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The Betrothed

by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #6490 · 776,070 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Betrothed

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6490]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, David Moynihan, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


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Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





THE BETROTHED




INTRODUCTION--(1832.)


The Tales of the Crusaders was determined upon as the title of the
following series of the Novels, rather by the advice of the few
friends whom, death has now rendered still fewer, than by the
author's own taste. Not but that he saw plainly enough the
interest which might be excited by the very name of the Crusaders,
but he was conscious at the same time that that interest was of a
character which it might be more easy to create than to satisfy,
and that by the mention of so magnificent a subject each reader
might be induced to call up to his imagination a sketch so
extensive and so grand that it might not be in the power of the
author to fill it up, who would thus stand in the predicament of
the dwarf bringing with him a standard to measure his own stature,
and showing himself, therefore, says Sterne, "a dwarf more ways
than one."

It is a fact, if it were worth while to examine it, that the
publisher and author, however much their general interests are the
same, may be said to differ so far as title pages are concerned;
and it is a secret of the tale-telling art, if it could be termed
a secret worth knowing, that a taking-title, as it is called, best
answers the purpose of the bookseller, since it often goes far to
cover his risk, and sells an edition not unfrequently before the
public have well seen it. But the author ought to seek more
permanent fame, and wish that his work, when its leaves are first
cut open, should be at least fairly judged of. Thus many of the
best novelists have been anxious to give their works such titles
as render it out of the reader's power to conjecture their
contents, until they should have an opportunity of reading them.

All this did not prevent the Tales of the Crusaders from being the
title fixed on; and the celebrated year of projects (eighteen
hundred and twenty-five) being the time of publication, an
introduction was prefixed according to the humour of the day.



The first tale of the series was influenced in its structure,
rather by the wish to avoid the general expectations which might
be formed from the title, than to comply with any one of them, and
so disappoint the rest. The story was, therefore, less an incident
belonging to the Crusades, than one which was occasioned by the
singular cast of mind introduced and spread wide by those
memorable undertakings. The confusion among families was not the
least concomitant evil of the extraordinary preponderance of this
superstition. It was no unusual thing for a Crusader, returning
from his long toils of war and pilgrimage, to find his family
augmented by some young off-shoot, of whom the deserted matron
could give no very accurate account, or perhaps to find his
marriage-bed filled, and that, instead of becoming nurse to an old
man, his household dame had preferred being the lady-love of a
young one. Numerous are the stories of this kind told in different
parts of Europe; and the returned knight or baron, according to
his temper, sat down good naturedly contented with the account
which his lady gave of a doubtful matter, or called in blood and
fire to vindicate his honour, which, after all, had been
endangered chiefly by his forsaking his household gods to seek
adventures in Palestine.

Scottish tradition, quoted, I think, in some part of the Border
Minstrelsy, ascribes to the clan of Tweedie, a family once stout
and warlike, a descent which would not have misbecome a hero of
antiquity. A baron, somewhat elderly we may suppose, had wedded a
buxom young lady, and some months after their union he left her to
ply the distaff alone in his old tower, among the mountains of the
county of Peebles, near the sources of the Tweed. He returned
after seven or eight years, no uncommon space for a pilgrimage to
Palestine, and found his family had not been lonely in his
absence, the lady having; been cheered by the arrival of a
stranger, (of whose approach she could give the best account of
any one,) who hung on her skirts, and called her mammy, and was
just such as the baron would have longed to call his son, but that
he could by no means make his age correspond, according to the
doctrine of civilians, with his own departure for Palestine. He
applied to his wife, therefore, for the solution of this dilemma.
The lady, after many floods of tears, which she had reserved for
the occasion, informed the honest gentleman, that, walking one day
alone by the banks of the infant river, a human form arose from a
deep eddy, still known and termed Tweed-pool, who deigned to
inform her that he was the tutelar genius of the stream, and,
_bongre malgre_, became the father of the sturdy fellow,
whose appearance had so much surprised her husband. This story,
however suitable to Pagan times, would have met with full credence
from few of the baron's contemporaries, but the wife was young and
beautiful, the husband old and in his dotage; her family (the
Frazers, it is believed) were powerful and warlike, and the baron
had had fighting enough in the holy wars. The event was, that he
believed, or seemed to believe, the tale, and remained contented
with the child with whom his wife and the Tweed had generously
presented him. The only circumstance which preserved the memory of
the incident was, that the youth retained the name of Tweed, or
Tweedie. The baron, meanwhile, could not, as the old Scotch song
says, "Keep the cradle rowing," and the Tweed apparently thought
one natural son was family enough for a decent Presbyterian lover;
and so little gall had the baron in his composition, that having
bred up the young Tweed as his heir while he lived, he left him in
that capacity when he died, and the son of the river-god founded
the family of Drummelzier and others, from whom have flowed, in
the phrase of the Ettrick Shepherd, "many a brave fellow, and many
a bauld feat."

The tale of the Noble Moringer is somewhat of the same nature--it
exists in a collection of German popular songs, entitled, Sammlung
Deutschen Volkslieder, Berlin, 1807; published by Messrs. Busching
and Von der Hagen. The song is supposed to be extracted from a
manuscript chronicle of Nicholas Thomann, chaplain to St. Leonard
in Wissenhorn, and dated 1533. The ballad, which is popular in
Germany, is supposed from the language, to have been composed in
the fifteenth century. The Noble Moringer, a powerful baron of
Germany, about to set out on a pilgrimage to the land of St.
Thomas, with the geography of which we are not made acquainted,
resolves to commit his castle, dominions, and lady, to the vassal
who should pledge him to keep watch over them till the seven years
of his pilgrimage were accomplished. His chamberlain, an elderly
and a cautious man, declines the trust, observing, that seven
days, instead of seven years, would be the utmost space to which
he would consent to pledge himself for the fidelity of any woman.
The esquire of the Noble Moringer confidently accepts the trust
refused by the chamberlain, and the baron departs on his
pilgrimage. The seven years are now elapsed, all save a single day
and night, when, behold, a vision descends on the noble pilgrim as
he sleeps in the land of the stranger.

  "It was the noble Moringer, within an orchard slept,
  When on the Baron's slumbering sense a boding vision crept,
  And whispered in his ear a voice,'
  'Tis time. Sir Knight, to wake--
  Thy lady and thy heritage another master take.

  "'Thy tower another banner knows, thy steeds another rein,
  And stoop them to another's will, thy gallant vassal train;
  And she, the lady of thy love, so faithful once and fair,
  This night, within thy father's hall, she weds Marstetten's heir.'"

The Moringer starts up and prays to his patron St. Thomas, to
rescue him from the impending shame, which his devotion to his
patron had placed him in danger of incurring. St. Thomas, who must
have felt the justice of the imputation, performs a miracle. The
Moringer's senses were drenched in oblivion, and when he waked he
lay in a well-known spot of his own domain; on his right the
Castle of his fathers, and on his left the mill, which, as usual,
was built not far distant from the Castle.

  "He leaned upon his pilgrim's staff, and to the mill he drew--
  So altered was his goodly form that none their master knew.
  The baron to the miller said, 'Good friend, for charity,
  Tell a poor pilgrim, in your land, what tidings may there be?'

  "The miller answered him again--'He knew of little news,
  Save that the lady of the land did a new bridegroom choose;
  Her husband died in distant land, such is the constant word,
  His death sits heavy on our souls, he was a worthy lord.

  "'Of him I held the little mill, which wins me living free--
  God rest the baron in his grave, he aye was kind to me!
  And when St. Martin's tide comes round, and millers take their toll,
  The priest that prays for Moringer shall have both cope and stole.'"

The baron proceeds to the Castle gate, which is bolted to prevent
intrusion, while the inside of the mansion rung with preparations
for the marriage of the lady. The pilgrim prayed the porter for
entrance, conjuring him by his own sufferings, and for the sake of
the late Moringer; by the orders of his lady, the warder gave him
admittance.

  "Then up the hall paced Moringer, his step was sad and slow;
  It sat full heavy on his heart, none seemed their lord to know.
  He sat him on a lowly bench, oppressed with wo and wrong;
  Short while he sat, but ne'er to him seemed little space so long.

  "Now spent was day, and feasting o'er, and come was evening hour,
  The time was nigh when new made brides retire to nuptial bower,
  'Our Castle's wont,' a bride's man said, 'hath been both firm and long--
  No guest to harbour in our halls till he shall chant a song.'"

When thus called upon, the disguised baron sung the following
melancholy ditty:--

  "'Chill flows the lay of frozen age,' 'twas thus the pilgrim sung,
  'Nor golden mead, nor garment gay, unlocks his heavy tongue.
  Once did I sit, thou bridegroom gay, at board as rich as thine,
  And by my side as fair a bride, with all her charms, was mine.

  "'But time traced furrows on my face, and I grew silver hair'd,
  For locks of brown, and cheeks of youth, she left this brow and beard;
  Once rich, but now a palmer poor, I tread life's latest stage,
  And mingle with your bridal mirth the lay of frozen age.'"

The lady, moved at the doleful recollections which the palmer's
song recalled, sent to him a cup of wine. The palmer, having
exhausted the goblet, returned it, and having first dropped in the
cup his nuptial ring, requested the lady to pledge her venerable
guest.

  "The ring hath caught the lady's eye, she views it close and near,
  Then might you hear her shriek aloud, 'The Moringer is here!'
  Then might you see her start from seat, while tears in torrents fell,
  But if she wept for joy or wo, the ladies best can tell.

  "Full loud she utter'd thanks to Heaven, and every saintly power,
  That had restored the Moringer before the midnight hour;
  And loud she utter'd vow on vow, that never was there bride,
  That had like her preserved her troth, or been so sorely tried.

  "'Yes, here I claim the praise,' she said, 'to constant matrons due,
  Who keep the troth, that they have plight, so stedfastly and true;
  For count the term howe'er you will, so that you count aright,
  Seven twelvemonths and a day are out when bells toll twelve to-night.'

   "It was Marstetten then rose up, his falchion there he drew,
   He kneeled before The Moringer, and down his weapon threw;
   'My oath and knightly faith are broke,' these were the words he said;
   'Then take, my liege, thy vassal's sword, and take thy vassal's head.

   "The noble Moringer, he smiled, and then aloud did say,
   'He gathers wisdom that hath roamed seven twelvemonths and a day,
   My daughter now hath fifteen years, fame speaks her sweet and fair;
   I give her for the bride you lose, and name her for my heir.

   "'The young bridegroom hath youthful bride, the old bridegroom the old,
   Whose faith were kept till term and tide so punctually were told.
   But blessings on the warder kind that oped my castle gate,
   For had I come at morrow tide, I came a day too late.'"

There is also, in the rich field of German romance, another
edition of this story, which has been converted by M. Tieck (whose
labours of that kind have been so remarkable) into the subject of
one of his romantic dramas. It is, however, unnecessary to detail
it, as the present author adopted his idea of the tale chiefly
from the edition preserved in the mansion of Haighhall, of old the
mansion-house of the family of Braidshaigh, now possessed by their
descendants on the female side, the Earls of Balcarras. The story
greatly resembles that of the Noble Moringer, only there is no
miracle of St. Thomas to shock the belief of good Protestants. I
am permitted, by my noble friends, the lord and lady of Haighhall,
to print the following extract from the family genealogy.

   Sir William Bradshaghe 2d
   Sone to Sr John was a
   great traveller and a
   Souldyer and married
   To
   Mabell daughter and
   Sole heire of Hugh
   Noris de Haghe and
   Blackrode and had issue
   EN. 8. E 2.
   of this Mabel is a story by tradition of undouted
   verity that in Sr William Bradshage's absence
   (being 10 yeares away in the wares) she
   married a welsh kt. Sr William retorninge
   from the wars came in a Palmers habit amongst
   the Poore to haghe. Who when she saw &
   congetringe that that he favoured her former
   husband wept, for which the kt chasticed her
   at wich Sr William went and made him selfe
   Knawne to his Tennants in wch space the kt
   fled, but neare to Newton Parke Sr William overtooke
   him and slue him. The said Dame
   Mabell was enjoyned by her confessor to
   doe Pennances by going onest every week
   barefout and bare legg'd to a Crosse ner Wigan
   from the haghe wilest she lived & is called
   Mabb to this day; & ther monument Lyes
   in wigan Church as you see ther Portrd.
   An: Dom: 1315.

There were many vestiges around Haighhall, both of the Catholic
penances of the Lady Mabel, and the history of this unfortunate
transaction in particular; the whole history was within the memory
of man portrayed upon a glass window in the hall, where
unfortunately it has not been preserved. Mab's Cross is still
extant. An old ruinous building is said to have been the place
where the Lady Mabel was condemned to render penance, by walking
hither from Haighhall barefooted and barelegged for the
performance of her devotions. This relic, to which an anecdote so
curious is annexed, is now unfortunately ruinous. Time and
whitewash, says Mr. Roby, have altogether defaced the effigies of
the knight and lady on the tomb. The particulars are preserved in
Mr. Roby's Traditions of Lancashire, [Footnote: A very elegant
work, 2 vols. 1829. By J. Roby, M.R.S.L.] to which the reader is
referred for further particulars. It does not appear that Sir
William Braidshaigh was irreparably offended against the too hasty
Lady Mabel, although he certainly showed himself of a more fiery
mould than the Scottish and German barons who were heroes of the
former tales. The tradition, which the author knew very early in
life, was told to him by the late Lady Balcarras. He was so much
struck with it, that being at that time profuse of legendary lore,
he inserted it in the shape of a note to Waverley, the first of
his romantic offences. Had he then known, as he now does, the
value of such a story, it is likely that, as directed in the
inimitable receipt for making an epic poem, preserved in the
Guardian, he would have kept it for some future opportunity.

As, however, the tale had not been completely told, and was a very
interesting one, and as it was sufficiently interwoven with the
Crusades, the wars between the Welsh and the Norman lords of the
Marches was selected as a period when all freedoms might be taken
with the strict truth of history without encountering any well
known fact which might render the narrative improbable. Perhaps,
however, the period which vindicates the probability of the tale,
will, with its wars and murders, be best found described in the
following passage of Gryffyth Ap Edwin's wars.

"This prince in conjunction with Algar, Earl of Chester, who had
been banished from England as a traitor, in the reign of Edward
the Confessor, marched into Herefordshire and wasted all that
fertile country with fire and sword, to revenge the death of his
brother Rhees, whose head had been brought to Edward in pursuance
of an order sent by the King on account of the depredations which
he had committed against the English on the borders. To stop these
ravages the Earl of Hereford, who was nephew to Edward, advanced
with an army, not of English alone, but of mercenary Normans and
French, whom he had entertained in his service, against Gryffyth
and Algar. He met them near Hereford, and offered them battle,
which the Welsh monarch, who had won five pitched battles before,
and never had fought without conquering, joyfully accepted. The
earl had commanded his English forces to fight on horseback, in
imitation of the Normans, against their usual custom; but the
Welsh making a furious and desperate charge, that nobleman
himself, and the foreign cavalry led by him, were so daunted at
the view of them, that they shamefully fled without fighting;
which being seen by the English, they also turned their backs on
the enemy, who, having killed or wounded as many of them as they
could come up with in their flight, entered triumphantly into
Hereford, spoiled and fired the city, razed the walls to the
ground, slaughtered some of the citizens, led many of them
captive, and (to use the words of the Welsh Chronicle) left
nothing in the town but blood and ashes. After this exploit they
immediately returned into Wales, undoubtedly from a desire of
securing their prisoners, and the rich plunder they had gained.
The King of England hereupon commanded Earl Harold to collect a
great army from all parts of the kingdom, and assembling them at
Gloucester, advanced from thence to invade the dominions of
Gryffyth in North Wales. He performed his orders, and penetrated
into that country without resistance from the Welsh; Gryffyth and
Algar returning into some parts of South Wales. What were their
reasons for this conduct we are not well informed; nor why Harold
did not pursue his advantage against them; but it appears that he
thought it more advisable at this time to treat with, than subdue,
them; for he left North Wales, and employed himself in rebuilding
the walls of Hereford, while negotiations were carrying on with
Gryffyth which soon after produced the restoration of Algar, and a
peace with that king, not very honourable to England, as he made
no satisfaction for the mischief he had done in the war, nor any
submissions to Edward. Harold must doubtless have had some private
and forcible motives to conclude such a treaty. The very next year the
Welsh monarch, upon what quarrel we, know not, made a new incursion
into England, and killed the Bishop of Hereford, the Sheriff of the county,
and many more of the English, both ecclesiastics and laymen. Edward
was counselled by Harold, and Leofrick, Earl of Mercia, to make
peace with him again; which he again broke; nor could he be
restrained by any means, from these barbarous inroads, before the
year one, thousand and sixty-three; when Edward, whose patience
and pacific disposition had been too much abused, commissioned
Harold to assemble the whole strength of the kingdom, and make war
upon him in his own country till he had subdued or destroyed him.
That general acted so vigorously, and with so much celerity, that
he had like to have surprised him in his palace: but just before
the English forces arrived at his gate, having notice of the
danger that threatened him, and seeing no other means of safety,
he threw himself with a few of his household into one of his ships
which happened at the instant to be ready to sail and put to
sea."--LYTTLETON'S _Hist. of England_, vol. ii. p. 338.

This passage will be found to bear a general resemblance to the
fictitious tale told, in the Romance.

ABBOTSFORD, 1_st June_, 1832.




INTRODUCTION.

MINUTES OF SEDERUNT OF A GENERAL MEETING OF THE SHAREHOLDERS
DESIGNING TO FORM A JOINT-STOCK COMPANY, UNITED FOR THE PURPOSE OF
WRITING AND PUBLISHING THE CLASS OF WORKS CALLED THE WAVERLEY
NOVELS,

HELD IN THE WATERLOO TAVERN, REGENT'S BRIDGE, EDINBURGH, 1_st
June_, 1825.

[The reader must have remarked, that the various editions of the
proceedings at this meeting were given in the public papers with
rather more than usual inaccuracy. The cause of this was no ill-
timed delicacy on the part of the gentlemen of the press to assert
their privilege of universal presence wherever a few are met
together, and to commit to the public prints whatever may then and
there pass of the most private nature. But very unusual and
arbitrary methods were resorted to on the present occasion to
prevent the reporters using a right which is generally conceded to
them by almost all meetings, whether of a political or commercial
description. Our own reporter, indeed, was bold enough to secrete
himself under the Secretary's table, and was not discovered till
the meeting was well-nigh over. We are sorry to say, he suffered
much in person from fists and toes, and two or three principal
pages were torn out of his note-book, which occasions his report
to break off abruptly. We cannot but consider this behaviour as
more particularly illiberal on the part of men who are themselves
a kind of gentlemen of the press; and they ought to consider
themselves as fortunate that the misused reporter has sought no
other vengeance than from the tone of acidity with which he has
seasoned his account of their proceedings.--_Edinburgh
Newspaper_.]

A meeting of the gentlemen and others interested in the celebrated
publications called the Waverley Novels, having been called by
public advertisement, the same was respectably attended by various
literary characters of eminence. And it being in the first place
understood that individuals were to be denominated by the names
assigned to them in the publications in question, the Eidolon, or
image of the author, was unanimously called to the chair, and
Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq. of Monkbarns, was requested to act as
Secretary.

The Preses then addressed the meeting to the following purpose:--

"Gentlemen, I need scarcely remind you, that we have a joint
interest in the valuable property which has accumulated under our
common labours. While the public have been idly engaged in
ascribing to one individual or another the immense mass of various
matter, which the labours of many had accumulated, you, gentlemen,
well know, that every person in this numerous assembly has had his
share in the honours and profits of our common success. It is,
indeed, to me a mystery, how the sharp-sighted could suppose so
huge a mass of sense and nonsense, jest and earnest, humorous and
pathetic, good, bad, and indifferent, amounting to scores of
volumes, could be the work of one hand, when we know the doctrine
so well laid down by the immortal Adam Smith, concerning the
division of labour. Were those who entertained an opinion so
strange, not wise enough to know, that it requires twenty pairs of
hands to make a thing so trifling as a pin--twenty couple of dogs
to kill an animal so insignificant as a fox?--"

"Hout, man!" said a stout countryman, "I have a grew-bitch at home
will worry the best tod in Pomoragrains, before ye could say,
Dumpling."

"Who is that person?" said the Preses, with some warmth, as it
appeared to us.

"A son of Dandy Dinmont's," answered the unabashed rustic. "God,
ye may mind him, I think!--ane o' the best in your aught, I
reckon. And, ye see, I am come into the farm, and maybe something
mair, and a whoen shares in this buik-trade of yours."

"Well, well," replied the Preses, "peace, I pray thee, peace.
Gentlemen, when thus interrupted, I was on the point of
introducing the business of this meeting, being, as is known to
most of you, the discussion of a proposition now on your table,
which I myself had the honour to suggest at last meeting, namely,
that we do apply to the Legislature for an Act of Parliament in
ordinary, to associate us into a corporate body, and give us a
_personi standi in judicio_, with full power to prosecute and
bring to conviction all encroachers upon our exclusive privilege,
in the manner therein to be made and provided. In a letter from
the ingenious Mr. Dousterswivel which I have received---"

Oldbuck, warmly--"I object to that fellow's name being mentioned;
he is a common swindler."

