The Serf

The hedge priest roared with delight, Fulke sniggered meaningly, and a sardonic grin lit up the stern countenance of Geoffroi de la Bourne. Lewin must be given credit for a finer attitude. He seemed insufferably bored by the whole thing, and longing to be in bed.

The night wore on, and they drank deep, till more than one head lay low. Geoffroi filled his cup again and again, but each potation left him clearer in brain, affecting him not at all. At last he rose to seek his couch. Dom Anselm was snoring heavily, Lewin had already departed, and Fulke was playing dice with the squire.

"I have no mind to sleep for a while," Geoffroi said, "the night is hot. Bring a torch," he said to a serf; and then turning to the jongleur, "come with me, Sir Jester, to my bed-side, and relate to me some merry tales till I fall upon sleep, for I am like to wake long this night."

Preceded by the flickering of the torch, and followed by the minstrel, he left the hall. They descended the steps in red light and deepest shadow, and came out into the courtyard which was very still. Every one was asleep save one lean dog, who, hearing footsteps, padded up and thrust his cold nose into Geoffroi's hand. He fondled the creature, standing still for a moment, sending a keen eye round the big empty space, as who should find some enemy lurking there. The two others waited his pleasure.

"Come, come," he said at length in curiously detached tones, extremely and noticeably unlike his usual quick incisiveness, "we will get to bed."

He turned towards Outfangthef. They had taken some three paces towards the tower, when a lightning flash of dazzling brilliancy leapt right over the sky from pole to pole, and showed the whole scene as bright as in the day. Geoffroi stopped suddenly, as did the others, expecting a great peal of thunder. Suddenly the Baron began to shiver and bend. He wheeled round tottering, and caught the minstrel by the shoulder. The little man squeaked like a rat in the jaws of a dog.

"Hist!" said Geoffroi, "What do you hear? What do you hear, man?"

"Nothing, my lord," said the jongleur in deep amazement.

"Listen, jongleur. What do you hear now?" said he.

"My lord, I can hear nothing," answered the little man.

"I have drunken too deep," said the Baron; "surely I am most devilishly drunk, for I can hear, I can hear" – he leant in the manner of a man listening – "I can hear now as I speak to you, voices as of a great company of men praying to Our Lady – listen! their voices are praying deeply. I think they must be monks."

"Lord, look you to this," whispered the serf, terror-stricken.

The dog, perhaps because he felt the three men were going in fear, or perhaps from some deeper and more hidden reason which men do not yet understand, crouched low on the ground and hid his head between his paws, whining.

"They are praying to the Blessed Virgin," said Geoffroi. "Can you hear nothing – those deep voices?"

"My lord," said the jongleur with more confidence, "the night is late, and I have known many sounds appear like human voices in the night. A cow loweth or a beetle boometh in the orchard flowers."

"What it may be I do not know," answered he, "but I know that it is no ox a-lowing or fly upon the wing. I am not mocked. There is something wrong with the night."

"The more reason, Sir Geoffroi, that I should divert you with tales and jests. These fearful nights of strange lights in the sky and noises from the fen lands need some light business to fill the mind. To bed, my lord!"

"Come then," said Geoffroi. "God shield us, it is very hot," and as he turned, the sweat stood in great drops upon his brow.

At the exact moment the little party entered the door of Outfangthef, the serfs, far down in the fen, rose from their knees, and began to steal swiftly and noiselessly up the hill.

The Baron's sleeping chamber was an octagonal stone room with a groined roof. A faldestol, the great-grandfather of our own armchair, spread with cushions, stood by a tall candlestick. The bed boasted curtains and a roof, though its occupant lay upon nothing more luxurious than straw. On a low table near the faldestol were some vessels of glass and silver. Arms hung upon the walls, and a litter of shavings on the floor showed the Baron had been carving at some time during the day. On the perch by the bed head sat Geoffroi's favourite hawk, now sunk in motionless and sinister sleep.

Taken as a whole, the apartment was extremely comfortable and even luxurious in its appearance. To reconstruct it nowadays would cost the modern æsthete an enormous sum of money.

The serf knelt at the threshold and delivered the torch to the jongleur, who lit the candle from it. Then Geoffroi shut the door, and, removing his tunic and short cloak, flung himself on the bed.

"Sit there," he said to the man, pointing to the faldestol. "There is wine upon the table if you are thirsty." Then he added with a change of manner, "you are well found in faëry tales and sic like. What means the noise I have heard to-night?"

"They say, my lord, that souls that cannot rest may be heard singing and wailing in the fen, calling on each other in reproach."

"The pot upbraiding the kettle for the soot on't! Well, well, that sweet morat is bad for a man, I think. Better stick to wine. The honey makes the brain mad."

"There is poison in many flowers," said the jongleur, "and what likes a bee's belly well enough may be bad for a man. It was the drink in you, my lord, for I heard no sound."

"It does not matter much. It is done and over. For the minute I was accoyed. Tell me a story."

