University of Virginia Library

LEGENDS
OF
THE NORMAN CONQUERORS.

THE SAXON'S OATH.

The son of Godwin was the flower of the whole Saxon race.
The jealousies which had disturbed the mind of Edward the
Confessor had long since passed away; and Harold, whom he
once had looked upon with eyes of personal aversion, he now
regarded almost as his own son. Yet still the Saxon hostages
— Ulfnoth, and the young son of Swerga, who in the time of
his mad predilection for the Normans, and his unnatural distrust
of his own countrymen, had been delivered for safe keeping
to William, duke of Normandy — still lingered, melancholy
exiles, far from the white cliffs of their native land. And now,
for the first time since their departure, did the aspect of affairs
appear propitious for their liberation; and Harold, brother of
one, and uncle of the other, full of proud confidence in his own
intellect and valor, applied to Edward for permission that he
might cross the English channel, and, personally visiting the
Norman, bring back the hostages in honor and security to the
dear land of their forefathers. The countenance of the Confessor
fell at the request; and, conscious probably in his own
heart of some rash promise made in days long past, and long
repented, to the ambitious William, he manifested a degree of
agitation amounting almost to alarm.

“Harold,” he said, after a long pause of deliberation — “Harold,
my son, since you have made me this request, and that
your noble heart seems set on its accomplishment, it shall not
be my part to do constraint or violence to your affectionate and
patriotic wishes. Go, then, if such be your resolve, but go
without my leave, and contrary to my advice. It is not that I
would not have your brother and your kinsman home, but that
I do distrust the means of their deliverance; and sure I am,
that should you go in person, some terrible disaster shall befall
ourselves and this our country. Well do I know Duke William;
well do I know his spirit — brave, crafty, daring, deep,
ambitious, and designing. You, too, he hates especially, nor
will he grant you anything, save at a price that shall draw down
an overwhelming ruin on you who pay it, and on the throne of
which you are the glory and the stay. If we would have these
hostages delivered at a less ransom than the downfall of our
Saxon dynasty — the misery of merry England — another messenger
than thou must seek the wily Norman. Be it, however,
as thou wilt, my friend, my kinsman, and my son.”

Oh, sage advice, and admirable counsel! advice how fatally
neglected — counsel how sadly frustrated! Gallant, and brave,
and young; fraught with a noble sense of his own powers, a
full reliance on his own honorable purposes; untaught as yet
in that, the hardest lesson of the world's hardest school, distrust
of others, suspicion of all men — Harold set forth upon his journey,
as it were, on an excursion in pursuit of pleasure. Surrounded
by a train of blithe companions, gallantly mounted,
gorgeously attired, with falcon upon fist, and greyhounds bounding
by his side, gayly and merrily he started, on a serene autumnal
morning, for the coast of Sussex. There he took ship;
and scarcely was he out of sight of land, when, as it were at
once to justify the words of Edward, the wind, which had been
on his embarkation the fairest that could blow from heaven,

suddenly shifted round, the sky was overcast with vast clouds
of a leaden hue, the waves tossed wildly with an ominous and
hollow murmur; and, ere the first day had elapsed, as fierce a
tempest burst upon his laboring barks as ever baffled mariner
among the perilous shoals and sandbanks of the narrow seas.
Hopeless almost of safety, worn out with unaccustomed toil
and hard privations, for three days and as many nights they
battled with the stormy waters; and on the morning of the
fourth, when the skies lightened, and the abating violence of
the strong gales allowed them to put in, and come to anchor,
where the Somme pours its noble stream into the deep, through
the rich territories of the count of Ponthieu, they were at once
made prisoners, robbed of their personal effects, held to a heavy
ransom, and cast as prisoners-of-war into the dungeon-walls of
Belram, to languish there until the avarice of the count Guy
should be appeased with gold.

Still Harold bore a high heart and a proud demeanor, bearding
the robber-count even to his teeth, set him at defiance, proclaiming
himself an embassador from England to the duke of
Normandy, and claiming as a right the means of making known
to William his unfortunate condition. This, deeming it perchance
his interest so to do, the count at once conceded; and
before many days had passed, Harold might see, from the
barred windows of his turret-prison, a gallant band of lancers,
arrayed beneath the Norman banner, with a pursuivant and
trumpet at their head, wheeling around the walls of the grim
fortress. A haughty summons followed, denouncing “the extremities
of fire and of the sword against the count de Ponthieu,
his friends, dependants, and allies, should he not instantly set
free, with all his goods and chattels, his baggage and his horses,
friends, followers, and slaves, unransomed with all honor, Harold,
the son of Godwin, the friend and host of William, high
and puissant duke of Normandy!” Little, however, did mere

menaces avail with the proud count de Ponthieu; nor did the
Saxon prince obtain his liberty till William had paid down a
mighty sum of silver, and invested Guy with a magnificent demesne
on the rich meadows of the Eaune.

Then once more did the son of Godwin ride forth a freeman,
in the bright light of heaven, escorted — such were the strange
anomalies of those old times — by a superb array of lances, furnished
for his defence by the same count de Ponthieu, who,
having held him in vile durance until his object was obtained,
as soon as he was liberated on full payment of the stipulated
price, had thenceforth treated him as a much-honored guest,
holding his stirrup at his castle-gate when he departed, and
sending a strong guard of honor to see him in all safety over
the frontier of the duke's demesne. Here, at the frontier town,
William's high senechal attended his arrival; and gay and glorious
was his progress through the rich fields of Normandy,
until he reached Rouen. The glorious chase — whether by the
green margin of some brimful river they roused the hermit-tyrant
of the waters, that noblest of the birds of chase, to make
sport for their long-winged falcons, or through the sere trees
of the forest pursued the stag or felon wolf with horn, hound,
and halloo — diversified the tedium of the journey; while
every night some feudal castle threw wide its hospitable gates
to greet with revelry and banqueting the guest of the grand
duke. Arrived at Rouen, that powerful prince himself, the
mightiest warrior of the day, rode forth beyond the gates to
meet the Saxon; nor did two brothers long estranged meet ever
with more cordiality of outward show than these, the chiefs of
nations long destined to be rival and antagonistic, till from their
union should arise the mightiest, the wisest, the most victorious,
and enlightened, and free race of men, that ever peopled
empires, or spread their language and their laws through an
admiring world. On that first meeting, as he embraced his

guest, the princely Norman announced to him that his young
brother and his nephew were thenceforth at his absolute disposal.

“The hostages are yours,” he said — “yours, at your sole
request; nor would I be less blithe to render them, if Harold
stood before me himself a landless exile, than as I see him
now, the first lord of a powerful kingdom, the most trusty messenger
of a right noble king. But, of your courtesy, I pray you
leave us not yet awhile; though if you will do so, my troops
shall convey you to the seashore, my ships shall bear you home!
— but, I beseech, do this honor to your host, to tarry with him
for a little space: and as you be the first — for so you are reported
to us — in all realities and sports of Saxon warfare, so
let us prove your prowess, and witness you our skill, in passages
of Norman chivalry.”

In answer to this fair request, what could the Saxon do but
acquiesce? Yet, even as he did so, the words of the gray-headed
king came sensibly upon his memory, and he began to
feel as if in truth the net of the deceiver were already round
about him with its inevitable meshes. Still, having once assented,
nothing remained for him but to fulfil, as gracefully as
possible, his half-unwilling promise. So joyously, however,
were the days consumed — so gayly did the evenings pass,
among festivities far more refined and delicate than were the
rude feasts of the sturdy Saxons, wherein excess of drink and
vulgar riot composed the chief attractions — that, after one short
week had flown, all the anxieties and fears of Harold were lost
in admiration of the polished manners of his Norman hosts, and
the high qualities of his chief entertainer. From town to town
they passed in gay cortége, visiting castle after castle in their
route, and ever and anon testing the valor and the skill each of
the other, in those superb encounters of mock warfare — the
free and gentle passage of arms — which in the education of

the warlike Normans were second only to the real shock of
battle, which was to them, not metaphorically, the very breath
of life.

Nor in these jousts and tournaments, whether with headless
lance or blunted broadsword, or in the deadlier though still amicable
strife at outrance, did not the Saxon, though unused to the
menêge of the destrier and equestrian combat with the lance,
win high renown and credit with his martial hosts. The Saxon
tribes had, from their earliest existence as a people, been famed
as infantry; their arms, a huge and massive axe; a short, sharp,
two-edged sword, framed like the all-victorious weapon of the
Romans; a target, and ponderous javelin, used ever as a missile.
Cavalry, properly so called, although their leaders sometimes
rode into the conflict, they had none; and by a natural consequence,
one of that people for the first time adopting the complete
panoply, mounting the barbed war-horse, and tilting with
the long lance of the Gallic chivalry, must have engaged with
the practised champions of the time at a fearful disadvantage.
Still, even at this odds, such was the force of emulation acting
upon a spirit elastic, vigorous, and fiery, backed by a powerful
and agile frame, inured to feats of strength and daring, that little
time elapsed ere Harold could abide the brunt of the best lance
of William's court, not only without the risk of reputation, but
often at advantage. After a long and desperate encounter,
wherein the Saxon prince had foiled all comers, hurling three
cavaliers to earth with one unsplintered lance, William, in admiration
of his bravery, insisted on bestowing on his friend,
with his own honored blade, the accolade of knighthood —
buckled the gilded spurs upon his heels; presented him with
the complete apparel of a knight — the lance, with its appropriate
bandrol — the huge, two-handed war-sword; and, above all,
the finest charger of his royal stables, which, constantly supplied
from the best blood of Andalusia, at that time were esteemed

the choicest stud in Europe. It may now be supposed that
honors such as these, coming too from a Norman, for the most
part esteemed the scornor of the Saxon race — nor this alone,
but from the most renowned and famous warrior of the day —
produced a powerful effect on the enthusiastic and ambitious
spirit of the young Englishman; nor did the wily duke fail to
observe the operation of his deep-laid manœuvres, nor, when
observed, did he neglect by every means to strengthen the impression
he had made. To this end, therefore, not courtesies
alone, nor the high-prized distinctions of military honor, nor
gorgeous gifts, nor personal deference, were deemed sufficient
instruments. To finish what he had himself so well begun, to
complete the ensnarement of the Saxon's senses, the aid of
woman was called in — woman, all-powerful, perilous, fascinating
woman! Nor did he lack a fair and willing bait wherewith
to give his prize. In his own court, filled as it was with the
most lovely, or at least — thanks to the prowess of the Norman
spear — the most renowned of Europe's ladies, there was not
one that could compete in beauty, wit, or grace, with Alice, his
bright daughter. Too keen a player with the passions and the
characters of men — too wise a judge of that most wondrous
compound, that strange mass of inconsistencies, of evil and of
good, of honor and deceit, the human heart — too close a calculator
of effects and causes, was William, to divulge his purpose,
or to hint his wishes, even to the obedient ear of Alice. He
cared not — he — whether she loved, or feigned to love, so that
his object was effected. Commanding ever his wildest passions,
using them but as instruments and tools to bend or break
men to his purposes, he never dreamed or recked of their ungovernable
force upon the minds of others. It was but a few
days after the arrival of his guest, that he discovered how he
gazed after, and with signs of evident and earnest admiration,
on the young damsel, to whose intimacy he had been studiously
admitted as an especial and much-honored friend of his host:
and her father, to fan this flame on Harold's part, it needed
little art from so consummate an intriguer as the duke; while
as to Alice, young as she was, and thoughtless, delighted with
attention, and attracted by the fine form and high repute of the
young stranger, and yet more by the raciness and trifling singularities
of his foreign though high-bred deportment — a fond,
paternal smile, and an approving glance, as she toyed with her
young admirer, sufficed to give full scope to her vivacious inclinations.

Daily the Norman's game became more intricate, daily more
certain; when suddenly, just as the Saxon — flattered and half-enamored
as he was, began to feel that he had no excuse for
lingering longer at a distance from his country and his sovereign
— began to speak of a return before the setting-in of winter,
an accident occurred, which, with his wonted readiness of
wit, William turned instantly to good account.

The ducal territories, which had descended to the Norman
line from their first champion, Rollo, were separated by the
small stream of Coësnor from the neighboring tract of Brittany,
to which all the succeeding princes had possessed a claim
since Charles the Simple, in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte,
had ceded it to that great duke, the founder of the Norman dynasty.
The consequence of this pretence — for such in fact it
was — were endless bickerings, small border wars, aggressions
and reprisals, burnings, and massacres, and vengeance! Some
trivial skirmish had occurred upon this frontier, just as the
duke had perceived that he must either suffer Harold to depart
before his projects were accomplished, or force him to remain
by open violence. In such a crisis he resolved at once upon
his line of action; and, instantly proclaiming war, he raised the
banner of his dukedom, summoned his vassals, great and small,
to render service for their military tenures; and in announcing

to his guest his march against the forces of his hereditary foe,
claimed his assistance in the field as a true host from his well-proved
guest, and a godfather-in-arms from the son whom he
had admitted to the distinguished honor of the knightly accolade.
Intoxicated with ambition and with love, madly desirous
of acquiring fame among the martial Normans, and fancying,
with a vanity not wholly inexcusable, that he was doing
service to his country in acquiring the respect of foreign powers,
he met half-way the proffer. And, in the parlance of the
day, right nobly did he prove his gilded spurs of knighthood.
In passing the Coësnor, which, like the See, the Seluna, and
the other streams that cross the great Greve of St. Michel, is
perilous from its spring-tide and awful quicksands, Harold displayed,
in recovering several soldiers, who, having quitted the
true line of march, were on the point of perishing, a noble
union of intrepidity and strength.

During the whole course of the war, the Norman and his
guest had but one tent and one table; side by side in the front
of war they charged the enemy, and side by side they rode
upon the march, beguiling the fatigue and labor with gay jests
or graver conversation: and now so intimate had they become,
so perfect was the confidence reposed by the frank Englishman
in his frank-seeming friend, that the sagacious tempter felt the
game absolutely in his power, and waited but a fitting opportunity
for aiming his last blow. Nor was it long ere the occasion
he had sought, occurred. Some brilliant exploits, performed
in the last skirmish of the campaign, by the intended
victim of his perfidy, gave him a chance to descant on the national
and well-proved hardihood and valor of this Saxon race.
Thence, by a stroke of masterly and well-timed tact, he touched
upon the beauties, the fertility, the noble forests, and the rich
fields of England — the happy days which he had passed amid
the hospitalities of that fair island. The praises of the reigning

monarch followed, a topic wherein Harold freely and eagerly
united with his host.

“You were but young in those days,” William continued,
“and searce, I trow, can recollect the scenes which to my
older memory are but as things of yesterday. Then, then, indeed,
our races were at variance, and your good sire — peace
to his soul! — worked me and mine sore scathe and trouble.
Yet was it natural, most natural! For in those times your excellent
and venerable king — long may he sway the sceptre he
so honors! — lived with me upon terms of the most close and
cordial friendship. Ay, in good sooth, we were as two brothers
— living beneath the same roof, eating of the same board,
and drinking from one cup! Not thou and I, my Harold, are
more sure comrades. Ay! and he promised me — this in thy
private ear — if ever he should gain the throne of England, to
leave me by his will, in default of his own issue, heir to that
noble kingdom. I doubt not of his troth nor loyalty, though
it is years since we spoke of it. You have more lately been
about him: hast ever heard him speak of it? What thinkest
thou of his plighted faith? He is not one, I do believe, to
register a vow in heaven, and fall from it!”

Taken thus by surprise, annoyed and much embarrassed by
the turn their converse had thus taken, Harold turned pale, and
actually stammered, as he made reply:—

“He never had presumed to question his liege lord and king
on matters of such import. The king had never dropped the
slightest hint to him concerning the succession. If he had
sworn, doubtless he would perform his oath: he was famed,
the world over, for his strict sanctity; how, then, should he be
perjured? He doubted not, had he so promised, the duke
would have no reason to complain of any breach of faith in
good King Edward's testament.”

“Ay! it is so,” said William, musingly, as it appeared to

Harold, although in truth his every word had been premeditated
long before. “I had so hoped it would be; and, by my
faith, right glad am I that you confirm me in mine aspirations.
By your aid, my good friend — with the best Saxon on my side
— all else is certain; and by my faith, whatever you shall ask
of me, were it my daughter's hand in marriage, surely it shall
be yours when I am king of England!”

Again the words of the Confessor flashed on the mind of the
ill-fated Saxon, and he foresaw at once the terrible result of
this unwilling confidence. At the same time he saw no means
of present extrication, and, with an air of evident embarrassment,
he answered in words half-evasive, yet sufficiently conclusive,
as he hoped, to stop, for the time being, the unpleasing
topic. But this was far from the intent of William, who, having
read with an intuitive and almost supernatural sagacity the
thought that flashed across the brain of Harold, determined that
he should commit himself in terms decisive, and admitting of
no dubious explanation. Taking it, then, for granted that he
had replied fully in the affirmative —

“Since, then,” he said, “you do engage so loyally to serve
me, you shall engage to fortify for me the castle on the heights
of Dover; to dig in it good wells of living water; and, at my
summons, to surrender it! You shall give me your sister, that
she may be espoused unto the noblest of my barons; and you
shall have to wife my daughter Alice: some passages, I trow,
have gone between ye ere now. Moreover, as a warrant of
your faith, your brother Ulfnoth shall yet tarry with me; and
when I come to England to possess my crown, then will I yield
him to you!”

