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

by Henry William Herbert

  CHAPTER XII.

  THE DEPARTURE.

  "He mounted himself on a steed so talle, And her on a pale palfraye, And slung his bugle about his necke, And roundly they rode awaye."

  THE CHILDE OF ELLE.

  The glad days rapidly passed over, and the morning of the tenth day,as it broke fair and full of promise in the unclouded eastern sky,looked on a gay and happy cavalcade, in all the gorgeous andglittering attire of the twelfth century, setting forth in proudarray, half martial and half civil, from the gates of Waltheofstow.

  First rode an old esquire, with three pages in bright half armor,hauberks of chain mail covering their bodies, and bacinets of steel ontheir heads, but with their arms and lower limbs undefended, except bythe sleeves of their buff jerkins and their close-fitting hose ofdressed buckskin. Behind these, a stout man-at-arms carried the guidonwith the emblazoned bearings of his leader, followed by twenty mountedarchers, in doublets of Kendal green, with yew bows in their hands,wood-knives, and four-and-twenty peacock-feathered cloth-yard arrows intheir girdles, and battle-axes at their saddle-bows.

  In the midst rode Sir Yvo de Taillebois, all armed save his head,which was covered with a velvet mortier with a long drooping feather,and wearing a splendid surcoat; and, by his side, on a fleetAndalusian jennet, in a rich purple habit, furred at the cape andcuffs, and round the waist, with snow-white swansdown, the fair andgentle Guendolen, followed by three or four gay girls of Norman birth,and, happier and fairer than the happiest and fairest, the charmingSaxon beauty, pure-minded and honest Edith. Behind these followed atrain of baggage vans, cumbrous and lumbering concerns, groaning alongheavily on their ill-constructed wheels, and a horse-litter, intendedfor the use of the lady, if weary or ill at ease, but at the presentconveying the aged freed-woman, who was departing, now in well-nighher ninetieth summer, from the home of her youth, and the graves ofher husband and five goodly sons, departing from the house of bondage,to a free new home in the far north-west.

  The procession was closed by another body of twenty morehorse-archers, led by two armed esquires; and with these rode Kenric,close shaven, and his short, cropped locks curling beneath a jauntyblue bonnet, with a heron's feather, wearing doublet and hose offorest green, with russet doeskin buskins, the silver badge of Sir Yvode Taillebois on his arm, and in his hand the freeman's trusty weapon,the puissant English bow, which did such mighty deeds, and won such_los_ thereafter, at those immortal fields of Cressy and Poictiers,and famous Agincourt.

  As the procession wound down the long slope of the castle hill, andthrough the Saxon quarter, the serfs, who had collected to look on theshow, set up a loud hurrah, the ancient Saxon cry of mirth, ofgreeting, or defiance. It was the cry of _caste_, rejoicing atthe elevation of a brother to the true station of a man. But there wasone voice which swelled not the cry; one man, who turned sullenlyaway, unable to bear the sight of another's joy, turned away,muttering vengeance--Eadwulf the Red--the only soul so base, evenamong the fallen and degraded children of servitude and sorrow, as torefuse to be glad at the happiness which it was not granted him toshare, though that happiness were a mother's and a brother's escapefrom misery and degradation.

  Many days, many weeks, passed away, while that gay cavalcade wereengaged in their long progress to the north-westward, through thewhole length of the beautiful West Riding of Yorkshire, from itssouthern frontier, where it abuts on Nottinghamshire and the wildcounty of Derby, to its western border, where its wide moors andtowering crag-crested peaks are blended with the vast treeless fellsof Westmoreland.

  And during all that lengthened but not weary progress, it was butrarely, and then only at short intervals, that they were out of thesight of the umbrageous and continuous forest.

  Here and there, in the neighborhood of some ancient borough, such asDoncaster, Pontefract, or Ripon, through which lay their route, theycame upon broad oases of cultivated lands, with smiling farms andpleasant corn-fields and free English homesteads, stretching along thefertile valley of some blue brimful river; again, and that morefrequently, they found small forest-hamlets, wood-embosomed, withtheir little garths and gardens, clustering about the tower of someinferior feudal chief, literally set in a frame of verdure.

