Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
strifes, and can little tell whether you or he--if all were
equal--would bear away the prize of chivalry. But, I say, all is not
equal between you; and if you meet Hugh de Monthermer, you fall before
his lance as sure as you now live: for he is armoured in high
innocence, with a just quarrel, and an honest name to vindicate; you
fight, weighed down with the consciousness of wrong upon your arm, a
false oath upon your lips, and doubt and discouragement at your heart!
Were you twenty times the knight you are, that burden were enough to
make you fall before a peasant's staff! One thing, however, I have a
right to demand: you shall give that paper to Prince Edward, fully
twelve hours before you go into the lists--this you must promise me to
do, or I myself will go and cast myself--"
"I have no right to refuse," interrupted the Earl; "on my honour, as a
knight, the Prince shall have the paper. Be you ready to prove that it
is genuine?"
"I am ever ready," answered Kate; "and though I may shrink and quiver,
like a wounded limb when a surgeon draws the arrow forth, yet I shall
be glad when each step of my bitter task is begun, and the time of rest
comes nearer. If they wish to remove this body?"--she added, as the
Earl walked towards the door,
"Let them do it," answered Alured--"let them do it--they shall be
watched!"
Thus saying, he left the room, and slowly descended the stairs, Kate
Greenly lighting him down to the bottom. He went thoughtfully and
sadly, with a heart full of gloom, anxiety, and strife; but there were
kindly parts in his character, too; and when he reached the bottom
step, he turned and looked once more in the face of his unhappy
companion. Then, taking her hand, he said, "Poor girl, I am sorry for
thee! Can nought be done to save thee?"
"Nothing, my lord!" replied Kate Greenly, calmly; "I have but one
Saviour, and he is not of earth."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
"THE King has sat down to supper, my good lord," said one of the young
Earl's attendants, meeting him at the door of his apartments, "and
wondered that you were not there. A seat is kept for you, however."
"Is it near the Prince?" demanded Alured.
"Nay, my lord, the Prince is gone," replied the man; "did you not know
it?"
"Gone!" exclaimed the young nobleman. "Gone, whither?"
"To Leicester, my lord," said the servant. "While you and Sir Guy de
Margan were conversing here, news came from Leicester of a revolt
amongst the peasants there; and the Prince set out at once, with some
fifty men--'tis not half an hour since."
"Why, he is to be the judge of the field the day after to-morrow!" cried
the Earl, in surprise and evident disappointment.
"I heard film tell the King myself, my lord," replied the man, "that he
would be back ere sunset to-morrow."
"This is unfortunate," murmured Alured--"this is most unfortunate; but
it can't be helped!" and after making some slight change in his
apparel, and giving some orders in a low but earnest voice, he hastened
to the hall. Henry, as soon as he appeared, greeted him with light
merriment, saying, "You are late for the banquet, noble Earl; but we
forgive you, as we doubt not some fair lady held you in chains of
dalliance not to be broken."
"Nay, sire," replied the Earl, gravely, "my heart is too full of other
things to think of levities. I was with a sick friend, and the time,
though it passed heavily, was not noted."
"A sick friend is as good an excuse as a fair lady," said the King,
"and one that may be pleaded at all times."
"Nay, sire," replied Mortimer, who was sitting near, "neither fair lady
nor sick friend can be a moment's excuse for delay in day of battle, or
even, I hold, of tournament."
"A high question of chivalry," replied the King. "Let some of our old
knights decide it. What say you, Sir John Hardy?"
"That the matter has been decided often, my liege," said the old
soldier, who was placed some way down the table, and who spoke with
grave deliberation on the subject which he considered all-important.
"No excuse on earth can be received for the man who has touched a
challenger's shield, or taken an accuser's glove, or received his
leader's command to prepare for battle, if he be more than a quarter of
an hour behind the time appointed. That space is given in case of
accident, or men's judgment differing as to time. Thus the trumpets may
sound thrice, with five minutes between each blast; but if he comes not
at the third call, he is held coward and recreant by all civilized men,
and can plead nothing, unless it be the commands of his sovereign, as
his excuse."
"The honour of a knight," said another old soldier, in an authoritative
and somewhat pedantic tone, "should be as bright as his shield, as
clear and cutting as his sword, and as pointed and steady as his lance.
What he has once asserted, that he should maintain to the death; for
whatever cause there may be for retracting, an imputation on his
courage will still lie, if he make a moment's delay in meeting an enemy
in the field."
Hugh de Monthermer remained calm and pale, but the cheek of Alured de
Ashby flushed as if every word he heard was fire. As soon as possible
after the banquet, he quitted the hall and sought his apartments, with
a hurried and irregular step.
He found the armourers still busy in their task, as he passed through
the outer chamber; and, pausing at the bench where they were working,
he gazed down upon the weapons under their hands with a thoughtful but
abstracted look. Then, with a sudden start, clenching his hand tight,
he said, "See that all be firm and strong, Mapleton, yet not too
heavy."
