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

he might not lose so dear a hope. The sun was slowly sinking in the west, amidst gorgeous clouds, and she gazed into the glowing depths, as if she saw the gate of Paradise therein.

It was but a few moments, while they yet lingered in conversation, that her children observed a deadly paleness, a strange gray hue, come over her face; suddenly she extended her arms, and fell back upon her couch.

Wilfred ran for help. Even the Norman servants loved their mistress, and hurried to her chamber; baron, priest, all were there; she lay as if insensible, but when Father Elphege, the prior, arrived, and began the litany for the dying, she raised her head and strove to follow.

That morning she had received the Holy Communion at his hands; and of the familiar rites prescribed by the Church of those days for the comfort of the dying, only the last anointing, after the example of Him, whose body was anointed for His burial, remained, and with humble faith she received the holy rite.

This done, she made signs for her children to approach; she threw her arms fondly around them in turn, but could not speak.

The priest bade them all kneel down, and he recommenced the litany for the dying. Soon he came to the solemn words:

"Per Crucem et Passionem Tuam, Libera eam Domine {viii}."

She strove to make the holy sign of our redemption, and in making it, yielded her chaste soul to the hands of her merciful Father and loving Redeemer. She had gone to rejoin her own true love, and her poor children were orphans in a world of violence and wrong.

They laid her by the side of Edmund, and the same solemn rites we have described before were yet once more repeated. There were many, many true mourners, all the poor English who felt that her intercession alone had interposed between them and a cruel lord--and the very foreigners themselves, whom her meekness and gentle beauty had strangely touched--all mourned the lily of Aescendune.

But her children!--Who shall describe the sense of desolation which fell upon them as they stood by the open grave?

"Comfort them, O Father of the fatherless," prayed the good prior; "comfort them and defend them with Thy favourable kindness as with a shield."

CHAPTER V. A FRAY IN THE GREENWOOD.

After the last sad rites were paid to the Lady Winifred, a deep gloom fell upon Wilfred, and his sorrow was so great that it won respect from his Norman companions, at least for a time.

He was indeed alone, for the baron had sent his sister Edith to a convent for her better education, as he said, and as Wilfred had none of his own kith and kin about him, he avoided all company, save when the routine of each day forced him into the society of his fellow pages.

Such was the case one fine morning in early spring, a few months after the loss of his mother.

The four pages were in the tilt yard, where there stood a wooden figure, called a "quintain," which turned round upon an axis, and held a wooden sword in one hand and a buckler in the other.

It was the duty of each of the athletes to mount his horse, and strike the buckler full in the centre with his lance, while riding by at full speed, under certain penalties, which will soon be perceived.

Etienne rode first, and acquitted himself with remarkable dexterity; after him Wilfred was invited by the maitre d'armes to make the trial, but he was comparatively unaccustomed to the game.

"Let Pierre or Louis try next," said he.

The two boys, thus called upon, went through the trial fairly, striking the very centre of the shield, as befitted them. And then our Wilfred could not refuse to make the attempt. He rode, but his horse swerved just before meeting the mock warrior; he struck the shield, therefore, on one side, whereupon the figure wheeled round, and, striking him with the wooden sword, hurled him from his horse on to the sward, amidst the laughter of his companions.

He rose, not very much hurt in body, but sadly out of temper, and, unable to bear the jeers of his companions, and their sarcastic compliments on his "graceful horsemanship," he left the yard.

He was trying very hard to learn such feats, and yet could not gain the dexterity for these novel exercises; and, poor boy, he was quite weary of being laughed at, so he went and wandered pensively about in the forest.

He had, indeed, to chew the cud of bitter reflection, for his position was not at all a happy one. Few lads could have more to bear--cutting sarcasm, biting contempt, not openly or coarsely expressed, but always implied plainly enough--constant abuse of his nation, and even of his own immediate ancestors, on whose fair domains these Norman intruders were fattening.

"Oh! it is too hard to bear," thought the poor lad.

And then he saw the unfortunate thralls of his father, ground down by the tyranny of these Norman lords and their soldiery, forced to draw stone and timber, like beasts of burden, for the purpose of building towers and dungeons for their oppressors, urged on with the lash if they faltered.

Since the death of their good lady, all this had been, of course, much worse.

And then, those forest laws, so vilely cruel. Wilfred saw men blind with one eye, or wanting a hand; and why? Because they had killed a hare or wounded a deer; for it would have been a hanging matter to kill the red hart.

Meanwhile he was growing in mind and body; he had now passed his seventeenth birthday, and was beginning to think himself a man; but where were the vassals whose leader and chieftain he was born to be?--where?

The people of Aescendune were diminishing daily--the English people thereof, we should say, for the places of those who fled their homes, and went no one knew whither, were filled by Normans, French, Bretons, or other like "cattle," as Wilfred called them in his wrath.

Everywhere he heard the same "jabbering" tongue, that Norman French--French with a Danish accent, and he liked it little enough. Good old English was becoming rare; the strangers compared it to the grunting of swine or the lowing of cattle, in their utter scorn of the aborigines.

