CHAPTER XV.

THE OLD HOME.

"Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career, And is brought home at even-song, pricked through with a spear."

IVANHOE.

That was a dark day for Eadwulf, on which the train of Sir Yvo de Taillebois departed from the tower of Waltheofstow; and thenceforth the discontented, dark-spirited man became darker, more morose and gloomy, until his temper had got to such a pass that he was shunned and avoided by every one, even of his own fellows.

It is true, that in the condition of slavery, in the being one of a despised and a detested caste, in being compelled to labor for the benefit of others than himself, in the being liable at any moment to be sold, together with the glebe to which he is attached for life, like the ox or ass with which he toils as a companion, there is not much to promote contentedness, to foster a quiet, placable, and gentle disposition, to render any man more just, or grateful, or forbearing to his fellows. Least of all is it so, where there is in the slave just enough of knowledge, of civilization, of higher nurture, to enable him to desire freedom in the abstract, to pine for it as a right denied, and to hate those by whom he is deprived of it, without comprehending its real value, or in the least appreciating either the privileges which it confers or the duties which it imposes on the freeman--least of all, when the man has from nature received a churlish, gloomy, sullen temperament, such as would be likely to make to itself a fanciful adversity out of actual prosperity, to resent all opposition to its slightest wish as an injury, and to envy, almost to the length of hating, every one more fortunate than himself.

It may, however, as all other conditions of inferiority, of sorrow, or of suffering, be rendered lighter and more tolerable by the mode of bearing it. Not that one would desire to see any man, whether reduced by circumstances to that condition, or held to it from his birth, so far reduced to a tame and senseless submission as to accept it as his natural state, or to endure it apathetically, without an effort at raising himself to his proper position in the scale of humanity and nature.

It is perfectly consistent with the utmost abhorrence of the condition, and the most thorough determination to escape from it by any means lawful to a Christian, to endure what is unavoidable, and to do that which must be done, bravely, patiently, well, and therefore nobly.

But it was not in the nature of Eadwulf to take either part. His rugged, stubborn, animal character, was as little capable of forming any scheme for his own prospective liberation, to which energy, and a firm, far-reaching will, should be the agents, as it was either to endure patiently or to labor well.

Perpetually remiss, working reluctantly and badly, ever a recusant, a recreant, a sullen and morose grumbler, while he in no respect lightened, but, it is probable, rather enhanced his difficulties, he detracted from what slight hope there might exist of his future emancipation, by carefully, as it would seem, conciliating the ill-opinion and ill-will of all men, whether his equals or his superiors--while he entirely neglected to earn or amass such small sums as might be within his reach, and as might perhaps, in the end, suffice to purchase his liberation.

So long as Kenric and his mother remained in the hamlet of Waltheofstow, and he was permitted to associate with them in their quarter, in consequence of the character for patience, honesty, fidelity, and good conduct, which his brother had acquired with his masters, Eadwulf's temper had been in some sort restrained by the influence, unconfessed indeed, and only half-endured with sullen reluctance, which that brother obtained over him, through his clearer and stronger intellect. But when they had departed, and when he found himself ejected, as a single man in the first place, and yet more as one marked for a bad servant and a dangerous character, from the best cottage in the quarter, to which he had begun to fancy himself of right entitled, he became worse and worse, until, even in the sort of barrack or general lodging of the male slaves of the lowest order, he was regarded by his fellows as the bad spirit of the set, and was never sought by any, unless as the ringleader in some act of villainy, wickedness, or rebellion.

It is probable, moreover, that the beauty and innocence of Edith, who, however averse she might be to the temper and disposition of the man, had been wont, since her betrothal to his brother, to treat him with a certain friendship and familiarity, might have had some influence in modifying his manner, at least, and curbing the natural display of his passionate yet sullen disposition.

Certain it is, that in some sort he loved her--as much, perhaps, as his sensual and unintelligent soul would allow him to love; and though he never had shown any predilection, never had made any effort to conciliate her favor, nor dared to attempt any rivalry of his brother, whom he wholly feared, and half-hated for his assumed superiority, he sorely felt her absence, regretted her liberation from slavery, and even felt aggrieved at it, since he could not share her new condition.

His brother's freedom he resented as a positive injury done to himself; and his bearing away with him the beautiful Edith, soon to become his bride, he looked on in the light of a fraudulent or forcible abstraction of his own property. From that moment, he became utterly brutalized and bad; he was constantly ordered for punishment, and at length he got to such a pitch of idleness, insolence, and rebellion, that Sir Philip de Morville, though, in his reluctance to resort to corporeal punishment, he would not allow him to be scourged or set in the stocks, ordered his seneschal to take steps for selling him to some merchant, who would undertake to transport him to one of the English colonies in Ireland.

