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

by Henry William Herbert

But she, with the woman's wily charm, replied not a word while he was in the tide of indignation and invective; but when he paused, exhausted for the moment by his own vehemence, she took up the word—

"Ten-pence would have well paid him! At least, I am well content to know," she said, "the value of my life, and that, too, at my own father's rating. The Saxons may be, as I have heard tell, but have not seen that they are, sordid, degraded, brutal, devoid of chivalry and courtesy and love of fame; but I would wager my life there is not a free Saxon man—no, not the poorest Franklin, who would not rate the life of his coarse-featured, sun-burned daughter at something higher than the value of a heifer. But it is very well. I am rebuked. I will trouble you no farther, valiant Sir Yvo de Taillebois. I have no right to trouble you, beausire, for I must sure be base-born, though I dreamed not of it, that my blood should be dearly bought at ten-pence. Were it of the pure current that mantled in the veins of our high ancestors, it should fetch something more, I trow, in the market."

"Nay! nay! thou art childish, Guendolen, peevish, and all unreasonable. I spoke not of thy life, and thou knowest it right well, but of the chance, the slight merit of his own, by which he saved it."

"Slight merit, father!"

"Pshaw! girl, thou hast gotten me on the mere play of words. But how canst make it tally with the vast ideas of this churl's chivalry and heaven-aspiring nobility of soul, that he so little values liberty, the noblest, most divine of all things, not immortal, as to reject it thus ignobly?"

"It skills not to argue with you, sir," she answered, sadly; "for I see you are resolved to refuse me my boon, as wherefore should you not, setting so little value on this poor life of mine. I know that I am but a poor, weak child, that I was a disappointment to you in my cradle, seeing that I neither can win fresh honors to your house amid the spears and trumpets, nor transmit even the name, of which you are so proud, to future generations; but I am, at least in pride, too much a Taillebois to crave, as an importunate, unmannerly suitor, what is denied to me as a free grace. Only this—were you and I in the hands of the Mussulman, captives and slaves together, and you should accept freedom as a gift, leaving your own blood in bondage, I think the Normans would hold you dishonored noble, and false knight; I am sure the Saxons would pronounce you nidering. I have done, sir. Let the Saxon die a slave, if you think it comports with the dignity of De Taillebois to be a slave's debtor. I thought, if you did not love me, that you loved the memory of my mother better."

"There! there!" replied Sir Yvo, quite overpowered, and half amused by the mixture of art and artlessness, of real passion and affected sense of injury by which she had worked out her purpose. "There! there! enough said, Guendolen. You will have it as you will, depend on't. I might have known you would, from the beginning, and so have spared myself the pains of arguing with you. It must be as you will have it, and I will go buy the brood of Sir Philip at once; pray Heaven only that they will condescend to be manumitted, without my praying them to accept their liberty upon my knee. It will cost me a thousand zecchins or more, I warrant me, at the first, and then I shall have to find them lands of my lands, and to be security for their "were and mund," and I know not what. Alack-a-day! women ever! ever women! when we are young it is our sisters, our mistresses, our wives; when we grow old, our daughters!—and by my hopes of Heaven, I believe the last plague is the sorest!"

"My funeral expenses, with the dole and alms and masses, would scarcely have cost you so much, Sir Yvo. Pity he did not let the stag work his will on me! Don't you think so, sir?"

"Leave off your pouting, silly child. You have your own way, and that is all you care for; I don't believe you care the waving of a feather for the Saxons, so you may gratify your love of ruling, and force your father, who should show more sense and firmness, to yield to every one of your small caprices. So smooth that bent brow, and let us see a smile on those rosy lips again, and you may tell your Edith, if that's her name, that she shall be a free woman before sunset."

"So you confess, after all this flurry, that it was but a small caprice, concerning which you have so thwarted me. Well, I forgive you, sir, by this token,"—and, as she spoke, she threw her white arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead tenderly, before she added, "and now, to punish you, the next caprice I take shall be a great one, and you shall grant it to me without wincing. Hark you, there are the trumpets sounding for dinner, and you not point-device for the banquet-hall! but never heed to-day. There are no ladies to the feast, since I am not so well at ease as to descend the stair. Send me some ortolans and beccaficos from the table, sir; and above all, be sure, with the comfits and the Hypocras, you send me the deeds of manumission for Kenric and Edith, all in due form, else I will never hold you true knight any more, or gentle father."