Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock (large screen ebook reader txt) 📗

the earl, “did you give your love to the Earl of Huntingdon, whose lands touch the Ouse and the Trent, or to Robert Fitz-Ooth, the son of his mother?”

“Neither to the earl nor his earldom,” answered Matilda firmly, “but to Robert Fitz-Ooth and his love.”

“That I well knew,” said the earl; “and though the ceremony be incomplete, we are not the less married in the eye of my only saint, our Lady, who will yet bring us together. Lord Fitzwater, to your care, for the present, I commit your daughter.—Nay, sweet Matilda, part we must for a while; but we will soon meet under brighter skies, and be this the seal of our faith.”

He kissed Matilda’s lips, and consigned her to the baron, who glowered about him with an expression of countenance that showed he was mortally wroth with somebody; but whatever he thought or felt he kept to himself. The earl, with a sign to his followers, made a sudden charge on the soldiers, with the intention of cutting his way through. The soldiers were prepared for such an occurrence, and a desperate skirmish succeeded. Some of the women screamed, but none of them fainted; for fainting was not so much the fashion in those days, when the ladies breakfasted on brawn and ale at sunrise, as in our more refined age of green tea and muffins at noon. Matilda seemed disposed to fly again to her lover, but the baron forced her from the chapel. The earl’s bowmen at the door sent in among the assailants a volley of arrows, one of which whizzed past the ear of the abbot, who, in mortal fear of being suddenly translated from a ghostly friar into a friarly ghost, began to roll out of the chapel as fast as his bulk and his holy robes would permit, roaring “Sacrilege!” with all his monks at his heels, who were, like himself, more intent to go at once than to stand upon the order of their going. The abbot, thus pressed from behind, and stumbling over his own drapery before, fell suddenly prostrate in the door-way that connected the chapel with the abbey, and was instantaneously buried under a pyramid of ghostly carcasses, that fell over him and each other, and lay a rolling chaos of animated rotundities, sprawling and bawling in unseemly disarray, and sending forth the names of all the saints in and out of heaven, amidst the clashing of swords, the ringing of bucklers, the clattering of helmets, the twanging of bow-strings, the whizzing of arrows, the screams of women, the shouts of the warriors, and the vociferations of the peasantry, who had been assembled to the intended nuptials, and who, seeing a fair set-to, contrived to pick a quarrel among themselves on the occasion, and proceeded, with staff and cudgel, to crack each other’s skulls for the good of the king and the earl. One tall friar alone was untouched by the panic of his brethren, and stood steadfastly watching the combat with his arms a-kembo, the colossal emblem of an unarmed neutrality.

At length, through the midst of the internal confusion, the earl, by the help of his good sword, the staunch valour of his men, and the blessing of the Virgin, fought his way to the chapel-gate—his bowmen closed him in—he vaulted into his saddle, clapped spurs to his horse, rallied his men on the first eminence, and exchanged his sword for a bow and arrow, with which he did old execution among the pursuers, who at last thought it most expedient to desist from offensive warfare, and to retreat into the abbey, where, in the king’s name, they broached a pipe of the best wine, and attached all the venison in the larder, having first carefully unpacked the tuft of friars, and set the fallen abbot on his legs.

The friars, it may be well supposed, and such of the king’s men as escaped unhurt from the affray, found their spirits a cup too low, and kept the flask moving from noon till night. The peaceful brethren, unused to the tumult of war, had undergone, from fear and discomposure, an exhaustion of animal spirits that required extraordinary refection. During the repast, they interrogated Sir Ralph Montfaucon, the leader of the soldiers, respecting the nature of the earl’s offence.

“A complication of offences,” replied Sir Ralph, “superinduced on the original basis of forest-treason. He began with hunting the king’s deer, in despite of all remonstrance; followed it up by contempt of the king’s mandates, and by armed resistance to his power, in defiance of all authority; and combined with it the resolute withholding of payment of certain moneys to the abbot of Doncaster, in denial of all law; and has thus made himself the declared enemy of church and state, and all for being too fond of venison.” And the knight helped himself to half a pasty.

“A heinous offender,” said a little round oily friar, appropriating the portion of pasty which Sir Ralph had left.

“The earl is a worthy peer,” said the tall friar whom we have already mentioned in the chapel scene, “and the best marksman in England.”

“Why this is flat treason, brother Michael,” said the little round friar, “to call an attainted traitor a worthy peer.”

“I pledge you,” said brother Michael. The little friar smiled and filled his cup. “He will draw the long bow,” pursued brother Michael, “with any bold yeoman among them all.”

“Don’t talk of the long bow,” said the abbot, who had the sound of the arrow still whizzing in his ear: “what have we pillars of the faith to do with the long bow?”

“Be that as it may,” said Sir Ralph, “he is an outlaw from this moment.”

“So much the worse for the law then,” said brother Michael. “The law will have a heavier miss of him than he will have of the law. He will strike as much venison as ever, and more of other game. I know what I say: but basta: Let us drink.”

“What other game?” said the little friar. “I hope he won’t poach among our partridges.”

“Poach! not he,” said brother Michael: “if he wants your partridges, he will strike them under your nose (here’s to you), and drag your trout-stream for you on a Thursday evening.”

“Monstrous! and starve us on fast-day,” said the little friar.

“But that is not the game I mean,” said brother Michael.

“Surely, son Michael,” said the abbot, “you do not mean to insinuate that the noble earl will turn freebooter?”

“A man must live,” said brother Michael, “earl or no. If the law takes his rents and beeves without his consent, he must take beeves and rents where he can get them without the consent of the law. This is the lex talionis.”

“Truly,” said Sir Ralph, “I am sorry for the damsel: she seems fond of this wild runagate.”

“A mad girl, a mad girl,” said the little friar.

“How a mad girl?” said brother Michael. “Has she not beauty, grace, wit, sense, discretion, dexterity, learning, and valour?”

“Learning!” exclaimed the little friar; “what has a woman to do with learning? And valour! who ever heard a woman commended for valour? Meekness and mildness, and softness, and gentleness, and tenderness, and humility, and obedience to her husband, and faith in her confessor, and domesticity, or, as learned doctors call it, the faculty of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling, and preserving, and