University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE LADY AND HER LOVER.

Long before the dawn had begun to grow gray in the east,
Kenric had taken his way to the castle, by a direct path
across the hills to a point on the lake shore, where there
always lay a small ferry-boat, for the use of the castellan, his
household, and vassals. Edith, to whom he had told all that he
had extorted from Eadwulf, and who, like himself, clearly
foresaw difficulty and danger at hand, arising from the conduct
and flight of the ill-conditioned and ill-starred brother,
went about her household work, most unusual for her, with a
melancholy and despondent heart.

She, who while a serf had been constantly, almost recklessly
gay, as one who had no sorrow for which to care, wore
a grave brow, and carried a heavy heart. For liberty, if it
give independence to the body and its true expansion to the
soul, brings responsibility also, and care. She carolled this
morning no blythe old Saxon ballads as she kneaded her barley
cakes, or worked her overflowing churn; she had this

morning no merry word with which to greet the verdurer's
boys, as they came and went from her ample kitchen with
messes for the hounds to the kennels, or raw meat for the
eyasses in the mews; and they wondered not a little, for the
kindness and merry humor of their young mistress had won
their hearts, and they were grieved to see her downcast. She
was restless, and unable, as it seemed, to settle herself to any
thing, coming and going from one place to another, without
much apparent object, and every half hour or so, opening the
door and gazing wistfully down the valley, toward the sea,
not across the hills over which her husband had bent his
way.

It must have been nearly ten o'clock, in those unsophisticated
days approaching nearly to the dinner hour, when
something caught her eye at a distance, which instantly
brought a bright light into it, and a clear, rich color to her
cheek; and she clapped her hands joyously, crying, “I am
so glad! so glad!” Then, hurrying into the house, she
called to the boys, giving them quick, eager orders, and set
herself to work arranging the house, strewing the floor with
fresh green rushes, and decking the walls with holly branches,
the bright-red berries of the mountain ash, wild asters, and
such late wood-flowers as yet survived, with a spirit very different
from the listless mood which had possessed her.

What was the vision that had so changed the tenor of her
mind?

Winding through one of those green lanes—which form so
exquisite a feature in the scenery of the lake country, with
their sinuous, gray boundary stone walls, bordered with ashes,
hazels, wild roses, and beds of tall fern at their base, while

the walls themselves are overspread with small ferns, wild
strawberries, the geranium, and rich lichens—there came a
fair company, the persons of which were easily distinguished
by Edith, in that clear atmosphere, when at a mile's distance
from the cottage—a mile which was augmented into nearly
three by the meanderings of the lane, corresponding with
those of the brook.

In the front rode a lady, the Lady Guendolen, on a beautiful
chesnut-colored Andalusian jennet, with snow-white mane
and tail, herself splendidly attired in a dark murrey-colored
skirt, passamented with black embroidery, and above it a
surcoat or tunic, fitting the body closely a little way below the
hips, of blue satin, embroidered in silver with the armorial
bearings of her house—a custom as usual in those days with
the ladies as with the knights of the great houses. Her head
was covered with a small cap of blue velvet, with one white
feather, and on her left hand, covered by a doe-skin hawking-glove,
was set a superb gosshawk, unhooded, so familiar was
he with his bright mistress, and held only by a pair of silver
jesses, corresponding with the silver bells which decked his
yellow legs, and jingled at his every motion. By her side,
attending far more to his fair companion than to the fiery
horse which he bestrode, was a young cavalier, bending over
her with an air of the deepest tenderness, hanging on her
words as if they were more than the sweetest music to his
soul, and gazing on her with affection so obvious as to show
him a permitted lover. He was a powerful, finely-formed
young man, of six or eight-and-twenty years, with a frank
open countenance, full of intellect, nobleness, and spirit, with
an occasional shadow of deep thought, but hardly to be

called handsome, unless it were for the expression, since the
features, though well cut, were not regular, and the complexion
was too much sun-burned and weather-hardened even
for manly beauty.

