University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
THE LADY'S GAME.

It did not prove, in truth, a matter altogether so easy of
accomplishment as Guendolen, in her warm enthusiasm and
sympathy, had boasted, to effect that small thing, as she had
termed it in her thoughtless eagerness, the liberation of three
human beings, and the posterity of two, through countless
generations, from the curse and degradation of hereditary
bondage.

The value, in the first place, of the unhappy beings, to each
of whom, as to a beast of burden, or to a piece of furniture,
a regular money-price was attached, although they could not
be sold away from the land to which they appertained, unless
by their own consent, was by no means inconsiderable even to
one so rich as Sir Yvo de Taillebois; for in those days the
wealth even of the greatest landed proprietors lay rather in
the sources of revenue, than in revenue itself; and men, whose
estates extended over many parishes, exceeding far the limits
of a modern German principality, whose forests contained
herds of deer to be numbered by the thousand head, whose

cattle pastured over leagues of hill and valley, who could
raise armies, at the lifting of their banners, larger than many
a sovereign prince of the nineteenth century, were often hard
set to find the smallest sums of ready money on emergency,
unless by levying tax or scutage on their vassals, or by applying
to the Jews and Lombards.

In the second place, the scruples of Kenric, which justly
appeared so generous and noble to the fine, unsophisticated
intellect of the young girl, by no means appeared in the
same light to the proud barons, accustomed to regard the
Saxon, and more especially the serf, as a being so palpably
and manifestly inferior, that he was scarcely deemed to possess
rights, much less sentiments or feelings, other than those of
the lower animals.

To them, therefore, the Saxon's refusal to consent to his
own sale as a step necessary to manumission, appeared an act
of insolent outrecuidance, or at the best a bold and impudent
piece of chicanery, whereby to extort from his generous
patrons a recompense three times greater than they had
thought of conferring on him, in the first instance.

It was with scorn, therefore, and almost with anger, that
Sir Yvo listened to the first solicitations of Guendolen in behalf
of her clients; and he laughed at her high-flown sentiments
of admiration and wonder at the self-devotion, the
generosity, the immovable constancy, of the noble Saxon.

“The noble Saxon! By the glory of Heaven!” he exclaimed,
“these women would talk one out of all sense of
reason, with their sympathetic jargon! Why, here 's a sturdy
knave, who has done what, to win all this mighty gratitude?
Just stuck his whittle into a wild stag's weasard, and saved a

lady's life, more by good luck than by good service—as any
man, or boy, of Norman blood, would have done in a trice,
and thought no more of it; and then, when his freedom 's
tendered him as a reward for doing that for which ten-pence
had well paid him, and for failing to do which he had deserved
to be scourged till his bones lay bare, he is too mighty
to accept it—marry! he names conditions, he makes terms,
on which he will consent to oblige his lords by becoming free;
and you—you plead for him. The noble Saxon! by the great
gods, I marvel at you, Guendolen.”

But she, with the woman's wily charm, replied not a word
while he was in the tide of indignation and invective; but
when he paused, exhausted for the moment by his own vehemence,
she took up the word—

“Ten-pence would have well paid him! At least, I am
well content to know,” she said, “the value of my life, and
that, too, at my own father's rating. The Saxons may be, as
I have heard tell, but have not seen that they are, sordid, degraded,
brutal, devoid of chivalry and courtesy and love of
fame; but I would wager my life there is not a free Saxon
man—no, not the poorest Franklin, who would not rate the
life of his coarse-featured, sun-burned daughter at something
higher than the value of a heifer. But it is very well. I am
rebuked. I will trouble you no farther, valiant Sir Yvo de
Taillebois. I have no right to trouble you, beausire, for I
must sure be base-born, though I dreamed not of it, that my
blood should be dearly bought at ten-pence. Were it of the
pure current that mantled in the veins of our high ancestors,
it should fetch something more, I trow, in the market.”

“Nay! nay! thou art childish, Guendolen, peevish, and all

unreasonable. I spoke not of thy life, and thou knowest
it right well, but of the chance, the slight merit of his own,
by which he saved it.”

“Slight merit, father!”

“Pshaw! girl, thou hast gotten me on the mere play of
words. But how canst make it tally with the vast ideas of
this churl's chivalry and heaven-aspiring nobility of soul, that
he so little values liberty, the noblest, most divine of all
things, not immortal, as to reject it thus ignobly?”

