Part 12 (2/2)

”Norman,” said s.e.xwolf, ”the castle is there, though you see it not, and so are the walls. The castle is Harold's name, which no Walloon will dare to confront; and the walls are the heaps of the slain which lie in every valley around.” So saying, he wound his horn, which was speedily answered, and led the way over a plank which admitted across the trench.

”Not even a drawbridge!” groaned the knight.

s.e.xwolf exchanged a few words with one who seemed the head of the small garrison, and then regaining the Norman, said: ”The Earl and his men have advanced into the mountainous regions of Snowdon; and there, it is said, the blood-l.u.s.ting Gryffyth is at length driven to bay. Harold hath left orders that, after as brief a refreshment as may be, I and my men, taking the guide he hath left for us, join him on foot. There may now be danger: for though Gryffyth himself may be pinned to his heights, he may have met some friends in these parts to start up from crag and combe. The way on horse is impa.s.sable: wherefore, master Norman, as our quarrel is not thine nor thine our lord, I commend thee to halt here in peace and in safety, with the sick and the prisoners.”

”It is a merry companions.h.i.+p, doubtless,” said the Norman; ”but one travels to learn, and I would fain see somewhat of thine uncivil skirmis.h.i.+ngs with these men of the mountains; wherefore, as I fear my poor mules are light of the provender, give me to eat and to drink. And then shalt thou see, should we come in sight of the enemy, if a Norman's big words are the sauce of small deeds.”

”Well spoken, and better than I reckoned on,” said s.e.xwolf, heartily.

While De Graville, alighting, sauntered about the village, the rest of the troop exchanged greetings with their countrymen. It was, even to the warrior's eye, a mournful scene. Here and there, heaps of ashes and ruin-houses riddled and burned--the small, humble church, untouched indeed by war, but looking desolate and forlorn--with sheep grazing on large recent mounds thrown over the brave dead, who slept in the ancestral spot they had defended.

The air was fragrant with spicy smells of the gale or bog myrtle; and the village lay sequestered in a scene wild indeed and savage, but prodigal of a stern beauty to which the Norman, poet by race, and scholar by culture, was not insensible. Seating himself on a rude stone, apart from all the warlike and murmuring groups, he looked forth on the dim and vast mountain peaks, and the rivulet that rushed below, intersecting the village, and lost amidst copses of mountain ash. From these more refined contemplations he was roused by s.e.xwolf, who, with greater courtesy than was habitual to him, accompanied the theowes who brought the knight a repast, consisting of cheese, and small pieces of seethed kid, with a large horn of very indifferent mead.

”The Earl puts all his men on Welch diet,” said the captain, apologetically. ”For indeed, in this lengthy warfare, nought else is to be had!”

The knight curiously inspected the cheese, and bent earnestly over the kid.

”It sufficeth, good s.e.xwolf,” said he, suppressing a natural sigh. ”But instead of this honey-drink, which is more fit for bees than for men, get me a draught of fresh water: water is your only safe drink before fighting.”

”Thou hast never drank ale, then!” said the Saxon; ”but thy foreign tastes shall be heeded, strange man.”

A little after noon, the horns were sounded, and the troop prepared to depart. But the Norman observed that they had left behind all their horses: and his squire, approaching, informed him that s.e.xwolf had positively forbidden the knight's steed to be brought forth.

”Was it ever heard before,” cried Sire Mallet de Graville, ”that a Norman knight was expected to walk, and to walk against a foe too! Call hither the villein,--that is, the captain.”

But s.e.xwolf himself here appeared, and to him De Graville addressed his indignant remonstrance. The Saxon stood firm, and to each argument replied simply, ”It is the Earl's orders;” and finally wound up with a bluff--”Go or let alone: stay here with thy horse, or march with us on thy feet.”

”My horse is a gentleman,” answered the knight, ”and, as such, would be my more fitting companion. But as it is, I yield to compulsion--I bid thee solemnly observe, by compulsion; so that it may never be said of William Mallet de Graville, that he walked, bon gre, to battle.” With that, he loosened his sword in the sheath, and, still retaining his ring mail, fitting close as a s.h.i.+rt, strode on with the rest.

