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Sir Nigel

by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #2845 · 717,607 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sir Nigel

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle


        
Release date: October 1, 2001 [eBook #2845]
                Most recently updated: April 11, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2845


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR NIGEL ***




[Illustration]




Sir Nigel

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle




CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION
  I. THE HOUSE OF LORING
  II. HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY
  III. THE YELLOW HORSE OF CROOKSBURY
  IV. HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR HOUSE OF TILFORD
  V. HOW NIGEL WAS TRIED BY THE ABBOT OF WAVERLEY
  VI. IN WHICH LADY ERMYNTRUDE OPENS THE IRON COFFER
  VII. HOW NIGEL WENT MARKETING TO GUILDFORD
  VIII. HOW THE KING HAWKED ON CROOKSBURY HEATH
  IX. HOW NIGEL HELD THE BRIDGE AT TILFORD
  X. HOW THE KING GREETED HIS SENESCHAL OF CALAIS
  XI. IN THE HALL OF THE KNIGHT OF DUPLIN
  XII. HOW NIGEL FOUGHT THE TWISTED MAN OF SHALFORD
  XIII. HOW THE COMRADES JOURNEYED DOWN THE OLD, OLD ROAD
  XIV. HOW NIGEL CHASED THE RED FERRET
  XV. HOW THE RED FERRET CAME TO COSFORD
  XVI. HOW THE KING’S COURT FEASTED IN CALAIS CASTLE
  XVII. THE SPANIARDS ON THE SEA
  XVIII. HOW BLACK SIMON CLAIMED FORFEIT FROM THE KING OF SARK
  XIX. HOW A SQUIRE OF ENGLAND MET A SQUIRE OF FRANCE
  XX. HOW THE ENGLISH ATTEMPTED THE CASTLE OF LA BROHINIÈRE
  XXI. HOW THE SECOND MESSENGER WENT TO COSFORD
  XXII. HOW ROBERT OF BEAUMANOIR CAME TO PLOERMEL
  XXIII. HOW THIRTY OF JOSSELIN ENCOUNTERED THIRTY OF PLOERMEL
  XXIV. HOW NIGEL WAS CALLED TO HIS MASTER
  XXV. HOW THE KING OF FRANCE HELD COUNSEL AT MAUPERTUIS
  XXVI. HOW NIGEL FOUND HIS THIRD DEED
  XXVII. HOW THE THIRD MESSENGER CAME TO COSFORD




INTRODUCTION


Dame History is so austere a lady that if one, has been so ill-advised
as to take a liberty with her, one should hasten to make amends by
repentance and confession. Events have been transposed to the extent of
some few months in this narrative in order to preserve the continuity
and evenness of the story. I hope so small a divergence may seem a
venial error after so many centuries. For the rest, it is as accurate
as a good deal of research and hard work could make it.

The matter of diction is always a question of taste and discretion in a
historical reproduction. In the year 1350 the upper classes still spoke
Norman-French, though they were just beginning to condescend to
English. The lower classes spoke the English of the original Piers
Plowman text, which would be considerably more obscure than their
superiors’ French if the two were now reproduced or imitated. The most
which the chronicles can do is to catch the cadence and style of their
talk, and to infuse here and there such a dash of the archaic as may
indicate their fashion of speech.

I am aware that there are incidents which may strike the modern reader
as brutal and repellent. It is useless, however, to draw the Twentieth
Century and label it the Fourteenth. It was a sterner age, and men’s
code of morality, especially in matters of cruelty, was very different.
There is no incident in the text for which very good warrant may not be
given. The fantastic graces of Chivalry lay upon the surface of life,
but beneath it was a half-savage population, fierce and animal, with
little ruth or mercy. It was a raw, rude England, full of elemental
passions, and redeemed only by elemental virtues. Such I have tried to
draw it.

For good or bad, many books have gone to the building of this one. I
look round my study table and I survey those which lie with me at the
moment, before I happily disperse them forever. I see La Croix’s
“Middle Ages,” Oman’s “Art of War,” Rietstap’s “Armorial General,” De
la Borderie’s “Histoire de Bretagne,” Dame Berner’s “Boke of St.
Albans,” “The Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brokeland,” “The Old Road,”
Hewitt’s “Ancient Armour,” Coussan’s “Heraldry,” Boutell’s “Arms,”
Browne’s “Chaucer’s England,” Cust’s “Scenes of the Middle Ages,”
Husserand’s “Wayfaring Life,” Ward’s “Canterbury Pilgrims;” Cornish’s
“Chivalry,” Hastings’ “British Archer,” Strutt’s “Sports,” Johnes
Froissart, Hargrove’s “Archery,” Longman’s “Edward III,” Wright’s
“Domestic Manners.” With these and many others I have lived for months.
If I have been unable to combine and transfer their effect, the fault
is mine.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.


“UNDERSHAW,” November 30, 1905.




I.
THE HOUSE OF LORING


In the month of July of the year 1348, between the feasts of St.
Benedict and of St. Swithin, a strange thing came upon England, for out
of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and piled, heavy
with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that
strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their
calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the
hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes
upon the strange cloud and a heaviness upon their hearts. They crept
into the churches where the trembling people were blessed and shriven
by the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no
rustling from the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All
was still, and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up
and onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was
the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping
ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the
whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch.

Then the rain began to fall. All day it rained, and all the night and
all the week and all the month, until folk had forgotten the blue
heavens and the gleam of the sunshine. It was not heavy, but it was
steady and cold and unceasing, so that the people were weary of its
hissing and its splashing, with the slow drip from the eaves. Always
the same thick evil cloud flowed from east to west with the rain
beneath it. None could see for more than a bow-shot from their
dwellings for the drifting veil of the rain-storms. Every morning the
folk looked upward for a break, but their eyes rested always upon the
same endless cloud, until at last they ceased to look up, and their
hearts despaired of ever seeing the change. It was raining at
Lammas-tide and raining at the Feast of the Assumption and still
raining at Michaelmas. The crops and the hay, sodden and black, had
rotted in the fields, for they were not worth the garnering. The sheep
had died, and the calves also, so there was little to kill when
Martinmas came and it was time to salt the meat for the winter. They
feared a famine, but it was worse than famine which was in store for
them.

For the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone upon a
land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and rotten leaves
reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose from the woods. The
fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and color never
matched before—scarlet and mauve and liver and black. It was as though
the sick earth had burst into foul pustules; mildew and lichen mottled
the walls, and with that filthy crop Death sprang also from the
water-soaked earth. Men died, and women and children, the baron of the
castle, the franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein
in his wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and
all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken none
recovered, and the illness was ever the same—gross boils, raving, and
the black blotches which gave its name to the disease. All through the
winter the dead rotted by the wayside for want of some one to bury
them. In many a village no single man was left alive. Then at last the
spring came with sunshine and health and lightness and laughter—the
greenest, sweetest, tenderest spring that England had ever known—but
only half of England could know it. The other half had passed away with
the great purple cloud.

Yet it was there in that stream of death, in that reek of corruption,
that the brighter and freer England was born. There in that dark hour
the first streak of the new dawn was seen. For in no way save by a
great upheaval and change could the nation break away from that iron
feudal system which held her limbs. But now it was a new country which
came out from that year of death. The barons were dead in swaths. No
high turret nor cunning moat could keep out that black commoner who
struck them down.

Oppressive laws slackened for want of those who could enforce them, and
once slackened could never be enforced again. The laborer would be a
slave no longer. The bondsman snapped his shackles. There was much to
do and few left to do it. Therefore the few should be freemen, name
their own price, and work where and for whom they would. It was the
black death which cleared the way for that great rising thirty years
later which left the English peasant the freest of his class in Europe.

But there were few so far-sighted that they could see that here, as
ever, good was coming out of evil. At the moment misery and ruin were
brought into every family. The dead cattle, the ungarnered crops, the
untilled lands—every spring of wealth had dried up at the same moment.
Those who were rich became poor; but those who were poor already, and
especially those who were poor with the burden of gentility upon their
shoulders, found themselves in a perilous state. All through England
the smaller gentry were ruined, for they had no trade save war, and
they drew their living from the work of others. On many a manor-house
there came evil times, and on none more than on the Manor of Tilford,
where for many generations the noble family of the Lorings had held
their home.

There was a time when the Lorings had held the country from the North
Downs to the Lakes of Frensham, and when their grim castle-keep rising
above the green meadows which border the River Wey had been the
strongest fortalice betwixt Guildford Castle in the east and Winchester
in the west. But there came that Barons’ War, in which the King used
his Saxon subjects as a whip with which to scourge his Norman barons,
and Castle Loring, like so many other great strongholds, was swept from
the face of the land. From that time the Lorings, with estates sadly
curtailed, lived in what had been the dower-house, with enough for
splendor.

And then came their lawsuit with Waverley Abbey, and the Cistercians
laid claim to their richest land, with peccary, turbary and feudal
rights over the remainder. It lingered on for years, this great
lawsuit, and when it was finished the men of the Church and the men of
the Law had divided all that was richest of the estate between them.
There was still left the old manor-house from which with each
generation there came a soldier to uphold the credit of the name and to
show the five scarlet roses on the silver shield where it had always
been shown—in the van. There were twelve bronzes in the little chapel
where Matthew the priest said mass every morning, all of men of the
house of Loring. Two lay with their legs crossed, as being from the
Crusades. Six others rested their feet upon lions, as having died in
war. Four only lay with the effigy of their hounds to show that they
had passed in peace.

Of this famous but impoverished family, doubly impoverished by law and
by pestilence, two members were living in the year of grace 1349—Lady
Ermyntrude Loring and her grandson Nigel. Lady Ermyntrude’s husband had
fallen before the Scottish spearsmen at Stirling, and her son Eustace,
Nigel’s father, had found a glorious death nine years before this
chronicle opens upon the poop of a Norman galley at the sea-fight of
Sluys. The lonely old woman, fierce and brooding like the falcon mewed
in her chamber, was soft only toward the lad whom she had brought up.
All the tenderness and love of her nature, so hidden from others that
they could not imagine their existence, were lavished upon him. She
could not bear him away from her, and he, with that respect for
authority which the age demanded, would not go without her blessing and
consent.

So it came about that Nigel, with his lion heart and with the blood of
a hundred soldiers thrilling in his veins, still at the age of two and
twenty, wasted the weary days reclaiming his hawks with leash and lure
or training the alans and spaniels who shared with the family the big
earthen-floored hall of the manor-house.

Day by day the aged Lady Ermyntrude had seen him wax in strength and in
manhood, small of stature, it is true, but with muscles of steel—and a
soul of fire. From all parts, from the warden of Guildford Castle, from
the tilt-yard of Farnham, tales of his prowess were brought back to
her, of his daring as a rider, of his debonair courage, of his skill
with all weapons; but still she, who had both husband and son torn from
her by a bloody death, could not bear that this, the last of the
Lorings, the final bud of so famous an old tree, should share the same
fate. With a weary heart, but with a smiling face, he bore with his
uneventful days, while she would ever put off the evil time until the
harvest was better, until the monks of Waverley should give up what
they had taken, until his uncle should die and leave money for his
outfit, or any other excuse with which she could hold him to her side.

And indeed, there was need for a man at Tilford, for the strife betwixt
the Abbey and the manor-house had never been appeased, and still on one
pretext or another the monks would clip off yet one more slice of their
neighbor’s land. Over the winding river, across the green meadows, rose
the short square tower and the high gray walls of the grim Abbey, with
its bell tolling by day and night, a voice of menace and of dread to
the little household.

It is in the heart of the great Cistercian monastery that this
chronicle of old days must take its start, as we trace the feud betwixt
the monks and the house of Loring, with those events to which it gave
birth, ending with the coming of Chandos, the strange spear-running of
Tilford Bridge and the deeds with which Nigel won fame in the wars.
Elsewhere, in the chronicle of the White Company, it has been set forth
what manner of man was Nigel Loring. Those who love him may read herein
those things which went to his making. Let us go back together and gaze
upon this green stage of England, the scenery, hill, plain and river
even as now, the actors in much our very selves, in much also so
changed in thought and act that they might be dwellers in another world
to ours.




II.
HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY


The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the Blessed
Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from man’s
salvation.

From tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John of
the House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he conducted
the many high duties of his office. All around for many a mile on every
side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was the
master. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and
cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with
a busy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of
the brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below.
From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a
Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir,
while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother
Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.

Abbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at the
greensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open Gothic
arches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren within. Two and
two in their black-and-white garb with slow step and heads inclined,
they paced round and round. Several of the more studious had brought
their illuminating work from the scriptorium, and sat in the warm
sunshine with their little platters of pigments and packets of
gold-leaf before them, their shoulders rounded and their faces sunk low
over the white sheets of vellum. There too was the copper-worker with
his burin and graver. Learning and art were not traditions with the
Cistercians as with the parent Order of the Benedictines, and yet the
library of Waverley was well filled both with precious books and with
pious students.

But the true glory of the Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and so
ever and anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk,
soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee,
fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadows
speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed
from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope of
Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshes
drained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, all
circled the great Abbey round with the visible labors of the Order.

The Abbot’s full and florid face shone with a quiet content as he
looked out at his huge but well-ordered household. Like every head of a
prosperous Abbey, Abbot John, the fourth of the name, was a man of
various accomplishments. Through his own chosen instruments he had to
minister a great estate and to keep order and decorum among a large
body of men living a celibate life. He was a rigid disciplinarian
toward all beneath him, a supple diplomatist to all above. He held high
debate with neighboring abbots and lords, with bishops, with papal
legates, and even on occasion with the King’s majesty himself. Many
were the subjects with which he must be conversant. Questions of
doctrine, questions of building, points of forestry, of agriculture, of
drainage, of feudal law, all came to the Abbot for settlement. He held
the scales of justice in all the Abbey banlieue which stretched over
many a mile of Hampshire and of Surrey. To the monks his displeasure
might mean fasting, exile to some sterner community, or even
imprisonment in chains. Over the layman also he could hold any
punishment save only corporeal death, instead of which he had in hand
the far more dreadful weapon of spiritual excommunication.

Such were the powers of the Abbot, and it is no wonder that there were
masterful lines in the ruddy features of Abbot John, or that the
brethren, glancing up, should put on an even meeker carriage and more
demure expression as they saw the watchful face in the window above
them.

A knock at the door of his studio recalled the Abbot to his immediate
duties, and he returned to his desk. Already he had spoken with his
cellarer and prior, almoner, chaplain and lector, but now in the tall
and gaunt monk who obeyed his summons to enter he recognized the most
important and also the most importunate of his agents, Brother Samuel
the sacrist, whose office, corresponding to that of the layman’s
bailiff, placed the material interests of the monastery and its
dealings with the outer world entirely under his control, subject only
to the check of the Abbot. Brother Samuel was a gnarled and stringy old
monk whose stern and sharp-featured face reflected no light from above
but only that sordid workaday world toward which it was forever turned.
A huge book of accounts was tucked under one of his arms, while a great
bunch of keys hung from the other hand, a badge of his office, and also
on occasion of impatience a weapon of offense, as many a scarred head
among rustics and lay brothers could testify.

The Abbot sighed wearily, for he suffered much at the hands of his
strenuous agent. “Well, Brother Samuel, what is your will?” he asked.

“Holy father, I have to report that I have sold the wool to Master
Baldwin of Winchester at two shillings a bale more than it fetched last
year, for the murrain among the sheep has raised the price.”

“You have done well, brother.”

“I have also to tell you that I have distrained Wat the warrener from
his cottage, for his Christmas rent is still unpaid, nor the hen-rents
of last year.”

“He has a wife and four children, brother.” He was a good, easy man,
the Abbot, though liable to be overborne by his sterner subordinate.

“It is true, holy father; but if I should pass him, then how am I to
ask the rent of the foresters of Puttenham, or the hinds in the
village? Such a thing spreads from house to house, and where then is
the wealth of Waverley?”

“What else, Brother Samuel?”

“There is the matter of the fish-ponds.”

The Abbot’s face brightened. It was a subject upon which he was an
authority. If the rule of his Order had robbed him of the softer joys
of life, he had the keener zest for those which remained.

“How have the char prospered, brother?”

“They have done well, holy father, but the carp have died in the
Abbot’s pond.”

“Carp prosper only upon a gravel bottom. They must be put in also in
their due proportion, three milters to one spawner, brother sacrist,
and the spot must be free from wind, stony and sandy, an ell deep, with
willows and grass upon the banks. Mud for tench, brother, gravel for
carp.”

The sacrist leaned forward with the face of one who bears tidings of
woe. “There are pike in the Abbot’s pond,” said he.

“Pike!” cried the Abbot in horror. “As well shut up a wolf in our
sheepfold. How came a pike in the pond? There were no pike last year,
and a pike does not fall with the rain nor rise in the springs. The
pond must be drained, or we shall spend next Lent upon stockfish, and
have the brethren down with the great sickness ere Easter Sunday has
come to absolve us from our abstinence.”

“The pond shall be drained, holy father; I have already ordered it.
Then we shall plant pot-herbs on the mud bottom, and after we have
gathered them in, return the fish and water once more from the lower
pond, so that they may fatten among the rich stubble.”

“Good!” cried the Abbot. “I would have three fish-stews in every
well-ordered house—one dry for herbs, one shallow for the fry and the
yearlings, and one deep for the breeders and the tablefish. But still,
I have not heard you say how the pike came in the Abbot’s pond.”

A spasm of anger passed over the fierce face of the sacrist, and his
keys rattled as his bony hand clasped them more tightly. “Young Nigel
Loring!” said he. “He swore that he would do us scathe, and in this way
he has done it.”

“How know you this?”

“Six weeks ago he was seen day by day fishing for pike at the great
Lake of Frensham. Twice at night he has been met with a bundle of straw
under his arm on the Hankley Down. Well, I wot that the straw was wet
and that a live pike lay within it.”

The Abbot shook his head. “I have heard much of this youth’s wild ways;
but now indeed he has passed all bounds if what you say be truth. It
was bad enough when it was said that he slew the King’s deer in Woolmer
Chase, or broke the head of Hobbs the chapman, so that he lay for seven
days betwixt life and death in our infirmary, saved only by Brother
Peter’s skill in the pharmacies of herbs; but to put pike in the
Abbot’s pond—why should he play such a devil’s prank?”

“Because he hates the House of Waverley, holy father; because he swears
that we hold his father’s land.”

“In which there is surely some truth.”

“But, holy father, we hold no more than the law has allowed.”

“True, brother, and yet between ourselves, we may admit that the
heavier purse may weigh down the scales of Justice. When I have passed
the old house and have seen that aged woman with her ruddled cheeks and
her baleful eyes look the curses she dare not speak, I have many a time
wished that we had other neighbors.”

“That we can soon bring about, holy father. Indeed, it is of it that I
wished to speak to you. Surely it is not hard for us to drive them from
the country-side. There are thirty years’ claims of escuage unsettled,
and there is Sergeant Wilkins, the lawyer of Guildford, whom I will
warrant to draw up such arrears of dues and rents and issues of hidage
and fodder-corn that these folk, who are as beggarly as they are proud,
will have to sell the roof-tree over them ere they can meet them.
Within three days I will have them at our mercy.”

“They are an ancient family and of good repute. I would not treat them
too harshly, brother.”

“Bethink you of the pike in the carp pond!”

The Abbot hardened his heart at the thought. “It was indeed a devil’s
deed—when we had but newly stocked it with char and with carp. Well,
well, the law is the law, and if you can use it to hurt, it is still
lawful to do so. Have these claims been advanced?”

“Deacon the bailiff with his two varlets went down to the Hall
yesternight on the matter of the escuage, and came screaming back with
this young hothead raging at their heels. He is small and slight, yet
he has the strength of many men in the hour of his wrath. The bailiff
swears that he will go no more, save with half a score of archers to
uphold him.”

The Abbot was red with anger at this new offense. “I will teach him
that the servants of Holy Church, even though we of the rule of Saint
Bernard be the lowliest and humblest of her children, can still defend
their own against the froward and the violent! Go, cite this man before
the Abbey court. Let him appear in the chapter-house after tierce
to-morrow.”

But the wary sacrist shook his head: “Nay, holy father, the times are
not yet ripe. Give me three days, I pray you, that my case against him
may be complete. Bear in mind that the father and the grandfather of
this unruly squire were both famous men of their day and the foremost
knights in the King’s own service, living in high honor and dying in
their knightly duty. The Lady Ermyntrude Loring was first lady to the
King’s mother. Roger FitzAlan of Farnham and Sir Hugh Walcott of
Guildford Castle were each old comrades-in-arms of Nigel’s father, and
sib to him on the distaff side. Already there has been talk that we
have dealt harshly with them. Therefore, my rede is that we be wise and
wary and wait until his cup be indeed full.”

