The White Company
were wont so often to cut short the loose talk of the scoffer. The
autumn sun streamed down as brightly as ever, and the peaceful red path
still wound in front of them through the rustling, yellow-tinted forest,
Nature seemed to be too busy with her own concerns to heed the dignity
of an outraged pontiff. Yet he felt a sense of weight and reproach
within his breast, as though he had sinned himself in giving ear to such
words. The teachings of twenty years cried out against such license. It
was not until he had thrown himself down before one of the many wayside
crosses, and had prayed from his heart both for the archer and for
himself, that the dark cloud rolled back again from his spirit.
CHAPTER VIII. THE THREE FRIENDS.
His companions had passed on whilst he was at his orisons; but his young
blood and the fresh morning air both invited him to a scamper. His staff
in one hand and his scrip in the other, with springy step and floating
locks, he raced along the forest path, as active and as graceful as a
young deer. He had not far to go, however; for, on turning a corner,
he came on a roadside cottage with a wooden fence-work around it, where
stood big John and Aylward the bowman, staring at something within. As
he came up with them, he saw that two little lads, the one about nine
years of age and the other somewhat older, were standing on the plot
in front of the cottage, each holding out a round stick in their left
hands, with their arms stiff and straight from the shoulder, as
silent and still as two small statues. They were pretty, blue-eyed,
yellow-haired lads, well made and sturdy, with bronzed skins, which
spoke of a woodland life.
“Here are young chips from an old bow stave!” cried the soldier in great
delight. “This is the proper way to raise children. By my hilt! I could
not have trained them better had I the ordering of it myself.”
“What is it then?” asked Hordle John. “They stand very stiff, and I
trust that they have not been struck so.”
“Nay, they are training their left arms, that they may have a steady
grasp of the bow. So my own father trained me, and six days a week I
held out his walking-staff till my arm was heavy as lead. Hola, mes
enfants! how long will you hold out?”
“Until the sun is over the great lime-tree, good master,” the elder
answered.
“What would ye be, then? Woodmen? Verderers?”
“Nay, soldiers,” they cried both together.
“By the beard of my father! but ye are whelps of the true breed. Why so
keen, then, to be soldiers?”
“That we may fight the Scots,” they answered. “Daddy will send us to
fight the Scots.”
“And why the Scots, my pretty lads? We have seen French and Spanish
galleys no further away than Southampton, but I doubt that it will be
some time before the Scots find their way to these parts.”
“Our business is with the Scots,” quoth the elder; “for it was the Scots
who cut off daddy's string fingers and his thumbs.”
“Aye, lads, it was that,” said a deep voice from behind Alleyne's
shoulder. Looking round, the wayfarers saw a gaunt, big-boned man, with
sunken cheeks and a sallow face, who had come up behind them. He held
up his two hands as he spoke, and showed that the thumbs and two first
fingers had been torn away from each of them.
“Ma foi, camarade!” cried Aylward. “Who hath served thee in so shameful
a fashion?”
“It is easy to see, friend, that you were born far from the marches of
Scotland,” quoth the stranger, with a bitter smile. “North of Humber
there is no man who would not know the handiwork of Devil Douglas, the
black Lord James.”
“And how fell you into his hands?” asked John.
“I am a man of the north country, from the town of Beverley and the
wapentake of Holderness,” he answered. “There was a day when, from Trent
to Tweed, there was no better marksman than Robin Heathcot. Yet, as you
see, he hath left me, as he hath left many another poor border archer,
with no grip for bill or bow. Yet the king hath given me a living here
in the southlands, and please God these two lads of mine will pay off
a debt that hath been owing over long. What is the price of daddy's
thumbs, boys?”
“Twenty Scottish lives,” they answered together.
“And for the fingers?”
“Half a score.”
“When they can bend my war-bow, and bring down a squirrel at a hundred
paces, I send them to take service under Johnny Copeland, the Lord of
the Marches and Governor of Carlisle. By my soul! I would give the rest
of my fingers to see the Douglas within arrow-flight of them.”
“May you live to see it,” quoth the bowman. “And hark ye, mes enfants,
take an old soldier's rede and lay your bodies to the bow, drawing from
hip and thigh as much as from arm. Learn also, I pray you, to shoot with
a dropping shaft; for though a bowman may at times be called upon to
shoot straight and fast, yet it is more often that he has to do with a
town-guard behind a wall, or an arbalestier with his mantlet raised when
you cannot hope to do him scathe unless your shaft fall straight upon
him from the clouds. I have not drawn string for two weeks, but I may
be able to show ye how such shots should be made.” He loosened his
long-bow, slung his quiver round to the front, and then glanced keenly
round for a fitting mark. There was a yellow and withered stump some
way off, seen under the drooping branches of a lofty oak. The archer
measured the distance with his eye; and then, drawing three shafts, he
shot them off with such speed that the first had not reached the mark
ere the last was on the string. Each arrow passed high over the oak;
and, of the three, two stuck fair into the stump; while the third,
caught in some wandering puff of wind, was driven a foot or two to one
side.
