CHAPTER XXXI

A Strange Meeting

Rarely has the world beheld, even in that age of ceaseless surprises, so strange a spectacle as the English invasion of Spain in 1367. The bravest and most honourable man alive championing the falsest and most cruel; free Englishmen fighting to bring a gallant nation in bondage to a tyrant; a handful of heroes cutting their way into an unknown land, and braving pestilence, famine, and the attacks of an army thrice as strong as their own, in a quarrel with which they had nothing to do, and for a faithless despot who was all the while overreaching and betraying them—such were the startling contradictions produced by the resolve of a man like the Black Prince to aid a man like Pedro the Cruel.

But no such thoughts troubled the stout English who followed the prince through the Pyrenees in that memorable February; for, in a whole generation of constant war they had acquired, alas! such a love of it that (as the Wars of the Roses were to prove to the horror of all Europe a century later) when no foes were to be found, they would fight each other rather than not fight at all. If no “good wars” were to be had in France, even an invasion of Spain was better than nothing; and in after days the few survivors of that ill-fated expedition bitterly recalled with what boyish, unthinking gaiety they had set out on it.

“Marry, this be a brave sight!” cried Will Wade, in whose untravelled eyes these glittering snow-peaks were a thing to be remembered for ever. “How bonnily yon snow glistens; for all the world like sugar on a Christmas cake! This is better sport than hammering horseshoes at Deerham—hey, Ned Smith?”

“Yon jackanape whom our lord overcame at sword-play,” replied the smith, “spake truth for once when he said that a man who hath not seen the world is nought. Mark me, Will, when we go home to merry Hampshire when this job is done, we shall have tales to tell that shall make the Romaunt of Sir Bevis look pale as a half-heated iron.”

“Hark ye, comrade Laneham!” cried Wade to an older man, “thou hast been in foreign parts before. Know’st thou the name of this valley?”

“Marry, that do I; it is called the Pass of Roncesvalles.”

“Roncesvalles?” echoed Will. “What, the place where the good knight Messire Roland, the chief of King Charles’s twelve Paladins, was slain by the Saracens? Well, now, to think that I myself should tread the very ground where he died! I heard a minstrel sing the tale in our lord’s hall one Christmas Eve, and I shame me not to own that I let fall a tear or two when he came to the good knight’s death; but that I should one day see the very spot with mine own eyes, this could I never have dreamed!”

“I marvel not the good knight came by the worse, if the heathen dogs beset him in a place like this!” cried Ned Smith, eyeing wonderingly the shaggy woods and frowning precipices around him. “But tell me, Robin Laneham, what is yon thing perched on that high rock before us? A man, a mountain-goat, or a demon?”

“Belike he hath a spice of all three,” chuckled the old archer; “he is a Spanish goat-herd.”

“What?” cried Wade, staring at the strange, Robinson-Crusoe form. “Have the Spaniards that we go to fight, then, skins like to those of goats?”

“Wonderest thou at that? Why, what more natural than that these mountain-folk, who live among goats day and night, and eat nought but goats’ flesh, and drink goats’ milk, should come to have a goatish aspect themselves? I warrant that ere we come this way again, yon fellow will have not only a goat’s skin, but goat’s horns to boot!”

Honest Ned (to whom such a thing seemed quite possible) accepted the tale in perfect good faith, and pictured to himself the amazement of his cronies at home, when he should tell them all this on his return.

“But how say men that this is a land of sunshine?” cried another recruit, wincing as a gust of icy wind smote him full in the face. “If it be so, the sun must be frozen like all else here, for the icicles hang on my beard as thick as ever they hung on the eaves of our cottage at Deerham!”

“Patience, lad; thou’lt have sun enow ere long, never fear.”

In fact, they had only marched a few miles farther, when they suddenly emerged from the gloomy gorge, and saw below them, in the full glory of the midday sun, a wide sweep of green upland sloping down to a vast, smooth plain, dappled with clustering olive-trees, dainty gardens, dark orange-groves, pleasant orchards, quaint little red-tiled hamlets, and white-walled country houses embowered in noble trees, while, far beyond all, rose the stately ramparts and graceful towers of queenly Pampeluna.

A ringing shout of joy broke from the English host; and the weary men, forgetting all their fatigues, pressed on as briskly as ever.

But this land of promise proved far other than they thought. As far as Pampeluna, indeed, the weather was fine; and the warm, dry plain seemed a paradise to men benumbed with the cold mountain winds. But as soon as they left the town behind, a storm of wind and rain burst upon them which lasted several days, completely breaking up the roads (which were bad enough at best), and sorely impeding their advance. Worse still, the country-folk had fled before the invaders, carrying with them all their stores; and the English, already short of supplies, were now menaced with actual famine!

At this sudden and dismal change, they began to murmur aloud.

