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• A DILEMMA THROUGH NECROMANCY—TROLLOP AGAIN—ROBIN OF ELSDUNE AND MARY OF ELDERSFIELD—THE WHISPERING GALLERY.

Chapter 1. THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF HILDEBRAND DE BRUTE, WHERE THEY LIVED, AND HOW THEY CAME THERE.

I am one of that race which was English before William the Norman conquered our country. One of my ancestors followed Robert of Normandy to the wars of Palestine, and from plain John Birts changed his name to John de Brute. The Roman poet called the great Saxon race from whom we sprang “sea wolves that live on the pillage of the world,” and I fear that this was too true of their earlier history; but when the land was conquered, they soon settled down around the villages of the forest glades, or by the banks of the rivers, each settlement being independent of its fellow settlement.

The Birts who assisted in the Saxon conquest of England were landholders in a land of Birch trees, and land tillers, before they crossed the seas. Their first settlement in this country was on the banks of the Severn, below the site of the ancient town of Theocsbury, at a place called Deorhyst. At Deorhyst, the religion of the Cross succeeded the pagan worship of Woden, the War God, earlier than in many parts of Saxon England, and a priory was founded in Saxon times. Here, on the conversion of the Birts to Christianity, the sacred rite of baptism was performed by immersion in the waters of the Severn, and when they died, our Edwards, or Ealdwulfs, and their Ethelgifas were laid in the grave to the ringing of the passing bell. For many years the Priory of Deorhyst acquired great and deserved celebrity among the early Christian establishments. It was rich and flourishing when the fires of the Danish invasion wrapped in flames its great wooden structures. Church and Grange were alike destroyed, and the family of the Birts had, like the Prior of Deorhyst himself, to take refuge in the dense forest which then stretched from the Malvern Hills to the Severn, and from beyond Worcester to Gloucester, and which in after times became the “Malvern Chase” of the haughty Norman conqueror.

From old traditions handed down through long generations of the Birts, it is well nigh certain that at the time of the burning of Deorhyst, a family of Saxons had settled in a glade in the forest near to the old Roman trackway which led from Gloucester across the Malverns to Saxon Hereford. Here, too, an ancient Christian church was built of forest oaks with nothing of stone save mayhap the font, and it was called Pendyke from very early times, the church being built at the head of a dyke or trench, which was once a boundary of British tribes before the Saxons landed in Britain or the Romans either.

The family who dwelt at Pendyke bore the name of Kite, and in Saxon times the Birts of Deorhyst, and the Kitels of Pendyke, were mighty hunters in the forest, and many a wolf and many a wild boar fell before their spears.

It was to the Kitels that the Birts fled for safety at the burning and sacking of Deorhyst by Sweyne, and it was by their aid that our family reclaimed some hides of forest land within a short distance of Pendyke and established a settlement, to which they gave the name of Birtsmereton, or the ton or village where the Birts settled close upon the borders of a great mere or moor-land swamp.

The time came when the Kitels and De Brutes were no longer contented with their wooden granges and barns in the forest glades; moreover, they were always in danger from the troublous Welsh; so they each built their keep or strong tower, round which the ton or village clustered, one at Pendyke, on Kitel Hill, and the other at Birtsmereton, while close by each was erected a little church, for our gallant ancestors were God-fearing men.

Birtsmereton Keep was small, but strong, surrounded by massive stone walls and a deep trench or moat. A little stream fed this moat and ran through a large upper fish-pool, which answered two purposes, it fed the moat with water and the occupiers of the Keep with fish on fast days. The only entrance to the Keep was by a drawbridge across the deep, dark moat, and a strong portcullis hung from the battlemented gateway, which was loopholed for archers, while from a niche looked down our patron saint, St. Gunhilda. It was a forest keep, and when the farmer became a knight among Normans he still followed in the footsteps of our Saxon forefathers. He kept large droves of swine to feed upon the acorns and the beech mast on the Swineyard Hill of the Malverns, which rose above the Norman chase and forest, but it never was a great stronghold in which a crowd could be banqueted or a numerous retinue summoned to arms.

My grandfather, Giles de Brute, pulled down the Keep, leaving only the basement, and erected the Manor House in which I was born. Instead of the tower-like Keep with its round lights for windows, we had a comfortable dwelling with hanging roofs and gables, and my dear mother always pointed with pride to our windows filled with glass. Indeed, neither at Kitel Keep or Castlemereton are there now such lattices which can be opened or shut at pleasure, neither are there such andirons for the burning logs in the winter time, or so fine a vent to carry off the smoke as in our Hall. Then our bedrooms are far larger and more lofty than the little cub-holes which our ancestor Sire Giles and his dame used to occupy up the winding stone staircase of the Norman Keep. The walls too are painted with the romance of George and the Dragon, and with Noah's Ark and the wild beasts which came out of it. Our tenants were thirteen in number, and they did service for the land they occupied, which was taken in from the forest, and the gift of the Red Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare. Besides this, there were two hundred acres of arable and pasturage for the stock of the home farm, which consisted of oxen and heifers, calves and sheep, geese and capons, cocks and hens. These, with the gardens, fish-ponds, rabbit-warren, and pigeon-house, kept us well provided, and right hospitable my father was to poor as well as rich. Then there was the chaplain, an old friend of my mother's family, and the steward who lived in the house, and the forester who lived in the woods, while the plough drivers and swineherds occupied mud cottages outside but near to the Manor for defence.

Our nearest neighbours of gentle blood were Sire John Carfax of Castlemereton, and the Kitels of Pendyke, the Calverleys of Branshill across the Malvern Hills, and the Berews of Berew, the descendants of a Saxon family as ancient as our own, but who had gone down in the world through fines and spoliations, and by offence given the De Clares by appropriations of land from the forest without saying with or by your leave. Then farther off were the Bromwichs of Broomsbarrow, and the Brydges of Longdune, who lived at an old grange—Eastington—once the homes of the Saxon Eastings. To all these places there were trackways through the Chase so broad that two or three might ride abreast, while there were many portways and paths, known only to those who lived in the neighbourhood, which led to different parts of the forest, sometimes to open glades where the deer would pasture, sometimes to dense thickets the lair of the wild boar, though boars were becoming scarce to find and difficult to kill.

The south Malverns, under which our Manor House is built, are very different in their character to the northern hills which rise above the Priory and little village of Malvern. They are far more wooded up their slopes, and although not so high, the thickets are more dense and the gullets more deeply riven. For ages the forests about Waum's well, on the flanks of the Herefordshire fire-beacon, have been refuges for those who, like Owen Glendower and Sire John Oldcastle, have had to seek shelter from the wrath of kings and ecclesiastics, or the poacher who had offended against the forest laws, and was liable to pains and penalties. The side of the Midsummer Hill, below the camp on its summit, is famous for its hollows and masses of stone, with which the Britons built rude huts and circles, and here we find ever the biggest stag, and sometimes the lair of a boar.

The Ragged Stone, or Rent Hill, with its valleys of the white-leaved oak and holly bush on either flank, and seamed with gullets both on the northern and southern slopes, is a sunny hill-top on a summer's day, where swallows skim and butterflies haunt the stunted flowers, but below are the densest thickets of our forest, and the little rill which runs through the hawthorn glades. Here grow the earliest primroses of spring and the sweet white violet; and here, in the summer, are the purple foxgloves, and the yellow mullein with its woollen leaves. Then the last hill of all is the Chase End, or the end of our Malvern Chase, for at Murrell's End, beyond the groves of Hazeldine, begins the great Chase of Gloucester. At the base, towards the south, nestles the little Norman church of Broomsbarrow, and behind is the wilderness of the Howling Heath. But through all the forest, go where you will, the spring time is resonant with the songs of birds, the nightingale and mavis, the storm-cock and the blackbird; and among the hill-tops we listen to the trill of the stone-chat and the whistle of the whin-cock, or the piping of the white dappled wheat-ear.

I was born in the year of grace 1438, just eight years after the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc, was burnt to death for witchcraft, and three years before Eleanor Cobham, who was a sort of relation of ours through the Oldcastles, did public penance in three places in London, being accused of the great sin of endeavouring to destroy the king, his majesty Henry VI., by divinations and enchantments. But my dear and learned father was more affected, as I have often heard him say in after years, by the death of his friend the learned astrologer Roger Bolingbroke, who was most falsely accused, with Margery Jourdain, of making a wax figure of his most sacred majesty the King, for Eleanor Cobham, and in necromancing it under the light of the stars, so that in proportion as it was sweated and melted before a fire it would, by magical sympathy, cause the flesh and substance of the King to wither and melt away and his marrow to be dried up in his bones. Roger Bolingbroke was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, and Margery Jourdain was burned alive in Smithfield. At this my father was most indignant, for he, like Bolingbroke, was much given to the sciences, and especially to the studies of astronomy and astrology, as indeed was my grandfather before him, he having learned much at the time when the celebrated Owen Glendower, who was himself reputed to be a magician, was accustomed to take refuge in our forest home, and to go to and fro to Kenderchurch, the home of his daughter, Jane Scudamore, where he passed by the name of Jack of Kent

My dear mother and ever respected father did not agree on these subjects, she never liked my father star-gazing on the Malverns, or squaring the circle with Bolingbroke, or watching the moon night after night; while she knew well that her calves once died in the paddocks hard by when Moll Billings went away cursing and blaspheming from the drawbridge. She knew too that the butter would not churn, and the conserves got mouldy when Moll was seen squinting in at the dairy door after a moonlight night, so she kept Moll at a distance and wished my father would let the moon alone also.

My father was a Wycliffite, or as was now termed a Lollard, and our grandfather's dearest friend and cousin, Sire John Oldcastle, after he had been hunted and persecuted for six long years, during which he had often sheltered in our Manor House, had been hung in iron chains and roasted over a fire, because he had been found guilty of heresy, as Bolingbroke was of necromancy, and this only a little more than twenty years before I was born.

My father was a powerful man, with large brown eyes and strongly marked forehead, round which clustered thick brown hair. An air of resolute determination expressed somewhat of his character, and a just, true man was he. My sweet mother was of Norman blood, the daughter of Sire Giles and Dame Acton; a family which came originally from France in the time of Edward the Confessor. Mother was ever beautiful, at least to father and me, her only child. Her face was lighted by dark but kindly eyes, her thoughts were ever for others rather than for herself and she nursed Moll Billings when she was sick with fever well nigh unto death, after she believed the calves had died through her witchments.

My boyhood was passed entirely at home, and to my father I owe that excellent education which has been of such service to me during a somewhat long life. He was a scholar, and had written out with his own hand much of Wycliffe's Bible and the works of Master Chaucer and Boccaccio. While my mother was busy in the long winter nights with her needle or spindle, my father would be engaged with his parchments and grey goose quill, and often would she rise up from by the burning logs, and with beaming eyes look over the writing, and, putting her arms round his neck, ask what it betokened.

Above our Manor House, within a two miles' gallop, rises the south end of Malvern Hills, and many a time and oft have I clambered up the Beacon of Herefordshire, or the Swineyard Hill, where the swine do pasture, or the Hill of Midsummer, with its ancient camp, which my father said “was occupied, with Danesmoor, by the Danes, some of whom settled around this hill when they had harried all the Saxons they could find.”

Then there is the “Dead Oaks” below the Gullet Pass, where many a poacher of deer has been hung in chains as a scare to others who would trespass on the rights of those Norman barons who claimed all animals of the chase and the falcons of the hills. Here, when a boy, I have passed in fear and trembling, as the bones of the dead clattered in the wind as it whistled down the Gullet or sighed and sobbed round the Swineyard above.

When I was about twenty years of age, John Hasting, our forester and woodman, became my frequent companion, and after the morning's studies with my father over scrip, parchment, and pen, it was my delight to persuade Hasting to accompany me to the mere of Longdune, where in autumn time we snared snipes and plover in numbers with horse-hair springes, while he would occasionally kill both wild ducks and wild geese with his cress-bow, or the grey goose shaft from the long-bow, in the use of which he had no compeer. In the summer time the mere was dry in large portions, though much covered by the bull-rush and the flag, and John could always find a heron for our falcons; while many a boomer have we brought home from the mere before the summer's sun had risen above the spire of Longdune.

