CHAPTER VI ON THE DOWNS
We fear that Brian Fitz-Count must have sunk in the reader's estimation. After the perusal of the last chapter, it is difficult to understand how a doughty warrior and belted knight could so demean himself as to take an old demented woman into his consultations, and come to her for guidance.
Let us briefly review the phases of mind through which he had passed, and see whether we can find any rational explanation of his condition.
The one great desire of Brian's life was to have a son to whom he could bequeath his vast possessions, and his reflected glory. Life was short, but if he could live, as it were, in the persons of his descendants, it seemed as if death would be more tolerable. God heard his prayer. He had two sons, fine lads, by his Countess, and awhile he rejoiced in them, but the awful scourge of leprosy made its appearance in his halls. For a long time he would not credit the reality of the infliction, and was with difficulty restrained from knocking down the physician who first announced the fact. By degrees the conviction was forced upon him, and the law of the time—the unwritten law especially—forced him to consign them to a house of mercy for lepers, situated near Byfield in Northamptonshire. Poor boys, they wept sore, for they were old enough to share their father's craving for glory and distinction; but they were torn away and sent to this living tomb, for in the eyes of all men it was little better.
Brian wearied Heaven with prayers; he had Masses innumerable said on their behalf; he gave alms to all the churches of Wallingford for the poor; he made benefactions to Reading Abbey and the neighbouring religious houses; he helped to enrich the newly-built church of Cholsey, built upon the ruins of the edifice the Danes had burnt. But still Heaven was obdurate, the boys did not recover, and he had to part with the delight of his eyes.
And then ensued a sudden collapse of faith. He ceased to pray. God heard not prayer: perhaps there was no God; and he ceased from his good deeds, gave no alms, neglected Divine service, and became a sceptic in heart—secretly, however, for whatever a man might think in his heart in those days of ecclesiastical power, the doughtiest baron would hesitate to avow scepticism; men would condone, as, alas, many do now, an irreligious life, full of deeds of evil, if only the evil-doer professed to believe in the dominant Creed.
When a man ceases to believe in God, he generally comes to believe in the Devil. Men must have a belief of some sort; so in our day, men who find Christianity too difficult, take to table turning, and like phenomena, and practise necromancy of a mild description.
So it was then. Ceasing to believe in God, Brian Fitz-Count believed in witches.
The intense hatred of witchcraft, begotten of dread, which kindled the blazing funeral pyres of myriads of people, both guilty—at least in intention—and innocent of the black art, had not yet attained its height.
Pope Innocent had not yet pronounced his fatal decree. The witch inquisitors had not yet started on their peregrinations, Hopkins had yet to be born, and so the poor crazed nun who had done no one any harm, whom wise men thought mad, and foolish ones inspired, was allowed to burrow at Cwichelm's Hlawe.
And many folk resorted to her, to make inquiries about lost property, lost kinsfolk, the present and the future. Amongst others, a seneschal of Wallingford, who had lost a valuable signet ring belonging to his lord.
"On your return to the castle seize by the throat the first man you meet after you pass the portals. He will have the ring."
And the first man the seneschal met was a menial employed to sweep and scour the halls; him without fear he seized by the throat. "Give me the ring thou hast found," and lo, the affrighted servitor, trembling, drew it forth and restored it.
Brian heard of the matter; it penetrated through the castle. He gave orders to hang the servitor, but the poor wretch took sanctuary in time; and then he rode over to Cwichelm's Hlawe himself.
What was his object?
To inquire after his progeny.
One son, a beautiful boy, had escaped the fatal curse, but it was not the child of his wife. Brian had loved a fair English girl, whom he had wooed rather by violence than love. He carried her away from her home, a thing too common in those lawless days to excite much comment. She died in giving birth to a fair boy, and was buried in the adjacent graveyard.
After he lost his other two children by leprosy, Brian became devoted to this child; the reader has heard how he lost him.
And to inquire whether, perchance, the child, whose body had never been found, yet lived, Brian first rode to Cwichelm's Hlawe.
"Have I given the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" was his bitter cry. "Doth the child yet live?"
The supposed sorceress, after incantations dire, intended to impress the mind, replied in the affirmative.
"But where?"
"Beware; the day when thou dost regain him it will be the bitterest of thy life."
"But where shall he be found?"
"That the dead have not told me."
"But they may tell."
"I know not, but thou shalt see him again in the flesh. Come again in the vine-month, when the clouds of war and rapine shall begin to gather over England once more, and I will tell thee all I shall have learned."
"The clouds of war and rapine?"
"Yes, Brian Fitz-Count. Dost thou, the sworn ally of the banished Empress, mistake my words?"
And we have seen the result of that last interview—in the second visit.
* * * * *
When Brian rode from the barrow—out on the open downs—he gazed upon the beacons which yet blazed, and sometimes shouted with exultation, for like a war-horse he sniffed the coming battle, and shouted ha! ha! He gave his horse the reins and galloped along the breezy ridge—following the Icknield way—his hound behind him.
And then he saw another horseman approaching from the opposite direction, just leaving the Blewbery down. In those days when men met it was as when in a tropical sea, in days happily gone by, sailors saw a strange sail: the probability was that it was an enemy.
Still Brian feared not man, neither God nor man, and only loosing his sword in its sheath, he rode proudly to the rencontre.
"What ho! stranger! who? and whence?"
"Thy enemy from the grave, whither thou hast sent my kith and kin."
