CHAPTER VIII.
THE THREE FRIENDS.
His companions had passed on whilst he was at his orisons; but
his young blood and the fresh morning air both invited him to a
scamper. His staff in one hand and his scrip in the other, with
springy step and floating locks, he raced along the forest path,
as active and as graceful as a young deer. He had not far to go,
however; for, on turning a corner, he came on a roadside cottage
with a wooden fence-work around it, where stood big John and
Aylward the bowman, staring at something within. As he came up
with them, he saw that two little lads, the one about nine years
of age and the other somewhat older, were standing on the plot in
front of the cottage, each holding out a round stick in their
left hands, with their arms stiff and straight from the shoulder,
as silent and still as two small statues. They were pretty,
blue-eyed, yellow-haired lads, well made and sturdy, with bronzed
skins, which spoke of a woodland life.
"Here are young chips from an old bow stave!" cried the soldier
in great delight. "This is the proper way to raise children. By
my hilt! I could not have trained them better had I the ordering
of it myself,"
"What is it then?" asked Hordle John. "They stand very stiff,
and I trust that they have not been struck so."
"Nay, they are training their left arms, that they may have a
steady grasp of the bow. So my own father trained me, and six
days a week I held out his walking-staff till my arm was heavy as
lead. Hola, mes enfants! how long will you hold out?"
"Until the sun is over the great lime-tree, good master," the
elder answered.
"What would ye be, then? Woodmen? Verderers?"
"Nay, soldiers," they cried both together.
"By the beard of my father! but ye are whelps of the true breed.
Why so keen, then, to be soldiers?"
"That we may fight the Scots," they answered. "Daddy will send
us to fight the Scots."
"And why the Scots, my pretty lads? We have seen French and
Spanish galleys no further away than Southampton, but I doubt
that it will be some time before the Scots find their way to
these parts."
"Our business is with the Scots," quoth the elder; "for it was
the Scots who cut off daddy's string fingers and his thumbs."
"Aye, lads, it was that," said a deep voice from behind Alleyne's
shoulder. Looking round, the wayfarers saw a gaunt, big-boned
man, with sunken cheeks and a sallow face, who had come up behind
them. He held up his two hands as he spoke, and showed that the
thumbs and two first fingers had been torn away from each of
them.
"Ma foi, camarade!" cried Aylward. "Who hath served thee in so
shameful a fashion?"
"It is easy to see, friend, that you were born far from the
marches of Scotland," quoth the stranger, with a bitter smile.
"North of Humber there is no man who would not know the handiwork
of Devil Douglas, the black Lord James."
"And how fell you into his hands?" asked John.
"I am a man of the north country, from the town of Beverley and
the wapentake of Holderness," he answered. "There was a day
when, from Trent to Tweed, there was no better marksman than
Robin Heathcot. Yet, as you see, he hath left me, as he hath
left many another poor border archer, with no grip for bill or
bow. Yet the king hath given me a living here in the southlands,
and please God these two lads of mine will pay off a debt that
hath been owing over long. What is the price of daddy's thumbs,
boys?"
"Twenty Scottish lives," they answered together.
"And for the fingers?"
"Half a score."
"When they can bend my war-bow, and bring down a squirrel at a
hundred paces, I send them to take service under Johnny Copeland,
the Lord of the Marches and Governor of Carlisle. By my soul! I
would give the rest of my fingers to see the Douglas within
arrow-flight of them."
"May you live to see it," quoth the bowman. "And hark ye, mes
enfants, take an old soldier's rede and lay your bodies to the
bow, drawing from hip and thigh as much as from arm. Learn also,
I pray you, to shoot with a dropping shaft; for though a bowman
may at times be called upon to shoot straight and fast, yet it is
more often that he has to do with a town-guard behind a wall, or
an arbalestier with his mantlet raised when you cannot hope to do
him scathe unless your shaft fall straight upon him from the
clouds. I have not drawn string for two weeks, but I may be able
to show ye how such shots should be made." He loosened his
long-bow, slung his quiver round to the front, and then glanced
keenly round for a fitting mark. There was a yellow and withered
stump some way off, seen under the drooping branches of a lofty
oak. The archer measured the distance with his eye; and then,
drawing three shafts, he shot them off with such speed that the
first had not reached the mark ere the last was on the string.
