Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

Two straight roads passed through the forest, and a multitude of smaller paths, which, winding about in every different direction, crossing and recrossing each other,--now avoiding the edge of a pond and making a large circuit, now taking advantage of a savannah, to proceed straight forward, and now turning sharp round the vast boll of some antique tree,--formed altogether an absolute labyrinth, through which it needed a very certain clue, or very long experience, to proceed in safety.

These paths, also, however multiplied and intersected, left between them many a wide unbroken space of forest ground, where apparently the foot of man had never trod, nor axe of woodman ever rung, the only tracks through which seemed to be some slight breaks in the underwood, where the rushing sides of a boar or deer had dashed the foliage away. Many of these spaces were of the extent of several thousand acres; and if the very intricacy of the general forest paths themselves would not have afforded shelter and concealment to men who, like the cotereaux and routiers, as much needed a well hidden lair as ever did the wildest savage of the wood, such asylum was easily to be found in the dark recesses of these inviolate wilds.

Here, on a bright morning of July, when the grey of the sky was just beginning to warm with the rising day, a single man, armed with sword, corselet, and steel bonnet, all shining with the last polishing touch which they had received at the shop of the armourer, took his way alone down one of the narrowest paths of the forest. In his hand he held an arbalète,[^[18]] or cross-bow, then a very late invention; and, by the careful manner in which he examined every bush as he passed, he seemed some huntsman tracing, step by step, the path of a deer.

"Cursed be the fools!" muttered he to himself; "they have not taken care to mark the brisé well; and, in this strange forest, how am I to track them? Ah, here is another!" and, passing on from tree to tree, he at length paused where one of the smaller branches, broken across, hung with its leaves just beginning to wither from the interruption of the sap. Here, turning from the direct path, he pushed his way through the foliage, stooping his head to prevent the branches striking him in the face, but still taking pains to remark at every step each tree or bush that he passed; and wherever he perceived a broken branch, keeping it to his right-hand as he proceeded. His eyes nevertheless were now and then turned to the left, as well as the right; and at length, after he had advanced about four hundred yards in this cautious manner, he found the boughs broken all around, so that the brisé, as he called it, terminated there; and all guide by which to direct his course seemed at an end.

At this place he paused; and, after examining more scrupulously every object in the neighbourhood, he uttered a long whistle, which, after a moment or two, met with a reply, but from such a distance that it was scarcely audible. The cross-bowman whistled again; and the former sound was repeated, but evidently nearer. Then came a slight rustling in the bushes, as if some large body stirred the foliage, and then for a moment all was still.

"Ha, Jodelle!" cried a voice at last, from the other side of the bushes. "Is it you?" and pushing through the leaves, which had concealed him while he had paused to examine the stranger we have described, a genuine routier, if one might judge by his very rude and rusty arms, entered the little open space in which the other had been waiting. He had an unbent bow in his hand, and a store of arrows in his belt, which was garnished still farther with a strong short sword, and of knives and daggers not a few, from the miséricorde of a hand's breadth long, to the thigh knife of a peasant of those days, whose blade of nearly two feet in length rendered it a serviceable and tremendous weapon.

He had on his back, by way of clothing, a light iron haubert, which certainly shone not brightly; nor possibly was it desirable for him that it should. Though of somewhat more solid materials than a linen gown, it had more than one rent in it, where the rings had either been broken by a blow, or worn through by age: but, in these places, the deficient links had been supplied by cord, which at all events kept the yawning mouths of the gaps together. On his head was placed an iron hat, as it was called, much in the shape of the famous helmet of Mambrino, as described by Cervantes; and round about it were twined several branches of oak, which rendered his head, when seen through the boughs, scarce distinguishable from the leaves themselves; while his rugged and dingy haubert might well pass for a part of the trunk of one of the trees.

"Well met! well met, Jodelle!" cried he, as the other approached. "Come to the halting place. We have waited for you long, and had scanty fare. But say, what have you done? Have you slit the devil's weasand, or got the knight's purse? Do you bring us good news or bad? Do you come gay or sorry? Tell me! tell me, Jodelle! Thou art our leader, but must not lead us to hell with thy new-fashioned ways."

"Get thee on to the halt," replied Jodelle; "I will tell all there."

The two cotereaux--for such they were--now made their way through the trees and shrubs, to a spot where the axe had been busily plied to clear away about half an acre of ground, round which were placed a range of huts, formed of branches, leaves, and mud, capable of containing perhaps two or three hundred men.