THE DEPARTURE.
"He mounted himself on a steed so talle,
And her on a pale palfraye,
And slung his bugle about his necke,
And roundly they rode awaye."
THE CHILDE OF ELLE.
The glad days rapidly passed over, and the morning of the tenth day,
as it broke fair and full of promise in the unclouded eastern sky,
looked on a gay and happy cavalcade, in all the gorgeous and
glittering attire of the twelfth century, setting forth in proud
array, half martial and half civil, from the gates of Waltheofstow.
First rode an old esquire, with three pages in bright half armor,
hauberks of chain mail covering their bodies, and baçinets of steel on
their heads, but with their arms and lower limbs undefended, except by
the sleeves of their buff jerkins and their close-fitting hose of
dressed buckskin. Behind these, a stout man-at-arms carried the guidon
with the emblazoned bearings of his leader, followed by twenty mounted
archers, in doublets of Kendal green, with yew bows in their hands,
wood-knives, and four-and-twenty peacock-feathered cloth-yard arrows in
their girdles, and battle-axes at their saddle-bows.
In the midst rode Sir Yvo de Taillebois, all armed save his head,
which was covered with a velvet mortier with a long drooping feather,
and wearing a splendid surcoat; and, by his side, on a fleet
Andalusian jennet, in a rich purple habit, furred at the cape and
cuffs, and round the waist, with snow-white swansdown, the fair and
gentle Guendolen, followed by three or four gay girls of Norman birth,
and, happier and fairer than the happiest and fairest, the charming
Saxon beauty, pure-minded and honest Edith. Behind these followed a
train of baggage vans, cumbrous and lumbering concerns, groaning along
heavily on their ill-constructed wheels, and a horse-litter, intended
for the use of the lady, if weary or ill at ease, but at the present
conveying the aged freed-woman, who was departing, now in well-nigh
her ninetieth summer, from the home of her youth, and the graves of
her husband and five goodly sons, departing from the house of bondage,
to a free new home in the far north-west.
The procession was closed by another body of twenty more
horse-archers, led by two armed esquires; and with these rode Kenric,
close shaven, and his short, cropped locks curling beneath a jaunty
blue bonnet, with a heron's feather, wearing doublet and hose of
forest green, with russet doeskin buskins, the silver badge of Sir Yvo
de Taillebois on his arm, and in his hand the freeman's trusty weapon,
the puissant English bow, which did such mighty deeds, and won such
_los_ thereafter, at those immortal fields of Cressy and Poictiers,
and famous Agincourt.
As the procession wound down the long slope of the castle hill, and
through the Saxon quarter, the serfs, who had collected to look on the
show, set up a loud hurrah, the ancient Saxon cry of mirth, of
greeting, or defiance. It was the cry of _caste_, rejoicing at
the elevation of a brother to the true station of a man. But there was
one voice which swelled not the cry; one man, who turned sullenly
away, unable to bear the sight of another's joy, turned away,
muttering vengeance--Eadwulf the Red--the only soul so base, even
among the fallen and degraded children of servitude and sorrow, as to
refuse to be glad at the happiness which it was not granted him to
share, though that happiness were a mother's and a brother's escape
from misery and degradation.
Many days, many weeks, passed away, while that gay cavalcade were
engaged in their long progress to the north-westward, through the
whole length of the beautiful West Riding of Yorkshire, from its
southern frontier, where it abuts on Nottinghamshire and the wild
county of Derby, to its western border, where its wide moors and
towering crag-crested peaks are blended with the vast treeless fells
of Westmoreland.
And during all that lengthened but not weary progress, it was but
rarely, and then only at short intervals, that they were out of the
sight of the umbrageous and continuous forest.
Here and there, in the neighborhood of some ancient borough, such as
Doncaster, Pontefract, or Ripon, through which lay their route, they
came upon broad oases of cultivated lands, with smiling farms and
pleasant corn-fields and free English homesteads, stretching along the
fertile valley of some blue brimful river; again, and that more
frequently, they found small forest-hamlets, wood-embosomed, with
their little garths and gardens, clustering about the tower of some
inferior feudal chief, literally set in a frame of verdure.