Each arrow passed high over the oak; and, of the three, two stuck
fair into the stump; while the third, caught in some wandering
puff of wind, was driven a foot or two to one side.
"Good!" cried the north countryman. "Hearken to him lads! He is
a master bowman, Your dad says amen to every word he says."
"By my hilt!" said Aylward, "if I am to preach on bowmanship, the
whole long day would scarce give me time for my sermon. We have
marksmen in the Company who will notch with a shaft every
crevice and joint of a man-at-arm's harness, from the clasp of
his bassinet to the hinge of his greave. But, with your favor,
friend, I must gather my arrows again, for while a shaft costs a
penny a poor man can scarce leave them sticking in wayside
stumps. We must, then, on our road again, and I hope from my
heart that you may train these two young goshawks here until they
are ready for a cast even at such a quarry as you speak of."
Leaving the thumbless archer and his brood, the wayfarers struck
through the scattered huts of Emery Down, and out on to the broad
rolling heath covered deep in ferns and in heather, where droves
of the half-wild black forest pigs were rooting about amongst the
hillocks. The woods about this point fall away to the left and
the right, while the road curves upwards and the wind sweeps
keenly over the swelling uplands. The broad strips of bracken
glowed red and yellow against the black peaty soil, and a queenly
doe who grazed among them turned her white front and her great
questioning eyes towards the wayfarers. Alleyne gazed in
admiration at the supple beauty of the creature; but the archer's
fingers played with his quiver, and his eyes glistened with the
fell instinct which urges a man to slaughter.
"Tete Dieu!" he growled, "were this France, or even Guienne, we
should have a fresh haunch for our none-meat. Law or no law, I
have a mind to loose a bolt at her."
"I would break your stave across my knee first," cried John,
laying his great hand upon the bow. "What! man, I am
forest-born, and I know what comes of it. In our own township of
Hordle two have lost their eyes and one his skin for this very
thing. On my troth, I felt no great love when I first saw you,
but since then I have conceived over much regard for you to wish
to see the verderer's flayer at work upon you."
"It is my trade to risk my skin," growled the archer; but none
the less he thrust his quiver over his hip again and turned his
face for the west.
As they advanced, the path still tended upwards, running from
heath into copses of holly and yew, and so back into heath again.
It was joyful to hear the merry whistle of blackbirds as they
darted from one clump of greenery to the other. Now and again a
peaty amber colored stream rippled across their way, with ferny
over-grown banks, where the blue kingfisher flitted busily from
side to side, or the gray and pensive heron, swollen with trout
and dignity, stood ankle-deep among the sedges. Chattering jays
and loud wood-pigeons flapped thickly overhead, while ever and
anon the measured tapping of Nature's carpenter, the great green
woodpecker, sounded from each wayside grove. On either side, as
the path mounted, the long sweep of country broadened and
expanded, sloping down on the one side through yellow forest and
brown moor to the distant smoke of Lymington and the blue misty
channel which lay alongside the sky-line, while to the north the
woods rolled away, grove topping grove, to where in the furthest
distance the white spire of Salisbury stood out hard and clear
against the cloudless sky. To Alleyne whose days had been spent
in the low-lying coastland, the eager upland air and the wide
free country-side gave a sense of life and of the joy of living
which made his young blood tingle in his veins. Even the heavy
John was not unmoved by the beauty of their road, while the
bowman whistled lustily or sang snatches of French love songs in
a voice which might have scared the most stout-hearted maiden
that ever hearkened to serenade.
"I have a liking for that north countryman," he remarked
presently. "He hath good power of hatred. Couldst see by his
cheek and eye that he is as bitter as verjuice. I warm to a man
who hath some gall in his liver."
"Ah me!" sighed Alleyne. "Would it not be better if he had some
love in his heart?"
"I would not say nay to that. By my hilt! I shall never be said
to be traitor to the little king. Let a man love the sex.
Pasques Dieu! they are made to be loved, les petites, from
whimple down to shoe-string! I am right glad, mon garcon, to see
that the good monks have trained thee so wisely and so well."
"Nay, I meant not worldly love, but rather that his heart should
soften towards those who have wronged him."
