The White Company/Chapter XIV

by Arthur Conan Doyle

CHAPTER XIV

HOW SIR NIGEL SOUGHT FOE A WAYSIDE VENTURE

For a time Sir Nigel was very moody and downcast, with bent brows and eyes upon the pommel of his saddle. Edricson and Terlake rode behind him in little better case, while Ford, a careless and light-hearted youth, grinned at the melancholy of his companions, and flourished his lord's heavy spear, making a point to right and a point to left, as though he were a paladin contending against a host of assailants. Sir Nigel happening, however, to turn himself in his saddle, Ford instantly became as stiff and as rigid as though he had been struck with a palsy. The four rode alone, for the archers had passed a curve in the road, though Alleyne could still hear the heavy clump, clump of their marching, or catch a glimpse of the sparkle of steel through the tangle of leafless branches.

'Ride by my side, friends, I entreat of you,' said the knight, reining in his steed that they might come abreast of him. 'For since it hath pleased you to follow me to the wars, it were well that you should know how you may best serve me. I doubt not, Terlake, that you will show yourself a worthy son of a valiant father, and you, Ford, of yours; and you, Edricson, that you are mindful of the old-time house from which all men know that you are sprung. And first I would have you bear very steadfastly in mind that our setting forth is by no means for the purpose of gaining spoil or exacting ransom, though it may well happen that such may come to us also. We go to France, and from thence, I trust, to Spain, in humble search of a field in which we may win advancement and perchance some small share of glory. For this purpose I would have you know that it is not my wont to let any occasion pass where it is in any way possible that honour may be gained. I would have you bear this in mind, and give great heed to it that you may bring me word of all cartels, challenges, wrongs, tyrannies, infamies, and wronging of damsels. Nor is any occasion too small to take note of, for I have known such trifles as the dropping of a gauntlet, or the flicking of a breadcrumb, when well and properly followed up, lead to a most noble spear-running. But, Edricson, do I not see a cavalier who rides down yonder road amongst the nether shaw? It would be well, perchance, that you should give him greeting from me, and, should he be of gentle blood, it may be that he would care to exchange thrusts with 'Why, my lord,' quoth Ford, standing in his stirrups and shading his eyes, 'it is old Hob Davidson, the fat miller of Milton!'

'Ah, so it is, indeed,' said Sir Nigel, puckering his cheeks; 'but wayside ventures are not to be scorned, for I have seen no finer passages than are to be bad from such chance meetings, when cavaliers are willing to advance themselves. I can well remember that two leagues from the town of Rheims I met a very valiant and courteous cavalier of France, with whom I had gentle and most honourable contention for upwards of an hour. It hath ever grieved me that I had not his name, for he smote upon me with a mace and went upon his way ere I was in condition to have much speech with him; but his arms were an allurion in chief above a fess azure. I was also on such an occasion thrust through the shoulder by Lyon de Montcourt, whom I met on the high road betwixt Libourne and Bordeaux. I met him but the once, but I have never seen a man for whom I bear a greater love and esteem. And so also with the squire Le Bourg Capillet, who would have been a very valiant captain had he lived.'

'He is dead then?' asked Alleyne Edricson.

'Alas! it was my ill fate to slay him in a bickering which broke out in a field near the township of Tarbes. I cannot call to mind how the thing came about, for it was in the year of the Prince's ride through Languedoc, when there was much fine skirmishing to be had at barriers. By St. Paul! I do not think that any honourable cavalier could ask for better chance of advancement than might be had by spurring forth before the army and riding to the gateways of Narbonne, or Bergerac, or Mont Giscar, where some courteous gentleman would ever be at wait to do what he might to meet your wish or ease you of your vow. Such a one at Ventadour ran three courses with me betwixt daybreak and sunrise, to the great exaltation of his lady.'

'And did you slay him also, my lord?' asked Ford with reverence.

'I could never learn, for he was carried within the barrier, and as I had chanced to break the bone of my leg it was a great unease to me to ride or even to stand. Yet, by the goodness of heaven and the pious intercession of the valiant St. George, I was able to sit my charger in the great battle, which was no very long time afterwards. But what have we here? A very fair and courtly maiden, or I mistake.'

It was indeed a tall and buxom country lass, with a basket of spinach leaves upon her head, and a great slab of bacon tucked under one arm. She bobbed a frightened curtsey as Sir Nigel swept his velvet hat from his head and reined up his great charger.

'God be with thee, fair maiden!' said he.

'God guard thee, my lord!' she answered, speaking in the broadest West Saxon speech, and balancing herself first on one foot and then on the other in her bashfulness.

'Fear not, my fair damsel,' said Sir Nigel, 'but tell me if perchance a poor and most unworthy knight can in any wise be of service to you. Should it chance that you have been used despitefully, it may be that I may obtain justice for you.'

'Lawk no, kind sir,' she answered, clutching her bacon the tighter, as though some design upon it might be hid under this knightly offer. 'I be the milking wench o' fairmer Arnold, and he be as kind a maister as heart could wish.'

