CHAPTER XIX

CHAS-CHATEIL

On the summit of a hill looking over the vale of the Kennet stood the castle of Chas-Chateil, surrounded by a park well wooded, and stocked with deer and beasts of game. It had been built in the reign of Stephen by Henry de Moreville, a great baron who flourished in the twelfth century and bore an eagle on his shield, after his return from the Holy Land; and as the Morevilles were favourites with the second Henry, it escaped destruction during the time when the politic king razed so many feudal fortresses to the ground. Originally it was an ordinary Norman castle, consisting of a basecourt, the sides of the walls being fortified with angles, towers, buttresses, battlements, and hornworks. But it was now a far prouder and more magnificent edifice--a place which, if well garrisoned and provisioned, might, before the invention of cannon, have held out long against a besieging army.

In fact, few men in England had a more thorough perception of the utter insecurity of national affairs at that time than Hugh de Moreville. Having long foreseen the crisis, he had not neglected to set his house in order; and Chas-Chateil had, consequently, been much enlarged and strengthened, and much improved both as regarded the appearance which it presented in its exterior and as regarded the comfort which it afforded to the inmates. At morning, indeed, when seen at sunrise it had quite a gay and laughing aspect; and in the interior everything was arranged with a view of rendering feudal life as tolerable and pleasant as possible. The outer galleries glittered with the armour of the sentinels, and the towers were all bright with their new gratings, and the roofs bordered with machicolations, parapets, guard-walks, and sentry-boxes; and on passing the chapel, dedicated to St. Moden--the patron saint of the Morevilles--and entering the court, with its fountain and its cisterns, you found the kitchens, with their mighty fireplaces on one side, and stables and hen-houses and pigeons on the other side, and in the middle, strongly defended, the donjon, where were kept the archives and the treasure of the house. Below were the cellars, the vaults, and, what were sometimes as well filled as either, the prisons, in which unhappy captives pined and groaned; and above, and only to be reached by one spacious stone stair, the apartments occupied by the family and dependants of the lord of the castle--the great hall, the lady’s bower, the guest-room, the bed-chambers, and the numerous cribs necessary for the accommodation of the multitudinous domestics, who, arrayed in the picturesque costume and speaking the quaint language of the period, and wearing the Moreville eagle, under the names of demoiselles, waiting-women, squires, pages, grooms, yeomen, henchmen, minstrels, and jesters, formed the household of a feudal magnate.

But when Oliver Icingla entered the castle of his maternal ancestors, the hour was so late that everything was quiet, most of the household having betaken themselves to repose. Nor, in truth, had he any opportunity of making observations. With very little ceremony he was told to dismount from his horse; and having, not without a sigh, parted from Ayoub, he was conducted, manacled as he was, up the great stone stair, and into the interior of the castle, and that with such haste that he had scarcely time to take breath, far less to collect his thoughts, till, after passing through several galleries, he found himself in a somewhat dimly lighted room. There, covered with a mantle of minever, Hugh de Moreville was stretched on a couch, his favourite hound by his side.

The Norman baron was occupied with his last meal for the day--that cold collation, generally taken at nine o’clock, and known as “liverie.” But it was evident he was merely going through a form, and that he could not taste the viands. In fact, De Moreville was suffering severely from gout--the result of indulgence in good cheer during his brief stay in the capital--and his temper, never celestial, was so severely tried by pain and twitches, that, at times, he was inclined to mutter imprecations the reverse of complimentary on king, barons, citizens, the laws of Edward the Confessor, even the Great Charter itself.

“What ho, young kinsman!” said he, recovering himself after a moment, and speaking in a bantering tone; “I hardly deemed myself such a favourite of Fortune as that she should send you under the roof of Chas-Chateil; but I rejoice to see you. Our last meeting was unlucky in this, that we parted without your fully understanding me. By St. Moden, you shall now comprehend my meaning!”