Circumstances, however, occurred, which changed the fate both of the master and the slave, and led in the end to the events, which form the most striking portion of the present narrative.

For some time past, as was known throughout all the region, Sir Philip de Morville had been, if not actually at feud, at least on terms of open enmity with the nobleman whose lands marched with his own on the forest side, Sir Foulke d'Oilly--a man well-advanced in years, most of which he had spent in constant marauding warfare, a hated oppressor and tyrant to his tenantry and vassals, and regarded, among his Norman neighbors and comrades, as an unprincipled, discourteous, and cruel man.

With this man, recently, fresh difficulties had arisen concerning some disputed rights of chase, and on a certain day, within a month after the departure of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, the two nobles, meeting on the debatable ground, while in pursuit of the chase, under very aggravating circumstances, the hounds of both parties having fallen on the scent of the same stag, high words passed--a few arrows were shot by the retainers on both sides, Sir Philip's being much the more numerous; a forester of Sir Foulke d'Oilly's train was slain; and, had it not been for the extreme forbearance of De Morville, a conflict would have ensued, which could have terminated only in the total discomfiture of his rival and all his men.

This forbearance, however, effected no good end; for, before the barons parted, some words passed between them in private, which were not heard by any of their immediate followers, and the effect of which was known only by the consequences which soon ensued.

On the following morning, at the break of day, before the earliest of the serfs were summoned to their labors, the castle draw-bridge was lowered, and Sir Philip rode forth on his destrier, completely armed, but followed only by a single esquire in his ordinary attire.

The vizor of the knight's square-topped helmet was lowered, and the mail-hood drawn closely over it. His habergeon of glittering steel-rings, his mail-hose, fortified on the shoulders and at the knees by plates of polished steel, called poldrons and splents, shone like silver through the twilight; his triangular shield hung about his neck, his great two-handed broad-sword from his left shoulder to his heel, and his long steel-headed lance was grasped in his right hand; none could doubt that he was riding forth to do battle, but it was strange that he wore no surcoat of arms over his plain mail, that no trumpet preceded, no banner was borne behind him, no retainers, save that one unarmed man, in his garb of peace, followed the bridle of their lord.

He rode away slowly down the hill, through the serf's quarter, into the wood; the warder from the turret saw him turn and gaze back wistfully toward his hereditary towers, perhaps half prescient that he should see them no more. He turned, and was lost to view; nor did any eye of his faithful vassals look on him in life again.

Noon came, and the dinner hour, but the knight came not to the banquet hall--evening fell, and there were no tidings; but, at nightfall, Eadwulf came in, pale, ghastly, and terrified, and announced that the knight and the esquire both lay dead with their horses in a glade of the wood, not far from the scene of the quarrel of the preceding day, on the banks of the river Idle. No time was lost. With torch and cresset, bow and spear, the household hurried, under their appointed officers, to the fatal spot, and soon found the tidings of the serf to be but too true.

The knight and his horse lay together, as they had fallen, both stricken down at the same instant, in full career as it would seem, by a sudden and instantaneous death-stroke. The warrior, though prostrate, still sat the horse as if in life; he was not unhelmed; his shield was still about his neck; his lance was yet in the rest, the shaft unbroken, and the point unbloodied--the animal lay with its legs extended, as if it had been at full speed when the fatal stroke overtook it. A barbed cloth-yard arrow had been shot directly into its breast, piercing the heart through and through, by some one in full front of the animal; and a lance point had entered the throat of the rider, above the edge of the shield which hung about his neck, coming out between the shoulders behind, and inflicting a wound which must have been instantaneously mortal.

Investigation of the ground showed that many horses had been concealed or ambushed in a neighboring dingle, within easy arrow-shot of the murdered baron; that two horsemen had encountered him in the glade, one of whom, he by whose lance he had fallen, had charged him in full career.

It was evident to the men-at-arms, that Sir Philip's charger had been treacherously shot dead in full career, by an archer ambushed in the brake, at the very moment when he was encountering his enemy at the lance's point; and that, as the horse was in the act of falling, he had been bored through from above, before his own lance had touched the other rider.

The esquire had been cut down and hacked with many wounds of axes and two-handed swords, one of his arms being completely severed from the trunk, and his skull cleft asunder by a ghastly blow. His horse's brains had been dashed out with a mace, probably after the slaughter of the rider; and that this part of the deed of horror had been accomplished by many armed men, dismounted, and not by the slayer of De Morville, was evident, from the number of mailed and booted footsteps deeply imprinted in the turf around the carcasses of the murdered men and butchered animals.

