CHAPTER XX.

THE LADY AND HER LOVER.

Fair Ellen that was so mild More she beheld Triamour the child, Than all other men.

SIR TRIAMOUR.

Long before the dawn had begun to grow gray in the east, Kenric had taken his way to the castle, by a direct path across the hills to a point on the lake shore, where there always lay a small ferry-boat, for the use of the castellan, his household, and vassals. Edith, to whom he had told all that he had extorted from Eadwulf, and who, like himself, clearly foresaw difficulty and danger at hand, arising from the conduct and flight of the ill-conditioned and ill-starred brother, went about her household work, most unusual for her, with a melancholy and despondent heart.

She, who while a serf had been constantly, almost recklessly gay, as one who had no sorrow for which to care, wore a grave brow, and carried a heavy heart. For liberty, if it give independence to the body and its true expansion to the soul, brings responsibility also, and care. She carolled this morning no blythe old Saxon ballads as she kneaded her barley cakes, or worked her overflowing churn; she had this morning no merry word with which to greet the verdurer's boys, as they came and went from her ample kitchen with messes for the hounds to the kennels, or raw meat for the eyasses in the mews; and they wondered not a little, for the kindness and merry humor of their young mistress had won their hearts, and they were grieved to see her downcast. She was restless, and unable, as it seemed, to settle herself to any thing, coming and going from one place to another, without much apparent object, and every half hour or so, opening the door and gazing wistfully down the valley, toward the sea, not across the hills over which her husband had bent his way.

It must have been nearly ten o'clock, in those unsophisticated days approaching nearly to the dinner hour, when something caught her eye at a distance, which instantly brought a bright light into it, and a clear, rich color to her cheek; and she clapped her hands joyously, crying, "I am so glad! so glad!" Then, hurrying into the house, she called to the boys, giving them quick, eager orders, and set herself to work arranging the house, strewing the floor with fresh green rushes, and decking the walls with holly branches, the bright-red berries of the mountain ash, wild asters, and such late wood-flowers as yet survived, with a spirit very different from the listless mood which had possessed her.

What was the vision that had so changed the tenor of her mind?

Winding through one of those green lanes--which form so exquisite a feature in the scenery of the lake country, with their sinuous, gray boundary stone walls, bordered with ashes, hazels, wild roses, and beds of tall fern at their base, while the walls themselves are overspread with small ferns, wild strawberries, the geranium, and rich lichens--there came a fair company, the persons of which were easily distinguished by Edith, in that clear atmosphere, when at a mile's distance from the cottage--a mile which was augmented into nearly three by the meanderings of the lane, corresponding with those of the brook.

In the front rode a lady, the Lady Guendolen, on a beautiful chestnut-colored Andalusian jennet, with snow-white mane and tail, herself splendidly attired in a dark murrey-colored skirt, passamented with black embroidery, and above it a surcoat or tunic, fitting the body closely a little way below the hips, of blue satin, embroidered in silver with the armorial bearings of her house--a custom as usual in those days with the ladies as with the knights of the great houses. Her head was covered with a small cap of blue velvet, with one white feather, and on her left hand, covered by a doe-skin hawking-glove, was set a superb gosshawk, unhooded, so familiar was he with his bright mistress, and held only by a pair of silver jesses, corresponding with the silver bells which decked his yellow legs, and jingled at his every motion. By her side, attending far more to his fair companion than to the fiery horse which he bestrode, was a young cavalier, bending over her with an air of the deepest tenderness, hanging on her words as if they were more than the sweetest music to his soul, and gazing on her with affection so obvious as to show him a permitted lover. He was a powerful, finely-formed young man, of six or eight-and-twenty years, with a frank open countenance, full of intellect, nobleness, and spirit, with an occasional shadow of deep thought, but hardly to be called handsome, unless it were for the expression, since the features, though well cut, were not regular, and the complexion was too much sun-burned and weather-hardened even for manly beauty.

