The Outlaw of Torn

CHAPTER I

Here is a story that has lain dormant for seven hundred years. At first it was
suppressed by one of the Plantagenet kings of England. Later it was forgotten.
I happened to dig it up by accident. The accident being the relationship of my
wife’s cousin to a certain Father Superior in a very ancient monastery in
Europe.

He let me pry about among a quantity of mildewed and musty manuscripts and I
came across this. It is very interesting—partially since it is a bit of
hitherto unrecorded history, but principally from the fact that it records the
story of a most remarkable revenge and the adventurous life of its innocent
victim—Richard, the lost prince of England.

In the retelling of it, I have left out most of the history. What interested me
was the unique character about whom the tale revolves—the visored
horseman who—but let us wait until we get to him.

It all happened in the thirteenth century, and while it was happening, it shook
England from north to south and from east to west; and reached across the
channel and shook France. It started, directly, in the London palace of Henry
III, and was the result of a quarrel between the King and his powerful
brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

Never mind the quarrel, that’s history, and you can read all about it at
your leisure. But on this June day in the year of our Lord 1243, Henry so
forgot himself as to very unjustly accuse De Montfort of treason in the
presence of a number of the King’s gentlemen.

De Montfort paled. He was a tall, handsome man, and when he drew himself to his
full height and turned those gray eyes on the victim of his wrath, as he did
that day, he was very imposing. A power in England, second only to the King
himself, and with the heart of a lion in him, he answered the King as no other
man in all England would have dared answer him.

“My Lord King,” he cried, “that you be my Lord King alone
prevents Simon de Montfort from demanding satisfaction for such a gross insult.
That you take advantage of your kingship to say what you would never dare say
were you not king, brands me not a traitor, though it does brand you a
coward.”

Tense silence fell upon the little company of lords and courtiers as these
awful words fell from the lips of a subject, addressed to his king. They were
horrified, for De Montfort’s bold challenge was to them but little short
of sacrilege.

Henry, flushing in mortification and anger, rose to advance upon De Montfort,
but suddenly recollecting the power which he represented, he thought better of
whatever action he contemplated and, with a haughty sneer, turned to his
courtiers.

“Come, my gentlemen,” he said, “methought that we were to
have a turn with the foils this morning. Already it waxeth late. Come, De Fulm!
Come, Leybourn!” and the King left the apartment followed by his
gentlemen, all of whom had drawn away from the Earl of Leicester when it became
apparent that the royal displeasure was strong against him. As the arras fell
behind the departing King, De Montfort shrugged his broad shoulders, and
turning, left the apartment by another door.

When the King, with his gentlemen, entered the armory he was still smarting
from the humiliation of De Montfort’s reproaches, and as he laid aside
his surcoat and plumed hat to take the foils with De Fulm, his eyes alighted on
the master of fence, Sir Jules de Vac, who was advancing with the King’s
foil and helmet. Henry felt in no mood for fencing with De Fulm, who, like the
other sycophants that surrounded him, always allowed the King easily to best
him in every encounter.

De Vac he knew to be too jealous of his fame as a swordsman to permit himself
to be overcome by aught but superior skill, and this day Henry felt that he
could best the devil himself.

The armory was a great room on the main floor of the palace, off the guard
room. It was built in a small wing of the building so that it had light from
three sides. In charge of it was the lean, grizzled, leather-skinned Sir Jules
de Vac, and it was he whom Henry commanded to face him in mimic combat with the
foils, for the King wished to go with hammer and tongs at someone to vent his
suppressed rage.

So he let De Vac assume to his mind’s eye the person of the hated De
Montfort, and it followed that De Vac was nearly surprised into an early and
mortifying defeat by the King’s sudden and clever attack.

Henry III had always been accounted a good swordsman, but that day he quite
outdid himself and, in his imagination, was about to run the pseudo De Montfort
through the heart, to the wild acclaim of his audience. For this fell purpose
he had backed the astounded De Vac twice around the hall when, with a clever
feint, and backward step, the master of fence drew the King into the position
he wanted him, and with the suddenness of lightning, a little twist of his foil
sent Henry’s weapon clanging across the floor of the armory.

For an instant, the King stood as tense and white as though the hand of death
had reached out and touched his heart with its icy fingers. The episode meant
more to him than being bested in play by the best swordsman in
England—for that surely was no disgrace—to Henry it seemed
prophetic of the outcome of a future struggle when he should stand face to face
with the real De Montfort; and then, seeing in De Vac only the creature of his
imagination with which he had vested the likeness of his powerful
brother-in-law, Henry did what he should like to have done to the real
Leicester. Drawing off his gauntlet he advanced close to De Vac.

“Dog!” he hissed, and struck the master of fence a stinging blow
across the face, and spat upon him. Then he turned on his heel and strode from
the armory.

De Vac had grown old in the service of the kings of England, but he hated all
things English and all Englishmen. The dead King John, though hated by all
others, he had loved, but with the dead King’s bones De Vac’s
loyalty to the house he served had been buried in the Cathedral of Worcester.

During the years he had served as master of fence at the English Court, the
sons of royalty had learned to thrust and parry and cut as only De Vac could
teach the art, and he had been as conscientious in the discharge of his duties
as he had been in his unswerving hatred and contempt for his pupils.

And now the English King had put upon him such an insult as might only be wiped
out by blood.

As the blow fell, the wiry Frenchman clicked his heels together, and throwing
down his foil, he stood erect and rigid as a marble statue before his master.
White and livid was his tense drawn face, but he spoke no word.

He might have struck the King, but then there would have been left to him no
alternative save death by his own hand; for a king may not fight with a lesser
mortal, and he who strikes a king may not live—the king’s honor
must be satisfied.

Had a French king struck him, De Vac would have struck back, and gloried in the
fate which permitted him to die for the honor of France; but an English
King—pooh! a dog; and who would die for a dog? No, De Vac would find
other means of satisfying his wounded pride. He would revel in revenge against
this man for whom he felt no loyalty. If possible, he would harm the whole of
England if he could, but he would bide his time. He could afford to wait for
his opportunity if, by waiting, he could encompass a more terrible revenge.

De Vac had been born in Paris, the son of a French officer reputed the best
swordsman in France. The son had followed closely in the footsteps of his
father until, on the latter’s death, he could easily claim the title of
his sire. How he had left France and entered the service of John of England is
not of this story. All the bearing that the life of Jules de Vac has upon the
history of England hinges upon but two of his many attributes—his
wonderful swordsmanship and his fearful hatred for his adopted country.

CHAPTER II

South of the armory of Westminster Palace lay the gardens, and here, on the
third day following the King’s affront to De Vac, might have been seen
a black-haired woman gowned in a violet cyclas, richly embroidered with gold
about the yoke and at the bottom of the loose-pointed sleeves, which reached
almost to the similar bordering on the lower hem of the garment. A richly
wrought leathern girdle, studded with precious stones, and held in place by a
huge carved buckle of gold, clasped the garment about her waist so that the
upper portion fell outward over the girdle after the manner of a blouse. In the
girdle was a long dagger of beautiful workmanship. Dainty sandals encased her
feet, while a wimple of violet silk bordered in gold fringe, lay becomingly
over her head and shoulders.

By her side walked a handsome boy of about three, clad, like his companion, in
gay colors. His tiny surcoat of scarlet velvet was rich with embroidery, while
beneath was a close-fitting tunic of white silk. His doublet was of scarlet,
while his long hose of white were cross-gartered with scarlet from his tiny
sandals to his knees. On the back of his brown curls sat a flat-brimmed,
round-crowned hat in which a single plume of white waved and nodded bravely at
each move of the proud little head.

The child’s features were well molded, and his frank, bright eyes gave an
expression of boyish generosity to a face which otherwise would have been too
arrogant and haughty for such a mere baby. As he talked with his companion,
little flashes of peremptory authority and dignity, which sat strangely upon
one so tiny, caused the young woman at times to turn her head from him that he
might not see the smiles which she could scarce repress.

Presently the boy took a ball from his tunic, and, pointing at a little bush
near them, said, “Stand you there, Lady Maud, by yonder bush. I would
play at toss.”

The young woman did as she was bid, and when she had taken her place and turned
to face him the boy threw the ball to her. Thus they played beneath the windows
of the armory, the boy running blithely after the ball when he missed it, and
laughing and shouting in happy glee when he made a particularly good catch.

In one of the windows of the armory overlooking the garden stood a grim, gray,
old man, leaning upon his folded arms, his brows drawn together in a malignant
scowl, the corners of his mouth set in a stern, cold line.

He looked upon the garden and the playing child, and upon the lovely young
woman beneath him, but with eyes which did not see, for De Vac was working out
a great problem, the greatest of all his life.

For three days, the old man had brooded over his grievance, seeking for some
means to be revenged upon the King for the insult which Henry had put upon him.
Many schemes had presented themselves to his shrewd and cunning mind, but so
far all had been rejected as unworthy of the terrible satisfaction which his
wounded pride demanded.

His fancies had, for the most part, revolved about the unsettled political
conditions of Henry’s reign, for from these he felt he might wrest that
opportunity which could be turned to his own personal uses and to the harm, and
possibly the undoing, of the King.

For years an inmate of the palace, and often a listener in the armory when the
King played at sword with his friends and favorites, De Vac had heard much
which passed between Henry III and his intimates that could well be turned to
the King’s harm by a shrewd and resourceful enemy.

With all England, he knew the utter contempt in which Henry held the terms of
the Magna Charta which he so often violated along with his kingly oath to
maintain it. But what all England did not know, De Vac had gleaned from scraps
of conversation dropped in the armory: that Henry was even now negotiating with
the leaders of foreign mercenaries, and with Louis IX of France, for a
sufficient force of knights and men-at-arms to wage a relentless war upon his
own barons that he might effectively put a stop to all future interference by
them with the royal prerogative of the Plantagenets to misrule England.

If he could but learn the details of this plan, thought De Vac: the point of
landing of the foreign troops; their numbers; the first point of attack. Ah,
would it not be sweet revenge indeed to balk the King in this venture so dear
to his heart!

A word to De Clare, or De Montfort would bring the barons and their retainers
forty thousand strong to overwhelm the King’s forces.

And he would let the King know to whom, and for what cause, he was beholden for
his defeat and discomfiture. Possibly the barons would depose Henry, and place
a new king upon England’s throne, and then De Vac would mock the
Plantagenet to his face. Sweet, kind, delectable vengeance, indeed! And the old
man licked his thin lips as though to taste the last sweet vestige of some
dainty morsel.

And then Chance carried a little leather ball beneath the window where the old
man stood; and as the child ran, laughing, to recover it, De Vac’s eyes
fell upon him, and his former plan for revenge melted as the fog before the
noonday sun; and in its stead there opened to him the whole hideous plot of
fearsome vengeance as clearly as it were writ upon the leaves of a great book
that had been thrown wide before him. And, in so far as he could direct, he
varied not one jot from the details of that vividly conceived masterpiece of
hellishness during the twenty years which followed.

The little boy who so innocently played in the garden of his royal father was
Prince Richard, the three-year-old son of Henry III of England. No published
history mentions this little lost prince; only the secret archives of the kings
of England tell the story of his strange and adventurous life. His name has
been blotted from the records of men; and the revenge of De Vac has passed from
the eyes of the world; though in his time it was a real and terrible thing in
the hearts of the English.

CHAPTER III

For nearly a month, the old man haunted the palace, and watched in the gardens
for the little Prince until he knew the daily routine of his tiny life with his
nurses and governesses.

He saw that when the Lady Maud accompanied him, they were wont to repair to the
farthermost extremities of the palace grounds where, by a little postern gate,
she admitted a certain officer of the Guards to whom the Queen had forbidden
the privilege of the court.

There, in a secluded bower, the two lovers whispered their hopes and plans,
unmindful of the royal charge playing neglected among the flowers and shrubbery
of the garden.

Toward the middle of July De Vac had his plans well laid. He had managed to
coax old Brus, the gardener, into letting him have the key to the little
postern gate on the plea that he wished to indulge in a midnight escapade,
hinting broadly of a fair lady who was to be the partner of his adventure, and,
what was more to the point with Brus, at the same time slipping a couple of
golden zecchins into the gardener’s palm.

Brus, like the other palace servants, considered De Vac a loyal retainer of the
house of Plantagenet. Whatever else of mischief De Vac might be up to, Brus was
quite sure that in so far as the King was concerned, the key to the postern
gate was as safe in De Vac’s hands as though Henry himself had it.

The old fellow wondered a little that the morose old master of fence should, at
his time in life, indulge in frivolous escapades more befitting the younger
sprigs of gentility, but, then, what concern was it of his? Did he not have
enough to think about to keep the gardens so that his royal master and mistress
might find pleasure in the shaded walks, the well-kept sward, and the gorgeous
beds of foliage plants and blooming flowers which he set with such wondrous
precision in the formal garden?

Further, two gold zecchins were not often come by so easily as this; and if the
dear Lord Jesus saw fit, in his infinite wisdom, to take this means of
rewarding his poor servant, it ill became such a worm as he to ignore the
divine favor. So Brus took the gold zecchins and De Vac the key, and the little
prince played happily among the flowers of his royal father’s garden, and
all were satisfied; which was as it should have been.

That night, De Vac took the key to a locksmith on the far side of London; one
who could not possibly know him or recognize the key as belonging to the
palace. Here he had a duplicate made, waiting impatiently while the old man
fashioned it with the crude instruments of his time.

From this little shop, De Vac threaded his way through the dirty lanes and
alleys of ancient London, lighted at far intervals by an occasional smoky
lantern, until he came to a squalid tenement but a short distance from the
palace.

A narrow alley ran past the building, ending abruptly at the bank of the Thames
in a moldering wooden dock, beneath which the inky waters of the river rose and
fell, lapping the decaying piles and surging far beneath the dock to the remote
fastnesses inhabited by the great fierce dock rats and their fiercer human
antitypes.

Several times De Vac paced the length of this black alley in search of the
little doorway of the building he sought. At length he came upon it, and, after
repeated pounding with the pommel of his sword, it was opened by a slatternly
old hag.

“What would ye of a decent woman at such an ungodly hour?” she
grumbled. “Ah, ’tis ye, my lord?” she added, hastily, as the
flickering rays of the candle she bore lighted up De Vac’s face.
“Welcome, my Lord, thrice welcome. The daughter of the devil welcomes her
brother.”

“Silence, old hag,” cried De Vac. “Is it not enough that you
leech me of good marks of such a quantity that you may ever after wear mantles
of villosa and feast on simnel bread and malmsey, that you must needs burden me
still further with the affliction of thy vile tongue?

“Hast thou the clothes ready bundled and the key, also, to this gate to
perdition? And the room: didst set to rights the furnishings I had delivered
here, and sweep the century-old accumulation of filth and cobwebs from the
floor and rafters? Why, the very air reeked of the dead Romans who builded
London twelve hundred years ago. Methinks, too, from the stink, they must have
been Roman swineherds who habited this sty with their herds, an’ I
venture that thou, old sow, hast never touched broom to the place for fear of
disturbing the ancient relics of thy kin.”

“Cease thy babbling, Lord Satan,” cried the woman. “I would
rather hear thy money talk than thou, for though it come accursed and tainted
from thy rogue hand, yet it speaks with the same sweet and commanding voice as
it were fresh from the coffers of the holy church.

“The bundle is ready,” she continued, closing the door after De
Vac, who had now entered, “and here be the key; but first let us have a
payment. I know not what thy foul work may be, but foul it is I know from the
secrecy which you have demanded, an’ I dare say there will be some who
would pay well to learn the whereabouts of the old woman and the child, thy
sister and her son you tell me they be, who you are so anxious to hide away in
old Til’s garret. So it be well for you, my Lord, to pay old Til well and
add a few guilders for the peace of her tongue if you would that your prisoner
find peace in old Til’s house.”

“Fetch me the bundle, hag,” replied De Vac, “and you shall
have gold against a final settlement; more even than we bargained for if all
goes well and thou holdest thy vile tongue.”

But the old woman’s threats had already caused De Vac a feeling of
uneasiness, which would have been reflected to an exaggerated degree in the old
woman had she known the determination her words had caused in the mind of the
old master of fence.

His venture was far too serious, and the results of exposure too fraught with
danger, to permit of his taking any chances with a disloyal fellow-conspirator.
True, he had not even hinted at the enormity of the plot in which he was
involving the old woman, but, as she had said, his stern commands for secrecy
had told her enough to arouse her suspicions, and with them her curiosity and
cupidity. So it was that old Til might well have quailed in her tattered
sandals had she but even vaguely guessed the thoughts which passed in De
Vac’s mind; but the extra gold pieces he dropped into her withered palm
as she delivered the bundle to him, together with the promise of more, quite
effectually won her loyalty and her silence for the time being.

Slipping the key into the pocket of his tunic and covering the bundle with his
long surcoat, De Vac stepped out into the darkness of the alley and hastened
toward the dock.

Beneath the planks he found a skiff which he had moored there earlier in the
evening, and underneath one of the thwarts he hid the bundle. Then, casting
off, he rowed slowly up the Thames until, below the palace walls, he moored
near to the little postern gate which let into the lower end of the garden.

Hiding the skiff as best he could in some tangled bushes which grew to the
water’s edge, set there by order of the King to add to the beauty of the
aspect from the river side, De Vac crept warily to the postern and,
unchallenged, entered and sought his apartments in the palace.

The next day, he returned the original key to Brus, telling the old man that he
had not used it after all, since mature reflection had convinced him of the
folly of his contemplated adventure, especially in one whose youth was past,
and in whose joints the night damp of the Thames might find lodgement for
rheumatism.

“Ha, Sir Jules,” laughed the old gardener, “Virtue and Vice
be twin sisters who come running to do the bidding of the same father, Desire.
Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what
another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be vice or
virtue? Or on the other hand if my friend desires his own wife and if that be
virtue, then if I also desire his wife, is not that likewise virtue, since we
desire the same thing? But if to obtain our desire it be necessary to expose
our joints to the Thames’ fog, then it were virtue to remain at
home.”

“Right you sound, old mole,” said De Vac, smiling, “would
that I might learn to reason by your wondrous logic; methinks it might stand me
in good stead before I be much older.”

“The best sword arm in all Christendom needs no other logic than the
sword, I should think,” said Brus, returning to his work.

That afternoon, De Vac stood in a window of the armory looking out upon the
beautiful garden which spread before him to the river wall two hundred yards
away. In the foreground were box-bordered walks, smooth, sleek lawns, and
formal beds of gorgeous flowering plants, while here and there marble statues
of wood nymph and satyr gleamed, sparkling in the brilliant sunlight, or, half
shaded by an overhanging bush, took on a semblance of life from the riotous
play of light and shadow as the leaves above them moved to and fro in the faint
breeze. Farther in the distance, the river wall was hidden by more closely
massed bushes, and the formal, geometric precision of the nearer view was
relieved by a background of vine-colored bowers, and a profusion of small trees
and flowering shrubs arranged in studied disorder.

Through this seeming jungle ran tortuous paths, and the carved stone benches of
the open garden gave place to rustic seats, and swings suspended from the
branches of fruit trees.

Toward this enchanting spot slowly were walking the Lady Maud and her little
charge, Prince Richard; all ignorant of the malicious watcher in the window
behind them.

A great peacock strutted proudly across the walk before them, and, as Richard
ran, childlike, after it, Lady Maud hastened on to the little postern gate
which she quickly unlocked, admitting her lover, who had been waiting without.
Relocking the gate the two strolled arm in arm to the little bower which was
their trysting place.

As the lovers talked, all self-engrossed, the little Prince played happily
about among the trees and flowers, and none saw the stern, determined face
which peered through the foliage at a little distance from the playing boy.

Richard was devoting his royal energies to chasing an elusive butterfly which
fate led nearer and nearer to the cold, hard watcher in the bushes. Closer and
closer came the little Prince, and in another moment, he had burst through the
flowering shrubs, and stood facing the implacable master of fence.

“Your Highness,” said De Vac, bowing to the little fellow,
“let old DeVac help you catch the pretty insect.”

Richard, having often seen De Vac, did not fear him, and so together they
started in pursuit of the butterfly which by now had passed out of sight. De
Vac turned their steps toward the little postern gate, but when he would have
passed through with the tiny Prince, the latter rebelled.

“Come, My Lord Prince,” urged De Vac, “methinks the butterfly
did but alight without the wall, we can have it and return within the garden in
an instant.”

“Go thyself and fetch it,” replied the Prince; “the King, my
father, has forbid me stepping without the palace grounds.”

“Come,” commanded De Vac, more sternly, “no harm can come to
you.”

But the child hung back and would not go with him so that De Vac was forced to
grasp him roughly by the arm. There was a cry of rage and alarm from the royal
child.

“Unhand me, sirrah,” screamed the boy. “How dare you lay
hands on a prince of England?”

De Vac clapped his hand over the child’s mouth to still his cries, but it
was too late. The Lady Maud and her lover had heard and, in an instant, they
were rushing toward the postern gate, the officer drawing his sword as he ran.

When they reached the wall, De Vac and the Prince were upon the outside, and
the Frenchman had closed and was endeavoring to lock the gate. But, handicapped
by the struggling boy, he had not time to turn the key before the officer threw
himself against the panels and burst out before the master of fence, closely
followed by the Lady Maud.

De Vac dropped the key and, still grasping the now thoroughly affrightened
Prince with his left hand, drew his sword and confronted the officer.

There were no words, there was no need of words; De Vac’s intentions were
too plain to necessitate any parley, so the two fell upon each other with grim
fury; the brave officer facing the best swordsman that France had ever produced
in a futile attempt to rescue his young prince.

In a moment, De Vac had disarmed him, but, contrary to the laws of chivalry, he
did not lower his point until it had first plunged through the heart of his
brave antagonist. Then, with a bound, he leaped between Lady Maud and the gate,
so that she could not retreat into the garden and give the alarm.

Still grasping the trembling child in his iron grip, he stood facing the lady
in waiting, his back against the door.

“Mon Dieu, Sir Jules,” she cried, “hast thou gone mad?”

“No, My Lady,” he answered, “but I had not thought to do the
work which now lies before me. Why didst thou not keep a still tongue in thy
head and let his patron saint look after the welfare of this princeling? Your
rashness has brought you to a pretty pass, for it must be either you or I, My
Lady, and it cannot be I. Say thy prayers and compose thyself for death.”

Henry III, King of England, sat in his council chamber surrounded by the great
lords and nobles who composed his suit. He awaited Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, whom he had summoned that he might heap still further indignities
upon him with the intention of degrading and humiliating him that he might
leave England forever. The King feared this mighty kinsman who so boldly
advised him against the weak follies which were bringing his kingdom to a
condition of revolution.

What the outcome of this audience would have been none may say, for Leicester
had but just entered and saluted his sovereign when there came an interruption
which drowned the petty wrangles of king and courtier in a common affliction
that touched the hearts of all.

There was a commotion at one side of the room, the arras parted, and Eleanor,
Queen of England, staggered toward the throne, tears streaming down her pale
cheeks.

“Oh, My Lord! My Lord!” she cried, “Richard, our son, has
been assassinated and thrown into the Thames.”

In an instant, all was confusion and turmoil, and it was with the greatest
difficulty that the King finally obtained a coherent statement from his queen.

It seemed that when the Lady Maud had not returned to the palace with Prince
Richard at the proper time, the Queen had been notified and an immediate search
had been instituted—a search which did not end for over twenty years; but
the first fruits of it turned the hearts of the court to stone, for there
beside the open postern gate lay the dead bodies of Lady Maud and a certain
officer of the Guards, but nowhere was there a sign or trace of Prince Richard,
second son of Henry III of England, and at that time the youngest prince of the
realm.

It was two days before the absence of De Vac was noted, and then it was that
one of the lords in waiting to the King reminded his majesty of the episode of
the fencing bout, and a motive for the abduction of the King’s little son
became apparent.

An edict was issued requiring the examination of every child in England, for on
the left breast of the little Prince was a birthmark which closely resembled a
lily and, when after a year no child was found bearing such a mark and no trace
of De Vac uncovered, the search was carried into France, nor was it ever wholly
relinquished at any time for more than twenty years.

The first theory, of assassination, was quickly abandoned when it was subjected
to the light of reason, for it was evident that an assassin could have
dispatched the little Prince at the same time that he killed the Lady Maud and
her lover, had such been his desire.

The most eager factor in the search for Prince Richard was Simon de Montfort,
Earl of Leicester, whose affection for his royal nephew had always been so
marked as to have been commented upon by the members of the King’s
household.

Thus for a time the rupture between De Montfort and his king was healed, and
although the great nobleman was divested of his authority in Gascony, he
suffered little further oppression at the hands of his royal master.

CHAPTER IV

As De Vac drew his sword from the heart of the Lady Maud, he winced, for,
merciless though he was, he had shrunk from this cruel task. Too far he had
gone, however, to back down now, and, had he left the Lady Maud alive, the
whole of the palace guard and all the city of London would have been on his
heels in ten minutes; there would have been no escape.

The little Prince was now so terrified that he could but tremble and whimper in
his fright. So fearful was he of the terrible De Vac that a threat of death
easily stilled his tongue, and so the grim, old man led him to the boat hidden
deep in the dense bushes.

De Vac did not dare remain in this retreat until dark, as he had first
intended. Instead, he drew a dingy, ragged dress from the bundle beneath the
thwart and in this disguised himself as an old woman, drawing a cotton wimple
low over his head and forehead to hide his short hair. Concealing the child
beneath the other articles of clothing, he pushed off from the bank, and,
rowing close to the shore, hastened down the Thames toward the old dock where,
the previous night, he had concealed his skiff. He reached his destination
unnoticed, and, running in beneath the dock, worked the boat far into the dark
recess of the cave-like retreat.

Here he determined to hide until darkness had fallen, for he knew that the
search would be on for the little lost Prince at any moment, and that none
might traverse the streets of London without being subject to the closest
scrutiny.

Taking advantage of the forced wait, De Vac undressed the Prince and clothed
him in other garments, which had been wrapped in the bundle hidden beneath the
thwart; a little red cotton tunic with hose to match, a black doublet and a
tiny leather jerkin and leather cap.

The discarded clothing of the Prince he wrapped about a huge stone torn from
the disintegrating masonry of the river wall, and consigned the bundle to the
voiceless river.

The Prince had by now regained some of his former assurance and, finding that
De Vac seemed not to intend harming him, the little fellow commenced
questioning his grim companion, his childish wonder at this strange adventure
getting the better of his former apprehension.

“What do we here, Sir Jules?” he asked. “Take me back to the
King’s, my father’s palace. I like not this dark hole nor the
strange garments you have placed upon me.”

“Silence, boy!” commanded the old man. “Sir Jules be dead,
nor are you a king’s son. Remember these two things well, nor ever again
let me hear you speak the name Sir Jules, or call yourself a prince.”

The boy went silent, again cowed by the fierce tone of his captor. Presently he
began to whimper, for he was tired and hungry and frightened—just a poor
little baby, helpless and hopeless in the hands of this cruel enemy—all
his royalty as nothing, all gone with the silken finery which lay in the thick
mud at the bottom of the Thames, and presently he dropped into a fitful sleep
in the bottom of the skiff.

When darkness had settled, De Vac pushed the skiff outward to the side of the
dock and, gathering the sleeping child in his arms, stood listening,
preparatory to mounting to the alley which led to old Til’s place.

As he stood thus, a faint sound of clanking armor came to his attentive ears;
louder and louder it grew until there could be no doubt but that a number of
men were approaching.

De Vac resumed his place in the skiff, and again drew it far beneath the dock.
Scarcely had he done so ere a party of armored knights and men-at-arms clanked
out upon the planks above him from the mouth of the dark alley. Here they
stopped as though for consultation and plainly could the listener below hear
every word of their conversation.

“De Montfort,” said one, “what thinkest thou of it? Can it be
that the Queen is right and that Richard lies dead beneath these black
waters?”

“No, De Clare,” replied a deep voice, which De Vac recognized as
that of the Earl of Leicester. “The hand that could steal the Prince from
out of the very gardens of his sire without the knowledge of Lady Maud or her
companion, which must evidently have been the case, could more easily and
safely have dispatched him within the gardens had that been the object of this
strange attack. I think, My Lord, that presently we shall hear from some bold
adventurer who holds the little Prince for ransom. God give that such may be
the case, for of all the winsome and affectionate little fellows I have ever
seen, not even excepting mine own dear son, the little Richard was the most to
be beloved. Would that I might get my hands upon the foul devil who has done
this horrid deed.”

Beneath the planks, not four feet from where Leicester stood, lay the object of
his search. The clanking armor, the heavy spurred feet, and the voices above
him had awakened the little Prince and, with a startled cry, he sat upright in
the bottom of the skiff. Instantly De Vac’s iron hand clapped over the
tiny mouth, but not before a single faint wail had reached the ears of the men
above.

“Hark! What was that, My Lord?” cried one of the men-at-arms.

In tense silence they listened for a repetition of the sound and then De
Montfort cried out:

“What ho, below there! Who is it beneath the dock? Answer, in the name of
the King!”

Richard, recognizing the voice of his favorite uncle, struggled to free
himself, but De Vac’s ruthless hand crushed out the weak efforts of the
babe, and all was quiet as the tomb, while those above stood listening for a
repetition of the sound.