In all its force, the madness of his conduct now glared upon
the very soul of Harold. He saw the guilt he had iucurred
already; the peril he had brought upon the kinsmen he had
come to save; the wo that might result to his loved country!

But, seeing this, he saw no better means than to feign acquiescence
with this unworthy project, holding himself at liberty to
break thereafter an unwilling promise.

No more was said upon the subject. They rode onward as
before, but the light-hearted pleasure of the Saxon was destroyed;
and though the great duke feigned not to perceive the
changed mood of his comrade, he had resolved already that he
should yet more publicly commit himself ere he should leave
the realm.

At Avranches, but three days after their discourse, William
convoked a grand assembly of his lords and barons — the mightiest
and the noblest of his vavasours and vassals — the pride
of Normandy. There, in the centre of the hall, he caused an
immense chest to be deposited, filled to the very brim with the
most holy relics — bones of the martyred saints — fragments of
the true cross — all that was deemed most sacred and most
awful by the true-hearted catholic — and covered with a superb
cloth of gold, as though it were an ordinary slab or table.
There, seated in high state, upon his chair of dignity — a drawn
sword in his hand, wearing his cap of maintenance, circled by
fleurs-de-lis, upon his head, and clad in ermined robes of state —
he held cour pleusêre of his nobles. The Saxon stood among
them, honored among the first at all times, and now the more
especially distinguished, that it was his farewell reception previous
to his departure for England. After presenting him with
the most splendid gifts, and making the most liberal professions
of attachment, “Harold,” exclaimed the duke, “before we part,
I call on you, before this noble company, here to confirm by
oath your promise made to me three days since, `to aid me in
obtaining, after the death of Edward, the throne and crown of
England; to take my daughter Alice to wife; and to send me
your sister hither, that I may find for her a princely spouse
among my vavasours!”

Taken a second time at fault, and daring not thus openly to
falsify his word — but with a blank and troubled aspect, unsatisfied
with his internal reservation, and conscious of his perjury
— Harold laid both his hands on two small reliquaries
which lay, as if by chance, upon the cloth of gold; and swore,
provided he should live, to make good all those promises —
“so might God aid him.” And with one deep, solemn acclamation,
the whole assembly echoed those last words: “So
may God aid him! may God aid! God aid!” At the same instant,
on a signal from the duke, the cloth of gold was drawn
aside, and Harold saw the sacrilege he must commit, so deeply
sworn on things so holy, should he repent, or falsify his oath!
He saw, and shuddered visibly, as though he had been stricken
by an ague; yet presently, by a powerful effort, rallying all his
courage to his aid, he made his last farewells, departed, loaded
with gifts and honors, but with a melancholy heart; and sailed
immediately for England, leaving the brother, for whose liberty
he came a suitor, ten times more deeply forfeit than he had
been before. On his first interview with Edward, he related
all that had occurred — even his own involuntary oath. And
the old sovereign trembled, and grew pale, but manifested nothing
of surprise or anger!

“I knew it,” he replied, in calm but hollow tones; “I knew
it, and I did forewarn you, how that your visit to the Norman
should bring misery on you, and ruin on our country! As I
forewarned you, so has it come to pass! So shall it come to
pass hereafter, till all hath been fulfilled: God only grant that
I live not to see it!”

THE NORMAN'S VENGEANCE.

Edward the Confessor was dead; and dying, had bequeathed
the crown of merry England to Harold, son of Godwin,
destined, alas! to be the last prince of the Saxon race who
should possess the throne of the fair island. The oath which
he had sworn to Willian, duke of Normandy, engaging to
assist him in obtaining that same realm, which had now fallen
to himself, alike by testament of the late king, and by election
of the people, dwelt not in the new monarch's bosom! Selfishness
and ambition, aided, perhaps, and strengthened by the
suggestions of a sincere patriotism, that whispered to his soul
the baseness of surrendering his countrymen, their lives, their
liberties, their fortunes, and his loved native land, into the stern
hands of a foreign ruler, determined him to brave the worst,
rather than keep the oath, which, with its wonted sophistry,
self-interest was ready to represent involuntary and of no avail.
Not long, however, was he allowed to flatter himself with
hopes that the tempest, excited by his own weak duplicity,
might possibly blow over. The storm-clouds were already
charged with thunder destined to burst almost at once on his
devoted head. The cry of warfare had gone forth through
Christendom; the pope had launched the dreadful bolt of interdict

and excommunication against the perjured Saxon, and all
who should adhere to him in his extremity; nay, more, had
actually granted to the Norman duke, by virtue of holy
office as God's vicegerent and dispenser of all dignities on
earth, the sovereignty of the disputed islands. In token of his
perfect approbation of the justice of his cause, the Roman pontiff
had sent, moreover, to the duke, a ring of gold, containing
an inestimable relic, a lock of hair from the thrice-mitred temples
of St. Peter, the first Roman bishop; a consecrated banner
blest by himself—the same which had been reared, in token
of the greatness and supremacy of holy church, by those bold
Normans, Raoul and William of Montreuil, above the captured
battlements of every tower and castle through the bright kingdom
of Campania. Thus doubly armed, once by the justice
of his cause, and yet more strongly by the sanction of the
church, the bold duke hesitated not to strive by force of arms
to gain that rich inheritance, which he had hoped to win by
the more easy agency of guile and of persuasion.

A herald, sent with a most noble train, bore William's terms
to the new monarch. “William, the duke of Normandy,” he
said, boldly, but with all reverence due to his birth and present
station, “calls to your memory the oath, which you swore to him
by your hand and by your mouth, on good and holy relics!”

“True it is,” answered Harold, “that I did swear; but
under force I did so, not by free will of mine! Moreover, I
did promise that which 'twas not mine to grant. My royalty
belongs not to myself, but to my people, in trust of whom I hold
it. I may not yield it but at their demand; let them but second
William, and instantly the crown he seeks for shall be his!
Farther, without my people's leave, I may not wed a woman
of a stranger race. My sister, whom he would have espoused
unto the noblest of his barons—she hath been dead a year.
Will he, that I should send her corpse?”

A little month elapsed, and during that brief interval, Harold
neglected nothing that might preserve the crown he had determined
never, except with life, to yield to his fierce rival.
A powerful fleet was instantly appointed to cruise upon the
Downs, and intercept the French invaders; a mighty army was
collected on the coast, and each and all the Saxon landholders,
nobles, and thanes, and franklins, bound themselves by strong
oaths “never to entertain or truce, or treaty, with the detested
Normans, but to die freemen, or freemen to conquer.”

A second time the herald came in peace, demanding, in
tones fair and moderate, that Harold, if he might not keep all
the conditions of his oath, would fulfil part, at least, and wed
Alice, his betrothed wife already, the daughter of the puissant
duke, who, thereupon, would yield to him, as being his daughter's
dower, all right and title to the crown, which he now
claimed as his by heritage.

Harold again returned a brief and stern refusal; resolved,
that as he would not yield the whole, he would not, by conceding
part, risk the alienation of the love — which he possessed
in an extraordinary degree — of the whole English people.
Then burst the storm at once. From every part of Europe,
where the victorious banners of the Normans were spread to
the wind of heaven, adventurers flocked to the consecrated
standard of their kinsman.

Four hundred vessels of the largest class, and more than
twice that number of the transports of the day, were speedily
assembled in the frith of Dives, a stream which falls into the
sea between the Seine and Orne. There, for a month or better,
by contrary winds and furious storms, they were detained
inactive. At length, a southern breeze rose suddenly, and by
its aid they made the harbor of Saint Valery; but there, again,
they were detained by times more stormy than before; and,
superstitious as all men of that period were, the soldiers soon

began to tremble and to murmur; strange tales of dreams, and
prodigies were circulated, and the spirit of that vast host, of
late so confident and proud, sank hourly. At length, whether
at the instigation of their own fanatical belief, or as a last resource,
or hoping to distract the minds of men from gloomier
considerations, the Norman chiefs appointed a procession round
the harbor of Saint Valery; bearing the holiest relics, and
among them, the bones of the good saint himself, the patron
and nomenclator of the town; and ere the prayers were ended,
lo! the wind shifted once again, and now blew steadily and
fair, swelling the canvass with propitious breath, and driving
out each vane and streamer at full length, toward their destined
port.

The same storm, which had held William on his Norman
coast, windbound and motionless, which he had cursed as unpropitious
and disastrous, fifty times every day, for the last
month, had been, in truth — so little is the foresight, and so ignorant
the wisdom even of the most sagacious among mortals —
had been, in truth, the agent by which his future conquest was
to be effected. Those gales which pent the Norman galleys
in their harbors, had forced the English fleet, shattered and
storm-tossed, to put in for victuals and repairs, leaving the seas
unguarded to the approach of the invaders. Nor was this all!
Those self-same gales had wafted from the northward another
fleet of foemen, the Norwegian host of the bold sea-king, Harold
Hardrada, and the treacherous Tosti, the rebel brother of
the Saxon monarch. Debarking in the Humber, they had laid
waste the fertile borders of Northumberland and Yorkshire;
had vanquished, in a pitched battle, Morcar and Edwin, and
the youthful Waltheof — who had made head against them
with their sudden levies, raised from the neighboring countries
— had driven them into the walls of York, and there were now
besieging them with little hope of rescue or relief. Meanwhile,

the king, who had, for months, been lying in the southern portion
of the realm, in Essex, Kent, or Sussex, awaiting, at the
head of the best warriors of his kingdom, the arrival of his
most inveterate foeman — summoned by news of this irruption,
unexpected, yet, as it seemed most formidable, into his northern
provinces, lulled into temporary carelessness by the long
tarrying of his Norman enemy; and hoping, as it indeed
seemed probable, that the prevailing wind would not change
so abruptly, but that he might, by using some extraordinary diligence
and speed, attack and overpower the besieging force at
York, and yet return to Dover in time to oppose, with the united
force of his whole nation, the disembarkation of the duke
— had left his post and travelled with all speed toward York,
leading the bravest and best-disciplined of his army against the
fierce Norwegians, while the shores of Sussex remained comparatively
naked and defenceless. A bloody and decisive battle,
fought at the bridge of Staneford, over the river Derwent,
rewarded his activity and valor — a battle in which he displayed
no less his generalship and valor, than the kind generosity and
mercy of his nature. Riding, himself, in person, up to the
hostile lines, before the first encounter, sheathed in the complete
armor of the Norman chivalry — which, since his visit to
the continent, he had adopted — “Where,” he cried, in his
loudest tones, “is Tosti, son of Godwin?”

“Here stands he,” answered the rebel, from the centre of
the Norwegian phalanx, which, with lowered spears, awaited
the attack.

“Thy brother,” replied Harold, concealed by the frontlet of
his barred helmet from all recognition, “sends thee his greeting
— offers thee peace, and friendship, and all thine ancient
honors.”

“Good words!” cried Tosti, “mighty good, and widely different
from the insults he bestowed on me last year! But if I

should accept the offer, what will he grant to Harold, son of
Sigurd?”

“Seven feet of English earth,” replied the king; “or, since
he be gigantic in his stature, he shall have somewhat more!”

“Let Harold, then address himself to battle,” answered
Tosti. “None but a liar ever shall declare that Tosti, son of
Godwin, has played a traitor's part to Harold, son of Sigurd!”

There was no more of parley. With a shock, that was
heard for leagues, the hosts encountered; and in the very first
encounter, pierced by an arrow in the throat, Hardrada fell,
and to his place succeeded that false brother and rebellious subject,
Tosti, the Saxon. Again the generous Harold offered
him peace and liberal conditions! again his offers were insultingly
rejected! and once again, with a more deadly fury than
before, the armies met, and, this time, fought it out, till not a
leader or a chief of the Norwegian host was left alive, save
Olaf, Harold's son, and the prince bishop of the Orkneys —
Tosti, himself, having at length obtained the fate he merited so
richly. A third time peace and amity were offered, and now
they were accepted; and swearing friendship to the English
king for ever, the Norsemen left the fatal land, whereon yet
weltered in their gore their king, the noblest of their chiefs,
and twice five thousand of the bravest men of their brave nation.
But glorious as that day was justly deemed — and widely
as it was sung and celebrated by the Saxon bards — perfect as
was the safety which it wrought to all the northern counties —
and freely as it suffered Harold to turn his undivided forces
against whatever foe might dare set hostile foot on English soil
inviolate — still was that day decisive of his fate! — decisive of
the victory of William, whose banners were already floating
over the narrow seas in proud anticipation of their coming triumph!

It was a bright and beauteous morning in September, when

the great fleet of William put to sea, the galley of the grand
duke leading. She was a tall ship, of the largest tonnage then
in use, well manned, and gallantly equipped; from the main-topmast
streamed the consecrated banner of the pope, and from
her peak, a broad flag with a blood-red cross. Her sails were,
not as now, of plain white canvass, but gorgeously adorned
with various colors, and blazoned with the rude incipient heraldry,
which, though not then a science, was growing gradually
into esteem and use. In several places might be seen depicted
the three Lions, which were even then the arms of Normandy;
and on her prow was carved, with the best skill of the
French artist, a young child with a bended bow, and a shaft
quivering on the string. Fair blew the breeze, and free the gallant
ship careered before it — before the self-same wind which
at the self-same moment was tossing on its joyous pinions the
victorious banners of the Saxon king. Fair blew the breeze, and
fast the ship of William sped through the curling billows — so
fast that, ere the sun set in the sea, the fleet was hull down in
the offing, though staggering along under all press of sail.
Night sank upon the sea; and faster flew the duke; and as the
morning broke, the chalky cliffs of Albion were in full view, at
two or three leagues distance. William, who had slept all that
night as soundly and as calmly as a child, stood on the deck
ere it was light enough to see the largest object on the sea,
one mile away. His first glance was toward the promised
land, he was so swiftly nearing; his second, toward the offing,
where he hoped to see his gallant followers. Brighter and
brighter grew the morning, but not a speck was visible upon
the clear horizon. “Up to the topmast, mariners,” cried the
bold duke; “up to the topmast-head! And now what see
ye?” he continued, as they sprang up in rapid emulation to
that giddy height.

“Naught,” cried the first — “naught but the sea and sky!”

“Anchor, then — anchor, presently; we will await their coming,
and in the meanwhile, Sir Seneschal, serve us a breakfast
of your best, and see there be no lack of wines, the strongest
and the noblest!” and, on the instant, the heavy plunge was
heard of the huge anchor in the deep; the sails were furled;
and like a living creature endowed with intellect, and moving
by volition, the gallant ship swung round, awaiting the arrival
of her consorts.

The feast was spread, and, from the high duke on the poop
to the most humble mariner on the forecastle, the red wine
flowed for all in generous profusion. Again a lookout was
sent up, and now he cried, “I see far, far, to seaward, the
topsails of four vessels.” A little pause consumed in revelry
and feasting, and once again the ship-boy climbed the mast.
“I see,” he said, the third time, “a forest on the deep, of
masts and sails!”

“God aid! God aid!” replied the armed crew — “God aid!”
and, with the word, again they weighed the anchor, and, ere
three hours had passed, the whole of that huge armament rode
at their moorings off the beach at Pevensey.

There was no sign of opposition or resistance; and on the
third day after Harold's victory at Staneford, the Norman host
set foot on English soil. The archers were the first to disembark
— armed with the six-foot bows, and cloth-yard shafts,
then, for the first time, seen in England, soon destined to become
the national weapon of its stout yeomanry. Their faces
closely shorn, and short-cut hair, their light and succinct
garments, were seen by the affrighted peasantry, who looked
upon their landing from a distance, with equal terror and astonishment.
Next came the men-at-arms, sheathed in their glittering
hauberks and bright hose-of-mail, with conical steel helmets
on their heads, long lances in their hands, and huge two-handed
swords transversely girt across their persons. After

them landed the pioneers, the laborers, and carpenters, who
made the complement of that immense army, bearing with them,
piece after piece, three fortresses of timber, arranged beforehand,
and prepared to be erected on the instant, wherever they
should come to land. Last of the mighty host, Duke William
left his galley, and the long lines fell into orderly and beautiful
array, as he was rowed to land. In leaping to that wished-for
shore, the Norman's right foot struck the gunwale of the shallop,
and he fell headlong on the sand, face downward. Instantly,
through the whole array, a deep and shuddering murmur
rose — “God guard us — 'tis a sign of evil!”

But ere the sounds had passed away, he had sprung to his
feet. “What is it that you fear?” he shouted, in clear and
joyous tones, “or what dismays you? Lo! I have seized
this earth in both mine hands, and, by the splendor of our God,
'tis yours!”

Loud was the cheer of gratulation which peeled seaward far,
and far into the bosom of the invaded land, at that most brilliant
and successful repartee — and with alacrity and glee —
confident of success, and high in daring courage — the Norman
host marched, unopposed, in regular and terrible array, toward
Hastings. Here on the well-known heights, to this day known
by the commemorative name of Battle, the wooden fortresses
were speedily erected; trenches were dug; and William's
army sat down for the night upon the land, which was thenceforth
to be their heritage — thenceforth for evermore.

