The woods of De Coucy Magny stretched far over hill and dale, and
plain, where now not the root of one ancient tree is to be seen; and
many a vineyard, and a cornfield, and a meadow are to-day spread fair
out in the open sunshine, which were then covered with deep and
tangled underwood, or shaded by the broad arms of vast primeval oaks.
Two straight roads passed through the forest, and a multitude of
smaller paths, which, winding about in every different direction,
crossing and recrossing each other,--now avoiding the edge of a pond
and making a large circuit, now taking advantage of a savannah, to
proceed straight forward, and now turning sharp round the vast boll of
some antique tree,--formed altogether an absolute labyrinth, through
which it needed a very certain clue, or very long experience, to
proceed in safety.
These paths, also, however multiplied and intersected, left between
them many a wide unbroken space of forest ground, where apparently the
foot of man had never trod, nor axe of woodman ever rung, the only
tracks through which seemed to be some slight breaks in the underwood,
where the rushing sides of a boar or deer had dashed the foliage away.
Many of these spaces were of the extent of several thousand acres; and
if the very intricacy of the general forest paths themselves would not
have afforded shelter and concealment to men who, like the cotereaux
and routiers, as much needed a well hidden lair as ever did the
wildest savage of the wood, such asylum was easily to be found in the
dark recesses of these inviolate wilds.
Here, on a bright morning of July, when the grey of the sky was just
beginning to warm with the rising day, a single man, armed with sword,
corselet, and steel bonnet, all shining with the last polishing touch
which they had received at the shop of the armourer, took his way
alone down one of the narrowest paths of the forest. In his hand he
held an _arbalète_,[18] or cross-bow, then a very late invention; and,
by the careful manner in which he examined every bush as he passed, he
seemed some huntsman tracing, step by step, the path of a deer.
--------------------
[Footnote 18: Guillaume le Breton says unqualifiedly, that Richard
C[oe]ur de Lion invented the _arbalète_, or cross-bow. Brompton, on
the other hand, only declares that he revived the use of it, "hoc
genus sagittandi in usum revocavit."]
--------------------
"Cursed be the fools!" muttered he to himself; "they have not taken
care to mark the _brisé_ well; and, in this strange forest, how am I
to track them? Ah, here is another!" and, passing on from tree to
tree, he at length paused where one of the smaller branches, broken
across, hung with its leaves just beginning to wither from the
interruption of the sap. Here, turning from the direct path, he pushed
his way through the foliage, stooping his head to prevent the branches
striking him in the face, but still taking pains to remark at every
step each tree or bush that he passed; and wherever he perceived a
broken branch, keeping it to his right-hand as he proceeded. His eyes
nevertheless were now and then turned to the left, as well as the
right; and at length, after he had advanced about four hundred yards
in this cautious manner, he found the boughs broken all around, so
that the _brisé_, as he called it, terminated there; and all guide by
which to direct his course seemed at an end.
At this place he paused; and, after examining more scrupulously every
object in the neighbourhood, he uttered a long whistle, which, after a
moment or two, met with a reply, but from such a distance that it was
scarcely audible. The cross-bowman whistled again; and the former
sound was repeated, but evidently nearer. Then came a slight rustling
in the bushes, as if some large body stirred the foliage, and then for
a moment all was still.
"Ha, Jodelle!" cried a voice at last, from the other side of the
bushes. "Is it you?" and pushing through the leaves, which had
concealed him while he had paused to examine the stranger we have
described, a genuine routier, if one might judge by his very rude and
rusty arms, entered the little open space in which the other had been
waiting. He had an unbent bow in his hand, and a store of arrows in
his belt, which was garnished still farther with a strong short sword,
and of knives and daggers not a few, from the _miséricorde_ of a
hand's breadth long, to the thigh knife of a peasant of those days,
whose blade of nearly two feet in length rendered it a serviceable and
tremendous weapon.
He had on his back, by way of clothing, a light iron haubert, which
certainly shone not brightly; nor possibly was it desirable for him
that it should. Though of somewhat more solid materials than a linen
gown, it had more than one rent in it, where the rings had either been
broken by a blow, or worn through by age: but, in these places, the
deficient links had been supplied by cord, which at all events kept
the yawning mouths of the gaps together. On his head was placed an
iron hat, as it was called, much in the shape of the famous helmet of
Mambrino, as described by Cervantes; and round about it were twined
several branches of oak, which rendered his head, when seen through
the boughs, scarce distinguishable from the leaves themselves; while
his rugged and dingy haubert might well pass for a part of the trunk
of one of the trees.
