E. M. Hull - "The Sheik"

Laura Lee Hope - "The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge"

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - "Wives and Daughters"

William Shakespeare - "The History of Troilus and Cressida"

The White Company

A >> Arthur Conan Doyle >> The White Company




"Hola, mon petit," said the old bowman, pushing his way through
the crowd, with the huge forester at his heels. "What is all
this, then? By the twang of string! I think that you will have
some work upon your hands if you are to right all the wrongs that
you may see upon this side of the water. It is not to be thought
that a troop of bowmen, with the wine buzzing in their ears, will
be as soft-spoken as so many young clerks in an orchard. When
you have been a year with the Company you will think less of such
matters. But what is amiss here? The provost-marshal with his
archers is coming this way, and some of you may find yourselves
in the stretch-neck, if you take not heed."

"Why, it is old Sam Aylward of the White Company!" shouted the
man-at-arms. "Why, Samkin, what hath come upon thee? I can call
to mind the day when you were as roaring a blade as ever called
himself a free companion. By my soul! from Limoges to Navarre,
who was there who would kiss a wench or cut a throat as readily
as bowman Aylward of Hawkwood's company?"

"Like enough, Peter," said Aylward, "and, by my hilt! I may not
have changed so much. But it was ever a fair loose and a clear
mark with me. The wench must be willing, or the man must be
standing up against me, else, by these ten finger bones I either
were safe enough for me."

A glance at Aylward's resolute face, and at the huge shoulders of
Hordle John, had convinced the archers that there was little to
be got by violence. The girl and the old man began to shuffle on
in the crowd without their tormentors venturing to stop them.
Ford and Alleyne followed slowly behind them, but Aylward caught
the latter by the shoulder.

"By my hilt! camarade," said he, "I hear that you have done great
things at the Abbey to-day, but I pray you to have a care, for it
was I who brought you into the Company, and it would be a black
day for me if aught were to befall you."

"Nay, Aylward, I will have a care."

"Thrust not forward into danger too much, mon petit. In a little
time your wrist will be stronger and your cut more shrewd. There
will be some of us at the `Rose de Guienne' to-night, which is
two doors from the hotel of the `Half Moon,' so if you would
drain a cup with a few simple archers you will be right welcome."

Alleyne promised to be there if his duties would allow, and then,
slipping through the crowd, he rejoined Ford, who was standing in
talk with the two strangers, who had now reached their own
doorstep.

"Brave young signor," cried the tall man, throwing his arms round
Alleyne, "how can we thank you enough for taking our parts
against those horrible drunken barbarians. What should we have
done without you? My Tita would have been dragged away, and my
head would have been shivered into a thousand fragments."

"Nay, I scarce think that they would have mishandled you so,"
said Alleyne in surprise.

"Ho, ho!" cried he with a high crowing laugh, "it is not the head
upon my shoulders that I think of. Cospetto! no. It is the head
under my arm which you have preserved."

"Perhaps the signori would deign to come under our roof, father,"
said the maiden. "If we bide here, who knows that some fresh
tumult may not break out."

"Well said, Tita! Well said, my girl! I pray you, sirs, to
honor my unworthy roof so far. A light, Giacomo! There are five
steps up. Now two more. So! Here we are at last in safety.
Corpo di Bacco! I would not have given ten maravedi for my head
when those children of the devil were pushing us against the
wall. Tita mia, you have been a brave girl, and it was better
that you should be pulled and pushed than that my head should be
broken."

"Yes indeed, father," said she earnestly.

"But those English! Ach! Take a Goth, a Hun, and a Vandal, mix
them together and add a Barbary rover; then take this creature
and make him drunk--and you have an Englishman. My God I were
ever such people upon earth! What place is free from them? I
hear that they swarm in Italy even as they swarm here.
Everywhere you will find them, except in heaven."

"Dear father," cried Tita, still supporting the angry old man, as
he limped up the curved oaken stair. "You must not forget that
these good signori who have preserved us are also English."

"Ah, yes. My pardon, sirs! Come into my rooms here. There are
some who might find some pleasure in these paintings, but I learn
the art of war is the only art which is held in honor in your
island."

The low-roofed, oak-panelled room into which he conducted them
was brilliantly lit by four scented oil lamps. Against the
walls, upon the table, on the floor, and in every part of the
chamber were great sheets of glass painted in the most brilliant
colors. Ford and Edricson gazed around them in amazement, for
never had they seen such magnificent works of art.

