The Red King.
Whichever way I looked the forest stretched in one dense twilight. It was the very realization of that appalling hush and bewildering continuity of shade so often described by travellers in the American woods. I had lost now all sense of any particular direction, and the only chance of reaching the outside of the wood was to go as much as possible in one direct line. Away then I went—but soon found myself entangled in the thickest underwood—actually overhead in rank weeds; now on the verge of an impassable bog, and now on that of a deep ravine. Fortunately for me, the summer had been remarkably dry, and the ravines were dry too,—I could descend into them, and climb out on the other side. But the more I struggled on, the more I became confounded. Pausing to consider my situation, I saw a hairy face and a large pair of eyes fixed on me. Had it been a satyr, I felt that I should not have been surprised, it seemed so satyr-like a place. It was only a stag—which, with its head just above the tall fern, and its antlers amongst the boughs, looked very much like Kühleborn of the Undine story. As I moved towards him he dashed away through the jungle, for so only could it be called, and I could long hear the crash of his progress. Ever and anon, huge swine with a fierce guffaw rushed from their lairs—one might have imagined them the wild boars of a German forest. At length I caught the tinkle of a cow-bell—a cheerful sound, for it must be in some open part of the forest, and from its distinctness not far distant. Thitherward I turned, and soon emerged into a sort of island in the sea of woods, a farm, like an American clearing. I sate down on a fallen tree to cool and rest myself, and was struck with the beauty of the place. These green fields lying so peacefully amid the woods, which, in one place pushed forward their scattered trees, in another retreated; here sprinkling them out thinly on the common, and there hanging their masses of dark foliage over a low-thatched hut or two. The quiet farm-house too, surrounded by its belt of tall hollies; the flocks of geese dispersed over the short turf, and the cows coming home out of the forest to be milked: it was a most peaceful picture, and unlike all that citizens are accustomed to contemplate, except in Spenser or the German writers. These cow-bells too, have something in their sound so quaint and woodland. They are slung by a leathern strap from the neck of the leader, having neither sound nor shape of a common bell, but are like a tin canister, with a ring at the bottom to suspend them by. They seem like the first rudimental attempt at a bell, and have a sound dull and horny, rather than clear and ringing. The leaders of these herds are said to have a singular sagacity in tracking the woods, and finding their way to particular spots and home again, by extraordinary and intricate ways.
Having now a clear conception of my position, I proceeded leisurely towards Stony-Cross, the reputed place of the catastrophe of Rufus. The tree whence the fatal arrow glanced, or, at least, the one marked by popular tradition as it, was standing till about a century ago, when a triangular stone was set down to identify the spot; with these inscriptions, one on each side:
1. Here stood the oak, on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell at a stag, glanced and struck King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, in the breast, of which he instantly died, on the second of August, A.D. 1100.
2. King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being slain, as is before related, was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkess, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and was buried in the cathedral church of that city.
3. A.D. 1745: That the place where an event so memorable had happened, might not be hereafter unknown, this stone was set up by John Lord Delawar, who has seen the tree growing in this place.
This place is called in Doomsday Book, Truham, by Leland, Thorougham, by other writers, Choringham, and Chuham. It is now known by the name of Stony-Cross. Leland says that, in his time (the reign of Henry VIII.) a chapel was standing near the place, most probably built by some of King William’s descendants, to pray for his soul; it being the general opinion of the time, that the divine judgment for his cruelties in the forest had fallen upon him here more expressly, because here he had actually destroyed a church. No trace of such a thing is now visible, and indeed, it is one of the singularities of this spot, that so little vestige of the destroyed villages, churches, etc. is to be discovered.