“Dock rats,” said De Clare, and then as though the devil guided
them to protect his own, two huge rats scurried upward from between the loose
boards, and ran squealing up the dark alley.

“Right you are,” said De Montfort, “but I could have sworn
’twas a child’s feeble wail had I not seen the two filthy rodents
with mine own eyes. Come, let us to the next vile alley. We have met with no
success here, though that old hag who called herself Til seemed overanxious to
bargain for the future information she seemed hopeful of being able to give
us.”

As they moved off, their voices grew fainter in the ears of the listeners
beneath the dock and soon were lost in the distance.

“A close shave,” thought De Vac, as he again took up the child and
prepared to gain the dock. No further noises occurring to frighten him, he soon
reached the door to Til’s house and, inserting the key, crept noiselessly
to the garret room which he had rented from his ill-favored hostess.

There were no stairs from the upper floor to the garret above, this ascent
being made by means of a wooden ladder which De Vac pulled up after him,
closing and securing the aperture, through which he climbed with his burden, by
means of a heavy trapdoor equipped with thick bars.

The apartment which they now entered extended across the entire east end of the
building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The
apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near the center
of the room.

The walls were unplastered and the rafters unceiled; the whole bearing a most
barnlike and unhospitable appearance.

In one corner was a huge bed, and across the room a smaller cot; a cupboard, a
table, and two benches completed the furnishings. These articles De Vac had
purchased for the room against the time when he should occupy it with his
little prisoner.

On the table were a loaf of black bread, an earthenware jar containing honey, a
pitcher of milk and two drinking horns. To these, De Vac immediately gave his
attention, commanding the child to partake of what he wished.

Hunger for the moment overcame the little Prince’s fears, and he set to
with avidity upon the strange, rough fare, made doubly coarse by the rude
utensils and the bare surroundings, so unlike the royal magnificence of his
palace apartments.

While the child ate, De Vac hastened to the lower floor of the building in
search of Til, whom he now thoroughly mistrusted and feared. The words of De
Montfort, which he had overheard at the dock, convinced him that here was one
more obstacle to the fulfillment of his revenge which must be removed as had
the Lady Maud; but in this instance there was neither youth nor beauty to plead
the cause of the intended victim, or to cause the grim executioner a pang of
remorse.

When he found the old hag, she was already dressed to go upon the street, in
fact he intercepted her at the very door of the building. Still clad as he was
in the mantle and wimple of an old woman, Til did not, at first, recognize him,
and when he spoke, she burst into a nervous, cackling laugh, as one caught in
the perpetration of some questionable act, nor did her manner escape the shrewd
notice of the wily master of fence.

“Whither, old hag?” he asked.

“To visit Mag Tunk at the alley’s end, by the river, My
Lord,” she replied, with more respect than she had been wont to accord
him.

“Then, I will accompany you part way, my friend, and, perchance, you can
give me a hand with some packages I left behind me in the skiff I have moored
there.”

And so the two walked together through the dark alley to the end of the
rickety, dismantled dock; the one thinking of the vast reward the King would
lavish upon her for the information she felt sure she alone could give; the
other feeling beneath his mantle for the hilt of a long dagger which nestled
there.

As they reached the water’s edge, De Vac was walking with his right
shoulder behind his companion’s left, in his hand was gripped the keen
blade and, as the woman halted on the dock, the point that hovered just below
her left shoulder-blade plunged, soundless, into her heart at the same instant
that De Vac’s left hand swung up and grasped her throat in a grip of
steel.

There was no sound, barely a struggle of the convulsively stiffening old
muscles, and then, with a push from De Vac, the body lunged forward into the
Thames, where a dull splash marked the end of the last hope that Prince Richard
might be rescued from the clutches of his Nemesis.

CHAPTER V

For three years following the disappearance of Prince Richard, a bent old woman
lived in the heart of London within a stone’s throw of the King’s
palace. In a small back room she lived, high up in the attic of an old
building, and with her was a little boy who never went abroad alone, nor by
day. And upon his left breast was a strange mark which resembled a lily. When
the bent old woman was safely in her attic room, with bolted door behind her,
she was wont to straighten up, and discard her dingy mantle for more
comfortable and becoming doublet and hose.

For years, she worked assiduously with the little boy’s education. There
were three subjects in her curriculum; French, swordsmanship and hatred of all
things English, especially the reigning house of England.

The old woman had had made a tiny foil and had commenced teaching the little
boy the art of fence when he was but three years old.

“You will be the greatest swordsman in the world when you are twenty, my
son,” she was wont to say, “and then you shall go out and kill many
Englishmen. Your name shall be hated and cursed the length and breadth of
England, and when you finally stand with the halter about your neck, aha, then
will I speak. Then shall they know.”

The little boy did not understand it all, he only knew that he was comfortable,
and had warm clothing, and all he required to eat, and that he would be a great
man when he learned to fight with a real sword, and had grown large enough to
wield one. He also knew that he hated Englishmen, but why, he did not know.

Way back in the uttermost recesses of his little, childish head, he seemed to
remember a time when his life and surroundings had been very different; when,
instead of this old woman, there had been many people around him, and a sweet
faced woman had held him in her arms and kissed him, before he was taken off to
bed at night; but he could not be sure, maybe it was only a dream he
remembered, for he dreamed many strange and wonderful dreams.

When the little boy was about six years of age, a strange man came to their
attic home to visit the little old woman. It was in the dusk of the evening but
the old woman did not light the cresset, and further, she whispered to the
little boy to remain in the shadows of a far corner of the bare chamber.

The stranger was old and bent and had a great beard which hid almost his entire
face except for two piercing eyes, a great nose and a bit of wrinkled forehead.
When he spoke, he accompanied his words with many shrugs of his narrow
shoulders and with waving of his arms and other strange and amusing
gesticulations. The child was fascinated. Here was the first amusement of his
little starved life. He listened intently to the conversation, which was in
French.

“I have just the thing for madame,” the stranger was saying.
“It be a noble and stately hall far from the beaten way. It was built in
the old days by Harold the Saxon, but in later times, death and poverty and the
disfavor of the King have wrested it from his descendants. A few years since,
Henry granted it to that spend-thrift favorite of his, Henri de Macy, who
pledged it to me for a sum he hath been unable to repay. Today it be my
property, and as it be far from Paris, you may have it for the mere song I have
named. It be a wondrous bargain, madame.”

“And when I come upon it, I shall find that I have bought a crumbling
pile of ruined masonry, unfit to house a family of foxes,” replied the
old woman peevishly.

“One tower hath fallen, and the roof for half the length of one wing hath
sagged and tumbled in,” explained the old Frenchman. “But the three
lower stories be intact and quite habitable. It be much grander even now than
the castles of many of England’s noble barons, and the price,
madame—ah, the price be so ridiculously low.”

Still the old woman hesitated.

“Come,” said the Frenchman, “I have it. Deposit the money
with Isaac the Jew—thou knowest him?—and he shall hold it together
with the deed for forty days, which will give thee ample time to travel to
Derby and inspect thy purchase. If thou be not entirely satisfied, Isaac the
Jew shall return thy money to thee and the deed to me, but if at the end of
forty days thou hast not made demand for thy money, then shall Isaac send the
deed to thee and the money to me. Be not this an easy and fair way out of the
difficulty?”

The little old woman thought for a moment and at last conceded that it seemed
quite a fair way to arrange the matter. And thus it was accomplished.

Several days later, the little old woman called the child to her.

“We start tonight upon a long journey to our new home. Thy face shall be
wrapped in many rags, for thou hast a most grievous toothache. Dost
understand?”

“But I have no toothache. My teeth do not pain me at all. I—”
expostulated the child.

“Tut, tut,” interrupted the little old woman. “Thou hast a
toothache, and so thy face must be wrapped in many rags. And listen, should any
ask thee upon the way why thy face be so wrapped, thou art to say that thou
hast a toothache. And thou do not do as I say, the King’s men will take
us and we shall be hanged, for the King hateth us. If thou hatest the English
King and lovest thy life do as I command.”

“I hate the King,” replied the little boy. “For this reason I
shall do as thou sayest.”

So it was that they set out that night upon their long journey north toward the
hills of Derby. For many days they travelled, riding upon two small donkeys.
Strange sights filled the days for the little boy who remembered nothing
outside the bare attic of his London home and the dirty London alleys that he
had traversed only by night.

They wound across beautiful parklike meadows and through dark, forbidding
forests, and now and again they passed tiny hamlets of thatched huts.
Occasionally they saw armored knights upon the highway, alone or in small
parties, but the child’s companion always managed to hasten into cover at
the road side until the grim riders had passed.

Once, as they lay in hiding in a dense wood beside a little open glade across
which the road wound, the boy saw two knights enter the glade from either side.
For a moment, they drew rein and eyed each other in silence, and then one, a
great black mailed knight upon a black charger, cried out something to the
other which the boy could not catch. The other knight made no response other
than to rest his lance upon his thigh and with lowered point, ride toward his
ebon adversary. For a dozen paces their great steeds trotted slowly toward one
another, but presently the knights urged them into full gallop, and when the
two iron men on their iron trapped chargers came together in the center of the
glade, it was with all the terrific impact of full charge.

The lance of the black knight smote full upon the linden shield of his foeman,
the staggering weight of the mighty black charger hurtled upon the gray, who
went down with his rider into the dust of the highway. The momentum of the
black carried him fifty paces beyond the fallen horseman before his rider could
rein him in, then the black knight turned to view the havoc he had wrought. The
gray horse was just staggering dizzily to his feet, but his mailed rider lay
quiet and still where he had fallen.

With raised visor, the black knight rode back to the side of his vanquished
foe. There was a cruel smile upon his lips as he leaned toward the prostrate
form. He spoke tauntingly, but there was no response, then he prodded the
fallen man with the point of his spear. Even this elicited no movement. With a
shrug of his iron clad shoulders, the black knight wheeled and rode on down the
road until he had disappeared from sight within the gloomy shadows of the
encircling forest.

The little boy was spell-bound. Naught like this had he ever seen or dreamed.

“Some day thou shalt go and do likewise, my son,” said the little
old woman.

“Shall I be clothed in armor and ride upon a great black steed?” he
asked.

“Yes, and thou shalt ride the highways of England with thy stout lance
and mighty sword, and behind thee thou shalt leave a trail of blood and death,
for every man shalt be thy enemy. But come, we must be on our way.”

They rode on, leaving the dead knight where he had fallen, but always in his
memory the child carried the thing that he had seen, longing for the day when
he should be great and strong like the formidable black knight.

On another day, as they were biding in a deserted hovel to escape the notice of
a caravan of merchants journeying up-country with their wares, they saw a band
of ruffians rush out from the concealing shelter of some bushes at the far side
of the highway and fall upon the surprised and defenseless tradesmen.

Ragged, bearded, uncouth villains they were, armed mostly with bludgeons and
daggers, with here and there a cross-bow. Without mercy they attacked the old
and the young, beating them down in cold blood even when they offered no
resistance. Those of the caravan who could, escaped, the balance the highwaymen
left dead or dying in the road, as they hurried away with their loot.

At first the child was horror-struck, but when he turned to the little old
woman for sympathy he found a grim smile upon her thin lips. She noted his
expression of dismay.

“It is naught, my son. But English curs setting upon English swine. Some
day thou shalt set upon both—they be only fit for killing.”

The boy made no reply, but he thought a great deal about that which he had
seen. Knights were cruel to knights—the poor were cruel to the
rich—and every day of the journey had forced upon his childish mind that
everyone must be very cruel and hard upon the poor. He had seen them in all
their sorrow and misery and poverty—stretching a long, scattering line
all the way from London town. Their bent backs, their poor thin bodies and
their hopeless, sorrowful faces attesting the weary wretchedness of their
existence.

“Be no one happy in all the world?” he once broke out to the old
woman.

“Only he who wields the mightiest sword,” responded the old woman.
“You have seen, my son, that all Englishmen are beasts. They set upon and
kill one another for little provocation or for no provocation at all. When thou
shalt be older, thou shalt go forth and kill them all for unless thou kill
them, they will kill thee.”

At length, after tiresome days upon the road, they came to a little hamlet in
the hills. Here the donkeys were disposed of and a great horse purchased, upon
which the two rode far up into a rough and uninviting country away from the
beaten track, until late one evening they approached a ruined castle.

The frowning walls towered high against the moonlit sky beyond, and where a
portion of the roof had fallen in, the cold moon, shining through the narrow
unglazed windows, gave to the mighty pile the likeness of a huge, many-eyed
ogre crouching upon the flank of a deserted world, for nowhere was there other
sign of habitation.

Before this somber pile, the two dismounted. The little boy was filled with awe
and his childish imagination ran riot as they approached the crumbling barbican
on foot, leading the horse after them. From the dark shadows of the ballium,
they passed into the moonlit inner court. At the far end the old woman found
the ancient stables, and here, with decaying planks, she penned the horse for
the night, pouring a measure of oats upon the floor for him from a bag which
had hung across his rump.

Then she led the way into the dense shadows of the castle, lighting their
advance with a flickering pine knot. The old planking of the floors, long
unused, groaned and rattled beneath their approach. There was a sudden scamper
of clawed feet before them, and a red fox dashed by in a frenzy of alarm toward
the freedom of the outer night.

Presently they came to the great hall. The old woman pushed open the great
doors upon their creaking hinges and lit up dimly the mighty, cavernous
interior with the puny rays of their feeble torch. As they stepped cautiously
within, an impalpable dust arose in little spurts from the long-rotted rushes
that crumbled beneath their feet. A huge bat circled wildly with loud
fluttering wings in evident remonstrance at this rude intrusion. Strange
creatures of the night scurried or wriggled across wall and floor.

But the child was unafraid. Fear had not been a part of the old woman’s
curriculum. The boy did not know the meaning of the word, nor was he ever in
his after-life to experience the sensation. With childish eagerness, he
followed his companion as she inspected the interior of the chamber. It was
still an imposing room. The boy clapped his hands in delight at the beauties of
the carved and panelled walls and the oak beamed ceiling, stained almost black
from the smoke of torches and oil cressets that had lighted it in bygone days,
aided, no doubt, by the wood fires which had burned in its two immense
fireplaces to cheer the merry throng of noble revellers that had so often sat
about the great table into the morning hours.

Here they took up their abode. But the bent, old woman was no longer an old
woman—she had become a straight, wiry, active old man.

The little boy’s education went on—French, swordsmanship and hatred
of the English—the same thing year after year with the addition of
horsemanship after he was ten years old. At this time the old man commenced
teaching him to speak English, but with a studied and very marked French
accent. During all his life now, he could not remember of having spoken to any
living being other than his guardian, whom he had been taught to address as
father. Nor did the boy have any name—he was just “my son.”

His life in the Derby hills was so filled with the hard, exacting duties of his
education that he had little time to think of the strange loneliness of his
existence; nor is it probable that he missed that companionship of others of
his own age of which, never having had experience in it, he could scarce be
expected to regret or yearn for.

At fifteen, the youth was a magnificent swordsman and horseman, and with an
utter contempt for pain or danger—a contempt which was the result of the
heroic methods adopted by the little old man in the training of him. Often the
two practiced with razor-sharp swords, and without armor or other protection of
any description.

“Thus only,” the old man was wont to say, “mayst thou become
the absolute master of thy blade. Of such a nicety must be thy handling of the
weapon that thou mayst touch an antagonist at will and so lightly, shouldst
thou desire, that thy point, wholly under the control of a master hand, mayst
be stopped before it inflicts so much as a scratch.”

But in practice, there were many accidents, and then one or both of them would
nurse a punctured skin for a few days. So, while blood was often let on both
sides, the training produced a fearless swordsman who was so truly the master
of his point that he could stop a thrust within a fraction of an inch of the
spot he sought.

At fifteen, he was a very strong and straight and handsome lad. Bronzed and
hardy from his outdoor life; of few words, for there was none that he might
talk with save the taciturn old man; hating the English, for that he was taught
as thoroughly as swordsmanship; speaking French fluently and English
poorly—and waiting impatiently for the day when the old man should send
him out into the world with clanking armor and lance and shield to do battle
with the knights of England.

It was about this time that there occurred the first important break in the
monotony of his existence. Far down the rocky trail that led from the valley
below through the Derby hills to the ruined castle, three armored knights urged
their tired horses late one afternoon of a chill autumn day. Off the main road
and far from any habitation, they had espied the castle’s towers through
a rift in the hills, and now they spurred toward it in search of food and
shelter.

As the road led them winding higher into the hills, they suddenly emerged upon
the downs below the castle where a sight met their eyes which caused them to
draw rein and watch in admiration. There, before them upon the downs, a boy
battled with a lunging, rearing horse—a perfect demon of a black horse.
Striking and biting in a frenzy of rage, it sought ever to escape or injure the
lithe figure which clung leech-like to its shoulder.

The boy was on the ground. His left hand grasped the heavy mane; his right arm
lay across the beast’s withers and his right hand drew steadily in upon a
halter rope with which he had taken a half hitch about the horse’s
muzzle. Now the black reared and wheeled, striking and biting, full upon the
youth, but the active figure swung with him—always just behind the giant
shoulder—and ever and ever he drew the great arched neck farther and
farther to the right.

As the animal plunged hither and thither in great leaps, he dragged the boy
with him, but all his mighty efforts were unavailing to loosen the grip upon
mane and withers. Suddenly, he reared straight into the air carrying the youth
with him, then with a vicious lunge he threw himself backward upon the ground.

“It’s death!” exclaimed one of the knights, “he will
kill the youth yet, Beauchamp.”

“No!” cried he addressed. “Look! He is up again and the boy
still clings as tightly to him as his own black hide.”

“’Tis true,” exclaimed another, “but he hath lost what
he had gained upon the halter—he must needs fight it all out again from
the beginning.”

And so the battle went on again as before, the boy again drawing the iron neck
slowly to the right—the beast fighting and squealing as though possessed
of a thousand devils. A dozen times, as the head bent farther and farther
toward him, the boy loosed his hold upon the mane and reached quickly down to
grasp the near fore pastern. A dozen times the horse shook off the new hold,
but at length the boy was successful, and the knee was bent and the hoof drawn
up to the elbow.

Now the black fought at a disadvantage, for he was on but three feet and his
neck was drawn about in an awkward and unnatural position. His efforts became
weaker and weaker. The boy talked incessantly to him in a quiet voice, and
there was a shadow of a smile upon his lips. Now he bore heavily upon the black
withers, pulling the horse toward him. Slowly the beast sank upon his bent
knee—pulling backward until his off fore leg was stretched straight
before him. Then, with a final surge, the youth pulled him over upon his side,
and, as he fell, slipped prone beside him. One sinewy hand shot to the rope
just beneath the black chin—the other grasped a slim, pointed ear.

For a few minutes the horse fought and kicked to gain his liberty, but with his
head held to the earth, he was as powerless in the hands of the boy as a baby
would have been. Then he sank panting and exhausted into mute surrender.

“Well done!” cried one of the knights. “Simon de Montfort
himself never mastered a horse in better order, my boy. Who be thou?”

In an instant, the lad was upon his feet his eyes searching for the speaker.
The horse, released, sprang up also, and the two stood—the handsome boy
and the beautiful black—gazing with startled eyes, like two wild things,
at the strange intruder who confronted them.

“Come, Sir Mortimer!” cried the boy, and turning he led the
prancing but subdued animal toward the castle and through the ruined barbican
into the court beyond.

“What ho, there, lad!” shouted Paul of Merely. “We would
not harm thee—come, we but ask the way to the castle of De
Stutevill.”

The three knights listened but there was no answer.

“Come, Sir Knights,” spoke Paul of Merely, “we will ride
within and learn what manner of churls inhabit this ancient rookery.”

As they entered the great courtyard, magnificent even in its ruined grandeur,
they were met by a little, grim old man who asked them in no gentle tones what
they would of them there.

“We have lost our way in these devilish Derby hills of thine, old
man,” replied Paul of Merely. “We seek the castle of Sir John de
Stutevill.”

“Ride down straight to the river road, keeping the first trail to the
right, and when thou hast come there, turn again to thy right and ride north
beside the river—thou canst not miss the way—it be plain as the
nose before thy face,” and with that the old man turned to enter the
castle.

“Hold, old fellow!” cried the spokesman. “It be nigh onto
sunset now, and we care not to sleep out again this night as we did the last.
We will tarry with you then till morn that we may take up our journey
refreshed, upon rested steeds.”

The old man grumbled, and it was with poor grace that he took them in to feed
and house them over night. But there was nothing else for it, since they would
have taken his hospitality by force had he refused to give it voluntarily.

From their guests, the two learned something of the conditions outside their
Derby hills. The old man showed less interest than he felt, but to the boy,
notwithstanding that the names he heard meant nothing to him, it was like unto
a fairy tale to hear of the wondrous doings of earl and baron, bishop and king.

“If the King does not mend his ways,” said one of the knights,
“we will drive his whole accursed pack of foreign blood-suckers into the
sea.”

“De Montfort has told him as much a dozen times, and now that all of us,
both Norman and Saxon barons, have already met together and formed a pact for
our mutual protection, the King must surely realize that the time for
temporizing be past, and that unless he would have a civil war upon his hands,
he must keep the promises he so glibly makes, instead of breaking them the
moment De Montfort’s back be turned.”

“He fears his brother-in-law,” interrupted another of the knights,
“even more than the devil fears holy water. I was in attendance on his
majesty some weeks since when he was going down the Thames upon the royal
barge. We were overtaken by as severe a thunder storm as I have ever seen, of
which the King was in such abject fear that he commanded that we land at the
Bishop of Durham’s palace opposite which we then were. De Montfort, who
was residing there, came to meet Henry, with all due respect, observing,
‘What do you fear, now, Sire, the tempest has passed?’ And what
thinkest thou old ‘waxen heart’ replied? Why, still trembling, he
said, ‘I do indeed fear thunder and lightning much, but, by the hand of
God, I tremble before you more than for all the thunder in
Heaven!’”

“I surmise,” interjected the grim, old man, “that De Montfort
has in some manner gained an ascendancy over the King. Think you he looks so
high as the throne itself?”

“Not so,” cried the oldest of the knights. “Simon de Montfort
works for England’s weal alone—and methinks, nay know, that he
would be first to spring to arms to save the throne for Henry. He but fights
the King’s rank and covetous advisers, and though he must needs seem to
defy the King himself, it be but to save his tottering power from utter
collapse. But, gad, how the King hates him. For a time it seemed that there
might be a permanent reconciliation when, for years after the disappearance of
the little Prince Richard, De Montfort devoted much of his time and private
fortune to prosecuting a search through all the world for the little fellow, of
whom he was inordinately fond. This self-sacrificing interest on his part won
over the King and Queen for many years, but of late his unremitting hostility
to their continued extravagant waste of the national resources has again
hardened them toward him.”

The old man, growing uneasy at the turn the conversation threatened, sent the
youth from the room on some pretext, and himself left to prepare supper.

As they were sitting at the evening meal, one of the nobles eyed the boy
intently, for he was indeed good to look upon; his bright handsome face, clear,
intelligent gray eyes, and square strong jaw framed in a mass of brown waving
hair banged at the forehead and falling about his ears, where it was again cut
square at the sides and back, after the fashion of the times.

His upper body was clothed in a rough under tunic of wool, stained red, over
which he wore a short leathern jerkin, while his doublet was also of leather, a
soft and finely tanned piece of undressed doeskin. His long hose, fitting his
shapely legs as closely as another layer of skin, were of the same red wool as
his tunic, while his strong leather sandals were cross-gartered halfway to his
knees with narrow bands of leather.

A leathern girdle about his waist supported a sword and a dagger and a round
skull cap of the same material, to which was fastened a falcon’s wing,
completed his picturesque and becoming costume.

“Your son?” he asked, turning to the old man.

“Yes,” was the growling response.

“He favors you but little, old fellow, except in his cursed French
accent.

“’S blood, Beauchamp,” he continued, turning to one of his
companions, “an’ were he set down in court, I wager our gracious
Queen would he hard put to it to tell him from the young Prince Edward.
Dids’t ever see so strange a likeness?”

“Now that you speak of it, My Lord, I see it plainly. It is indeed a
marvel,” answered Beauchamp.

Had they glanced at the old man during this colloquy, they would have seen a
blanched face, drawn with inward fear and rage.

Presently the oldest member of the party of three knights spoke in a grave
quiet tone.

“And how old might you be, my son?” he asked the boy.

“I do not know.”

“And your name?”

“I do not know what you mean. I have no name. My father calls me son and
no other ever before addressed me.”

At this juncture, the old man arose and left the room, saving he would fetch
more food from the kitchen, but he turned immediately he had passed the doorway
and listened from without.

“The lad appears about fifteen,” said Paul of Merely, lowering his
voice, “and so would be the little lost Prince Richard, if he lives. This
one does not know his name, or his age, yet he looks enough like Prince Edward
to be his twin.”

“Come, my son,” he continued aloud, “open your jerkin and let
us have a look at your left breast, we shall read a true answer there.”

“Are you Englishmen?” asked the boy without making a move to comply
with their demand.

“That we be, my son,” said Beauchamp.

“Then it were better that I die than do your bidding, for all Englishmen
are pigs and I loathe them as becomes a gentleman of France. I do not uncover
my body to the eyes of swine.”

The knights, at first taken back by this unexpected outbreak, finally burst
into uproarious laughter.

“Indeed,” cried Paul of Merely, “spoken as one of the
King’s foreign favorites might speak, and they ever told the good
God’s truth. But come lad, we would not harm you—do as I
bid.”

“No man lives who can harm me while a blade hangs at my side,”
answered the boy, “and as for doing as you bid, I take orders from no man
other than my father.”

Beauchamp and Greystoke laughed aloud at the discomfiture of Paul of Merely,
but the latter’s face hardened in anger, and without further words he
strode forward with outstretched hand to tear open the boy’s leathern
jerkin, but met with the gleaming point of a sword and a quick sharp, “En
garde!” from the boy.

There was naught for Paul of Merely to do but draw his own weapon, in
self-defense, for the sharp point of the boy’s sword was flashing in and
out against his unprotected body, inflicting painful little jabs, and the
boy’s tongue was murmuring low-toned taunts and insults as it invited him
to draw and defend himself or be stuck “like the English pig you
are.”

Paul of Merely was a brave man and he liked not the idea of drawing against
this stripling, but he argued that he could quickly disarm him without harming
the lad, and he certainly did not care to be further humiliated before his
comrades.

But when he had drawn and engaged his youthful antagonist, he discovered that,
far from disarming him, he would have the devil’s own job of it to keep
from being killed.

Never in all his long years of fighting had he faced such an agile and
dexterous enemy, and as they backed this way and that about the room, great
beads of sweat stood upon the brow of Paul of Merely, for he realized that he
was fighting for his life against a superior swordsman.

The loud laughter of Beauchamp and Greystoke soon subsided to grim smiles, and
presently they looked on with startled faces in which fear and apprehension
were dominant.

The boy was fighting as a cat might play with a mouse. No sign of exertion was
apparent, and his haughty confident smile told louder than words that he had in
no sense let himself out to his full capacity.

Around and around the room they circled, the boy always advancing, Paul of
Merely always retreating. The din of their clashing swords and the heavy
breathing of the older man were the only sounds, except as they brushed against
a bench or a table.

Paul of Merely was a brave man, but he shuddered at the thought of dying
uselessly at the hands of a mere boy. He would not call upon his friends for
aid, but presently, to his relief, Beauchamp sprang between them with drawn
sword, crying “Enough, gentlemen, enough! You have no quarrel. Sheathe
your swords.”

But the boy’s only response was, “En garde, cochon,” and
Beauchamp found himself taking the center of the stage in the place of his
friend. Nor did the boy neglect Paul of Merely, but engaged them both in
swordplay that caused the eyes of Greystoke to bulge from their sockets.

So swiftly moved his flying blade that half the time it was a sheet of gleaming
light, and now he was driving home his thrusts and the smile had frozen upon
his lips—grim and stern.

Paul of Merely and Beauchamp were wounded in a dozen places when Greystoke
rushed to their aid, and then it was that a little, wiry, gray man leaped
agilely from the kitchen doorway, and with drawn sword took his place beside
the boy. It was now two against three and the three may have guessed, though
they never knew, that they were pitted against the two greatest swordsmen in
the world.

“To the death,” cried the little gray man, “à mort, mon
fils.” Scarcely had the words left his lips ere, as though it had but
waited permission, the boy’s sword flashed into the heart of Paul of
Merely, and a Saxon gentleman was gathered to his fathers.

The old man engaged Greystoke now, and the boy turned his undivided attention
to Beauchamp. Both these men were considered excellent swordsmen, but when
Beauchamp heard again the little gray man’s “à mort, mon
fils,” he shuddered, and the little hairs at the nape of his neck rose
up, and his spine froze, for he knew that he had heard the sentence of death
passed upon him; for no mortal had yet lived who could vanquish such a
swordsman as he who now faced him.

As Beauchamp pitched forward across a bench, dead, the little old man led
Greystoke to where the boy awaited him.

“They are thy enemies, my son, and to thee belongs the pleasure of
revenge; à mort, mon fils.”

Greystoke was determined to sell his life dearly, and he rushed the lad as a
great bull might rush a teasing dog, but the boy gave back not an inch and,
when Greystoke stopped, there was a foot of cold steel protruding from his
back.