Altogether he was, however, a remarkably attractive-looking
person. He sat his horse superbly, as a king might sit his
throne; his every motion was perfect majesty of grace; and
when he smiled, so radiant was the glance lighting up the
dark face, that he was, for the moment, actually handsome.
He was dressed in a plain, dark hunting suit, with a bonnet
and feather of the same hue, and untanned deer buskins, the
only ornament he wore being a long blue scarf, of the same
color as the surcoat of his mistress, and embroidered, probably
by her hand, with the same bearings. The spurs in his
buskins, however, were not gilded, and the light estoe, or
sharp-pointed hunting-sword, which hung at his left side,
showed by its form that he had not yet attained the honors of
knighthood.

Aradas de Ratcliffe was the heir male of a line, one of the
first and noblest which had settled in the lake country, in the
beautiful vale of Rydal, but a little way distant to the northward
from the lands of Sir Yvo de Taillebois. His father, a
baron of great renown, had taken the Cross when for advanced
in life, and proceeding to the Holy Land with that disastrous
second Crusade, led by Conrad III. the German Emperor, and
Louis VII. of France, at the summoning of Pope Eugene III.,
had fallen in the first encounter with the infidels, and dying
under shield, knight-like, had left his infant son with no other
guardian than his mother, a noble lady of the house of Fitz
Norman.

She had discharged her trust as became the character of
her race; and so soon as the boy was of sufficient years, he
was entered in the household of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, as the
finest school in the whole realm for the aspirant to honor in
arms.

Here, as page and esquire, he had served nearly twenty
years of his life, first following his lord's stirrup, until he was
perfect in the use of his arms, and old enough to wield them;
then, fighting in his train, until he had proved himself of such
stern fidelity and valor, that he became his favorite attendant,
and most trusted man-at-arms.

In feudal days, it must be remembered that it was no disgrace
to a scion of the highest family to serve his pagehood
under a noble or knight of lineage and renown; on the contrary,
it was both a condition that must be undergone, and
one held as an honor to both parties; so much so, that barons
of the greatest name and vastest demesnes in the realm would
often solicit, and esteem it as a high favor, to have their sons
ride as pages in the train of some almost landless knight, whose
extraordinary prowess should have won him an extraordinary
name.

These youths, moreover, as they were nobly born, so were
they nobly entreated; nothing low or mean was suffered to
come before them. Even in their services, nothing menial
was required of them. To arm their lord for battle, to follow
him to the tournament or to the field, where to rush in to his
rescue if beaten down, to tend his hurts if wounded, to bear
his messages, and guard his secrets as his own life, to wait on
the ladies—these were the duties of a page in the twelfth
century. Courage, truth, honor, fidelity unto death, courtesy,

humility to the humble, haughtiness to the haughty—these
were the lessons taught him. It may be doubted whether our
teachings in the nineteenth are so far superior, and whether
they bear so far better fruits in the end!

Be this, however, as it may, Aradas de Ratcliffe, having
grown up in the same household with the beautiful Guendolen,
though some twelve years her senior, had grown up to love
her; and his promise of manhood being in no wise inferior
to her beauty, his birth equal to her own, and his dead father
an old and trusted friend of Sir Yvo, he was now riding by
her side, not only as her surest defender, but as her affianced
husband; it being settled, that so soon as the youthful esquire
should have won his knightly spurs, the lands of Hawkshead,
Coniston, and Yewdale, should be united with the adjoining
demesnes of Rydal manor, dim with its grand old woods, by
the union of the heiress of De Taillebois to the heir of the
proud Ratcliffes.

And now they had ridden forth on this bright and fair
autumnal morning, partly to fly their hawks at the herons,
for which the grassy meads in the vale of Kentmere were
famous, partly to visit the new home of Guendolen's favorite
Edith, and more, in truth, than all, to enjoy the pleasure of a
loving tête-à-tête; for the girl who followed her lady kept discreetly
out of ear-shot, and amused herself flirting with the
single page who accompanied them; and the rest of the
train, consisting of grooms, falconers, and varlets, bearing the
hawks and leading the sumpter-mules, lagged considerably in
the rear.

There was not, however, very much of gayety in the manner
of either of the young people; the fair face of Guendolen

was something paler than its use, and her glad eyes had a
beseeching look, even while she smiled, and while her voice was
playful; and there was a sorrowful shadow on the brow of
Aradas, and he spoke in a grave, low tone, though it was full
of gentleness and trust.

