With incredible slowness the summer months passed by in the stifling atmosphere of the Saxon tower of Oxford Castle. Many times Gabriel cheered himself by a resolute dwelling on the old motto written in Elizabethan handwriting in the great family Bible at Hereford which had belonged to his grandfather, “Hope helpeth heavie hartes, sayeth Henry Harford.”
He remembered that the same motto appeared in neat printing characters when the Bible had been handed down to his father, and had become “Bridstock Harford, his Book.” Apparently the Harfords had always had troubled times, but had known how to win their way through them, and he tried desperately not to disgrace the family traditions of fortitude and constancy.
It must, however, be owned that his surroundings were enough to discourage the bravest heart. The youngest of about fifty men of various ranks and different callings, but all of them prisoners of war, he found his natural reserve and fastidiousness tried in a hundred galling ways. While the miserably inadequate food and the total deprivation of the exercise to which all his life e had been accustomed, not only affected his health, but made it daily a greater effort to fight against the evil tendencies of his own nature. Solomon, in the days of his wisdom, set it on record that the man who could rule himself was greater than the victorious general who captured a city, but the world still gives the praise and glory to the military conqueror, and reserves sneers and hard words for the man who hates and boldly fights evil—a reflection only too apt to occur to people in moments of temptation.
Gabriel struggled on, however, through July and August and the greater part of September, saved by hope, and always persuading himself that his father would assuredly effect his exchange before another week of this dreary life was ended. He dwelt often, too, on the thought that perhaps his letter to Hilary after her mother’s death might reach her heart and awaken his Princess Briar-Rose to love once more. Happily he never dreamt that Norton had waylaid the messenger, and that the fragments of the letter had been trodden down into the mud of Marshfield-street. Like poor little Helena, he was for the time helped by an illusion.
On September the 23rd, while he was poring over the tiny volume of Plato which Falkland had given him, his attention was drawn to a general tolling of bells throughout the city, and when Aaron, the brutal gaoler employed to look after the war prisoners by Provost-Marshal Smith entered with the day’s rations, he was beset by eager questions.
“What hath chanced? Hath a battle been fought?” asked the prisoners, for once failing to snatch without delay at the penny loaves dealt out to them from a basket by Sandy, Aaron’s half-witted helper.
“A battle,” growled Aaron, setting down the buckets from which the cans were refilled with beer and water. “Ay, to be sure, and a victory for the king; but it has cost him my Lord Carnarvon, and my Lord Falkland, and a host of other noblemen beside, all for the trouble of slaying Puritan dogs like yourselves.”
Gabriel was well used to the taunt, but at the news of Falkland’s death he turned pale.
“Did you say my Lord Falkland was slain?” he asked, hoping against hope that his rescuer might only be wounded.
“Ay, to be sure, don’t you hear the bells tolling? He’s being borne through Oxford to Great Tew this very moment, though for the matter of that they ought to bury him at night with a stake through his heart at the crossing of the roads, for they say ’twas sheer suicide—he rode out alone betwixt the two armies! just the fool’s act one would look for from a bookish coward, always trying to make peace! A pox on all peace-loving cravens say I. Don’t stand staring at me like that, you mongrel cur! What was my Lord Falkland to you?” and he emphasized the question with a brutal kick.