A Welch guide, subject to one of the Underkings (who was in allegiance to England, and animated, as many of those petty chiefs were, with a vindictive jealousy against the rival tribe of Gryffyth, far more intense than his dislike of the Saxon), led the way.

The road wound for some time along the course of the river Conway; Penmaen-mawr loomed before them. Not a human being came in sight, not a goat was seen on the distant ridges, not a sheep on the pastures. The solitude in the glare of the broad August sun was oppressive. Some houses they pa.s.sed--if buildings of rough stones, containing but a single room, can be called houses--but they were deserted. Desolation preceded their way, for they were on the track of Harold the Victor. At length, they pa.s.sed the cold Conovium, now Caer-hen, lying low near the river. There were still (not as we now scarcely discern them, after centuries of havoc,) the mighty ruins of the Romans,--vast shattered walls, a tower half demolished, visible remnants of gigantic baths, and, proudly rising near the present ferry of Tal-y-Cafn, the fortress, almost unmutilated, of Castell-y-Bryn. On the castle waved the pennon of Harold. Many large flat-bottomed boats were moored to the river-side, and the whole place bristled with spears and javelins.

Much comforted, (for,--though he disdained to murmur, and rather than forego his mail, would have died therein a martyr,--Mallet de Graville was mightily wearied by the weight of his steel,) and hoping now to see Harold himself, the knight sprang forward with a spasmodic effort at liveliness, and found himself in the midst of a group, among whom he recognised at a glance his old acquaintance, G.o.drith. Doffing his helm with its long nose-piece, he caught the thegn's hand, and exclaimed: ”Well met, ventre de Guillaume! well met, O G.o.dree the debonnair! Thou rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on foot, and with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus, thou beholdest that much-suffering man!”

”Welcome indeed,” returned G.o.drith, with some embarra.s.sment; ”but how camest thou hither, and whom seekest thou?”

”Harold, thy Count, man--and I trust he is here.”

”Not so, but not far distant--at a place by the mouth of the river called Caer Gyffin [158]. Thou shalt take boat, and be there ere the sunset.”

”Is a battle at hand? Yon churl disappointed and tricked me; he promised me danger, and not a soul have we met.”

”Harold's besom sweeps clean,” answered G.o.drith, smiling. ”But thou art like, perhaps, to be in at the death. We have driven this Welch lion to bay at last. He is ours, or grim Famine's. Look yonder;” and G.o.drith pointed to the heights of Penmaen-mawr. ”Even at this distance, you may yet descry something grey and dim against the sky.”

”Deemest thou my eye so ill practised in siege, as not to see towers? Tall and ma.s.sive they are, though they seem here as airy as roasts, and as dwarfish as landmarks.”

”On that hill-top, and in those towers, is Gryffyth, the Welch king, with the last of his force. He cannot escape us; our s.h.i.+ps guard all the coasts of the sh.o.r.e; our troops, as here, surround every pa.s.s. Spies, night and day, keep watch. The Welch moels (or beacon-rocks) are manned by our warders. And, were the Welch King to descend, signals would blaze from post to post, and gird him with fire and sword. From land to land, from hill to hill, from Hereford to Caerleon, from Caerleon to Milford, from Milford to Snowdon, through Snowdon to yonder fort, built, they say, by the fiends or the giants, --through defile and through forest, over rock, through mora.s.s, we have pressed on his heels. Battle and foray alike have drawn the blood from his heart; and thou wilt have seen the drops yet red on the way, where the stone tells that Harold was victor.”

”A brave man and true king, then, this Gryffyth,” said the Norman, with some admiration; ”but,” he added in a colder tone, ”I confess, for my own part, that though I pity the valiant man beaten, I honour the brave man who wins; and though I have seen but little of this rough land as yet, I can well judge from what I have seen, that no captain, not of patience unwearied, and skill most consummate, could conquer a bold enemy in a country where every rock is a fort.”

”So I fear,” answered G.o.drith, ”that thy countryman Rolf found; for the Welch beat him sadly, and the reason was plain. He insisted on using horses where no horses could climb, and attiring men in full armour to fight against men light and nimble as swallows, that skim the earth, then are lost in clouds. Harold, more wise, turned our Saxons into Welchmen, flying as they flew, climbing where they climbed; it has been as a war of the birds. And now there rests but the eagle, in his last lonely eyrie.”

