In the days that followed, it seemed the cruse of contentment would
never run dry, and I, foolish I, thought angry destiny had misled me,
and that these green Saxon glades were to witness the final ending of
my story. Vain hope! Illusive expectation! The hand of fate was even
then raised to strike!
In that pleasant harborage, outside the ken of ambition, and beyond the
limits of avarice, surrounded by almost impenetrable mazes of forest
land, life was delightful indeed. The sun shone yellow and big in those
early days upon our oak-crowned hillocks--sometimes I doubt if it is
ever so warm and ruddy now--and December storms told mightily in praise
of the great Yule fires wherewith we defied the winter cold. In the
summer time, when the sunny Saxon orchards sheltered the herds of kine
in their flickering shadows, and the great droves of black swine lay
a-basking among the ferns on the distant hangers, we lived more out of
doors than in. Editha then would bring out under the oaks the little
ruddy-cheeked Gurth, and set him upon my knee, that I might cut him
reed whistles or bows and arrows, while the flaxen-haired Agitha played
about her mother, tuning her pretty prattle to the merry clatter of the
distaff and the wheel.
In the winter the blaze that went leaping and crackling from our
hearthstone shone golden upon the hair of those little ones as they
sat wide-eyed by me, and saw among the ruddy embers the white horse of
Hengist and the banner of his brother winning these fertile vales for
a noble Saxon realm. Never was there a better Saxon than I! And when
I told of Harold, and softened to those tender ears the story of his
dying, the bright drops of sympathy stood in my small maiden’s eyes,
while Gurth’s flashed hatred of the false Norman and scorn of foreign
tyrants. Under such circumstances it will readily be understood that
I ought to have had little wish to draw weapons again or bestride the
good charger growing so gross and sleek in his stall all this long
peace time.
And yet the silken meshes of felicity were irksome against all reason,
and I would grow weary of so much good fortune, finding my pretty
deckings and raiment heavier--more burdensome wear--than ever was
martial harness. My fair Saxon wife noticed these moods, and strove
to mend them. She would take me out to the hawking, were I never so
gloomy, and then I would envy the wild haggards of the rocks who got
their living from day to day in the free mid air, and asked no favor
of either gods or men. Or, perhaps, she would make revelries upon the
level green before her homestead, and thither would come all the fools
and pedlers, all the bear-baiters, somersaulters, and wrestlers of the
shire. But I was not to be pleasured so, and I slew the bear in single
combat, and tossed, vindictive, the somersaulters over the hucksters’
stalls, and broke the ribs in the wrestlers’ sides--till none would
play with me, and all of the people murmured. Then, of a night, Editha
got the best gleemen in Mercia to sing to me, and when they sang of
peace, and sheep and orchards, or each praised his leman’s moonlike
eyes and slender middies, I would not listen. Nor was it better when
they tuned their strings to martial ditties, for that doubled my
malady, since then their rhyming stirred my soul to new unrest, making
worse that which they sought to cure.
I sometimes think it was all this to-do which brought Voewood under
Norman notice. But, perhaps, it was the slow and steady advance of the
invaders’ power percolating like a rising tide into all the recesses
of the land which drew us into the fatal circle of the despoilers, and
not my waywardness. Be this as it may, the result was the same.
Over to the northward, a score of miles away, where the great road
ran east, we heard from wandering strollers the Normans were passing
daily. Then, later, there came in the news-budget of a Flemish pedler
tidings that the hungry foreigners had licked up all the fat meadows
around the nearest town, had hung its aldermen over the walls, and
built a tower and dungeon (after their wont) in the middle of it. Yes!
and these messengers of ill omen said there were left no men of note
or Saxon blood to uphold the English cause--there was no proper speech
in England but the Norman--there was no way of wearing a tunic but
the Norman--nothing now to swear by but by Our Lady of Tours and Holy
St. Bridget--all Saxon wives were in danger of kissing--and all Saxon
abbots were become barefooted monks!
