The Iron Star - And What It Saw on Its Journey Through the Ages Part 7

Why should not a man give a farm to his cousin when he died, especially when that cousin's wife, Matilda, was another cousin? Then Harold, Duke of Wess.e.x, had sworn by a whole tubful of relics of dead saints that when Edward died he would not stand in William's way.

That, too, was a great thing to do. A promise ought to be kept to the letter, and how much more a sacred oath like that!--although men do say that Harold did not know there was a relic within a mile of him at the time he gave the promise.

But that promise Harold had not kept. On the contrary, he had claimed, first, that when he made it he had been s.h.i.+pwrecked on the Norman coast; he was really a prisoner, and gave the promise that he might get away; which as a matter of honour but made a bad matter worse.

Then, more reasonably, from our point of view, he claimed that the kingdom of England belonged to the English, and was not his to give.

Englishmen had made _him_ King, not William, and that was the end of it,--an answer which was likely to drive William nearly wild. And it did. William swore a great oath that before he died he would be King of all England. And Ulf, with many another, promised to help him.

Then Ulf went straight back to his s.h.i.+p again and that very night set a double guard as anchor-watch, for never in all his life, he said, had he seen so many thieves together at one time, and so few honest men. All of those same thieves and the other few presently set sail across the channel; and, odd to say, to this day there are men who proudly claim that a very far back ancestor of theirs "came over with William the Conqueror." But perhaps they have made themselves believe that that particular person was one of those honest ones.

Ulf talked it over with young Wulf in the first watch that night.

"If England were one 'twould be a mad voyage," he said. "Mind thou this, Wulf, when thou art captain, one arrow can be broken. Two also.

But to break a bundle is another matter. This Harold is a strong man, but he has only a part of the country behind him. His own brother, Tostig, has raised a fleet against him, Thor knows where."

"His brother?" and Wulf stared in amaze.

"So William says, and he is a fox. Tostig is a hothead; he cannot govern himself, so of course he cannot rule others. He was made lord of the Northumbrians because of his royal blood, but they were men, not thralls, and presently told him that his health would be better in another land. Then he looked to Harold to help him with an army, but Harold found the Northumbrians were so much in the right of it that Tostig's rule was over, for help him he could not with any show of justice. Now, then, Tostig is sailing with the King of Norway, to raid the northern coasts."

"What! is Harold Hardrada of Norway with us too?"

"So William says. Harold Hardrada, the 'stern in council' is to strike at the mouth of the river Humber, while we land in the south country.

It is easier so."

And it was. For the old story-tellers say that Harold of England marched with his army, night and day, to meet the raiders of Tostig; and with twenty of his house-guards he rode far ahead, hoping to meet and have peace with his brother and save England. Almost he succeeded, also, for he gave him a brother's welcome, a brother's love; promised him lands and a share in government; and Tostig was well-nigh persuaded. But he was in bad company. He had brought over this band of cutthroats, with the greatest of them all at their head, under promise of unlimited plunder. And now what about them? So he had to put the question to his brother.

"What shall be the share of my--friend, Harold Hardrada, who has come so far for me?" Then, they say, Harold of England gave a right royal answer. What was to be the share of this pirate?

"Seven feet of English ground for a grave. Or, as he is said to be a very tall man, perhaps we can allow him a little more."

If you would like to know more about Harold Hardrada, and what he did in his youth among the Turks at Constantinople, you can read a great deal in Sir Walter Scott's novel, "Count Robert of Paris," some of which, perhaps, is true. But, great fighter though he was, now was the time for his last battle; and on September 25, 1066, at Stamford- bridge, Harold of England met him and put him into the "seven feet of English ground" which he had promised him. It was a great victory, yet a sad one; for Tostig had refused the terms and fell fighting against his own countrymen, to be buried with the pirates whom he had captained. And in the South at Pevensey, four days later, William was landing.

