With the Black Prince

by William O. Stoddard

As for the secret character of the grange itself, there was small wonder that a few hundred acres, if so much there might be, of patches of farm land should be sheltered among those woods from any but such men as had been Sir Edward Neville. It might all be within the somewhat doubtful borders of his own manorial grant, given to his ancestors by the earlier kings and confirmed by Edward the First, to be lost under his son, the second Edward, and Earl Mortimer, and to be regained under Edward the Third and the house of Beauchamp.

It was said, indeed, that there were regions tenfold as wide, in some of the remoter baronies, whereof men knew but little, especially among the Scottish border counties and among the hills. Besides these were the unsearched fen districts on the coasts, the wild mountain parts of Wales, and worst of all were the highlands of Scotland and the seagirt isles of the Scottish coasts. As for Ireland, even the greater part of it was almost an unknown land to Englishmen, for nothing less than an army might venture inland too far with any hope of ever coming back again.

In the several parts of the grange itself, as in the cottages scattered beyond it, the women plied their tasks. Some of them spun with distaffs, and two or three looms were busy; more might have been but for the lack of wool. There was much raising of sheep in the more thickly settled parts of England in those days, but there was small room for them in Arden. Moreover, they, more than cattle or horses or swine, were sorely thinned by the wolves. It was a hundred and fifty years later that these fierce beasts disappeared from England, and the last of them in Scotland was slain yet a century later. So was it that so little cloth, even of homespun, was worn by the bowmen who rode behind Richard of Wartmont, in the gloom of that evening when he followed the Earl and his men-at-arms through the gate of Warwick town.

Long had been the journey, hard pushed and weary were beasts and men. There was small ceremony of arrival or reception for the greater part of the cavalcade, but the Lady Maud was conducted at once to the care of the Countess Eleanor of Warwick, her younger sister, the wife of the earl.

As for Richard, his men were cared for well, under direction of Sir Geoffrey de Harcourt, while their young captain was bidden to hasten with his great kinsman to meet once more the Prince of Wales and Sir Walter de Maunay.

This greeting, too, was brief, for the hour was late; but the prince said graciously:

"O thou of Wartmont, I will make thee my comrade in arms! In the morn I would fain see thy men. My father himself bade me gather as many deer stealers as I might, for, quoth he, the hand that can send a gray goose shaft to strike a stag at a hundred yards may fairly bring down a Frenchman at half that distance. Give me bowmen enough of the right sort, and I will train them to face anything that Philip of France can muster."

"O my Lord the Prince," replied Richard, "I have a hundred with me, of whom any man can send an arrow through a coat of mail at fifty yards. I like the king's notion right well."

"Go, now," said the prince; "go with thy kinsman, the earl. On the morrow I will tell thee what to do with thy men."

But these, for their part, were all of a merry heart that night. Not often had any of them visited Warwick, at least in later years, for therein was a jail, and they liked not so much as to look thereon, being in danger of being put within it. They had good quarters and good fare, with much ale, and they knew they were to see brave sights next day, and to have a word from even the Black Prince himself. Was not that enough of cheer for men of the woods who had seldom been out beyond the shadows of the oaks of Arden?