Historical Tales Volume Iv Part 6

The shades of night were fast gathering when a poor charcoal-burner, pa.s.sing with his cart through the forest, came upon a dead body stretched bleeding upon the gra.s.s. An arrow had pierced its breast.

Lifting it into his cart, wrapped in old linen, he jogged slowly onward, the blood still dripping and staining the ground as he pa.s.sed. Not till he reached the hunting-lodge did he discover that it was the corpse of a king he had found in the forest depths. The dead body was that of William II. of England.

Tyrrell had disappeared. In vain they sought him. He was nowhere to be found. Suspicion rested on him. He had murdered the king, men said, and fled the land.

Mystery has ever since shrouded the death of the Red King. Tyrrell lived to tell his tale. It was probably a true one, though many doubted it.

The Frenchman had quarrelled with the king, men said, and had murdered him from revenge. Just why he should have murdered so powerful a friend and patron, for a taunt pa.s.sed in jest, was far from evident.

Tyrrell's story is as follows: He and the king had taken their stations, opposite one another, waiting the work of the woodsmen who were beating up the game. Each had an arrow in his cross-bow, his finger on the trigger, eagerly listening for the distant sounds which would indicate the coming of game. As they stood thus intent, a large stag suddenly broke from the bushes and sprang into the s.p.a.ce between them.

William drew, but the bow-string broke in his hand. The stag, startled at the sound, stood confused, looking suspiciously around. The king signed to Tyrrell to shoot, but the latter, for some reason, did not obey. William grew impatient, and called out,--

"Shoot, Walter, shoot, in the devil's name!"

Shoot he did. An instant afterwards the king fell without word or moan.

Tyrrell's arrow had struck a tree, and, glancing, pierced the king's breast; or it may be that an arrow from a more distant bow had struck him. When Tyrrell reached his side he was dead.

The French knight knew what would follow if he fell into the hands of the king's companions. He could not hope to make people credit his tale.

Mounting his horse, he rode with all speed through the forest, not drawing rein till the coast was reached. He had far outridden the news of the tragedy. Taking s.h.i.+p here, he crossed over in haste to Normandy, and thence made his way to France, not drawing a breath free from care till he felt the soil of his native land beneath his feet. Here he lived to a good age and died in peace, his life diversified by a crusading visit to the Holy Land.

The end of the Red King resembled that of his father. The Conqueror had been deserted before he had fairly ceased breathing, his body left half clad on the bare boards of his chamber, while some of his attendants rifled the palace, others hastened to offer their services to his son.

The same scenes followed the Red King's death. His body was left in the charcoal-burner's cart, clotted with blood, to be conveyed to Winchester, while his brother Henry rode post-haste thither to seize the royal treasure, and the train of courtiers rode as rapid a course, to look after their several interests.

Reaching the royal palace, Henry imperiously demanded the keys of the king's treasure-chamber. Before he received them William de Breteuil entered, breathless with haste, and bade the keepers not to deliver them.

"Thou and I," he said to Henry, "ought loyally to keep the faith which we promised to thy brother, Duke Robert; he has received our oath of homage, and, absent or present, he has the right."

But what was faith, what an oath, when a crown was the prize? A quarrel followed; Henry drew his sword; the people around supported him; soon he had the treasure and the royal regalia; Robert might have the right, he had the kingdom.

There is tradition connected with the Red King's death. A stirrup hangs in Lyndhurst Hall, said to be that which he used on that fatal day. The charcoal-burner was named Purkess. There are Purkesses still in the village of Minstead, near where William Rufus died. And the story runs that the earthly possessions of the Purkess family have ever since been a single horse and cart. A stone marks the spot where the king fell, on it is the inscription,--

"Here stood the oak-tree on which the arrow, shot by Walter Tyrrell at a stag, glanced and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, on the breast; of which stroke he instantly died on the second of August, 1100.

"That the spot where an event so memorable had happened might not hereafter be unknown, this stone was set up by John, Lord Delaware, who had seen the tree growing in this place, anno 1745."

We may end by saying that England was revenged; the retribution for which her children had prayed had overtaken the race of the pirate king. That broad domain of Saxon England, which William the Conqueror had wrested from its owners to make himself a hunting-forest, was reddened with the blood of two of his sons and a grandson. The hand of Heaven had fallen on that cruel race. The New Forest was consecrated in the blood of one of the Norman kings.

_HOW THE WHITE s.h.i.+P SAILED._

Henry I., king of England, had made peace with France. Then to Normandy went the king with a great retinue, that he might have Prince William, his only and dearly-loved son, acknowledged as his successor by the Norman n.o.bles and married to the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these things were done; regal was the display, great the rejoicing, and on the 25th of November, 1120, the king and his followers, with the prince and his fair young bride, prepared to embark at Barfleur on their triumphant journey home.

So far all had gone well. Now disaster lowered. Fate had prepared a tragedy that was to load the king's soul with life-long grief and yield to English history one of its most pathetic tales.

Of the vessels of the fleet, one of the best was a fifty-oared galley called "The White s.h.i.+p," commanded by a certain Thomas Fitzstephen, whose father had sailed the s.h.i.+p on which William the Conqueror first came to England's sh.o.r.es. This service Fitzstephen represented to the king, and begged that he might be equally honored.

"My liege," he said, "my father steered the s.h.i.+p with the golden boy upon the prow in which your father sailed to conquer England, I beseech you to grant me the same honor, that of carrying you in the White s.h.i.+p to England."