In truth, like Jacob of old, when he served for the daughters
of Laban, the young esquire was waxing weary of the long
servitude and the hope deferred. The temporary lull of war,
which at that time prevailed over both England and the
French provinces belonging to the crown, gave him no hope
of speedily winning the desired spurs; and the bloody wars,
which were in progress on the shores of the sister island,
though fierce and sanguinary enough to satisfy the most eager
for the perils and honors of the battle-field, were not so evidently
favored by the monarch, or so clear from the taint of
piracy, as to justify a cavalier, of untainted character and unbroken
fortunes, in joining the invaders. But in this very
year had the eyes of all the Christian world been strongly
turned toward Palestine, where Baldwin IV., a minor, and a
leper, and no match for the talents and power of the victorious
Saladin, sat feebly on the throne of the strong crusading
Kings of Jerusalem, which was now tottering to its fall, under
the fierce assaults of the Mussulman.

Henry II. and Louis of France had sworn to maintain
between them the peace of God, and to join in a third Crusade
for the defense of the Tomb of Christ and the Holy City. In
this war, Aradas saw the certainty of winning knighthood; but
Guendolen, who would have armed her champion joyously,
and buckled on his sword with her own hand, for any European
conflict, shuddered at the tales of the poisoned sarbacanes

and arrows with which report armed the gigantic Saracens—
shuddered at the knives of the assasins of the mountains—
at the pestilences which were known to brood over those arid
shores; and yet more, at the strange monsters, dragons, and
winged-serpents—nay, fiends and incarnate demons—with
which superstitious horror peopled the solitudes which had
witnessed the awful scenes of the Temptation, the Passion,
and the Death, of the Son of God.

In short, she interposed her absolute nay, with the quiet
but positive determination of a woman, and clinched it with
a woman's argument.

“You do not love me, Aradas,” she said; “I know you do
not love me, or you would never think of speaking of that
fearful country, or of taking the Cross—that country, from
which no one ever returns alive—or, if he do return, returns
so bent and bowed with plague and fever, or so hacked and
mangled by the poisoned weapons of the savages, that he is
an old man ere his prime, and dead before — No, no! I
will not hear of it! No, I will not! I will not love you, if
you so much as breathe it to me again, Aradas!”

“That were a penalty,” said the young man, half-sadly
smiling; “but, can you help it, Guendolen?”

“Don't trust in that, sir,” she said. “One can do any
thing—every thing—by trying.”

“Can one, pardie! I would you would show me, then,
how to win these spurs of gold, by trying.”

“I can. Be firm, be faithful, and, above all, be patient.
Remember, without hope, without patience, there is no evidence
of faith; without faith, there is, there can be, neither
true chivalry nor true love. Besides, we are very young, we

are very happy as we are; occasion will come up, perhaps is
at hand even now; and—and—well, if I am worth having,
I am worth waiting for, Beausire Aradas; and if you don't
think so, by 'r lady, you 'd better bestow yourself where—”

“Whoop! whoop! So ho! He mounts! he mounts!”
A loud shout from the rear of the party interrupted her. In
the earnestness of their conversation, they had cleared the
confines of the winding lane, and entered, without observing
it, a beautiful stretch of meadow-land, intersected by small
rivulets and water-courses, sloping down to the lake shore.
Some of the grooms and varlets had spread out over the flat
grass-land, beating the reeds with their hawking-poles, and
cheering their merry spaniels. The shout was elicited by the
sudden uprising of the great, long-necked hermit-fisher, from
a broad reed belt by the stream-side, flapping his broad gray
vans heavily on the light air, and stretching his long yellow
legs far behind him, as he soared skyward, with his harsh,
clanging cry.

All eyes were instantly turned to the direction of the shout,
and every heart bounded at the sight of the quarry.

“Whoop! Diamond! whoop!” cried the young girl, as she
cast off her gallant falcon; and then, seeing her lover throw
off his long-winged peregrine to join in the flight, “A wager,
Aradas. My glove on `Diamond' against `Helvellyn.' What
will you wager, Beausire?”

“My heart!”

“Nay! I have that already. Else you swore falsely.
Against your turquoise ring. I 'll knot my kerchief with it.”

“A wager! Now ride, Guendolen; ride, if you would see
the wager won.”

