Then, bidding Eadgyth to attend her, she proceeded at once to the spital, to leech the unfortunate squire.
She stopped a few moments in the chapel, to direct the chaplain to offer ma.s.ses for the souls of those who had fallen in the battle. A sob caught her breath as she remembered the earnest repet.i.tion with which Stephen le Hareau had declared that the earl was amongst them.
But she dare not think, and went on hurriedly to direct that others should be offered for the safety of those who had escaped, and for the success of their undertaking.
Her ministrations to the wounded man kept at bay the fierce troop of agonising thoughts that were thronging down upon her like a pack of hungry wolves. Rolling bandages, and preparing salves and unguents, she had scarce time to speculate upon the probability of the truth of her patient"s direful news. True, no doubt, it was as far as his knowledge went, but there was hope, as Sir Hoel had suggested, that his report of the battle had been supplied by their opponents, and himself sent off by them, as a messenger of evil tidings, with the express intent of demoralising the garrison of Blauncheflour.
The physical sufferings of the poor squire were so terrible to witness, that Emma almost forgot the awful shadow of death and impending peril that hung over her own head, and the hours flew past without her noticing their flight. All that she and her leech and her ladies could do to lessen his pain was done, but it was not much.
Even in these days little could be done for such a case, with all the skill of advanced science.
Presently a page came to the countess with a message from the two knights, St. Brice and De Gourin, begging her to give them audience in the council-chamber.
"Watch over my sufferer, Eadgyth," said Emma.
When she entered the apartment in which the two knights were awaiting her, she quivered with apprehension as she saw their grave faces. Sir Hoel"s kindly visage was white as his silver hair, and even Sir Alain"s inflamed countenance was a shade less purple-red than usual, while his expression was distinctly anxious.
They both hesitated to speak, but the countess broke the pause.
"Tell me the worst, gentle sirs, I pray you. Suspense is ever hardest to bear, and I see you have ill news."
Sir Hoel advanced and took her hand in both his own, a little forgetting the ceremony due to her rank, in his huge pity for her youth and the forlorn fate that he feared too surely had befallen her.
"Alas, dear lady, the news is ill indeed! Sir Walter Deresfort, and the Saxon thegn, Alfnoth of Walsham, with some dozen men-at-arms, have ridden in from Cambridgeshire, and confirm"--a sob broke his voice--"in every item the dire tidings brought by poor Stephen le Hareau."
"Do they say, then, that I am a widow?" asked Emma in a strange, hard voice, with so awful a calm in it, that the thick-skinned Sir Alain, who was little wont to heed the tears or shrieks of women, or to spare them in any respect if they stood in his way, shuddered as he heard it.
He thought the countess was going mad.
"I fear," answered Sir Hoel, "there is no doubt the earl is slain, St.
Nicholas rest his soul!"
"Then, gentlemen," asked Emma in the same strange tone, "what is to be done?"
"G.o.d knows!" exclaimed Sir Hoel, the great tears running down his furrowed face, and dripping upon his hauberk.
"n.o.ble lady," said Sir Alain eagerly, speaking for the first time, "it is well known that the wrath of the Primate, and of his master, William the Norman, is princ.i.p.ally enkindled against the countrymen of the late earl. Thy safety, most n.o.ble countess, is, of course, what every man in the garrison would give his life to insure, therefore my humble counsel, for what it may be worth, is that thou shouldest at once take ship with the trusty Bretons under my command, and make for Bretagne, and thy late husband"s estates of Guader and Montfort."
"What is thy counsel, Sir Hoel?" demanded Emma, still with the same unnatural calm.
"Dear lady, I would advise thee as doth Sir Alain."
"But would not the garrison, thus bereft of half their numbers, fall an instant prey to the enemy?" asked Emma.
"It is not William"s policy to provoke the Saxons, and to his own countrymen he is ever complacent," urged De Gourin, with the same eagerness. "Therefore my meaning is, that the castle be surrendered at once, in which case the garrison would probably be softly dealt with, we Bretons being out of the way; whereas further resistance will be useless, and will but further provoke their vengeance, the style of which we have seen."
"Art thou of this advice also, Sir Hoel?" demanded Emma.
Sir Hoel bowed his head. "Dear lady," he said, "there is no doubt that the Primate hath animosity against us Bretons, and may prove kinder to Normans and Saxons; yet methinks I will stand by them, and advise them not to try his mercy sooner than is needful. I counsel, therefore, that thou shouldest so far follow Sir Alain"s advice, as to take ship with himself and his band for Bretagne. For my part, I will fight for it with the garrison remaining to me. Blauncheflour has been built to stand a siege, and we may well victual it before supplies can be cut off. We may yet make good terms."
"There spoke the spirit of a true knight!" cried Emma, turning on De Gourin with so fierce a flash in her eyes, that he started, so great a change was it from the stony indifference of her former manner.
