University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE ESCAPE.

One of those serfs, Eadwulf, was little disposed to resign
himself tranquilly to his fate; as within a short period after
the occupation of Waltheofstow by the new seneschal, his
wonted contumacy had brought him into wonted disgrace
and condemnation, and, there being no longer any clemency
overruling the law for the mitigation of such penalties as
should seem needful, the culprit was on several occasions
cruelly scourged, and imprisoned in the lowest vaults of the
castle dungeon.

Maddened by this treatment, he at length resolved to
escape at all risks, and knowing every path and dingle of the
forest, he flattered himself that he should easily elude pursuers
who were strange, as yet, to that portion of the country;
and having, on the departure of his brother, contrived
stealthily to possess himself of the crossbow and bolts which
had belonged to him, being intrusted to his care as an unusual
boon, owing to his good conduct and his occupation

as a sort of underkeeper in the chase, fancied that he should
be able easily to support himself by killing game in the
forests through which he must make his way, until he should
arrive at the new residence of that brother, where he doubted
not of finding comfort and assistance.

During the days which had elapsed between the emancipation
of Kenric and his departure from the castle, much
had been ascertained, both by the new freeman and his
beautiful betrothed, concerning the route which led to their
future abode, its actual position, and the wild and savage
nature of the country on which it abutted.

All this had naturally enough become known to Eadwulf;
and he, having once been carried as far as to Lancaster by the
late lord's equerry, to help in bringing home some recently-purchased
war-horses, knew well the general direction of the
route, and, having heard, while there, of the fordable nature
of the Lancastrian sands, made little doubt of being able to
find his way to his brother, and by his aid to gain the wild
hills, where he trusted to subsist himself as a hunter and outlaw
on the vast and untraversed heaths to the northward.

It was his hope to gain sufficient start, in the first instance,
to enable him to make off so long before his absence should
be discovered, that bloodhounds could not be laid on his
track until the scent should be already cold; and then keeping
the forest-ground, and avoiding all cleared or cultivated
lands, to cross the Lancaster sands, and thence, by following
up the course of the Kent River, on which he knew Kenric
would be stationed as verdurer, to gain the interior labyrinth
of fells, moors, morasses, and ravines, which at that time
occupied the greater part of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

To this end, he managed to conceal himself at nightfall not
far from the quarter, before the serfs had collected in their
dormitory, intending to prosecute his flight so soon as the
neighborhood should be steeped in the silence of night, and
the moon should give him sufficient light to find his way
through the deep forest mazes; and thus, before daybreak,
was already some twenty miles distant from Waltheofstow,
where he concealed himself in a deep hazel brake, intending
to sleep away the hours of daylight, and resume his flight
once more during the partial darkness of the night.

It was true that his route lay through the woodland-chase,
which spread far and wide over the environs of Fenton in the
Forest, and was the property of his new master; but for this
he cared little, since there had been so small intercourse
between the tenantry and vassals of his late lord and those of
Sir Foulke D'Oilly, that he had no fears of being recognized
by any chance retainer whom he might possibly encounter,
while he knew that, should he chance to be discovered by a
passing serf of his own oppressed race, he should not be
betrayed by them to their mutual tyrants. Armed, therefore,
at large, and already at a considerable distance from the scene
of his captivity, he considered himself well-nigh safe when he
concealed himself, in the early gray of the dawn, in such
a dingle as he felt sure would secure him from the chance
intrusion of any casual wayfarers.

Under one difficulty, however, he sorely labored. He had
been unable to carry with him any provision, however slender;
and he must depend on his skill as a forester for his
sustenance, by poaching in the woods which he had to traverse,
and cooking his game as best he might, borrowing an

hour or two of the darkness for the purpose, and kindling his
fire in the most remote and obscure places, to avoid danger
of the smoke being observed by day, or the glare of the fire
by night.

He had lost his evening meal on the previous day, and the
appetite of the Saxon peasant was proverbially mighty;
while, as is ever the case with men who have no motives to
self-restraint or economy, abstinence was an unknown power.

It was vastly to his joy, therefore, that when the sun was
getting fairly above the horizon, after he had been himself
lurking an hour or two in the thick covert, he saw among the
branches a noble stag come picking his way daintily along a
deer-path which skirted the dingle, accompanied by two slim
and graceful does, evidently intending to lay up, during the
day, in the very brake which he unwittingly had occupied.

