CHAPTER XVII.

HOW RALPH CAME HOME.

'Sweet nuncle, methinks some of thy wits adhered to my cap, and that, when I put the same upon thy noble skull, they found an entrance into it by that crack the worshipful bishop's mace rove therein, else thou hadst never assayed this mad journey! Why, thou hast scarce taken a step without giving a groan.'

'Have I been so weak, Grillonne?' Earl Ralph asked, a faint smile brightening his pale, worn face.

He was on horseback, but rode at a foot's pace, and bent over the neck of his _hacquenée_ like an aged and decrepit man. He was dressed in a loose flowing Saxon blouse, and had not a link of mail on his person from top to toe. On his left rode Grillonne, who strove to cheer him with loving banter; on his right the young Anglo-Dane, Leofric Ealdredsson, the son of his late host in the Fenland refuge; a little behind came a small band of men-at-arms, a squire leading Ralph's Spanish destrier, and a mule bearing the earl's harness, making some score in all.

'In good sooth,' continued the earl, 'it hath not seemed to me that my path was strewn with rose-leaves, but only with the thorns stripped bare of flowers. Yet would I go through it seven times over to see my lady's face again.'

'Well-a-day, nuncle! and a pretty galliard thou art, forsooth, to figure before a gracious dame, with thy hollow cheeks and thy hawk's eyes glaring out of caverns deep eno' for pixies to bide in,' replied the privileged jester. 'Cogs bones! thou hadst done better to go to Denmark first as thou didst intend, there to have picked up a few stout followers and a little flesh to cover thy worn framework withal. The women ever love the signs of power.'

A jealous pang flushed the earl's gaunt face with a faint hue of red. What if the fool spoke truth, and Emma should turn from him in his defeat, and embitter his humiliation by fresh reproaches? She had sent him forth with a doubting heart, scarce wishing him success, in that he fought against her kinsman and suzerain, William of Normandy. All his feudal pomp and glory, at the head of the eager army he then led to battle, had failed to move the bosom of the daughter of William Fitzosbern, who, young as she was, had seen many a fair host go forth with streaming pennons and noisy clarions. How, then, would she greet the weary, wounded wight who crept back to his castle like a thief in the night, with a poor remnant of faithful followers in little better plight than himself?

Truth is seldom palatable to men in high places, and the jester's light words had struck home too surely.

'Thou presumest, Sir Fool!' quoth the earl sharply. 'Thine office doth not establish thee a critic of mine actions!'

'Mercy, sweet nuncle! I cry you mercy! A fool's words count for nothing!' cried Grillonne, looking into his lord's face with so much love in his clear, keen eyes, that De Guader instantly forgave him.

'Thou art the best friend I have, Grillonne!' he said impulsively.

'Nay, there thou dost wrong to a thousand stout hearts, good my lord!' answered the jester, 'noble Leofric there amongst the number. But see, thy toils are well-nigh ended. Yonder rise the white walls of Norwich Castle.'

'St. Nicholas be praised!' exclaimed the earl fervently. 'Right glad shall I be to shelter my aching head within the towers. The next bosquet shall serve me for tiring-room. I will show myself in harness as befits a knight.'

Some two hours later, the warders at the great gate of Castle Blauncheflour saw a small troop of horsemen approaching the portal at a foot-pace, amongst them a knight in mail, but without cognisance, or surcoat, or shield, his countenance covered by his large round helmet, and, riding beside him, a motley-coated jester, whose well-known visage caused a thrill of excitement amongst the guards, greater than the general appearance of the group; for many a similar one had demanded and received admittance within the castle during the preceding days, since Stephen le Hareau had pioneered the fugitives.

This party had little difficulty in gaining entrance, for the faces of the men-at-arms composing it were all more or less familiar to the warders; and, after a short parley, the portcullis was raised and the drawbridge lowered to admit of their passage into the courtyard of the castle.

The news that the earl's jester had returned spread like wildfire through the garrison, with the mysterious celerity that sometimes makes it seem as if intelligence was circulated by magic.

Before the new-comers had dismounted from their horses, the countess, who was passing from the chapel to the spital, heard the rumour, and came forth into the courtyard to ascertain if it indeed were true.

Sir Alain de Gourin, who had been overlooking some target practice amongst the archers in the tilt-yard, came also to receive and examine the fugitives.

Seeing the countess and the ladies who had followed her, glad that duty gave them the opportunity to satisfy their own curiosity, he louted low, and took his place beside them.

Archers and soldiers of various arms from the guardroom, servants and others, had swarmed from all quarters, and the courtyard was well-nigh full of animated faces.

One new-comer after another was recognised, and, so to speak, 'passed' by De Gourin, and it came to the turn of the helmeted knight to declare himself--most of the others wore round steel-caps with a nasal, which left the features visible.