The Abbot had opened his mouth to reply, when the consultation was
interrupted by a most unwonted buzz of excitement from among the monks
in the cloister below. Questions and answers in excited voices sounded
from one side of the ambulatory to the other. Sacrist and Abbot were
gazing at each other in amazement at such a breach of the discipline
and decorum of their well-trained flock, when there came a swift step
upon the stair, and a white-faced brother flung open the door and
rushed into the room.

“Father Abbot!” he cried. “Alas, alas! Brother John is dead, and the
holy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-virgate
field!”




III.
THE YELLOW HORSE OF CROOKSBURY


In those simple times there was a great wonder and mystery in life. Man
walked in fear and solemnity, with Heaven very close above his head,
and Hell below his very feet. God’s visible hand was everywhere, in the
rainbow and the comet, in the thunder and the wind. The Devil too raged
openly upon the earth; he skulked behind the hedge-rows in the
gloaming; he laughed loudly in the night-time; he clawed the dying
sinner, pounced on the unbaptized babe, and twisted the limbs of the
epileptic. A foul fiend slunk ever by a man’s side and whispered
villainies in his ear, while above him there hovered an angel of grace
who pointed to the steep and narrow track. How could one doubt these
things, when Pope and priest and scholar and King were all united in
believing them, with no single voice of question in the whole wide
world?

Every book read, every picture seen, every tale heard from nurse or
mother, all taught the same lesson. And as a man traveled through the
world his faith would grow the firmer, for go where he would there were
the endless shrines of the saints, each with its holy relic in the
center, and around it the tradition of incessant miracles, with stacks
of deserted crutches and silver votive hearts to prove them. At every
turn he was made to feel how thin was the veil, and how easily rent,
which screened him from the awful denizens of the unseen world.

Hence the wild announcement of the frightened monk seemed terrible
rather than incredible to those whom he addressed. The Abbot’s ruddy
face paled for a moment, it is true, but he plucked the crucifix from
his desk and rose valiantly to his feet.

“Lead me to him!” said he. “Show me the foul fiend who dares to lay his
grip upon brethren of the holy house of Saint Bernard! Run down to my
chaplain, brother! Bid him bring the exorcist with him, and also the
blessed box of relics, and the bones of Saint James from under the
altar! With these and a contrite and humble heart we may show front to
all the powers of darkness.”

But the sacrist was of a more critical turn of mind. He clutched the
monk’s arm with a grip which left its five purple spots for many a day
to come.

“Is this the way to enter the Abbot’s own chamber, without knock or
reverence, or so much as a ‘Pax vobiscum’?” said he sternly. “You were
wont to be our gentlest novice, of lowly carriage in chapter, devout in
psalmody and strict in the cloister. Pull your wits together and answer
me straightly. In what form has the foul fiend appeared, and how has he
done this grievous scathe to our brethren? Have you seen him with your
own eyes, or do you repeat from hearsay? Speak, man, or you stand on
the penance-stool in the chapter-house this very hour!”

Thus adjured, the frightened monk grew calmer in his bearing, though
his white lips and his startled eyes, with the gasping of his breath,
told of his inward tremors.

“If it please you, holy father, and you, reverend sacrist, it came
about in this way. James the subprior, and Brother John and I had spent
our day from sext onward on Hankley, cutting bracken for the
cow-houses. We were coming back over the five-virgate field, and the
holy subprior was telling us a saintly tale from the life of Saint
Gregory, when there came a sudden sound like a rushing torrent, and the
foul fiend sprang over the high wall which skirts the water-meadow and
rushed upon us with the speed of the wind. The lay brother he struck to
the ground and trampled into the mire. Then, seizing the good subprior
in his teeth, he rushed round the field, swinging him as though he were
a fardel of old clothes.

“Amazed at such a sight, I stood without movement and had said a credo
and three aves, when the Devil dropped the subprior and sprang upon me.
With the help of Saint Bernard I clambered over the wall, but not
before his teeth had found my leg, and he had torn away the whole back
skirt of my gown.” As he spoke he turned and gave corroboration to his
story by the hanging ruins of his long trailing garment.

“In what shape then did Satan appear?” the Abbot demanded.

“As a great yellow horse, holy father—a monster horse, with eyes of
fire and the teeth of a griffin.”

“A yellow horse!” The sacrist glared at the scared monk. “You foolish
brother! How will you behave when you have indeed to face the King of
Terrors himself if you can be so frightened by the sight of a yellow
horse? It is the horse of Franklin Aylward, my father, which has been
distrained by us because he owes the Abbey fifty good shillings and can
never hope to pay it. Such a horse, they say, is not to be found
betwixt this and the King’s stables at Windsor, for his sire was a
Spanish destrier, and his dam an Arab mare of the very breed which
Saladin, whose soul now reeks in Hell, kept for his own use, and even
it has been said under the shelter of his own tent. I took him in
discharge of the debt, and I ordered the varlets who had haltered him
to leave him alone in the water-meadow, for I have heard that the beast
has indeed a most evil spirit, and has killed more men than one.”

“It was an ill day for Waverley that you brought such a monster within
its bounds,” said the Abbot. “If the subprior and Brother John be
indeed dead, then it would seem that if the horse be not the Devil he
is at least the Devil’s instrument.”

“Horse or Devil, holy father, I heard him shout with joy as he trampled
upon Brother John, and had you seen him tossing the subprior as a dog
shakes a rat you would perchance have felt even as I did.”

“Come then,” cried the Abbot, “let us see with our own eyes what evil
has been done.”

And the three monks hurried down the stair which led to the cloisters.

They had no sooner descended than their more pressing fears were set at
rest, for at that very moment, limping, disheveled and mud-stained, the
two sufferers were being led in amid a crowd of sympathizing brethren.
Shouts and cries from outside showed, however, that some further drama
was in progress, and both Abbot and sacrist hastened onward as fast as
the dignity of their office would permit, until they had passed the
gates and gained the wall of the meadow. Looking over it, a remarkable
sight presented itself to their eyes.

Fetlock deep in the lush grass there stood a magnificent horse, such a
horse as a sculptor or a soldier might thrill to see. His color was a
light chestnut, with mane and tail of a more tawny tint. Seventeen
hands high, with a barrel and haunches which bespoke tremendous
strength, he fined down to the most delicate lines of dainty breed in
neck and crest and shoulder. He was indeed a glorious sight as he stood
there, his beautiful body leaning back from his wide-spread and propped
fore legs, his head craned high, his ears erect, his mane bristling,
his red nostrils opening and shutting with wrath, and his flashing eyes
turning from side to side in haughty menace and defiance.

Scattered round in a respectful circle, six of the Abbey lay servants
and foresters, each holding a halter, were creeping toward him. Every
now and then, with a beautiful toss and swerve and plunge, the great
creature would turn upon one of his would-be captors, and with
outstretched head, flying mane and flashing teeth, would chase him
screaming to the safety of the wall, while the others would close
swiftly in behind and cast their ropes in the hope of catching neck or
leg, but only in their turn to be chased to the nearest refuge.

Had two of these ropes settled upon the horse, and had their throwers
found some purchase of stump or boulder by which they could hold them,
then the man’s brain might have won its wonted victory over swiftness
and strength. But the brains were themselves at fault which imagined
that one such rope would serve any purpose save to endanger the
thrower.

Yet so it was, and what might have been foreseen occurred at the very
moment of the arrival of the monks. The horse, having chased one of his
enemies to the wall, remained so long snorting his contempt over the
coping that the others were able to creep upon him from behind. Several
ropes were flung, and one noose settled over the proud crest and lost
itself in the waving mane. In an instant the creature had turned and
the men were flying for their lives; but he who had cast the rope
lingered, uncertain what use to make of his own success. That moment of
doubt was fatal. With a yell of dismay, the man saw the great creature
rear above him. Then with a crash the fore feet fell upon him and
dashed him to the ground. He rose screaming, was hurled over once more,
and lay a quivering, bleeding heap, while the savage horse, the most
cruel and terrible in its anger of all creatures on earth, bit and
shook and trampled the writhing body.

A loud wail of horror rose from the lines of tonsured heads which
skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long
hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of thanksgiving and
of joy.

On the road which led to the old dark manor-house upon the side of the
hill a youth had been riding. His mount was a sorry one, a weedy,
shambling, long-haired colt, and his patched tunic of faded purple with
stained leather belt presented no very smart appearance; yet in the
bearing of the man, in the poise of his head, in his easy graceful
carriage, and in the bold glance of his large blue eyes, there was that
stamp of distinction and of breed which would have given him a place of
his own in any assembly. He was of small stature, but his frame was
singularly elegant and graceful. His face, though tanned with the
weather, was delicate in features and most eager and alert in
expression. A thick fringe of crisp yellow curls broke from under the
dark flat cap which he was wearing, and a short golden beard hid the
outline of his strong square chin. One white osprey feather thrust
through a gold brooch in the front of his cap gave a touch of grace to
his somber garb. This and other points of his attire, the short hanging
mantle, the leather-sheathed hunting-knife, the cross belt which
sustained a brazen horn, the soft doe-skin boots and the prick spurs,
would all disclose themselves to an observer; but at the first glance
the brown face set in gold and the dancing light of the quick,
reckless, laughing eyes, were the one strong memory left behind.

Such was the youth who, cracking his whip joyously, and followed by
half a score of dogs, cantered on his rude pony down the Tilford Lane,
and thence it was that with a smile of amused contempt upon his face he
observed the comedy in the field and the impotent efforts of the
servants of Waverley.

Suddenly, however, as the comedy turned swiftly to black tragedy, this
passive spectator leaped into quick strenuous life. With a spring he
was off his pony, and with another he was over the stone wall and
flying swiftly across the field. Looking up from his victim, the great
yellow horse saw this other enemy approach, and spurning the prostrate,
but still writhing body with its heels, dashed at the newcomer.

But this time there was no hasty flight, no rapturous pursuit to the
wall. The little man braced himself straight, flung up his metal-headed
whip, and met the horse with a crashing blow upon the head, repeated
again and again with every attack. In vain the horse reared and tried
to overthrow its enemy with swooping shoulders and pawing hoofs. Cool,
swift and alert, the man sprang swiftly aside from under the very
shadow of death, and then again came the swish and thud of the unerring
blow from the heavy handle.

The horse drew off, glared with wonder and fury at this masterful man,
and then trotted round in a circle, with mane bristling, tail streaming
and ears on end, snorting in its rage and pain. The man, hardly
deigning to glance at his fell neighbor, passed on to the wounded
forester, raised him in his arms with a strength which could not have
been expected in so slight a body, and carried him, groaning, to the
wall, where a dozen hands were outstretched to help him over. Then, at
his leisure, the young man also climbed the wall, smiling back with
cool contempt at the yellow horse, which had come raging after him once
more.

As he sprang down, a dozen monks surrounded him to thank him or to
praise him; but he would have turned sullenly away without a word had
he not been stopped by Abbot John in person.

“Nay, Squire Loring,” said he, “if you be a bad friend to our Abbey,
yet we must needs own that you have played the part of a good Christian
this day, for if there is breath left in our servant’s body it is to
you next to our blessed patron Saint Bernard that we owe it.”

“By Saint Paul! I owe you no good-will, Abbot John,” said the young
man. “The shadow of your Abbey has ever fallen across the house of
Loring. As to any small deed that I may have done this day, I ask no
thanks for it. It is not for you nor for your house that I have done
it, but only because it was my pleasure so to do.”

The Abbot flushed at the bold words, and bit his lip with vexation.

It was the sacrist, however, who answered: “It would be more fitting
and more gracious,” said he, “if you were to speak to the holy Father
Abbot in a manner suited to his high rank and to the respect which is
due to a Prince of the Church.”

The youth turned his bold blue eyes upon the monk, and his sunburned
face darkened with anger. “Were it not for the gown upon your back, and
for your silvering hair, I would answer you in another fashion,” said
he. “You are the lean wolf which growls ever at our door, greedy for
the little which hath been left to us. Say and do what you will with
me, but by Saint Paul! if I find that Dame Ermyntrude is baited by your
ravenous pack I will beat them off with this whip from the little patch
which still remains of all the acres of my fathers.”

“Have a care, Nigel Loring, have a care!” cried the Abbot, with finger
upraised. “Have you no fears of the law of England?”

“A just law I fear and obey.”

“Have you no respect for Holy Church?”

“I respect all that is holy in her. I do not respect those who grind
the poor or steal their neighbor’s land.”

“Rash man, many a one has been blighted by her ban for less than you
have now said! And yet it is not for us to judge you harshly this day.
You are young and hot words come easily to your lips. How fares the
forester?”

“His hurt is grievous, Father Abbot, but he will live,” said a brother,
looking up from the prostrate form. “With a blood-letting and an
electuary, I will warrant him sound within a month.”

“Then bear him to the hospital. And now, brother, about this terrible
beast who still gazes and snorts at us over the top of the wall as
though his thoughts of Holy Church were as uncouth as those of Squire
Nigel himself, what are we to do with him?”

“Here is Franklin Aylward,” said one of the brethren. “The horse was
his, and doubtless he will take it back to his farm.”

But the stout red-faced farmer shook his head at the proposal. “Not I,
in faith!” said he. “The beast hath chased me twice round the paddock;
it has nigh slain my boy Samkin. He would never be happy till he had
ridden it, nor has he ever been happy since. There is not a hind in my
employ who will enter his stall. Ill fare the day that ever I took the
beast from the Castle stud at Guildford, where they could do nothing
with it and no rider could be found bold enough to mount it! When the
sacrist here took it for a fifty-shilling debt he made his own bargain
and must abide by it. He comes no more to the Crooksbury farm.”

“And he stays no more here,” said the Abbot. “Brother sacrist, you have
raised the Devil, and it is for you to lay it again.”

“That I will most readily,” cried the sacrist. “The pittance-master can
stop the fifty shillings from my very own weekly dole, and so the Abbey
be none the poorer. In the meantime here is Wat with his arbalist and a
bolt in his girdle. Let him drive it to the head through this cursed
creature, for his hide and his hoofs are of more value than his wicked
self.”

A hard brown old woodman who had been shooting vermin in the Abbey
groves stepped forward with a grin of pleasure. After a lifetime of
stoats and foxes, this was indeed a noble quarry which was to fall
before him. Fitting a bolt on the nut of his taut crossbow, he had
raised it to his shoulder and leveled it at the fierce, proud,
disheveled head which tossed in savage freedom at the other side of the
wall. His finger was crooked on the spring, when a blow from a whip
struck the bow upward and the bolt flew harmless over the Abbey
orchard, while the woodman shrank abashed from Nigel Loring’s angry
eyes.

“Keep your bolts for your weasels!” said he. “Would you take life from
a creature whose only fault is that its spirit is so high that it has
met none yet who dare control it? You would slay such a horse as a king
might be proud to mount, and all because a country franklin, or a monk,
or a monk’s varlet, has not the wit nor the hands to master him?”

The sacrist turned swiftly on the Squire. “The Abbey owes you an
offering for this day’s work, however rude your words may be,” said he.
“If you think so much of the horse, you may desire to own it. If I am
to pay for it, then with the holy Abbot’s permission it is in my gift
and I bestow it freely upon you.”

The Abbot plucked at his subordinate’s sleeve. “Bethink you, brother
sacrist,” he whispered, “shall we not have this man’s blood upon our
heads?”

“His pride is as stubborn as the horse’s, holy father,” the sacrist
answered, his gaunt fact breaking into a malicious smile. “Man or
beast, one will break the other and the world will be the better for
it. If you forbid me—”

“Nay, brother, you have bought the horse, and you may have the bestowal
of it.”

“Then I give it—hide and hoofs, tail and temper—to Nigel Loring, and
may it be as sweet and as gentle to him as he hath been to the Abbot of
Waverley!”

The sacrist spoke aloud amid the tittering of the monks, for the man
concerned was out of earshot. At the first words which had shown him
the turn which affairs had taken he had run swiftly to the spot where
he had left his pony. From its mouth he removed the bit and the stout
bridle which held it. Then leaving the creature to nibble the grass by
the wayside he sped back whence he came.

“I take your gift, monk,” said he, “though I know well why it is that
you give it. Yet I thank you, for there are two things upon earth for
which I have ever yearned, and which my thin purse could never buy. The
one is a noble horse, such a horse as my father’s son should have
betwixt his thighs, and here is the one of all others which I would
have chosen, since some small deed is to be done in the winning of him,
and some honorable advancement to be gained. How is the horse called?”

“Its name,” said the franklin, “is Pommers. I warn you, young sir, that
none may ride him, for many have tried, and the luckiest is he who has
only a staved rib to show for it.”

“I thank you for your rede,” said Nigel, “and now I see that this is
indeed a horse which I would journey far to meet. I am your man,
Pommers, and you are my horse, and this night you shall own it or I
will never need horse again. My spirit against thine, and God hold thy
spirit high, Pommers, so that the greater be the adventure, and the
more hope of honor gained!”

While he spoke the young Squire had climbed on to the top of the wall
and stood there balanced, the very image of grace and spirit and
gallantry, his bridle hanging from one hand and his whip grasped in the
other. With a fierce snort, the horse made for him instantly, and his
white teeth flashed as he snapped; but again a heavy blow from the
loaded whip caused him to swerve, and even at the instant of the
swerve, measuring the distance with steady eyes, and bending his supple
body for the spring, Nigel bounded into the air and fell with his legs
astride the broad back of the yellow horse. For a minute, with neither
saddle nor stirrups to help him, and the beast ramping and rearing like
a mad thing beneath him, he was hard pressed to hold his own. His legs
were like two bands of steel welded on to the swelling arches of the
great horse’s ribs, and his left hand was buried deep in the tawny
mane.

Never had the dull round of the lives of the gentle brethren of
Waverley been broken by so fiery a scene. Springing to right and
swooping to left, now with its tangled wicked head betwixt its
forefeet, and now pawing eight feet high in the air, with scarlet,
furious nostrils and maddened eyes, the yellow horse was a thing of
terror and of beauty. But the lithe figure on his back, bending like a
reed in the wind to every movement, firm below, pliant above, with calm
inexorable face, and eyes which danced and gleamed with the joy of
contest, still held its masterful place for all that the fiery heart
and the iron muscles of the great beast could do.

Once a long drone of dismay rose from the monks, as rearing higher and
higher yet a last mad effort sent the creature toppling over backward
upon its rider. But, swift and cool, he had writhed from under it ere
it fell, spurned it with his foot as it rolled upon the earth, and then
seizing its mane as it rose swung himself lightly on to its back once
more. Even the grim sacrist could not but join the cheer, as Pommers,
amazed to find the rider still upon his back, plunged and curveted down
the field.

But the wild horse only swelled into a greater fury. In the sullen
gloom of its untamed heart there rose the furious resolve to dash the
life from this clinging rider, even if it meant destruction to beast
and man. With red, blazing eyes it looked round for death. On three
sides the five-virgate field was bounded by a high wall, broken only at
one spot by a heavy four-foot wooden gate. But on the fourth side was a
low gray building, one of the granges of the Abbey, presenting a long
flank unbroken by door or window. The horse stretched itself into a
gallop, and headed straight for that craggy thirty-foot wall. He would
break in red ruin at the base of it if he could but dash forever the
life of this man, who claimed mastery over that which had never found
its master yet.

The great haunches gathered under it, the eager hoofs drummed the
grass, as faster and still more fast the frantic horse bore himself and
his rider toward the wall. Would Nigel spring off? To do so would be to
bend his will to that of the beast beneath him. There was a better way
than that. Cool, quick and decided, the man swiftly passed both whip
and bridle into the left hand which still held the mane. Then with the
right he slipped his short mantle from his shoulders and lying forward
along the creature’s strenuous, rippling back he cast the flapping
cloth over the horse’s eyes.

The result was but too successful, for it nearly brought about the
downfall of the rider. When those red eyes straining for death were
suddenly shrouded in unexpected darkness the amazed horse propped on
its forefeet and came to so dead a stop that Nigel was shot forward on
to its neck and hardly held himself by his hair-entwined hand. Ere he
had slid back into position the moment of danger had passed, for the
horse, its purpose all blurred in its mind by this strange thing which
had befallen, wheeled round once more, trembling in every fiber, and
tossing its petulant head until at last the mantle had been slipped
from its eyes and the chilling darkness had melted into the homely
circle of sunlit grass once more.

But what was this new outrage which had been inflicted upon it? What
was this defiling bar of iron which was locked hard against its mouth?
What were these straps which galled the tossing neck, this band which
spanned its chest? In those instants of stillness ere the mantle had
been plucked away Nigel had lain forward, had slipped the snaffle
between the champing teeth, and had deftly secured it.

Blind, frantic fury surged in the yellow horse’s heart once more at
this new degradation, this badge of serfdom and infamy. His spirit rose
high and menacing at the touch. He loathed this place, these people,
all and everything which threatened his freedom. He would have done
with them forever; he would see them no more. Let him away to the
uttermost parts of the earth, to the great plains where freedom is.
Anywhere over the far horizon where he could get away from the defiling
bit and the insufferable mastery of man.

