University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
THE OLD HOME.

That was a dark day for Eadwulf, on which the train of
Sir Yvo de Taillebois departed from the tower of Waltheofstow;
and thenceforth the discontented, dark-spirited man
became darker, more morose and gloomy, until his temper
had got to such a pass that he was shunned and avoided by
every one, even of his own fellows.

It is true, that in the condition of slavery, in the being one
of a despised and a detested caste, in being compelled to
labor for the benefit of others than himself, in the being liable
at any moment to be sold, together with the glebe to which he
is attached for life, like the ox or ass with which he toils as a
companion, there is not much to promote contentedness, to
foster a quiet, placable, and gentle disposition, to render any
man more just, or grateful, or forbearing to his fellows. Least
of all is it so, where there is in the slave just enough of
knowledge, of civilization, of higher nurture, to enable him to
desire freedom in the abstract, to pine for it as a right denied,
and to hate those by whom he is deprived of it, without

comprehending its real value, or in the least appreciating
either the privileges which it confers or the duties which it
imposes on the freeman—least of all, when the man has from
nature received a churlish, gloomy, sullen temperament, such
as would be likely to make to itself a fanciful adversity out
of actual prosperity, to resent all opposition to its slightest
wish as an injury, and to envy, almost to the length of hating,
every one more fortunate than himself.

It may, however, as all other conditions of inferiority, of
sorrow, or of suffering, be rendered lighter and more tolerable
by the mode of bearing it. Not that one would desire to see
any man, whether reduced by circumstances to that condition,
or held to it from his birth, so far reduced to a tame and
senseless submission as to accept it as his natural state, or to
endure it apathetically, without an effort at raising himself to
his proper position in the scale of humanity and nature.

It is perfectly consistent with the utmost abhorrence of the
condition, and the most thorough determination to escape
from it by any means lawful to a Christian, to endure what
is unavoidable, and to do that which must be done, bravely,
patiently, well, and therefore nobly.

But it was not in the nature of Eadwulf to take either part.
His rugged, stubborn, animal character, was as little capable
of forming any scheme for his own prospective liberation, to
which energy, and a firm, far-reaching will, should be the
agents, as it was either to endure patiently or to labor well.

Perpetually remiss, working reluctantly and badly, ever a
recusant, a recreant, a sullen and morose grumbler, while he
in no respect lightened, but, it is probable, rather enhanced
his difficulties, he detracted from what slight hope there

might exist of his future emancipation, by carefully, as it
would seem, conciliating the ill-opinion and ill-will of all
men, whether his equals or his superiors—while he entirely
neglected to earn or amass such small sums as might be within
his reach, and as might perhaps, in the end, suffice to purchase
his liberation.

So long as Kenric and his mother remained in the hamlet
of Waltheofstow, and he was permitted to associate with them
in their quarter, in consequence of the character for patience,
honesty, fidelity, and good conduct, which his brother had
acquired with his masters, Eadwulf's temper had been in some
sort restrained by the influence, unconfessed indeed, and only
half-endured with sullen reluctance, which that brother obtained
over him, through his clearer and stronger intellect.
But when they had departed, and when he found himself
ejected, as a single man in the first place, and yet more as one
marked for a bad servant and a dangerous character, from the
best cottage in the quarter, to which he had begun to fancy
himself of right entitled, he became worse and worse, until,
even in the sort of barrack or general lodging of the male
slaves of the lowest order, he was regarded by his fellows as
the bad spirit of the set, and was never sought by any, unless as
the ringleader in some act of villainy, wickedness, or rebellion.

It is probable, moreover, that the beauty and innocence of
Edith, who, however averse she might be to the temper and
disposition of the man, had been wont, since her betrothal to
his brother, to treat him with a certain friendship and familiarity,
might have had some influence in modifying his manner,
at least, and curbing the natural display of his passionate yet
sullen disposition.

Certain it is, that in some sort he loved her—as much, perhaps,
as his sensual and unintelligent soul would allow him
to love; and though he never had shown any predilection,
never had made any effort to conciliate her favor, nor dared
to attempt any rivalry of his brother, whom he wholly feared,
and half-hated for his assumed superiority, he sorely felt her
absence, regretted her liberation from slavery, and even felt
aggrieved at it, since he could not share her new condition.

His brother's freedom he resented as a positive injury done
to himself; and his bearing away with him the beautiful
Edith, soon to become his bride, he looked on in the light of
a fraudulent or forcible abstraction of his own property. From
that moment, he became utterly brutalized and bad; he was
constantly ordered for punishment, and at length he got to
such a pitch of idleness, insolence, and rebellion, that Sir
Philip de Morville, though, in his reluctance to resort to corporeal
punishment, he would not allow him to be scourged or
set in the stocks, ordered his seneschal to take steps for selling
him to some merchant, who would undertake to transport
him to one of the English colonies in Ireland.

