University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE NORMAN LORDS.

High up in a green, gentle valley, a lap among the hills,
which, though not very lofty, were steep and abrupt with
limestone crags and ledges, heaving themselves above the soil
on their upper slopes and summits, perched on a small isolated
knoll, or hillock, so regular in form, and so evenly
scarped and rounded, that it bore the appearance of an artificial
work, stood the tall Norman fortalice of Philip de
Morville.

It was not a very large building, consisting principally of a
single lofty square keep, with four lozenge-shaped turrets
at the angles, attached to the body of the place, merlonwise,
as it is termed in heraldry, or corner to corner, rising some
twenty feet or more above the flat roof of the tower, which
was surrounded with heavy projecting battlements widely
overhanging the base, and pierced with crenelles for archery,
and deep machicolations, by which to pour down boiling oil,
or molten lead, upon any who should attempt the walls.

In the upper stories only, of this strong place, were there
any windows, such as deserved the name, beyond mere loops
and arrowslits; but there, far above the reach of any scaling-ladder,
they looked out, tall and shapely, glimmering in the
summer sunshine, in the rich and gorgeous hues of the
stained glass—at that time the most recent and costly of
foreign luxuries, opening on a projecting gallery, or bartizan,
of curiously-carved stonework, which ran round all the four
sides of the building, and rendered the dwelling apartments
of the castellan and his family both lightsome and commodious.
One of the tall turrets, which have been described,
contained the winding staircase, which gave access to the
halls and guard-rooms which occupied all the lower floors,
and to the battlements above, while each of the others contained
sleeping-chambers of narrow dimensions, on each story,
opening into the larger apartments.

This keep, with the exception of the tall battlemented
flanking walls, with their esplanades and turrets, and advanced
barbican or gate-house, was the only genuine Norman portion
of the castle, and occupied the very summit of the knoll;
but below it, and for the most part concealed and covered by
the ramparts on which it abutted, was a long, low, roomy
stone building, which had been in old times the mansion of
the Saxon thane, who had occupied the rich and fertile lands
of that upland vale, in the happy days before the advent of
the fierce and daring Normans, to whom he had lost both
life and lands, and left an empty name alone to the inheritance,
which was not to descend to any of his race or lineage.

Below the walls, which encircled the hillock about midway
between the base and summit, except at one spot, where the

gate-house was thrust forward to the brink of a large and
rapid brook, which had been made by artificial means completely
to encircle the little hill, the slopes were entirely bare
of trees or underwood, every thing that could possibly cover
the advances of an enemy being carefully cut down or uprooted,
and were clothed only by a dense carpet of short, thick
greensward, broidered with daisies pied, and silver lady's
smocks; but beyond the rivulet, covering all the bottom of
the valley with rich and verdant shade, were pleasant orchards
and coppices, among which peeped out the thatched roofs
and mud walls of the little village, inhabited by the few free
laborers, and the more numerous thralls and land-serfs, who
cultivated the demesnes of the foreign noble, who possessed
them by right of the sword.

Through this pleasant little hamlet, the yellow road, which
led up to the castle, wound devious, passing in its course by
an open green, on which half a dozen sheep and two or three
asses were feeding on the short herbage, with a small Saxon
chapel, distinguished by its low, round, wolf-toothed arch and
belfry, on the farther side; and, in singular proximity to the
sacred edifice, a small space, inclosed by a palisade, containing
a gallows, a whipping-post, and a pair of stocks—sad monuments
of Saxon slavery, and Norman tyranny and wrong.

In one of the upper chambers of the feudal keep, a small
square room, with a vaulted roof, springing from four clustered
columns in the corners, with four groined ribs, meeting in the
middle, from which descended a long, curiously-carved pendant
of stone, terminating in a gilt iron candelabrum of several
branches, two men were seated at a board, on which, though
the solid viands of the mid-day meal had been removed, there

were displayed several silver dishes, with wastel bread, dried
fruits, and light confections, as well as two or three tall, graceful
flasks of the light fragrant wines of Gascony and Anjou,
and several cups and tankards of richly-chased and gilded
metal, intermixed with several large-bowled and thin-stemmed
goblets of purple and ruby-colored glass.

The room was a very pleasant one, lighted by two tall windows,
on two different sides, which stood wide open, admitting
the soft, balmy, summer air, and the fresh smell of the neighboring
greenwoods, the breezy voice of which came gently in,
whispering through the casement. The walls were hung
with tapestries of embossed and gilded Spanish leather,
adorned with spirited figures of Arab skirmishers and Christian
chivalry, engaged in the stirring game of warfare; while,
no unfit decoration for a wall so covered, two or three fine
suits of chain and plate armor, burnished so brightly that they
shone like silver, with their emblazoned shields and appropriate
weapons, stood, like armed knights on constant duty, in
canopied niches, framed especially to receive them.

Varlets, pages, and attendants, had all withdrawn; and the
two Norman barons sat alone, sipping their wine in silence,
and apparently reflecting on some subject which they found it
difficult to approach without offense or embarrassment. At
last, the younger of the two, Sir Philip de Morville, after
drawing his open hand across his fair, broad forehead, as if he
would have swept away some cloud which gloomed over his
mind, and drinking off a deep goblet of wine, opened the conversation
with evident confusion and reluctance.