”Thy battles have improved thy eloquence much, Messire G.o.dree,” said the Norman, condescendingly. ”Nevertheless, I cannot but think a few light horse----”

”Could scale yon mountain-brow?” said G.o.drith, laughing, and pointing to Penmaen-mawr.

The Norman looked and was silent, though he thought to himself, ”That s.e.xwolf was no such dolt after all!”

BOOK VII.

THE WELCH KING.

CHAPTER I.

The sun had just cast his last beams over the breadth of water into which Conway, or rather Cyn-wy, ”the great river,” emerges its winding waves. Not at that time existed the matchless castle, which is now the monument of Edward Plantagenet, and the boast of Wales. But besides all the beauty the spot took from nature, it had even some claim from ancient art. A rude fortress rose above the stream of Gyffin, out of the wrecks of some greater Roman hold [159], and vast ruins of a former town lay round it; while opposite the fort, on the huge and ragged promontory of Gogarth, might still be seen, forlorn and grey, the wrecks of the imperial city, destroyed ages before by lightning.

All these remains of a power and a pomp that Rome in vain had bequeathed to the Briton, were full of pathetic and solemn interest, when blent with the thought, that on yonder steep, the brave prince of a race of heroes, whose line transcended, by ages, all the other royalties of the North, awaited, amidst the ruins of man, and in the stronghold which nature yet gave, the hour of his doom.

But these were not the sentiments of the martial and observant Norman, with the fresh blood of a new race of conquerors.

”In this land,” thought he, ”far more even than in that of the Saxon, there are the ruins of old; and when the present can neither maintain nor repair the past, its future is subjection or despair.”

Agreeably to the peculiar uses of Saxon military skill, which seems to have placed all strength in d.y.k.es and ditches, as being perhaps the cheapest and readiest outworks, a new trench had been made round the fort, on two sides, connecting it on the third and fourth with the streams of Gyffin and the Conway. But the boat was rowed up to the very walls, and the Norman, springing to land, was soon ushered into the presence of the Earl.

Harold was seated before a rude table, and bending over a rough map of the great mountain of Penmaen; a lamp of iron stood beside the map, though the air was yet clear.

The Earl rose, as De Graville, entering with the proud but easy grace habitual to his countrymen, said, in his best Saxon: ”Hail to Earl Harold! William Mallet de Graville, the Norman, greets him, and brings him news from beyond the seas.”

There was only one seat in that bare room--the seat from which the Earl had risen. He placed it with simple courtesy before his visitor, and leaning, himself, against the table, said, in the Norman tongue, which he spoke fluently: ”It is no slight thanks that I owe to the Sire de Graville, that he hath undertaken voyage and journey on my behalf; but before you impart your news, I pray you to take rest and food.”

”Rest will not be unwelcome; and food, if unrestricted to goats' cheese, and kid-flesh,--luxuries new to my palate,--will not be untempting; but neither food nor rest can I take, n.o.ble Harold, before I excuse myself, as a foreigner, for thus somewhat infringing your laws by which we are banished, and acknowledging gratefully the courteous behavior I have met from thy countrymen notwithstanding.”

”Fair Sir,” answered Harold, ”pardon us if, jealous of our laws, we have seemed inhospitable to those who would meddle with them. But the Saxon is never more pleased than when the foreigner visits him only as the friend: to the many who settle amongst us for commerce--Fleming, Lombard, German, and Saracen--we proffer shelter and welcome; to the few who, like thee, Sir Norman, venture over the seas but to serve us, we give frank cheer and free hand.”

Agreeably surprised at this gracious reception from the son of G.o.dwin, the Norman pressed the hand extended to him, and then drew forth a small case, and related accurately, and with feeling, the meeting of his cousin with Sweyn, and Sweyn's dying charge.

The Earl listened, with eyes bent on the ground, and face turned from the lamp; and, when Mallet had concluded his recital, Harold said, with an emotion he struggled in vain to repress: ”I thank you cordially gentle Norman, for kindness kindly rendered! I--I--” The voice faltered. ”Sweyn was very dear to me in his sorrows! We heard that he had died in Lycia, and grieved much and long. So, after he had thus spoken to your cousin, he--he----Alas! O Sweyn, my brother!”

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