Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

by Henry William Herbert

  CHAPTER X.

  THE LADY AND THE SLAVE.

  "Weep not for him that dieth, For his struggling soul is free, And the world from which it flieth Is a world of misery; But weep for him that weareth The collar and the chain; To the agony he beareth, Death were but little pain."

  CAROLINE NORTON.

  "What mean you, Edith?" inquired the girl, raising herself from herpillow, as her attention was called to the unusually subdued tones ofthe Saxon maiden, who was, in her ordinary mood, so gay and joyous,and who appeared to be the general favorite of all around her; "whatmean you, Edith?" she repeated; "you can not be speaking of yourself;you, who are ever blithesome and light-hearted as the bee on theblossom, or the bird on the bough. You can have no sorrows of theheart, I think, so penetrating as to make all outward bodily painsforgotten, and yet--you are pale, you are weeping? Tell me, girl--tellme, dear Edith, and let me be your friend."

  "Friend! lady," said the girl, looking at her wistfully, yetdoubtfully withal; "you _my_ friend, noble lady! That were indeedimpossible. I will not say, that to the poor, to the Saxon, to the_slave_, there can be _no_ friend, under heaven; but that you--you,a noble and a Norman! Alas! alas! that were indeed impossible!"

  "Impossible!" cried Guendolen, eagerly, forgetting her ailments in herfine and feeling excitement. "Wherefore, how should it be impossible?One God made us both, Edith; and made us both out of one clay, withone life here on earth, and one hereafter; both children of one fallenrace, and heirs of one promise; both daughters of one fair, free land;both Englishwomen--then why not friends, Edith, and sisters?"

  "Of one land, lady, it is true," said the girl, gently. "Yes!daughters of one _fair_ land, for even to the slave England isvery beautiful and dear, even as to you she is _free_. But forus, who were once her first-born and her favorites, that magic wordhas passed away, that charm has ceased, forever. For us, in freeEngland's wide-rejoicing acres, there is no spot free, save the sixfeet of earth that shall receive our bodies, when the soul shall be aslave's no longer. Lady, lady, alas! noble lady, if one God made usboth of one clay, that shall go downward to mingle with the commonsod, and of one spirit that shall mount upward, when the weariness andwoe shall be at an end forever, man has set a great gulf between us,that we can not pass over it at all, to come the one unto the other.Our wants may be the same, while we are here below, and our hopes maybe the same heavenward; but there all sameness ends between us. Myjoys can not be your joys, and God forbid that my sorrows should beyours, either. Our hearts may not feel, our heads may not think, inunison, even if our flesh be of one texture, and our souls of onespirit. You are good, and gentle, and kind, lady, but you may neverunderstand what it is to be such as I."

  She ceased, but she ceased weeping also, and seemed lost in deepthought, and almost forgetful of herself and her surroundings, as sheremained on her knees by the bedside of Guendolen, with her headdrooping from her fair bended neck, and her embrowned but shapelyhands folded in her lap.

  The lady looked at her silently for a few moments, partly in sympathy,partly, it must be said, in wonder. New ideas were beginning to beawakened in her mind, and a perception of something, which had neverbefore dawned upon her, became palpable and strong.

  That which we behold, and have beheld daily perhaps for years,naturally becomes so usual and customary in our eyes, that we cease toregard it as any thing but as a fact, of which we have never seen andscarcely can conceive any thing to the contrary--that we look at it asa part of that system which we call nature, and of which we neverquestion the right or the wrong, the injustice or the justice, but,knowing that it _is_, never think of inquiring wherefore it is,and whether it ought to be.

  Thus it was with Guendolen de Taillebois. She had been accustomed,during all her life, to see Saxons as serfs, and rarely in any othercapacity; for the franklins and thanes who had retained theirindependence, their freedom, and a portion of their ancestral acres,were few in numbers, and held but little intercourse with their Normanneighbors, being regarded by them as rude and semi-barbarousinferiors, while they, in turn, regarded them as cruel and insolentusurpers and oppressors.

  She had seen these serfs, rudely attired indeed, and employed inrugged, laborious, and menial occupations; but, then, it was clearthat their boorish demeanor, stolid expression, and apparent lack ofcapacity or intelligence for any superior employment, seemed toindicate them as persons filling the station in society for whichnature had adapted them. Well-clad, sufficiently clothed, warmlylodged--in all outward things perhaps equal, if not superior, to thepeasantry of most European countries in the present day--never, exceptin extreme and exceptional cases, cruelly or severely treated, sinceit was ever the owner's interest to regard the well-doing of hisserfs, it had never occurred to her that the whole race was in itself,from innate circumstances, and apart from extraordinary sorrows orsufferings, hopeless, miserable, and conscious of unmerited butirretrievable degradation.

