Читать книгу Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest - Henry William Herbert - Страница 6

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"'Twere better to die free, than live a slave."

Euripides.

It was fortunate, for all concerned, that no long time elapsed before more efficient aid came on the ground, than the gentleman who first reached the spot, and who, although a member of that dauntless chivalry, trained from their cradles to endure hardship, to despise danger, and to look death steadfastly and unmoved in the face, was so utterly paralyzed by what he deemed, not unnaturally, the death of his darling, that he made no effort to relieve her from the weight of the slaughtered animal, though it rested partially on her lower limbs, and on one arm, which lay extended, nevertheless, as it had fallen, in the dust. But up came, in an instant, Philip de Morville, on his superb, snow-white Andalusian, a Norman baron to the life—tall, powerful, thin-flanked, deep-chested, with the high aquiline features and dark chestnut hair of his race, nor less with its dauntless valor, grave courtesy, and heart as impassive to fear or tenderness or pity, as his own steel hauberk. Up came esquires and pages, foresters and grooms, and springing tumultuously to the ground, under the short, prompt orders of their lord, raised the dead palfrey bodily up, while Sir Philip drew the fair girl gently from under it, and raising her in his arms more tenderly than he had ever been known to entreat any thing, unless it were his favorite falcon, laid her on the short, soft greensward, under the shadow of one of the huge, broad-headed oaks by the wayside.

"Cheer thee, my noble lord and brother," he exclaimed, "the Lady Guendolen is not dead, nor like to die this time. 'Tis only fear, and perchance her fall, for it was a heavy one, that hath made her faint. Bustle, knaves, bustle. Bring water from the spring yonder. Has no one a leathern bottiau? You, Damian, gallop, as if you would win your spurs of gold by riding, to the sumpter mule with the panniers. It should be at the palmer's spring by this time; for, hark, the bells from the gray brothers' chapel, in the valley by the river, are chiming for the noontide service. Bring wine and essences, electuaries and ambergris, if the refectioner have any with him. You, Raoul," he continued, addressing a sturdy, grim-featured old verdurer, who was hanging over the still senseless girl with an expression of solicitude hardly natural to his rugged and scar-seamed countenance, "take a led horse, and hie thee to the abbey; tell the good prior what hath befallen, and pray the brother mediciner he will ride this way, as speedily as he may; and you," turning to the old, white-haired seneschal, "send up some of the varlets to the castle, for the horse-litter; she may not ride home this day."

In the mean time, while he was accumulating order on order, while pages and horse-boys, grooms and esquires, were galloping off, in different directions, as if with spurs of fire, and while the barons themselves were awkwardly endeavoring to perform those ministrations for the fair young creature, which they were much more used themselves to receive at the hands of the softer sex, who were in those rude days often the chirurgeons and leeches, as well as the comforters and soothers of the bed of pain and sickness, than to do such offices for others, the bold defender of Guendolen—Kenric the dark-haired—lay in his blood, stark and cold, deemed dead, and quite forgotten, even by the lowest of the Norman varletry, who held themselves too noble to waste services upon a Saxon, much more upon a thral and bondsman.

They—such of them, that is to say, as were not needed in direct attendance on the persons of the nobles, or as had not been dispatched in search of aid—applied themselves, with characteristic zeal and eagerness, to tend and succor the nobler animals, as they held them, of the chase; while they abandoned their brother man and fellow-countryman, military Levites as they were, to his chances of life or death, without so much as even caring to ask or examine whether he were numbered with the living or the dead.

The palfrey was first seen to, and pronounced dead; when his rich housings were stripped off carefully, and cleaned as well as time and place permitted; when the carcass was dragged off the road, and concealed, for the moment, with fern leaves and boughs lopped from the neighboring bushes, while something was said among the stable boys of sending out some of the "dog Saxon serfs" to bury him on the morrow.