He turned with a rush, and one magnificent deer-like bound carried him
over the four-foot gate. Nigel’s hat had flown off, and his yellow
curls streamed behind him as he rose and fell in the leap. They were in
the water-meadow now, and the rippling stream twenty feet wide gleamed
in front of them running down to the main current of the Wey. The
yellow horse gathered his haunches under him and flew over like an
arrow. He took off from behind a boulder and cleared a furze-bush on
the farther side. Two stones still mark the leap from hoof-mark to
hoof-mark, and they are eleven good paces apart. Under the hanging
branch of the great oak-tree on the farther side (that _Quercus
Tilfordiensis ordiensis_ is still shown as the bound of the Abby’s
immediate precincts) the great horse passed. He had hoped to sweep off
his rider, but Nigel sank low on the heaving back with his face buried
in the flying mane. The rough bough rasped him rudely, but never shook
his spirit nor his grip. Rearing, plunging and struggling, Pommers
broke through the sapling grove and was out on the broad stretch of
Hankley Down.

And now came such a ride as still lingers in the gossip of the lowly
country folk and forms the rude jingle of that old Surrey ballad, now
nearly forgotten, save for the refrain:

The Doe that sped on Hinde Head,
    The Kestril on the winde,
And Nigel on the Yellow Horse
    Can leave the world behinde.


Before them lay a rolling ocean of dark heather, knee-deep, swelling in
billow on billow up to the clear-cut hill before them. Above stretched
one unbroken arch of peaceful blue, with a sun which was sinking down
toward the Hampshire hills. Through the deep heather, down the gullies,
over the watercourses, up the broken slopes, Pommers flew, his great
heart bursting with rage, and every fiber quivering at the indignities
which he had endured.

And still, do what he would, the man clung fast to his heaving sides
and to his flying mane, silent, motionless, inexorable, letting him do
what he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down,
through Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers,
onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the
Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening
his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of
Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing
the ox-hide curtains of their cottage doors horse and rider were lost
amid the high bracken of the Haslemere Valley. On he went, and on,
tossing the miles behind his flying hoofs. No marsh-land could clog
him, no hill could hold him back. Up the slope of Linchmere and the
long ascent of Fernhurst he thundered as on the level, and it was not
until he had flown down the incline of Henley Hill, and the gray castle
tower of Midhurst rose over the coppice in front, that at last the
eager outstretched neck sank a little on the breast, and the breath
came quick and fast. Look where he would in woodland and on down, his
straining eyes could catch no sign of those plains of freedom which he
sought.

And yet another outrage! It was bad that this creature should still
cling so tight upon his back, but now he would even go to the
intolerable length of checking him and guiding him on the way that he
would have him go. There was a sharp pluck at his mouth, and his head
was turned north once more. As well go that way as another, but the man
was mad indeed if he thought that such a horse as Pommers was at the
end of his spirit or his strength. He would soon show him that he was
unconquered, if it strained his sinews or broke his heart to do so.
Back then he flew up the long, long ascent. Would he ever get to the
end of it? Yet he would not own that he could go no farther while the
man still kept his grip. He was white with foam and caked with mud. His
eyes were gorged with blood, his mouth open and gasping, his nostrils
expanded, his coat stark and reeking. On he flew down the long Sunday
Hill until he reached the deep Kingsley Marsh at the bottom. No, it was
too much! Flesh and blood could go no farther. As he struggled out from
the reedy slime with the heavy black mud still clinging to his
fetlocks, he at last eased down with sobbing breath and slowed the
tumultuous gallop to a canter.

Oh, crowning infamy! Was there no limit to these degradations? He was
no longer even to choose his own pace. Since he had chosen to gallop so
far at his own will he must now gallop farther still at the will of
another. A spur struck home on either flank. A stinging whip-lash fell
across his shoulder. He bounded his own height in the air at the pain
and the shame of it. Then, forgetting his weary limbs, forgetting his
panting, reeking sides, forgetting everything save this intolerable
insult and the burning spirit within, he plunged off once more upon his
furious gallop. He was out on the heather slopes again and heading for
Weydown Common. On he flew and on. But again his brain failed him and
again his limbs trembled beneath him, and yet again he strove to ease
his pace, only to be driven onward by the cruel spur and the falling
lash. He was blind and giddy with fatigue.

He saw no longer where he placed his feet, he cared no longer whither
he went, but his one mad longing was to get away from this dreadful
thing, this torture which clung to him and would not let him go.
Through Thursley village he passed, his eyes straining in his agony,
his heart bursting within him, and he had won his way to the crest of
Thursley Down, still stung forward by stab and blow, when his spirit
weakened, his giant strength ebbed out of him, and with one deep sob of
agony the yellow horse sank among the heather. So sudden was the fall
that Nigel flew forward over his shoulder, and beast and man lay
prostrate and gasping while the last red rim of the sun sank behind
Butser and the first stars gleamed in a violet sky.

The young Squire was the first to recover, and kneeling by the panting,
overwrought horse he passed his hand gently over the tangled mane and
down the foam-flecked face. The red eye rolled up at him; but it was
wonder not hatred, a prayer and not a threat, which he could read in
it. As he stroked the reeking muzzle, the horse whinnied gently and
thrust his nose into the hollow of his hand. It was enough. It was the
end of the contest, the acceptance of new conditions by a chivalrous
foe from a chivalrous victor.

“You are my horse, Pommers,” Nigel whispered, and he laid his cheek
against the craning head. “I know you, Pommers, and you know me, and
with the help of Saint Paul we shall teach some other folk to know us
both. Now let us walk together as far as this moorland pond, for indeed
I wot not whether it is you or I who need the water most.”

And so it was that some belated monks of Waverley passing homeward from
the outer farms saw a strange sight which they carried on with them so
that it reached that very night the ears both of sacrist and of Abbot.
For, as they passed through Tilford they had seen horse and man walking
side by side and head by head up the manor-house lane. And when they
had raised their lanterns on the pair it was none other than the young
Squire himself who was leading home, as a shepherd leads a lamb, the
fearsome yellow horse of Crooksbury.




IV.
HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR HOUSE OF TILFORD


By the date of this chronicle the ascetic sternness of the old Norman
castles had been humanized and refined so that the new dwellings of the
nobility, if less imposing in appearance, were much more comfortable as
places of residence. A gentle race had built their houses rather for
peace than for war. He who compares the savage bareness of Pevensey or
Guildford with the piled grandeur of Bodmin or Windsor cannot fail to
understand the change in manners which they represent.

The earlier castles had a set purpose, for they were built that the
invaders might hold down the country; but when the Conquest was once
firmly established a castle had lost its meaning save as a refuge from
justice or as a center for civil strife. On the marches of Wales and of
Scotland the castle might continue to be a bulwark to the kingdom, and
there still grew and flourished; but in all other places they were
rather a menace to the King’s majesty, and as such were discouraged and
destroyed. By the reign of the third Edward the greater part of the old
fighting castles had been converted into dwelling-houses or had been
ruined in the civil wars, and left where their grim gray bones are
still littered upon the brows of our hills. The new buildings were
either great country-houses, capable of defense, but mainly
residential, or they were manor-houses with no military significance at
all.

Such was the Tilford Manor-house where the last survivors of the old
and magnificent house of Loring still struggled hard to keep a footing
and to hold off the monks and the lawyers from the few acres which were
left to them. The mansion was a two-storied one, framed in heavy beams
of wood, the interstices filled with rude blocks of stone. An outside
staircase led up to several sleeping-rooms above. Below there were only
two apartments, the smaller of which was the bower of the aged Lady
Ermyntrude. The other was the hall, a very large room, which served as
the living room of the family and as the common dining-room of
themselves and of their little group of servants and retainers. The
dwellings of these servants, the kitchens, the offices and the stables
were all represented by a row of penthouses and sheds behind the main
building. Here lived Charles the page, Peter the old falconer, Red
Swire who had followed Nigel’s grandfather to the Scottish wars,
Weathercote the broken minstrel, John the cook, and other survivors of
more prosperous days, who still clung to the old house as the barnacles
to some wrecked and stranded vessel.

One evening about a week after the breaking of the yellow horse, Nigel
and his grandmother sat on either side of the large empty fireplace in
this spacious apartment. The supper had been removed, and so had the
trestle tables upon which it had been served, so that the room seemed
bare and empty. The stone floor was strewed with a thick layer of green
rushes, which was swept out every Saturday and carried with it all the
dirt and débris of the week. Several dogs were now crouched among these
rushes, gnawing and cracking the bones which had been thrown from the
table. A long wooden buffet loaded with plates and dishes filled one
end of the room, but there was little other furniture save some benches
against the walls, two dorseret chairs, one small table littered with
chessmen, and a great iron coffer. In one corner was a high wickerwork
stand, and on it two stately falcons were perched, silent and
motionless, save for an occasional twinkle of their fierce yellow eyes.

But if the actual fittings of the room would have appeared scanty to
one who had lived in a more luxurious age, he would have been surprised
on looking up to see the multitude of objects which were suspended
above his head. Over the fireplace were the coats-of-arms of a number
of houses allied by blood or by marriage to the Lorings. The two
cresset-lights which flared upon each side gleamed upon the blue lion
of the Percies, the red birds of de Valence, the black engrailed cross
of de Mohun, the silver star of de Vere, and the ruddy bars of
FitzAlan, all grouped round the famous red roses on the silver shield
which the Lorings had borne to glory upon many a bloody field. Then
from side to side the room was spanned by heavy oaken beams from which
a great number of objects were hanging. There were mail-shirts of
obsolete pattern, several shields, one or two rusted and battered
helmets, bowstaves, lances, otter-spears, harness, fishing-rods, and
other implements of war or of the chase, while higher still amid the
black shadows of the peaked roof could be seen rows of hams, flitches
of bacon, salted geese, and those other forms of preserved meat which
played so great a part in the housekeeping of the Middle Ages.

Dame Ermyntrude Loring, daughter, wife, and mother of warriors, was
herself a formidable figure. Tall and gaunt, with hard craggy features
and intolerant dark eyes, even her snow-white hair and stooping back
could not entirely remove the sense of fear which she inspired in those
around her. Her thoughts and memories went back to harsher times, and
she looked upon the England around her as a degenerate and effeminate
land which had fallen away from the old standard of knightly courtesy
and valor.

The rising power of the people, the growing wealth of the Church, the
increasing luxury in life and manners, and the gentler tone of the age
were all equally abhorrent to her, so that the dread of her fierce
face, and even of the heavy oak staff with which she supported her
failing limbs, was widespread through all the country round.

Yet if she was feared she was also respected, for in days when books
were few and readers scarce, a long memory and a ready tongue were of
the more value; and where, save from Dame Ermyntrude, could the young
unlettered Squires of Surrey and Hampshire hear of their grandfathers
and their battles, or learn that lore of heraldry and chivalry which
she handed down from a ruder but a more martial age? Poor as she was,
there was no one in Surrey whose guidance would be more readily sought
upon a question of precedence or of conduct than the Dame Ermyntrude
Loring.

She sat now with bowed back by the empty fireplace, and looked across
at Nigel with all the harsh lines of her old ruddled face softening
into love and pride. The young Squire was busy cutting bird-bolts for
his crossbow, and whistling softly as he worked. Suddenly he looked up
and caught the dark eyes which were fixed upon him. He leaned forward
and patted the bony hand.

“What hath pleased you, dear dame? I read pleasure in your eyes.”

“I have heard to-day, Nigel, how you came to win that great war-horse
which stamps in our stable.”

“Nay, dame; I had told you that the monks had given it to me.”

“You said so, fair son, but never a word more. Yet the horse which you
brought home was a very different horse I wot, to that which was given
you. Why did you not tell me?”

“I should think it shame to talk of such a thing.”

“So would your father before you, and his father no less. They would
sit silent among the knights when the wine went round and listen to
every man’s deeds; but if perchance there was anyone who spoke louder
than the rest and seemed to be eager for honor, then afterwards your
father would pluck him softly by the sleeve and whisper in his ear to
learn if there was any small vow of which he could relieve him, or if
he would deign to perform some noble deed of arms upon his person. And
if the man were a braggart and would go no further, your father would
be silent and none would know it. But if he bore himself well, your
father would spread his fame far and wide, but never make mention of
himself.”

Nigel looked at the old woman with shining eyes. “I love to hear you
speak of him,” said he. “I pray you to tell me once more of the manner
of his death.”

“He died as he had lived, a very courtly gentleman. It was at the great
sea-battle upon the Norman coast, and your father was in command of the
after-guard in the King’s own ship. Now the French had taken a great
English ship the year before when they came over and held the narrow
seas and burned the town of Southampton.

“This ship was the Christopher, and they placed it in the front of
their battle; but the English closed upon it and stormed over its side,
and slew all who were upon it.

“But your father and Sir Lorredan of Genoa, who commanded the
Christopher, fought upon the high poop, so that all the fleet stopped
to watch it, and the King himself cried aloud at the sight, for Sir
Lorredan was a famous man-at-arms and bore himself very stoutly that
day, and many a knight envied your father that he should have chanced
upon so excellent a person. But your father bore him back and struck
him such a blow with a mace that he turned the helmet half round on his
head, so that he could no longer see through the eye holes, and Sir
Lorredan threw down his sword and gave himself to ransom. But your
father took him by the helmet and twisted it until he had it straight
upon his head. Then, when he could see once again, he handed him his
sword, and prayed him that he would rest himself and then continue, for
it was great profit and joy to see any gentleman carry himself so well.
So they sat together and rested by the rail of the poop; but even as
they raised their hands again your father was struck by a stone from a
mangonel and so died.”

“And this Sir Lorredan,” cried Nigel, “he died also, as I understand?”

“I fear that he was slain by the archers, for they loved your father,
and they do not see these things with our eyes.”

“It was a pity,” said Nigel; “for it is clear that he was a good knight
and bore himself very bravely.”

“Time was, when I was young, when commoners dared not have laid their
grimy hands upon such a man. Men of gentle blood and coat-armor made
war upon each other, and the others, spearmen or archers, could
scramble amongst themselves. But now all are of a level, and only here
and there one like yourself, fair son, who reminds me of the men who
are gone.”

Nigel leaned forward and took her hands in his. “What I am you have
made me,” said he.

“It is true, Nigel. I have indeed watched over you as the gardener
watches his most precious blossom, for in you alone are all the hopes
of our ancient house, and soon—very soon—you will be alone.”

“Nay, dear lady, say not that.”

“I am very old, Nigel, and I feel the shadow closing in upon me. My
heart yearns to go, for all whom I have known and loved have gone
before me. And you—it will be a blessed day for you, since I have held
you back from that world into which your brave spirit longs to plunge.”

“Nay, nay, I have been happy here with you at Tilford.”

“We are very poor, Nigel. I do not know where we may find the money to
fit you for the wars. Yet we have good friends. There is Sir John
Chandos, who has won such credit in the French wars and who rides ever
by the King’s bridle-arm. He was your father’s friend and they were
Squires together. If I sent you to court with a message to him he would
do what he could.”

Nigel’s fair face flushed. “Nay, Dame Ermyntrude, I must find my own
gear, even as I have found my own horse, for I had rather ride into
battle in this tunic than owe my suit to another.”

“I feared that you would say so, Nigel; but indeed I know not how else
we may get the money,” said the old woman sadly. “It was different in
the days of my father. I can remember that a suit of mail was but a
small matter in those days, for in every English town such things could
be made. But year by year since men have come to take more care of
their bodies, there have been added a plate of proof here and a cunning
joint there, and all must be from Toledo or Milan, so that a knight
must have much metal in his purse ere he puts any on his limbs.”

Nigel looked up wistfully at the old armor which was slung on the beams
above him. “The ash spear is good,” said he, “and so is the oaken
shield with facings of steel. Sir Roger FitzAlan handled them and said
that he had never seen better. But the armor—”

Lady Ermyntrude shook her old head and laughed. “You have your father’s
great soul, Nigel, but you have not his mighty breadth of shoulder and
length of limb. There was not in all the King’s great host a taller or
a stronger man. His harness would be little use to you. No, fair son, I
rede you that when the time comes you sell this crumbling house and the
few acres which are still left, and so go forth to the wars in the hope
that with your own right hand you will plant the fortunes of a new
house of Loring.”

A shadow of anger passed over Nigel’s fresh young face. “I know not if
we may hold off these monks and their lawyers much longer. This very
day there came a man from Guildford with claims from the Abbey
extending back before my father’s death.”

“Where are they, fair son?”

“They are flapping on the furze-bushes of Hankley, for I sent his
papers and parchments down wind as fast as ever falcon flew.”

“Nay! you were mad to do that, Nigel. And the man, where is he?”

“Red Swire and old George the archer threw him into the Thursley bog.”

“Alas! I fear me such things cannot be done in these days, though my
father or my husband would have sent the rascal back to Guildford
without his ears. But the Church and the Law are too strong now for us
who are of gentler blood. Trouble will come of it, Nigel, for the Abbot
of Waverley is not one who will hold back the shield of the Church from
those who are her servants.”

“The Abbot would not hurt us. It is that gray lean wolf of a sacrist
who hungers for our land. Let him do his worst. I fear him not.”

“He has such an engine at his back, Nigel, that even the bravest must
fear him. The ban which blasts a man’s soul is in the keeping of his
church, and what have we to place against it? I pray you to speak him
fair, Nigel.”

“Nay, dear lady, it is both my duty and my pleasure to do what you bid
me; but I would die ere I ask as a favor that which we can claim as a
right. Never can I cast my eyes from yonder window that I do not see
the swelling down-lands and the rich meadows, glade and dingle, copse
and wood, which have been ours since Norman-William gave them to that
Loring who bore his shield at Senlac. Now, by trick and fraud, they
have passed away from us, and many a franklin is a richer man than I;
but never shall it be said that I saved the rest by bending my neck to
their yoke. Let them do their worst, and let me endure it or fight it
as best I may.”

The old lady sighed and shook her head. “You speak as a Loring should,
and yet I fear that some great trouble will befall us. But let us talk
no more of such matters, since we cannot mend them. Where is your
citole, Nigel? Will you not play and sing to me?”

The gentleman of those days could scarce read and write; but he spoke
in two languages, played at least one musical instrument as a matter of
course, and possessed a number of other accomplishments, from the
imping of hawk’s feathers, to the mystery of venery, with knowledge of
every beast and bird, its time of grace and when it was seasonable. As
far as physical feats went, to vault barebacked upon a horse, to hit a
running hare with a crossbow-bolt, or to climb the angle of a castle
courtyard, were feats which had come by nature to the young Squire; but
it was very different with music, which had called for many a weary
hour of irksome work. Now at last he could master the strings, but both
his ear and his voice were not of the best, so that it was well perhaps
that there was so small and so unprejudiced an audience to the
Norman-French chanson, which he sang in a high reedy voice with great
earnestness of feeling, but with many a slip and quaver, waving his
yellow head in cadence to the music:

A sword!  A sword!  Ah, give me a sword!
    For the world is all to win.
Though the way be hard and the door be barred,
    The strong man enters in.
If Chance and Fate still hold the gate,
    Give me the iron key,
And turret high my plume shall fly,
    Or you may weep for me!

A horse!  A horse!  Ah, give me a horse!
    To bear me out afar,
Where blackest need and grimmest deed
    And sweetest perils are.
Hold thou my ways from glutted days
    Where poisoned leisure lies,
And point the path of tears and wrath
    Which mounts to high emprise!

A heart!  A heart!  Ah, give me a heart
    To rise to circumstance!
Serene and high and bold to try
    The hazard of the chance,
With strength to wait, but fixed as fate
    To plan and dare and do,
The peer of all, and only thrall,
    Sweet lady mine, to you!


It may have been that the sentiment went for more than the music, or it
may have been the nicety of her own ears had been dulled by age, but
old Dame Ermyntrude clapped her lean hands together and cried out in
shrill applause.

“Weathercote has indeed had an apt pupil!” she said. “I pray you that
you will sing again.”

“Nay, dear dame, it is turn and turn betwixt you and me. I beg that you
will recite a romance, you who know them all. For all the years that I
have listened I have never yet come to the end of them, and I dare
swear that there are more in your head than in all the great books
which they showed me at Guildford Castle. I would fain hear ‘Doon of
Mayence,’ or ‘The Song of Roland,’ or ‘Sir Isumbras.’”

So the old dame broke into a long poem, slow and dull in the inception,
but quickening as the interest grew, until with darting hands and
glowing face she poured forth the verses which told of the emptiness of
sordid life, the beauty of heroic death, the high sacredness of love
and the bondage of honor. Nigel, with set, still features and brooding
eyes, drank in the fiery words, until at last they died upon the old
woman’s lips and she sank back weary in her chair.

Nigel stooped over her and kissed her brow. “Your words will ever be as
a star upon my path,” said he. Then, carrying over the small table and
the chessmen, he proposed that they should play their usual game before
they sought their rooms for the night.