"For shame, Mr. Oldbuck," said the Preses, "to use such terms
respecting the ingenious inventor of the great patent machine
erected at Groningen, where they put in raw hemp at one end, and
take out ruffled shirts at the other, without the aid of hackle or
rippling-comb--loom, shuttle, or weaver--scissors, needle, or
seamstress. He had just completed it, by the addition of a piece
of machinery to perform the work of the laundress; but when it was
exhibited before his honour the burgomaster, it had the
inconvenience of heating the smoothing-irons red-hot; excepting
which, the experiment was entirely satisfactory. He will become as
rich as a Jew."

"Well," added Mr. Oldbuck, "if the scoundrel--"

"Scoundrel, Mr. Oldbuck," said the Preses, "is a most unseemly
expression, and I must call you to order. Mr. Dousterswivel is
only an eccentric genius."

"Pretty much the same in the Greek," muttered Mr. Oldbuck; and
then said aloud, "and if this eccentric genius has work enough in
singeing the Dutchman's linen, what the devil has he to do here?"

"Why, he is of opinion, that at the expense of a little mechanism,
some part of the labour of composing these novels might be saved
by the use of steam." There was a murmur of disapprobation at this
proposal, and the words, "Blown up," and "Bread taken out of our
mouths," and "They might as well construct a steam parson," were
whispered. And it was not without repeated calls to order, that
the Preses obtained an opportunity of resuming his address.

"Order!--Order! Pray, support the chair. Hear, hear, hear the
chair!"

"Gentlemen, it is to be premised, that this mechanical operation
can only apply to those parts of the narrative which are at
present composed out of commonplaces, such as the love-speeches of
the hero, the description of the heroine's person, the moral
observations of all sorts, and the distribution of happiness at
the conclusion of the piece. Mr. Dousterswivel has sent me some
drawings, which go far to show, that by placing the words and
phrases technically employed on these subjects, in a sort of
framework, like that of the Sage of Laputa, and changing them by
such a mechanical process as that by which weavers of damask alter
their patterns, many new and happy combinations cannot fail to
occur, while the author, tired of pumping his own brains, may have
an agreeable relaxation in the use of his fingers."

"I speak for information, Mr. Preses," said the Rev. Mr. Lawrence
Templeton; "but I am inclined to suppose the late publication of
Walladmor to have been the work of Dousterswivel, by the help of
the steam-engine." [Footnote: A Romance, by the Author of
Waverley, having been expected about this time at the great
commercial mart of literature, the Fair of Leipsic, an ingenious
gentleman of Germany, finding that none such appeared, was so kind
as to supply its place with a work, in three volumes, called
Walladmor, to which he prefixed the Christian and surname at full
length. The character of this work is given with tolerable
fairness in the text. ]

"For shame, Mr. Templeton," said the Preses; "there are good
things in Walladmor, I assure you, had the writer known any thing
about the country in which he laid the scene."

"Or had he had the wit, like some of ourselves, to lay the scene
in such a remote or distant country that nobody should be able to
back-speer [Footnote: Scottish for cross-examine him.] him," said
Mr. Oldbuck.

"Why, as to that," said the Preses, "you must consider the thing
was got up for the German market, where folks are no better judges
of Welsh manners than of Welsh crw." [Footnote: The ale of the
ancient British is called crw in their native language.]

"I make it my prayer that this be not found the fault of our own
next venture," said Dr. Dryasdust, pointing to some books which
lay on the table. "I fear the manners expressed in that
'Betrothed' of ours, will scarce meet the approbation of the
Cymmerodion; I could have wished that Llhuyd had been looked into
--that Powel had been consulted--that Lewis's History had been
quoted, the preliminary dissertations particularly, in order to
give due weight to the work."

"Weight!" said Captain Clutterbuck; "by my soul, it is heavy
enough already, Doctor."

"Speak to the chair," said the Preses, rather peevishly.

"To the chair, then, I say it," said Captain Clutterbuck, "that
'The Betrothed' is heavy enough to break down the chair of John of
Gaunt, or Cador-Edris itself. I must add, however, that, in my
poor mind, 'The Talisman' goes more trippingly off." [Footnote:
This was an opinion universally entertained among the friends of
the author.]

"It is not for me to speak," said the worthy minister of Saint
Ronan's Well; "but yet I must say, that being so long engaged upon
the Siege of Ptolemais, my work ought to have been brought out,
humble though it be, before any other upon a similar subject at
least."

"Your Siege, Parson!" said Mr. Oldbuck, with great contempt; "will
you speak of your paltry prose-doings in my presence, whose great
Historical Poem, in twenty books, with notes in proportion, has
been postponed _ad Grcecas Kalendas?_" The Preses, who
appeared to suffer a great deal during this discussion, now spoke
with dignity and determination. "Gentlemen," he said, "this sort
of discussion is highly irregular. There is a question before you,
and to that, gentlemen, I must confine your attention. Priority of
publication, let me remind you, gentlemen, is always referred to
the Committee of Criticism, whose determination on such subjects
is without appeal. I declare I will leave the chair, if any more
extraneous matter be introduced.--And now, gentlemen, that we are
once more in order, I would wish to have some gentleman speak upon
the question, whether, as associated to carry on a joint-stock
trade in fictitious narrative, in prose and verse, we ought not to
be incorporated by Act of Parliament? What say you, gentlemen, to
the proposal? _Vis unita fortior_, is an old and true adage."

"_Societas mater discordiarum_, is a brocard as ancient and
as veritable," said Oldbuck, who seemed determined, on this
occasion, to be pleased with no proposal that was announced by the
chair.

"Come, Monkbarns," said the Preses, in his most coaxing manner,
"you have studied the monastic institutions deeply, and know there
must be a union of persons and talents to do any thing
respectable, and attain a due ascendance over the spirit of the
age. _Tres faciunt collegium_--it takes three monks to make a
convent."

"And nine tailors to make a man," replied Oldbuck, not in the
least softened in his opposition; "a quotation as much to the
purpose as the other."

"Come, come," said the Preses, "you know the Prince of Orange
said to Mr. Seymour, 'Without an association, we are a rope of
sand.'"

"I know," replied Oldbuck, "it would have been as seemly that none
of the old leaven had been displayed on this occasion, though you
be the author of a Jacobite novel. I know nothing of the Prince of
Orange after 1688; but I have heard a good deal of the immortal
William the Third."

"And to the best of my recollection," said Mr. Templeton,
whispering to Oldbuck, "it was Seymour made the remark to the
Prince, not the Princo to Seymour. But this is a specimen of our
friend's accuracy, poor gentleman: He trusts too much to his
memory! of late years--failing fast, sir--breaking up."

"And breaking down, too," said Mr. Oldbuck. "But what can you
expect of a man too fond of his own hasty and flashy compositions,
to take the assistance of men of reading and of solid parts?"

"No whispering--no caballing--no private business, gentlemen,"
said the unfortunate Preses, who reminded us somewhat of a
Highland drover engaged in gathering and keeping in the straight
road his excursive black cattle.

"I have not yet heard," he continued, "a single reasonable
objection to applying for the Act of Parliament, of which the
draught lies on the table. You must be aware that the extremes of
rude and of civilized society are, in these our days, on the point
of approaching to each other. In the patriarchal period, a man is
his own weaver, tailor, butcher, shoemaker, and so forth; and, in
the age of Stock-companies, as the present may be called, an
individual may be said, in one sense, to exercise the same
plurality of trades. In fact, a man who has dipt largely into
these speculations, may combine his own expenditure with the
improvement of his own income, just like the ingenious hydraulic
machine, which, by its very waste, raises its own supplies of
water. Such a person buys his bread from his own Baking Company,
his milk and cheese from his own Dairy Company, takes off a new
coat for the benefit of his own Clothing Company, illuminates his
house to advance his own Gas Establishment, and drinks an
additional bottle of wine for the benefit of the General Wine
Importation Company, of which he is himself a member. Every act,
which would otherwise be one of mere extravagance, is, to such a
person, seasoned with the _odor lucri_, and reconciled to
prudence. Even if the price of the article consumed be
extravagant, and the quality indifferent, the person, who is in a
manner his own customer, is only imposed upon for his own benefit.
Nay, if the Joint-stock Company of Undertakers shall unite with
the Medical Faculty, as proposed by the late facetious Doctor G--,
under the firm of Death and the Doctor, the shareholder might
contrive to secure to his heirs a handsome slice of his own death-
bed and funeral expenses. In short, Stock-Companies are the
fashion of the age, and an Incorporating Act will, I think, be
particularly useful in bringing back the body, over whom I have
the honour to preside, to a spirit of subordination, highly
necessary to success in every enterprise where joint wisdom,
talent, and labour, are to be employed. It is with regret that I
state, that, besides several differences amongst yourselves, I
have not myself for some time been treated with that deference
among you which circumstances entitled me to expect."

"_Hinc illa lachryma_," muttered Mr. Oldbuck.

"But," continued the Chairman, "I see other gentlemen impatient to
deliver their opinions, and I desire to stand in no man's way. I
therefore--my place in this chair forbidding me to originate the
motion--beg some gentleman may move a committee for revising the
draught of the bill now upon the table, and which has been duly
circulated among those having interest, and take the necessary
measures to bring it before the House early next session."

There was a short murmur in the meeting, and at length Mr. Oldbuck
again rose. "It seems, sir," he said, addressing the chair, "that
no one present is willing to make the motion you point at. I am
sorry no more qualified person has taken upon him to show any
reasons in the contrair, and that it has fallen on me, as we
Scotsmen say, to bell-the-cat with you; anent whilk phrase,
Pitscottie hath a pleasant jest of the great Earl of Angus--"

Here a gentleman whispered to the speaker, "Have a care of
Pitscottie" and, Mr. Oldbuck, as if taking the hint, went on.

"But that's neither here nor there--Well, gentlemen, to be short,
I think it unnecessary to enter into the general reasonings whilk
have this day been delivered, as I may say, _ex cathedra_;
nor will I charge our worthy Preses with an attempt to obtain over
us, _per ambages_, and under colour of an Act of Parliament,
a despotic authority, inconsistent with our freedom. But this I
will say, that times are so much changed above stairs, that
whereas last year you might have obtained an act incorporating a
Stock Company for riddling ashes, you will not be able to procure
one this year for gathering pearls. What signifies, then, wasting
the time of the meeting, by inquiring whether or not we ought to
go in at a door which we know to be bolted and barred in our face,
and in the face of all the companies for fire or air, land or
water, which we have of late seen blighted!"

Here there was a general clamour, seemingly of approbation, in
which the words might be distinguished, "Needless to think of it"--
"Money thrown away"--"Lost before the committee," &c. &c. &c. But
above the tumult, the voices of two gentlemen, in different
corners of the room, answered each other clear and loud, like the
blows of the two figures on Saint Dunstan's clock; and although
the Chairman, in much agitation, endeavoured to silence them, his
interruption had only the effect of cutting their words up into
syllables, thus,--

   _First Voice_. "The Lord Chan--"
   _Second Voice_. "The Lord Lau--"
   _Chairman_, (loudly.) "Scandalum magnatum!"
   _First Voice_. "The Lord Chancel--"
   _Second Voice_. "The Lord Lauder--"
   _Chairman_, (_louder yet_.) "Breach of Privilege!"
   _First Voice_. "The Lord Chancellor--"
   _Second Voice_. "My Lord Lauderdale--"
   _Chairman_, (_at the highest pitch of his voice_.)
            "Called before the House!"
   _Both Voices together_. "Will never consent to such a bill."

A general assent seemed to follow this last proposition, which was
propounded with as much emphasis as could be contributed by the
united clappers of the whole meeting, joined to those of the
voices already mentioned.

Several persons present seemed to consider the business of the
meeting as ended, and were beginning to handle their hats and
canes, with a view to departure, when the Chairman, who had thrown
himself back in his chair, with an air of manifest mortification
and displeasure, again drew himself up, and commanded attention.
All stopped, though some shrugged their shoulders, as if under the
predominating influence of a _bore_. But the tenor of his
discourse soon excited anxious attention.

"I perceive, gentlemen," he said, "that you are like the young
birds, who are impatient to leave their mother's nest--take care
your own penfeathers are strong enough to support you; since, as
for my part, I am tired of supporting on my wing such a set of
ungrateful gulls. But it signifies nothing speaking--I will no
longer avail myself of such weak ministers as you--I will discard
you--I will unbeget you, as Sir Anthony Absolute says--I will
leave you and your whole hacked stock in trade--your caverns and
your castles--your modern antiques, and your antiquated moderns--
your confusion of times, manners, and circumstances--your
properties, as player-folk say of scenery and dresses--the whole
of your exhausted expedients, to the fools who choose to deal with
them. I will vindicate my own fame with my own right hand, without
appealing to such halting assistants,

  'Whom I have used for sport, rather than need.'

--I will lay my foundations better than on quicksands--I will rear
my structure of better materials than painted cards; in a word, I
will write HISTORY!"

There was a tumult of surprise, amid which our reporter detected
the following expressions:--"The devil you will!"--"You, my dear
sir, _you?_"--"The old gentleman forgets that he is the
greatest liar since Sir John Mandeville."

"Not the worse historian for that," said Oldbuck, "since history,
you know, is half fiction."

"I'll answer for that half being forthcoming" said the former
speaker; "but for the scantling of truth which is necessary after
all, Lord help us!--Geoffrey of Monmouth will be Lord Clarendon to
him."

As the confusion began to abate, more than one member of the
meeting was seen to touch his forehead significantly, while
Captain Clutterbuck humm'd

  Be by your friends advised,
  Too rash, too hasty, dad,
  Maugre your bolts and wise head,
  The world will think you mad.

"The world, and you, gentlemen, may think what you please," said
the Chairman, elevating his voice; "but I intend to write the most
wonderful book which the world ever read--a book in which every
incident shall be incredible, yet strictly true--a work recalling
recollections with which the ears of this generation once tingled,
and which shall be read by our children with an admiration
approaching to incredulity. Such shall be the LIFE OF NAPOLEON
BONAPARTE by the AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY."

In the general start and exclamation which followed this
annunciation, Mr. Oldbuck dropped his snuff-box; and the Scottish
rappee, which dispersed itself in consequence, had effects upon
the nasal organs of our reporter, ensconced as he was under the
secretary's table, which occasioned his being discovered and
extruded in the illiberal and unhandsome manner we have mentioned,
with threats of farther damage to his nose, ears, and other
portions of his body, on the part especially of Captain
Clutterbuck. Undismayed by these threats, which indeed those of
his profession are accustomed to hold at defiance, our young man
hovered about the door of the tavern, but could only bring us the
farther intelligence, that the meeting had broken up in about a
quarter of an hour after his expulsion, "in much-admired
disorder."




CHAPTER THE FIRST.


   Now in these days were hotte wars upon the Marches of Wales.
   LEWIS'S _History._


The Chronicles, from which this narrative is extracted, assure us,
that during the long period when the Welsh princes maintained
their independence, the year 1187 was peculiarly marked as
favourable to peace betwixt them and their warlike neighbours, the
Lords Marchers, who inhabited those formidable castles on the
frontiers of the ancient British, on the ruins of which the
traveller gazes with wonder. This was the time when Baldwin,
Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by the learned Giraldus de
Barri, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's, preached the Crusade
from castle to castle, from town to town; awakened the inmost
valleys of his native Cambria with the call to arms for recovery
of the Holy Sepulchre; and, while he deprecated the feuds and wars
of Christian men against each other, held out to the martial
spirit of the age a general object of ambition, and a scene of
adventure, where the favour of Heaven, as well as earthy renown,
was to reward the successful champions.

Yet the British chieftains, among the thousands whom this spirit-
stirring summons called from their native land to a distant and
perilous expedition, had perhaps the best excuse for declining the
summons. The superior skill of the Anglo-Norman knights, who were
engaged in constant inroads on the Welsh frontier, and who were
frequently detaching from it large portions, which they fortified
with castles, thus making good what they had won, was avenged,
indeed, but not compensated, by the furious inroads of the
British, who, like the billows of a retiring tide, rolled on
successively, with noise, fury, and devastation; but, on each
retreat, yielded ground insensibly to their invaders.

A union among the native princes might have opposed a strong and
permanent barrier to the encroachments of the strangers; but they
were, unhappily, as much at discord among themselves as they were
with the Normans, and were constantly engaged in private war with
each other, of which the common enemy had the sole advantage.

The invitation to the Crusade promised something at least of
novelty to a nation peculiarly ardent in their temper; and it was
accepted by many, regardless of the consequences which must ensue,
to the country which they left defenceless. Even the most
celebrated enemies of the Saxon and Norman race laid aside their
enmity against the invaders of their country, to enrol themselves
under the banners of the Crusade.

Amongst these was reckoned Gwenwyn, (or more properly Gwenwynwen,
though we retain the briefer appellative,) a British prince who
continued exercising a precarious sovereignty over such parts of
Powys-Land as had not been subjugated by the Mortimers, Guarines,
Latimers, FitzAlans, and other Norman nobles, who, under various
pretexts, and sometimes contemning all other save the open avowal
of superior force, had severed and appropriated large portions of
that once extensive and independent principality, which, when
Wales was unhappily divided into three parts on the death of
Roderick Mawr, fell to the lot of his youngest son, Mervyn. The
undaunted resolution and stubborn ferocity of Gwenwyn, descendant
of that prince, had long made him beloved among the "Tall men" or
Champions of Wales; and he was enabled, more by the number of
those who served under him, attracted by his reputation, than by
the natural strength of his dilapidated principality, to retaliate
the encroachments of the English by the most wasteful inroads.

Yet even Gwenwyn on the present occasion seemed to forget his
deeply sworn hatred against his dangerous neighbours. The Torch of
Pengwern (for so Gwenwyn was called, from his frequently laying
the province of Shrewsbury in conflagration) seemed at present to
burn as calmly as a taper in the bower of a lady; and the Wolf of
Plinlimmon, another name with which the bards had graced Gwenwyn,
now slumbered as peacefully as the shepherd's dog on the domestic
hearth.

But it was not alone the eloquence of Baldwin or of Girald which
had lulled into peace a spirit so restless and fierce. It is true,
their exhortations had done more towards it than Gwenwyn's
followers had thought possible. The Archbishop had induced the
British Chief to break bread, and to mingle in silvan sports, with
his nearest, and hitherto one of his most determined enemies, the
old Norman warrior Sir Raymond Berenger, who, sometimes beaten,
sometimes victorious, but never subdued, had, in spite of
Gwenwyn's hottest incursions, maintained his Castle of Garde
Doloureuse, upon the marches of Wales; a place strong by nature,
and well fortified by art, which the Welsh prince had found it
impossible to conquer, either by open force or by stratagem, and
which, remaining with a strong garrison in his rear, often checked
his incursions, by rendering his retreat precarious. On this
account, Gwenwyn of Powys-Land had an hundred times vowed the
death of Raymond Berenger, and the demolition of his castle; but
the policy of the sagacious old warrior, and his long experience
in all warlike practice, were such as, with the aid of his more
powerful countrymen, enabled him to defy the attempts of his fiery
neighbour. If there was a man, therefore, throughout England, whom
Gwenwyn hated more than another, it was Raymond Berenger; and yet
the good Archbishop Baldwin could prevail on the Welsh prince to
meet him as a friend and ally in the cause of the Cross. He even
invited Raymond to the autumn festivities of his Welsh palace,
where the old knight, in all honourable courtesy, feasted and
hunted for more than a week in the dominions of his hereditary
foe.

To requite this hospitality, Raymond invited the Prince of Powys,
with a chosen but limited train, during the ensuing Christmas, to
the Garde Doloureuse, which some antiquaries have endeavoured to
identify with the Castle of Colune, on the river of the same name.
But the length of time, and some geographical difficulties, throw
doubts upon this ingenious conjecture.

As the Welshman crossed the drawbridge, he was observed by his
faithful bard to shudder with involuntary emotion; nor did
Cadwallon, experienced as he was in life, and well acquainted with
the character of his master, make any doubt that he was at that
moment strongly urged by the apparent opportunity, to seize upon
the strong fortress which had been so long the object of his
cupidity, even at the expense of violating his good faith.

Dreading lest the struggle of his master's conscience and his
ambition should terminate unfavourably for his fame, the bard
arrested his attention by whispering in their native language,
that "the teeth which bite hardest are those which are out of
sight;" and Gwenwyn looking around him, became aware that, though,
only unarmed squires and pages appeared in the courtyard, yet the
towers and battlements connecting them were garnished with archers
and men-at-arms.

They proceeded to the banquet, at which Gwenwyn, for the first
time, beheld Eveline Berenger, the sole child of the Norman
castellane, the inheritor of his domains and of his supposed
wealth, aged only sixteen, and the most beautiful damsel upon the
Welsh marches. Many a spear had already been shivered in
maintenance of her charms; and the gallant Hugo de Lacy, Constable
of Chester, one of the most redoubted warriors of the time, had
laid at Eveline's feet the prize which his chivalry had gained in
a great tournament held near that ancient town. Gwenwyn considered
these triumphs as so many additional recommendations to Eveline;
her beauty was incontestable, and she was heiress of the fortress
which he so much longed to possess, and which he began now to
think might be acquired by means more smooth than those with which
he was in the use of working out his will.