"You like them then," the lame artist cried, in answer to the
look of pleasure and of surprise in their faces. "There are then
some of you who have a taste for such trifling."

"I could not have believed it," exclaimed Alleyne. "What color!
What outlines! See to this martyrdom of the holy Stephen, Ford.
Could you not yourself pick up one of these stones which lie to
the hand of the wicked murtherers?"

"And see this stag, Alleyne, with the cross betwixt its horns.
By my faith! I have never seen a better one at the Forest of
Bere."

"And the green of this grass--how bright and clear! Why all the
painting that I have seen is but child's play beside this. This
worthy gentleman must be one of those great painters of whom I
have oft heard brother Bartholomew speak in the old days at
Beaulieu."

The dark mobile face of the artist shone with pleasure at the
unaffected delight of the two young Englishmen. His daughter had
thrown off her mantle and disclosed a face of the finest and most
delicate Italian beauty, which soon drew Ford's eyes from the
pictures in front of him. Alleyne, however, continued with
little cries of admiration and of wonderment to turn from the
walls to the table and yet again to the walls.

"What think you of this, young sir?" asked the painter, tearing
off the cloth which concealed the flat object which he had borne
beneath his arm. It was a leaf-shaped sheet of glass bearing
upon it a face with a halo round it, so delicately outlined, and
of so perfect a tint, that it might have been indeed a human face
which gazed with sad and thoughtful eyes upon the young squire.
He clapped his hands, with that thrill of joy which true art will
ever give to a true artist.

"It is great!" he cried. "It is wonderful! But I marvel, sir,
that you should have risked a work of such beauty and value by
bearing it at night through so unruly a crowd."

"I have indeed been rash," said the artist. "Some wine, Tita,
from the Florence flask! Had it not been for you, I tremble to
think of what might have come of it. See to the skin tint: it is
not to be replaced, for paint as you will, it is not once in a
hundred times that it is not either burned too brown in the
furnace or else the color will not hold, and you get but a sickly
white. There you can see the very veins and the throb of thee
blood. Yes, diavolo! if it had broken, my heart would have
broken too. It is for the choir window in the church of St.
Remi, and we had gone, my little helper and I, to see if it was
indeed of the size for the stonework. Night had fallen ere we
finished, and what could we do save carry it home as best we
might? But you, young sir, you speak as if you too knew
something of the art."

"So little that I scarce dare speak of it in your presence,"
Alleyne answered. "I have been cloister-bred, and it was no very
great matter to handle the brush better than my brother novices."

"There are pigments, brush, and paper," said the old artist. "I
do not give you glass, for that is another matter, and takes much
skill in the mixing of colors. Now I pray you to show me a touch
of your art. I thank you, Tita! The Venetian glasses, cara mia,
and fill them to the brim. A seat, signor!"

While Ford, in his English-French, was conversing with Tita in
her Italian French, the old man was carefully examining his
precious head to see that no scratch had been left upon its
surface. When he glanced up again, Alleyne had, with a few bold
strokes of the brush, tinted in a woman's face and neck upon the
white sheet in front of him.

"Diavolo!" exclaimed the old artist, standing with his head on
one side, "you have power; yes, cospetto! you have power, it is
the face of an angel!"

"It is the face of the Lady Maude Loring!" cried Ford, even more
astonished.

"Why, on my faith, it is not unlike her!" said Alleyne, in some
confusion.

"Ah! a portrait! So much the better. Young man, I am Agostino
Pisano, the son of Andrea Pisano, and I say again that you have
power. Further, I say, that, if you will stay with me, I will
teach you all the secrets of the glass-stainers' mystery: the
pigments and their thickening, which will fuse into the glass and
which will not, the furnace and the glazing--every trick and
method you shall know."

"I would be right glad to study under such a master," said
Alleyne; "but I am sworn to follow my lord whilst this war
lasts."

"War! war!" cried the old Italian. "Ever this talk of war. And
the men that you hold to be great--what are they? Have I not
heard their names? Soldiers, butchers, destroyers! Ah, per
Bacco! we have men in Italy who are in very truth great. You
pull down, you despoil; but they build up, they restore. Ah, if
you could but see my own dear Pisa, the Duomo, the cloisters of
Campo Santo, the high Campanile, with the mellow throb of her
bells upon the warm Italian air! Those are the works of great
men. And I have seen them with my own eyes, these very eyes
which look upon you. I have seen Andrea Orcagna, Taddeo Gaddi,
Giottino, Stefano, Simone Memmi--men whose very colors I am not
worthy to mix. And I have seen the aged Giotto, and he in turn
was pupil to Cimabue, before whom there was no art in Italy, for
the Greeks were brought to paint the chapel of the Gondi at
Florence. Ah, signori, there are the real great men whose names
will be held in honor when your soldiers are shown to have been
the enemies of humankind."

