DE MOREVILLE’S DAUGHTER
A girl not more than seventeen, with eyes of deep blue, fair face,
features slightly aquiline, a soft and somewhat pensive, but still noble
expression, her auburn hair not almost entirely concealed, as was the
fashion of the court ladies of the period, but flowing free over her
shoulders; and her graceful figure not decorated or deformed as theirs
were with meretricious ornaments, but arrayed in a simple robe of white,
girdled at the slender waist with a belt of blue--such was the Norman
demoiselle who suddenly appeared before the eyes of Oliver Icingla and
put his melancholy musings to flight. Nor could he doubt who she was,
seeing her where he did.
“By the Holy Cross!” he exclaimed to himself, “surely that is no other
than the demoiselle who has so often been present to me in my dreams and
visions! And yet she can be none other than the daughter of my worst
woe--she whom the Lord Neville mentioned as so fascinating and so fair.
Verily, my lord was guilty of no exaggeration when he spoke so highly in
praise of her grace and comeliness!”
Beatrix de Moreville could not know what eyes were upon her, or possibly
she would not have lingered so long that July evening on “the ladies’
walk.” However, if she had known all, her vanity would perhaps have been
gratified; for, in spite of his strong antipathy to the father, Oliver
was enchanted with the daughter, and, when she vanished with her
waiting-women at the sound of the vesper bell, he devoutly prayed that
she might return again and again to cheer the solitude which he had
begun so much to abhor. In fact, although he knew it not, he was, as old
Froissart said on a similar occasion, “stricken to the heart with a
sparkle of fine love that endured long after.” All that evening she
occupied his thoughts; and, after comparing her to the various heroines
of the chivalrous romances then in vogue, always giving her the
preference, he finally fell asleep to dream that he was being put by
Hugh de Moreville into a frightful instrument of torture, and that he
was saved from the threatened infliction by De Moreville’s daughter.
Next day appeared marvellously long to Oliver, so impatiently did he
await the coming of evening and the coming of the fair being who had
made so strong an impression on his fancy. Again she appeared, and
evening after evening during August, when from the ramparts of
Chas-Chateil the rustics could be seen gathering in the yellow corn,
always remaining until the bat begun to hunt the moth and the vesper
bell sounded. Oliver grew more and more interested, and thought of her
more highly the oftener he saw her; for, as the old chronicler puts it,
“love reminded him of her day and night, and represented her beauty and
behaviour in such bewitching points of view, that he could think of
nothing else, albeit her father had done him grievous wrong.”
But Oliver Icingla was a youth of mettle, and not the youth to be
content to worship Beatrix de Moreville at a distance as an Indian
worships his star. Naturally enough, he began to form plans for making
this Norman damsel aware of his existence, and not altogether without
success. In fact, fortune very highly favoured the captive Englishman in
this respect. The Lady Beatrix was frequently in her evening walks
accompanied by a very devoted attendant in the shape of a dog, and this
dog sometimes found its way to the rampart without its mistress. Oliver
from his window very easily made the dog’s acquaintance, and speedily
converted the acquaintance into a friendship so close that it would not
pass the place of his incarceration without giving audible signs of
recognition. This led to important consequences.
One evening late in August, when Oliver’s captivity had lasted for more
than ten weeks, he was posted, as usual, at his window, looking through
the bars, when Beatrix de Moreville passed close to him with her dog and
her maidens. The dog stopped, looked up in his face, wagged his tail,
and began to spring up towards him, and the lady naturally enough turned
her eyes in the same direction to see what was the cause of her canine
favourite’s excitement. Such an opportunity might never, as Oliver
thought, occur again, and he was not likely, under the circumstances, to
allow it to pass for lack of presence of mind.
“May God and Our Lady bless thee, noble demoiselle!” said he, not
without a slight tremulousness in his voice. “I would that, like thee, I
had the privilege of walking at freedom; for methinks that freedom, ever
sweet, is doubly sweet on such an eve as this.”
Oliver sighed as he spoke. The lady appeared startled, and looked
embarrassed; but influenced, doubtless, by courtesy, she stayed her
steps and gazed timidly through the iron bars on the face of the
speaker, so young, so fair, and yet so melancholy.
“Pardon my boldness, noble demoiselle,” continued Oliver, “and fear not.
I am no wild beast, though thus caged, but an English squire who was
taught from childhood by a widowed mother to serve God and the ladies;
and I comprehended my duties in both respects even before I was
apprenticed to chivalry in the castle of my kinsman, the noble Earl of
Salisbury. But I am well-nigh beside myself with this captivity. Credit
me, that hardly have I heard the sound of any one’s voice for weeks,
save when visited by the holy man who is the chaplain in this castle;
for my gaoler is the most churlish of churls, and answers only with a
sullen scowl when I address him. To all men, I doubt not, captivity is
irksome; but to me it is not only irksome but horrible; for I am English
by birth and lineage, and of all nations it is well known that the
English most thoroughly abhor the thought of being deprived of liberty.”
