CHAPTER V.
HOW A STRANGE COMPANY GATHERED AT THE "PIED MERLIN."
The night had already fallen, and the moon was shining between
the rifts of ragged, drifting clouds, before Alleyne Edricson,
footsore and weary from the unwonted exercise, found himself in
front of the forest inn which stood upon the outskirts of
Lyndhurst. The building was long and low, standing back a little
from the road, with two flambeaux blazing on either side of the
door as a welcome to the traveller. From one window there thrust
forth a long pole with a bunch of greenery tied to the end of
it--a sign that liquor was to be sold within. As Alleyne walked
up to it he perceived that it was rudely fashioned out of beams
of wood, with twinkling lights all over where the glow from
within shone through the chinks. The roof was poor and thatched;
but in strange contrast to it there ran all along under the eaves
a line of wooden shields, most gorgeously painted with chevron,
bend, and saltire, and every heraldic device. By the door a
horse stood tethered, the ruddy glow beating strongly upon his
brown head and patient eyes, while his body stood back in the
shadow.
Alleyne stood still in the roadway for a few minutes reflecting
upon what he should do. It was, he knew, only a few miles
further to Minstead, where his brother dwelt. On the other hand,
he had never seen this brother since childhood, and the reports
which had come to his ears concerning him were seldom to his
advantage. By all accounts he was a hard and a bitter man.
It might be an evil start to come to his door so late and claim
the shelter of his root: Better to sleep here at this inn, and
then travel on to Minstead in the morning. If his brother would
take him in, well 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 sucking 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 need his help! He is here to-night
for herbergage, as are the others except the foresters. His
neighbor is a tooth-drawer. That bag at his girdle is full of
the teeth that he drew at Winchester fair. I warrant that there
are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a
trifle dim in the eye. The lusty man next him with the red head
I have not seen before. The four on this side are all workers,
three of them in the service of the bailiff of Sir Baldwin
Redvers, and the other, he with the sheepskin, is, as I hear, a
villein from the midlands who hath run from his master. His year
and day are well-nigh up, when he will be a free man."
"And the other?" asked Alleyne in a whisper. "He is surely some
very great man, for he looks as though he scorned those who were
about him."
The landlady looked at him in a motherly way and shook her head.
"You have had no great truck with the world," she said, "or you
would have learned that it is the small men and not the great who
hold their noses in the air. Look at those shields upon my wall
and under my eaves. Each of them is the device of some noble
lord or gallant knight who hath slept under my roof at one time
or another. Yet milder men or easier to please I have never
seen: eating my bacon and drinking my wine with a merry face, and
paying my score with some courteous word or jest which was dearer
to me than my profit. Those are the true gentles. But your
chapman or your bearward will swear that there is a lime in the
wine, and water in the ale, and fling off at the last with a
curse instead of a blessing. This youth is a scholar from
Cambrig, where men are wont to be blown out by a little
knowledge, and lose the use of their hands in learning the laws
of the Romans. But I must away to lay down the beds. So may the
saints keep you and prosper you in your undertaking!"
Thus left to himself, Alleyne drew his panel of wood where the
light of one of the torches would strike full upon it, and worked
away with all the pleasure of the trained craftsman, listening
the while to the talk which went on round the fire. The peasant
in the sheepskins, who had sat glum and silent all evening, had
been so heated by his flagon of ale that he was talking loudly
and angrily with clenched hands and flashing eyes.
"Sir Humphrey Tennant of Ashby may till his own fields for me,"
he cried. "The castle has thrown its shadow upon the cottage
over long. For three hundred years my folk have swinked and
sweated, day in and day out, to keep the wine on the lord's table
and the harness on the lord's back. Let him take off his plates
and delve himself, if delving must be done."
"A proper spirit, my fair son!" said one of the free laborers.
"I would that all men were of thy way of thinking."
"He would have sold me with his acres," the other cried, in a
voice which was hoarse with passion. "`The man, the woman and
their litter'--so ran the words of the dotard bailiff. Never a
bullock on the farm was sold more lightly. Ha! he may wake some
black night to find the flames licking about his ears--for fire
is a good friend to the poor man, and I have seen a smoking heap
of ashes where over night there stood just such another
castlewick as Ashby."