And they gave the head to their horses, and rode furiously.
No riding is so desperate, it is said, no excitement so tremendous,
as that of the short, fierce, reckless gallop in the chase
where bird hunts bird through the boundless fields of air.
Not even the tremdnous burst and rally of the glorious
hunts-up, with the heart-inspiring crash of the hounds, and
the merry blare of the bugles, when the hart of grease has
broken covert, and the pack are running him breast high.

In the latter, the heart may beat, the pulse may throb and
quiver, but the eye is unoccupied, and free to direct the hand,
to rule the courser's gallop, and mark the coming leap. In
the former, the eye, as the heart, and the pulse, and the ear,
are all bent aloft, up! up! with the straining, towering birds;
while the steed must pick its own way over smooth or
rough, and the rider take his leaps as they chance to come,
unseen and unexpected. Such was the glorious mystery of
Rivers!

The wind, what little of it there was when the heron rose,
was from the southward, and the bird flew before it directly
toward the cottage of Kenric, rising slowly but strongly into
the upper regions of air. The two falcons, which were nearly
half a mile astern of the quarry when they were cast off, flew
almost, as it seemed, with the speed of lightning, in parallel
lines about fifty yards apart, rising as he rose, and evidently
gaining on him at every stroke of their long, sharp pinions,
in pursuit. And in pursuit of those, their riders sitting well
back in their saddles, and holding them hard by the head,
the high-blooded horses tore across the marshy plain, driving
fragments of turf high into the air at every stroke, and sweeping
over the drains and water-courses which obstructed their

career, like the unbridled wind. It was a glorious spectacle—
a group of incomparable splendor, in coloring, in grace, in vivacity,
motion, fire, sweeping through that panorama of magnificent
mountain scenery.

The day was clear and sunny, the skies soft and transparently
blue; but, ever and anon, huge clouds came driving
over the scene, casting vast purple-shadows over the green
meadows and the mirrored lake. One of these now came
sweeping overhead, and toward it towered the contending
birds. The heron, when he saw that he was pursued, uttered
a louder and harsher cry, and began to scale the sky in great
aërial circles. Silent, in smaller circles, towered the falcons,
each emulous to out-top the others. Up! up! higher and
higher! Neither victorious yet, neither vanquished. Now!
now! the falcons are on a level with him, and again rings
the clanging shriek of the wild water-bird, and he redoubles
his last effort. He rises, he out-tops the hawks, and all vanish
in an instant from the eyes of the pursuers, swallowed up in
the depths of the great golden cloud.

Still the harsh clanking cry is heard; and now, as they
and the cloud still drift northward, they reappear, now all descending,
above the little esplanade before the cottage-door
where Edith stands watching.

The heron is below, falling plumb through the air with his
back downward, his wings flapping at random, his long neck
trussed on his breast, and his sharp bill projecting upward,
perilous as the point of a Moorish assagay. The falcons
both above him, towering for the swoop, Aradas' Helvellyn
the topmost.

He pointed to the birds with his riding-rod triumphantly,

and glancing an arch look at his mistress, “Helvellyn has it,”
he said; “Palestine or no Palestine, on the stoop!”

“On the hawks!” she replied; “and heaven decide it!”

“I will wear the glove in my casque in the first career,”
and, as he spoke, the falcon closed his wings and came down
with a swoop like lightning on the devoted quarry. The rush
of his impetuous plunge, cleaving the air, was clearly audible,
above the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the pursuers.

But the gallant heron met the shock unflinching, and
Helvellyn, gallant Helvellyn, came down like a catapult
upon the deadly beak of the fierce wader, and was impaled
from breast to back in a second. There was a minute of
wild convulsive fluttering, and then the heron shook off his
assailant, who drifted slowly down, writhing and struggling,
with all his beauteous plumes disordered and bedropped with
gore, to the dull earth, while, with a clang of triumph, the
victor once more turned to rise heavenward.

The cry of triumph was premature, for, even as it was
uttered, brave Diamond made his stoop. Swift and sure as
the bolt of Heaven, he found his aim, and, burying his keen
singles to the sheath in the back of the tortured waterfowl,
clove his skull at a single stroke of the trenchant bill.

“Hurrah! hurrah! brave Diamond,” cried the delighted
girl. “No Palestine! no Palestine! For this, your bells and
jesses shall be of gold, beautiful Diamond, and your drink of
the purest wine of Gascony.”

