thrall. Some dashed into houses and sheds, and bore thence sickles,
scythes, axes, picks, shovels, and mattocks, and ancient rust-caked
weapons; some seized the horses tethered by the ale-house door and
sprang upon them. Richard, still holding Osbern by the hand, entered
the town in the midst of the first contingent of those who remained on
foot.
"They have taken our horses," he whispered. "Silence now--we must not
move nor breathe!"
The maltman's barn opened on to Ludford Street, and they slipped within
and hid between the outer wall and a rampart of odorous sacks. Edric
drove the whole body of his compatriots out into the open. After a
quick consultation with Ingelric, he set off with the old man on the
shortest route to Caynham. Some made towards Ashford, some towards the
Moor. A few splashed through the ford over which the grey waters of the
Teme glided in their winter flood.
An hour passed; another hour; the second hour after noon began. Richard
was still in the maltman's storehouse, scarcely stirring from the post
he had originally taken up, listening intently to every sound that
penetrated from without. Osbern had perched himself upon a sack by his
father's side, as motionless except for his fingers, about which he
twined a piece of string in cat's cradle pattern. The voices of women
reached them, the laughter of children, the swirl of water among the
roots of the willows. Falling cobwebs powdered these two with dingy
flakes; conflicting currents of air made the malt-dust dance all around
them; they heard the patter of rats' feet, the dogged gnawing of a
mouse. Suddenly a woman shrieked in terror----
"Yonder--see yonder! Horsemen! horsemen! Yonder the death of us all! My
man--where is he? Gone--left me here helpless! The Frenchmen! The
Frenchmen!"
Panic seized the women of Ludford (there were some twenty of them):
tearful, voluble, or outwardly composed, they carried, dragged, drove
their children up the street, across the green, and out of the town, in
frantic search of masculine protection.
Richard and Osbern stepped stiffly out into the street, brushing their
garments as they went. Yes, there they were, the horsemen, filing along
the hill-side track. The apathetic sun of late winter lent a sulky
radiance to lance, mace, and scabbard, ringed hauberk, conical helm,
and kite-shaped shield. Nearer they came--sixty in all, Richard
guessed. The cavalcade appeared at the farther end of the street:
men-at-arms, pursuivants, knights, esquires, and, behind his banner,
riding alone, William fitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford and Lord of
Breteuil, in the full splendour of vigorous manhood.
"Seignior!" cried Richard the Norman--"Seignior, faictes grace a moy,
qui suys de vostre sang!"
William fitzOsbern threw an amused glance at a forgotten cobweb that
adhered to the speaker's head.
"Mort Dex!" said he. "Whom have we here?"
"Richard of Overton, son of Hugh, son of Osbern, son of Walter of Rye
in the Cotentin, where my nephew is now lord. Sir Count, the mother of
my grandsire was cousin and nurse unto Herfast your own father's
father, and unto noble Dame Gunnore his sister, spouse of our then
Duke."
"Thou art the Scrope. I have heard of thee. One named Perot spoke of
thee with the King at Westminster; and that British fellow of
thine--Howel they call him--guides the company of Ralph de Mortemar
behind us upon the road. I have pressed on with another to conduct me,
for I would reach the city of Hereford as soon as may be."
"Seignior, I have dwelt for twenty years within your county that now
is," said Richard, dropping on one knee, "and I pray of you justice and
your puissant aid! The rascal English do me wrong, and they will not
consider my cause, for I stand alone. One Ulwin invades certain of my
lands and a mill which I myself set up beside the river: he first
exchanged this Ashford for money and cattle of mine, then pleaded his
no-right to sell."
He paused. FitzOsbern had half-turned in his saddle and was surveying
the rugged hill of Lude upon the other side of the ford.
"What a rock of defence!" he exclaimed. "Careless fools to let it stand
unfortified!... Well, I did look for thee to come to greet us; but
alone? and--toil-stained, is it? I have seen no rascal English
hereabouts. This seems a village dead or sleeping. Are ye the only
persons here alive, thou and one child?"
