Approach the chamber, look upon his bed.
His is the passing of no peaceful ghost,
Which, as the lark arises to the sky,
’Mid morning’s sweetest breeze and softest dew,
Is wing’d to heaven by good men’s sighs and tears!—
Anselm parts otherwise.
OLD PLAY
During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the
besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage,
and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De
Bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle.
“Where is Front-de-Bœuf?” said the latter, who had superintended the
defence of the fortress on the other side; “men say he hath been
slain.”
“He lives,” said the Templar, coolly, “lives as yet; but had he worn
the bull’s head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to
fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a
few hours, and Front-de-Bœuf is with his fathers—a powerful limb lopped
off Prince John’s enterprise.”
“And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,” said De Bracy; “this
comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things
and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.”
“Go to—thou art a fool,” said the Templar; “thy superstition is upon a
level with Front-de-Bœuf’s want of faith; neither of you can render a
reason for your belief or unbelief.”
“Benedicite, Sir Templar,” replied De Bracy, “pray you to keep better
rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of
Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for
the ‘bruit’ goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple
of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Brian
de Bois-Guilbert is of the number.”
“Care not thou for such reports,” said the Templar; “but let us think
of making good the castle.—How fought these villain yeomen on thy
side?”
“Like fiends incarnate,” said De Bracy. “They swarmed close up to the
walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the
archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse’s
boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us!
Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven
times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told
every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against
my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron—But
that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been
fairly sped.”
“But you maintained your post?” said the Templar. “We lost the outwork
on our part.”
“That is a shrewd loss,” said De Bracy; “the knaves will find cover
there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched,
gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so
break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every
point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but
they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday
even. Front-de-Bœuf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from
his bull’s head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we
not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by
delivering up our prisoners?”
“How?” exclaimed the Templar; “deliver up our prisoners, and stand an
object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who
dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party
of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle
against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and
the very refuse of mankind?—Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!—The
ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I
consent to such base and dishonourable composition.”
“Let us to the walls, then,” said De Bracy, carelessly; “that man never
breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter rate than I
do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two
scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?—Oh, my brave lances! if
ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should
I see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! And how short
while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!”
“Wish for whom thou wilt,” said the Templar, “but let us make what
defence we can with the soldiers who remain—They are chiefly
Front-de-Bœuf’s followers, hated by the English for a thousand acts of
insolence and oppression.”
“The better,” said De Bracy; “the rugged slaves will defend themselves
to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the
peasants without. Let us up and be doing, then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert;
and, live or die, thou shalt see Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day
as a gentleman of blood and lineage.”
“To the walls!” answered the Templar; and they both ascended the
battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish,
in defence of the place. They readily agreed that the point of greatest
danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had
possessed themselves. The castle, indeed, was divided from that
barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could
assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without
surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar
and De Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their
leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault,
to draw the chief part of the defenders’ observation to this point, and
take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take
place in the defence elsewhere. To guard against such an evil, their
numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to
space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give
the alarm whenever danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that
De Bracy should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar
should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of
reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly
threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect,
that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the
besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before,
the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached
so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might
introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under
cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly
uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy
and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every
possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced
the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who
possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack.
Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a
bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual resource of
bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone
for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church,
stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and
forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was
no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance,
than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and
natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the
agonies of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-Bœuf, a
hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting
church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and
absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar,
an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he
said Front-de-Bœuf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt
for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the
Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she
put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of
Jerusalem, “with a great sum,” and Front-de-Bœuf preferred denying the
virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician.
But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were
gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron’s heart, though
hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into
the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the
impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture
of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and
inveterate obstinacy of his disposition;—a fearful state of mind, only
to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints
without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present
agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!
“Where be these dog-priests now,” growled the Baron, “who set such
price on their ghostly mummery?—where be all those unshod Carmelites,
for whom old Front-de-Bœuf founded the convent of St Anne, robbing his
heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and
close—where be the greedy hounds now?—Swilling, I warrant me, at the
ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly
churl.—Me, the heir of their founder—me, whom their foundation binds
them to pray for—me—ungrateful villains as they are!—they suffer to die
like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!—Tell
the Templar to come hither—he is a priest, and may do something—But
no!—as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de Bois-Guilbert,
who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.—I have heard old men talk of
prayer—prayer by their own voice—Such need not to court or to bribe the
false priest—But I—I dare not!”
