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Edward II. At Berkeley Castle By an Eye-witness (with Apologies to Mr H. Belloc)

The King had not slept for three nights. He looked at his face in the muddy pool of water which had settled in the worn flagstones of his prison floor, and noticed that his beard was of a week’s growth. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. In the room next door, which was the canteen, the soldiers were playing on a drum. Over the tall hills the dawn was ruffling the clouds. There was a faint glimmer on the waters of the river. The footsteps of the gaolers were heard on the outer rampart. At seven o’clock they brought the King a good dinner: they allowed him burgundy from France, and yellow mead, and white bread baked in the ovens of the Abbey, although he was constrained to drink out of pewter, and plates were forbidden him. Eustace, his page, timidly offered him music. The King bade him sing the “Lay of the Sussex Lass,” which begins thus:

Triumphant, oh! triumphant now she stands,
Above my Sussex, and above my sea!
She stretches out her thin ulterior hands
Across the morning . . .

But the King, to whom memories were portentous, called for another song and Eustace sang a stave of that ballad which was made on the Pyrenees, and which is still unfinished (for the modern world has no need of these things), telling of how Lord Raymond drank in a little tent with Charlemagne:

Enormous through the morning the tall battalions run:
The men who fought with Charlemagne are very dearly done;
The wine is dark beneath the night, the stars are in the sky,
The hammer’s in the blacksmith’s hand in case he wants to try.
We’ll ride to Fontarabia, we’ll storm the stubborn wall,
And I call.

And Uriel and his Seraphim are hammering a shield;
And twice along the valley has the horn of Roland pealed;
And Cleopatra on the Nile, Iseult in Brittany,
And Lancelot in Camelot, and Drake upon the sea;
And behind the young Republic are the fellows with the flag,
And I brag!

The King listlessly opened his eyes and said that he had no stomach for such song, and from the next door came the mutter of the drums. For on that night–which was Candlemas–Thursday, or as we should now call it “Friday”–the gaolers were keeping holiday, and drinking English beer brewed in Sussex; for the beer of West England was not to their liking, as any one who has walked down the old Roman Road through Daglingworth, Brimpsfield, and Birdlip towards Cardigan on a warm summer’s day can know. For a man may tramp that road and stop and ask for drink at an inn, and receive nothing but Imperialist whisky, and drinks that annoy rather than satisfy the great thirst of a Christian.

Outside, a little breeze had crept out of the West. The morning star was paling over the Quantock Hills, and the King was mortally weary. “This day three years ago,” he thought, “I was spurred and harnessed for the lists in a tunic of mail, with an emerald on my shoulder-strap, and I was tilting with my lord of Cleremont before Queen Isabella of France. The birds were singing in Touraine, and the sun was beating on the lists; and the minstrels of Val-es-Dunes were chanting the song of the men who died for the Faith when they stormed Jerusalem. What is the lilt of that song,” said the King, “which the singers of Val-es-Dunes sang?” And Eustace pondered, for his memory was weak and he was overwrought by nights of watching and days of vigilance; but presently he touched his strings and sang: