CHAPTER XIII OSRIC AT HOME
It is not our intention to follow Osric's career closely during the early period of his pagehood under the fostering care of Brian Fitz-Count and the influence of Alain, but we shall briefly dwell in this chapter upon the great change which was taking place in his life and character.
When we first met him, he was simple to a fault, but he had the sterling virtues of truthfulness and obedience, purity and unselfishness, sedulously cultivated in a congenial soil by his grandfather, one of Nature's noblemen, although not ranked amongst the Norman noblesse.
But it was the virtue which had never yet met real temptation. Courageous and brave he was also, but still up to the date of the adventure with the deer, he had never struck a blow in anger, or harmed a fellow-creature, save the beasts of the chase whom he slew for food, not for sport.
Then came the great change in his life: the gentle, affectionate lad was thrown into the utterly worldly and impure atmosphere of a Norman castle—into a new world; thoughts and emotions were aroused to which he had been hitherto a perfect stranger, and, strange to say, he felt unsuspected traits in his own character, and desires in his own unformed mind answering to them.
For instance, he who had never raised a hand in angry strife, felt the homicidal impulse rush upon him during the skirmish we described in a previous chapter. He longed to take part in the frays, to be where blows were going; thenceforward he gave himself up with ardour to the study of war; he spent all his spare time in acquiring the arts of fence and the management of weapons; and Brian smiled grimly as he declared that Osric would soon be a match for Alain.
But it was long before the Baron allowed him to take part in actual bloodshed, and then only under circumstances which did not involve needless risk, or aught more than the ordinary chances of mortal combat, mitigated by whatsoever aid his elders could afford; for Brian loved the boy with a strange attachment; the one soft point in his armour of proof was his love for Osric—not a selfish love, but a parental one, as if God had committed the boy to his charge in the place of those he had lost.
Yet he did not believe Osric was his long-lost son: no, that child was dead and gone,—the statements of the old man were too explicit to allow of further doubt.
Osric was present when that brutal noble, Robert Fitz-Hubert, stormed Malmesbury; there he beheld for the first time the horrors of a sack; there he saw the wretched inhabitants flying out of their burning homes to fall upon the swords of the barbarous soldiery. At the time he felt that terrible thirst so like that of a wild beast,—which in some modern sieges, such as Badajos, has turned even Englishmen into wild and merciless savages,—and then when it was over, he felt sick and loathed himself.
He was fond of Alain, who returned the preference, yet Alain was a bad companion, for he was an adept in the vices of his day—not unlike our modern ones altogether, yet developed in a different soil, and of ranker growth.