Nearly five months had gone by since that black New Year night, and the fields and woods of Old England were bright with all the beauty of sunny May, when a small band of armed horsemen came riding slowly over the crest of a ridge looking down on the quiet, green valley, at the far end of which the low, square, dark-grey tower of a noble cathedral rose above the grassy meadows and glittering windings of its tiny river, sentinelling, like a guardian giant, the ancient town of Winchester.
The party consisted of a knight in full armour, his two esquires, and a dozen sturdy men-at-arms, who, when passing through this beautiful country in that bright sunshine, and actually in sight of their homes, after long absence and countless perils, might well have been expected to be radiant with joy. But it was not so. They rode in sullen silence, with gloomy faces and downcast eyes, which ever and anon shot by stealth a dark look at their leader, who wore the only bright face in the whole band.
Well might Sir Simon Harcourt look so joyful. Claremont Castle and its broad lands, which he had coveted so long, were his at last, by the death of his two nephews; for by this time Alured’s death seemed as certain as Hugo’s. Nothing had ever been seen or heard of the fratricide since the fatal night when his uncle came back alone from a fruitless search for him; and no one doubted that he had either been slain by French soldiers or prowling robbers, or had died by his own hand in a fit of frantic despair.
Hence Sir Simon (after waiting some months, as if to give time for the discovery of some proof that his lost nephew was still alive) respectfully asked leave of the king to cross over to England, and “put in order” (i.e. take as his own) the fair domain that was lying masterless; and Edward could find no cause for refusing.
Neither he nor his son had ever liked the man, toward whom both felt the instinctive repugnance of a high nature for a low one, even apart from the terrible shadow that had now darkened his name. But, whatever were their secret suspicions, they could prove nothing; and both alike shrank from putting an open stigma on one who was certainly guiltless in actual deed, and might possibly (sorely as appearances were against him) be guiltless in purpose too.
So Harcourt crossed the sea with a small train, landed at Southampton, and rode inland till almost in sight of Claremont Castle, revolving in his mind schemes of selfish ambition, and either not seeing or not heeding the lowering looks of his followers.
But these brave men had good cause to look gloomy, apart from their dark suspicions of the wily and hard-hearted man who was now their master; for the whole land through which they were passing seemed smitten by the curse of Heaven. That terrific pestilence, known to history as the Black Death, which had wasted the whole continent of Europe during the two past years, had reached Britain at last. The shadow of death darkened all the land; and in the fair southern counties of Merry England, as in doomed Egypt of old, “there was not a house where there was not one dead.”
Even their short march from the coast had already given them ghastly proof of the misery which, under all this glitter of victory and conquest, was gnawing the very vitals of England, and amply avenging the sufferings inflicted by her on France. Through the silent streets of Southampton corpse after corpse was being borne; and many houses stood empty, with open doors, not a soul being left alive within.
Hardly had they got clear of the town, when they met a man being led away to prison; and, on asking his crime, they were told that, being unable to find work in his native place, he had presumed to leave it and seek employment elsewhere, “which thing,” said the sheriff, with an important air, “hath been straitly forbidden by our lord the king, in a special statute framed this very year, commanding all craftsmen to remain in their own place, and be content with such wages as are given there; wherefore this contumacious rogue hath well deserved his doom!”
A little farther they passed through a small hamlet, without seeing a living thing in its voiceless, grass-grown street, in the middle of which two unburied corpses lay festering in the sun. Sir Simon, seeing (as he thought) a man leaning out of a window in the last cottage of all, hailed him; but there was no reply, and the knight, looking closer, grew pale as he saw the shrunken features and rayless eyes of the dead. There was no one left alive in the whole village!