He then awoke the squire who slept at the door of his chamber, and ordered horses to be saddled and men to be mounted; and, just as morning began to dawn and the song of the nightingale ceased, and the antlers of the deer stirred above the fern, and the red in the east heralded the rise of the sun, the king, having mounted, left the castle and rode away through the park of Windsor, to which he was never to return.
“Now,” soliloquised he, “let mine enemies tremble, for I will oppose guile to guile and force to force. Revenge is sweet, and revenge, at least, I may enjoy; and even if Fate do her worst I am prepared. Rather than be their slave I will commit my soul to God and my body to St. Wulstan.”
CHAPTER XIX
CHAS-CHATEIL
ON the summit of a hill looking over the vale of the Kennet stood the castle of Chas-Chateil, surrounded by a park well wooded, and stocked with deer and beasts of game. It had been built in the reign of Stephen by Henry de Moreville, a great baron who flourished in the twelfth century and bore an eagle on his shield, after his return from the Holy Land; and as the Morevilles were favourites with the second Henry, it escaped destruction during the time when the politic king razed so many feudal fortresses to the ground. Originally it was an ordinary Norman castle, consisting of a basecourt, the sides of the walls being fortified with angles, towers, buttresses, battlements, and hornworks. But it was now a far prouder and more magnificent edifice—a place which, if well garrisoned and provisioned, might, before the invention of cannon, have held out long against a besieging army.
In fact, few men in England had a more thorough perception of the utter insecurity of national affairs at that time than Hugh de Moreville. Having long foreseen the crisis, he had not neglected to set his house in order; and Chas-Chateil had, consequently, been much enlarged and strengthened, and much improved both as regarded the appearance which it presented in its exterior and as regarded the comfort which it afforded to the inmates. At morning, indeed, when seen at sunrise it had quite a gay and laughing aspect; and in the interior everything was arranged with a view of rendering feudal life as tolerable and pleasant as possible. The outer galleries glittered with the armour of the sentinels, and the towers were all bright with their new gratings, and the roofs bordered with machicolations, parapets, guard-walks, and sentry-boxes; and on passing the chapel, dedicated to St. Moden—the patron saint of the Morevilles—and entering the court, with its fountain and its cisterns, you found the kitchens, with their mighty fireplaces on one side, and stables and hen-houses and pigeons on the other side, and in the middle, strongly defended, the donjon, where were kept the archives and the treasure of the house. Below were the cellars, the vaults, and, what were sometimes as well filled as either, the prisons, in which unhappy captives pined and groaned; and above, and only to be reached by one spacious stone stair, the apartments occupied by the family and dependants of the lord of the castle—the great hall, the lady’s bower, the guest-room, the bed-chambers, and the numerous cribs necessary for the accommodation of the multitudinous domestics, who, arrayed in the picturesque costume and speaking the quaint language of the period, and wearing the Moreville eagle, under the names of demoiselles, waiting-women, squires, pages, grooms, yeomen, henchmen, minstrels, and jesters, formed the household of a feudal magnate.
But when Oliver Icingla entered the castle of his maternal ancestors, the hour was so late that everything was quiet, most of the household having betaken themselves to repose. Nor, in truth, had he any opportunity of making observations. With very little ceremony he was told to dismount from his horse; and having, not without a sigh, parted from Ayoub, he was conducted, manacled as he was, up the great stone stair, and into the interior of the castle, and that with such haste that he had scarcely time to take breath, far less to collect his thoughts, till, after passing through several galleries, he found himself in a somewhat dimly lighted room. There, covered with a mantle of minever, Hugh de Moreville was stretched on a couch, his favourite hound by his side.
The Norman baron was occupied with his last meal for the day—that cold collation, generally taken at nine o’clock, and known as “liverie.” But it was evident he was merely going through a form, and that he could not taste the viands. In fact, De Moreville was suffering severely from gout—the result of indulgence in good cheer during his brief stay in the capital—and his temper, never celestial, was so severely tried by pain and twitches, that, at times, he was inclined to mutter imprecations the reverse of complimentary on king, barons, citizens, the laws of Edward the Confessor, even the Great Charter itself.
“What ho, young kinsman!” said he, recovering himself after a moment, and speaking in a bantering tone; “I hardly deemed myself such a favourite of Fortune as that she should send you under the roof of Chas-Chateil; but I rejoice to see you. Our last meeting was unlucky in this, that we parted without your fully understanding me. By St. Moden, you shall now comprehend my meaning!”
“My lord,” replied Oliver, speaking calmly, though his blood boiled with indignation at the tone in which he was addressed, “I thank you for welcoming me to the castle which is the inheritance of my mother; albeit I cannot help confessing that it would have been more pleasing to come under different circumstances. However, of that anon. Meantime, vouchsafe to inform me for what reason I have been hunted like a robber by your men-at-arms, and dragged here forcibly against my will. I demand to know.”
De Moreville laughed mockingly, and raised his eyes to the roof of the chamber, whereupon were carved some grotesque figures, each of which might be intended to represent that important bird the Moreville eagle.