'It is well,' said he, and with a shake of the bridle rode on down the woodland path. 'I would have you bear in mind,' he continued to his squires, 'that gentle courtesy is not, as is the base use of so many false knights, to be shown only to maidens of high degree, for there is no woman so humble that a true knight may not listen to her tale of wrong. But here comes a cavalier who is indeed in haste. Perchance it would be well that we should ask him whither he rides, for it may be that he is one who desires to advance himself in chivalry.'

The bleak, hard, wind-swept road dipped down in front of them into a little valley, and then, writhing up the heathy slope upon the other side, lost itself among the gaunt pine-trees. Far away between the black lines of trunks the quick glitter of steel marked where the Company pursued its way. To the north stretched the tree country, but to the south, between two swelling downs, a glimpse might be caught of the cold grey shimmer of the sea, with the white fleck of a galley sail upon the distant sky-line. Just in front of the travellers a horseman was urging his steed up the slope, driving it on with whip and spur as one who rides for a set purpose. As he clattered up, Alleyne could see that the roan horse was grey with dust and flecked with foam, as though it had left many a mile behind it. The rider 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 and 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 name,' 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-armour,' 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 honourable 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 chaunted in a shrill voice: 'Benedictus dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad prœlium, 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 neighbours 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 clamour 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 rearguard, 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 galleybagger?' 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 gravest 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 monies 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 them 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. Cross-roads 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 honour of his lady. The times were changed, however, and the forest tracks wound away from them deserted and silent, with no trample of war-horse or clang of armour 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 it. He seemed to be in the last extremity of fright, with a face the colour of clay and his limbs all ashake as one who hath an ague. Behind him, with his toe ever rasping upon the other's heels, there walked a very stern black-bearded man with a hard eye and a set mouth. He bore over his shoulder a great knotted stick with three jagged nails stuck in the head of it, and from time to time he whirled it up in the air with a quivering arm, as though he could scarce hold back from dashing his companion's brains out. So in silence they walked under the spread of the branches on the grass-grown path from Boldre.

'By St. Paul!' quoth the knight, 'but this is a passing strange sight, and perchance some very perilous and honourable venture may arise from it. I pray you, Edricson, to ride up to them and to ask them the cause of it.'

There was no need, however, for him to move, for the twain came swiftly towards them until they were within a spear's length, when the man with the cross sat himself down sullenly upon a tussock of grass by the wayside, while the other stood beside him with his great cudgel still hanging over his head. So intent was he that he raised his eyes neither to knight nor squires, but kept them ever fixed with a savage glare upon his comrade.

'I pray you, friend,' said Sir Nigel, 'to tell us truthfully who you are, and why you follow this man with such bitter enmity.'

'So long as I am within the pale of the king's law,' the stranger answered, 'I cannot see why I should render account to every passing wayfarer.'

'You are no very shrewd reasoner, fellow,' quoth the knight; 'for if it be within the law for you to threaten him with your club, then it is also lawful for me to threaten you with my sword.'

The man with the cross was down in an instant on his knees upon the ground, with hands clasped above him and his face shining with hope. 'For dear Christ's sake, my fair lord,' he cried in a crackling voice, 'I have at my belt a bag with a hundred rose nobles, and I will give it to you freely if you will but pass your sword through this man's body.'

'How, you foul knave?' exclaimed Sir Nigel hotly. 'Do you think that a cavalier's arm is to be bought like a packman's ware? By St. Paul! I have little doubt that this fellow hath some very good cause to hold you in hatred.'

'Indeed, my fair sir, you speak sooth,' quoth he with the club, while the other seated himself once more by the wayside. 'For this man is Peter Peterson, a very noted rieve, drawlatch, and murtherer, who has wrought much evil for many years in the parts about Winchester. It was but the other day, upon the feast of the blessed Simon and Jude, that he slew my younger brother William in Bere Forest—for which, by the black thorn of Glastonbury! I shall have his heart's blood, though I walked behind him to the farther end of the earth.'

'But if this be indeed so,' asked Sir Nigel, 'why is it that you have come with him so far through the forest?'

'Because I am an honest Englishman, and will take no more than the law allows. For when the deed was done this foul and base wretch fled to sanctuary at St. Cross, and I, as you may think, after him with all the posse. The Prior, however, hath so ordered that while he holds this cross no man may lay hand upon him without the ban of church, which heaven forefend from me or mine. Yet, if for an instant he lay the cross aside, or if he fail to journey to Pitt's Deep, where it is ordered that he shall take ship to outland parts, or if he take not the first ship, or if until the ship be ready he walk not every day into the sea as far as his loins, then he becomes outlaw, and I shall forthwith dash out his brains.'

At this the man on the ground snarled up at him like a rat, while the other clenched his teeth, and shook his club, and looked down at him with murder in his eyes. Knight and squires gazed from rogue to avenger, but as it was a matter which none could mend they tarried no longer, but rode upon their way. Alleyne, looking back, saw that the murderer had drawn bread and cheese from his scrip, and was silently munching it, with the protecting cross still hugged to his breast, while the other, black and grim, stood in the sunlit road and threw his dark shadow athwart him.