Never was a country turned inside out so soon or quietly; and as I
looked over our wide, fair meadows, and upon my sweet girl and her
flaxen little ones, and thought how already for her I had risked my
life, I could not help wondering how soon I might have to venture it
again.
On apace came the outer conquest into our inner peace. Towns and burghs
went down, and the hungry flames of lust and avarice fed upon what they
destroyed. All the vales and hills the swords of Hengist and Horsa
had won, and baptized with foemen’s blood, in the mighty names of old
Norsemen and Valhalla, were being christened anew to suit a mincing,
latter tongue. Thane and franklin uncapped them at the roadside to
these steel-bound swarms of ruthless spoilers, and nothing was sacred,
neither deed nor covenant, neither having nor holding, which ran
counter to the wishes of the western scourges of our English weakness.
When I thought of all this I was extraordinarily ill at ease, and,
before I could settle upon how best to meet the danger, it came upon
us, and we were overwhelmed. Briefly, it was thus: About twelve years
after the battle where Harold had died, the Norman leader had, we
heard, taken it into his head to poll us like cattle, to find the sum
and total of our feus and lands, our serfs and orchards, and even of
our very selves! Now, few of us Saxons but felt this was a certain
scheme to tax and oppress us even more severely than the people had
been oppressed in the time of St. Dunstan. Besides this, our free
spirits rose in scorn of being counted and weighed and mulcted by
plebeian emissaries of the usurper, so we murmured loud and long.
And those thanes who complained the bitterest were hanged by the
derisive Normans on their own kitchen beams--on the very same hooks
where they cured their mighty sides of pork--while those who complied
but falsely with the assessor’s commands were robbed of wife and
heritage, children and lands, and shackled with the brass collar of
serfdom, or turned out to beg their living on the wayside and sue the
charity of their own dependants. Whether we would thus be hanged or
outcast, or whether we would humble us to this hateful need, writing
ourselves and our serfs down in the great “Doom’s Day” book, all had to
choose.
For my own part, after much debating, and for the sake of those who
looked to me, I had determined to do what was required--and then, if
it might be, to bring all the Saxon gentlemen together--to raise these
English shires upon the Normans, and with fire and sword revoke our
abominable indenture of thraldom. But, alas! my hasty temper and my
inability to stomach an affront in any guise undid my good resolutions.
Well, this mighty book was being compiled far and wide, we heard,
in every shire: there were some men of good standing base enough to
countenance it, and, taking the name of the King’s justiciaries, they
got together shorn monks--shaveling rascals who did the writing and
computing--with reeves hungry for their masters’ woodlands, and many
other lean forsworn villains. This jury of miscreants went round from
hall to hall, from manor to manor, with their scrips and pens and
parchment, until all the land was being gathered into the avaricious
Norman’s tax roll.
They cast their greedy eyes at last on sunny, sleepy Voewood, though,
indeed, I had implored every deity, old or new, I could recall that
they might overlook it; and one day their hireling train of two score
pikemen came ambling down the glades with a fat Abbot--a Norman
rascal--at their head, and pulled up at our doorway.
“Hullo!” says the monk. “Whose house is this?”
“Mine,” I said gruffly, with a secret fancy that there would be some
heads broken before the census was completed.
“And who are you?”
“The Master of Voewood.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else!”
“Well, you are not over-civil, anyhow, my Saxon churl,” said the man of
scrolls and goose-quills.
“Frankly,” I answered, “Sir Monk, the smaller civility you look for
from me to-day the less likely you are to be disappointed. Out with
that infernal catechism of yours, and have done, and move your black
shadows from my porch.”
At this the clerk shrugged his shoulders--no doubt he did not look to
be a very welcome guest--and coughed and spit, and then unfurled in
our free sunshine a great roll of questions, and forthwith proceeded to
expound them in bastard Latin, smacking of moldy cathedral cells and
cloister pedantry.
“Now, mark me, Sir Voewood, and afterward answer truly in everything.