But a sudden and rude interruption broke in upon their gentle contest.
A dog pricked its ears and barked. The others ran growling to the door.
And then there came a sharp clash of arms, a dull heavy blow as from a
club or sword-pommel, and a deep voice from without summoned them to
open in the King’s name. The old dame and Nigel had both sprung to
their feet, their table overturned and their chessmen scattered among
the rushes. Nigel’s hand had sought his crossbow, but the Lady
Ermyntrude grasped his arm.

“Nay, fair son! Have you not heard that it is in the King’s name?” said
she. “Down, Talbot! Down, Bayard! Open the door and let his messenger
in!”

Nigel undid the bolt, and the heavy wooden door swung outward upon its
hinges. The light from the flaring cressets beat upon steel caps and
fierce bearded faces, with the glimmer of drawn swords and the yellow
gleam of bowstaves. A dozen armed archers forced their way into the
room. At their head were the gaunt sacrist of Waverley and a stout
elderly man clad in a red velvet doublet and breeches much stained and
mottled with mud and clay. He bore a great sheet of parchment with a
fringe of dangling seals, which he held aloft as he entered.

“I call on Nigel Loring!” he cried. “I, the officer of the King’s law
and the lay summoner of Waverley, call upon the man named Nigel
Loring!”

“I am he.”

“Yes, it is he!” cried the sacrist. “Archers, do as you were ordered!”

In an instant the band threw themselves upon him like the hounds on a
stag. Desperately Nigel strove to gain his sword which lay upon the
iron coffer. With the convulsive strength which comes from the spirit
rather than from the body, he bore them all in that direction, but the
sacrist snatched the weapon from its place, and the rest dragged the
writhing Squire to the ground and swathed him in a cord.

“Hold him fast, good archers! Keep a stout grip on him!” cried the
summoner. “I pray you, one of you, prick off these great dogs which
snarl at my heels. Stand off, I say, in the name of the King! Watkin,
come betwixt me and these creatures who have as little regard for the
law as their master.”

One of the archers kicked off the faithful dogs. But there were others
of the household who were equally ready to show their teeth in defense
of the old house of Loring. From the door which led to their quarters
there emerged the pitiful muster of Nigel’s threadbare retainers. There
was a time when ten knights, forty men-at-arms and two hundred archers
would march behind the scarlet roses. Now at this last rally when the
young head of the house lay bound in his own hall, there mustered at
his call the page Charles with a cudgel, John the cook with his longest
spit, Red Swire the aged man-at-arms with a formidable ax swung over
his snowy head, and Weathercote the minstrel with a boar-spear. Yet
this motley array was fired with the spirit of the house, and under the
lead of the fierce old soldier they would certainly have flung
themselves upon the ready swords of the archers, had the Lady
Ermyntrude not swept between them:

“Stand back, Swire!” she cried. “Back, Weathercote Charles, put a leash
on Talbot, and hold Bayard back!” Her black eyes blazed upon the
invaders until they shrank from that baleful gaze. “Who are you, you
rascal robbers, who dare to misuse the King’s name and to lay hands
upon one whose smallest drop of blood has more worth than all your
thrall and caitiff bodies?”

“Nay, not so fast, dame, not so fast, I pray you!” cried the stout
summoner, whose face had resumed its natural color, now that he had a
woman to deal with. “There is a law of England, mark you, and there are
those who serve and uphold it, who are the true men and the King’s own
lieges. Such a one am I. Then again, there are those who take such as
me and transfer, carry or convey us into a bog or morass. Such a one is
this graceless old man with the ax, whom I have seen already this day.
There are also those who tear, destroy or scatter the papers of the
law, of which this young man is the chief. Therefore, I would rede you,
dame, not to rail against us, but to understand that we are the King’s
men on the King’s own service.”

“What then is your errand in this house at this hour of the night?”

The summoner cleared his throat pompously, and turning his parchment to
the light of the cressets he read out a long document in Norman-French,
couched in such a style and such a language that the most involved and
foolish of our forms were simplicity itself compared to those by which
the men of the long gown made a mystery of that which of all things on
earth should be the plainest and the most simple. Despair fell cold
upon Nigel’s heart and blanched the face of the old dame as they
listened to the dread catalogue of claims and suits and issues,
questions of peccary and turbary, of house-bote and fire-bote, which
ended by a demand for all the lands, hereditaments, tenements,
messuages and curtilages, which made up their worldly all.

Nigel, still bound, had been placed with his back against the iron
coffer, whence he heard with dry lips and moist brow this doom of his
house. Now he broke in on the recital with a vehemence which made the
summoner jump:

“You shall rue what you have done this night!” he cried. “Poor as we
are, we have our friends who will not see us wronged, and I will plead
my cause before the King’s own majesty at Windsor, that he, who saw the
father die, may know what things are done in his royal name against the
son. But these matters are to be settled in course of law in the King’s
courts, and how will you excuse yourself for this assault upon my house
and person?”

“Nay, that is another matter,” said the sacrist. “The question of debt
may indeed be an affair of a civil court. But it is a crime against the
law and an act of the Devil, which comes within the jurisdiction of the
Abbey Court of Waverley when you dare to lay hands upon the summoner or
his papers.”

“Indeed, he speaks truth,” cried the official. “I know no blacker sin.”

“Therefore,” said the stern monk, “it is the order of the holy father
Abbot that you sleep this night in the Abbey cell, and that to-morrow
you be brought before him at the court held in the chapter-house so
that you receive the fit punishment for this and the many other violent
and froward deeds which you have wrought upon the servants of Holy
Church. Enough is now said, worthy master summoner. Archers, remove
your prisoner!”

As Nigel was lifted up by four stout archers, the Dame Ermyntrude would
have rushed to his aid, but the sacrist thrust her back.

“Stand off, proud woman! Let the law take its course, and learn to
humble your heart before the power of Holy Church. Has your life not
taught its lesson, you, whose horn was exalted among the highest and
will soon not have a roof above your gray hairs? Stand back, I say,
lest I lay a curse upon you!”

The old dame flamed suddenly into white wrath as she stood before the
angry monk: “Listen to me while I lay a curse upon you and yours!” she
cried as she raised her shriveled arms and blighted him with her
flashing eyes—

“As you have done to the house of Loring, so may God do to you, until
your power is swept from the land of England, and of your great Abbey
of Waverley there is nothing left but a pile of gray stones in a green
meadow! I see it! I see it! With my old eyes I see it! From scullion to
Abbot and from cellar to tower, may Waverley and all within it droop
and wither from this night on!”

The monk, hard as he was, quailed before the frantic figure and the
bitter, burning words. Already the summoner and the archers with their
prisoner were clear of the house. He turned and with a clang he shut
the heavy door behind him.




V.
HOW NIGEL WAS TRIED BY THE ABBOT OF WAVERLEY


The law of the Middle Ages, shrouded as it was in old Norman-French
dialect, and abounding in uncouth and incomprehensible terms, in
deodands and heriots, in infang and outfang, was a fearsome weapon in
the hands of those who knew how to use it. It was not for nothing that
the first act of the rebel commoners was to hew off the head of the
Lord Chancellor. In an age when few knew how to read or to write, these
mystic phrases and intricate forms, with the parchments and seals which
were their outward expression, struck cold terror into hearts which
were steeled against mere physical danger.

Even young Nigel Loring’s blithe and elastic spirit was chilled as he
lay that night in the penal cell of Waverley and pondered over the
absolute ruin which threatened his house from a source against which
all his courage was of no avail. As well take up sword and shield to
defend himself against the black death, as against this blight of Holy
Church. He was powerless in the grip of the Abbey. Already they had
shorn off a field here and a grove there, and now in one sweep they
would take in the rest, and where then was the home of the Lorings, and
where should Lady Ermyntrude lay her aged head, or his old retainers,
broken and spent, eke out the balance of their days? He shivered as he
thought of it.

It was very well for him to threaten to carry the matter before the
King, but it was years since royal Edward had heard the name of Loring,
and Nigel knew that the memory of princes was a short one. Besides, the
Church was the ruling power in the palace as well as in the cottage,
and it was only for very good cause that a King could be expected to
cross the purposes of so high a prelate as the Abbot of Waverley, as
long as they came within the scope of the law. Where then was he to
look for help? With the simple and practical piety of the age, he
prayed for the aid of his own particular saints: of Saint Paul, whose
adventures by land and sea had always endeared him; of Saint George,
who had gained much honorable advancement from the Dragon; and of Saint
Thomas, who was a gentleman of coat-armor, who would understand and
help a person of gentle blood. Then, much comforted by his naïve
orisons he enjoyed the sleep of youth and health until the entrance of
the lay brother with the bread and small beer, which served as
breakfast, in the morning.

The Abbey court sat in the chapter-house at the canonical hour of
tierce, which was nine in the forenoon. At all times the function was a
solemn one, even when the culprit might be a villain who was taken
poaching on the Abbey estate, or a chapman who had given false measure
from his biased scales. But now, when a man of noble birth was to be
tried, the whole legal and ecclesiastical ceremony was carried out with
every detail, grotesque or impressive, which the full ritual
prescribed. The distant roll of church music and the slow tolling of
the Abbey bell; the white-robed brethren, two and two, walked thrice
round the hall singing the “_Benedicite_” and the “_Veni, Creator_”
before they settled in their places at the desks on either side. Then
in turn each high officer of the Abbey from below upward, the almoner,
the lector, the chaplain, the subprior and the prior, swept to their
wonted places.

Finally there came the grim sacrist, with demure triumph upon his
downcast features, and at his heels Abbot John himself, slow and
dignified, with pompous walk and solemn, composed face, his iron-beaded
rosary swinging from his waist, his breviary in his hand, and his lips
muttering as he hurried through his office for the day. He knelt at his
high prie-dieu; the brethren, at a signal from the prior, prostrated
themselves upon the floor, and the low deep voices rolled in prayer,
echoed back from the arched and vaulted roof like the wash of waves
from an ocean cavern. Finally the monks resumed their seats; there
entered clerks in seemly black with pens and parchment; the
red-velveted summoner appeared to tell his tale; Nigel was led in with
archers pressing close around him; and then, with much calling of old
French and much legal incantation and mystery, the court of the Abbey
was open for business.

It was the sacrist who first advanced to the oaken desk reserved for
the witnesses and expounded in hard, dry, mechanical fashion the many
claims which the House, of Waverley had against the family of Loring.
Some generations back in return for money advanced or for spiritual
favor received the Loring of the day had admitted that his estate had
certain feudal duties toward the Abbey. The sacrist held up the
crackling yellow parchment with swinging leaden seals on which the
claim was based. Amid the obligations was that of escuage, by which the
price of a knight’s fee should be paid every year. No such price had
been paid, nor had any service been done. The accumulated years came
now to a greater sum than the fee simple of the estate. There were
other claims also. The sacrist called for his books, and with thin,
eager forefinger he tracked them down: dues for this, and tailage for
that, so many shillings this year, and so many marks that one. Some of
it occurred before Nigel was born; some of it when he was but a child.
The accounts had been checked and certified by the sergeant of the law.

Nigel listened to the dread recital, and felt like some young stag who
stands at bay with brave pose and heart of fire, but who sees himself
compassed round and knows clearly that there is no escape. With his
bold young face, his steady blue eyes, and the proud poise of his head,
he was a worthy scion of the old house, and the sun, shining through
the high oriel window, and showing up the stained and threadbare
condition of his once rich doublet, seemed to illuminate the fallen
fortunes of his family.

The sacrist had finished his exposition, and the sergeant-at-law was
about to conclude a case which Nigel could in no way controvert, when
help came to him from an unexpected quarter. It may have been a certain
malignity with which the sacrist urged his suit, it may have been a
diplomatic dislike to driving matters to extremes, or it may have been
some genuine impulse of kindliness, for Abbot John was choleric but
easily appeased. Whatever the cause, the result was that a white plump
hand, raised in the air with a gesture of authority, showed that the
case was at an end.

“Our brother sacrist hath done his duty in urging this suit,” said he,
“for the worldly wealth of this Abbey is placed in his pious keeping,
and it is to him that we should look if we suffered in such ways, for
we are but the trustees of those who come after us. But to my keeping
has been consigned that which is more precious still, the inner spirit
and high repute of those who follow the rule of Saint Bernard. Now it
has ever been our endeavor, since first our saintly founder went down
into the valley of Clairvaux and built himself a cell there, that we
should set an example to all men in gentleness and humility. For this
reason it is that we built our houses in lowly places, that we have no
tower to our Abbey churches, and that no finery and no metal, save only
iron or lead, come within our walls. A brother shall eat from a wooden
platter, drink from an iron cup, and light himself from a leaden
sconce. Surely it is not for such an order who await the exaltation
which is promised to the humble, to judge their own case and so acquire
the lands of their neighbor! If our cause be just, as indeed I believe
that it is, then it were better that it be judged at the King’s assizes
at Guildford, and so I decree that the case be now dismissed from the
Abbey court so that it can be heard elsewhere.”

Nigel breathed a prayer to the three sturdy saints who had stood by him
so manfully and well in the hour of his need. “Abbot John,” said he, “I
never thought that any man of my name would utter thanks to a
Cistercian of Waverley; but by Saint Paul! you have spoken like a man
this day, for it would indeed be to play with cogged dice if the
Abbey’s case is to be tried in the Abbey court.”

The eighty white-clad brethren looked with half resentful, half amused
eyes as they listened to this frank address to one who, in their small
lives, seemed to be the direct vice-regent of Heaven. The archers had
stood back from Nigel, as though he was at liberty to go, when the loud
voice of the summoner broke in upon the silence—

“If it please you, holy father Abbot,” cried the voice, “this decision
of yours is indeed secundum legem and intra vires so far as the civil
suit is concerned which lies between this person and the Abbey. That is
your affair; but it is I, Joseph the summoner, who have been grievously
and criminally mishandled, my writs, papers and indentures destroyed,
my authority flouted, and my person dragged through a bog, quagmire or
morass, so that my velvet gabardine and silver badge of office were
lost and are, as I verily believe, in the morass, quagmire or bog
aforementioned, which is the same bog, morass—”

“Enough!” cried the Abbot sternly. “Lay aside this foolish fashion of
speech and say straitly what you desire.”

“Holy father, I have been the officer of the King’s law no less than
the servant of Holy Church, and I have been let, hindered and assaulted
in the performance of my lawful and proper duties, whilst my papers,
drawn in the King’s name, have been shended and rended and cast to the
wind. Therefore, I demand justice upon this man in the Abbey court, the
said assault having been committed within the banlieue of the Abbey’s
jurisdiction.”

“What have you to say to this, brother sacrist?” asked the Abbot in
some perplexity.

“I would say, father, that it is within our power to deal gently and
charitably with all that concerns ourselves, but that where a the
King’s officer is concerned we are wanting in our duty if we give him
less than the protection that he demands. I would remind you also, holy
father, that this is not the first of this man’s violence, but that he
has before now beaten our servants, defied our authority, and put pike
in the Abbot’s own fish-pond.”

The prelate’s heavy cheeks flushed with anger as this old grievance
came fresh into his mind. His eyes hardened as he looked at the
prisoner. “Tell me, Squire Nigel, did you indeed put pike in the pond?”

The young man drew himself proudly up. “Ere I answer such a question,
father Abbot, do you answer one from me, and tell me what the monks of
Waverley have ever done for me that I should hold my hand when I could
injure them?”

A low murmur ran round the room, partly wonder at his frankness, and
partly anger at his boldness.

The Abbot settled down in his seat as one who has made up his mind.
“Let the case of the summoner be laid before me,” said he. “Justice
shall be done, and the offender shall be punished, be he noble or
simple. Let the plaint be brought before the court.”

The tale of the summoner, though rambling and filled with endless legal
reiteration, was only too clear in its essence. Red Swire, with his
angry face framed in white bristles, was led in, and confessed to his
ill treatment of the official. A second culprit, a little wiry
nut-brown archer from Churt, had aided and abetted in the deed. Both of
them were ready to declare that young Squire Nigel Loring knew nothing
of the matter. But then there was the awkward incident of the tearing
of the writs. Nigel, to whom a lie was an impossibility, had to admit
that with his own hands he had shredded those august documents. As to
an excuse or an explanation, he was too proud to advance any. A cloud
gathered over the brow of the Abbot, and the sacrist gazed with an
ironical smile at the prisoner, while a solemn hush fell over the
chapter-house as the case ended and only, judgment remained.

“Squire Nigel,” said the Abbot, “it was for you, who are, as all men
know, of ancient lineage in this land, to give a fair example by which
others should set their conduct. Instead of this, your manor house has
ever been a center for the stirring up of strife, and now not content
with your harsh showing toward us, the Cistercian monks of Waverley,
you have even marked your contempt for the King’s law, and through your
servants have mishandled the person of his messenger. For such offenses
it is in my power to call the spiritual terrors of the Church upon your
head, and yet I would not be harsh with you, seeing that you are young,
and that even last week you saved the life of a servant of the Abbey
when in peril. Therefore, it is by temporal and carnal means that I
will use my power to tame your overbold spirit, and to chasten that
headstrong and violent humor which has caused such scandal in your
dealings with our Abbey. Bread and water for six weeks from now to the
Feast of Saint Benedict, with a daily exhortation from our chaplain,
the pious Father Ambrose, may still avail to bend the stiff neck and to
soften the hard heart.”

At this ignominious sentence by which the proud heir of the house of
Loring would share the fate of the meanest village poacher, the hot
blood of Nigel rushed to his face, and his eye glanced round him with a
gleam which said more plainly than words that there could be no tame
acceptance of such a doom. Twice he tried to speak, and twice his anger
and his shame held the words in his throat.

“I am no subject of yours, proud Abbot!” he cried at last. “My house
has ever been vavasor to the King. I deny the power of you and your
court to lay sentence upon me. Punish these your own monks, who whimper
at your frown, but do not dare to lay your hand upon him who fears you
not, for he is a free man, and the peer of any save only the King
himself.”

The Abbot seemed for an instant taken aback by these bold words, and by
the high and strenuous voice in which they were uttered. But the
sterner sacrist came as ever to stiffen his will. He held up the old
parchment in his hand.

“The Lorings were indeed vavasors to the King,” said he; “but here is
the very seal of Eustace Loring which shows that he made himself vassal
to the Abbey and held his land from it.”

“Because he was gentle,” cried Nigel, “because he had no thought of
trick or guile.”

“Nay!” said the summoner. “If my voice may be heard, father Abbot, upon
a point of the law, it is of no weight what the causes may have been
why a deed is subscribed, signed or confirmed, but a court is concerned
only with the terms, articles, covenants and contracts of the said
deed.”

“Besides,” said the sacrist, “sentence is passed by the Abbey court,
and there is an end of its honor and good name if it be not upheld.”

“Brother sacrist,” said the Abbot angrily, “methinks you show overmuch
zeal in this case, and certes, we are well able to uphold the dignity
and honor of the Abbey court without any rede of thine. As to you,
worthy summoner, you will give your opinion when we crave for it, and
not before, or you may yourself get some touch of the power of our
tribunal. But your case hath been tried, Squire Loring, and judgment
given. I have no more to say.”

He motioned with his hand, and an archer laid his grip upon the
shoulder of the prisoner. But that rough plebeian touch woke every
passion of revolt in Nigel’s spirit. Of all his high line of ancestors,
was there one who had been subjected to such ignominy as this? Would
they not have preferred death? And should he be the first to lower
their spirit or their traditions? With a quick, lithe movement, he
slipped under the arm of the archer, and plucked the short, straight
sword from the soldier’s side as he did so. The next instant he had
wedged himself into the recess of one of the narrow windows, and there
were his pale set face, his burning eyes, and his ready blade turned
upon the assembly.

“By Saint Paul!” said he, “I never thought to find honorable
advancement under the roof of an abbey, but perchance there may, be
some room for it ere you hale me to your prison.”

The chapter-house was in an uproar. Never in the long and decorous
history of the Abbey had such a scene been witnessed within its walls.
The monks themselves seemed for an instant to be infected by this
spirit of daring revolt. Their own lifelong fetters hung more loosely
as they viewed this unheard-of defiance of authority. They broke from
their seats on either side and huddled half-scared, half-fascinated, in
a large half-circle round the defiant captive, chattering, pointing,
grimacing, a scandal for all time. Scourges should fall and penance be
done for many a long week before the shadow of that day should pass
from Waverley. But meanwhile there was no effort to bring them back to
their rule. Everything was chaos and disorder. The Abbot had left his
seat of justice and hurried angrily forward, to be engulfed and hustled
in the crowd of his own monks like a sheep-dog who finds himself
entangled amid a flock.

Only the sacrist stood clear. He had taken shelter behind the
half-dozen archers, who looked with some approval and a good deal of
indecision at this bold fugitive from justice.

“On him!” cried the sacrist. “Shall he defy the authority of the court,
or shall one man hold six of you at bay? Close in upon him and seize
him. You, Baddlesmere, why do you hold back?”

