CHAPTER XV.

'O HIGH AMBITION LOWLY LAID!'

The choughs and ravens which had flapped lazily away, with noisy wings and harsh croaking, when the Royalists had come to search amongst the dead and wounded for Ralph de Guader, had settled down to their banquet again as soon as their disturbers had departed, mistakenly laden with the body of the Breton knight whom Grillonne had decorated with the earl's helmet. Their foul beaks were busy with the flesh of the dead and the eyes of the living.

The harsh clamour of these noisy revellers pierced at length to the fainting ears of the fallen earl, who was in some measure revived by the cordial which Grillonne had poured down his throat. Consciousness came back to him, a poor exchange, under such circumstances, for kind oblivion. For he could move neither hand nor foot, and the weight upon his chest was as the oppression of a fearful nightmare--a nightmare from which there was no awaking. He lay helpless--the living under the dead!

Above him stretched the twilight sky, still flushed with fleeting, blood-red clouds, beyond which, from pale green pools of infinite depth, glimmered, here and there, a silvery star. To the right stretched the sombre heath, its rising hills crested with fantastic figures of contorted slain, men and horses stiffened into uncouth and terrible forms; while groaning wounded were heaped between them, their panting anguish not less awful than the silence of the dead.

To his left also were witnesses of battle, but not so many, for on that side the hungry morasses had swallowed them up. To the south and west the measureless fen stretched to the horizon, crimson to its farthest verge with the ensanguined glow of the sun, the tall reeds reddened like warrior's lances that had been dipped in the life-blood of the foe.

The air was full of the awful scent of wounds and blood, and the weird, dank odours of the decaying sedges, while the wailing wind piped and moaned over the wold, swaying the rushes, though scarcely making a ripple on the protected surfaces of the bottomless lagoons.

Mallard and teal and plover came circling back to their haunts in the lonely swamps, now that the din of battle, which had frightened them, was over and done; and, as the twilight deepened, bats and owls came forth with silent wings to hunt their night-roaming prey.

Ralph's open eyes looked only into the sky, and at the wild, wind-driven clouds fleeting across the calm, immutable heavens beyond, as the struggling hosts of mortals fleet over the face of eternity.

His soul was filled with an overwhelming sense of desolation and guilt. He had brought his fate upon himself, and he must face the Shadow of the Valley of Death, all forsworn and blood-stained as he was; alone, helpless. No wife to comfort him, no priest to absolve him,

'Cut off even in the blossoms of his sin, Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd.'

Against the clear spaces of the sky, he saw, high up, almost above the clouds, an ordered flight of wild swans passing swiftly westward into the sunset glow.

Oh, that he were free as they, winged as the wind! His spirit writhed in fierce rebellion. He put forth all his force in a wild struggle to drag his limbs from the prisoning mass that detained them, but he could not lift the ghastly burden that weighted him to earth an inch.

'Mary in heaven, help me!' he groaned. 'I am scarce wounded, and so strong! It will take me hours to die, and these foul birds will perish mine eyes!'

The cold sweat burst from his brow, and, as he writhed again, he somewhat shook his head, and the bells on the jester's cap tinkled.

He quivered with astonishment, and contrived so far to lift his head as to catch a glimpse of the points of the cape which covered his shoulders. At first the idea seized him that he was no longer on earth at all, but in purgatory, and dressed in a jester's garb, in that his sin had been through the folly of pride and mad ambition. Then, with a flash, came the joyous thought of Grillonne, the faithful, the ready of wit, the fertile of resource.

A wild gladness came to him, but as the sky grew dark, and the stars were obscured by clouds, hope left him again.

'If it were he indeed, he has forgotten me, or has met his death in trying to save me.'

Then all the joys of earth passed before him in a fair pageant, and he thought of his young bride with her clear, loving eyes that he might never see again, and to whom he had been united with such magnificence scarcely a month before, and who was but a few short miles from the scene of his present suffering; and at the thought, burning tears welled from beneath his closed lids and rolled down his bronzed cheeks, moistening the parti-coloured edges of Grillonne's cape.

'Ah, it is bitter!' he groaned.