Together they buried the knights at the bottom of the dry moat at the back of
the ruined castle. First they had stripped them and, when they took account of
the spoils of the combat, they found themselves richer by three horses with
full trappings, many pieces of gold and silver money, ornaments and jewels, as
well as the lances, swords and chain mail armor of their erstwhile guests.

But the greatest gain, the old man thought to himself, was that the knowledge
of the remarkable resemblance between his ward and Prince Edward of England had
come to him in time to prevent the undoing of his life’s work.

The boy, while young, was tall and broad shouldered, and so the old man had
little difficulty in fitting one of the suits of armor to him, obliterating the
devices so that none might guess to whom it had belonged. This he did, and from
then on the boy never rode abroad except in armor, and when he met others upon
the high road, his visor was always lowered that none might see his face.

The day following the episode of the three knights the old man called the boy
to him, saying,

“It is time, my son, that thou learned an answer to such questions as
were put to thee yestereve by the pigs of Henry. Thou art fifteen years of age,
and thy name be Norman, and so, as this be the ancient castle of Torn, thou
mayst answer those whom thou desire to know it that thou art Norman of Torn;
that thou be a French gentleman whose father purchased Torn and brought thee
hither from France on the death of thy mother, when thou wert six years old.

“But remember, Norman of Torn, that the best answer for an Englishman is
the sword; naught else may penetrate his thick wit.”

And so was born that Norman of Torn, whose name in a few short years was to
strike terror to the hearts of Englishmen, and whose power in the vicinity of
Torn was greater than that of the King or the barons.

CHAPTER VI

From now on, the old man devoted himself to the training of the boy in the
handling of his lance and battle-axe, but each day also, a period was allotted
to the sword, until, by the time the youth had turned sixteen, even the old man
himself was as but a novice by comparison with the marvelous skill of his
pupil.

During these days, the boy rode Sir Mortimer abroad in many directions until he
knew every bypath within a radius of fifty miles of Torn. Sometimes the old man
accompanied him, but more often he rode alone.

On one occasion, he chanced upon a hut at the outskirts of a small hamlet not
far from Torn and, with the curiosity of boyhood, determined to enter and have
speech with the inmates, for by this time the natural desire for companionship
was commencing to assert itself. In all his life, he remembered only the
company of the old man, who never spoke except when necessity required.

The hut was occupied by an old priest, and as the boy in armor pushed in,
without the usual formality of knocking, the old man looked up with an
expression of annoyance and disapproval.

“What now,” he said, “have the King’s men respect
neither for piety nor age that they burst in upon the seclusion of a holy man
without so much as a ‘by your leave’?”

“I am no king’s man,” replied the boy quietly. “I am
Norman of Torn, who has neither a king nor a god, and who says ‘by your
leave’ to no man. But I have come in peace because I wish to talk to
another than my father. Therefore you may talk to me, priest,” he
concluded with haughty peremptoriness.

“By the nose of John, but it must be a king has deigned to honor me with
his commands,” laughed the priest. “Raise your visor, My Lord, I
would fain look upon the countenance from which issue the commands of
royalty.”

The priest was a large man with beaming, kindly eyes, and a round jovial face.
There was no bite in the tones of his good-natured retort, and so, smiling, the
boy raised his visor.

“By the ear of Gabriel,” cried the good father, “a child in
armor!”

“A child in years, mayhap,” replied the boy, “but a good
child to own as a friend, if one has enemies who wear swords.”

“Then we shall be friends, Norman of Torn, for albeit I have few enemies,
no man has too many friends, and I like your face and your manner, though there
be much to wish for in your manners. Sit down and eat with me, and I will talk
to your heart’s content, for be there one other thing I more love than
eating, it is talking.”

With the priest’s aid, the boy laid aside his armor, for it was heavy and
uncomfortable, and together the two sat down to the meal that was already
partially on the board.

Thus began a friendship which lasted during the lifetime of the good priest.
Whenever he could do so, Norman of Torn visited his friend, Father Claude. It
was he who taught the boy to read and write in French, English and Latin at a
time when but few of the nobles could sign their own names.

French was spoken almost exclusively at court and among the higher classes of
society, and all public documents were inscribed either in French or Latin,
although about this time the first proclamation written in the English tongue
was issued by an English king to his subjects.

Father Claude taught the boy to respect the rights of others, to espouse the
cause of the poor and weak, to revere God and to believe that the principal
reason for man’s existence was to protect woman. All of virtue and
chivalry and true manhood which his old guardian had neglected to inculcate in
the boy’s mind, the good priest planted there, but he could not eradicate
his deep-seated hatred for the English or his belief that the real test of
manhood lay in a desire to fight to the death with a sword.

An occurrence which befell during one of the boy’s earlier visits to his
new friend rather decided the latter that no arguments he could bring to bear
could ever overcome the bald fact that to this very belief of the boy’s,
and his ability to back it up with acts, the good father owed a great deal,
possibly his life.

As they were seated in the priest’s hut one afternoon, a rough knock fell
upon the door which was immediately pushed open to admit as disreputable a band
of ruffians as ever polluted the sight of man. Six of them there were, clothed
in dirty leather, and wearing swords and daggers at their sides.

The leader was a mighty fellow with a great shock of coarse black hair and a
red, bloated face almost concealed by a huge matted black beard. Behind him
pushed another giant with red hair and a bristling mustache; while the third
was marked by a terrible scar across his left cheek and forehead and from a
blow which had evidently put out his left eye, for that socket was empty, and
the sunken eyelid but partly covered the inflamed red of the hollow where his
eye had been.

“A ha, my hearties,” roared the leader, turning to his motley crew,
“fine pickings here indeed. A swine of God fattened upon the sweat of
such poor, honest devils as we, and a young shoat who, by his looks, must have
pieces of gold in his belt.

“Say your prayers, my pigeons,” he continued, with a vile oath,
“for The Black Wolf leaves no evidence behind him to tie his neck with a
halter later, and dead men talk the least.”

“If it be The Black Wolf,” whispered Father Claude to the boy,
“no worse fate could befall us for he preys ever upon the clergy, and
when drunk, as he now is, he murders his victims. I will throw myself before
them while you hasten through the rear doorway to your horse, and make good
your escape.” He spoke in French, and held his hands in the attitude of
prayer, so that he quite entirely misled the ruffians, who had no idea that he
was communicating with the boy.

Norman of Torn could scarce repress a smile at this clever ruse of the old
priest, and, assuming a similar attitude, he replied in French:

“The good Father Claude does not know Norman of Torn if he thinks he runs
out the back door like an old woman because a sword looks in at the front
door.”

Then rising he addressed the ruffians.

“I do not know what manner of grievance you hold against my good friend
here, nor neither do I care. It is sufficient that he is the friend of Norman
of Torn, and that Norman of Torn be here in person to acknowledge the debt of
friendship. Have at you, sir knights of the great filth and the mighty
stink!” and with drawn sword he vaulted over the table and fell upon the
surprised leader.

In the little room, but two could engage him at once, but so fiercely did his
blade swing and so surely did he thrust that, in a bare moment, The Black Wolf
lay dead upon the floor and the red giant, Shandy, was badly, though not
fatally wounded. The four remaining ruffians backed quickly from the hut, and a
more cautious fighter would have let them go their way in peace, for in the
open, four against one are odds no man may pit himself against with impunity.
But Norman of Torn saw red when he fought and the red lured him ever on into
the thickest of the fray. Only once before had he fought to the death, but that
once had taught him the love of it, and ever after until his death, it marked
his manner of fighting; so that men who loathed and hated and feared him were
as one with those who loved him in acknowledging that never before had God
joined in the human frame absolute supremacy with the sword and such utter
fearlessness.

So it was, now, that instead of being satisfied with his victory, he rushed out
after the four knaves. Once in the open, they turned upon him, but he sprang
into their midst with his seething blade, and it was as though they faced four
men rather than one, so quickly did he parry a thrust here and return a cut
there. In a moment one was disarmed, another down, and the remaining two
fleeing for their lives toward the high road with Norman of Torn close at their
heels.

Young, agile and perfect in health, he outclassed them in running as well as in
swordsmanship, and ere they had made fifty paces, both had thrown away their
swords and were on their knees pleading for their lives.

“Come back to the good priest’s hut, and we shall see what he may
say,” replied Norman of Torn.

On the way back, they found the man who had been disarmed bending over his
wounded comrade. They were brothers, named Flory, and one would not desert the
other. It was evident that the wounded man was in no danger, so Norman of Torn
ordered the others to assist him into the hut, where they found Red Shandy
sitting propped against the wall while the good father poured the contents of a
flagon down his eager throat.

The villain’s eyes fairly popped from his head when he saw his four
comrades coming, unarmed and prisoners, back to the little room.

“The Black Wolf dead, Red Shandy and John Flory wounded, James Flory, One
Eye Kanty and Peter the Hermit prisoners!” he ejaculated.

“Man or devil! By the Pope’s hind leg, who and what be ye?”
he said, turning to Norman of Torn.

“I be your master and ye be my men,” said Norman of Torn. “Me
ye shall serve in fairer work than ye have selected for yourselves, but with
fighting a-plenty and good reward.”

The sight of this gang of ruffians banded together to prey upon the clergy had
given rise to an idea in the boy’s mind, which had been revolving in a
nebulous way within the innermost recesses of his subconsciousness since his
vanquishing of the three knights had brought him, so easily, such riches in the
form of horses, arms, armor and gold. As was always his wont in his after life,
to think was to act.

“With The Black Wolf dead, and may the devil pull out his eyes with red
hot tongs, we might look farther and fare worse, mates, in search of a
chief,” spoke Red Shandy, eyeing his fellows, “for verily any man,
be he but a stripling, who can vanquish six such as we, be fit to command
us.”

“But what be the duties?” said he whom they called Peter the
Hermit.

“To follow Norman of Torn where he may lead, to protect the poor and the
weak, to lay down your lives in defence of woman, and to prey upon rich
Englishmen and harass the King of England.”

The last two clauses of these articles of faith appealed to the ruffians so
strongly that they would have subscribed to anything, even daily mass, and a
bath, had that been necessary to admit them to the service of Norman of Torn.

“Aye, aye!” they cried. “We be your men, indeed.”

“Wait,” said Norman of Torn, “there is more. You are to obey
my every command on pain of instant death, and one-half of all your gains are
to be mine. On my side, I will clothe and feed you, furnish you with mounts and
armor and weapons and a roof to sleep under, and fight for and with you with a
sword arm which you know to be no mean protector. Are you satisfied?”

“That we are,” and “Long live Norman of Torn,” and
“Here’s to the chief of the Torns” signified the ready assent
of the burly cut-throats.

“Then swear it as ye kiss the hilt of my sword and this token,”
pursued Norman of Torn catching up a crucifix from the priest’s table.

With these formalities was born the Clan Torn, which grew in a few years to
number a thousand men, and which defied a king’s army and helped to make
Simon de Montfort virtual ruler of England.

Almost immediately commenced that series of outlaw acts upon neighboring
barons, and chance members of the gentry who happened to be caught in the open
by the outlaws, that filled the coffers of Norman of Torn with many pieces of
gold and silver, and placed a price upon his head ere he had scarce turned
eighteen.

That he had no fear of or desire to avoid responsibility for his acts, he
grimly evidenced by marking with a dagger’s point upon the foreheads of
those who fell before his own sword the initials NT.

As his following and wealth increased, he rebuilt and enlarged the grim Castle
of Torn, and again dammed the little stream which had furnished the moat with
water in bygone days.

Through all the length and breadth of the country that witnessed his
activities, his very name was worshipped by poor and lowly and oppressed. The
money he took from the King’s tax gatherers, he returned to the miserable
peasants of the district, and once when Henry III sent a little expedition
against him, he surrounded and captured the entire force, and, stripping them,
gave their clothing to the poor, and escorted them, naked, back to the very
gates of London.

By the time he was twenty, Norman the Devil, as the King himself had dubbed
him, was known by reputation throughout all England, though no man had seen his
face and lived other than his friends and followers. He had become a power to
reckon with in the fast culminating quarrel between King Henry and his foreign
favorites on one side, and the Saxon and Norman barons on the other.

Neither side knew which way his power might be turned, for Norman of Torn had
preyed almost equally upon royalist and insurgent. Personally, he had decided
to join neither party, but to take advantage of the turmoil of the times to
prey without partiality upon both.

As Norman of Torn approached his grim castle home with his five filthy, ragged
cut-throats on the day of his first meeting with them, the old man of Torn
stood watching the little party from one of the small towers of the barbican.

Halting beneath this outer gate, the youth winded the horn which hung at his
side in mimicry of the custom of the times.

“What ho, without there!” challenged the old man entering grimly
into the spirit of the play.

“’Tis Sir Norman of Torn,” spoke up Red Shandy, “with
his great host of noble knights and men-at-arms and squires and lackeys and
sumpter beasts. Open in the name of the good right arm of Sir Norman of
Torn.”

“What means this, my son?” said the old man as Norman of Torn
dismounted within the ballium.

The youth narrated the events of the morning, concluding with, “These,
then, be my men, father; and together we shall fare forth upon the highways and
into the byways of England, to collect from the rich English pigs that living
which you have ever taught me was owing us.”

“’Tis well, my son, and even as I myself would have it; together we
shall ride out, and where we ride, a trail of blood shall mark our way.

“From now, henceforth, the name and fame of Norman of Torn shall grow in
the land, until even the King shall tremble when he hears it, and shall hate
and loathe ye as I have even taught ye to hate and loathe him.

“All England shall curse ye and the blood of Saxon and Norman shall never
dry upon your blade.”

As the old man walked away toward the great gate of the castle after this
outbreak, Shandy, turning to Norman of Torn, with a wide grin, said:

“By the Pope’s hind leg, but thy amiable father loveth the English.
There should be great riding after such as he.”

“Ye ride after ME, varlet,” cried Norman of Torn, “an’
lest ye should forget again so soon who be thy master, take that, as a
reminder,” and he struck the red giant full upon the mouth with his
clenched fist—so that the fellow tumbled heavily to the earth.

He was on his feet in an instant, spitting blood, and in a towering rage. As he
rushed, bull-like, toward Norman of Torn, the latter made no move to draw; he
but stood with folded arms, eyeing Shandy with cold, level gaze; his head held
high, haughty face marked by an arrogant sneer of contempt.

The great ruffian paused, then stopped, slowly a sheepish smile overspread his
countenance and, going upon one knee, he took the hand of Norman of Torn and
kissed it, as some great and loyal noble knight might have kissed his
king’s hand in proof of his love and fealty. There was a certain rude,
though chivalrous grandeur in the act; and it marked not only the beginning of
a lifelong devotion and loyalty on the part of Shandy toward his young master,
but was prophetic of the attitude which Norman of Torn was to inspire in all
the men who served him during the long years that saw thousands pass the
barbicans of Torn to crave a position beneath his grim banner.

As Shandy rose, one by one, John Flory, James, his brother, One Eye Kanty, and
Peter the Hermit knelt before their young lord and kissed his hand. From the
Great Court beyond, a little, grim, gray, old man had watched this scene, a
slight smile upon his old, malicious face.

“’Tis to transcend even my dearest dreams,” he muttered.
“’S death, but he be more a king than Henry himself. God speed the
day of his coronation, when, before the very eyes of the Plantagenet hound, a
black cap shall be placed upon his head for a crown; beneath his feet the
platform of a wooden gibbet for a throne.”

CHAPTER VII

It was a beautiful spring day in May, 1262, that Norman of Torn rode alone down
the narrow trail that led to the pretty cottage with which he had replaced the
hut of his old friend, Father Claude.

As was his custom, he rode with lowered visor, and nowhere upon his person or
upon the trappings of his horse were sign or insignia of rank or house. More
powerful and richer than many nobles of the court, he was without rank or other
title than that of outlaw and he seemed to assume what in reality he held in
little esteem.

He wore armor because his old guardian had urged him to do so, and not because
he craved the protection it afforded. And, for the same cause, he rode always
with lowered visor, though he could never prevail upon the old man to explain
the reason which necessitated this precaution.

“It is enough that I tell you, my son,” the old fellow was wont to
say, “that for your own good as well as mine, you must not show your face
to your enemies until I so direct. The time will come and soon now, I hope,
when you shall uncover your countenance to all England.”

The young man gave the matter but little thought, usually passing it off as the
foolish whim of an old dotard; but he humored it nevertheless.

Behind him, as he rode down the steep declivity that day, loomed a very
different Torn from that which he had approached sixteen years before, when, as
a little boy he had ridden through the darkening shadows of the night, perched
upon a great horse behind the little old woman, whose metamorphosis to the
little grim, gray, old man of Torn their advent to the castle had marked.

Today the great, frowning pile loomed larger and more imposing than ever in the
most resplendent days of its past grandeur. The original keep was there with
its huge, buttressed Saxon towers whose mighty fifteen foot walls were pierced
with stairways and vaulted chambers, lighted by embrasures which, mere slits in
the outer periphery of the walls, spread to larger dimensions within, some even
attaining the area of small triangular chambers.

The moat, widened and deepened, completely encircled three sides of the castle,
running between the inner and outer walls, which were set at intervals with
small projecting towers so pierced that a flanking fire from long bows, cross
bows and javelins might be directed against a scaling party.

The fourth side of the walled enclosure overhung a high precipice, which
natural protection rendered towers unnecessary upon this side.

The main gateway of the castle looked toward the west and from it ran the
tortuous and rocky trail, down through the mountains toward the valley below.
The aspect from the great gate was one of quiet and rugged beauty. A short
stretch of barren downs in the foreground only sparsely studded with an
occasional gnarled oak gave an unobstructed view of broad and lovely meadowland
through which wound a sparkling tributary of the Trent.

Two more gateways let into the great fortress, one piercing the north wall and
one the east. All three gates were strongly fortified with towered and
buttressed barbicans which must be taken before the main gates could be
reached. Each barbican was portcullised, while the inner gates were similarly
safeguarded in addition to the drawbridges which, spanning the moat when
lowered, could be drawn up at the approach of an enemy, effectually stopping
his advance.

The new towers and buildings added to the ancient keep under the direction of
Norman of Torn and the grim, old man whom he called father, were of the Norman
type of architecture, the windows were larger, the carving more elaborate, the
rooms lighter and more spacious.

Within the great enclosure thrived a fair sized town, for, with his ten hundred
fighting-men, the Outlaw of Torn required many squires, lackeys, cooks,
scullions, armorers, smithies, farriers, hostlers and the like to care for the
wants of his little army.

Fifteen hundred war horses, beside five hundred sumpter beasts, were quartered
in the great stables, while the east court was alive with cows, oxen, goats,
sheep, pigs, rabbits and chickens.

Great wooden carts drawn by slow, plodding oxen were daily visitors to the grim
pile, fetching provender for man and beast from the neighboring farm lands of
the poor Saxon peasants, to whom Norman of Torn paid good gold for their crops.

These poor serfs, who were worse than slaves to the proud barons who owned the
land they tilled, were forbidden by royal edict to sell or give a pennysworth
of provisions to the Outlaw of Torn, upon pain of death, but nevertheless his
great carts made their trips regularly and always returned full laden, and
though the husbandmen told sad tales to their overlords of the awful raids of
the Devil of Torn in which he seized upon their stuff by force, their tongues
were in their cheeks as they spoke and the Devil’s gold in their pockets.

And so, while the barons learned to hate him the more, the peasants’ love
for him increased. Them he never injured; their fences, their stock, their
crops, their wives and daughters were safe from molestation even though the
neighboring castle of their lord might be sacked from the wine cellar to the
ramparts of the loftiest tower. Nor did anyone dare ride rough shod over the
territory which Norman of Torn patrolled. A dozen bands of cut-throats he had
driven from the Derby hills, and though the barons would much rather have had
all the rest than he, the peasants worshipped him as a deliverer from the
lowborn murderers who had been wont to despoil the weak and lowly and on whose
account the women of the huts and cottages had never been safe.

Few of them had seen his face and fewer still had spoken with him, but they
loved his name and his prowess and in secret they prayed for him to their
ancient god, Wodin, and the lesser gods of the forest and the meadow and the
chase, for though they were confessed Christians, still in the hearts of many
beat a faint echo of the old superstitions of their ancestors; and while they
prayed also to the Lord Jesus and to Mary, yet they felt it could do no harm to
be on the safe side with the others, in case they did happen to exist.

A poor, degraded, downtrodden, ignorant, superstitious people, they were;
accustomed for generations to the heel of first one invader and then another
and in the interims, when there were any, the heels of their feudal lords and
their rapacious monarchs.

No wonder then that such as these worshipped the Outlaw of Torn, for since
their fierce Saxon ancestors had come, themselves as conquerors, to England, no
other hand had ever been raised to shield them from oppression.

On this policy of his toward the serfs and freedmen, Norman of Torn and the
grim, old man whom he called father had never agreed. The latter was for
carrying his war of hate against all Englishmen, but the young man would
neither listen to it, nor allow any who rode out from Torn to molest the lowly.
A ragged tunic was a surer defence against this wild horde than a stout lance
or an emblazoned shield.

So, as Norman of Torn rode down from his mighty castle to visit Father Claude,
the sunlight playing on his clanking armor and glancing from the copper boss of
his shield, the sight of a little group of woodmen kneeling uncovered by the
roadside as he passed was not so remarkable after all.

Entering the priest’s study, Norman of Torn removed his armor and lay
back moodily upon a bench with his back against a wall and his strong, lithe
legs stretched out before him.

“What ails you, my son?” asked the priest, “that you look so
disconsolate on this beautiful day?”

“I do not know, Father,” replied Norman of Torn, “unless it
be that I am asking myself the question, ‘What it is all for?’ Why
did my father train me ever to prey upon my fellows? I like to fight, but there
is plenty of fighting which is legitimate, and what good may all my stolen
wealth avail me if I may not enter the haunts of men to spend it? Should I
stick my head into London town, it would doubtless stay there, held by a hempen
necklace.

“What quarrel have I with the King or the gentry? They have quarrel
enough with me it is true, but, nathless, I do not know why I should have hated
them so before I was old enough to know how rotten they really are. So it seems
to me that I am but the instrument of an old man’s spite, not even
knowing the grievance to the avenging of which my life has been dedicated by
another.

“And at times, Father Claude, as I grow older, I doubt much that the
nameless old man of Torn is my father, so little do I favor him, and never in
all my life have I heard a word of fatherly endearment or felt a caress, even
as a little child. What think you, Father Claude?”

“I have thought much of it, my son,” answered the priest. “It
has ever been a sore puzzle to me, and I have my suspicions, which I have held
for years, but which even the thought of so frightens me that I shudder to
speculate upon the consequences of voicing them aloud. Norman of Torn, if you
are not the son of the old man you call father, may God forfend that England
ever guesses your true parentage. More than this, I dare not say except that,
as you value your peace of mind and your life, keep your visor down and keep
out of the clutches of your enemies.”

“Then you know why I should keep my visor down?”

“I can only guess, Norman of Torn, because I have seen another whom you
resemble.”

The conversation was interrupted by a commotion from without; the sound of
horses’ hoofs, the cries of men and the clash of arms. In an instant,
both men were at the tiny unglazed window. Before them, on the highroad, five
knights in armor were now engaged in furious battle with a party of ten or a
dozen other steel-clad warriors, while crouching breathless on her palfry, a
young woman sat a little apart from the contestants.

Presently, one of the knights detached himself from the melee and rode to her
side with some word of command, at the same time grasping roughly at her bridle
rein. The girl raised her riding whip and struck repeatedly but futilely
against the iron headgear of her assailant while he swung his horse up the
road, and, dragging her palfrey after him, galloped rapidly out of sight.

Norman of Torn sprang to the door, and, reckless of his unarmored condition,
leaped to Sir Mortimer’s back and spurred swiftly in the direction taken
by the girl and her abductor.

The great black was fleet, and, unencumbered by the usual heavy armor of his
rider, soon brought the fugitives to view. Scarce a mile had been covered ere
the knight, turning to look for pursuers, saw the face of Norman of Torn not
ten paces behind him.

With a look of mingled surprise, chagrin and incredulity the knight reined in
his horse, exclaiming as he did so, “Mon Dieu, Edward!”

“Draw and defend yourself,” cried Norman of Torn.

“But, Your Highness,” stammered the knight.

“Draw, or I stick you as I have stuck an hundred other English
pigs,” cried Norman of Torn.

The charging steed was almost upon him and the knight looked to see the rider
draw rein, but, like a black bolt, the mighty Sir Mortimer struck the other
horse full upon the shoulder, and man and steed rolled in the dust of the
roadway.

The knight arose, unhurt, and Norman of Torn dismounted to give fair battle
upon even terms. Though handicapped by the weight of his armor, the knight also
had the advantage of its protection, so that the two fought furiously for
several minutes without either gaining an advantage.

The girl sat motionless and wide-eyed at the side of the road watching every
move of the two contestants. She made no effort to escape, but seemed riveted
to the spot by the very fierceness of the battle she was beholding, as well,
possibly, as by the fascination of the handsome giant who had espoused her
cause. As she looked upon her champion, she saw a lithe, muscular, brown-haired
youth whose clear eyes and perfect figure, unconcealed by either bassinet or
hauberk, reflected the clean, athletic life of the trained fighting man.

Upon his face hovered a faint, cold smile of haughty pride as the sword arm,
displaying its mighty strength and skill in every move, played with the
sweating, puffing, steel-clad enemy who hacked and hewed so futilely before
him. For all the din of clashing blades and rattling armor, neither of the
contestants had inflicted much damage, for the knight could neither force nor
insinuate his point beyond the perfect guard of his unarmored foe, who, for his
part, found difficulty in penetrating the other’s armor.

Finally, by dint of his mighty strength, Norman of Torn drove his blade through
the meshes of his adversary’s mail, and the fellow, with a cry of
anguish, sank limply to the ground.

“Quick, Sir Knight!” cried the girl. “Mount and flee; yonder
come his fellows.”

And surely, as Norman of Torn turned in the direction from which he had just
come, there, racing toward him at full tilt, rode three steel-armored men on
their mighty horses.

“Ride, madam,” cried Norman of Torn, “for fly I shall not,
nor may I, alone, unarmored, and on foot hope more than to momentarily delay
these three fellows, but in that time you should easily make your escape. Their
heavy-burdened animals could never o’ertake your fleet palfrey.”

As he spoke, he took note for the first time of the young woman. That she was a
lady of quality was evidenced not alone by the richness of her riding apparel
and the trappings of her palfrey, but as well in her noble and haughty demeanor
and the proud expression of her beautiful face.

Although at this time nearly twenty years had passed over the head of Norman of
Torn, he was without knowledge or experience in the ways of women, nor had he
ever spoken with a female of quality or position. No woman graced the castle of
Torn nor had the boy, within his memory, ever known a mother.

His attitude therefore was much the same toward women as it was toward men,
except that he had sworn always to protect them. Possibly, in a way, he looked
up to womankind, if it could be said that Norman of Torn looked up to anything:
God, man or devil—it being more his way to look down upon all creatures
whom he took the trouble to notice at all.

As his glance rested upon this woman, whom fate had destined to alter the
entire course of his life, Norman of Torn saw that she was beautiful, and that
she was of that class against whom he had preyed for years with his band of
outlaw cut-throats. Then he turned once more to face her enemies with the
strange inconsistency which had ever marked his methods.

Tomorrow he might be assaulting the ramparts of her father’s castle, but
today he was joyously offering to sacrifice his life for her—had she been
the daughter of a charcoal burner he would have done no less. It was enough
that she was a woman and in need of protection.

The three knights were now fairly upon him, and with fine disregard for fair
play, charged with couched spears the unarmored man on foot. But as the leading
knight came close enough to behold his face, he cried out in surprise and
consternation:

“Mon Dieu, le Prince!” He wheeled his charging horse to one side.
His fellows, hearing his cry, followed his example, and the three of them
dashed on down the high road in as evident anxiety to escape as they had been
keen to attack.

“One would think they had met the devil,” muttered Norman of Torn,
looking after them in unfeigned astonishment.

“What means it, lady?” he asked turning to the damsel, who had made
no move to escape.

“It means that your face is well known in your father’s realm, my
Lord Prince,” she replied. “And the King’s men have no desire
to antagonize you, even though they may understand as little as I why you
should espouse the cause of a daughter of Simon de Montfort.”

“Am I then taken for Prince Edward of England?” he asked.

“An’ who else should you be taken for, my Lord?”

“I am not the Prince,” said Norman of Torn. “It is said that
Edward is in France.”

“Right you are, sir,” exclaimed the girl. “I had not thought
on that; but you be enough of his likeness that you might well deceive the
Queen herself. And you be of a bravery fit for a king’s son. Who are you
then, Sir Knight, who has bared your steel and faced death for Bertrade,
daughter of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester?”

“Be you De Montfort’s daughter, niece of King Henry?” queried
Norman of Torn, his eyes narrowing to mere slits and face hardening.

“That I be,” replied the girl, “an’ from your face I
take it you have little love for a De Montfort,” she added, smiling.

“An’ whither may you be bound, Lady Bertrade de Montfort? Be you
niece or daughter of the devil, yet still you be a woman, and I do not war
against women. Wheresoever you would go will I accompany you to safety.”

