Heroines of the Crusades. Celestia Angenette Bloss
they parted, Robert to take refuge with his mother’s brother, in Flanders, and William to return to his distracted kingdom, where the fires of civil war still smouldered in the ashes of freedom.
In such scenes was Adela nurtured, and thus in an atmosphere of intrigue and superstition, was a character naturally penetrating and impetuous, prepared to devise and carry forward the wildest schemes.
Public calamities, and domestic vexations, impaired the peace and irritated the temper of the English monarch. Bodesmen from the north, brought news of leagues and plots against his power, while messengers from Normandy, conveyed tidings of the disaffections of his peers, and the hostilities of the French king.
Richard, his most dutiful and affectionate son, had accompanied him to England. The young prince was exceedingly fond of the chase, and often spent whole days hunting in the New Forest of Hampshire.
The malaria of the depopulated district, and the painful emotions awakened in his sensitive nature, by the sight of famishing wretches, vainly seeking food and shelter, brought on a delirious fever, which soon terminated his life. He was interred in Winchester Cathedral.
The last tone of the curfew bell was reverberating through the silent halls of the palace, when the distracted father, haunted by the piteous lamentations, and reproachful ravings of his departed son, threw himself despairingly upon his couch.
“News from beyond seas,” said the chamberlain, entering, and presenting him a letter. William cut the silk and read.
“In the name of the blessed Mary, ever virgin, St. Michael, and St. Valery, doth thy poor scribe Ingulfus pray, that strength may be given thee, duke William, by grace of God, king of England, to bear the dreadful tidings, which much it grieves me to convey. When this comes to thee thou wilt know that thy sweet daughter, Agatha, liveth no more. From the day of our departure she shed no tears, but a tender wailing sound, like the moan of a wounded dove, issued ever from her lips. Her heart, she said, was devoted to her first spouse, and she prayed that the Most High would rather take her to himself, than allow her ever to be wedded to another. Her prayer was granted.
“The faintness which we witnessed at her betrothal, returned upon her by night and by day, but she never murmured; and on the eve of the blessed St. Agnes, having received the rites of our holy Church, she died, with the crucifix in her hand, and the name of Edwin on her lips.”
The scroll dropped from the hand of the stricken father and a remorseful pang wrung his heart.
Again the chamberlain entered ushering in a dark figure wrapped in a long serge cloak, like those usually worn by monks. Kneeling at the monarch’s feet, the stranger spoke. “Knowing, oh king! thy munificence to thy faithful servants, and moved by the love I bear thy throne and realm, I have discovered to Fitz Osborne the secret haunts of thine enemies, and to obtain thy royal favor, have brought from the Isle of Ely, that which I hope will please thee well. Behold the head of the Saxon chief.”
The Conqueror shrank back in horror, as the well-known features of Edwin, pale and distorted with the death agony, and the long, fair locks all dabbled with gore, met his bewildered gaze.
“Cursed traitor!” shouted he, starting from his seat, “dost thou think to win my favor by bringing me the head of thy murdered lord? Ho! seneschal, convey this Judas to the lowest cell of the donjon. There shall he learn how William rewards the betrayer of innocent blood.” The prisoner was borne from his presence.
The monarch buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears of uncontrollable anguish.
“Woe is me, my daughter, – Done to death by thy father’s unholy ambition – Thy Edwin hunted and slain on his own hearth-stone. What has this sceptre brought me? Toilsome days, and sleepless nights, – a divided household, – and children cut off in the flower of their youth. Truly, saith the Scripture; ‘Woe unto him that coveteth an evil covetousness unto his house.’”
As he bowed his head his eyes fell upon the fatal, silver shield. Lifting it reverently from the floor, and wiping the clotted blood from its polished surface, with some difficulty, he deciphered the Saxon inscription, which has been thus elegantly translated.
“Edwin his pledge has left in me,
Now to the battle prest:
His guardian angel may she be,
Who wears me on her breast.
To him true hearted may she prove,
Oh! God, to thee I pray;
Edwin shall well requite her love,
Returning from the fray.
But if, forgetful of her vows,
May Heaven avert the thought,
She sell this love-charm of her spouse,
Which never could be bought;
If of her own free will she cast
This talisman away;
May Edwin’s life no longer last,
To rue that fatal day.”
CHAPTER V
“Still to the truth direct thy strong desire, And flee the very air where dwells a liar. Fail not the mass, there still with reverent feet, Each morn be found, nor scant thy offering meet, Haste thee, sir knight, where dames complain of wrong; Maintain their right, and in their cause be strong.”
The last act in the bloody tragedy of England’s subjection, was consummated in the year 1074, when Earl Waltheof, having been drawn into a plot against the crown, and betrayed by his Norman wife, Judith, to her uncle, the Conqueror, was beheaded on a rising ground, just without the gates of Winchester, the first Anglo-Saxon that perished by the hand of the executioner.
The perfidious Judith had fixed her affections on a French Count, but William had already secured a willing agent of his own purposes, in the person of Simon, a Norman noble, lame and deformed, on whom he designed to bestow her hand, with the rich earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon.
The haughty Judith scorned the alliance, and stripped of rank and power, retired to the wilds of Yorkshire in obscurity and contempt.
The bitter tears occasioned by the melancholy fate of Agatha and Edwin, were fresh upon the cheek of Maude, when the heavy tidings of her father’s cruel death, overwhelmed her in a tide of deeper anguish. A lingering illness followed, yet sweet dreams stole ever upon her rest, and the watchful Adela comprehended, that transported to the home of her childhood, in the gaiety of life’s early morn, she trod again the breezy upland, and fragrant glade, wandered through wood and wold, with Edwin by her side, or sitting by the star-lit fountain, challenged the nightingale from out the leafy holt, with snatches of Runic rhyme, and Saxon melody. But young life combating disease, slowly led her back from the gates of the grave. One by one the bright visions faded, and sadly her eyes unclosed to a consciousness of the dark realities before her.
William had determined that the hand of the beautiful heiress of Huntingdon, should compensate the pliant Simon for the mortifying refusal of her stepmother. The betrothal was to take place directly on the Conqueror’s arrival in Normandy, but the happy oblivion of Maude, no less than the entreaties of Adela, and the menacing of Robert served to delay the doom they could not finally avert.
William had subdued the rebel province of Maine, and moved by the declining health, and incessant pleading of his beloved Queen, had accorded to his refractory son a full pardon for his late rebellion, “promising at the same time, to grant him everything that he could expect from the affection of a father consistently with the duty of a king.”
Thus peace was restored throughout the Conqueror’s dominions, and the royal family happy in their reunion, kept merry Christmas in the capital city of Rouen.
“Sweet sister mine,” said Robert to Adela, as she sat engaged