Thorne Guy
The Serf

CHAPTER V

The three trees of Monkshood Glade

How fresh the morning air was in the wood! A million yellow spears flashed through the thick leaves and stabbed the undergrowth with gold. A delicious smell of leaves and forest beasts scented the cool breezes, and birds of all colours sang hymns to the sun.

An early summer morning in a great wood! In all life there is nothing so mysteriously delightful. Where the leaves of the oaks and elms and beeches were so thick that they turned the spaces below into fragrant purple dusk, what soft bright-eyed creatures might lie hid! In the hot open glades brilliant little snakes lay shining, and green-bronze lizards, like toy dragons, slept in armour. The fat singing bees that shouldered their way through the bracken wore broad gold bands round their fur, and had thin vibrating wings of pearl. They were like jewels with voices.

Upon a piece of smooth grass sward, nibbled quite short by rabbits, which sloped down to a brook of brown and amber water, sat Lewin, the minter. His fine clear-cut face harmonised with all the beauty around, and he drank in the air as if it had been wine. There was a soft look in his eyes as of a man dreaming of lovely things. His face is worth a little scrutiny. The glorious masses of dark-red hair gave it an aureola, the long straight nose showed enormous force of character, but the curve of the lips was delicate and refined, and seemed to oppose a weakness. There was something dreamy, treacherous, and artistic in his countenance.

For an hour Lewin had come into the wood to forget his scheming and ambitions and to be happy in the sunlight. He plucked blades of grass idly and threw them into the brook. Once he looked up, feeling that something was watching him, and saw mild eyes regarding him from a thicket. It was a young fawn which had come to drink in the brook, and saw him with gentle surprise. He gave a hunting halloa, and immediately the wood all round was alive with noise and flying forms. Part of a herd of deer had been closing round his resting-place, and were leaping away in wild terror at his shout.

The forest became silent again, until he heard feet crackling on the leaves and twigs, and looking up saw a radiant vision approaching him. A tall, dark girl, lithe as a willow, was coming through the wood.

Lewin sprang up from the little lawn and went down the path to meet her, holding out his hands.

"Ah, Gundruda!" he said, "I have waited your coming. How fair you are this beautiful morning!"

"Go away," she said, with a flash of pearls. "That is what you say to every girl."

"Of course, Gundruda mine. I love all women; my heart is as large as an abbey."

"Then your fine speeches lose all their value, minter. But I have a message."

He dropped his banter at once. "Yes! yes!" he said eagerly.

"My lord goeth after a boar this afternoon with Sir Fulke, and my Lady Alice will be by the well in the orchard when they have gone."

"Good," said he, "there will I be also. Are Richard and Brian going hunting?"

"No; they will be hard at work with all the theows and men-at-arms fortifying the castle. Oh, Lewin, there is such a to-do! Last night as ever was, came a messenger to say Roger Bigot is coming to Hilgay to kill us all, and Christ help us! that is what I say."

A shrill note of alarm had come into her voice, for she had seen war before, and knew something of the unbridled cruelty that walked with conquerors. At that he put his arm round her waist and drew her close to him. They were a fine pair as they stood side by side in the wood. Lewin captured one pretty hand in his – a little, white, firm hand that curled up comfortably in his clasp. Then he kissed her on her soft cheeks.

"How beautiful you are," he said in a soft, dreamy voice, deep and rich. He strained her to him. "Oh, how strange and beautiful you are, Gundruda. I would that for ever you were in my arms. There is nothing like you in the world, Gundruda. You are worth kingdoms. Oh, you beautiful girl!"

She abandoned herself to his caresses, with closed eyes and quick shuddering breaths of pleasure. Suddenly the mellow notes of a horn in all their proud sweetness came floating through the wood, and this amorous business came to a sudden end.

Geoffroi was starting out to the hunt.

The two people in the wood went back to the castle by devious ways. They found that Lord Geoffroi with a few attendants had already left the castle and entered the forest.

The castle-works were humming with activity. The weapon smiths were forging and fitting arrow heads, and making quarels and bolts. The carpenters were building hoards, or wooden pent houses, which should be run out on the top of the curtains. The crenelets, which grinned between the roof and the machicolade at the top of Outfangthef, were cleared of all obstructions. A trèbuchet for slinging stones – invented in Flanders, and very effective at short range – was being fitted together on the roof of the Barbican. Hammers were tapping, metal rang on metal, the saws groaned, and a great din of preparation pervaded everything.

In one corner of the bailey a man was cutting lead into strips so that it could be more easily made molten and poured upon besiegers. In another a group were hoisting pitch barrels on to the walls with a pulley and tackle.

