HUNTING A WILD BOAR
One day in autumn, about a month after Styr the Anglo-Saxon had taken
counsel with his son in the stable at Oakmede, when King John was
occupied with the siege of Rochester, and Hugh de Moreville was in
London urging on his confederates the desperate expedient which they
subsequently adopted, a gallant party of knights and squires, armed with
spears and hunting-horns, and attended by huntsmen with boar-hounds,
left the castle of Chas-Chateil.
Riding through the chase, the hunters penetrated into the great forest
of Berkshire, which at that time stretched from Windsor right away up
the vale of the Kennet to Hungerford, a distance of some forty miles as
the crow flies. Their object was to hunt a wild boar, and they were
headed by Sir Anthony Waledger, who rode Oliver Icingla’s black steed
Ayoub, an animal to which the Norman knight had taken a decided fancy,
and which he already looked on as his own property.
It has been hinted that Sir Anthony Waledger was somewhat boastful over
his cups, in which he at times indulged more deeply than prudence
warranted; and after a carouse, while his blood was still heated, he at
times deluded himself with the idea that he was an important feudal
magnate. On such occasions, and in De Moreville’s absence, the knight
gave himself much greater airs than ever the lord of the castle took the
trouble to do; and as he paid his vows to St. Hubert, the patron of
sylvan sports, as well as to St. Martin, the patron of mediæval
Bacchanalians, he was particularly fond of displaying his mightiness and
getting rid of his superfluous energy by indulging in that violent sport
which has been described as “the image of war.” Nay, more; Sir Anthony
relished violent sport in its most violent form, and looking with
contempt on hawking and hunting the deer, even by way of whet for
fiercer game, devoted himself to the wolf and the wild boar. Many were
the perilous adventures he had passed in the forest; but he boasted
frequently that he loved danger for its own sake, and loved it all the
better that it was accompanied by the excitement of the chase.
“Sirs,” he would exclaim, when the red wine of Bordeaux sparkled in his
cup, and the fire began to glow in his brain, “let us leave falconry to
the ladies, and damsels, and spaniels, and stag-hunting to the
greyhounds and men who are women in all but the name. By the head of my
namesake, St. Anthony, I prefer pressing close on the track of the bear
or the wild boar, beasts that have the courage to turn to bay and rend
their pursuers.”
On this occasion Sir Anthony Waledger, having washed down his breakfast
with copious draughts, was particularly enthusiastic. Moreover, he was
violent in proportion to his enthusiasm. He talked loudly and largely
about the qualities of De Moreville’s dogs, and which was likely to hunt
the best, always in a way which would have led a stranger to believe
they were his own, brooking no contradiction whatever; and no sooner
had the huntsmen roused a huge boar from his lair than he became highly
excited, and, shouting loudly as he hounded the dogs on the game, dashed
his spurs into Ayoub’s side and went off in keen pursuit. All the
forenoon the chase continued, and as their horses grew weary and began
to flag, the hunters gradually tailed off; but Sir Anthony never halted
in the pursuit, nor did the black steed give the slightest sign of
weariness, though his glossy coat was literally covered with foam. On
the knight went, the dogs gradually gaining on the boar, and the boar
making a circuit till he led them back to within a mile of Chas-Chateil,
and turned fiercely to bay under a gigantic oak hard by the spot where
the castle of Donnington was afterwards built--perhaps the oak under
which, according to tradition, Geoffrey Chaucer in his last years wrote
many of his poems.
And terrible was the aspect which the boar now presented; his ears
erect, his shaggy hair standing in bristles, and his mouth foaming with
rage, as, tearing and tossing aside the dogs with his mighty tusks, he
collected all his remaining strength to spring at the horse and the
rider. Nor did Sir Anthony shrink from the stern encounter. Blowing his
horn till it resounded through the woods, and shouting with a ferocity
which rivalled the dumb ferocity of his grisly antagonist, he, with an
oath and a gesture of fiery impatience, threw down his hunting-spear,
and, drawing his sword of Bordeaux steel, dashed the rowels of his spurs
into Ayoub’s flank and swung aloft his weapon to deal a decisive blow.