“It skills not to argue with you, sir,” she answered, sadly;
“for I see you are resolved to refuse me my boon, as wherefore
should you not, setting so little value on this poor life of
mine. I know that I am but a poor, weak child, that I was a
disappointment to you in my cradle, seeing that I neither can
win fresh honors to your house amid the spears and trumpets,
nor transmit even the name, of which you are so proud, to
future generations; but I am, at least in pride, too much
a Taillebois to crave, as an importunate, unmannerly suitor,
what is denied to me as a free grace. Only this—were you
and I in the hands of the Mussulman, captives and slaves
together, and you should accept freedom as a gift, leaving
your own blood in bondage, I think the Normans would hold
you dishonored noble, and false knight; I am sure the Saxons
would pronounce you nidering. I have done, sir. Let the
Saxon die a slave, if you think it comports with the dignity
of De Taillebois to be a slave's debtor. I thought, if you did
not love me, that you loved the memory of my mother
better.”

“There! there!” replied Sir Yvo, quite overpowered, and
half amused by the mixture of art and artlessness, of real passion

and affected sense of injury by which she had worked
out her purpose. “There! there! enough said, Guendolen.
You will have it as you will, depend on 't. I might have
known you would, from the beginning, and so have spared
myself the pains of arguing with you. It must be as you will
have it, and I will go buy the brood of Sir Philip at once;
pray Heaven only that they will condescend to be manumitted,
without my praying them to accept their liberty upon my
knee. It will cost me a thousand zecchins or more, I warrant
me, at the first, and then I shall have to find them lands
of my lands, and to be security for their “were and mund,” and
I know not what. Alack-a-day! women ever! ever women!
when we are young it is our sisters, our mistresses, our wives;
when we grow old, our daughters!—and by my hopes of
Heaven, I believe the last plague is the sorest!”

“My funeral expenses, with the dole and alms and masses,
would scarcely have cost you so much, Sir Yvo. Pity he did
not let the stag work his will on me! Don't you think so,
sir?”

“Leave off your pouting, silly child. You have your own
way, and that is all you care for; I don't believe you care the
waving of a feather for the Saxons, so you may gratify your
love of ruling, and force your father, who should show more
sense and firmness, to yield to every one of your small caprices.
So smooth that bent brow, and let us see a smile on
those rosy lips again, and you may tell your Edith, if that 's
her name, that she shall be a free woman before sunset.”

“So you confess, after all this flurry, that it was but a
small caprice, concerning which you have so thwarted me.
Well, I forgive you, sir, by this token,”—and, as she spoke,

she threw her white arms about his neck, and kissed him on
the forehead tenderly, before she added, “and now, to punish
you, the next caprice I take shall be a great one, and you
shall grant it to me without wincing. Hark you, there are
the trumpets sounding for dinner, and you not point-device
for the banquet-hall! but never heed to-day. There are no
ladies to the feast, since I am not so well at ease as to descend
the stair. Send me some ortolans and beccaficos from the
table, sir; and above all, be sure, with the comfits and the
Hypocras, you send me the deeds of manumission for Kenric
and Edith, all in due form, else I will never hold you true
knight any more, or gentle father.”

“Fare you well, my child, and be content. And if you
rule your husband, when you get one, as you now rule your
father, Heaven in its mercy help him, for he will have less of
liberty to boast than the hardest-worked serf of them all.
Fare you well, little wicked Guendolen.”

And she laughed a light laugh as the affectionate father,
who used so little of the father's authority, left the Bower, and
cried joyously, “Free, free! all free! I might have been sure
that I should succeed with him. Dear, gentle father! and
yet once, once for a time, I was afraid. Yet I was right, I
was right; and the right must ever win the day. Edith!
Edith!” she cried, as she heard her light foot without. “You
are free. I have conquered!”

It is needless, perhaps it were impossible, to describe the
mingled feelings of delight, gratitude, and wonder, coupled to
something akin to incredulity, which were aroused in the
simple breast of the Saxon maiden, by the tidings of her certain
manumission, and, perhaps even gladder yet, of her transference,

in company with all those whom she loved, to a new
home among scenes which, if not more lovely than those in
which her joyless childhood and unregretted youth had
elapsed, were at least free from recollections of degradation and
disgrace.

The news circulated speedily through the castle, how the
gratitude of the Lady Guendolen had won the liberty of the
whole family of her preserver, with the sole exception of the
gross thrall Eadwulf; and it was easily granted to Edith, that she
should be the bearer of the happy tidings to the Saxon quarter.

Sweet ever to the captive's, to the slave's, ear must be the
sound of liberty, and hard the task, mighty the sacrifice, to
reject it, on any terms, however hard or painful; but if ever
that delightful sound was rendered doubly dear to the hearer,
it was when the sweetest voice of the best beloved—even of
her for whom the blessed boon had been refused, as without
her nothing worth—conveyed it to the ears of the brave and
constant lover, enhanced by the certainty that she, too, who
announced the happiness, had no small share in procuring it, as
she would have a large share of enjoying it, and in rendering
happy the life which she had crowned with the inestimable gift
of freedom.

