The White Company
and plough the land, and take wives to themselves----”
“Alas! alas!” cried Alleyne aghast, “you have surely sucked this poison
from the man Wicliffe, of whom I have heard such evil things.”
“Nay, I know him not. I have learned it by looking from my own chamber
window and marking these poor monks of the priory, their weary life,
their profitless round. I have asked myself if the best which can be
done with virtue is to shut it within high walls as though it were some
savage creature. If the good will lock themselves up, and if the wicked
will still wander free, then alas for the world!”
Alleyne looked at her in astonishment, for her cheek was flushed, her
eyes gleaming, and her whole pose full of eloquence and conviction. Yet
in an instant she had changed again to her old expression of merriment
leavened with mischief.
“Wilt do what I ask?” said she.
“What is it, lady?”
“Oh, most ungallant clerk! A true knight would never have asked, but
would have vowed upon the instant. 'Tis but to bear me out in what I say
to my father.”
“In what?”
“In saying, if he ask, that it was south of the Christchurch road that I
met you. I shall be shut up with the tire-women else, and have a week
of spindle and bodkin, when I would fain be galloping Troubadour up
Wilverley Walk, or loosing little Roland at the Vinney Ridge herons.”
“I shall not answer him if he ask.”
“Not answer! But he will have an answer. Nay, but you must not fail me,
or it will go ill with me.”
“But, lady,” cried poor Alleyne in great distress, “how can I say that
it was to the south of the road when I know well that it was four miles
to the north.”
“You will not say it?”
“Surely you will not, too, when you know that it is not so?”
“Oh, I weary of your preaching!” she cried, and swept away with a toss
of her beautiful head, leaving Alleyne as cast down and ashamed as
though he had himself proposed some infamous thing. She was back again
in an instant, however, in another of her varying moods.
“Look at that, my friend!” said she. “If you had been shut up in abbey
or in cell this day you could not have taught a wayward maiden to abide
by the truth. Is it not so? What avail is the shepherd if he leaves his
sheep.”
“A sorry shepherd!” said Alleyne humbly. “But here is your noble
father.”
“And you shall see how worthy a pupil I am. Father, I am much beholden
to this young clerk, who was of service to me and helped me this very
morning in Minstead Woods, four miles to the north of the Christchurch
road, where I had no call to be, you having ordered it otherwise.” All
this she reeled off in a loud voice, and then glanced with sidelong,
questioning eyes at Alleyne for his approval.
Sir Nigel, who had entered the room with a silvery-haired old lady upon
his arm, stared aghast at this sudden outburst of candor.
“Maude, Maude!” said he, shaking his head, “it is more hard for me to
gain obedience from you than from the ten score drunken archers who
followed me to Guienne. Yet, hush! little one, for your fair lady-mother
will be here anon, and there is no need that she should know it. We will
keep you from the provost-marshal this journey. Away to your chamber,
sweeting, and keep a blithe face, for she who confesses is shriven. And
now, fair mother,” he continued, when his daughter had gone, “sit
you here by the fire, for your blood runs colder than it did. Alleyne
Edricson, I would have a word with you, for I would fain that you should
take service under me. And here in good time comes my lady, without
whose counsel it is not my wont to decide aught of import; but, indeed,
it was her own thought that you should come.”
“For I have formed a good opinion of you, and can see that you are one
who may be trusted,” said the Lady Loring. “And in good sooth my dear
lord hath need of such a one by his side, for he recks so little of
himself that there should be one there to look to his needs and meet his
wants. You have seen the cloisters; it were well that you should see the
world too, ere you make choice for life between them.”
“It was for that very reason that my father willed that I should come
forth into the world at my twentieth year,” said Alleyne.
“Then your father was a man of good counsel,” said she, “and you cannot
carry out his will better than by going on this path, where all that is
noble and gallant in England will be your companions.”
“You can ride?” asked Sir Nigel, looking at the youth with puckered
eyes.
“Yes, I have ridden much at the abbey.”
“Yet there is a difference betwixt a friar's hack and a warrior's
destrier. You can sing and play?”
“On citole, flute and rebeck.”
“Good! You can read blazonry?”
“Indifferent well.”
“Then read this,” quoth Sir Nigel, pointing upwards to one of the many
quarterings which adorned the wall over the fireplace.
“Argent,” Alleyne answered, “a fess azure charged with three lozenges
dividing three mullets sable. Over all, on an escutcheon of the first, a
jambe gules.”
“A jambe gules erased,” said Sir Nigel, shaking his head solemnly. “Yet
it is not amiss for a monk-bred man. I trust that you are lowly and
serviceable?”
“I have served all my life, my lord.”
“Canst carve too?”
“I have carved two days a week for the brethren.”
“A model truly! Wilt make a squire of squires. But tell me, I pray,
canst curl hair?”
“No, my lord, but I could learn.”
