Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

It seemed to him at first that a sweet voice was singing the popular ballad, “I go to the verdure, for love invites me;” that he was, in fact, in the woodlands around Oakmede, walking hand in hand with De Moreville’s daughter, and that suddenly as they moved through the greenwood and reached a spot familiar to him from childhood, they came upon his mother stretched lifeless and rigid under a leafless tree growing on a hillock where there still remained a circle of rough stones, which seemed to indicate that the place had in ancient days been dedicated to the rites of the Druids. Oliver started in great horror, and rapidly his imagination associated the death of his mother with the enmity which had been shown towards himself by Hugh de Moreville. But he did not awake. Suddenly, as if by magic, other figures appeared on the scene, and before him, as he imagined, were all the departed chiefs of the house of Icingla urging him to execute a terrible vengeance, while one of them, arrayed in the long cloak and wearing the long beard in vogue among the Anglo-Saxons up to the time of the Conquest, raised his hand and exclaimed—

“Dally not with the Norman’s daughter, O heir of the Icinglas! nor deem that aught but evil can come of her love. Beware of her wiles, and avoid her presence, and wed her not, for harder thou wouldst find the couch of the foreign woman than the bare ground on which thou sleepest while keeping faith with thy country and thy race.”

And then Oliver dreamt that, as he uttered something like a defiance of this warning, which, awake or asleep, could be little to his liking, the scene changed, and the Anglo-Saxon chiefs, after frowning menacingly on their heir, suddenly became horned cattle, and they rushed upon him bellowing furiously, as if bent on his instant destruction. Fortunately awaking at that moment, in great terror Oliver sprang to his feet, agitated and trembling, and as he did so the sight which met his eyes was not such as to allay his trepidation. Before him, close upon him, bellowing savagely, he beheld a herd of forest bulls tearing up the ground at the spot where he had observed the traces of slaughter, their milk-white skins, and curling manes, and black muzzles, horns, and hoofs distinct in the pale moonlight. Attracted by the barking of the bloodhound, several were advancing furiously on Oliver, nothing, indeed, intervening between him and their black, sharp horns but the faithful dog, which, with a sullen growl, was springing desperately on the foremost of the herd in a brave endeavour to save its master from the terrible peril with which he was threatened. Oliver Icingla, with his hair standing on end, gazed in consternation on the spectacle before him, and involuntarily uttering an exclamation of horror, grasped his battle axe with some vague intention of defending himself against the ferocious herd by which he was assailed.

CHAPTER XLII
BURNING OF OAKMEDE

WHILE Oliver Icingla was exerting himself so strenuously against the French who garrisoned the castles of Sussex, and while ballads in his praise were sung in the streets of London, and in the very hearing of the invaders, Dame Isabel was passing her time sadly in the old halls of Oakmede.

The life of a Norman dame of the thirteenth century was, no doubt, somewhat monotonous; but it was not solitary, and generally could not be very dull. In fact, the castle of almost every Norman baron was a school of chivalry, where young men of noble birth, first as pages, and afterwards as squires, served an apprenticeship to arms, and were taught “to serve God and the ladies,” as Oliver had been in the household of the Earl of Salisbury and Hela Devereux, his pious countess. Moreover, the spouse of every powerful noble had a number of damsels in attendance, whom she instructed in the art of needlework and embroidery, as also how to make salve, and bind up wounds, in the event of a siege, and in some very homely domestic duties connected with the larder and the dairy, the dame working in their company, setting them their tasks, and at times reading to them from some holy book or romance of chivalry.

Dame Isabel Icingla’s position, of course, was very different in many respects from that of the wife or widow of a Norman baron, and her household much more limited. Moreover, she could not seclude herself as they could do—in fact, as her husband had been known among the Saxons as Hlaford, which signified the bread-giver, so she as his wife was known as Hleafdian, which signified the server of bread; and she was fain to avoid the charge of being denounced as “niddering” by conforming to the system of lavish hospitality and free intercourse with humble neighbours which the Icinglas, as Saxon thanes, had ever practised—their door having always stood open, from morning to evening, to all comers, and their cheer, such as it was, having been dispensed with open hand.

All this, of course, was very homely and primitive, and perhaps Dame Isabel did not relish it. But while enacting her part as a Hleafdian, she never for a moment forgot that she was a Moreville, and never really descended from what she deemed the dignity of a noble lady. Born a Norman, and heiress to vast possessions, her pride was naturally high; and though she was perhaps unconscious of the fact, her original pride as Moreville and Norman had been much increased by her marriage with an Icingla, and all that she heard of their vague and indefinite pretensions; for, having little of their old grandeur left, save their pride, the Icinglas made the most of it in season, or out of season, and regarded their own strength in battle and wisdom in council as nothing compared with the lustre which they borrowed from ancestors who had held princely rank, and headed great armies in England, before the Danish kings turned England upside down.

For various reasons, therefore, Dame Isabel Icingla entertained a very high opinion of her own importance; and even in going through the duties of hospitality which devolved upon her as Hleafdian, she was grave and stately almost to affectation. In the evening, however, she was in the habit of unbending so far as either to converse with her three maidens on domestic affairs, or—being a woman of notable piety—to read to them some passage from the lives of the saints, albeit she may have been aware that these damsels would have much preferred a little lighter literature. But however that might have been, Dame Isabel, dressed in her russet gown, and wearing the wimple which concealed her grey hairs and gave a conventual appearance to her face, was seated in her chair of state, and thus occupied, with her three maidens around her, when a strange murmur ran through the house, and a spaniel which lay at her feet started up and uttered a low growl, and then barked, and, as the dog barked, Wolf, the son of Styr, rushed in with terror on his countenance.

“Oh, noble lady,” cried he, so agitated that he could scarcely articulate, “fly! They are coming; they are here!”