And, giving head to her jennet, the first of all the train she
reached the spot where the birds lay struggling on the grass
within ten yards of Kenric's door, and, as she sprang from her
saddle, was caught in the arms of Edith.

“God's blessings on you! welcome! welcome! dearest
lady,” cried the beautiful Saxon, raining down tears of
gratitude.

“Thanks, Edith; but, quick! quick! help me save the falcon,
lest the heronshaw hurt him. My life was at stake on
his flight, and he has saved my life!”

“The heronshaw is dead enough, lady, he will hurt nothing
more,” said the Saxon, following her lady, nevertheless, to
secure the gallant gosshawk, which in a moment sat pluming
his ruffled feathers, and glaring at her triumphantly with his
clear golden eye, as he arched his proud neek to her caresses,
on the wrist of his fair mistress.

It seemed as though he knew that he had won her wager.

The hour of the noonday meal had now fully arrived, and
the sumpter mules were soon brought up, and carpets spread
on the turf, and flasks and barrels, pasties and brawns, and
huge boars' heads unpacked in tempting profusion, and all
preparations made for a meal in the open air.

But Edith pleaded so hard that her dear lady, to whom she
owed more than life, whom she loved more than her own life,
would honor her humble roof, would suffer the choicest of the
viands to be borne into her pleasant, sunny room, and taste
her home-brewed mead, that Guendolen, who was in rapture
at her triumph, readily consented, and Aradas, who was
pleased to see Guendolen happy, made no opposition.

So, while amid loud merriment, and the clang of flasks and
beakers, and the clash of knives and trenchers, their train
fared jovially and lustily without, they feasted daintily and
happily within the Saxon's cottage.

And the sunny room was pleasant; and the light played

cheerfully on the polished pewter trenchers on the dresser,
and the varnished holly and scarlet berries, and bright wild-flowers
on the wall; and the sparkling wood fire was not
amiss after the gallop in the clear air; and Guendolen preferred
the light, foaming mead of the Saxon housewife, to the
wines of Gascony and Bordeaux; and all went happily and
well.

Above all, Edith gained her point. She got occasion to
tell the tale of Eadwulf's flight, arrival, and departure, and
obtained a promise of protection for her husband, in case he
should be brought in question for his share in his brother's
escape; and even prevailed that no search should be made
after Eadwulf, provided he would keep himself aloof, and
commit no offense against the pitiless forest laws, or depredations
on the people of the dales.

Many strange emotions of indignation, sympathy, horror,
alternately swept through the mind of Guendolen, and were
reflected from her eloquent eyes; and many times did Aradas
twirl his thick mustache, and gripe his dagger's hilt, as they
heard the vicissitudes of that strange tale—the base and dastardly
murder of the noble and good Sir Philip de Morville;
the slaying of the bailiff by the hand of Eadwulf, which thus
came to look liker to lawful retribution than to mere homicide;
the strange chances of the serf's escape; the wonderful wiles
by which he had baffled the speed of horses and the scent of
bloodhounds; and the final catastrophe of the sands, swallowing
up, as it would seem, well-nigh all the slaughterers of Sir
Philip, while sparing the panting and heart-broken fugitive.
It was indeed a tale more strange and horrible than any
thing, save truth.

They sat some time in silence, musing. Then suddenly, as
by an impulse, their eyes met. Their meaning was the same.

“Yes!” he said, bowing his head gravely, in answer to
what he read in her look, “there may be an occasion, and a
very noble one.”

“And for such an one, I will bind my glove on your
casque, and buckle your sword to your side very gladly.”

“Amen!” said he. “Be it as God wills. He will defend
the right.”

So, bidding their pretty hostess adieu, not leaving her
without a token of their visit and good-will, they mounted
and rode homeward, thinking no more of the sport; graver,
perhaps, and more solemn in their manner; but, on the
whole, happier and more hopeful than when they set forth in
the morning.

And Edith, though she understood nothing of the impulses
of their hearts, was grateful and content; and when her husband
returned home, and, hanging about his neck, she told
him what she had done, and how she had prospered, and
received his approbation and caresses, was that night the happiest
woman within the four seas that gird Britain.