Here, first, I will read you the declaration of your neighbor, the
worthy thane Sewin, in order that you may see how the matter should
go, and then afterward I will question you yourself,” and, taking
a parchment from a junior, he began: “Here is what Sewin told us:
_Rex tenet in Dominio Sohurst; de firma Regis Edwardi fuit. Tunc se
defendebat pro 17 Hidis; nihil geldaverunt. Terra est 16 Carucatæ;
in Dominio sunt 2æ Carucatæ, et 24 Villani, et 10 Bordarij cum 20
Carucis. Ibi Ecclesia quam Willelmus tenet de Rege cum dimidia Hida in
Elemosina, Silva 40 Porcorum et ipsa est in parco Regis----_”
But hardly had my friend got so far as this in displaying the
domesticity of Sewin the thane, when there broke a loud uproar from
the rear of Voewood, and the tripping Latin came to a sudden halt as
there emerged in sight a rabble of Saxon peasants and Norman prickers
freely exchanging buffets. In the midst of them was our bailiff, a
very stalwart fellow, hauling along and beating as he came a luckless
soldier in the foreign garb just then so detestable to our eyes.
“Why,” I said, “what may all this be about? What has the fellow done,
Sven, that your Saxon cudgel makes such friends with his Norman cape?”
“What? Why, the graceless yonker, not content with bursting open the
buttery door and setting all these scullion men-at-arms drinking my
lady’s ale and rioting among her stores, must needs harry the maidens,
scaring them out of their wits, and putting the whole place in an
uproar! As I am an honest man, there has been more good ale spilled
this half-hour, more pottery broken, more linen torn, more roasts
upset, more maids set screaming, than since the Danes last came round
this way and pillaged us from roof to cellar!”
“Why, you fat Saxon porker!” cried the leader of the troops, pushing to
the front, “what are you good for but for pillage? Drunken serf! And
were it not for the politic heart of yonder King, I and mine would make
you and yours sigh again for your Danish ravishers, looking back from
our mastery to their red fury with sickly longing! Out on you! Unhand
the youth, or by St. Bridget, there will be a fat carcass for your
crows to peck at!” and he put his hand upon his dagger.
Thereon I stepped between them, and, touching my jeweled belt, said:
“Fair Sir, I think the youth has had no less than his deserts, and as
for the Voewood crows they like Norman carrion even better than Saxon
flesh.”
The soldier frowned, as well as he might, at my retort, but before we
could draw, as assuredly we would have done, the monk pushed in between
us, and the athelings of the commission, who had orders to carry out
their work with peace and despatch as long as that were possible,
quieted their unruly rabble, and presently a muttering, surly order was
restored between the glowering crowds.
“Now,” said the scribe propitiatingly, anxious to get through with
his task, “you have heard how amiably Sewin answered. Of you I will
ask a question or two in Saxon, since, likely enough, you do not know
the blessed Latin.” (By the soul of Hengist, though, I knew it before
the stones of that confessor’s ancient monastery were hewn from their
native rock!) “Answer truly, and all shall be well with you. First,
then, how much land hast thou?”
But I could not stand it. My spleen was roused against these braggart
bullies, and, throwing discretion to the wind, I burst out, “Just so
much as serves to keep me and mine in summer and winter!”
“And how many plows?”
“So many as need to till our cornlands.”
“Rude boar!” said the monk, backing off into the group of his friends,
and frowning from that vantage in his turn. “How many serfs acknowledge
your surly leadership?”
“Just so many,” I said, boiling over, “as can work the plows and reap
the corn, and keep the land from greedy foreign clutches! There, put up
your scroll and begone. I will not answer you! I will not say how many
pigeons there are in our dovecotes--how many fowls roost upon their
perches--how many earthen pots we have, or how many maids to scrub
them! Get you back to the Conqueror: tell him I deride and laugh at him
for the second time. Say I have lived a longish life, and never yet saw
the light of that day when I profited by humility. Say I, the swart
stranger who stabbed his ruffian courtier and galloped away with the
white maid, Editha of Voewood--I, who plucked that flower from the very
saddle-bow of his favorite, and thundered derisive through his first
camp there on the eastern downs--say, even I will find a way to keep
and wear her, in scorn of all that he can do! Out with you--begone!”