"Faith, sir," said Ford, "there is something to say for the
soldiers also, for, unless they be defended, how are all these
gentlemen whom you have mentioned to preserve the pictures which
they have painted?"

"And all these!" said Alleyne. "Have you indeed done them
all?--and where are they to go?"

"Yes, signor, they are all from my hand. Some are, as you see,
upon one sheet, and some are in many pieces which may fasten
together, There are some who do but paint upon the glass, and
then, by placing another sheet of glass upon the top and
fastening it, they keep the air from their painting. Yet I hold
that the true art of my craft lies as much in the furnace as in
the brush. See this rose window, which is from the model of the
Church of the Holy Trinity at Vendome, and this other of the
`Finding of the Grail,' which is for the apse of the Abbey
church. Time was when none but my countrymen could do these
things; but there is Clement of Chartres and others in France who
are very worthy workmen. But, ah! there is that ever shrieking
brazen tongue which will not let us forget for one short hour
that it is the arm of the savage, and not the hand of the master,
which rules over the world."

A stern, clear bugle call had sounded close at hand to summon
some following together for the night.

"It is a sign to us as well," said Ford. "I would fain stay here
forever amid all these beautiful things--" staring hard at the
blushing Tita as he spoke--"but we must be back at our lord's
hostel ere he reach it." Amid renewed thanks and with promises
to come again, the two squires bade their leave of the old
Italian glass-stainer and his daughter. The streets were clearer
now, and the rain had stopped, so they made their way quickly
from the Rue du Roi, in which their new friends dwelt, to the Rue
des Apotres, where the hostel of the "Half Moon" was situated.



CHAPTER XXII.

HOW THE BOWMEN HELD WASSAIL AT THE "ROSE DE GUIENNE."


"Mon Dieu! Alleyne, saw you ever so lovely a face?" cried Ford
as they hurried along together. "So pure, so peaceful, and so
beautiful!"

"In sooth, yes. And the hue of the skin the most perfect that
ever I saw. Marked you also how the hair curled round the brow?
It was wonder fine."

"Those eyes, too!" cried Ford. "How clear and how tender--simple,
and yet so full of thought!"

"If there was a weakness it was in the chin," said Alleyne.

"Nay. I saw none."

"It was well curved, it is true."

"Most daintily so."

"And yet----"

"What then, Alleyne? Wouldst find flaw in the sun?"

"Well, bethink you, Ford, would not more power and expression
have been put into the face by a long and noble beard?"

"Holy Virgin!" cried Ford, "the man is mad. A beard on the face
of little Tita!"

"Tita! Who spoke of Tita?"

"Who spoke of aught else?"

"It was the picture of St. Remi, man, of which I have been
discoursing."

"You are indeed," cried Ford, laughing, "a Goth, Hun, and Vandal,
with all the other hard names which the old man called us. How
could you think so much of a smear of pigments, when there was
such a picture painted by the good God himself in the very room
with you? But who is this?"

"If it please you, sirs," said an archer, running across to them,
"Aylward and others would be right glad to see you. They are
within here. He bade me say to you that the Lord Loring will not
need your service to-night, as he sleeps with the Lord Chandos."

"By my faith!" said Ford, "we do not need a guide to lead us to
their presence." As he spoke there came a roar of singing from
the tavern upon the right, with shouts of laughter and stamping
of feet. Passing under a low door, and down a stone-flagged
passage, they found themselves in a long narrow hall lit up by a
pair of blazing torches, one at either end. Trusses of straw had
been thrown down along the walls, and reclining on them were some
twenty or thirty archers, all of the Company, their steel caps
and jacks thrown off, their tunics open and their great limbs
sprawling upon the clay floor. At every man's elbow stood his
leathern blackjack of beer, while at the further end a hogshead
with its end knocked in promised an abundant supply for the
future. Behind the hogshead, on a half circle of kegs, boxes,
and rude settles, sat Aylward, John, Black Simon and three or
four other leading men of the archers, together with Goodwin
Hawtayne, the master-shipman, who had left his yellow cog in the
river to have a last rouse with his friends of the Company. Ford
and Alleyne took their seats between Aylward and Black Simon,
without their entrance checking in any degree the hubbub which
was going on.