Again, the hatred which subsisted between the British and their
Saxon and Norman invaders; his long and ill-extinguished feud with
this very Raymond Berenger; a general recollection that alliances
between the Welsh and English had rarely been happy; and a
consciousness that the measure which he meditated would be
unpopular among his followers, and appear a dereliction of the
systematic principles on which he had hitherto acted, restrained
him from speaking his wishes to Raymond or his daughter. The idea
of the rejection of his suit did not for a moment occur to him; he
was convinced he had but to speak his wishes, and that the
daughter of a Norman, castellane, whose rank or power were not of
the highest order among the nobles of the frontiers, must be
delighted and honoured by a proposal for allying his family with
that of the sovereign of a hundred mountains.

There was indeed another objection, which in later times would
have been of considerable weight--Gwenwyn was already married. But
Brengwain was a childless bride; sovereigns (and among sovereigns
the Welsh prince ranked himself) marry for lineage, and the Pope
was not likely to be scrupulous, where the question was to oblige
a prince who had assumed the Cross with such ready zeal, even
although, in fact, his thoughts had been much more on the Garde
Doloureuse than on Jerusalem. In the meanwhile, if Raymond
Berenger (as was suspected) was not liberal enough in his opinions
to permit Eveline to hold the temporary rank of concubine, which
the manners of Wales warranted Gwenwyn to offer as an interim,
arrangement, he had only to wait for a few months, and sue for a
divorce through the Bishop of Saint David's, or some other
intercessor at the Court of Rome.

Agitating these thoughts in his mind, Gwenwyn prolonged his
residence at the Castle of Berenger, from Christmas till
Twelfthday; and endured the presence of the Norman cavaliers who
resorted to Raymond's festal halls, although, regarding
themselves, in virtue of their rank of knighthood, equal to the
most potent sovereigns, they made small account of the long
descent of the Welsh prince, who, in their eyes, was but the chief
of a semibarbarous province; while he, on his part, considered
them little better than a sort of privileged robbers, and with the
utmost difficulty restrained himself from manifesting his open
hatred, when he beheld them careering in the exercises of
chivalry, the habitual use of which rendered them such formidable
enemies to his country. At length, the term of feasting was ended,
and knight and squire departed from the castle, which once more
assumed the aspect of a solitary and guarded frontier fort.

But the Prince of Powys-Land, while pursuing his sports on his own
mountains and valleys, found that even the abundance of the game,
as well as his release from the society of the Norman chivalry,
who affected to treat him as an equal, profited him nothing so
long as the light and beautiful form of Eveline, on her white
palfrey, was banished from the train of sportsmen. In short, he
hesitated no longer, but took into his confidence his chaplain, an
able and sagacious man, whose pride was flattered by his patron's
communication, and who, besides, saw in the proposed scheme some
contingent advantages for himself and his order. By his counsel,
the proceedings for Gwenwyn's divorce were prosecuted under
favourable auspices, and the unfortunate Brengwain was removed to
a nunnery, which perhaps she found a more cheerful habitation than
the lonely retreat in which she had led a neglected life, ever
since Gwenwyn had despaired of her bed being blessed with issue.
Father Einion also dealt with the chiefs and elders of the land,
and represented to them the advantage which in future wars they
were certain to obtain by the possession of the Garde Doloureuse,
which had for more than a century covered and protected a
considerable tract of country, rendered their advance difficult,
and their retreat perilous, and, in a word, prevented their
carrying their incursions as far as the gates of Shrewsbury. As
for the union with the Saxon damsel, the fetters which it was to
form might not (the good father hinted) be found more permanent
than those which had bound Gwenwyn to her predecessor, Brengwain.

These arguments, mingled with others adapted to the views and
wishes of different individuals, were so prevailing, that the
chaplain in the course of a few weeks was able to report to his
princely patron, that this proposed match would meet with no
opposition from the elders and nobles of his dominions. A golden
bracelet, six ounces in weight, was the instant reward of the
priest's dexterity in negotiation, and he was appointed by Gwenwyn
to commit to paper those proposals, which he doubted not were to
throw the Castle of Garde Doloureuse, notwithstanding its
melancholy name, into an ecstasy of joy. With some difficulty the
chaplain prevailed on his patron to say nothing in this letter
upon his temporary plan of concubinage, which he wisely judged
might be considered as an affront both by Eveline and her father.
The matter of the divorce he represented as almost entirely
settled, and wound up his letter with a moral application, in
which were many allusions to Vashti, Esther, and Ahasuerus.

Having despatched this letter by a swift and trusty messenger, the
British prince opened in all solemnity the feast of Easter, which
had come round during the course of these external and internal
negotiations.

Upon the approaching Holy-tide, to propitiate the minds of his
subjects and vassals, they were invited in large numbers to
partake of a princely festivity at Castell-Coch, or the Red-
Castle, as it was then called, since better known by the name of
Powys-Castle, and in latter times the princely seat of the Duke of
Beaufort. The architectural magnificence of this noble residence
is of a much later period than that of Gwenwyn, whose palace, at
the time we speak of, was a low, long-roofed edifice of red stone,
whence the castle derived its name; while a ditch and palisade
were, in addition to the commanding situation, its most important
defences.




CHAPTER THE SECOND


    In Madoc's tent the clarion sounds,
    With rapid clangor hurried far;
    Each hill and dale the note rebounds,
    But when return the sons of war?
    Thou, born of stern Necessity,
    Dull Peace! the valley yields to thee,
    And owns thy melancholy sway.
     WELSH POEM.


The feasts of the ancient British princes usually exhibited all
the rude splendour and liberal indulgence of mountain hospitality,
and Gwenwyn was, on the present occasion, anxious to purchase
popularity by even an unusual display of profusion; for he was
sensible that the alliance which he meditated might indeed be
tolerated, but could not be approved, by his subjects and
followers.

The following incident, trifling in itself, confirmed his
apprehensions. Passing one evening, when it was become nearly
dark, by the open window of a guard-room, usually occupied by some
few of his most celebrated soldiers, who relieved each other in
watching his palace, he heard Morgan, a man distinguished for
strength, courage, and ferocity, say to the companion with whom he
was sitting by the watch-fire, "Gwenwyn is turned to a priest, or
a woman! When was it before these last months, that a follower of
his was obliged to gnaw the meat from the bone so closely, as I am
now peeling the morsel which I hold in my hand?" [Footnote: It is
said in Highland tradition, that one of the Macdonalds of the
Isles, who had suffered his broadsword to remain sheathed for some
months after his marriage with a beautiful woman, was stirred to a
sudden and furious expedition against the mainland by hearing
conversation to the above purpose among his bodyguard.]

"Wait but awhile," replied his comrade, "till the Norman match be
accomplished; and so small will be the prey we shall then drive
from the Saxon churls, that we may be glad to swallow, like hungry
dogs, the very bones themselves."

Gwenwyn heard no more of their conversation; but this was enough
to alarm his pride as a soldier, and his jealousy as a prince. He
was sensible, that the people over whom he ruled were at once
fickle in their disposition, impatient of long repose, and full of
hatred against their neighbours; and he almost dreaded the
consequences of the inactivity to which a long truce might reduce
them. The risk was now incurred, however; and to display even more
than his wonted splendour and liberality, seemed the best way of
reconciling the wavering affections of his subjects.

A Norman would have despised the barbarous magnificence of an
entertainment, consisting of kine and sheep roasted whole, of
goat's flesh and deer's flesh seethed in the skins of the animals
themselves; for the Normans piqued themselves on the quality
rather than the quantity of their food, and, eating rather
delicately than largely, ridiculed the coarser taste of the
Britons, although the last were in their banquets much more
moderate than were the Saxons; nor would the oceans of _Crw_
and hydromel, which overwhelmed the guests like a deluge, have
made up, in their opinion, for the absence of the more elegant and
costly beverage which they had learnt to love in the south of
Europe. Milk, prepared in various ways, was another material of
the British entertainment, which would not have received their
approbation, although a nutriment which, on ordinary occasions,
often supplied the Avant of all others among the ancient
inhabitants, whose country was rich in flocks and herds, but poor
in agricultural produce.

The banquet was spread in a long low hall, built of rough wood
lined with shingles, having a fire at each end, the smoke of
which, unable to find its way through the imperfect chimneys in
the roof, rolled in cloudy billows above the heads of the
revellers, who sat on low seats, purposely to avoid its stifling
fumes. [Footnote: The Welsh houses, like those of the cognate
tribes in Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, were very
imperfectly supplied with chimneys. Hence, in the History of the
Gwydir Family, the striking expression of a Welsh chieftain who,
the house being assaulted and set on fire by his enemies, exhorted
his friends to stand to their defence, saying he had seen as much
smoke in the hall upon a Christmas even.] The mien and appearance
of the company assembled was wild, and, even in their social
hours, almost terrific. Their prince himself had the gigantic port
and fiery eye fitted to sway an unruly people, whose delight was
in the field of battle; and the long mustaches which he and most
of his champions wore, added to the formidable dignity of his
presence. Like most of those present, Gwenwyn was clad in a simple
tunic of white linen cloth, a remnant of the dress which the
Romans had introduced into provincial Britain; and he was
distinguished by the Eudorchawg, or chain of twisted gold links,
with which the Celtic tribes always decorated their chiefs. The
collar, indeed, representing in form the species of links made by
children out of rushes, was common to chieftains of inferior rank,
many of whom bore it in virtue of their birth, or had won it by
military exploits; but a ring of gold, bent around the head,
intermingled with Gwenwyn's hair--for he claimed the rank of one
of three diademed princes of Wales, and his armlets and anklets,
of the same metal, were peculiar to the Prince of Powys, as an
independent sovereign. Two squires of his body, who dedicated
their whole attention to his service, stood at the Prince's back;
and at his feet sat a page, whose duty it was to keep them warm by
chafing and by wrapping them in his mantle. The same right of
sovereignty, which assigned to Gwenwyn his golden crownlet, gave
him a title to the attendance of the foot-bearer, or youth, who
lay on the rushes, and whose duty it was to cherish the Prince's
feet in his lap or bosom. [Footnote: See Madoc for this literal
_foot page's_ office and duties. Mr. Southey's notes inform
us: "The foot-bearer shall hold the feet of the King in his lap,
from the time he reclines at the board till he goes to rest, and
he shall chafe them with a towel; and during all that time shall
watch that no harm befalls the King. He shall eat of the shame
dish from which the King takes his food; he shall light the first
candle before the King." Such are the instructions given for this
part of royal ceremonial in the laws of Howell Dha. It may be
added, that probably upon this Celtic custom was founded one of
those absurd and incredible representations which were propagated
at the time of the French revolution, to stir up the peasants
against their feudal superiors. It was pretended that some feudal
seigneurs asserted their right to kill and disembowel a peasant,
in order to put their own feet within the expiring body, and so
recover them from the chill.]

Notwithstanding the military disposition of the guests, and the
danger arising from the feuds into which they were divided, few of
the feasters wore any defensive armour, except the light goat-skin
buckler, which hung behind each man's seat. On the other hand,
they were well provided with offensive weapons; for the broad,
sharp, short, two-edged sword was another legacy of the Romans.
Most added a wood-knife or poniard; and there were store of
javelins, darts, bows, and arrows, pikes, halberds, Danish axes,
and Welsh hooks and bills; so, in case of ill-blood arising during
the banquet, there was no lack of weapons to work mischief.

But although the form of the feast was somewhat disorderly, and
that the revellers were unrestrained by the stricter rules of
good-breeding which the laws of chivalry imposed, the Easter
banquet of Gwenwyn possessed, in the attendance of twelve eminent
bards, one source of the most exalted pleasure, in a much higher
degree than the proud Normans could themselves boast. The latter,
it is true, had their minstrels, a race of men trained to the
profession of poetry, song, and music; but although those arts
were highly honoured, and the individual professors, when they
attained to eminence, were often richly rewarded, and treated with
distinction, the order of minstrels, as such, was held in low
esteem, being composed chiefly of worthless and dissolute
strollers, by whom the art was assumed, in order to escape from
the necessity of labour, and to have the means of pursuing a
wandering and dissipated course of life. Such, in all times, has
been the censure upon the calling of those who dedicate themselves
to the public amusement; among whom those distinguished by
individual excellence are sometimes raised high in the social
circle, while far the more numerous professors, who only reach
mediocrity, are sunk into the lower scale. But such was not the
case with the order of bards in Wales, who, succeeding to the
dignity of the Druids, under whom they had originally formed a
subordinate fraternity, had many immunities, were held in the
highest reverence and esteem, and exercised much influence with
their countrymen. Their power over the public mind even rivalled
that of the priests themselves, to whom indeed they bore some
resemblance; for they never wore arms, were initiated into their
order by secret and mystic solemnities, and homage was rendered to
their _Awen_, or flow of poetic inspiration, as if it had
been indeed marked with a divine character. Thus possessed of
power and consequence, the bards were not unwilling to exercise
their privileges, and sometimes, in doing so, their manners
frequently savoured of caprice.

This was perhaps the case with Cadwallon, the chief bard of
Gwenwyn, and who, as such, was expected to have poured forth the
tide of song in the banqueting-hall of his prince. But neither the
anxious and breathless expectation of the assembled chiefs and
champions--neither the dead silence which stilled the roaring
hall, when his harp was reverently placed before him by his
attendant--nor even the commands or entreaties of the Prince
himself--could extract from Cadwallon more than a short and
interrupted prelude upon the instrument, the notes of which
arranged themselves into an air inexpressibly mournful, and died
away in silence. The Prince frowned darkly on the bard, who was
himself far too deeply lost in gloomy thought, to offer any
apology, or even to observe his displeasure. Again he touched a
few wild notes, and, raising his looks upward, seemed to be on the
very point of bursting forth into a tide of song similar to those
with which this master of his art was wont to enchant his hearers.
But the effort was in vain--he declared that his right hand was
withered, and pushed the instrument from him.

A murmur went round the company, and Gwenwyn read in their aspects
that they received the unusual silence of Cadwallon on this high
occasion as a bad omen. He called hastily on a young and ambitious
bard, named Caradoc of Menwygent, whose rising fame was likely
soon to vie with the established reputation of Cadwallon, and
summoned him to sing something which might command the applause of
his sovereign and the gratitude of the company. The young man was
ambitious, and understood the arts of a courtier. He commenced a
poem, in which, although under a feigned name, he drew such a
poetic picture of Eveline Berenger, that Gwenwyn was enraptured;
and while all who had seen the beautiful original at once
recognized the resemblance, the eyes of the Prince confessed at
once his passion for the subject, and his admiration of the poet.
The figures of Celtic poetry, in themselves highly imaginative,
were scarce sufficient for the enthusiasm of the ambitious bard,
rising in his tone as he perceived the feelings which he was
exciting. The praises of the Prince mingled with those of the
Norman beauty; and "as a lion," said the poet, "can only be led by
the hand of a chaste and beautiful maiden, so a chief can only
acknowledge the empire of the most virtuous, the most lovely of
her sex. Who asks of the noonday sun, in what quarter of the world
he was born? and who shall ask of such charms as hers, to what
country they owe their birth?"

Enthusiasts in pleasure as in war, and possessed of imaginations
which answered readily to the summons of their poets, the Welsh
chiefs and leaders united in acclamations of applause; and the
song of the bard went farther to render popular the intended
alliance of the Prince, than had all the graver arguments of his
priestly precursor in the same topic.

Gwenwyn himself, in a transport of delight, tore off the golden
bracelets which he wore, to bestow them upon a bard whose song had
produced an effect so desirable; and said, as he looked at the
silent and sullen Cadwallon, "The silent harp was never strung
with golden wires."

"Prince," answered the bard, whose pride was at least equal to
that of Gwenwyn himself, "you pervert the proverb of Taliessin--it
is the flattering harp which never lacked golden strings."

Gwenwyn, turning sternly towards him, was about to make an angry
answer, when the sudden appearance of Jorworth, the messenger whom
he had despatched to Raymond Berenger, arrested his purpose. This
rude envoy entered the hall bare-legged, excepting the sandals of
goat-skin which he wore, and having on his shoulder a cloak of the
same, and a short javelin in his hand. The dust on his garments,
and the flush on his brow, showed with what hasty zeal his errand
had been executed. Gwenwyn demanded of him eagerly, "What news
from Garde Doloureuse, Jorworth ap Jevan?"

"I bear them in my bosom," said the son of Jevan; and, with much
reverence, he delivered to the Prince a packet, bound with silk,
and sealed with the impression of a swan, the ancient cognizance
of the House of Berenger. Himself ignorant of writing or reading,
Gwenwyn, in anxious haste, delivered the letter to Cadwallon, who
usually acted as secretary when the chaplain was not in presence,
as chanced then to be the case. Cadwallon, looking at the letter,
said briefly, "I read no Latin. Ill betide the Norman, who writes
to a Prince of Powys in other language than that of Britain! and
well was the hour, when that noble tongue alone was spoken from
Tintadgel to Cairleoil!"

Gwenwyn only replied to him with an angry glance.

"Where is Father Einion?" said the impatient Prince.

"He assists in the church," replied one of his attendants, "for it
is the feast of Saint--"

"Were it the feast of Saint David," said Gwenwyn, "and were the
pyx between his hands, he must come hither to me instantly!"

One of the chief henchmen sprung off, to command his attendance,
and, in the meantime, Gwenwyn eyed the letter containing the
secret of his fate, but which it required an interpreter to read,
with such eagerness and anxiety, that Caradoc, elated by his
former success, threw in a few notes to divert, if possible, the
tenor of his patron's thoughts during the interval. A light and
lively air, touched by a hand which seemed to hesitate, like the
submissive voice of an inferior, fearing to interrupt his master's
meditations, introduced a stanza or two applicable to the subject.

"And what though thou, O scroll," he said, apostrophizing the
letter, which lay on the table before his master, "dost speak with
the tongue of the stranger? Hath not the cuckoo a harsh note, and
yet she tells us of green buds and springing flowers? What if thy
language be that of the stoled priest, is it not the same which
binds hearts and hands together at the altar? And what though thou
delayest to render up thy treasures, are not all pleasures most
sweet, when enhanced by expectation? What were the chase, if the
deer dropped at our feet the instant he started from the cover--or
what value were there in the love of the maiden, were it yielded
without coy delay?"

The song of the bard was here broken short by the entrance of the
priest, who, hasty in obeying the summons of his impatient master,
had not tarried to lay aside even the stole, which he had worn in
the holy service; and many of the elders thought it was no good
omen, that, so habited, a priest should appear in a festive
assembly, and amid profane minstrelsy.

The priest opened the letter of the Norman Baron, and, struck with
surprise at the contents, lifted his eyes in silence.

"Read it!" exclaimed the fierce Gwenwyn.

"So please you," replied the more prudent chaplain, "a smaller
company were a fitter audience."

"Read it aloud!" repeated the Prince, in a still higher tone;
"there sit none here who respect not the honour of their prince,
or who deserve not his confidence. Read it, I say, aloud! and by
Saint David, if Raymond the Norman hath dared--"

He stopped short, and, reclining on his seat, composed himself to
an attitude of attention; but it was easy for his followers to
fill up the breach in his exclamation which prudence had
recommended.

The voice of the chaplain was low and ill-assured as he read the
following epistle:--

   "Raymond Berenger, the noble Norman Knight, Seneschal
   of the Garde Doloureuse, to Gwenwyn, Prince of Powys,
   (may peace be between them!) sendeth health.

"Your letter, craving the hand of our daughter Eveline Berenger,
was safely delivered to us by your servant, Jorworth ap Jevan, and
we thank you heartily for the good meaning therein expressed to us
and to ours. But, considering within ourselves the difference of
blood and lineage, with the impediments and causes of offence
which have often arisen in like cases, we hold it fitter to match
our daughter among our own people; and this by no case in
disparagement of you, but solely for the weal of you, of
ourselves, and of our mutual dependants, who will be the more safe
from the risk of quarrel betwixt us, that we essay not to draw the
bonds of our intimacy more close than beseemeth. The sheep and the
goats feed together in peace on the same pastures, but they mingle
not in blood, or race, the one with the other. Moreover, our
daughter Eveline hath been sought in marriage by a noble and
potent Lord of the Marches, Hugo de Lacy, the Constable of
Chester, to which most honourable suit we have returned a
favourable answer. It is therefore impossible that we should in
this matter grant to you the boon you seek; nevertheless, you
shall at all times find us, in other matters, willing to pleasure
you; and hereunto we call God, and Our Lady, and Saint Mary
Magdalene of Quatford, to witness; to whose keeping we heartily
recommend you.

"Written by our command, at our Castle of Garde Doloureuse, within
the Marches of Wales, by a reverend priest, Father Aldrovand, a
black monk of the house of Wenlock; and to which we have appended
our seal, upon the eve of the blessed martyr Saint Alphegius, to
whom be honour and glory!"

