Chương Chương 34 · HOW THE COMPANY MADE SPORT IN THE VALE OF PAMPELUNA.

. HOW THE COMPANY MADE SPORT IN THE VALE OF PAMPELUNA.

Whilst the council was sitting in Pampeluna the White Company, having

encamped in a neighboring valley, close to the companies of La Nuit and

of Black Ortingo, were amusing themselves with sword-play, wrestling,

and shooting at the shields, which they had placed upon the hillside

to serve them as butts. The younger archers, with their coats of mail

thrown aside, their brown or flaxen hair tossing in the wind, and their

jerkins turned back to give free play to their brawny chests and arms,

stood in lines, each loosing his shaft in turn, while Johnston, Aylward,

Black Simon, and half-a-score of the elders lounged up and down with

critical eyes, and a word of rough praise or of curt censure for the

marksmen. Behind stood knots of Gascon and Brabant crossbowmen from

the companies of Ortingo and of La Nuit, leaning upon their unsightly

weapons and watching the practice of the Englishmen.

“A good shot, Hewett, a good shot!” said old Johnston to a young bowman,

who stood with his bow in his left hand, gazing with parted lips after

his flying shaft. “You see, she finds the ring, as I knew she would from

the moment that your string twanged.”

“Loose it easy, steady, and yet sharp,” said Aylward. “By my hilt! mon

gar., it is very well when you do but shoot at a shield, but when there

is a man behind the shield, and he rides at you with wave of sword and

glint of eyes from behind his vizor, you may find him a less easy mark.”

“It is a mark that I have found before now,” answered the young bowman.

“And shall again, camarade, I doubt not. But hola! Johnston, who is this

who holds his bow like a crow-keeper?”

“It is Silas Peterson, of Horsham. Do not wink with one eye and look

with the other, Silas, and do not hop and dance after you shoot, with

your tongue out, for that will not speed it upon its way. Stand straight

and firm, as God made you. Move not the bow arm, and steady with the

drawing hand!”

“I' faith,” said Black Simon, “I am a spearman myself, and am more

fitted for hand-strokes than for such work as this. Yet I have spent my

days among bowmen, and I have seen many a brave shaft sped. I will not

say but that we have some good marksmen here, and that this Company

would be accounted a fine body of archers at any time or place. Yet I

do not see any men who bend so strong a bow or shoot as true a shaft as

those whom I have known.”

“You say sooth,” said Johnston, turning his seamed and grizzled face

upon the man-at-arms. “See yonder,” he added, pointing to a bombard

which lay within the camp: “there is what hath done scath to good

bowmanship, with its filthy soot and foolish roaring mouth. I wonder

that a true knight, like our prince, should carry such a scurvy thing in

his train. Robin, thou red-headed lurden, how oft must I tell thee not

to shoot straight with a quarter-wind blowing across the mark?”

“By these ten finger-bones! there were some fine bowmen at the intaking

of Calais,” said Aylward. “I well remember that, on occasion of an

outfall, a Genoan raised his arm over his mantlet, and shook it at us, a

hundred paces from our line. There were twenty who loosed shafts at him,

and when the man was afterwards slain it was found that he had taken

eighteen through his forearm.”

“And I can call to mind,” remarked Johnston, “that when the great

cog 'Christopher,' which the French had taken from us, was moored two

hundred paces from the shore, two archers, little Robin Withstaff and

Elias Baddlesmere, in four shots each cut every strand of her hempen

anchor-cord, so that she well-nigh came upon the rocks.”

“Good shooting, i' faith rare shooting!” said Black Simon. “But I have

seen you, Johnston, and you, Samkin Aylward, and one or two others who

are still with us, shoot as well as the best. Was it not you, Johnston,

who took the fat ox at Finsbury butts against the pick of London town?”

A sunburnt and black-eyed Brabanter had stood near the old archers,

leaning upon a large crossbow and listening to their talk, which had

been carried on in that hybrid camp dialect which both nations could

understand. He was a squat, bull-necked man, clad in the iron helmet,

mail tunic, and woollen gambesson of his class. A jacket with hanging

sleeves, slashed with velvet at the neck and wrists, showed that he was

a man of some consideration, an under-officer, or file-leader of his

company.

“I cannot think,” said he, “why you English should be so fond of your

six-foot stick. If it amuse you to bend it, well and good; but why

should I strain and pull, when my little moulinet will do all for me,

and better than I can do it for myself?”

“I have seen good shooting with the prod and with the latch,” said

Aylward, “but, by my hilt! camarade, with all respect to you and to your

bow, I think that is but a woman's weapon, which a woman can point and

loose as easily as a man.”