'Not more bitter for thee than for the scores and tens of scores thou hast led into like misery,' said awakened conscience grimly.

'_Mea culpa! mea culpa!_' murmured the unfortunate warrior in his anguish. 'My days have been evil in the land. I have sought not the will of Heaven, but mine own vain-glory. But oh, Mary Mother, let not my sins be visited on the head of my sweet lady! as thou wert a woman, protect her from all harm! Sure William will be merciful to his kinswoman.'

Dismal indeed were the thoughts that chased each other across his restless brain, which seemed to make up by its activity for the enforced stillness of his body. Visions crowded upon him of his castle of Blauncheflour in flames, and his lady in the power of insulting or--and it was little less terrible to his ambitious, jealous spirit--too-courteous conquerors, some one of whom might, perchance, find favour in her eyes and drive his memory from her heart.

At length, however, as the stillness of the night fell over the plain, broken only by the moaning wind or the agonised groan of some fellow-sufferer, he grew calmer, and a deep resignation flooded his breast.

'_Mea culpa!_' he murmured again. Death seemed inevitable, and he bowed his spirit humbly to accept it.

Hark!--

The mingled anguish and joy of hope awaked once more. For the silence was broken by a sound so faint that his listening ears could scarce detect its repetition, distracted as they were by the tumultuous pulses which throbbed at the possibility of escape. Yet why hope rather than fear? Why should the sound of approaching steps mean friends rather than foes?

The fact grew certain. Steps were approaching, and were accompanied by a clash of arms that betokened soldiery.

How he strained to catch every faint sound that might indicate the direction in which these, his fellow-men, alive and strong and capable of help, were moving!

'St. Nicholas befriend me! If the miracle is wrought that I be rescued from this living tomb, I vow to make pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre before my days are done!'

Then he shuddered in sick misery lest the band should pass him by! Better a blow from the _miséricorde_ of an enemy, than the languishing torture of his present position.

Others thought so too, for he heard more than one piteous cry for help.

Then he, the proud earl, lifted up a feeble voice and craved deliverance, even by death!--

And it came.

'Here! here! This way, my lads, this way!' cried the familiar voice of the faithful jester. 'Look you, galliards, there is my famous cap and cape! Saints be praised! He wears them still. The Lord grant there is a living skull in the cap. I shrewdly thought I heard him squeak!'

'Ay, Grillonne, thou didst, sure enough!' cried the earl; and the revulsion of feeling from despair to hope was so great that he fainted again.

When he revived, his head was in Grillonne's arms, and the intolerable weight of the slain who had fallen above him was removed from his limbs, which, however, were so numbed that he could not move them. Half-a-dozen stout fellows, archers, slingers, and spearmen, were bustling about him, dimly visible by the light of a horn lantern which one of them carried.

Grillonne, seeing his eyes open, instantly held a flask to his lips, and when the draught had helped his revival, nodded sagely.

''Tis well to be taken for a fool sometimes, nuncle.' he remarked, twitching his tinkling cap from the earl's head. 'Thy fine helmet has been carried off in triumph to the enemy's camp on the corse of poor Sir Guy de Landerneau, whom I bedecked with it; seeing that, as they had already killed him as dead as a Norwich red herring, they could do him no further hurt. 'Twill have given us time even if they discover the cheat, as most like they will, for so many of them are full well acquainted with thy noble hawk nose.'

'Ah, Grillonne ready-wit,' said the earl, 'St. Nicholas reward thee! That prince of hypocrisy, Lanfranc, may say that jesters have no hope, and are doomed without fail to the worm that dieth not and the fire that knows no quenching![5] But I tell thee, Grillonne, he in hell shall pray to thee in heaven as Dives to Lazarus!' and the groaning noble kissed the hand that lay upon his breast, albeit the member belonged to one of that despised class, for death is a greater leveller than any democrat or republican of them all, and Ralph de Guader had held long converse with him.

[5] 'D. Have jesters hope? M. None. In their whole design they are the ministers of Satan. Of them it is said: "They have not known God, therefore God hath despised them, and the Lord shall have them in derision, for mockers shall be mocked."'--Lanfranc's _Elucidarium_, p. 256, quoted by Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_.

