The Rival Heirs Part 22

But fatigue overcame him, and he slept. And during that sleep symptoms of fever began to show themselves. He began to talk in his dreams--"There goes a fire--avoid it, it is an evil spirit--shoot arrows at it. Make it tell the secret--now we shall know about the swamp. Here is a fiend throttling me--oh, its awful eyes, they blaze like two marsh fires. No, tie him to the wall; he shall tell the truth or die. What are you giving me to drink?--it is blood, blood. You have poisoned me--I burn, burn--my veins are full of boiling lead--my heart a boiling cauldron. See, there are the marsh fiends--they are carrying away Louis and Pierre--their tails are as whips--ah, an arrow through each of their arms will stop them.

Where is my armour?--a hunting dress won't stop their darts, or save one from their claws. Oh, father, help me--save me from the goblins."

In this incoherent way he talked for hours, and the old dame shuddered as he confused the real tragedy of the previous night with imaginary terrors. Oh, how awful were his ravings to her, when at last she learned the truth. Yet in those very ravings he showed that remorse was at his heart.

She wept as she sat by his bed--wept over the son he had slain. The details of that tragedy were, however, studiously concealed from her by Wilfred's sedulous care; yet she knew Etienne had been the leader of the hostile troop, in conflict with whom she supposed her Eadwin to have fallen in fair open fight; for she was led to understand he had been slain in the terrific struggle in the house.

"The only son of his mother, and she was a widow."

Father Kenelm came and read to her the story of the widow's son at Nain, from King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospels. Not even to him did she confide the secret, or tell who was separated from the good priest only by a curtain--an instinct told her it was right to tend and save--she would trust nothing else.

But in spite of this resolution the good father discovered it all; for while he read the sweet story of old, he heard a cry in Norman French.

"Keep off the fiend--the hobgoblin--he has got burning arrows--snakes! snakes! there are snakes in the bed!"

"What means this, good mother?"

"Oh, thou wilt not betray him."

"Hast thou a fugitive there? Methinks I know the voice. Can it be the son of the wicked baron?"

"He is not answerable for his father's sin; oh, do not betray him--he is mad with fever."

"Dost thou mean to release him, should he get well? Methinks it were better that he should die."

"With all his sins upon his head? May the saints forbid."

"At least were he but absolved after due contrition, and thou knowest that thou hast little cause to love him."

"His death cannot give me back my boy," and she wept once more.

"Nay, it cannot; but if thou dost save him, it shall be under a solemn pledge never to betray the place of our retreat. I will myself swear him upon the Holy Gospels. But woe to him should our young lord Wilfred discover him; I verily believe he would die the death of St. Edmund {xiii}."

"Canst thou not teach poor Wilfred mercy--thou art his pastor and teacher?"

"He grows fiercer daily, and chafes at all restraint. Remember what he has suffered."

"The greater the merit, could he but forgive. You will keep my secret, father?"

"I will: let me see him."

Father Kenelm went behind the curtain and watched the sufferer.

Etienne glared at him with lackl.u.s.tre eyes, but knew him not, and continued his inarticulate ravings. His forgiving nurse moistened his lips from time to time with water, and by him was a decoction of cooling herbs, with which she a.s.suaged his parching thirst.

"Thou art a true follower of Him who prayed for His murderers,"

said Father Kenelm. "The Man of Sorrows comfort thee."

CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE.

Rarely had a spring occurred so dry as that of 1069. With the beginning of March dry winds set in from the east, no rain fell, and the watercourses shrank to summer proportions.

All that winter Hugo de Malville had mourned in hopeless grief the loss of his boy--his only child; but at length grief deepened into one bitter thirst--a thirst for revenge.

That the Dismal Swamp protected the objects of his hatred from his sword he felt well a.s.sured; and had the frost been keen enough to render the marshes penetrable, he would have risked all in a desperate attempt to root out the vermin, as he called the poor natives, from the woods.

But frost alternated with thaw, and snow with rain, and no attempt was likely to be attended with success; so he waited and added compound interest to his thirst for vengeance.

At length set in the dry and fierce winds of which we have spoken, and he felt secure of his prey at last; so preparations were at once made for a grand battle in the marshes.

The keen winds continued, and the scouts reported that the swamp was drier than they had ever seen it before. At length April arrived, and with its earliest days--days of bright suns.h.i.+ne--it was decided to delay no longer, but to explore the marshes with the whole force of the barony, strengthened by recruits from the castles of the neighbouring Norman n.o.bles who willingly lent their aid, and hastened to share the sport dearest of all to the Norman mind.

But one thing was necessary to secure success--a guide, and how to procure one was the riddle which puzzled Hugo, both by day and night.

No Norman could help them; but might not some Englishmen serve, not as willing tools, but under the compulsion of force and the dread of torture?

There were no English in the domains of the baron; all had fled into the forest who were yet alive. There were, it is true, native woodmen in other parts of the wilderness; but they were not va.s.sals of Hugo, and one and all had repeatedly disclaimed knowledge of that part of the forest which was to be explored.

In his perplexity Hugo offered great rewards to anyone who would discover any of the former people of Aescendune and bring them before him.

Leaving Hugo and his friends to concert their murderous plans, we must invite the reader to accompany us once more to freedom's home, the Dismal Swamp.

A council was being held at this selfsame time, which materially a.s.sisted the schemes of the baron, although not greatly to his ultimate gratification.

It was held around the fire in the same farmhouse in which poor Eadwin had met his death, and which had now become the headquarters of the outlaws whom Norman tyranny had made.

Wilfred, young although he was, presided--for was he not the representative of the ancient lords of Aescendune, and those gathered around him the descendants of the men whom his fathers had often led to victory?

On his right sat Haga, the oldest retainer of his house, a man who at the beginning of the century had actually fought with Alfgar against the Danes; on his left, Boom, the ancient forester of the Aescendune woods--as moderns would say, "the head keeper."

And there were s.e.xwulf and Ulf, Tosti and Elfwold, Ernulph and Ordgar, Oslac and Osgood, Wulfsy and Ringulph, Frithgist and Wulfgar--men whose names sounded rough and uncouth in Norman ears, but were familiar enough to the natives.

The whole party having a.s.sembled, Wilfred, as a consequence of his rank, spoke first and opened the debate.

"We have all come together tonight, Englishmen and friends, to consider what we shall do in a very grave crisis--the gravest which has yet occurred since we fled to this refuge from the Norman tyrant Hugo--whom may the saints confound. The thrall, Oslac, imperilling his life for our sake, has been to Aescendune, and brings us back certain information that there is a great gathering of men and horse to explore the swamp, for they guess shrewdly that we are hidden here, and they know now who burnt their farms and slew their men in the woods--thus making them afraid, the cowards, to venture therein save in large parties.

"But since the old bear has lost his cub, his thirst for vengeance incites him to stake all upon one grand attempt to penetrate our fastnesses, and the dryness of the season seems to him to make it possible."

"Our pools and sloughs are never quite dry--they are bottomless,"

said Beorn, "and you might stow away the castle of Aescendune in some of them, and 'twould sink out of sight."

"But it is our object to foil his good intentions towards us: sooner or later we must fight him, and why not now? Haga, my father, thou art the oldest and wisest here present; speak, and we will be guided by thy counsel."

"Let the Norman come," said the sage solemnly; "he shall perish in his pride."

"In what manner shall he die?"