It was a bright morning in the month
of August, when a lad of some fifteen years of age,
sitting on a low wall, watched party after party of
armed men riding up to the castle of the Earl of Evesham.
A casual observer glancing at his curling hair and
bright open face, as also at the fashion of his dress,
would at once have assigned to him a purely Saxon
origin; but a keener eye would have detected signs
that Norman blood ran also in his veins, for his figure
was lither and lighter, his features more straightly
and shapely cut, than was common among Saxons.
His dress consisted of a tight-fitting jerkin, descending
nearly to his knees. The material was a light-blue
cloth, while over his shoulder hung a short cloak
of a darker hue. His cap was of Saxon fashion,
and he wore on one side a little plume of a heron.
In a somewhat costly belt hung a light short sword,
while across his knees lay a crossbow, in itself almost
a sure sign of its bearer being of other than Saxon
blood. The boy looked anxiously as party after
party rode past towards the castle.
“I would give something,”
he said, “to know what wind blows these knaves
here. From every petty castle in the Earl’s
feu the retainers seem hurrying here. Is
he bent, I wonder, on settling once and for all his
quarrels with the Baton of Wortham? or can he be intending
to make a clear sweep of the woods? Ah! here
comes my gossip Hubert; he may tell me the meaning
of this gathering.”
Leaping to his feet, the speaker started
at a brisk walk to meet a jovial-looking personage
coming down from the direction of the castle.
The new comer was dressed in the attire of a falconer,
and two dogs followed at his heels.
“Ah, Master Cuthbert,”
he said, “what brings you so near to the castle?
It is not often that you favour us with your presence.”
“I am happier in the woods,
as you well know, and was on my way thither but now,
when I paused at the sight of all these troopers flocking
in to Evesham. What enterprise has Sir Walter
on hand now, think you?”
“The earl keeps his own counsel,”
said the falconer, “but methinks a shrewd guess
might be made at the purport of the gathering.
It was but three days since that his foresters were
beaten back by the landless men, whom they caught
in the very act of cutting up a fat buck. As thou
knowest, my lord though easy and well-disposed to all,
and not fond of harassing and driving the people as
are many of his neighbours, is yet to the full as
fanatical anent his forest privileges as the worst
of them. They tell me that when the news came
in of the poor figure that his foresters cut with
broken bows and draggled plumes-for the
varlets had soused them in a pond of not over
savoury water-he swore a great oath that
he would clear the forest of the bands. It may
be, indeed, that this gathering is for the purpose
of falling in force upon that evil-disposed and most
treacherous baron, Sir John of Wortham, who has already
begun to harry some of the outlying lands, and has
driven off, I hear, many heads of cattle. It
is a quarrel which will have to be fought out sooner
or later, and the sooner the better, say I. Although
I am no man of war, and love looking after my falcons
or giving food to my dogs far more than exchanging
hard blows, yet would I gladly don the buff and steel
coat to aid in levelling the keep of that robber and
tyrant, Sir John of Wortham.”
“Thanks, good Hubert,”
said the lad. “I must not stand gossiping
here. The news you have told me, as you know,
touches me closely, for I would not that harm should
come to the forest men.”
“Let it not out, I beseech thee,
Cuthbert, that the news came from me, for temperate
as Sir Walter is at most times, he would, methinks,
give me short shift did he know that the wagging of
my tongue might have given warning through which the
outlaws of the Chase should slip through his fingers.”
“Fear not, Hubert; I can be
mum when the occasion needs. Can you tell me
farther, when the bands now gathering are likely to
set forth?”
“In brief breathing space,”
the falconer replied. “Those who first
arrived I left swilling beer, and devouring pies and
other provisions cooked for them last night, and from
what I hear, they will set forth as soon as the last
comer has arrived. Whichever be their quarry,
they will try to fall upon it before the news of their
arrival is bruited abroad.”
With a wave of his hand to the falconer
the boy started. Leaving the road, and striking
across the slightly undulated country dotted here
and there by groups of trees, the lad ran at a brisk
trot, without stopping to halt or breathe, until after
half an hour’s run he arrived at the entrance
of a building, whose aspect proclaimed it to be the
abode of a Saxon franklin of some importance.
It would not be called a castle, but was rather a
fortified house, with a few windows looking without,
and surrounded by a moat crossed by a drawbridge, and
capable of sustaining anything short of a real attack.
Erstwood had but lately passed into Norman hands,
and was indeed at present owned by a Saxon. Sir
William de Lance, the father of the lad who is now
entering its portals, was a friend and follower of
the Earl of Evesham; and soon after his lord had married
Gweneth the heiress of all these fair lands-given
to him by the will of the king, to whom by the death
of her father she became a ward-Sir William
had married Editha, the daughter and heiress of the
franklin of Erstwood, a cousin and dear friend of
the new Countess of Evesham.
In neither couple could the marriage
at first have been called one of inclination on the
part of the ladies, but love came after marriage.