The archer shook his head. "A man should love those of his own
breed," said he. "But it is not nature that an English-born man
should love a Scot or a Frenchman. Ma foi! you have not seen a
drove of Nithsdale raiders on their Galloway nags, or you would
not speak of loving them. I would as soon take Beelzebub himself
to my arms. I fear, mon gar., that they have taught thee but
badly at Beaulieu, for surely a bishop knows more of what is
right and what is ill than an abbot can do, and I myself with
these very eyes saw the Bishop of Lincoln hew into a Scottish
hobeler with a battle-axe, which was a passing strange way of
showing him that he loved him."
Alleyne scarce saw his way to argue in the face of so decided an
opinion on the part of a high dignitary of the Church. "You have
borne arms against the Scots, then?" he asked.
"Why, man, I first loosed string in battle when I was but a lad,
younger by two years than you, at Neville's Cross, under the Lord
Mowbray. Later, I served under the Warden of Berwick, that very
John Copeland of whom our friend spake, the same who held the
King of Scots to ransom. Ma foi! it is rough soldiering, and a
good school for one who would learn to be hardy and war-wise."
"I have heard that the Scots are good men of war," said Hordle
John.
"For axemen and for spearmen I have not seen their match," the
archer answered. "They can travel, too, with bag of meal and
gridiron slung to their sword-belt, so that it is ill to follow
them. There are scant crops and few beeves in the borderland,
where a man must reap his grain with sickle in one fist and brown
bill in the other. On the other hand, they are the sorriest
archers that I have ever seen, and cannot so much as aim with the
arbalest, to say nought of the long-bow. Again, they are mostly
poor folk, even the nobles among them, so that there are few who
can buy as good a brigandine of chain-mail as that which I am
wearing, and it is ill for them to stand up against our own
knights, who carry the price of five Scotch farms upon their
chest and shoulders. Man for man, with equal weapons, they are
as worthy and valiant men as could be found in the whole of
Christendom."
"And the French?" asked Alleyne, to whom the archer's light
gossip had all the relish that the words of the man of action
have for the recluse.
"The French are also very worthy men. We have had great good
fortune in France, and it hath led to much bobance and camp-fire
talk, but I have ever noticed that those who know the most have
the least to say about it. I have seen Frenchmen fight both in
open field, in the intaking and the defending of towns or
castlewicks, in escalados, camisades, night forays, bushments,
sallies, outfalls, and knightly spear-runnings. Their knights
and squires, lad, are every whit as good as ours, and I could
pick out a score of those who ride behind Du Guesclin who would
hold the lists with sharpened lances against the best men in the
army of England. On the other hand, their common folk are so
crushed down with gabelle, and poll-tax, and every manner of
cursed tallage, that the spirit has passed right out of them. It
is a fool's plan to teach a man to be a cur in peace, and think
that he will be a lion in war. Fleece them like sheep and sheep
they will remain. If the nobles had not conquered the poor folk
it is like enough that we should not have conquered the nobles."
"But they must be sorry folk to bow down to the rich in such a
fashion," said big John. "I am but a poor commoner of England
myself, and yet I know something of charters, liberties
franchises, usages, privileges, customs, and the like. If these
be broken, then all men know that it is time to buy arrow-heads."
"Aye, but the men of the law are strong in France as well as the
men of war. By my hilt! I hold that a man has more to fear there
from the ink-pot of the one than from the iron of the other.
There is ever some cursed sheepskin in their strong boxes to
prove that the rich man should be richer and the poor man poorer.
It would scarce pass in England, but they are quiet folk over the
water."
"And what other nations have you seen in your travels, good sir?"
asked Alleyne Edricson. His young mind hungered for plain facts
of life, after the long course of speculation and of mysticism on
which he had been trained.
"I have seen the low countryman in arms, and I have nought to say
against him. Heavy and slow is he by nature, and is not to be brought
into battle for the sake of a lady's eyelash or the twang of a
minstrel's string, like the hotter blood of the south. But ma foi!
lay hand on his wool-bales, or trifle with his velvet of Bruges, and
out buzzes every stout burgher, like bees from the tee-hole, ready to
lay on as though it were his one business in life. By our lady! they
have shown the French at Courtrai and elsewhere that they are as deft
in wielding steel as in welding it."
"And the men of Spain?"
"They too are very hardy soldiers, the more so as for many
hundred years they have had to fight hard against the cursed
followers of the black Mahound, who have pressed upon them from
the south, and still, as I understand, hold the fairer half of
the country. I had a turn with them upon the sea when they came
over to Winchelsea and the good queen with her ladies sat upon
the cliffs looking down at us, as if it had been joust or
tourney. By my hilt! it was a sight that was worth the seeing,
for all that was best in England was out on the water that day.