Sometimes vast tracks of rich and thriftily-cultured meadow-lands,
ever situate in the loveliest places of the shire, pastured by
abundant flocks, and dotted with sleek herds of the already celebrated
short-horns, told where the monks held their peaceful sway, enjoying
the fat of the land; and proclaimed how, in those days at least, the
priesthood of Rome were not the sensual, bigot drones, the ignorant,
oppressive tyrants, whose whereabout can be now easily detected by the
squalid and neglected state of lands and animals and men, whenever
they possess the soil and control the people. Such were the famous
Abbey-stedes of Fountain's and Jorvaulx, then, as now, both for
fertility and beauty, the boast of the West Riding.
Still, notwithstanding these pleasant interchanges of rural with
forest scenery, occurring so often as to destroy all monotony, and to
keep up a delightful anticipation in the mind of the voyager, as to
what sort of view would meet his eye on crossing yon hill-top, or
turning that curvature of the wood-road, by far the greater portion of
their way led them over sandy tracks, meandering like ribbons through
wide glades of greensward, under the broad protecting arms of giant
oaks and elms and beeches, the soft sod no less refreshing to the
tread of the quadrupeds, than was the cool shadow of the twilight
trees delicious to the riders.
Those forests of the olden day were rarely tangled or thicketlike,
unless in marshy levels, where the alder, the willow, and other
water-loving shrubs replaced the monarchs of the wild; or where, in
craggy gullies, down which brawled impetuous the bright hill-streams,
the yew, the holly, and the juniper, mixed with the silvery stems and
quivering verdure of the birches, or the deeper hues of the
broad-leaved witch-elms and hazels, formed dingles fit for fairy
bowers.
For the most part, the huge bolls of the forest-trees stood far apart,
in long sweeping aisles, as regular as if planted by the hand of man,
allowing the grass to grow luxuriantly in the shade, nibbled, by the
vast herds of red and fallow deer and roes, into the softest and most
even sward that ever tempted the foot of high-born beauty.
And no more lovely sight can be imagined than those deep, verdant
solitudes, at early morn, when the luxuriant feathery ferns, the broom
and gorse blazing with their clusters of golden blossoms, the
crimson-capped foxgloves, the sky-blue campanulas by the roadside, the
clustering honeysuckles overrunning the stunt hawthorns, and vagrant
briars and waving grasses were glittering far and near in their
morning garniture of diamond dewdrops, with the long level rays of the
new-risen sun streaming in yellow lustre down the glades, and casting
great blue lines of shadow from every mossy trunk--no sight more
lovely than the same scenes in the waning twilight, when the red
western sky tinged the gnarled bolls with lurid crimson, and carpeted
the earth with sheets of copper-colored light, while the skies above
were darkened with the cerulean robes of night.
Nor was there lack of living sounds and sights to take away the sense
of loneliness from the mind of the voyager in the green
wilderness--the incessant songs of the thrush and blackbird, and
whistle of the wood-robin, the mellow notes of the linnets, the willow
warblers and the sedge birds in the watery brake, the harsh laugh of
the green-headed woodpecker, and the hoarse cooing of the innumerable
stock-doves, kept the air vocal during all the morning and evening
hours; while the woods all resounded far and wide with the loud
belling of the great stags, now in their lusty prime, calling their
shy mates, or defying their lusty rivals, from morn to dewy eve.
And ever and anon, the wild cadences of the forest bugles, clearly
winded in the distance, and the tuneful clamor of the deep-mouthed
talbots, would tell of some jovial hunts-up.
Now it would be some gray-frocked hedge priest plodding his way alone
on foot, or on his patient ass, who would return the passenger's
benedicite with his smooth _pax vobiscum_; now it would be some
green-kirtled forest lass who would drop her demure curtsey to the
fair Norman lady, and shoot a sly glance from her hazel eyes at the
handsome Norman pages. Here it would be a lord-abbot, or proud prior
with his lay brothers, his refectioners and sumptners, his
baggage-mules, and led Andalusian jennets, and as the poet sung,
"With many a cross-bearer before,
And many a spear behind,"
who would greet them fairly in some shady nook beside the sparkling
brook or crystal well-head, and pray them of their courtesy to alight
and share his poor convent fare, no less than the fattest haunch, the
tenderest peacock, and the purest wine of Gascony, on the soft green
sward.
