Transcriber’s Note: Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

LEGENDS
OF
LOVE AND CHIVALRY.
Knights of England, France, and Scotland.

THE
KNIGHTS
OF
ENGLAND, FRANCE,
AND
SCOTLAND.

BY
HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT,

AUTHOR OF “THE CAVALIERS OF ENGLAND”—“THE ROMAN TRAITOR”—“CROMWELL,”
“THE BROTHERS”—“CAPTAINS OF THE OLD WORLD,” ETC.

REDFIELD,
CLINTON HALL, NEW YORK
1852.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852,
By J. S. REDFIELD,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Southern
District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY C. C. SAVAGE,
13 Chambers Street, N. Y.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Legends of the Norman Conquerors[7]
The Saxon’s Oath[9]
The Norman’s Vengeance[22]
The Faith of Woman[37]
The Erring Arrow[45]
The Saxon Prelate’s Doom[61]
The Fate of the Blanche Navire[73]
The Saxon’s Bridal[85]
Legends of the Crusaders[99]
The Syrian Lady[101]
The Templar’s Trials[115]
The Renegado[128]
Legends of Feudal Days[143]
The False Ladye[145]
The Vassal’s Wife[177]
True Love’s Devotion[221]
Legends of Scotland[303]
Passages in the Life of Mary Stuart[305]
Chastelar[305]
Rizzio[323]
The Kirk of Field[337]
Bothwell[351]
The Captivity[364]
The Closing Scene[378]
Elizabeth’s Remorse[393]
The Moorish Father[407]

LEGENDS
OF
THE NORMAN CONQUERORS.

THE SAXON’S OATH.

“My tongue hath sworn, but still my mind is free.”

The son of Godwin was the flower of the whole Saxon race. The jealousies which had disturbed the mind of Edward the Confessor had long since passed away; and Harold, whom he once had looked upon with eyes of personal aversion, he now regarded almost as his own son. Yet still the Saxon hostages—Ulfnoth, and the young son of Swerga, who in the time of his mad predilection for the Normans, and his unnatural distrust of his own countrymen, had been delivered for safe keeping to William, duke of Normandy—still lingered, melancholy exiles, far from the white cliffs of their native land. And now, for the first time since their departure, did the aspect of affairs appear propitious for their liberation; and Harold, brother of one, and uncle of the other, full of proud confidence in his own intellect and valor, applied to Edward for permission that he might cross the English channel, and, personally visiting the Norman, bring back the hostages in honor and security to the dear land of their forefathers. The countenance of the Confessor fell at the request; and, conscious probably in his own heart of some rash promise made in days long past, and long repented, to the ambitious William, he manifested a degree of agitation amounting almost to alarm.

“Harold,” he said, after a long pause of deliberation—“Harold, my son, since you have made me this request, and that your noble heart seems set on its accomplishment, it shall not be my part to do constraint or violence to your affectionate and patriotic wishes. Go, then, if such be your resolve, but go without my leave, and contrary to my advice. It is not that I would not have your brother and your kinsman home, but that I do distrust the means of their deliverance; and sure I am, that should you go in person, some terrible disaster shall befall ourselves and this our country. Well do I know Duke William; well do I know his spirit—brave, crafty, daring, deep, ambitious, and designing. You, too, he hates especially, nor will he grant you anything, save at a price that shall draw down an overwhelming ruin on you who pay it, and on the throne of which you are the glory and the stay. If we would have these hostages delivered at a less ransom than the downfall of our Saxon dynasty—the misery of merry England—another messenger than thou must seek the wily Norman. Be it, however, as thou wilt, my friend, my kinsman, and my son.”

Oh, sage advice, and admirable counsel! advice how fatally neglected—counsel how sadly frustrated! Gallant, and brave, and young; fraught with a noble sense of his own powers, a full reliance on his own honorable purposes; untaught as yet in that, the hardest lesson of the world’s hardest school, distrust of others, suspicion of all men—Harold set forth upon his journey, as it were, on an excursion in pursuit of pleasure. Surrounded by a train of blithe companions, gallantly mounted, gorgeously attired, with falcon upon fist, and greyhounds bounding by his side, gayly and merrily he started, on a serene autumnal morning, for the coast of Sussex. There he took ship; and scarcely was he out of sight of land, when, as it were at once to justify the words of Edward, the wind, which had been on his embarkation the fairest that could blow from heaven, suddenly shifted round, the sky was overcast with vast clouds of a leaden hue, the waves tossed wildly with an ominous and hollow murmur; and, ere the first day had elapsed, as fierce a tempest burst upon his laboring barks as ever baffled mariner among the perilous shoals and sandbanks of the narrow seas. Hopeless almost of safety, worn out with unaccustomed toil and hard privations, for three days and as many nights they battled with the stormy waters; and on the morning of the fourth, when the skies lightened, and the abating violence of the strong gales allowed them to put in, and come to anchor, where the Somme pours its noble stream into the deep, through the rich territories of the count of Ponthieu, they were at once made prisoners, robbed of their personal effects, held to a heavy ransom, and cast as prisoners-of-war into the dungeon-walls of Belram, to languish there until the avarice of the count Guy should be appeased with gold.

Still Harold bore a high heart and a proud demeanor, bearding the robber-count even to his teeth, set him at defiance, proclaiming himself an embassador from England to the duke of Normandy, and claiming as a right the means of making known to William his unfortunate condition. This, deeming it perchance his interest so to do, the count at once conceded; and before many days had passed, Harold might see, from the barred windows of his turret-prison, a gallant band of lancers, arrayed beneath the Norman banner, with a pursuivant and trumpet at their head, wheeling around the walls of the grim fortress. A haughty summons followed, denouncing “the extremities of fire and of the sword against the count de Ponthieu, his friends, dependants, and allies, should he not instantly set free, with all his goods and chattels, his baggage and his horses, friends, followers, and slaves, unransomed with all honor, Harold, the son of Godwin, the friend and host of William, high and puissant duke of Normandy!” Little, however, did mere menaces avail with the proud count de Ponthieu; nor did the Saxon prince obtain his liberty till William had paid down a mighty sum of silver, and invested Guy with a magnificent demesne on the rich meadows of the Eaune.

Then once more did the son of Godwin ride forth a freeman, in the bright light of heaven, escorted—such were the strange anomalies of those old times—by a superb array of lances, furnished for his defence by the same count de Ponthieu, who, having held him in vile durance until his object was obtained, as soon as he was liberated on full payment of the stipulated price, had thenceforth treated him as a much-honored guest, holding his stirrup at his castle-gate when he departed, and sending a strong guard of honor to see him in all safety over the frontier of the duke’s demesne. Here, at the frontier town, William’s high senechal attended his arrival; and gay and glorious was his progress through the rich fields of Normandy, until he reached Rouen. The glorious chase—whether by the green margin of some brimful river they roused the hermit-tyrant of the waters, that noblest of the birds of chase, to make sport for their long-winged falcons, or through the sere trees of the forest pursued the stag or felon wolf with horn, hound, and halloo—diversified the tedium of the journey; while every night some feudal castle threw wide its hospitable gates to greet with revelry and banqueting the guest of the grand duke. Arrived at Rouen, that powerful prince himself, the mightiest warrior of the day, rode forth beyond the gates to meet the Saxon; nor did two brothers long estranged meet ever with more cordiality of outward show than these, the chiefs of nations long destined to be rival and antagonistic, till from their union should arise the mightiest, the wisest, the most victorious, and enlightened, and free race of men, that ever peopled empires, or spread their language and their laws through an admiring world. On that first meeting, as he embraced his guest, the princely Norman announced to him that his young brother and his nephew were thenceforth at his absolute disposal.

“The hostages are yours,” he said—“yours, at your sole request; nor would I be less blithe to render them, if Harold stood before me himself a landless exile, than as I see him now, the first lord of a powerful kingdom, the most trusty messenger of a right noble king. But, of your courtesy, I pray you leave us not yet awhile; though if you will do so, my troops shall convey you to the seashore, my ships shall bear you home!—but, I beseech, do this honor to your host, to tarry with him for a little space: and as you be the first—for so you are reported to us—in all realities and sports of Saxon warfare, so let us prove your prowess, and witness you our skill, in passages of Norman chivalry.”

In answer to this fair request, what could the Saxon do but acquiesce? Yet, even as he did so, the words of the gray-headed king came sensibly upon his memory, and he began to feel as if in truth the net of the deceiver were already round about him with its inevitable meshes. Still, having once assented, nothing remained for him but to fulfil, as gracefully as possible, his half-unwilling promise. So joyously, however, were the days consumed—so gayly did the evenings pass, among festivities far more refined and delicate than were the rude feasts of the sturdy Saxons, wherein excess of drink and vulgar riot composed the chief attractions—that, after one short week had flown, all the anxieties and fears of Harold were lost in admiration of the polished manners of his Norman hosts, and the high qualities of his chief entertainer. From town to town they passed in gay cortége, visiting castle after castle in their route, and ever and anon testing the valor and the skill each of the other, in those superb encounters of mock warfare—the free and gentle passage of arms—which in the education of the warlike Normans were second only to the real shock of battle, which was to them, not metaphorically, the very breath of life.

Nor in these jousts and tournaments, whether with headless lance or blunted broadsword, or in the deadlier though still amicable strife at outrance, did not the Saxon, though unused to the menêge of the destrier and equestrian combat with the lance, win high renown and credit with his martial hosts. The Saxon tribes had, from their earliest existence as a people, been famed as infantry; their arms, a huge and massive axe; a short, sharp, two-edged sword, framed like the all-victorious weapon of the Romans; a target, and ponderous javelin, used ever as a missile. Cavalry, properly so called, although their leaders sometimes rode into the conflict, they had none; and by a natural consequence, one of that people for the first time adopting the complete panoply, mounting the barbed war-horse, and tilting with the long lance of the Gallic chivalry, must have engaged with the practised champions of the time at a fearful disadvantage. Still, even at this odds, such was the force of emulation acting upon a spirit elastic, vigorous, and fiery, backed by a powerful and agile frame, inured to feats of strength and daring, that little time elapsed ere Harold could abide the brunt of the best lance of William’s court, not only without the risk of reputation, but often at advantage. After a long and desperate encounter, wherein the Saxon prince had foiled all comers, hurling three cavaliers to earth with one unsplintered lance, William, in admiration of his bravery, insisted on bestowing on his friend, with his own honored blade, the accolade of knighthood—buckled the gilded spurs upon his heels; presented him with the complete apparel of a knight—the lance, with its appropriate bandrol—the huge, two-handed war-sword; and, above all, the finest charger of his royal stables, which, constantly supplied from the best blood of Andalusia, at that time were esteemed the choicest stud in Europe. It may now be supposed that honors such as these, coming too from a Norman, for the most part esteemed the scorner of the Saxon race—nor this alone, but from the most renowned and famous warrior of the day—produced a powerful effect on the enthusiastic and ambitious spirit of the young Englishman; nor did the wily duke fail to observe the operation of his deep-laid manœuvres, nor, when observed, did he neglect by every means to strengthen the impression he had made. To this end, therefore, not courtesies alone, nor the high-prized distinctions of military honor, nor gorgeous gifts, nor personal deference, were deemed sufficient instruments. To finish what he had himself so well begun, to complete the ensnarement of the Saxon’s senses, the aid of woman was called in—woman, all-powerful, perilous, fascinating woman! Nor did he lack a fair and willing bait wherewith to give his prize. In his own court, filled as it was with the most lovely, or at least—thanks to the prowess of the Norman spear—the most renowned of Europe’s ladies, there was not one that could compete in beauty, wit, or grace, with Alice, his bright daughter. Too keen a player with the passions and the characters of men—too wise a judge of that most wondrous compound, that strange mass of inconsistencies, of evil and of good, of honor and deceit, the human heart—too close a calculator of effects and causes, was William, to divulge his purpose, or to hint his wishes, even to the obedient ear of Alice. He cared not—he—whether she loved, or feigned to love, so that his object was effected. Commanding ever his wildest passions, using them but as instruments and tools to bend or break men to his purposes, he never dreamed or recked of their ungovernable force upon the minds of others. It was but a few days after the arrival of his guest, that he discovered how he gazed after, and with signs of evident and earnest admiration, on the young damsel, to whose intimacy he had been studiously admitted as an especial and much-honored friend of his host: and her father, to fan this flame on Harold’s part, it needed little art from so consummate an intriguer as the duke; while as to Alice, young as she was, and thoughtless, delighted with attention, and attracted by the fine form and high repute of the young stranger, and yet more by the raciness and trifling singularities of his foreign though high-bred deportment—a fond, paternal smile, and an approving glance, as she toyed with her young admirer, sufficed to give full scope to her vivacious inclinations.

Daily the Norman’s game became more intricate, daily more certain; when suddenly, just as the Saxon—flattered and half-enamored as he was, began to feel that he had no excuse for lingering longer at a distance from his country and his sovereign—began to speak of a return before the setting-in of winter, an accident occurred, which, with his wonted readiness of wit, William turned instantly to good account.

The ducal territories, which had descended to the Norman line from their first champion, Rollo, were separated by the small stream of Coësnor from the neighboring tract of Brittany, to which all the succeeding princes had possessed a claim since Charles the Simple, in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, had ceded it to that great duke, the founder of the Norman dynasty. The consequence of this pretence—for such in fact it was—were endless bickerings, small border wars, aggressions and reprisals, burnings, and massacres, and vengeance! Some trivial skirmish had occurred upon this frontier, just as the duke had perceived that he must either suffer Harold to depart before his projects were accomplished, or force him to remain by open violence. In such a crisis he resolved at once upon his line of action; and, instantly proclaiming war, he raised the banner of his dukedom, summoned his vassals, great and small, to render service for their military tenures; and in announcing to his guest his march against the forces of his hereditary foe, claimed his assistance in the field as a true host from his well-proved guest, and a godfather-in-arms from the son whom he had admitted to the distinguished honor of the knightly accolade. Intoxicated with ambition and with love, madly desirous of acquiring fame among the martial Normans, and fancying, with a vanity not wholly inexcusable, that he was doing service to his country in acquiring the respect of foreign powers, he met half-way the proffer. And, in the parlance of the day, right nobly did he prove his gilded spurs of knighthood. In passing the Coësnor, which, like the See, the Seluna, and the other streams that cross the great Grêve of St. Michel, is perilous from its spring-tide and awful quicksands, Harold displayed, in recovering several soldiers, who, having quitted the true line of march, were on the point of perishing, a noble union of intrepidity and strength.

During the whole course of the war, the Norman and his guest had but one tent and one table; side by side in the front of war they charged the enemy, and side by side they rode upon the march, beguiling the fatigue and labor with gay jests or graver conversation: and now so intimate had they become, so perfect was the confidence reposed by the frank Englishman in his frank-seeming friend, that the sagacious tempter felt the game absolutely in his power, and waited but a fitting opportunity for aiming his last blow. Nor was it long ere the occasion he had sought, occurred. Some brilliant exploits, performed in the last skirmish of the campaign, by the intended victim of his perfidy, gave him a chance to descant on the national and well-proved hardihood and valor of this Saxon race. Thence, by a stroke of masterly and well-timed tact, he touched upon the beauties, the fertility, the noble forests, and the rich fields of England—the happy days which he had passed amid the hospitalities of that fair island. The praises of the reigning monarch followed, a topic wherein Harold freely and eagerly united with his host.

“You were but young in those days,” William continued, “and scarce, I trow, can recollect the scenes which to my older memory are but as things of yesterday. Then, then, indeed, our races were at variance, and your good sire—peace to his soul!—worked me and mine sore scathe and trouble. Yet was it natural, most natural! For in those times your excellent and venerable king—long may he sway the sceptre he so honors!—lived with me upon terms of the most close and cordial friendship. Ay, in good sooth, we were as two brothers—living beneath the same roof, eating of the same board, and drinking from one cup! Not thou and I, my Harold, are more sure comrades. Ay! and he promised me—this in thy private ear—if ever he should gain the throne of England, to leave me by his will, in default of his own issue, heir to that noble kingdom. I doubt not of his troth nor loyalty, though it is years since we spoke of it. You have more lately been about him: hast ever heard him speak of it? What thinkest thou of his plighted faith? He is not one, I do believe, to register a vow in heaven, and fall from it!”

Taken thus by surprise, annoyed and much embarrassed by the turn their converse had thus taken, Harold turned pale, and actually stammered, as he made reply:—

“He never had presumed to question his liege lord and king on matters of such import. The king had never dropped the slightest hint to him concerning the succession. If he had sworn, doubtless he would perform his oath: he was famed, the world over, for his strict sanctity; how, then, should he be perjured? He doubted not, had he so promised, the duke would have no reason to complain of any breach of faith in good King Edward’s testament.”

“Ay! it is so,” said William, musingly, as it appeared to Harold, although in truth his every word had been premeditated long before. “I had so hoped it would be; and, by my faith, right glad am I that you confirm me in mine aspirations. By your aid, my good friend—with the best Saxon on my side—all else is certain; and by my faith, whatever you shall ask of me, were it my daughter’s hand in marriage, surely it shall be yours when I am king of England!”

Again the words of the Confessor flashed on the mind of the ill-fated Saxon, and he foresaw at once the terrible result of this unwilling confidence. At the same time he saw no means of present extrication, and, with an air of evident embarrassment, he answered in words half-evasive, yet sufficiently conclusive, as he hoped, to stop, for the time being, the unpleasing topic. But this was far from the intent of William, who, having read with an intuitive and almost supernatural sagacity the thought that flashed across the brain of Harold, determined that he should commit himself in terms decisive, and admitting of no dubious explanation. Taking it, then, for granted that he had replied fully in the affirmative—

“Since, then,” he said, “you do engage so loyally to serve me, you shall engage to fortify for me the castle on the heights of Dover; to dig in it good wells of living water; and, at my summons, to surrender it! You shall give me your sister, that she may be espoused unto the noblest of my barons; and you shall have to wife my daughter Alice: some passages, I trow, have gone between ye ere now. Moreover, as a warrant of your faith, your brother Ulfnoth shall yet tarry with me; and when I come to England to possess my crown, then will I yield him to you!”

In all its force, the madness of his conduct now glared upon the very soul of Harold. He saw the guilt he had incurred already; the peril he had brought upon the kinsmen he had come to save; the wo that might result to his loved country! But, seeing this, he saw no better means than to feign acquiescence with this unworthy project, holding himself at liberty to break thereafter an unwilling promise.

No more was said upon the subject. They rode onward as before, but the light-hearted pleasure of the Saxon was destroyed; and though the great duke feigned not to perceive the changed mood of his comrade, he had resolved already that he should yet more publicly commit himself ere he should leave the realm.

At Avranches, but three days after their discourse, William convoked a grand assembly of his lords and barons—the mightiest and the noblest of his vavasours and vassals—the pride of Normandy. There, in the centre of the hall, he caused an immense chest to be deposited, filled to the very brim with the most holy relics—bones of the martyred saints—fragments of the true cross—all that was deemed most sacred and most awful by the true-hearted catholic—and covered with a superb cloth of gold, as though it were an ordinary slab or table. There, seated in high state, upon his chair of dignity—a drawn sword in his hand, wearing his cap of maintenance, circled by fleurs-de-lis, upon his head, and clad in ermined robes of state—he held cour pleusêre of his nobles. The Saxon stood among them, honored among the first at all times, and now the more especially distinguished, that it was his farewell reception previous to his departure for England. After presenting him with the most splendid gifts, and making the most liberal professions of attachment, “Harold,” exclaimed the duke, “before we part, I call on you, before this noble company, here to confirm by oath your promise made to me three days since, ‘to aid me in obtaining, after the death of Edward, the throne and crown of England; to take my daughter Alice to wife; and to send me your sister hither, that I may find for her a princely spouse among my vavasours!’”

Taken a second time at fault, and daring not thus openly to falsify his word—but with a blank and troubled aspect, unsatisfied with his internal reservation, and conscious of his perjury—Harold laid both his hands on two small reliquaries which lay, as if by chance, upon the cloth of gold; and swore, provided he should live, to make good all those promises—“so might God aid him.” And with one deep, solemn acclamation, the whole assembly echoed those last words: “So may God aid him! may God aid! God aid!” At the same instant, on a signal from the duke, the cloth of gold was drawn aside, and Harold saw the sacrilege he must commit, so deeply sworn on things so holy, should he repent, or falsify his oath! He saw, and shuddered visibly, as though he had been stricken by an ague; yet presently, by a powerful effort, rallying all his courage to his aid, he made his last farewells, departed, loaded with gifts and honors, but with a melancholy heart; and sailed immediately for England, leaving the brother, for whose liberty he came a suitor, ten times more deeply forfeit than he had been before. On his first interview with Edward, he related all that had occurred—even his own involuntary oath. And the old sovereign trembled, and grew pale, but manifested nothing of surprise or anger!

“I knew it,” he replied, in calm but hollow tones; “I knew it, and I did forewarn you, how that your visit to the Norman should bring misery on you, and ruin on our country! As I forewarned you, so has it come to pass! So shall it come to pass hereafter, till all hath been fulfilled: God only grant that I live not to see it!”

THE NORMAN’S VENGEANCE.

“God and good angels fight on William’s side,
And Harold fall in height of all his pride.”—Shakspere.

Edward the Confessor was dead; and dying, had bequeathed the crown of merry England to Harold, son of Godwin, destined, alas! to be the last prince of the Saxon race who should possess the throne of the fair island. The oath which he had sworn to William, duke of Normandy, engaging to assist him in obtaining that same realm, which had now fallen to himself, alike by testament of the late king, and by election of the people, dwelt not in the new monarch’s bosom! Selfishness and ambition, aided, perhaps, and strengthened by the suggestions of a sincere patriotism, that whispered to his soul the baseness of surrendering his countrymen, their lives, their liberties, their fortunes, and his loved native land, into the stern hands of a foreign ruler, determined him to brave the worst, rather than keep the oath, which, with its wonted sophistry, self-interest was ready to represent involuntary and of no avail. Not long, however, was he allowed to flatter himself with hopes that the tempest, excited by his own weak duplicity, might possibly blow over. The storm-clouds were already charged with thunder destined to burst almost at once on his devoted head. The cry of warfare had gone forth through Christendom; the pope had launched the dreadful bolt of interdict and excommunication against the perjured Saxon, and all who should adhere to him in his extremity; nay, more, had actually granted to the Norman duke, by virtue of his holy office as God’s vicegerent and dispenser of all dignities on earth, the sovereignty of the disputed islands. In token of his perfect approbation of the justice of his cause, the Roman pontiff had sent, moreover, to the duke, a ring of gold, containing an inestimable relic, a lock of hair from the thrice-mitred temples of St. Peter, the first Roman bishop; a consecrated banner blest by himself—the same which had been reared, in token of the greatness and supremacy of holy church, by those bold Normans, Raoul and William of Montreuil, above the captured battlements of every tower and castle through the bright kingdom of Campania. Thus doubly armed, once by the justice of his cause, and yet more strongly by the sanction of the church, the bold duke hesitated not to strive by force of arms to gain that rich inheritance, which he had hoped to win by the more easy agency of guile and of persuasion.

A herald, sent, with a most noble train, bore William’s terms to the new monarch. “William, the duke of Normandy,” he said, boldly, but with all reverence due to his birth and present station, “calls to your memory the oath, which you swore to him by your hand and by your mouth, on good and holy relics!”

“True it is,” answered Harold, “that I did so swear; but under force I did so, not by free will of mine! Moreover, I did promise that which ’twas not mine to grant. My royalty belongs not to myself, but to my people, in trust of whom I hold it. I may not yield it but at their demand; let them but second William, and instantly the crown he seeks for shall be his! Farther, without my people’s leave, I may not wed a woman of a stranger race. My sister, whom he would have espoused unto the noblest of his barons—she hath been dead a year. Will he, that I should send her corpse?”

A little month elapsed, and during that brief interval, Harold neglected nothing that might preserve the crown he had determined never, except with life, to yield to his fierce rival. A powerful fleet was instantly appointed to cruise upon the Downs, and intercept the French invaders; a mighty army was collected on the coast, and each and all the Saxon landholders, nobles, and thanes, and franklins, bound themselves by strong oaths “never to entertain or truce, or treaty, with the detested Normans, but to die freemen, or freemen to conquer.”