"Well met! well met, Jodelle!" cried he, as the other approached.
"Come to the halting place. We have waited for you long, and had
scanty fare. But say, what have you done? Have you slit the devil's
weasand, or got the knight's purse? Do you bring us good news or bad?
Do you come gay or sorry? Tell me! tell me, Jodelle! Thou art our
leader, but must not lead us to hell with thy new-fashioned ways."
"Get thee on to the halt," replied Jodelle; "I will tell all there."
The two cotereaux--for such they were--now made their way through the
trees and shrubs, to a spot where the axe had been busily plied to
clear away about half an acre of ground, round which were placed a
range of huts, formed of branches, leaves, and mud, capable of
containing perhaps two or three hundred men.
In the open space in the centre several personages of the same
respectable class as the two we have already introduced to the reader,
were engaged in various athletic sports--pitching an immense stone,
shooting at a butt, or striking downright blows at a log of wood, to
see who could hew into its substance most profoundly.
Others again were scattered about, fashioning bows out of strong
beechen poles, pointing arrows and spears, or sharpening their knives
and swords; while one or two lay listlessly looking on, seemingly
little inclined to employ very actively either their mental or
corporeal faculties.
The arrival of Jodelle, as he was called, put a stop to the sports,
and caused a momentary bustle amongst the whole party, the principal
members of which seemed to recognise in him one of the most
distinguished of their fraternity, although some of those present
gazed on him as a stranger.
"Welcome, welcome, sire Jodelle!" cried one who had been fashioning a
bow. "By my faith! we have much needed thy presence. We are here at
poor quarters. Not half so good as we had in the mountains of
Auvergne, till that bad day's work we made of it between the Allier
and the Puy; and a hundred thousand times worse than when we served
the merry king of England, under that bold knight Mercader. Oh, the
quarrel of that cross-bow at Chaluz was the worst shaft ever was shot
for us. Those days will never come again."
"They may, they may!" replied Jodelle, "and before we dream of,--for
good, hard wars are spoken of; and then the detested cotereaux
grow, with these good kings, into their faithful troops of
Brabançois,--their excellent free companions! But we shall see. In the
mean time, tell me where is Jean le Borgne?"
"He is gone with a party to look for some rich Jews going to Rouen,"
replied the person who had spoken before. "But we have plenty of men
here for any bold stroke, if there be one in the market; and
besides----"
"Did you meet with captain Vanswelder?" interrupted Jodelle. "The
fools at the castle believe he has two thousand bows with him. Where
does he lie? How many has he?"
"He never had above four hundred," replied another of the many
cotereaux who by this time had gathered round Jodelle; "and when your
men came--if you are the captain, Jodelle--he took such of us as would
go with him down to Normandy, to offer himself to the bad king John
for half the sum of crowns we had before. Now, fifty of us, who had
served king Richard, and value our honour, agreed not to undersell
ourselves after such a fashion as that; so we joined ourselves to your
men, to take the chance of the road."
"You did wisely and honourably," replied Jodelle; "but nevertheless
you would have been very likely to get hanged or roasted for your
pains, if I had not, by chance, stuck myself to the skirts of that Guy
de Coucy, who is now at his château hard by, menacing fire and sword
to every man of us that he finds in his woods. By St. Macrobius! I
believe the mad-headed boy would have attacked Vanswelder and his
whole troop, with the few swords he can muster, which do not amount to
fifty. A brave youth he is, as ever lived:--pity 'tis he must die! And
yet, when he dashed out my brother's brains with his battle-axe, I
vowed to God and St. Nicolas that I would die or slay him, as well as
that treacherous slave who betrayed us into attacking a band of
men-at-arms instead of a company of pilgrims. It is a firm vow, and
must be kept."
"And yet, good master Jodelle, thou hast been somewhat slow in putting
it in execution," said one of the cotereaux. "Here thou and Gerard
Pons have been near a month with him--and yet, from all that I can
divine, thou hast neither laid thy finger on master or man!"