"Go, fair sir, if it suits thee! Take all thy fainthearted mercenaries with thee to their native Bretagne! I will stay with Sir Hoel and defend this castle, which the earl gave into my charge. The _late_ earl, thou said"st? Methinks thou art wondrous quick to make so certain of his death! Methinks all these gallant gentlemen who have galloped back to the safe walls of Blauncheflour in such hot haste, scarce waited to see if he was wounded or slain! For _me_ he will never be the _late_ earl. On earth or in heaven he is my husband still, and I will hold his castle, hoping, perhaps selfishly, that he will come to claim it. I will hold it if only to have vengeance on his foes!"
Sir Hoel watched her in delighted surprise. Sir Alain flushed hotly under her attack, but could not but admire the high-spirited beauty as she hurled her indignant taunts at his head.
"Now, by all the saints! thou art unjust to me and my poor following, n.o.ble lady!" he exclaimed. "My object was but to secure thy safety."
"If the earl be indeed slain," said Emma, with a tremor in her voice, "my safety boots me but little; if he be not, it is important that Blauncheflour hold out to the last gasp. Besides, ye know not how it fares with my brother of Hereford; his arms have perchance prevailed, and he may be able to relieve us."
"A slender hope," said Sir Alain impatiently. "But our lives are at thy disposal, n.o.ble Emma."
He accompanied this speech with a smile of homage, which he meant to be irresistibly touching and pathetic; for a new idea had come into the adventurer"s bullet-head, which somewhat gilded the pill of hard fighting without hope of plunder, which the countess"s decision forced him to swallow. He remembered that if, as he fully believed, De Guader was slain, the beautiful Emma had become a widow with a goodly dower!
for even if, as was probable, her late husband"s possessions in England were forfeit through his treason, and all English and Norman property of her own, the estates of Guader and Montfort were beyond William"s jurisdiction, and she would doubtless draw rich rents from them. This rich prize was here under his hand, and, to a great extent, in his power. If he played his cards well, he might secure her for himself, albeit she was William of Normandy"s kinswoman.
But the good old Sir Hoel looked at her fair, flushed face with very different thoughts. "G.o.d bless thee, dear young lady," he said, with a husky voice. "He would be a coward indeed who grudged to give his life for thee! Though, for that matter, we must needs fight for our own sakes, so we need not try to make out that all our valour is on thy behalf!"
Emma met his kind eyes, and scarce bore their sympathy.
She turned away hastily. "There must be more wounded in the spital,"
she said; "I must tend them. Make what preparation needs for holding out under a long siege."
And so saying she quitted the apartment.
"Alas!" Sir Hoel murmured, more to himself than to De Gourin, when she was gone, "I doubt she is buoying herself with a false hope, and that our n.o.ble De Guader will glad her eyes no more."
"By the rood!" answered Sir Alain, "I doubt so too. But methinks so fair a widow, and so well-dowered and youthful withal, may find consolation on this side the grave. Holy Mary! A dame of spirit! If our motley garrison, Saxons, Danes, Flemings, and other, were of metal that would ring to the same tune, our case would not look so desperate."
"Methinks the mercenaries under thy hand are the most doubtful metal within the walls, good sir," answered Sir Hoel gravely, eyeing his companion somewhat keenly. "If thou canst get the right ring out of _them_, I think I can answer for the rest!"
CHAPTER XV.
"O HIGH AMBITION LOWLY LAID!"
The choughs and ravens which had flapped lazily away, with noisy wings and harsh croaking, when the Royalists had come to search amongst the dead and wounded for Ralph de Guader, had settled down to their banquet again as soon as their disturbers had departed, mistakenly laden with the body of the Breton knight whom Grillonne had decorated with the earl"s helmet. Their foul beaks were busy with the flesh of the dead and the eyes of the living.
The harsh clamour of these noisy revellers pierced at length to the fainting ears of the fallen earl, who was in some measure revived by the cordial which Grillonne had poured down his throat. Consciousness came back to him, a poor exchange, under such circ.u.mstances, for kind oblivion. For he could move neither hand nor foot, and the weight upon his chest was as the oppression of a fearful nightmare--a nightmare from which there was no awaking. He lay helpless--the living under the dead!
Above him stretched the twilight sky, still flushed with fleeting, blood-red clouds, beyond which, from pale green pools of infinite depth, glimmered, here and there, a silvery star. To the right stretched the sombre heath, its rising hills crested with fantastic figures of contorted slain, men and horses stiffened into uncouth and terrible forms; while groaning wounded were heaped between them, their panting anguish not less awful than the silence of the dead.
To his left also were witnesses of battle, but not so many, for on that side the hungry mora.s.ses had swallowed them up. To the south and west the measureless fen stretched to the horizon, crimson to its farthest verge with the ensanguined glow of the sun, the tall reeds reddened like warrior"s lances that had been dipped in the life-blood of the foe.
The air was full of the awful scent of wounds and blood, and the weird, dank odours of the decaying sedges, while the wailing wind piped and moaned over the wold, swaying the rushes, though scarcely making a ripple on the protected surfaces of the bottomless lagoons.
Mallard and teal and plover came circling back to their haunts in the lonely swamps, now that the din of battle, which had frightened them, was over and done; and, as the twilight deepened, bats and owls came forth with silent wings to hunt their night-roaming prey.