“Lives Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” said a broken and shrill voice close by
his bedside, “to say there is that which he dares not!”
The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Bœuf heard, in
this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those
demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds
of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the
meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and
drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted
resolution, he exclaimed, “Who is there?—what art thou, that darest to
echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?—Come before my
couch that I may see thee.”
“I am thine evil angel, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” replied the voice.
“Let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou be’st indeed a
fiend,” replied the dying knight; “think not that I will blench from
thee.—By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors
that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell
should never say that I shrunk from the conflict!”
“Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” said the almost unearthly
voice, “on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!—Who stirred up the
licentious John to war against his grey-headed father—against his
generous brother?”
“Be thou fiend, priest, or devil,” replied Front-de-Bœuf, “thou liest
in thy throat!—Not I stirred John to rebellion—not I alone—there were
fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties—better men
never laid lance in rest—And must I answer for the fault done by
fifty?—False fiend, I defy thee! Depart, and haunt my couch no more—let
me die in peace if thou be mortal—if thou be a demon, thy time is not
yet come.”
“In peace thou shalt NOT die,” repeated the voice; “even in death shalt
thou think on thy murders—on the groans which this castle has echoed—on
the blood that is engrained in its floors!”
“Thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice,” answered Front-de-Bœuf,
with a ghastly and constrained laugh. “The infidel Jew—it was merit
with heaven to deal with him as I did, else wherefore are men canonized
who dip their hands in the blood of Saracens?—The Saxon porkers, whom I
have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of
my liege lord.—Ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of
plate—Art thou fled?—art thou silenced?”
“No, foul parricide!” replied the voice; “think of thy father!—think of
his death!—think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that
poured forth by the hand of a son!”
“Ha!” answered the Baron, after a long pause, “an thou knowest that,
thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call
thee!—That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one
besides—the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.—Go, leave me, fiend!
and seek the Saxon witch Ulrica, who alone could tell thee what she and
I alone witnessed.—Go, I say, to her, who washed the wounds, and
straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of
one parted in time and in the course of nature—Go to her, she was my
temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed—let
her, as well as I, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!”
“She already tastes them,” said Ulrica, stepping before the couch of
Front-de-Bœuf; “she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness
is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.—Grind not thy teeth,
Front-de-Bœuf—roll not thine eyes—clench not thine hand, nor shake it
at me with that gesture of menace!—The hand which, like that of thy
renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one
stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as
mine own!”
“Vile murderous hag!” replied Front-de-Bœuf; “detestable screech-owl!
it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou hast assisted
to lay low?”
“Ay, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” answered she, “it is Ulrica!—it is the
daughter of the murdered Torquil Wolfganger!—it is the sister of his
slaughtered sons!—it is she who demands of thee, and of thy father’s
house, father and kindred, name and fame—all that she has lost by the
name of Front-de-Bœuf!—Think of my wrongs, Front-de-Bœuf, and answer me
if I speak not truth. Thou hast been my evil angel, and I will be
thine—I will dog thee till the very instant of dissolution!”
“Detestable fury!” exclaimed Front-de-Bœuf, “that moment shalt thou
never witness—Ho! Giles, Clement, and Eustace! Saint Maur, and Stephen!
seize this damned witch, and hurl her from the battlements headlong—she
has betrayed us to the Saxon!—Ho! Saint Maur! Clement! false-hearted,
knaves, where tarry ye?”
“Call on them again, valiant Baron,” said the hag, with a smile of
grisly mockery; “summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter
to the scourge and the dungeon—But know, mighty chief,” she continued,
suddenly changing her tone, “thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid,
nor obedience at their hands.—Listen to these horrid sounds,” for the
din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from
the battlements of the castle; “in that war-cry is the downfall of thy
house—The blood-cemented fabric of Front-de-Bœuf’s power totters to the
foundation, and before the foes he most despised!—The Saxon,
Reginald!—the scorned Saxon assails thy walls!—Why liest thou here,
like a worn-out hind, when the Saxon storms thy place of strength?”
