The White Company
and good.
He would bide with him for a time and do what he might to serve him.
If, on the other hand, he should have hardened his heart against him,
he could only go on his way and do the best he might by his skill as
a craftsman and a scrivener. At the end of a year he would be free
to return to the cloisters, for such had been his father's bequest. A
monkish upbringing, one year in the world after the age of twenty, and
then a free selection one way or the other--it was a strange course
which had been marked out for him. Such as it was, however, he had no
choice but to follow it, and if he were to begin by making a friend
of his brother he had best wait until morning before he knocked at his
dwelling.
The rude plank door was ajar, but as Alleyne approached it there came
from within such a gust of rough laughter and clatter of tongues that
he stood irresolute upon the threshold. Summoning courage, however, and
reflecting that it was a public dwelling, in which he had as much right
as any other man, he pushed it open and stepped into the common room.
Though it was an autumn evening and somewhat warm, a huge fire of heaped
billets of wood crackled and sparkled in a broad, open grate, some of
the smoke escaping up a rude chimney, but the greater part rolling out
into the room, so that the air was thick with it, and a man coming from
without could scarce catch his breath. On this fire a great cauldron
bubbled and simmered, giving forth a rich and promising smell. Seated
round it were a dozen or so folk, of all ages and conditions, who set
up such a shout as Alleyne entered that he stood peering at them through
the smoke, uncertain what this riotous greeting might portend.
“A rouse! A rouse!” cried one rough looking fellow in a tattered jerkin.
“One more round of mead or ale and the score to the last comer.”
“'Tis the law of the 'Pied Merlin,'” shouted another. “Ho there, Dame
Eliza! Here is fresh custom come to the house, and not a drain for the
company.”
“I will take your orders, gentles; I will assuredly take your orders,”
the landlady answered, bustling in with her hands full of leathern
drinking-cups. “What is it that you drink, then? Beer for the lads of
the forest, mead for the gleeman, strong waters for the tinker, and wine
for the rest. It is an old custom of the house, young sir. It has been
the use at the 'Pied Merlin' this many a year back that the company
should drink to the health of the last comer. Is it your pleasure to
humor it?”
“Why, good dame,” said Alleyne, “I would not offend the customs of your
house, but it is only sooth when I say that my purse is a thin one. As
far as two pence will go, however, I shall be right glad to do my part.”
“Plainly said and bravely spoken, my suckling friar,” roared a deep
voice, and a heavy hand fell upon Alleyne's shoulder. Looking up, he saw
beside him his former cloister companion the renegade monk, Hordle John.
“By the thorn of Glastonbury! ill days are coming upon Beaulieu,” said
he. “Here they have got rid in one day of the only two men within their
walls--for I have had mine eyes upon thee, youngster, and I know that
for all thy baby-face there is the making of a man in thee. Then there
is the Abbot, too. I am no friend of his, nor he of mine; but he has
warm blood in his veins. He is the only man left among them. The others,
what are they?”
“They are holy men,” Alleyne answered gravely.
“Holy men? Holy cabbages! Holy bean-pods! What do they do but live and
suck in sustenance and grow fat? If that be holiness, I could show you
hogs in this forest who are fit to head the calendar. Think you it was
for such a life that this good arm was fixed upon my shoulder, or that
head placed upon your neck? There is work in the world, man, and it is
not by hiding behind stone walls that we shall do it.”
“Why, then, did you join the brothers?” asked Alleyne.
“A fair enough question; but it is as fairly answered. I joined them
because Margery Alspaye, of Bolder, married Crooked Thomas of Ringwood,
and left a certain John of Hordle in the cold, for that he was a
ranting, roving blade who was not to be trusted in wedlock. That was
why, being fond and hot-headed, I left the world; and that is why,
having had time to take thought, I am right glad to find myself back in
it once more. Ill betide the day that ever I took off my yeoman's jerkin
to put on the white gown!”
Whilst he was speaking the landlady came in again, bearing a broad
platter, upon which stood all the beakers and flagons charged to the
brim with the brown ale or the ruby wine. Behind her came a maid with
a high pile of wooden plates, and a great sheaf of spoons, one of which
she handed round to each of the travellers. Two of the company, who were
dressed in the weather-stained green doublet of foresters, lifted the
big pot off the fire, and a third, with a huge pewter ladle, served out
a portion of steaming collops to each guest. Alleyne bore his share and
his ale-mug away with him to a retired trestle in the corner, where he
could sup in peace and watch the strange scene, which was so different
to those silent and well-ordered meals to which he was accustomed.
The room was not unlike a stable. The low ceiling, smoke-blackened and
dingy, was pierced by several square trap-doors with rough-hewn ladders
leading up to them. The walls of bare unpainted planks were studded
here and there with great wooden pins, placed at irregular intervals
and heights, from which hung over-tunics, wallets, whips, bridles, and
saddles. Over the fireplace were suspended six or seven shields of
wood, with coats-of-arms rudely daubed upon them, which showed by their
varying degrees of smokiness and dirt that they had been placed there
at different periods. There was no furniture, save a single long
dresser covered with coarse crockery, and a number of wooden benches and
trestles, the legs of which sank deeply into the soft clay floor, while
the only light, save that of the fire, was furnished by three torches
stuck in sockets on the wall, which flickered and crackled, giving
forth a strong resinous odor. All this was novel and strange to the
cloister-bred youth; but most interesting of all was the motley circle
of guests who sat eating their collops round the blaze. They were a
humble group of wayfarers, such as might have been found that night
in any inn through the length and breadth of England; but to him they
represented that vague world against which he had been so frequently and
so earnestly warned. It did not seem to him from what he could see of it
to be such a very wicked place after all.