“Well, well,” he said, “it must out, Sir Yvo, and though
it is not very grateful to speak of such things, I must needs do

so, lest I appear to you uncourtly and ungracious, in hesitating
to do to you, mine own most tried and trusty friend, to
whom I owe no less than my own life, so small a favor as the
granting liberty to one poor devil of a Saxon. I told you I
would do it, if I might; yet, by my father's soul, I know not
how to do it!”

“Where is the rub, my friend?” replied the other, kindly.
“I doubt not, if we put both our heads together, we can accomplish
even a greater thing than making a free English
yeoman of a Saxon thrall.”

“I never was rich, as you well know, De Taillebois; but at
the time of the king's late incursion into Wales, when I was
summoned to lead out my power, I had no choice but to
mortgage this my fortalice, with its demesne of Waltheofstow,
and all its plenishing and stock, castle and thralls, and crops
and fisheries, to Abraham of Tadcaster, for nineteen thousand
zecchins, to buy their outfitting, horses, and armor; and this
prohibits me from manumitting this man, Kenric, although I
would do so right willingly, not for that it would pleasure you
only, but that he is a faithful and an honest fellow for a thrall,
and right handy, both with arbalast and longbow. I know
not well how to accomplish it.”

“Easily, easily, Philip,” answered Sir Yvo, laughing.
“Never shall it be said that nineteen thousand zecchins
stood between Yvo de Taillebois and his gratitude; besides,
this will shoot double game with a single arrow. It will
relieve our trusty Kenric from the actual bondage of a corporeal
lord and master, and liberate my right good friend and
brother in arms, Philip de Morville, from the more galling
spiritual bondage of that foul tyrant and perilous oppressor,

debt. Tush! no denial, I say,” he continued, perceiving that Sir
Philip was about to make some demur; “it is a mere trifle, this,
and a matter of no moment. I am, as you well know, passing
rich, what with my rents in Westmoreland, and my estates beyond
the sea. I have even now well-nigh twice the sum that
you name, lying idle in my bailiff's hands at Kendall, until I
may find lands to purchase. It was my intent to have bought
those border lands of Clifford's, that march with my moorlands
on Hawkshead, but it seems he will not sell, and I am
doubly glad that it gives me the occasion to serve you. I will
direct my bailiff at once to take horse for Tadcaster and redeem
your mortgage, and you can take your own time and
pleasure to repay it. There is no risk, Heaven knows, for
Waltheofstow is well worth nineteen thousand zecchins three
times told, and, in lieu of usance money, you shall transfer the
man Kenric from thee and thine to me and mine, forever. So
shall my gratitude be preserved intact, and my pretty Guendolen
have her fond fancy gratified.”

“Be it so, then, in God's name; and by my faith I thank
you for the loan right heartily; for, on mine honor! that
same blood-sucker of Israel hath pumped me like the veriest
horse-leech, these last twelve months, and I know not but I
should have had to sell, after all. We must have Kenric's
consent, however, that all may be in form; for he is no common
thrall, but a serf of the soil, and may not be removed
from it, nor manumitted even, save with his own free will.”

“Who ever heard of a serf refusing to be free, more than
of a Jew not loving ducats? My life on it, he will not be
slow to consent!”

“I trow not, I trow not, De Taillebois, but let us set about

it presently; a good deed can not well be done too quickly.
You pass the wine cup, too, I notice. Let us take cap and
cloak, and stroll down into the hamlet yonder; it is a pleasant
ramble in the cool afternoon, and we can see him in his den;
he will be scant of wind, I trow, and little fit to climb the castle
hill this evensong, after the battering he received from that
stout forester. But freedom will be a royal salve, I warrant
me, for his worst bruises. Shall we go?”

“Willingly, willingly. I would have it to tell Guendolen
at her wakening. 'T will be a cure to her also. She is a tender-hearted
child ever, and was so from her cradle. Why, I
have known her cry like the lady Niobe, that the prior of St.
Albans told us of—who wept till she was changed into a dripping
fountain, when blessed St. Michael and St. George slew
all her tribe of children, for that she likened herself, in her
vain pride of beauty, to the most holy virgin mother, St. Mary
of Sienna—at the killing of a deer by a stray shaft, that had
a suckling fawn beside her foot; and when I caused them to
imprison Wufgitha, that was her nurse's daughter, for selling
of a hundred pounds of flax that was given her to spin, she
took sick, and kept to her bed two days and more, all for that
she fancied the wench would pine; though her prison-house
was the airiest and most lightsome turret chamber in my
house at Kendal, and she was not in gyves nor on prison diet.
Faith! I had no peace with her, till I gave the whole guidance
of the women into her hands. They are all ladies since that
day at Kendal, or next akin to it.”

“Over god's forbode!” answered Philip, laughing. “It
must have been a black day for your seneschal. How rules he
your warders, since? My fellow, Hundibert, swears that the

girls need more watching than the laziest swine in the whole
Saxon herd. But come; let us be moving.”

