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

by Henry William Herbert

For a moment, he thought his hour was come; but the next glance reassured him, and he saw that his fortune had again brought him safety, in the place of ruin.

The men were Saxons, outlaws, fugitives from the Norman tyranny, and several of them, like himself, serfs escaped from the cruelty of their masters. One of them had joined the party so recently, that, like Eadwulf, he yet wore the brazen collar about his neck, the badge of servitude and easy means of detection, of which he had not yet found the means to rid himself.

A few words sufficed to describe his piteous flight, and to win the sympathy and a promise of protection from the outlaws; but when the bloodhounds were named, and their probably close proximity, they declared with one voice that there was not a moment to be lost, and that they could shelter him without a possibility of danger.

Without farther words, one by one they entered the brook, scattering into it as if they were about to pass down it to the southward, but the moment their feet were in the water, turning upward and ascending the gorge, which grew wilder and steeper as they proceeded, until, at a mile's distance, they came to a great circular cove of rocks, walled in by crags of three hundred feet in height, with the little stream plunging down it, at the upward extremity, small in volume, but sprinkling the staircase of rocks, down which it foamed, with incessant sheets of spray.

Scarcely had they turned the projecting shoulder of rock which guarded the entrance of this stern circle, before the distant bay of the bloodhounds came heavily down the air; and, at the same instant, the armed party galloped over the brow of the bare moor which Eadwulf had passed so recently, cheering the fierce dogs to fresh exertions, and expecting, so hotly did their sagacious guides press upon the recent trail, to see the fugitive fairly before them.

Much to their wonder, however, though the country lay before their eyes perfectly open, in a long stretch of five or six miles, without a bush, a brake, or apparently a hollow which could conceal a man if he were in motion, he was not to be discovered within the limits of the horizon.

"By St. Paul!" exclaimed the foremost rider; shading his eyes with his hand, to screen them from the rays of the level sun, "he can not have gained so much on us as to have got already beyond the range of eyeshot. He must have laid up in the heather. At all events, we are sure of him. Forward! forward! Halloo! hark, forward!"

Animated by his cheering cry, the dogs dashed onward furiously, reached the brink of the rill, and were again at fault. "Ha! he is at his old tricks again;" shouted the leader, who was no other than Hugonet, surnamed the Black, the brother of the murdered bailiff. "But it shall not avail him. We will beat the brook on both banks, up and down, to its source and to its mouth, if it needs, but we will have him. You, Wetherall, follow it northerly to the hills with six spears and three couple of the hounds. I will ride down toward the sea; I fancy that will prove to be the line he has taken. If they hit off the scent, or you catch a view of him, blow me five mots upon your bugle, thus, sa-sa-wa-la-roa! and, lo! in good time, here comes Sir Foulke."

And thundering up on his huge Norman war-horse, cursing furiously when he perceived that the hounds were at fault, came that formidable baron; for his enormous weight had kept him far in the rear of his lighter-armed, and less ponderous vassals. His presence stimulated them to fresh exertions, but all exertions were in vain.

Evening fell on the wide purple moorlands, and they had found no track of him they sought. Wetherall, after making a long sweep around the cove and the waterfall, and tracing back the rill to its source, in a mossy cairn among the hills, at some five miles' distance, descended it again and rejoined the party, with the positive assurance that the serf had not gone in that direction, for that the hounds had beaten both banks the whole way to the spring-head, and that he had not come out on either side, or their keen scent would have detected him.