Gaston's face had darkened. He could not gainsay his brother's reluctant words, but he chafed beneath them as a restive horse beneath the curb rein tightly drawn.
"Yet our mother bid us watch and be ready. She spoke often of our lost inheritance, and she knew all the peril, the danger."
Raymond's eyes sought his brother's face. He looked like one striving to recall a dim and almost lost memory.
"But thinkest thou, Gaston, that in thus speaking our mother was thinking of the strong fortress of Saut? I can scarce believe that she would call that our birthright. For we are not of the eldest branch of our house. There must be many whose title would prove far better than our own. We might perchance win it back to the house of De Brocas by act of conquest; but even so, I misdoubt me if we should hold it in peace. We have proud kinsfolk in England, they tell us, whose claim, doubtless, would rank before ours. They care not to cross the water to win back the lands themselves, yet I trow they would put their claim before the King did tidings reach them that their strong and wily foe had been ousted therefrom. We win not back lands for others to hold, nor would we willingly war against our own kindred. Methinks, my Brother, that our mother had other thoughts in her mind when she spoke of our rightful inheritance."
"Other thoughts! nay, now, what other thoughts?" asked Gaston, with quick impatience. "I have never dreamed but of Saut. I have called it in my thoughts our birthright ever since we could walk far enow to look upon its frowning battlements perched upon yon wooded crag."
And Gaston stretched out his hand in the direction in which the Castle of Saut lay, not many leagues distant.
"We have heard naught save of Saut ever since we could run alone. What but that could our mother's words have boded? Sure she looked to us to recover yon fortress as our father once meant to do?"
"I know not altogether, and yet I can scarce believe it was so. Would that our father had left some commands we might have followed. But, Brother, canst thou not recall that other name she spoke so many a time and oft as she lay a-dying? Sure it was some such name as Basildon or Basildene – the name of some fair spot, I trow, where she must once have lived. Gaston, canst thou remember the day when she called us to her, and joined our hands together, and spoke of us as 'the twin brothers of Basildene'? I have scarce thought of it from that hour to this, but it comes back now clearly to my mind. In sooth, it might well have been of Basildene she was thinking when she gave us that last charge. What could she have known or cared for Saut and its domain? She had fled hither from England, I know not why. She knew but little of the ways and the thoughts of those amongst whom she had come to dwell. It might well have been of her own land that she was thinking so oft. I verily believe that Basildene is our lost inheritance."
"Basildene!" said Gaston quickly, with a start as of recollection suddenly stirred to life; "sure I remember the name right well now that thy words bring it back to mind. Yet it is years since I have heard it spoke. Raymond, knowest thou where is this Basildene?"
"In England, I well believe," was the answer of the other brother. "Methinks it was the name of our mother's home. I seem to remember how she told us of it – the old house over the sea, where she had lived. Perchance it was once her own in very sooth, and some turbulent baron or jealous kinsman drove her forth from it, even as we of the house of De Brocas have been ousted from the Castle of Saut. Brother, if that be so, Basildene is more our inheritance than yon gloomy fortress can be. We are our mother's only children, and when she joined our hands together she called us the twins of Basildene. I trow that we have an inheritance of our very own, Gaston, away over the blue water yonder."
Gaston's eyes flashed with sudden ardour and purpose.
Often of late had the twins talked together of the future that lay before them, of the doughty deeds they would accomplish; yet so far nothing of definite purpose had entered into their minds. Gaston's dreams had been all of the ancient fortress of Saut, now for long years passed into the hands of the hostile family, the terrible and redoubtable Sieur de Navailles, who was feared throughout the length and breadth of the country round about his house. Raymond had been dimly conscious of other thoughts and purposes, but memory was only gradually recalling to his mind the half-forgotten days of childhood, when the twin eaglets had stood at their mother's knee to talk with her in her own tongue of the land across the water where was her home – the land to which their father had lately passed, upon some mission the children were too young to understand.
Now the faint dim memories had returned clear and strong. The long silence was broken. Eagerly the boys strove to recall the past, and bit by bit things pieced themselves together in their minds till they could not but marvel how they had so long forgotten. Yet it is often so in youth. Days pass by one after the other unnoticed and unmarked. Then all in a moment some new train of thought or purpose is awakened, a new element enters life, making it from that day something different; and by a single bound the child becomes a youth – the youth a man.
Some such change as this was passing over the twin brothers at this time. A deep-seated dissatisfaction with their present surroundings had long been growing up in their hearts. They were happy in a fashion in the humble home at the mill, with good Jean the miller, and Margot his wife who had been their nurse and a second mother to them all their lives; but they knew that a great gulf divided them from the Gascon peasants amongst whom they lived – a gulf recognized by all those with whom they came in contact, and in nowise bridged by the fact that the brothers shared in a measure the simple peasant life, and had known no other.
Their very name of De Brocas spoke of the race of nobles who had long held almost sovereign rights over a large tract of country watered by the Adour and its many tributary streams; and although at this time, the year of grace 1342, the name of De Brocas was no more heard, but that of the proud Sieur de Navailles who now reigned there instead, the old name was loved and revered amongst the people, and the boys were bred up in all the traditions of their race, till the eagle nature at last asserted itself, and they felt that life could no longer go on in its old accustomed groove. Had they not been taught from infancy that a great future lay before them? and what could that future be but the winning back of their old ancestral lands and rights?
Perhaps they would have spoken more of this deeply-seated hope had it not been so very chimerical – so apparently impossible of present fulfilment. To wrest from the proud and haughty Sieur de Navailles the vast territory and strong castle that had been held by him in open defiance of many mandates from a powerful King, was a task that even the sanguine and ambitious boys knew to be a hundred times too hard for them. If they had dreamed of it in their hearts, they had scarce named the hope even to each other. But today the brooding silence had been broken. The twins had taken counsel one with the other; and now burning thoughts of this other fair inheritance were in the minds of both. What golden possibilities did not open out before them? How small a matter it seemed to cross the ocean and claim as their own that unknown Basildene! Both were certain that their mother had held it in her own right. Sure, if there were right or justice in the kingdom of the Roy Outremer, they would but have to show who and what they were, to become in very fact what their mother had loved to call them – the twin brothers of Basildene.
How their young hearts swelled with delighted expectation at the thought of leaving behind the narrow life of the mill, and going forth into the wide world to seek fame and fortune there! And England was no such foreign land to them, albeit they had never been above ten leagues from the mill where they had been born and brought up. Was not their mother an Englishwoman? Had she not taught them the language of her country, and begged them never to forget it? And could they not speak it now as well as they spoke the language of Gascony – better than they spoke the French of the great realm to which Gascony in a fashion belonged?
The thought of travel always brings with it a certain exhilaration, especially to the young and ardent, and thoughts of such a journey on such a quest could not but be tinged with all the rainbow hues of hope.
"We will go; we will go right soon!" cried Gaston. "Would that we could go tomorrow! Why have we lingered here so long, when we might have been up and doing years ago?"
"Nay, Brother, we were but children