“Is this the land of plenty whereof they told us? Why, there is neither bite nor sup to be had without fighting for it!”

“Plenty, quotha? Rare plenty, in sooth, when I myself saw, this very day, a loaf of bread (and a small one to boot) sold in our camp for a silver florin!”

“And see how these storms beset us, even in this land of sunshine! One would think, lads, there is a curse on our undertaking!”

“Small wonder if there be, when we fight for one like yon Spanish butcher, whom our Prince is so fond to brother! I saw him yester-eve, when he rode through the camp with his highness; and I tell ye his is a face that none would trust—no, not a five-year-old child! Dost mind, Hal, yon French dog that was chained in the courtyard of our inn at Bordeaux, which looked so mild and meek when any man came nigh to it, till, snap! it had him by the leg or ever he was aware? Even such is Pedro the Cruel, as men call him—a goodly name, in truth, for a crowned king!”

“Crowned king, quotha? Could I have my way, I’d crown him with a red-hot trivet, as was done to yon French rogue who headed the peasant churls against the nobles in the days of the Jacquerie! He deserves no less, I trow; for what manner of king is he, think ye, at the very sound of whose coming his subjects fly as from the Evil One himself?”

When they crossed the Ebro at Logrono, the rain was still falling in torrents; and the soldiers’ growls were louder than ever as they struggled through ankle-deep mud, wet, weary, half-starved, with the furious wind buffeting them like a living foe, and the stinging rain-gusts lashing their faces.

But all murmurs were hushed as there came striding through their ranks (on foot like themselves) a figure which all knew at a glance. It was a tall man in full armour, whose gaunt, strongly marked features, hooked nose, and quick, fierce, restless movements, with the piercing glance of his one eye, were grimly suggestive of an eagle about to swoop on its prey. Such was the famous Sir John Chandos, the best knight of Edward’s host, and rightly called “the flower of English chivalry.”

“How now, lads?” cried he, cheerily; “do ye flag with the goal in sight? Patience a little, and ye shall have full amends. Yon Spanish knaves are so malapert as to deem that the bold lads of Merry England can be daunted by a gust of wind and a shower of rain; but we will teach them ere long that they have erred—ha?”

The great leader’s stirring words put new life into all who heard; and forward pressed the toil-worn host as if it had just started.

On the morrow, their eagerness for action was increased tenfold by the news that Don Tello, Henry of Transtamare’s brother, had fallen with a large force on an isolated English detachment, and cut off Sir William Felton, several other knights, and more than two hundred men. But, though burning to avenge this disaster, the English saw no way of doing so; for they found the Spanish army so strongly posted at the little town of Navaretta, that even the Black Prince durst not attack, in such a position, a force thrice his own; and all that day the opposing hosts faced each other in sullen inaction.

That evening was the most anxious that the great English leader had ever spent. Fight he must on the morrow, for not a morsel of food was left; and he would have to attack, with barely thirty thousand men, more than one hundred thousand. At Crecy and Poitiers his strong position had won the day against superior numbers, but now all the advantages of numbers and position were with the enemy.

The sun was sinking when his watchful eye saw a small group of horsemen advance a little before the glittering wall of spears and helmets in the Spanish host. They seemed officers of high rank, if not the actual commanders—and, in fact, the tall, handsome man in the centre, with a crown on his helmet, was Henry of Transtamare himself; and the short, square man in black armour, who was speaking to him so earnestly, was Bertrand du Guesclin!

The Breton hero’s advice, if taken, would have sealed the doom of the English, and ended the war ere it had well begun. Warning Henry that his raw levies, though brave, were no match in open field for Edward’s veterans, he pointed out that the unprovided English must either starve or fight at a disadvantage, and that all he had to do was to keep any supplies from reaching the enemy, and let famine and disease do the work for him.

But here, as at Auray, the great general’s wise counsel was overborne by the folly of his hot-headed colleagues. The fiery Henry would hear of nothing but instant battle, and his brother Don Tello, flushed with his slight success, vehemently supported him, saying with a sneer—

“Sir Bertrand has not forgotten, belike, how these English made him prisoner at Auray; perchance he is afraid of the like ill-hap befalling again.”

“On the morrow,” said Du Guesclin, with a look that made even the haughty Spaniard quail, “it shall be seen which of us two is the more afraid.”

When a deserter brought word to the English, an hour later, that the Spaniards meant to come forth and meet them in the field next morning, the shout of stern joy that rolled like thunder from rank to rank startled even their over-confident foes, for then, as in after days, “it was ever the wont of the English to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy.”