With that they descended the winding stone stairway into
the great hall or guard-room, which occupied the whole of
one floor of the castle—a noble vaulted room, stone-arched
and stone-paved, its walls hung with splendid arms and well-used
weapons,

Thence, through an echoing archway, above which in its
grooves of stone hung the steel-clinched portcullis, and down
a steep and almost precipitous flight of steps, without any rail
or breastwork, they reached the large court-yard, where some
of the retainers were engaged in trying feats of strength and
skill, throwing the hammer, wrestling, or shooting with arbalasts
at a mark, while others were playing at games of chance
in a cool shadowy angle of the walls, moistening their occupation
with an occasional pull at a deep, black tankard, which
stood beside them on the board.

After tarrying a few minutes in the court, observing the
wrestlers and cross-bowmen, and throwing in an occasional
word of good-humored encouragement at any good shot or
happy fall, the lords passed the drawbridge, which was lowered,
giving access to the pleasant country, over which the
warder was gazing half-wistfully, and watching a group of
pretty girls, who were washing clothes in the brook at about
half a mile's distance, laughing as merrily and singing as
tunefully as though they had been free maidens of gentle
Norman lineage, instead of contemned and outlawed Saxons,

the children, and the wives and mothers of slaves and bondmen
in the to be hereafter.

“Hollo! old Stephen,” cried the Knight of Morville, gayly,
as he passed the stout dependent; “I thought thou wert too
resolute a bachelor to cast a sheep's-eye on the lasses, and too
thorough-paced a Norman to let the prettiest Saxon of them
all find favor in your sight.”

“I don't know, sir; I don't know that,” answered the man,
with a grin, half-bashfully, and between bantering and earnest.
“There 's little Edith down yonder; and, bond or free, there 's
not a girl about the castle, or within ten miles of it, for that
matter, that has got an eye to come near those blue sparklers
of her's; and as for her voice, when she 's singing, it would
wile the birds out of heaven, let alone the wits of a poor
soldier's brain-pan. Hark to her now, Sir Philip. Sang
ever nightingale so sweetly as you trill, Sir Knight?”

“Win her, Stephen. Win her, I 'll grant you my permission,
for your paramour; and if you do, I 'll give her to you
for your own. I owe you a boon of some sort, for that service
you did me when you knocked that Welch churl on the
head, who would have driven his long knife into my ribs, that
time I was dismounted in the pass near Dunmailraise. Win
her, therefore, if you may, Stephen, and yours she shall be,
as surely and as steadfastly as though she were the captive of
your spear.”

“Small chance, Sir Philip,” replied the man, slowly; “all
thanks to you, natheless. But she 's troth-plighted to that
tall, well-made fellow, Kenric, they say, that saved the lady
Guendolen from the stag this morning. They 'll be asking
your consent to the wedding and the bedding, one of these

days, Beausire. To-morrow, as like as not, seeing this feat
of the good youth's will furnish forth a sort of plea for the
asking of a favor.”

“That will not much concern you, warder,” said Sir Yvo.
“Your rival will be out of your way shortly. I have asked
his freedom but now of Sir Philip, and shall have him away
with me the next week, to the North country.”

“I don't know that will do me much good. They say she
loves him parlously, and he her; and she ever looks coldly
on me.”

“A little perseverance is a certain remedy for cold looks,
Stephen. So, don't be down-hearted. You will have a clear
field soon.”

“I am not so sure of that, sir. I should not wonder if he
refused to go.”

“Refused to go—to be free—to be his own master, and a
thrall and slave no longer!”

“Who can tell, sir?” answered the man. “Saxon or Norman,
bond or free, we 're all men, after all; and women have
made fools of us all, since the days of Sir Adam in Paradise,
and will, I fancy, to the end of all time. I 'd do and suffer
a good deal myself to win such a look out of Edith's blue
eyes, as I saw her give yon Saxon churl, when he came to
after we had thrown cold water on him. And, after all, if
Sir Hercules, of Greece, made a slave of himself, and a sheslave,
too, as that wandering minstrel sang to us in the hall
the other day, all to win the love of the beautiful Sultana,
Omphale, I don't see, for myself, why a Saxon serf, that 's
been a serf all his life, and got pretty well used to it by this
time, should n't stay a serf all the rest of it, to keep the love

of Edith, who is prettier a precious sight than the fair Turk,
Omphale, I 'll warrant. I don't know but what I would
myself.”

“Pshaw! Stephen; that smacks Norman—smacks of the
gai science, chivalry, sentiment, and fine high romance. You 'll
never see a Saxon sing `all for love,' I 'll warrant you.”

“Well, sir, well. We shall see. A Saxon's a man, as I
said before; and a Saxon in love is a man in love; and a
man in love is n't a man in his senses any more than Sir
Hercules of Greece was, and when a Saxon's in love, and out
of his senses, there 's no saying what he 'll do; only one may
guess it will be nothing over wise. And so, as I said before,
I should not wonder if Kenric should not part with collar,
thong, and shackles, if he must needs part too with little
Edith the Fair. I would not, any wise, if I were he, Beausire.”