A second time the herald came in peace, demanding, in tones fair and moderate, that Harold, if he might not keep all the conditions of his oath, would fulfil part, at least, and wed Alice, his betrothed wife already, the daughter of the puissant duke, who, thereupon, would yield to him, as being his daughter’s dower, all right and title to the crown, which he now claimed as his by heritage.

Harold again returned a brief and stern refusal; resolved, that as he would not yield the whole, he would not, by conceding part, risk the alienation of the love—which he possessed in an extraordinary degree—of the whole English people. Then burst the storm at once. From every part of Europe, where the victorious banners of the Normans were spread to the wind of heaven, adventurers flocked to the consecrated standard of their kinsman.

Four hundred vessels of the largest class, and more than twice that number of the transports of the day, were speedily assembled in the frith of Dives, a stream which falls into the sea between the Seine and Orne. There, for a month or better, by contrary winds and furious storms, they were detained inactive. At length, a southern breeze rose suddenly, and by its aid they made the harbor of Saint Valery; but there, again, they were detained by times more stormy than before; and, superstitious as all men of that period were, the soldiers soon began to tremble and to murmur; strange tales of dreams, and prodigies were circulated, and the spirit of that vast host, of late so confident and proud, sank hourly. At length, whether at the instigation of their own fanatical belief, or as a last resource, or hoping to distract the minds of men from gloomier considerations, the Norman chiefs appointed a procession round the harbor of Saint Valery; bearing the holiest relics, and among them, the bones of the good saint himself, the patron and nomenclator of the town; and ere the prayers were ended, lo! the wind shifted once again, and now blew steadily and fair, swelling the canvass with propitious breath, and driving out each vane and streamer at full length, toward their destined port.

The same storm, which had held William on his Norman coast, windbound and motionless, which he had cursed as unpropitious and disastrous, fifty times every day, for the last month, had been, in truth—so little is the foresight, and so ignorant the wisdom even of the most sagacious among mortals—had been, in truth, the agent by which his future conquest was to be effected. Those gales which pent the Norman galleys in their harbors, had forced the English fleet, shattered and storm-tossed, to put in for victuals and repairs, leaving the seas unguarded to the approach of the invaders. Nor was this all! Those self-same gales had wafted from the northward another fleet of foemen, the Norwegian host of the bold sea-king, Harold Hardrada, and the treacherous Tosti, the rebel brother of the Saxon monarch. Debarking in the Humber, they had laid waste the fertile borders of Northumberland and Yorkshire; had vanquished, in a pitched battle, Morcar and Edwin, and the youthful Waltheof—who had made head against them with their sudden levies, raised from the neighboring countries—had driven them into the walls of York, and there were now besieging them with little hope of rescue or relief. Meanwhile, the king, who had, for months, been lying in the southern portion of the realm, in Essex, Kent, or Sussex, awaiting, at the head of the best warriors of his kingdom, the arrival of his most inveterate foeman—summoned by news of this irruption, unexpected, yet, as it seemed most formidable, into his northern provinces, lulled into temporary carelessness by the long tarrying of his Norman enemy; and hoping, as it indeed seemed probable, that the prevailing wind would not change so abruptly, but that he might, by using some extraordinary diligence and speed, attack and overpower the besieging force at York, and yet return to Dover in time to oppose, with the united force of his whole nation, the disembarkation of the duke—had left his post and travelled with all speed toward York, leading the bravest and best-disciplined of his army against the fierce Norwegians, while the shores of Sussex remained comparatively naked and defenceless. A bloody and decisive battle fought at the bridge of Staneford, over the river Derwent, rewarded his activity and valor—a battle in which he displayed no less his generalship and valor, than the kind generosity and mercy of his nature. Riding, himself, in person, up to the hostile lines, before the first encounter, sheathed in the complete armor of the Norman chivalry—which, since his visit to the continent, he had adopted—“Where,” he cried, in his loudest tones, “is Tosti, son of Godwin?”

“Here stands he,” answered the rebel, from the centre of the Norwegian phalanx, which, with lowered spears, awaited the attack.

“Thy brother,” replied Harold, concealed by the frontlet of his barred helmet from all recognition, “sends thee his greeting—offers thee peace, and friendship, and all thine ancient honors.”

“Good words!” cried Tosti, “mighty good, and widely different from the insults he bestowed on me last year! But if I should accept the offer, what will he grant to Harold, son of Sigurd?”

“Seven feet of English earth,” replied the king; “or, since he be gigantic in his stature, he shall have somewhat more!”

“Let Harold, then address himself to battle,” answered Tosti. “None but a liar ever shall declare that Tosti, son of Godwin, has played a traitor’s part to Harold, son of Sigurd!”

There was no more of parley. With a shock, that was heard for leagues, the hosts encountered; and in the very first encounter, pierced by an arrow in the throat, Hardrada fell, and to his place succeeded that false brother and rebellious subject, Tosti, the Saxon. Again the generous Harold offered him peace and liberal conditions! again his offers were insultingly rejected! and once again, with a more deadly fury than before, the armies met, and, this time, fought it out, till not a leader or a chief of the Norwegian host was left alive, save Olaf, Harold’s son, and the prince bishop of the Orkneys—Tosti, himself, having at length obtained the fate he merited so richly. A third time peace and amity were offered, and now they were accepted; and swearing friendship to the English king for ever, the Norsemen left the fatal land, whereon yet weltered in their gore their king, the noblest of their chiefs, and twice five thousand of the bravest men of their brave nation. But glorious as that day was justly deemed—and widely as it was sung and celebrated by the Saxon bards—perfect as was the safety which it wrought to all the northern counties—and freely as it suffered Harold to turn his undivided forces against whatever foe might dare set hostile foot on English soil inviolate—still was that day decisive of his fate!—decisive of the victory of William, whose banners were already floating over the narrow seas in proud anticipation of their coming triumph!

It was a bright and beauteous morning in September, when the great fleet of William put to sea, the galley of the grand duke leading. She was a tall ship, of the largest tonnage then in use, well manned, and gallantly equipped; from the main-topmast streamed the consecrated banner of the pope, and from her peak, a broad flag with a blood-red cross. Her sails were, not as now, of plain white canvass, but gorgeously adorned with various colors, and blazoned with the rude incipient heraldry, which, though not then a science, was growing gradually into esteem and use. In several places might be seen depicted the three Lions, which were even then the arms of Normandy; and on her prow was carved, with the best skill of the French artist, a young child with a bended bow, and a shaft quivering on the string. Fair blew the breeze, and free the gallant ship careered before it—before the self-same wind which at the self-same moment was tossing on its joyous pinions the victorious banners of the Saxon king. Fair blew the breeze, and fast the ship of William sped through the curling billows—so fast that, ere the sun set in the sea, the fleet was hull down in the offing, though staggering along under all press of sail. Night sank upon the sea; and faster flew the duke; and as the morning broke, the chalky cliffs of Albion were in full view, at two or three leagues distance. William, who had slept all that night as soundly and as calmly as a child, stood on the deck ere it was light enough to see the largest object on the sea, one mile away. His first glance was toward the promised land, he was so swiftly nearing; his second, toward the offing, where he hoped to see his gallant followers. Brighter and brighter grew the morning, but not a speck was visible upon the clear horizon. “Up to the topmast, mariners,” cried the bold duke; “up to the topmast-head! And now what see ye?” he continued, as they sprang up in rapid emulation to that giddy height.

“Naught,” cried the first—“naught but the sea and sky!”

“Anchor, then—anchor, presently; we will await their coming, and in the meanwhile, Sir Seneschal, serve us a breakfast of your best, and see there be no lack of wines, the strongest and the noblest!” and, on the instant, the heavy plunge was heard of the huge anchor in the deep; the sails were furled; and like a living creature endowed with intellect, and moving by volition, the gallant ship swung round, awaiting the arrival of her consorts.

The feast was spread, and, from the high duke on the poop to the most humble mariner on the forecastle, the red wine flowed for all in generous profusion. Again a lookout was sent up, and now he cried, “I see far, far, to seaward, the topsails of four vessels.” A little pause consumed in revelry and feasting, and once again the ship-boy climbed the mast. “I see,” he said, the third time, “a forest on the deep, of masts and sails!”

“God aid! God aid!” replied the armed crew—“God aid!” and, with the word, again they weighed the anchor, and, ere three hours had passed, the whole of that huge armament rode at their moorings off the beach at Pevensey.

There was no sign of opposition or resistance; and on the third day after Harold’s victory at Staneford, the Norman host set foot on English soil. The archers were the first to disembark—armed with the six-foot bows, and cloth-yard shafts, then, for the first time, seen in England, soon destined to become the national weapon of its stout yeomanry. Their faces closely shorn, and short-cut hair, their light and succinct garments, were seen by the affrighted peasantry, who looked upon their landing from a distance, with equal terror and astonishment. Next came the men-at-arms, sheathed in their glittering hauberks and bright hose-of-mail, with conical steel helmets on their heads, long lances in their hands, and huge two-handed swords transversely girt across their persons. After them landed the pioneers, the laborers, and carpenters, who made the complement of that immense army, bearing with them, piece after piece, three fortresses of timber, arranged beforehand, and prepared to be erected on the instant, wherever they should come to land. Last of the mighty host, Duke William left his galley, and the long lines fell into orderly and beautiful array, as he was rowed to land. In leaping to that wished-for shore, the Norman’s right foot struck the gunwale of the shallop, and he fell headlong on the sand, face downward. Instantly, through the whole array, a deep and shuddering murmur rose—“God guard us—’tis a sign of evil!”

But ere the sounds had passed away, he had sprung to his feet. “What is it that you fear?” he shouted, in clear and joyous tones, “or what dismays you? Lo! I have seized this earth in both mine hands, and, by the splendor of our God, ’tis yours!”

Loud was the cheer of gratulation which peeled seaward far, and far into the bosom of the invaded land, at that most brilliant and successful repartee—and with alacrity and glee—confident of success, and high in daring courage—the Norman host marched, unopposed, in regular and terrible array, toward Hastings. Here on the well-known heights, to this day known by the commemorative name of Battle, the wooden fortresses were speedily erected; trenches were dug; and William’s army sat down for the night upon the land, which was thenceforth to be their heritage—thenceforth for evermore.

The news reached Harold as he lay at York, wounded and resting from his labors, and on the instant, with his victorious army, he set forth, publishing, as he marched along, his proclamation to all the chief of provinces and shires, to arm their followers, and meet him with all speed at London. The western levies came without delay; those from the north, owing to distance, were some time behind; and yet, could Harold have been brought by any means to moderate his fierce and desperate impatience, he would, ere four days had elapsed, have found himself, at least, in the command of twice two hundred men. But irritated to the utmost by the sufferings of his countrymen, whose lands were pitilessly ravaged, whose tenements were burned for miles around the Norman camp, whose wives and daughters were subjected to every species of insult and indignity, the Saxon king pressed onward. And though his forces did not amount to one-fourth part of the great duke’s array, still, he was resolved to encounter them, precipitate and furious as a madman.

On the eighteenth day after the defeat of Tosti and Hardrada, the Saxon army was encamped over against the fortified position of the invaders. On that same day, a monk, Sir Hugues Maigrot, came to find Harold, with proposals from the foe, offering him peace on one of three conditions—either that he should yield the kingdom presently—or leave it to the arbitration of the pope—or, finally, decide the matter by appeal to God in single combat.

To each and all of these proposals, the Saxon answered bluntly in the negative. “I will not yield my kingdom! I will not leave it to the pope! I will not meet the duke in single combat!”

Again the monk returned. “I come again,” he said, “from William. ‘Tell Harold,’ said the duke, ‘if he will hold him to his ancient compact, I yield him all the lands beyond the Humber; I give his brother Gurth all the demesnes his father, Godwin, held. If he refuse these my last proffers, tell him before his people, he is a perjured liar, accursed of the pope, and excommunicated—he, and all those that hold to him!’”

But no effect had the bold words of William on the stern spirits of the English. “Battle,” they cried—“no peace with the Normans. Battle—immediate battle!” and with that answer did the priest return to his employer; and either host prepared for the appeal to that great arbiter, the sword.

Fairly the morning broke which was to look upon the slaughter of so many thousands; broad and bright rose the sun before whose setting one of those two magnificent and gallant armies must necessarily be involved in utter ruin. As the first rays were visible upon the eastern sky, Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, William’s maternal brother, performed high mass before the marshalled troops, wearing his cope and rochet over his iron harness. The holy rites performed, he leaped upon his snow-white charger, and, with his truncheon in his hand, arrayed the cavalry, which he commanded.

It was a glorious spectacle, that mighty host, arrayed in three long columns of attack, marching with slow and orderly precision against the palisaded trenches of the Saxons. The men-at-arms of the great counts of Boulogne and Ponthieu composed the first; the second being formed by the auxiliar bands of Brittany, Poitou, and Maine; and in the third, commanded by the duke in person—mounted on a superb Andalusian charger, wearing about his neck the reliquary on which his rival had sworn falsely, and accompanied by a young noble, Tunstan the White, bearing the banner of the pope—were marshalled all the flower and strength of Normandy. Scattered along the front of the advance were multitudes of archers, lightly equipped in quilted jerkins, with long yew bows, and arrows of an ell in length, mingled with crossbow-men with arbalasts of steel, and square, steel-headed quarrels.

Steadily they advanced, and in good order; while, in their entrenched camp, guarded by palisades of oak morticed together in a long line of ponderous trellis-work, the Englishmen awaited their approach, drawn up around their standard, which—blazoned with the white dragon, long both the ensign and the war-cry of their race—was planted firmly in the earth, surrounded by the dense ranks of heavy infantry which formed the strength of their array.

Just as the charge began, William rode out before the lines, and thus addressed his soldiery: “Turn your hearts wholly to the combat! set all upon the die, either to fall or conquer! For if we gain, we shall be rich and glorious. That which I gain, shall be your gain; that which I conquer, yours! If I shall win this land, ye shall possess it! Know, too, and well remember this, that not to claim my right have I come only, but to revenge—ay, to revenge our gentle nation on all the felonies, the perjuries, the treasons of the English!—the English, who, in profound peace, upon Saint Brice’s eve, ruthlessly slew the unarmed and defenceless Danes; who decimated the bold followers of Alfred, my kinsman and your countryman, and slew himself by shameless treachery! On, then, with God’s aid, Normans! on, for revenge and victory!”

Then out dashed from the lines the boldest of his vavasours, the Norman Taillefer, singing aloud the famous song—well known through every province of proud France—the song of Charlemagne and Rollo—tossing aloft the while his long, two-handed war-sword, and catching it adroitly as it fell; while at each close of that proud, spirit-stirring chant, each warrior of that vast array thundered the burden of the song—“God aid! God aid!”

Then, like a storm of hail, close, deadly, and incessant, went forth the volleyed showers from arbalast and long-bow; while infantry and horse charged in unbroken order against the gates and angles of the fort. But with a cool and stubborn hardihood the Saxon infantry stood firm. Protected by the massive palisades from the appalling volleys of the archery, they hurled their short and heavy javelins with certain aim and deadly execution over their stout defences; while their huge axes, wherever they came hand to hand, shivered the Norman spears like reeds, and cleft the heaviest mail, even at a single blow! Long, and with all the hot, enthusiastic valor of their race, did the assailants crowd around the ramparts; but it was all in vain—they could not scale them in the face of that indomitable infantry; they could not force one timber from its place; and they at length recoiled, weary and half-subdued, toward the reserve of William.

After a short cessation, again the archery advanced; but, by the orders of the duke, their volleys were no longer sent point-blank, but shot at a great elevation, so that they fell in a thick, galling shower, striking the heads and wounding the unguarded faces of the bold defenders. Harold himself, who fought on foot beside his standard, lost his right eye at the first flight; but not for that did he desert his post, or play less valiantly the part of a determined soldier and wise leader. Again with that tremendous shout of “Nôtre Dame—God aid! God aid!” which had, in every realm of Europe, sounded the harbinger of victory, the horse and foot rushed on to the attack; while from their rear that heavy and incessant sleet of bolt, and shaft, and bullet, fell fast and frequent into the dense ranks of the still-undaunted English. At no point did they force their way, however, even when fighting at this desperate advantage. At no point did a single Norman penetrate a gate, or overtop a palisade; while at one entrance so complete was the repulse of the attacking squadrons, that they recoiled, hard pressed by the defenders, to a ravine at some considerable distance from the trenches, deep, dangerous, and filled with underwood and brambles; these, as they fell back in confusion, their horses stumbling and unable to recover, were overthrown and slain pell-mell, and half defeated. One charge of cavalry, one shock of barbed horse, would have insured the total rout of the invaders; but—wo for England on that day!—cavalry she had none, nor barbed horse, to complete gloriously the work her sturdy footmen had commenced so gallantly. Still, great was the disorder, great was the disarray and peril, of the foreign soldiery. The cry went through the host that the great duke was slain; and, though he flung himself amid the flyers, with his head bare, that they might recognise his features—threatening, cursing, striking at friend and foe with undiscriminating violence—it was well nigh an hour before he could restore the semblance of any discipline or order. This, once accomplished, he advanced again; and yet a third time, though he exerted every nerve, was he repulsed at every point in terrible disorder, and with tremendous loss.

Evening was fast approaching; and well did William know that, if the following morning should find the Saxons firm in their unforced entrenchments, his hopes were vain and hopeless! The country, far and near, was rousing to the Saxon war-cry; and to the Normans, not to conquer, was to be conquered utterly; and to be conquered was to perish, one and all! Valor or open force, it was too evident, could effect nothing against men as valiant and as strong, posted with more advantage. Guile was his last resource; and guile, as usual, prevailed!

A thousand of his cavaliers advanced, as though about to charge the trenches at full speed, with lances lowered, and with their wonted ensenzie, “God aid!” But as they neared the palisades, by preconcerted stratagem, as if they had lost heart, they suddenly drew bridle, all as a single man, and fled, as it appeared, in irretrievable disorder, back, back to the main body! Meanwhile, throughout the lines, the banners were waved to and fro disorderly, and the ranks shifted, and spears rose and fell, and all betokened their complete disorganization. The sight was too much even for the cool hardihood of Saxon courage. With one tremendous shout they rushed from their entrenchments—which, had they held to them, not forty-fold the force of William could have successfully assailed—and, wielding with both hands their bills and axes, plunged headlong in pursuit. That instant, all was over! For, at a moment’s notice, at a concerted signal of a single trumpet, the very men they deemed defeated wheeled into line; and with their spears projecting ten feet, at the least, before their chargers’ poitrels, their long plumes floating backward in the current caused by their own quick motion, the chivalry of France bore down on their pursuers, breathless, confused, and struggling. It was a massacre, but not a rout; for not a man turned on his heel, or even thought to fly: but back to back, in desperate groups, they fought after their ranks were broken, hewing with their short weapons at the mail-clad lancers, who securely speared them from the backs of their barbed horses—asking not, nor receiving quarter—true sons of England to the last, annihilated but not conquered! Night fell, and Gurth, and Leofwyn, and Harold, lay dead around their standard—pierced with innumerable wounds, gory, and not to be discerned, so were their features and their forms defaced and mangled by friend or foeman. Yet still, when all was lost, without array or order, standards, or chiefs, or hopes, the Englishmen fought on—till total darkness sank down on the field of slaughter, and utter inability to slay caused a brief pause in the unsparing havoc. Such was the vengeance of the Norman!

THE FAITH OF WOMAN.

“Two things there be on earth that ne’er forget—
A woman, and a dog—where once their love is set!”—Old MS.

It was the morning after the exterminating fight at Hastings. The banner blessed of the Roman pontiff streamed on the tainted air, from the same hillock whence the dragon standard of the Saxons had shone unconquered to the sun of yester-even! Hard by was pitched the proud pavilion of the conqueror, who, after the tremendous strife and perilous labors of the preceding day, reposed himself in fearless and untroubled confidence upon the field of his renown; secure in the possession of the land, which he was destined to transmit to his posterity for many a hundred years, by the red title of the sword.

To the defeated Saxons, morning, however, brought but a renewal of those miseries which, having yesterday commenced with the first victory of their Norman lords, were never to conclude, or even to relax, until the complete amalgamation of the rival races should leave no Normans to torment, no Saxons to endure; all being merged at last into one general name of English, and by their union giving origin to the most powerful, and brave, and intellectual people, the world has ever looked upon since the extinction of Rome’s freedom.

At the time of which we are now speaking, nothing was thought of by the victors save how to rivet most securely on the necks of the unhappy natives their yoke of iron; nothing by the poor, subjugated Saxons, but how to escape for the moment the unrelenting massacre which was urged far and wide by the remorseless conquerors throughout the devastated country. With the defeat of Harold’s host, all national hope of freedom was at once lost to England. Though, to a man, the English population were brave and loyal, and devoted to their country’s rights, the want of leaders—all having perished side by side on that disastrous field—of combination, without which myriads are but dust in the scale against the force of one united handful—rendered them quite unworthy of any serious fears, and even of consideration, to the bloodthirsty barons of the invading army. Over the whole expanse of level country which might be seen from the slight elevation whereon was pitched the camp of William, on every side might be descried small parties of the Norman horse, driving in with their bloody lances, as if they were mere cattle, the unhappy captives; a few of whom they now began to spare, not from the slightest sentiment of mercy, but literally that their arms were weary with the task of slaying, although their hearts were yet insatiate of blood.

It must be taken now into consideration by those who listen with dismay and wonder to the accounts of pitiless barbarity—of ruthless, indiscriminating slaughter on the part of men whom they have hitherto been taught to look upon as brave indeed as lions in the field, but not partaking of the lion’s nature after the field was won—not only that the seeds of enmity had long been sown between those rival people, but that the deadly crop of hatred had grown up, watered abundantly by the tears and blood of either; and, lastly, that the fierce fanaticism of religious persecution was added to the natural rancor of a war waged for the ends of conquest or extermination. The Saxon nation, from the king downward to the meanest serf who fought beneath his banner, or buckled on the arms of liberty, were all involved under the common ban of the pope’s interdict. They were accursed of God, and handed over by his holy church to the kind mercies of the secular arm; and therefore, though but yesterday they were a powerful and united nation, to-day they were but a vile horde of scattered outlaws, whom any man might slay wherever he should find them, whether in arms or otherwise—amenable for blood neither to any mortal jurisdiction, nor even to the ultimate tribunal to which all must submit hereafter, unless deprived of their appeal like these poor fugitives, by excommunication from the pale of Christianity. For thirty miles around the Norman camp, pillars of smoke by day, continually streaming upward to the polluted heaven, and the red glare of nightly conflagration, told fatally the doom of many a happy home! Neither the castle nor the cottage might preserve their male inhabitants from the sword’s edge, their females from more barbarous persecution. Neither the sacred hearth of hospitality nor the more sacred altars of God’s churches might protect the miserable fugitives; neither the mail-shirt of the man-at-arms nor the monk’s frock of serge availed against the thrust of the fierce Norman spear. All was dismay and havoc, such as the land wherein those horrors were enacted has never witnessed since, through many a following age.

High noon approached, and in the conqueror’s tent a gorgeous feast was spread. The red wine flowed profusely, and song and minstrelsy arose with their heart-soothing tones, to which the feeble groans of dying wretches bore a dread burden from the plain whereon they still lay struggling in their great agonies, too sorely maimed to live, too strong as yet to die. But, ever and anon, their wail waxed feebler and less frequent; for many a plunderer was on foot, licensed to ply his odious calling in the full light of day—reaping his first if not his richest booty from the dead bodies of their slaughtered foemen. Ill fared the wretches who lay there, untended by the hand of love or mercy, “scorched by the death-thirst, and writhing in vain;” but worse fared they who showed a sign of life to the relentless robbers of the dead, for then the dagger—falsely called that of mercy—was the dispenser of immediate immortality. The conqueror sat at his triumphant board, and barons drank his health: “First English monarch, of the pure blood of Normandy!”—“King by the right of the sword’s edge!”—“Great, glorious, and sublime!” Yet was not his heart softened, nor was his bitter hate toward the unhappy prince who had so often ridden by his side in war, and feasted at the same board with him in peace, relinquished or abated. Even while the feast was at the highest, while every heart was jocund and sublime, a trembling messenger approached, craving on bended knee permission to address the conqueror and king—for so he was already schooled by brief but hard experience to style the devastator of his country.

