We stole along as quietly as might be for some distance in safety, riding where the moss was deepest and the shadows thick, and then, just when we were at the nearest to the Norman camp in the curve we were making toward the monastery beyond, those ill-conditioned invaders set up their evening trumpet-call. As the shrill notes came down into the dim starlight glade, strong, clear, and martial in the evening quiet, they thrilled that gallant old charger I had borrowed from the camp at Hastings down to his inmost warlike fiber. He recognized the familiar sound—mayhap it was the very trumpet-call which had been fodder and stable to him for years—and, with ears pricked forward and feet that beat the dewy turf in union to his pleasure, he whinnied loud and long!
Nothing it availed me to smite my hand upon my breast at this deadly betrayal, or lay a warning finger upon his brave, unwitting, velvet nozzle—luckless, accursed horse, the mischief was done! But yet, I will not abuse him, for the grass grows green over his strong sleek limbs, and right well that night he amended his error! Hardly had his neigh gone into the stillness when the chargers in the camp answered it, and in a moment the men-at-arms and squires by the nearest fire were all on foot, and in another they had espied us and set up a shout that woke the ready camp in a moment.
There was small time to think. I clapped my hand upon Editha’s bridle rein and gave my own a shake, and away we went across the checkered moonlight glade. But so close had we been that a bow-string or two hummed in the Norman tents, and before we were fairly started I heard the rustle of the shafts in the leaves overhead. It was more than arrows we had to dread, and, turning my head for a moment ere we plunged again into dark vistas of the forest road, there, sure enough, was the pursuit streaming out after us, and gallant squires and knights tumbling into their saddles and shouting and cheering as they came galloping and glittering down behind us—a very pretty show, but a dangerous one.
By the souls of St. Dunstan and his forty monks! but I could have enjoyed that midnight ride had it not been for the pale, brave rider at my side, and the little ones that lay fearfully a-nestling on our saddle-bows. For hours the swift, keen gallop of our horses swallowed the unseen ground in tireless rhythm—all through the night field and coppice and hanger swept by us as we passed from glade to glade and woodland to woodland—now ’twas a lonely forester’s hut that shone for a moment in ghostly whiteness between the tree-stems with the nightshine on its lifeless face, and anon we sped through droves of Saxon swine, sleeping upon the roadway under their oak-trees, round a muffled swineherd. And the great forest stags stayed the fraying of their antlers against the tree-trunks in the dark coppices as we flew by, and the startled wolf yelped and snarled upon our path as our fleeting shadows overtook him; and then, there, ever behind, low, remorseless, stern, came the murmuring hoofbeats of our pursuers, now rising and now falling upon the light breath of the night-wind, but ever, as our panting steeds strode shorter and shorter, coming nearer and nearer, clearer and clearer.
Had this somber race, whereof Death held the stakes, continued so as it began, straight on end, I do not think we could have got away. But when we had ridden many an hour, and the heavy streaks of white foam were marking Editha’s horse with dreadful suggestion, and his breath was coming hot and husky through his wide red nostrils, for a moment or two the sound of the pursuers stopped. Blessed respite. They had missed the woodland road—but for all too short a space. We had hardly made good four or five hundred yards of advantage when, terribly near to us, sounded the call of one of their horsemen, and soon all the others were in his footsteps again. This one, he who now led the pursuers by, perhaps, a quarter of a mile, gained on us stride by stride, until I could stand the thud of his horsehoofs on the turf behind no more. “Here!” I said fiercely to Editha, “take Gurth,” and put him with his sister in her arms, then, bidding them ride slowly forward, turned my good charger and paced him slowly back toward the oncoming knight, with stern anger smoldering in my heart.
There was a smooth, wide bit of grassy road between us in that center, midnight Saxon forest. And never a gleam of light fell upon that ancient thoroughfare; never the faintest, thin white finger of a star pierced the black canopy of boughs overhead; it was as black as the kennel of Cerberus, and as I sat my panting war-horse I could not see my own hand stretched out before me—yet there, in that grim blackness, I met the Norman lance to lance, and sent his spirit whirling into the outer space!
I let him come within two hundred yards, then suddenly rose in my stirrups and, shouting Harold’s war-cry, since I did not deign to fall upon him unawares, “Out! Out! England! England!” awaited his answer. It came in a moment, strange and inhuman in the black stillness, “Rou! Ha Rou! Notre Dame!” and then—muttering between my tight-set teeth that surely that road was the road to hell for one of us—I bent my head down almost to my horse’s ears, drove the spurs into him, and, gripping my long, keen spear, thundered back upon my unseen foeman. With a shock that startled the browsing hinds a mile away, we were together. The Norman spear broke into splinters athwart my body—but mine, more truly held, struck him fair and full—I felt him like a great dead weight upon it, I felt his saddle-girths burst and fly, and then, as my own strong haft bent like a willow wand and snapped close by my hand, that midnight rider and his visionary steed went crashing to the ground. Bitterly I laughed as I turned my horse northward once more, and from a black cavern-mouth on the hillside an owl echoed my grim merriment with ghastly glee.
Well, the night was all but done, yet were we not out of the toils. A little further on, Editha’s floundering steed gave out, and, just as we saw the pale turrets of the monastery shining in the open a mile ahead of us, the horse rolled over dead upon the grass and bracken.
“Quick, quick!” I said, “daughter of Hardicanute,” and the good Saxon girl had passed the little ones to the pommel and put her own foot upon my toe and sprang on to my saddle crupper sooner than it takes to tell. Ah! and the nearer we came to our goal the closer seemed to be the throb and beat of the pursuing hoofs behind. And many an anxious time did I turn my head to watch the rogues closing with us, now ever and anon in sight, and many a word of encouragement did I whisper to the gallant charger whose tireless courage was standing us in such good case.