"Fear not, my lord--fear not," replied the armourer, "there never was
better steel in all the world; and these poylins are a rare invention
for the defence of the elbows and knees. I have prepared a garland,
too, my lord, for your neck. I know you love it not, but 'tis much
safer, if you will but wear it, though it does spoil the look of the
hauberk, it must be confessed. But very often I have known the blow of
a lance right in the throat kill or disable a knight, though the spear
went not through the rings--'tis a trick with the Lord Hugh, too, I
hear, to aim at the throat. They say he killed two men so at Evesham,
and the Soldan of Egypt's brother, when he was in Paynimrie."
Alured de Ashby had long ceased to listen; but with his brow bent and
his eyes fixed upon the arms, he stood thinking of other things, till
the armourer ceased and looked up in his face; and then, turning away,
he quitted the room without any reply. When in his own chamber, he
closed the door, and for nearly two hours his foot might be heard,
walking to and fro, sometimes, indeed, pausing for a minute or two, but
still resuming its heavy tread.
Who can depict all the stormy passions that agitated him at that
moment--the struggle that was taking place in his bosom, so different
from that which had torn the heart of Hugh de Monthermer, though as
violent in its degree, and proceeding from the same events. To
fight in an unrighteous quarrel!--to go, solemnly appealing to
Heaven for the justice of his cause, and to feel that that cause was
unjust!--deliberately to persist in charging an innocent man with a
horrible crime, of which he knew him to be innocent!--It was a fearful
contemplation for one in whom conscience had not been smothered under
many evil deeds, notwithstanding the faults and follies which sometimes
blinded his eyes to right and wrong. But yet, to retract the accusation
he had made--to acknowledge that he had erred--to own that he had been
rash and weak--to see Hugh de Monthermer triumph--all this was
repugnant to the most powerful vices of his character--to jealous pride
and irritable vanity.
Nevertheless, this he might have overcome; for, as we have shown, there
was a high sense of honour in his nature, and the voice of conscience
was strong enough, when the question was one of such mighty moment, to
overpower the busy tongue of passion, and lead him to what was right;
but, alas! there was another consideration. He feared the loss of
renown! The very suspicion of any dread of his adversary was enough to
put every good resolution to flight; and, unhappily, the laws of
chivalry opposed a barrier to his pursuing the only course of
rectitude, which would have been difficult enough to surmount even had
his natural disposition been different from what it was.
Then came back the remembrance of the conversation which had taken
place at the banquet. It seemed to him as if the two old knights, who
had declared the rules of arms, had been sitting in judgment on the
cause pleaded by the disputants in his own bosom. They had pronounced
against the voice of conscience--they had given sentence in favour of
that fantastic honour which was based more on personal courage than on
truth.
Good Heaven! he thought, that the world should suspect he was afraid to
meet in arms the man he had accused! That _he_ should fear Hugh de
Monthermer--that _he_ should take advantage of any new risen doubt to
withdraw a charge which he had solemnly made, and shrink from a combat
which he had himself provoked! How would men jeer at his name--how
silent would the heralds stand, when he entered the court or the
tilt-yard? He pictured to himself a thousand imaginary insults:--he saw
knights refusing to break a lance with one who had shrunk from the
wager of battle he had demanded; he saw ladies turning away their heads
in scorn from the craven knight who had feared to meet an equal in the
field. He could not--he would not do it!--and yet conscience still
cried aloud; ay, and the voice of Kate Greenly rang in his ears,
telling him that conscience was powerful to overthrow as well as to
admonish; prophesying to him that he would fall before the lance of the
man he knowingly injured, and that shame and defeat, as well as
injustice and falsehood, would be his companions on that fatal field.
"Foul befal the girl!" he cried, "for putting such thoughts into my
head; they hang upon me like a spell--they will cling to me in the hour
of battle. Many a man has fought in an unjust cause--ay, and many a one
has fallen. In this ordeal, is the judgment of God shown, or is it not?
Is it possible to conceive that we can appeal to Him, and call upon Him
to defend the right, and solemnly swear that our cause is just, all the
time having a lie upon our lips, and that He will not punish? He were
worse than the God of the Moslemah, if he did not. What then shall I
gain? For the first time in life, I shall soil my soul with an
untruth--I shall take a false oath--I shall be defeated, disgraced,
with the judgment of God pronouncing that I am perjured, and die,
leaving a stained and blackened name behind.--And yet, to withdraw the
charge is impossible!" he continued. "Better disgraced, and hide me
from contumely in the grave, than live and meet the scornful looks of
every knight in Europe! My only chance is in the Prince--perhaps he may
stop it. Would he were here!--I would give him the paper now! Yet I
must show no desire to recant the accusation. I remember how his proud
lip curled when that braggart, De Poix, slunk from the mêlée at the
Northampton tournament, on pretence that his horse was lame. Curses on
my own precipitate haste!--but still deeper curses on that traitor,
Richard, who urged me on!--Would I could know the truth.--Oh! if I
thought that it was so, I would tear his heart from his body, and
trample it quivering in the dust.--The foul villain!--And my father so
good to him!"
Such were some of the broken and disjointed thoughts which crossed the
mind of Alured de Ashby, and from them the reader may form some idea of
the agitated state of his feelings during that night. He slept scarcely