Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

by Henry William Herbert

But when she appeared, mounted on a snow-white Andalusian jennet, whose tail and mane literally swept the ground in waves of silver, in her robes of white sendal and cloth of silver, with the bridal head-tire of long-descending gauzy fillets floating around her like a wreath of mist about a graceful cypress, and her long auburn ringlets disheveled in their mazes of bright curls, powdered with diamond dust and garlanded with virgin roses, the very battlements shook to the shouts of applause, which made the banners toss and rustle as if a storm-wind smote them.

Two pages, dressed in cloth of silver, tended her bridle-reins on either hand, and two more bore up the long emblazoned foot-cloths of white and silver, which would otherwise have embarrassed the paces of the beautiful and docile steed which bore her, timing its tread to the soft symphony of lutes and dulcimers which harbingered the progress; while no less than six belted knights, with their chains of gold about their necks, bore the staves of the satin canopy, or baldacchino, which sheltered her fair beauties from the beams of the blythe May morning.

Twelve bridesmaids, all of noble birth, mounted like herself on snow-white palfreys, all robed and filleted in white and silver, and garlanded with pale blush roses, nymphs worthy of the present goddess, bridled and blushed behind her. And there, radiant with love and triumph, making his glorious charger—a red roan, with a mane and tail white and redundant as the surges of the creamy sea—caracole, and bound from the dull earth in sobresaults, croupades and balotades, which would have crazed a professor of equitation with admiration, apart from envy, rode Aradas de Ratcliffe, with his twelve groom's-men glittering with gems, and glorious with silk upon silk, silver upon silver.

Sir Yvo de Taillebois, with twenty or thirty of the greatest barons of the north country, his cotemporaries, and many of them his brothers-in-arms, and fellows at the council-table of their puissant Norman monarch, whom they admitted only to be first baron of the English barons, primus inter pares, brought up the rear of the procession, while yet behind them filed a long band of spears and pennoncelles, and again after these a countless multitude, from all the country side, rejoicing and exulting, to form a portion of the pageant which added so much to the customary pleasures of the Maying.

Thus, for miles, they swept onward through the pleasant meadow-land, tufted and gemmed with unnumbered flowers, between tall hedges white with the many-blossomed May, and overrun with flaunting clusters of the delicious woodbine.

Once and again they were met by troops of country girls scattering flowers, and as often rode beneath triumphal arches, deftly framed of green leaves and gay wild-flowers by rustic hands, in token of the heart's gratitude, until they reached the shores of the blue lake, where Sir Yvo's yacht awaited them, convoyed by every barque and boat that could be pressed into the service from all the neighboring meres and lakelets of the county.

The wind blew fair and soft, and swelled the sails of cloth of silver, and waved the long azure pennants forward, as omens of happy days ahead; and smoothly over the rippling waters, to the sound of the soft bridal music, galleys and horse-boats, barques and barges, careered in fair procession, while the great multitude, afoot, rushed, like an entering tide, through the horse-roads and lanes around the head of the lake, eager to share the wedding-feast and the wedding dance, at least, if not to witness the nuptial ceremonial.

At Bowness they took horse again, and escorted by the bailiff and burghers of Kendall, proceeded, at an increased pace, to the splendid Abbey Church, dim with the religious light which streamed through its deeply tinted window-panes, and was yet further obscured by the thick clouds from the tossed chalices of incense, through which swelled, like an angel's choir, the pure chant of girls and children, and the deep diapason of the mighty organ.

The nuptial ceremony was followed by a feast fit for kings, served up in the grand hall of Kendal Castle, wherein, before the Norman conquest, the proud Saxon Earls, Morcar and Edwin, maternal ancestors of the fair bride, had banqueted and rioted in state, and where, as tradition related, they had held revel for the last time on the eve of their departure for the fatal field of Hastings, fatal to Saxon liberty, but harbinger of a prouder era, and first cause and creatrix of a nobler race, to rule in Merrie England.

It needs not, here, to dwell on the strange dainties, the now long-disused and unaccustomed viands and beverages of those old days, more than on the romantic feudal usages and abstruse ceremonials of the day; suffice it that, to their palates, heronshaw, egret and peacock, venison and boar's-meat, and chines of the wild bull, were no less dainty than the choicest of our modern luxuries to the beaux and belles of the nineteenth century; and that hypocras and pigment, morat and mead and clary, made the pulses burn and the cheeks mantle as blythely and as brightly as Champagne or Burgundy. The ball, for the nobles in the castle-hall, for the commons on the castle-green, followed the feast; but not till the stocking had been thrown, and the curtain drawn, and the beautiful bride fairly bedded, was the nuptial ceremony esteemed fully ended, which gave the lovely Guendolen, for weal and not for woe, to the brave and faithful Aradas de Ratcliffe.