The White Company
“I doubt it not, mon ami,” quoth the archer, going back to his tankard.
“Here is to thee, lad, and may we be good comrades to each other! But,
hola! what is it that ails our friend of the wrathful face?”
The unfortunate limner had been sitting up rubbing himself ruefully
and staring about with a vacant gaze, which showed that he knew neither
where he was nor what had occurred to him. Suddenly, however, a flash
of intelligence had come over his sodden features, and he rose and
staggered for the door. “'Ware the ale!” he said in a hoarse whisper,
shaking a warning finger at the company. “Oh, holy Virgin, 'ware the
ale!” and slapping his hands to his injury, he flitted off into the
darkness, amid a shout of laughter, in which the vanquished joined as
merrily as the victor. The remaining forester and the two laborers
were also ready for the road, and the rest of the company turned to the
blankets which Dame Eliza and the maid had laid out for them upon the
floor. Alleyne, weary with the unwonted excitements of the day, was soon
in a deep slumber broken only by fleeting visions of twittering legs,
cursing beggars, black robbers, and the many strange folk whom he had
met at the “Pied Merlin.”
CHAPTER VII. HOW THE THREE COMRADES JOURNEYED THROUGH THE WOODLANDS.
At early dawn the country inn was all alive, for it was rare indeed
that an hour of daylight would be wasted at a time when lighting was so
scarce and dear. Indeed, early as it was when Dame Eliza began to stir,
it seemed that others could be earlier still, for the door was ajar,
and the learned student of Cambridge had taken himself off, with a
mind which was too intent upon the high things of antiquity to stoop
to consider the four-pence which he owed for bed and board. It was the
shrill out-cry of the landlady when she found her loss, and the clucking
of the hens, which had streamed in through the open door, that first
broke in upon the slumbers of the tired wayfarers.
Once afoot, it was not long before the company began to disperse. A
sleek mule with red trappings was brought round from some neighboring
shed for the physician, and he ambled away with much dignity upon his
road to Southampton. The tooth-drawer and the gleeman called for a cup
of small ale apiece, and started off together for Ringwood fair, the old
jongleur looking very yellow in the eye and swollen in the face after
his overnight potations. The archer, however, who had drunk more than
any man in the room, was as merry as a grig, and having kissed the
matron and chased the maid up the ladder once more, he went out to the
brook, and came back with the water dripping from his face and hair.
“Hola! my man of peace,” he cried to Alleyne, “whither are you bent this
morning?”
“To Minstead,” quoth he. “My brother Simon Edricson is socman there, and
I go to bide with him for a while. I prythee, let me have my score, good
dame.”
“Score, indeed!” cried she, standing with upraised hands in front of the
panel on which Alleyne had worked the night before. “Say, rather what
it is that I owe to thee, good youth. Aye, this is indeed a pied merlin,
and with a leveret under its claws, as I am a living woman. By the rood
of Waltham! but thy touch is deft and dainty.”
“And see the red eye of it!” cried the maid.
“Aye, and the open beak.”
“And the ruffled wing,” added Hordle John.
“By my hilt!” cried the archer, “it is the very bird itself.”
The young clerk flushed with pleasure at this chorus of praise, rude and
indiscriminate indeed, and yet so much heartier and less grudging than
any which he had ever heard from the critical brother Jerome, or the
short-spoken Abbot. There was, it would seem, great kindness as well as
great wickedness in this world, of which he had heard so little that was
good. His hostess would hear nothing of his paying either for bed or
for board, while the archer and Hordle John placed a hand upon either
shoulder and led him off to the board, where some smoking fish, a dish
of spinach, and a jug of milk were laid out for their breakfast.
“I should not be surprised to learn, mon camarade,” said the soldier, as
he heaped a slice of fish upon Alleyne's tranchoir of bread, “that you
could read written things, since you are so ready with your brushes and
pigments.”
“It would be shame to the good brothers of Beaulieu if I could not,” he
answered, “seeing that I have been their clerk this ten years back.”
The bowman looked at him with great respect. “Think of that!” said he.
“And you with not a hair to your face, and a skin like a girl. I can
shoot three hundred and fifty paces with my little popper there, and
four hundred and twenty with the great war-bow; yet I can make nothing
of this, nor read my own name if you were to set 'Sam Aylward' up
against me. In the whole Company there was only one man who could read,
and he fell down a well at the taking of Ventadour, which proves that
the thing is not suited to a soldier, though most needful to a clerk.”
“I can make some show at it,” said big John; “though I was scarce long
enough among the monks to catch the whole trick of it.
“Here, then, is something to try upon,” quoth the archer, pulling a
square of parchment from the inside of his tunic. It was tied securely
with a broad band of purple silk, and firmly sealed at either end with a
large red seal. John pored long and earnestly over the inscription upon
the back, with his brows bent as one who bears up against great mental
strain.
“Not having read much of late,” he said, “I am loth to say too much
about what this may be. Some might say one thing and some another, just
as one bowman loves the yew, and a second will not shoot save with the
ash. To me, by the length and the look of it, I should judge this to be
a verse from one of the Psalms.”
The bowman shook his head. “It is scarce likely,” he said, “that Sir
Claude Latour should send me all the way across seas with nought more
weighty than a psalm-verse. You have clean overshot the butts this time,
mon camarade. Give it to the little one. I will wager my feather-bed
that he makes more sense of it.”
