The White Company
all stained with earth and with moss upon one side from shoulder to hem.
He stood in the shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for
this woman seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature
that mind could conceive of. Such had he imagined the angels, and such
he had tried to paint them in the Beaulieu missals; but here there was
something human, were it only in the battered hawk and discolored dress,
which sent a tingle and thrill through his nerves such as no dream of
radiant and stainless spirit had ever yet been able to conjure up. Good,
quiet, uncomplaining mother Nature, long slighted and miscalled, still
bides her time and draws to her bosom the most errant of her children.
The two walked swiftly across the meadow to the narrow bridge, he in
front and she a pace or two behind. There they paused, and stood for
a few minutes face to face talking earnestly. Alleyne had read and
had heard of love and of lovers. Such were these, doubtless--this
golden-bearded man and the fair damsel with the cold, proud face. Why
else should they wander together in the woods, or be so lost in talk by
rustic streams? And yet as he watched, uncertain whether to advance from
the cover or to choose some other path to the house, he soon came
to doubt the truth of this first conjecture. The man stood, tall and
square, blocking the entrance to the bridge, and throwing out his hands
as he spoke in a wild eager fashion, while the deep tones of his stormy
voice rose at times into accents of menace and of anger. She stood
fearlessly in front of him, still stroking her bird; but twice she threw
a swift questioning glance over her shoulder, as one who is in search
of aid. So moved was the young clerk by these mute appeals, that he came
forth from the trees and crossed the meadow, uncertain what to do, and
yet loth to hold back from one who might need his aid. So intent were
they upon each other that neither took note of his approach; until, when
he was close upon them, the man threw his arm roughly round the damsel's
waist and drew her towards him, she straining her lithe, supple figure
away and striking fiercely at him, while the hooded hawk screamed with
ruffled wings and pecked blindly in its mistress's defence. Bird and
maid, however, had but little chance against their assailant who,
laughing loudly, caught her wrist in one hand while he drew her towards
him with the other.
“The best rose has ever the longest thorns,” said he. “Quiet, little
one, or you may do yourself a hurt. Must pay Saxon toll on Saxon land,
my proud Maude, for all your airs and graces.”
“You boor!” she hissed. “You base underbred clod! Is this your care and
your hospitality? I would rather wed a branded serf from my father's
fields. Leave go, I say----Ah! good youth, Heaven has sent you. Make him
loose me! By the honor of your mother, I pray you to stand by me and to
make this knave loose me.”
“Stand by you I will, and that blithely,” said Alleyne. “Surely, sir,
you should take shame to hold the damsel against her will.”
The man turned a face upon him which was lion-like in its strength and
in its wrath. With his tangle of golden hair, his fierce blue eyes, and
his large, well-marked features, he was the most comely man whom Alleyne
had ever seen, and yet there was something so sinister and so fell in
his expression that child or beast might well have shrunk from him. His
brows were drawn, his cheek flushed, and there was a mad sparkle in his
eyes which spoke of a wild, untamable nature.
“Young fool!” he cried, holding the woman still to his side, though
every line of her shrinking figure spoke her abhorrence. “Do you keep
your spoon in your own broth. I rede you to go on your way, lest worse
befall you. This little wench has come with me and with me she shall
bide.”
“Liar!” cried the woman; and, stooping her head, she suddenly bit
fiercely into the broad brown hand which held her. He whipped it back
with an oath, while she tore herself free and slipped behind Alleyne,
cowering up against him like the trembling leveret who sees the falcon
poising for the swoop above him.
“Stand off my land!” the man said fiercely, heedless of the blood which
trickled freely from his fingers. “What have you to do here? By your
dress you should be one of those cursed clerks who overrun the land like
vile rats, poking and prying into other men's concerns, too caitiff to
fight and too lazy to work. By the rood! if I had my will upon ye, I
should nail you upon the abbey doors, as they hang vermin before their
holes. Art neither man nor woman, young shaveling. Get thee back to thy
fellows ere I lay hands upon you: for your foot is on my land, and I may
slay you as a common draw-latch.”
“Is this your land, then?” gasped Alleyne.
“Would you dispute it, dog? Would you wish by trick or quibble to juggle
me out of these last acres? Know, base-born knave, that you have dared
this day to stand in the path of one whose race have been the advisers
of kings and the leaders of hosts, ere ever this vile crew of Norman
robbers came into the land, or such half-blood hounds as you were let
loose to preach that the thief should have his booty and the honest man
should sin if he strove to win back his own.”
“You are the Socman of Minstead?”
“That am I; and the son of Edric the Socman, of the pure blood of
Godfrey the thane, by the only daughter of the house of Aluric, whose
forefathers held the white-horse banner at the fatal fight where our
shield was broken and our sword shivered. I tell you, clerk, that my
folk held this land from Bramshaw Wood to the Ringwood road; and, by the
soul of my father! it will be a strange thing if I am to be bearded upon
the little that is left of it. Begone, I say, and meddle not with my
affair.”
“If you leave me now,” whispered the woman, “then shame forever upon
your manhood.”