“Gentle sir,” said the Lady Beatrix, speaking with an effort and not
without agitation, “I know not what you would have me to do. Is it that
you wish me to speak to my lord and father on your behalf? If such be
your object, say so, I pray you, and it shall be done forthwith.”
“Nay, noble demoiselle,” replied Oliver, shaking his head; “that were
vain as to appeal to the wolf of the forest to abstain from preying on
the deer in the chase. He would not listen.”
“But he ever listens to me--he shall listen!”
“By the Holy Cross!” exclaimed Oliver, giving way to the enthusiasm
which the presence of Beatrix de Moreville created, “I marvel who could
refuse to listen to a being so gentle and beautiful. However,” added he,
checking himself as he perceived that she was startled by the warmth of
his speech, “I will not so far trespass on your generosity as to accept
your intercession: nor, in truth, could it avail ought. Between the Lord
Hugh de Moreville and myself there has never been much love, and we have
twice parted of late not just the best of friends. Moreover, I chance to
be of kin through my mother to the house of Moreville, and the Lord Hugh
dislikes me more on that account than mayhap he would otherwise do.
Wherefore accept my thanks and leave me to my fate. Events have ere this
opened stronger doors than keep me here; and credit me, that when I do
leave this castle where I have passed so many weary, weary hours, I
shall at least carry with me one pleasant memory--the memory of the
fairest face that I have seen in England, France, or Spain. Adieu, noble
demoiselle; may the saints--especially Our Lady--ever watch over thy
welfare and safety!”
Beatrix de Moreville moved on pensively, and not without indulging in
pity for the young warrior whose language was so earnest and whose
plight was so sad. Nor did the knowledge that he was there prevent her
returning to the battlements to breathe the evening air; nor, so far as
can be ascertained, did she make a point of avoiding further
conversation. In fact, she became inspired with a very dangerous
interest in her father’s captive, and contrived not only to learn who
and what he was, but how he had fought at Muradel and Bovines, and much
more about his parentage and his history than was likely to add to her
peace of mind. In short, the daughter of De Moreville, the Norman of
Anglo-Normans, passed the winter of 1215 dreaming of her English
kinsman and picturing him as a hero. Ere the spring of 1216 came he was
costing her many a sigh and many a tear.
As for Oliver Icingla, he almost felt that he was content with his
condition. It would be too much to say that if his prison doors had been
opened he would have said with the heroine of the ballad of “The Spanish
Lady’s Love”--
“Full woe is me:
Oh, let me still sustain this kind captivity!”--
but certainly he did find his prison infinitely less intolerable than it
had been when he first entered it, cursing the fate that had sent him
thither. At times, however, the old spirit seized him, and he stamped
about like a caged lion, and startled the sullen gaoler by his
explosions of rage.
“On my faith,” said he to himself one day in April, after having worn
himself out by the intensity of his ravings, “never did the hart pant
for the water-brook more than I pant for freedom and air and exercise,
and yet the chance seems as far away from me as ever. I marvel how long
I have been here. Ha! I have lost count. By St. Edward, I fear me that
ere long I shall lose my senses!”
As Oliver thus soliloquised he went to the window, and, seating himself
on the broad sill of stone, looked out on meadows and woodlands which
spring, “that great painter of the earth,” had once more robed in green,
and on the ploughed fields to which, in spite of war and rumours of war,
the husbandmen were committing the seeds, with every hope of reaping in
due season. Almost as he did so, his ear caught the sound of a musical
instrument and of a voice singing a Castilian ballad in very indifferent
Spanish, but in accents which were so familiar that his heart leaped
within him. Oliver listened, and as he listened the singer sang--
“They have carried afar into Navarre the great Count of Castile,
And they have bound him sorely, they have bound him hand and heel;
The tidings up the mountains go, and down among the valleys--
To the rescue! to the rescue, ho! they have ta’en Fernan Gonsalez!”
Interrupting without ceremony, and taking the ballad out of the singer’s
mouth, Oliver repeated the verse at the top of his voice, so emphasising
several of the words as to leave little room for mistake as to his
meaning. As he did so he observed a figure climb slowly but without
difficulty up a parapet, at such a distance from him that there was no
possibility of communicating by words; but the figure, on reaching the
top of the parapet, reared itself and stood in the form of a boy dressed
in crimson, holding some musical instrument in his hand, and looking
scrutinously from window to window, and from casement to casement,
apparently with the object of discovering from which had come the voice
of the person who had caught up his song. Oliver, to aid him, took his
cap, put his hand between the bars of the window, and dexterously tossed
the cap in the air. The signal was observed and had the desired effect.
The singer returned it, and having dropped nimbly to the ground
disappeared, while Oliver, withdrawing into the interior of his chamber,
began to marvel what consequences would flow from this unexpected
incident.
