The Death Of The Red King
by
William of Normandy, by the grace of God and his iron mace, had made himself king of England. An iron king he proved, savage, ruthless, the descendant of a few generations of pirate Norsemen, and himself a pirate in blood and temper. England strained uneasily under the harsh rein which he placed upon it, and he harried the country mercilessly, turning a great area of fertile land into a desert. That he might have a hunting-park near the royal palace, he laid waste all the land that lay between Winchester and the sea, planting there, in place of the homes destroyed and families driven out, what became known as the “New Forest.” Nothing angered the English more than this ruthless act. A law had been passed that any one caught killing a deer in William’s new hunting-grounds should have his eyes put out. Men prayed for retribution. It came. The New Forest proved fatal to the race of the Conqueror. In 1081 his oldest son Richard mortally wounded himself within its precincts. In May of the year 1100 his grandson Richard, son of Duke Robert, was killed there by a stray arrow. And, as if to emphasize more strongly this work of retribution, two months afterwards William Rufus, the Red King, the son of the Conqueror, was slain in the same manner within its leafy shades.
William Rufus–William II. of England–was, like all his Norman ancestors, fond of the chase. When there were no men to be killed, these fierce old dukes and kings solaced themselves with the slaughter of beasts. In early summer of the year 1100 the Red King was at Winchester Castle, on the skirts of the New Forest. Thence he rode to Malwood-Keep, a favorite hunting-lodge in the forest. Boon companions were with him, numbers of them, one of them a French knight named Sir Walter Tyrrell, the king’s favorite. Here the days were spent in the delights of the chase, the nights in feasting and carousing, and all went merrily.
Around them spread far and wide the umbrageous lanes and alleys of the New Forest, trees of every variety, oaks in greatest number, crowding the soil. As yet there were no trees of mighty girth. The forest was young. Few of its trees had more than a quarter-century of growth, except where more ancient woodland had been included. The place was solitary, tenanted only by the deer which had replaced man upon its soil, and by smaller creatures of wing and fur. Barely a human foot trod there, save when the king’s hunting retinue swept through its verdant aisles and woke its solitary depths with the cheerful notes of the hunting-horn. The savage laws of the Conqueror kept all others but the most daring poachers from its aisles.
Such was the stage set for the tragedy which we have to relate. The story goes that rough jests passed at Malwood-Keep between Tyrrell and the king, ending in anger, as jests are apt to. William boasted that he would carry an army through France to the Alps. Tyrrell, heated with wine, answered that he might find France a net easier to enter than to escape from. The hearers remembered these bitter words afterwards.
On the night before the fatal day it is said that cries of terror came from the king’s bed-chamber. The attendants rushed thither, only to find that the monarch had been the victim of nightmare. When morning came he laughed the incident to scorn, saying that dreams were fit to scare only old women and children. His companions were not so easily satisfied. Those were days when all men’s souls were open to omens good and bad. They earnestly advised him not to hunt that day. William jested at their fears, vowed that no dream should scare him from the chase, yet, uneasy at heart, perhaps, let the hours pass without calling for his horse. Midday came. Dinner was served. William ate and drank with unusual freedom. Wine warmed his blood and drove off his clinging doubts. He rose from the table and ordered his horse to be brought. The day was young enough still to strike a deer, he said.