The man in question, a tall bushy-bearded fellow, clad like the others
in green jerkin and breeches with high brown boots, advanced slowly,
sword in hand, against Nigel. His heart was not in the business, for
these clerical courts were not popular, and everyone had a tender heart
for the fallen fortunes of the house of Loring and wished well to its
young heir.

“Come, young sir, you have caused scathe enough,” said he. “Stand forth
and give yourself up!”

“Come and fetch me, good fellow,” said Nigel, with a dangerous smile.

The archer ran in. There was a rasp of steel, a blade flickered like a
swift dart of flame, and the man staggered back, with blood running
down his forearm and dripping from his fingers. He wrung them and
growled a Saxon oath.

“By the black rood of Bromeholm!” he cried, “I had as soon put my hand
down a fox’s earth to drag up a vixen from her cubs.”

“Standoff!” said Nigel curtly. “I would not hurt you; but by Saint
Paul! I will not be handled, or some one will be hurt in the handling.”

So fierce was his eye and so menacing his blade as he crouched in the
narrow bay of the window that the little knot of archers were at a loss
what to do. The Abbot had forced his way through the crowd and stood,
purple with outraged dignity, at their side.

“He is outside the law,” said he. “He hath shed blood in a court of
justice, and for such a sin there is no forgiveness. I will not have my
court so flouted and set at naught. He who draws the sword, by the
sword also let him perish. Forester Hugh lay a shaft to your bow!”

The man, who was one of the Abbey’s lay servants, put his weight upon
his long bow and slipped the loose end of the string into the upper
notch. Then, drawing one of the terrible three-foot arrows,
steel-tipped and gaudily winged, from his waist, he laid it to the
string.

“Now draw your bow and hold it ready!” cried the furious Abbot. “Squire
Nigel, it is not for Holy Church to shed blood, but there is naught but
violence which will prevail against the violent, and on your head be
the sin. Cast down the sword which you hold in your hand!”

“Will you give me freedom to leave your Abbey?”

“When you have abided your sentence and purged your sin.”

“Then I had rather die where I stand than give up my sword.”

A dangerous flame lit in the Abbot’s eyes. He came of a fighting Norman
stock, like so many of those fierce prelates who, bearing a mace lest
they should be guilty of effusion of blood, led their troops into
battle, ever remembering that it was one of their own cloth and dignity
who, crosier in hand, had turned the long-drawn bloody day of Hastings.
The soft accent of the churchman was gone and it was the hard voice of
a soldier which said—

“One minute I give you, and no more. Then when I cry ‘Loose!’ drive me
an arrow through his body.”

The shaft was fitted, the bow was bent, and the stern eyes of the
woodman were fixed on his mark. Slowly the minute passed, while Nigel
breathed a prayer to his three soldier saints, not that they should
save his body in this life, but that they should have a kindly care for
his soul in the next. Some thought of a fierce wildcat sally crossed
his mind, but once out of his corner he was lost indeed. Yet at the
last he would have rushed among his enemies, and his body was bent for
the spring, when with a deep sonorous hum, like a breaking harp-string,
the cord of the bow was cloven in twain, and the arrow tinkled upon the
tiled floor. At the same moment a young curly-headed bowman, whose
broad shoulders and deep chest told of immense strength, as clearly as
his frank, laughing face and honest hazel eyes did of good humor and
courage, sprang forward sword in hand and took his place by Nigel’s
side.

“Nay, comrades!” said he. “Samkin Aylward cannot stand by and see a
gallant man shot down like a bull at the end of a baiting. Five against
one is long odds; but two against four is better, and by my
finger-bones! Squire Nigel and I leave this room together, be it on our
feet or no.”

The formidable appearance of this ally and his high reputation among
his fellows gave a further chill to the lukewarm ardor of the attack.
Aylward’s left arm was passed through his strung bow, and he was known
from Woolmer Forest to the Weald as the quickest, surest archer that
ever dropped a running deer at tenscore paces.

“Nay, Baddlesmere, hold your fingers from your string-case, or I may
chance to give your drawing hand a two months’ rest,” said Aylward.
“Swords, if you will, comrades, but no man strings his bow till I have
loosed mine.”

Yet the angry hearts of both Abbot and sacrist rose higher with a fresh
obstacle.

“This is an ill day for your father, Franklin Aylward, who holds the
tenancy of Crooksbury,” said the sacrist. “He will rue it that ever he
begot a son who will lose him his acres and his steading.”

“My father is a bold yeoman, and would rue it evermore that ever his
son should stand by while foul work was afoot,” said Aylward stoutly.
“Fall on, comrades! We are waiting.”

Encouraged by promises of reward if they should fall in the service of
the Abbey, and by threats of penalties if they should hold back, the
four archers were about to close, when a singular interruption gave an
entirely new turn to the proceedings.

At the door of the chapter-house, while these fiery doings had been
afoot, there had assembled a mixed crowd of lay brothers, servants and
varlets who had watched the development of the drama with the interest
and delight with which men hail a sudden break in a dull routine.
Suddenly there was an agitation at the back of this group, then a swirl
in the center, and finally the front rank was violently thrust aside,
and through the gap there emerged a strange and whimsical figure, who
from the instant of his appearance dominated both chapter-house and
Abbey, monks, prelates and archers, as if he were their owner and their
master.

He was a man somewhat above middle age, with thin lemon-colored hair, a
curling mustache, a tufted chin of the same hue, and a high craggy
face, all running to a great hook of the nose, like the beak of an
eagle. His skin was tanned a brown-red by much exposure to the wind and
sun. In height he was tall, and his figure was thin and loose-jointed,
but stringy and hard-bitten. One eye was entirely covered by its lid,
which lay flat over an empty socket, but the other danced and sparkled
with a most roguish light, darting here and there with a twinkle of
humor and criticism and intelligence, the whole fire of his soul
bursting through that one narrow cranny.

His dress was as noteworthy as his person. A rich purple doublet and
cloak was marked on the lapels with a strange scarlet device shaped
like a wedge. Costly lace hung round his shoulders, and amid its soft
folds there smoldered the dull red of a heavy golden chain. A knight’s
belt at his waist and a knight’s golden spurs twinkling from his
doeskin riding-boots proclaimed his rank, and on the wrist of his left
gauntlet there sat a demure little hooded falcon of a breed which in
itself was a mark of the dignity of the owner. Of weapons he had none,
but a mandolin was slung by a black silken band over his back, and the
high brown end projected above his shoulder. Such was the man, quaint,
critical, masterful, with a touch of what is formidable behind it, who
now surveyed the opposing groups of armed men and angry monks with an
eye which commanded their attention.

“Excusez!” said he, in a lisping French. “Excusez, mes amis! I had
thought to arouse from prayer or meditation, but never have I seen such
a holy exercise as this under an abbey’s roof, with swords for
breviaries and archers for acolytes. I fear that I have come amiss, and
yet I ride on an errand from one who permits no delay.”

The Abbot, and possibly the sacrist also, had begun to realize that
events had gone a great deal farther than they had intended, and that
without an extreme scandal it was no easy matter for them to save their
dignity and the good name of Waverley. Therefore, in spite of the
debonair, not to say disrespectful, bearing of the newcomer, they
rejoiced at his appearance and intervention.

“I am the Abbot of Waverley, fair son,” said the prelate. “If your
message deal with a public matter it may be fitly repeated in the
chapter-house; if not I will give you audience in my own chamber; for
it is clear to me that you are a gentle man of blood and coat-armor who
would not lightly break in upon the business of our court—a business
which, as you have remarked, is little welcome to men of peace like
myself and the brethren of the rule of Saint Bernard.”

“_Pardieu!_ Father Abbot,” said the stranger. “One had but to glance at
you and your men to see that the business was indeed little to your
taste, and it may be even less so when I say that rather than see this
young person in the window, who hath a noble bearing, further molested
by these archers, I will myself adventure my person on his behalf.”

The Abbot’s smile turned to a frown at these frank words. “It would
become you better, sir, to deliver the message of which you say that
you are the bearer, than to uphold a prisoner against the rightful
judgment of a court.”

The stranger swept the court with his questioning eye. “The message is
not for you, good father Abbot. It is for one whom I know not. I have
been to his house, and they have sent me hither. The name is Nigel
Loring.”

“It is for me, fair sir.”

“I had thought as much. I knew your father, Eustace Loring, and though
he would have made two of you, yet he has left his stamp plain enough
upon your face.”

“You know not the truth of this matter,” said the Abbot. “If you are a
loyal man, you will stand aside, for this young man hath grievously
offended against the law, and it is for the King’s lieges to give us
their support.”

“And you have haled him up for judgment,” cried the stranger with much
amusement. “It is as though a rookery sat in judgment upon a falcon. I
warrant that you have found it easier to judge than to punish. Let me
tell you, father Abbot, that this standeth not aright. When powers such
as these were given to the like of you, they were given that you might
check a brawling underling or correct a drunken woodman, and not that
you might drag the best blood in England to your bar and set your
archers on him if he questioned your findings.”

The Abbot was little used to hear such words of reproof uttered in so
stern a voice under his own abbey roof and before his listening monks.
“You may perchance find that an Abbey court has more powers than you
wot of, Sir Knight,” said he, “if knight indeed you be who are so
uncourteous and short in your speech. Ere we go further, I would ask
your name and style?”

The stranger laughed. “It is easy to see that you are indeed men of
peace,” said he proudly. “Had I shown this sign,” and he touched the
token upon his lapels, “whether on shield or pennon, in the marches of
France or Scotland, there is not a cavalier but would have known the
red pile of Chandos.”

Chandos, John Chandos, the flower of English chivalry, the pink of
knight-errantry, the hero already of fifty desperate enterprises, a man
known and honored from end to end of Europe! Nigel gazed at him as one
who sees a vision. The archers stood back abashed, while the monks
crowded closer to stare at the famous soldier of the French wars. The
Abbot abated his tone, and a smile came to his angry face.

“We are indeed men of peace, Sir John, and little skilled in warlike
blazonry,” said he; “yet stout as are our Abbey walls, they are not so
thick that the fame of your exploits has not passed through them and
reached our ears. If it be your pleasure to take an interest in this
young and misguided Squire, it is not for us to thwart your kind
intention or to withhold such grace as you request. I am glad indeed
that he hath one who can set him so fair an example for a friend.”

“I thank you for your courtesy, good father Abbot,” said Chandos
carelessly. “This young Squire has, however, a better friend than
myself, one who is kinder to those he loves and more terrible to those
he hates. It is from him I bear a message.”

“I pray you, fair and honored sir,” said Nigel, “that you will tell me
what is the message that you bear.”

“The message, _mon ami_, is that your friend comes into these parts and
would have a night’s lodging at the manor house of Tilford for the love
and respect that he bears your family.”

“Nay, he is most welcome,” said Nigel, “and yet I hope that he is one
who can relish a soldier’s fare and sleep under a humble roof, for
indeed we can but give our best, poor as it is.”

“He is indeed a soldier and a good one,” Chandos answered, laughing,
“and I warrant he has slept in rougher quarters than Tilford
Manor-house.”

“I have few friends, fair sir,” said Nigel, with a puzzled face. “I
pray you give me this gentleman’s name.”

“His name is Edward.”

“Sir Edward Mortimer of Kent, perchance, or is it Sir Edward Brocas of
whom the Lady Ermyntrude talks?”

“Nay, he is known as Edward only, and if you ask a second name it is
Plantagenet, for he who comes to seek the shelter of your roof is your
liege lord and mine, the King’s high majesty, Edward of England.”




VI.
IN WHICH LADY ERMYNTRUDE OPENS THE IRON COFFER


AS in a dream Nigel heard these stupendous and incredible words. As in
a dream also he had a vision of a smiling and conciliatory Abbot, of an
obsequious sacrist, and of a band of archers who cleared a path for him
and for the King’s messenger through the motley crowd who had choked
the entrance of the Abbey court. A minute later he was walking by the
side of Chandos through the peaceful cloister, and in front in the open
archway of the great gate was the broad yellow road between its borders
of green meadow-land. The spring air was the sweeter and the more
fragrant for that chill dread of dishonor and captivity which had so
recently frozen his ardent heart. He had already passed the portal when
a hand plucked at his sleeve and he turned to find himself confronted
by the brown honest face and hazel eyes of the archer who had
interfered in his behalf.

“Well,” said Aylward, “what have you to say to me, young sir?”

“What can I say, my good fellow, save that I thank you with all my
heart? By Saint Paul! if you had been my blood brother you could not
have stood by me more stoutly.”

“Nay! but this is not enough.”

Nigel colored with vexation, and the more so as Chandos was listening
with his critical smile to their conversation. “If you had heard what
was said in the court,” said he, “you would understand that I am not
blessed at this moment with much of this world’s gear. The black death
and the monks have between them been heavy upon our estate. Willingly
would I give you a handful of gold for your assistance, since that is
what you seem to crave; but indeed I have it not, and so once more I
say that you must be satisfied with my thanks.”

“Your gold is nothing to me,” said Aylward shortly, “nor would you buy
my loyalty if you filled my wallet with rose nobles, so long as you
were not a man after my own heart. But I have seen you back the yellow
horse, and I have seen you face the Abbot of Waverley, and you are such
a master as I would very gladly serve if you have by chance a place for
such a man. I have seen your following, and I doubt not that they were
stout fellows in your grandfather’s time; but which of them now would
draw a bow-string to his ear? Through you I have left the service of
the Abbey of Waverley, and where can I look now for a post? If I stay
here I am all undone like a fretted bow-string.”

“Nay, there can be no difficulty there,” said Chandos. “_Pardieu!_ a
roistering, swaggering dare-devil archer is worth his price on the
French border. There are two hundred such who march behind my own
person, and I would ask nothing better than to see you among them.”

“I thank you, noble sir, for your offer,” said Aylward, “and I had
rather follow your banner than many another one, for it is well known
that it goes ever forward, and I have heard enough of the wars to know
that there are small pickings for the man who lags behind. Yet, if the
Squire will have me, I would choose to fight under the five roses of
Loring, for though I was born in the hundred of Easebourne and the rape
of Chichester, yet I have grown up and learned to use the longbow in
these parts, and as the free son of a free franklin I had rather serve
my own neighbor than a stranger.”

“My good fellow,” said Nigel, “I have told you that I could in no wise
reward you for such service.”

“If you will but take me to the wars I will see to my own reward,” said
Aylward. “Till then I ask for none, save a corner of your table and six
feet of your floor, for it is certain that the only reward I would get
from the Abbey for this day’s work would be the scourge for my back and
the stocks for my ankles. Samkin Aylward is your man, Squire Nigel,
from this hour on, and by these ten finger-bones he trusts the Devil
will fly away with him if ever he gives you cause to regret it!” So
saying he raised his hand to his steel cap in salute, slung his great
yellow bow over his back, and followed on some paces in the rear of his
new master.

“_Pardieu!_ I have arrived _à la bonne heure_,” said Chandos. “I rode
from Windsor and came to your manor house, to find it empty save for a
fine old dame, who told me of your troubles. From her I walked across
to the Abbey, and none too soon, for what with cloth-yard shafts for
your body, and bell, book and candle for your soul, it was no very
cheerful outlook. But here is the very dame herself, if I mistake not.”

It was indeed the formidable figure of the Lady Ermyntrude, gaunt,
bowed and leaning on her staff, which had emerged from the door of the
manor-house and advanced to greet them. She croaked with laughter, and
shook her stick at the great building as she heard of the discomfiture
of the Abbey court. Then she led the way into the hall where the best
which she could provide had been laid out for their illustrious guest.
There was Chandos blood in her own veins, traceable back through the de
Greys, de Multons, de Valences, de Montagues and other high and noble
strains, so that the meal had been eaten and cleared before she had
done tracing the network of intermarriages and connections, with
quarterings, impalements, lozenges and augmentations by which the
blazonry of the two families might be made to show a common origin.
Back to the Conquest and before it there was not a noble family-tree
every twig and bud of which was not familiar to the Dame Ermyntrude.

And now when the trestles were cleared and the three were left alone in
the hall, Chandos broke his message to the lady. “King Edward hath ever
borne in mind that noble knight your son Sir Eustace,” said he. “He
will journey to Southampton next week, and I am his harbinger. He bade
me say, noble and honored lady, that he would come from Guildford in
any easy stage so that he might spend one night under your roof.”

The old dame flushed with pleasure, and then turned white with vexation
at the words. “It is in truth great honor to the house of Loring,” said
she, “yet our roof is now humble and, as you have seen, our fare is
plain. The King knows not that we are so poor. I fear lest we seem
churlish and niggard in his eyes.”

But Chandos reasoned away her fears. The King’s retinue would journey
on to Farnham Castle. There were no ladies in his party. Though he was
King, still he was a hardy soldier, and cared little for his ease. In
any case, since he had declared his coming, they must make the best of
it. Finally, with all delicacy, Chandos offered his own purse if it
would help in the matter. But already the Lady Ermyntrude had recovered
her composure.

“Nay, fair kinsman, that may not be,” said she. “I will make such
preparation as I may for the King. He will bear in mind that if the
house of Loring can give nothing else, they have always held their
blood and their lives at his disposal.”

Chandos was to ride on to Farnham Castle and beyond, but he expressed
his desire to have a warm bath ere he left Tilford, for like most of
his fellow-knights, he was much addicted to simmering in the hottest
water that he could possibly endure. The bath therefore, a high hooped
arrangement like a broader but shorter churn, was carried into the
privacy of the guest-chamber, and thither it was that Nigel was
summoned to hold him company while he stewed and sweltered in his tub.

Nigel perched himself upon the side of the high bed, swinging his legs
over the edge and gazing with wonder and amusement at the quaint face,
the ruffled yellow hair, and the sinewy shoulders of the famous
warrior, dimly seen amid a pillar of steam. He was in a mood for talk;
so Nigel with eager lips plied him with a thousand questions about the
wars, hanging upon every word which came back to him, like those of the
ancient oracles, out of the mist and the cloud. To Chandos himself, the
old soldier for whom war had lost its freshness, it was a renewal of
his own ardent youth to listen to Nigel’s rapid questions and to mark
the rapt attention with which he listened.

“Tell me of the Welsh, honored sir,” asked the Squire. “What manner of
soldiers are the Welsh?”

“They are very valiant men of war,” said Chandos, splashing about in
his tub. “There is good skirmishing to be had in their valleys if you
ride with a small following. They flare up like a furzebush in the
flames, but if for a short space you may abide the heat of it, then
there is a chance that it may be cooler.”

“And the Scotch?” asked Nigel. “You have made war upon them also, as I
understand.”

“The Scotch knights have no masters in the world, and he who can hold
his own with the best of them, be it a Douglas, a Murray or a Seaton,
has nothing more to learn. Though you be a hard man, you will always
meet as hard a one if you ride northward. If the Welsh be like the
furze fire, then, _pardieu!_ the Scotch are the peat, for they will
smolder and you will never come to the end of them. I have had many
happy hours on the marches of Scotland, for even if there be no war the
Percies of Alnwick or the Governor of Carlisle can still raise a little
bickering with the border clans.”

“I bear in mind that my father was wont to say that they were very
stout spearmen.”

“No better in the world, for the spears are twelve foot long and they
hold them in very thick array; but their archers are weak, save only
the men of Ettrick and Selkirk who come from the forest. I pray you to
open the lattice, Nigel, for the steam is overthick. Now in Wales it is
the spearmen who are weak, and there are no archers in these islands
like the men of Gwent with their bows of elm, which shoot with such
power that I have known a cavalier to have his horse killed when the
shaft had passed through his mail breeches, his thigh and his saddle.
And yet, what is the most strongly shot arrow to these new balls of
iron driven by the fire-powder which will crush a man’s armor as an egg
is crushed by a stone? Our fathers knew them not.”

“Then the better for us,” cried Nigel, “since there is at least one
honorable venture which is all our own.”

Chandos chuckled and turned upon the flushed youth a twinkling and
sympathetic eye. “You have a fashion of speech which carries me back to
the old men whom I met in my boyhood,” said he. “There were some of the
real old knight-errants left in those days, and they spoke as you do.
Young as you are, you belong to another age. Where got you that trick
of thought and word?”

“I have had only one to teach me, the Lady Ermyntrude.”

“_Pardieu!_ she has trained a proper young hawk ready to stoop at a
lordly quarry,” said Chandos. “I would that I had the first unhooding
of you. Will you not ride with me to the wars?”

The tears brimmed over from Nigel’s eyes, and he wrung the gaunt hand
extended from the bath. “By Saint Paul! what could I ask better in the
world? I fear to leave her, for she has none other to care for her. But
if it can in any way be arranged—”

“The King’s hand may smooth it out. Say no more until he is here. But
if you wish to ride with me—”

“What could man wish for more? Is there a Squire in England who would
not serve under the banner of Chandos! Whither do you go, fair sir? And
when do you go? Is it to Scotland? Is it to Ireland? Is it to France?
But alas, alas!”