In the summer days flags and rushes held wild ducks' eggs and plovers, with which mother loved to make a dainty dish, when our friends and neighbours came to dine or to pass the day fishing in the moat for the luce, or in the little stream for the silver trouts.

Under the auspices of Hasting I learned a good deal of the noble sport of falconry, and our tercels were taught to fly at herons, while we had hobbies and merlins which would pounce on wild pigeons, snipe, and partridges. I also learnt to reclaim the birds and direct their diet, while, in the spring time, we would search for the young on some rocky shelf among the Malverns, or in a crow's nest from which the owners had been driven, among the tops of the highest oaks. Hasting always made our bows, and he exercised the boys and serfs around us in archery on the great green between our churches of Birtsmereton and Berew. He knew every yew and ash tree in the forest for miles around, and no arrows were so tapered, or winged with such wild-goose feathers, as those we called the “Hasting's shaft.” No wonder then that in such company I became a proficient with the “gallant grey goose shaft,” and that before I was twenty I could have transfixed a man at three hundred paces or a pigeon at fifty.

One evening, in the mid-spring time, Hasting told me he had heard a bittern booming at the moon down among the reeds and willows in the mere; so we were up before the sun, the grey mist still hanging over the vale, I with my cross-bow, and Hasting with his long-bow and sheaf of arrows. The air was, as Hasting said, “filled with a charm of the songs of birds.” We could hear the stormcock whistling on the tops of the elms and the blackbird trolling in every thicket; by and by, from a paddock, a lark would rise carolling his welcome to the sun, then a blackcap would whistle with a tune that made us think it was the nightingale until we heard the trill, trill of that songster himself, while the zoo zoo was cooing in every grove.

The sun rose as we neared the mere, and we heard the boom, boom of the bittern, the quack of the mallard, and the shrill cauk, cauk of the heron. The mere possessed a character of its own.It was, if possible, more lonely than the Chase with its scattered villages and granges, and silent as the grave, save the calls of its wild fowl and the croak of the frog. “Boom, boom,” rang out the bittern, and we directed our course towards it, as we knew it would cease to call soon after sunrise, but it was not easy to reach the spot from which the sound emanated. There were mires, tall rushes and sedges, with here and there water lying in deep hollows filled by a spring-time flood, and boggy places which would engulf a man if he slipped in, and cover him up to the day of doom in black peaty slush. So it was agreed that I should try a creep with my cross-bow in order to get a sitting shot at the boomer, which I longed to obtain, for it was the birthday of our neighbour Rosamond Berew. I then half scrambled and half waded through the sedges to within some five hundred yards of the place where the coveted bird sat, offering, in his own way, his hymn to the rising sun. The boomer always feeds by night, not, like the heron, by day, and in the early morning it will often sit close, whereas the heron quickly takes flight on the slightest sound. This was in our favour, and while Hasting went a little to the right, I crawled straight for some thick reeds from which the loud call note seemed to come. Creeping and creeping, with as little noise as possible, I was at last rewarded by seeing the beautiful bird squatted on a little knoll among the bull-rushes, his head flung well back as it uttered its call, and the sun lighting up its beautiful buff brown and chestnut plumage, while down the breast was a tippet I fervently hoped would soon grace the neck of a turtle dove who nestled under the groves of Berew. But my nerves were unsteady, and though within fifty paces of the bittern I felt that I might miss. In after years, when my life depended on steadiness of aim, I never felt so unnerved as I did when watching that bittern on that spring morning. At last, placing the bolt of the cross-bow in readiness, and bending on one knee, I took careful aim, but my hand shook, and the bolt sped close above the head of the bird. One sharp boom, a toss, as it were, through the sedges, and the strong bird was high above me, winging its flight to less dangerous quarters. In my chagrin I threw my crossbow on the ground, when suddenly the bittern fell almost at my feet, an arrow having pierced its body from wing to wing. A pang of jealousy shot through me for a moment, as Hasting came splashing through the sedges.

“Never mind, Master Hildebrande,” said he, “better luck next time; I have missed more boomers than ever I killed.”

Soon recovering, I congratulated him on his success, but I said nothing about the feathers for the tippet, or the birth-day present.

By this time we had got well across the mere, and it was determined I should try my luck with the long-bow at a wild duck on the water, and that we would return by Kitel Hill and the trackway to our manor. We had just crossed the brook that ran by Pendyke through the mere, when we heard the whimper of a small dog in the sedges, and coming down the bank towards the brook we saw Bessie Kitel with her red tercel on her wrist, the very red tercel I gave her just a year before.

“Oh, Hildebrande de Brute,” she said, “it is too bad of you and Hasting thus early disturbing every hern within a reach of Kitel. You naughty boy, I would fly the tercel at a hern, but you and Hasting never give a poor girl a chance, and we of Kitel must content ourselves with duck or partridge. However, it is your own loss, and you will not now have a hern's crest worked by my own fingers to wear in your cap and bring you the luck of falconry.”

Hardly had she spoken when a hern rose from the sedges by the brook. In a moment Bessie released the hood, and the tercel made such a dash towards the hern as at once told us it was a bold bird.

“Right well trounced,” said Hasting, as the noble bird made his first swoop, and “cauk, cauk,” cried the hern, as the falcon missed his strike. Again the falcon trounced, again missed, and the hern rose circling in the air. Here the tercel appeared to change its tactics, as it rose higher in great sweeps above the quarry, until both seemed soaring to the clouds. At last down came the swoop with lightning force, and we could hear the air whistle as the tercel descended, when suddenly there seemed a struggle among the clouds and slowly the heron fell fluttering to the ground.

“Spiked! by all that's holy,” shouted Hasting, as he rushed towards the mere in which the heron had fallen.

Among the rushes lay both birds, dead, the falcon transfixed by the heron's beak, and the neck of the heron so injured by the shock that it too was killed.

A tear stood in Bessie's eye as we brought back her dead tercel and the heron's plume. “Poor Hildebrande,” she said, for thus had she named her falcon, “you shall lie under the yew tree on our hill of Kitel, a fitting grave for so bold a bird.”

Bessie Kitel was about eighteen years of age, and with her long fair hair and sparkling grey eyes looked the picture of good health and good temper. I did not altogether like her appropriating the bittern which Hasting had slung over his shoulder, saying, “Well, Hildebrande, if I have lost my tercel in endeavouring to obtain a heron's plume for you, you have won the boomer's tippet for me.” She then inquired into the circumstances of the capture, and I had the mortification of confessing my miss and the good aim of Hasting. I thought a shade of displeasure passed across her face as I told her I sought the bird for the birthday of Rosamond Berew, but she was far too kindly-hearted to bear enmity, and invited us to take some refreshment at Kitel Keep, which rose immediately above us on the hill-top.

The Keep of Kitel, in the parish of Pendyke, is one of the most curious relics of antiquity in this part of England. It is a single tower, standing on the edge of a plain, and overlooking the mere of Longdune, while in the distance rise the range of the Cotswolds and the hill of Bredon. To the north we see the hills and priory of Malvern, and below the green woodlands of Malvern Chase; while at a short distance to the southward is the little monastery and church of Pendyke. The Keep is said to have been built upon the site of a Saxon grange by a Kitel who turned soldier in the days of William Rufus. In later times the occupiers surrounded the tower with barns and pleasant cots, so that the stronghold became the residence of the descendants of the founder, who cultivated their land with the aid of their own labourers and cottars, who gathered the grain, sheared the sheep, made the cider, hewed the wood, and malted the barley. The entrance to Kitel Keep is by a flight of stone steps, and the chambers are somewhat small and confined, while the narrow window lights are not filled with glass, but with thin cow's horn, inasmuch as Master Kitel had a great objection to employing any of the modern novelties or new luxuries.

We were greeted by the deep baying of two deer-hounds, and John Kitel seeing us approaching up the hill, from the mere below, met us on the steps, followed by his bulldog “Holdfast,” a brute that would have pinned a lion at his master's signal, but was singularly tractable to the sound of his voice. Kitel gave us a homely greeting and hearty welcome, bidding us to the table, where his serving men were already gathered awaiting the important hour of dinner, for it wanted only two hours of mid-day. I soon found myself seated between “the Master” and Bessie, above the massive silver salt cellar, while Hasting placed himself at the lower board with the grieve and hinds. Cups and trenchers of bread were soon supplied to us, and a great collop pasty with salt pork was already on the table. Flagons of cider were passed round, also a small double-handed cup with wine in honour of the guests, which was carried to myself and Hasting by the hands of the fair Bessie. Kitel congratulated me on my prowess with the bow and cross-bow, and expressed a fervent hope that I should never be immersed in parchments, or become a scholar, which was fit only for “priests and scriveners.” He gave us an invitation to repeat our visit whenever sport took us in that direction, and concluded by an exhortation to “ware scholarship,” “which took Sire John Oldcastle to the gallows, and never yet enabled a man to draw a good bow or wield a battle-axe.”

We proceeded from Kitel Keep to the Berew, or home of the Berews, in order that I might present Rosamond Berew with the boomer's tippet.

“Underhill,” as their new manor house is called, from its situation below the round hill of Berew, is a very different place from Kitel Keep, although its site was formerly occupied likewise by a small Saxon grange. Surrounded by a moat it is almost entirely constructed of timber from the forest, with stone foundations and “wattle and dab” for the walls. It is not nearly so large as our own manor house of Birtsmereton, but far more comfortable than are the ancient Keeps, for here there are windows with glass, and a parlour fitted up with beautiful tapestry, also a chimney, a very rare structure in common country houses. This parlour, too, boasted one luxury which we did not then possess, and which old Master Berew is said to have received from the far East. This was a carpet, an article much too valuable to tread upon, and which is only put down for show on rare occasions, the floor being usually occupied by clean rushes, of which the meres of Longdune or Eldersfield furnish abundance.

Indeed the parlour itself at Underhill is rarely occupied, the central hall being the chamber usually frequented by the household.

The first person we beheld on our arrival was the youth known to our neighbourhood as “Silent John,” the only brother of Rosamond, who never spoke save when he was spoken to, and not always then. Clad in a hunting vest with woollen hose, he was engaged in making horse-hair springes for snipes and plover, while his eyes brightened as he beheld the bittern, and he vouchsafed a quiet nod to our salutations. John superintended the farming of the estate, and the ploughing and sowing of autumn and spring. Under him were half-a-dozen churls, and in his quiet way he managed to set an example of industry to the neighbourhood, while, owing to the careful cultivation bestowed on the land, the farming at Berew was conspicuous for its crops at harvest, and the breed of cattle on the pastures. John and his sister Rosamond were orphans, and lived with their grandfather at the grange of Underhill, having lost both their parents in early childhood.

The Berews were of Saxon origin, like ourselves, but, owing to various circumstances, they had yielded less to Norman influences, and therefore were subjected more to Norman despotism. For a long time therefore the family remained churls, under the bondage of Norman lords, until one of them paid forty marks for his manumission, which was obtained by the sub-prior of Little Malvern. This was about 100 years before I was born, but since that time the Berews had accumulated money, and the grandfather of Rosamond wasknown to possess many broad pieces in addition to certain hides of land. Master Berew had known Sire John Oldcastle personally, and, himself a Lollard, had witnessed some of the persecutions of that sect. Age did not diminish his hatred of the house of Lancaster, though for years he had lived a life of retirement, varied only by occasional visits from my father, with whom, as a scholar, he was ever delighted to converse. Master Berew had been tall in his younger days, and his face now a good deal resembled the profile of the tercel or the kite. His hair was long and almost white, and he looked at us as we entered with sharp grey eyes, which seemed to search for information before we were ready to give it. He had a sorrowful expression, and wore a somewhat stern demeanour, as he rose to give his salutations to myself and my companion. He requested us to be seated on the oaken bench opposite the great chair he occupied, and on which Rosamond sat when she was released from her household duties, and listened to the instructions of her grandfather, or when he related the events of his younger days. He heard my account of the morning's sport with some interest, but I said nothing about the destiny of the boomer's tippet, or the crest of the hern. Then he inquired what were my studies, and seemed to think more of scholarship than of the hawk or the hound.