Altogether he was, however, a remarkably attractive-looking person. He sat his horse superbly, as a king might sit his throne; his every motion was perfect majesty of grace; and when he smiled, so radiant was the glance lighting up the dark face, that he was, for the moment, actually handsome. He was dressed in a plain, dark hunting suit, with a bonnet and feather of the same hue, and untanned deer buskins, the only ornament he wore being a long blue scarf, of the same color as the surcoat of his mistress, and embroidered, probably by her hand, with the same bearings. The spurs in his buskins, however, were not gilded, and the light estoc, or sharp-pointed hunting-sword, which hung at his left side, showed by its form that he had not yet attained the honors of knighthood.

Aradas de Ratcliffe was the heir male of a line, one of the first and noblest which had settled in the lake country, in the beautiful vale of Rydal, but a little way distant to the northward from the lands of Sir Yvo de Taillebois. His father, a baron of great renown, had taken the Cross when far advanced in life, and proceeding to the Holy Land with that disastrous Second Crusade, led by Conrad III. the German Emperor, and Louis VII. of France, at the summoning of Pope Eugene III., had fallen in the first encounter with the infidels, and dying under shield, knight-like, had left his infant son with no other guardian than his mother, a noble lady of the house of Fitz Norman.

She had discharged her trust as became the character of her race; and so soon as the boy was of sufficient years, he was entered in the household of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, as the finest school in the whole realm for the aspirant to honor in arms.

Here, as page and esquire, he had served nearly twenty years of his life, first following his lord's stirrup, until he was perfect in the use of his arms, and old enough to wield them; then, fighting in his train, until he had proved himself of such stern fidelity and valor, that he became his favorite attendant, and most trusted man-at-arms.

In feudal days, it must be remembered that it was no disgrace to a scion of the highest family to serve his pagehood under a noble or knight of lineage and renown; on the contrary, it was both a condition that must be undergone, and one held as an honor to both parties; so much so, that barons of the greatest name and vastest demesnes in the realm would often solicit, and esteem it as a high favor, to have their sons ride as pages in the train of some almost landless knight, whose extraordinary prowess should have won him an extraordinary name.

These youths, moreover, as they were nobly born, so were they nobly entreated; nothing low or mean was suffered to come before them. Even in their services, nothing menial was required of them. To arm their lord for battle, to follow him to the tournament or to the field, where to rush in to his rescue if beaten down, to tend his hurts if wounded, to bear his messages, and guard his secrets as his own life, to wait on the ladies--these were the duties of a page in the twelfth century. Courage, truth, honor, fidelity unto death, courtesy, humility to the humble, haughtiness to the haughty--these were the lessons taught him. It may be doubted whether our teachings in the nineteenth are so far superior, and whether they bear so far better fruits in the end!

Be this, however, as it may, Aradas de Ratcliffe, having grown up in the same household with the beautiful Guendolen, though some twelve years her senior, had grown up to love her; and his promise of manhood being in no wise inferior to her beauty, his birth equal to her own, and his dead father an old and trusted friend of Sir Yvo, he was now riding by her side, not only as her surest defender, but as her affianced husband; it being settled, that so soon as the youthful esquire should have won his knightly spurs, the lands of Hawkshead, Coniston, and Yewdale, should be united with the adjoining demesnes of Rydal manor, dim with its grand old woods, by the union of the heiress of De Taillebois to the heir of the proud Ratcliffes.

And now they had ridden forth on this bright and fair autumnal morning, partly to fly their hawks at the herons, for which the grassy meads in the vale of Kentmere were famous, partly to visit the new home of Guendolen's favorite Edith, and more, in truth, than all, to enjoy the pleasure of a loving _tête-à-tête_; for the girl who followed her lady kept discreetly out of ear-shot, and amused herself flirting with the single page who accompanied them; and the rest of the train, consisting of grooms, falconers, and varlets, bearing the hawks and leading the sumpter-mules, lagged considerably in the rear.

There was not, however, very much of gayety in the manner of either of the young people; the fair face of Guendolen was something paler than its use, and her glad eyes had a beseeching look, even while she smiled, and while her voice was playful; and there was a sorrowful shadow on the brow of Aradas, and he spoke in a grave, low tone, though it was full of gentleness and trust.