“Speak out, Dog Saxon!” cried the ferocious prince; “but since thou must speak, see that thy speech be brief, an’ thou wouldst keep thy tongue uncropped thereafter!”

“Great duke and mighty,” replied the trembling envoy, “I bear you greeting from Elgitha, herewhile the noble wife of Godwin, the queenly mother of our late monarch—now, as she bade me style her, the humblest of your suppliants and slaves. Of your great nobleness and mercy, mighty king, she sues you, that you will grant her the poor leave to search amid the heaps of those our Saxon dead, that her three sons may at least lie in consecrated earth—so may God send you peace and glory here, and everlasting happiness hereafter!”

“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as if in wonder toward his nobles; “hear to the Saxon slave, that dares to speak of consecrated earth, and of interment for the accursed body of that most perjured, excommunicated liar! Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog, whom you have dared to style your king, that for the interdicted and accursed dead the sands of the seashore are but too good a sepulchre!”

“She bade me proffer humbly to your acceptance the weight of Harold’s body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified and cringing messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”

“Proffer us gold! what gold, or whose? Know, villain, all the gold throughout this conquered realm is ours. Hence, dog and outcast, hence! nor presume e’er again to come, insulting us by proffering, as a boon to our acceptance, that which we own already, by the most indefeasible and ancient right of conquest!—Said I not well, knights, vavasours, and nobles?”

“Well! well and nobly!” answered they, one and all. “The land is ours, and all that therein is: their dwellings, their demesnes, their wealth, whether of gold, or silver, or of cattle—yea, they themselves are ours! themselves, their sons, their daughters, and their wives—our portion and inheritance, to be our slaves for ever!”

“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the duke, spurning him with his foot; “and hark ye, arbalast-men and archers, if any Saxon more approach us on like errand, see if his coat of skin be proof against the quarrel of the shaft!”

And once again the feast went on; and louder rang the revelry, and faster flew the wine-cup, round the tumultuous board. All day the banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on that fatal field, watered sufficiently already by the rich gore of many a noble heart. All day the banquet lasted, and far was it prolonged into the watches of the night; when, rising with the wine-cup in his hand—“Nobles and barons,” cried the duke, “friends, comrades, conquerors, bear witness to my vow! Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory, and where our last foe fell—there will I raise an abbey to his eternal praise and glory. Richly endowed, it shall be, from the first fruits of this our land. Battle, it shall be called, to send the memory of this, the great and singular achievement of our race, to far posterity; and, by the splendor of our God, wine shall be plentier among the monks of Battle, than water in the noblest and richest cloister else, search the world over! This do I swear: so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted us for our renown, and will not now deny his help, when it be asked for his own glory!”

The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a Saxon had presumed, since the intolerant message of the duke, to come to look upon his dead. But now the ground was needed whereon to lay the first stone of the abbey William had vowed to God. The ground was needed; and, moreover, the foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential on the winds of heaven. And now, by trumpet-sound, and proclamation through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain of death, to come and seek their dead, lest the health of the conquerors should suffer from the pollution they themselves had wrought. Scarce had the blast sounded, and the glad tidings been announced once only, ere from their miserable shelters, where they had herded with the wild beasts of the forest—from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might escape the Norman spear—forth crept the relics of that persecuted race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and steps that tottered no less from the effect of terror than of age—maidens, and youths, and infants—too happy to obtain permission to search amid those festering heaps, dabbling their hands in the corrupt and pestilential gore which filled each nook and hollow of the dinted soil, so they might bear away, and water with their tears, and yield to consecrated ground, the relics of those brave ones, once loved so fondly, and now so bitterly lamented. It was toward the afternoon of that same day, when a long train was seen approaching, with crucifix, and cross, and censer—the monks of Waltham abbey, coming to offer homage for themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals, to him whom they acknowledged as their king; expressing their submission to the high will of the Norman pontiff—justified, as they said, and proved by the assertion of God’s judgment upon the hill of Hastings. Highly delighted by this absolute submission, the first he had received from any English tongue, the conqueror received the monks with courtesy and favor, granting them high immunities, and promising them free protection, and the unquestioned tenor of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he had answered their address, he detained two of their number—men of intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he instantly discovered—from whom to derive information as to the nature of his newly-acquired country and newly-conquered subjects. Osgad and Ailric, the deputed messengers from the respected principal of their community, had yet a further and higher object than to tender their submission to the conqueror. Their orders were, at all and every risk, to gain permission to consign the corpse of their late king and founder to the earth previously denied to him. And soon, emboldened by the courtesy and kindness of the much-dreaded Norman, they took courage to approach the subject, knowing it interdicted, even on pain of death; and, to their wonder and delight, it was unhesitatingly granted.

Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled defeat and slaughter, those old men might be seen toiling among the naked carcasses, disfigured, maimed, and festering in the sun, toiling to find the object of their devoted veneration. But vain were all their labors—vain was their search, even when they called in the aid of his most intimate attendants, ay, of the mother that had borne him! The corpses of his brethren, Leofwyn and Gurth, were soon discovered; but not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him, could now distinguish the maimed features of the king.

At last, when hope itself was now almost extinct, some one named Edith—Edith the Swan-necked! She had been the mistress—years ere he had been, or dreamed of being, king—to the brave son of Godwin. She had beloved him in her youth with that one, single-minded, constant, never-ending love, which but few, even of her devoted sex, can feel, and they but once, and for one cherished object. Deserted and dishonored when he she loved was elevated to the throne, she had not ceased from her true adoration; but, quitting her now-joyless home, had shared her heart between her memories and her God, in the sequestered cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland. More days elapsed ere she could reach the fatal spot, and the increased corruption denied the smallest hope of his discovery: yet, from the moment when the mission was named to her, she expressed her full and confident conviction that she could recognise that loved one so long as but one hair remained on that head she had once so cherished! It was night when she arrived on the fatal field, and by the light of torches once more they set out on their awful duty. “Show me the spot,” she said, “where the last warrior fell;” and she was led to the place where had been found the corpses of his gallant brethren: and, with an instinct that nothing could deceive, she went straight to the corpse of Harold! It had been turned already to and fro many times by those who sought it; his mother had looked on it, and pronounced it not her son’s: but that devoted heart knew it at once—and broke! Whom rank, and wealth, and honors had divided, defeat and death made one!—and the same grave contained the cold remains of Edith the Swan-necked and the last scion of the Saxon kings of England.

THE ERRING ARROW.

“’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in good green-wood,
When the navis and merle are singing,
When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter’s horn is ringing.”—Lady of the Lake.

As beautiful a summer’s morning as ever chased the stars from heaven, was dawning over that wide tract of waste and woodland, which still, though many a century has now mossed over the ancestral oaks which then were in their lusty prime, retains the name by which it was at that day styled appropriately—the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed since the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God’s own altars, making the roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of the grim wolf or antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured vales to barren and desolate wastes—to gratify his furious passion for that sport which has so justly been entitled the mimicry of warfare. Few years had then elapsed, yet not a symptom of their old fertility could now be traced in the wild plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom, and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance with which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign once smiling like a goodly garden with every meet production for the sustenance of man.

It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer’s morning as ever eye of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the verge of his great orb above the low horizon, was checkering the mossy greensward with long, fantastic lines of light and shadow, and tinging the gnarled limbs of the huge oaks with ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly on every blade of grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt his power, nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of the firmament; nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that waked above it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles through every variation of the wildest forest-scenery—here traversing in easy curves wide undulations clothed with the purple heather; here sinking downward to the brink of sheets of limpid water; now running straight through lines of mighty trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly mingled with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to make twilight of the hottest noontide. Such were the leading features of the country which had most deeply felt, and has borne down to later days most evident memorials of, the Norman’s tyranny.

Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes—surrounded by its flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring streamlet, with barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences that marked the architecture of the conquering race—stood Malwood keep, the favorite residence of Rufus, no less than it had been of his more famous sire. Here, early as was the hour, all was already full of life, full of the joyous and inspiriting confusion that still characterizes, though in a less degree than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro—some leading powerful and blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the earth, and neighed till every turret echoed to the din; some struggling to restrain the mighty bloodhounds which bayed and strove indignantly against the leash; while others, lying in scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf, furbished their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which, for the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field of Hastings.

It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue that mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint phrase of the day the noble sport was designated. A hundred horses, at the least, of the most costly and admired breeds, were there paraded: the huge, coal-black destrier of Flanders, limbed like an elephant, but with a coat that might have shamed the richest velvet by its sleekness; the light and graceful Andalusian, with here and there a Spaniard, springy, and fleet, and fearless—while dogs, in numbers infinitely greater, and of races yet more various, made up the moving picture: bloodhounds to track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent; slowhounds to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to outstrip him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel beasts of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor were these all, for birds themselves were there, trained to make war on their own race: the long-winged hawks of Norway, with lanners from the isle of Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and gosshawks. No tongue could tell the beauty of the creatures thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed, and showing their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing eyes; some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they are more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare boast himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the superb and lavish gorgeousness of their equipment.

A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were in the stirrup. Again if rang, longer and keener than before, and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows, over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the followers and comrades of their king.

Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe, and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the second William. His hair, from which he had derived his famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head; his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and passion—suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French; “the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel, shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against these gay gallants?”

“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed. A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein, bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could bend. “Right jovially will we—an’ they dare cope with us! What sayest thou, De Beauchamp—darest thou wager thy black boar-hound against a cast of merlins—thyself and Vermandois against his grace and me?”

“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed; “thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow save thine!”

“To his, my liege?” cried Beauchamp, “thou yield to his! Never drew Walter Tyrrel so true a string as thou; he lacks the sleight, I trow, so ekes it out with strength! Tyrrel must hold him pleased if he rate second i’ the field.”

“How now, Sir Walter?” shouted the king; “hearest thou this bold De Beauchamp, and wilt thou yield the bucklers?—not thou, I warrant me, though it be to thy king!”

“So please your highness,” Tyrrel answered; “’tis but a sleight to ’scape our wager—’scaping the shame beside of yielding! He deems us over-strong for him, and so would part us!”

“Nay, by my halydom,” Rufus replied with a gay smile, “but we will have it so. We two will ride in company, each shooting his own shaft for his own hand. I dare uphold my arrow for twenty marks of gold, and my white Alan, against thy Barbary bay. Darest thou, Sir Walter?”

“I know not that—I dare not!” answered Tyrrel; “but your grace wagers high, nor will I lightly lose Bay Barbary: if so our wager stand, I shoot no roving shaft.”

“Shoot as thou wilt, so stands it!”

“Amen!” cried Tyrrel, “and I doubt not to hear your grace confess Tyrrel hath struck the lordlier quarry.”

“Away, then, all! away!” and, setting spurs to his curveting horse, the monarch led the way at a hard gallop, followed by all his train—a long and bright procession, their gay plumes and many-colored garments offering a lively contrast to the deep, leafy verdure of July, and their clear weapons glancing lifelike to the sunshine.

They had careered along, with merriment and music, perhaps three miles into the forest, when the deep baying of a hound was heard, at some short distance to the right, from a thick verge of coppice. Instantly the king curbed in his fiery horse, and raised his hand on high, waving a silent halt. “Ha! have we outlaws here?” he whispered close in the ear of Tyrrel. “’Fore God, but they shall rue it!”

Scarcely had he spoken, when a buck burst from a thicket, and, ere it made three bounds, leaped high into the air and fell, its heart pierced through and through by the unerring shaft of an outlying ranger, who the next instant stepped out of his covert, and, catching sight of the gay cavalcade confronting him—the sounds of whose approach he must have overlooked entirely in the excitement of his sport—turned hastily as if to fly. But it was all too late: a dozen of the king’s retainers had dashed their rowels into their horses’ flanks the instant he appeared, and scarcely had he discovered their advance before he was their prisoner.

“A Saxon, by my soul,” cried Rufus, with a savage scowl, “taken red-hand, and in the fact! Out with thy wood-knife, Damian! By the most holy Virgin, we will first mar his archery, and then present him with such a taste of venison as shall, I warrant me, appease his hankering for one while. Off with his thumb and finger! off with them speedily, I say, an’ thou wouldst ’scape his doom! Ha! grinnest thou, villain?” he continued, as a contortion writhed the bold visage of his victim, who, certain of his fate, and hopeless of resistance or of rescue, yielded with stubborn resolution to his torturers—“an’ this doth make thee smile, thou shalt laugh outright shortly! Hence with him, now, Damian and Hugonet; and thou, Raoul, away with thee—set toils enow, uncouple half a score of brachs and slowhounds, and see thou take me a right stag of ten ere vespers!—Barebacked shalt thou ride on him to the forest, thou unhanged Saxon thief, and see how his horned kinsmen will entreat thee! See that the dog escape ye not, or ye shall swing for it. Bind him, and drag him hence to the old church of Lyme; hold him there, on your lives, till sunset! And ye—lead thither his wild charger: we will sup there upon the greensward, as we return to Malwood, and thou shalt make us merry with thy untutored horsemanship. Now for our wager, Walter! Forward—hurrah!” and on again they dashed, until they reached the choicest hunting-ground of all that spacious woodland—the desolate and desert spot where once had stood the fairest village of the land.

Unroofed and doorless, in different stages of decay, a score or two of cottages, once hospitable, happy homes of a free peasantry, stood here and there amid the brushwood which had encroached upon the precincts; while in the midst the desecrated church of Lyme reared its gray tower, now overgrown with ivy, and crumbling in silent ruin. Upon the cross which crowned the lowly tower, there sat, as they approached, a solitary raven—nor, though the whoop and horn rang close below his perch, did he show any sign of wildness or of fear; but, rising slowly on his wing, flapped round and round in two or three slow circles, and then with a hoarse croak resumed his station. The raven was a favorite bird with the old hunters; and when the deer was slain he had his portion, thence named “the raven’s bone.” Indeed, so usual was the practice, that this bird, the wildest by its nature of all the things that fly, would rarely shun a company which its sagacity descried to be pursuers of the sylvan game.

“What! sittest thou there, old black-frock, in our presence?” shouted the king, bending his bow; “but we will teach thee manners!” Still, the bird moved not, but again sent forth his ominous and sullen croak above the jocund throng. The bow was raised—the cord was drawn back to the monarch’s ear: it twanged, and the next moment the hermit-bird came fluttering down, transfixed by the long shaft, with painful and discordant cries, and fell close at the feet of Rufus’s charger.

There was a murmur in the crowd; and one, a page who waited on the king, whispered with a pale face and agitated voice into his fellow’s ear: “I have heard say—

‘Whose shaft ’gainst raven’s life is set,
Shaft’s feather his heart-blood shall wet!’”

The red king caught the whisper, and turning with an inflamed countenance and flashing eye on the unwitting wakener of his wrath—“Dastard and fool!” he shouted; and, clinching his gloved hand, he dealt the boy so fierce a blow upon the chest, that he fell to the earth like a lifeless body, plunging so heavily upon the sod head-foremost, that the blood gushed from nose, ears, mouth, and he lay senseless and inanimate as the surrounding clay. With a low, sneering laugh, the tyrant once more spurred his charger forward, amid the smothered execrations of his Norman followers, boiling with indignation for that one of their noble and victorious race should have endured the foul wrong of a blow, though it were dealt him by a monarch’s hand. And there were scowling brows, and teeth set hard, among the very noblest of his train; and, as the glittering band swept on, the father of the injured boy—a dark-browed, aged veteran, who had couched lance at Hastings to win the throne of earth’s most lovely island for that base tyrant’s sire—reined in his horse, and, leaping to the earth, upraised the body from the gory turf, and wiped away the crimson stream from the pale features, and dashed pure water, brought from a neighboring brooklet in a comrade’s bacinet, upon the fair young brow—but it was all in vain! The dying child rolled upward his faint eyes; they rested on the anxious lineaments of that war-beaten sire, who, stern and fiery to all else, had ever to that motherless boy been soft and tender as a woman. “Father,” he gasped, while a brief, painful smile illuminated with a transient gleam his ashy lips—“mercy, kind mother Mary! Father—father”—the words died in the utterance; the dim eyes wavered—closed; the head fell back upon the stalwart arm that had supported it, and, with one long and quivering convulsion, the innocent soul departed!

Some three or four—inferior barons of the train, yet each a gentleman of lineage and prowess in the field, each one in his own estimate a prince’s peer—had paused around the desolate father and his murdered child; and now, as the old man gazed hopelessly upon the features of his first-born and his only, the sympathy which had moistened their hard eyes and relaxed their iron features was swallowed up in a fierce glare of indignation, irradiating their scarred and war-seamed visages with that sublime expression, from which, when glowing on the face of a resolute and fearless man, the wildest savage of the forest will shrink in mute dismay. The father, after a long and fearful struggle with his more tender feelings—wringing his hard hands till the blood-drops started redly from beneath every nail—lifted his face, more pale and ashy in its hues than that of the inanimate form which he had loved so tenderly; and as he lifted it he caught the fierce glow mantling on the front of each well-tried companion, and his own features lightened with the self-same blaze: his hand sank downward to the hilt of the long poniard at his girdle, and the fingers worked with a convulsive tremor as they griped the well-known pommel, and an exulting smile curled his mustached lip, prophetic of revenge. Once more he bowed above the dead; he laid his broad hand on the pulseless heart, and printed a long kiss on the forehead; then lifting, with as much tenderness as though they still had sense and feeling, the relics of the only thing he loved on earth, he bore them from the roadside into the shelter of a tangled coppice; unbuckled his long military mantle, and spreading it above them, secured it at each corner by heavy stones, a temporary shelter from insult or intrusion. This done, in total silence he rejoined his friends, who had foreborne to offer aid where they perceived it would be held superfluous. Without one word, he grasped the bridle of his charger, tightened his girths, and then, setting no foot to stirrup, vaulted almost without an effort into the steel-bound demipique. Raising his arm aloft, he pointed into the long aisles of the forest, wherein the followers of Rufus had long since disappeared.

“Our thoughts are one!” he hissed, in accents scarcely articulate, between his grinded teeth; “what need of words? Are not we soldiers, gentlemen, and Normans, and shall not deeds speak for us?”

Truly he said, their thoughts were one!—for each had severally steeled his heart as by a common impulse: and now, without a word, or sign, or any interchange of sentiments, feeling that each understood the other, they wheeled their horses on the tyrant’s track, and at a hard trot rode away, resolved on instant vengeance.

Meanwhile, the hunters had arrived at their appointed ground. The slowhounds were uncoupled and cast loose; varlets with hunting-poles, and mounted grooms, pressed through the underwood; while, in each open glade and riding of the forest, yeomen were stationed with relays of tall and stately gazehounds, to slip upon the hart the instant he should break from the thick covert. The knights and nobles galloped off, each with his long-bow strung, and cloth-yard arrow notched and ready, to posts assigned to them—some singly, some in pairs; all was replete with animation and with fiery joy.

According to the monarch’s pleasure, Tyrrel rode at his bridle-hand, for that day’s space admitted as his comrade and his rival. Two splendid bloodhounds, coal-black, but tawny on the muzzle and the breast, so accurately trained that they required no leash to check their ardor, ran at the red king’s heel; but neither page nor squire, such was his special mandate, accompanied their master. And now the loud shouts of the foresters and the deep baying of the pack gave note that the chase was on foot; and by the varied cadences and different points whence pealed the soul-exciting clamors, Rufus, a skilful and sagacious sportsman, immediately perceived that two if not three of the noble animals they hunted must have been roused at once. For a few seconds he stood upright in his stirrups, his hand raised to his ear, lest the slight summer breeze should interrupt the welcome sounds.

“This way,” he said, in low and guarded tones, “this way they bend; and with the choicest buck—hark to old Hubert’s holloa! and there, there, Tyrrel, list to that burst—list to that long, sharp yell! Beshrew my soul, if that be not stanch Palamon—that hound is worth ten thousand. Ha! they are now at fault. Again! brave Palamon again! and now they turn; hark how the echoes roar! Ay, they are crossing now the Deer-leap dingle; and now, now, as their notes ring out distinct and tuneful, they gain the open moorland. Spur, Tyrrel, for your life! spur, spur! we see him not again till we reach Bolderwood”—and, with the word, he raised his bugle to his lips, and wound it lustily and well till every oak replied to the long flourish.

Away they flew, driving their foaming chargers, now through the tangled underwood with tightened reins, now with free heads careering along the level glades, now sweeping over the wide brooks that intersect the forest as though their steeds were winged, and now, at distant intervals, pausing to catch the fitful music of the pack. After a furious chase of at least two hours, the sounds still swelling on their right, nearer and nearer as they rode the farther, the avenue through which they had been galloping for many minutes was intersected at right angles by one yet wider though neglected, and, as it would seem, disused, for many marshy pools might be seen glittering to the sun, which was now fast descending to the westward, and many plants of ash and tufted hazels had sprung up, marring the smoothness of its surface. Here, by a simultaneous motion, and as it seemed obedient to a common thought, both riders halted.

“He must cross, Tyrrel, he must cross here,” cried the excited monarch; “ay, by the life of Him who made us—and that before we be ten minutes older. I will take stand even here, where I command both alleys: ride thou some fifty yards or so, to the right; stand by yon rowan sapling. And mark me—see’st thou yon scathed but giant oak?—Now, if he pass on this side, mine is the first shot; if on the other, thine. I will not balk thy fortunes; meddle not thou with mine!”

They parted—the king sitting like a statue on his well-trained but fiery Andalusian, the rein thrown loosely on the horse’s neck, and the bow already half bent in the vigorous right hand; the baron riding, as he had been commanded, down the neglected avenue, till he had reached the designated tree, when he wheeled round his courser and remained likewise motionless, facing the king, at that brief interval.

Nearer and nearer came the baying of the pack, while ever and anon a sharp and savage treble, mixed with the deeper notes, gave token to the skilful foresters that they were running with the game in view. Nearer it came, and nearer; and now it was so close, that not an echo could be traced amid the stormy music: but with the crash no human shout was blended, no bugle lent its thrilling voice to the blithe uproar, no clang of hoofs announced the presence of pursuers. All, even the best and boldest riders, saving those two who waited there in calm, deliberate impatience, had long been foiled by the quick turns and undiminished pace maintained by the stout quarry.

The crashing of the branches might now be heard distinctly, as they were separated by some body in swift motion; and next the laboring sobs of a beast overdone with toil and anguish; the waving of the coppice followed in a long, sinuous line, resembling in some degree the wake of a fleet ship among the rolling billows. Midway it furrowed the dense thicket between the king and Tyrrel, but with an inclination toward the former. His quick eye noted his advantage: his bow rose slowly and with a steady motion to its level; it was drawn to its full extent—the forked steel head pressing against the polished yew, the silken string stretched home to the right ear. The brambles were forced violently outward, and with a mighty but laborious effort the hunted stag dashed into the more open space. Scarcely had he cleared the thicket, before a sharp and ringing twang announced the shot of Rufus. So true had been his aim, that the barbed arrow grazed the withers of the game—a hart of grease, with ten tines on his noble antlers—leaving a gory line where it had razed the skin; and so strong was the arm that launched it, that the shaft, glancing downward, owing to the king’s elevation and the short distance of the mark at which he aimed, was buried nearly to the feathers in the soft, mossy greensward. The wounded stag bounded at least six feet into the air; and Tyrrel, deeming the work already done, lowered his weapon. But the king’s sight was truer. Raising his bridle-hand to screen his eyes from the rays, now nearly level, of the setting sun—“Ho!” he cried, “Tyrrel, shoot—in the fiend’s name shoot!”