"Satan take thee; when did I slay them? If I did, must I send thee to rejoin them?"
"Try, and God defend the right. Here on this lonely moor, we meet face to face. Defend thyself."
"Ah! I guess who thou art: an outlaw!"
"One whom thou didst make homeless."
"Ah! I see, Wulfnoth of Compton. Tell me, thou English boar, what thou didst with my child."
"And if I slew him, as thou didst mine, what then?"
A mighty blow was the reply, and the two drawing their swords, fell to work—the deadly work.
And by their sides a canine battle took place, a wolf-hound, which accompanied the stranger, engaged the boar-hound of the Baron.
Oh! how they strove; how blow followed blow; how the horses seemed to join in the conflict, and tried to bite and kick each other with their rampant fore-feet; how the blades crashed; how thrust, cut, and parry, succeeded each other.
But Norman skill prevailed over English strength, and the Englishman fell prone to the ground, with a frightful wound on the right shoulder, while his horse galloped round and round in circles.
And meanwhile the opposite result took place in the struggle between the quadrupeds: the wolf-hound had slain the boar-hound. Brian would fain have avenged his favourite, but the victor avoided his pursuit, and bow and arrows had he none, nor missile of any kind, for he had accidentally left his hunting spear behind.
He looked at his foe who lay stretched on the turf, bleeding profusely. Then dismounting, he asked sternly—
"Say what thou didst with my boy!"
"Strike; thou shalt never know."
And Brian would have struck, but his opponent fell back senseless, and he could not strike him in that condition: something restrained his hand.
"Poor Bruno," he said, as he gave his gallant hound one sigh. "Less fortunate than thy lord; that mongrel cur hath slain thee: but I may not stay to waste tears over thee," and remounting, he rode away unscathed from the struggle, leaving the horse of the vanquished one to roam the downs.
And as he rode, his thoughts were again on his lost child, and on the boy whom he had seen on the previous day, and sent before him in durance. Was it possible this was his son? Nay, the old man, who would not lie to save his life, had affirmed the contrary. Still he would make further inquiries, and keep the lad in sight, if not assured of his birth and parentage.
A thought struck him: should he threaten the torture to the aged Englishman, and so strive to wring the secret—if there were one—from him. Yet he hesitated, and debated the question with its pros and cons again and again, until the greater urgency of the coming struggle extinguished all other thoughts in his mind.
He had enemies, yes, bitter ones, and now that the dogs of war were allowed to be unchained, he would strike a blow for himself, as well as for Maud. Why, there was that hated rival, the Lord of Shirburne, who boasted that he kept the Key of the Chilterns in his hand—there was his rival of Donnington Castle over the downs—what splendid opportunities for plunder, vainglory, and revenge.
In such meditations did the Lord of Wallingford ride home through the forest, and adown the Moreton brook.
* * * * *
Meanwhile his defeated foe, upon whom the victor had scarcely bestowed a passing thought, lay stiff and stark upon the ground.
The night wind sang a dirge over him, but no human being was there to see whether the breath was yet in him. But a canine friend was there—his poor wolf hound—mangled by the teeth of his foe, but yet alive and likely to live. And now he came up to the prostrate body of his master and licked his face, while from time to time he raised his nose in the air, and uttered a plaintive howl, which floated adown the wind an appeal for help.
Was it a prayer for the living or the dead?
Surely there were the signs of life, the hues of that bloodless cheek are not yet those of death; see, he stirs! only just a stir, but it tells of life, and where there is life there is hope.
But who shall cherish the flickering spark?
The aspect of nature seems all merciless. Is there mercy yet in man?
A faint beating of the heart; a faint pulsation of the wrist—it might be quickened into life.
Is it well that he should live?
A typical Englishman, of Saxon lineage, stout, thickset. Did we believe in the transmigration of souls, we should say he had been a bull in some previous state of existence. Vast strength, great endurance, do find their incarnations in that frame: he might have felled an ox, but yet he went down before the subtlety of Norman fence.
Is it good that he should live, an outlaw, whose life any Norman may take and no questions asked? Look at that arm; it may account for many a Norman lost in solitary wayfaring. Oh! what memories of wrong sleep within that insensible brain!
Happily it is for a wiser power to decide.
Listen, there is a tinkling of small bells over there in the distance. It draws nearer; the dog gives a louder howl—now the party is close.
Five or six horses, a sumpter mule, five or six ecclesiastics in sombre dress, riding the horses, the hoods drawn back over the heads, the horses richly caparisoned, little silver bells dependent here and there from their harness.
"What have we here, brother Anselm? why doth the dog thus howl?"
"There hath been a fray, brother Laurentius. Here is a corpse; pray for his soul."
"Nay, he yet liveth," said a third, who had alighted. "I feel his heart beat; he is quite warm. But, oh! Saint Benedict! what a wound, what a ghastly gash across the shoulder."
"Raise him on the sumpter mule; we must bear him home and tend him. Remember the good Samaritan."
"But first let me bind up the wound as well as I can, and pour in oil and wine. I will take him before me. Sancta Maria! what a weight! No, good dog, we mean thy master no harm."
But the dog offered no opposition; he saw his master was in good hands. He only tried as well as his own wounds would let him to caper for joy.
"Poor dog, he hath been hurt too. How chanced it? What a mystery."
Happily the good brothers never travelled without medicinal stores, and a little ointment modifies pain.
So in a short time they were on their road again, carrying the wounded with them.
They were practical Christians, those monks.