An occasional hawking or fishing party was organised for her entertainment, but the disturbed state of the country, the fear of treachery, and the uncertainty of the whereabouts of the king"s forces, rendered so large an escort necessary, and entailed so much trouble and preparation, that the sport was robbed of all zest. If orders were given in the evening, it most frequently happened that the morning would be wet and uninviting; if left till a suitable morning had dawned, all freshness had vanished before the advancing sun ere so large a party could be put in motion.
Moreover, Emma had little heart for such entertainment, which chiefly served to bring back memories of happier days, when Earl Roger and Ralph de Guader had been beside her; and all the prowess of her Danish hawk did but remind her of her husband and his dangers. Soar, and stoop, and chancelier as he might, he failed to move her enthusiasm, and did but render her more sad, while the encomiums of Sir Alain De Gourin, who made a point of attending her on these expeditions, irked rather than pleased her. His criticisms, admiring as they were, seemed to her impertinent when pa.s.sed on a bird which Ralph de Guader had p.r.o.nounced as one of the most perfect he had ever seen.
So she strove to cheat the hours by embroidering a magnificent mantle for her absent lord, using all the most elaborate Saxon st.i.tches, which she had learned from Eadgyth, who sat ever at her elbow to help her, if she forgot her lesson. Such gorgeous mantles were much in fashion among the Norman exquisites.
Eadgyth herself was busy, by Emma"s desire, making an altar-cloth for the chapel of the castle, in which the De Guader and East Anglian arms were mingled somewhat incongruously with pictorial ill.u.s.trations of the life of St. Nicholas. The chaplain of the aforesaid chapel had drawn the designs, being a very clever limner and illuminator, and he took great interest in the progress of the pious work, losing no opportunity to visit the fair embroideress when she was engaged upon it.
He was a young Breton of good family, but had sunk his patronymic for the priestly "Father Pierre," the venerable t.i.tle being rather incongruous to his boyish face and shy, shrinking ways. He was an ascetic enthusiast, believing sternly in the mortification of the flesh, and his young cheeks were sunken, his large dark eyes hollow and glittering, and his tall figure painfully emaciated. But his sternness was all for himself; to his flock he was the kindest of pastors, and in his humility he did not venture to enter upon political matters, accepting the judgment of his feudal superior as paramount, and not to be questioned.
Emma did not feel drawn to him. Her practical nature could not comprehend or draw comfort from his mystic and dreamy ecstasies, and she needed a strong, clear-headed guide, to advise her on the tangible and imminent perplexities that encircled her.
"Oh for an hour of Father Theodred!" she sighed one day, when Father Pierre had left the apartment, after making a vague reply to a question she had addressed to him, touching some small urgent duty of the hour.
"Our good chaplain hath more anxiety regarding the ordering of thy needlework warriors for the adornment of his chapel, than for the bodies of the living men who are defending it, methinks! In good sooth, Eadgyth, I feel tired of this st.i.tchery. I would the wind blew not so keenly on the battlements. I could be ever watching the horizon like some sea-rover"s deserted mate, looking out for the glint of sun on a steel headpiece, as such an one would watch for a sail. The stone walls well-nigh stifle me! I feel entombed sitting here, where I cannot see if any approach to bring tidings of my dear lord! Fetch me mantle and headrail, sweet damsel. Methinks, if I sit here longer, chewing the cud of bitter reflection, I shall go stark staring mad. Let us go to the battlements and fight the wind!"
Eadgyth, whose more phlegmatic temperament did not seek relief from mental pain in physical exercise, smiled at the restlessness of her friend, but instantly laid aside her needlework, and sought her lady"s tire-woman, who brought the wished-for garments.
In a few moments Emma and Eadgyth had left the lodge, ascended the spiral staircase in the great tower, and were pacing upon the battlements. It was one of those grey chilly days, frequent in the Eastern counties, when the north-west wind brings haze from the Fenlands, and the Wash, and the North Sea; covering the sky with a leaden pall, and bringing winter into summer"s heart. Columns of dust rose along the roadways, but the wind swept away all mist and fog, and the country showed bleak and naked to the horizon.
The sentinels saluted their countess and her lady-in-waiting with a deep reverence, but they were accustomed to see their fair Castellan scanning the distance, as if distrusting that any eyes could be so keen and faithful as her own.
They paced the circuit of the battlements some five or six times, and played with the pigeons that crowded upon the merlons, and greeted them with soft cooing and much fluttering of soft-coloured pinions, for they knew well that Emma"s gipsire was generally stored with peas for them.
Suddenly Emma caught her bower-maiden by the wrist.
"See!" she cried. "My sail is in sight! Dost thou not catch the glint of a morion over yonder?"
They were on the southern side of the keep, and she indicated a far speck upon the course of the Ikenield way.
"Nay," replied Eadgyth, "mine eyes reach not so far, the more especially as this stinging wind brings unbidden tears into them."
"I am right, Eadgyth--it is a horseman approaching! Ho, sentinel! thy vigil is no very keen one!"
"In sooth, lady, I can see naught," answered the sentinel, with a respectful salutation.
It had been a favourite amus.e.m.e.nt with Emma, when a girl at Clifford Castle, to challenge her maidens and squires, and any n.o.ble visitor who might chance to be present, to a trial of sight, from the walls of that goodly fortress, and seldom had she found any who could rival her for length of vision. She proved to be right on this occasion. A horseman was approaching, and at a gallop, and the sentinels soon acknowledged his coming and gave the fitting signal.