Efforts were made immediately to track the assassins by the slot, several, both of the men-at-arms and of the Yorkshire foresters, being expert at the art; but their skill was at fault, as well as the scent of the slow-hounds, which were laid on the trail; for, within a few hundred yards of the spot, the party had entered the channel of the river Idle, and probably followed its course upward, to a place where it flowed over a sheet of hard, slaty, rock; and where the land farther back consisted of a dry, sun-burned, upland waste, of short, summer-parched turf, which took no impression of the horses' hoofs.

There was no proof, nor any distinct circumstantial evidence; yet none doubted any more than if they had beheld the doing of the dastardly deed, that the good Lord de Morville had fallen by the hand of Sir Foulke d'Oilly and of his associates in blood-shedding.

For the rest, the good knight lay dead, leaving no child, wife, brother, nor any near relation, who should inherit either his honors or his lands. He had left neither testament nor next of kin. Literally, he had died, and made no sign.

The offices of the church were done duly, the masses were chanted over the dead, and the last remains of the good knight were consigned to dust in the chapel vaults of his ancestral castle, never to descend to posterity of his, or to bear his name again forever.

In a few days it was made known that Sir Philip had died deeply indebted to the Jews of York, of Tadcaster, even of London; that his estates, all of which were unentailed and in his own right, were heavily mortgaged; and that the lands would be sold to satisfy the creditors of the deceased. Shortly after, it was whispered abroad, and soon proclaimed aloud, that Sir Foulke d'Oilly had become purchaser of whatever was saleable, and had been confirmed by the royal mandate in the possession of the seigneurial and feudal rights of the lapsed fief of Waltheofstow. There had been none to draw attention to the suspicions which weighed so heavily against Sir Foulke in the neighborhood, and among the followers of the dead knight; they were men of small rank and no influence, and had no motive to induce them wantonly to incur the hatred of the most powerful and unscrupulous noble of the vicinity, by bringing charges which they had no means to substantiate, if true, and which, to disprove, it was probable that he had contrivances already prepared by false witness.

Within a little while, Sir Foulke d'Oilly assumed his rights territorial and seigneurial; but he removed not in person to Waltheofstow, continuing to reside in his own larger and more magnificent castle of Fenton in the Forest, within a few miles' distance, and committing the whole management of his estates and governance of his serfs to a hard, stern, old man-at-arms, renowned for his cruel valor, whom he installed as the seneschal of the fief, with his brother acting as bailiff under him, and a handful of fierce, marauding, free companions, as a garrison to the castle.

The retainers of the old lord were got rid of peacefully, their dues of pay being made up to them, and themselves dismissed, with some small gratuity. One by one the free tenants threw up the farms which they rented, or resigned the fiefs which they held on man-service; and, before Sir Philip had been a month cold in his grave, not a soul was left in the place, of its old inhabitants, except the miserable Saxon serfs, to whom change of masters brought no change of place; and who, regarded as little better than mere brutes of burden, were scarce distinguished one from the other, or known by name, to their new and vicarious rulers. On them fell the most heavily the sudden blow which had deprived them of a just, a reasonable, and a merciful lord, as justice and mercy went in those days, and consigned them defenseless and helpless slaves, to one among the cruellest oppressors of that cruel and benighted period--and, worse yet than that, mere chattels at the mercy of an underling, crueller even than his lord, and wanting even in the sordid interest which the owner must needs feel in the physical welfare of his property.

Woe, indeed, woe worth the day, to the serfs of Waltheofstow, when they fell into the hands of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and tasted of the mercies of his seneschal, Black Hugonet of Fenton in the Forest!

It was some considerable time before the news of this foul murder reached the ears of Sir Yvo de Taillebois; and when it did become known to him, and measures were taken by him to reclaim the manor of Waltheofstow, in virtue of the mortgage he had redeemed, it was found that so many prior claims, and that to so enormous an extent, were in existence, as to swallow up the whole of the estates, leaving Sir Yvo a loser of the nineteen thousand zecchins which he had advanced, with nothing to show in return for his outlay beyond the freedom of Kenric and his family.

The good knight, however, was too rich to be seriously affected by the circumstance, and of too noble and liberal a strain to regret deeply the mere loss of superabundant and unnecessary gold. But not so did he regard the death of his dear companion and brother in arms; yet, though he caused inquiries to be set on foot as to the mode of his decease, so many difficulties intervened, and the whole affair was plunged in so deep a mystery and obscurity, that he was compelled to abandon the pursuit reluctantly, until, after months had elapsed, unforeseen events opened an unexpected clew to the fatal truth.