The deer was then dragged roughly whence it lay, across the breast of Kenric, in whose left shoulder one of its terrible brow antlers had made a deep gash, while his right arm was badly shattered by a blow of its sharp hoofs. So careless were the men of inflicting pain on the living, or dishonor on the dead, that one of them, in removing the quarry, set his booted foot square on the Saxon's chest, and forced, by the joint effect of the pressure and the pain, a stifled, choking sound, half involuntary, half a groan, from the pale lips of the motionless sufferer. With a curse, and a slight, contemptuous kick, the Norman groom turned away, with his antlered burthen, muttering a ribald jest on "the death-grunt of the Saxon boar;" and drawing his keen wood-knife, was soon deep in the mysteries of the cureé, and deeper yet in blood and grease, prating of "nombles, briskets, flankards, and raven-bones," then the usual terms of the art of hunting, or butchery, whichever the reader chooses to call it, which are now probably antiquated. The head was cabbaged, as it was called, and, with the entrails, given as a reward to the fierce hounds, which glared with ravenous eyes on the gory carcass. Even its peculiar morsel was chucked to the attendant raven, the black bird of St. Hubert, which—free from any apprehension of the gentle hunters, who affected to treat him with respectful and reverential awe—sat on the stag-horned peak of an aged oak-tree, awaiting his accustomed portion, with an observant eye and an occasional croak. By-and-by, when the sumpter mule came up, with kegs of ale and bottiaus of mead and hypocras, and wine of Gascony and Anjou, before even the riders' throats were slaked by the generous liquor, the bridle-bits and cavessons, nose-bags and martingales of the coursers were removed, and liberal drenches were bestowed on them, partly in guerdon of past services, partly in order to renew their strength and stimulate their valiant ardor.

Long ere this, however, fanned by two or three pages with fans of fern wreaths, and sprinkled with cold spring-water by the hands of her solicitous kinsman, the young girl had given symptoms of returning life, and a brighter expression returned to the dark, melancholy visage of her father.

Two or three long, faint, fluttering sighs came from her parted lips; and then, regular, though low and feeble, her breathing made itself heard, and her girlish bosom rose and fell responsive.

Her father, who had been chafing her hands assiduously, pressed one of them caressingly, at this show of returning animation, and raised it to his lips; when, awakening at the accustomed tenderness, her languid eyes opened, a faint light of intelligence shone forth from them, a pale glow of hectic color played over her face, and a smile glittered for a second on her quivering lips.

"Dear father," she whispered, faintly; but, the next moment, an expression of fear was visible in all her features, and a palpable shiver shook all her frame. "The stag!" she murmured; "the stag! save me, save"—and before the word, uttered simultaneously by the two lords—"He is dead, dear one," "He will harm no one any more"—had reached her ears, she again relapsed into insensibility, while with equal care, but renewed hope, they tended and caressed her.

But Kenric no one tended, no one caressed, save, "faithful still, where all were faithless found," the brindled staghound, "Kilbuck," who licked his face assiduously, with his grim, gory tongue and lips, and besmearing his face with blood and foam, rendered his aspect yet more terrible and death-like.

But now the returning messengers began to ride in, fast and frequent; first, old Raoul, the huntsman, surest, although not fleetest, and with him, shaking in his saddle, between the sense of peril and the perplexity occasioned him by the high, hard trot of the Norman war-horse pressed into such unwonted service, "like a boar's head in aspick jelly," the brother mediciner from the neighboring convent, with his wallet of simples and instruments of chirurgery.

By his advice, the plentiful application of cold water, with essences and stimulants in abundance, a generous draught of rich wine of Burgundy, and, when animation seemed thoroughly revived, the gentle breathing of a vein, soon restored the young lady to her perfect senses and complete self-possession, though she was sorely bruised, and so severely shaken that it was enjoined on her to remain perfectly quiet, where she lay, with a Lincoln-green furred hunting-cloak around her, until the arrival of the litter should furnish means of return to the castle of her father's host and kinsman.

And, in good season, down the hill, slowly and toilsomely came the horse-litter, poor substitute for a wheeled vehicle; but even thus the best, if not only, conveyance yet adopted for the transport of the wounded, the feeble, or the luxurious, and, as such, used only by the wealthy and the noble.