He had no sooner espied the animal, which was coming
down wind upon him, utterly unconscious of the proximity
of his direst foe, then he crouched low among the fern, fitted
a quarrel to the string of his arbalast, and waited until
his game was within ten paces of his ambush.

Then the winch was released, the bow twanged, and the
forked head of the ponderous bolt crashed through the brain
of the noble stag. One great bound he made, covering
six yards of forest soil in that last leap of the death agony,
and then laid dead almost at the feet of his unseen destroyer.
The terrified does fled in wild haste into the opener parts
of the forest, and, in an instant, the keen wood-knife of
the Saxon had pierced the throat of the deer, and selected
such portions, carved from the still quivering carcase, as
he could most easily carry with him. These thrust carefully

into the sort of hunting-pouch, or wallet, which he wore slung
under his left arm, he proceeded, with the utmost wariness
and caution, to cover up the slaughtered beast with boughs
of the trees and brackens, rejoicing in his secret soul that he
had secured to himself provision for two days longer at the
least, and hoping that on the fourth morning he would be in
security, beyond the broad expanse of Morecambe Bay.

But wonderfully deceitful are the hopes of the human
heart; and, in the present instance, as often is the case, the
very facts which he regarded as most auspicious were pregnant
with the deepest danger.

Even where he had most warily calculated his chances, and
chosen his measures with the deepest precaution, selecting the
full of the moon for the period of his escape, and choosing the
route in which he had anticipated the least danger of interruption,
he had erred the most signally.

For it had so fallen out that Sir Foulke D'Oilly, having
appointed this very day for a grand hunting match in his
woods of Fenton, had issued orders to a strong party of
his vassals, under the leading of Black Hugonet, his seneschal,
and his brother, Ralph Wetheral, the bailiff, to come up
from Waltheofstow by daybreak, and rendezvous at a station
in the forest not a league distant from the spot in which Eadwulf
had so unhappily chosen to conceal himself.

At the very moment in which the serf had launched his
fatal bolt against the deer, the bailiff, Ralph Wetheral, who
was, by virtue of his office, better acquainted with his person
than any others of the household, was within a half a mile
of his lair, engaged in tracking up the slot of the very animal
which he was rejoicing to have slain, by aid of a mute lymer,

or slow-hound, of an especial breed, kept and trained for the
purpose; and in furtherance of his pursuit, had dismounted
from his horse, and was following the dog as he dragged him
onward, tugging at the leash; while ten or fifteen of his companions
were scattered through the woods behind him, beating
them carefully, in order to track the stags or wild boars
to their lairs, before the arrival of their lord.

It was, perhaps, half an hour after he had discharged the
shot, when he was alarmed by a light rustling of the underwood
and the cracking of dry sticks under a cautious footstep,
and at first surmised that a second beast of chase was following
on the track of his predecessor. But, in a moment, he
was undeceived, by hearing the voice of a man whispering a
few low words of encouragement to a dog, and at once the
full extent of his danger flashed upon him. The dog was evidently
questing the animal he had shot, and, within an instant,
would lead his master to the spot. Under the cruel
enactment of the Norman forest-laws, to slay a deer was a
higher offense than to kill a fellow-man; the latter crime
being in many cases remissible on the payment of a fine, while
the former inevitably brought down on the culprit capital
punishment, often enhanced by torture. To be found hidden,
close behind a warm and yet bleeding stag, was tantamount
to being taken red-handed in the fact, and instant death was
the least punishment to be looked for.

Discovery was so close at hand, that flight itself seemed
impossible; yet in immediate flight lay the sole chance of
safety. He had already started from his lair, when the slow-hound,
coming on the track of the fresh blood, set up a wild
and savage yell, broke from the leash, and in a second was

standing over the slaughtered quarry, tearing away with his
fangs and claws the bushes which covered the carcass.

At the same moment, the branches were parted, and the
bailiff of Waltheofstow stood before the culprit, carrying an
unbended long-bow in his hand, and having a score of cloth-yard
arrows at his belt, a short anlace at his side, and his bugle
slung about his neck.

The recognition on each side was immediate, and the Norman
advanced fearlessly to seize the fugitive, raising his bugle
to his lips, as he came on, to summon succor. But Eadwulf,
who had already laid a quarrel in the groove of the crossbow,
with some indefinite idea of shooting the dog before
the man should enter upon the scene, raised the weapon
quickly to his shoulder, and, taking rapid aim, discharged it
full at the breast of the bold intruder.

