Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (357 page)

“And the other?” asked Alleyne in a whisper. “He is surely some very great man, for he looks as though he scorned those who were about him.”

The landlady looked at him in a motherly way and shook her head. “You have had no great truck with the world,” she said, “or you would have learned that it is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air. Look at those shields upon my wall and under my eaves. Each of them is the device of some noble lord or gallant knight who hath slept under my roof at one time or another. Yet milder men or easier to please I have never seen: eating my bacon and drinking my wine with a merry face, and paying my score with some courteous word or jest which was dearer to me than my profit. Those are the true gentles. But your chapman or your bearward will swear that there is a lime in the wine, and water in the ale, and fling off at the last with a curse instead of a blessing. This youth is a scholar from Cambrig, where men are wont to be blown out by a little knowledge, and lose the use of their hands in learning the laws of the Romans. But I must away to lay down the beds. So may the saints keep you and prosper you in your undertaking!”

Thus left to himself, Alleyne drew his panel of wood where the light of one of the torches would strike full upon it, and worked away with all the pleasure of the trained craftsman, listening the while to the talk which went on round the fire. The peasant in the sheepskins, who had sat glum and silent all evening, had been so heated by his flagon of ale that he was talking loudly and angrily with clenched hands and flashing eyes.

“Sir Humphrey Tennant of Ashby may till his own fields for me,” he cried. “The castle has thrown its shadow upon the cottage over long. For three hundred years my folk have swinked and sweated, day in and day out, to keep the wine on the lord’s table and the harness on the lord’s back. Let him take off his plates and delve himself, if delving must be done.”

“A proper spirit, my fair son!” said one of the free laborers. “I would that all men were of thy way of thinking.”

“He would have sold me with his acres,” the other cried, in a voice which was hoarse with passion. “‘The man, the woman and their litter’ — so ran the words of the dotard bailiff. Never a bullock on the farm was sold more lightly. Ha! he may wake some black night to find the flames licking about his ears — for fire is a good friend to the poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap of ashes where over night there stood just such another castlewick as Ashby.”

“This is a lad of mettle!” shouted another of the laborers. “He dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from Adam’s loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference then between the ermine cloak and the leathern tunic, if what they cover is the same?”

“Aye, Jenkin,” said another, “our foeman is under the stole and the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk. Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at priest and the noble lays his hand upon glaive. They are twin thieves who live upon our labor.”

“It would take a clever man to live upon thy labor, Hugh,” remarked one of the foresters, “seeing that the half of thy time is spent in swilling mead at the ‘Pied Merlin.’”

“Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to guard, like some folk I know.”

“If you dare open that swine’s mouth against me,” shouted the woodman, “I’ll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the doing of it, thou long-jawed lackbrain.”

“Nay, gentles, gentles!” cried Dame Eliza, in a singsong heedless voice, which showed that such bickerings were nightly things among her guests. “No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed to the good name of the house.”

“Besides, if it comes to the cropping of ears, there are other folk who may say their say,” quoth the third laborer. “We are all freemen, and I trow that a yeoman’s cudgel is as good as a forester’s knife. By St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we had to bend to our master’s servants as well as to our masters.”

“No man is my master save the King,” the woodman answered. “Who is there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the English king?”

“I know not about the English king,” said the man Jenkin. “What sort of English king is it who cannot lay his tongue to a word of English? You mind last year when he came down to Malwood, with his inner marshal and his outer marshal, his justiciar, his seneschal, and his four and twenty guardsmen. One noontide I was by Franklin Swinton’s gate, when up he rides with a yeoman pricker at his heels. ‘Ouvre,’ he cried, ‘ouvre,’ or some such word, making signs for me to open the gate; and then ‘Merci,’ as though he were adrad of me. And you talk of an English king?”

“I do not marvel at it,” cried the Cambrig scholar, speaking in the high drawling voice which was common among his class. “It is not a tongue for men of sweet birth and delicate upbringing. It is a foul, snorting, snarling manner of speech. For myself, I swear by the learned Polycarp that I have most ease with Hebrew, and after that perchance with Arabian.”

