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

wind had arisen, and was howling in fitful gusts across the ensanguined plain of the dead; dark night gathered over the gloomy slopes, conquered at such lavish waste of human life--dark, but not silent; for in every direction arose the moans of the wounded and dying.

On the fatal hill, where the harvest of death had been thickest, the Conqueror had caused his ducal pavilion to be reared, just where Harold's standard had stood, and where the ruined altar of Battle Abbey stands now. They had cleared away the bodies to make room for the tent, but the ground was sodden with the blood of both Englishman and Norman.

The sounds of revelry issued from beneath those gorgeous hangings, and mocked the plaintive cries of the sufferers around.

"O Earth, Earth, such are thy rulers!" exclaimed a solemn voice. "To gratify one man's ambition, this scene disfigures thy surface, and mocks the image of God in man."

So spake a good monk, Norman although he was, who had followed Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, into England as his chaplain, selected because he could speak the English tongue--that warrior prelate, who in conjunction with Odo of Bayeux blessed the Conqueror's banners, and ministered in things sacred to the "pious" invaders.

He wandered, this good brother, from one dying sinner to another, absolving the penitent, and ministering to the parched lips of many a sufferer. His own long brown garment was stiff at the extremities with gore, but he heeded it not.

And at last, when he came to a heap of slain just where the Normans had first hewn their way through the English entrenchments, after the sham retreat had drawn away so many of their defenders, he was attracted by the sound of convulsive weeping.

There, kneeling beside the body of an English warrior, he saw a boy of some fourteen years, sobbing as if his young heart would break, while he addressed the slain one with many a plaintive cry.

"Father, wake; speak but once more to me; thou canst not be dead. Oh my father, only once more speak to thy son."

"Alas! my poor boy, he will speak no more until the earth gives up her dead, and refuses to cover her slain; but we will comfort his soul with masses and prayers. How didst thou come hither, my poor child?"

"I followed him to the battle, and he bade me tarry by the stuff; but when all was lost Guthlac ran away, and I came hither to die with him if need should be. Oh my father, would God I had died for thee."

"Father, good father, what clamour is this?" said a deep voice, "some English lad mourning a sire?"

"Even so, my Lord of Blois. The poor child mourns his father."

"There be many mourners now. William Malet, with a lady whom Harold loved, and two good monks of Waltham, have just found the body of the perjured usurper. The face was so mangled, that no man might know him, but she recognised him by a mark on his body. So they have carried it away by the duke's command to bury it by the shore which he strove so vainly to guard."

"Oh may I but bear his body home to my poor mother," moaned the lad.

"We will ask the Conqueror to grant thy petition, poor mourner," said the sympathising monk.

"William will not refuse his prayer, father, if thy superior, the Bishop of Coutances, urges it; he is all-powerful just now," said Eustace of Blois. "The poor boy shall plead himself. Come, my lad, to the pavilion; there shalt thou ask for and obtain the poor boon thou cravest."

The unhappy Wilfred--for our readers have of course recognised the young heir of Aescendune--repressed his sobs, strove to wipe away his tears, as if he felt them unmanly, and followed his conductors, the knight and the monk, towards the ducal tent.

There William, attended by all his chief officers--by Odo of Bayeux and Geoffrey of Coutances, by Hugh de Bigod and Robert de Mortain, and some few others of his mightiest nobles, was taking the evening meal, served by a few young pages, themselves the sons of nobles or knights, who learnt the duties of chivalry by beginning at the lowest grade, if to wait on the Conqueror could be so considered.

Speaking to the sentinel, the good chaplain was allowed to enter, and whisper low in the ear of the bishop.

"I can refuse thee nought after thy good service," said the courtly prelate. "Thou say'st the poor boy has a boon to crave--the body of his sire, and begs through me--I will out, and speak to him."

"Thy name, my son?" said Geoffrey to Wilfred.

"Wilfred, son of the Thane of Aescendune, in Mercia."

"Hast thou been in the battle?"

"Only since all was over, or I had died by his side."

"The saints have preserved thee for better things than to die in a cause accursed by the Church. Nay, my son, I blame thee not, thou art too young to know better."

And truly the boy's face and manner, winning though suffused with tears, might have softened a harder heart than beat beneath the rochet of the Bishop of Coutances, warrior prelate though he was.

So, without any further delay, he led the boy into the presence of the mighty Conqueror.

"Who is this stripling? an English lad, my lord of Coutances?"

"He has come to beg permission to carry away the body of his sire. Bend thy knee, my lad, and salute thy future king."

"Nay, thy present one; coronation will but put the seal on accomplished facts," said Eustace.

But young though Wilfred was, he had his father's spirit in him, and spoke in broken sentences.

"My lord," he said, "I cannot own thee as my king. My father would not have me abjure all he taught me before his body is yet cold. I but ask thee as a kind enemy, who wars not with the dead, to give me leave to remove him from this fatal spot--to take him home. Thou wilt not deny an English lad this poor boon, mighty duke as thou art."

William understood English well, and was touched by the boyish spirit of the address, by the absence of fear.

"Thou dost not fear me then?" he said.

"He who lies dead on yon field for his country's sake taught me to despise fear."

"Thou art verily a bold youth, and were there many like thee, England might yet be hard to win. A noble father must have begotten so brave a son."

