The White Company
so that I doubt if he will so much as feel a twinge of purgatory. I came
up even as the seneschal's archers were tying him up, and I gave him my
fore-word that I would bide with him until he had passed. There were two
leaden crowns among the silver, but I would not for that stand in the
way of his salvation.”
“By Saint Paul!” said Sir Nigel, “if you have indeed this power to open
and to shut the gates of hope, then indeed you stand high above mankind.
But if you do but claim to have it, and yet have it not, then it seems
to me, master clerk, that you may yourself find the gate barred when you
shall ask admittance.”
“Small of faith! Small of faith!” cried the sompnour. “Ah, Sir Didymus
yet walks upon earth! And yet no words of doubt can bring anger to mine
heart, or a bitter word to my lip, for am I not a poor unworthy worker
in the cause of gentleness and peace? Of all these pardons which I bear
every one is stamped and signed by our holy father, the prop and centre
of Christendom.”
“Which of them?” asked Sir Nigel.
“Ha, ha!” cried the pardoner, shaking a jewelled forefinger. “Thou
wouldst be deep in the secrets of mother Church? Know then that I have
both in my scrip. Those who hold with Urban shall have Urban's pardon,
while I have Clement's for the Clementist--or he who is in doubt may
have both, so that come what may he shall be secure. I pray you that you
will buy one, for war is bloody work, and the end is sudden with little
time for thought or shrift. Or you, sir, for you seem to me to be a man
who would do ill to trust to your own merits.” This to the alderman of
Norwich, who had listened to him with a frowning brow and a sneering
lip.
“When I sell my cloth,” quoth he, “he who buys may weigh and feel and
handle. These goods which you sell are not to be seen, nor is there
any proof that you hold them. Certes, if mortal man might control God's
mercy, it would be one of a lofty and God-like life, and not one who is
decked out with rings and chains and silks, like a pleasure-wench at a
kermesse.
“Thou wicked and shameless man!” cried the clerk. “Dost thou dare to
raise thy voice against the unworthy servant of mother Church?”
“Unworthy enough!” quoth David Micheldene. “I would have you to know,
clerk, that I am a free English burgher, and that I dare say my mind to
our father the Pope himself, let alone such a lacquey's lacquey as you!”
“Base-born and foul-mouthed knave!” cried the sompnour. “You prate of
holy things, to which your hog's mind can never rise. Keep silence, lest
I call a curse upon you!”
“Silence yourself!” roared the other. “Foul bird! we found thee by the
gallows like a carrion-crow. A fine life thou hast of it with thy silks
and thy baubles, cozening the last few shillings from the pouches of
dying men. A fig for thy curse! Bide here, if you will take my rede, for
we will make England too hot for such as you, when Master Wicliff has
the ordering of it. Thou vile thief! it is you, and such as you, who
bring an evil name upon the many churchmen who lead a pure and a holy
life. Thou outside the door of heaven! Art more like to be inside the
door of hell.”
At this crowning insult the sompnour, with a face ashen with rage,
raised up a quivering hand and began pouring Latin imprecations upon
the angry alderman. The latter, however, was not a man to be quelled by
words, for he caught up his ell-measure sword-sheath and belabored the
cursing clerk with it. The latter, unable to escape from the shower
of blows, set spurs to his mule and rode for his life, with his enemy
thundering behind him. At sight of his master's sudden departure, the
varlet Watkin set off after him, with the pack-mule beside him, so that
the four clattered away down the road together, until they swept round
a curve and their babble was but a drone in the distance. Sir Nigel
and Alleyne gazed in astonishment at one another, while Ford burst out
a-laughing.
“Pardieu!” said the knight, “this David Micheldene must be one of those
Lollards about whom Father Christopher of the priory had so much to say.
Yet he seemed to be no bad man from what I have seen of him.”
“I have heard that Wicliff hath many followers in Norwich,” answered
Alleyne.
“By St. Paul! I have no great love for them,” quoth Sir Nigel. “I am a
man who am slow to change; and, if you take away from me the faith that
I have been taught, it would be long ere I could learn one to set in its
place. It is but a chip here and a chip there, yet it may bring the tree
down in time. Yet, on the other hand, I cannot but think it shame that a
man should turn God's mercy on and off, as a cellarman doth wine with a
spigot.”
“Nor is it,” said Alleyne, “part of the teachings of that mother Church
of which he had so much to say. There was sooth in what the alderman
said of it.”
“Then, by St. Paul! they may settle it betwixt them,” quoth Sir Nigel.
“For me, I serve God, the king and my lady; and so long as I can keep
the path of honor I am well content. My creed shall ever be that of
Chandos:
“Fais ce que dois--adviegne que peut,
C'est commande au chevalier.”
CHAPTER XXVIII. HOW THE COMRADES CAME OVER THE MARCHES OF FRANCE
After passing Cahors, the party branched away from the main road, and
leaving the river to the north of them, followed a smaller track which
wound over a vast and desolate plain. This path led them amid marshes
and woods, until it brought them out into a glade with a broad stream
swirling swiftly down the centre of it. Through this the horses splashed
their way, and on the farther shore Sir Nigel announced to them that
they were now within the borders of the land of France. For some miles
they still followed the same lonely track, which led them through
a dense wood, and then widening out, curved down to an open rolling
country, such as they had traversed between Aiguillon and Cahors.