Before the words had reached his ear, the baron saw his error; for, instantly recovering, the gallant deer dashed onward, passing immediately beneath the oak-tree which Rufus had already mentioned. Raising his bow with a rapidity which seemed incredible, Tyrrel discharged his arrow. It struck, just at the correct elevation, against the gnarled trunk of the giant tree; but, swift as was its flight, the motion of the wounded deer was yet more rapid: he had already crossed the open glade, and was lost in the thicket opposite. Diverted from its course, but unabated in its force, the Norman shaft sped onward; full, full and fairly it plunged into the left side of the hapless monarch, unguarded by the arm which he had cast aloft. The keen point actually drove clear through his body, and through his stout buff coat, coming out over his right hip; while the goose-feather, which had winged it to its royal mark, was literally dabbled in his life-blood!

Without a breath, a groan, a struggle, the Conqueror’s son dropped lifeless from his saddle. His horse, freed from the pressure of the master-limbs that had so well controlled him, reared upright as the monarch fell, and, with a wild, quick snort of terror, rushed furiously away into the forest. The bloodhounds had already, by the fierce cunning of their race, discovered that their game was wounded, and had joined freshly with his old pursuers; while he, who did the deed, gazed for one moment horror-stricken on the work of his right hand, and then, without so much as drawing nigh to see if anything of life remained to his late master, casting his fatal bow into the bushes, put spurs to his unwearied horse, and drew not bridle till he reached the coast; whence, taking ship, he crossed the seas, and fell in Holy Land, hoping by many deeds of wilful bloodshed—such is the inconsistency of man—to win God’s pardon for one involuntary slaughter.

Hours rolled away. The sun had set already, and his last gleams were rapidly departing from the skies, nor had the moon yet risen, when six horsemen came slowly, searching as it were for traces on the earth, up the same alley along which Tyrrel and the king had ridden with such furious speed since noontide. The lingering twilight did not suffice to show the features of the group, but the deep tones of the second rider were those of the bereaved and vengeful father.

“How now?” he said, addressing his words to the man who led the way, mounted upon a shaggy forest-pony; “how now, Sir Saxon!—is it for this we saved thee from the tyrant’s hangmen, that thou shouldst prove a blind guide in this matter?”

“Norman,” replied the other, still scanning, as he spoke, the ground dinted and torn by the fresh hoof-tracks, “my heart thirsts for vengeance not less than thine; nor is our English blood less stanch, although it be less fiery, than the hottest stream that swells the veins of your proud race! I tell you, Rufus hath passed here, and he hath not turned back. You shall have your revenge!”

Even as he spoke, the beast which he bestrode set his feet firm and snuffed the air, staring as though his eyeballs would start from their sockets, and uttering a tremulous, low neigh. “Blood hath been shed here! and that, I trow, since sunset! Jesu! what have we now?” he cried, as his eye fell upon the carcass that so lately had exulted in the possession of health, and energy, and strength, and high dominion. “By Thor the Thunderer, it is the tyrant’s corpse!”

“And slain,” replied the father, “slain by another’s hand than mine! Curses, ten thousand curses, on him who shot this shaft!” While he was speaking he dismounted, approached the body of his destined victim, and gazed with an eye of hatred most insatiably savage upon the rigid face and stiffening limbs; then drawing his broad dagger—“I have sworn!” he muttered, as he besmeared its blade with the dark, curdled gore—“I have sworn! Lie there and rot,” he added, spurning the body with his foot. “And now we must away, for we are known and noted; and, whoso did the deed, ’tis we shall bear the blame of it. We must see other lands. I will but leave a brief word with the monks of Lymington, that they commit my poor boy to a hallowed tomb, and then farewell, fair England!” And they, too, rode away, nor were they ever seen again on British soil; nor—though shrewd search was made for them until the confessor of Tyrrel, when that bold spirit had departed, revealed the real slayer of the king—did any rumor of their residence or fortunes reach any mortal ear.

The moon rose over the New Forest broad and unclouded, and the dew fell heavy over glade and woodland. The night wore onward, and the bright planet set, and one by one the stars went out—and still the king lay there untended and alone. The morning mists were rising, when the rumbling sound of a rude cart awoke the echoes of that fearful solitude. A charcoal-burner of the forest was returning from his nocturnal labors, whistling cheerfully the burden of some Saxon ballad, as he threaded the dark mazes of the green-wood. A wiry-looking cur—maimed, in obedience to the forest-law, lest he should chase the deer reserved to the proud conquerors alone—followed the footsteps of his master, who had already passed the corpse, when a half-startled yelp, followed upon the instant by a most melancholy howl, attracted the attention of the peasant. After a moment’s search he found, although he did not recognise, the cause of his dog’s terror; and, casting it upon his loaded cart, bore it to the same church whereat but a few hours before the living sovereign had determined to glut his fierce eyes with the death-pangs of his fellow-man. Strange are the ways of Providence. That destined man lived after his intended torturer! And, stranger yet, freed from his bonds, that he might minister unto the slaughter of that self-same torturer, he found his purpose frustrate—frustrate, as it were, by its accomplishment—his meditated deed anticipated, his desperate revenge forestalled.—“Verily, vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord, “and I will repay it.”

THE SAXON PRELATE’S DOOM.

“Die, prophet, in thy speech!”—King Henry VI.

The mightiest monarch of his age, sovereign of England—as his proud grandsire made his vaunt of yore—by right of the sword’s edge; grand duke of Normandy, by privilege of blood; and liege lord of Guienne, by marriage with its powerful heritress; the bravest, the most fortunate, the wisest of the kings of Europe, Henry the Second, held his court for the high festival of Christmas in the fair halls of Rouen. The banquet was already over, the revelry was at the highest, still, the gothic arches ringing with the merriment, the laughter, and the blended cadences of many a minstrel’s harp, of many a trouvere’s lay. Suddenly, while the din was at the loudest, piercing through all the mingled sounds, a single trumpet’s note was heard—wailing, prolonged, and ominous—as was the chill it struck to every heart in that bright company—of coming evil. During the pause which followed, for at that thrilling blast the mirth and song were hushed as if by instinct—a bustle might be heard below, the tread of many feet, and the discordant tones of many eager voices. The great doors were thrown open, not with the stately ceremonial that befitted the occasion, but with a noisy and irreverent haste that proved the urgency or the importance of the new-comers. Then, to the wonder of all present, there entered—not in their wonted pomp, with stole, and mitre, crozier dalmatique and ring, but in soiled vestments, travel-worn and dusty, with features haggard from fatigue, and sharpened by anxiety and fear—six of the noblest of old England’s prelates, led by the second dignitary of the church, York’s proud archbishop. Hurrying forward to the dais, where Henry sat in state, they halted all together at the step, and in one voice exclaimed:—

“Fair sir, and king, not for ourselves alone, but for the holy church, for your own realm and crown, for your own honor, your own safety, we beseech you—”

“What means this, holy fathers?” Henry cried, hastily, and half alarmed, as it would seem, by the excited language of the churchmen. “What means this vehemence—or who hath dared to wrong ye, and for why?”

“For that, at your behest, we dared to crown the youthful king, your son! Such, sire, is our offence. Our wrong—that we your English prelates are excommunicated, and—”

“Now, by the eyes of God!”[A] exclaimed the king, breaking abruptly in upon the bishop’s speech, his noble features crimsoned by the indignant blood, that rushed to them at mention of this foul affront, “Now, by the eyes of God, if all who have consented to his consecration be accursed, then am I so myself!”

[A] For this strange but authentic oath, see Thierry’s “Norman Conquest,” whence most of these details are taken.

“Nor is this all,” replied the prelate, well pleased to note the growing anger of the sovereign, “nor is this all the wrong. The same bold man, who did you this affront, an’ you look not the sharper, will light a blaze in England that shall consume right speedily your royal crown itself. He marches to and fro, with troops of horse, and bands of armed footmen, stirring the Saxon churls against the gentle blood of Normandy, nay, seeking even to gain entrance into your garrisons and castles.”

“Do I hear right,” shouted the fiery prince, striking his hand upon the board with such fierce vehemence, that every flask and tankard rang. “Do I hear right—and is it but a dream that I am England’s king? What! one base vassal; one who has fattened on the bread of our ill-wasted charity; one beggar, who first came to our court with all his fortunes on his back, bestriding a galled, spavined jade; one wretch like this insult at once a line of sovereign princes—trample a realm beneath his feet—and go unpunished and scathe-free? What! was there not one man, one only, of the hordes of recreant knights who feast around my board, to free his monarch from a shaveling who dishonors and defies him? Break off the feast—break off, I say! no time for revelry and wine!—To council, lords, to council! We must indeed bestir us, an’ we would hold the crown our grandsire won, not for himself alone, nor for his race—who, by God’s grace, will wear it, spite priest, cardinal, or pope—but for the gentle blood of Norman chivalry!”

Rising at once, he led the way to council; and, with wild haste and disarray, the company dispersed. But as the hall grew thin, four knights remained behind in close converse—so deep, so earnest, that they were left alone, when all the rest, ladies, and cavaliers, and chamberlains, and pages, had departed, and the vast gallery, which had so lately rung with every various sound of human merriment, was silent as the grave. There was a strange and almost awful contrast between the strong and stately forms of the four barons—their deep and energetic whispers, the fiery glances of their angry eyes, the fierce gesticulations of their muscular and well-turned limbs—and the deserted splendors of that royal hall: the vacant throne, the long array of seats; the gorgeous plate, flagons, and cups, and urns of gold and marquetry; the lights still glowing, as it were, in mockery over the empty board; the wine unpoured—the harps untouched and voiceless.

“Be it so—be it so!” exclaimed, in louder tones than they had used before, one, the most striking in appearance of the group; “be it so—let us swear! Richard le Breton, Hugues de Morville, William de Traci—even as I shall swear, swear ye—by God, and by our trusty blades, and by our Norman honor!”

“We will,” cried all, “we swear! we be not recreant, nor craven, as our good swords shall witness!”

“Thus, then,” continued the first speaker, drawing his sword, and grasping a huge cup of wine, “thus, then, I, Reginald Fitz-Urse, for mine own part, and for each one and all of ye, do swear—so help me God and our good Lady!—never to touch the winecup; never to bend before the shrine; never to close the eyes in sleep; never to quit the saddle, or unbelt the brand; never to pray to God; never to hope for heaven—until the wrong we reck of be redressed!—until the insult done our sovereign be avenged!—until the life-blood of his foeman stream on our battle-swords as streams this nobler wine!”

Then, with the words—for not he only, but each one of the four, holding their long, two-handed blades extended at arms’ length before them with all their points in contact, and in the other hand grasping the brimming goblets, had gone through, in resolute, unflinching tones, the fearful adjuration—then, with the words, they all dashed down the generous liquor on the weapons, watched it in silence as it crimsoned them from point to hilt, and sheathing them, all purple as they were, hurried, not from the hall alone, but from the palace; mounted their fleetest war-steeds, and, that same night, rode furiously away toward the nearest sea.

The fifth day was in progress after King Henry’s banquet, when, at the hour of noon, four Norman knights, followed by fifty men-at-arms, sheathed cap-à-pie in mail, arrayed beneath the banner of Fitz-Urse, entered the town of Canterbury at a hard gallop. The leaders of the band alone were clad in garbs of peace, bearing no weapon but their swords, and singularly ill-accoutred for horse-exercise, being attired in doublets of rich velvet, with hose of cloth of gold or silver, as if in preparation for some high and festive meeting. Yet was it evident that they had ridden miles in that unsuitable apparel; for the rich velvet was besmeared with many a miry stain, and the hose dashed with blood, which had been drawn profusely by the long rowels of their gilded spurs.

Halting in serried order at the market-cross, the leader of the party summoned, by an equerry, the city mayor to hear the orders of the king; and, when that officer appeared—having commanded him, “on his allegiance, to call his men to arms, and take such steps as should assuredly prevent the burghers of the town from raising any tumult on that day, whate’er might come to pass”—with his three friends, and twelve, the stoutest, of the men-at-arms who followed in their train, rode instantly away to the archbishop’s palace.

The object of their deadly hatred, when the four knights arrived, was in the act of finishing his noonday meal; and all his household were assembled at the board, from which he had just risen. There was no sign of trepidation, no symptom of surprise, much less of fear or consternation, in his aspect or demeanor, as one by one his visitors stalked unannounced into the long apartment. Yet was there much indeed in the strange guise wherein they came—in their disordered habits, in the excitement visibly depicted on their brows, haggard from want of sleep, pale with fatigue and labor, yet resolute, and stern, and terse, with the resolve of their dread purpose—to have astonished, nay, dismayed the spirit of one less resolute in the defence of what he deemed the right than Thomas à-Becket. Silently, one by one, they entered, the leader halting opposite the prelate, with his arms folded on his breast, and his three comrades forming as it were in a half-circle around him. Not one of them removed the bonnet from his brow, or bowed the knee on entering, or offered any greeting, whether to the temporal rank or spiritual station of their intended victim; but gazed on him with a fixed sternness that was far more awful than any show of violence. This dumb-show, although it needs must occupy some time in the description, had lasted perhaps a minute, when the bold prelate broke the silence, addressing them in clear, harmonious tones, and with an air as dignified and placid as though he had been bidding them to share the friendly banquet.

“Fair sirs,” he said, “I bid ye welcome; although, in truth, the manner of your entrance be not in all things courteous, nor savoring of that respect which should be paid, if not to me—who am but as a worm, the meanest of His creatures—yet to the dignity whereunto HE has raised me! Natheless, I bid ye hail! Please ye disclose the business whereon ye now have come to me.”

Still not a word did they reply—but seated themselves all unbidden, still glaring on him with fixed eyes, ominous of evil. At length Fitz-Urse addressed him, speaking abruptly, and in tones so hoarse and hollow—the natural consequence of his extreme exertions, four days and nights having been actually passed in almost constant travel—that his most intimate associate could not have recognised his voice.

“We come,” he said, “on the king’s part, to take—and that, too, on the instant—some order with your late proceedings: to have the excommunicated presently absolved; to see the bishops, who have been suspended, forthwith re-established; and to hear what you may now allege concerning your design against your sovereign lord and master!”

“It is not I,” Thomas replied, still calmer and more dignified than the fierce spirits who addressed him, “it is not I who have done this. It is the sovereign pontiff, God’s own supreme vicegerent, who, of his own will, excommunicated my late brother of York. He alone, therefore, can absolve him. I have no power in’t. As for the rest, let them but make submission, and straightway shall they be restored!”

“From whom, then,” Reginald Fitz-Urse demanded, “from whom, then, hold you your archbishopric—from England’s king, or from the pope of Rome?”

“My spiritual rights, of God and of the pope—my temporal privileges, of the king,” was the prompt answer.

“The king, then, gave you not?” the baron asked again. “Beware, I warn you, beware how you do answer me: the king, I say, gave you not ALL that you enjoy?”

“He did not,” answered Becket, without moving a single muscle of his composed but haughty countenance; although, at the reply, the fiery temper of his unwelcome visiters was made more clearly manifest, as a deep, angry murmur burst simultaneously from all their lips, and they wrung with fierce gestures their gloved hands, as if it was with difficulty they restrained themselves from violence more open in its character.

“Ye threaten me, I well believe,” exclaimed the stately prelate, “but it is vain and useless. Were all the swords in England brandished against my head, ye should gain nothing, nothing from me.”

“We will do more than threaten,” answered Fitz-Urse; and rising from his seat, rushed out of the apartment, followed by his companions, crying aloud, even before they crossed the threshold, “To-arms, Normans, to-arms!”

The doors were closed behind them, and barred instantly with the most jealous care; while Reginald and the conspirators, meeting the guard whom they had left without, armed themselves cap-à-pie in the courtyard before the palace-gates, as if for instant battle, with helmet, hood-of-mail, and hauberk; their triangular steel-plated shields hanging about their necks; their legs protected by mail-hose, fitting as closely and as flexible as modern stockings; their huge two-handed swords belted about them in such fashion, that their cross-guarded hilts came over their left shoulders, while their points clanked against the spur on their right heels.

There was no pause; for, snatching instantly an axe from the hands of a carpenter who chanced to be at work in the courtyard, Fitz-Urse assailed the gate. Strong as it was, it creaked and groaned beneath the furious blows, and the long corridors within rolled back the threatening sounds in deep and hollow echoes. Within the palace all was confusion and dismay, and every face was pale and ghastly, save his alone who had the cause for fear.

“Fly! fly, my lord!” cried the assistants, breathless with terror; “fly to the altar! There, there, at least, shall you be safe!”

“Never!” the prelate answered, his bold spirit as self-possessed and calm in that most imminent peril as though he had been bred from childhood upward to the performance of high deeds and daring; “never will I turn back from that which I have set myself to do! God, if it be his pleasure, shall preserve me from yet greater straits than these; and if it be not so his will to do, then God forbid I should gainsay him!” Nor would he stir one foot, until the vesper-bell, rung by the sacristan, unwitting of his superior’s peril, began to chime from the near walls of the cathedral. “It is the hour,” he quietly observed, on hearing the sweet cadence of the bells, “it is the hour of prayer; my duty calls me. Give me my vestments—carry my cross before me!” And, attiring himself as though nothing of unusual moment were impending, he traversed, with steps even slower than his wont, the cloister leading from his dwelling to the abbey; though, ere he left the palace, the din of blows had ceased, and the fierce shout of the assailants gave token that the door had yielded. Chiding his servitors for their excess of terror, as unworthy of their sacred calling, he still walked slowly onward, while the steel-shod footsteps of his foemen might be heard clashing on the pavement but a few yards behind him. He reached the door of the cathedral; entered without casting so much as one last glance behind; passed up the nave, and going up the steps of the high altar, separated from the body of the church by a slight rail of ornamental iron-work, commenced the service of the day.

Scarcely had he uttered the first words, when Reginald, sheathed, as has been heretofore described, in complete panoply, with his two-handed sword already naked, rushed into the cathedral.

“To me!” he cried, with a fierce shout, “to me, valiant and loyal servants of the king!” while close behind him followed, in like array, with flashing eyes, and inflamed visages, and brandished weapons, his sworn confederates; and without the gates their banded men-at-arms stood in a serried circle, defying all assistance from the town. Again his servitors entreated Becket to preserve himself, by seeking refuge in the dark crypts beneath the chancel, where he might rest concealed in absolute security until the burghers should be aroused to rescue; or by ascending the intricate and winding turret-stairs to the cathedral-roof, whence he might summon aid ere he could possibly be overtaken: but it was all in vain. Confiding in the goodness of his cause, perhaps expecting supernatural assistance, the daring prelate silenced their prayers by a contemptuous refusal; and even left the altar, to prevent one of the monks from closing the weak, trellised gates, which marked the holiest precincts. Meanwhile, unmoved in their fell purpose, the Normans were at hand.

“Where is the traitor?” cried Fitz-Urse, but not a voice replied; and the unwonted tones were vocal yet beneath the vaulted roof in lingering echoes, when he again exclaimed, “Where—where is the archbishop?”

“Here stands he,” Becket answered, drawing his lofty person up to its full height, and spreading his arms forth with a gesture of perfect majesty. “Here stands he, but no traitor! What do ye in God’s house in such apparel? what is your will, or purpose?”

“That you die, presently!” was the reply, enforced by the uplifted weapon and determined features of the savage baron.

“I am resigned,” returned the prelate, the calm patience of the martyr blent with a noble daring that would have well become a warrior on the battle-field. “Ye shall not see me fly before your swords! But in the name of the all-powerful God, whom ye dishonor and defy, I do command ye injure no one of my companions, layman or priest.” His words were interrupted by a heavy blow across his shoulders, delivered, with the flat of his huge sword, by Reginald.

“Fly!” he said, “fly, priest, or you are dead!” But the archbishop moved not a step, spoke not a syllable. “Drag him hence, comrades,” continued the last speaker; “away with him beyond the threshold—we may not smite him here!”

“Here—here, or nowhere!” the archbishop answered—“here, in the very presence, and before the altar, and the image, of our God!” And, as he spoke, he seized the railings with both hands, set his feet firm, and, being of a muscular and powerful frame, sustained by daring courage and highly-wrought excitement, he succeeded in maintaining his position, in spite of the united efforts of the four Norman warriors.

Meanwhile, all the companions of the prelate had escaped, by ways known only to themselves—all but one faithful follower—the Saxon, Edward Grim, his cross-bearer since his first elevation to the see of Canterbury—the same who had so boldly spoken out after the conference of Clarendon; and the conspirators began to be alarmed lest, if their purpose were not speedily accomplished, the rescue should arrive and frustrate their intentions. Their blood, moreover, was heated by the struggle; and their fierce natures, never much restrained by awe or reverence for things divine, burst through all bonds.

“Here, then, if it so please you!—here!” cried William de Traci, striking, as he spoke, a blow with the full sweep of both his arms wielding his ponderous weapon, at the defenceless victim’s head. But the bold Saxon suddenly stretched out his arm to guard his beloved master. Down came the mighty blow—but not for that did the true servitor withdraw his naked limb—down came the mighty blow, and lopped the unflinching hand, sheer as the woodman’s bill severs the hazel-twig!

Still, Becket stood unwounded. “Strike! strike, you others!” shouted the Norman, as he grasped the maimed but still-resolved protector of his master, and held him off by the exertion of his entire strength; “strike! strike!” And they did strike, fearlessly—mercilessly! Hugues de Morville smote him with a mace upon his temples, and he fell, stunned, but still alive, face downward on the pavement; and Reginald Fitz-Urse, whirling his espaldron around his head, brought it down with such reckless fury upon the naked skull, that the point clove right through it, down to the marble pavement, on which it yet alighted with a degree of violence so undiminished, that it was shivered to the very hilt, and the strong arms of him who wielded it were jarred up to the shoulders, as if by an electric shock. One of the men-at-arms, who had rushed in during the struggle, spurned with his foot the motionless and senseless clay.

“Thus perish all,” he said, “all foemen of the king, and of the gentle Normans—all who dare, henceforth, to arouse the base and slavish Saxons against their free and princely masters!”

Thus fell the Saxon prelate, ruthlessly butchered at the very shrine of God—not so much that he was a Romish priest, and an upholder of the rights of Rome, as that he was a Saxon-man, a vindicator of the liberties of England! Yet, though the pope absolved that king whose cruel will had, in truth, done the deed, yet was that deed not unavenged. If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed—if these things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder—then, of a surety, that murder was avenged!

THE FATE OF THE BLANCHE NAVIRE.[B]

“The bark that held a prince went down,
The sweeping waves rolled on,
And what was England’s glorious crown
To him who wept a son?”—Hemans.

The earliest dawning of a December’s morning had not yet tinged the eastern sky, when in the port of Barfleur the stirring bustle which precedes an embarkation broke loudly on the ear of all who were on foot at that unseemly hour; nor were these few in number, for all the population of that town—far more considerable than it appears at present, when mightier cities, some rendered so by the gigantic march of commerce, some by the puissant and creative hands of military despotism, have sprung on every side into existence, and overshadowed its antique renown—were hastening through the narrow streets toward the water’s edge. The many-paned, stone-latticed casements gleamed with a thousand lights, casting a cheerful glare over the motley multitude which swarmed before them with all the frolic merriment of an unwonted holyday. All classes and all ranks might there be seen, of every age and sex: barons and lords of high degree, clad in the rich attires of a half-barbarous yet gorgeous age, mounted on splendid horses, and attended by long retinues of armed and liveried vassals; ladies and demoiselles of birth and beauty curbing their Spanish jennets, and casting sidelong looks of love toward the favored knights curveting in the conscious state of proud humility beside their bridle-reins—as clearly visible as at high noon, in the broad radiance of the torches that accompanied their progress; while all around them and behind crowded the humbler throng of mariners and artisans, with here a solemn burgher, proud in his velvet pourpoint and his golden chain, and there a barefoot monk, far prouder in his frock of sackcloth and his knotted girdle; and ever and anon a group of merry maidens, with their high Norman caps and short jupons of parti-colored serge, crowding around the jongleur[C] with his ape and gittern—or pressing on to hear the loftier professor[D] of the gai-science, girded with sword and dagger in token of his gentle blood, and followed by his boy bearing the harp, which then had power to win, not with the low-born and vulgar throng, but with the noble and the fair, high favor for its wandering master!