Rosamond Berew would only be pronounced beautiful by those who knew and loved her, for her principal beauty lay in expression, and no face I ever beheld equalled hers in the smiles which lighted it when she was glad, or the look of deep sympathy when she sorrowed with the bereaved. She had a gentle voice, too, which contrasted not a little with the gruff tones of her grandfather or the shrill loud calls of the country wenches. Her long brown hair hung in clusters down her neck as she advanced with beaming eyes to welcome us as we crossed the drawbridge, a posie of spring violets in her bodice, and a white dove nestling on her shoulder.

In the chamber where Master Berew was sitting she had gathered a store of herbs, from the woods above the house, which are famous as medicaments and salves. There was the ground ivy and the roots of the daffodil, with maiden's fingers and lords and ladies, all of which awaited the arrival of the celebrated herbalist—Mary of Eldersfield—sometimes called “The Witch,” when they were to be stewed and compressed for future use, and given, as need required, among the households of the labourer and the poor. Then there were large bunches of primroses and cowslips, and the white wind-flower, all fresh-gathered in the woods, and with these the nest of the blue Isaac, which John had brought in only to receive a scolding from his sister for robbing the poor bird of its bright blue eggs, and an entreaty to spare the nest of the water-hen which had built its sedgy cradle on the borders of the moat.

The wild flowers were a birthday gift from the children of the cottars, one of whom had brought a young furze pig and another a pair of quice or wood-pigeons, for “the Rose of Berew,” as she was often called, was almost worshipped by the hinds and their children, as she had ever a kind word and friendly greeting for those who are too often regarded as of less consequence than the cattle on the land, and are rarely so well treated.

Hasting meanwhile learnt from John Berew that a wild boar had been seen in the thickets of the Holly Bush hill, and a large stag near the pass of the hill of the Swineyard. It was therefore agreed that we should consult my father and Kitel of Pendyke, and with our combined foresters and others should hold a chase some early day. Rosamond agreed to accompany us to Birtsmereton, only about a distance of a score of bow-shots, as she wished to convey some flowers from the woods of Berew for the acceptance of my mother. We said “good-bye” to the venerable Nigel, and set forth together. Hitherto I had said nothing of the bittern's tippet, but as Rosamond tripped along by my side, and John was deep about potions for sick kine with Hasting, I took the opportunity of requesting her to accept the feathers and wear them for the sake of old acquaintance since we were children, as it was her birthday and I had taken much trouble to obtain them. She turned away her face while I spoke and was engaged in pulling her violets to pieces; then turning cheerily, she said with a smile, “I thank you gratefully, Master Hildebrande.” Still I did not like the ” Master.” We soon arrived in sight of the tower of our church and the gables of the Manor-house. The rooks were cawing from the big elms and the moor-hen and coot flitted across the great fish-pond, as we passed towards the drawbridge. My father and mother were seated on the parapet above the moat, in the evening's sunshine, and Rosamond Berew curtsied as she received my mother's kiss and blessing. John soon possessed himself of the big tankard of cider which was brought from the house, and said little save giving some directions as to the most probable place for finding the boar on the day of the proposed chase. My father willingly gave his consent to the boar hunt, but declined joining us, as he was engaged on business of a pressing nature. It was agreed that the Kitels of Pendyke should be invited, and that we should borrow two boar-hounds from Sire Hugh Calverley of Branshill, in addition to the deer-hounds which would be furnished by the Kitels and ourselves. Bessie Kitel and Rosamond Berew were to join our party, with any of the Calverleys who liked to ride from Branshill, and Sire John Carfax from Castlemereton. The meeting place was to be the summit of the pass between the Ragged Stone and Midsummer Hills on the trackway between Theocsbury and Ledbury. These arrangements settled, Rosamond and her brother departed, an early day being fixed for our hunt of the wild boar.

Chapter 2. THE MEET AT THE HOLLY BUSH PASS—THE BOAR HUNT—AN UNIVITED VISITOR

In the days of the Norman kings the forest laws were far more oppressive than they are now, and the Chase of Malvern stretched away for miles with here and there a village and a church rising in the clearings. Even in the time of Edward the First and his son-in-law Gilbert de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester, land which now the farmer's axe has cleared and converted into pastures was covered with wood, dense thickets and the yellow gorse, the haunts of the wild boar and the wild deer, while the bittern was a common bird in the meres, and the beaver still haunted the Severn at Beverley. But now both boars and bitterns are become rare, and the stag is not nearly so abundant as it was in the days of my grandfather.

Still the chase of boar or deer was far more accessible to the dwellers in the forest than it ever was in the days of the Red Earl, when a man hardly dare venture out of the line of the trackways or cut a new path through the thickets lest he should disturb the wild beasts in their lairs. The owners of the principal keeps and castles—such as Hanley and Branshill Castles, or Castlemereton and Birtsmereton Keeps—now claimed a right of chase in portions of the forest near them, as having been granted to their forefathers for services rendered in years gone by.

The largest range in our neighbourhood was that of the Earl of Warwick in the right of his Countess, Ann Beauchamp, who was the owner of Hanley Castle and other vast possessions. Our forester, Hasting, was a ranger of Lord Warwick's, and so had built a woodman's lodge, which he called “The Robin Hood,” at Castlemereton, as being near to the haunts of some of the stags in the Gullet Pass and about the Swineyard Hill, and where, after a deer had been killed, it could be flayed and dressed. This lodge was a mere log house, but was filled with various implements of the woodman's craft, such as long-bows and cross-bows, bags of quarrels, sheaves of arrows, boar-spears, falcon tressels and fishing gear. Against the beams of timber there hung knives and bills, axes for falling timber, large boots made of buck's hides, and leathern jackets which would defy the most thorny thicket.

It was at “The Robin Hood” that Hasting and I formed most of our hunting plans, and more than once after a long chase and we had been overtaken by nightfall, have we been glad of the rude shelter and passed the night there with fern for our bedding and deer skins for our coverlids. On the day before the boar hunt we passed most of our time at the lodge making the necessary arrangements and sending messages to the neighbouring gentry, with requests to bring the particular dogs we required, and whose attendance was often, to us at least, of more importance than their masters.

Thus we invited Sire Hugh Calverley of Branshill Castle across the Malverns, and his son, begging of him to bring his famous boarhounds, Hecate and Styx. Sire John Carfax of Castlemereton was the possessor of several fox curs which he used for hunting vermin, but they had remarkable noses, and might be useful as the ground was parched and dry. Kitel of Pendyke managed his dogs right well, and Bessie would surely join us in the forest. John Berew knew more of kine than hounds, but he was sure to keep his tongue quiet, and was a right sterling fellow if a boar was brought to bay. Then there was the Rector of Broomsbarrow, a great lover of the chase, and who knew the lair of every stag within five miles of his residence, with the Prior of Newent, who would even hunt foxes on the hill of Maia, if he could find no nobler game. Nay, it was even reported by scandalous tongues that he had been seen chasing hares with his fox curs in Lent.

Another point to ascertain from “The Robin Hood” was the whereabouts of the boar and his lair. This, as far as we could judge from the accounts of foresters, was somewhere in the Gullet dingle among a thicket of hollies above the Dead Oaks, and where tradition says Sire John Oldcastle lay hid during three days when our house at Birtsmereton was searched by the bloodhounds of the Archbishop Arundel, and even our secret room in the pannelled chamber was considered to be unsafe.

The Gullet Pass is situated between the great camp of Midsummer Hill and the hill of the Swineyards, which Gilbert de Clare granted to the dwellers around Ledbury whereon to pasture their swine, and all around the camp there have grown up dense thickets, which form excellent shelter for deer or wild boar, although tradition says that a British town once clustered around the base of these hills.

Early on the appointed morning I mounted my iron grey, “Sir Roland,” and accompanied by Hasting rode by the trackway from Theocsbury, past the pilgrims' inn known as the “Duke of York,” to Ledbury and Hereford. This village hostel has for many years been a kind of half-way house or resting-place for religious pilgrims travelling to Hereford to worship at the shrines of St. Ethelbert or St. Cantilupe, and was frequently the rendezvous of the Red Earl and his son who was afterwards killed at the battle of Bannockburn, when they hunted among the dense thickets of the Hawthorns or the Ragged Stone, or sought the lair of the boar in the wilds of the Howling Heath.

“The Duke of York” is a rambling wooden edifice with the tabard of the Duke Richard hanging from a pole which stands on the great open common which surrounds the inn, and is the village green in the forest below the hills. Here we found John Berew engaged with a tankard of cider and a toast with borage, and carrying a huge boar-spear. He had also brought some hinds as beaters, and they too were draining horn after horn of their favourite beverage. In a short time Kitel of Pendyke rode up, accompanied by his daughter Bessie, looking like a summer rose as she gave us a cheery “good morrow,” and patted her palfrey's neck. With them also rode Rosamond Berew and the Brydges of Eastington, lovers of the chase, and famous for their skill in archery. As our custom is, when hunting near the only village hostel for many a mile in these wild woodlands, we all partook of the host's cheer, the fair damsels touching each cup of hippocrass with their cherry lips before we drank, cap in hand, to their health and luck to our own spears. Rosamond Berew rode a grey jennet, full of mettle, which she managed with grace and spirit. She wore a dark grey riding gown, cape and hood, with her nut brown hair loose down her back. A look of dignity told of her ancient lineage, which her grandfather used to say was that of “warriors before the Norman had a beginning.” The expression of her face was grave, tending even to melancholy, when not lighted by that smile which Hasting used to call the “angel's look.” It was now arranged that our horses should be sent by the trackway which led towards Broomsbarrow, in case the boar broke away through the forest before he was brought to bay, and we proceeded on foot up the pass to the trysting-place on the summit, the ladies only riding on horseback.

At the Holly Bush Pass we met a numerous party assembled. Sire Hugh Calverley rode up to the meet. With him was Lachmere of Severn End, who was on a visit to Branshill, with Bromwich of Broomsbarrow, the Prior of Newent, and the Rector of Broomsbarrow.

They brought a goodly staff of woodmen to drive the thickets, and dogs of various kinds followed their masters. Sire Hugh was not dressed in hunting gear, but rode up in his gown of violet-coloured cloth with purfled sleeves. The velvet which adorned the sleeves showed his rank of knight. He was a handsome man of somewhat proud bearing, and wore a short beard. He wore peaks to his shoes of considerable length, but not so long as those of his son Roger, who was dressed as if for a Court instead of a hunt of the boar. We other hunters wore the hunting gear of woodcraft, namely, skull caps of deer hide, surmounted by the feathers of the eagle, the heron, or the bittern, while here and there was a cap with the wing of the wild goose across the front. Then we had boots which came up to the thigh, without the long and peaked toes so ill adapted for charging through a thicket. The forester of Branshill and Hasting were both equipped, after the fashion of the times of Chaucer, in green hood and jerkin, green baldrics, and large horns by their sides; and Hasting wore on his breast a St. Gunhilda of silver, while he of Branshill wore an effigy of St. Christopher. All had boar-spears and sharp daggers, but the bows and arrow sheafs were left behind. The parsons rode on dainty palfreys with embossed bridles jingling in the wind, and their gown sleeves were lined with fur, with hoods like those for women.

The Prior of Newent gave us a merry nod and an invitation to see his young dogs course a leveret in the summer, while he invited one and all present to a miracle play on the ensuing week.

Sire John Carfax, of Castlemereton, brought his magnificent sleuth-hound Hercules, and boasted that he “was of the blood of the celebrated dog Hades, which had been laid on the scent of that arch-heretic Sire John Oldcastle, who had obtained shelter in the neighbourhood, and would, no doubt, have pulled him down on the very crest of the Malverns, if it had not been that some churl had spilt his own blood upon the trail and thus baffled the hound by fresh blood.” “This churl,” he said, “lived somewhere near Pendyke,” and I observed that Rosamond Berew looked pale and angry; when Hasting blew a blast upon his horn, which summoned us all for the start, and Kitel, well versed in woodcraft, gave directions how the woodlands were to be driven. The sleuth-hounds and boar-hounds were held in leash, but the Prior of Newent's fox curs, and various other dogs that were distinguished for their yelping powers, accompanied the woodmen and beaters, who were to drive the thickets and startle the boar from his lair. The nobler dogs were not to be loosed until the boar was at bay, or until he broke through the beaters and made for some distant part of the forest. In the latter case those who had horses would mount them, the boar-hounds would be put on the track, and we might follow as best we could. The hope was that he would stand at bay somewhere on the line of the hills, so that all might be up at the death.