That was a happy hearth, a blessed home, on that calm
summer evening, though death had been that very day borne
from its darkened doors, though pain and suffering still
dwelt within its walls. But when the heart is glad, and the
soul contented and at peace, the pains of the body are easily
endured, if they are felt at all; and happier hearts, save one
alone, which was discontent and bitter, perhaps bitterer from
the contemplation of the unparticipated bliss of the others,

were never bowed in prayer, or filled with gratitude to the
Giver of all good.

Eadwulf sat, gloomy, sullen, and hard of heart, beside the
cheerful group, though not one of it, refusing to join in prayer,
answering harshly that he had nothing for which to praise
God, or be thankful to him; and that to pray for any thing to
him would be useless, for that he had never enjoyed his favor
or protection.

His feelings were not those of natural regret at the continuance
of his own unfortunate condition, so much as of unnatural
spite at the alteration in the circumstances of his
mother, his brother, and that brother's beautiful betrothed;
and it was but too clear that, whether he should himself remain
free or no, he had been better satisfied that they should
continue in their original condition, rather than that they
should be elevated above himself by any better fortune.

Kenric had in vain striven to soothe his morose and selfish
mood, to cheer his desponding and angry, rather than sorrowful,
anticipations—he had pointed out to him that his own
liberation from slavery, and elevation to the rank and position
of a freeman and military tenant of a fief of land, did not
merely render it probable, but actually make it certain, that
Eadwulf also would be a freeman, and at liberty to join his
kindred in a short time in their new home; “for it must be
little, indeed, that you know of my heart,” said the brave and
manly peasant, “or of that of Edith, either, if you believe that
either of us could enjoy our own liberty, or feel our own happiness
other than unfinished and incomplete, so long as you,
our own and only brother, remain in slavery and sorrow.
Your price is not rated so high, brother Eadwulf, but that we

may easily save enough from our earnings, when once free to
labor for ourselves, within two years at the farthest, to purchase
your freedom too from Sir Philip; and think how easy
will be the labor, and how grateful the earnings, when every
day's toil finished, and every zecchin saved, will bring us a day
nearer to a brother's happy manumission.”

“Words!” he replied, doggedly—“mighty fine words, in
truth. I marvel how eloquent we have become, all on the
sudden. Your labor will be free, as you say, and your earnings
your own; and wondrous little shall I profit by them.
I should think now, since you are so mighty and powerful with
the pretty Lady Guendolen, all for a mere chance which might
have befallen me, or any one, all as well as yourself, you
might have stipulated for my freedom—I had done so I am
sure, though I do not pretend to your fine sympathies and
heaven-reaching notions—”

“And so have lost their freedom!” replied Kenric, shaking
his head, as he waved his hand toward the women; “for that
would have been the end of it. For the rest, I made no stipulations;
I only refused freedom, if it were procurable only by
leaving my aged mother and my bethrothed bride in slavery.
As it was, I had lost my own liberty, and not gained theirs,
if it had not been for Edith, who won for us all, what I had
lost for one.”

“And no one thought of me, or my liberty! I was not
worth thinking of, nor worthy, I trow, to be free.”

“You say well, Eadwulf—you say right well,” cried Edith,
her fair face flushing fiery red, and her frame quivering with
excitement. “You are not worthy to be free. There is no
freedom, or truth, or love, or honor, in your heart. Your

spirit, like your body, is a serf's, and one would do dishonor
to the soul of a dog, if she likened it to yours. Had you been
offered freedom, you had left all, mother, brother, and betrothed—had
any maiden been so ill-advised as betroth herself
to so heartless a churl—to slavery, and misery, and infamy,
or death, to win your own coveted liberty. Nay! I believe,
if they had been free, and you a serf, you would have
betrayed them into slavery, so that you might be alone free.
A man who can not feel and comprehend such a sacrifice as
Kenric made for all of us, is capable of no sacrifice himself, and
is not worthy to be called a man, or to be a freeman.”

Thus passed away that evening, and with the morrow came
full confirmation; and the bold Saxon stood upon his native
soil, as free as the air he breathed; the son, too, of a free
mother, and with a free, fair maiden by his side, soon to be
the free wife of a free Englishman. And none envied them,
not one of their fellow-serfs, who remained still condemned to
toil wearily and woefully, until their life should be over—not
one, save Eadwulf, the morose, selfish, slave-souled brother.