“I was but now bound, under escort of five of my father’s knights,
to visit Mary, daughter of John de Stutevill of Derby.”

“I know the castle well,” answered Norman of Torn, and the shadow
of a grim smile played about his lips, for scarce sixty days had elapsed since
he had reduced the stronghold, and levied tribute on the great baron.
“Come, you have not far to travel now, and if we make haste you shall sup
with your friend before dark.”

So saying, he mounted his horse and was turning to retrace their steps down the
road when he noticed the body of the dead knight lying where it had fallen.

“Ride on,” he called to Bertrade de Montfort, “I will join
you in an instant.”

Again dismounting, he returned to the side of his late adversary, and lifting
the dead knight’s visor, drew upon the forehead with the point of his
dagger the letters NT.

The girl turned to see what detained him, but his back was toward her and he
knelt beside his fallen foeman, and she did not see his act. Brave daughter of
a brave sire though she was, had she seen what he did, her heart would have
quailed within her and she would have fled in terror from the clutches of this
scourge of England, whose mark she had seen on the dead foreheads of a dozen of
her father’s knights and kinsmen.

Their way to Stutevill lay past the cottage of Father Claude, and here Norman
of Torn stopped to don his armor. Now he rode once more with lowered visor, and
in silence, a little to the rear of Bertrade de Montfort that he might watch
her face, which, of a sudden, had excited his interest.

Never before, within the scope of his memory, had he been so close to a young
and beautiful woman for so long a period of time, although he had often seen
women in the castles that had fallen before his vicious and terrible attacks.
While stories were abroad of his vile treatment of women captives, there was no
truth in them. They were merely spread by his enemies to incite the people
against him. Never had Norman of Torn laid violent hand upon a woman, and his
cut-throat band were under oath to respect and protect the sex, on penalty of
death.

As he watched the semi-profile of the lovely face before him, something stirred
in his heart which had been struggling for expression for years. It was not
love, nor was it allied to love, but a deep longing for companionship of such
as she, and such as she represented. Norman of Torn could not have translated
this feeling into words for he did not know, but it was the far faint cry of
blood for blood and with it, mayhap, was mixed not alone the longing of the
lion among jackals for other lions, but for his lioness.

They rode for many miles in silence when suddenly she turned, saying:

“You take your time, Sir Knight, in answering my query. Who be ye?”

“I am Nor—” and then he stopped. Always before he had
answered that question with haughty pride. Why should he hesitate, he thought.
Was it because he feared the loathing that name would inspire in the breast of
this daughter of the aristocracy he despised? Did Norman of Torn fear to face
the look of seem and repugnance that was sure to be mirrored in that lovely
face?

“I am from Normandy,” he went on quietly. “A gentleman of
France.”

“But your name?” she said peremptorily. “Are you ashamed of
your name?”

“You may call me Roger,” he answered. “Roger de Conde.”

“Raise your visor, Roger de Conde,” she commanded. “I do not
take pleasure in riding with a suit of armor; I would see that there is a man
within.”

Norman of Torn smiled as he did her bidding, and when he smiled thus, as he
rarely did, he was good to look upon.

“It is the first command I have obeyed since I turned sixteen, Bertrade
de Montfort,” he said.

The girl was about nineteen, full of the vigor and gaiety of youth and health;
and so the two rode on their journey talking and laughing as they might have
been friends of long standing.

She told him of the reason for the attack upon her earlier in the day,
attributing it to an attempt on the part of a certain baron, Peter of Colfax,
to abduct her, his suit for her hand having been peremptorily and roughly
denied by her father.

Simon de Montfort was no man to mince words, and it is doubtless that the old
reprobate who sued for his daughter’s hand heard some unsavory truths
from the man who had twice scandalized England’s nobility by his rude and
discourteous, though true and candid, speeches to the King.

“This Peter of Colfax shall be looked to,” growled Norman of Torn.
“And, as you have refused his heart and hand, his head shall be yours for
the asking. You have but to command, Bertrade de Montfort.”

“Very well,” she laughed, thinking it but the idle boasting so much
indulged in in those days. “You may bring me his head upon a golden dish,
Roger de Conde.”

“And what reward does the knight earn who brings to the feet of his
princess the head of her enemy?” he asked lightly.

“What boon would the knight ask?”

“That whatsoever a bad report you hear of your knight, of whatsoever
calumnies may be heaped upon him, you shall yet ever be his friend, and believe
in his honor and his loyalty.”

The girl laughed gaily as she answered, though something seemed to tell her
that this was more than play.

“It shall be as you say, Sir Knight,” she replied. “And the
boon once granted shall be always kept.”

Quick to reach decisions and as quick to act, Norman of Torn decided that he
liked this girl and that he wished her friendship more than any other thing he
knew of. And wishing it, he determined to win it by any means that accorded
with his standard of honor; an honor which in many respects was higher than
that of the nobles of his time.

They reached the castle of De Stutevill late in the afternoon, and there,
Norman of Torn was graciously welcomed and urged to accept the Baron’s
hospitality overnight.

The grim humor of the situation was too much for the outlaw, and, when added to
his new desire to be in the company of Bertrade de Montfort, he made no effort
to resist, but hastened to accept the warm welcome.

At the long table upon which the evening meal was spread sat the entire
household of the Baron, and here and there among the men were evidences of
painful wounds but barely healed, while the host himself still wore his sword
arm in a sling.

“We have been through grievous times,” said Sir John, noticing that
his guest was glancing at the various evidences of conflict. “That fiend,
Norman the Devil, with his filthy pack of cut-throats, besieged us for ten
days, and then took the castle by storm and sacked it. Life is no longer safe
in England with the King spending his time and money with foreign favorites and
buying alien soldiery to fight against his own barons, instead of insuring the
peace and protection which is the right of every Englishman at home.

“But,” he continued, “this outlaw devil will come to the end
of a short halter when once our civil strife is settled, for the barons
themselves have decided upon an expedition against him, if the King will not
subdue him.”

“An’ he may send the barons naked home as he did the King’s
soldiers,” laughed Bertrade de Montfort. “I should like to see this
fellow; what may he look like—from the appearance of yourself, Sir John,
and many of your men-at-arms, there should be no few here but have met
him.”

“Not once did he raise his visor while he was among us,” replied
the Baron, “but there are those who claim they had a brief glimpse of him
and that he is of horrid countenance, wearing a great yellow beard and having
one eye gone, and a mighty red scar from his forehead to his chin.”

“A fearful apparition,” murmured Norman of Torn. “No wonder
he keeps his helm closed.”

“But such a swordsman,” spoke up a son of De Stutevill.
“Never in all the world was there such swordplay as I saw that day in the
courtyard.”

“I, too, have seen some wonderful swordplay,” said Bertrade de
Montfort, “and that today. O he!” she cried, laughing gleefully,
“verily do I believe I have captured the wild Norman of Torn, for this
very knight, who styles himself Roger de Conde, fights as I ne’er saw man
fight before, and he rode with his visor down until I chid him for it.”

Norman of Torn led in the laugh which followed, and of all the company he most
enjoyed the joke.

“An’ speaking of the Devil,” said the Baron, “how think
you he will side should the King eventually force war upon the barons? With his
thousand hell-hounds, the fate of England might well be in the palm of his
bloody hand.”

“He loves neither King nor baron,” spoke Mary de Stutevill,
“and I rather lean to the thought that he will serve neither, but rather
plunder the castles of both rebel and royalist whilst their masters be absent
at war.”

“It be more to his liking to come while the master be home to welcome
him,” said De Stutevill, ruthfully. “But yet I am always in fear
for the safety of my wife and daughters when I be away from Derby for any time.
May the good God soon deliver England from this Devil of Torn.”

“I think you may have no need of fear on that score,” spoke Mary,
“for Norman of Torn offered no violence to any woman within the wall of
Stutevill, and when one of his men laid a heavy hand upon me, it was the great
outlaw himself who struck the fellow such a blow with his mailed hand as to
crack the ruffian’s helm, saying at the time, ‘Know you, fellow,
Norman of Torn does not war upon women?’”

Presently the conversation turned to other subjects and Norman of Torn heard no
more of himself during that evening.

His stay at the castle of Stutevill was drawn out to three days, and then, on
the third day, as he sat with Bertrade de Montfort in an embrasure of the south
tower of the old castle, he spoke once more of the necessity for leaving and
once more she urged him to remain.

“To be with you, Bertrade of Montfort,” he said boldly, “I
would forego any other pleasure, and endure any privation, or face any danger,
but there are others who look to me for guidance and my duty calls me away from
you. You shall see me again, and at the castle of your father, Simon de
Montfort, in Leicester. Provided,” he added, “that you will welcome
me there.”

“I shall always welcome you, wherever I may be, Roger de Conde,”
replied the girl.

“Remember that promise,” he said smiling. “Some day you may
be glad to repudiate it.”

“Never,” she insisted, and a light that shone in her eyes as she
said it would have meant much to a man better versed in the ways of women than
was Norman of Torn.

“I hope not,” he said gravely. “I cannot tell you, being but
poorly trained in courtly ways, what I should like to tell you, that you might
know how much your friendship means to me. Goodbye, Bertrade de
Montfort,” and he bent to one knee, as he raised her fingers to his lips.

As he passed over the drawbridge and down toward the highroad a few minutes
later on his way back to Torn, he turned for one last look at the castle and
there, in an embrasure in the south tower, stood a young woman who raised her
hand to wave, and then, as though by sudden impulse, threw a kiss after the
departing knight, only to disappear from the embrasure with the act.

As Norman of Torn rode back to his grim castle in the hills of Derby, he had
much food for thought upon the way. Never till now had he realized what might
lie in another manner of life, and he felt a twinge of bitterness toward the
hard, old man whom he called father, and whose teachings from the boy’s
earliest childhood had guided him in the ways that had cut him off completely
from the society of other men, except the wild horde of outlaws, ruffians and
adventurers that rode beneath the grisly banner of the young chief of Torn.

Only in an ill-defined, nebulous way did he feel that it was the girl who had
come into his life that caused him for the first time to feel shame for his
past deeds. He did not know the meaning of love, and so he could not know that
he loved Bertrade de Montfort.

And another thought which now filled his mind was the fact of his strange
likeness to the Crown Prince of England. This, together with the words of
Father Claude, puzzled him sorely. What might it mean? Was it a heinous offence
to own an accidental likeness to a king’s son?

But now that he felt he had solved the reason that he rode always with closed
helm, he was for the first time anxious himself to hide his face from the sight
of men. Not from fear, for he knew not fear, but from some inward impulse which
he did not attempt to fathom.

CHAPTER VIII

As Norman of Torn rode out from the castle of De Stutevill, Father Claude
dismounted from his sleek donkey within the ballium of Torn. The austere
stronghold, notwithstanding its repellent exterior and unsavory reputation,
always extended a warm welcome to the kindly, genial priest; not alone because
of the deep friendship which the master of Torn felt for the good father, but
through the personal charm, and lovableness of the holy man’s nature,
which shone alike on saint and sinner.

It was doubtless due to his unremitting labors with the youthful Norman, during
the period that the boy’s character was most amenable to strong
impressions, that the policy of the mighty outlaw was in many respects pure and
lofty. It was this same influence, though, which won for Father Claude his only
enemy in Torn; the little, grim, gray, old man whose sole aim in life seemed to
have been to smother every finer instinct of chivalry and manhood in the boy,
to whose training he had devoted the past nineteen years of his life.

As Father Claude climbed down from his donkey—fat people do not
“dismount”—a half dozen young squires ran forward to assist
him, and to lead the animal to the stables.

The good priest called each of his willing helpers by name, asking a question
here, passing a merry joke there with the ease and familiarity that bespoke
mutual affection and old acquaintance.

As he passed in through the great gate, the men-at-arms threw him laughing,
though respectful, welcomes and within the great court, beautified with smooth
lawn, beds of gorgeous plants, fountains, statues and small shrubs and bushes,
he came upon the giant, Red Shandy, now the principal lieutenant of Norman of
Torn.

“Good morrow, Saint Claude!” cried the burly ruffian. “Hast
come to save our souls, or damn us? What manner of sacrilege have we committed
now, or have we merited the blessings of Holy Church? Dost come to scold, or
praise?”

“Neither, thou unregenerate villain,” cried the priest, laughing.
“Though methinks ye merit chiding for the grievous poor courtesy with
which thou didst treat the great Bishop of Norwich the past week.”

“Tut, tut, Father,” replied Red Shandy. “We did but aid him
to adhere more closely to the injunctions and precepts of Him whose servant and
disciple he claims to be. Were it not better for an Archbishop of His Church to
walk in humility and poverty among His people, than to be ever surrounded with
the temptations of fine clothing, jewels and much gold, to say nothing of two
sumpter beasts heavy laden with runlets of wine?”

“I warrant his temptations were less by at least as many runlets of wine
as may be borne by two sumpter beasts when thou, red robber, had finished with
him,” exclaimed Father Claude.

“Yes, Father,” laughed the great fellow, “for the sake of
Holy Church, I did indeed confiscate that temptation completely, and if you
must needs have proof in order to absolve me from my sins, come with me now and
you shall sample the excellent discrimination which the Bishop of Norwich
displays in the selection of his temptations.”

“They tell me you left the great man quite destitute of finery, Red
Shandy,” continued Father Claude, as he locked his arm in that of the
outlaw and proceeded toward the castle.

“One garment was all that Norman of Torn would permit him, and as the sun
was hot overhead, he selected for the Bishop a bassinet for that single article
of apparel, to protect his tonsured pate from the rays of old sol. Then,
fearing that it might be stolen from him by some vandals of the road, he had
One Eye Kanty rivet it at each side of the gorget so that it could not be
removed by other than a smithy, and thus, strapped face to tail upon a donkey,
he sent the great Bishop of Norwich rattling down the dusty road with his head,
at least, protected from the idle gaze of whomsoever he might chance to meet.
Forty stripes he gave to each of the Bishop’s retinue for being abroad in
bad company; but come, here we are where you shall have the wine as proof of my
tale.”

As the two sat sipping the Bishop’s good Canary, the little old man of
Torn entered. He spoke to Father Claude in a surly tone, asking him if he knew
aught of the whereabouts of Norman of Torn.

“We have seen nothing of him since, some three days gone, he rode out in
the direction of your cottage,” he concluded.

“Why, yes,” said the priest, “I saw him that day. He had an
adventure with several knights from the castle of Peter of Colfax, from whom he
rescued a damsel whom I suspect from the trappings of her palfrey to be of the
house of Montfort. Together they rode north, but thy son did not say whither or
for what purpose. His only remark, as he donned his armor, while the girl
waited without, was that I should now behold the falcon guarding the dove. Has
he not returned?”

“No,” said the old man, “and doubtless his adventure is of a
nature in line with thy puerile and effeminate teachings. Had he followed my
training, without thy accurst priestly interference, he had made an iron-barred
nest in Torn for many of the doves of thy damned English nobility. An’
thou leave him not alone, he will soon be seeking service in the household of
the King.”

“Where, perchance, he might be more at home than here,” said the
priest quietly.

“Why say you that?” snapped the little old man, eyeing Father
Claude narrowly.

“Oh,” laughed the priest, “because he whose power and mien be
even more kingly than the King’s would rightly grace the royal
palace,” but he had not failed to note the perturbation his remark had
caused, nor did his off-hand reply entirely deceive the old man.

At this juncture, a squire entered to say that Shandy’s presence was
required at the gates, and that worthy, with a sorrowing and regretful glance
at the unemptied flagon, left the room.

For a few moments, the two men sat in meditative silence, which was presently
broken by the old man of Torn.

“Priest,” he said, “thy ways with my son are, as you know,
not to my liking. It were needless that he should have wasted so much precious
time from swordplay to learn the useless art of letters. Of what benefit may a
knowledge of Latin be to one whose doom looms large before him. It may be years
and again it may be but months, but as sure as there be a devil in hell, Norman
of Torn will swing from a king’s gibbet. And thou knowst it, and he too,
as well as I. The things which thou hast taught him be above his station, and
the hopes and ambitions they inspire will but make his end the bitterer for
him. Of late I have noted that he rides upon the highway with less enthusiasm
than was his wont, but he has gone too far ever to go back now; nor is there
where to go back to. What has he ever been other than outcast and outlaw? What
hopes could you have engendered in his breast greater than to be hated and
feared among his blood enemies?”

“I know not thy reasons, old man,” replied the priest, “for
devoting thy life to the ruining of his, and what I guess at be such as I dare
not voice; but let us understand each other once and for all. For all thou dost
and hast done to blight and curse the nobleness of his nature, I have done and
shall continue to do all in my power to controvert. As thou hast been his bad
angel, so shall I try to be his good angel, and when all is said and done and
Norman of Torn swings from the King’s gibbet, as I only too well fear he
must, there will be more to mourn his loss than there be to curse him.

“His friends are from the ranks of the lowly, but so too were the friends
and followers of our Dear Lord Jesus; so that shall be more greatly to his
honor than had he preyed upon the already unfortunate.

“Women have never been his prey; that also will be spoken of to his honor
when he is gone, and that he has been cruel to men will be forgotten in the
greater glory of his mercy to the weak.

“Whatever be thy object: whether revenge or the natural bent of a cruel
and degraded mind, I know not; but if any be curst because of the Outlaw of
Torn, it will be thou—I had almost said, unnatural father; but I do not
believe a single drop of thy debased blood flows in the veins of him thou
callest son.”

The grim old man of Torn had sat motionless throughout this indictment, his
face, somewhat pale, was drawn into lines of malevolent hatred and rage, but he
permitted Father Claude to finish without interruption.

“Thou hast made thyself and thy opinions quite clear,” he said
bitterly, “but I be glad to know just how thou standeth. In the past
there has been peace between us, though no love; now let us both understand
that it be war and hate. My life work is cut out for me. Others, like thyself,
have stood in my path, yet today I am here, but where are they? Dost understand
me, priest?” And the old man leaned far across the table so that his
eyes, burning with an insane fire of venom, blazed but a few inches from those
of the priest.

Father Claude returned the look with calm level gaze.

“I understand,” he said, and, rising, left the castle.

Shortly after he had reached his cottage, a loud knock sounded at the door,
which immediately swung open without waiting the formality of permission.
Father Claude looked up to see the tall figure of Norman of Torn, and his face
lighted with a pleased smile of welcome.

“Greetings, my son,” said the priest.

“And to thee, Father,” replied the outlaw. “And what may be
the news of Torn. I have been absent for several days. Is all well at the
castle?”

“All be well at the castle,” replied Father Claude, “if by
that you mean have none been captured or hanged for their murders. Ah, my boy,
why wilt thou not give up this wicked life of thine? It has never been my way
to scold or chide thee, yet always has my heart ached for each crime laid at
the door of Norman of Torn.”

“Come, come, Father,” replied the outlaw, “what do I that I
have not good example for from the barons, and the King, and Holy Church.
Murder, theft, rapine! Passeth a day over England which sees not one or all
perpetrated in the name of some of these?

“Be it wicked for Norman of Torn to prey upon the wolf, yet righteous for
the wolf to tear the sheep? Methinks not. Only do I collect from those who have
more than they need, from my natural enemies; while they prey upon those who
have naught.

“Yet,” and his manner suddenly changed, “I do not love it,
Father. That thou know. I would that there might be some way out of it, but
there is none.

“If I told you why I wished it, you would be surprised indeed, nor can I
myself understand; but, of a verity, my greatest wish to be out of this life is
due to the fact that I crave the association of those very enemies I have been
taught to hate. But it is too late, Father, there can be but one end and that
the lower end of a hempen rope.”

“No, my son, there is another way, an honorable way,” replied the
good Father. “In some foreign clime there be opportunities abundant for
such as thee. France offers a magnificent future to such a soldier as Norman of
Torn. In the court of Louis, you would take your place among the highest of the
land. You be rich and brave and handsome. Nay do not raise your hand. You be
all these and more, for you have learning far beyond the majority of nobles,
and you have a good heart and a true chivalry of character. With such wondrous
gifts, naught could bar your way to the highest pinnacles of power and glory,
while here you have no future beyond the halter. Canst thou hesitate, Norman of
Torn?”

The young man stood silent for a moment, then he drew his hand across his eyes
as though to brush away a vision.

“There be a reason, Father, why I must remain in England for a time at
least, though the picture you put is indeed wondrous alluring.”

And the reason was Bertrade de Montfort.

CHAPTER IX

The visit of Bertrade de Montfort with her friend Mary de Stutevill was drawing
to a close. Three weeks had passed since Roger de Conde had ridden out from the
portals of Stutevill and many times the handsome young knight’s name had
been on the lips of his fair hostess and her fairer friend.

Today the two girls roamed slowly through the gardens of the great court, their
arms about each other’s waists, pouring the last confidences into each
other’s ears, for tomorrow Bertrade had elected to return to Leicester.

“Methinks thou be very rash indeed, my Bertrade,” said Mary.
“Were my father here he would, I am sure, not permit thee to leave with
only the small escort which we be able to give.”

“Fear not, Mary,” replied Bertrade. “Five of thy
father’s knights be ample protection for so short a journey. By evening
it will have been accomplished; and, as the only one I fear in these parts
received such a sound setback from Roger de Conde recently, I do not think he
will venture again to molest me.”

“But what about the Devil of Torn, Bertrade?” urged Mary.
“Only yestereve, you wot, one of Lord de Grey’s men-at-arms came
limping to us with the news of the awful carnage the foul fiend had wrought on
his master’s household. He be abroad, Bertrade, and I can think of
naught more horrible than to fall into his hands.”

“Why, Mary, thou didst but recently say thy very self that Norman of Torn
was most courteous to thee when he sacked this, thy father’s castle. How
be it thou so soon hast changed thy mind?”

“Yes, Bertrade, he was indeed respectful then, but who knows what horrid
freak his mind may take, and they do say that he be cruel beyond compare.
Again, forget not that thou be Leicester’s daughter and Henry’s
niece; against both of whom the Outlaw of Torn openly swears his hatred and his
vengeance. Oh, Bertrade, wait but for a day or so, I be sure my father must
return ere then, and fifty knights shall accompany thee instead of five.”

“What be fifty knights against Norman of Torn, Mary? Thy reasoning is on
a parity with thy fears, both have flown wide of the mark.

“If I am to meet with this wild ruffian, it were better that five knights
were sacrificed than fifty, for either number would be but a mouthful to that
horrid horde of unhung murderers. No, Mary, I shall start tomorrow and your
good knights shall return the following day with the best of word from
me.”

“If thou wilt, thou wilt,” cried Mary petulantly. “Indeed
it were plain that thou be a De Montfort; that race whose historic bravery be
second only to their historic stubbornness.”

Bertrade de Montfort laughed, and kissed her friend upon the cheek.

“Mayhap I shall find the brave Roger de Conde again upon the highroad to
protect me. Then indeed shall I send back your five knights, for of a truth,
his blade is more powerful than that of any ten men I e’er saw fight
before.”

“Methinks,” said Mary, still peeved at her friend’s
determination to leave on the morrow, “that should you meet the doughty
Sir Roger all unarmed, that still would you send back my father’s
knights.”

Bertrade flushed, and then bit her lip as she felt the warm blood mount to her
cheek.

“Thou be a fool, Mary,” she said.

Mary broke into a joyful, teasing laugh; hugely enjoying the discomfiture of
the admission the tell-tale flush proclaimed.

“Ah, I did but guess how thy heart and thy mind tended, Bertrade; but now
I see that I divined all too truly. He be indeed good to look upon, but what
knowest thou of him?”

“Hush, Mary!” commanded Bertrade. “Thou know not what thou
sayest. I would not wipe my feet upon him, I care naught whatever for him, and
then—it has been three weeks since he rode out from Stutevill and no word
hath he sent.”

“Oh, ho,” cried the little plague, “so there lies the wind?
My Lady would not wipe her feet upon him, but she be sore vexed that he has
sent her no word. Mon Dieu, but thou hast strange notions, Bertrade.”

“I will not talk with you, Mary,” cried Bertrade, stamping her
sandaled foot, and with a toss of her pretty head she turned abruptly toward
the castle.

In a small chamber in the castle of Colfax two men sat at opposite sides of a
little table. The one, Peter of Colfax, was short and very stout. His red,
bloated face, bleary eyes and bulbous nose bespoke the manner of his life;
while his thick lips, the lower hanging large and flabby over his receding
chin, indicated the base passions to which his life had been given. His
companion was a little, grim, gray man but his suit of armor and closed helm
gave no hint to his host of whom his guest might be. It was the little armored
man who was speaking.

“Is it not enough that I offer to aid you, Sir Peter,” he said,
“that you must have my reasons? Let it go that my hate of Leicester be
the passion which moves me. Thou failed in thy attempt to capture the maiden;
give me ten knights and I will bring her to you.”

“How knowest thou she rides out tomorrow for her father’s
castle?” asked Peter of Colfax.

“That again be no concern of thine, my friend, but I do know it, and, if
thou wouldst have her, be quick, for we should ride out tonight that we may
take our positions by the highway in ample time tomorrow.”

Still Peter of Colfax hesitated, he feared this might be a ruse of
Leicester’s to catch him in some trap. He did not know his
guest—the fellow might want the girl for himself and be taking this
method of obtaining the necessary assistance to capture her.

“Come,” said the little, armored man irritably. “I cannot
bide here forever. Make up thy mind; it be nothing to me other than my revenge,
and if thou wilt not do it, I shall hire the necessary ruffians and then not
even thou shalt see Bertrade de Montfort more.”

This last threat decided the Baron.

“It is agreed,” he said. “The men shall ride out with you in
half an hour. Wait below in the courtyard.”

When the little man had left the apartment, Peter of Colfax summoned his squire
whom he had send to him at once one of his faithful henchmen.

“Guy,” said Peter of Colfax, as the man entered, “ye made a
rare fizzle of a piece of business some weeks ago. Ye wot of which I
speak?”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“It chances that on the morrow ye may have opportunity to retrieve thy
blunder. Ride out with ten men where the stranger who waits in the courtyard
below shall lead ye, and come not back without that which ye lost to a handful
of men before. You understand?”

“Yes, My Lord!”

“And, Guy, I half mistrust this fellow who hath offered to assist us. At
the first sign of treachery, fall upon him with all thy men and slay him. Tell
the others that these be my orders.”

“Yes, My Lord. When do we ride?”

“At once. You may go.”

The morning that Bertrade de Montfort had chosen to return to her
father’s castle dawned gray and threatening. In vain did Mary de
Stutevill plead with her friend to give up the idea of setting out upon such a
dismal day and without sufficient escort, but Bertrade de Montfort was firm.

“Already have I overstayed my time three days, and it is not lightly that
even I, his daughter, fail in obedience to Simon de Montfort. I shall have
enough to account for as it be. Do not urge me to add even one more day to my
excuses. And again, perchance, my mother and my father may be sore distressed
by my continued absence. No, Mary, I must ride today.” And so she did,
with the five knights that could be spared from the castle’s defence.

Scarcely half an hour had elapsed before a cold drizzle set in, so that they
were indeed a sorry company that splashed along the muddy road, wrapped in
mantle and surcoat. As they proceeded, the rain and wind increased in volume,
until it was being driven into their faces in such blinding gusts that they
must needs keep their eyes closed and trust to the instincts of their mounts.

Less than half the journey had been accomplished. They were winding across a
little hollow toward a low ridge covered with dense forest, into the somber
shadows of which the road wound. There was a glint of armor among the drenched
foliage, but the rain-buffeted eyes of the riders saw it not. On they came,
their patient horses plodding slowly through the sticky road and hurtling
storm.

Now they were halfway up the ridge’s side. There was a movement in the
dark shadows of the grim wood, and then, without cry or warning, a band of
steel-clad horsemen broke forth with couched spears. Charging at full run down
upon them, they overthrew three of the girl’s escort before a blow could
be struck in her defense. Her two remaining guardians wheeled to meet the
return attack, and nobly did they acquit themselves, for it took the entire
eleven who were pitted against them to overcome and slay the two.

In the melee, none had noticed the girl, but presently one of her assailants, a
little, grim, gray man, discovered that she had put spurs to her palfrey and
escaped. Calling to his companions he set out at a rapid pace in pursuit.

Reckless of the slippery road and the blinding rain, Bertrade de Montfort urged
her mount into a wild run, for she had recognized the arms of Peter of Colfax
on the shields of several of the attacking party.

Nobly, the beautiful Arab bent to her call for speed. The great beasts of her
pursuers, bred in Normandy and Flanders, might have been tethered in their
stalls for all the chance they had of overtaking the flying white steed that
fairly split the gray rain as lightning flies through the clouds.

But for the fiendish cunning of the little grim, gray man’s foresight,
Bertrade de Montfort would have made good her escape that day. As it was,
however, her fleet mount had carried her but two hundred yards ere, in the
midst of the dark wood, she ran full upon a rope stretched across the roadway
between two trees.

As the horse fell, with a terrible lunge, tripped by the stout rope, Bertrade
de Montfort was thrown far before him, where she lay, a little, limp bedraggled
figure, in the mud of the road.

There they found her. The little, grim, gray man did not even dismount, so
indifferent was he to her fate; dead or in the hands of Peter of Colfax, it was
all the same to him. In either event, his purpose would be accomplished, and
Bertrade de Montfort would no longer lure Norman of Torn from the path he had
laid out for him.

