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?"