[B] The title given by the chroniclers to this ill-fated vessel is “The Blanche Nef,” the latter word being the old French for the modern term, which we have substituted. Singularly enough, the ancient word survives as the name of a piece of antique gold plate modelled like a ship, in which the napkins of the royal table are served in the high ceremonials of the court of France.

[C] The juggler of the middle ages, who, like the street-musicians of the present time, were mostly Savoyards by birth, generally carried with them the ape or marmoset, even to this day their companion, and added to their feats of strength and sleight of hand both minstrelsey and music.

[D] The gai-science, so early as the commencement of the century of which we write, had its degrees, its colleges, and its professors, who, though itinerants, and dependent for their subsistence on their instrument and voice, considered war no less their trade than song, esteeming themselves, and moreover admitted by others to be, in the fullest sense, gentlemen.

The courts and thoroughfares of the old town—for it was old even then—by slow degrees grew silent and deserted; and, ere the sun was well above the wave, the multitudes which thronged them had rolled downward to the port, and stood in dense ranks gazing on its calm and sheltered basin. Glorious indeed and lovely was the sight when the first yellow rays streamed over the still waters: they waked the distant summits of the hills behind the town into a sudden life; they kissed the crest of every curling ripple that dimpled with its “innumerable laughter” the azure face of ocean; but, more than all, they seemed to dwell upon two noble barks, which lay, each riding at a single anchor, at a short arrow-shot from the white sands that girt as with a silver frame the liquid mirror of the harbor.

Fashioned by the best skill of that early day, and ornamented with the most lavish splendor, though widely different from the floating castles of modern times, those vessels—the picked cruisers of the British navy—were in their structure no less picturesque than in their decoration royally magnificent. Long, low, and buoyant, they floated lightly as birds upon the surface; their open waists already bristling with the long oars by which, after the fashion of the Roman galley, they were propelled in serene weather; their masts clothed with the wings which seemed in vain to woo the breeze; their elevated sterns and forecastles blazing with tapestries of gold and silver, reflected in long lines of light, scarcely broken by the dancing ripples. The larger of the two bore on her foresail, blazoned in gorgeous heraldry, the arms of England. The second, somewhat smaller, but if anything more elegant in her proportions, and fitted with a nicer taste, although less sumptuous, was painted white from stem to stern; her oars, fifty in number, of the same spotless hue, were barred upon the blades with silver; and on her foresail of white canvass, overlaid with figured damask, were wrought, among a glittering profusion of devices, in characters of silver, the words “La Blanche Navire.” Beyond them, in the outer bay, a dozen ships or more were dimly seen through the mist-wreaths which the wintry sun was gradually scattering—their canvass hanging in festoons from their long yard-arms, and their decks crowded, not with mariners alone, but with the steel-clad forms of men-at-arms and archers, the gallant train of the third Norman who had swayed the destinies of England.

The youngest son of the sagacious Conqueror, after the death of the “Red king,” by a rare union of audacity and cunning, Henry, had seized the sceptre of the fair island—the hereditary right of his romantic, generous, and gallant brother, who with the feudatories of his Norman duchy was waging war upon the Saracen, neglectful of his own and of his subjects’ interests alike, beneath the burning sun of Syria. Already firmly seated in his usurped dominion ere Robert returned homeward, nor yet contented with his ill-gained supremacy, he had wrung from the bold crusader, partly by force but more by fraud, his continental realms; and adding cruelty which scarcely can be conceived to violence and fraud, deprived him of Heaven’s choicest blessing, sight, and cast him—of late the most renowned and glorious knight in Christendom—a miserable, eyeless captive into the towers of Cardiff, his dungeon while he lived, and after death his tomb!

No retributive justice had discharged its thunders upon the guilty one; no gloom sat on his smooth and lordly brow, no thorns had lurked beneath the circle of Henry’s blood-bought diadem. Fortune had smiled on every effort; had granted every wish, however wild; had sanctioned every enterprise, however dubious or desperate: he never had known sorrow; and from his restless, energetic soul, remorse and penitence were banished by the incessant turmoil of ambition and the perpetual excitement of success. And now his dearest wish had been accomplished—the most especial aim and object of his life perfected with such absolute security, that his insatiate soul was satisfied. Absolute lord of England, and undisputed ruler of the fair Cotentin, he had of late disarmed the league which for a time had threatened his security; detaching from the cause of France the powerful count of Anjou, whose daughter—the most lovely lady and the most splendid heiress of the time—he had seen wedded to his first-born and his favorite, William. The previous day he had beheld the haughty barons tender the kiss of homage and swear eternal loyalty to the young heir of England, Normandy, and Anjou; the previous night he had sat glad and glorious at the festive board, encompassed by all that was fair, and noble, and high-born, in the great realms he governed, and among all that proud and graceful circle his eye had looked on none so brave and beautiful as that young, guiltless pair for whom he had imbrued, not his hands only, but his very soul, in blood! He sat on the high dais, beneath the gilded canopy; and as he quaffed the health of those who had alone a kindly tenure of his cold and callous heart, a noble knight approached with bended knee, and placing in his hand a mark of gold—“Fair sir,” he said, “I, a good knight and loyal—Thomas Fitz-Stephen—claim of your grace a boon. My father, Stephen Fitz-Evrard, served faithfully and well, as long as he did live, your father William—served him by sea, and steered the ship with his own hand which bore him to that glorious crown which he right nobly won at Hastings. I pray you, then, fair king, that you do sell to me, for this gold mark, the fief I crave of you: that, as Fitz-Evrard served the first King William, so may Fitz-Stephen serve the first King Henry. I have right nobly fitted—ay, on mine honor, as beseems a mighty monarch—here, in the bay of Barfleur, ‘the Blanche Navire.’ Receive it at my hands, great sir, and suffer me to steer you homeward; and so may the blessed Virgin and her Son send us the winds which we would have!”

“Good knight and loyal,” answered the prince, as he received the proffered coin, “grieved am I, of a truth, and sorrowful, that altogether I may not confer on you the fief which of good right you claim: for lo! the bark is chosen—nay, more, apparelled for my service—which must to-morrow, by Heaven’s mercy, bear me to that land whither your sire so fortunately guided mine. But since it may not be that I may sail myself, as would I could do so, in your good bark, to your true care will I intrust what I hold dearer than my very soul—my sons, my daughters—mine and my country’s hope; and as your father steered the FIRST, so shall you steer the THIRD King William, that shall be, to the white cliffs of England!”

“Well said, my liege!” cried Foulke, the count of Anjou, a noble-looking baron of tall and stately presence, although far past the noon of manhood, the father of the lovely bride; “to better mariner or braver ship than stout Fitz-Stephen and La Blanche Navire, was never freight intrusted! Quaff we a full carouse to their blithe voyage! How sayest thou, daughter mine,” he added, turning to the blushing girl, who sat attired in all the pomp of newly-wedded royalty beside her youthful lover—“how sayest thou? wouldst desire a trustier pilot, or a fleeter galley?”

“Why,” she replied, with a smile half-sweet, half-sorrowful, while a bright tear-drop glittered in her eye—“why should I seek for fleetness, when that same speed will but the sooner bear me from the sight of our fair France, and of thee, too, my father?”

“Dost thou, then, rue thy choice?” whispered the ardent voice of William in her ear; “and wouldst thou tarry here, when fate and duty summon me hence for England?”

Her full blue eye met his, radiant with true affection, and her slight fingers trembled in the clasp of her young husband with a quick thrill of agitation, and her lips parted, but the words were heard by none save him to whom they were addressed; for, with the clang of beakers, and the loud swell of joyous music, and the glad merriment of all the courtly revellers, the toast of the bride’s father passed round the gleaming board: “A blithe and prosperous voyage—speed to the Blanche Navire, and joy to all who sail in her!”

Thus closed the festive evening, and thus the seal of destiny was set upon a hundred youthful brows, foredoomed, alas! to an untimely grave beneath the ruthless billows.

The wintry day wore onward; and, wintry though it was, save for a touch of keenness in the frosty air, and for the leafless aspect of the country, it might have passed for a more lightsome season; the sky was pure and cloudless as were the prospects and the hopes of the gay throng who now embarked secure and confident beneath its favorable omens. The sun shone gayly as in the height of summer, and the blue waves lay sleeping in its lustre as quietly as though they ne’er had howled despair into the ears of drowning wretches! There was no thought of peril or of fear—how should there be? The ships were trustworthy; the seamen skilful, numerous, and hardy; the breezes fair, though faint; the voyage brief; the time propitious.

The day wore onward; and it was high noon before the happy king—his every wish accomplished, secure as he conceived himself, and firm in the fruition of his blood-bought majesty—rowed with his glittering train on board the royal galley. Loud pealed the cheering clamors of his Norman subjects, bidding their sovereign hail; but louder yet they pealed, when, with its freight of ladies, the second barge shot forth—William and his fair sister, and yet fairer bride, and all the loveliest of the dames that graced the broad Cotentin.

Not yet, however, were the anchors weighed—not yet were the sails sheeted home; for on the deck of the king’s vessel, beneath an awning of pure cloth-of-gold, a gorgeous board was spread. Not in the regal hall of Westminster could more of luxury have been brought together than was displayed upon that galley’s poop. Spread with the softest ermine—meet carpet for the gentle feet that trod it—cushioned with seats of velvet, steaming with perfumes the most costly, it was a scene resembling more some fairy palace than the wave-beaten fabric that had braved many a gale, and borne the flag of England through many a storm in triumph. And there they sat and feasted, and the red wine-cup circled freely, and the song went round: their hearts were high and happy, and they forgot the lapse of hours; and still the reveller’s shout was frequent on the breeze, and still the melody of female tones, blent with the clang of instrumental music, rang in the ears of those who loitered on the shore, after the sun had bathed his lower limb in the serene and peaceful waters.

Then, as it were, awaking from their trance of luxury, the banqueters broke off. Skiff after skiff turned shoreward, till none remained on board the royal ship except the monarch and his train, and that loved son with his bright consort, whom, parting from them there, he never was to look upon again! The courses were unfurled, topsails were spread, and pennants floated seaward; and, as the good ship gathered way, the father bade adieu—adieu, as he believed it, but for one little night—to all he loved on earth; and their barge, manned by a score of powerful and active rowers, wafted the bridal party to the Blanche Navire, which, as her precious freight drew nigh, luffed gracefully and swiftly up to meet them, as though she were a thing of life, conscious and proud of the high honor she enjoyed in carrying the united hopes of Normandy and England.

Delay—there was yet more delay! The night had settled down upon the deep before the harbor of Barfleur was fairly left behind; and yet so lovely was the night—with the moon, near her full, soaring superbly through the cloudless sky, and myriads on myriads of clear stars weaving their mystic dance around her—that the young voyagers walked to and fro the deck, rejoicing in the happy chance that had secured to them so fair time for their excursion: and William sat aloof, with his sweet wife beside him, indulging in those bright anticipations, those golden dreams of happiness, which indeed make futurity a paradise to those who have not learned, by the sad schoolings of experience, that human life is but another name for human sorrow.

Fairer—the breeze blew fairer; and every sail was set and drawing, and the light ripples burst with a gurgling sound like laughter about the snow-white stem; and, still to waft them the more swiftly to their home, fifty long oars, pulled well and strongly by as many nervous arms, glanced in the liquid swell. The bubbles on the surface were scarcely seen as they flashed by, so rapid was their course; and a long wake of boiling foam glanced in the moonshine, till it was lost to sight in the far distance. The port was far behind them; and the king’s ship, seen faintly on the glimmering horizon, loomed like a pile of vapor far on their starboard bow. And still the music rang upon the favorable wind, and still the rowers sang amid their toil, and still the captain sent the deep bowl round. The helmsman dozed upon the tiller—the watch upon the forecastle had long since stretched themselves upon the deck—in the deep slumbers of exhaustion and satiety.

“Give way! my merry men, give way!” such was the jovial captain’s cry; “pull for the pride of Normandy—pull for your country’s fame, men of the fair Cotentin. What! will ye let yon island-lubbers outstrip ye in the race? More way! more way!”

And with unrivalled speed the Blanche Navire sped on. A long black line stretches before her bow, dotting the silvery surface with ragged and fantastic shades; but not one eye has marked it! On she goes, swifter yet and swifter, and still the fatal shout is ringing from her decks: “Give way, men of Cotentin! give more way!” Now they are close upon it, and now the dashing of the surf about the broken ledges—for that black line is the dread Raz de Gatteville, the most tremendous reef of all that bar the iron coast of Normandy! The hoarse and hollow roar must reach the ears even of those who sleep. But no! the clangor of the exulting trumpets, and the deep booming of the Norman nakir, and that ill-omened shout, “Give way—yet more—more way!” has drowned even the all-pervading roar of the wild breakers. On, on she goes, fleet as the gazehound darting upon its antlered prey; and now her bows are bathed by the upflashing spray; and now—hark to that hollow shock, that long and grinding crash!—hark to that wild and agonizing yell sent upward by two hundred youthful voices, up to the glorious stars that smiled as if in mockery of their ruin. There rang the voice of the strong, fearless men; the knight who had spurred oft his destrier amid the shivering of lances and the rending clash of blades, without a thought unless of high excitement and fierce joy; the mariner who, undismayed, had reefed his sail, and steered his bark aright, amid the wildest storm that ever lashed the sea to fury—now utterly unnerved and paralyzed by the appalling change from mirth and revelry to imminent and instant death.

So furious was the rate at which the galley was propelled, that, when she struck upon the sharp and jagged rocks, her prow was utterly stove inward, and the strong tide rushed in, foaming and roaring like a mill-stream! Ten seconds’ space she hung upon the perilous ledge, while the waves made a clear breach over her, sweeping not only every living being, but every fixture—spars, bulwarks, shrouds, and the tall masts themselves—from her devoted decks. At the first shock, with the instinctive readiness that characterizes, in whatever peril, the true mariner, Fitz-Stephen, rallying to his aid a dozen of the bravest of his men, had cleared away and launched a boat; and, even as the fated bark went down, bodily sucked into the whirling surf, had seized the prince and dragged him with a stalwart arm into the little skiff, which had put off at once, to shun the drowning hundreds who must have crowded in and sunk her on the instant.

“Pull back!—God’s death!—pull back!” cried the impetuous youth, as he looked round and saw that he alone of all his race was there; “pull back, ye dastard slaves, or by the Lord and Maker of us all, though ye escape the waves, ye ’scape not my revenge!”—and, as he spoke, he whirled his weapon from the scabbard and pressed the point so closely to Fitz-Stephen’s throat, that its keen temper razed the skin; and, terrified by his fierce menaces, and yet more by the resolute expression that glanced forth from his whole countenance, they turned her head once more toward the reef, and shot into the vortex, agitated yet and boiling, wherein the hapless galley had been swallowed. A female head, with long, fair hair, rose close beside the shallop’s stern, above the turbulent foam. William bent forward: he had already clutched those golden tresses—a moment, and she would have been enfolded in his arms—another head rose suddenly! another—and another—and another! Twenty strong hands grappled the gunwale of the skiff with the tenacity of desperation. There was a struggle, a loud shout, a heavy plunge, and the last remnant of the Blanche Navire went down, actually dragged from beneath the few survivors by the despairing hands of those whom she could not have saved or succored had she been of ten times her burden.

All, all went down! There was a long and awful pause, and then a slight splash broke the silence, a faint and gurgling sigh, and a strong swimmer rose and shook the brine from his dark locks; and lo, he was alone upon the deep! Something he saw at a brief distance, distinct and dark, floating upon the surface, and with a vigorous stroke he neared it—a fragment of a broken spar. Hope quickened at his heart, and love of life, almost forgotten in the immediate agony and terror, returned in all its natural strength. He seized a rope, and by its aid reared himself out of the abyss; and now he sat, securely as he deemed it, upon a floating fragment on which, one little hour before, he would not have embarked for all the wealth of India. Scarcely had he reached his temporary place of safety, before another of the sufferers swam feebly up and joined him, and then a third, the last of the survivors. The first who reached the spar—it was no other than Fitz-Stephen—had perused with an anxiety the most sickening and painful the faces of the new-comers: he knew them, but they were not the features he would have given his own life to see in safety—Berault, a butcher of Rouen, and Godfrey, a renowned and gallant youth, the son of Gilbert, count de L’Aigle. “The prince—where is the prince?” Fitz-Stephen cried to each, as he arrived; “hast thou not seen the prince?” And each, in turn, replied: “He never rose again—he, nor his brothers, nor his sister, nor his bride, nor one of all their company!”—“Wo be to me!” Fitz-Stephen cried, and letting go his hold, deliberately sank into the whirling waters; and, though a strong man and an active swimmer, chose to die with the victims whom his rashness had destroyed, rather than meet the indignation of their bereaved father, and bear the agonies of his own lifelong remorse.

Three days elapsed before the tidings reached King Henry, who in the fearful misery of hope deferred had lingered on the beach, trusting to hear that, from some unknown cause, the galley of his son might have put back to Barfleur. On the third day, Berault, the sole survivor of that night of misery, was brought in by a fishing-boat which had preserved him; and, when he had concluded his narration, Robert of Normandy had been revenged, although his wrongs had been a hundred-fold more flagrant than they were. Henry, though he lived years, NEVER SMILED AGAIN!

THE SAXON’S BRIDAL.

There are times in England when the merry month of May is not, as it would now appear, merely a poet’s fiction; when the air is indeed mild and balmy, and the more conspicuously so, that it succeeds the furious gusts and driving hailstorms of the boisterous March, the fickle sunshine and capricious rains of April. One of these singular epochs in the history of weather it was in which events occurred, which remained unforgotten for many a day, in the green wilds of Charnwood forest.

If was upon a soft, sweet morning, toward the latter end of the month, and surely nothing more delicious could have been conceived by the fancy of the poet. The low west wind was fanning itself among the tender leaves of the new-budded trees, and stealing over the deep meadows, all redolent with dewy wild flowers, waving them with a gentle motion, and borrowing a thousand perfumes from their bosoms. The hedgerows were as white with the dense blossoms of the hawthorn as though they had been powdered over by an untimely snowstorm; while everywhere along the wooded banks the saffron primrose and its sweet sister of the spring, the violet, were sunning their unnumbered blossoms in the calm warmth of the vernal sunshine. The heavens, of a pure, transparent blue, were laughing with a genial lustre, not flooded by the dazzling glare of midsummer, but pouring over all beneath their influence a lovely, gentle light, in perfect keeping with the style of the young scenery; and all the air was literally vocal with the notes of innumerable birds, from the proud lark, “rejoicing at heaven’s gate,” to the thrush and blackbird, trilling their full, rich chants from every dingle, and the poor linnet, piping on the spray. Nothing—no, nothing—can be imagined that so delights the fancy with sweet visions, that so enthrals the senses, shedding its influences even upon the secret heart, as a soft, old-fashioned May morning. Apart from the mere beauties of the scenery—from the mere enjoyment of the bright skies, the dewy perfumes that float on every breeze, the mild, unscorching warmth—apart from all these, there is something of a deeper and a higher nature in the thoughts called forth by the spirit of the time; a looking forward of the soul to fairer things to come; an excitement of a quiet hope within, not very definite, perhaps, nor easily explained, but one which almost every man has felt, and contrasted with the languid and pallid satiety produced by the full heat of summer, and yet more with the sober and reflective sadness that steals upon the mind as we survey the russet hues and the sere leaves of autumn. It is as if the newness, the fresh youth of the season, gave birth to a corresponding youth of the soul. Such are the sentiments which many men feel now-a-days, besides the painter, and the poet, and the soul-rapt enthusiast of nature: but those were iron days of which we write, and men spared little time in thought from action or from strife, nor often paused to note their own sensations, much less to ponder on their origin or to investigate their causes.

The morning was such as we have described—the scene a spot of singular beauty within the precincts of the then-royal forest of Charnwood, in Leicestershire. A deep but narrow stream wound in a hundred graceful turns through the rich meadow-land that formed the bottom of a small, sloping vale, which had been partially reclaimed, even at that day, from the waste; though many a willow-bush fringing its margin, and many a waving ash, fluttering its delicate tresses in the air, betrayed the woodland origin of the soft meadow. A narrow road swept down the hill, with a course little less serpentine than that of the river below, and crossed it by a small, one-arched stone bridge, overshadowed by a gigantic oak-tree, and scaled the opposite acclivity in two or three sharp, sandy zigzags. Both the hillsides were clothed with forest, but still the nature of the soil or some accidental causes had rendered the wood as different as possible; for, on the farther side of the stream, the ground was everywhere visibly covered by a short, mossy turf, softer and more elastic to the foot than the most exquisite carpet that ever issued from the looms of Persia, and overshadowed by huge and scattered oaks, growing so far apart that the eye could range far between their shadowy vistas; while on the nearer slope—the foreground, as it might be called, of the picture—all was a dense and confused mass of tangled shrubbery and verdure. Thickets of old, gnarled thorn-bushes, completely overrun and matted with woodbines; coppices of young ash, with hazel interspersed, and eglantine and dog-roses thickly set between; clumps of the prickly gorse and plumelike broom, all starry with their golden flowerets, and fern so wildly luxuriant, that in many places it would have concealed the head of the tallest man, covered the ground for many a mile through which the narrow road meandered.

There was one object more in view—one which spoke of man even in that solitude, and man in his better aspect. It was the slated roof and belfry, all overgrown with moss and stone-crop, of a small wayside chapel, in the old Saxon architecture, peering out from the shadows of the tall oaks which overhung it in the far distance. It was, as we have said, very small, in the old Saxon architecture, consisting, in fact, merely of a vaulted roof supported upon four squat, massy columns, whence sprung the four groined ribs which met in the centre of the arch. Three sides alone of this primitive place of worship, which would have contained with difficulty forty persons, were walled in, the front presenting one wide, open arch, richly and quaintly sculptured with the indented wolf’s teeth of the first Saxon style. Small as it was, however, the little chapel had its high altar, with the crucifix and candle, its reading-desk of old black oak, its font, and pix, and chalices, and all the adjuncts of the Roman ritual. A little way to the left might be discovered the low, thatched eaves of a rustic cottage, framed of the unbarked stems of forest-trees—the abode, probably, of the officiating priest; and close beside the walls of the little church a consecrated well, protected from the sun by a stone vault, of architecture corresponding to the chapel.

Upon the nearer slope, not far from the roadside, but entirely concealed from passers by the nature of the ground and the dense thickets, there were collected, at an early hour of the morning, five men, with as many horses, who seemed to be awaiting, in a sort of ambush, some persons whom they would attack at unawares. The leader of the party, as he might be considered, as much from his appearance as from the deference shown to him by the others, was a tall, active, powerful man, of thirty-eight or forty years, with a bold and expressive countenance—expressive, however, of no good quality, unless it were the fiery, reckless daring which blazed from his broad, dark eye, and that was almost obscured by the cloud of insufferable pride which lowered upon his frowning brow, and by the deep, scar-like lines of lust, and cruelty, and scorn, which ploughed his weather-beaten features. His dress was a complete suit of linked chain-mail—hauberk, and sleeves, and hose—with shoes of plaited steel, and gauntlets wrought in scale, covering his person from his neck downward in impenetrable armor. He had large gilded spurs buckled upon his heels, and a long, two edged dagger, with a rich hilt and scabbard, in his belt; but neither sword, nor lance, nor any other weapon of offence, except a huge steel mace, heavy enough to fell an ox at a single blow, which he grasped in his right hand; while from his left hung the bridle of a tall, coal-black Norman charger, which was cropping the grass quietly beside him. His head was covered by a conical steel cap, with neither crest, nor plume, nor visor, and mail-hood falling down from it to protect the neck and shoulders of the wearer.