“I know not about that,” answered the Brabanter, “but this I know,

that though I have served for fourteen years, I have never yet seen an

Englishman do aught with the long-bow which I could not do better with

my arbalest. By the three kings! I would even go further, and say that I

have done things with my arbalest which no Englishman could do with his

long-bow.”

“Well said, mon gar.,” cried Aylward. “A good cock has ever a brave

call. Now, I have shot little of late, but there is Johnston here who

will try a round with you for the honor of the Company.”

“And I will lay a gallon of Jurancon wine upon the long-bow,” said Black

Simon, “though I had rather, for my own drinking, that it were a quart

of Twynham ale.”

“I take both your challenge and your wager,” said the man of Brabant,

throwing off his jacket and glancing keenly about him with his black,

twinkling eyes. “I cannot see any fitting mark, for I care not to waste

a bolt upon these shields, which a drunken boor could not miss at a

village kermesse.”

“This is a perilous man,” whispered an English man-at-arms, plucking at

Aylward's sleeve. “He is the best marksman of all the crossbow companies

and it was he who brought down the Constable de Bourbon at Brignais. I

fear that your man will come by little honor with him.”

“Yet I have seen Johnston shoot these twenty years, and I will not

flinch from it. How say you, old war-hound, will you not have a flight

shot or two with this springald?”

“Tut, tut, Aylward,” said the old bowman. “My day is past, and it is

for the younger ones to hold what we have gained. I take it unkindly of

thee, Samkin, that thou shouldst call all eyes thus upon a broken bowman

who could once shoot a fair shaft. Let me feel that bow, Wilkins! It is

a Scotch bow, I see, for the upper nock is without and the lower within.

By the black rood! it is a good piece of yew, well nocked, well strung,

well waxed, and very joyful to the feel. I think even now that I might

hit any large and goodly mark with a bow like this. Turn thy quiver to

me, Aylward. I love an ash arrow pierced with cornel-wood for a roving

shaft.”

“By my hilt! and so do I,” cried Aylward. “These three gander-winged

shafts are such.”

“So I see, comrade. It has been my wont to choose a saddle-backed

feather for a dead shaft, and a swine-backed for a smooth flier. I will

take the two of them. Ah! Samkin, lad, the eye grows dim and the hand

less firm as the years pass.”

“Come then, are you not ready?” said the Brabanter, who had watched

with ill-concealed impatience the slow and methodic movements of his

antagonist.

“I will venture a rover with you, or try long-butts or hoyles,” said old

Johnston. “To my mind the long-bow is a better weapon than the arbalest,

but it may be ill for me to prove it.”

“So I think,” quoth the other with a sneer. He drew his moulinet from

his girdle, and fixing it to the windlass, he drew back the powerful

double cord until it had clicked into the catch. Then from his quiver he

drew a short, thick quarrel, which he placed with the utmost care upon

the groove. Word had spread of what was going forward, and the rivals

were already surrounded, not only by the English archers of the Company,

but by hundreds of arbalestiers and men-at-arms from the bands of

Ortingo and La Nuit, to the latter of which the Brabanter belonged.

“There is a mark yonder on the hill,” said he; “mayhap you can discern

it.”

“I see something,” answered Johnston, shading his eyes with his hand;

“but it is a very long shoot.”

“A fair shoot--a fair shoot! Stand aside, Arnaud, lest you find a bolt

through your gizzard. Now, comrade, I take no flight shot, and I give

you the vantage of watching my shaft.”

As he spoke he raised his arbalest to his shoulder and was about to pull

the trigger, when a large gray stork flapped heavily into view skimming

over the brow of the hill, and then soaring up into the air to pass the

valley. Its shrill and piercing cries drew all eyes upon it, and, as it

came nearer, a dark spot which circled above it resolved itself into a

peregrine falcon, which hovered over its head, poising itself from time

to time, and watching its chance of closing with its clumsy quarry.

Nearer and nearer came the two birds, all absorbed in their own contest,

the stork wheeling upwards, the hawk still fluttering above it, until

they were not a hundred paces from the camp. The Brabanter raised his

weapon to the sky, and there came the short, deep twang of his powerful

string. His bolt struck the stork just where its wing meets the body,

and the bird whirled aloft in a last convulsive flutter before falling

wounded and flapping to the earth. A roar of applause burst from the

crossbowmen; but at the instant that the bolt struck its mark old

Johnston, who had stood listlessly with arrow on string, bent his bow

and sped a shaft through the body of the falcon. Whipping the other from

his belt, he sent it skimming some few feet from the earth with so true

an aim that it struck and transfixed the stork for the second time ere

it could reach the ground. A deep-chested shout of delight burst from

the archers at the sight of this double feat, and Aylward, dancing with

joy, threw his arms round the old marksman and embraced him with such

vigor that their mail tunics clanged again.