On the morrow the two hosts joined battle, and Bertrand’s words were amply fulfilled. When Chandos’s column of levelled lances and charging steeds came crashing into Don Tello’s division, the boaster’s heart died within him, and he fled with two thousand of his men, leaving bare the flank of the Spanish centre, on which the Black Prince himself instantly fell like a thunderbolt. And beside him, with a savage glare in his pale-blue eyes, his red beard bristling like a lion’s mane, and his sword reeking with slaughter, rode Pedro the Cruel, athirst for his brother’s blood.

But here the fight went hard, for Henry himself led the centre, and around him fought his bravest followers. The untrained Spanish levies fell like mown grass before men whose whole life had been one long battle; but new thousands succeeded, and the harvest of death went on, while Henry, striking right and left with the force of a giant, made his mighty voice heard above all the din—

“Brave gentlemen, you have made me your king; stand by me now as loyal men and true!”

Nobly did the doomed men redeem their fatal pledge, fighting on even when the battle was lost beyond recovery, to protect their king’s escape. Nor was the heroic self-sacrifice vain; for, just as the last of the gallant band went down, Henry dashed through the ford of the Najarra unpursued, to renew the struggle a few months later, with better fortune.

He might not have got off so well but for a false report of his having made for Navaretta, which drew away most of the English soldiers, who, fired with the hope of a king’s ransom, followed the chase so hotly that they burst pell-mell into the town with the flying Spaniards. The pursuers made at once for Henry’s quarters, where, though they did not find him, they found a rich camp-equipage and service of gold plate, that made every face radiant.

“Here is a bit of glass that sparkles bravely!” cried Wade, pouncing on a diamond worth thousands of pounds—“and set in gold, too! Mayhap ’tis worth a crown or so; and anyhow it will be a gay gaud for my Gillian to wear o’ holidays.”

“This cup for my money!” shouted Ned Smith, seizing a beautifully carved goblet set with jewels. “Marry, how my gossips in merry Hampshire will stare when I show ’em a cup that was used by the King of Castile!”

“I will be content with this,” said old Laneham, clutching a massive gold dish. “I had hoped to put a king or two to ransom ere this job was over; but half a loaf is aye better than no bread.”

Meanwhile the Claremont twins, swept toward the river by the rush of flight and pursuit, heard all at once a well-known war-cry amid a whirl of struggling figures and clashing weapons, and, flying to the spot, they found three or four French knights fighting desperately, back to back, against a throng of English and Gascon soldiers. Foremost was a short, sturdy form in black armour, wielding a mighty axe, which dealt death at every blow.

“Slay him! Cut him down!” roared a big Gascon, springing back just in time from the fatal weapon.

“Nay! Take him alive for ransom!” shouted an Englishman. “He must be a knight of renown.”

“Yield, noble Du Guesclin!” cried Alured, bursting through the press. “We have won the day, and thou canst do no more!”

But his kindly words were lost in the hideous din, and Bertrand, seeing him come rushing on, mistook him for a new foe. The fatal axe flashed and fell once more, and down went Alured beneath the blow of his old friend.

But as the falling-off of the broken helmet showed Bertrand whom he had smitten, the sight seemed to wither his strength, and he let fall his terrible axe, while his foes, seeing him disarmed, closed fiercely round him.

“Back, fellows!” cried Hugo, sternly, as he thrust himself between. “Yield, good Sir Bertrand—yield to Hugo de Claremont.”

“I yield me, rescue or no rescue, sith better may not be,” said Bertrand, hoarsely. “But thy brother—lives he yet? If I have slain him, I shall ne’er have the heart to wield weapon more.”

“Vex not thyself, fair sir,” said Alured, faintly, as he tried to raise his bruised and aching head. “I am but somewhat dazed. Marry, thy blows are not such as a man can jest with.”

“Now, God be praised my stroke slew thee not,” cried Du Guesclin, raising him from the earth. “I ever thought we should meet again, but I deemed not it should be thus.”

But neither the admiration of the whole army, nor the praise of grim old Chandos himself, nor the thanks and rewards heaped on them by the Black Prince (who welcomed their prisoner as if Du Guesclin had been his best friend instead of his most redoubtable foe), could chase from the brows of the twins the gloomy foreboding that clouded them; and, as they entered their tent that night, Alured said sadly—

“My mind misgives me, brother, that God is not with us in this work, and that it will not prosper.”

He spoke but too truly. History has told how their gallant host melted beneath the blighting breath of pestilence and famine—how its great leader saw his men perish round him while waiting in vain for the fulfilment of the promises that his faithless ally had never meant to keep—how he was forced to drain his own coffers to feed the men whom the crowned ruffian who owed his throne to them had left to starve and die—and how he finally repassed the Pyrenees with the wreck of his splendid army, heavy and sick at heart, bearing with him the seeds of the fell disease that was to doom him, only a few years later, to an untimely grave, while the royal cut-throat whom he had championed, within a twelvemonth of his restoration, lost crown and life.