"News of your coming has reached these English, my lord, and they
believe that your purpose is to spoil their homesteads, and so they are
gone without into the country, gathering together all able men for
resistance. Wild Edric of Clun was here but now, at work upon their
fears. Though they be mostly on foot, and their weapons be rusty, they
are more than we, and might bar your road to Hereford. Come with me, I
pray you: on yonder hill I have a strong house, where ye, aye, and all
these, may be safe."
"Joyously will we partake of thine hospitality, good Richard, for an
hour or so, although our march be thereby delayed. Thy Howel, I know,
will lead Ralph de Mortemar to thy very door. Say, who is the lad? Son
of thine, I wager."
"My eldest son, so please you. Osbern, stand forth."
"Hah! Osbern fitzRichard, how sayest thou?
"Wilt thou serve my lady in bower and at board until such time as thou
be old enough to ride with me into battle?"
"Assurement, mon seignior!" replied the child, upon his knee beside his
father in a moment. His French had the thick accent of an Englishman.
FitzOsbern smiled down upon him.
"Shalt learn more gracious French," said he, "but not more gracious
manners. Well, let us be going."
"Seignior," said one of the esquires, "I hear the tramp of many feet,
but no voices at all."
"The English!" cried William, and Richard the Scrob sprang to his feet.
"They think to surprise us. It were best parley with them in the open,
in peaceable guise. Boy, I will carry thee behind me."
Osbern clambered on to the Earl's steed.
"Sir, have I your leave?" asked Richard of Sir Walter de Lacy, who rode
on the left of his master. Lacy nodded, and instantly Richard was
astride behind him. He had scarcely mounted, when a strange, seething
hiss resounded from one side of the street, and above their heads.
Another hiss, and another: a splutter, then a crackle; and the thatch
of the maltman's dwelling, which adjoined his barn, burst into
steadily-spreading flame.
"O Mary! happy thought!" they heard in the fatuous tones of the
maltman's son Oswin. "Hem them right well about, and watch them cook
alive!"
"Thank God for burning pitch!" and in the indignant voice of Grim:
"Thou oaf! Would thou had been born dumb! We had them snared!"
A horse neighed shrilly; the other horses echoed the warning sound.
"Quick, ere terror benumb them!" the Earl shouted. "Right about--a dash
for it!"
A bucketful of hot pitch streamed from one roof, hot charcoal cinders
showered from another; some one flung a lighted torch. Another thatch
was already on fire. The English were formed in a thin ring all round
Ludford. The Norman charge scattered those at the bottom of the street,
and the horsemen poured out.
"Follow me!" cried Richard. "I know a way to baffle them. Ride,
sirs--ride as ye were devils!"
Edric of Clun, on horseback, planted himself in fitzOsbern's way with
menacing gesture; William hurled his truncheon, hit him on the head,
and sent him tumbling from his saddle. Ednoth clung like a vice to
Richard's legs for some yards, and was thrown to the ground, and
trampled by many hurrying hooves. The few mounted English tried
valiantly to intercept the trained cavalry, but were unhorsed or put to
flight.
"To Richard's hall!" shouted Ulwin, from the background, where he was
making tentative passes in the air with an antique sword. "Overton!
Overton! Fire! Burn! Torches, I say--bring torches! Come on, all of
you! Come, burn his house to the ground!"
The Earl and his men had rallied to Richard the Scrob, who called and
signalled to them from Walter de Lacy's crupper. He headed straight for
the forest of Haye.
"Warily now," said he. "There is much bogland."
He led them westward, skirting swamps, threading apparently
impenetrable thickets, with scarcely a pause. They could hear faintly
the voices of a few Englishmen who cursed as they wandered among the
briary undergrowth. The hindmost of the Normans looked back and saw
Ludford flaming, crumbling, and falling into ruins.