The other four were men-at-arms, clad all in suits of armor, but less completely than their lord: thus they had steel shirts only, with stout buff breeches and heavy boots to guard their lower limbs, and iron skullcaps only, without the hood, upon their heads, and leather gauntlets upon their hands; but, as if to make up for this deficiency, they were positively loaded with offensive weapons. They had the long, two-handed sword of the period belted across their persons, three or four knives and daggers of various size and strength at their girdles, great battle-axes in their hands, and maces hanging at their saddle-bows. They had been tarrying there already several hours, their leader raising his eyes occasionally to mark the progress of the sun as he climbed up the azure vault, and muttering a brief and bitter curse as hour passed after hour, and those came not whom he expected.

“Danian,” he said at length, turning to the principal of his followers, who stood nearer to his person, and a little way apart from the others—“Danian, art sure this was the place and day? How the dog Saxons tarry! Can they have learned our purpose?”

“Surely not, surely not, fair sir,” returned the squire, “seeing that I have mentioned it to no one, not even to Raoul, or Americ, or Guy, who know no more than their own battle-axes the object of their ambush. And it was pitch-dark when we left the castle, and not a soul has seen us here; so it is quite impossible they should suspect—and hark! there goes the bell; and see, sir, see—there they come, trooping through the oak-trees down the hill!”

And indeed, as he spoke, the single bell of the small chapel began to chime with the merry notes that proclaim a bridal, and a gay train of harmless, happy villagers might be seen, as they flocked along, following the footsteps of the gray-headed Saxon monk, who, in his frock and cowl, with corded waist and sandalled feet, led the procession. Six young girls followed close behind him, dressed in blue skirts and russet jerkins, but crowned with garlands of white May-flowers, and May-wreaths wound like scarfs across their swelling bosoms, and hawthorn-branches in their hands, singing the bridal carol in the old Saxon tongue, in honor of the pride of the village, the young and lovely Marian. She was indeed the very personification of all the poet’s dreams of youthful beauty—tall and slender in her figure, yet exquisitely, voluptuously rounded in every perfect outline, with a waist of a span’s circumference, wide, sloping shoulders, and a bust that, for its matchless swell, as it struggled and throbbed with a thousand soft emotions, threatening to burst from the confinement of her tight-fitting jacket, would have put to shame the bosom of the Medicean Venus. Her complexion, wherever the sun had not too warmly kissed her beauties, was pure as the driven snow; while her large, bright-blue eyes, red, laughing lip, and the luxuriant flood of sunny, golden hair, which streamed down in wild, artless ringlets to her waist, made her a creature for a prince’s, or more, a poet’s adoration.

But neither prince nor poet was the god of that fair girl’s idolatry, but one of her own class, a Saxon youth, a peasant—nay, a serf—from his very cradle upward the born thrall of Hugh de Mortemar, lord of the castle and the hamlet at its foot, named, from its situation in the depths of Charnwood, Ashby in the Forest. But there was now no graven collar about the sturdy neck of the young Saxon, telling of a suffering servitude; no dark shade of gloom in his full, glancing eye; no sullen doggedness upon his lip: for he was that day, that glad day, a freeman—a slave no longer—but free, free, by the gift of his noble master; free as the wild bird that sung so loudly in the forest; free as the liberal air that bore the carol to his ears. His frock of forest-green and buskins of the untanned deer-hide set off his muscular, symmetrical proportions, and his close-curled, short auburn hair showed a well-turned and shapely head. Behind this gay and happy pair came several maids and young men, two-and-two; and after these, an old, gray-headed man, the father of the bride—and leaning on his arm an aged matron, the widowed mother of the enfranchised bridegroom.

Merrily rang the gay, glad bells, and blithely swelled up the bridal chorus as they collected on the little green before the ancient arch, and slowly filed into the precincts of the forest shrine; but very speedily their merriment was changed into dismay and terror and despair, for scarcely had they passed into the sacred building, before the knight, with his dark followers, leaped into their saddles, and thundering down the hill at a tremendous gallop, surrounded the chapel before the inmates had even time to think of any danger. It was a strange, wild contrast, the venerable priest within pronouncing even then the nuptial blessing, and proclaiming over the bright young pair the union made by God, which thenceforth no man should dissever—the tearful happiness of the blushing bride, the serious gladness of the stalwart husband, the kneeling peasantry, the wreaths of innocent flowers; and at the gate, the stern, dark men-at-arms, with their scarred savage features, and their gold-gleaming harness and raised weapons. A loud shriek burst from the lips of the sweet girl, as, lifting her eyes to the sudden clang and clatter that harbingered those dread intruders, she saw and recognised upon the instant the fiercest of the Norman tyrants—dreaded by all his neighbors far and near, but most by the most virtuous and young and lovely—the bold, bad baron of Maltravers. He bounded to the earth as he reached the door, and three of his followers leaped from their horses likewise, one sitting motionless in his war-saddle, and holding the four chargers. “Hold, priest!” he shouted, as he entered, “forbear this mummery; and thou, dog Saxon, think not that charms like these are destined to be clasped in rapture by any arms of thy slow, slavish race!” and with these words he strode up to the altar, seemingly fearless of the least resistance, while his men kept the door with brandished weapons. Mute terror seized on all, paralyzed utterly by the dread interruption—on all but the bold priest and the stout bridegroom.

“Nay, rather forbear thou, Alberic de Maltravers! These two are one for ever—wo be to those who part them!”

“Tush, priest—tush, fool!” sneered the fierce baron, as he seized him by the arm, and swinging him back rudely, advanced upon the terrified and weeping girl, who was now clinging to the very rails of the high altar, trusting, poor wretch, that some respect for that sanctity of place which in old times had awed even heathens, might now prevail with one whom no respect for anything divine or human had ever yet deterred from doing his unholy will.

“Ha! dog!” cried he, in fiercer tones, that filled the chapel as it were a trumpet, seeing the Saxon bridegroom lift up a heavy quarter-staff which lay beside him, and step in quietly but very resolutely in defence of his lovely wife—“Ha! dog and slave, dare you resist a Norman and a noble?—back, serf, or die the death!” and he raised his huge mace to strike him.

“No serf, sir, nor slave either,” answered the Saxon, firmly, “but a freeman, by my good master’s gift, and a landholder.”

“Well, master freeman and landholder,” replied the other, with a bitter sneer, “if such names please you better, stand back—for Marian lies on no bed but mine this night—stand back, before worse come of it!”

“I will die rather,” was the answer.—“Then die! fool! die!” shouted the furious Norman, and with the words he struck full at the bare brow of the dauntless Saxon with his tremendous mace—it fell, and with dint that would have crushed the strongest helmet into a thousand splinters—it fell, but by a dexterous slight the yeoman swung his quarter-staff across the blow, and parried its direction, although the tough ash-pole burst into fifty shivers—it fell upon the carved rails of the altar and smashed them into atoms; but while the knight, who had been somewhat staggered by the impetus of his own misdirected blow, was striving to recover himself, the young man sprang upon him, and grappling him by the throat, gained a short-lived advantage. Short-lived it was indeed, and perilous to him that gained—for although there were men enough in the chapel, all armed with quarter staves, and one or two with the genuine brown bill, to have overpowered the four Normans, despite their war array—yet so completely were they overcome by consternation, that not one moved a step to aid him; the priest, who had alone showed any spark of courage, being impeded by the shrieking women, who, clinging to the hem of his vestments, implored him for the love of God to save them.

In an instant that fierce grapple was at an end, for in the twinkling of an eye, two of the men-at-arms had rushed upon him and dragged him off their lord.

“Now by the splendor of God’s brow,” shouted the enraged knight, “thou art a sweet dog thus to brave thy masters. Nay, harm him not. Raoul”—he went on—“harm not the poor dog,”—as his follower had raised his battle-axe to brain him—“harm him not, else we should raise the ire of that fool, Mortemar! Drag him out—tie him to the nearest tree, and this good priest beside him—before his eyes we will console this fair one.” And with these words he seized the trembling girl, forcing her from the altar, and encircling her slender waist in the foul clasp of his licentious arms. “And ye,” he went on, lashing himself into fury as he continued,—“and ye churl Saxons, hence!—hence dogs and harlots to your kennels!”

No farther words were needed, for his orders were obeyed by his own men with the speed of light, and the Saxons overjoyed to escape on any terms, rushed in a confused mass out of the desecrated shrine, and fled in all directions, fearful of farther outrage. Meanwhile, despite the struggles of the youth, and the excommunicating anathemas which the priest showered upon their heads, the men-at-arms bound them securely to the oak-trees, and then mounting their horses, sat laughing at their impotent resistance, while with a refinement of brutality worthy of actual fiends, Alberic de Maltravers bore the sweet wife clasped to his iron breast, up to the very face of her outraged, helpless husband, and tearing open all her jerkin, displayed to the broad light the whole of her white, panting bosom, and poured from his foul, fiery lips a flood of lustful kisses on her mouth, neck, and bosom, under the very eyes of his tortured victim. To what new outrage he might have next proceeded, must remain ever doubtful, for at this very instant the long and mellow blast of a clearly-winded bugle came swelling through the forest succeeded by the bay of several bloodhounds, and the loud, ringing gallop of many fast approaching.

“Ha!” shouted he, “ten thousand curses on him! here comes De Mortemar. Quick—quick—away! Here, Raoul, take the girl, buckle her tight to your back with the sword-belt, and give me your twohanded blade; I lost my mace in the chapel!—That’s right! quick! man—that’s right—now, then, be off—ride for your life—straight to the castle; we will stop all pursuit. Fare thee well, sweet one, for a while—we will conclude hereafter what we have now commenced so fairly!”

And as he spoke, he also mounted his strong charger, and while the man, Raoul, dashed his spurs rowel-deep into his horse’s flanks, and went off at a thundering gallop, the other four followed him at a slower pace, leaving the Saxons in redoubled anguish—redoubled by the near hope of rescue.

But for once villany was not permitted to escape due retribution, for ere the men-at-arms, who led the flight, had crossed the little bridge, a gallant train came up at a light canter from the wood, twenty or thirty archers, all with their long bows bent, and their arrows notched and ready, with twice as many foresters on foot, with hounds of every kind, in slips and leashes, and at their head a man of as noble presence as ever graced a court or reined a charger. He was clad in a plain hunting-frock of forest-green, with a black velvet bonnet and a heron’s plume, and wore no other weapon but a light hunting-sword—but close behind him rode two pages, bearing his knightly lance with its long pennon, his blazoned shield, and his two-handed broadsword. It was that brave and noble Norman, Sir Hugh de Mortemar. His quick eye in an instant took in the whole of the confused scene before him, and understood it on the instant.

“Alberic de Maltravers!” he cried, in a voice clear and loud as the call of a silver trumpet, “before God he shall rue it,” and with the words he snatched his lance from the page, and dashing spurs into his splendid Spanish charger, thundered his orders out with the rapid rush of a winter’s torrent. “Bend your bows, archers,—draw home your arrows to the head! stand, thou foul ravisher, dishonest Norman, false gentleman, and recreant knight! Stand on the instant, or we shoot! Cut loose the yeoman from the tree, ye varlets, and the good priest. Randal, cast loose the bloodhounds down to the bridge across yon knoll, and lay them on the track of that flying scoundrel. Ha! they will meet us.”

And so in truth they did; for seeing that he could not escape the deadly archery, Alberic de Maltravers wheeled short on his pursuers, and shouted his war-cry—“Saint Paul for Alberic!—false knight and liar in your throat. Saint Paul! Saint Paul! charge home,”—and with the words the steel-clad men-at-arms drove on, expecting by the weight of their harness to ride down and scatter the light archery like chaff. Unarmed although he was, De Mortemar paused not—not for a moment!—but galloped in his green doublet as gallantly upon his foe as though he had been sheathed in steel. He had but one advantage—but one hope!—to bear his iron-clad opponent down at the lance point, without closing—on! they came, on!—Maltravers swinging his twohanded sword aloft, and trusting in his mail to turn the lance’s point—De Mortemar with his long spear in rest—“Saint Paul! Saint Paul!”—they met! the dust surged up in a dense cloud! the very earth appeared to shake beneath their feet!—but not a moment was the conflict doubtful. Deep! deep! throughed his linked mail, and through his leathern jerkin, and through his writhing flesh, the grinded spear-head shove into his bosom, and came out at his back, the ash-staff breaking in the wound. Down he went, horse and man!—and down, at one close volley of the gray goose shafts, down went his three companions!—one shot clear through the brain by an unerring shaft—the others stunned and bruised, their horses both slain under them. “Secure them,” shouted Hugh, “bind them both hand and foot, and follow,”—and he paused not to look upon his slain assailant, but galloped down the hill, followed by half his train, the bloodhounds giving tongue fiercely, and already gaining on the fugitive. It was a fearful race, but quickly over!—for though the man-at-arms spurred desperately on, his heavy Norman horse, oppressed, moreover, by his double load, had not a chance in competing with the proud Andalusian of De Mortemar. Desperately he spurred on—but now the savage hounds were up with him—they rushed full at the horse’s throat and bore him to the earth—another moment, Raoul was a bound captive, and Marian, rescued by her liege lord, and wrapped in his own mantle, was clasped in the fond arms of her husband!

“How now, good priest,” exclaimed Sir Hugh, “are these two now fast wedded?”

“As fast, fair sire, as the holy rites may wed them.”

“Then ring me, thou knave, Ringan, a death-peal! Thou, Gilbert, and thou, Launcelot, make me three halters, quick—nay! four—the dead knight shall swing, as his villany well merits, beside the living knaves!—Sing me a death-chant, priest, for these are judged to death, unhouselled and unshriven!”

Not a word did the ruffians answer, they knew that prayer was useless, and with dark frowning brows, and dauntless bearing, they met their fate, impenitent and fearless. For Marian begged their lives in vain. De Mortemar was pitiless in his just wrath! And the spurs were hacked from the heels of the dead knight, and the base halter twisted round his cold neck, and his dishonored corpse hung up upon the very tree to which he had bade bind the Saxon bridegroom. And the death-peals were sung, and the death-hymn was chanted; and ere the sounds of either had died away in the forest echoes, the three marauders writhed out their villain souls in the mild air, and swung three grim and ghastly monuments of a foul crime and fearful retribution—and this dread rite consummated the Saxon’s bridal!

LEGENDS
OF
THE CRUSADERS.

THE SYRIAN LADY;
A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

“Yes, love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love.”—The Giaour.

There is something in the first approach of spring—in the budding of the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the sun—as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed, that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph. Like many others, admirable practices of the olden time, the setting apart to joy and innocent festivity of the first of May is now gradually falling into neglect; but at the period of which we are about to treat, not Christmas itself could be observed with more reverential care than its inviting rival. On May-day, the evergreens which had decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave way to garlands of such flowers as the mellowing influences of the season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume; troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete, prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court, the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad harbinger of sunshine and of summer.

In England, above all other lands—the merry England of antiquity—was this pleasing festival peculiarly dear to all classes of society; at all times a period eagerly anticipated, and rapturously enjoyed, never perhaps was its arrival celebrated by all men with wilder revelry, with more enthusiastic happiness, than on the year which had accomplished the deliverance of their lion-hearted monarch from the chains of perfidious Austria. It seemed to the whole nation as though, not only the actual winter of the year, with his dark accompaniments of snow and storm, but the yet more oppressive winter of anarchy and misrule, of usurpation and tyranny, were about to pass away from the people, which had so long groaned under the griping sway of the bad John, or been torn by the savage strife of his mercenary barons; while their legitimate and honored sovereign was dragging his dreary hours along in the dungeon, from which he had but now escaped, through the devoted fidelity and unrivalled art of the minstrel Blondel.

Now, however, the king was on the throne of his fathers, girt with a circle of three gallant spirits, who had shed their blood like water on the thirsty deserts of Syria; earning not only earthly honor and renown, but, as their imperfect faith had taught them to believe, the far more lofty guerdon of eternal life. Now their national festival had returned—they were called upon by the thousand voices of nature to give the rein to Pleasure, and why should they turn a deaf ear to her inspiring call?

The streets of London—widely different indeed from the vast wilderness of walls, which has risen like a phœnix from the ashes of its predecessor, but even at that early age a vast and flourishing town—were thronged, from the earliest dawn, by a constant succession of smiling faces: old and young, men and maidens, grave citizens and stern soldiers, all yielding to the excitement of the moment, all hurrying from the intricate lanes of the city to greet their king, who had announced his intention of holding a court at Westminster, and proceeding thence, at high noon, to feast with the city dignitaries in Guild-hall. The open stalls, which then occupied the place of shops, were adorned by a display of their richest wares, decorated with wreaths of a thousand bright colors;—steel harness from the forges of Milan; rich velvets from the looms of Genoa; drinking-cups and ewers of embossed gold, glittered in every booth. The projecting galleries, which thrust forward their irregular gables far across the narrow streets, were hung with tapestries of price; while garlands of flowers, stretched from side to side, and the profusion of hawthorn boughs, with their light green leaves and snowy blossoms, lent a sylvan appearance to the crowded haunts of the metropolis. From space to space the streets were guarded by the city-watch in their white cassocks and glittering head-pieces; while ever and anon the train of some great lord came winding its way, with led horses in costly caparison, squires and pages in the most gorgeous fashion of the day, the banner and the knightly armor of the baron borne before him, from his lodgings in the Minories, or the more notorious Chepe. The air was literally alive with music and light laughter; even the shaven and cowled monk, as he threaded his way through the motley concourse—suffered the gravity of his brow to relax into a smile when he looked upon the undisguised delight of some fair girl, escorted by her trusty bachelor; now stopping to gaze on the foreign curiosities displayed in decorated stalls; now starting in affected terror from the tramp and snort of the proud war-horse, or mustering a frown of indignation at the unlicensed salutation of its courtly rider; now laughing with unsuppressed glee at the strange antics of the mummers and morricers, who, in every disguise that fancy could suggest, danced and tumbled through the crowded ways—heedless of the disturbance they excited, or the danger they incurred from the hoofs of chargers which were prancing along in constant succession, to display the equestrian graces and firm seat of some young aspirant for the honors of chivalry.

The whole scene was in the highest degree picturesque, and such as no other age of the world could afford. The happiness which, although fleeting and fictitious, threw its bright illumination over the whole multitude, oblivious of the cares, the labors, and the sorrows of to-morrow, afforded a subject for the harp of the poet, no less worthy his inspired meditations than the gorgeous coloring and the rich costume of the middle ages might lend to the pencil of a Leslie or a Newton.

In a chamber overlooking with its Gothic casements this scene of contagious mirth—alone, unmoved by the gay hum which told of happiness in every passing breeze—borne down, as it would appear, by the weight of some secret calamity—sat Sir Gilbert à-Becket, of glorious form and unblemished fame. The bravest of the brave on the battle-plain, unequalled for wisdom in the hall of council, he had been among the first of those bold hearts who had buckled on their mighty armor to fight the good fight of Christianity—to rear the cross above the crescent—and to redeem the Savior’s sepulchre from the contaminating sway of the unbeliever.

There was not one among the gallant thousands who had followed their lion-hearted leader from the green vales of England to the sultry sands of Palestine, whose high qualities had been more frequently tried, or whose undaunted valor was more generally acknowledged, than the knight à-Becket; there was not one to whose lance the chivalrous Richard looked more confidently for support, nor one to whose counsel he more willingly inclined his ear. In the last desperate effort before the walls of Ascalon—when, with thirty knights alone, the English monarch had defied the concentrated powers, and vainly sought an opponent in the ranks of sixty thousand mussulmans—his crest had shone the foremost in those fierce encounters which have rendered the name of the Melec Ric a terror to the tribes of the desert that has endured even to the present day. It was at the close of this bloody encounter, that, conquered by his own previous exertions rather than by the prowess of his foemen—his armor hacked and rent, his war-steed slain beneath him—he had been overwhelmed by numbers while wielding his tremendous blade beside the bridle-rein of his king, and borne away by the Saracens into hopeless captivity.

Days and months had rolled onward, and the limbs of the champion were wasted and his constitution sapped by the vile repose of the dungeon; yet never for an instant had his proud demeanor altered, or his high spirit quailed beneath the prospect of an endless slavery. All means had been resorted to by his turbaned captors to induce him to adopt the creed of Mohammed. Threat of torments such as was scarcely endured even by the martyrs of old; promises of dominion, and wealth, and honor; the agonies of thirst and hunger; the allurement of beauty almost superhuman—had been brought to assail the faith of the despairing but undaunted prisoner: and each temptation had been tried but to prove how unflinching was his resolution, and how implicit his faith in that Rock of Ages which he had ever served with enthusiastic, at least, if erring zeal, and with a fervency of love which no peril could shake, no pleasure could seduce from its serene fidelity.

At length, when hope itself was almost dead within his breast; when ransom after ransom had been vainly offered; when the noblest moslem captives had been tendered in exchange for his inestimable head; and, to crown the whole, when the no-longer united powers of the crusading league had departed from the shores on which they had lavished so much of their best blood—his deliverance from the fetters of the infidel was accomplished by one of those extraordinary circumstances which the world calls chance, but which the Christian knows how to attribute to the infinite mercies of an overruling Providence. The eagerness of the politic sultan—whose name ranks as high among the tribes of Islam as the glory of his opponents among the pale sons of Europe—to obtain proselytes from the nations which he had the sagacity to perceive were no less superior to the wandering hordes of the desert in arts than in arms, had led him to break through those laws which are so intimately connected with the religion of Mohammed—the laws of the harem! As the pious faith of the western warrior appeared to gain fresh vigor from every succeeding temptation, so did the anxiety of his conqueror increase to gain over to his cause a spirit the value of which was daily rendered more and more conspicuous. In order to bring about this end, after every other device had failed, he commanded the admission to the Briton’s cell of the fairest maiden of his harem—a maid whose pure and spotless beauty went further to prove her unblemished descent than even the titles which were assigned to the youthful Leila, of almost royal birth.

Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision. But truly has it been said, “Magna est veritas et prævalebit!” The damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another, was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles, than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love; he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as unworthy his country, his name, and his religion.

It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised to accompany him to his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies, as she had been the sole illuminator to his hours of desolation and despair.

Rescued from his fetters, he had lain in concealment on the rocky shores of the Mediterranean, anxiously awaiting the vessel which was to convey him to the land of his birth, and her whose society alone could render his being supportable. The vessel arrived: but what was the agony of his soul on learning that she whom he prized above light, and life, and all save virtue, had fallen a sacrifice to the furious disappointment of her indignant countrymen! Maddened with grief, and careless of an existence which had now become a burden rather than a treasure, he would have returned to avenge the wrongs of his lost Leila, and perish on her grave, had not her emissaries—conscious that in such a case the fate which had befallen the mistress must undoubtedly be theirs likewise—compelled him to secure their common safety by flight.

After weary wanderings, he had returned a heart-stricken wretch to his native England, at that moment rejoicing with unfeigned delight at the recovery of her heroic king. He sometimes mingled in the labors of the council or the luxuries of the banquet, but it was evident to all that his mind was far away! that for him there might indeed be the external semblance of joy, but that all within was dark and miserable! It was plain that, in the words of the poet—

“That heavy chill had frozen o’er the fountains of the tears,
And though the eye may sparkle still, ’tis where the ice appears.”

On this morning of universal joy—to him a period fraught with the gloomiest recollections, for it was the anniversary of that sad day on which he had parted from the idol of his heart, never to behold her more!—on this morning he had secluded himself from the sight of men; he was alone with his memory! His eyes indeed rested on the letters of an illuminated missal which lay open before him; but the long, dark lock of silky hair which was grasped in his feverish hand, showed too plainly that his grief was still of that harrowing and fiery character which prevents the mind from tasting as yet the consolations of Divine truth. He had sat thus for hours, unconscious of the passing multitude, whose every sound was borne to his unheeding ears by the fresh breeze of spring. His courtly robe and plumed bonnet, his collar, spurs, and sword, lay beside him, arranged for the approaching festival by his officious page; but no effort could have strung his nerves or hardened his heart on that day to bear with the frivolous ceremonies and false glitter of a court. He recked not now whether his presence would lend a zest to the festival, or whether his absence might be construed into offence. The warrior, the politician, the man, were merged in the lover! Utter despondency had fallen upon his spirit. Like the oak of his native forests, he was proud and unchanged in appearance, but the worm was busy at his heart. Even tears would have been a relief to the dead weight of despair which had benumbed his very soul; but never, since that fatal hour, had one drop relieved the aching of his brain, or one smile gleamed across his haggard features. Mechanically he fulfilled his part in society: he moved, he spoke, he acted, like his fellow-men; but he was now become, from the most ardent and impetuous of his kind, a mere creature of habit and circumstance.