The news reached Harold as he lay at York, wounded and
resting from his labors, and on the instant, with his victorious
army, he set forth, publishing, as he marched along, his proclamation
to all the chief of provinces and shires, to arm their
followers, and meet him with all speed at London. The western
levies came without delay; those from the north, owing to
distance, were some time behind; and yet, could Harold have

been brought by any means to moderate his fierce and desperate
impatience, he would, ere four days had elapsed, have
found himself, at least, in the command of twice two hundred
men. But irritated to the utmost by the sufferings of his countrymen,
whose lands were pitilessly ravaged, whose tenements
were burned for miles around the Norman camp, whose wives
and daughters were subjected to every species of insult and
indignity, the Saxon king pressed onward. And though his
forces did not amount to one-fourth part of the great duke's.
array, still, he was resolved to encounter them, precipitate and
furious as a madman.

On the eighteenth day after the defeat of Tosti and Hardrada,
the Saxon army was encamped over against the fortified position
of the invaders. On that same day, a monk, Sir Hugues
Maigrot, came to find Harold, with proposals from the foe,
offering him peace on one of three conditions — either that he
should yield the kingdom presently — or leave it to the arbitration
of the pope — or, finally, decide the matter by appeal to
God in single combat.

To each and all of these proposals, the Saxon answered
bluntly in the negative. “I will not yield my kingdom! I
will not leave it to the pope! I will not meet the duke in
single combat!”

Again the monk returned. “I come again,” he said, “from
William. `Tell Harold,' said the duke, `if he will hold him
to his ancient compact, I yield him all the lands beyond the
Humber; I give his brother Gurth all the demesnes his father,
Godwin, held. If he refuse these my last proffers, tell him before
his people, he is a perjured liar, accursed of the pope, and
excommunicated — he, and all those that hold to him!”'

But no effect had the bold words of William on the stern
spirits of the English. “Battle,” they cried — “no peace with
the Normans. Battle — immediate battle!” and with that answer

did the priest return to his employer; and either host prepared
for the appeal to that great arbiter, the sword.

Fairly the morning broke which was to look upon the slaughter
of so many thousands; broad and bright rose the sun before
whose setting one of those two magnificent and gallant armies
must necessarily be involved in utter ruin. As the first rays
were visible upon the eastern sky, Odo, the bishop of Bayeux,
William's maternal brother, performed high mass before the
marshalled troops, wearing his cope and rochet over his iron
harness. The holy rites performed, he leaped upon his snow-white
charger, and, with his truncheon in his hand, arrayed
the cavalry, which he commanded.

It was a glorious spectacle, that mighty host, arrayed in
three long columns of attack, marching with slow and orderly
precision against the palisaded trenches of the Saxons. The
men-at-arms of the great counts of Boulogne and Ponthieu
composed the first; the second being formed by the auxiliar
bands of Brittany, Poitou, and Maine; and in the third, commanded
by the duke in person — mounted on a superb Andalusian
charger, wearing about his neck the reliquary on which
his rival had sworn falsely, and accompanied by a young noble,
Tunstan the White, bearing the banner of the pope — were
marshalled all the flower and strength of Normandy. Scattered
along the front of the advance were multitudes of archers,
lightly equipped in quilted jerkins, with long yew bows, and
arrows of an ell in length, mingled with crossbow-men with
arbalasts of steel, and square, steel-headed quarrels.

Steadily they advanced, and in good order; while, in their
entrenched camp, guarded by palisades of oak morticed together
in a long line of ponderous trellis-work, the Englishmen awaited
their approach, drawn up around their standard, which — blazoned
with the white dragon, long both the ensign and the war-cry
of their race — was planted firmly in the earth, surrounded

by the dense ranks of heavy infantry which formed the strength
of their array.

Just as the charge began, William rode out before the lines,
and thus addressed his soldiery: “Turn your hearts wholly to
the combat! set all upon the die, either to fall or conquer! For
if we gain, we shall be rich and glorious. That which I gain,
shall be your gain; that which I conquer, yours! If I shall
win this land, ye shall possess it! Know, too, and well remember
this, that not to claim my right have I come only, but to
revenge — ay, to revenge our gentle nation on all the felonies,
the perjuries, the treasons of the English! — the English, who,
in profound peace, upon Saint Brice's eve, ruthlessly slew the
unarmed and defenceless Danes; who decimated the bold followers
of Alfred, my kinsman and your countryman, and slew
himself by shameless treachery! On, then, with God's aid,
Normans! on, for revenge and victory!”

Then out dashed from the lines the boldest of his vavasours,
the Norman Taillefer, singing aloud the famous song — well
known through every province of proud France — the song of
Charlemagne and Rollo — tossing aloft the while his long, two-handed
war-sword, and catching it adroitly as it fell; while at
each close of that proud, spirit-stirring chant, each warrior of
that vast array thundered the burden of the song — “God aid!
God aid!”

Then, like a storm of hail, close, deadly, and incessant, went
forth the volleyed showers from arbalast and long-bow; while
infantry and horse charged in unbroken order against the gates
and angles of the fort. But with a cool and stubborn hardihood
the Saxon infantry stood firm. Protected by the massive
palisades from the appalling volleys of the archery, they hurled
their short and heavy javelins with certain aim and deadly execution
over their stout defences; while their huge axes, wherever
they came hand to hand, shivered the Norman spears like

reeds, and cleft the heaviest mail, even at a single blow! Long,
and with all the hot, enthusiastic valor of their race, did the
assailants crowd around the ramparts; but it was all in vain —
they could not scale them in the face of that indomitable infantry;
they could not force one timber from its place; and
they at length recoiled, weary and half-subdued, toward the
reserve of William.

After a short cessation, again the archery advanced; but,
by the orders of the duke, their volleys were no longer sent
point-blank, but shot at a great elevation, so that they fell in a
thick, galling shower, striking the heads and wounding the unguarded
faces of the bold defenders. Harold himself, who
fought on foot beside his standard, lost his right eye at the first
flight; but not for that did he desert his post, or play less valiantly
the part of a determined soldier and wise leader. Again
with that tremendous shout of “Nôtre Dame — God aid! God
aid!” which had, in every realm of Europe, sounded the harbinger
of victory, the horse and foot rushed on to the attack;
while from their rear that heavy and incessant sleet of bolt, and
shaft, and bullet, fell fast and frequent into the dense ranks of
the still-undaunted English. At no point did they force their
way, however, even when fighting at this desperate advantage.
At no point did a single Norman penetrate a gate, or overtop a
palisade; while at one entrance so complete was the repulse
of the attacking squadrons, that they recoiled, hard pressed by
the defenders, to a ravine at some considerable distance from
the trenches, deep, dangerous, and filled with underwood and
brambles; these, as they fell back in confusion, their horses
stumbling and unable to recover, were overthrown and slain
pell-mell, and half defeated. One charge of cavalry, one shock
of barbed horse, would have insured the total rout of the invaders;
but — wo for England on that day! — cavalry she had
none, nor barbed horse, to complete gloriously the work her

sturdy footmen had commenced so gallantly. Still, great was
the disorder, great was the disarray and peril, of the foreign
soldiery. The cry went through the host that the great duke
was slain; and, though he flung himself amid the flyers, with
his head bare, that they might recognise his features — threatening,
cursing, striking at friend and foe with undiscriminating
violence — it was well nigh an hour before he could restore the
semblance of any discipline or order. This, once accomplished,
he advanced again; and yet a third time, though he exerted
every nerve, was he repulsed at every point in terrible disorder,
and with tremendous loss.

Evening was fast approaching; and well did William know
that, if the following morning should find the Saxons firm in
their unforced entrenchments, his hopes were vain and hopeless!
The country, far and near, was rousing to the Saxon
war-cry; and to the Normans, not to conquer, was to be conquered
utterly; and to be conquered was to perish, one and all!
Valor or open force, it was too evident, could effect nothing
against men as valiant and as strong, posted with more advantage.
Guile was his last resource; and guile, as usual, prevailed!

A thousand of his cavaliers advanced, as though about to
charge the trenches at full speed, with lances lowered, and with
their wonted ensenzie, “God aid!” But as they neared the
palisades, by preconcerted stratagem, as if they had lost heart,
they suddenly drew bridle, all as a single man, and fled, as it
appeared, in irretrievable disorder, back, back to the main
body! Meanwhile, throughout the lines, the banners were
waved to and fro disorderly, and the ranks shifted, and spears
rose and fell, and all betokened their complete disorganization.
The sight was too much even for the cool hardihood of Saxon
courage. With one tremendous shout they rushed from their
entrenchments — which, had they held to them, not forty-fold

the force of William could have successfully assailed — and,
wielding with both hands their bills and axes, plunged headlong
in pursuit. That instant, all was over! For, at a moment's
notice, at a concerted signal of a single trumpet, the
very men they deemed defeated wheeled into line; and with
their spears projecting ten feet, at the least, before their chargers'
poitrels, their long plumes floating backward in the current
caused by their own quick motion, the chivalry of France
bore down on their pursuers, breathless, confused, and struggling.
It was a massacre, but not a rout; for not a man turned
on his heel, or even thought to fly: but back to back, in desperate
groups, they fought after their ranks were broken, hewing
with their short weapons at the mail-clad lancers, who securely
speared them from the backs of their barbed horses — asking
not, nor receiving quarter — true sons of England to the last,
annihilated but not conquered! Night fell, and Gurth, and
Leofwyn, and Harold, lay dead around their standard — pierced
with innumerable wounds, gory, and not to be discerned, so
were their features and their forms defaced and mangled by
friend or foeman. Yet still, when all was lost, without array
or order, standards, or chiefs, or hopes, the Englishmen fought
on — till total darkness sank down on the field of slaughter, and
utter inability to slay caused a brief pause in the unsparing
havoc. Such was the vengeance of the Norman!

THE FAITH OF WOMAN.

It was the morning after the exterminating fight at Hastings.
The banner blessed of the Roman pontiff streamed on the tainted
air, from the same hillock whence the dragon standard of
the Saxons had shone unconquered to the sun of yester-even!
Hard by was pitched the proud pavilion of the conqueror, who,
after the tremendous strife and perilous labors of the preceding
day, reposed himself in fearless and untroubled confidence upon
the field of his renown; secure in the possession of the land,
which he was destined to transmit to his posterity for many a
hundred years, by the red title of the sword.

To the defeated Saxons, morning, however, brought but a
renewal of those miseries which, having yesterday commenced
with the first victory of their Norman lords, were never to conclude,
or even to relax, until the complete amalgamation of the
rival races should leave no Normans to torment, no Saxons to
endure; all being merged at last into one general name of
English, and by their union giving origin to the most powerful,
and brave, and intellectual people, the world has ever looked
upon since the extinction of Rome's freedom.

At the time of which we are now speaking, nothing was

thought of by the victors save how to rivet most securely on
the necks of the unhappy natives their yoke of iron; nothing
by the poor, subjugated Saxons, but how to escape for the moment
the unrelenting massacre which was urged far and wide
by the remorseless conquerors throughout the devastated country.
With the defeat of Harold's host, all national hope of
freedom was at once lost to England. Though, to a man, the
English population were brave and loyal, and devoted to their
country's rights, the want of leaders — all having perished side
by side on that disastrous field — of combination, without which
myriads are but dust in the scale against the force of one united
handful — rendered them quite unworthy of any serious fears,
and even of consideration, to the bloodthirsty barons of the invading
army. Over the whole expanse of level country which
might be seen from the slight elevation whereon was pitched
the camp of William, on every side might be descried small
parties of the Norman horse, driving in with their bloody lances,
as if they were mere cattle, the unhappy captives; a few of
whom they now began to spare, not from the slightest sentiment
of mercy, but literally that their arms were weary with
the task of slaying, although their hearts were yet insatiate of
blood.

It must be taken now into consideration by those who listen
with dismay and wonder to the accounts of pitiless barbarity —
of ruthless, indiscriminating slaughter on the part of men whom
they have hitherto been taught to look upon as brave indeed as
lions in the field, but not partaking of the lion's nature after
the field was won — not only that the seeds of enmity had long
been sown between those rival people, but that the deadly crop
of hatred had grown up, watered abundantly by the tears and
blood of either; and, lastly, that the fierce fanaticism of religious
persecution was added to the natural rancor of a war
waged for the ends of conquest or extermination. The Saxon

nation, from the king downward to the meanest serf who fought
beneath his banner, or buckled on the arms of liberty, were all
involved under the common ban of the pope's interdict. They
were accursed of God, and handed over by his holy church to
the kind mercies of the secular arm; and therefore, though but
yesterday they were a powerful and united nation, to-day they
were but a vile horde of scattered outlaws, whom any man
might slay wherever he should find them, whether in arms or
otherwise — amenable for blood neither to any mortal jurisdiction,
nor even to the ultimate tribunal to which all must submit
hereafter, unless deprived of their appeal like these poor fugitives,
by excommunication from the pale of Christianity. For
thirty miles around the Norman camp, pillars of smoke by day,
continually streaming upward to the polluted heaven, and the
red glare of nightly conflagration, told fatally the doom of many
a happy home! Neither the castle nor the cottage might preserve
their male inhabitants from the sword's edge, their females
from more barbarous persecution. Neither the sacred
hearth of hospitality nor the more sacred altars of God's churches
might protect the miserable fugitives; neither the mail-shirt of
the man-at-arms nor the monk's frock of serge availed against
the thrust of the fierce Norman spear. All was dismay and
havoc, such as the land wherein those horrors were enacted has
never witnessed since, through many a following age.

High noon approached, and in the conqueror's tent a gorgeous
feast was spread. The red wine flowed profusely, and
song and minstrelsy arose with their heart-soothing tones, to
which the feeble groans of dying wretches bore a dread burden
from the plain whereon they still lay struggling in their great
agonies, too sorely maimed to live, too strong as yet to die.
But, ever and anon, their wail waxed feebler and less frequent;
for many a plunderer was on foot, licensed to ply his odious
calling in the full light of day — reaping his first if not his richest

booty from the dead bodies of their slaughtered foemen. Ill
fared the wretches who lay there, untended by the hand of love
or mercy, “scorched by the death-thirst, and writhing in vain;”
but worse fared they who showed a sign of life to the relentless
robbers of the dead, for then the dagger — falsely called that of
mercy — was the dispenser of immediate immortality. The
conqueror sat at his triumphant board, and barons drank his
health: “First English monarch, of the pure blood of Normandy!”
— “King by the right of the sword's edge!” — “Great,
glorious, and sublime!” Yet was not his heart softened, nor
was his bitter hate toward the unhappy prince who had so often
ridden by his side in war, and feasted at the same board with
him in peace, relinquished or abated. Even while the feast
was at the highest, while every heart was jocund and sublime,
a trembling messenger approached, craving on bended knee
permission to address the conqueror and king — for so he was
already schooled by brief but hard experience to style the devastator
of his country.

“Speak out, Dog Saxon!” cried the ferocious prince; “but
since thou must speak, see that thy speech be brief, an' thou
wouldst keep thy tongue uncropped thereafter!”

“Great duke and mighty,” replied the trembling envoy, “I
bear you greeting from Elgitha, herewhile the noble wife of
Godwin, the queenly mother of our late monarch — now, as she
bade me style her, the humblest of your suppliants and slaves.
Of your great nobleness and mercy, mighty king, she sues you,
that you will grant her the poor leave to search amid the heaps
of those our Saxon dead, that her three sons may at least lie in
consecrated earth — so may God send you peace and glory
here, and everlasting happiness hereafter!”

“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as
if in wonder toward his nobles; “hear to the Saxon slave, that
dares to speak of consecrated earth, and of interment for the

accursed body of that most perjured, excommunicated liar!
Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog, whom you have dared
to style your king, that for the interdicted and accursed dead
the sands of the seashore are but too good a sepulchre!”

“She bade me proffer humbly to your acceptance the weight
of Harold's body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified
and cringing messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”

“Proffer us gold! what gold, or whose? Know, villain, all
the gold throughout this conquered realm is ours. Hence, dog
and outcast, hence! nor presume e'er again to come, insulting
us by proffering, as a boon to our acceptance, that which we
own already, by the most indefeasible and ancient right of conquest!
— Said I not well, knights, vavasours, and nobles?”

“Well! well and nobly!” answered they, one and all. “The
land is ours, and all that therein is: their dwellings, their demesnes,
their wealth, whether of gold, or silver, or of cattle —
yea, they themselves are ours! themselves, their sons, their
daughters, and their wives — our portion and inheritance, to be
our slaves for ever!”

“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the duke, spurning
him with his foot; “and hark ye, arbalast-men and archers,
if any Saxon more approach us on like errand, see if his coat
of skin be proof against the quarrel of the shaft!”

And once again the feast went on; and louder rang the revelry,
and faster flew the wine-cup, round the tumultuous board.
All day the banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on
that fatal field, watered sufficiently already by the rich gore of
many a noble heart. All day the banquet lasted, and far was
it prolonged into the watches of the night; when, rising with
the wine-cup in his hand — “Nobles and barons,” cried the
duke, “friends, comrades, conquerors, bear witness to my vow!
Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon

yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory,
and where our last foe fell — there will I raise an abbey to HIS
eternal praise and glory. Richly endowed, it shall be, from the
first fruits of this our land. Battle, it shall be called, to send
the memory of this, the great and singular achievement of our
race, to far posterity; and, by the splendor of our God, wine shall
be plentier among the monks of Battle, than water in the noblest
and richest cloister else, search the world over! This
do I swear: so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted us for
our renown, and will not now deny his help, when it be asked
for his own glory!”

