University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
THE DEPARTURE.

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

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

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

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

As the procession wound down the long slope of the castle
hill, and through the Saxon quarter, the serfs, who had collected
to look on the show, set up a loud hurrah, the ancient

Saxon cry of mirth, of greeting, or defiance. It was the cry
of caste, rejoicing at the elevation of a brother to the true station
of a man. But there was one voice which swelled not
the cry; one man, who turned sullenly away, unable to bear
the sight of another's joy, turned away, muttering vengeance—
Eadwulf the Red—the only soul so base, even among the
fallen and degraded children of servitude and sorrow, as to refuse
to be glad at the happiness which it was not granted him
to share, though that happiness were a mother's and a brother's
escape from misery and degradation.

Many days, many weeks, passed away, while that gay cavalcade
were engaged in their long progress to the north-westward,
through the whole length of the beautiful West Riding
of Yorkshire, from its southern frontier, where it abuts on
Nottinghamshire and the wild county of Derby, to its western
border, where its wide moors and towering crag-crested peaks
are blended with the vast treeless fells of Westmoreland.

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

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

Sometimes vast tracks of rich and thriftily-cultured meadow-lands,

ever situate in the loveliest places of the shire,
pastured by abundant flocks, and dotted with sleek herds of
the already celebrated short-horns, told where the monks held
their peaceful sway, enjoying the fat of the land; and proclaimed
how, in those days at least, the priesthood of Rome
were not the sensual, bigot drones, the ignorant, oppressive
tyrants, whose whereabout can be now easily detected by the
squalid and neglected state of lands and animals and men,
whenever they possess the soil and control the people. Such
were the famous Abbey-stedes of Fountain's and Jorvaulx,
then, as now, both for fertility and beauty, the boast of the
West Riding.

Still, notwithstanding these pleasant interchanges of rural
with forest scenery, occuring so often as to destroy all
monotony, and to keep up a delightful anticipation in the
mind of the voyager, as to what sort of view would meet his
eye on crossing you hill-top, or turning that curvature of the
wood-road, by far the greater portion of their way led them
over sandy tracks, meandering like ribbons through wide
glades of greensward, under the broad protecting arms of
giant oaks and elms and beeches, the soft sod no less refreshing
to the tread of the quadrupeds, than was the cool shadow
of the twilight trees delicious to the riders.

Those forests of the olden day were rarely tangled or
thicketlike, unless in marshy levels, where the alder, the
willow, and other water-loving shrubs replaced the monarchs
of the wild; or where, in craggy gullies, down which brawled
impetuous the bright hill-streams, the yew, the holly,
and the juniper, mixed with the silvery stems and quivering
verdure of the birches, or the deeper hues of the broad-leaved

witch-elms and hazels, formed dingles fit for fairy
bowers.

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

And no more lovely sight can be imagined than those
deep, verdant solitudes, at early morn, when the luxuriant
feathery ferns, the broom and gorse blazing with their clusters
of golden blossoms, the crimson-capped foxgloves, the sky-blue
campanulas by the roadside, the clustering honeysuckles
overrunning the stunt hawthorns, and vagrant briars and
waving grasses were glittering far and near in their morning
garniture of diamond dewdrops, with the long level rays of
the new-risen sun streaming in yellow lustre down the glades,
and casting great blue lines of shadow from every mossy
trunk—no sight more lovely than the same scenes in the
waning twilight, when the red western sky tinged the gnarled
bolls with lurid crimson, and carpeted the earth with sheets
of copper-colored light, while the skies above were darkened
with the cerulean robes of night.

Nor was there lack of living sounds and sights to take
away the sense of loneliness from the mind of the voyager in
the green wilderness—the incessant songs of the thrush and
blackbird, and whistle of the wood-robin, the mellow notes of
the linnets, the willow warblers and the sedge birds in the
watery brake, the harsh laugh of the green-headed woodpecker,
and the hoarse cooing of the innumerable stock-doves,

kept the air vocal during all the morning and evening hours;
while the woods all resounded far and wide with the loud
belling of the great stags, now in their lusty prime, calling
their shy mates, or defying their lusty rivals, from morn to
dewy eve.

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

Now it would be some gray-frocked hedge priest plodding
his way alone on foot, or on his patient ass, who would return
the passenger's benedicite with his smooth pax vobiscum; now
it would be some green-kirtled forest lass who would drop her
demure curtesy to the fair Norman lady, and shoot a sly
glance from her hazel eyes at the handsome Norman pages.
Here it would be a lord-abbot, or proud prior with his
lay brothers, his refectioners and sumptners, his baggage-mules,
and led Andalusian jennets, and as the poet sung,

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

There, it would be a knot of sun-burned Saxon woodmen,
in their green frocks and buckram hose, with long bows in
their hands, short swords and quivers at their sides, and
bucklers of a span-breadth on their shoulders, men who had

never acknowledged Norman king, nor bowed to Norman
yoke, who would stand at gaze, marking the party, from the
jaws of some bosky dingle, too proud to yield a foot, yet too
few to attack; proving that to be well accompanied, in those
days, in Sherwood, was a matter less of pomp than of sound
policy. Anon, receiving notice of their approach from the
repeated bugle-blasts of his verdurers, as they passed each
successive mere or forest-station, a Norman knight or noble,
in his garb of peace, would gallop down some winding wood-path,
with his slender train scattering far behind him, to greet
his brother in arms, and pray him to grace his tower by refreshing
his company and resting his fair and gentle daughter
for a few days or hours, within its precincts.