In and out of the great gateway rough carts were rattling every moment, full of apples and wheat from the farmhouses round.

A row of patient oxen were stabled in a pen, hastily knocked up with beams of fir, in one corner of the bailey. In the field by the castle side, the swine shrieked horribly as a serf killed them relentlessly, and in the kitchens the women boiled, dried, and salted before glowing wood fires.

Long before dawn, scouts on swift horses had been posting along the Norwich road, and messages had been sent to all the villeins proper to fulfil their pledge of service.

Tongues wagged unceasing.

"Come ye here, cripples, and give a hand to this beam."

"Have you gotten your money safe, minter? The bastard son a letcheth after coined monies."

"Aye, and after more things than coined monies. Gundruda, beauty, Roger hath a fat Turkman privy to him, and going always in his train. He will marry you to the black man!"

"By the rood, then, I'd as soon wed him as you!"

"Roger taketh with him always a crucet hûs, my son."

"And what is that, then, Father Anselm?"

"Know you not the crucet hûs? fight lustily, then, or you may know him too well. The crucet hûs, that is a chest which is short and narrow and shallow. Roger putteth men therein, and putteth sharp stones upon him so that all his limbs be brake thereby. My Lord Bigot loveth it. Also he useth the 'Lâŏ and grim.' 'Tis a neck bond, my lad, of which two or three men had enough to bear one! It is so made that it is fastened to a beam. And Roger putteth a sharp iron round about the man's throat and his neck, so that he cannot in any direction sit or lie or sleep, but must bear all that iron."

"God's teeth! Father! you have a merry way of comfort."

"Truth is stern, Huber; fight then lustily, and get you shriven to-morrow."

"That will I, Father."

"And you, John and Denys, and Robert, all you soldiers. Come you to me ere this fight, and pay Holy Church her due fee, and have safety for your souls. An if you die then you will be saved men, and among the merry angels and my Lords the Saints, as good as they in heaven. An you go not to battle with hearts purged of sin, the divell will have every mother's son of you. Alas, how miserable and rueful a time will be then! And you who are whilom in shining armour-mail, with wine to drink, and girls to court for your pleasure, will lie in a portion of fire but seven foot long."

Thus, Anselm, the hedge priest, passing from group to group in beery exhortation.

Who knows how it affected them?

The heavenly sun still looks into the lowest valleys. The unclean hands of that false priest, unfaithful minister that he was, may have given the mass to a sick soul with great spiritual comfort. The bestial old man may have absolved dark men, penitent of their sins, because they themselves earnestly believed in his power.

As he sat in the chapel during that day, the mysterious powers conferred on him from Saint Peter himself, in unbroken succession, may, indeed, have flowed through him, giving grace.

Lewin lounged about the courtyard listening to his exhortations with amusement, yet not without wonder at the strange psychic force which moved the minds of these rough men. The crafty, sensual sentimentalist, of course, had no illusions about the abstract, yet the idea always fascinated him when it came. It was very grand and sonorous, he thought, this bondage to mystery, this ritual of the unseen. So lonely a man was he, immured in the impregnable fortress of his own brain, for there was no mental equal for him at Hilgay, that for mere mind-food he gave himself over to wild fancies. Our Lord upon the cross was more beautiful to him than to many devout believers, and he would have told you that he could hear the going of God in the wind. Sometimes he half-wondered if it were not true that Christ died.

He went into his mint, deserted now, and sat him down upon a bench in his little room. The sunshine cut its living way through the dust of the silent empty place. A whip lay upon the floor, where it had been thrown by an overseer of the theows who worked in the mint. There were flies upon it. He kicked the thing aside with disgust; it was a reminder of the stern terrible age in which he lived, and in which he felt so out of place. Depression began to flow over him in silent waves, until he remembered that he was to meet Lady Alice in the afternoon. That turned the current of his idle, discontented thoughts towards a more palpable thing. His secret wooing of the Norman lady who was so proud and stately was very dear to him, and the romance of it pleased him even more than the mere material joys he hoped some day to gain from it. Proud as she was, womanlike she at least deigned to listen to him, and his crafty brain schemed darkly to take opportunity as it came, and make her his own by treachery. He went out again among the busy workmen, and began to direct some smiths who were rivetting a suit of brass armour, engraved with a curious pattern of beetles and snakes in arabesque, which required delicate handling.