So deeply was he now absorbed in his dark reveries, that the increasing clamor of the multitude had escaped his attention, although the character of the sounds was no longer that of unmingled pleasure. The voices of men, harsh and pitched in an unnatural key, rude oaths, and tumultuous confusion, proclaimed that, if not engaged in actual violence, the mob was at least ripe for mischief. More than once, during the continuance of these turbulent sounds, had the plaintive accents of a female voice been distinctly audible—when on a sudden a shriek arose of such fearful import, close beneath the casements of the abstracted baron, that it thrilled to his very heart. It seemed to his excited fancy that the notes of a well-remembered voice lent their music to that long-drawn cry; nay, he almost imagined that his own name was indistinctly blended in that yell of fear.

With the speed of light he had sprung to his feet, and hurried to the lattice; but twice before he reached it, had the cry repeated, calling on the name of “Gilbert!” with a plaintive energy that could no longer be mistaken. He gained the embrasure, dashed the trellised blinds apart, and there—struggling in the licentious grasp of the retainers who ministered to the brutal will of some haughty noble—her raven tresses scattered to the winds of heaven, her turbaned shawl and flowing caftan rent and disordered by the rude hands of lawless violence—he beheld a female form of unrivalled symmetry, clad in the well-remembered garments of the East. Her face was turned from him, and the dark masses of hair which had escaped from their confinement entirely concealed her features; still there was an undefined resemblance which acted so keenly upon his feelings, that the thunder of heaven could scarcely burst with a more appalling crash above the heads of the guilty than did the powerful tones of the crusader as he bade them, “as they valued life, release the damsel!” With a rapid shudder which ran through every limb at his clear summons, she turned her head. It was—it was his own lost Leila! the high and polished brow; the eyes that rivalled in languor the boasted organs of the wild gazelle; the rapturous ecstasy that kindled every lineament as she recognised her lover’s form—

——“the voice that clove through all the din,
As a lute’s pierceth through the cymbal’s clash,
Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling”—

were all, all Leila’s! To snatch his sword from its scabbard, to vault at a single bound from the lofty casement, to force his way through the disordered press, to level her audacious assailants to the earth, was but a moment’s work for the gigantic power of the knight, animated as he now was by all those feelings which can minister valor to the most timid, and give strength to the feeblest arm! He beheld her whom he had believed to be snatched for ever from his heart, nor could hundreds of mail-clad soldiers have withstood his furious onset! He had already clasped his recovered treasure in one nervous arm, while with the other he brandished aloft the trusty blade, which had so often carried havoc and terror to the centre of the moslem lines; when the multitude, enraged at the interference of a stranger with what to them appeared the laudable occupation of persecuting a witch or infidel, seconded by the bold ruffians who had first laid hand upon the lovely foreigner, rushed bodily onward, threatening to overpower all resistance by the weight of numbers.

Gallantly, however, and at the same time mercifully, did Sir Gilbert à-Becket support his previous reputation. Dealing sweeping blows with his huge falchion on every side, yet shunning to use the point or edge, he had cleft his way in safety to the threshold of his own door. Yet even then the final issue of the strife was far from certain; for so sudden had been the exit of the baron, and from so unusual an outlet, that none of his household were conscious of their lord’s absence, and the massy portal was closed against the entrance of the lawful owner. Stones and staves flew thick around him; and so fiercely did the leaders of the furious mob press upon his retreat, that, yielding at length to the dictates of his excited spirit, he dealt the foremost a blow which would have cloven him to the teeth though he had been fenced in triple steel; thundering at the same time with his booted heel against the oaken leaves of his paternal gate, and shouting to page and squire within till the vaulted passages rang forth in startled echoes.

At this critical moment the din of martial music, which had long been approaching, heralded the royal procession; though so actively were the rioters engaged in their desperate onset, and so totally engrossed was the baron in the rescue of his recovered bride, that neither party were aware of it until its clangor rang close at hand, and a dazzling cavalcade of knights and nobles came slowly on the scene of action.

Of stature almost gigantic, noble features, and kingly bearing—his garb glittering with gold and jewels till the dazzled eye could scarcely brook its splendor; backing a steed which seemed as though its strength and spirit might have borne Goliath to the field; and wielding a blade which no other arm in Christendom could have poised even for a second—the lion-hearted Richard, followed by every noble of his realm, dashed with his native impetuosity into the centre.

“Ha! St. George!” he shouted, in a voice heard clearly above the mingled clang of instruments and the tumult of the conflict; “have ye no better way to keep our festival than thus to take base odds on one? Shame on ye, vile recreants! What, ho!” he cried, as he recognised the person of the knight, “our good comrade à-Becket thus hard bestead! Hence to your kennels, ye curs of England!—dare ye match yourselves against the Lion and his brood?”

Loud rang the acclamations of the throng, accustomed to the blunt boldness of their warrior-king, and losing sight of his haughty language in joy for his return and admiration of the additional glory which had accrued to the whole nation from the prowess of its champion: “God save thee, gallant lion-heart! Never was so brave a knight! never so noble a king!”

Louder still was the wonder of the monarch and his assembled court when they learned the strange adventure which had been brought to so fair a conclusion by their unexpected succor. The lady threatened with the lasting indignation of the royal Saladin, though never really in danger of life, had devised the false report of her own death—knowing that it were hopeless for her to dream of flight, so long as the eyes of all were concentrated on her in dark and angry suspicion; and knowing also that no dread of instant dissolution nor hope of liberty could have induced her devoted lover to have quitted the land while she remained in “durance vile.”

When the first excitement—caused by the escape of a prisoner so highly esteemed as was the bold crusader—had ceased to agitate the mussulman divan, and affairs had returned to their usual course—easily escaping from the vigilance of the harem guard, she had made good her flight to the seabathed towers of Venice, and thence to the classic plains of Italy. Then it was that the loneliness of her situation, the perils, the toils, the miseries which she must necessarily endure, weighed no less heavily on her tender spirits, than the unwonted labor of so toilsome a journey on her delicate and youthful frame. Ignorant of any European language, save the name of her lover, and the metropolis of his far-distant country, her sole reply to every query was the repetition, in her musical, although imperfect accents, of the words—“London,” “Gilbert.” Marvellous it is to relate—and were it not, in good sooth, history too marvellous—that her talismanic speech did at length convey her through nations hostile to her race, through the almost uninhabited forest, and across the snowy barrier of the Alps, through realms laid waste by relentless banditti, and cities teeming with licentious and merciless adventurers, to the chalky cliffs and verdant meadows of England! For weeks had she wandered through the streets of the vast metropolis, jeered by the cruel, and pitied, but unaided, by the merciful—tempted by the wicked, and shunned by the virtuous—repeating ever and anon her simple exclamation, “Gilbert, Gilbert!” till her strength was well nigh exhausted, and her spirits were fast sinking into utter despondency and despair.

On the morning of the festival she had gone forth with hopes renewed, when she perceived the concourse of nobles crowding to greet their king—for she knew her Gilbert to be high in rank and favor—and fervently did she trust that this day would be the termination of her miseries. Again was she miserably deceived; so miserably that, perchance, had not the very assault which had threatened her with death or degradation restored her, as it were by magic, to the arms of him whom she had so tenderly and truly loved, she had sunk that night beneath the pressure of grief and anxiety, too poignant to be long endured. But so it was not ordained by that perfect Providence, which, though it may for a time suffer bold vice to triumph, and humble innocence to mourn, can ever bring real good out of seeming evil; and whose judgments are so inevitably, in the end, judgments of mercy and of truth, that well might the minstrel king declare of old, in the inspired language of holy writ—

“I have been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”

THE TRIALS OF A TEMPLAR;
A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what can man do unto me.”

Psalm cxviii. 6.

A summer-day in Syria was rapidly drawing toward its close, as a handful of European cavalry, easily recognised by their flat-topped helmets, cumbrous hauberks, and chargers sheathed like their riders, in plate and mail, were toiling their weary way through the deep sand of the desert, scorched almost to the heat of molten lead by the intolerable glare of an eastern sun. Insignificant in numbers, but high of heart, confident from repeated success, elated with enthusiastic valor, and inspiriting sense of a holy cause, they followed the guidance of their leader, one of the best and most tried lances of the temple, careless whither, and secure of triumph; their steel armor glowing like burnished gold, their lance-heads flashing in the level rays of the setting orb, and the party-colored banner of the Beauseant hanging motionless in the still atmosphere.

Before them lay an interminable waste of bare and dusty plain, broken into long swells succeeding each other in monotonous regularity, though occasionally varied by stunted patches of thorny shrubs and dwarf palm-trees. As they wheeled round one of these thickets, their commander halted suddenly at the sight of some fifty horsemen, whose fluttering garb and turbaned crowns, as well as the springy pace of their Arab steeds, proclaimed them natives of the soil, winding along the bottom of the valley beneath him, with the stealthy silence of prowling tigers. Although the enemy nearly trebled his own force in numerical power, without a moment’s hesitation Albert of Vermandois arrayed his little band, and before the infidels had even discovered his presence, much less drawn a blade, or concentrated their scattered line, the dreaded war-cry rung upon their ears—“Ha! Beauseant! for the temple! for the temple!” and down thundered the irresistible charge of the western crusaders on their unguarded flank. Not an instant did the Saracens withstand the brunt of the Norman lance; they broke away on all sides, leaving a score of their companions stretched to rise no more on the bloody plain. Scarcely, however, had the victors checked their blown horses, or reorganized their phalanx, disordered by the hot struggle, when the distant clang of cymbal, horn, and kettle-drum mingled with the shrill lelies of the heathen sounding in every direction, announced that their march had been anticipated, their route beset, themselves surrounded. Hastily taking possession of the vantage-ground afforded by an abrupt hillock, and dismissing the lightest of his party to ride for life to the Christian camp, and demand immediate aid, Albert awaited the onset with the stern composure which springs from self-possession. A few minutes sufficed to show the Christians the extent of their embarrassment, and the imminence of their peril. Three heavy masses of cavalry were approaching them from as many different quarters; their gaudy turbans, gilded arms, and waving pennons of a hundred hues, blazing in marked contrast to the stern and martial simplicity of the iron soldiers of the west. To the quick eye of Albert it was instantly evident that their hope consisted in protracting the conflict till the arrival of succor; and even this hope was diminished by the unwonted velocity with which the Mohammedans hurried to the attack. It seemed as if they also were aware that, in order to conquer, they must conquer quickly; for, contrary to their usual mode of fighting, they charged resolutely upon the very lances of the motionless Christians, who, in a solid circle, opposed their mailed breasts in firm array to their volatile antagonists. Fiercely, however, as they charged, their lighter coursers recoiled before the bone and weight of the European war-steeds. The lances of the crusaders were shivered in the onset; but to the thrust of these succeeded the deadly sweep of the twohanded swords, flashing above the cimeters of the infidel with the sway of some terrific engine. Time after time the eastern warriors rushed on, time after time they retreated, like the surf from some lonely rock on which it has wasted its thunders in vain. At length they changed their plan, and wheeling in rapid circles, poured their arrows in as fast, and for a time as fruitlessly, as the snowstorm of a December day. On they came again, right upon the point where Vermandois was posted, headed by a tall chieftain, distinguished no less by his gorgeous arms than by his gallant bearing. Rising in his stirrups, when at a few paces distance, he hurled his long javelin full in the face of the crusader. Bending his crest to the saddle-bow, as the dart passed harmlessly over him, Albert cast his massive battle-axe in return. The tremendous missile rustled past the chief at whom it was aimed, and smote his shield-bearer to the earth, at the very moment when an arrow pierced the templar’s charger through the eyeball to the brain. The animal, frantic with the pain, bounded forward and rolled lifeless, bearing his rider with him to the ground; yet even in that last struggle the stern knight clave the turbaned leader down to the teeth before he fell. Five hundred horse dashed over him—his array was broken—his companions were hewn from their saddles, even before their commander was snatched from beneath the trampling hoofs, disarmed, fettered, and reserved for a doom to which the fate of his comrades had been a boon of mercy. Satisfied with their success, and aware that a few hours at the farthest must bring up the rescue from the Christian army, the Saracens retreated as rapidly as they had advanced; all night long they travelled with unabated speed toward their inaccessible fastnesses, in the recesses of their wild mountains. Arrived at their encampment, the prisoner was cast into a dungeon hewn from the living rock. Day after day rolled heavily on, and Albert lay in utter darkness, ignorant of his destiny, unvisited by any being except the swart and bearded savage who brought the daily pittance, scarcely sufficient for the wants of his wretched existence.

Albert of Vermandois, a Burgundian youth of high nobility, and yet more exalted renown, had left his native land stung almost to madness by the early death of her to whom he had vowed his affections, and whose name he had already made “glorious by his sword,” from the banks of the Danube to the pillars of Hercules. He had bound the cross upon his breast, he had mortified all worldly desires, all earthly passions, beneath the strict rule of his order. While yet in the flush and pride of manhood, before a gray hair had streaked his dark locks, or a single line wrinkled his lofty brow, he had changed his nature, his heart, his very being; he had attained a height of dignity and fame scarcely equalled by the best and noblest warriors of the temple. The vigor of his arm, the vast scope of his political foresight, no less than the unimpeached rigor of his morals, had long rendered him a glory to his brotherhood, a cause of terror and an engine of defeat to the Saracen lords of the Holy Land. Many a league had been formed to overpower, many a dark plot hatched to inveigle him; but so invariably had he borne down all odds in open warfare before his irresistible lance, so certainly had he hurled back all secret treasons with redoubled vengeance on the heads of the schemers, that he was almost deemed the possessor of some cabalistic spell, framed for the downfall and destruction of the sons of Islam.

Deep were the consultations of the infidel leaders concerning the destiny of their formidable captive. The slaughter actually wrought by his hand had been so fearful, the ravages produced among their armies by his policy so unbounded, that a large majority were in favor of his instant execution; nor could human ingenuity devise, or brute cruelty perform, more hellish methods of torture than were calmly discussed in that infuriate assembly.

It was late on the third day of his captivity, when the hinges of his dungeon-grate creaked, and a broader glare streamed through the aperture than had hitherto disclosed the secrets of his prisonhouse. The red light streamed from a lamp in the grasp of a dark figure—an imaum, known by his high cap of lambskin, his loose black robes, his parchment cincture, figured with Arabic characters, and the long beard that flowed even below his girdle in unrestrained luxuriance. A negro, bearing food of a better quality, and the beverage abhorred by the prophet, the forbidden juice of the grape, followed—his ivory teeth and the livid circles of his eyes glittering with a ghastly whiteness in the clear lamp-light. He arranged the unaccustomed dainties on the rocky floor: the slave withdrew. The priest seated himself so that the light should reveal every change of the templar’s features, while his own were veiled in deep shadow.

“Arise, young Nazarene,” he said, “arise and eat, for to-morrow thou shalt die. Eat, drink, and let thy soul be strengthened to bear thy doom; for as surely as there is one God, and one prophet, which is Mohammed, so surely is the black wing of Azrael outstretched above thee!”

“It is well,” was the unmoved reply. “I am a consecrated knight, and how should a templar tremble?—a Christian, and how should a follower of Jesus fear to die?”

“My brother hath spoken wisely, yet is his wisdom but folly. Truly hast thou said, ‘It is well to die;’ for is it not written that the faithful and the yaoor must alike go hence? But is it the same thing for a warrior to fall amid the flutter of banners and the flourish of trumpets—which are to the strong man even as the breath of his nostrils, or as the mild shower in seedtime to the thirsty plain—and to perish by inches afar from his comrades, surrounded by tribes to whom the very name of his race is a by-word and a scorn?”

“Now, by the blessed light of heaven!” cried the indignant soldier, “rather shouldst thou say a terror and a ruin; for when have the dogs endured the waving of our pennons or the flash of our armor? But it skills not talking—leave me, priest, for I abhor thy creed, as I despise thy loathsome impostor!”

For a short space the wise man of the tribes was silent; he gazed intently on the countenance of his foeman, but not a sign of wavering or dismay could his keen eye trace in the stern and haughty features. “Allah Acbar,” he said at length; “to God all things are possible: would the Christian live?”

“All men would live, and I am but a man,” returned the knight; “yet, praise be to Him where all praise is due, I have never shrunk from death in the field, nor can he fright me on the scaffold. If my Master has need of his servant, he who had power to deliver Israel from bondage, and Daniel from the jaws of the lion, surely he shall deliver my soul from the power of the dog. And if he has appointed for me the crown of martyrdom, it shall ne’er be said that Albert of Vermandois was deaf to the will of the God of battles and the Lord of hosts.”

“The wise man hath said,” replied the slow, musical notes of the priest, in strange contrast to the fiery zeal of the prisoner—“the wise man hath said, ‘Better is the cottage that standeth firm than the tower which tottereth to its fall.’ Will my brother hear reason? Cast away the cross from thy breast, bind the turban upon thy brow, and behold thou shalt be as a prince among our people!”

“Peace, blasphemer! I spit at thee—I despise, I defy thee! I, a worshipper of the living Jehovah, shall I debase myself to the camel-driver of Mecca? Peace! begone!” He turned his face to the wall, folded his arms upon his chest, and was silent. No entreaties, no threats of torment, no promises of mercy, could induce him again to open his lips. His eyes were fixed as if they beheld some shape, unseen by others; his brow was calm, and, but for a slight expression of scorn about the muscles of the mouth, he might have passed for a visionary.

After a time, the imaum arose, quitted the cell, and the warrior was again alone. But a harder trial was yet before him. The door of his prison opened yet once more, and a form entered—a being whom the poets in her own land of minstrelsey would have described under the types of a young date-tree, bowing its graceful head to the breath of evening; of a pure spring in the burning desert; of a gazelle, bounding over the unshaken herbage; of a dove, gliding on the wings of the morning! And of a truth she was lovely: her jetty hair braided above her transparent brow, and floating in a veil of curls over her shoulders; her large eyes swimming in liquid languor; and, above all, that indescribable charm—

“The mind, the music breathing from her face”—

her form slighter and more sylph-like than the maids of Europe can boast, yet rounded into the fairest mould of female beauty—all combined to make up a creature resembling rather a houri of Mohammed’s paradise than

“One of earth’s least earthly daughters.”

For a moment the templar gazed, as if he doubted whether he were not looking upon one of those spirits which are said to have assailed and almost shaken the sanctity of many a holy anchorite. His heart, for the first time in many years, throbbed wildly. He bowed his head between his knees, and prayed fervently; nor did he again raise his eyes, till a voice, as harmonious as the breathing of a lute, addressed him in the lingua-Franca:—

“If the sight of his hand-maiden is offensive to the eyes of the Nazarene, she will depart as she came, in sorrow.”

The soldier lifted up his eyes, and saw her bending over him with so sad an expression of tenderness, that, despite of himself, his heart melted within him, and his answer was courteous and even kind: “I thank thee, dear lady, I thank thee for thy good will, though it can avail me nothing. But wherefore does one so fair, and it may well be so happy as thou art, visit the cell of a condemned captive?”

“Say not condemned—oh, say not condemned! Thy servant is the bearer of life, and freedom, and honor. She saw thy manly form, she looked upon thine undaunted demeanor, and she loved thee—loved thee to distraction—would follow thee to the ends of earth—would die to save thee—has already saved thee, if thou wilt be saved! Rank, honor, life, and love—”

“Lady,” he interrupted her, “listen! For ten long years I have not lent my ear to the witchery of a woman’s voice. Ten years ago, I was the betrothed lover of a maid, I had well-nigh said, as fair as thou art. She died—died, and left me desolate! I have fled from my native land; I have devoted to my God the feelings which I once cherished for your sex. I could not give thee love in return for thy love; nor would I stoop to feign that which I felt not, although it were to win, not temporal, but eternal life.”

“Oh! dismiss me not,” she sobbed, as she threw her white arms around his neck, and panted on his bosom; “oh! dismiss me not thus. I ask no vows; I ask no love. Be but mine; let my country be your country, my God yours—and you are safe and free!”

“My Master,” he replied coldly, as he disengaged her grasp, and removed her from his arms, “hath said, ‘What would it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ I have listened to thee, lady, and I have answered thee; but my heart is heavy—for it is mournful to see that so glorious a form should be the habitation of so frail a spirit. I pray thee, leave me! To-morrow I shall meet my God, and I would commune with him now in spirit and in truth!”

Slowly she turned away, wrapped her face in her veil, and moved with faltering steps—wailing as if her heart were about to burst—through the low portal. The gate clanged heavily as she departed; but the sounds of her lamentation were audible long after the last being, who would show a sign of pity for his woes, or of admiration for his merits, had gone forth, never again to return!

All night long the devotions, the fervent and heartfelt prayers of the crusader, ascended to the throne of his Master; and often, though he struggled to suppress the feeling, a petition for his lovely though deluded visiter was mingled with entreaties for strength to bear the fate he anticipated.

Morning came at last, not as in frigid climates of the North—creeping through its slow gradations of gray dawn and dappling twilight—but bursting at once from night into perfect day. The prison-gates were opened for the last time, the fetters were struck off from the limbs of the undaunted captive, and himself led forth like a victim to the sacrifice.

From leagues around, all the hordes of the desert had come together, in swarms outnumbering the winged motes that stream like dusty atoms in every sunbeam. It was a strange, and, under other circumstances, would have been a glorious spectacle. In a vast sandy basin, surrounded on every side by low but rugged eminences, were the swarthy sons of Syria mustered, rank above rank, to feast their eyes on the unwonted spectacle of a Christian’s sufferings. The rude tribes of the remotest regions, Arab and Turcoman, mounted on the uncouth dromedary, or on steeds of matchless symmetry and unstained pedigree, mingling their dark baracans with the brilliant arms and gorgeous garbs of the sultan’s court—even the unseen beauties of a hundred harems watched from their canopied litters the preparations for the execution with as much interest and as little concern as the belles of our own day exhibit before the curtain has been drawn aside which is to disclose the performances of a Pedrotti or a Malibran to the enraptured audience.

In the centre of this natural amphitheatre stood the scathed and whitening trunk of a thunder-stricken palm. To this inartificial stake was the captive led. One by one his garments were torn asunder, till his muscular form and splendid proportions were revealed in naked majesty to the wondering multitude. Once, before he was attached to the fatal tree, a formal offer of life, and liberty, and high office in the moslem court, was tendered to him, on condition of his embracing the faith of the prophet—and refused by one contemptuous motion of his hand. He was bound firmly to the stump, with his hands secured far above his head. At some fifty paces distant, stood a group of dark and fierce warriors, with bended bows and well-filled quivers, evidently awaiting the signal to pour in their arrowy sleet upon his unguarded limbs. He gazed upon them with a countenance unmoved and serene, though somewhat paler than its usual tints. His eyes did not, however, long dwell on the unattractive sight: he turned them upward, and his lips moved at intervals, though no sound was conveyed to the ear of the bystanders.

Some minutes had elapsed thus, when the shrill voice of the muezzin was heard, proclaiming the hour of matin-prayer in his measured chant: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet!” In an instant the whole multitude were prostrate in the dust, and motionless as though the fatal blast of the simoom was careering through the tainted atmosphere. A flash of contempt shot across the features of the templar, but it quickly vanished in a more holy expression, as he muttered to himself the words used on a far more memorable occasion, by Divinity itself: “Forgive them, Lord; they know not what they do!”

The pause was of short duration. With a rustle like the voice of the forest when the first breath of the rising tempest agitates its shivering foliage, the multitude rose to their feet. A gallant horseman dashed from the cavalcade which thronged around the person of their sultan, checked his steed beside the archer-band, spoke a few hasty words, and galloped back to his station.