He doffed his steel headpiece silently, and looked around upon the throng. The gaunt, pale face woke no instant response from the many onlookers, but the countess sprang forward with outstretched arms to his saddle-bow.

'My lord!' she cried. 'Soldiers! do you not know your earl?'

'A Guader! a Guader!'

The cry resounded in the court with vigour even surpassing that of a few days before, when their Castellan's eloquence had moved them so deeply.

Ralph de Guader caught his wife's outstretched arms in his own, and looked down into the fair face he had feared never to see again; and then--not the gentle lady, but the mailed warrior swooned.

Worn out with the terrible fatigues he had undergone, while yet unhealed of his wounds, the earl reeled in his saddle, and would have fallen, if the tender arms of his wife had not caught him in their clasp.

His head sank on Emma's shoulder. The fiery Oliver turned his intelligent head and caressed her arm softly with his velvet nose, but stood without moving a limb, gazing at her with his full, bright eyes. He seemed to understand. Had he moved, the countess would have fared ill.

Emma was quickly eased of her beloved burden by the retainers around, and the insensible earl was borne within the sheltering walls of the keep, and laid upon his own broidered, carved oak bed, in his own spacious and luxurious room.

Ah! how Emma wept and prayed and joyed over him, and laughed lowly for delight that in very truth she had her warrior once more.

How she burnt sweet essences, and bathed his lips with perfumed waters, and shuddered at the print of Odo's mace that still marked his brow with a black and sullen scar.

Ralph, opening his steel-grey eyes upon that eager face, lost all fear lest his gauntness and humiliation and defeat should lessen wifely love.

'Sweetheart!' he sighed. 'Sweetheart! God be praised that I see thee again!' The memory of his desolation on the battlefield came over him with resistless force. His breast heaved with a mighty sob as he took his wife's hands again in his own and pressed them to his lips.

'They brought me news of thy death, Ralph. But I knew better,' whispered Emma, as she bent over him, her quick tears falling on his face. 'I knew better! Thou couldst not have died but I had known it. My heart had been rent in twain.'

Then Ralph told her the history of his struggle, and of the long dreadful hours when he lay 'twixt life and death upon the field; and how Grillonne had schemed and saved him; and of the refuge in the Fens. A murmured story, told in a voice faint and weak with suffering, and received with many an ejaculation of sympathy and love.

'I had planned to steal away privily by Wells on the sea, and there take ship for Denmark,' De Guader said. 'But, sweetheart, the thought of thee was to me as the thought of water to the pilgrim in the desert. Thee I must see, or perish for longing. And I see thee.' He drew her to him and feasted his eyes on her face.

'And for that thou didst confront danger and difficulty and the pain of thy sore wounds?' said Emma proudly.

'In sooth the wounds were sore, but of danger there was little,' answered the earl. Then he sprang up from the couch into a sitting posture with a suddenness that startled his gentle leech. 'They deem me crushed,' he said. 'So flushed are they by their victory that they are careless to pursue it further. I found no trace of their troops as I dragged wearily to Norwich. They have gone west, I deem it, to deal with thy brother.'

'Alas, my poor Roger! I would we had news of him,' said the countess, her face drawn with pain. De Guader caught the change in her face with jealous quickness. The old haunting fear came back lest she should scorn the broken man.

'Emma, my defeat is dire! Dost thou credit how I have come back to thee,--hiding behind bush and briar, beaten, poverty-stricken, all but alone? I, who left thee at the head of a noble army, now scattered like chaff before the winds! Dost thou not spurn me?'

The daughter of William Fitzosbern looked in the face of the man she had chosen for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse.

'My knight,' she said, 'hadst thou come maimed of a hand and foot, with thy visage marred for ever and a day by the cruel daggers of thy foes, as hath happened to thy favourite squire, Stephen le Hareau, I had but loved thee the better.'

'By the Holy Rood! has Stephen le Hareau been so foully entreated?'

'Alack, yes! Moreover, he bore a message from the king's men, that every prisoner, of whatever rank and whatever nation, they might take in this struggle, should lose his right foot.'

The earl raised himself from the couch and smote his knee with his balled fist.

'By the bones of St. Nicholas, I will avenge them! I will yet prevail.' He turned to Emma, fiercely seizing her hands again in his, this time with no very tender grip. 'Hast thou courage? Wilt thou help me now in my sore need, or is thine heart half with William? Say me sooth!'

'It is with thee!--all with thee!'

'God bless thee for that answer!' He passed his hand across his eyes, and then held his brow as if in pain. 'That accursed shaveling's mace! Sith he cracked my poor head with it, whenever I try to think I get a pang instead of a notion.'