There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen, in their green
frocks and buckram hose, with long bows in their hands, short swords
and quivers at their sides, and bucklers of a span-breadth on their
shoulders, men who had never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed to
Norman yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from the
jaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too few
to attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those days, in
Sherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound policy. Anon,
receiving notice of their approach from the repeated bugle-blasts
of his verdurers, as they passed each successive _mere_ or
forest-station, a Norman knight or noble, in his garb of peace, would
gallop down some winding wood-path, with his slender train scattering
far behind him, to greet his brother in arms, and pray him to grace
his tower by refreshing his company and resting his fair and gentle
daughter for a few days or hours, within its precincts.
In short, whether in the forest or in the open country, scarcely an
hour, never a day, was passed, without their encountering some
pleasant sight, some amusing incident, some interesting adventure.
There was a vast fund of romance in the daily life of those olden
days, an untold abundance of the picturesque, not a little, indeed, of
what we should call stage-effect, in the ordinary habits and every-day
affairs of men, which we have now, in our busy, headlong race for
affluence, ambition, priority, in every thing good or evil,
overlooked, if not forgotten.
Life was in England then, as it was in France up to the days of the
Revolution, as it never has been at any time in America, as it is
nowhere now, and probably never will be any where again, unless we
return to the primitive, social equality, and manful independence of
patriarchal times; when truth was held truth, and manhood manhood, the
world over; and some higher purpose in mortality was acknowledged than
the mere acquiring, some larger nobleness in man than the mere
possessing, of unprofitable wealth.
Much of life, then, was spent out of doors; the mid-day meal, the
mid-day slumber, the evening dance, were enjoyed, alike by prince
and peasant, under the shadowy forest-tree, or the verdure of the
trellised bower. The use of flowers was universal; in every rustic
festival, of the smallest rural hamlets, the streets would be arched
and garlanded with wreaths of wild flowers; in every village hostelry,
the chimney would be filled with fresh greens, the board decked
with eglantine and hawthorn, the beakers crowned with violets and
cowslips, just as in our days the richest ball-rooms, the grandest
banquet-halls, are adorned with brighter, if not sweeter or more
beautiful, exotics.
The great in those days had not lost "that touch of nature" which
"makes the whole world kin" so completely, as to see no grace in
simplicity, to find no beauty in what is beautiful alike to all, to
enjoy nothing which can be enjoyed by others than the great and
wealthy.
The humble had not been, then, bowed so low that the necessities had
precluded all thought, all care, for the graces of the existence of
man.
If the division between the noble and the common of the human race, as
established by birth, by hereditary rank, by unalterable caste, were
stronger and deeper and less eradicable than at this day, the real
division, as visible in his nature, between man and man, of the noble
and the common, the difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, his
pleasures, his capacity no less than his power of enjoying, was a mere
nothing then, to what it is to-day.
The servants, the very serfs, of aristocracy, in those days, when
aristocracy was the rule of blood and bravery, were not, by a
hundredth part, so far removed below the proudest of their lords, in
every thing that renders humanity graceful and even glorious, in every
thing that renders life enjoyable, as are, at this day, the workers
fallen below the employers, when nobility has ceased to be, and
aristocracy is the sway of capital, untinctured with intelligence, and
ignorant of gentleness or grace.
It is not that the capitalist is richer, and the operative
poorer--though this is true to the letter--than was the prince, than
was the serf of those days. It is not only that the aristocrat of
capital, the noble by the grace of gold, is ten times more arrogant,
more insulting, more soulless, cold-hearted, and calmly cruel, than
the aristocrat of the sword, the noble by the grace of God; and that
the worker is worked more hardly, clad more humbly, fed more sparely,
than the villain of the middle ages--though this, also, is true to the
letter--but it is, that the very tastes, the enjoyments, and the
capacities for enjoyment, in a word, almost the nature of the two
classes are altered, estranged, unalterably divided.