If it were grim and desolate upon the English border, however, what
can describe the hideous barrenness of this ten times harried tract
of France? The whole face of the country was scarred and disfigured,
mottled over with the black blotches of burned farm-steadings, and
the gray, gaunt gable-ends of what had been chateaux. Broken fences,
crumbling walls, vineyards littered with stones, the shattered arches of
bridges--look where you might, the signs of ruin and rapine met the eye.
Here and there only, on the farthest sky-line, the gnarled turrets of a
castle, or the graceful pinnacles of church or of monastery showed where
the forces of the sword or of the spirit had preserved some small islet
of security in this universal flood of misery. Moodily and in silence
the little party rode along the narrow and irregular track, their hearts
weighed down by this far-stretching land of despair. It was indeed
a stricken and a blighted country, and a man might have ridden from
Auvergne in the north to the marches of Foix, nor ever seen a smiling
village or a thriving homestead.
From time to time as they advanced they saw strange lean figures
scraping and scratching amid the weeds and thistles, who, on sight
of the band of horsemen, threw up their arms and dived in among the
brushwood, as shy and as swift as wild animals. More than once, however,
they came on families by the wayside, who were too weak from hunger and
disease to fly, so that they could but sit like hares on a tussock, with
panting chests and terror in their eyes. So gaunt were these poor folk,
so worn and spent--with bent and knotted frames, and sullen, hopeless,
mutinous faces--that it made the young Englishman heart-sick to look
upon them. Indeed, it seemed as though all hope and light had gone so
far from them that it was not to be brought back; for when Sir Nigel
threw down a handful of silver among them there came no softening of
their lined faces, but they clutched greedily at the coins, peering
questioningly at him, and champing with their animal jaws. Here and
there amid the brushwood the travellers saw the rude bundle of
sticks which served them as a home--more like a fowl's nest than the
dwelling-place of man. Yet why should they build and strive, when the
first adventurer who passed would set torch to their thatch, and when
their own feudal lord would wring from them with blows and curses the
last fruits of their toil? They sat at the lowest depth of human misery,
and hugged a bitter comfort to their souls as they realized that they
could go no lower. Yet they had still the human gift of speech, and
would take council among themselves in their brushwood hovels, glaring
with bleared eyes and pointing with thin fingers at the great widespread
chateaux which ate like a cancer into the life of the country-side. When
such men, who are beyond hope and fear, begin in their dim minds to see
the source of their woes, it may be an evil time for those who have wronged
them. The weak man becomes strong when he has nothing, for then only can
he feel the wild, mad thrill of despair. High and strong the chateaux,
lowly and weak the brushwood hut; but God help the seigneur and his lady
when the men of the brushwood set their hands to the work of revenge!
Through such country did the party ride for eight or it might be nine
miles, until the sun began to slope down in the west and their shadows
to stream down the road in front of them. Wary and careful they must
be, with watchful eyes to the right and the left, for this was no man's
land, and their only passports were those which hung from their belts.
Frenchmen and Englishmen, Gascon and Provencal, Brabanter, Tardvenu,
Scorcher, Flayer, and Free Companion, wandered and struggled over the
whole of this accursed district. So bare and cheerless was the outlook,
and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as
to whether he might find food and quarters for his little troop. It was
a relief to him, therefore, when their narrow track opened out upon a
larger road, and they saw some little way down it a square white house
with a great bunch of holly hung out at the end of a stick from one of
the upper windows.
“By St. Paul!” said he, “I am right glad; for I had feared that we might
have neither provant nor herbergage. Ride on, Alleyne, and tell this
inn-keeper that an English knight with his party will lodge with him
this night.”
Alleyne set spurs to his horse and reached the inn door a long bow-shot
before his companions. Neither varlet nor ostler could be seen, so he
pushed open the door and called loudly for the landlord. Three times he
shouted, but, receiving no reply, he opened an inner door and advanced
into the chief guest-room of the hostel.
A very cheerful wood-fire was sputtering and cracking in an open grate
at the further end of the apartment. At one side of this fire, in a
high-backed oak chair, sat a lady, her face turned towards the door.
The firelight played over her features, and Alleyne thought that he had
never seen such queenly power, such dignity and strength, upon a woman's
face. She might have been five-and-thirty years of age, with aquiline
nose, firm yet sensitive mouth, dark curving brows, and deep-set eyes
which shone and sparkled with a shifting brilliancy. Beautiful as she
was, it was not her beauty which impressed itself upon the beholder;
it was her strength, her power, the sense of wisdom which hung over
the broad white brow, the decision which lay in the square jaw and
delicately moulded chin. A chaplet of pearls sparkled amid her black
hair, with a gauze of silver network flowing back from it over her
shoulders; a black mantle was swathed round her, and she leaned back in
her chair as one who is fresh from a journey.
In the opposite corner there sat a very burly and broad-shouldered man,