Cedric, the Forester

by Bernard Gay Marshall

At once she leaped toward the wall with a glad cry:

“Oh, my lord, my lord, have patience but a moment. I will undo the door.”

She brushed aside some old and mildewed hangings, all heavy with dust and grime, and brought to view a small iron door. Snatching from her girdle the largest key, she fitted it into the lock. Still, try as she would, she could not turn it till old Marvin came to her help. Then indeed the rusty lock gave way, the door swung slowly open, and my father, the Lord of Mountjoy, followed by half a score of knights and men-at-arms, stepped forth into the candlelight.

When Lady Mountjoy at last was free from my father’s embrace, she stood with her hands on his shoulders and asked a dozen questions, demanding that he answer all at once.

“Whence comest thou, my lord? Are the Scots beaten? Had’st thou news of the treachery of the Old Wolf of Carleton? How many men hast thou? Oh! I had forgot this secret passage and the door to which thou gavest me the key on our wedding day. My foolish men, and almost myself, believed thy signal was a ghostly tapping. But Dickon remembered the passage; and when I had thrice heard the signal I knew it for the knock that thou makest at my door,—the signal that means thee and none else in the world.”

Meanwhile old Marvin had made fast the secret door, and we all were moving toward the stairway, my father’s arm encased in link armor thrown around the waist of the castle’s mistress.

“Welladay, my dearest Kate! Not quite so fast and I will tell thee. The Scots are beaten; and we of Mountjoy had an honorable share in it. The campaign goes on, but a loyal youth from Mountjoy village found me after the battle and told of the doings of the traitor, Carleton. Straightway I took the boy before the King. And he being pleased with some work I had done that day, did bid me take ten of my best men, make my choice of ten horses from his train, and ride post haste to the relief of my house and my lady. We reached the Tarn Rock, half a league from here, at nightfall, and reconnoitered Carleton’s camp. He being in greater force than we could cope with at once, I bethought me of this old passage from the wood two furlongs off. And so I have been tap, tap tapping for an hour, hoping at last to get the news of my coming to thee. And art thou well, my Kate? And have the rascals done aught to harm thee or Dickon here?”

“Not a whit, my lord. Save for an arrow stroke our Dickon hath come by in open fight, and which is already nearly healed. They have made some mighty threats, and would have carried them through with right good will could they have reached us; but, thanks to Dickon, to old Marvin here and the others, they got much worse than they gave. Many a Carleton knave will ne’er cut another throat, be it of man or pig; and the Old Wolf himself was very near to his just reward in the shape of a good steel bolt from Marvin’s bow.”

On the ramparts next morning swung my father’s banner of purple and gold. Watching our enemies’ camp, I could plainly see that the display of this flag, which they knew should signify naught else than the presence of the head of our house, early brought most of them, and finally the Gray Wolf himself, to gaze at the flagstaff. They were telling one another, as I could well imagine, that this was but a ruse on the part of the castle’s mistress, intended to deceive them into the belief that Lord Mountjoy had come through their lines in the night. What was their surprise therefore, when Lord Mountjoy appeared on the battlements in full armor and wearing the purple plume he had brought from Italy, and yet more when they saw him attended and followed as he was. Armored knights, in numbers they could not tell, came into sight and passed from view on the battlements and at the casements. We could fairly see the rumor flying through the Carleton camp that Lord Mountjoy had returned with all his men and by stealth or by magic had passed their sentinels during the night.

The Gray Wolf stared long and viciously at our battlements, and called on those with younger eyes to make sure of what he saw. Then with oaths and curses that made his men quail before him, he gave orders to break camp and return to Teramore.