“But you maintained your post?” said the Templar. “We lost the outwork on our part.”
“That is a shrewd loss,” said De Bracy; “the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-Boeuf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull’s head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?”
“How?” exclaimed the Templar; “deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind? — Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy! — The ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and dishonourable composition.”
“Let us to the walls, then,” said De Bracy, carelessly; “that man never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions? — Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!”
“Wish for whom thou wilt,” said the Templar, “but let us make what defence we can with the soldiers who remain — They are chiefly Front-de-Boeuf’s followers, hated by the English for a thousand acts of insolence and oppression.”
“The better,” said De Bracy; “the rugged slaves will defend themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing, then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood and lineage.”
“To the walls!” answered the Templar; and they both ascended the battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders’ observation to this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Bracy should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack.
Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-Boeuf, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-Boeuf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of Jerusalem, “with a great sum,” and Front-de-Boeuf preferred denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician.
But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron’s heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition; — a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!
“Where be these dog-priests now,” growled the Baron, “who set such price on their ghostly mummery? — where be all those unshod Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-Boeuf founded the convent of St Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close — where be the greedy hounds now? — Swilling, I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl. — Me, the heir of their founder — me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for — me — ungrateful villains as they are! — they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled! — Tell the Templar to come hither — he is a priest, and may do something — But no! — as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell. — I have heard old men talk of prayer — prayer by their own voice — Such need not to court or to bribe the false priest — But I— I dare not!”
“Lives Reginald Front-de-Boeuf,” said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, “to say there is that which he dares not!”
The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Boeuf heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, “Who is there? — what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven? — Come before my couch that I may see thee.”
“I am thine evil angel, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf,” replied the voice.
“Let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou be’st indeed a fiend,” replied the dying knight; “think not that I will blench from thee. — By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that I shrunk from the conflict!”
“Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf,” said the almost unearthly voice, “on rebellion, on rapine, on murder! — Who stirred up the licentious John to war against his grey-headed father — against his generous brother?”
“Be