The weapon smiths were grumbling because they were short of hands for the heavier parts of their labour. Five or six of the most reliable serfs could not be found anywhere. Some one had seen them going into the forest, and it was supposed that they were acting as beaters for Geoffroi. Every one grumbled at the Baron. It was thought that this was no time for amusements. A boar would keep, herons would last till the world's end, deer would get them young every year till the world stopped. Every hour Roger Bigot came slowly nearer, and the men of Hilgay wanted the comfort of a master mind to direct and reassure them at a time like this.

The two squires fussed and raved, and stormed till the sweat stood in great drops upon them, but they could not get half the work out of the men that Geoffroi, or even Fulke, were able to. They had no personality and were ineffective, lacking that most potent and most powerful of human things. But every one did his best, nevertheless, and by "noon-meat" work had distinctly advanced, and already the castle began to wear something of an aspect of war.

It is extraordinary how a building or a place can be transformed in our minds by a few outward touches, combined with an attitude of expectation. If one has waited for a wedding in an almost empty church, the coming ceremony has an actual power of destroying the somewhat funereal aspect of the place. A single vase of flowers upon the altar seems swollen to a whole tree of bloom, the footsteps of a melancholy old man unlocking the rusty door, or spreading the priest's robes for him, is magnified into the beating of many feet. A crowd is created, expectant of a bride.

In a country lane on a hot summer afternoon, on Sunday, we say that a "Sabbath peace" is over all the land. The wind in the trees seems whispering litanies, and the soft voices of the wood-pigeons sound like psalms, the woods are at orisons, and the fields at prayer. As evening comes gently on, the feeling becomes intensified, though there is nothing but the chance lin-lan-lone of a distant bell to help it. The evening is not really more peaceful and gracious on the day of rest. The rooks wing home with mellow voices indeed, and the plover calls sweetly down the wind for his mate, but these are ordinary sounds. You may hear them on week days. The peace is in our own hearts, subjective and holy, informed by our own thoughts.

In the very air of the castle there was a tremulous expectation of war. Lady Alice, in her chamber, far away from the tumult, knew it. Little Gertrude, in the orchard, felt in her blood that the day was not ordinary; the very dogs sought wistfully to understand the excitement that pervaded everything.

At noon-meat, the jongleur, who had remained in the castle, blear-eyed and silent, got very drunk indeed. A madness of excitement got hold of him, and he sang war songs in a strident unnatural voice. The stern choruses rang out in the sunshine, with a pitiful whining of the crowth. All the afternoon the men hummed fierce catches as they went about their work. The day was cloudless and very hot. About five o'clock, when the sun's rays began to strike the ground slantingly, and the world was full of the curious relative sadness that comes with evening, the toilers knocked off for a rest. The pantler brought out horns of Welsh ale, and they sat round the well discussing the great impending event, the strength of the defences, the number of the enemy, the chances of the fight. The jongleur was lying insensible by the well-side, and a merry fool was bedabbling his shameless old face with pitch from a bucket, when the attention of every one in the castle was suddenly arrested by the distant but quite unmistakable sound of a horn.

A deep silence fell upon them all. Then they heard it again, no hunting mot or tuneful call of peace, but a long, keen, threatening note of alarm!

The thundering of a horse's feet growing ever nearer and nearer throbbed in the air. The sound seemed a great way off. Some one shouted some quick orders. The pins were pulled from the portcullis chains, so that upon releasing a handle it would fall at once. That was all they could do for the moment. They heard that the horseman was coming on at a most furious gallop. The sound came from the great main drive of the forest. Quick conjectures flew about among them all.

"Godis head! surely Roger is ten days away."

"So the scouts have said. He moveth very slowly. Oswald saw it with his own eyën."

"We shall know before one should tell to twenty, listen!"

The news-bringer, whoever he might be, was now close at hand, and with startling effect he sent before him another keen vibratory note of his invisible horn. It seemed to come right up to the very castle gate, and to break in metallic sound at the feet of those standing near.

In a moment more they saw him turn out from among the interlacing forest trees, and come furiously down the turf towards them.

"It's Kenulf, the forester," shouted two or three voices at once. "Surely some one rides after him."

The rider was now close upon them, and vainly trying to pull in his horse. The animal was maddened by the goring of his spurs – long single spikes in the fashion of that time – and would not stop. So, with a shrill shout of warning and an incredible echoing and thunder of noise, he galloped over the drawbridge, under the vaulted archway of the gate tower, and only pulled up when he was in the bailey itself, and confronted with the great rock of the keep.

For a moment he could not speak in his exhaustion, but by his white face and haunted eyes they saw that he had some terrible news.

There was a horn of beer propped up against the draw-well, which some one had set down at the distant noises of the forester's coming. Brian de Burgh picked it up and gave it to the gasping fellow. Then he stammered out his news, striking them cold with amazement.

