"In consideration of your carrying my message," added the king, "I will let you off for ten thousand crowns, which you will send to Bruges within five days after you have crossed the seas."
"Sire," said the knight, "I engage so to do; and God reward you and my lord of Derby for your kindness to me."
No delay could be laid to the charge of Sir Hervé de Léon in fulfilling his promise. Finding himself released from prison, he took leave of the king, and embarked at Southampton. His intention was to land at Harfleur, but the vessel in which he sailed encountered a violent storm. For fifteen days the knight was almost at the mercy of the winds and the waves; and he was under the necessity of throwing his horses overboard. At length the mariners landed at Crotoy, a town in Picardy, at the mouth of the Somme, and Sir Hervé with his suite journeyed on foot to Abbeville.
The voyage, however, had proved too much for the Breton knight, and at Abbeville he was so ill and so weakened by sea-sickness that he could not ride on horseback. But he did not forget his promise; and, though his end was approaching, he travelled in a litter to Paris, and delivered to Philip of Valois, word for word, the message with which King Edward had intrusted him.
"And now," said King Edward, "let my adversary tremble."
"Ay, let Philip of Valois tremble," shouted hundreds of voices.
Everywhere throughout England there was bustle, and excitement, and preparation for war; and while men-at-arms and archers were mustering at Southampton, Godfrey de Harcourt, that great noble of Normandy, whom Philip of Valois menaced with death, reached England, to encourage the king with his promises and aid him with his counsels; and among the youth who surrounded the Prince of Wales there was much enthusiasm, and also much talk of performing feats of arms; and none among them was more enthusiastic than myself or more hopeful of doing something to win renown.
It was under such circumstances, one morning in May, that I rode through Windsor Forest to the homestead that had sheltered my childhood, to bid adieu to my grandsire and to my mother before crossing the sea. My grandsire shed a tear and my mother wept bitterly as we parted. But my heart was too elate with hope, and my brain too full of glowing aspirations, to allow their sadness to depress me. Already I was, in imagination, winning the spurs of knighthood, even leading armies to victory, and making my way to fame and fortune by heroic achievements.
So far everything appeared brilliant. But I was destined, ere the year closed, to discover that war was not wholly made up of triumphs, and to have ample leisure to pine, in irksome solitude, for a sight of the quiet homestead which I had deemed so dull.