"Ale, mes camarades?" cried the bowman, "or shall it be wine?
Nay, but ye must have the one or the other. Here, Jacques, thou
limb of the devil, bring a bottrine of the oldest vernage, and
see that you do not shake it. Hast heard the news?"

"Nay," cried both the squires.

"That we are to have a brave tourney."

"A tourney?"

"Aye, lads. For the Captal du Buch hath sworn that he will find
five knights from this side of the water who will ride over any
five Englishmen who ever threw leg over saddle; and Chandos hath
taken up the challenge, and the prince hath promised a golden
vase for the man who carries himself best, and all the court is
in a buzz over it."

"Why should the knights have all the sport?" growled Hordle John.
"Could they not set up five archers for the honor of Aquitaine
and of Gascony?"

"Or five men-at-arms," said Black Simon.

"But who are the English knights?" asked Hawtayne.

"There are three hundred and forty-one in the town," said
Aylward, "and I hear that three hundred and forty cartels and
defiances have already been sent in, the only one missing being
Sir John Ravensholme, who is in his bed with the sweating
sickness, and cannot set foot to ground."

"I have heard of it from one of the archers of the guard," cried
a bowman from among the straw; "I hear that the prince wished to
break a lance, but that Chandos would not hear of it, for the
game is likely to be a rough one."

"Then there is Chandos."

"Nay, the prince would not permit it. He is to be marshal of the
lists, with Sir William Felton and the Duc d'Armagnac. The
English will be the Lord Audley, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Thomas
Wake, Sir William Beauchamp, and our own very good lord and
leader."

"Hurrah for him, and God be with him!" cried several. "It is
honor to draw string in his service,"

"So you may well say," said Aylward. "By my ten finger-bones!
if you march behind the pennon of the five roses you are like to
see all that a good bowman would wish to see. Ha! yes, mes
garcons, you laugh, but, by my hilt! you may not laugh when you
find yourselves where he will take you, for you can never tell
what strange vow he may not have sworn to. I see that he has a
patch over his eye, even as he had at Poictiers. There will come
bloodshed of that patch, or I am the more mistaken."

"How chanced it at Poictiers, good Master Aylward?" asked one of
the young archers, leaning upon his elbows, with his eyes fixed
respectfully upon the old bowman's rugged face.

"Aye, Aylward, tell us of it," cried Hordle John,

"Here is to old Samkin Aylward!" shouted several at the further
end of the room, waving their blackjacks in the air.

"Ask him!" said Aylward modestly, nodding towards Black Simon.
"He saw more than I did. And yet, by the holy nails! there was
not very much that I did not see either."

"Ah, yes," said Simon, shaking his head, "it was a great day. I
never hope to see such another. There were some fine archers who
drew their last shaft that day. We shall never see better men,
Aylward."

"By my hilt! no. There was little Robby Withstaff, and Andrew
Salblaster, and Wat Alspaye, who broke the neck of the German.
Mon Dieu! what men they were! Take them how you would, at long
butts or short, hoyles, rounds, or rovers, better bowmen never
twirled a shaft over their thumb-nails."

"But the fight, Aylward, the fight!" cried several impatiently.

"Let me fill my jack first, boys, for it is a thirsty tale. It
was at the first fall of the leaf that the prince set forth, and
he passed through Auvergne, and Berry, and Anjou, and Touraine.
In Auvergne the maids are kind, but the wines are sour. In Berry
it is the women that are sour, but the wines are rich. Anjou,
however, is a very good land for bowmen, for wine and women are
all that heart could wish. In Touraine I got nothing save a
broken pate, but at Vierzon I had a great good fortune, for I had
a golden pyx from the minster, for which I afterwards got nine
Genoan janes from the goldsmith in the Rue Mont Olive. From
thence we went to Bourges, were I had a tunic of flame-colored
silk and a very fine pair of shoes with tassels of silk and drops
of silver."

"From a stall, Aylward?" asked one of the young archers.

"Nay, from a man's feet, lad. I had reason to think that he
might not need them again, seeing that a thirty-inch shaft had
feathered in his back."

"And what then, Aylward?"

"On we went, coz, some six thousand of us, until we came to
Issodun, and there again a very great thing befell."

"A battle, Aylward?"

"Nay, nay; a greater thing than that. There is little to be
gained out of a battle, unless one have the fortune to win a
ransom. At Issodun I and three Welshmen came upon a house which
all others had passed, and we had the profit of it to ourselves.
For myself, I had a fine feather-bed--a thing which you will not
see in a long day's journey in England. You have seen it,
Alleyne, and you, John. You will bear me out that it is a noble
bed. We put it on a sutler's mule, and bore it after the army.
It was on my mind that I would lay it by until I came to start
house of mine own, and I have it now in a very safe place near
Lyndhurst."