The drivers were sent to the base of Midsummer Hill in the direction of the ravine called the “Gullet Pass,” and we had to force our way through thorns, brush wood, and tangled thicket, though here and there the ground was white with the wood wind flower, and the primrose blossomed under every tree. Great hollies grew on the hill side, and I could hear Kitel to my right shouting to the beaters, and singing the old song—

“Holly hath berries as red as any rose,
The forester and hunter
Keep them for the does.”

As we neared the ravine called the Gullet, the yelping of half a score curs told us that game was afoot, but it was impossible to see half-a-dozen yards in advance, and I only knew where Kitel was by the whining of his hound, which he led himself. While struggling through a mass of brambles I was hailed by Kitel begging me to leave the line of beaters to him and ascend the hill, so that I might get a good view, and signal by voice and horn if the boar should go up the dingle or break across the hill. With some difficulty I found my way through thorns and hollies, to the open space which once formed the camp of Britons or Romans on the hill Midsummer, and which furnished a splendid view of the surrounding country.

The outer vallum of this great camp encircles the two spurs known as the Holly Bush and the Midsummer Hills. The highest point and deepest trenches are on the Midsummer Hill, and Gilbert de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester, has struck his dyke right through mound and vallum. Near the summit was a large pile of wood laid on fern, and surmounted with faggots ready for a beacon fire which would show a light to the whole country round. To my surprise Rosamond Berew was standing by the beacon looking earnestly on the woodlands below. She started as I addressed her, inquiring what had become of her gallant grey. It seems that Sire Hugh Calverley had expressed his opinion that “some sharp eyes were wanted on both hills,” and Rosamond had volunteered for the Midsummer, while we could now see that Besisie Kitel had climbed to the summit of the Ragged Stone. They had left their horses in the muddy trackway between the hills and were enjoying the glorious scenery and the animated spectacle below. The hills were studded with figures on foot or horseback, the sunlight flashing here and there upon the steel caps and corselets of some archers who had run up from Branshill, while the broad trackway below echoed with the neighing of steeds as certain ladies from the castle rode up, hoping to be in time for the finding of the boar. Hot and tired I threw myself down on the hill-top for a few moments by the side of Rosamond, and listening to the shouts of the beaters, the cry of the dogs, and the winding of the foresters' horns, we revelled in the view revealed to us beneath that spring-time sun.

I had often been upon those hill-tops with Hasting in our hunting expeditions, but Rosamond knew the scenes around us as well or better than myself. She had, it appeared, frequently accompanied her grandfather, with whom this was a favourite ride, winding up the pass of the Gullet. So she pointed out the Scyrrid Vawr and Black Mountains among the hills of Wales, and the hills above Grosmont, where Harry of Monmouth won his first battle against the followers of Owen Glendower. We saw, too, the distinct smoke of Hereford with a wooded hill beyond, where Mortimer of Wigmore raised his standard, and Prince Edward galloped on his black charger on his escape from the castle where he and his father Henry III. were confined as prisoners; then nearer was the smoke above Ledbury, which she said was once the home of an ancestor of the Berews, who became a Christian and gave it to the Church.

In the valley at our feet, but sheltered beneath the hills of Eastnor, rose the old baronial castle of Branshill, its four flanking towers glistening in the morning sun. It is but a small fortress, but strongly fortified, and in our troublous times it was an important keep. Sire Hugh Calverley was well known to be a follower of the House of Lancaster, and guarded his castle like a royal stronghold. Branshill is as old as the days of the Norman king, William Rufus, who ordered a chain of forts to be erected along the marches after he was driven out of Wales, and of such are Branshill and Castlemereton. Branshill has been little altered since Norman times, and the moat, the walls, the towers, and the loop-holes for the archers remain the same to the present day. The hall has been rendered more modern and the armoury on its walls tells of many a knight who has defended it; while its barbican, narrow archway, strong gates, and portcullis bespeak security for its inhabitants. It has often been the home of highborn dames and gallant knights, and Sire Hugh Calverley was of goodly family and of distinction.

After gazing at the scene around us, Rosamond directed my attention to the great Herefordshire camp with its fire beacon of wood and faggots, which rose like a great haystack when facing the north, and looking towards the ancient city of Worcester. She pointed to the “Hermit's Cave,” a dark hollow in the rocks below the fire beacon. Here, she told me, as the tears glistened in her eyes, was the spot were the bloodhounds of Castlemereton had nearly pulled down the hunted and persecuted Oldcastle, but he was saved with the faithful Thomas Payne, who accompanied him in his flight from Birtsmereton, where they had sheltered for several weeks.

“It was grandfather,” she said in a hollow whisper, “who opened a vein in his own arm and let the blood stream out, and so smeared the turf between the Hermit's Cave and the Wind's Point that it threw the sleuth-hounds off the scent, and allowed Sire John and Payne to diverge into the dense copses of the forest at Newer's Wood, and for awhile to escape.” “It was to grandfather, Master Hildebrande, that proud knight alluded, as the descendant of a Saxon churl, and it was my grandfather and yours also who sheltered the persecuted for the sake of their religion and their God, and of whom I am more proud than if I were the daughter of a Norman king.”

I knew little of this episode, for my mother's family, the Actons, being Catholics, it was seldom mentioned at Birtsmereton, although my own grandfather assisted so much in the escape of the persecuted Lollards not fifty years before we two were standing on the Midsummer Camp waiting for the breaking of the boar.

Just then a horn winding in the trackway made us turn quickly towards the south; Bessie Kitel still held her post on the Ragged Stone and waved her kerchief as a signal that we should join her, by which I judged that her father and the line of beaters were approaching the Ragged Stone slopes. The sun was now sufficiently high to throw his western shadows over the vale of Eastnor; and, giving Rosamond my ungloved hand while using my boar spear as a support, we quickly descended by the Red Earl's dyke to the trackway below. When halfway down the steep slope Rosamond stopped suddenly, and exclaimed in an excited tone, “Good heavens! see, Master Hildebrande, it is the Shadow of the Ragged Stone,” and she pointed to what seemed to be a black, dark column resting on the Castle of Branshill, while all the rest of the vale was flooded in sunshine. While we were gazing at this strange scene of brilliant sunlight and local darkness, the tra-la-lirala of half-a-dozen horns on our left gave us due notice that the boar was on foot from his night's lair, and we lost no time in running full tilt to meet the horsemen in the trackway below.

“Mount 'Sir Roland,' Master Hildebrande,” said Rosamond, “and let us gallop for the valley of the White-leaved Oak; the boar is safe to go to the Howling Heath.” But “Sir Roland” had been sent to the trackway by the great hawthorn thickets, on the way to Broomsbarrow, and besides it was my duty to proceed on foot to the summit of the Ragged Stone and to signal to those below which way the boar was beading.

Mounting Rosamond on her grey, and giving directions that Bessie Kitel's palfrey should be led to the pass of the White-leaved Oak, I ran rapidly up the slopes, when I was accosted by Bessie Kitel:-

“Well, Hildebrande the hunter—though you do not deserve the name for staring in the direction of the Beacon of Hereford when the boar was twice showing himself in the open glades on this side the Dead Oak—you will not be entrusted with the signals again by my father, if you are given to moon-gazing so soon after sun-rise. What have you done with my palfrey, and where is your own 'Sir Roland?'“ “Now, there he is again!” and truly again the boar showed himself travelling steadily and without haste in the direction of the Chase-end—the last hill in our Malvern Chase. The hunters were nearly a mile behind, so I wound the signal-note on my bugle-horn, and waved a kerchief in the direction the boar had taken, until I heard a reveillé sounded from all the horns below, and the beaters were well on the track of the boar. It was time now to assist Bessie down the deep cleft which gives the name to the Ragged Stone until we came to the “While-leaved Oak,” or the pass between the Chase-end and the Ragged Stone. Here we found her palfrey, and here those who were not engaged in the chase were assembled. Roger Calverley, Sire Hugh's son, was amongst them, carrying a huge bear-spear and wearing fine feathers in a very fine hood. His dress was little adapted to the chase, as you might have hidden a fawn in his violet-coloured sleeves. An eagle's feather in a woman's headgear was sadly out of place, and so thought Bessie Kitel, who had challenged him to walk up the Ragged Stone, but he dared not for the tips of his shoes.

A ringing note from one of the boar-hounds told us that the Branshill foresters had let them loose upon the trail, while a whoop and wild halloo from the summit of Chase-end let us know that the boar was well forward in that direction, and heading, as Rosamond expected, toward the Howling Heath. Telling Bessie Kitel to ride straight for the “halloo,” I ran at full speed to the trackway below, where I knew “Sir Roland” awaited me. The gallant roan bounded with joy as he heard the sound of the horn, and I galloped for the south end of the Chase-end, and pulled up below the Howling Heath. Here I waited till the hunters were seen crossing the crest of the hill, while Bessie Kitel and the Calverleys rode along the western slope. Again rang out the deep notes of the hounds, when the boar came thundering by and dashed down the glen, avoiding the hill of the Howling Heath. I grasped my spear at the thought that here he must come to bay, but waited patiently for the rest to come up. Kitel, too, had mounted, and, with Rosamond Berew, joined me, when we determined to leave our steeds with the horse-boys and proceed on to the glen. Laying the hounds on the track, we surrounded the thicket in which the boar had taken refuge, and each hunter became anxious for first blood. In the densest part of the thicket the boar turned upon his pursuers, and in a second one of the sleuth-hounds lay ripped up by his tusks. I could now see that he was an enormous animal with tusks that gleamed like white scimitars, and that his charge would need a sturdy arm and an unflinching hold. I now determined to show myself and await the charge, when to my utter astonishment, his sleeves torn to rags, and his feather and hood gone, I saw Roger Calverley, with boar-spear at rest, pushing through the brambles to the wild beast at bay. Struck with his courage, I yet determined not to be forestalled, and again pressed forward. Hecate and Styx had now come up, and Styx pinned the boar by the ear. Turning short he cut her fearfully with his tusks and charged Calverley, who stood like a man. The spear glanced aside, and in one moment he was on his back, prostrate amidst the briars. He, however, drew blood, although it proved to be a mere skin scratch. The men hallooed, the dogs yelled, the horns sounded, and the foresters swore great oaths as the gallant beast charged through them all and broke clear away in the direction of Broomsbarrow. Turning to Calverley, I found he had escaped the animal's tusks, and was now coolly engaged in cutting off the tips of his shoes with his dagger. When out of the thickets and mire, all who had horses mounted and rode away. Calverley without hat or hood, and his vestments in a condition wonderful to behold, mounted the palfrey Sire Hugh rode to the meet, leaving his respected father to find his way back to Branshill as he could. Roger Kitel got a heavy fall, but was soon up again, and Bessie and Rosamond Berew followed at the gallop, Rosamond knowing every forest path and trackway and promising to be guide to her fair companion.

I felt annoyed with. myself for halting in the bushes, and that Calverley should have drawn first blood, while I could not but admire the gallantry of one I thought a mere dandy and who now rode ahead of us all; so, shaking the boar-spear I held in my hand, I determined that the boar should serve me as he had done “Styx” before I waited again for the charge. I soon overtook the palfrey that carried Calverley, and the baying of the hounds told us that the boar was well on his way to the copses of Hazeldine, where Hasting and I had trapped many a badger. Turning at Redmarley, the home of the D'Abitots in the days of the Conquest, he made for the forest thickets of Corse and the gorse groves of Hasfield, and it was not until we reached these that we saw him again. I was engaged with Hasting and Kitel in encouraging the hounds, when he was viewed by Bessie Kitel crossing the open glades leading to the Severn. We were, with Calverley and Rosamond Berew, all that were left of the meet at the Hollybush, and the ladies appeared to have had enough of the chase. We determined, however, to endeavour once more to bring the animal to bay, and, cheering on the dogs, we were soon galloping over the open flats below the hill when Calverley exclaimed, “By St. George, he will cross the river,” and by the time we reached the Severn, we could see the boar ascending the hill of Wainlode, on the other side the water. Shouting to the ladies to ride by the river bank to the lode at Ashelworth, where the De Clares had established a horse ferry more than a hundred years ago, I leaped “Sir Roland” into the river, followed by Calverley. Kitel and Hasting knew that their steeds were too exhausted for the effort, and joined the fair huntresses as they galloped for the ferry.