The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a
Saxon had presumed, since the intolerant message of the duke,
to come to look upon his dead. But now the ground was
needed whereon to lay the first stone of the abbey William had
vowed to God. The ground was needed; and, moreover, the
foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential on the
winds of heaven. And now, by trumpet-sound, and proclamation
through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain of
death, to come and seek their dead, lest the health of the conquerors
should suffer from the pollution they themselves had
wrought. Scarce had the blast sounded, and the glad tidings
been announced once only, ere from their miserable shelters,
where they had herded with the wild beasts of the forest —
from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might escape
the Norman spear — forth crept the relics of that persecuted
race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and steps
that tottered no less from the effect of terror than of age —
maidens, and youths, and infants — too happy to obtain permission
to search amid those festering heaps, dabbling their hands
in the corrupt and pestilential gore which filled each nook and
hollow of the dinted soil, so they might bear away, and water
with their tears, and yield to consecrated ground, the relics of

those brave ones, once loved so fondly, and now so bitterly lamented.
It was toward the afternoon of that same day, when a
long train was seen approaching, with crucifix, and cross, and
censer — the monks of Waltham abbey, coming to offer homage
for themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals, to him whom
they acknowledged as their king; expressing their submission
to the high will of the Norman pontiff — justified, as they said,
and proved by the assertion of God's judgment upon the hill of
Hastings. Highly delighted by this absolute submission, the
first he had received from any English tongue, the conqueror
received the monks with courtesy and favor, granting them high
immunities, and promising them free protection, and the unquestioned
tenor of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he had
answered their address, he detained two of their number — men
of intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he
instantly discovered — from whom to derive information as to
the nature of his newly-acquired country and newly-conquered
subjects. Osgad and Ailric, the deputed messengers from the
respected principal of their community, had yet a further and
higher object than to tender their submission to the conqueror.
Their orders were, at all and every risk, to gain permission to
consign the corpse of their late king and founder to the earth
previously denied to him. And soon, emboldened by the courtesy
and kindness of the much-dreaded Norman, they took courage
to approach the subject, knowing it interdicted, even on
pain of death; and, to their wonder and delight, it was unhesitatingly
granted.

Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled
defeat and slaughter, those old men might be seen
toiling among the naked carcasses, disfigured, maimed, and festering
in the sun, toiling to find the object of their devoted veneration.
But vain were all their labors — vain was their search,
even when they called in the aid of his most intimate attendants,

ay, of the mother that had borne him! The corpses of
his brethren, Leofwyn and Gurth, were soon discovered; but
not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him,
could now distinguish the maimed features of the king.

At last, when hope itself was now almost extinct, some one
named Edith — Edith the Swan-necked! She had been the
mistress — years ere he had been, or dreamed of being, king —
to the brave son of Godwin. She had beloved him in her youth
with that one, single-minded, constant, never-ending love, which
but few, even of her devoted sex, can feel, and they but once,
and for one cherished object. Deserted and dishonored when
he she loved was elevated to the throne, she had not ceased
from her true adoration; but, quitting her now-joyless home,
had shared her heart between her memories and her God, in
the sequestered cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland. More
days elapsed ere she could reach the fatal spot, and the increased
corruption denied the smallest hope of his discovery:
yet, from the moment when the mission was named to her, she
expressed her full and confident conviction that she could recognise
that loved one so long as but one hair remained on that
head she had once so cherished! It was night when she arrived
on the fatal field, and by the light of torches once more
they set out on their awful duty. “Show me the spot,” she said,
“where the last warrior fell;” and she was led to the place where
had been found the corpses of his gallant brethren: and, with an
instinct that nothing could deceive, she went straight to the corpse
of Harold! It had been turned already to and fro many times by
those who sought it; his mother had looked on it, and pronounced
it not her son's: but that devoted heart knew it at once — and
broke! Whom rank, and wealth, and honors had divided, defeat
and death made one! — and the same grave contained the cold
remains of Edith the Swan-necked and the last scion of the
Saxon kings of England.

THE ERRING ARROW.

As beautiful a summer's morning as ever chased the stars
from heaven, was dawning over that wide tract of waste and
woodland, which still, though many a century has now mossed
over the ancestral oaks which then were in their lusty prime,
retains the name by which it was at that day styled appropriately
— the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed since
the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that
burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God's own altars, making
the roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of
the grim wolf or antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured
vales to barren and desolate wastes — to gratify his furious
passion for that sport which has so justly been entitled the
mimicry of warfare. Few years had then elapsed, yet not a
symptom of their old fertility could now be traced in the wild
plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom,
and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance
with which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign
once smiling like a goodly garden with every meet production
for the sustenance of man.

It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer's morning as
ever eye of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the
verge of his great orb above the low horizon, was checkering
the mossy greensward with long, fantastic lines of light and
shadow, and tinging the gnarled limbs of the huge oaks with
ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly on every blade of
grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt his power,
nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of the firmament;
nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the
lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that
waked above it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles
through every variation of the wildest forest-scenery — here
traversing in easy curves wide undulations clothed with the
purple heather; here sinking downward to the brink of sheets
of limpid water; now running straight through lines of mighty
trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through
brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly
mingled with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to
make twilight of the hottest noontide. Such were the leading
features of the country which had most deeply felt, and has
borne down to later days most evident memorials of, the Norman's
tyranny.

Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes — surrounded
by its flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring
streamlet, with barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences
that marked the architecture of the conquering race —
stood Malwood keep, the favorite residence of Rufus, no less
than it had been of his more famous sire. Here, early as was
the hour, all was already full of life, full of the joyous and inspiriting
confusion that still characterizes, though in a less degree
than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for
the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro — some leading
powerful and blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the

earth, and neighed till every turret echoed to the din; some
struggling to restrain the mighty bloodhounds which bayed and
strove indignantly against the leash; while others, lying in
scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf, furbished
their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which, for
the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field
of Hastings.

It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue
that mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint
phrase of the day the noble sport was designated. A hundred
horses, at the least, of the most costly and admired breeds, were
there paraded: the huge, coal-black destrier of Flanders, limbed
like an elephant, but with a coat that might have shamed the
richest velvet by its sleekness; the light and graceful Andalusian,
with here and there a Spaniard, springy, and fleet, and
fearless — while dogs, in numbers infinitely greater, and of races
yet more various, made up the moving picture: bloodhounds to
track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent; slowhounds
to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to outstrip
him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed
and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel
beasts of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor
were these all, for birds themselves were there, trained to make
war on their own race: the long-winged hawks of Norway,
with lanners from the isle of Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and
gosshawks. No tongue could tell the beauty of the creatures
thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed, and showing
their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing eyes;
some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon
man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they
are more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare
boast himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the
superb and lavish gorgeousness of their equipment.

A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant
a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were
in the stirrup. Again it rang, longer and keener than before,
and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed
arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows,
over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the
followers and comrades of their king.

Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite
proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe,
and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or
yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity
with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the
second William. His hair, from which he had derived his
famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue
which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish
brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head;
his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were
well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and
restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole
aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and
passion — suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness
that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent
and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all
relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary
blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French;
“the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel,
shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against
these gay gallants?”

“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed.
A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein,
bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could
bend. “Right jovially will we — an' they dare cope with us!
What sayest thou, De Beauchamp — darest thou wager thy

black boar-hound against a cast of merlins — thyself and Vermandois
against his grace and me?”

“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed;
“thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow
save thine!”

“To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his!
Never drew Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks
the sleight, I trow, so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must
hold him pleased if he rate second i' the field.”

“How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou
this bold De Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers? —
not thou, I warrant me, though it be to thy king!”

“So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “'tis but a
sleight to 'scape our wager — 'scaping the shame beside of
yielding! He deems us over-strong for him, and so would
part us!”

“Nay, by my halydom,” Rufus replied with a gay smile,
“but we will have it so. We two will ride in company, each
shooting his own shaft for his own hand. I dare uphold my
arrow for twenty marks of gold, and my white Alan, against
thy Barbary bay. Darest thou, Sir Walter?”

“I know not that — I dare not!” answered Tyrrel; “but
your grace wagers high, nor will I lightly lose Bay Barbary:
if so our wager stand, I shoot no roving shaft.”

“Shoot as thou wilt, so stands it!”

“Amen!” cried Tyrrel, “and I doubt not to hear your grace
confess Tyrrel hath struck the lordlier quarry.”

“Away, then, all! away!” and, setting spurs to his curveting
horse, the monarch led the way at a hard gallop, followed
by all his train — a long and bright procession, their gay plumes
and many-colored garments offering a lively contrast to the
deep, leafy verdure of July, and their clear weapons glancing
lifelike to the sunshine.

They had careered along, with merriment and music, perhaps
three miles into the forest, when the deep baying of a hound
was heard, at some short distance to the right, from a thick
verge of coppice. Instantly the king curbed in his fiery horse,
and raised his hand on high, waving a silent halt. “Ha! have
we outlaws here?” he whispered close in the ear of Tyrrel.
“'Fore God, but they shall rue it!”

Scarcely had he spoken, when a buck burst from a thicket,
and, ere it made three bounds, leaped high into the air and fell,
its heart pierced through and through by the unerring shaft of
an outlying ranger, who the next instant stepped out of his covert,
and, catching sight of the gay cavalcade confronting him —
the sounds of whose approach he must have overlooked entirely
in the excitement of his sport — turned hastily as if to fly. But
it was all too late: a dozen of the king's retainers had dashed
their rowels into their horses' flanks the instant he appeared,
and scarcely had he discovered their advance before he was
their prisoner.

“A Saxon, by my soul,” cried Rufus, with a savage scowl,
“taken red-hand, and in the fact! Out with thy wood-knife,
Damian! By the most holy Virgin, we will first mar his archery,
and then present him with such a taste of venison as
shall, I warrant me, appease his hankering for one while. Off
with his thumb and finger! off with them speedily, I say, an'
thou wouldst 'scape his doom! Ha! grinnest thou, villain?”
he continued, as a contortion writhed the bold visage of his
victim, who, certain of his fate, and hopeless of resistance or
of rescue, yielded with stubborn resolution to his torturers —
“an' this doth make thee smile, thou shalt laugh outright shortly!
Hence with him, now, Damian and Hugonet; and thou,
Raoul, away with thee — set toils enow, uncouple half a score
of brachs and slowhounds, and see thou take me a right stag
of ten ere vespers! — Barebacked shalt thou ride on him to

the forest, thou unhanged Saxon thief, and see how his horned
kinsmen will entreat thee! See that the dog escape ye not, or
ye shall swing for it. Bind him, and drag him hence to the old
church of Lyme; hold him there, on your lives, till sunset!
And ye — lead thither his wild charger: we will sup there
upon the greensward, as we return to Malwood, and thou shalt
make us merry with thy untutored horsemanship. Now for
our wager, Walter! Forward — hurrah!” and on again they
dashed, until they reached the choicest hunting-ground of all
that spacious woodland — the desolate and desert spot where
once had stood the fairest village of the land.

Unroofed and doorless, in different stages of decay, a score
or two of cottages, once hospitable, happy homes of a free peasantry,
stood here and there amid the brushwood which had
encroached upon the precincts; while in the midst the desecrated
church of Lyme reared its gray tower, now overgrown
with ivy, and crumbling in silent ruin. Upon the cross which
crowned the lowly tower, there sat, as they approached, a solitary
raven — nor, though the whoop and horn rang close below
his perch, did he show any sign of wildness or of fear; but,
rising slowly on his wing, flapped round and round in two or
three slow circles, and then with a hoarse croak resumed his
station. The raven was a favorite bird with the old hunters;
and when the deer was slain he had his portion, thence named
“the raven's bone.” Indeed, so usual was the practice, that
this bird, the wildest by its nature of all the things that fly,
would rarely shun a company which its sagacity described to be
pursuers of the sylvan game.

“What! sittest thou there, old black-frock, in our presence?”
shouted the king, bending his bow; “but we will teach thee
manners!” Still, the bird moved not, but again sent forth his
ominous and sullen croak above the jocund throng. The bow
was raised — the cord was drawn back to the monarch's ear:

it twanged, and the next moment the hermit-bird came fluttering
down, transfixed by the long shaft, with painful and discordant
cries, and fell close at the feet of Rufus's charger.

There was a murmur in the crowd; and one, a page who
waited on the king, whispered with a pale face and agitated
voice into his fellow's ear: “I have heard say —

The red king caught the whisper, and turning with an inflamed
countenance and flashing eye on the unwitting wakener
of his wrath — “Dastard and fool!” he shouted; and, clinching
his gloved hand, he dealt the boy so fierce a blow upon the
chest, that he fell to the earth like a lifeless body, plunging so
heavily upon the sod head-foremost, that the blood gushed from
nose, ears, mouth, and he lay senseless and inanimate as the
surrounding clay. With a low, sneering laugh, the tyrant once
more spurred his charger forward, amid the smothered execrations
of his Norman followers, boiling with indignation for that
one of their noble and victorious race should have endured the
foul wrong of a blow, though it were dealt him by a monarch's
hand. And there were scowling brows, and teeth set hard,
among the very noblest of his train; and, as the glittering band
swept on, the father of the injured boy — a dark-browed, aged
veteran, who had couched lance at Hastings to win the throne
of earth's most lovely island for that base tyrant's sire — reined
in his horse, and, leaping to the earth, upraised the body from
the gory turf, and wiped away the crimson stream from the pale
features, and dashed pure water, brought from a neighboring
brooklet in a comrade's bacinet, upon the fair young brow —
but it was all in vain! The dying child rolled upward his faint
eyes; they rested on the anxious lineaments of that war-beaten
sire, who, stern and fiery to all else, had ever to that motherless
boy been soft and tender as a woman. “Father,” he gasped,

while a brief, painful smile illuminated with a transient gleam
his ashy lips—“mercy, kind mother Mary! Father—father”
—the words died in the utterance; the dim eyes wavered—
closed; the head fell back upon the stalwart arm that had supported
it, and, with one long and quivering convulsion, the
innocent soul departed!

Some three or four—inferior barons of the train, yet each
a gentleman of lineage and prowess in the field, each one in
his own estimate a prince's peer—had paused around the desolate
father and his murdered child; and now, as the old man
gazed hopelessly upon the features of his first-born and his
only, the sympathy which had moistened their hard eyes and
relaxed their iron features was swallowed up in a fierce glare
of indignation, irradiating their scarred and war-seamed visages
with that sublime expression, from which, when glowing on
the face of a resolute and fearless man, the wildest savage of
the forest will shrink in mute dismay. The father, after a long
and fearful struggle with his more tender feelings—wringing his
hard hands till the blood-drops started redly from beneath every
nail—lifted his face, more pale and ashy in its hues than that
of the inanimate form which he had loved so tenderly; and as
he lifted it he caught the fierce glow mantling on the front of
each well-tried companion, and his own features lightened with
the self-same blaze: his hand sank downward to the hilt of the
long poniard at his girdle, and the fingers worked with a convulsive
tremor as they griped the well-known pommel, and an
exulting smile curled his mustached lip, prophetic of revenge.
Once more he bowed above the dead; he laid his broad hand
on the pulseless heart, and printed a long kiss on the forehead;
then lifting, with as much tenderness as though they still had
sense and feeling, the relics of the only thing he loved on earth,
he bore them from the roadside into the shelter of a tangled
coppice; unbuckled his long military mantle, and spreading it

above them, secured it at each corner by heavy stones, a temporary
shelter from insult or intrusion. This done, in total
silence he rejoined his friends, who had foreborne to offer aid
where they perceived it would be held superfluous. Without
one word, he grasped the bridle of his charger, tightened his
girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup, vaulted almost without
an effort into the steel-bound demipique. Raising his arm
aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest, wherein the
followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.

“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate,
between his grinded teeth; “what need of words?
Are not we soldiers, gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not
deeds speak for us?”

Truly he said, their thoughts were one! — for each had severally
steeled his heart as by a common impulse: and now,
without a word, or sign, or any interchange of sentiments, feeling
that each understood the other, they wheeled their horses
on the tyrant's track, and at a hard trot rode away, resolved on
instant vengeance.

Meanwhile, the hunters had arrived at their appointed ground.
The slowhounds were uncoupled and cast loose; varlets with
hunting-poles, and mounted grooms, pressed through the underwood;
while, in each open glade and riding of the forest, yeomen
were stationed with relays of tall and stately gazehounds,
to slip upon the hart the instant he should break from the thick
covert. The knights and nobles galloped off, each with his
long-bow strung, and cloth-yard arrow notched and ready, to
posts assigned to them — some singly, some in pairs; all was
replete with animation and with fiery joy.

