THE SAXON’S BRIDAL.
There are times in England when the merry month of May is not, as it would now appear, merely a poet’s fiction; when the air is indeed mild and balmy, and the more conspicuously so, that it succeeds the furious gusts and driving hailstorms of the boisterous March, the fickle sunshine and capricious rains of April. One of these singular epochs in the history of weather it was in which events occurred, which remained unforgotten for many a day, in the green wilds of Charnwood forest.
If was upon a soft, sweet morning, toward the latter end of the month, and surely nothing more delicious could have been conceived by the fancy of the poet. The low west wind was fanning itself among the tender leaves of the new-budded trees, and stealing over the deep meadows, all redolent with dewy wild flowers, waving them with a gentle motion, and borrowing a thousand perfumes from their bosoms. The hedgerows were as white with the dense blossoms of the hawthorn as though they had been powdered over by an untimely snowstorm; while everywhere along the wooded banks the saffron primrose and its sweet sister of the spring, the violet, were sunning their unnumbered blossoms in the calm warmth of the vernal sunshine. The heavens, of a pure, transparent blue, were laughing with a genial lustre, not flooded by the dazzling glare of midsummer, but pouring over all beneath their influence a lovely, gentle light, in perfect keeping with the style of the young scenery; and all the air was literally vocal with the notes of innumerable birds, from the proud lark, “rejoicing at heaven’s gate,” to the thrush and blackbird, trilling their full, rich chants from every dingle, and the poor linnet, piping on the spray. Nothing—no, nothing—can be imagined that so delights the fancy with sweet visions, that so enthrals the senses, shedding its influences even upon the secret heart, as a soft, old-fashioned May morning. Apart from the mere beauties of the scenery—from the mere enjoyment of the bright skies, the dewy perfumes that float on every breeze, the mild, unscorching warmth—apart from all these, there is something of a deeper and a higher nature in the thoughts called forth by the spirit of the time; a looking forward of the soul to fairer things to come; an excitement of a quiet hope within, not very definite, perhaps, nor easily explained, but one which almost every man has felt, and contrasted with the languid and pallid satiety produced by the full heat of summer, and yet more with the sober and reflective sadness that steals upon the mind as we survey the russet hues and the sere leaves of autumn. It is as if the newness, the fresh youth of the season, gave birth to a corresponding youth of the soul. Such are the sentiments which many men feel now-a-days, besides the painter, and the poet, and the soul-rapt enthusiast of nature: but those were iron days of which we write, and men spared little time in thought from action or from strife, nor often paused to note their own sensations, much less to ponder on their origin or to investigate their causes.
The morning was such as we have described—the scene a spot of singular beauty within the precincts of the then-royal forest of Charnwood, in Leicestershire. A deep but narrow stream wound in a hundred graceful turns through the rich meadow-land that formed the bottom of a small, sloping vale, which had been partially reclaimed, even at that day, from the waste; though many a willow-bush fringing its margin, and many a waving ash, fluttering its delicate tresses in the air, betrayed the woodland origin of the soft meadow. A narrow road swept down the hill, with a course little less serpentine than that of the river below, and crossed it by a small, one-arched stone bridge, overshadowed by a gigantic oak-tree, and scaled the opposite acclivity in two or three sharp, sandy zigzags. Both the hillsides were clothed with forest, but still the nature of the soil or some accidental causes had rendered the wood as different as possible; for, on the farther side of the stream, the ground was everywhere visibly covered by a short, mossy turf, softer and more elastic to the foot than the most exquisite carpet that ever issued from the looms of Persia, and overshadowed by huge and scattered oaks, growing so far apart that the eye could range far between their shadowy vistas; while on the nearer slope—the foreground, as it might be called, of the picture—all was a dense and confused mass of tangled shrubbery and verdure. Thickets of old, gnarled thorn-bushes, completely overrun and matted with woodbines; coppices of young ash, with hazel interspersed, and eglantine and dog-roses thickly set between; clumps of the prickly gorse and plumelike broom, all starry with their golden flowerets, and fern so wildly luxuriant, that in many places it would have concealed the head of the tallest man, covered the ground for many a mile through which the narrow road meandered.
