Cedric, the Forester Part 19

Gilroy's keen gray eyes roved ever about the lodge; and after one or two courteous replies to my questions, he asked of Cedric:

"Art sure, Grimsby, that that inner room contains no cask or wine-skin?

'Twould seem else that thy lodge is but meagerly furnished."

"Aye, 'tis so," answered Cedric at once.

Again our guest glanced keenly at Sir Cedric, while I breathed shortly indeed. But he said no more; and now I made diversion by asking Sir Philip if 'twas true that the Carringtons are Welsh descended. I knew full well 'twas not; and was hugely pleased when he denied it hotly and went on at greatest length to prove his family of pure Norman blood by reciting all the quarterings on the Carrington shield and their origins in the days before the Conquest.

At last Lord Gilroy stood erect and said, to my great and joyful relief:

"Welladay! We must fare on, if ever we are to take that runagate. The sunbeams already slope far to westward; and 'twill soon be-"

But there his words were of a sudden checked; and he stood staring at a point on the floor beneath the bench, three yards away. There, where half an hour before all had been deepest shadow, the sloping beam of the afternoon sun now rested, and brought to clear and certain view _the iron collar_.

With an oath he sprang forward and seized it. Holding it up before us, he read in a loud voice the graven words:

"_Egbert, Thrall of William, Lord of Gilroy._"

Cedric stood facing him; and none of us spoke any word. Then Gilroy flung the collar on the floor and burst forth:

"Ah then! 'Tis even as I thought. One churl will help another in any strait."

At this insult to my comrade, my hand flew to where my good sword should have been; and I ground my teeth to find it not. But Gilroy paid no heed to me. Instantly he sprang forward toward the inner door.

"We'll see what lies within," he shouted.

But Cedric De La Roche was quicker yet. He leaped before the door, and with a mighty push sent Lord Gilroy half across the room. Then both Gilroy and Carrington drew swords and rushed upon us. By this time I had gathered my wits, and recalling the goodly weapon at my very back, had turned and seized the rusted broadsword from above the fireplace. I was but just in time to receive the attack of both of them at once; for Cedric stooped to reach his cross-bow which rested against the wall, ready drawn and with the bolt he had meant for the hound still in groove. For a moment I withstood the double attack; then Sir Philip only was before me. He fought fiercely enough, forsooth, but in a most lubberly fashion. Half a dozen strokes and I caught his weapon with a twist I had long practiced and sent it clattering across the floor. Then with loud menaces of running him through the body, I drove him before me to the wall where I made him stand with hands above his head. Glancing sidewise, I now beheld the Lord of Gilroy in the same pitiful plight.

His weapon also lay on the floor; and Cedric stood before him with cross-bow leveled at his heart.

"Wilt thou slay us then," growled Gilroy, "in unseemly brawl over this runagate?"

"Nay," answered Cedric sweetly, "but ye are our prisoners, duly taken.

If we grant your lives and arms, you shall give us knightly word to retire from the lands of Grimsby, and give o'er this b.l.o.o.d.y hunting you were bent upon."

"That word we give," said Gilroy, shortly.

We instantly lowered our weapons, and, stooping, lifted the swords from the floor and returned them to their owners. Simon, the dogmaster, opened the door and thrust in his bandaged head wherein one eye was purple and swollen with a blow it had received from the whip b.u.t.t.

Behind him stood two of the foresters.

"Return thou, till I call thee," shouted Gilroy furiously.

When they had retired once more to the brookside, our late antagonists turned again to leave the lodge. At the door Lord Gilroy paused and spake again, slowly and as one that fully weighs his words.