According to the monarch's pleasure, Tyrrel rode at his
bridle-hand, for that day's space admitted as his comrade and
his rival. Two splendid bloodhounds, coal-black, but tawny on
the muzzle and the breast, so accurately trained that they required

no leash to check their ardor, ran at the red king's heel;
but neither page nor squire, such was his special mandate, accompanied
their master. And now the loud shouts of the foresters
and the deep baying of the pack gave note that the chase
was on foot; and by the varied cadences and different points
whence pealed the soul-exciting clamors, Rufus, a skilful and
sagacious sportsman, immediately perceived that two if not three
of the noble animals they hunted must have been roused at
once. For a few seconds he stood upright in his stirrups, his
hand raised to his ear, lest the slight summer breeze should
interrupt the welcome sounds.

“This way,” he said, in low and guarded tones, “this way
they bend; and with the choicest buck — hark to old Hubert's
holloa! and there, there, Tyrrel, list to that burst — list to that
long, sharp yell! Beshrew my soul, if that be not stanch Palamon
— that hound is worth ten thousand. Ha! they are now
at fault. Again! brave Palamon again! and now they turn;
hark how the echoes roar! Ay, they are crossing now the
Deer-leap dingle; and now, now, as their notes ring out distinct
and tuneful, they gain the open moorland. Spur, Tyrrel,
for your life! spur, spur! we see him not again till we reach
Bolderwood” — and, with the word, he raised his bugle to his
lips, and wound it lustily and well till every oak replied to the
long flourish.

Away they flew, driving their foaming chargers, now through
the tangled underwood with tightened reins, now with free
heads careering along the level glades, now sweeping over the
wide brooks that intersect the forest as though their steeds
were winged, and now, at distant intervals, pausing to catch the
fitful music of the pack. After a furious chase of at least two
hours, the sounds still swelling on their right, nearer and nearer
as they rode the farther, the avenue through which they had
been galloping for many minutes was intersected at right angles

by one yet wider though neglected, and, as it would seem, disused,
for many marshy pools might be seen glittering to the
sun, which was now fast descending to the westward, and many
plants of ash and tufted hazels had sprung up, marring the
smoothness of its surface. Here, by a simultaneous motion, and
as it seemed obedient to a common thought, both riders halted.

“He must cross, Tyrrel, he must cross here,” cried the excited
monarch; “ay, by the life of Him who made us — and
that before we be ten minutes older. I will take stand even
here, where I command both alleys: ride thou some fifty yards
or so, to the right; stand by yon rowan sapling. And mark
me — see'st thou you scathed but giant oak? — Now, if he pass
on this side, mine is the first shot; if on the other, thine. I
will not balk thy fortunes; meddle not thou with mine!”

They parted — the king sitting like a statue on his well-trained
but fiery Andalusian, the rein thrown loosely on the
horse's neck, and the bow already half bent in the vigorous
right hand; the baron riding, as he had been commanded, down
the neglected avenue, till he had reached the designated tree,
when he wheeled round his courser and remained likewise motionless,
facing the king, at that brief interval.

Nearer and nearer came the baying of the pack, while ever
and anon a sharp and savage treble, mixed with the deeper
notes, gave token to the skilful foresters that they were running
with the game in view. Nearer it came, and nearer; and now
it was so close, that not an echo could be traced amid the
stormy music: but with the crash no human shout was blended,
no bugle lent its thrilling voice to the blithe uproar, no clang
of hoofs announced the presence of pursuers. All, even the
best and boldest riders, saving those two who waited there in
calm, deliberate impatience, had long been foiled by the quick
turns and undiminished pace maintained by the stout quarry.

The crashing of the branches might now be heard distinctly,

as they were separated by some body in swift motion; and next
the laboring sobs of a beast overdone with toil and anguish;
the waving of the coppice followed in a long, sinuous line, resembling
in some degree the wake of a fleet ship among the
rolling billows. Midway it furrowed the dense thicket between
the king and Tyrrel, but with an inclination toward the former.
His quick eye noted his advantage: his bow rose slowly and
with a steady motion to its level; it was drawn to its full extent
— the forked steel head pressing against the polished yew,
the silken string stretched home to the right ear. The brambles
were forced violently outward, and with a mighty but laborious
effort the hunted stag dashed into the more open space.
Scarcely had he cleared the thicket, before a sharp and ringing
twang announced the shot of Rufus. So true had been his aim,
that the barbed arrow grazed the withers of the game — a hart
of grease, with ten tines on his noble antlers — leaving a gory
line where it had razed the skin; and so strong was the arm
that launched it, that the shaft, glancing downward, owing to
the king's elevation and the short distance of the mark at which
he aimed, was buried nearly to the feathers in the soft, mossy
greensward. The wounded stag bounded at least six feet into
the air; and Tyrrel, deeming the work already done, lowered
his weapon. But the king's sight was truer. Raising his
bridle-hand to screen his eyes from the rays, now nearly level,
of the setting sun — “Ho!” he cried, “Tyrrel, shoot — in the
fiend's name shoot!”

Before the words had reached his ear, the baron saw his
error; for, instantly recovering, the gallant deer dashed onward,
passing immediately beneath the oak-tree which Rufus had
already mentioned. Raising his bow with a rapidity which
seemed incredible, Tyrrel discharged his arrow. It struck,
just at the correct elevation, against the gnarled trunk of the
giant tree; but, swift as was its flight, the motion of the wounded

deer was yet more rapid: he had already crossed the open
glade, and was lost in the thicket opposite. Diverted from its
course, but unabated in its force, the Norman shaft sped onward;
full, full and fairly it plunged into the left side of the
hapless monarch, unguarded by the arm which he had cast
aloft. The keen point actually drove clear through his body,
and through his stout buff coat, coming out over his right hip;
while the goose-feather, which had winged it to its royal mark,
was literally dabbled in his life-blood!

Without a breath, a groan, a struggle, the Conqueror's son
dropped lifeless from his saddle. His horse, freed from the
pressure of the master-limbs that had so well controlled him,
reared upright as the monarch fell, and, with a wild, quick snort
of terror, rushed furiously away into the forest. The bloodhounds
had already, by the fierce cunning of their race, discovered
that their game was wounded, and had joined freshly
with his old pursuers; while he, who did the deed, gazed for
one moment horror-stricken on the work of his right hand, and
then, without so much as drawing nigh to see if anything of life
remained to his late master, casting his fatal bow into the bushes,
put spurs to his unwearied horse, and drew not bridle till he
reached the coast; whence, taking ship, he crossed the seas,
and fell in Holy Land, hoping by many deeds of wilful bloodshed
— such is the inconsistency of man — to win God's pardon
for one involuntary slaughter.

Hours rolled away. The sun had set already, and his last
gleams were rapidly departing from the skies, nor had the
moon yet risen, when six horsemen came slowly, searching as
it were for traces on the earth, up the same alley along which
Tyrrel and the king had ridden with such furious speed since
noontide. The lingering twilight did not suffice to show the
features of the group, but the deep tones of the second rider
were those of the bereaved and vengeful father.

“How now?” he said, addressing his words to the man
who led the way, mounted upon a shaggy forest-pony; “how
now, Sir Saxon! — is it for this we saved thee from the tyrant's
hangmen, that thou shouldst prove a blind guide in this
matter?”

“Norman,” replied the other, still scanning, as he spoke, the
ground dinted and torn by the fresh hoof-tracks, “my heart
thirsts for vengeance not less than thine; nor is our English
blood less stanch, although it be less fiery, than the hottest
stream that swells the veins of your proud race! I tell you,
Rufus hath passed here, and he hath not turned back. You
shall have your revenge!”

Even as he spoke, the beast which he bestrode set his feet
firm and snuffed the air, staring as though his eyeballs would
start from their sockets, and uttering a tremulous, low neigh.
“Blood hath been shed here! and that, I trow, since sunset!
Jesu! what have we now?” he cried, as his eye fell upon the
carcass that so lately had exulted in the possession of health,
and energy, and strength, and high dominion. “By Thor the
Thunderer, it is the tyrant's corpse!”

“And slain,” replied the father, “slain by another's hand than
mine! Curses, ten thousand curses, on him who shot this
shaft!” While he was speaking he dismounted, approached
the body of his destined victim, and gazed with an eye of hatred
most insatiably savage upon the rigid face and stiffening limbs;
then drawing his broad dagger — “I have sworn!” he muttered,
as he besmeared its blade with the dark, curdled gore — “I
have sworn! Lie there and rot,” he added, spurning the body
with his foot. “And now we must away, for we are known
and noted; and, whoso did the deed, 'tis we shall bear the
blame of it. We must see other lands. I will but leave a
brief word with the monks of Lymington, that they commit my
poor boy to a hallowed tomb, and then farewell, fair England!”

And they, too, rode away, nor were they ever seen again on
British soil; nor — though shrewd search was made for them
until the confessor of Tyrrel, when that bold spirit had departed,
revealed the real slayer of the king — did any rumor of their
residence or fortunes reach any mortal ear.

The moon rose over the New Forest broad and unclouded,
and the dew fell heavy over glade and woodland. The night
wore onward, and the bright planet set, and one by one the stars
went out — and still the king lay there untended and alone.
The morning mists were rising, when the rumbling sound of a
rude cart awoke the echoes of that fearful solitude. A charcoal-burner
of the forest was returning from his nocturnal labors,
whistling cheerfully the burden of some Saxon ballad, as he
threaded the dark mazes of the green-wood. A wiry-looking
cur — maimed, in obedience to the forest-law, lest he should
chase the deer reserved to the proud conquerors alone — followed
the footsteps of his master, who had already passed the
corpse, when a half-startled yelp, followed upon the instant by
a most melancholy howl, attracted the attention of the peasant.
After a moment's search he found, although he did not recognise,
the cause of his dog's terror; and, casting it upon his
loaded cart, bore it to the same church whereat but a few hours
before the living sovereign had determined to glut his fierce
eyes with the death-pangs of his fellow-man. Strange are the
ways of Providence. That destined man lived after his intended
torturer! And, stranger yet, freed from his bonds, that
he might minister unto the slaughter of that self-same torturer,
he found his purpose frustrate — frustrate, as it were, by its accomplishment
— his meditated deed anticipated, his desperate
revenge forestalled. — “Verily, vengeance is mine,” saith the
Lord, “and I will repay it.”

THE SAXON PRELATE'S DOOM.

The mightiest monarch of his age, sovereign of England —
as his proud grandsire made his vaunt of yore — by right of the
sword's edge; grand duke of Normandy, by privilege of blood;
and liege lord of Guienne, by marriage with its powerful heritress;
the bravest, the most fortunate, the wisest of the kings
of Europe, Henry the Second, held his court for the high festival
of Christmas in the fair halls of Rouen. The banquet was
already over, the revelry was at the highest, still, the gothic
arches ringing with the merriment, the laughter, and the
blended cadences of many a minstrel's harp, of many a trouvere's
lay. Suddenly, while the din was at the loudest, piercing
through all the mingled sounds, a single trumpet's note was
heard — wailing, prolonged, and ominous — as was the chill it
struck to every heart in that bright company — of coming evil.
During the pause which followed, for at that thrilling blast the
mirth and song were hushed as if by instinct — a bustle might
be heard below, the tread of many feet, and the discordant
tones of many eager voices. The great doors were thrown
open, not with the stately ceremonial that befitted the occasion,
but with a noisy and irreverent haste that proved the urgency
or the importance of the new-comers. Then, to the wonder

of all present, there entered — not in their wonted pomp, with
stole, and mitre, crozier dalmatique and ring, but in soiled vestments,
travel-worn and dusty, with features haggard from fatigue,
and sharpened by anxiety and fear — six of the noblest
of old England's prelates, led by the second dignitary of the
church, York's proud archbishop. Hurrying forward to the
dais, where Henry sat in state, they halted all together at the
step, and in one voice exclaimed:—

“Fair sir, and king, not for ourselves alone, but for the holy
church, for your own realm and crown, for your own honor,
your own safety, we beseech you —”

“What means this, holy fathers?” Henry cried, hastily, and
half alarmed, as it would seem, by the excited language of the
churchmen. “What means this vehemence — or who hath
dared to wrong ye, and for why?”

“For that, at your behest, we dared to crown the youthful
king, your son! Such, sire, is our offence. Our wrong —
that we your English prelates are excommunicated, and —”

“Now, by the eyes of God!”[1] exclaimed the king, breaking
abruptly in upon the bishop's speech, his noble features crimsoned
by the indignant blood, that rushed to them at mention
of this foul affront, “Now, by the eyes of God, if all who have
consented to his consecration be accursed, then am I so myself!”

“Nor is this all,” replied the prelate, well pleased to note
the growing anger of the sovereign, nor is this all the wrong.
The same bold man, who did you this affront, an' you look not
the sharper, will light a blaze in England that shall consume
right speedily your royal crown itself. He marches to and
fro, with troops of horse, and bands of armed footmen, stirring
the Saxon churls against the gentle blood of Normandy, nay,
seeking even to gain entrance into your garrisons and castles.”

“Do I hear right,” shouted the fiery prince, striking his
hand upon the board with such fierce vehemence, that every
flask and tankard rang. “Do I hear right — and is it but a
dream that I am England's king? What! one base vassal;
one who has fattened on the bread of our ill-wasted charity;
one beggar, who first came to our court with all his fortunes on
his back, bestriding a galled, spavined jade; one wretch like
this insult at once a line of sovereign princes — trample a realm
beneath his feet — and go unpunished and scathe-free? What!
was there not one man, one only, of the hordes of recreant knights
who feast around my board, to free his monarch from a shaveling
who dishonors and defies him? Break off the feast —
break off, I say! no time for revelry and wine! — To council,
lords, to council! We must indeed bestir us, an' we would
hold the crown our grandsire won, not for himself alone, nor
for his race — who, by God's grace, will wear it, spite priest, cardinal,
or pope — but for the gentle blood of Norman chivalry!”

Rising at once, he led the way to council; and, with wild
haste and disarray, the company dispersed. But as the hall
grew thin, four knights remained behind in close converse —
so deep, so earnest, that they were left alone, when all the rest,
ladies, and cavaliers, and chamberlains, and pages, had departed,
and the vast gallery, which had so lately rung with every various
sound of human merriment, was silent as the grave. There
was a strange and almost awful contrast between the strong and
stately forms of the four barons — their deep and energetic
whispers, the fiery glances of their angry eyes, the fierce gesticulations
of their muscular and well-turned limbs — and the
deserted splendors of that royal hall: the vacant throne, the
long array of seats; the gorgeous plate, flagons, and cups, and
urns of gold and marquetry; the lights still glowing, as it were,
in mockery over the empty board; the wine unpoured — the
harps untouched and voiceless.

“Be it so — be it so!” exclaimed, in louder tones than they
had used before, one, the most striking in appearance of the
group; “be it so — let us swear! Richard le Breton, Hugues
de Morville, William de Traci — even as I shall swear, swear
ye — by God, and by our trusty blades, and by our Norman
honor!”

“We will,” cried all, “we swear! we be not recreant, nor
craven, as our good swords shall witness!”

“Thus, then,” continued the first speaker, drawing his sword,
and grasping a huge cup of wine, “thus, then, I Reginald Fitz-Urse,
for mine own part, and for each one and all of ye, do
swear — so help me God and our good Lady! — never to touch
the winecup; never to bend before the shrine; never to close
the eyes in sleep; never to quit the saddle, or unbelt the brand;
never to pray to God; never to hope for heaven — until the
wrong we reck of be redressed! — until the insult done our sovereign
be avenged! — until the life-blood of his foeman stream
on our battle-swords as streams this nobler wine!”

Then, with the words — for not he only, but each one of the
four, holding their long, two-handed blades extended at arms'
length before them with all their points in contact, and in the
other hand grasping the brimming goblets, had gone through,
in resolute, unflinching tones, the fearful adjuration — then, with
the words, they all dashed down the generous liquor on the
weapons, watched it in silence as it crimsoned them from point
to hilt, and sheathing them, all purple as they were, hurried,
not from the hall alone, but from the palace; mounted their
fleetest war-steeds, and, that same night, rode furiously away
toward the nearest sea.

The fifth day was in progress after King Henry's banquet,
when, at the hour of noon, four Norman knights, followed by
fifty men-at-arms, sheathed cap-à-pie in mail, arrayed beneath
the banner of Fitz-Urse, entered the town of Canterbury at a

hard gallop. The leaders of the band alone were clad in garbs
of peace, bearing no weapon but their swords, and singularly
ill-accoutred for horse-exercise, being attired in doublets of rich
velvet, with hose of cloth of gold or silver, as if in preparation
for some high and festive meeting. Yet was it evident that
they had ridden miles in that unsuitable apparel; for the rich
velvet was besmeared with many a miry stain, and the hose
dashed with blood, which had been drawn profusely by the
long rowels of their gilded spurs.

Halting in serried order at the market-cross, the leader of
the party summoned, by an equerry, the city mayor to hear the
orders of the king; and, when that officer appeared — having
commanded him, “on his allegiance, to call his men to arms, and
take such steps as should assuredly prevent the burghers of the
town from raising any tumult on that day, whate'er might come
to pass” — with his three friends, and twelve, the stoutest, of
the men-at-arms who followed in their train, rode instantly
away to the archbishop's palace.