In truth, like Jacob of old, when he served for the daughters of Laban, the young esquire was waxing weary of the long servitude and the hope deferred. The temporary lull of war, which at that time prevailed over both England and the French provinces belonging to the crown, gave him no hope of speedily winning the desired spurs; and the bloody wars, which were in progress on the shores of the sister island, though fierce and sanguinary enough to satisfy the most eager for the perils and honors of the battle-field, were not so evidently favored by the monarch, or so clear from the taint of piracy, as to justify a cavalier, of untainted character and unbroken fortunes, in joining the invaders. But in this very year had the eyes of all the Christian world been strongly turned toward Palestine, where Baldwin IV., a minor, and a leper, and no match for the talents and power of the victorious Saladin, sat feebly on the throne of the strong crusading Kings of Jerusalem, which was now tottering to its fall, under the fierce assaults of the Mussulman.

Henry II. and Louis of France had sworn to maintain between them the peace of God, and to join in a third Crusade for the defense of the Tomb of Christ and the Holy City. In this war, Aradas saw the certainty of winning knighthood; but Guendolen, who would have armed her champion joyously, and buckled on his sword with her own hand, for any European conflict, shuddered at the tales of the poisoned sarbacanes and arrows with which report armed the gigantic Saracens--shuddered at the knives of the assassins of the mountains--at the pestilences which were known to brood over those arid shores; and yet more, at the strange monsters, dragons, and winged-serpents--nay, fiends and incarnate demons--with which superstitious horror peopled the solitudes which had witnessed the awful scenes of the Temptation, the Passion, and the Death, of the Son of God.

In short, she interposed her absolute nay, with the quiet but positive determination of a woman, and clinched it with a woman's argument.

"You do not love me, Aradas," she said; "I know you do not love me, or you would never think of speaking of that fearful country, or of taking the Cross--that country, from which no one ever returns alive--or, if he do return, returns so bent and bowed with plague and fever, or so hacked and mangled by the poisoned weapons of the savages, that he is an old man ere his prime, and dead before---- No, no! I will not hear of it! No, I will not! I will not love you, if you so much as breathe it to me again, Aradas!"

"That were a penalty," said the young man, half-sadly smiling; "but, can you help it, Guendolen?"

"Don't trust in that, sir," she said. "One can do any thing--every thing--by trying."

"Can one, pardie! I would you would show me, then, how to win these spurs of gold, by trying."

"I can. Be firm, be faithful, and, above all, be patient. Remember, without hope, without patience, there is no evidence of faith; without faith, there is, there can be, neither true chivalry nor true love. Besides, we are very young, we are very happy as we are; occasion will come up, perhaps is at hand even now; and--and--well, if I am worth having, I am worth waiting for, Beausire Aradas; and if you don't think so, by'r lady, you'd better bestow yourself where----"

"Whoop! whoop! So ho! He mounts! he mounts!" A loud shout from the rear of the party interrupted her. In the earnestness of their conversation, they had cleared the confines of the winding lane, and entered, without observing it, a beautiful stretch of meadow-land, intersected by small rivulets and water-courses, sloping down to the lake shore. Some of the grooms and varlets had spread out over the flat grass-land, beating the reeds with their hawking-poles, and cheering their merry spaniels. The shout was elicited by the sudden uprising of the great, long-necked hermit-fisher, from a broad reed belt by the stream-side, flapping his broad gray vans heavily on the light air, and stretching his long yellow legs far behind him, as he soared skyward, with his harsh, clanging cry.

All eyes were instantly turned to the direction of the shout, and every heart bounded at the sight of the quarry.

"Whoop! Diamond! whoop!" cried the young girl, as she cast off her gallant falcon; and then, seeing her lover throw off his long-winged peregrine to join in the flight, "A wager, Aradas. My glove on 'Diamond' against 'Helvellyn.' What will you wager, Beausire?"

"My heart!"

"Nay! I have that already. Else you swore falsely. Against your turquoise ring. I'll knot my kerchief with it."

"A wager! Now ride, Guendolen; ride; if you would see the wager won."