The voice of Father Einion faltered, and the scroll which he held
in his hand trembled in his grasp, as he arrived at the conclusion
of this epistle; for well he knew that insults more slight than
Gwenwyn would hold the least word it contained, were sure to put
every drop of his British blood into the most vehement commotion.
Nor did it fail to do so. The Prince had gradually drawn himself
up from the posture of repose in which he had prepared to listen
to the epistle; and when it concluded, he sprung on his feet like
a startled lion, spurning from him as he rose the foot-bearer, who
rolled at some distance on the floor. "Priest," he said, "hast
thou read that accursed scroll fairly? for if thou hast added, or
diminished, one word, or one letter, I will have thine eyes so
handled, that thou shalt never read letter more!"

The monk replied, trembling, (for he was well aware that the
sacerdotal character was not uniformly respected among the
irascible Welshmen,) "By the oath of my order, mighty prince, I
have read word for word, and letter for letter."

There was a momentary pause, while the fury of Gwenwyn, at this
unexpected affront, offered to him in the presence of all his
Uckelwyr, (_i.e._ noble chiefs, literally men of high
stature,) seemed too big for utterance, when the silence was
broken by a few notes from the hitherto mute harp of Cadwallon.
The Prince looked round at first with displeasure at the
interruption, for he was himself about to speak; but when he
beheld the bard bending over his harp with an air of inspiration,
and blending together, with unexampled skill, the wildest and most
exalted tones of his art, he himself became an auditor instead of
a speaker, and Cadwallon, not the Prince, seemed to become the
central point of the assembly, on whom all eyes were bent, and to
whom each ear was turned with breathless eagerness, as if his
strains were the responses of an oracle.

"We wed not with the stranger,"--thus burst the song from the lips
of the poet. "Vortigern wedded with the stranger; thence came the
first wo upon Britain, and a sword upon her nobles, and a
thunderbolt upon her palace. We wed not with the enslaved Saxon--
the free and princely stag seeks not for his bride the heifer
whose neck the yoke hath worn. We wed not with the rapacious
Norman--the noble hound scorns to seek a mate from the herd of
ravening wolves. When was it heard that the Cymry, the descendants
of Brute, the true children of the soil of fair Britain, were
plundered, oppressed, bereft of their birthright, and insulted
even in their last retreats?--when, but since they stretched their
hand in friendship to the stranger, and clasped to their bosoms
the daughter of the Saxon? Which of the two is feared?--the empty
water-course of summer, or the channel of the headlong winter
torrent?--A maiden smiles at the summer-shrunk brook while she
crosses it, but a barbed horse and his rider will fear to stem the
wintry flood. Men of Mathravel and Powys, be the dreaded flood of
winter--Gwenwyn, son of Cyverliock!--may thy plume be the topmost
of its waves!"

All thoughts of peace, thoughts which, in themselves, were foreign
to the hearts of the warlike British, passed before the song of
Cadwallon like dust before the whirlwind, and the unanimous shout
of the assembly declared for instant war. The Prince himself spoke
not, but, looking proudly around him, flung abroad his arm, as one
who cheers his followers to the attack.

The priest, had he dared, might have reminded Gwenwyn, that the
Cross which he had assumed on his shoulder, had consecrated his
arm to the Holy War, and precluded his engaging in any civil
strife. But the task was too dangerous for Father Einion's
courage, and he shrunk from the hall to the seclusion of his own
convent. Caradoc, whose brief hour of popularity was past, also
retired, with humbled and dejected looks, and not without a glance
of indignation at his triumphant rival, who had so judiciously
reserved his display of art for the theme of war, that was ever
most popular with the audience.

The chiefs resumed their seats no longer for the purpose of
festivity, but to fix, in the hasty manner customary among these
prompt warriors, where they were to assemble their forces, which,
upon such occasions, comprehended almost all the able-bodied males
of the country,--for all, excepting the priests and the bards,
were soldiers,--and to settle the order of their descent upon the
devoted marches, where they proposed to signalize, by general
ravage, their sense of the insult which their Prince had received,
by the rejection of his suit.




CHAPTER THE THIRD


  The sands are number'd, that make up my life;
  Here must I stay, and here my life must end.
     HENRY VI. ACT. I. SCENE IV.


When Raymond Berenger had despatched his mission to the Prince of
Powys, he was not unsuspicious, though altogether fearless, of the
result. He sent messengers to the several dependants who held
their fiefs by the tenure of _cornage_, and warned them to be
on the alert, that he might receive instant notice of the approach
of the enemy. These vassals, as is well known, occupied the
numerous towers, which, like so many falcon-nests, had been built
on the points most convenient to defend the frontiers, and were
bound to give signal of any incursion of the Welsh, by blowing
their horns; which sounds, answered from tower to tower, and from
station to station, gave the alarm for general defence. But
although Raymond considered these precautions as necessary, from
the fickle and precarious temper of his neighbours, and for
maintaining his own credit as a soldier, he was far from believing
the danger to be imminent; for the preparations of the Welsh;
though on a much more extensive scale than had lately been usual,
were as secret, as their resolution of war had been suddenly
adopted.

It was upon the second morning after the memorable festival of
Castell-Coch, that the tempest broke on the Norman frontier. At
first a single, long, and keen bugle-blast, announced the approach
of the enemy; presently the signals of alarm were echoed from
every castle and tower on the borders of Shropshire, where every
place of habitation was then a fortress. Beacons were lighted upon
crags and eminences, the bells were rung backward in the churches
and towns, while the general and earnest summons to arms announced
an extremity of danger which even the inhabitants of that
unsettled country had not hitherto experienced.

Amid this general alarm, Raymond Berenger, having busied himself
in arranging his few but gallant followers and adherents, and
taken such modes of procuring intelligence of the enemy's strength
and motions as were in his power, at length ascended the watch-
tower of the castle, to observe in person the country around,
already obscured in several places by the clouds of smoke, which
announced the progress and the ravages of the invaders. He was
speedily joined by his favourite squire, to whom the unusual
heaviness of his master's looks was cause of much surprise, for
till now they had ever been blithest at the hour of battle. The
squire held in his hand his master's helmet, for Sir Raymond was
all armed, saving the head.

"Dennis Morolt," said the veteran soldier, "are our vassals and
liegemen all mustered?"

"All, noble sir, but the Flemings, who are not yet come in."

"The lazy hounds, why tarry they?" said Raymond. "Ill policy it is
to plant such sluggish natures in our borders. They are like their
own steers, fitter to tug a plough than for aught that requires
mettle."

"With your favour," said Dennis, "the knaves can do good service
notwithstanding. That Wilkin Flammock of the Green can strike like
the hammers of his own fulling-mill."

"He will fight, I believe, when he cannot help it," said Raymond;
"but he has no stomach for such exercise, and is as slow and as
stubborn as a mule."

"And therefore are his countrymen rightly matched against the
Welsh," replied Dennis Morolt, "that their solid and unyielding
temper may be a fit foil to the fiery and headlong dispositions of
our dangerous neighbours, just as restless waves are best opposed
by steadfast rocks.--Hark, sir, I hear Wilkin Flammock's step
ascending the turret-stair, as deliberately as ever monk mounted
to matins."

Step by step the heavy sound approached, until the form of the
huge and substantial Fleming at length issued from the turret-door
to the platform where they "were conversing. Wilkin Flammock was
cased in bright armour, of unusual weight and thickness, and
cleaned with exceeding care, which marked the neatness of his
nation; but, contrary to the custom of the Normans, entirely
plain, and void of carving, gilding, or any sort of ornament. The
basenet, or steel-cap, had no visor, and left exposed a broad
countenance, with heavy and unpliable features, which announced
the character of his temper and understanding. He carried in his
hand a heavy mace.

"So, Sir Fleming," said the Castellane, "you are in no hurry,
methinks, to repair to the rendezvous."

"So please you," answered the Fleming, "we were compelled to
tarry, that we might load our wains with our bales of cloth and
other property."

"Ha! wains?--how many wains have you brought with you?"

"Six, noble sir," replied Wilkin.

"And how many men?" demanded Raymond Berenger.

"Twelve, valiant sir," answered Flammock.

"Only two men to each baggage-wain? I wonder you would thus
encumber yourself," said Berenger.

"Under your favour, sir, once more," replied Wilkin, "it is only
the value which I and my comrades set upon our goods, that
inclines us to defend them with our bodies; and, had we been
obliged to leave our cloth to the plundering clutches of yonder
vagabonds, I should have seen small policy in stopping here to
give them the opportunity of adding murder to robbery. Gloucester
should have been my first halting-place."

The Norman knight gazed on the Flemish artisan, for such was
Wilkin Flammock, with such a mixture of surprise and contempt, as
excluded indignation. "I have heard much," he said, "but this is
the first time that I have heard one with a beard on his lip
avouch himself a coward."

"Nor do you hear it now," answered Flammock, with the utmost
composure--"I am always ready to fight for life and property; and
my coming to this country, where they are both in constant danger,
shows that I care not much how often I do so. But a sound skin is
better than a slashed one, for all that."

"Well," said Raymond Berenger, "fight after thine own fashion, so
thou wilt but fight stoutly with that long body of thine. We are
like to have need for all that we can do.--Saw you aught of these
rascaille Welsh?--have they Gwenwyn's banner amongst them?"

"I saw it with the white dragon displayed," replied Wilkin; "I
could not but know it, since it was broidered in my own loom."

Raymond looked so grave upon this intelligence, that Dennis
Morolt, unwilling the Fleming should mark it, thought it necessary
to withdraw his attention. "I can tell thee," he said to
Flammock, "that when the Constable of Chester joins us with his
lances, you shall see your handiwork, the dragon, fly faster
homeward than ever flew the shuttle which wove it."

"It must fly before the Constable comes up, Dennis Morolt," said
Berenger, "else it will fly triumphant over all our bodies."

"In the name of God and the Holy Virgin!" said Dennis, "what may
you mean, Sir Knight?--not that we should fight with the Welsh
before the Constable joins us?"--He paused, and then, well
understanding the firm, yet melancholy glance, with which his
master answered the question, he proceeded, with yet more vehement
earnestness--"You cannot mean it--you cannot intend that we shall
quit this castle, which we have so often made good against them,
and contend in the field with two hundred men against thousands?--
Think better of it, my beloved master, and let not the rashness of
your old age blemish that character for wisdom and warlike skill,
which your former life has so nobly won."

"I am not angry with you for blaming my purpose, Dennis," answered
the Norman, "for I know you do it in love to me and mine. But,
Dennis Morolt, this thing must be--we must fight the Welshmen
within these three hours, or the name of Raymond Berenger must be
blotted from the genealogy of his house."

"And so we will--we will fight them, my noble master," said the
esquire; "fear not cold counsel from Dennis Morolt, where battle
is the theme. But we will fight them under the walls of the
castle, with honest Wilkin Flammock and his crossbows on the wall
to protect our flanks, and afford us some balance against the
numerous odds."

"Not so, Dennis," answered his master--"In the open field we must
fight them, or thy master must rank but as a mansworn knight.
Know, that when I feasted yonder wily savage in my halls at
Christmas, and when the wine was flowing fastest around, Gwenwyn
threw out some praises of the fastness and strength of my castle,
in a manner which intimated it was these advantages alone that had
secured me in former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke in
answer, when I had far better been silent; for what availed my
idle boast, but as a fetter to bind me to a deed next to madness?
If, I said, a prince of the Cymry shall come in hostile fashion
before the Garde Doloureuse, let him pitch his standard down in
yonder plain by the bridge, and, by the word of a good knight, and
the faith of a Christian man, Raymond Berenger will meet him as
willingly, be he many or be he few, as ever Welshman was met
withal."

Dennis was struck speechless when he heard of a promise so rash,
so fatal; but his was not the casuistry which could release his
master from the fetters with which his unwary confidence had bound
him. It was otherwise with Wilkin Flammock. He stared--he almost
laughed, notwithstanding the reverence due to the Castellane, and
his own insensibility to risible emotions. "And is this all?" he
said. "If your honour had pledged yourself to pay one hundred
florins to a Jew or to a Lombard, no doubt you must have kept the
day, or forfeited your pledge; but surely one day is as good as
another to keep a promise for fighting, and that day is best in
which the promiser is strongest. But indeed, after all, what
signifies any promise over a wine flagon?"

"It signifies as much as a promise can do that is given elsewhere.
The promiser," said Berenger, "escapes not the sin of a word-
breaker, because he hath been a drunken braggart."

"For the sin," said Dennis, "sure I am, that rather than you
should do such a deed of dole, the Abbot of Glastonbury would
absolve you for a florin."

"But what shall wipe out the shame?" demanded Berenger--"how shall
I dare to show myself again among press of knights, who have
broken my word of battle pledged, for fear of a Welshman and his
naked savages? No! Dennis Morolt, speak on it no more. Be it for
weal or wo, we fight them to-day, and upon yonder fair field."

"It may be," said Flammock, "that Gwenwyn may have forgotten the
promise, and so fail to appear to claim it in the appointed space;
for, as we heard, your wines of France flooded his Welsh brains
deeply."

"He again alluded to it on the morning after it was made," said
the Castellane--"trust me, he will not forget what will give him
such a chance of removing me from his path for ever."

As he spoke, they observed that large clouds of dust, which had
been seen at different points of the landscape, were drawing down
towards the opposite side of the river, over which an ancient
bridge extended itself to the appointed place of combat. They were
at no loss to conjecture the cause. It was evident that Gwenwyn,
recalling the parties who had been engaged in partial devastation,
was bending with his whole forces towards the bridge and the plain
beyond it.

"Let us rush down and secure the pass," said Dennis Morolt; "we
may debate with them with some equality by the advantage of
defending the bridge. Your word bound you to the plain as to a
field of battle, but it did not oblige you to forego such
advantages as the passage of the bridge would afford. Our men, our
horses, are ready--let our bowmen secure the banks, and my life on
the issue."

"When I promised to meet him in yonder field, I meant," replied
Raymond Berenger, "to give the Welshman the full advantage of
equality of ground. I so meant it--he so understood it; and what
avails keeping my word in the letter, if I break it in the sense?
We move not till the last Welshman has crossed the bridge; and
then--"

"And then," said Dennis, "we move to our death!--May God forgive
our sins!--But--"

"But what?" said Berenger; "something sticks in thy mind that
should have vent."

"My young lady, your daughter the Lady Eveline--"

"I have told her what is to be. She shall remain in the castle,
where I will leave a few chosen veterans, with you, Dennis, to
command them. In twenty-four hours the siege will be relieved, and
we have defended it longer with a slighter garrison. Then to her
aunt, the Abbess of the Benedictine sisters--thou, Dennis, wilt
see her placed there in honour and safety, and my sister will care
for her future provision as her wisdom shall determine." "_I_
leave you at this pinch!" said Dennis Morolt, bursting into tears
--"_I_ shut myself up within walls, when my master rides to
his last of battles!--_I_ become esquire to a lady, even
though it be to the Lady Eveline, when he lies dead under his
shield!--Raymond Berenger, is it for this that I have buckled thy
armour so often?"

The tears gushed from the old warrior's eyes as fast as from those
of a girl who weeps for her lover; and Raymond, taking him kindly
by the hand, said, in a soothing tone, "Do not think, my good old
servant, that, were honour to be won, I would drive thee from my
side. But this is a wild and an inconsiderate deed, to which my
fate or my folly has bound me. I die to save my name from
dishonour; but, alas! I must leave on my memory the charge of
imprudence."

"Let me share your imprudence, my dearest master," said Dennis
Morolt, earnestly--"the poor esquire has no business to be thought
wiser than his master. In many a battle my valour derived some
little fame from partaking in thee deeds which won your renown--
deny me not the right to share in that blame which your temerity
may incur; let them not say, that so rash was his action, even his
old esquire was not permitted to partake in it! I am part of
yourself--it is murder to every man whom you take with you, if you
leave me behind."

"Dennis," said Berenger, "you make me feel yet more bitterly the
folly I have yielded to. I. would grant you the boon you ask, sad
as it is--But my daughter--"

"Sir Knight," said the Fleming, who had listened to this dialogue
with somewhat less than his usual apathy, "it is not my purpose
this day to leave this castle; now, if you could trust my troth to
do what a plain man may for the protection of my Lady Eveline--"

"How, sirrah!" said Raymond; "you do not propose to leave the
castle? Who gives you right to propose or dispose in the case,
until my pleasure is known?"

"I shall be sorry to have words with you, Sir Castellane," said
the imperturbable Fleming;--"but I hold here, in this township,
certain mills, tenements, cloth-yards, and so forth, for which I
am to pay man-service in defending this Castle of the Garde
Doloureuse, and in this I am ready. But if you call on me to march
from hence, leaving the same castle defenceless, and to offer up
my life in a battle which you acknowledge to be desperate, I must
needs say my tenure binds me not to obey thee."

"Base mechanic!" said Morolt, laying his hand on his dagger, and
menacing the Fleming.

But Raymond Berenger interfered with voice and hand--"Harm him
not, Morolt, and blame him not. He hath a sense of duty, though
not after our manner; and he and his knaves will fight best behind
stone walls. They are taught also, these Flemings, by the practice
of their own country, the attack and defence of walled cities and
fortresses, and are especially skilful in working of mangonels and
military engines. There are several of his countrymen in the
castle, besides his own followers. These I propose to leave
behind; and I think they will obey him more readily than any but
thyself--how think'st thou? Thou wouldst not, I know, from a
miscontrued point of honour, or a blind love to me, leave this
important place, and the safety of Eveline, in doubtful hands?"

"Wilkin Flammock is but a Flemish clown, noble sir," answered
Dennis, as much overjoyed as if he had obtained some important
advantage; "but I must needs say he is as stout and true as any
whom you might trust; and, besides, his own shrewdness will teach
him there is more to be gained by defending such a castle as this,
than by yielding it to strangers, who may not be likely to keep
the terms of surrender, however fairly they may offer them."

"It is fixed then," said Raymond Berenger. "Then, Dennis, thou
shalt go with me, and he shall remain behind.--Wilkin Flammock,"
he said, addressing the Fleming solemnly, "I speak not to thee the
language of chivalry, of which thou knowest nothing; but, as thou
art an honest man, and a true Christian, I conjure thee to stand
to the defence of this castle. Let no promise of the enemy draw
thee to any base composition--no threat to any surrender. Relief
must speedily arrive, if you fulfil your trust to me and to my
daughter, Hugo de Lacy will reward you richly--if you fail, he
will punish you severely."

"Sir Knight," said Flammock, "I am pleased you have put your trust
so far in a plain handicraftsman. For the Welsh, I am come from a
land for which we were compelled--yearly compelled--to struggle
with the sea; and they who can deal with the waves in a tempest,
need not fear an undisciplined people in their fury. Your daughter
shall be as dear to me as mine own; and in that faith you may
prick forth--if, indeed, you will not still, like a wiser man,
shut gate, down portcullis, up drawbridge, and let your archers
and my crossbows man the wall, and tell the knaves you are not the
fool that they take you for."

"Good fellow, that must not be," said the Knight. "I hear my
daughter's voice," he added hastily; "I would not again meet her,
again to part from her. To Heaven's keeping I commit thee, honest
Fleming.--Follow me, Dennis Morolt."

The old Castellane descended the stair of the southern tower
hastily, just as his daughter Eveline ascended that of the eastern
turret, to throw herself at his feet once more. She was followed
by the Father Aldrovand, chaplain of her father; by an old and
almost invalid huntsman, whose more active services in the field
and the chase had been for some time chiefly limited to the
superintendence of the Knight's kennels, and the charge especially
of his more favourite hounds; and by Rose Flammock, the daughter
of Wilkin, a blue-eyed Flemish maiden, round, plump, and shy as a
partridge, who had been for some time permitted to keep company
with the high-born Norman damsel, in a doubtful station, betwixt
that of an humble friend and a superior domestic. Eveline rushed
upon the battlements, her hair dishevelled, and her eyes drowned
in tears, and eagerly demanded of the Fleming where her father
was.

Flammock made a clumsy reverence, and attempted some answer; but
his voice seemed to fail him. He turned his back upon Eveline
without ceremony, and totally disregarding the anxious inquiries
of the huntsman and the chaplain, he said hastily to his daughter,
in his own language, "Mad work! mad work! look to the poor maiden,
Roschen--_Der alter Herr ist verruckt_." [Footnote: The old
lord is frantic.]

Without farther speech he descended the stairs, and never paused
till he reached the buttery. Here he called like a lion for the
controller of these regions, by the various names of Kammerer,
Keller-master, and so forth, to which the old Reinold, an ancient
Norman esquire, answered not, until the Netherlander fortunately
recollected his Anglo-Norman title of butler. This, his regular
name of office, was the key to the buttery-hatch, and the old man
instantly appeared, with his gray cassock and high rolled hose, a
ponderous bunch of keys suspended by a silver chain to his broad
leathern girdle, which, in consideration of the emergency of the
time, he had thought it right to balance on the left side with a
huge falchion, which seemed much too weighty for his old arm to
wield.