"This is a lad of mettle!" shouted another of the laborers. He
dares to give tongue to what all men think. Are we not all from
Adam's loins, all with flesh and blood, and with the same mouth
that must needs have food and drink? Where all this difference
then between the ermine cloak and the leathern tunic, if what
they cover is the same?"
"Aye, Jenkin," said another, "our foeman is under the stole and
the vestment as much as under the helmet and plate of proof. We
have as much to fear from the tonsure as from the hauberk.
Strike at the noble and the priest shrieks, strike at priest and
the noble lays his hand upon glaive. They are twin thieves who
live upon our labor."
"It would take a clever man to live upon thy labor, Hugh,"
remarked one of the foresters, "seeing that the half of thy time
is spent in swilling mead at the `Pied Merlin.'"
"Better that than stealing the deer that thou art placed to
guard, like some folk I know."
"If you dare open that swine's mouth against me," shouted the
woodman, "I'll crop your ears for you before the hangman has the
doing of it, thou long-jawed lackbrain."
"Nay, gentles, gentles!" cried Dame Eliza, in a singsong heedless
voice, which showed that such bickerings were nightly things
among her guests. "No brawling or brabbling, gentles! Take heed
to the good name of the house."
"Besides, if it comes to the cropping of ears, there are other
folk who may say their say," quoth the third laborer. "We are
all freemen, and I trow that a yeoman's cudgel is as good as a
forester's knife. By St. Anselm! it would be an evil day if we
had to bend to our master's servants as well as to our masters."
"No man is my master save the King," the woodman answered. "Who
is there, save a false traitor, who would refuse to serve the
English king?"
"I know not about the English king," said the man Jenkin. "What
sort of English king is it who cannot lay his tongue to a word of
English? You mind last year when he came down to Malwood, with
his inner marshal and his outer marshal, his justiciar, his
seneschal, and his four and twenty guardsmen. One noontide I was
by Franklin Swinton's gate, when up he rides with a yeoman
pricker at his heels. `Ouvre,' he cried, `ouvre,' or some such
word, making signs for me to open the gate; and then `Merci,' as
though he were adrad of me. And you talk of an English king?"
"I do not marvel at it," cried the Cambrig scholar, speaking in
the high drawling voice which was common among his class. "It is
not a tongue for men of sweet birth and delicate upbringing. It
is a foul, snorting, snarling manner of speech. For myself, I
swear by the learned Polycarp that I have most ease with Hebrew,
and after that perchance with Arabian."
"I will not hear a word said against old King Ned," cried Hordle
John in a voice like a bull. "What if he is fond of a bright eye
and a saucy face. I know one of his subjects who could match him
at that. If he cannot speak like an Englishman I trow that he
can fight like an Englishman, and he was hammering at the gates
of Paris while ale-house topers were grutching and grumbling at
home."
This loud speech, coming from a man of so formidable an
appearance, somewhat daunted the disloyal party, and they fell
into a sullen silence, which enabled Alleyne to hear something of
the talk which was going on in the further corner between the
physician, the tooth-drawer and the gleeman.
"A raw rat," the man of drugs was saying, "that is what it is
ever my use to order for the plague--a raw rat with its paunch
cut open."
"Might it not be broiled, most learned sir?" asked the tooth-drawer.
"A raw rat sounds a most sorry and cheerless dish."
"Not to be eaten," cried the physician, in high disdain. "Why
should any man eat such a thing?"
"Why indeed?" asked the gleeman, taking a long drain at his
tankard.
"It is to be placed on the sore or swelling. For the rat, mark
you, being a foul-living creature, hath a natural drawing or
affinity for all foul things, so that the noxious humors pass
from the man into the unclean beast."
"Would that cure the black death, master?" asked Jenkin.
"Aye, truly would it, my fair son."
"Then I am right glad that there were none who knew of it. The
black death is the best friend that ever the common folk had in
England."
