"And then, what happened after the death of thy father?"
"They issued from the woods, seized the castle--the few defenders left had fled to Warwick--and then summoned the whole neighbourhood to arms. The bale fires were blazing on every hill. The Count of Warwick bid me tell you, my liege, that he will hold his castle till aid arrives, but that he is powerless to check the wave of insurrection which is spreading over the country far and wide."
"It is well; our banner shall be unfurled and these English shall feel the lion's wrath, which they have provoked. Tomorrow is Ascension Day--the truce of God--on Friday we march. Meanwhile I commend thee to the abbot's hospitality; he will bring thee to the banquet tomorrow after the High Mass. Remember, a true warrior should be as devout in church as fearless in the field."
Etienne left the presence, assured that the death of his father would be speedily avenged, and slept more soundly that night than he had since the fatal fire in the marshes. He loved his father, and it must be remembered that he knew not that father's crimes. Not for one moment did he suspect that he had been concerned in the burning of the monastery, nor did he dream that there had been aught in the death of the Lady of Aescendune save the hand of nature.
The one absorbing passion of his life at this moment was hatred of his successful rival--not so much as his rival, but as the murderer of his father.
All the Norman inhabitants of the neighbourhood crowded the abbey church on the morrow, and were present at the Mass of the day; the poor English were there in small numbers; they could not worship devoutly in company with their oppressors, but frequented little village sanctuaries, too poverty stricken to invite Norman cupidity, where, on that very account, the poor clerics of English race might still minister to their scattered flocks, and preach to them in the language Alfred had dignified by his writings, but which the Normans compared to the "grunting of swine."
And the service in the church over, how grand was the company which met in the banqueting hall of the palace on the island!
The Conqueror sat at the head of the board; on his right hand the Count d'Harcourt, head of an old Norman family, which still retained many traces of its Danish descent, and was as little French-like as Normans of that date could be; De le Pole, progenitor of a fated house, well-known in English history; De la Vere, the ancestor of future Earls of Oxford; Arundel, who bequeathed his name to a town on the Sussex coast, where his descendants yet flourish; Clyfford, unknowing of the fate which awaited his descendants in days of roseate hue; FitzMaurice, a name to become renowned in Irish story; Gascoyne, ancestor of a judge whose daring justice should immortalise his name; Hastings, whose descendant fell the victim of the Boar of Gloucester in later days; Maltravers, whose name was destined to be defiled at Berkeley Castle in Plantagenet times; Peverel, a name now familiar through the magic pen of Scott; Talbot, whose progeny, in times when the Normans' children had become the English of the English, burnt the ill-fated "Maid" at Rouen {[xx]}.
There was a bishop present who blessed the meats, but Etienne could have spared the presence of Geoffrey of Coutances, whom he knew as the friend of Wilfred, and the author of many inconvenient (and, as Etienne thought, impertinent) inquiries about that young unfortunate, after the burning of the old priory.
Who shall describe the splendour of that feast? We will not attempt it, nor will we try to analyse the feelings of the country youth so suddenly introduced into so brilliant an assembly.