Brian Fitz-Count. A. D. Crake
Senlac, thrice blessed—and cursed we who survived, to lose home, hearth, altar, and all, and to beget a race of slaves."
"Nay, not slaves, grandfather; thou hast never bent the knee."
"Had I been ten years older, I had been at Senlac and died by my father's side."
"But your mother, you lived to comfort her."
"Not long; when the news of our father's death came, she bore up for my sake—but when our patrimony was taken by force, and we who had fought for our true king were driven from our homes as rebels and traitors, to herd with the beasts of the field; when our thralls became the bondsmen of men of foreign tongues and hard hearts—her heart broke, and she left me alone, after a few months of privation."
"But you fought against the Norman."
"I fought by the side of the last Englishman who fought at all, with Hereward and his brave men at the 'Camp of Refuge'; and spent the prime of my life a prisoner in the grim castle of the recreant Lords of Wallingford."
And he lifted up his eyes, suffused with tears, to heaven.
"Why do you call the Lords of Wallingford Castle recreant?"
"Because they were false to their country, in submitting to the Norman invader. When the Conqueror came to Southwark, the brave men of the city of London, guarded by their noble river and Roman walls, bade him defiance. So he came up the south bank of the stream to Wallingford, where the shire-reeve (the sheriff), Wigod, was ready, like a base traitor, to receive him. There Wigod sumptuously entertained him, and the vast mound which told of English victory in earlier days, became the kernel of a Norman stronghold. The Conqueror gave the daughter of Wigod in marriage to his particular friend, Robert d'Oyley, of Oxford Castle; and when men afterwards saw men like Wigod of Wallingford and Edward of Salisbury glutted with the spoils of Englishmen, better and braver than themselves, they ate their bread in bitterness of spirit, and praised the dead more than the living."
Just then a rustling in the branches attracted their attention.
"Oh, grandfather, there is a gallant stag! may I go and take him?—it will replenish our larder for days. We have been so hungry."
"It is death to kill the Baron's deer."
"When he can catch us!—that!—for him," and the boy snapped his fingers.
"Hist! I hear the sound of hound and horn—be cautious, or we may get into dire trouble."
"Trust me, grandfather. Where are my arrows? Oh, here they are. Come, Bruno."
And a large wolf-hound bounded forth, eager as his young master.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Sir Milo was Sheriff of Gloucester, and was afterwards created Earl of Hereford by the Empress Maude.
[5] Otherwise ceorls and theowes, tenant farmers and labourers, the latter, bondsmen, "adscripti glebæ," bought with the land, but who could not be sold apart from it.
CHAPTER III WHO STRUCK THE STAG?
"It was a stag, a stag of ten,
Bearing his branches sturdily."
We left the grandson of the recluse setting forth in quest of the stag.
Forth he and his dog bounded from the thick covert in which their cottage was concealed, and emerging from the tall reeds which bordered the brook, they stood beneath the shade of the mighty beech-trees, whose trunks upbore the dense foliage, as pillars in the solemn aisles of cathedrals support the superstructure; for the woods were God's first temples, and the inhabitants of such regions drew from them the inspiration from which sprang the various orders of Gothic architecture.
Here Osric, for such was his name, paused and hid in a thicket of hazel, for he spied the stag coming down the glade towards him, he restrained the dog by the leash: and the two lay in ambush.
The hunted creature, quite unsuspecting any new foes, came down the glen, bearing his branches loftily, for doubtless he was elate, poor beast, with the victory which his heels had given him over his human and canine foes. And now he approached the ambush: the boy had fitted an arrow to his bow but hesitated, it seemed almost a shame to lay so noble an animal low; but hunger and want are stern masters, and men must eat if they would live.
Just then the creature snuffed the tainted air, an instant, and he would have escaped; but the bow twanged, and the arrow buried itself in its side, the stag bounded in the death agony towards the very thicket whence the fatal dart had come; when Osric met it, and drawing his keen hunting-knife across its throat, ended its struggles and its life together.
He had received a woodland education, and knew what to do; he soon quartered the stag, whose blood the dog was lapping, and taking one of the haunches on his shoulders, entered the tangled maze of reeds and water wherein lay his island-home.
"Here, grandfather, here is one of the haunches, what a capital fat one it is! truly it will be a toothsome morsel for thee, and many tender bits will there be to suit thy aged teeth; come, Judith, come and help me hang it on the tree; then I will go and fetch the rest, joint by joint."
"But stop, Osric, what sound, what noise is that?" and the old man listened attentively—then added—
"Huntsmen have driven that stag hitherwards, and are following on its trail."
The breeze brought the uproarious baying of dogs and cries of men down the woods. It was at that moment, that, as stated in our last chapter, the fox had crossed the track, and baffled them for the moment.
Alas for poor Osric, only for the moment, for the huntsmen had succeeded in getting some of the older and wiser hounds to take up the lost trail, and the scent of their former enemy again greeting their olfactory organs, they obeyed the new impulse—or rather the old one renewed, and were off again after the deer.
And as we see a flock of sheep, stopped by a fence, hesitating where to go, until one finds a gap and all follow; so the various undecided dogs agreed that venison was better than carrion, and the stag therefore a nobler quarry than the fox; so, save a few misguided young puppies, they resumed the legitimate chase.
The huntsmen followed as fast as the trees and bushes allowed them, until, after a mile or two, they all came to a sudden stand, where the object of the chase had already met its death at the hands of Osric.
Meanwhile the unhappy youth had heard them drawing nearer and nearer. He knew that it would be impossible to escape discovery, unless the intricacies of their retreat should baffle the hunters, whom they heard drawing nearer and nearer. The dogs, they knew, would not pursue the chase beyond the place of slaughter. Oh! if they had but time to mangle it before the men arrived, so that the manner in which it had met its death might not be discovered—but that was altogether unlikely. And in truth clamorous human cries mingled with wild vociferous barkings, howlings, bayings, and other canine clamour, showed that the hunt was already assembled close by.
"I will go forth and own the deed: then perhaps they will not inquire further——"
"Nay, my son, await God's Will here."
And the old man restrained the youth.
At length they heard such words as these—
"He cannot be far off."
"He is hidden amongst the reeds."
"Turn