The White Company
should have cast off its foulest weed and should now lose what we are
fain to look upon as our choicest blossom.”
“You speak too kindly, father,” the youth answered. “If I had my will I
should never go forth, but should end my days here in Beaulieu. It hath
been my home as far back as my mind can carry me, and it is a sore thing
for me to have to leave it.”
“Life brings many a cross,” said the Abbot gently. “Who is without them?
Your going forth is a grief to us as well as to yourself. But there
is no help. I had given my foreword and sacred promise to your father,
Edric the Franklin, that at the age of twenty you should be sent out
into the world to see for yourself how you liked the savor of it. Seat
thee upon the settle, Alleyne, for you may need rest ere long.”
The youth sat down as directed, but reluctantly and with diffidence.
The Abbot stood by the narrow window, and his long black shadow fell
slantwise across the rush-strewn floor.
“Twenty years ago,” he said, “your father, the Franklin of Minstead,
died, leaving to the Abbey three hides of rich land in the hundred of
Malwood, and leaving to us also his infant son on condition that we
should rear him until he came to man's estate. This he did partly
because your mother was dead, and partly because your elder brother,
now Socman of Minstead, had already given sign of that fierce and rude
nature which would make him no fit companion for you. It was his desire
and request, however, that you should not remain in the cloisters, but
should at a ripe age return into the world.”
“But, father,” interrupted the young man, “it is surely true that I am
already advanced several degrees in clerkship?”
“Yes, fair son, but not so far as to bar you from the garb you now wear
or the life which you must now lead. You have been porter?”
“Yes, father.”
“Exorcist?”
“Yes, father.”
“Reader?”
“Yes, father.”
“Acolyte?”
“Yes, father.”
“But have sworn no vow of constancy or chastity?”
“No, father.”
“Then you are free to follow a worldly life. But let me hear, ere you
start, what gifts you take away with you from Beaulieu? Some I already
know. There is the playing of the citole and the rebeck. Our choir will
be dumb without you. You carve too?”
The youth's pale face flushed with the pride of the skilled workman.
“Yes, holy father,” he answered. “Thanks to good brother Bartholomew, I
carve in wood and in ivory, and can do something also in silver and
in bronze. From brother Francis I have learned to paint on vellum, on
glass, and on metal, with a knowledge of those pigments and essences
which can preserve the color against damp or a biting air. Brother
Luke hath given me some skill in damask work, and in the enamelling of
shrines, tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs. For the rest, I know a
little of the making of covers, the cutting of precious stones, and the
fashioning of instruments.”
“A goodly list, truly,” cried the superior with a smile. “What clerk of
Cambrig or of Oxenford could say as much? But of thy reading--hast not
so much to show there, I fear?”
“No, father, it hath been slight enough. Yet, thanks to our good
chancellor, I am not wholly unlettered. I have read Ockham, Bradwardine,
and other of the schoolmen, together with the learned Duns Scotus and
the book of the holy Aquinas.”
“But of the things of this world, what have you gathered from your
reading? From this high window you may catch a glimpse over the wooden
point and the smoke of Bucklershard of the mouth of the Exe, and the
shining sea. Now, I pray you, Alleyne, if a man were to take a ship and
spread sail across yonder waters, where might he hope to arrive?”
The youth pondered, and drew a plan amongst the rushes with the point
of his staff. “Holy father,” said he, “he would come upon those parts
of France which are held by the King's Majesty. But if he trended to the
south he might reach Spain and the Barbary States. To his north would be
Flanders and the country of the Eastlanders and of the Muscovites.”
“True. And how if, after reaching the King's possessions, he still
journeyed on to the eastward?”
“He would then come upon that part of France which is still in dispute,
and he might hope to reach the famous city of Avignon, where dwells our
blessed father, the prop of Christendom.”
“And then?”
“Then he would pass through the land of the Almains and the great Roman
Empire, and so to the country of the Huns and of the Lithuanian pagans,
beyond which lies the great city of Constantine and the kingdom of the
unclean followers of Mahmoud.”
“And beyond that, fair son?”
“Beyond that is Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and the great river which
hath its source in the Garden of Eden.”
“And then?”
“Nay, good father, I cannot tell. Methinks the end of the world is not
far from there.”
“Then we can still find something to teach thee, Alleyne,” said the
Abbot complaisantly. “Know that many strange nations lie betwixt there
and the end of the world. There is the country of the Amazons, and the
country of the dwarfs, and the country of the fair but evil women who
slay with beholding, like the basilisk. Beyond that again is the kingdom
of Prester John and of the great Cham. These things I know for very
sooth, for I had them from that pious Christian and valiant knight, Sir
John de Mandeville, who stopped twice at Beaulieu on his way to and from
Southampton, and discoursed to us concerning what he had seen from the
reader's desk in the refectory, until there was many a good brother who
got neither bit nor sup, so stricken were they by his strange tales.”