  Sometimes vast tracks of rich and thriftily-cultured meadow-lands,ever situate in the loveliest places of the shire, pastured byabundant flocks, and dotted with sleek herds of the already celebratedshort-horns, told where the monks held their peaceful sway, enjoyingthe fat of the land; and proclaimed how, in those days at least, thepriesthood of Rome were not the sensual, bigot drones, the ignorant,oppressive tyrants, whose whereabout can be now easily detected by thesqualid and neglected state of lands and animals and men, wheneverthey possess the soil and control the people. Such were the famousAbbey-stedes of Fountain's and Jorvaulx, then, as now, both forfertility and beauty, the boast of the West Riding.

  Still, notwithstanding these pleasant interchanges of rural withforest scenery, occurring so often as to destroy all monotony, and tokeep up a delightful anticipation in the mind of the voyager, as towhat sort of view would meet his eye on crossing yon hill-top, orturning that curvature of the wood-road, by far the greater portion oftheir way led them over sandy tracks, meandering like ribbons throughwide glades of greensward, under the broad protecting arms of giantoaks and elms and beeches, the soft sod no less refreshing to thetread of the quadrupeds, than was the cool shadow of the twilighttrees delicious to the riders.

  Those forests of the olden day were rarely tangled or thicketlike,unless in marshy levels, where the alder, the willow, and otherwater-loving shrubs replaced the monarchs of the wild; or where, incraggy gullies, down which brawled impetuous the bright hill-streams,the yew, the holly, and the juniper, mixed with the silvery stems andquivering verdure of the birches, or the deeper hues of thebroad-leaved witch-elms and hazels, formed dingles fit for fairybowers.

  For the most part, the huge bolls of the forest-trees stood far apart,in long sweeping aisles, as regular as if planted by the hand of man,allowing the grass to grow luxuriantly in the shade, nibbled, by thevast herds of red and fallow deer and roes, into the softest and mosteven sward that ever tempted the foot of high-born beauty.

  And no more lovely sight can be imagined than those deep, verdantsolitudes, at early morn, when the luxuriant feathery ferns, the broomand gorse blazing with their clusters of golden blossoms, thecrimson-capped foxgloves, the sky-blue campanulas by the roadside, theclustering honeysuckles overrunning the stunt hawthorns, and vagrantbriars and waving grasses were glittering far and near in theirmorning garniture of diamond dewdrops, with the long level rays of thenew-risen sun streaming in yellow lustre down the glades, and castinggreat blue lines of shadow from every mossy trunk--no sight morelovely than the same scenes in the waning twilight, when the redwestern sky tinged the gnarled bolls with lurid crimson, and carpetedthe earth with sheets of copper-colored light, while the skies abovewere darkened with the cerulean robes of night.

  Nor was there lack of living sounds and sights to take away the senseof loneliness from the mind of the voyager in the greenwilderness--the incessant songs of the thrush and blackbird, andwhistle of the wood-robin, the mellow notes of the linnets, the willowwarblers and the sedge birds in the watery brake, the harsh laugh ofthe green-headed woodpecker, and the hoarse cooing of the innumerablestock-doves, kept the air vocal during all the morning and eveninghours; while the woods all resounded far and wide with the loudbelling of the great stags, now in their lusty prime, calling theirshy mates, or defying their lusty rivals, from morn to dewy eve.

  And ever and anon, the wild cadences of the forest bugles, clearlywinded in the distance, and the tuneful clamor of the deep-mouthedtalbots, would tell of some jovial hunts-up.

  Now it would be some gray-frocked hedge priest plodding his way aloneon foot, or on his patient ass, who would return the passenger'sbenedicite with his smooth _pax vobiscum_; now it would be somegreen-kirtled forest lass who would drop her demure curts
ey to thefair Norman lady, and shoot a sly glance from her hazel eyes at thehandsome Norman pages. Here it would be a lord-abbot, or proud priorwith his lay brothers, his refectioners and sumptners, hisbaggage-mules, and led Andalusian jennets, and as the poet sung,

  "With many a cross-bearer before, And many a spear behind,"

  who would greet them fairly in some shady nook beside the sparklingbrook or crystal well-head, and pray them of their courtesy to alightand share his poor convent fare, no less than the fattest haunch, thetenderest peacock, and the purest wine of Gascony, on the soft greensward.