And they went, for I was clearly in no mood to be dallied with, while
behind me the serfs and vassals were now mustering strongly, an
angry array armed with such weapons as they could snatch up in their
haste, and wanting but a word or look to fall upon the little band of
assessors and slay them as they stood. Thus we won that hour--and many
a long day had we to regret the victory.
My luck was against me that time. I hoped, so far as there was any
hope or reason in my thoughtless anger, to have had a space to rouse
the neighboring thanes and their vassals upon these our tyrants,
and I had dreamed, so combustible was the country just then, somehow
perhaps the flame would have spread far and wide. I saw that abominable
thing, Rebellion, for once linked hand in hand with her sweet rival,
Patriotism, I saw the red flames of vengeance in the quarrel I had
made my own sweeping through the land and lapping up with its hundred
tongues every evidence of the spoilers! Yes! and even I had fancied
that, as there were no true Saxon Princes for our English throne, there
was still Editha, my wife; and if there were no swords left to fence a
throne so filled, yet there was the sword of Phra the Phœnician! Vain
fantasy! The faces of the Fates were averted.
Those hateful inquisitors had not gone many hours’ journey northward,
when, as ill-luck would have it, they fell in with a Norman Captain,
Godfrey de Boville, and two hundred men-at-arms, marching to garrison
a western city. To these they told their tale, and, ever ready for
pillage and bloodshed, the band halted, and then turned into the
woodlands where we had our lair.
The sun was low that afternoon when an affrighted herdsman came running
in to me with the news that he knew not how many soldiers were in the
glades beyond. And before he could get his breath or quite tell his
hasty message their prickers came out of the wood--the gallant Norman
array (whose glitter has since grown dearer to me than the shine of
a mistress’ eyes) rode from under our oak-trees, the banners and
bannerets fluttered upon the evening wind--their trumpets brayed until
our very rafters echoed to that warlike sound--the level twilight rays
flashed back from those serried ranks and the steel panoply of the
warriors in as goodly a martial show as ever, to that day, I had seen.
What need I tell you of the negotiations which followed while this
silver cloud, charged with ruin and cruelty, hung on the dusky velvet
side of the twilight hill above us? What need be said of how I swore
between my teeth at the chance which had brought this swarm hither in
a day rather than in the week I had hoped for, or how my heart burned
with smothered anger and pride when we had to tamely answer their
haughty summons to unconditional surrender?
Yet by one saving clause they did not attack us at once. Only to me was
it clear how utterly impossible was it with the few rugged serfs at
my command to defend even for one single onset that great straggling
house against their overwhelming force. To them our strength was quite
unknown; this and the gathering darkness tempted the Norman to put
off the attack until the daylight came again, and the respite was our
saving. It was not a saving upon which to dwell long, for ’twas no more
glorious than the retreat of a wolf from his hiding-place when the
shepherds fire the brake behind him.
All along the edge of the hill their watch-fires presently twinkled
out, and as Editha and Sven the Strong came to me in gloomy conference
upon the turret we could see the soldiers pass now and again before
the blaze, we could hear their laughter and the snatches of their
drinking-song, the hoarse cry of the wardens, and the champing and
whinny of the chargers picketed under the starlight in lines upon our
free Saxon turf. And for Sven and all his good comrade hinds we knew
to-morrow would bring the riveting of new and heavier collars than any
they had worn as yet. For me and my contumacy, though I feared it not,
there could be naught but the swift absolution of a Norman sword; while
for her--for her, that gentle, stately lady to whose pale sweetness
my rough, unworthy pen can do no sort of justice--there was nameless
degradation and half a wandering bully’s tent.
