Behind the knights, who were forbidden to scatter and must always follow the king’s person, there was a body of twenty or thirty hobelers or mounted bowmen, together with several squires, unarmed themselves but leading spare horses upon which the heavier part of their knights’ equipment was carried. A straggling tail of falconers, harbingers, varlets, body-servants and huntsmen holding hounds in leash completed the long and many-coloured train which rose and dipped on the low undulations of the moor.
Many weighty things were on the mind of Edward the king. There was truce for the moment with France, but it was a truce broken by many small deeds of arms, raids, surprises, and ambushes upon either side, and it was certain that it would soon dissolve again into open war. Money must be raised, and it was no light matter to raise it, now that the Commons had once already voted the tenth lamb and the tenth sheaf. Besides, the Black Death had ruined the country, the arable land was all turned to pasture, the labourer, laughing at statutes, would not work under fourpence a day, and all society was chaos. In addition, the Scotch were growling over the border, there was the perennial trouble in half-conquered Ireland, and his allies abroad in Flanders and in Brabant were clamouring for the arrears of their subsidies.
All this was enough to make even a victorious monarch full of care; but now Edward had thrown it all to the winds and was as lighthearted as a boy upon a holiday. No thought had he for the dunning of Florentine bankers or the vexatious conditions of those busybodies at Westminster. He was out with his hawks, and his thoughts and his talk should be of nothing else. The varlets beat the heather and bushes as they passed, and whooped loudly as the birds flew out.
“A magpie! A magpie!” cried the falconer.
“Nay, nay, it is not worthy of your talons, my brown-eyed queen,” said the king, looking up at the great bird which flapped from side to side above his head, waiting for the whistle which should give her the signal. “The tercels, falconer—a cast of tercels! Quick, man, quick! Ha! the rascal makes for wood! He puts in! Well flown, brave peregrine! He makes his point. Drive him out to thy comrade. Serve him, varlets! Beat the bushes! He breaks! He breaks! Nay, come away then! You will see master magpie no more.”
The bird had indeed, with the cunning of its race, flapped its way through brushwood and bushes to the thicker woods beyond, so that neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous beaters could harm it. The king laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the king soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent attendant flapping above his head.
“Is she not a noble bird, fair son?” he asked, glancing up as her shadow fell upon him.
“She is indeed, sire. Surely no finer ever came from the isles of the north.”
“Perhaps not, and yet I have had a hawk from Barbary as good a footer and a swifter flyer. An Eastern bird in yarak has no peer.”
“I had one once from the Holy Land,” said de Manny. “It was fierce and keen and swift as the Saracens themselves. They say of old Saladin that in his day his breed of birds, of hounds, and of horses had no equal on earth.”
“I trust, dear father, that the day may come when we shall lay our hands on all three,” said the Prince, looking with shining eyes upon the king. “Is the Holy Land to lie forever in the grasp of these unbelieving savages, or the Holy Temple to be defiled by their foul presence? Ah! my dear and most sweet lord, give to me a thousand lances with ten thousand bowmen like those I led at Crécy, and I swear to you by God’s soul that within a year I will have done homage to you for the Kingdom of Jerusalem!”
The King laughed as he turned to Walter Manny. “Boys will still be boys,” said he.
“The French do not count me such!” cried the young Prince, flushing with anger.
“Nay, fair son, there is no one sets you at a higher rate than your father. But you have the nimble mind and quick fancy of youth, turning over from the thing that is half done to a further task beyond. How would we fare in Brittany and Normandy while my young paladin, with his lances and his bowmen, was besieging Ascalon or battering at Jerusalem?”
“Heaven would help in Heaven’s work.”
“From what I have heard of the past,” said the king, dryly, “I cannot see that Heaven has counted for much as an ally in these wars of the East. I speak with reverence, and yet it is but sooth to say that Richard of the Lion Heart, or Louis of France, might have found the smallest earthly principality of greater service to him than all the celestial hosts. How say you to that, my lord bishop?”
A stout churchman, who had ridden behind the king on a solid, bay cob, well-suited to his weight and dignity, jogged up to the monarch’s elbow.
“How say