“I will not hear a word said against old King Ned,” cried Hordle John in a voice like a bull. “What if he is fond of a bright eye and a saucy face. I know one of his subjects who could match him at that. If he cannot speak like an Englishman I trow that he can fight like an Englishman, and he was hammering at the gates of Paris while ale-house topers were grutching and grumbling at home.”

This loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an appearance, somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell into a sullen silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of the talk which was going on in the further corner between the physician, the tooth-drawer and the gleeman.

“A raw rat,” the man of drugs was saying, “that is what it is ever my use to order for the plague — a raw rat with its paunch cut open.”

“Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?” asked the tooth-drawer. “A raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish.”

“Not to be eaten,” cried the physician, in high disdain. “Why should any man eat such a thing?”

“Why indeed?” asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his tankard.

“It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark you, being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or affinity for all foul things, so that the noxious humors pass from the man into the unclean beast.”

“Would that cure the black death, master?” asked Jenkin.

“Aye, truly would it, my fair son.”

“Then I am right glad that there were none who knew of it. The black death is the best friend that ever the common folk had in England.”

“How that then?” asked Hordle John.

“Why, friend, it is easy to see that you have not worked with your hands or you would not need to ask. When half the folk in the country were dead it was then that the other half could pick and choose who they would work for, and for what wage. That is why I say that the murrain was the best friend that the borel folk ever had.”

“True, Jenkin,” said another workman; “but it is not all good that is brought by it either. We well know that through it corn-land has been turned into pasture, so that flocks of sheep with perchance a single shepherd wander now where once a hundred men had work and wage.”

“There is no great harm in that,” remarked the tooth-drawer, “for the sheep give many folk their living. There is not only the herd, but the shearer and brander, and then the dresser, the curer, the dyer, the fuller, the webster, the merchant, and a score of others.”

“If it come to that.” said one of the foresters, “the tough meat of them will wear folks teeth out, and there is a trade for the man who can draw them.”

A general laugh followed this sally at the dentist’s expense, in the midst of which the gleeman placed his battered harp upon his knee, and began to pick out a melody upon the frayed strings.

“Elbow room for Floyting Will!” cried the woodmen. “Twang us a merry lilt.”

“Aye, aye, the ‘Lasses of Lancaster,’” one suggested.

“Or ‘St. Simeon and the Devil.’”

“Or the ‘Jest of Hendy Tobias.’”

To all these suggestions the jongleur made no response, but sat with his eye fixed abstractedly upon the ceiling, as one who calls words to his mind. Then, with a sudden sweep across the strings, he broke out into a song so gross and so foul that ere he had finished a verse the pure-minded lad sprang to his feet with the blood tingling in his face.

“How can you sing such things?” he cried. “You, too, an old man who should be an example to others.”

The wayfarers all gazed in the utmost astonishment at the interruption.

“By the holy Dicon of Hampole! our silent clerk has found his tongue,” said one of the woodmen. “What is amiss with the song then? How has it offended your babyship?”

“A milder and better mannered song hath never been heard within these walls,” cried another. “What sort of talk is this for a public inn?”

“Shall it be a litany, my good clerk?” shouted a third; “or would a hymn be good enough to serve?”

The jongleur had put down his harp in high dudgeon. “Am I to be preached to by a child?” he cried, staring across at Alleyne with an inflamed and angry countenance. “Is a hairless infant to raise his tongue against me, when I have sung in every fair from Tweed to Trent, and have twice been named aloud by the High Court of the Minstrels at Beverley? I shall sing no more to-night.”

“Nay, but you will so,” said one of the laborers. “Hi, Dame Eliza, bring a stoup of your best to Will to clear his throat. Go forward with thy song, and if our girl-faced clerk does not love it he can take to the road and go whence he came.”

