บทที่ บทที่ 8 · THE THREE FRIENDS.

. 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 that 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.