The eager face had clouded. For the instant he had forgotten that a
suit of armor was as much beyond his means as a service of gold plate.
Down in a twinkling came all his high hopes to the ground. Oh, these
sordid material things, which come between our dreams and their
fulfilment! The Squire of such a knight must dress with the best. Yet
all the fee simple of Tilford would scarce suffice for one suit of
plate.

Chandos, with his quick wit and knowledge of the world, had guessed the
cause of this sudden change. “If you fight under my banner it is for me
to find the weapons,” said he. “Nay, I will not be denied.”

But Nigel shook his head sadly. “It may not be. The Lady Ermyntrude
would sell this old house and every acre round it, ere she would permit
me to accept this gracious bounty which you offer. Yet I do not
despair, for only last week I won for myself a noble war-horse for
which I paid not a penny, so perchance a suit of armor may also come my
way.”

“And how won you the horse?”

“It was given me by the monks of Waverley.”

“This is wonderful. _Pardieu!_ I should have expected, from what I had
seen, that they would have given you little save their malediction.”

“They had no use for the horse, and they gave it to me.”

“Then we have only to find some one who has no use for a suit of armor
and will give it to you. Yet I trust that you will think better of it
and let me, since that good lady proves that I am your kinsman, fit you
for the wars.”

“I thank you, noble sir, and if I should turn to anyone it would indeed
be to you; but there are other ways which I would try first. But I pray
you, good Sir John, to tell me of some of your noble spear-runnings
against the French, for the whole land rings with the tale of your
deeds and I have heard that in one morning three champions have fallen
before your lance. Was it not so?”

“That it was indeed so these scars upon my body will prove; but these
were the follies of my youth.”

“How can you call them follies? Are they not the means by which
honorable advancement may be gained and one’s lady exalted?”

“It is right that you should think so, Nigel. At your age a man should
have a hot head and a high heart. I also had both and fought for my
lady’s glove or for my vow or for the love of fighting. But as one
grows older and commands men one has other things to think of. One
thinks less of one’s own honor and more of the safety of the army. It
is not your own spear, your own sword, your own arm, which will turn
the tide of fight; but a cool head may save a stricken field. He who
knows when his horsemen should charge and when they should fight on
foot, he who can mix his archers with his men-at-arms in such a fashion
that each can support the other, he who can hold up his reserve and
pour it into the battle when it may turn the tide, he who has a quick
eye for boggy land and broken ground—that is the man who is of more
worth to an army than Roland, Oliver and all the paladins.”

“Yet if his knights fail him, honored sir, all his head-work will not
prevail.”

“True enough, Nigel; so may every Squire ride to the wars with his soul
on fire, as yours is now. But I must linger no longer, for the King’s
service must be done. I will dress, and when I have bid farewell to the
noble Dame Ermyntrude I will on to Farnham; but you will see me here
again on the day that the King comes.”

So Chandos went his way that evening, walking his horse through the
peaceful lanes and twanging his citole as he went, for he loved music
and was famous for his merry songs. The cottagers came from their huts
and laughed and clapped as the rich full voice swelled and sank to the
cheery tinkling of the strings. There were few who saw him pass that
would have guessed that the quaint one-eyed man with the yellow hair
was the toughest fighter and craftiest man of war in Europe. Once only,
as he entered Farnham, an old broken man-at-arms ran out in his rags
and clutched at his horse as a dog gambols round his master. Chandos
threw him a kind word and a gold coin as he passed on to the castle.

In the meanwhile young Nigel and the Lady Ermyntrude, left alone with
their difficulties, looked blankly in each other’s faces.

“The cellar is well nigh empty,” said Nigel. “There are two firkins of
small beer and a tun of canary. How can we set such drink before the
King and his court?”

“We must have some wine of Bordeaux. With that and the mottled cow’s
calf and the fowls and a goose, we can set forth a sufficient repast if
he stays only for the one night. How many will be with him?”

“A dozen, at the least.”

The old dame wrung her hands in despair. “Nay, take it not to heart,
dear lady!” said Nigel. “We have but to say the word and the King would
stop at Waverley, where he and his court would find all that they could
wish.”

“Never!” cried the Lady Ermyntrude. “It would be shame and disgrace to
us forever if the King were to pass our door when he has graciously
said that he was fain to enter in. Nay, I will do it. Never did I think
that I would be forced to this, but I know that he would wish it, and I
will do it.”

She went to the old iron coffer, and taking a small key from her girdle
she unlocked it. The rusty hinges, screaming shrilly as she threw back
the lid, proclaimed how seldom it was that she had penetrated into the
sacred recesses of her treasure-chest. At the top were some relics of
old finery: a silken cloak spangled with golden stars, a coif of silver
filigree, a roll of Venetian lace. Beneath were little packets tied in
silk which the old lady handled with tender care: a man’s
hunting-glove, a child’s shoe, a love-knot done in faded green ribbon,
some letters in rude rough script, and a vernicle of Saint Thomas. Then
from the very bottom of the box she drew three objects, swathed in
silken cloth, which she uncovered and laid upon the table. The one was
a bracelet of rough gold studded with uncut rubies, the second was a
gold salver, and the third was a high goblet of the same metal.

“You have heard me speak of these, Nigel, but never before have you
seen them, for indeed I have not opened the hutch for fear that we
might be tempted in our great need to turn them into money. I have kept
them out of my sight and even out of my thoughts. But now it is the
honor of the house which calls, and even these must go. This goblet was
that which my husband, Sir Nele Loring, won after the intaking of
Belgrade when he and his comrades held the lists from matins to vespers
against the flower of the French chivalry. The salver was given him by
the Earl of Pembroke in memory of his valor upon the field of Falkirk.”

“And the bracelet, dear lady?”

“You will not laugh, Nigel?”

“Nay, why should I laugh?”

“The bracelet was the prize for the Queen of Beauty which was given to
me before all the high-born ladies of England by Sir Nele Loring a
month before our marriage—the Queen of Beauty, Nigel—I, old and
twisted, as you see me. Five strong men went down before his lance ere
he won that trinket for me. And now in my last years—”

“Nay, dear and honored lady, we will not part with it.”

“Yes, Nigel, he would have it so. I can hear his whisper in my ear.
Honor to him was everything—the rest nothing. Take it from me, Nigel,
ere my heart weakens. To-morrow you will ride with it to Guildford; you
will see Thorold the goldsmith; and you will raise enough money to pay
for all that we shall need for the King’s coming.” She turned her face
away to hide the quivering of her wrinkled features, and the crash of
the iron lid covered the sob which burst from her overwrought soul.




VII.
HOW NIGEL WENT MARKETING TO GUILDFORD


It was on a bright June morning that young Nigel, with youth and
springtime to make his heart light, rode upon his errand from Tilford
to Guildford town. Beneath him was his great yellow warhorse,
caracoling and curveting as he went, as blithe and free of spirit as
his master. In all England one would scarce have found upon that
morning so high-mettled and so debonair a pair. The sandy road wound
through groves of fir, where the breeze came soft and fragrant with
resinous gums, or over heathery downs, which rolled away to north and
to south, vast and untenanted, for on the uplands the soil was poor and
water scarce. Over Crooksbury Common he passed, and then across the
great Heath of Puttenham, following a sandy path which wound amid the
bracken and the heather, for he meant to strike the Pilgrims’ Way where
it turned eastward from Farnham and from Seale. As he rode he
continually felt his saddle-bag with his hand, for in it, securely
strapped, he had placed the precious treasures of the Lady Ermyntrude.
As he saw the grand tawny neck tossing before him, and felt the easy
heave of the great horse and heard the muffled drumming of his hoofs,
he could have sung and shouted with the joy of living.

Behind him, upon the little brown pony which had been Nigel’s former
mount, rode Samkin Aylward the bowman, who had taken upon himself the
duties of personal attendant and body-guard. His great shoulders and
breadth of frame seemed dangerously top-heavy upon the tiny steed, but
he ambled along, whistling a merry lilt and as lighthearted as his
master. There was no countryman who had not a nod and no woman who had
not a smile for the jovial bowman, who rode for the most part with his
face over his shoulder, staring at the last petticoat which had passed
him. Once only he met with a harsher greeting. It was from a tall,
white-headed, red-faced man whom they met upon the moor.

“Good-morrow, dear father!” cried Aylward. “How is it with you at
Crooksbury? And how are the new black cow and the ewes from Alton and
Mary the dairymaid and all your gear?”

“It ill becomes you to ask, you ne’er-do-weel,” said the old man. “You
have angered the monks of Waverley, whose tenant I am, and they would
drive me out of my farm. Yet there are three more years to run, and do
what they may I will bide till then. But little did I think that I
should lose my homestead through you, Samkin, and big as you are I
would knock the dust out of that green jerkin with a good hazel switch
if I had you at Crooksbury.”

“Then you shall do it to-morrow morning, good father, for I will come
and see you then. But indeed I did not do more at Waverley than you
would have done yourself. Look me in the eye, old hothead, and tell me
if you would have stood by while the last Loring—look at him as he
rides with his head in the air and his soul in the clouds—was shot down
before your very eyes at the bidding of that fat monk! If you would,
then I disown you as my father.”

“Nay, Samkin, if it was like that, then perhaps what you did was not so
far amiss. But it is hard to lose the old farm when my heart is buried
deep in the good brown soil.”

“Tut, man! there are three years to run, and what may not happen in
three years? Before that time I shall have gone to the wars, and when I
have opened a French strong box or two you can buy the good brown soil
and snap your fingers at Abbot John and his bailiffs. Am I not as
proper a man as Tom Withstaff of Churt? And yet he came back after six
months with his pockets full of rose nobles and a French wench on
either arm.”

“God preserve us from the wenches, Samkin! But indeed I think that if
there is money to be gathered you are as likely to get your fist full
as any man who goes to the war. But hasten, lad, hasten! Already your
young master is over the brow.”

Thus admonished, the archer waved his gauntleted hand to his father,
and digging his heels into the sides of his little pony soon drew up
with the Squire. Nigel glanced over his shoulder and slackened speed
until the pony’s head was up to his saddle.

“Have I not heard, archer,” said he, “that an outlaw has been loose in
these parts?”

“It is true, fair sir. He was villain to Sir Peter Mandeville, but he
broke his bonds and fled into the forests. Men call him the ‘Wild Man
of Puttenham.’”

“How comes it that he has not been hunted down? If the man be a
draw-latch and a robber it would be an honorable deed to clear the
country of such an evil.”

“Twice the sergeants-at-arms from Guildford have come out against him,
but the fox has many earths, and it would puzzle you to get him out of
them.”

“By Saint Paul! were my errand not a pressing one I would be tempted to
turn aside and seek him. Where lives he, then?”

“There is a great morass beyond Puttenham, and across it there are
caves in which he and his people lurk.”

“His people? He hath a band?”

“There are several with him.”

“It sounds a most honorable enterprise,” said Nigel. “When the King
hath come and gone we will spare a day for the outlaws of Puttenham. I
fear there is little chance for us to see them on this journey.”

“They prey upon the pilgrims who pass along the Winchester Road, and
they are well loved by the folk in these parts, for they rob none of
them and have an open hand for all who will help them.”

“It is right easy to have an open hand with the money that you have
stolen,” said Nigel; “but I fear that they will not try to rob two men
with swords at their girdles like you and me, so we shall have no
profit from them.”

They had passed over the wild moors and had come down now into the main
road by which the pilgrims from the west of England made their way to
the national shrine at Canterbury. It passed from Winchester, and up
the beautiful valley of the Itchen until it reached Farnham, where it
forked into two branches, one of which ran along the Hog’s Back, while
the second wound to the south and came out at Saint Catherine’s Hill
where stands the Pilgrim shrine, a gray old ruin now, but once so
august, so crowded and so affluent. It was this second branch upon
which Nigel and Aylward found themselves as they rode to Guildford.

No one, as it chanced, was going the same way as themselves, but they
met one large drove of pilgrims returning from their journey with
pictures of Saint Thomas and snails’ shells or little leaden ampullae
in their hats and bundles of purchases over their shoulders. They were
a grimy, ragged, travel-stained crew, the men walking, the women borne
on asses. Man and beast, they limped along as if it would be a glad day
when they saw their homes once more. These and a few beggars or
minstrels, who crouched among the heather on either side of the track
in the hope of receiving an occasional farthing from the passer-by,
were the only folk they met until they had reached the village of
Puttenham. Already there, was a hot sun and just breeze enough to send
the dust flying down the road, so they were glad to clear their throats
with a glass of beer at the ale-stake in the village, where the fair
alewife gave Nigel a cold farewell because he had no attentions for
her, and Aylward a box on the ear because he had too many.

On the farther side of Puttenham the road runs through thick woods of
oak and beech, with a tangled undergrowth of fern and bramble. Here
they met a patrol of sergeants-at-arms, tall fellows, well-mounted,
clad in studded-leather caps and tunics, with lances and swords. They
walked their horses slowly on the shady side of the road, and stopped
as the travelers came up, to ask if they had been molested on the way.

“Have a care,” they added, “for the ‘Wild Man’ and his wife are out.
Only yesterday they slew a merchant from the west and took a hundred
crowns.”

“His wife, you say?”

“Yes, she is ever at his side, and has saved him many a time, for if he
has the strength it is she who has the wit. I hope to see their heads
together upon the green grass one of these mornings.”

The patrol passed downward toward Farnham, and so, as it proved, away
from the robbers, who had doubtless watched them closely from the dense
brushwood which skirted the road. Coming round a curve, Nigel and
Aylward were aware of a tall and graceful woman who sat, wringing her
hands and weeping bitterly, upon the bank by the side of the track. At
such a sight of beauty in distress Nigel pricked Pommers with the spur
and in three bounds was at the side of the unhappy lady.

“What ails you, fair dame?” he asked. “Is there any small matter in
which I may stand your friend, or is it possible that anyone hath so
hard a heart as to do you an injury.”

She rose and turned upon him a face full of hope and entreaty. “Oh,
save my poor, poor father!” she cried. “Have you perchance seen the
way-wardens? They passed us, and I fear they are beyond reach.”

“Yes, they have ridden onward, but we may serve as well.”

“Then hasten, hasten, I pray you! Even now they may be doing him to
death. They have dragged him into yonder grove and I have heard his
voice growing ever weaker in the distance. Hasten, I implore you!”

Nigel sprang from his horse and tossed the rein to Aylward.

“Nay, let us go together. How many robbers were there, lady?”

“Two stout fellows.”

“Then I come also.”

“Nay, it is not possible,” said Nigel. “The wood is too thick for
horses, and we cannot leave them in the road.”

“I will guard them,” cried the lady.

“Pommers is not so easily held. Do you bide here, Aylward, until you
hear from me. Stir not, I command you!” So saying, Nigel, with the
light, of adventure gleaming in his joyous eyes, drew his sword and
plunged swiftly into the forest.

Far and fast he ran, from glade to glade, breaking through the bushes,
springing over the brambles, light as a young deer, peering this way
and that, straining his ears for a sound, and catching only the cry of
the wood-pigeons. Still on he went, with the constant thought of the
weeping woman behind and of the captured man in front. It was not until
he was footsore and out of breath that he stopped with his hand to his
side, and considered that his own business had still to be done, and
that it was time once more that he should seek the road to Guildford.

Meantime Aylward had found his own rough means of consoling the woman
in the road, who stood sobbing with her face against the side of
Pommers’ saddle.

“Nay, weep not, my pretty one,” said he. “It brings the tears to my own
eyes to see them stream from thine.”

“Alas! good archer, he was the best of fathers, so gentle and so kind!
Had you but known him, you must have loved him.”

“Tut, tut! he will suffer no scathe. Squire Nigel will bring him back
to you anon.”

“No, no, I shall never see him more. Hold me, archer, or I fall!”

Aylward pressed his ready arm round the supple waist. The fainting
woman leaned with her hand upon his shoulder. Her pale face looked past
him, and it was some new light in her eyes, a flash of expectancy, of
triumph, of wicked joy, which gave him sudden warning of his danger.

He shook her off and sprang to one side, but only just in time to avoid
a crashing blow from a great club in the hands of a man even taller and
stronger than himself. He had one quick vision of great white teeth
clenched in grim ferocity, a wild flying beard and blazing wild-beast
eyes. The next instant he had closed, ducking his head beneath another
swing of that murderous cudgel.

With his arms round the robber’s burly body and his face buried in his
bushy beard, Aylward gasped and strained and heaved. Back and forward
in the dusty road the two men stamped and staggered, a grim
wrestling-match, with life for the prize. Twice the great strength of
the outlaw had Aylward nearly down, and twice with his greater youth
and skill the archer restored his grip and his balance. Then at last
his turn came. He slipped his leg behind the other’s knee, and, giving
a mighty wrench, tore him across it. With a hoarse shout the outlaw
toppled backward and had hardly reached the ground before Aylward had
his knee upon his chest and his short sword deep in his beard and
pointed to his throat.

“By these ten finger-bones!” he gasped, “one more struggle and it is
your last!”

The man lay still enough, for he was half-stunned by the crashing fall.
Aylward looked round him, but the woman had disappeared. At the first
blow struck she had vanished into the forest. He began to have fears
for his master, thinking that he perhaps had been lured into some
deathtrap; but his forebodings were soon at rest, for Nigel himself
came hastening down the road, which he had struck some distance from
the spot where he left it.

“By Saint Paul!” he cried, “who is this man on whom you are perched,
and where is the lady who has honored us so far as to crave our help?
Alas, that I have been unable to find her father!”

“As well for you, fair sir,” said Aylward, “for I am of opinion that
her father was the Devil. This woman is, as I believe, the wife of the
‘Wild Man of Puttenham,’ and this is the ‘Wild Man’ himself who set
upon me and tried to brain me with his club.”

The outlaw, who had opened his eyes, looked with a scowl from his
captor to the new-comer. “You are in luck, archer,” said he, “for I
have come to grips with many a man, but I cannot call to mind any who
have had the better of me.”

“You have indeed the grip of a bear,” said Aylward; “but it was a
coward deed that your wife should hold me while you dashed out my
brains with a stick. It is also a most villainous thing to lay a snare
for wayfarers by asking for their pity and assistance, so that it was
our own soft hearts which brought us into such danger. The next who
hath real need of our help may suffer for your sins.”

“When the hand of the whole world is against you,” said the outlaw in a
surly voice, “you must fight as best you can.”

“You well deserve to be hanged, if only because you have brought this
woman, who is fair and gentle-spoken, to such a life,” said Nigel. “Let
us tie him by the wrist to my stirrup leather, Aylward, and we will
lead him into Guildford.”

The archer drew a spare bowstring from his case and had bound the
prisoner as directed, when Nigel gave a sudden start and cry of alarm.

“Holy Mary!” he cried. “Where is the saddle-bag?”

It had been cut away by a sharp knife. Only the two ends of strap
remained. Aylward and Nigel stared at each other in blank dismay. Then
the young Squire shook his clenched hands and pulled at his yellow
curls in his despair.

“The Lady Ermyntrude’s bracelet! My grandfather’s cup!” he cried. “I
would have died ere I lost them! What can I say to her? I dare not
return until I have found them. Oh, Aylward, Aylward! how came you to
let them be taken?”

The honest archer had pushed back his steel cap and was scratching his
tangled head. “Nay, I know nothing of it. You never said that there was
aught of price in the bag, else had I kept a better eye upon it.
Certes! it was not this fellow who took it, since I have never had my
hands from him. It can only be the woman who fled with it while we
fought.”

Nigel stamped about the road in his perplexity. “I would follow her to
the world’s end if I knew where I could find her, but to search these
woods for her is to look for a mouse in a wheat-field. Good Saint
George, thou who didst overcome the Dragon, I pray you by that most
honorable and knightly achievement that you will be with me now! And
you also, great Saint Julian, patron of all wayfarers in distress! Two
candles shall burn before your shrine at Godalming, if you will but
bring me back my saddle-bag. What would I not give to have it back?”

“Will you give me my life?” asked the outlaw. “Promise that I go free,
and you shall have it back, if it be indeed true that my wife has taken
it.”

“Nay, I cannot do that,” said Nigel. “My honor would surely be
concerned, since my loss is a private one; but it would be to the
public scathe that you should go free. By Saint Paul! it would be an
ungentle deed if in order to save my own I let you loose upon the gear
of a hundred others.”

“I will not ask you to let me loose,” said the “Wild Man.” “If you will
promise that my life be spared I will restore your bag.”

“I cannot give such a promise, for it will lie with the Sheriff and
reeves of Guildford.”

“Shall I have your word in my favor?”

“That I could promise you, if you will give back the bag, though I know
not how far my word may avail. But your words are vain, for you cannot
think that we will be so fond as to let you go in the hope that you
return?”

“I would not ask it,” said the “Wild Man,” “for I can get your bag and
yet never stir from the spot where I stand. Have I your promise upon
your honor and all that you hold dear that you will ask for grace?”