  Had she considered the subject, she would of course have perceived andadmitted that sick or in health, sorrowful or at ease, to be compelledto toil on, toil on, day after day, wearily, at the bidding and forthe benefit of another, deriving no benefit from that toil beyond amere subsistence, was an unhappy and forlorn condition. Yet, how manydid she not see of her own conquering countrymen of the lower orders,small landholders in the country, small artisans and mechanics in theboroughs, reduced to the same labors, and nearly to the samenecessity.

  With the personal condition or habits of the serfs, the ladies andeven the lords of the great Norman families had little acquaintance,little means even of becoming acquainted. The services of theirfortalices, all but those menial and sordid offices of which thoseexalted persons had no cognizance, were discharged by domestics,higher or lower in grade, the highest being of gentle blood, and, invery noble houses, even of noble blood, of their own proud race; andthe Saxons, whether bond-servants of the soil, or, what was of rareoccurrence at that time, free tenants on man service, were employed inthe fields or in the forest, under the bailiff or overseer, who ruledthem at his own discretion, and punished them, if punishment wereneeded, with the stocks, the gyves, or the scourge, without consultingthe lord, and of course without so much as the knowledge of the lady.

  Even if, by hazard, it did reach the dainty ears of some fairchatelaine, that Osrick or Edmund had undergone the lash for somemisdoing or short-coming, she heard of it much as a modern lady wouldread of the committal of a pickpocket or drunkard to the treadmill, orof a vagrant hussy to pick hemp; wondering why those low creatureswould do such wicked things, and sorrowfully musing why suchpunishments should be necessary--never suspecting the injustice of thelaw, or doubting the necessity of the punishment.

  And eminently thus it was with Guendolen. While in her good aunt'spriory, she had ever seen the serfs of the church well looked after,well doing, not overworked, not oppressed, cared for if sick,comforted if sorrowing, well tended in age, a contented if not a happyrace, so far as externals only were regarded, and nothing hitherto hadled her to look farther than to externals. On her father's princelybarony she saw even less of them than she had been accustomed to do atthe priory, passing them casually only when in the fields athay-making or harvest work, or pausing perhaps to observe arosy-cheeked child in the Saxon quarter, or to notice a cherry-lippedmaiden by the village well. But here, too, so far as she did see, shesaw them neither squalid nor starved, neither miserable normaltreated. No acts of tyranny or cruelty reached her ears, perhapsnone happened which should reach them; and of the rigorous,oppressive, insolent, and cruel laws which regulated their condition,controlled their progress, prevented their rise in the social scale,fettered and cramped their domestic relations, she knew nothing.

  Since her sojourn at Waltheofstow, she had gained more personalacquaintance with her down-trodden Saxon countrymen and countrywomen,and more especially since her accident in the forest, than in all herprevious life.

  For, in the first place, Sir Ph
ilip de Morville, being unmarried andwithout female relations in his family, had no women of Norman bloodemployed as attendants or domestics in the castle, the whole work ofwhich was performed by serf girls of various degrees, under thesuperintendence of an emancipated Saxon dame, who presided over whatwe should now call the housekeeper's department. Of these girls,Edith, and one or two others, Elgythas, Berthas, and the like,ministered to the Lady's Bower, and having perhaps contractedsomething of unusual refinement and expression from a nearerattendance on the more courtly race, and especially on the Normanladies who at times visited the castle, presented, it is certain,unusually favorable specimens of the Saxon peasantry, and hadattracted the attention of Guendolen in a greater degree than anySaxons she had previously encountered.

  Up to that time, she had regarded them, certainly, on the whole, as aslow, as a somewhat stolid, impassive, and unimpassioned race, lessmercurial than her own impetuous, impulsive kindred, and far lessliable to strong emotions or keen perceptions, whether of pain orpleasure. The girlish liveliness and gentleness, and even the untaughtgraces of Edith had, at the first, attracted her; and, as she wasthrown a good deal into contact with her, from the fact of herconstant attendance on the chambers she occupied, she had become muchinterested in her, regarding her as one of the happiest, most artless,and innocent little girls she had ever met--one, she imagined, on whomno shadow of grief had ever fallen, and whose humble lot was one ofactual contentment, if not of positive enjoyment.