"Ha! sir fool, wouldst thou have done it better?" demanded Jodelle,
turning on the speaker fiercely. "If I slew the fool juggler first,
which were easy to do, never should I get a stroke at his lord; and,
let me tell thee, 'tis no such easy matter to reach the master, who
has never doffed his steel haubert since I have seen him--except when
he sleeps, and then a varlet and a page lie across his door--a
privilege which he gave them in the Holy Land, where they saved his
life from a raw Saracen; and now, the fools hold it as such an honour,
they would not yield it for a golden ring. Besides," he added,
grinning with a mixture of shrewd malevolence and self-conceit in his
countenance, "I have a plot in my head. You know, I bear a brain."
"Yes, yes!" replied several; "we know thou art rare at a plot. What
goes forward now? I vow a wax-candle to the Virgin Mary if it be a
good plot, and succeeds," added one of them. But this liberality
towards the Virgin, unhappily for the priests, met with no imitators.
"My plot," replied Jodelle, "is as good a plot as ever was laid--ay,
or hatched either--and will succeed too. Wars are coming on thick. We
have no commander since our quarrel with Mercader. This De Coucy has
no men. To the wars he must and will; and surely would rather be
followed by a stout band of free companions, than have his banner
fluttering at the head of half a dozen varlets, like a red rag on a
furze bush. I will find means to put it in his head, and means to
bring about that you shall be the men. Then shall he lead us to spoil
and plunder enough, and leave it all to us when he has got it--for his
hand is as free as his heart is bold. My vow will stand over till the
war is done, and then the means of executing it will be in my own
hands. What say you?"
"A good plot!--an excellent good plot!" cried several of the
cotereaux; but nevertheless, though plunged deep in blood and crime,
there were many of the band who knit their brow, and turned down the
corner of the mouth, at the profound piece of villany with which
master Jodelle finished his proposal. This did not prevent them from
consenting, however; and Jodelle proceeded to make various
arrangements for disposing comfortably of the band, during the space
of time which was necessarily to elapse before his plan could be put
in execution.
The first thing to be done was to evacuate the woods of De Coucy
Magny, that no unpleasant collision might take place between the
cotereaux and De Coucy; and the next consideration was, where the band
was to lie till something more should be decided. This difficulty was
soon set aside, by one of the troop which had been originally in
possession of the forest, proposing as a refuge some woods in the
neighbourhood, which they had haunted previous to betaking themselves
to their present refuge. They then agreed to divide into two separate
bands, and to confine their system of plundering as much as possible
to the carrying off of horses; so that no difficulty might be found in
mounting the troop, in case of the young knight accepting their
services.
"And now," cried Jodelle, "how many are you, when all are here?"
"One hundred and thirty-three," was the reply.
"Try to make up three fifties," cried Jodelle, "and, in the first
place, decamp with all speed; for this very day De Coucy, with all the
horsemen he can muster, will be pricking through every brake in the
forest. Carry off all your goods--unroof the huts--and if there be a
clerk amongst you, let him write me a scroll, and leave it on the
place, to say you quit it, all for the great name of De Coucy. So
shall his vanity be tickled."
"Oh! there's Jeremy the monk can both read and write, you know," cried
several; "and as for parchment, he shall write upon the linen that was
in the pedlar's pack."
"And now," cried Jodelle, "to the work! But first show me where haunt
the deer, for I must take back a buck to the castle to excuse my
absence."
With very little trouble a fine herd was found, just cropping the
morning grass; and Jodelle instantly brought down a choice buck with a
quarrel from his cross-bow. He then bade adieu to his companions, and
casting the carcase over his shoulders, he took his way back to the
castle.
It may be almost needless here to say, that this very respectable
personage, calling himself Jodelle, was one of the two men who had
been received into De Coucy's service in Auvergne, for the purpose of
leading to Paris two beautiful Arabian horses he had brought from
Palestine. His objects in joining the young knight at all, and for
fixing himself in his train more particularly afterwards, having been
already explained by himself, we shall not notice them; but shall only
remark, that personal revenge being in those days inculcated even as a
virtue, it was a virtue not at all likely to be so confined to the
better classes, as not to ornament in a high degree persons of
Jodelle's station and profession.
