Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

Such were the determinations of De Coucy in the age of chivalry, and he was one more likely than most men to keep such determinations. They, however, like all resolutions, were of course modified by circumstances; and in the mean while, his squire, Hugo, rejoined him with the two varlets, who had been hired in Auvergne to lead his horses, but who were now fitted to make a figure in the train of so warlike a knight.

Still the prospect of his cold and vacant home, with no smile to give him welcome, and, as he well knew, nothing but poverty for his entertainment, sat somewhat heavily upon the young knight's heart. To lodge upon the battle plain, under a covering that scarce excluded the weather; to feed on the coarsest and most scanty food; to endure all perils and privations, for chivalry's, religion's, or his country's sake, was nothing to the bold and hardy soldier, whose task and pride it was so to suffer: but, for the châtelain, De Coucy, to return to the castle where his fathers had lived in splendour,--to the bowers and halls where his infancy had been nursed with tenderness,--and to find all empty and desolate; the wealth and magnificence wasted in the thousand fruitless enterprises of the crusades, and the loved and familiar laid low in the melancholy dwellings of the gone, was bitter, sadly bitter, even for a young, light heart, and unquenchable spirit like his.

One of his ancestors, who, in the reign of Henry the First, had founded the younger branch of the De Coucy's, of which he was now the sole representative, had done important services to the crown, and had been rewarded by the hand of Aleonore de Magny, on the Seine, heiress of the last terre libre, or free land, in France; and this his race had maintained, in its original freedom, against all the surrounding barons, and even against the repeated efforts of every successive king, who, on all occasions, attempted to exact homage by force, or to win it by policy. His father, indeed, before taking the cross, which he did at the persuasion of Louis the Seventh, had put his lands under the protection of the king, who, on his part, promised to guard its inviolability against all and every one; and acknowledged by charter under his hand and seal, that it was free and independent of the crown.

The manoir, or castel, of every baron of the time, was always a building of more or less strength; but it is to be supposed, of course, that the château attached to lands in continual dispute, was fortified with an additional degree of precaution and care. Nor was this wanting in the château of De Coucy Magny, as it was called: wall, and battlement, tower, turret, and bartizan, overhung every angle of the hill on which it was placed, and rendered it almost impregnable, according to the mode of warfare of those days.

When De Coucy had left it, with his father's men-at-arms, though age had blackened it, not one stone was less in the castle-walls,--not a weed was on the battlements; and even the green ivy, that true parasite which sucks the vital strength of that which supports it, was carefully removed from the masonry.

But, oh! how fast decay speeds on, even by the neglect of ten short years! When De Coucy returned, the evening sun was setting behind the hill on which the castle stood; and, as he led his scanty band of horsemen up the winding and difficult path, he could see, by the rough, uneven outline of the dark mass before him, what ravages time had already made. High above the rest, the donjon, which used to seem proud of its square regularity, now towered with one entire angle of its battlements given way, and with many a bush and shrub waving its long feathery foliage from window and from loophole; while the neglected state of the road, and even the tameness of the wild animals in the woods near the château; the hares and the deer, which stood and gazed with their large round eyes for many moments at De Coucy and his followers before they started away, told, with a sad moral, that man was seldom seen there.

De Coucy sighed as he rode on; and, stopping at the gates of the barbican, which, thickly plated and studded with iron, opposed all entrance, wound a long blast upon his horn. A moment after, the noise of bolts and bars was heard, as if the doors were about to be thrown open; but then again came the sound of an old man's voice, exclaiming in a tone of querulous anger--"Hold, hold! Villain Calord! Will you give up the castle to the cotereaux? Hold, I say! or I will break thy pate! I saw them from the beffroy. They are a band of cotereaux. Go round to the serfs' sheds, and bid them come and take their bows to the walls. Up you, and ring the bancloche, that we may have the soldiers from Magny!"

"Onfroy! Onfroy!" shouted De Coucy. "Open your gates! 'Tis I, Guy de Coucy!"

"Your voice I know not!" roared the old man in reply. "My young lord had a soft, sweet voice; and yours is as deep as a bell. I know not your voice, fair sir.--Man the walls, I say, Calord! 'Tis all a trick," he continued, speaking to his companion. "Sound the bancloche!"

"If you know not my voice," cried De Coucy, "surely you should know the blast I have sounded on my horn!"