  Nor, hitherto, insomuch as actual realities were concerned, wasGuendolen much in error. Sir Philip de Morville, as has been statedalready, was, according to the times and their tenor, a good andconsiderate lord. His bailiff was a well-intentioned, strict man,intent on having his master's work done to the last straw, but beyondthat neither an oppressor nor a tyrant. Kenric, her distant kinsmanand betrothed, was confessedly the best man and most favored servantin the quarter; and his mother, who had grown old in the service ofSir Philip's father, whom she had nursed with simple skill through theeffects of many a mimic battle in the lists, or real though scarcemore dangerous fray, now superannuated, reigned as much the mistressof her son's hearth as though she had been a free woman, and the cotin which she dwelt her freehold.

  Edith herself was the first bower-maiden of the castle, and, safeunder the protecting wings of dame Ulrica, the housewife, defied theimpertinence of forward pages, the importunate gallantry of esquires,and was cheerfully acknowledged as the best and prettiest lass of thelot, by the old gray-haired seneschal, in his black velvet suit andgold chain of office.

  Really, therefore, none of her own immediate family had known anyactual wants, or suffered any material hardships or sorrows, throughtheir condition, up to the period at which my tale commences. Theirgreatest care, perhaps, had arisen from the temper, surly, rude,insolent, and provocative, of Eadwulf the Red, Kenric's brother, whohad already, by misconduct, and even actual crime, according to theNorman code, subjected himself to severe penalties, and been reduced,in default of harsher treatment, to the condition of a mere slave, achattel, saleable like an ox or ass, at the pleasure of their lord.

  This, both in its actual sense, as keeping them in constantapprehension of what further distress Eadwulf's future misconductmight bring upon them, and in its moral bearing, as holding themconstantly reminded of their own servile condition, had been, thusfar, their prime grief and cause of complaint, had they been personsgiven to complain.

  Still, although well-nigh a century had elapsed since the NormanConquest, and the heir of the Conqueror in the fourth generation wassitting on the throne which that great and politic prince won on thefatal day of Hastings, their condition had not become habitual or easyto those, at least, who had been reduced to slavery from freedom, bythe consequences of that disastrous battle. And such was the conditionof the family whence sprang Kenric and Edith. The Saxon thane,Waltheof, whose name and that of his abode had descended to the Normanfortalice which had arisen from the ashes of his less aspiring manor,had resisted the Norman invaders so long, with such inveterate andstubborn valor, and, through the devotion of his tenants andfollowers, with such cost of life, that when he fell in fight, and hispossessions were granted to his slayer, all the dwellers on his landswere involved in the common ruin.

  To the serfs of the soil, who had been serfs before the conquest, itmattered but little. The slave to the Saxon was but changed into theslave of the Norman, and did not perhaps find in him a crueller,though he might a haughtier and more overbearing master. But to thefreeman, the doom which consigned him to the fetters of the Norman,which converted him from the owner into the serf of the soil, wassecond only, if second, to the bitterness of death. And such had beenthe doom of the grandfather of Kenric and Eadwulf.

  Their mother herself had been born free, not far from the hovel inwhich she still dwelt a slave, though she was but an infant when thehurricane of war and ruin swept over the green oaks of Sherwood, andhad no memory of the time when she was not the thrall of a foreignlord. Her father, Wulfred, was the largest tenant under Waltheof,himself a franklin, or small landholder, and of blood as noble, andstation more elevated than that of one half the adventurers who hadflocked to the banner of William the invader. With his landlord andfriend, he had fought to the last, not at Hastings only, but in everybloody ineffectual rising, until the last spark of Saxon liberty wastrampled out under the iron hoofs of the Norman war-horse; but, lesshappy than Waltheof, he had survived to find himself a slave, and thefather of slaves, tilling for a cruel foreign conqueror the land whichhad been his own and his father's, and his father's father's, but inwhich he and his heirs should have no heritage for evermore, beyondthe six-foot measure which should be meted to them every one, for hislong home.

  And the memory of these things had not yet passed away, nor thebitterness of the iron departed from the children, which had thenentered into the soul of the parent.

  An irrepressible desire came over the mind of Guendolen, to know andcomprehend something more fully the sentiments and sorrows of the girlwho had nursed and attended her so gently since her adventure with thestag; and perceiving intuitively that the slave girl, who, strange asit appeared to her, seemed to have a species of pride of her own,would not reveal her inward self in the presence of the vain andflippant Norman waiting girls, she hastened to dismiss them, withoutwounding their self-esteem, on a pretext of which they would bewilling enough to avail themselves.