Were the descendants of Hengist, Horsa, Ella, Cerdic, Ercenwin, Ida, Uffa, and Cridda to bear this? and more especially was he, Wilfred, the grandson of the heroic Alfgar, whose praises as the companion in arms of the Ironside had been sung by a hundred minstrels, and told again and again at the winter's fire in the castle hall--was he to bear this contumely? He could not much longer.

And then that scowling, dark, frowning, old Baron--there was a world of deadly mischief in his dark eye, which looked like light twinkling at the bottom of a black well. Once when Etienne was uttering some polished sarcasm at Wilfred's expense, the English lad caught the father's look, and there was something in it which puzzled him for a day or two.

Wilfred knew the baron did not like him, and felt that the hatred was all the more deadly for never being expressed. He sometimes thought that his stepfather wished him to quarrel with Etienne, in the full belief that Norman skill must prevail, in case of a combat.

Single combat. Well, the pages were always talking about it. Etienne knew a brave knight who took his stand on a bridge, horse and all complete, and when any one came by of equal rank, this strange bridge warden had two questions to ask; first:

"Wilt thou acknowledge the Lady Adeliza of Coutances to be the most peerless beauty in the world?"

Supposing the newcomer not to be in love, and to be willing to admit the superiority of the fair charmer, then to him the bridge warden further added:

"Wilt thou admit that I am a better knight than thou--better with horse, sword, and lance?"

If the newcomer said "Yes," he might pass without further toll; if not he must fight, yea, even to the death. And this our Norman pages thought the grandest thing in chivalry.

As yet they had kept from such direct insult as would necessitate an appeal to sword or lance in Wilfred's case, which, indeed, pages could not resort to without the permission of their feudal superiors; but how long would this last?

The promise the poor lad had given to his beloved and lost mother had made him patient for a time; but his patience had been tried to the uttermost.

He looked on the woods which had once echoed to his father's horn: for miles and miles they extended in trackless mazes of underwood, swamp, and brake; and report already credited them with being the haunt of outlaws innumerable.

"Where were all the fugitives from Aescendune?" thought our Wilfred; "did the woods conceal them?"

Well, if so, the day might come when he would be glad to join them.

While he was thus musing, the sun rose high in the heavens, and he heard the horns summon the hunters--he heard the loud baying of the hounds, but he heeded not--he loathed society that day, and satisfying his hunger with a crust of bread, obtained at the hut of a thrall, he wandered deeper into the forest.

The day was hot, and he grew tired. He lay down at the foot of a tree, and at length slept.

How long that slumber lasted he knew not, but he dreamt a strange and gruesome dream. He thought his ancestors--the whole line of them--passed before him in succession, all going into the depths of the wood, and that as each spectral form passed it looked at him with sorrow and pointed into the forest.

At length, in his dream, his father came and stood by him, and pointed to the woods likewise.

Meanwhile a lurid light was rising in the woods behind him, and a sense of imminent danger grew on the sleeper when strange outcries arose from the wood.

He was on the border land, twixt sleeping and waking, and the outcries were not all imaginary. There was the voice of one who besought for mercy, and the laughter and scornful tones of those who refused it; and these, at least, were real, for they awoke the sleeper.

The cry which aroused young Wilfred from his sleep was uttered in a tone of distress, which at once appealed to his manhood for aid.

And it was a familiar voice--that of his own foster brother, the son of his old nurse, with whom, in the innocent days of childhood, he had sported and romped again and again; for distinctions of rank were far less regarded amongst the old English than amongst the Normans--they were "English all."

The poor peasant lad had been so unfortunate as to bring down a hare with a heavy stick. The animal had risen just before him; the weapon was ready; the temptation too great. Forgetful of all but the impulse of the moment, he had flung the stick, and the hare fell. He was just rushing to seize his prize, when the three Norman pages came suddenly on the scene.

"Here is a young English lout, killing a hare," shouted Etienne; "lay hold of him."

And before the astonished Eadwin could fly, the son of his lord fulfilled his own command, and seized the culprit by the collar.

"How didst thou dare, thou false thief, to kill one of our hares? Dost thou not know the penalty?"

The unhappy lad stammered out faint excuses, in broken English; "he had not meant to do it--the thing rose up so suddenly"--and the like. But in the first place his captors did not understand his language sufficiently to make out the excuses, neither were they in the mood to receive any.

"What is the law?" said Etienne; "does it not say that he who slays a hare shall lose the hand that did the deed; and here is a poacher taken red handed. Louis, where is thy hunting knife?"

"We need not trouble to take him to the castle; off with his hand, and let him go."

Their hunting knives, with which they were accustomed to "break up" the deer, were in their girdles, and, shame to say, the other two youths at once assented to Etienne's proposal to execute the law themselves.

So they dragged their intended victim to a stump, and Etienne prepared to execute the cruel operation which he had witnessed too often not to know how to do it.

Poor Eadwin appealed in vain for mercy. They were laughing at his fright, and indeed there was so little sympathy between Norman lord and English thrall, that pity found no place to enter into the relations between them: it was the old Roman and his slave over again.

But an unexpected deliverer was at hand.

Just as the young "noble" was about to execute the threat; when the poor wrist was already extended by force on a rude stump; when the knife was already