The rich and great have, with a few rare exceptions that serve only to
prove the rule, lost all taste for the simple, for the natural, for
the beautiful, unless it be the beautiful of art and artifice; the
poor and lowly have, for the most part, lost all taste, all perception
of the beautiful, of the graceful, in any shape, all enjoyment of any
thing beyond the tangible, the sensual, the real.
Hence a division, which never can be reconciled. Both classes have
receded from the true nature of humanity, in the two opposite
directions, that they no longer even comprehend the one the tastes of
the other, and scarce have a desire or a hope in common; for what the
poor man most desires, a sufficiency for his mere wants, physical and
moral, the rich man can not comprehend, never having known to be
without it; while the artificial nothings, for which the capitalist
strives and wrestles to the last, would be to his workman mere
syllabub and flummery to the tired and hungry hunter.
In those days the enjoyments, and, in a great measure, the tastes, of
all men were alike, from the highest to the lowest--the same sports
pleased them, the same viands, for the most part, nourished, the same
liquors enlivened them. Fresh meat was an unusual luxury to the noble,
yet not an impossible indulgence to the lowest vassal; wine and beer
were the daily, the sole, beverages of all, differing only, and that
not very widely, in degree. The same love of flowers, processions,
out-of-door amusements, dances on the greensward, suppers in the
shade, were common to all, constantly enjoyed by all.
Now, it is certain, the enjoyments, the luxuries of the one class--nay,
the very delicacy of their tables, if attainable, would be utterly
distasteful to the other; and the rich soups, the delicate-made
dishes, the savor of the game, and the purity of the light French and
Rhenish wines, which are the _ne plus ultra_ of the rich man's
splendid board, would be even more distasteful to the man of the
million, than would be his beans and bacon and fire-fraught whisky to
the palate of the gaudy millionaire.
Throughout their progress, therefore, a thousand picturesque
adventures befell our party, a thousand romantic scenes were presented
by their halts for the noon-day repose, the coming meal, or the
nightly hour of rest, which never could now occur, unless to some
pleasure-party, purposely masquerading, and aping the romance of other
days.
Sometimes, when no convent, castle, hostelry, or hermitage, lay on the
day's route, the harbingers would select some picturesque glen and
sparkling fountain; and, when the party halted at the spot, an
extempore pavilion would be found pitched, of flags and pennoncelles,
outspread on a lattice-work of lances, with war-cloaks spread for
cushions, and flasks and _bottiaus_ cooling in the spring, and
pasties and boar's meat, venison and game, plates of silver and
goblets of gold, spread on the grass, amid pewter-platters and
drinking-cups of horn, a common feast for man and master, partaken
with the same appetite, hallowed by the same grace, enlivened by
the same minstrelsy and music, and enjoyed no less by the
late-enfranchised serfs, than by the high-born nobles to whom they
owed their freedom.
Sometimes, when it was known beforehand that they must encamp for
the night in the greenwood, the pages and waiting-women would ride
forward, in advance of the rest, with the foragers, the baggage, and a
portion of the light-armed archery; and, when the shades of evening
were falling, the welcome watch-setting of the mellow-winded bugles
would bid the voyagers hail; and, as they opened some moon-lit grassy
glade, they would behold green bowers of leafy branches, garlanded
with wild roses and eglantine, and strewn with dry, soft moss, and
fires sparkling bright amid the shadows, and spits turning before the
blaze, and pots seething over it, suspended from the immemorial gipsy
tripods. And then the horses would be unbridled, unladen, groomed, and
picketed, to feed on the rich forest herbage; and the evening meal
would be spread, and the enlivening wine-cup would go round, and the
forest chorus would be trolled, rendered doubly sweet by the soft
notes of the girls, until the bugles breathed a soft good-night, and,
the females of the party withdrawing to their bowers of verdure, meet
tiring rooms for Oberon and his wild Titania, the men, from the
haughty baron to the humblest groom, would fold them in their cloaks,
and sleep, with their feet to the watch-fires, and their untented
brows toward heaven, until the woodlark, and the merle and mavis,
earlier even than the village chanticleer, sounded their forest
reveillé.