"It is mine own secret path," their guide announced. "Verily, mon
seignior, I have prepared for your coming."
They left the forest behind them, and rode through the hamlet of
Overton.
"Look yonder!" said Richard, pointing to the grey gleam of a stone
rampart among the trees surrounding his mansion.
"What is this?" laughed the Earl. "Have ye licence from King William to
erect a castle within his realm?"
"I am King William's loyal subject," the Scrob replied. "Of a
certainty, our King will not grudge a timely shelter to his Earl."
A curtain-wall, roughly but strongly compacted of quarried stone, of
wood, and of rubble, surrounded and concealed the timber dwelling of
Richard and Alftrude; at the western end of the enclosure the
unfinished keep loomed upon its mount; and about them both an
eight-foot moat was drawn.
"The keep as well!" cried fitzOsbern. "Oh, guileful notion, to colour
it with pitch! Only the hawk-eyed may spy it from the valley, for the
foliage embowers it--and, man, ye can surely keep watch therefrom for
many a mile!"
At a blast from Richard's horn, the drawbridge was lowered, and several
Normans in his service appeared upon the threshold, mail-clad and fully
armed.
"It was four weeks building, under Geoffrey of Rouen," said Richard,
"and the moat was digging thirteen days more. I have engines of war
within, and great store of missiles of stone. Enter, bel sire. They
will not find it easy to burn this my dwelling about my head."
"Let the peasants come!" said William fitzOsbern. "They must learn to
know their masters; but please the saints! we shall not need to take
the lives of many. Perchance the sweet peers of heaven may send that
Mortemar find us before long.... Cousin, thou hast a pleasant view from
thy fortress, even through such a narrow peephole. H'm! Rich
forfeitures for our sovereign Lord! Thou shalt trouble thyself no more,
cousin Richard, concerning lands and mills and cheating Saxons. As far
and as wide as eye can see, from the sky that is our Lord God's
footstool unto Satan's fires in the centre of earth, this same pleasant
country shall be thine own, in reward for this day's fealty and
service, and so I, William of Hereford and Breteuil, promise thee in
the name of the King.... Nay, no thanks: kneel but one moment
longer.... It is meet, sirs, is it not, that our leader in this
engagement should hold the honourable rank of chevalier? We will
account this a field of battle. Rise up, Sir Richard fitzHugh le
Scrope!"
The next morning, when the Earl of Hereford had gone his way, and the
bodies of the only two Englishmen slain by Ralph de Mortemar's rescuing
party had been borne to burial, the new lord of the Moor, of Ashford,
of Ludford, and of Stanage rode out to display the extent and resources
of his manors to his astonished lady. Their itinerary ended, they stood
in the evening outside the moat and gazed at the placid, billowing
country beneath them. Although by the cold, saffron light of a February
sunset the misty course of the Teme was the only certain landmark and
it was hard to distinguish meadow and ploughland, pasture and forest,
they had to feast their eyes until the last glimmer faded.
"With right tillage," said Richard, "it should yield me thrice its
yearly value in grain. And I will have yet more sheep, and yet more
cattle: there is now place for four times as many as ever I bred.... I
have made thee great and famous, as I promised; and Osbern, with the
Earl to favour him, should be an even greater lord than I.... Our
fishpond shall go forward upon the morrow. What sayest thou to an
orchard yonder, planted with apples of Normandy? and I think that
Gascon vines would ripen passably upon our southern slope. O Alftrude,
thou knowest how I have loved and pondered this land this many a year;
and we shall have great profit of it, ma belle, thou and I together."
Alftrude dwelt at Richard's Castle well content; for, as she sometimes
observed when she looked round upon her flocks, her herds and her
horses, her orchards, her cornfields, her vineyards, her chickens,
ducks and geese, her hounds and her falcons, her fishpond, her smooth
green lawn, her yew-tree alley, her doves and her peacocks, and her
band of healthy children, there was no reason at all why she should not.