[CHAPTER X—THE PASS OF THE EAGLES]
On a breezy autumn morning, while we made practice of arms in the courtyard, a herald from De Lacey, the Lord High Constable, rode over Mountjoy drawbridge. He had an urgent message for my father, and the like for Sir Geoffrey, the young Lord of Carleton, Sir James Dunwoodie of Grimsby and all the other loyal knights and barons of our neighborhood. The Welsh had broken over the border once more; and under Rhys, their barbarous chief who styled himself King of Wales, were burning and ravaging through the Western Marches. Many miles of fair and fruitful land they had overrun; and now they lay before Wallingham, threatening that goodly fortress and all of those who had taken refuge within it with fire and sword.
The army of the Welsh was five thousand strong. They had driven the garrison of Wallingham within walls at once; and had they been as skilled in the use of mangonels and other enginery of siege as they were with the swords and javelins of their ancient custom, they would ere this have breached or scaled the walls and given the place over to massacre and the torch. But stout Sir Philip De Courcey still stood at bay; and now De Lacey was arming for his relief. The Constable had but five hundred horsemen; and of these seven score mail-clad knights, for the young king, Richard the Lion Hearted, so lately crowned, was gathering for the Crusade a vast array of the chivalry of England; and this left our Western Marches but lightly defended. So the Lord Constable was sending messengers far and wide, calling to his standard the knights and barons of the Western counties with all the mounted men that at a day’s notice they could muster.
De Lacey had many times before met and scattered the bands of Welsh marauders. Now he meant to deliver such a blow as should break their power forever. He had sworn to drive them not only from the plain of Wallingham, but across the Marches and into their mountain fastnesses and to harry and slay them till not a score of the robbers remained under the skull-bone banner of their chief. To this end, he would accept no foot-soldiers, even as archers. His whole force must be mounted in order that the Welsh, on their tough little mountain horses might not escape as they had done after many another bloody raid.
On the following day there gathered under the Constable’s banner at Hereford such an array of chivalry as I had ne’er before seen. Four hundred mail-clad knights were there, and near a thousand men-at-arms in good steel caps and braced and quilted leathern jackets and bearing the stout shields and heavy broadswords of their trade. Then there were twelve hundred and more of archers, mostly armed with cross-bows, but some with long-bows and cloth-yard shafts, some having quilted caps and jackets, but more being lightly clad in the foresters’ Lincoln green or peasants’ hodden gray. All, as by the Constable’s command, were mounted in some sort, though truly some of the sorry old nags and hairy-legged plow-horses that they bestrode might have much to do to overtake one of the wiry and long-shanked Welsh who fled on foot, to say naught of their ponies that could run all day without tiring on their moorland tracks and winding mountain ways.
Geoffrey, the young Lord of Carleton, with two hundred men, was at the meeting place when we arrived. Soon after came Dunwoodie of Grimsby, Lord Pelham, Lionel of Montmorency and the men of Mannerley, Whitbury and Gresham. By the Commander’s order, each man had in his pouch store of bread and dried meat for three days’ campaigning. Beyond that time, we must find our eating where we could. ’Twas mid-afternoon ere our force was assembled; but we took the road straightway, and by nightfall were encamped at Hardiston, half way to Wallingham.
For Geoffrey of Carleton, for myself, the Heir of Mountjoy, and my squire and comrade, Cedric of Pelham Wood, this was the first sight and sound of war on such a scale; and we were fairly lifted up by the thought of what the morrow would bring. Cedric and I had each nineteen years at Candlemas, and Sir Geoffrey but six months less. Many bloody frays had we seen in the petty warfare of our countryside with robber baron and with banded forest outlaws; and each of us already knew the pang of hostile steel. Cedric, indeed, was but lately recovered from the wounds he had a year before at Morton where he had been accounted as one dead. But the tramp of an army of mounted men and the sweet music of their clinking armor and weapons we heard for the first time that day. We rode near the middle of the line; and, glancing forward and back at the gallant train, that seemed a whole crusade on the narrow roads, could scarce believe that there existed anywhere an enemy that could stand before its charge. Our mail-clad knights alone, riding under the lead of the stern old Constable, seemed invincible. The Welsh, we knew, fought without defensive armor, save their bull’s hide shields; and almost I pitied them for their nakedness when I thought of the terrible Norman spears and swords in the hands of men long trained in their skillful use and hardened by years of warfare. It seemed scarce fair indeed that knights and gentlemen should fight at such advantage. The arrows and javelins and e’en the sword strokes of their enemies would touch them not, while their own well-aimed blows would cleave through flimsy defenses and scatter wounds and death. Thus mused I in my youthful ignorance; but ere two days had passed I was both sadder and wiser. Never again will I pass such hasty judgment on the power of an enemy I have not surely tried.
Though both Sir Geoffrey and I were as yet knights by courtesy only, not having won our spurs, we were armed and equipped for the expedition like the older knights about us. Cedric also, though a yeoman born, wore a coat of woven mail, and had a good broadsword at his side. But slung upon his back the while was his steel cross-bow—his first and favorite weapon and the one with which he had such wondrous skill. He could strike a running hare more surely than I could one that sat stock still beneath a bush; and he had managed to impart to a dozen and more of the Mountjoy archers some measure of his craft, so that ’twas acknowledged we had the best cross-bow men in the countryside.
Geoffrey of Carleton had gained much in the two years just past in breadth of shoulder and length of arm; and could now dispute with me on almost even terms with the foils or the wooden targes and broadswords of our martial play. I had already the height and reach of my father who had a name for bone and brawn and feats of knightly strength; and Cedric, though a handsbreadth shorter, had the shoulders and thighs of a smith. He could hang by one arm from a bough, and draw himself up to the chin; and I have seen him crumple a gold coin in his hand by way of making good his word when he had declared it over thin and light.
Though Cedric was born and had lived till his sixteenth year in the woodland cottage of his father, the forester of Pelham, his speech was not as that of the churls around us; and at Castle Mountjoy he had learned the ways of gentleness as readily as one of noblest blood. My lady mother was never aweary of lessoning such a pupil in the manners of a knight and gentleman; and now had reason to look with pride on her work. Withal Cedric ne’er forgot the class from which he sprung nor carried himself as a lord over them when given authority.