And they gave the head to their horses, and rode furiously. No riding is so desperate, it is said, no excitement so tremendous, as that of the short, fierce, reckless gallop in the chase where bird hunts bird through the boundless fields of air. Not even the tremendous burst and rally of the glorious hunts-up, with the heart-inspiring crash of the hounds, and the merry blare of the bugles, when the hart of grease has broken covert, and the pack are running him breast high.

In the latter, the heart may beat, the pulse may throb and quiver, but the eye is unoccupied, and free to direct the hand, to rule the courser's gallop, and mark the coming leap. In the former, the eye, as the heart, and the pulse, and the ear, are all bent aloft, up! up! with the straining, towering birds; while the steed must pick its own way over smooth or rough, and the rider take his leaps as they chance to come, unseen and unexpected. Such was the glorious mystery of Rivers!

The wind, what little of it there was when the heron rose, was from the southward, and the bird flew before it directly toward the cottage of Kenric, rising slowly but strongly into the upper regions of air. The two falcons, which were nearly half a mile astern of the quarry when they were cast off, flew almost, as it seemed, with the speed of lightning, in parallel lines about fifty yards apart, rising as he rose, and evidently gaining on him at every stroke of their long, sharp pinions, in pursuit. And in pursuit of those, their riders sitting well back in their saddles, and holding them hard by the head, the high-blooded horses tore across the marshy plain, driving fragments of turf high into the air at every stroke, and sweeping over the drains and water-courses which obstructed their career, like the unbridled wind. It was a glorious spectacle--a group of incomparable splendor, in coloring, in grace, in vivacity, motion, fire, sweeping through that panorama of magnificent mountain scenery.

The day was clear and sunny, the skies soft and transparently blue; but, ever and anon, huge clouds came driving over the scene, casting vast purple-shadows over the green meadows and the mirrored lake. One of these now came sweeping overhead, and toward it towered the contending birds. The heron, when he saw that he was pursued, uttered a louder and harsher cry, and began to scale the sky in great aërial circles. Silent, in smaller circles, towered the falcons, each emulous to out-top the others. Up! up! higher and higher! Neither victorious yet, neither vanquished. Now! now! the falcons are on a level with him, and again rings the clanging shriek of the wild water-bird, and he redoubles his last effort. He rises, he out-tops the hawks, and all vanish in an instant from the eyes of the pursuers, swallowed up in the depths of the great golden cloud.

Still the harsh clanking cry is heard; and now, as they and the cloud still drift northward, they reappear, now all descending, above the little esplanade before the cottage-door where Edith stands watching.

The heron is below, falling plumb through the air with his back downward, his wings flapping at random, his long neck trussed on his breast, and his sharp bill projecting upward, perilous as the point of a Moorish assagay. The falcons both above him, towering for the swoop, Aradas' Helvellyn the topmost.

He pointed to the birds with his riding-rod triumphantly, and glancing an arch look at his mistress, "Helvellyn has it," he said; "Palestine or no Palestine, on the stoop!"

"On the hawks!" she replied; "and heaven decide it!"

"I will wear the glove in my casque in the first career," and, as he spoke, the falcon closed his wings and came down with a swoop like lightning on the devoted quarry. The rush of his impetuous plunge, cleaving the air, was clearly audible, above the rustling of the leaves and the noise of the pursuers.

But the gallant heron met the shock unflinching, and Helvellyn, gallant Helvellyn, came down like a catapult upon the deadly beak of the fierce wader, and was impaled from breast to back in a second. There was a minute of wild convulsive fluttering, and then the heron shook off his assailant, who drifted slowly down, writhing and struggling, with all his beauteous plumes disordered and bedropped with gore, to the dull earth, while, with a clang of triumph, the victor once more turned to rise heavenward.

The cry of triumph was premature, for, even as it was uttered, brave Diamond made his stoop. Swift and sure as the bolt of Heaven, he found his aim, and, burying his keen singles to the sheath in the back of the tortured waterfowl, clove his skull at a single stroke of the trenchant bill.

