The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune

by A. D. Crake

  CHAPTER X. EVEN THE TIGER LOVES ITS CUB.

  We must once more use the privilege of an author, and transport ourreaders from the distant forest to Aescendune, speedily as theGenius of the Lamp transported the palace of Aladdin.

  The November evening was setting in drearily, the fast-fadinggleams of daylight were disappearing amidst thickly-fallingsnow--it was the hour when tired mortals shut doors and windows,turn instinctively to the cheerful hearth, and while they hear thewind roar without, thank God they are sheltered from its blasts;and perhaps think with some pity of poor homeless wanderers, inpathless forests, or on dismal moors.

  Troop after troop, the wearied and dispirited Normans returned fromtheir fruitless chase, till all were safely housed, save oneunhappy band. First came the wicked old baron himself, with all histwenty retainers, safe and sound, then Bernard de Torci, who hadwon to himself an English wife and the manor of Wylmcotte; thenGilbert D'Aubyn of Bearleigh. One after another the troops came infrom the outer darkness, white with snow, and shook their mantlesand jerkins in the guard chamber within the entrance archway, afterwhich their leaders repaired to the bathroom--for, in their way,the Norman warriors were luxurious--and afterwards, perfumed andanointed, donned the festal robes in which they hoped to dazzle theeyes of the fair, if such were to be found in the Castle ofAescendune.

  The hour appointed for the banquet was the first hour of thenight--six in the evening we should now call it--and the Majordomosought his lord.

  He found him risen from the bath and vested in flowing robes ofrichest texture, with an ermine mantle around his shoulders.

  "The banquet is ready, my lord, but the guests have not allarrived."

  "Has my son returned?"

  "He has not come back yet, my lord. Shall I delay the banquet?"

  "Are all the others in?"

  "Sir Eustace de Senville has not yet come from the forest."

  "Let it be delayed half an hour."

  The old servant shook his head--the roast meats were done to aturn, and he feared the reputation of the ten cooks, who had toiledthe long afternoon before the fires, might suffer.

  The baron paced impatiently up and down his chamber.

  There is some redeeming feature in the hearts of the worst of us:even Lady Macbeth could not herself slay King Duncan, "he looked solike her father," and the one weak point in the armour of proof--ofselfishness, we should say--which encrusted Hugo de Malville, washis love for his son.

  Etienne was to him as the apple of his eye; and little wonder--thequalities which, we doubt not, nay, we trust, disfigure thatamiable youth in the minds of our gentle readers--his pride, hiscarelessness for the bodily or mental sufferings of others--allthese things were nought to the Norman noble, he loved to see hisson stark and fierce, and smiled as he heard of deeds which bettermen would have sternly refused to condone.

  He almost longed for war--for some rebellion on the part of theEnglish--that Etienne might flesh his sword and win his spurs, and,as we see, that wish, at least, was gratified.

  But it was this very love for his own son which had made the oldbaron so unloving a stepfather to Wilfred, in whom he could onlysee the rival of his boy, and both mother and son were obstacles tobe removed--the old sinner did not sin for himself, it must beconfessed.

  Half an hour passed. Sir Eustace, the last who arrived that night,came in, and the baron, to the great relief of the cooks, descendedto the hall.

  Still he was far too proud and jealous of his dignity to show hisanxiety in voice or mien. He descended calmly to the banquet, thechaplain blessed the food, and the tired and hungry nobles fell toat the high table, while their retainers feasted below.

  It was a bright and dazzling scene: at the head of the hall sat theBaron and his chief guests upon a platform. Above it hung trophiesof war or the chase--arms borne in many a conflict, swords, spears,arrows--to each of which some legend was attached; the antlers ofthe giant stag, the tusk of the wild boar, the head and bill ofsome long-necked heron.

  Below, at right angles to the high table, were three other tables,not fixtures, but composed of boards spread over trestles, andcovered with coarse white cloths. At these sat the retainers, themen whose rank did not entitle them to sit at the high table, tothe number of some three hundred--there was not an Englishmanamongst them.

  All day long the cooks and their menials had groaned before thehuge fires, where they roasted deer, sheep, oxen, swine, and thelike, and now they bore the joints in procession around the tables,and the guests cut off--with the knives which hung at theirgirdles, and which, perchance, had been more than once stained bythe blood of their foes--such portion of the meat as they fancied,transferred it to their trenchers, and ate it without the aid offorks; nevertheless there were napkins whereon to wipe their handswhen they had done.

  The leaders sat at the high table--the leaders of each of thenumerous bands which had scoured the forest; one, and only one, wasabsent, and he was, as our readers know, Etienne, son of Hugo.

  Naught was said until hunger and thirst were appeased--until basinswere brought round with scented water, in which our lords washedtheir fingers, and after waving them gracefully in the air, driedthem with the delicate napkins with which they were girded: andrich wines were poured into goblets of gold and silver; then Hugoasked, from his seat upon the dais:

  "What success has gladdened our arms today? Doubtless some of ourknights have news for us."

  "I have seen no foe, save the wild boar and a stray wolf, althoughI have tramped the forest from the rising to the setting sun," saidSir Bernard.

  "Nor I," "nor I," said one after the other around the table.

  The old man, Eustace de Senville, was silent till all had spoken;then, like Nestor of old, wise, and qualified by age to act ascounsellor, he let fall his weighty words, which fell from his lipslike the flakes of thick falling snow without.

  "My lot hath been different," he said; "it fell to me to explorethe quarter of the forest next to that assigned to the son of ourhost. We had already completed our task, and were on the point ofreturning homewards, for the sun was already low, when we heard theblast of a horn appealing to us for aid."

  "From what quarter?" said the baron.