Another minute—and arrow after arrow whistled from the Paynim bows, piercing the limbs and even grazing the body of the templar; but not a murmur escaped from the victim—scarcely did a frown contract his brow. There was an irradiation, as if of celestial happiness, upon his countenance; nor could a spectator have imagined for a moment that his whole frame was almost convulsed with agony, but for the weapons quivering even to their feathered extremities in every joint, and the large blood-drops trickling like rain upon the thirsty soil!

Again there was a pause. Circled by his Nubian guard, and followed by the bravest and the brightest of his court, the sultan himself rode up to the bleeding crusader. Yet, even there, decked with all the pomp of royalty and pride of war, goodly in person, and sublime in bearing, the monarch of the East was shamed—shamed like a slave before his master—by the native majesty of Christian virtue; nor could the prince at first find words to address the tortured mortal who stood at his feet with the serene deportment which would have beseemed the judge upon his tribunal no less than the martyr at the stake.

“Has the Nazarene yet learned experience from the bitter sting of adversity? The skill of the leech may yet assuage thy wounds, and the honors which shall be poured upon thee may yet efface thine injuries—even as the rich grain conceals in its luxuriance the furrows of the ploughshare! Will the Nazarene live? or will he die the death of a dog?”

“The Lord is on my side,” was the low but firm reply—“the Lord is on my side: I will not fear what man doeth unto me!”

On swept the monarch’s train, and again the iron shower fell fast and fatally—not as before, on the members, but on the broad chest and manly trunk. The blood gushed forth in blacker streams; the warrior’s life was ebbing fast away—when from the rear of the broken hills a sudden trumpet blew a point of war in notes so thrilling, that it pierced the ears like the thrust of some sharp weapon. Before the astonishment of the crowd had time to vent itself in word or deed, the eminences were crowded with the mail-clad myriads of the Christian forces! Down they came, like the blast of the tornado on some frail and scattered fleet, with war-cry, and the clang of instruments, and the thick trampling of twice ten thousand hoofs. Wo to the sons of the desert in that hour! They were swept away before the mettled steeds and levelled lances of the templars like dust before the wind, or stubble before the devouring flame!

The eye of the dying hero lightened as he saw the banners of his countrymen. His whole form dilated with exultation and triumph. He tore his arm from its fetters, waved it around his blood-stained forehead, and for the last time shouted forth his cry of battle: “Ha! Beauseant! A Vermandois for the temple!” Then, in a lower tone, he cried: “‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’” He bowed his head, and his undaunted spirit passed away.

THE RENEGADO;
A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.

——————“how faint and feebly dim
The fame that could accrue to him
Who cheered the band, and waved the sword,
A traitor in a turbaned horde.”—Siege of Corinth.

For well nigh two long years had the walls of Acre rung to the war-cries and clashing arms of the contending myriads of Christian and Mohammedan forces, while no real advantage had resulted to either army, from the fierce and sanguinary struggles that daily alarmed the apprehensions, or excited the hopes of the besieged. The rocky heights of Carmel now echoed to the flourish of the European trumpet, and now sent back the wilder strains of the Arabian drum and cymbal. On the one side were mustered the gigantic warriors of the western forests, from the wild frontiers of Germany, and the shores of the Baltic; while on the other were assembled the Moslems of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, the wandering tribes from the Tigris to the banks of the Indus, and the swarthy hordes of the Mauritanian desert. Not a day passed unnoted by some bloody skirmish or pitched battle;—at one time the sultan forced his way into the beleaguered city, and the next moment the crusaders plundered the camp of the Mohammedan. As often as by stress of weather the European fleet was driven from its blockading station, so often were fresh troops poured in to replace the exhausted garrison; and as fast as the sword of the infidel, or the unsparing pestilence, thinned the camp of the crusaders, so fast was it replenished by fresh swarms of pilgrims, burning with enthusiastic ardor, and aspiring to re-establish the dominion of the Latin kings within the precincts of the holy city.

Suddenly, however, the aspect of affairs was altered; a change took place in the tactics of the paynim leaders—a change which, in the space of a few weeks, wrought more havoc in the lines of the invaders than months of open warfare. The regular attacks of marshalled front and steady fighting, wherein the light cavalry of the Turkish and Saracen tribes invariably gave way before the tremendous charges of the steel-clad knights, were exchanged for an incessant and harassing war of outposts. Not a drop of water could be conveyed into the Christian camp, unless purchased by a tenfold effusion of noble blood; not a picket could be placed in advance of their position, but it was inevitably surrounded and cut off; not a messenger could be despatched to any Latin city, but he was intercepted, and his intelligence rendered subservient to the detriment and destruction of the inventors.

Nor was it long before the author of this new system was discovered. In every affair a chieftain was observed, no less remarkable for his powerful make, far exceeding the stature and slight, though sinewy, frame of his oriental followers, than for his skill in disposing his irregular horsemen, so as to act with the greatest possible advantage against his formidable, but cumbrous opponents. His arms and equipment, moreover, distinguished him yet more clearly than his huge person from his paynim coadjutors. His brows indeed were turbaned, but beneath the embroidered shawl and glittering tiara he wore the massive cerveilliere and barred vizor of the European headpiece; instead of the fluttering caftan and light hauberk, his whole form was sheathed in solid mail; the steed which he bestrode showed more bone and muscle than the swift but slender coursers of the desert, and was armed on chest and croup with plates of tempered steel. Nor, though he avoided to risk his light-armed troops against their invulnerable opponents, did he himself shrink from the encounter; on the contrary, ever leading the attack and covering the retreat, it seemed his especial delight to mingle hand to hand with the best lances of the temple. Many a knight had fallen beneath the sweep of his tremendous blade, and these not of the unknown and unregarded multitude; for it was ever from among the noblest and the best that he singled out his antagonists—his victims—for of all who had gone against him, not one had been known to return. So great was the annoyance wrought to the armies of the cross by the policy, as well as by the valor of the moslem chief, that every method had been contrived for overpowering him by numbers, or deceiving him by stratagem; still the sagacity and foresight of the infidel had penetrated their deep devices, with a certainty as unerring as that with which his huge battle-axe had cloven their proudest crests.

To such a pitch had the terror of his prowess extended, that not content with the reality, in itself sufficiently gloomy, the soldiers had begun to invest him with the attributes of a superhuman avenger. It was observed, that save the gold and crimson scarf which bound his iron temples, he was black from head to heel-stirrup, and spur, and crest, the trappings of his charger, and the animal itself, all dark as the raven’s wing—that, more than once since he had fought in the van of the mussulmans, strange shouts had been heard ringing above the lelies of the paynim, and repeating the hallowed war-cry of the Christian in tones of hellish derision—once, too, when he had utterly destroyed a little band of templars, a maimed and wounded wretch, who had escaped from the carnage of his brethren, skulking beneath his lifeless horse, averred that, while careering at his utmost speed, the charger of the mysterious warrior had swerved in mad consternation from the consecrated banner, which had been hurled to the earth, and that the sullen head of the rider had involuntarily bowed to the saddle-bow as he dashed onward in his course of blood and ruin; and in truth there was enough of the marvellous—in the activity by which he avoided all collision with a superior force, and in the victories which he bore off day by day from the men who, till he had come upon the stage, had only fought to conquer—to palliate, if not to justify, some vague and shadowy terrors, in an age when the truth of supernatural interference, whether of saints or demons, was believed as implicitly as the holy writ. Men, who a few weeks before would have gone forth to battle against a threefold array of enemies rejoicing as if to a banquet, now fought faintly, and began to look for safety in a timely retreat, rather than in the deeds of their own right hands, as soon as they beheld the sable form of that adversary, whom all regarded as something more than a mere human foe; while many believed, that if not a natural incarnation of the evil principle, he was, at least, a mortal endowed with power to work the mischief designed for his performance, by the inveterate malignity of the arch-fiend himself. And it was a fact, very characteristic of the period at which these events occurred, that the most accomplished warriors of the time bestowed as much attention on the framing of periapt, and spell, and all the arms of spiritual war, as on their mere earthly weapons, the spear, the buckler, and the steed.

The middle watch of night was long passed, and the sky was overcast with heavy clouds—what little air was stirring came in blasts as close and scorching as though they issued from the mouth of an oven. The camp of the crusaders was silent, and sleeping, all but the vigilant guards, ever on the alert to catch the faintest sound, which might portend a sally from the walls of the city, or a surprise of the indefatigable Saladin from without.

In the pavilion of Lusignan, the nominal leader of the expedition, all the chiefs of the crusade had met in deep consultation. But the debate was ended; one by one they had retired to their respective quarters, and the Latin monarch was left alone, to muse on the brighter prospects which were opening to his ambition in the approach of Philip Augustus and the lion-hearted Richard, at the head of such an array of gallant spirits as might justify his most extravagant wishes. Suddenly his musings were interrupted by sounds, remote at first, but gradually thickening upon his ear. The faint blast of a distant trumpet, and the challenge of sentries, was succeeded by the hurried tramp of approaching footsteps; voices were heard in eager and exulting conversation, and lights were seen marshalling the new-comers to the royal tent. A few moments, and a knot of his most distinguished knights stood before him, and, with fettered hands, and his black armor soiled with dust and blood, the mysterious warrior of the desert, a captive in the presence of his conquerors.

The narration of the victory was brief. A foraging-party had ridden forth on the preceding morning, never to return!—for, instructed by his scouts, the infidel had beset their march, had assaulted them at nightfall, and destroyed them to a man. But his good fortune had at last deserted him. A heavy body of knights, with their archers and sergeants, returning from a distant excursion, had come suddenly upon his rear when he was prosecuting his easy triumph. The moslems, finding themselves abruptly compelled to act on the defensive, were seized by one of those panics to which all night-attacks are so liable—were thrown into confusion, routed, and cut to pieces. Their commander, on the first appearance of the Christians, had charged with his wonted fury, before he perceived that he was deserted by all, and surrounded past the hope of escape. Heretofore he had fought for victory, now he fought for revenge and for death; and never had he enacted such prodigies of valor as now when that valor was about to be extinguished for ever! Quarter was offered to him, and the tender answered by redoubled blows of his weighty axe. Before he could be taken, he had surrounded himself with a rampart of dead; and when at length numbers prevailed, and he was a prisoner, so deep was the respect of the victors toward so gallant a foe, that all former prejudices vanished: and when he had opposed the first attempt to remove his vizor, he was conveyed, unquestioned and in all honor, to the tent of the Latin king.

The time had arrived when further concealment was impracticable. The captive stood before the commander of the crusading force; and the rules of war, no less than the usages of that chivalrous courtesy practised alike by the warriors of the West and their oriental foemen, required that he should remove the vizor which still concealed his features. Still, however, he stood motionless, with his arms folded across his breast, resembling rather the empty panoply which adorns some hero’s monument than a being instinct with life, and agitated by all the passions to which the mortal heart is liable. Words were addressed to him in the lingua-Franca, or mixed language, which had obtained during those frequent intervals of truce which characterized the nature of the holy wars—breaking into the bloody gloom of strife as an occasional ray of sunshine illuminates the day of storm and darkness—but no effect was produced by their sound on the proud or perhaps uncomprehending prisoner.

For a moment, their former terrors, which had vanished on the fall of their dreaded opponent, appeared to have regained their ascendency over the superstitious hearts of the unenlightened warriors: many there were who confidently expected that the removal of the iron mask would disclose the swart and thunder-stricken brow, the fiery glance, and the infernal aspect, of the prince of darkness! No resistance was offered when the chamberlain of Guy de Lusignan stepped forward, and with all courtesy unlaced the fastenings of the casque and gorget. The clasps gave way, and scarcely could a deeper consternation or a more manifest astonishment have fallen upon the beholders had the king of terrors himself glared forth in awful revelation from that iron panoply. It was no dark-complexioned Saracen—

“In shadowed livery of the burnished sun,”

with whiskered lip and aquiline features, who struck such a chill by his appearance on every heart. The pale skin, the full blue eye, the fair curls that clustered round the lofty brow, bespoke an unmixed descent from the tribes of some northern land of mountain and forest; and that eye, that brow, those lineaments, were all familiar to the shuddering circle as the reflexion of their own in the polished mirror.

One name burst at once from every lip in accents of the deepest scorn. It was the name of one whose titles had stood highest upon their lists of fame; whose deeds had been celebrated by many a wandering minstrel even among the remote hills of Caledonia or the morasses of green Erin; the valor of whose heart and the strength of whose arm had been related far and near by many a pilgrim; whose untimely fall had been mourned by many a maid beside the banks of his native Rhine!—“Arnold of Falkenhorst!” The frame of the culprit was convulsed till the meshes of his linked mail clattered from the nervous motion of the limbs which they enclosed; a crimson flush passed across his countenance, but not a word escaped from his lips, and he gazed straight before him with a fixed, unmeaning stare—how sadly changed from the glance of fire which would so short a time ago have quelled with its indignant lightning the slightest opposition to his indomitable pride!

For an instant all remained petrified, as it were, by wonder and vexation of spirit. The next moment a fierce rush toward the captive, with naked weapons and bended brows, threatened immediate destruction to the wretched renegado.

Scarcely, however, was this spirit manifested, before it was checked by the grand-master of the temple, who stood beside the seat of Lusignan. He threw his venerable person between the victim and the uplifted weapons that thirsted for his blood.

“Forbear!” he cried, in the deep tones of determination—“forbear, soldiers of the cross, and servants of the Most High! Will ye contaminate your knightly swords with the base gore of a traitor to his standard, a denier of his God? Fitter the axe of the headsman, or the sordid gibbet, for the recreant and coward! Say forth, Beau Sire de Lusignan—have I spoken well?”

“Well and nobly hast thou spoken, Amaury de Montleon,” replied the monarch. “By to-morrow’s dawn shall the captive meet the verdict of his peers; and if they condemn him—by the cross which I wear on my breast, and the faith to which I trust for salvation, shall he die like a dog on the gallows, and his name shall be infamous for ever! Lead him away, Sir John de Crespigny, and answer for your prisoner with your head! And you, fair sirs, meet me at sunrise in the tiltyard: there will we sit in judgment before our assembled hosts, and all men shall behold our doom. Till then, farewell!”

In the dogged silence of despair was the prisoner led away, and in the silence of sorrow and dismay the barons of that proud array passed away from the presence of the king: and the night was again solitary and undisturbed.

It wanted a full hour of the appointed time for the trial, when the swarming camp poured forth its many-tongued multitudes to the tiltyard. The volatile Frenchman, the proud and taciturn Castilian, the resolute Briton, and the less courtly knights of the German empire, crowded to the spot. It was a vast enclosure, surrounded with palisades, and levelled with the greatest care, for the exhibition of that martial skill on which the crusaders set so high a value, and provided with elevated seats for the judges of the games—now to be applied to a more important and awful decision.

The vast multitude was silent, every feeling absorbed in breathless expectation; every brow was knit, and every heart was quivering with that sickening impatience which makes us long to know all that is concealed from our vision by the dark clouds of futurity, even if that all be the worst—

“The dark and hideous close,
Even to intolerable woes!”

This expectation had already reached its highest pitch, when, as the sun reared his broad disk in a flood of radiance above the level horizon of the desert, a mournful and wailing blast of trumpets announced the approach of the judges. Arrayed in their robes of peace, with their knightly belts and spurs, rode the whilome monarch of Jerusalem, and the noblest chiefs of every different nation which had united to form one army under the guidance of one commander. Prelates, and peers, and knights—all who had raised themselves above the mass, in which all were brave and noble, by distinguished talents of either war or peace—had been convoked to sit in judgment on a cause which concerned no less the welfare of the holy church and the interests of religion than the discipline and laws of war. The peers of France and England, and the dignitaries of the empire, many of whom were present, although their respective kings had not yet reached the shores of Palestine—were clad in their robes and caps of maintenance, the knights in the surcoats and collars of their orders, and the prelates in all the splendor of pontifical decoration. A strong body of knights, whose rank did not as yet entitle them to seats in the council, were marshalled like pillars of steel, in full caparison of battle, around the listed field, to prevent the escape of the prisoner, no less than to guard his person from premature violence, had such been attempted by the enthusiastic and indignant concourse.

Arnold of Falkenhorst—stripped of his Moorish garb, and wearing in its stead his discarded robes of knighthood, his collar and blazoned shield about his neck, his golden spurs on his heel, and his swordless scabbard belted to his side—was placed before his peers, to abide their verdict. Beside him stood a page, displaying his crested burgonet and the banner of his ancient house, and behind him a group of chosen warders, keeping a vigilant watch on every motion. But the precaution seemed needless: the spirits of the prisoner had sunk, and he seemed deserted alike by the almost incredible courage which he had so often displayed, and by the presence of mind for which he had been so widely and so justly famous. His countenance, even to his lips, was as white as sculptured marble, and his eyes had a dead and vacant glare; and scarcely did he seem conscious of the purpose for which that multitude was collected around him. Once, and once only, as his eye fell upon the fatal tree, which cast its long shadow in terrible distinctness across the field of judgment, with its accursed noose, and the ministers of blood around it, a rapid and convulsive shudder ran through every limb; it was but a momentary affection, and, when passed, no sign of emotion could be traced in his person, unless it were a slight and almost imperceptible rocking of his whole frame from side to side, as he stood awaiting his doom. Utter despondency seemed to have taken possession of his whole soul; and the soldier who had looked unmoved into the very eye of death in the field, sunk like the veriest coward under the apprehensions of that fate which he had no longer the resolution to bear like a man.

The herald stepped forth, in his quartered tabard and crown of dignity, and the trumpeter by his side blew a summons on his brazen instrument that might have waked the dead. While the sounds were yet ringing in the ears of all, the clear voice of the king-at-arms cried aloud: “Arnold of Falkenhorst, count, banneret, and baron, hear! Thou standest this day before thy peers, accused of heresy and treason; a forsworn and perjured knight; a deserter from thy banner, and a denier of thy God; leagued with the pagan dogs against the holy church; a recreant, a traitor, and a renegado; with arms in thine hands wert thou taken, battling against the cross which thou didst swear to maintain with the best blood of thy veins! Speak! dost thou disavow the deed?”

The lips of Arnold moved, but no words came forth. It seemed as if some swelling convulsion of his throat smothered his utterance. There was a long pause, all expecting that the prisoner would seek to justify his defection, or challenge—as his last resource—the trial by the judgment of God. The rocking motion of his frame increased, and it almost appeared as if he were about to fall upon the earth. The trumpet’s din again broke the silence, and the herald’s voice again made proclamation:

“Arnold of Falkenhorst, speak now, or hear thy doom!—and then for ever hold thy peace!”

No answer was returned to the second summons; and, at the command of Lusignan, the peers and princes of the crusade were called upon for their award. Scarcely had he ceased, before the assembled judges rose to their feet like a single man. In calm determination they laid each one his extended hand upon his breast, and, like the distant mutterings of thunder, was heard the fatal verdict—“Guilty, upon mine honor!”

The words were caught up by the myriads that were collected around, and shouted till the welkin rang: “Guilty, guilty!—To the gibbet with the traitor!”

As soon as the tumult was appeased, Guy de Lusignan arose from his lofty seat, and—the herald making proclamation after him—pronounced the judgment of the court:—

“Arnold of Falkenhorst, whilome count of the empire, belted knight, and sworn soldier of the cross! by thy peers hast thou been tried, and by thy peers art thou condemned! Traitor, recreant, and heretic—discourteous gentleman, false knight, and fallen Christian—hear thy doom! The crest shall be erased from thy burgonet; the spurs shall be hewn from thine heels; the bearings of thy shield shall be defaced; the name of thy house shall be forgotten! To the holy church are thy lands and lordships forfeit! On the gibbet shalt thou die like a dog, and thy body shall be food for the wolf and the vulture!”

“It is the will of God,” shouted the assembled nations, “it is the will of God!”

As soon as the sentence was pronounced—painful, degrading, abhorrent as that sentence was—some portion of the prisoner’s anxiety was relieved; at least, his demeanor was more firm. He raised his eyes, and looked steadily upon the vast crowd which was exulting in his approaching degradation. If there was no composure on his brow, neither was there that appearance of abject depression by which his soul and body had appeared to be alike prostrated. Nay, for an instant his eye flashed and his lip curled, as he tore the collar of knighthood and the shield from his neck, and cast them at the feet of the herald, who was approaching to fulfil the decree. “I had discarded them before,” he said, “nor does it grieve me now to behold them thus.” Yet, notwithstanding the vaunt, his proud spirit was stung—stung more deeply by the sense of degradation than by the fear of death. The spurs which had so often goaded his charger to glory, amid the acclamations and admiration of thousands, were hacked from his heels by the sordid cleaver; the falcon-crest, which had once been a rallying-point and a beacon amid the dust and confusion of the fight, was shorn from his casque; the quarterings of many a noble family were erased from his proud escutcheon, and the shield itself reversed and hung aloft upon the ignominious tree. The pride which had burst into a momentary blaze of indignation, had already ceased to act upon his flagging spirits; and, when a confessor was tendered to him, and he was even offered the privilege of readmission within the pale of the church, he trembled.

“The crime—if crime there be—is his,” he said, pointing toward Guy de Lusignan. “I had served him, and served the cross, as never man did, had he not spurned me with injury, and disgraced me before his court, when I sought the hand of her whom I had rescued by my lance from paynim slavery. Had I been the meanest soldier in the Christian army, my deeds had won me a title to respect, at least, if not to favor. De Lusignan and his haughty daughter drove me forth to seek those rights and that honor from the gratitude of the infidel which were denied by my brothers-in-arms. If I am a sinner, he made me what I am; and now he slays me for it! I say not, ‘Let him give me the hand which he then denied me;’ but let him spare my life, and I am again a Christian; my sword shall again shine in the van of his array; the plots, the stratagems, the secrets of the moslem, shall be his. I, even I, the scorned and condemned renegado, can do more to replace De Lusignan on the throne of Jerusalem than the lances of ten thousand crusaders—ay, than the boasted prowess of Cœur de Lion, or the myriads of France and Austria! All this will I do for him—all this, and more—if he but grants me life. I cannot—I dare not die!—What said I?—I a Falkenhorst, and dare not!”

“Thy life is forfeit,” replied the unmoved priest; “thy life is forfeit, and thy words are folly. For who would trust a traitor to his liege lord, a deserter of his banner, and a denier of his faith? Death is before thee—death and immortality! Beware lest it be an immortality of evil and despair—of the flame that is unquenchable—of the worm that never dies! I say unto thee, ‘Put not thy trust in princes,’ but turn thee to Him who alone can say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven!’ Bend thy knee before the throne of grace; pluck out the bitterness from thine heart, and the pride from thy soul; and ’though thy sins be redder than scarlet, behold they shall be whiter than snow!’ Confess thy sins, and repent thee of thy transgressions, and He who died upon the mount for sinners, even he shall open unto thee the gates of everlasting life.”

“It is too late,” replied the wretched culprit, “it is too late! If I die guilty, let the punishment light on those who shall have sent me to my last account. Away, priest! give me life, or leave me!”

“Slave!” cried the indignant priest—“slave and coward, perish!—and be thy blood, and the blood of Him whom thou hast denied, upon thine own head!”

Not another word was spoken. He knew that all was hopeless—that he must die, unpitied and despised; and in sullen silence he yielded himself to his fate. The executioners led him to the fatal tree: his arms were pinioned—the noose adjusted about his muscular neck. In dark and gloomy despair he looked for the last time around him. He gazed upon the lists, which had so often witnessed the display of his unrivalled horsemanship, and echoed to the applauses which greeted his appearance on the field of mimic war; he gazed on many a familiar and once-friendly face, all scowling on him in hatred and disdain. Heart-sick, hopeless, and dismayed, he closed his aching eyes; and, as he closed them, the trumpets, to whose cheering sound he had so often charged in glory, rang forth the signal of his doom! The pulleys creaked hoarsely—the rope was tightened even to suffocation—and the quivering frame struggled out its last agonies, amid the unheeded execrations of the infuriate multitude!

“Sigh, nor word, nor struggling breath,
Heralded his way to death:
Ere his very thought could pray,
Unanealed he passed away,
Without a hope from mercy’s aid—
To the last, a renegade!”

LEGENDS
OF
FEUDAL DAYS.

THE FALSE LADYE.