The House of Walderne

by A. D. Crake

  Chapter 25: The Battle Of Lewes.

  The barons, on their side, prepared with sober earnestness for thestruggle. They were not fighting for personal aggrandisement, but,as an old writer says, "they had in all things one faith and onewill--love of God and their neighbour." So unanimous were they intheir brotherly love, that they did not fear to die for theircountry.

  It was the dead of night, and a horseman rode towards the villageof Fletching. He was armed cap-a-pie, like one who might have toforce his way against odds. His armour was dark, and he bore butone cognisance on his shield, the Cross. He was quite alone, but heknew that farther along he should find a sleeping host. The starsshone brightly above him, the country lay buried in sleep, scarcelya light twinkled throughout the expanse.

  The sound of a deep bell tolling the hour of midnight reached him.It was from the priory which he had left an hour or morepreviously.

  "Ere that hour strike again, England's fate will have beendecided," he said, as if to himself, "and perhaps my account withGod and man summed up before His bar. Well, I have a good cause,and a clear conscience, and I can leave it in God's hands."

  And soon from the crest of a low hill he looked down upon the campof the barons. There were many lights, and the murmur of voicesarose.

  Just then came the stern challenge.

  "Who goes there?"

  "A crusader, who as a knight received his spurs from Earl Simon,and now comes to fight by his side to the death for the libertiesof England."

  "The watchword?"

  "I have it not--twelve hours have not passed since I landed inEngland after an absence of years."

  "Stand while I summon the guard."

  In a little while a small troop approached, their leader the youngLord Walter of Hereford, who had been present, as it chanced, whenour hero was knighted. He recognised him with joy.

  "The Earl of Leicester will be overjoyed to see you. He has longgiven you up for lost."

  "He has not forgotten me?"

  "Even yesternight he wished you were present to fight by his side."

  Our poor Hubert felt his heart throb with joy and pride.

  As they descended into the camp Hubert perceived the Bishop ofWorcester, Walter de Cantilupe, riding through the ranks, andexhorting the soldiers to confess their sins, and to receiveabsolution and the Holy Communion; assuring them that such as fellwould fall in God's cause, and suffer on behalf of the truth.Behind him his followers distributed white crosses to the soldiers,as if they were crusaders, which they attached to their breasts andbacks. In this war of Englishmen against Englishmen there was needof some such mark to distinguish the rival parties.

  All through the camp religious exercises were proceeding, and whenat last Walter of Hereford brought our hero to the tent of EarlSimon, they found him prostrate in fervent prayer.

  "Father and leader," said the young earl with deep reverence, "Ihave brought thee a long-lost son."

  The earl rose.

  "My son! Hubert! Can it be thou, risen from the dead?"

  "Come to share thy fate for weal or woe, my beloved lord. From thyhands I received knighthood: at thy side will I conquer or die."

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  The dawn was at hand. The birds began their matin songs, when thestern blast of the trumpet drowned their tiny warblings.

  The army arose as one man. At first all was confusion, as when beesswarm, which was rapidly reduced into order, as the leaders went upand down with the standard bearers, and the men fell into theirranks. When all was still the earl, the great earl, came forth,armed cap-a-pie, mounted on his charger. The herald proclaimedsilence. The deep, manly voice was heard:

  "Beloved brethren! We are about to fight this day for the libertyof this realm, in honour of God, His blessed Mother, and all theSaints, for the defence of our Mother Church of England, and forthe faith of Christ.

  "Let us therefore pray to our Lord God, that since we are His, Hewould grant us victory in the battle, and commend ourselves to Him,body, soul, and spirit."

  Then the Bishop of Worcester gave the Benediction, after which thevast multitude arose as a man, took their places, and began theironward march. Scouts of the royal army, out foraging, saw them, andbore the tidings to King Henry and Prince Edward at the priory andthe castle, and the opposing forces arose in their turn.

  Before the hour of prime, the earl, by whose side throughout thatday rode our Hubert, descried the towers of the priory from thesummit of a swelling ridge, and beheld soon after the army of theprince issuing forth from the west gate, and that of the king fromthe priory below. Earl Simon divided his forces into three parts:the centre he placed under the young Earl of Gloucester, whom hehad that morning knighted; the right wing under his two sons, Simonand Guy; the left wing was composed of the Londoners. He himselfremained at the head of the reserve behind the centre, where hecould see all the field and direct operations. There was no smoke,as in a modern battlefield, to obstruct the view.

  Prince Edward commanded on the right of the royal troops, and wasthus opposed to the Londoners, whom he hated because of theirinsults to his mother {34}; and Richard commanded the leftwing, and was thus opposed to Simon and Guy, the sons of the greatearl. The centre was commanded by Henry himself, not by virtue ofhis ability in the field, but of his exalted rank. The royalstandard of the Dragon was raised; a token, said folk, that noquarter was to be given.

  This was a sign for the attack, and it was begun by thatthunderbolt of war, Prince Edward, who charged full upon theLondoners. The poor light-armed cits were ill prepared for theshock of so heavy a brigade of cavalry; and they broke and yieldedlike a dam before a resistless flood. No mercy was shown them. Manywere driven into the Ouse on the right, and so miserably drowned;others fled in a body before the prince, who pursued them for fourmiles, hacking, hewing, quartering, slaughtering. Just like theRupert of the later Civil Wars, he sacrificed the victory to theheadlong impetuosity of his nature.

  Now let us turn to the left. On the crest of the hill, which thererose steeply, were the tents and baggage of the barons. Over one ofthese floated Earl Simon's banner, and close by was a litter inwhich he had been carried during a recent illness, but which nowonly contained four unfortunate burgesses of London town who weredetained as hostages because they had attempted to betray the cityto King Henry.

