Part 15 (2/2)
Then I saw that a body of the enemy, hastily called from the rear-most ranks by the huge and red-haired Gruffud, son of Rhys, a.s.saulted this position and sought to pull our archers from their posts of vantage.
Climbing upward amongst the crags, they faced at closest range the deadly aim of the cross-bow men. Backward they fell by scores, their bodies crus.h.i.+ng down those below them. Not a dozen came to grips with the archers. Of these the leader had his great sword thrust aside by Cedric's bow, then was seized about the waist, lifted from the earth and thrown to the rocks below where he lay still with broken back.
With the fall of Gruffud, our men set up a mighty shout, and pressed the Welsh ever the harder. The deadly bolts still poured down from Cedric's vantage ground, but s.h.i.+fted ever their direction as we drove the enemy before us. The yells of the Welshmen, which had been those of victory and triumph, now changed to cries of despair. Hundreds turned and fled; and of these many cast down their weapons that they might run the faster. Soon the downward pathway ahead of us was filled with fugitives, and only a few bands of desperate warriors fought on, preferring death to such a defeat after victory had been almost within their grasp.
With the pa.s.s open before us, we paused not to pursue the Welsh into the rocky and wooded fastnesses where they had fled. Taking up our sorely wounded in such litters as we could hastily form, and those with less grave hurts behind the other hors.e.m.e.n, we reformed our column and rode away down the broad valley toward the Marches and the goodly fortress of Wenderley that Sir John Clarendon held for the King.
When the moon rose at the ninth hour of the evening of that day the Lord High Constable stood in the courtyard at Wenderley, surrounded by the lords and barons of his expedition and of the castle garrison. His wounds had been bathed and bandaged, but his face was white with the bloodletting and the fatigues of the day so that his friends were urging him to seek his rest. Yet for the time he put away their counsel, declaring that one duty yet remained. Young Geoffrey of Carleton and I with Cedric, my squire, had been summoned before him.
”Kneel down,” he commanded, sternly. We obeyed in silence, and he drew his sword from its sheath and thrice struck the young Lord of Carleton lightly on the shoulder.
”Rise, Sir Geoffrey of Carleton,” he said, ”I dub thee knight. Be thou ever faithful, true and valorous as thou hast been this day.”
Then I also received the strokes of the sword and words were p.r.o.nounced that made me a knight and chevalier in verity.
Lastly, and to my great amaze, I heard the words:
”Rise, Sir Cedric De La Roche. I dub thee Knight of the Crag. The device on thy s.h.i.+eld shall be an eagle in token of the spot where thy resource changed defeat to victory. Be thou ever faithful, true and valorous as thou hast been this day, and England hath gained a stout defender and King Richard of the Lion Heart a worthy support to his throne.”
CHAPTER XI-BY KIMBERLEY MOAT
After the Battle of the Pa.s.s we had a season of quiet at Mountjoy. King Richard had sailed on the Great Crusade, leaving his brother John as Regent; and the people of England, n.o.bles and commons alike, learned that there was a far worse rule than that of stern old Henry of Anjou, for John Lackland, his younger son, had at once the greed of a tiger and the meanness of a rat. Many of the high places of Church and State were filled with his favorites-miserable creatures for the most part whose only merits were a ready complaisance to the wishes of their master and a measure of craft and subtlety in furtherance of his schemes. Sheriffs and bailiffs of a yet more contemptible strain hurried to do the bidding of these velvet-clad beggars and thieves, and honest and forthright men led a hard life indeed unless they were themselves high in power and of numerous following.
Among these last might be reckoned the Mountjoys and their friends and allies, the Carletons of Teramore. We were too strong and too valuable in the defense of the Western Marches to be meddled with save for the greatest cause; so the land for some leagues about us was in a measure free from the ills which now and again brought other portions of the Kingdom to the verge of rebellion.