The gates of the castle were open, and de Coucy himself standing on
the drawbridge, as the coterel returned.
"Ha! varlet," said he. "Where hast thou been without the gates so
early? I must have none here that stray forth when they may be
needed!"
"I had nought to do, beau sire," replied Jodelle, "and went but to
strike a buck in the wood, that your board might show some venison:--I
have not been long, though it led me farther than I thought."
"Ha! canst thou wing a shaft, or a quarrel well?" demanded De Coucy.
"Thou hast brought down indeed a noble buck, and hit him fair in the
throat. What distance was your shot?"
"A hundred and twenty yards," answered the coterel; "and if I hit not
a Normandy pippin at the same, may my bowstring be cut by your mad
fool, sir knight!"
"By the blessed saints!" cried De Coucy, "thou shalt try this very day
at a better mark; for thou shalt have a _coterel's_ head within fifty
steps, before yon same sun, that has just risen, goes down over the
wood!"
"The poor cotereaux!" cried Jodelle, affecting a look of compassion.
"They are hunted from place to place, like wild beasts; and yet there
is many a good soldier amongst them, after all."
"Out, fellow!" cried the knight. "Speakest thou for plunderers and
common thieves?"
"Nay, beau sire! I speak not for them," replied Jodelle. "Yet what can
the poor devils do? Here, in time of war, they spend their blood and
their labour in the cause of one or other of the parties; and then,
the moment they are of no further use, they are cast off like a
mail-shirt after a battle. They have no means of living but by their
swords; and when no one will employ them, what can they do? What could
I have done myself, beau sire, if your noble valour had not induced
you to take me into your train? All the money I had got in the wars
was spent; and I must have turned routier, or starved."
"But would you say, fellow, that you have been a coterel?" demanded De
Coucy, eyeing him from head to foot, as a man might be supposed to do
on finding himself unexpectedly in company with a wolf, and
discovering that it was a much more civilised sort of animal than he
expected.
"I will not deny, beau sire," replied Jodelle, "that I once commanded
two hundred as good free lances as ever served king Richard."
"Where are they now?" demanded De Coucy, with some degree of growing
interest in the man to whom he spoke. "Are they dispersed? What has
become of them?"
"I do not well know, beau sire," replied the coterel. "When Peter
Gourdun's arblast set Richard, the lion-hearted, on the same long,
dark journey that he had given to so many others himself, I quarrelled
with count Mercader, under whom I served. Richard with his dying
breath, as you have doubtless heard, fair sir, ordered the man
Gourdun, who had killed him, to be spared and set free; and Mercader
promised to obey: but, no sooner was king Richard as cold as king
Pepin, than Mercader had Gourdun tied hand and foot to the harrow of
the drawbridge of Chaluz, and saw him skinned alive with his own
eyes."
"Cruel villain!" cried De Coucy.
"Ay! fair knight," rejoined the coterel. "I ventured to say that he
was disobedient as a soldier, as well as cruel as a knight; and that
he ought to have obeyed the king's commands, just as much after he was
dead, as if he had lived to see them obeyed. What will you have? There
were plenty to tell Mercader what I said:--there were high words
followed; and I left the camp as soon as peace was trumpeted. I had
saved some money, and hoped to buy a haubert feof under some noble
lord; but, as evil fortune would have it, I met with a _menestrandie_,
consisting of the chief _menestrel_, and four or five jongleurs and
glee-maidens; and never did they leave me till all I had was nearly
gone: what lasted, kept me a year at Besançon; after which I was glad
enough to engage myself for hire, to ride your horses from Vic le
Comte to Paris."
"But your troop!" said De Coucy. "Have you never heard any news of all
your men?"
"I have heard, through one of the minstrels," said the coterel, "that
soon after I was gone, they repented and would not take service with
king John, as they had at first proposed; but came to offer themselves
to the noble king Philip of France, who, however, being at peace,
would not entertain them; and that they are now roaming about, seeking
some noble baron who will give them protection, and lead them where
they may gain both money and a good name."
"By the rood! they want the last, perhaps, more than the first,"
replied De Coucy, turning to enter the château.
The coterel's brow darkened, and he set his teeth hard, feeling the
head of his dagger as he followed the knight, as if his hand itched to
draw it and strike De Coucy from behind; which indeed he might easily
have done, and with fatal effect, at the spot where the haubert ending
left his throat and collar bare.