  Towards this height the foolish Richard directed his charge, fullybelieving that the head and front of all the mischief, Simonhimself, was in that litter, and that he should crush him and therebellion together. But such showers of stones and arrows came fromthe hill that his forces were disorganised, and when Earl Simonsuddenly strengthened his sons by the reserve, their united forcescrushed the King of the Romans and all his men. They descended withall the impetus of a charge from above, and the enemy fled.

  Then the earl might have made the mistake which Prince Edward madeon the opposite side, and followed the flying foe; but he was fartoo wise. He saw on his left the centre under the Earl ofGloucester, fighting valiantly on equal terms with the royal centreunder King Henry. He fell upon its flank with all the force of hisvictorious array: one deadly struggle and the royal lines bent,curved, broke, then fled in disorder, the old king gallopingfuriously towards the priory, fleeing in great fear for dear life.

  Yet more ludicrous was the fate of his brother Richard, King of theRomans, who, while Henry reached the priory wounded, had takenrefuge in the windmill, where he was being baited, almost in joke,by the victorious foes, amidst cries of:

  "Come out you bad miller!"

  "You to turn a wretched mill master!"

  "You who defied us all so proudly!"

  "You, the 'ever Augustus!"

  At length the poor badgered king, seeing that they were preparingto set the mill on fire and smoke him out, surrendered to afollower of the Earl of Gloucester, Sir John Bix, and came out allcovered with flour, while men sang:

  The King of the Romans gathered a host,And made
him a castle of a mill post.

  Meanwhile the camp on the hill, with the banner and the aforesaidlitter, had aroused the attention of Prince Edward, just returningfrom harrying the Londoners.

  "Up the hill, my men," he said. "There is the very devil himself inthat litter."

  The camp was stoutly defended, but after a while the defenders wereforced to fly by superior force. Then the prince's men rushed uponthe litter, Drogo of Walderne foremost. They thought they had gotthe great earl.

  "Come out, Simon, thou devil, thou worst of traitors," they cried.

  Within were only the four shrinking, timid burgesses, and Drogo andhis band dragged them out, shrieking in vain that they were for theking, and cut them to pieces, poor unfortunates. But they did notfind Earl Simon, and only slew their own friends; and when theconfusion was over they looked down upon the battlefield, where oneglance showed them that the main battle was lost, and the barons inpossession of the field.

  In vain Edward besought his men, now much reduced in numbers, tomake another charge. They saw the enemy waiting with levelledlances to receive them, and felt that the position they were askedto assail was impregnable.

  Edward was a most affectionate son, and was very anxious to learnthe fate of his royal father, so he determined to force his way tothe priory at all hazards, and made a circuit of the town so as toreach the sacred pile from the unassailed quarter. Night was nowapproaching, and the prince's party had to fight their way at everystep with the victorious horsemen of the barons. Edward's giantstrength and long sweeping sword made him a way over heaps ofcorpses strewn before him, but others were less fortunate.

  Hard by the river, on the eastern side of the town, and beneath thehigh cliffs which rise almost precipitously to the isolated groupof downs, there was a terrible charge, a hand-to-hand melee. Drogoof Walderne and Harengod, his sword red with blood, his lancecouched, was confronted here by a knight in sable armour, his solecognisance--the White Cross.

  They rode at each other. Drogo's lance grazed his opponent'scasque: the unknown knight drove his missile through corselet andbreast, and Drogo went down crashing from his steed. The combatwent sweeping on past them, the desperate foes fighting as theyrode. Edward and his horsemen, less and less in number each minute,still riding for the priory, straining every nerve to reach it; theothers assailing them at every turn.

  The Earl of Warrenne, William of Valence, Guy of Lusignan, and EarlBigod of Norwich, were separated from the rest of the band, and,despairing of attaining the prince again, rode across the lowalluvial flats for Pevensey.

  By God, who is over us, much did they sin,That let pass o'er sea the Earl of Warrene,Much hath he robbed us, by moor and by fen,Our gold and our silver he carried hath henne {35};

  Sang the citizens of Lewes afterwards of black Earl John.

  Let us return in the shadows of the evening, while the prince gainsthe priory with a few of his followers, by sheer valour, while therest are drowned in the river, or lost in the marshes--let usreturn to the place where Drogo de Harengod went down before anunknown foe.

  "Dost thou know me?" said the conqueror, bending over the dying manand raising his helm.

  "Art thou alive, or a ghost?" says a conscience-stricken voice.

  "Nay, I am Hubert of Walderne, the cousin thou hast hated andinjured. But our quarrel is settled now; thou art a dying man."

  "Nay, not dying. I must live to repent.

  "Oh, the key! the key! Throw this key into the moat!

  "Nay, he will haunt me. Tell me, am I really dying? Nay, if it costme my soul, I will not baulk my vengeance. Besides, it is too late!

  "Martin!"

  A rush of blood came to his lips, and Drogo of Harengod fell back acorpse on the blood-stained grass. Hubert gazed upon him a moment,then loosed the armour to give him air, but it was all over.

  "God rest his soul. Our enmity is over, but what did he mean aboutthe key?"

  He felt in the gypsire of the dead enemy. There was a key,unsightly, rusty, and heavy.

  "Why, I remember this key. It is the key of the dungeon atWalderne. Whom can he have got there? Why is it here? What did hemean about Martin?"

  A horrible dread seized him--he could not resist the impulse whichcame upon him to ride to Walderne at once. He sought Earl Simon,obtained a troop, and started immediately through the dark andgloomy forest for Walderne.