The White Company
“By Saint Paul! I have never heard that he had shown so much love for
you that you should mourn him so.”
“Yet he was my brother--the only kith or kin that I had upon earth.
Mayhap he had cause to be bitter against me, for his land was given to
the abbey for my upbringing. Alas! alas! and I raised my staff against
him when last we met! He has been slain--and slain, I fear, amidst crime
and violence.”
“Ha!” said Sir Nigel. “Read on, I pray you.”
“'God be with thee, my honored lord, and have thee in his holy keeping.
The Lady Loring hath asked me to set down in writing what hath befallen
at Twynham, and all that concerns the death of thy ill neighbor the
Socman of Minstead. For when ye had left us, this evil man gathered
around him all outlaws, villeins, and masterless men, until they were
come to such a force that they slew and scattered the king's men who
went against them. Then, coming forth from the woods, they laid siege to
thy castle, and for two days they girt us in and shot hard against us,
with such numbers as were a marvel to see. Yet the Lady Loring held the
place stoutly, and on the second day the Socman was slain--by his own
men, as some think--so that we were delivered from their hands; for
which praise be to all the saints, and more especially to the holy
Anselm, upon whose feast it came to pass. The Lady Loring, and the Lady
Maude, thy fair daughter, are in good health; and so also am I, save for
an imposthume of the toe-joint, which hath been sent me for my sins. May
all the saints preserve thee!'”
“It was the vision of the Lady Tiphaine,” said Sir Nigel, after a pause.
“Marked you not how she said that the leader was one with a yellow
beard, and how he fell before the gate. But how came it, Alleyne, that
this woman, to whom all things are as crystal, and who hath not said one
word which has not come to pass, was yet so led astray as to say that
your thoughts turned to Twynham Castle even more than my own?”
“My fair lord,” said Alleyne, with a flush on his weather-stained
cheeks, “the Lady Tiphaine may have spoken sooth when she said it; for
Twynham Castle is in my heart by day and in my dreams by night.”
“Ha!” cried Sir Nigel, with a sidelong glance.
“Yes, my fair lord; for indeed I love your daughter, the Lady Maude;
and, unworthy as I am, I would give my heart's blood to serve her.”
“By St. Paul! Edricson,” said the knight coldly, arching his eyebrows,
“you aim high in this matter. Our blood is very old.”
“And mine also is very old,” answered the squire.
“And the Lady Maude is our single child. All our name and lands centre
upon her.”
“Alas! that I should say it, but I also am now the only Edricson.”
“And why have I not heard this from you before, Alleyne? In sooth, I
think that you have used me ill.”
“Nay, my fair lord, say not so; for I know not whether your daughter
loves me, and there is no pledge between us.”
Sir Nigel pondered for a few moments, and then burst out a-laughing. “By
St. Paul!” said he, “I know not why I should mix in the matter; for I
have ever found that the Lady Maud was very well able to
look to her own affairs. Since first she could stamp her little foot,
she hath ever been able to get that for which she craved; and if she set
her heart on thee, Alleyne, and thou on her, I do not think that this
Spanish king, with his three-score thousand men, could hold you apart.
Yet this I will say, that I would see you a full knight ere you go to my
daughter with words of love. I have ever said that a brave lance should
wed her; and, by my soul! Edricson, if God spare you, I think that you
will acquit yourself well. But enough of such trifles, for we have our
work before us, and it will be time to speak of this matter when we see
the white cliffs of England once more. Go to Sir William Felton, I pray
you, and ask him to come hither, for it is time that we were marching.
There is no pass at the further end of the valley, and it is a perilous
place should an enemy come upon us.”
Alleyne delivered his message, and then wandered forth from the camp,
for his mind was all in a whirl with this unexpected news, and with his
talk with Sir Nigel. Sitting upon a rock, with his burning brow resting
upon his hands, he thought of his brother, of their quarrel, of the Lady
Maude in her bedraggled riding-dress, of the gray old castle, of the
proud pale face in the armory, and of the last fiery words with which
she had sped him on his way. Then he was but a penniless, monk-bred lad,
unknown and unfriended. Now he was himself Socman of Minstead, the head
of an old stock, and the lord of an estate which, if reduced from its
former size, was still ample to preserve the dignity of his family.
Further, he had become a man of experience, was counted brave among
brave men, had won the esteem and confidence of her father, and, above
all, had been listened to by him when he told him the secret of his
love. As to the gaining of knighthood, in such stirring times it was no
great matter for a brave squire of gentle birth to aspire to that honor.
He would leave his bones among these Spanish ravines, or he would do
some deed which would call the eyes of men upon him.
Alleyne was still seated on the rock, his griefs and his joys drifting
swiftly over his mind like the shadow of clouds upon a sunlit meadow,
when of a sudden he became conscious of a low, deep sound which came
booming up to him through the fog. Close behind him he could hear the
murmur of the bowmen, the occasional bursts of hoarse laughter, and the
champing and stamping of their horses. Behind it all, however, came that
low-pitched, deep-toned hum, which seemed to come from every quarter and
to fill the whole air. In the old monastic days he remembered to
have heard such a sound when he had walked out one windy night at
Bucklershard, and had listened to the long waves breaking upon the
shingly shore. Here, however, was neither wind nor sea, and yet the dull
murmur rose ever louder and stronger out of the heart of the rolling sea
of vapor. He turned and ran to the camp, shouting an alarm at the top of
his voice.