The serf suggested, with his rugged northern valor, we should set light
to the hall and, with the women and children in our midst, sally out
and cut a way to freedom, and I knew the path he would choose would
have been through the hostile camp. But his lady suggested better. She
proposed both hind and bondsmen should steal away in the darkness,
and, since valor here was hopeless, disperse over the countryside, and
there, secure in their humbleness, await our future returning. We, on
the other hand, would follow them through the friendly shadows that
lay deep and nigh to the house on the unguarded side, and then turn us
to a monastery some few miles away, where, if we could reach it, in
Sanctuary and the care of one of the few remaining Saxon abbots, we
might bide our chance, or at least make terms with our conquerors.
So it was settled, and soon I had all those kind, shaggy villains
in the dining-hall standing there uncapped upon the rushes in the
torchlight, and listening in melancholy silence to the plan, and then
presently, with the despatch our situation needed, they were slipping
in twos and threes out of the little rearward portal and slinking off
to the thickets.
Presently our turn came, and as I stood gloomy and stern in that
voiceless, empty hall that was wont to be so bright and noisy,
fingering my itching dagger and scowling out of the lattice upon the
red gleam in the night air hanging over the Norman camp-fires, there
came the fall of my wife’s feet upon the stairway. In either hand she
had a babe, swaddled close up against the night air, and naught but
their bright wonder-brimming eyes showing as she hugged them tight
against her sides. For them, for them alone, the frown gave way, and I
stooped to that escape. We crept away, and Editha’s heart was torn at
leaving thus the hall where she had been born and reared, and when,
presently, in the shadows of the crowded oaks, she found all her slaves
and bondsmen in a knot to wish her farewell, the tears that had been
brooding long overflowed unrestrainedly.
Even I, who had dwelt among them but a space on my way from the further
world of history toward the unknown future, could not but be moved by
their uncouth love and loyalty. There were men there who had stood in
arms with her father when the cruel Danes had ravished these valleys
for a score of miles inland, and some who had grown with her in the
goodly love and faith of thane and servitor as long as she herself
had lived. These rugged fellows wept like children, called me father,
_klafod_, “bread bestower,” and pressed upon her in silent sorrow,
kissing her hands and the hem of her robe, and taking the little ones
from her arms, and pressing their rude unshaven faces to their rosebud
cheeks until I feared that Gurth or Agitha might cry out, or some wail
from that secret scene of sorrow would catch the ears of our watchful
foemen.
So, as gently as might be, I parted the weeping mistress and her
bondsmen, and set her upon a good horse Sven had stolen from the
paddock, and springing into the saddle of my own strong charger, gave
my broad jeweled belt to the Saxon that he might divide it among his
comrades, and, taking a long tough spear from his faithful hand, turned
northward with Editha upon our dangerous journey.
* * * * *
We stole along as quietly as might be for some distance in safety,
riding where the moss was deepest and the shadows thick, and then, just
when we were at the nearest to the Norman camp in the curve we were
making toward the monastery beyond, those ill-conditioned invaders set
up their evening trumpet-call. As the shrill notes came down into the
dim starlight glade, strong, clear, and martial in the evening quiet,
they thrilled that gallant old charger I had borrowed from the camp at
Hastings down to his inmost warlike fiber. He recognized the familiar
sound--mayhap it was the very trumpet-call which had been fodder and
stable to him for years--and, with ears pricked forward and feet that
beat the dewy turf in union to his pleasure, he whinnied loud and long!
Nothing it availed me to smite my hand upon my breast at this deadly
betrayal, or lay a warning finger upon his brave, unwitting, velvet
nozzle--luckless, accursed horse, the mischief was done! But yet, I
will not abuse him, for the grass grows green over his strong sleek
limbs, and right well that night he amended his error! Hardly had his
neigh gone into the stillness when the chargers in the camp answered
it, and in a moment the men-at-arms and squires by the nearest fire
were all on foot, and in another they had espied us and set up a shout
that woke the ready camp in a moment.