"The night before the great fight of Senlac," said the jongleur, "is told of as a most wonderful strange night. The minstrel, Taillefer, went a-wandering round the camp fires, cheering the hearts of the soldiers with songs, by the order of Duke William himself. The Duke had made order that but little wine was to be given to the troops, and that they were to ride into battle shriven and fasting. So he sent Taillefer to cheer them with songs. The minstrel wandered from fire to fire over the hill till he was weary and would sleep. He came, as he went, to the old fort of the Haestingas, and there, under a ruined wall, he laid him down.

"Now my lord, Sir Taillefer was a very evil man. By the rood, but he was an evil man! Whatever deviltry a could lay his mind to, that did he, and he was in great favour with the Duke.

"Now two days before the battle the Norman army had come sailing from Saint Valeri, and had landed on the sands of England at Bulverhithe, near Pevensey, or Anderida, as some will have it. No Saxon came to oppose the landing, for the fighting men were all at the northern war on Derwent banks. In the village, Taillefer came upon a farmhouse, where the farmer was away at the war, for all the houses were empty of men. There did he find and ill-use a beautiful Saxon girl, who did resist him with many tears. He was a gay fellow, with ever a song in's mouth, but for all that, his dwelling that night was besprent with tears and wailing.

"Now, as Taillefer lay a-sleeping in the old fort, there came to him and stood by his side a long, thin man, with yellow hair and a cleft lip. 'What are you?' said Taillefer. 'Look well at me,' said the man, 'for I am the father of Githa, whom you used with violence. To-morrow morn we shall meet again. You will be singing your last song.'

"Now Taillefer was a brave man, and loved a fight, so with that he got him his axe and cleft the man from head to toe. But the blow went through the air as if no one was there, and the axe, falling upon a rock, was splintered into pieces and Taillefer a top of it, sprawling face down, and, they say, bawling most lustily. Two soldiers found him, and he said he was drunk to them, though he was no more drunk than my crowth.

"On the morrow, at nine of the clock, the bugles rang out mots of war, and the Normans were about advancing. Taillefer, in great inward fear, for he knew that he would die that day, prayed a boon from the Duke, that he might strike the first blow of the fight. He did not want to live long with the fear upon him. The Duke said aye to his question, so a-got on his destrier, and went riding out of the lines singing gaily, though 'twas said his face was very pale. He couched his lance at a Saxon, and pierced him through. Then a tall, thin man, with yellow hair and s cleft lip, came swiftly at him with a sword, and thrust it into his belly before he could recover the lance. 'It is you, then,' said Taillefer, and died in great torment."

His voice sank into silence, and he lifted the wine-cup for refreshment.

"It is a strange story," said Geoffroi, "and a pitiful to-do about a theow girl. I do not believe that story."

"I spun it as 'twas told to me, my lord," said the teller humbly.

The big man moved among the crackling straw and crossed himself, and we who have no great crime upon our conscience need not be careful to enquire into his thoughts.

"I will sleep now," he said after a pause.

The minstrel rose to go, bowing a farewell.

"No," said Geoffroi; "stay there, make your bed in that faldestol to-night. I do not care to be alone. And, mark well! that if you hear any untoward noise, or should you hear a sound of men's voices praying, rouse me at once."

He turned his face towards the wall, and before long his deep breathing showed that sleep had come to him.

The candle began to burn very low and to flicker. The jongleur saw enormous purple shadows leap at each other across the room, and play, fantastic, about the bed. He rose and peered out of a narrow unglazed window in the thickness of the wall. The hot air from the room passed by his cheeks as it made its way outside. There was no lightning now, and the sky was beginning to be full of a colourless and clear light, which showed that dawn was about to begin. Far, far away in some distant steading, the jongleur heard the crowing of a cock.

As he watched, the daylight began to flow and flood out of the East, and close to the window he heard a thin, reedy chirp from a starling just half awake.

He turned round towards the room, thinking he heard a stir. He saw the elderly man on the bed risen up upon his elbow. His right hand pointed towards the opposite wall, at a space over the table. With a horrid fear thumping in his heart and sanding his throat, the minstrel saw that Geoffroi's eyes were open in an extremity of terror, and his nostrils were caught up and drawn like a man in a fit.

"My lord! my lord!" he quavered at him.

There was no sign that Geoffroi heard him, except for a quivering of his pointing, rigid finger. The minstrel took up a vessel of glass from the table, and flung it on the floor.

The crash roused the Baron. His arm dropped and his face relaxed, and, with a little groan, he fell face down in a swoon. The minstrel hopped about the room in an agony of indecision. Then he took the jug of wine, the only liquid he could find, and, turning the Baron on his back, he flung it in his face.

Geoffroi sat up with a sudden shout, all dripping crimson. He held out his red-stained hand. "What is this? What is this?" he cried in a high, unnatural voice. "This is blood on my hand!"

"No, my lord, it is wine," said the jongleur; "you fell into a deep swoon, and it was thus I roused you."

"Did you see him?" said Geoffroi. "Oh, did you see him by the wall? Christ shield us all! It was Pierce, a soldier of mine. His throat was cut and all bloody, and he made mouths like a man whose throat is slit in war."

"My lord, you are disordered," said the jongleur. "You ate pork at supper, a wonderful bad thing for the belly at night."

Geoffroi said never a word, but fell trembling upon his knees.

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.