Down came Harold from his victory, weary with fighting, weary with marching, yet sternly earnest to drive back the invaders and save the land from being harried, if he could. But October was half through before he met them at Hastings. All day long, on the 14th, they fought, and Harold held his own, though with the smaller army. Each man knew his place, and kept it, and William found them a wall of iron. At last his captains pa.s.sed the word for a false retreat. The Saxons of Harold, with cheers, broke ranks to pursue, when round wheeled the Normans like hawks and plunged among them. Then came the cras.h.i.+ng of battle-axe on helmet, and like a long, slow wave, the Norman line swept onward and the Saxon helms went down. A brief check around the summit of a hill, where Harold and his guards had rallied, --then arrows sped in flights upward to fall straight down among them.

Their ranks were broken. And one by one each fell like a soldier in soldierly fas.h.i.+on where he stood with the loved captain among them.

Just as, eight hundred years afterward in America fell the blue-clad soldiers around their general, Custer, fighting the Sioux Indians on the Western plains.

Thus William the Conqueror began to conquer England, and when he ended England was his own. Everywhere his captains built their castles, and where that captain was a Thorfin it was bad for the land. Still, now and then there was an Ulf among them, or one like him, who knew better how to govern; and all was well with them and theirs for many days.

Do you care to know what next the fragments of our Star beheld?

SPARK X.

HOW THE STAR SANG A SONG OF FREEDOM TO A CAPTIVE KING.

Once again all England was under one King. It was a sad time for the English, for the word of the Northman was the law, and wherever there seemed need for it, a grim, gray castle towered up solidly above the forest, with a great ditch, called a moat, dug around it; and behind that water and those walls of stone lived Normans, as they now were called.

Ulf, like the others, had his castle, and governed broad lands; but so well, and so well did Wulf and Wulf's son in his time, that nothing of note ever happened there, and therefore n.o.body ever heard of them. No man's house was burned by them with the owner in it. No one's cattle were carried off to the use of the castle without just payment. No one was killed without good cause, or what, in those days, was thought to be good cause. So this part of England lived long in placid quiet.

There was no other castle within long marches through forest and bogland hard to pa.s.s over; and, for all of Ulf's peacefulness, if Thorfin, or some of his mates, wanted excitement, and thought it would be a good day to ride out and harry the land or besiege the home of a neighbour, someone would remember the old, old days around Sigurd's Vik, and suggest that to-morrow would be a better day than this to visit Ulf; the to-morrow that never came.

Daneshold they called it now; that is to say, the home, or hold of the Danes; and since they now spoke Norman-French more often than Saxon- English or Danish, Wulf's son was named Loup, which was pretty good French for "wolf;" and one more generation fled away under his rule, with nothing to record. Then came the day of his son in turn; Louis, or as he was now called in the new fas.h.i.+on, Louis of Daneshold.

Now Ulf had ploughed the sea so much in his youth that he was delighted to plough the land for the rest of his life. Wulf, as a boy, saw quite enough of sea-life to satisfy _him._ As it happened, Loup cared little for roaming; and the old traditions of the past were quite forgotten. But one day young Louis of Daneshold entered the armoury by chance, and came across a somewhat rusty old s.h.i.+rt of mail, quite out of style. He knew it must date back to the time of the vikings, and must have seen many a wild fray, and the fancy took him to polish it up and look for scars. In those days a lad was taught to s.h.i.+ne up his armour as carefully as now he would be expected to polish his boots, and it was a pleasure to Louis to sit down with sand and buff-leather in the narrow window of the tower, and rub away at the steel until his arm ached. Then when the sunlight trickled over the mesh as brightly as it ever did, he began his scar-hunting. Then he rubbed his eyes with amazement, for scar there was none! Not a link was broken, not a dent. Only on one shoulder lay a thin shadow when the light was right, clearly the score of a swas.h.i.+ng blow yet too shallow to be called a scar. What a wonderful thing was this!

He sprang up and slipped it on over his broad young shoulders. It fitted like a glove, and the sunset glow flushed in at the window and streamed across him in a ruddy battle-flood. In that same second he was seized with a longing to leave all this peacefulness, this land of lowing cattle and calm sunset, and see other lands and other ways of living. It was in his blood. A roamer he must be, as his great- grandfather had been before him. Then and there he made up his mind to be in the fas.h.i.+on with the courtly world that stirred in the heart of England. He would join the Crusade!