There was small time to think. I clapped my hand upon Editha’s bridle
rein and gave my own a shake, and away we went across the checkered
moonlight glade. But so close had we been that a bow-string or two
hummed in the Norman tents, and before we were fairly started I heard
the rustle of the shafts in the leaves overhead. It was more than
arrows we had to dread, and, turning my head for a moment ere we
plunged again into dark vistas of the forest road, there, sure enough,
was the pursuit streaming out after us, and gallant squires and knights
tumbling into their saddles and shouting and cheering as they came
galloping and glittering down behind us--a very pretty show, but a
dangerous one.
By the souls of St. Dunstan and his forty monks! but I could have
enjoyed that midnight ride had it not been for the pale, brave rider
at my side, and the little ones that lay fearfully a-nestling on our
saddle-bows. For hours the swift, keen gallop of our horses swallowed
the unseen ground in tireless rhythm--all through the night field and
coppice and hanger swept by us as we passed from glade to glade and
woodland to woodland--now ’twas a lonely forester’s hut that shone
for a moment in ghostly whiteness between the tree-stems with the
nightshine on its lifeless face, and anon we sped through droves of
Saxon swine, sleeping upon the roadway under their oak-trees, round
a muffled swineherd. And the great forest stags stayed the fraying
of their antlers against the tree-trunks in the dark coppices as we
flew by, and the startled wolf yelped and snarled upon our path as
our fleeting shadows overtook him; and then, there, ever behind, low,
remorseless, stern, came the murmuring hoofbeats of our pursuers, now
rising and now falling upon the light breath of the night-wind, but
ever, as our panting steeds strode shorter and shorter, coming nearer
and nearer, clearer and clearer.
Had this somber race, whereof Death held the stakes, continued so as
it began, straight on end, I do not think we could have got away. But
when we had ridden many an hour, and the heavy streaks of white foam
were marking Editha’s horse with dreadful suggestion, and his breath
was coming hot and husky through his wide red nostrils, for a moment or
two the sound of the pursuers stopped. Blessed respite. They had missed
the woodland road--but for all too short a space. We had hardly made
good four or five hundred yards of advantage when, terribly near to
us, sounded the call of one of their horsemen, and soon all the others
were in his footsteps again. This one, he who now led the pursuers by,
perhaps, a quarter of a mile, gained on us stride by stride, until I
could stand the thud of his horsehoofs on the turf behind no more.
“Here!” I said fiercely to Editha, “take Gurth,” and put him with his
sister in her arms, then, bidding them ride slowly forward, turned my
good charger and paced him slowly back toward the oncoming knight, with
stern anger smoldering in my heart.
There was a smooth, wide bit of grassy road between us in that center,
midnight Saxon forest. And never a gleam of light fell upon that
ancient thoroughfare; never the faintest, thin white finger of a star
pierced the black canopy of boughs overhead; it was as black as the
kennel of Cerberus, and as I sat my panting war-horse I could not see
my own hand stretched out before me--yet there, in that grim blackness,
I met the Norman lance to lance, and sent his spirit whirling into the
outer space!
I let him come within two hundred yards, then suddenly rose in my
stirrups and, shouting Harold’s war-cry, since I did not deign to fall
upon him unawares, “Out! Out! England! England!” awaited his answer. It
came in a moment, strange and inhuman in the black stillness, “Rou! Ha
Rou! Notre Dame!” and then--muttering between my tight-set teeth that
surely that road was the road to hell for one of us--I bent my head
down almost to my horse’s ears, drove the spurs into him, and, gripping
my long, keen spear, thundered back upon my unseen foeman. With a shock
that startled the browsing hinds a mile away, we were together. The
Norman spear broke into splinters athwart my body--but mine, more truly
held, struck him fair and full--I felt him like a great dead weight
upon it, I felt his saddle-girths burst and fly, and then, as my own
strong haft bent like a willow wand and snapped close by my hand, that
midnight rider and his visionary steed went crashing to the ground.
Bitterly I laughed as I turned my horse northward once more, and from
a black cavern-mouth on the hillside an owl echoed my grim merriment
with ghastly glee.
Well, the night was all but done, yet were we not out of the toils. A
little further on, Editha’s floundering steed gave out, and, just as we
saw the pale turrets of the monastery shining in the open a mile ahead
of us, the horse rolled over dead upon the grass and bracken.