Grillonne raised the hand which had been so honoured to his own lips and added some hearty smacks to the aristocratic salute it had received.

'Nay, my dear lord,' he said in a rather husky voice, 'I would fain lay that hand up in lavender and take it to heaven with me when I die, since thou thinkest I have hope to get there. But alack! we have rough work before us to prevent thee from getting thither before thy palace is prepared for thee. Thou art not saved yet by a very long chalk. If St. Nicholas is half so generous as thou deemest, he will give me my reward at once, like a free-handed gentleman, in the shape of success to the safe ending of my undertaking; nor must we spend further time in palaver.'

He beckoned to the men who were with him, and four of them came forward with a litter roughly woven of osiers, of which a plentiful supply was near at hand. Grillonne and another lifted the earl into it, and they set off at a rapid pace, the jester guiding them along the smoothest path; and watching over his charge with tender care.

To De Guader it seemed as if he were couched on pillows of softest down, notwithstanding his wounds and the pain the motion caused him, for the joy of being rescued from his horrible entombment, and of having yet a chance of life and love, was so intense that he seemed to be in a dream of bliss.

His eyes filled with grateful tears each time that a gleam from the lantern gave him a fitful glimpse of Grillonne's face. Never had he thought to be so glad to look on that wizened, whimsical countenance, with its oblique eyes twinkling with mingled malice and affection, and which seemed almost quainter under the conical steel-cap with the nasal, in which he had ensconced it on giving up his cap to the earl, than in that strange headgear itself.

The way was no flowery one either. Slain men and horses encumbered the bearers at every step, and more than one pitiful voice from some wounded wretch, in such plight as the earl had just been rescued from, besought them in mercy to stop and give aid, for the sake of Mary Mother and the saints in heaven. Most pitiful of all was the cry for 'Water, for the love of Christ!' from men whose limbs were actually immersed in the rippling edges of the meres or engulfed in the slimy ooze, and who were so faint from wounds, or so set fast by the slain above them, that they could reach no drop wherewith to moisten their parched lips and slake the burning death-thirst which tormented them. But they cried to deaf ears; nay, when entreating arms were thrown around the limbs of the litter-bearers, a sharp cut across the knuckles with dagger or anlace speedily unclasped the detaining fingers, whether they belonged to friend or foe.

It was rough treatment, but the men were risking their lives in their endeavour to save that of the earl, and delay would have been fatal both to him and to themselves. The fact that the body of Sir Guy de Landerneau had been removed by the enemy proved that they desired to make certain of De Guader's fate, and on finding their mistake they might at any time return to rectify it.

The moon had risen by this, and shone between the swift fleeting clouds that sped across the sky. By her light and the uncertain glimmer of the lantern, Ralph saw that two of his rescuers wore the winged helms and long moustaches and golden torcs distinguishing the costume of the Danes. His heart leapt with hope that the messengers he had despatched to the court of King Sweyn had moved the warlike monarch to seize the opportunity of striking a blow at his ancient enemy, William of Normandy, and had sent him timely reinforcements. But their progress was too rapid for speech, and whatever might be his curiosity, he had to lie passive in his litter and allow himself to be borne whithersoever his rescuers pleased.

And by what a weird and desolate pathway did they bear him!

Heading, apparently, for the very heart of the fen that stretched westward as far as eye could reach, its level surface unbroken by tree or hill, and only varied by beds of tall reeds and snake-like pools of still, dark water, the surfaces of which were scarcely rippled by the gusty breeze, they advanced steadily for the better part of an hour.

The fitful light of the half shrouded moon cast ghastly gleams upon the waving plumes of the flowering sedges and white tufts of the meadow-sweet, whose strong and somewhat sickly perfume mingled, strangely luscious, with the dank odours of peat and decaying rushes and grasses. Now and again some frightened bird flew screaming from its roosting-place, or dusky water-rat glided hastily into thicker cover, or plunged with a flop into the water, while the pipe of the curlew, or boom of the bittern, sounded from afar off in the melancholy marshes. The loneliness was intense, and seemed but accentuated by the presence of bird and beast.