  "Lilian and Marguerite," she said, "you must be weary my good girls,with watching me through this long night and my peevish temper musthave made you yet more weary, for I feel that I am not myself, andthat I have tried your patience. Go, therefore, now, and get somerepose, that when I shall truly need your services again, you may bewell at ease to serve me. I feel as if I could sleep now; and while Islumber, Edith, here, can watch beside me, and drive away the gnatswith her fan, as well as a more experienced bower-woman."

  Whether the girls suspected or not that their mistress desired to berid of them, they were not sorry to be dismissed from attendance onher couch; and whether they proposed to devote the opportunity torepose, or to gay flirtation with the pages of their own lord's or ofSir Philip's household, they withdrew at once, leaving the lady gazingfixedly on the motionless and hardly conscious figure of the slavegirl.

  By a sudden impulse she passed her small white hand caressingly overthe soft and abundant tresses of Edith's fair hair; and so unusual wasthe sensation to the daughter of the downfallen race, that shestarted, as if a blow had been dealt her, and blushed crimson, betweensurprise and wonder, as she raised her great blue eyes wide open tothe face of the young lady.

  "And is it so hard?" she asked, in reference more to what sheunderstood Edith to mean, than to any thing she had spoken, or evenhinted--"is it so hard, my poor child? I had thought that your lot satas lightly on you as the dew-drop in the chalice of the bluebell. Ihad fancied you as happy as any one of us here below. Will you nottell me what is this sorrow which weighs on you so heavily? It may
beI can do something to relieve it."

  "Lady, I am, as you know, a Saxon, and a slave, the daughter of aslave, and, should it ever be my lot to wed, the wife, to be, of aserf, a bondman of the soil, and the mother of things doomed, or erethey see the blessed light of Heaven, to the collar and the chain fromthe cradle to the grave. Think you a woman, with such thoughts asthese at her heart, can be very gay or joyous?"

  "And yet, you were both gay and joyous yesterday, Edith; and all lastweek, since I have been at the castle, I have heard no sounds so gayor so pleasant to my ear as your merry ballads. And you are no more aserf this morn than you were yestrene, and the good God alone knowswhat any of us all may be on the morrow, Edith. Something, I know,must have happened, girl, to make you wear a face so altered on thisbeautiful summer day, and carry so sad a heart, when all the world isso happy."

  "All the world, lady!" replied Edith; "all the world happy! Alas! notone tenth of it, unless you mean the beasts and the birds, which,knowing nothing, are blithe in their happy innocence. Of the humanworld around us, lady, one half knows not, and more by far than onehalf cares not, how miserable or how hopeless are their fellows--nor,if all knew and cared for all, could they either comprehend orconsole, much less relieve, the miserable."

  "But if I be one of those, Edith, who know not, I am at least not oneof those who care not. Therefore, I come back to the place whence Istarted. Something has happened, which makes you dwell so much moredolefully to-day, upon that which weighed not on you, yestrene,heavier than a feather."

  "Something _has_ happened, lady. But it is all one; for it resolvesitself in all but into this; I am a slave--a slave, until life isover."

  "This is strange," said Guendolen, thoughtfully. "I do notunderstand--_may_ not understand this. It does not seem to methat your duties are so very hard, your life so very painful, or yourrule so very strict, that you should suddenly thus give way to uttergloom and despondency, for no cause but what you have known for years,and found endurable until this moment."

  "But henceforth unendurable. Oh! talk not, lady, talk not. You mayconsole the dying, for to him there is a hope, a present hope of aquick-coming future. But comfort not the slave; for to him thebitterest and most cruel past is happier than the hopeless present, ifonly for that it is past; and the present, hopeless as it is, is yetless desperate than the future; for to the slave, in the future, everything except happiness is possible. I may seem to speak enigmas toyou, lady, and I am sure that you do not understand me--how shouldyou? None but a slave can know or imagine what it is to be a slave;none can conceive what a slave feels, thinks, suffers. And yet a slaveis a man, after all; and a lord is no more than a man, whileliving--and yet, what a gulf between them!"

  "And you will not tell me, Edith," persisted the Lady Guendolen, "youwill not tell me what it is that has happened to you of late, whichmakes you grieve so despondently, thus on a sudden, over yourlate-endured condition? Then you must let me divine it. You havelearned your own heart of late. You have discovered that you love,Edith."