Circumstances, however, occurred, which changed the fate
both of the master and the slave, and led in the end to the
events, which form the most striking portion of the present
narrative.

For some time past, as was known throughout all the region,
Sir Philip de Morville had been, if not actually at feud,
at least on terms of open enmity with the nobleman whose
lands marched with his own on the forest side, Sir Foulke
d'Oilly—a man well-advanced in years, most of which he had
spent in constant marauding warfare, a hated oppressor and

tyrant to his tenantry and vassals, and regarded, among his
Norman neighbors and comrades, as an unprincipled, discourteous,
and cruel man.

With this man, recently, fresh difficulties had arisen concerning
some disputed rights of chase, and on a certain day,
within a month after the departure of Sir Yvo de Taillebois,
the two nobles, meeting on the debatable ground, while in
pursuit of the chase, under very aggravating circumstances,
the hounds of both parties having fallen on the scent of the
same stag, high words passed—a few arrows were shot by the
retainers on both sides, Sir Philip's being much the more
numerous; a forester of Sir Foulke d'Oilly's train was slain;
and, had it not been for the extreme forbearance of De Morville,
a conflict would have ensued, which could have terminated
only in the total discomfiture of his rival and all his
men.

This forbearance, however, effected no good end; for, before
the barons parted, some words passed between them in
private, which were not heard by any of their immediate followers,
and the effect of which was known only by the consequences
which soon ensued.

On the following morning, at the break of day, before the
earliest of the serfs were summoned to their labors, the castle
draw-bridge was lowered, and Sir Philip rode forth on his
destrier, completely armed, but followed only by a single
esquire in his ordinary attire.

The vizor of the knight's square-topped helmet was lowered,
and the mail-hood drawn closely over it. His habergeon of
glittering steel-rings, his mail-hose, fortified on the shoulders
and at the knees by plates of polished steel, called poldrons

and splents, shone like silver through the twilight; his triangular
shield hung about his neck, his great two-handed
broad-sword from his left shoulder to his heel, and his long
steel-headed lance was grasped in his right hand; none could
doubt that he was riding forth to do battle, but it was strange
that he wore no surcoat of arms over his plain mail, that no
trumpet preceded, no banner was borne behind him, no retainers,
save that one unarmed man, in his garb of peace, followed
the bridle of their lord.

He rode away slowly down the hill, through the serf's quarter,
into the wood; the warder from the turret saw him turn
and gaze back wistfully toward his hereditary towers, perhaps
half prescient that he should see them no more. He
turned, and was lost to view; nor did any eye of his faithful
vassals look on him in life again.

Noon came, and the dinner hour, but the knight came not
to the banquet hall—evening fell, and there were no tidings;
but, at nightfall, Eadwulf came in, pale, ghastly, and terrified,
and announced that the knight and the esquire both lay dead
with their horses in a glade of the wood, not far from the
scene of the quarrel of the preceding day, on the banks of the
river Idle. No time was lost. With torch and cresset, bow
and spear, the household hurried, under their appointed officers,
to the fatal spot, and soon found the tidings of the serf
to be but too true.

The knight and his horse lay together, as they had fallen,
both stricken down at the same instant, in full career as it
would seem, by a sudden and instantaneous death-stroke.
The warrior, though prostrate, still sat the horse as if in life;
he was not unhelmed; his shield was still about his neck;

his lance was yet in the rest, the shaft unbroken, and the
point unbloodied—the animal lay with its legs extended, as if
it had been at full speed when the fatal stroke overtook it.
A barbed clothyard arrow had been shot directly into its
breast, piercing the heart through and through, by some one
in full front of the animal; and a lance point had entered the
throat of the rider, above the edge of the shield which hung
about his neck, coming out between the shoulders behind,
and inflicting a wound which must have been instantaneously
mortal.

Investigation of the ground showed that many horses had
been concealed or ambushed in a neighboring dingle, within
easy arrow-shot of the murdered baron; that two horsemen
had encountered him in the glade, one of whom, he by whose
lance he had fallen, had charged him in full career.

It was evident to the men-at-arms, that Sir Philip's charger
had been treacherously shot dead in full career, by an archer
ambushed in the brake, at the very moment when he was encountering
his enemy at the lance's point; and that, as the
horse was in the act of falling, he had been bored through
from above, before his own lance had touched the other
rider.

The esquire had been cut down and hacked with many
wounds of axes and two-handed swords, one of his arms being
completely severed from the trunk, and his skull cleft asunder
by a ghastly blow. His horse's brains had been dashed out
with a mace, probably after the slaughter of the rider; and
that this part of the deed of horror had been accomplished
by many armed men, dismounted, and not by the slayer of
De Morville, was evident, from the number of mailed and

booted footsteps deeply imprinted in the turf around the carcases
of the murdered men and butchered animals.