“My lord,” replied Oliver, speaking calmly, though his blood boiled with indignation at the tone in which he was addressed, “I thank you for welcoming me to the castle which is the inheritance of my mother; albeit I cannot help confessing that it would have been more pleasing to come under different circumstances. However, of that anon. Meantime, vouchsafe to inform me for what reason I have been hunted like a robber by your men-at-arms, and dragged here forcibly against my will. I demand to know.”

De Moreville laughed mockingly, and raised his eyes to the roof of the chamber, whereupon were carved some grotesque figures, each of which might be intended to represent that important bird the Moreville eagle.

“On my faith!” answered he at length, “I marvel much that any youth with the Moreville blood in his veins can be such a dullard as to ask such a question. But an answer you shall have. You were seized and brought hither because you were engaged in attempts at variance with the laws of the land and the authority of the barons, the conservators of the charter signed at Runnymede.”

“Answer me two questions,” said Oliver, sternly. “Am I a prisoner? and if so, is my life aimed at?”

“Everything depends on yourself. Meanwhile, you have letters from Queen Isabel to King John. Hand them to me.”

“You do me great injustice,” said Oliver, “in supposing it possible that, if intrusted with letters, I should render them to any but the person for whose hand they were intended.”

“Is that your answer?” fiercely demanded De Moreville.

“It is my answer,” retorted Oliver, with equal heat; “and it is an answer more courteous than you deserve.”

“By the bones of St. Moden!” exclaimed De Moreville, with a frowning brow, “I can no longer brook such obstinacy! May I become an Englishman if I bend or break not your proud spirit ere the year is much nearer midsummer!” and he blew a silver whistle that lay at his side, the sound of which instantly brought Ralph Hornmouth and another man-at-arms into the chamber.

“Ho, there! Ralph Hornmouth,” said De Moreville, fiercely, “give me the letters which this varlet has about him. Methinks, from the direction his eye took when I mentioned them, he has them in his boots.”

Hornmouth and his comrade obeyed; and Oliver, notwithstanding a brave struggle, had the bitter mortification, while prostrated on his back and held down, of seeing the queen’s letter taken from his boot and handed to the Norman baron; but no second letter could be found, for the very excellent reason that no such letter had ever been in existence.

Meanwhile, De Moreville perused the epistle slowly, and as he read, his countenance evinced disappointment. It seemed, indeed, that the letter did not contain the kind of information he expected; and he turned to Oliver, who was again on his feet, almost weeping from rage, and regarding his kinsman with angry glances.

“You will now inform me,” said he, like a man determined on having an answer by fair or foul means, “whither William de Collingham has gone, and with what intent.”

“Dog of a Norman!” exclaimed Oliver, giving way to his fury, “I would not answer such a question to save my body from the bernicles. Villain and oppressor, do your worst; I defy you and your myrmidons.”

“I can waste no more time in bandying words,” said De Moreville, significantly. “Conduct this varlet to the blind chamber of the prison-house,” continued he, addressing Hornmouth, “and give him a taste of the brake. The blind chamber has, in its day, brought still worse madmen than he is to their senses, and the brake has proved too much for the endurance of hardier limbs.”

Oliver Icingla shuddered. He rapidly recalled to memory the stories he had often heard from men of English race of the atrocious cruelties perpetrated by Norman barons in earlier reigns on their unfortunate prisoners; how one victim was starved to death; how a second was flung into a cellar full of reptiles; how a third was hung up by the thumbs; how a fourth was crippled in a frame which was so constructed that he could not move an inch in any direction; and how a fifth was suspended from a sharp collar round his neck, with his toes just resting on the ground. It was natural enough that Oliver should shudder as the recollection of such things flashed through his brain; and as they did so his blood ran cold, and his heart beat fast and loud. But he was game to the backbone; and De Moreville, who watched him narrowly, could not but marvel that there was not, even for a moment, any appearance of the slightest inclination to show the white feather.

“I am in your power,” said he, in a firm voice, as he threw back his head proudly. “You can do with me as you please; but bear in mind that whatever you do will be at your peril.”

“Away with him!” cried De Moreville, with an impatient gesture; and Oliver was led from the chamber.