The object of their deadly hatred, when the four knights arrived,
was in the act of finishing his noonday meal; and all
his household were assembled at the board, from which he had
just risen. There was no sign of trepidation, no symptom of
surprise, much less of fear or consternation, in his aspect or
demeanor, as one by one his visiters stalked unannounced into
the long apartment. Yet was there much indeed in the strange
guise wherein they came — in their disordered habits, in the
excitement visibly depicted on their brows, haggard from want
of sleep, pale with fatigue and labor, yet resolute, and stern,
and terse, with the resolve of their dread purpose — to have
astonished, nay, dismayed the spirit of one less resolute in the
defence of what he deemed the right than Thomas à-Becket.
Silently, one by one, they entered, the leader halting opposite
the prelate, with his arms folded on his breast, and his three

comrades forming as it were in a half-circle around him. Not
one of them removed the bonnet from his brow, or bowed the
knee on entering, or offered any greeting, whether to the temporal
rank or spiritual station of their intended victim; but
gazed on him with a fixed sternness that was far more awful
than any show of violence. This dumb-show, although it needs
must occupy some time in the description, had lasted perhaps
a minute, when the bold prelate broke the silence, addressing
them in clear, harmonious tones, and with an air as dignified
and placid as though he had been bidding them to share the
friendly banquet.

“Fair sirs,” he said, “I bid ye welcome; although, in truth,
the manner of your entrance be not in all things courteous, nor
savoring of that respect which should be paid, if not to me —
who am but as a worm, the meanest of His creatures — yet to
the dignity whereunto HE has raised me! Natheless, I bid ye
hail! Please ye disclose the business whereon ye now have
come to me.”

Still not a word did they reply — but seated themselves all
unbidden, still glaring on him with fixed eyes, ominous of evil.
At length Fitz-Urse addressed him, speaking abruptly, and in
tones so hoarse and hollow — the natural consequence of his
extreme exertions, four days and nights having been actually
passed in almost constant travel — that his most intimate associate
could not have recognised his voice.

“We come,” he said, “on the king's part, to take — and that,
too, on the instant — some order with your late proceedings:
to have the excommunicated presently absolved; to see the
bishops, who have been suspended, forthwith re-established;
and to hear what you may now allege concerning your design
against your sovereign lord and master!”

“It is not I,” Thomas replied, still calmer and more dignified
than the fierce spirits who addressed him, “it is not I who

on the night-wind pealing from some unseen clock-tower the
last hour before midnight.

“There! there! beau sire, we are in time; that is the ban
cloche of the chateau; when we shall pass the second turn,
we shall be in the hamlet!”

“Ha!” cried the baron, “on, then, on! we have no time to
lose, for all it is not midnight.”

The road swept down a little sandy pitch, at the foot of
which ran a clear brawling trout-stream, wheeled short to the
left hand, and having crossed the stream by a steep, one-arched
bridge of brick, scaled the ascent on the opposite side, and
winding abruptly to the right, the dark ever-green pine-trees,
which clothed the banks of the gully scattering off diversely,
burst out into the little plain whereon were clustered round a
small rustic chapel, some twenty tidy-looking cottages with
cultivated stripes of garden-ground before the doors, and several
orchards interspersed with apple-trees, and a few vines
trained upon the latticed screens, the whole presenting a calm
and gentle picture of peaceful and domestic comfort. Scarcely
a bow-shot beyond these, its base and outer wall concealed
from the road by the close foliage of the still verdant orchards,
rose the gray weather-beaten tower of the keep, a tall square
building with a steep, flagged roof and projecting battlements,
having a circular bartizan at every angle, with a high flagstaff
rising from the ridge of the main dongeon. A loud vociferous
barking was set up by a dozen of deep-mouthed mastiffs,
as the little band of De Coucy rode clanging and clattering
round the hamlet, and many a male and female head was
thrust out of the latticed casements to note the character of
the intruders, and was as speedily withdrawn, reassured by the
appearance of the baron clad in his splendid surcoat. Within
five minutes they had cleared the village and its scattered
shrubbery, and stood before the barbacan of the chateau in full

their triangular steel-plated shields hanging about their necks;
their legs protected by mail-hose, fitting as closely and as flexible
as modern stockings; their huge two-handed swords belted about
them in such fashion, that their cross-guarded hilts came over
their left shoulders, while their points clanked against the spur
on their right heels.

There was no pause; for, snatching instantly an axe from
the hands of a carpenter who chanced to be at work in the
courtyard, Fitz-Urse assailed the gate. Strong as it was, it
creaked and groaned beneath the furious blows, and the long
corridors within rolled back the threatening sounds in deep and
hollow echoes. Within the palace all was confusion and dismay,
and every face was pale and ghastly, save his alone who
had the cause for fear.

“Fly! fly, my lord!” cried the assistants, breathless with
terror; “fly to the altar! There, there, at least, shall you be
safe!”

“Never!” the prelate answered, his bold spirit as self-possessed
and calm in that most imminent peril as though he had
been bred from childhood upward to the performance of high
deeds and daring; “never will I turn back from that which I
have set myself to do! God, if it be his pleasure, shall preserve
me from yet greater straits than these; and if it be not
so his will to do, then God forbid I should gainsay him!” Nor
would he stir one foot, until the vesper-bell, rung by the sacristan,
unwitting of his superior's peril, began to chime from the
near walls of the cathedral. “It is the hour,” he quietly observed,
on hearing the sweet cadence of the bells, “it is the
hour of prayer; my duty calls me. Give me my vestments —
carry my cross before me!” And, attiring himself as though
nothing of unusual moment were impending, he traversed, with
steps even slower than his wont, the cloister leading from his
dwelling to the abbey; though, ere he left the palace, the din

of blows had ceased, and the fierce shout of the assailants gave
token that the door had yielded. Chiding his servitors for their
excess of terror, as unworthy of their sacred calling, he still
walked slowly onward, while the steel-shod footsteps of his
foemen might be heard clashing on the pavement but a few
yards behind him. He reached the door of the cathedral;
entered without casting so much as one last glance behind;
passed up the nave, and going up the steps of the high altar,
separated from the body of the church by a slight rail of ornamental
iron-work, commenced the service of the day.

Scarcely had he uttered the first words, when Reginald,
sheathed, as has been heretofore described, in complete panoply,
with his two-handed sword already naked, rushed into the
cathedral.

“To me!” he cried, with a fierce shout, “to me, valiant and
loyal servants of the king!” while close behind him followed,
in like array, with flashing eyes, and inflamed visages, and
brandished weapons, his sworn confederates; and without the
gates their banded men-at-arms stood in a serried circle, defying
all assistance from the town. Again his servitors entreated
Becket to preserve himself, by seeking refuge in the dark crypts
beneath the chancel, where he might rest concealed in absolute
security until the burghers should be aroused to rescue;
or by ascending the intricate and winding turret-stairs to the
cathedral-roof, whence he might summon aid ere he could possibly
be overtaken: but it was all in vain. Confiding in the
goodness of his cause, perhaps expecting supernatural assistance,
the daring prelate silenced their prayers by a contemptuous
refusal; and even left the altar, to prevent one of the monks
from closing the weak, trellised gates, which marked the holiest
precincts. Meanwhile, unmoved in their fell purpose, the
Normans were at hand.

“Where is the traitor?” cried Fitz-Urse, but not a voice replied;

and the unwonted tones were vocal yet beneath the
vaulted roof in lingering echoes, when he again exclaimed,
“Where — where is the archbishop?”

“Here stands he,” Becket answered, drawing his lofty person
up to its full height, and spreading his arms forth with a
gesture of perfect majesty. “Here stands he, but no traitor!
What do ye in God's house in such apparel? what is your
will, or purpose?”

“That you die, presently!” was the reply, enforced by the
uplifted weapon and determined features of the savage baron.

“I am resigned,” returned the prelate, the calm patience of
the martyr blent with a noble daring that would have well become
a warrior on the battle-field. “Ye shall not see me fly
before your swords! But in the name of the all-powerful God,
whom ye dishonor and defy, I do command ye injure no one
of my companions, layman or priest.” His words were interrupted
by a heavy blow across his shoulders, delivered, with
the flat of his huge sword, by Reginald.

“Fly!” he said, “fly, priest, or you are dead!” But the
archbishop moved not a step, spoke not a syllable. “Drag him
hence, comrades,” continued the last speaker; “away with him
beyond the threshold — we may not smite him here!”

“Here — here, or nowhere!” the archbishop answered —
“here, in the very presence, and before the altar, and the image,
of our God!” And, as he spoke, he seized the railings
with both hands, set his feet firm, and, being of a muscular and
powerful frame, sustained by daring courage and highly-wrought
excitement, he succeeded in maintaining his position, in spite
of the united efforts of the four Norman warriors.

Meanwhile, all the companions of the prelate had escaped,
by ways known only to themselves — all but one faithful follower
— the Saxon, Edward Grim, his cross-bearer since his first
elevation to the see of Canterbury — the same who had so

boldly spoken out after the conference of Clarendon; and the
conspirators began to be alarmed lest, if their purpose were not
speedily accomplished, the rescue should arrive and frustrate
their intentions. Their blood, moreover, was heated by the
struggle; and their fierce natures, never much restrained by
awe or reverence for things divine, burst through all bonds.

“Here, then, if it so please you! — here!” cried William de
Traci, striking, as he spoke, a blow with the full sweep of both
his arms wielding his ponderous weapon, at the defenceless
victim's head. But the bold Saxon suddenly stretched out his
arm to guard his beloved master. Down came the mighty
blow — but not for that did the true servitor withdraw his naked
limb — down came the mighty blow, and lopped the unflinching
hand, sheer as the woodman's bill severs the hazel-twig!

Still, Becket stood unwounded. “Strike! strike, you others!”
shouted the Norman, as he grasped the maimed but still-resolved
protector of his master, and held him off by the exertion
of his entire strength; “strike! strike!” And they did strike,
fearlessly — mercilessly! Hugues de Morville smote him with
a mace upon his temples, and he fell, stunned, but still alive,
face downward on the pavement; and Reginald Fitz-Urse,
whirling his espaldron around his head, brought it down with
such reckless fury upon the naked skull, that the point clove
right through it, down to the marble pavement, on which it yet
alighted with a degree of violence so undiminished, that it was
shivered to the very hilt, and the strong arms of him who
wielded it were jarred up to the shoulders, as if by an electric
shock. One of the men-at-arms, who had rushed in
during the struggle, spurned with his foot the motionless and
senseless clay.

“Thus perish all,” he said, “all foemen of the king, and of
the gentle Normans — all who dare, henceforth, to arouse the
base and slavish Saxons against their free and princely masters!”

Thus fell the Saxon prelate, ruthlessly butchered at the very
shrine of God — not so much that he was a Romish priest, and
an upholder of the rights of Rome, as that he was a Saxonman,
a vindicator of the liberties of England! Yet, though the
pope absolved that king whose cruel will had, in truth, done
the deed, yet was that deed not unavenged. If the revolt and
treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh
and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable
old age, and a heart-broken death-bed — if these things may be
deemed Heaven's vengeance upon murder — then, of a surety,
that murder was avenged!

THE FATE OF THE BLANCHE NAVIRE.[2]

The earliest dawning of a December's morning had not yet
tinged the eastern sky, when in the port of Barfleur the stirring
bustle which precedes an embarkation broke loudly on the ear
of all who were on foot at that unseemly hour; nor were these
few in number, for all the population of that town — far more
considerable than it appears at present, when mightier cities,
some rendered so by the gigantic march of commerce, some by
the puissant and creative hands of military despotism, have
sprung on every side into existence, and overshadowed its antique
renown — were hastening through the narrow streets toward
the water's edge. The many-paned, stone-latticed casements
gleamed with a thousand lights, casting a cheerful glare
over the motley multitude which swarmed before them with all
the frolic merriment of an unwonted holyday. All classes and
all ranks might there be seen, of every age and sex: barons

and lords of high degree, clad in the rich attires of a half-barbarous
yet gorgeous age, mounted on splendid horses, and attended
by long retinues of armed and liveried vassals; ladies
and demoiselles of birth and beauty curbing their Spanish jennets,
and casting sidelong looks of love toward the favored
knights curveting in the conscious state of proud humility beside
their bridle-reins — as clearly visible as at high noon, in
the broad radiance of the torches that accompanied their progress;
while all around them and behind crowded the humbler
throng of mariners and artisans, with here a solemn burgher,
proud in his velvet pourpoint and his golden chain, and there
a barefoot monk, far prouder in his frock of sackcloth and his
knotted girdle; and ever and anon a group of merry maidens,
with their high Norman caps and short jupons of parti-colored
serge, crowding around the jongleur[3] with his ape and gittern
— or pressing on to hear the loftier professor[4] of the gai-science,
girded with sword and dagger in token of his gentle blood, and
followed by his boy bearing the harp, which then had power to
win, not with the low-born and vulgar throng, but with the noble
and the fair, high favor for its wandering master!

The courts and thoroughfares of the old town — for it was
old even then — by slow degrees grew silent and deserted;
and, ere the sun was well above the wave, the multitudes which
thronged them had rolled downward to the port, and stood in
dense ranks gazing on its calm and sheltered basin. Glorious
indeed and lovely was the sight when the first yellow rays

streamed over the still waters: they waked the distant summits
of the hills behind the town into a sudden life; they kissed the
crest of every curling ripple that dimpled with its “innumerable
laughter” the azure face of ocean; but, more than all, they
seemed to dwell upon two noble barks, which lay, each riding
at a single anchor, at a short arrow-shot from the white sands
that girt as with a silver frame the liquid mirror of the harbor.

Fashioned by the best skill of that early day, and ornamented
with the most lavish splendor, though widely different from the
floating castles of modern times, those vessels — the picked
cruisers of the British navy — were in their structure no less
picturesque than in their decoration royally magnificent. Long,
low, and buoyant, they floated lightly as birds upon the surface;
their open waists already bristling with the long oars by which,
after the fashion of the Roman galley, they were propelled in
serene weather; their masts clothed with the wings which
seemed in vain to woo the breeze; their elevated sterns and
forecastles blazing with tapestries of gold and silver, reflected
in long lines of light, scarcely broken by the dancing ripples.
The larger of the two bore on her foresail, blazoned in gorgeous
heraldry, the arms of England. The second, somewhat
smaller, but if anything more elegant in her proportions, and
fitted with a nicer taste, although less sumptuous, was painted
white from stem to stern; her oars, fifty in number, of the same
spotless hue, were barred upon the blades with silver; and on
her foresail of white canvass, overlaid with figured damask,
were wrought, among a glittering profusion of devices, in characters
of silver, the words “La Blanche Navire.” Beyond
them, in the outer bay, a dozen ships or more were dimly seen
through the mist-wreaths which the wintry sun was gradually
scattering — their canvass hanging in festoons from their long
yard-arms, and their decks crowded, not with mariners alone,
but with the steel-clad forms of men-at-arms and archers, the

gallant train of the third Norman who had swayed the destinies
of England.

The youngest son of the sagacious Conqueror, after the death
of the “Red king,” by a rare union of audacity and cunning,
Henry, had seized the sceptre of the fair island — the hereditary
right of his romantic, generous, and gallant brother, who
with the feudatories of his Norman duchy was waging war
upon the Saracen, neglectful of his own and of his subjects'
interests alike, beneath the burning sun of Syria. Already
firmly seated in his usurped dominion ere Robert returned
homeward, nor yet contented with his ill-gained supremacy,
he had wrung from the bold crusader, partly by force but more
by fraud, his continental realms; and adding cruelty which
scarcely can be conceived to violence and fraud, deprived him
of Heaven's choicest blessing, sight, and cast him — of late the
most renowned and glorious knight in Christendom — a miserable,
eyeless captive into the towers of Cardiff, his dungeon
while he lived, and after death his tomb!

No retributive justice had discharged its thunders upon the
guilty one; no gloom sat on his smooth and lordly brow, no
thorns had lurked beneath the circle of Henry's blood-bought
diadem. Fortune had smiled on every effort; had granted every
wish, however wild; had sanctioned every enterprise, however
dubious or desperate: he never had known sorrow; and
from his restless, energetic soul, remorse and penitence were
banished by the incessant turmoil of ambition and the perpetual
excitement of success. And now his dearest wish had been
accomplished — the most especial aim and object of his life
perfected with such absolute security, that his insatiate soul
was satisfied. Absolute lord of England, and undisputed ruler
of the fair Cotentin, he had of late disarmed the league which
for a time had threatened his security; detaching from the cause
of France the powerful count of Anjou, whose daughter — the

most lovely lady and the most splendid heiress of the time —
he had seen wedded to his first-born and his favorite, William.
The previous day he had beheld the haughty barons tender the
kiss of homage and swear eternal loyalty to the young heir of
England, Normandy, and Anjou; the previous night he had sat
glad and glorious at the festive board, encompassed by all that
was fair, and noble, and high-born, in the great realms he governed,
and among all that proud and graceful circle his eye had
looked on none so brave and beautiful as that young, guiltless
pair for whom he had imbrued, not his hands only, but his very
soul, in blood! He sat on the high dais, beneath the gilded
canopy; and as he quaffed the health of those who had alone
a kindly tenure of his cold and callous heart, a noble knight
approached with bended knee, and placing in his hand a mark
of gold — “Fair sir,” he said, “I, a good knight and loyal —
Thomas Fitz-Stephen — claim of your grace a boon. My father,
Stephen Fitz-Evrard, served faithfully and well, as long as he
did live, your father William — served him by sea, and steered
the ship with his own hand which bore him to that glorious
crown which he right nobly won at Hastings. I pray you,
then, fair king, that you do sell to me, for this gold mark, the
fief I crave of you: that, as Fitz-Evrard served the first King
William, so may Fitz-Stephen serve the first King Henry. I
have right nobly fitted — ay, on mine honor, as beseems a
mighty monarch — here, in the bay of Barfleur, `the Blanche
Navire.' Receive it at my hands, great sir, and suffer me to
steer you homeward; and so may the blessed Virgin and her
Son send us the winds which we would have!”