We went forth in little ships and came back in great galleys--for
of fifty tall ships of Spain, over two score flew the Cross of
St. George ere the sun had set. But now, youngster, I have
answered you freely, and I trow it is time what you answered me.
Let things be plat and plain between us. I am a man who shoots
straight at his mark. You saw the things I had with me at yonder
hostel: name which you will, save only the box of rose-colored
sugar which I take to the Lady Loring, and you shall have it if
you will but come with me to France."
"Nay," said Alleyne, "I would gladly come with ye to France or
where else ye will, just to list to your talk, and because ye are
the only two friends that I have in the whole wide world outside
of the cloisters; but, indeed, it may not be, for my duty is
towards my brother, seeing that father and mother are dead, and
he my elder. Besides, when ye talk of taking me to France, ye do
not conceive how useless I should be to you, seeing that neither
by training nor by nature am I fitted for the wars, and there
seems to be nought but strife in those parts."
"That comes from my fool's talk," cried the archer; "for being a
man of no learning myself, my tongue turns to blades and targets,
even as my hand does. Know then that for every parchment in
England there are twenty in France. For every statue, cut gem,
shrine, carven screen, or what else might please the eye of a
learned clerk, there are a good hundred to our one. At the
spoiling of Carcasonne I have seen chambers stored with writing,
though not one man in our Company could read them. Again, in
Arles and Nimes, and other towns that I could name, there are the
great arches and fortalices still standing which were built of
old by giant men who came from the south. Can I not see by your
brightened eye how you would love to look upon these things?
Come then with me, and, by these ten finger-bones! there is not
one of them which you shall not see."
"I should indeed love to look upon them," Alleyne answered; "but
I have come from Beaulieu for a purpose, and I must be true to my
service, even as thou art true to thine."
"Bethink you again, mon ami," quoth Aylward, "that you might do
much good yonder, since there are three hundred men in the
Company, and none who has ever a word of grace for them, and yet
the Virgin knows that there was never a set of men who were in
more need of it. Sickerly the one duty may balance the other.
Your brother hath done without you this many a year, and, as I
gather, he hath never walked as far as Beaulieu to see you during
all that time, so he cannot be in any great need of you."
"Besides," said John, "the Socman of Minstead is a by-word
through the forest, from Bramshaw Hill to Holmesley Walk. He is
a drunken, brawling, perilous churl, as you may find to your
cost."
"The more reason that I should strive to mend him," quoth
Alleyne. "There is no need to urge me, friends, for my own
wishes would draw me to France, and it would be a joy to me if I
could go with you. But indeed and indeed it cannot be, so here I
take my leave of you, for yonder square tower amongst the trees
upon the right must surely be the church of Minstead, and I may
reach it by this path through the woods."
"Well, God be with thee, lad!" cried the archer, pressing Alleyne
to his heart. "I am quick to love, and quick to hate and 'fore
God I am loth to part."
"Would it not be well," said John, "that we should wait here, and
see what manner of greeting you have from your brother. You may
prove to be as welcome as the king's purveyor to the village
dame."
"Nay, nay," he answered; "ye must not bide for me, for where I go
I stay."
"Yet it may be as well that you should know whither we go," said
the archer. "We shall now journey south through the woods until
we come out upon the Christchurch road, and so onwards, hoping
to-night to reach the castle of Sir William Montacute, Earl of
Salisbury, of which Sir Nigel Loring is constable. There we
shall bide, and it is like enough that for a month or more you
may find us there, ere we are ready for our viage back to
France."
It was hard indeed for Alleyne to break away from these two new
but hearty friends, and so strong was the combat between his
conscience and his inclinations that he dared not look round,
lest his resolution should slip away from him. It was not until
he was deep among the tree trunks that he cast a glance
backwards, when he found that he could still see them through the
branches on the road above him. The archer was standing with
folded arms, his bow jutting from over his shoulder, and the sun
gleaming brightly upon his head-piece and the links of his
chain-mail. Beside him stood his giant recruit, still clad in
the home-spun and ill-fitting garments of the fuller of
Lymington, with arms and legs shooting out of his scanty garb.
Even as Alleyne watched them they turned upon their heels and
plodded off together upon their way.