  "And if it were so, lady," replied the girl, darkly, "were not thatenough to make a woman, who is at once a Christian and a slave, bothdespond and despair? First to love a slave--for to love other than aslave, being herself a slave were the same, as for a mortal to beenamored of a star in heaven--and then, even if license were grantedto wed him she loved, which is not certain or even of usualoccurrence, to be the mother of babes, to whom but one reality issecured, beyond a peradventure, the reality that they too must beslaves and wretched. But you are wrong, lady. I have not learned myown heart of late--I have known it long. I have not discovered but nowthat I love, nor has he whom I love. We have been betrothed this yearand better."

  "What then? what then?" cried Guendolen, eagerly. "Will not Sir Philipconsent? If that be all, dry your tears, Edith; so small a boon asthat I can command by a single word."

  "Sir Philip heeds not such matters, lady. His bailiff _has_ consented,if that were all."

  "What is it, then? This scruple about babes," said Guendolen,thoughtfully. "It is sad--it is sad, indeed. Yet if you love_him_, as you say, and your life in its actual reality be not sobitter----"

  "No, lady, no; it is not even that. If I had scruples on that head,they have vanished; Kenric has convinced me----"

  "Kenric!" exclaimed Guendolen, starting erect into a sitting attitude,forgetful of her pains and bruises. "What, the brave man who saved mefrom the stag at the risk of his own life, who was half slain inserving me--is he--is he _your_ Kenric?"

  "The same," answered Edith, with the quiet accent of fixed sorrow."And the same for whom you procured the priceless boon of liberty."

  An idea flashed, like the electric fluid, across the mind ofGuendolen, who up to that moment had suspected nothing of theconnection between her preserver and the beautiful girl before her,and who knew nothing of his grand refusal to accept even libertyitself, most inestimable of all gifts, which could not be shared bythose whom he loved beyond liberty or life; and she imagined that sheread the secret, and had pierced the maiden's mystery.

  "Can it be?" she said, sorrowfully, and seeming rather to be communingwith herself, than inquiring of her companion. "Can it be that one sobrave, so generous, and seemingly so noble, should be so base andabject? Oh! but these men, these men, if tale and history speak true,they are the same all and ever--false, selfish, and deceivers!"

  "Kenric, lady?"

  "And because he is free--the freeman but of the hour--he has despisedthee, Edith, the slave girl? But hold thy head high, sweet one, andthy heart higher. Thou shalt be free to-morrow, girl, and the mate ofhis betters; it shall be thou, to-morrow, who shall repay scorn withscorn, and----"

  "No, lady, no," cried the girl, who had been hitherto silenced andoverpowered by the impulsive vehemence of Guendolen. "You misapprehendme altogether. It is not I whom he rejected, for that _he_ was free;but liberty that he cast from him, as a toy not worth the having,because I might not be free with him--I, and his aged mother, of whomhe is, alone, the only stay and comfort."

  "Noble! noble!" cried the Norman girl, joyously clapping her handstogether. "Noble and glorious, gentle and great! This, this, indeed,is true nobility! Why do we Normans boast ourselves, as if we alonecould think great thoughts, or do great deeds? and here we areoutdone, beyond all question or comparison, in the true gentleness ofperfect chivalry; and that, by a Saxon slave. But be of good cheer,Edith, my sister and my friend; be of good cheer. The sun shall not godown looking upon you still a slave, nor upon your Kenric, nor yetupon his mother. You shall be free, all free, free as the blessedwinds of heaven, before the sun set in the sea. And you shall be thewife of no serf, but of a freeman, and a freeholder, in my own manorlands of Kendal upon Kent; and you shall be, God willing, the motherof free Englishmen, to do their lady as leal service as their stoutfather did before them. Fear nothing, and doubt nothing, Edith; forthis shall be, so surely as I am Guendolen of Taillebois. So small athing as this I can right readily do with my good father, and he asreadily with our true friend, noble Sir Philip de Morville. But hark!I hear their horses' hoofs and the whimpering of their hounds in thecourt-yard. To the bartizan, girl, to the bartizan! Is it they--is itthe chase returning?"

  "It is they, dear lady--your noble sire and Sir Philip, and all theknights who rode forth this morning--all laughing in high merrimentand glee! and now they mount the steps--they have entered."

  "No better moment, then, to press a boon. Fly, girl, be your wisheswings to your speech. I would see my father straightway!"