The White Company
leave you now, mother, for the way is over-rough for your feet; but I
will bring you back a silken gown, if there be one in France or Spain,
and I will bring Jinny a silver penny; so good-bye to you, and God have
you in His keeping!” Whipping up the little woman, he lifted her lightly
to his lips, and then, taking his place in the ranks again, marched on
with the laughing Company.
“That was ever his way,” she cried, appealing to Sir Nigel, who reined
up his horse and listened with the greatest courtesy. “He would jog on
his own road for all that I could do to change him. First he must be a
monk forsooth, and all because a wench was wise enough to turn her back
on him. Then he joins a rascally crew and must needs trapse off to the
wars, and me with no one to bait the fire if I be out, or tend the cow
if I be home. Yet I have been a good mother to him. Three hazel switches
a day have I broke across his shoulders, and he takes no more notice
than you have seen him to-day.”
“Doubt not that he will come back to you both safe and prosperous, my
fair dame,” quoth Sir Nigel. “Meanwhile it grieves me that as I have
already given my purse to a beggar up the road I----”
“Nay, my lord,” said Alleyne, “I still have some moneys remaining.”
“Then I pray you to give them to this very worthy woman.” He cantered
on as he spoke, while Alleyne, having dispensed two more pence, left
the old dame standing by the furthest cottage of Hordle, with her shrill
voice raised in blessings instead of revilings.
There were two cross-roads before they reached the Lymington Ford, and
at each of them Sir Nigel pulled up his horse, and waited with many a
curvet and gambade, craning his neck this way and that to see if fortune
would send him a venture. Crossroads had, as he explained, been rare
places for knightly spear-runnings, and in his youth it was no uncommon
thing for a cavalier to abide for weeks at such a point, holding gentle
debate with all comers, to his own advancement and the great honor of
his lady. The times were changed, however, and the forest tracks wound
away from them deserted and silent, with no trample of war-horse or
clang of armor which might herald the approach of an adversary--so that
Sir Nigel rode on his way disconsolate. At the Lymington River they
splashed through the ford, and lay in the meadows on the further side to
eat the bread and salt meat which they carried upon the sumpter horses.
Then, ere the sun was on the slope of the heavens, they had deftly
trussed up again, and were swinging merrily upon their way, two hundred
feet moving like two.
There is a third cross-road where the track from Boldre runs down to the
old fishing village of Pitt's Deep. Down this, as they came abreast of
it, there walked two men, the one a pace or two behind the other. The
cavaliers could not but pull up their horses to look at them, for a
stranger pair were never seen journeying together. The first was a
misshapen, squalid man with cruel, cunning eyes and a shock of tangled
red hair, bearing in his hands a small unpainted cross, which he held
high so that all men might see it. He seemed to be in the last extremity
of fright, with a face the color of clay and his limbs all ashake as one
who hath an ague. Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's
heels, there walked a very stern, black-bearded man with a hard eye and
a set mouth. He bore over his shoulder a great knotted stick with three
jagged nails stuck in the head of it, and from time to time he whirled
it up in the air with a quivering arm, as though he could scarce hold
back from dashing his companion's brains out. So in silence they walked
under the spread of the branches on the grass-grown path from Boldre.
“By St. Paul!” quoth the knight, “but this is a passing strange sight,
and perchance some very perilous and honorable venture may arise from
it. I pray you, Edricson, to ride up to them and to ask them the cause
of it.”
There was no need, however, for him to move, for the twain came swiftly
towards them until they were within a spear's length, when the man
with the cross sat himself down sullenly upon a tussock of grass by the
wayside, while the other stood beside him with his great cudgel still
hanging over his head. So intent was he that he raised his eyes neither
to knight nor squires, but kept them ever fixed with a savage glare upon
his comrade.
“I pray you, friend,” said Sir Nigel, “to tell us truthfully who you
are, and why you follow this man with such bitter enmity?”
“So long as I am within the pale of the king's law,” the stranger
answered, “I cannot see why I should render account to every passing
wayfarer.”
“You are no very shrewd reasoner, fellow,” quoth the knight; “for if
it be within the law for you to threaten him with your club, then it is
also lawful for me to threaten you with my sword.”
The man with the cross was down in an instant on his knees upon the
ground, with hands clasped above him and his face shining with hope.
“For dear Christ's sake, my fair lord,” he cried in a crackling voice,
“I have at my belt a bag with a hundred rose nobles, and I will give it
to you freely if you will but pass your sword through this man's body.”
“How, you foul knave?” exclaimed Sir Nigel hotly. “Do you think that
a cavalier's arm is to be bought like a packman's ware. By St. Paul! I
have little doubt that this fellow hath some very good cause to hold you
in hatred.”
“Indeed, my fair sir, you speak sooth,” quoth he with the club, while
the other seated himself once more by the wayside. “For this man is
Peter Peterson, a very noted rieve, draw-latch, and murtherer, who has
wrought much evil for many years in the parts about Winchester. It was
but the other day, upon the feasts of the blessed Simon and Jude, that
he slew my younger brother William in Bere Forest--for which, by the
black thorn of Glastonbury! I shall have his heart's blood, though I
walk behind him to the further end of earth.”
“But if this be indeed so,” asked Sir Nigel, “why is it that you have
come with him so far through the forest?”