It was but a hundred paces, and yet ere he had crossed it every bowman
was ready at his horse's head, and the group of knights were out and
listening intently to the ominous sound.
“It is a great body of horse,” said Sir William Felton, “and they are
riding very swiftly hitherwards.”
“Yet they must be from the prince's army,” remarked Sir Richard Causton,
“for they come from the north.”
“Nay,” said the Earl of Angus, “it is not so certain; for the peasant
with whom we spoke last night said that it was rumored that Don Tello,
the Spanish king's brother, had ridden with six thousand chosen men to
beat up the prince's camp. It may be that on their backward road they
have come this way.”
“By St. Paul!” cried Sir Nigel, “I think that it is even as you say, for
that same peasant had a sour face and a shifting eye, as one who bore us
little good will. I doubt not that he has brought these cavaliers upon
us.”
“But the mist covers us,” said Sir Simon Burley. “We have yet time to
ride through the further end of the pass.”
“Were we a troop of mountain goats we might do so,” answered Sir William
Felton, “but it is not to be passed by a company of horsemen. If these
be indeed Don Tello and his men, then we must bide where we are, and do
what we can to make them rue the day that they found us in their path.”
“Well spoken, William!” cried Sir Nigel, in high delight. “If there be
so many as has been said, then there will be much honor to be gained
from them and every hope of advancement. But the sound has ceased, and I
fear that they have gone some other way.”
“Or mayhap they have come to the mouth of the gorge, and are marshalling
their ranks. Hush and hearken! for they are no great way from us.”
The Company stood peering into the dense fog-wreath, amidst a silence so
profound that the dripping of the water from the rocks and the breathing
of the horses grew loud upon the ear. Suddenly from out the sea of mist
came the shrill sound of a neigh, followed by a long blast upon a bugle.
“It is a Spanish call, my fair lord,” said Black Simon. “It is used by
their prickers and huntsmen when the beast hath not fled, but is still
in its lair.”
“By my faith!” said Sir Nigel, smiling, “if they are in a humor for
venerie we may promise them some sport ere they sound the mort over us.
But there is a hill in the centre of the gorge on which we might take
our stand.”
“I marked it yester-night,” said Felton, “and no better spot could be
found for our purpose, for it is very steep at the back. It is but a
bow-shot to the left, and, indeed, I can see the shadow of it.”
The whole Company, leading their horses, passed across to the small hill
which loomed in front of them out of the mist. It was indeed admirably
designed for defence, for it sloped down in front, all jagged and
boulder-strewn, while it fell away in a sheer cliff of a hundred feet or
more. On the summit was a small uneven plateau, with a stretch across of
a hundred paces, and a depth of half as much again.
“Unloose the horses!” said Sir Nigel. “We have no space for them, and if
we hold our own we shall have horses and to spare when this day's work
is done. Nay, keep yours, my fair sirs, for we may have work for them.
Aylward, Johnston, let your men form a harrow on either side of the
ridge. Sir Oliver and you, my Lord Angus, I give you the right wing, and
the left to you, Sir Simon, and to you, Sir Richard Causton. I and Sir
William Felton will hold the centre with our men-at-arms. Now order
the ranks, and fling wide the banners, for our souls are God's and our
bodies the king's, and our swords for Saint George and for England!”
Sir Nigel had scarcely spoken when the mist seemed to thin in the
valley, and to shred away into long ragged clouds which trailed from
the edges of the cliffs. The gorge in which they had camped was a mere
wedge-shaped cleft among the hills, three-quarters of a mile deep, with
the small rugged rising upon which they stood at the further end, and
the brown crags walling it in on three sides. As the mist parted, and
the sun broke through, it gleamed and shimmered with dazzling brightness
upon the armor and headpieces of a vast body of horsemen who stretched
across the barranca from one cliff to the other, and extended backwards
until their rear guard were far out upon the plain beyond. Line after
line, and rank after rank, they choked the neck of the valley with
a long vista of tossing pennons, twinkling lances, waving plumes and
streaming banderoles, while the curvets and gambades of the chargers
lent a constant motion and shimmer to the glittering, many-colored mass.
A yell of exultation, and a forest of waving steel through the length
and breadth of their column, announced that they could at last see their
entrapped enemies, while the swelling notes of a hundred bugles and
drums, mixed with the clash of Moorish cymbals, broke forth into a proud
peal of martial triumph. Strange it was to these gallant and sparkling
cavaliers of Spain to look upon this handful of men upon the hill, the
thin lines of bowmen, the knots of knights and men-at-arms with armor
rusted and discolored from long service, and to learn that these were
indeed the soldiers whose fame and prowess had been the camp-fire talk
of every army in Christendom. Very still and silent they stood, leaning
upon their bows, while their leaders took counsel together in front of
them. No clang of bugle rose from their stern ranks, but in the centre
waved the leopards of England, on the right the ensign of their Company
with the roses of Loring, and on the left, over three score of Welsh