The House of Walderne Part 10

"I never doubted it, but I say that Martin's ambition is more Christ-like--is it not?"

"It is indeed."

"Yet should I be called to lay down my life in some b.l.o.o.d.y field, if it be my duty, the path to heaven may not be more difficult than from the convent cell."

These last words he said as if to himself, but years afterwards, on an occasion yet to be related, they came back to the mind of our Martin.

Upon a horse, which he had learned at length to manage well; with two attendants in the earl's livery by his side, Martin set forth; his last farewells said. Yet he looked back with more or less sadness to the kind friends he was leaving, to tread all alone the paths of an unknown city, and a.s.sociate with strangers.

As they pa.s.sed through Warwick, the gates of the castle opened, and the earl of that town came forth with a gallant hunting suite; he recognised our young friend.

"Ah, Martin, Martin," he said, 'whither goest thou so equipped and attended?"

"To Oxenford, to be a scholar, good my lord."

"And after that?"

"To go forth with the cord of Saint Francis around me."

"Ah, it was he who taught thee to kill my deerhound. Well, fare thee well, lad, and when thou art a priest say a ma.s.s for me, for I sorely need it."

He waved his hand, and the cavalcade swept onward.

They rode through a wild tract of heath land. Cultivated fields there were few, tracts of furze--spinneys, as men then called small patches of wood--in plenty. The very road was a mere track over the gra.s.s, and it seemed like what we should now call riding across country.

At length they drew near the old town of Southam, where they made their noontide halt and refreshed themselves at the hostelry of the "Bear and Ragged Staff," for the people were dependants of the mighty Lord of Warwick.

Then through a dreary country, almost uninhabited, save by the beasts of the chase, they rode for Banbury. Twice or thrice indeed they pa.s.sed knots of wild uncouth men, in twos or threes, who might have been dangerous to the unattended traveller, but saw no prospect of aught but good sound blows should they attack these retainers of Leicester.

And now they reached the "town of cakes" (I know not whether they made the luscious compound we call Banbury cakes then), and pa.s.sed the time at the chief hostelry of the town, sharing the supper with twenty or thirty other wayfarers, and sleeping with some of them in a great loft above the common room on trusses of hay and straw.

It was rough accommodation, but Martin's early education had not rendered him squeamish, neither were his attendants.

The following day they rode through Adderbury, where not long before an unhappy miscreant, who counterfeited the Saviour and deluded a number of people, had been actually crucified by being nailed to a tree on the green. Then, an hour later, they left Teddington Castle, another stronghold of the Earl of Warwick, on their right: they were roughly accosted by the men-at-arms, but the livery of Leicester protected them.

Soon after they approached the important town of Woodstock, with its ancient palace, where a century earlier Henry II had wiled away his time with Fair Rosamond. The park and chase were most extensive and deeply wooded; emerging from its umbrageous recesses, they saw a group of spires and towers.

"Behold the spires of Oxenford!" cried the men.

Martin's heart beat with ill-suppressed emotion--here was the object of his long desire, the city which he had seen again and again in his dreams. Headington Hill arose on the left, and the heights about c.u.mnor on the right. Between them rose the great square tower of Oxford Castle, and the huge mound {11} thrown up by the royal daughter of Alfred hard by; while all around arose the towers and spires of the learned city, then second only in importance to London.

The first view of the Eternal City (Rome)--what volumes have been written upon the sensations which attend it. So was the first view of Oxford to our eager aspirant for monastic learning and ecclesiastical sanct.i.ty. Long he stood drinking in the sight, while his heart swelled within him and tears stood in his eyes; but the trance was roughly broken by his attendants.

"Come, young master. We must hurry on, or we may not get in before nightfall, and there may be highwaymen lurking about the suburbs."

Chapter 6: At Walderne Castle.

The watcher on the walls of Walderne Castle sees the sun sink beneath the distant downs, flooding Mount Caburn and his kindred giants with crimson light. In the great hall supper is preparing.

See them all trooping in--retainers, fighting men, serving men, all taking their places at the boards placed at right angles to the high table, where the seats of Sir Nicholas de HarenG.o.d and his lady are to be seen.

He enters: a bluff stern warrior, in his undress, that is, without his panoply of armour and arms, in the long flowing robe affected by his Norman kindred at the festal board. She, with the comely robe which had superseded the gunna or gown, and the couvrechef (whence our word kerchief) on the head.