“Surely, sir,” said Alleyne, speaking in as persuasive and soothing a
way as he could, “if your birth is gentle, there is the more reason that
your manners should be gentle too. I am well persuaded that you did but
jest with this lady, and that you will now permit her to leave your land
either alone or with me as a guide, if she should need one, through the
wood. As to birth, it does not become me to boast, and there is sooth in
what you say as to the unworthiness of clerks, but it is none the less
true that I am as well born as you.”
“Dog!” cried the furious Socman, “there is no man in the south who can
say as much.”
“Yet can I,” said Alleyne smiling; “for indeed I also am the son of
Edric the Socman, of the pure blood of Godfrey the thane, by the only
daughter of Aluric of Brockenhurst. Surely, dear brother,” he continued,
holding out his hand, “you have a warmer greeting than this for me.
There are but two boughs left upon this old, old Saxon trunk.”
His elder brother dashed his hand aside with an oath, while an
expression of malignant hatred passed over his passion-drawn features.
“You are the young cub of Beaulieu, then,” said he. “I might have known
it by the sleek face and the slavish manner too monk-ridden and craven
in spirit to answer back a rough word. Thy father, shaveling, with all
his faults, had a man's heart; and there were few who could look him in
the eyes on the day of his anger. But you! Look there, rat, on yonder
field where the cows graze, and on that other beyond, and on the orchard
hard by the church. Do you know that all these were squeezed out of
your dying father by greedy priests, to pay for your upbringing in the
cloisters? I, the Socman, am shorn of my lands that you may snivel Latin
and eat bread for which you never did hand's turn. You rob me first, and
now you would come preaching and whining, in search mayhap of another
field or two for your priestly friends. Knave! my dogs shall be set upon
you; but, meanwhile, stand out of my path, and stop me at your peril!”
As he spoke he rushed forward, and, throwing the lad to one side, caught
the woman's wrist. Alleyne, however, as active as a young deer-hound,
sprang to her aid and seized her by the other arm, raising his iron-shod
staff as he did so.
“You may say what you will to me,” he said between his clenched
teeth--“it may be no better than I deserve; but, brother or no, I swear
by my hopes of salvation that I will break your arm if you do not leave
hold of the maid.”
There was a ring in his voice and a flash in his eyes which promised
that the blow would follow quick at the heels of the word. For a moment
the blood of the long line of hot-headed thanes was too strong for the
soft whisperings of the doctrine of meekness and mercy. He was conscious
of a fierce wild thrill through his nerves and a throb of mad gladness
at his heart, as his real human self burst for an instant the bonds
of custom and of teaching which had held it so long. The socman sprang
back, looking to left and to right for some stick or stone which might
serve him for weapon; but finding none, he turned and ran at the top of
his speed for the house, blowing the while upon a shrill whistle.
“Come!” gasped the woman. “Fly, friend, ere he come back.”
“Nay, let him come!” cried Alleyne. “I shall not budge a foot for him or
his dogs.”
“Come, come!” she cried, tugging at his arm. “I know the man: he will
kill you. Come, for the Virgin's sake, or for my sake, for I cannot go
and leave you here.”
“Come, then,” said he; and they ran together to the cover of the woods.
As they gained the edge of the brushwood, Alleyne, looking back, saw his
brother come running out of the house again, with the sun gleaming upon
his hair and his beard. He held something which flashed in his right
hand, and he stooped at the threshold to unloose the black hound.
“This way!” the woman whispered, in a low eager voice. “Through the
bushes to that forked ash. Do not heed me; I can run as fast as you, I
trow. Now into the stream--right in, over ankles, to throw the dog off,
though I think it is but a common cur, like its master.” As she spoke,
she sprang herself into the shallow stream and ran swiftly up the
centre of it, with the brown water bubbling over her feet and her
hand out-stretched toward the clinging branches of bramble or sapling.
Alleyne followed close at her heels, with his mind in a whirl at this
black welcome and sudden shifting of all his plans and hopes. Yet, grave
as were his thoughts, they would still turn to wonder as he looked at
the twinkling feet of his guide and saw her lithe figure bend this way
and that, dipping under boughs, springing over stones, with a lightness
and ease which made it no small task for him to keep up with her. At
last, when he was almost out of breath, she suddenly threw herself down
upon a mossy bank, between two holly-bushes, and looked ruefully at her
own dripping feet and bedraggled skirt.
“Holy Mary!” said she, “what shall I do? Mother will keep me to my
chamber for a month, and make me work at the tapestry of the nine bold
knights. She promised as much last week, when I fell into Wilverley bog,
and yet she knows that I cannot abide needle-work.”
Alleyne, still standing in the stream, glanced down at the graceful
pink-and-white figure, the curve of raven-black hair, and the proud,
sensitive face which looked up frankly and confidingly at his own.
“We had best on,” he said. “He may yet overtake us.”
“Not so. We are well off his land now, nor can he tell in this great
wood which way we have taken. But you--you had him at your mercy. Why
did you not kill him?”
“Kill him! My brother!”
“And why not?”--with a quick gleam of her white teeth. “He would have
killed you. I know him, and I read it in his eyes. Had I had your staff
I would have tried--aye, and done it, too.” She shook her clenched white