The stream was strong and we were carried down a considerable distance before we gained the opposite shore. Calverley had thrown himself clear of the palfrey, and with one hand on the saddle was swimming side by side by his steed. “Wet work this, De Brute,” he said, as I assisted him to land, “my poor horse is half drowned.”

We now could hear from the baying of the hounds that the boar had turned upon them in the thickets above. Tying our good steeds to some trees, we faced the thickets together, and soon came upon the besiegers and the besieged. The boar was bespattered with blood and bloody foam, and was evidently much exhausted, but no sooner had I emerged from the dense brushwood to the open space where the struggle was taking place, than he at once charged, though Hecate held on like grim death. Throwing myself on one knee and the whole weight of my body forward, I met his charge with the spear at rest, but the treacherous shaft broke short against his tough hide and brisket, when Calverley rushed up, and driving his spear behind the shoulder into the heart, our gallant prey lay dead. We were both still dripping like otter dogs, and Calverley looked a miserable object in the remnants of his dandy garments. Even my stout jerkin was torn, and I had lost my cap with Bessie Kitel's feathers.

We were now across the Severn in the Chase of Gloucester, which was carefully guarded by the foresters of that Chase. A few notes upon the horn would be certain to bring a flayer or a forester upon us, and yet it was necessary to blow the death signal that Kitel and Hasting might assist in securing the head and tusks—trophies we had so hardly earned.

Sounding then two blasts, we set to work with our knives and daggers to cut off the boar's head—no easy task. Before it was accomplished, we heard, as we thought, the gallop of our friends' horses along the Severn bank, and Calverley went to direct them to the open glade, which was completely hidden though so near the Severn stream.

I had allowed the hounds and curs to blood themselves at the carcase, when I heard Calverley calling “De Brute!” in a loud voice. On descending to the Severn an unexpected sight awaited me. Instead of our friends, I found a party of four horsemen, and one of them was assuming a very hostile attitude.

“Who are you, young Springalls, who dare to trespass on the chase of Gloucester, and dare to cross the Severn after one of our boars that has chosen to roam?”

“And who are you,” said Calverley, “to talk so glibly to your betters?”

“I am the Master Forester of the Royal Chase of Gloucester,” was the reply, “and if you cannot give a good account of yourselves I will very soon lodge you both in Gloucester dungeons; such trespass shall not go unpunished.”

“Gently, gently, Master Forester,” said a young man of about my own age, “it seems to me we have to deal with gentlemen, and this trespass may not be wanton.”

The young nobleman, for such his dress betokened him, who now spoke was of very remarkable appearance—his complexion was fair, with large blue eyes, and long yellow hair with lovelocks in a style almost effeminate. He was tall, more than six feet in height, with a great width of chest and shoulder; his address was most courteous, while at the same time he had the air of one accustomed to command.

“Who are you, my good friends,” he asked, “and why here on the chase of Gloucester?”

Calverley bowed profoundly, for he had no cap to doff, and explained who we were, and the circumstances of the long hunt which brought us there. He said also that we were both aware that by the Charter of Edward III. we had trespassed, but that the custom and usage of woodcraft now allowed of the following of stag or boar across the boundary for a short distance.

A tall and portly gentleman now introduced himself as Sire John de Guyse, and, offering his hand to Calverley and then to me, said he knew our fathers right well, and would be answerable for the honour of their sons.

We had thus smoothed matters when the rest of our party came galloping up. They seemed surprised at seeing us thus surrounded, and both Kitel and Hasting looked ready for a fight, when our mediator, transferring the falcon on his wrist to one of his followers, dismounted, and, walking up to Bessie Kitel, begged to be allowed to assist her to descend from the saddle that she might see the boar which he courteously said “had been so gallantly hunted by youth and beauty.”

We now observed the manly form of this young nobleman; in his cap of red velvet he wore a heron's plume, and on a jerkin of red velvet braided with gold there was fastened a silver rose. A greater contrast to my dowdy self and the tattered Calverley could hardly be imagined. Turning to Rosamond Berew, he admired her jennet and asked how far she had ridden, and when she pointed to the hills where the chase began, he replied that truly we “seemed all hunters born!”

When Hasting had cut a path with his whinger to the green glade where the boar lay dead and we had gathered round the scene, our friend in need turned to the Master Forester and said, “Good boar, staunch hounds, bold hunters, and fair ladies. Master Forester, we must take no notice of this trespass; and from you, fair damsels, we may not part without some slight token of this day's chase.”

He then took his heron's plume and gave it to Rosamond Berew, and clasped the silver rose upon the kirtle of Bessie. Then turning to his followers, he said, “Sire John de Guyse and gentlemen, time flies,” so taking off his cap to the ladies, and giving us a slight nod of recognition, he withdrew, and in a few minutes we heard the hoofs of their horses as they galloped down the green turf by the Severn side.

We now prepared for our return homewards. The boar's head was fastened behind the saddle of Hasting, and, tired with our exertions, we rode slowly towards the Ashleworth ferry, and talked of the various incidents of the chase and the meeting with the party of falconers from Gloucester. Kitel said he believed the young noble-man to be Lord Berkeley, while Calverley thought he might be Lord Tracy.

Having crossed the ferry, and being in need of refreshment, we determined to seek for some at the manor of the Pauncefortes of Hasfield. Calverley declared he would rather starve than present himself in his present condition before the lovely daughters of Julian Paunceforte, till a hint from Kitel of the probability of a pasty of goose, a Berkeley cheese, and a tankard of hippocrass, made him prefer to put off starvation, and we all rode up together to the drawbridge of the moat, when Kitel dismounted to beg the hospitality he knew would welcome us.

Hasfield Moat house differed somewhat in its structure from the manor houses which are now arising in many parts of our western counties. The moat was dug only in front of the dwelling house, which was protected on the north and east by a high wall with steps on the inner side to enable archers to shoot through the apertures, while on the top of the wall was a chevaux de frise of strong oaken spikes. The house was mostly built of strong timber, and the only entrance was by the drawbridge; though it might not stand a regular siege, it was right well protected against robbers and raiders.

We had not waited long when Paunceforte appeared to welcome the weary hunters, and entreating us to dismount, led the way to the Moat House, where at the door, ready to receive us with all hospitality, was the fair mistress of the house and her two sweet daughters Dorothy and Miranda, to whose care our damsels were committed.

Dorothy was a fair girl, with a sharp wit, and was so well taught by her parents that she could read Master Wycliffes Bible, and had written verses which might have passed for Master Lydgate's; while Miranda had a voice like a mavis, and played with wondrous skill upon harp and spinnet. The central hall was hung around with skins of wild animals, which Master Paunceforte, who had been a great traveller, had brought from foreign parts, and which excited much admiration among our party, who had never seen such trophies of the chase before.

The table soon was spread with platters of salted beef, and the goose pastie which Kitel said was a dish to dream of, and loaves of wastel bread. Mistress Paunceforte, too, was famous for her green cheeses, and never ceased to recommend the hot collops. Flagons of hippocrass and cider passed around, and nothing was spared which hospitality could provide.

The afternoon was now drawing to a close, so, making a promise to meet our hosts at the miracle plays at Theocsbury or at the gluttony feast at Redmarley, we again mounted out horses and partook of the stirrup cup which was handed to us by the mistress herself. I now observed that she had lost her right hand and bore the cup in her left. The history I afterwards learnt was as follows:-

“In the days of his youth Julian Paunceforte had plighted his troth to the beautiful Dorothy Ashfield, whose home was in Oxfordshire. He was a gallant sailor, and had arrived at some distinction. Their marriage was deferred, for Paunceforte was ordered to take the command of a vessel and sailed to the distant Mediterranean sea. On this voyage he was taken prisoner by pirates and sold as a slave in the East. A lady of rank beholding his degraded and forlorn condition and seeing that he had been gently nurtured and born in better circumstances, took compassion on the broken-down and nearly dying captive, released him from his fetters, and raised him to a situation of a less menial kind.

“By and by love succeeded to pity, and she offered to free him altogether on condition that he should spend the rest of his life with her in the East.

“Then Paunceforte told her how an English girl was weeping over his absence by the broad meadows of the Isis, and anxiously hoping for his return home in love and constancy.

“The Eastern lady laughed in bitter scorn at the idea of woman's constancy, and Paunceforte, little thinking that his words would be taken literally, declared that his betrothed would give her right hand for the return of her lover. 'Then be it so!' exclaimed the indignant princess, and she swore a solemn oath that Paunceforte should be her slave unto death unless the hand of the English girl was sent across the seas as a ransom and pledge of her fidelity.

“Tradition tells how Dorothy had gone to Hasfield to visit the widowed mother of her lover, and the girl and the grey-haired woman mourned together over the fate of him who seemed lost to them for ever; when one day a ransomed captive, a fellow-prisoner of Julian Paunceforte's, appeared and related to them the history of the strange oath which would keep him a captive until the day of his death. This news deepened the shadow of sorrow which was over the old Manor, and two days afterwards Dorothy Ashfield left for the port of Bristol. She in time returned, but bearing her arm in anguish in a sling, for the plighted hand had been cut off at the wrist and gone across the seas as a ransom.”

Our horses were too much exhausted for us to ride faster than a walk, and as Calverley seemed anxious to converse with Bessie Kitel, I rode the whole way back with Rosamond Berew.

We had both of us heard much of the religious questions of the times, for the exactions and encroachments of the ecclesiastics were the constant topic of conversation between my father and Master Berew; and we had read Master Wycliffe's “Trialogues,” and his belief that Christ taught faith, hope, and charity rather than the persecution and burning of heretics. We had also learned to detest the sight of the “sompnour,” described by Master Chaucer, with his “fire-red cherubim's face, so scalded, whelked, and bepimpled that children fled from its presence,” and whose vocation was that of an ecclesiastical officer who served citations for trial in the Church courts on the most trivial pretences. Nor were we better inclined towards the “pardoner,” for we had learnt from the writings of the great Reformer of Lutterworth that “God only can forgive sin, and that therefore pardons and dispensations were not to be sold like an ox or an ass,” that “the Scriptures assure us that Christ is the mediator between God and man.” Yet a month rarely passed away that our villages were not pestered with these miserable pedlars who travelled from place to place selling dispensations for sin and exhibiting pretended relics, such as a veil of the Virgin Mary, handkerchiefs with the blood of Christ, fragments of St. Peter's boat, and such like impostures.

Witchcraft, too, was the subject of our conversation, and we agreed that, although there might be cases in which black magic, sorcery, and enchantment deserved to be punished with the strong arm of the law, nevertheless hundreds of innocent persons were tortured and executed for imaginary magic, as in the case of several poor women executed a few years previously.

Indeed, to such a height had the fear of necromancy arisen, that it was unsafe to concoct a potation of herbs, or even to gather plants for medicaments; while the presence of a black cat, or an owl, in a household was absolutely so dangerous that we ever destroyed our black kittens.

Nor were these the only topics of our conversation. It was impossible to ignore the fact that we were living in dangerous times. We were both old enough to remember the excitement caused throughout the country by Cade's rebellion; how the Archbishops of York and Canterbury had to take refuge in the Tower, and the talk of the desperate single combat between Squire Iden and Cade, in which the latter was slain. The great battle of St. Alban's, too, (1454) was hailed as a good omen by our parents, who looked upon the Duke of York as the rightful king, and hoped under him for greater liberty of conscience in religious matters.