  "That assigned to your son. We at once hastened to render help,and, after some fruitless search, heard the horn once more, and,guided by its sound, reached a spot where the groans of one in painfell upon our ear, amidst the increasing darkness of the forest. Wefound the victim, his horn by his side, dead--pierced through by anarrow. The life had been ebbing when, hearing our signals, he hadstriven with his last breath to summon us that he might not diealone, and, indeed, his face looked as one who had died in awfulfear with some gruesome sight before his eyes."

  "To what party did he belong?"

  "He wore the badge of Aescendune, he was short of stature, oneshoulder somewhat higher than the other, and he wore this belt,which we have brought home in hopes he may be known thereby."

  The baron took the belt, with hands which shook in spite of all hisefforts at composure, and knew it to belong to one Torquelle, whohad been in attendance on his son.

  "Etienne hath found foes," he said in a voice which he strove torender calm.

  "A light snow had begun to fall," continued the speaker, "the sunwas already very low, and it was dusk in the woods, when our dogsbegan to growl. Dimly in the shade we saw three or four beingscreeping forward, as if studying the ground carefully. We watchedthem with fear, doubting if they were of this world."

  "Why?"

  "They had horns, and tails, and huge ears."

  "They say the wood is haunted by wood demons."

  "Then thou wert afraid to follow?"

  "We dare fight men, we fear none who breathe; but we shrink fromSatan and his hosts. Still we sent a flight of arrows, and theyvanished."

  "Was the distance near enough to do execution?"

  "Scarcely, had they been men; it mattered not if they were whatthey appeared to be."

&n
bsp; Strange to say, the idea that the foe had been masquerading for thepurpose of frightening them, never struck our Normans.

  "When they had gone, we approached the spot," continued the agedknight of Senville, "and found foot marks in the snow, which, fromthe previous fall, lay lightly on the ground, for the storm oftonight had hardly set in. There were marks of one of our parties,and we saw by torchlight strange footprints, as if they had beentracked by two or three daring foes--we thought we distinguishedhoof marks."

  A terrible silence fell upon the whole assembly, as the idea thatthey had been contending with demons, and not with mortals, fellupon them, and perhaps the bravest would have hesitated to enterthe forest that night, however dire the need.

  The baron knew this; yet when supper was over, when the hour ofretiring to rest had arrived, and still there were no signs of hisson, he selected a band of trusty warriors, who, in spite of thestory of the demons, which Eustace's men had made known throughoutthe castle, would not be untrue to their lord.

  And with these men, while all the rest slept, he penetrated theforest, and with torches and horns made night hideous, until coldand fatigue drove him home, his heart heavier than before, hisdesire unaccomplished.

  He threw himself upon his couch, only to be haunted by dreadfuldreams, in which he saw his son surrounded by the demons of SirEustace's tale, and in every other variety of danger or distress,like the constantly shifting scenes of a modern theatre.

  And in all these dreams the "Dismal Swamp" played a prominent part.

  Day broke at last, cold but bright; the first beams of the sungladdened the castle, reflected keenly from the white ground, thetrees hung with frozen snow, which had broken many branches to theground--the winter seemed to have come in good earnest.

  Early in the day, a hundred men, well armed and mounted, led by thebaron, again entered the forest. They reached, in due course, thepart of the wood assigned to Etienne on the previous day.

  The snow had effaced all tracks, but Sir Eustace speedily found thespot where he had left the dead man, and there was the corpse,stiff and frozen, but it was evident that the knight's descriptiongiven the previous evening was all too correct. The man had died ingreat horror and anguish; the arrow yet remained in his body. Itwas, as in the earlier cases, one of English make--a clumsy shaft,unlike the polished Norman workmanship.

  "We must search the whole district," said the baron; "but we hadbetter keep together."

  Every one shared this opinion.

  It was the unknown danger that troubled them, the thought thatsupernatural powers were arrayed against them, that the English hadcalled the fiends to their aid, which terrified these hardenedwarriors.

  If the English had, indeed, sought by ghostly disguise to affrighttheir foes, they had well succeeded.

  It was late in the morning before the glade was reached where ourparty had rested, and the body of the man first slain wasdiscovered, and the whole band gathered around it.

  Like the others, he had fallen by an English arrow.

  The fear that all their friends had thus fallen became general, andexpressed itself in their countenances. The baron was livid.

  There was no possibility of tracing the party, the snow had coveredthe footsteps; but evidence was soon found in the fragments offood--the remains of the carcase of the wild boar--to show thatthis had been the midday rest, and that here the very beginning ofhostilities had taken place.

  They returned thence to the spot where Torquelle was slain. Fearand trembling seized many of the baron's warriors as they gazedupon those distorted features--fear, mingled with dread--somysterious were the circumstances. They buried the body as decentlyas time permitted, and continued their course until they came uponanother corpse slain in like manner.

  Horror increased: at every stage the baron feared to find the deadbody of his son. They still pursued the same line: it led to theedge of the Dismal Swamp, and there it ended.

  They stood gazing upon that desolate wilderness.

  "No human being could penetrate there," said Sir Bernard.

  "Try."

  Hugo advanced, dismounting for the purpose, but sank almostdirectly in a quagmire covered with snow, and was drawn out withdifficulty.

  "No, the place is enchanted."

  "Guarded by fiends."

  "Listen."

  Cries as of men and dogs came across the waste.

  "They are the demons of the pit, who would lead us into thequagmires."

  "They sound like human voices."

  "Come what will, if hard frost will but freeze the ground, we willsearch the place," said the baron. "Come, my men, we can do nomore; let us return--it is near nightfall."

  This welcome order was obeyed by all the Normans with the greatestalacrity, for they dreaded the approach of night, and the terrorsof the forest, which had already proved so fatal to theircompanions.

  No further mishap befell them; weary and footsore they reached thecastle, but the heaviest heart amongst them was that of Hugo.