Part 14

And the brave girl made instant reply: “Even to the judgment of God, lord king.” Then, skilled in all the curious customs of those warlike times, she drew off her glove. “Whosoever my accuser be, lord king,” she said, “I do denounce him as foresworn and false, and thus do I throw myself upon God’s good mercy, if it shall please him to raise me up a champion.” And she flung her glove upon the floor of the hall, in face of the king and all his barons.

It was a bold thing for a girl to do, and a murmur of applause ran through even that unfriendly throng. For, to stand the test of a “wager of battle,” or the “judgment of God,” as the savage contest was called, was the last resort of any one accused of treason or of crime. It meant no less than a “duel to the death” between the accuser and the accused or their accepted champions, and, upon the result of the duel hung the lives of those in dispute. And the Princess Edith’s glove lying on the floor of the Abbey hall was her assertion that she had spoken the truth and was willing to risk her life in proof of her innocence.

Edgar the Atheling, peace-lover, though he was, would gladly have accepted the post of champion for his niece, but, as one also involved in the charge of treason, such action was denied him.

For the moment, the Red King’s former admiration for this brave young princess caused him to waver; but those were days when suspicion and jealousy rose above all nobler traits. His face grew stern again.

“Ordgar of Oxford,” he said, “take up the glove!” and Edith knew who was her accuser. Then the King asked: “Who standeth as champion for Edgar the Atheling and this maid, his niece?”

Almost before the words were spoken young Robert Fitz Godwine had sprung to Edith’s side.

“That would I, lord king, if a young squire might appear against a belted knight!”

“Ordgar of Oxford fights not with boys!” said the accuser contemptuously.

The king’s savage humor broke out again.

“Face him with your own page, Sir Ordgar,” he said, with a grim laugh. “Boy against boy would be a fitting wager for a young maid’s life.” But the Saxon knight was in no mood for sport.

“Nay, beausire; this is no child’s play,” he said. “I care naught for this girl. I stand as champion for the king against yon traitor Atheling, and if the maiden’s cause is his, why then against her too. This is a man’s quarrel.”

Young Robert would have spoken yet again as his face flushed hot with anger at the knight’s contemptuous words. But a firm hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a strong voice said:

“Then is it mine, Sir Ordgar. If between man and man, then will I, with the gracious permission of our lord the king, stand as champion for this maiden here and for my good lord, the noble Atheling, whose liegeman and whose man am I, next to you, lord king.” And, taking the mate to the glove which the Princess Edith had flung down in defiance, he thrust it into the guard of his cappe. line, or iron skull-cap, in token that he, Godwine of Winchester, the father of the boy Robert, was the young girl’s champion.

Three days after, in the tilt-yard of Gloucester Castle, the wager of battle was fought. It was no gay tournament show with streaming banners, gorgeous lists, gayly dressed ladies, flower-bedecked balconies, and all the splendid display of a tourney of the knights, of which you read in the stories of romance and chivalry. It was a solemn and sombre gathering in which all the arrangements suggested only death and gloom, while the accused waited in suspense, knowing that halter and fagot were prepared for them should their champion fall. In quaint and crabbed Latin the old chronicler, John of Fordun, tells the story of the fight, for which there is neither need nor space here. The glove of each contestant was flung into the lists by the judge, and the dispute committed for settlement to the power of God and their own good swords. It is a stirring picture of those days of daring and of might, when force took the place of justice, and the deadliest blows were the only convincing arguments. But, though supported by the favor of the king and the display of splendid armor, Ordgar’s treachery had its just reward. Virtue triumphed, and vice was punished. Even while treacherously endeavoring (after being once disarmed) to stab the brave Godwine with a knife which he had concealed in his boot, the false Sir Ordgar was overcome, confessed the falsehood of his charge against Edgar the Atheling and Edith his niece, and, as the quaint old record has it, “The strength of his grief and the multitude of his wounds drove out his impious soul.”

So young Edith was saved; and, as is usually the case with men of his character, the Red King’s humor changed completely. The victorious Godwine received the arms and lands of the dead Ordgar; Edgar the Atheling was raised high in trust and honor; the throne of Scotland, wrested from the Red Donald, was placed once more in the family of King Malcolm, and King William Rufus himself became the guardian and protector of the Princess Edith.

And when, one fatal August day, the Red King was found pierced by an arrow under the trees of the New Forest, his younger brother, Duke Henry, whom men called Beauclerc, “the good scholar,” for his love of learning and of books, ascended the throne of England as King Henry I. And the very year of his accession, on the 11th of November, 1100, he married, in the Abbey of Westminster, the Princess Edith of Scotland, then a fair young lady of scarce twenty-one. At the request of her husband she took, upon her coronation day, the Norman name of Matilda, or Maud, and by this name she is known in history and among the queens of England.

So scarce four and thirty years after the Norman conquest, a Saxon princess sat upon the throne of Norman England, the loving wife of the son of the very man by whom Saxon England was conquered.

“Never, since the battle of Hastings,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian, “had there been such a joyous day as when Queen Maud was crowned.” Victors and vanquished, Normans and Saxons, were united at last, and the name of “Good Queen Maud” was long an honored memory among the people of England.

And she was a good queen. In a time of bitter tyranny, when the common people were but the serfs and slaves of the haughty and cruel barons, this young queen labored to bring in kindlier manners and more gentle ways. Beautiful in face, she was still more lovely in heart and life. Her influence upon her husband, Henry the scholar, was seen in the wise laws he made, and the “Charter of King Henry” is said to have been gained by her intercession. This important paper was the first step toward popular liberty. It led the way to Magna Charta, and finally to our own Declaration of Independence. The boys and girls of America, therefore, in common with those of England, can look back with interest and affection upon the romantic story of “Good Queen Maud,” the brave-hearted girl who showed herself wise and fearless both in the perilous mist at Edinburgh, and, later still, in the yet greater dangers of “the black lists of Gloucester.”

JACQUELINE OF HOLLAND: THE GIRL OF THE LAND OF FOGS, A.D. 1414.

Count William of Hainault, of Zealand and Friesland, Duke of Bavaria and Sovereign Lord of Holland, held his court in the great, straggling castle which he called his “hunting lodge,” near to the German Ocean, and since known by the name of “The Hague.” (1)

(1) “The Hague” is a contraction of the Dutch’s Gravenhage--the haag, or “hunting lodge,” of the Graf, or count.

Count William was a gallant and courtly knight, learned in all the ways of chivalry, the model of the younger cavaliers, handsome in person, noble in bearing, the surest lance in the tilting-yard, and the stoutest arm in the foray.

Like “Jephtha, Judge of Israel,” of whom the mock-mad Hamlet sang to Polonius, Count William had

“One fair daughter, and no more, The which he loved passing well;”

and, truth to tell, this fair young Jacqueline, the little “Lady of Holland,” as men called her,--but whom Count William, because of her fearless antics and boyish ways, called “Dame Jacob,” (1)--loved her knightly father with equal fervor.

(1) Jaqueline is the French rendering of the Dutch Jakobine--the feminine of Jakob, or James.

As she sat, that day, in the great Hall of the Knights in the massive castle at The Hague, she could see, among all the knights and nobles who came from far and near to join in the festivities at Count William’s court, not one that approached her father in nobility of bearing or manly strength--not even her husband.