"Hurrah! hurrah! brave Diamond," cried the delighted girl. "No Palestine! no Palestine! For this, your bells and jesses shall be of gold, beautiful Diamond, and your drink of the purest wine of Gascony."

And, giving head to her jennet, the first of all the train she reached the spot where the birds lay struggling on the grass within ten yards of Kenric's door, and, as she sprang from her saddle, was caught in the arms of Edith.

"God's blessings on you! welcome! welcome! dearest lady," cried the beautiful Saxon, raining down tears of gratitude.

"Thanks, Edith; but, quick! quick! help me save the falcon, lest the heronshaw hurt him. My life was at stake on his flight, and he has saved my life!"

"The heronshaw is dead enough, lady, he will hurt nothing more," said the Saxon, following her lady, nevertheless, to secure the gallant gosshawk, which in a moment sat pluming his ruffled feathers, and glaring at her triumphantly with his clear golden eye, as he arched his proud neck to her caresses, on the wrist of his fair mistress.

It seemed as though he knew that he had won her wager.

The hour of the noonday meal had now fully arrived, and the sumpter mules were soon brought up, and carpets spread on the turf, and flasks and barrels, pasties and brawns, and huge boars' heads unpacked in tempting profusion, and all preparations made for a meal in the open air.

But Edith pleaded so hard that her dear lady, to whom she owed more than life, whom she loved more than her own life, would honor her humble roof, would suffer the choicest of the viands to be borne into her pleasant, sunny room, and taste her home-brewed mead, that Guendolen, who was in rapture at her triumph, readily consented, and Aradas, who was pleased to see Guendolen happy, made no opposition.

So, while amid loud merriment, and the clang of flasks and beakers, and the clash of knives and trenchers, their train fared jovially and lustily without, they feasted daintily and happily within the Saxon's cottage.

And the sunny room was pleasant; and the light played cheerfully on the polished pewter trenchers on the dresser, and the varnished holly and scarlet berries, and bright wild-flowers on the wall; and the sparkling wood fire was not amiss after the gallop in the clear air; and Guendolen preferred the light, foaming mead of the Saxon housewife, to the wines of Gascony and Bordeaux; and all went happily and well.

Above all, Edith gained her point. She got occasion to tell the tale of Eadwulf's flight, arrival, and departure, and obtained a promise of protection for her husband, in case he should be brought in question for his share in his brother's escape; and even prevailed that no search should be made after Eadwulf, provided he would keep himself aloof, and commit no offense against the pitiless forest laws, or depredations on the people of the dales.

Many strange emotions of indignation, sympathy, horror, alternately swept through the mind of Guendolen, and were reflected from her eloquent eyes; and many times did Aradas twirl his thick mustache, and gripe his dagger's hilt, as they heard the vicissitudes of that strange tale--the base and dastardly murder of the noble and good Sir Philip de Morville; the slaying of the bailiff by the hand of Eadwulf, which thus came to look liker to lawful retribution than to mere homicide; the strange chances of the serf's escape; the wonderful wiles by which he had baffled the speed of horses and the scent of bloodhounds; and the final catastrophe of the sands, swallowing up, as it would seem, well-nigh all the slaughterers of Sir Philip, while sparing the panting and heart-broken fugitive. It was indeed a tale more strange and horrible than any thing, save truth.

They sat some time in silence, musing. Then suddenly, as by an impulse, their eyes met. Their meaning was the same.

"Yes!" he said, bowing his head gravely, in answer to what he read in her look, "there may be an occasion, and a very noble one."

"And for such an one, I will bind my glove on your casque, and buckle your sword to your side very gladly."

"Amen!" said he. "Be it as God wills. He will defend the right."

So, bidding their pretty hostess adieu, not leaving her without a token of their visit and good-will, they mounted and rode homeward, thinking no more of the sport; graver, perhaps, and more solemn in their manner; but, on the whole, happier and more hopeful than when they set forth in the morning.

And Edith, though she understood nothing of the impulses of their hearts, was grateful and content; and when her husband returned home, and, hanging about his neck, she told him what she had done, and how she had prospered, and received his approbation and caresses, was that night the happiest woman within the four seas that gird Britain.