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

"Was it not fear, then?"

"It was not."

"Then at least vouchsafe some explanation, that I may justify thee to the others."

"I cannot."

"Thou wilt not."

"If thou wilt have it so."

"Farewell, then; I can be no friend to a coward."

And the speaker departed: Wilfred counted his steps as he went down the stairs. One pang of boyish pride--wounded pride--but it was soon lost in the deeper woe.

A few more minutes and the warder brought the lad his supper. He ate it, and then, wearied out--he had had no rest during the previous night as the reader is aware, and had been in the saddle for twenty hours--wearied out, he slept.

And while he slept the door softly opened, and the baron entered. At the first glance he saw the lad was fast asleep, as his heavy and regular breathing indicated. He did not awake him, but gazed upon the features of the boy he had so deeply injured, with an expression wherein there was no lingering remorse, but simply a deep and deadly hatred. At length he was about to awake the sleeper, when he saw the end of a packet of parchment protrude from the breast of the tunic. The baron drew it softly out.

It was the letter of Father Elphege to the Bishop of Coutances.

The baron was scholar enough to read it--few Normans were so, and fewer English nobles; but he was an exception. He read and knew all; he read, and blanched a deadly white as he did so; his knees shook together, and a cold sweat covered his face.

It was known, then; to how many? Probably only to the prior and Wilfred, for it was but a dying confession of yesterday, as he gathered from the letter.

A sudden resolution came upon him; he did not awake the sleeper, but retired to digest it at his ease in the security of his own chamber.

It was but little sleep the baron took that night. Hour after hour the sentinel heard him pacing to and fro. Had any one seen him, he would have judged that Hugo was passing through a terrible mental conflict.

"No, I cannot do it," he said, as if to some unseen prompter.

"It is the only way; crush all thine enemies at once, let not even a dog survive to bark at thee."

"But what would the world say?"

"The world need not know, if thou contrivest well."

"But such secrets will out--a bird of the air would carry the matter, if none else did."

"Such are the bogies with which nurses frighten children. Art thou not a man and a Norman?"

"But the poor monks--if they were but soldiers."

"The less crime if they perish--they are fitter to die; and they are but English swine, like their neighbours, of whom thou hast slain so many."

So, through the long hours did the Prince of Darkness commune with his destined prey. There are periods of temptation which none know in their intensity, save such as have by long habit encouraged the Evil One to tempt them--who have swallowed bait after bait, until they can digest a very large hook at last.

At length, just as the dawn was reddening the skies, the baron threw himself upon his pallet and slept, not the sleep of the innocent, for his features moved convulsively again and again, and sometimes it seemed as if he were contending with some fearful adversary in his dreams.

But no angel of good stood near his couch; long since had continual indulgence in evil driven his guardian away, and Satan had all his own way.

The sounds of life and activity were many about the castle, and still Hugo arose not, until the third or fourth hour. Then he swallowed hastily a cup of generous Gascon wine, and a crust of toasted bread, steeped in the liquor; after which he mounted his favourite steed, a high horse of great spirit, not to say viciousness, which none save himself cared to ride, and galloped furiously for hours through the forest, startling the timid deer and her fawn from many a brake.

It was evening when he returned: Wilfred had not yet been released.

Count Eustace had departed, not until he had sought an interview with Wilfred, in his prison chamber, which turned out to be a fruitless one; for, terrified although he was at the loss of his letter, the youth kept his secret.

It was a pity that he did so. Many a sad page yet to be written might have been saved. But was it unnatural that the poor orphan should feel an invincible reluctance to claim Norman aid? yet the Bishop of Coutances was Norman.

At length, supper being ready, Hugo came in and took his usual place at the head of the high table. All trace of his mental struggles was gone.

"Bring my son Wilfred down to the hall."

The attendants hasted, and soon reappeared with the English heir of Aescendune.

He was calm and composed--that unhappy youth; he looked the baron straight in the face, he did not honour Etienne or any one else with a single glance; but waited to be questioned.

"Wilfred of Aescendune," said his stepfather, "why didst thou absent thyself yesterday, and traverse dangerous roads without permission?"

No answer.

"Didst thou fly because thou fearedst the combat, which thine own unmannerly insolence had brought upon thee?"

"No."

It was the only word Wilfred spoke, and that with emphasis. Etienne sneered.

"Perhaps thou mightest not have fled hadst thou known that the combat would have been a mere form. I had instructed the marshal of the lists to prevent deadly results."

Again Etienne cast a look at his companions, which seemed to give the lie to these words.

"Wilt thou promise to make no further attempt to leave the demesne without permission if thou art released from superveillance?"

"No," once more.

"Then I will no longer retain the charge of thee. Thou shalt go and do penance at the priory of thy sainted namesake, till thou dost come to a better mind. I will send thee after supper, and give fitting charge to Father Elphege."

Wilfred was forced to sit down during the meal, but he ate nothing.

When it was ended, the baron called old Osbert the seneschal and gave his instructions. They led the youth away; he did not return the baron's half-ironical salutation, but departed with his guards in silence.

High was the wassail in the castle that night, and many casks of wine were broached; at length all sought their couches and slept heavily.

