Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE NEW HOME.

  "Sweetly blows the haw and the rowan-tree, Wild roses speck our thickets sae briery; Still, still will our walk in the green-wood be-- Oh, Jeanie! there's nothing to fear ye."

  HOGG'S BALLADS.

  On the following morning they entered Westmoreland; and as theyapproached the term of their journey, advancing the more rapidly asthey entered the wilder and more sparsely-populated regions toward thelakes and fells, where the castellated dwellings of the knightlynobles and the cloisters of the ecclesiastical lords became few andfar between, they reached Kendal, then a small hamlet, with a noblecastle and small priory, before noon; and, making no stay, pressedonward to the shores of Windermere, which they struck, not far fromthe scattered cottages and small chapel of ease, tended by two agedbrothers from Kendal, known then, as it is now, not having grown muchsince that day, as the village of Bowness.

  On the lake, moored at a rude pier, lay a small but gayly-decoratedyacht, or galley, with the arms of Sir Yvo de Taillebois emblazoned onits foresail, and a gay streamer flaunting from its topmast, awaitingthe arrival of the party, which had been announced to their vassals bya harbinger sent forward from Bolton Abbey.

  And here the nobles, with their immediate train, separated from thebulk of the party, the former going on board the galley, and crossingthe pellucid waters of the beautiful lake to Sir Yvo's noble castle,which lay not a mile from the strand, embosomed in a noble chase,richly-wooded with superb oak and ash forests, midway of the gentleand green valley between the lake and the western mountains, overwhich his demesnes extended, while the escort, with the horse-boys,grooms, and servitors, took the longer and more difficult way aroundthe head of the lake--a circuit of some twenty miles--over the sitesof the modern towns of Ambleside and Hawkshead, the castle lying inCumberland, although the large estates of De Taillebois extended formany miles on both sides of the water, and in both counties, being thelast grand feudal demesne on the south side of the mountains.

  Further to the north, again, where the country spread out into plainsbeyond Keswick, toward Penrith and Carlisle, and the untamed Scottishborders, there were again found vast feudal demesnes, the property ofthe Lords of the Marches, the Howards, the Percys, the Umfravilles,and others, whose prowess defended the rich lowlands of York andLancaster from the incursions of the Border Riders.

  To the north, the nearest neighbor of De Taillebois was the Threlkeld,of Threlkeld Castle, on the skirts of Keswick, at thirty miles or moreof distance across the pathless mountains of Scafell, Helvellyn,Saddleback, and Skiddaw. Nigher to him, on the south, and adjoininghis lands, lay the estates of the Abbots of Furness; and to thewestward, beyond the wide range of moor and mountain, which it tookhis party-two days to traverse, and in which, from Bolton till theyreached Kendal, they had seen, according to the words of the mottoprefixed to this chapter,

  ----------- "neither rich, nor poor, But moss, and ling, and bare wild moor,"

  lay the lands of the Cliffords and the mighty Nevilles. All the innercountry, among those glorious peaks, those deep glens, encumberedwith old unshorn woods, those blue waters, undisturbed by the presenceof a foreigner, since the eagles of the ubiquitous Roman glitteredabove his camps on the stern hill-sides, over that most unprofitableof his conquests, was virgin ground, uninhabited, save by fugitiveserfs, criminal refugees from justice, and some wild families ofliberty-loving Saxons, who had fled to the mountains, living by thestrong hand and the bended bow, and content to sacrifice all else forthe priceless boon of freedom.

  It was, perhaps, the very wildness and solitude of the locality, asmuch as the exquisite charm of the loveliest scenery in England, towhich, strange to say, he was fully alive--enhanced by the certaintythat in those remote regions, where there were no royal forests, norany territorial magnates who could in any way rival himself, hisforest rights, of which every Norman was constitutionally jealous,were perfectly intangible and unassailable--which had so much attachedSir Yvo de Taillebois to his Cumbrian castle of High Furness, inpreference to all his fair estates and castles in the softer and morecultivated portions of the realm.

  Certain it is, that he did love it better than all his other landsunited; and hither he resorted, whenever he could escape from theduties of camps and the restraint of courts, to live a life among hisvassals, his feudal tenants, and his humbler villagers, more like thatof an Oriental patriarch than of a Norman warrior, but for the feudalpomp which graced his castle halls, and swelled his mountain huntsinto a mimicry of warfare.