In the dimness of the cloudy night, with the uncertain bursts of moonlight, that seemed to make the chaos of scarce divided earth and water but more difficult to distinguish, the men who bore the earl threaded their way through the bewildering maze, with an unerring celerity and absence of hesitation that proved them to be no strangers to its mysterious solitude.

At length they halted, beside a channel less overgrown with weeds and rushes than the many they had passed, and which was, in fact, the Great Ouse River.

One of the party put a horn to his lips and sounded a couple of mots. His summons was answered from the water, and in a few seconds a boat impelled by eight sturdy oarsmen shot forth from a bend in the river and drew to the bank. The earl was speedily put on board, with the faithful Grillonne at his head, and his bearers embarked, some with him, some in a second boat which had come in the wake of the first.

De Guader confided himself utterly to the safe keeping of his jester, and the rhythmic sound of the oars, which he believed were every moment bringing him nearer to liberty, soothed him inexpressibly. He fell into a drowsy sleep of exhaustion, never really losing consciousness, but devoid of all impatience, and almost of all curiosity as to whither he was being taken.

But the splash of the oars ceased at length, and the keel of the boat grated on the shore of a small island, raising a modest crown a little above the level of the surrounding fen. It was protected by an earthwork somewhat similar in construction to the great dykes with which Cambridge is seamed, the Devil's Dyke, Fleamdyke, and others, and, had the light served, the low turrets of a long, rambling, two-storied house might have been seen behind its shelter.

A summons was given by a few mots on the horn, and in answer a deep voice threw a challenge across the sullen surface of the waters,--

'Who goes there?'

'St. Nicholas for Guader!'

A rattle of chains and hoarse creaking of bolts and hinges followed, and a heavy gate was slowly lifted, which admitted the boats into an inner moat. They glided in and moored their vessels at a small landing stage on the opposite side, the gate closing instantly behind them.

As they did so, the sentry asked anxiously, in a low voice and in the Saxon tongue, 'What cheer?'

'All's well!' was the answer.

'St. Eadmund be praised!' ejaculated the sentry fervently; and the earl's heart leapt with a thrill of joy and gratitude to the poor unknown soldier who cared about his safety, so infinitely precious had the humblest human sympathy become to him since those dreadful hours when he had thought himself doomed to quit the cheerful earth and the faces of his fellow-men for evermore!

Inside the enclosure a party of wild-looking ceorls surrounded them, with shaggy locks and rude jerkins of sheepskin, armed with pikes and staves for the most part, but some few better clad, and bearing the terrible seax; their brawny necks half hidden by their unshorn beards, which hung in tow-coloured elf-locks round their weather-beaten and scarred faces. Amongst them were one or two tall fellows, dressed, like those in the party of rescuers who had attracted De Guader's attention, in Danish mode.

This much he gathered by the fitful moonlight and the feeble light of lanterns carried by the men. Question and answer followed quick between his bearers and their rough colleagues, but he could comprehend little of what they said, for they spoke in all manner of tongues and dialects.

'Thou hast had a harsh ride, I fear me, good nuncle,' said Grillonne, bending over his beloved master with tender solicitude. 'Gramercy! 'Tis a God-forsaken hole we have brought thee to; but beggars must not be choosers, and let us hope that the archbishop's people will keep their pious noses from sniffing thee out in it! Troth! if they venture them here, I parry, some of these stout carles will slit them for them parlous quick!'

'Methinks any corner of the earth is better than being quite out of it, Grillonne,' returned the earl, with a gentle smile. 'I am not like to be critical; but in good sooth I would fain know the title of my host?'

'I scarce know it myself, good my lord,' replied the jester. ''Tis a Saxon, or more properly Anglo-Danish thegn, whose son went shares in thy escapade, and has got a maimed foot for his share of the booty, they tell me. The father and son have had a price on their heads since Hereward Leofricsson's downfall, and have a natural fellow-feeling for thy discomfiture, sweet nuncle.'

