Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=PfdLAAAAcAAJ
(the Bavarian State Library)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
THE WOODMAN;
A ROMANCE
OF
THE TIMES OF RICHARD III.
BY G. P. R. JAMES.
AUTHOR OF "DARNLEY," "THE SMUGGLER," "THE CONVICT," "MARGARET GRAHAM,"
"THE FORGERY," ETC.
PARIS,
A. AND W. GALIGNANI AND Co., BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY,
RUE VIVIENNE, No. 18. QUAI MALAQUAIS, No. 3.
1849
THE WOODMAN;
A ROMANCE OF THE TIMES OF RICHARD III.
BY G. P. R. JAMES.
CHAPTER I.
Of all the hard-working people on the earth, there are none so
serviceable to her neighbours as the moon. She lights lovers and
thieves. She keeps watch-dogs waking. She is a constant resource to
poets and romance-writers. She helps the compounders of almanacks
amazingly. She has something to do with the weather, and the tides,
and the harvest; and in short she has a finger in every man's pie, and
probably more or less effect upon every man's brain. She is a charming
creature in all her variations. Her versatility is not the offspring
of caprice; and she is constant in the midst of every change.
I will have a moon, say what you will, my dear Prebend; and she shall
more or less rule every page of this book.
There was a sloping piece of ground looking to the south east, with a
very small narrow rivulet running at the bottom. On the opposite side
of the stream was another slope, as like the former as possible, only
looking in the opposite direction. Titian, and Vandyke, and some other
painters, have pleased themselves with depicting, in one picture, the
same face in two or three positions; and these two slopes looked
exactly like the two profiles of one countenance. Each had its little
clumps of trees scattered about. Each had here and there a hedgerow,
somewhat broken and dilapidated; and each too had towards its northern
extremity a low chalky bank, through which the stream seemed to have
forced itself, in those good old times when rivers first began to go
on pilgrimages towards the sea, and, like many other pilgrims that we
wot of made their way through all obstacles in a very unceremonious
manner.
Over these two slopes about the hour of half past eleven, post
meridian, the moon was shining with a bright but fitful sort of
splendour; for ever and anon a light fleecy cloud, like a piece of
swansdown borne by the wind, would dim the brightness of her rays, and
cast a passing shadow on the scene below. Half an hour before, indeed,
the radiant face of night's sweet queen had been veiled by a blacker
curtain, which had gathered thick over the sky at the sun's decline;
but, as the moon rose high, those dark vapours became mottled with
wavy lines of white, and gradually her beams seemed to drink them up.
It may be asked if those two sloping meadows, with their clumps of
trees, and broken hedgerows, and the little stream flowing on between
them, was all that the moonlight showed? That would depend upon where
the eye of the observer was placed. Near the lower part of the valley,
formed by the inclination of the land, nothing else could be
perceived; but walk half way up towards the top, on either side, and
the scene was very much altered. Gradually rising, as the eye rose,
appeared, stretching out beyond the chalky banks to the north, through
which the rivulet came on, a large-grey indistinct mass stretching all
along from east to west, the rounded lines of which, together with
some misty gaps, taking a blueish white tint in the moonlight, showed
it to be some ancient forest, lying at the distance probably of two or
three miles from the spot first mentioned.
But there were other objects displayed by the moonlight; for as those
soft clouds, sweeping rapidly past, varied her light, and cast bright
gleams or grey shadows on the ground, every here and there, especially
on the south western slope, a brilliant spot would sparkle forth,
flashing back the rays; and a nearer look showed naked swords, and
breast-plates, and casques, while every now and then, under the
increasing light, that which seemed a hillock took the form of a horse
or of a human being, lying quietly on the green turf, or cast
motionless down beneath a hedge or an old hawthorn tree.
Were they sleeping there in that dewy night? Ay, sleeping that sleep
which fears not the blast, nor the tempest nor the dew, which the
thunder cannot break, and from which no trumpet but one shall ever
rouse the sleeper.
From sunset till that hour, no living thing, unless it were fox or
wolf, had moved upon the scene. The battle was over, the pursuers
recalled, the wounded removed; the burial of the dead, if it was to be
cared for at all, postponed till another day; and all the fierce and
base passions which are called forth by civil contest had lain down to
sleep before the hour of which I speak. Even the human vulture, which
follows on the track of warring armies to feed upon the spoils of the
dead, had gorged itself upon that field, and left the rich arms and
housings to be carried away on the morning following.
The fiercer and the baser passions, I have said, now slept; but there
were tenderer affections which woke, and through that solemn and sad
scene, with no light but that of the moon, with no sound but that of
the sighing wind, some four or five persons were seen wandering about,
half an hour before midnight. Often, as they went, they bent down at
this spot or at that, and gazed at some object on the ground.
Sometimes one of them would kneel, and twice they turned over a dead
body which had fallen with the face downwards. For more than an hour
they went on, pausing at times to speak to each other, and then
resuming their examination--I know not whether to call it search; for
certainly they seemed to find nothing if they did search, although
they left hardly a square yard of the whole field unexplored.
It was nearly one o'clock on the following morning, when with slow
steps they took their way over the rise; and the next moment the sound
of horses' feet going at a quick pace broke the silence. That sound,
in the absence of every other noise, might be heard for nearly ten
minutes; and then all was stillness and solitude once more.