“Gods and fiends!” exclaimed the wounded knight; “O, for one moment’s
strength, to drag myself to the ‘melee’, and perish as becomes my
name!”
“Think not of it, valiant warrior!” replied she; “thou shalt die no
soldier’s death, but perish like the fox in his den, when the peasants
have set fire to the cover around it.”
“Hateful hag! thou liest!” exclaimed Front-de-Bœuf; “my followers bear
them bravely—my walls are strong and high—my comrades in arms fear not
a whole host of Saxons, were they headed by Hengist and Horsa!—The
war-cry of the Templar and of the Free Companions rises high over the
conflict! And by mine honour, when we kindle the blazing beacon, for
joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall
live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell,
which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!”
“Hold thy belief,” replied Ulrica, “till the proof reach thee—But, no!”
she said, interrupting herself, “thou shalt know, even now, the doom,
which all thy power, strength, and courage, is unable to avoid, though
it is prepared for thee by this feeble band. Markest thou the
smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds
through the chamber?—Didst thou think it was but the darkening of thy
bursting eyes—the difficulty of thy cumbered breathing?—No!
Front-de-Bœuf, there is another cause—Rememberest thou the magazine of
fuel that is stored beneath these apartments?”
“Woman!” he exclaimed with fury, “thou hast not set fire to it?—By
heaven, thou hast, and the castle is in flames!”
“They are fast rising at least,” said Ulrica, with frightful composure;
“and a signal shall soon wave to warn the besiegers to press hard upon
those who would extinguish them.—Farewell, Front-de-Bœuf!—May Mista,
Skogula, and Zernebock, gods of the ancient Saxons—fiends, as the
priests now call them—supply the place of comforters at your dying bed,
which Ulrica now relinquishes!—But know, if it will give thee comfort
to know it, that Ulrica is bound to the same dark coast with thyself,
the companion of thy punishment as the companion of thy guilt.—And now,
parricide, farewell for ever!—May each stone of this vaulted roof find
a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!”
So saying, she left the apartment; and Front-de-Bœuf could hear the
crash of the ponderous key, as she locked and double-locked the door
behind her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of escape. In the
extremity of agony he shouted upon his servants and allies—“Stephen and
Saint Maur!—Clement and Giles!—I burn here unaided!—To the rescue—to
the rescue, brave Bois-Guilbert, valiant De Bracy!—It is Front-de-Bœuf
who calls!—It is your master, ye traitor squires!—Your ally—your
brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights!—all the curses due
to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus
miserably!—They hear me not—they cannot hear me—my voice is lost in the
din of battle.—The smoke rolls thicker and thicker—the fire has caught
upon the floor below—O, for one drought of the air of heaven, were it
to be purchased by instant annihilation!” And in the mad frenzy of
despair, the wretch now shouted with the shouts of the fighters, now
muttered curses on himself, on mankind, and on Heaven itself.—“The red
fire flashes through the thick smoke!” he exclaimed; “the demon marches
against me under the banner of his own element—Foul spirit, avoid!—I go
not with thee without my comrades—all, all are thine, that garrison
these walls—Thinkest thou Front-de-Bœuf will be singled out to go
alone?—No—the infidel Templar—the licentious De Bracy—Ulrica, the foul
murdering strumpet—the men who aided my enterprises—the dog Saxons and
accursed Jews, who are my prisoners—all, all shall attend me—a goodly
fellowship as ever took the downward road—Ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed
in his frenzy till the vaulted roof rang again. “Who laughed there?”
exclaimed Front-de-Bœuf, in altered mood, for the noise of the conflict
did not prevent the echoes of his own mad laughter from returning upon
his ear—“who laughed there?—Ulrica, was it thou?—Speak, witch, and I
forgive thee—for, only thou or the fiend of hell himself could have
laughed at such a moment. Avaunt—avaunt!—-”
But it were impious to trace any farther the picture of the blasphemer
and parricide’s deathbed.