At the present moment, it was true, a reconciliation had been patched up, and King Henry was acknowledged as monarch of England by the Yorkists and the great Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, but now, in this year 1459, there were rumours of warlike preparations, and great bodies of troops had been massed at Worcester.

Who could say how soon our quiet homes might not be invaded by armed men and made desolate by a reckless soldiery!

While conversing on such subjects we had arrived as far as the rounded hill of Berthhill on the horse trackway to Gadbury Camp and the church of Eldersfield, when a tall figure crossed our path and entered the dense glades of the forest. I had hardly time to see whether the dress was that of a man or woman, but Rosamond said, “There is Mary of Eldersfield; I expect she has been on Berthhill after nettles to make a capon sit, or spurges for ointments.” Mary of Eldersfield was celebrated for her knowledge of herbs and medicaments, but led the life of a strict recluse.

Chapter 3. LORD EDWARD OF MARCH—THE PREDICAMENT AT WAINLODE HILL—THE WITCH OF ELDERSFIELD AND HER MEDICAMENTS.

As I rode homewards I could not help thinking of Rosamond, and a change of feeling respecting her, which had come over me of late, and which I did not altogether understand. We had been much together as boy and girl, but I had also seen much of Bessie Kitel and Kate Brydges of Eastington. Yet, I was now almost afraid of Rosamond, afraid of doing something she did not like, or saying something of which she did not approve, and her face always haunted me, go where I would. If I mounted “Roan Roland” or “Bold Harry,” they always would carry me towards Berew, and I always blushed when I got there and wondered how they could be so stupid, especially when I found John Berew only at home, and Rosamond away searching for wild flowers on the hills. To her I owed all my knowledge of the herbs of the forest glades, so good for medicaments, taught her by Mary of Eldersfield and the Sub-Prior of Pendyke.

Many a time have I walked across the Malverns, or the Gullet Pass, where alone I could gather sufficient whortleberries for a comfiture for Master Berew, and receive for my reward a smile from Rosamond. Then there was the bee flower which grows upon the hill of Berew, but never in the vale, with which Rosamond loved to deck her hair in the pleasant month of June! I knew where the first blossoms were to be found in an old stone-pit, among stone oyster shells which look as if fresh from the sea. But Rosamond's favourite flower was the “nodding star of Bethlehem,” with its white silvery blossoms, among the yellow broom and gorse of Broomsbarrow. Long distances have I walked for these flowers and others, such as wild mint and sages, with which Rosamond would make medicaments for the poor and sick, for she was never happier than when doing some kind service for others. But now, and I could not account for it, we seemed somewhat estranged from each other, and she called me “Master Hildebrande,” whereas she once said “Hildebrande.” Thoughts of this kind passed through my mind as I neared my own home!

I found my father and mother seated in the panelled chamber, the internal adornment of which my father had superintended. In my grandfather's time, the walls were bare, or only covered here and there with worn tapestry. The noble chimney-piece was my father's own design, and the armorial bearings of the various friends who visited us from time to time were painted above each panel and were the work of a foreign artist. Here are the arms of Scudamore of Kentchurch, whose grandmother was a daughter of Owen Glendower, and the Baskervilles of Erdisley who came over with the Conqueror, Blount of Eye, Bromwich of Broomsbarrow, Throcmorton, Rudhall, Vaughan of Hergest, all old friends of my father and mother. My father was clad in the long manteline which he wore in the house, and which was well suited to a scholar. His beloved parchments were on one side and mother on the other, as was her custom when night drew on. A letter, with the silk only lately cut, lay upon her lap, and tears were in her eyes, and both of them seemed impressed by news of great importance.

When I had related the events of the day, my father said:-

“You are aware, Hildebrande, that the present King's marriage with Margaret of Anjou has been the commencement of a series of troubles from about the time of your birth to the present day. Within two years of that marriage in the year 1445 the good Duke Humphrey was murdered. Before Margaret had been Queen seven years, the noble Duke, Richard of York, who many, like myself, believed to be the legitimate King, was ignominiously cast into prison, and probably would have been there now, or in another world, but for us Marchmen, who railed round his standard at Wigmore, and frightened the Queen and the Council into setting him at liberty.

“The year of grace 1454 saw the noble York lieutenant to the King, when Queen Margaret was delivered of a sort who few believe to be the son of the imbecile Henry. Through the intrigues of the unscrupulous Margaret, Edmund Beaufort was placed in power until the battle of St. Alban's, when Somerset was killed and King Henry taken prisoner. This occurred four years ago and a peace has been patched up, when now I have just received a letter to inform me that the Queen, dragging the King in her train, has marched on Ludlow at the head of 6o,ooo men, and that, owing to the treachery of Sire Andrew Trollop, the Duke of York and his son the Earl of March, with the great Warwick, are all fugitives from her who spares neither friend nor foe if they interfere with her ambitious projects.

“This letter informs me that the Duke of York has escaped to Ireland, that his son Edward of March has fled to Gloucester, and the Earl of Warwick is safe at his castle of Hanley, only a few miles from hence. Edward's situation is most precarious, there are only too many who would betray him to the vindictive Queen, and she would rejoice at getting the heir of York into her eagle clutches. Not a moment must be lost in bringing him safe, by unfrequented paths, through the forest to Hanley Castle, where Warwick may make a stand, until we who love the White Rose can rally round him, and save the country and ourselves from ruin.

“Lord Edward of March is now at the Forester's lodge at Wainlode in the Chase of Gloucester, and it is evident that you have fallen in with him to-day in company with the forester, who is true as he is brave, and would defend him to the death; but Trollop's minions are already on the track, and it is madness for March to be flying falcons when he should be flying for his life. I must ride for Hanley Castle before the sun rises to-morrow, to arrange with Warwick the summoning of the adherents of the White Rose again to arms. You, I would have to ride with the grey dawn of morning to Wainlode. Take Hasting with you, and this letter for Edward of March. It is a missive from the Earl of Warwick, and Lord Edward will not hesitate to place himself under your guidance, while you must be guided by circumstances whether you will conduct him straight to Hartley, or bring him here until we can safely deliver him to the care of Warwick.”

“The House of York, Hildebrande,” he continued, “is the only hope of those reformers whom men call Lollards, who in this country protest against the exactions and encroachments of the Roman Pontiffs, and who hold by the tenets and opinions of such as John de Wyckliffe. These noble Lords are now in the greatest danger, and it becomes you and I, if necessary, to die for our faith, and those who would aid us. In the meantime let me show you a secret of this house, the chamber in which Sire John Oldcastle was hidden, a secret which no one knows but myself and your mother, and I now entrust it to you.”

He then led me to one of the oaken panels close to the great chimney, and touching a secret spring a door flew open and revealed a recess large enough to hold two men standing. There was no apparent escape from this recess save by the secret door into the chamber, but my father showed me in the thick wall a large stone which had been pierced and suspended on an iron rod, and fastened on the inside like a trap door. This stone, when swung upwards, permitted the passage of a man out to the terrace in front and the moat, from whence in a boat it was easy to cross to the land and out into the forest. My father explained how in my grandfather's time the secret chamber was hidden only by tapestry, and how he had himself invented the panelled door and spring. “It may happen,” said he, “that we may require to use this secret for ourselves, or others, in troublous times like these, for no man can calculate what may happen on the morrow.”

I mounted a fresh horse at sunrise on the following morning, and, accompanied by Hasting, rode quickly by the avenue of great elms which reached from the moat, across the park to the trackway to Branshill and Ledbury. The blackbirds were singing and the swallows skimming over the grass, the young leaves were bursting forth in the trees, and the Malverns were clad in their green spring mantle, with the canopy of a blue sky over all. My thoughts were so occupied with the sudden fall of the Duke of York and Earl of Warwick, and the dispersion of their followers near Ludlow, that I said little to Hasting as we rode on, until we were close under Gadbury Camp, near to the Norman church of Eldersfield.

This camp was an important stronghold in the forest, when the Romans held the line of the Severn, and the British, under their chief Caractacus, defended the barrier of the Malverns inch by inch. Strongly fortified by nature in its steep sides, there is a level platform on its summit, where a large force could be arrayed for battle. It was now deserted and surrounded by dense woodlands, the only access being a narrow pathway on the south. The camp is a large flat area without trees, and nothing grew there save brush-wood, gorse, and long grass.

The absence of trees was accounted for by the fact that the noted “white witch,” called the “Witch of Eldersfield,” frequented this isolated spot, and was said to summon the Devil to assist her, and to visit the moon.

Hasting told me that only the year previous no less than forty wondrous cures had been ascribed to the White Witch, who lived on the camp. An instance of her evil doings had happened to the head forester of Gloucester Chase in the thickets on the flanks of Gadbury. He had gone forth in search of a stag of great size which was known to frequent a part of the chase known as “Pudden Crok,” and on climbing the Crok he found the deer browsing beneath a large oak. He was enabled to obtain a close shot, and the animal, badly wounded, rushed down the steep bank and took refuge in the woodlands on the slopes of Gadbury. Arriving at a dense thicket he heard the stag moaning and dying in the bushes; he cut a path through the underwood, but there was no sign of any stag or struggle, not a blade of grass was disturbed, not a leaf moved, but he heard, on the platform above, a peal of laughter, as if the witch had summoned some unearthly companion to her revels. Night was approaching, and the forester returned to his lodge convinced that foul spirits obeyed the commands of the accursed witch, and that the black stag was a black fiend.

I listened with a smile to this tale, and, telling Hasting that I had heard that the witch was only a herbalist, touched my horse with the spur, and we trotted as fast as the muddy paths would allow towards the horse ferry by which we were to cross the ferry at Ashleworth. We had almost reached the river when the sound of a horse at full gallop behind us made us pause to discover who was the rider.

It proved to be Rosamond Berew on her grey jennet all alone, hot with her ride, and looking anxious and alarmed. There was little time for greeting, and she said, as she pulled up her jennet:-

“Master Hildebrande, for God's sake do not attempt to cross at the ferry. Not many minutes after you started, a message arrived from Lord Warwick to your father to inform him that more than two hundred archers, led by the traitor Sire Andrew Trollop, are now in our Chase in search of those Yorkists who escaped from before Ludlow, and that a high price is set upon the heads of all the leaders of the House of York. Your father had started for Hanley Castle, and your respected mother herself rode up to our poor house at Berew to beg of my brother to gallop after you, lest you should fall into some ambush. Trollop himself is with his bloodhounds, and is sure to make for the ferry at Ashleworth. John was out with the kine, so I mounted 'Grey Bess,' and rejoice greatly, Master Hildebrande, that I have overtaken you in time.”

This was a dilemma! Swimming the river on horseback was not to be thought of, as we must keep our horses fresh; we therefore determined to ride up the right bank to a boat ferry at a place called the Haw, and that Hasting should remain there while I crossed in a boat and proceeded on foot to the Lodge at Wainlode. Time would be lost, but there was no help for it.

Entreating Rosamond to seek the most unfrequented paths on her return, I begged the posie she wore in her bosom, of rue and rosemary—the one for grace the other for remembrance—and arriving at the Haw I soon was on the other side of the water.

I ran rapidly by the green meadows on the Severn side, where the comfrey, so excellent for bruises, was just showing its lilac blossoms, and soon reached the woodlands which at Wainlode surmounted the steep cliff above the river.

The forester's lodge was erected near to this cliff, close upon the river bank. It was built much after the fashion of the one Hasting frequented in the Malvern Chase, but much larger, and was opposite the spot where the wains or waggons, loaded with corn for Gloucester, came once a year, when their burdens were placed on rafts and sent across the Severn. Thus it was called Wainlode.

The bark of many dogs gave notice of my arrival, and I was some little distance from the lodge when the forester accompanied by a couple of woodmen, armed, met me, as I was running, with the question, “What tidings?” Taking the forester aside, I told him that the archers of Sire Andrew Trollop were searching in every direction, on the other side of the water, for the followers of York and Warwick, who were now fugitives from the wrath of the Lancastrians, and that I was the bearer of a missive from Lord Warwick to Edward, Earl of March, and who from my description my father believed to be the young nobleman I had seen the day before.