That such an eventuality threatened, he knew from one Spizo the Spaniard, the
single traitor in the service of Norman of Torn, whose mean aid the little
grim, gray man had purchased since many months to spy upon the comings and
goings of the great outlaw.

The men of Peter of Colfax gathered up the lifeless form of Bertrade de
Montfort and placed it across the saddle before one of their number.

“Come,” said the man called Guy, “if there be life left in
her, we must hasten to Sir Peter before it be extinct.”

“I leave ye here,” said the little old man. “My part of the
business is done.”

And so he sat watching them until they had disappeared in the forest toward the
castle of Colfax.

Then he rode back to the scene of the encounter where lay the five knights of
Sir John de Stutevill. Three were already dead, the other two, sorely but not
mortally wounded, lay groaning by the roadside.

The little grim, gray man dismounted as he came abreast of them and, with his
long sword, silently finished the two wounded men. Then, drawing his dagger, he
made a mark upon the dead foreheads of each of the five, and mounting, rode
rapidly toward Torn.

“And if one fact be not enough,” he muttered, “that mark upon
the dead will quite effectually stop further intercourse between the houses of
Torn and Leicester.”

Henry de Montfort, son of Simon, rode fast and furious at the head of a dozen
of his father’s knights on the road to Stutevill.

Bertrade de Montfort was so long overdue that the Earl and Princess Eleanor,
his wife, filled with grave apprehensions, had posted their oldest son off to
the castle of John de Stutevill to fetch her home.

With the wind and rain at their backs, the little party rode rapidly along the
muddy road, until late in the afternoon they came upon a white palfrey standing
huddled beneath a great oak, his arched back toward the driving storm.

“By God,” cried De Montfort, “tis my sister’s own
Abdul. There be something wrong here indeed.” But a rapid search of the
vicinity, and loud calls brought no further evidence of the girl’s
whereabouts, so they pressed on toward Stutevill.

Some two miles beyond the spot where the white palfrey had been found, they
came upon the dead bodies of the five knights who had accompanied Bertrade from
Stutevill.

Dismounting, Henry de Montfort examined the bodies of the fallen men. The arms
upon shield and helm confirmed his first fear that these had been
Bertrade’s escort from Stutevill.

As he bent over them to see if he recognized any of the knights, there stared
up into his face from the foreheads of the dead men the dreaded sign, NT,
scratched there with a dagger’s point.

“The curse of God be on him!” cried De Montfort. “It be the
work of the Devil of Torn, my gentlemen,” he said to his followers.
“Come, we need no further guide to our destination.” And,
remounting, the little party spurred back toward Torn.

When Bertrade de Montfort regained her senses, she was in bed in a strange
room, and above her bent an old woman; a repulsive, toothless old woman, whose
smile was but a fangless snarl.

“Ho, ho!” she croaked. “The bride waketh. I told My Lord that
it would take more than a tumble in the mud to kill a De Montfort. Come, come,
now, arise and clothe thyself, for the handsome bridegroom can scarce
restrain his eager desire to fold thee in his arms. Below in the great hall he
paces to and fro, the red blood mantling his beauteous countenance.”

“Who be ye?” cried Bertrade de Montfort, her mind still dazed from
the effects of her fall. “Where am I?” and then, “O, Mon
Dieu!” as she remembered the events of the afternoon; and the arms of
Colfax upon the shields of the attacking party. In an instant she realized the
horror of her predicament; its utter hopelessness.

Beast though he was, Peter of Colfax stood high in the favor of the King; and
the fact that she was his niece would scarce aid her cause with Henry, for it
was more than counter-balanced by the fact that she was the daughter of Simon
de Montfort, whom he feared and hated.

In the corridor without, she heard the heavy tramp of approaching feet, and
presently a man’s voice at the door.

“Within there, Coll! Has the damsel awakened from her swoon?”

“Yes, Sir Peter,” replied the old woman. “I was but just
urging her to arise and clothe herself, saying that you awaited her
below.”

“Haste then, My Lady Bertrade,” called the man, “no harm will
be done thee if thou showest the good sense I give thee credit for. I will
await thee in the great hall, or, if thou prefer, will come to thee
here.”

The girl paled, more in loathing and contempt than in fear, but the tones of
her answer were calm and level.

“I will see thee below, Sir Peter, anon,” and rising, she hastened
to dress, while the receding footsteps of the Baron diminished down the
stairway which led from the tower room in which she was imprisoned.

The old woman attempted to draw her into conversation, but the girl would not
talk. Her whole mind was devoted to weighing each possible means of escape.

A half hour later, she entered the great hall of the castle of Peter of Colfax.
The room was empty. Little change had been wrought in the apartment since the
days of Ethelwolf. As the girl’s glance ranged the hall in search of her
jailer it rested upon the narrow, unglazed windows beyond which lay freedom.
Would she ever again breathe God’s pure air outside these stifling walls?
These grimy hateful walls! Black as the inky rafters and wainscot except for
occasional splotches a few shades less begrimed, where repairs had been made.
As her eyes fell upon the trophies of war and chase which hung there her lips
curled in scorn, for she knew that they were acquisitions by inheritance rather
than by the personal prowess of the present master of Colfax.

A single cresset lighted the chamber, while the flickering light from a small
wood fire upon one of the two great hearths seemed rather to accentuate the dim
shadows of the place.

Bertrade crossed the room and leaned against a massive oak table, blackened by
age and hard usage to the color of the beams above, dented and nicked by the
pounding of huge drinking horns and heavy swords when wild and lusty brawlers
had been moved to applause by the lay of some wandering minstrel, or the
sterner call of their mighty chieftains for the oath of fealty.

Her wandering eyes took in the dozen benches and the few rude, heavy chairs
which completed the rough furnishings of this rough room, and she shuddered.
One little foot tapped sullenly upon the disordered floor which was littered
with a miscellany of rushes interspread with such bones and scraps of food as
the dogs had rejected or overlooked.

But to none of these surroundings did Bertrade de Montfort give but passing
heed; she looked for the man she sought that she might quickly have the
encounter over and learn what fate the future held in store for her.

Her quick glance had shown her that the room was quite empty, and that in
addition to the main doorway at the lower end of the apartment, where she had
entered, there was but one other door leading from the hall. This was at one
side, and as it stood ajar she could see that it led into a small room,
apparently a bedchamber.

As she stood facing the main doorway, a panel opened quietly behind her and
directly back of where the thrones had stood in past times. From the black
mouth of the aperture stepped Peter of Colfax. Silently, he closed the panel
after him, and with soundless steps, advanced toward the girl. At the edge of
the raised dais he halted, rattling his sword to attract her attention.

If his aim had been to unnerve her by the suddenness and mystery of his
appearance, he failed signally, for she did not even turn her head as she said:

“What explanation hast thou to make, Sir Peter, for this base treachery
against thy neighbor’s daughter and thy sovereign’s niece?”

“When fond hearts be thwarted by a cruel parent,” replied the
pot-bellied old beast in a soft and fawning tone, “love must still find
its way; and so thy gallant swain hath dared the wrath of thy great father and
majestic uncle, and lays his heart at thy feet, O beauteous Bertrade, knowing
full well that thine hath been hungering after it since we did first avow our
love to thy hard-hearted sire. See, I kneel to thee, my dove!” And with
cracking joints the fat baron plumped down upon his marrow bones.

Bertrade turned and as she saw him her haughty countenance relaxed into a
sneering smile.

“Thou art a fool, Sir Peter,” she said, “and, at that, the
worst species of fool—an ancient fool. It is useless to pursue thy cause,
for I will have none of thee. Let me hence, if thou be a gentleman, and no word
of what hath transpired shall ever pass my lips. But let me go, ’tis all
I ask, and it is useless to detain me for I cannot give what you would have. I
do not love you, nor ever can I.”

Her first words had caused the red of humiliation to mottle his already ruby
visage to a semblance of purple, and now, as he attempted to rise with dignity,
he was still further covered with confusion by the fact that his huge stomach
made it necessary for him to go upon all fours before he could rise, so that he
got up much after the manner of a cow, raising his stern high in air in a most
ludicrous fashion. As he gained his feet he saw the girl turn her head from him
to hide the laughter on her face.

“Return to thy chamber,” he thundered. “I will give thee
until tomorrow to decide whether thou wilt accept Peter of Colfax as thy
husband, or take another position in his household which will bar thee for all
time from the society of thy kind.”

The girl turned toward him, the laugh still playing on her lips.

“I will be wife to no buffoon; to no clumsy old clown; to no debauched,
degraded parody of a man. And as for thy other rash threat, thou hast not the
guts to put thy wishes into deeds, thou craven coward, for well ye know that
Simon de Montfort would cut out thy foul heart with his own hand if he ever
suspected thou wert guilty of speaking of such to me, his daughter.” And
Bertrade de Montfort swept from the great hall, and mounted to her tower
chamber in the ancient Saxon stronghold of Colfax.

The old woman kept watch over her during the night and until late the following
afternoon, when Peter of Colfax summoned his prisoner before him once more. So
terribly had the old hag played upon the girl’s fears that she felt fully
certain that the Baron was quite equal to his dire threat, and so she had again
been casting about for some means of escape or delay.

The room in which she was imprisoned was in the west tower of the castle, fully
a hundred feet above the moat, which the single embrasure overlooked. There
was, therefore, no avenue of escape in this direction. The solitary door was
furnished with huge oaken bars, and itself composed of mighty planks of the
same wood, cross barred with iron.

If she could but get the old woman out, thought Bertrade, she could barricade
herself within and thus delay, at least, her impending fate in the hope that
succor might come from some source. But her most subtle wiles proved
ineffectual in ridding her, even for a moment, of her harpy jailer; and now
that the final summons had come, she was beside herself for a lack of means to
thwart her captor.

Her dagger had been taken from her, but one hung from the girdle of the old
woman and this Bertrade determined to have.

Feigning trouble with the buckle of her own girdle, she called upon the old
woman to aid her, and as the hag bent her head close to the girl’s body
to see what was wrong with the girdle clasp, Bertrade reached quickly to her
side and snatched the weapon from its sheath. Quickly she sprang back from the
old woman who, with a cry of anger and alarm, rushed upon her.

“Back!” cried the girl. “Stand back, old hag, or thou shalt
feel the length of thine own blade.”

The woman hesitated and then fell to cursing and blaspheming in a most horrible
manner, at the same time calling for help.

Bertrade backed to the door, commanding the old woman to remain where she was,
on pain of death, and quickly dropped the mighty bars into place. Scarcely had
the last great bolt been slipped than Peter of Colfax, with a dozen servants
and men-at-arms, were pounding loudly upon the outside.

“What’s wrong within, Coll,” cried the Baron.

“The wench has wrested my dagger from me and is murdering me,”
shrieked the old woman.

“An’ that I will truly do, Peter of Colfax,” spoke Bertrade,
“if you do not immediately send for my friends to conduct me from thy
castle, for I will not step my foot from this room until I know that mine own
people stand without.”

Peter of Colfax pled and threatened, commanded and coaxed, but all in vain. So
passed the afternoon, and as darkness settled upon the castle the Baron
desisted from his attempts, intending to starve his prisoner out.

Within the little room, Bertrade de Montfort sat upon a bench guarding her
prisoner, from whom she did not dare move her eyes for a single second. All
that long night she sat thus, and when morning dawned, it found her position
unchanged, her tired eyes still fixed upon the hag.

Early in the morning, Peter of Colfax resumed his endeavors to persuade her to
come out; he even admitted defeat and promised her safe conduct to her
father’s castle, but Bertrade de Montfort was not one to be fooled by his
lying tongue.

“Then will I starve you out,” he cried at length.

“Gladly will I starve in preference to falling into thy foul
hands,” replied the girl. “But thy old servant here will starve
first, for she be very old and not so strong as I. Therefore, how will it
profit you to kill two and still be robbed of thy prey?”

Peter of Colfax entertained no doubt but that his fair prisoner would carry out
her threat and so he set his men to work with cold chisels, axes and saws upon
the huge door.

For hours, they labored upon that mighty work of defence, and it was late at
night ere they made a little opening large enough to admit a hand and arm, but
the first one intruded within the room to raise the bars was drawn quickly back
with a howl of pain from its owner. Thus the keen dagger in the girl’s
hand put an end to all hopes of entering without completely demolishing the
door.

To this work, the men without then set themselves diligently while Peter of
Colfax renewed his entreaties, through the small opening they had made.
Bertrade replied but once.

“Seest thou this poniard?” she asked. “When that door falls,
this point enters my heart. There is nothing beyond that door, with thou,
poltroon, to which death in this little chamber would not be preferable.”

As she spoke, she turned toward the man she was addressing, for the first time
during all those weary, hideous hours removing her glance from the old hag. It
was enough. Silently, but with the quickness of a tigress the old woman was
upon her back, one claw-like paw grasping the wrist which held the dagger.

“Quick, My Lord!” she shrieked, “the bolts, quick.”

Instantly Peter of Colfax ran his arm through the tiny opening in the door and
a second later four of his men rushed to the aid of the old woman.

Easily they wrested the dagger from Bertrade’s fingers, and at the
Baron’s bidding, they dragged her to the great hall below.

As his retainers left the room at his command, Peter of Colfax strode back and
forth upon the rushes which strewed the floor. Finally he stopped before the
girl standing rigid in the center of the room.

“Hast come to thy senses yet, Bertrade de Montfort?” he asked
angrily. “I have offered you your choice; to be the honored wife of Peter
of Colfax, or, by force, his mistress. The good priest waits without, what be
your answer now?”

“The same as it has been these past two days,” she replied with
haughty scorn. “The same that it shall always be. I will be neither wife
nor mistress to a coward; a hideous, abhorrent pig of a man. I would die, it
seems, if I felt the touch of your hand upon me. You do not dare to touch me,
you craven. I, the daughter of an earl, the niece of a king, wed to the warty
toad, Peter of Colfax!”

“Hold, chit!” cried the Baron, livid with rage. “You have
gone too far. Enough of this; and you love me not now, I shall learn you to
love ere the sun rises.” And with a vile oath he grasped the girl roughly
by the arm, and dragged her toward the little doorway at the side of the room.

CHAPTER X

For three weeks after his meeting with Bertrade de Montfort and his sojourn at
the castle of John de Stutevill, Norman of Torn was busy with his wild horde in
reducing and sacking the castle of John de Grey, a royalist baron who had
captured and hanged two of the outlaw’s fighting men; and never again
after his meeting with the daughter of the chief of the barons did Norman of
Torn raise a hand against the rebels or their friends.

Shortly after his return to Torn, following the successful outcome of his
expedition, the watch upon the tower reported the approach of a dozen armed
knights. Norman sent Red Shandy to the outer walls to learn the mission of the
party, for visitors seldom came to this inaccessible and unhospitable fortress;
and he well knew that no party of a dozen knights would venture with hostile
intent within the clutches of his great band of villains.

The great red giant soon returned to say that it was Henry de Montfort, oldest
son of the Earl of Leicester, who had come under a flag of truce and would have
speech with the master of Torn.

“Admit them, Shandy,” commanded Norman of Torn, “I will speak
with them here.”

When the party, a few moments later, was ushered into his presence it found
itself facing a mailed knight with drawn visor.

Henry de Montfort advanced with haughty dignity until he faced the outlaw.

“Be ye Norman of Torn?” he asked. And, did he try to conceal the
hatred and loathing which he felt, he was poorly successful.

“They call me so,” replied the visored knight. “And what may
bring a De Montfort after so many years to visit his old neighbor?”

“Well ye know what brings me, Norman of Torn,” replied the young
man. “It is useless to waste words, and we cannot resort to arms, for you
have us entirely in your power. Name your price and it shall be paid, only be
quick and let me hence with my sister.”

“What wild words be these, Henry de Montfort? Your sister! What mean
you?”

“Yes, my sister Bertrade, whom you stole upon the highroad two days
since, after murdering the knights of John de Stutevill who were fetching her
home from a visit upon the Baron’s daughter. We know that it was you for
the foreheads of the dead men bore your devil’s mark.”

“Shandy!” roared Norman of Torn. “WHAT MEANS THIS? Who has
been upon the road, attacking women, in my absence? You were here and in charge
during my visit to my Lord de Grey. As you value your hide, Shandy, the
truth!”

“Since you laid me low in the hut of the good priest, I have served you
well, Norman of Torn. You should know my loyalty by this time and that never
have I lied to you. No man of yours has done this thing, nor is it the first
time that vile scoundrels have placed your mark upon their dead that they might
thus escape suspicion, themselves.”

“Henry de Montfort,” said Norman of Torn, turning to his visitor,
“we of Torn bear no savory name, that I know full well, but no man may
say that we unsheath our swords against women. Your sister is not here. I give
you the word of honor of Norman of Torn. Is it not enough?”

“They say you never lie,” replied De Montfort. “Would to God
I knew who had done this thing, or which way to search for my sister.”

Norman of Torn made no reply, his thoughts were in wild confusion, and it was
with difficulty that he hid the fierce anxiety of his heart or his rage against
the perpetrators of this dastardly act which tore his whole being.

In silence De Montfort turned and left, nor had his party scarce passed the
drawbridge ere the castle of Torn was filled with hurrying men and the noise
and uproar of a sudden call to arms.

Some thirty minutes later, five hundred iron-clad horses carried their mailed
riders beneath the portcullis of the grim pile, and Norman the Devil, riding at
their head, spurred rapidly in the direction of the castle of Peter of Colfax.

The great troop, winding down the rocky trail from Torn’s buttressed
gates, presented a picture of wild barbaric splendor.

The armor of the men was of every style and metal from the ancient banded mail
of the Saxon to the richly ornamented plate armor of Milan. Gold and silver and
precious stones set in plumed crest and breastplate and shield, and even in the
steel spiked chamfrons of the horses’ head armor showed the rich loot
which had fallen to the portion of Norman of Torn’s wild raiders.

Fluttering pennons streamed from five hundred lance points, and the gray banner
of Torn, with the black falcon’s wing, flew above each of the five
companies. The great linden wood shields of the men were covered with gray
leather and, in the upper right hand corner of each, was the black
falcon’s wing. The surcoats of the riders were also uniform, being of
dark gray villosa faced with black wolf skin, so that notwithstanding the
richness of the armor and the horse trappings, there was a grim, gray warlike
appearance to these wild companies that comported well with their reputation.

Recruited from all ranks of society and from every civilized country of Europe,
the great horde of Torn numbered in its ten companies serf and noble; Briton,
Saxon, Norman, Dane, German, Italian and French, Scot, Pict and Irish.

Here birth caused no distinctions; the escaped serf, with the gall marks of his
brass collar still visible about his neck, rode shoulder to shoulder with the
outlawed scion of a noble house. The only requisites for admission to the troop
were willingness and ability to fight, and an oath to obey the laws made by
Norman of Torn.

The little army was divided into ten companies of one hundred men, each company
captained by a fighter of proven worth and ability.

Our old friends Red Shandy, and John and James Flory led the first three
companies, the remaining seven being under command of other seasoned veterans
of a thousand fights.

One Eye Kanty, owing to his early trade, held the always important post of
chief armorer, while Peter the Hermit, the last of the five cut-throats whom
Norman of Torn had bested that day, six years before, in the hut of Father
Claude, had become majordomo of the great castle of Torn, which post included
also the vital functions of quartermaster and commissary.

The old man of Torn attended to the training of serf and squire in the art of
war, for it was ever necessary to fill the gaps made in the companies, due to
their constant encounters upon the highroad and their battles at the taking of
some feudal castle; in which they did not always come off unscathed, though
usually victorious.

Today, as they wound west across the valley, Norman of Torn rode at the head of
the cavalcade, which strung out behind him in a long column. Above his gray
steel armor, a falcon’s wing rose from his crest. It was the insignia
which always marked him to his men in the midst of battle. Where it waved might
always be found the fighting and the honors, and about it they were wont to
rally.

Beside Norman of Torn rode the grim, gray, old man, silent and taciturn;
nursing his deep hatred in the depths of his malign brain.

At the head of their respective companies rode the five captains: Red Shandy;
John Flory; Edwild the Serf; Emilio, Count de Gropello of Italy; and Sieur
Ralph de la Campnee, of France.

The hamlets and huts which they passed in the morning and early afternoon
brought forth men, women and children to cheer and wave God-speed to them; but
as they passed farther from the vicinity of Torn, where the black falcon wing
was known more by the ferocity of its name than by the kindly deeds of the
great outlaw to the lowly of his neighborhood, they saw only closed and barred
doors with an occasional frightened face peering from a tiny window.

It was midnight ere they sighted the black towers of Colfax silhouetted against
the starry sky. Drawing his men into the shadows of the forest a half mile from
the castle, Norman of Torn rode forward with Shandy and some fifty men to a
point as close as they could come without being observed. Here they dismounted
and Norman of Torn crept stealthily forward alone.

Taking advantage of every cover, he approached to the very shadows of the great
gate without being detected. In the castle, a light shone dimly from the
windows of the great hall, but no other sign of life was apparent. To his
intense surprise, Norman of Torn found the drawbridge lowered and no sign of
watchmen at the gate or upon the walls.

As he had sacked this castle some two years since, he was familiar with its
internal plan, and so he knew that through the scullery he could reach a small
antechamber above, which let directly into the great hall.

And so it happened that, as Peter of Colfax wheeled toward the door of the
little room, he stopped short in terror, for there before him stood a strange
knight in armor, with lowered visor and drawn sword. The girl saw him too, and
a look of hope and renewed courage overspread her face.

“Draw!” commanded a low voice in English, “unless you prefer
to pray, for you are about to die.”

“Who be ye, varlet?” cried the Baron. “Ho, John! Ho, Guy! To
the rescue, quick!” he shrieked, and drawing his sword, he attempted to
back quickly toward the main doorway of the hall; but the man in armor was upon
him and forcing him to fight ere he had taken three steps.

It had been short shrift for Peter of Colfax that night had not John and Guy
and another of his henchmen rushed into the room with drawn swords.

“Ware! Sir Knight,” cried the girl, as she saw the three knaves
rushing to the aid of their master.

Turning to meet their assault, the knight was forced to abandon the
terror-stricken Baron for an instant, and again he had made for the doorway
bent only on escape; but the girl had divined his intentions, and running
quickly to the entrance, she turned the great lock and threw the key with all
her might to the far corner of the hall. In an instant she regretted her act,
for she saw that where she might have reduced her rescuer’s opponents by
at least one, she had now forced the cowardly Baron to remain, and nothing
fights more fiercely than a cornered rat.

The knight was holding his own splendidly with the three retainers, and for an
instant Bertrade de Montfort stood spell-bound by the exhibition of
swordsmanship she was witnessing.

Fighting the three alternately, in pairs and again all at the same time, the
silent knight, though weighted by his heavy armor, forced them steadily back;
his flashing blade seeming to weave a net of steel about them. Suddenly his
sword stopped just for an instant, stopped in the heart of one of his
opponents, and as the man lunged to the floor, it was flashing again close to
the breasts of the two remaining men-at-arms.

Another went down less than ten seconds later, and then the girl’s
attention was called to the face of the horrified Baron; Peter of Colfax was
moving—slowly and cautiously, he was creeping, from behind, toward the
visored knight, and in his raised hand flashed a sharp dagger.

For an instant, the girl stood frozen with horror, unable to move a finger or
to cry out; but only for an instant, and then, regaining control of her
muscles, she stooped quickly and, grasping a heavy foot-stool, hurled it full
at Peter of Colfax.

It struck him below the knees and toppled him to the floor just as the
knight’s sword passed through the throat of his final antagonist.

As the Baron fell, he struck heavily upon a table which supported the only
lighted cresset within the chamber. In an instant, all was darkness. There was
a rapid shuffling sound as of the scurrying of rats and then the quiet of the
tomb settled upon the great hall.

“Are you safe and unhurt, my Lady Bertrade?” asked a grave English
voice out of the darkness.

“Quite, Sir Knight,” she replied, “and you?”

“Not a scratch, but where is our good friend the Baron?”

“He lay here upon the floor but a moment since, and carried a thin long
dagger in his hand. Have a care, Sir Knight, he may even now be upon
you.”

The knight did not answer, but she heard him moving boldly about the room. Soon
he had found another lamp and made a light. As its feeble rays slowly
penetrated the black gloom, the girl saw the bodies of the three men-at-arms,
the overturned table and lamp, and the visored knight; but Peter of Colfax was
gone.

The knight perceived his absence at the same time, but he only laughed a low,
grim laugh.

“He will not go far, My Lady Bertrade,” he said.

“How know you my name?” she asked. “Who may you be? I do not
recognize your armor, and your breastplate bears no arms.”

He did not answer at once and her heart rose in her breast as it filled with
the hope that her brave rescuer might be the same Roger de Conde who had saved
her from the hirelings of Peter of Colfax but a few short weeks since. Surely
it was the same straight and mighty figure, and there was the marvelous
swordplay as well. It must be he, and yet Roger de Conde had spoken no English
while this man spoke it well, though, it was true, with a slight French accent.

“My Lady Bertrade, I be Norman of Torn,” said the visored knight
with quiet dignity.

The girl’s heart sank, and a feeling of cold fear crept through her. For
years that name had been the symbol of fierce cruelty, and mad hatred against
her kind. Little children were frightened into obedience by the vaguest hint
that the Devil of Torn would get them, and grown men had come to whisper the
name with grim, set lips.

“Norman of Torn!” she whispered. “May God have mercy on my
soul!”

Beneath the visored helm, a wave of pain and sorrow surged across the
countenance of the outlaw, and a little shudder, as of a chill of hopelessness,
shook his giant frame.

“You need not fear, My Lady,” he said sadly. “You shall be in
your father’s castle of Leicester ere the sun marks noon. And you will be
safer under the protection of the hated Devil of Torn than with your own mighty
father, or your royal uncle.”

“It is said that you never lie, Norman of Torn,” spoke the girl,
“and I believe you, but tell me why you thus befriend a De
Montfort.”

“It is not for love of your father or your brothers, nor yet hatred of
Peter of Colfax, nor neither for any reward whatsoever. It pleases me to do as
I do, that is all. Come.”

He led her in silence to the courtyard and across the lowered drawbridge, to
where they soon discovered a group of horsemen, and in answer to a low
challenge from Shandy, Norman of Torn replied that it was he.

“Take a dozen men, Shandy, and search yon hellhole. Bring out to me,
alive, Peter of Colfax, and My Lady’s cloak and a palfrey—and
Shandy, when all is done as I say, you may apply the torch! But no looting,
Shandy.”

Shandy looked in surprise upon his leader, for the torch had never been a
weapon of Norman of Torn, while loot, if not always the prime object of his
many raids, was at least a very important consideration.

The outlaw noticed the surprised hesitation of his faithful subaltern and
signing him to listen, said:

“Red Shandy, Norman of Torn has fought and sacked and pillaged for the
love of it, and for a principle which was at best but a vague generality.
Tonight we ride to redress a wrong done to My Lady Bertrade de Montfort, and
that, Shandy, is a different matter. The torch, Shandy, from tower to scullery,
but in the service of My Lady, no looting.”

“Yes, My Lord,” answered Shandy, and departed with his little
detachment.

In a half hour he returned with a dozen prisoners, but no Peter of Colfax.

“He has flown, My Lord,” the big fellow reported, and indeed it was
true. Peter of Colfax had passed through the vaults beneath his castle and, by
a long subterranean passage, had reached the quarters of some priests without
the lines of Norman of Torn. By this time, he was several miles on his way to
the coast and France; for he had recognized the swordsmanship of the outlaw,
and did not care to remain in England and face the wrath of both Norman of Torn
and Simon de Montfort.

“He will return,” was the outlaw’s only comment, when he had
been fully convinced that the Baron had escaped.

They watched until the castle had burst into flames in a dozen places, the
prisoners huddled together in terror and apprehension, fully expecting a
summary and horrible death.

When Norman of Torn had assured himself that no human power could now save the
doomed pile, he ordered that the march be taken up, and the warriors filed down
the roadway behind their leader and Bertrade de Montfort, leaving their
erstwhile prisoners sorely puzzled but unharmed and free.

As they looked back, they saw the heavens red with the great flames that sprang
high above the lofty towers. Immense volumes of dense smoke rolled southward
across the sky line. Occasionally it would clear away from the burning castle
for an instant to show the black walls pierced by their hundreds of embrasures,
each lit up by the red of the raging fire within. It was a gorgeous, impressive
spectacle, but one so common in those fierce, wild days, that none thought it
worthy of more than a passing backward glance.

Varied emotions filled the breasts of the several riders who wended their slow
way down the mud-slippery road. Norman of Torn was both elated and sad. Elated
that he had been in time to save this girl who awakened such strange emotions
in his breast; sad that he was a loathsome thing in her eyes. But that it was
pure happiness just to be near her, sufficed him for the time; of the morrow,
what use to think! The little, grim, gray, old man of Torn nursed the spleen he
did not dare vent openly, and cursed the chance that had sent Henry de Montfort
to Torn to search for his sister; while the followers of the outlaw swore
quietly over the vagary which had brought them on this long ride without either
fighting or loot.

Bertrade de Montfort was but filled with wonder that she should owe her life
and honor to this fierce, wild cut-throat who had sworn especial hatred against
her family, because of its relationship to the house of Plantagenet. She could
not fathom it, and yet, he seemed fair spoken for so rough a man; she wondered
what manner of countenance might lie beneath that barred visor.

