CHAPTER XVI.

THE ESCAPE.

Then said King Florentyne, "What noise is this? 'Fore Saint Martyn, Some man," he said, "in my franchise, Hath slain my deer and bloweth the prize."

GUY OF WARWICK.

One of those serfs, Eadwulf, was little disposed to resign himself tranquilly to his fate; as within a short period after the occupation of Waltheofstow by the new seneschal, his wonted contumacy had brought him into wonted disgrace and condemnation, and, there being no longer any clemency overruling the law for the mitigation of such penalties as should seem needful, the culprit was on several occasions cruelly scourged, and imprisoned in the lowest vaults of the castle dungeon.

Maddened by this treatment, he at length resolved to escape at all risks, and knowing every path and dingle of the forest, he flattered himself that he should easily elude pursuers who were strange, as yet, to that portion of the country; and having, on the departure of his brother, contrived stealthily to possess himself of the crossbow and bolts which had belonged to him, being intrusted to his care as an unusual boon, owing to his good conduct and his occupation as a sort of underkeeper in the chase, fancied that he should be able easily to support himself by killing game in the forests through which he must make his way, until he should arrive at the new residence of that brother, where he doubted not of finding comfort and assistance.

During the days which had elapsed between the emancipation of Kenric and his departure from the castle, much had been ascertained, both by the new freeman and his beautiful betrothed, concerning the route which led to their future abode, its actual position, and the wild and savage nature of the country on which it abutted.

All this had naturally enough become known to Eadwulf; and he, having once been carried as far as to Lancaster by the late lord's equerry, to help in bringing home some recently-purchased war-horses, knew well the general direction of the route, and, having heard, while there, of the fordable nature of the Lancastrian sands, made little doubt of being able to find his way to his brother, and by his aid to gain the wild hills, where he trusted to subsist himself as a hunter and outlaw on the vast and untraversed heaths to the northward.

It was his hope to gain sufficient start, in the first instance, to enable him to make off so long before his absence should be discovered, that bloodhounds could not be laid on his track until the scent should be already cold; and then keeping the forest-ground, and avoiding all cleared or cultivated lands, to cross the Lancaster sands, and thence, by following up the course of the Kent River, on which he knew Kenric would be stationed as verdurer, to gain the interior labyrinth of fells, moors, morasses, and ravines, which at that time occupied the greater part of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

To this end, he managed to conceal himself at nightfall not far from the quarter, before the serfs had collected in their dormitory, intending to prosecute his flight so soon as the neighborhood should be steeped in the silence of night, and the moon should give him sufficient light to find his way through the deep forest mazes; and thus, before daybreak, was already some twenty miles distant from Waltheofstow, where he concealed himself in a deep hazel brake, intending to sleep away the hours of daylight, and resume his flight once more during the partial darkness of the night.

It was true that his route lay through the woodland-chase, which spread far and wide over the environs of Fenton in the Forest, and was the property of his new master; but for this he cared little, since there had been so small intercourse between the tenantry and vassals of his late lord and those of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, that he had no fears of being recognized by any chance retainer whom he might possibly encounter, while he knew that, should he chance to be discovered by a passing serf of his own oppressed race, he should not be betrayed by them to their mutual tyrants. Armed, therefore, at large, and already at a considerable distance from the scene of his captivity, he considered himself well-nigh safe when he concealed himself, in the early gray of the dawn, in such a dingle as he felt sure would secure him from the chance intrusion of any casual wayfarers.

Under one difficulty, however, he sorely labored. He had been unable to carry with him any provision, however slender; and he must depend on his skill as a forester for his sustenance, by poaching in the woods which he had to traverse, and cooking his game as best he might, borrowing an hour or two of the darkness for the purpose, and kindling his fire in the most remote and obscure places, to avoid danger of the smoke being observed by day, or the glare of the fire by night.

He had lost his evening meal on the previous day, and the appetite of the Saxon peasant was proverbially mighty; while, as is ever the case with men who have no motives to self-restraint or economy, abstinence was an unknown power.

It was vastly to his joy, therefore, that when the sun was getting fairly above the horizon, after he had been himself lurking an hour or two in the thick covert, he saw among the branches a noble stag come picking his way daintily along a deer-path which skirted the dingle, accompanied by two slim and graceful does, evidently intending to lay up, during the day, in the very brake which he unwittingly had occupied.