“Nay, but not too last,” broke in Hordle John. “There are two words in this matter. It may be that my little comrade has been over quick in reproof, he having gone early into the cloisters and seen little of the rough ways and words of the world. Yet there is truth in what he says, for, as you know well, the song was not of the cleanest. I shall stand by him, therefore, and he shall neither be put out on the road, nor shall his ears be offended indoors.”

“Indeed, your high and mighty grace,” sneered one of the yeomen, “have you in sooth so ordained?”

“By the Virgin!” said a second, “I think that you may both chance to find yourselves upon the road before long.”

“And so belabored as to be scarce able to crawl along it,” cried a third.

“Nay, I shall go! I shall go!” said Alleyne hurriedly, as Hordle John began to slowly roll up his sleeve, and bare an arm like a leg of mutton. “I would not have you brawl about me.”

“Hush! lad,” he whispered, “I count them not a fly. They may find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to spin. Stand thou clear and give me space.”

Both the foresters and the laborers had risen from their bench, and Dame Eliza and the travelling doctor had flung themselves between the two parties with soft words and soothing gestures, when the door of the “Pied Merlin” was flung violently open, and the attention of the company was drawn from their own quarrel to the new-comer who had burst so unceremoniously upon them.

CHAPTER VI. HOW SAMKIN AYLWARD WAGERED HIS FEATHER-BED
.

He was a middle-sized man, of most massive and robust build, with an arching chest and extraordinary breadth of shoulder. His shaven face was as brown as a hazel-nut, tanned and dried by the weather, with harsh, well-marked features, which were not improved by a long white scar which stretched from the corner of his left nostril to the angle of the jaw. His eyes were bright and searching, with something of menace and of authority in their quick glitter, and his mouth was firm-set and hard, as befitted one who was wont to set his face against danger. A straight sword by his side and a painted long-bow jutting over his shoulder proclaimed his profession, while his scarred brigandine of chain-mail and his dinted steel cap showed that he was no holiday soldier, but one who was even now fresh from the wars. A white surcoat with the lion of St. George in red upon the centre covered his broad breast, while a sprig of new-plucked broom at the side of his head-gear gave a touch of gayety and grace to his grim, war-worn equipment.

“Ha!” he cried, blinking like an owl in the sudden glare. “Good even to you, comrades! Hola! a woman, by my soul!” and in an instant he had clipped Dame Eliza round the waist and was kissing her violently. His eye happening to wander upon the maid, however, he instantly abandoned the mistress and danced off after the other, who scurried in confusion up one of the ladders, and dropped the heavy trap-door upon her pursuer. He then turned back and saluted the landlady once more with the utmost relish and satisfaction.

“La petite is frightened,” said he. “Ah, c’est l’amour, l’amour! Curse this trick of French, which will stick to my throat. I must wash it out with some good English ale. By my hilt! camarades, there is no drop of French blood in my body, and I am a true English bowman, Samkin Aylward by name; and I tell you, mes amis, that it warms my very heart-roots to set my feet on the dear old land once more. When I came off the galley at Hythe, this very day, I down on my bones, and I kissed the good brown earth, as I kiss thee now, ma belle, for it was eight long years since I had seen it. The very smell of it seemed life to me. But where are my six rascals? Hola, there! En avant!”

At the order, six men, dressed as common drudges, marched solemnly into the room, each bearing a huge bundle upon his head. They formed in military line, while the soldier stood in front of them with stern eyes, checking off their several packages.

“Number one — a French feather-bed with the two counter-panes of white sendall,” said he.

“Here, worthy sir,” answered the first of the bearers, laying a great package down in the corner.

“Number two — seven ells of red Turkey cloth and nine ells of cloth of gold. Put it down by the other. Good dame, I prythee give each of these men a bottrine of wine or a jack of ale. Three — a full piece of white Genoan velvet with twelve ells of purple silk. Thou rascal, there is dirt on the hem! Thou hast brushed it against some wall, coquin!”

“Not I, most worthy sir,” cried the carrier, shrinking away from the fierce eyes of the bowman.

