The White Company, Arthur Conan Doyle [chrome ebook reader txt] 📗

was a stern-faced man, hard of mouth and dry of eye, with a heavy sword clanking at his side, and a stiff white bundle swathed in linen balanced across the pommel of his saddle.

“The king’s messenger,” he bawled as he came up to them. “The messenger of the king. Clear the causeway for the king’s own man.”

“Not so loudly, friend,” quoth the little knight, reining his horse half round to bar the path. “I have myself been the king’s man for thirty years or more, but I have not been wont to halloo about it on a peaceful highway.”

“I ride in his service,” cried the other, “and I carry that which belongs to him. You bar my path at your peril.”

“Yet I have known the king’s enemies claim to ride in his same,” said Sir Nigel. “The foul fiend may lurk beneath a garment of light. We must have some sign or warrant of your mission.”

“Then must I hew a passage,” cried the stranger, with his shoulder braced round and his hand upon his hilt. “I am not to be stopped on the king’s service by every gadabout.”

“Should you be a gentleman of quarterings and coat-armor,” lisped Sir Nigel, “I shall be very blithe to go further into the matter with you. If not, I have three very worthy squires, any one of whom would take the thing upon himself, and debate it with you in a very honorable way.”

The man scowled from one to the other, and his hand stole away from his sword.

“You ask me for a sign,” he said. “Here is a sign for you, since you must have one.” As he spoke he whirled the covering from the object in front of him and showed to their horror that it was a newly-severed human leg. “By God’s tooth!” he continued, with a brutal laugh, “you ask me if I am a man of quarterings, and it is even so, for I am officer to the verderer’s court at Lyndhurst. This thievish leg is to hang at Milton, and the other is already at Brockenhurst, as a sign to all men of what comes of being over-fond of venison pasty.”

“Faugh!” cried Sir Nigel. “Pass on the other side of the road, fellow, and let us have the wind of you. We shall trot our horses, my friends, across this pleasant valley, for, by Our Lady! a breath of God’s fresh air is right welcome after such a sight.”

“We hoped to snare a falcon,” said he presently, “but we netted a carrion-crow. Ma foi! but there are men whose hearts are tougher than a boar’s hide. For me, I have played the old game of war since ever I had hair on my chin, and I have seen ten thousand brave men in one day with their faces to the sky, but I swear by Him who made me that I cannot abide the work of the butcher.”

“And yet, my fair lord,” said Edricson, “there has, from what I hear, been much of such devil’s work in France.”

“Too much, too much,” he answered. “But I have ever observed that the foremost in the field are they who would scorn to mishandle a prisoner. By St. Paul! it is not they who carry the breach who are wont to sack the town, but the laggard knaves who come crowding in when a way has been cleared for them. But what is this among the trees?”

“It is a shrine of Our Lady,” said Terlake, “and a blind beggar who lives by the alms of those who worship there.”

“A shrine!” cried the knight. “Then let us put up an orison.” Pulling off his cap, and clasping his hands, he chanted in a shrill voice: “Benedictus dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad proelium, et digitos meos ad bellum.” A strange figure he seemed to his three squires, perched on his huge horse, with his eyes upturned and the wintry sun shimmering upon his bald head. “It is a noble prayer,” he remarked, putting on his hat again, “and it was taught to me by the noble Chandos himself. But how fares it with you, father? Methinks that I should have ruth upon you, seeing that I am myself like one who looks through a horn window while his neighbors have the clear crystal. Yet, by St. Paul! there is a long stride between the man who hath a horn casement and him who is walled in on every hand.”

“Alas! fair sir,” cried the blind old man, “I have not seen the blessed blue of heaven this two-score years, since a levin flash burned the sight out of my head.”

“You have been blind to much that is goodly and fair,” quoth Sir Nigel, “but you have also been spared much that is sorry and foul. This very hour our eyes have been shocked with that which would have left you unmoved. But, by St. Paul! we must on, or our Company will think that they have lost their captain somewhat early in the venture. Throw the man my purse, Edricson, and let us go.”

Alleyne, lingering behind, bethought him of the Lady Loring’s counsel, and reduced the noble gift which the knight had so freely bestowed to a single penny, which the beggar with many mumbled blessings thrust away into his wallet. Then, spurring his steed, the young squire rode at the top of his speed after his companions, and overtook them just at the spot where the trees fringe off into the moor and the straggling hamlet of Hordle lies scattered on either side of the winding and deeply-rutted track. The Company was already well-nigh through the village; but, as the knight and his squires closed up upon them, they heard the clamor of a strident voice, followed by a roar of deep-chested laughter from the ranks of the archers. Another minute brought them up with the rear-guard, where every man marched with his beard on his shoulder and a face which was agrin with merriment. By the side of the column walked a huge red-headed bowman, with his hands thrown out in argument and expostulation, while close at his heels followed a little wrinkled woman who poured forth a shrill volley of abuse, varied by an occasional thwack from her stick, given with all the force of her body, though she might have been beating one of the forest trees for all the effect that she seemed likely to produce.