But days and weeks elapsed, and nothing came to alter his situation; and
Oliver, thinking he was forgotten by those on whom he had been relying,
was musing over the song that had raised his hopes, and ever and anon
asking himself with a smile whether or not it would be possible to
persuade De Moreville’s daughter to play the part of the infanta who
bribed the alcaydé with her jewels to set free the great Count of
Castile, and who then fled with him to his own land, when there occurred
an event which changed the aspect of his affairs.
It was somewhere about the middle of May, 1216, and Oliver had been
nearly eleven months in captivity, and Hugh de Moreville, with Ralph
Hornmouth in attendance, had been many months absent from Chas-Chateil,
being, in fact at the court of Paris; and the castle, which was well
garrisoned, was under the command of a Norman knight who had seen about
fifty winters, and who rejoiced in the name of Anthony Waledger. He was
a man of courage and prudence, Sir Anthony Waledger, and had married the
“lady governess” of Beatrix de Moreville, she being a distant kinswoman
of the house. And Hugh de Moreville had the most implicit confidence in
her husband’s fidelity and discretion. It is true that the old knight
was a man of violent temper and intemperate habits, and much given to
brimming goblets and foaming tankards. Besides, he had the character of
having sometimes in moments of danger shown too much of the discretion
which is the better part of valour. But De Moreville overlooked his
weaknesses, believing him to be incapable of betraying his trust or
failing in his duty. Moreover, the knight had faith in his garrison,
and felt so secure that he would readily have staked his head on holding
out Chas-Chateil against any army in England till the arrival of
succour; and his confidence was all the greater because he knew that he
had the means--no matter how closely the castle might be invested--of
communicating with the baronial party in time to be rescued, for there
was a subterranean passage, the existence of which Waledger believed to
be known to none save himself and the baron whom he served. In this he
was partly wrong, inasmuch as Styr, the Anglo-Saxon, from his residence
at Chas-Chateil in the days of Edric Icingla, was aware that there was
this underground passage, and even knew the chamber that communicated
with it. But he knew no more, and if put into it could no more have
guessed where it was to lead or where it was to terminate than De
Moreville’s horse-boy, Clem the Bold Rider, or Richard de Moreville, the
baron’s nephew, who were equally ignorant that such a passage existed.
Everything, however, tended to inspire the governor of Chas-Chateil with
a feeling of security. Indeed, over his cups he was in the habit of
talking big to De Moreville’s knights and squires, and especially to De
Moreville’s nephew Richard, about his engines of war, and what he could
do with their aid.
“Sirs,” he was wont to say at such moments, “let who will tremble at a
false tyrant’s frown, I defy his malice. Let him do his worst, and, by
the head of St. Anthony, if King John makes his appearance before the
castle of Chas-Chateil, the said king will be the luckiest of Johns if
he can escape from before it alive and at liberty.”
Never had Sir Anthony Waledger boasted more loudly of the impregnability
of the fortress he commanded than as he sat at supper in the great hall
on the evening of the day to which allusion has been made; and never did
the garrison retire to rest with a better prospect of reposing
undisturbed till the return of daylight. But it appeared, as Ralph
Hornmouth remarked, that “his confidence did not rest on quite so firm a
foundation as the Bass rock.” About three hours after sunset, when the
moon afforded but a faint light, shouts suddenly resounded through
Chas-Chateil, and gradually swelled into such an uproar as if all the
fiends had congregated within its walls to fight out the quarrels they
had been fostering from the beginning of time.
Oliver Icingla, roused from his repose, started from his couch and
rushed to the window; but as there was nothing visible in the direction
towards which it looked to explain the uproar, that grew louder and more
alarming, he hastily donned his garments, and stood calm, though greatly
curious, to await the issue. As he did so, voices were heard; the gaoler
opened the door, and as the door opened in rushed, pell-mell, De
Moreville’s daughter with her two maidens and the wife of Waledger, all
in the utmost trepidation, weeping and wringing their hands, and showing
signs of hasty toilets.
“Gentle sir,” said Beatrix, coming towards him, “I implore you by our
kindred blood and for the sake of your mother to save us from these
cruel men.”
“Assuredly, noble demoiselle,” replied Oliver very calmly, as he took
his fair kinswoman’s hand and kissed it most gallantly by the moonlight.
“I am under the vows of chivalry, and albeit I wear not the spurs of
knighthood, I am bound to save imperilled ladies or to die in their
defence. But I marvel who they can be?”
“Oh,” cried the spouse of Waledger, whose consternation increased every
moment, “who should they be but your own friends, the ravening wolves
whom the false king has brought into the realm--Falco the Cruel, Manlem
the Bloody, Soltim the Merciless, Godeschal the Iron-hearted? Woe is me
that I should live to be in their power!”
“On my faith, madam,” said Oliver, who had listened to her vehemence and
the names and epithets with amazement, “I am more puzzled than ever.
Beshrew me if I ever heard of the men before. In truth, their names
sound as strange to my ear as if you had called the roll of the
Ethiopians who kept guard over the caliph’s palace at Bagdad.”
But at that moment steps sounded in the gallery, and a loud knock at the
door made Beatrix de Moreville tremble and the three other women shriek
with terror.