“I would fain know, father,” asked the young man, “what there may be at
the end of the world?”
“There are some things,” replied the Abbot gravely, “into which it was
never intended that we should inquire. But you have a long road before
you. Whither will you first turn?”
“To my brother's at Minstead. If he be indeed an ungodly and violent
man, there is the more need that I should seek him out and see whether I
cannot turn him to better ways.”
The Abbot shook his head. “The Socman of Minstead hath earned an evil
name over the country side,” he said. “If you must go to him, see at
least that he doth not turn you from the narrow path upon which you have
learned to tread. But you are in God's keeping, and Godward should you
ever look in danger and in trouble. Above all, shun the snares of women,
for they are ever set for the foolish feet of the young. Kneel down, my
child, and take an old man's blessing.”
Alleyne Edricson bent his head while the Abbot poured out his heartfelt
supplication that Heaven would watch over this young soul, now going
forth into the darkness and danger of the world. It was no mere form for
either of them. To them the outside life of mankind did indeed seem to
be one of violence and of sin, beset with physical and still more with
spiritual danger. Heaven, too, was very near to them in those days.
God's direct agency was to be seen in the thunder and the rainbow,
the whirlwind and the lightning. To the believer, clouds of angels and
confessors, and martyrs, armies of the sainted and the saved, were
ever stooping over their struggling brethren upon earth, raising,
encouraging, and supporting them. It was then with a lighter heart and
a stouter courage that the young man turned from the Abbot's room, while
the latter, following him to the stair-head, finally commended him to
the protection of the holy Julian, patron of travellers.
Underneath, in the porch of the Abbey, the monks had gathered to give
him a last God-speed. Many had brought some parting token by which he
should remember them. There was brother Bartholomew with a crucifix of
rare carved ivory, and brother Luke with a white-backed psalter
adorned with golden bees, and brother Francis with the “Slaying of the
Innocents” most daintily set forth upon vellum. All these were
duly packed away deep in the traveller's scrip, and above them old
pippin-faced brother Athanasius had placed a parcel of simnel bread and
rammel cheese, with a small flask of the famous blue-sealed Abbey wine.
So, amid hand-shakings and laughings and blessings, Alleyne Edricson
turned his back upon Beaulieu.
At the turn of the road he stopped and gazed back. There was the
wide-spread building which he knew so well, the Abbot's house, the long
church, the cloisters with their line of arches, all bathed and mellowed
in the evening sun. There too was the broad sweep of the river Exe, the
old stone well, the canopied niche of the Virgin, and in the centre of
all the cluster of white-robed figures who waved their hands to him. A
sudden mist swam up before the young man's eyes, and he turned away upon
his journey with a heavy heart and a choking throat.
CHAPTER III. HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.
It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty, with
young life glowing in his veins and all the wide world before him,
should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had
left. Long ere Alleyne was out of sound of the Beaulieu bells he was
striding sturdily along, swinging his staff and whistling as merrily as
the birds in the thicket. It was an evening to raise a man's heart. The
sun shining slantwise through the trees threw delicate traceries across
the road, with bars of golden light between. Away in the distance
before and behind, the green boughs, now turning in places to a coppery
redness, shot their broad arches across the track. The still summer air
was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here and there a
tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again
in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of
insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere--the
sweet restful silence of nature.
And yet there was no want of life--the whole wide wood was full of it.
Now it was a lithe, furtive stoat which shot across the path upon some
fell errand of its own; then it was a wild cat which squatted upon the
outlying branch of an oak and peeped at the traveller with a yellow and
dubious eye. Once it was a wild sow which scuttled out of the bracken,
with two young sounders at her heels, and once a lordly red staggard
walked daintily out from among the tree trunks, and looked around
him with the fearless gaze of one who lived under the King's own high
protection. Alleyne gave his staff a merry flourish, however, and the
red deer bethought him that the King was far off, so streaked away from
whence he came.
The youth had now journeyed considerably beyond the furthest domains of
the Abbey. He was the more surprised therefore when, on coming round a
turn in the path, he perceived a man clad in the familiar garb of the
order, and seated in a clump of heather by the roadside. Alleyne had
known every brother well, but this was a face which was new to him--a
face which was very red and puffed, working this way and that, as
though the man were sore perplexed in his mind. Once he shook both hands
furiously in the air, and twice he sprang from his seat and hurried down
the road. When he rose, however, Alleyne observed that his robe was much
too long and loose for him in every direction, trailing upon the ground
and bagging about his ankles, so that even with trussed-up skirts he
could make little progress. He ran once, but the long gown clogged him
so that he slowed down into a shambling walk, and finally plumped into
the heather once more.
“Young friend,” said he, when Alleyne was abreast of him, “I fear from
thy garb that thou canst know little of the Abbey of Beaulieu.”
“Then you are in error, friend,” the clerk answered, “for I have spent
all my days within its walls.”