"And what then, master-bowman?" asked Hawtayne. "By St.
Christopher! it is indeed a fair and goodly life which you have
chosen, for you gather up the spoil as a Warsash man gathers
lobsters, without grace or favor from any man."

"You are right, master-shipman," said another of the older
archers. "It is an old bowyer's rede that the second feather of
a fenny goose is better than the pinion of a tame one. Draw on
old lad, for I have come between you and the clout."

"On we went then," said Aylward, after a long pull at his
blackjack. "There were some six thousand of us, with the prince
and his knights, and the feather-bed upon a sutler's mule in the
centre. We made great havoc in Touraine, until we came into
Romorantin, where I chanced upon a gold chain and two bracelets
of jasper, which were stolen from me the same day by a black-eyed
wench from the Ardennes. Mon Dieu! there are some folk who have
no fear of Domesday in them, and no sign of grace in their souls,
for ever clutching and clawing at another man's chattels."

"But the battle, Aylward, the battle!" cried several, amid a
burst of laughter.

"I come to it, my young war-pups. Well, then, the King of France
had followed us with fifty thousand men, and he made great haste
to catch us, but when he had us he scarce knew what to do with
us, for we were so drawn up among hedges and vineyards that they
could not come nigh us, save by one lane. On both sides were
archers, men-at-arms and knights behind, and in the centre the
baggage, with my feather-bed upon a sutler's mule. Three hundred
chosen knights came straight for it, and, indeed, they were very
brave men, but such a drift of arrows met them that few came
back. Then came the Germans, and they also fought very bravely,
so that one or two broke through the archers and came as far as
the feather-bed, but all to no purpose. Then out rides our own
little hothead with the patch over his eye, and my Lord Audley
with his four Cheshire squires, and a few others of like kidney,
and after them went the prince and Chandos, and then the whole
throng of us, with axe and sword, for we had shot away our
arrows. Ma foi! it was a foolish thing, for we came forth from
the hedges, and there was naught to guard the baggage had they
ridden round behind us. But all went well with us, and the king
was taken, and little Robby Withstaff and I fell in with a wain
with twelve firkins of wine for the king's own table, and, by my
hilt! if you ask me what happened after that, I cannot answer
you, nor can little Robby Withstaff either."

"And next day?"

"By my faith! we did not tarry long, but we hied back to
Bordeaux, where we came in safety with the King of France and
also the feather-bed. I sold my spoil, mes garcons, for as many
gold-pieces as I could hold in my hufken, and for seven days I
lit twelve wax candles upon the altar of St. Andrew; for if you
forget the blessed when things are well with you, they are very
likely to forget you when you have need of them. I have a score
of one hundred and nineteen pounds of wax against the holy
Andrew, and, as he was a very just man, I doubt not that I shall
have full weigh and measure when I have most need of it."

"Tell me, master Aylward," cried a young fresh-faced archer at
the further end of the room, "what was this great battle about?"

"Why, you jack-fool, what would it be about save who should wear
the crown of France?"

"I thought that mayhap it might be as to who should have this
feather-bed of thine."

"If I come down to you, Silas, I may lay my belt across your
shoulders," Aylward answered, amid a general shout of laughter.
"But it is time young chickens went to roost when they dare
cackle against their elders. It is late, Simon."

"Nay, let us have another song."

"Here is Arnold of Sowley will troll as good a stave as any man
in the Company."

"Nay, we have one here who is second to none," said Hawtayne,
laying his hand upon big John's shoulder. "I have heard him on
the cog with a voice like the wave upon the shore. I pray you,
friend, to give us `The Bells of Milton,' or, if you will, `The
Franklin's Maid.'"

Hordle John drew the back of his hand across his mouth, fixed his
eyes upon the corner of the ceiling, and bellowed forth, in a
voice which made the torches flicker, the southland ballad for
which he had been asked:--

The franklin he hath gone to roam,
The franklin's maid she bides at home,
But she is cold and coy and staid,
And who may win the franklin's maid?

There came a knight of high renown
In bassinet and ciclatoun;
On bended knee full long he prayed,
He might not win the franklin's maid.

There came a squire so debonair
His dress was rich, his words were fair,
He sweetly sang, he deftly played:
He could not win the franklin's maid.

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