"My Lord Geoffroi is dead, gentlemen," said he. "He has been murdered. I came upon him standing by the three trees in Monkshood. He had an arrow right through his mouth, nailed to a tree was he, and the grass all sprent with him. Gentlemen, I came into the glade half-an-hour after I had seen my lord well and alive. He rode fiercely ahead of us after the boar, towards Monkshood. My lord loves to ride alone, and Sir Fulke followed but slowly, and set a peregryn at a heron on the way. But I pressed on faster, so that an Lord Geoffroi killed the boar, and when he had made the first cuts, I should do the rest. God help us all, and Our Lady too! I did come into the glade half a mile away from where the three trees stand. My eyën go far and they are very keen. There was a man, I could see, standing still, but as I blew a call he went swiftly into the underwood. Then came I to the trees and saw my lord standing dead. Sir Fulke and the train came up soon after, and they are bringing It home. Make you ready. Cwaeth he to me, that you were to make proper mourning, to light the torches and say the Mass, and have many lights upon the holy table. And so my lord shall the quicker find rest. Haste! haste! for soon they will be near, and there is scant of time withouten great haste. Take me to my lady, for I would tell her."

"No," said a girl, who was standing by, very hastily, "I will prepare her first," and with that Gundruda, with a face full of wonder, slipped away to the postern which led to the orchard.

So this was how the first tidings of Hyla's vengeance came to the castle.

Now the killing of Geoffroi de la Bourne happened in this way.

As one might imagine, there was no sleep for the serfs on the night before the attempt. From the time when they had stolen up the hill after the murder of Pierce to the coming of dawn was but short. They spent it round the dead fire among the noises of the night.

A great exultation was born in the heart of each man. Hyla showed them his blood-stained hands, with vulgar merriment at the sight, rejoicing in the deed. They were all animated with the lust of slaughter. Wild hopes began to slide in and out of their minds. One could hardly expect anything fine – in externals – from these rough boorish men. Although their purpose was noble, and the feelings that animated them had much that owed its existence to a love for their fellows, a protest of essential human nature against oppression and foul wrongs, yet their talk was coarse and brutal about it all. This must be chronicled in order to present a proper explanation of them, but if it is understood it will be forgiven. No doubt the canons of romance would call for another kind of picture. The men would keep vigil, full of lofty thoughts, high words, and prayers to God. They would have spoken of themselves as Christ's ministers of wrath; the romancer would have prettily compared them to King David with his Heaven-ordered mission of vengeance. And yet King David, for example, mutilated the Philistines in a fearfully brutal way – it is for any one to read – and how much more would not these poor fellows be likely to shock and offend our nice sensibilities. No doubt it was horrible of Hyla to call up a sleeping puppy and make it lick Pierce's blood from his hands, but this story is written to make Hyla explicit, and Hyla was not refined.

Early in the morning the conspirators took a meal together before setting out to play their various parts in this tragedy. Harl was already far away with the women. Gurth was to go down to the river and take the swiftest punt away from the landing-place and hide in the reeds upon the other side. A whistle would summon him when Hyla and Cerdic came down to the water ready for flight. Gurth was to sink the other punts, to make pursuit impossible for a time.

Cerdic, Richard, and a third man called Aescwig were to lie in the wood to turn the boar, as well as they were able, towards the glade of Monkshood. They were lean, wiry men, swift of foot, and knew that they could do this. Cerdic had a swift dog concealed, for it was unlawed, which he used for poaching. It would help them. Hyla himself would lurk in the glade with his knife, waiting in the hope of his enemy.

After the first meal they slunk off to their posts with little outward emotion and but few words of parting. The clear cold light of the morning chilled them, and robbed the occasion of much of its excitement. But for all that went they doggedly towards their work.

For a certain distance Hyla went in company with the three beaters, but at a point they stopped, and he proceeded onwards alone.

When he had got far on upon his way to Monkshood he lay down deep in the fern to rest, and watched the sky between the delicate lace of the leaves.

He saw a tiny wine-coloured spider swinging from branch to branch like a drop of blood on a silver cord, the sunlight so irradiated it. The wild bees were already hard at work filling their bags of ebony and gold with the sweet juices of flowers. The honeysuckle swung its trumpets round the brown pillar of an oak, like censers of amber and ivory, shedding delicate incense on the air. The breezes carried the rich scents to and fro from tree to tree. Hyla felt weary now that the hour was so close at hand. He was not excited, nor did he even feel the slightest tremor of fear. He was simply indifferent and tired. He wanted to sleep for ever in this silent, sunlit place.