It is not improbable that Jodelle would have yielded without
hesitation to the temptation of opportunity, especially as his escape
over the drawbridge into the wood might have been effected in an
instant; but he saw clearly that his words had made an impression upon
the knight. For the moment indeed they seemed to produce no
determinate result, yet it was evident that whenever he found a
fitting opportunity, it would be easy to re-awaken the ideas to which
he had already given birth, and by suggesting a very slight link of
connection, cause De Coucy to make the application to himself.
One reason, perhaps, why very prudent men are often not so successful
as rash ones, may be that, even in the moment of consideration,
opportunity is lost. While the coterel still held his hand upon his
dagger, De Coucy's squire, Hugo de Barre, approached to tell the young
châtelain that his seven vassals--the poor remains of hundreds--were
very willing to ride against the cotereaux, though such was no part of
their actual tenure; and that, as soon as they could don their armour
and saddle their horses, they would be up at the castle. They promised
also to bring with them all the armed men they could get to aid them,
in the towns and villages in the neighbourhood, not one of which had
escaped without paying some tribute to the dangerous tenants of the
young knight's woods.
In little less than an hour, De Coucy found himself at the head of
near one hundred men; and, confident in his own powers both of mind
and body, he waited not for many others that were still hastening to
join him; but, giving his banner to the wind, set forth to attack the
banditti, in whatever numbers he might find them.
It were uninteresting to detail all the measures that De Coucy took to
ensure that no part of the forests should remain unsearched;
especially as we already know, that his perquisitions were destined to
be fruitless. Nor is it necessary to dwell upon the means that the
coterel employed to draw the young knight and his followers, without
seeming to do so, towards the spot which his companions had so lately
evacuated.
De Coucy, by nature, was not suspicious; but yet his eye very
naturally strayed, from time to time, to the face of Jodelle, whose
fellow feeling for the cotereaux had been so openly expressed in the
morning; and, as they approached the former halting-place of the
freebooters, he remarked somewhat of a smile upon his lip.
"Ha!" said he, in an under voice, at the same time turning his horse
and riding up to him. "What means that smile, sir Brabançois?"
Jodelle's reply was ready. "It means, sir knight, that I can help you,
and I will; for even were these my best friends, the laws by which we
are ruled bind me to render you all service against them, on having
engaged with you.--Do you see that broken bough? Be you sure it means
something. The men you seek for are not far off."
"So, my good friend," said De Coucy, "methinks you must have exercised
the trade of Brabançois in the green wood, as well as in the tented
field, to know so well all the secret signs of these gentry's hiding
places."
"I have laid many an ambush in the green wood," replied Jodelle
undauntedly; "and the signs that have served me for that may well lead
me to trace others."
"Here are foot-marks, both of horse and foot," cried Hugo de Barre,
"and lately trodden too, for scarce a fold of the moss has risen
since."
"Coming or going?" cried De Coucy, spurring up to the spot.
"Both, my lord," replied the squire. "Here are hoof marks all ways."
Without wasting time in endeavouring to ascertain which traces were
the last imprinted, De Coucy took such precautions as the scantiness
of his followers permitted for ensuring that the cotereaux did not
make their escape by some other outlet; and then boldly plunged in on
horseback, following through the bushes, as well as he could, the
marks that the band had left behind them when they decamped. He was
not long in making his way to the open space, surrounded with huts,
which we have before described. The state of the whole scene at once
showed, that it had been but lately abandoned; though the unroofing of
the hovels evinced that its former tenants entertained no thought of
making it any more their dwelling-place.
In the centre of the opening, however, stood the staff of a lance, on
the end of which was fixed a scroll of parchment, written in very fair
characters to the following effect:--
"Sire de Coucy! hearing of your return to your lands, we leave them
willingly--not because we fear you, or any man, but because we respect
your knightly prowess, and would not willingly stand in deadly fight
against one of the best knights in France."
"By St. Jerome! the knaves are not without their courtesy!" exclaimed
De Coucy. "Well, now they are off my land, God speed them!"
"Where the devil did they get the parchment?" muttered Jodelle to
himself:--and thus ended the expedition with two exclamations that did
not slightly mark the age.