The heavy missile took effect, just as it was aimed, piercing
the cavity of the man's heart, that he sprang a foot or better
up into the air, and fell slain outright upon the body of the
deer, which his dog had discovered, his spirit passing away
without a struggle or a convulsion.

The dog uttered a long, melancholy, wailing howl, stooped
to snuff at and lick the face of its murdered master, and then,
as Eadwulf was drawing forth a third quarrel, before he could
bend the arbalast again, or fit the missile to the string, fled
howling into the wood whence he had come, as if he foresaw
his purpose.

“A curse upon the yelling cur; he will bring the hue-and-cry
down on me in no time. There is nothing but a run
for it, and but a poor chance at that.”

And, with the words, he dashed away toward the north-west,

through the opener parts of the forest, at a speed which,
could he have maintained it, would have soon carried him out
of the reach of pursuit. And wonderfully he did maintain
it; for at the end of the second hour he had run nearly fifteen
miles from the scene of the murder; and here, on the brink
of a small brimful river, of perhaps forty or fifty yards in
width, flowing tranquilly but rapidly through the greenwoods,
in a course not very much from the direction which
he desired to follow, he cast himself down on the turf, and
lay panting heavily for some minutes on the sward, until he
had in some degree recovered his breath, when he bathed his
face in the cool water, drank a few swallows, and then crossing
the stream by some large stepping-stones which lay here
in a shallow spot, continued his flight with singular speed
and endurance.

He had not, however, fled above a hundred or two of yards
beyond the water, when he heard, at the distance of about
three miles behind him, the sound he most dreaded to hear
the deep bay of bloodhounds. Beyond doubt, they were on
his track; and how was he to shun their indomitable fury?

He was a man of some resource and skill in woodcraft,
although rude and barbarous in other matters; and, in desperate
emergencies, men think rapidly, and act on the first
thought.

The second tone of the dogs had scarcely reached his ear,
before he was rushing backward, as nearly as possible in his
own tracks, to the river, into which, from the first stepping-stone,
he leaped head-foremost, and swam vigorously and
lightly down the current, which bore him bravely on his way.
The stream was swift and strong; and its banks, clothed with

thick underwood, concealed his movements from the eyes of
any one on either margin; and he had floated down considerably
more than a mile, before he heard the bloodhounds come
up in full cry to the spot where he had passed the water, and
cross over it, cheered by the shouts and bugle-blasts of the
man-hunters.

Then their deep clamor ceased at once, where he had
turned on his back track, and he knew they were at fault, and
perceived that the men, by their vociferations and bugle-notes,
were casting them to and fro in all directions, to recover his
scent.

Still he swam rapidly onward, and had interposed nearly
another mile between himself and his pursuers, when he
heard, by their shouts coming down either bank, that they
had divined the stratagem to which he had had recourse, and
were trailing him down the margins, secure of striking his
track again, wherever he should leave the river.

He was again becoming very anxious, when a singular accident
gave him another chance of safety. A wood-pigeon,
flapping its wings violently as it took flight, attracted his attention
to the tree from which it took wing. It was a huge
oak, overhanging the stream, into which one of its branches
actually dipped, sound and entire below, but with a large hollow
at about twenty feet from the ground, which, as he easily
divined, extended downward to the level of the soil. No
sooner seen, than he had seized the pendulous branch, swung
himself up by it, through a prodigious exertion, and, springing
with mad haste from bough to bough, reached the opening
in the decayed trunk. It was a grim, dark abyss, and,
should he enter it, he saw not how he should ever make his

exit. But a nearer shout, and the sounds of galloping horsemen,
decided him. He entered it foot-foremost, hung by his
hands for a moment to the orifice, in hesitation, and then,
relaxing his hold, dropped sheer down through the rotten
wood, and spiders'-webs, and unhealthy funguses, to the bottom
of the tunnel-shaped hollow. Aroused from their diurnal
dreams by the crash of his descent, two great brown-owls
rushed out of the summit of the tree, and swooped down
over the heads of the men-at-arms, who just at the instant
passed under the branches, jingling in their panoply, and
effectually prevented any suspicion from attaching to the hiding-place.

For the moment he was safe; and there he stood, in almost
total darkness, shivering with wet and cold, amid noisome
smells and damp exhalations, listening to the shouts of his
enemies, as they rode to and fro, until they were lost in the
distance.