There was one object more in view—one which spoke of man even in that solitude, and man in his better aspect. It was the slated roof and belfry, all overgrown with moss and stone-crop, of a small wayside chapel, in the old Saxon architecture, peering out from the shadows of the tall oaks which overhung it in the far distance. It was, as we have said, very small, in the old Saxon architecture, consisting, in fact, merely of a vaulted roof supported upon four squat, massy columns, whence sprung the four groined ribs which met in the centre of the arch. Three sides alone of this primitive place of worship, which would have contained with difficulty forty persons, were walled in, the front presenting one wide, open arch, richly and quaintly sculptured with the indented wolf’s teeth of the first Saxon style. Small as it was, however, the little chapel had its high altar, with the crucifix and candle, its reading-desk of old black oak, its font, and pix, and chalices, and all the adjuncts of the Roman ritual. A little way to the left might be discovered the low, thatched eaves of a rustic cottage, framed of the unbarked stems of forest-trees—the abode, probably, of the officiating priest; and close beside the walls of the little church a consecrated well, protected from the sun by a stone vault, of architecture corresponding to the chapel.
Upon the nearer slope, not far from the roadside, but entirely concealed from passers by the nature of the ground and the dense thickets, there were collected, at an early hour of the morning, five men, with as many horses, who seemed to be awaiting, in a sort of ambush, some persons whom they would attack at unawares. The leader of the party, as he might be considered, as much from his appearance as from the deference shown to him by the others, was a tall, active, powerful man, of thirty-eight or forty years, with a bold and expressive countenance—expressive, however, of no good quality, unless it were the fiery, reckless daring which blazed from his broad, dark eye, and that was almost obscured by the cloud of insufferable pride which lowered upon his frowning brow, and by the deep, scar-like lines of lust, and cruelty, and scorn, which ploughed his weather-beaten features. His dress was a complete suit of linked chain-mail—hauberk, and sleeves, and hose—with shoes of plaited steel, and gauntlets wrought in scale, covering his person from his neck downward in impenetrable armor. He had large gilded spurs buckled upon his heels, and a long, two edged dagger, with a rich hilt and scabbard, in his belt; but neither sword, nor lance, nor any other weapon of offence, except a huge steel mace, heavy enough to fell an ox at a single blow, which he grasped in his right hand; while from his left hung the bridle of a tall, coal-black Norman charger, which was cropping the grass quietly beside him. His head was covered by a conical steel cap, with neither crest, nor plume, nor visor, and mail-hood falling down from it to protect the neck and shoulders of the wearer.
The other four were men-at-arms, clad all in suits of armor, but less completely than their lord: thus they had steel shirts only, with stout buff breeches and heavy boots to guard their lower limbs, and iron skullcaps only, without the hood, upon their heads, and leather gauntlets upon their hands; but, as if to make up for this deficiency, they were positively loaded with offensive weapons. They had the long, two-handed sword of the period belted across their persons, three or four knives and daggers of various size and strength at their girdles, great battle-axes in their hands, and maces hanging at their saddle-bows. They had been tarrying there already several hours, their leader raising his eyes occasionally to mark the progress of the sun as he climbed up the azure vault, and muttering a brief and bitter curse as hour passed after hour, and those came not whom he expected.
“Danian,” he said at length, turning to the principal of his followers, who stood nearer to his person, and a little way apart from the others—“Danian, art sure this was the place and day? How the dog Saxons tarry! Can they have learned our purpose?”
“Surely not, surely not, fair sir,” returned the squire, “seeing that I have mentioned it to no one, not even to Raoul, or Americ, or Guy, who know no more than their own battle-axes the object of their ambush. And it was pitch-dark when we left the castle, and not a soul has seen us here; so it is quite impossible they should suspect—and hark! there goes the bell; and see, sir, see—there they come, trooping through the oak-trees down the hill!”