“I trust, Aylward,” said Sir Nigel gravely, as he rode up, “that this doth not mean that any violence hath been offered to women. If such a thing happened, I tell you that the man shall hang, though he were the best archer that ever wore brassart.”

“Nay, my fair lord,” Aylward answered with a grin, “it is violence which is offered to a man. He comes from Hordle, and this is his mother who hath come forth to welcome him.”

“You rammucky lurden,” she was howling, with a blow between each catch of her breath, “you shammocking, yaping, over-long good-for-nought. I will teach thee! I will baste thee! Aye, by my faith!”

“Whist, mother,” said John, looking back at her from the tail of his eye, “I go to France as an archer to give blows and to take them.”

“To France, quotha?” cried the old dame. “Bide here with me, and I shall warrant you more blows than you are like to get in France. If blows be what you seek, you need not go further than Hordle.”

“By my hilt! the good dame speaks truth,” said Aylward. “It seems to be the very home of them.”

“What have you to say, you clean-shaved galley-beggar?” cried the fiery dame, turning upon the archer. “Can I not speak with my own son but you must let your tongue clack? A soldier, quotha, and never a hair on his face. I have seen a better soldier with pap for food and swaddling clothes for harness.”

“Stand to it, Aylward,” cried the archers, amid a fresh burst of laughter.

“Do not thwart her, comrade,” said big John. “She hath a proper spirit for her years and cannot abide to be thwarted. It is kindly and homely to me to hear her voice and to feel that she is behind me. But I must leave you now, mother, for the way is over-rough for your feet; but I will bring you back a silken gown, if there be one in France or Spain, and I will bring Jinny a silver penny; so good-bye to you, and God have you in His keeping!” Whipping up the little woman, he lifted her lightly to his lips, and then, taking his place in the ranks again, marched on with the laughing Company.

“That was ever his way,” she cried, appealing to Sir Nigel, who reined up his horse and listened with the greatest courtesy. “He would jog on his own road for all that I could do to change him. First he must be a monk forsooth, and all because a wench was wise enough to turn her back on him. Then he joins a rascally crew and must needs trapse off to the wars, and me with no one to bait the fire if I be out, or tend the cow if I be home. Yet I have been a good mother to him. Three hazel switches a day have I broke across his shoulders, and he takes no more notice than you have seen him to-day.”

“Doubt not that he will come back to you both safe and prosperous, my fair dame,” quoth Sir Nigel. “Meanwhile it grieves me that as I have already given my purse to a beggar up the road I–-”

“Nay, my lord,” said Alleyne, “I still have some moneys remaining.”

“Then I pray you to give them to this very worthy woman.” He cantered on as he spoke, while Alleyne, having dispensed two more pence, left the old dame standing by the furthest cottage of Hordle, with her shrill voice raised in blessings instead of revilings.

There were two cross-roads before they reached the Lymington Ford, and at each of then Sir Nigel pulled up his horse, and waited with many a curvet and gambade, craning his neck this way and that to see if fortune would send him a venture. Crossroads had, as he explained, been rare places for knightly spear-runnings, and in his youth it was no uncommon thing for a cavalier to abide for weeks at such a point, holding gentle debate with all comers, to his own advancement and the great honor of his lady. The times were changed, however, and the forest tracks wound away from them deserted and silent, with no trample of warhorse or clang of armor which might herald the approach of an adversary—so that Sir Nigel rode on his way disconsolate. At the Lymington River they splashed through the ford, and lay in the meadows on the further side to eat the bread and salt meat which they carried upon the sumpter horses. Then, ere the sun was on the slope of the heavens, they had deftly trussed up again, and were swinging merrily upon their way, two hundred feet moving like two.

There is a third cross-road where the track from Boldre runs down to the old fishing village of Pitt’s Deep. Down this, as they came abreast of it, there walked two men, the one a pace or two behind the other. The cavaliers could not but pull up their horses to look at them, for a stranger pair were never seen journeying together. The first was a misshapen, squalid man with cruel, cunning eyes and a shock of tangled red hair, bearing in his hands a small unpainted cross, which he held high so that all men might see