الفصل الفصل 3 · HOW HORDLE JOHN COZENED THE FULLER OF LYMINGTON.

. 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.