A Prince of Cornwall / A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex

by Charles W. Whistler

Then Owen said in a voice that had grown very stern: "Who was the sentry who should have been here?"

The men looked at one another, and the chief of them answered at last that the man was from Dartmoor, one of such a name. And then one looked more closely at the arms Tregoz wore, and cried out that they were the very arms of the missing sentry, or so like them that one must wait for daylight to say for certain that they were not they.

It was plain enough then. In such arms Tregoz could well walk through the village itself unnoticed, as one of the palace guards would be, and so when the time came he would climb from some hiding in the fosse and take the place of his countryman on the rampart, and the watchful captain would see but a sentry there and deem that all was well.

Yet this did not tell us who was the one who had wrestled with and slain him, and Owen told what had been done, while I went and brought the bow and arrows from the foot of the rampart, in hopes that they might tell us by mark or make if more than Tregoz and the sentry were in this business. Then I looked at my window, and, though narrow, it was as fair a mark in the moonlight as one would need. Without letting my shadow fall on the sleeper, it was possible to see my couch and the white furs on it, though it would be needful to raise the arm across the moonlight in the act of shooting. It was all well planned, but it needed a first-rate bowman.

"It was surely Tregoz who shot," one of the men said. "The sentry who was here was a bungler with a bow. None whom we know but Tregoz could have made sure of that mark, bright as the night is. Well it was, Lord, that you were not sleeping in your wonted place."

Owen glanced at me to warn me to say nothing, and bade the men take the body to the guardroom. They were already cursing the sentry who had brought shame on their ranks by leaguing himself with a traitor, and it was plain that there was no need to bid them lay hands on him if they could. That was a matter that concerned their own honour.

So we left the guarding of the place in their hands, and they doubled the watches from that time forward. Then we went and spoke with the captain of the guard, who yet kept his post at the doors, as none had called him.

"Maybe I am to blame," he said, when he heard all. "I should not have left a Dartmoor man from the country whence Tregoz came to keep watch there. I knew that he was thence, and thought no harm."

"There is no blame to you," Owen said. "It is not possible to look for such treachery among our own men."

Then we went into our room to show the captain what had been done. And thence the two arrows had already been taken. The hole in the plaster where the first struck was yet there, and the slit made by the second in the tough hide of the bear was to be seen when I turned over the fur, but who had taken them we could not tell. Only, it was plain that here in the palace some one was in the plot and had taken away what might be proof of who the archer had been, not knowing, as I suppose, that the attempt had failed so utterly. For an arrow will often prove a good witness, as men will use only some special pattern that they are sure of, and will often mark them that they may claim them and their own game in the woodlands if they are found in some stricken beast that has got away for a time. It was more than likely that Tregoz would have been careful to use only such arrows as he knew well in a matter needing such close shooting as this. Indeed, we afterwards found men who knew the two shafts from the rampart as those of the Cornishman, without doubt.