"What is your will," he said, "Master Flammock? or what are your
commands, since it is my lord's pleasure that they shall be laws
to me for a time?"

"Only a cup of wine, good Meister Keller-master--butler, I mean."

"I am glad you remember the name of mine office," said Reinold,
with some of the petty resentment of a spoiled domestic, who
thinks that a stranger has been irregularly put in command over
him.

"A flagon of Rhenish, if you love me," answered the Fleming, "for
my heart is low and poor within me, and I must needs drink of the
best."

"And drink you shall," said Reinold, "if drink will give you the
courage which perhaps you want."--He descended to the secret
crypts, of which he was the guardian, and returned with a silver
flagon, which might contain about a quart.--"Here is such wine,"
said Reinold, "as thou hast seldom tasted," and was about to pour
it out into a cup.

"Nay, the flagon--the flagon, friend Reinold; I love a deep and
solemn draught when the business is weighty," said Wilkin. He
seized on the flagon accordingly, and drinking a preparatory
mouthful, paused as if to estimate the strength and flavour of the
generous liquor. Apparently he was pleased with both, for he
nodded in approbation to the butler; and, raising the flagon to
his mouth once more, he slowly and gradually brought the bottom of
the vessel parallel with the roof of the apartment, without
suffering one drop of the contents to escape him.

"That hath savour, Herr Keller-master," said he, while he was
recovering his breath by intervals, after so long a suspense of
respiration; "but, may Heaven forgive you for thinking it the best
I have ever tasted! You little know the cellars of Ghent and of
Ypres."

"And I care not for them," said Reinold; "those of gentle Norman
blood hold the wines of Gascony and France, generous, light, and
cordial, worth all the acid potations of the Rhine and the
Neckar."

"All is matter of taste," said the Fleming; "but hark ye--Is there
much of this wine in the cellar?"

"Methought but now it pleased not your dainty palate?" said
Reinold.

"Nay, nay, my friend," said Wilkin, "I said it had savour--I may
have drunk better--but this is right good, where better may not be
had.--Again, how much of it hast thou?"

"The whole butt, man," answered the butler; "I have broached a
fresh piece for you."

"Good," replied Flammock; "get the quart-pot of Christian measure;
heave the cask up into this same buttery, and let each soldier of
this castle be served with such a cup as I have here swallowed. I
feel it hath done me much good--my heart was sinking when I saw
the black smoke arising from mine own fulling-mills yonder. Let
each man, I say, have a full quart-pot--men defend not castles on
thin liquors."

"I must do as you will, good Wilkin Flammock," said the butler;
"but I pray you, remember all men are not alike. That which will
but warm your Flemish hearts, will put wildfire into Norman
brains; and what may only encourage your countrymen to man the
walls, will make ours fly over the battlements."

"Well, you know the conditions of your own countrymen best; serve
out to them what wines and measure you list--only let each Fleming
have a solemn quart of Rhenish.--But what will you do for the
English churls, of whom there are a right many left with us?"

The old butler paused, and rubbed his brow.--"There will be a
strange waste of liquor," he said; "and yet I may not deny that
the emergency may defend the expenditure. But for the English,
they are, as you wot, a mixed breed, having much of your German
sullenness, together with a plentiful touch of the hot blood of
yonder Welsh furies. Light wines stir them not; strong heavy
draughts would madden them. What think you of ale, an
invigorating, strengthening liquor, that warms the heart without
inflaming the brain?"

"Ale!" said the Fleming.--"Hum--ha--is your ale mighty, Sir
Butler?--is it double ale?"

"Do you doubt my skill?" said the butler.--"March and October have
witnessed me ever as they came round, for thirty years, deal with
the best barley in Shropshire.--You shall judge."

He filled, from a large hogshead in the corner of the buttery, the
flagon which the Fleming had just emptied, and which was no sooner
replenished than Wilkin again drained it to the bottom.

"Good ware," he said, "Master Butler, strong stinging ware. The
English churls will fight like devils upon it--let them be
furnished with mighty ale along with their beef and brown bread.
And now, having given you your charge, Master Reinold, it is time
I should look after mine own."

Wilkin Flammock left the buttery, and with a mien and judgment
alike undisturbed by the deep potations in which he had so
recently indulged, undisturbed also by the various rumours
concerning what was passing without doors, he made the round of
the castle and its outworks, mustered the little garrison, and
assigned to each their posts, reserving to his own countrymen the
management of the arblasts, or crossbows, and of the military
engines which were contrived by the proud Normans, and were
incomprehensible to the ignorant English, or, more properly,
Anglo-Saxons, of the period, but which his more adroit countrymen
managed with great address. The jealousies entertained by both the
Normans and English, at being placed under the temporary command
of a Fleming, gradually yielded to the military and mechanical
skill which he displayed, as well as to a sense of the emergency,
which became greater with every moment.




CHAPTER THE FOURTH


  Beside yon brigg out ower yon burn,
  Where the water bickereth bright and sheen,
  Shall many a falling courser spurn,
  And knights shall die in battle keen.
     PROPHECY OF THOMAS THE RHYMER.


The daughter of Raymond Berenger, with the attendants whom we have
mentioned, continued to remain upon the battlements of the Garde
Doloureuse, in spite of the exhortations of the priest that she
would rather await the issue of this terrible interval in the
chapel, and amid the rites of religion. He perceived, at length,
that she was incapable, from grief and fear, of attending to, or
understanding his advice; and, sitting down beside her, while the
huntsman and Rose Flammock stood by, endeavoured to suggest such
comfort as perhaps he scarcely felt himself.

"This is but a sally of your noble father's," he said; "and though
it may seem it is made on great hazard, yet who ever questioned
Sir Raymond Berenger's policy of wars?--He is close and secret in
his purposes. I guess right well he had not marched out as he
proposes, unless he knew that the noble Earl of Arundel, or the
mighty Constable of Chester, were close at hand."

"Think you this assuredly, good father?--Go, Raoul--go, my dearest
Rose--look to the east--see if you cannot descry banners or clouds
of dust.--Listen--listen--hear you no trumpets from that quarter?"

"Alas! my lady," said Raoul, "the thunder of heaven could scarce
be heard amid the howling of yonder Welsh wolves." Eveline turned
as he spoke, and looking towards the bridge, she beheld an
appalling spectacle. The river, whose stream washes on three sides
the base of the proud eminence on which the castle is situated,
curves away from the fortress and its corresponding village on the
west, and the hill sinks downward to an extensive plain, so
extremely level as to indicate its alluvial origin. Lower down, at
the extremity of this plain, where the banks again close on the
river, were situated the manufacturing houses of the stout
Flemings, which were now burning in a bright flame. The bridge, a
high, narrow combination of arches of unequal size, was about half
a mile distant from the castle, in the very centre of the plain.
The river itself ran in a deep rocky channel, was often
unfordable, and at all times difficult of passage, giving
considerable advantage to the defenders of the castle, who had
spent on other occasions many a dear drop of blood to defend the
pass, which Raymond Berenger's fantastic scruples now induced him
to abandon. The Welshmen, seizing the opportunity with the avidity
with which men grasp an unexpected benefit, were fast crowding
over the high and steep arches, while new bands, collecting from
different points upon the farther bank, increased the continued
stream of warriors, who, passing leisurely and uninterrupted,
formed their line of battle on the plain opposite to the castle.

At first Father Aldrovand viewed their motions without anxiety,
nay, with the scornful smile of one who observes an enemy in the
act of falling into the snare spread for them by superior skill.
Raymond Berenger, with his little body of infantry and cavalry,
were drawn up on the easy hill which is betwixt the castle and the
plain, ascending from the former towards the fortress; and it
seemed clear to the Dominican, who had not entirely forgotten in
the cloister his ancient military experience, that it was the
Knight's purpose to attack the disordered enemy when a certain
number had crossed the river, and the others were partly on the
farther side, and partly engaged in the slow and perilous
manoeuvre of effecting their passage. But when large bodies of the
white-mantled Welshmen were permitted without interruption to take
such order on the plain as their habits of fighting recommended,
the monk's countenance, though he still endeavoured to speak
encouragement to the terrified Eveline, assumed a different and an
anxious expression; and his acquired habits of resignation
contended strenuously with his ancient military ardour. "Be
patient," he said, "my daughter, and be of good comfort; thine
eyes shall behold the dismay of yonder barbarous enemy. Let but a
minute elapse, and thou shalt see them scattered like dust.--Saint
George! they will surely cry thy name now, or never!"

The monk's beads passed meanwhile rapidly through his hands, but
many an expression of military impatience mingled itself with his
orisons. He could not conceive the cause why each successive
throng of mountaineers, led under their different banners, and
headed by their respective chieftains, was permitted, without
interruption, to pass the difficult defile, and extend themselves
in battle array on the near side of the bridge, while the English,
or rather Anglo-Norman cavalry, remained stationary, without so
much as laying their lances in rest. There remained, as he
thought, but one hope--one only rational explanation of this
unaccountable inactivity--this voluntary surrender of every
advantage of ground, when that of numbers was so tremendously on
the side of the enemy. Father Aldrovand concluded, that the
succours of the Constable of Chester, and other Lord Marchers,
must be in the immediate vicinity, and that the Welsh were only
permitted to pass the river without opposition, that their retreat
might be the more effectually cut off, and their defeat, with a
deep river in their rear, rendered the more signally calamitous.
But even while he clung to this hope, the monk's heart sunk within
him, as, looking in every direction from which the expected
succours might arrive, he could neither see nor hear the slightest
token which announced their approach. In a frame of mind
approaching more nearly to despair than to hope, the old man
continued alternately to tell his beads, to gaze anxiously around,
and to address some words of consolation in broken phrases to the
young lady, until the general shout of the Welsh, ringing from the
bank of the river to the battlements of the castle, warned him, in
a note of exultation, that the very last of the British had
defiled through the pass, and that their whole formidable array
stood prompt for action upon the hither side of the river.

This thrilling and astounding clamour, to which each Welshman lent
his voice with all the energy of defiance, thirst of battle, and
hope of conquest, was at length answered by the blast of the
Norman trumpets,--the first sign of activity which had been
exhibited on the part of Raymond Berenger. But cheerily as they
rang, the trumpets, in comparison of the shout which they
answered, sounded like the silver whistle of the stout boatswain
amid the howling of the tempest.

At the same moment when the trumpets were blown, Berenger gave
signal to the archers to discharge their arrows, and the men-at-
arms to advance under a hail-storm of shafts, javelins, and
stones, shot, darted, and slung by the Welsh against their steel-
clad assailants.

The veterans of Raymond, on the other hand, stimulated by so many
victorious recollections, confident in the talents of their
accomplished leader, and undismayed even by the desperation of
their circumstances, charged the mass of the Welshmen with their
usual determined valour. It was a gallant sight to see this little
body of cavalry advance to the onset, their plumes floating above
their helmets, their lances in rest, and projecting six feet in
length before the breasts of their coursers; their shields hanging
from their necks, that their left hands might have freedom to
guide their horses; and the whole body rushing on with an equal
front, and a momentum of speed which increased with every second.
Such an onset might have startled naked men, (for such were the
Welsh, in respect of the mail-sheathed Normans,) but it brought no
terrors to the ancient British, who had long made it their boast
that they exposed their bare bosoms and white tunics to the lances
and swords of the men-at-arms, with as much confidence as if they
had been born invulnerable. It was not indeed in their power to
withstand the weight of the first shock, which, breaking their
ranks, densely as they were arranged, carried the barbed horses
into the very centre of their host, and well-nigh up to the fatal
standard, to which Raymond Berenger, bound by his fatal vow, had
that day conceded so much vantage-ground. But they yielded like
the billows, which give way, indeed, to the gallant ship, but only
to assail her sides, and to unite in her wake. With wild and
horrible clamours, they closed their tumultuous ranks around
Berenger and his devoted followers, and a deadly scene of strife
ensued.

The best warriors of Wales had on this occasion joined the
standard of Gwenwyn; the arrows of the men of Gwentland, whose
skill in archery almost equalled that of the Normans themselves,
rattled on the helmets of the men-at-arms; and the spears of the
people of Deheubarth, renowned for the sharpness and temper of
their steel heads, were employed against the cuirasses not without
fatal effect, notwithstanding the protection, which these afforded
to the rider.

It was in vain that the archery belonging to Raymond's little
band, stout yeomen, who, for the most part, held possession by
military tenure, exhausted their quivers on the broad mark
afforded them by the Welsh army. It is probable, that every shaft
carried a Welshman's life on its point; yet, to have afforded
important relief to the cavalry, now closely and inextricably
engaged, the slaughter ought to have been twenty-fold at least.
Meantime, the Welsh, galled by this incessant discharge, answered
it by volleys from their own archers, whose numbers made some
amends for their inferiority, and who were supported by numerous
bodies of darters and slingers. So that the Norman archers, who
had more than once attempted to descend from their position to
operate a diversion in favour of Raymond and his devoted band,
were now so closely engaged in front, as obliged them to abandon
all thoughts of such a movement.

Meanwhile, that chivalrous leader, who from the first had hoped
for no more than an honourable death, laboured with all his power
to render his fate signal, by involving in it that of the Welsh
Prince, the author of the war. He cautiously avoided the
expenditure of his strength by hewing among the British; but, with
the shock of his managed horse, repelled the numbers who pressed
on him, and leaving the plebeians to the swords of his companions,
shouted his war-cry, and made his way towards the fatal standard
of Gwenwyn, beside which, discharging at once the duties of a
skilful leader and a brave soldier, the Prince had stationed
himself. Raymond's experience of the Welsh disposition, subject
equally to the highest flood, and most sudden ebb of passion, gave
him some hope that a successful attack upon this point, followed
by the death or capture of the Prince, and the downfall of his
standard, might even yet strike such a panic, as should change the
fortunes of the day, otherwise so nearly desperate. The veteran,
therefore, animated his comrades to the charge by voice and
example; and, in spite of all opposition, forced his way gradually
onward. But Gwenwyn in person, surrounded by his best and noblest
champions, offered a defence as obstinate as the assault was
intrepid. In vain they were borne to the earth by the barbed
horses, or hewed down by the invulnerable riders. Wounded and
overthrown, the Britons continued their resistance, clung round
the legs of the Norman steeds, and cumbered their advance while
their brethren, thrusting with pikes, proved every joint and
crevice of the plate and mail, or grappling with the men-at-arms,
strove to pull them from their horses by main force, or beat them
down with their bills and Welsh hooks. And wo betide those who
were by these various means dismounted, for the long sharp knives
worn by the Welsh, soon pierced them with a hundred wounds, and
were then only merciful when the first inflicted was deadly.

The combat was at this point, and had raged for more than half an
hour, when Berenger, having forced his horse within two spears'
length of the British standard, he and Gwenwyn were so near to
each other as to exchange tokens of mutual defiance.

"Turn thee, Wolf of Wales," said Berenger, "and abide, if thou
darest, one blow of a good knight's sword! Raymond Berenger spits
at thee and thy banner."

"False Norman churl!" said Gwenwyn, swinging around his head a
mace of prodigious weight, and already clottered with blood, "thy
iron headpiece shall ill protect thy lying tongue, with which I
will this day feed the ravens."

Raymond made no farther answer, but pushed his horse towards the
Prince, who advanced to meet him with equal readiness. But ere
they came within reach of each other's weapons, a Welsh champion,
devoted like the Romans who opposed the elephants of Pyrrhus,
finding that the armour of Raymond's horse resisted the repeated
thrusts of his spear, threw himself under the animal, and stabbed
him in the belly with his long knife. The noble horse reared and
fell, crushing with his weight the Briton who had wounded him; the
helmet of the rider burst its clasps in the fall, and rolled away
from his head, giving to view his noble features and gray hairs.
He made more than one effort to extricate himself from the fallen
horse, but ere he could succeed, received his death-wound from the
hand of Gwenwyn, who hesitated not to strike him down with his
mace while in the act of extricating himself.

During the whole of this bloody day, Dennis Morolt's horse had
kept pace for pace, and his arm blow for blow, with his master's.
It seemed as if two different bodies had been moving under one act
of volition. He husbanded his strength, or put it forth, exactly
as he observed his knight did, and was close by his side, when he
made the last deadly effort. At that fatal moment, when Raymond
Berenger rushed on the chief, the brave squire forced his way up
to the standard, and, grasping it firmly, struggled for possession
of it with a gigantic Briton, to whose care it had been confided,
and who now exerted his utmost strength to defend it. But even
while engaged in this mortal struggle, the eye of Morolt scarcely
left his master; and when he saw him fall, his own force seemed by
sympathy to abandon him, and the British champion had no longer
any trouble in laying him prostrate among the slain.

The victory of the British was now complete. Upon the fall of
their leader, the followers of Raymond Berenger would willingly
have fled or surrendered. But the first was impossible, so closely
had they been enveloped; and in the cruel wars maintained by the
Welsh upon their frontiers, quarter to the vanquished was out of
question. A few of the men-at-arms were lucky enough to
disentangle themselves from the tumult, and, not even attempting
to enter the castle, fled in various directions, to carry their
own fears among the inhabitants of the marches, by announcing the
loss of the battle, and the fate of the far-renowned Raymond
Berenger.

The archers of the fallen leader, as they had never been so deeply
involved in the combat, which had been chiefly maintained by the
cavalry, became now, in their turn, the sole object of the enemy's
attack. But when they saw the multitude come roaring towards them
like a sea, with all its waves, they abandoned the bank which they
had hitherto bravely defended, and began a regular retreat to the
castle in the best order which they could, as the only remaining
means of securing their lives. A few of their lightfooted enemies
attempted to intercept them, during the execution of this prudent
manoeuvre, by outstripping them in their march, and throwing
themselves into the hollow way which led to the castle, to oppose
their retreat. But the coolness of the English archers, accustomed
to extremities of every kind, supported them on the present
occasion. While a part of them, armed with glaives and bills,
dislodged the Welsh from the hollow way, the others, facing in the
opposite direction, and parted into divisions, which alternately
halted and retreated, maintained such a countenance as to check
pursuit, and exchange a severe discharge of missiles with the
Welsh, by which both parties were considerable sufferers.

At length, having left more than two-thirds of their brave
companions behind them, the yeomanry attained the point, which,
being commanded by arrows and engines from the battlements, might
be considered as that of comparative safety. A volley of large
stones, and square-headed bolts of great size and thickness,
effectually stopped the farther progress of the pursuit, and those
who had led it drew back their desultory forces to the plain,
where, with shouts of jubilee and exultation, their countrymen
were employed in securing the plunder of the field; while some,
impelled by hatred and revenge, mangled and mutilated the limbs of
the dead Normans, in a manner unworthy of their national cause and
their own courage. The fearful yells with which this dreadful work
was consummated, while it struck horror into the minds of the
slender garrison of the Garde Doloureuse, inspired them at the
same time with the resolution rather to defend the fortress to the
last extremity, than to submit to the mercy of so vengeful an
enemy. [Footnote: This is by no means exaggerated in the text. A
very honourable testimony was given to their valour by King Henry
II., in a letter to the Greek Emperor, Emanuel Commenus. This
prince having desired that an account might be sent him of all
that was remarkable in the island of Great Britain, Henry, in
answer to that request, was pleased to take notice, among other
particulars, of the extraordinary courage and fierceness of the
Welsh, who were not afraid to fight unarmed with enemies armed at
all points, valiantly shedding their blood in the cause of their
country, and purchasing glory at the expense of their lives.]




CHAPTER THE FIFTH


  That baron he to his castle fled,
  To Barnard Castle then fled he;
  The uttermost walls were eathe to win,
  The Earls have won them speedilie;-
  The uttermost walls were stone and brick;
  But though they won them soon anon,
  Long ere they won the inmost walls,
  For they were hewn in rock of stone.
     PERCY'S RELICS OF ANCIENT POETRY.


The unhappy fate of the battle was soon evident to the anxious
spectators upon the watch-towers of the Garde Doloureuse, which
name the castle that day too well deserved. With difficulty the
confessor mastered his own emotions to control those of the
females on whom he attended, and who were now joined in their
lamentation by many others--women, children, and infirm old men,
the relatives of those whom they saw engaged in this unavailing
contest. These helpless beings had been admitted to the castle for
security's sake, and they had now thronged to the battlements,
from which Father Aldrovand found difficulty in making them
descend, aware that the sight of them on the towers, that should
have appeared lined with armed men, would be an additional
encouragement to the exertions of the assailants. He urged the
Lady Eveline to set an example to this group of helpless, yet
intractable mourners.

Preserving, at least endeavouring to preserve, even in the
extremity of grief, that composure which the manners of the times
enjoined--for chivalry had its stoicism as well as philosophy--
Eveline replied in a voice which she would fain have rendered
firm, and which was tremulous in her despite--"Yes, father, you
say well--here is no longer aught left for maidens to look upon.
Warlike meed and honoured deed sunk when yonder white plume
touched the bloody ground.--Come, maidens, there is no longer
aught left us to see--To mass, to mass--the tourney is over!"