“I say yes, dog! By the three kings! I have seen a man gasp out his last breath for less. Had you gone through the pain and unease that I have done to earn these things you would be at more care. I swear by my ten finger-bones that there is not one of them that hath not cost its weight in French blood! Four — an incense-boat, a ewer of silver, a gold buckle and a cope worked in pearls. I found them, camarades, at the Church of St. Denis in the harrying of Narbonne, and I took them away with me lest they fall into the hands of the wicked. Five — a cloak of fur turned up with minever, a gold goblet with stand and cover, and a box of rose-coloured sugar. See that you lay them together. Six — a box of monies, three pounds of Limousine gold-work, a pair of boots, silver tagged, and, lastly, a store of naping linen. So, the tally is complete! Here is a groat apiece, and you may go.”

“Go whither, worthy sir?” asked one of the carriers.

“Whither? To the devil if ye will. What is it to me? Now, ma belle, to supper. A pair of cold capons, a mortress of brawn, or what you will, with a flask or two of the right Gascony. I have crowns in my pouch, my sweet, and I mean to spend them. Bring in wine while the food is dressing. Buvons my brave lads; you shall each empty a stoup with me.”

Here was an offer which the company in an English inn at that or any other date are slow to refuse. The flagons were re-gathered and came back with the white foam dripping over their edges. Two of the woodmen and three of the laborers drank their portions off hurriedly and trooped off together, for their homes were distant and the hour late. The others, however, drew closer, leaving the place of honor to the right of the gleeman to the free-handed new-comer. He had thrown off his steel cap and his brigandine, and had placed them with his sword, his quiver and his painted long-bow, on the top of his varied heap of plunder in the corner. Now, with his thick and somewhat bowed legs stretched in front of the blaze, his green jerkin thrown open, and a great quart pot held in his corded fist, he looked the picture of comfort and of good-fellowship. His hard-set face had softened, and the thick crop of crisp brown curls which had been hidden by his helmet grew low upon his massive neck. He might have been forty years of age, though hard toil and harder pleasure had left their grim marks upon his features. Alleyne had ceased painting his pied merlin, and sat, brush in hand, staring with open eyes at a type of man so strange and so unlike any whom he had met. Men had been good or had been bad in his catalogue, but here was a man who was fierce one instant and gentle the next, with a curse on his lips and a smile in his eye. What was to be made of such a man as that?

It chanced that the soldier looked up and saw the questioning glance which the young clerk threw upon him. He raised his flagon and drank to him, with a merry flash of his white teeth.

“A toi, mon garcon,” he cried. “Hast surely never seen a man-at-arms, that thou shouldst stare so?”

“I never have,” said Alleyne frankly, “though I have oft heard talk of their deeds.”

“By my hilt!” cried the other, “if you were to cross the narrow sea you would find them as thick as bees at a tee-hole. Couldst not shoot a bolt down any street of Bordeaux, I warrant, but you would pink archer, squire, or knight. There are more breastplates than gaberdines to be seen, I promise you.”

“And where got you all these pretty things?” asked Hordle John, pointing at the heap in the corner.

“Where there is as much more waiting for any brave lad to pick it up. Where a good man can always earn a good wage, and where he need look upon no man as his paymaster, but just reach his hand out and help himself. Aye, it is a goodly and a proper life. And here I drink to mine old comrades, and the saints be with them! Arouse all together, me, enfants, under pain of my displeasure. To Sir Claude Latour and the White Company!”

“Sir Claude Latour and the White Company!” shouted the travellers, draining off their goblets.

“Well quaffed, mes braves! It is for me to fill your cups again, since you have drained them to my dear lads of the white jerkin. Hola! mon ange, bring wine and ale. How runs the old stave? —

       
We’ll drink all together

       
To the gray goose feather

       
And the land where the gray goose flew.”

He roared out the catch in a harsh, unmusical voice, and ended with a shout of laughter. “I trust that I am a better bowman than a minstrel,” said he.