“Ah! camarade,” he cried, “you shall have a stoup with me for this! What

then, old dog, would not the hawk please thee, but thou must have the

stork as well. Oh, to my heart again!”

“It is a pretty piece of yew, and well strung,” said Johnston with a

twinkle in his deep-set gray eyes. “Even an old broken bowman might find

the clout with a bow like this.”

“You have done very well,” remarked the Brabanter in a surly voice.

“But it seems to me that you have not yet shown yourself to be a better

marksman than I, for I have struck that at which I aimed, and, by the

three kings! no man can do more.”

“It would ill beseem me to claim to be a better marksman,” answered

Johnston, “for I have heard great things of your skill. I did but wish

to show that the long-bow could do that which an arbalest could not do,

for you could not with your moulinet have your string ready to speed

another shaft ere the bird drop to the earth.”

“In that you have vantage,” said the crossbowman. “By Saint James! it

is now my turn to show you where my weapon has the better of you. I pray

you to draw a flight shaft with all your strength down the valley, that

we may see the length of your shoot.”

“That is a very strong prod of yours,” said Johnston, shaking his

grizzled head as he glanced at the thick arch and powerful strings of

his rival's arbalest. “I have little doubt that you can overshoot me,

and yet I have seen bowmen who could send a cloth-yard arrow further

than you could speed a quarrel.”

“So I have heard,” remarked the Brabanter; “and yet it is a strange

thing that these wondrous bowmen are never where I chance to be. Pace

out the distances with a wand at every five score, and do you, Arnaud,

stand at the fifth wand to carry back my bolts to me.”

A line was measured down the valley, and Johnston, drawing an arrow to

the very head, sent it whistling over the row of wands.

“Bravely drawn! A rare shoot!” shouted the bystanders.

“It is well up to the fourth mark.”

“By my hilt! it is over it,” cried Aylward. “I can see where they have

stooped to gather up the shaft.”

“We shall hear anon,” said Johnston quietly, and presently a young

archer came running to say that the arrow had fallen twenty paces beyond

the fourth wand.

“Four hundred paces and a score,” cried Black Simon. “I' faith, it is a

very long flight. Yet wood and steel may do more than flesh and blood.”

The Brabanter stepped forward with a smile of conscious triumph, and

loosed the cord of his weapon. A shout burst from his comrades as they

watched the swift and lofty flight of the heavy bolt.

“Over the fourth!” groaned Aylward. “By my hilt! I think that it is well

up to the fifth.”

“It is over the fifth!” cried a Gascon loudly, and a comrade came

running with waving arms to say that the bolt had pitched eight paces

beyond the mark of the five hundred.

“Which weapon hath the vantage now?” cried the Brabanter, strutting

proudly about with shouldered arbalest, amid the applause of his

companions.

“You can overshoot me,” said Johnston gently.

“Or any other man who ever bent a long-bow,” cried his victorious

adversary.

“Nay, not so fast,” said a huge archer, whose mighty shoulders and red

head towered high above the throng of his comrades. “I must have a word

with you ere you crow so loudly. Where is my little popper? By sainted

Dick of Hampole! it will be a strange thing if I cannot outshoot that

thing of thine, which to my eyes is more like a rat-trap than a bow.

Will you try another flight, or do you stand by your last?”

“Five hundred and eight paces will serve my turn,” answered the

Brabanter, looking askance at this new opponent.

“Tut, John,” whispered Aylward, “you never were a marksman. Why must you

thrust your spoon into this dish?”

“Easy and slow, Aylward. There are very many things which I cannot do,

but there are also one or two which I have the trick of. It is in my

mind that I can beat this shoot, if my bow will but hold together.”

“Go on, old babe of the woods!” “Have at it, Hampshire!” cried the

archers laughing.

“By my soul! you may grin,” cried John. “But I learned how to make the

long shoot from old Hob Miller of Milford.” He took up a great black

bow, as he spoke, and sitting down upon the ground he placed his two

feet on either end of the stave. With an arrow fitted, he then pulled

the string towards him with both hands until the head of the shaft was

level with the wood. The great bow creaked and groaned and the cord

vibrated with the tension.

“Who is this fool's-head who stands in the way of my shoot?” said he,

craning up his neck from the ground.

“He stands on the further side of my mark,” answered the Brabanter, “so

he has little to fear from you.”

“Well, the saints assoil him!” cried John. “Though I think he is

over-near to be scathed.” As he spoke he raised his two feet, with the

bow-stave upon their soles, and his cord twanged with a deep rich hum

which might be heard across the valley. The measurer in the distance

fell flat upon his face, and then jumping up again, he began to run in

the opposite direction.

“Well shot, old lad! It is indeed over his head,” cried the bowmen.

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the Brabanter, “who ever saw such a shoot?”