There was wildness in her tone, and when she rose, with the air of
one who would lead out a procession, she staggered, and would have
fallen, but for the support of the confessor. Hastily wrapping her
head in her mantle, as if ashamed of the agony of grief which she
could not restrain, and of which her sobs and the low moaning
sounds that issued from under the folds enveloping her face,
declared the excess, she suffered Father Aldrovand to conduct her
whither he would.

"Our gold," he said, "has changed to brass, our silver to dross,
our wisdom, to folly--it is His will, who confounds the counsels
of the wise, and shortens the arm of the mighty. To the chapel--to
the chapel, Lady Eveline; and instead of vain repining, let us
pray to God and the saints to turn away their displeasure, and to
save the feeble remnant from the jaws of the devouring wolf."

Thus speaking, he half led, half supported Eveline, who was at the
moment almost incapable of thought and action, to the castle-
chapel, where, sinking before the altar, she assumed the attitude
at least of devotion, though her thoughts, despite the pious words
which her tongue faltered out mechanically, were upon the field of
battle, beside the body of her slaughtered parent. The rest of the
mourners imitated their young lady in her devotional posture, and
in the absence of her thoughts. The consciousness that so many of
the garrison had been cut off in Raymond's incautious sally, added
to their sorrows the sense of personal insecurity, which was
exaggerated by the cruelties which were too often exercised by the
enemy, who, in the heat of victory, were accustomed to spare
neither sex nor age.

The monk, however, assumed among them the tone of authority which
his character warranted, rebuked their wailing and ineffectual
complaints, and having, as he thought, brought them to such a
state of mind as better became their condition, he left them to
their private devotions to indulge his own anxious curiosity by
inquiring into the defences of the castle. Upon the outward walls
he found Wilkin Flammock, who, having done the office of a good
and skilful captain in the mode of managing his artillery, and
beating back, as we have already seen, the advanced guard of the
enemy, was now with his own hand measuring out to his little
garrison no stinted allowance of wine.

"Have a care, good Wilkin," said the father, "that thou dost not
exceed in this matter. Wine is, thou knowest, like fire and water,
an excellent servant, but a very bad master."

"It will be long ere it overflow the deep and solid skulls of my
countrymen," said Wilkin Flammock. "Our Flemish courage is like
our Flanders horses--the one needs the spur, and the other must
have a taste of the winepot; but, credit me, father, they are of
an enduring generation, and will not shrink in the washing.--But
indeed, if I were to give the knaves a cup more than enough, it
were not altogether amiss, since they are like to have a platter
the less."

"How do you mean!" cried the monk, starting; "I trust in the
saints the provisions have been cared for?"

"Not so well as in your convent, good father," replied Wilkin,
with the same immoveable stolidity of countenance. "We had kept,
as you know, too jolly a Christmas to have a very fat Easter. Yon
Welsh hounds, who helped to eat up our victuals, are now like to
get into our hold for the lack of them."

"Thou talkest mere folly," answered the monk; "orders were last
evening given by our lord (whose soul God assoilzie!) to fetch in
the necessary supplies from the country around!

"Ay, but the Welsh were too sharp set to permit us to do that at
our ease this morning, which should have been done weeks and
months since. Our lord deceased, if deceased he be, was one of
those who trusted to the edge of the sword, and even so hath come
of it. Commend me to a crossbow and a well-victualled castle, if I
must needs fight at all.--You look pale, my good father, a cup of
wine will revive you."

The monk motioned away from him the untasted cup, which Wilkin
pressed him to with clownish civility. "We have now, indeed," he
said, "no refuge, save in prayer!"

"Most true, good father;" again replied the impassible Fleming;
"pray therefore as much as you will. I will content myself with
fasting, which will come whether I will or no."--At this moment a
horn was heard before the gate.--"Look to the portcullis and the
gate, ye knaves!--What news, Neil Hansen?"

"A messenger from the Welsh tarries at the Mill-hill, just within
shot of the cross-bows; he has a white flag, and demands
admittance."

"Admit him not, upon thy life, till we be prepared for him," said
Wilkin. "Bend the bonny mangonel upon the place, and shoot him if
he dare to stir from the spot where he stands till we get all
prepared to receive him," said Flammock in his native language.
"And, Neil, thou houndsfoot, bestir thyself--let every pike,
lance, and pole in the castle be ranged along the battlements, and
pointed through the shot-holes--cut up some tapestry into the
shape of banners, and show them from the highest towers.--Be ready
when I give a signal, to strike _naker_, [Footnote:
_Naker_,--Drum. ] and blow trumpets, if we have any; if not,
some cow-horns--anything for a noise. And hark ye, Neil Hansen, do
you, and four or five of your fellows, go to the armoury and slip
on coats-of-mail; our Netherlandish corslets do not appal them so
much. Then let the Welsh thief be blindfolded and brought in
amongst us--Do you hold up your heads and keep silence--leave me
to deal with him--only have a care there be no English among us."

The monk, who in his travels had acquired some slight knowledge of
the Flemish language, had well-nigh started when he heard the last
article in Wilkin's instructions to his countryman, but commanded
himself, although a little surprised, both at this suspicious
circumstance, and at the readiness and dexterity with which the
rough-hewn Fleming seemed to adapt his preparations to the rules
of war and of sound policy.

Wilkin, on his part, was not very certain whether the monk had not
heard and understood more of what he said to his countryman, than
what he had intended. As if to lull asleep any suspicion which
Father Aldrovand might entertain, he repeated to him in English
most of the directions which he had given, adding, "Well, good
father, what think you of it?"

"Excellent well," answered the father, "and done as if you had
practised war from the cradle, instead of weaving broad-cloth."

"Nay, spare not your jibes, father," answered Wilkin.--"I know
full well that you English think that Flemings have nought in
their brainpan but sodden beef and cabbage; yet you see there goes
wisdom to weaving of webs."

"Right, Master Wilkin Flammock," answered the father; "but, good
Fleming, wilt thou tell me what answer thou wilt make to the Welsh
Prince's summons?"

"Reverend father, first tell me what the summons will be," replied
the Fleming.

"To surrender this castle upon the instant," answered the monk.
"What will be your reply?"

"My answer will be, Nay--unless upon good composition."

"How, Sir Fleming! dare you mention composition and the castle of
the Garde Doloureuse in one sentence?" said the monk.

"Not if I may do better," answered the Fleming. "But would your
reverence have me dally until the question amongst the garrison
be, whether a plump priest or a fat Fleming will be the better
flesh to furnish their shambles?"

"Pshaw!" replied Father Aldrovand, "thou canst not mean such
folly. Relief must arrive within twenty-four hours at farthest.
Raymond Berenger expected it for certain within such a space."

"Raymond Berenger has been deceived this morning in more matters
than one," answered the Fleming.

"Hark thee, Flanderkin," answered the monk, whose retreat from the
world had not altogether quenched his military habits and
propensities, "I counsel thee to deal uprightly in this matter, as
thou dost regard thine own life; for here are as many English left
alive, notwithstanding the slaughter of to-day, as may well
suffice to fling the Flemish bull-frogs into the castle-ditch,
should they have cause to think thou meanest falsely, in the
keeping of this castle, and the defence of the Lady Eveline."

"Let not your reverence be moved with unnecessary and idle fears,"
replied Wilkin Flammock--"I am castellane in this house, by
command of its lord, and what I hold for the advantage of mine
service, that will I do."

"But I," said the angry monk, "I am the servant of the Pope--the
chaplain of this castle, with power to bind and unloose. I fear me
thou art no true Christian, Wilkin Flammock, but dost lean to the
heresy of the mountaineers. Thou hast refused to take the blessed
cross--thou hast breakfasted, and drunk both ale and wine, ere
thou hast heard mass. Thou art not to be trusted, man, and I will
not trust thee--I demand to be present at the conference betwixt
thee and the Welshman."

"It may not be, good father," said Wilkin, with the same smiling,
heavy countenance, which he maintained on all occasions of life,
however urgent. "It is true, as thou sayest, good father, that I
have mine own reasons for not marching quite so far as the gates
of Jericho at present; and lucky I have such reasons, since I had
not else been here to defend the gate of the Garde Doloureuse. It
is also true that I may have been sometimes obliged to visit my
mills earlier than the chaplain was called by his zeal to the
altar, and that my stomach brooks not working ere I break my fast.
But for this, father, I have paid a mulet even to your worshipful
reverence, and methinks since you are pleased to remember the
confession so exactly, you should not forget the penance and the
absolution."

The monk, in alluding to the secrets of the confessional, had gone
a step beyond what the rules of his order and of the church
permitted. He was baffled by the Fleming's reply, and finding him
unmoved by the charge of heresy, he could only answer, in some
confusion, "You refuse, then, to admit me to the conference with
the Welshman?"

"Reverend father," said Wilkin, "it altogether respecteth secular
matters. If aught of religious tenor should intervene, you shall
be summoned without delay."

"I will be there in spite of thee, thou Flemish ox," muttered the
monk to himself, but in a tone not to be heard by the by-standers;
and so speaking he left the battlements.

Wilkin Flammock, a few minutes afterwards, having first seen that
all was arranged on the battlements, so as to give an imposing
idea of a strength which did not exist, descended to a small
guard-room, betwixt the outer and inner gate, where he was
attended by half-a-dozen of his own people, disguised in the
Norman armour which they had found in the armoury of the castle,--
their strong, tall, and bulky forms, and motionless postures,
causing them to look rather like trophies of some past age, than
living and existing soldiers. Surrounded by these huge and
inanimate figures, in a little vaulted room which almost excluded
daylight, Flammock received the Welsh envoy, who was led in
blindfolded betwixt two Flemings, yet not so carefully watched but
that they permitted him to have a glimpse of the preparations on
the battlements, which had, in fact, been made chiefly for the
purpose of imposing on him. For the same purpose an occasional
clatter of arms was made without; voices were heard as if officers
were going their rounds; and other sounds of active preparation
seemed to announce that a numerous and regular garrison was
preparing to receive an attack.

When the bandage was removed from Jorworth's eyes,--for the same
individual who had formerly brought Gwenwyn's offer of alliance,
now bare his summons of surrender,--he looked haughtily around him
and demanded to whom he was to deliver the commands of his master,
the Gwenwyn, son of Cyvelioc, Prince of Powys.

"His highness," answered Flammock, with his usual smiling
indifference of manner, "must be contented to treat with Wilkin
Flammock of the Fulling-mills, deputed governor of the Garde
Doloureuse."

"Thou deputed governor!" exclaimed Jorworth; "thou?--a Low-country
weaver!--it is impossible. Low as they are, the English Crogan
[Footnote: This is a somewhat contumelious epithet applied by the
Welsh to the English.] cannot have sunk to a point so low, as to
be commanded by _thee!_--these men seem English, to them I
will deliver my message."

"You may if you will," replied Wilkin, "but if they return you any
answer save by signs, you shall call me _schelm_."

"Is this true?" said the Welsh envoy, looking towards the men-at-
arms, as they seemed, by whom Flammock was attended; "are you
really come to this pass? I thought that the mere having been born
on British earth, though the children of spoilers and invaders,
had inspired you with too much pride to brook the yoke of a base
mechanic. Or, if you are not courageous, should you not be
cautious?--Well speaks the proverb, Wo to him that will trust a
stranger! Still mute--still silent?--answer me by word or sign--Do
you really call and acknowledge him as your leader?"

The men in armour with one accord nodded their casques in reply to
Jorworth's question, and then remained motionless as before.

The Welshman, with the acute genius of his country, suspected
there was something in this which he could not entirely
comprehend, but, preparing himself to be upon his guard, he
proceeded as follows: "Be it as it may, I care not who hears the
message of my sovereign, since it brings pardon and mercy to the
inhabitants of this Castell an Carrig, [Footnote: Castle of the
Craig.] which you have called the Garde Doloureuse, to cover the
usurpation of the territory by the change of the name. Upon
surrender of the same to the Prince of Powys, with its
dependencies, and with the arms which it contains, and with the
maiden Eveline Berenger, all within the castle shall depart
unmolested, and have safe-conduct wheresoever they will, to go
beyond the marches of the Cymry."

"And how, if we obey not this summons?" said the imperturbable
Wilkin Flammock.

"Then shall your portion be with Raymond Berenger, your late
leader," replied Jorworth, his eyes, while he was speaking,
glancing with the vindictive ferocity which dictated his answer.
"So many strangers as be here amongst ye, so many bodies to the
ravens, so many heads to the gibbet!--It is long since the kites
have had such a banquet of lurdane Flemings and false Saxons."

"Friend Jorworth," said Wilkin, "if such be thy only message, bear
mine answer back to thy master, That wise men trust not to the
words of others that safety, which they can secure by their own
deeds. We have walls high and strong enough, deep moats, and
plenty of munition, both longbow and arblast. We will keep the
castle, trusting the castle will keep us, till God shall send us
succour."

"Do not peril your lives on such an issue," said the Welsh
emissary, changing his language to the Flemish, which, from
occasional communication with those of that nation in
Pembrokeshire, he spoke fluently, and which he now adopted, as if
to conceal the purport of his discourse from the supposed English
in the apartment. "Hark thee hither," he proceeded, "good Fleming.
Knowest thou not that he in whom is your trust, the Constable De
Lacy, hath bound himself by his vow to engage in no quarrel till
he crosses the sea, and cannot come to your aid without perjury?
He and the other Lords Marchers have drawn their forces far
northward to join the host of Crusaders. What will it avail you to
put us to the toil and trouble of a long siege, when you can hope
no rescue?"

"And what will it avail me more," said Wilkin, answering in his
native language and looking at the Welshman fixedly, yet with a
countenance from which all expression seemed studiously banished,
and which exhibited, upon features otherwise tolerable, a
remarkable compound of dulness and simplicity, "what will it avail
me whether your trouble be great or small?"

"Come, friend Flammock," said the Welshman, "frame not thyself
more unapprehensive than nature hath formed thee. The glen is
dark, but a sunbeam can light the side of it. Thy utmost efforts
cannot prevent the fall of this castle; but thou mayst hasten it,
and the doing so shall avail thee much." Thus speaking, he drew
close up to Wilkin, and sunk his voice to an insinuating whisper,
as he said, "Never did the withdrawing of a bar, or the raising of
a portcullis, bring such vantage to Fleming as they may to thee,
if thou wilt."

"I only know," said Wilkin, "that the drawing the one, and the
dropping the other, have cost me my whole worldly subsistence."

"Fleming, it shall be compensated to thee with an overflowing
measure. The liberality of Gwenwyn is as the summer rain."

"My whole mills and buildings have been this morning burnt to the
earth--"

"Thou shalt have a thousand marks of silver, man, in the place of
thy goods," said the Welshman; but the Fleming continued, without
seeming to hear him, to number up his losses.

"My lands are forayed, twenty kine driven off, and--"

"Threescore shall replace them," interrupted Jorworth, "chosen
from the most bright-skinned of the spoil."

"But my daughter--but the Lady Eveline"--said the Fleming, with
some slight change in his monotonous voice, which seemed to
express doubt and perplexity--"You are cruel conquerors, and--"

"To those who resist us we are fearful," said Jorworth, "but not
to such as shall deserve clemency by surrender. Gwenwyn will
forget the contumelies of Raymond, and raise his daughter to high
honour among the daughters of the Cymry. For thine own child, form
but a wish for her advantage, and it shall be fulfilled to the
uttermost. Now, Fleming, we understand each other."

"I understand thee, at least," said Flammock.

"And I thee, I trust?" said Jorworth, bending his keen, wild blue
eye on the stolid and unexpressive face of the Netherlander, like
an eager student who seeks to discover some hidden and mysterious
meaning in a passage of a classic author, the direct import of
which seems trite and trivial.

"You believe that you understand me," said Wilkin; "but here lies
the difficulty,--which of us shall trust the other?"

"Darest thou ask?" answered Jorworth. "Is it for thee, or such as
thee, to express doubt of the purposes of the Prince of Powys?"

"I know them not, good Jorworth, but through thee; and well I wot
thou art not one who will let thy traffic miscarry for want of aid
from the breath of thy mouth."

"As I am a Christian man," said Jorworth, hurrying asseveration on
asseveration--"by the soul of my father--by the faith of my
mother--by the black rood of--"

"Stop, good Jorworth--thou heapest thine oaths too thickly on each
other, for me to value them to the right estimate," said Flammock;
"that which is so lightly pledged, is sometimes not thought worth
redeeming. Some part of the promised guerdon in hand the whilst,
were worth an hundred oaths."

"Thou suspicious churl, darest thou doubt my word?"

"No--by no means," answered Wilkin;--"nevertheless, I will believe
thy deed more readily."

"To the point, Fleming," said Jorworth--"What wouldst thou have of
me?"

"Let me have some present sight of the money thou didst promise,
and I will think of the rest of thy proposal."

"Base silver-broker!" answered Jorworth, "thinkest thou the Prince
of Powys has as many money-bags, as the merchants of thy land of
sale and barter? He gathers treasures by his conquests, as the
waterspout sucks up water by its strength, but it is to disperse
them among his followers, as the cloudy column restores its
contents to earth and ocean. The silver that I promise thee has
yet to be gathered out of the Saxon chests--nay, the casket of
Berenger himself must be ransacked to make up the tale."

"Methinks I could do that myself, (having full power in the
castle,) and so save you a labour," said the Fleming.

"True," answered Jorworth, "but it would be at the expense of a
cord and a noose, whether the Welsh took the place or the Normans
relieved it--the one would expect their booty entire--the other
their countryman's treasures to be delivered undiminished."

"I may not gainsay that," said the Fleming. "Well, say I were
content to trust you thus far, why not return my cattle, which are
in your own hands, and at your disposal? If you do not pleasure me
in something beforehand, what can I expect of you afterwards?"

"I would pleasure you in a greater matter," answered the equally
suspicious Welshman. "But what would it avail thee to have thy
cattle within the fortress? They can be better cared for on the
plain beneath."

"In faith," replied the Fleming, "thou sayst truth--they will be
but a trouble to us here, where we have so many already provided
for the use of the garrison.--And yet, when I consider it more
closely, we have enough of forage to maintain all we have, and
more. Now, my cattle are of a peculiar stock, brought from the
rich pastures of Flanders, and I desire to have them restored ere
your axes and Welsh hooks be busy with their hides."

"You shall have them this night, hide and horn," said Jorworth;
"it is but a small earnest of a great boon."

"Thanks to your munificence," said the Fleming; "I am a simple-
minded man, and bound my wishes to the recovery of my own
property."

"Thou wilt be ready, then, to deliver the castle?" said Jorworth.

"Of that we will talk farther to-morrow," said Wilkin Flammock;
"if these English and Normans should suspect such a purpose, we
should have wild work--they must be fully dispersed ere I can hold
farther communication on the subject. Meanwhile, I pray thee,
depart suddenly, and as if offended with the tenor of our
discourse."

"Yet would I fain know something more fixed and absolute," said
Jorworth.

"Impossible--impossible," said the Fleming: "see you not yonder
tall fellow begins already to handle his dagger--Go hence in
haste, and angrily--and forget not the cattle."

"I will not forget them," said Jorworth; "but if thou keep not
faith with us--"

So speaking, he left the apartment with a gesture of menace,
partly really directed to Wilkin himself, partly assumed in
consequence of his advice. Flammock replied in English, as if that
all around might understand, what he said,

"Do thy worst, Sir Welshman! I am a true man; I defy the proposals
of rendition, and will hold out this castle to thy shame and thy
master's!--Here--let him be blindfolded once more, and returned in
safety to his attendants without; the next Welshman who appears
before the gate of the Garde Doloureuse, shall be more sharply
received."

The Welshman was blindfolded and withdrawn, when, as Wilkin
Flammock himself left the guardroom, one of the seeming men-at-
arms, who had been present at this interview, said in his ear, in
English, "Thou art a false traitor, Flammock, and shalt die a
traitor's death!"

Startled at this, the Fleming would have questioned the man
farther, but he had disappeared so soon as the words were uttered.
Flammock was disconcerted by this circumstance, which showed him
that his interview with Jorworth had been observed, and its
purpose known or conjectured, by some one who was a stranger to
his confidence, and might thwart his intentions; and he quickly
after learned that this was the case.




CHAPTER THE SIXTH


  Blessed Mary, mother dear,
  To a maiden bend thine ear,
  Virgin undefiled, to thee
  A wretched virgin bends the knee.
    HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.


The daughter of the slaughtered Raymond had descended from the
elevated station whence she had beheld the field of battle, in the
agony of grief natural to a child whose eyes have beheld the death
of an honoured and beloved father. But her station, and the
principles of chivalry in which she had been trained up, did not
permit any prolonged or needless indulgence of inactive sorrow. In
raising the young and beautiful of the female sex to the rank of
princesses, or rather goddesses, the spirit of that singular
system exacted from them, in requital, a tone of character, and a
line of conduct, superior and something contradictory to that of
natural or merely human feeling. Its heroines frequently resembled
portraits shown by an artificial light--strong and luminous, and
which placed in high relief the objects on which it was turned;
but having still something of adventitious splendour, which,
compared with that of the natural day, seemed glaring and
exaggerated.