  At about ten miles distant across the lake, up toward the lower spursof the north-eastern mountains, lies the small lake of Kentmere, thehead-waters and almost the spring of the river Kent; which, flowingdown southward through the vale of Kendal, falls into the western headof Morecambe Bay, having its embouchure guarded by the terrible sandsof Lancaster, so fatal to foot-passengers, owing to the terrificinflux of the entering tides.

  Set like a gem of purest water in a rough frame of savage mountains,their lower sides mantled with rich deciduous woods, their purpleheathery brows dotted with huge Scotch firs, single, or in romanticgroups, their scalps bald and broken, of gray and schistous rock,Kentmere fills up the whole basin of the dell it occupies, with theexception of a verge of smooth, green meadow-land, never above ahundred or two of yards in width, margined with a silvery stripe ofsnow-white sand, and studded by a few noble oaks.

  At the head of the lake, half encircled by the dancing brook whichformed its only inlet, rose a soft swell of ground, smooth andround-headed, neither hill nor hillock; its southern face, toward thelake, cleared of wood, and covered with short, close greensward, itsflanks and brow overgrown with luxuriant oak-wood of the secondgrowth, interspersed with varnished hollies, silver-stemmed birches,and a score or two of gigantic fir-trees, overtopping the pale greenfoliage of the coppice, and contrasting its lightsome tints by theiralmost sable hue.

  Behind this fairy knoll the hill rose in rifted perpendicular faces ofrock, garlanded and crowned with hanging coppices, for two or threehundred feet in height; the nesting-place of noble falcons,peregrines, gosshawks, haggards of the rock, and of a single pair ofgolden eagles, the terror of the dale from time immemorial.

  In all lake land, there is no lovelier spot than Kentmere. The deepmeadows by its side in early spring are one glowing garden ofmany-colored crocuses, golden, white, purple lady-smocks, yellowking-cups, and all sweet and gay-garbed flowers that love thewater-side; the rounded knoll and all the oak-wood sides are alivewith saffron primroses, cowslips, and meadow-sweets; and the air isrife with the perfume of unnumbered violets, and vocal with the songof countless warblers.

  And on the mid slope of that rounded, bosom-like swell of land, therestood, at the period of my tale, a low stone building of one story,long for its height, narrow, and massively built of blocks of thenative gray stone of the hills, with a projecting roof of heavy flags,forming a porch over the door, and two chimneys, one at either end, ofa form peculiar, to this day, to that district, each covered with aflat stone slab supported on four columns, to prevent the smoke fromdriving down into the chambers, under the influence of the whirlinggusts from the mountain tops.

  Glass windows were unknown in those days, save to the castellatedmansions of the great, or the noble minsters and cathedrals of thegreat cities--the art having been first introduced, after thecommencement of the dark ages, in the reign of Edward the Confessor,although it must have been well known and of common occurrence inEngland during its occupation by the Romans, who used glass forwindows as well as implements so early as the time of Cicero, and whowould seem to have brought its manufacture to a perfectionunattainable by us moderns, since it is credibly asserted that theyhad the art to render it malleable. Horn and talc, or oiled parchment,were used by the middle classes, but this was a luxury confined to thedwellers in towns; and the square mullioned apertures, which hereserved for windows, were closed by day and in fine weather by slenderlattice
s, and during storms or at night by wooden shutters. The wantof these luxuries, however, being unknown, was unregarded; and theverdurer's house at Kentmere was regarded in those days as a finespecimen of rural architecture, and stood as high by comparison asmany an esquire's hall of the present day.

  For the rest, it was partly overrun with ivy and woodbine, and wasoverhung at the western end by a noble mountain-ash, from under theroots of which welled out a small crystal spring, and sheltered to theeast by a group of picturesque Scotch firs. An out-building or two, astone barn, a cow-house, and what, by the baying and din of hounds,was clearly a dog-kennel, stood a little way aloof, under the skirtsof the coppice, and completed the appurtenances of what was thendeemed a very perfect dwelling for a small rural proprietor, and wouldbe held now a very tolerable mountain farm-house for a tenant cotter.

  This was the new home of Kenric and Edith, now by the good offices ofthe old curate of Bowness made man and wife; and here, with the goodold mother nodding and knitting by the hearth, and two stout boys,Kenric's varlets, to tend the hounds and hawks, and to do the officesof the small hill farm, they dwelt as happy as the day; he occupyingthe responsible position of head-forester of upper Kentdale, andwarder of the cotters, shepherds, and verdurers, whose cottages werescattered in the woods and over the hill-sides, and both secure in thefavor of their lovely lady, and proud of the confidence of their lord.