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

by Henry William Herbert

Ebenezer Elliott.

It was a wild and wicked morning, in the first red light of which, Eadwulf, awakening from the restless and uneasy sleep into which he had last night fallen, among the scattered brushwood growing on the seaward slope of the sand hills of Lancashire, looked across the wide sands, now left bare by the recess of the tide, stretching away to the bleak coasts of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and the huge mountain ridges, which might be seen indistinctly looming up blue and massive in the distance inland, distinguishable from clouds only by the hard abruptness of their outlines, as they cut sharp and clean against the lurid sky of the horizon.

Along the sea line, which lay grim and dark in ominous repose, the heaven's glared for a span's breadth, as it appeared to the eye, with a wild brassy light, above which brooded a solid belt of purple cloud, deepening into black as it rose upward, and having a distinct, solid-looking edge, scolloped, as it were, into huge rounded masses, as material as if they had been earthy hills, instead of mere piles of accumulated vapor.

These volumed masses lay motionless, as yet, in the brooding calm; but, all upward to the zenith, the sky was covered with tortured and distracted wrack-wreaths, some black as night, some just touched by the sun, which was arising unseen by mortal eyes behind the cloud-banks which mustered so thick to the eastward, and some glowing with a fiery crimson gleam, as if they issued from the mouth of a raging furnace.

Every thing was ominous of a storm, but every thing as yet was calm, tranquil, and peaceful. In the very quiet, however, there was something awful, something that seemed to whisper of coming horror. The wide sands lay gray and leaden at the feet of the observer, reflecting the lowering clouds which overhung them, except where the brassy glare of the horizon tinged their extreme verge with an angry rust-colored hue, that seemed to partake the nature of shadow rather than of light.

The face of the Saxon fell as he gazed over the fearful waste, beyond which lay his last hope of safety; for, though he had never before seen those treacherous sands, he had learned much of their nature, especially from the outlaws, with whom he found his last shelter; and he knew, that to cross them certainly and in safety, the passenger on foot should set out with the receding tide, so as to reach the mid labyrinth of oozy channels and half-treacherous sand banks, through which the scanty and divided rivers of the fair lakeland found their way oceanward, when the water was at its lowest ebb.

Instead of this, however, so heavily had he slept toward morning, the utter weariness of his limbs and exhaustion of his body having completely conquered the watchfulness of his anxious mind, that the tide had so long run out, leaving the sands toward the shore, especially at this upper end of the bay, bare and hard as a beaten road, that it might well be doubted whether it had not already turned, and might not be looked for, ere he could reach the mid-channel, pouring in, unbroken, as it is wont to do in calm weather, over those boundless flats, with a speed exceeding that of horses.

There was no time for delay, however; for, from the report of the horseman who had overtaken him just before twilight, he could not doubt that his pursuers had not halted for the night farther than five or six miles in his rear; so that their arrival might be looked for at any moment, on any one of the headlands along the shore, whence they would have no difficulty in discerning him at several miles distance, while traveling over the light-colored surface of the sands.

Onward, therefore, he hastened, as fast as his weary limbs could carry him, hardly conscious whether he was flying from the greater danger, or toward it. He had a strong suspicion that the flood would be upon him ere he should reach the channel of Kent; and that he should find it an unfordable river, girdled by pathless quicksands. He knew, however, that be his chances of escape what they might by persisting onward, his death was as certain, by strange tortures, as any thing sublunary can be called certain, should the Normans overtake him, red-handed from what they were sure to regard as recent murder.

On, therefore, he fled into the deceitful waste. At first, the sands were hard, even, and solid, yet so cool and damp under the worn and blistered feet of the wretched fugitive, that they gave him an immediate sense of pleasurable relief and refreshment; and for three or four miles he journeyed with such ease and rapidity as, compared to the pain and lassitude with which on the past days he had stumbled along, over the stony roads, and across the broken moors, that his heart began to wax more cheerful, and his hopes of escape warmed into something tangible and real.