“It is of import,” said he, “for I love to keep my hair well ordered,
seeing that the weight of my helmet for thirty years hath in some degree
frayed it upon the top.” He pulled off his velvet cap of maintenance as
he spoke, and displayed a pate which was as bald as an egg, and shone
bravely in the firelight. “You see,” said he, whisking round, and
showing one little strip where a line of scattered hairs, like the last
survivors in some fatal field, still barely held their own against the
fate which had fallen upon their comrades; “these locks need some little
oiling and curling, for I doubt not that if you look slantwise at my
head, when the light is good, you will yourself perceive that there are
places where the hair is sparse.”
“It is for you also to bear the purse,” said the lady; “for my sweet
lord is of so free and gracious a temper that he would give it gayly to
the first who asked alms of him. All these things, with some knowledge
of venerie, and of the management of horse, hawk and hound, with the
grace and hardihood and courtesy which are proper to your age, will make
you a fit squire for Sir Nigel Loring.”
“Alas! lady,” Alleyne answered, “I know well the great honor that you
have done me in deeming me worthy to wait upon so renowned a knight,
yet I am so conscious of my own weakness that I scarce dare incur duties
which I might be so ill-fitted to fulfil.”
“Modesty and a humble mind,” said she, “are the very first and rarest
gifts in page or squire. Your words prove that you have these, and
all the rest is but the work of use and time. But there is no call for
haste. Rest upon it for the night, and let your orisons ask for guidance
in the matter. We knew your father well, and would fain help his son,
though we have small cause to love your brother the Socman, who is
forever stirring up strife in the county.”
“We can scarce hope,” said Nigel, “to have all ready for our start before
the feast of St. Luke, for there is much to be done in the time. You
will have leisure, therefore, if it please you to take service under me,
in which to learn your devoir. Bertrand, my daughter's page, is hot to
go; but in sooth he is over young for such rough work as may be before
us.”
“And I have one favor to crave from you,” added the lady of the castle,
as Alleyne turned to leave their presence. “You have, as I understand,
much learning which you have acquired at Beaulieu.”
“Little enough, lady, compared with those who were my teachers.”
“Yet enough for my purpose, I doubt not. For I would have you give
an hour or two a day whilst you are with us in discoursing with my
daughter, the Lady Maude; for she is somewhat backward, I fear, and hath
no love for letters, save for these poor fond romances, which do but
fill her empty head with dreams of enchanted maidens and of errant
cavaliers. Father Christopher comes over after nones from the priory,
but he is stricken with years and slow of speech, so that she gets small
profit from his teaching. I would have you do what you can with her, and
with Agatha my young tire-woman, and with Dorothy Pierpont.”
And so Alleyne found himself not only chosen as squire to a knight but
also as squire to three damosels, which was even further from the part
which he had thought to play in the world. Yet he could but agree to
do what he might, and so went forth from the castle hall with his
face flushed and his head in a whirl at the thought of the strange and
perilous paths which his feet were destined to tread.
CHAPTER XII. HOW ALLEYNE LEARNED MORE THAN HE COULD TEACH.
And now there came a time of stir and bustle, of furbishing of arms and
clang of hammer from all the southland counties. Fast spread the tidings
from thorpe to thorpe and from castle to castle, that the old game was
afoot once more, and the lions and lilies to be in the field with the
early spring. Great news this for that fierce old country, whose trade
for a generation had been war, her exports archers and her imports
prisoners. For six years her sons had chafed under an unwonted peace.
Now they flew to their arms as to their birthright. The old soldiers of
Crecy, of Nogent, and of Poictiers were glad to think that they might
hear the war-trumpet once more, and gladder still were the hot youth who
had chafed for years under the martial tales of their sires. To pierce
the great mountains of the south, to fight the tamers of the fiery
Moors, to follow the greatest captain of the age, to find sunny
cornfields and vineyards, when the marches of Picardy and Normandy were
as rare and bleak as the Jedburgh forests--here was a golden prospect
for a race of warriors. From sea to sea there was stringing of bows in
the cottage and clang of steel in the castle.
Nor did it take long for every stronghold to pour forth its cavalry, and
every hamlet its footmen. Through the late autumn and the early winter
every road and country lane resounded with nakir and trumpet, with the
neigh of the war-horse and the clatter of marching men. From the Wrekin
in the Welsh marches to the Cotswolds in the west or Butser in the
south, there was no hill-top from which the peasant might not have seen
the bright shimmer of arms, the toss and flutter of plume and of pensil.
From bye-path, from woodland clearing, or from winding moor-side track
these little rivulets of steel united in the larger roads to form a
broader stream, growing ever fuller and larger as it approached the
nearest or most commodious seaport. And there all day, and day after
day, there was bustle and crowding and labor, while the great ships
loaded up, and one after the other spread their white pinions and darted
off to the open sea, amid the clash of cymbals and rolling of drums and
lusty shouts of those who went and of those who waited. From Orwell to
the Dart there was no port which did not send forth its little fleet,
gay with streamer and bunting, as for a joyous festival. Thus in the
season of the waning days the might of England put forth on to the
waters.
In the ancient and populous county of Hampshire there was no lack of
leaders or of soldiers for a service which promised either honor or
profit. In the north the Saracen's head of the Brocas and the scarlet
fish of the De Roches were waving over a strong body of archers from
Holt, Woolmer, and Harewood forests. De Borhunte was up in the east, and