Chapter Chapter 5 · HOW A STRANGE COMPANY GATHERED AT THE “PIED MERLIN.”

. 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 roof. 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 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

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 fast,” 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.