  There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen, in their greenfrocks and buckram hose, with long bows in their hands, short swordsand quivers at their sides, and bucklers of a span-breadth on theirshoulders, men who had never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed toNorman yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from thejaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too fewto attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those days, inSherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound policy. Anon,receiving notice of their approach from the repeated bugle-blastsof his verdurers, as they passed each successive _mere_ orforest-station, a Norman knight or noble, in his garb of peace, wouldgallop down some winding wood-path, with his slender train scatteringfar behind him, to greet his brother in arms, and pray him to gracehis tower by refreshing his company and resting his fair and gentledaughter for a few days or hours, within its precincts.

  In short, whether in the forest or in the open country, scarcely anhour, never a day, was passed, without their encountering somepleasant sight, some amusing incident, some interesting adventure.There was a vast fund of romance in the daily life of those oldendays, an untold abundance of the picturesque, not a little, indeed, ofwhat we should call stage-effect, in the ordinary habits and every-dayaffairs of men, which we have now, in our busy, headlong race foraffluence, ambition, priority, in every thing good or evil,overlooked, if not forgotten.

  Life was in England then, as it was in France up to the days of theRevolution, as it never has been at any time in America, as it isnowhere now, and probably never will be any where again, unless wereturn to the primitive, social equality, and manful independence ofpatriarchal times; when truth was held truth, and manhood manhood, theworld over; and some higher purpose in mortality was acknowledged thanthe mere acquiring, some larger nobleness in man than the merepossessing, of unprofitable wealth.

  Much of life, then, was spent out of doors; the mid-day meal, themid-day slumber, the evening dance, were enjoyed, alike by princeand peasant, under the shadowy forest-tree, or the verdure of thetrellised bower. The use of flowers was universal; in every rusticfestival, of the smallest rural hamlets, the streets would be archedand garlanded with wreaths of wild flowers; in every village hostelry,the chimney would be filled with fresh greens, the board deckedwith eglantine and hawthorn, the beakers crowned with violets andcowslips, just as in our days the richest ball-rooms, the grandestbanquet-halls, are adorned with brighter, if not sweeter or morebeautiful, exotics.

  The great in those days had not lost "that touch of nature" which"makes the whole world kin" so completely, as to see no grace insimplicity, to find no beauty in what is beautiful alike to all, toenjoy nothing which can be enjoyed by others than the great andwealthy.

  The humble had not been, then, bowed so low that the necessities hadprecluded all thought, all care, for the graces of the existence ofman.

  If the division between the noble and the common of the human race, asestablished by birth, by hereditary rank, by unalterable caste, werestronger and deeper and less eradicable than at this day, the realdivision, as visible in his nature, between man and man, of the nobleand the common, the difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, hispleasures, his capacity no less than his power of enjoying, was a merenothing then, to what it is to-day.

  The servants, the very serfs, of aristocracy, in those days, whenaristocracy was the rule of blood and bravery, were not, by ahundredth part, so far removed below the proudest of their lords, inevery thing that renders humanity graceful and even glorious, in everything that renders life enjoyable, as are, at this day, the workersfallen below the employers, when nobility has ceased to be, andaristocracy is the sway of capital, untinctured with intelligence, andignorant of gentleness or grace.

  It is not that the capitalist is richer, and the operativepoorer--though this is true to the letter--than was the prince, thanwas the serf of those days. It is not only that the aristocrat ofcapital, the noble by the grace of gold, is ten times more arrogant,more insulting, more soulless, cold-hearted, and calmly cruel, thanthe aristocrat of the sword, the noble by the grace of God; and thatthe worker is worked more hardly, clad more humbly, fed more sparely,than the villain of the middle ages--though this, also, is true to theletter--but it is, that the very tastes, the enjoyments, and thecapacities for enjoyment, in a word, almost the nature of the twoclasses are altered, estranged, unalterably divided.