Once the outlaw took his cloak from its fastenings at his saddle’s cantel
and threw it about the shoulders of the girl, for the night air was chilly, and
again he dismounted and led her palfrey around a bad place in the road, lest
the beast might slip and fall.

She thanked him in her courtly manner for these services, but beyond that, no
word passed between them, and they came, in silence, about midday within sight
of the castle of Simon de Montfort.

The watch upon the tower was thrown into confusion by the approach of so large
a party of armed men, so that, by the time they were in hailing distance, the
walls of the great structure were crowded with fighting men.

Shandy rode ahead with a flag of truce, and when he was beneath the castle
walls Simon de Montfort called forth:

“Who be ye and what your mission? Peace or war?”

“It is Norman of Torn, come in peace, and in the service of a De
Montfort,” replied Shandy. “He would enter with one companion, my
Lord Earl.”

“Dares Norman of Torn enter the castle of Simon de Montfort—thinks
he that I keep a robbers’ roost!” cried the fierce old warrior.

“Norman of Torn dares ride where he will in all England,” boasted
the red giant. “Will you see him in peace, My Lord?”

“Let him enter,” said De Montfort, “but no knavery, now, we
are a thousand men here, well armed and ready fighters.”

Shandy returned to his master with the reply, and together, Norman of Torn and
Bertrade de Montfort clattered across the drawbridge beneath the portcullis of
the castle of the Earl of Leicester, brother-in-law of Henry III of England.

The girl was still wrapped in the great cloak of her protector, for it had been
raining, so that she rode beneath the eyes of her father’s men without
being recognized. In the courtyard, they were met by Simon de Montfort, and his
sons Henry and Simon.

The girl threw herself impetuously from her mount, and, flinging aside the
outlaw’s cloak, rushed toward her astounded parent.

“What means this,” cried De Montfort, “has the rascal offered
you harm or indignity?”

“You craven liar,” cried Henry de Montfort, “but yesterday
you swore upon your honor that you did not hold my sister, and I, like a fool,
believed.” And with his words, the young man flung himself upon Norman of
Torn with drawn sword.

Quicker than the eye could see, the sword of the visored knight flew from its
scabbard, and, with a single lightning-like move, sent the blade of young De
Montfort hurtling across the courtyard; and then, before either could take
another step, Bertrade de Montfort had sprung between them and placing a hand
upon the breastplate of the outlaw, stretched forth the other with palm
out-turned toward her kinsmen as though to protect Norman of Torn from further
assault.

“Be he outlaw or devil,” she cried, “he is a brave and
courteous knight, and he deserves from the hands of the De Montforts the best
hospitality they can give, and not cold steel and insults.” Then she
explained briefly to her astonished father and brothers what had befallen
during the past few days.

Henry de Montfort, with the fine chivalry that marked him, was the first to
step forward with outstretched hand to thank Norman of Torn, and to ask his
pardon for his rude words and hostile act.

The outlaw but held up his open palm, as he said,

“Let the De Montforts think well ere they take the hand of Norman of
Torn. I give not my hand except in friendship, and not for a passing moment;
but for life. I appreciate your present feelings of gratitude, but let them not
blind you to the fact that I am still Norman the Devil, and that you have seen
my mark upon the brows of your dead. I would gladly have your friendship, but I
wish it for the man, Norman of Torn, with all his faults, as well as what
virtues you may think him to possess.”

“You are right, sir,” said the Earl, “you have our gratitude
and our thanks for the service you have rendered the house of Montfort, and
ever during our lives you may command our favors. I admire your bravery and
your candor, but while you continue the Outlaw of Torn, you may not break bread
at the table of De Montfort as a friend would have the right to do.”

“Your speech is that of a wise and careful man,” said Norman of
Torn quietly. “I go, but remember that from this day, I have no quarrel
with the House of Simon de Montfort, and that should you need my arms, they are
at your service, a thousand strong. Goodbye.” But as he turned to go,
Bertrade de Montfort confronted him with outstretched hand.

“You must take my hand in friendship,” she said, “for, to my
dying day, I must ever bless the name of Norman of Torn because of the horror
from which he has rescued me.”

He took the little fingers in his mailed hand, and bending upon one knee raised
them to his lips.

“To no other—woman, man, king, God, or devil—has Norman of
Torn bent the knee. If ever you need him, My Lady Bertrade, remember that his
services are yours for the asking.”

And turning, he mounted and rode in silence from the courtyard of the castle of
Leicester. Without a backward glance, and with his five hundred men at his
back, Norman of Torn disappeared beyond a turning in the roadway.

“A strange man,” said Simon de Montfort, “both good and bad,
but from today, I shall ever believe more good than bad. Would that he were
other than he be, for his arm would wield a heavy sword against the enemies of
England, an he could be persuaded to our cause.”

“Who knows,” said Henry de Montfort, “but that an offer of
friendship might have won him to a better life. It seemed that in his speech
was a note of wistfulness. I wish, father, that we had taken his hand.”

CHAPTER XI

Several days after Norman of Torn’s visit to the castle of Leicester, a
young knight appeared before the Earl’s gates demanding admittance to
have speech with Simon de Montfort. The Earl received him, and as the young man
entered his presence, Simon de Montfort sprang to his feet in astonishment.

“My Lord Prince,” he cried. “What do ye here, and
alone?”

The young man smiled.

“I be no prince, My Lord,” he said, “though some have said
that I favor the King’s son. I be Roger de Conde, whom it may have
pleased your gracious daughter to mention. I have come to pay homage to
Bertrade de Montfort.”

“Ah,” said De Montfort, rising to greet the young knight cordially,
“an you be that Roger de Conde who rescued my daughter from the fellows
of Peter of Colfax, the arms of the De Montforts are open to you.

“Bertrade has had your name upon her tongue many times since her return.
She will be glad indeed to receive you, as is her father. She has told us of
your valiant espousal of her cause, and the thanks of her brothers and mother
await you, Roger de Conde.

“She also told us of your strange likeness to Prince Edward, but until I
saw you, I could not believe two men could be born of different mothers and yet
be so identical. Come, we will seek out my daughter and her mother.”

De Montfort led the young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by
Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly
glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed
another to usurp his prerogative and rescue her from Peter of Colfax.

“And to think,” she cried, “that it should have been Norman
of Torn who fulfilled your duties for you. But he did not capture Sir
Peter’s head, my friend; that is still at large to be brought to me upon
a golden dish.”

“I have not forgotten, Lady Bertrade,” said Roger de Conde.
“Peter of Colfax will return.”

The girl glanced at him quickly.

“The very words of the Outlaw of Torn,” she said. “How many
men be ye, Roger de Conde? With raised visor, you could pass in the
King’s court for the King’s son; and in manner, and form, and
swordsmanship, and your visor lowered, you might easily be hanged for Norman of
Torn.”

“And which would it please ye most that I be?” he laughed.

“Neither,” she answered, “I be satisfied with my friend,
Roger de Conde.”

“So ye like not the Devil of Torn?” he asked.

“He has done me a great service, and I be under monstrous obligations to
him, but he be, nathless, the Outlaw of Torn and I the daughter of an earl and
a king’s sister.”

“A most unbridgeable gulf indeed,” commented Roger de Conde, drily.
“Not even gratitude could lead a king’s niece to receive Norman of
Torn on a footing of equality.”

“He has my friendship, always,” said the girl, “but I doubt
me if Norman of Torn be the man to impose upon it.”

“One can never tell,” said Roger de Conde, “what manner of
fool a man may be. When a man’s head be filled with a pretty face, what
room be there for reason?”

“Soon thou wilt be a courtier, if thou keep long at this turning of
pretty compliments,” said the girl coldly; “and I like not
courtiers, nor their empty, hypocritical chatter.”

The man laughed.

“If I turned a compliment, I did not know it,” he said. “What
I think, I say. It may not be a courtly speech or it may. I know nothing of
courts and care less, but be it man or maid to whom I speak, I say what is in
my mind or I say nothing. I did not, in so many words, say that you are
beautiful, but I think it nevertheless, and ye cannot be angry with my poor
eyes if they deceive me into believing that no fairer woman breathes the air of
England. Nor can you chide my sinful brain that it gladly believes what mine
eyes tell it. No, you may not be angry so long as I do not tell you all
this.”

Bertrade de Montfort did not know how to answer so ridiculous a sophistry; and,
truth to tell, she was more than pleased to hear from the lips of Roger de
Conde what bored her on the tongues of other men.

De Conde was the guest of the Earl of Leicester for several days, and before
his visit was terminated, the young man had so won his way into the good graces
of the family that they were loath to see him leave.

Although denied the society of such as these throughout his entire life, yet it
seemed that he fell as naturally into the ways of their kind as though he had
always been among them. His starved soul, groping through the darkness of the
empty past, yearned toward the feasting and the light of friendship, and urged
him to turn his back upon the old life, and remain ever with these people, for
Simon de Montfort had offered the young man a position of trust and honor in
his retinue.

“Why refused you the offer of my father?” said Bertrade to him as
he was come to bid her farewell. “Simon de Montfort is as great a man in
England as the King himself, and your future were assured did you attach
yourself to his person. But what am I saying! Did Roger de Conde not wish to be
elsewhere, he had accepted and, as he did not accept, it is proof positive that
he does not wish to bide among the De Montforts.”

“I would give my soul to the devil,” said Norman of Torn,
“would it buy me the right to remain ever at the feet of Bertrade
Montfort.”

He raised her hand to his lips in farewell as he started to speak, but
something—was it an almost imperceptible pressure of her little fingers,
a quickening of her breath or a swaying of her body toward him?—caused
him to pause and raise his eyes to hers.

For an instant they stood thus, the eyes of the man sinking deep into the eyes
of the maid, and then hers closed and with a little sigh that was half gasp,
she swayed toward him, and the Devil of Torn folded the King’s niece in
his mighty arms and his lips placed the seal of a great love upon those that
were upturned to him.

The touch of those pure lips brought the man to himself.

“Ah, Bertrade, my Bertrade,” he cried, “what is this thing
that I have done! Forgive me, and let the greatness and the purity of my love
for you plead in extenuation of my act.”

She looked up into his face in surprise, and then placing her strong white
hands upon his shoulders, she whispered:

“See, Roger, I am not angry. It is not wrong that we love; tell me it is
not, Roger.”

“You must not say that you love me, Bertrade. I am a coward, a craven
poltroon; but, God, how I love you.”

“But,” said the girl, “I do love—”

“Stop,” he cried, “not yet, not yet. Do not say it till I
come again. You know nothing of me, you do not know even who I be; but when
next I come, I promise that ye shall know as much of me as I myself know, and
then, Bertrade, my Bertrade, if you can then say, ‘I love you’ no
power on earth, or in heaven above, or hell below shall keep you from being
mine!”

“I will wait, Roger, for I believe in you and trust you. I do not
understand, but I know that you must have some good reason, though it all seems
very strange to me. If I, a De Montfort, am willing to acknowledge my love for
any man, there can be no reason why I should not do so, unless,” and she
started at the sudden thought, wide-eyed and paling, “unless there be
another woman, a—a—wife?”

“There is no other woman, Bertrade,” said Norman of Torn. “I
have no wife; nor within the limits of my memory have my lips ever before
touched the lips of another, for I do not remember my mother.”

She sighed a happy little sigh of relief, and laughing lightly, said:

“It is some old woman’s bugaboo that you are haling out of a dark
corner of your imagination to frighten yourself with. I do not fear, since I
know that you must be all good. There be no line of vice or deception upon your
face and you are very brave. So brave and noble a man, Roger, has a heart of
pure gold.”

“Don’t,” he said, bitterly. “I cannot endure it. Wait
until I come again and then, oh my flower of all England, if you have it in
your heart to speak as you are speaking now, the sun of my happiness will be at
zenith. Then, but not before, shall I speak to the Earl, thy father. Farewell,
Bertrade, in a few days I return.”

“If you would speak to the Earl on such a subject, you insolent young
puppy, you may save your breath,” thundered an angry voice, and Simon de
Montfort strode, scowling, into the room.

The girl paled, but not from fear of her father, for the fighting blood of the
De Montforts was as strong in her as in her sire. She faced him with as brave
and resolute a face as did the young man, who turned slowly, fixing De Montfort
with level gaze.

“I heard enough of your words as I was passing through the
corridor,” continued the latter, “to readily guess what had gone
before. So it is for this that you have wormed your sneaking way into my home?
And thought you that Simon de Montfort would throw his daughter at the head of
the first passing rogue? Who be ye, but a nameless rascal? For aught we know,
some low born lackey. Get ye hence, and be only thankful that I do not aid you
with the toe of my boot where it would do the most good.”

“Stop!” cried the girl. “Stop, father, hast forgot that but
for Roger de Conde ye might have seen your daughter a corpse ere now, or,
worse, herself befouled and dishonored?”

“I do not forget,” replied the Earl, “and it is because I
remember that my sword remains in its scabbard. The fellow has been amply
repaid by the friendship of De Montfort, but now this act of perfidy has wiped
clean the score. An’ you would go in peace, sirrah, go quickly, ere I
lose my temper.”

“There has been some misunderstanding on your part, My Lord,” spoke
Norman of Torn, quietly and without apparent anger or excitement. “Your
daughter has not told me that she loves me, nor did I contemplate asking you
for her hand. When next I come, first shall I see her and if she will have me,
My Lord, I shall come to you to tell you that I shall wed her. Norm—Roger
de Conde asks permission of no man to do what he would do.”

Simon de Montfort was fairly bursting with rage but he managed to control
himself to say,

“My daughter weds whom I select, and even now I have practically closed
negotiations for her betrothal to Prince Philip, nephew of King Louis of
France. And as for you, sir, I would as lief see her the wife of the Outlaw of
Torn. He, at least, has wealth and power, and a name that be known outside his
own armor. But enough of this; get you gone, nor let me see your face again
within the walls of Leicester’s castle.”

“You are right, My Lord, it were foolish and idle for us to be quarreling
with words,” said the outlaw. “Farewell, My Lady. I shall return as
I promised, and your word shall be law.” And with a profound bow to De
Montfort, Norman of Torn left the apartment, and in a few minutes was riding
through the courtyard of the castle toward the main portals.

As he passed beneath a window in the castle wall, a voice called to him from
above, and drawing in his horse, he looked up into the eyes of Bertrade de
Montfort.

“Take this, Roger de Conde,” she whispered, dropping a tiny parcel
to him, “and wear it ever, for my sake. We may never meet again, for the
Earl my father, is a mighty man, not easily turned from his decisions;
therefore I shall say to you, Roger de Conde, what you forbid my saying. I love
you, and be ye prince or scullion, you may have me, if you can find the means
to take me.”

“Wait, my lady, until I return, then shall you decide, and if ye be of
the same mind as today, never fear but that I shall take ye. Again,
farewell.” And with a brave smile that hid a sad heart, Norman of Torn
passed out of the castle yard.

When he undid the parcel which Bertrade had tossed to him, he found that it
contained a beautifully wrought ring set with a single opal.

The Outlaw of Torn raised the little circlet to his lips, and then slipped it
upon the third finger of his left hand.

CHAPTER XII

Norman of Torn did not return to the castle of Leicester “in a few
days,” nor for many months. For news came to him that Bertrade de
Montfort had been posted off to France in charge of her mother.

From now on, the forces of Torn were employed in repeated attacks on royalist
barons, encroaching ever and ever southward until even Berkshire and Surrey and
Sussex felt the weight of the iron hand of the outlaw.

Nearly a year had elapsed since that day when he had held the fair form of
Bertrade de Montfort in his arms, and in all that time he had heard no word
from her.

He would have followed her to France but for the fact that, after he had parted
from her and the intoxication of her immediate presence had left his brain
clear to think rationally, he had realized the futility of his hopes, and he
had seen that the pressing of his suit could mean only suffering and
mortification for the woman he loved.

His better judgment told him that she, on her part, when freed from the subtle
spell woven by the nearness and the newness of a first love, would doubtless be
glad to forget the words she had spoken in the heat of a divine passion. He
would wait, then, until fate threw them together, and should that ever chance,
while she was still free, he would let her know that Roger de Conde and the
Outlaw of Torn were one and the same.

If she wants me then, he thought, but she will not. No, it is impossible. It is
better that she marry her French prince than to live, dishonored, the wife of a
common highwayman; for though she might love me at first, the bitterness and
loneliness of her life would turn her love to hate.

As the outlaw was sitting one day in the little cottage of Father Claude, the
priest reverted to the subject of many past conversations; the unsettled state
of civil conditions in the realm, and the stand which Norman of Torn would take
when open hostilities between King and baron were declared.

“It would seem that Henry,” said the priest, “by his
continued breaches of both the spirit and letter of the Oxford Statutes, is but
urging the barons to resort to arms; and the fact that he virtually forced
Prince Edward to take up arms against Humphrey de Bohun last fall, and to carry
the ravages of war throughout the Welsh border provinces, convinces me that he
be, by this time, well equipped to resist De Montfort and his
associates.”

“If that be the case,” said Norman of Torn, “we shall have
war and fighting in real earnest ere many months.”

“And under which standard does My Lord Norman expect to fight?”
asked Father Claude.

“Under the black falcon’s wing,” laughed he of Torn.

“Thou be indeed a close-mouthed man, my son,” said the priest,
smiling. “Such an attribute helpeth make a great statesman. With thy
soldierly qualities in addition, my dear boy, there be a great future for thee
in the paths of honest men. Dost remember our past talk?”

“Yes, father, well; and often have I thought on’t. I have one more
duty to perform here in England and then, it may be, that I shall act on thy
suggestion, but only on one condition.”

“What be that, my son?”

“That wheresoere I go, thou must go also. Thou be my best friend; in
truth, my father; none other have I ever known, for the little old man of Torn,
even though I be the product of his loins, which I much mistrust, be no father
to me.”

The priest sat looking intently at the young man for many minutes before he
spoke.

Without the cottage, a swarthy figure skulked beneath one of the windows,
listening to such fragments of the conversation within as came to his attentive
ears. It was Spizo, the Spaniard. He crouched entirely concealed by a great
lilac bush, which many times before had hid his traitorous form.

At length the priest spoke.

“Norman of Torn,” he said, “so long as thou remain in
England, pitting thy great host against the Plantagenet King and the nobles and
barons of his realm, thou be but serving as the cats-paw of another. Thyself
hast said an hundred times that thou knowst not the reason for thy hatred
against them. Thou be too strong a man to so throw thy life uselessly away to
satisfy the choler of another.

“There be that of which I dare not speak to thee yet and only may I guess
and dream of what I think, nor do I know whether I must hope that it be false
or true, but now, if ever, the time hath come for the question to be settled.
Thou hast not told me in so many words, but I be an old man and versed in
reading true between the lines, and so I know that thou lovest Bertrade de
Montfort. Nay, do not deny it. And now, what I would say be this. In all
England there lives no more honorable man than Simon de Montfort, nor none who
could more truly decide upon thy future and thy past. Thou may not understand
of what I hint, but thou know that thou may trust me, Norman of Torn.”

“Yea, even with my life and honor, my father,” replied the outlaw.

“Then promise me, that with the old man of Torn alone, thou wilt come
hither when I bidst thee and meet Simon de Montfort, and abide by his decision
should my surmises concerning thee be correct. He will be the best judge of any
in England, save two who must now remain nameless.”

“I will come, Father, but it must be soon for on the fourth day we ride
south.”

“It shall be by the third day, or not at all,” replied Father
Claude, and Norman of Torn, rising to leave, wondered at the moving leaves of
the lilac bush without the window, for there was no breeze.

Spizo, the Spaniard, reached Torn several minutes before the outlaw chief and
had already poured his tale into the ears of the little, grim, gray, old man.

As the priest’s words were detailed to him the old man of Torn paled in
anger.

“The fool priest will upset the whole work to which I have devoted near
twenty years,” he muttered, “if I find not the means to quiet his
half-wit tongue. Between priest and petticoat, it be all but ruined now. Well
then, so much the sooner must I act, and I know not but that now be as good a
time as any. If we come near enough to the King’s men on this trip south,
the gibbet shall have its own, and a Plantagenet dog shall taste the fruits of
his own tyranny,” then glancing up and realizing that Spizo, the
Spaniard, had been a listener, the old man, scowling, cried:

“What said I, sirrah? What didst hear?”

“Naught, My Lord; thou didst but mutter incoherently,” replied the
Spaniard.

The old man eyed him closely.

“An did I more, Spizo, thou heardst naught but muttering,
remember.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

An hour later, the old man of Torn dismounted before the cottage of Father
Claude and entered.

“I am honored,” said the priest, rising.

“Priest,” cried the old man, coming immediately to the point,
“Norman of Torn tells me that thou wish him and me and Leicester to meet
here. I know not what thy purpose may be, but for the boy’s sake, carry
not out thy design as yet. I may not tell thee my reasons, but it be best that
this meeting take place after we return from the south.”

The old man had never spoken so fairly to Father Claude before, and so the
latter was quite deceived and promised to let the matter rest until later.

A few days after, in the summer of 1263, Norman of Torn rode at the head of his
army of outlaws through the county of Essex, down toward London town. One
thousand fighting men there were, with squires and other servants, and five
hundred sumpter beasts to transport their tents and other impedimenta, and
bring back the loot.

But a small force of ailing men-at-arms, and servants had been left to guard
the castle of Torn under the able direction of Peter the Hermit.

At the column’s head rode Norman of Torn and the little grim, gray, old
man; and behind them, nine companies of knights, followed by the catapult
detachment; then came the sumpter beasts. Horsan the Dane, with his company,
formed the rear guard. Three hundred yards in advance of the column rode ten
men to guard against surprise and ambuscades.

The pennons, and the banners and the bugles; and the loud rattling of sword,
and lance and armor and iron-shod hoof carried to the eye and ear ample
assurance that this great cavalcade of iron men was bent upon no peaceful
mission.

All his captains rode today with Norman of Torn. Beside those whom we have met,
there was Don Piedro Castro y Pensilo of Spain; Baron of Cobarth of Germany,
and Sir John Mandecote of England. Like their leader, each of these fierce
warriors carried a great price upon his head, and the story of the life of any
one would fill a large volume with romance, war, intrigue, treachery, bravery
and death.

Toward noon one day, in the midst of a beautiful valley of Essex, they came
upon a party of ten knights escorting two young women. The meeting was at a
turn in the road, so that the two parties were upon each other before the ten
knights had an opportunity to escape with their fair wards.

“What the devil be this,” cried one of the knights, as the main
body of the outlaw horde came into view, “the King’s army or one of
his foreign legions?”

“It be Norman of Torn and his fighting men,” replied the outlaw.

The faces of the knights blanched, for they were ten against a thousand, and
there were two women with them.

“Who be ye?” said the outlaw.

“I am Richard de Tany of Essex,” said the oldest knight, he who had
first spoken, “and these be my daughter and her friend, Mary de
Stutevill. We are upon our way from London to my castle. What would you of us?
Name your price, if it can be paid with honor, it shall be paid; only let us go
our way in peace. We cannot hope to resist the Devil of Torn, for we be but ten
lances. If ye must have blood, at least let the women go unharmed.”

“My Lady Mary is an old friend,” said the outlaw. “I called
at her father’s home but little more than a year since. We are neighbors,
and the lady can tell you that women are safer at the hands of Norman of Torn
than they might be in the King’s palace.”

“Right he is,” spoke up Lady Mary. “Norman of Torn accorded
my mother, my sister, and myself the utmost respect; though I cannot say as
much for his treatment of my father,” she added, half smiling.

“I have no quarrel with you, Richard de Tany,” said Norman of Torn.
“Ride on.”

The next day, a young man hailed the watch upon the walls of the castle of
Richard de Tany, telling him to bear word to Joan de Tany that Roger de Conde,
a friend of her guest Lady Mary de Stutevill, was without.

In a few moments, the great drawbridge sank slowly into place and Norman of
Torn trotted into the courtyard.

He was escorted to an apartment where Mary de Stutevill and Joan de Tany were
waiting to receive him. Mary de Stutevill greeted him as an old friend, and the
daughter of de Tany was no less cordial in welcoming her friend’s friend
to the hospitality of her father’s castle.

“Are all your old friends and neighbors come after you to Essex,”
cried Joan de Tany, laughingly, addressing Mary. “Today it is Roger de
Conde, yesterday it was the Outlaw of Torn. Methinks Derby will soon be
depopulated unless you return quickly to your home.”

“I rather think it be for news of another that we owe this visit from
Roger de Conde,” said Mary, smiling. “For I have heard tales, and I
see a great ring upon the gentleman’s hand—a ring which I have seen
before.”

Norman of Torn made no attempt to deny the reason for his visit, but asked
bluntly if she heard aught of Bertrade de Montfort.

“Thrice within the year have I received missives from her,” replied
Mary. “In the first two she spoke only of Roger de Conde, wondering why
he did not come to France after her; but in the last she mentions not his name,
but speaks of her approaching marriage with Prince Philip.”

Both girls were watching the countenance of Roger de Conde narrowly, but no
sign of the sorrow which filled his heart showed itself upon his face.

“I guess it be better so,” he said quietly. “The daughter of
a De Montfort could scarcely be happy with a nameless adventurer,” he
added, a little bitterly.

“You wrong her, my friend,” said Mary de Stutevill. “She
loved you and, unless I know not the friend of my childhood as well as I know
myself, she loves you yet; but Bertrade de Montfort is a proud woman and what
can you expect when she hears no word from you for a year? Thought you that she
would seek you out and implore you to rescue her from the alliance her father
has made for her?”

“You do not understand,” he answered, “and I may not tell
you; but I ask that you believe me when I say that it was for her own peace of
mind, for her own happiness, that I did not follow her to France. But, let us
talk of other things. The sorrow is mine and I would not force it upon others.
I cared only to know that she is well, and, I hope, happy. It will never be
given to me to make her or any other woman so. I would that I had never come
into her life, but I did not know what I was doing; and the spell of her beauty
and goodness was strong upon me, so that I was weak and could not resist what I
had never known before in all my life—love.”

“You could not well be blamed,” said Joan de Tany, generously.
“Bertrade de Montfort is all and even more than you have said; it be a
benediction simply to have known her.”

As she spoke, Norman of Torn looked upon her critically for the first time, and
he saw that Joan de Tany was beautiful, and that when she spoke, her face
lighted with a hundred little changing expressions of intelligence and
character that cast a spell of fascination about her. Yes, Joan de Tany was
good to look upon, and Norman of Torn carried a wounded heart in his breast
that longed for surcease from its sufferings—for a healing balm upon its
hurts and bruises.

And so it came to pass that, for many days, the Outlaw of Torn was a daily
visitor at the castle of Richard de Tany, and the acquaintance between the man
and the two girls ripened into a deep friendship, and with one of them, it
threatened even more.

Norman of Torn, in his ignorance of the ways of women, saw only friendship in
the little acts of Joan de Tany. His life had been a hard and lonely one. The
only ray of brilliant and warming sunshine that had entered it had been his
love for Bertrade de Montfort and hers for him.

His every thought was loyal to the woman who he knew was not for him, but he
longed for the companionship of his own kind and so welcomed the friendship of
such as Joan de Tany and her fair guest. He did not dream that either looked
upon him with any warmer sentiment than the sweet friendliness which was as new
to him as love—how could he mark the line between or foresee the terrible
price of his ignorance!

Mary de Stutevill saw and she thought the man but fickle and shallow in matters
of the heart—many there were, she knew, who were thus. She might have
warned him had she known the truth, but instead, she let things drift except
for a single word of warning to Joan de Tany.

“Be careful of thy heart, Joan,” she said, “lest it be
getting away from thee into the keeping of one who seems to love no less
quickly than he forgets.”

The daughter of De Tany flushed.

“I am quite capable of safeguarding my own heart, Mary de
Stutevill,” she replied warmly. “If thou covet this man thyself,
why, but say so. Do not think though that, because thy heart glows in his
presence, mine is equally susceptible.”

It was Mary’s turn now to show offense, and a sharp retort was on her
tongue when suddenly she realized the folly of such a useless quarrel. Instead
she put her arms about Joan and kissed her.

“I do not love him,” she said, “and I be glad that you do
not, for I know that Bertrade does, and that but a short year since, he swore
undying love for her. Let us forget that we have spoken on the subject.”

It was at this time that the King’s soldiers were harassing the lands of
the rebel barons, and taking a heavy toll in revenge for their stinging defeat
at Rochester earlier in the year, so that it was scarcely safe for small
parties to venture upon the roadways lest they fall into the hands of the
mercenaries of Henry III.

Not even were the wives and daughters of the barons exempt from the attacks of
the royalists; and it was no uncommon occurrence to find them suffering
imprisonment, and sometimes worse, at the hands of the King’s supporters.

And in the midst of these alarms, it entered the willful head of Joan de Tany
that she wished to ride to London town and visit the shops of the merchants.

While London itself was solidly for the barons and against the King’s
party, the road between the castle of Richard de Tany and the city of London
was beset with many dangers.

“Why,” cried the girl’s mother in exasperation,
“between robbers and royalists and the Outlaw of Torn, you would not be
safe if you had an army to escort you.”