“It is but a trick,” quoth John. “Many a time have I won a gallon of ale

by covering a mile in three flights down Wilverley Chase.”

“It fell a hundred and thirty paces beyond the fifth mark,” shouted an

archer in the distance.

“Six hundred and thirty paces! Mon Dieu! but that is a shoot! And yet it

says nothing for your weapon, mon gros camarade, for it was by turning

yourself into a crossbow that you did it.”

“By my hilt! there is truth in that,” cried Aylward. “And now, friend,

I will myself show you a vantage of the long-bow. I pray you to speed

a bolt against yonder shield with all your force. It is an inch of elm

with bull's hide over it.”

“I scarce shot as many shafts at Brignais,” growled the man of Brabant;

“though I found a better mark there than a cantle of bull's hide. But

what is this, Englishman? The shield hangs not one hundred paces from

me, and a blind man could strike it.” He screwed up his string to the

furthest pitch, and shot his quarrel at the dangling shield. Aylward,

who had drawn an arrow from his quiver, carefully greased the head of

it, and sped it at the same mark.

“Run, Wilkins,” quoth he, “and fetch me the shield.”

Long were the faces of the Englishmen and broad the laugh of the

crossbowmen as the heavy mantlet was carried towards them, for there in

the centre was the thick Brabant bolt driven deeply into the wood, while

there was neither sign nor trace of the cloth-yard shaft.

“By the three kings!” cried the Brabanter, “this time at least there is

no gainsaying which is the better weapon, or which the truer hand that

held it. You have missed the shield, Englishman.”

“Tarry a bit! tarry a bit, mon gar.!” quoth Aylward, and turning round

the shield he showed a round clear hole in the wood at the back of it.

“My shaft has passed through it, camarade, and I trow the one which goes

through is more to be feared than that which bides on the way.”

The Brabanter stamped his foot with mortification, and was about to make

some angry reply, when Alleyne Edricson came riding up to the crowds of

archers.

“Sir Nigel will be here anon,” said he, “and it is his wish to speak

with the Company.”

In an instant order and method took the place of general confusion.

Bows, steel caps, and jacks were caught up from the grass. A long cordon

cleared the camp of all strangers, while the main body fell into four

lines with under-officers and file-leaders in front and on either flank.

So they stood, silent and motionless, when their leader came riding

towards them, his face shining and his whole small figure swelling with

the news which he bore.

“Great honor has been done to us, men,” cried he: “for, of all the army,

the prince has chosen us out that we should ride onwards into the lands

of Spain to spy upon our enemies. Yet, as there are many of us, and as

the service may not be to the liking of all, I pray that those will step

forward from the ranks who have the will to follow me.”

There was a rustle among the bowmen, but when Sir Nigel looked up at

them no man stood forward from his fellows, but the four lines of men

stretched unbroken as before. Sir Nigel blinked at them in amazement,

and a look of the deepest sorrow shadowed his face.

“That I should live to see the day!” he cried. “What! not one----”

“My fair lord,” whispered Alleyne, “they have all stepped forward.”

“Ah, by Saint Paul! I see how it is with them. I could not think that

they would desert me. We start at dawn to-morrow, and ye are to have

the horses of Sir Robert Cheney's company. Be ready, I pray ye, at early

cock-crow.”

A buzz of delight burst from the archers, as they broke their ranks and

ran hither and thither, whooping and cheering like boys who have news of

a holiday. Sir Nigel gazed after them with a smiling face, when a heavy

hand fell upon his shoulder.

“What ho! my knight-errant of Twynham!” said a voice, “You are off to

Ebro, I hear; and, by the holy fish of Tobias! you must take me under

your banner.”

“What! Sir Oliver Buttesthorn!” cried Sir Nigel. “I had heard that you

were come into camp, and had hoped to see you. Glad and proud shall I be

to have you with me.”

“I have a most particular and weighty reason for wishing to go,” said

the sturdy knight.

“I can well believe it,” returned Sir Nigel; “I have met no man who is

quicker to follow where honor leads.”

“Nay, it is not for honor that I go, Nigel.”

“For what then?”

“For pullets.”

“Pullets?”

“Yes, for the rascal vanguard have cleared every hen from the

country-side. It was this very morning that Norbury, my squire,

lamed his horse in riding round in quest of one, for we have a bag of

truffles, and nought to eat with them. Never have I seen such locusts as

this vanguard of ours. Not a pullet shall we see until we are in front

of them; so I shall leave my Winchester runagates to the care of the

provost-marshal, and I shall hie south with you, Nigel, with my truffles

at my saddle-bow.”

“Oliver, Oliver, I know you over-well,” said Sir Nigel, shaking his

head, and the two old soldiers rode off together to their pavilion.