“It is for that purpose we have sent for thee,” replied the earl. “Thou must win thy spurs, and there is no likelihood of opportunity arising in this peaceful land (how little the earl thought what was in the near future), so thou must even go where blows are going.”
“I am ready, my lord, and willing.”
“The Earl of Hereford is about to return home, and will take thee with him to fight against the Welsh under his banner. Now what dost thou say to that?”
Hubert bent the knee to the new lord, with all that grace which he inherited from his Provencal blood. And sooth, my young readers, if you could have seen that eager face with that winning smile, and those brave bright eyes, you would have loved him, too, as the earl did; but for all that I do not think he had the sterling qualities of his friend Martin, who is rather my hero: but then I am not young now, or I might think differently.
We have not space again to describe this portion of Hubert’s life, upon which we now enter, in any detail. Suffice it to say he went to Hereford Castle with the earl, and was soon transferred to an outpost on the upper Wye, where he was at once engaged in deadly warfare with the fiercest of savages. For the Welsh, once the cultivated Britons, had degenerated into savagery. Bloodshed and fire raising amongst the hated “Saxons” (as they called all the English alike) were the amusement and the business of their lives, until Edward the First, of dire necessity, conquered and tamed them in the very next generation. Until then, the Welsh borders were a hundred times more insecure than the Cheviots. No treaties could bind the mountaineers. They took oaths of allegiance, and cheerfully broke them. “No faith with Saxons” was their motto.
These fields, these meadows once were ours,
And sooth by heaven and all its powers,
Think you we will not issue forth,
To spoil the spoiler as we may,
And from the robber rend the prey.
Even the payment of blackmail, so effectual with the Highlanders, did not secure the border counties from these flippant fighters, and in sooth Normans were much too proud for any such evasion of a warrior’s duty.
There, then, our Hubert fleshed his maiden sword, within a week after his arrival at Llanystred Castle; and that in a fierce skirmish, wherein the fighting was all hand to hand, he slew his man.
But in these fights, where every one was brave, there was small opportunity for Hubert to gain personal distinction. A coward was very rare; as well expect a deer to be born amongst a race of tigers. There were, it is true, degrees of self devotion, and for a chance of distinguishing himself by self sacrifice Hubert longed.
And thus it came.