I am a Christian man,” said Jorworth, hurrying asseveration on asseveration—”by the soul of my father—by the faith of my mother—by the black rood of—”
“Stop, good Jorworth—thou heapest thine oaths too thickly on each other, for me to value them to the right estimate,” said Flammock; “that which is so lightly pledged, is sometimes not thought worth redeeming. Some part of the promised guerdon in hand the whilst, were worth an hundred oaths.”
“Thou suspicious churl, darest thou doubt my word?”
“No—by no means,” answered Wilkin;—”nevertheless, I will believe thy deed more readily.”
“To the point, Fleming,” said Jorworth—”What wouldst thou have of me?”
“Let me have some present sight of the money thou didst promise, and I will think of the rest of thy proposal.”
“Base silver-broker!” answered Jorworth, “thinkest thou the Prince of Powys has as many moneybags, as the merchants of thy land of sale and barter? He gathers treasures by his conquests, as the waterspout sucks up water by its strength, but it is to disperse them among his followers, as the cloudy column restores its contents to earth and ocean. The silver that I promise thee has yet to be gathered out of the Saxon chests—nay, the casket of Berenger himself must be ransacked to make up the tale.”
“Methinks I could do that myself, (having full power in the castle,) and so save you a labour,” said the Fleming.
“True,” answered Jorworth, “but it would be at the expense of a cord and a noose, whether the Welsh took the place or the Normans relieved it—the one would expect their booty entire—the other their countryman’s treasures to be delivered undiminished.”
“I may not gainsay that,” said the Fleming. “Well, say I were content to trust you thus far, why not return my cattle, which are in your own hands, and at your disposal? If you do not pleasure me in something beforehand, what can I expect of you afterwards?”
“I would pleasure you in a greater matter,” answered the equally suspicious Welshman. “But what would it avail thee to have thy cattle within the fortress? They can be better cared for on the plain beneath.”
“In faith,” replied the Fleming, “thou sayst truth—they will be but a trouble to us here, where we have so many already provided for the use of the garrison.—And yet, when I consider it more closely, we have enough of forage to maintain all we have, and more. Now, my cattle are of a peculiar stock, brought from the rich pastures of Flanders, and I desire to have them restored ere your axes and Welsh hooks be busy with their hides.”
“You shall have them this night, hide and horn,” said Jorworth; “it is but a small earnest of a great boon.”
“Thanks to your munificence,” said the Fleming; “I am a simple-minded man, and bound my wishes to the recovery of my own property.”
“Thou wilt be ready, then, to deliver the castle?” said Jorworth.
“Of that we will talk farther tomorrow,” said Wilkin Flammock; “if these English and Normans should suspect such a purpose, we should have wild work—they must be fully dispersed ere I can hold farther communication on the subject. Meanwhile, I pray thee, depart suddenly, and as if offended with the tenor of our discourse.”
“Yet would I fain know something more fixed and absolute,” said Jorworth.
“Impossible—impossible,” said the Fleming: “see you not yonder tall fellow begins already to handle his dagger—Go hence in haste, and angrily—and forget not the cattle.”
“I will not forget them,” said Jorworth; “but if thou keep not faith with us—”
So speaking, he left the apartment with a gesture of menace, partly really directed to Wilkin himself, partly assumed in consequence of his advice. Flammock replied in English, as if that all around might understand, what he said,
“Do thy worst, Sir Welshman! I am a true man; I defy the proposals of rendition, and will hold out this castle to thy shame and thy master’s!—Here—let him be blindfolded once more, and returned in safety to his attendants without; the next Welshman who appears before the gate of the Garde Doloureuse, shall be more sharply received.”
The Welshman was blindfolded and withdrawn, when, as Wilkin Flammock himself left the guardroom, one of the seeming men-at- arms, who had been present at this interview, said in his ear, in English, “Thou art a false traitor, Flammock, and shalt die a traitor’s death!”
Startled at this, the Fleming would have questioned the man farther, but he had disappeared so soon as the words were uttered. Flammock was disconcerted by this circumstance, which showed him that his interview with Jorworth had been observed, and its purpose known or conjectured, by some one who was a stranger to his confidence, and might thwart his intentions; and he quickly after learned that this was the case.
Chapter VI
Blessed Mary, mother dear,
To a maiden bend thine ear,
Virgin undefiled, to thee
A wretched virgin bends the knee.
HYMN TO THE VIRGIN.
The daughter of the slaughtered Raymond had descended from the elevated station whence she had beheld the field of battle, in the agony of grief natural to a child whose eyes have beheld the death of an honoured and beloved father. But her station, and the principles of chivalry in which she had been trained up, did not permit any prolonged or needless indulgence of inactive sorrow. In raising the young and beautiful of the female sex to the rank of princesses, or rather goddesses, the spirit of that singular system exacted from them, in requital, a tone of character, and a line of conduct, superior and something contradictory to that of natural or merely human feeling. Its heroines frequently resembled portraits shown by an artificial light—strong and luminous, and which placed in high relief the objects on which it was turned; but having still something of adventitious splendour, which, compared with that of the natural day, seemed glaring and exaggerated.
It was not permitted to the orphan of the Garde Doloureuse, the daughter of a line of heroes, whose stem was to be found in the race of Thor, Balder, Odin, and other deified warriors of the North, whose beauty was the theme of a hundred minstrels, and her eyes the leading star of half the chivalry of the warlike marches of Wales, to mourn her sire with the ineffectual tears of a village maiden. Young as she was, and horrible as was the incident which she had but that instant witnessed, it was not altogether so appalling to her as to a maiden whose eye had not been accustomed to the rough, and often fatal sports of chivalry, and whose residence had not been among scenes and men where war and death had been the unceasing theme of every tongue, whose imagination had not been familiarized with wild and bloody events, or, finally, who had not been trained up to consider an honourable “death under shield,” as that of a field of battle was termed, as a more desirable termination to the life of a warrior, than that lingering and unhonoured fate which comes slowly on, to conclude the listless and helpless inactivity of prolonged old age. Eveline, while she wept for her father, felt her bosom glow when she recollected that he died in the blaze of his fame, and amidst heaps of his slaughtered enemies; and when she thought