Do you know what that was?

In Palestine lies the holy city of Jerusalem, the burial-place of Jesus. For hundreds of years men had journeyed there,--folk called them pilgrims,--because it was such a holy place that just to visit it was thought to make men better, and more sure of Heaven in the eternity to come. But the way was hard and dangerous, and the journey at last became almost impossible; for from the far East had come Arabs, Moors, Syrians, dark races who wore turbans, whose flag was red with a silver crescent in it, and who wors.h.i.+pped G.o.d in another and a bloodier way than ours. To them, also, Jerusalem was a holy place.

Westward their armies swept until at last they captured the city, and they hold it as a Moslem possession to this day,--though twice for a short time it was wrested from them by the armies of the West. It seemed to those western men a terrible thing thus to surrender the sacred city to the "infidel." So king after king planned expeditions, with his neighbours, and sailed away with their bravest knights and fighting-men to recover it. These expeditions were called "crusades,"

and it was the third of these that Louis of Daneshold made up his mind to join.

Now, if he had been a great captain he would have sailed with a small army of fighting-men at his back, but being as he was, but a youth, with his war days all before him, he started more modestly; for in those times young men who had not learned by experience were content to work their way upward in the train of some knight of renown and wait for chances to win their names. Also, it was thought to be such a privilege that a famous knight was likely to have in his company as squires (as such usually well-born attendants were called) only the sons of his own personal friends; thus the best chance that Louis could obtain was but to be a squire in the troop of a poor knight who was quite unknown, and who was glad indeed to have a broad-shouldered youth along who paid his own way, and his own retainer's also, instead of asking payment.

So, while on s.h.i.+p and in camp, and on the journey, Louis was but one of a mult.i.tude, and his leader little better. But when they entered Palestine it was another story. Both were light-weights, and their horses stood the journey better than their comrades; thus gradually they began to be in the leading troops while on the march. The old- style cut of Louis's armour had caused him some heartaches when he was with his plate-armoured mates, but the very uniqueness of it caused the leading knights to rest their eyes on him when scanning their men for a good one to send out as a scout, and after one or two trials they began to learn that in all their host they had no swifter horseman, nor a keener eye for an ambush; nor, when it came to the point, a deadlier swordsman than that same blue-eyed, fair-haired lad.

And at last there came a day when the army was in line of battle against the Saracen; when the Knights of the Temple vied with the knights of other orders each striving to carry their flag farthest into that th.o.r.n.y jungle of flas.h.i.+ng scimitars, and the huge arm of King Richard the Lion-hearted hewed a red road for them all which none could equal; for was he not the strongest man in the two entire armies--this King who could sever an iron bar with a swordstroke? But ever as he plunged with fresh zeal and ringing warcry into the heart of the fray, he became aware of a knight and his squire that as surely as his shadow, kept but a pace behind him; and the blows that were struck in that fight under the burning sun and with the loose sand of the desert underfoot made the day one to be remembered long by those that lived beyond it.

At last a fresh troop of tried warriors pressed forward on the wearied men of the West. Louder rang the shout of the turbaned men--

"Allah! Allahu!"

Backward, slowly yet surely, they drove their enemies everywhere save in that one spot where Richard swung his mace; and even he, too, gave place for a yard or two, leaving Louis and the other knight fighting like wildcats, back to back. Then Louis went down--down--into darkness. Of what happened next, how his leader for long minutes stood above him guarding both, till with a roar the angry King burst through the Saracens and rescued them, he knew nothing until he woke days afterward, feeling very tired, and a little light-headed, and oddly weak; just awake enough to wonder how he happened to be in a royal tent, watched over by a handsome, golden-haired young man, who smiled sunnily at him and talked to him in good French, saying that his name was Blondel. That Richard had declared so good a squire was worth being cared for by a king; and that Louis had but one business on hand, which was to go to sleep again, which he presently very contentedly did.