"Our word is given to leave the lands of Grimsby and thus to allow this thrall to escape. But no promise have we given as to aught else. Mayhap the King will listen when I send him word at Winchester how his va.s.sal so newly of the fee of Grimsby is bearing himself. Mayhap it will not seem to him quite fitting that one who holds his lands in fee should with deceit and with violence shelter misdoing churls from their lawful masters."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _THEN WITH LOUD MENACES I DROVE HIM TO THE WALL WHERE I MADE HIM STAND WITH HANDS ABOVE HIS HEAD_]

I caught my breath in dismay. Such a threat I knew the crafty Gilroy quite capable of carrying out. For myself I had little concern: the Mountjoys were too strong in the Western country and too valuable to the King's cause for any such matter to bring down upon us any serious menace. But Cedric was a yeoman born; and many there were to think with spite and envy of his rise to knightly dignity.

Sir Philip now burst forth with a cackling laugh-the first sound that had come from him since I had him at the wall with his hands o'er his head.

"Ha, Grimsby!" he jibed, "thou'rt not so great a victor as it seemed.

Mayhap the fee of Grimsby will soon be vacant once more."

Then Cedric spoke again, his words being p.r.o.nounced with the same slow heedfulness with which the Lord of Gilroy had uttered his threat a moment since.

"'Tis true, my lord, that naught prevents thee from sending or carrying this tale to the King. 'Tis also true-and this mayhap thou hast forgotten-that naught prevents _me_, in the event of thy wishing to carry this quarrel further, from taking to the King the full account (well known to me though thou hast thought it hidden) of thy doings and those of the Carringtons during the weeks that followed the King's return to England, and while his traitorous brother, Prince John, with the aid of certain gentlemen who might have been more loyally employed, strove to keep him from his throne, and even, so 'tis said, to deprive him of life."

Before the half of this had been spoken the face of Lord Gilroy had grown pale as death, and he seemed to shrink a full handsbreadth in stature. His nephew gazed from one to the other of us with whitened cheeks and foolish, open mouth. As soon as Cedric had finished, Lord Gilroy began in a tone far different from any he had used that day:

"Nay, nay, Grimsby and Mountjoy both! Why _should_ we make of this trifling despite o'er a runagate thrall such a matter of bitter menacing? In truth, 'twere well should we all forget this day of petty quarreling and live in neighborly peace henceforth."

"Nothing would better please me," quoth Sir Cedric in reply.

"And thou, Mountjoy?" pursued Lord Gilroy, "what sayest thou?"

"With all my heart," I replied.

Lord Gilroy seemed about to offer his hand in token of our reconciliation; but mayhap something in our faces stayed him. With a hurried bow he turned once more to the door of the lodge. After him went Sir Philip, reminding me in his shrunken confidence of a rain-drenched chanticleer. At the brookside, they climbed sullenly upon their horses'

backs, and without a word to their followers, spurred away through the forest.

An hour later, Egbert, the freeman, astride a good horse from the Grimsby stables, with cross-bow in hand and gold in pouch, was riding through the twilight on the road to Shrewsbury.

CHAPTER XIII-ON THE ROAD TO RUNNYMEDE

I was in Stamford in the year of the Great Charter of King John. Half the knights and barons of all England with a goodly following of men-at-arms and yeomanry had been a.s.sembled under the banner of our stout Marshal, Fitz Walter, and had seized by force and arms full many royal castles. Now, at the end of a truce which to no avail had been secured by the Archbishop, we were ready to march towards London to bring to terms our most crafty and tyrannic lord and king. For years he had dealt in plots and scheming to overreach the great and strong among the baronry, and from the weaker seized their lands and goods at will and oft threw their persons into durance to further his gross ends of gain or vengeance. Now some hundreds of the barons of the North, with a dozen or more of us from the West counties and the Welsh Marches, and a sprinkling of churchmen, who no less than ourselves had suffered from the King's o'erreaching, were gathered in Bermondsey Hall to agree, if we might, upon a scroll of the grievances that the King must remedy when our further a.s.saults should have forced him to sue for peace.

Geoffrey, Lord of Carleton and Teramore, leader of a hundred lances and half a thousand bowmen, rose from his seat amid a clamor of disputing voices and saluted the Marshal and the a.s.sembled company.