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

Life was in England then, as it was in France up to the
days of the Revolution, as it never has been at any time in
America, as it is nowhere now, and probably never will be
any where again, unless we return to the primitive, social
equality, and manful independence of patriarchal times; when
truth was held truth, and manhood manhood, the world over;
and some higher purpose in mortality was acknowledged than

the mere acquiring, some larger nobleness in man than the
mere possessing, of unprofitable wealth.

Much of life, then, was spent out of doors; the mid-day
meal, the mid-day slumber, the evening dance, were enjoyed,
alike by prince and peasant, under the shadowy forest-tree, or
the verdure of the trellised bower. The use of flowers was
universal; in every rustic festival, of the smallest rural hamlets,
the streets would be arched and garlanded with wreaths
of wild flowers; in every village hostelry, the chimney would
be filled with fresh greens, the board decked with eglantine
and hawthorn, the beakers crowned with violets and cowslips,
just as in our days the richest ball-rooms, the grandest banquet-halls,
are adorned with brighter, if not sweeter or more
beautiful, exotics.

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

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

If the division between the noble and the common of the
human race, as established by birth, by hereditary rank, by
unalterable caste, were stronger and deeper and less eradicable
than at this day, the real division, as visible in his nature,
between man and man, of the noble and the common, the
difference in his tastes, his enjoyments, his pleasures, his capacity
no less than his power of enjoying, was a mere nothing
then, to what it is to-day.

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

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

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

Hence a division, which never can be reconciled. Both
classes have receded from the true nature of humanity, in the

two opposite directions, that they no longer even comprehend
the one the tastes of the other, and scarce have a desire or
a hope in common; for what the poor man most desires, a
sufficiency for his mere wants, physical and moral, the rich
man can not comprehend, never having known to be without
it; while the artificial nothings, for which the capitalist strives
and wrestles to the last, would be to his workman mere syllabub
and flummery to the tired and hungry hunter.

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

Now, it is certain, the enjoyments, the luxuries of the one
class—nay, the very delicacy of their tables, if attainable,
would be utterly distasteful to the other; and the rich soups,
the delicate-made dishes, the savor of the game, and the
purity of the light French and Rhenish wines, which are the
ne plus ultra of the rich man's splendid board, would be
even more distasteful to the man of the million, than would
be his beans and bacon and fire-fraught whisky to the palate
of the gaudy millionaire.

Throughout their progress, therefore, a thousand picturesque
adventures befell our party, a thousand romantic scenes were
presented by their halts for the noon-day repose, the coming

meal, or the nightly hour of rest, which never could now
occur, unless to some pleasure-party, purposely masquerading,
and aping the romance of other days.

Sometimes, when no convent, castle, hostelry, or hermitage,
lay on the day's route, the harbingers would select some picturesque
glen and sparkling fountain; and, when the party
halted at the spot, an extempore pavilion would be found
pitched, of flags and pennoncelles, outspread on a lattice-work
of lances, with war-cloaks spread for cushions, and flasks and
bottiaus cooling in the spring, and pasties and boar's meat,
venison and game, plates of silver and goblets of gold, spread
on the grass, amid pewter-platters and drinking-cups of horn,
a common feast for man and master, partaken with the same
appetite, hallowed by the same grace, enlivened by the same
minstrelsy and music, and enjoyed no less by the late-enfranchised
serfs, than by the high-born nobles to whom they owed
their freedom.

Sometimes, when it was known beforehand that they must
encamp for the night in the greenwood, the pages and waiting-women
would ride forward, in advance of the rest, with
the foragers, the baggage, and a portion of the light-armed
archery; and, when the shades of evening were falling, the
welcome watch-setting of the mellow-winded bugles would
bid the voyagers hail; and, as they opened some moon-lit
grassy glade, they would behold green bowers of leafy branches,
garlanded with wild roses and eglantine, and strewn with
dry, soft moss, and fires sparkling bright amid the shadows,
and spits turning before the blaze, and pots seething over it,
suspended from the immemorial gipsy tripods. And then
the horses would be unbridled, unladen, groomed, and picketed,

to feed on the rich forest herbage; and the evening meal
would be spread, and the enlivening wine-cup would go round,
and the forest chorus would be trolled, rendered doubly sweet
by the soft notes of the girls, until the bugles breathed a soft
good-night, and, the females of the party withdrawing to their
bowers of verdure, meet tiring rooms for Oberon and his wild
Titania, the men, from the haughty baron to the humblest
groom, would fold them in their cloaks, and sleep, with their
feet to the watch-fires, and their untented brows toward
heaven, until the woodlark, and the merle and mavis, earlier
even than the village chanticleer, sounded their forest reveillé.