CHAPTER LIX
A STARTLING SPECTACLE
A FEW minutes before sunset on the evening of the day on which the wrestling match had taken place at Westminster, a body of horsemen, about a dozen in number, were seen passing through the little town of Barnet, and riding in the direction of London. Both men and horses looked as if their journey had been long, and as if they were weary of the road.
At the head of this small cavalcade rode two horsemen. One was a young knight, so juvenile-looking, indeed, that but for the gold spurs unworn by squires, he would have been thought too lately out of his teens to be girded with the belt of knighthood. The other was a squire, tall and strong, over whose head many a winter had passed, and on whose face and rough-hewn features the conflicts in which he had taken part had left their marks in the form of scars. One was Oliver Icingla, the other Ralph Hornmouth; and as Oliver now and then made remarks to Hornmouth, and now talked caressingly to a tall greyhound that trotted by his horse’s side, he did so with the tone of one who held no vague pretensions, but possessed very substantial realities in the way of rank and wealth, and whose presence even in the palace which was his ultimate destination that night could not be treated as a matter of indifference. In fact, his position had very much changed in a worldly point of view. Now the heir of the Icinglas was not only a belted knight, who had rendered important services to England during the great Pembroke’s Protectorate, but Lord of Chas-Chateil and Mount Moreville, with ample manors, and the power, in the event of any civil war, of bringing into the field a formidable band of feudal warriors. At this time especially his importance was fully recognised, for both the Bishop of Winchester and Hubert de Burgh were naturally eager to secure him as an ally, and all the more so that the young king was understood to listen with a ready ear to the Icingla’s counsels.
A few words will suffice to explain how this came to pass.
Hugh de Moreville had for years ceased to give Oliver the slightest uneasiness. The active career, indeed, of that Norman of Anglo-Normans had closed with his escape from Lincoln. For months after his arrival at Mount Moreville he had remained shut up in that stronghold, fretting and fuming, giving way to wild bursts of rage, and devising every kind of wild scheme for redeeming the disasters of the baronial party. But all his schemes ended in air, and meantime want of food, want of sleep, and constant worry did the wear and tear of years. His hair became grey, his countenance haggard, and his form, lately so erect and so strong, began to bend under the load of regret, of remorse, and mortification, and disappointed ambition. At forty-five he had the appearance of an old man, and he gave way to fancies which made the faithful Hornmouth apprehensive that his lord’s reason was departing.
De Moreville’s habits, indeed, became most eccentric; and when he sauntered broodingly from the castle from which in other days he had been wont to ride forth with the air of a man who claimed an immense superiority over his kind, he made a point of saluting any children whom he met, “to the end,” as he humbly expressed it, “that he might have a return of the benediction of the Innocents.” Gradually the inclination he had expressed to seek consolation in the cloister became stronger, and at length the world, in which he had played so conspicuous a part, learned that De Moreville, the haughty and iron-handed, was a monk in the abbey of Dryburgh. But it ought to be mentioned that in a feudal age, when life presented such violent contrasts, this created no surprise, for many warriors as haughty and stern as De Moreville took the cowl, and endeavoured to make their peace with Heaven by ending their days in penance and prayer.
When, therefore, Oliver Icingla reached years of legal discretion, he did homage for his mother’s inheritance, and took possession of Chas-Chateil without an obstacle being interposed; and he was even now returning from the court of the King of Scots, at the castle of Roxburgh, whither he had repaired to go through the feudal ceremony which was to constitute him lord of Mount Moreville.
Ralph Hornmouth stuck steadily to De Moreville till the Norman baron turned monk; and when De Moreville hid his head in a cowl, and his body in a cloister, Hornmouth made a complete transfer of his fidelity to Oliver Icingla, and pursued life as if unconscious that he had made a change of masters. Ever ready to ride at half an hour’s notice from Chas-Chateil to Mount Moreville, and from Mount Moreville to Oakmede, where the hall of the Icinglas had again risen in stately proportion from its ashes and ruins, he was worth his weight in gold during troublous times; and as for political creed, Hornmouth was content to leave that to the warrior whose banner he followed. He had ridden willingly with De Moreville to fight for Prince Louis and the Norman barons, and he was prepared to ride as cheerfully with the Icingla to fight for King Henry to the cry of “St. Edward!” It was, as he thought, for the Anglo-Norman baron or the Anglo-Saxon Hlaford to take the responsibility of choosing a side; it was his duty to fight his best on whatever side they drew their swords.
And De Moreville’s daughter no longer inhabited the great mansion in Ludgate, from the balcony of which she looked forth on the cavalcade that escorted the boy-king through the city of London, but a much humbler dwelling on the banks of the Thames, near Scotland-yard, where stood the palace with which, in an earlier age, Edgar had gifted Kenneth, and in which the King of Scots still resided when he came to Westminster to enact his part at a coronation. Dame Waledger was still her guardian and companion, an arrangement most convenient to both; for Beatrix had no kinswoman to whom she could cling for protection, and Sir Anthony, living at his manor in Berkshire, was in the habit of carousing so freely in the day and contending with so many imaginary antagonists at night, that the dame, not indifferent to her own safety in life and limb, dreaded nothing so much as living under the same roof with a husband who might any night slay her, under the delusion that he was engaged in mortal combat with the wild boar which he had encountered under the oak at Donnington.
But one circumstance had much changed the colour of Beatrix’s life: Oliver Icingla had not persisted in avoiding her company and praying to be delivered from the temptation of seeing her. On the contrary, as time wore off the impression that had been left by his frightful dream, the memory of the romantic interview at Chas-Chateil had returned upon him with an effect before which other considerations rapidly gave way. In short, while the Icingla was returning from the North, Beatrix had the prospect of being his bride ere Christmas; and as he passed the village of Charing, riding side by side with Hornmouth, and talking to the tall greyhound, De Moreville’s daughter was uppermost in his thoughts, and her hand seemed to beckon him on as his journey southward drew to an end.