"They are certain, my lord," replied one of his attendants. "The Lord de Vesci, who is taken sorely wounded, saw him die."
"He was a great man," said Edward. "Now spur on and clear the plain; but be merciful, my friends. Remember, they are brave men and fellow-countrymen."
Thus speaking the Prince advanced again, and having seen that no party remained in active contention with his forces, but that all were either dead, taken, or dispersed, he caused his standard to be pitched upon the banks of the little rivulet we mentioned, his trumpets to blow the recal--and thus ended the famous battle of Evesham.
CHAPTER XXIII.
How frequently in real life, as upon the mimic stage, the most opposite scenes that it is possible to conceive follow each other in quick succession. Often, indeed, are they placed side by side, or only veiled from the eye of the spectator by a thin partition, which falls with a touch, and all is changed. While revelry haunts the saloons of life, anguish writhes in the garret, and misery tenants the cellar. Pomp, and pageantry, and splendour occupy the one day; sorrow, destitution, and despair the next; and, as in some of our old tragedies, the laughter and merriment of the buffoon, appear alternately with tears and agony.
If it be so with human life--if, in this fitful spring-day of our being, the storms and the sunshine tread upon the heels of each other, so must it be with everything that would truly represent existence--even with a tale like this.
We must change the scene, then, and convey the reader far away from the sad field of Evesham--without pausing to detail some of the barbarous horrors there committed on the bodies of the dead--at once to the splendid court of England, now triumphant over its enemies, and revelling in uncontrolled power.
We may, indeed, stay for an instant to remark, that while joy and satisfaction spread through the various partisans of the court, while the foreign favourites of Henry III. displayed their rejoicing with indecent ostentation, and even the calmer and wiser adherents of his high-minded son could not refrain from triumphant exultation, consternation, dismay, and mourning spread throughout the middle and lower classes of the people, through the clergy of the real Anglican church, and through the greater part of the barons who claimed a genuine English descent. The barrier was thrown down which had protected their rights and liberties; and most of those whose swords had been so long unsheathed in the popular cause, now lay weltering in their gore upon the field of Evesham, leaving none but outlaws, and fugitives to mourn for them in secrecy and concealment, and poets and minstrels to sing the deeds of the gone.
It was at the court of England,--not in the capital of the kingdom, but in the palace of Eltham, then one of the most beautiful, if not most splendid of the residences of our kings--in a small chamber in the left wing of the building, rather more than a month after the scenes which we have lately commemorated, that there lay upon a couch, covered with a leopard's skin, a young knight, busily engaged in reading a manuscript written in a somewhat cramped and difficult hand. He was clad altogether in the garments of peace, but a deep gash upon his brow, a scarf bound tight round his arm, and a certain uneasy expression of countenance when he turned from side to side, showed that it was not long since he had been engaged in the fierce and bloody pursuits of war.
Hugh de Monthermer had not passed through the battle of Evesham unwounded; and though, as a point of chivalrous, courage, he had scorned to suffer the slightest sign of anguish to appear, yet the injuries he had received were long in being healed, and even for some days his life had been held in danger.