"I am sorry, friend," said the king, "that my vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot sail with the son of the man who served my father. But the prince and all his company shall go along with you in the White s.h.i.+p, which you may esteem an honor equal to that of carrying me."

By evening of that day the king with his retinue had set sail, with a fair wind, for England's sh.o.r.es, leaving the prince with his attendants to follow in Fitzstephen's s.h.i.+p. With the prince were his natural brother Richard, his sister the countess of Perch, Richard, earl of Chester, with his wife, the king's niece, together with one hundred and forty of the flower of the young n.o.bility of England and Normandy, accompanying whom were many ladies of high descent. The whole number of persons taking pa.s.sage on the White s.h.i.+p, including the crew, were three hundred.

Prince William was but a boy, and one who did little honor to his father's love. He was a dissolute youth of eighteen, who had so little feeling for the English as to have declared that when he came to the throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. Destiny had decided that the boastful boy should not have the opportunity to carry out this threat.

"Give three casks of wine, Fitzstephen," he said, "to your crew. My father, the king, has sailed. What time have we to make merry here and still reach England with the rest?"

"If we sail at midnight," answered Fitzstephen, "my fifty rowers and the White s.h.i.+p shall overtake the swiftest vessel in the king's fleet before daybreak."

"Then let us be merry," said the prince; "the night is fine, the time young, let us enjoy it while we may."

Merry enough they were; the prince and his companions danced in the moonlight on the s.h.i.+p's deck, the sailors emptied their wine-casks, and when at last they left the harbor there was not a sober sailor on board, and the captain himself was the worse for wine.

As the s.h.i.+p swept from the port, the young n.o.bles, heated with wine, hung over the sides and drove away with taunts the priests who had come to give the usual benediction. Wild youths were they,--the most of them,--gay, ardent, in the hey-day of life, caring mainly for pleasure, and with little heed of aught beyond the moment's whim. There seemed naught to give them care, in sooth. The sea lay smooth beneath them, the air was mild, the moon poured its soft l.u.s.tre upon the deck, and propitious fortune appeared to smile upon the s.h.i.+p as it rushed onward, under the impulse of its long banks of oars, in haste to overtake the distant fleet of the king.

All went merrily. Fitzstephen grasped the helm, his soul proud with the thought that, as his father had borne the Conqueror to England's strand, he was bearing the pride of younger England, the heir to the throne. On the deck before him his pa.s.sengers were gathered in merry groups, singing, laughing, chatting, the ladies in their rich-lined mantles, the gentlemen in their bravest attire; while to the sound of song and merry talk the well-timed fall of the oars and swash of driven waters made refrain.

They had reached the harbor's mouth. The open ocean lay before them. In a few minutes more they would be sweeping over the Atlantic's broad expanse. Suddenly there came a frightful crash; a shock that threw numbers of the pa.s.sengers headlong to the deck, and tore the oars from the rowers' hands; a cry of terror that went up from three hundred throats. It is said that some of the people in the far-off s.h.i.+ps heard that cry, faint, far, despairing, borne to them over miles of sea, and asked themselves in wonder what it could portend.

It portended too much wine and too little heed. The vessel, carelessly steered, had struck upon a rock, the _Catee-raze_, at the harbor's mouth, with such, violence that a gaping wound was torn in her prow, and the waters instantly began to rush in.

The White s.h.i.+p was injured, was filling, would quickly sink. Wild consternation prevailed. There was but one boat, and that small.

Fitzstephen, sobered by the concussion, hastily lowered it, crowded into it the prince and a few n.o.bles, and bade them hastily to push off and row to the land.

"It is not far," he said, "and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die."

They obeyed. The boat was pushed off, the oars dropped into the water, it began to move from the s.h.i.+p. At that moment, amid the cries of horror and despair on the sinking vessel, came one that met the prince's ear in piteous appeal. It was the voice of his sister, Marie, the countess of Perch, crying to him for help.

In that moment of frightful peril Prince William's heart beat true.

"Row back at any risk!" he cried. "My sister must be saved. I cannot bear to leave her."

They rowed back. But the hope that from that panic-stricken mult.i.tude one woman could be selected was wild. No sooner had the boat reached the s.h.i.+p's side than dozens madly sprung into it, in such numbers that it was overturned. At almost the same moment the White s.h.i.+p went down, dragging all within reach into her eddying vortex. Death spread its sombre wings over the spot where, a few brief minutes before, life and joy had ruled.

When the tossing eddies subsided, the pale moonlight looked down on but two souls of all that gay and youthful company. These clung to a spar which had broken loose from the mast and floated on the waves, or to the top of the mast itself, which stood above the surface.

"Only two of us, out of all that gallant company!" said one of these in despairing tones. "Who are you, friend and comrade?"

"I am a n.o.bleman, G.o.dfrey, the son of Gilbert de L'Aigle. And you?" he asked.

"I am Berold, a poor butcher of Rouen," was the answer.

"G.o.d be merciful to us both!" they then cried together.

Immediately afterwards they saw a third, who had risen and was swimming towards them. As he drew near he pushed the wet, clinging hair from his face, and they saw the white, agonized countenance of Fitzstephen. He gazed at them with eager eyes; then cast a long, despairing look on the waters around him.

"Where is the prince?" he asked, in tones that seemed to shudder with terror.