And, having given this warning, the Viscount of Melun lay back on his couch and died.
Naturally enough, this story, when it reached the camp at Dover, made a strong impression, and the barons regarded the movements of their foreign allies with grave suspicion, and communicated their thoughts to each other in whispers. But they had placed themselves in such a predicament that they knew not what steps to take. In fact, Louis had them under his thumb. He had made himself master of the whole South of England. In the West and in the North his power was great, supported in one quarter by the Prince of Wales and in the other by the King of Scots.
“We are like woodcocks caught in our springe,” said one.
“And ere long,” remarked others, “we may be dealt with as deer in a buckstall.”
“In truth,” observed Hugh de Moreville, “our lord Louis is a deceiver, and we are his dupes. But patience, and the tables will be turned, without our cause being lost. It is possible to dupe the deceiver. Meantime, let us use these Frenchmen while they believe they are using us. Patience, I say, and one day they will discover with amazement that the tables are turned. By St. Moden, I swear it!”
“Our friends are already beginning to fall away from our cause, as rats desert a falling house,” said the first speaker bitterly.
“It is true,” said De Moreville; and he sighed as he thought of Walter Merley.
It was August, 1215, and Oakmede, with its old house of timber and Roman brick, and its great wooden gates, and irregular pile of outbuildings, reposed in the warmth and sunshine of a bright autumn day. All was still and peaceful around the homely hall of the once mighty Icinglas; and though the country was ringing with alarms and rumours of war, the inhabitants pursued their ordinary avocations, apparently taking as little interest in the quarrel of King John and the Anglo-Norman barons as if Oakmede had been situated in the recesses of the forests of Servia.
The hinds were employed in the fields with the labours of harvest; the swineherd was in the woodlands with his grunting herd; and nobody appeared in the shape of living mortal save an old cowherd, in a garment much resembling the smock-frock still worn by English peasants, and Wolf, the son of Styr, and half-a-dozen urchins from the neighbouring hamlet, who watched the varlet with interest and admiration as he fed a couple of the dogs which were then commonly used to hunt wild boars, and ministered to the wants of two young hawks, which he had procured by a long journey and by climbing a precipice at the risk of his life.