The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune by A. D. Crake (leveled readers TXT) 📗

not hear the trumpets?--that blast tells of their return together."

"Wilt thou grant me a chamber, that I may don meet apparel for the presence?"

"It is my duty; but of thy grace--tell me whom I entertain."

"The Lord of Aescendune, and patron of your branch house there."

The chamberlain bowed low, and turned to lead his guest within the precincts. The rowers cried "largesse," and the young noble threw them a handful of coin.

Soon Etienne was alone in a comfortable cell, and was attiring his person, a duty a Norman seldom neglected; nor did he despise the luxury of a bath, to the scorn of the un-laving natives. The Norman was the gentleman of the period, alike in etiquette, attire, and food.

And likewise, some of the most beautiful of the animal creation are the fiercest carnivora.

The abbot had put off his riding attire; he had clothed his feet in dainty slippers instead of sandals, and had thrown a soft robe around his monastic garb--contrasting strongly with the stern attire prescribed by St. Benedict, and he was about to descend to the hall, when the chamberlain in person told him of the arrival of Etienne.

"Bid him share our poor meal; we will hear no bad news till we have broken our fast; they sit ill on an empty stomach."

The chamberlain retired.

And there at the guest table in the refectory sat Etienne, and marvelled to see how well the ascetics fared. Yet there was refinement in their dishes; and there was little or no excess; they drank the light wines of France, not the heavier ale and mead of their predecessors.

The Latin grace said, they fell to. The joints of meat were passed round, the game, the fish, and each used his fingers in the place of forks, and then washed them in the finger glasses, which had some purpose then to serve, ere they waved them in the air, and then wiped them on delicate napkins.

The meal over, the abbot retired to his chamber, a pleasant room, overlooking the river, and there he took his seat in a cosy chair near the Gothic window, and sent for the visitor.

Etienne appeared; bent with the grace of youth, kissed the abbot's hand, and then standing before him, with all due modesty, waited to be addressed.

Such etiquette was exacted of those who had not yet won their spurs.

The abbot gave him a short benediction, a brief "Dens te custodiat fili," and quickly added, "I am told thou hast news for me of our little patrimony at Aescendune."

"The wolves have ravaged it, father; our own pious brethren are ejected; English swine root in its precincts."

The abbot coloured.

"Who has dared to do this impiety?" he thundered.

"The English rebels and outlaws, who have long lain hidden in the woods, led by the son of the rebel lord who fell at Senlac."

"The brethren--are they safe?"

"They are on their journey hither; the saints have protected them--no thanks to the English."

"And how dared the stripling thou namest to do such deeds; where was thy father, the Baron?"

"He was foully slain in an ambush:" and Etienne, who strove to keep cool, could not restrain a strange quivering of the lips.

"Come, tell me all, my son; God comfort thee."

Etienne began his tale, and the reader will easily guess that Wilfred's character fared very badly at his hands--that without any wilful falsehood, of which indeed this proud young Norman was incapable, so distorted a version of the facts known to our readers was presented, that the abbot shuddered at the daring bloodthirstiness and impiety of one so young as this English lad.

"It is enough--thou shalt have audience with the king at once. I can obtain it for thee; God's justice shall not ever sleep, and William is His chosen instrument. Hark!"

The compline bell began to ring.

"William attends the service tonight. I will crave an audience for thee; meanwhile, compose thy thoughts for God's holy house. Come, my son, this is the way to the chapel."

If the reader has visited the old colleges in Oxford or Cambridge, he will easily conceive a fair idea of the general appearance of the abbey of Abingdon.

There were the same quadrangles (vulgarly called "quads"), the same cloisters, open to the air, but sheltered from sun and rain; which find their fairest modern example, perhaps, in Magdalene College, Oxen. The cells of the monks resembled in size and position the rooms of the undergraduates at the olden colleges, although they were far less luxuriously furnished.

Nor was the element of learning wanting. The Benedictines were indeed the scholars of Europe, and some hundred boys were educated, free of cost, at Abingdon--the cloisters in summer serving as their classrooms. And let me tell my schoolboy readers, the fare and the discipline were alike very hard.

But the chapel in great abbeys--like the one we are writing about--resembled a cathedral rather than a college chapel. And he who has the general plan of a cathedral in his mind can easily imagine the abbey church of St. Mary's at Abingdon.

The choir was devoted to the monks alone; the nave and aisles apportioned to the laity; the side chapels contained altars dedicated to special saints, and occasional services.

Such was the building into which Etienne de Malville entered, not without religious awe, as the pealing organ--then recently introduced by the Normans--rolled its volume of sound through the vaulted aisles.

The monks were all in the choir, which was lighted by torches and tapers. In the nave a few laity of the town were scattered--here a knight or soldier, there a mechanic.

Suddenly, as Etienne took his place, the tread of many armed heels broke the silence, and penetrated up the aisle.

The sound ceased; those who caused it were already in their chosen places, and the monks had begun the Psalms, when Etienne heard a peculiarly stern and deep voice near at hand taking up the sacred words of Israel's royal singer, with which the worshipper seemed familiar.

Then, for the first time, he perceived that the Conqueror--the mightiest of earth's warriors--was he from whom the voice proceeded, kneeling without state in the midst of his subjects, lords and vassals, to join in the late evening service of the church {xix}.