“You have.”

“And that my wife shall be unharmed?”

“I promise it.”

The outlaw laid back his head and uttered a long shrill cry like the
howl of a wolf. There was a silent pause, and then, clear and shrill,
there rose the same cry no great distance away in the forest. Again the
“Wild Man” called, and again his mate replied. A third time he
summoned, as the deer bells to the doe in the greenwood. Then with a
rustle of brushwood and snapping of twigs the woman was before them
once more, tall, pale, graceful, wonderful. She glanced neither at
Aylward nor Nigel, but ran to the side of her husband.

“Dear and sweet lord,” she cried, “I trust they have done you no hurt.
I waited by the old ash, and my heart sank when you came not.”

“I have been taken at last, wife.”

“Oh, cursed, cursed day! Let him go, kind, gentle sirs; do not take him
from me!”

“They will speak for me at Guildford,” said the “Wild Man.” “They have
sworn it. But hand them first the bag that you have taken.”

She drew it out from under her loose cloak. “Here it is, gentle sir.
Indeed it went to my heart to take it, for you had mercy upon me in my
trouble. But now I am, as you see, in real and very sore distress. Will
you not have mercy now? Take ruth on us, fair sir! On my knees I beg it
of you, most gentle and kindly Squire!”

Nigel had clutched his bag, and right glad he was to feel that the
treasures were all safe within it. “My proffer is given,” said he. “I
will say what I can; but the issue rests with others. I pray you to
stand up, for indeed I cannot promise more.”

“Then I must be content,” said she, rising, with a composed face. “I
have prayed you to take ruth, and indeed I can do no more; but ere I go
back to the forest I would rede you to be on your guard lest you lose
your bag once more. Wot you how I took it, archer? Nay, it was simple
enough, and may happen again, so I make it clear to you. I had this
knife in my sleeve, and though it is small it is very sharp. I slipped
it down like this. Then when I seemed to weep with my face against the
saddle, I cut down like this—”

In an instant she had shorn through the stirrup leather which bound her
man, and he, diving under the belly of the horse, had slipped like a
snake into the brushwood. In passing he had struck Pommers from
beneath, and the great horse, enraged and insulted, was rearing high,
with two men hanging to his bridle. When at last he had calmed there
was no sign left of the “Wild Man” or of his wife. In vain did Aylward,
an arrow on his string, run here and there among the great trees and
peer down the shadowy glades. When he returned he and his master cast a
shamefaced glance at each other.

“I trust that we are better soldiers than jailers,” said Aylward, as he
climbed on his pony.

But Nigel’s frown relaxed into a smile. “At least we have gained back
what we lost,” said he. “Here I place it on the pommel of my saddle,
and I shall not take my eyes from it until we are safe in Guildford
town.”

So they jogged on together until passing Saint Catherine’s shrine they
crossed the winding Wey once more, and so found themselves in the steep
high street with its heavy-caved gabled houses, its monkish hospitium
upon the left, where good ale may still be quaffed, and its great
square-keeped castle upon the right, no gray and grim skeleton of ruin,
but very quick and alert, with blazoned banner flying free, and steel
caps twinkling from the battlement. A row of booths extended from the
castle gate to the high street, and two doors from the Church of the
Trinity was that of Thorold the goldsmith, a rich burgess and Mayor of
the town.

He looked long and lovingly at the rich rubies and at the fine work
upon the goblet. Then he stroked his flowing gray beard as he pondered
whether he should offer fifty nobles or sixty, for he knew well that he
could sell them again for two hundred. If he offered too much his
profit would be reduced. If he offered too little the youth might go as
far as London with them, for they were rare and of great worth. The
young man was ill-clad, and his eyes were anxious. Perchance he was
hard pressed and was ignorant of the value of what he bore. He would
sound him.

“These things are old and out of fashion, fair sir,” said he. “Of the
stones I can scarce say if they are of good quality or not, but they
are dull and rough. Yet, if your price be low I may add them to my
stock, though indeed this booth was made to sell and not to buy. What
do you ask?”

Nigel bent his brows in perplexity. Here was a game in which neither
his bold heart nor his active limbs could help him. It was the new
force mastering the old: the man of commerce conquering the man of
war—wearing him down and weakening him through the centuries until he
had him as his bond-servant and his thrall.

“I know not what to ask, good sir,” said Nigel. “It is not for me, nor
for any man who bears my name, to chaffer and to haggle. You know the
worth of these things, for it is your trade to do so. The Lady
Ermyntrude lacks money, and we must have it against the King’s coming,
so give me that which is right and just, and we will say no more.”

The goldsmith smiled. The business was growing more simple and more
profitable. He had intended to offer fifty, but surely it would be
sinful waste to give more than twenty-five.

“I shall scarce know what to do with them when I have them,” said he.
“Yet I should not grudge twenty nobles if it is a matter in which the
King is concerned.”

Nigel’s heart turned to lead. This sum would not buy one-half what was
needful. It was clear that the Lady Ermyntrude had overvalued her
treasures. Yet he could not return empty-handed, so if twenty nobles
was the real worth, as this good old man assured him, then he must be
thankful and take it.

“I am concerned by what you say,” said he. “You know more of these
things than I can do. However, I will take—”

“A hundred and fifty,” whispered Aylward’s voice in his ear.

“A hundred and fifty,” said Nigel, only too relieved to have found the
humblest guide upon these unwonted paths.

The goldsmith started. This youth was not the simple soldier that he
had seemed. That frank face, those blue eyes, were traps for the
unwary. Never had he been more taken aback in a bargain.

“This is fond talk and can lead to nothing, fair sir,” said he, turning
away and fiddling with the keys of his strong boxes. “Yet I have no
wish to be hard on you. Take my outside price, which is fifty nobles.”

“And a hundred,” whispered Aylward.

“And a hundred,” said Nigel, blushing at his own greed.

“Well, well, take a hundred!” cried the merchant. “Fleece me, skin me,
leave me a loser, and take for your wares the full hundred!”

“I should be shamed forever if I were to treat you so badly,” said
Nigel. “You have spoken me fair, and I would not grind you down.
Therefore, I will gladly take one hundred—”

“And fifty,” whispered Aylward.

“And fifty,” said Nigel.

“By Saint John of Beverley!” cried the merchant. “I came hither from
the North Country, and they are said to be shrewd at a deal in those
parts; but I had rather bargain with a synagogue full of Jews than with
you, for all your gentle ways. Will you indeed take no less than a
hundred and fifty? Alas! you pluck from me my profits of a month. It is
a fell morning’s work for me. I would I had never seen you!” With
groans and lamentations he paid the gold pieces across the counter, and
Nigel, hardly able to credit his own good fortune, gathered them into
the leather saddle-bag.

A moment later with flushed face he was in the street and pouring out
his thanks to Aylward.

“Alas, my fair lord! the man has robbed us now,” said the archer. “We
could have had another twenty had we stood fast.”

“How know you that, good Aylward?”

“By his eyes, Squire Loring. I wot I have little store of reading where
the parchment of a book or the pinching of a blazon is concerned, but I
can read men’s eyes, and I never doubted that he would give what he has
given.”

The two travelers had dinner at the monk’s hospitium, Nigel at the high
table and Aylward among the commonalty. Then again they roamed the high
street on business intent. Nigel bought taffeta for hangings, wine,
preserves, fruit, damask table linen and many other articles of need.
At last he halted before the armorer’s shop at the castle-yard, staring
at the fine suits of plate, the engraved pectorals, the plumed helmets,
the cunningly jointed gorgets, as a child at a sweet-shop.

“Well, Squire Loring,” said Wat the armorer, looking sidewise from the
furnace where he was tempering a sword blade, “what can I sell you this
morning? I swear to you by Tubal Cain, the father of all workers in
metal, that you might go from end to end of Cheapside and never see a
better suit than that which hangs from yonder hook!”

“And the price, armorer?”

“To anyone else, two hundred and fifty rose nobles. To you two
hundred.”

“And why cheaper to me, good fellow?”

“Because I fitted your father also for the wars, and a finer suit never
went out of my shop. I warrant that it turned many an edge before he
laid it aside. We worked in mail in those days, and I had as soon have
a well-made thick-meshed mail as any plates; but a young knight will be
in the fashion like any dame of the court, and so it must be plate now,
even though the price be trebled.”

“Your rede is that the mail is as good?”

“I am well sure of it.”

“Hearken then, armorer! I cannot at this moment buy a suit of plate,
and yet I sorely need steel harness on account of a small deed which it
is in my mind to do. Now I have at my home at Tilford that very suit of
mail of which you speak, with which my father first rode to the wars.
Could you not so alter it that it should guard my limbs also?”

The armorer looked at Nigel’s small upright figure and burst out
laughing. “You jest, Squire Loring! The suit was made for one who was
far above the common stature of man.”

“Nay, I jest not. If it will but carry me through one spear-running it
will have served its purpose.”

The armorer leaned back on his anvil and pondered while Nigel stared
anxiously at his sooty face.

“Right gladly would I lend you a suit of plate for this one venture,
Squire Loring, but I know well that if you should be overthrown your
harness becomes prize to the victor. I am a poor man with many
children, and I dare not risk the loss of it. But as to what you say of
the old suit of mail, is it indeed in good condition?”

“Most excellent, save only at the neck, which is much frayed.”

“To shorten the limbs is easy. It is but to cut out a length of the
mail and then loop up the links. But to shorten the body—nay, that is
beyond the armorer’s art.”

“It was my last hope. Nay, good armorer, if you have indeed served and
loved my gallant father, then I beg you by his memory that you will
help me now.”

The armorer threw down his heavy hammer with a crash upon the floor.
“It is not only that I loved your father, Squire Loring, but it is that
I have seen you, half armed as you were, ride against the best of them
at the Castle tiltyard. Last Martinmas my heart bled for you when I saw
how sorry was your harness, and yet you held your own against the stout
Sir Oliver with his Milan suit: When go you to Tilford?”

“Even now.”

“Heh, Jenkin, fetch out the cob!” cried the worthy Wat. “May my right
hand lose its cunning if I do not send you into battle in your father’s
suit! To-morrow I must be back in my booth, but to-day I give to you
without fee and for the sake of the good-will which I bear to your
house. I will ride with you to Tilford, and before night you shall see
what Wat can do.”

So it came about that there was a busy evening at the old Tilford
Manor-house, where the Lady Ermyntrude planned and cut and hung the
curtains for the hall, and stocked her cupboards with the good things
which Nigel had brought from Guildford.

Meanwhile the Squire and the armorer sat with their heads touching and
the old suit of mail with its gorget of overlapping plates laid out
across their knees. Again and again old Wat shrugged his shoulders, as
one who has been asked to do more than can be demanded from mortal man.
At last, at a suggestion from the Squire, he leaned back in his chair
and laughed long and loudly in his bushy beard, while the Lady
Ermyntrude glared her black displeasure at such plebeian merriment.
Then taking his fine chisel and his hammer from his pouch of tools, the
armorer, still chuckling at his own thoughts, began to drive a hole
through the center of the steel tunic.




VIII.
HOW THE KING HAWKED ON CROOKSBURY HEATH


The King and his attendants had shaken off the crowd who had followed
them from Guildford along the Pilgrims’ Way and now, the mounted
archers having beaten off the more persistent of the spectators, they
rode at their ease in a long, straggling, glittering train over the
dark undulating plain of heather.

In the van was the King himself, for his hawks were with him and he had
some hope of sport. Edward at that time was a well-grown, vigorous man
in the very prime of his years, a keen sportsman, an ardent gallant and
a chivalrous soldier. He was a scholar too, speaking Latin, French,
German, Spanish, and even a little English.

So much had long been patent to the world, but only of recent years had
he shown other and more formidable characteristics: a restless ambition
which coveted his neighbor’s throne, and a wise foresight in matters of
commerce, which engaged him now in transplanting Flemish weavers and
sowing the seeds of what for many years was the staple trade of
England. Each of these varied qualities might have been read upon his
face. The brow, shaded by a crimson cap of maintenance, was broad and
lofty. The large brown eyes were ardent and bold. His chin was
clean-shaven, and the close-cropped dark mustache did not conceal the
strong mouth, firm, proud and kindly, but capable of setting tight in
merciless ferocity. His complexion was tanned to copper by a life spent
in field sports or in war, and he rode his magnificent black horse
carelessly and easily, as one who has grown up in the saddle. His own
color was black also, for his active; sinewy figure was set off by
close-fitting velvet of that hue, broken only by a belt of gold, and by
a golden border of open pods of the broom-plant.

With his high and noble bearing, his simple yet rich attire and his
splendid mount, he looked every inch a King.

The picture of gallant man on gallant horse was completed by the noble
Falcon of the Isles which fluttered along some twelve feet above his
head, “waiting on,” as it was termed, for any quarry which might arise.
The second bird of the cast was borne upon the gauntleted wrist of
Raoul the chief falconer in the rear.

At the right side of the monarch and a little behind him rode a youth
some twenty years of age, tall, slim and dark, with noble aquiline
features and keen penetrating eyes which sparkled with vivacity and
affection as he answered the remarks of the King. He was clad in deep
crimson diapered with gold, and the trappings of his white palfrey were
of a magnificence which proclaimed the rank of its rider. On his face,
still free from mustache or beard, there sat a certain gravity and
majesty of expression which showed that young as he was great affairs
had been in his keeping and that his thoughts and interests were those
of the statesman and the warrior. That great day when, little more than
a school-boy, he had led the van of the victorious army which had
crushed the power of France and Crécy, had left this stamp upon his
features; but stern as they were they had not assumed that tinge of
fierceness which in after years was to make “The Black Prince” a name
of terror on the marches of France. Not yet had the first shadow of
fell disease come to poison his nature ere it struck at his life, as he
rode that spring day, light and debonair, upon the heath of Crooksbury.

On the left of the King, and so near to him that great intimacy was
implied, rode a man about his own age, with the broad face, the
projecting jaw and the flattish nose which are often the outward
indications of a pugnacious nature.

His complexion was crimson, his large blue eyes somewhat prominent, and
his whole appearance full-blooded and choleric. He was short, but
massively built, and evidently possessed of immense strength. His
voice, however, when he spoke was gentle and lisping, while his manner
was quiet and courteous. Unlike the King or the Prince, he was clad in
light armor and carried a sword by his side and a mace at his
saddle-bow, for he was acting as Captain of the King’s Guard, and a
dozen other knights in steel followed in the escort. No hardier soldier
could Edward have at his side, if, as was always possible in those
lawless times, sudden danger was to threaten, for this was the famous
knight of Hainault, now naturalized as an Englishman, Sir Walter Manny,
who bore as high a reputation for chivalrous valor and for gallant
temerity as Chandos himself.

Behind the knights, who were forbidden to scatter and must always
follow the King’s person, there was a body of twenty or thirty hobblers
or mounted bowmen, together with several squires, unarmed themselves
but leading spare horses upon which the heavier part of their knights’
equipment was carried. A straggling tail of falconers, harbingers,
varlets, body-servants and huntsmen holding hounds in leash completed
the long and many-colored train which rose and dipped on the low
undulations of the moor.

Many weighty things were on the mind of Edward the King. There was
truce for the moment with France, but it was a truce broken by many
small deeds of arms, raids, surprises and ambushes upon either side,
and it was certain that it would soon dissolve again into open war.
Money must be raised, and it was no light matter to raise it, now that
the Commons had once already voted the tenth lamb and the tenth sheaf.
Besides, the Black Death had ruined the country, the arable land was
all turned to pasture, the laborer, laughing at statutes, would not
work under fourpence a day, and all society was chaos. In addition, the
Scotch were growling over the border, there was the perennial trouble
in half-conquered Ireland, and his allies abroad in Flanders and in
Brabant were clamoring for the arrears of their subsidies.

All this was enough to make even a victorious monarch full of care; but
now Edward had thrown it all to the winds and was as light-hearted as a
boy upon a holiday. No thought had he for the dunning of Florentine
bankers or the vexatious conditions of those busybodies at Westminster.
He was out with his hawks, and his thoughts and his talk should be of
nothing else. The varlets beat the heather and bushes as they passed,
and whooped loudly as the birds flew out.

“A magpie! A magpie!” cried the falconer.

“Nay, nay, it is not worthy of your talons, my brown-eyed queen,” said
the King, looking up at the great bird which flapped from side to side
above his head, waiting for the whistle which should give her the
signal. “The tercels, falconer—a cast of tercels! Quick, man, quick!
Ha! the rascal makes for wood! He puts in! Well flown, brave peregrine!
He makes his point. Drive him out to thy comrade. Serve him, varlets!
Beat the bushes! He breaks! He breaks! Nay, come away then! You will
see Master Magpie no more.”

The bird had indeed, with the cunning of its race, flapped its way
through brushwood and bushes to the thicker woods beyond, so that
neither the hawk amid the cover nor its partner above nor the clamorous
beaters could harm it. The King laughed at the mischance and rode on.
Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued
by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the
goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of
this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent
silent attendant flapping above his head.

“Is she not a noble bird, fair son?” he asked, glancing up as her
shadow fell upon him.

“She is indeed, sire. Surely no finer ever came from the isles of the
north.”

“Perhaps not, and yet I have had a hawk from Barbary as good a footer
and a swifter flyer. An Eastern bird in yarak has no peer.”

“I had one once from the Holy Land,” said de Manny. “It was fierce and
keen and swift as the Saracens themselves. They say of old Saladin that
in his day his breed of birds, of hounds and of horses had no equal on
earth.”

“I trust, dear father, that the day may come when we shall lay our
hands on all three,” said the Prince, looking with shining eyes upon
the King. “Is the Holy Land to lie forever in the grasp of these
unbelieving savages, or the Holy Temple to be defiled by their foul
presence? Ah! my dear and most sweet lord, give to me a thousand lances
with ten thousand bowmen like those I led at Crécy, and I swear to you
by God’s soul that within a year I will have done homage to you for the
Kingdom of Jerusalem!”

The King laughed as he turned to Walter Manny. “Boys will still be
boys,” said he.

“The French do not count me such!” cried the young Prince, flushing
with anger.

“Nay, fair son, there is no one sets you at a higher rate than your
father. But you have the nimble mind and quick fancy of youth, turning
over from the thing that is half done to a further task beyond. How
would we fare in Brittany and Normandy while my young paladin with his
lances and his bowmen was besieging Ascalon or battering at Jerusalem?”

“Heaven would help in Heaven’s work.”

“From what I have heard of the past,” said the King dryly, “I cannot
see that Heaven has counted for much as an ally in these wars of the
East. I speak with reverence, and yet it is but sooth to say that
Richard of the Lion Heart or Louis of France might have found the
smallest earthly principality of greater service to him than all the
celestial hosts. How say you to that, my Lord Bishop?”

A stout churchman who had ridden behind the King on a solid bay cob,
well-suited to his weight and dignity, jogged up to the monarch’s
elbow. “How say you, sire? I was watching the goshawk on the partridge
and heard you not.”

“Had I said that I would add two manors to the See of Chichester, I
warrant that you would have heard me, my Lord Bishop.”

“Nay, fair lord, test the matter by saying so,” cried the jovial
Bishop.

The King laughed aloud. “A fair counter, your reverence. By the rood!
you broke your lance that passage. But the question I debated was this:
How is it that since the Crusades have manifestly been fought in God’s
quarrel, we Christians have had so little comfort or support in
fighting them. After all our efforts and the loss of more men than
could be counted, we are at last driven from the country, and even the
military orders which were formed only for that one purpose can scarce
hold a footing in the islands of the Greek sea. There is not one
seaport nor one fortress in Palestine over which the flag of the Cross
still waves. Where then was our ally?”

“Nay, sire, you open a great debate which extends far beyond this
question of the Holy Land, though that may indeed be chosen as a fair
example. It is the question of all sin, of all suffering, of all
injustice—why it should pass without the rain of fire and the
lightnings of Sinai. The wisdom of God is beyond our understanding.”

The King shrugged his shoulders. “This is an easy answer, my Lord
Bishop. You are a prince of the Church. It would fare ill with an
earthly prince who could give no better answer to the affairs which
concerned his realm.”

“There are other considerations which might be urged, most gracious
sire. It is true that the Crusades were a holy enterprise which might
well expect the immediate blessing of God; but the Crusaders—is it
certain that they deserved such a blessing? Have I not heard that their
camp was the most dissolute ever seen?”

“Camps are camps all the world over, and you cannot in a moment change
a bowman into a saint. But the holy Louis was a crusader after your own
heart. Yet his men perished at Mansurah and he himself at Tunis.”

“Bethink you also that this world is but the antechamber of the next,”
said the prelate. “By suffering and tribulation the soul is cleansed,
and the true victor may be he who by the patient endurance of
misfortune merits the happiness to come.”

“If that be the true meaning of the Church’s blessing, then I hope that
it will be long before it rests upon our banners in France,” said the
King. “But methinks that when one is out with a brave horse and a good
hawk one might find some other subject than theology. Back to the
birds, Bishop, or Raoul the falconer will come to interrupt thee in thy
cathedral.”

