The White Company
“Hast so indeed?” cried he. “Then perhaps canst tell me the name of
a great loathly lump of a brother wi' freckled face an' a hand like a
spade. His eyes were black an' his hair was red an' his voice like
the parish bull. I trow that there cannot be two alike in the same
cloisters.”
“That surely can be no other than brother John,” said Alleyne. “I trust
he has done you no wrong, that you should be so hot against him.”
“Wrong, quotha?” cried the other, jumping out of the heather. “Wrong!
why he hath stolen every plack of clothing off my back, if that be a
wrong, and hath left me here in this sorry frock of white falding, so
that I have shame to go back to my wife, lest she think that I have
donned her old kirtle. Harrow and alas that ever I should have met him!”
“But how came this?” asked the young clerk, who could scarce keep from
laughter at the sight of the hot little man so swathed in the great
white cloak.
“It came in this way,” he said, sitting down once more: “I was passing
this way, hoping to reach Lymington ere nightfall when I came on this
red-headed knave seated even where we are sitting now. I uncovered and
louted as I passed thinking that he might be a holy man at his orisons,
but he called to me and asked me if I had heard speak of the new
indulgence in favor of the Cistercians. 'Not I,' I answered. 'Then the
worse for thy soul!' said he; and with that he broke into a long tale
how that on account of the virtues of the Abbot Berghersh it had been
decreed by the Pope that whoever should wear the habit of a monk of
Beaulieu for as long as he might say the seven psalms of David should be
assured of the kingdom of Heaven. When I heard this I prayed him on
my knees that he would give me the use of his gown, which after many
contentions he at last agreed to do, on my paying him three marks
towards the regilding of the image of Laurence the martyr. Having
stripped his robe, I had no choice but to let him have the wearing of my
good leathern jerkin and hose, for, as he said, it was chilling to
the blood and unseemly to the eye to stand frockless whilst I made my
orisons. He had scarce got them on, and it was a sore labor, seeing that
my inches will scarce match my girth--he had scarce got them on, I say,
and I not yet at the end of the second psalm, when he bade me do honor
to my new dress, and with that set off down the road as fast as feet
would carry him. For myself, I could no more run than if I had been sown
in a sack; so here I sit, and here I am like to sit, before I set eyes
upon my clothes again.”
“Nay, friend, take it not so sadly,” said Alleyne, clapping the
disconsolate one upon the shoulder. “Canst change thy robe for a jerkin
once more at the Abbey, unless perchance you have a friend near at
hand.”
“That have I,” he answered, “and close; but I care not to go nigh him in
this plight, for his wife hath a gibing tongue, and will spread the
tale until I could not show my face in any market from Fordingbridge
to Southampton. But if you, fair sir, out of your kind charity would be
pleased to go a matter of two bow-shots out of your way, you would do me
such a service as I could scarce repay.”
“With all my heart,” said Alleyne readily.
“Then take this pathway on the left, I pray thee, and then the
deer-track which passes on the right. You will then see under a great
beech-tree the hut of a charcoal-burner. Give him my name, good sir,
the name of Peter the fuller, of Lymington, and ask him for a change of
raiment, that I may pursue my journey without delay. There are reasons
why he would be loth to refuse me.”
Alleyne started off along the path indicated, and soon found the log-hut
where the burner dwelt. He was away faggot-cutting in the forest, but
his wife, a ruddy bustling dame, found the needful garments and tied
them into a bundle. While she busied herself in finding and folding
them, Alleyne Edricson stood by the open door looking in at her with
much interest and some distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a
woman before. She had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen
stuff, and a brass brooch the size of a cheese-cake stuck in the front
of it.
“Peter the fuller!” she kept repeating. “Marry come up! if I were Peter
the fuller's wife I would teach him better than to give his clothes to
the first knave who asks for them. But he was always a poor, fond, silly
creature, was Peter, though we are beholden to him for helping to bury
our second son Wat, who was a 'prentice to him at Lymington in the year
of the Black Death. But who are you, young sir?”
“I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead.”
“Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could read it
from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye. Hast learned from the monks, I
trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a lazar-house. Out upon them! that
they should dishonor their own mothers by such teaching. A pretty world
it would be with all the women out of it.”
“Heaven forfend that such a thing should come to pass!” said Alleyne.
“Amen and amen! But thou art a pretty lad, and the prettier for thy
modest ways. It is easy to see from thy cheek that thou hast not spent
thy days in the rain and the heat and the wind, as my poor Wat hath been
forced to do.”
“I have indeed seen little of life, good dame.”
“Wilt find nothing in it to pay for the loss of thy own freshness. Here
are the clothes, and Peter can leave them when next he comes this way.
Holy Virgin! see the dust upon thy doublet! It were easy to see that
there is no woman to tend to thee. So!--that is better. Now buss me,
boy.”
