Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune<br />A Tale of the Days of Saint Dunstan by A. D. Crake (ebook reader with highlight function txt) 📖

The sun arose in a bright and cloudless sky on the following morning, and his first beams aroused every sleeper in the hall of Æscendune from his couch of straw, for softer material was seldom or never used for repose. Even the chamber in which the prince slept could not be called luxurious: the bed was in a box-like recess; its coverlets, worked richly by the fair hands of the ladies, who had little other occupation, covered a mattress which even modern schoolboys would call rough and uncomfortable.

The wind played with the tapestry which represented the history of Joseph and his brethren, as it found its way in through crevices in the ill-built walls. There were two or three stools over which the thane’s care for his guest had caused coverlets to be thrown; a round table of rough construction stood like a tripod on three legs, upon which stood the unwonted luxury of ewer and basin, for most people had to perform their ablutions at the nearest convenient well or spring.

Leaving this chamber in good time, Prince Edwy acompanied his new friends to the priory church, where they heard mass before the sun was high in the heavens, after which they returned to the hall to take a light breakfast before they sought the attractions of the chase in the forest. Full of life they mounted their horses, and galloped in the wild exuberance of animal spirits with their dogs through the leafy arches of the forest, startling the red deer, the wolf, or the wild boar. Soon they roused a mighty individual of the latter tribe, who turned to bay, when the boys dismounted and finished the affair with their boar spears, not without some personal danger, and the loss of a couple of dogs.

Onward again they swept, past leafy glades of beech trees, where the swineherd drove his half-tame charges, or where the woodcutters plied their toil, and loaded their rude carts or hand barrows with fuel for the kitchen of the hall; past rookeries, where the birds made the air lively by their noise; over brook, through the half-dry marsh, until they came upon an old wolf; whom they followed and slew for want of better game, not without a desperate struggle, in which Elfric, ever the foremost, got a much worse scratch than on the preceding day.

But how enjoyable the sport was, how sweet to breathe the bright pure air of that May day; how grand to outstrip the wind over the yielding turf, and at last to carry home the trophies of their prowess; the scalp of the wolf, the tusks of the boar, leaving the serfs to bring in the succulent flesh of the latter, while the hawks and crows fed upon the former.

And then with what appetite they sat down to their “noon meat,” taken, however, at the late hour of three, after which they wandered down to the river and angled for the trout which abounded in the clear stream.

The youthful reader will not wonder that such attractions sufficed to detain Edwy several days, during which he was continually hunting in the adjacent forests, always attended by Elfric, and sometimes by Alfred. To the elder brother he seemed to have conceived a real liking, and expressed great reluctance to part with him.

“Could you not return with me to court,” he said, “and relieve the tedium of old Dunstan’s society? You cannot think what pleasures London affords; it is life there indeed—it is true there are no forests like these, but then, in the winter, when the country is so dreary, the town is the place.”

“My father will never consent to my leaving home,” returned Elfric, who inwardly felt his heart was with the prince.

“We might overcome that. I am to have a page. You might be nominally my page, really my companion; and should I ever be king, you would find you had not served me in vain.”

The idea had got such strong possession of the mind of Edwy, that he ventilated it the same night at the supper table, but met with scant encouragement. Still he did not despair; for, as he told Elfric, the influence of his royal uncle, King Edred, might be hopefully exerted on their joint behalf.

“I mean to get you to town,” he said. “I shall persuade my old uncle, who is more a monk than a king, that you are dreadfully pious, attached to monkish Latin, and all that sort of thing, so that he will long to get you to town, if it is only to set an example to me.”

“But if he does not find that I answer his expectations?”

“Oh, it will be too late to alter then; you will be comfortably installed in the palace; and, between you and me, he is but old and feeble, and has always had a disease of some kind. I expect he will soon die, and then who will be king save Edwy, and who in England shall be higher than his friend Elfric?”

It was a brilliant prospect, as it seemed to boys of fifteen, for such was the mature age of the speakers.

Shortly after the last conversation, an express came from the court to seek the young prince—the messenger had been long delayed from ignorance of the present abode of Edwy, who had carefully concealed the secret until he felt he could tarry no longer, fearing the wrath not only of the king, but of Dunstan, whom he dreaded yet more than his uncle.

So he and his attendants, who had, like him, found pleasant entertainment at Æscendune, bade farewell to the home where he had been so hospitably entertained: and so ended a visit, pregnant with the most important results, then utterly unforeseen and unintended, to the family he had honoured by his presence.

Some few weeks passed, and under the tuition of their chaplain, who was charged with their education, Elfric and Alfred had returned to their usual course of life.

It would seem somewhat a hard one to a lover of modern ease. They rose early, as we have already seen, and before breaking their fast went with their father and most of the household to the early mass at the monastery of St. Wilfred, returned to an early meal, and then worked hard, on ordinary occasions at their Latin, and such other studies as were pursued in that primitive age of England. The midday meal was succeeded by somewhat severe bodily exercise, generally hunting the boar or wolf which still abounded in the forests, an excitement not unattended by danger, which, however, their father would never permit them to shun. He knew full well the importance of personal courage at an age when the dangers of hunting were only initiatory to the stern duties of war, and no Englishman could shun the latter when his country called upon him to take up arms. Nor were martial exercises unknown to the boys; the bow, it is true, was somewhat neglected then in England, but the use of sword, shield, and battle-axe was daily inculcated.

“Si vis pacem,” Father Cuthbert said on such occasions, “para arma.”

Wearied by their exertions, whether at home or abroad, the brothers welcomed the evening social meal, and the rest which followed, when old Saxon legend or the harp of the gleeman enlivened the household fire, till compline sweetly closed the day.

Swiftly and pleasantly were passing the weeks succeeding the visit of the prince, when a royal messenger appeared, bearing a letter sealed with the king’s signet. The old thane, who had passed his youth in more troublous times, and could scarcely read the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels, then extant, could not construe the monkish Latin in which it was King Edred’s good pleasure to write.

So the chaplain, Cuthbert, read him the letter in which the king greeted his loyal and well-beloved subject, Ella of Æscendune, and begged of him, as a great favour, that he would send his eldest boy to court, to be the companion of the young prince, who had (the king said) conceived a great affection for Elfric.

“I hear,” added Edred, “that your boy is a boy after his father’s heart, full of love for the saints, diligent in his studies, and I trust well qualified to amend by example the somewhat giddy ways of my nephew.”

Ella felt that this latter commendation might be better bestowed upon Alfred, who, although far less full of boyish spirit and energy than his brother, was far more attached to his religious duties, as also far more attentive to the wishes of his parents; but his love for Elfric blinded him to more serious defects in the character of his son, or he might have feared their development in a congenial soil.

So the father saw his boy alone, and communicated the contents of the letter. The news was indeed welcome to Elfric, who panted for travel and adventure and the freedom he fancied he should get in Edwy’s society. But Ella hardly perceived this, and enlarged upon the dangers to which his son would be exposed, and tried to put before the boy all the “pros “ and “cons” of the question faithfully.

“He would not keep him back,” he said, “if he desired to leave home,” but as he uttered the words he felt his heart very heavy, for Æscendune would lose half its brightness in losing Elfric.

But Elfric’s choice was already made, and he only succeeded in repressing his delight with great