"How that then?" asked Hordle John.
"Why, friend, it is easy to see that you have not worked with
your hands or you would not need to ask. When half the folk in
the country were dead it was then that the other half could pick
and choose who they would work for, and for what wage. That is
why I say that the murrain was the best friend that the borel
folk ever had."
"True, Jenkin," said another workman; "but it is not all good
that is brought by it either. We well know that through it
corn-land has been turned into pasture, so that flocks of sheep
with perchance a single shepherd wander now where once a hundred
men had work and wage."
"There is no great harm in that," remarked the tooth-drawer, "for
the sheep give many folk their living. There is not only the
herd, but the shearer and brander, and then the dresser, the
curer, the dyer, the fuller, the webster, the merchant, and a
score of others."
"If it come to that." said one of the foresters, "the tough meat
of them will wear folks teeth out, and there is a trade for the
man who can draw them."
A general laugh followed this sally at the dentist's expense, in
the midst of which the gleeman placed his battered harp upon his
knee, and began to pick out a melody upon the frayed strings.
"Elbow room for Floyting Will!" cried the woodmen. "Twang us a
merry lilt."
"Aye, aye, the `Lasses of Lancaster,'" one suggested.
"Or `St. Simeon and the Devil.'"
"Or the `Jest of Hendy Tobias.'"
To all these suggestions the jongleur made no response, but sat
with his eye fixed abstractedly upon the ceiling, as one who
calls words to his mind. Then, with a sudden sweep across the
strings, he broke out into a song so gross and so foul that ere
he had finished a verse the pure-minded lad sprang to his feet
with the blood tingling in his face.
"How can you sing such things?" he cried. "You, too, an old man
who should be an example to others."
The wayfarers all gazed in the utmost astonishment at the
interruption.
"By the holy Dicon of Hampole! our silent clerk has found his
tongue," said one of the woodmen. "What is amiss with the song
then? How has it offended your babyship?"
"A milder and better mannered song hath never been heard within
these walls," cried another. "What sort of talk is this for a
public inn?"
"Shall it be a litany, my good clerk?" shouted a third; "or would
a hymn be good enough to serve?"
The jongleur had put down his harp in high dudgeon. "Am I to be
preached to by a child?" he cried, staring across at Alleyne with
an inflamed and angry countenance. "Is a hairless infant to
raise his tongue against me, when I have sung in every fair from
Tweed to Trent, and have twice been named aloud by the High Court
of the Minstrels at Beverley? I shall sing no more to-night."
"Nay, but you will so," said one of the laborers. "Hi, Dame
Eliza, bring a stoup of your best to Will to clear his throat.
Go forward with thy song, and if our girl-faced clerk does not
love it he can take to the road and go whence he came."
"Nay, but not too last," broke in Hordle John. "There are two
words in this matter. It may be that my little comrade has been
over quick in reproof, he having gone early into the cloisters
and seen little of the rough ways and words of the world. Yet
there is truth in what he says, for, as you know well, the song
was not of the cleanest. I shall stand by him, therefore, and he
shall neither be put out on the road, nor shall his ears be
offended indoors."
"Indeed, your high and mighty grace," sneered one of the yeomen,
"have you in sooth so ordained?"
"By the Virgin!" said a second, "I think that you may both chance
to find yourselves upon the road before long."
"And so belabored as to be scarce able to crawl along it," cried
a third.
"Nay, I shall go! I shall go!" said Alleyne hurriedly, as Hordle
John began to slowly roll up his sleeve, and bare an arm like a
leg of mutton. "I would not have you brawl about me."
"Hush! lad," he whispered, "I count them not a fly. They may
find they have more tow on their distaff than they know how to
spin. Stand thou clear and give me space."
Both the foresters and the laborers had risen from their bench,
and Dame Eliza and the travelling doctor had flung themselves
between the two parties with soft words and soothing gestures,
when the door of the "Pied Merlin" was flung violently open, and
the attention of the company was drawn from their own quarrel to
the new-comer who had burst so unceremoniously upon them.