Sir Cedric, as now we gladly styled him, was high in the councils of Mountjoy. My father consulted him as often as myself on the gravest questions; and Lady Mountjoy willingly spent uncounted hours in bettering his knowledge of polite and courtly ways and of those divers little matters of knightly bearing to which in our rough Western land we give mayhap too little heed. At the books, to her amaze, he soon had far outstripped her. An uncle of his was one of the monks at Kirkwald Abbey, and a famous Latin scholar. For a year past, Cedric had been making frequent journeys to the Abbey; and once we had old Father Benedict at Mountjoy for a month or more. For hours together they would pore over dusty and ancient tomes that made me ache with weariness but to look upon them. The first we knew, our Cedric was better at the Latin reading than any layman we had seen or heard of. History and chronicles were good meat and drink to him; and often, with his head between the covers of a book, his dinner would be quite forgot but for my l.u.s.ty calling.
Withal he was no pale bookworm, but a l.u.s.ty and rollicking lad who in rough and tumble play could lay me on the broad of my back with scarce a minute's striving. At the sword-play I was ever his better, but his mastery of the cross-bow grew yet more wonderful as the seasons pa.s.sed.
Even the oldsters admitted that he equalled Marvin at Marvin's best.
Already he had the name of the best cross-bowman in England; and I found that strangers to our county, who had heard nothing of the deeds of my father and all our n.o.ble forbears, had knowledge, nevertheless, of Mountjoy as the house to which Sir Cedric gave allegiance.
But I think the thing that warmed me most toward my former squire and constant comrade was the loyalty he ever had to the cla.s.s of folk from which he sprung. Lord Mountjoy often gave to him authority over working crews at some necessary task on farm or highway or scouting parties of swordsmen and archers that rode the Marches to guard against the Welsh marauders. It would have been no wonder had such a sudden rise to t.i.tle and preferment bred in a youth who had been born in a forester's cot a certain arrogance of manner and an overweening confidence in his own worth and deserts. But, by his own desire, the archers and men-at-arms of Mountjoy still addressed him as they had when his station was no higher than theirs; and though he could be quick and firm on occasion, he was never above listening to and profiting by the counsels of the elder men in buckram or in hodden gray. Nor did he forget the cottage in Pelham Wood which housed his old father and his small, tow-headed brethren. Since he had dwelt at Mountjoy Hall, scarce a month had pa.s.sed without his riding thence and leaving with them some share in any guerdon he had won.
It was after such a journey that Cedric returned to the Hall one autumn evening in such a mood of silence and depression as I had never seen since those sad days when he quarreled with my father over the punishment due the churls of De Lancey Manor. At his supper he spoke no word, and ate and drank but little. My lady mother did anxiously inquire if he were ill, for we knew him well as a valiant trencherman, and he had ridden far in a frosty air. He put away her questionings with his usual courtesy, denying that aught ailed him; but me he could not so easily check, for I followed him to his room, and, finding him sitting with his face in his hands, demanded to know as friend and comrade what had turned his world awry.
”Sir Richard,” he replied sadly, ”hast ever had friend of thine flung into dungeon cell, there to lie at the pleasure of some low-living scoundrel?”
”Nay,” I answered quickly, ”this evil I have thus far 'scaped, though I well know 'tis common enough in these days, and many there be that suffer it.”
”Of those I am one,” replied Cedric. ”And now I rack my head to know whether or not there be any possible help for it. Wilfrid, son of the farmer of Birkenhead, was my comrade and playmate since ever I can remember. We hunted and fished and swam together and willingly fought each other's battles when we were but little lads. Once he plunged in and pulled me from the Tarleton Water, when, far gone with cramp, I had twice sunken. His handling of the long-bow is well-nigh equal to my father's, and better than that of any youth I know. I had lately planned to bring him to Mountjoy and to say a word to thy father of his deserts.”
”And who is it that now hath seized him?”
”'Tis that wry-mouthed and rat-eyed scoundrel, Bardolph, that lately hath been made King's Bailiff, and hath in charge the rebuilding of Kimberley Castle.”
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