“Rise, Sir Geoffrey of Carleton,” he said, “I dub thee knight. Be thou ever faithful, true and valorous as thou hast been this day.”
Then I also received the strokes of the sword and words were pronounced that made me a knight and chevalier in verity.
Lastly, and to my great amaze, I heard the words:
“Rise, Sir Cedric De La Roche. I dub thee Knight of the Crag. The device on thy shield shall be an eagle in token of the spot where thy resource changed defeat to victory. Be thou ever faithful, true and valorous as thou hast been this day, and England hath gained a stout defender and King Richard of the Lion Heart a worthy support to his throne.”
[CHAPTER XI—BY KIMBERLEY MOAT]
After the Battle of the Pass we had a season of quiet at Mountjoy. King Richard had sailed on the Great Crusade, leaving his brother John as Regent; and the people of England, nobles and commons alike, learned that there was a far worse rule than that of stern old Henry of Anjou, for John Lackland, his younger son, had at once the greed of a tiger and the meanness of a rat. Many of the high places of Church and State were filled with his favorites—miserable creatures for the most part whose only merits were a ready complaisance to the wishes of their master and a measure of craft and subtlety in furtherance of his schemes. Sheriffs and bailiffs of a yet more contemptible strain hurried to do the bidding of these velvet-clad beggars and thieves, and honest and forthright men led a hard life indeed unless they were themselves high in power and of numerous following.
Among these last might be reckoned the Mountjoys and their friends and allies, the Carletons of Teramore. We were too strong and too valuable in the defense of the Western Marches to be meddled with save for the greatest cause; so the land for some leagues about us was in a measure free from the ills which now and again brought other portions of the Kingdom to the verge of rebellion.
Sir Cedric, as now we gladly styled him, was high in the councils of Mountjoy. My father consulted him as often as myself on the gravest questions; and Lady Mountjoy willingly spent uncounted hours in bettering his knowledge of polite and courtly ways and of those divers little matters of knightly bearing to which in our rough Western land we give mayhap too little heed. At the books, to her amaze, he soon had far outstripped her. An uncle of his was one of the monks at Kirkwald Abbey, and a famous Latin scholar. For a year past, Cedric had been making frequent journeys to the Abbey; and once we had old Father Benedict at Mountjoy for a month or more. For hours together they would pore over dusty and ancient tomes that made me ache with weariness but to look upon them. The first we knew, our Cedric was better at the Latin reading than any layman we had seen or heard of. History and chronicles were good meat and drink to him; and often, with his head between the covers of a book, his dinner would be quite forgot but for my lusty calling.
Withal he was no pale bookworm, but a lusty and rollicking lad who in rough and tumble play could lay me on the broad of my back with scarce a minute’s striving. At the sword-play I was ever his better, but his mastery of the cross-bow grew yet more wonderful as the seasons passed. Even the oldsters admitted that he equalled Marvin at Marvin’s best. Already he had the name of the best cross-bowman in England; and I found that strangers to our county, who had heard nothing of the deeds of my father and all our noble forbears, had knowledge, nevertheless, of Mountjoy as the house to which Sir Cedric gave allegiance.
But I think the thing that warmed me most toward my former squire and constant comrade was the loyalty he ever had to the class of folk from which he sprung. Lord Mountjoy often gave to him authority over working crews at some necessary task on farm or highway or scouting parties of swordsmen and archers that rode the Marches to guard against the Welsh marauders. It would have been no wonder had such a sudden rise to title and preferment bred in a youth who had been born in a forester’s cot a certain arrogance of manner and an overweening confidence in his own worth and deserts. But, by his own desire, the archers and men-at-arms of Mountjoy still addressed him as they had when his station was no higher than theirs; and though he could be quick and firm on occasion, he was never above listening to and profiting by the counsels of the elder men in buckram or in hodden gray. Nor did he forget the cottage in Pelham Wood which housed his old father and his small, tow-headed brethren. Since he had dwelt at Mountjoy Hall, scarce a month had passed without his riding thence and leaving with them some share in any guerdon he had won.