“It is he, and no other,” said the forester, “and right glad should I be if he was safe at Hanley Castle, for King Henry's scouts are all around this country. Theocsbury is ill-affected to the House of York, and Gloucester would shield him if it were possible, but Trollop (may he be accursed as a foul traitor) has arrived there, with a host of archers from Hereford. Only this morning men-at-arms were seen upon our hill. I am not suspected, or they would soon be here.”

He then conducted me to the lodge, and we found Lord Edward standing within the high palisades which surrounded it. He was caressing a boar-hound, and received me with a courteous bow of recognition. He did not wear the falconer's dress as before, but was clad in a suit of hunter's green, which showed the proportions of his powerful frame to great advantage.

Bending on one knee and doffing my cap, I presented Lord Warwick's letter, which he read without evincing the slightest emotion, and merely remarked, “We shall deal with these tyrants yet. Warwick is safe in his castle at Hanley, and my noble father has by this time crossed the seas to Ireland.”

The Master Forester now came forward and informed him that his safety was compromised by the appearance of Trollop at Gloucester, and that Malvern Chase had parties of scouts distributed in hopes of his capture or that of any other fugitive Yorkist. He therefore recommended Lord Edward to accept my offers of guidance by the unfrequented forest rides to Hanley Castle, as on that side of the Severn many espoused the cause of Henry of Lancaster, while on the other side many of the houses would advance the banners of the White Rose.

The young Earl thus addressed me: “Will you be my guide, good Sir? Warwick says in this missive that the De Brutes, of whom I suppose you to be a scion, are men of honour. Serve me in this strait, and if I live, I will serve you in turn. A Plantagenet never forgets a kindness.”

I then hastened to assure him that my life was at his service, and proposed my plan of escape. The forester also suggested that Lord Edward should be disguised, and go forth with the dogs in the direction of the Haw, as if for hunting. The Earl consented, and the forester winding his horn for “the rally,” in a short time a dozen woodmen assembled at the well-known call. Lord Edward was arrayed in a rough leather jerkin and long boots and buskins, a cap with long lappets which fell over the cheeks and covered his long fair hair, and a bill in his hand. In this dress it was almost impossible to recognise the dashing young nobleman of the previous day, now turned into John Ball.

We had left the hunting lodge less than half an hour when the glittering of steel caps was seen on the banks of the Severn, and soon we heard the tramp of horses and the clatter of arms. The forester begged of Lord Edward to show himself as little as possible and keep well among the thickest of the wood, acting as a driver of the game. He then called to me to accompany him and descended towards the river bank, where he busily engaged himself in looking for the track of an imaginary stag.

Five or six horsemen armed from head to foot rode up to us, and the officer in command inquired if we had tidings of the escape of certain Yorkists in the general flight from Ludlow, as both the Duke of York and his son, Lord Edward of March, were believed to have taken refuge in the Chase of Malvern or to have crossed to that of Gloucester. Sire Andrew Trollop, he said, had arrived at Gloucester, while the Duke of Somerset had despatched bands of scouts from Worcester, and good hopes were entertained of their capture. Tidings had been brought, he said, of the appearance of a strange nobleman who was seen searching for herons along the river flats.

The forester replied that Sire John de Guyse and Lord Berkeley had indeed been there, but had both departed for Gloucester the day before.

“Well then,” replied the officer, “I charge you in the king's name and of Sire Andrew Trollop, knight, commissioned by the right honourable parliament of England, now assembled at Coventry, to summon your followers and assist me, John Salwey, of Ludlow, in apprehending the followers of the Duke of York who rose in rebellion against our Lord the King, and who are now believed to be hidden in the Chase over which you have the care and keeping. I am sorry to spoil your hunting, but there are stags on foot better worth our capture, for the heads of these traitors are worth a thousand merks apiece. Sound, therefore, your bugle-horn, and let your woodmen join us in the search.”

“Have you,” he continued, “for I am a stranger in this country, any idea where these rebels may have taken shelter?”

A gleam of intelligence passed across the face of the Master Forester, which, observed by both Master Salwey and myself, was interpreted by us in a very different light “By my halidame,” he replied, “I expect the Rector of Down Hatherley is a malcontent who would gladly shelter any one of the House of York or Warwick,” though he well knew the Rector was a staunch Lancastrian! “Also,” he said, “there is Master Paunceforte the other side the water, at Hasfield Moat House; we must send a couple of trusty men to invite his aid, until we can ourselves cross and conduct a search.” “But we must first to Hatherley,” he said to Salwey, “a thousand merks is indeed a goodly sum.”

Then he told me to take John Ball, the woodman, and crossing the ferry at the Haw to proceed to Hasfield, and warn them of the party of Lancastrian searchers and the quarry they hunted.

I at once took the hint, leaving Salwey and his men in the care of one who I perceived was quite capable of putting them well on the chase of the wild-goose, while I carried off the stag. I now joined Lord Edward in the thickets, and beckoning him to follow in silence, led him in the direction of the ferry by a narrow path through the forest from Wainlode to Apperley.

We had not gone far before we heard the forester's horn calling up his woodmen, and I knew that all the party were well offto Down Hatherley in the opposite direction, so slackened speed, when Lord Edward, coming up somewhat breathless, said:-

“I hope this pace will not last long, for I am well nigh winded, and this leather jerkin and these buskins are not meant for such travelling. Whither now, and what tidings?”

I related what had passed, and he laughed heartily the ruse of the Master Forester.

We soon arrived at the boat at the Haw, and the ferryman said not a soul had been there since I crossed in the morning. Safe on the other side, a blast of horn soon brought Hasting and our steeds to the trackway which leads from the river to the forest paths.

We now learned that several armed men had inquired of Hasting what he was doing there, and whether any one had passed that way? He replied that his young master had gone to the lodge at Wainlode seeking to borrow a hound, and that he was waiting for his return. He overheard the leader of the troop say that other riders were stationed along the horse trackways which led through the forest.

Under these circumstances I determined to send Hasting ahead with the horses instead of our mounting them, as the fact of Lord Edward being seen on horseback in the woodman's dress would excite suspicion. So, telling Hasting to make for the church green at Eldersfield by the horse trackway, we at once took the footpaths by Chaseley in the same direction.

Threading the narrow and intricate forest paths of Chaseley by ways no horse could follow, we emerged near an open space called Eldersfield, so named from the abundance of elder trees, with their flowers so famous for eye ointments, and their berries for “honey rob" and black pigments.

Here in the wilderness the Normans built a church, and in the clearings of the forest had settled a few franklins and their churls, but the trackways are still difficult to find and the village is most remote and hidden.

As we emerged from the forest to the knoll on which stands the church, we saw a tall, somewhat masculine, middle-aged woman, with large black eyes of a most searching character, sitting upon a large stone, and carrying in her hand a great bunch of wild sages freshly gathered. I at once knew this could be no other than the celebrated “Mary of Eldersfield,” whom some called a witch and others a herbalist. In former days she used to come to Berew and our Manor House, but latterly she had led the life of a recluse, going nowhere save to the house of sickness, where with her great skill and famous medicaments she was ever welcome.

She arose as we approached, and, with her peculiar long stride, advanced to meet us. Recognising me at once from my likeness to my father, she said, “Rosamond Berew bid me watch and tell you that wolves are abroad, and your road by the horse trackway already beset. Follow me!”

She led the way by a clearing to the borders of the forest, until we arrived at a rounded knoll, “the Pudden Krok,” of which Hasting had related the tale of the marvellous stag. The “Krok” is covered with large yew trees, and Mary bid me mount one of these and to conceal myself as much as possible among the dense foliage while I scanned the valley below. On doing so I perceived that the trackway was full of soldiers between us and our destination, and that no horseman could pass without challenge. Our guide then put her fingers to her lips, and motioned to us to follow her.

Descending from the Krok in the direction of the Camp of Gadbury, she conducted us up a short steep slope to the perfectly level platform on the summit of the ancient stronghold. There were no trees, but the entire area was covered with dense scrub of gorse, honesty, ivy, and brambles, which was impenetrable save by the aid of the billhook. No path could we see until our guide pushed aside a mass of gorse and passed into a narrow cutting, which led through walls of scrub and thorns to the centre of the platform. Here was a strange structure of wooden logs, interlaced with twigs and bedaubed with mud. It was circular, with four slits looking north, south, east, and west, down narrow paths cut in the scrub, which were straight for a short distance and then winded through the thick underwood. The apertures could be closed at night with wooden doors, and were large enough to allow of escape from any one of them. The place was a remarkable contrivance for safety and retreat.

Inviting us to enter, our guide drew a bench from under a table and motioned us to be seated. Two brown owls, known as “hooters,” blinked upon us from a wicker cage, and a large raven hopped upon the floor. With these, in apparent intimacy, was a large black cat, and outside, in a box of wooden strips, a blackbird was singing with all his might. A small wooden bedstead, a bench, a table, and a wooden cupboard was all the furniture the hut contained. On the table was a parchment covered with groups of stars, and a number of dried plants arranged in bundles; also several adders were dried and hung by their tails from the wooden logs of the walls. Dried newts hung about in clusters.

Such was the furniture within the dwelling of the famed “Witch of Eldersfield,” who was celebrated for her wonderful cures both of man and beast, and the good which ever waited on her pharmacy.

I observed that Lord Edward surveyed this dwelling and its surroundings with a suspicious look, as if we had entered into a witch's den, which Mary observing said, “Fear not, Sir, these are but nostrums for fevers and rheumatism, and neither Tab or her mistress ever injured man or beast.”

We had not, however, been long within the dwelling when the sound of a bugle-horn among the gorse showed that the Lancastrians had ascended the hill and might discover the retreat of the herbalist. On this, Mary led us down one of the paths through dense scrub down the hill, and below we could see the glitter of the steel caps of the soldiery, and hear their shouts to their companions on the platform.

Pointing, to a large oak, the trunk of which appeared as firm and sound as that of any tree of the forest, she whispered to Lord Edward that there was a hollow in the middle fork where he might lie hidden, and begged of him to ascend the tree and there wait in shelter until we returned on the removal of the soldiers.

Having seen him safely hidden in the hollow of the oak, Mary returned to her retreat upon the platform, while I descended the hill towards the trackway, as I had no fear, clad as I was in the hunter's dress of the Malvern Chase, that I should be mistaken for a fugitive Yorkist. In the meantime it struck me that the hollow oak might be the cause of the sudden disappearance of the “Witch of Eldersfield,” which certain tales of the surrounding peasantry recounted.

On reaching the trackway I saw our own horses and Hasting surrounded by a troop of men-at-arms. They were led by an officer clad in a stout jerkin of green, with yellow buskins, and wearing a steel bonnet projecting far over the face. He was speaking roughly to Hasting when I walked forward boar-spear in hand.

As I wore the crest of our house, the Talbot, embroidered upon the sleeve of my jerkin, he saw I was of gentle blood, and said, “Pardon, Sir, I asked your follower a plain question and I cannot get a plain answer. I inquired if he had seen a young man of tall and comely stature, with blue eyes and fair hair, and he tells me 'he knows the spoor of a boar from the stud of a stag'—at least such I understand to be the drift of his unintelligible speech.”

I apologised for Hasting, who spoke only the Saxon dialect so prevalent in our forest land, and was ignorant of the French parlance of the more cultivated classes. Observing the velvet with which his jerkin was trimmed, I knew that the Lancastrian was of knightly order, so I made the low bow usual in addressing one of his rank and station.

“I am Sire Andrew Trollop,” said the Knight, “and am engaged in searching for rebels and traitors to our Lord the King, and there is little doubt, from all we hear, that Edward of March, the eldest son and heir of that foul traitor the Duke of York, is in these wilds, having escaped from Wigmore.” “And,” he continued, “I never saw a better hiding-place than this Gadbury, or more formidable thickets to search for boar, or stag, or traitor. There are fifty men in those woodlands, and another half-score are gone to the summit, yet not a sign can be seen of any one of them. However, here come some of them.”

As he spoke, several men-at-arms appeared leading or, rather dragging, Mary of Eldersfield, with the cry too often heard, “The witch! the witch!” One of the soldiers carried an owl with his neck twisted, another had a handful of dried beetles, another displayed some dried herbs and adder skins with as much pride as if they were the honourable trophies of war.