“Why, it is written in the French tongue,” said Alleyne, “and in a
right clerkly hand. This is how it runs: 'A le moult puissant et moult
honorable chevalier, Sir Nigel Loring de Christchurch, de son tres
fidele ami Sir Claude Latour, capitaine de la Compagnie blanche,
chatelain de Biscar, grand seigneur de Montchateau, vavaseur de le
renomme Gaston, Comte de Foix, tenant les droits de la haute justice, de
la milieu, et de la basse.' Which signifies in our speech: 'To the very
powerful and very honorable knight, Sir Nigel Loring of Christchurch,
from his very faithful friend Sir Claude Latour, captain of the White
Company, chatelain of Biscar, grand lord of Montchateau and vassal to
the renowned Gaston, Count of Foix, who holds the rights of the high
justice, the middle and the low.'”
“Look at that now!” cried the bowman in triumph. “That is just what he
would have said.”
“I can see now that it is even so,” said John, examining the parchment
again. “Though I scarce understand this high, middle and low.”
“By my hilt! you would understand it if you were Jacques Bonhomme. The
low justice means that you may fleece him, and the middle that you may
torture him, and the high that you may slay him. That is about the truth
of it. But this is the letter which I am to take; and since the platter
is clean it is time that we trussed up and were afoot. You come with
me, mon gros Jean; and as to you, little one, where did you say that you
journeyed?”
“To Minstead.”
“Ah, yes. I know this forest country well, though I was born myself
in the Hundred of Easebourne, in the Rape of Chichester, hard by the
village of Midhurst. Yet I have not a word to say against the Hampton
men, for there are no better comrades or truer archers in the whole
Company than some who learned to loose the string in these very parts.
We shall travel round with you to Minstead lad, seeing that it is little
out of our way.”
“I am ready,” said Alleyne, right pleased at the thought of such company
upon the road.
“So am not I. I must store my plunder at this inn, since the hostess is
an honest woman. Hola! ma cherie, I wish to leave with you my gold-work,
my velvet, my silk, my feather bed, my incense-boat, my ewer, my naping
linen, and all the rest of it. I take only the money in a linen bag,
and the box of rose colored sugar which is a gift from my captain to the
Lady Loring. Wilt guard my treasure for me?”
“It shall be put in the safest loft, good archer. Come when you may, you
shall find it ready for you.”
“Now, there is a true friend!” cried the bowman, taking her hand. “There
is a bonne amie! English land and English women, say I, and French wine
and French plunder. I shall be back anon, mon ange. I am a lonely man,
my sweeting, and I must settle some day when the wars are over and done.
Mayhap you and I----Ah, mechante, mechante! There is la petite peeping
from behind the door. Now, John, the sun is over the trees; you must be
brisker than this when the bugleman blows 'Bows and Bills.'”
“I have been waiting this time back,” said Hordle John gruffly.
“Then we must be off. Adieu, ma vie! The two livres shall settle the
score and buy some ribbons against the next kermesse. Do not forget Sam
Aylward, for his heart shall ever be thine alone--and thine, ma petite!
So, marchons, and may St. Julian grant us as good quarters elsewhere!”
The sun had risen over Ashurst and Denny woods, and was shining
brightly, though the eastern wind had a sharp flavor to it, and the
leaves were flickering thickly from the trees. In the High Street of
Lyndhurst the wayfarers had to pick their way, for the little town
was crowded with the guardsmen, grooms, and yeomen prickers who were
attached to the King's hunt. The King himself was staying at Castle
Malwood, but several of his suite had been compelled to seek such
quarters as they might find in the wooden or wattle-and-daub cottages of
the village. Here and there a small escutcheon, peeping from a
glassless window, marked the night's lodging of knight or baron. These
coats-of-arms could be read, where a scroll would be meaningless, and
the bowman, like most men of his age, was well versed in the common
symbols of heraldry.
“There is the Saracen's head of Sir Bernard Brocas,” quoth he. “I saw
him last at the ruffle at Poictiers some ten years back, when he bore
himself like a man. He is the master of the King's horse, and can sing
a right jovial stave, though in that he cannot come nigh to Sir John
Chandos, who is first at the board or in the saddle. Three martlets on a
field azure, that must be one of the Luttrells. By the crescent upon it,
it should be the second son of old Sir Hugh, who had a bolt through his
ankle at the intaking of Romorantin, he having rushed into the fray ere
his squire had time to clasp his solleret to his greave. There too is
the hackle which is the old device of the De Brays. I have served under
Sir Thomas de Bray, who was as jolly as a pie, and a lusty swordsman
until he got too fat for his harness.”
So the archer gossiped as the three wayfarers threaded their way among
the stamping horses, the busy grooms, and the knots of pages and squires
who disputed over the merits of their masters' horses and deer-hounds.
As they passed the old church, which stood upon a mound at the left-hand
side of the village street the door was flung open, and a stream of
worshippers wound down the sloping path, coming from the morning mass,
all chattering like a cloud of jays. Alleyne bent knee and doffed hat at
the sight of the open door; but ere he had finished an ave his comrades
were out of sight round the curve of the path, and he had to run to
overtake them.