With the litter came three or four women; one or two, Norman maidens, the immediate attendants of the Lady Guendolen, and the others, Saxon slave girls of the household of Sir Philip de Morville, who hurried down, eager to gain favor by show of zealous duty, or actuated by woman's feelings for woman's suffering, even in different grades and station.

The foremost of them all, bounding along with all the wild agility and free natural gracefulness of wood-nymph or bacchante, was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, not above the middle height of her sex, but plump as a partridge, with limbs exquisitely formed and rounded, a profusion of flaxen tresses floating unrestrained on the air, large dark-blue eyes, and a complexion all of milk and roses—the very type of rural Saxon youth and beauty.

As she outstripped all the rest in speed, she was the first to tender gentle service to the Lady Guendolen, who received her with a smile, calling her "Edith the Fair," and thanking her for her ready aid.

But, ere long, as the courtlier maidens arrived on the ground, poor Edith was set aside, as is too often the case with humble merit, while the others lifted the lady into the horse-litter, covered her with light and perfumed garlands, and soon had all ready for her departure.

But, in the mean time, Edith had turned a hasty glance around her; and descrying the inanimate body of the Saxon serf, lying alone and untended, moved by the gentle sympathy of woman for the humblest unknown sufferer, she hastened to assist, if assistance were still possible. But, as she recognized the limbs, stately, though cold and still, and the features, still noble through gore and defilement, a swift horror smote her, that she shook like a leaf, and fell, with a wild, thrilling shriek, "O, Kenric, Kenric!" on the body of the wounded man.

"Ha! what is this?" cried Sir Philip, who now first saw or remembered what had passed. "How is this? Knaves, is there a man hurt here?"

"A Saxon churl, Beausire," replied one of the pages, flippantly, "who has gotten his brisket unseamed by his brother Saxon yonder!" and he pointed to the dead carcass of the stag.

"Our lady save us," murmured the gentle Guendolen, who seemed about to relapse into insensibility; "he saved my life, and have ye let him perish?"

"Now, by the splendor of our lady's eyes!" cried Yvo de Taillebois, the father of the fair young lady, "this is the gallant lad we saw afar, in such bold hand-to-hand encounter with yon mad brute. We have been ingrately, shamefully remiss. This must be amended, Philip de Morville."

"It shall, it shall, my noble friend," cried Philip; "and ye, dogs, that have let the man perish untended thus, for doing of his devoir better than all the best of ye, bestir yourselves. If the man die, as it seems like enow, ye shall learn ere ye are one day older, what pleasant bed-rooms are the vaults of Waltheofstow, and how tastes the water of the moat."

Meantime the monk trotted up, and, after brief examination, announced that, though badly hurt, his life was in no immediate peril, and set himself at once to comfort and revive him.

"He is not slain; he will not die, my child," said Sir Yvo, softly, bending over the litter to his pale lily, who smiled faintly as she whispered in reply—

"Dear father, nor be a slave any longer?"

"Not if I may redeem him," he answered; "but I will speak with Sir Philip at once. Meanwhile be tranquil, and let them convey you homeward. Forward, there, with the litter—gently, forward!"

And, therewith, he turned and spoke eagerly to De Morville, who listened with a grave brow, and answered;

"If it may be, my noble friend and brother. If it may be. But there are difficulties. Natheless, on my life, I desire to pleasure you."

"Nay! it comports not with our name or station, that the noble Guendolen de Taillebois should owe life to a collared thral—a mere brute animal. My lord, your word on it! He must be free, since Yvo de Taillebois is his debtor."

"My word is pledged on it," replied De Morville. "If it can be at all, it shall be. Nay, look not so black on it. It shall be. We will speak farther of it at the castle! And now, lo! how he opes his eyes and stares. He will be right, anon; and ye, knaves, bear him to the castle, when the good brother bids ye, and gently, if ye would escape a reckoning with me. And now, good friends, to horse! to horse! The litter is half-way to the castle gates already. To horse! to horse! and God send us no more such sorry huntings."