The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune by A. D. Crake (best desktop ebook reader .txt) 📖

Thick clouds of smoke ascended to the skies; a pungent smell overpowered all the sweet odours of the forest; blackened beams and stones, cracked and shivered by the heat, lay all around.

What had caused the fire? Could it have been accidental?

They soon decided that it could not.

Two things seemed conclusive on this point--the first, the simultaneous outbreak in all parts of the buildings; the second, the fact that no one had escaped, save the man who bore the news, and died, his story but half told.

But what had been the fate of the rest? Had they been shut in the buildings, and so left to die as the flames reached them?

The terrible conviction that such had been the case became general; but at the same time the similarity of the circumstances with those under which the Monastery had been burnt would necessitate a like conclusion in that case also; and if so, who had then been the incendiary?

There were those amongst the retainers of Baron Hugo who could have answered this question, but they were all puzzled concerning the latter conflagration, for they knew of no gathering of their conquered foes, and they imagined they were acquainted with every nook of the forest, save the impenetrable morass in its centre.

On the morrow there was to have been a great hunt; but instead of the chase of beasts, the more exciting one of men was now substituted--the "murderers" should be hunted out, cost what it might--"The vermin should be extirpated."

The majority of the guests had departed the previous night, but many yet remained, the guests of Hugo, and with some of the wisest and most valiant of these he was taking counsel the following morning how best to track the outlaws, who had dared to commit this insolent deed, when Etienne appeared to announce that several of their people had not returned home from the fire, and amongst them his own fellow page, the minstrel of the previous night, Louis de Marmontier.

"We will find them; perchance they yet linger there. Bid a troop of horse be ready."

They mounted, rode, arrived on the scene, and found no one there. Then they separated in all directions, two or three in each group, to find their missing comrades.

Etienne and Pierre, with a dozen men at arms--for the baron would not let them go forth less strongly attended--were eager in the search, for they loved their companion, and were very anxious about his safety.

Midway between the castle and the burnt farm, slightly out of the track, was a huge oak, and around it a slight space clear of undergrowth. A brook ran close by--a stream of sweet sparkling water--and Etienne rode thither to give the horses drink, when, as he approached, he saw the form of a youth leaning down, as if drinking, and thought he knew the dress.

He approached eagerly. Yes, it was Louis; but he did not stir. Etienne dismounted and discovered the fact he had already anticipated: his young companion was dead: an arrow, evidently shot close at hand, had pierced his chest. The poor lad had but slight defensive armour--a light cuirass thrown on at the first alarm.

He had fallen and been left for dead, but had evidently afterwards dragged himself to the brook, in the agony of thirst, and had died while attempting to drink.

They placed the body reverently on the moss at the foot of the tree, and for a time were silent. The remembrance of his activity and gaiety on the previous day, and of his sweet minstrelsy on the very eve of his voice being hushed for ever, came sadly to their minds. At length Etienne broke the silence.

"Draw forth the arrow," he said.

They drew it forth and gave it him, bloodstained as it was: he looked closely upon it.

"This is an arrow from the same quiver as that which killed Gislebert; it is of English make, such as those clumsy louts use."

It was indeed a heavy, broad shaft, quite unlike the slender, tapering arrows of Norman workmanship, adapted for a long flight, in days when a furlong was considered a boy's distance.

"Our own serfs turn upon us. Well, they will rue it ere long; a short shrift and a long rope will be their portion."

"Ah! I remember noticing such in the quiver of the young thrall Eadwin," said Pierre--"he whose hand you sought to cut off for poaching."

They said no more on that occasion, but pursued in silence the train of thought suggested.

It was a strange gathering that night at the castle; for corpse after corpse was borne in from the woods to receive Christian burial at the priory, all killed by arrows, and those arrows--which the slayers had not troubled to remove, as if they disdained reprisals--all of the clumsy sort used by the "aborigines"

The winter of the year 1068 was setting in with great severity, sharp winds from the north and east had already stripped the faded leaves from the trees of the forest, and the heavens were frequently veiled by dark masses of cloud, from whence fast-falling snow ever and anon descended.

The winter opened drearily for the inhabitants of Aescendune, for the "mystery of the forest" was yet unsolved; none knew whence those incendiaries had issued who had given Yew Farm, with all its inmates, to the vengeful flames; but that this latter conflagration was in some way connected with the earlier destruction of St. Wilfred's Priory seemed not unlikely to most men.

Hugo de Malville cum Aescendune was not the man to sit calmly on the battlements of his newly-built towers and survey the destruction of his property, although he was not free from a terrible dread that his sins were finding him out, at which times he was like a haunted man who sees spectres, invisible to the world around.

Well did he surmise from whom the deadly provocation came, the loss of his farm, the death of a noble lad committed to his care; not to mention the loss of some common men, who could easily be replaced: for there were ever fresh swarms of Normans, French, and Bretons pouring into poor old England, as though it were some newly discovered and uninhabited land.

The aggressors, he doubted not, were the outlaws his tyranny had driven to the forests, the forerunners of the Robin Hoods and Little Johns of later days, whose exploits against the Norman race awoke the enthusiasm of so many minstrels and ballad makers {x}.