“Quick, quick!” I said, “daughter of Hardicanute,” and the good Saxon
girl had passed the little ones to the pommel and put her own foot
upon my toe and sprang on to my saddle crupper sooner than it takes to
tell. Ah! and the nearer we came to our goal the closer seemed to be
the throb and beat of the pursuing hoofs behind. And many an anxious
time did I turn my head to watch the rogues closing with us, now ever
and anon in sight, and many a word of encouragement did I whisper to
the gallant charger whose tireless courage was standing us in such good
case.
Noble beast! right well had he atoned his mistake that evening, and in
a few minutes more we left the greenwood, and now he swept us over the
Abbot’s fat meadows, where the white morning mist was lying ghostly
in wreaths and wisps upon the tall wet grass, and then we staggered
into the foss and spurned the short turf, and so past the checkered
cloisters, and pulled up finally at a low postern door I had espied as
we approached the nearest wall of the noble Saxon monastery. Surely
never was a traveler in such a hurry to be admitted as I, and I beat
upon that iron-studded door with the knob of my dagger in a way which
must have been heard in every cell of that sacred pile.
“My friend,” said a reverend head which soon appeared at a little
window above, “is this not unseemly haste at such an hour, and my Lord
Abbot not yet risen to matins?”
“For the love of Heaven, father,” I said, “come down and let us in!”
for by this time the Normans were not a bowshot away, and it still
looked as if we might fall into their hands.
“Why,” said the unwotting monk, “no doubt the hospitality of St. Olaf’s
walls was never refused to weary strangers, but you must go round to
the lodge and rouse the porter there--truly he sleeps a little heavy,
but no doubt he will admit you eventually.”
“Sir Priest,” I shouted in my rage and fear as the good old fellow
went meandering on, “our need is past all nicety of etiquette! Here is
Editha of Voewood, the niece of your holy Abbot himself, and yonder are
they who would harry and take her. Come down, come down, or by the Holy
Rood our blood will forever stain your ungenerous lintel!”
By this time the horsemen were breasting the smooth green glacis that
led up to the monastery walls--half a dozen of them had outlived that
wild race--the reins were upon their smoking chargers’ necks, their
reeking spurs red and ruddy with their haste, the spattered clay
and loam of many a woodland rivulet checkering their horses to the
shoulders, and each rider as he came shouting and clapping his hands
upon the foam-speckled neck of these panting steeds that strained with
thundering feet to the last hundred yards of green sward and the prize
beyond.
Nearer and nearer they came, and my fair, tall Saxon wife put down her
little ones by the opening of the door and covered them with her skirt
as she turned her pale, white, tearless face to the primrose flush of
the morning. And I--with bitterness and despair in my heart--unsheathed
my Saxon sword and cast the scabbard fiercely to the ground, and stood
out before them--my bare and heaving breast a fair target for those
glittering oncoming Norman lances!
And then--just when that game was all but lost--there came the sweet
patter of sandaled feet within, bolt by bolt was drawn back; willing
hands were stretched out; the mother and her babes were dragged from
the steps--even my charger was swallowed by the friendly shelter, and
I myself was pulled back lastly--the postern slammed to, and, as the
great locks turned again, and the iron bars fell into their stony
sockets, we heard the Norman chargers’ hoofs ringing on the flagstones,
and the angry spear-heads rattling on the outer studs of that friendly
oaken doorway.
* * * * *
Thus was the gentle franklin saved; but little did I think in saving
her how long I was to lose her. I had but stabled my noble beast
down by the Abbot’s own palfrey, and fed and watered him with loving
gratitude, and then had gone to Editha and my own supper (waited on by
many a wondering, kindly one of these corded, russet Brothers), when
that strange fate of mine overtook me once again. I know not how it
was, but all on a sudden the world melted away into a shadowy fantasy,
my head sank upon the supper-board, and there--between the goodly Abbot
and the fair Saxon lady--I fell into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.