The Woodman: A Romance of the Times of Richard III Read online

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  Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://books.google.com/books?id=PfdLAAAAcAAJ (the Bavarian State Library) 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

  THE WOODMAN;

  A ROMANCE

  OF

  THE TIMES OF RICHARD III.

  BY G. P. R. JAMES.

  AUTHOR OF "DARNLEY," "THE SMUGGLER," "THE CONVICT," "MARGARET GRAHAM,""THE FORGERY," ETC.

  PARIS,

  A. AND W. GALIGNANI AND Co., BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY,

  RUE VIVIENNE, No. 18. QUAI MALAQUAIS, No. 3.

  1849

  THE WOODMAN;

  A ROMANCE OF THE TIMES OF RICHARD III.

  BY G. P. R. JAMES.

  CHAPTER I.

  Of all the hard-working people on the earth, there are none soserviceable to her neighbours as the moon. She lights lovers andthieves. She keeps watch-dogs waking. She is a constant resource topoets and romance-writers. She helps the compounders of almanacksamazingly. She has something to do with the weather, and the tides,and the harvest; and in short she has a finger in every man's pie, andprobably more or less effect upon every man's brain. She is a charmingcreature in all her variations. Her versatility is not the offspringof caprice; and she is constant in the midst of every change.

  I will have a moon, say what you will, my dear Prebend; and she shallmore or less rule every page of this book.

  There was a sloping piece of ground looking to the south east, with avery small narrow rivulet running at the bottom. On the opposite sideof the stream was another slope, as like the former as possible, onlylooking in the opposite direction. Titian, and Vandyke, and some otherpainters, have pleased themselves with depicting, in one picture, thesame face in two or three positions; and these two slopes lookedexactly like the two profiles of one countenance. Each had its littleclumps of trees scattered about. Each had here and there a hedgerow,somewhat broken and dilapidated; and each too had towards its northernextremity a low chalky bank, through which the stream seemed to haveforced itself, in those good old times when rivers first began to goon pilgrimages towards the sea, and, like many other pilgrims that wewot of made their way through all obstacles in a very unceremoniousmanner.

  Over these two slopes about the hour of half past eleven, postmeridian, the moon was shining with a bright but fitful sort ofsplendour; for ever and anon a light fleecy cloud, like a piece ofswansdown borne by the wind, would dim the brightness of her rays, andcast a passing shadow on the scene below. Half an hour before, indeed,the radiant face of night's sweet queen had been veiled by a blackercurtain, which had gathered thick over the sky at the sun's decline;but, as the moon rose high, those dark vapours became mottled withwavy lines of white, and gradually her beams seemed to drink them up.

  It may be asked if those two sloping meadows, with their clumps oftrees, and broken hedgerows, and the little stream flowing on betweenthem, was all that the moonlight showed? That would depend upon wherethe eye of the observer was placed. Near the lower part of the valley,formed by the inclination of the land, nothing else could beperceived; but walk half way up towards the top, on either side, andthe scene was very much altered. Gradually rising, as the eye rose,appeared, stretching out beyond the chalky banks to the north, throughwhich the rivulet came on, a large-grey indistinct mass stretching allalong from east to west, the rounded lines of which, together withsome misty gaps, taking a blueish white tint in the moonlight, showedit to be some ancient forest, lying at the distance probably of two orthree miles from the spot first mentioned.

  But there were other objects displayed by the moonlight; for as thosesoft clouds, sweeping rapidly past, varied her light, and cast brightgleams or grey shadows on the ground, every here and there, especiallyon the south western slope, a brilliant spot would sparkle forth,flashing back the rays; and a nearer look showed naked swords, andbreast-plates, and casques, while every now and then, under theincreasing light, that which seemed a hillock took the form of a horseor of a human being, lying quietly on the green turf, or castmotionless down beneath a hedge or an old hawthorn tree.

  Were they sleeping there in that dewy night? Ay, sleeping that sleepwhich fears not the blast, nor the tempest nor the dew, which thethunder cannot break, and from which no trumpet but one shall everrouse the sleeper.

  From sunset till that hour, no living thing, unless it were fox orwolf, had moved upon the scene. The battle was over, the pursuersrecalled, the wounded removed; the burial of the dead, if it was to becared for at all, postponed till another day; and all the fierce andbase passions which are called forth by civil contest had lain down tosleep before the hour of which I speak. Even the human vulture, whichfollows on the track of warring armies to feed upon the spoils of thedead, had gorged itself upon that field, and left the rich arms andhousings to be carried away on the morning following.

  The fiercer and the baser passions, I have said, now slept; but therewere tenderer affections which woke, and through that solemn and sadscene, with no light but that of the moon, with no sound but that ofthe sighing wind, some four or five persons were seen wandering about,half an hour before midnight. Often, as they went, they bent down atthis spot or at that, and gazed at some object on the ground.Sometimes one of them would kneel, and twice they turned over a deadbody which had fallen with the face downwards. For more than an hourthey went on, pausing at times to speak to each other, and thenresuming their examination--I know not whether to call it search; forcertainly they seemed to find nothing if they did search, althoughthey left hardly a square yard of the whole field unexplored.

  It was nearly one o'clock on the following morning, when with slowsteps they took their way over the rise; and the next moment the soundof horses' feet going at a quick pace broke the silence. That sound,in the absence of every other noise, might be heard for nearly tenminutes; and then all was stillness and solitude once more.