The Red Tavern

by C. R. Macauley

Then it may have been, the grizzled knight went on, that Sir Richard had witnessed that self-same tournament upon the field of Anjou, at Vannes? It had been extravagantly rich in prizes, ... that tournament. He himself had been so fortunate as to win two barbs and three coats of Tuscan mail, ... fluted, ... sumptuous, ... exquisitely damascened. But they had long since found their way into the rapacious talons of the Jews. Everything that he had ever possessed ... of any value, ... saving that which he was then wearing, ... and his knightly honor, ... had followed at the tail of them into the same far-reaching, ever greedy claws. Yet he courted no hatred of them, ... eh! Why should one? Were they not as necessary to a gold-lean knight, these gleaners of worldly wealth, as were his very bread and wine, ... eh? What excuse was there for despising one of the prime essentials of life, he wanted to know?

In something after this manner the warrior rambled on. Touching, with a ponderous grace, upon any subject that chanced to fall, haphazard, into his mind, not pausing for a moment to listen to answering comment, or seeming to expect it: Sir Richard was growing convinced that the crafty fellow was witness to the passing of the insult between the Renegade Duke and himself, and that he was merely talking to defeat their avowed purpose of renewing hostilities till the hour when they should halt for the night.

There would be no duel that day, and no escape, of this he was by now almost certain. Disappointed, chagrined, impatient of his strange thralldom, and desiring above all things else to deliver Henry's message to Douglas, he rode gloomily along, lending something less than half an ear to the empty words that his stanch, unwavering guard was volleying into it.

For a considerable while the road had been threading between a pleasing succession of furze and thistle-grown downs. It was from a copse abutting upon the highway, when they were riding between the steeper of these, that a frightened hare scurried in front of them across the road. Upon the instant de Claverlok drew rein and swept each of the hillsides with a swift and keen scrutiny. The trifling incident of the flying hare was as the first eddy of wind that heralds the coming tornado; for, in almost the next moment, there followed the sharp spattering of bolts against bonnet and breast-plate and shield. One struck fair upon Sir Richard's gorget, causing him to reel in his saddle and his temples to throb and ache with the shock of the impact. Among those riding ahead the young knight saw three pitch heavily off their horses. Clear eyed and iron nerved indeed were these Scot archers; men who could pick you out with unerring nicety the crevice between gorget and helm, or the joint between pauldron and breast-plate. Often, with the beaver drawn, they were known to flick an arrow through the eye-slit without touching either side of the orifice.

After the first shower of bolts the slopes upon each side of the company of horsemen became alive with warriors, slipping down the hill upon them like brown and living torrents. There was a ruddy glare ahead, where the ardent rays of the sun, now setting, were beating against the breastplates of an advancing foe. Uprose, then, loud cries of "Douglas, and the Duke of York!" "Long live the White Rose!" which was met with shouts of "Death to the traitors!" "Long live Tyrrell and the Duke of Warwick!"

Sir Richard was just upon the point of yielding to the instinctive call that would have placed him in the singular position of giving battle against the enemies of his supposed own foes, when the Renegade Duke's hand fell heavily upon the bridle of his prancing stallion.

"Cock-shut time is come!" he was shouting in the young knight's ear. "I am ready to obey thy command of this morning. Ride with me to the left!"

Quick as a flash Sir Richard wheeled, and together they drove upward along a narrow roadway that debouched from the one over which they had been traveling, unlimbering their battle-axes as they sped along.

When the wooded summit of the down intervened between them and the scene of the conflict, they drew rein and went at it. Whatsoever else the Renegade Duke may have been, Sir Richard was quick to discover that as a foeman he was not in the least to be despised. Blow after blow he was parrying, and that with a neatness and cleverness that set the impetuous young knight somewhat by the ears. Indeed, growing out of the very frenzy of his eagerness, he realized that his attacks were losing an alarming measure of their force and accuracy.

There was now need of immediate action, as, upon the further side of the down, the crash of arms seemed to be subsiding. It was just as he was charging his antagonist afresh that Sir Richard heard the thunder of hoof-beats along the narrow road upon which the Duke and he were fighting for their very lives. Summoning every vestige of energy and strength at his command, he aimed a blow full at his foeman's head-piece. When it appeared to be upon the point of striking, the Renegade Duke executed a swift demivolte. The heavy ax, glancing along his helm, clove off its jaunty white plume, and crashed fair upon the chamfron of his mount. There followed then a momentary reeling and staggering, like a maimed ship in a sudden gale, whereupon horse and rider fell, furiously plunging and kicking, into a thornhedge beside the road.