A while later, and the traveller had reached the barbican, and, after a short parley, the portcullis was raised, the drawbridge lowered, and he rode forward into the courtyard of the castle.
Emma descended full of tremulous excitement. Sir Alain de Gourin met her, on his way to the courtyard, to question the new-comer.
"I will send word at once, if he prove to be one of the earl"s men, or brings any message or news," said Sir Alain.
"Nay," replied Emma, "I will myself go down. Each moment of waiting will prove a year."
So, with Eadgyth beside her, and her train of ladies following, she went down to the great portal on the east side of the keep, whence a short time before she had bidden "G.o.d Speed" to her n.o.ble spouse and his army.
The horseman was surrounded by a curious crowd of soldiers and domestics. Archers and men-at-arms of all sorts and conditions from the guard-room, pages, squires, cooks, and scullions, had all come forth to see. Certain of the garrison who had been trying their strength for pastime in a wrestling bout, had left their sport, and stood with brawny arms akimbo, and mouths agape. Even the pale face of the chaplain was amongst the group, his dark eyes gazing with pity and awe upon the man who formed its centre.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Tower Stairs.]
He was in sorry plight! His horse, flecked with foam and b.l.o.o.d.y with spurring, head down, nostrils red, and limbs trembling with fatigue, looked as though another mile had been utterly beyond his spent powers.
The casque of the rider was battered, and his countenance so gashed with wounds as to be beyond recognition, nor did his surcoat or harness in any way help to show his ident.i.ty, so stained and torn were they.
Shield he had none, and his right arm hung straightly at his side.
He took no heed of the crowd buzzing round him, nor of the countess standing at the portal of the keep, with Sir Alain de Gourin at her right, and Sir Hoel de St. Brice on her left, and her train of ladies and squires behind her, but sat on his panting steed, with his chin sunk on his breast.
Suddenly one from the circle around him cried, "_Mort de ma vie!_ He has lost a foot as well as a hand!"
A murmur of surprise burst round him.
"Those are no gashes gained in fair fighting! His nose is slit! Saints and angels! He has been in the hands of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s men! We all know how William serves his prisoners!"
"Speak, Sir Fugitive, or Sir Messenger, or whatever your name is,"
thundered De Gourin, "and speedily! Is it so? Who art thou? For thy beauty is so spoiled we are at a loss by what t.i.tle to greet thee! By the rood! his own mother would not know him!"
The countess hastily bade her leech be called, and shuddered, not only with pity, but with a dread presentiment of evil, as the ghastly witness of men"s merciless cruelty turned his maimed face towards them, his bloodshot eyes staring vacantly, half dazed with terror and pain.
"It is all over!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely, forcing his swollen lips to utter the words with difficulty. "The earl is slain, and my master; and the army is scattered like a flock of sheep! Flee, flee! They are coming after me to storm the castle!"
He raised his right arm, from which the hand had been riven, the stump black with the searing of red-hot irons with which the flow of blood had been staunched, in a gesture of entreaty.
A fearful witness truly as to what might be expected to follow on defeat.
A howl of fierce anger ran around the courtyard, and many a strong breast heaved with an indignant sob of impotent rage; curses loud and deep were showered on the heads of William of Normandy and his vicegerents.
"Heed him not, n.o.ble Emma!" cried Sir Hoel de St. Brice hastily. "By the Holy Virgin! "tis but a recreant who has let himself be made prisoner, and now repeats the story they have stuffed him with! Out of his wits with their rough treatment, and small wonder! May the Foul Fiend seize them for their barbarity!"
"Christ be my witness, I speak sooth!" cried the unfortunate fugitive.
"I am Stephen le Hareau, squire of the body to Sir Guy de Landerneau, and I swear by the Holy Cross, I saw the earl fall with mine own eyes!"
"Thou Stephen le Hareau? Thou?" shouted Sir Alain de Gourin, startled out of his equanimity as he looked at the pitiful object before his eyes, and remembered the handsome gallant he had seen ride from the castle gates a few weeks before.
A fresh hiss of execration burst from the bystanders, as the cruelty of the young man"s fate came home to them.
Stephen le Hareau! The handsomest and most popular squire in the earl"s following! They knew him, too, for a brave and dauntless soldier.
Sir Hoel looked towards the countess, wondering how she would bear the blow, for the difficulty with which she had maintained her self-control when she had parted with her n.o.ble bridegroom had been manifest to all, and now the worst fears she could then have entertained were declared to have come to pa.s.s.
But Emma, who had shrunk from the approach of evil, stood firm to meet its actual contact. Her face was white as marble, and her lips quivered, but she said in a firm voice,--
"The cruelty this poor gentleman has undergone may well nerve our hearts to resistance. St. Nicholas grant thou art in the right, Sir Hoel. He may well deem things blacker than they are! I prithee, keep him no longer answering our vain queries. Let him be lifted from his horse and carried to the spital. I will tend him with my own hands. His poor steed also, let it be cared for."
Eadgyth and several of the ladies were sobbing hysterically behind her.
She turned to them.
"Courage, dames and damsels!" she said, with a simple dignity that shamed them into self-control. "I have heard as evil tales as this, and found them vanish like dreams at the breaking of the morn."
She gathered her robes around her and swept back into the keep, and, calling her tirewoman, ordered her to bring sundry essences and simples, which, like every n.o.ble lady of the time, she kept by her, the science of medicine being chiefly in feminine hands in those days.