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."