“Good knight and loyal,” answered the prince, as he received
the proffered coin, “grieved am I, of a truth, and sorrowful, that
altogether I may not confer on you the fief which of good right
you claim: for lo! the bark is chosen — nay, more, apparelled
for my service — which must to-morrow, by Heaven's mercy,

bear me to that land whither your sire so fortunately guided
mine. But since it may not be that I may sail myself, as would
I could do so, in your good bark, to your true care will I intrust
what I hold dearer than my very soul — my sons, my daughters
— mine and my country's hope; and as your father steered the
FIRST, so shall you steer the THIRD King William, that shall be,
to the white cliffs of England!”

“Well said, my liege!” cried Foulke, the count of Anjou, a
noble-looking baron of tall and stately presence, although far
past the noon of manhood, the father of the lovely bride; “to
better mariner or braver ship than stout Fitz-Stephen and La
Blanche Navire, was never freight intrusted! Quaff we a full
carouse to their blithe voyage! How sayest thou, daughter
mine,” he added, turning to the blushing girl, who sat attired
in all the pomp of newly-wedded royalty beside her youthful
lover — “how sayest thou? wouldst desire a trustier pilot, or a
fleeter galley?”

“Why,” she replied, with a smile half-sweet, half-sorrowful,
while a bright tear-drop glittered in her eye — “why should I
seek for fleetness, when that same speed will but the sooner bear
me from the sight of our fair France, and of thee, too, my father?”

“Dost then, then, rue thy choice?” whispered the ardent
voice of William in her ear; “and wouldst thou tarry here,
when fate and duty summon me hence for England?”

Her full blue eye met his, radiant with true affection, and her
slight fingers trembled in the clasp of her young husband with
a quick thrill of agitation, and her lips parted, but the words
were heard by none save him to whom they were addressed;
for, with the clang of beakers, and the loud swell of joyous music,
and the glad merriment of all the courtly revellers, the toast
of the bride's father passed round the gleaming board: “A blithe
and prosperous voyage — speed to the Blanche Navire, and joy
to all who sail in her!”

Thus closed the festive evening, and thus the seal of destiny
was set upon a hundred youthful brows, foredoomed, alas! to
an untimely grave beneath the ruthless billows.

The wintry day wore onward; and, wintry though it was,
save for a touch of keenness in the frosty air, and for the leafless
aspect of the country, it might have passed for a more
lightsome season; the sky was pure and cloudless as were the
prospects and the hopes of the gay throng who now embarked
secure and confident beneath its favorable omens. The sun
shone gayly as in the height of summer, and the blue waves
lay sleeping in its lustre as quietly as though they ne'er had
howled despair into the ears of drowning wretches! There
was no thought of peril or of fear — how should there be? The
ships were trustworthy; the seamen skilful, numerous, and
hardy; the breezes fair, though faint; the voyage brief; the
time propitious.

The day wore onward; and it was high noon before the
happy king — his every wish accomplished, secure as he conceived
himself, and firm in the fruition of his blood-bought
majesty — rowed with his glittering train on board the royal
galley. Loud pealed the cheering clamors of his Norman subjects,
bidding their sovereign hail; but louder yet they pealed,
when, with its freight of ladies, the second barge shot forth —
William and his fair sister, and yet fairer bride, and all the loveliest
of the dames that graced the broad Cotentin.

Not yet, however, were the anchors weighed — not yet were
the sails sheeted home; for on the deck of the king's vessel,
beneath an awning of pure cloth-of-gold, a gorgeous board was
spread. Not in the regal hall of Westminster could more of
luxury have been brought together than was displayed upon
that galley's poop. Spread with the softest ermine — meet
carpet for the gentle feet that trod it — cushioned with seats of
velvet, steaming with perfumes the most costly, it was a scene

resembling more some fairy palace than the wave-beaten fabric
that had braved many a gale, and borne the flag of England
through many a storm in triumph. And there they sat and
feasted, and the red wine-cup circled freely, and the song went
round: their hearts were high and happy, and they forgot the
lapse of hours; and still the reveller's shout was frequent on
the breeze, and still the melody of female tones, blent with the
clang of instrumental music, rang in the ears of those who loitered
on the shore, after the sun had bathed his lower limb in
the serene and peaceful waters.

Then, as it were, awaking from their trance of luxury, the
banqueters broke off. Skiff after skiff turned shoreward, till
none remained on board the royal ship except the monarch and
his train, and that loved son with his bright consort, whom,
parting from them there, he never was to look upon again!
The courses were unfurled, topsails were spread, and pennants
floated seaward; and, as the good ship gathered way, the father
bade adieu — adieu, as he believed it, but for one little night —
to all he loved on earth; and their barge, manned by a score
of powerful and active rowers, wafted the bridal party to the
Blanche Navire, which, as her precious freight drew nigh,
luffed gracefully and swiftly up to meet them, as though she
were a thing of life, conscious and proud of the high honor
she enjoyed in carrying the united hopes of Normandy and
England.

Delay — there was yet more delay! The night had settled
down upon the deep before the harbor of Barfleur was fairly
left behind; and yet so lovely was the night — with the moon,
near her full, soaring superbly through the cloudless sky, and
myriads on myriads of clear stars weaving their mystic dance
around her — that the young voyagers walked to and fro the
deck, rejoicing in the happy chance that had secured to them
so fair a time for their excursion: and William sat aloof, with

his sweet wife beside him, indulging in those bright anticipations,
those golden dreams of happiness, which indeed make
futurity a paradise to those who have not learned, by the sad
schoolings of experience, that human life is but another name
for human sorrow.

Fairer — the breeze blew fairer; and every sail was set and
drawing, and the light ripples burst with a gurgling sound like
laughter about the snow-white stem; and, still to waft them the
more swiftly to their home, fifty long oars, pulled well and
strongly by as many nervous arms, glanced in the liquid swell.
The bubbles on the surface were scarcely seen as they flashed
by, so rapid was their course; and a long wake of boiling foam
glanced in the moonshine, till it was lost to sight in the far distance.
The port was far behind them; and the king's ship,
seen faintly on the glimmering horizon, loomed like a pile of
vapor far on their starboard bow. And still the music rang
upon the favorable wind, and still the rowers sang amid their
toil, and still the captain sent the deep bowl round. The helmsman
dozed upon the tiller — the watch upon the forecastle had
long since stretched themselves upon the deck — in the deep
slumbers of exhaustion and satiety.

“Give way! my merry men, give way!” such was the jovial
captain's cry; “pull for the pride of Normandy — pull for your
country's fame, men of the fair Cotentin. What! will ye let
yon island-lubbers outstrip ye in the race? More way! more
way!”

And with unrivalled speed the Blanche Navire sped on. A
long black line stretches before her bow, dotting the silvery
surface with ragged and fantastic shades; but not one eye has
marked it! On she goes, swifter yet and swifter, and still the
fatal shout is ringing from her decks: “Give way, men of Cotentin!
give more way!” Now they are close upon it, and
now the dashing of the surf about the broken ledges — for that

black line is the dread Raz de Gatteville, the most tremendous
reef of all that bar the iron coast of Normandy! The hoarse
and hollow roar must reach the ears even of those who sleep.
But no! the clangor of the exulting trumpets, and the deep
booming of the Norman nakir, and that ill-omened shout, “Give
way — yet more — more way!” has drowned even the all-pervading
roar of the wild breakers. On, on she goes, fleet as the
gazehound darting upon its antlered prey; and now her bows
are bathed by the upflashing spray; and now — hark to that
hollow shock, that long and grinding crash! — hark to that wild
and agonizing yell sent upward by two hundred youthful voices,
up to the glorious stars that smiled as if in mockery of their
ruin. There rang the voice of the strong, fearless men; the
knight who had spurred oft his destrier amid the shivering of
lances and the reading clash of blades, without a thought unless
of high excitement and fierce joy; the mariner who, undismayed,
had reefed his sail, and steered his bark aright, amid
the wildest storm that ever lashed the sea to fury — now utterly
unnerved and paralyzed by the appalling change from mirth
and revelry to imminent and instant death.

So furious was the rate at which the galley was propelled,
that, when she struck upon the sharp and jagged rocks, her
prow was utterly stove inward, and the strong tide rushed in,
foaming and roaring like a mill-stream! Ten seconds' space
she hung upon the perilous ledge, while the waves made a
clear breach over her, sweeping not only every living being,
but every fixture — spars, bulwars, shrouds, and the tall masts
themselves — from her devoted decks. At the first shock, with
the instinctive readiness that characterizes, in whatever peril,
the true mariner, Fitz-Stephen, rallying to his aid a dozen of
the bravest of his men, had cleared away and launched a boat;
and, even as the fated bark went down, bodily sucked into the
whirling surf, had seized the prince and dragged him with a

stalwart arm into the little skiff, which had put off at once, to
shun the drowning hundreds who must have crowded in and
sunk her on the instant.

“Pull back! — God's death! — pull back!” cried the impetuous
youth, as he looked round and saw that he alone of all his
race was there; “pull back, ye dastard slaves, or by the Lord
and Maker of us all, though ye escape the waves, ye 'scape
not my revenge!” — and, as he spoke, he whirled his weapon
from the scabbard and pressed the point so closely to Fitz-Stephen's
throat, that its keen temper razed the skin; and, terrified
by his fierce menaces, and yet more by the resolute expression
that glanced forth from his whole countenance, they
turned her head once more toward the reef, and shot into the
vortex, agitated yet and boiling, wherein the hapless galley had
been swallowed. A female head, with long, fair hair, rose
close beside the shallop's stern, above the turbulent foam. William
bent forward: he had already clutched those golden tresses
— a moment, and she would have been enfolded in his arms
— another head rose suddenly! another — and another — and
another! Twenty strong hands grappled the gunwale of the
skiff with the tenacity of desperation. There was a struggle,
a loud shout, a heavy plunge, and the last remnant of the Blanche
Navire went down, actually dragged from beneath the few survivors
by the despairing hands of those whom she could not
have saved or succored had she been of ten times her burden.

All, all went down! There was a long and awful pause,
and then a slight splash broke the silence, a faint and gurgling
sigh, and a strong swimmer rose and shook the brine from his
dark locks; and lo, he was alone upon the deep! Something
he saw at a brief distance, distinct and dark, floating upon the
surface, and with a vigorous stroke he neared it — a fragment
of a broken spar. Hope quickened at his heart, and love of life,
almost forgotten in the immediate agony and terror, returned

in all its natural strength. He seized a rope, and by its aid
reared himself out of the abyss; and now he sat, securely as he
deemed it, upon a floating fragment on which, one little hour
before, he would not have embarked for all the wealth of India.
Scarcely had he reached his temporary place of safety, before
another of the sufferers swam feebly up and joined him, and
then a third, the last of the survivors. The first who reached
the spar — it was no other than Fitz-Stephen — had perused
with an anxiety the most sickening and painful the faces of the
new-comers: he knew them, but they were not the features he
would have given his own life to see in safety — Berault, a
butcher of Rouen, and Godfrey, a renowned and gallant youth,
the son of Gilbert, count de L'Aigle. “The prince — where is
the prince?” Fitz-Stephen cried to each, as he arrived; “hast
thou not seen the prince?” And each, in turn, replied: “He
never rose again — he, nor his brothers, nor his sister, nor his
bride, nor one of all their company!” — “Wo be to me!” Fitz-Stephen
cried, and letting go his hold, deliberately sank into
the whirling waters; and, though a strong man and an active
swimmer, chose to die with the victims whom his rashness had
destroyed, rather than meet the indignation of their bereaved
father, and bear the agonies of his own lifelong remorse.

Three days elapsed before the tidings reached King Henry,
who in the fearful misery of hope deferred had lingered on the
beach, trusting to hear that, from some unknown cause, the galley
of his son might have put back to Barfleur. On the third
day, Berault, the sole survivor of that night of misery, was
brought in by a fishing-boat which had preserved him; and,
when he had concluded his narration, Robert of Normandy had
been revenged, although his wrongs had been a hundred-fold
more flagrant than they were. Henry, though he lived years,
NEVER SMILED AGAIN!

THE SAXON'S BRIDAL.

There are times in England when the merry month of May
is not, as it would now appear, merely a poet's fiction; when
the air is indeed mild and balmy, and the more conspicuously
so, that it succeeds the furious gusts and driving hailstorms of
the boisterous March, the fickle sunshine and capricious rains
of April. One of these singular epochs in the history of weather
it was in which events occurred, which remained unforgotten
for many a day, in the green wilds of Charnwood forest.

It was upon a soft, sweet morning, toward the latter end of
the month, and surely nothing more delicious could have been
conceived by the fancy of the poet. The low west wind was
fanning itself among the tender leaves of the new-budded trees,
and stealing over the deep meadows, all redolent with dewy
wild flowers, waving them with a gentle motion, and borrowing
a thousand perfumes from their bosoms. The hedgerows were
as white with the dense blossoms of the hawthorn as though
they had been powdered over by an untimely snowstorm; while
everywhere along the wooded banks the saffron primrose and
its sweet sister of the spring, the violet, were sunning their
unnumbered blossoms in the calm warmth of the vernal sunshine.
The heavens, of a pure, transparent blue, were laughing
with a genial lustre, not flooded by the dazzling glare of

midsummer, but pouring over all beneath their influence a lovely,
gentle light, in perfect keeping with the style of the young
scenery; and all the air was literally vocal with the notes of
innumerable birds, from the proud lark, “rejoicing at heaven's
gate,” to the thrush and blackbird, trilling their full, rich chants
from every dingle, and the poor linnet, piping on the spray.
Nothing — no, nothing — can be imagined that so delights the
fancy with sweet visions, that so enthrals the senses, shedding
its influences even upon the secret heart, as a soft, old-fashioned
May morning. Apart from the mere beauties of the
scenery — from the mere enjoyment of the bright skies, the
dewy perfumes that float on every breeze, the mild, unscorching
warmth — apart from all these, there is something of a
deeper and a higher nature in the thoughts called forth by the
spirit of the time; a looking forward of the soul to fairer things
to come; an excitement of a quiet hope within, not very definite,
perhaps, nor easily explained, but one which almost every
man has felt, and contrasted with the languid and pallid satiety
produced by the full heat of summer, and yet more with the
sober and reflective sadness that steals upon the mind as we
survey the russet hues and the sere leaves of autumn. It is as
if the newness, the fresh youth of the season, gave birth to a
corresponding youth of the soul. Such are the sentiments
which many men feel now-a-days, besides the painter, and the
poet, and the soul-rapt enthusiast of nature: but those were
iron days of which we write, and men spared little time in
thought from action or from strife, nor often paused to note
their own sensations, much less to ponder on their origin or to
investigate their causes.

The morning was such as we have described — the scene a
spot of singular beauty within the precincts of the then-royal
forest of Charnwood, in Leicestershire. A deep but narrow
stream wound in a hundred graceful turns through the rich

meadow-land that formed the bottom of a small, sloping vale,
which had been partially reclaimed, even at that day, from the
waste; though many a willow-bush fringing its margin, and
many a waving ash, fluttering its delicate tresses in the air,
betrayed the woodland origin of the soft meadow. A narrow
road swept down the hill, with a course little less serpentine
than that of the river below, and crossed it by a small, one-arched
stone bridge, overshadowed by a gigantic oak-tree, and
scaled the opposite acclivity in two or three sharp, sandy zig-zags.
Both the hillsides were clothed with forest, but still the
nature of the soil or some accidental causes had rendered the
wood as different as possible; for, on the farther side of the
stream, the ground was everywhere visibly covered by a short,
mossy turf, softer and more elastic to the foot than the most
exquisite carpet that ever issued from the looms of Persia, and
overshadowed by huge and scattered oaks, growing so far apart
that the eye could range far between their shadowy vistas;
while on the nearer slope — the foreground, as it might be
called, of the picture — all was a dense and confused mass of
tangled shrubbery and verdure. Thickets of old, gnarled thorn-bushes,
completely overrun and matted with woodbines; coppices
of young ash, with hazel interspersed, and eglantine and
dog-roses thickly set between; clumps of the prickly gorse
and plumelike broom, all starry with their golden flowerets, and
fern so wildly luxuriant, that in many places it would have
concealed the head of the tallest man, covered the ground for
many a mile through which the narrow road meandered.

