In the Days of Chivalry: A Tale of the Times of the Black Prince. Everett-Green Evelyn
he was just a little less confident than Gaston of the brilliant success that was to attend upon their feats of arms. Still there was much of the fighting instinct in the boy, and there was certainly no hope of regaining Basildene in the present. So that he agreed willingly to his brother's proposition, although he resolved before he left these parts to look once with his own eyes upon the home that had sheltered his mother's childhood and youth.
And then they plunged into the thickest of the forest, and could talk no more till they had reached the little clearing that lay around the woodman's hut. The old man was not far away, as they heard by the sound of a falling axe a little to the right of them. Following this sound, they quickly came upon the object of their search – the grizzled old man, with the same look of unutterable woe stamped upon his face.
Gaston, who knew only one-half of the errand upon which they had come, produced the pieces of silver that the Rector and John had sent, with a message of thanks to the old woodman for his help in directing the Prince and his company to the robbers' cave at such a favourable moment. The old man appeared bewildered at first by the sight of the money and the words of thanks; but recollection came back by degrees, though he seemed as one who in constant brooding upon a single theme has come to lose all sense of other things, and scarce to observe the flight of time, or to know one day from another.
This strange, wild melancholy, which had struck John at once, now aroused in Raymond a sense of sympathetic interest. He had come to try to seek the cause of the old man's sorrow, and he did not mean to leave with his task unfulfilled.
Perhaps John could have found no fitter emissary than this Gascon lad, with his simple forest training, his quick sympathy and keen intelligence, and his thorough knowledge of the details of peasant life, which in all countries possess many features in common.
It was hard at first to get the old man to care to understand what was said, or to take the trouble to reply. The habit of silence is one of the most difficult to break; but patience and perseverance generally win the day: and when it dawned upon this strange old man that it was of himself and his own loss and grief that these youths had come to speak, a new look crossed his weatherbeaten face, and a strange gleam of mingled fury and despair shone in the depths of his hollow eyes.
"My sorrow!" he exclaimed, in a voice from which the dreary cadence had now given place to a clearer, firmer ring: "is it of that you ask, young sirs? Has it been told to you the cruel wrong that I have suffered?"
Then suddenly clinching his right hand and shaking it wildly above his head, he broke into vehement and almost unintelligible invective, railing with frenzied bitterness against some foe, speaking so rapidly, and with such strange inflections of voice, that it was but a few words that the brothers could distinguish out of the whole of the impassioned speech. One of those words was "my son – my boy," followed by the names of Sanghurst and Basildene.
It was these names that arrested the attention of the brothers, causing them to start and exchange quick glances. Raymond waited till the old man had finished his railing, and then he asked gently:
"Had you then a son? Where is he now?"
"A son! ay, that had I – the light and brightness of my life!" cried the old man, with a sudden burst of rude eloquence that showed him to have been at some former time something better than his present circumstances seemed to indicate. "Young sirs, I know not who you are; I know not why you ask me of my boy. But your faces are kind, and perchance there may be help in the world, though I have found it not. I know not how time has fled since that terrible sorrow fell upon me. Perchance not many years by the calendar, but in misery and suffering a lifetime. Listen, and I will tell you all. I was not ever as you see me now. I was no lonely woodman buried in the heart of the forest. I was second huntsman to Sir Hugh Vavasour of Woodcrych, in favour with my master and well contented with my lot. I had a wife whom I loved, and she had born me a lovely boy, who was the very light of my eyes and the joy of my heart. I should weary you did I tell you of all his bold pranks and merry ways. He was, I verily believe, the loveliest child that God's sun has ever looked down upon. When it pleased Him to take my wife away from me after seven happy years, I strove not to murmur; for I had still the child, and every day that passed made him more winsome, more loving, more mettlesome and bold. Even the master would draw rein as he passed my door to have a word with the boy; and little Mistress Joan gave me many a silver groat to buy him a fairing with, and keep him always dressed in the smartest little suit of forester's green. The priest noticed him too, and would have him to his house to teach him many things, and told me he would live to carve out a fortune for himself. I thought naught too good for him. I would have wondered little if even the King had sent for him to make of him a companion for his son.
"Perchance I was foolish in the boastings I made. But the beauty and the wisdom of the boy struck all alike – and thence came his destruction."
"His destruction?" echoed both brothers in a breath. "What! is he then dead?"
"He is worse than dead," answered the father, in a hollow, despairing voice; "he has been bewitched – undone by foul sorcery, bound over hand and foot, and given to the keeping of Satan. Even the priest can do nothing for us. He is lost, body and soul, for ever."
The brothers exchanged wondering glances as they made the sign of the cross, the old man watching the gesture with a bitter smile in his eye. Then Raymond spoke again:
"But what was it that happened? we do not yet understand."
"I will tell you all. If you know this part of the world, young sirs, you have doubtless heard of the old Manor of Basildene, where dwells one, Peter Sanghurst by name, who is nothing more nor less than a wizard, who should be hunted to death without pity. Men have told me (I know not with what truth) that these wizards, who give themselves over to the devil, are required by their master from time to time to furnish him with new victims, and these victims are generally children – fair and promising children, who can first be trained in the black arts of their earthly master, and are then handed over, body and soul, to the devil, to be his slaves and his victims for ever."
The old man was speaking slowly now, with a steady yet despairing ferocity that was terrible to hear. His sunken eyes gleamed in their sockets, and his hands, that were tightly clinched over the handle of his axe, trembled with the emotion that had him in its clutches.
"I was sent upon a mission by my master. I was absent from my home some seven days. When I came back my boy was gone. I had left him in the care of the keeper of the hounds. He was an honest man, and told me all the tale. Perchance you know that Sir Hugh Vavasour is what men call a spendthrift. His estates will not supply him with the money he needs. He is always in debt, he is always in difficulties. From that it comes that he cares little what manner of men are his comrades or friends, provided only that they can supply his needs when his own means fail. This is why, when all men else hate and loathe the very name of Sanghurst, he calls himself their friend. He knows that the old man has the secret by which all things may be turned into gold, and therefore he welcomes his son to Woodcrych. And men say that Mistress Joan is to be given in marriage to his son one day, because he will take her without dowry; for she is the fairest creature in the world, and he has vowed that she shall wed him and none else."
The brothers were intensely interested by this tale, but were growing a little confused by all the names introduced, and they wanted the story of the woodman's son complete.
"Then was it the old man who took your boy, or was it his son? Are they not both called Peter?"
"Ay, they have both the same name – the same name and the same nature: evil, cruel, remorseless. I know not how nor where the old man first set eyes upon my boy; but he must have seen him, and have coveted possession of him for his devilish practices; for upon the week that I was absent from home, he left the solitude of his house, and came with the master himself to the house where the boy was. And then Sir Hugh explained to honest Stephen, who had charge of him, that Master Peter Sanghurst had offered the lad a place in his service, where he would learn many things that would stand him in good stead all the days of his life. It sounded fair in all faith. But Stephen stoutly refused to let the boy go till I returned; whereupon Sir Hugh struck him a blow across the face with his heavy whip, and young Peter Sanghurst, leaping to the ground, seized the child and placed him in front of him upon the horse, and the three