Efforts were made immediately to track the assassins by the
slot, several, both of the men-at-arms and of the Yorksire foresters,
being expert at the art; but their skill was at fault,
as well as the scent of the slow-hounds, which were laid on
the trail; for, within a few hundred yards of the spot, the
party had entered the channel of the river Idle, and probably
followed its course upward, to a place where it flowed over a
sheet of hard, slaty, rock; and where the land farther back
consisted of a dry, sun-burned, upland waste, of short, summer-parched
turf, which took no impression of the horses' hoofs.

There was no proof, nor any distinct circumstantial evidence;
yet none doubted any more than if they had beheld
the doing of the dastardly deed, that the good Lord de Morville
had fallen by the hand of Sir Foulke d'Oilly and of his associates
in blood-shedding.

For the rest, the good knight lay dead, leaving no child,
wife, brother, nor any near relation, who should inherit either
his honors or his lands. He had left neither testament nor
next of kin. Literally, he had died, and made no sign.

The offices of the church were done duly, the masses were
chanted over the dead, and the last remains of the good
knight were consigned to dust in the chapel vaults of his ancestral
castle, never to descend to posterity of his, or to bear
his name again forever.

In a few days it was made known that Sir Philip had died
deeply indebted to the Jews of York, of Tadcaster, even of
London; that his estates, all of which were unentailed and in
his own right, were heavily mortgaged; and that the lands

would be sold to satisfy the creditors of the deceased. Shortly
after, it was whispered abroad, and soon proclaimed aloud,
that Sir Foulke d'Oilly had become purchaser of whatever
was saleable, and had been confirmed by the royal mandate
in the possession of the seigneurial and feudal rights of the
lapsed fief of Waltheofstow. There had been none to draw
attention to the suspicions which weighed so heavily against
Sir Foulke in the neighborhood, and among the followers of
the dead knight; they were men of small rank and no influence,
and had no motive to induce them wantonly to incur
the hatred of the most powerful and unscrupulous noble of
the vicinity, by bringing charges which they had no means to
substantiate, if true, and which, to disprove, it was probable
that he had contrivances already prepared by false witness.

Within a little while, Sir Foulke d'Oilly assumed his rights
territorial and seigneurial; but he removed not in person to
Waltheofstow, continuing to reside in his own larger and
more magnificent castle of Fenton in the Forest, within a few
miles' distance, and committing the whole management of his
estates and governance of his serfs to a hard, stern, old man-at-arms,
renowned for his cruel valor, whom he installed as
the seneschal of the fief, with his brother acting as bailiff
under him, and a handful of fierce, marauding, free companions,
as a garrison to the castle.

The retainers of the old lord were got rid of peacefully, their
dues of pay being made up to them, and themselves dismissed,
with some small gratuity. One by one the free tenants threw
up the farms which they rented, or resigned the fiefs which they
held on man-service; and, before Sir Philip had been a month
cold in his grave, not a soul was left in the place, of its old inhabitants,

except the miserable Saxon serfs, to whom change of
masters brought no change of place; and who, regarded as
little better than mere brutes of burden, were scarce distinguished
one from the other, or known by name, to their new
and vicarious rulers. On them fell the most heavily the sudden
blow which had deprived them of a just, a reasonable,
and a merciful lord, as justice and mercy went in those days,
and consigned them defenseless and helpless slaves, to one
among the cruellest oppressors of that cruel and benighted
period—and, worse yet than that, mere chattels at the mercy
of an underling, crueller even than his lord, and wanting even
in the sordid interest which the owner must needs feel in the
physical welfare of his property.

Woe, indeed, woe worth the day, to the serfs of Waltheofstow,
when they fell into the hands of Sir Foulke d'Oilly,
and tasted of the mercies of his seneschal, Black Hugonet of
Fenton in the Forest!

It was some considerable time before the news of this foul
murder reached the ears of Sir Yvo de Taillebois; and when
it did become known to him, and measures were taken
by him to reclaim the manor of Waltheofstow, in virtue
of the mortgage he had redeemed, it was found that so
many prior claims, and that to so enormous an extent, were
in existence, as to swallow up the whole of the estates, leaving
Sir Yvo a loser of the nineteen thousand zecchins which
he had advanced, with nothing to show in return for his outlay
beyond the freedom of Kenric and his family.

The good knight, however, was too rich to be seriously
affected by the circumstance, and of too noble and liberal a
strain to regret deeply the mere loss of superabundant and

unnnecessary gold. But not so did he regard the death
of his dear companion and brother in arms; yet, though he
caused inquiries to be set on foot as to the mode of his
decease, so many difficulties intervened, and the whole affair
was plunged in so deep a mystery and obscurity, that he was
compelled to abandon the pursuit reluctantly, until, after
months had elapsed, unforeseen events opened an unexpected
clew to the fatal truth.