The impeachment of the Duchess of Gloucester for witchcraft, the burning of Margery Jourdayn at Smithfield, and the hanging of Roger Bolingbroke for necromancy were still topics of general conversation, and were examples of the fate one convicted of witchcraft was likely to meet with at the hands of the highest judges in the land. Courtiers, priests, and bishops went to see the burning of a witch, as they would the baiting of a bull. Nor was their example lost upon the lower classes. A man who was a student was very apt to be set down as a wizard, and the fact of such animals as owls and cats being seen in the house of an aged woman was enough to satisfy the soldiers of the undoubted witchcraft of our guide. But Mary was not old, nor ugly, nor withered, and even under the trying circumstances in which she was placed there was an air of dignity as she raised her tall form, and quietly awaited the judgment of the leader of the boisterous soldiery around.

Having heard the circumstances of her apprehension and looked at the contents of her dwelling displayed by the soldiers, Sire Andrew said: “We can give her the ordeal of the nearest water, and see whether she will sink or swim”—a judgment which was willingly acquiesced in by the soldiers, who, more in sport than in cruelty, would have tossed her into one of the large deep marl pits filled with water which are abundant in the neighbourhood.

It was time to interfere, and I said to Sire Andrew:

“This is no witch, she is merely a poor herbalist of the forest, who is well known for the cures effected by her nostrums; her witchments, if witchments they are, are for good and not for evil, and every village has some record of her healing.'

“I care nothing for her nostrums,” said Trollop, with a glitter in his cruel grey eyes. “This is enough for me! I have burnt half-a-dozen hags, before now, for having in their possession less cunning means of necromancy and wicked philtering than these,” and he held up the adder skins to my view. “She sinks or swims in that slough before we part.”

“Not while I am present, Sire Andrew Trollop,” I said. “I will not stand by and see an innocent woman put to the torture of the ordeal you propose, because a set of ignorant soldiers choose to imagine that she is a witch.”

The Lancastrian paled with passion as he shouted:

“And pray, Master Springall, what is to prevent me from putting you into that horsepool, or hanging you to that oak? You propose to interfere with my commission, given at Worcester by our royal master, King Henry, which is to take and apprehend all witches and wizards, and malcontents such as you, and deal with them according to my best judgment, and that judgnient is—”

“Gently, gently, Sire Andrew,” said the officer in command of a large party of soldiers who had been searching Gadbury, and now joined their comrades, “I may not have you talk of hanging my good and excellent friend, Hildebrande de Brute.” Then turning back his steel bonnet, he displayed the handsome face of Roger Calverley, of Branshill, who, at the head of his retainers, had, it seems, assisted the bully in his search for the Yorkists. “You are not in a country, Sire Andrew,” he continued, “where even the king's writ will avail for such tyranny as you propose. It is such conduct as yours,” he proceeded in a tone of the highest indignation, “which makes the name of Lancastrian to stink in the land, conduct utterly unworthy of a knight and gentleman.”

Trollop was a coward, as all traitors are, and said he merely intended to give me a fright, and the ducking would do the witch no harm. “Ask the crone yourself, Master Calverley,” he said, “what necromancy and philtering these portend,” as he pointed to a bunch of snake sloughs in the hands of a soldier.

Calverley turned to Mary, and questioned her as to the uses of the various trophies from her dwelling. She replied that they were all used in pharmacy, and gave a short description of the different diseases to which they were applied. He then inquired from me what character the supposed witch bore amongst her neighbours in the forest villages, and I informed him that she went by the name of Mary of Eldersfield, and was most notable for her knowledge of herb pharmacy, and the efficacy of her nostrums.

Calverley then called me aside, and advised me to ride homewards and keep quiet for a time: “For you know,” he said, “that your father is suspected of being a supporter of the House of York, and the Court is now determined to make examples of any that outwardly manifest their adherence to what now is a ruined cause, as you must know. In a short time the Yorkist leaders must be in the power of the Crown, and Queen Margaret never spares an enemy. This fellow,” he said, alluding to Trollop, “is the traitor who betrayed York and Warwick, and I would willingly be rid of his company, for I hate traitors even if they serve our cause. He rode from Gloucester to Branshill early this morning with some half-score troopers, and a letter from Lord Belmore to my father asking for aid to search this side the Severn, as Edward of March is believed to be hiding in this immediate neighbourhood. Now, my good friend and brother of woodcraft, let me beg of you to lose no time in riding to your home at Birtsmereton, and when next we meet, I trust this storm will have passed away.”

“We will ride on, Sir Knight,” he said haughtily to Trollop, “it is not impossible that Edward of March may be sheltered in the thickets, though I, for one, would rather meet him on the battle-field than be seeking for him as I would for a murderer or a thief. Order your sleuth-hounds to stand back, Sir, and follow at a distance” (for Sire Andrew's half-score men at-arms came round their leader), “they are no company for the retainers of Branshill, who are soldiers, not witch-takers, or curs which hunt thieves.” Then sounding three blasts upon the silver horn which hung at his baldrick, Calverley led the way slowly on the road to Hasfield, Trollop following, with a hang-dog look, behind.

I congratulated Mary of Eldersfield upon our escape; then, when the men-at-arms were out of sight, I told Hasting to remain where he was, and, accompanied by “The Witch,” proceeded to the oak where I expected Lord Edward was chafing at his long confinement.

This was the case, and Lord Edward did not improve matters by his excessive hurry to descend from his hiding-place. No sooner had I assisted him from the hollow into the branches than he leaped down from the tree to the ground, and, falling heavily, sprained his knee so badly that he was almost incapable of standing, and the pain was very great.

The question now was, “What we should do?” To ascend the hill to Mary's hut was impossible, and it was not easy to reach the horses below. However, Mary was equal to the predicament, and telling me to remain quietly with Lord Edward, she strode up a pathway to her abode, and in a short time descended with a small phial of oil and a bunch of the “danewort.” Begging me to cut away the top of Lord Edward's buskin with my dagger so as to expose the injured limb, she proceeded to rub in the oil. During the operation, I observed Lord Edward crossing himself from time to time with a singular expression of fear on his countenance for one who in danger was so collected and unmoved. After the rubbing he was not only able to stand, but with the aid of my arm to walk slowly towards the trackway where the horses were waiting, but he refused the aid of Mary's arm, which she offered more than once. I assisted him to mount “Roan Roland,” and he then thanked Mary for her medicaments, adding, “May God, good woman, preserve you from the wiles of Satan.”

Chapter 4. LORD EDWARD OF MARCH AT BIRTSMERTON—HANLEY CASTLE

We reached Birtsmereton without further adventure and found my father was still absent, not having returned from Hanley Castle. I resigned Lord Edward, for a time, to the care of my mother and her damsels, and busied myself in superintending the arrangement of our panelled chamber for the comfort of our illustrious guest. I placed a couch near the great chimney, and had a fire of logs lighted. I then looked carefully to the secret chamber, as it was by no means improbable that some Lancastrian men-at-arms, holding a writ from King Henry, now at Coventry, might insist upon the right of search. Touching the spring, I thoroughly examined the chamber and the swinging stone by which egress could be obtained to the terrace above the moat. I then waited on Lord Edward, and conducted him to the couch.

He had taken off the woodman's gear, and was now clad in a loose robe of my father's. Lying at full length upon the couch, he laughed and said: I wonder what Warwick would say if he saw me now, tended like a sick girl from having a sprained knee. What poor creatures we are, Master Hildebrande, when hurt and wounded. I vow that I should be as useless in a fray, at this present moment, as if I had a broken limb. But I must not complain; I owe you my life, and, what is dearer, my liberty. Have you news of Warwick yet? What men-at-arms has he at this hunting place of Hanley, which I have heard him speak of as part of the dower of his Countess?”

As he thus asked question after question, a damsel entered with the tapers in our noblest silver sconces, and commenced arranging the table for supper. Soon after my mother came with other maidens, and the repast was quickly served. I was struck with the grace and courtesy with which he addressed my mother, and he received nought at the hands of the serving maidens without a bow or slight wave of the hand.

Supper over, he requested my mother to sit at the foot of his couch, and proceeded to relate to her our adventures of the day—the meeting with Mary of Eldersfield, her hiding him in the hollow oak, the appearance of her dwelling, and his strong suspicion that sorcery intermingled with her pharmacy.

“I have good reason, Mistress de Brute,” he said, “to fear and hate sorcery and witchcraft; my young brother Richard, not yet nine years old, was tall and as straight as a young poplar tree, when one day he happened to ride on his palfrey against an old crone. She cursed him by her demons and attendant fiends, and look at him now. The blessing of the Holy Father of Rome, and the prayers of our Archbishop, and all the assoilings of the Church have been ineffectual in removing some blast which affects him. Richard has crooked shoulders through that hag's sorcery, and I much doubt if he ever lives to be a man.”

“Yet,” he continued, “I would not find fault with the bridge that carried me safe across the gulf and I might now have been a prisoner in the hands of the Lancastrians but for your witch of this wild Chase ; her nostrums too are good for my injured knee, which is less painful since the application of those herb bracings.”

My gentle mother replied that witchcraft was no doubt a device of Satan, but that my father had told her there were wise men, like Master Roger Bacon, and wise women too, who were neither witches nor wizards, and she had always heard Mary of Eldersfield spoken of as famous for her pharmacy.

As the evening passed, Lord Edward made inquiry as to the disposition of various families in the neighbourhood towards the rival claims of York and Lancaster, and he then expressed a wish to retire for the night, finding his knee painful. While assisting him to the great tapestried chamber, he inquired how old I was? When I replied that I was almost twenty-one years of age, he asked me what age I supposed him to be? I guessed a score of years and five, whereupon he laughed, and said forsooth I was the older of the two. Truly it was difficult to believe such a stalwart form could be yet so youthful.

Promising to attend him in the early morning, he said: “Good night, my good friend Hildebrande'; Edward of March feels as safe under your honest roof-tree as he would in his father's halls at Wigmore, or his strong castle at Ludlow; nay, safer, since we may no longer depend upon a Saint's oath or a Queen's honour.”

I could not sleep, however, when I went to my chamber, and stood for a long time at the casement gazing at the reflection of the moon on the moat, and the forms of the dark trees beyond, and listening to the call of the coots as they swam to and fro across the water. I thought of Rosamond Berew, her beautiful smile, her courage, her bright and modest ways, and I wondered if she ever thought of me in that quiet home of hers below the round hill of Berew. At last I sought my couch and was only awakened by the sunlight streaming in at my casement, and the clatter of arms as my father rode over the drawbridge into the courtyard, attended by the archers who accompanied him to Hanley Castle.

I was soon dressed and waited on him with the news of the safety of our guest, when the expression of his face told me that all was not well at Hanley Castle. I then learnt from him that after the dispersal of the Yorkist camp before Ludlow, the King had summoned a Parliament to meet at Coventry, and had attainted the Duke of York, his Duchess, his sons, the Earl and Countess of Salisbury, their son the Earl of Warwick, Lord Clinton, and many others. The army of 60,000 men was broken up into separate corps. King Henry was at Coventry with the Queen, and was expected to besiege Lord Warwick's great stronghold at Warwick, while other corps were massed at Worcester, and two were marching to London.

The Duke of York was believed to have escaped to Ireland from Wales, and Lord Warwick had so few followers with him at Hanley Castle that my father and others had counselled his flight also, as it was impossible to hold Hanley if the Lancastrians should bring up culverins to bear upon it, and which they had at Worcester.

It was therefore necessary, as soon as Lord Edward was able to move, to conduct him to Hanley Castle, where he would be in a safer asylum than in our small moated grange, should his track be followed by those Lancastrians, who would hear of his having been seen in the Chase of Gloucester.

I now proceeded to Lord Edward's bedchamber, and found that a night's rest had greatly relieved him. I was again struck with his courageous bearing as he received the tidings of the complete dispersal of his father's followers, and the apparent crushing out of all his ambitious schemes for power. “We shall meet that false Queen and her puppet king again,” said he; “the White Rose shall yet blossom on the banner