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

by Henry William Herbert

And the silent isle imbowers,

The Lady of Shalott."

Tennyson.

High up in the gray square tower, which constituted the keep of the castle of Waltheofstow, there was a suite of apartments, the remains of which are discoverable to this day, known as the Lady's Bower; which had, it is probable, from the construction of the edifice, been set apart, not only as the private chambers of the chatelaine and ladies of the family, her casual guests and their attendants, but as what we should now call the drawing-rooms, wherein the more social hours of those rude days were passed, when the sexes intermingled, whether for the enjoyment of domestic leisure, or for gayety and pleasure.

The keep of Waltheofstow consisted, as did indeed all the smaller fortalices of that date, when private dwellings, even of the great and powerful, were constructed with a view to defense above all beside, of one large massive building of an oblong square form, with a solid circular buttress at each angle, which, above the basement floor, was hollowed into a lozenge-shaped turret, extending above the esplanade of the highest battlements, and terminating at a giddy height in a crenellated and machicolated lookout, affording a shelter to the sentries, and a flanking defense to the corps de logis.

For its whole height, from the guard-room, which occupied the whole ground-floor, to the battlements, one of these turrets contained the great winding stone staircase of the castle, lighted at the base by mere shot-holes and loops, but, as it rose higher and higher above the danger of escalade, by mullioned windows of increasing magnitude, until, at the very summit, it was surmounted by a beautifully-wrought lanthorn of Gothic stone-work. The other three, lighted in the same manner, better and better as they ascended, formed each a series of small pleasant rooms, opening upon the several stories, and for the most part were fitted as the sleeping-rooms of the various officers.

The whole floor, first above the guard-room, was divided into the kitchen, butteries, and household offices; while the next in order, being the third in elevation above the court-yard, was reserved in one superb parallelogram of ninety feet by sixty, well lighted by narrow lanceolated windows, and adorned with armors of plate and mail, scutcheons rich with heraldic bearings, antlers of deer and elk, horns of the bull, yet surviving, of the great Caledonian forests, skulls of the grizzly boars grinning with their ivory tusks, and banners dependent from the lofty groinings of the arched roof, trophies of many a glorious day. This was the knight's hall, the grand banqueting-saloon of the keep; while of its three turrets, one was the castle chapel, a second a smaller dining-hall, and the last the private cabinet and armory of the castellan. Above this, again, on the fourth plat, were bed-chambers of state, the larger armory, and the dormitories of the warders, esquires, pages, and seneschal, who alone dwelt within the keep, the rest of the garrison occupying the various out-buildings and towers upon the flanking walls and ramparts.

The fifth story, at least a hundred feet in air above the inner court, and nearly thrice that elevation above the base of the scarped mount on which the castle stood, contained the Lady's bower; and its whole area of ninety feet by sixty was divided, in the first instance, laterally by three partitions, into three apartments, each sixty feet in length by thirty wide. Of these, however, the first and last were subdivided equally in two squares of thirty feet. The whole of the bower, thus, contained a handsome ante-chamber, opening from the great staircase, with a large room for the waiting-women to the right, communicating with the turret chamber corresponding to the stairway. Beyond the vestibule, by which access was had to it, lay the grand ladies' hall, furnished with all the superabundance of splendor and magnificence, and all the lack of real convenience, which was the characteristic of the time; divans, and deep settles, and ponderous arm-chairs covered with gold and velvet; embroideries and emblazoned foot-cloths on the floor; mirrors of polished steel, emulating Venetian crystals, on the walls; mighty candelabra of silver gilt; tables of many kinds, some made for the convenience of long-forgotten games, some covered with cups and vessels of gold, silver, and richly-colored glass, and one or two, smaller, and set away in quiet nooks, with easy seats beside them, showing the feminine character of the occupants, by a lute, a gittern, and two or three other musical implements long since fallen into disuse; pages of music written in the old musical notation of the age; some splendidly-bound and illuminated missals and romances, in priceless manuscript, each actually worth its weight in gold; silks and embroideries; a working-stand, with a gorgeous surcoat of arms half finished, the needle sticking in the superb material where the fairy fingers had left it, when last called from their gentle task; and great vases full of the finest flowers of the season.

Such was the aspect of the room, beheld by the declining rays of the sun, which had already sunk so low that his stray beams, instead of falling downward through the gorgeous hues of the tinted-windows, streamed upward into that lofty place, playing on the richly-carved and gilded ceilings, catching here on a mirror, there on a vase of gold or silver, and sending hundreds of burning specks of light dancing through the motley haze of gold and purple, which formed the atmosphere of that almost royal bower.

From this rich withdrawing-room, strangely out of place in appearance, though not so in reality, in the old gray Norman fortress, among the din of arms and flash of harness, opened two bed-rooms, equal in costliness of decoration to the saloon without, each having its massive four-post bedstead in a recess, accessible by three or four broad steps, as if it were a throne of honor, each with its mirror and toilet, its appurtenances for the bath, its easy couches, and its chair of state; its prie dieu and kneeling-hassock, in a niche, with a perfumed lamp burning before a rudely-painted picture of the Madonna, each having communication with a pretty turret-chamber, fitted with couch and reading-desk, and opening on a bartizan or balcony, which, though they were intended in times of war or danger for posts of vantage to the defense, whence to shower missiles or pour seething pitch or oil on the heads of assailants, were filled in the pleasant days of peace with shrubs and flowers, planted in large tubs and troughs, waving green and joyous, and filling the air with sweet smells two hundred feet above their dewy birth-place.