It was not permitted to the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, the
daughter of a line of heroes, whose stem was to be found in the
race of Thor, Balder, Odin, and other deified warriors of the
North, whose beauty was the theme of a hundred minstrels, and her
eyes the leading star of half the chivalry of the warlike marches
of Wales, to mourn her sire with the ineffectual tears of a
village maiden. Young as she was, and horrible as was the incident
which she had but that instant witnessed, it was not altogether so
appalling to her as to a maiden whose eye had not been accustomed
to the rough, and often fatal sports of chivalry, and whose
residence had not been among scenes and men where war and death
had been the unceasing theme of every tongue, whose imagination
had not been familiarized with wild and bloody events, or,
finally, who had not been trained up to consider an honourable
"death under shield," as that of a field of battle was termed, as
a more desirable termination to the life of a warrior, than that
lingering and unhonoured fate which comes slowly on, to conclude
the listless and helpless inactivity of prolonged old age.
Eveline, while she wept for her father, felt her bosom glow when
she recollected that he died in the blaze of his fame, and amidst
heaps of his slaughtered enemies; and when she thought of the
exigencies of her own situation, it was with the determination to
defend her own liberty, and to avenge her father's death, by every
means which Heaven had left within her power.

The aids of religion were not forgotten; and according to the
custom of the times, and the doctrines of the Roman church, she
endeavoured to propitiate the favour of Heaven by vows as well as
prayers. In a small crypt, or oratory, adjoining to the chapel,
was hung over an altar-piece, on which a lamp constantly burned, a
small picture of the Virgin Mary, revered as a household and
peculiar deity by the family of Berenger, one of whose ancestors
had brought it from the Holy Land, whither he had gone upon
pilgrimage. It was of the period of the Lower Empire, a Grecian
painting, not unlike those which in Catholic countries are often
imputed to the Evangelist Luke. The crypt in which it was placed
was accounted a shrine of uncommon sanctity--nay, supposed to have
displayed miraculous powers; and Eveline, by the daily garland of
flowers which she offered before the painting, and by the constant
prayers with which they were accompanied, had constituted herself
the peculiar votaress of Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse, for so
the picture was named.

Now, apart from others, alone, and in secrecy, sinking in the
extremity of her sorrow before the shrine of her patroness, she
besought the protection of kindred purity for the defence of her
freedom and honour, and invoked vengeance on the wild and
treacherous chieftain who had slain her father, and was now
beleaguering her place of strength. Not only did she vow a large
donative in lands to the shrine of the protectress whose aid she
implored; but the oath passed her lips, (even though they
faltered, and though something within her remonstrated against the
vow,) that whatsoever favoured knight Our Lady of the Garde
Doloureuse might employ for her rescue, should obtain from her in
guerdon whatever boon she might honourably grant, were it that of
her virgin hand at the holy altar. Taught as she was to believe,
by the assurances of many a knight, that such a surrender was the
highest boon which Heaven could bestow, she felt as discharging a
debt of gratitude when she placed herself entirely at the disposal
of the pure and blessed patroness in whose aid she confided.
Perhaps there lurked in this devotion some earthly hope of which
she was herself scarce conscious, and which reconciled her to the
indefinite sacrifice thus freely offered. The Virgin, (this
flattering hope might insinuate,) kindest and most benevolent of
patronesses, will use compassionately the power resigned to her,
and _he_ will be the favoured champion of Maria, upon whom
her votaress would most willingly confer favour.

But if there was such a hope, as something selfish will often
mingle with our noblest and purest emotions, it arose unconscious
of Eveline herself, who, in the full assurance of implicit faith,
and fixing on the representative of her adoration, eyes in which
the most earnest supplication, the most humble confidence,
struggled with unbidden tears, was perhaps more beautiful than
when, young as she was, she was selected to bestow the prize of
chivalry in the lists of Chester. It was no wonder that, in such a
moment of high excitation, when prostrated in devotion before a
being of whose power to protect her, and to make her protection
assured by a visible sign, she doubted nothing, the Lady Eveline
conceived she saw with her own eyes the acceptance of her vow. As
she gazed on the picture with an over-strained eye, and an
imagination heated with enthusiasm, the expression seemed to alter
from the hard outline, fashioned by the Greek painter; the eyes
appeared to become animated, and to return with looks of
compassion the suppliant entreaties of the votaress, and the mouth
visibly arranged itself into a smile of inexpressible sweetness.
It even seemed to her that the head made a gentle inclination.

Overpowered by supernatural awe at appearances, of which her faith
permitted her not to question the reality, the Lady Eveline folded
her arms on her bosom, and prostrated her forehead on the
pavement, as the posture most fitting to listen to divine
communication.

But her vision went not so far; there was neither sound nor voice,
and when, after stealing her eyes all around the crypt in which
she knelt, she again raised them to the figure of Our Lady, the
features seemed to be in the form in which the limner had sketched
them, saving that, to Eveline's imagination, they still retained
an august and yet gracious expression, which she had not before
remarked upon the countenance. With awful reverence, almost
amounting to fear, yet comforted, and even elated, with the
visitation she had witnessed, the maiden repeated again and again
the orisons which she thought most grateful to the ear of her
benefactress; and rising at length, retired backwards, as from the
presence of a sovereign, until she attained the outer chapel.

Here one or two females still knelt before the saints which the
walls and niches presented for adoration; but the rest of the
terrified suppliants, too anxious to prolong their devotions, had
dispersed through the castle to learn tidings of their friends,
and to obtain some refreshment, or at least some place of repose
for themselves and their families.

Bowing her head, and muttering an ave to each saint as she passed
his image, (for impending danger makes men observant of the rites
of devotion,) the Lady Eveline had almost reached the door of the
chapel, when a man-at-arms, as he seemed, entered hastily; and,
with a louder voice than suited the holy place, unless when need
was most urgent, demanded the Lady Eveline. Impressed with the
feelings of veneration which the late scene had produced, she was
about to rebuke his military rudeness, when he spoke again, and in
anxious haste, "Daughter, we are betrayed!" and though the form,
and the coat-of-mail which covered it, were those of a soldier,
the voice was that of Father Aldrovand, who, eager and anxious at
the same time, disengaged himself from the mail hood, and showed
his countenance.

"Father," she said, "what means this? Have you forgotten the
confidence in Heaven which you are wont to recommend, that you
bear other arms than your order assigns to you?"

"It may come to that ere long," said Father Aldrovand; "for I was
a soldier ere I was a monk. But now I have donn'd this harness to
discover treachery, not to resist force. Ah! my beloved daughter--
we are dreadfully beset--foemen without--traitors within!--The
false Fleming, Wilkin Flammock, is treating for the surrender of
the castle!"

"Who dares say so?" said a veiled female, who had been kneeling
unnoticed in a sequestered corner of the chapel, but who now
started up and came boldly betwixt Lady Eveline and the monk.

"Go hence, thou saucy minion," said the monk, surprised at this
bold interruption; "this concerns not thee."

"But it _doth_ concern me," said the damsel, throwing back
her veil, and discovering the juvenile countenance of Rose, the
daughter of Wilkin Flammock, her eyes sparkling, and her cheeks
blushing with anger, the vehemence of which made a singular
contrast with the very fair complexion, and almost infantine
features of the speaker, whose whole form and figure was that of a
girl who has scarce emerged from childhood, and indeed whose
general manners were as gentle and bashful as they now seemed
bold, impassioned, and undaunted.--"Doth it not concern me," she
said, "that my father's honest name should be tainted with
treason? Doth it not concern the stream when the fountain is
troubled? It _doth_ concern me, and I will know the author of
the calumny."

"Damsel," said Eveline, "restrain thy useless passion; the good
father, though he cannot intentionally calumniate thy father,
speaks, it may be, from false report."

"As I am an unworthy priest," said the father, "I speak from the
report of my own ears. Upon the oath of my order, myself heard
this Wilkin Flammock chaffering with the Welshman for the
surrender of the Garde Doloureuse. By help of this hauberk and
mail hood, I gained admittance to a conference where he thought
there were no English ears. They spoke Flemish too, but I knew the
jargon of old."

"The Flemish," said the angry maiden, whose headstrong passion led
her to speak first in answer to the last insult offered, "is no
jargon like your piebald English, half Norman, half Saxon, but a
noble Gothic tongue, spoken by the brave warriors who fought
against the Roman Kaisars, when Britain bent the neck to them--and
as for this he has said of Wilkin Flammock," she continued,
collecting her ideas into more order as she went on, "believe it
not, my dearest lady; but, as you value the honour of your own
noble father, confide, as in the Evangelists, in the honesty of
mine!" This she spoke with an imploring tone of voice, mingled
with sobs, as if her heart had been breaking.

Eveline endeavoured to soothe her attendant. "Rose," she said, "in
this evil time suspicions will light on the best men, and
misunderstandings will arise among the best friends.--Let us hear
the good father state what he hath to charge upon your parent.
Fear not but that Wilkin shall be heard in his defence. Thou wert
wont to be quiet and reasonable."

"I am neither quiet nor reasonable on this matter," said Rose,
with redoubled indignation; "and it is ill of you, lady, to listen
to the falsehoods of that reverend mummer, who is neither true
priest nor true soldier. But I will fetch one who shall confront
him either in casque or cowl." So saying, she went hastily out of
the chapel, while the monk, after some pedantic circumlocution,
acquainted the Lady Eveline with what he had overheard betwixt
Jorworth and Wilkin; and proposed to her to draw together the few
English who were in the castle, and take possession of the
innermost square tower; a keep which, as usual in Gothic
fortresses of the Norman period, was situated so as to make
considerable defence, even after the exterior works of the castle,
which it commanded, were in the hand of the enemy.

"Father," said Eveline, still confident in the vision she had
lately witnessed, "this were good counsel in extremity; but
otherwise, it were to create the very evil we fear, by seating our
garrison at odds amongst themselves. I have a strong, and not
unwarranted confidence, good father, in our blessed Lady of the
Garde Doloureuse, that we shall attain at once vengeance on our
barbarous enemies, and escape from our present jeopardy; and I
call you to witness the vow I have made, that to him whom Our Lady
should employ to work us succour, I will refuse nothing, were it
my father's inheritance, or the hand of his daughter."

"_Ave Maria! Ave Regina Coeli!_" said the priest; "on a rock
more sure you could not have founded your trust.--But, daughter,"
he continued after the proper ejaculation had been made, "have you
never heard, even by a hint, that there was a treaty for your hand
betwixt our much honoured lord, of whom we are cruelly bereft,
(may God assoilzie his soul!) and the great house of Lacy?"

"Something I may have heard," said Eveline, dropping her eyes,
while a slight tinge suffused her cheek; "but I refer me to the
disposal of our Lady of Succour and Consolation."

As she spoke, Rose entered the chapel with the same vivacity she
had shown in leaving it, leading by the hand her father, whose
sluggish though firm step, vacant countenance, and heavy
demeanour, formed the strongest contrast to the rapidity of her
motions, and the anxious animation of her address. Her task of
dragging him forward might have reminded the spectator of some of
those ancient monuments, on which a small cherub, singularly
inadequate to the task, is often represented as hoisting upward
towards the empyrean the fleshy bulk of some ponderous tenant of
the tomb, whose disproportioned weight bids fair to render
ineffectual the benevolent and spirited exertions of its
fluttering guide and assistant.

"Roschen--my child--what grieves thee?" said the Netherlander, as
he yielded to his daughter's violence with a smile, which, being
on the countenance of a father, had more of expression and feeling
than those which seemed to have made their constant dwelling upon
his lips.

"Here stands my father," said the impatient maiden; "impeach him
with treason, who can or dare! There stands Wilkin Flammock, son
of Dieterick, the Cramer of Antwerp,--let those accuse him to his
face who slandered him behind his back!"

"Speak, Father Aldrovand," said the Lady Eveline; "we are young in
our lordship, and, alas! the duty hath descended upon us in an
evil hour; yet we will, so may God and Our Lady help us, hear and
judge of your accusation to the utmost of our power."

"This Wilkin Flammock," said the monk, "however bold he hath made
himself in villany, dares not deny that I heard him with my own
ears treat for the surrender of the castle."

"Strike him, father!" said the indignant Rose,--"strike the
disguised mummer! The steel hauberk may be struck, though not the
monk's frock--strike him, or tell him that he lies foully!"

"Peace, Roschen, thou art mad," said her father, angrily; "the
monk hath more truth than sense about him, and I would his ears
had been farther off when he thrust them into what concerned him
not."

Rose's countenance fell when she heard her father bluntly avow the
treasonable communication of which she had thought him incapable--
she dropt the hand by which she had dragged him into the chapel,
and stared on the Lady Eveline, with eyes which seemed starting
from their sockets, and a countenance from which the blood, with
which it was so lately highly coloured, had retreated to garrison
the heart.

Eveline looked upon the culprit with a countenance in which
sweetness and dignity were mingled with sorrow. "Wilkin," she
said, "I could not have believed this. What! on the very day of
thy confiding benefactor's death, canst thou have been tampering
with his murderers, to deliver up the castle, and betray thy
trust!--But I will not upbraid thee--I deprive thee of the trust
reposed in so unworthy a person, and appoint thee to be kept in
ward in the western tower, till God send us relief; when, it may
be, thy daughter's merits shall atone for thy offences, and save
farther punishment.--See that our commands be presently obeyed."

"Yes--yes--yes!" exclaimed Rose, hurrying one word on the other as
fast and vehemently as she could articulate--"Let us go--let us go
to the darkest dungeon--darkness befits us better than light."

The monk, on the other hand, perceiving that the Fleming made no
motion to obey the mandate of arrest, came forward, in a manner
more suiting his ancient profession, and present disguise, than
his spiritual character; and with the words, "I attach thee,
Wilkin Flammock, of acknowledged treason to your liege lady,"
would have laid hand upon him, had not the Fleming stepped back
and warned him off, with a menacing and determined gesture, while
he said,--"Ye are mad!--all of you English are mad when the moon
is full, and my silly girl hath caught the malady.--Lady, your
honoured father gave me a charge, which I propose to execute to
the best for all parties, and you cannot, being a minor, deprive
me of it at your idle pleasure.--Father Aldrovand, a monk makes no
lawful arrests.--Daughter Roschen, hold your peace and dry your
eyes--you are a fool."

"I am, I am," said Rose, drying her eyes and regaining her
elasticity of manner--"I am indeed a fool, and worse than a fool,
for a moment to doubt my father's probity.--Confide in him,
dearest lady; he is wise though he is grave, and kind though he is
plain and homely in his speech. Should he prove false he will fare
the worse! for I will plunge myself from the pinnacle of the
Warder's Tower to the bottom of the moat, and he shall lose his
own daughter for betraying his master's."

"This is all frenzy," said the monk--"Who trusts avowed traitors?
--Here, Normans, English, to the rescue of your liege lady--Bows
and bills--bows and bills!"

"You may spare your throat for your next homily, good father,"
said the Netherlander, "or call in good Flemish, since you
understand it, for to no other language will those within hearing
reply."

He then approached the Lady Eveline with a real or affected air of
clumsy kindness, and something as nearly approaching to courtesy
as his manners and features could assume. He bade her good-night,
and assuring her that he would act for the best, left the chapel.
The monk was about to break forth into revilings, but Eveline,
with more prudence, checked his zeal.

"I cannot," she said, "but hope that this man's intentions are
honest--"

"Now, God's blessing on you, lady, for that very word!" said Rose,
eagerly interrupting her, and kissing her hand.

"But if unhappily they are doubtful," continued Eveline, "it is
not by reproach that we can bring him to a better purpose. Good
father, give an eye to the preparations for resistance, and see
nought omitted that our means furnish for the defence of the
castle."

"Fear nothing, my dearest daughter," said Aldrovand; "there are
still some English hearts amongst us, and we will rather kill and
eat the Flemings themselves, than surrender the castle."

"That were food as dangerous to come by as bear's venison,
father," answered Rose, bitterly, still on fire with the idea that
the monk treated her nation with suspicion and contumely.

On these terms they separated--the women to indulge their fears
and sorrows in private grief, or alleviate them by private
devotion; the monk to try to discover what were the real purposes
of Wilkin Flammock, and to counteract them if possible, should
they seem to indicate treachery. His eye, however, though
sharpened by strong suspicion, saw nothing to strengthen his
fears, excepting that the Fleming had, with considerable military
skill, placed the principal posts of the castle in the charge of
his own countrymen which must make any attempt to dispossess him
of his present authority both difficult and dangerous. The monk at
length retired, summoned by the duties of the evening service, and
with the determination to be stirring with the light the next
morning.




CHAPTER THE SEVENTH


  Oh, sadly shines the morning sun
  On leaguer'd castle wall,
  When bastion, tower, and battlement,
  Seemed nodding to their fall.
      OLD BALLAD.


True to his resolution, and telling his beads as he went, that he
might lose no time, Father Aldrovand began his rounds in the
castle so soon as daylight had touched the top of the eastern
horizon. A natural instinct led him first to those stalls which,
had the fortress been properly victualled for a siege, ought to
have been tenanted by cattle; and great was his delight to see
more than a score of fat kine and bullocks in the place which had
last night been empty! One of them had already been carried to the
shambles, and a Fleming or two, who played butchers on the
occasion, were dividing the carcass for the cook's use. The good
father had well-nigh cried out, a miracle; but, not to be too
precipitate, he limited his transport to a private exclamation in
honour of Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse.

"Who talks of lack of provender?--who speaks of surrender now?" he
said. "Here is enough to maintain us till Hugo de Lacy arrives,
were he to sail back from Cyprus to our relief. I did purpose to
have fasted this morning, as well to save victuals as on a
religious score; but the blessings of the saints must not be
slighted.--Sir Cook, let me have half a yard or so of broiled beef
presently; bid the pantler send me a manchet, and the butler a cup
of wine. I will take a running breakfast on the western
battlements." [Footnote: Old Henry Jenkins, in his Recollections
of the Abbacies before their dissolution, has preserved the fact
that roast-beef was delivered out to the guests not by weight, but
by measure.]

At this place, which was rather the weakest point of the Garde
Doloureuse, the good father found Wilkin Flammock anxiously
superintending the necessary measures of defence. He greeted him
courteously, congratulated him on the stock of provisions with
which the castle had been supplied during the night, and was
inquiring how they had been so happily introduced through the
Welsh besiegers, when Wilkin took the first occasion to interrupt
him.

"Of all this another time, good father; but I wish at present, and
before other discourse, to consult thee on a matter which presses
my conscience, and moreover deeply concerns my worldly estate."

"Speak on, my excellent son," said the father, conceiving that he
should thus gain the key to Wilkin's real intentions. "Oh, a
tender conscience is a jewel! and he that will not listen when it
saith, 'Pour out thy doubts into the ear of the priest,' shall one
day have his own dolorous outcries choked with fire and brimstone.
Thou wert ever of a tender conscience, son Wilkin, though thou
hast but a rough and borrel bearing."

"Well, then," said Wilkin, "you are to know, good father, that I
have had some dealings with my neighbour, Jan Vanwelt, concerning
my daughter Rose, and that he has paid me certain gilders on
condition I will match her to him."

"Pshaw, pshaw! my good son," said the disappointed confessor,
"this gear can lie over--this is no time for marrying or giving in
marriage, when we are all like to be murdered."

"Nay, but hear me, good father," said the Fleming, "for this point
of conscience concerns the present case more nearly than you wot
of.--You must know I have no will to bestow Rose on this same Jan
Vanwelt, who is old, and of ill conditions; and I would know of
you whether I may, in conscience, refuse him my consent?"

"Truly," said Father Aldrovand, "Rose is a pretty lass, though
somewhat hasty; and I think you may honestly withdraw your
consent, always on paying back the gilders you have received."

"But there lies the pinch, good father," said the Fleming--"the
refunding this money will reduce me to utter poverty. The Welsh
have destroyed my substance; and this handful of money is all, God
help me! on which I must begin the world again."

"Nevertheless, son Wilkin," said Aldrovand, "thou must keep thy
word, or pay the forfeit; for what saith the text? _Quis
habitabit in tabernaculo, quis requiescet in monte sancta?_--
Who shall ascend to the tabernacle, and dwell in the holy
mountain? Is it not answered again, _Qui jurat proximo et non
decipit?_--Go to, my son--break not thy plighted word for a
little filthy lucre--better is an empty stomach and an hungry
heart with a clear conscience, than a fatted ox with iniquity and
wordbreaking.--Sawest thou not our late noble lord, who (may his
soul be happy!) chose rather to die in unequal battle, like a true
knight, than live a perjured man, though he had but spoken a rash
word to a Welshman over a wine flask?"

"Alas! then," said the Fleming, "this is even what I feared! We
must e'en render up the castle, or restore to the Welshman,
Jorworth, the cattle, by means of which I had schemed to victual
and defend it."

"How--wherefore--what dost thou mean?" said the monk, in
astonishment. "I speak to thee of Rose Flammock, and Jan Van-
devil, or whatever you call him, and you reply with talk about
cattle and castles, and I wot not what!"

"So please you, holy father, I did but speak in parables. This
castle was the daughter I had promised to deliver over--the
Welshman is Jan Vanwelt, and the gilders were the cattle he has
sent in, as a part-payment beforehand of my guerdon."