"I propose, my lords and gentlemen," he said in that high, sweet voice of his which yet is far-heard and commanding, "the name of Sir Cedric De La Roche, Knight of Grimsby and bold defender of our Western Marches, for the fifth and final member of this group. He is a brave man and true; and hath, as we often say in the West, a head as well as an arm.

He is both soldier and scholar, forsooth, and knoweth more of the Latin tongue than any layman among us. You have named Sir Richard of Mountjoy to serve you in this matter because, three months agone, he took the Castle of Tournoy which the King's men were strongly holding with greater forces than his own and from whence they might have sorely threatened us. But most of you know not that 'twas Cedric De La Roche who gained entrance to the castle in disguise, and full well deceived the garrison, then at midnight overpowered, gagged and bound the sentinel at a little postern gate, threw it open and admitted the Mountjoys. Lacking him and his stratagem we might still be hammering at the walls of Tournoy and our whole campaign be sore delayed."

"For the Latin we have the Abbot of Moberley," said old Lord Esmond from his seat on one of the benches at the right. "What need have we of another clerk?"

"The Reverend Abbot," answered Carleton, "will do the cause good service, I doubt not, in making clear for our Commissioners the substance of old scrolls and charters which they must study, and mayhap in inditing in fair Latin hand the articles which we present to the King. In his hands we may be sure the interests of his order, and particularly of the Abbey of Moberley, will not suffer. But I say 'tis well that we of the baronage have a representative of our own number who can see that this scroll, for which we risk our lives and fortunes, truly and amply provides for remedy of the wrongs we suffer."

"And _I_ say," shouted Lord Esmond, springing to his feet the instant Carleton had finished, "that if we are to have a representative of our order in the inditing of this scroll, as my Lord Carleton says, we should have a representative indeed. De La Roche is a true man and a capable soldier, as none will deny; but we have here many lords and gentlemen of longer service and of purest Norman blood. The Knight of Grimsby, as all may know, is yeoman and Saxon born. Such a man, be he never so learned, must ever think as the folk from whom he sprung and can never rightly guard our rights and privileges."

For an hour we had debated of our wrongs and the measures that should put an end to them, each speaker being fiercely bent upon the thing that should lift the oppression that had borne most heavily upon him and caring little for aught else. But finally 'twas seen that the whole a.s.sembly could accomplish naught but argument and loud bickering, and that the writing of the scroll must be done by a few chosen men who should later bring their work before the whole body of leaders for their a.s.sent and undertaking. Two of the oldest of the northern leaders, the Baron De Longville and the Lord of Esmond, had been first named, then the learned and courtier-like Abbot of Moberley who was beneath the insurgent banner because of the King's high-handed procedure in the matter of Moberley Abbey, where, during the absence on pilgrimage of the rightful holder, he had declared the abbacy vacant and conferred it with all its lands upon one of his shameless favorites from Normandy. A moment before, my own name had been added to the list in recognition of the services of the Western lords that had well broken the power of the King in all their countryside.

Following Lord Esmond's bitter speech, came shouts of approval from some of the other northerners; and it seemed like that my old friend and comrade would be deprived of the honor which Geoffrey of Carleton had sought to have conferred upon him. But the venerable De Lacey, long the Lord High Constable of England, and still a power in the land, though bent and snowy-haired with age, rose slowly to his feet and addressed the Marshal and the company:

"My lords: 'tis well for those to talk who know whereof they speak.

Years agone I knighted Cedric De La Roche for knightliest service at the Battle of the Pa.s.s where verily he changed defeat to victory. Since that time he hath many a time and oft served under me and others, always to the welfare of the Kingdom and the enhancement of his name. Lord Esmond says that Cedric De La Roche comes not of n.o.ble family. I ask of you, my lords, who made _our_ families n.o.ble but some hard-smiting ancestors we had that served not better, I warrant you, than this man of whom we speak. And I have seen his lands of Grimsby and the stout and loyal men who do willingly follow him, and know full well he can think and plan as well as strike. Finally, my lords, 'tis not the tale of his father's or his grandfather's deeds but of his very own that should guide the choosing of a man for a time of need."