But in the middle of the night many sleepers were aroused by the cry of FIRE! yet so heavy with wine were they, that few arose; hut most heard it as a man hears some sound in his sleep, which he half suspects to belong to dreamland, and turns again to his pillow.

Imagine the surprise with which such men (including Etienne, Pierre, and the other late companions of the unhappy Wilfred) learned that the monastery had caught fire accidentally in the night, and that so sudden had been the conflagration that none had escaped.

None! No; so far as men could discover. The priory built by Offa of Aescendune was a heap of smoking embers, and monks were there none, neither had any heard aught of the English heir of Aescendune.

The poor English who yet remained in the village were weeping over their lost friends, and the very Norman men-at-arms were hushed in the presence of their sorrow.

The shades of evening fell upon the desolate ruins, but nought had occurred to alleviate the calamity: all seemed to have perished unaided in the suddenness of their destruction--a thing improbable--unheard of--yet so it was.

All seemed over--the English brethren and their guest blotted out from the earth. And none looked more contented than Baron Hugo.

If the Conqueror had really intended to govern the English justly, like his great predecessor Canute, circumstances over which he had small control were against him; when he committed himself to an unjust war of aggression against an unoffending people, for if Harold had given him offence, England had given none, he entered upon a course of evil in which he could not pause.

Canute was a heathen during his darkest and bloodiest days; when he became a Christian, his worst deeds lay behind him, and the whole course of his reign was a progress from evil to good, the scene brightening each day. This, our Second Chronicle sufficiently illustrates.

But William had no such excuse; he bore a high reputation for piety--as piety was understood in his day, before the invasion of England--he was, says a contemporary author, "a diligent student of Scripture, a devout communicant, and a model to prelates and judges."

But after ambition led him to stain his soul with the blood shed at Senlac, his career was one upon which the clouds gathered more thickly each day; his Norman followers clamoured for their promised rewards, and he yielded to this temptation, and spoiled Englishmen, thane after thane, to satisfy this greed, until the once wealthy lords of the soil were driven to beg their bread, or to work as slaves on the land they had once owned.

Early in 1067 William returned to celebrate his triumph in Normandy, and while he was absent the government of the conquered country was committed to his half brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and William Fitz-Osborne. These rulers heard no cry for redress on the part of the poor English, scorned their complaints, and repulsed them with severity, as if they wished by provoking rebellion to justify further confiscations and exactions; in short, they made it impossible for the Conqueror to pursue his policy of conciliation. Rebellions arose and were stifled in fire and blood, and henceforth there was simply a reign of terror for the conquered; on one side insolence and pride, on the other, misery and despair.

Many of the English fled to the woods for refuge, and were hunted down, when their tyrants could accomplish their wishes, like beasts of prey, stigmatised with the title of "robbers" or "outlaws." Such, as we have seen, was the case at Aescendune; and after the supposed death of Wilfred, no bounds were set to the cruelties and oppressions of Hugo and his satellites; their dungeons were full, their torture chamber in constant use, so long as there were Englishmen to suffer oppression and wrong.

Autumn, the autumn of 1068, came with all its wealth of golden store; the crops were safely housed in the barns, the orchards were laden with fruit, the woods had put on those brilliant hues with which they prepare for the sleep of winter--never so fair as when they assume the garb of decay.

Wilfred of Aescendune was gone. His tragical fate had aroused little sympathy amongst his Norman companions, hardened as they were by familiarity with scenes of violence; the burning of the abbey and the fiery fate of its inmates had been but a nine days' wonder. Etienne and his fellow pages spoke of their lost companion with little regard to the maxim, "nihil nisi bonum de mortuis," and seemed, indeed, to think that he was well out of the way.

There were few English left to mourn him: the baron would trust none in the castle, and the churls and thralls of the village had perished or taken refuge in the greenwoods, which lay, like a sea of verdure, to the north of the domain of Aescendune, where it was shrewdly suspected they might be found, enjoying the freedom of the forests, and making free with the red deer.

It was a primeval forest, wherein were trees which had witnessed old Druids, silver knife in hand, cutting the mistletoe, or which had stood in the vigour of youth when Caesar's legionaries had hunted those same Druids to their last retreats. Giant oaks cast their huge limbs abroad, and entwined in matrimonial love with the silver beech; timid deer with their fawns wantoned in the shade beneath, or wild swine munched the acorns. Here were slow sedgy streams, now illumined, as by a ray of light, when some monster of the inland waters flashed along after his scaly prey, or stirred by a sudden plunge as the otter sprang from the bank. Sometimes the brock took an airing abroad, and the wolf came to look after his interests and see what he could snatch.

While, in the upper regions, amidst that sea of leaves, whole tribes of birds, long since vanished from England, carried on their aerial business, and now and then the eagle made a swoop amongst them, and then there was a grand scattering.

Many a lonely pool there was, where the kingfisher had never seen the face of man; many a bushel, not to say waggon load, of nuts rotted for want of modern schoolboys to gather them; many an acre of blackberries wasted their sweetness on the desert air.

Now and then came the horn of the hunter, waking up the echoes, then the loud murmur of hounds, then the rush and clamour of the chase swept by, and all was quiet again, even as