There was one object more in view — one which spoke of
man even in that solitude, and man in his better aspect. It was
the slated roof and belfry, all overgrown with moss and stone-crop,
of a small wayside chapel, in the old Saxon architecture,
peering out from the shadows of the tall oaks which overhung
it in the far distance. It was, as we have said, very small, in

the old Saxon architecture, consisting, in fact, merely of a
vaulted roof supported upon four squat, massy columns, whence
sprung the four groined ribs which met in the centre of the
arch. Three sides alone of this primitive place of worship,
which would have contained with difficulty forty persons, were
walled in, the front presenting one wide, open arch, richly and
quaintly sculptured with the indented wolf's teeth of the first
Saxon style. Small as it was, however, the little chapel had
its high altar, with the crucifix and candle, its reading-desk of
old black oak, its font, and pix, and chalices, and all the adjuncts
of the Roman ritual. A little way to the left might be
discovered the low, thatched eaves of a rustic cottage, framed
of the unbarked stems of forest-trees — the abode, probably, of
the officiating priest; and close beside the walls of the little
church a consecrated well, protected from the sun by a stone
vault, of architecture corresponding to the chapel.

Upon the nearer slope, not far from the roadside, but entirely
concealed from passers by the nature of the ground and the
dense thickets, there were collected, at an early hour of the
morning, five men, with as many horses, who seemed to be
awaiting, in a sort of ambush, some persons whom they would
attack at unawares. The leader of the party, as he might be
considered, as much from his appearance as from the deference
shown to him by the others, was a tall, active, powerful man,
of thirty-eight or forty years, with a bold and expressive countenance
— expressive, however, of no good quality, unless it
were the fiery, reckless daring which blazed from his broad,
dark eye, and that was almost obscured by the cloud of insufferable
pride which lowered upon his frowning brow, and by
the deep, scar-like lines of lust, and cruelty, and scorn, which
ploughed his weather-beaten features. His dress was a complete
suit of linked chain-mail — hauberk, and sleeves, and hose
— with shoes of plaited steel, and gauntlets wrought in scale,

covering his person from his neck downward in impenetrable
armor. He had large gilded spurs buckled upon his heels, and
a long, two edged dagger, with a rich hilt and scabbard, in his
belt; but neither sword, nor lance, nor any other weapon of
offence, except a huge steel mace, heavy enough to fell an ox
at a single blow, which he grasped in his right hand; while
from his left hung the bridle of a tall, coal-black Norman charger,
which was cropping the grass quietly beside him. His
head was covered by a conical steel cap, with neither crest, nor
plume, nor visor, and mail-hood falling down from it to protect
the neck and shoulders of the wearer.

The other four were men-at-arms, clad all in suits of armor,
but less completely than their lord: thus they had steel shirts
only, with stout buff breeches and heavy boots to guard their
lower limbs, and iron skullcaps only, without the hood, upon
their heads, and leather gauntlets upon their hands; but, as if
to make up for this deficiency, they were positively loaded with
offensive weapons. They had the long, two-handed sword of
the period belted across their persons, three or four knives and
daggers of various size and strength at their girdles, great
battle-axes in their hands, and maces hanging at their saddle-bows.
They had been tarrying there already several hours,
their leader raising his eyes occasionally to mark the progress
of the sun as he climbed up the azure vault, and muttering a
brief and bitter curse as hour passed after hour, and those came
not whom he expected.

“Danian,” he said at length, turning to the principal of his
followers, who stood nearer to his person, and a little way
apart from the others — “Danian, art sure this was the place
and day? How the dog Saxons tarry! Can they have learned
our purpose?”

“Surely not, surely not, fair sir,” returned the squire, “seeing
that I have mentioned it to no one, not even to Raoul, or

Americ, or Guy, who know no more than their own battle-axes
the object of their ambush. And it was pitch-dark when we
left the castle, and not a soul has seen us here; so it is quite
impossible they should suspect — and hark! there goes the bell;
and see, sir, see — there they come, trooping through the oak-trees
down the hill!”

And indeed, as he spoke, the single bell of the small chapel
began to chime with the merry notes that proclaim a bridal,
and a gay train of harmless, happy villagers might be seen, as
they flocked along, following the footsteps of the gray-headed
Saxon monk, who, in his frock and cowl, with corded waist
and sandalled feet, led the procession. Six young girls followed
close behind him, dressed in blue skirts and russet jerkins,
but crowned with garlands of white May-flowers, and
May-wreaths wound like scarfs across their swelling bosoms,
and hawthorn-branches in their hands, singing the bridal carol
in the old Saxon tongue, in honor of the pride of the village,
the young and lovely Marian. She was indeed the very personification
of all the poet's dreams of youthful beauty — tall
and slender in her figure, yet exquisitely, voluptuously rounded
in every perfect outline, with a waist of a span's circumference,
wide, sloping shoulders, and a bust that, for its matchless swell,
as it struggled and throbbed with a thousand soft emotions, threatening
to burst from the confinement of her tight-fitting jacket,
would have put to shame the bosom of the Medicean Venus.
Her complexion, wherever the sun had not too warmly kissed
her beauties, was pure as the driven snow; while her large,
bright-blue eyes, red, laughing lip, and the luxuriant flood of
sunny, golden hair, which streamed down in wild, artless ringlets
to her waist, made her a creature for a prince's, or more, a
poet's adoration.

But neither prince nor poet was the god of that fair girl's
idolatry, but one of her own class, a Saxon youth, a peasant —

nay, a serf — from his very cradle upward the born thrall of
Hugh de Mortemar, lord of the castle and the hamlet at its foot,
named, from its situation in the depths of Charnwood, Ashby in
the Forest. But there was now no graven collar about the
sturdy neck of the young Saxon, telling of a suffering servitude;
no dark shade of gloom in his full, glancing eye; no sullen
doggedness upon his lip: for he was that day, that glad
day, a freeman — a slave no longer — but free, free, by the gift
of his noble master; free as the wild bird that sung so loudly
in the forest; free as the liberal air that bore the carol to his
ears. His frock of forest-green and buskins of the untanned
deer-hide set off his muscular, symmetrical proportions, and
his close-curled, short auburn hair showed a well-turned and
shapely head. Behind this gay and happy pair came several
maids and young men, two-and-two; and after these, an old,
gray-headed man, the father of the bride — and leaning on his
arm an aged matron, the widowed mother of the enfranchised
bridegroom.

Merrily rang the gay, glad bells, and blithely swelled up the
bridal chorus as they collected on the little green before the
ancient arch, and slowly filed into the precincts of the forest
shrine; but very speedily their merriment was changed into
dismay and terror and despair, for scarcely had they passed
into the sacred building, before the knight, with his dark followers,
leaped into their saddles, and thundering down the hill
at a tremendous gallop, surrounded the chapel before the inmates
had even time to think of any danger. It was a strange,
wild contrast, the venerable priest within pronouncing even
then the nuptial blessing, and proclaiming over the bright
young pair the union made by God, which thenceforth no man
should dissever — the tearful happiness of the blushing bride,
the serious gladness of the stalwart husband, the kneeling peasantry,
the wreaths of innocent flowers; and at the gate, the

stern, dark men-at-arms, with their scarred savage features,
and their gold-gleaming harness and raised weapons. A loud
shriek burst from the lips of the sweet girl, as, lifting her eyes
to the sudden clang and clatter that harbingered those dread
intruders, she saw and recognised upon the instant the fiercest
of the Norman tyrants — dreaded by all his neighbors far and
near, but most by the most virtuous and young and lovely —
the bold, bad baron of Maltravers. He bounded to the earth
as he reached the door, and three of his followers leaped from
their horses likewise, one sitting motionless in his war-saddle,
and holding the four chargers. “Hold, priest!” he shouted,
as he entered, “forbear this mummery; and thou, dog Saxon,
think not that charms like these are destined to be clasped in
rapture by any arms of thy slow, slavish race!” and with these
words he strode up to the altar, seemingly fearless of the least
resistance, while his men kept the door with brandished weapons.
Mute terror seized on all, paralyzed utterly by the dread
interruption — on all but the bold priest and the stout bridegroom.

“Nay, rather forbear thou, Alberic de Maltravers! These
two are one for ever — wo be to those who part them!”

“Tush, priest — tush, fool!” sneered the fierce baron, as he
seized him by the arm, and swinging him back rudely, advanced
upon the terrified and weeping girl, who was now clinging to
the very rails of the high altar, trusting, poor wretch, that some
respect for that sanctity of place which in old times had awed
even heathens, might now prevail with one whom no respect
for anything divine or human had ever yet deterred from doing
his unholy will.

“Ha! dog!” cried he, in fiercer tones, that filled the chapel
as it were a trumpet, seeing the Saxon bridegroom lift up a
heavy quarter-staff which lay beside him, and step in quietly
but very resolutely in defence of his lovely wife — “Ha! dog

and slave, dare you resist a Norman and a noble? — back,
serf, or die the death!” and he raised his huge mace to strike
him.

“No serf, sir, nor slave either,” answered the Saxon,
firmly, “but a freeman, by my good master's gift, and a landholder.”

“Well, master freeman and landholder,” replied the other,
with a bitter sneer, “if such names please you better, stand
back — for Marian lies on no bed but mine this night — stand
back, before worse come of it!”

“I will die rather,” was the answer. — “Then die! fool!
die!” shouted the furious Norman, and with the words he struck
full at the bare brow of the dauntless Saxon with his tremendous
mace — it fell, and with dint that would have crushed the
strongest helmet into a thousand splinters — it fell, but by a
dexterous slight the yeoman swung his quarter-staff across the
blow, and parried its direction, although the tough ash-pole
burst into fifty shivers — it fell upon the carved rails of the
altar and smashed them into atoms; but while the knight, who
had been somewhat staggered by the impetus of his own misdirected
blow, was striving to recover himself, the young man
sprang upon him, and grappling him by the throat, gained a
short-lived advantage. Short-lived it was indeed, and perilous
to him that gained — for although there were men enough in
the chapel, all armed with quarter staves, and one or two with
the genuine brown bill, to have overpowered the four Normans,
despite their war array — yet so completely were they overcome
by consternation, that not one moved a step to aid him;
the priest, who had alone showed any spark of courage,
being impeded by the shrieking women, who, clinging to the
hem of his vestments, implored him for the love of God to
save them.

In an instant that fierce grapple was at an end, for in the

twinkling of an eye, two of the men-at-arms had rushed upon
him and dragged him off their lord.

“Now by the splendor of God's brow,” shouted the enraged
knight, “thou art a sweet dog thus to brave thy masters. Nay,
harm him not. Raoul” — he went on — “harm not the poor dog,”
— as his follower had raised his battle-axe to brain him —
“harm him not, else we should raise the ire of that fool, Mortemar!
Drag him out — tie him to the nearest tree, and this
good priest beside him — before his eyes we will console this
fair one.” And with these words he seized the trembling
girl, forcing her from the altar, and encircling her slender
waist in the foul clasp of his licentious arms. “And ye,”
he went on, lashing himself into fury as he continued, —
“and ye churl Saxons, hence! — hence dogs and harlots to
your kennels!”

No farther words were needed, for his orders were obeyed
by his own men with the speed of light, and the Saxons over-joyed
to escape on any terms, rushed in a confused mass out
of the desecrated shrine, and fled in all directions, fearful of
farther outrage. Meanwhile, despite the struggles of the
youth, and the excommunicating auathemas which the priest
showered upon their heads, the men-at-arms bound them
securely to the oak-trees, and then mounting their horses, sat
laughing at their impotent resistance, while with a refinement
of brutality worthy of actual fiends, Alberic de Maltravers bore
the sweet wife clasped to his iron breast, up to the very face
of her outraged, helpless husband, and tearing open all her
jerkin, displayed to the broad light the whole of her white,
panting bosom, and poured from his foul, fiery lips a flood of
lustful kisses on her mouth, neck, and bosom, under the very
eyes of his tortured victim. To what new outrage he might
have next proceeded, must remain ever doubtful, for at this
very instant the long and mellow blast of a clearly-winded bugle

came swelling through the forest succeeded by the bay of
several bloodhounds, and the loud, ringing gallop of many fast
approaching.

“Ha!” shouted he, “ten thousand curses on him! here
comes De Mortemar. Quick — quick — away! Here, Raoul,
take the girl, buckle her tight to your back with the sword-belt,
and give me your twohanded blade; I lost my mace in the
chapel! — That's right! quick! man — that's right — now, then,
be off — ride for your life — straight to the castle; we will
stop all pursuit. Fare thee well, sweet one, for a while — we
will conclude hereafter what we have now commenced so
fairly!”

And as he spoke, he also mounted his strong charger, and
while the man, Raoul, dashed his spurs rowel-deep into his
horse's flanks, and went off at a thundering gallop, the other
four followed him at a slower pace, leaving the Saxons in redoubled
anguish — redoubled by the near hope of rescue.

But for once villany was not permitted to escape due retribution,
for ere the men-at-arms, who led the flight, had crossed
the little bridge, a gallant train came up at a light canter from
the wood, twenty or thirty archers, all with their long bows
bent, and their arrows notched and ready, with twice as many
foresters on foot, with hounds of every kind, in slips and leashes,
and at their head a man of as noble presence as ever graced a
court or reined a charger. He was clad in a plain hunting-frock
of forest-green, with a black velvet bonnet and a heron's
plume, and wore no other weapon but a light hunting-sword —
but close behind him rode two pages, bearing his knightly
lance with its long pennon, his blazoned shield, and his two-handed
broadsword. It was that brave and noble Norman, Sir
Hugh de Mortemar. His quick eye in an instant took in the
whole of the confused scene before him, and understood it on
the instant.

“Alberic de Maltravers!” he cried, in a voice clear and loud
as the call of a silver trumpet, “before God he shall rue it,”
and with the words he snatched his lance from the page, and
dashing spurs into his splendid Spanish charger, thundered his
orders out with the rapid rush of a winter's torrent. “Bend
your bows, archers, — draw home your arrows to the head!
stand, thou foul ravisher, dishonest Norman, false gentleman,
and recreant knight! Stand on the instant, or we shoot! Cut
loose the yeoman from the tree, ye varlets, and the good priest.
Randal, cast loose the bloodhounds down to the bridge across
yon knoll, and lay them on the track of that flying scoundrel.
Ha! they will meet us.”

And so in truth they did; for seeing that he could not escape
the deadly archery, Alberic de Maltravers wheeled short on
his pursuers, and shouted his war-cry — “Saint Paul for Alberic!
— false knight and liar in your throat. Saint Paul! Saint
Paul! charge home,” — and with the words the steel-clad men-at-arms
drove on, expecting by the weight of their harness to
ride down and scatter the light archery like chaff. Unarmed
although he was, De Mortemar paused not — for a moment!
— but galloped in his green doublet as gallantly upon his foe
as though he had been sheathed in steel. He had but one advantage
— but one hope! — to bear his iron-clad opponent down
at the lance point, without closing — on! they came, on! —
Maltravers swinging his twohanded sword aloft, and trusting in
his mail to turn the lance's point — De Mortemar with his long
spear in rest — “Saint Paul! Saint Paul!” — they met! the dust
surged up in a dense cloud! the very earth appeared to shake
beneath their feet! — but not a moment was the conflict doubtful.
Deep! deep! throughed his linked mail, and through his
leathern jerkin, and through his writhing flesh, the grinded
spear-head shove into his bosom, and came out at his back, the
ash-staff breaking in the wound. Down he went, horse and

man! — and down, at one close volley of the gray goose shafts,
down went his three companions! — one shot clear through the
brain by an unerring shaft — the others stunned and bruised,
their horses both slain under them. “Secure them,” shouted
Hugh, “bind them both hand and foot, and follow,” — and he
paused not to look upon his slain assailant, but galloped down
the hill, followed by half his train, the bloodhounds giving
tongue fiercely, and already gaining on the fugitive. It was a
fearful race, but quickly over! — for though the man-at-arms
spurred desperately on, his heavy Norman horse, oppressed,
moreover, by his double load, had not a chance in competing
with the proud Andalusian of De Mortemar. Desperately he
spurred on — but now the savage hounds were up with him —
they rushed full at the horse's throat and bore him to the earth
— another moment, Raoul was a bound captive, and Marian,
rescued by her liege lord, and wrapped in his own mantle, was
clasped in the fond arms of her husband!

“How now, good priest,” exclaimed Sir Hugh, “are these
two now fast wedded?”

“As fast, fair sire, as the holy rites may wed them.”

“Then ring me, thou knave, Ringan, a death-peal! Thou,
Gilbert, and thou, Launcelot, make me three halters, quick —
nay! four — the dead knight shall swing, as his villany well
merits, beside the living knaves! — Sing me a death-chant,
priest, for these are judged to death, unhouselled and unshriven!”

Not a word did the ruffians answer, they knew that prayer
was useless, and with dark frowning brows, and dauntless bearing,
they met their fate, impenitent and fearless. For Marian
begged their lives in vain. De Mortemar was pitiless in his
just wrath! And the spurs were hacked from the heels of the
dead knight, and the base halter twisted round his cold neck,
and his dishonored corpse hung up upon the very tree to which

he had bade bind the Saxon bridegroom. And the death-peals
were sung, and the death-hymn was chanted; and ere the
sounds of either had died away in the forest echoes, the three
marauders writhed out their villain souls in the mild air, and
swung three grim and ghastly monuments of a foul crime and
fearful retribution — and this dread rite consummated the Saxon's
bridal!