Straightway the conversation came back to the mystery of the woods and
the mystery of the rivers, to the dark-eyed hawks and the yellow-eyed,
to hawks of the lure and hawks of the fist. The Bishop was as steeped
in the lore of falconry as the King, and the others smiled as the two
wrangled hard over disputed and technical questions: if an eyas trained
in the mews can ever emulate the passage hawk taken wild, or how long
the young hawks should be placed at hack, and how long weathered before
they are fully reclaimed.

Monarch and prelate were still deep in this learned discussion, the
Bishop speaking with a freedom and assurance which he would never have
dared to use in affairs of Church and State, for in all ages there is
no such leveler as sport. Suddenly, however, the Prince, whose keen
eyes had swept from time to time over the great blue heaven, uttered a
peculiar call and reined up his palfrey, pointing at the same time into
the air.

“A heron!” he cried. “A heron on passage!”

To gain the full sport of hawking a heron must not be put up from its
feeding-ground, where it is heavy with its meal, and has no time to get
its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it
must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the
fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the
prelude of all good sport. The object to which the Prince had pointed
was but a black dot in the southern sky, but his strained eyes had not
deceived him, and both Bishop and King agreed that it was indeed a
heron, which grew larger every instant as it flew in their direction.

“Whistle him off, sire! Whistle off the gerfalcon!” cried the Bishop.

“Nay, nay, he is overfar. She would fly at check.”

“Now, sire, now!” cried the Prince, as the great bird with the breeze
behind him came sweeping down the sky.

The King gave the shrill whistle, and the well-trained hawk raked out
to the right and to the left to make sure which quarry she was to
follow. Then, spying the heron, she shot up in a swift ascending curve
to meet him.

“Well flown, Margot! Good bird!” cried the King, clapping his hands to
encourage the hawk, while the falconers broke into the shrill whoop
peculiar to the sport.

Going on her curve, the hawk would soon have crossed the path of the
heron; but the latter, seeing the danger in his front and confident in
his own great strength of wing and lightness of body, proceeded to
mount higher in the air, flying in such small rings that to the
spectators it almost seemed as if the bird was going perpendicularly
upward.

“He takes the air!” cried the King. “But strong as he flies, he cannot
out fly Margot. Bishop, I lay you ten gold pieces to one that the heron
is mine.”

“I cover your wager, sire,” said the Bishop. “I may not take gold so
won, and yet I warrant that there is an altar-cloth somewhere in need
of repairs.”

“You have good store of altar-cloths, Bishop, if all the gold I have
seen you win at tables goes to the mending of them,” said the King.
“Ah! by the rood, rascal, rascal! See how she flies at check!”

The quick eyes of the Bishop had perceived a drift of rooks when on
their evening flight to the rookery were passing along the very line
which divided the hawk from the heron. A rook is a hard temptation for
a hawk to resist. In an instant the inconstant bird had forgotten all
about the great heron above her and was circling over the rooks, flying
westward with them as she singled out the plumpest for her stoop.

“There is yet time, sire! Shall I cast off her mate?” cried the
falconer.

“Or shall I show you, sire, how a peregrine may win where a gerfalcon
fails?” said the Bishop. “Ten golden pieces to one upon my bird.”

“Done with you, Bishop!” cried the King, his brow dark with vexation.
“By the rood! if you were as learned in the fathers as you are in hawks
you would win to the throne of Saint Peter! Cast off your peregrine and
make your boasting good.”

Smaller than the royal gerfalcon, the Bishop’s bird was none the less a
swift and beautiful creature. From her perch upon his wrist she had
watched with fierce, keen eyes the birds in the heaven, mantling
herself from time to time in her eagerness. Now when the button was
undone and the leash uncast the peregrine dashed off with a whir of her
sharp-pointed wings, whizzing round in a great ascending circle which
mounted swiftly upward, growing ever smaller as she approached that
lofty point where, a mere speck in the sky, the heron sought escape
from its enemies. Still higher and higher the two birds mounted, while
the horsemen, their faces upturned, strained their eyes in their
efforts to follow them.

“She rings! She still rings!” cried the Bishop. “She is above him! She
has gained her pitch.”

“Nay, nay, she is far below,” said the King.

“By my soul, my Lord Bishop is right!” cried the Prince. “I believe she
is above. See! See! She swoops!”

“She binds! She binds!” cried a dozen voices as the two dots blended
suddenly into one.

There could be no doubt that they were falling rapidly. Already they
grew larger to the eye. Presently the heron disengaged himself and
flapped heavily away, the worse for that deadly embrace, while the
peregrine, shaking her plumage, ringed once more so as to get high
above the quarry and deal it a second and more fatal blow. The Bishop
smiled, for nothing, as it seemed, could hinder his victory.

“Thy gold pieces shall be well spent, sire,” said he. “What is lost to
the Church is gained by the loser.”

But a most unlooked-for chance deprived the Bishop’s altar cloth of its
costly mending. The King’s gerfalcon having struck down a rook, and
finding the sport but tame, bethought herself suddenly of that noble
heron, which she still perceived fluttering over Crooksbury Heath. How
could she have been so weak as to allow these silly, chattering rooks
to entice her away from that lordly bird? Even now it was not too late
to atone for her mistake. In a great spiral she shot upward until she
was over the heron. But what was this? Every fiber of her, from her
crest to her deck feathers, quivered with jealousy and rage at the
sight of this creature, a mere peregrine, who had dared to come between
a royal gerfalcon and her quarry. With one sweep of her great wings she
shot up until she was above her rival. The next instant—

“They crab! They crab!” cried the King, with a roar of laughter,
following them with his eyes as they bustled down through the air.
“Mend thy own altar-cloths, Bishop. Not a groat shall you have from me
this journey. Pull them apart, falconer, lest they do each other an
injury. And now, masters, let us on, for the sun sinks toward the
west.”

The two hawks, which had come to the ground interlocked with clutching
talons and ruffled plumes, were torn apart and brought back bleeding
and panting to their perches, while the heron after its perilous
adventure flapped its way heavily onward to settle safely in the
heronry of Waverley. The cortege, who had scattered in the excitement
of the chase, came together again, and the journey was once more
resumed.

A horseman who had been riding toward them across the moor now
quickened his pace and closed swiftly upon them. As he came nearer, the
King and the Prince cried out joyously and waved their hands in
greeting.

“It is good John Chandos!!” cried the King. “By the rood, John, I have
missed your merry songs this week or more! Glad I am to see that you
have your citole slung to your back. Whence come you then?”

“I come from Tilford, sire, in the hope that I should meet your
majesty.”

“It was well thought of. Come, ride here between the Prince and me, and
we will believe that we are back in France with our war harness on our
backs once more. What is your news, Master John?”

Chandos’ quaint face quivered with suppressed amusement and his one eye
twinkled like a star. “Have you had sport, my liege?”

“Poor sport, John. We flew two hawks on the same heron. They crabbed,
and the bird got free. But why do you smile so?”

“Because I hope to show you better sport ere you come to Tilford.”

“For the hawk? For the hound?”

“A nobler sport than either.”

“Is this a riddle, John? What mean you?”

“Nay, to tell all would be to spoil all. I say again that there is rare
sport betwixt here and Tilford, and I beg you, dear lord, to mend your
pace that we make the most of the daylight.”

Thus adjured, the King set spurs to his horse, and the whole cavalcade
cantered over the heath in the direction which Chandos showed.
Presently as they came over a slope they saw beneath them a winding
river with an old high-backed bridge across it. On the farther side was
a village green with a fringe of cottages and one dark manor house upon
the side of the hill.

“This is Tilford,” said Chandos. “Yonder is the house of the Lorings.”

The King’s expectations had been aroused and his face showed his
disappointment.

“Is this the sport that you have promised us, Sir John? How can you
make good your words?”

“I will make them good, my liege.”

“Where then is the sport?”

On the high crown of the bridge a rider in armor was seated, lance in
hand, upon a great yellow steed. Chandos touched the King’s arm and
pointed. “That is the sport,” said he.




IX.
HOW NIGEL HELD THE BRIDGE AT TILFORD


The King looked at the motionless figure, at the little crowd of hushed
expectant rustics beyond the bridge, and finally at the face of
Chandos, which shone with amusement.

“What is this, John?” he asked.

“You remember Sir Eustace Loring, sire?”

“Indeed I could never forget him nor the manner of his death.”

“He was a knight errant in his day.”

“That indeed he was—none better have I known.”

“So is his son Nigel, as fierce a young war-hawk as ever yearned to use
beak and claws; but held fast in the mews up to now. This is his trial
fight. There he stands at the bridge-head, as was the wont in our
fathers’ time, ready to measure himself against all comers.”

Of all Englishmen there was no greater knight errant than the King
himself, and none so steeped in every quaint usage of chivalry; so that
the situation was after his own heart.

“He is not yet a knight?”

“No, sire, only a Squire.”

“Then he must bear himself bravely this day if he is to make good what
he has done. Is it fitting that a young untried Squire should venture
to couch his lance against the best in England?”

“He hath given me his cartel and challenge,” said Chandos, drawing a
paper from his tunic. “Have I your permission, sire, to issue it?”

“Surely, John, we have no cavalier more versed in the laws of chivalry
than yourself. You know this young man, and you are aware how far he is
worthy of the high honor which he asks. Let us hear his defiance.”

The knights and squires of the escort, most of whom were veterans of
the French war, had been gazing with interest and some surprise at the
steel-clad figure in front of them. Now at a call from Sir Walter Manny
they assembled round the spot where the King and Chandos had halted.
Chandos cleared his throat and read from his paper—

“‘_A tous seigneurs, chevaliers et escuyers_,’ so it is headed,
gentlemen. It is a message from the good Squire Nigel Loring of
Tilford, son of Sir Eustace Loring, of honorable memory. Squire Loring
awaits you in arms, gentlemen, yonder upon the crown of the old bridge.
Thus says he: ‘For the great desire that I, a most humble and unworthy
Squire, entertain, that I may come to the knowledge of the noble
gentlemen who ride with my royal master, I now wait on the Bridge of
the Way in the hope that some of them may condescend to do some small
deed of arms upon me, or that I may deliver them from any vow which
they may have taken. This I say out of no esteem for myself, but solely
that I may witness the noble bearing of these famous cavaliers and
admire their skill in the handling of arms. Therefore, with the help of
Saint George, I will hold the bridge with sharpened lances against any
or all who may deign to present themselves while daylight lasts.”

“What say you to this, gentlemen?” asked the King, looking round with
laughing eyes.

“Truly it is issued in very good form,” said the Prince. “Neither
Claricieux nor Red Dragon nor any herald that ever wore tabard could
better it. Did he draw it of his own hand?”

“He hath a grim old grandmother who is one of the ancient breed,” said
Chandos. “I doubt not that the Dame Ermyntrude hath drawn a challenge
or two before now. But hark ye, sire, I would have a word in your
ear—and yours too, most noble Prince.”

Leading them aside, Chandos whispered some explanations, which ended by
them all three bursting into a shout of laughter.

“By the rood! no honorable gentleman should be reduced to such
straits,” said the King. “It behooves me to look to it. But how now,
gentlemen? This worthy cavalier still waits his answer.”

The soldiers had all been buzzing together; but now Walter Manny turned
to the King with the result of their counsel.

“If it please your majesty,” said he, “we are of opinion that this
Squire hath exceeded all bounds in desiring to break a spear with a
belted knight ere he has given his proofs. We do him sufficient honor
if a Squire ride against him, and with your consent I have chosen my
own body-squire, John Widdicombe, to clear the path for us across the
bridge.”

“What you say, Walter, is right and fair,” said the King. “Master
Chandos, you will tell our champion yonder what hath been arranged. You
will advise him also that it is our royal will that this contest be not
fought upon the bridge, since it is very clear that it must end in one
or both going over into the river, but that he advance to the end of
the bridge and fight upon the plain. You will tell him also that a
blunted lance is sufficient for such an encounter, but that a
hand-stroke or two with sword or mace may well be exchanged, if both
riders should keep their saddles. A blast upon Raoul’s horn shall be
the signal to close.”

Such ventures as these where an aspirant for fame would wait for days
at a cross-road, a ford, or a bridge, until some worthy antagonist
should ride that way, were very common in the old days of adventurous
knight erranty, and were still familiar to the minds of all men because
the stories of the romancers and the songs of the trouveres were full
of such incidents. Their actual occurrence however had become rare.
There was the more curiosity, not unmixed with amusement, in the
thoughts of the courtiers as they watched Chandos ride down to the
bridge and commented upon the somewhat singular figure of the
challenger. His build was strange, and so also was his figure, for the
limbs were short for so tall a man. His head also was sunk forward as
if he were lost in thought or overcome with deep dejection.

“This is surely the Cavalier of the Heavy Heart,” said Manny. “What
trouble has he, that he should hang his head?”

“Perchance he hath a weak neck,” said the King.

“At least he hath no weak voice,” the Prince remarked, as Nigel’s
answer to Chandos came to their ears. “By our lady, he booms like a
bittern.”

As Chandos rode back again to the King, Nigel exchanged the old ash
spear which had been his father’s for one of the blunted tournament
lances which he took from the hands of a stout archer in attendance. He
then rode down to the end of the bridge where a hundred-yard stretch of
greensward lay in front of him. At the same moment the Squire of Sir
Walter Manny, who had been hastily armed by his comrades, spurred
forward and took up his position.

The King raised his hand; there was a clang from the falconer’s horn,
and the two riders, with a thrust of their heels and a shake of their
bridles, dashed furiously at each other. In the center the green strip
of marshy meadowland, with the water squirting from the galloping
hoofs, and the two crouching men, gleaming bright in the evening sun,
on one side the half circle of motionless horsemen, some in steel, some
in velvet, silent and attentive, dogs, hawks, and horses all turned to
stone; on the other the old peaked bridge, the blue lazy river, the
group of openmouthed rustics, and the dark old manor-house with one
grim face which peered from the upper window.

A good man was John Widdicombe, but he had met a better that day.
Before that yellow whirlwind of a horse and that rider who was welded
and riveted to his saddle his knees could not hold their grip. Nigel
and Pommers were one flying missile, with all their weight and strength
and energy centered on the steady end of the lance. Had Widdicombe been
struck by a thunderbolt he could not have flown faster or farther from
his saddle. Two full somersaults did he make, his plates clanging like
cymbals, ere he lay prone upon his back.

For a moment the King looked grave at that prodigious fall. Then
smiling once more as Widdicombe staggered to his feet, he clapped his
hands loudly in applause. “A fair course and fairly run!” he cried.
“The five scarlet roses bear themselves in peace even as I have seen
them in war. How now, my good Walter? Have you another Squire or will
you clear a path for us yourself?”

Manny’s choleric face had turned darker as he observed the mischance of
his representative. He beckoned now to a tall knight, whose gaunt and
savage face looked out from his open bassinet as an eagle might from a
cage of steel.

“Sir Hubert,” said he, “I bear in mind the day when you overbore the
Frenchman at Caen. Will you not be our champion now?”

“When I fought the Frenchman, Walter, it was with naked weapons,” said
the knight sternly. “I am a soldier and I love a soldier’s work, but I
care not for these tiltyard tricks which were invented for nothing but
to tickle the fancies of foolish women.”

“Oh, most ungallant speech!” cried the King. “Had my good-consort heard
you she would have arraigned you to appear at a Court of Love with a
jury of virgins to answer for your sins. But I pray you to take a
tilting spear, good Sir Hubert!”

“I had as soon take a peacock’s feather, my fair lord; but I will do
it, if you ask me. Here, page, hand me one of those sticks, and let me
see what I can do.”

But Sir Hubert de Burgh was not destined to test either his skill or
his luck. The great bay horse which he rode was as unused to this
warlike play as was its master, and had none of its master’s stoutness
of heart; so that when it saw the leveled lance, the gleaming figure
and the frenzied yellow horse rushing down upon it, it swerved, turned
and galloped furiously down the river-bank. Amid roars of laughter from
the rustics on the one side and from the courtiers on the other, Sir
Hubert was seen, tugging vainly at his bridle, and bounding onward,
clearing gorse-bushes and heather-clumps, until he was but a
shimmering, quivering gleam upon the dark hillside. Nigel, who had
pulled Pommers on to his very haunches at the instant that his opponent
turned, saluted with his lance and trotted back to the bridge-head,
where he awaited his next assailant.

“The ladies would say that a judgment hath fallen upon our good Sir
Hubert for his impious words,” said the King.

“Let us hope that his charger may be broken in ere they venture to ride
out between two armies,” remarked the Prince. “They might mistake the
hardness of his horse’s mouth for a softness of the rider’s heart. See
where he rides, still clearing every bush upon his path.”

“By the rood!” said the King, “if the bold Hubert has not increased his
repute as a jouster he has gained great honor as a horseman. But the
bridge is still closed, Walter. How say you now? Is this young Squire
never to be unhorsed, or is your King himself to lay lance in rest ere
his way can be cleared? By the head of Saint Thomas! I am in the very
mood to run a course with this gentle youth.”

“Nay, nay, sire, too much honor hath already been done him!” said
Manny, looking angrily at the motionless horseman. “That this untried
boy should be able to say that in one evening he has unhorsed my
Squire, and seen the back of one of the bravest knights in England is
surely enough to turn his foolish head. Fetch me a spear, Robert! I
will see what I can make of him.”

The famous knight took the spear when it was brought to him as a
master-workman takes a tool. He balanced it, shook it once or twice in
the air, ran his eyes down it for a flaw in the wood, and then finally
having made sure of its poise and weight laid it carefully in rest
under his arm. Then gathering up his bridle so as to have his horse
under perfect command, and covering himself with the shield, which was
slung round his neck, he rode out to do battle.

Now, Nigel, young and inexperienced, all Nature’s aid will not help you
against the mixed craft and strength of such a warrior. The day will
come when neither Manny nor even Chandos could sweep you from your
saddle; but now, even had you some less cumbrous armor, your chance
were small. Your downfall is near; but as you see the famous black
chevrons on a golden ground your gallant heart which never knew fear is
only filled with joy and amazement at the honor done you. Your downfall
is near, and yet in your wildest dreams you would never guess how
strange your downfall is to be.

Again with a dull thunder of hoofs the horses gallop over the soft
water-meadow. Again with a clash of metal the two riders meet. It is
Nigel now, taken clean in the face of his helmet with the blunted
spear, who flies backward off his horse and falls clanging on the
grass.

But good heavens! what is this? Manny has thrown up his hands in horror
and the lance has dropped from his nerveless fingers. From all sides,
with cries of dismay, with oaths and shouts and ejaculations to the
saints, the horsemen ride wildly in. Was ever so dreadful, so sudden,
so complete, an end to a gentle passage at arms? Surely their eyes must
be at fault? Some wizard’s trick has been played upon them to deceive
their senses. But no, it was only too clear. There on the greensward
lay the trunk of the stricken cavalier, and there, a good dozen yards
beyond, lay his helmeted head.

“By the Virgin!” cried Manny wildly, as he jumped from his horse, “I
would give my last gold piece that the work of this evening should be
undone! How came it? What does it mean? Hither, my Lord Bishop, for
surely it smacks of witchcraft and the Devil.”

With a white face the Bishop had sprung down beside the prostrate body,
pushing through the knot of horrified knights and squires.

“I fear that the last offices of the Holy Church come too late,” said
he in a quivering voice. “Most unfortunate young man! How sudden an
end! _In medio vitæ_, as the Holy Book has it—one moment in the pride
of his youth, the next his head torn from his body. Now God and his
saints have mercy upon me and guard me from evil!”

The last prayer was shot out of the Bishop with an energy and
earnestness unusual in his orisons. It was caused by the sudden outcry
of one of the Squires who, having lifted the helmet from the ground,
cast it down again with a scream of horror.

“It is empty!” he cried. “It weighs as light as a feather.”

“’Fore God, it is true!” cried Manny, laying his hand on it. “There is
no one in it. With what have I fought, father Bishop? Is it of this
world or of the next?”

The Bishop had clambered on his horse the better to consider the point.
“If the foul fiend is abroad,” said he, “my place is over yonder by the
King’s side. Certes that sulphur-colored horse hath a very devilish
look. I could have sworn that I saw both smoke and flame from its
nostrils. The beast is fit to bear a suit of armor which rides and
fights and yet hath no man within it.”

“Nay, not too fast, father Bishop,” said one of the knights. “It may be
all that you say and yet come from a human workshop. When I made a
campaign in South Germany I have seen at Nuremberg a cunning figure,
devised by an armorer, which could both ride and wield a sword. If this
be such a one—”

“I thank you all for your very gentle courtesy,” said a booming voice
from the figure upon the ground.

At the words even the valiant Manny sprang into his saddle. Some rode
madly away from the horrid trunk. A few of the boldest lingered.

“Most

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