“But then, as I have no army,” retorted the laughing girl,
“if you reason by your own logic, I shall be indeed quite safe.”

And when Roger de Conde attempted to dissuade her, she taunted him with being
afraid of meeting with the Devil of Torn, and told him that he might remain at
home and lock himself safely in her mother’s pantry.

And so, as Joan de Tany was a spoiled child, they set out upon the road to
London; the two girls with a dozen servants and knights; and Roger de Conde was
of the party.

At the same time a grim, gray, old man dispatched a messenger from the
outlaw’s camp; a swarthy fellow, disguised as a priest, whose orders were
to proceed to London, and when he saw the party of Joan de Tany, with Roger de
Conde, enter the city, he was to deliver the letter he bore to the captain of
the gate.

The letter contained this brief message:

“The tall knight in gray with closed helm is Norman of Torn,” and
was unsigned.

All went well and Joan was laughing merrily at the fears of those who had
attempted to dissuade her when, at a cross road, they discovered two parties of
armed men approaching from opposite directions. The leader of the nearer party
spurred forward to intercept the little band, and, reining in before them,
cried brusquely,

“Who be ye?”

“A party on a peaceful mission to the shops of London,” replied
Norman of Torn.

“I asked not your mission,” cried the fellow. “I asked, who
be ye? Answer, and be quick about it.”

“I be Roger de Conde, gentleman of France, and these be my sisters and
servants,” lied the outlaw, “and were it not that the ladies be
with me, your answer would be couched in steel, as you deserve for your boorish
insolence.”

“There be plenty of room and time for that even now, you dog of a French
coward,” cried the officer, couching his lance as he spoke.

Joan de Tany was sitting her horse where she could see the face of Roger de
Conde, and it filled her heart with pride and courage as she saw and understood
the little smile of satisfaction that touched his lips as he heard the
man’s challenge and lowered the point of his own spear.

Wheeling their horses toward one another, the two combatants, who were some
ninety feet apart, charged at full tilt. As they came together the impact was
so great that both horses were nearly overturned and the two powerful war
lances were splintered into a hundred fragments as each struck the exact center
of his opponent’s shield. Then, wheeling their horses and throwing away
the butts of their now useless lances, De Conde and the officer advanced with
drawn swords.

The fellow made a most vicious return assault upon De Conde, attempting to ride
him down in one mad rush, but his thrust passed harmlessly from the tip of the
outlaw’s sword, and as the officer wheeled back to renew the battle, they
settled down to fierce combat, their horses wheeling and turning shoulder to
shoulder.

The two girls sat rigid in their saddles watching the encounter, the eyes of
Joan de Tany alight with the fire of battle as she followed every move of the
wondrous swordplay of Roger de Conde.

He had not even taken the precaution to lower his visor, and the grim and
haughty smile that played upon his lips spoke louder than many words the utter
contempt in which he held the sword of his adversary. And as Joan de Tany
watched, she saw the smile suddenly freeze to a cold, hard line, and the eyes
of the man narrow to mere slits, and her woman’s intuition read the death
warrant of the King’s officer ere the sword of the outlaw buried itself
in his heart.

The other members of the two bodies of royalist soldiers had sat spellbound as
they watched the battle, but now, as their leader’s corpse rolled from
the saddle, they spurred furiously in upon De Conde and his little party.

The Baron’s men put up a noble fight, but the odds were heavy and even
with the mighty arm of Norman of Torn upon their side the outcome was apparent
from the first.

Five swords were flashing about the outlaw, but his blade was equal to the
thrust and one after another of his assailants crumpled up in their saddles as
his leaping point found their vitals.

Nearly all of the Baron’s men were down, when one, an old servitor,
spurred to the side of Joan de Tany and Mary de Stutevill.

“Come, my ladies,” he cried, “quick and you may escape. They
be so busy with the battle that they will never notice.”

“Take the Lady Mary, John,” cried Joan, “I brought Roger de
Conde to this pass against the advice of all and I remain with him to the
end.”

“But, My Lady—” cried John.

“But nothing, sirrah!” she interrupted sharply. “Do as you
are bid. Follow my Lady Mary, and see that she comes to my father’s
castle in safety,” and raising her riding whip, she struck Mary’s
palfrey across the rump so that the animal nearly unseated his fair rider as he
leaped frantically to one side and started madly up the road down which they
had come.

“After her, John,” commanded Joan peremptorily, “and see that
you turn not back until she be safe within the castle walls; then you may bring
aid.”

The old fellow had been wont to obey the imperious little Lady Joan from her
earliest childhood, and the habit was so strong upon him that he wheeled his
horse and galloped after the flying palfrey of the Lady Mary de Stutevill.

As Joan de Tany turned again to the encounter before her, she saw fully twenty
men surrounding Roger de Conde, and while he was taking heavy toll of those
before him, he could not cope with the men who attacked him from behind; and
even as she looked, she saw a battle axe fall full upon his helm, and his sword
drop from his nerveless fingers as his lifeless body rolled from the back of
Sir Mortimer to the battle-tramped clay of the highroad.

She slid quickly from her palfrey and ran fearlessly toward his prostrate form,
reckless of the tangled mass of snorting, trampling, steel-clad horses, and
surging fighting-men that surrounded him. And well it was for Norman of Torn
that this brave girl was there that day, for even as she reached his side, the
sword point of one of the soldiers was at his throat for the coup de grace.

With a cry, Joan de Tany threw herself across the outlaw’s body,
shielding him as best she could from the threatening sword.

Cursing loudly, the soldier grasped her roughly by the arm to drag her from his
prey, but at this juncture, a richly armored knight galloped up and drew rein
beside the party.

The newcomer was a man of about forty-five or fifty; tall, handsome,
black-mustached and with the haughty arrogance of pride most often seen upon
the faces of those who have been raised by unmerited favor to positions of
power and affluence.

He was John de Fulm, Earl of Buckingham, a foreigner by birth and for years one
of the King’s favorites; the bitterest enemy of De Montfort and the
barons.

“What now?” he cried. “What goes on here?”

The soldiers fell back, and one of them replied:

“A party of the King’s enemies attacked us, My Lord Earl, but we
routed them, taking these two prisoners.”

“Who be ye?” he said, turning toward Joan who was kneeling beside
De Conde, and as she raised her head, “My God! The daughter of De Tany! a
noble prize indeed my men. And who be the knight?”

“Look for yourself, My Lord Earl,” replied the girl removing the
helm, which she had been unlacing from the fallen man.

“Edward?” he ejaculated. “But no, it cannot be, I did but
yesterday leave Edward in Dover.”

“I know not who he be,” said Joan de Tany, “except that he be
the most marvelous fighter and the bravest man it has ever been given me to
see. He called himself Roger de Conde, but I know nothing of him other than
that he looks like a prince, and fights like a devil. I think he has no quarrel
with either side, My Lord, and so, as you certainly do not make war on women,
you will let us go our way in peace as we were when your soldiers wantonly set
upon us.”

“A De Tany, madam, were a great and valuable capture in these troublous
times,” replied the Earl, “and that alone were enough to
necessitate my keeping you; but a beautiful De Tany is yet a different matter
and so I will grant you at least one favor. I will not take you to the King,
but a prisoner you shall be in mine own castle for I am alone, and need the
cheering company of a fair and loving lady.”

The girl’s head went high as she looked the Earl full in the eye.

“Think you, John de Fulm, Earl of Buckingham, that you be talking to some
comely scullery maid? Do you forget that my house is honored in England, even
though it does not share the King’s favors with his foreign favorites,
and you owe respect to a daughter of a De Tany?”

“All be fair in war, my beauty,” replied the Earl.
“Egad,” he continued, “methinks all would be fair in hell
were they like unto you. It has been some years since I have seen you and I did
not know the old fox Richard de Tany kept such a package as this hid in his
grimy old castle.”

“Then you refuse to release us?” said Joan de Tany.

“Let us not put it thus harshly,” countered the Earl. “Rather
let us say that it be so late in the day, and the way so beset with dangers
that the Earl of Buckingham could not bring himself to expose the beautiful
daughter of his old friend to the perils of the road, and so—”

“Let us have an end to such foolishness,” cried the girl. “I
might have expected naught better from a turncoat foreign knave such as thee,
who once joined in the councils of De Montfort, and then betrayed his friends
to curry favor with the King.”

The Earl paled with rage, and pressed forward as though to strike the girl, but
thinking better of it, he turned to one of the soldiers, saying:

“Bring the prisoner with you. If the man lives bring him also. I would
learn more of this fellow who masquerades in the countenance of a crown
prince.”

And turning, he spurred on towards the neighboring castle of a rebel baron
which had been captured by the royalists, and was now used as headquarters by
De Fulm.

CHAPTER XIII

When Norman of Torn regained his senses, he found himself in a small tower room
in a strange castle. His head ached horribly, and he felt sick and sore; but he
managed to crawl from the cot on which he lay, and by steadying his swaying
body with hands pressed against the wall, he was able to reach the door. To his
disappointment, he found this locked from without and, in his weakened
condition, he made no attempt to force it.

He was fully dressed and in armor, as he had been when struck down, but his
helmet was gone, as were also his sword and dagger.

The day was drawing to a close and, as dusk fell and the room darkened, he
became more and more impatient. Repeated pounding upon the door brought no
response and finally he gave up in despair. Going to the window, he saw that
his room was some thirty feet above the stone-flagged courtyard, and also that
it looked at an angle upon other windows in the old castle where lights were
beginning to show. He saw men-at-arms moving about, and once he thought he
caught a glimpse of a woman’s figure, but he was not sure.

He wondered what had become of Joan de Tany and Mary de Stutevill. He hoped
that they had escaped, and yet—no, Joan certainly had not, for now he
distinctly remembered that his eyes had met hers for an instant just before the
blow fell upon him, and he thought of the faith and confidence that he had read
in that quick glance. Such a look would nerve a jackal to attack a drove of
lions, thought the outlaw. What a beautiful creature she was; and she had
stayed there with him during the fight. He remembered now. Mary de Stutevill
had not been with her as he had caught that glimpse of her, no, she had been
all alone. Ah! That was friendship indeed!

What else was it that tried to force its way above the threshold of his bruised
and wavering memory? Words? Words of love? And lips pressed to his? No, it must
be but a figment of his wounded brain.

What was that which clicked against his breastplate? He felt, and found a metal
bauble linked to a mesh of his steel armor by a strand of silken hair. He
carried the little thing to the window, and in the waning light made it out to
be a golden hair ornament set with precious stones, but he could not tell if
the little strand of silken hair were black or brown. Carefully he detached the
little thing, and, winding the filmy tress about it, placed it within the
breast of his tunic. He was vaguely troubled by it, yet why he could scarcely
have told, himself.

Again turning to the window, he watched the lighted rooms within his vision,
and presently his view was rewarded by the sight of a knight coming within the
scope of the narrow casement of a nearby chamber.

From his apparel, he was a man of position, and he was evidently in heated
discussion with someone whom Norman of Torn could not see. The man, a great,
tall, black-haired and mustached nobleman, was pounding upon a table to
emphasize his words, and presently he sprang up as though rushing toward the
one to whom he had been speaking. He disappeared from the watcher’s view
for a moment and then, at the far side of the apartment, Norman of Torn saw him
again just as he roughly grasped the figure of a woman who evidently was
attempting to escape him. As she turned to face her tormentor, all the devil in
the Devil of Torn surged in his aching head, for the face he saw was that of
Joan de Tany.

With a muttered oath, the imprisoned man turned to hurl himself against the
bolted door, but ere he had taken a single step, the sound of heavy feet
without brought him to a stop, and the jingle of keys as one was fitted to the
lock of the door sent him gliding stealthily to the wall beside the doorway,
where the inswinging door would conceal him.

As the door was pushed back, a flickering torch lighted up, but dimly, the
interior, so that until he had reached the center of the room, the visitor did
not see that the cot was empty.

He was a man-at-arms, and at his side hung a sword. That was enough for the
Devil of Torn—it was a sword he craved most; and, ere the fellow could
assure his slow wits that the cot was empty, steel fingers closed upon his
throat, and he went down beneath the giant form of the outlaw.

Without other sound than the scuffing of their bodies on the floor, and the
clanking of their armor, they fought, the one to reach the dagger at his side,
the other to close forever the windpipe of his adversary.

Presently, the man-at-arms found what he sought, and, after tugging with ever
diminishing strength, he felt the blade slip from its sheath. Slowly and feebly
he raised it high above the back of the man on top of him; with a last supreme
effort he drove the point downward, but ere it reached its goal, there was a
sharp snapping sound as of a broken bone, the dagger fell harmlessly from his
dead hand, and his head rolled backward upon his broken neck.

Snatching the sword from the body of his dead antagonist, Norman of Torn rushed
from the tower room.

As John de Fulm, Earl of Buckingham, laid his vandal hands upon Joan de Tany,
she turned upon him like a tigress. Blow after blow she rained upon his head
and face until, in mortification and rage, he struck her full upon the mouth
with his clenched fist; but even this did not subdue her and, with ever
weakening strength, she continued to strike him. And then the great royalist
Earl, the chosen friend of the King, took the fair white throat between his
great fingers, and the lust of blood supplanted the lust of love, for he would
have killed her in his rage.

It was upon this scene that the Outlaw of Torn burst with naked sword. They
were at the far end of the apartment, and his cry of anger at the sight caused
the Earl to drop his prey, and turn with drawn sword to meet him.

There were no words, for there was no need of words here. The two men were upon
each other, and fighting to the death, before the girl had regained her feet.
It would have been short shrift for John de Fulm had not some of his men heard
the fracas, and rushed to his aid.

Four of them there were, and they tumbled pell-mell into the room, fairly
falling upon Norman of Torn in their anxiety to get their swords into him; but
once they met that master hand, they went more slowly, and in a moment, two of
them went no more at all, and the others, with the Earl, were but circling
warily in search of a chance opening—an opening which never came.

Norman of Torn stood with his back against a table in an angle of the room, and
behind him stood Joan de Tany.

“Move toward the left,” she whispered. “I know this old pile.
When you reach the table that bears the lamp, there will be a small doorway
directly behind you. Strike the lamp out with your sword, as you feel my hand
in your left, and then I will lead you through that doorway, which you must
turn and quickly bolt after us. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

Slowly he worked his way toward the table, the men-at-arms in the meantime
keeping up an infernal howling for help. The Earl was careful to keep out of
reach of the point of De Conde’s sword, and the men-at-arms were nothing
loath to emulate their master’s example.

Just as he reached his goal, a dozen more men burst into the room, and
emboldened by this reinforcement, one of the men engaging De Conde came too
close. As he jerked his blade from the fellow’s throat, Norman of Torn
felt a firm, warm hand slipped into his from behind, and his sword swung with a
resounding blow against the lamp.

As darkness enveloped the chamber, Joan de Tany led him through the little
door, which he immediately closed and bolted as she had instructed.

“This way,” she whispered, again slipping her hand into his and, in
silence, she led him through several dim chambers, and finally stopped before a
blank wall in a great oak-panelled room.

Here the girl felt with swift fingers the edge of the molding. More and more
rapidly she moved as the sound of hurrying footsteps resounded through the
castle.

“What is wrong?” asked Norman of Torn, noticing her increasing
perturbation.

“Mon Dieu!” she cried. “Can I be wrong! Surely this is the
room. Oh, my friend, that I should have brought you to all this by my
willfulness and vanity; and now when I might save you, my wits leave me and I
forget the way.”

“Do not worry about me,” laughed the Devil of Torn.
“Methought that it was I who was trying to save you, and may heaven
forgive me else, for surely, that be my only excuse for running away from a
handful of swords. I could not take chances when thou wert at stake,
Joan,” he added more gravely.

The sound of pursuit was now quite close, in fact the reflection from
flickering torches could be seen in nearby chambers.

At last the girl, with a little cry of “stupid,” seized De Conde
and rushed him to the far side of the room.

“Here it is,” she whispered joyously, “here it has been all
the time.” Running her fingers along the molding until she found a little
hidden spring, she pushed it, and one of the great panels swung slowly in,
revealing the yawning mouth of a black opening behind.

Quickly the girl entered, pulling De Conde after her, and as the panel swung
quietly into place, the Earl of Buckingham with a dozen men entered the
apartment.

“The devil take them,” cried De Fulm. “Where can they have
gone? Surely we were right behind them.”

“It is passing strange, My Lord,” replied one of the men.
“Let us try the floor above, and the towers; for of a surety they have
not come this way.” And the party retraced its steps, leaving the
apartment empty.

Behind the panel, the girl stood shrinking close to De Conde, her hand still in
his.

“Where now?” he asked. “Or do we stay hidden here like
frightened chicks until the war is over and the Baron returns to let us out of
this musty hole?”

“Wait,” she answered, “until I quiet my nerves a little. I am
all unstrung.” He felt her body tremble as it pressed against his.

With the spirit of protection strong within him, what wonder that his arm fell
about her shoulder as though to say, fear not, for I be brave and powerful;
naught can harm you while I am here.

Presently she reached her hands up to his face, made brave to do it by the
sheltering darkness.

“Roger,” she whispered, her tongue halting over the familiar name.
“I thought that they had killed you, and all for me, for my foolish
stubbornness. Canst forgive me?”

“Forgive?” he asked, smiling to himself. “Forgive being given
an opportunity to fight? There be nothing to forgive, Joan, unless it be that I
should ask forgiveness for protecting thee so poorly.”

“Do not say that,” she commanded. “Never was such bravery or
such swordsmanship in all the world before; never such a man.”

He did not answer. His mind was a chaos of conflicting thoughts. The feel of
her hands as they had lingered momentarily, and with a vague caress upon his
cheek, and the pressure of her body as she leaned against him sent the hot
blood coursing through his veins. He was puzzled, for he had not dreamed that
friendship was so sweet. That she did not shrink from his encircling arms
should have told him much, but Norman of Torn was slow to realize that a woman
might look upon him with love. Nor had he a thought of any other sentiment
toward her than that of friend and protector.

And then there came to him as in a vision another fair and beautiful
face—Bertrade de Montfort’s—and Norman of Torn was still more
puzzled; for at heart he was clean, and love of loyalty was strong within him.
Love of women was a new thing to him, and, robbed as he had been all his
starved life of the affection and kindly fellowship, of either men or women, it
is little to be wondered at that he was easily impressionable and responsive to
the feeling his strong personality had awakened in two of England’s
fairest daughters.

But with the vision of that other face, there came to him a faint realization
that mayhap it was a stronger power than either friendship or fear which caused
that lithe, warm body to cling so tightly to him. That the responsibility for
the critical stage their young acquaintance had so quickly reached was not his
had never for a moment entered his head. To him, the fault was all his; and
perhaps it was this quality of chivalry that was the finest of the many noble
characteristics of his sterling character. So his next words were typical of
the man; and did Joan de Tany love him, or did she not, she learned that night
to respect and trust him as she respected and trusted few men of her
acquaintance.

“My Lady,” said Norman of Torn, “we have been through much,
and we are as little children in a dark attic, and so if I have presumed upon
our acquaintance,” and he lowered his arm from about her shoulder,
“I ask you to forgive it for I scarce know what to do, from weakness and
from the pain of the blow upon my head.”

Joan de Tany drew slowly away from him, and without reply, took his hand and
led him forward through a dark, cold corridor.

“We must go carefully now,” she said at last, “for there be
stairs near.”

He held her hand pressed very tightly in his, tighter perhaps than conditions
required, but she let it lie there as she led him forward, very slowly down a
flight of rough stone steps.

Norman of Torn wondered if she were angry with him and then, being new at love,
he blundered.

“Joan de Tany,” he said.

“Yes, Roger de Conde; what would you?”

“You be silent, and I fear that you be angry with me. Tell me that you
forgive what I have done, an it offended you. I have so few friends,” he
added sadly, “that I cannot afford to lose such as you.”

“You will never lose the friendship of Joan de Tany,” she answered.
“You have won her respect and—and—” But she could not
say it and so she trailed off lamely—“and undying gratitude.”

But Norman of Torn knew the word that she would have spoken had he dared to let
her. He did not, for there was always the vision of Bertrade de Montfort before
him; and now another vision arose that would effectually have sealed his lips
had not the other—he saw the Outlaw of Torn dangling by his neck from a
wooden gibbet.

Before, he had only feared that Joan de Tany loved him, now he knew it, and
while he marvelled that so wondrous a creature could feel love for him, again
he blamed himself, and felt sorrow for them both; for he did not return her
love nor could he imagine a love strong enough to survive the knowledge that it
was possessed by the Devil of Torn.

Presently they reached the bottom of the stairway, and Joan de Tany led him,
gropingly, across what seemed, from their echoing footsteps, a large chamber.
The air was chill and dank, smelling of mold, and no ray of light penetrated
this subterranean vault, and no sound broke the stillness.

“This be the castle’s crypt,” whispered Joan; “and they
do say that strange happenings occur here in the still watches of the night,
and that when the castle sleeps, the castle’s dead rise from their
coffins and shake their dry bones.

“Sh! What was that?” as a rustling noise broke upon their ears
close upon their right; and then there came a distinct moan, and Joan de Tany
fled to the refuge of Norman of Torn’s arms.

“There is nothing to fear, Joan,” reassured Norman of Torn.
“Dead men wield not swords, nor do they move, or moan. The wind, I think,
and rats are our only companions here.”

“I am afraid,” she whispered. “If you can make a light, I am
sure you will find an old lamp here in the crypt, and then will it be less
fearsome. As a child I visited this castle often, and in search of adventure,
we passed through these corridors an hundred times, but always by day and with
lights.”

Norman of Torn did as she bid, and finding the lamp, lighted it. The chamber
was quite empty save for the coffins in their niches, and some effigies in
marble set at intervals about the walls.

“Not such a fearsome place after all,” he said, laughing lightly.

“No place would seem fearsome now,” she answered simply,
“were there a light to show me that the brave face of Roger de Conde were
by my side.”

“Hush, child,” replied the outlaw. “You know not what you
say. When you know me better, you will be sorry for your words, for Roger de
Conde is not what you think him. So say no more of praise until we be out of
this hole, and you safe in your father’s halls.”

The fright of the noises in the dark chamber had but served to again bring the
girl’s face close to his so that he felt her hot, sweet breath upon his
cheek, and thus another link was forged to bind him to her.

With the aid of the lamp, they made more rapid progress, and in a few moments,
reached a low door at the end of the arched passageway.

“This is the doorway which opens upon the ravine below the castle. We
have passed beneath the walls and the moat. What may we do now, Roger, without
horses?”

“Let us get out of this place, and as far away as possible under the
cover of darkness, and I doubt not I may find a way to bring you to your
father’s castle,” replied Norman of Torn.

Putting out the light, lest it should attract the notice of the watch upon the
castle walls, Norman of Torn pushed open the little door and stepped forth into
the fresh night air.

The ravine was so overgrown with tangled vines and wildwood that, had there
ever been a pathway, it was now completely obliterated; and it was with
difficulty that the man forced his way through the entangling creepers and
tendrils. The girl stumbled after him and twice fell before they had taken a
score of steps.

“I fear I am not strong enough,” she said finally. “The way
is much more difficult than I had thought.”

So Norman of Torn lifted her in his strong arms, and stumbled on through the
darkness and the shrubbery down the center of the ravine. It required the
better part of an hour to traverse the little distance to the roadway; and all
the time her head nestled upon his shoulder and her hair brushed his cheek.
Once when she lifted her head to speak to him, he bent toward her, and in the
darkness, by chance, his lips brushed hers. He felt her little form tremble in
his arms, and a faint sigh breathed from her lips.

They were upon the highroad now, but he did not put her down. A mist was before
his eyes, and he could have crushed her to him and smothered those warm lips
with his own. Slowly, his face inclined toward hers, closer and closer his iron
muscles pressed her to him, and then, clear cut and distinct before his eyes,
he saw the corpse of the Outlaw of Torn swinging by the neck from the arm of a
wooden gibbet, and beside it knelt a woman gowned in rich cloth of gold and
many jewels. Her face was averted and her arms were outstretched toward the
dangling form that swung and twisted from the grim, gaunt arm. Her figure was
racked with choking sobs of horror-stricken grief. Presently she staggered to
her feet and turned away, burying her face in her hands; but he saw her
features for an instant then—the woman who openly and alone mourned the
dead Outlaw of Torn was Bertrade de Montfort.

Slowly his arms relaxed, and gently and reverently he lowered Joan de Tany to
the ground. In that instant Norman of Torn had learned the difference between
friendship and love, and love and passion.

The moon was shining brightly upon them, and the girl turned, wide-eyed and
wondering, toward him. She had felt the wild call of love and she could not
understand his seeming coldness now, for she had seen no vision beyond a life
of happiness within those strong arms.

“Joan,” he said, “I would but now have wronged thee. Forgive
me. Forget what has passed between us until I can come to you in my rightful
colors, when the spell of the moonlight and adventure be no longer upon us, and
then,”—he paused—“and then I shall tell you who I be
and you shall say if you still care to call me friend—no more than that
shall I ask.”

He had not the heart to tell her that he loved only Bertrade de Montfort, but
it had been a thousand times better had he done so.

She was about to reply when a dozen armed men sprang from the surrounding
shadows, calling upon them to surrender. The moonlight falling upon the leader
revealed a great giant of a fellow with an enormous, bristling
mustache—it was Shandy.

Norman of Torn lowered his raised sword.

“It is I, Shandy,” he said. “Keep a still tongue in thy head
until I speak with thee apart. Wait here, My Lady Joan; these be
friends.”

Drawing Shandy to one side, he learned that the faithful fellow had become
alarmed at his chief’s continued absence, and had set out with a small
party to search for him. They had come upon the riderless Sir Mortimer grazing
by the roadside, and a short distance beyond, had discovered evidences of the
conflict at the cross-roads. There they had found Norman of Torn’s
helmet, confirming their worst fears. A peasant in a nearby hut had told them
of the encounter, and had set them upon the road taken by the Earl and his
prisoners.

“And here we be, My Lord,” concluded the great fellow.

“How many are you?” asked the outlaw.

“Fifty, all told, with those who lie farther back in the bushes.”

“Give us horses, and let two of the men ride behind us,” said the
chief. “And, Shandy, let not the lady know that she rides this night with
the Outlaw of Torn.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

They were soon mounted, and clattering down the road, back toward the castle of
Richard de Tany.

Joan de Tany looked in silent wonder upon this grim force that sprang out of
the shadows of the night to do the bidding of Roger de Conde, a gentleman of
France.

There was something familiar in the great bulk of Red Shandy; where had she
seen that mighty frame before? And now she looked closely at the figure of
Roger de Conde. Yes, somewhere else had she seen these two men together; but
where and when?

And then the strangeness of another incident came to her mind. Roger de Conde
spoke no English, and yet she had plainly heard English words upon this
man’s lips as he addressed the red giant.

Norman of Torn had recovered his helmet from one of his men who had picked it
up at the crossroads, and now he rode in silence with lowered visor, as was his
custom.

There was something sinister now in his appearance, and as the moonlight
touched the hard, cruel faces of the grim and silent men who rode behind him, a
little shudder crept over the frame of Joan de Tany.

Shortly before daylight they reached the castle of Richard de Tany, and a great
shout went up from the watch as Norman of Torn cried:

“Open! Open for My Lady Joan.”

Together they rode into the courtyard, where all was bustle and excitement. A
dozen voices asked a dozen questions only to cry out still others without
waiting for replies.

Richard de Tany with his family and Mary de Stutevill were still fully clothed,
having not lain down during the whole night. They fairly fell upon Joan and
Roger de Conde in their joyous welcome and relief.

“Come, come,” said the Baron, “let us go within. You must be
fair famished for good food and drink.”

“I will ride, My Lord,” replied Norman of Torn. “I have a
little matter of business with my friend, the Earl of Buckingham. Business
which I fear will not wait.”

Joan de Tany looked on in silence. Nor did she urge him to remain, as he raised
her hand to his lips in farewell. So Norman of Torn rode out of the courtyard;
and as his men fell in behind him under the first rays of the drawing day, the
daughter of De Tany watched them through the gate, and a great light broke upon
her, for what she saw was the same as she had seen a few days since when she
had turned in her saddle to watch the retreating forms of the cut-throats of
Torn as they rode on after halting her father’s party.

CHAPTER XIV

Some hours later, fifty men followed Norman of Torn on foot through the ravine
below the castle where John de Fulm, Earl of Buckingham, had his headquarters;
while nearly a thousand more lurked in the woods before the grim pile.

Under cover of the tangled shrubbery, they crawled unseen to the little door
through which Joan de Tany had led him the night before. Following the
corridors and vaults beneath the castle, they came to the stone stairway, and
mounted to the passage which led to the false panel that had given the two
fugitives egress.

Slipping the spring lock, Norman of Torn entered the apartment followed closely
by his henchmen. On they went, through apartment after apartment, but no sign
of the Earl or his servitors rewarded their search, and it was soon apparent
that the castle was deserted.

As they came forth into the courtyard, they descried an old man basking in the
sun, upon a bench. The sight of them nearly caused the old fellow to die of
fright, for to see fifty armed men issue from the untenanted halls was well
reckoned to blanch even a braver cheek.