But the blow was not destined to be struck. Unaccustomed to such
treatment, rendered furious by the provocation of hours, and startled by
the fierce aspect of the boar, the noble animal made one plunge, reared
himself high in the air, and then fell prostrate on the ground, bearing
his rider with him. It was a terrible moment. Sir Anthony was, indeed,
little hurt by the fall, but his sword had dropped from his hand, and he
lay at the boar’s mercy.
The knight in terror bawled out for St. Anthony and St. Hubert to come
to his aid.
Only two moments did the boar lose ere making the rush; they were
employed in freeing himself from the dogs, already blinded by the blood
from the wounds he had inflicted; and then he made his final rush--a
rush that brought his very snout in contact with the prostrate knight’s
person. But ere that rush took place, and ere mischief could be done,
from the branches of the oak dropped something which to the knight’s
swimming eyes looked like a large ball. Next moment the sword of
Bordeaux steel, driven by a sure hand, penetrated the boar’s throat;
and, as the monster rolled back on the grass, writhing in the agonies of
death, and Sir Anthony freed himself from the steed, and the steed
sprang to his feet with a bound, he found standing before him, holding
Ayoub’s bridle-rein in his left hand and the Bordeaux blade in the
right, a dark-haired and rather swarthy youngster, in parti-coloured
garments of an outlandish cut, with a smile on his countenance. The
smile was meaningless, and the boy looked marvellously innocent;
nevertheless, Sir Anthony was so enraged with his mishap that he almost
felt inclined to kill his preserver on the spot for that meaningless
smile and that innocent look.
“Who in the fiend’s name are you?” he asked with a frowning brow and in
a voice of thunder.
The boy, who had not, as it happened, parted with the sword, replied
with a smile which disarmed Sir Anthony’s anger; but the answer was in a
language which the knight did not understand; so he muttered a slight
imprecation to rid himself of the remnant of his wrath, and, having
again loudly sounded his horn, began to look more kindly on the
mysterious stranger who had come to his rescue at the very moment of his
extreme need, and when otherwise he must have been torn to pieces.
“By my faith,” said he in a low tone and with a thrill of superstitious
awe, “I firmly believe that St. Anthony or St. Hubert has sent this
youth to my aid, and it behoves me, therefore, to treat him as one whom
the saints account worthy of being their messenger. One thing is lucky,”
continued he: “the youth cannot speak our tongue, and therefore cannot
report the unworthy spectacle I have presented.”
As Sir Anthony thus soliloquised, the huntsmen and two squires,
attracted by the repeated blasts of his horn, rode up to the spot, and
the knight, having given a very inadequate description of the scene that
had been enacted, and consigned the boar to the huntsmen to be cut up,
ordered them to take care of the boy and bring him to the castle. He
then attempted to remount, but he might as well have attempted to scale
the heavens. Ayoub positively resisted, and, despising both threats and
caresses, stood proudly upon the dignity which had been so recently and
so deeply injured. The knight was finally under the necessity of
mounting the horse of one of the huntsmen, and leaving Ayoub, and the
mystic boy, and the dead boar under their care, rode slowly away through
the trees towards Chas-Chateil.
“Cog’s wounds! friend Martin,” said one of the huntsmen to his fellow,
after examining the boy as to his proficiency in the vernacular tongue,
“I can make nothing of this jackanapes. Beshrew me if I do not think he
is such a creature as was of late taken in the sea on the coast of
Suffolk.”
“Hubert, lad, I fail to comprehend thee,” said Martin.
“Natheless, it is true as any story ever sung by minstrel,” continued
Hubert. “It was a fish in the form of a man, and they kept it alive six
months on land, feeding it the whilst on raw meat; but seeing they could
get no speech out of it, they cast it back into the sea.”
“I doubt thee not, Hubert, lad--I doubt thee not,” said Martin cheerily;
“but, credit me, this is no such creature, but a boy from some
outlandish country beyond the seas. I have heard the like of him ere now
singing glees on the great bridge at London. Mark how simple and
innocent he is. Even that fiend of a horse, that wouldn’t so much as
look at Sir Anthony, takes kindly to the child and licks his hand.”