Cedric, the Forester

by Bernard Gay Marshall

Cedric’s face was wried with pain and wrath. He stamped upon the ground in bitter impatience. Then, pulling from the basket the huge meat pie which had formed the greater part of the provision he had sought to carry to the prisoner, he dropped it before him and struck it with most vicious kick before it reached the ground. The crust flew off in a dozen pieces, and revealed the inner part as no juicy slices of flesh of fowl or pig but a close-wound coil of hempen rope, such as no mortal man could feed upon.

“Had I placed this beneath my armpits as was my first thought,” growled Cedric, “it would now have been safe hidden in the bundle of straw they have given Wilfrid for a bed. Fortune favored us not, it seems; but mayhap that fickle jade will smile on our further contrivings. I made a new plan even as I climbed the tower stairs; and Wilfrid is well apprised of it. ’Tis not so simple as the first nor seemingly so sure; but it may serve our turn.”

“Must we wait till the morrow and risk another entry of the castle?” I questioned. “Mayhap the bailiff will not ride abroad so opportunely.”

“Nay, we shall make the essay to-night,” he answered slowly. “Time presses, if Wilfrid is not to be so weakened by fasting as to be incapable of any effort in his own behalf. Marcel hath already been told to have the horses here at nine and await our coming till dawn if need be. If we can come by a ball of fine, stout cord like fishing lines, we will have that rope in the tower room by midnight. Then all the rest will be quickly done, and Wilfrid a dozen leagues from Kimberley ere sunrise.”

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An hour before midnight Cedric and I lay under the group of saplings, ten yards from the castle moat and opposite the window of the room which held young Wilfrid of Birkenhead. Beside us on the ground, lay the ball of cord, with one projecting end fastened to the coil of rope. Now Cedric took a cross-bow bolt from the sack at his girdle and tied the other end of the cord firmly about it. Then, drawing the bow, he placed the bolt in groove.

The sky was covered with thin clouds that half obscured the stars; and the moon had not yet risen. The castle wall on the other side of the moat was a gray blur in the murk, but we could clearly see the sentinel as he slowly paced his rounds of the battlements. The steel cap that he wore and the point of his spear caught now and again a gleam of the starlight. Twenty feet below the tower’s summit a blacker square in the wall was the window of Wilfrid’s cell; and to the right of this could barely be discerned the lattice which had been swung wide as though to admit the fresher air.

Cedric crouched on his knees, gazing at the window till the sentry passed from sight; then softly he uttered the cry of an owl. At once some white object fluttered in the blackness of the cell window. Cedric rose to his feet, took careful aim at the window and let fly the bolt. But alas! the pull of the cord as it unwound from the ball checked the quarrel sadly, and it rang on the stones of the wall no higher than our heads. We crouched at once in the shadows, certain that the sentry had heard its steely stroke; but he came not back to the tower; and soon we breathed again.

Cedric drew in the line and recharged his weapon, whispering to me the while that he should have better known than to have it so tightly coiled, and that another try, with the cord lying loose, would surely place the bolt within the window.

Now the sentry came again on his rounds; and we waited perforce for his passing. When he had gone once more Cedric threw his weapon to his shoulder and sent the bolt on its way. How my ears strained in listening! And, an instant later, how my heart sank when I heard once more the clang of iron ’gainst the tower stones and realized that Cedric had failed a second time to strike his mark at fifty paces.