CHAPTER VII
A MAN OF THE FOREST
FEW days were merrier in ancient England than the first day of the year. Not so fatigued with the celebration of Christmas as to be incapable of continuing the festivity, the inhabitants—especially the young—welcomed the new year with uproarious mirth.
Even before the Saxon, or Dane, or Norman had set foot in Britain—even before the apostles of Christianity had found their way to our shores—the season had been the occasion of religious rites and observances. It is well known that, on the last night of the year, the Druids were in the habit of going into the woods, cutting the mistletoe off the oak with golden bills, bringing it next morning into the towns, distributing it among the people, who wore it as an amulet to preserve them from danger, and performing certain pagan rites, which were gradually turned by the early Church into such exhibitions as the “Fête des Fous,” performed by companies of both sexes, dressed in fantastic garments, who ran about on New Year’s Day, asking for gifts, rushing into churches during the services of the vigils, and disturbing the devout by their gestures and cries.
In England, on New Year’s Day, it was customary for every one who had it in his power to wear new clothes; and unfortunate was deemed the wight who had not the means that day of indulging in some luxury of the kind. Now, on the 1st of January in the year 1215—a year destined to be memorable in the annals of England—Wolf, the varlet, had been provided with garments more befitting the sobriety observed in the house of Dame Isabel Icingla than the scarlet striped with yellow, in which he had strutted at the court of Castile; and, prompted by the vanity natural to youth, he resolved on displaying his finery at the cottage inhabited by his father, Styr, the Anglo-Saxon.
And the cottage of Styr, which stood about a mile from Oakmede, was not without its pretensions. Indeed, it was a palace compared with the squalid huts in which most of the labouring peasantry of England then herded; for Styr, in his youth, had served the Icinglas with fidelity in peace and war, and they had not proved forgetful of his services. Moreover, it was rumoured that Styr had dealings with outlaws, and that, at times, he so far forgot himself as to take out his crossbow on moonlight nights with an eye to the king’s deer. But, however that may have been, food in abundance, and, on such occasions as holidays, good cheer in plenty, and tankards of foaming ale, were found under Styr’s roof; and he could tell of war and of battles, especially of that last battle in which Richard Cœur de Lion defeated Philip Augustus, and in which Edric Icingla fell with his back to the ground and his feet to the foe. Listening to stories of the past, and singing some songs he had learned in Spain, Wolf found the hours glide away rather swiftly, and the day was far spent when he rose to leave.
“And so, Wolf,” said Styr for the fifth or sixth time, “it is not, after all, to the wars to which the young Hlaford has gone?”
“No, in truth,” replied Wolf, quickly, “or, credit me, he would not have left me behind. Little better than a prisoner is he, mewed up in the gloomy Tower, like bird in cage.”
“But hark thee, Wolf,” said the old man, “and I will tell thee a secret. Forest Will, or Will with the Club, as they call him, passed this way not later than yesterday.”
“And who is this Forest Will—knowest thou, father?” asked Wolf, interrupting.
“Nay, lad, that is more than I can tell. Some say he is a great man whose life is forfeit to the law; others that he is a captain of forest outlaws. For my part, I know little more of him than do my neighbours; but this little I do know, that he is wondrous familiar with all that is doing, alike at the king’s court and the castles of the barons—ay, even in foreign parts—and he foretells that, ere the harvest is ready for the sickle, there will be war.”