He had no sooner espied the animal, which was coming down wind upon him, utterly unconscious of the proximity of his direst foe, then he crouched low among the fern, fitted a quarrel to the string of his arbalast, and waited until his game was within ten paces of his ambush.

Then the winch was released, the bow twanged, and the forked head of the ponderous bolt crashed through the brain of the noble stag. One great bound he made, covering six yards of forest soil in that last leap of the death agony, and then laid dead almost at the feet of his unseen destroyer. The terrified does fled in wild haste into the opener parts of the forest, and, in an instant, the keen wood-knife of the Saxon had pierced the throat of the deer, and selected such portions, carved from the still quivering carcass, as he could most easily carry with him. These thrust carefully into the sort of hunting-pouch, or wallet, which he wore slung under his left arm, he proceeded, with the utmost wariness and caution, to cover up the slaughtered beast with boughs of the trees and brackens, rejoicing in his secret soul that he had secured to himself provision for two days longer at the least, and hoping that on the fourth morning he would be in security, beyond the broad expanse of Morecambe Bay.

But wonderfully deceitful are the hopes of the human heart; and, in the present instance, as often is the case, the very facts which he regarded as most auspicious were pregnant with the deepest danger.

Even where he had most warily calculated his chances, and chosen his measures with the deepest precaution, selecting the full of the moon for the period of his escape, and choosing the route in which he had anticipated the least danger of interruption, he had erred the most signally.

For it had so fallen out that Sir Foulke d'Oilly, having appointed this very day for a grand hunting match in his woods of Fenton, had issued orders to a strong party of his vassals, under the leading of Black Hugonet, his seneschal, and his brother, Ralph Wetheral, the bailiff, to come up from Waltheofstow by daybreak, and rendezvous at a station in the forest not a league distant from the spot in which Eadwulf had so unhappily chosen to conceal himself.

At the very moment in which the serf had launched his fatal bolt against the deer, the bailiff, Ralph Wetheral, who was, by virtue of his office, better acquainted with his person than any others of the household, was within a half a mile of his lair, engaged in tracking up the slot of the very animal which he was rejoicing to have slain, by aid of a mute lymer, or slow-hound, of an especial breed, kept and trained for the purpose; and in furtherance of his pursuit, had dismounted from his horse, and was following the dog as he dragged him onward, tugging at the leash; while ten or fifteen of his companions were scattered through the woods behind him, beating them carefully, in order to track the stags or wild boars to their lairs, before the arrival of their lord.

It was, perhaps, half an hour after he had discharged the shot, when he was alarmed by a light rustling of the under-wood and the cracking of dry sticks under a cautious footstep, and at first surmised that a second beast of chase was following on the track of his predecessor. But, in a moment, he was undeceived, by hearing the voice of a man whispering a few low words of encouragement to a dog, and at once the full extent of his danger flashed upon him. The dog was evidently questing the animal he had shot, and, within an instant, would lead his master to the spot. Under the cruel enactment of the Norman forest-laws, to slay a deer was a higher offense than to kill a fellow-man; the latter crime being in many cases remissible on the payment of a fine, while the former inevitably brought down on the culprit capital punishment, often enhanced by torture. To be found hidden, close behind a warm and yet bleeding stag, was tantamount to being taken red-handed in the fact, and instant death was the least punishment to be looked for.

Discovery was so close at hand, that flight itself seemed impossible; yet in immediate flight lay the sole chance of safety. He had already started from his lair, when the slow-hound, coming on the track of the fresh blood, set up a wild and savage yell, broke from the leash, and in a second was standing over the slaughtered quarry, tearing away with his fangs and claws the bushes which covered the carcass.

At the same moment, the branches were parted, and the bailiff of Waltheofstow stood before the culprit, carrying an unbended long-bow in his hand, and having a score of cloth-yard arrows at his belt, a short anlace at his side, and his bugle slung about his neck.

The recognition on each side was immediate, and the Norman advanced fearlessly to seize the fugitive, raising his bugle to his lips, as he came on, to summon succor. But Eadwulf, who had already laid a quarrel in the groove of the crossbow, with some indefinite idea of shooting the dog before the man should enter upon the scene, raised the weapon quickly to his shoulder, and, taking rapid aim, discharged it full at the breast of the bold intruder.