Now, this is not a history of King Richard. If you would like to know more about him and what he did in England and in Palestine you can read two of Sir Walter Scott's best books, "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman," and very stirring times they tell about. What we are most concerned with is what the fragments of the Iron Star saw in their travels, and one stout piece of its steel had now parted from its comrades for ever. In that terrible battle, what was the value of one sword, more or less, to the knights as they charged and fell back with the surging of the red tide? So the sword that Louis wielded lay uncared for where it fell.

Meanwhile, yonder in the royal tent Louis and Blondel had joyous times together. It was delightful for the young Englishman to lie back among his cus.h.i.+ons, with a servant to fan him and hand him cooling drink, to watch through the looped-up doorway the men-at-arms without, wrestling, quoit-throwing, boxing, fencing, in the way that men of English blood, the world over, keep their muscles st.u.r.dy and lithe, quick to guard their heads.

It was blissful, though embarra.s.sing, when through the tent came Richard's stately little queen Berengaria, or her taller, more dignified cousin Edith, two of the most beautiful of women, and deigned to ask graciously, in the soft, low voice of pity, how he did.

It was soul-stirring when the great King himself came striding in, perhaps full of wrath over some bit of state-craft gone wrong, perhaps joyous with the prospect of another battle; perhaps in as happy and more peaceful a mood, when he would seize the harp of Blondel and sweep the strings with ma.s.sive, yet practised hands, and send his great voice rolling across the encampment in thundering song, like the impetuous Frenchman that he was.

_For Richard I. was French!_ We are so apt to look on him as the King of the English, and as being so very much of an Englishman as to be the sample of the race, that we are apt to forget that although he was born in England his mother was French, his father French by descent, and Richard himself ruled England for the most of his reign from his home in France--when he was not off on a Crusade away from both countries--and carried on wars in France. All told, he did not live twelve months on English soil. But the knights of England were so French--Norman-French--themselves that this did not greatly matter to them. Still less did it matter to Louis! But one day those great hands picked up the harp more hastily than usual and with a war-song clashed the strings; and presently there came a sharp tw.a.n.g or two, and the singer looked at Blondel like a schoolboy caught in mischief for the harp lay a wreck in his hands.

"Never mind, Blondel," laughed the royal culprit, "there is gold yet in our coffers with which to buy another."

"That may be, your Majesty," replied Blondel, ruefully, "But all the gold of Saladin could not buy what is not; and where to look for harp- strings in this land of sand is beyond me!"

Then spoke up Louis from his couch right gladly,

"But I have a set! I found them packed away with my armour by some mistake of a retainer, although I know more of sword-play than of music."

"Time enough yet for both, lad," cried the King. "The true knight is master of both, and knight shalt thou be when next on horse again!" A matter which indeed came to pa.s.s; for Richard laughingly declared that, considering that the young man already had fairly won his knightly spurs in the field, never was a set of harp-strings so cheaply bought before as by the exchange just ordered. But Louis lay back on his cus.h.i.+ons with his heart fluttering like a girl's, knowing well that it was but a jest of the merry monarch's, and that the real honour he meant the world to know was battle-won.

Thus he came back from Palestine "Sir Louis of Daneshold," with the red cross of the Crusader blazoned on his shoulder, and knighted by the King's own hand. And thus it came to pa.s.s, also, that Blondel struck up such a friends.h.i.+p for the giver of the harp-strings, and found them so wonderfully resonant, that when the expedition broke up and all started homeward, he insisted on going with him, at least part way. Thus they had a joyous journeying together by land and sea.

But one day, after they had parted company, word came to Blondel as he sang at the banquet table of a castle; a word carelessly spoken by a guest as of a matter which every one knew. And by cautious questioning he learned that Richard of England had never reached his kingdom; that Leopold, Duke of Austria, treacherously had made him prisoner while crossing his dukedom, whither a s.h.i.+pwreck had driven him, and handed him to an enemy of his, Emperor Henry VI., who paid sixty thousand pounds for him and now held him chained deep in some one of the many castles of his domain. In which one, no one knew.