He was wearing Pierce's dagger round his waist, and he took it out to see if it was sharp enough. The stains of blood still held to it in films of brown and purple, but its point was needle-like, and the edge bitter keen. He put it down by his side upon a great fern tuft over which countless ants were hurrying. It fell among the ants as a streak of lightning falls among a crowd of men. Then, like some uncouth spirit of the wood, some faun, one might have fancied, he fell into a long, dreamless sleep.

He was awakened suddenly, when the sun was already at its height, by the sweet fanfaronade of distant horns. He glided away towards Monkshood swiftly and silently, a brown thing stealing through the undergrowth upon his malign errand. At last he came to the place he sought.

Monkshood Glade was a long narrow drive, carpeted with fine turf and surrounded with a thick wall of trees. In shape it was like the aisle of a cathedral. At the far end of the place it opened out into a half circle, like a lady chapel, and, to carry out the simile, where the altar should have been three great trees were standing in a triangle. The trunks of the trees grew within a hand's breadth of each other and formed a deep recess, with no entry save the one at the base of the triangle. Inside this place it was quite dark and cool.

Hyla crept into the undergrowth at the side of the glade, about twenty yards from the entrance to this little tree-cave, and lay waiting, crouching on his belly.

For an hour or two – it seemed ages to him – nothing happened whatever. The business of the wood went on all round, but there was no sound of human life. The waiting made him restive and uneasy. He began to remember how many the chances were that Geoffroi would not come that way. He began to see on how slender a possibility his hopes rested, and to wonder at himself and his companions for having trusted so great an issue to such a chance.

Then, quite suddenly, his heart leapt up and began to beat furiously, till the sound of its throbbing seemed to be surely filling all the wood. Peering out of the scrub he saw far down the glade a grey speck moving rapidly in his direction. It grew larger every moment as he watched, and next he saw that it was followed by a second and larger object, which almost immediately resolved itself into a man on horseback riding hard. In two minutes the boar and its pursuer were close upon him. He saw the boar galloping, with blood and foam round its tusks, and heard its harsh grunting. He could see its eyes as bright as live coals. Geoffroi was thundering twenty yards behind. Suddenly he saw the Baron taking aim at his quarry with a short, thick bow. He guided his horse, still in full career, a little to one side, by the pressure of his knees. It was a wonderful piece of horsemanship. He saw a quick movement of Geoffroi's arm, and, though the arrow sped too quickly for him to trace its course, the great boar with a hoarse squeal stumbled upon its fore-legs. It rose, staggered round in a circle, for the great forest beasts die hard, and then with a final squeal rolled over upon its side, with its hoofs stark and stiff in the air.

This took place between Hyla and the trees.

Geoffroi reined in his horse and, throwing his bow upon the ground, dismounted and ran towards the boar. He drew his hunting knife as he went.

As silently as a snake Hyla crept out of the undergrowth. Geoffroi's back was towards him and he was leaning over the boar with his knife. Hyla picked up the bow. The horse, heaving from its exertions, regarded him with mild eyes devoid of curiosity. Hyla took a barbed hunting shaft from the little quiver at the saddle side. He fitted it carefully to the bow. Suddenly the Baron stood up and was about to turn round when Hyla drew the bow-string to his shoulder, English fashion, and shot the arrow. It struck Geoffroi in the muscles of the left shoulder and went deep into him.

With a horrid yell of agony he spun round towards his unseen foe. Hyla had rapidly fitted another arrow to the bow and stood confronting him. For a moment the two men stood regarding each other. Then very slowly Geoffroi began to retreat backwards towards the trees. Hyla kept the arrow pointed at his heart.

"That was for Elgifu," he said.

Geoffroi reached the three trees, and went backwards into the recess. His eye rolled round desperately. Then he made a last effort. "Put that down," he roared with terrible authority. But the time had gone by when he could make Hyla cower.

"This is for Frija," said Hyla, and an arrow quivered in Geoffroi's mouth and passed through his head, transfixing him to the tree trunk behind.

A sudden impulse flooded the Serf's brain, quick, vivid, and uplifting: the tears started into his eyes though he knew not why.

Once more the bow-string twanged as a third arrow sank silently into the corpse. "For Freedom!" he whispered fearfully, wondering at himself.

Hyla stood watching the frightful sight with calm contemplation. The Baron dead and bloody was nothing. He began to feel a positive contempt for the man he had feared so long.

As he stood with a smile distorting his face, a horn rang out down the glade, and he saw that a horseman was riding hard towards him. Making the sign of the cross, he slipped into cover and began to fly swiftly through the wood.