“Good!” cried the north countryman. “Hearken to him lads! He is a master
bowman. Your dad says amen to every word he says.”
“By my hilt!” said Aylward, “if I am to preach on bowmanship, the whole
long day would scarce give me time for my sermon. We have marksmen in
the Company who will notch with a shaft every crevice and joint of a
man-at-arm's harness, from the clasp of his bassinet to the hinge of his
greave. But, with your favor, friend, I must gather my arrows again, for
while a shaft costs a penny a poor man can scarce leave them sticking
in wayside stumps. We must, then, on our road again, and I hope from my
heart that you may train these two young goshawks here until they are
ready for a cast even at such a quarry as you speak of.”
Leaving the thumbless archer and his brood, the wayfarers struck through
the scattered huts of Emery Down, and out on to the broad rolling heath
covered deep in ferns and in heather, where droves of the half-wild
black forest pigs were rooting about amongst the hillocks. The woods
about this point fall away to the left and the right, while the road
curves upwards and the wind sweeps keenly over the swelling uplands. The
broad strips of bracken glowed red and yellow against the black peaty
soil, and a queenly doe who grazed among them turned her white front
and her great questioning eyes towards the wayfarers. Alleyne gazed
in admiration at the supple beauty of the creature; but the archer's
fingers played with his quiver, and his eyes glistened with the fell
instinct which urges a man to slaughter.
“Tete Dieu!” he growled, “were this France, or even Guienne, we should
have a fresh haunch for our none-meat. Law or no law, I have a mind to
loose a bolt at her.”
“I would break your stave across my knee first,” cried John, laying his
great hand upon the bow. “What! man, I am forest-born, and I know what
comes of it. In our own township of Hordle two have lost their eyes and
one his skin for this very thing. On my troth, I felt no great love when
I first saw you, but since then I have conceived over much regard for
you to wish to see the verderer's flayer at work upon you.”
“It is my trade to risk my skin,” growled the archer; but none the less
he thrust his quiver over his hip again and turned his face for the
west.
As they advanced, the path still tended upwards, running from heath into
copses of holly and yew, and so back into heath again. It was joyful to
hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they darted from one clump
of greenery to the other. Now and again a peaty amber colored stream
rippled across their way, with ferny over-grown banks, where the blue
kingfisher flitted busily from side to side, or the gray and pensive
heron, swollen with trout and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the
sedges. Chattering jays and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead,
while ever and anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the
great green woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. On either side,
as the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and expanded,
sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and brown moor to
the distant smoke of Lymington and the blue misty channel which lay
alongside the sky-line, while to the north the woods rolled away, grove
topping grove, to where in the furthest distance the white spire of
Salisbury stood out hard and clear against the cloudless sky. To Alleyne
whose days had been spent in the low-lying coastland, the eager upland
air and the wide free country-side gave a sense of life and of the joy
of living which made his young blood tingle in his veins. Even the
heavy John was not unmoved by the beauty of their road, while the bowman
whistled lustily or sang snatches of French love songs in a voice which
might have scared the most stout-hearted maiden that ever hearkened to
serenade.
“I have a liking for that north countryman,” he remarked presently. “He
hath good power of hatred. Couldst see by his cheek and eye that he is
as bitter as verjuice. I warm to a man who hath some gall in his liver.”
“Ah me!” sighed Alleyne. “Would it not be better if he had some love in
his heart?”
“I would not say nay to that. By my hilt! I shall never be said to be
traitor to the little king. Let a man love the sex. Pasques Dieu! they
are made to be loved, les petites, from whimple down to shoe-string! I
am right glad, mon garcon, to see that the good monks have trained thee
so wisely and so well.”
“Nay, I meant not worldly love, but rather that his heart should soften
towards those who have wronged him.”
The archer shook his head. “A man should love those of his own breed,”
said he. “But it is not nature that an English-born man should love
a Scot or a Frenchman. Ma foi! you have not seen a drove of Nithsdale
raiders on their Galloway nags, or you would not speak of loving them. I
would as soon take Beelzebub himself to my arms. I fear, mon gar., that
they have taught thee but badly at Beaulieu, for surely a bishop knows
more of what is right and what is ill than an abbot can do, and I myself
with these very eyes saw the Bishop of Lincoln hew into a Scottish
hobeler with a battle-axe, which was a passing strange way of showing
him that he loved him.”
Alleyne scarce saw his way to argue in the face of so decided an opinion
on the part of a high dignitary of the Church. “You have borne arms
against the Scots, then?” he asked.
“Why, man, I first loosed string in battle when I was but a lad, younger
by two years than you, at Neville's Cross, under the Lord Mowbray.
Later, I served under the Warden of Berwick, that very John Copeland of
whom our friend spake, the same who held the King of Scots to ransom. Ma
foi! it is rough soldiering, and a good school for one who would learn
to be hardy and war-wise.”
“I have heard that the Scots are good men of war,” said Hordle John.
“For axemen and for spearmen I have not seen their match,” the archer
answered. “They can travel, too, with bag of meal and gridiron slung
to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow them. There are scant