“Because I am an honest Englishman, and will take no more than the law
allows. For when the deed was done this foul and base wretch fled to
sanctuary at St. Cross, and I, as you may think, after him with all
the posse. The prior, however, hath so ordered that while he holds this
cross no man may lay hand upon him without the ban of church, which
heaven forfend from me or mine. Yet, if for an instant he lay the cross
aside, or if he fail to journey to Pitt's Deep, where it is ordered that
he shall take ship to outland parts, or if he take not the first ship,
or if until the ship be ready he walk not every day into the sea as far
as his loins, then he becomes outlaw, and I shall forthwith dash out his
brains.”
At this the man on the ground snarled up at him like a rat, while the
other clenched his teeth, and shook his club, and looked down at him
with murder in his eyes. Knight and squire gazed from rogue to avenger,
but as it was a matter which none could mend they tarried no longer, but
rode upon their way. Alleyne, looking back, saw that the murderer had
drawn bread and cheese from his scrip, and was silently munching it,
with the protecting cross still hugged to his breast, while the other,
black and grim, stood in the sunlit road and threw his dark shadow
athwart him.
CHAPTER XV. HOW THE YELLOW COG SAILED FORTH FROM LEPE.
That night the Company slept at St. Leonard's, in the great monastic
barns and spicarium--ground well known both to Alleyne and to John, for
they were almost within sight of the Abbey of Beaulieu. A strange thrill
it gave to the young squire to see the well-remembered white dress once
more, and to hear the measured tolling of the deep vespers bell.
At early dawn they passed across the broad, sluggish, reed-girt
stream--men, horses, and baggage in the flat ferry barges--and so
journeyed on through the fresh morning air past Exbury to Lepe.
Topping the heathy down, they came of a sudden full in sight of the old
sea-port--a cluster of houses, a trail of blue smoke, and a bristle of
masts. To right and left the long blue curve of the Solent lapped in a
fringe of foam upon the yellow beach. Some way out from the town a line
of pessoners, creyers, and other small craft were rolling lazily on the
gentle swell. Further out still lay a great merchant-ship, high ended,
deep waisted, painted of a canary yellow, and towering above the
fishing-boats like a swan among ducklings.
“By St. Paul!” said the knight, “our good merchant of Southampton hath
not played us false, for methinks I can see our ship down yonder. He
said that she would be of great size and of a yellow shade.”
“By my hilt, yes!” muttered Aylward; “she is yellow as a kite's claw,
and would carry as many men as there are pips in a pomegranate.”
“It is as well,” remarked Terlake; “for methinks, my fair lord, that
we are not the only ones who are waiting a passage to Gascony. Mine eye
catches at times a flash and sparkle among yonder houses which assuredly
never came from shipman's jacket or the gaberdine of a burgher.”
“I can also see it,” said Alleyne, shading his eyes with his hand. “And
I can see men-at-arms in yonder boats which ply betwixt the vessel and
the shore. But methinks that we are very welcome here, for already they
come forth to meet us.”
A tumultuous crowd of fishermen, citizens, and women had indeed swarmed
out from the northern gate, and approached them up the side of the moor,
waving their hands and dancing with joy, as though a great fear had been
rolled back from their minds. At their head rode a very large and solemn
man with a long chin and a drooping lip. He wore a fur tippet round his
neck and a heavy gold chain over it, with a medallion which dangled in
front of him.
“Welcome, most puissant and noble lord,” he cried, doffing his bonnet
to Black Simon. “I have heard of your lordship's valiant deeds, and in
sooth they might be expected from your lordship's face and bearing. Is
there any small matter in which I may oblige you?”
“Since you ask me,” said the man-at-arms, “I would take it kindly if you
could spare a link or two of the chain which hangs round your neck.”
“What, the corporation chain!” cried the other in horror. “The ancient
chain of the township of Lepe! This is but a sorry jest, Sir Nigel.”
“What the plague did you ask me for then?” said Simon. “But if it is
Sir Nigel Loring with whom you would speak, that is he upon the black
horse.”
The Mayor of Lepe gazed with amazement on the mild face and slender
frame of the famous warrior.
“Your pardon, my gracious lord,” he cried. “You see in me the mayor and
chief magistrate of the ancient and powerful town of Lepe. I bid you
very heartily welcome, and the more so as you are come at a moment when
we are sore put to it for means of defence.”
“Ha!” cried Sir Nigel, pricking up his ears.
“Yes, my lord, for the town being very ancient and the walls as old
as the town, it follows that they are very ancient too. But there is a
certain villainous and bloodthirsty Norman pirate hight Tete-noire, who,
with a Genoan called Tito Caracci, commonly known as Spade-beard, hath
been a mighty scourge upon these coasts. Indeed, my lord, they are very
cruel and black-hearted men, graceless and ruthless, and if they should
come to the ancient and powerful town of Lepe then--”
“Then good-bye to the ancient and powerful town of Lepe,” quoth Ford,
whose lightness of tongue could at times rise above his awe of Sir
Nigel.
The knight, however, was too much intent upon the matter in hand to give
heed to the flippancy of his squire. “Have you then cause,” he asked,
“to think that these men are about to venture an attempt upon you?”