“Methinks I have some remembrance of the lilt,” remarked the gleeman, running his fingers over the strings, “Hoping that it will give thee no offence, most holy sir” — with a vicious snap at Alleyne—”and with the kind permit of the company, I will even venture upon it.”

Many a time in the after days Alleyne Edricson seemed to see that scene, for all that so many which were stranger and more stirring were soon to crowd upon him. The fat, red-faced gleeman, the listening group, the archer with upraised finger beating in time to the music, and the huge sprawling figure of Hordle John, all thrown into red light and black shadow by the flickering fire in the centre — memory was to come often lovingly back to it. At the time he was lost in admiration at the deft way in which the jongleur disguised the loss of his two missing strings, and the lusty, hearty fashion in which he trolled out his little ballad of the outland bowmen, which ran in some such fashion as this:

         
What of the bow?

           
The bow was made in England:

       
Of true wood, of yew wood,

         
The wood of English bows;

           
So men who are free

           
Love the old yew tree

       
And the land where the yew tree grows.

 
        
What of the cord?

           
The cord was made in England:

       
A rough cord, a tough cord,

         
A cord that bowmen love;

           
So we’ll drain our jacks

           
To the English flax

       
And the land where the hemp was wove.

         
What of the shaft?

           
The shaft was cut in England:

       
A long shaft, a strong shaft,

         
Barbed and trim and true;

           
So we’ll drink all together

           
To the gray goose feather

       
And the land where the gray goose flew.

         
What of the men?

           
The men were bred in England:

       
The bowman — the yeoman —

         
The lads of dale and fell

           
Here’s to you — and to you;

           
To the hearts that are true

       
And the land where the true hearts dwell.

“Well sung, by my hilt!” shouted the archer in high delight. “Many a night have I heard that song, both in the old war-time and after in the days of the White Company, when Black Simon of Norwich would lead the stave, and four hundred of the best bowmen that ever drew string would come roaring in upon the chorus. I have seen old John Hawkwood, the same who has led half the Company into Italy, stand laughing in his beard as he heard it, until his plates rattled again. But to get the full smack of it ye must yourselves be English bowmen, and be far off upon an outland soil.”

Whilst the song had been singing Dame Eliza and the maid had placed a board across two trestles, and had laid upon it the knife, the spoon, the salt, the tranchoir of bread, and finally the smoking dish which held the savory supper. The archer settled himself to it like one who had known what it was to find good food scarce; but his tongue still went as merrily as his teeth.

“It passes me,” he cried, “how all you lusty fellows can bide scratching your backs at home when there are such doings over the seas. Look at me — what have I to do? It is but the eye to the cord, the cord to the shaft, and the shaft to the mark. There is the whole song of it. It is but what you do yourselves for pleasure upon a Sunday evening at the parish village butts.”

“And the wage?” asked a laborer.

“You see what the wage brings,” he answered. “I eat of the best, and I drink deep. I treat my friend, and I ask no friend to treat me. I clap a silk gown on my girl’s back. Never a knight’s lady shall be better betrimmed and betrinketed. How of all that, mon garcon? And how of the heap of trifles that you can see for yourselves in yonder corner? They are from the South French, every one, upon whom I have been making war. By my hilt! camarades, I think that I may let my plunder speak for itself.”

“It seems indeed to be a goodly service,” said the tooth-drawer.

“Tete bleu! yes, indeed. Then there is the chance of a ransom. Why, look you, in the affair at Brignais some four years back, when the companies slew James of Bourbon, and put his army to the sword, there was scarce a man of ours who had not count, baron, or knight. Peter Karsdale, who was but a common country lout newly brought over, with the English fleas still hopping under his doublet, laid his great hands upon the Sieur Amaury de Chatonville, who owns half Picardy, and had five thousand crowns out of him, with his horse and harness. ‘Tis true that a French wench took it all off Peter as quick as the Frenchman paid it; but what then? By the twang of string! it would be a bad thing if money was not made to be spent; and how better than on woman — eh, ma belle?”