw the face of the wounded man flush fiery red, and then grow pale as ashes. "Not to hold in thrall, but to liberate; but to make thee as free as the birds of the wildest wing—a freeman; and, if thou wilt follow me, a freeholder on my lands beyond the lakes, in the fair shire of Westmoreland."

"I am a serf of the soil, Beausire de Morville, and I may not be sold from the soil, unless legally convicted of felony. I know no felony that I have done, Sir Philip."

"Felony, man!" exclaimed Sir Philip; "art thou mad? We would reward thee for thy good faith and valor. We would set thee free. Of course, thou canst not be sold, but with thine own consent. But thou hast only to consent, and be free as thy master."

"Sir Philip," replied the man, turning even paler than before, and trembling, as if he had a fit of palsy, "would I could rise to bless you, on my bended knee! May the great God of all things bless you! but I can not consent—think me not ungrateful—but I can not be free!"

"Not free!" exclaimed both nobles in a breath; and Sir Yvo gazed on him wistfully, as if he but partially understood; but Philip de Morville turned on his heel, superciliously. "Come, Sir Yvo," he said; "it skills not wasting time, or breath, on these abjects. Why, by the light of heaven! had I been fettered in a dungeon, with a ton of iron at my heels, I had leaped head-high to know myself once more a freeman; and here this slave, By 'r lady! I can not brook to speak his name! can not consent, forsooth! can not consent to be free! Heaven's mercy! Let him rot a slave, then! unless, perchance, thou wouldst crave him for thy sake, and the Virgin Mother's sake, to take good counsel and be free. Out on it! out on it! I am sick to the soul at such baseness!"

And he left the cottage abruptly, in scorn and anger. But Sir Yvo de Taillebois stood still, gazing compassionately and inquiringly on the man, over whose face there had fallen a dark, gray, death-like shadow, as he lay with his teeth and hands clinched like vices.

"Can this be? I thought not that on earth there lived a man who might be free, and would not. Dost not love liberty, Kenric?"

"Ask the wild eagle in his place of pride! Ask the wild goat on Pennigant or Ingleborough's head; and when they come down to the cage and chain, believe, then, that I love it not. Freedom! freedom! To be free but five minutes, I would die fifty deaths of direst torture. And yet it can not be—it can not be! Peace, tempter, peace; you can not stir my soul. Slave I was born, slave I must die, and only in the grave shall be a slave no longer. Leave me, beausire; but think me not ungrateful. I never looked to owe so much to living man, and least of all to living man of your proud race, as I owe you to-day. But leave me, noble sir; you can not aid us. So go your way, and leave us to our sorrow, and may the God of serfs and seigneurs be about you with his blessing."

"Passing strange! This is passing strange!" said De Taillebois, as he turned to go likewise; "I never saw a beast that would not leave his cage when the door was open."

"But I have!" answered Kenric; "when the beast's brood were within, and might not follow him. But I am not a beast, Sir Knight; but though a serf, a man—a Saxon, not a Norman, it is true; but a man, yet, a man! There may be collar on my neck, and gyves on wrist and ankle, but my soul wears no shackles. It is as free as thine, and shall stand face to face with thine, one day, before the judgment seat. I am a man, I say, Sir Yvo de Taillebois; there sits old Bertha, surnamed the Good, a serf herself, mother of serfs, and grandmother; there lies my serf-brother's boy, himself a serf no longer; there sprawl unconscious on the hearth his baby brethren, serfs from the cradle to the grave; and here comes," he added, in a deeper, sterner, lower tone, as the beautiful Saxon slave-girl entered, whom they had seen near the drawbridge, washing in the stream—"here comes—look upon her, noble knight and Norman!—here comes my plighted bride, my Edith the fair-haired! I am a man, Norman! Should I be man, or beast, if, leaving these in bondage, I were to fare forth hence, alone, into dishonored freedom?"

CHAPTER VII.
THE SLAVE GIRL'S SELF-DEVOTION.

"I say not nay, but that all day,

It is both writ and said,

That woman's faith is, as who sayeth,

All utterly decayed;

But neverthelesse, right good witnesse

In this case might be laid,

That they love true and continue—

Recorde the Not-browne mayde;

Which, when her love came her to prove,

To her to make his mone,

Wolde have him part—for in her hart