Alleyne stooped and kissed her, for the kiss was the common salutation
of the age, and, as Erasmus long afterwards remarked, more used in
England than in any other country. Yet it sent the blood to his temples
again, and he wondered, as he turned away, what the Abbot Berghersh
would have answered to so frank an invitation. He was still tingling
from this new experience when he came out upon the high-road and saw a
sight which drove all other thoughts from his mind.
Some way down from where he had left him the unfortunate Peter was
stamping and raving tenfold worse than before. Now, however, instead of
the great white cloak, he had no clothes on at all, save a short woollen
shirt and a pair of leather shoes. Far down the road a long-legged
figure was running, with a bundle under one arm and the other hand to
his side, like a man who laughs until he is sore.
“See him!” yelled Peter. “Look to him! You shall be my witness. He shall
see Winchester jail for this. See where he goes with my cloak under his
arm!”
“Who then?” cried Alleyne.
“Who but that cursed brother John. He hath not left me clothes enough to
make a gallybagger. The double thief hath cozened me out of my gown.”
“Stay though, my friend, it was his gown,” objected Alleyne.
“It boots not. He hath them all--gown, jerkin, hosen and all. Gramercy
to him that he left me the shirt and the shoon. I doubt not that he will
be back for them anon.”
“But how came this?” asked Alleyne, open-eyed with astonishment.
“Are those the clothes? For dear charity's sake give them to me. Not the
Pope himself shall have these from me, though he sent the whole college
of cardinals to ask it. How came it? Why, you had scarce gone ere this
loathly John came running back again, and, when I oped mouth to reproach
him, he asked me whether it was indeed likely that a man of prayer would
leave his own godly raiment in order to take a layman's jerkin. He
had, he said, but gone for a while that I might be the freer for my
devotions. On this I plucked off the gown, and he with much show of
haste did begin to undo his points; but when I threw his frock down
he clipped it up and ran off all untrussed, leaving me in this sorry
plight. He laughed so the while, like a great croaking frog, that I
might have caught him had my breath not been as short as his legs were
long.”
The young man listened to this tale of wrong with all the seriousness
that he could maintain; but at the sight of the pursy red-faced man and
the dignity with which he bore him, the laughter came so thick upon him
that he had to lean up against a tree-trunk. The fuller looked sadly and
gravely at him; but finding that he still laughed, he bowed with much
mock politeness and stalked onwards in his borrowed clothes. Alleyne
watched him until he was small in the distance, and then, wiping the
tears from his eyes, he set off briskly once more upon his journey.
CHAPTER IV. HOW THE BAILIFF OF SOUTHAMPTON SLEW THE TWO MASTERLESS MEN.
The road along which he travelled was scarce as populous as most other
roads in the kingdom, and far less so than those which lie between the
larger towns. Yet from time to time Alleyne met other wayfarers, and
more than once was overtaken by strings of pack mules and horsemen
journeying in the same direction as himself. Once a begging friar came
limping along in a brown habit, imploring in a most dolorous voice to
give him a single groat to buy bread wherewith to save himself from
impending death. Alleyne passed him swiftly by, for he had learned from
the monks to have no love for the wandering friars, and, besides, there
was a great half-gnawed mutton bone sticking out of his pouch to prove
him a liar. Swiftly as he went, however, he could not escape the curse
of the four blessed evangelists which the mendicant howled behind him.
So dreadful are his execrations that the frightened lad thrust his
fingers into his ear-holes, and ran until the fellow was but a brown
smirch upon the yellow road.
Further on, at the edge of the woodland, he came upon a chapman and his
wife, who sat upon a fallen tree. He had put his pack down as a table,
and the two of them were devouring a great pasty, and washing it down
with some drink from a stone jar. The chapman broke a rough jest as he
passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them,
on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor
her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief,
and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he
seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of man
to man.
But even as he brooded sadly over it and pined for the sweet peace of
the Abbey, he came on an open space dotted with holly bushes, where was
the strangest sight that he had yet chanced upon. Near to the pathway
lay a long clump of greenery, and from behind this there stuck straight
up into the air four human legs clad in parti-colored hosen, yellow and
black. Strangest of all was when a brisk tune struck suddenly up and
the four legs began to kick and twitter in time to the music. Walking on
tiptoe round the bushes, he stood in amazement to see two men bounding
about on their heads, while they played, the one a viol and the other
a pipe, as merrily and as truly as though they were seated in a choir.
Alleyne crossed himself as he gazed at this unnatural sight, and
could scarce hold his ground with a steady face, when the two dancers,
catching sight of him, came bouncing in his direction. A spear's length
from him, they each threw a somersault into the air, and came down upon
their feet with smirking faces and their hands over their hearts.
“A guerdon--a guerdon, my knight of the staring eyes!” cried one.
“A gift, my prince!” shouted the other. “Any trifle will serve--a purse
of gold, or even a jewelled goblet.”
Alleyne thought of what he had read of demoniac possession--the
jumpings, the twitchings, the wild talk. It was in his mind to repeat
over the exorcism proper to such attacks; but the two burst out
a-laughing at his scared face, and turning on to their heads once more,
clapped their heels in derision.