Meanwhile they had reached the entrance of the house, and the earl was borne into a long barnlike hall, very sparsely furnitured, with a table running almost from one end of it to the other, and rude settles and stools placed against it, as in preparation for a meal. At one end was an archway leading into another apartment, which seemed, to judge by the heat and the savoury odours, the noises of pots and kettles and other indications which came from it, to be a kitchen; while at the other end was a cheerful fire of peat, beside which sat an aged warrior wearing the Anglo-Danish tunic and cross-gartered hose, his white hair flowing back over his shoulders and his grizzled beard growing close up his cheeks, so that it seemed almost to meet the bushy white eyebrows that shaded his bright blue eyes. His baldric was richly worked with gold, and he wore massive gold bracelets on his arms.

Beside him stood a broad-shouldered, athletic young man in similar garb; his thick fair hair surrounding his head like a lion's mane, and his long moustaches and golden beard showing lighter than the bronzed skin of his cheeks and chest; his eyes as bright and blue as those of his father, and his neck and sinewy arms covered with tattoo marks. But the linen tunic he wore was drabbled with mud and gore, and one of his feet was swathed in bandages, through which the crimson stains would force their way, and his muscular hand grasped the arm of his father's carved oak chair to ease his weight somewhat from the wounded foot.

On the opposite side of the large open fireplace sat a monk in the habit of the Black Friars, and near by a stately lady, wearing the headrail and flowing robes which had been the fashion in the time of the Confessor; while a bevy of damsels waited behind her, looking towards the wounded earl with curious eyes.

The old thegn rose as the bearers brought their noble burden forward, advanced to the litter, and, bowing with great dignity, said in his own tongue,--

'By the Holy Cross! my heart is glad to see thee safe beneath my roof, oh, valorous earl! Would that Ealdred Godwinsson had means to offer fitting hospitality to the son of Ralph the Staller, in whose hand his own has been placed and under whose standard he has fought in many a hard field! Alas! the glory of his house has faded! Barely can he save his last days from the fury of his foes by hiding in this wilderness of the meres! But to such as he possesses, thrice welcome, noble earl! Had not age and infirmity clogged his steps as securely as chains of iron, he had sallied forth to thy rescue himself. Had not a spear-thrust in the instep, got this morn while fighting in thy ranks, crippled Leofric his son, that son had gone forth to seek thee.' Here the younger man bowed deeply in token of assent and reverence. 'It boots not! His followers have been true, and thou art here.'

'Brave thegn,' returned De Guader, raising himself as far as possible in his litter, 'I thank thee for thy fidelity to a ruined and defeated man! The saints forefend that my presence bring evil to thy retreat!'

'Nay,' answered Ealdred, 'had those who would harm us the wit to track us, we had perished long since. But thou art sore wounded! Berwine, the widow of mine eldest-born, shall leech thy hurts.'

A couch was prepared in a recess near the fireplace, and the earl was placed thereon. Cordials and delicate soups, with omelettes of plovers' eggs, were brought to tempt his appetite, and the young thegn's widow examined his wounds, pansed and dressed them with soothing unguents, and finally bound them up in linen of her own weaving, and with the greatest tenderness and skill.

Meanwhile the stalwart fellows who had borne the stricken noble so far upon their strong shoulders,--no light burden, sheathed as he was in all his mail!--with Grillonne and others, were regaled with the savoury messes whose odours had assailed them with such enticing welcome through the kitchen door as they entered, and, in sooth, they had a _ménu_ fit for a king.

Stewed and fried eel, pike and lampreys in pasties, roast gossander, curlew, and snipe!--fare fit for an epicure, and by no means cavilled at by the hungry men before whom it was served--add thereto good cider and ale.

For this island in the meres was the home of innumerable wildfowl, and fish as many crowded the waters around it. 'Wild swannes, gossanders, water-crows, hernes, hernshaws, cranes, curlewes, mallard, teele, bytters, knotts, styntes, godwytts, widgeons, smeaths, puffins, and many sorts of gulls; eels, pike, pickerel, perch, roach, barbel, lampreys, and sometimes a royal-fish' (turbot or sturgeon?); so that, as the chronicler relates of Hereward's refuge in the neighbouring Isle of Ely, foemen might sit blockading the place for seven years without 'making one hunter cease to set his nets or one fowler to deceive the birds with springe and snare.'

In this asylum we will leave the earl, and see how it fares with Blauncheflour.