'Strive not to think, mine own. Rest awhile. Where shouldst thou rest if not here in thine home, or when, if not after dire fatigue?'

'No, Emma! no rest for me till I have retrieved mine honour! Stephen le Hareau, thou saidest? He fought like a Paladin beside me. The smartest squire in my following, and the best born. I so loved the lad that I would have had him squire to mine own body, but that Sir Guy de Landerneau was as a father to him, and had formed him in all fitting a man-at-arms. Sir Guy dead too! Yet death is But the soldier's portion, it irks me not. 'Tis that the fiends should mutilate one of Le Hareau's gentle blood. It beggars credence! Their own leader is of such proud lineage. Ha, ha!'

Emma had moved softly to his side, and had enlaced her slender fingers round his mailed arm, striving to soothe him with mute sympathy.

'Seest thou not the menace in the insult, Emma? They spare not rank. Had I been taken, my fate had been even as Le Hareau's.'

Emma shuddered, recalling Le Hareau's awful face as she had seen it on the day of his return. 'It bears not to think of,' she said.

'Sweet, I must go forth! I must seek Sweyn Ulfsson of Denmark in mine own person; he dallies with my messengers. I must go to him and demand fulfilment of his pledges. I must go to Wader and Montfort and assemble my vassalage. Hast thou courage to hold Blauncheflour till my return?'

'I have courage for aught that profits thee.'

Ralph gazed in her face, his eyes aflame with joyous pride. He took her fair cheeks between his palms, and bent down and kissed her brow and lips.

'Methinks there is but little risk, my Falcon!' he said. 'They cannot turn from west to east, as the sun does, in a night. That gives me time. They will scarce attempt Blauncheflour and I not in it. If they do, it is impregnable. Ere six weeks I shall relieve thee with a fair force at my back.'

Emma looked wistfully in his eyes. Her heart ached at the thought of losing him again.

'Courage, m'amie!' he said, mistaking the cause of her hesitation.

'My courage fails not, Ralph,' she answered. 'I had held thy castle while a man would obey my orders and stand to the walls, even hadst thou been dead, as they tried to make me believe. How then should I quail to hold it for thee living? I do but mourn that we must part again.'

And again Ralph took her face between his palms and kissed it.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lanfranc, the Primate, sat writing in his closet; a satisfied smile hovered round the corners of his mobile lips and lighted up the depths of his gleaming Southern eyes. A monk stood waiting to receive the letter.

It ran thus:--

'To his lord, William, King of the English, his faithful Lanfranc sends his faithful service and faithful prayers. Gladly would we see you, as an angel of God, but we are unwilling that you should take the trouble of crossing the sea at this particular juncture. For if you were to come to put down these traitors and robbers, you would do us dishonour. Rodulph the Count, or rather the traitor, and his whole army have been routed, and ours, with a great body of Normans and Saxons, are in pursuit. Our leaders inform me that in a few days they will drive these perjured wretches into the sea, or capture them dead or alive. The details I send you by this monk, who may be trusted, as he has done fealty to me. May God Almighty bless you.'[6]

[6] Lanfranc, _Opp._ i. 56, translated by Hook, _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_, vol. ii. p. 136.

The details which Lanfranc's messenger had to give of the defeat of the Earl of East Anglia, or, as the prelate styled him, Rodulph the Count, we already know.

Turning to the monk, the archbishop said, 'Regarding the base uprising favoured and headed by our lord-king's cousin, Roger, Earl of Hereford, the tidings are of like good savour. Inform our liege that the English prelates, Bishop Wulfstan and Abbot Æthelwig, in union with Urse, Sheriff of Worcestershire, have hindered the traitor from passing the Severn, and have taken the earl himself prisoner, whereon we pray our liege heartily to make known his wishes how we may best dispose of this haught prisoner.

'Forget not to repeat likewise the stratagem by which the Count Rodulph's men deceived us, so that we made not his body secure, and know not certainly if he be dead or alive.'

'I will forget no detail, good my lord Archbishop,' replied the messenger; and Lanfranc folded his letter, and fastened it with a silken cord, and sealed it with his official seal.

'Naught could be more satisfactory,' he murmured to himself, as he was performing these small offices, 'than the manner in which the Saxons have ranged themselves, in this matter, upon our liege's side. It was a bold stroke on the part of the Lady Judith to warn us of her husband's schemes, and to risk his rage and his danger. Sooth, it had been a dire struggle if the doughty son of Siward had taken his part, as the plotters did well intend. A turmoil raised for the sake of one woman, and foiled by another! Thanks to thee, Judith, the day is ours!'

But not to be ended quite so speedily as the sanguine Primate supposed. A woman was to hold his best troops at bay for a space of three long months, and then to make terms quite other than a choice between imprisonment or the bottom of the sea.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong!