บทที่ บทที่ 5 · Chapter 5

. Chapter 5

THE EARL of Mackworth, as was customary among the great lords in those

days, maintained a small army of knights, gentlemen, men-at-arms, and

retainers, who were expected to serve him upon all occasions of need,

and from whom were supplied his quota of recruits to fill such levies as

might be made upon him by the King in time of war.

The knights and gentlemen of this little army of horse and foot soldiers

were largely recruited from the company of squires and bachelors, as the

young novitiate soldiers of the castle were called.

This company of esquires consisted of from eighty to ninety lads,

ranging in age from eight to twenty years. Those under fourteen years

were termed pages, and served chiefly the Countess and her waiting

gentlewomen, in whose company they acquired the graces and polish of the

times, such as they were. After reaching the age of fourteen the lads

were entitled to the name of esquire or squire.

In most of the great houses of the time the esquires were the especial

attendants upon the Lord and Lady of the house, holding such positions

as body-squires, cup-bearers, carvers, and sometimes the office of

chamberlain. But Devlen, like some other of the princely castles of the

greatest nobles, was more like a military post or a fortress than an

ordinary household. Only comparatively few of the esquires could be

used in personal attendance upon the Earl; the others were trained

more strictly in arms, and served rather in the capacity of a sort of

body-guard than as ordinary squires. For, as the Earl rose in power and

influence, and as it so became well worth while for the lower nobility

and gentry to enter their sons in his family, the body of squires became

almost cumbersomely large. Accordingly, that part which comprised the

squires proper, as separate from the younger pages, was divided into

three classes--first, squires of the body, who were those just past

pagehood, and who waited upon the Earl in personal service; second,

squires of the household, who, having regular hours assigned for

exercise in the manual of arms, were relieved from personal service

excepting upon especial occasions; and thirdly and lastly, at the head

of the whole body of lads, a class called bachelors--young men ranging

from eighteen to twenty years of age. This class was supposed to

exercise a sort of government over the other and younger squires--to

keep them in order as much as possible, to marshal them upon occasions

of importance, to see that their arms and equipments were kept in good

order, to call the roll for chapel in the morning, and to see that those

not upon duty in the house were present at the daily exercise at arms.

Orders to the squires were generally transmitted through the bachelors,

and the head of that body was expected to make weekly reports of affairs

in their quarters to the chief captain of the body.

From this overlordship of the bachelors there had gradually risen a

system of fagging, such as is or was practised in the great English

public schools--enforced services exacted from the younger lads--which

at the time Myles came to Devlen had, in the five or six years it had

been in practice, grown to be an absolute though unwritten law of the

body--a law supported by all the prestige of long-continued usage. At

that time the bachelors numbered but thirteen, yet they exercised over

the rest of the sixty-four squires and pages a rule of iron, and were

taskmasters, hard, exacting, and oftentimes cruel.

The whole company of squires and pages was under the supreme command of

a certain one-eyed knight, by name Sir James Lee; a soldier seasoned by

the fire of a dozen battles, bearing a score of wounds won in fight and

tourney, and withered by hardship and labor to a leather-like toughness.

He had fought upon the King's side in all the late wars, and had at

Shrewsbury received a wound that unfitted him for active service, so

that now he was fallen to the post of Captain of Esquires at Devlen

Castle--a man disappointed in life, and with a temper imbittered by that

failure as well as by cankering pain.

Yet Perhaps no one could have been better fitted for the place he held

than Sir James Lee. The lads under his charge were a rude, rough, unruly

set, quick, like their elders, to quarrel, and to quarrel fiercely, even

to the drawing of sword or dagger. But there was a cold, iron sternness

about the grim old man that quelled them, as the trainer with a lash of

steel might quell a den of young wolves. The apartments in which he was

lodged, with his clerk, were next in the dormitory of the lads, and

even in the midst of the most excited brawlings the distant sound of his

harsh voice, “Silence, messieurs!” would bring an instant hush to the

loudest uproar.

It was into his grim presence that Myles was introduced by Gascoyne.

Sir James was in his office, a room bare of ornament or adornment or

superfluous comfort of any sort--without even so much as a mat of rushes

upon the cold stone pavement to make it less cheerless. The old one-eyed

knight sat gnawing his bristling mustaches. To anyone who knew him it

would have been apparent that, as the castle phrase went, “the devil sat

astride of his neck,” which meant that some one of his blind wounds was

aching more sorely than usual.

His clerk sat beside him, with account-books and parchment spread upon

the table, and the head squire, Walter Blunt, a lad some three or four

years older than Myles, and half a head taller, black-browed, powerfully

built, and with cheek and chin darkened by the soft budding of his

adolescent beard, stood making his report.

Sir James listened in grim silence while Gascoyne told his errand.

“So, then, pardee, I am bid to take another one of ye, am I?” he

snarled. “As though ye caused me not trouble enow; and this one a cub,

looking a very boor in carriage and breeding. Mayhap the Earl thinketh I

am to train boys to his dilly-dally household service as well as to use

of arms.”

“Sir,” said Gascoyne, timidly, “my Lord sayeth he would have this one

entered direct as a squire of the body, so that he need not serve in the

household.”

“Sayest so?” cried Sir James, harshly. “Then take thou my message back

again to thy Lord. Not for Mackworth--no, nor a better man than he--will

I make any changes in my government. An I be set to rule a pack of boys,

I will rule them as I list, and not according to any man's bidding.