"Parables!" said the monk, colouring with anger at the trick put
on him; "what has a boor like thee to do with parables?--But I
forgive thee--I forgive thee."

"I am therefore to yield the castle to the Welshman, or restore
him his cattle?" said the impenetrable Dutchman.

"Sooner yield thy soul to Satan!" replied the monk.

"I fear it must be the alternative," said the Fleming; "for the
example of thy honourable lord--"

"The example of an honourable fool"--answered the monk; then
presently subjoined, "Our Lady be with her servant!--This Belgic-
brained boor makes me forget what I would say."

"Nay, but the holy text which your reverence cited to me even
now," continued the Fleming.

"Go to," said the monk; "what hast thou to do to presume to think
of texts?--knowest thou not the letter of the Scripture slayeth,
and that it is the exposition which maketh to live?--Art thou not
like one who, coming to a physician, conceals from him half the
symptoms of the disease?--I tell thee, thou foolish Fleming, the
text speaketh but of promises made unto Christians, and there is
in the Rubric a special exception of such as are made to
Welshmen." At this commentary the Fleming grinned so broadly as to
show his whole case of broad strong white teeth. Father Aldrovand
himself grinned in sympathy, and then proceeded to say,--"Come,
come, I see how it is. Thou hast studied some small revenge on me
for doubting of thy truth; and, in verity, I think thou hast taken
it wittily enough. But wherefore didst thou not let me into the
secret from the beginning? I promise thee I had foul suspicions of
thee.

"What!" said the Fleming, "is it possible I could ever think of
involving your reverence in a little matter of deceit? Surely
Heaven hath sent me more grace and manners.--Hark, I hear
Jorworth's horn at the gate."

"He blows like a town swineherd," said Aldrovand, in disdain.

"It is not your reverence's pleasure that I should restore the
cattle unto them, then?" said Flammock.

"Yes, thus far. Prithee, deliver him straightway over the walls
such a tub of boiling water as shall scald the hair from his
goatskin cloak. And, hark thee, do thou, in the first place, try
the temperature of the kettle with thy forefinger, and that shall
be thy penance for the trick thou hast played me."

The Fleming answered this with another broad grin of intelligence,
and they proceeded to the outer gate, to which Jorworth had come
alone. Placing himself at the wicket, which, however, he kept
carefully barred, and speaking through a small opening, contrived
for such purpose, Wilkin Flammock demanded of the Welshman his
business.

"To receive rendition of the castle, agreeable to promise," said
Jorworth.

"Ay? and art thou come on such errand alone?" said Wilkin.

"No, truly," answered Jorworth; "I have some two score of men
concealed among yonder bushes."

"Then thou hadst best lead them away quickly," answered Wilkin,
"before our archers let fly a sheaf of arrows among them."

"How, villain! Dost thou not mean to keep thy promise?" said the
Welshman.

"I gave thee none," said the Fleming; "I promised but to think on
what thou didst say. I have done so, and have communicated with my
ghostly father, who will in no respect hear of my listening to thy
proposal."

"And wilt thou," said Jorworth, "keep the cattle, which I simply
sent into the castle on the faith of our agreement?"

"I will excommunicate and deliver him over to Satan," said the
monk, unable to wait the phlegmatic and lingering answer of the
Fleming, "if he give horn, hoof, or hair of them, to such an
uncircumcised Philistine as thou or thy master."

"It is well, shorn priest," answered Jorworth in great anger. "But
mark me--reckon not on your frock for ransom. When Gwenwyn hath
taken this castle, as it shall not longer shelter such a pair of
faithless traitors, I will have you sewed up each into the carcass
of one of these kine, for which your penitent has forsworn
himself, and lay you where wolf and eagle shall be your only
companions."

"Thou wilt work thy will when it is matched with thy power," said
the sedate Netherlander.

"False Welshman, we defy thee to thy teeth!" answered, in the same
breath, the more irascible monk. "I trust to see hounds gnaw thy
joints ere that day come that ye talk of so proudly."

By way of answer to both, Jorworth drew back his arm with his
levelled javelin, and shaking the shaft till it acquired a
vibratory motion, he hurled it with equal strength and dexterity
right against the aperture in the wicket. It whizzed through the
opening at which it was aimed, and flew (harmlessly, however)
between the heads of the monk and the Fleming; the former of whom
started back, while the latter only said, as he looked at the
javelin, which stood quivering in the door of the guard-room,
"That was well aimed, and happily baulked."

Jorworth, the instant he had flung his dart, hastened to the
ambush which he had prepared, and gave them at once the signal and
the example of a rapid retreat down the hill. Father Aldrovand
would willingly have followed them with a volley of arrows, but
the Fleming observed that ammunition was too precious with them to
be wasted on a few runaways. Perhaps the honest man remembered
that they had come within the danger of such a salutation, in some
measure, on his own assurance. When the noise of the hasty retreat
of Jorworth and his followers had died away, there ensued a dead
silence, well corresponding with the coolness and calmness of that
early hour in the morning.

"This will not last long," said Wilkin to the monk, in a tone of
foreboding seriousness, which found an echo in the good father's
bosom.

"It will not, and it cannot," answered Aldrovand; "and we must
expect a shrewd attack, which I should mind little, but that their
numbers are great, ours few; the extent of the walls considerable,
and the obstinacy of these Welsh fiends almost equal to their
fury. But we will do the best. I will to the Lady Eveline--She
must show herself upon the battlements--She is fairer in feature
than becometh a man of my order to speak of; and she has withal a
breathing of her father's lofty spirit. The look and the word of
such a lady will give a man double strength in the hour of need."

"It may be," said the Fleming; "and I will go see that the good
breakfast which I have appointed be presently served forth; it
will give my Flemings more strength than the sight of the ten
thousand virgins--may their help be with us!--were they all
arranged on a fair field."




CHAPTER THE EIGHTH


  'Twas when ye raised,' mid sap and siege,
  The banner of your rightful liege
  At your she captain's call,
  Who, miracle of womankind,
  Lent mettle to the meanest hind
  That mann'd her castle wall.
     WILLIAM STEWART ROSE.


The morning light was scarce fully spread abroad, when Eveline
Berenger, in compliance with her confessor's advice, commenced her
progress around the walls and battlements of the beleaguered
castle, to confirm, by her personal entreaties, the minds of the
valiant, and to rouse the more timid to hope and to exertion. She
wore a rich collar and bracelets, as ornaments which indicated her
rank--and high descent; and her under tunic, in the manner of the
times, was gathered around her slender waist by a girdle,
embroidered with precious stones, and secured by a large buckle of
gold. From one side of the girdle was suspended a pouch or purse,
splendidly adorned with needle-work, and on the left side it
sustained a small dagger of exquisite workmanship. A dark-coloured
mantle, chosen as emblematic of her clouded fortunes, was flung
loosely around her; and its hood was brought forward, so as to
shadow, but not hide, her beautiful countenance. Her looks had
lost the high and ecstatic expression which had been inspired by
supposed revelation, but they retained a sorrowful and mild, yet
determined character--and, in addressing the soldiers, she used a
mixture of entreaty and command--now throwing herself upon their
protection--now demanding in her aid the just tribute of their
allegiance.

The garrison was divided, as military skill dictated, in groups,
on the points most liable to attack, or from which an assailing
enemy might be best annoyed; and it was this unavoidable
separation of their force into small detachments, which showed to
disadvantage the extent of walls, compared with the number of the
defenders; and though Wilkin Flammock had contrived several means
of concealing this deficiency of force from the enemy, he could
not disguise it from the defenders of the castle, who cast
mournful glances on the length of battlements which were
unoccupied save by sentinels, and then looked out to the fatal
field of battle, loaded with the bodies of those who ought to have
been their comrades in this hour of peril.

The presence of Eveline did much to rouse the garrison from this
state of discouragement. She glided from post to post, from tower
to tower of the old gray fortress, as a gleam of light passes over
a clouded landscape, and touching its various points in
succession, calls them out to beauty and effect. Sorrow and fear
sometimes make sufferers eloquent. She addressed the various
nations who composed her little garrison, each in appropriate
language. To the English, she spoke as children of the soil--to
the Flemings, as men who had become denizens by the right of
hospitality--to the Normans, as descendants of that victorious
race, whose sword had made them the nobles and sovereigns of every
land where its edge had been tried. To them she used the language
of chivalry, by whose rules the meanest of that nation regulated,
or affected to regulate, his actions. The English she reminded of
their good faith and honesty of heart; and to the Flemings she
spoke of the destruction of their property, the fruits of their
honest industry. To all she proposed vengeance for the death of
their leader and his followers--to all she recommended confidence
in God and Our Lady of the Garde Doloureuse; and she ventured to
assure all, of the strong and victorious bands that were already
in march to their relief.

"Will the gallant champions of the cross," she said, "think of
leaving their native land, while the wail of women and of orphans
is in their ears?--it were to convert their pious purpose into
mortal sin, and to derogate from the high fame they have so well
won. Yes--fight but valiantly, and perhaps, before the very sun
that is now slowly rising shall sink in the sea, you will see it
shining on the ranks of Shrewsbury and Chester. When did the
Welshmen wait to hear the clangour of their trumpets, or the
rustling of their silken banners? Fight bravely--fight freely but
awhile!--our castle is strong--our munition ample--your hearts are
good--your arms are powerful--God is nigh to us, and our friends
are not far distant. Fight, then, in the name of all that is good
and holy--fight for yourselves, for your wives, for your children,
and for your property--and oh! fight for an orphan maiden, who
hath no other defenders but what a sense of her sorrows, and the
remembrance of her father, may raise up among you."

Such speeches as these made a powerful impression on the men to
whom they were addressed, already hardened, by habits and
sentiments, against a sense of danger. The chivalrous Normans
swore, on the cross of their swords, they would die to a man ere
they would surrender their posts--the blunter Anglo-Saxons cried,
"Shame on him who would render up such a lamb as Eveline to a
Welsh wolf, while he could make her a bulwark with his body!"--
Even the cold Flemings caught a spark of the enthusiasm with which
the others were animated, and muttered to each other praises of
the young lady's beauty, and short but honest resolves to do the
best they might in her defence.

Rose Flammock, who accompanied her lady with one or two attendants
upon her circuit around the castle, seemed to have relapsed into
her natural character of a shy and timid girl, out of the excited
state into which she had been brought by the suspicions which in
the evening before had attached to her father's character. She
tripped closely but respectfully after Eveline, and listened to
what she said from time to time, with the awe and admiration of a
child listening to its tutor, while only her moistened eye
expressed how far she felt or comprehended the extent of the
danger, or the force of the exhortations. There was, however, a
moment when the youthful maiden's eye became more bright, her step
more confident, her looks more elevated. This was when they
approached the spot where her father, having discharged the duties
of commander of the garrison, was now exercising those of
engineer, and displaying great skill, as well as wonderful
personal strength, in directing and assisting the establishment of
a large mangonel, (a military engine used for casting stones,)
upon a station commanding an exposed postern gate, which led from
the western side of the castle down to the plain; and where a
severe assault was naturally to be expected. The greater part of
his armour lay beside him, but covered with his cassock to screen
it from morning dew; while in his leathern doublet, with arms bare
to the shoulder, and a huge sledge-hammer in his hand, he set an
example to the mechanics who worked under his direction.

In slow and solid natures there is usually a touch of
shamefacedness, and a sensitiveness to the breach of petty
observances. Wilkin Flammock had been unmoved even to
insensibility at the imputation of treason so lately cast upon
him; but he coloured high, and was confused, while, hastily
throwing on his cassock, he endeavoured, to conceal the dishabille
in which he had been surprised by the Lady Eveline. Not so his
daughter. Proud of her father's zeal, her eye gleamed from him to
her mistress with a look of triumph, which seemed to say, "And
this faithful follower is he who was suspected of treachery!"

Eveline's own bosom made her the same reproach; and anxious to
atone for her momentary doubt of his fidelity, she offered for his
acceptance a ring of value; "in small amends," she said, "of a
momentary misconstruction." "It needs not, lady," said Flammock,
with his usual bluntness, "unless I have the freedom to bestow the
gaud on Rose; for I think she was grieved enough at that which
moved me little,--as why should it?"

"Dispose of it as thou wilt," said Eveline; "the stone it bears is
as true as thine own faith."

Here Eveline paused, and looking on the broad expanded plain which
extended between the site of the castle and the river, observed
how silent and still the morning was rising over what had so
lately been a scene of such extensive slaughter.

"It will not be so long," answered Flammock; "we shall have noise
enough, and that nearer to our ears than yesterday."

"Which way lie the enemy?" said Eveline; "methinks I can spy
neither tents nor pavilions."

"They use none, lady," answered Wilkin Flammock. "Heaven has
denied them the grace and knowledge to weave linen enough for such
a purpose--Yonder they lie on both sides of the river, covered
with nought but their white mantles. Would one think that a host
of thieves and cut-throats could look so like the finest object in
nature--a well-spread bleaching-field!--Hark!--hark--the wasps are
beginning to buzz; they will soon be plying their stings."

In fact, there was heard among the Welsh army a low and indistinct
murmur, like that of

  "Bees alarmed and arming in their hives."

Terrified at the hollow menacing sound, which grew louder every
moment, Rose, who had all the irritability of a sensitive
temperament, clung to her father's arm, saying, in a terrified
whisper, "It is like the sound of the sea the night before the
great inundation."

"And it betokens too rough weather for woman to be abroad in,"
said Flammock. "Go to your chamber, Lady Eveline, if it be your
will--and go you too, Roschen--God bless you both--ye do but keep
us idle here."

And, indeed, conscious that she had done all that was incumbent
upon her, and fearful lest the chill which she felt creeping over
her own heart should infect others, Eveline took her vassal's
advice, and withdrew slowly to her own apartment, often casting
back her eye to the place where the Welsh, now drawn out and under
arms, were advancing their ridgy battalions, like the waves of an
approaching tide.

The Prince of Powys had, with considerable military skill, adopted
a plan of attack suitable to the fiery genius of his followers,
and calculated to alarm on every point the feeble garrison.

The three sides of the castle which were defended by the river,
were watched each by a numerous body of the British, with
instructions to confine themselves to the discharge of arrows,
unless they should observe that some favourable opportunity of
close attack should occur. But far the greater part of Gwenwyn's
forces, consisting of three columns of great strength, advanced
along the plain on the western side of the castle, and menaced,
with a desperate assault, the walls, which, in that direction,
were deprived of the defence of the river. The first of these
formidable bodies consisted entirely of archers, who dispersed
themselves in front of the beleaguered place, and took advantage
of every bush and rising ground which could afford them shelter;
and then began to bend their bows and shower their arrows on the
battlements and loop-holes, suffering, however, a great deal more
damage than they were able to inflict, as the garrison returned
their shot in comparative safety, and with more secure and
deliberate aim. [Footnote: The Welsh were excellent bowmen; but,
under favour of Lord Lyttleton, they probably did not use the long
bow, the formidable weapon of the Normans, and afterwards of the
English yeomen. That of the Welsh most likely rather resembled the
bow of the cognate Celtic tribes of Ireland, and of the
Highlanders of Scotland. It was shorter than the Norman long bow,
as being drawn to the breast, not to the ear, more loosely strung,
and the arrow having a heavy iron head; altogether, in short, a
less effective weapon. It appears, from the following anecdote,
that there was a difference between the Welsh arrow and those of
the English.

In 1122, Henry the II., marching into Powys-Land to chastise
Meredith ap Blethyn and certain rebels, in passing a defile, was
struck by an arrow on the breast. Repelled by the excellence of
his breast-plate, the shaft fell to the ground. When the King felt
the blow, and saw the shaft, he swore his usual oath, by the death
of our Lord, that the arrow came not from a Welsh but an English
bow; and, influenced by this belief hastily put an end to the
war.] Under cover, however, of their discharge of arrows, two very
strong bodies of Welsh attempted to carry the outer defences of
the castle by storm. They had axes to destroy the palisades, then
called barriers; faggots to fill up the external ditches; torches
to set fire to aught combustible which they might find; and, above
all, ladders to scale the walls.

These detachments rushed with incredible fury towards the point of
attack, despite a most obstinate defence, and the great loss which
they sustained by missiles of every kind, and continued the
assault for nearly an hour, supplied by reinforcements which more
than recruited their diminished numbers. When they were at last
compelled to retreat, they seemed to adopt a new and yet more
harassing species of attack. A large body assaulted one exposed
point of the fortress with such fury as to draw thither as many of
the besieged as could possibly be spared from other defended
posts, and when there appeared a point less strongly manned than
was adequate to defence, that, in its turn, was furiously assailed
by a separate body of the enemy.

Thus the defenders of the Garde Doloureuse resembled the
embarrassed traveller, engaged in repelling a swarm of hornets,
which, while he brushes them, from one part, fix in swarms upon
another, and drive him to despair by their numbers, and the
boldness and multiplicity of their attacks. The postern being of
course a principal point of attack, Father Aldrovand, whose
anxiety would not permit him to be absent from the walls, and who,
indeed, where decency would permit, took an occasional share in
the active defence of the place, hasted thither, as the point
chiefly in danger.

Here he found the Fleming, like a second Ajax, grim with dust and
blood, working with his own hands the great engine which he had
lately helped to erect, and at the same time giving heedful eye to
all the exigencies around.

"How thinkest thou of this day's work?" said the monk in a
whisper.

"What skills it talking of it, father?" replied Flammock; "thou
art no soldier, and I have no time for words."

"Nay, take thy breath," said the monk, tucking up the sleeves of
his frock; "I will try to help thee the whilst--although, our Lady
pity me, I know nothing of these strange devices--not even the
names. But our rule commands us to labour; there can be no harm
therefore, in turning this winch--or in placing this steel-headed
piece of wood opposite to the chord, (suiting his actions to his
words,) nor see I aught uncanonical in adjusting the lever thus,
or in touching the spring."

The large bolt whizzed through the air as he spoke, and was so
successfully aimed, that it struck down a Welsh chief of eminence,
to which Gwenwyn himself was in the act of giving some important
charge.

"Well driven, _trebuchet_--well flown, _quarrel!_" cried
the monk, unable to contain his delight, and giving in his
triumph, the true technical names to the engine, and the javelin
which it discharged.

"And well aimed, monk," added Wilkin Flammock; "I think thou
knowest more than is in thy breviary."

"Care not thou for that," said the father; "and now that thou
seest I can work an engine, and that the Welsh knaves seem
something low in stomach, what think'st thou of our estate?"

"Well enough--for a bad one--if we may hope for speedy succour;
but men's bodies are of flesh, not of iron, and we may be at last
wearied out by numbers. Only one soldier to four yards of wall, is
a fearful odds; and the villains are aware of it, and keep us to
sharp work."

The renewal of the assault here broke off their conversation, nor
did the active enemy permit them to enjoy much repose until
sunset; for, alarming them with repeated menaces of attack upon
different points, besides making two or three formidable and
furious assaults, they left them scarce time to breathe, or to
take a moment's refreshment. Yet the Welsh paid a severe price for
their temerity; for, while nothing could exceed the bravery with
which their men repeatedly advanced to the attack, those which
were made latest in the day had less of animated desperation than
their first onset; and it is probable, that the sense of having
sustained great loss, and apprehension of its effects on the
spirits of his people, made nightfall, and the interruption of the
contest, as acceptable to Gwenwyn as to the exhausted garrison of
the Garde Doloureuse.

But in the camp or leaguer of the Welsh there was glee and
triumph, for the loss of the past day was forgotten in
recollection of the signal victory which had preceded this siege;
and the dispirited garrison could hear from their walls the laugh
and the song, the sound of harping and gaiety, which triumphed by
anticipation over their surrender.

The sun was for some time sunk, the twilight deepened, and night
closed with a blue and cloudless sky, in which the thousand
spangles that deck the firmament received double brilliancy from
some slight touch of frost, although the paler planet, their
mistress, was but in her first quarter. The necessities of the
garrison were considerably aggravated by that of keeping a very
strong and watchful guard, ill according with the weakness of
their numbers, at a time which appeared favourable to any sudden
nocturnal alarm; and, so urgent was this duty, that those who had
been more slightly wounded on the preceding day, were obliged to
take their share in it, notwithstanding their hurts. The monk and
Fleming, who now perfectly understood each other, went in company
around the walls at midnight, exhorting the warders to be
watchful, and examining with their own eyes the state of the
fortress. It was in the course of these rounds, and as they were
ascending an elevated platform by a range of narrow and uneven
steps, something galling to the monk's tread, that they perceived
on the summit to which they were ascending, instead of the black
corslet of the Flemish sentinel who had been placed there, two
white forms, the appearance of which struck Wilkin Flammock with
more dismay than he had shown during any of the doubtful events of
the preceding day's fight.

"Father," he said, "betake yourself to your tools--_es
spuckt_--there are hobgoblins here."

The good father had not learned as a priest to defy the spiritual
host, whom, as a soldier, he had dreaded more than any mortal
enemy; but he began to recite, with chattering teeth, the exorcism
of the church, _"Conjuro vos omnes,

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