The heavy missile took effect, just as it was aimed, piercing the cavity of the man's heart, that he sprang a foot or better up into the air, and fell slain outright upon the body of the deer, which his dog had discovered, his spirit passing away without a struggle or a convulsion.

The dog uttered a long, melancholy, wailing howl, stooped to snuff at and lick the face of its murdered master, and then, as Eadwulf was drawing forth a third quarrel, before he could bend the arbalast again, or fit the missile to the string, fled howling into the wood whence he had come, as if he foresaw his purpose.

"A curse upon the yelling cur; he will bring the hue-and-cry down on me in no time. There is nothing but a run for it, and but a poor chance at that."

And, with the words, he dashed away toward the northwest, through the opener parts of the forest, at a speed which, could he have maintained it, would have soon carried him out of the reach of pursuit. And wonderfully he did maintain it; for at the end of the second hour he had run nearly fifteen miles from the scene of the murder; and here, on the brink of a small brimful river, of perhaps forty or fifty yards in width, flowing tranquilly but rapidly through the greenwoods, in a course not very much from the direction which he desired to follow, he cast himself down on the turf, and lay panting heavily for some minutes on the sward, until he had in some degree recovered his breath, when he bathed his face in the cool water, drank a few swallows, and then crossing the stream by some large stepping-stones which lay here in a shallow spot, continued his flight with singular speed and endurance.

He had not, however, fled above a hundred or two of yards beyond the water, when he heard, at the distance of about three miles behind him, the sound he most dreaded to hear, the deep bay of bloodhounds. Beyond doubt, they were on his track; and how was he to shun their indomitable fury?

He was a man of some resource and skill in woodcraft, although rude and barbarous in other matters; and, in desperate emergencies, men think rapidly, and act on the first thought.

The second tone of the dogs had scarcely reached his ear, before he was rushing backward, as nearly as possible in his own tracks, to the river, into which, from the first stepping-stone, he leaped head-foremost, and swam vigorously and lightly down the current, which bore him bravely on his way. The stream was swift and strong; and its banks, clothed with thick underwood, concealed his movements from the eyes of any one on either margin; and he had floated down considerably more than a mile, before he heard the bloodhounds come up in full cry to the spot where he had passed the water, and cross over it, cheered by the shouts and bugle-blasts of the man-hunters.

Then their deep clamor ceased at once, where he had turned on his back track, and he knew they were at fault, and perceived that the men, by their vociferations and bugle-notes, were casting them to and fro in all directions, to recover his scent.

Still he swam rapidly onward, and had interposed nearly another mile between himself and his pursuers, when he heard, by their shouts coming down either bank, that they had divined the stratagem to which he had had recourse, and were trailing him down the margins, secure of striking his track again, wherever he should leave the river.

He was again becoming very anxious, when a singular accident gave him another chance of safety. A wood-pigeon, flapping its wings violently as it took flight, attracted his attention to the tree from which it took wing. It was a huge oak, overhanging the stream, into which one of its branches actually dipped, sound and entire below, but with a large hollow at about twenty feet from the ground, which, as he easily divined, extended downward to the level of the soil. No sooner seen, than he had seized the pendulous branch, swung himself up by it, through a prodigious exertion, and, springing with mad haste from bough to bough, reached the opening in the decayed trunk. It was a grim, dark abyss, and, should he enter it, he saw not how he should ever make his exit. But a nearer shout, and the sounds of galloping horsemen, decided him. He entered it foot-foremost, hung by his hands for a moment to the orifice, in hesitation, and then, relaxing his hold, dropped sheer down through the rotten wood, and spiders'-webs, and unhealthy funguses, to the bottom of the tunnel-shaped hollow. Aroused from their diurnal dreams by the crash of his descent, two great brown-owls rushed out of the summit of the tree, and swooped down over the heads of the men-at-arms, who just at the instant passed under the branches, jingling in their panoply, and effectually prevented any suspicion from attaching to the hiding-place.

For the moment he was safe; and there he stood, in almost total darkness, shivering with wet and cold, amid noisome smells and damp exhalations, listening to the shouts of his enemies, as they rode to and fro, until they were lost in the distance.