  The rich and great have, with a few rare exceptions that serve only toprove the rule, lost all taste for the simple, for the natural, forthe beautiful, unless it be the beautiful of art and artifice; thepoor and lowly have, for the most part, lost all taste, all perceptionof the beautiful, of the graceful, in any shape, all enjoyment of anything beyond the tangible, the sensual, the real.

  Hence a division, which never can be reconciled. Both classes havereceded from the true nature of humanity, in the two oppositedirections, that they no longer even comprehend the one the tastes ofthe other, and scarce have a desire or a hope in common; for what thepoor man most desires, a sufficiency for his mere wants, physical andmoral, the rich man can not comprehend, never having known to bewithout it; while the artificial nothings, for which the capitaliststrives and wrestles to the last, would be to his workman meresyllabub and flummery to the tired and hungry hunter.

  In those days the enjoyments, and, in a great measure, the tastes, ofall men were alike, from the highest to the lowest--the same sportspleased them, the same viands, for the most part, nourished, the sameliquors enlivened them. Fresh meat was an unusual luxury to the noble,yet not an impossible indulgence to the lowest vassal; wine and beerwere the daily, the sole, beverages of all, differing only, and thatnot very widely, in degree. The same love of flowers, processions,out-of-door amusements, dances on the greensward, suppers in theshade, were common to all, constantly enjoyed by all.

  Now, it is certain, the enjoyments, the luxuries of the one class--nay,the very delicacy of their tables, if attainable, would be utterlydistasteful to the other; and the rich soups, the delicate-madedishes, the savor of the game, and the purity of the light French andRhenish wines, which are the _ne plus ultra_ of the rich man'ssplendid board, would be even more distasteful to the man of themillion, than would be his beans and bacon and fire-fraught whisky tothe palate of the gaudy millionaire.

  Throughout their progress, therefore, a thousand picturesqueadventures befell our party, a thousand romantic scenes were presentedby their halts for the noon-day repose, the coming meal, or thenightly hour of rest, which never could now occur, unless to somepleasure-party, purposely masquerading, and aping the romance of otherdays.

  Sometimes, when no convent, castle, hostelry, or hermitage, lay on theday's route, the harbingers would select some picturesque glen andsparkling fountain; and, when the party halted at the spot, anextempore pavilion would be found pitched, of flags and pennoncelles,outspread on a lattice-work of lances, with war-cloaks spread forcushions, and flasks and _bottiaus_ cooling in the spring, andpasties and boar's meat, venison and game, plates of silver andgoblets of gold, spread on the grass, amid pewter-platters anddrinking-cups of horn, a common feast for man and master, partakenwith the same appetite, hallowed by the same grace, enlivened bythe same minstrelsy and music, and enjoyed no less by thelate-enfranchised serfs, than by the high-born nobles to whom theyowed their freedom.

  Sometimes, when it was known beforehand that they must encamp forthe n
ight in the greenwood, the pages and waiting-women would rideforward, in advance of the rest, with the foragers, the baggage, and aportion of the light-armed archery; and, when the shades of eveningwere falling, the welcome watch-setting of the mellow-winded bugleswould bid the voyagers hail; and, as they opened some moon-lit grassyglade, they would behold green bowers of leafy branches, garlandedwith wild roses and eglantine, and strewn with dry, soft moss, andfires sparkling bright amid the shadows, and spits turning before theblaze, and pots seething over it, suspended from the immemorial gipsytripods. And then the horses would be unbridled, unladen, groomed, andpicketed, to feed on the rich forest herbage; and the evening mealwould be spread, and the enlivening wine-cup would go round, and theforest chorus would be trolled, rendered doubly sweet by the softnotes of the girls, until the bugles breathed a soft good-night, and,the females of the party withdrawing to their bowers of verdure, meettiring rooms for Oberon and his wild Titania, the men, from thehaughty baron to the humblest groom, would fold them in their cloaks,and sleep, with their feet to the watch-fires, and their untentedbrows toward heaven, until the woodlark, and the merle and mavis,earlier even than the village chanticleer, sounded their forestreveille.