CHAPTER XIX. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CONQUEROR.

The mighty Conqueror of England was the central figure of the age in which he lived--the greatest soldier of an age of soldiers, and not less statesman than warrior.

Born to a life of warfare, the Conquest had been but the culminating point of a career spent in the tented field--but on that one event he staked his all.

For had he been vanquished at Senlac there was no hope of flight; the English commanded the sea, while his suzerain of France, ever on the watch to regain those Norman dominions which Rollo had won, would have taken instant advantage of the loss of its military leaders to re-annex Normandy to the French crown, and must have succeeded.

Had William fallen in England the Norman name and glory would have perished at Hastings.

Doubtless, he felt how great was the stake he had placed at the hazard of the die, and having won it, he used it as his own.

Yet he was not all of stone. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler says of him--"He was mild to those good men who loved God, although stern beyond measure to those who resisted his will."

Hence the power which men like Lanfranc or Anselm had over him; and it must be added that his life was exemplary as a private individual, his honour unsullied, his purity unstained.

Stern was the race of which he was the head and the ruling spirit. Well does the old chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, say:

"God had chosen the Normans to humble the English nation, because He perceived that they were more fierce than any other people."

And we modern English must remember that we are the descendants of old English and Normans combined. They came to "high mettle" the blood of our race, and when the conquerors and the conquered were moulded into one people, the result was the Englishmen who won Crecy and Agincourt against overwhelming odds, whose very name was a terror to continental soldiery, as Froissart abundantly testifies.

Grieve as we may over the tyranny and wrong of the Conquest, England would never have been so great without it as she afterwards became.

Etienne knelt in the abbey chapel until the last worshippers had gone out, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a gentle voice said:

"The King awaits thee, my son, in the abbot's audience chamber."

In spite of his boldness, Etienne felt a strange tremor as he passed through the cloisters and approached the dreaded monarch.

But he himself belonged to the same stern race, and when the folding doors opened, and he saw the King seated in the abbot's chair, he had perfectly recovered his composure. With winning grace he bent the knee before his liege, and gazed into that face whose frown was death.

But it was not frowning now; the expression was almost paternal, for the Conqueror loved a gallant youth.

"Rise up, my son," he said; "the holy father here tells me you bear stirring news."

"My liege, he hath spoken rightly. I have to tell of rebellion and sacrilege; our English vassals have risen against us, and my brave father has fallen by their hands; our castle is in their holding, and they have driven the brethren of St. Benedict homeless from their monastery."

"And who has dared this deed?"

"Wilfred, son of the rebel who fell at Senlac."

"Wilfred of Aescendune! I remember the stripling when he sought his father's corpse on the battlefield, but had heard that he had lost his life in the fire which consumed the monastery."

"Nay, sire, he had fled to the rebels, and we doubt not now that he and the outlaws, with whom he found a home, fired the monastery, themselves, to cover his flight."

"Tell me, then, what could have driven him to so violent a course, and tell me truly; for some cause there must have been."

It must be remembered that, at this period, William had not given up all hope of reconciling the English to his rule.

"I know no cause, sire, save--"

"Save what?" said he sternly, for Etienne hesitated.

"My liege, the lad, whom your royal will made the heir to the lands my father had won by his services on the field of battle, never lost his sympathy with the rebel rout around, or all had perhaps been well; he struck me in defence of a churl whom I found stealing game, and I challenged him to fight."

"And did he shirk the contest? I should not have thought it of him."

"He ran away, sire, and was brought back; was sent to the monastery by my father for a time of penance as a punishment; the same night the building was burnt by the outlaws, as we have every reason to think by his connivance, since he joined them and became their head, while we all thought him dead."

"And how didst thou learn he yet lived?"

"By his actions; the outlaws under his command burnt our farms, slew our men in the woods, and not our common men only, whose loss might better be borne, but they murdered a noble youth, my fellow page, entrusted to my father's care, Louis de Marmontier; and finally, by the help of a false guide, they entrapped my father and his retainers into a marsh, which they set on fire, and all perished."

Etienne spoke these words with deep emotion, but still firmly and distinctly.

"Fear not, my son, thy father's death shall be avenged, or my sword has lost its power. Weep not for the dead--women weep, men avenge wrongs on the wrongdoer; but tell me, art thou certain of these facts? didst thou or any one else see this Wilfred at the head of the outlaws?"

"My liege, I saw him myself; I penetrated their fastnesses in the forest, and but narrowly escaped with life."

"And saw Wilfred of Aescendune?"

"Distinctly, my liege, almost face to face, in command of the rebels."

"And then, what happened after the death of thy father?"

"They issued from the woods, seized the castle--the few defenders left had fled to Warwick--and then summoned the whole neighbourhood to arms. The bale fires were blazing on every hill. The Count of Warwick bid me tell you, my liege, that he will hold his castle till aid arrives, but that he is powerless to check the wave of insurrection which is spreading over the country far and wide."

"It is well; our banner shall be unfurled and these English shall feel the lion's wrath, which they have provoked. Tomorrow is Ascension Day--the truce of God--on Friday we march. Meanwhile I commend thee to the abbot's hospitality; he will bring thee to the banquet tomorrow after the High Mass. Remember, a true warrior should be as devout in church as fearless in the field."

Etienne left the presence, assured that the death of his father would be speedily avenged, and