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

by Henry William Herbert

In the rear of the slope or knoll, so often mentioned, was a deep tangled dell, or dingle, filled with a thickset growth of holly, birch, and alder, with here a feathery juniper, and there a graceful fern bush; and behind this arose a higher ridge, clothed with tall, thrifty oaks and beeches, of the second growth, and cutting off in that direction all view beyond its own near horizon.

It was not in this direction, however, nor up the road toward the remote castle, nor down across the bridge over the silver Idle, that the watchers turned their eager eyes, expecting the more eagerly, as, at times, the distant woods before them—lying beyond a long stretch of native savanna, made probably by the beaver, while that industrious animal yet figured in the British fauna—seemed to mourn and labor with a deep, indefinite murmuring sound, half musical, half solemn, but liker to an echo than to any known utterance of any living human being. It was too varied for the noise of falling waters, too modulated for the wind harp of the west, which was sighing fitfully among the branches. Eagerly they watched, with a wild look of almost painful expectation in their keen, light-blue eyes, resembling in no respect the lively glance with which the jovial hunter awaits his gallant quarry; there was something that spoke of apprehension in the haggard eye—perhaps the fear of ill-performing an unwilling duty.

And if it were so, it was not unnatural; not at that day, alas! uncommon; for dress, air, aspect, and demeanor, all told them at first sight, to be of that most wretched, if not most abject class, the Saxon serfs of England. They were both clad alike, in short, close-cut frocks, or tunics, of tanned leather, gathered about their waists with broad buff belts, fastened with brazen buckles, in each of which stuck a long buckhorn-hafted two-edged Sheffield whittle; both were bare-headed, both shod with heavy-clouted shoes, and both wore, soldered about their necks, broad brazen dog-collars, having the brand of their condition, with their own names and qualities, and that and the condition of their master.

Here, however, ended the direct resemblance, even of their garb; for, while the taller and better formed man of the two, who was also somewhat the darker haired and finer featured, wore a species of rude leather gauntlets, with buskins of the same material, reaching as high as the binding of the frock, the other man was bare-armed and bare-legged also, with the exception of an inartificial covering of thongs of boar-hide, plaited from the ankle to the knee upward. The latter also carried no weapon but a long quarter-staff, though he held a brace of noble snow-white alans—the wire-haired grayhounds of the day—in a leash of twisted buckskin; while his brother—for so strong was their personal resemblance, that their kinship could scarcely be doubted—carried a short, steel-headed javelin in his hand, and had beside him, unrestrained, a large coarser hound, of a deep brindled gray color, with clear, hazel eyes; and what was strange to say, in view of the condition of this man, unmaimed, according to the cruel forest code of the Norman kings.

This difference in the apparel, and, it may be added, in the neatness, well-being, and general superior bearing of him who was the better armed, might perhaps be explained by a glance at the engraving on the respective collars. For while that of the one, and he the better clad and better looking, bore that he was "Kenric the Dark, thral of the land to Philip de Morville," that of the other stamped him "Eadwulf the Red, gros thral" of the same Norman lord.

Both Saxon serfs of the mixed Northern race, which, largely intermixed with Danish blood, produced a nobler, larger-limbed, loftier, and more athletic race than the pure Saxons of the southern counties—they had fallen, with the properties of the Saxon thane, to whom they had belonged in common, into the hands of the foreign conqueror. Yet Kenric was of that higher class—for there were classes even among these miserable beings—which could not be sold, nor parted from the soil on which they were born, but at their own option; while Eadwulf, although his own twin-brother, for some cause into which it were needless to inquire, could be sold at any time, or to any person, or even swapped for an animal, or gambled away at the slightest caprice of his owner.

To this may be added, that, probably from caprice, or perhaps from some predilection for his personal appearance and motions, which were commanding, and even graceful, or for his bearing, which was evidently less churlish than that of his countrymen in general, his master had distinguished him in some respects from the other serfs of the soil; and, without actually raising him to any of the higher offices reserved to the Normans, among whom the very servitors claimed to be, and indeed were, gentlemen, had employed him in subordinate stations under his huntsman, and intrusted him so far as occasionally to permit his carrying arms into the field.

With him, as probably is the case in most things, the action produced reaction; and what had been the effect of causes, came in time to be the cause of effects. Some real or supposed advantages procured for him the exceeding small dignity of some poor half-conceded rights; and those rights, the effect of perhaps an imaginary superiority, soon became the causes of something more real—of a sentiment of half independence, a desire of achieving perfect liberty.

In this it was that he excelled his brother; but we must not anticipate. What were the characters of the men, and from their characters what events grew, and what fates followed, it is for the reader of these pages to decipher.

After our men had tarried where we found them, waiting till expectation should grow into certainty for above half an hour, and the morning had become clear and sunny, the distant indescribable sound, heard indistinctly in the woods, ripened into that singularly modulated, all sweet, but half-discordant crash, which the practiced ear is not slow to recognize as the cry of a large pack of hounds, running hard on a hot scent in high timber.