Then turning to his guests:

"But I hope yet," he added, "to win the hearts of such as he. They loved Canute, although he conquered them. Am I less a foreigner than he? and may not I win their love as he did?"

"Begin then thy reign with an act of clemency, my royal son," said the bishop.

"I do; the lad shall have the protection he needs, and the assistance of our people, so far as our power yet extends."

The tears started once more into Wilfred's eyes.

"I thank thee, my Lord Duke, for my dead father's sake, and for my living mother, and will pray the saints to forgive thee the bloodshed of this day."

It was a curious ending to his speech, especially as the bloodshed was supposed to be on account of the saints, over whose bones the ill-fated Harold had taken his famous oath; but William had respect for courage and outspoken truthfulness, and more than once promoted men to high office in Church or State, who had withstood him in the face.

He only added, "When we meet again, my son, thou mayst judge thy king differently."

Wilfred left the ducal tent; the authority of Count Eustace speedily procured the assistance of some Norman camp followers, and the body was reverently removed from the heap of slain, and placed upon a litter. Wilfred slept in the tent of Eustace, and in the morning commenced his homeward journey, with the funeral cortege.

It is unnecessary to enter further into the details of that most sad journey. Suffice it to say that he was able to transfer the precious burden from Norman to English hands, and that he arrived home in safety, whither Guthlac had preceded him, with the tidings that all save himself had perished alike.

Therefore the return of Wilfred was like that of one dead and alive again, lost and found; and the poor widow felt she had yet something besides her daughter Edith to live for.

The immediate effects of the conquest were not felt for some few weeks in the central parts of Mercia, and nought interfered with the solemn function customary at funerals in those ages.

The second morning after the return of Wilfred was fixed for the burial of the deceased thane, in the priory church which his father had built in the place of an earlier structure burnt by the Danes in 1006.

It was a noble pile for those early days, built chiefly of stone, which was fast superseding wood as a material for churches, dedicated to St. Wilfred. The lofty roof, the long choir beyond the transept, gave magnificence to the fabric, which was surrounded without by the cloisters of the priory, of which it was the central feature.

In the south transept--for it was a cruciform church--was a chapel dedicated especially to St. Cuthbert, where the ashes of the deceased thane's forefathers reposed in peace beneath the pavement. There lay Ella of Aescendune, murdered by a Dane named Ragnar; his two sons, Elfric, who died young, and Alfred, who succeeded to the inheritance. There, as in a shrine, the martyr Bertric reposed, who, like St. Edmund, had died by the arrows of the heathen Danes, there the once warlike Alfgar, the father of our thane, rested in peace, his lady Ethelgiva by his side {vi}.

The body lay in the great hall, where he had so recently feasted his retainers after the return from Stamford Bridge. Six large tapers burned around it, and watchers were there both by day and night.

There his people crowded to gaze upon the sternly composed features for the last time; there knelt in prayer his disconsolate widow, her son and daughter: they scarcely ever left the hallowed remains until the hour came when, amidst the lamentations of the whole population, the body of the gallant Edmund was borne to the tomb in that chapel of St. Cuthbert, where those gallant ancestors whose story we have told in former chronicles awaited him--"earth to earth, and dust to dust."

It was a touching procession. The body was borne by the chief tenants yet living, and surrounded by chanting monks, whose solemn "Domine refugium nostrum" fell with awful yet consoling effect upon the ears of the multitude. The churls and thralls, sadly thinned by the sword, followed behind their lady and her two children, Wilfred and Edith.

They placed the bier before the high altar while the requiem mass was sung, six monks kneeling beside it, three on each side, with lighted tapers. Then the coffin was sprinkled with hallowed water, perfumed with sweet incense, and borne to its last resting place in the chapel of St. Cuthbert, where they laid him by the side of his father, Alfgar the Dane.

"Ego sum resurrectio et vita, dixit Dominus--I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord."

CHAPTER III. THE WEDDING OF THE HAWK AND THE DOVE.

It was a feature peculiar to the Norman Conquest, that while its real injustice and disregard of moral right could hardly be surpassed in the annals of warfare, the conquerors strove to give to every act of violence and wrong the technical sanction of law and the appearance of equity.

This was easily done: first, by assuming that William was the lawful successor of Edward the Confessor, and that all who had opposed him were therefore in the position of conquered rebels; and secondly, since the Pope had excommunicated Harold, and sanctioned the invasion, by treating all his aiders and abettors as heretics or schismatics.

Generally these harsh doctrines were pushed to their legitimate consequences in cruel wrong inflicted upon an innocent people, and the Anglo-Saxon thanes and nobles who survived the first years of conquest were reduced to serfdom or beggary; but there were exceptions. William doubtless intended at first to govern justly, and strove to unite the two nations--English and Norman; therefore, when the occasion offered, he bade his knights and barons who aspired to an English estate marry the widows or daughters of the dispossessed thanes, and so reconcile the conflicting interests. Hence the blood of the old Anglo-Saxon lords flows in many a family proud of its unblemished descent from the horde of pirates and robbers, whom a century and a half in France had turned into the polished Normans.

Alas! the varnish was often only skin deep.

"Scratch the Norman, you will find the Dane," said the old proverb--none the less ruthless and cruel because of the gloss of a superficial civilisation.

Within a few weeks after the fatal day of Senlac, all resistance on the part of the disunited English, left without