Three or four of the men round the fire were evidently underkeepers
and verderers from the forest, sunburned and bearded, with the quick
restless eye and lithe movements of the deer among which they lived.
Close to the corner of the chimney sat a middle-aged gleeman, clad in a
faded garb of Norwich cloth, the tunic of which was so outgrown that it
did not fasten at the neck and at the waist. His face was swollen and
coarse, and his watery protruding eyes spoke of a life which never
wandered very far from the wine-pot. A gilt harp, blotched with many
stains and with two of its strings missing, was tucked under one of his
arms, while with the other he scooped greedily at his platter. Next to
him sat two other men of about the same age, one with a trimming of fur
to his coat, which gave him a dignity which was evidently dearer to him
than his comfort, for he still drew it round him in spite of the hot
glare of the faggots. The other, clad in a dirty russet suit with a long
sweeping doublet, had a cunning, foxy face with keen, twinkling eyes and
a peaky beard. Next to him sat Hordle John, and beside him three other
rough unkempt fellows with tangled beards and matted hair--free laborers
from the adjoining farms, where small patches of freehold property
had been suffered to remain scattered about in the heart of the royal
demesne. The company was completed by a peasant in a rude dress of
undyed sheepskin, with the old-fashioned galligaskins about his legs,
and a gayly dressed young man with striped cloak jagged at the edges
and parti-colored hosen, who looked about him with high disdain upon his
face, and held a blue smelling-flask to his nose with one hand, while he
brandished a busy spoon with the other. In the corner a very fat man was
lying all a-sprawl upon a truss, snoring stertorously, and evidently in
the last stage of drunkenness.
“That is Wat the limner,” quoth the landlady, sitting down beside
Alleyne, and pointing with the ladle to the sleeping man. “That is he
who paints the signs and the tokens. Alack and alas that ever I should
have been fool enough to trust him! Now, young man, what manner of a
bird would you suppose a pied merlin to be--that being the proper sign
of my hostel?”
“Why,” said Alleyne, “a merlin is a bird of the same form as an eagle or
a falcon. I can well remember that learned brother Bartholomew, who is
deep in all the secrets of nature, pointed one out to me as we walked
together near Vinney Ridge.”
“A falcon or an eagle, quotha? And pied, that is of two several colors.
So any man would say except this barrel of lies. He came to me, look
you, saying that if I would furnish him with a gallon of ale, wherewith
to strengthen himself as he worked, and also the pigments and a board,
he would paint for me a noble pied merlin which I might hang along with
the blazonry over my door. I, poor simple fool, gave him the ale and all
that he craved, leaving him alone too, because he said that a man's mind
must be left untroubled when he had great work to do. When I came back
the gallon jar was empty, and he lay as you see him, with the board in
front of him with this sorry device.” She raised up a panel which was
leaning against the wall, and showed a rude painting of a scraggy and
angular fowl, with very long legs and a spotted body.
“Was that,” she asked, “like the bird which thou hast seen?”
Alleyne shook his head, smiling.
“No, nor any other bird that ever wagged a feather. It is most like a
plucked pullet which has died of the spotted fever. And scarlet too!
What would the gentles Sir Nicholas Boarhunte, or Sir Bernard Brocas, of
Roche Court, say if they saw such a thing--or, perhaps, even the King's
own Majesty himself, who often has ridden past this way, and who loves
his falcons as he loves his sons? It would be the downfall of my house.”
“The matter is not past mending,” said Alleyne. “I pray you, good dame,
to give me those three pigment-pots and the brush, and I shall try
whether I cannot better this painting.”
Dame Eliza looked doubtfully at him, as though fearing some other
stratagem, but, as he made no demand for ale, she finally brought the
paints, and watched him as he smeared on his background, talking the
while about the folk round the fire.
“The four forest lads must be jogging soon,” she said. “They bide at
Emery Down, a mile or more from here. Yeomen prickers they are, who tend
to the King's hunt. The gleeman is called Floyting Will. He comes from
the north country, but for many years he hath gone the round of the
forest from Southampton to Christchurch. He drinks much and pays little
but it would make your ribs crackle to hear him sing the 'Jest of Hendy
Tobias.' Mayhap he will sing it when the ale has warmed him.”
“Who are those next to him?” asked Alleyne, much interested. “He of the
fur mantle has a wise and reverent face.”
“He is a seller of pills and salves, very learned in humors, and rheums,
and fluxes, and all manner of ailments. He wears, as you perceive, the
vernicle of Sainted Luke, the first physician, upon his sleeve. May good
St. Thomas of Kent grant that it may be long before either I or mine