But all his efforts were in vain: neither men nor dogs could track the fugitives, although all the woods were explored, save only that impassable Dismal Swamp, where all seemed rottenness and slime, and where it could scarcely be imagined aught human could live.

Day after day the vengeful baron ranged the woods with his dogs and men-at-arms, but all in vain.

Neither would Etienne forbear his woodland sports, although the stragglers in the forest were constantly cut off by their unseen foe; but in his hunts, accompanied by Pierre, his sole surviving companion, he sought more eagerly for the tracks of men than of beasts, and vowed he would some day avenge poor Louis.

Brave although the Normans were, they hesitated to remain in the outlying cottages and farms which were yet untouched by the destroyer, and therefore, by their lord's permission, concentrated their forces in and around the castle, where they kept diligent watch, as men who held their lives in their hands, and shunned the woods after nightfall.

For night after night the fatal fires blazed, now at one extremity of the domain, now at another, until there threatened to be very little left to burn, unless some prompt and decisive measures were taken; but superstitious fears united with natural ones to assist the unseen enemy, by paralysing the courage of the hitherto invincible Norman.

This state of things could be endured no longer; and the baron sent embassies to the neighbouring barons to beg their aid against a combination of outlaws united against law and society, who had burnt his farms and slain his retainers, and whom, owing to his limited numbers, he had yet failed to exterminate.

The Normans clung together; hence their power--as the weakness of the poor English was disunion--and favourable replies being received, a day was appointed for a general search to be made in the forest by the barons living near its borders.

It came at last--a day in November, when the sun seemed making a last effort to prevail against coming winter. The wind was fresh and bracing, and nature appeared bright and cheerful, on that long-to-be-remembered morning.

Early in the morn, just after sunrise, Bernard de Torci, Gilbert d'Aubyn, Eustace de Senville, and a large body of their retainers, arrived at the castle. They found the men of Aescendune prepared to receive them, and the leaders entered the council chamber of their host.

There they perfected their plans--the forest was divided into portions, and a district assigned to each leader to be subdivided and thoroughly explored. All human tracks were to be followed up by the help of the hounds, and prisoners, when taken, to be sent, under guard, to the castle, there to be rigorously examined, if necessary by torture.

The only part of the scheme presenting any real difficulty was the morass in the centre of the forest, already known to our readers. Hugo believed it impenetrable, and that no human being could live within its area; but he sent for his chief huntsman, and examined him before his fellow nobles.

He found that old Ralph regarded the Dismal Swamp, as they called the morass, as utterly uninhabitable and impassable; he had never heard any sounds of life from within; he thought the place haunted; it abounded in quagmires, and corpse lights and baleful fires were seen on its waters at night.

The man was dismissed, and it was decided, that the borders of the morass should be explored, although with little hope of finding any trace of the foe; but should such be found, it was not to be neglected, the more especially if the search were conducted elsewhere in vain.

The northern part of the forest fell to Hugo's share, and was subdivided by him between his chief retainers. Every nook was to be investigated, and signals were arranged whereby all the hunters could be assembled together in case of need.

The work was a very arduous one, for the portion assigned to the retainers of Aescendune alone, occupied a circuit of some fifteen miles, bounded on the east by a stream which ran into the Avon, on the north by a well-defined range of wooded hills.

This was the most important section of all, for what faint indications had been gained of the whereabouts of the foe, all pointed in this direction.

The men-at-arms were divided into five distinct bands, lightly armed, because of the distance they had to travel, and Etienne claimed and obtained the command of one party.

However, the baron, while he had no doubt of his son's valour, grievously doubted his discretion, and added to the party Ralph, his chief forester, strictly charging Etienne in any difficulty to be guided by his advice--directions which the young heir received with a toss of the head, which spoke volumes for his submission.

They entered the forest--a gallant array, each party numbering about twenty, and there were nearly twenty of such bands; but when they divided and again subdivided, and each took their different routes, they appeared lost in the vastness of the forest, and in a very few minutes every band was so isolated that they heard no sounds indicating that any save themselves were in the wood.

We will leave all other parties to their fate, and confine our attention to that commanded by Etienne, which, indeed, was destined to surpass all the others in the results accomplished, and in their influence on the future destinies of all the personages in our history.

They proceeded fully five miles from home before their real task began. Perhaps the reader will wonder how they could know their own destined region in so pathless a wilderness, but it was part of the training they had received as hunters to find their way in the lonely woods; and there were signs innumerable which told them where they were, and in what direction they were going. Etienne alone, could guide his men while day lasted, as well as a pilot could steer a ship in a well-known archipelago, and in Ralph he had a tower of strength.

Every landmark was known--the course of every stream; each tree, by the direction in which it threw its boughs and by the mosses at the foot of its trunk, told the points of the compass.

Yet there were probably, in so large an extent of country, many wild glens and deep fastnesses hitherto untraversed, and these had to be discovered and explored.

Straight through the territory assigned to them marched our little band; keen-nosed dogs went first, secured by leashes, that the