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."
"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.
