CHAPTER XIV

The Black Death

Nearly five months had gone by since that black New Year night, and the fields and woods of Old England were bright with all the beauty of sunny May, when a small band of armed horsemen came riding slowly over the crest of a ridge looking down on the quiet, green valley, at the far end of which the low, square, dark-grey tower of a noble cathedral rose above the grassy meadows and glittering windings of its tiny river, sentinelling, like a guardian giant, the ancient town of Winchester.

The party consisted of a knight in full armour, his two esquires, and a dozen sturdy men-at-arms, who, when passing through this beautiful country in that bright sunshine, and actually in sight of their homes, after long absence and countless perils, might well have been expected to be radiant with joy. But it was not so. They rode in sullen silence, with gloomy faces and downcast eyes, which ever and anon shot by stealth a dark look at their leader, who wore the only bright face in the whole band.

Well might Sir Simon Harcourt look so joyful. Claremont Castle and its broad lands, which he had coveted so long, were his at last, by the death of his two nephews; for by this time Alured’s death seemed as certain as Hugo’s. Nothing had ever been seen or heard of the fratricide since the fatal night when his uncle came back alone from a fruitless search for him; and no one doubted that he had either been slain by French soldiers or prowling robbers, or had died by his own hand in a fit of frantic despair.

Hence Sir Simon (after waiting some months, as if to give time for the discovery of some proof that his lost nephew was still alive) respectfully asked leave of the king to cross over to England, and “put in order” (_i.e._ take as his own) the fair domain that was lying masterless; and Edward could find no cause for refusing.

Neither he nor his son had ever liked the man, toward whom both felt the instinctive repugnance of a high nature for a low one, even apart from the terrible shadow that had now darkened his name. But, whatever were their secret suspicions, they could prove nothing; and both alike shrank from putting an open stigma on one who was certainly guiltless in actual deed, and might possibly (sorely as appearances were against him) be guiltless in purpose too.

So Harcourt crossed the sea with a small train, landed at Southampton, and rode inland till almost in sight of Claremont Castle, revolving in his mind schemes of selfish ambition, and either not seeing or not heeding the lowering looks of his followers.

But these brave men had good cause to look gloomy, apart from their dark suspicions of the wily and hard-hearted man who was now their master; for the whole land through which they were passing seemed smitten by the curse of Heaven. That terrific pestilence, known to history as the Black Death, which had wasted the whole continent of Europe during the two past years, had reached Britain at last. The shadow of death darkened all the land; and in the fair southern counties of Merry England, as in doomed Egypt of old, “there was not a house where there was not one dead.”

Even their short march from the coast had already given them ghastly proof of the misery which, under all this glitter of victory and conquest, was gnawing the very vitals of England, and amply avenging the sufferings inflicted by her on France. Through the silent streets of Southampton corpse after corpse was being borne; and many houses stood empty, with open doors, not a soul being left alive within.

Hardly had they got clear of the town, when they met a man being led away to prison; and, on asking his crime, they were told that, being unable to find work in his native place, he had presumed to leave it and seek employment elsewhere, “which thing,” said the sheriff, with an important air, “hath been straitly forbidden by our lord the king, in a special statute framed this very year, commanding all craftsmen to remain in their own place, and be content with such wages as are given there; wherefore this contumacious rogue hath well deserved his doom!”

A little farther they passed through a small hamlet, without seeing a living thing in its voiceless, grass-grown street, in the middle of which two unburied corpses lay festering in the sun. Sir Simon, seeing (as he thought) a man leaning out of a window in the last cottage of all, hailed him; but there was no reply, and the knight, looking closer, grew pale as he saw the shrunken features and rayless eyes of the dead. There was no one left alive in the whole village!

About a mile beyond this place of death, they espied a large placard affixed to a post by the wayside, written in a stiff, official hand—for printing was still a century away in the unknown future.

