A Prince of Cornwall Part 27

"Dead?" I called back, with a terror of what I knew would be his answer.

Then he laughed at me.

"Do you expect a horse to be leather all through, Master? Of course he is.--Saddle and all smashed to bits."

Then a dull anger took me that he thought of the horse only, as it seemed, unless he was mazed as I was with it all.

"The man--the man," I said.

"There is no man here, Master. Did one fall?" he said in a new voice, and he crossed to the other side of the gorge and scanned the face of the cliff.

"He is not to be seen," he said. "Maybe he has caught yonder."

He pointed to a ledge that was plain enough to me, but nowhere near the place whence the fall was. There were no ledges to be seen as I looked straight down, and I knew that this place was the most sheer fall along all the length of the gorge.

Now three more of our party came up, and at once they rode down to the village and so round to where the man stood. It seemed a long time before they were there and talking to him.

"Ho, Oswald!"

Their voices came cheerfully enough, and I looked down at them.

"There seem to be clefts here and there, and in one of those he must needs be," they said. "We are going to the village to get a cragsman with a rope, and will be with you anon."

There was at least hope in that, and I watched them ride swiftly away. The ravens were gathering fast now, knowing that what fell from above must needs be their prey, and two great eagles were wheeling high overhead, waiting. I heard the kites screaming to one another from above the eagles, and from the woods came the call of the buzzards. They knew more than I.

Now the ealdorman could not bring Elfrida round, and he thought it best to take her hence. So he had her lifted to him on his horse, and went slowly and carefully down the hill toward the village with her. I had told him all that had happened by this time, and I was to bring word presently to him of how the search went.

So I and those two friends who had first come sat there on the cliff top waiting in silence for the coming of the man with his ropes. All that could be said had been said.

Here and there on the face of the cliff some yew trees had managed to find a holding, and their boughs were broken by the pa.s.sage of the horse at least through them. But there were no shreds of clothing on them, as if Erpwald had reached them. That might be because the weightier horse fell first. It seemed to me in that moment of the fall that he was between the horse and the cliff as he went over the edge, for the forefeet of the horse struck his legs and threw him backward, and the last thing that I minded was seeing his head against the horse's mane in some way. That last glimpse will bide with me until I forget all things.

It seemed very long before our friends came back with the ropes.

Backwards and forwards in front of us flew untiringly two ravens, now flying across the gorge, and then again almost brus.h.i.+ng us with their wings as they swept up the face of the cliff from below. We thought they had a nest somewhere close at hand, for it was their time.

"If Erpwald were dead," I said presently, "those birds would not be so restless. It is hard to think that they know where he is and how he fares; but at least they tell us that he is not yet prey for them."

Backward and forward they swept, until my eyes grew dazed with watching them, and then suddenly they both croaked their alarm note, wheeled quickly away from the cliff's face, and fled across the gorge and were gone.

Then was a rattle of stones, and a shout from some one in the track below, and I started and saw a head slowly rising above the edge of the cliff as if its owner had climbed up to us. White and streaked with blood was the face, but it was not crushed or marred, and it was Erpwald's.

"Lend me a hand," he said, as we stared at him, as one needs must stare at one who comes back as it were from the grave. "My head swims even yet."

I grasped his hand and helped him to the gra.s.s, and once there he stood upright and shook himself, looking round in an astonished way as he did so.

"No broken bones," he said. "Where is Elfrida? Is she all right? I was rough with her, I fear, but I could not help it. Could I have managed otherwise?"

"In no way better," I said, finding my tongue at length. "She has gone to the village. But where have you been!"

"In a long hole just over here," he answered. "But how long has she been gone?"

"How long do you think that you have been in your hole?"

"A few minutes. It cannot be long. Yet it must have been longer than I thought, for the shadows are changed."

It was a full hour and a half since he fell, but I did not say so, lest it should be some sort of shock to him. So I bade him sit down while I saw to a cut there was on his head--the only sign of hurt that he had.

"I thought that I was done for at first," he said.

"So thought I, until we found that you were not at the bottom. Even now some of us have gone for ropes that we might search the cliff for you. We could not see you anywhere, and there does not seem to be any ledge here that could catch you."

"Why, you could have touched me with a spear all the time, if you had known where to thrust it. I think I fainted, or somewhat foolish of the sort. My head hit the rock as I went over. Also the horse ground me between it and the cliff, so that all my breath went. But that pushed me into the hole, and I will not grumble. At least, I think that was it, but I cannot be sure. My senses went."

He began to laugh, but suddenly turned to me with a new look on his face.

"Oh, but was Elfrida feared for me?--What did she think?"

"She saw nought of it," I said. "I believe that she had fainted with terror when you laid hold of her. The ealdorman came and took her to the village, and I do not suppose she knows that you have been lost."

"That is well," he said, with his great sigh. "Look over and see my hole."

I did not care to look over again, and, moreover, knew that I could not see it. I mind every jutting stone and twisted yew that is on the cliff there, to this day. However, one of the others went a little to one side, where Erpwald had appeared, and swung himself to the tiny ledge that had given him foothold as he came up, and so looked at the place. There was a long cleft between two layers of rock which went back into the cliff's face for some depth, with a little backward slope that had saved the helpless man from rolling out again, and there was a raven's nest at one end of it. One may see that cleft from below and across the gorge if one knows where to look, but not by any means from above, by reason of the overhang of the brink. It was plain that, as he thought, the horse's body, or maybe its shoulder, thrust him into the cleft, but it was well that he was senseless and so could not struggle, or he would have surely missed it. It is his saying that he had no trouble in getting into the place, but more in climbing out.

Now we called the good news to some of our people and the villagers who were on the road below, and they broke into cheers as they heard it. They could hardly believe that the man they had seen on the edge just now was Erpwald himself. Then we went down to the village, meeting the men with the ropes halfway, and so came to the first houses of the street, where the ealdorman was standing outside one of the better sort. He came to meet us, and I never saw anything like the look on his face when he saw Erpwald and heard his cheerful greeting. I told him how things ended.

"I have given a lot of trouble, as it seems" Erpwald said humbly; "but I could not help it."

"Trouble!" said the ealdorman. "Had it not been for you there would have been nought but trouble for me all the rest of my life."

He took Erpwald's hand as he spoke and pressed it, but he would not say more then. Maybe he could not. So he turned to me.

"It is all right, Oswald, for Elfrida is herself again, and she saw nothing after she looked into the gulf below her. I have told her nothing."

"Do not tell her anything, Ealdorman," Erpwald said. "No need to say what a near thing it was, or that I handled her like a sack of oats. She would never forgive me. But Oswald says it was all that I could have done. It was a good thing that he was there to take her."

"How are you going to account for the broken head, then?"

"Say I was thrown from my horse afterward, or somewhat of that kind," he said. "Or, stay, these will do it. I have been birds'

nesting. I thought these would please her. One gets falls while scrambling after the like."

He put his hand into his pouch as he spoke.

"Plague on it, one is broken," he said, bringing out a raven's egg.

"There were two in that place where I stopped falling."

The ealdorman and I stared at him in wonder. It amazed us that in such a moment a man should think of this trifle. And now he was turning his soiled pouch inside out and wiping it with a tuft of gra.s.s, grumbling the while. It was plain that the danger had made no impression on him.

"Were not you frightened when you found how nearly you had fallen from the cliff?" I asked him.

"No; why should I be? I did not fall from it. I was feared enough when I thought that I was going, and I thought I was at the bottom when I came to myself. But as I had not gone so far, there was an end."