Star of Mercia Part 18

"The Englis.h.!.+" cried William, and Richard the Scrob sprang to his feet.

"They think to surprise us. It were best parley with them in the open, in peaceable guise. Boy, I will carry thee behind me."

Osbern clambered on to the Earl's steed.

"Sir, have I your leave?" asked Richard of Sir Walter de Lacy, who rode on the left of his master. Lacy nodded, and instantly Richard was astride behind him. He had scarcely mounted, when a strange, seething hiss resounded from one side of the street, and above their heads.

Another hiss, and another: a splutter, then a crackle; and the thatch of the maltman's dwelling, which adjoined his barn, burst into steadily-spreading flame.

"O Mary! happy thought!" they heard in the fatuous tones of the maltman's son Oswin. "Hem them right well about, and watch them cook alive!"

"Thank G.o.d for burning pitch!" and in the indignant voice of Grim:

"Thou oaf! Would thou had been born dumb! We had them snared!"

A horse neighed shrilly; the other horses echoed the warning sound.

"Quick, ere terror benumb them!" the Earl shouted. "Right about--a dash for it!"

A bucketful of hot pitch streamed from one roof, hot charcoal cinders showered from another; some one flung a lighted torch. Another thatch was already on fire. The English were formed in a thin ring all round Ludford. The Norman charge scattered those at the bottom of the street, and the hors.e.m.e.n poured out.

"Follow me!" cried Richard. "I know a way to baffle them. Ride, sirs--ride as ye were devils!"

Edric of Clun, on horseback, planted himself in fitzOsbern's way with menacing gesture; William hurled his truncheon, hit him on the head, and sent him tumbling from his saddle. Ednoth clung like a vice to Richard's legs for some yards, and was thrown to the ground, and trampled by many hurrying hooves. The few mounted English tried valiantly to intercept the trained cavalry, but were unhorsed or put to flight.

"To Richard's hall!" shouted Ulwin, from the background, where he was making tentative pa.s.ses in the air with an antique sword. "Overton!

Overton! Fire! Burn! Torches, I say--bring torches! Come on, all of you! Come, burn his house to the ground!"

The Earl and his men had rallied to Richard the Scrob, who called and signalled to them from Walter de Lacy's crupper. He headed straight for the forest of Haye.

"Warily now," said he. "There is much bogland."

He led them westward, skirting swamps, threading apparently impenetrable thickets, with scarcely a pause. They could hear faintly the voices of a few Englishmen who cursed as they wandered among the briary undergrowth. The hindmost of the Normans looked back and saw Ludford flaming, crumbling, and falling into ruins.

"It is mine own secret path," their guide announced. "Verily, mon seignior, I have prepared for your coming."

They left the forest behind them, and rode through the hamlet of Overton.

"Look yonder!" said Richard, pointing to the grey gleam of a stone rampart among the trees surrounding his mansion.

"What is this?" laughed the Earl. "Have ye licence from King William to erect a castle within his realm?"

"I am King William's loyal subject," the Scrob replied. "Of a certainty, our King will not grudge a timely shelter to his Earl."

A curtain-wall, roughly but strongly compacted of quarried stone, of wood, and of rubble, surrounded and concealed the timber dwelling of Richard and Alftrude; at the western end of the enclosure the unfinished keep loomed upon its mount; and about them both an eight-foot moat was drawn.

"The keep as well!" cried fitzOsbern. "Oh, guileful notion, to colour it with pitch! Only the hawk-eyed may spy it from the valley, for the foliage embowers it--and, man, ye can surely keep watch therefrom for many a mile!"

At a blast from Richard's horn, the drawbridge was lowered, and several Normans in his service appeared upon the threshold, mail-clad and fully armed.

"It was four weeks building, under Geoffrey of Rouen," said Richard, "and the moat was digging thirteen days more. I have engines of war within, and great store of missiles of stone. Enter, bel sire. They will not find it easy to burn this my dwelling about my head."

"Let the peasants come!" said William fitzOsbern. "They must learn to know their masters; but please the saints! we shall not need to take the lives of many. Perchance the sweet peers of heaven may send that Mortemar find us before long.... Cousin, thou hast a pleasant view from thy fortress, even through such a narrow peephole. H'm! Rich forfeitures for our sovereign Lord! Thou shalt trouble thyself no more, cousin Richard, concerning lands and mills and cheating Saxons. As far and as wide as eye can see, from the sky that is our Lord G.o.d's footstool unto Satan's fires in the centre of earth, this same pleasant country shall be thine own, in reward for this day's fealty and service, and so I, William of Hereford and Breteuil, promise thee in the name of the King.... Nay, no thanks: kneel but one moment longer.... It is meet, sirs, is it not, that our leader in this engagement should hold the honourable rank of chevalier? We will account this a field of battle. Rise up, Sir Richard fitzHugh le Scrope!"

The next morning, when the Earl of Hereford had gone his way, and the bodies of the only two Englishmen slain by Ralph de Mortemar's rescuing party had been borne to burial, the new lord of the Moor, of Ashford, of Ludford, and of Stanage rode out to display the extent and resources of his manors to his astonished lady. Their itinerary ended, they stood in the evening outside the moat and gazed at the placid, billowing country beneath them. Although by the cold, saffron light of a February sunset the misty course of the Teme was the only certain landmark and it was hard to distinguish meadow and ploughland, pasture and forest, they had to feast their eyes until the last glimmer faded.

"With right tillage," said Richard, "it should yield me thrice its yearly value in grain. And I will have yet more sheep, and yet more cattle: there is now place for four times as many as ever I bred.... I have made thee great and famous, as I promised; and Osbern, with the Earl to favour him, should be an even greater lord than I.... Our fishpond shall go forward upon the morrow. What sayest thou to an orchard yonder, planted with apples of Normandy? and I think that Gascon vines would ripen pa.s.sably upon our southern slope. O Alftrude, thou knowest how I have loved and pondered this land this many a year; and we shall have great profit of it, ma belle, thou and I together."

Alftrude dwelt at Richard's Castle well content; for, as she sometimes observed when she looked round upon her flocks, her herds and her horses, her orchards, her cornfields, her vineyards, her chickens, ducks and geese, her hounds and her falcons, her fishpond, her smooth green lawn, her yew-tree alley, her doves and her peac.o.c.ks, and her band of healthy children, there was no reason at all why she should not.