Tell him, sirrah, that I will enter no lad as squire of the body without

first testing an he be fit at arms to hold that place.” He sat for a

while glowering at Myles and gnawing his mustaches, and for the time

no one dared to break the grim silence. “What is thy name?” said he,

suddenly. And then, almost before Myles could answer, he asked the head

squire whether he could find a place to lodge him.

“There is Gillis Whitlock's cot empty,” said Blunt. “He is in the

infirmary, and belike goeth home again when he cometh thence. The fever

hath gotten into his bones, and--”

“That will do,” said the knight, interrupting him impatiently. “Let him

take that place, or any other that thou hast. And thou, Jerome,” said he

to his clerk, “thou mayst enter him upon the roll, though whether it be

as page or squire or bachelor shall be as I please, and not as Mackworth

biddeth me. Now get ye gone.”

“Old Bruin's wound smarteth him sore,” Gascoyne observed, as the two

lads walked across the armory court. He had good-naturedly offered to

show the new-comer the many sights of interest around the castle, and in

the hour or so of ramble that followed, the two grew from acquaintances

to friends with a quickness that boyhood alone can bring about. They

visited the armory, the chapel, the stables, the great hall, the Painted

Chamber, the guard-house, the mess-room, and even the scullery and the

kitchen, with its great range of boilers and furnaces and ovens. Last of

all Myles's new friend introduced him to the armor-smithy.

“My Lord hath sent a piece of Milan armor thither to be repaired,” said

he. “Belike thou would like to see it.”

“Aye,” said Myles, eagerly, “that would I.”

The smith was a gruff, good-natured fellow, and showed the piece of

armor to Myles readily and willingly enough. It was a beautiful bascinet

of inlaid workmanship, and was edged with a rim of gold. Myles scarcely

dared touch it; he gazed at it with an unconcealed delight that warmed

the smith's honest heart.

“I have another piece of Milan here,” said he. “Did I ever show thee my

dagger, Master Gascoyne?”

“Nay,” said the squire.

The smith unlocked a great oaken chest in the corner of the shop, lifted

the lid, and brought thence a beautiful dagger with the handle of ebony

and silver-gilt, and a sheath of Spanish leather, embossed and gilt.

The keen, well-tempered blade was beautifully engraved and inlaid

with niello-work, representing a group of figures in a then popular

subject--the dance of Death. It was a weapon at once unique and

beautiful, and even Gascoyne showed an admiration scarcely less keen

than Myles's openly-expressed delight.

“To whom doth it belong?” said he, trying the point upon his thumb nail.

“There,” said the smith, “is the jest of the whole, for it belongeth

to me. Sir William Beauclerk bade me order the weapon through Master

Gildersworthy, of London town, and by the time it came hither, lo! he

had died, and so it fell to my hands. No one here payeth the price for

the trinket, and so I must e'en keep it myself, though I be but a poor

man.”

“How much dost thou hold it for?” said Gascoyne.

“Seventeen shillings buyeth it,” said the armorer, carelessly.

“Aye, aye,” said Gascoyne, with a sigh; “so it is to be poor, and not be

able to have such things as one loveth and would fain possess. Seventeen

shillings is nigh as much by half again as all my yearly wage.”

Then a sudden thought came to Myles, and as it came his cheeks glowed

as hot as fire “Master Gascoyne,” said he, with gruff awkwardness,

“thou hast been a very good, true friend to me since I have come to this

place, and hast befriended me in all ways thou mightest do, and I, as

well I know, but a poor rustic clod. Now I have forty shillings by me

which I may spend as I list, and so I do beseech thee that thou wilt

take yon dagger of me as a love-gift, and have and hold it for thy very

own.”

Gascoyne stared open-mouthed at Myles. “Dost mean it?” said he, at last.

“Aye,” said Myles, “I do mean it. Master Smith, give him the blade.”

At first the smith grinned, thinking it all a jest; but he soon saw that

Myles was serious enough, and when the seventeen shillings were produced

and counted down upon the anvil, he took off his cap and made Myles a

low bow as he swept them into his pouch. “Now, by my faith and troth,”

quoth he, “that I do call a true lordly gift. Is it not so, Master

Gascoyne?”

“Aye,” said Gascoyne, with a gulp, “it is, in soothly earnest.” And

thereupon, to Myles's great wonderment, he suddenly flung his arms about

his neck, and, giving him a great hug, kissed him upon the cheek. “Dear

Myles,” said he, “I tell thee truly and of a verity I did feel warm

towards thee from the very first time I saw thee sitting like a poor oaf

upon the bench up yonder in the anteroom, and now of a sooth I give thee

assurance that I do love thee as my own brother. Yea, I will take the

dagger, and will stand by thee as a true friend from this time forth.

Mayhap thou mayst need a true friend in this place ere thou livest long

with us, for some of us esquires be soothly rough, and knocks are more

plenty here than broad pennies, so that one new come is like to have a

hard time gaining a footing.”

“I thank thee,” said Myles, “for thy offer of love and friendship, and

do tell thee, upon my part, that I also of all the world would like best

to have thee for my friend.”

Such was the manner In which Myles formed the first great friendship of

his life, a friendship that was destined to last him through many years

to come. As the two walked back across the great quadrangle, upon which

fronted the main buildings of the castle, their arms were wound across

one another's shoulders, after the manner, as a certain great writer

says, of boys and lovers.