When Norman of Torn questioned him, he learned that De Fulm had ridden out
early in the day bound for Dover, where Prince Edward then was. The outlaw knew
it would be futile to pursue him, but yet, so fierce was his anger against this
man, that he ordered his band to mount, and spurring to their head, he marched
through Middlesex, and crossing the Thames above London, entered Surrey late
the same afternoon.

As they were going into camp that night in Kent, midway between London and
Rochester, word came to Norman of Torn that the Earl of Buckingham, having sent
his escort on to Dover, had stopped to visit the wife of a royalist baron,
whose husband was with Prince Edward’s forces.

The fellow who gave this information was a servant in my lady’s household
who held a grudge against his mistress for some wrong she had done him. When,
therefore, he found that these grim men were searching for De Fulm, he saw a
way to be revenged upon his mistress.

“How many swords be there at the castle?” asked Norman of Torn.

“Scarce a dozen, barring the Earl of Buckingham,” replied the
knave; “and, furthermore, there be a way to enter, which I may show you,
My Lord, so that you may, unseen, reach the apartment where My Lady and the
Earl be supping.”

“Bring ten men, beside yourself, Shandy,” commanded Norman of Torn.
“We shall pay a little visit upon our amorous friend, My Lord, the Earl
of Buckingham.”

Half an hour’s ride brought them within sight of the castle. Dismounting,
and leaving their horses with one of the men, Norman of Torn advanced on foot
with Shandy and the eight others, close in the wake of the traitorous servant.

The fellow led them to the rear of the castle, where, among the brush, he had
hidden a rude ladder, which, when tilted, spanned the moat and rested its
farther end upon a window ledge some ten feet above the ground.

“Keep the fellow here till last, Shandy,” said the outlaw,
“till all be in, an’ if there be any signs of treachery, stick him
through the gizzard—death thus be slower and more painful.”

So saying, Norman of Torn crept boldly across the improvised bridge, and
disappeared within the window beyond. One by one the band of cut-throats passed
through the little window, until all stood within the castle beside their
chief; Shandy coming last with the servant.

“Lead me quietly, knave, to the room where My Lord sups,” said
Norman of Torn. “You, Shandy, place your men where they can prevent my
being interrupted.”

Following a moment or two after Shandy came another figure stealthily across
the ladder and, as Norman of Torn and his followers left the little room, this
figure pushed quietly through the window and followed the great outlaw down the
unlighted corridor.

A moment later, My Lady of Leybourn looked up from her plate upon the grim
figure of an armored knight standing in the doorway of the great dining hall.

“My Lord Earl!” she cried. “Look! Behind you.”

And as the Earl of Buckingham glanced behind him, he overturned the bench upon
which he sat in his effort to gain his feet; for My Lord Earl of Buckingham had
a guilty conscience.

The grim figure raised a restraining hand, as the Earl drew his sword.

“A moment, My Lord,” said a low voice in perfect French.

“Who are you?” cried the lady.

“I be an old friend of My Lord, here; but let me tell you a little story.

“In a grim old castle in Essex, only last night, a great lord of England
held by force the beautiful daughter of a noble house and, when she spurned his
advances, he struck her with his clenched fist upon her fair face, and with his
brute hands choked her. And in that castle also was a despised and hunted
outlaw, with a price upon his head, for whose neck the hempen noose has been
yawning these many years. And it was this vile person who came in time to save
the young woman from the noble flower of knighthood that would have ruined her
young life.

“The outlaw wished to kill the knight, but many men-at-arms came to the
noble’s rescue, and so the outlaw was forced to fly with the girl lest he
be overcome by numbers, and the girl thus fall again into the hands of her
tormentor.

“But this crude outlaw was not satisfied with merely rescuing the girl,
he must needs mete out justice to her noble abductor and collect in full the
toll of blood which alone can atone for the insult and violence done her.

“My Lady, the young girl was Joan de Tany; the noble was My Lord the Earl
of Buckingham; and the outlaw stands before you to fulfill the duty he has
sworn to do. En garde, My Lord!”

The encounter was short, for Norman of Torn had come to kill, and he had been
looking through a haze of blood for hours—in fact every time he had
thought of those brutal fingers upon the fair throat of Joan de Tany and of the
cruel blow that had fallen upon her face.

He showed no mercy, but backed the Earl relentlessly into a corner of the room,
and when he had him there where he could escape in no direction, he drove his
blade so deep through his putrid heart that the point buried itself an inch in
the oak panel beyond.

Claudia Leybourn sat frozen with horror at the sight she was witnessing, and,
as Norman of Torn wrenched his blade from the dead body before him and wiped it
on the rushes of the floor, she gazed in awful fascination while he drew his
dagger and made a mark upon the forehead of the dead nobleman.

“Outlaw or Devil,” said a stern voice behind them, “Roger
Leybourn owes you his friendship for saving the honor of his home.”

Both turned to discover a mail-clad figure standing in the doorway where Norman
of Torn had first appeared.

“Roger!” shrieked Claudia Leybourn, and swooned.

“Who be you?” continued the master of Leybourn addressing the
outlaw.

For answer Norman of Torn pointed to the forehead of the dead Earl of
Buckingham, and there Roger Leybourn saw, in letters of blood, NT.

The Baron advanced with outstretched hand.

“I owe you much. You have saved my poor, silly wife from this beast, and
Joan de Tany is my cousin, so I am doubly beholden to you, Norman of
Torn.”

The outlaw pretended that he did not see the hand.

“You owe me nothing, Sir Roger, that may not be paid by a good supper. I
have eaten but once in forty-eight hours.”

The outlaw now called to Shandy and his men, telling them to remain on watch,
but to interfere with no one within the castle.

He then sat at the table with Roger Leybourn and his lady, who had recovered
from her swoon, and behind them on the rushes of the floor lay the body of De
Fulm in a little pool of blood.

Leybourn told them that he had heard that De Fulm was at his home, and had
hastened back; having been in hiding about the castle for half an hour before
the arrival of Norman of Torn, awaiting an opportunity to enter unobserved by
the servants. It was he who had followed across the ladder after Shandy.

The outlaw spent the night at the castle of Roger Leybourn; for the first time
within his memory a welcomed guest under his true name at the house of a
gentleman.

The following morning, he bade his host goodbye, and returning to his camp
started on his homeward march toward Torn.

Near midday, as they were approaching the Thames near the environs of London,
they saw a great concourse of people hooting and jeering at a small party of
gentlemen and gentlewomen.

Some of the crowd were armed, and from very force of numbers were waxing brave
to lay violent hands upon the party. Mud and rocks and rotten vegetables were
being hurled at the little cavalcade, many of them barely missing the women of
the party.

Norman of Torn waited to ask no questions, but spurring into the thick of it
laid right and left of him with the flat of his sword, and his men, catching
the contagion of it, swarmed after him until the whole pack of attacking
ruffians were driven into the Thames.

And then, without a backward glance at the party he had rescued, he continued
on his march toward the north.

The little party sat upon their horses looking in wonder after the retreating
figures of their deliverers. Then one of the ladies turned to a knight at her
side with a word of command and an imperious gesture toward the fast
disappearing company. He, thus addressed, put spurs to his horse, and rode at a
rapid gallop after the outlaw’s troop. In a few moments he had overtaken
them and reined up beside Norman of Torn.

“Hold, Sir Knight,” cried the gentleman, “the Queen would
thank you in person for your brave defence of her.”

Ever keen to see the humor of a situation, Norman of Torn wheeled his horse and
rode back with the Queen’s messenger.

As he faced Her Majesty, the Outlaw of Torn bent low over his pommel.

“You be a strange knight that thinks so lightly on saving a queen’s
life that you ride on without turning your head, as though you had but driven a
pack of curs from annoying a stray cat,” said the Queen.

“I drew in the service of a woman, Your Majesty, not in the service of a
queen.”

“What now! Wouldst even belittle the act which we all witnessed? The
King, my husband, shall reward thee, Sir Knight, if you but tell me your
name.”

“If I told my name, methinks the King would be more apt to hang
me,” laughed the outlaw. “I be Norman of Torn.”

The entire party looked with startled astonishment upon him, for none of them
had ever seen this bold raider whom all the nobility and gentry of England
feared and hated.

“For lesser acts than that which thou hast just performed, the King has
pardoned men before,” replied Her Majesty. “But raise your visor, I
would look upon the face of so notorious a criminal who can yet be a gentleman
and a loyal protector of his queen.”

“They who have looked upon my face, other than my friends,” replied
Norman of Torn quietly, “have never lived to tell what they saw beneath
this visor, and as for you, Madame, I have learned within the year to fear it
might mean unhappiness to you to see the visor of the Devil of Torn lifted from
his face.” Without another word he wheeled and galloped back to his
little army.

“The puppy, the insolent puppy,” cried Eleanor of England, in a
rage.

And so the Outlaw of Torn and his mother met and parted after a period of
twenty years.

Two days later, Norman of Torn directed Red Shandy to lead the forces of Torn
from their Essex camp back to Derby. The numerous raiding parties which had
been constantly upon the road during the days they had spent in this rich
district had loaded the extra sumpter beasts with rich and valuable booty and
the men, for the time satiated with fighting and loot, turned their faces
toward Torn with evident satisfaction.

The outlaw was speaking to his captains in council; at his side the old man of
Torn.

“Ride by easy stages, Shandy, and I will overtake you by tomorrow
morning. I but ride for a moment to the castle of De Tany on an errand, and, as
I shall stop there but a few moments, I shall surely join you tomorrow.”

“Do not forget, My Lord,” said Edwild the Serf, a great
yellow-haired Saxon giant, “that there be a party of the King’s
troops camped close by the road which branches to Tany.”

“I shall give them plenty of room,” replied Norman of Torn.
“My neck itcheth not to be stretched,” and he laughed and mounted.

Five minutes after he had cantered down the road from camp, Spizo the Spaniard,
sneaking his horse unseen into the surrounding forest, mounted and spurred
rapidly after him. The camp, in the throes of packing refractory, half broken
sumpter animals, and saddling their own wild mounts, did not notice his
departure. Only the little grim, gray, old man knew that he had gone, or why,
or whither.

That afternoon, as Roger de Conde was admitted to the castle of Richard de Tany
and escorted to a little room where he awaited the coming of the Lady Joan, a
swarthy messenger handed a letter to the captain of the King’s soldiers
camped a few miles south of Tany.

The officer tore open the seal as the messenger turned and spurred back in the
direction from which he had come.

And this was what he read:

Norman of Torn is now at the castle of Tany, without escort.

Instantly the call “to arms” and “mount” sounded
through the camp and, in five minutes, a hundred mercenaries galloped rapidly
toward the castle of Richard de Tany, in the visions of their captain a great
reward and honor and preferment for the capture of the mighty outlaw who was
now almost within his clutches.

Three roads meet at Tany; one from the south along which the King’s
soldiers were now riding; one from the west which had guided Norman of Torn
from his camp to the castle; and a third which ran northwest through Cambridge
and Huntingdon toward Derby.

All unconscious of the rapidly approaching foes, Norman of Torn waited
composedly in the anteroom for Joan de Tany.

Presently she entered, clothed in the clinging house garment of the period; a
beautiful vision, made more beautiful by the suppressed excitement which caused
the blood to surge beneath the velvet of her cheek, and her breasts to rise and
fall above her fast beating heart.

She let him take her fingers in his and raise them to his lips, and then they
stood looking into each other’s eyes in silence for a long moment.

“I do not know how to tell you what I have come to tell,” he said
sadly. “I have not meant to deceive you to your harm, but the temptation
to be with you and those whom you typify must be my excuse. I—” He
paused. It was easy to tell her that he was the Outlaw of Torn, but if she
loved him, as he feared, how was he to tell her that he loved only Bertrade de
Montfort?

“You need tell me nothing,” interrupted Joan de Tany. “I have
guessed what you would tell me, Norman of Torn. ‘The spell of moonlight
and adventure is no longer upon us’—those are your own words, and
still I am glad to call you friend.”

The little emphasis she put upon the last word bespoke the finality of her
decision that the Outlaw of Torn could be no more than friend to her.

“It is best,” he replied, relieved that, as he thought, she felt no
love for him now that she knew him for what he really was. “Nothing good
could come to such as you, Joan, if the Devil of Torn could claim more of you
than friendship; and so I think that for your peace of mind and for my own, we
will let it be as though you had never known me. I thank you that you have not
been angry with me. Remember me only to think that in the hills of Derby, a
sword is at your service, without reward and without price. Should you ever
need it, Joan, tell me that you will send for me—wilt promise me that,
Joan?”

“I promise, Norman of Torn.”

“Farewell,” he said, and as he again kissed her hand he bent his
knee to the ground in reverence. Then he rose to go, pressing a little packet
into her palm. Their eyes met, and the man saw, in that brief instant, deep in
the azure depths of the girl’s that which tumbled the structure of his
new-found complacency about his ears.

As he rode out into the bright sunlight upon the road which led northwest
toward Derby, Norman of Torn bowed his head in sorrow, for he realized two
things. One was that the girl he had left still loved him, and that some day,
mayhap tomorrow, she would suffer because she had sent him away; and the other
was that he did not love her, that his heart was locked in the fair breast of
Bertrade de Montfort.

He felt himself a beast that he had allowed his loneliness and the aching
sorrow of his starved, empty heart to lead him into this girl’s life.
That he had been new to women and newer still to love did not permit him to
excuse himself, and a hundred times he cursed his folly and stupidity, and what
he thought was fickleness.

But the unhappy affair had taught him one thing for certain: to know without
question what love was, and that the memory of Bertrade de Montfort’s
lips would always be more to him than all the allurements possessed by the
balance of the women of the world, no matter how charming, or how beautiful.

Another thing, a painful thing he had learned from it, too, that the attitude
of Joan de Tany, daughter of an old and noble house, was but the attitude which
the Outlaw of Torn must expect from any good woman of her class; what he must
expect from Bertrade de Montfort when she learned that Roger de Conde was
Norman of Torn.

The outlaw had scarce passed out of sight upon the road to Derby ere the girl,
who still stood in an embrasure of the south tower, gazing with strangely
drawn, sad face up the road which had swallowed him, saw a body of soldiers
galloping rapidly toward Tany from the south.

The King’s banner waved above their heads, and intuitively, Joan de Tany
knew for whom they sought at her father’s castle. Quickly she hastened to
the outer barbican that it might be she who answered their hail rather than one
of the men-at-arms on watch there.

She had scarcely reached the ramparts of the outer gate ere the King’s
men drew rein before the castle.

In reply to their hail, Joan de Tany asked their mission.

“We seek the outlaw, Norman of Torn, who hides now within this
castle,” replied the officer.

“There be no outlaw here,” replied the girl, “but, if you
wish, you may enter with half a dozen men and search the castle.”

This the officer did and, when he had assured himself that Norman of Torn was
not within, an hour had passed, and Joan de Tany felt certain that the Outlaw
of Torn was too far ahead to be caught by the King’s men; so she said:

“There was one here just before you came who called himself though by
another name than Norman of Torn. Possibly it is he ye seek.”

“Which way rode he?” cried the officer.

“Straight toward the west by the middle road,” lied Joan de Tany.
And, as the officer hurried from the castle and, with his men at his back,
galloped furiously away toward the west, the girl sank down upon a bench,
pressing her little hands to her throbbing temples.

Then she opened the packet which Norman of Torn had handed her, and within
found two others. In one of these was a beautiful jeweled locket, and on the
outside were the initials JT, and on the inside the initials NT; in the other
was a golden hair ornament set with precious stones, and about it was wound a
strand of her own silken tresses.

She looked long at the little trinkets and then, pressing them against her
lips, she threw herself face down upon an oaken bench, her lithe young form
racked with sobs.

She was indeed but a little girl chained by the inexorable bonds of caste to a
false ideal. Birth and station spelled honor to her, and honor, to the daughter
of an English noble, was a mightier force even than love.

That Norman of Torn was an outlaw she might have forgiven, but that he was,
according to report, a low fellow of no birth placed an impassable barrier
between them.

For hours the girl lay sobbing upon the bench, whilst within her raged the
mighty battle of the heart against the head.

Thus her mother found her, and kneeling beside her, and with her arms about the
girl’s neck, tried to soothe her and to learn the cause of her sorrow.
Finally it came, poured from the flood gates of a sorrowing heart; that wave of
bitter misery and hopelessness which not even a mother’s love could
check.

“Joan, my dear daughter,” cried Lady de Tany, “I sorrow with
thee that thy love has been cast upon so bleak and impossible a shore. But it
be better that thou hast learnt the truth ere it were too late; for, take my
word upon it, Joan, the bitter humiliation such an alliance must needs have
brought upon thee and thy father’s house would soon have cooled thy love;
nor could his have survived the sneers and affronts even the menials would have
put upon him.”

“Oh, mother, but I love him so,” moaned the girl. “I did not
know how much until he had gone, and the King’s officer had come to
search for him, and then the thought that all the power of a great throne and
the mightiest houses of an entire kingdom were turned in hatred against him
raised the hot blood of anger within me and the knowledge of my love surged
through all my being. Mother, thou canst not know the honor, and the bravery,
and the chivalry of the man as I do. Not since Arthur of Silures kept his round
table hath ridden forth upon English soil so true a knight as Norman of Torn.

“Couldst thou but have seen him fight, my mother, and witnessed the honor
of his treatment of thy daughter, and heard the tone of dignified respect in
which he spoke of women thou wouldst have loved him, too, and felt that outlaw
though he be, he is still more a gentleman than nine-tenths the nobles of
England.”

“But his birth, my daughter!” argued the Lady de Tany. “Some
even say that the gall marks of his brass collar still showeth upon his neck,
and others that he knoweth not himself the name of his own father, nor had he
any mother.”

Ah, but this was the mighty argument! Naught could the girl say to justify so
heinous a crime as low birth. What a man did in those rough cruel days might be
forgotten and forgiven but the sins of his mother or his grandfather in not
being of noble blood, no matter howsoever wickedly attained, he might never
overcome or live down.

Torn by conflicting emotions, the poor girl dragged herself to her own
apartment and there upon a restless, sleepless couch, beset by wild, impossible
hopes, and vain, torturing regrets, she fought out the long, bitter night;
until toward morning she solved the problem of her misery in the only way that
seemed possible to her poor, tired, bleeding, little heart. When the rising sun
shone through the narrow window, it found Joan de Tany at peace with all about
her; the carved golden hilt of the toy that had hung at her girdle protruded
from her breast, and a thin line of crimson ran across the snowy skin to a
little pool upon the sheet beneath her.

And so the cruel hand of a mighty revenge had reached out to crush another
innocent victim.

CHAPTER XV

When word of the death of Joan de Tany reached Torn, no man could tell from
outward appearance the depth of the suffering which the sad intelligence
wrought on the master of Torn.

All that they who followed him knew was that certain unusual orders were
issued, and that that same night, the ten companies rode south toward Essex
without other halt than for necessary food and water for man and beast.

When the body of Joan de Tany rode forth from her father’s castle to the
church at Colchester, and again as it was brought back to its final resting
place in the castle’s crypt, a thousand strange and silent knights, black
draped, upon horses trapped in black, rode slowly behind the bier.

Silently they had come in the night preceding the funeral, and as silently,
they slipped away northward into the falling shadows of the following night.

No word had passed between those of the castle and the great troop of
sable-clad warriors, but all within knew that the mighty Outlaw of Torn had
come to pay homage to the memory of the daughter of De Tany, and all but the
grieving mother wondered at the strangeness of the act.

As the horde of Torn approached their Derby stronghold, their young leader
turned the command over to Red Shandy and dismounted at the door of Father
Claude’s cottage.

“I am tired, Father,” said the outlaw as he threw himself upon his
accustomed bench. “Naught but sorrow and death follow in my footsteps. I
and all my acts be accurst, and upon those I love, the blight falleth.”

“Alter thy ways, my son; follow my advice ere it be too late. Seek out a
new and better life in another country and carve thy future into the semblance
of glory and honor.”

“Would that I might, my friend,” answered Norman of Torn.
“But hast thou thought on the consequences which surely would follow
should I thus remove both heart and head from the thing that I have built?

“What suppose thou would result were Norman of Torn to turn his great
band of cut-throats, leaderless, upon England? Hast thought on’t, Father?

“Wouldst thou draw a single breath in security if thou knew Edwild the
Serf were ranging unchecked through Derby? Edwild, whose father was torn limb
from limb upon the rack because he would not confess to killing a buck in the
new forest, a buck which fell before the arrow of another man; Edwild, whose
mother was burned for witchcraft by Holy Church.

“And Horsan the Dane, Father. How thinkest thou the safety of the roads
would be for either rich or poor an I turned Horsan the Dane loose upon ye?

“And Pensilo, the Spanish Don! A great captain, but a man absolutely
without bowels of compassion. When first he joined us and saw our mark upon the
foreheads of our dead, wishing to out-Herod Herod, he marked the living which
fell into his hands with a red hot iron, branding a great P upon each cheek and
burning out the right eye completely. Wouldst like to feel, Father, that Don
Piedro Castro y Pensilo ranged free through forest and hill of England?

“And Red Shandy, and the two Florys, and Peter the Hermit, and One Eye
Kanty, and Gropello, and Campanee, and Cobarth, and Mandecote, and the thousand
others, each with a special hatred for some particular class or individual, and
all filled with the lust of blood and rapine and loot.

“No, Father, I may not go yet, for the England I have been taught to
hate, I have learned to love, and I have it not in my heart to turn loose upon
her fair breast the beasts of hell who know no law or order or decency other
than that which I enforce.”

As Norman of Torn ceased speaking, the priest sat silent for many minutes.

“Thou hast indeed a grave responsibility, my son,” he said at last.
“Thou canst not well go unless thou takest thy horde with thee out of
England, but even that may be possible; who knows other than God?”

“For my part,” laughed the outlaw, “I be willing to leave it
in His hands; which seems to be the way with Christians. When one would shirk a
responsibility, or explain an error, lo, one shoulders it upon the Lord.”

“I fear, my son,” said the priest, “that what seed of
reverence I have attempted to plant within thy breast hath borne poor
fruit.”

“That dependeth upon the viewpoint, Father; as I take not the Lord into
partnership in my successes it seemeth to me to be but of a mean and poor
spirit to saddle my sorrows and perplexities upon Him. I may be wrong, for I am
ill-versed in religious matters, but my conception of God and scapegoat be not
that they are synonymous.”

“Religion, my son, be a bootless subject for argument between
friends,” replied the priest, “and further, there be that nearer my
heart just now which I would ask thee. I may offend, but thou know I do not
mean to. The question I would ask, is, dost wholly trust the old man whom thou
call father?”

“I know of no treachery,” replied the outlaw, “which he hath
ever conceived against me. Why?”

“I ask because I have written to Simon de Montfort asking him to meet me
and two others here upon an important matter. I have learned that he expects to
be at his Leicester castle, for a few days, within the week. He is to notify me
when he will come and I shall then send for thee and the old man of Torn; but
it were as well, my son, that thou do not mention this matter to thy father,
nor let him know when thou come hither to the meeting that De Montfort is to be
present.”

“As you say, Father,” replied Norman of Torn. “I do not make
head nor tail of thy wondrous intrigues, but that thou wish it done thus or so
is sufficient. I must be off to Torn now, so I bid thee farewell.”

Until the following Spring, Norman of Torn continued to occupy himself with
occasional pillages against the royalists of the surrounding counties, and his
patrols so covered the public highways that it became a matter of grievous
import to the King’s party, for no one was safe in the district who even
so much as sympathized with the King’s cause, and many were the dead
foreheads that bore the grim mark of the Devil of Torn.

Though he had never formally espoused the cause of the barons, it now seemed a
matter of little doubt but that, in any crisis, his grisly banner would be
found on their side.

The long winter evenings within the castle of Torn were often spent in rough,
wild carousals in the great hall where a thousand men might sit at table
singing, fighting and drinking until the gray dawn stole in through the east
windows, or Peter the Hermit, the fierce majordomo, tired of the din and
racket, came stalking into the chamber with drawn sword and laid upon the
revellers with the flat of it to enforce the authority of his commands to
disperse.

Norman of Torn and the old man seldom joined in these wild orgies, but when
minstrel, or troubadour, or storyteller wandered to his grim lair, the Outlaw
of Torn would sit enjoying the break in the winter’s dull monotony to as
late an hour as another; nor could any man of his great fierce horde outdrink
their chief when he cared to indulge in the pleasures of the wine cup. The only
effect that liquor seemed to have upon him was to increase his desire to fight,
so that he was wont to pick needless quarrels and to resort to his sword for
the slightest, or for no provocation at all. So, for this reason, he drank but
seldom since he always regretted the things he did under the promptings of that
other self which only could assert its ego when reason was threatened with
submersion.

Often on these evenings, the company was entertained by stories from the wild,
roving lives of its own members. Tales of adventure, love, war and death in
every known corner of the world; and the ten captains told, each, his story of
how he came to be of Torn; and thus, with fighting enough by day to keep them
good humored, the winter passed, and spring came with the ever wondrous miracle
of awakening life, with soft zephyrs, warm rain, and sunny skies.

Through all the winter, Father Claude had been expecting to hear from Simon de
Montfort, but not until now did he receive a message which told the good priest
that his letter had missed the great baron and had followed him around until he
had but just received it. The message closed with these words:

“Any clew, however vague, which might lead nearer to a true knowledge of
the fate of Prince Richard, we shall most gladly receive and give our best
attention. Therefore, if thou wilst find it convenient, we shall visit thee,
good father, on the fifth day from today.”

Spizo, the Spaniard, had seen De Montfort’s man leave the note with
Father Claude and he had seen the priest hide it under a great bowl on his
table, so that when the good father left his cottage, it was the matter of but
a moment’s work for Spizo to transfer the message from its hiding place
to the breast of his tunic. The fellow could not read, but he to whom he took
the missive could, laboriously, decipher the Latin in which it was penned.

The old man of Torn fairly trembled with suppressed rage as the full purport of
this letter flashed upon him. It had been years since he had heard aught of the
search for the little lost prince of England, and now that the period of his
silence was drawing to a close, now that more and more often opportunities were
opening up to him to wreak the last shred of his terrible vengeance, the very
thought of being thwarted at the final moment staggered his comprehension.

“On the fifth day,” he repeated. “That is the day on which we
were to ride south again. Well, we shall ride, and Simon de Montfort shall not
talk with thee, thou fool priest.”

That same spring evening in the year 1264, a messenger drew rein before the
walls of Torn and, to the challenge of the watch, cried:

“A royal messenger from His Illustrious Majesty, Henry, by the grace of
God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine, to Norman of Torn.
Open, in the name of the King!”

Norman of Torn directed that the King’s messenger be admitted, and the
knight was quickly ushered into the great hall of the castle.

The outlaw presently entered in full armor, with visor lowered.

The bearing of the King’s officer was haughty and arrogant, as became a
man of birth when dealing with a low born knave.

“His Majesty has deigned to address you, sirrah,” he said,
withdrawing a parchment from his breast. “And, as you doubtless cannot
read, I will read the King’s commands to you.”

“I can read,” replied Norman of Torn, “whatever the King can
write. Unless it be,” he added, “that the King writes no better
than he rules.”

The messenger scowled angrily, crying:

“It ill becomes such a low fellow to speak thus disrespectfully of our
gracious King. If he were less generous, he would have sent you a halter rather
than this message which I bear.”

“A bridle for thy tongue, my friend,” replied Norman of Torn,
“were in better taste than a halter for my neck. But come, let us see
what the King writes to his friend, the Outlaw of Torn.”

Taking the parchment from the messenger, Norman of Torn read:

Henry, by Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine; to
Norman of Torn:

Since it has been called to our notice that you be harassing and plundering the
persons and property of our faithful lieges!!!!!

We therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in us by Almighty God, do
command that you cease these nefarious practices!!!!!

And further, through the gracious intercession of Her Majesty, Queen Eleanor,
we do offer you full pardon for all your past crimes!!!!!

Provided, you repair at once to the town of Lewes, with all the fighting men,
your followers, prepared to protect the security of our person, and wage war
upon those enemies of England, Simon de Montfort, Gilbert de Clare and their
accomplices, who even now are collected to threaten and menace our person and
kingdom!!!!!

Or, otherwise, shall you suffer death, by hanging, for your long unpunished
crimes. Witnessed myself, at Lewes, on May the third, in the forty-eighth year
of our reign.

HENRY, REX.

“The closing paragraph be unfortunately worded,” said Norman of
Torn, “for because of it shall the King’s messenger eat the
King’s message, and thus take back in his belly the answer of Norman of
Torn.” And crumpling the parchment in his hand, he advanced toward the
royal emissary.

The knight whipped out his sword, but the Devil of Torn was even quicker, so
that it seemed that the King’s messenger had deliberately hurled his
weapon across the room, so quickly did the outlaw disarm him.

And then Norman of Torn took the man by the neck with one powerful hand and,
despite his struggles, and the beating of his mailed fists, bent him back upon
the table, and there, forcing his teeth apart with the point of his sword,
Norman of Torn rammed the King’s message down the knight’s throat;
wax, parchment and all.

It was a crestfallen gentleman who rode forth from the castle of Torn a half
hour later and spurred rapidly—in his head a more civil tongue.

When, two days later, he appeared before the King at Winchelsea and reported
the outcome of his mission, Henry raged and stormed, swearing by all the saints
in the calendar that Norman of Torn should hang for his effrontery before the
snow flew again.