Although the knights and barons of the Norman invasion
would, no doubt, be considered rude and rough in these
days of broadcloth and civilization, yet their manners
were gentle and polished by the side of those of the
rough though kindly Saxon franklins; and although the
Saxon maids were doubtless as patriotic as their fathers
and mothers, yet the female mind is greatly led by
gentle manners and courteous address. Thus then,
when bidden or forced to give their hands to the Norman
knights, they speedily accepted their lot, and for
the most part grew contented and happy enough.
In their changed circumstances it was pleasanter to
ride by the side of their Norman husbands, surrounded
by a gay cavalcade, to hawk and to hunt, than to discharge
the quiet duties of mistress of a Saxon farm-house.
In many cases, of course, their lot was rendered wretched
by the violence and brutality of their lords; but in
the majority they were well satisfied with their lot,
and these mixed marriages did more to bring the peoples
together and weld them in one, than all the laws and
decrees of the Norman sovereigns.
This had certainly been the case with
Editha, whose marriage with Sir William had been one
of the greatest happiness. She had lost him, three
years before the story begins, fighting in Normandy,
in one of the innumerable wars in which our first
Norman kings were constantly involved. On entering
the gates of Erstwood, Cuthbert had rushed hastily
to the room where his mother was sitting with three
or four of her maidens, engaged in work.
“I want to speak to you at once, mother,”
he said.
“What is it now, my son?”
said his mother, who was still young and very comely.
Waving her hand to the girls, they left her.
“Mother,” he said, when
they were alone, “I fear me that Sir Walter is
about to make a great raid upon the outlaws. Armed
men have been coming in all the morning from the castles
round, and if it be not against the Baron de Wortham
that these preparations are intended, and methinks
it is not, it must needs be against the landless men.”
“What would you do, Cuthbert?”
his mother asked anxiously. “It will not
do for you to be found meddling in these matters.
At present you stand well in the favour of the Earl,
who loves you for the sake of his wife, to whom you
are kin, and of your father, who did him good liegeman’s
service.”
“But, mother, I have many friends
in the wood. There is Cnut, their chief, your
own first cousin, and many others of our friends, all
good men and true, though forced by the cruel Norman
laws to refuge in the woods.”
“What would you do?” again his mother
asked.
“I would take Ronald my pony
and ride to warn them of the danger that threatens.”
“You had best go on foot, my
son. Doubtless men have been set to see that
none from the Saxon homesteads carry the warning to
the woods. The distance is not beyond your reach,
for you have often wandered there, and on foot you
can evade the eye of the watchers; but one thing, my
son, you must promise, and that is, that in no case,
should the Earl and his bands meet with the outlaws,
will you take part in any fray or struggle.”
“That will I willingly, mother,”
he said. “I have no cause for offence against
the castle or the forest, and my blood and my kin are
with both. I would fain save shedding of blood
in a quarrel like this. I hope that the time
may come when Saxon and Norman may fight side by side,
and I maybe there to see.”
A few minutes later, having changed
his blue doublet for one of more sober and less noticeable
colour, Cuthbert started for the great forest, which
then stretched to within a mile of Erstwood. In
those days a large part of the country was covered
with forest, and the policy of the Normans in preserving
these woods for the chase, tended to prevent the increase
of cultivation.
The farms and cultivated lands were
all held by Saxons, who although nominally handed
over to the nobles to whom William and his successors
had given the fiefs, saw but little of their Norman
masters. These stood, indeed, much in the position
in which landlords stand to their tenants, payment
being made, for the most part, in produce. At
the edge of the wood the trees grew comparatively
far apart, but as Cuthbert proceeded farther into
its recesses, the trees in the virgin forest stood
thick and close together. Here and there open
glades ran across each other, and in these his sharp
eye, accustomed to the forest, could often see the
stags starting away at the sound of his footsteps.
It was a full hour’s journey
before Cuthbert reached the point for which he was
bound. Here, in an open space, probably cleared
by a storm ages before, and overshadowed by giant
trees, was a group of men of all ages and appearances.
Some were occupied in stripping the skin off a buck
which hung from the bough of one of the trees.
Others were roasting portions of the carcass of another
deer. A few sat apart, some talking, others busy
in making arrows, while a few lay asleep on the greensward.
As Cuthbert entered the clearing, several of the party
rose to their feet.
“Ah, Cuthbert,” shouted
a man of almost gigantic stature, who appeared to
be one of the leaders of the party, “what brings
you here, lad, so early? You are not wont to
visit us till even, when you can lay your crossbow
at a stag by moonlight.”
“No, no, Cousin Cnut,”
Cuthbert said, “thou canst not say that I have
ever broken the forest laws, though I have looked on
often and often, whilst you have done so.”
“The abettor is as bad as the
thief,” laughed Cnut, “and if the foresters
caught us in the act, I wot they would make but little
difference whether it was the shaft of my longbow
or the quarrel from thy crossbow which brought down
the quarry. But again, lad, why comest thou here?
for I see by the sweat on your face and by the heaving
of your sides that you have run fast and far.”
“I have, Cnut; I have not once
stopped for breathing since I left Erstwood.
I have come to warn you of danger. The earl is
preparing for a raid.”