Harcourt (who, like other gentlemen of his time, could neither read nor write, and was rather proud of it than otherwise) sent one of his esquires—a young prodigy who could actually read his own language—to decipher the notice, which was so thoroughly characteristic of that age as to be worth quoting in full—

“Bee it knowen unto alle menne hereby, that it hath beene ordayned by our lorde the kynge, of hys grete goodnesse and mercie, that alle sturdie, myghtie, and valliaunt beggars, whych doe goe to and fro in thys realme, cravinge alms for theyr idlesse; the fyrst tyme they bee founde soe offendynge, they shall bee soundly scourged for a publicke ensample; the second tyme, theyr eares shall bee cutte off; and atte the thirde, theye shall incontinently bee hanged.”

The reading of this fourteenth-century poor law was hardly ended, when by came a group of peasants, gaunt, haggard, tattered, half-starved, who, as they unwillingly made way for the knight and his train, scowled at him askance, and muttered between their teeth words of ominous sound.

“These be the fine folk,” growled one, “who make us eat bread mingled with chopped straw, that they may have their cates and their spices.”

“And send us to face rain and wind and cold in the field,” said a second, “while they sit at ease in their fine houses!”

“And ere we put hand to our own crop,” added a third, “we must plough their worships’ fields, and reap and garner their grain; yea, and thrash and winnow it too; and all for nought—not one silver penny of fee!”

“Thou say’st sooth, Hob; slugs and caterpillars are they every one, who devour our labour, and do nought for themselves.”

“Marry, thou art right, Will; the old saying is ever true—

“‘When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?’”

“Ay, true it is; it will ne’er be a blithe world in Merry England till all the gentlemen are out of it.”

If Sir Simon and his gay young esquires heard these ominous murmurs at all, they probably despised them as the mere idle growling of “a sort of discontented churls,” little dreaming that this was the first muttering of that tremendous storm which, in the days of Edward III.’s weak and worthless successor, was to shake all England with the terror of “Wat Tyler’s Rising.”

The farther they went, the deeper grew the horror of that plague-stricken region. The jovial shout of the teamster, the merry whistle of the ploughboy, the blithe song of the housewife over her spinning-wheel, were heard no more. The few peasants still at work in the fields had the heavy, spiritless, hopeless look of men doomed to die; and when two wayfarers met on the high-road, they glanced nervously at each other’s faces, as if expecting to see there the livid spot which was the herald of the fell destroyer.

Passing through the village of Shawford, Harcourt and his men found a Dominican friar (who had just buried with his own hands three or four victims of the plague whom no one else dared to touch) preaching to a throng of country-folk; and the knight’s crafty face changed slightly as he heard the preacher’s text—

“Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.”

Slowly they rode down into the beautiful valley of the Itchen, and, passing under the stately trees that overhung the winding river (now in all the beauty of their fresh green leaves), mounted the farther slope, and saw before them the rich pastures and green woods of Claremont, beyond which the dark-grey tower of the ancient castle looked forth from its encircling lifeguard of noble trees.

“At last!” said Harcourt, half-aloud, as if his greedy joy at the possession of this splendid and long-coveted prize had for once overcome his wonted crafty caution.

At that moment a fearful cry, half howl and half shriek, burst from the thicket beside him, and through the crackling boughs broke a ghastly figure, with the marks of the pestilence terribly plain on its livid face, and only a few rags of clothing hanging loosely around its bony frame, which was so frightfully wasted that the scared spectators half thought they beheld a new-buried corpse starting from its grave.

The poor wretch was plainly at the point of death; but, filled with the strength of that madness which was a common symptom of the fell disease (usually impelling the wretched sufferers to communicate the horrible taint to all whom they met), he sprang like a tiger at Sir Simon’s unprotected face (for the knight had opened his visor to see his new domain more clearly), and bit him deeply in the right cheek!

In a moment the men cut him down; but the work was done.

“Bear his worship to yon cottage, and look to him,” cried the elder esquire, as the knight reeled in his saddle and fell heavily to the earth; “I ride to Winchester for a leech.”

Away he flew, as one who rides for life and death; but, with all his speed, he rode in vain.

Three days later, Sir Simon Harcourt died; and those who stood by his death-bed saw with secret horror that, to the last moment, his skeleton hands kept working themselves convulsively against each other, as if striving to wipe off some fancied stain.

So died the arch-plotter, in sight of the rich heritage for which he had played so foully, and which he never enjoyed; nor could he have found a fitter epitaph than the solemn text read over his grave by good William de Wykeham, the founder of Winchester College—

“This night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?”