The chaplain, who served the little chapel within the castle, says grace, and the company fall upon the food with little ceremony. We have so often described their manners, or rather absence of manners, that we will not repeat how the joints were carved in the absence of forks, nor how necessary the finger gla.s.ses were after meals, although they only graced the higher board.

Wine, hippocras, mead, ale--there was plenty to eat and drink, and when the hunger was satisfied a palmer or pilgrim, who had but recently arrived from the Holy Land, sang a touching ballad about his adventures and sufferings in that Holy Land:

Trodden by those blessed feet Which for our salvation were Nailed unto the holy rood.

He sang of the captivity of Jerusalem under her Saracen rulers; of the Holy Places, nay, of the Sepulchre itself, in the hands of the heathen. That song, and kindred songs, had already caused rivers of blood to be shed; men were now getting hardened to the tale, albeit the Lady Sybil shed tears.

For she thought of her brother Roger, who had taken the Cross at that gathering at Cross-in-Hand when labouring under his sire's dire displeasure, and who had fallen yet more deeply under the ban, owing to events with which our readers are but partially acquainted.

And now, where Roger sat, she saw her own husband--well beloved--yet had he not effaced the memory of her brother. And she longed to see that brother's son, of whom she had heard, recognised as the heir of Walderne.

The palmer sang, and his song told of one, a father stern, who bade his son wash off the guilt of some grievous sin in the blood of the unbeliever--how that son went forth, full of zeal--but went forth to find his efforts blasted by a haunting, malignant fiend he had himself armed with power to blast; how at length, conquering all opposition, he had reached the holy sh.o.r.e, and embarked on every desperate enterprise, until he was laid out for dead, when--

At this moment the chapel bell rang for the evening prayers, which were never later than curfew, for as men then rose with the sun it was well to go to bed with him, so they all flocked to the chapel.

The office commonly called Compline was said, and the little sanctuary was left again vacant and dark save where the solitary lamp twinkled before the altar.

But the Lady Sybil did not seek her couch. She remained kneeling in devotion before the altar, which her wealth and piety had founded.

Nor was she alone. The palmer yet knelt on the floor of the sanctuary.

When they had been left alone together for some minutes, and all was still save the wind which howled without she rose and said:

"Tell me who thou art, O mysterious man: thy voice reminds me of one long dead."

"Dead to the world, yet living in the flesh. Sybil, I am thy brother Roger, at least what remains of him; thou hast not forgotten me."

"But why hast thou been silent so long? Thy brother in arms, the great Earl of Leicester, himself said he saw thee fall fighting gloriously against the fell Paynim."

"And he spake sooth, but he did not see me rise again. I was carried off the field for interment by the good brethren of Saint John, when, just as they were about to lower me with the dead warriors into one common grave, they perceived that there was life in me. They raised me, and restored the spirit which had all but fled, and when at last it returned, reason did not return with it.

For a full year I was bereft of my senses. They kept me in the hospital at Acre, but they knew nought, and could learn nought of my kindred, until at length I recovered my reason. Then I told them I was dead to the world, and besought them to keep me, but they bade me wander, and stir up others to the rescue of the Holy Land ere I took my rest. And then, too, there was my son--"

"Thy SON?"

"Yes. I see I had better unfold all to thee in detail, from the beginning of my wanderings. After I had fled from my father's wrath, I first went to sunny Provence, where I found friends in the great family of the Montforts, and won the friendship of a man who has since become famous, the Earl of Leicester. A distant kinswoman of theirs, a cousin many times removed, effaced from my heart the fickle damsel who had been the cause of my disgrace in England.

Poor Eveline! Never was there sweeter face or sunnier disposition!

Had she lived all had been well. I had not then gone forth, abandoned to my own sinful self. But she died in giving birth to my Hubert."

"Thy son, doth he yet live?"

"I left him in the care of Simon de Montfort, and went forward to the rendezvous of the crusaders, the Isle of Malta, where, being grievously insulted by a Frenchman--during a truce of G.o.d, which had been proclaimed to the whole army--forgot all but my hot blood, struck him, thereby provoked a combat, and slew him, for which I was expelled the host, and forbidden to share in the holy war.

"So I sailed thence to Sicily--in deep dejection, repenting, all too late, my ungovernable spirit.

"It was in the Isle of Sicily that an awful judgment befell me, which has pursued me ever since, until it has blanched my locks with gray, and hollowed out these wrinkles on my brow.