Cnut laughed somewhat disdainfully.
“He has raided here before,
and I trow has carried off no game. The landless
men of the forest can hold their own against a handful
of Norman knights and retainers in their own home.”
“Ay,” said Cuthbert, “but
this will be no common raid. This morning bands
from all the holds within miles round are riding in,
and at least 500 men-at-arms are likely to do chase
today.”
“Is it so?” said Cnut,
while exclamations of surprise, but not of apprehension,
broke from those standing round. “If that
be so, lad, you have done us good service indeed.
With fair warning we can slip through the fingers
of ten times 500 men, but if they came upon us unawares,
and hemmed us in it would fare but badly with us,
though we should, I doubt not give a good account
of them before their battle-axes and maces ended the
strife. Have you any idea by which road they will
enter the forest, or what are their intentions?”
“I know not,” Cuthbert
said; “all that I gathered was that the earl
intended to sweep the forest, and to put an end to
the breaches of the laws, not to say of the rough
treatment that his foresters have met with at your
hands. You had best, methinks, be off before Sir
Walter and his heavily-armed men are here. The
forest, large as it is, will scarce hold you both,
and methinks you had best shift your quarters to Langholm
Chase until the storm has passed.”
“To Langholm be it, then,”
said Cnut, “though I love not the place.
Sir John of Wortham is a worse neighbour by far than
the earl. Against the latter we bear no malice,
he is a good knight and a fair lord; and could he
free himself of the Norman notions that the birds of
the air, and the beasts of the field, and the fishes
of the water, all belong to Normans, and that we Saxons
have no share in them, I should have no quarrel with
him. He grinds not his neighbours, he is content
with a fair tithe of the produce, and as between man
and man is a fair judge without favour. The baron
is a fiend incarnate; did he not fear that he would
lose by so doing, he would gladly cut the throats,
or burn, or drown, or hang every Saxon within twenty
miles of his hold. He is a disgrace to his order,
and some day when our band gathers a little stronger,
we will burn his nest about his ears.”
“It will be a hard nut to crack,”
Cuthbert said, laughing. “With such arms
as you have in the forest the enterprise would be something
akin to scaling the skies.”
“Ladders and axes will go far,
lad, and the Norman men-at-arms have learned to dread
our shafts. But enough of the baron; if we must
be his neighbours for a time, so be it.”
“You have heard, my mates,”
he said, turning to his comrades gathered around him,
“what Cuthbert tells us. Are you of my opinion,
that it is better to move away till the storm is past,
than to fight against heavy odds, without much chance
of either booty or victory?”
A general chorus proclaimed that the
outlaws approved of the proposal for a move to Langholm
Chase. The preparations were simple. Bows
were taken down from the boughs on which they were
hanging, quivers slung across the backs, short cloaks
thrown over the shoulders. The deer was hurriedly
dismembered, and the joints fastened to a pole slung
on the shoulders of two of the men. The drinking-cups,
some of which were of silver, looking strangely out
of place among the rough horn implements and platters,
were bundled together, carried a short distance and
dropped among some thick bushes for safety; and then
the band started for Wortham.
With a cordial farewell and many thanks
to Cuthbert, who declined their invitations to accompany
them, the retreat to Langholm commenced.
Cuthbert, not knowing in which direction
the bands were likely to approach, remained for a
while motionless, intently listening.
In a quarter of an hour he heard the
distant note of a bugle.
It was answered in three different
directions, and Cuthbert, who knew every path and
glade of the forest, was able pretty accurately to
surmise those by which the various bands were commencing
to enter the wood.
Knowing that they were still a long
way off, he advanced as rapidly as he could in the
direction in which they were coming. When by the
sound of distant voices and the breaking of branches
he knew that one at least of the parties was near
at hand, he rapidly climbed a thick tree and ensconced
himself in the branches, and there watched, secure
and hidden from the sharpest eye, the passage of a
body of men-at-arms fully a hundred strong, led by
Sir Walter himself, accompanied by some half dozen
of his knights.
When they had passed, Cuthbert again
slipped down the tree and made at all speed for home.
He reached it, so far as he knew without having been
observed by a single passer-by.
After a brief talk with his mother,
he started for the castle, as his appearance there
would divert any suspicion that might arise; and it
would also appear natural that seeing the movements
of so large a body of men, he should go up to gossip
with his acquaintances there.
When distant a mile from Evesham,
he came upon a small party.
On a white palfrey rode Margaret,
the little daughter of the earl. She was accompanied
by her nurse and two retainers on foot.
Cuthbert-who was a great
favourite with the earl’s daughter, for whom
he frequently brought pets, such as nests of young
owlets, falcons, and other creatures-was
about to join the party when from a clump of trees
near burst a body of ten mounted men.
Without a word they rode straight
at the astonished group. The retainers were cut
to the ground before they had thought of drawing a
sword in defence.
The nurse was slain by a blow with
a battle-axe, and Margaret, snatched from her palfrey,
was thrown across the saddle-bow of one of the mounted
men, who then with his comrades dashed off at full
speed.