“They were all I had—and I am an old man. Now they are gone, my very name must perish.”
The royal lady looked at him for a moment, her whole being trembling with grief.
“My heart is broken,” she said. “Yet what is my loss to thine?”
The old man took her hand, and kissed it.
“I am a loyal man—and an Englishman. I gave them freely to the cause of my Queen. Who am I that I should complain?”
Royal lady and lowly-born forester gazed into each other’s eyes for a brief space—their looks conveying thoughts which were too sacred for words—and then the Queen’s train moved down the hill, and the old man was left alone—alone with his sorrow and his dead.
The world is full of changes, and ever on the heels of war comes the angel form of peace. Men called the hill whereon the battle had been fought Warhill, and in after days the builders raised the sacred pile of Mottram Church, where the soldiers of Matilda and Stephen fought and died.
Author’s Note.
According to an old Longdendale tradition, the War Hill, Mottram, is the site of a battle which was fought in the twelfth century between the forces of the Princess Matilda and King Stephen.