第11章

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.