Via Crucis | Page 2

do homage to the Empress
Maud. Her court was, indeed, little more than a show, and Stephen
ruled in wrongful possession of the land; but here and there a sturdy
and honest knight was still to be found, who might, perhaps, be brought
to do homage for his lands to King Stephen, but who would have felt
that he was a traitor, and no true man, had he not rendered the homage
of fealty to the unhappy lady who was his rightful sovereign. And one
of these was Raymond Warde, whose great-grandfather had ridden with
Robert the Devil to Jerusalem, and had been with him when he died in
Nicaea; and his grandsire had been in the thick of the press at Hastings,
with William of Normandy, wherefore he had received the lands and
lordship of Stoke Regis in Hertfordshire; and his name is on Battle
Abbey Roll to this day.
During ten years Stephen of Blois had reigned over England with
varying fortune, alternately victor and vanquished, now holding his
great enemy, Robert of Gloucester, a prisoner and hostage, now himself
in the Empress's power, loaded with chains and languishing in the keep
of Bristol Castle. Yet of late the tide had turned in his favour; and
though Gloucester still kept up the show of warfare for his half- sister's
sake,--as indeed he fought for her so long as he had breath,-- the worst
of the civil war was over; the partisans of the Empress had lost faith in
her sovereignty, and her cause was but lingering in the shadow of death.

The nobles of England had judged Stephen's character from the hour in
which King Henry died, and they knew him to be a brave soldier, a
desperate fighter, an indulgent man, and a weak ruler.
Finding themselves confronted by a usurper who had no great talent to
recommend him, nor much political strength behind his brilliant
personal courage, their first instinct was to refuse submission to his
authority, and to drive him out as an impostor. It was not until they had
been chilled and disappointed by the scornful coldness of the Empress
Queen's imperious bearing that they saw how much pleasanter it would
be to rule Stephen than to serve Maud. Yet Gloucester was powerful,
and with his feudal retainers and devoted followers and a handful of
loyal independent knights, he was still able to hold Oxford, Gloucester,
and the northernmost part of Berkshire for his sister.
Now, in the early spring of this present year, the great earl had gone
forth, with his followers and a host of masons and labouring men, to
build a new castle on the height by Faringdon, where good King Alfred
had carved the great white horse by tearing the turf from the gravel hill,
for an everlasting record of victory. Broadly and boldly Gloucester had
traced the outer wall and bastions, the second wall within that, and the
vast fortress which was to be thus trebly protected. The building was to
be the work of weeks, not months, and, if it were possible, of days
rather than of weeks. The whole was to be a strong outpost for a fresh
advance, and neither gold nor labour was to be spared in the execution
of the plan. Gloucester pitched his sister's camp and his own tent upon
the grassy eminence that faced the castle. Thence he himself directed
and commanded, and thence the Empress Maud, sitting beneath the
lifted awning of her imperial tent, could see the grey stones rising,
course upon course, string upon string, block upon block, at a rate that
reminded her of that Eastern trick which she had seen at the Emperor's
court, performed by a turbaned juggler from the East, who made a tree
grow from the seed to the leafy branch and full ripe fruit while the
dazed courtiers who looked on could count fivescore.
Thither, as to a general trysting-place, the few loyal knights and barons
went up to do homage to their sovereign lady, and to grasp the hand of

the bravest and gentlest man who trod English ground; and thither, with
the rest, Raymond Warde was gone, with his only son, Gilbert, then but
eighteen years of age, whom this chronicle chiefly concerns; and
Raymond's wife, the Lady Goda, was left in the manor house of Stoke
Regis under the guard of a dozen men-at-arms, mostly stiff-jointed
veterans of King Henry's wars, and under the more effectual protection
of several hundred sturdy bondsmen and yeomen, devoted, body and
soul, to their master and ready to die for his blood or kin. For
throughout Hertfordshire and Essex and Kent there dwelt no Norman
baron nor any earl who was beloved of his Saxon people as was the
Lord of Stoke; wherefore his lady felt