THE ERRING ARROW.
“’Tis merry, ’tis merry, in good green-wood,
When the navis and merle are singing,
When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter’s horn is ringing.”—Lady of the Lake.
As beautiful a summer’s morning as ever chased the stars from heaven, was dawning over that wide tract of waste and woodland, which still, though many a century has now mossed over the ancestral oaks which then were in their lusty prime, retains the name by which it was at that day styled appropriately—the “New Forest.” Few years had then elapsed since the first Norman lord of England had quenched the fires that burned in thirty hamlets; had desecrated God’s own altars, making the roofless aisles of many a parish church the haunt of the grim wolf or antlered red-deer; turning fair fields and cultured vales to barren and desolate wastes—to gratify his furious passion for that sport which has so justly been entitled the mimicry of warfare. Few years had then elapsed, yet not a symptom of their old fertility could now be traced in the wild plains waving with fern, and overrun with copsewood, broom, and brambles; unless it might be found in the profuse luxuriance with which this thriftless crop had overspread the champaign once smiling like a goodly garden with every meet production for the sustenance of man.
It was, as has been said, as beautiful a summer’s morning as ever eye of man beheld. The sun, which had just raised the verge of his great orb above the low horizon, was checkering the mossy greensward with long, fantastic lines of light and shadow, and tinging the gnarled limbs of the huge oaks with ruddy gold; the dew, which lay abundantly on every blade of grass and every bending wild-flower, had not yet felt his power, nor raised a single mist-wreath to veil the brightness of the firmament; nor was the landscape, that lay there steeped in the lustre of the glowing skies, less lovely than the dawn that waked above it: long sylvan avenues sweeping for miles through every variation of the wildest forest-scenery—here traversing in easy curves wide undulations clothed with the purple heather; here sinking downward to the brink of sheets of limpid water; now running straight through lines of mighty trees, and now completely overbowered as they dived through brakes and dingles, where the birch and holly grew so thickly mingled with the prickly furze and creeping eglantine as to make twilight of the hottest noontide. Such were the leading features of the country which had most deeply felt, and has borne down to later days most evident memorials of, the Norman’s tyranny.
Deeply embosomed in these delicious solitudes—surrounded by its flanking walls, and moat brimmed from a neighboring streamlet, with barbican and ballium, and all the elaborate defences that marked the architecture of the conquering race—stood Malwood keep, the favorite residence of Rufus, no less than it had been of his more famous sire. Here, early as was the hour, all was already full of life, full of the joyous and inspiriting confusion that still characterizes, though in a less degree than in those days of feudal pomp, the preparations for the chase. Tall yeomen hurried to and fro—some leading powerful and blooded chargers, which reared, and pawed the earth, and neighed till every turret echoed to the din; some struggling to restrain the mighty bloodhounds which bayed and strove indignantly against the leash; while others, lying in scattered groups upon the esplanade of level turf, furbished their cloth-yard shafts, or strung the six-foot bows, which, for the first time, had drawn blood in England upon the fatal field of Hastings.
It might be seen, upon the instant, it was no private retinue that mustered to the “mystery of forests,” as in the quaint phrase of the day the noble sport was designated. A hundred horses, at the least, of the most costly and admired breeds, were there paraded: the huge, coal-black destrier of Flanders, limbed like an elephant, but with a coat that might have shamed the richest velvet by its sleekness; the light and graceful Andalusian, with here and there a Spaniard, springy, and fleet, and fearless—while dogs, in numbers infinitely greater, and of races yet more various, made up the moving picture: bloodhounds to track the wounded quarry by their unerring scent; slowhounds to force him from his lair; gazehounds and lymmers to outstrip him on the level plain; mastiffs to bay the boar, “crook-kneed and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;” with terriers to unkennel beasts of earth, and spaniels to rouse the fowls of air. Nor were these all, for birds themselves were there, trained to make war on their own race: the long-winged hawks of Norway, with lanners from the isle of Man; merlins, and jerfalcons, and gosshawks. No tongue could tell the beauty of the creatures thus assembled: some scarcely half-reclaimed, and showing their wild nature at every glance of their quick, flashing eyes; some docile and affectionate, and in all things dependent upon man, to whom, despite caprice, and cruelty, and coldness, they are more faithful in his need than he, proud though he be, dare boast himself toward his fellow. No fancy could imagine the superb and lavish gorgeousness of their equipment.
A long, keen bugle-blast rang from the keep, and in an instant a hundred bows were strung, a hundred ready feet were in the stirrup. Again if rang, longer and keener than before, and every forester was in his saddle; while from the low-browed arch, bending their stately heads quite to their saddle-bows, over the echoing drawbridge a dozen knights rode forth, the followers and comrades of their king.
Scarcely above the middle size, but moulded in most exquisite proportion, thin-flanked, deep-chested, muscular, and lithe, and agile, there was not one of all his train, noble, or squire, or yeoman, who could display a form so fitted for the union of activity with strength, of beauty with endurance, as could the second William. His hair, from which he had derived his famous soubriquet, was not of that marked and uncomely hue which we should now term red, but rather of a bright and yellowish brown, curled closely to a classical and bust-like head; his eye was quick and piercing; his features, severally, were well formed and handsome; yet had the eye a wavering, and restless, and at times even downcast expression; and the whole aspect of the face told many a tale of pride, and jealousy, and passion—suspicion that might be roused to cruelty, and wilfulness that surely would be lashed by any opposition to violent and reckless fury. But now the furrows on the brow were all relaxed, the harsh lines of the mouth smoothed into temporary blandness. “Forward, messires!” he cried, in Norman-French; “the morning finds us sluggards. What, ho! Sir Walter Tyrrel, shall we two company to-day, and gage our luck against these gay gallants?”
“Right jovially, my liege,” returned the knight whom he addressed. A tall, dark-featured soldier rode beside his bridle-rein, bearing a bow which not an archer in the train could bend. “Right jovially will we—an’ they dare cope with us! What sayest thou, De Beauchamp—darest thou wager thy black boar-hound against a cast of merlins—thyself and Vermandois against his grace and me?”
“Nay, thou shouldst gage him odds, my Walter,” Rufus interposed; “thy shaft flies ever truest, nor yield I to any bow save thine!”